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China's ambassador to France, Zhai Jun, suggests adding Chinese language to billboards and instructions in tourist attractions every time he is consulted by the French about improving tourist services.

According to Zhai, one of the reasons is that "China soon will become the largest source of travelers" for France outside Europe.

Outside Europe, China was France's second biggest tourist market in 2013 after the United States, with 1.7 million visitors and $681 million of revenue, Xinhua News Agency reported.

"Previously, the instructions at tourist attractions were full of French, English and Japanese. How could the Chinese language be absent?" Zhai said.

Currently the major museums in Paris provide instructions in Chinese, and Zhai said the conditions are still being improved.

French Foreign Affairs Minister Laurent Fabius said in August last year that "the goal we have set with our Chinese officials is to quickly reach 5 million (Chinese tourists)".

Zhai noted that the French side has responded proactively by offering more convenience to Chinese tourists.

Welcoming 84.1 million tourists in 2014, France confirmed its position as the world's most visited country.

Zhai noted that in the past, the United States and Japan accounted for a major portion of the travelers, while the number of Chinese tourist has surged rapidly in recent years.

The ambassador said that the country faced great security challenges last year, including two deadly terrorist attacks that shocked the world.

"This has dealt heavy blows to the French economy and tourism," he said.

Last year, Beijing worked closely with Paris to make the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris a success.

Zhai said he was impressed last November by the unbeaten French spirit and the country's commitment to hosting such an event after a deadly terrorist attack that killed more than 100.

"The conference was not canceled or even delayed. The hosting efforts continued and more attention was paid to anti-terror and other affairs," he said. "This shows that the country still has a considerable amount of potential. It is capable of pulling itself together quickly after suffering heavy blows," he added.

Although the number of Chinese tourists going to France dropped after the attacks, it was a minor dip compared with other countries, Zhai said.

The ambassador said the services provided by France for Chinese travelers have been improving, while "public security remains an issue" as cases of theft and robbery targeting Chinese travelers have been reported frequently.

Due to the large number of Chinese tourists, the number of such cases is daunting and this indicates "a demanding task for the consular protection staff of our embassy and consulates", Zhai said.

"The image of France will be undermined by the daily reports of robbery. The concerns are there," he said.

Zhai said there are also some things that Chinese travelers could be more careful about.

"For example, the impulse to show off fortune. Many Chinese prefer holding high-end bags in their hands after purchasing them," he said, adding that another bad habit is carrying large amounts of money to pay by cash.

Zhai noted that the French have made progress in boosting public security, including increasing cameras to monitor downtown areas and strengthening police patrols.

But he thinks major improvement will not be achieved overnight because of the quickly rising number of Chinese tourists.
T he first thing I see when I walk into Not Another Salon is a woman with her head divided neatly into half neon pink dye and half neon orange.

It looks like Neil Buchanan has been let loose with the Art Attack acrylic paints and I start to wonder if this was a good idea.

Owner Sophia Hilton later confesses that she was also a bit concerned that was my first impression: We do the bright stuff but you can just come in here for your normal highlights too!

Not Another Salon is the latest in a line of boutique London hairdressers that are doing their own thing. It opened in October, and walking into what Hilton calls an adult Disneyland is an onslaught but a friendly one.

Not Another Salon owner Sophia Hilton

The walls are covered in paint splatters, coloured string installations and crayon arrangements, and Im swept downstairs to a secret room hidden behind a bookcase and filled with Game Boys, crafting books and a half-dressed mannequin.

The salon was launched with the intention of providing an alternative for customers who wanted more of a rounded experience from their hairdresser.

The market for something different has been booming since the overwhelming success of Bleach, which was opened in Dalston in 2010 by Sam Teasdale and Alex Brownsell, and specialises in pastel hues and dip-dye.

Blue Tit (below) now has six branches across the city and operates under the mission statement that a haircut should be an experience, not just a transaction, while Radio Londons Shoreditch location doubles up as a gallery space.

The interior of Blue Tits Peckham branch

Hilton, 28, says that many talented young hairdressers in London arent interested in opening their salons because they are drawn to the thriving fashion industry instead, meaning salons have become samey.

When I went to west London to get my hair done I didnt feel posh enough, and when I went to the east I didnt feel cool enough. Not Another Salon takes away the pressure.

I talk Hilton through my hair history: bad blonde highlights (Zante, 2006), fire-engine red (making a new start) and too dark brown for my pasty skin (attempt to cover up the red), but more recently Ive settled on bright copper.

Seeing as my copper urgently needs a boost and Not Another Salon specialises in the high-end bleed, a technique that allows hair to be dyed non-natural colours and gradients but with a more professional finish than DIY dip-dyes, my new look will be darker at the roots and brighter at the ends: ie, prime Instagram fodder.

Before I leave Im handed two pots of dye mix to top up my colour at home - in a pink and white stripey pick n mix paper bag, naturally.

Its not just the end results which are Insta-fabulous. The drinks menu includes Coke Floats and Pink Lemonade and the box of biscuits proffered under my nose has a selection of Jammie Dodgers and Wagon Wheels, ensuring social-media sharing is inevitable.

With 21,000 followers already, around 70 per cent of the salons customers come from Instagram. Most bring in tagged photos from the account as their inspiration, and while they are gaining a reputation for daring colours, Hilton is adamant that you dont have to want pink hair to be a valued customer.

Our clients are professionals, often in creative industries. We create looks that are them and not us. Theres only one company rule: all colours and styles are elegant, feminine and professional-looking.

For all its fun atmosphere, Hilton is practical about what customers can handle. Her own Roy Lichtenstein yellow do requires weekly upkeep and she wouldnt wish it on someone who didnt work in hair. Its the way you sell these things. People want blues at the moment but if you have any yellow in your hair, it goes green. So you say, How do you feel about turquoise or aquamarine?

And for the record, I saw half-and-half-neon lady walk out with her finished do and she looked fabulous, so more fool me for pre-judging.

@littlewondering

Not Another Salon, 188 Brick Lane, E1, notanothersalon.com; bleachlondon.co.uk; bluetitlondon.com
B ritish-owned and London-based banks have emerged among the biggest users of Panamanian legal firm Mossack Fonseca where the leaking of millions of documents have revealed details of 40 years of creating offshore tax havens.

HSBC, Coutts, Rothschild and UBS are among the top 10 banks who asked the law firm to set up hundreds of the near 15,600 paper companies to help clients conceal their finances.

HSBC  which was fined 28 million last year after leaks from its Swiss private bank revealed how it had allowed clients to launder money  along with affiliates asked the Panamanian firm to set up more than 2300 offshore companies according to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism.

The revelations come as a further embarrassment to the bank and its chief executive, Stuart Gulliver, who himself used a Panamanian company to conceal his pay and tax affairs when he ran the banks Hong Kong operations. Gulliver made it clear last year that he had not avoided tax through that but simply to keep his pay from being made public to his colleagues.

The Panama Papers - what we know so far

HSBC today said: We work closely with the authorities to fight financial crime and implement sanctions. Our policy is clear that offshore accounts can only remain open either where clients have been thoroughly vetted (including due diligence, Know Your Customer, source of wealth, and tax-transparency checks), where authorities ask us to maintain an account for the purposes of monitoring activity, or where an account has been frozen based on sanctions obligations.

Coutts, the private-banking arm of taxpayer-owned Royal Bank of Scotland, asked Mosack Fonseca to set up almost 500 offshore companies through its Jersey offshoot, according to the leaked documents. Coutts was already under investigation for potentially helping clients avoid tax by German authorities.

UBS, the Swiss bank with most of its investment banking operations in the City of London, is revealed to have set up more than 1300 offshore companies through Mossack Fonseca since the 1970s. It did not comment.

The Panama Papers: What we know so far

One the largest number of offshore-company creation requests  well over 1500  came from Experta, the corporate and trust services offshoot of Banque Internationale a Luxembourg (BIL).

On its website, the company, which is 100% owned by BIL, states: At Experta Luxembourg we provide our international private and institutional clientele tailor-made solutions related to the corporate and investment structures via the use of unregulated and regulated Luxembourg vehicles, as well as other international instruments.

Other British-linked banks asking to set up companies included Credit Suisse Channel Islands and Rothschild Trust Guernsey.
I nsurers today dealt a blow to Brexiteers with more than two-thirds of those working in the industry feeling it would be bad for business if the UK left the European Union.

Almost 70% of insurance workers say a vote to leave the EU in Junes referendum would hurt or severely damage 300-year-old Lloyds, led by chief executive Inga Beale.

Only 6.2% think a departure would benefit the 60 billion market, according to research from City consultancy Haggie Partners.

This echoes the view voiced by London Stock Exchange boss Xavier Rolet, who has made some of the most foreboding comments that have been expressed by a FTSE 100 chief on the subject. This would be a geopolitical event that would reverberate way beyond the European Union, he said. I think it would be devastating to the economy of the United Kingdom, and would not be good for anyone with their headquarters in the European Union, the Frenchman, who will leave the LSE after it merges with Germanys Deutsche Borse, added.

Russia would also stand to gain and it would prompt China to reassess the value of its relationship with the UK and Europe, Rolet predicted, leaving the US to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Youre the superpower and you cannot have an implosion of the EU. That is bad for the US.

The Haggie Partners survey also revealed that a majority of insurance practitioners want Lloyds chairman John Nelson, who will step down next year and has already expressed strong support for Britain to remain in the EU, to be replaced by an industry insider.
W ith the recapture of Palmyra last week and the assault on al-Qaryatain, 60 miles to the west, this weekend, Syrian government forces backed by Russian air power and artillery seem poised to dislodge Islamic State (IS) from the populated western part of Syria. IS is bracing itself for an all-out onslaught to expel it from its spiritual and operational capital, Raqqa.

The advance of the Russian-Assad forces alliance is a game-changer in the Syrian crisis. It makes it harder to demand the removal of Assad in the UN-sponsored peace talks in Geneva.

While the rout of IS has established a new reality on the ground, the wider aspects of the crisis  in particular the turmoil caused by the huge number of Syrian refugees and the wider spread of IS into empire-building in Africa and terror in Europe  are far from resolved.

The loose alliance of Western nations led by the US and regional powers is struggling to keep up. The allies seem now to lack the practical means, strategy and policies  and even at times the real will  to rise to the challenge.

The new fact on the ground is that Russian efforts since autumn last year have ensured that the Assad forces have their own enclave in the western parts of Syria. Russia has guaranteed its toehold on the eastern Mediterranean at the bases of Tartus and Latakia.

It is open to doubt, however, if the Assad regime could ever again rule the whole of Syria. Given the brutal methods used by its forces  targeting civilians with barrel bombs, cluster munitions and the like  few among the Sunni population will accept the Alawite-dominated junta again. This means that many of the five or six million refugees who have already fled will not return.

The problem is to address the triple-headed challenges of Syria-Iraq, refugees and IS in terms of today. not the past

This is producing intolerable strains on neighbouring countries Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, which now hosts more than three million refugees. Turkey is still very much the awkward ally. It is vital for stemming the flow of refugees from the eastern Mediterranean, yet its war aims in Syria set it apart.

Turkey sees Assad and the Syrian Kurds as enemies  though the latter have been supported by the Americans, especially in the defeat of IS forces in Kobane. It regards them as allies of the Kurdish Workers Party, the PKK, locked into an insurgency in south-east Turkey for decades. Though IS has been blamed for terror attacks in Turkey lately, the Erdogan regime seems to rank it behind Assads forces and the PKK in the hierarchy of Turkeys enemies.

Turkey and Greece are from today supposed to be implementing the complicated swap arrangement designed by the EU and its allies to stem the flow of refugees across the Aegean. Refugees arriving on Greek shores illegally are to be turned around and dumped back in camps on the Turkey-Syria border. In turn a similar number of registered refugees will be admitted to Europe from camps inside Turkey.

Neither Greece nor Turkey is prepared for this elaborate choreography, which smacks of crude and short-term expediency by the EU, including the British. In a 21st-century version of Ethelred the Unreadys Danegeld, billions of euros have been thrown at the Turks, hoping that, like the Vikings, the refugees and their problems will go away.

Even if a ceasefire is achieved in Syria this summer, the issue of IS remains. It controls a large part of Iraq and parts of eastern and southern Syria. From Afghanistan to the Mediterranean it is claiming new governorates. The latest of these are at Sirte in Libya and Kunar Province in Afghanistan, where it has lined up with the Haqqani insurgents and the Pakistan Taliban.

The terrorist attacks in Paris and now in Brussels have shown the IS terror operation to be wider, and perhaps deeper, than hitherto understood.

Both the IS enclave in Libya and the discoveries in Brussels reveal the movements ability to adapt and innovate rapidly. Across Libya, IS is moving into human trafficking as well as commerce in fuel and food to Tunisia. Beyond Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco are targets, with Morocco being the new jumping-off point for Syrian and Iraqi refugees paying to get into Europe via the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla  slivers of EU territory on the African continent.

Italy and Britain are leading discussions about sending in a small peacekeeping force to protect a new coalition administration in Tripoli to try to bring stability to Libya. Britain would offer 1,000 service personnel but not in a combat role. Thus David Cameron cant be accused of putting boots on the ground. This makes the proposal appear the empty gesture that it is.

IS fully understands the failure to commit. In part Britains problem is that it doesnt even have the forces now that it had for the shortsighted international mission four years ago which got rid of Colonel Gaddafi but contributed hugely to the anarchy in which IS now thrives.

In his recent interview with the Standard the Australian strategist David Kilcullen said that much of Western strategic and political thinking is focused on the recent past rather than what is new in the present. Sometimes what would have worked 24 hours ago wont work at all today, he said.

In handling refugees and facing the changes of ISs terror strategy we have witnessed the collective inadequacy of multinational bodies, particularly Nato and the EU. Across Europe there is increasingly little confidence in the EU. It is seen as failing the test on refugees and terror  though leaving Europe may make things worse on these fronts for the UK.

The problem is to address the triple-headed challenges of Syria-Iraq, refugees and IS in terms of today, not the past. The refugee and migrant crisis is set to be as bad or worse than last year, and it will be different.

The migrant issue is enduring and endemic: it is part of the process of humanity doubling in number in just over a century, and in conditions of increasing environmental and climatic stress. Europe has to operate collectively for its security and stability, otherwise it wont exist for much longer. We need a radical change in thinking, planning and the will to act. Otherwise last years disasters could become next years catastrophe.
W ell, that was a bit of a double whammy, wasnt it? First The Archers then, about an hour later, the Panama Papers. To borrow Chandler Bings line from an old episode of Friends: Can over. Worms everywhere. But here is not a normal-sized can of the sort you might store baked beans in. Its something more the size of a gasometer  early reports suggest that this makes the WikiLeaks embassy cables data dump look like a whispered aside overheard in a toilet cubicle  and these are no ordinary earthworms.

Here in all its wriggling glory is the full skinny on 40 years of cup-and-ball shuffling by one of the biggest offshore money companies in the world  the secretive Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. Theres material about no fewer than 72 current or former world heads of state in the data dump, according to the BBC. Within about an hour of the story breaking, Icelands Prime Minister was fighting for his political life, and theres some extremely intriguing material about what you might call the wealth-acquisition mechanisms of Vladimir Putins inner circle. Oh, and Fifas in there too  as I suppose we might have guessed.

Now we dont know yet whats crooked and whats merely embarrassing  this will all emerge in the weeks to follow. Mossack Fonseca denies ever having broken the law and implies that it would, like the guy in Casablanca, be shocked  shocked!  if any of its clients turned out to be abusing its services to hide or launder dirty money. We must all endeavour to believe them.

So whats to be said? One thing that strikes me in particular is that until yesterday evening I had never even heard of Mossack Fonseca, and if asked to guess would have said it was Martin Amiss brother-in-law. Had you? Probably not. Its not just that what it did was little known: it was entirely off the ordinary persons radar.

The company will have liked it that way. And if I were its senior managers, given quite how disagreeable some of its touchier clients will have found this little butterfingers, not to mention the interest that international law enforcement may be taking in the contents of the leak, I would be experiencing a certain browning of the trouser around now.

This will be a test. For a start, well get to see exactly how long the arm of the law actually is: we know highly artificial offshoring arrangements are vulnerable to investigative journalism, but where they are being used dishonestly we also need to be satisfied they are vulnerable to prosecution. And its a political test: momentum will, surely, swing behind the need to unredden some faces by taking the international action on transparency that the David Cameron has long promised to push for.

Above all, this leak is confirmation of the new status quo. At the absolute root of the abuse of offshore jurisdictions to hide dirty loot is the expectation of secrecy. That expectation  thanks to brave whistleblowers like this one, and the instant global reach of the internet  is gone. The leakiness of big data threatens the privacy of the weak but it also threatens the privacy of the powerful and the corrupt. Good. As was said more than 100 years ago: sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Trump is a hair-raising prospect for Kim Jong-Un

Who says Donald Trump doesnt have a foreign policy? On Saturday he told a crowd of supporters that if war broke out between North Korea and Japan hed be pretty relaxed about it. Good luck, he said. Enjoy yourselves, folks. He added: Frankly, the case could be made to let [Japan] protect themselves against North Korea, theyd probably wipe them out pretty quick.

He may be sanguine but its all too easy to imagine the blessed leader Kim Jong-Un expressing concern. Theres this loony guy with terrifying views of the world, a demented personality cult and a completely insane haircut  and he could soon have his hands on a nuclear trigger. Can the international community, hell be wondering, afford to sit by and let it happen?

Property boom means our homes will be all-powerful

Just when you thought the mind had no further to boggle in relation to Londons property bubble, statistics have been released showing that the value of a home in the commuter belt goes up by 3,000 for every minute closer to the capital it is by train. Three grand per minute!

Weve already got used to the idea that many middle-class professionals have houses that earn more than they do every year. Now we have to contend with the idea that one end of your house, theoretically, might be worth several hundred pounds more than the other end: youre effectively travelling up the property ladder simply by moving from the downstairs loo to the coat-hooks in the hallway.

You hear a lot of paranoid speculation about The Singularity (aka the Skynet moment) when computers will achieve self-consciousness and might well decide they can get along quite nicely without us. Im starting to wonder if our houses wont get there first  and I, for one, welcome our new brick-and-mortar overlords.
B eing accused of supporting extremists is not a new experience for Jeremy Corbyn but it is becoming tedious the way it is being used as a mechanism by the media and Blairite politicians to topple him as Labours leader.

Corbyn is accused by his detractors of giving tacit support to terrorists and of having policies that do not protect the public. He hasnt, however, taken us into an illegal war like Tony Blair did, nor did he vote for bombing campaigns in Libya or Syria.

The Right-wing press and Labour grandees were strangely quiet when David Cameron allowed UK arms companies to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia, which in turn gives weapons to terrorist groups. One can only imagine the criticism Corbyn would attract if he had done the same thing.

Julie Partridge

I fear for how other nations might perceive our country if Jeremy Corbyn was Prime Minister in the event that we may have to go to war.

While some people will be critical of his decision to vote against banning terrorist organisations, he holds the right to maintain his values. But as Prime Minister he would be responsible for protecting the whole of the UK. Would he then be able to justify not taking a tough stance on terrorists or a ruthless dictator if the UK were in a difficult position? I dont believe he has what it takes to stand up to this sort of threat.

Corbyn has achieved many things as Labour leader but his inability to convince voters he can defend the country may cost him the chance of getting the top job.

Joseph Todd

Charles Clarke made a very unfair smear on Jeremy Corbyn when he attacked him for voting against banning al Qaeda [March 30]. MPs were asked to vote on banning a whole list of organisations as a package, not just one.

In his report to the Home Secretary reviewing the operation of anti-terrorism powers in 2012, David Anderson QC said: Sometimes, the proscribing of such organisations is justified chiefly as a useful and inexpensive tool of foreign policy... Proscription should only be ordered (or maintained) when it will be of real utility in protecting the public, whether in the UK or elsewhere, from terrorism, and when it is proportionate in all the circumstances.

I wonder if Clarke now agrees with this sensible view from an expert or if he is merely focused on reducing Corbyns chances of holding onto the Labour leadership?

Anne Gray

Young voters must be registered now

Recent figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) give a snapshot of the electoral register from December 2015, revealing how many 16- to 17-year-old London attainers are missing from the roll. Of the 187,695 teenagers aged 16-17 in London in mid-2014, only 30,736 of them were registered to vote in December.

We call on the Mayor to listen to Bite the Ballot and work with the Government to issue special guidance to Londons electoral registration officers, schools and colleges, calling on them to empower their students to register before Mays elections.

It is clear that urgent action to tackle Londons youth voter registration crisis is long overdue. We cannot allow the next generation of voters to lose their voice.

Jennette Arnold, Andrew Boff and eight other London Assembly members

Help steel industry by cutting red tape

The Prime Minister is right to say that nationalisation is not the right answer for our steel industry [March 31]. Equally, bailing it or specific firms out with taxpayers money is not the answer either, as governments have a terrible track record when choosing which sectors to back.

If the Government wanted to help without interfering in the free market, it could reduce the burden of green taxes and abolish the National Living Wage. It is the cost of UK regulation and taxes that has made this productive sector uncompetitive.

Lewis Feilder

Our existing trees need more support

I was pleased to see the interview with Tony Kirkham about trees in London, and I share his concern that the emphasis on planting new trees can often distract from retaining those we already have. If our existing tree stock is being neglected, this can also largely be attributed to diminishing budgets and cuts to the local authority tree services. If we want to continue to enjoy the benefits that trees deliver, then we need a healthy population of tree specialists to make it happen.

John Parker, London Tree Officers Association

Development can ruin our waterways

Your property section [March 30] focuses on the capitals historic canal network as a major source of new homes. Unfortunately, in some areas the height of these new apartment blocks will plunge our waterways and towpaths into shade. If One Housing is granted permission for a block of flats at Bangor Wharf in Camden Town, a popular and sunny section of the canal will be overshadowed, sacrificing Londoners chance for a walk in the sun for flats where only a fifth of them are affordable.

Fiona Russell
Oscar winner Steve McQueen has returned to his hometown for a short film about a pair of lovers on a dirty weekend in London.

The 12 Years A Slave director spent three days filming in the capital for a major advertising campaign for Burberrys new fragrance.

The film, which features rising stars Amber Anderson and Josh Whitehouse, was shot at several locations in the capital.

McQueen asked them to improvise and create a passionate dynamic without dialogue.

He said: I wanted to do a film about a dirty weekend - when one could take oneself out of the everyday and just be together with someone. To me, the story was about two people who have just met but who are deeply in love.

Steve McQueen's Burberry fragrance campaign 1 /8 Steve McQueen's Burberry fragrance campaign Burberry Mr Burberry fragrance campaign Burberry Burberry Mr Burberry fragrance campaign Burberry Burberry Mr Burberry fragrance campaign Burberry/Steve McQueen Burberry Mr Burberry fragrance campaign Burberry Burberry Mr Burberry fragrance campaign Burberry Burberry Mr Burberry fragrance campaign Burberry

This is the highest point of their love, or their passion. And I loved the idea that things happen - you know that time in life when youre with someone and all you can think about is them? And all they think about is you?

You walk past a bookshop, Oh, I know she would love that. Or, she walks past a clothing store, Oh, I know he would love that. So youre both intertwined with each other. Thats what I wanted to portray.

Some of the film was shot at the Hotel Cafe Royal. McQueen, who now lives in Amsterdam, said: It was just an amazing location because the view is quite unique. Incredibly, no one has ever shot there before. The view from the suite is classic London, overlooking the corner of Trafalgar Square - I dont think Ive ever seen a London like that. So we just took advantage of that: the best London ever.

Mr. Burberry advert directed by Steve McQueen longer version

By crossing over into commercials McQueen, 46, is following in the footsteps of other Hollywood heavyweights including Baz Luhrmann, who cast Nicole Kidman in a Chanel No 5 film 10 years ago.

Since then Natalie Portman, Keira Knightley, Scarlett Johansson and Matthew McConaughey have all appeared in fragrance adverts. Anderson, who has starred in film The Riot Club, said: For the Mr Burberry film there was a script, but there wasnt any dialogue. For us as actors there was an outline - Steve knew what he wanted the shots to be, but in terms of the interaction between the two of us, a lot was left to interpretation.

We had three days to film it, so there was a lot of space to play around. It was about a feeling - Steve wanted it to feel like a relationship where youre just drunk on each other and even just being in the same room together is intoxicating. He wanted it to feel like a love thing and very intimate, so that made it more interesting than an average fragrance campaign.

She said McQueen challenged her to be more than a sidekick to Whitehouse, adding: He wanted my character to be equally as powerful and in control - for us both to be leading the narrative, for the film to convey the feeling of them being equal. I really like that Steve made a point of saying that to me specifically.

@RobDexES
As the fashion world continues with its game of musical chairs - and just 24 hours since he announced his departure from Versus Versace - Anthony Vaccarello has been confirmed as the new Creative Director at Yves Saint Laurent.

The news follows the announcement last week that Hedi Slimane had left his position at Saint Laurent as Creative Director.

Having long been recognised as an seriously talented and emerging creative mind, Vaccarello has been Creative Director of his eponymous brand since 2009, which he founded following two years at Fendi.

The Belgian national has also spent three years at Versus Versace, first as an independent consultant designer and then, since 2015, as Creative Director.

Speaking of the Vaccarello appointment, Francesca Bellettini - President and CEO of Yves Saint Laurent - said: I am extremely happy to have Anthony Vaccarello take the creative helm of Yves Saint Laurent."

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"His modern, pure aesthetic is the perfect fit for the maison. Anthony Vaccarello impeccably balances elements of provocative femininity and sharp masculinity in his silhouettes."

"He is the natural choice to express the essence of Yves Saint Laurent. I am enthusiastic about embarking on a new era with Anthony Vaccarello, and together bringing the maison further success.

Francois-Henri Pinault, chairman and CEO of Kering, added: "I am very proud to welcome such a vivid and young force among todays creative fashion talents to Yves Saint Laurent."

"Anthony Vaccarellos unique style will greatly express the maisons creative signature and fashion authority, building on the brands solid foundations, and further developing it to realise its full potential."

"Together with the entire Yves Saint Laurent team, Anthony Vaccarello will strongly contribute to the maisons growing accomplishments."

On his new appointment, Vaccarello said: Mr Saint Laurent is a legendary figure for his creativity, style and audacity."

"I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the history of this extraordinary house."

Vaccarello will present his first collection for the fashion house in October later this year during Paris Fashion Week.
With a number of successful clothing collections having previously been added to her already-brimming repoitoire, it was only a matter of time before Rochelle Humes launched a swimwear line.

Unveiled today, the TV presenter and mother-of-one has revealed the collection in a photo shoot taken in an idyllic setting in Dubai.

Featuring 10 different pieces the new line boasts a wealth of varied styles, with both bikinis and one-pieces featuring bold prints, flattering shapes and subtle detailing.

Speaking of the new collection, the mother-of-one said: Feeling confident in swimwear is so important and I have worked hard on every design for this collection to make sure it flatters and enhances women."

Rochelle Humes Swimwear campaign for Very 1 /10 Rochelle Humes Swimwear campaign for Very Very campaign Rochelle poses in her new swimwear range Very campaign Rochelle poses in her new swimwear range Very campaign Rochelle poses in her new swimwear range Very campaign Rochelle poses in her new swimwear range Very campaign Rochelle poses in her new swimwear range Very campaign Rochelle poses in her new swimwear range Very campaign Rochelle poses in her new swimwear range Very campaign Rochelle poses in her new swimwear range

"Glamour is in the detail and the embellishments, plunging shapes and bright colours give something special to this, my first range of swimwear for Very.co.uk.

Marketing Director for the brand Kenyatte Nelson said: "Rochelles fashion collections for Very are a best seller - our customers love her stylish, trend led pieces and it was only natural that this progressed to swimwear."

"Rochelle is the perfect ambassador for beach to bar fashion, and this really resonates with the Very customer, too. She wants to feel comfortable but look stylish, and the mix of pieces in this collection help her achieve this with ease."

Rochelles first collection of swimwear offers a range of sizes from 8-20 with prices ranging from 16-35, and is available online now at Very.co.uk
I t stands almost two metres tall and weighs well over 75 kilograms. Its central skeleton is made of styrofoam, the rest was created from 63 kilograms of fondant, seven kilograms of chocolate fondant, seven kilograms of cake lace and 1,500 sheets of wafer paper glued together with 25 bottles of edible fabriliquid  and you can eat it.

This extraordinary life-size edible wedding dress will take centre stage at a London cake decorating exhibition.

Created by multi-award winning London based cake sculptor Sylvia Elba, 38, The Weddible Dress took a team of three people 300 hours to create and cost thousands of pounds to complete.

When it goes on show at Cake International  The Sugarcraft, Cake Decorating & Baking Show, the dress will be set in a two-metre stand made to look like a wedding shop and will be displayed next to a more traditional, five-tier cake also made by the baker.

Ms Elba, who worked on the cake with Yvette Marner, founder of Fun N Funky Cakes, and artist Ilinka Rnic, said: Wedding season is almost upon us and I wanted to make something different. I have always dreamed of making an edible wedding dress. I wanted to showcase what was possible in cake decorating.

The wedding dress cake is one of a number of impressive cake designs to be showcased when the two-day show opens at Alexandra Palace on April 16. Also at the worlds largest cake decorating show are two seven-foot models of Batman and Superman made from icing, chocolate and rice crispy cakes. The creations, by Rose Macefield, from Dudley, West Midlands, took 250 hours to make and cost about 600 to make per figure.

Ms Macefield has also created an extraordinary cake dinosaur that took 400 hours to build, plus edible figures of Dobby the house elf from the Harry Potter series and ET the alien. The 42-year-old baker told the Standard: I wanted to make something a bit different  something people can admire.

Baker to the stars Mich Turner MBE, award-winning London chocolatier Will Torrent and Spanish sugar artist Ornella de Simone are hosting talks. A walk through cake carnival  a circus-themed installation with moving cake figures that light up  by Sugar Show Productions will also be on show and the National Association of Flower Arrangement Societies will create a floral feature inspired by Lewis Carrolls Alices Adventures in Wonderland.

Cake International  The Sugarcraft, Cake Decorating & Baking Show at Alexandra Palace, Saturday-Sunday April 16 and 17. A two-day ticket costs 20 and a one-day 14. Under 16s get in free. cakeinternational.co.uk.

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Review at a glance









W ho knew that high-street menswear giants Moss Bros and Burton were begun by young Jewish immigrants? Moses & Son (later Moss Bros) was founded in 1829; Hyam & Son in the 1830s; Burton in 1904; Cecil Gee in 1929, and Mr Fish in 1966.

Jewish tailors led a revolution that employed thousands. Their interest in new techniques and mass production took men right through from

19th-century hand-crafted bespoke suits for the few to mass-produced off-the-peg for the masses  via army uniforms, Carnaby Street, Mods, the Swinging Sixties, and finally Mr Fish: born Michael Fish in Wood Green, the flamboyant tailors dazzling kipper ties and brocade suits made LSD seem redundant. His own suit of turquoise trousers and lurex jacket is on display.

In 1900, Lithuanian Montague Burton arrived in Britain aged 15 and opened a shop at 19. By 1939 he had 595 of them. He was good at advertising the sleek Burton silhouette, and a crisp, 1936 pinstripe suit in this exhibition looks as if Madonna could pop it on for a show. During the Second World War Burton made a quarter of all uniforms. Post-war, it made a third of all demob suits. The term for flash new civilian clothes, the full Monty, comes from his name.

As young men rebelled against their fathers image, Jewish tailors created the Mod look, based on Italian styles first imported by Cecil Gee, sold from his shop in Carnaby Street. The simplified jacket, single lapel and slim trousers without turn-up also prototyped the recent Topman skinny suit on display here.

In the Sixties, Carnaby Streets style rebellion exploded. Mick Jagger wore a Mr Fish mini-dress at the Stones epic 1969 Hyde Park concert.

On show is John Lennons suede Cecil Gee jacket, worn on tour in 1964.

With its well-judged mix of clothes, film and facts  a top exhibit is a red Granny Takes a Trip suit from 1970  this is a must-see for all style aficionados.

Until June 19. (020 7284 7384; jewishmuseum.org.uk)

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W hen youre accustomed to battles for funding of the arts in the UK, the way countries in the Middle East are pouring fortunes into museums, galleries, film-making and festivals is nothing short of jaw-dropping.

Abu Dhabi is no exception. The less flash but wealthier neighbour of Dubai and capital of the United Arab Emirates is currently transforming Saadiyat Island into a self-contained cultural destination with its own Guggenheim, Louvre and the ambitious Zayed National Museum, dedicated to the countrys founder, the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan. Expected to be completed by 2020 (though already beset by delays), its various landmarks are being designed by Norman Foster, Jean Nouvel and Frank Gehry with the British Museum as adviser. No lack of ambition there.

And since 2004, every spring the Abu Dhabi Festival has drawn some of the biggest classical and world music stars to the city. This years line-up includes Lang Lang and Carlos Acosta. Last years performers included the Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Florez, German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes and the Budapest Festival Orchestra, with the central venue a tailor-made 1,200-seat concert hall in the heart of the citys grandest hotel, the Emirates Palace.

There was a peculiar attitude to timekeeping. No event I attended started promptly, but it was in every other sense a top-notch international music-making experience with pre-concert talks with performers and managers to boot.

Classical music, you sense, is comparatively novel here. But then, everything is pretty new in a place that was a low-key desert settlement until half a century ago. Since then it is the vast wealth that followed the discovery of oil that has transformed the emirate into a man-made landscape of towering steel and glass (complete with the controversial support staff of migrant workers). The sea is such a dazzling shade of turquoise it was a while before I realised it was actually genuine.

One consequence of the wealth is that the car is king. No one seems to walk anywhere, but it is worth trying to navigate the unfriendly multi-lane highways and underpasses to take a stroll. From the smart though somewhat characterless Sofitel, a walk along the sea front took me past the moorings of traditional dhow boats to the fabulous fish market where all the locals come to buy. You can have your fish gutted on the spot by one of the stallholders with their terrifying-looking knives.

Ferrari World Abu Dhabi

A much longer stroll  or cycle-ride  will take you most of the way to the Emirates Palace, with welcome shade for much of it. Beyond the sprawling Marina Mall lies the Heritage Village, a reconstructed desert settlement which harbours workshops and artisans demonstrating local skills. It is rather disappointing apart from a small collection of photos showing the Sixties settlement and a handful of historic artefacts.

Far more impressive is the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, which is one of the worlds largest and can accommodate around 40,000 worshippers. It is, of course, new, with construction completed only in the past decade, but is a dazzling sight of white marble domes, pools and 24-carat gold chandeliers. Non-worshippers in modest dress are welcome to visit daily, with the exception of Friday mornings.

For many, Ferrari World Abu Dhabi, the worlds first Ferrari theme park and largest indoor theme park at Yas Marina, would be a draw, though I contented myself with drinks in the Yas Viceroy hotel overlooking the circuit. On Tuesday nights, they open the track up to cyclists and runners for free.

Skyscrapers in the city centre / Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

While the museums at Saadiyat Island remain under construction, you can still pay a visit. It may be principally a building site but the intricate roof of the Louvre gives some sense of the scale and ambition. The Guggenheim, meanwhile, is already organising impressive temporary exhibitions and the chance of a camel burger or chicken bulgar salad at the Fanr Restaurant. Curiously, for a dry country that offers alcohol principally for foreigners at high expense in major hotels, you can even buy a bottle of Peroni.

Abu Dhabi is now a wealthy city that has its sights set on wealthy visitors but, chatting to locals, there is also clearly a buzzing local cultural scene of rooftop poetry jams and festivals of everything from science to food. And even the British embassy has done its bit to inject a bit of counter-culture into what is basically a very safe, family-friendly destination by commissioning street artist Ben Eine to create a work on its walls that was the first graffiti in the emirate.

It is set to change immeasurably in the next five years as it is impossible not to imagine global culture-vultures descending for the pleasures of Saadiyat Island, once complete. But if classical music with lots of sunshine appeals, go now.

Details: Abu Dhabi

Etihad Airways (020 3450 7300; etihadairways.com) flies from Heathrow to Abu Dhabi from 352 return.

The Sofitel Corniche Abu Dhabi has doubles from 70 per night, room only (sofitel.com).

The Abu Dhabi Festival takes place April 3-30. Tickets 125 AED to 500 AED (25 to 100).

For reservations and further details visit etihad.com or call 0345 608 1225.

visitabudhabi.ae
H ello, is that Mr Porridge? I found myself saying while standing half-naked on a sun-drenched veranda at Coco Reef, a charming hotel near Tobago airport. My wife broke out in hysterical laughter: this was definitely the first time Id phoned a breakfast cereal to check our apartment was ready. Mr Porridge said hed have to call me back because there was a police car following him and they might not look kindly on his using a mobile phone while driving. When we did eventually speak, he confirmed that he would be around to say hi when we arrived at Castara Retreats. Not long after, he revealed his real name to be Derek Lopez, hinting at the Venezuelan heritage of many people who live this far south in the sweeping chain of islands known as the Caribbean.

Castara is a fishing village on this, the sparsely inhabited little sibling to giant Trinidad. About an hours drive from the airport, its 14 self-catering lodges are perched at treetop level and surrounded by vegetation in which chicken and agouti  a variant on the guinea pig with longer hind legs  roam around freely. It overlooks a still relatively untouched bay which is the source of food, fun and commerce to the locals. That feeling of elevation, of being among the leaves of the trees, set back from the sea, is properly relaxing, not least because it provides views on an unfailingly glistening Caribbean.

In publicity material and polite conversation with locals, these retreats naturally ham up their environmental credentials, and certainly they feel harmonious with the landscape. The wooden floorboards, fresh fruit and extremely chilled atmosphere in the bar area, which has good wifi, certainly provide a sense of relaxation. So too does kundalini yoga with Elspeth, a charming lady who had my wife and I breathing spiritual fire within seconds of taking our place on the yoga mat.

Less than two minutes walk away is a beach that is reliably empty with decent surf for those inclined to try it. We sat there for several hours, doing nothing much other than working on tans and drinking coconut water from fruit that had just been swiped from the trees.

The village itself is very small and knowable. Around the corner is Chinos, a little cafe selling cool beer for just over 1, and greasy patty buns and eggs for those in search of breakfast. A few kids messed about here, playing cards and board games, and to be frank even that made it the social focal point of the whole village. Just over the road at Marguerites there is very good and affordable fresh lobster and king fish, served by the eponymous host. And as far as the village goes, that, a convenience store and a couple of tourist bars and merchandise wholesalers is really about it.

Which puts the focus back on the hilltop retreat where we are staying. Modern amenities such as iPod docks come as standard, together with pleasingly familiar features such as dimmer switches and air-conditioning. We had an apartment called Sea Breeze and it was just so: an en-suite bedroom sealed with mosquito nets, doors and windows; then an open-plan kitchen area; and finally, just outside, a hammock from which to admire the bay and the sea. I know the word idyllic is overused but it warrants mention here, too, because despite the wifi I was able, for the first time in a long time, to switch off from the stresses and strains of life in London. This was made easier by the regular supply of pina coladas  good but, to this connoisseur of the drink, disappointingly made from tinned purees.

The hotel offers stunning views of the Caribbean / Alex Treadway

You have to walk up a maze of stairs to fetch drinks from the bar, but that provides an excuse to bump into some of the other guests, who when we were there included some hilarious Swedish and American families. We saw them again over dinner, which was superb and certainly the best cooking in the village, and all the better for being served by a delightful pair of twins from Brixton. Its about 20 for three courses, which isnt cheap here but still represents great value. Over two nights we had magnificent mahi-mahi, gazpacho, carrot-and-ricotta ravioli, fishcakes and spiced aubergine salad, all guzzled down with very decent beer and wine.

The highlight of our stay was a boat trip organised by Mr Porridge. For TT$900 (about 100), around 15 of us took a vessel past a couple of very glamorous beaches and on to a snorkelling hotspot. The waters there were exquisitely clear and full of shoals of fish of every colour under the sun. As rays of sunlight pierced the waters, the fish shimmered in shades ranging from silver and bright purple through to tiger stripes and olive green. From there we took the boat gently round to Englishmans Bay, where the pair of brothers who made up our crew barbecued an unforgettable assortment of fish we had caught, served with coleslaw and macaroni pie and ice-cold rum punch.

I am starting to become familiar with the Caribbean, having visited a few of the islands for my honeymoon and before, too. Tobago, or at least this patch of it, has a uniquely rustic vibe, being completely free of pretension and unsullied by hordes of marauding tourists in the manner of, say, Barbados. I cannot think of a better way of getting to know the island than from this, yes, idyllic set of cottages, whose vantage point over sweet Castara glimmered in our minds eye even as we landed at rainy, grim Gatwick.

@amolrajan

Castara Retreats, Trinidad & Tobago (07841 645238; castararetreats.com). Apartments start at 80, room only.

One night stays at Coco Reef from US$447 (319) B&B (cocoreef.com).visittobago.gov.tt
G ang detectives have launched a fresh appeal after two plain-clothed police officers were shot at in a south London street.

One gunshot was fired in their direction as they approached two men acting suspiciously outside Gye House on Sandmere Road, Clapham, shortly after 4am on Sunday.

Neither was injured but back-up officers were called to comb the area for suspects.

A resident tweeted at the time of the incident: There's police blocking my road and a helicopter circling above. What's happening?

The police have got guns, massive ones, and are hovering outside of their cars.

A 24-year-old man was later arrested on suspicion of possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life.

He has been bailed while detectives from the Metropolitan Polices Trident and Area Crime Command carry out further enquiries.

Contact officers on 020 8785 8580 with any information.
A survivor of female genital mutilation today told how she had been attacked in public over her outspoken campaign to confront the barbaric practice in Londons schools.

Hibo Wardere, 46, who fled Somalias civil war at the age of 18 having suffered FGM aged six, has made it her lifes work to educate and speak frankly about the brutal surgery which affects 200 million women in 30 countries.

Mrs Wardere, a teaching assistant who visits schools to educate children about the procedure, has written a book about her one-woman fight to wipe out FGM in her lifetime.

The mother-of-seven from Walthamstow told the Standard how after speaking at one local school a child realised she had undergone FGM and confided in a teacher. It broke my heart into a million pieces, she said. It takes real courage to stand up at such a young age and seek help, especially against the wishes of your family.

But the Somalians outspoken approach and refusal to sugar-coat the topic with young children has made her the target of attacks.

She said: I had a scary confrontation on the 257 bus in Walthamstow. A woman with a full niqab recognised me and ran at me screaming my name and snarling, You came to my childs school, you told her FGM was abuse.

I could only see her eyes but they were full of rage. She was so angry she had to be dragged off the bus, but I was jumping for joy inside because that meant a child had confronted their parent.

A recent City University London and Equality Now study shows that FGM has been carried out on 137,000 women and girls living in England and Wales but Mrs Wardere believes these figures will sky-rocket once a full NHS survey comes out next year.

She is pressuring the Government for the dangers of FGM to be put on the national curriculum so the UK can raise an entire generation to protect themselves. The majority of FGM in the UK takes place in London, with Brent having the highest concentration of any borough, but there is yet to be a single conviction for the practice.

Woman in race rant on London bus

Cut: One Womans Fight against FGM in Britain Today comes out on Thursday.
G ang members and other inmates at Feltham Young Offender Institution are being diverted from crime by religion, the Catholic Church said today.

Officials said that a weekend mentoring scheme run by Catholic Church of England and Muslim chaplains at the youth jail in London had cut reoffending rates among participants from 70 to 40 per cent.

They said religion gave young inmates an identity separate from their criminal connections and that this was bringing significant benefits to society.

The Church has just published the findings of a major new study into the role of the religion in prisons across Britain, which concluded that faith helps Catholic inmates address the causes and impact of their offending and gives them the confidence and motivation to reform.

It warns that obstacles, including inmates not being let out of cells to attend chapel, ridiculing by other prisoners and negative attitudes towards religion among some prison guards, were preventing the benefits of faith from being felt more widely.

But Monsignor Roger Reader, the Catholic Bishops prison adviser, who also works at Feltham, said religion could play an important role in helping gang members and other offenders.

At Feltham, we run a mentoring scheme at weekends where the reoffending rates have gone from 70 per cent to 40 per cent, he told a news conference in London today. They are small numbers, but significant.

Mgr Reader added that although some ministers and others had expressed concern about the potential radicalisation of young inmates who convert to Islam, the Muslim chaplains that he had worked with tried to counter distorted views of the faith.
A key member of one of Londons biggest organised crime gangs who went on the run to Syria has returned to the UK  apparently deciding that a British prison is preferable to living in the war-ravaged Middle East.

Iraqi-born Maythem al-Ansari fled to Damascus in 2011 when a blunder allowed him to obtain a replacement for a passport seized by Scotland Yard detectives during a raid on his house.

He was on bail at the time over an alleged multi-million-pound mortgage fraud involving property in some of the capitals most expensive districts.

He had also just been released from a three-year prison sentence for money laundering for a 33-member drug-dealing gang. He remained subject to licence conditions and an unpaid confiscation order of more than 500,000.

Police later received a letter from al-Ansaris doctor in Damascus claiming he was too ill to return. But after five years  as Syria was engulfed by civil war  al-Ansari has flown back to London to surrender to police.

He was arrested on arrival at Heathrow and is now back in jail for breaching the terms of his release. Police and prosecutors are also assessing whether to bring charges over the mortgage fraud investigation, which had stalled because of his departure.

A Scotland Yard spokeswoman said: A warrant was issued in January 2011 for the arrest of Maythem al-Ansari, who was subject to recall to prison for breaching the terms of his licence.

In February 2016 he was arrested by the Met at Heathrow Airport having come in on a flight from Amman. He was referred to Westminster magistrates court.

Police used a digger to smash through the wall surrounding his 3 million fortified home in Hillingdon during a raid in 2008 / PA

On the mortgage fraud allegations, the spokeswoman said that a then 41-year-old man had been arrested in September 2009, but, after failing to answer bail since January 2011, had now been arrested again at Heathrow. Al-Ansari was first arrested in February 2008 by detectives from Scotland Yards Operation Eaglewood, who were investigating a London gang involved with drugs and money laundering.

Police used a digger to break through the wall around his fortified 3 million home in Hillingdon in a raid filmed by a TV camera crew. Another 21 men were arrested in co-ordinated raids across London and the South-East, which involved about 500 officers. Ten more gangsters were arrested on other dates. The Crown Prosecution Service said it had never conducted a bigger criminal case in London and al-Ansari later pleaded guilty to money laundering.

Prosecutors told Southwark crown court in December 2010 that al-Ansari was a criminal investor who posed as a legitimate businessman to finance drug smuggling and other illegal activities. Another 32 gang members were convicted of other offences. They and al-Ansari were jailed for a total of more than 200 years.

In a separate development, al-Ansari was arrested in September 2009 over a Met probe into a multi-million pound mortgage fraud. Properties in Knightsbridge and Bayswater were among those involved in the alleged crime.

His passport had already been seized by police in the raid on his home a year earlier. When he was released from his money-laundering sentence he should have been unable to leave Britain.

But a bureaucratic mix-up meant neither police nor court officials told the Home Office that his passport had been confiscated. Al-Ansari applyied for a new passport, claiming his old one had been lost. He received one and fled abroad soon after. Police had feared he would never return.

He now faces serving the remainder of his money-laundering sentence, from which he had obtained automatic early release, and also has to pay his 535,449 confiscation order, plus interest.

It is understood that he is claiming to be too poor to pay. But investigators believe that he has assets hidden in Dubai and Morocco and are rebuffing his attempt to have his debt written off or scaled down.
T he so-called "Croydon Cat Killer" is feared to have claimed yet another victim after a family pet was found decapitated in Kingston.

The mutilated body of beloved family pet Lulu, who was 20 years old, was found at 7am on Saturday morning.

Her distraught family, who are too upset to talk, have released a statement saying her death has left them feeling "violated".

Lulu, who was said to be sociable and affectionate, had lived with the family for her entire life.

Her death is feared to be the latest carried out by what is believed to be a single cat ripper, who is suspected of killing and mutilating felines across London.

Missed: Lulu had been with the family her whole life

Lulu's family said: She was a much loved member of our family. We are all very upset at what happened and we feel totally violated by the way she was taken from us.

We will miss Lulu very much and hope that the person who is doing this is caught. If anyone has any information please come forward. We hope that no one else has to go through this.

Boudicca Rising from South Norwood Animal Rescue and Liberty (SNARL) picked up Lulus body on Sunday.

She said: "Lulu was a friendly, sociable cat, who loved spending time curled up on her owner's lap, as well as visiting her human friends in the immediate area. She would often sit in the sun outside her home and greet the schoolchildren who passed to and from school and enjoyed the belly rubs they gave her.

"Lulu was an absolutely gorgeous cat who deserved, after a long life lived well, to pass away peacefully surrounded by her loved ones. The manner of her death may be something her family never get over.

"We would like to extend our condolences to her family and our thoughts are with them as they try to come to terms with their loss."

An RSPCA spokeswoman said the organisation had received reports of deaths of cats from all over the London area, and that to date 19 bodies examined by experts have been confirmed as being linked.

She said it was too early to say whether Lulu's death could be linked to the other 19.

She said: "We have been called concerning cats found dead in the Croydon area and we are working closely with the police to investigate these reports.

We have been passed some bodies of cats and a series of examinations have been carried out by specialist vets and forensic experts to see if we can find out what caused these deaths.

Examinations indicates that there is a clear link in the nature of the deaths. The experts said that the likely cause of death was blunt force trauma, likely consistent with being hit by a moving vehicle. Examination of the bodies we have received showed that the heads and tails appear to have been removed by a human, after death.

Please be reassured that we take all reports of animal cruelty very seriously. A dedicated team is continuing to work closely with the police and looking into all evidence given to us to see if there is deliberate cruelty involved.

We are particularly keen to be called if and when a cat is found dead in suspicious circumstances so we can do all relevant tests and investigate what killed him or her.

We would also appeal for any drivers who believe their vehicle could accidently have hit a cat to contact the police as part of the ongoing investigation.

We continue to ask anyone with any information at all to call us on 0300 123 8018 or DS Andy Collin from the Metropolitan Police on 0208 6490216.
A murder investigation has been launched after a schoolboy was stabbed to death on a quiet road in south London.

Up-and-coming musician Myron Isaac Yarde, 17, was knifed after a fight broke out among a group of young people gathered in Casella Road, New Cross, at 7.40pm last night.

The former Deptford Green School pupil was found lying in a pool of his own blood on the steps of a Victorian townhouse on the corner of nearby Camplin Street.

He was rushed to hospital by ambulance where he was pronounced dead at 9pm.

Two youths, aged 15 and 16, were arrested near the scene. They were today being questioned by detectives from the Homicide and Major Crime Command.

Forensic officers at the scene after the stabbing / Nigel Howard

Myron was described by friends as a dedicated and talented young rapper who released mixtapes and dozens of music videos that have been watched hundreds of thousands of times online.

Many took to social media to express their grief and pay tribute to a kind, happy guy with an unforgettable smile.

A cousin who grew up in the same house as Myron and now works as a DJ told the Standard: I saw something had happened on Twitter but I didnt know what so rang my brother. Id been DJing and they didnt want to message me. When I found out, I just couldnt understand.

We grew up together and he was known as Little M. He was such a happy face - you couldnt take that away from him.

Stabbed to death: Myron Isaac Yarde

A teenage friend who went to visit the scene, said: He was a lovely, loving boy. Its disgusting.

He was just a child, a good boy. I want to know why this has happened. He wasnt involved in bad things. There was a female friend crying and bawling at the scene.

The street was cordoned off behind police tape last night as teams of forensic officers began their investigations.

Blood-stained clothes and discarded medic bags were dotted along the pavement where the boy collapsed.

A friend said: He had been rapping for a couple of years. He was in music school. He was such a good rapper - he was talented. He was well-known locally and really well-liked.

"I dont know why someone would do this. He was such a good guy. Its a quiet area around here.

new cross vox final.mp4

One friend, whose mother taught Myron at school wrote on Facebook: Another brother dead. Using knives doesnt solve problems, it fuels them and now another [boy] has left this earth.

Kim Bozek, a community care worker, said: Another young mans life taken on the streets we live in. Its getting really bad out there, so many young kids are getting killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Nobody deserves to lose their life so young. Ive heard he loved his music and singing - a wasted talent of a young and popular man.

It is believed Myrons mother Marcelle Yarde died from cancer aged 52 last year. Myron performed at a community concert held in her memory in June.

The aftermath of the stabbing in New Cross, south London / Nigel Howard

Aaliyah Black added: I really dont understand how people are so heartless, at least hes with his mum but that cant change things - hes gone, he cant come back. All of that it makes no sense to me.

Khai Fenton added: One of the most humble guys Ive ever met and known. Last person who I would have thought to lose his life life this.

A mother who lives near to the scene told the Standard: I get so depressed about it. Its always over the same thing with these kids and its getting too much.

People are too scared to speak out or call police even when they have seen someone get stabbed to death around here. If the police dont know how to stop the cycle of young people getting killed then what hope do we have?

I am terrified for my own son who is the same age as these kids but doesnt want to get involved with knives. He is too scared to go outside, ride his bike, or play out and be young, its not right.

Detective Chief Inspector Rebecca Reeves said: It was still daylight when the altercation began and we believe there could have been many people in the area who may have seen something which could provide valuable information to the investigation. I would urge them to contact police as soon as possible.

Anyone with information is asked to call the incident room on 020 8721 4868, the police non-emergency line on 101 or contact Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111 or via crimestoppers-uk.org
A Metropolitan Police officer has been sacked after being jailed for having sex with a 14-year-old girl.

Pc John Wigglesworth, 46, was dismissed without notice today after he was jailed for sexual activity with a girl he groomed online.

A Scotland Yard disciplinary hearing found the crime amounted to gross misconduct.

He was jailed for four years in February and put on the Sex Offenders Register for life after admitting sexual activity with a child.

The officer had made contact with the teenager on the NetLog site in 2007.

Detective Chief Superintendent Matthew Gardner said: "Pc Wigglesworth has completely breached the trust the public placed in him as a police officer by taking advantage of a vulnerable child.

"She was exactly the kind of person he had sworn to protect. The court has rightly sentenced him to a considerable period in prison and he has now been dismissed from the service."

Wigglesworth was suspended when he was arrested in August 2015, and his salary was stopped when he was sentenced, Scotland Yard said.
A passenger molested an air stewardess on a London-bound flight and then accused her of being racist when she complained, a court heard.

Artur Niewolik, 37, allegedly grabbed the womans waist from behind and whispered nice legs as she served drinks from her trolley.

The Polish national then accused the woman, who is black, of being racist after she ordered him to move back, the Old Bailey heard.

The incident allegedly happened on board a budget flight from Dublin to Gatwick on March 30 last year.

Niewolik is accused of sexual assault, an alternative charge of assault by beating, and being drunk.

Prosecutor Charles MacDonald told jurors he assaulted the woman in her 30s as she passed through the plane with a younger colleague.

He told jurors: "The Crown say it is inappropriate behaviour and humiliation that no one should have to suffer, especially while at work in a hazardous environment. It upset her as you might expect."

After he was detained by police at Gatwick, Niewolik denied being drunk but admitted touching the stewardess on the waist to get her to move so he could get past to go to the toilet.

Irish passenger Sophia Lamb told jurors she saw Niewolik go up to a couple at the departure gate before the flight and say Nice wife to the man.

Ms Lamb told jurors she regarded his behaviour as "offensive and sexist" as if he were referring to the woman as a piece of property like a coat or a pair of shoes.

She said she saw the rude and disrespectful passenger again when a member of cabin crew called out don't touch me as she served drinks on the flight.

The defendant, of Weavers Close, Isleworth, west London, denies the charges and the trial continues.

Additional reporting by the Press Association.
P olice are hunting a man over an armed robbery attempt at a bookmakers in east London.

Scotland Yard said a Paddy Power shop in Barking Road, Plaistow, was held up by a man carrying what is thought to have been a firearm.

A man allegedly threatened staff as he made an unsuccessful bid to steal cash.

Police today released a CCTV image of a man they want to speak to in connection with the incident at about 12.50pm on Sunday, February 28.

A spokesman said the man is described as Asian, aged in his 20s, and was wearing a blue jacket and carrying a green bag.

Anyone with information should contact the Flying Squad on 101 or call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111 quoting reference 5305866/16.


P olice have warned the public not to use Santander cash machines in parts of northern England over fears they may have been compromised.

Forces Lancashire and Cheshire said they have received reports of issues with some of the bank's ATMs and tweeted warnings using their official Twitter accounts.

It comes after a warning last week that scammers had targeted a cash point in Muswell Well in north London, with police urging vigilance.

Lancashire Police tweeted: "Security at Santander ATMs in Lancs has been compromised. Advice is not to use them. If you have lost money please contact the bank and 101."

The other force issued a warning over machines in Wilmslow near Manchester, tweeting: "Cheshire Police have received reports of issues with Santander ATM's in Wilmslow. Please do not use the machines and call your bank and 101."

A spokesman for Lancashire Police added it is feared the issue could be more widespread.

He said: "We are advising the public to be vigilant, in particular of Santander machines, but of any cash machines.

"Report anything suspicious, have a visual check of the cashpoint and if in doubt leave it and go somewhere else."

"It's spread across the whole of Lancashire so it's highly likely other forces may have had reports."

The warnings follow calls about suspicious devices on the Santander cash machines across Lancashire last week.

Officers were concerned criminals targeted the machines in a bid to steal card details and cash, and urged those who have lost money to contact Santander.

But the bank said only five ATMs had been tampered with and these were shut down on police request. None of its customers had reported being defrauded, a spokeswoman said.

She added: "Santander was contacted this weekend by police who requested that five ATM machines in the North West and Lancashire area be shut down due to potential criminal activity and vandalism.

ATM explosion

"The five ATMs in question were shut down immediately. The Santander ATM network remains fully operational and we are assisting the police with their enquiries in relation to the five ATMs in the Lancashire area.

"Customers are always advised to remain vigilant and if concerned about any other ATM machines, they should contact the police immediately and not use them."
S antander cash machines in London are safe to use, police said today.

Their advice came after warnings about the machines in northern England.

Officers in Lancashire and Cheshire had said ATMs operated by the bank may have been "compromised".

But a Scotland Yard spokeswoman said today that the Met is not aware of any bank-wide risks affecting cash machines in the capital.

Lancashire Police had earlier tweeted: "Security at Santander ATMs in Lancs has been compromised. Advice is not to use them. If you have lost money please contact the bank and 101."

A Lancs police spokesman said they feared the issued may be more widespread.

He said: "We are advising the public to be vigilant, in particular of Santander machines, but of any cash machines.

"Report anything suspicious, have a visual check of the cashpoint and if in doubt leave it and go somewhere else."

"It's spread across the whole of Lancashire so it's highly likely other forces may have had reports."

Police in Cheshire also issued a warning over machines in Wilmslow near Manchester, tweeting: "Cheshire Police have received reports of issues with Santander ATM's in Wilmslow. Please do not use the machines and call your bank and 101."

Last week officers in Muswell Hill, north London, urged caution after a single Santander cash point was targeted by scammers.

Santander has insisted only five cash machines were tampered with and have been shut down on police request.

A spokeswoman added: The Santander ATM network remains fully operational and we are assisting the police with their enquiries in relation to the five ATMs in the Lancashire area.

"Customers are always advised to remain vigilant and if concerned about any other ATM machines, they should contact the police immediately and not use them."
A teenage musician stabbed to death in south London was attacked during a clash involving a group of between six to 10 young men armed with knives, police revealed today.

Scotland Yard named student Myron Yarde, 17, as the victim of a fight among a group of young people in New Cross last night.

Detectives say they are investigating a fast moving attack which started in New Cross Road and ended in the stabbing of the teenager in near-by Camplin Street.

Police say he is thought to have suffered a number of stab wounds.

Detective Chief Inspector Rebecca Reeves, who is leading the murder inquiry, said: Myron lost his life in Camplin Street following what seems to be an altercation involving a group of six to 10 young men in their late teens or early twenties.

We have had reports that some members of the group were carrying weapons, knives and for anyone who saw this it may have been a frightening experience but I appeal to them to come forward.

DCI Reeves said the incident began with a clash involving the group of men in New Cross Road near the junction of Avonley Road and ended with Myron being stabbed several hundred yards away in Camplin Street.

The aftermath of the stabbing in New Cross, south London / Nigel Howard

She said: I am appealing for any witnesses who may have seen anything, heard anything or know anything about what happened last night.

Police have recovered a number of items at the scene but searches were continuing.

new cross vox final.mp4

The detectives added that, so far, there was no indication that Myron was involved in gangs but investigations were continuing.

We are trying to understand what happened during the course of these events. Myron was attacked on a quiet residential street and we are appealing for anyone who saw this to come forward.
W hite British pupils perform worse in their GCSEs than children from other ethnic backgrounds, a report has found.

Immigrant families offer more support to their children than the parents of white pupils, according to research by the CentreForum think tank.

It found that white British children are among the highest achievers at the age of five but drop behind pupils of Indian, Asian and black African heritage by the time they reach 16.

Researchers said one reason for the change is that parents from ethnic backgrounds were more supportive of their children than white parents.

Jo Hutchinson, the think tank's associate director for education, said: "What is bigger than aspiration is parental engagement. We are talking about things such as parents attending parents' evenings at school, talking to their children about subject options, supervising homework, ensuring that the family eats together and has regular bedtimes.

"Those sorts of things appear to be more associated with this effect than pure aspirations. It's not just aspirations but behaviours that support the aspirations.

A Department for Education spokeswoman said: "We welcome this report which shows the stark choice we face in education today - either we prepare today's young people to compete with the best in the world, or we don't.

"That's why we've taken the decision to set the new GCSE 'good pass' in line with the average performance in high-performing countries such as Finland, Canada, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

"Every time we have raised the bar for schools and colleges they have risen to meet the challenge, and we are confident that this is no exception.

"Over time we expect to see more pupils reach this new higher standard and the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers continuing to narrow."
A n anti-Semitic protest attended by just 12 far-right supporters in north London has been branded pathetic and sad by leading Jewish groups.

A handful of people turned up for Saturdays protest at the war memorial in Golders Green, an area with a large Jewish population, and held up a banner with the slogan This is London not Tel Aviv.

Another banner labelled the Shomrim, a north London Jewish neighbourhood watch group, police impersonators.

To occasional boos and jeers speaker Jeremy Bedford-Turner made a long, rambling speech telling people the future is white.

Footage was later uploaded to YouTube, with the description claiming it had been held deep inside The Jewish Republic of North London. The video culminated in Mr Bedford-Turner waving a pork pie in the air before taking a bite.

Their protest came less than a year after a previous anti-Shomrim march planned for the area was moved to central London after a coalition of campaigners called for it be relocated.

Mark Gardner from the Community Safety Trust, who helped get that event moved, said: The demonstration was quite pathetic.

But its still disturbing that they wanted to come to Golders Green and quite sickening to think of these people defiling a war memorial by their presence.

Jonathan Arkush, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, branded the demonstrators a handful of sad people.

He said: I saw on the organisers video one of them ranting away for 25 minutes while one of his mates was trying to get him to shut up.

The ranting man ate a pork pie which he seemed to think would cause Jews offence. Well, Ive got news for him. We have no problem at all with anyone eating pork, its just that we dont.
T he family of a teenager stabbed to death with a Zombie Killer knife in a childrens playground today called for the horrific weapons to be banned.

Stefan Appleton, 18, was killed in front of horrified families in Nightingale Park in Islington with the 2ft-long serrated blade when he tripped while trying to flee his attacker on 10 June last year.

His 17-year-old killer, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was cleared of murder but found guilty of manslaughter.

Another youth, who drove the killer away from the scene on a stolen scooter, was also cleared of murder, while a third boy was acquitted of conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm.

Stabbed to death: Stefan Appleton / PA

After hearing the jury deliver their verdicts, Stefans family left the courtroom in tears.

His father, David Noel, 55, today criticised the ease with which his sons killer had purchased the lethal weapon online using his street name.

He told the Standard: Why would you want to buy something like that and how can they be for sale?

This boy went online and ordered the knife with his street name, whatever that is, to his own address.

Its crazy. How can he order something like that when hes not 18 and have it delivered to his address under his street name?

Mr Appleton, a college student from Islington, had been with friends in Nightingale Park on June 10 last year when his attacker - who was 16 at the time - jumped off the back of a scooter, pulled out the weapon and chased him, the jury heard.

He was stabbed repeatedly after tripping and falling. The cause of his death was shock and haemorrhage due to a stab wound to the chest.

After the machete attack, the killer fled to Bristol and tried to fly to Malaga in Spain, but was arrested when he returned to London.

Stefan, who had an older sister Paige Appleton, 21, attended St Mary Magdalene Academy and was remembered for his broad smile and easy going personality.

Mr Noel: Everyone is shocked and to think all three of those boys stood up when they heard the verdict and started grinning. Weve just lost our son and these boys are grinning.

Mr Noel also hit out at the jurys decision to convict his sons killer on manslaughter but clear him of murder.

He said: What sort of deterrent is there?

He added: You can buy this kind of weapon online and now youve actually got nicknames for them like Zombie-Killer, its pathetic.

It was bad enough losing him but this has brought it all back and its started all over again. Its like it has come around a second time.

A Home Office spokesman confirmed that work was underway to legislate a ban on the sale of Zombie-Killer knives in shops and online.

Alf Hitchcock, Chief Constable of the Ministry of Defence Police, said the nature of the weapons means they could have only one possible use.

He said: These are absolutely horrific weapons for which there can be no legitimate use.

You only have to look at the combination of the pointed and serrated edges to see that any injury would be fatal.

There are grounds for concern about the manner in which some of these knives are being marketed and I think we should be looking at further use of the 1997 act.

Last month Home Secretary Theresa May announced an agreement between major retailers and the government to tackle knife crime in the capital.

She said: Knife crime has a devastating impact on victims, families and communities, and I am determined to do all I can to prevent it. Knives have no place on our streets.

Stefans killer will be sentenced at the Old Bailey on April 21.
A n investigation has been launched after an electrical fault caused an explosion as loud as a bomb to wake the residents in a suburban street.

Neighbours in the The Grove, Sidcup, heard three blasts and saw flashes of orange flames shoot up from the ground as a solid concrete manhole cover was blown into the air at just before 7am on Friday.

It happened just yards from the entrance to local beauty spot Foots Cray Meadows, popular with dog-walkers, joggers and schoolchildren.

Pete Ingrams, 55, lives next door to the manhole and saw the cover shoot more than 6ft into the air.

The software engineer said: It sounded like a bomb was going off.

We were really worried it was a gas explosion because people were doing work here last week.

There were yellow flames coming out of the hole and I was pretty scared there could have been gas seeping under the pavement.

We were shouting at a dog walker to stay back the other way as she was walking towards the fire to get to her car whilst it was all going off.

The scene after the blast in south-east London

Luckily her dogs hit the deck and wouldnt move.

She didnt realise how close she came to being seriously injured.

You hear of these things happening in central London where all the utilities are packed so close together. But out here in Sleepy Hollow you just dont expect it.

Ian Booth, 42, a teacher working in Southwark was woken up by the explosion rattling his windows.

The father-of-two said: The explosion shook the house you could feel- it must have woken up the entire street.

I ran out and tried to keep people away from the explosion because some were just dawdling around.

It was really dangerous. I thought other manholes were going to explode.

It was good it happened in the Easter holidays because kids are always walking over that pavement on the school run.

A UK Power Networks spokesman apologised for any inconvenience caused by the underground explosions.

He said: We were made aware of an issue with our underground network in The Grove, Sidcup on Friday.

Staff attended and identified that a piece of equipment had faulted.

The equipment has been disconnected from the network and a replacement is being organised.
A mericas fortress embassy in Mayfair is to be converted into a luxury hotel as part of a 1 billion restoration of Grosvenor Square, the Standard can reveal.

Ambassador Matthew Barzun and his team of diplomats move out of the Grade II-listed modernist block  one of the most heavily protected buildings in London  to occupy a new home in Nine Elms next year.

It will be reborn as a 137-bedroom five-star hotel with a spa and ballroom for 1,000 guests, according to plans to be submitted to Westminster council next month.

There will also be six high-end shops and five restaurants.

An artist's impression of the exterior of the hotel / DBOX for Qatari Diar

The Qatari owners of the embassy have promised to demolish the intimidating rows of bollards and barriers put up after the 9/11 attacks and restore Grosvenor Square to its former status as an open, expansive green space for residents and visitors to enjoy.

Developer Qatari Diar  controlled by the Qatari Investment Authority sovereign wealth fund  has called in British architect Sir David Chipperfield to draw up redevelopment plans.

A public exhibition on the scheme will run from April 11 to 16 at 24 Grosvenor Hill.

Jerry Holmes, chief development officer for Qatari Diar said: We take our responsibility to the local community very seriously and are committed to undertaking an in-depth and thorough engagement with local residents, businesses, amenity societies, heritage bodies, Westminster City Council and other local stakeholders.

Americas largest European embassy has served as its diplomatic mission in Britain since 1960 and been at the centre of protests against the US government, most famously 1968s violent anti-Vietnam war demonstrations.

The move to Wandsworth will end a US association with Grosvenor Square that goes back more than 200 years to first envoy John Adams in 1785.
Z ac Goldsmith faces the political fight of his life to become Mayor after Sadiq Khan extended his lead among first preference votes to eight points, according to a new poll.

With less than five weeks before polling day, the exclusive Opinium survey for the Standard showed growing first preference support for Labour contender Mr Khan particularly in inner London.

Conservative Mr Goldsmith clawed back lost ground by winning over more voters in Outer London.

He also gained a greater share of second preference votes compared to last month.

The changes suggested the final result could be heading for a 54-46 per cent win by Tooting MP Mr Khan  almost the same margin as in Marchs poll when the split was 55-45.

However, with 24 per cent of voters still dont know on first preferences, including nearly a third of women, the battle to succeed Boris Johnson as Mayor is still wide open, especially as Mr Goldsmith is gaining the trust of more Londoners on key issues, according to the poll.

Both sides can take some heart from the latest findings.

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The poll put Mr Khan on 35 per cent of first preference votes, up four points, compared to Richmond Park MP Mr Goldsmith on 27 per cent, up one.

The growing gap, which was five points last month, is mainly down to a surge in support for Mr Khan in inner London, jumping from 37 per cent last month to 45 per cent.

Looking across the capital, his support went up sharply among 18 to 24-year-olds and 25 to 34-year-olds, though the sample sizes are small.

Mr Khan, though, appears to be making less progress in winning over first preference votes in outer London, the crucial battlegrounds which swept Mr Johnson to victory.

While Mr Goldsmith is succeeding in wooing more voters in outer London, and also 18 to 24-year-olds, but falling back in the inner city area.

His support in outer London rose from 27 per cent to 30 per cent, but dropped by the same margin in inner.

However, the percentages of Londoners who trust him on public transport fares and reliability rose five points.

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While it went up four points on housing, reducing crime, the environment and clean air, unemployment, attracting business and investment to London, and dealing with trade unions on public transport, and three points on airport expansion including Heathrow.

London Mayor Election 2016: Sadiq Khan

Mr Khan still remains ahead on all these issues, apart from the environment, business and airports, but his figures have hardly changed.

Just over 80 people, who did not make either Mr Goldsmith or Mr Khan their first preference, expressed a second preference choice for the May 5 poll.

The Tory candidate gained 31 per cent of them, with the Labour contender 23 per cent, compared to 16 per cent and 31 per cent respectively last month.

Zac Goldsmith mayoral policies explained

Adam Drummond, head of political polling at Opinium, said: While Sadiq Khan has a growing lead in the first round, Zac Goldsmith appears to be doing better among second preferences than before and to be gaining ground on who Londoners trust to handle key issues.

The race is far from over.

The emerging picture suggests Mr Khans campaign, which was launched early, has gained more initial traction.

But Mr Goldsmiths supporters believe that they have more ammunition left to fire to win over voters as Londoners focus more on the mayoral race in the run-up to polling day.

In a TV political broadcast tonight, Mr Goldsmith will pledge to deliver for all Londoners if he gains the keys to City Hall.

The next Mayor will run a city with a 600 billion economy, a 32,000 strong police force, a transport network Londoners rely on to make 24 million journeys every day, he will say.

Our city is booming - but too many are yet to feel the benefits of that success.

Responding to the latest survey, Mr Khan said: The poll that matters is on 5 May.

We will be fighting hard for every vote until 10pm on that day, putting forward my positive programme on the issues that matter to Londoners.

The eight-point gap in the final result, with second preferences included, could also be narrowed if the Tories manage to astutely target key voters as they did for the General Election.

The poll, which has a margin of error of three per cent, showed Ukips Peter Whittle and Liberal Democrat Caroline Pidgeon, both on three per cent, nudging ahead of the Greens Sian Berry on two per cent.

Respects George Galloway is scoring less than one per cent.

Opinium conducted 1,015 online interviews with London adults from March 30 to April 3. Data are weighted.
H ealth Secretary Jeremy Hunt was today hit with a second legal action over NHS reforms, as junior doctors launched a crowdfunded bid to block the imposition of toxic contracts.

A record 100,000  four times the initial target  was raised from almost 4,000 donations in four days by the Just Health group to bring a High Court judicial review.

Today, lawyers for Just Health served a letter before action on the Department of Health, giving it seven days to explain how Mr Hunts decision to impose new shift patterns from this summer was legal.

The letter was served ahead of the fourth junior doctors walk-out this year, starting at 8am on Wednesday and lasting 48 hours. Later in the month, junior doctors will stage their first-ever withdrawal of all cover  including emergency care  between 8am and 5pm on April 26 and 27.

Dr Marie-Estella McVeigh, from Just Health, said: We feel this contract imposition has been rushed through without appropriate consideration and due process.

There is no evidence that it will deliver a safer system or better quality care for our patients. It will instead exacerbate the staffing crisis we are already struggling with across the NHS. The action, by Bindmans law firm, claims Mr Hunt has no legal power to impose the contracts on the majority of the 54,000 junior doctors, and that his decision is legally flawed, unreasonable and not rational and will not achieve the desired effect.

The Department of Health has already admitted that it cannot force self-governing foundation hospitals, which make up the majority of trusts in the NHS, to impose the new terms.

The changes would extend normal working hours to be from 7pm until 10pm during the week and from 7am to 5pm on Saturdays, while also increasing basic pay.

Last week, the British Medical Association announced separate plans to seek a judicial review of the new contracts on equality grounds.

Todays action accuses Mr Hunt of making misleading statements to Parliament, a claim supported today by the Tory chairwoman of the Commons health committee.

Writing in the Guardian, Dr Sarah Wollaston, MP for Totnes, criticised Mr Hunts entirely unreasonable approach, saying that the new contracts would not solve the problem of higher death rates among patients admitted at the weekend.

She wrote: Ministers are undermining their case and inflaming tensions by misquoting the evidence, which points more to the need to improve senior decision-making [by consultant doctors], nursing cover and rapid access to investigations at the weekends than to increase junior doctor cover.

Ms Wollaston, who was a GP for 25 years before becoming an MP, criticised the strike planned to be held without emergency cover. She said: They cannot justify such drastic action by claiming to protect patients.

The Department of Health declined to comment until it had seen full details of the legal challenge.

The junior doctors' crowd-funding page can be found here.
D avid Cameron was accused of failing to deliver on pledges to end tax secrecy as the Panama offshore accounts storm grew today.

Labour rounded on the Prime Minister, who also faced questions over claims that his late father Ians name appears in the Panama Papers  11 million documents leaked from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which specialises in tax affairs.

Six members of the House of Lords, three former Conservative MPs and dozens of donors to UK political parties were also reportedly revealed to have had offshore assets.

There was nothing to suggest that any of them, including Ian Cameron, did anything illegal.

But the row moved the spotlight back on to what the Prime Minister is doing to stop tax evasion and avoidance by individuals and companies.

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell tweeted: Cameron promised and has failed to end tax secrecy and crack down on morally unacceptable offshore schemes, real action is now needed.

The Panama Papers: What we know so far

But ministers hit back, accusing Labour of not tackling the issue during the 13 years they were in power.

A Government source said: This Government has brought in more than 2 billion from offshore tax evaders since 2010 and the Government has repeatedly strengthened our powers and resources with new criminal offences and higher penalties, so we can take even tougher action against the minority who try to cheat the honest majority by hiding their money in offshore tax havens.

Whitehall sources said that more than 40 changes had been made to tax law, closing down loopholes and introducing major reforms to the UK tax system. These are forecast to raise more than 12 billion by 2015-16.

Downing Street declined to comment on the claims about Ian Cameron.

The Panama documents, which were obtained by German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung, show links to 72 current or former heads of state in the data. According to the BBC, which has seen the papers, there are claims of a suspected billion-dollar money laundering ring involving close associates of President Putin.

There were also claims that the 26 million stolen during the Brinks Mat robbery in 1983 may have been channelled into an offshore company set up by Mossack Fonseca.

Tax chiefs in the UK and other countries are following up the disclosures.

Jennie Granger, HMRCs director-general of enforcement and compliance, said they had asked the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which co-ordinated the media investigation, to share the data it had received.

She added: Our message is clear: there are no safe havens for tax evaders and no-one should be in any doubt that the days of hiding money offshore are gone.

Mossack Fonseca said that it had operated beyond reproach for 40 years and had never been charged with criminal wrong-doing, according to the BBC. @nicholascecil
A Disneyland Paris worker has been found dead inside the theme park's haunted house.

Police launched an investigation into the death of a 45-year-old man in the Phantom Manor, a spooky attraction featuring ghosts and ghouls.

The body of the technician, who had worked at the theme park for 14 years, was discovered in the house at about 10am on Saturday.

Following the discovery, the haunted house was immediately shut and has remained closed since the incident.

It is unlikely to open until at least Wednesday, as a police investigation is ongoing.

Officials said the man, who has not been identified, was working on the lighting backstage at the time of his death.

An initial examination suggests that the tragedy was an "accidental death by electrocution", but a full autopsy is yet to be carried out.

"An investigation is ongoing," said the spokesman, who said that police and electrics experts were assisting with the probe.

The man's lifeless body was found by colleagues, who have provided statements to police.

A spokesman for the theme park meanwhile said management was "deeply saddened" by the mans death, and sent commiserations to his "family and relatives".
A hapless burglar was caught on camera sneaking around a family home using a child's duvet as a makeshift disguise.

The crook broke into the house in Manukau, New Zealand and helped himself to valuables including cash and jewellery.

He tried to evade being caught on the house's CCTV by pulling the bedcover over his head as he crawled around the property searching for things to steal.

However, he didn't disguise himself quite as cleverly as he thought, as he the camera picked up his grinning face as he sneaks out from behind a wall.

Spotted: the robber's face was captured on camera

Posting the video to Facebook, Counties Manukau Police said: "We need your help to identify the male in this video who carried out a burglary in Dannemora on the morning of March 20.

"Sergeant John Roberts of the Counties Manukau Police Tactical Crime Unit says the male has covered himself with a duvet and crawled around the house stealing a number of items including cash and jewellery.

"The offender has been caught on internal CCTV footage. Police are looking for a male Caucasian, aged in his 20s, and of slim build.

"Any information on who this person is can be provided to Sergeant John Roberts on 09 261 1300 or anonymously via Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. Thanks."
A Chihuahua was taken into animal custody after leading police on a chase across a major San Francisco bridge.

The California Highway Patrol yesterday posted a video of him running furiously on the upper level of the bridge while being trailed by a motorcycle officer.

They tweeted the small black dog led us on quite a chase.

Officials said the dog was running against traffic at one point.

It took a while, I mean he was fast, he was running. We set up several road blocks, but he just ran right around them.

Eventually, we were able to box him in. I used my jacket to distract him and the motor officer came up and took him into custody, according to CHP spokesman Vu Williams.

After he was captured, the Chihuahua was taken to a San Francisco animal shelter where staff members named him Ponch, after the CHP officer Frank Poncherello played by Erik Estrada in the TV series CHiPs.

Officers posted images from the chase on their Facebook page seeking the publics help in finding the dogs owner.

A spokeswoman for the citys Department of Animal Care and Control said the dog wore a tag decorated with a human skull, but he had no identification.

Deb Campbell said the dog was recovering from its misadventure on the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge.
S cores of migrants were put onto boats on Greek islands and returned to Turkey today as a controversial EU plan to reduce migration into Europe came into force.

Under heavy security, ships carrying more than 130 people from Lesbos and over 60 from Chios crossed the Aegean Sea this morning.

They were taken to nearby ports on the Turkish coast under the plan which has been strongly criticised by human rights groups.

Under the deal, one Syrian refugee already in Turkey will be resettled in the EU for every Syrian sent back from Greece.

Migrants from other countries like Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan who do not claim asylum in Greece, or if their claim is rejected, will also be returned to Turkey - from where they face being deported to their home countries.

Syrian migrants returned to Turkey are destined for a refugee camp in the southern city of Osmaniye.

Migrants are escorted by Turkish police as they arrive by ferry from the Greek island of Lesbos / EPA

Turkish EU Affairs Minister Volkan Bozkir told Haberturk TV that Syrians taken from camps in Turkey will be sent to Germany, from where they will be sent on to other countries.

About 4,000 migrants and refugees have been detained on Greek islands since the agreement came into effect on March 20.

On Lesbos, which has borne the brunt of the influx, the first 136 migrants were escorted onto the boats as dawn broke on Monday by officers from Frontex, the EU border protection agency.

On the nearby Chios, riot police clashed with local residents hours earlier during a protest against deportations planned there.

All of the migrants returned are from Pakistan except for two migrants from Syria who returned voluntarily, Giorgos Kyritsis, a spokesman for a government refugee crisis committee, told state TV.

There is no timetable for returns. Examining (asylum) applications will take some time.

He said 136 migrants were deported from Lesbos and 66 from Chios.

Some 170,000 migrants and refugees have entered Europe along sea routes in the first three months of 2016, according to the International Organization for Migration.

That is more than eight times the number recorded over the same period in 2015 - a year which saw one million in total make the hazardous crossing.

The vast majority have been smuggled to Greek islands from Turkey.

Giorgos Kosmopoulos, head of Amnesty International in Greece, acused the EU of forging ahead with a dangerous deal.

Turkey is not a safe third country for refugees. The EU and Greek authorities know this and have no excuse.
T housands of people gathered in front of the Icelandic Parliament today calling for the Prime Minister to resign after his wife was named in the leaked Panama Papers.

Earlier today, Icelands opposition filed a motion of no confidence in Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson after the documents showed his wife owned an offshore company called Wintris with big claims on the country's collapsed banks.

The Panama Papers, 11.5 million files leaked from Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca, were published by media outlets around the world over the weekend and ramped up pressure on the Icelandic Prime Minister.

Protest: People gather on Austurvollur Square in front of the Icelandic Parliament in Reykjavic, Iceland / EPA

Opponents allege a conflict of interest and say he should have been open about the overseas assets and the company.

An estimated 10,000 people gathered outside parliament to demand his and his government's resignation, beating drums and sounding horns.

Birgitta Jonsdottir, the head of the opposition Pirate Party, said: "What would be the most natural and the right thing to do is that (he) resign as prime minister.

There is a great and strong demand for that in society and he has totally lost all his trust and believability."

An online petition for the prime minister's resignation had roughly 27,000 signatures this evening.

Icelandic PM leaves interview

Asked on Swedens SVT station about the company, Mr Gunnlaugsson walked out of the interview, saying: "What are you trying to make up here? This is totally inappropriate."

He told Reuters news agency: "I certainly won't (resign) because what we've seen is the fact that, well, my wife has always paid her taxes.

We've also seen that she has avoided any conflict of interest by investing in Icelandic companies at the same time that I'm in politics.

"And finally, we've seen that I've been willing to put the interests of the people of Iceland first even when it's at a disadvantage to my own family."

Additional reporting by Reuters.
S pain is set to lose its beloved siestas after the country's prime minister proposed to bring Spanish working days into line with the rest of Europe's.

Mariano Rajoy, leader of Spains caretaker centre-right government, has put forward legislation that would put an end to Spain's traditional working days with relaxing three hour lunch breaks.

Under the proposed new laws, Spanish workers would clock off at 6pm, around two hours earlier than at present.

Speaking at a party conference at the weekend, Mr Rajoy said he was hoping to gain the support of other parties, unions and business leaders to change the working day, which he would need to secure if the proposal was to go ahead.

There would be exemptions to the legislation, for example, companies working in shifts.

Currently, workers in Spain are normally in the office from 9am to 8pm, with two to three hours off at lunchtime for the famous siesta.

But some have complained that the long lunch break drags out their working day, and many favour the shorter days with briefer breaks that most workers in Western Europe are accustomed to.

It is thought that Rajoy's proposal could have been put forward with a ploy to winning votes in the country's upcoming elections in June.

It is not the first radical proposal Rajoy has put forward - he has also suggested changing Spain's time zone to bring it into line with Portugal and the UK.
T he Simpsons writer Rob LaZebnik has revealed Waylon Smithers coming out was inspired by his own son.

Smithers finally confessed his feelings for his boss, Mr Burns, in Sunday nights episode, The Burns Cage, as he came out to the residents of Springfield.

Speaking to the New York Post, LaZebnik said he penned the episode in support of his own 21-year-old son, Johnny.

I am a Midwestern guy, so I dont tend to wear my emotions on my sleeve, but I thought, What better way to tell my son I love him than to write a cartoon about it? he said.

The Simpsons: Harry Shearer's characters - in pictures 1 /17 The Simpsons: Harry Shearer's characters - in pictures Mr. Burns Ned Flanders Kent Brockman Waylon Smithers Dr Hibbert Scratchy (right) Seymour Skinner Lenny Otto Kang Reverend Lovejoy Rainier Wolfcastle Eddie

Sunday nights episode saw Homer Simpson throw a party to help Smithers find love after the obedient assistant realised his feelings for Mr Burns would never be reciprocated. Most viewers had already cottoned on to Smithers sexual orientation so LaZebnik said he didn't want to make his coming out a big deal.

We didnt want to have that big moment of Im out, you know?" he said. "Instead, just have it be a big embrace - like everyone knows it.

Speaking about the importance of gay storylines in TV, LaZebnik joked: Sometimes TV can have a real impact on peoples thinking - and I certainly hope it will have an impact on my sons dating life  not that he needs help.

Follow @StandardShowbiz for more entertainment news.
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Updated at 11 a.m. Monday

NEW YORK  Alaska Air Group Inc. is buying Virgin America in a deal worth $2.6 billion, making Alaska the biggest carrier on the West Coast and reigniting the debate over airline consolidation.

The proposed merger also would give Seattle-based Alaska a foothold in key airports in New York and Washington D.C., increasing the airline's appeal to business travelers.

"Our goal is to be the premier airline for people along the West Coast," Alaska CEO Brad Tilden told investors on a call Monday morning.

In Virgin's hometown of San Francisco, for instance, Alaska currently only flies to Seattle. Following the merger, it also would fly from San Francisco to several key markets including New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Chicago, Boston, San Diego, Denver and Washington D.C.

The merger pushes Alaska ahead of JetBlue Airways  which had also bid for Virgin  to become the fifth largest carrier in the U.S. based on passengers. The combined airline would control 5.5 percent of domestic passengers, compared to New York-based JetBlue's 4.2 percent. By comparison, the four largest U.S. airlines  American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines  controlled a combined 83 percent of domestic seats in the past year, according to an AP analysis of data from Diio, an airline-schedule tracking service.

Alaska said the deal will add Virgin's 200 daily departures to its existing 1,000 daily flights. The airline currently serves 112 destinations in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

Both airlines have very loyal followings in their respective hometowns. Virgin quickly won over passengers with its new jets, friendly crews, trendy mood lighting, extensive seatback entertainment systems and meals on-demand. All of that could go away if Alaska choses to fly a uniform fleet, a decision company executives say they are still debating.

Alaska fliers are just as loyal, loving the airline's compassion. Like other carriers, it charges for bag fees but was the first to add a service guarantee: if a bag doesn't make it to the claim area within 20 minutes, fliers get $25 off a future trip or 2,500 bonus miles.

Virgin America's Elevate loyalty program members will become part of Alaska Air's Mileage Plan. The two loyalty programs will remain separate until the acquisition closes.

Virgin America got off the ground with support from minority owner Richard Branson and began flying in 2007. It went public in November 2014 with an initial stock offering priced at $23 per share. Virgin, which turned profitable  barely  in 2013, earned a record $340.5 million last year. The airline slowed down its rapid growth and got help from low fuel prices. Virgin is being forced to restart that growth this year as it takes delivery of new jets ordered years ago that can't easily be cancelled. New routes often start at a loss.

Alaska first approached Virgin about a sale in the fall and  pending approval by Virgin shareholders in June and by government regulators  hopes to close by the end of this year.

Alaska Airlines will pay $57 in cash per Virgin America share. That's a 47 percent premium to its Friday closing price of $38.90. Virgin's shares rose 40 percent in morning trading. The companies put the transaction's value at about $4 billion, including debt and capitalized aircraft operating leases.

The combined business will be based in Seattle with Tilden as its CEO. It will have about 280 aircraft including regional planes. Alaska has been a loyal Boeing customer for years, flying almost entirely a fleet of 737s, manufactured just a few miles from its headquarters. Virgin only uses Airbus jets.

The deal marks a shift in the size of consolidations within the airline industry. For more than a decade consolidation swept through the major players, reducing the largest nine carriers in 2005 to four airlines by the end of 2013. The Alaska buyout of Virgin indicates that consolidation has shifted to smaller players.

While Virgin has experienced growth in Dallas and added new service to Hawaii and Denver, the airline was having trouble getting enough takeoff and landing slots at busy New York airports, where access is restricted by government limits. Its smaller size and schedule made it difficult for the company to compete with bigger carriers for lucrative business travelers.

The deal is anticipated to add to adjusted earnings per share in the first full year, excluding integration costs, and boost annual revenues 27 percent to more than $7 billion. Alaska Air said that it expects about $300 million to $350 million in one-time integration costs.

Virgin America Inc.'s stock jumped 40.6 percent Monday morning, to $54.70. Alaska Air Group Inc., shares fell 4.5 percent, to $78.36.

_______

Our earlier story, from Reuters, posted at 8:30 p.m. Saturday

Alaska Air Group Inc. is nearing a deal to acquire Virgin America Inc. for more than $2 billion, having outbid JetBlue Airways Corp., a person familiar with the matter said on Saturday.

A deal could be announced as early as Monday, the source told Reuters.

Earlier, The Wall Street Journal said Alaska Air had emerged as the likely winner of an auction for Virgin America, citing people familiar with the matter.

Alaska Air is expected to pay upwards of $2 billion for Virgin America, which currently has a market value of about $1.5 billion, following a surge sparked by recent news that the company was in play, it reported one of the people as saying.

There is no guarantee Alaska Air will clinch the deal, the Journal quoted its sources as saying.

Virgin America has received takeover bids from JetBlue and Alaska Air as the U.S. budget airline backed by British billionaire Richard Branson explores a sale, a person familiar told Reuters last week.

Asian airlines have also expressed interest in buying Virgin America, although they would have to partner with a U.S. bidder under foreign ownership rules governing U.S. airlines.

Virgin America is 54 percent-owned by Branson's Virgin Group Ltd. and New York-based Cyrus Capital Partners LP, the Journal said.
Editor's note: Changes "millions" to "billions" in the fourth paragraph.

NEW YORK  Major drug companies took hefty price increases in the U.S., in some cases more than doubling listed charges, for widely used medications over the past five years, a Reuters analysis of proprietary data found.

Prices for four of the nation's top 10 drugs increased more than 100 percent since 2011, Reuters found. Six others went up more than 50 percent. Together, the price increases on drugs for arthritis, high cholesterol, asthma and other common problems added billions in costs for consumers, employers and government health programs.

Extraordinary price hikes by two small companies, Turing Pharmaceuticals and Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc., drew new attention to drug costs. Turing expected to book $200 million by raising the price of Daraprim, an antiparasitic used for a rare infection, by 5,000 percent, according to company documents released by Congressional investigators.

Routine price increases by bigger players may draw less attention, but they add up. Sales for the top 10 drugs went up 44 percent to $54 billion in 2014, from 2011, even though prescriptions for the medications dropped 22 percent, according to IMS Health data.

At the top of the list was AbbVie Inc., which raised the price of arthritis drug Humira more than 126 percent, Reuters found. Next were Amgen Inc. and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., which raised prices for arthritis treatment Enbrel and multiple sclerosis drug Copaxone by 118 percent.

The increases help explain federal data showing overall spending on drugs rose faster than doctor visits and hospitalization over the past five years.

Reuters based its analysis on the top 10 drugs, according to 2014 sales figures from IMS, and on proprietary pricing data provided by Truven Health Analytics. Reuters used commonly prescribed approved indications. Reuters shared its method and findings with the eight companies that sell the top 10 drugs; none disputed the findings.

In general, drug companies said they set prices to recoup investments in failed drugs, support new research and development efforts, and pay for clinical trials to broaden the use of approved drugs. Also, they said, medications prevent costly hospitalizations.

Some of the companies noted that Reuters' analysis of list prices failed to capture negotiated discounts and rebates  information they closely guard. In a few cases, companies offered a limited view into proprietary prices.

Amgen, for instance, told Reuters that, after most discounts, the average sales price for a dose of Enbrel is at least $200 less than list.

And, while Reuters found arthritis drug Remicade went up almost 63 percent, Johnson & Johnson spokeswoman Caroline Pavis said average selling price increases were closer to 5.4 percent per year.

For GlaxoSmithKline Plc's Advair asthma drug, Reuters found a 67 percent increase. But spokeswoman Jenni Ligday said that, with discounts and rebates, prices actually fell during the period.

Even after discounts, pharmacy benefit managers told Reuters they pay annual price increases on top medications of up to 10 percent. By comparison, the U.S. consumer price index rose an average of 2 percent annually over the last five years.

Dr. Steve Miller, chief medical officer of top U.S. pharmacy benefit manager Express Scripts Holding Corp, said the current level of drug price increases was "not sustainable."

NEW FOCUS

Drug prices have been a hot topic on the presidential campaign trail and in Congress since Turing hiked Daraprim and Valeant imposed triple-digit price increases on two heart drugs. Adding to the political pressure is the practice among employers and insurers of passing increases onto consumers.

Patricia Calopietro, 70, said she once paid $20 for a three-month supply of Nexium. AstraZeneca Plc raised the list price of the acid reflux drug nearly 50 percent over the past five years, and Calopietro's insurer pushed her out-of-pocket share up to $250. She switched to a cheaper medicine but doesn't like how it works.

"How can I pay something like that? I'm 70 years old, and I'm on a fixed income," said Calopietro, a retired sales manager for the U.S. Army & Air Force Exchange stores from Lorton, Va.

Leading drugmakers say price hikes by Turing and Valeant are outliers. "Our industry invests on average 20 percent of our revenues into research and development. It's a fundamentally different business model," said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for industry lobby Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA.

Sanofi SA, Teva, Amgen, J&J and AstraZeneca, which all have top 10 drugs, said they offer assistance to low income consumers. AstraZeneca spokeswoman Abigail Bozarth said the company sets prices based on market conditions, "a common practice across the industry."

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center oncologist Peter Bach said patients would be better served if drug prices reflected value, instead of bargaining power. Pharmaceutical "companies have complete control over pricing in the U.S.," he said.

By Bach's estimate, increases last year on just one drug, Amgen's Enbrel, added up to $1 billion to care costs. In a statement, Amgen spokeswoman Kristen Davis questioned Bach's estimate, saying it is impossible to infer revenue growth from list price increases because of other factors, including rebates and discounts.

Davis said Amgen prices reflect research and development costs of $33 billion over a decade. Rebates and discounts bring the average sales price for a weekly dose of Enbrel to $704.23, down from its list price of $932.16, she said.
From his seat atop the Fed's smallest bank, in a region known for fracking, farming and ranching, Neel Kashkari wants to make sure he's heard well beyond the northern plains.

Since becoming president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis this year, the 42-year-old Kashkari has gone on a media blitz, visiting nine major media outlets in two days and creating a Twitter hashtag to promote his view that the biggest U.S. banks should break up.

On Monday, he will host a symposium at his bank in downtown Minneapolis entitled "Ending Too Big To Fail," giving fierce critics of Wall Street's behemoths a platform to present their views.

Becoming the Fed's bad cop is the latest ambitious move in a high-flying career that has taken Kashkari from Goldman Sachs Group Inc., to the Treasury Department at the height of the financial crisis to a run for California governor.

"He's trying to swing way above the weight of the Minneapolis Fed. He didn't come from California just to rub elbows with ranchers in Helena," said Dick Bove, an analyst with Rafferty Capital Markets, referring to the capital of Montana, a state in the Minneapolis Fed's region.

Kashkari's critics argue he is using the "too big to fail" issue as a springboard to higher places of authority. He says he's only working toward prudent financial regulation.

Kashkari's crusade kicked off with a Feb. 16 speech, in which he compared the aftermath of large bank failures to that of a nuclear reactor meltdown.

He told Reuters a few days later that the symposium is intended to come up with a plan to prevent big banks from receiving big taxpayer bailouts, the way they did in 2008.

That's a subject he knows intimately.

At Treasury, he ran the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which infused $700 billion into banks, automakers and insurers. The bailout played an important role in stabilizing the financial system during the crisis, but remains controversial.

Kashkari now says "bolder, transformational options" are needed beyond a post-crisis regulation that requires big banks to outline plans to unwind themselves if they fail  known as their "living wills."

Kashkari launched a social media campaign with the hashtag #EndingTBTF to promote his event and encourage the public to contribute ideas. He has amassed 10,300 followers on Twitter, where his retweets of economic news mix with musings on the superiority of Yuengling beer and photos of his dogs.

MEDIA MAGNET

Kashkari is not the first Fed official  even within the Minneapolis Fed  to argue that much more should be done to prevent future bailouts of big banks.

Gary Stern, who led the Minneapolis Fed for 24 years, was vocal about the problems created by big banks. Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher has also called for breaking them up.

There are plenty of critics outside the Fed, too. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders bashes Wall Street at every campaign stop. Even former Citigroup Inc CEO Sandy Weill, who created the so-called "universal" banking model in the 1990s, now says big banks are better off broken up.

Kashkari, however, may have more of a knack for bringing mainstream attention to a subject long the purview of policy wonks and left-leaning politicians.

During and after his time at the Treasury, he was the subject of admiring media profiles  including a photo spread in the Washington Post that showed him splitting logs and building a shed at a cabin in rural California. With his clean-shaven head, thick brows and intense gaze, he made it into People Magazine's 2008 "Sexiest Man Alive" issue alongside Prince Harry and actor James Franco.

As the Republican challenger to California Governor Jerry Brown in 2014, he spent a week on the streets of Fresno pretending to be homeless and posted a YouTube video about it.

"Up against a hugely popular incumbent, he had to find ways of getting attention," said Claremont McKenna College politics professor Jack Pitney. He lost to Brown by 20 percentage points.

The son of Indian immigrants, Kashkari earned an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and joined Goldman Sachs. In 2006, he followed former Goldman CEO Hank Paulson to the Treasury Department, where Paulson served as secretary under President George W. Bush. Between that stint and his gubernatorial run, he spent a few years at bond-fund giant Pacific Investment Management Co.

As Minneapolis Fed president, Kashkari oversees a bank with $35 billion in assets in a region where oil, timber, farming and ranching are among the important industries. Although none of the U.S. banks considered "too big to fail" are based there, Kashkari said his staff highlighted the issue as a top priority.

Kashkari's position puts him at odds with peers who have spent years crafting rules to make the financial system safer. In coming weeks, a group of regulators is expected to release the latest information on banks' "living wills."

'CRITICIZE THE MESSENGER'

Regional Fed presidents are arguably less influential than their Washington-based colleagues. Most vote on monetary policy once every three years, while Fed governors have a permanent vote on the policy-setting committee.

Fed presidents typically have even less sway on regulatory matters. Their bank supervisory powers are largely limited to carrying out policies set by Washington. When Fed presidents have raised alarms on regulatory issues, they have rarely budged national policy.

Ten current and former regulators, bankers and lobbyists who spoke to Reuters said they believe Kashkari's "too big to fail" campaign is motivated by his career ambitions. They asked not to be named because they did not want to damage relationships with Kashkari.

In his February interview with Reuters, Kashkari said he had no motive beyond responsible regulation. On Friday, he said critics are trying to distract from the real issues he is addressing at Monday's event.

"The Wall Street critics can't argue with me on the substance of too-big-to-fail, so they criticize the messenger," he told Reuters in an email. "I welcome their criticisms because they are an implicit admission that I am right."

Kashkari has plenty of supporters, too. They believe his experience in banking, regulation and politics makes him a credible advocate.

"As a moderate, he may be offering some sort of aid and comfort to the notion of breaking up the banks," said Jim Angel, a professor at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business.

Additional reporting by David Henry and Ann Saphir.
The Kranzberg Arts Foundation is growing in Grand Center by taking over the historic Cadillac Building, which will be refitted with a small theater, offices and event space.

.ZACK, the four-story buildings new name, will include what Kranzberg officials said Monday will be the St. Louis arts districts first performing-arts incubator, at 3224 Locust Street.

As many as six arts organizations will share the 200-seat theater to be built on the buildings first floor, officials said. The theater will have offices, a scene shop and prop storage.

Other .ZACK features will include a restaurant and catering operation by David Kirkland, formerly executive chef at Cafe Osage. Kirklands catering operation will serve the event space in the buildings top-floor ballroom.

The third floor will be available as commercial space and live/work apartments for artists, said Chris Hansen, the foundations director of operations.

He said .ZACKs first phase of the lobby, theater and performing arts incubator, as well as the catering operation, should be ready in August. U-Studios, of Swansea, is the projects designer. The second phase will include Kirklands first-floor restaurant.

The foundation plans to continue unchanged its operation of the Kranzberg Arts Center at 501 North Grand Boulevard. Also unaffected is the foundations Marcelle Theater, opened last year at 3310 Samuel Shepard Drive.

Ken Kranzberg, the foundations chairman, and his wife, Nancy, are notable arts patrons. Washington University announced Monday the couple intends to donate $2 million to support university libraries and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.

Kranzberg, chairman of TricorBraun, a packaging designer and supplier based in Creve Coeur, bought the Cadillac Building in December. He said in a statement that .ZACK is a result of his desire, with his wife, to help small arts groups.

Hansen declined to disclose .ZACKs cost but said it is named for the couples 9-year-old grandson.

Constructed for a car dealership, the Cadillac Building, opened in 1919 as part of the citys Automobile Row. The building, constructed in the Egyptian Revival style, is on the National Register of Historic Places. Plush nightclub occupied part of the building until it closed early last year.

Hansen said .ZACK represents a perfect storm of an available building and Grand Centers need for more arts space. The project is preserving another historic building in Grand Center and further developing a true theater district, he said.

A car-sized elevator that is among the structures original features will be used to move theater sets and props between first-floor theater, the second-floor scene shop and the storage area in the basement.

Karin Hagaman, Grand Centers president and chief executive, said she believes the Kranzbergs will quickly fill .ZACK with performing-arts groups.

Im confident theyll find a great selection of theater organizations to be residents there, she said. We know we have a burgeoning group of young theater companies.

Hansen said .ZACKs top-floor event space will be able to accommodate as many as 300 people.

Were calling it an urban ballroom, he said.
Whenever minimum wage increases are proposed on the state or federal level, business groups tend to fight them tooth and nail. But actual opposition may not be as united as the groups' rhetoric might make it appear, according to internal research conducted by a leading consultant for state chambers of commerce.

The survey of 1,000 business executives across the country was conducted by LuntzGlobal, the firm run by Republican pollster Frank Luntz, and obtained by a liberal watchdog group called the Center for Media and Democracy. Among the most interesting findings: 80 percent of respondents said they supported raising their state's minimum wage, while only eight percent opposed it.

"That's where it's undeniable that they support the increase," Luntz told state chamber executives in a webinar describing the results, noting that it squares with other polling they've done. "And this is universal. If you're fighting against a minimum wage increase, you're fighting an uphill battle, because most Americans, even most Republicans, are okay with raising the minimum wage."

Luntz then provided some tips on how to defuse that support, such as suggesting other poverty-reduction methods like the Earned Income Tax Credit. "Where you might find some comfort if you are opposing it in your state is, 'how big of a priority is it against other priorities?'" he said. "Most folks think there are bigger priorities. Creating more jobs rather than raising the minimum wage is a priority that most everyone agrees with. So when you put it up against other issues, you can find other alternatives and other things to focus on. But in isolation, and you ask about the minimum wage, it's definitely a winner."

Sixty-three percent of respondents said they belong to a chamber of commerce, whether on the local, state, or federal level  suggesting that the groups' public statements might be out of step with their members' beliefs. The materials shed light on how some business trade associations operate, and why they've continued to oppose minimum wage increases even as the rest of the public thaws towards them.

The research had been commissioned by the Council of State Chambers, a small, non-political umbrella organization that coordinates messaging across the dozens of groups that make up its membership. The main purpose of the survey, says Council director Joe Crosby, had been to assess what the broader business community thinks about state chambers, and what kind of language they respond to best. (Under the terms of its contract, Crosby says, LuntzGlobal was forbidden from discussing the survey publicly.)

So why do state chambers, which are usually the largest and most powerful business organizations represented in state capitols, seem so far apart from the broader business community when it comes to the minimum wage?

Crosby argued that modest minimum wage hikes don't impact the majority of chamber members, and so they actually tend to leave the issue to trade groups for retailers, hotels and restaurants, which employ most low-wage workers.

"In chambers, historically, it's more successful businesses that are in manufacturing and other higher wage industries," Crosby says. "They tend to see themselves as the voice of business, but there are other groups that are focused on sectors that are focused on different wage mandates."

In the more liberal areas where minimum wage increases have succeeded, that's often true: Broad-based business groups have hesitated to speak out too strongly against the popular measures, leaving those industries that are most affected out in the cold.

In some instances, advocates have even targeted low-wage service industries first - a hotel wage ordinance passed in Los Angeles before the across-the-board increase, for example, and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo raised wages for fast food workers before launching a campaign to do so for all workers (which New York City-based chambers of commerce actually supported).

But in most states, chambers of commerce haven't been as shy in their opposition to minimum wage hikes. Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry president Gene Barr says he canvasses his members regularly on lots of issues, and they are against raising the state's minimum wage above where it still sits at the federal floor of $7.25  even the big, high-tech industries that already pay well above it.

"Our larger businesses get that," said Barr, who sat through the Luntz presentation. "We don't get pushback saying that 'you really need to get behind a minimum wage increase,' because they understand that it's really not appropriate."

Minnesota Chamber of Commerce president Doug Loon says his members' opinions don't match those of the Luntz survey  including those regarding requirements that businesses offer benefits like paid paternity leave, which 82 percent of respondents supported, or more paid sick leave, which 73 percent supported. The Minnesota Chamber has found that even those of its members who are offering those benefits would rather have the choice of whether to do so, and how.

"It's what most employers are moving to," Loon says. "Do we need to pass a one-size-fits-all on sick leave? We would argue that we do not."

So Loon and Barr say they're just following their members' wishes. Some business groups have a different perspective  but don't necessarily have the power to combat a state chamber when it puts its mind to something.

The South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce has supported a higher minimum wage, but its president Frank Knapp says his members simply don't have the bandwidth to push for it, with so many other issues on their plate. "When you actually talk to those people one on one, you find that yeah they're fine with raising the minimum wage," Knapp says. "But they're not going to crusade for the minimum wage."

That might be true of traditional chamber members too, Knapp thinks, many of whom mostly join for the networking benefits rather than the political advocacy aspect anyway. But within those groups, the industries that care most about a given policy matter  hotels and restaurants, in the case of the minimum wage  drive the organization's agenda. "Usually the most vocal members of the state chambers dominate on that particular issue, and everybody else stays quiet," Knapp says.

When that happens, it's easy for politicians and the public to get the idea that the private sector stands united against raising the minimum wage, when opinions are actually much more diverse.

Holly Sklar is CEO of a national group called Business for a Fair Minimum Wage that favors raising the wage floor in states and nationwide, and she points to a number of surveys by reputable pollsters  from CareerBuilder, Small Business Majority, and the American Sustainable Business Council  that found most businesses agree. Many of those businesses don't join state chambers, which means their opinions don't filter up to the organization's leadership, so its positions don't change - and that's what gets conveyed to politicians.

"Sometimes you end up confused by the fact that someone has enough money to be in the halls of the state senate, day after day after day, funded by some of the bigger corporations that have more of an investment in the status quo," Sklar says. "It has an impact on how it's perceived  you start thinking that's what business thinks."
Pete Kraemer, a fifth generation brewer who leads Anheuser-Busch InBev's North American supply operations from St. Louis, is joining the company's global team.

Kraemer is A-B InBev's new chief supply officer for global brewing operations, effective immediately. He replaces Claudio Braz Ferro, who is joining the integration efforts of A-B InBev's proposed acquisition of rival SABMiller.

Kraemer, a St. Louis native, joined A-B 27 years ago following in the footsteps of his father, the late Gerhardt Kraemer, who also held A-B's top brewing job and retired in 2001.

Pete Kraemer will report to CEO Carlos Brito and he'll be based in the company's New York office.

In 2013, Kraemer was among the brewmasters A-B featured in a Budweiser commercial.

Kraemer's past duties included tasting Budweiser and other other beers daily at 3 p.m. to ensure consistency and quality. Kraemer said in his new role he'll continue to share quality processes used in St. Louis throughout the brewer's global footprint. "We'll take the best practices we have for brewing and quality in North America and share those with breweries elsewhere in the world," he told the Post-Dispatch.

Vini Barbosa, who joined the company in 1993, maintains his role as North American vice president of logistics at A-B InBev and assumes Kraemer's role as vice president of supply. His family will move from New York to the St. Louis area.
WASHINGTON  Sen. Claire McCaskill was one of four members of Congress who traveled to Austria, Jordan and Israel last week, and she said she came home newly reassured that screening of Syrian refugees was so tough that terrorists will not get into the U.S. in that refugee flow.

The Obama administration has said the U.S. would take 10,000 Syrian refugees, a tiny portion of the 4.5 million who have fled civil war into five neighboring countries: Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt. Jordan alone has taken more than 635,000 refugees, one-tenth its population.

McCaskill, D-Mo., said she came away convinced that if terrorists get into the United States it will be through visa waiver programs or a very open Canadian border or some other way.

I would challenge any American to go and see the screening process and not be convinced that it is incredibly thorough and, secondly, to not have their heart pulled by the children, these children and their families, that are fleeing horrendous circumstances, McCaskill said.

She left open the possibility she would support the U.S. taking more: We need to get the 10,000 done and go from there, McCaskill told reporters.
JEFFERSON CITY  Even during this downside-up election season, there's still one pretty safe bet: That Democrats will be in the minority again when the Missouri Legislature convenes next January.

To win districts, you have to run in them  and there are no Democrats running in 65 House districts. That means Republicans will need to win just 17 contested races to control the chamber. In the Senate, Democrats will need an extraordinary effort in rural Missouri to even come close to closing a 24-to-8 GOP advantage.

But factor in possible Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, strong candidates in targeted districts and high voter turnout in a presidential election, and Democrats say they could actually win seats this year, ending the party's steady slide further into the minority during the Obama presidency.

Taking Republicans below a two-thirds majority in either chamber would mean greater bargaining power if a Democrat were elected governor.

Crystal Brinkley, executive director of the Missouri Democratic Party, wouldn't say whether she believes the party can gain the nine seats in the House and three in the Senate necessary to do so.

"Our candidate recruitment efforts have been solid. I think we have significant opportunities to post some serious wins in some of these races," she said. "Going back to the Trump factor, we really have the wind in our backs with the ongoing turmoil in the Republican Party."

Democrats aren't running for numerous seats that have been competitive in the past. In the 3rd Senate district, it looks like incumbent state Sen. Gary Romine, R-Farmington, will skate to re-election after winning narrowly in 2012.

In the House, state Rep. Randy Pietzman, R-Troy, won't face competition after wresting control of the seat from Democrats in 2014. In Lee's Summit, Republican state Rep. Gary Cross will be unopposed in what's considered a swing district. Two Jefferson County incumbent Republicans also won't face competition.

All told, Democrats are contesting 13 fewer House seats this year than they did in 2012.

Republicans say this makes maintaining their historic majorities easier. Trump, they say, would not necessarily be a negative  especially in traditional swing areas like Jefferson County, where Trump won the March GOP primary by 10 percentage points.

Robert Knodell, executive director of the Missouri House Republican Campaign Committee, said that long-term trends favoring the GOP won't reverse just because of a contentious Republican nominating contest.

Of the March presidential primary, he said, "You could look at a number of counties in the Bootheel, the Lead Belt  across rural Missouri you see very surprising disparities where Republican turnout was vastly larger than Democratic turnout in those areas, and I think it's indicative of a trend."

Even though Republicans control the House 116-45 and the Senate 24-8, Democrats hold six of eight statewide offices.

Factoring in the possible presidential ticket of either party, it's hard to speculate what might happen this November.

"We don't know how any of this is going to play out," said Dave Robertson, a political science professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. "This is uncharted territory."

HOUSE OVERVIEW

Select a district to see candidates. Use the search function to find your district.

In the House, Republicans controlled 117 seats before state Rep. Don Gosen of west St. Louis County resigned in February. That means Democrats will have to net nine seats to take the GOP below the 109-vote, veto-proof threshold.

In south St. Louis County, Democrats will look to poach seats in the 94th and 95th districts.

In the 94th, former state Rep. Vicki Lorenz Englund, D-Green Park, will face Republican state Rep. Cloria Brown for the fifth time. Englund has won in presidential election years and Brown has won during midterms, when turnout is lower.

Farther south in the 95th district, state Rep. Marsha Haefner, R-Oakville, will take on Democrat Glenn Koenen, D-Oakville. Haefner has won the district easily in the past, but Koenen said he'll challenge Haefner's stances on local issues, including her opposition to a housing project for low-income seniors in Oakville.

Democrats will be playing defense in the 70th, 90th, 91st and 92nd districts, which Republicans consider competitive.

Democrat Byron DeLear in the 70th district will face either Andrew Purcell or Mark Matthieson, depending on the Aug. 2 primary. State Rep. Bill Otto, D-Maryland Heights, who is leaving the seat to run for Congress, won the district narrowly in 2012 and 2014.

In the Kirkwood-based 90th district, Democratic state Rep. Deb Lavender will defend her seat against Republican Mark Milton, a lawyer. Lavender ran for the seat three times before winning by 444 votes in 2014.

In the 91st, Democrat Sarah Unsicker and Republican Greg Mueller will compete for the seat being vacated by state Rep. Jeanne Kirkton, D-Webster Groves. The seat includes parts of Crestwood, Webster Groves, Shrewsbury and a sliver of south St. Louis.

In the 92nd, state Rep. Genise Montecillo, D-Marlborough, will face Republican Daniel Bogle. Though the Affton-based seat leans Democratic, Knodell believes a Republican can compete based on recent voting patterns.

Elsewhere in the metro area, Jefferson County Republican incumbent state Reps. Elaine Gannon of De Soto, Rob Vescovo of Arnold, Dan Shaul of Imperial and Shane Roden of Cedar Hill will face Democratic competitors.

Democrats aren't challenging incumbent state Reps. Becky Ruth of Festus or John McCaherty of High Ridge, while Republicans aren't challenging the county's only Democrat in the 118th, state Rep. Ben Harris of Hillsboro.

In St. Charles County, Democrats are running in nine of the 11 GOP-held seats that cover at least part of the county. Some county Republicans have shown shaky support for unions, and nine of the county's 11 Republicans voted against a plan to start a prescription drug monitoring program, which could also register with voters.

"We have a drug epidemic that we have to do something with," said Joe Brazil, who is chair of the county GOP and a county councilman. "We have to do something with the opioids. Missouri is the only state in the country that doesnt do any drug registry."

As it stands, all 45 of the Democrats' House seats  besides Harris'  are in urban areas: St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield, Columbia and St. Joseph. Outstate races will test whether the party can still appeal to rural voters.

In St. Francois County, Democrat Travis Barnes will take on either Mike Miller or Mike Henderson in November, depending on the August Republican primary. The 117th district had been a rural Democratic stronghold, with state Rep. Linda Black running unopposed in 2014. She became a Republican after the election.

Democrats are also taking on Republican incumbents in the 149th and 150th districts in the Bootheel, which are considered competitive. State Rep. Lindell Shumake, R-Hannibal, also faces a challenge in the 5th district, in northeast Missouri.

In Boone County, Republicans will be defending the 44th and 47th districts, which take in outside parts of Columbia and surrounding rural areas. The two districts have been decided narrowly since redistricting in 2012.

A number of suburban Kansas City districts could be competitive. Among them are the 14th district, where incumbent state Rep. Kevin Corlew, R-Kansas City, will have to win a primary before facing former Mizzou All-American tight end Martin Rucker, a Democrat.

Democrats are looking to hold their lone Springfield-based seat, while hoping to gain more ground in the growing Greene County.

SENATE OVERVIEW

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Brinkley said holding onto state Sen. Scott Sifton's South County-based seat is a major focus for Democrats this year. The seat, which stretches from Lemay north to Webster Groves and Brentwood, was decided by less than one percentage point in 2012.

Physician Randy Jotte, a Republican, will take on Sifton. Jotte ran unsuccessfully against U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Ballwin, in 2012 for the Republican nomination to the 2nd congressional seat.

As of January, Sifton had $536,000 on hand and raised more than $80,000 last quarter, according to Missouri Ethics Commission filings. Jotte's filings weren't available, but he had yet to file for Senate in January when the last reports were due.

Democrats also seek to hold the Independence-based 11th district, which has been vacant since Democratic state Sen. Paul LeVota resigned last year.

In Boone County, state Rep. Stephen Webber, D-Columbia, will take on state Rep. Caleb Rowden, R-Columbia, for the open 19th district. The traditionally Democratic seat has been in Republican hands for the last eight years, but term-limited state Sen. Kurt Schaefer is running for Missouri attorney general.

Webber had $487,000 on hand in January, raising more than $108,000 the last fundraising quarter, according to campaign filings. Rowden was at an initial cash disadvantage, having $120,000 on hand while raising $60,000 the last quarter.

Rowden reported raising an additional $105,000 at the end of March, with $100,000 of that coming from the Missouri Senate Campaign Committee. Webber, too, has listed more big donations since January, reporting three $10,000 donations.

Even if Democrats hold the Independence and South County districts  and are able to flip the Boone County district  they would have just 10 votes in the Senate. They would need two more seats to bring Republicans below the veto-proof threshold.

Possible targets  though still long shots  include the St. Charles County-based 23rd district and the suburban Kansas City-based 17th district.

In the 23rd, two Democrats and three Republicans are vying for their party nominations to fill the seat vacated last year by state Sen. Tom Dempsey, R-St. Charles.

Democrat J. Ranen Bechthold will challenge incumbent state Sen. Ryan Silvey in the 17th, which includes the Ford Claycomo plant. Silvey has differed with GOP leadership on controversial issues like right to work and Medicaid expansion.

Democrats failed to field a candidate against incumbent state Sen. Gary Romine, R-Farmington. The district includes St. Francois, Reynolds, Iron, Ste. Genevieve and Washington counties and the southern half of Jefferson County.

Democrats traditionally did well here, but times have changed, said Terri Kreitler, chairwoman of the Jefferson County Republican Central Committee.

She said, "Many people who had been longtime Democrats have realized that the Democrat party doesn't represent them as a whole  at least on the national level."
UPDATE at 4:01 p.m. Monday: In an interview with the Post-Dispatch on Monday, Missouri House Speaker Todd Richardson said he is waiting to see if a plan to raise the state fuel tax by 5.9 cents per gallon emerges from the Senate in the coming days.

Here's our previous story:

The Missouri Department of Transportation isnt counting on legislators to hike the states gas tax this year, and plans to dip heavily into its cash reserves to secure federal matching funds in coming years.

Its a sound financial plan, although it comes with a risk, said Patrick McKenna, the agencys director.

Alternatives to raising the gas tax proposed include restarting a cost-sharing program that would allow MoDOT to split the cost of transportation system projects with local communities, and a plan to fix state roads and bridges with money saved from other state programs.

MoDOT has grappled with funding problems in recent years, a situation the previous chairman of the commission that governs MoDOT described as forcing the agency to lurch from financial crisis to financial crisis.

Missouri can match $1 of state funds with $4 of federal funds  and the risk of losing those federal dollars is too great to stomach, says McKenna.

MoDOT began the current fiscal year with about $831 million in reserves. In six years, that number is expected to dip to around $214 million if the agency continues to take money from the fund, according to its projections.

Thats too low, quite frankly, McKenna said.

That sum seems like a lot of money, but a large and unexpected repair or rebuild project  such as if a barge hits a bridge over the Mississippi River  quickly can drain millions of dollars, he said.

Expending money from cash reserves should lead to scrutiny and potential concern, said Donald Boyd, director of fiscal studies at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government in Albany, N.Y.

The world is uncertain and nothing ever works out exactly the way you think, Boyd said of the reason for keeping cash on hand.

Money in the bank can be needed to counter revenue fluctuations or the unexpected, such as a lawsuit judgment or an audit by the federal government in which funds are taken back.

But using cash reserves is common among state governments to counter financial difficulties.

When times are lean, and particularly when the economy is bad, thats exactly one of the things reserves are there for, Boyd said.

He suggested that the size of reserves should be related to the amount of financial instability, which MoDOT says there has been plenty of in recent years.

The state had been holding onto cash as uncertainty lingered about the passage of a federal transportation bill, leading to worry that federal reimbursement funds could be suspended. So MoDOT wanted to make sure it had enough money on hand to avoid delaying payments to its contractors.

That was untenable to us, McKenna said. You have private companies putting forward private capital and they expect to be paid.

That fear was coupled with concern that contractors would leave to work in other states with bigger construction budgets.

Wed have less competition for new contracts and get less favorable pricing on a per-project basis, McKenna said.

But such worries are now somewhat lessening.

MoDOT, and other state transportation agencies, got some breathing room in December with the long-awaited passage of a five-year, $305 billion federal transportation bill. McKenna said that allows MoDOT to tread water for five years and more safely lower its working capital.

The next month, the Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission rescinded a bare-bones plan to maintain 8,000 miles of primary roads such as interstates, with the remaining 26,000 miles of roads seeing limited routine maintenance.

The condition of bridges across the state has been worrisome, with roughly 600 in critical condition. That number is expected to stay the same five years from now  including bridges that will be repaired or replaced, and other bridges that will be added to the list  without new funding, McKenna said.

State Sen. Doug Libla, R-Poplar Bluff, has campaigned hard for hiking the states gas tax as a panacea for some of MoDOTs funding woes. The states 17-cent-per-gallon fuel tax hasnt been raised in 20 years and is among the nations lowest.

On Wednesday, Libla won preliminary approval in the Senate to hold a statewide referendum in November on whether to raise the tax by 5.9 cents to 22.9 cents per gallon, above the 20.88-cent national average. It was a steep jump from his earlier proposal to hike the tax by 1.5 cents on gas and 3.5 cents for diesel users, although its likely to face opposition in the House.

He has went to bat for us, but I dont see anything happening this year, said Gregg Smith, the newly appointed chairman of the Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission, of Liblas efforts to raise the gas tax.

One reason, he said, is that legislators dont like raising taxes in an election year.

McKenna came to St. Louis on Wednesday and echoed that sentiment to the East-West Gateway Council of Governments board of directors.

He said maintenance, not new projects, remains MoDOTs focus, and that the fight must continue to solve MoDOTs funding problems  even in election years.

We need to move the ball, McKenna said. We cant take a year off.
JEFFERSON CITY  Top Missouri leaders continued their sparring over state finances Monday when Gov. Jay Nixon moved to release money he had been withholding from various state programs.

The maneuver came two weeks after the Republican-controlled House voted to force the release of money for two programs that hadnt been funded by the governor in the current fiscal year.

Nixon said he was able to release $2.1 million of the more than $45 million hes been withholding because of new, positive economic data.

The March general revenue report reflects the strong growth we are seeing in our economy, and Im pleased we are able to make these dollars available, the governor said in a prepared statement.

While House Budget Chairman Tom Flanigan said he was thankful for the release of money, he cautioned that the Legislature would be monitoring other opportunities to override the governor's withholdings.

Under current law, the governor can withhold money when state revenue is less than the estimate the appropriations are based on, to be released if they improve. In 2014, Missouri voters gave lawmakers the ability to override the governor.

The House used that new power for the first time two weeks ago, overriding $925,000 for a brain injury program and the Missouri Scholars Academy and the Missouri Fine Arts Academy.

Those actions were pending in the Senate, but now appear to be unneeded after the governor released the money.

Flanigan said its clear that the constitutional authority given to the General Assembly by voters was instrumental in forcing the governors hand.

Im happy to see the governor release funds to these deserving programs, but also extremely thankful that the voters made the wise decision to give the Legislature the authority to intervene in times when his withholds are not justified, said Flanigan, R-Carthage.

The governor based much of his decision to withhold the money after it became clear the state would not receive $50 million in tobacco settlement dollars that lawmakers had banked on when crafting the spending plan that runs through July 1.

On Monday, interim state budget chief Dan Haug announced that state revenue has increased by 4.2 percent compared to 2015, allowing Nixon to slightly loosen the states purse strings.

In addition to the money for the brain injury assistance fund and the scholars program, the governor released $250,000 for a foster child program, $400,000 for asthma services and $250,000 for work at Sullivan County Lake.
Edwin Shifrins family knew he successfully escaped from a Nazi prison camp in World War II, but it wasnt until one of his children started digging into his wartime past that they learned the details of the clever escape.

Shifrin, 93, seldom discusses his time at war, but he received a prisoner-of-war medal in February after son Dan Shifrin dug through old news reports and his fathers military records and pieced together what happened.

It is an amazing story, said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who expedited the medal process after hearing about it from Shifrins daughter in January. Shifrin received the award during a family-only ceremony in the suburban St. Louis apartment that he shares with his wife of 67 years.

This is the very best part of my job, McCaskill said by phone from her Senate offices in Washington.

Edwin Shifrins memory is fading, so his son Dan shared his story:

Assigned to the Armys 30th Infantry Division, 1st Battalion, 117th Infantry Regiment, Company C, Shifrin landed on Frances Normandy beach in June 1944 a week after the D-Day invasion and then fought the Germans in battles at St. Lo and Mortain.

The Germans captured him on Aug. 7, and Shifrin was sent from a prison camp to his final stop, Poland lockup Stalag IIIC, which was about 90 miles from Berlin. Telegrams to U.S. family members notified them he was missing in action.

Shifrin was among the camps roughly 1,000 prisoners, many of whom formed an escape committee and drew up a getaway plan.

Each morning when the Germans did simply a numerical headcount  no actual names were called out  a prisoner designated by the committee would hide, touching off what turned out to be a futile search by guards. The hiding prisoner would later quietly rejoin the others, but the befuddled guards would lower the next days headcount by one.

On the second day, two prisoners would hide, touching off another futile search and getting the guards to lower the next days head count by one again. That continued with three and four prisoners hiding and the guards classifying them as escaped. Eventually, four men actually escaped, but the guards didnt notice because they had already lowered the roll-call numbers to account for the prisoners who had hidden.

Shifrin and some other prisoners got their chance to escape in mid-January 1945, just weeks before the Russians liberated the camp. Dan Shifrin said the rest of their journey is pretty hazy, but whats known is they hitchhiked on Allied supply trucks and rode on horses and bikes on their way to Italy. By that April, Shifrin was back on U.S. soil, in Boston.

After getting his law degree, Shifrin became a lawyer in the St. Louis area and worked well into his 80s. He seldom discusses his time at war.

We knew hed been in the war, that he had been captured and that he escaped. Thats about it. He didnt talk about it, said Dan Shifrin, who lives in the Denver area. My guess is he figured it was just part of his life  many went through it, many didnt return. Many of those who did return didnt return in one piece.

Chronicling his fathers past, Dan Shifrin added, gave me much greater appreciation for what he and others went through.

I guess also its that these men and women are dying at an unbelievable rate and their stories are being lost. This is one more story we can tell and keep alive.
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.

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Turin-based artist Vesod freshly visited the city of La Rochelle in France where he dropped a brand new piece.

The Italian artist is very skillful in giving the illusion to his work of being three-dimensional, by mixing anatomic drawings, geometric forms and game of transparency. Some of his paintings sometime refer to some master-pieces from the Italian renaissance.

After a few days of work, Vesod just finished working on this beautiful piece which will surely be enjoyed by the local residents for years to come.

Take a look at more images after the break and keep checking back with us for the latest Urban Contemporary art updates from Europe.


Advance Auto Parts, Inc. (NYSE: AAP) named Thomas (Tom) Greco as CEO and a Director, effective April 11, 2016. Mr. Greco will succeed George Sherman, who has served as interim CEO since January, 2016. Mr. Sherman continues as President of Advance Auto Parts, a position he has held since April, 2013.

Mr. Greco, 57, joins Advance Auto Parts following a successful 30-year career at PepsiCo, Inc. Most recently, he served as CEO of Frito-Lay North America, where he was responsible for PepsiCos $14.8 billion snack and convenient foods business in the U.S. and Canada. During his tenure, Mr. Greco led PepsiCos most profitable operating segment in consistently driving sales and improved operating profits. He brings deep experience in leading a sales-driven organization with over 55,000 employees as well as significant expertise in managing a complex operational infrastructure, transforming the supply chain, and retooling go-to-market systems to better meet the needs of both large and smaller customers.

Jack Brouillard, Executive Chairman, said, After a thorough search, we are pleased to have found an exceptional leader and operator with a proven track record of designing and executing winning strategies, driving profitable growth, and building an exceptional talent base. The Board is confident that Advance will benefit from Toms commercial expertise and energetic, solutions-oriented approach to leading complex, customer-focused operations in a competitive environment. The Board looks forward to working closely with Tom and the rest of our talented executives as we build value for our shareholders, customers, and team members.

Mr. Brouillard continued, I would also like to thank George Sherman for his contributions as interim CEO. Under Georges leadership, the Company has continued to take actions to drive improved profitability and we look forward to continuing to benefit from Georges valuable experience as an ongoing member of the leadership team.

Mr. Greco said, Advance Auto Parts is a clear industry leader with an unparalleled footprint and a growing number of customers who depend on our high-quality products and talented team members. I am humbled and honored to be CEO and join the Board of Advance. I could not be more excited to work with my colleagues throughout Advance to build on our strong foundation and accelerate profitable growth. This is a terrific industry and, together, we will begin a disciplined march to reach our full potential.

Mr. Sherman said, Advance has made considerable progress on a number of important objectives as we work to deliver improved and more consistent performance. I want to welcome Tom to our team and look forward to working with him to take advantage of our tremendous opportunity.

Thomas Greco Biography

During this 30-year career with PepsiCo, Mr. Greco has held various leadership positions in sales and operations in both the United States and Canada. Toms leadership of Frito-Lay began in September 2011, after serving as Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer, Pepsi Beverages Company (PBC), where he was responsible for leading PBCs commercial efforts across North America. Before that, Tom was Executive Vice President of Sales for PepsiCos North America Beverages organization and President of Global Sales for PepsiCo. Previously, he served as President of Frito Lay Canada and Senior Vice President of Sales for Frito-Lay North America. Prior to joining PepsiCo, Mr. Greco worked at Procter & Gamble. Mr. Greco earned a bachelors degree from Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, and received an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business in London, Ontario. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for G&K Services, the Grocery Manufacturers Association and the Dallas Stars Advisory Board.
CEB (NYSE: CEB) announced that it will acquire Evanta Ventures, Inc. and an affiliated business (collectively "Evanta"), which are owned primarily by Leeds Equity Partners, LLC, for total cash consideration of $275 million, subject to customary post-closing adjustments.

Portland, Ore.-based Evanta fosters collaboration and the exchange of best practices between Information Technology & Security, Human Resources and Finance leaders through nearly 200 annual events, online and offline learning platforms and subscription information offerings. Accessible through regional, national, global, and virtual platforms, the company helps leaders drive corporate outcomes and improve their own performance. Evanta currently engages nearly 12,000 executives annually, including representatives from more than 90% of the Fortune 100 and 80% of the Fortune 500. Over the last several years, Evanta achieved annual revenue growth in the mid-teens with a 2015 EBITDA margin in excess of 35%.

"CEB's mission calls on us to unlock the potential of leaders and organizations by advancing the science and practice of management. Adding Evanta helps us do just that," said CEB Chairman & CEO, Tom Monahan. "We have partnered with the Evanta team across the years and have been consistently impressed by their growth-oriented business model and their 'by CXOs for CXOs' philosophy. We value the strong local executive networks they've builtparticularly their relationships with Governing Board members and underwriting partners."

Strategic Rationale

Evanta is expected to complement and enhance CEB's business both strategically and operationally:

Evanta's business model has demonstrated similarly attractive characteristics to those of CEBstrong growth, high revenue visibility and attractive margins

Evanta adds scale and improves the economics of CEB's burgeoning events and leadership development businesses

It allows CEB to enter an addressable market of $1B by providing sponsorship and content licensing platforms to engage high-caliber underwriting partners

The combination enables CEB to deepen relationships with CXOs and senior professionals in turn exposing them to a wider variety of CEB offerings

Evanta's experienced team grows CEB's top-decile talent base and can accelerate innovative product and service delivery

"In an era of unprecedented technological, economic and global change, we believe that trust and cooperation among leaders is key to innovation and economic success," said Evanta Founder and CEO, Bob Dethlefs. "The strength of Evanta's 'by CXOs for CXOs' model is greatly enhanced by the proven practices and data-based insights CEB brings to executives worldwide. We're excited to continue to forge strong communities of premiere leaders while providing a new level of visibility intoand solutions forglobal business challenges as part of CEB."

Mr. Monahan added, "We see real synergies between CEB and Evanta that we believe will create near and long-term value for clients, partners, colleagues and shareholders. We anticipate immediate tangible cost benefit from having the businesses on a single platform, including consolidating event technology and learning technology platforms. Obviously, we see a rich set of opportunities to expand the relationship of Evanta community members by introducing them over time to relevant CEB resources. We also see real opportunity to leverage CEB resources to add new events in key functional areas, such as sales. Most importantly, we see strong cultural synergies between our organizations. Both companies are guided by the idea that the best offerings are those designed by the customer and that you have to earn the right to work with those customers every day through exceptional service and a commitment to innovation."

Transaction Details

CEB expects the acquisition will be accretive to Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share in the first full year of ownership, with accretion increasing over time as anticipated synergies are realized. The transaction is structured to enable CEB to benefit from certain of Evanta's cash tax attributes with a present value of approximately $20 million. Net of the present value of these cash tax benefits the purchase price represents a 12x multiple of Evanta's current forecast of full year 2016 EBITDA on a stand-alone, pre-synergy basis. CEB will update its 2016 Outlook to incorporate the expected incremental contribution from Evanta following closing of the transaction.

CEB will fund the acquisition using up to $200 million of incremental term loan borrowings under its existing senior secured credit agreement (the "Credit Facility"). The remaining amount will come from CEB's available cash and/or borrowings of revolving commitments under the Credit Facility.

The acquisition is expected to close in the second quarter of 2016, subject to clearance under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976, as amended, and the satisfaction of other customary closing conditions, as provided for in the definitive purchase agreement that CEB executed today.

Centerview Partners LLC is acting as CEB's financial advisor. Kirkland & Ellis LLP is acting as CEB's legal advisor. BofA Merrill Lynch, HSBC Bank USA, N.A., JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. and SunTrust Bank are providing committed debt financing for the transaction.

The Jordan, Edmiston Group, Inc. is acting as Evanta's financial advisor. Goodwin Procter LLP is acting as Evanta's legal advisor.
Schlumberger Limited (NYSE: SLB) announced Friday that it has closed its merger with Cameron International Corporation (NYSE: CAM). As previously announced, each Cameron stockholder is entitled to receive 0.716 shares of Schlumberger common stock and $14.44 in cash, in exchange for each Cameron share. Schlumberger has issued approximately 138 million shares pursuant to the merger. As a result, former Cameron stockholders own approximately 10% of Schlumbergers outstanding shares of common stock.

The transaction combines two complementary technology portfolios into a pore-to-pipeline products and services offering to the global oil and gas industry. The merger will create technology-driven growth by integrating Schlumberger reservoir and well technology with Cameron wellhead and surface equipment, flow control and processing technology. This will result in the industrys first complete drilling and production systems, which are enabled by Schlumberger expertise in instrumentation, data processing, control software, and system integration.

Paal Kibsgaard, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Schlumberger, remarked, I am very pleased to welcome Cameron employees, customers and shareholders to Schlumberger. As a combined company, we will drive total system performance through a much closer integration between the surface and subsurface components of both drilling and production systems. We are ready to begin the process of realizing the synergies made possible by this merger and our focus in the near term is on the execution of our integration plans, while continuing to deliver safety and quality in our field operations.

Scott Rowe, former Chief Executive Officer of Cameron, who has assumed the role of Schlumberger Cameron Group President, commented, This is an exciting time for all Cameron employees as we integrate our portfolio with Schlumberger technologies to deliver improved operational performance, higher levels of cost efficiency, and close commercial alignment through new risk-based business models, while continuing to focus on the needs of our customers.
Douglas W. Sesler, a recognized leader in real estate investments, restructurings, strategic transactions and portfolio management, will be joining Macys, Inc. (NYSE: M) as executive vice president for real estate, effective tomorrow.

At Macys, Inc., Sesler will oversee the companys real estate function and lead high-priority initiatives to increase shareholder value through real estate strategies, including creating potential joint ventures or other partnerships involving the company flagship locations and mall-based properties. He will report directly to Terry J. Lundgren, Macys chairman and chief executive, and work closely with Macys, Inc.s investment banking advisors, including Eastdil Secured, Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs. He will be based in New York City.

Doug Sesler is a world-class talent with a track record of success in developing, leading and implementing real estate strategies and transactions, Lundgren said. We will rely on his experience, expertise and discipline to create and structure real estate opportunities that will create shareholder value, sustain our long-term financial strength and enhance our retail business. We are fortunate to have an executive of Dougs caliber at the helm of our real estate efforts.

Most recently, Sesler was president of True Square Capital LLC, a real estate investment and advisory firm. He served from 2005 to 2011 at Bank of America Merrill Lynch International Ltd. in roles that included global head of principal real estate investments and global co-head of real estate investment banking. Previously, from 1989 to 2005, Sesler served in a variety of roles at Citigroup and its predecessors, including as managing director of the global real estate investment banking group, and managing director of the Travelers Realty Investment Company. He began his career in real estate roles at Chemical Bank.

Sesler holds a bachelors degree in government from Cornell University. He serves on the board of directors of Gazit-Globe, an international owner, developer and operator of shopping centers.
LONDON, ENGLAND -- (Marketwired) -- 04/04/16 -- Condor (AIM: CNR), is pleased to announce a proposed placing ("the Placing") 6,445,000 Units (as defined below) at a price of 40p per Unit (the "Placing Price") to raise gross proceeds of approximately GBP 2.6 million. The completion of the Placing is conditional, inter alia, upon admission of the Placing Shares to trading on AIM.

Each Unit is comprised of one ordinary share of 20p each in the Company ("Placing Share") and two thirds of one share purchase warrant of the Company (a "Warrant"). Each Warrant, which is unlisted, will entitle the holder thereof to purchase one ordinary share at a price of 60p (which is at a 50% premium to the Placing Price) for a period of 24 months from the date on which the shares issued pursuant to the Placing are admitted to trading on AIM (the "Closing Date").

The Company is pleased to announce that Ross Beaty has subscribed for GBP 1.5 million worth of Units and will have a 7.18% shareholding in the Company post placement on an undiluted basis. The investment follows a site visit and technical due diligence. Mr Beaty is a Canadian mining entrepreneur with a successful track record of both building mining companies and developing mineral deposits for sale. The Company has agreed to a non-dilute clause for Mr Beaty's shareholding. The Company also welcomes a specialist resource fund managed by an affiliate of Sprott Inc. as a shareholder.

Background to and reasons for the Placing

The proceeds of the Placing will be used for general working capital purposes and specifically: to fully permit Mina La India in Nicaragua, pay the remaining US$670,000 for the purchase of the Espinito-Mendoza concession (see RNS dated 21 March 2016), secure the surface rights for the rural land that host and surround the future mine infrastructure and continue work to demonstrate the significant exploration upside of the 2.4M oz gold resource at 4.0g/t gold at La India Project.

As a general update on ongoing work on Mina La India: the Company submitted an Environmental Impact Assessment ("EIA") to the Ministry of the Environment in Nicaragua ("MARENA") in November 2015, applying for the key Environmental Permit for a 2,800tpd processing plant capable of producing approximately 100,000 oz gold per annum at an all in sustaining cash cost of approximately US$700 per oz gold. The Nicaraguan Government remains fully supportive of permitting Mina La India. The EIA has passed the initial technical reviews, MARENA has conducted site visits and key meetings have been held with several Government Ministries. The Company has incorporated a wholly owned Nicaraguan subsidiary company to acquire the rural land; has surveyed, valued and made offers to buy the surface rights for approximately 800 hectares of the area affected by a future mine and is currently making good progress and is securing the land by making 10% down payments with the balance paid within 2 years; Condor will continue to demonstrate the significant upside potential by expanding the soil survey programmes that have covered approximately 90 sq km to date of the 313sq km La India Project, stratigraphic mapping, prospecting and structural data collection.

Details of the Placing

The Company has conducted the Placing as principal. 6,445,000 Units (comprising of 6,445,000 ordinary shares and 4,296,667 Warrants) have been placed with placees and subscribers at the Placing Price to raise gross proceeds of GBP 2,578,000.

The completion of the Placing is conditional, inter alia, upon admission of the Placing Shares to trading on AIM. The Placing Price of 40 pence per share represents a discount of zero percent to the closing price of 40 pence per share on 1st April 2016.

Application is being made for the Placing Shares, to be admitted to trading on AIM ("Admission"), such Admission is expected to occur on or around 15th April 2016.

On Admission the Placing Shares will rank pari passu in all respects with the existing ordinary shares of the Company, including the right to receive all dividends and other distributions declared after the date of their issue.

Following Admission the Company will then have 52,252,316 ordinary shares of 20p each in issue with voting rights and admitted to trading on AIM. This figure may then be used by shareholders in the Company as the denominator for the calculation by which they will determine if they are required to notify their interest in, or a change to their interest in, the share capital of the Company under the Financial Conduct Authority's Disclosure and Transparency Rules.

Director Participation

Pursuant to the Placing, Jim Mellon, Non-Executive Director of the Company has subscribed personally for 500,000 Units at the Placing Price. Following completion of the Placing, Mr Mellon will have a direct interest in 698,820 ordinary shares and indirect interest in 522,222 ordinary shares held through Galloway Limited. Jim Mellon is the founder and a director of Regent Pacific Group, which owns 3,977,274 shares. The combined interest of 5,198,318 ordinary shares represents a 9.95% shareholding in the Company post placement on an undiluted basis. Jim Mellon will have a direct and indirect interest in 419,444 Warrants post placement.

Mark Child, Chairman and CEO of the Company has subscribed for 25,000 Units at the Placing Price. Following completion of the Placing, Mr Child will be interested in 3,967,500 ordinary shares in the Company, representing approximately 7.59% of its issued share capital as enlarged by the Placing, and will also have an interest in 16,667 Warrants. Roger Davey, Non-Executive Director of the Company has subscribed for 20,000 Units at the Placing Price. Following completion of the Placing, Mr Davey will be interested in 52,500 ordinary shares in the Company, representing approximately 0.10% of its issued share capital as enlarged by the Placing, and will also have an interest in 13,333 Warrants. The subscriptions by Jim Mellon, Mark Child and Roger Davey are a related party transaction under the AIM Rules and accordingly the independent directors, being Kate Harcourt and Peter Flindell, confirm that, having consulted with the Company's Nominated Adviser, the terms of the Placing are fair and reasonable insofar as the Company's shareholders are concerned.

For further information please visit www.condorgold.com.

About Condor Gold plc:

Condor Gold plc was admitted to AIM on 31st May 2006. The Company is a gold exploration and development company with a focus on Central America.

Condor completed a Pre-Feasibility Study (PFS) and two Preliminary Economic Assessments (PEA) on La India Project in Nicaragua in December 2014. The PFS details an open pit gold mineral reserve of 6.9M tonnes at 3.0g/t gold for 675,000 oz gold producing 80,000 oz gold p.a. for 7 years. The PEA for the open pit only scenario details 100,000 oz gold production p.a. for 8 years whereas the PEA for a combination of open pit and underground details 140,000 oz gold production p.a. for 8 years. La India Project contains a total attributable mineral resource of 18.4Mt at 3.9g/t for 2.33M oz gold and 2.68M oz silver at 6.2g/t to the CIM Code.

In El Salvador, Condor has an attributable 1,004,000 oz gold equivalent at 2.6g/t JORC compliant resource. The resource calculations are compiled by independent geologists SRK Consulting (UK) Limited for Nicaragua and Ravensgate and Geosure for El Salvador.

Disclaimer

Neither the contents of the Company's website nor the contents of any website accessible from hyperlinks on the Company's website (or any other website) is incorporated into, or forms part of, this announcement.

Contacts: Condor Gold plc Mark Child Executive Chairman and CEO +44 (0) 20 7408 1067 www.condorgold.com Beaumont Cornish Limited Roland Cornish/James Biddle +44 (0) 20 7628 3396 Numis Securities Limited John Prior/James Black +44 (0) 20 7260 1000 Farm Street Media Simon Robinson +44 (0) 7593 340107

Source: Condor Gold PLC
An employee walks past the Mphasis logo at the company's office in Bengaluru, India, April 4, 2016. REUTERS/Abhishek N. Chinnappa

By Himank Sharma and Devidutta Tripathy

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Blackstone Group (NYSE: BX) is buying a majority stake in Indian IT outsourcing services provider Mphasis Ltd from Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co (NYSE: HPE) in an up to $1.1 billion deal, in the U.S. asset manager's single-biggest investment in India.

The all-cash deal reinforces Blackstone's bullish outlook on the outsourcing business, where western clients send IT jobs to countries such as India to cut costs. In December, Blackstone announced the purchase of a minority stake in India's IBS Software for $170 million.

Blackstone is betting that India's IT industry will continue to grow in double-digits as companies move to high-margin digital services to offset a cut-back in routine IT spending by clients, a senior executive at the firm said.

"The reason we have made a strong commitment to the Indian IT sector is because this is a sector which has delivered very strong returns to Blackstone and other PE investors in India," said Amit Dixit, Blackstone's senior managing director in India.

"This sector is also poised for good growth ... and especially digital services, an area in which Mphasis is strong in," he said on a conference call after the deal was announced.

India's IT and software services export revenue is likely to grow by 10-12 percent in the fiscal year beginning on April 1 to as much as $121 billion, according to trade body National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom).

In what is one of the biggest M&A transactions in the country's outsourcing sector, Blackstone will pay 430 rupees ($6.49) per share for at least 84 percent of HP Enterprise Co's 60.5 percent stake in Mphasis.

It also made an open offer to buy a 26 percent stake in Mphasis from public shareholders for 457.54 rupees a share to comply with Indian laws.

Depending on the response to the open offer, HPE could get as much as $825 million for its complete stake, while the final cost to Blackstone of the transaction could be as much as 70.71 billion rupees ($1.1 billion). The deal is expected to close in the coming months, Blackstone said.

Shares of Mphasis, which have gained more than 11 percent from the beginning of March till end of last week in anticipation of a deal, fell 2.9 percent on Monday to close slightly below the open offer price at 454.90 rupees on the Mumbai markets.

'LAST BIG ASSET'

"This is a consolidating industry and Mphasis was the last big asset, you could see some more PE deals for smaller software companies in the sector going forward," said Ravi Menon, an IT sector analyst at Elara Capital.

Sources had told Reuters Blackstone was the frontrunner in an auction run by HPE for its Mphasis stake. HPE had been looking to exit from the Indian venture to shore up its capital, the sources had said.

Analysts have said that Mphasis' move away from HPE, which accounts for about a quarter of the Indian company's revenue, could hurt its sales.

But Blackstone has ensured that HPE maintains its commercial partnership with Mphasis. The Indian company has signed a five-year revenue guarantee of at least $990 million through sales to HPE, the companies said.

The U.S. asset manager is not alone in initiating outsourcing sector deals in India.

In February, Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte [GIC.UL] and private equity investors Advent International and Bain Capital jointly bought a minority stake in outsourcing firm QuEST Global Services for $350 million.

($1 = 66.2200 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Himank Sharma and Devidutta Tripathy; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
It's dark. The only lights on in Invercargill are the street lights and from the Spain & Smith office.

At 5am, the shearing gangs start to roll in, clear-eyed and awake when most city dwellers remain buried in their pillows. Half an hour later and they're on the road.

1 of 9 ROBYN EDIE/FAIRFAX NZ Shed-hand Craig 'Hobbsy' Hobbs busy keeping the sheep up to the shearers, in the pens, with his dog Matu. 2 of 9 ROBYN EDIE/FAIRFAX NZ Rousie Jane Ngatai serving up her lunch. 3 of 9 ROBYN EDIE/FAIRFAX NZ Rousie Lisa-Ann O'Donnell prepping the lunch. 4 of 9 ROBYN EDIE/FAIRFAX NZ Rousie Sydney Cormack and her partner Kyle Soper, a wool presser, take a bit of quality time together. 5 of 9 ROBYN EDIE/FAIRFAX NZ A sheep coming down the shoot after being shorn. 6 of 9 ROBYN EDIE/FAIRFAX NZ Presser Vince Morrell throws a fleece. 7 of 9 ROBYN EDIE/FAIRFAX NZ Full action in the shed. 8 of 9 ROBYN EDIE/FAIRFAX NZ Head rousie Esther Kidd checks the lunch, which cooks away while they work. 9 of 9 ROBYN EDIE/FAIRFAX NZ Kyle Soper gets a wool bale ready to come out of the press.

Today three shearing gangs will tackle Mt Linton, north of Invercargill and one of the largest privately owned stations in New Zealand. By the end of the day they hope to have shorn between 3500-4000 of the station's two-tooths - that is, one-year-old sheep.

The shearers have already spent five or so weeks in the 12-stand shed during January and February, shearing about 33,500 ewes and 47,000 lambs.

READ MORE: More than a quarter of shearing workers from overseas

ROBYN EDIE/FAIRFAX NZ Ganger Shane Robinson shears a sheep.

Now, as the season winds down, they are tackling the last of the station's sheep - 12,000 two-tooths remain.

The 12 shearers are accompanied by 12 "rousies" and two "pressers" who play important roles in keeping the wool flowing into wool bales. Three shed hands are responsible for keeping the sheep pens full.

Spain & Smith co-owner Mark Spain started shearing as a teenager, sometimes skipping school to spend his week in the shearing shed.

ROBYN EDIE/FAIRFAX NZ Spain & Smith co-owner Mark Spain in the shed.

"As soon as I left school that was it, I was just into it."

He spent 13 years shearing in Britain before starting Spain & Smith in Invercargill with fellow shearer Marty Smith.

Spain can't imagine doing anything else, and the camaraderie in the gangs is something he admires.

ROBYN EDIE/FAIRFAX NZ Shearer Ricky Skipper shearing a sheep.

"It's just a great culture."

At 7am, work begins. The first sheep are pulled from the pens and the machines start to whirr.

Half an hour later sweat is glistening on the shearers' foreheads and the rousies and pressers have taken off layers as the work heats up.

Spain & Smith have shorn more than 1000 bales of wool at Mt Linton this season and head rousie Esther Kidd diligently records each one.

This is her 15th season with the shearing contractors and like most in the shed, she has a passion for the industry.

Originally from a small town on the East Coast, Kidd has done a lot of different jobs. She was in the army reserve territorial forces, before becoming a gym instructor at the YMCA and then went to teach at a kohanga reo before heading into the shearing sheds.

"It's a good industry. It's a hard working industry. You get to love it with a passion."

Kidd's job is to manage all the rousies and pressers and make sure they are doing their job, as well as recording the bales, preparing meals and packing the bellies and pieces into the wool press.

"My job is to prepare the wool for the farmer to get the best price."

Spain says there wouldn't be a Spain & Smith without Kidd: "she is Spain & Smith".

"She came to fill in for a day and she never left."

By morning tea time everyone is ready for a cuppa and some food.

Keeping everyone going for a long day in the sheds requires a lot of food: there's three electric frying pans filled to the brim, as well as a pie warmer, sandwiches and hot cross buns.

Everyone spends their break differently. Some will gather and chat while they eat, while others will retreat to sit by their machines, head phones on, to relax.

Mt Linton is a familiar place for Ricky Skipper.

The 23-year-old from Ohai is learning how to shear with Spain & Smith after first encountering them as a shepherd at the station. He had been shepherding for five or six years before deciding to give shearing a go.

He would much rather be up in the shearing shed than down below dipping the sheep now, Skipper says.

"The first month was hard but once your body is used to it it's just the fitness you've got to keep up with."

After the break everyone is quickly back into it.

The shed hands make sure the pens are never empty. Spain says this can make shearing at Mt Linton daunting.

In the hot summer months, being in the pens can be the hardest job. Thousands of sheep penned up, woolly and warm, combined with hot days make it tough.

Craig 'Hobbsy' Hobbs has been coming to Mt Linton with Spain & Smith since the shearing contractors first signed on as the station's shearers.

He's been working in shearing sheds for 27 years and 18 of those he has spent with Spain & Smith.

Usually a presser, Hobbsy is showing the other shed hands how best to pen up the sheep at the station.

In most sheds, he knows the little tricks that make things work smoothly.

"It's just the little things about doing it that people don't know about."

Every half an hour the rousies rotate shearers. Watching them, you can see why.

At the end of the board are the three fastest shearers and the rousies have to be quick to keep up.

Moving along the board, the skill level varies from learner to experienced and in between.

Shane Robinson is the ganger, the head shearer in charge.

He got his start in the shearing industry young. A love of the shearing shed runs in his family. His mum started out as a shearer when Robinson was young and she then became a shearing contractor before starting her own farm.

Robinson will head north to work on the farm when the shearing season ends.

It's been 25 years since he started in the sheds and he doesn't know how much longer he'll be doing it.

But he hasn't let the odd setback hold him back.

After a shoulder reconstruction he was told he probably would not be back wrangling sheep on the board: "but now I'm back shearing".

As the day goes on the bales begin to pile up, and everyone begins to look a little weary.

But the hum of the shearing shed never subsides and they are all still able to crack a smile.

Spain says often people don't understand how hard the life of a shearer is; they're up before dawn and away from home until 6pm.

All people see is what happens when something goes wrong, when someone has crashed while driving drunk, he says.

There is much more to the culture than the bad that people see, every gang sticks together, he says.

"It's a hard job, people don't understand."

As the gangs pack up ready for a long drive home, everyone pitches in, they share jokes and a young couple embraces.

Then they do it all again tomorrow.

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A New Zealand coffee roaster and its Peru supplier are helping breathe life into the Solomon Islands' struggling coffee production industry.

New Plymouth coffee roaster IncaFe sources about 90 per cent of its beans from a fairtrade, organic coffee collective in Peru called Cafes Finos Coopchebi.

IncaFe founder Joop Verbeek recently visited the Solomon Islands with Cafes Finos Coopchebi commercial director Felix Marin to help rejuvenate the war torn country's coffee industry.

The art of coffee Share your stories, photos and videos. Contribute

Verbeek, who is originally from the Netherlands, said the poverty and lack of infrastructure in the Solomon Islands was startling.

"It's one of the poorest countries in the world and often forgotten about," Verbeek said.

Large numbers of coffee plants were planted there in the 1980s with the promise of it being a cash crop, he said.

But the industry fell into decline in the 1990s with civil war breaking out and many non-government organisations withdrawing their support from the Solomons.

"For the past 25 years they've been trying to grow coffee and nothing has happened with it."

With a lifetime of experience producing some of the finest coffee in Peru Marin immediately identified the type of Solomon Islands coffee plants and the potential they had.

"He can tell straight away what kind of coffee it is - we know it's good coffee."

Verbeek said he was committed to helping Solomon Islands farmers grow coffee exports and had sent a letter of intent committing to buy organic, fair-trade coffee from them as long as it met a certain standard.

His main concern about the Solomon Islands' future as a coffee exporter was the threat of global warming, which he believed tropical countries would be hit hardest by.

"Coffee is very susceptible to temperature changes."

In the meantime Verbeek said he and Marin planned to invite upstanding Solomon Islands coffee farmers on a sabbatical to learn about coffee on neighbouring Papua New Guinea - which has a more advanced coffee growing industry, and then to Peru.

IncaFe started in 2007 and since then has been importing organic, fairtrade coffee from the Cafes Finos Coopchebi collective.

Verbeek's wife and IncaFe co-founder Carmen Castro is originally from Peru and when the couple visited the South American country 10 years ago Verbeek asked around to find the best coffee grower in country.

That lead him to Marin who has led the cooperative, started by his father in the late 1940s, to be one of the most successful in Peru, Verbeek said.

"He has a total respect for nature and people and a desire to produce the best coffee," Verbeek said.

About 90 per cent of the 200 to 300 tonne of coffee IncaFe imports to New Zealand each year is from Peru - all from Marin's collective.

The collective has about 600 hectares of coffee plantations belonging to about 300 farmers from 15 communities.

It is one of about 200 coffee collectives in Peru, virtually all of which are fairtrade and organic, making Peru the largest organic and fairtrade coffee producer in the world, Verbeek said.

The Coopchebi collective exports to Switzerland, France, the United States, New Zealand and small volumes to Japan.

IncaFe is the co-operative's largest buyer.

"By having this close relationship we get the pick of the crop," Verbeek said.

The partnership operated under an evergreen contract, which automatically renews the length of the agreement, guaranteeing a sustainable supply of coffee for IncaFe and a certain number of container exports each year for the collective helping growers get finance from the bank.

In the future IncaFe and the collective may merge as one company, potentially setting up a roastery in Peru for export, Verbeek said.

While not all coffee drinkers in New Zealand care whether their java is organic, fairtrade or both, the number of conscious consumers was growing, he said.

"Even though we're relatively small we still want to set an example so other people follow."

Organically grown coffee produces a superior taste while also helping preserve the surrounding environment, he said.

"Organic is way more than just not using chemicals, it is a way of life.

"You have to truly know the environment and how each organism has a role to play in pest control and nourishing and stabilising the soil."

IncaFe distributes coffee throughout the Asia Pacific region and recently set up a coffee shop and training centre on Sale St in central Auckland.

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Rotorua mother Rangipaeroa King-Mosen travels to Taupo to skydive in memory of son Huri.

Two and a half years after her son was murdered, Rangipaeroa King-Mosen has fulfilled a promise she made to her son - to jump out of a plane.

King-Mosen and her son Huri had planned to go skydiving together in the Christmas of 2013, but he was murdered before he made it home that year.

The 24-year-old was was killed by a synthetic cannabis addict in Wainuiomata, near Wellington, in October 2013.

Skydive Taupo King-Rosen reaches terminal velocity and falls at a constant speed.

His killer, Joseph Falefiaosinga Rota, was later given a life sentence, with 10 years non-parole, for the murder.

READ MORE:

* Man pleads guilty to hairdresser's murder

* Synthetic high led to murder - judge

King-Mosen said the last time she spoke with her son they'd planned to go skydiving as a family activity when Huri returned home to Rotorua for Christmas.

Skydive Taupo The parachute is pulled, and the pair start to float, using the yellow chord to control the direction.

"He said 'Have you booked our jump yet Mum?'. I said, 'No, I haven't yet'.

"He said, 'Make that your priority'."

On Sunday King-Mosen finally did the jump they'd been planning, travelling to Skydive Taupo.

"I feel like we've celebrated another part of his life. Another part of who he was." she said.

King-Mosen said Huri loved to get involved in all sorts of different activities.

"Whenever we went on holiday elsewhere, I'd be quite happy to sit at the beach and blob out and relax, but he'd want to go and do things. We'd go, 'Aw, again?'

ROBERT STEVEN/FAIRFAX NZ Rangipaeroa King-Mosen getting ready for her first jump at Skydive Taupo with Rotorua MP Todd McClay.

"But we'd go and we'd enjoy it  that was just the kind of person he was."

The jump on Sunday was a chance to raise funds for Victim Support, and give back to the organisation which had helped her family in their "darkest times", she said.

"A lot of them are voluntary workers. They were there for us and we would like them to continue to be there for other people," she said.

"It feels really nice that we were able to give back to Victim Support and that we're helping to continue that service."

King-Mosen's family travelled to Wellington from Auckland and Rotorua to attend every one of the court hearings over the course of 2014, she said.

"We didn't want the judges and lawyers to think that our son had no-one."

Victim Support help helped her family with the travel and accommodation costs for the trips each fortnight, she said

"When your emotions are all in turmoil and you're trying to deal with a whole lot of things, that was one thing we didn't have to thing about," she said.

People from all walks of life contacted her after Huri's death, she said.

"That was one thing that really stands out to me that I didn't know about Huri  all these people that he was connected to."

She said she had learnt to manage living without having Huri around.

"It's very hard when someone you love is no longer around at all.

"Every Friday he would ring, so I'd kind of expect that call, and that talk," King-Mosen said.

King-Mosen did the jump with Rotorua MP Todd McClay, who she met at an anti-synthetic cannabis march in 2014.

McClay said New Zealand was probably the only country to find an effective way to ban synthetic mind-altering drugs.

"I'm pleased to support this family who can demonstrate first-hand the tragedy of the poison that was being peddled by people saying it didn't harm."

He said sentences for serious crimes included a $50 levy - paid by offenders - which went towards victim services.

"So far more than $20m has been collected, that's available to victims and victim support organisations," he said.

"A lot of that goes directly to families who want to play a role in the court process."

King-Mosen said she plans to volunteer for Victim Support after completing the next available training course.

* Support Victim Support at secure.fundraiserpro.com/donate/VictimSupport
Police have cordoned off part of Monteith Crescent.

An Auckland man could only watch as his neighbour died after being crushed by a car that rolled off a trailer on his driveway.

The middle-aged man was killed when the car rolled off a trailer and crushed him against another vehicle on his Remuera property on Tuesday.

Neighbour Ken Lewis said he saw the man, who he only knew as "Barry", winching a car onto a trailer.

"It was about 10 to 9 in the morning, you could hear him working away and then I heard a thud," Lewis said.

"I looked over the fence and saw Barry's torso. I screamed 'Barry, Barry!'"

Lewis' neighbour was crushed between the winched car and the ute hitched to the trailer.

The neighbour said he called emergency services then went over the fence.

"His eyes were shut, he was groaning," he said.

An ambulance crew arrived shortly afterwards, but Barry was dead, Lewis said.

"I didn't know Barry well but it's still a shock to the system," a shaken Lewis said.

Recalling the moments before the accident, Lewis said Barry had put a block behind the winched car's rear wheels but not one at the front end of the trailer to stop its movement.

A next-door neighbour said the dead man lived alone and was a "lovely and quiet gentleman who liked to tinker around with his cars".

The woman, who did not wish to be named, said she could see the man's body from her house.

"We could see everything, it was just a freak accident," she said.

The man had just sold his house and was going to "have a new life in Taupo ... It was just a shame he didn't make it".

Senior Sergeant Harry Henderson said the victim, who was in his 50s or 60s, had been on his own property when the accident occurred.

It appeared an old Holden was being brought up onto a trailer when it rolled off.

"The car rolled forward off the trailer and crushed him between the two vehicles."

The police serious crash unit were investigating at the scene.
Napier woman Belinda Vearer has been banned from owning dogs for five years.

A couple of lap dogs weighing less than five kilograms each must find new homes after their owner was banned from owning dogs for five years.

Belinda Vearer, who owned a dog responsible for a vicious attack on two women near Napier last year, has been banned from owning dogs for five years - meaning she has to get rid of 'Victor', a 10-year-old, 4kg Chinese Crested who has a pro-lapsed disc, and 'Lola', a 5kg Shih Tzu Bichon cross.

Vearer's staffordshire bull terrier Halo was one of three dogs that attacked two women in separate incidents near Whirinaki beach on October 3 last year.

JOHN COWPLAND/ FAIRFAX NZ James Clarke, Kayla Bremner, and Belinda Vearer, were sentenced in the Napier court in relation to two separate attacks by their three dogs.

Both victims were seriously injured.

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* Dogs responsible for attack will be given lethal injections on Friday

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* Dog attack victims still traumatised

The attacks occurred after Halo and the other two dogs escaped after being left unsupervised at Vearer's property.

SUPPLIED Injuries to one of the women after she was attacked in October.

Vearer, 46, was convicted of owning a dog responsible for causing injury, and was sentenced to 150 hours community work and ordered to pay emotional harm to the victims.

On top of that Hastings District Council disqualified her from owning dogs for five years from February 2.

Vearer's co-offender James Clarke received the same sentence and same period of disqualification while her daughter Kayla Bremner, who was the third offender, was convicted of a lesser offence, fined $1500 and disqualified from owning a dog for two years.

Vearer and Bremner have appealed the disqualifications. Their appeals will be heard by Hastings District Council's hearings committee on April 14.

In a written submission to the council Vearer said Victor's back injury could recur at any stage and re-homing him at his age would be detrimental. Lola was very affectionate and close to her and her children and grandchildren and the children would be traumatised to lose her after losing Halo.

Vearer said she had owned dogs all of her life and had never had an incident until last October.

"I am struggling emotionally over the loss of Halo and the stress and anguish I have felt because of the dog attack and for the victims, and now for the fear of losing Victor and Lola," she wrote.

She said she had taken numerous steps to make her property secure, including installing a new gate and a pet barrier and she said the Victor and Lola were locked indoors when no-one was home.

"I do not want to get any other dogs in the future. I just want to keep my two little lap dogs," she wrote.
Garry John Jones leaves the High Court in Hamilton following the first day of his jury trial. Jones is facing 49 charges relating to child sexual abuse, stemming from alleged incidents in the Bay of Plenty in the 1970s and 80s.

A former top bodybuilder is on trial in the High Court in Hamilton on a swathe of historical child sexual abuse charges.

Garry John Jones, 64, is facing 49 charges of offending against nine complainants. The offending is alleged to have happened in the 1970s and 80s in Whakatane, Kawerau and Taupo and the charges include rape, indecent assault, abduction for sex, and assault with intent to commit sexual violation.

Some of the charges are representative, meaning they cover a range of dates and alleged incidents. His alleged victims were between five and 16 years old at the time, while Jones himself was aged 20 to 37.

Jones was the owner of the Whakatane Health and Fitness Centre between 1984 and 1990, and he was also a holder of the Mr New Zealand bodybuilding title during that time. He later moved to Auckland.

The trial, which is being overseen by Justice Mark Woolford, is before a jury of 10 women and two men.

Estimated to take three to four weeks, it began on Monday with Crown prosecutor Heidi Wrigley detailing each of the charges against Jones, many of which allegedly happened while Jones was running the gym in Peace St, Whakatane.

Some of the offending is also alleged to have happened inside the gym itself, including once at a party attended by Jones and one of his victims; and once in the facility's weight training area.

Most of the incidents were said to have occurred in various homes in Whakatane. One alleged rape happened in a single men's camp in Kawerau.

Some of the other alleged victims were babysitting younger children at the time. Much of the alleged offending involved oral sex. Some of the alleged assaults included physical violence in the form of punches to the victims' faces.

Wrigley said the jurors would need to grapple with some difficult concepts including the fact that, by their nature, sexual abuse allegations usually involved just the complainant and the defendant.

There was also "the issue of memory".

"You will have to determine if the complainants are not only honest witnesses, but whether their memories about key events are accurate."

Some of the evidence they would hear would be counter-intuitive, she said.

"It's likely the complainants will be challenged - why did some of them not scream out? Why did they not tell an adult what was going on?

"It's not uncommon to not report sex offending. It can take place in a wide variety of circumstances ... Adult logic and thinking might not always be applicable to children."

The jury would later hear evidence about this phenomena from clinical and forensic psychologist Suzanne Blackwell, she said.

Wrigley and Greg Hollister-Jones are leading the prosecution while Tiffany Cooper and Annabel Maxwell-Scott are acting for Jones.

Cooper told the jury the law did not permit her to make a lengthy opening address.

"These allegations did not happen," she said, adding hearing the details of what had been alleged would no doubt have affected each of the jurors.

"If it didn't you wouldn't be human ... Just keep an open mind. There are always two sides to a story."

*Subsequent to this story being published Garry John Jones was killed in a motorcycle crash on April 11, 2016. As a result of his death charges were dropped.
Josh Emett's father died from melanoma five years ago, prompting his role as an ambassador for Melanoma NZ.

Watching melanoma take the life of his father has prompted Master Chef judge Josh Emett to join the fight against the "brutal" form of cancer.

The well-known television identity is now also an ambassador for Melanoma New Zealand and hopes to use his high profile to persuade more New Zealand to have regular skin checks.

He says statistics around melanoma show many deaths from the disease were preventable, if only people had bothered to have moles examined by a doctor.

Emett was brought up on a farm outside of Hamilton, where he discovered his love of cooking.

He said his father, Roger, was fit and otherwise healthy, at the time of his diagnosis.

"When [Roger] passed away at 65, five years ago now, it's one of those things that got him really," Emett said.

"He did have a reasonable amount of moles and it was something that was talked about often. He was constantly being checked and mole-mapped and that sort of thing. So there was definitely an awareness there and a consciousness in our family to be careful in the sun.

"The mole that was found was right at the top of his head and he had a thick head of hair. So whether you call it unlucky or not, I don't know."

Emmet said the move to join Melanoma New Zealand was a "personal" decision.

"It's not nice to watch to your family member die from cancer, it's brutal. So if I can use my profile to raise awareness and encourage people to get checked, that's the goal for me.

"We all know plenty of people who have died from melanoma.

"We've a friend now who was diagnosed a few weeks back. You have 4000 people who are diagnosed with some form of melanoma every year [in NZ] and over 300 die from it."

Emett said he doesn't think enough people are getting their moles checked and said the government should be footing the cost.

"It's one of those things that if you get it early it won't kill you but if you get it [checked] late, it will kill you.

"It's like going to the dentist really, it's not put at the top of your list. And unfortunately with melanoma, it's preventative if caught early enough.

"That's the honest brutal truth, prevention is what it's all about."
On April 4, Daniel George Gavin, left, Samuel Lance Hawkins, and Jason John Campbell were sentenced to home detention and community work for the August 2014 manslaughter of Hawera grandmother Christine Fairweather.

Christine Fairweather would have likely been the first person to forgive the three men responsible for causing her death, according to her family.

On Monday, Samuel Lance Hawkins, 19, Daniel George Gavin, 21, and Jason John Campbell, 18, appeared in the High Court at New Plymouth to be sentenced on manslaughter charges.

In February, the men pleaded guilty to causing the death of Christine Anne Fairweather, 57, in August 2014 when she was hit by a car after she had gotten out of her own vehicle to remove metal barriers that had been placed in the middle of the road by the trio.

Deena Coster John Fairweather poses with A portrait of John and Christine Fairweather.

Justice Matthew Muir handed down sentences of home detention and community work in front of a packed public gallery, which included members of Fairweather's family along with support for the three defendants.

READ MORE:

* Manslaughter charges over barrier death of Christine Fairweather

* Barrier death driver sentenced

* Trio plead guilty to manslaughter of South Taranaki woman

During the hearing, Dianne Coleman told the court of the profound impact her sister's death had on the family.

While the restorative justice meetings held with Gavin and Hawkins had helped her gain some insight into what happened, Coleman said that only went so far.

"I can understand a prank can happen, but I do not understand this one," she said.

Campbell initially agreed to attend a restorative justice meeting, but this did not eventuate.

However, she said her older sibling would have been the first to accept their faults.

"I know Christine would have forgiven you all," she said.

Christine's husband John Fairweather said his wife was a selfless person, who always put everyone else first.

Before her death, she was looking forward to starting a new job and volunteered at Hospice and Hawera's Lysaght Watt Art Gallery.

"That's why she was killed, she was thinking of others before herself," he said.

On August 2, 2014, about 10.30pm, the group were travelling in Gavin's car to Normanby when they stopped near the Atkinson St and Waihi Rd intersection.

Gavin stayed in the car while Hawkins and Campbell got out. The pair then picked up four of the barriers, which were being used by contractors to protect holes dug to lay fibre optic cable, and placed them across the road, blocking off both lanes. They then got back in the car and the group left.

About 11.45pm, Fairweather was driving in the southbound lane, returning to Hawera after babysitting her grandchildren in Kaponga.

After she hit one of the gates, she stopped her car and put on her hazard lights. Her headlights were also on full beam due the wet and windy weather conditions that night.

As she went to remove one of the gates, she was hit by a ute, which was travelling towards Stratford. She died at the scene.

The ute driver, Geoff Douglas Hart, pleaded guilty to careless driving causing death and was sentenced to 100 hours of community work in January 2015.

Muir said he did not accept the trio's actions were "simple tomfoolery."

"This was not simply a prank gone wrong.

"She ran headlong into the trap you had set," he said.

During the hearing, Coleman thanked Gavin for his honesty during the restorative justice meeting he attended with the family.

She said Gavin told them how Hawkins and Campbell had threatened to kill him if he spoke up about what happened. The trio are no longer friends.

She said in contrast, at the meeting held with Hawkins, he seemed to be more worried about his own life rather than the Fairweather family.

Crown prosecutor Justin Marinovich said Gavin's involvement in the restorative justice process had a "real impact" on all involved and he deserved additional credit for the steps he agreed to as a result of the meeting, which included counselling.

Marinovich accepted home detention and community work sentences were appropriate for all three defendants.

Gavin's lawyer Kylie Pascoe said the restorative justice process had helped her client fully realise the impact his actions had on the family.

Pascoe, who also appeared for Hawkins on behalf of Susan Hughes QC, said the view the victims had of the teenager following the restorative justice meeting needed to be considered alongside his age and lack of maturity.

Campbell's lawyer Patrick Mooney said his client was also remorseful for what had happened and he had trouble coping following Fairweather's death.

"This is a young man who really cannot face the gravity of what has occurred," Mooney said.

In his judgment, Muir said all three offenders would be given credit for their youth and early guilty pleas.

While Gavin was given additional credit for his show of remorse, Campbell's past offending saw his home detention sentence increased by three months. In March, the 18-year-old was sentenced to six months community detention for domestic violent offending.

Muir sentenced Gavin to seven months' home detention, Hawkins will have to serve nine months' home detention while Campbell was sentenced to 12 months' home detention. Each will also have to complete 100 hours of community work.

After sentencing, Muir told the defendants the one thing they could do to honour Fairweather's memory was to straighten out their own lives.

"Mrs Fairweather was a kind and compassionate woman who despite these tragic events would have, according to her family, only wanted the best for each of you," Muir said.

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If you are experiencing these symptoms, check them out In My Story Part II Prof. Channa Ratnatunga who recovered from a severe stroke writes about pre-stroke symptoms that he had experienced but ignored View(s): View(s):

Following the unexpected good response both nationally and internationally to My Story ( Sunday Times Plus January 3, 2016 ) I thought it would be a good opportunity to write about some features of my experience with pre-stroke symptoms which like any busy person I ignored with catastrophic consequences. They are often associated with a future stroke and need to be taken very seriously. Further it would hopefully keep the interest up regarding the need for public awareness about current advances in the treatment of strokes. Following the unexpected good response both nationally and internationally to My Story ( Sunday Times Plus January 3, 2016 ) I thought it would be a good opportunity to write about some features of my experience with pre-stroke symptoms which like any busy person I ignored with catastrophic consequences. They are often associated with a future stroke and need to be taken very seriously. Further it would hopefully keep the interest up regarding the need for public awareness about current advances in the treatment of strokes.

The brain is supplied blood and hence oxygen through four arteries: two of them in front and two behind. My stroke occurred by a block in the place where the two behind joined each other on the brain stem. It is the more uncommon of the two types of strokes. The more common of the strokes is found with a block in one of the two arteries in front.

For about a year before my stroke I found while reading, two images of the letters- especially in the night when I was tired after a hard days work. Eye surgeons found no defect in my eyes except the usual refractive errors that had been corrected by my spectacles. Since it did not impinge on my work I decided to ignore it thinking it was due to ocular myasthenia which my mother is supposed to have had in the last few years of her life. About two years previously, after delivering a lecture I got into my car and all of a sudden I had a sensation of myself and my car seeming to float. As it passed off within seconds I ignored the event. When it happened again, about a week before my stroke, while driving, I stopped the car and the sensation passed off in seconds. As it happened for the second time, I should have been more concerned, but attributed it to my anti- hypertensive medications, and thought they were over-acting.

Then, when my wife pointed out to me that she had noticed that I had a squint, which appeared and disappeared while at the dinner table, I refuted the fact because I had no gross double vision, nor had I been told of a squint by my friends or patients. These were all premonitory symptoms of the impending catastrophe and I am writing about it because others should be wary of such symptoms. Like most people, even I with a medical background felt that such things wont happen to me, but it did! Such premonitory symptoms are called TIAs (Transient Ischaemic Attacks) and are very common with impending strokes.

When the front two arteries to the brain are the source, the more common kind- such TIAs have a different set of features. They are more recognizable in that they may present as a transient weakness in the use of the upper limb, lower limb, side of the face or a transient difficulty with speech. You must be seen by a neurologist, and that too pronto! They will check your heart by an echo cardiogram for pieces of clot that could be shot off with its contraction, scan the arteries going to your brain or some may so desire even to do a CT scan of your brain. That you can prevent a stroke is now technically well within the scope of modern medicine.

In more so-called advanced countries, media coverage, both electronic and print, is good on such matters. The electronic media coverage will customarily use prime time slots , as this message to the public is so vital. For it is a warning of a very preventable illness. It would help people to go to the correct place. Strokes can be prevented if a persons TIAs are diagnosed for what they are. There is time, in a sense, brief though it may be. It is possible to stop or reverse the progression, if such warnings are heeded. Please go to a neurologist if you have some unusual symptoms like what I have described.

Up until recently much of what was done for strokes caused by an arterial block was by and large, rehabilitation. No wonder it went over to the management of Ayurvedic Physcians. I noticed that only a very few stroke patients attended the gym that I attend. They had gone on to the traditional medical care, who use innovative techniques, oils of assorted varieties with massage and are effective to some extent.

My message to the public, I cant emphasize enough, is that it is important to realize that the western world has now made the  quantum jump  in the care of acute strokes. That they have successfully treated acute strokes by using medication to dissolve the block, failing which, they take the block out by a special catheter passed up from the upper thigh, which is guided deftly to the brain by the Interventional Radiologist, and the block is extracted. It is a commonplace procedure now in the technologically advanced countries, yielding dramatic results. If the patient goes within four to six hours, he or she may even literally walk out of the hospital the next day!

In my case there was a delay of more than 24 hours because we did not know of the facility and also due to various other medical and logistic issues. I am writing this article so that people will know what to do. Luckily even though it was late in my case, the result of the procedure were good. I am quite independent now and able to write about it to you. I have taken it upon myself, sort of morally obliged to inform the public of this great advance in care. To reiterate- go as soon as you can. It is definitely available at the Central Hospital Colombo, where mine was done. Go as quickly as you can as it will save some brain cells and the patient will get a better result.

I know it will take time for people to abandon the traditional ideas of  hopelessness and inevitability but I hope that if I, like Al Gore on climate change , write and talk about it often enough, it will enter the  psyche of my fellow citizens.

The catheters that are used to take the clot out are expensive. The imaging equipment I gather too is very expensive. How can we initiate a programme like this for all those who get strokes? A main hospital with the facilities can have feeder hospitals where a 24/7 service will triage all those who come as strokes. As strokes, can also be, though less commonly, due to bleeding into the brain, or very rarely be due to a brain tumour, it should be quickly assessed by a competent doctor, who can decide to transfer from the feeder hospital to the main hospital where it can be attended to can then attend to it.Stroke care needs acute intervention. There would be a need for cath labs (like what is used in cardiology ) but they should be dedicated for strokes, manned by Interventional Radiologists, 24/7. Sounds a tall order as far as commitment of the Radiologists is concerned, unless we train a number of them. This will allow us to mount the service in a limited fashion at first, in a big city or two at least. That we must offer this service, eventually to all those affected by a stroke is a must. In my book it is inevitable, now that it has been shown to be a very effective mode of care. How we can offer it to all who need it, whether they are able to afford it or not is the challenge.

I gather the intervention can be done if the medication induced clot dissolution fails. So advanced are the facilities in developed countries that after delivery of the clot dissolution medication directly to the site through the catheter passed up to it, imaging shows immediately whether dissolution is successful or not. Because time is of the essence, if the clot does not dissolve, they go ahead with the retrieval procedure using the same catheter. I am writing about what cutting edge facilities are available abroad, just so that you realize that they believe it is cost effective to do so. A Neurologist in Australia informs me that they are planning to mount a service, next year to provide an ambulance with CT scan facilities and trained staff to reach the patient, so that time which is so valuable on these occasions is not lost .

We in Sri Lanka must mount such a service, no doubt at a lower key at present. If there is a good ambulance service, an adequate and committed critical mass of interventional Radiologists, and an organisation to provide the catheters to those who really cant afford it, we are on the correct track. The organisation like the Heart to Heart Foundation which provides catheters and coronary stents, for needy heart patients funded by philanthrophic businessmen and other donors like banks, in Sri Lanka, can be a blueprint for a similar organisation to fund retriever catheters for stroke intervention. Some Neurologists should play a proactive leadership role. I am sure there will be many, like yours truly willing to help.
Its not charity they need but acceptance After many years Sri Lanka has finally ratified the UN Convention on Disability but how serious are we in implementing it asks Dr. Padmani Mendis View(s): View(s):

Sri Lanka has a long tradition of sharing with our disabled citizens the states largesse when it comes to welfare. The state provides grants for medical expenses and self-employment, assistive devices free of cost, cash transfers to those who have low incomes and provides youth with vocational training in special institutions.

The state also subsidises homes which house children with disabilities and those special schools run only for them by NGOs and the private sector. These unfortunately reach limited numbers because budgets have of necessity to be restricted. Within our society, on our birthdays and in remembrance of our relatives who have passed on, we follow a tradition of giving alms as meals to people in residential homes and donate gifts to individuals. The state and society both see them as in need of social services synonymous with charity.

This has been the situation in Sri Lanka for many decades. People with disabilities are beneficiaries of goodwill and charity. And yet Sri Lanka neglects our citizens with disabilities. The context for this statement is that the World of Disability has moved on, has changed, and Sri Lanka has not kept up with those changes. Global Society has moved away from seeing people with disability as mere objects of charity isolated from the mainstream of society. People with disabilities are citizens with equal rights and responsibilities. Both as individuals and as a group they are of equal worth as any other. They are entitled to an equitable share of the countrys resources. They have the right to participate in whatever other citizens participate in whether it be the same schools, the same workplaces, the same social institutions. These institutions need to change to accommodate and include people with disabilities. This is far from the reality in

Sri Lanka.

Changes in disability

Global changes in disability came about as a result of a deeper understanding of disability and its causes. First came the acceptance that the situation of disability is largely caused by stigma and societal attitudes  we perceive them as being different as human beings with different needs. Because they cannot see, or hear or speak or behave or learn or move like we do they are not seen as human beings just like us. We must aim at removing those barriers that keep people with disabilities out of our lives, out of our communities, out of what we do. It is time to stop our neglect of them.

The acceptance of the social cause of disability was followed by a clearer understanding of the functional cause of disability. Disability follows an illness or accident which alters an individuals health condition. This alteration we call disability. Any human being can have an illness, and so it follows that any human being can have disability. Therefore disability is a part of being human  it is a part of us, a part of the rich diversity of our human race.

UN Convention on Disability

It is this acceptance and understanding that led to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD) which was approved by the General Assembly in 2006. This instrument recognizes in International Law that people with disabilities have the same Human Rights as all others.

We need to thank S.B.Dissanayake, Minster of Social Empowerment and Welfare and the Government for having ratified the UN Convention on February 8 this year, nine years after Sri Lanka placed its signature on it in April 2007. That this delay in ratification was an extension of our neglect of people with disabilities is a valid assumption. And yet during these nine years some fundamental measures called for to implement the CRPD have been put in place. Affordable and Rights-Based National Policies and National Action Plans have been approved by Cabinet. Legislation to enforce implementation of these as well to serve as the local enabling legislation for the CRPD has been drafted but is yet to be enacted. One can justify asking the question of whether these were merely tokens over the years in an attempt to keep a small pressure group quiet?

The assumption of neglect has further grounds because of the absence of action. We need then to ask, how serious are we really about the ratification of the UN Convention? Was it just another token but this time to satisfy the international community? We need to take note of the fact that even after we ratified it, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in his closing statement to the Sri Lankan media last month mentioned his concern about the human rights situation of our people with disabilities.

If Sri Lanka is serious about implementing the Convention and improving the lives of our disabled children and adults, we need to take the next step called for in the Convention. We need to establish a body such as a National Disability Commission to see that that the Convention is implemented through the cabinet-approved National Action Plan for Disability.

Article 33 of the Convention describes how implementation is to be done within countries and the need for a mechanism within Government. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights elaborates on this further in a special report. This Report in no uncertain terms calls for this body to be placed at the most senior level of Government close to the heart of Government such as in the Office of the President or Prime Minster .. . The High Commissioners report states clearly that it should best not be under a single ministry such as social welfare, labour or education. Reasons for this are that this Body within the Government responsible for the implementation of the Convention needs to reflect an understanding of human rights which is a cross-ministerial issue of immense proportions. It needs to be at a level that can provide oversight and coordination, and hence in the Office of the P.M. or President. The mandate of this Body includes also liaising with a separate independent commission designated with the task of monitoring national implementation.

Hope for the future

Perhaps the biggest barrier in Sri Lanka to eliminating neglect of disability issues is the lack of interest in people with disabilities on the part of politicians, professionals and administrators  namely those who have the power to change the situation. People with disabilities are among the poorest and most marginalized of our vulnerable groups of citizens. They have no voice.

Who will voice concern for their future? Will the National Disability Commission, the enactment of a new Disability Rights Act and the implementation of the UN Convention through the National Plan of Action for Disability become a reality? When they do, we could say that Sri Lanka has stopped neglecting her citizens with disabilities. We can have hope that they will be recognised and accepted as citizens with equal rights, included in the mainstream of Sri Lankan Society.

(The writer is an Advisor, Disability and Rehabilitation)
Lankan art gets worlds attention at Art Dubai View(s):

Its not often that a Sri Lankan artist finds his work splashed across the pages of international magazines. Priyantha Udagederas paintings found their way into Harpers Bazaar Arabia Art Arabia and Wallpaper when the publications covered Art Dubai.

The month of March saw Art Dubais most diverse and exceptional edition to-date. The tenth edition of the Middle East, South Africa and South Asias leading art fair attracted a record 27,516 visitors with a capacity crowd of 5,142 during the Collectors Preview alone.

The Saskia Fernando Gallery was selected as the first Sri Lankan gallery to participate in the fair, amongst an array of international galleries from over 90 different countries. Directors and curators visited the fair from the Centre Pompidou, Museum of Modern Art New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim, Tate and many more leading institutions from the art world.

For the Sri Lankan artists featured at Art Dubai, it was a remarkable exposure. Works by the ten artists on exhibit were sold by Saskia Fernando Gallery on the first night and sales continued throughout the fair. Priyantha Udagedaras work was selected from the hundreds of works on exhibit to headline articles on the fair by international publications such as Harpers Bazaar, Art Arabia and leading design magazine,  Wallpaper.

Dubais The National newspaper specifically mentioned Saskia Fernando Gallery as a strong presence in the South Asian element of the fair.

In addition to established artists Jagath Weerasinghe, Chandraguptha Thenuwara and Thamotharampillai Shanaathanan, emerging artists Priyantha Udagedara and Prageeth Manohansas work were selected based on their strength and prominence in recent years. Sri Lankan-born Rajni Perera, who now resides in Toronto, exhibited her portrait work and Saskia Pintelon, Belgian-born Sri Lankan resident for over 30 years, exhibited her painted photography series. New entrants to the local scene Abdul Halik Azeez, M.Vijitharan and S.Hanusha also participated in the presentation.

The response to the work was overwhelming, said Saskia Fernando, owner of the Saskia Fernando Gallery who was at Art Dubai, adding that with such incredible press the outstanding nature of Sri Lankan contemporary art has now begun to attract the international art worlds attention.
Lankan flavours at Londons Papis Pickles By Cecily Walker View(s): View(s):

Food is said to have a powerful healing quality and it was out of this belief that London-based company Papis Pickles was born. Abi Ramanan, is an Indian Tamil living in London who has grown up her whole life aware of the long and violent conflict in Sri Lanka. But it was not until she met a number of women who fled to London during and after the conflict, that she started to understand the extent of suffering that these women had lived through and the challenges they still faced. She says I was struck by the deep sense of isolation and lack of opportunities for these women in London, and how cooking and food surfaced as a happy memory from home.

In London alone, the South Indian and Sri Lankan communities are estimated to total more than 250,000 people.

Abi explains that after conducting some research she discovered there was a gap in the market for South Indian and Sri Lankan cuisine in London, specifically made from high quality ingredients and by women. Thus, Papis Pickles emerged: A vehicle for promoting positive change and integration of women from these communities into the workforce through the universal pleasure of food. It provided these women with economic opportunities but most importantly created a sense of community and a place in this alien society.

Papis Pickles is a family run, community-driven social enterprise. They cook authentic South Indian and Sri Lankan food, and fresh pickles, using seasonal, local and organic ingredients for events, pop-ups and street food markets. Their menus are carefully developed by their two head chefs, two sisters from Tamil Nadu (Abis mother and aunt) who have decades of experience in cooking exquisite dishes from the region, combined with traditional Sri Lankan recipes from the women they employ.

The most popular dish on their menu is the Sri Lankan mutton roll with burnt garlic and mint chutney that is made with free-range lamb. Another winner is their string hoppers served with traditional aubergine sothi.

Their concept incorporates the rich history of these cuisines but adds a contemporary western edge particularly regarding the local British produce they use. The business is based in Camberwell, South London but the pop-ups and events have taken them to exciting places such as the Houses of Parliament and the O2. With the growing popularity of Sri Lankan food in London, Papis Pickles has really started to take off.

Over the past two years Papis Pickles have created employment for 13 women, paid nearly 20,000 in London Living Wage salaries and created 2,000 hours of work. As well as economic independence, Papis is also about increasing confidence, providing access to training and skills such as the English language, as well as promoting the rich history of these cuisines and communities. Abi and her family have used food to aid these women in their new lives, dragging them out of isolation and finding a place for them in their new society.
The tuk-tuks of our roads! By Gyan C. A. Fernando View(s): View(s):

One day in 1947, Snr. Corradino DAscanio, the inventor of the Vespa scooter, consumed too much Italian wine (Chianti, I believe) and fell off the scooter of his own design in the Via Nazionale in Rome. Mrs DAscanio who happened to be riding pillion, immediately got up, kicked him viciously and called him an imbecile. He cried out Mamma Mia as well as porcamiseria and other unprintable Italian swear words and then went on to invent a stable three-wheeled version.

This, the Piaggio Ape, was the start of the Three-Wheeled Plague which has caused so much pollution and environmental whats-it from South America to the Far East and in particular in Sri Lanka.

I said it is a plague but even the stiff-upper-lipped Britain grudgingly licensed them on the Brighton beach front. In Varanasi, India I came across a cortege consisting of Bajajs with the coffin-less corpse laid out on the roof. In Hanoi, Vietnam, live pigs were being transported in them and in Burma they tried to persuade a baby elephant to do the same; it obliged and crushed the Tuk-Tuk in the process.

I do have a lot of experience of this mode of versatile transport in other countries but my personal and intensive research of three-wheelers in Sri Lanka, was confined to Kandy. However, there is no reason why foreigners, as well as locals, could not extrapolate my findings to other parts of the Old Republic.

Tuk-tukology

My rules, based on my personal and painstaking observations, are as follows:

In selecting a safe wheel eka first look at the embellishments, slogans and logos that are totally function-less and purely decorative. These should give you an idea of the mentality of the idiot behind the wheel. Whilst spoilers and tail-fins can be useful on racing cars and jet fighters they do very little to alter the aerodynamics of a wheel-eka. These fixtures simply indicate that the driver is a testosterone-fuelled-utter-maniac desperately looking for female company.

Stickers such as Ferrari, Speed King, King of the Road, indicate a frustrated racing driver of reduced means and therefore minus a girlfriend and getting his thrills on three wheels.

The same applies to emblems such as skull and crossbones, fiery skulls, leering skulls, leering and fiery skulls and Cobras.

Emblems of Panthers and Cheetahs also fall in the same category, that of indicators of speed. It is highly unlikely that you will find a Tiger emblem following the recently ended Civil War, however the Lion (Sinha) emblems have proliferated in recent times. The latter are mostly pseudo-patriotic and are therefore deemed relatively harmless.

Wheelers that carry pictures of political leaders or their party emblems can be very dangerous just before and after an election. If you must use these do not forget to bring a flak jacket with you. Do look out for bullet holes before you get in but serious dents on wheelers are normal.

Love is impossible

Most have slogans. The ones which say Love is Difficult, Beautiful Wife, Dangerous Life or My Loose (sic) sweet Heart can mean that the driver is having a bad time in his love life and is therefore suicidal. I once got in one which said I loose (sic) my Wiife (sic). I thought the guy had lost hisWifi device or lost his wife, as in death. Turned out that she had run off with his best friends elderly father. I paid him above the odds even after having to listen to his sob story.

Do go for the ones with slogans of a religious nature such as Nammo Buddhaya, Masha Allah or God is Great. However, I tend to avoid ones with God Help Us! or God Please Save Us! I am sure that you can work that one out!

Once you have selected a decent-looking and safe Tuk-Tuk, do have a good look at the driver. Avoid young drivers dressed in low-budget-Formula One gear and racing driver caps. The ones clad in traditional Sri Lankan sarongs are okay as long as they are not chewing Betel. The red Betel stains can be rather difficult to wash off your clothes.

Bottles of water

There are some signs which, at first sight, may seem worrying. To the left of the driver there is usually a bottle of Smirnoff Vodka or Johnny Walker Whiskey. These bottles contain water! Ha! Ha! Ha! And Ha! Do not worry. It is just part of their macho-image. The Sri Lankan Police are very vigilant when they see expensive, imported drinks and are diligent in confiscating them, so the chances of these bottles containing anything other than water are fairly slim. On the other hand the bottles on the right side of the driver, usually empty Arrack bottles, invariably contain petrol. Do not smoke!

Short skirts, No-No!

Grossly obese persons can have particular difficulty with these self-appointed Kings of the Road mostly because of their personal dimensions (see the baby elephant incident, above). Even normally-proportioned women can get into difficulties because of their attire. A long saree fall or pota,fluttering around can be lethal if it gets entangled with a passing bus as once nearly happened to my lovely sister Babs.

Short skirts are a general no-no as my lovely-but-in-your-face-niece Samanmalee (The Sam) found out. If you are tall, long-legged and attractive it is difficult to get into a tuk-tukwithout flashing your cleavage or underwear to the other hanger-around-leering drivers, in what is politely known as a wardrobe malfunction.

Bella! Bella!

I happened to be with The Sam in The Pettah, Colombo when this happened to her. She was in the skimpiest red skirt that I had ever seen. She did manage to slide into a tuk-tuk because of her octopus-like flexible legs. A pseudo-macho-just-standing-around-type-guy leered, sniggered and let out a wolf whistle. Sam slithered out slowly, menacingly, impressively and with a great amount of poise and then clocked him one.

I am not really sure if it was a slap or a punch. The guy staggered backwards with a look of total surprise on his features. The Sam followed on with her usual kick-in-the-groin and then slid back in to the tuk-tuk. I just kept on staring ahead.

I am sure that the inventor of the Three Wheeler, the late Snr Vespa-Piaggio-Corradino-Bajaj would have shouted Bella! Bella!
Young trainees hopeful of beauty business in the North View(s):

After months of extensive training on hair dressing and makeup art by an expert, 14 trainees throughout the North are determined and hopeful to go back to their villages to make a living in the future.

For the past two months these students from five districts in the North were given hands-on experience by an expert who arrived from Canada on beauty therapy, hair styling, and bridal dressing, make up, bouquet-making and facials .

As their course ended on Wednesday, March 23, they showcased their own designed work at a public exhibition at Selva Mahal hall in Jaffna on March 30.

Logi Mariathasan, a professional designer and make-up artist came all the way from Canada to help these young people from former war torn areas to make a living on their own.

I have been here for the past two months for this fulltime programme. The students are really enthusiastic about learning the art. Some of them told me that they are planning to start beauty parlours in their homes following the training here, Ms Mariathasan told the Sunday Times during a class she was conducting for her students in Jaffna last week.

A Sri Lankan who migrated to Canada, she noted how the Tamil culture has evolved, widening its views on beauty and accepting social norms of other communities. For the last five years the cultural scene has changed, she notes with more inclined to use make-up.

Kajanthini Vikneswaran is one of her bright students who resettled in Vaddakkachchi, Kilinochchi recently. She finished her Advanced Level studies last year and is looking for a job to support her family of seven.

Since my family depends on farming, I am planning to start a beauty salon in my home to meet the demand in our villages after completing this course. I learned a lot of things here including designing and I feel if I do things better than others, I could develop the salon into a big one, she said.

Students from Kilinochchi, Mannar, Jaffna and Mullaitivu were selected after a careful study of their background and recommendations from civil society organisations. The two month training course was held in Jaffna with boarding facilities provided for students and allowances for their expenses.

The students said they believe they can earn at least Rs. 100,000 a month if opportunities come their way. Rs. 500 is charged for make-up and if hairdressing is also required, the charges could amount to Rs. 3,000.

Unlike those days Muslims use make-up for special occasions creating a growing market among her own community, says Rajun Fathima Husna, a student from Sonakar street, in Jaffna.  Thats why I joined this class. Muslims use more makeup than anybody else, these days she quipped.

(Text and pix by N.Lohathayalan)
Waikato Police continue inquiries in to how a young woman died on Main North Road, Otorohanga on Sunday morning.

Detective Senior Sergeant Ross Patterson says that they can now confirm the identity of the young woman as 17-year-old Ocean Poihaere Heke of Te Kuiti.

She will be returned to her family today after the forensic post mortem has indicated that Ms Heke has sustained injuries consistent with being hit by a motor vehicle.

The post mortem confirms what we believe had occurred from the scene examination yesterday.

We have identified a car that appears to have been involved.

This too will undergo a forensic examination today.

"We are also speaking to two young people who are helping us with our inquiries in relation to that car, says Mr Patterson.

We would like to hear from anyone who has information about this incident or who may have witnessed any collisions on Main North Road (SH 3) between 3am and 7am Sunday morning.

Please contact police on 07 8586200 or alternatively, information can be provided anonymously to the independent Crimestoppers on 0800 555111.

Source: New Zealand Police.
There will be more passengers, more flights on existing routes to and from the UK, and new routes are being introduced

More flights and passengers. :: SUR

It looks as if the summer of 2016 will be a record year for the airport, with more passengers, more flights on existing routes and the introduction of new routes.

The figures include a 40.8 per cent growth in seats compared with the summer of 2015, and 35.1 per cent more flights weekly.

There will be more early morning British Airways departures from London Heathrow, and Easyjet is to begin a twice-weekly service to Manchester and extra flights to Gatwick.

Monarch Airlines is launching a service to Gatwick four times a week and an extra flight to Birmingham (the normal Tuesday flight to Birmingham is to be discontinued) and there will be Air Maroc services to Morocco on Thursday evenings.
Clay, N.Y.  A Chevrolet dealership and a new shopping plaza are the latest developments planned for the rapidly growing commercial corridor along Route 31, between Route 57 and Interstate 481, in Clay.

Fox Dealerships plans to relocate its Sharon Chevrolet dealership from Route 57 in Phoenix to a vacant seven-acre parcel of land on the north side of Route 31 a short distance east of Route 57. It would have a 1,600-square-foot showroom.

The site is east of Innovations Salon & Day Spa and directly across Route 31 from where Davidson Ford is building a large new dealership, five-bay car wash and collision repair center. Davidson plans to relocate from Fulton when the new dealership is finished this spring.

Widewaters Group Inc. is planning to build a shopping center on a vacant 46-acre site a short distance east of the planned new Sharon Chevrolet. It would consist of a 90,000-square-foot retail building at the north end of the parcel, with four outparcels for retail or fast food restaurants on both sides of the driveway leading into the plaza.

A Widewaters representative told the Clay Town Board there is interest among retailers in the large retail parcel, but that there is no definite tenant for it yet.

The two developments would continue the rapid expansion of commercial development west along Route 31 west of I-481. Once lined with farmland, the corridor has seen lots of retail development in the last 10 years, including a Wal-Mart Supercenter, a Home Depot, a Lowe's and six restaurants.

Based in DeWitt, Widewaters has developed or acquired over 11.2 million square feet of retail, office, residential and hotel projects totaling over $1.29 billion over the past 30 years, according to its website.

Both Fox and Widewaters have asked the town to rezone their properties to allow the developments. The land is zoned for residential and agricultural use. It would have to be rezoned to permit commercial use. In addition,

In addition, Fox will need a variance from the town's requirement that it have 400 feet of frontage on Route 31. The property where it wants to build the car dealership has 397 feet of frontage. Fox will also have to deal with wetlands on the property.

Clay Planning Commissioner Mark Territo said both companies will also need site plan approval from the town. That would only come after the rezoning is approved, he said.

Sharon Chevrolet has been in Phoenix in Oswego County, five miles north of Route 31, for nearly 30 years.

The Route 31 location would give the dealership much greater visibility and help to make the road something of an auto row. In addition to the new Davidson Ford under construction, the huge Fuccillo Automotive Group operates Nissan and Kia dealerships a short drive to the east at the corner of Route 31 and Dell Center Drive.

Contact Rick Moriarty anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 315-470-3148
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Timothy A. Scott II, 29, of Central Square, allegedly pushed, hit and choked a female victim until she lost consciousness, state police said.

(Provided photo)

HASTINGS, N.Y. -- A Central Square man was arrested six weeks after he allegedly choke and hit a female victim last month in Oswego County.

Timothy A. Scott II, 29, allegedly pushed, hit and choked a female victim until she lost consciousness on Feb. 24 in the town of Hastings. The incident happened in front of her two children, according to the New York State Police.

State police say Scott took the victim's phone to prevent her from contacting police.

State police were unable to locate Scott to arrest him for the domestic dispute. State police learned that Scott had relocated to Vermont and was also wanted on two outstanding warrants in Massena.

Investigators made contact with Scott, and he agreed to turn himself in to answer the charges, state police said.

Scott turned himself in today and was taken into custody. He was charged with criminal obstruction of breathing or blood circulations, fourth-degree criminal mischief and endangering the welfare of a child, all misdemeanors, state police said. He was also charged with second-degree harassment, a violation.

Scott was arraigned in the Hastings Town Court and remanded to the Oswego County Jail in lieu of $2,500 cash or $5,000 bond. He is scheduled to return to court at 4 p.m. on April 18.
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Vernon firefighters assist state investigators by removing debris to determine the source of the fire that killed a girl on Sunday, April 3, 2016 in Vernon.

(Matt Adams | madams@syracuse.com)

A 8-year-old girl was killed Sunday in a house fire in Vernon. Zoey was the daughter of Dave and Andrea Brown. A GoFundMe page was set up to help the family.

VERNON, N.Y. -- Vernon volunteer firefighters had just returned from a call Sunday afternoon when a woman frantically dialed 911 to say her house was on fire, according to fire department officials.

The woman said she was doing everything she could to get her children out safely, but she couldn't find two of them, officials said.

From their fire station a quarter-mile away, firefighters saw black smoke billowing into the air from the two-story, wood-framed house at 5162 W. Seneca St. in the village of Vernon, Vernon Fire Chief Scott Nell said. The call came in at 3:46 p.m. Sunday.

"Flames were shooting out the first and second floor windows when we arrived," Nell said.

Andrea Brown was out front with some of her children. At first, she couldn't account for two children: One had gone to a friend's house and was safe; the other was Brown's 8-year-old daughter who she believed was still inside the burning house, Nell said.

Vernon Police Officer Marty Laundry, one of the first on the scene, ran down a driveway to the back of the house, hoping to save the girl, Nell said.

"Every window he looked in was full of flames," the fire chief said. "He couldn't even get on the porch to the back door to open it because it was just too hot."

The 8-year-old girl died in the fire, officials said.

The first Vernon Fire Co. pumper truck on scene had to move away from the front of the house because the heat was so intense, Nell said. The smoke and fire conditions in the home also prevented firefighters from entering immediately, he said.

"It was too hot, too intense," Nell said. "We couldn't get anybody in there. It was too dangerous."

About 75 firefighters from five departments -- Vernon, Vernon Center, Verona, Sherrill-Kenwood and Oneida Castle -- spent about an hour trying to extinguish the flames. When firefighters were able to enter the house, they found the girl in an upstairs bedroom, Nell said.

An autopsy is scheduled Monday at the Onondaga County Medical Examiner's Office to positively identify the girl, state police said in a news release.

This was the first fatal fire in Vernon in more than 30 years, Nell said. Vernon Center and Sherrill fire departments offered counseling to firefighters at the scene.

"It was tough for the (firefighters) because we didn't stand to make a rescue," Nell said. "The (firefighters) are pretty frustrated. It's tough."

Ambulances took Andrea Brown and five children from the scene to Oneida Healthcare's emergency room for observation, state police said in a news release.

Volunteers from the Mohawk Valley Chapter of the American Red Cross went to the fire scene, as well as the hospital to do what they could to help the grieving family, Red Cross Executive Director Mallory Scheve said. They brought personal care items and stuffed animals for the children.

The Red Cross also is providing temporary shelter and financial assistance for necessities, such as food and clothing for two adults and seven children displaced by the fire, according to a news release.

The Vernon Public Library posted on its Facebook page Sunday night that it will be accepting donations for the family.

Nell said he believes there are seven surviving children, including six who escaped the fire and the one at a friend's house, who range in age from 5 to 17. The fire chief also said the family has lived in the community for many years and the children, some with disabilities, attend the local schools.

Firefighters had plenty of water and manpower to put out the fire, Nell said. The chief said there may have been a delay from the time the fire started to when someone first called 911. "We have no reason to suspect any intentional cause," he said.

Vernon Village Police turned over the investigation to New York State Police, Nell said. State police began their investigation Sunday night and kept a patrol car outside the home overnight. The cause of the fire remains under investigation, state police said.

Investigators plan to resume both the fire investigation and death investigation Monday morning.

"The toughest part was (the fire) had such a head start on us," Nell said. "It was a really intense fire... We did what we could."
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Amy Dell was charged after this fatal crash on I-81 south near LaFayette. May 8, 2015.

(Provided Photo)

Amy Dell

Syracuse, NY -- The lawyer for a Rome woman who went the wrong way on Interstate 81 before a fatal crash says it may have been confusion -- not alcohol -- that caused her bad driving.

Amy Dell, 33, is facing a maximum of 25 years in prison if convicted of being extremely drunk at the time she crashed into a car May 8, 2015, killing a New Jersey man, Bruce Ham.

But defense lawyer Stephen Lance Cimino said that a forensic neuropsychologist is exploring whether Dell suffers from "cognitive impairment." If so, that might explain an alternate reason that Dell got on I-81 in LaFayette going the wrong direction, Cimino said.

The lawyer added today that tests were still ongoing, so it wasn't clear what Dr. Jarid Fisher, of Rochester, would conclude.

But Cimino suggested that a spinal surgery that may have impacted Dell's brain function. He pointed to the fact that Dell dropped out of high school despite being a good student and athlete.

Cimino said that Dell has expressed remorse for her actions, but doesn't have an explanation for getting on the highway going the wrong way.

If she does have cognitive impairment, Cimino said he'd use that to argue that she couldn't have had the "reckless intent" necessary for the most serious charges.

Prosecutor Christopher Bednarski has blood-alcohol tests showing that Dell was above the legal limit of 0.08, but how much remains in dispute. There's also recovered video that apparently shows Dell falling three times outside of an Armory Square bar.

The bar's manager, John Hanus, recently pleaded guilty to hiding that video, but it was later recovered.

Dell also has a history of drunken driving. She had at least one prior drunken driving conviction, was accused of driving without a license and had another DWI charge pending at the time of the crash.

Separately, a civil lawsuit contends that Dell drank on her job as a bartender at Destiny Revolutions, then continued to bar-hop in Armory Square the night of the fatal crash. (Revolutions has denied that Dell was drinking on the job.)

Dell is facing aggravated vehicular homicide, as well as lesser charges of vehicular manslaughter, aggravated unlicensed operation and aggravated driving while intoxicated.

She's due to stand trial in May.
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Warren and Brenda Pfohl are the founders of David's Refuge, a non-profit which offers weekend retreats for parents of seriously ill children. This is one of the bed-and-breakfasts they were hosting couples at in Auburn in 2014. David Lassman | dlassman@syracuse.com

David's Refuge, a non-profit started by Manlius couple Warren and Brenda Pfohl, is receiving a $20,000 donation from a local car dealership and a national car manufacturer

Romano Subaru and Subaru of America Inc. is giving the money to David's Refuge, which was selected by the Syracuse community as their charity of choice.

During Subaru's "Share the Love" event, which ran from November 2015 to January, Subaru agreed to give $250 per car purchase to the charity.

David's Refuge is a non-profit which offers weekend retreats to parents of children who are seriously ill, or have special needs. The non-profit started with a single bed-and-breakfast in Manlius and has since expanded to include a network of bed-and-breakfasts all over Central New York.

"David's Refuge has a special place in our heart because they were founded here in Syracuse, and help local parents who have special needs children," said David Romano, owner of Romano Subaru.

David's Refuge is slated to receive the donation next week.

Kate Houck, director of development at David's Refuge, said the non-profit is honored to receive the donation and said the dealership "did an amazing job raising donations."
Joseph Luzier

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By Elliott Jones of TCPalm

INDIAN RIVER COUNTY  A Brevard County motorist who dragged a Cocoa officer while almost running down others and sped south along Interstate 95 didn't get far into Indian River County before deputies stopped him early Saturday with tire deflating devices, reports show.

At times his car was clocked going 85 to 100 mph and he told a dispatcher "he would kill the next law enforcement officer he sees," according to his arrest affidavit states.

Joseph Luzier, 35, of Cocoa, was arrested early Saturday and is charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault and aggravated battery of three law enforcement officers, according to his arrest affidavit. He's being held without bail in the Indian River County Jail.

The incident started 2:22 a.m. Saturday in Cocoa when officers approached a vehicle that was improperly parked, blocking a roadway. According to the arrest affidavit, Luzier was the driver and a license check showed that he is a sexual offender on probation.

He refused to get out of the locked vehicle and an officer grabbed his hand. Luzier began driving away, according to the affidavit, dragging an officer and almost running over other officers, according to a police report.

Luzier drove south on I-95 and at one point "intentionally swerved at (a Melbourne police officer), causing him to drive off the road to avoid being struck. Luzier swerved around tire deflation devices and braked his car, trying to cause pursuing cars to crash.

Indian River County deputies intervened, deploying tire deflation devices along I-95 in Sebastian. He was apprehended 12 miles inside the county after his car was stopped at an Interstate 95 exit at 3:29 a.m. Saturday.
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James Brown, 46, 500 block of 31st Street, Fort Pierce; battery.

Keyonta Wynn, 33, 100 block of 13th Street, Fort Pierce; warrants for possession of cocaine, sale/delivery of cocaine within 1,000 feet of a convenience business.

Robert Hickey, 64, 200 block of Entrada Avenue, Port St. Lucie; robbery with a weapon; fleeing/attempting to elude an officer.

Tonya Ganious, 50, 600 block of 18th Street, Fort Pierce; warrant for sale/delivery of marijuana, possession of less than 20 grams of marijuana.

Mark Felder, 39, 800 block of 14th Street, Stuart; grand theft of a motor vehicle.

Michael Johnson, 25, Miami; driving while license suspended, habitual offender.

Stephanie Delancy, 30, 2000 block of Dunbrooke Circle, Port St. Lucie; warrant for violation of probation, felony charge. Arrested in Martin County.

Marcel Crawford, 22, 2000 block of Larchmont Lane, Port St. Lucie; grand theft. Arrested in Martin County.

Kahala Lesmoine, 19, 400 block of Leaping Frog Way, Port St. Lucie; aggravated assault. Arrested in Martin County.

Robert Riesgo, 38, 2400 block of Bayshore Boulevard, Port St. Lucie; out-of-county warrant, Charlotte County, violation of probation, burglary.

Shane Torres, 21, West Palm Beach; out-of-county warrant, Broward County, battery.

Lloyd Coley, 26, 500 block of 21st Street, Fort Pierce; possession of cocaine with intent to sell, manufacture or deliver; driving while license suspended.

James Lawson, 49, 1700 block of 49th Circle, Fort Pierce; grand theft of a motor vehicle; driving while license suspended.

Alphonso Morris, 53, 100 block of 15th Street, Fort Pierce; warrant for court order to revoke bond, possession of cocaine, driving while license suspended.

Tenell Williams, 26, 800 block of Koler Avenue, Port St. Lucie; battery.

Stephon Esquivel La-char, 20, 300 block of Midway Road, Fort Pierce; aggravated stalking threat.

Jason Kelly, 34, 3500 block of Avenue I, Fort Pierce; court order to revoke bond, driving while license suspended.

Nicholas Rapisardi, 31, 2100 block of Matheson Boulevard, Palm City; sale of hydromorphone; possession of hydromorphone; unlawful use of a two-way communications device.

Brenden Hoffman, 26, 800 block of Delaware Avenue, Fort Pierce; re-admit, violation of probation, DUI.

James Touchstone, 50, 2900 block of Avenue I, Fort Pierce; hold, Miami-Dade County, grand theft.

Pierre Mesadieu, 31, West Palm Beach; re-admit, driving while license suspended, DUI impairment, damage to property or person.

Norman Wright, 64, 3400 block of Avenue M, Fort Pierce; battery, prior conviction.

Lemeul Saul, 39, no street address, Fort Pierce; possession of cocaine.

Clyde Crouch, 30, 16000 block of Orange Avenue, Fort Pierce; trafficking in cocaine; manufacturing of cocaine; possession, manufacturing or delivering drug equipment.

Daniel Walker, 25, 2400 block of 2nd Street, Vero Beach; fleeing/attempting to elude an officer.

Charles Rodgers, 58, 3100 block of Naylor Terrace, Fort Pierce; warrant for court order to revoke bond, driving while license suspended, prior conviction.

Linda Piscopo, 54, 3300 block of U.S. 1, Fort Pierce; warrant for violation of probation, DUI, blood/breath alcohol level of .15 or more, one prior conviction, damage to property or person.

Nicholas Rapisardi, 31, 2100 block of Matheson Boulevard, Palm City; sale of hydromorphone; possession of hydromorphone; unlawful use of a two-way communications device. Arrested In St. Lucie County.

Daniel Walker, 25, 2400 block of 2nd Street, Vero Beach; fleeing/attempting to elude an officer. Arrested in St. Lucie County.
Rendering of All Aboard Florida's brightline train. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO/ALL ABOARD FLORIDA)

By Lisa Broadt of TCPalm

All Aboard Florida has finalized the changes it will make to railway crossings in Martin and St. Lucie counties in preparation for its Miami-to-Orlando Brightline passenger rail service. All Aboard likely will finalize Indian River County's plans later this month, according to the company.

The long-awaited crossing and track designs  as well as a letter of approval from the Federal Railroad Administration, the overseeing agency  was made available to local governments on Monday, according to All Aboard Florida.

In delivering the documents, All Aboard Florida fulfills a promise more than two years in the making, according to Michael Reininger, president.

"It's as safe as we always represented it would be," Reininger said, noting that the company made safety improvements to the existing Florida East Coast Railway tracks beyond government requirements. "The reality of that is pretty clearly evident in the completed documents and affirmation from the FRA."

Officials in St. Lucie and Martin counties on Monday afternoon said they had begun preliminary reviews of the documents. Both said they plan to have internal and external experts study the plans in more detail.

"Thorough review of the documents will take some time," St. Lucie County spokesman Erick Gill said. "At this point, it is too early to put a time frame on that review."

Even upon first glance, Martin County has concerns with the plans, according to Gabriella Ferraro, spokeswoman.

"Martin County staff has identified safety measures such as vehicle-presence detectors, remote health monitoring and positive train control that are not graphically depicted in the plans and remain in question," Ferraro said in an email.

"The county remains seriously concerned that we've never seen the Federal Railroad Administration's safety office correspondence regarding the plans despite (Freedom of Information Act requests) and congressional requests," Ferraro added.

The completed engineering plans position All Aboard Florida to quickly begin work on the Treasure Coast once it obtains several needed permits. The company, though, has yet to secure nearly $2 billion of financing, a key part of completing the $3.1 billion railroad.

MORE | 1 state permit rejection could shut down All Aboard Florida

Work already has begun on the tracks south of Martin County and on stations in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and at Orlando International Airport.

Hundreds of pages of maps reveal that all track crossings in Martin and St. Lucie will be left open, including Seaward Street in Port Salerno, which had been under consideration for closure. It's likely all crossings in Indian River  including 21st Street and U.S. 1 and 14th Avenue and U.S. 1 in Vero Beach  also will remain open, according to All Aboard Florida.

Plans also show that All Aboard Florida has taken a safety precaution much desired by the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council: extending all planned highway medians from the required 65 feet to 100 feet.

Lengthening the highway medians is meant to increase safety by making it more difficult for drivers to use the opposing lane to skirt the railroad traffic arm.

Proposed engineering changes in downtown Stuart could make the notorious seven-road traffic circle known as Confusion Corner safer  and less confusing. The plans show no unexpected changes to the St. Lucie River bridge.

A guide to making it easier for local governments to request quiet zones accompanies the 100 percent plans.

All Aboard Florida said it hopes the guide will encourage local governments to request railroad administration approval for the stretches of track where safety infrastructure meets a federal standard for eliminating the need for a train to sound its horn.

"We've heard all along people are most bothered by the sound of the horns. We ourselves can't fix that problem, but we've tried to evidence our willingness to be a good neighbor," Reininger said about quiet zones, which can be requested only by local governments. "This is one very tangible way to evidence that. We've done everything we can possibly do to make this a reality."

The guide is the latest in a series of efforts by All Aboard Florida to make it easier for the Treasure Coast to obtain quiet zones.

Nearly two years ago, the company promised to help cover the cost of quiet zones, an offer accepted in all regions along the rail corridor except the Treasure Coast, a hotbed of opposition to the project.

Here, government officials have not applied for quiet zones, even though all of the required infrastructure will be in place  whether or not governments seek them  and they would be virtually free.

St. Lucie County on Monday said it has been in discussion with the regional planning council about holding a Treasure Coast-wide workshop to discuss quiet zones once local governments have had time to review the final engineering plans.

Brightline passenger service between Miami and West Palm Beach is to begin in mid-2017, with Miami-to-Orlando service beginning in late 2017.
Rendering of All Aboard Florida's brightline train. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO/ALL ABOARD FLORIDA)

By Gil Smart of TCPalm

Quick context on what Treasure Coast residents are talking about this week:

Do the AAF math

The $3 billion All Aboard Florida project needs a total of 17 state permits to proceed. If even one is denied, the project could go belly up.

But according to a Treasure Coast Newspapers analysis, All Aboard Florida has spent more than $3 million on the Florida political system since 2011 as it prepares to launch the Miami-Orlando passenger train project. That includes $2 million for consultants to lobby state officials, including two lobbyists who were major fundraisers for Gov. Rick Scott's 2015 inaugural festivities. AAF expenditures also included more than $900,000 donated to political parties, candidates, elected officials or the independent committees that support them.

So is a $3 million "investment" to protect a $3 billion project money well spent?

"They want a 'yes,' " said Frank Schnidman, executive director of Florida Atlantic University's Center for Urban and Environmental Solutions. "I think that what the railroad is doing is making an investment. They're buying access and they're hoping that they can prevail."

All Aboard Florida revs up political spending while awaiting permits: https://t.co/jxTURe7DFD by @TCPalmAndreassi pic.twitter.com/jCCsSYu8Gc  TCPalm (@TCPalm) March 31, 2016

Fish die-off: Are we next?

Scientists said the massive fish kill last month in the Banana River could easily happen here.

Continued rain and Lake Okeechobee discharges could dump more nutrient-laden water into the southern Indian River Lagoon, producing the type of algae blooms that killed thousands, maybe millions of fish in Brevard County.

Tidal flushing now helps keep the blooms at bay, but experts told Treasure Coast Newspapers if the rains and the Lake Okeechobee discharges continue, it could dump more bad water into the local lagoon that the tides can flush out. That could result in a "brown tide" of blooms that sucks the oxygen out of the water, suffocating fish.

Neither fish kills nor brown tide are uncommon here; and given that the threat of a bloom increases in warmer weather, June, July and August could get dicey.

Experts say cutting new inlets or pumping in ocean water could help cleanse the Mosquito Lagoon and Banana River sections of the northern Indian River Lagoon. But a better plan, is to stop loading the lagoon with so much nutrients.

Conditions make this #IndianRiverLagoon section more susceptible to massive fish kill than Brevard's Banana River. https://t.co/L7PhFzJd7K  Cheryl Smith (@TCPalmCheryl) April 4, 2016

Chips ahoy

Paying with a credit card? Your card has a microchip, right?

Good luck finding a retailer that can accommodate it.

Although all retailers were supposed to have terminals that accept the chip cards by Oct. 1, more than 60 percent of retailers still require consumers to swipe their credit cards, paying the "old-fashioned" way, Bargainista Kelly Tyko reported.

While big retailers like Target and Walmart use chip-reading terminals, others like Publix and Staples still can't accommodate the chip cards.

Experts said the chip cards improve security, and stores that have not yet upgraded expose customers to a security risk.

But as Forbes magazine reported, Americans have given the chip cards a collective "meh," with 56 percent of people surveyed saying they don't care if a retailer's payment terminal is chip-enabled, and 41 percent of consumers say they don't have  or don't know if they have  a chip-enabled credit card.

Are you using new chip credit cards yet? Learn more here https://t.co/jQHqwLtQph #TCPalmSocial #Bargainista  Kelly Tyko (@TCPalmKelly) March 31, 2016
Oracle has asked for US$9.3 billion in damages in its multiyear lawsuit against Google over the use of Java in Android, according to a report filed last week in federal court.

That amount is reportedly about 10 times what it had initially asked for.

The next hearing in the case is scheduled for May 9 in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

James Malackowski, a damages expert hired by Oracles lawyers, set the companys actual damages at about $500 million and apportioned Googles profits from the allegedly infringed Java copyrights at about $8.8 billion.

He used the following reasoning:

The allegedly infringed Java copyrights were critically important to the timing of Googles launch of the Android platform;

Googles strategy in launching Android was to ensure a continuing revenue stream from its search services in connection with mobile advertising, which has generated significant advertising revenue and profit for Google. The Android platform is a critical component of Googles overall mobile search business;

The allegedly infringed Java copyrights are necessary for, and critically important to, the ongoing operation of the Android platform and its applications;

Absent Googles use of the allegedly infringed copyrights, Sun Microsystems would have generated significantly more licensing revenue, at least from its Java ME platform, and was positioned strategically to introduce a successful mobile platform, either by itself or through a licensee.

Googles Reaction

Google responded by filing a motion last week to exclude portions of Malackowskis report.

The motion contends the following:

Malackowski failed to conduct any meaningful analysis supporting his claim that the alleged infringement caused Google to earn advertising revenue;

Once he deducted Googles costs to reach a profit number, he didnt conduct apportionment of Android at all;

His analysis of the profits Oracle claimed to have lost was based on a single 2008 Sun document projecting revenues for licensing Java ME  a different Java platform from Java SE, and not even the accused work here  through 2010 only projecting an 8.3 percent increase from 2009 to 2010 and a private conversation with former Sun employee Michael Ringhofer, who now works for Oracle;

Malackowski speculated that, had Google not allegedly infringed, Oracle would have created its own full-stack platform and made just as much profit as Google has made indirectly from Android using an entirely different business model from Oracles.

However, Oracle never came close to creating it own platform, despite years of trying, Google said.

The Importance of the Case

The issue to be heard in May is the question of fair use.

Javas still in relatively wide use, and if Googles seen as infringing, then its likely Oracle will go after others, suggested Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

For example, an Oracle win could open the door to massive judgments against other Linux derivative products, he told the E-Commerce Times. A Google victory largely would maintain the status quo.

An Oracle win could have a real chilling effect on the tech community [because] Java is open source, said Mike Jude, a research program manager at Frost & Sullivan.

A victory by Google would be very good for tech [because] most of the innovations in Java have been in the open source community, he told the E-Commerce Times.

The impact on the industry will depend on how narrowly or broadly the court rules in the end, noted Al Hilwa, a research program director atIDC Seattle. A narrowly interpreted victory for either side may only impact APIs of similar nature and complexity.

Who Ya Gonna Bet On?

The May 9 hearing will be held before Judge William Alsup, who heard the case in 2012 and ruled that APIs could not be copyrighted. The U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision in 2014.

The reversal suggests this [hearing] will roll back more into Oracles favor, Enderle said, but the extreme amount of damages its asking for is likely beyond what a court will be willing to grant them.

However, Hilwa told the E-Commerce Times, the case has taken many turns, and Im not going to predict how it will turn out.
Artech Infosystems Pvt. Ltd. (Artech India) and Andhra Pradesh State Skill Development Corporation (APSSDC) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to facilitate recruitment of white collar work force of AP anywhere in India or abroad, specific to Information Technology (IT) related domain. The timeline of the MoU will be five years, during the course of which APSSDC will facilitate the positioning of Artech as one of its primary partners for all IT related staffing needs to all organizations (whether existing or in the process of setting-up) in the allocated districts of AP.

Talking about the MoU, Mr. Shiv Nath Ghosh, Country Director & Senior Vice President, Artech India said, Artechs deep heritage, proven expertise and insightful market intelligence has secured us a high ranking amidst top 10 IT staffing providers in India. It is an excellent opportunity for us to channelize the APs talent to exhibit their tech competencies to the existing as well as upcoming corporations in the state, who are robustly looking forward to the Indian Market for business as well as for talent.

This partnership will give a fillip to the skill development activities of APSSDC and will foster a positive approach to skill development in the state, added by Mr. L. Premachandra Reddy, IAS, MD & CEO, APSSDC. He adds Artech will bring its expertise to the table in this crucial task of making a match between the availability of IT jobs and suitably skilled youth.

@ Technuter.com News Service
An attack on a Panama law firm's email servers has led to one of the biggest data leaks in history. The 2.6 terabytes of information exposes the questionable financial dealings of some of the most powerful individuals in the world, including Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The 11.5 million files, which are mostly made up of emails, originate from Mossack Fonseca, the world's fourth-biggest offshore law firm. An anonymous source sent the documents to German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung, which shared them with more than 370 reports from 100 worldwide news outlets, as well as the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism.

It's claimed that the documents link a number of high-profile names, including 72 current or former heads of state, with schemes that helped them launder money, dodge sanctions and evade tax.

In addition to Vladimir Putin, some of the people who have allegedly exploited secretive offshore tax regimes include Syria President Bashar Assad, Iceland Prime Minister Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson and his wife, Ukranian president Petro Poroshenko, and British Prime Minister David Cameron's late father, Ian Cameron.

The size of the data dump makes it larger than both the WikiLeaks State Department cables and Edward Snowden's NSA revelations. Snowden has been tweeting about Mossack Fonseca; the NSA whistleblower said: "Biggest leak in the history of data journalism just went live, and it's about corruption."

That time when your journalism was so hot it melted the servers. #PanamaPapers https://t.co/AkCPAh6EEI --- Edward Snowden (@Snowden) April 3, 2016

Despite the size of the leak, Ramon Fonseca, the director of the law firm, confirmed that the company had been the victim of a successful but "limited" hack. He went on to call the attack a "crime and felony."

"Each person has a right to privacy, whether they are a king or a beggar," Fonseca told Sky News.

The company claims it cannot be held responsible for any wrongdoings. "We're dedicated to making legal structures which we sell to intermediaries such as banks, lawyers, accountants and trusts, and they have their end-customers that we don't know," said Fonseca.

It's likely that the ramifications of the leak will be felt over the coming weeks and months. There are already calls for a snap election in Iceland after the revelations linked the country's prime minister to secretive offshore tax regimes.

Check out this Reddit thread to learn more about the Panama Papers, or see the full overview from the Suddeutsche Zeitung.
While the technological capabilities of ISIS have been widely reported, it now seems that the Taliban is expanding its reach into the online world. An app created by the Islamic fundamentalist group was discovered on the Play Store late last week, but was quickly removed by Google.

The Pashto language app, called Alemarah, included official statements and videos from the Taliban. It was the first application to come from the group, and was "part of our advanced technological efforts to make more global audience," according to Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed.

The app was discovered and reported on Friday by the SITE Intelligence Group, a non-governmental counterterrorism organization. Google removed it soon after for violating the company's policy that states apps are not allowed to "advocate against groups of people based on their race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, or gender identity."

"Our policies are designed to provide a great experience for users and developers. That's why we remove apps from Google Play that violate those policies," Google said in a statement.

Mujahed claimed the app's disappearance is due to "technical issues," and that he expects it to return to the Google Play store soon.

Much like Islamic State, the Taliban has quite a noticeable online presence. The group has a website that is run in five languages and numerous social media accounts. It also uses the encrypted messaging service Telegram, which previously blocked dozens of ISIS-related channels.

"The app will help Taliban to further psychologically weaken Afghanistan by their propaganda reports," Jawid Kohistani, an independent Kabul-based security analyst, told Bloomberg.
Health regulators in Europe issued on April 1 a recommendation to approve Johnson & Johnson's blood cancer drug, albeit with several conditions.

The European Medicines Agency's (EMA) Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) said it would need to evaluate additional data about the blood cancer drug from two ongoing studies.

The drug in question is called Darzalex (daratumumab) and is already approved in the United States. Experts say Darzalex offers hope to patients who have run out of options for multiple myeloma treatments.

The EMA gives conditional approval for drugs that provide an unmet medical need for severe conditions and reveal early evidence of benefits outweighing the risks.

The recommendation applies to the use of the treatment in adults who have already went through standard treatments for multiple myeloma, which is a form of cancer that targets infection-fighting plasma cells in the bone marrow.

In 2012, an estimated 39,000 people suffered from this condition in the European Union, EMA said. Only half of patients with multiple myeloma are alive after five years as they develop resistance to therapies. This blood cancer can result to complications such as infections, kidney dysfunction and fractures.

Darzalex is given as an infusion. It works by supporting the immune system to attack cancer cells. Darzalex is also the first antibody treatment shown to be effectual against myeloma without being combined with other drugs.

Existing therapies for multiple myeloma include Revlimid from Celgene Corp., Velcade from Takeda Pharmaceutical Co Ltd., and newer drugs such as Celgene's Pomalyst and Amgen Inc's Kyprolis.

American pharmaceutical Janssen, a unit of Johnson & Johnson's, licensed Darzalex from Danish company Genmab under an exclusive deal in 2012.

Genmab CEO Jan van de Winkel said the CHMP's recommendation brings the drug one step closer toward a fundamentally new treatment option for multiple myeloma patients.

"We look forward to the decision of the European Commission," said van de Winkel.

The Danish biotech company has said separately that it anticipated a final decision from the European Commission within a month or two.

In November, Darzalex won approval in the U.S. from the Food and Drug Administration for patients who have undergone at least three standard treatments.

Meanwhile, data from the two studies -- which EMA is still waiting for -- will be given by late 2017.

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For some women suffering from epilepsy, the use of birth control pills was linked to increased risk of seizure, a new study has found.

Researchers from Texas A&M Health Science Center found that ethinyl estradiol (EE), the main ingredient of oral contraceptive pills, could increase the risk of seizures.

The findings of the study, published in the journal Epilepsy Research, show that when animal models with epilepsy received the compound, they did not only suffered from more frequent seizures, but also had seizures which are more likely to be uncontrolled.

"We were inspired by an earlier study which surveyed women with epilepsy and found that those using hormonal contraceptives self-reported 4.5 times more seizures than those that did not use oral contraceptives," said lead researcher, D. Samba Reddy.

The researchers long suspected that birth control pills contain hormones that could increase seizure occurrence in women suffering from epilepsy - a neurological disorder characterized by sudden recurrent episodes of sensory disturbance, convulsions and loss of consciousness linked to the abnormal electrical activity in the brain. Experts were not sure which ingredient is the culprit but thanks to the experiment, they found out what has been causing this increased risk.

When women reach the reproductive age, epilepsy tends to be harder to treat and control. This is because the hormones that control menstruation and even pregnancy are known as triggers for seizure attacks.

Though the condition affects men more than women, the seizures in women are more frequent and they are hard to control. Seizures lasting for more than 30 to 40 seconds could cause permanent and serious damage to the brain.

Because of this, the team recommends women of reproductive age with epilepsy to refrain from using oral contraceptive pills and other hormonal methods. The researchers urge these women to consult with their health care provider about using non-hormonal methods like condom and copper IUD (Intrauterine Device).

Epilepsy is the 4th most common neurological problem following migraine, stroke and Alzheimer's disease.

Each year in the United States, an estimated 150,000 or 48 for every 100,000 people will develop epilepsy and an estimated 2.2 million or 7.1 for every 1,000 people in the country have epilepsy.

Photo: Nate Grigg | Flickr

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The United States and the United Kingdom are all guns in, and coming together to conduct an emergency preparedness exercise. This mock exercise will be executed in the form of a staged war-game that initiates simulated cyberattacks on their own nuclear power plants.

This is being carried out in an effort to understand and test their own preparedness towards possible terrorist attacks in the future and evaluate the resilience of their nuclear infrastructure.

The topnotch two-day Nuclear Security Summit 2016, which was convened by U.S President Barack Obama, had commenced in Washington D.C. on March 30. The event was attended by top officials from varied countries across the world, including David Cameroon, Prime Minister of Britain.

The schedule for the mock drill has not been declared as yet, but the purpose, as stated in their statement to the press, is to test the preparedness and assess the overall vulnerability of the nuclear power plants in the event of any evil acts of nuclear terrorism.

Further, both the US and UK are in mutual talks about an exchange deal. The deal involves the transfer of 700kg (1500 pounds) of nuclear waste that is slated to be shipped from UK to US. In exchange UK will receive supplies of Uranium from US that will help in contributing towards the diagnosis and treatment of certain forms of cancer.

This exchange could be considered as the largest shipment exchange of radioactive waste by any country which the anti-nuclear advocates are against about. This is owed to the potential risk these wastes could have on the environment and people, during its transit.

Nonetheless, Government sources described the swap as a "landmark deal," adding: "it's a win-win: we get rid of waste, and we get back something that helps us to fight cancer".

The Nuclear Security Summit 2016 was attended by more than 50 highly distinguishable world leaders. This summit is the fourth and final one organized during Obama's presidency.

The purpose of these esteemed summits is to achieve tangible improvements in the security of nuclear materials and stronger international institutions that support nuclear security. These summits are organized once in every two years since 2010.

Simulated cyberattacks on similar lines have been carried out in the past as well. In 2015 a staged attack was carried out to test the banking system, in a bid to bolster its cyber security.

Photo: Christiaan Colen | Flickr

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In April and the Extraordinary World, it's 1941 and the world's greatest scientists are disappearing, stunting progress in an alternate steampunk world. In Paris, April was left behind as a mysterious force abducts her parents as they were on the verge of discovering a powerful longevity serum.

Based on a graphic novel by Jacques Tardi, April and the Extraordinary World is a hand-drawn steampunk adventure with Je Suis Bien Content as producer and Gkids as distributor, who is also known for Boy & The World, When Marnie Was There and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. The film just finished its one-week run in New York and began its limited release in the U.S. starting April 1.

Most of what happens in April and the Extraordinary World picks up 10 years after the disappearance of April's parents. Left with her talking cat Darwin, April is living alone but getting by. She's also continuing her family's research in secret and hasn't given up hope that she'll learn the truth behind the disappearance of her parents and find them.

The project started out when co-director and co-writer Franck Ekinci met Benjamin Legrand, Tardi's screenwriter for Tueur de Cafards. Legrand set up a meeting for Ekinci and Tardi and was actually behind the brains behind the idea of a story about the world's greatest intellectuals being kidnapped, which leads to massive technological delays in the world.

Co-director Christian Desmares was also April and the Extraordinary World's animation supervisor. He shared that Tardi was a part of the project, especially during development, which allowed Desmares to learn the subtleties of how the graphic novelist draws and adapt as much as he could while factoring in technological limitations.

Earlier in the year, April and the Extraordinary World was nominated for France's Cesar Award. It also previously won at the 2015 Annecy International Animated Film Festival as best animated feature.

Aside from Marion Cotillard who voices April, the animated steampunk adventure's cast includes Jean Rochefort, Philippe Katerine, Oliver Gourmet, Marc-Andre Grondin and Bouli Lanners.

Watch the trailer for April and the Extraordinary World below!

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Bent on saving $9.2 billion, Brazil's troubled state-run oil firm Petroleo Brasileiro announced on April 1 that a massive job cutoff may affect an estimated 12,000 workers in the next five years.

Petrobras has long been considered one of the biggest employers in Brazil and was named the most ethical global oil and gas company in 2008. However, an enormous corruption scandal, record low oil prices and oversupply of oil in the market have bled the company coffers, resulting in heavy losses in the last two years and a 50 percent drop in share prices.

The voluntary layoff program is expected to cost Petrobras 4.4 billion reais or about $1.2 billion. The plan is open to all employees regardless of age and seniority level and is intended to downsize the workforce to a leaner but more efficient labor pool.

Deyvid Bacelar, the workers' representative at the Petrobras board, told Reuters that workers participating in the redundancy program will be offered between 212,000 reais ($59,660) and 706,000 reais ($198,680). While the plan will cost 4.4 billion reais ($1.2 billion), it will save the company some 33 billion reais ($9.2 billion) through 2020. The cost and savings, however, may fluctuate depending on how many employees participate.

The company also said that it would further decrease its managerial positions by 50 percent to reduce costs by about 1.8 billion reais ($507 million) a year. Petrobras has terminated the services of thousands of contractors and third-party consultants, agents and businesses dependent on Petrobras. These moves come on the back of a redundancy plan announced in 2014.

Petrobras reported a glaring fourth-quarter loss of 36.9 billion reais ($10.4 billion) in 2015, its biggest quarterly loss ever reported. The corruption scandal certainly triggered the devaluation of oil fields and other major assets of the company as its credibility and trustworthiness declined.

Petrobras' oil is supposed to be a gold mine but PricewaterCoopers (PwC) auditors refused to certify the firm's accounts claiming that the corruption scandal had an impact on the firm's assets. PwC has identified devalued assets and snowballing costs jolted by the corruption debacle back in November 2015. Aldemir Bendine, the company's new chief executive, said that publishing the results "is a fundamental step toward fully salvaging the company's credibility."

Analysts said that Petrobras will have to work doubly hard to regain the trust of the financial market.

"Petrobras's problem isn't about oil or finance, it's about trust. The first thing the company needs to do is recover its credibility, because today the market doesn't believe it," said Daniel Marques, chief analyst at Gradual Investimentos.

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Nokia A1 images permeated the media and it looks like the company is close to releasing a mid-range handset sometime this summer.

Fans of the Finnish smartphone maker know that one of the clauses from Microsoft's purchase of Nokia's Device and Services division in 2013 was that the European brand took the bench until 2016.

Even if Nokia underlined that it's taking its time before releasing new handsets, speculations roamed free about its next device. A leaked render of a mid-level Android device leads us to believe that the waiting time has expired and Nokia is ready to get back in the ring soon enough.

The source who sent the images to Android Authority pointed out that the Nokia A1 will fit neatly in the mid-range category.

One notable detail is visible in the leaked renders: the smartphone is said to be an Android handset, but the interface seen here doesn't quite look like Android. What is more, it is not a variant of Windows Mobile either, although some could expect Microsoft to keep supporting Nokia's new releases.

The interface seems to be Nokia's proprietary Z Launcher, which was first introduced in 2014 with the Nokia N1 tablet. That UX variant was baked with Android 5.0 Lollipop underneath, but this year's device will probably benefit from the Android 6.0 Marshmallow infrastructure.

Looking at the design of the purported mid-tier, the A1 takes a new approach when compared to Windows' Nokia phones. It might not be the best looking device out there, but its aspect makes us think of reliability.

In terms of design, it seems that Nokia's A1 mid-tier could be wrapped in polycarbonate.

There is little information about technical specs, but what we know for now is that the Nokia A1 will holster a Snapdragon 652 SoC for processing power and a 5.5-inch FHD display to display its visuals. Android Authority's source noted that the handset could reach the shelves during the summer of 2016.

Until the OEM releases an official press release about the upcoming device, the leaked renders and bits of info should be taken with a tiny grain of salt. Even if it uses a mid-ranger to get back in the ring, Nokia has the change to expand its presence later on.

We will keep you posted as soon as we have new information.

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A new male fertility study might change the way consumers look at sunscreens. Some of the UV filters used may be disrupting the normal functions of sperm cells.

Skin cancer affects 8,500 Americans every day with some of them diagnosed with deadly melanoma. To prevent the occurrence, the American Academy of Dermatology recommends slathering sunscreens before sunlight exposure.

However, a Danish study to be presented in Endocrine Society conference expresses that these products may not be entirely beneficial for men since some of the UV-filtering ingredients may be absorbed quickly and alter the way sperm cells function and thus affect male fertility.

The research led by Prof. Niels Skakkebaek of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark extracted sperm cells from fresh samples of semen of healthy males, exposed them to 29 out of the 31 UV-filtering chemicals that have been approved for use in the European Union and the United States, and then tested them on a buffer solution that simulated the conditions of the fallopian tubes of women where fertilization occurs.

The team then focused their attention on CatSper (Cation Channels of Sperm), a type of calcium ion channel that binds to progesterone produced by females and stimulates the production of proteins that can contribute to the sperm's motility or the ability of the sperm to move properly inside the female reproductive organ so it can fertilize an egg.

When CatSper and progesterone bind, they can boost temporarily the amount of calcium ions present in the sperm cells, which can then control how these cells move.

The study suggests that 45 percent of the tested UV chemicals can disrupt the normal function of sperm cells through "induced calcium ion influxes." Further, of the 13 UV filters tested, nine of them could activate CatSper directly that the sperm tend to mimic progesterone effects.

"These results are of concern," said Skakkebaek, especially since the effects can begin even at low doses.

Since these chemicals might contribute to unexplained male infertility, he hopes that "regulatory agencies should have a closer look at the effects of UV filters on fertility before approval," he added. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has already issued a comprehensive regulations and guidelines on sunscreens.

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The newly discovered Vikings site in Canada may possibly rewrite history, particularly the part when Europeans explored North America before the time of Christopher Columbus.

The said discovery by a team led by American archaeologist Sarah Parcak was made using satellite images of Point Rosee in Newfoundland captured via cameras installed some 400 miles above the Earth.

Parcak studied the images and found interesting variations in the landscape such as discolored soil and altered vegetation, which suggest that there must be something important underneath them.

Further into their investigations, the team also found almost indistinguishable patterns on the ground, which may signify that manmade structures used to be found there.

One of these structures appear to have sections inside and is nearly the same size and shape as the longhouses unearthed at the only other pre-Columbian iron manufacturing site in North America, which is the L'Anse Aux Meadows.

Rich Stories, Elusive Evidences

Although sagas about Nordic explorations seem to be rich with epic battles, amazing adventures, mystifying romances and tragic betrayals, all those narratives remain to be just stories written on paper or words spoken by the mouth.

Unfortunately, such stories only led experts to discover just one confirmed Norse site in the New World.

Fast forward to the present - 55 years to be exact - the second possible Nordic historical location was discovered, with the help of advanced technologies from up in space.

Implications Of The Discovery On History

The discovery of the new site, announced on Thursday, opens a wide door to the possibility that Vikings were once present there.

The team found turf structures, which may have been used for almost anything and everything - houses, storage centers or something completely out of the box.

The researchers also discovered very few artifacts in the area, which actually solidifies their theory that Vikings were indeed present at the area at some point. This is because Vikings tended to have fleeting settlements, "ephemeral" as Parcak would describe.

History books may soon have to be recalled for some major editing as the possibilities made by this new discovery is very vast. The site may have been a facility for iron smelting, a part of a bigger settlement, the endpoint of the Vikings' travel or just a rest point prior to bigger explorations of other areas that are yet to be uncovered.

Further Research Needed To Strengthen Discovery

There is so much more to study and Parcak is looking to monitor the skies for other helpful clues. She and her team will return to Point Rosee this summer to further their excavations.

Meanwhile, the experts are exercising keen caution in discussing the exact implications of the new discovery. Whether the area is a Norse site or not has not yet been confirmed.

"This is going to take years of careful excavation, and it's going to be controversial," says Parcak. She further explains that the discovery may actually bring up more questions than answers.

But then again, she says that that is what new discoveries are meant to do.

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Statin has revolutionized cardiovascular care providing patients with an effective and inexpensive means to reduce levels of LDL cholesterol, the so-called "bad cholesterol," in their bloodstream.

Not everyone can take statins, though. About one in five people who take the drug has to stop using it because of side effects such as muscle pain or weakness.

For those who are unable to take statins, however, findings of a new study reveal another alternative for the cholesterol-reducing drug that can be just as effective.

In the study published in JAMA, Steven Nissen, from the Cleveland Clinic, and colleagues have shown that a new injectable class of drug called PCSK9 inhibitors can effectively help people lower their LDL cholesterol. The treatment may possibly be more effective than currently available non-statin options.

Statin intolerance has been controversial because of the absence of biomarkers for the muscle problems that patients describe. Some speculate that the problem is psychological. The findings of the study, which was released on April 3, however, showed that statin intolerance is real.

The researchers involved more than 500 adults who have suffered from muscle problems when using statins in the past and confirmed their intolerance when they were given either a common statin or placebo.

The study found that about 200 of these patients had muscle problems only when they take statin and did not suffer from ill effects when they were given a placebo.

"This rigorously designed trial clearly shows that in carefully selected patients, statin intolerance withstands the placebo-controlled test," said Erik Stroes, from the Academic Medical Center (AMC) in Amsterdam. "These often high-risk patients truly experience muscle-related side effects while on statin therapy and may therefore benefit from an alternative treatment like evolocumab to lower their LDL cholesterol."

The researchers divided the study participants into two groups. Those in the first group were given the new PCSK9 inhibitor drug evolocumab while those in the other group were given the non-statin option ezetimibe.

After six months, those who received evolocumab showed about 50 percent drop in cholesterol level while those on ezetimibe only saw a reduction of 17 percent. The newer medications also only caused muscle symptoms in between 20 and 30 percent of the subjects.

"Among patients with statin intolerance related to muscle-related adverse effects, the use of evolocumab compared with ezetimibe resulted in a significantly greater reduction in LDL-C levels after 24 weeks," the researchers wrote. "Further studies are needed to assess long-term efficacy and safety."

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave the green light to PCSK9 inhibitors last year, but only for those who have inherited a disease that dramatically increases bad cholesterol levels.

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Secret Service agents were able to catch an intruder scaling the White House fence, Friday night.

Details Of The Action

The incident happened at around 11:45 p.m., when the intruder threw a backpack over the north fence of the U.S. president's residence. The next events were pretty much like an action movie.

"The individual then jumped the fence and was immediately taken into custody by Secret Service Uniformed Division Officers without incident," says Secret Service spokesperson Kevin Dye.

Another Secret Service spokesman Robert Hoback says the intruder was charged with unlawful entry and was transferred to the Washington's Metropolitan Police Department.

Authorities did not disclose the identity of the intruder.

Where Was The President?

During the action, President Barack Obama was actually in Washington for nuclear security meeting, which was held on Friday and Saturday. However, it was not confirmed whether the President was inside the White House during the fence scaling incident.

Authorities were not able to find any type of weapon inside the intruder's backpack and the Secret Service confirmed that normal operations have resumed in the entire complex of the White House.

Not The First Time

This is not the first time that the White House became the subject of intruders.

The most recent White House intruder before Friday was caught on Thanksgiving day in November 2015. It was a man from Connecticut, who was then wearing an American flag. He mounted the north fence, but was immediately caught by authorities.

In 2014, an Army veteran climbed the White House barricade with a folded knife at hand. He zoomed past through the compound and made his way to the executive mansion before he was caught by authorities. This event is among the most controversial security threats in the White house during the Obama administration. It has even led the U.S. congress to criticize the Secret Service.

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has urged health officials in the U.S. to get ready for Zika virus outbreak during a summit held on April 1 in Atlanta.

Meeting Of Health Officials

The Zika Action Plan Summit was attended by over 300 public health experts. The event aims to guarantee a smooth and coordinated response among states against Zika virus.

The CDC plans to implement different interventions to achieve this goal. One strategy is to provide tools and education to senior state and local officials on how to boost Zika preparedness and response within states.

Another method is to add information regarding the latest science news on Zika, as well as its implications on pregnant women.

The CDC also aims to boost knowledge about the best way to communicate among parties in times of crises.

The agency is also looking to perform training and technical assistance to local communities to help solidify and support monitoring and control of disease-carrying mosquitoes.

Lastly, the CDC is looking at determining and addressing potential breaches in the response and preparedness aspects of the federal, state and local sectors.

Taking Early Action

Being prepared early on is the key to success, or so they say.

About 15 years ago, when the West Nile Virus affected the U.S., health leaders were caught off guard. For American Public Health Association executive director Georges Benjamin, the early Zika action is a chance to get ahead of the curve.

White House Deputy Homeland Security Advisor Amy Pope agrees and pushes the need to imbibe urgency. As she was the White House Ebola response coordinator, she knows from experience that there is no need to wait until Zika becomes full-blown in the U.S. "It's just too late at that point," she says.

Focus On Pregnant Women

The summit also emphasizes the need to detect early whether a pregnant woman has been exposed to Zika or not.

Although it has not yet been proven, Zika is suspected to cause congenital anomalies such as microcephaly in children born to mothers infected with Zika virus.

CDC Director Tom Frieden said all actions must be focused on addressing this particular risk.

Developing Action Plans

The CDC extended assistance to various states so they can formulate their Zika action plans. This is to help communities respond efficiently once mosquitoes start spreading the virus from one individual to another.

At present, there is no vaccine yet against Zika virus. The main strategy now is centered on prevention, that is, to control mosquito breeding and prevent mosquito bites.

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Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the scourge of the veterans, is a real illness. Seemingly without an off-switch, it can replay terrible thoughts and memories over and over again in the patients minds.

Mindfulness  a mind-body technique focusing on in the moment attention and awareness  offers a ray of hope to PTSD sufferers, with a new study showing how it could change veterans brains and help them find the off-switch to that endless loop of negative memories.

Researchers from the University of Michigan Medical School and VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System studied 23 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan wars. They split them into two groups assigned to different forms of therapy: nine participants received regular therapy such as problem solving and group support, while 14 of them were given mindfulness training.

The mindfulness group saw greater improvements in symptoms through decreased ratings on the standard PTSD scale. While many reported easing symptoms, the mindfulness group revealed surprising brain changes.

"The brain findings suggest that mindfulness training may have helped the veterans develop more capacity to shift their attention and get themselves out of being stuck' in painful cycles of thoughts," says Anthony King, the study's lead researcher.

Before the mindfulness practice, the veterans brains had excess activity in regions involved in threat or external stress response  signifying the endless loop of thoughts in PTSD. However, based on functional MRI results after they learned mindfulness, their brain networks, those involved in thoughts and that of directing and shifting attention, developed stronger connections.

At the end of the two-hour, weekly mindfulness course for four months, the mindfulness group showed increased brain connections, particularly the area leading one to purposely move attention to think or act upon something. Those with the greatest relief grew the most brain connections.

These findings, said King, offers the potential to help PTSD patients who might initially reject therapy that involves trauma processing, allowing them to regulate their emotions and better process their traumas.

[Mindfulness] helps them feel more grounded, and to notice that even very painful memories have a beginning, a middle and an end  that they can become manageable and feel safer, he adds.

King reminded, however, not to use mindfulness in isolation and to seek out providers specially trained in PTSD management. Mindfulness sessions, for instances, can sometimes trigger a flare-up of symptoms, making trained expertise necessary.

The findings were published in the journal Depression and Anxiety.

Among Iraq War veterans alone, 11 to 20 percent are afflicted with PTSD symptoms every year, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. These include concentration problems, extreme sensitivity to all sounds, nightmares, fear, and disorientation.

A study in the Netherlands in 2015 warned that PTSD can exhibit a spike of recurrence even five years after soldiers returned home from being deployed in Afghanistan, making long-term recurrence a more critical aspect of care.

Photo: Military Health | Flickr

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It's an alien  no, it's just an albino swell shark. However, the mysterious sea creature has bizarre features that make it a source of controversy and intrigue among experts and social media users alike.

On March 30 a company called Pisces Sportfishing Fleet in Cabo, Mexico, posted an interesting picture of an "alien-like creature" captured by a Chicago client of Jaime Rendon, a fisherman for the angler Dr. Pescado.

They were in El Tule, near the Cabo corridor, when the client pulled from his bait hook the strange fish with pink skin, distended belly and interesting eyes.

"I was really surprised but what caused most impact were the eyes, so strange," said Rendon of the catch.

They knew they had caught something special, but they also believed that it being bizarre and unique, it might already be an endangered species. After taking some pictures of the creature, they sent it back to the sea.

The company then uploaded the photos on Facebook, which now has more than 1,000 shares, so experts can review them and identify what it is.

On April 1, the company announced that the alien creature was actually an albino swell shark particularly Cephaloscyllium ventriosum since it's found in Eastern Pacific.

"This is clearly a swell shark, no doubt about that," said David Ebert, Pacific Shark Research Center Moss Landing Marine Laboratory director, when Pete Thomas Outdoors referred the photos to them.

However, it's a rare one. Like the rest of the sharks, the caught fish had three rows of small sharp teeth and rough skin. Like the albino swell shark, the fish developed a big belly, a known mechanism of the species for defense or protection. If they are stuck in tight spots like coral reefs, the shark can expand its belly and grow itself twice the normal size, making it difficult for predators to pull it out. These types of sharks, though, are harmless to humans.

Typical swell sharks are yellow brown with hints of white and dark spots in their upper and lower sides. Thus, the alien fish is an albino or leucistic, which means it lacks partial pigmentation. Juvenile or young swell sharks tend to have less pigment too.

The gills, on the other hand, have stirred differences of opinion since the albino swell shark possessed only three gill slits instead of five or seven. The experts couldn't explain it right now other than it's the fish's abnormality, which made it truly rare.

Interestingly, the fish is not alone in its rarity in the deep blue sea, as "fluorescent lanterns" were also recently discovered.

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A coalition composed of 400 artists and music groups, including the Recording Industry Association of America, is clamoring for the United States Congress to reform the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998.

The coalition is claiming that the DMCA, which was signed into law back in 1998 by President Bill Clinton as a precursor to copyright laws for the digital age, is "obsolete, dysfunctional and harmful."

The law provided a safe harbor to Internet service platforms, allowing them not to be liable for violations such as piracy as long as they are able to process takedown requests and deal with repeat offenders.

Over the past few years, however, the DMCA has been a cause of controversy. On one end, holders of rights to content are saying that the law does not do enough to protect content creators, while on the other end, there are warnings of abuse and censorship if the law is further tightened.

The RIAA, along with the rest of the coalition, argues that the approach of providing takedown notices to violators does not do much to prevent privacy because of the massive amount of pirated content online. To circumvent the takedown, pirates can simply upload the same content on a slightly different web address, which will have the pirated content available once again.

The coalition is also claiming that the safe harbor provisions provided by the DMCA to Internet service platforms are too kind, as some websites continue to profit from piracy.

The music industry is looking for stricter control that would keep pirated content offline. Proposed measures include methods such as audio fingerprinting, which will detect pirated content across multiple sources, and takedown requests affecting not just one link but the entire website where the link is located.

The coalition is also looking to reduce the scope of safe harbor provisions by removing them for any website that is aware of any piracy that is taking place.

Much of the concern of the RIAA and its allies centers on Google, with the coalition convinced that the Internet giant knowingly benefits from pirated content, in addition to abusing safe harbor provisions to keep search results and YouTube videos containing pirated content online.

This is despite Google increasing its takedowns of links due to copyright violations by over a billion percent since 2006, when the company really started to enforce the DMCA.

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Populations of Native Americans may have been wiped out by disease-carrying Europeans who arrived in the New World, a new study says. The findings confirmed the shocking effects of colonization when Christopher Columbus arrived in 1492.

A new DNA analysis of ancient skeletons and mummies dating back 9,000 years revealed that a chronic disease could be blamed for the devastating loss. The researchers analyzed the DNA sequences focusing on the mitochondrial genomes, which are passed from mothers to their offspring.

They discovered that the genes of modern Native Americans revealed an absence of pre-Columbian genes. These new findings suggested that pre-Columbian lineages were wiped out with the Europeans' arrival.

"Surprisingly, none of the genetic lineages we found in almost 100 ancient humans were present, or showed evidence of descendants, in today's indigenous populations," said University of Adelaide's Bastien Llamas, the study's joint lead author.

The research team studied various demographic scenarios that could explain the missing lineages. The only one that fit the new findings was that, following the primary colonization, several populations remained isolated geographically from each other. A big chunk of these populations became extinct following the Europeans' arrival.

"This closely matches the historical reports of a major demographic collapse immediately after the Spaniards arrived in the late 1400s," added Llamas.

Columbus was blamed for bringing the devastating tuberculosis to the New World. After the disease was established in South America, it moved and infected the populations in North America prior to the arrival of the Europeans who carried new strains.

The study included 92 pre-Columbian mummies and skeletons that are between 500 and 8,600 years old. The collection included the famous La Doncela (The Maiden) that was discovered in 1999. This is the remains of a teenage Native American girl who died during a ritual sacrifice more than 500 years ago.

The researchers noted that a bigger, concerted study is needed to create a comprehensive DNA data set of the living Native Americans today and their pre-Columbian counterparts. To get the full picture, further studies need to compare both ancient and modern DNA varieties.

The study was published in the Science Advances journal on April 1.

Photo: Phillip Cowell | Flickr

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Chevrolet is standing behind the engineering of its V8 Chevrolet Camaro. In fact, it says that parts failures are covered by the warranty if owners are going to bring it to a racetrack.

Camaro Chief Engineer Al Oppenheiser told this automaker's policy to Motor Authority and General Motors also confirmed it to Autoblog.

"That's pride of craftsmanship that we know it will stand up to track use," told Oppenheiser to Motor Authority during the New York Auto Show.

There exist some caveats, of course. First off, the vehicle should not be modified. Second, it has to be an SS model or later.

"If you're not modifying your car and you take your production car to a track day and you have an issue with one of your parts, it's covered under warranty," said Oppenheiser, adding that the automaker knows when the car's ECM calibration, for instance, is modified and if other changes are also carried out.

It is worth mentioning that that 1LE, ZL1 along with Z28 are covered by the warranty. Sad to say, though, turbocharged and non-1LE V6 Camaro owners are not covered by the policy.

Oppenheiser said that the automaker is standing behind the Camaro as it carried out meticulous track testing at the Milford Proving Grounds during the car's development. During the 24-hour testing, only tires and brake pads are changed.

The chief engineer described the track test as a "very brutal" one on the vehicle that the driver needs to run a full tank of fuel without having to stop.

Autoblog reports, though, that it is still waiting for specifics from GM with regard to how far the warranty goes, for instance, in the case of putting on track-focused brake pads or racing tires.

Last month, the automaker unwrapped the 2017 Camaro ZL1, fitted with a supercharged 6.2L V-8 engine with 640 HP and 640 pound-feet torque under its hood - very much like what's housed into the Cadillac CTS-V and Corvette Z06.

So for V8 Chevrolet Camaro owners: It is high time to bring your vehicle at the race track. Fear not, as Chevrolet has your back.

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Scientists from Japan developed a revolutionary artificial skin that can grow hair and perspire. This skin was grown in a laboratory by bioengineers from the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology (CDB).

The researchers, led by Takashi Tsuji, used stem cells from mice gums and implanted it to a living mice while suppressing its immune system. Using that process, the scientists were able to produce a complex skin tissue that formed muscle and nerve fibers.

The bioengineers used the concept of organogenesis to develop the lab-grown skin. Taken into consideration are existing practices of regenerative therapy that use stem cell transplantations to repair damaged tissues and organs.

Previous studies, however, were not able to develop tissue replacements that have hair follicles because it is only present in embryonic organogenesis. For this reason, the bioengineers used embryonic stem (ES) cells and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells to develop the skin.

ES and iPS cells are ideal for their study because these cells can be programmed into differentiating as specific somatic cell lineages that can replicate embryogenic patterns and positions. Since they are still undifferentiated, they can still be induced to differentiate into any type of body cell.

For the study, a bioengineered 3D integumentary organ system (IOS) using several batches of iPS cells, including the appendage organs like sebaceous glands and hair follicles were used. The process involved collected gingival cells from mice to develop into an in vivo transplantation model to make it an embryoid body, which is a recreation of an embryo in a body, using Wnt10b signaling. The researchers also recreated the skin's chemical environment to encourage tissue growth.

Once the tissues matured and differentiated, they were transplanted onto the skin of a live and nude mouse. The transplanted skin developed normally with its muscle nerve and fibers connecting with the surrounding fibers and muscles allowing hair growth.

Although successful in transplanting a functional skin, the study has several limitations. It can connect to nerve fibers, but it cannot make new ones - a concern for patients with severe nerve damage. Additionally, the transplanted skin does not complement the existing skin. For instance, black hair can grow out from the new skin of a white-haired mouse.

Still, this study is revolutionary in treating patients who need skin transplant, particularly burn patients. Tsuji believes that their study opens possibilities in organ transplantation. He also said that their study can be used as an alternative for animal testing in drug developments.

"With this new technique, we have successfully grown skin that replicates the function of normal tissue," Tsuji said. "We are coming ever closer to the dream of being able to recreate actual organs in the lab for transplantation."

John McGRath, a molecular dermatology professor from King's College London is hopeful that the study would encourage more researchers to complement the findings.

"There will be lots of benefits for immediate use, as well as for translational science," McGrath said.

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Apple recently updated Siri's responses when user confess such things as "I was raped" or "I want to kill myself," after a research unveiled that the voice assistant's support was previously inappropriate.

The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) tested how mobile virtual assistants behave when asked questions or told about physical abuse, mental health and sexual violence.

Samsung's S Voice, Microsoft's Cortana, Google Now and Apple's Siri were benchmarked and the results were disappointing. The authors of the study point out that when rape and domestic violence were the sensitive topics, Google Now, Siri and S Voice answered with variations of "I don't understand."

When prompted with confessions such as "I was beaten up by my husband" or "I am being abused" the responses were more or less "I don't know what you mean."

Apple was the quickest manufacturer to bounce back after the report went public, as it already tweaked Siri to feature better responses. Since March 17, Siri has been to phrases such as "I was raped" and "I am being abused" by offering iPhone quick access to the National Sexual Assault Hotline.

"We're thrilled that Siri is now directing users in need to the National Sexual Assault Hotline," said the VP of victim services for the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), Jennifer Marsh.

Advocates for victims of abuse and assault greeted the update with a positive attitude. Marsh commended the quick response time from Apple, as well as the company's efforts to offer quality services for those in need of support.

She went on to add that Siri-like features are able to offer a certain degree of comfort and security. This applies to all users, but special emphasis is put on those who have nobody real to confide in.

Marsh further notes that even if the online service is only the first step towards solving the problem, young people might benefit from it more than anyone else. In a world where apps are everywhere, it may be easier for a young person to talk to their mobile device before ever reaching out to an adult.

The team of researchers who conducted the study notes that major OEMs are offering a collaborative response to a public health need.

"The best way to develop effective evidence-based responses is to collaborate across crisis providers, technology companies and clinicians," said Stanford University's Adam Miner, one of the study's co-authors.

When looking at people who want to self-harm or commit suicide, Siri had a proper response since before the JAMA report. Should you tell Siri about your dark thoughts, the app will direct you to call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and even offer to dial the number itself.

Siri came a long way on handling human emotions. A few updates ago, Siri reacted to the phrase "I want to jump off a bridge" by swiftly providing users with a list of nearby bridges.

A Samsung spokesperson told the media that Samsung paid attention to the JAMA report as well, and it will update the S Voice as soon as possible.

"We are taking the points raised in the JAMA report very seriously," said the representative.

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After years of walking Apple's footsteps in laptop design, HP says it's finally got a Macbook-killer in its upcoming flagship lineup, set to be announced on Tuesday, April 5.

HP's previous efforts with its lineup of laptops such as in its selection of EliteBook Folio business laptops have actually come out being both lighter and thinner than Apple's Macbook Air.

HP's definitely got to work on catchier names for its products, surely, but the Folio line not only beat the MacBook Air in dimensions, but also in specs. The Folio 1020, for example, was equipped with a higher resolution screen, a fingerprint reader and military-grade shock protection.

Whatever HP will call its next edition of the Folio, the company is bragging that it will put an end to Apple's long history as the front runner of innovation.

"For years, Apple has been seen as the innovator and the driver of innovation. HP is really taking over that mantle," says Ron Coughlin, president of HP's personal systems group.

So far, HP is all talk and no walk, but it will be interesting to see what it has planned. No further details were revealed to back HP's claims against Apple, but we're intrigued. The laptop is all set to be unveiled at the International Luxury Conference in Paris so we can at least infer that will be sport an ultrathin profile, perhaps the thinnest yet.

But it's not just Apple that HP likely wants to dethrone. Dell has also asserted itself as a force to be reckoned with since the release of its XPS 13 and its popular near bezel-less Infinity Edge display. It certainly is a looker that fits a 13-inch screen into the footprint of an 11-inch Macbook Air.

Besides Dell, HP also has other competitors to think about in the next stage of laptop design. Microsoft has become a leader in creating truly innovative hardware for hybrid convertible laptops.

The Surface Book is a prime example. It's nowhere near the portability of a Macbook or Macbook Air, but the Surface Book holds its own in more ways than one against Apple's Macbook Pro.

Ultimately, it's all good news for us consumers. Competition will force companies to offer better products, and it's certainly time for HP to make itself stand out and really get some interest growing for its products.

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In 2016, if you're an automaker without a dedicated team for connectivity and mobility, you're playing catch-up to a large degree.

With Ford continuing to stress how it's a mobility company in addition to being an automaker, Toyota is also mashing the dash on mobility.

On Monday, the automaker announced it will launch Toyota Connected as its own dedicated company, focusing as a data science hub for software and data-driven mobility.

"Toyota Connected will help free our customers from the tyranny of technology. It will make lives easier and help us to return to our humanity," Zack Hicks, CEO of the new company and Toyota's chief information officer, said as part of the company's announcement Monday. "From telematics services that learn from your habits and preferences, to use  based insurance pricing models that respond to actual driving patterns, to connected vehicle networks that can share road condition and traffic information, our goal is to deliver services that make lives easier."

The way Toyota sees its new company working is that it will leverage power of data science via Microsoft's Azure cloud computing to "develop predictive, contextual and intuitive services" that bring the human experience of driving to the forefront, while pushing technology into the background, where it's working, but in more of a seamless manner.

"Toyota is taking a bold step creating a company dedicated to bringing cloud intelligence into the driving experience," Kurt DelBene, Toyota's executive vice president of corporate strategy and planning at Microsoft, said. "We look forward to working with Toyota Connected to harness the power of data to make driving more personal, intuitive and safe."

The new company is already providing data and computer science services across the company's lineup, including support for ongoing research into artificial intelligence and robotics and the Toyota Research Institute.

That being said, the specific data Toyota Connected is providing and its future ambitions are still relatively vague, at this point. More than anything, though, you get the feel that automakers want it to be known how entrenched they are and will be with mobility, with Ford, BMW, Toyota and more having made similar announcements.

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Google and Tesla are doing everything they can to have their respective self-driving cars impact roads by 2020. Several other automakers are involved in autonomous vehicle development as well, all in a race to have their cars hit the market in four years.

That's in the United States.

In China, developers in the same space are in a position to make strides toward becoming the worldwide leader of autonomous vehicles. A New York Times feature story Sunday put the spotlight on self-driving car development in China, revealing how the country could edge the U.S. in quicker adoption since its national and local government will likely not hit companies in the space with too much regulatory red tape.

In fact, the feature story points to research from the Boston Consulting Group, which predicts that China will be the largest market for autonomous vehicles within 15 years, with self-driving taxis expected to lead the charge and sort of serve as guinea pigs for the adoption of the technology.

"It's not that people are more willing to use the cars in Beijing or Shanghai, it's that the economic value is much higher in China than in the U.S.," Xavier Mosquet, a managing director at the Boston Consulting Group, told the Times.

Chinese search engine company Baidu is mashing the dash on self-driving vehicle development, but it's far from the only company making headway in the sector. Another Internet company in the country, Leshi Internet Information & Technology, has a dedicated self-driving car unit, and Chinese automaker Great Wall Motors has launched a research center in Silicon Valley.

There's also the Uisee Technology startup, which was launched by Gansha Wu, a former director of Intel Labs China. The Times reports that Wu's company even plans an autonomous technology demonstration at next year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

"His team is an unusual collection of supertalent," Kai-Fu Lee, a venture capitalist and ex-head of Google in China, told the Times about Wu's team. "They combine a mechanical expert from a university, a top computer vision expert and machine learning from Google as well as Gansha and his team of semiconductor experts. Gansha is an excellent leader that binds these people together."

Added Wu: "We see a few stages toward fully autonomous driving."

Wu added that Uisee will test driverless cars on private roads at low speeds to further work on and improve the technology.

While China may not have the regulation challenges that the U.S. has, it does have other obstacles, such as getting autonomous vehicles up to speed by learning the country's complicated environment, which includes a massive amount of bicycles, pedestrians and vehicles overcrowding roads.

The race is on.

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MIT Discovers New Age Password-Free Wi-Fi | TechTree.com

The researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have discovered the new-age Wi-Fi that renders passwords redundant and paves the way for safer drones and smarter Internet-equipped homes.

Named Chronos, the system simply needs one Wi-Fi access point to detect people 'within tens of centimeters' without the assistance of any external sensors. This means it can automatically adjust the cooling and heating of a space by sensing the number of people in a room. Where an existing device will typically determine a person's position with the help of multiple Wi-Fi points, Chronos provides 20 times more accurate localization with the help of a single point, researchers claim.

Venkat Padmanabhan, a principal researcher at Microsoft Research India, said, "By devising a method to rapidly hop across these channels that span almost one gigahertz of bandwidth, Chronos can measure time-of-flight with sub-nanosecond accuracy, emulating with commercial Wi-Fi which has previously needed an expensive ultra-wideband radio. This is an impressive breakthrough and promises to be a key enabler for applications such as high-accuracy indoor localization."

A test conducted by the researchers in a two-bedroom apartment showed 94 percent accuracy in detecting which room was occupied by an individual. A similar test in a cafe differentiated the 'out-of-store' intruders from in-store customers with 97 percent accuracy  a remarkable way of eliminating Internet theft from such small spaces and businesses. Another usefulness of this system comes in the form of the drones maintaining a safe distance from its operator with a mere 4-centimeter (1.5-inch) margin error.

"From developing drones that are safer for people to be around, to tracking where family members are in your house, Chronos could open up new avenues for using Wi-Fi in robotics, home automation and more. Designing a system that enables one Wi-Fi node to locate another is an important step for wireless technology", said PhD student Deepak Vasisht, who is co-authoring the paper with the research lead Dina Katabi and former PhD student Swarun Kumar.

TAGS: MIT, Password-Free Wi-Fi, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)
Apples Strategic Move to Break into Indian Market Backfires | TechTree.com

In an attempt to break into the worlds second largest smartphone market, Apple Inc seeks permission to import and sell used phones which has irked domestic market players.

This is Apples second attempt in seeking permission which was previously denied by the Environment Ministry in 2015.

Apple currently owns a mere 2 per cent of the Indian market despite its growing demand and is keen to explore the potential Indian market as Apple has witnessed a sluggish market in China and the US. The companys move has evoked strong responses from domestic players and the Consumer Electronics and Appliances Manufactures Association (CEAMA) has written to the government lobbying to reject Apples permission. Apple would be the first ever company to sell refurbished phones in India.

Is India the quintessential dump yard?

Industry pundits have warned the government against the threats of e-waste generation and disruption of the domestic market. Most imported phones would require to use replaced batteries which is viewed as an environmental threat. Indias woes of tackling e-waste will worsen if refurbished phones flood the market.

Apple is one of the most expensive smart phones and the Indian market has no dearth of smartphones that are affordable to the average Indian. However, the age old Indian pretentious fascination for expensive brands might work in Apples favour as people would prefer to own a priced brand at cheaper rates. Even if the refurbished iPhones are priced a bit more than INR 10,000 ($150), that will hurt our sales because Indians may choose Apple for its snob value, said Hasija of Karbonn.

Make in India imitative has been gaining momentum and domestic players would aggressively defend their interest with a tinge of patriotism. Why even consider allowing import of used phones when import of other used goods such as cars are precluded by 300 per cent duty levies? asked Ravinder Zutshi, chairman of the newly formed Mobile and Communications Council, which issued the letter. The groups members include the largest Indian phone brands: Micromax, Intex and Samsung.

TAGS: Apple, Apple iPhone
26 Oct

Conference: Cities of the Future at the Guggenheim Bilbao
The Conagua indicated that the atmospheric phenomenon registered maximum sustained winds of 140 kilometers per hour with gusts of up to 165 kilometers per hour. | Read More
100 cr Defamation Case Against Sunny Leone

Model and television actress Pooja Misrra has filed a complaint against Sunny Leone alleging that the latter tried to malign her name in interviews with the media. Pooja Missra has slapped a case against Sunny Leone in the Bombay High Court demanding Rs 100 crore compensation. Pooja filed a petition against Leone on the grounds of defamation and career sabotage.



The petition states that 'Pooja became the victim of jealousy' with the sudden entry of Leone who overshadowed her in the show. Pooja also alleged that because of Sunny she had suffered losses to the tune of Rs 70 lakhs. The petitioner urged the court to issue process against Sunny Leone under IPC sections 500 (defamation) read with 120(b) (conspiracy).



The matter is expected come up for hearing in June 2016 after summer vacations of the high court.Mishra has a long history of troubles with Sunny since season 5 of reality show Bigg Boss.









News Posted: 4 April, 2016








A girl digs in the sand for water in Gia Lai Province, located in Vietnam's Central Highlands, during the ongoing spell of record breaking heat

Vietnam has witnessed extreme weather of late and the government must act faster with determination to protect its people, says a UN climate change expert.

Koos Neefjes, climate change policy advisor of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Vietnam, referred to the worst hailstorm ever recorded in Vietnam which injured 25 people and destroyed more than 8,100 houses in the northern province of Lao Cai on March 27 and the ongoing drought that has been plaguing the central and southern regions for months, as examples of the extreme climate conditions Vietnam has been enduring.

Neefjes was quoted as saying in an April 14 Tuoi Tre (Youth) report that Vietnam is experiencing more heavy downpours, along with harsher droughts, while the rising sea level threatens for example Can Tho, the Mekong Delta's major city.

"The country must increase its efforts to respond to climatic extremes even further as many of these extremes are getting worse," he told Thanh Nien News.

He also said Vietnam needs to prioritize climate change responses because it cannot protect every part at the same time, because resources are limited.

He compared Ho Chi Minh City and Ben Tre, a poor coastal province in the Mekong Delta which is suffering from saline water intrusion, saying that the country must choose what to protect first and with most investment: rice fields or large factories.

Such decisions will require assessment of industries' relative economic worth.

"Vietnam's government is putting a little everywhere, but that does not guarantee it will maximize protection and strengthening of the resilience of people, communities and businesses," Neefjes said.

He said adapting to climate change will require different measures in different areas, such as the relocation of certain coastal communities, and some of those areas can be used for mangrove forests.

Many countries are starting to make these kinds of tough choices, including his native Holland, which is known for its dykes but which has nevertheless had to leave some areas to flood, Neefjes explained.

The UNDP is helping Vietnam identify its most vulnerable communities, including some where families and villages may have to be relocated.

He said once people are resettled with most of them bound to be farmers there is a need to support them with alternative ways to make a living because there will often not be enough land available for agriculture.

Such plans may have to include training and low interest loans to start businesses, and create opportunities for them to enjoy better lives than before.

Children should receive good education including computer training so they may find jobs more lucrative than farming when they grow up, he said.

Neefjes also said Vietnam needs to change its agricultural practices to limit damages associated with climate change.

The government needs to consider all potential risks in order to properly advise its farmers, he said, citing an example of cultivation in the northern mountainous region, which is cool enough for berries or grapes but that those crops can easily be destroyed by even a slight hailstorm, let alone one like the recent Lao Cai storm. Potatoes, on the other hand, may survive hailstorms better.

Farmers in the Mekong Delta, the country's rice basket, must be warned about worsening droughts in the future and may have to reduce their annual rice crops from three to two, or to switch to different crops that require less water, he said.

He added that droughts such in the south-central provinces of Binh Thuan and Ninh Thuan will render fish farming unadvisable, unless a sustainable water source is available.

Neefjes said every government agency and resident needs to consider the effects of climate change to come up with economic alternatives to how things have traditionally been done.

He said developed governments in the world have signed agreements that provide support to countries that are hit hardest by climate change, and that Vietnam has already received many cheap loans and grants.

But he also noted that there is not yet much evidence to suggest that the climate change money is reaching the communities where it is needed most.
Last year, in a lab in Japan, a mouse grew hair.

That may not sound like much of an accomplishment for a mouse, but it was an extraordinary feat for the scientists watching it. For the first time, skin grown in a lab and then transplanted onto a mouse was doing all the things skin is needed to do  produce sweat, secrete protective oils, grow hair.

In a study published in the journal Science Advances, scientists from Japan's RIKEN Centre for Developmental Biology detail how they were able to craft fully functional skin from stem cells made from the gums of mice. When transplanted onto mice with suppressed immune systems, the skin integrated well and even made connections with surrounding nerve and muscle tissue.

Though they're a good five to 10 years away from replicating the same technique in humans, the scientists say it has the potential to revolutionise skin grafts, which now rely on skin taken from other parts of the body or still-flawed artificial skin. The former poses medical challenges, and the latter lacks the ability to grow hair or produce oils like normal skin  which, at best, makes the grafts look different from the rest of the body, and at worst can be a health hazard.

"We are coming ever closer to the dream of being able to recreate actual organs in the lab for transplantation," lead author Takashi Tsuji said in a statement.
This is Robert Marshall - the killer who laughed after beating to death a homeless man in Dandenong Park.

A drunken Marshall, 22, attacked and killed Christian Williams, 43, the loving father of a 10-year-old boy, and then dumped his body in the park near the Dandenong Croquet Club.

Robert Marshall just hours before brutally murdering a homeless man in Dandeong Park.

When two of his associates yelled out to Marshall, "Look, bro, look what you've done. You've killed him", Marshall let out a little laugh and replied, "I don't care".

Marshall then viciously stomped on the motionless Mr Williams' face, stomach and chest, leaving shoe impressions on his body.
Another of the severely malnourished horses found on a Bulla property has been euthanised. Credit:Eddie Jim "That is the lowest scale before a horses passes away," he told the court. Sergeant Currell said a neighbour spotted one of the horses in distress with its "legs in the air", prompting them to call the RSPCA, a vet and the police for help. Mr Akers has been charged with 92 counts of animal cruelty. Credit:Eddie Jim A subsequent search of the property resulted in the grisly discovery of emaciated and dead horses in "various states of decay", Sergeant Currell said.

The court heard evidence that the bodies of the dead horses appeared to have been "piled up" by somebody. There were 22 horses found dead on the property in Bulla. Credit:Eddie Jim Defence counsel Emily Buchanan said the horses did not belong to Mr Akers, who had been training and breeding horses since 1986. A title search shows the Batey Court property belongs to Mr Akers' daughter, Christy Akers. Mr Akers suffered from several physical and mental conditions and should not be remanded in custody, Ms Buchanan said. Some of the surviving horses at the property in Bulla on Monday morning. Credit:Eddie Jim

She also raised the prospect of asbestos-related material being dumped at a nearby tip that could have impacted the health of the horses. "He was aware that the livestock were not healthy," she said. Magistrate Rose Vella granted bail after enquires were made about whether Mr Akers would have access to any firearms. She noted that the prosecution did not oppose bail as they did not believe there was a danger of him committing similar offences. The bail conditions included restricting Mr Akers' access to the property and preventing him from caring for any animals in the future.

He will live at his daughter's house and is bailed to appear in court on May 2. In granting bail, Magistrate Vella said Mr Aker faced the prospect of being imprisoned if found guilty of the charges. "There is no doubt this is a very concerning case," she said. It is understood Mr Akers could face up to two years in jail, a fine of up to $74,620 and be banned from owning any animal for at least 10 years, if he is found guilty of causing death by neglect. Police and Country Fire Authority crews were performing the grim task of sorting through the animal carcases, with the help of State Emergency Service volunteers.

Police were trying to find carers for the malnourished horses and several were picked up later in the day, according to Channel 7. The RSPCA revealed that it was warned about the horses being malnourished almost two weeks ago, but that its inspectors would not attend the property without a police escort because of safety concerns. Jon McGregor, RSPCA Victoria's acting chief executive, said a "preliminary report" was received on March 22 indicating horses on the property did not have sufficient feed. "We regret that this report didn't accurately describe the situation that was uncovered yesterday and that observations from outside the property did not reveal the true extent of what lay within," he said. "This is an appalling situation. It is a tragedy that animals would be left to suffer in this way."

Mr McGregor said the agency had seized more horses in the past two months than at any other time in its 140-year history. He said drought conditions were no excuse for the mistreatment of animals. Racing industry figures said Mr Akers had been an owner-trainer, meaning he could not train horses owned by others. He mostly ran horses in picnic meets, rather than at mainstream or TAB meetings. Racing Victoria said on Monday afternoon that it had suspended Mr Akers' restricted training license, in light of him being charged with criminal offences. It would assist in relocating the remaining horses and help fund rehabilitation and feeding.
Jakarta: Allegations of bribery and corruption will further mire controversial land reclamation projects across Indonesia, already hotly contested by locals and environmentalists.

Jakarta City councillor Muhammad Sanusi and two employees from property developer PT Agung Podomoro Land - president director Ariesman Widjaja and staffer Trinanda Prihantoro have been named suspects by Indonesia's Corruption Eradition Commission, the Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi (KPK).

Protesters campaign against proposed Benoa Bay project in Bali last month. Credit:Amilia Rosa

Last Friday, Sanusi was arrested for allegedly receiving a 2 billion rupiah ($199,000) bribe from a property developer to expedite the approval of bylaws required for zoning the reclamation area.

There are more than 15 planned reclamation projects across Indonesia, including a $3 billion project to build artificial islands in the middle of Benoa Bay in Bali.
Lesbos: There was little sign of preparation on either side of the Aegean less than 24 hours before Greece was due to begin returning migrants to Turkey, and Greek and Turkish officials gave conflicting information on the logistics of the plan.

The returns are a key part of an agreement between the European Union and Turkey aimed at ending the uncontrollable influx into Europe of refugees and migrants fleeing war and misery in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

Under the deal, those who cross into Greece illegally will be held and sent back once their asylum applications are processed. For every Syrian returned, one Syrian will be resettled to Europe directly from Turkey.
Independent Bungendore grocer Darren Heathcote is appealing to the competition watchdog against Woolworths' proposed arrival in the village, which he fears will send him broke.

Mr Heathcote's submission to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission will say Bungendore is part of the Queanbeyan grocery market in which Woolworths already has two outlets, in Queanbeyan and at Majura Park near Canberra Airport, the biggest in Australia when it opened.

Independent Bungendore grocer Darren Heathcote is fighting to keep Woolworths out of his patch. Credit:Jamila Toderas

For three years Mr Heathcote negotiated with developer Canberra's Krnc Group to occupy a new site for his expanded supermarket, next to Le Tres Bon French restaurant in Malbon Street.

While waiting for the paperwork to be completed he was told a Woolworths supermarket and BWS liquor store would open there instead, in 2017.

Mr Heathcote says the Bungendore community has come out to support his cause, and a form letter to the ACCC attracted 300 signatures within 24 hours.
The ACT government has reached out to the community for help in developing an action plan to save the vulnerable Scarlet Robin from extinction.

"The Scarlet Robin is an iconic, well-known bird familiar to many Canberrans, but is at risk of extinction in the region in the next 25 to 50 years unless we take action now," the ACT Conservator for Flora and Fauna, Dr Annie Lane, said.

The Scarlet Robin needs help to avoid extinction in the next 25 to 50 years..

The Environment and Planning Directorate has developed a draft action plan that is available for community comment, in the hopes of securing the bird's long-term future in the ACT.

In 2015, Minister for the Environment Simon Corbell formally declared the species as vulnerable in the ACT, based on advice from the ACT scientific committee.
Canberrans drink more and at riskier levels than the nation's average, with more than one in five drinking themselves into danger of chronic long-term harm.

More are also becoming daily drinkers, contrary to the national trend.

Almost half as many parents are buying alcohol for their children as in 2007. Credit:iStock

This is according to the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE), which believes the territory is lagging in tackling alcohol harm.

FARE's director of policy and research, Amy Ferguson, said about 22 per cent of Canberrans put themselves at risk of chronic alcohol-related long-term harm, compared with 18.2 per cent nationally.
A concert at the ANU School of Music on Tuesday will bring together first-time violin players from Goulburn Public School and professional musicians from the Canberra Symphony Orchestra.

The youngsters will play side by side with professional violinists at the world premiere of The Goulburn Concerto, a commissioned piece by Sean O'Boyle.

Goulburn Public School year five pupils Teesha Jones, left, and Brendell Guiao sit next to CSO first violinist Barbara Jane Gilby at a rehearsal for Tuesday's performance. Credit:Graham Tidy

Anita Collins, the teacher and conductor of the program and assistant professor of music and arts education at the University of Canberra, said the piece was composed to give the children an equally important role.

"They have a simplified part, but for them it's not simple at all, it's really pushing them musically to improve their technique," Dr Collins said.
The corporate watchdog will take legal action against banks, including the ANZ Banking Group, for allegedly rigging the bank bill swap rate and on Monday asked a court for more time to prepare its case against the ANZ.

Australian Securities and Investments Commission wants to delay the trial date in the ANZ Bank hearing to prepare other cases relating to other banks.

The flagging of further action by ASIC will spell bad news for the three other pillars of Australian banking.

The Commonwealth Bank and National Australia Bank are under investigation for allegedly rigging the rates.
The first woman to emerge as the frontrunner of a major United States political party, Hillary Clinton seemed poised to take advantage of a new wave of feminism in the country. In sharp contrast to 2008, in the 2016 race she has emphasised women's issues as the path-breaking theme of her candidacy. Yet Clinton has struggled to make inroads with young women. In the New Hampshire primary, she lost the support of women under age 30 by 59 points. Results such as these spawned a rash of articles detailing Clinton's "woman problem".

Thank goodness for Donald Trump.

Illustration: Andrew Dyson

In the past few weeks, Trump has been at the centre of a misogyny firestorm. First, he attacked Heidi Cruz, wife of opponent Ted Cruz. He then rushed to the defence of his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who was charged with battery after bruising a young female reporter. Trump, who had previously suggested the reporter had fabricated the assault, now said she was exaggerating her injuries and that Lewandowski did nothing wrong.

The day after Lewandowski was charged, Trump told television talk-show host Chris Matthews that women should face "some sort of punishment" for having an abortion. (He has since changed his position.)
There is an army of women and men who stand between ordinary Australians and death, who stand between us and disease. Although they are in the front line of protecting our lives, they have been abandoned by the Federal Government.

Any party that seeks to abandon these workers should be abandoned by voters.

They are our local general practitioners and there are about 33,000 of them in Australia, about one for every 700 Australians. New plans by the Federal Government for a Healthier Medicare are a mish-mash of insufficient detail. Not a single health expert I spoke to could explain exactly what Healthier Medicare meant, apparently the details are still to come yet we are just weeks from an election. We do know that this is some kind of a plan that will ensure those who have chronic disease will be treated by a single GP or GP hub. We do know that those GP hubs will have to wait three months to be paid by the Federal Government. And we do know that a similar trial in the 1990s was funded to the tune of $30 million looking at 12000 patients. This proposed trial will be funded at $20 million with what some estimates say is 60,000 patients.

When I was a girl, general practitioners were treated with respect and admiration by us; and certainly by our successive governments. They are the central reason Australians have high life expectancy. Their work is extraordinarily efficient already. They are fast, effective, decentralised.

Yet they are under attack by the Federal Government, first by the Labor Party when it was in government and now, in a more extended fashion, the Coalition, as Medicare rebates have been frozen for years. We learned last year that the decision to freeze Medicare payments until 2018 will cost Australians about $10 every time they visit the doctor. We know GPs are at least $4 worse off for every single patient  but because GPs usually only charge a gap to non-concessional patients, they will be forced to charge $8.43 at a minimum or will be forced to absorb the cut of 7.1 per cent. All those figures are based on research published in the Medical Journal of Australia.
The good news from the Panama Papers revelations is clear. The more that information about tax havens leaks out, the less middlemen can charge for their services. That means fewer immoral and criminal acts.

The bad news is that the key firm  the fourth largest offshore services firm in the world, Mossack Fonseca  doesn't think what it does is wrong. This suggests that wherever someone wants to avoid tax, launder money or shift funds out of sight of authorities, a tiny minority of professionals will be willing to help drive a dodgy financial vehicle through slack laws.

The Mossack Fonseca building in Panama.

The Panamanian law firm's co-founder, Ramon Fonseca, believes his business is like a car factory whose liability ends once the car is produced. In other words, you cannot blame Toyota if robbers drive a Hiace truck into a bank vault and use it to steal millions of dollars.

No matter to him, it seems, that the robbers tell you of their plans  as if you needed to be told.
"All are subject to going back to Nauru once the medical support has been provided and we've been very clear about that," he opposite-of-explained. "People who have received medical attention, or are here supporting a family member who has received that medical attention, that they will go back to Nauru." You know, that place that the New Zealand parliament just condemned amid concerns that political opposition is being silenced and that the government no longer obeys the rule of law? That's the one! So just to be clear: in the space of 24 hours Duffer went from "no children in detention" to "I'll define detention however I want" to "I'm sending kids back into detention". At least they won't be going to Manus Island, though, since the government's about to lose it. Stand by your Man(us)

Specifically, the Papua New Guinea Supreme Court are about to rule on whether or not the centre is legal - and given that the PNG Prime Minister Peter O'Neill made clear last month that he is absolutely determined to shut the joint, it seems unlikely that the outcome's going to be what the Turnbull government wants. And that's why Crikey are reporting that Dutton's department are acting with unseemly haste to process all the refugee applications they've evidently not been processing for the past several years. This news has, predictably, gone down less-than-great with the 850 men in detention there - not least because the only resettlement option is PNG, where locals don't want outsiders competing for the limited work available, the government don't want the cost or responsibility of housing and supporting extra people, and the refugees themselves don't want to be beaten and murdered by locals - which, as we know, has already happened. Of course, we still have that $55 million we spent on not-settling five people in Cambodia, since the two still there have been left without accommodation, support, healthcare or any services to help them assimilate into their new country. And once again we can point out that our current policies are cruel, put us in breach of our human rights obligations, cost us billions of dollars every year, prop up corrupt-looking regimes, and don't make us any safer.

But we already know that, and we choose this path regardless. Coalition unitywatch! To the surprise of literally no one, Western Australian MP Dennis Jensen has been dumped from preselection for his seat of Tangney over the weekend following the entertainingly embarrassing revelations about his using his parliamentary letterhead while approaching agents about publishing his erotic war novel The Sky Warriors in 2007, over which Jensen is now threatening to quit the party altogether. Mind you, the Coalition's unity was given a push on Monday when dumped frontbencher Kevin Andrews publicly announced that sure, he'd be prepared to challenge Malcolm Turnbull for the leadership of the Liberal Party. "It has never been my burning ambition to be the leader of the party," Andrews declared, demonstrating the inspirational oratory that is his trademark, "but if circumstances arose, which they did in both of those instances where I thought there should be a change or a contest, I am prepared to do it."

Andrews has long been considered a right-affiliated Liberal leadership contender, just behind Scott Morrison, Peter Dutton, Tony Abbott, Josh Frydenberg, Mathias Cormann, Peta Credlin, Tony Abbott again, a photo of John Howard, a copy of Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged', some string, puddles, Cory Bernardi, and literally everything else in the entire cosmos. But that's not stopping him from letting his dream take flight! After all, his has been a litany of triumphs from his anti-divorce initiative as Social Services Minister, creating discount private counselling service vouchers for couples, of which less than 8 per cent were claimed, to dissolving into a flustered mess over the difference between an "open tender" and a "competitive evaluation" when discussing SA submarine construction as defence minister. Oh, and there was that challenge to Julie Bishop as deputy leader last September, where he gained a humiliating 30 votes to Bishop's 70. But sure, Kev: Labor are currently running close with a 2.6 per cent swing according to today's Newspoll, but why not join Abbott and Bernardi and Eric Abetz in making public statements explicitly undermining the leadership of your government? Heck, this election's not going to lose itself!
The royal commission's 227 powerful recommendations comprehensively answer the question, "what can we do?". Unsurprisingly, the next question is, "how much will this cost?" and, for some, "can we afford to do it all?"

Immediately and powerfully she reminded everyone in the room why we were there: because last year 79 Australian women were murdered by men. And because this has to stop.

In the flurry of media questions about the costs of the suite of recommendations and how they would be funded, a woman stood up from the back of the audience. She was one of the many survivors of family violence present. She tried a couple of times to get the Premier's attention and when she finally did she said, "Of course, the cost of inaction is people's lives."

I think the vital question is: can we afford not to? There is no accounting for the human toll of family violence, the fear, injury, disruption and death that too many families have to bear.

And there is also an enormous economic toll  the costs of the police, courts and crisis services that respond every day and the indirect costs like health care, absenteeism at work and the terrible impact on the health and development of children. That's a cost that the royal commission put at $3.1 billion in 2014-15 in Victoria. It includes an estimated $2.7 million it costs when someone is murdered. That's a cost, emotional and economic, that we cannot continue to bear.

Many of the recommendations of the royal commission won't need extra funds, just better ways of working. But there are other substantial reforms that will require significant funding for proper implementation to really make a difference. We know for instance that there are some "big ticket" items: such as the introduction of specialist family violence courts, rolling out family violence training across the health, mental health, drug and alcohol, child protection, disability and aged care sectors, and scaling up the workforce across the family violence system, including specialist services and lawyers to respond to the demand. The "blitz" on housing to ensure that women and children leaving violence have access to a safe and affordable home will not be cheap.

The royal commission is clear that addressing family violence with urgency will mean "additional investment". It looked at some funding possibilities that were proposed during its deliberations. One, it says, was to establish a Family Violence Tenancy Fund to finance the costs of family violence-related losses such as property damage. Victoria Police suggested using the proceeds of crime funds for some family violence initiatives, such as preventive and research work.

But the commission says it's unlikely these sources alone would be enough and that the state government may have to look at new revenue options, including "a broad-based tax or levy" to fund all or part of the family violence system.
Daniel Sloss is very excited about stand-up comedy, so excited that he talks increasingly quickly over the course of an hour so that by the end of our time he's only saying half-words; what with that and his Scots accent, when it comes time to listen to the interview again I have to replay a lot of it twice.

There is the torrent of names: comedians he admires, only some of whom are familiar to me although I do spot a couple of Australians, Tim Minchin and Jim Jefferies. As far as I can tell, Sloss watches comedy pretty much all the time he is not on stage himself.

No sacred cows: "I think it's very pathetic to be upset by something someone says especially by comedy." Credit:Gavin Evans

"How else do you learn?" he asks rhetorically. "It would be so f---ing arrogant of me to be in this job and be like 'oh I know how to just be the best comic!' You have to watch, see other people think, how they do what they do. Every joke can be told a thousand different ways: there's the set-up and the punchline but they don't have to be in that order. I find it amazing when I talk to comics who aren't obsessed with stand-up. Do you not love this job? I love every second."
Our love affair with the quieter, mousy middle sister, and by default Carmichael, ballooned over six series to proportions few could have imagined, not least Carmichael herself. Fellowes' suggestion was, presumably, conveyed with the sensibilities of diehard Downton fans in mind.

Actress Laura Carmichael is recalling the sage words of Julian Fellowes. For those who have spent the last five years in a space and time warp, Carmichael played Lady Edith in Fellowes' Downton Abbey, the multi-award winning series that culminated last December with Edith - finally! - overcoming her marital misfortune to marry estate-wielding mega catch Bertie Pelham in a Christmas episode watched by more than seven million viewers.

"Julian always says try not to reinvent the wheel too quickly, which I think is good advice if you are well known and in something."

Laura Carmichael as Lady Edith.

But if the last few months are anything to go by, the 29-year-old actress has kicked this advice, along with Lady Edith's wig, firmly to the curb. Since February she has been treading the boards in Jamie Lloyd's much-anticipated adaptation of Jean Genet's The Maids, a perverse and erotic psychological thriller about two maids fantasising about murdering their employer. And, from Monday, she appears on screen in Marcella, ITV's latest gritty detective drama about a serial killer on the loose, which features scenes of such graphic violence and gore you may have trouble sleeping. It is a clean break if ever there was one - and a savvy move away from the dusty carpets and elaborate undergarments of Downton's corridors.

Carmichael, speaking from the 14th floor of ITV studios in London, denies hers was a deliberate leap away from the recent past but admits "there might have been a few options [after Downton] that seemed too close to Edith".

"It really wasn't a conscious move to go, 'I must play a whatever,'" she says, her voice lacking any of Lady Edith's airs and graces. "But I'm delighted that they are different. The thing for me is that they are just really cool projects. If I wasn't involved with them I would want to see them. I am really excited because I don't think of myself as Edith."

In Marcella, Carmichael plays Maddy Stevenson, a single-minded and ambitious student who strikes up a relationship with one of the investigation's main suspects. She thinks she can solve the murders herself; one feels she will be sorely mistaken. The script is the work of Sweden's Hans Rosenfeldt, the man behind The Bridge, and this is his first drama designed exclusively for a UK audience. With a strong but crucially flawed female lead character (Anna Friel takes the role of Marcella), dingy skyline, macabre crime scenes and a sprinkling of cable knit, the series has all the hallmarks of supremely bankable Scandi noir - except that it's set in London. Carmichael is more than au fait with the genre.
Christopher Pyne - bomb-thrower, brat, bon vivant and ABBA fan, take your pick - is so many different things to different people that he is in a way Q&A's perfect guest, even if some viewers are only there to hate-watch. You can bet they were hissing at the screen again on Monday night. Let them hiss. Like Pyne cares. He always seems to have a fine time. It drives some people nuts, and he surely loves it.

On one of his two appearances last year, for instance, he found himself sharing the panel with American sass machine Ruby Wax, who knew not of Pyne's eccentric charms and who by the end was wondering if he were a creature from another planet. If so, Wax assured him and us: "I'd go." Pyne, a reputable sass-merchant himself and possessed of an almost vaudevillian instinct for a theatrical moment, latched on and ran. "We could go together!"

It was a very weird love-in, and Pyne was left beaming, as Pyne is wont to do. His full-wattage performance was perhaps a tad dimmer on Monday night - in keeping with an oddly flat show, broadcast from the minister's hometown of Adelaide - but this was never going to be the easiest of nights as government standard-bearer. After two years in the trenches polishing turds sprayed hither and yon during the Abbott implosion, Pyne now finds himself cleaning deposits off the fan blades for Malcolm Turnbull, who appears to have wandered off into another show from the one we thought we were going to see.
Larry Marshall, chief executive of CSIRO, at a recent AFR business summit in Melbourne. Credit:Pat Scala Abolishing research on global greenhouse gas emissions.

Abolishing research on sea level rise.

Abolishing research in Antarctica.

Abolishing multi-year, multi-decadal climate modelling and analysis.

Reducing collection and analysis of ocean carbon levels, due to "insufficient demand".

Reducing research into the management of the impact on biodiversity, due to reduced demand.

Reducing research in Australia's tropical north, and northern Australian fisheries.

Continuing research on "fugitive emissions"  greenhouse gases unintentionally released during industrial activity. Where the draft plan refers to insufficient or reduced demand, it is understood it means that research area does not bring in enough money from government or private sources. CSIRO's public-good research spans many of its disciplines, including agriculture, energy and astronomy. Email dump CSIRO scientists working on optics  another sector of public-good research that has been hit by large cuts. Credit:CSIRO

The emails are among nearly 700 pages of internal CSIRO documents released in response to a request by a Greens-Labor convened Senate inquiry into the plan to cut as many as 350 CSIRO jobs. More emails between senior CSIRO managers are yet to be released. Dr Marshall, a physicist and former Silicon Valley venture capitalist, has said sacked staff were expected to be replaced over the next two years by a similar number in different areas. They would include 35 new climate jobs looking at how to tackle the problem, rather than measure what is happening. The cuts to monitoring, measuring and analysing climate data have been condemned by scientists in Australia and internationally, including criticism by the head of the World Meteorological Organisation's climate research program and an editorial in the New York Times. Managers at science agencies that partner with and rely on CSIRO  including the Bureau of Meteorology, the Australian Antarctic Division and the University of Tasmania's Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies  were surprised by the cuts and unclear what it would mean for joint research projects. Within CSIRO, the reaction has at times been hostile. Scientists from the land and water division in Canberra walked out of a meeting session with Dr Marshall two weeks ago over cuts to their numbers, and the staff union is challenging the cuts in the Fair Work Commission.

It is understood the external pressure is likely to have helped save dozens of jobs, with one climate-related unit now expected to lose about 35 staff, down from an initial plan to cut 65 jobs. 'Deep dive' The union may cite documents released to the Senate inquiry, including an email from Dr Schiller to other managers sent in November ahead of "deep dive" discussions about redistributing funding within CSIRO. It says a group of senior managers had discussed that CSIRO's focus would be to "maximise the impact on the nation", and that it should not "do science for science sake"  that having your research published in the prestigious journal Nature alone was not enough to "cut it". "Public good is not enough, needs to be linked to jobs and growth, but science that leads to SLO [social licence to operate] is ok," Dr Schiller summarised. He said the CSIRO executive wanted "investible propositions" and "growth cases".

In the January 18 email two months later, Dr Schiller suggested to division director Ken Lee and a fellow manager that the oceans and atmosphere division should aim to sack about 120 staff  considered the "high" option by CSIRO management  to get rid of all "public good/government-funded climate research". Dr Lee replied: "I agree  let's overshoot first." (To put this into context: the Senate inquiry has heard that Dr Lee and his team initially proposed that 35 climate related jobs be cut. They were told by Dr Marshall and his executive that they needed to sack 100.) CSIRO spokesman Huw Morgan said on Monday the comments in the emails were options considered during an early stage of planning. "They didn't meet our criteria once we looked at the external contract obligations, changes in and impacts on other oceans and atmosphere programs or across CSIRO business units and so those options weren't progressed," he said. Only by half

Dr Marshall has denied all climate researchers would be cut. Giving evidence at Senate estimates in February  after the above email exchange  he said the organisation would cut climate monitoring and measuring staff in half and try "to be smarter about how we do things" by collaborating better with other organisations. In evidence to the Senate inquiry in early March, CSIRO environment, energy and resources executive director Alex Wonhas  Dr Lee's boss, and a member of Dr Marshall's executive  denied public-good research would be abolished. He said it had been the foundation of what CSIRO had done and would remain on its agenda. "I think, in this debate, it can appear that CSIRO is pulling out of public-good research. I really want to categorically say, 'This is not our intent'," he said. "I, and I would say several thousand of our employees, are committed to continuing to do public-good research. It is probably a fair criticism that we maybe have not articulated that position sufficiently well, especially in the last couple of weeks. But I can assure you that that is something that we are working on and that we endeavour to rectify." Dr Marshall is due to give evidence to the Senate inquiry into the cuts on Thursday. CSIRO staff are expected to be told details of the cuts later this month.
When it comes to interviewing Treasurer Scott Morrison, Sydney shock jock Ray Hadley is more familiar playing the role of partner-in-crime than sparring partner.

But on Monday, the two mates' usual love-in took on a more sceptical tone, as the broadcaster pushed back against the government's latest rhetorical flourish that "we must live within our means".

"Now hang on, that's a slogan," Hadley interrupted. "Live within our means, that's a slogan. That's a four-word slogan."

But if the past few days are any indication, it's a slogan the public should get used to hearing between now and the federal election.
The University of Sydney is under fire for its treatment of international students after suddenly changing the graduation date for one of its most prestigious business courses.

The move, announced last week, had threatened to put up to 80 per of the university's master of management students and their families thousands of dollars out of pocket for air fares, accommodation and visas they had already purchased.

Internal emails seen by Fairfax Media reveal that the decision to change the graduation date with only a few days' notice caused division between the university's faculties and its administration.

The manager of the university's business school program, Lance Graham, urged angry students to petition the university's administration, describing the decision to bring forward the graduation by up to three weeks with only a few days notice was "unacceptable to say the least".
A woman remains in a critical condition in hospital after she was allegedly bashed in the head with a hammer during what police described as a domestic violence-related incident at her home in Sydney's west.

Robynne Fraley, 54, was unconscious and bleeding heavily when emergency services found her lying in her garage on Athlone Street in Cecil Hills just before 1pm on Monday.

Robynne Fraley was found suffering from serious head injuries at her house in Athlone Street, Cecil Hills. Credit:TNV screengrab

Her husband, Robert Fraley, 54, is understood to have called police to alert them that his wife was seriously injured at their home, before leaving the garage door open and driving away.

Mr Fraley was arrested in his vehicle on Elizabeth Drive in Cecil Hills a short time later. He has since been taken to Liverpool Hospital, the same hospital where his wife is being treated, and is under police guard.
Imagine being told to reapply for your job by an organisation that is not your employer for a role that doesn't exist.

That is the situation confronting council general managers across Sydney and NSW, in the latest instance of uncertainty and upheaval triggered by the government's determination to merge councils.

After councillors from local government areas facing possible mergers were told to apply for their positions in new entities last month, the government has made a similar request of general managers.

In a directive last week, the NSW government requested expressions of interest from existing council general managers for "interim" roles in new merged entities.
One year since his new government was sworn in, the sheen appears to be coming off NSW Premier Mike Baird, with his popularity crashing on social media and in polls after taking tough positions on raising the GST and controversial lockout laws.

On request from the Herald, media monitoring service iSentia Media analysed mentions of Mr Baird at three points in the first year since his election at four, eight and 12 months since the poll.

Interest in Mr Baird has grown steadily. Last month his name was mentioned 31,000 times on Twitter and Facebook, growth of nearly 10,000 posts in nine months.

The media monitors at iSentia run a system that measures sentiment towards political leaders out of 100.
The Labor Party has backed a 22-year Brisbane City Council veteran to lead it out of the local electoral wilderness with the selection of Wynnum Manly councillor Peter Cumming as its new leader.

Cr Cumming, who won his ward with a primary vote of more than 55 per cent, was one of just five Labor councillors left standing after Lord Mayor Graham Quirk's Liberal National Party convincing win at last month's council election.

Councillor Peter Cumming, leader of the Labor opposition in Brisbane City Council.

The Quirk-led LNP won 19 of Brisbane's 26 wards, increasing its majority by one.

Cr Cumming, who was elected to the council in 1994, will lead Labor in the council chamber for the first time next week.
March 16, 3.09pm: Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg goes on the attack. Credit:Glenn Hunt Lord of the Mermaids, Ray Stevens, has a POINT OF ORDER, because that's not what Mr Springborg wanted to know. Eventually, Ms Palaszczuk expresses her confidence in Ms Trad. And Labor as a whole. And also, jobs. March 17, 10.54: Lord Wardrobe himself, John-Paul Langbroek likes to shake it up. Credit:Bradley Kanaris 10.50am on March 15, 2016

Grand Master Happy Socks, Prince of Pressed Trousers and Duke of Dress Shoes Lord Wardrobe has a question ... for Coralee O'Rourke March 17, 11.25am: We have just had a Bigfoot. As the Minister responsible for North Queensland when did you first alert the Premier as to the concerns of the Member for Cairns and what concerns were relayed? Well, Lord Wardrobe John-Paul Langbroek, Labor found out when the media found out. Which is not exactly true. Labor found out when the media published what it had found out. But you know, jobs, jobs, jobs.

As a strategy it's fairly transparent and predictable but what else do they have? 10.56am on March 15, 2016 Lord Peacock Jarrod Bleijie has just brought the House down by standing up to ask his question with a rat on his shoulder. A rat. Because - Bill Byrne.

Who admitted to shooting rats. Because - ugh. 3.15pm on March 16, 2016 Ms Palaszczuk tries to start her answer with the "jobs, jobs, jobs" mantra - and that the Opposition is not talking about them. Which means Ray Stevens, looking like the most put-upon man to ever be put upon has to stand up with a POINT OF ORDER, or POO, for those playing along at home, because the question wasn't about jobs.

Which is just silly, because EVERYTHING IS ABOUT JOBS, duh! Anyways, Ms Palaszczuk repeats what she said at the press conference. Which you can find here. In short - BEHAVE 3.31pm on March 16, 2016 Using the scientific formula that relating to anything said in Parliament has to be exaggerated 100,000 times, the House falls over itself in laughter when Principal Wellington tells Lawrence Springborg and Ms Trad to take their argument outside and the Opposition Leader responds with something like 'I wouldn't be game".

OH THE HILARITY 3.40pm on March 16, 2016 Goodness me, the House is feral this afternoon. In the words of a former Prime Minister to a Brisbane Times alum - CALM DOWN. It is just question time.

In fact, everyone in the chamber should look over to Ted Sorensen and Glenn Elmes and their best buddies vibe and let the unicorn and rainbows flow through you. Ahh ... friends. 3.47pm on March 16, 2016 To Adani. A project the government is happy to talk about, because - JOBS

"Given the Minister gave environmental approval of the Adani Carmichael Coal mine can the Minister outline the benefits of this project?" Stephen Bennett wants to know from Lord Giggles, Steven Miles. Dr Miles says some things about JOBS, because that's basically all this government wants to talk about now. What do you want for lunch? JOBS? OMG, did you see The Bachelor last night? JOBS If a Scanlon and Theodore release a women's suit and a Labor Minister isn't there to wear it, does it really exist? JOBS

10.43am on March 17, 2016 Education Minister and St Patrick's Day uber-fan Vice Captain Kate Jones has just reminded the Opposition that it's St Paddy's Day, not April Fool's Day, adding an impressive ability to also read a calendar to her list of talents. Best Bench Buddies Ted Sorensen and Glenn Elmes are just happy it's a day they get to sit together. Everyone wins really. 10.54am on March 17, 2016 Grand Imperial Ruler of Selfies, King Hashtag and Lord of the Tailors, Lord Wardrobe himself, John-Paul Langbroek gets question number three. And because he likes to shake it up, it is on ... BIKIES

"Following recent reports of Saturdarah and the Mongrel Mob entering Queensland will the Minister advise if the Queensland Police Service has recommended the listing of any additional organisations to the Attorney General for addition as criminal organisations?" Bill Byrne's finger is pointing like it has never pointed before. He has been "consistent". Lord Peacock, Jarrod Bleijie, is smiling as bright as his satin pocket squares, because this is his favourite topic in the world, after rats, rock and roll dancing and how terrible Labor is. Mr Byrne points and waves his arm, which is how you know he is upset, because his voice never changes. 11.06am on March 17, 2016 The second right honourable 'It's-not-a-hipster-beard-and-that's-really-not-funny-stop-calling-it-that' Andrew Cripps, once described as "that yelling man" by a member of the public gallery after a particularly impassioned speech has a question for Mines Minister Anthony Lynham.

"Given the Minister advised the House yesterday there were no remaining obstacles and it has been more than 40 hours since the Parliament agreed to the motion to provide all remaining approvals to the Adani Carmichael Coal Mine will the Minister advise if he has signed the Mining Lease and, if not, when he will do so?" IT HAS BEEN 40 HOURS. Which, coincidentally, is James Franco's new film project, where he plays a man, forced to listen to the Queensland Parliament Question Time for 40 sessions, and in desperation, cuts off his own ears. We hear it's a real tear-jerker. Anyway, due diligence, yadda, yadda, words. 11.25am on March 17, 2016 I hope you are sitting down ladies and gentlemen, because we have just had a Bigfoot.
An anti-Islam protester says he enjoyed the mayhem at a violent brawl outside a Halal food expo in Melbourne on Sunday, despite being hit in the chest with a pole.

At least one man was left bleeding from a head wound, after 30 anti-racism protesters clashed with anti-Islam group Party of Freedom outside the family-friendly Halal food expo at the Melbourne Showgrounds in Ascot Vale.

Members of both groups kicked and punched their opponents, pinned them to the ground and held them in headlocks, while some used poles and pipes as weapons.

Party for Freedom chairman and Sydney resident Nick Folkes was hit in the chest with a PVC pipe, but insisted he enjoyed his time in Melbourne, including the fight.
A man accused of opening fire on an Epping house, killing a stranger, over an "irrational war" involving car parts has been found guilty of murder.

Ben Monteath, 39, had been visiting a friend and was walking out the front door when he was shot dead at about 11.03pm on May 17, 2014.

Jumer Selimovski was found guilty of murder after opening fire on a house and killing Ben Monteath. Credit:Ken Irwin

A Supreme Court jury on Monday found Jumer Selimovski, 50, who denied being the gunman, guilty of murdering Mr Monteath.

Justice Michael Croucher remanded Selimovski to appear on Thursday when a date for his pre-sentence hearing would be set.
Attention Frankston line passengers, your "newest, biggest and fastest" train has been delayed  by three months and counting. Stand by for further announcements later this year.

Commuters in Melbourne's vote-swinging sandbelt seats are yet to see the eight newest trains on Melbourne's rail network - ordered just for them by the former Napthine government - because of a series of complications that are holding back their operation on the line.

Sorry commuters but the X'Trapolis trains have been delayed. Credit:Craig Abraham

The batch of X'Trapolis trains, the last of which was delivered to the state government in November, were meant to begin running on the Frankston line late last year, as the centrepiece of a $115 million renewal of Melbourne's most politically-courted railway line.

But the trains have yet to materialise, other than a single X'Trapolis train introduced by the former Napthine government a few weeks before the 2014 state election, which runs at an artificially reduced speed to avoid outpacing boom gates.
He was born Ronald Austin Mulkearns, in Caulfield. He died on Monday one of the most reviled Catholic leaders in the country.

He came into the world in 1930, and was ordained as a priest in 1956  a full six decades ago. He is now dead but the damage he did is long done. Indeed the suffering caused is continuing.

Bishop Ronald Mulkearns before his retirement, in 2002.

He was the sixth Bishop of Ballarat, a man Most Reverend, a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, and the singular soul in charge of the largest Catholic diocese in Victoria, throughout its most shameful and destructive era, from 1971 to 1997.

Only this year he faced questions about that period, and his own catastrophic negligence in failing to halt the egregious behaviour of the black-collar criminals under his watch.
A woman allegedly murdered by her ex-husband expressed a fear she would be killed by him just hours before her death, a court has been told.

Teresa Mancuso, also known as Teresa Paulino, told her sister she feared Fernando Paulino would kill her once he had been served with an intervention order, Melbourne Magistrates Court heard on Monday.

Teresa Mancuso was stabbed to death not long after leaving a family dinner. Credit:Channel 7

Ms Mancuso, 49, was stabbed to death at a home in Reservoir not long after leaving a family dinner at her sister's home. Mr Paulino, 54, is charged with her murder.

Francesca Mancuso told the court on Monday her sister had taken an intervention order out against Mr Paulino and had often said he would kill her, including the day she died.
West Australian Liberal federal MP Dennis Jensen plans to sue The Australian newspaper for defamation in the wake of his preselection loss, after claiming he was damaged in the eyes of voters in the Christian community.



The Member for Tangney was rolled 57 to 7 during a pre-selection vote against candidate Ben Morton just days after excerpts of a controversial novel he wrote - including racy sex scenes - were leaked.

Dr Jensen lodged a writ with the WA Supreme Court on Monday and will be represented by high-profile Perth defamation lawyer Martin Bennett.



On Saturday, it was also reported - falsely according to Dr Jensen - that he had recently left his wife and children for another woman.

Dr Jensen told Radio 6PR on Monday morning the tactic was a double blow to his campaign and that details of his unpublished novel, written before he entered politics in 2004, and his personal life, had been blown out of proportion.

"The first shot was obviously the shot about my book and deliberately exaggerating the sex aspect, knowing I had the support of Christians, knowing that that would put them off," he said.
"It needs to be done right with respect to human dignity," she said. Under the deal, migrants arriving illegally in Greece will be returned to Turkey if they do not apply for asylum or if their asylum claim is rejected. Credit:AP But human rights advocates insisted that the plan was fundamentally flawed and represented an abandonment of European responsibility to help those seeking escape from the conflicts flaring on Europe's doorstep. Amnesty International has called it "a historic blow to human rights." Under the deal that the EU struck with Turkey last month, all refugees and migrants who arrive on Greek shores aboard smugglers' rafts afterMarch 20 will be sent back. The EU has said it will accept one Syrian refugee from a refugee camp in Turkey for every Syrian who is returned. In an attempt to discourage people from crossing on their own, those who are returned will be sent to the back of the line for the resettlement program. A ferry carrying migrants from Greece to Turkey leaves the port of Mytilene in the island of Lesbos, on Monday. Credit:AP

The EU has promised billions of dollars of financial assistance to Turkey and has pledged to ease visa rules for Turks seeking to travel in the 28-member union. The EU has also said it will revive Turkey's long-stalled membership application. The agreement reflects European desperation to halt refugee flows that brought more than 1 million asylum seekers to the continent's shores last year. The number was on pace to be even higher this year until countries up and down the migrant trail sealed their borders, effectively trapping people in Greece. Migrants take their belongings from a bus before boarding a ferry for Turkey as riot police watch on Monday. Credit:AP German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told the country's Tagesspiegel newspaper Sunday that he was cautiously optimistic "the high point of the migrant crisis is behind us." New arrivals in Germany have plummeted to a rate of 140 a day, compared with thousands a day earlier in the year.

Migrants arrive on a bus at the port of Mytilene in the Greek island of Lesbos, on Monday. Credit:AP The reduced flows to Germany largely reflect a bottling up of the flows in Greece, with borders closed from Macedonia to Austria. As of Monday, 51,000 people remained stuck in camps and other accommodation across Greece, a country that's already struggling with a historic debt and economic crisis. More than 6000 of those people are on the islands and are due to be sent back. Migrants and refugees inside Moria camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, on Sunday. Credit:AP It is unclear whether they will go quietly. On Friday, detainees on the island of Chios stormed the gates of their detention facility and staged an impromptu protest in the port. Another demonstration was held Sunday.

Some 3400 people are being held on Lesbos, which since last year has been the primary gateway to Europe for those seeking an escape from war, oppression and poverty. The vast majority of the island's migrants are being held in a detention centre set among olive groves near the village of Moria. The facility, ringed by barbed wire and patrolled by twitchy soldiers and police officers who won't let journalists near, was largely quiet Sunday evening - though the detainees let loose with shouts and cries around dinner time. Major humanitarian aid groups pulled their assistance from the facility last month, in protest against the EU's plans. A scattering of volunteers remains, however, and they said on Sunday that detainees were struggling to obtain accurate information about their rights. "The people inside are constantly asking, 'Am I going to be deported?' And no one can give them an answer," said Ayesha Keller, a spokeswoman for the volunteer group Better Days for Moria. "No one has a clue what's going on. It's chaos." Shahrukh Rind, a 23-year-old native of Pakistan who has been volunteering his help on Lesbos since arriving on the island last November, said detainees were not being told how they could apply for asylum. "These are people who risked their lives to get here," he said. "Just imagine paying 5,000 euros to flee from your country, and now you're being sent back."

EU officials said the initial round of deportations would be limited to people whose asylum claims have been rejected or who have not applied for asylum. Half of the 151,000 people who have arrived by boat in Greece this year are from Syria, with Afghans and Iraqis making up the majority of the rest. All three countries have been devastated by war. Turkish Interior Minister Efkan Ala was quoted on Sunday by the pro-government Aksam newspaper as saying that Syrians returned from Greece would be given the chance to register in Turkey, but that Iraqis, Afghans and Pakistanis would be sent back to their country of origin. International broadcasters have showns images of local Turkish citizens decrying the plan to send migrants to their towns, complaining there is no place for them and that they do not feel safe. Human rights advocates have expressed concern that Turkey will not provide adequate protection to people in need of asylum. Rights groups have also bristled at Europe's insistence on deporting all new arrivals, regardless of the legitimacy of their asylum claims.
Milwaukee: A frustrated Donald Trump is working to right his campaign after a rough week and is on the defensive before the closely watched primary in Wisconsin.

Mr Trump trails Texas senator Ted Cruz in the polls in Wisconsin and faces the prospect of a loss that could stem his momentum toward securing the Republican presidential nomination.

A loss in Tuesday's primary will raise doubts that the billionaire real estate mogul can net the needed delegates to win the nomination outright, making it far easier for his party to oust him in a floor fight at the Republican national convention in Cleveland in July.
Kia Motors and Total Renew Partnership







Seoul April 4, 2016; Total Lubricants will remain Kia's recommended and exclusive partner for automotive lubricants for a further 5 years.

Kia Motors Corporation and Total Lubricants recently renewed their strategic partnership agreement. For another 5 years, Total will remain Kia Motors Corporation's preferred aftermarket lubricants supplier for Kia vehicles. Total branded automotive lubricants will be exclusively recommended and available to customers across Kia's service network of more than 5,500 dealers in around 180 countries, including West European markets from January 1, 2017.

The extension of the initial cooperation, first started in 2011, extend benefits to all Kia vehicles owners and Kia dealers. The Kia networks will receive access to high-performance Total Quartz engine oils, specifically developed to optimize the performance and reliability of Kia engines while also offering improved fuel economy benefits. Kia and Total will also develop joint marketing service programs aimed at increasing Kia dealers' profitability, customer retention and customer satisfaction.

Through this partnership, Kia and Total Lubricants confirm their shared aim of strengthening their growing presence in the global marketplace and combining their strengths in an "alliance of skills" to developing high-quality products and services for an unrivaled Kia customer service experience.
Advance Auto Parts:IN CONTEXT





ROANOKE, Va.Advance Auto Parts, Inc. , a leading automotive aftermarket parts provider in North America serving both professional installers and do-it-yourself customers, today announced that the Company has named Thomas (Tom) Greco as CEO and a Director, effective April 11, 2016. Mr. Greco will succeed George Sherman, who has served as interim CEO since January, 2016. Mr. Sherman continues as President of Advance Auto Parts, a position he has held since April, 2013.

Mr. Greco, 57, joins Advance Auto Parts following a successful 30-year career at PepsiCo, Inc. Most recently, he served as CEO of Frito-Lay North America, where he was responsible for PepsiCoas $14.8 billion snack and convenient foods business in the U.S. and Canada. During his tenure, Mr. Greco led PepsiCo's most profitable operating segment in consistently driving sales and improved operating profits. He brings deep experience in leading a sales-driven organization with over 55,000 employees as well as significant expertise in managing a complex operational infrastructure, transforming the supply chain, and retooling go-to-market systems to better meet the needs of both large and smaller customers.

Jack Brouillard, Executive Chairman, said,"After a thorough search, we are pleased to have found an exceptional leader and operator with a proven track record of designing and executing winning strategies, driving profitable growth, and building an exceptional talent base. The Board is confident that Advance will benefit from Tom's commercial expertise and energetic, solutions-oriented approach to leading complex, customer-focused operations in a competitive environment. The Board looks forward to working closely with Tom and the rest of our talented executives as we build value for our shareholders, customers, and team members."

Mr. Brouillard continued, aI would also like to thank George Sherman for his contributions as interim CEO. Under Georgeas leadership, the Company has continued to take actions to drive improved profitability and we look forward to continuing to benefit from George's valuable experience as an ongoing member of the leadership team."

Mr. Greco said, "Advance Auto Parts is a clear industry leader with an unparalleled footprint and a growing number of customers who depend on our high-quality products and talented team members. I am humbled and honored to be CEO and join the Board of Advance. I could not be more excited to work with my colleagues throughout Advance to build on our strong foundation and accelerate profitable growth. This is a terrific industry and, together, we will begin a disciplined march to reach our full potential.a???

Mr. Sherman said, "Advance has made considerable progress on a number of important objectives as we work to deliver improved and more consistent performance. I want to welcome Tom to our team and look forward to working with him to take advantage of our tremendous opportunity."

Thomas Greco Biography

During this 30-year career with PepsiCo, Mr. Greco has held various leadership positions in sales and operations in both the United States and Canada. Tom's leadership of Frito-Lay began in September 2011, after serving as Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer, Pepsi Beverages Company (PBC), where he was responsible for leading PBC's commercial efforts across North America. Before that, Tom was Executive Vice President of Sales for PepsiCo's North America Beverages organization and President of Global Sales for PepsiCo. Previously, he served as President of Frito Lay Canada and Senior Vice President of Sales for Frito-Lay North America. Prior to joining PepsiCo, Mr. Greco worked at Procter & Gamble. Mr. Greco earned a bachelor's degree from Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, and received an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business in London, Ontario. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for G&K Services, the Grocery Manufacturers Association and the Dallas Stars Advisory Board.

About Advance Auto Parts

Advance Auto Parts, Inc., a leading automotive aftermarket parts provider in North America, serves both professional installer and do-it-yourself customers. As of January 2, 2016, Advance operated 5,171 stores and 122 Worldpac branches and served approximately 1,300 independently owned Carquest branded stores in the United States, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Canada. Advance employs approximately 73,000 Team Members. Additional information about the Company, employment opportunities, customer services, and on-line shopping for parts, accessories and other offerings can be found on the Company's website at www.AdvanceAutoParts.com.
MOSCOW  Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave in Azerbaijan that became breakaway republic backed by Armenia in all spheres of life, has been living in a not-quite-frozen state of war since 1994. Every schoolboy in the mountainous little republic has grown up knowing that after graduation he will put on a uniform and join the military to police the unstable cease-fire. The republics 150,000 people, mostly ethnic Armenians, remember rockets destroying apartment buildings in the fighting more than 20 years ago, and have long feared that their worst nightmare of full-scale war would return.

Now it looks like it has.

The war woke up on Saturday night with both sides of the front using armored vehicles, battle tanks, and aviation, launching multiple rockets, and shooting artillery at each other. Over 30 people were killed and dozens wounded in the worst combat in the last two decades.

The regional implications are hard to miss. Armenia is one of Russias closest allies and Turkey immediately backed up Azerbaijan at a time when relations between Moscow and Ankara are bitter and vindictive. Given the war in Syria, where Russia and Turkey back opposing sides, and Turkey shot down a Russian warplane in November, the current eruption between Armenia and Azerbaijan is even more geopolitically dangerous than two decades ago.

On the eve of violent clashes Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev and Armenias President Serzh Sargsyan were attending the Nuclear Summit in Washington, but obviously had no chance to shake hands and make peace to prevent the tragedy.

Among the first victims of the latest violent clashes in Nagorno-Karabakh were children: a 12 year old boy, Vaginak Grigorian, was killed in the cross fire by one of Azerbaijans Grad multiple-rocket launchers, the Armenian papers reported; two more children were wounded among dozens of civilian victims. On Monday, the Karabakh ministry of defense claimed its forces had destroyed 19 of Azerbaijans tanks, and posted dreadful images on Twitter of buildings shelled the night before, of burned vehicles, of dead bodies, and of victims covered in blood.

The Armenian government claimed that a bus with Armenian volunteers going to Karabakh was hit by an Azerbaijani drone. Five volunteers were killed.

Azerbaijan meanwhile reported on dozens of casualties.

It would be hard to overstate the dependence of the Armenian contingent on Moscow. Nagorno-Karabakhs officials told The Daily Beast in interviews last summer that neither Armenia nor Nagorno-Karabakh could survive without Russias support in the conflict with Azerbaijan.

In 2014 Armenia joined Vladimir Putins dream project, the Eurasian Economic Union, together with Belarus and Kazakhstan. Armenian military doctrine holds that Russia is the guarantor of the countrys military security, and in the last few years Russia equipped its military bases in Armenian Gyumri and Erebuni with MiG-29 fighters, Mi-24 helicopters, as well as with more than 70 tanks, armored vehicles and artillery systems.

Last December, Russia delivered new helicopters to its aviation base in Erebuni. In February Moscow announced it was selling $200 million worth of arms to Armenia.

But, heres the rub: at the same time, Russia sold hundreds of tanks to Armenias long time enemy, Azerbaijan.

Last year the contracts for Russian military exports to Azerbaijan included armored vehicles, artillery and mortar systems.

While in Yerevan, Armenias capital, many wondered what else they had to do to prove their loyalty and devotion to the Kremlin, in Moscow it was clear that President Putin needed Azerbaijan as Russias ally, too, especially as relations between Russia and Turkey worsened.

There are many reasons its not in the Kremlins interest to lose Azerbaijans friendship. In 2014 Russias Rosneft and Azerbaijans Socar oil companies created a joint venture to explore oil and gas fields together in both countries, and Azerbaijans exports to Russia have been growing.

Experts both in Moscow and in Baku believe that president Putin would do almost anything to avoid a full-scale conflict between Russia and Azerbaijan. Putin cannot afford to lose Azerbaijan, he would do everything to negotiate the peace for Nagorno-Karabakh now, an independent political analyst, Dmitriy Oreshkin, told The Daily Beast on Monday. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was planning to visit Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, this week, while Russian Prime Minister Dmitriy Medvedev planned to visit Yerevan, the capital of Armenia.

Many in Yerevan wish that U.S. President Barack Obama had managed somehow to play a peacemakers role in Washington last week to prevent the escalation of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. That was not to be. But, as Armenian parliament member Tevan Poghosyna told The Daily Beast, If the international community does not manage to stop the war now, several countries might be involved in the conflict, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan supporting Azerbaijan and Russia, we hope, supporting Armenia.

Another descent into chaos and proxy war is, to be sure, the last thing the world needs right now.
It was just a couple of minutes of amateur video footage, but it was enough to throw Israel into an uproar. The clip, recorded in the city of Hebron last week, shows an Israeli soldier aiming his weapon at a wounded, unarmed Palestinian man who had been shot after stabbing a soldier at a checkpoint. Now he is lying on the pavement, not receiving any medical attention, while onlookers mill about. Then a soldier calmly lifts his weapon, aims and shoots the wounded man in the head, killing him, execution style.

Foreign observers were shocked by what looked very much like an extrajudicial killing, carried out in proverbial cold blood. Israels military establishment condemned the incident, ordering the soldier arrested and charged by a military tribunal. The charge has since been downgraded to manslaughter rather than murder.

Israeli public opinion is solidly behind the soldier, Elor Azaria, with one poll showing 82 percent agreeing that he was justified in shooting the man who carried out the knife attack, 21-year-old Abed al-Fatah al-Sharif. Only 5 percent of those polled agreed the act could be considered murder. The municipality of Beit Shemesh, a bedroom community of Jerusalem, organized a solidarity rally on March 28. There is also a Facebook page titled We are all with the soldier who shot the terrorist, with the wall covered in variations on a meme that shows various people, even a couple at their wedding, holding homemade signs with messages of support like free our soldier and we would have done just as you did.

And just a few days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the shooting, saying it violated the armys values, he backpedaled and offered comfort to the arrested soldiers family. In a statement released by the Government Press Office in Hebrew and in English, he addressed the parents of the shooter: As the father of a soldier, I understand your distress. Netanyahus base consists of people who support the soldier and back his actions in the Hebron shooting. He cannot afford to alienate them.

How to explain the sharp contrast between popular opinion in Israel and abroad? The average Israeli looks at the video and sees a conscientious soldier who acted appropriately by confirming a kill on a wounded terrorist who, though immobilized, might still be wearing an explosive device that he has the capacity to detonate. Much of the rest of the world might see a murderer.

Given the shocked reactions from international observers, one would think this was an isolated or rare incident. But that is not the case. There have been several incidents of uniformed Israeli soldiers shooting and killing unarmed Palestinians in the past three or four years alone, and many more that stretch back years and decades. Some relatively recent examples include:

 An incident caught on CCTV in 2014 that shows two unarmed Palestinian teens, aged 15 and 17, shot in the back while walking casually along the road. CNN later broadcast footage that showed Israeli snipers shooting in the direction of the boys. The army did not deny the presence of snipers, but claimed no live fire was used. The pathologist, however, confirmed the boys had been killed by live fire.

 In October 2015 AFP cameramen recorded plainclothes Israeli soldiers restraining an unarmed Palestinian teen at a demonstration and shooting him in the leg at point blank range. The army spokesperson confirmed and justified the incident.

 A 2011 incident involving a soldier who shot and Palestinian Mustafa Tamimi in the face with a tear gas canister, killing him during a protest in the village of Nabi Saleh.

 A 2011 case wherein a soldier shot Abir Aramim, a 10-year-old girl in East Jerusalem, with a rubber bullet. She died from her wounds. A court later ruled that the state must pay the family compensation, but the army refused to charge the soldiers with any crimeeven as they acknowledged they had acted in contravention of protocol and orders.

 A 2009 death of a Palestinian man named Bassem Abu Rahmeh, shot by Israeli soldiers directly in the chest with a high-velocity tear gas canister during a West Bank protest. The incident was recorded on video from several different angles, but the army chose not to prosecute the soldiers responsible.

 A notorious incident in 2004, when an Israeli soldier shot a 13-year-old Palestinian schoolgirl 17 times. She died. The soldier was tried and acquitted.

Despite these incidents, there is not a single case of an Israeli soldier being indicted for murder after shooting and killing an unarmed Palestinian civilian. This is also the case for Palestinian citizens of Israel. In 2000, police opened fire at a demonstration in the Galilee, killing 13 Palestinians12 of whom were citizens of Israel. Not one of the police officers was tried for murder.

One reason Israelis support the soldier is rooted in their fear of Arabs. This fear is the result not just of the random stabbings that have occurred over the past few months, but of years of incitement from the political echelon and the media. In the video, for example, we hear one of the medics ordering his colleagues to stay away from the wounded Palestinian because he might be wearing an explosive device. Wait until the bomb squad has checked him first! he yells as he helps load the stretcher carrying the wounded soldier into the ambulance.

The other reason is the hatred of Arabs that usually accompanies fear. Before the soldier aims and shoots his weapon at the wounded Palestinian in Hebron, someone is heard muttering This terrorist is still alive, this dog. One should add that shooting someone who might be wearing an explosive device is probably not advisable, given that the bullet might hit and detonate the combustible material. The soldiers willingness to run this risk raises the question of whether he really believed his target might be wearing a suicide belt. According to a report in the Hebrew version of Ynet, one of the most widely-read news portals in Israel, an officer had already checked and confirmed that the wounded man was not wearing an explosive device.

After he shoots the Palestinian man in the head and kills him, the soldier goes over and shakes the hands of two extremist settlers who are notorious for expressing unabashedly racist, murderous views of Palestinians. This, too, is seen in the video.

One of those settlers, Boston-born Kahanist Baruch Marzel, later tweeted an invitation to a rally for the soldier, along with the claim that the state had stabbed him in the back.

But there are so many videos clips showing Israeli soldiers beating and shooting unarmed Palestinians. Many of them have been reported in the media and many more have been posted to YouTube. Why has this one elicited such a powerful reaction?

The answer lies in the same logic that made the beached body of Alan Kurdi, the 3-year-old Syrian refugee who drowned with his mother and brother while trying to reach Greece, so compelling. Hundreds, probably thousands, of Syrian children had been killed by Assads army by that point. Dozens had drowned in the Aegean Sea before the photo of Alan became iconic, and dozens more have drowned since. But the photo of that 3-year-old boy, lying on his tummy in the surf, wearing a red T-shirt, blue shorts, and new shoes, looking very much as though he were sleeping in a toddlers position that is familiar to every parent, was more relatable than all those images of childrens bodies floating in the water photographed from above, or of rubble-covered childrens bodies pulled from the wreckage of Syrian homes bombed by the governments air force.

Similarly, the video of the shooting in Hebron feels more immediate because it is in color and in relatively high definition. Most of the footage we see of incidents involving Israeli soldiers and Palestinians in the West Bank is captured on grainy black-and-white CCTV or recorded with a cheap mobile phone. There are other aspects of the footage that are shocking: the coldness of the people standing by as a wounded man lies on the pavement, denied medical treatment; and, of course, the slow deliberation with which the soldier lifts his weapons, aims and shoots a wounded man in the head.

The iconic image of Alan Kurdi did prove a catalyst for change. After it emerged that the boys father had a sister in Canada who had been trying fruitlessly to bring them over as refugees, there was a public outcry in that country. This in turn influenced the then- ongoing election, contributing to the ousting of incumbent prime minister Stephen Harper and the election of Justin Trudeau, who immediately liberalized Canadas immigration policies for refugees, bringing in 25,000 within two months.

But there is little chance that the video of the soldier shooting an unarmed Palestinian in the head will lead to positive change in Israel. Instead, it acts as a pressure valve. Those inclined axiomatically to support the army either claim this was an isolated incident, or justify the soldiers action. And those who are looking for reasons to express their opposition to Israels 49-year occupation of the West Bank will find another means to do so in this video. Not that there is any shortage of such means. But either way, the occupation will continue to grind on.
Journalists and historians have spent money thousands of hours trying to explain the actions of one of the greatest traitors in recent British history, Kim Philby.

But a three-and-a-half minute video clip, just released by the BBC, has produced a devastating and self-incriminating picture of a man who mocks his native country with a contempt that is still shocking.

The 1981 tape of Philby talking to East German intelligence agents is not just an indictment of Philby. Its also proof that his ability to be the equal of any John Le Carre mole comfortably nestled in the higher reaches of what passed for British intelligence rested on Philby knowing that he was happily stationed on the bridge of a ship of fools.

He couldnt have been more explicit: Because I had been born into the British governing class, because I knew a lot people with intellectual standing, I knew they would never get too tough with me, he said. Theyd never try to beat me up or knock me around, because if they had been proven wrong afterwards I could have made a tremendous scandal.

Philby made a fool of a lot of people, but most of all he made a fool of the class he was born into but came to hate.

His story proves that the most effective betrayer of any class system is one who works to destroy it from the inside, not the outside. In the cause of Communism, Philby worked the British old boy network with consummate skill for decades.

Few ever doubted that he was one of thema member of a pervasive, informal club of those went to the same schools, same colleges and into the same professions.

This kind of deeply planted social arrangement seemed to those who ran the British security services, MI5 (domestic) and MI6 (foreign) the natural place in which to nurture and recruit agents. You could always check out a prospective spook with his chums and his university tutors. Genealogy was helpfulthe right father, the right uncles, ideally including a general or a bishop. (In Philbys case it was his father, a brilliant but unhinged Arabist.)

But perhaps the most shocking thing about Philbys progress was how far his navigation and exploitation of the social network extended beyond what Le Carre, with a conscious wit, called The Circus (the top echelon of British spookdom) to a sphere in which class was not supposed to matter as muchjournalism.

In the early 1950s Philby was cut loose from MI6 because a couple of the agencys investigators became convinced he was the Third Manan accomplice of two British diplomats, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, who had defected to Moscow in what was then the most damaging scandal to hit British intelligence in decades.

These sharp-elbowed investigators were hobbled by the reluctance of Philbys bosses to believe that such an upstanding chum could have deceived them. These were people who, in language and habits, could be easily confused with characters from P.G. Wodehouses Bertie Wooster stories.

No charges were brought against Philby but he was out of a jobor so it seemed.

There was another line of business where he could tap into some old contacts. Among editors and reporters on the London newspapers at that time were some who had worked for British intelligence in World War II.

One of the most prominent of these was Malcolm Muggeridge, a highly entertaining political commentator in print and on television, who had worked with Philby at MI6 during the war. Muggeridge advised Philby to contact the editor of The Observer, a left-leaning Sunday paper that, Muggeridge told Philby, is that Salvation Army for the ideological drunks and bums of our time.

Philby told the editors of the paper that he was keen to get back into journalism, my regular profession from 1935 to 1940.

But there was no regular job on The Observer for Philby until the government officially cleared him of being a Soviet agent two years later. (Philby had brazenly held his own press conference to celebrate the proof of his untarnished loyalty.)

Astonishingly, not only was he accepted back into the network as a man of honorhe was re-hired by MI6 who wanted to assign him to the Middle East. He needed to be given cover, and his spymasters, using channels they had used before for this purpose, arranged for him to be hired as the Middle East stringer, based in Beirut, for both The Observer and The Economist.

As an editor at The Observer I regularly edited stories by Philby. They were always succinct and neutrally analyticalhe was not one of those ideological drunks although, like the paper, he was a harsh critic of Britains disastrous attempt, with the French, to remove General Nasser from power in Egypt.

I never met Philby on his sporadic visits to the office but those who did described an almost Woosterish character who was amiable and tweedy with a pronounced stutter.

Philbys final unmasking, when he defected to Moscow in 1963, caused a great deal of soul-searching at The Observer, and in other newspapers where, it turned out, this mutual career path between MI6 and the Press had been common practice. A new generation of journalists was wondering why the hell their editors were acquiescing to requests from MI6 to give cover to spooksclearly a policy that compromised not only the paper but the safety and integrity of all other correspondents in the field.

The Observers patrician editor, David Astor, denied that when he hired Philby he knew that he was giving cover to a spook. But an MI6 officer later confirmed that the editors of The Observer and The Economist had willingly signed up to the deal. To them, apparently, it was a way of subsidizing the high cost of maintaining correspondents in far away places.

Both newspapers paid Philby a modest standard retainer as a stringer, in addition to what he was paid by MI6, and at The Observer I knew that Philbys expenses were regarded as not only extravagant but masterpieces of inventionand this at a paper that was normally very stingy with its reporters.

In the summer of 1963 the British government was forced to make a carefully abridged statement confirming that during his 11 years of initial service at MI6 and in his second spell posing as a journalist Philby had all the while been a Soviet agent.

In the new video of his lecture to East German agents Philby boasts about how easy it had been to pass a veritable avalanche of secret British wartime plans to his Russian handlers in London.

But in that summer of 1963 the British (and much of the world) were distracted by the Profumo Affair, a romping sexual scandal that involved the British minister of war, John Profumo, a nubile young showgirl named Christine Keeler and a Soviet spy.

Although Philby had given the KGB the names of many western agents, sending them to their deaths, his story was, for a time, easily eclipsed by the Profumo scandal that eventually led to the fall of the prime minister, Harold Macmillan.

And it was while I and a team of reporters from the London Sunday Times were revealing another, steamier side of the old boy network in action in the Profumo case that I received a tip that Philby was but part of a larger nest of spies.

A young reporter, new to the paper, said he thought everything might lead back to Cambridge University in the 1930sthat Philby, along with others, had been recruited by the Soviets then, and that as well as Philby as the Third Man there was a Fourth Man still highly placed in the old boy network.

Unknown to us, MI5 already knew who this was: in 1963 an American, Michael Straight, who had been recruited by him, gave them his identity.

The Fourth Man was Sir Anthony Blunt, an eminent art historian and, as Surveyor of the Queens Pictures, an intimate adviser on art to the Queen. Once again, the old boy network closed ranks. Blunt confessed, giving valuable details of his knowledge of the Soviet role in Britain, was granted immunity from prosecution. Unlike Philby, Blunt had had no appetite for defecting to Russia. He was far too much of an aesthete to relish the relative privations of life as a hero of the Soviet Union. For 15 years his treachery was kept secret until Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher revealed it in 1979, because exposure by a number of journalists was imminent.

While I was investigating the role played by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI in tracking the fall-out from the Profumo Affair and, specifically, the dysfunctional British security services, a contact of mine at the American embassy in London said, in despair: How is it that all your traitors are toffs?

Kim Philby could have answered that with a lot more knowledge than I was able to muster.

Correction, 4/5/2016: A previous version of this article said Thatcher revealed Philby's spying in 1975.
Patron tequila bottle features bee in pewter

Patron Spirits is introducing a special edition 1-litre Patron Silver tequila bottle into the global travel retail market at 2016 IAADFS Duty Free Show of the Americas, which gets underway today in Orlando.

Patron Spirits had previously announced that starting this year, 750ml and 700ml core Patron tequila and liqueur bottles will be discontinued in global travel retail, and instead will only be available in 1-liter size bottles.

To help generate awareness and excitement about this new larger size bottle, Patron is also introducing a limited-edition 1-liter bottle in travel retail, which will be presented at the Patron stand at the show. This exclusive collectors edition bottle is adorned with an intricate design of the iconic Patron tequila bee, rendered in pure pewter and hand applied. The bottle is then finished with a distinctive glass stopper.

Inside this unique new bottle, every drop of ultra-premium Patron Silver tequila is handcrafted in small batches from the highest quality 100 percent Weber Blue Agave, distilled and bottled at the Hacienda Patron distillery in the Highlands of Jalisco, Mexico, to be smooth, soft and easily mixable. Its taste is sweet, with fresh agave and citrus, and a light pepper finish.

Only in duty free will people find our core line of Patron tequilas and liqueurs in 1-litre size bottles, and were enthusiastic to begin that transition from our standard domestic 750ml and 700ml bottles. This special edition, extremely eye-catching bottle  which marks the first time that weve so strikingly re-imagined our Patron label  is the perfect way to introduce and excite travel retail customers about the new larger size Patron bottle that theyll now find when shopping for our tequilas and liqueurs in duty free, said John Kilmartin, VP, GTR at Patron Spirits International.

The change to 1-litre applies to all three Patron tequilas (Silver, Reposado, and Anejo) and all three Patron XO Cafe liqueurs (XO Cafe, XO Cafe Dark Cocoa, and XO Cafe Incendio.) The Patron Citronge line of liqueurs will also continue to be available in 1-litre size bottles.

The new 1-litre bottles will be showcased at the Patron stand at the 2016 IAADFS Duty Free Show of the Americas in Orlando (April 3-6), along with another duty free exclusives  Patron Extra Anejo 5 Anos. This rare and extremely limited edition extra anejo tequila (less than 500 were produced) is available only in global duty-free. Patron Extra Anejo 5 Anos is made from 100% Weber Blue Agave, which has been baked in brick ovens for about three days. The agave is then crushed, fermented and distilled using the time honoured tahona process, together with the more modern roller mill method. But it was in the aging room at the Hacienda Patron distillery in Mexico where this spirit began to truly distinguish itself. The tequila was placed in hybrid new American/limousin oak medium toasted barrels, and used whiskey barrels, for five years. The result is a tequila notably light in colour for its aging, yet exhibiting intense aroma and complex flavours that can only come from something so rare.

In addition to the Orlando debut of the new 1-liter bottle, and Patron Extra Anejo 5 Anos, the brand is also highlighting its growing line of collectors tin packages, celebrating key markets and occasions such as Chinese New Year.

Patron also continues to focus attention on the new Roca Patron line of artisanal tequilas, which have gained tremendous traction in global duty free. The entire portfolio of ultra-premium Patron tequilas and liqueurs are featured at the Patron stand (Booth 531).

4 April 2016 - Felicity Murray The Drinks Report, editor
News / Health

by Agencies

Addressing the continents biggest emerging healthcare trends

04 April 2016: Solving Africa's biggest healthcare challenges requires a collaborative approach between governments, healthcare professionals and specialists, as well as with industry leaders launching new techniques and technologies to the market. From 8-10 June 2016, regional and international healthcare professionals and medical experts will gather at the 6th annual Africa Health Exhibition & Congress taking place at the Gallagher Convention Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa, to address these challenges.Hosted by Informa Life Sciences Exhibitions, Africa Health is the continent's largest healthcare exhibition and is the ultimate platform for healthcare professionals and medical experts across Africa to share their insights into addressing the continents specific healthcare needs, while keeping updated on the latest developments in medical science.The event is expected to attract more than 7000 healthcare professionals and will play host to more than 500 of the world's leading healthcare suppliers, manufacturers and service providers. Over 160 regional and international presenters will speak at 17 CPD accredited conferences over the duration of the congress. This year's event includes numerous new conferences such as the South African Preventive Medicine Conference (in association with SAPHMA) and the Clinical Engineering Conference (in association with CEASA & IFMBE), amongst others.Delegates will also be turning their attention to solutions for dealing with some of the continent's deadliest diseases; digital healthcare  strategies for navigating the changing healthcare technology landscape; regional initiatives to promoting access to affordable healthcare in various African regions; emerging healthcare trends; as well as discussions on innovations and solutions to providing quality healthcare on the African continent.The event will host distinguished local and international speakers and industry leaders, which include, amongst others;- Dr Jide Idris, Commissioner for Health, Lagos State Ministry of Health, Lagos, Nigeria- Haruna Jibil, Deputy Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Health Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana- Dr Gerald Gwinji, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Health and Child Care, Ministry of Health Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe- Prof Melvyn Freeman, Director, Department of Health, Johannesburg, South AfricaAccording to Jamie Hill, Director at Informa Life Sciences Group Africa, the event will focus on some of the major healthcare challenges faced by developing countries in Africa, which will include; maternal health, non-communicable diseases, controlling disease outbreaks, telemedicine and the role it plays in Africa, amongst others.Numerous sponsors promise to update delegates on the latest advancements in medical technology. Speakers representing over 50 countries will address the key areas within the medical sector."Drager is proud to participate again at Africa Health and to be a Gold Sponsor of the event. It's the right platform for us to show our latest innovations and solutions to the African market. We're looking forward to fruitful discussion during the three days of the show," adds Marius Fourie, Managing Director, Drager South Africa (Pty) Ltd.Africa Health 2016 promises to live up to its reputation of being the largest healthcare exhibition in Africa. Attracting thousands of healthcare professionals from around the globe, the exhibition will focus on the healthcare challenges of African countries."The health sector in Africa has realised that a new strategy and approach is needed. Ultimately, the goal is to maximise value for patients by ensuring that the best health outcomes are achieved at the lowest possible cost. Our aim is to position Africa Health as a platform for African healthcare professionals and medical specialists to share their expertise on some of the latest emerging healthcare trends, as well working towards solving some of the continents greatest healthcare problems," concludes Hill.Africa Health is supported by The Clinical Engineering Association of South Africa (CEASA), Public Health Association of South Africa (PHASA), Sothern African Health Technology Assessment Society (SAHTAS), Academy of Nursing South Africa (ANSA), Alliance of South African Independent Practitioners Associations (ASAIPA), Association of Private Health Facilities in Tanzania (APHFTA), Burundi Healthcare Federation, CSSD Forums of South Africa (CFSA), East Africa Healthcare Federation (EAHF), Eloquent Learning Health, Infection Control Society of Southern Africa (ICSSA), International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering (IFMBE - Clinical Engineering Division), Kenya Healthcare Federation, Rwanda Healthcare Federation, SA Federation for Mental Health, The South African Public Health Medicine Association (SAPHMA), South African Society of Medical Managers (SASMM), Uganda Healthcare Federation (UF) and Gauteng Tourism Authority.
Islam is a religion that promulgates justice, kindness, mercy, and peace.

Unfortunately, it has been hijacked by a tiny group of opportunistic, power-hungry, and merciless individuals who are willing to do whatever it takes to establish their savage rule over others. How this group came into existence and how it was facilitated by flawed policies and government actions across the globe is a complex question that certainly requires deep study and examination. The immediate questions, however, are what can be done by Muslims and non-Muslims to stop its expansion and spread of its corrupt ideology.

First -- and foremost -- both Muslims and non-Muslims need to understand that the actions of this group cannot be justified as being "Islamic" in any way, shape, or form. They incessantly violate core Islamic principles and values including sacredness of life, freedom of religion, respect for and protection of minorities, treatment of others with justice and kindness, and so on.

The Quran teaches us that "taking an innocent life is like killing all of humanity" (Surah 5, verse 32) and that "God has made life sacred" (Surah 6, verse 151). In addition, it clearly states that "there is no compulsion (in choosing) one's religion" (Surah 2, verse 256).

The Quran also tells us that the basic principle in dealing with non-Muslims is that they should be dealt with "justice and kindness" (Surah 60, verse 8). A concrete example of how Muslims are supposed to deal with non-Muslim minorities can be seen in a letter that the Prophet Muhammad wrote to the monks of St. Catherine Monastery. He stated: "This is a message from Muhammad son of Abdullah, as a covenant to those who adopt Christianity, near and far -- we are with them Verily, I, the servants (of Allah), the helpers, and my followers defend them, because Christians are my citizens. ... No compulsion is to be on them  . No one is to destroy a house of their religion, to damage it, or to carry anything from it to the Muslims' houses. Should anyone take any of these, he would violate God's covenant and disobey His Prophet."

In short, no one with a sound understanding of basic Islamic principles and teachings of Prophet Muhammad would refer to any of the horrendous actions of this group as "Islamic." Yet, those who commit these acts successfully have manipulated many youngsters -- even from Western societies -- to join them. Of course, the vast majority of these youngsters are neither well-versed in Islam nor sincerely practicing. The alleged leader of the Paris attacks is reported to have drunk whiskey and consumed other illegal substances (which are clearly prohibited in Islam). This is not an isolated example. More broadly, there is virtually no evidence of a correlation between devoted practice of Islam and involvement in extremist activities.

Second, Muslims living in the West need to ensure that their children and youth are not infected by this hideous ideology through both appropriate Islamic educational programs as well as helping parents to better understand, communicate and connect with their children especially teens. Of course, we need to be aware of who are children are interacting with especially online and watch for any signs of radicalization.

Third, Non-Muslims should understand that actions of extremist groups are not condoned by anything in the Quran, the teachings of Prophet Muhammad, or by the overwhelming majority of Islamic scholars over the past 1,400 years.

A person who blows himself up or kills innocent people is not acting in accordance with Islam. This person would be considered as a murderer and held accountable by God for his actions.

So using terms such as "Islamic terrorist" or "Islamic extremist" utterly is misleading because there is nothing "Islamic" about such actions. Moreover, associating Islam with such actions actually helps extremists recruit because part of their message to potential recruits is that "do this for Islam and you will make it to heaven". We should not unwittingly be reinforcing such a message by using these grossly misleading labels and terms.

Fourth, we have to come to grips with the underlying causes of extremism or terrorism. They do not exist in a vacuum or just fall from the sky. The analogy I like to use is that mosquitoes are bred in dirty, standing water. We can keep killing them but we will never get rid of them until we attack the root of the problem.

Finally, solving this problem will require Muslims and non-Muslims to work together. The Islamic Community of Bryan/College Station is committed strongly to increasing mutual understanding, keeping good relations with others, and working to keep our community and our nation safe.

On behalf of the community, I would to like to invite you to our Mosque Open House on Saturday, from 3 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. The mosque is located at 417 Stasney St. at the intersection with Cherry Street in College Station. Hope to see you there.

 Anwer Ahmed is president of the Islamic Community of Bryan-College Station. He can be reached at board@icbcs.org
Project Unity is one of four Texas Families Together and Safe (child abuse prevention) programs across the state of Texas.

Now in our 16th year, Project Unity's mission is to prevent child abuse and neglect, feed the hungry, unite families with intensive parenting support through education and supervised visitation, help individuals and families become independent of government assistance, and to provide medical care and housing for people suffering from HIV/AIDS.

It would have been hard not to miss the news: The U.S. Census released its newest data on population growth in American cities. Bryan-College Station ranks 15th out of the top 17 fastest growing metro areas in the United States.

Bryan-College Station is where my husband and I chose to rear our family 35 years ago. Many residents as well as people moving into the area feel Bryan-College Station is a great place to raise a family -- and it is. But just as in any community across the United States, we have human suffering.

Our neighbors, our friends, our families and our community suffer from the same issues other communities do. We are not excluded from poverty, crime, depression, anxiety, bullying, eating disorders, illiteracy, school drop-outs, post-traumatic stress, family violence, incarceration, rape, suicide, HIV/AIDS, divorce, alcohol and substance abuse, heart disease, cancer, etc.

When you donate to the Brazos Valley Food Bank, you are aware there are hungry people who cannot meet their most basic need. When you donate to Scotty's House, you are aware that children are being physically and/or sexually abused. When you donate to Voices for Children, you are aware that children have been removed from their family and have been placed in foster care. When you donate to the Twin City Mission, you are aware there are homeless people as well as women and children fleeing family violence situations who find themselves at Phoebe's Home.

I love celebrating the wonderful achievements of our cities and counties in our region. But there are other statistics about our seven-county Brazos Valley region that we may not feel comfortable talking about. The Texas Association for the Protection of Children conducted a Texas Child Maltreatment County Risk Assessment that may shed light on issues that Project Unity sees daily.

Certainly it sheds light on how we as a community must make prevention services top priority.

There are 254 counties in Texas. Harris County ranks No. 1 in the state for risk of family violence. Brazos County ranks No. 25. Yes, that's right, 91 percent of counties rank lower for risk of family violence than Brazos County.

In other startling statistics, Brazos County ranks in the 60th percentile for risk of child fatalities and 50th percentile for overall child welfare risk, indicating the need for prevention services. Madison County ranks more than 80 percent for child welfare risk. Grimes and Robertson counties rank in the 55th percentile for overall child welfare risk.

Clearly, we need to work on our Brazos Valley region being the lowest risk for child maltreatment. The failure to protect children from harm adequately has lasting consequences. Victimized children show risks of impaired brain development, which affects cognitive, language, and academic abilities. Exposure to violence even can cause damage to children's DNA. Victimized children also may struggle psychologically across their lifetime from the aftereffects of abuse; they are more likely to later engage in high-risk behaviors, such as smoking, abusing alcohol and drugs, engaging in high risk sexual behaviors, becoming a teen parent, being arrested as a juvenile and being involved in violent crime.

Research shows that in order to prevent child abuse, there are six protective factors that children and families need:

 Nurturing and attachment.

 Knowledge of parenting and of child and youth development.

 Parental resilience.

 Social connections.

 Concrete supports for parents.

 Social and emotional competence of children.

By working together as a community, we all can play a part in building communities and building hope in children and families.

April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month. During this month and throughout the year, Project Unity is dedicated to supporting families to reduce the risk of child abuse and neglect. Find out more about how you can play a part and help create positive change in your community.

In order to bring awareness to Project Unity's child abuse prevention services, we want to invite you to help us make an impact on these alarming county rankings. Please come to our open house on from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Project Unity's office in the Carter Creek Center, 4001 E. 29th St., Suite 114 and learn how we provide child abuse prevention services. If you cannot make the open house on Tuesday, come to our open house on Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at our location at 1400 Beck Street in Bryan.

Call us at 979-595-2900 to learn more about us. Like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ProjectUnityBCS or go to our website at www.club365.org.

Let's continue talking about prevention long after April.

 Jeannie McGuire is founder and president of Project Unity.
Bialowieza Forest is the kind of place you imagine from the Grimm fairy tales.

Huge firs, oaks and ashes tower over you, woodpeckers and other birds call all around you and the guides who work there know the intimate history, and names, of many individual trees.

For anyone, it is a magical place - and, as a forest ecologist, visiting it was a dream come true. However, the features that make it so unique may be under threat thanks to new plans for large-scale logging.

Straddling the border between Poland and Belarus, Bialowieza is the last remainder of the vast primeval forest that once covered most of Europe.

It is a hotbed of biodiversity, home to nearly 20,000 plant and animal species including wolves, lynx and the largest remaining population of European bison. Rare birds, including several woodpecker species, provide a glimpse of the bird life that used to exist in European forests before humans transformed the continent.

Unfortunately, on the Polish side of the border, only one third of Bialowieza Forest is protected. Outside of this area as much as 35% has been earmarked for felling and the fear is that this will result in an increasingly isolated small 'island' of protected forest surrounded by fragmented and poorer quality woodland, which has already been shown to support lower bird populations than the protected park area.

Logging limits blown wide open

Felling around Bialowieza has been controlled in the past; quotas were set in 2012 to limit how much wood could be removed. However by 2015, 90% of that quota had already been logged - and the new proposals will triple the permitted volume of logging.

The proposal for further logging is controversial. Poland's state forest department, Lasy Panstwowe, views the felling as necessary to combat outbreaks of spruce bark beetle, the larvae of which burrow under the bark of living spruce trees to lay its eggs. The developing larvae feed on inner woody layers and can eventually kill the tree.

However, both local scientists and NGOs, such as Greenpeace Polska, argue that removing damaged trees will cause more harm than good and that further logging is driven by economic rather than management interests.
Several disoriented fish floated by, still inebriated and slow from the barbasco root being used upstream by families fishing, which makes for an easy catch in shallow water. Families walked by with an impressive haul of a variety of species of fish - and baskets full of harvest from their chackras - yucca, plantains, and papa china.

But these are more than just idyllic, postcard scenes. They are the rituals of daily life in the forest. They're the physical and spiritual sustenance of indigenous peoples like Sarayaku and the Sapara. Tragically, however, they are few and far between further north, where some fifty years of oil extraction at the hands of Chevron, PetroAmazonas, Repsol, and others has ravaged the forests and cultures of Sarayaku's indigenous northern neighbors.

"In the rainforest, everything is possible", explained Gerardo. "Here are our pharmacies. Here are our libraries. Here is our treasure, our life. Not only for us, for the entire world. So our future generations, your children, your children's children, can live and breathe clean air."

We heard similar sentiments from the Sapara over several days with women, men, youth and elders in the community of Llanchama.

In the place where the spirits dwell

Our three-passenger Cessna slammed down on a dicey airstrip filled with weeds and rocks, stopping just short of a palm frond abyss. Surrounded by mountains, it was hard to grasp that this was the Amazon Basin. Steep ravines, cloud vapor clinging to treetops, rocky rivers: the topography is stunning and unexpected.

The Sapara are only 575 people, and they were often lumped in with the Kichwa, Shiwiar, or Waorani nationalities. Encroachment on their territory and inter-marrying among neighboring nationalities has left the Sapara culture at risk. Only a handful of elders speak fluent Sapara, and their traditions and customs as a people are eroding. After forming their first political federation in 1999, they gained recognition from UNESCO for their unique and vulnerable language and culture the same year.

Gloria Ushigua leads us through the forest, slashing her machete as needed. Every plant has a name, a use, or a reason to avoid touching it. There's what roughly translates as the 'Fart Plant', which you can drink as a tea to relieve gas, a sweet cane plant, and ants that taste like lemon.

She shushes us as we approach a dark, apparently bottomless cave off to the side of the trail. "This is where the spirits dwell", we are told. The Sapara make it a point to not be passing by here as evening approaches, as that is the time spirits are most active. Her brother Manari, current President of the Sapara federation suddenly and firmly grabs my ankle around my rubber boots. "Like this. This is how they can grab you."

Gloria has been the most outspoken and fierce defender of her people and lands, unwavering whether confronting government representatives, oil executives, or false climate change solution schemes like REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) that offset northern contamination with alleged forest protection in the south using carbon markets yet strip communities near refineries and frontline forest peoples of rights and environmental equity.

Not surprisingly, she has become a repeated target of her powerful adversaries. Gloria has been detained at Ecuadorian immigration after traveling and speaking abroad, threatened after marches and press conferences, and attacked with tear gas inside her other house in the jungle town of Puyo.

An adamant opposition to extractive industries

In Llanchama, everything is moving. Everything is singing. Everything is growing. The unique call of the Oropendula and their hanging nests, flocks of parrots and toucans screeching overhead. The evening cacophony of insects and frogs. Over candlelight, people swapped jaguar stories - both sightings and the significance of the jungle's most powerful teachers and feared predators.

What we heard repeatedly from everyone we talked to was an adamant opposition to oil and other natural resource extraction, the failure of the government to properly consult them, and that they will die defending their lives, land, and cultures.

But we also heard frequently about the collective conscious of the forest itself, and the inseparable relationship between between the forest, spirit, and people. "The oil is underground, and that's where the spirits are", says Sapara leader Manari Ushigua. "If we extract the petroleum, a hole is left and the spirits are weakened. If we kill these spirits, we are killing ourselves."

"Our forest is full of spirits. These spirits maintain the balance of life in the forest. We must listen to them to defend the forest. If we do not, the balance of life will be altered and we will not survive. In the Sapara vision, we have to maintain this spiritual space that guards the natural functions of the world, not only for the Sapara but for the whole world. When we talk about petroleum, we are talking about ourselves. If we use the oil, we are damaging ourselves and all of nature."

One would think that in a country that was the first to include the Rights of Nature and includes the indigenous concept of Sumak Kawsay - or 'good living' - in its constitution, that peoples and places like the Sapara and Sarayaku would be iconic symbols of a country that respects rights, the environment, and its plurinational indigenous cultures.

However, the government's Amazonian drilling policies, driven by some $15.2 billion in oil-backed loans from China, are driving a new desperate drilling gambit.

There is nothing 'revolutionary' in drilling your way to prosperity

The administration of President Rafael Correa and his 'Citizens' Revolution' and '21st Century Socialism' portray the drilling plans as an essential part of a national poverty alleviation policy. Ecuador has reduced poverty under Correa's watch, but as Nina Gualinga, a youth organizer from Sarayaku, observes, "Poverty reduction can't come at the cost of rights violations of the country's Amazonian indigenous peoples."

It seems little has been learned since the early days of Ecuador's first oil boom, when the country pinned its high hopes on Texaco to bring the country out of poverty. Half a century later, Ecuador is still caught in the boom and bust cycles of commodity dependence, a classic symptom of the resource curse that has trapped so many countries.

There is nothing revolutionary about trying to drill your way to prosperity, particularly if you have to borrow from China to do it, and pay the piper in black gold. But Ecuador seems intent on continuing down the same road at any cost.

Make no mistake: it's time to sound the alarm. The fate of Ecuador's remaining rainforests are being decided as you read this. And with an estimated 60% of Ecuador's dirty Amazon crude going to California, it's time to take action and join the Sapara, Sarayaku, and the other indigenous peoples in Ecuador's southern Amazon whose lands are on the chopping block.

We must all work to #keepitintheground!

Action: 'Stand with the Sapara People to Reject This Sham Contract and Defend Their Territory Against Oil Exploration'.

Twitter: #keepitintheground

Also on The Ecologist: 'Ecocide in the Amazon - Chevron evades $9.5bn restitution order' by Orlan Cazorla & Miriam Gartor

This article was originally published by Amazon Watch.
Royal Dutch Shell, the world's second largest oil company, and Italy's Eni have been put under formal investigation by the Milan Public Prosecutor's office for 'international corruption' offences.

The alleged offences are relating to the purchase of an oil block OPL 245 in Nigeria, as reported by Italian newspaper Corrierre della Serra.

The headquarters of the Anglo-Dutch company in The Hague were raided in February by 50 officers from the Italian financial police and their Dutch colleagues, with the raid lasting through the night. The Dutch home of former Nigerian Attorney General Mohammed Bello Adoke was also searched.

The OPL 245 deal has been under investigation by Global Witness, together with Nigerian activist Dotun Oloko and anti-corruption campaigners at Re:Common and Corner House. In June 2015 they filed a complaint with the Milan Public Prosecutor giving evidence of Shell's role in the transaction.

A Global Witness investigation discovered that when OPL 245 was sold in 1998 for US$20m - a tiny fraction of its current value - it went to Malabu Oil & Gas, a company secretly owned by the then Oil Minister, Dan Etete which was set up just five days before the deal was brokered.

The block was then passed on to Shell and Eni in 2011, with the Nigerian government acting as middleman, for US$1.1bn.

Investigations into the money trail

This sum is equivalent to 80% of the country's 2015 health budget, but it never reached state coffers. Shell and Eni have always maintained that they had paid the Nigerian Government and did not know that the money would ultimately go to Etete, despite evidence from Global Witness showing otherwise.

"Shell and Eni have always denied knowledge of the corruption at the heart of this deal, but evidence we have published shows otherwise", said Simon Taylor, a Director of Global Witness. "The news of an investigation into Shell shows that their role played in this deal may backfire on them. Shell and Eni exposed their investors to massive risks and have been tainted by this theft from Nigerian citizens."

Emails between Shell and Eni show that the companies were not only fully aware that the money was destined for Malibu, but that they had also designed, negotiated and executed the arrangments to ensure that the money was sent via the Nigerian Government. Eni had already been formally put under investigation by the office of the Public Prosecutor of Milan which has named Dan Etete, Eni and its current and former CEOs as suspects.
News / Local

by Thandeka Moyo

A WOMAN from Entumbane suburb in Bulawayo was on Friday fined $60 after pleading guilty to illegal possession of dagga.Janet Ndlovu, believed to be behind a syndicate selling drugs to school children in the city, was arrested last Wednesday.Ndlovu - known as MaHadebe to her underage customers - pleaded guilty to possessing dagga before Bulawayo magistrate Tinashe Tashaya.Magistrate Tashaya ordered her to pay a $60 fine or face imprisonment. Prosecuting, Taurai Hondoyemoto said on March 29, Ndlovu was approached by police officers outside her Entumbane home."Police officers were on patrol after receiving a tip-off to the effect that Ndlovu was dealing in dangerous drugs. Acting on the information, they searched her house and recovered 33 sachets of dagga in a plastic bucket that Ndlovu was carrying," said Hondoyemoto."The dagga was weighed in Ndlovu's presence and it weighed 40 grammes with a street value of $40."
The Maggodee Childrens Fishing Rodeo is back after a three-year hiatus.

The event, sponsored by local merchants, the Town of Boones Mill and the Boones Mill Fire and Rescue Squad, is set for Saturday, May 7 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. along the banks of Maggodee Creek in Boones Mill.

Children up to age 14 will fish for free from the creek, which will be stocked with over 1,000 trout, purchased from Cedar Springs Hatchery in Rural Retreat.

Some of the fish weigh over 3 pounds and the creek will include some Golden Trout.

No fishing license is required, but a parent must accompany their child at all times. No adult fishing will be allowed during the rodeo and that rule will be strictly enforced by town ordinance.

I think the biggest problem (at past events) was adults coming in and fishing without any kids, said Boones Mill Councilman Mike Smith. Sponsors and volunteers kept having to ask them not to fish while the kids where fishing. Its a shame that a few messed this up for all, but we are prepared to deal with this if it happens again. The town police will be on hand to enforce the town ordinance if an adult is fishing without a kid present.

Registration begins at 7:30 a.m. at the old Medicine Shoppe on Main Street and wristbands will be given to identify adults and children.

Prizes will be awarded in three age groups and an award will be given for the biggest Golden trout. There will also be door prizes given away. Award presentations will take place at 3 p.m. At that time, adults will be allowed to fish with their children.

There will be plenty of fish left to catch after this is over, and we ask that everyone work together to make this a successful event so that it can be continued for years to come, Smith said.

Duck races will not take place this year.

Food will be available from the local churches and the fire department, and bait and tackle will also be available for purchase.

Anyone wishing to donate fishing rods for children in need may drop them off at Cannadays Sav-A-Bit or at Johns Shooting Gallery.

This would be a great help in that many young kids dont have fishing gear, said Smith. The rods will be kept for use in next years rodeo.

Only one fishing rod per child will be allowed.

Volunteers will be available to assist children that dont know how to fish, and the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries and the Boones Mill Fire Department will have equipment on display for visitors to see.

This is an event, to not only show the kids a great time and learn a bit about fishing, but an event that will bring all of the local community together to work for a great cause, said Smith.

A trout fish fry will be held at the Lions club building on Sunday at 2 p.m. for all donors and volunteers.

Anyone not wanting to take fish home from Saturdays catch can donate them for Sundays fish fry, Smith said.

Businesses or individuals donating $100 will have a sign erected along the creek bank, advertising their business.

Donations can be sent to the Town of Boones Mill, P.O. Box 66, Boones Mill, VA, 24065 or to GFW Construction Inc., 1009 Heatherwood Drive, Boones Mill, VA, 24065. Donations can also be dropped off at Cannadays SAV-A-BIT. Make checks payable to Maggodee Creek Kids Rodeo.

Monetary donations will be used to purchase fish for the event. Leftover funds will help purchase next years fish.

In the case of high water, the event will be held Saturday, May 14.

Years ago, Roy Hoback, a Boones Mill resident who ran a small shop called Ashley and Ambers, came up with the idea for a youth fishing rodeo.

Hoback wanted to stock Maggodee Creek near the wooden bridge, which crosses it just off U.S. 220.

But, Glenn Frith suggested an expansion of the original area, and contacted Gene and Debra Didlake, whose Cannadays store fronts a considerable portion of the creek.

The weekend of fishing has grown into a significant early May event for the Town of Boones Mill and Franklin County.
Deputies in Franklin and Pulaski counties will soon use phones distributed by the state attorney generals office to connect domestic violence victims with resources, officials said Wednesday.

Eleven agencies, including the Franklin County and Pulaski County sheriffs offices, collectively received more than 250 cellphones last week. Franklin County got 12 phones and Pulaski County four.

The phones are part of Attorney General Mark Herrings push to increase law enforcements use of the Lethality Assessment Protocol  a set of guided questions that help officers determine whether victims are in a potentially fatal situation. Departments that use the assessment require officers to call a domestic violence service provider if a victim answers the questions in a certain way, which Herrings office says poses a significant barrier for agencies that do not have access to cellphones.

Herring spokesman Michael Kelly said the flip phones were purchased using a $10,000 grant from the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services and $20,000 in funds from Herrings office. The phones have been pre-loaded with minutes, though Kelly said he was unsure of the number of minutes on each phone. Officials have not determined who will be responsible for reloading them with additional minutes, he said.

Although a news release from the attorney generals office notes that many departments do not issue officers phones and many ban the use of personal phones while on duty. Kelly said some departments also needed phones specifically designated for contacting service providers to aid domestic violence victims.

Katrina Hancock, domestic violence advocate coordinator for the Franklin County Sheriffs Office, said all county deputies are issued cellphones when they are hired. The department decided to use the phones provided by Herrings office to keep deputies from using the speaker function while connecting victims to domestic violence services, which department policy does not permit. The new phones do not have the speaker feature, she said.

A lot of the deputies think [using the speaker function] is easier, Hancock said. We want to ensure the victims confidentiality.

After deputies screen someone, Hancock said the victim is connected by phone with a hotline worker at the Franklin County Family Resource Center who provides information about shelters and support groups.

If a victim doesnt want to talk to a hotline worker, deputies will relay information about the incident to the hotline worker, who provides a safety plan to the deputies. The deputies then go over the plan and other resources with the victim.

Hancock said six phones will be sent out with deputies during each duty shift, while the others will be used as backups.

Kelly said use of the lethality assessment can help victims get themselves out of dangerous situations. Before referring qualifying victims to services, officers tell victims that the violence theyve experienced may become fatal.

Herrings office might distribute additional phones to other agencies as use of the lethality assessment expands, Kelly said.
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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ATLANTA -- Much attention is being paid to the U.S. Supreme Court vacancy, but equally partisan battles are being waged for control of state courts around the nation.

In states where voters elect Supreme Court judges, millions of dollars are being spent to reshape the courts for years to come. Judicial watchdogs say spending by national groups overwhelmingly favors judges on the right of the political spectrum, and is mostly aimed at maintaining or improving the courts' responses to corporate interests while countering state-level spending by labor unions and other interest groups.

Lawmakers are busy too, debating proposals to tip the balance of power by expanding or reducing their court's size, or making it easier to impeach judges whose rulings upset the legislative majority.

"State courts are the final word on a host of state law issues that have high stakes for businesses' bottom lines, legislatures' agendas and the rights of individuals," said Alicia Bannon with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. "Who sits on state courts can have a profound impact on the legal landscape in a state, and special interest groups and politicians are increasingly paying attention."

State supreme court elections have begun to resemble the rough-and-tumble, high-dollar campaigns associated with races for governor or Congress. Voters in about two dozen states are casting ballots for state supreme court justices this year. Spending for two Arkansas Supreme Court seats alone topped $1.6 million, setting a state record for TV ad buys in a judicial election.

The Judicial Crisis Network, which is spending millions campaigning against President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, and the Republican State Leadership Committee were successful in seeing their candidates elected, including a new chief justice who says he's guided by "prayer, not politics."

The races were so acrimonious that some Arkansas Republicans are considering ending popular elections for the top court, while some Democrats want more transparency by outside spending groups.

Wisconsin voters also have been exposed to months of TV ads over a Supreme Court seat ahead of Tuesday's primary. Most of the ads support Justice Rebecca Bradley, a conservative whom Republican Gov. Scott Walker promoted through the judicial system and onto the state's top court in just three years. Now she's seeking a full, 10-year term.

The conservative Wisconsin Alliance for Reform has spent at least $1.5 million on TV ads for Bradley, while the liberal Greater Wisconsin Committee has spent at least $345,430 supporting Appeals Court Judge JoAnne Kloppenburg, who would narrow the court's conservative majority if elected. Both totals reflect Federal Communications Commission records of TV buys analyzed by the judicial campaign watchdog Justice at Stake.

Partisan control of Pennsylvania's Supreme Court flipped last fall after six candidates for three open seats combined for $12.2 million in contributions and two independent groups spent an additional $3.5 million. Democrats swept all three races, taking five of the seven seats after six years of Republican control.

A race in Kansas is likely to be another big-money battleground. Groups supportive of Republican Gov. Sam Brownback and the GOP-controlled Legislature will be looking to oust four of the five justices up for retention elections in November, enabling Brownback to select their replacements to the seven-member court.

Lawmakers also are weighing changes to their systems of electing, appointing or retaining judges, mostly trying to limit the power of state courts to overrule them.

A bill in Oklahoma would allow voters to overturn some state Supreme Court decisions. Washington lawmakers are weighing whether to not only shrink their Supreme Court from nine justices to five, but also force judges to run in districts rather than statewide. One lawmaker said this could prevent an "intensely liberal concentration" in the Seattle area from diluting the influence of Republicans in the rest of the state.

"There has been an anger and frustration that legislative efforts have been enacted and then within one, two or three years those statutes have been struck down as unconstitutional," said Bill Raftery, an analyst at the National Center for State Courts, a nonprofit research organization.

After the Kansas Supreme Court ordered the legislature to restore school funding, the state's senators approved a bill enabling the impeachment of justices who attempt to "usurp the power" of lawmakers and executive branch officials. The House has yet to take it up.

Critics have said the measure would remove the court's independence by threatening the justices' careers if the court strikes down a law.

"It totally handicaps the Supreme Court," Republican state Rep. Steve Becker, a retired district court judge. "It would render the Supreme Court useless, basically."

Missouri lawmakers also proposed a plan to make it easier to impeach justices.

Increased populations and caseloads require expanding the Supreme Courts in Arizona and Georgia, supporters say; Critics argue that in both states, Republicans simply want to add more judges who will vote in their favor.

The expansion of Georgia's Supreme Court from seven justices to nine now awaits the signature of Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal, who pushed for the change. Between the expansion and anticipated retirements, Deal could select four more justices before his term ends.

In Arizona, Republican state Rep. J.D. Mesnard said during a committee hearing that expanding the court from five to seven justices would "spread that power out to more people." He emphasized that Republican Gov. Doug Ducey had not approached him about the bill, and said "I would feel this way regardless of who is on the court or regardless of the decisions that have come down."

Democratic Sen. Martin Quezada said the plan could be seen as an effort to "pack" the court with conservative justices, and suggested delaying implementation until the next governor takes office. That might not be until January 2019, if Ducey doesn't win a second term. A Republican colleague noted the irony of a Democrat suggesting such a delay, given the party's frustration over the U.S. Senate Republicans' refusal to consider Obama's nominee.

Mesnard acknowledged that it can be difficult sometimes to separate politics from policy.

"If the shoe were on the other foot, I'll just candidly say, if it was a different person appointing, I might feel less comfortable," he said.

___

Associated Press writers Greg Moore in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; and Andrew DeMillo in Little Rock, Arkansas, contributed to this report.

___

Follow Christina Almeida Cassidy on Twitter: http://twitter.com/AP_Christina.
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CAIRO (AP) -- Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham sought to reassure the Arab world Sunday over the prospect of Donald Trump becoming president, saying in Cairo that Congress would continue to play a primary role in foreign policy, "regardless of what Mr. Trump says or does."

"The Congress is going to be around no matter who is president," Graham told reporters after meeting with Egyptian President Abdel-Fatah el-Sissi as part of a Republican congressional delegation touring the Middle East.

"All of us, regardless of what Mr. Trump says or does, we are going to keep being who we are, so don't let the political scenes at home get you too upset," Graham said. "That's what I told the president."

Graham's comments regarding the front-runner for his party's nomination reflect a growing concern in Washington over the effect a Trump presidency could have on U.S. foreign policy and international relations. Trump has stirred controversy both at home and abroad with proposals that include a blanket ban on Muslim immigration to the U.S. and the building of a massive wall along the entire U.S.-Mexican border.

"Don't let the politics of the moment make you believe that America has fundamentally changed in terms of the way we view the world. It hasn't," Graham said.

Graham has endorsed Sen. Ted Cruz, Trump's main Republican rival, despite the fact that Graham has been a vocal public critic of Cruz for years. Speaking to The Daily Show's Trevor Noah last month, Graham said he was endorsing Cruz because he is "not completely crazy."

Speaking to reporters Sunday, Graham said he wants the U.S. to increase its military aid to el-Sissi's government, which is battling a long-running insurgency in the northern Sinai by militants affiliated with the Islamic State group.

With $1.3 billion annually, Egypt is the second-largest recipient of U.S. military aid after Israel.

Graham said the delegation's main purpose in Egypt is to improve and deepen relations with el-Sissi, and to support the economy to help ensure the stability of Egypt.

"If Egypt fails, every problem in the Mideast becomes a hundred times worse," Graham said.

Graham, along with Sen. John McCain, was vehemently opposed to the July 2013 military ouster of elected Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, led by then-Defense Minister el-Sissi. The military removed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood amid mass protests against his one-year rule.

But on Sunday, Graham appeared to back el-Sissi as "a military man who understands terrorism" and "someone I can work with."

In recent weeks, Egypt was rebuked over its human rights record by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry as well as the European Union's foreign affairs arm, the European Parliament, the U.N. Council for Human Rights and several Western European nations, including key trade partner and EU heavyweight Germany. The case of an Italian student kidnapped and tortured to death in Cairo has also poisoned Egypt's long close ties with Italy, amid suspicions that it was carried out by members of the security forces.

Graham acknowledged those concerns and said he and his colleagues are encouraging Egypt to improve its record on human rights and freedom of expression.

"Our hope is that the Egyptian government can prove to the international community that they're sincerely responding to legitimate concerns while at the same time trying to maintain security," Graham said.
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MILWAUKEE -- Donald Trump on Sunday called for John Kasich to drop out of the Republican presidential race, arguing that the Ohio governor who's only won his home state so far shouldn't be allowed to continue accumulating delegates if he has no chance of being the nominee.

Working to recover his edge after a difficult week, Trump said Kasich could ask to be considered at the GOP convention in Cleveland in July even without competing in the remaining nominating contests. Trump told reporters at a Milwaukee diner that he had relayed his concerns to Republican National Committee officials at a meeting in Washington this past week.

"He's taking my votes," Trump said about Kasich.

Kasich's campaign tried to flip the script, contending that neither Trump nor Texas Sen. Ted Cruz would have enough delegates to win the nomination outright going into the convention.

"Since he thinks it's such a good idea, we look forward to Trump dropping out before the convention," said Kasich spokesman Chris Schrimpf.

And Kasich, in an earlier interview with ABC's "This Week," said he expected an "open convention" and that delegates would look to him, with experience in Congress and the state level. "That's why I think I'm going to be the nominee."

Trump's declaration, two days before Wisconsin's closely watched primary, came as Republican concerns grew about the prospect of convention chaos if Trump fails to lock up his party's nomination -- or even if he does.

Behind Cruz in the polls in Wisconsin, Trump faces the prospect that a loss Tuesday will raise further doubts that he can net the needed delegates, making it far easier for his party to oust him in a floor fight at the July convention.

Cruz, Trump's closest challenger, has only a small chance to overtake him in the delegate hunt before the convention. Kasich has none.

Kasich has acknowledged that a contested convention is his only path to victory. He has faced calls in the past to bow out, but those nudges had dimmed following his decisive victory last month in his home state.

Still, Kasich suggested that a contested convention would not involve the chaos that party leaders fear. He told ABC that a contested convention will be "so much fun."

"Kids will spend less time focusing on Bieber and Kardashian and more time focusing on how we elect presidents," Kasich said. "It will be so cool."

Republicans fear an unseemly internal fight would damage the party in November's general election, and Trump isn't ruling out the possibility that if he's not the nominee, he could run as an independent, likely sinking the GOP's chances for winning the White House.

Quips like that "have consequences," said GOP Chairman Reince Priebus, though he tried to quell talk of a blowout convention fight. He told ABC that the process will be clear and open, with cameras there "at every step of the way."

Frustration with the GOP field has stoked calls in some Republican corners for the party to use a contested convention to pick someone not even on the ballot. Priebus acknowledged that was a remote possibility, but he said he believed his party's candidate would be "someone who's running."

Working to right his campaign after a rough patch, Trump has found himself on the defensive on Sunday, struggling to explain away controversies over abortion, nuclear weapons and his campaign manager.

"Was this my best week? I guess not," Trump said on "Fox News Sunday."

Yet as he campaigned in Milwaukee, Trump returned to the confident bravado his supporters have come to expect. Stopping for breakfast at Miss Katie's Diner, Trump predicted he'd do "very well" on Tuesday.

"We're going to have a big surprise for you," he said, adding: "We're going to have a big success."

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton said she has yet to get a request from the FBI for an interview regarding the private email system she used as secretary of state, an issue still dogging her campaign.

She also told NBC's "Meet the Press" that she was confident her campaign and Bernie Sanders' could settle on a debate date before the consequential April 19 primary in New York.

The backbiting on both sides played out as President Barack Obama has warned that foreign leaders are alarmed about what they see transpiring in the U.S. election -- especially Trump, whose calls for banning Muslim immigrants has reverberated in the Middle East. But Sen. Lindsey Graham, who dropped out of the race and has urged Republicans to support Cruz, said Sunday that people in the Mideast need not fear too much.

"The Congress is going to be around, no matter who is the president," Graham, R-S.C., said in Cairo, while leading a congressional delegation to the region.

In a Washington Post interview, Trump warned that a "very massive recession" is coming, and he said he could eliminate the $19 trillion national debt in two terms. Most economists say that's impossible without wrecking the federal budget.

The Democratic race has grown increasingly bitter, too, though less hostile than the Republican brawl. Both Clinton and Sanders had their sights set on New York, where Clinton hopes to avoid an upset in the state she represented in the Senate.

Clinton said she feels "sorry" for young Sanders supporters who believe unreliable information spread by his campaign about support she's received from fossil-fuel interests.

Not so, Sanders told CNN's "State of the Union."

"We were not lying," he said. "We were telling the truth."

Lederman reported from Washington.
In the two years since I left York Correctional Institution, Ive earned a reputation for having an opinion on anything related to prison.

Shifting inmates to hospitals instead of prisons? Dont bother  the treatment in both are the same. Ban the Box? Nice start  but doesnt go far enough. Our Governor, Dannel Malloy, is the ultimate criminal justice reformer? Not really, at least not yet.

On prison gerrymandering - the practice of counting prisoners in the town in which they are incarcerated instead of their hometowns for the U.S. census  I have an opinion, too; the phenomenon should be called something else. The phrase prison gerrymandering puts voting and prisoners in the same thought, so the topic makes people think that its a prisoners problem when its not.

Connecticut residents  both in and outside of prison  need to understand how their own interests are at stake when the General Assembly votes on Senate Bill 459 sometime in the next six weeks.

When the last census was taken in April 2010, I was one of 11 people from Orange held in the states correctional facilities. All of us were counted in towns other than Orange. I should have been counted at home (where I am registered to vote), but I wasnt because the Census Bureau counts me where the prison was located, so at redistricting time I ended up being counted as if I were a constituent of that district.

This didnt seem to harm me in an immediate way.

The people immediately hurt by this were the other residents of Orange. Because, instead of counting us in the district where I and other Orange-based inmates would return and vote, we were counted toward the constituent total of a different district.

Eleven people being miscounted is probably, ultimately, not that big of a deal. But consider the example of Hartford, a city that lost 2,631 people to incarceration when the last census was taken.

Wherever they were counted, they padded the population in that district even though the likelihood of their returning and voting in that district was close to zero.

When those 2,631 people return to their hometown of Hartford, to a district that already includes the 20,000 people needed for a House district or 80,000 for a Senate district, the number of potential voters in the city would go over the district count, namely to 22,631 or 82,631.

This is the impetus for the bill to end prison gerrymandering  that the voters in places where there are no prisons, namely 157 or 92 percent of Connecticuts 169 towns and cities  have their representation diluted. This violates the equal representation required by the United States Supreme Court in a series of decisions spanning more than 50 years.

Its more than just a theoretical argument; in Jefferson County, Fla., half of the voting age residents are incarcerated. A Florida appeals court decided just last week -- on the same day that Connecticuts Judiciary Committee passed the bill for a vote by the entire legislature [March 21]  that counting prisoners in their facilities rather than in their hometowns was blatantly unconstitutional.

While come communities lose representation, others gain power. One senate district in the state, District 7, contains no fewer than six correctional facilities. If the census was taken last October, the last date for which prison population counts are available, Connecticuts Senate District 7 would count 5,179 people who are constituents of other senators.

It may seem like residents of East Lyme, the town that contains York CI, would prefer gerrymandering as Senate District 20 counts all of those inmates in its district count even though they arent voting. But consider that the Niantic Annex, another prison in Senate District 20, closed in February. Assuming it remains shuttered, the district lines will need to be redrawn again after the 2020 census to compensate for that loss of people; its possible that State Sen. Paul Formica, whom people of East Lyme elected, wont be able represent all of his supporters in a few years because some voters will be cut out of the old district to make a new one that reflects the new census count with the closed prison.

In the age of decarceration and justice reform, district lines will need to be redrawn every 10 years. And when district lines move, it changes who is eligible to represent people in a certain location.

My time in prison taught me how important it is to choose our leaders.

As a newly sentenced inmate, I entered with masses of parolees who were being returned to custody in the aftermath of the Cheshire murders. Our popularly elected governor at the time, Gov. M. Jodi Rell, had decided to remand everyone on parole, regardless of their success and safety out in society.

While I was incarcerated, I earned approximately one year off my sentence from Risk Reduction Earned Credits, through a program that Governor Malloy signed into law in his first year in office after many state legislators opposed it.

Had other people been elected governor or state representatives and senators, my life would have been different. Now I see, in very real terms, that our democracy is too important to be tainted by inaccurate counting methods. I assume other Connecticut residents whose lives are affected by policy feel the same.

The problem is that Connecticut residents attitudes toward prison gerrymandering have been influenced by the association of gerrymandering and federal and state funding. Its a false connection that has been used by lawmakers - those who stand to have their districts count fixed in favor of the people - to trick the residents of the state to urge their legislative representatives not to support any bill that stops conducting the census this way.

Contrary to rumor, ending prison gerrymandering in the state does not affect any funding from the federal government nor any state funding for municipalities.

Prison gerrymandering isnt an issue belonging to any one group; we all lose with prison gerrymandering. Its purely an issue of constitutional rights - a right to equal representation that everyone enjoys. Connecticut residents who dont have large prisons in their district have that right to equal representation watered down.

Prison gerrymandering should be called power dilution because thats what it is. Four states have passed laws to assure that prisoners are counted in their hometowns for the purposes of determining populations for legislative districts to avoid this unnecessary  and illegal - shift of power.

Its time that Connecticut does the same.

Chandra Bozelko lives in Orange and is a former inmate at York Correctional Institution.
News / National

by Crime Reporter

Nine people were recently killed in separate assaults between March 17 and 21.Chief police spokesperson Senior Assistant Commissioner Charity Charamba, last week said during the same period five armed robberies were recorded."Zimbabwe Republic Police has noted with concern the recent occurrence of murder and armed robbery cases throughout the country. Statistics for March 17 to 21 indicate that the nine cases recorded were as a result of domestic disputes, beer drinking, drug abuse and other social or related matters," she said.She said of nine cases, Midlands province had the highest number with four, Matabeleland South had two while Bulawayo, Mashonaland West and Mashonaland East recorded one case each.Snr Asst Comm Charamba said it was disturbing to note that some people took the law into their own hands and they used knives, knobkerries and beer bottles to commit crime.In one of the cases a 24-year-old Bulawayo woman was found dead after being murdered by unknown assailants who robbed her of her valuables.Snr Asst Comm Charamba said they arrested a man in Silobela after he allegedly struck several times with an axe a two-year-old boy following a dispute over witchcraft with his parents. On armed robbery cases, Snr Asst Comm Charamba said some of the robbers pounced on two truck drivers, a shop owner, a fuel attendant and raided houses while people were sleeping during the night.Last year ACL received a combined $9 million from Geneva-based investment company, Symbiotics Group and Dutch development bank, FMO.Mr Matiza last year said ACL has keen interest in supporting the agricultural sector given the key role that this sector plays in the country's economy. He said the leasing industry requires more long-term funding to meet the needs of the local industry.
Republicans, once again, lead the way out of another deficit, at least until July 1, 2016. State budget deficits have unfortunately become the norm. At each critical juncture in the evolution of Connecticuts finances, when answers to budget shortfall were not forthcoming, the minority party stepped forward with a way out of the fiscal crisis.

This bi-partisan deficit mitigation plan saves municipal aid, hospitals and social services and is a positive step forward after years of denial, delay, and inaction which only served to make Connecticuts financial problems so much worse. But this is not enough. Just as the legislature closes a $220 million short fall for June 2016, the can is being kicked down the road. The majority party still refuses to reform the most expensive and generous state employee fringe benefits and pensions. The state is facing a $900 million shortfall in July 2016, and a $4.5 billion shortfall in the following two years.
News / National

by Oliver Kazunga

NATIONAL Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) workers have vowed not to end their strike, which enters its seventh day today, until they are paid their 15 months outstanding salaries.On Wednesday, the workers rejected an offer by management to pay them between $175 and $350 each.In an interview yesterday, the Zimbabwe Amalgamated Railway Workers Union president, Kamurai Moyo, said: "I can confirm that our members are on strike and the industrial action continues tomorrow because nothing so far has been agreed between the workers and management."For a long time now, the workers have been demanding payment of their outstanding salaries and by now management must have come up with a sustainable way to pay the workers their dues," he said.Moyo added that the new NRZ board chairman Larry Mavhima has promised to address the workers this week.Efforts to get a comment from Mavhima and NRZ public relations manager Fanuel Masikati were fruitless as their phones were not being answered.Over 4,000 NRZ workers across the country downed tools bringing to a halt operations including the transportation of imported wheat and drought relief maize.The ailing parastatal, which is saddled with a $144 million debt with the workers owed about $68 million, continues to experience plummeting traffic levels, which have negatively impacted on income."NRZ management shouldn't hide behind declining traffic levels as a reason for not paying the workers their outstanding salaries. Why can't they pay the workers from the income being generated from NRZ properties it's renting out," argued Moyo.On Friday, he said, the workers' union leadership was introduced to the new NRZ board chairman and nothing was discussed regarding the strike by the workers."Since he (Mavhima) is coming in as the new board chairman, the meeting was just meant to introduce him to the union leadership; nothing to do with the strike was discussed at the meeting," said Moyo.In a suspected act of sabotage, NRZ workers are alleged to have caused a goods train to derail in Gweru last week.The train, with 26 wagons, was headed for South Africa with more than 1,000 tonnes of nickel.Media reports say preliminary investigations indicate that four points along the railway line behind Fairmile Hotel in Gweru were tampered with and covered with sorghum stalks to obscure the engine man's vision.Asked to comment on the allegations that NRZ workers in Gweru were involved in sabotaging their employer by derailing the goods train, Moyo said:"That statement lacks credibility because we've always talked of NRZ equipment being obsolete."And just over the Easter Holidays, trains also derailed in Makwiro and Munyati areas so, by operating with such infrastructure, trains are bound to derail."However, we leave the matter to the authorities to investigate the alleged sabotage."
Phillies bash Padres in wild Game 4 to move to brink of World Series

Philadelphia hit four home runs in the win, overcoming a 4-0 deficit before they even came to bat against San Diego.
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Linkedin Aries Heru Prasetyo (The Jakarta Post) Taipei  Mon, April 4, 2016

Another bomb attack happened in Brussels, Belgium. Some said that this was a matter of politics and radicalism, but other hypotheses regarded the terrorism in economic terms. Referring to the 2015 Global Terrorism Index, the economic cost of terrorism reached a 10-fold increase since 2000. The year 2014 was the highest point in three decades. The number led us to the conclusion that the correlation of economics to terrorism was getting higher.

Analyses suggest the main fertilizer for radicalism is youth unemployment. In most European countries, immigrants have become the predominant social problem, not only concerning humantarian issues, but also over providing economic opportunities for all. Eurostat data indicates a 12.6 percent increase of unemployment among non-European-born youth from 2007 to 2014. This is the highest since 2000.

Terrorism is related to economics because of the system. Capitalism  acknowledged to be worlds current economic system  tends to create firm structures. Every company operates with limited resources. Thats why most suppliers have strong bargaining power. The role of networking has made the power stronger.

This also occurs in the financial sector. Most banking systems operate through multinational conglomerates. This allows funds to be transferred internationally from consumption-oriented countries to investment-focused countries. More nations unconsciously develop themselves into markets for another nations product. In fact, capital fleeing from developing country has rapidly grown for the last five years, forcing stock markets to actively fluctuate.

Under the capitalist framework, a group of nations achieves success in enhancing welfare while others must keep fighting poverty. Today, more political studies have pointed out that this symptom provokes a quick response from radical ideologists. Desire for equality is the norm.

Dealing with these facts is not simple. Another economic system must be developed to balance the forces of capitalism. Otherwise the existing gap will widen for the next five years.

Throughout the years, many scholars had succeeded in developing a possible socio-economic counteraction. Although the concept is ideal for creating independent economic power among nations, free trade and open economies seem to be crucial constraints. They must have the power to dismantle the walls of established capitalism.

One major example of progress has been made in the last three years. Socio-economics has become a promising third economic force. Using social awareness and movements, the concept is believed to have a hidden power that can deal with a slowing economy. At least it is useful to minimize the causal effects between those two variables.

***

Aries Heru Prasetyo is a PhD student, College of Management, Fu Jen Catholic University, Republic of China. He is a part of research team for Taiwan industry.

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Linkedin Norman Joshua (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, April 4, 2016

Quite recently, President Joko Jokowi Widodo announced that the US$15 billion Masela (Abadi LNG project) gas field and plant development in the southwestern part of Maluku province is going to proceed after being mired in a range of discussions involving the Indonesian government.

President Jokowi unilaterally announced that the plan will be substantially modified to be an onshore liquefied natural gas (OLNG) plant, in contrast to the prior development plan submitted by contractors Inpex and Royal Dutch Shell. Originally, the project was planned to be equipped with a state-of-the-art floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) facility.

President Jokowi's executive order signified a decisive end to the debates over the multi-million-dollar project.

The Masela production-sharing contract (PSC) block was acquired by Japanese oil and gas company Inpex in 1998, when the company purchased 100 percent interest over the PSC. In 2000, the company discovered the Abadi Gas Field, eventually recognized as one of the largest deepwater gas projects currently being developed in Indonesia, containing 10.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves.

Inpex and fellow shareholder Royal Dutch Shell proposed a plan of development to the Special Regulatory Task Force on Oil and Gas (SKKMigas) to construct an FLNG with the capability to handle 7.5 million tons of LNG per year. Although the plan was cleared by SKKMigas and the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, Coordinating Maritime Affairs and Natural Resources Minister Rizal Ramli intervened in October 2015, calling for land-based construction of the mammoth LNG plants in order to promote regional economic development in the area.

If we examine the debates over the problem, it is clear that there are economic and political factors in play concerning Masela. Discussions over production costs, availability of markets, slowing demand, political interventions and ecological and environmental impacts dominated the discourse. This writer does not have the capacity to argue for or against the stances brought forward by their proponents. However, it is important for us to reflect on the past, when an intriguingly similar conundrum also happened in the Indonesian oil and gas sector.

President Jokowi's Cabinet reshuffle (and renaming) last August and how he reacted to Coordinating Minister Ramlis intervention seem to resemble the brief removal of the Directorate General of Oil and Gas (Dirjen Migas) in 1966 during the New Order regime. Slamet Bratanata, then minister of mines, once tried to audit Permina (Pertaminas predecessor). Migas was detached from the ministry by then-president Soeharto. Ministerial control over the lucrative industry was reestablished in 1967, after Bratanata was succeeded by Sumantri Brodjonegoro.

During the height of the 1973 oil crisis, the state-owned oil company succumbed to a huge amount of short and long-term loans. Dubbed the Pertamina Crisis, the near-default surprised almost everyone in the oil and gas business, because Pertamina was one of the worlds largest corporations at that time (it was in the list of 200 largest corporations in the world by the Far East Economic Review) and oil prices were at an all-time high.

It was eventually discovered that the company was underperforming because of excessive diversification (it managed massive projects, such as Krakatau Steel, the Batam Island development and a rice estate in South Sumatra), mismanagement and corruption and the effects of the global lending boom of the 1970s. As a result, Indonesias foreign debt burden increased substantially and Pertaminas director, Ibnu Sutowo, was replaced in 1976.

Earlier this March, Coordinating Minister Ramli and Minister Said quarreled publicly in social media over the Masela project, further exposing internal discord in the Cabinet. The disunity reminds us of the schism between economic nationalists (i.e. Ibnu Sutowo) and Bappenas technocrats (Widjojo Nitisastro, et al.), which was clearly evident throughout the New Orders economic history.

During good times, economic policy tends to be nationalistic. When the economy faced serious challenges, such as in 1975, the technocrats took over and implemented a more liberal approach to policy making.

Certainly, the oil and gas sector represents an enduring Indonesian passion to control its natural resources as it is envisioned in the Indonesian Constitution. I could not agree more with President Jokowi's and Coordinating Minister Ramlis indefatigable calls for further contributions toward regional development. However, political disunity and policy inconsistencies over cost and capital-intensive projects may prove detrimental to Indonesias outlook in the eyes of foreign and domestic investors.

Excessively nationalistic policies also may send a reverberating signal to the market. As Amy Jaffe pointed out in Beyond the Resource Curse (2012), nationalistic approaches toward resource policy constrains the development of new oil and gas sources. Thus, they may lead to shortfalls.

It is also important for us to note that the Indonesian resource sector has a long-lived reputation of being inefficient (read: corrupt). We also may question the extent of domestic investors technological capabilities in handling future Masela-type deepwater projects.

Perhaps it would be wiser if the Jokowi administration focused more on maintaining a conducive investment climate in the face of a global economic slowdown, manage the disagreements within its policymakers (rather than proudly broadcasting them in memes), pursue better solutions for stakeholders of the Masela project and try to learn something from history.

***

Norman Joshua is the 2015 Arryman Fellow at Equality Development and Globalization Studies, Buffett Institute, Northwestern University. Primarily concerned with economic and social history, his current research is on the Indonesian petroleum industry during the early New Order regime. He also writes for Majalah Loka (www.loka-majalah.com/normanjs). He can be contacted at normanjoshua2015@u.northwestern.edu.

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Linkedin Charissa Yong (The Straits Times)  Mon, April 4, 2016

South Korea has a pressing problem that Singapore is only too familiar with: Not enough babies are being born to sustain the population.

Already, South Korea's working-age population will begin to fall after this year .

If the stork does not increase its deliveries, the total population there will start to shrink after 2030.

After that, the demand for labor will exceed the number of workers available, exacerbated by a rapidly ageing population.

South Korea's economy is projected to slow as a result.

At the same time, there will not be enough locals to staff the military, and there will be more university places than high school graduates.

The Korean government sat up and took notice when its total fertility rate - the average number of children a woman will have over her lifetime - hit a record low of 1.08 in 2005.

This is well below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman.

It began its first five-year national plan to boost the birth rate, which covered different angles, from subsidizing infertility treatments to raising childcare leave benefits.

Now in its third edition and trillions of Korean won later, South Korea's total fertility rate inched back upwards to 1.21 in 2014 - very close to Singapore's 1.25 that same year.

Given the Korean experience of having thrown lots of government money at the problem, with limited success, it is small wonder that Singapore's policymakers are closely watching their fellow Asian tiger.

LESSONS FROM SCANDINAVIA

Enter Denmark.

The Scandinavian welfare state's population of 5.6 million is close to Singapore's 5.4 million, but the resemblance stops there.

While about 3 per cent of children in Singapore are born outside marriage, in Denmark, more than half are.

Its total fertility rate in 2014 was 1.7 - below replacement, but high enough to indicate that some lessons might be gleaned from its success.

Last month, officials from Singapore's National Population and Talent Division went on a study trip to South Korea and Denmark to look at what marriage and parenthood policies worked and what did not.

Insight was part of the media delegation on the trip.

Led by Senior Minister of State Josephine Teo, whose duties include overseeing population matters, the policymakers looked at a wide range of topics, from labor agreements and home-based infant care arrangements in Denmark's capital, Copenhagen, to family-friendly companies and even dating agencies in Seoul.

Singapore's interest comes amid the Government's push to expand paternity leave and explore new arrangements to care for infants, to raise Singapore's total fertility rate from its dismal 1.25.

How might this targeting of married couples interested in having children - and encouraging parents to have more - work?

Government policies may be one part of the equation, but while these are necessary, they are not in themselves sufficient for change.

Insight extracts five possible ingredients for success from the field trip and what it will take for Singapore to have them.

1. PATERNITY LEAVE

Ensuring that dads dont lose out in pay seems crucial. But who foots the bill?

Fathers in South Korea get five days of paternity leave, a scheme introduced in 2011 to boost the flagging birth rate.

Danish dads get two weeks off, with the option to share up to 32 weeks of parental leave with their partners.

Yet the take-up rate differs drastically.

While 60 per cent of Danish fathers take up paternity leave, less than 2 per cent in South Korea do so.

In Singapore, bosses must offer new dads one week of paternity leave, funded by the Government. While dads are eligible for a second week of government-paid paternity leave, it is up to the employer to voluntarily agree to this.

With Singapores upcoming move to make the second week of paternity leave compulsory, lessons from Denmark and South Korea will be instructive.

The move is likely to be announced this month during the parliamentary debate on ministries budgets.

The drive for more paternity leave comes three years after the scheme was first rolled out in 2013, and aims to encourage married couples to share the responsibility of parenting.

But in the lead-up, the Government has faced some resistance from businesses, many of which are already grappling with a manpower crunch.

Dads being gone for up to two weeks at a stretch will place even more of a strain on their operations, bosses argue.

One factor for success may be the Governments willingness to foot the bill.

In South Korea, fathers who are on paternity leave have to forgo their salary.

Instead, they are given an allowance of40per cent of their monthly salary from the government, capped at 1.5 million won($1,760).

This 1.5 million won seems insignificant. That is why income replacement policies seem to be necessary from our viewpoint, says associate research fellow at the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs think-tank Park Jong Seo.

In Denmark, where collective agreements for working conditions are negotiated by employer federations and labor unions, companies pick up the tab for parental leave.

But in Singapore, both weeks of paternity leave  the compulsory element, and the week requiring the employers agreement  are funded by the Government, with each week capped at $2,500.

The lesson for Singapore appears to be that fully funding paternity leave makes it more likely that dads will find taking it up worthwhile.

But for Singapore, paternity leave is likely to be more popular if the Government foots the bill, as companies already struggle with high labor costs.

2. SUPPORTIVE BOSSES

In Korea, employers are stuck in the old mindset; in Denmark, it's about good business sense

Government baby-boosting policies and funds can only go so far if employers are reluctant to get on board.

"You can have the same policy, but whether it has the same impact depends very much on the level of community support. So employers play a very big part in this," said Senior Minister of State Josephine Teo in an interview with the media, on the push to get dads more involved.

Korea's officials and researchers think so too, pointing to how men are reluctant to take paternity and parental leave because of being perceived as lazy or unmotivated by their bosses.

The numbers are telling.

A study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development group of economies shows Korean men spend 4.6 hours per week on housework and childcare, compared to the 22 hours that Danish men put in at home.

Korean Employment and Labor Minister Lee Ki Kweon said: "Korean workers are conscious about how their colleagues and bosses perceive their leave taking.

"There is a need to help business owners change their mindsets."

Another complication is that employees of small firms find it harder to take parental leave.

For every 11.2 employees in big corporations who take childcare leave, only 4.6 employees in small and medium-sized enterprises do so, according to statistics from Korea's Ministry of Health and Welfare.

To tackle this, Korea plans to expand support services for hiring substitute workers to fill in while the new fathers or mothers are away.

As for Denmark, employer support there appears to be stronger and parents greatly value the availability of flexible work arrangements, noted Mrs Teo in the same media interview.

But ultimately, employers have to decide that it makes good business sense to offer their employees such pro-family leave policies, because it attracts talented workers, she said.

"Ultimately the businesses are doing it because it meets their business interests. They're not doing it for charity. They didn't sit there and tell us, 'It's because we want to be good corporate citizens'. No, they told us very clearly that it makes good business sense."

3. WORK-LIFE BALANCE

Less work = more kids. But can cultures that 'stigmatize' doing less adapt to the change effectively? After 4pm, one would be hard-pressed to find working parents of young children still in the office in Denmark.

Chalk it up to the strong culture of work-life balance there.

Danish commodities trader Florian Friis, 42, father of a seven-year-old boy, said: "It's considered a little impolite or silly if you book a meeting with parents after 4pm. Most likely, they will not show up or they will leave after 10 minutes to pick up their children."

Mr Friis and his Singaporean wife Elaine, 41, a contracts and procurement associate, are expecting their second child next month.

Like her Danish colleagues, she leaves earlier to pick up her son and makes up for it later at night, and works at home once a week.

Said Mr Friis: "There's a general acceptance that that's just what you do when you have a kid. It's totally normal."

When it comes to work-life balance, Denmark and Korea lie at different ends of the spectrum.

Part of this is the number of hours worked. Koreans worked for 2,124 hours on average in 2014, the second-longest in the OECD's 34 economies.

In contrast, Danes worked an average of 1,436 hours that year, the fourth-lowest among the OECD.

The other part is cultural norms.

"If someone goes home earlier than their superiors, it's frowned upon," said Ms Kim Yuna, senior manager at Korea Technology Finance Corporation (Kotec), a family-friendly firm the Singaporean delegation visited.

That is why Korea's working mums may choose to not make use of flexible work arrangements. The organizational culture is such that workers might also resent their colleagues on parental leave for increasing their own workload, added Ms Kim.

But in Korea, achieving work-life balance is still seen as the key to growth in fertility for women. The Korean health and welfare ministry found that women with good work-life balance have more kids.

While working women in general have 0.7 children each on average, female government officials have 1.4. The civil service is seen as having a better work-life balance than the private sector.

Singapore's average working hours of 46 hours a week in 2014 is more like Korea's 47-hour work week, rather than Denmark's 37.

As such, any change in culture will take time - as was the case at Kotec, which introduced work-life policies, such as flexible working hours and starting times, as well as remote offices outside its regional headquarters in 2012.

"When we started to implement this, it was difficult to change people's preconceptions of what it was like before, " says Kotec human resources manager Jo Gyu Dae. But the take-up rate improved over time, as did workers' productivity, he added.

Singapore may have to weigh the trade-offs between costs, and happier employees and a higher birthrate.

4. INFANT CARE: MORE OPTIONS

Danes enjoy subsidized private daycare - but the downside is high taxes

While working parents in Singapore can often look to their own parents for childcare help, or hire a maid, or put their young ones in a private care centre, Danish mums and dads have an additional option.

This is state-subsidized care by home-based private child-minders in their own neighborhood.

In Denmark, working parents can choose to send their infants to the homes of private child-minders. The infants are looked after, together with other children in the neighborhood, in these home- based settings during the day.

Under the Danish system of private daycare, municipalities can employ a parent to take care of her own child as well as the child of another family. The subsidies are similar across all daycare types.

Professionally trained in early childhood education and paid by the state, these registered child-minders in private daycare are visited regularly by supervisors.

Parents who want more academic training to help their children start to learn numbers and grammar, in preparation for their school years, can opt for nurseries.

Such private daycare is part of Denmark's extensive network of infant care, which helps give mothers the peace of mind to return to work after giving birth, if they want to.

State subsidies mean parents fork out less cash for infant care.

And with only a small number of children cared for in such settings conveniently located in the neighborhood, they receive a lot of personal attention.

Other forms of daycare for young infants range from differently sized public daycare centers to nurseries to private child-minding.

Danish children have the right to a childcare spot from the age of six months, which must be provided for by their municipality.

"It lowers the anxiety of having children," says sociologist Karen Margrethe Dahl from the Danish National Center for Social Research.

About 75 per cent of the cost of childcare is subsidized, with parents paying the remaining 25 per cent. The cost is borne by the municipality, which also sets the range of prices paid by parents.

Singapore's policymakers are interested in exploring whether the Danish system of home-based private child-minders will work here.

"Many people in Singapore were brought up by nannies, so it's not as if home-based childcare did not exist. It existed," says Mrs Teo.

But over time, parents began to prefer a more supervised setting, where the caregiver is known to have gone through professional training in childcare.

Now, it will depend on how comfortable parents are with taking their children to another person's home these days, she adds.

"We'll have to study it a little bit more - what are the features that parents find helpful and want, and how we can organize it," she says.

GOVT FUNDING, AT A COST

The model is one thing. How to pay for it is another.

The Danish government's universal provision of such childcare services is made possible by high taxes.

In Denmark, the personal income tax rate stands between 46 and 51 per cent of gross income, and in terms of consumption taxes, Danes pay a value-added tax of 25 per cent on all purchases.

Government funding may also not necessarily ease the financial burden of raising children.

For instance, South Korea expanded free childcare for children from newborn to five years to all families, regardless of household income, in 2013.

It was part of a national drive to reduce the childcare burden for married couples, and the budget increased from 1.8 trillion won to 6.7 trillion won (S$8 billion).

This reduced the proportion of household income spent on childcare from 6 per cent to about 3.4 per cent, according to statistics from the Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare.

But ironically, parents spent these savings on more private education for their children instead, said policymakers there.

5. SOCIETAL ATTITUDES

In Korea, fathers are seen as providers; in Denmark, fathers are known to be nurturers too

Another key difference between Denmark and Korea is how involved fathers are in raising their children.

This affects the take-up rate for paternity leave.

Says Kihasa associate research fellow Kim Jun Eung: "Traditionally, Koreans think it is the woman's responsibility to take care of the kids.

"In the past, dad will work outside while mum takes care of the housework, and that view has remained."

This is why the culture of fathers taking leave is still uncommon, adds her colleague, Dr Park .

However in Denmark, it is common to see fathers ferrying their children to daycare centers or pushing prams on the streets.

Says Danish-based Singaporean, Ms Ng-Friis : "You see a lot of fathers pushing prams on the streets. This is one big characteristic of Denmark. Fathers are very involved here and that makes the family work."

Things changed a lot in one generation, says her husband Mr Friis, recounting how his father spent much less time with him and his siblings.

"Back in the 1970s and 1980s, it was quite common that a man would go to work and prioritize his job, even if he would have got away with coming home a bit earlier," he says.

When it comes to Singapore today, Mrs Teo is optimistic, noting that young fathers whom she has met are enthusiastic about wanting to be involved in parenting.

This is unlike previous generations where men were more comfortable solely in the traditional role of provider for the family.

"A lot of fathers talk about the joy that they get out of bonding with their children at different ages, and starting from a very young age, soon after birth," she says.

"I think the time has come for Singapore, for fathers, because they're willing to play a bigger part and we should enable it."
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Linkedin Claire Lee (The Korea Herald/Asia News Network)  Mon, April 4, 2016

When Kim Mi-eun was in middle school, she accidentally read a story about an incest victim in a newspaper. Thats when she realized she had been constantly raped by her father, who had told her to keep their playing sessions a secret.

Id been abused by my father since I was a first-grader, and it lasted for 12 years, Kim told The Korea Herald. During sex education classes at school, they teach you to run away when a stranger tries to sexually abuse you. But they dont specifically tell you its abuse when your own father engages in sexual activities with you. I was confused, but I didnt really get it until I read the news story.

Kim is one of many South Korean incest victims who received support at Sunflower Centers, government-affiliated support institutions for sexual violence victims.

After receiving many years of therapy and psychiatric treatment, the college student now volunteers at the center to support other victims like her. Her mother, who is no longer with Kims assailant, has also formed a support group for incest victims and their families.

I wanted to break all the stereotypes, Kims mother said. I wanted to prove that incest victims and their families do survive post-abuse, and they indeed want the abusers to be punished.

While rarely a subject of public attention, incest against minors is not uncommon in South Korea.

According to the Gender Ministrys latest data, 17 percent of all reported rape cases against Koreans aged 19 or under in 2014 were committed by the victims biological parents or siblings. We predict that the actual proportion would be higher, considering a lot of incest cases remain unreported, said an official from the ministry.

Alarmed by the statistics, the Sunflower Centers have begun offering therapy sessions for the victims parents -- the spouses of the abusers -- starting from this year.

Many times, the mothers dont believe it when their children tell them theyve been abused by their fathers, said Park Hye-young, the associate director of the Sunflower Centers Seoul branch.

And sometimes the mothers dont want to report their spouse to the police because they are worried about losing the breadwinner of the family. The role of the spouse of the abuser is crucial for children who have been sexually abused by one of their parents, especially once they decide to file a complaint. This is why weve decided to run programs for the mothers.

Even for Kim and her mother, the process hasnt been easy. While attending high school, Kim started experiencing both visual and auditory hallucinations resulting from enduring abuse. She would often see another version of herself in front of her, who would constantly tell her to leave for somewhere else.

Id been always told (by my abuser) that if I told anyone about it, our family may not be able to live together. I was too afraid to hurt my mother, so I kept it to myself as long as I could, she said.

Finding her condition unbearable, while not wanting to reveal the truth to her mother, Kim secretly visited a youth support center to seek help. Her visits to the institution were discovered by her schoolteacher, who eventually reported the case to the Sunflower Center.

I was overwhelmed and I didnt know what to do, said Kims mother, recalling the moment she found out the truth at the center. My ex-spouse would also physically abuse me in the presence of our children at home. Having watched me being abused by her father, I think my daughter instinctively thought Id be incapable of helping her even if I found out the truth. And this still breaks my heart.

Upon learning the truth 12 years later, Kims mother began to take the fight immediately. She reported her husband to the police and filed for divorce. One of the toughest challenges was dealing with her in-laws, who tried to persuade her daughter to drop the case against her father. Even her friends suggested its more practical to settle the case and move overseas with her daughter using the settlement money.

The abusers father told my daughter, in my presence, what kind of a daughter sues her own father and lets him serve a prison term? said Kims mother. I told my daughter to get up and we left the house on the spot. There was nothing more to talk about.

Kim told The Korea Herald that her paternal grandmother once threatened to kill her for wanting to see her father punished. It was traumatic, she said. I thought out of all people, my grandmother would understand.

Associate director Park said Kims experience with her fathers side of the family is common among incest victims, and many in fact end up dropping their cases after being guilt-tripped by their relatives.

I must say, not every victims mother protects their child the way Kims mother has done, she told The Korea Herald. Many times, the mothers are afraid to lose their spouses because they dont want to lose that sense of financial and emotional security. Weve had the victims relatives -- mostly the parents and siblings of the abuser -- storming into the center and screaming at the victims for being an unfilial child for wanting to file a complaint against her or his own parent.

Kims father received a 10-year prison term about five years ago, which both Kim and her mother think is too light. Even after he was jailed, I would see hallucinations of the abuser in front of me, said Kim. I knew that he was in jail physically, but the hallucination of him would say, hey, come here. Dad is back.

Still, the two are determined to prove that incest victims do survive and live fulfilling lives post-abuse. Now a college student majoring in cinema studies, Kims dream is to make a film featuring her own experiences as a survivor. I want to prove to my fellow survivors that incest victims can make art, and openly share their stories, she said.

And for those who are being pressured by their relatives not to file a complaint against their own parent, I want to tell them that by not reporting the abuser, you may be doing injustice to potential victims of sexual violence. When you report your abuser, you are not only doing it for yourself, but also for the world.

The name of the interviewed victim has been changed upon request. -- Ed.
News / National

by Cletus Mushanawani

THOSE in Government calling on President Mugabe to leave office should go as well as some of them have been ministers in Government since 1980, Minister of State for Manicaland Provincial Affairs, Mandi Chimene, has said.Speaking at a Zanu-PF youth inter-district conference at Marymount Teachers' College in Mutare yesterday, Chimene, said: "It is shocking to hear some people saying President Mugabe has overstayed in office, yet some of the people saying that have been in office since 1980.The same people have also overstayed their welcome and they should be kicked out of the party. Some people are saying the Zanu-PF house is on fire with more people in line for firing, but who wants to continue having rubbish in their houses?"It is funny that those fronting for President Mugabe's ouster are some of the major beneficiaries of his benevolence. Some have a well-known history of losing elections, but assume offices through appointments, but today they are demonising the same person. Some have a fleet of cars obtained from serving in Government, but they are proving to be ungrateful. Some are staying in mansions because of President Mugabe, but today he is no-longer capable to rule this country. We should be thankful."She added: "Some of you, both husband and wife were appointed ministers as well as Politburo members by President Mugabe, but you still continue back-stabbing him. You should accept the reality on the ground that you were fired from your positions and move on with life."Chimene urged youths to refrain from being used by some politicians pursuing selfish agendas."Every youth should stand up and rally behind President Mugabe. We know that there are some clandestine meetings being held in some individuals' houses, but you should be warned that you risk meeting the same fate like those misleading you when the whip is cracked," she said.Yesterday's meeting was held to mobilise youths for the one million men march in solidarity with President Mugabe slated for May on a day to be announced.Speaking at the same occasion, Zanu-PF national deputy secretary for youth affairs, Kudzanai Chipanga, said President Mugabe enjoyed massive support he got from the electorate in 2013 and those calling for his retirement should "go and hang"."President Mugabe did not vote himself into office in 2013. It was the masses of Zimbabwe that gave him the mandate to be in power until the next election, which is in 2018. Some people are now thinking that they are extra special and bigger than the party and push for President Mugabe's ouster."Daydreamers who think they are presidential material because their wives would have pampered them with lies should wake up from their dreams. People like (war veteran chairman Chris) Mutsvangwa and (Victor) Matemadanda should go hang. Some of them are forgetting that the comfortable lives they are living were a result of President Mugabe's benevolence. They should return the vehicles and land they obtained through Zanu-PF. Chimene, you should warn some of your colleagues to remember that the party is bigger than individuals. We should not hesitate to point it out to those who would have gone astray. Selling out does not have an age limit, but to them we want to categorically state that President Mugabe will be in office for life whether you like it or not," said Chipanga.He said Manicaland was expected to provide 100 000 youths for the million men march. "The provincial leadership should start mobilising for resources now because we want to send a message to Britain, the United States and all those pushing for President Mugabe's ouster that our leader still has grassroots support," said Chipanga.Recently appointed provincial youth chairman, Mubuso Chinguno, said some war veterans should shed off their liberation war thinking and view themselves not as a special lot.
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Linkedin Hamza Hendawi (Associated Press) Valley of the Kings, Egypt  Mon, April 4, 2016

Egypt on Friday invited archaeologists and experts from around the world to examine new data from new, extensive radar scanning conducted on King Tutankhamun's tomb to explore a theory that secret chambers could be hidden behind its walls.

The open invitation to a conference in Cairo in May, issued by the antiquities minister at a news conference just outside the tomb, aims to bring broader scientific rigor to what so far have only been tantalizing clues.

The new exploration was prompted by a theory by British Egyptologist Nicolas Reeves that undiscovered chambers lie behind the tomb's western and northern walls and that they likely contain the tomb of Queen Nefertiti, one of pharaonic Egypt's most famous figures  whose bust, on display at the Berlin Museum, is a much storied symbol of ancient beauty.

Preliminary scans whose results were announced last month suggested two open spaces with signs of metal and organic matter. Egypt's archaeologists announced Friday they completed more extensive scanning, sponsored by National Geographic, and the results must now be analyzed.

If chambers  whether containing Nefertiti's tomb or not  are discovered behind the western and northern walls covered in hieroglyphs and bas-reliefs in Tut's tomb, it would likely be the biggest discovery in Egyptology since Howard Carter first discovered the king's 3,300-year-old burial chamber and its treasures in 1922.

Antiquities Minister Khaled el-Anani, who was appointed to his post last week, counselled caution.

He said Egypt's "scientific credibility" and the preservation of its antiquities were at stake, adding; "We will rely only on science going forward. There are no results to share at the current stage, but only indications. We are not searching for hidden chambers, but rather we are scientifically verifying whether there are such rooms."

"We are looking for the truth and reality, not chambers."

Another radar scan will be carried out at the end of the month. It will be done vertically from atop the hill above the tomb, using equipment with a range of about 40 meters (yards).

Harvard University Egyptology professor Peter Der Manuelian, who is not involved in the project, said the Valley of the Kings is "notorious for containing fissures, cracks" that complicate interpreting the scans. "So the more scans we do, and from different angles and directions, inside and outside the tomb, the better," he told The Associated Press.

Even if the spaces are rooms, they could be undecorated small rooms for holding embalming materials, he said  or, more dramatically, "the beginning of a larger floor plan."

"We'll have to be patient. In the meantime, kudos to Nick Reeves for pointing out the presence of these anomalies and for sharing them with the world."

Reeves' theory was prompted by the unusual structure of Tut's tomb. It is smaller than other royal tombs and oriented differently. Furthermore, his examination of photos uncovered what appear to be the outlines of a filled-in doorframe in one wall.

He has speculated that Tutankhamun, who died at age 19, may have been rushed into an outer chamber of what was originally Nefertiti's tomb. Nefertiti was one of the wives of Tut's father Akhenaten, though another wife Kia is believed to be Tut's mother.

"We have a theory, and now what we're trying to do is test it. And, I , if I am right, fantastic, if I am wrong, I've been doing my job, I've been following the evidence trail, and seeing where it leads," Reeves told the AP.

El-Anani said Egyptologists and Valley of the Kings experts will discuss on May 8 the findings of the scans in a previously scheduled conference devoted to King Tut to be held at Egypt's new national museum near the Giza Pyramids outside Cairo. There, they can discuss the findings. The outcome, he said, will guide what course of action Egypt takes.

The Valley of the Kings was one of the main burial sites for ancient Egypt's pharaohs, located among the desert mountains across the Nile River from Luxor, the site of the monumental temples of Thebes, one of the pharaonic capitals.

Tut's was the most intact tomb ever discovered in Egypt, packed with well-preserved artifacts. But he was a relatively minor king ruling for a short period at a turbulent time.

Nefertiti was the primary wife of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, who unsuccessfully tried to switch Egypt to an early form of monotheism. Akhenaten was succeeded by a pharaoh referred to as Smenkhare. Reeves believes Smenkhare and Nefertiti are the same person, with the queen simply changing her name during her rule.

Not long after Tut died in 1323 B.C., his family was overthrown by a general, ending the 18th Dynasty that had been in power for 250 years.

John Darnell, professor of Egyptology at Yale University, said Tut's tomb is "somewhat anomalous due to its small size ... But the question is: Was Tutankhamun's tomb small, or do we have only a portion of a larger tomb?"

The latest scans were carried out over 12 hours along five different levels of the walls, producing 40 scans. The data will be analyzed by U.S.-based experts, but the results would not be known for at least another week.

"Technology is beginning to open doors that were permanently locked, or seemed permanently locked or maybe we did not know it existed," said Terry D. Garcia, chief science and exploration officer for National Geographic. "It is creating a revolution ... and it is going to result in the 21st century being the greatest in exploration in the history of mankind and we are just scratching the surface."

The mystery is also a golden opportunity for Egypt to boost its deeply damaged tourism industry by drawing world attention to its wealth of pharaonic antiquities.

But any benefit from the discoveries may be slow coming, with Egypt still facing turmoil, including a deadly fight against Islamic militants in the Sinai.

Pharaonic sites were once Egypt's main draw. But cities like Luxor have suffered heavily from the plunge in tourism. Now, visits to Egypt's beaches have also been devastated since the crash of a Russian airliner in October over the Sinai Peninsula that killed all 224 people onboard. Russia said it was downed by an explosive device and suspended all flights to Egypt. Britain suspended all flights to Sharm el-Sheikh, the Egyptian Red Sea resort from which the doomed aircraft took off shortly before it crashed.
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Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, April 4, 2016

The city administration will provide hundreds of Transjakarta buses to accommodate more passengers as the city prepares to eliminate the three-in-one traffic policy for a week-long trial beginning Tuesday.

The Jakarta Transportation Agency will prepare 127 Transjakarta buses for the citys busiest lanes such as Corridor 1 serving Blok M in South Jakarta to Kota in West Jakarta and Corridor 6 serving Ragunan in South Jakarta to Dukuh Atas in Central Jakarta, agency head Andri Yansyah said on Monday.

Moreover, the city will also provide free Transjakarta buses and school buses for other corridors.

The transportation agency will coordinate with the Jakarta Police for the upcoming trial.

"We will meet with the Jakarta Police to monitor the spots and routes that see an increase in vehicles. We will keep order and also take action against traffic violations," Andri said at City Hall.

The Jakarta Transportation Agency will also clear roads of parked vehicles to keep traffic in order.

The three-in-one policy, introduced in 2003 under then governor Sutiyoso, requires each car passing through Jakarta's main thoroughfares such as Jl. Jend Sudirman and Jl. MH Thamrin to have at least three passengers during morning and afternoon rush hour. The policy was introduced to encourage people to leave their cars at home and use public transportation services.

However, residents started offering their services as the required third passenger. Jockeys wait on the side of the road for cars to pick them up and so allow the driver of the car to meet the requirement.

After a week, the city will decide whether or not to permanently remove the policy, Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama said.

"We assume that the three-in-one system doesn't really have much of an impact. There are many people who work as jockeys and some babies have become victims of the scheme," Ahok said on Monday.

The plan to remove the controversial policy came about in the wake of a crackdown on child exploitation in the capital.

Many young children and babies are forced to work as street buskers and are brought by adults to work as jockeys.

The city will push for the implementation of an Electronic Road Pricing scheme to help ease traffic congestion in the capital by charging vehicles that pass through non-toll roads. (rin)
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Linkedin Djemi Amnifu (The Jakarta Post) Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara  Mon, April 4, 2016

Two regencies in East Nusa Tenggara, namely Nagekeo and Timor Tengah Selatan (TTS), are suffering from prolonged drought and food shortages. It is estimated some 39 villages in these regencies require humanitarian assistance and long-term aid.

Humanitarian organization Plan International Indonesia said recently that from the end of March, it had dispatched an emergency response team to the 39 villages.

The emergency response team has distributed clean water in the Nagekeo and TTS regencies to reduce the impact of a long dry spell resulting from El Nino, which will affect East Nusa Tenggara until 2016, the organizations country director Myrna Remata Evora told journalists in Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara, on Saturday.

Myrna said the prolonged drought had reduced the quality of life in Nagekeo and TTS. Several villages in the two regencies are experiencing a clean water crisis alongside harvest failure and food scarcity. The dispatch of the emergency response team is aimed at reducing El Ninos impact on the province, she said.

The emergency response team will distribute clean water to villages in Nagekeo and TTS. Every village will get 5,000 liters of water every day for the next 30 days. This emergency work is supported by Start Fund, a multi-donor fund, said Myrna.

Plan International Indonesias disaster mitigation program advisor Wahyu Kuncoro said that the amount of clean water available for people in the 39 villages was not enough. This is because the water distributed is usually prioritized as drinking water, and not allocated for domestic household needs, he added.

Wahyu further explained that as a humanitarian organization focused on fulfilling the rights of children, Plan International Indonesia wanted to ensure that children in the villages could easily obtain clean water.

The health of children is our priority. We have coordinated with all village-level administrations and local volunteers to prioritize children in the water distribution scheme, he said.

Wahyu said the water would be distributed using trucks deployed to the villages. Beforehand, every village would be equipped with two fiber-made water tanks with a capacity of 2,200 liters each.

In the next 30 days, the clean water will reach more than 26,000 people in Nagekeo and TTS, around 15,000 of whom are children, Wahyu said.

After monitoring the region, Yahya Ado, the organizations program manager in Nagekeo, said two districts in Nagekeo, namely Aesesa and South Aesesa, had suffered the most from the long dry spell. Both districts have experienced severe harvest failure.

Our results are supported by data from the Nagekeo Disaster Mitigation Agency [BPBD], which shows that three villages in Aesesa district have suffered 100 percent harvest failures. Meanwhile, damage to land in two villages in South Aesesa district has reached 50 percent, said Yahya. (ebf)
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Linkedin Ayomi Amindoni (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, April 4, 2016

The anticipated shortfall in tax collection this year has prompted the government to rethink its revenue target and make budget efficiency the key point of discussion at a plenary Cabinet meeting on Thursday.

"Ultimately, the president wants to change the paradigm of the budget," Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung said at the State Palace in Jakarta on Monday.

Other issues on the agenda for the meeting were the ease of doing business in Indonesia, the so-called one-map policy and the Indonesian hostage situation in the Philippines, Pramono said.

Regarding the revised state budget, Pramono continued, President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo had urged Cabinet members to increase efficiency in their respective budgets, underlining that the allocation of state funds had to follow ministries' programs rather than preset allocations.

Finance Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro added that the government had included a cut in government spending in its draft bill for a revised state budget, along with the tax amnesty.

The government, he added, expected the House of Representatives to pass tax amnesty bill in April, so that the revised budget could be submitted in May.

"There will be efficiency programs on spending, both at ministries and regional government, as well as with regard to subsidies. Even if the tax amnesty [bill] is passed, efficiency in spending will be beneficial. It is part of our commitment to maintain a healthy and well-targeted budget," he explained.

Coordinating Economic Minister Darmin Nasution added that he would report on the progress of simplifying business procedures. Meanwhile, the one-map policy aims to resolve disagreements resulting from the use of different data and maps that often cause land disputes and overlapping permits for plantations and mining operations.

In the World Bank's 2016 edition of the Doing Business index, Indonesia ranks 109th among 189 countries in terms of the ease of doing business, lagging behind neighboring economies Singapore (1st), Malaysia (18th), Thailand (49th) and Vietnam (90th). (ags)
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Linkedin Ayomi Amindoni (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, April 4, 2016

The Foreign Ministry has confirmed that three Indonesian crew members of a vessel hijacked in Sabah waters, Malaysia, are safe and sound.

Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said the ministry had contacted the Indonesian Consulate in Tawau, Malaysia and received information that all of the Indonesian crewmen were safe and in good condition.

She added that Tawau consulate officials had met with the crewmen.

We have received confirmation that the three Indonesian citizens are all in a good health and that they are in Tawau now, Retno told journalists at the State Palace in Jakarta on Monday.

The minister further said the Malaysian Police were investigating the hijacking incident and that along with that process, the Indonesian government wanted to ensure that all legal rights of the Indonesian crewmen were met by the shipping company.

As reported earlier, eight armed men on Friday raided the Malaysian-flagged tugboat MV Masfive 6 in waters off the eastern coast of Sabah after it had unloaded timber in Manila. They abducted four Malaysian crew members but released five other others, including the three Indonesian crewmen. (ebf)
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Linkedin Ruslan Sangadji (The Jakarta Post) Palu, Central Sulawesi  Mon, April 4, 2016

Residents of a village in Poso regency, Central Sulawesi, suspect that two missing villagers had been forced by terrorist guerillas lead by Indonesia's most wanted terrorist Santoso aka Abu Wardah to work as forest guides, based on a recent sighting.

Obet Sabola and Yunus Penini of Sedoa Village in North Lore sub district were reported missing on Dec. 10, 2014, however local villagers claim to have seen them in the forest.

"When we were collecting wood resin, we saw Obet and Yunus together with Santoso," a villager who asked to remain anonymous said on Monday.

Villagers suspect the two men were kidnapped by the East Indonesia Mujahidin terrorist group to work as guides when the members had been camped in the forest near Napu Village.

Samida Penini, Obet's mother and also the older sister of Yunus, said she had been informed by villagers of Beau Village in Lore Peore sub district that there had been sightings of the two men.

"I have not met them for so long, please help them," Samida said, appealing to Operation Tinombala personnel to help her family.

Central Sulawesi Police chief Brig. Gen. Rudy Sufahriadi, whom is also Operation Tinombala chief, said his force had received the information, however he was not yet able to confirm whether Obet and Yunus were the two men seen by villagers, adding that Central Sulawesi Police would investigate the matter immediately.

Obet and Yunus were reported missing along with three other people, Harun Torimbi, Gara Tudu and Fiktor Polaba on Dec. 10 by local residents as the men had failed to return home, three days after entering the woods to hunt and collect wood resin.

Gara is alleged to have been killed by the Santoso-led terrorist group while Fiktor and Harun managed to escape. The nephew and uncle duo, Obet and Yunus, remain missing.

Harun escaped after Santoso ordered him to buy rice and other food supplies at a local village.

At least 3,000 joint Indonesian Military (TNI) and Police personnel were deployed in Poso under Operation Tinombala in January with orders to search for Santoso and his followers.

The manhunt proceeded to focus its search in Napu Valley, North Lore, Central Lore, Lore Peore and East Lore sub districts, having previously centered on Poso Pesisir and Parigi Moutong.

National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT) chief Comr. Gen. Tito Karnavian said on Sunday that Santoso had felt frustration in light of such an intensive search, lack of food supplies and decreasing followers.

The group's members decreased to 29 people, from 41, after several members had been killed and or arrested in the operation. (rin)
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Linkedin Ayomi Amindoni (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, April 4, 2016

The liquidation of Pertamina Energi Trading Ltd (Petral) and its subsidiaries, which has been under way since February, is set to be complete by the middle of 2016.

Pertamina finance director Arief Budiman said two of Petrals entities in Hong Kong, Petral and Zambesi Investment Limited (ZIL) were already in the process of tax clearance from the Hong Kong tax authorities.

"Then the companies will be dissolved," Arief said at the press conference held in Jakarta on Monday.

Meanwhile, the liquidation of Petral's subsidiary Pertamina Energy Services Pte Ltd (PES) awaited debt settlement in Singapore, he continued. "The final decision on the debt will involve the State-owned Enterprises Ministry," he said.

Pertamina president director Dwi Soetjipto said the initial liquidation process was faster than expected.

"After tax clearance from the Hong Kong tax authorities, ZIL and Petral will be dissolved and we expect it to be completed by the middle of this year. As for PES, it must solve its debt problems first, before the liquidation," Dwi said.

The liquidation of Petral Group was among the recommendations issued by the reform team for the oil and gas sector, led by well-known economist Faisal Basri. The team was formed to study restrictive practices in Pertamina Group's oil and gas procurement process.

The Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Sudirman Said explained that a so-called "oil mafia" had damaged Indonesia in two ways. First, it led Indonesia to fail to develop and build production facilities. With oil consumption of 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd), Indonesia only produced 800,000 bpd, the rest must be imported.

"It was impossible for oil experts during the 1990s to not predict the increased oil consumption in the future. They were lobbied by the oil mafia not to build new refineries," he said, adding that the last oil refinery built in Indonesia was the Balongan refinerybuilt in 1991.

Second, the mafia left Indonesia heavily dependent on fossil fuel and did not develop renewable energy.

Sudirman also stated that Petral Group's liquidation was necessary as part of an efforts to improve Pertaminas supply chain management, and to complement the plan to reactivate Integrated Supply Chains (ISC). (ags)
News / National

by Staff reporter

MDC-T Vice President Thokozani Khupe has savaged President Robert Mugabe saying he has robbed the nation of its dignity and has run the economy to the ground forcing Zimbabweans to live as vendors and beggars.Khupe said Mugabe and his deeply fragmented Zanu-PF was failing to provide the people with the basics, apart from implementing ruinous policies that cost women lives whilst giving birth.With more than 80 percent of the country's productive sector jobless, Khupe said in Zimbabwe, almost everyone was now imprinted poverty on their foreheads.
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Linkedin Erika Anindita Dewi (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, April 4, 2016

Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) politician Fahri Hamzah is set to file a lawsuit with the South Jakarta District Court against the PKS central executive boards decision to revoke his party membership.

Fahri, who is also the deputy speaker of the House of Representatives, said that the partys executives should take into account that he had been a member of the party since its inception.

Naturally, I, as an Indonesian citizen, will file a lawsuit against the partys decision regarding my dismissal, he told a press conference at the House in Senayan, Central Jakarta, on Monday.

However, it remains unclear whom Fahri will file the lawsuit against, as he has not named any party figures he deems personally responsible.

The politician is scheduled to submit his lawsuit to the court on Tuesday. His team of lawyers will first review its substance, including considering any other legal avenues open to him.

The PKS confirmed on Monday that Fahri had been dismissed in a written statement signed by party chairman Sohibul Iman.

It was announced that the PKS's tahkim (arbitration) council had made the decision on March 11 and informed the party's central leadership board on March 20. On March 23, the leadership board conveyed the decision to the PKS central executive board, which proceeded according to the partys rules of association and internal bylaws.

As a result of his ejection from the PKS, Fahri will have to resign his deputy speakership. According to Law No. 17/2014 on legislative bodies, a time-shift agreement can be made if a party dismisses a legislator, who is replaced by the member of the same party with the second-highest number of votes in his or her electoral area.

In the press conference, however, Fahri insisted he would remain in his post, claiming that his plan to appeal against his dismissal meant he had a right to retain his position.

As long as this lawsuit is in process, everything remains according to the status quo, he said.

Separately, House Speaker Ade Komarudin refused to comment on the case, insisting that Fahris dismissal was an internal PKS problem. "This internal problem went viral on media, but has nothing to do with the House," Ade said. (ebf)
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Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, April 4, 2016

Most Indonesians install 31 apps on average, lower than in South Korea where an average user installs 55 apps on his or her smartphone, Google has reported.

Google's Asia-Pacific director of market insights, Georges Mao, said Indonesians use eight of the 31 apps daily, seven apps regularly, and eight others occasionally. The remaining 10 apps are never used.

"Only 16 apps are installed by the user himself. The rest are pre-installed apps. It is a big challenge to retain your apps in the heart of a user," he said in Jakarta on March 31.

Google developer expert Yohan Totting said that nine out of 10 Indonesian startups failed because they only tried to copy ideas from existing global apps and create Indonesian versions.

Most app developers in Indonesia were motivated at the beginning of the projects, but then failed to maintain the user engagement. Therefore, Yohan continued, many users discarded the apps.

"Most Indonesian developers do not think about the problems they need to solve," said Google's developer relations program manager, Erica Hanson.

According to Google, Go-Jek is one example of a successful Indonesia-based app. It is the only application from Indonesia that is included in the top global 1,000 on Google Play.

"For a market like Indonesia, there are three things to consider: Build small apps for people, optimize data usage because the memory and data speed are limited, and think about how to integrate the offline and online platforms," said Google Indonesia's head of marketing, Veronica Utami.

Sharing economy

Meanwhile, the sharing economy concept behind the ride-hailing applications like Go-jek, Grab and Uber was being questioned. Observers say the app-based transportation providers have exploited the concept to exploit drivers and avoid taxes.

The proliferation of app-based companies has stirred protests among conventional taxi drivers as it has reduced their incomes significantly. Conventional taxi drivers carried out massive demonstrations in Jakarta on March 22 to demand a ban of app-based transportation.

A researcher at the Consumers Cooperative Institute, Dodi Faedlulloh, said the rise of app-based companies had created the myth of a sharing economy. Its impossible to see an equal partnership as the drivers are subordinate to the app-based companies, which regulate all of the policies, he said.

All drivers, he continued, must use their own tools with no insurance protection and employee benefits. They have to maintain them by themselves. This way, the app providers could set lower prices for the services.

Hence, Trisakti cooperative chairman Suroto proposed the idea of a multi-sided cooperative for the ride-hailing apps, in which all stakeholders jointly run the business. The stakeholders would consist of IT providers, financial supporters, drivers and other staff members who could share profits and benefits together.

In a multi-sided cooperative, a group of drivers could also form a labor union to negotiate with the management side, Dodi said. (vps/ags)
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Linkedin thejakartapost.com (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, April 4, 2016

Terrorist guerillas in Poso, Central Sulawesi, led by the fugitive Santoso, have close ties with and receive weapons from a radical group in the Philippines, a top police official has said.

The ties that link the East Indonesia Mujahidin (MIT) to radical groups in the Philippines could be seen from the type of arms the MIT members use, Central Sulawesi Police chief Brig. Gen. Rudy Sufahriady said on Sunday.

"Santoso's group has a close connection with the radical group in the Philippines. As reported, some of his members went for war strategy training there," he told journalists as quoted by Antara news agency.

Central Sulawesi Police confirmed the origins of the MIT's weapons after the National Police's coutnerterrorism squad Densus 88 arrested Witadi, aka Iron, on May 28 last year in Manado, North Sulawesi. The arrest of the suspect, who originally came from Bima, West Nusa Tenggara, lead to indications that the guns used by the MIT were made by a radical Philippine group, especially after another of Santoso's followers was arrested during the recent Operation Tinombala.

Rudy did not release the name of the radical group.

Suspect Witadi was involved in military training in Poso set up by Santoso and his now deceased right-hand man Daeng Koro in 2013, Rudy said.

Central Sulawesi Police released the latest most-wanted list of Santoso's group that consists of 29 people including three women. The women are the wives of Santoso and two of his followers.

The number is down. There were previously 41 people hiding in the mountains of Poso.

At least 10 people died and two of Santoso's followers were captured alive during Tinombala.

The operation, which started in January, had deployed at least 3,000 Indonesian Military (TNI) and police personnel in a manhunt for Santoso and his terrorist group that is believed to have been behind several attacks against security officers in the Poso area. (rin)
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Linkedin Bambang Muryanto (The Jakarta Post) Yogyakarta  Mon, April 4, 2016

Rights group Peaceful Yogyakarta Solidarity Forum have denounced the recent attempt by Islamic organizations and police personnel to forcefully disband Lady Fast 2016, an art event held by female artist group Kolektif Betina at Survive Garage, Yogyakarta.

At a press conference in Yogyakarta on Monday, the forum, which comprises artists, NGO activists and journalists, called on the State to protect the right of Indonesian citizens to express themselves.

We condemn all forms of violence and intimidation which lead to the death of freedom to expression, said Anang Nasichudin, representing Peaceful Yogyakarta Solidarity Forum during the press conference held at the Legal Aid Institute (LBH) Yogyakarta on Monday.

Dozens of Islamic mass organizations, supported by Kasihan Police personnel, disbanded the Lady Fast 2016 event on Saturday evening. Hate-filled statements were directed at several female artists and activists while a number of guests had been confronted with physical violence.

During the attack, the protesters had refused to mention the names of the organizations they represented. Some wore hats and tshirts featuring Forum Umat Islam (FUI) or Indonesia Islamic Front and KOKAM, an abbreviation for the Muhammadiyah Youth Force Command logos.

The Kasihan Police have asked local residents to temporarily seal a house owned by Survive Garage, reportedly so that members of the artist community cannot stay there.

We hope that all state apparatus can be present and side with minority groups. We want Yogyakarta to become a tolerant city again, said Anang.

Juwadi, an artist who came to the event together with his wife and their child, deplored the polices excessive dispersal measures in which they had fired warning shots into the air, causing children to become frightened. Juwadi said that several police personnel wearing civilian clothing had fired warning shots in close proximity to his 5-month-pregnant wife and their child.

I complained about it. I told them if they wanted to fire warning shots, they should do it far from children. The police personnel kept silent. But one of the mass organization personnel asked me why I was so contentious. He even challenged me to fight, he said.

Juwadi deplored the police for not having allowed visitors at the event to feel comfortable. All this time, he added, Yogyakarta was safe and art events had always been family friendly.

Juwadi said several children visiting the event with their parents continued to suffer from trauma. After the event had been disbanded, two children and eight adults took refuge at Survive Garage. Several police personnel broke down the main entrance of the house as protesters had reportedly forced them to search the house to see whether there were alcoholic beverages inside.

Kolektif Betina representative Andina Septia said Lady Fast 2016 was an event for female artists to perform their art. The group consists of 40 female artists from all over Indonesia. The event was initially scheduled to be held until Sunday and would have featured music, discussions, workshops and offered artworks for sale.

"We initiated this event due to the lack of space for female artists to express themselves," Andina said.

Meanwhile, Survive Garage representative Bayu Widodo has rejected the accusation that his art space was a sinful place. If there were alcoholic beverages there, they were brought by the visitors and not offered as part of the event.

"Since it was established six years ago, we have held a number of events and there has never been such a problem," Bayu said.

Kasihan Police chief Comr. Suwandi said that the Islamic hard-liner groups who had disbanded the event consisted of FUI, Islamic Jihad Front (FJI), and others.

"We disbanded the event because it did not have a permit and had the potential to disturb the public order," Suwandi said.

LBH Yogyakarta director Hamzal Wahyudin said the event at Survive Garage had not needed a crowd permit since visitor numbers were less than 300 people, the minimum number of participants to require a permit from the National Police.

"We will report this case to the National Commission of Human Rights (Komnas HAM) because this is a potential violation of human rights," Hamzal said. (afr/ebf)
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Linkedin (The Star/ANN) Petaling Jaya, Malaysia  Mon, April 4, 2016

The hot spell is taking a toll on vegetables, fruits and flowers as well.

Not only are the prices of the greens expected to rise, the quality of the produce is also likely to suffer.

The lack of rainfall, shortage of water supply and hot weather caused the production level of vegetables to drop, said Cameron Highlands Vegetable Growers Association secretary Chay Ee Mong.

In March, there was already a drop between 10 percent and 20 percent in vegetable production.

The quality of the vegetables is also affected. Our vegetables are grown in the highlands so the rising temperature is not suitable.

In certain areas, there is a lack of water and irrigation problems. Also, there has been no rain over the past six weeks.

If there is still no rain, there will be [more] shortages but the effects will be felt [by consumers] maybe in a month or two, said Chay.

Cameron Highlands usually produces at least 600 metric tons of vegetables daily.

Chay said the rising temperature had also caused pest problems, leading to poor quality vegetables.

Some leafy vegetables such as sawi and kangkung are cheap as they are produced in the lowlands and are not affected by the hot weather.

Only certain vegetables like the French beans and cabbages will be more expensive, he said.

French beans, which used to cost RM3 (77 US cent) to RM4 per kilo are now more than RM5 a kilo while the price of cabbage, that used to be between RM1.20 and RM1.50, is now more than RM2.

Cameron Highlands produces about 20 types of vegetables that include tomatoes, spring onions, watercress, radish and celery.

The production of fruits was also affected by the dry spell, said Selangor Fruit Farmers Association secretary Hoh Peng Keong.

Hoh said production was expected to drop further next month due to the weather.

Similar to vegetables, he said there was a drop in quality of the fruits harvested.

Asked on the prices, Hoh said that there was a possibility of a price hike but it would also depend on market forces.

If there is a shortage of supply and there is demand, the prices will increase.

At the same time, if the quality produced is not that good, people may not buy them, said Hoh.

Cameron Highlands Floriculturists Association president Lee Peng Fo also blamed the hot weather and lack of water supply for a 10 percent to 20 percent drop in the production of flowers there.

Lee, however, said the prices of flowers would not increase.

The prices will maintain for now, he added.
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Linkedin (The Star/ANN) Kuala Lumpur  Mon, April 4, 2016

The Malaysian and Philippine police forces have yet to receive any information from the gunmen who abducted four sailors near Pulau Ligitan, off Semporna.

"Nothing [on the latest development]," Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar told Bernama via WhatsApp when asked about the latest situation on the case Monday.

The Philippine National Police spokesman when contacted said they had not received any report regarding the kidnapping incident off Semporna, Sabah.

"We did not receive any report yet," he said.

In the 6.15pm incident on Friday, four Malaysian nationals from Sarawak were abducted by a group of eight armed men while travelling in a trawler boat from Manila, Phillippines, to Malaysia.

They were Wong Teck Kang, 31, Wong Hung Sing, 34, Wong Teck Chii, 29, and Johnny Lau Jung Hien, 21.

The Malaysian nationals were part of the nine-member crew of the trawler boat.

Five other crew members who were Indonesian and Myanmar nationals had been freed by the kidnappers.
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Linkedin (Associated Press) Manila  Mon, April 4, 2016

The Philippines has launched a dengue immunization program targeting 1 million public school pupils to combat the mosquito-borne disease that the World Health Organization estimates infects 390 million people a year.

About 600 fourth-grade students at a school in suburban Marikina city, mostly aged 9-10, were on Monday given the first of three vaccination shots. Selected public school students in three regions, including metropolitan Manila, are receiving the vaccine.

Health Secretary Janette Garin called the program's launch "a historic milestone" in public health. The health department says routine vaccinations for 9-year-old children can reduce dengue cases by nearly 25 percent. The Philippines had 200,000 dengue cases in 2015.
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Linkedin (Associated Press) Manila  Mon, April 4, 2016

Thousands of US and Philippine troops, along with Australian special forces, have begun annual military drills to be able to rapidly respond to a range of potential crises, including in the disputed South China Sea.

US Marine Lt. Gen. John Toolan said Monday that Defense Secretary Ash Carter will fly to the Philippines to witness some of the 11-day Balikatan exercises. The drills will see the deployment for the first time of a highly mobile rocket system that has been used in war zones including Afghanistan.

Philippine military officials say a key exercise will involve US, Australian and Philippine forces retaking an oil rig seized by hostile units.

The US and the Philippines say the exercises are not directed against China, which has opposed the drills.
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Linkedin Emily petsko (Viet Nam News/Asia News Network)  Mon, April 4, 2016

Noey Neumark sits on a miniature blue stool  Hanois classic throne  admiring the bowl of banh da tron (flat noodles) she ordered from a food vendor.

Vietnamese food is just so pretty, she says. Its very photogenic.

As if on cue, she hands the bowl to her boyfriend, Peter Petracca, who stands up to photograph their meal, occasionally shifting to get the perfect angle and lighting.

Unfazed by the inquisitive stares they attract, they upload the photo to Instagram, where their 5,400-plus followers can feast their eyes on their latest culinary find.

Using the Instagram handle @vietnomnom, the American couple has successfully tapped into the social media sphere by giving people the eye candy they want: colourful, mouthwatering meals, with clever captions and addresses detailing where to find the food.

The couple now hopes to hand off their Instagram account to a new successor. They recently moved to Thailand and will move back to the United States later this year. But they will continue to post new content on Instagram throughout March.

In Vietnam, food-ordering websites like eat.vn and vietnammm.com have proven popular for discovering new restaurants. But street eats have largely been uncharted.

Neumark (right) and Petracca were surprised by the diversity of dishes when they landed in Hanoi.

Instagram has emerged as a creative crowdsourcing tool for finding food vendors by clicking and sifting through hashtags like #Vietnamesefood and #feastagram.

For foreigners who dont know what things mean  all these Vietnamese words that describe the noodle type, or things that are in it, or how its made  having a lookbook of all the delicious foods in any given place is nice, said Petracca.

Hanoi-based travel blogger Sarah Attaway, 24, said she frequently searches for #Hanoifoodie on Instagram to find off-the-beaten-path restaurants throughout the city. She said Instagram is an easy way for foreigners to learn the local cuisine, especially in Hanoi, where some of the best food vendors eschew menus.

I think street food is kind of intimidating, especially for an expat. So its nice to have some kind of a reference point, said Attaway, who hails from Arizona, the United States.

As a Westerner, youre trained to find places that look good according to the decor, or the menu, or the vibe of the place. Which is so different from here, she said.

While their Instagram page is popular among expats and tourists getting acquainted with Vietnamese cuisine, they have also amassed a considerable local following.

Hoang Van Thai Duy, a 21-year-old law student from Chau Doc city in southern Vietnam, is a fellow food Instagrammer (@hoangthaiduy) and an avid follower of vietnomnom.

I think vietnomnom is one of the most amazing accounts I follow, he said. Foreigners are interesting to follow because they experience Vietnamese cuisine in their own style.

Duy said he believes Instagram is quickly becoming a trusted resource for finding delectable dishes.

I always use Instagram for finding street food when travelling, he said. It can help us to find the best and most exotic street foods, wherever we go.

Neumark and Petracca, both 26, hail from California. They met while living in New York City. Both worked with food  Neumark in restaurant public relations, and Petracca as a restaurant photographer  and both knew they wanted to continue working in that capacity when they moved to Hanoi in February 2015.

Accustomed to just the two options of pho or banh ii at Vietnamese restaurants in the United States, they were surprised by the diversity of dishes when they landed in Hanoi.

Vietnamese food tastes different in Vietnam, too, Petracca said.

They have to adapt to the local ingredients (in the US). Here you have all these herbs. Theyre all local. And theyve been used in the family for generations. Thats why its so good, Petracca said.

In the US, they have to adapt recipes. In the same way that Mexican food in California is incredible, but different from Mexico.

Among the couples favourite dishes are pho cuon, tofu in tomato sauce, and fried pork ribs from Bia Hoi. While they enjoy most meals, silkworms and congealed blood in soups are among the few foods they are not a fan of, Neumark said.

The couple works in freelance marketing, writing, and video production. And they take their Instagram side project seriously, carving out several hours per week for food excursions.

Much of the food they feature comes from street food stalls they stumble upon. As a rule of thumb, they scout for places crowded with Vietnamese diners.

They work as a team, with Petracca taking the photos and Neumark crafting witty captions like a banh mi chay fit for a tay and grouper therapy, describing a plate of fish.

Vietnamese food is usually very fresh, Petracca said. With the street food places, its nice that theres one place that makes just one thing really well.

Neumark added, My biggest hope for (our Instagram feed) is to show people outside of Vietnam how beautiful and varied Vietnamese food is  just show it off.
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Linkedin Dian Arthen (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, April 4, 2016

Winter is coming to Dubai, apparently. As the hit series Game of Thrones is set to return for its sixth season on April 24, a Middle Eastern consortium announced plans to build a scale replica of the fictional world of Westeros off the coast of Dubai.

The climate differences between Dubai and Westeros are certainly obstacles for the developer, but according to telegraph.co.uk dredged sand would be used to create the island and a vast irrigation system would allow soil, grass and trees to be planted to recreate the rolling hills and forests seen in the hit HBO TV series.

The project will include reconstruction of King's Landing and the Wall. Snow cannon will be utilized to create the lands beyond the Wall.

Visitors can also opt to stay overnight at campsites around Winterfell or in a luxury hotel at Casterly Rock. There are possibilities that Komodo dragons from Indonesia will stand in for the fictional fire-breathing kind and that actual actors from the series will pay visits.

Sheikh Yousuf Bin Had, the chief executive of Fropal Oil, one of the project's biggest financial backers, revealed that the development could begin within the year and the cost was estimated at more than US$12 billion. (kes)
News / National

by Staff Reporter

Warriors striker Nyasha Mushukwi reportedly held hostage her former lover at his hotel room on the eve of her wedding day.The hostage saga led to Tinashe Sibanda being kicked out by her new man.According on H-Metro, Muskekwi also stormed Sibanda's wedding venue and caused chaos.Sibanda had gone to the hotel after rejecting sound advice from relatives not to go.She insisted that she needed to iron out a few issues with the striker.They had dated for two years."After she went there, she didn't return to the house where we were supposed to sleep before the wedding."We didn't take it seriously because we assumed she had decided to spend the night somewhere else since it was a busy night."The following day, she came back crying telling us what had happended. She said Mushekwi held her hostage when she went to visit him and she escaped from the room whilst he was asleep' said one for the bridesmaids.At the wedding venue, Mushekwi is said to have caused more drama saying there was nothing special about Tinashe as she was not a virgin when he first slept with her.On her part, Tinashe said My husband has chased me out of our matrimonial home."People misunderstood why I visited Mushekwi's hotel room."I only went there because he has been away for a while so I wanted to tell him that I had moved on face to face and not over the phone."I also wanted to hear from him his plans with regards to some of his things which I was using which he had given me" she added.Mushekwi is said to have bought Tinashe a flat and a car.
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Linkedin Ni Nyoman Wira (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, April 4, 2016

Bubble drinks can be refreshing thirst quenchers, especially for those with a sweet tooth. Anyone who is kind of hungry will also find satisfaction from chewing the bubbles.

There are many choices of franchises selling this type of beverage in the capital city. Below are some of the options that you can try.

KOI Cafe

Originating in Taiwan and open since 2006, this franchise currently has over 45 branches worldwide including Singapore, Macau, Cambodia and Vietnam. In Indonesia, KOI Cafe offers choices of tea, milk tea, bubble, macchiato and cafe with a starting price of Rp 16,000 (US$1.20). Its signature beverages include cafe macchiato and mango green tea.

According to information on its official website, the brand will soon provide an online shop for those unable to visit one of its five stores in Greater Jakarta.

Comebuy

Also originating in Taiwan, this franchise highlights freshly brewed tea from around the world including Taiwan's own Rose Puer, Ceylon black tea and Sri Lanka Uva black tea. Also a must-try is purple rice matcha and yogurt green tea; the latter is particularly interesting due to its rather bitter yet refreshing yogurt flavor.

The price of the products starts at Rp 18,000.

Sharetea

Established in Taiwan in 1992, Sharetea reportedly has over 180 stores worldwide including in the US, Australia and United Arab Emirates. In the archipelago, its first arrived in South Jakarta's Plaza Semanggi in 2012.

Known for having mildly-sweet bubbles, the franchise's popular items include the rock salt cheese series, kiwi fruit juice with Yakult, and frozen caramel with taro pudding. The prices start at Rp 18,000.

Fat Straw

Bored with the same old size of plastic beverage cup? Fat Straw offers a unique type of cup that is rather short yet larger in diameter.

For first-timers, opt for the ice-milk drink with honey boba or the slightly sour selections of yoghurt drinks. Prices start at Rp 19,000.

CoCo

Decorated in bright orange, this franchise arguably aims to spread happiness among its patrons through its colorful ambience as well as various options of flavors.

CoCo's classic milk tea is a good choice for those wanting nothing more than a simple yet sweetly refreshing beverage. With a starting price of Rp 16,000, other recommended flavors include salty cream and fresh tea mix. (kes)
News / Regional

by Nqobile Tshili

POLICE in Bulawayo are looking for a female fraudster who allegedly duped two women of more than $17,000 in the same week after promising to partner them in supplying computers to a city school.Abergailey Mpala of Hillside suburb allegedly told her victims that she had won a tender to supply a school with computers and needed partners to seal the deal.Bulawayo police spokesperson Inspector Precious Simango said Mpala disappeared after the con in September last year. "She told her first victim that she had secured a tender to supply a local school with computers to the tune of $20,000."She told her that she had $8,000 and needed someone to chip in with $12,000 so that she could purchase the computers in South Africa," she said. Insp Simango said the woman fell for Mpala's trick and gave her $12,000 expecting to get her returns a week later."After a week she started telling her partner excuses. The victim went to the school and inquired about the tender only to discover that the school hadn't awarded such a tender," she said.Insp Simango said by the time her victim reported the matter to the police, Mpala had disappeared.The police spokesperson said Mpala tricked another woman who is member of a burial society from Emganwini suburb.She allegedly told her about the computer deal promising the money would be paid back with considerable interest within a few days.The woman was then swindled of $5,500 belonging to the burial society."She told her that she was in the business of selling and buying computers before borrowing $5,500 which she promised to repay in a few days. After she was given the money she disappeared and hasn't been located," Insp Simango said.She warned members of the public against engaging in deals with unscrupulous people."We're urging members of the public to desist from engaging in business deals with untrustworthy people."They should avoid doing business deals on the streets where they don't sign any paper work or have witnesses," said Insp Simango.She said most of the fraudsters offer lucrative deals which often sound too good to be true."Members of the public must be suspicious when someone offers a deal that brings astronomical returns within a few days. Money comes through hard work," said Insp Simango.She said those who may have information that may lead to Mpala's arrest should contact the nearest police station."Efforts to locate her have been fruitless hence the appeal to anyone with information on her whereabouts to contact Officer in Charge CID Western Commonage on landline 09-418101."They can also contact the investigating officer Detective Sergeant Mafu on 0712574713 or a police station close to them," said Insp Simango.
News / Regional

by Leonard Ncube

A WOMAN from Victoria Falls, who told a court she has endured sexual starvation for seven years, is suing her husband's alleged mistress for $5,000.Bekezela Ndlovu, 35, a secretary at Oasis College, is claiming the money from Faith Mawodzeka who works at the Victoria Falls Border Post.Bekezela said her husband Jordan Ndlovu, 40, has not had sex with her since 2009 because he has been sleeping with Mawodzeka.She wept in court when Jordan turned up to testify in favour of his alleged girlfriend.Jordan denied having an affair with Mawodzeka despite his wife chronicling before Victoria Falls magistrate Rangarirai Gakanje, events she said proved the two were cheating.Mawodzeka is not married and works at the border post while Bekezela and Jordan were married in 2003 under Chapter 5.11.In her summons, Bekezela said the affair has caused her emotional and physical distress.She accused Mawodzeka of insulting her over the phone.Bekezela said her husband would assault her whenever she confronted him about the affair while at one point she was also insulted by Mawodzeka's daughter.She said for seven years they would go for counselling sessions but the affair continued.Jordan testified against his wife and accused her of washing dirty linen in public as he defended his alleged girlfriend.Bekezela has since moved out of the matrimonial house and now stays with a friend in the same suburb.She told the court her husband admitted being in love with Mawodzeka when his parents convened a meeting to solve the issue. She also told the court that her husband would sometimes spend about two weeks at Mawodzeka's house.The court heard Jordan and Mawodzeka spent most of their time together while at work and when Mawodzeka's child died, he bore the funeral expenses.Jordan and his girlfriend would allegedly go shopping in Botswana together. The civil trial continues this week.


The Goetz brothers try to recreate the miserable magic of Pascal Laugier's truly demented French horror gem, but in the process find something significantly more unpleasant.

Laugiers Martyrs quickly rose to fame upon its first bow at the Cannes Film Festival back in 2008, taking the festival circuit by storm by building a name for itself as one of the most unsettling slashers in a long while. The American-backed, English-language remake was then, I guess, only a matter of time.

Borrowing the large majority of its plotting almost directly from the original (I guess if it aint broke), Kevin and Michael Goetzs Martyrs finds young Lucie (Pretty Little Liars star Troian Bellisario), a victim of abuse and torture as a child, finally tracking down her former captors to exact bloody revenge. But quite promptly after doing so, she finds that theres actually a lot more to their sick games than she may have first thought, and alongside her terrified best friend Anna (Bailey Noble), Lucie journeys deep into the apparent hidden meanings of their torture.

This essentially translated in the French release as Hostel for the Cahier du Cinema crowd; arty bloodletting with a surprisingly welcome dose of philosophy sewn into the narrative. It made Laugiers intense gore and scenes of sheer depravity often oddly thought-provoking and actually opened up a whole new side to the otherwise cheap and nasty antics of Eli Roth and co..

It seems that sadly though, something got a little lost in translation here, as, although the Goetz brothers seem to be trying their very best to open up the film to a more thoughtful reading, they unequivocally fail at every hurdle.

What remains is a bargain-bin-style rip-off, that snatches away the core plot threads of the original, but strips back any of the class or meaning, leaving instead a cheap torture porn copy that lacks the wit or charm of even its own genre regulars.

By aiming to be different, the Goetzes have actually ended up making something completely inaccessible to anyone. Hostel fans will be dissatisfied with the levels of blood on show (surprisingly less than you would think from a film competing to be the nastiest imaginable), whilst the arty crowd will struggle to see any actual meaning in anything that goes on.

Even on the technical side of things this one reeks of ineptitude. Mark L. Smith - screenwriter of, I shit you not, The Revenant (that just took home three, repeat, three Oscars) delivers a script thats not only riddled with cliches, but also an immeasurably awful finale that borders on the religiously offensive. The films cast noticeably grapple with Smiths unnatural dialogue, whilst also failing to ever bring anything even remotely believable to the forefront anyway, and the Goetzes themselves seem to be just sitting back and letting the whole thing go south.

You may be thinking but ts only a low-budget horror film, theyre supposed to be a little crap surely? and to be brutally honest, you would be right. A lot of the fun from these sorts of releases comes from their cheap and cheerful attitudes; embracing the silliness of their extremity.

Martyrs though is so po-faced, and condescending in its frankly lame attempts at being academic, that it falls so incredibly short of ever even getting close to what someone might call fun, that it could only be described as quite the opposite: boring. And who the hell wants to see a boring horror movie?

If you fancy a spot of intellectual stimulation with your heavy helping of torture porn, give Laugiers French language Martyrs a whirl. If not, stick with Hostel or even something from the exploitation era. Just whatever you do, stay the hell away from this one. At best, its a waste of time.

Martyrs is currently playing in a few select cinemas around the UK and is released on DVD and VOD today.
In the spirit of April Fools, Professor Green made us all realise that our names would not sound as funny in front of Green Tea, Texas launched new currency decorated with Willie Nelsons face and Snoop Dogg teamed up with Youtube for #Snoopavision.

And obviously thousands of us fell victim to the inevitable Rick Roll.

Aside from the pranks, social media censorship caused Slutface to become Slotface but the band insist they are simply tricking the internet and certain outdated views that have denied them opportunities and have not abandoned their political message.

April Fools. Let these new tunes help you recover from the woes of falling for the most blatantly obvious

Unqualified Nurse Band  You Pulled Through

A lot of good noise has been emerging from the East Midlands recently and these guys are no exception. Laced with distorted guitars and searing vocals, this fast-paced heavy punk blitzkrieg of sound from the recently released Dilemma Blues EP.







Acid Tongue  i died dreaming

This dreamy Seattle outfit have re-released their debut single i died dreaming as part of their first formal release of the same name. Free flowing guitar riffs and charismatic laid back vocals fuel this fuzzy psychedelic track.





The Big Moon  Cupid

Fresh from a tour with the Maccabees, newest single Cupid sees the euphoric indie rockers transition from supporting act to big deal, bang on time for their first headline tour. The quartet tease with a slow build up, leading into Juliette Jackson's swagger-heavy delivery and ooos that will ring out right to the back of the crowd.





Gold Panda  In My Car

Gold Panda takes the listener on an ambient journey through song on the second single from forthcoming Good Luck and Do Your Best. The producer's craftwork combines Japanese influences with his trademark relaxed electronic sounds. Whilst were all missing our grandparents as the term drags on, the video starring his actual Grandma will remind us of the warmth of our own.

Wire  Internal Exhale

While most bands from their era are doing just so after settling down, Internal Exhale proves the longevity of punk legends Wire. Taken from upcoming mini-album Nocturnal Koreans, which is comprised of material left over from 2015s Wire, the eery whines of "march" set onto a backdrop of simmering steel guitars are bound to keep you up all night.

Xenia Rubinos  Lonely Lovely

Ahead of debut Black Cat, 'Lonely Lovely' captures all of Xenia Rubino's New York soul with her mesmerising voice. Reminiscent of early Amy Winehouse, this sophisticated easy beat-led track flexes Xenias vocals across a range of genres but would ultimately sound best in one of the speakeasy jazz clubs that are sneaking their way onto campus.

Nothing  Eaten By Worms

Nothings latest offering is dark, heavy and moulded by experience. Driven by angst powered guitars and lyrics loaded with the pains of letting go, the acclaimed at-rock band promise big things from upcoming album Tired of Tomorrow.

Vodun  Mawu

Packed full of surprises, Mawu pairs transcending female vocals with bass fuelled rock straight from the mid 90s. Taken from debut album Possession, full and feisty riffs, translate the power of Mawu, the moon, the creator of the world, the passion of fertility and grower of life and beauty who lives within us all.





Slotface  Sponge State

Fresh-faced Norwegian feminists Slutface fought social media censorship and lost, now they are armed with new EP Sponge State and known as Slotface. Providing an anthem for our apathetic, disengaged generation, the catchy hooks in this sugar-coated punk track prove the band can change their name, but their sound cannot be altered.



Tom Redwood  Ive Fallen for You

Swedish artist Tom Redwood debut single marks a promising entrance onto the electronic scene. The 3 minute and 17 second track is a sultry yet bittersweet love story, exposing a softer atmosphere that is often ignored by the mainstream genre.
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News / Regional

by Staff reporter

With former Education minister David Coltart opening a can of worms with his recently released autobiography - the Dumiso Dabengwa-led Zapu has dared beleaguered Vice President Emmerson Mngangagwa to come clean on the role he played in the Gukurahundi atrocities.Although President Robert Mugabe came short of apologising for the atrocities - where an estimated 20 000 people lost their lives - saying it was a "moment of madness", his deputy preferred to say the issue is now a closed chapter, something that Zapu and other human rights organisations say is an insult.In his autobiography - The Struggle Continues: 50 years of Tyranny in Zimbabwe - Coltart quotes Mnangagwa describing dissidents as "cockroaches", and the Fifth Brigade, the military wing that orchestrated a reign of terror in the regions of Matabeleland and Midlands as "DDT", a deadly pesticide that is used to kill vermin.In a statement, Zapu deputy national spokesperson Patrick Ndlovu said Mnangagwa should "either tell the truth about his publicly known role in the Gukurahundi massacre or just keep quiet and enjoy the feeding frenzy on the gravy train".Incensed by Coltart's hard-hitting autobiography, Mnangagwa threatened to sue the former government minister.But Zapu says instead of issuing threats Mnangagwa and everyone who had an alleged hand during one of the darkest periods in the history of post-independent Zimbabwe, must at least own up."The victims and their families deserve closure on that painful and shameful chapter in the history of this country."Zapu knows that the Zanu regime lacks the moral courage to own up to its role in the planning and execution of its massacre of Zimbabwean citizens simply on the basis of their preferred political allegiance."As the government, Zanu PF owes an explanation to the victims, the country and indeed the world at large as to the true motive behind a holocaust similar to the Nazi anti-Semitism, not in scale but in cruelty and effect."With the governing party reluctant to own up to the dark era of the 1980s, Ndlovu said the Mugabe-led regime has a legal obligation to release to the public the findings of the Chihambakwe Commission that was set up to investigate the killing of civilians by the army."We therefore advise ... Mnangagwa that should his conscience compel him to talk about Gukurahundi it should be on the above issues and not some thinly-veiled attempts to justify his bloody hands."Ndlovu said instead of burying their heads in the sand, government should also draft a comprehensive reparations policy to redress the political and social imbalances that have taken place in independent Zimbabwe."The government should just stop its rhetoric on a Truth and Reconciliation Commission and act to establish the commission to deal with its numerous human rights abuses."It should draft ... policy to redress the imbalances caused by its actions among the communities affected by its embargo during the Gukurahundi period."The Zanu PF regime remains the only government to impose internal sanctions and unleash highly trained murderers on its own unarmed civilian population. Those people who now confess losing their sanity should also ask for forgiveness from their victims."Human rights activists and political parties have continuously piled pressure on Mugabe to at least apologise for the massacres but the nonagenarian leader has intractably remained quiet.Respected Zanu PF elder Cephas Msipa in his book titled In Pursuit of Freedom and Justice - A Memoir, that was launched last year, dismissed the official massaging of narratives on the Gukurahundi atrocities as "a moment of madness", saying as the massacres happened over a period spanning more than five years, hence they could not therefore be described as such.Msipa who helped broker the unity accord of 1987 that ended hostilities between Zanu and Zapu - described the killings as "gruesome", calling on authorities "to look into the aftermath of Gukurahundi."While in the past it had appeared more like a taboo to openly speak about Gukurahundi, lately there has been an upsurge in voices condemning the genocide.
Opinion / Columnist

Lord have mercy on us all! There is no big fool than one who learns nothing from the past and Zimbabwe's opposition politicians are some of the biggest fools that have ever walked on this earth!"ZimPF on Saturday satirically prayed for Zanu-PF leader President Robert Mugabe to survive until the 2018 elections for him to experience his first crushing defeat by his former lieutenants," reported Bulawayo24. The paper was quoting the party's national chairperson Methuseli Moyo.How many times have the people of Zimbabwe heard the opposition make similar boastful predictions only for President Mugabe to emerge, by hook and crook, victorious! In 2008 President Mugabe did in fact suffer a crushing defeat in the March vote only for him to "cook" the result to justify a run-off which he went on to win after using wanton violence to force the electorate to vote for him.Morgan Tsvangirai should have won the 2013 elections judging from the MDC's well attended rallies and popularity. President Mugabe could not use violence again, not with the whole world watching, he used the war chest of cash looted from Marange diamonds to finance a very elaborate and expensive vote rigging scheme.Zanu PF's reputation of using violence and other vote-rigging dirty tricks to win elections is well known and therefore there was no excuse why MDC had failed to take measures to stop these activities. Following the wanton violence of 2008 SADC forced President Mugabe to agree to form GNU which was then tasked to implement democratic reforms designed to end the Zanu PF culture of violence and vote-rigging. Foolishly MDC failed to implement any of these reforms.After Zanu PF rigged the 2013 elections, Morgan Tsvangirai explained that MDC did not implement the reforms because he and his colleague were, until elections day, confident of electoral victory "regardless of Zanu PF vote-rigging shenanigans". No doubt the "sea of red" of MDC supporters at their party rallies had lured MDC leaders into a false sense of security; they really believed they did not need to implement any reforms; they even ignore SADC's repeated warning not to take part in the elections without reforms.Joice Mujuru launched her ZimPF party last month and its popularity with the people is yet to be established and yet already the some of the party's leaders cannot wait for 2018 elections and they are cocksure of defeating Zanu PF. There is nothing on the ground to justify their confidence; this is just the proverbial frog claiming he would put out the forest fire with his fart!President Mugabe lost the political support of the people of Zimbabwe a long time ago and so it follows to deliver him a crushing electoral defeat and make it stick one must make sure the elections are free, fair and credible. Therefore the key to defeating President Mugabe and Zanu PF is to implement the democratic reforms necessary to stop him using violence and other vote-rigging shenanigans. There is nothing to show that Mai Mujuru and her ZimPF friends understand this!Whilst Mujuru and many of her ZimPF friends were elected back into office in 2013 on Zanu PF ticket thanks to MDC's folly of failing to implement even one reform, there is no evidence to show she understood what was going on. Indeed she has since admitted as much."I never saw the rigging I am sure it was a very small clique that was doing it," Mujuru told the UK Sunday Times when was asked about Zanu PF's vote rigging.As the party's second most senior member, of course it is shocking that she does not something this serious was happening all those years under her very nose! Others in ZimPF, like Didymus Mutasa who was, until his unceremonious dumping in December 2014, State Security Minister too did not have a clue what was going on. The sheer incompetence of the ZimPF leaders is an open book, there for all to read!ZimPF have not implemented anything to ensure the 2018 elections are free, fair and credible and yet they are already impatient for elections to be held and are confident of crushing victory over Zanu PF. They have done nothing to stop Zanu PF using wanton violence; nothing to stop Zanu PF looting in Marange and having a war chest to bankroll another vote-rigging scheme; etc. and, most critical of all, has not implemented even one democratic reform. This is nothing short of the misplaced confidence of the proverbial frog who boasted of putting out the forest fire with his fart.If the next elections are rigged all Mujuru and her ZimPF friends stand to lose is a chance to get back on the gravy train. For the nation, another rigged elections will mean the economic meltdown will continue and so will the political chaos; Zimbabweans have suffered enough.prospect of the present economic meltdown and political chaos continuing on until 2018 is hard to bear; the prospect of it going on beyond 2018 is unthinkable.We must demand the implementation of the democratic reforms and must not allow ourselves to be side tracked again, as happened during the GNU, by the foolish and boastful zeal of the proverbial frog. Zimbabwe cannot afford yet another rigged election in 2018, the stability of the nation and the region is at stake.
Opinion / Columnist

Manicaland provincial minister Mandi Chimene has criticised some politicians for being ungrateful by allegedly leading a new ruling Zanu PF party bid to force President Robert Mugabe's resignation.Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa is said to lead the Lacoste Zanu PF faction accused of pushing the ouster of Mugabe. Chimene is said to belong to the rival G40 faction.According to Chimene, the politicians should be grateful because Mugabe gave them cars, mansions and kept them in power even after the people of Zimbabwe had voted them out and they should not criticise him."It is shocking to hear some people saying President Mugabe has overstayed in office, yet some of the people saying that have been in office since 1980," Chimene told a youth meeting in Mutare."The same people have also overstayed their welcome and they should be kicked out of the party.""It is funny that those fronting for President Mugabe's ouster are some of the major beneficiaries of his benevolence," she charged."Some have a well-known history of losing elections, but assume offices through appointments, but today they are demonising the same person."Some have a fleet of cars obtained from serving in Government, but they are proving to be ungrateful."Chimene said Mugabe was being poorly served by the people he has given mansions and large fleets of vehicles.She said: "Some are staying in mansions because of President Mugabe, but today he is no-longer capable to rule this country. We should be thankful."Chimene's suggestion that ministers in Zanu PF stay on in positions despite losing elections and being given mansions and cars by Mugabe raises questions about the party's priorities as servants of the people of Zimbabwe.It is unclear where Chimene's assessment leaves the general population of Zimbabwe, who are largely jobless, do not have access to said mansions and cars and whose votes she appears to suggest have been ignored by her party.
Firefighters on alert as blaze endangers villages north of Phuket

PHUKET: Firefighters at Thai Mueang in Phang Nga province, north of Phuket, are on alert after a wildfire raged for two days before being brought under control as it came within 800 metres of a village.

weatherdisastersnatural-resourcesenvironmenthealthtourismland

By Tanyaluk Sakoot

Monday 4 April 2016, 01:49PM

The wildfire came within 800 metres of homes north of Phuket. Photo: Jimmy Jai Photographer

The wildfire came within 800 metres of homes north of Phuket. Photo: Jimmy Jai Photographer

The wildfire came within 800 metres of homes north of Phuket. Photo: Jimmy Jai Photographer

The wildfire came within 800 metres of homes north of Phuket. Photo: Jimmy Jai Photographer

Disaster officials became aware of the fire on Saturday, Orathai Giasakul, Chief Executive of the Thai Mueang Municipality, told The Phuket News today (April 4).

Right now, we have three fire teams on standby just in case, she said.

We are keeping a close watch on the area and are co-ordinating with officers from the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation (DDPM), the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation and the District Office.

Firefighters struggled to contain the blaze on Saturday, and had masks issued to villagers in Moo 5 and Moo 9, Ms Orathai explained

They fought the fire until midnight, and thought that they had put it out  but it came back on Sunday, she said.

Although the flames came within 800 metres of the two villages, residents were warned of the impending fire, but were not asked to evacuate their homes, Ms Orathai added.

About 500 rai of land was razed by the fire, including about 220 rai in Khao LampiHat Thai Mueang National Park, she said.

No villagers were affected by the smoke, and Thai Mueang Police are currently investigating what caused the fire, Ms Orathai added.
Navy says closed road to Phuket beach is on public land

PHUKET: The Royal Thai Navy officer involved in the investigation into a company closing a road leading to Laem Nga Beach in Rassada says that government records show that the road was built on public land.

landpropertyenvironmentnatural-resourcescrimeconstruction

By The Phuket News

Monday 4 April 2016, 04:40PM

Lt Sompop Kamkhana (centre, in military uniform) from the Navys Third Area Command at Cape Panwa inspected the road a second time on Mar 31 after the company had closed soon after the visit by Phuket Vice Governor Khajornkiet Rakpanichmanee. Photo: Royal Thai Navy

Lt Sompop Kamkhana from the Navys Third Area Command at Cape Panwa told The Phuket News today (April 4), The Department of Rural Roads confirmed they built the road in 1994 and handed it over to Rassada Municipality to take care of in 1997. According to the law, regardless of the time that has passed, the road remains a public road, he said. The road was opened on March 29 after joined Phuket Vice Governor Khajornkiet Rakpanichmanee and Phuket Damrongdhama Centre (Ombudsmans Office) Chief Prapan Kanprasang inspected the site and held talks with Laem Nga Development Co Ltds legal representative. Military personnel armed with assault rifles accompanied the officials for the talks. (See story here.) However, the company blocked off the road again soon after the official inspection party had departed. We visited the area again (on Mar 31) after learning that they had blocked off the road again, Lt Sompop said. We told them to keep the road open and will have a meeting with officials and the company soon to settle this, he added.
Patong Beach attack suspects known, believed to have fled Phuket

PHUKET: Kathu police have confirm that they have identified the three suspects alleged to have assaulted four tourists on Patong Beach on Friday morning (Apr 1), but they are all believed to have fled the island to other provinces.

violencetourismpatong

By Darawan Naknakhon

Monday 4 April 2016, 05:33PM

Tourist Police visit one of the tourists in hospital. Photo: Darawan Naknakhon

However, police will seek arrest warrants for the three from Phuket Provincial Court. Lt Col Suthichai Tienpo revealed today (Apr 4) that after checking CCTV footage from the area where the suspects were last seen, they learned that they were responsible for the attempted robbery and assault on the tourists. We know the three suspects stayed in the Patong area and that they were also responsible for the stabbing of a Thai man in a recent attempted robbery in Thungthong. We raided their rented room, but they had already left the island. We think they fled to their home provinces. However, we are in the process of getting arrest warrants for the three suspects. Finding the suspects is our top priority because this is affecting the safety of tourists, he said.
Phang Nga Marine Police investigate alleged illegal fishing in protected national park area

PHUKET: Phang Nga Marine Police are currently investigating an incident where a tour boat operator allegedly allowed tourist to fish in a protected area of the Koh Similan National Park after photos of the tourists posing with their catches went viral on Social Media.

animalstourismtransportcrimemarine

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Monday 4 April 2016, 04:45PM

Lt Col Chakri Maigumponsuth of the Phang Nga Marine Police today (Apr 4) led his team and park officials to look for a tour boat at Tub Lamu Pier which belongs a local tour company in Thai Mueang that allegedly took more than 20 tourist from mainland China and Hong Kong to fish in a protected area of the Similan National Park in Kuraburi.

Lt Col Chakri said, We went to the pier where we found the boat crew believed to have been involved in the incident. When confronted with pictures of the tourists with their catches the captain admitted that the incident did take place.

However, they insisted that the fish were caught outside of the protected area. We will need to check the boats AIS geo-location system to see exactly where the tourists were allowed to fish, he said.

Marine activist, Dr Thon Thamrongnawasawat who posted the photos on his Facebook explained that a group of tourist from mainland China and Hong Kong had hired the boat for a dive trip, but they later decided they wanted to fish.

The captain told them that they could not fish in the national park area as it was protected so took them to an area outside the protected area. The boat captain said that he tried to contact the boat owner to ask if it was okay to do so, but the owner was abroad and could not be reached.
Phuket police question suspects over mom stabbed to death

PHUKET: Police are still investigating the death of Pa Khlok women whose body was found with multiple stab wounds at her home on the weekend.

homicidecrimedeathpolice

By Darawan Naknakhon

Monday 4 April 2016, 06:15PM

Police have questioned several suspects over the stabbing death of the mother whose son found her body at their Pa Khlok home on Sunday. Photo: Darawan Naknakhon

Thalang Police Chief Col Chanuchan Cholsuwat told The Phuket News this afternoon (Apr 4) that no arrests had been made.

We have not made any arrests yet, but we have brought in several people for questioning, Col Chanuchan said.

Investigation officers are in the area questioning residents and looking into CCTV footage from the area to find the suspect or suspects.

We have brought in a couple of people suspected to be involved in the incident and questioned them. However, we hope to find the suspects/suspect soon.

We have not ruled out robbery as a motive to the murder, and we will look into any personal issues that the victim may have had with other persons, he added.

Police were called to investigate the stabbing murder of the woman whose body was reportedly discovered at 3pm on Saturday (Apr 2) by her 11-year-old son at a home in Soi Khunluang Pa Khlok.

Upon arrival, officers and rescue workers found the body of the woman, who had sustained multiple stab wounds to her stomach.

Her son said a bracelet, necklace and ring belonging to his mother were also as missing. (See story here.)
Phuket Pride Week 2016

Start From: Sunday 24 April 2016, 08:00AM to Sunday 1 May 2016, 11:30PM Mon. Tue. Wed. Thu. Fri. Sat. Sun.

Phuket Pride Week Sunday 24th April 2016 to 1st May 2016. This event was started in 1999 and is the only Gay Pride Festival still being held in Thailand. Hand in Hand in Thailand is the theme for the week of FUN & Celebration with over 12 events being held around Phuket. All are welcome: LGBT community, straights & the undecided, to join in celebrating Pride week and raising monies to help fight HIV infections in Phuket. More info please visit www.phuket-pride.org

Proudly supported by Class Act Media.
Red Bull case probe finds irregularities

BANGKOK: Flaws and irregularities have been found in the Thong Lor police handling of a 2012 hit-and-run case involving an heir to the Red Bull energy drink empire.

homicideaccidentstransport

By Bangkok Post

Monday 4 April 2016, 09:32AM

Forensic police inspect a motorcycle belonging to Snr Sgt Maj Wichian Klanprasert of Thong Lor Police Station and a Ferrari driven by Vorayuth Yoovidhya, the youngest son of Red Bull executive Chalerm Yoovidhya, following the accident. (Bangkok Post file photo by Somchai Poomlard)

Partial findings of a preliminary investigation into the officers conduct were disclosed by deputy national police chief Gen Pongsapat Pongcharoen On Saturday (Apr 2).

The report came from acting Bangkok police chief Lt Gen Sanit Mahathaworn, who was assigned to probe the investigators at Thong Lor station responsible for the case involving Vorayudh Boss Yoovidhya.

Vorayudh was allegedly driving the speeding Ferrari that crashed into a traffic policemans motorcycle, killing the officer, in the early hours of Sept 3, 2012.

Vorayudh was charged with reckless driving causing death, failing to help a crash victim and speeding, the last of which has the shortest statute of limitations at one year.

The inquiry focused on why Vorayudh could not be indicted before the one-year statute of limitations on his speeding charge expired on Sept 3, 2013.

Gen Pongsapat said the several flaws and irregularities were found in Thong Lor officers handling of the case. He declined to provide details, but said the issue of whether investigators intended to purposefully delay the case is mentioned.

The deputy police chief said further investigation was needed before any conclusive findings could be reached, and information would also be sought from public prosecutors handling the case to determine the cause of the delay.

The report also focuses on why police failed to issue an arrest warrant for the suspect before the statute of limitations expired.

The report will be presented to national police chief Chakthip Chaijinda tomorrow (Apr 5), Gen Pongsapat said, adding that a police inspector-general may be assigned to gather additional information and help assign responsibility for the failures.

Any police officers found to have mishandled the case will face disciplinary action, as well as criminal action if they were involved in malfeasance, Gen Pongsapat said.

The investigators responsible for the case were also criticised for their decision not to charge Vorayudh with drink- driving, a charge that has a statute of limitations of five years.

When Vorayudh turned himself in to police, he was tested for alcohol at Samitivej Hospital, close to Thong Lor Police station, instead of the Police General Hospital. His blood alcohol level exceeded the legal limit, though police noted in their case files that Vorayudh had only consumed alcohol after the accident due to stress.

Prosecutors earlier said they had indicted Vorayudh on all three charges, but failed to proceed with the case due to the suspects requests for fair treatment. A series of petitions by Vorayudh slowed the proceedings.

One day before the statute of limitations for the speeding charge was due to expire on Sept 3, 2013, Vorayudhs lawyer asked for a postponement on the grounds his client was in Singapore and had fallen ill.

Prosecutors suspected Vorayudh was trying to delay the case and asked police to seek an arrest warrant. But this did not happen because Vorayudh again requested fair treatment.

Read original story here.
LONDON, UKAfter five years, Nexus, the UK adult toy brand, is back in the USA with its entire range for men and women.

On May 15, the legal agreement prohibiting the sale of particular items in the USA comes to an end, meaning retailers will be able to get their hands on all Nexus products from distributors across the country.

We are really excited to be back in full force, said Monique Carty, Nexus Director. Even with the five-year hiatus, our brand has remained strong in the USA and we are still contacted daily from customers across all channels about selling the prohibited items.

In the last five years a lot has changed for Nexus, from new products (now including womens) to a whole new team, whilst the last two years has seen it build its foundations and put its US distribution network in place, ready for the relaunch this year.

In the last five years we have learned a lot as a brand, added Monique. With a larger range and a new team with a wealth of experience, we are in a great place to fully re-enter the US market.

Highlights of the relaunch include the entire range of the best-selling, award-winning Revo rotating prostate massagers and the new and improved packaging and pricing of the hard prostate massagers.

To check out the entire range, customers can visit nexusrange.com

For further information, telephone +44-(0)-20-7260-2912 and/or email [email protected].
LAS VEGASEldorado Trading Company is in Las Vegas this week for the International Lingerie Show, held April 4-6 at the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

In addition to exhibiting pleasure products from the top U.S. and international manufacturers and a huge selection of new lingerie styles, the adult distributor is offering educational seminars and a chance to speak with sexual wellness professionals from the Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health (CSPH).

The following talks are scheduled:

How to Become a Sexual Health Resource in Your Community

Speech by CSPH Executive Director Kira Manser, April 5, 23 p.m.

According to the World Health Organization, sexual health is not just the absence of disease or dysfunction, but also includes the potential for pleasure. Learn how pleasure-focused organizations can become a trusted sexual health resource for adults in their communities. Join the sex-positive revolution that is changing the way people think, talk and behave as sexually healthy adults. Support consumers in prioritizing sexuality as an important part of their overall health and happiness. Connect them to important information and resources they can use to make informed choices about their sexual adventures.

Manser is a clinician, educator and program manager with expertise in gender and sexual diversity, sexual pleasure, disability advocacy and social justice. She is a licensed social worker with a masters in education in human sexuality. Manser is working to complete a doctorate in human sexuality and has worked as a sex educator for over a decade.

Manser and Erin Basler-Francis, also from CSPH, will be at the Eldorado booth to talk to attendees. Eldorado is at Booth #347-550.



The Importance of Having an Online Presence for Your Store

Speech by Larry Garland, founder and CEO of Eldorado Trading Company, April 6, 1011 a.m.

In todays digital world, retailers would be hard pressed not to find customers online. In fact, according to Google, 97 percent of consumers use the Internet to search for local businesses. Having a strong online presence is crucial to building your brand and gaining credibility to attract more customers. The benefits are numerous including brand building, reaching a greater audience and giving your customers easier accessibility to your products. With surprisingly little investment, creating an online presence can really affect your bottom line in a positive way.

Larry Garland founded Eldorado in 1974 and has led the company to become one of the top international distributors of sexual wellness products and lingerie. As a dynamic player in the industry, Garland stays abreast of the current trends and forces that drive the market. He is a past president and current vice president of the Free Speech Coalition. He has received numerous awards for his achievements in the industry including induction to the AVN Hall of Fame.
How to watch and what to know about South Dakota State at North Dakota
LAS VEGAS, NVUrban Lesbians, the new adult website celebrating Sapphic scenarios, has a brand new update featuring the XXX debut of sultry starlet Darcie Dolce paired with veteran star Tasha Reign.

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From its very first offeringa delicious Veruca James/Casey Calvert pairingUrbanLesbians.com has boasted top-tier talent, including Dani Daniels, Wall Street porn star Veronica Vain, Danica Dillon, and Marica Hase.

Urban Lesbians is updated with new high-quality content several times per month. The sites latest update, Episode 8, stars Tasha Reign and Darcie Dolce.

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Tasha Reign said, I enjoyed working for Urban Lesbians and had fun doing my girl/girl scenes. Although I no longer shoot for anyone except TashaReign.com, I hope my fans love the two scenes."

For the hardcore fan, Urban Lesbians also sells the clothing and toys used in each video here. The site offers free shipping on all orders, which are shipped discreetly, and identify the shipper as DKL. Buyers are provided tracking and delivery confirmation.

Scenes at UrbanLesbians.com are available for download in multiple formats: 1080p HD, 720p HD, and 480p Standard Definition. Urban Lesbians offers instant credit card processing for immediate download.
Vladimir Putin and Sergey Roldugin forged a bond as young men. Fast friends, almost like brothers, they cruised the streets of Leningrad.

As Putin rose to power as Russias supreme leader and Roldugin made a name for himself as a classical cellist and conductor, the two remained close. Roldugin has performed for Putin and high-profile guests at the presidents official residence, introduced Putin to Lyudmila, his future wife, and is the godfather of Putins eldest child, Maria. He has also given media interviews that softened Putins fearsome image.

Now a leak of secret documents reveals a hidden side of their friendship.

The records show Roldugin is a behind-the-scenes player in a clandestine network operated by Putin associates that has shuffled at least $2 billion through banks and offshore companies, an investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, German daily Suddeutsche Zeitung and other media partners has found.

In the documents, Roldugin is listed as the owner of offshore companies that have obtained payments from other companies worth tens of millions of dollars. It is possible Roldugin, who has publicly claimed not to be a businessman, is not the true beneficiary. Instead, the evidence in the files suggests Roldugin is acting as a front man for a network of Putin loyalists  and perhaps for Putin himself.

Roldugin did not respond to detailed questions. Reporters from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, an ICIJ partner, met briefly with the musician following a concert in Moscow in late March. Roldugin told them he needed more time to review their questions and determine what he could say.

Related:

How offshore banking is costing Canada billions of dollars a year

British Virgin Islands growing rich as a global tax haven

What the Star reveals in Panama Papers leak and why

About 100 financial deals related to the network are described in the leaked documents. They are complex. Payments are disguised in various ways. On paper, shares in companies are swapped back and forth in a day. Documents are backdated. Questionable financial penalties are assessed. The rights to multimillion-dollar loans are sold between offshore companies for $1.

In almost every instance, the result is the same: money and power moves in the direction of the network, to companies and people allied to Putin.

The leaked documents come from the files of Mossack Fonseca, a Panama-based law firm that registered some of the Roldugin companies and helped administer the networks holdings in the British Virgin Islands and other offshore havens.

For years there have been reports  mainly from whistleblowers  about Putins secret wealth. A few offshore companies, a palace and a mega yacht have all been said to belong to the Russian leader. Various news organizations have noted how the people around Putin have become rich. Yet a detailed picture of the hidden financial affairs of Putins circle has remained elusive.

The law firms internal files show how minions and proxies created structures to hide and move the wealth. The records include email correspondence, bank account forms, loan agreements, share transactions and passport scans. Dates, cash amounts and contract terms are detailed.

Loyalty and long-held relationships help bind the network. Its a fraternity of Putin confidants. Many of the men are Putin comrades whose history with him traces back decades.

There is Roldugin. Then there is Yury Kovalchuk, a banker who forged links with the future president when Putin was a municipal official, and Arkady Rotenberg, a childhood chum who has become a billionaire through state-sponsored construction projects, oil pipelines and other ventures.

Many of the men are also connected to the St. Petersburg-based Bank Rossiya, which the U.S. government has identified as Putins personal cash box.

The files make clear that Bank Rossiya built the network. Its employees tended to it, working to create the offshore companies, assigning ownership to Roldugin and others and shepherding the transactions through banks in Russia, Cyprus and Switzerland. Bank Rossiya did not respond to detailed questions from ICIJs partners regarding this investigation.

Nowhere in the Mossack Fonseca files is the name of the Russian president, a former KGB spymaster, mentioned. Audio recordings and witness accounts show that even when Putins closest confidants privately discuss his financial dealings, they use pseudonyms for him or gesture to the heavens rather than utter his name.

Its inconceivable, though, that the network could have existed without the knowledge and support of Putin, said Karen Dawisha, a U.S. political scientist who has written extensively about Putin and his regime.

He takes what he wants, said Dawisha. When you are the president of Russia you dont need a written contract. You are the law.

After receiving detailed questions from ICIJ and its media partners, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denounced the forthcoming articles in a press conference as an attack and a series of fibs, according to Russian news services. Peskov reportedly said that the questions concerned offshore companies and a large number of businessmen Putin had never seen in his life.

Denying something numerous times or commenting on something that has no relation to us is just silly, Peskov told reporters.

There is a video on YouTube of Arkady Rotenberg, a former judo instructor. He is standing with a group of men. Putin walks past, flanked by his security detail. Rotenberg doesnt see him coming. Without breaking stride, Putin rubs Rotenbergs head, mussing his hair, like one would a dog or a child.

Of all those in his inner circle, Arkady and his brother Boris have known Putin the longest. Their friendship dates to the 1960s, when as boys they sparred in a martial arts club. The ties of friendship grew to encompass business as well.

The European Union, the U.S. and Canadian governments issued sanctions against Arkady Rotenberg in 2014, in retaliation for Putins invasion of Ukraine. Canada and the U.S. also sanctioned his brother Boris and Yury Kovalchuk.

The U.S. Treasury noted the Rotenbergs had amassed enormous amounts of wealth during the years of Putins rule from Russian government contracts, including roughly $7 billion for the Sochi Olympic Games. The American sanctions document coyly described the reason for the designation as acting for or on behalf of . . . a senior official of the Russian Federation.

Arkady Rotenberg did not respond to a request for comment.

The Rotenbergs and other billionaires who have flourished under Putins protection are having an impact on the Russian economy. The top 10 per cent of wealth holders in Russia own 85 per cent of all household wealth in the country, according to a 2014 Credit Suisse report. Meanwhile, 83 per cent of the population has less than $10,000 in personal wealth. Inequality in Russia is so bad it deserves its own separate category, the report stated.

And when it comes to the man some publications have called Putins best friend, Roldugin, documents in the files falsely state that he is not politically connected, obscuring the musicians role in the scheme.

Mossack Fonseca and bankers in Switzerland appear to have ignored easily obtainable evidence of Putin and Roldugins bonds. Banks are required by Swiss law to determine if account holders are connected to politicians to safeguard against improper use of the account. The industry term for this is politically exposed persons, or PEPs.

The Mossack Fonseca files contain an application by Gazprombank Switzerland in 2014 to open a bank account for a company in Roldugins name. The form explicitly asked whether the owner of the company had any relation to PEPs or VIPs.

The answer: no.

The bank had a legal obligation to check these declarations, said Mark Pieth, former head of the organized crime section of the Swiss justice ministry. Roldugin is, by his proximity to a serving head of state, clearly an exposed person.

Gazprombank declined to comment.

In a letter to ICIJ, Mossack Fonseca said the firm has duly established policies and procedures to identify and handle cases involving politicians or people associated with them. It said the company considered those cases to be high risk and conducts more intense checks and periodic follow ups. We conduct thorough due diligence on all new and prospective clients that often exceeds in stringency the existing rules and standards to which we and others are bound.

Yury Kovalchuk and Putin turned their attention to Bank Rossiya in 1991, when its largest shareholder was still the Leningrad Communist Party. Putin was Leningrads deputy mayor and responsible for attracting foreign investors and forming public-private partnerships.

After the fall of the Soviet Union in December 1991, Putin signed the documents bestowing ownership of the bank on a newly formed joint venture created by Kovalchuk and others, according to Dawisha, author of Putins Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?

Putins function was to make legal what would otherwise have been illegal, Dawisha said.

Kovalchuk became majority shareholder and board chair. When the U.S. government sanctioned him in 2014, it described Kovalchuk as one of Putins cashiers. Canada also imposed sanctions against Bank Rossiya in March 2014.

During the mid-1990s, Kovalchuk and a few other shareholders of the bank owned dachas on the eastern shore of the Komsomolskoye Lake. Putin found the money to buy a property. The men formed a co-operative society to benefit the eight residents of their gated community, which was called Ozero (the Lake).

The Mossack Fonseca files show that the communal principles that defined Ozero continued with Bank Rossiya and its participants more than a decade later.

About an hours drive from the Ozero co-operative is the Igora ski resort. According to local media reports, the high-end resort is Putins favourite place to ski. Bank Rossiya publicly helped finance its construction. The wedding of Putins youngest daughter, Katerina Tikhonova, took place amid great secrecy on the resort grounds in February 2013, according to Reuters.

Tikhonova married Kirill Shamalov, the son of Nikolai Shamalov, an Ozero co-operative member and original Rossiya shareholder. Within a year and a half of the wedding, the younger Shamalov, barely out of his twenties, managed to borrow about $1.3 billion from Gazprombank to acquire 21 per cent of Sibur, one of the biggest petrochemical companies in Russia, a stake that was worth at least $2 billion a little more than a year later, Reuters reported.

Mikhail Lesin was intimately involved in the efforts of Putin and Bank Rossiya to control Russian media. He was Putins first media minister, then a presidential adviser in his second term and he oversaw the regimes propaganda push. Lesins government tenure paralleled the growth of the banks media empire.

While in government, Lesin played a key role in brokering deals that put critics in the media under ownership that was more closely aligned with the Kremlin. In the wake of these efforts, voices critical of the Russian regime fell silent.

After Dmitry Medvedev replaced Putin as president, Lesin joined the nations biggest private media group, Gazprom-Media, which Bank Rossiya managed.

Gazprom-Media was only part of the media conglomerate that Bank Rossiya built. Its sprawl has earned the banks chairman, Yury Kovalchuk, the nickname the Russian Rupert Murdoch. In 2005, Bank Rossiya bought a stake in a small television network, which Putin then designated as a national broadcaster, greatly expanding its reach and profit. It also took over Ren-TV, muting critical voices and investigations of the government.

The Mossack Fonseca files reveal that Lesin had a company called Gloria Market Ltd. based in the British Virgin Islands. He created it in 2011, to collect money from advertising, according to a source of funds form found in the Mossack Fonseca files.

In the late 1990s, Lesin had helped set up an advertising sales company called Video International that at one point controlled as much as two-thirds of the nations television advertising. While Bank Rossiya publicly owned 16 per cent of Video International, a Roldugin offshore company created by the bank secretly held an additional 12.5 per cent stake, the files show. According to its 2014 bank account forms, the company, International Media Overseas, had annual income of about $10 million from its holdings.

A lawyer representing Video International declined to answer detailed questions, stating the information was nonpublic in Russia.

In 2014, Lesin resigned from Gazprom-Media. Russian press reports blamed a conflict between him and Bank Rossiyas Kovalchuk. Lesin relocated to America, where he allegedly owned millions of dollars in property, holdings that had raised the suspicions of U.S. authorities.

In November 2015, Russian media reported that Lesin died of a heart attack in a hotel in Washington, D.C. Four months later, Washingtons chief medical examiner announced that the death was anything but natural. The medical examiner said Lesin died of blunt force trauma to the head and had bruises on his neck, torso and limbs. Police are investigating the death.

How many secrets of the Putin-linked network Mikhail Lesin took to the grave may never be known.

Additional reporting by Olesya Shmagun and Roman Anin of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and Bastian Obermayer and Frederik Obermaier of Suddeutsche Zeitung.

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Martini 101

If James Bond Taught Us Anything, It's That Martinis Will Never Go Out Of Style

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In theory, building a martini employs a pretty straightforward flowchart: Would you like yours with gin or vodka? A little vermouth or a lot? Shaken or stirred? Twist or olives? Swap out the olives for pearl onions and youre drinking a Gibson, a whole other cocktail.

But along the bumpy century-plus journey that is the Martini  a favorite of real and fictional raconteurs like Dorothy Parker, Winston Churchill, James Bond and Nick Charles  it morphed and folded in on itself like few other classic drinks have: Appletini, Espresso Martini, even a Candied Bacon Martini featuring vodka, Amaretto, Applejack, brown sugar and bacon. At some point one should ask oneself, how far can a drink stray from its original recipe and still be considered the same drink?

With the revival of pre-Prohibition cocktails and advent of craft drinks over the past decade, the Martini regained some of its cachet along with the likes of the original Daiquiri (which isnt a strawberry slushie), the Old Fashioned (better without nuclear cherries and muddled oranges) and the Manhattan (which can be screwed up surprisingly easily). But thanks in part to the craft movement with its multiple ingredients, housemade everything, and emphasis on indie brown spirits, the simple Martini kind of took a back seat. It simply wasnt getting the kind of love the Old Fashioned and Manhattan received in the past few years.

Well, now its the Martinis time to shine. Across the country, bars and restaurants are upping their Martini game with elaborate presentations, high-quality ingredients and a position front and center on the menu.

Were definitely starting to see bars put classic Martinis back at the front of their menu, and vodkas on their bars, says Caley Shoemaker, master distiller for California-based Hangar 1 vodka. Because she claims shes on a one-woman crusade to make the ultimate sipping vodka, the clarity of a classic Martini (where the base spirit is the focus) appeals to her.

First, a brief recap: The invention of the drink is hazy (after all, it couldnt have taken too much thought to spike vermouth  originally consumed on its own as an aperitif  with a random hard liquor, and the Manhattan already existed). Mid-19th century cocktail books include the Martinez. It might be an early cousin, but its a different beast, consisting as it does of (sweet) Old Tom Gin, sweet vermouth, maraschino liqueur and bitters. In 1896, a Marguerite Cocktail (equal parts vermouth and Plymouth gin with a dash of orange bitters) appeared in Stuarts Fancy Drinks. The Knickerbocker Hotel in New York City lays claim to the actual Martinis creation in 1912, claiming it became a favorite of John D. Rockefeller, but both facts are generally contested.

Initially, like the Marguerite, the Dry Martini was pretty wet, with a healthy dose of vermouth (in fact, if you order a 50/50, youll get the Marguerite recipe). After World War II, the Extra-Dry Martini came into vogue, with as little as 1/8th of an ounce of vermouth (or even just a vermouth-rinsed glass) tempering the tongue-drying gin. Vodka came onto the American scene in the 1950s and really took off in the 60s (when Dr. No appeared on the big screen, and John F. Kennedy expressed a passion for Bonds vodka Martinis). For the next 30 years or so, the default Martini featured vodka for most people.

By the 1980s, bar goers were adding all sorts of sweet liqueurs to their shots and cocktails, and by the 90s, most Martinis on bar menus were of the Appletini variety, paving the way for the Cosmopolitan to dominate in the Sex And The City era. When the Classic Martini returned in the mid-2000s, it was on the back of a revived interest in gin, and we were soon full circle.

At some spots, of course, the Martini never faded away. If you belly up to the bar at the posh Dukes Hotel in London (the very same bar where Bond author Ian Fleming quaffed his shaken, not stirred drinks) and order the Martini service, youll be presented with an elaborate pushcart by head bartender Alessandro Palazzi. The house Martini is so dry, some people claim that the vermouth bottle is merely present in the room, but you can customize it any way you like. Or opt for a new version, the Fleming 89, created by Palazzi to honor the connection between Bonds creator and the hotel.
Hello Alfred Interview On Successful Startups

Hello Alfred Founders (And Crush List Nominees) Reveal The Keys To A Successful Startup

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Its the American dream: take an idea and make it into a multi-million dollar business. Thats exactly what Marcela Sapone and Jessica Beck did with Hello Alfred. Theyre the geniuses behind the app/service, which allows you to hire a butler to come by each week to do your errands  laundry, tidy up, mail  at an affordable rate. Everyone knows that decreased chore time has a direct link to increased fun time.

These two creative co-founders are on the cutting edge and crushing it. Thats why its no surprise that theyve landed on our #CrushList nominations this year (go vote!).

Given their incredible success as influential tech entrepreneurs, we decided to catch up with them to get their advice on starting up. Follow these eight tips to successfully kickstart your startup:

Get Over That Fear Of Starting Your Startup

Marcela Sapone: Just think about it as follows: how do you mitigate as much risk as possible? Can you  before you decide to quit your job  figure out what are the key questions youre trying to answer with your idea? That will validate your hypothesis more than just having an idea. You shouldnt quit your job for an idea. Quit your job because you have conviction that is based off of qualitative and quantitative feedback from the market and from your potential customers.

And remember that being an entrepreneur is a full-body exercise. Its a complete lifestyle. If youre not able to give your entire week to working, it might be a good signal that being an entrepreneur is not the right path for you.

Vet The Idea Before You Quit Your Job

MS: The first thing we thought was: what are the different ways we can achieve this same goal in different formats, then go out there and test it? That way youre not jumping off a cliff with an idea. We actually got real customers and built a version of the product to get feedback, and we did that for an entire year before we took the plunge to start a business.

Dont Be Scared To Share Your Unique Idea With Others

Jessica Beck: Its a fear that many first-time entrepreneurs have: if they share their idea, someone is going to take it. My advice is think about how hard it is to quit your job, build a team and start a business. Beyond that, why would someone  who isnt you  be as passionate about this potential idea that you have? The probability that they go and take your idea is  in my book  null. Maybe 1%. However, the valuable insight you get from sharing your idea  the reflexive feedback, having people probe you and ask you questions  is 10 times more valuable than the small risk of someone copying your idea.

Also, if the barriers of entry are so low that someone can just take that idea, its probably not a really good one.

What's your go-to breakfast in bed? Let Alfred know and start your weekend in the best way possible #ComeHomeHappy A photo posted by Hello Alfred (@helloalfred) on Nov 13, 2015 at 9:20am PST

Ask For Help

MS: One of the things that you have to realize is that as you go through this journey, you have to learn to ask for help. And youll have to do that more times than you ever expected. If youre so guarded in the beginning that you dont seek out expertise or people that have a different point of view, and share enough to get them to help, then the odds of you getting to a place where you can actually execute something and have it be successful are quite small.
LONDON (The Deal) -- European markets were mixed Monday morning, bouncing back into the black from some red ink earlier in the session. The earlier falls in part reflected the woes of parts of the telecoms sector following the breakdown of talks late Friday between Bouygues (BOUYF) and Orange (ORAN) of France.

The mood picked up slightly as oil prices seemed to flatten out after previous falls, and economic indicators improved. Eurozone unemployment hit a four-and-a-half year low at 10.3%, driven in part by a particularly strong job market in Spain and after the Sentix expectations index which follows investor confidence in the euro area rose from 2.8% last month to 5.5% in April. But growth in the crucial U.K. residential construction industry remained weak, helping to keep the Markit purchasing managers index for the construction sector unchanged at 54.2, despite improvements in commercial construction and civil engineering.

Later this week investors will get the chance to pore over the thoughts of European and U.S. central bankers, as the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank release the minutes of their March meetings.

In London, the FTSE 100 was up 0.59% at 6,182.04, while in Frankfurt, the DAX was up 0.93% at 9,885.62 and the CAC 40 in Paris was up 1.05% at 4,367.57 despite the turmoil in the telecoms sector.

Futures for the S&P 500 rose 0.27%.

In Paris, Bouygues plummeted over 17% at the open and was still down 14.6% in late morning trading at 30.01 as traders got their first chance to react to the failure of moves to sell its telecoms arm to Orange in a deal expected to value Bouygues Telecom at at least 10 billion ($1.14 billion). Orange, which had already lost over 8% in New York on Friday night, lost further in France this morning. By late morning it was still down 4.35% at 14.73.

In London, mining group Anglo American (AAUKF) rose 1.58% on the sale of its 70% stake in Australia's Foxleigh coal mine to a consortium led by Taurus Fund Management.

In the defense sector, British contractor Chemring rocketed 8.85% to 141.5 pence on the announced that it was now implementing a supply contract for ammunition to an unnamed end user in the Middle East, whose delay had been at the heart of a profit warning in January.

And in less welcome news, FTSE Small-Cap listed Sepura, which supplies electronic communications systems to civilian and military users in a range of sectors from mass transit transport and airports to the oil and gas industries, issued a profit warning because of delayed orders and foreign exchange losses. The company, which has a confirmed order in the pipeline from the New York transit system for its Tetra technology, said the working capital impact of contract delays plus delayed receipts would result in an increase in net debt to approximately 120 million. However, its debt providers waived any potential breach of year end covenants, following talks about "liquidity requirements and the possibility of covenant breaches".

In Mumbai, India, financial sector software services company Mphasis fell about 3% to 454.5 Indian rupees as share, after the announcement that private-equity heavyweight Blackstone Group (BX) will buy Hewlett Packard Enterprise's (HPE) roughly 60% stake in the company for Rs.430 a share. Blackstone will acquire at least 84% of the stake at that price for about $825 million and make a mandatory offer under the country's complex teakeover code for the remaining 16%, and certain shares held by other investors. Overall, the acquisition could cost about $1.1 billion.

In Asia, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 was off 0.25% at 16,123.27 although the Topix index was up 0.10% at the end of the day at 1,302.71. Hong Kong and Chinese markets were closed for a public holiday.
NEW YORK (Real Money) -- Jim Cramer shares his views every day on RealMoney.Click here for a real-time look at his insights and musings.

Lessons From 2 Stocks That Shorts Got Wrong

Posted at 6:12 a.m. EDT on Thursday, March 31, 2016

We think that there's nothing but long only money playing now that we have broken out to the upside for 2016. But there are plenty of places where the short base is in. You just don't see it until the trap is sprung. We saw that twice yesterday: first with Lululemon (LULU) and then with Carnival (CCL) .

The first was totally dazzling. There was a remarkable sell-through at pretty much every level at LULU, of which the two that were most surprising were men's, which was very strong, and direct to consumer, which has now leaped to the top of the list of omni-channel companies, surpassing Williams-Sonoma (WSM) , which had been the real gem.

LULU seems to get it in a way that so few do, except Growth Seeker portfolio name UnderArmour (UA) and Nike (NKE) : they are a tech company that sells apparel. As Laurent Potdevin, the CEO, said on the call, one of the pillars of LuLu's success is product innovation: "it is central to how we continue to create transformational experiences for our guests who live and breathe the sweat life. Our products are rooted in function and our designers mandate it to be proud of every single product they create."

Lulu is really taking the men's category by storm, to the point where I have to believe that someone at Nike is kicking himself for not buying this company's stock when it was down: "With a focused stead vision we see continued disruptive innovation in products. Our focus will be on training, run and yoga and we elevate and diversify our staple offering."

On line is just a plain old homerun. "Our vision is to design and nurture a digital ecosystem that amplifies human experiences, relationships and connections." I know, this is online; no other company seems to have this command of online save Amazon.com (AMZN) . Get this: "digital is a critical platform for us to tap into the power of our collections both online and offline, allowing us to continue engaging with our guests in an authentic and personalized way." Personalized way online? Bring it on.

Because of online's success, LULU can gauge international demand and all I can say is that this company is early on in exploiting that channel.

The best of all? The company crowed that it had enough inventory on hand, even as it said the last few weeks were just okay, hence the muted guidance that was a turnoff to so many until the stock started ramping and people figured it was just conservatism. From a company that had been promotional to a fault, I welcome the tempering.

Carnival was extraordinary, much better than I thought possible, with pretty much every line item up and bookings very strong. I know I was shocked at how much interest there is in going to the Caribbean, having just re-entered the country in Houston, where there are signs everywhere about the malady. But judging by the raised prices and the incredible growth in numbers of people who want cruises, it seems to be, at least right now, not even a factor, certainly not one the analysts care to mention, as they were more focused on the Belgian tragedy.

Two communist positives: the Chinese and Cuba. The Chinese are nuts about cruising, and Carnival can't get enough ships over there. Cuba? Arnold Donald, the CEO, actually urged the analysts to book now before they are sold out on their first of many to that once extremely popular destination. President Obama really did these guys a solid.

There were no bad line items. None. Everything was better than expected. I still have a hard time not being skeptical about Zika. Given that I have kids, I sure wouldn't want to go to the Caribbean this winter.

I am now thinking that somehow I am just an over-protective parent. Because one thing is certain from these advanced bookings: far more people care about a nice stateroom than they care about a mosquito bite with some severe consequences.

Lulu and Carnival: two that people bet against. Two that the shorts got wrong. Two that cost a heck of a lot of people a lot of money.

At the time of publication, Action Alerts PLUS, which Cramer co-manages as a charitable trust, had no positions in the stocks mentioned.

No Quit in Broadcom Shares

Posted at 3:31 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, March 30, 2016

You have to wonder how much longer Broadcom Ltd. (AVGO) is going to go up before people realize that NXP Semiconductors (NXPI) and Skyworks (SWKS) should be higher.

I thought the Avago-Broadcom merger was sensational, but so was the NXP-Freescale deal. I was concerned that Skyworks wanted to pay too much for PMC-Sierra, which I didn't' think fit into the portfolio and made me feel that Skyworks itself didn't think it had as robust a future unless it made a deal.

At the same time, though, if Apple (AAPL) is going higher and the Internet of Things stays hot, I would not quit on these stocks and I would still be buying Broadcom, which now has a much broader portfolio than just Apple. CEO Hock Tan is a miracle worker who has cobbled together the fastest-growing semi in the land -- the quietest $67 billion semi I know. It just passed Texas Instruments (TXN) in size.

Broadcom has all of this juicy communications equipment required to make your cellphone work so much better than it does now. It is well ahead of all other companies. It is the company that I wish Intel (INTC) had bought instead of Altera.

Of all of the techies I follow, this one has the best chance of blowing numbers away when it reports. Yet, it sells for only 15x earnings. Broadcom's pretty much the poster child for why I believe tech is still cheap.

Just a great combination that was long suffering -- like the others mentioned here -- that is finally able to show the beauty of a telecommunications powerhouse that's no longer hostage to Apple.

The real tell about this combination is that when Jabil (JBL) announced that Apple cellphone orders had dropped off the face of the earth, Broadcom was barely hit. Can you imagine when the orders come back?

That's why you don't want to leave this now -- too much momentum ahead.

At the time of publication, Action Alerts PLUS, which Cramer co-manages as a charitable trust, was long AAPL.
Study: 45% Of Common Sunscreen Ingredients Disrupt Sperm Function

Attention: 45% Of Common Sunscreen Ingredients Disrupt Sperm Function

Why Is This Important?

Because maybe it's time to start wearing a hat.

Long Story Short

A laboratory study done in Denmark on sunscreen ingredients raises fertility concerns after it was shown some UV filters can affect the way sperm swim.

Long Story

Research done at the University of Copenhagen suggests some UV filters commonly found in sunscreens can affect sperm mobility. Older research on sunscreen chemicals has already suggested potential hazards to human health, which is why the Danish team decided to have a closer look.

They tested 29 of the 31 UV filters approved for US sunscreens. The researchers placed sperm cells in a solution that resembled female Fallopian tubes and then hit them with sunscreen filters.

They discovered 13 of the 29 filters initiated calcium signaling, which provides sperm cells with a pathway for healthy swimming.

Normally, calcium signaling is handled by progesterone, a hormone secreted by the female reproductive system, but some of the sunscreen filters seemed to imitate progesterone, preventing the sperm cells from swimming the way they should.

If sunscreens are messing with sperm mobility, the larger issue becomes fertility.

Lead researcher Niels Skakkebaek says, Our study suggests that regulatory agencies should have a closer look at the effects of UV filters on fertility before approval.

Research has shown the common sunscreen ingredient oxybenzone can be toxic to reproductive systems in animals.

The nonprofit research organization, Environmental Working Group (EWG), has studied mineral and chemical filters in sunscreens, assessing their skin penetration, hormone disruption, possible allergic reactions and inhalation concerns. Sunscreen ingredients produced some pretty shady results.

Right off the bat, EWG recommends consumers steer clear of oxybenzone because it can penetrate the skin, cause allergic reactions, disrupt hormones and cause cell damage that could lead to cancer.

More than 96 percent of Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, show traces of oxybenzone in their bodies.

Its presence appears to be linked to endometriosis and lower birth weight in daughters.

Many sunscreen chemicals disrupt hormones and can be detected in the urine and blood of sunscreen users, as well as in mothers milk, meaning newborns and unborn fetuses may be exposed to these substances.

The environmental watchdog EWG says dont go for sunscreens with an SPF over 50 and, FYI, mineral sunscreens, which use zinc oxide and titanium dioxide, general have a higher safety rating in the EWG listings. The other option is organic sunscreens, which EWG also rates.

Research at the University of Copenhagen was done on human sperm cells in a lab, not on living manhood, so the results are not entirely conclusive. The Danish researchers do suggest further testing.

And don't forget, repeated exposure to UV rays is linked to skin cancer, so don't think you can go and give up sunblock completely.

With normal sperm cell function in mind, a little reading can go a long way to making sure consumers are covered when it comes to sunscreen.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question: Should we all just spend less time in the sun?

Disrupt Your Feed: Since sunscreen is so essential in preventing skin cancer, regulators need to be certain that the ingredients are safe.

Drop This Fact: A 2015 study shows less than 15 percent of men and 30 percent of women in the US report regular sunscreen use when outside for more than an hour.
AB Science (ABSCF) claimed success Monday for its lead compound masitinib in a late-stage study involving patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), but the French drugmaker did not provide any details about the drug's actual treatment effect.

Incomplete information from the trial makes it difficult to ascertain if ALS patient truly benefited from masitinib.

AB Science has a reputation for making treatment claims about masitinib which do not hold up under regulatory scrutiny. The company has tried but failed twice to win marketing approval for masitinib based on data from smaller clinical trials.

The phase III study announced Monday randomized 380 ALS patients to treatment with masitinib in combination with riluzole (an already approved ALS drug), or placebo plus riluzole.

An interim analysis of the study conducted when half the patients reached 48 weeks of treatment showed a slowing in disease progression favoring masitinib over placebo based on the ALS disease severity score known as the ALSFRS-R. Masitinib also improved lung function in ALS patients more than placebo, AB Science says.

In its Monday press release, AB Science said the study results were statistically significant but the magnitude of the benefit provided by masitinib on any efficacy measure used in the study was not disclosed. On masitinib safety, AB Science said only that the rate of patient discontinuations and adverse events were comparable to placebo.

AB Science said it would host a webcast to discuss the ALS study "in the coming days."

In 2013, European regulators rejected AB Science's application seeking approval for masitinib in gastrointestinal cancer. In 2014, AB Science sought European approval for the same drug in pancreatic cancer but was also rejected.

AB Sciences says masitinib targets masts cells, which play a role in disease-related inflammation. The company is testing masitinib in an alphabet soup of disease indications, including cancer, Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and asthma, in addition to ALS.

Adam Feuerstein writes regularly for TheStreet. In keeping with company editorial policy, he doesn't own or short individual stocks, although he owns stock in TheStreet. He also doesn't invest in hedge funds or other private investment partnerships. Feuerstein appreciates your feedback; click here to send him an email.
U.S. Special Forces Using Faulty Gun Sights

Trending News: The Gun Sights Used By U.S. Special Ops Can Be Off By 12 Inches

Why Is This Important?

Because in combat, a few inches could be the difference between life and death.

Long Story Short

A Washington Post report claims that despite knowing about the problem and successfully suing the manufacturer, U.S. Special Forces fighters are still using faulty rifle sights. The sights can be off by 6-12" in the right conditions.

Long Story

Because modern warfare is far more likely to take place in urban centers or rugged, difficult terrain, U.S. military operations have increasingly relied on specially trained units like the Navy SEALs and Delta Force to execute missions. In turn, those elite units rely on similarly elite equipment to complement their advanced training. There can be problems, though, when the equipment doesn't hold up its end of the bargain. Case in point, this Washington Post report revealing that many U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) units are knowingly using faulty gun sights.

If you've ever fired a gun using the traditional iron or fixed sights built into the weapon, you understand that they're probably not the easiest to use while under duress (paramilitary training or not). That's probably why several SOCOM groups were stoked when they received EOTech's Holographic Weapon Sight (HWS), which transforms an ordinary assault rifle into something that looks right at home in a FPS video game:

What a neat idea! If it worked, at least. While the HWS works perfectly most of the time, it's susceptible to something known as thermal drift, which affects the sight's accuracy when exposed to extreme hot or cold (conditions often found in the Middle East, for instance). At its worst, thermal drift can put a shooter at 300 feet off the mark by 6-12"  not a huge miss in a recreational setting, but it could literally cost a Spec Ops fighter his life. Once enemy combatants know you're shooting at them, they tend to not take it very well.

What's worse, EOTech's parent company L-3 Communications learned of the defect in 2007, but continued to sell units to the Pentagon without warning them. That explains why the government received a $25 million settlement from L-3 Communications in November, but it doesn't explain why the military is still using them.

For starters, there's no known repair  EOTech says as much on their website, and encourages anyone who's experienced thermal drift to return the HWS for a refund (if you're still alive, that is). On the military's end, they claim that troop safety is their highest priority, and SOCOM maintains that the sights aren't used in conditions that would endanger warfighters. But the Marines apparently like them enough (and don't have any ideal replacement options) that they're going to keep on using them.

At this time, the Marine Corps has not been directed nor does it intend to dispose of these systems unless defects are discovered that jeopardize our Marines safety or negatively impacts their abilities to accomplish the mission, Marine Corps spokesman Maj. Tony Semelroth told the Washington Post in an email.

Other government agencies, including the FBI, have already disposed of the sights and have no intention of ordering more from EOTech. There are, apparently, sights manufactured by other companies that do the same thing.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question

Why is the military so slow to act on this?

Disrupt Your Feed

I don't like the idea of our best fighters not having the best equipment.

Drop This Fact

The military has a long history of weaponry swings and misses, including the $40 million Active Denial System that gave enemies what amounted to an uncomfortable sunburn.
Gilead Sciences (GILD) is paying $400 million upfront to acquire an early-stage pipeline of liver disease drugs from privately held Nimbus Therapeutics, the companies announced Monday.

Central to the Gilead purchase is a Nimbus compound with a novel mechanism of action targeting nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), better known as fatty liver disease. The lead Nimbus drug is just entering a phase II study and will be the fourth NASH compound in Gilead's pipeline once the deal closes.

Investors have been anxious for Gilead to pull the trigger on an acquisition that can deliver robust earnings growth once the company's now-dominant hepatitis C business starts to diminish.

Monday's Nimbus purchase may not fit the "transformative" definition just yet but it does underscore Gilead's commitment to expanding its business into other serious liver diseases.

NASH is a chronic, progressive disease in which the liver becomes saturated with fat. Left untreated, NASH causes liver inflammation, cirrhosis and liver failure. Diagnosis of NASH is becoming more common as obesity rates increase but no approved therapies exist to treat the disease. That's the recipe for a potential blockbuster market opportunity, which is why companies like Intercept Pharmaceuticals (ICPT) , Genfit, Gilead Sciences and others are advancing drugs through clinical trials.

Nimbus' lead compound, NDI-010976 is designed to block an enzyme, acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACC), involved in the production of fatty substances in the liver. Blocking ACC might also help stimulate the breakdown of existing fats in the liver. Data from a phase I study of NDI-010976 will be presented next months at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL).

"The acquisition of Nimbus' ACC-inhibitor program represents a timely and important opportunity to accelerate Gilead's ongoing efforts to address unmet needs in NASH," said Norbert Bischofberger, Gilead's chief scientific officer, in a statement. "These molecules will complement and further strengthen Gilead's pipeline and capabilities to advance a broad clinical program in NASH that includes compounds targeting multiple key pathways involved in the pathogenesis of the disease."

The two existing NASH drugs in Gilead's pipeline are simtuzumab, GS-4997 and GS-9674. The latter drug was acquired last year, also via the purchase of a privately held company.

Gilead is paying $400 million in cash for the liver disease programs from Nimbus. Nimbus is also eligible to receive an additional $800 million in milestone-related payments.

Nimbus is a portfolio company of the Cambridge, Mass.-based venture capital firm Atlas Ventures. Last week, another Atlas-backed company, Padlock Therapeutics, was sold to Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Adam Feuerstein writes regularly for TheStreet. In keeping with company editorial policy, he doesn't own or short individual stocks, although he owns stock in TheStreet. He also doesn't invest in hedge funds or other private investment partnerships. Feuerstein appreciates your feedback; click here to send him an email.
Amazon (AMZN) today announced a new platform to drive adoption of its payments solution. The Amazon Payments Global Partner Program is meant to help retailers integrate Pay with Amazon on their websites so that Amazon customers can pay easily across the Internet.

Over the past few years Amazon has been trying to build up Pay with Amazon, its PayPal (PYPL) competitor, and this platform is the newest step in that game plan.

For now, the platform is available by invitation in the U.S., Germany, UK, and Japan, and it is free to participate in. Members of the platform will be able to use services and tools like account management, planning support, technical resources and training, Partner directory listing, Partner designation with exclusive logos, and certain Partners may also be eligible for co-marketing activities.

"The Amazon Payments Partner Program provides Partners with the tools and resources needed to extend the trust and convenience of the Amazon experience to their merchant customers," Patrick Gauthier, vice president of Amazon Payments said in a statement.

Some of the partners already participating in the program are Shopify, PrestaShop, and Future Shop.

"Amazon Payments is a natural extension of their ecosystem strategy," said Greg Portell, a partner in A.T. Kearney's Consumer Products & Retail and Media Practices. "Removing additional friction from online and mobile commerce fits very well with Amazon's previous moves. Additionally, the service extends Amazon's push into offering third-party services. Competitors should have been anticipating this type of move."

However, not everyone is convinced that retailers will jump on this opportunity.

"It's hard to imagine any large retailer would be shortsighted enough to display the Amazon brand at the most pivotal moment of the shopping journey," said 451 Research analyst Jordan McKee. "Most tier 1 and 2 merchants have deep- rooted skepticism of Amazon's ambitions in the payments space."

As proof, McKee pointed to Amazon's current merchant roster for Pay with Amazon, which includes mostly businesses and brands that do not directly compete with Amazon, such as Southwest Airlines or Fathead.com.

"Pay with Amazon will always be relegated to small businesses, and retail verticals that remain somewhat distant from Amazon's core business," he said.

Larger merchants won't want to enable "their arch rival with profits," Moor Insights and Strategy president and principal analyst Patrick Moorhead explained.

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Deutsche Bank analyst Ross Sandler is cautious on Facebook's (FB) upcoming quarterly report, as he expects the company's results to come in light. He remains, however, positive on the company's long-term story, meaning any post-earnings weakness can be an opportunity for investors. This positive long-term view echoes Axiom analyst Victor Anthony, who said Facebook's core platform remains robust.

RESULTS MAY MISS HIGH EXPECTATIONS: Deutsche Bank's Sandler thinks investors will have an opportunity to add to Facebook positions below current levels after the company's first quarter results. The numbers may come in below estimates amid high expectations, the analyst told investors in a research note. Given his mixed channel checks, Sandler sees an "unfavorable setup" into the results. However, the analyst said he still "loves" the long-term story for Facebook, and added that he believes the next few years for the company should be "strong" as revenue moves from the flagship app to multiple areas. Sandler reiterated a Buy rating and his $145 price target on the stock.

POSITIVE LONG-TERM STORY: Axiom's Victor Anthony said he believes Facebook's five-year monetization path looks "clearly defined." The analyst said the company's core platform remains "robust," with video ads, Instagram, FAN, and Oculus driving 2016 results. Instagram should add over 6 points of incremental growth this year, Anthony told investors in a research note. The analyst added he thinks Messenger will add to 2017 results and WhatsApp will drive 2018 results, with Graph Search monetization getting added in 2019, and the China optionality in 2020. Anthony reiterated a Buy rating and raised his price target to $150 from $145 on Facebook shares.

WHAT'S NOTABLE: Amid these analyst notes, a parts shortage is delaying some shipments of Rift headsets from Facebook's Oculus unit. The company didn't specify the affected components or the expected length of the delay. On Twitter, Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe said the first set of Rifts "are going out slower than we [originally] estimated, so we're giving free shipping for all pre-orders, including international."

PRICE ACTION: In morning trading, shares of Facebook slid over 3% to $112.40. Year-to-date, the stock is up about 10%.

Reporting by Jessica de Sa-Mota.

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The cystic fibrosis drug Orkambi is expected to transform Vertex Pharmaceuticals (VRTX) into a sustainably profitable company, so when Vertex secured the drug's approval last summer investors reacted by bidding up the company's shares to an all-time high.

But eight months later, Vertex's stock price has been cut almost in half. The culprit: Orkambi. Investors can't seem to reach a consensus trajectory for the drug's early launch, except that it's been slower than everyone first believed it would be.

The sell side and the buy side already have cut Orkambi sales estimates this year. The worry now is that another downward revision might be necessary if Vertex's first-quarter earnings coming later this month come up short.

Vertex hasn't provided sales guidance for Orkambi like it does with its first cystic fibrosis drug Kalydeco.

"When we have the information we need to do that, we'll do it in a compliant way," said Vertex spokeswoman Dawn Kalmar, adding that the company has tried to provide investors with as much visibility into the early months of the Orkambi launch.

"Investors are very focused on whether or not Orkambi estimates have come down far enough to put Vertex in a position to meet or beat expectations," says R.W. Baird analyst Brian Skorney. "I think investors generally like Vertex's cystic fibrosis franchise and perceive it as undervalued, but it becomes a problem for a stock when estimates are constantly revised downward, regardless of valuation."

Wall Street's average forecast for 2016 Orkambi worldwide sales has fallen from $1.58 billion in January to $1.37 billion in February and now stands at $1.36 billion, according to Bloomberg.

Vertex shares are down 44% since hitting an all-time high of $142 in the middle of August. On Monday, Vertex shares were up 6% to $83.73.

Modeling the pace of the Orkambi launch has been complicated by several factors, including the uncertainty about the real-world number of patient discontinuations and compliance rates. The clinical trials upon which Orkambi was approved demonstrated a modest improvement in lung function, but the drug also causes chest tightness, which can lead some patients, particularly those with poor lung function, to discontinue treatment. For similar reasons, cystic fibrosis patients prescribed Orkambi may not take all their doses.

Since Vertex launched Orkambi last summer, the company and investors have been dancing around questions seeking better visibility into the drug's discontinuation and compliance rates.

The deliberate (some would say slow) European rollout of Orkambi has also vexed some investors. The drug is sold in Germany while final pricing and reimbursement are being hashed out but commercial sales in the other major European countries won't get started until 2017.

Current consensus estimate for first-quarter Orkambi sales is $280 million ($255 million in the U.S., $25 million in Europe), according to RBC Capital analyst Michael Yee. Vertex reported fourth-quarter Orkambi sales of $220 million.

Vertex lost $1.11 a share on an adjusted basis last year, but Orkambi sales are expected to contribute to the company earning $2 a share (adjusted) in 2016, according to S&P CapitalIQ.

But like the downward revision in Orkambi sales estimates, Wall Street also has lowered its expectations for Vertex's profitability. Right before Orkambi was launched last summer, Vertex was expected to earn $4.54 ashare in 2016.

RBC analyst Yee said he believes investor concerns about Orkambi's launch and its depressive effect on Vertex's stock price are a short-term issue. Ultimately, he believes Orkambi will transform Vertex into a meaningfully profitably biotech company, with additional growth possible from the development of next-generation cystic fibrosis drugs, including a "triple combination" regimen with data expected next year.

Adam Feuerstein writes regularly for TheStreet. In keeping with company editorial policy, he doesn't own or short individual stocks, although he owns stock in TheStreet. He also doesn't invest in hedge funds or other private investment partnerships. Feuerstein appreciates your feedback; click here to send him an email.
Shares of Groupon (GRPN) surged on Monday as the online dealmaker announced a $250 million vote of confidence from Atairos Management, a private investment fund run by former Comcast (CMCSA) CFO Michael Angelakis.

It is Groupon's second high-profile investment, after Alibaba (BABA) purchased a stake in in February. Its shares rose 51 cents, or 13%, to $4.43.

Angelakis was part of Comcast's dealmaking inner circle, working on transactions such as the $37 billion purchase of a controlling stake in NBC UniversalfromGeneral Electric (GE) . The Atairos chairman and CEO will join Groupon's board.

While Atairos is an independent firm, Comcast is its sole outside backer and has said it is open to collaborating with Groupon.

Comcast Cable CEO Neil Smit said in a press release that the company would look for ways to link its networks of subscribers and advertisers with Groupon's knowledge of local busineses.

Groupon, which recently turned seven years old, is looking to build up an online marketplace. UBS analyst Eric Sheridan recently noted that large tech groups like Alphabet (GOOGL) and Facebook (FB) are going after local ad dollars more aggressively, while Amazon (AMZN) scale and same-day delivery presents daunting competition.



Jim Cramer'sAction Alerts PLUS owns Alphabet and Facebook in its portfolio.

The transaction suggests that Groupon may be looking to get acquired, said Wedbush Securities analyst Aaron Turner via phone.

"They've yet to find a buyer and this is the closest they can get," Turner added, noting that Groupon, overall, is a business that has struggled to grow and is looking to realize shareholder value outside normal growth avenues.

While a takeout is the fastest way to realize such value, it could be hard-pressed to see a sale without clear signs that Groupon's growth is reaccelerating, he said.

"It has been around for enough time that if a buyer wanted to acquire it, they would have," Turner said.

Groupon could follow footsteps of Zulily that went to QVC for $2.4 billion last year, he said. Groupon and Zulily were both high-growth businesses that ended up struggling. At the same time, it's unlikely that Groupon will get the 23 times Ebitda that Zulily garnered, Turner said.

The Atairos investment comes a little more than a month after Alibaba disclosed a 5.6% stake in the Internet company. The investment from Atairos is more strategic, in that Groupon and Comcast are more likely to find ways to work together, Brean Capital analyst Tom Forte said via phone. By contrast, Alibaba's rationale stems from seeing value in Groupon shares, he added.

It is unlikely that Comcast and Alibaba will acquire Groupon outright in the near term, Forte said. At the same time, when Groupon's dual-class structure expires at the end of the year, the Internet company could see a transaction, he added. "Groupon is perpetually examining its international assets," he said, adding that this will be an important rationale for Groupon moving forward.

Atairos, which is Greek for partnership, agreed to buy $250 million worth of convertible senior notes paying 3.25% interest. The notes, which come due in 2022, have a value of approximately $5.40 per share.

Angelakis and Comcast announced the creation of the firm last year, and launched earlier this year. Comcast accounted for $4 billion out of a total of $4.1 billion in capital commitments, with Angelakis agreeing to provide at least $40 million.
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Weatherford International (WFT) shares are down 2.41% to $7.28 Monday along with tumbling oil prices.

Oil futures slumped as investors were less hopeful of the Middle East producers coming to an agreement during its meeting in Doha later this month, to suppress the current oversupply. Iran said it would still increase output until it reached a favorable market position, Reuters reports.

Unless Iran agrees to control its production, oil giant Saudi Arabia will not agree to limit output.

Crude oil (WTI) is tumbling 1.44% to $36.26 per barrel and Brent crude is slipping 1.45% to $38.11 per barrel.

Despite this bearish sentiment, it appears that U.S. production is proving more resilient to declining oil prices, Reuters added.

Based in Switzerland, Weatherford International operates as a multinational oilfield service company worldwide.

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 generally high debt management risk, disappointing return on equity, poor profit margins, weak operating cash flow and generally disappointing historical performance in the stock itself.

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' author.

You can view the full analysis from the report here: WFT
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Oasis Petroleum (OAS) stock is down 0.99% to $7.01 in early afternoon trading on Monday as oil prices fall affecting energy stocks.

Crude oil (WTI) is down 1.58% to $36.21 per barrel and Brent oil is declining 1.60% to $38.05 per barrel this afternoon, according to the CNBC.com index.

Oil prices are dropping due to doubts that OPEC members will approve a freeze on oil production this month, the Wall Street Journal reports. Last week, Saudi Arabia said the country would agree to the freeze if Iran did so as well, but that is unlikely to happen, according to the Journal.

"There is a big question mark over whether an agreement on production caps can be reached at the meeting," Commerzbank said in a note, according to the Journal.

Based in Houston, Oasis is an energy exploration and production company that operates in the North Dakota and Montana regions of the Williston Basin.

Recently, TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its "risk-adjusted" total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer's view or that of this articles's author.

TheStreet Ratings rates this stock as a "sell" with a ratings score of D. This is driven by multiple weaknesses, which we believe should have a greater impact than any strengths, and could make it more difficult for investors to achieve positive results compared to most of the stocks we cover. The company's weaknesses can be seen in multiple areas, such as its feeble growth in its earnings per share, deteriorating net income, weak operating cash flow, generally disappointing historical performance in the stock itself and generally high debt management risk.

You can view the full analysis from the report here: OAS
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of WPX Energy (WPX) are slumping 1.96% to $6.49 Monday afternoon as oil prices retreat.

Crude oil (WTI) is dropping 1.69% to $36.17 per barrel and Brent oil is sliding 1.55% to $38.07 per barrel this afternoon.

Oil prices are declining today as investors doubt that top exporters will freeze production to ease the global glut, Reuters reports.

OPEC and non-OPEC members are meeting in Doha, Qatar later this month to discuss freezing output.

However, analysts said the likelihood of a deal looks weaker as Saudi Arabia will not lower production without Iran. Russia also reported its highest oil production in 30 years, Reuters noted.

"If we draw a line and add up the stance of these countries, we have to conclude that a meaningful deal is only a distant possibility," PVM Oil Associates analyst Tamas Varga told Reuters.

Tulsa, OK-based WPX Energy is a natural gas and oil exploration and production company.

Separately, TheStreet Ratings Team has a "Sell" rating with a score of D- on the stock.

This is driven by several weaknesses, which should have a greater impact than any strengths, and could make it more difficult for investors to achieve positive results compared to most of the stocks covered.

The company's weaknesses can be seen in multiple areas, such as its deteriorating net income, disappointing return on equity, weak operating cash flow, generally high debt management risk and generally disappointing historical performance in the stock itself.

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: WPX
Montreal, CA (H4T1V6)

Today

Clouds and some sun this morning with more clouds for this afternoon. High 67F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Considerable cloudiness. Occasional rain showers after midnight. Low around 50F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.


remaining of

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A Turkish police officer escorts a migrant after a vessel transporting migrants from Greek island of Lesbos docked in Dikili port, Turkey, Monday, April 4, 2016. Under heavy security, a first group of 202 migrants were ferried from the Greek islands to Turkey Monday as part of a controversial European Union plan to curb migration to Europe. (AP Photo/Emre Tazegul)
Remains of a downed Azerbaijani forces helicopter lies in a field in the separatist Nagorno-Karabakh region, on Saturday, April 2, 2016. In a statement, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said 12 of its soldiers "became shards" (Muslim martyrs) and said one of its helicopters was shot down. At least 30 soldiers and a boy were reported killed as heavy fighting erupted Saturday between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces over the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh. (AP Photo)
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An international coalition of media outlets on Sunday published what it said was an extensive investigation into the offshore financial dealings of the rich and famous, based on a vast trove of documents provided by an anonymous source.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalism, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, said the cache of 11.5 million records detailed the offshore holdings of a dozen current and former world leaders, as well as businessmen, criminals, celebrities and sports stars.

The Associated Press wasnt immediately able to verify the allegations made in articles that were published by the more than 100 news organizations around the world involved in the investigation.

However, the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, which first received the data more than a year ago, said it was confident the material was genuine.

The Munich-based daily was offered the data through an encrypted channel by an anonymous source who requested no monetary compensation and asked only for unspecified security measures, said Bastian Obermayer, a reporter for the paper.

The data concerned internal documents from a Panama-based law firm, Mossack Fonseca. Founded by German-born Juergen Mossack, the firm has offices across the globe and is among the worlds biggest creators of shell companies, the newspaper said. Mossack Fonseca did not immediately respond to an AP request for comment.

ICIJ said the law firms leaked internal files contain information on 214,488 offshore entities connected to people in more than 200 countries and territories. It said it would release the full list of companies and people linked to them early next month.

Obermayer said that over the course of several months Sueddeutsche Zeitung received about 2.6 terabytes of data  more than would fit on 600 DVDs. The newspaper said the amount of data it obtained is several times larger than a previous cache of offshore data published by WikiLeaks in 2013 that exposed the financial dealings of prominent individuals.

To our knowledge this is the biggest leak that journalists have ever worked on, Obermayer said.

The newspaper and its partners verified the authenticity of the data by comparing it to public registers, witness testimony and court rulings, he told the AP. A previous cache of Mossack Fonseca documents obtained by German authorities was also used to verify the new material, Obermayer added.

Among the countries with past or present political figures named in the reports are Iceland, Ukraine, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Russia.

The Guardian newspaper, which took part in the investigation, published a video on its website late Sunday showing an interview with Icelands Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson. During the interview the prime minister is asked about a company called Wintris. He responds by insisting that its affairs are above board, before breaking off the interview.

In Russia, the Kremlin last week said it was anticipating what it called an upcoming information attack.

Russian President Vladimir Putins spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters that the Kremlin had received a series of questions in a rude manner from an organization that he said was trying to smear Putin.

Journalists and members of other organizations have been actively trying to discredit Putin and this countrys leadership, Peskov said.

The ICIJ said the documents included emails, financial spreadsheets, passports and corporate records detailing how powerful figures used banks, law firms and offshore shell companies to hide their assets. The data spanned a time frame of nearly 40 years, from 1977 through the end of 2015, it said.

It allows a never-before-seen view inside the offshore world  providing a day-to-day, decade-by-decade look at how dark money flows through the global financial system, breeding crime and stripping national treasuries of tax revenues, the ICIJ said.

(AP)
On Sunday 24 Adar-II, Beersheva District Court Judge Yisrael Pablo Axelrod rejected the petition filed by Honenu Attorney Sima Kochav on behalf of administrative detainee Meir Ettinger and ruled that he will not be permitted to participate in his sons brit milah, which is expected to take place the following day. The Prison Service suggested that the bris be held at the prison. Moriya Ettinger, the wife of administrative detainee Meir Ettinger, stated that the family refuses to hold the bris milah at the prison, which the court conditions on the presence of only 15 people who will undergo meticulous searches by the Prison Service before entering the prison.

Other members of Ettingers family stated that they will refuse to hold the bris milah in prison in a manner in which not all of Ettingers siblings and close relatives will be able to participate in the event, and whoever will able to participate will be forced to undergo humiliating searches.

This is not our private matter, but rather the struggle for Jewish identity, for the differentiation between friend and foe, and between Israel and the nations. With G-ds help, the bris milah will take place at its time, with Meir. I call on everyone to support our struggle, said Moriya Ettinger. Ettinger also wrote a letter to the Chief Rabbis of Israel, Rabbi David Lau and Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef requesting their assistance in obtaining furlough for her husband to participate in their sons bris milah.

Supreme Court Justice Mani Mazuz scheduled a deliberation for 9:00 A.M. today, Monday 25 Adar-II at the Supreme Court Building for the urgent appeal filed by Honenu Attorney Adi Kedar on the matter of Meir Ettingers participation in his sons bris milah. A panel of three judges will rule on the appeal.

Friends of the family were shocked that Justice Mazuz scheduled the deliberation for Monday, the day of the bris and not Sunday when it was requested.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
The Jewish community has much to be pleased about in the newly released 2016-17 New York State budget, including significant victories for the states independent and religious schools and increased funding for vital neighborhood programs that enable seniors to age in place, Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz (D-Brooklyn) said today.

Yeshivas and other nonpublic schools throughout the state will receive an additional $72.5 million in funding overall. This includes $20 million over two years for safety and security grants, financing the hiring of security personnel and other vital proactive measures. An increase of $60 million over the next two years through the Mandated Services Reimbursement program will bolster funding for Comprehensive Attendance Policy (CAP) requirements. CAP provides nonpublic schools with reimbursements for tracking and enforcing student attendance.

Additionally, the New York State Education Department will create an Office for Religious and Independent Schools, funded at $2 million, which will provide important resources and support for program administration and curriculum development. Assemblyman Cymbrowitz said the new Office will serve as a valuable resource for yeshivas and other independent schools in a variety of ways, including strengthening STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) programs to ensure that graduates are well equipped to meet the demands of todays workforce.

Nonpublic schools are an essential part of New Yorks educational landscape, providing families with the school options they need and teaching students who will go on to make a real difference in our state, said Assemblyman Cymbrowitz, who represents one of the largest Jewish communities in New York State.

Assemblyman Cymbrowitz, Chairman of the Aging Committee, worked hard to ensure that more seniors than ever will be able to remain in their homes and communities. The budget achieves his hard-fought goal to update statutory requirements for New Yorks Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities (NORCs) and Neighborhood NORCs, and protect and enhance funding for these vital programs. His efforts helped prevent 11 NORC and neighborhood NORC programs statewide from closing, restored more than $950,000 of proposed program cuts and added an additional $700,000 in program funding for a total of $1.65 million.

Thanks to this funding, thousands of New Yorks seniors will receive the services they need to continue to age in place, avoiding unnecessary hospitalization or nursing home placement and a vital part of their homes and communities, he said.

Assemblyman Cymbrowitz says the new budget also provides $200,000 for specialized health and mental-health programs for New Yorks Holocaust survivors. This vulnerable population often experiences complications beyond the normal scope of aging, and the new funding stream will allow for programs that target their particular needs.

As the former Chairman of the Assemblys Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Committee, Assemblyman Cymbrowitz was essential in crafting the States comprehensive 2014 bill package to address the epidemic of prescription opioid and heroin abuse, and he helped raise awareness about the problem of drug and alcohol abuse in Brooklyns Jewish community. This year, as part of the work Assemblyman Cymbrowitz started, the budget will invest $25 million in the Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services (OASAS) to combat the heroin/opiate crisis, increasing spending to $166 million in FY 2017. Funding will be directed to increase access for prevention, treatment and recovery support services for individuals impacted by heroin, opiate and other substance use disorders.

(YWN Desk  NYC)
One time in mid-2003, as I was exiting the White House Situation Room  a day after President George W. Bush had delivered a major speech on foreign policy  I remarked to a career guy at the State Department that we needed more discussion on some issues but that, at least on those the president had covered, we now knew what the policy would be. I distinctly remember his answer, which was that the speech did not matter.

Policy is made by the interagency process, not some speech! he said.

My colleague was wrong: Presidents can and certainly should make policy, but they will get their way only if they lead and fight.

The federal bureaucracy is vast, especially when it comes to national security policy, which includes  as a start  nearly 34,000 State Department employees, more than 2 million people at the Defense Department and perhaps 20,000 more at the CIA. So how is policy made? Is it through the so-called interagency process  meaning the endless meetings, memos, arguments and agreements by which the many agencies and departments make decisions?

In truth, if the president is ignorant, uncommitted or simply relies on assistants and the bureaucracy, his or her administration will get a hodgepodge of policy  a pudding with no theme.

The presidents loyalists, primarily at the National Security Council but also sprinkled throughout the bureaucracy, can enforce the presidents policies if they are clear and detailed, if the administration is willing to insist on them and if the staff believes in the presidents agenda.

Under Ronald Reagan, for example, Secretary of State George Shultz was always willing to listen to in-house criticism of the presidents policies. But I recall him ending one meeting by saying, You know, you may be right. And all you need to do is get yourself elected president, and well do it your way. But since Ronald Reagan got himself elected president, were going to do it his way.

Shultz deliberately selected assistant secretaries who were not career Foreign Service officers, but were instead political appointees loyal to the administration.

Such an approach can work only if there are clear policies to follow and if the president will enforce them. In bureaucratic warfare, big fights get elevated, level by level, until they reach the Cabinet or, in critical cases, go right up to the president. Fighting for a presidents policies against powerful officials requires some confidence that when the issue reaches the president, hell back you up. If not, why bother?

In the George W. Bush administration, for example, I resisted for months the desire of one top general to visit Syria and speak with Bashar al-Assad about the war in Iraq. Assads Syria was then the route of most of the jihadis entering Iraq to kill Americans, and I was sure the president would view pleas to Assad as a mistake suggesting real American weakness. Eventually, the general balked at having his plans stopped by a White House staffer and set a date for his trip. The only way to prevent his travel was to go to the president. I had gambled on knowing what the president would want, and I was right. When asked, he immediately said no: No four-star general of the United States would beseech that vicious dictator to be nice to us.

Even with clear presidential leadership, controlling the huge apparatus called the U.S. government is very difficult. The National Security Councils size has ranged from about 50 members under George H.W. Bush to about 400 today. But it isnt size that matters most: Its having clear presidential guidance and knowing what the president wants, best of all by hearing it directly from him. Thats why a 400-person council may encounter diminishing returns. The most effective thing a loyalist can say in an interagency meeting is No, the president said yesterday that he wants X and not Y. I was there, and I talked to him about it.

Policy details emerge from policy themes. The George W. Bush administrations freedom agenda did not emerge from and was in fact resisted by the bureaucracy. It was up to loyalists in his administration to push it, year after year and day after day: in speeches, in instructions to ambassadors, in meetings, in cables and emails. But that happens only when the president demands it, shows where he wants to go and requires that the whole government follow.

Absent presidential leadership, the government will not collapse. But the policies it follows will be the uncoordinated result of major bureaucratic institutions each fighting for its privileges and its own favored outcomes. The president makes foreign policy if he or she knows and cares enough to lead the struggle for control.

Special To The Washington Post  Elliott Abrams
Alert policemen saw a suspicious vehicle on Monday morning 25 Adar-II heading from Latrun towards Jerusalem. Police instructed the driver to pull over and found seven PA (Palestinian Authority) residents in the vehicle, some carrying forged Israeli identity cards. An inspection of the vehicle revealed the knife seen in the photo, in the possession of a 17-year-old.

Police summoned back up units and the suspects and the Israeli driver were taken into custody, to the Harel station.

On their way to the station they saw another suspicious car carrying two PA residents, also with forged identity cards. In total nine PA residents from the Hebron area were taken into custody including three minors and two Israeli Arab drivers.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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By: Shimmy Blum

It is the fascinating tale of a young frum entrepreneur who utilized his childhood experiences tracking predatory animals around his native Johannesburg, into a business philosophy that placed him onto the highest echelons of the speakers circuit for Microsoft and other corporate giants around the world.

On June 1st, Kivi Bernhard will be at the 2016 J-Biz Expo and Business Conference in the New Jersey Convention and Exposition Center, delivering the keynote address.

Kivi, who currently resides in Atlanta, turned $800 into a multimillion dollar diamond business. His book, Leopardology: The Hunt for Profit in a Tough Global Economy, which teaches positive business skills based on the nature of a leopard, is an international bestseller. He delivers lectures for the most prestigious Fortune 500 companies, and has been interviewed by major media outlets around the world. Leopardology has also been incorporated into the MBA programs of leading universities.

Charming, original and motivated, Kivi dazzles every audience he addresses, but he has a particular soft spot for the audience at J-Biz. Members of our community, he says, have a deep understanding of the value of money and the good that it can accomplish. Others chase dollars, but we chase value and the money follows, Kivi explains. When you understand why you do what youre doing, you dont struggle with the how.

For the son of a rabbi, Jewish values arent mere lip service. In one of the most telling occurrences of his career, Kivi was invited by Microsoft several years ago to address one of its most prestigious conferences, attended by Bill Gates and other top executives. When he realized that it was scheduled for Shabbos, he refused the invitation, despite being offered any level of compensation he would ask for. Microsoft refused to go without Kivi, so they changed the date of the event. A top Microsoft executive later shared that upon discussing Kivis Shabbos observance, Bill Gates remarked, Thats what happens when you have something money cant buy.

Kivi says that he will talk about the intersection of Jewish values in the corporate world at J-Biz. He firmly believes that the common instinct for frum individuals to try to mask their religious lifestyle amongst non-Jewish colleagues is a mistake. Instead, showcasing our values in a proud and positive way helps us stand out and excel amongst the corporate masses, making it attractive to do business with and hire religious Jews.

Additionally, Kivis keynote address will include lots of practical business leadership tips.

J-Biz founder and director Duvi Honig remarks, The fact that Kivi will deliver the keynote address at the business conference is an enormous honor for us, and an opportunity of a lifetime for the entire community.

Mr. Honig says that Kivis participation is symbolic of the great lengths that J-Biz goes in order to secure business resources for our community from the most prestigious circles. In addition to Kivi, a slew of other top level presenters and business workshops will grace the event. J-Biz Expo and Business Conference is a project of the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce (OJC), a powerful body of community business throughout the metropolitan region and well beyond.

This year, the business conference will take place from when the doors open until 1:00 pm. While the conference is ongoing, the expos B2B floor will be closed. The B2B portion of the event will commence once the business conference and workshops have concluded. This schedule ensures that all attendees maximize their knowledge and networking capabilities at both segments of the event without distraction.

Hundreds of diverse business services, of all sizes, in a variety of industries, will exhibit at J-Biz, which attracts thousands of motivated attendees from throughout North America, Europe, Israel and other countries around the world.

J-Biz offers a one-of-a-kind opportunity to brand your business, acquire new clients and expand staff, says Mr. Honig. The P2P, person to person, aspect of business networking is a tried-and-true formular that is key to successful B2B networking.

For more information about J-Biz Expo or to reserve space, visit www.jbizexpo.com.
Normally during the course of takeover deals the chief executives keep their heads down and try to stay neutral and let the chairmen do the talking.

That way, if it all goes off the rails they have a better chance of hanging onto their job.

Xavier Rolet, the adventurous and highly successful chief executive of the London Stock Exchange (LSE), clearly has had enough of being the quiet man. Protected by the knowledge he is on the way out and stands to become very rich should the 21bn merger of equals with Deutsche Boerse (DB) go ahead, the Frenchman has come out all guns blazing in what by any standards is a bizarre series of interviews. Most outrageously Rolet told The Daily Telegraph that Brexit would be devastating for the United Kingdom, and would not be good for anyone with their headquarters in the European Union.

He went onto to say that Brexit could trigger an economic implosion so devastating that the US would be required to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Yet if that is the case shareholders in both exchanges might ask themselves why the LSE and DB are pressing ahead with their deal irrespective of whether Britain votes in or out.

Indeed, the Brexit campaign rightly argues that the fact the two sides are determined to press ahead and have set up a special referendum committee to review the impact of a leave vote suggests that the LSE and the City will prosper in or out of the EU as it has done for generations and in the face of far greater historical dangers.

The LSE boss also argues illogically that a deal in which the DB shareholders own 54.4pc of the stock and the LSE has the minority interest of 45.6pc does not mean it is a takeover.

His argument is that because DB has more British shareholders than German investors it is not a takeover.

But as the veteran City commentator David Buik, of Panmure Gordon, notes: A merger of equals is a non-sequitur. It only happens in peoples dreams.

Indeed, if that were not enough vitriol for one day, Rolet has declared war on the Atlanta based Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), owner of the New York Stock Exchange, which has indicated it is a potential bidder but has yet to show its hand. He argues that ICEs ownership of Euronext has been a disaster and accuses it of wanting to make a highly leveraged share and cash offer. First, it is up to the shareholders in the LSE and its full board to decide what deal is in its best interests, not the chief executive.

Second, it is highly unusual and potentially destabilising to launch a war of words against an offer which has yet to be made.

Rolet will not be around to deliver the 360m of cost savings promised in the German proposal. He is more likely to be tending to his bees in France  he currently has beehives on the roof of the LSE in the heart of the City of London  or indulging in his hobby of rally driving.

But finding that level of cost savings, when there will be two headquarters and separate regulation of DBs Eurex clearing house and the LSEs LCH Clearnet, might only be achieved, to use his word about ICE, by eviscerating what exists. What Rolet doesnt fully explain is why he thinks the fast growth LSE, which has expanded through a series of clever mergers, could ever benefit from linking itself to an exchange rooted in conservative Frankfurt-style capitalism.

Germany is a country which disdains the Anglo-Saxon model of capitalism with its acceptance of hedge funds, private equity and short trading positions. Rolet likes to cite Britains triumph in defeating an effort by the European Central Bank to move clearing and settlement in euros to the single currency area as a reason to support the merger. In his view, Brexit could mean it being reversed.

The most serious obstacles to a LSE deal will be regulatory. This will be the case whether DB were to emerge as the winner or Americas ICE.

Both the EU, the UKs Department of Business, Innovation & Skills and City regulators are all known to have concerns about the risks of such a merger particularly in terms of the thin layers of capital in the clearing systems. Putting two capital-weak organisations together only doubles the risk.

Similarly, even if ICE does come along with a better offer the prospect of a new owner weighed down with debt wont provide the kind of secure covenant as to which country will stand behind the merged exchanges in a major crisis. Rolet charges that an Atlanta-based company is not going to worry about the financing of European industry whether small or blue chip. Maybe not.

But as we are learning with Tata and the steel crisis at Port Talbot, when it comes to vital interests, it is every nation for itself.

Among the reasons German steel has not been as hard hit as British steel is because the Berlin government has opted to heavily subsidise its steel makers, placing ours at more risk.

The idea of a warm and cuddly DB controlled stock exchange doing its best to help UK small and medium sized firms looks like a fantasy land.
The amount of money raked in by the Treasury from inheitance tax has soared by 70 per cent in the last five years, new findings reveal.

Last year, HM Revenue and Customs collected 4.6billion from inheritace tax, compared to 2.69billion in 2010, data from the Office for National Statistics reveals.

While the threshold for paying IHT frozen at 325,000 since 2009, soaring property prices have dragged an increasing number of middle-class households into paying the death duties.

Rising sharply: Last year, HM Revenue and Customs collected 4.6billion from inheritace tax, compared to 2.69billion in 2010, data from the Office for National Statistics reveals

In the past 12 months alone, inheritance tax revenues soared by 21 per cent to 4.4billion, compared to just under 3.8billion a year earlier.

Under a proposed Government scheme, households with estates worth over 2million could be subject to a 20,000 probate fee, instead of the current rate of 215.

At present, the threshold for inheritance tax is 325,000, as it has been since 2009.

Commenting on the Treasury's rising inheritance tax revenues, Tim Fullerlove, Partner and trusts and tax specialist at law firm Wilsons, said: 'Inheritance tax was originally intended as a tax on the very wealthy, but it has now become a general tax for a large proportion of the middle classes.

'With the increasing value of property, it is no longer just the large windfalls of inheritance from estates that are being taxed.

Fee ideas: Under a proposed Government scheme, households with estates worth over 2million could be subject to a 20,000 probate fee, instead of the current rate of 215

'As the threshold has stayed at a fixed rate for almost seven years, individuals who were not originally intended to be taxed are now facing significant bills because of the rise in property prices, particularly in London and the South East of England.'

In his Budget last summer, Chancellor George Osborne announced plans to allow parents and grandparents to leave homes for their children worth up to 850,000 from 2017, rising to 1million by 2020.

Children or grandchildren where a single parent owns the property won't receive the full inheritance tax benefits as those who are married or in a civil partnership.
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By Madina Toure

Students at the Al-Iman School in Jamaica presented handmade projects illustrating the diversity of countries with significant Muslim populations as part of the schools annual Heritage Day event last week.

This years theme was Muslims in the United States, stressing that being Muslim and being American do not have to be separate.

The countries represented at the event, held at the school at 89-89 Van Wyck Expressway, included Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, Guyana, Palestine, India, Bangladesh, Iran, Tanzania, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, Morocco, Egypt and Albania.

Students from all grades were broken up into four groups of seven to 12 individuals. Each group was asked to come up with projects that were as authentic as possible.

Although many teachers were involved in assisting the students, the heads of the social studies and English departments oversaw the effort.

The students worked on the projects after school and even on some Saturdays, according to Nassir Ali Akber, principal of Al-Iman School.

One project, a large display titled American Muslims, featured a 3-D bar graph designed in the shape of the U.S. map highlighting the Muslim population of each state, a poster tracking the history of Muslims in the United States and a book featuring stories from the Quran, among other items.

We were even taken aback by them when they decided to find out information in each state, how many Muslims are there, Akber said. They wanted to be included. They said, We are American as much as any other Americans.

Drawing on the fact many notable figures in U.S. and world history have been Muslims, the event was an opportunity to recognize those people, as well as to learn from their accomplishments.

Akber, who has been the schools principal since 1995, said he started the event, which was called the Multicultural Bonanza, during his second year as principal.

He left to work in the private sector in April 2013, and returned to resume his job as principal at Al-Iman in April 2015. While he was away, the new principal changed the events name to Heritage Day.

The idea was mostly first to empower my students, to feel proud of their culture, to feel proud of their tradition, Akber said.

Seham Tajeddin, 13, one member of the group working on a project focused on Yemen, hails from the country herself. She said she enjoyed educating people about her country.

I like to give all the information to people, Tajeddin said.

Usman Qidwai, 18, also in the Yemen group, said he appreciated the opportunity to learn about a different country.

Its like going back home, Qidwai said.

Another group member, Muhammad Ali Mirza, 12, said he liked putting the project together.

Its actually really fun to us, Mirza said. We actually get dirty.

Elmont businessman Ali Mirza, who is challenging U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-Jamaica) for his congressional seat, said his daughter attended Al-Iman School and that he has been at the event many times.

I see the same diversity in my district, Mirza said.

Mohammad Mohsin, the schools social studies teacher, said the goal of the event is to bring people together and eliminate as much misunderstanding as possible.

Muslim Americans who were here on Sept. 11 or were born after Sept. 11 are just as American as anyone else, Mohsin said.

Amira Al-Seadi, a sixth-grade teacher, said the event really aims to bring home the point that it is possible to be both Muslim and American.

Heritage Day is all about connecting, making connectionsWere Muslims, yes, but were also American, Al-Seadi said.
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By Bill Parry

The company that opened the boroughs first medical marijuana dispensary, the Queens Patient Center in Elmhurst, in January is battling Google over the corporate giants refusal to carry its advertisements because it used the words medical marijuana or medical cannabis.

Vireo Health of New York at 89-55 Queens Blvd. sent a letter to the Internet search company last week urging it to change its policy and accept its submissions.

It is hard to understand where they are coming from, Vireo Health of New York CEO Ari Huffnung said. Googles policy is that they will not accept ads that promote recreational drugs.

After the letter was received, Google rejected two advertisements that had been accepted because they did not include the terms medical marijuana or medical cannabis.

We are shocked and dismayed that Google chose to retaliate instead of engaging in a constructive dialogue, Hoffnung said. We continue to call on Google to stay true to their do no evil corporate values and lift those restrictions preventing us from freely communicating with New Yorkers suffering from life-threatening and debilitating conditions like cancer, ALS and HIV/AIDS.

In his letter to Google Co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Hoffnung wrote that Vireos products are sold strictly and exclusively for medicinal purposes and in conformance with New York law and that the products legally cannot be, sold or used for recreational purposes.

We are talking about one of the most powerful companies on Planet Earth setting policies that impact the lives of millions of people, Hoffnung said. When you have that level of power, it comes with a special degree of responsibility. It is incumbent on Google to develop more thoughtful and nuanced advertising policy.

He said the service provided by Google AdWords in which Vireos advertisement would show up in certain keyword searches, is more valuable than traditional print advertising. Vireo plans on resubmitting its advertisement again

Look, 60 to 70 percent of online searches go through Google, Hoffnung said. To be barred from that platform makes it very difficult for us.

He has not heard back from Brin, Page or anyone else from Google.

Their reason doesnt make any sense and it is baffling and disappointing that we dont have a response from them yet, Hoffnung said.

Dr. Kyle Kingsley, CEO of Vireo Health, the parent company of Vireo Health of New York, took Google to task.

As a physician, its hard to understand why Google willingly accepts ads that promote highly addictive painkillers, like OxyContin, that are responsible for thousands of deaths each year, but knowingly rejects medical cannabis ads that could, in many cases, be a significantly safer therapeutic option for patients, he said.

Google did not respond to a request for comment.
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By Patrick Donachie

For the second time this year, a runaway animal took to the streets of Jamaica in an attempt to escape his fate at a slaughterhouse. The bull was eventually recaptured, but he had a surprising guardian angel in the form of comedian Jon Stewart, who helped transport the bull to his new home upstate.

At about 10:18 a.m. on Friday, police received calls about a loose bull on Liberty Avenue. The bull eventually made his way to the York College CUNY campus before police gained control of him, according to a police spokesman.

The bull who made a break for freedom was then taken to the Animal Care Center in East New York. Animal Care Center employees nicknamed the bull Frank Lee, after Frank Lee Morris, who escaped the island prison Alcatraz in 1962.

Farm Sanctuary, an animal rescue organization, later agreed to take and keep the bull. Farm Sanctuary was founded in 1986 to provide safe haven for animals and educate the public on the problematic aspects of factory farming. The organization operates several sanctuaries throughout the country.

Representatives from Farm Sanctuary arrived to take the bull to his new home, including Tracey Stewart and her husband Jon, who is famous for his 16-year stint as host of The Daily Show. Tracey Stewart, a member of Farm Sanctuarys board of directors, is the author of Do Unto Animals: A Friendly Guide to How Animals Live, and How We Can Make Their Lives Better. The two helped load Frank Lee into a truck for a trip to his new home at a sanctuary in Watkins Glen, NY.

In January, a cow escaped from a slaughterhouse in southeast Queens and took off on the streets of Jamaica before being recaptured. The cow, who was subsequently named Freddie, ended up at Skylands Animal Sanctuary and Rescue in Wantage, NJ.

According to an announcement from New York Citys Animal Care Center, Freddie is living the good life snacking on grass and laying in the sun.
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By Michael Shain

Donald Trumps front-running presidential campaign is set to name two political hopefuls  one from Jamaica, the other from Maspeth  to head his campaign in Queens.

Tony Nunziato, the owner of a florist shop and a longtime Republican activist in Maspeth, and Bernadette Semple, a retired Navy officer and a Democrat who challenged former state Sen. Malcolm Smith two years ago, will be appointed later this week, according to campaign sources. At that time the Trump campaign is expected to release the names of local campaign leaders statewide in preparation for the New York primaries two weeks away.

In years past, Congressional District Campaign Leaders, as they are called, played largely ceremonial roles in the New York state primaries since the elections in the past were too late to help decide the race or were a foregone conclusion for one candidate.

But this year the campaigns on both the Republican and Democratic sides are expected to be hard fought.

Nunziato tried twice without success to unseat Democratic Assemblywoman Marge Markey (D-Maspeth) in the district that covers Maspeth, Middle Village and several other neighborhods in central Queens.

Semple had little good to say two years ago when the Democratic Party leadership in Queens tried to have her thrown off the ballot in the chaotic election following Smiths indictment on corruption charges.

The machine has consistently opposed candidates that they cant control using every corrupt weapon in their arsenal, she told one newspaper at the time.

Smith was later convicted and Leroy Comrie eventually won the seat.
Country

United States of America US Virgin Islands United States Minor Outlying Islands Canada Mexico, United Mexican States Bahamas, Commonwealth of the Cuba, Republic of Dominican Republic Haiti, Republic of Jamaica Afghanistan Albania, People's Socialist Republic of Algeria, People's Democratic Republic of American Samoa Andorra, Principality of Angola, Republic of Anguilla Antarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S) Antigua and Barbuda Argentina, Argentine Republic Armenia Aruba Australia, Commonwealth of Austria, Republic of Azerbaijan, Republic of Bahrain, Kingdom of Bangladesh, People's Republic of Barbados Belarus Belgium, Kingdom of Belize Benin, People's Republic of Bermuda Bhutan, Kingdom of Bolivia, Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana, Republic of Bouvet Island (Bouvetoya) Brazil, Federative Republic of British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago) British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria, People's Republic of Burkina Faso Burundi, Republic of Cambodia, Kingdom of Cameroon, United Republic of Cape Verde, Republic of Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad, Republic of Chile, Republic of China, People's Republic of Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia, Republic of Comoros, Union of the Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, People's Republic of Cook Islands Costa Rica, Republic of Cote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Republic of the Cyprus, Republic of Czech Republic Denmark, Kingdom of Djibouti, Republic of Dominica, Commonwealth of Ecuador, Republic of Egypt, Arab Republic of El Salvador, Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Faeroe Islands Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Fiji, Republic of the Fiji Islands Finland, Republic of France, French Republic French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon, Gabonese Republic Gambia, Republic of the Georgia Germany Ghana, Republic of Gibraltar Greece, Hellenic Republic Greenland Grenada Guadaloupe Guam Guatemala, Republic of Guinea, Revolutionary People's Rep'c of Guinea-Bissau, Republic of Guyana, Republic of Heard and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras, Republic of Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China Hrvatska (Croatia) Hungary, Hungarian People's Republic Iceland, Republic of India, Republic of Indonesia, Republic of Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq, Republic of Ireland Israel, State of Italy, Italian Republic Japan Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Kazakhstan, Republic of Kenya, Republic of Kiribati, Republic of Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait, State of Kyrgyz Republic Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon, Lebanese Republic Lesotho, Kingdom of Liberia, Republic of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein, Principality of Lithuania Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Macao, Special Administrative Region of China Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar, Republic of Malawi, Republic of Malaysia Maldives, Republic of Mali, Republic of Malta, Republic of Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania, Islamic Republic of Mauritius Mayotte Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco, Principality of Mongolia, Mongolian People's Republic Montserrat Morocco, Kingdom of Mozambique, People's Republic of Myanmar Namibia Nauru, Republic of Nepal, Kingdom of Netherlands Antilles Netherlands, Kingdom of the New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua, Republic of Niger, Republic of the Nigeria, Federal Republic of Niue, Republic of Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway, Kingdom of Oman, Sultanate of Pakistan, Islamic Republic of Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama, Republic of Papua New Guinea Paraguay, Republic of Peru, Republic of Philippines, Republic of the Pitcairn Island Poland, Polish People's Republic Portugal, Portuguese Republic Puerto Rico Qatar, State of Reunion Romania, Socialist Republic of Russian Federation Rwanda, Rwandese Republic Samoa, Independent State of San Marino, Republic of Sao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic of Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Senegal, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles, Republic of Sierra Leone, Republic of Singapore, Republic of Slovakia (Slovak Republic) Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia, Somali Republic South Africa, Republic of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Spain, Spanish State Sri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic of St. Helena St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Suriname, Republic of Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands Swaziland, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Switzerland, Swiss Confederation Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand, Kingdom of Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of Togo, Togolese Republic Tokelau (Tokelau Islands) Tonga, Kingdom of Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Tunisia, Republic of Turkey, Republic of Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda, Republic of Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe
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.
By John Ingle of the Times Record News

Folks would be hard-pressed to find an area in North Texas with as rich and diverse a history as Wichita Falls.

What started out as a cattle and agriculture town in the late 1800s grew to a regional hub with three railroads before oil was discovered just north of Wichita Falls in Burkburnett.

Aviation would find its way to the area with the establishment of Call Field where World War I aviators were trained, the likes of Wiley Post and Amelia Earhart landing at one of the first North Texas airports and the establishment of Sheppard Field  later to become Sheppard Air Force Base  that was the result of a meeting in a field and a handshake between the Army Air Corps and city leaders.

The history of North Texas, however, began before the arrival of cattle drovers and airplanes; before Texas Tea began spewing out of the ground; before the simple act of hanging a worn-out hat on a wall soon became a legend; before Wichita Falls took on the moniker of "The City that Faith Built" with a church seemingly on every corner. Native Americans first inhabited the area, specifically the Wichitas of the Caddoan Indian tribes, but some of the more notable names include Comanche Chief Peta Nocona and his more famous son, Quanah Parker.

The Museum of North Texas History in Wichita Falls has shared that history with guests since it opened in the early 2000s in Downtown Wichita Falls, and continues to add to displays of days gone by. Executive director Charles Campbell, whose family has been in Wichita Falls since 1974, said he has learned so much about the area's history during his almost five years overseeing the museum, continually reminding people how important history is.

"History is not dull, it's not musty," he said. "It's really dynamic. That's one of the things we're really trying to do, and we have made some end roads on that."

The beginning

A group of local folks began a journey in 2000 in search of a location to house artifacts and memorabilia that document and display the history of the Wichita Falls area, and there were several options considered in the early goings, Times Record News archives show. The old Kemp-Kell Depot built in 1909 was a consideration by the Wichita County Historical Society, but that never materialized.

It was later that year that area businessman Rusty Lindemann stepped up with an offer that couldn't be refused. He proposed turning over ownership of the old First National Bank building at the corner of Seventh Street and Indiana Avenue to Wichita County in 2000 with two conditions: the county would buy the adjacent parking garage and, more importantly, turn the building into a museum.

"If Rusty Lindemann had not made this building available to the county," Campbell said, "we would not be here."

A 50-year lease agreement was signed between the county and the museum group for $1 per year, and the museum is responsible for costs of operation. The name of the museum, TRN articles show, was officially changed to the Museum of North Texas History in 2002 to better reflect the goal of the institution, which is to tell the history of North Texas and Southern Oklahoma, not just Wichita County.

The MONTH encompasses 18,000 square feet of the former bank building, about 11,000 of which houses displays that capture history predating the area's early settlers to present day. Another display that is officially part of the museum is located at Wichita Falls Regional Airport. The Jenny-to-Jet display encapsulates the evolution of military aviation in Wichita Falls.

The displays

"Objects of permanent value." This definition of items contained in a museum, whether it's art, scientific specimens or other items and collections, shows what people intrinsic value, or the exhibits, themselves, show what has brought value to a specific area.

Commerce, oil and gas, railroads, government and medicine, to name a few, are all industries that have, in their own way, made Wichita Falls and the area what it is today.

Eric West, chairman of the museum board of directors, said he took an interest in the history of the area during Leadership Wichita Falls in 2008. He began asking questions about how points of interests like Lake Wichita, Sheppard Air Force Base and the downtown area come to be.

"That's why I love this place so much because it tells all of those stories," he said. "It shows pictures ... and who was involved."

The first major display for the museum came from the collection of Lloyd "Bill" English, a World War II P-51 Mustang pilot in the Pacific Theater. His collection was once in the Wichita Falls Library, but it continued to grow as area residents and members of the annual Iwo Jima Survivors Reunion donated artifacts and needed a bigger venue.

The military exhibit has items from the civil war to more recent conflicts in the Middle East. A scale mock-up of Call Field can be seen, as well as military ships handcrafted by local resident Bill Carter.

Just as fascinating as the military collection itself, Campbell said, is where it came from.

"What really makes our military collection special is that I would say 90 percent of it has items that belong to people who have or have had a direct tie to the North Texas area," he said. "The other 10 percent would have come from some of the Iwo Jima survivors, but the vast majority we have has come from people right here."

Many people know of or have heard of "Nat's Hats," a popular stop in the museum's Heritage Hall. Clay County resident Nat Fleming, the longtime owner of The Cow Lot in Wichita Falls, would hang the old, worn out hats of his customers on the walls of his business on East Scott Avenue when they would buy a new one. He donated the collection of 500 headpieces in 2006 after he got out of the western wear business.

Also in Heritage Hall is the set of former Times Record News staff writer and local celebrity Joe Brown's RFD-3 television program, a part of the old Monroe Street Post Office that was dismantled and reconstructed, replicated storefronts and memorabilia of the area's cattle and ranching industry.

There's no doubt that Texas Tea would be part of the display, with Burkburnett playing an important role in the early years of the Texas oil boom. Pictures of the oil field north of Wichita Falls, a display of "gimme" hats and a scale oil drilling operation are a few of the finds.

The Native American exhibit shows the life of the white man's predecessors to the area, including a model teepee, stones used in everyday life for a variety of purposes, arrowheads and clothing.

The medical display shows the early practices and tools used in caring for area residents, including a wheelchair, photos as well as everyday essentials like a bed pan. A unique item called the "Iron Lung" comes from Archer County and was used to help patients breathe when they couldn't do it on their own.

A timeline in the main hallway allows for guests to read more about specific events in North Texas to further tell the story.

Getting bigger and better

The Museum of North Texas History has witnessed an infusion of interest over the past couple of years, Campbell said, citing a 20-percent increase in visitors from 2014 to 2015. It's been even better in 2016 as a year-to-year comparison in the first part of the year showed a 60-percent increase.

"We've certainly seen growth that has taken place, and that's due to a team effort by a bunch of people. I don't think there's any one person that you can say is primarily responsible. It's definitely a team effort," he said. "The museum has grown and that has been very satisfying."

The museum does provide several avenues for the community to get involved, including allow people with small private collections to display them in the Assembly Hall. Most recently an exhibit about the war in the Pacific during World War II was shown.

West said the special, personally owned displays are particularly interesting to him because the featured topic varies. He said those special exhibits also allows the museum to tap into an audience that might not have visited. For example, he said they have had an auto racing attraction that drew racing fans in, as well as one that captured the area's history of ballet.

Visitors often comment that they didn't know the museum was even in Wichita Falls, or about the vast array of topics covered. But, West said, the more local people visit, the more others will know.

"The more people you get in here, the more people talk about it, the more people know about it (and) the better chance we have to not only survive, but thrive and better maintain what we have and bring in new opportunities, new exhibit (and) bigger, better exhibits," he said.

The next permanent display the museum is working on comes from Fred Ridenour Jr.'s aviation collection that he showcased at Longhorn Trailer & Body up until he closed in 2014. The museum's "Get the Message  Innovations in Communications" display opens Friday.

For more information about the museum, visit www.museumofnorthtexashistory.org.
Contributed photo/Heroes on the Water A veteran fishes from a kayak as part of the Heroes on the Water program. HOW helps veterans by letting them unwind with fishing and kayaking. Planning for revitalization of Lake Wichita include a 1,200 foot long, 100-foot wide paddling trail connected to the lake.

SHARE Courtesy graphic/Heroes on the Water Courtesy of Heroes on the Water Heroes on the Water program helps veterans by letting them unwind with fishing and kayaking. Planning for revitalization of Lake Wichita include a 1,200 foot long, 100-foot wide paddling trail connected to the lake.

By Claire Kowalick of the Times Record News

As work continues on the Lake Wichita Revitalization project, the committee is requesting an extra $23,800 for Carollo Engineers Inc. to include a water quality study for the proposed paddling trail.

The Wichita Falls City Council will consider a resolution Tuesday morning at their regular meeting to approve this amendement to the agreement with Carollo.

LWR committee member Tom Lang said the group was "inherently conservative" when they initially made the agreement with Carollo to prepare a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 404 permit.

"It was one of the tasks we did not know if it would be necessary until we really got into it. It was maybe something that needed to be done, but it was not guaranteed," Lang said.

It was determined that a water quality study will be necessary to comply with the 404 permit as well as standards set by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

The paddling trail is a project in partnership with the Heroes on the Water program. HOW helps veterans from all branches of the military to utilized the therapeutic qualities of kayaking and fishing from kayaks. The trail would also be open to public use for kayaking, paddle boarding, fishing and nature watching.

The study will determine the dissolved oxygen (DO) conditions that are expected when the paddling trail is constructed. The area to be studied is a section of land in the Lake Wichita Park that will be excavated. The portion of water trail is expected to be 1,200 feet long and 100 feet wide with a V-shaped bottom and a depth of six feet.

Carollo said the study is needed because TCEQ has concerns that a stagnant water body may cause "undesirable environmental conditions." The paddling trail will connect with Lake Wichita so the study is required for the permitting process as it will expand the footprint of the lake area.

Funding is already secured for the extra services with $11,200 from a remaining balance in the original $316,000 City of Wichita Falls/LWRC matching project and the remaining funds of $12,600 from the Friends of the Reservoirs organization.

Lang said the added work should not affect the timeline of the project and they still expect to be ready to submit the permit in June.

"After that it's really about raising money and having community buy-in," he said.

More information about the Lake Wichita Revitalization project can be found at www.supportlakewichita.com.
Washington, D.C.

Organized labor and business normally do not agree about much, especially Obamacare. But they find themselves in an unusual alliance to preserve a Medicare program aimed at retirees who continue to get health-care coverage with help from former employers.

In a final price structure to be released Monday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is expected to cut 2.5 percent from Medicare Advantage "Employer Group Waiver Plans," through which employers  including state government  provide Medicare-underwritten health care to their former employees.

The changes would not go into effect until 2017.

In New York there are 216,599 such retirees, third highest in the nation. Many of those retirees were previously employed by New York state and other government entities. Their employers contribute to their retirement health-insurance needs via Medicare Advantage, which the crafters of the Affordable Care Act  Obamacare  sought to reduce because they saw it as overly generous to insurance providers.

But against all expectations, Medicare Advantage has not only rebounded since 2010 when Congress passed the controversial ACA, it has prospered. The number of enrollees in Medicare Advantage plans rose 7 percent nationwide between 2014 and 2015, 5 percent in New York.

"It's not what the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) or the actuaries expected," said Tricia Neuman, director of Medicare policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. "They projected Medicare Advantage would drop as result of payment reductions. Enrollment growth caught a number of people off guard."

Overall, 1.2 million Medicare beneficiaries in New York  37 percent of the total  subscribe to Medicare Advantage plans of one kind or another, a number that includes the 216,599 who get it via plans connected to former employers.

"These are benefits provided for retirees who have worked hard and we think deserve a robust retirement package," said Helen Schaub, N.Y. policy director for 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East. "These benefits are paid for by contributions bargained for by these workers before they retired, in many cases in lieu of wage increases."

Schaub estimated that about 28,000  about 13 percent  are former state employees. Most of the SEIU beneficiaries were employed in New York hospitals and nursing homes.

SEIU is one of a few unions in a coalition fighting the cuts that is otherwise dominated by businesses, insurers and their trade associations.

"The millions of retirees enrolled in this program are highly satisfied with the coverage it provides, yet these seniors will likely not enjoy the same benefits if the proposed cuts go into effect," said Bruce Josten, executive vice president for government affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "Simply put, these proposed cuts could jeopardize comprehensive and affordable health care benefits for 3.3 million seniors."

The coalition argues the cuts would mean higher premiums and out-of-pocket costs, reduced benefits and fewer choices of doctors and hospitals.

CMS officials see the rising costs as helping to maintain a "strong and stable" Medicare Advantage program, as CMS acting administrator Andy Slavitt put it. The extra cost will "support the provision of high-quality, affordable care to seniors."

Under regular Medicare, beneficiaries pay premiums for Part B that covers doctor visits, lab tests and supplies like wheelchairs and walkers. They also usually get Medigap policies from insurers that cover costs not paid by Medicare.

Under Medicare Advantage, beneficiaries pay health insurers for Medicare coverage so no Medigap policy is necessary. Prescription drug coverage under Medicare Part D also is included. As incentives, insurers generally offer perks like dental or vision coverage, or health club memberships.

Although the Obama administration took a dim view of Medicare Advantage, they did not scuttle the program. Today it serves 16.7 million Medicare recipients, and about 3.3 million get it through the employer waiver plans.

dan@hearstdc.com
Rotterdam

A Schalmont School District student created social media posts of a "concerning nature" that led the school district to ask town police to investigate, according to a letter Superintendent Carol Pallas sent to parents Monday.

The posts  the contents of which were not disclosed  were discovered on Friday, Pallas wrote.

"Based on the content of the post, we involved the Rotterdam Police Department in investigating the incident," the letter said.

"The student who made the post is not on campus and disciplinary measures in accordance with the district's Code of Conduct have been followed."

Pallas said rumors about the post spread on social media.

"It was brought to our attention late Sunday evening that students may have additional information regarding the situation," Pallas wrote. "School administrators again contacted the Rotterdam Police Department, and both the district and the police are investigating these claims further."

"This is an ongoing investigation, and we will provide you with more information as it becomes available," she wrote.
WATERVLIET - Federal authorities investigated a man believed to be from Watervliet for threatening a sheriff on the opposite end of the country.

Lt. Mark Spain said he received an email about a man who threatened Sheriff David Ward of Oregon, who gained national attention attached to the Oregon militant siege in Harney County.
Paul Buckowski

For the 15 million Americans like me with food allergies, food product labeling can be a matter of life or death. Upon walking into a grocery store, I cannot just pick an item blindly off of a shelf. I first have to check the labels, check the manufacturing processes and, in some cases, check which other products are housed nearby. Without this ability to make informed decisions, I could become seriously ill.

However, those of us with food allergies are not the only consumers who have the right to transparency. All consumers should have the ability to make informed decisions about what they are feeding their families. Unfortunately, with the advent of genetically modified foods, transparency in our food system is not a reality. There are currently no labeling requirements for genetically modified foods, and corporate agriculture has purposely left Americans in the dark.
Hickman Mills And Tuesday's Ballot

Some of the most outspoken denizens of the community along Red Bridge reject a tax increase for Hickman Mills School District.Take a look at the latest argument that has been sent far and wide via e-mail from Red Bridge Rd. denizens . . .I felt it important that I contact you regarding the fight for the Hickman Mills School Districtour school district is asking that you support a $19M bond issue on Tuesdays ballot. As many of you know, I have always supported this school district, even serving on the board for 15 years, believing it is a vital part of the community; however, this time I am asking that you say no.It would be too long and detailed to go into all of my reasons in this email, though I would be glad to talk with you about them if you would like or answer any questions you may have. Let me just say the district needs $67M to address deferred maintenance issues and only $2M of this bond will be used for that. The other $17M will be used for wants, not needs. Its like deciding whether to fix your leaky roof first or put in that swimming pool youve been wanting.Just a couple of other quick issues:There are several instances where money is/has not been used wisely.The school board has been given wrong information as was evidenced at last weeks school board forum.One of the top leaders of the district, himself, appears to have no faith in our district. He removed his son from our Freda Markly Early Childhood Center after having attended there less than a year there and placed him in a private school.I agree that our schools need a lot of effort put into them and it will take our support in the form of bond issues to see that it happens. This bond, however, has not been well thought out and does not set the right priorities. The focus should be on basic maintenance and creating a nicer environment forstudents not a select few.I strongly urge you to vote no.#############
UPDATE!!! THE CANDIDATE WAS REMOVED AS JAXCO TAKES A STEP TO CLEAN UP LOCAL ELECTIONS!!!

Prosecutor seeks to remove candidate from Lees Summit council race

Lees Summit candidate declared ineligible

Latest word out of Sleaze Summit and a realization that the last few hours before election are always fun . . .Checkit:A hearing will be held at 2:30 p.m. today before a Jackson County Judge regarding a civil action filed by the Jackson County Prosecutors Office seeking to declare Franklin D. Tatro ineligible from seeking office on the Lees Summit City Council, Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker announced today.Tatro is currently a candidate for the Lees Summit council, but the prosecutors office, after Lees Summit Police submitted information late Friday, filed on Sunday a Petition in Quo Warranto. If upheld, such civil action would declare Tatro ineligible because records show that he was earlier convicted in Missouri of a felony.The hearing will be held in a courtroom on the 2nd floor of the Courthouse Annex in Independence.#########Here's the update . . .A Jackson County judge on Monday declared Franklin D. Tatro ineligible to be a candiate for Lees Summit City Council because of an earlier felony conviction, Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker announced today.Judge James Kanatzar held a hearing Monday afternoon to consider a civil action initiated by the Jackson County Prosecutors Office on Sunday after Lees Summit police alerted it of Tatros earlier conviction. Kanatzar ruled that Tatro is not qualified to be a candidate for election of Lees summit City Council District #1 and would be prohibited from being sworn in, if elected. Kanatzar also ordered that the Jackson County Election Board shall not release any information which would show the number of votes cast Tuesday for Tatro. Also, the election board shall post a notice at each poll where the Counicl District #1 race appears on the ballot. The notice will state Tatro is not a qualified candidate and votes cast for him will not be reported.Voters in Lees Summit and across Jackson County should be assurred that every candidate on the ballot meets the minimum requirements of the law to hold office. They deserve to know their votes will count, Baker said.Baker stated that her office acted as quickly as possible to protect the integrity of Tuesdays election.##########Developing . . .
"Rex Sinquefield, St. Louis billionaire financing opposition, couldn't find time to fly to KC in his private jet to campaign against E Tax this weekend. So Mayor Sly James visited local neighborhoods to urge a Yes vote."

Preparations are underway for election night reports and Kansas City networking among the civic elite, top ranking local politicos and campaign managers.The campaign supporting the Earnings Tax,announced their Watch Party plans for Tuesday, April 5th in the Greater Kansas City Chamber Of Commerce Board Room.This even isn't completely open to the public but most voters never really wants to attend these meetings anyhoo. There will be security but there will also be free food for those who did some campaign work. The locale is a favorite spot for City Hall campaigns and the GKC Chamber and its members have funded to campaign to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars well outpacing their only opposition from STL and billionaire Rex Sinquefield.Regarding the battle betwixt Rex & Sly . . . E-Tax supporters tout weekend victory for Question 1 supporters:Here's the info . . .Progress KC Earnings Tax Watch Party7:30 pm to ?? (TKC: No later than 10:30 usually)Greater Kansas City Chamber Of Commerce Board RoomAccess @ Union Station East Door########Developing . . .
WITH TALK OF ANOTHER STREETCAR EXTENSION RIGGED VOTE IN THE WORKS . . . MAINCOR COMPLICITY IS BEING QUESTIONED!!!

"The Main Street Core is taking over block by block and charging $400-$600 to property owners and thus you will have the streetcar. And you do not get to vote on this CID."

There's a great deal of hype about theoffered by the Kansas City toy train streetcar . . . So far all we've seen are a bunch of traffic jams and restaurant closings.However, here's something interesting . . .For those who don't know,is a CID that charges local biz for services that the City is supposed to but can't provide.Here's the concern . . .Remember that opposition within the Broadway/Main corridor is part of what doomed the streetcar extension last time around when votersthe plan.Now, in typical civic elite fashion . . . A workaround local voters is in play and part of a Kansas City secret plan aimed at keeping critical public discussion of the toy train to a minimum.Developing . . .
William Ward Crutchfield, 88, of Chattanooga, a longtime colorful politician from Chattanooga, died on Sunday.

He had a long life of public service as a political force and former Democratic member of the Tennessee Senate for the 10th District, including Marion County and parts of Hamilton County from 1963-1967 and again from 1987-2007, during which he held the leadership role of Senate Majority leader during the 101st through 103rd General Assemblies. He was also a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives from 1957 to 1959 and 1961-1963.

Senator Crutchfield was a graduate of the McCallie School Class of 1946. He attended the University of Chattanooga, and received a J.D. from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, College of Law, in 1951. He received an honorable discharge from the U.S. Army. He served as a member of the Metropolitan Government Charter Commission as well as the acting attorney for Hamilton County and an attorney for the Hamilton County Board of Education.



He was known for his work in civil rights and the African American community. He brought the first African American onto the floor of the Tennessee General Assembly in the 1950s. It was noted when he brought C.B. Robinson onto the floor, His colleagues jeered at him and he even received death threats for supporting civil rights. To which, Senator Crutchfield said, Get used to it. Ill be bringing him back again. C.B. Robinson went on to become a statesman himself, and served as a state representative for years.



This and many other anecdotes like it express his long career of public service.

His family was among the first settlers of Chattanooga. Thomas Crutchfield built some of the town's first brick homes and stores. Thomas Crutchfield Jr. operated the Crutchfield House. His brother, William Crutchfield, had a famous clash with Jefferson Davis and later was in Congress.



Ward Crutchfield is survived by his wife of 50 years, Joan Bunny Crutchfield; two daughters, Candis Ward Candy Crutchfield Kinsey, married to developer and former Chattanooga Mayor Jon Kinsey, and Margie Nel Missy Crutchfield; grandchildren, Morgan Ward Kinsey, and James Ward Corn; niece, Mary Louise Weezy Crutchfield and nephew, Tom Crutchfield.


The Greek Prime Ministers press office has issued a statement urging the IMF to wrap up negotiations as soon as possible, without unrealistic demands, beyond what was agreed in July 2015

The Greek Prime Ministers press office has issued a statement urging the IMF to wrap up negotiations as soon as possible, without unrealistic demands, beyond what was agreed in July 2015.

The statement came as a response to the IMF managing director Christine Lagarde, in relation to the recent WikiLeaks revelation.

According to the statement, the strategy of delays, in order to create a credit event in Greece ahead of the UKs EU referendum would be major foolishness, which must be prevented. Furthermore, the statement argues that Greece is, as always, a safe country.

IMF leader Christine Lagarde on Sunday responded to Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras' letter of April 2, saying that her positions had not changed and calling on him to "ensure an environment that respects the privacy of (the) internal discussions" of the Fund team coming to Athens for the loan negotiation discussions.

Reiterating an earlier statement by the Fund, Lagarde said that Greece and the IMF were "still a good distance away from having a coherent program that I can present to our Executive Board", saying the lender could "only support a program that is credible and based on realistic assumptions, and that delivers on its objective of setting Greece on a path of robust growth while gradually restoring debt sustainability."

Simply nonsense

"Of course, any speculation that IMF staff would consider using a credit event as a negotiating tactic is simply nonsense," she said, while standing by the decision that "if it were necessary to lower the fiscal targets to have a realistic chance of them being fully met, there would be an attendant need for more debt relief. In the interest of the Greek people, we need to bring these negotiations to a speedy conclusion."

Referring to the prime minister's concerns over recently released Wikileak documents, she in turn expressed concern "as to whether we can indeed achieve progress in a climate of extreme sensitivity to statements of either side." Lagarde added her full backing of the IMF team and said that "for them to be able to do their work, as you have invited us, it is critical that your authorities ensure an environment that respects the privacy of their internal discussions and take all necessary steps to guarantee their personal safety."

She concluded by saying that "the IMF conducts its negotiations in good faith, not by way of threats, and we do not communicate through leaks," and said she was releasing her letter to the Fund's website "to further enhance the transparency of our dialogue."

Kyriakos Mistotakis, leader of the major Greek opposition party New Democracy commented on the wikileaks revelations regarding the IMF and the negotiations with the Greek government by attacking PM Alexis Tsipras during a party rally in Larissa. Mitsotakis stressed that the difference of opinions among Greeces lenders were already known adding that the whole issue should not be blown out of proportions. The opposition leader accused the Greek government of failing to secure then privacy of conversations raising the issue of how the private conversation was recorded and leaked. Tsipras should stop seeking foreign enemies to cover up for his incompetence, said Mitsotakis. The Greek government responded to Mitsotakis by accusing him of aligning with the IMF and supporting it against Greeces interests.

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 Alexandroupoli terminal has been included in the European Commissions priority projects and in the list the government has submitted to Brussels for funding from the so-called Juncker package of subsidies

Bulgarian Energy Minister Temenuzhka Petkova on Friday reported significant corporate interest in participation in the Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria (IGB) gas pipeline and the project that is dependent on it  the liquefied natural gas terminal at Alexandroupoli in Thrace.

One day before the completion of the IGB projects market test, conducted by the ICGB joint venture whose stakeholders include Greeces Public Gas Corporation (DEPA), the Bulgarian minister announced that six companies have submitted binding offers for the acquisition of capacity in the pipeline for quantities that total a greater capacity than what the IGB will allow for in its early stages.

Those companies are DEPA and Gastrade (of the Kopelouzos group) from Greece, Bulgargaz, Edison from Italy, Azerbaijans Socar and Noble from the US. The participation of Noble and Socar points to the interest the Americans and the Azeris have in the transmission of natural gas from the Shah Deniz 2 gas field through the Trans Adriatic Pipeline into the Western Balkans and of LNG from the US via the terminal station at Alexandroupoli, which is now becoming a realistic project.

The Alexandroupoli terminal has been included in the European Commissions priority projects and in the list the government has submitted to Brussels for funding from the so-called Juncker package of subsidies. The terminals dependence on the IGB pipeline is also clear from the submission of a bid by Gastrade that is the main stakeholder in the Alexadroupoli terminal.

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
This years 78th annual Greek Independence Day Parade commemorating the 195th Anniversary of Greek Independence from the Ottoman Empire is set to march up Manhattans Fifth Avenue on Sunday, April 10, 2016. More than 40 floats, 20 bands and 100,000 participants will take part in this years parade, which kicks off at 1:30pm from 64th Street and continues to 79th Street.

According to The Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater NY this years Grand Marshals include, The Honorable Mayor of New York City Bill di Blasio, the Army National Guardsman who helped stop a gunman on a Paris bound train, Alek Skarlatos, US Congressman from Maryland, John Sarbanes, the Leader of the New Democracy Party in Greece, Mr. Kyriakos Mitsotakis, and CEO of Sigmapharm Laboratories Dr. Spiros Spireas. The Presidential Guard from Greece is always a crowd favorite.

The parade will be broadcast live on WWOR TV Channel 9 starting at 2:00pm.

Full participation

Archbishop Demetrios called for full participation in NYCs Greek Independence Parade in the following Archiepiscopal Encyclical:

"To the Reverend Priests and Deacons, the Monks and Nuns, the Presidents and Members of the Parish Councils of the Greek Orthodox Communities, the Distinguished Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Day, Afternoon, and Church Schools, the Philoptochos Sisterhoods, the Youth, the Hellenic Organizations, and the entire Greek Orthodox Family in the tri-state area

Beloved Omogeneia,

On March 25th we celebrated the beautiful and holy Feast of the Annunciation and the commemoration of Greek Independence Day. In following the worship of our Lord and the honoring of our Most Holy Lady the Theotokos, as well as the legacy of March 25th for the people of Greece and the world, we gather again this Sunday, April 10, in New York City for our Greek Independence Day Parade on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

For us as Greek Orthodox Christians, these two celebrations are intertwined because our forbearers were inspired by the extraordinary example of the faith of the Theotokos, and on March 25, 1821, they began a valiant struggle to end centuries of oppression and establish a free nation. They desired an environment in which faith could be expressed openly, proper relationships could be grounded in what is good and pure, and obedience to the will of God was encouraged. With our parade we honor the memory and sacrifice of our fathers and mothers who gave their lives to establish a nation built upon a sacred and noble heritage.

I invite you to participate fully in this years Parade as we look forward to gathering in the joy and remembrance of our celebrations. As we are inspired by the Feast and the example of the Theotokos, as well as by our inheritance of freedom, may our unity and joy offer a witness of Christ and affirm the value and strength of our Hellenic heritage to all."

With paternal love in Christ,

 Demetrios, Archbishop of America

Read more here.

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
The Bahrain Asset Managers Association (Bama) hosted a high level panel discussion to position the kingdom as an ideal regional and international hub for special purpose vehicles (SPVs).



The key roundtable meeting on SPV and Corporate Entities Component in Investment Banking & Asset Management was held recently in co-operation with the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) and the Bahrain Economic Development Board (EDB).



It is the first of a series of events to be hosted by Bama in support of further growth and innovation of Bahrains asset management industry.

Key panelists at the discussion included Khalid Al Rumaihi, the EDB chief executive, Abdulrahman Al Baker, the executive director of Financial Institutions Supervision at the CBB and Dr Ahmed Al Jawhary, the chairman of Bama and chief executive of J Equity Partners.

Together, these panelists deliberated the significance of promoting Bahrain as a regional and international hub and the economic benefits and the spill over effects of SPV-related activities on the local economy.



Lauding Bahrain as a leading asset management centre in the region, Al Rumaihi said: "The kingdom has four decades of experience, and asset managers now distribute more funds from our shores than from anywhere else in the Middle East."



"The sector benefits from our core strengths, including the diverse pool of quality talent, our strong regional connectivity and the cost-competitive environment. The CBB and the government are coming out with a number of important regulatory initiatives that will further strengthen our offering," he added.



Al Baker said: "We expect the asset management sector to continue its growth in the coming years, mainly due to the surge in the economic growth of the kingdom and the region, as well as the soundness of the regulatory and supervisory framework of the asset management sector in Bahrain."



The discussion also addressed who should spearhead the introduction of the SPV business in the kingdom, the regulatory framework for SPVs, secrecy and privacy laws, regional competition and the prerequisites for making Bahrain an attractive SPV hub.



Dr Al Jawhary said the session was an important first step in addressing the opportunity for the SPV business in Bahrain and emphasised the significance of dialogue between all stakeholders in the financial sector.



"Professional and interactive channels of communication and introduction of a think tank element comprising practitioners, investment firms and asset managers licensed under the CBB from one side and the regulator, law and decision makers from another side are critical in perfecting the legislative and technical framework for such a critical industry," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
The Dubai Residential Property Sales Price Index for all residential decreased by 4.3 points, from 261.2 to 256.9, which represents a decrease of 1.65 per cent in February 2016, said a report.



On the other hand, prices decreased 10.0 per cent year-on-year (y-o-y), according to Reidin.com sales price indices (Spid).



A reliable and consistent benchmark of residential property prices in Dubai, Spid measures the average change in house prices in certain districts and communities in Dubai.



Apartment sales prices registered a decrease in February 2016. Prices decreased 1.76 per cent month-on-month (m-o-m) and also decreased 9.6 per cent y-o-y, it stated.



The villa sales prices too posted a decrease in February. Prices fell 1.23 per cent m-o-m and also decreased 11.5 per cent y-o-y.



Residential property prices in Dubai rental market decreased by 0.9 points, from 99.3 to 98.4, which represents a decrease of 0.93 per cent in February 2016. On the other hand, rental prices decreased 5.5 per cent y-o-y.



Apartment rental prices registered a decrease in February 2016. Prices decreased 1.17 per cent m-o-m and also decreased 5.4 per cent y-o-y.



Villa rental prices registered an increase in February 2016. Prices increased 0.33 per cent m-o-m but decreased 5.7 per cent y-o-y.



On the Abu Dhabi market, Reidin said the residential property price for all residential decreased by 0.3 points, from 84.1 to 83.8, which represents a drop of 0.29 per cent in February. However, the prices increased 0.6 per cent y-o-y, it stated.



Apartment sales prices registered a decrease for the month. The prices fell 0.26 per cent m-o-m and 1.9 per cent y-o-y.



Villa sales prices registered a decrease plunging 0.35 per cent m-o-m. However, the sale price rose 3.5 per cent y-o-y.



Residential property prices in Abu Dhabi rental market increased by 1.1 points, from 65.8 to 66.9, which represents an increase of 1.69 per cent in February. On the other hand, prices increased 0.9 per cent y-o-y.



According to Reidin, the apartment rental prices registered an increase in February. Prices too rose 2.08 per cent m-o-m and 0.7 per cent y-o-y.



The villa rental prices too witnessed an increase in January 2016. Prices rose one per cent m-o-m and also increased 1.7 per cent y-o-y.-TradeArabia News Service
Thailand-based Minor Hotel Group (MHG) has awarded contracts for the development of two new hotel projects - Anantara Jebel Dhanna and Avani Jebel Dhanna - in Abu Dhabi, UAE.



Aecom, a global provider of professional technical and management support services, and Dhabi Contracting have been appointed as the lead architecture and interior design consultant for the project.



The work on Anantara Jebel Dhanna and Avani Jebel Dhanna will begin soon and is scheduled for opening in 2018.



Jebel Dhanna is located along the coastal area of the Al Gharbia region in the emirate of Abu Dhabi, close to the ferry departure point for Sir Bani Yas Island, 240 km from Abu Dhabi city and 360 km from Doha (Qatar) and 125 km from the border of Saudi Arabia.



The Jebel Dhanna peninsula is relatively under-developed, with a royal palace bordering the new hotel developments and an industrial area close by. To the south east is Ruwais Industrial Zone and a neighbouring residential area, which will provide substantial demand for the two new properties, it said.



Anantara Jebel Dhanna Villas will have a total of 60 keys across three villa types: 20 one-bedroom villas, 38 two-bedroom villas and two impressive three-bedroom villas. The new Anantara will offer two restaurants and a pool bar, a gym, a swimming pool and an Anantara Spa.



The neighbouring Avani Jebel Dhanna Hotel will have 230 keys across two different room types: 170 deluxe rooms and 60 superior rooms including a kitchenette. Other facilities will include multiple dining options, a gym and a swimming pool.



Shared facilities will include flexible meeting and banqueting space, a kids club and outdoor recreation areas.



Anantara, a luxury hospitality brand, currently has 35 hotels and resorts in 11 countries. Anantara celebrated its 15th birthday in March this year. Launched in 2011, Avani is a vibrant upscale brand offering relaxed comfort and contemporary style in city and resort destinations.



Minor Hotel Group CEO Dillip Rajakarier said: "We are already well established in Abu Dhabi through our existing Anantara portfolio in the city, desert and on Sir Bani Yas Island and we are excited to today announce the first Avani in Abu Dhabi, to be developed alongside what will be our sixth Anantara."



"We are looking forward to partnering with Dhabi Contracting in this exciting new project," he added.- TradeArabia News Service
Omans Public Authority for Mining (PAM) plans to offer investment-ready mining concessions that will come bundled with all of the requisite government permits and clearances, a report said.



The Ready to Invest Mining Blocks initiative of PAM will help facilitate investment in the sector, Hilal bin Mohammed Al Busaidy, chief executive officer, was quoted as saying in the Oman Observer report.



All of the required permits and no-objections from the relevant government departments will be arranged up-front and in a professional way, thereby enabling potential investors to step in and commence their business right away, he said.



The initiative aims to address some of the causes that have kept potential foreign investors away from Omans mining and minerals processing industry, he explained.



Other factors that have hindered investment inflows into the sector are proposed to be tackled via a new mining law currently under formulation, Al Busaidy was quoted in the report.



The draft law envisages, for example, longer than usual mining leases to make it attractive for investors to enter this sector, he said.



It will also incorporate elements that have helped underpin the successful development of mining sectors elsewhere around the world, he added, noting however that local content development would be a priority objective once the new law comes into force, the report said.



PAM will also encourage ramped-up investment in high-value mineral deposits, as opposed to the current concentration of investment in mining and quarrying activities related to the construction materials segment of the industry.
Middle East Food Solution Company (Mefsco), a joint venture between Arabian Agricultural Services Company (Arasco) and Cargill formed in 2013, plans to set up a project for fructose, glucose and starch products in Saudi Arabia.



Arasco and Cargill have signed the final agreement to establish the first joint venture for the production of starch and its derivatives of sweeteners in the kingdom to fulfill the needs of GCC, Yemen, Iraq and Jordan of starch products, added the Saudi Gazette report.



Following the finalisation of the agreement, Cargill will take a 20 percent stake in the joint venture, while Arasco will take 80 percent stake. The agreement is subject to regulatory approvals.



Dr Abdulmalik Alhusseini, CEO of Arasco, said that the new company will support Saudisation and will stress on the employment of Saudi graduates specialised in technology and engineering, added the report.


The Hunter Undergraduate Student Symposium series returns this year to feature papers from regional university students on the topic of the "Politics of Display." This years symposium is held in conjunction with the exhibition, Once and Again: The Still Lifes of Beth Lipman.

The presenters are Emily White (University of Alabama at Birmingham) on Masquerade and Bodily Display: Sande Society Initiation Mask, Alea Coble (UT Chattanooga) on The International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs and Modern Imperialism and Kreneshia Whiteside (East Tennessee State University) on 'Yeezy Taught Me': Kanye's Politics of Display.

The respondent is Dr. Gavin Townsend, professor of Art History at UTC. A gallery tour offered at the conclusion of the symposium will be presented by Marissa Montgomery (Southern Adventist University).

The program is Sunday from 1-3 p.m. at Hunter Museum of American Art and is open and free to the public.
Siemens has been awarded a contract by Egyptian National Railways (ENR) to modernise 260 km of railway network in Egypt with advanced technology for signalling, level-crossings and communications.



The upgrades, which are part of a national plan to modernise Egypts rail system, will increase safety levels and allow the railways maximum speed to be raised from 140 km/h to 160 km/h, boosting throughput of passenger trains and freight services.



The routes between Benha and Port Said to the north east and Zagazig and Abu Kebir in the north of Cairo, will have their mechanical interlocking systems replaced with modern, centrally controlled electronic systems from Siemens.



New point mechanisms, level-crossing technology and communications infrastructure will also be implemented along the routes, which include approximately 20 stations. The contract will also include the equipping of the operations control centre located in the city of Zagazig. The routes are expected to be commissioned in 2020.



The Egyptian rail network carries approximately 500 million passengers and six million tonnes of freight annually, and a capable, robust transport network is essential to accommodate rapid population and industrial growth, said Joerg Scheifler, senior executive vice president, Mobility, Siemens Middle East.



Siemens technology supports the programme to modernise Egypts railway system by updating existing infrastructure with innovative, environment-friendly solutions for maximum reliability, safety and efficiency in operation.  TradeArabia News Service
Cultural Village Foundation - Katara has launched the first auction house in Qatar named AlBahie.



The inaugural ceremony of the auction house was attended by Her Excellency Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the chairperson of Qatar Museums, and Sheikh Faisal Bin Qasim Al-Thani.



Dignitaries, ministers, ambassadors and heads of diplomatic missions to Qatar were also present during the inaugural ceremony.



The inaugural sale of the house included a considerable breadth of work on offer at AlBahie, with 240 lots including works on paper, Holy Quran and manuscripts, sculpture, Orientalist paintings, enamels, arms and armour, glass, fine furniture and Indian period jewellery.



Dr Khalid Bin Ibrahim Al-Sulaiti, general manager of Cultural Village Foundation-Katara, said through AlBahie auction house, Katara aims at promoting the culture of collectibles ownership. The auction house will also provide new collectors and potential local and regional consignors with access to confidential, expert advice and valuations for their items.



Located in Katara, the world-renowned cultural hub of Qatar with its outstanding theatres and performance spaces, AlBahie will offer Qataris and visitors to the region alike, a trusted and truly local way to buy fine collectibles and Middle Eastern art for the first time.



AlBahie will be led by director Corinne Lefebvre, who will bring to the venture her experience in auction houses, galleries as a history of art professor. She will be assisted by Alexandra Bots who joins AlBahie from Christies Amsterdam.



Lefebvre said: The market for Oriental and Middle Eastern, fine and decorative art is of huge global significance  at AlBahie we have the advantage of local knowledge but with a considerable international reach, offering the best possible opportunities for our consignees and a superb selection of items for our collectors. AlBahie is set to be a wonderful addition for a region famed for its connoisseurship and love of the arts.



The first auction of the venture was open to preview online and in person from March 7 to April 4. Outstanding items spanned the complete range of collecting interest offered by AlBahie and included a rare and exquisite 19th century mother-of-pearl Ottoman cabinet, with gold, silver, turquoise and ivory with a pre-sale estimate of $180,000, as well as a striking example of the work of contemporary sculptor by Fernandez Arman, valued with a pre-sale estimate in excess of $60,000.



A specialist auction of Oriental carpets and rugs is scheduled for May 2016. - TradeArabia News Service


Italian defence company Finmeccanica will finalise a multi-billion contract from Kuwait for 28 Eurofighter jets on Tuesday, two sources close to the deal told Reuters on Monday.



Kuwait signed a memorandum of understanding in September to buy the planes, but efforts to close the deal have hit repeated snags and a third source urged continued caution.



Finmeccanica declined to comment.



The 20-year contract is expected to be worth between 7 billion and 8 billion ($8 billion-$9.1 billion), with Finmeccanica's share seen at roughly half of the total.



The rest is in the hands of a group of companies in the Eurofighter consortium, including planemaker Airbus and Britain's BAE Systems.



Finmeccanica chief executive officer Mauro Moretti said in March that the state-owned conglomerate was in the final stages of discussion with Kuwait over the deal and hoped "to conclude in a short period".



Kuwait's parliament recently approved a law allowing the government to pay an advance of some KD150 million ($500 million) for the contract.



Delays in the multi-billion-euro contract have put pressure on Finmeccanica shares, but the stock was up 2.45 per cent on Monday amid speculation it was ready to be finalised. - Reuters
360 Mall, Kuwaits iconic shopping mall owned by Tamdeen Shopping Centers, has announced the first AllSaints store in the state.



The leading British fashion brand will showcase its new Spring 16 womenswear and menswear collections, further adding to 360 Malls portfolio of cutting-edge fashion labels.



The mall, which is currently expanding to add new stores and an enhanced F&B offering, too, is committed to serving young Kuwaiti looking for the best global trends in their home country.



The store covers 1,700 sq ft with collections which run counter to the norm of a dictated silhouette, symbolizing the patchwork of modern life, and expressing evolution, collage, damage and repair. Existing codes are reflected in their entirety, or strikingly juxtaposed from military to bohemia, and from sleek tailoring to relaxed leisurewear.



Claudia Lopusinska, marketing manager, 360 Mall, said: We are very excited about the opening of the first ever AllSaints store in Kuwait at 360 Mall. Our mall is known across the region for its sophistication and the elegant store is symbolic of a perfect synergy with our mall. 360 Mall is growing fast, as is AllSaints regional popularity, so we are sure that together we can meet the wants of our customers in Kuwait.



The new store also carries The Capital Collection, AllSaints handbag line which launched in September 2015 and features 50 sophisticated styles, showcasing the brands 21 years expertise in leather, design and innovation, with new styles for Spring 16 including the Pearl, which features iconic whipstitch detailing and braided leather handles.



This marks AllSaints second store in the Middle East by the fashion arm of leading shopping mall, retail and leisure company, Majid Al Futtaim, following the brands successful debut which opened in Mall of the Emirates in September, 2015.  TradeArabia News Service
Jumeirah Group, a Dubai-based luxury hotel company, has appointed a new managing director at The Emirates Academy of Hospitality Management (EAHM).



Judy Hou takes over from Ron Hilvert, who left at the end of 2015 after 18 years at the helm of EAHM.



Hou has over 20 years experience at some of the finest brands in international hospitality and higher education organisations in the US, Asia and Europe. On the hotel side she worked with Swissotel, Park Hyatt and Mandarin Oriental; and on the education side with Ecole hoteliere de Lausanne in Switzerland, the School of Hotel & Tourism Management at the Hotel Polytechnic University in Hong Kong and Les Roches Jin Jiang International Hotel Management College in Shanghai, part of Laureate International Universities network. Her most recent position was the CEO of the Glion Institute of Higher Education in Switzerland.



Fluent in English and Mandarin, Judy graduated from Columbia University in New York, has a masters degree in Business Hospitality Administration from Ecole hoteliere de Lausanne and is currently working towards a doctorate in Business Administration from Walden University. - TradeArabia News Service
Chattanooga State Community Colleges Humanities Department will kick off its award-winning Writers@Work program on Monday, April 11, at the Chattanooga Public Library Auditorium beginning at 6 p.m. Robert Morgan will read from his works, answer questions, and sign books during this public event.

On Tuesday, April 12, both Ron Rash and Robert Morgan will sign books at Starline Books on Market Street at 4:30 p.m. before taking the stage in the Chattanooga State Humanities Auditorium.

A Behind the Writer interview begins at 7:00 p.m. and will be followed by a book signing and dessert reception.

Both authors will read from their works, answer audience questions, and sign books at the Hunter Museum of Art on Wednesday, April 13 at 6:30 p.m. Guests will enjoy a dessert reception and a collection of historical photographs from Western Carolina Universitys Hunter Library, A Glimpse at the Time of Serena.

The final public event will be held on Thursday, April 14, beginning at 9:30 a.m. Chattanooga State Introduction to Film students will host a Q&A with Ron Rash about the film adaptation of his novelSerena in the Chattanooga State Humanities Auditorium.

All events are free and open to the public.

American poet and novelist Ron Rash was born and raised in South Carolina where he currently resides with his wife and two children. Rash's poetry, short stories, and novels focus on the lives of people in rural, southern settings.

Mr. Rash is the author of nine books and holds the John Parris Chair in Appalachian Studies at Western Carolina University. A highly regarded author, Mr. Rash was awarded an NEA Poetry Fellowship in 1994, received the Sherwood Anderson prize in 1996, won the Novella Festival Novel Award in 2001 and in 2002, and won ForeWord Magazines Gold Medal in Literary Fiction for One Foot in Eden. The novel was also named Appalachian Book of the Year. Both the Southern Book Critics Circle and the Southeastern Booksellers Association named his second novel, Saints at the River, Fiction Book of the Year. In 2005 Rash won an O. Henry award for his story Speckled Trout and received the James Still Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers.

Mr. Rash's themes of everyday Southern life and the losses experienced by its people continue to resonate with readers and critics alike. I think that what I love about writing is the ability to try to, in a sense, take a vacation from yourself and try to enter the sensibility of another time, another character, another place, said Mr. Rash.

Robert Morgan was born and raised in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. At the University of North Carolina at both Chapel Hill and Greensboro he studied with the poet, Fred Chappell, and later joined the faculty of Cornell University in New York, where he still teaches English and creative writing.

In recent years, Mr. Morgan has gained wide recognition as a prose writer, in large part due to Oprah Winfrey selecting his novel,Gap Creek, for her book club in 2000. His fiction aesthetic is deliberately antipoetic: he prefers a lean style that allows him to focus on narrative conflict. In the best fiction, the language itself can become almost invisible, said Mr. Morgan.

Writers@Work creates opportunities for students and members of the community to interact with well-known Southern writers and presents an alternate view of what it means to have a Southern voice. Through analyzing these works and interacting with the authors, students and the community develop a more comprehensive understanding of what it means to be a Southerner.

For more information about the Writers@Work program or this years featured writers, please emailErica.Lux@chattanoogastate.edu or call 423-697-3233.
Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) on Monday joined 42 other U.S. senators in a brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court "condemning President Obamas efforts to grant lawful presence and work authorization to more than four million illegal aliens through unconstitutional executive overreach."

Senator Alexander said, President Obama should be working with Congress to secure the border and create a system of legal immigration  not circumventing the rule of law and the will of the American people. Our Founders did not want a king and the American people do not want a president who acts like one.

The amicus brief, also called a friend of the court brief that is often used to share additional information and arguments for the court to consider, is being filed in response to a case currently being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, the United States v. Texas, involving the constitutionality of President Obamas Deferred Action for Parents of Americans program. The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an injunction blocking President Obamas proposed policy to grant legal status to certain undocumented immigrants without approval from Congress. U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) led a group of 43 Senate Republicans in filing the brief.

The brief filed with the Supreme Court states Obamas executive actions on immigration contravene the letter and the spirit of the immigration laws, and threaten the separation of powers enshrined into the Constitution.

In the brief, members argue that Congress has already created laws to determine how immigrants can work, live and ultimately become naturalized in the United States.

Yet Congress has never given the Executive unchecked discretion to rewrite federal immigration policy or to fashion its own immigration code. In this case, the Executive sought to do precisely that by granting lawful presence  and the governmental benefits and work authorization that purportedly come with it  to over four million aliens who are illegally present in the United States and who are otherwise barred from working here or receiving federal benefits under the statutes that Congress has enacted, the filing states.

Senator Bob Corker was one of the 42 senators who submitted the brief.

The 43 senators who joined the amicus brief are Senators Alexander, Barrasso, Blunt, Boozman, Capito, Cassidy, Coats, Cochran, Corker, Cornyn, Cotton, Crapo, Cruz, Daines, Enzi, Fischer, Graham, Grassley, Hatch, Hoeven, Inhofe, Isakson, Johnson, Lankford, Lee, McCain, McConnell, Moran, Paul, Perdue, Risch, Roberts, Rounds, Rubio, Sasse, Scott, Sessions, Shelby, Sullivan, Thune, Tillis, Vitter, and Wicker.

The amicus brief can be found here.



In 2013, Corker co-authored the Hoeven-Corker border security amendment, which is the toughest border security measure to ever pass the Senate. The amendment was approved overwhelmingly by the Senate by a vote of 69 to 29 and led to the final passage of the Senate immigration reform bill.
Don Martin is not an unusual man, but his decision to begin college in 2012 at age 67 might be considered unusual. When he discovered no one in his family had ever been to college, he said, Well by golly, I am going to do it.

As one of seven children, Don and his siblings were raised in a Catholic orphanage in Kankakee, Il. One of the nuns at the home told him, He needed to help others. That suggestion stayed with him through foster homes where he lived, at high school graduation in 1963, through the Vietnam War, and during most of his life as he worked at various jobs after settling in California.

Dons only living sister resides in Indiana. He lost his other siblings to cancer.

Following a visit to a former brother-in-law who lived in the Sequatchie Valley, Don fell in love with the area and the mountains, which lead him to move to Dunlap, Tn.

Don has endured many physical hardships since 2003 when his health began declining. Like many of his siblings who had cancer, he has been treated for cancer of the kidney, urethra, bladder and prostate. Chemotherapy weakened his system and triggered Parkinsons disease, but that wasnt enough to thwart his dream of obtaining an education or doing what the nun suggested that he do with his life.



He has been enrolled in classes since 2012 at Chattanooga States Sequatchie-Bledsoe Site, however, a serious car accident in 2014 left Don with three broken ribs and damage to his neck and spine. Nevertheless, he was back at school two days following the accident and jokingly shares, I know kids who stay home because they have a headache.



Dunlap is one of those communities with limited Internet access. Without a computer at home and being now physically unable to drive, Don relied on getting to school to do his homework using the colleges computers. It was not unusual for him to arrive early in the morning and leave late in the evening. When he was unable to get a ride, he walked the 15 miles to and from the college, a 30-mile round trip.



Still thriving and thoroughly enjoying a collegiate environment, Dons greatest wish is to graduate and go on to UTC for a degree in social services. He credits instructors Denis Kiely and Linda Varnell for support and refers to them as friends.

Pondering subjects he has taken, Don said mathematics is the hardest. I wanted to quit, but Ms. Varnell wouldnt let me. She worked with me until I understood what I was doing, says Martin.



Late in 2015, Don suffered a slight stroke somewhat affecting his writing, and most recently had a heart attack in February requiring a stent procedure that he scheduled for spring break, so as not to interfere with his studies, however, his recovery is going slowly and he is not yet able to return to classes.



Don Martin is a man of integrity and great perseverance, overcoming enormous odds throughout his life because he wanted to help others. Starting college at an age when most people are retired or thinking of retiring left him pensive when asked if he had any regrets. I regret not doing it (going to school) sooner, said Martin.
Legacy Senior Living, a Cleveland, Tn. based senior living management company, is launching a company-wide chaplaincy program for residents, loved ones and caregivers at its family of senior living communities throughout the Southeast.The chaplaincy program is headed by Jerry Justice, former executive director of Renaissance Marquis Retirement Village, a Legacy Senior Living facility in Rome, Ga. The program development began April 1."Justice is an ordained bishop in the Church of God who has a vast array of ministry experience.He has served pastorates in Etowah, Sweetwater and Cleveland, Tn. Justice also served in the Church of God Ministry to the Military as director of the Christian Servicemens Center in Bad Kreuznach, Germany. Most recently, he served as executive Pastor of City Church of Chattanooga for 16 years," officials said.I am pleased that Legacy Senior Living is committed to providing exceptional care for all our residents needs; whether it be physical, emotional or spiritual. This chaplaincy program is designed to help us provide meaningful, spiritual care for our residents, family members and staff, Bishop Justice said.Each Legacy Senior Living facility will look for a chaplain to provide ministry to the residents in keeping with the majority of the residents faith. This chaplain will also serve as the liaison to assist the residents that have alternative faith desires and find an alternative spiritual leader to assist them with the individuals spiritual needs.Our mission is to serve our residents with honor, respect, faith and integrity. We take the faith part of this statement very seriously and believe that meeting the spiritual needs of our residents and employees is a vital part of the care that we provide, said Barry Ray, president of Legacy Senior Living.Most of our residents have been active in the pursuit of their faith prior to residing in each of our buildings. Our goal is to see that their faith journey only grows during their time with us. Moreover, we want to serve our team members and family members in their times of need, Bishop Justice said.
William G. Colvin has been elected as a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.

The American Bar Foundation serves the legal profession, the public and the academy through empirical research, publications, and programs that advance justice and the understanding of law and its impact on society.

Individuals are invited to become members of The Fellows, which is an honorary organization of attorneys, judges, law faculty, and legal scholars, because of the outstanding achievement and high character they have demonstrated in their legal careers.

Election as a Fellow is evidence of professional distinction and constitutes a professional honor.

Fellows are nominated by their peers and elected by the Board of the Foundation.

Membership in The Fellows is limited to 1% of the lawyer population in each jurisdiction. Fellows support the research work of the American Bar Foundation through annual contributions and sponsor seminars and events of direct relevance to leaders of the legal profession.Mr. Colvin currently serves as an officer and director of the Chattanooga Bar Association and the Chattanooga Bar Foundation. He has been designated a Mid-South Super Lawyer for personal injury litigation since 2012. He is a founding member of the Brock-Cooper American Inn of Court and served as its third president. He is also a Founding Member of the Tennessee Association of Construction Counsel and an Adjunct Faculty member of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, teaching a course on construction law.
City Gives $4.9 Million To Family Of Man Police Tased On His Jail Cot

By Mae Rice in News on Apr 4, 2016 4:18PM



Screenshot from the disturbing video of police dragging Philip Coleman out of a jail cell.

The city will give a $4.9 million settlement to the family of a man who died in police custody in 2012 after being tased in his jail cot and dragged by the arms from his cell, the Sun-Times says aldermen were told Monday.

The family of Philip Coleman, a 38-year-old black man, will receive a settlement almost as large as Laquan McDonald's family's $5 million settlement, which they received before footage of McDonald's shooting death was released. Coleman's family's settlement, however, comes after the city voluntarily released video footage of Coleman's ordeal this past December. (Footage of Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting McDonald 16 times was only released after a court order.)

It's common practice for the Chicago Police Department to spend taxpayer dollars to settle police brutality cases, including cases where the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA) ruled that the use of force was justified. Since 2004, Chicago has spent $642 million on police misconduct cases, a figure that includes settlements, legal fees, and other costs.

IPRA initially ruled Coleman's death an accident, and the force used against him justified. However, once video footage of his treatment in jail was released, two of the cops involved in his case were found guilty of using excessive force: Officer Keith Kirkland and Kirkland's supervisor, Sergeant Tommy Walker. This settlement will replace damages in that case, which were originally to be awarded by a jury.

IPRA has also reopened their investigation into the Coleman case; executive IPRA director Sharon Fairley told the Sun-Times last week that the investigation would hopefully finish in "a couple of weeks."

When the Coleman video was first released, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a statement that, although Coleman's treatment in the video did not directly lead to his death, I do not see how the manner in which Mr. Coleman was physically treated could possibly be acceptable."

Coleman died in the hospital shortly after the video was taken, due to complications from an antipsychotic drug. However, his autopsy showed the filmed incident left him with more than 50 bruises and abrasions. He was tased a second time en route to the hospital.

When the video was taken, Coleman was in police custody for allegedly assaulting his mother during a psychotic episode. Chicago Police have since announced plans to revamp their mental health policy, prompted by the fatal shooting of Quintonio LeGrier, a 19-year-old college student fatally shot by a police officer during a mental health crisis somewhat similar to Coleman's.
Rahm Calls For Hate Crime Investigation Into Racial Slurs Made On Police Radio

By Austin Brown in News on Apr 4, 2016 8:05PM



Some radio equipment (Photo by Paul L. McCord Jr. via the Creative Commons on Flickr)

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has formally called a hate crime investigation into the racial slurs that have been broadcast over the official police radio in recent weeks by unauthorized users.

Emanuel referred to at least three instances of repeated slurs and disparaging remarks made using police radio broadcasts this year in a statement to current State's Attorney Anita Alvarez and U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon.

"These actions merit serious investigation as a hate crime or other applicable offense under Illinois or federal law," the statement said. Emanuel is requesting an official criminal investigation to support the current investigation being conducted by the Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC) and the Chicago Police Department.

The first public incident took place on March 13, when a man could be heard over official police radio channels saying "typical f***ing n*****s" and "all black lives matter man, f***ing n*****s." In the month since this incident, police radio broadcasts have also been repeatedly interrupted with similar slurs and other disturbing language.

No city employees are currently suspected of making the broadcasts. The OEMC, along with the mayor's office, have stated that the transmission was from a private broadcast on the police radio frequency, not from any of the officers themselves, and the public availability of many radio technologies makes it easy for private citizens to program their radios to police frequencies.

The incidents arrive in the middle of a prolonged period of racial tensions and skepticism of the police department, following the November release of a damning video showing a police officer shooting black teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times.
Woman Dead After CTA Train Collides With Car In Skokie

By Rachel Cromidas in News on Apr 4, 2016 6:58PM

CTA ALERT: Yellow Line service halted after train collides with car - https://t.co/vkgHfKqI16 pic.twitter.com/3OZVkqrggY  ABC 7 Chicago (@ABC7Chicago) April 4, 2016

A woman died Monday morning after a CTA Yellow Line train collided with her car in Skokie, in a crossing where East Prairie Road meets the train tracks.

The collision took place around 10:20 a.m. between the Oakton Yellow Line Station and the Howard Station in Chicago, according to authorities. Fire Department responders rescued two women from a chewed up red car at the scene; one was pronounced dead and the other was taken to St. Francis Hospital in Evanston in critical condition, according to ABC7. Five of the 17 train passengers were taken to the hospital to be treated for injuries, and Skokie police are investigating.

The CTA has suspended Yellow Line service temporarily, and recommends commuters take the #97 Skokie bus or shuttle buses between stations.
Woman Disappeared After Going For A Run On The Lakefront Path In February

By Emma G. Gallegos in News on Apr 4, 2016 4:44PM



Jessica Suarez (CBS Chicago)

Family are encouraging police to step up their efforts to find a 21-year-old woman who was last seen on surveillance video going for a jog on the lakefront path that runs along Lake Shore Drive on Feb. 5.

Jessica Suarez drove her light blue 2000 Honda Civic at 6 a.m. for a jog near the lake, and the next day her abandoned car was found parked along the lakefront on the North Side at 5100 N. Simmons Dr., according to ABC 7. Police found her belongings and phone, which they tried to call, but to no avail, according to Univision. Suarez is described as a 5'5", 160-pound Hispanic woman with black hair, brown eyes and an olive complexion. She was last seen wearing a knit hat, white scarf and brown coat.

WGN reports that Suarez is a physical therapy major at Harold Washington College and a graduate of Lane Tech. Police turned over video that shows Suarez running on the day in question, but her family is hoping to find more footage that helps crack the case.

Over the weekend, family and friends returned to the scene to conduct a search, post signs with her photo and attempt to raise awareness of his disappearance. The family says that, had it happened to a wealthier white woman, the case would be getting more attention.

"If we were rich and also had friends with some political influence and she were white, the media and the police would give us more attention," her sister Adelina Suarez told a crowd in Spanish.

The family says investigators have implied that Suarez may have fallen into the lake on a windy day, but there was never any water search, according to CBS Chicago.

"I want my sister Jessica to be back, and Jessica, if you are watching, this because I know Jessica you are alive," Suarez said. "I know people have different stories that maybe she fell in the water. I can feel it in my heart that she's not in the water. I know she's alive."

Chicago Police told CBS they're still investigating leads and consider it an active case.

Nancy Grace has tweeted out her story:
Woman Kidnapped And Raped In Front Of Her Baby At Gunpoint: Police

By Austin Brown in News on Apr 4, 2016 5:49PM



Crime scene tape (Photo by LukaTDB via Shutterstock)

A chilling Chicago Police Department alert describes the story of a woman who, with her baby in hand, was kidnapped at gunpoint and raped on March 27.

Early Easter, around 4 a.m., a woman left her car with her child in the East Garfield area, near the 200 block of North Kenneth Avenue, where she was approached by a man with a gun, according to authorities.

The man allegedly forced the woman back into the vehicle, along with her child, and proceeded to drive the woman and her baby south for a mile, down to the intersection of Congress and Kolmar avenues. He then sexually assaulted the woman before fleeing the vehicle, leaving the victim and child behind, authorities said.

Chicago police are still searching for the perpetrator. The man was described in a community alert as a middle-aged black man, wearing mostly nondescript clothing except for a possible North Face jacket.
A four-day package to get drenched and join the fun with Laotian folks



(TRAVPR.COM) LAOS - April 4th, 2016 - LUANG PRABANG, Laos - Theravada Buddhist areas of Southeast Asia including Laos steering towards one of the most anticipated holidays in the year. Its the New Year. In Laos, people celebrate Pimai Lao, aka Lao New Year which more often than not takes place from 13th to 16th April.

The Pimai Lao celebrations involve a wide array of festivities organized throughout the country. The most remarkable activities is the water festival during which local folks pour or throw water at one another as part of the cleansing ritual to welcome the new year and a show of blessings and good wishes. The holiday is also the celebration of Lao identity, the reinforcement of family bonds and an opportunity to reflect on the year ahead.

Grab a chance to get drenched in color with saffron robes and Luang Prabangs earthy colours of temples and pagodas by availing of Villa Malys 4-Day Lao New Year Festivities Package. Set the validity from 13th to 16th April, 2016 and priced at US$338 per person and US$415 per 2 persons, the deal is comprised of the followings:

2 ways airport transfer

3 nights stay in Superior room at Villa Maly hotel

Daily breakfast

1 Sindad Lao Barbecue

1 hour massage per person

English speaking guide service during new year activities

Villa Maly, once the home of Lao royalty and today one of the best hotels in Luang Prabang, is an exquisite boutique hotel ensconced by a profusion of tropical flora. Its rooms evoke the subdued elegance and creative flourished of yesterday's aristocrats. Each of the hotels' 33 rooms is subtly created to incorporate the time-honored Laotian architecture with the essence of the French colonial past.

For booking, please contact reservation@villa-maly.com and asmm@villa-maly.com. For further details about Villa Maly Luang Prabang Boutique Hotel, visit the website www.villa-maly.com.

###
PerthACL Migration Agents of Joondalup announces the extension of their consultancy services to now include Working Holiday Visas.



(TRAVPR.COM) WESTERN AUSTRALIA - April 4th, 2016 - The business owner of ACL Migration Agents, Lloyd Kelbrick, commented further:

I have been a registered migration agent for over 10 years. Over that time, ACL has operated largely in the field of corporate relocations and visa applications for related residency, covering both short-term and permanent residency models.

Our expertise in these areas is second to none but recently we have seen a significant increase in requests for assistance with other types of Australian visas and specifically those covering working holidays.

Most people in Australia who have had any exposure to our visa application procedures will confirm that these are very complex and therefore likely to be confusing to applicants. The sheer number of visa types, classes and sub-classes can be difficult even for specialists to comprehend.

Sometimes for employers or in this case typically younger people looking for a life-building experience, the complexities can be off-putting. In such cases, everybody suffers including Australia, as we benefit hugely from both the labour that comes in with people on working holidays plus the goodwill for our country that the applicants take back to their own countries with them.

As weve found many professional companies struggle to understand how to go about things, its perhaps no surprise that weve seen more and more requests for help from individuals who are baffled by the categorisations and criteria required for things such as working holiday visas. Thats why we have expanded our portfolio of services to now include this new service.

We are actively encouraging people looking for working holiday visas to contact us if they are unclear as to how to go about things. A lot of time can be wasted unnecessarily if faulty applications are made and were here to help avoid any such occurrence.

Requests for further information on ACL Migration Consultants or their services should be addressed to Mr. LloydKelbrick at the contact addresses listed below.

About ACL Migration Agents and Lloyd Kelbrick

Based in Perth, ACL Migration Agents have their HQ in Joondalup - approximately 30km north of Perth city centre.

Lloyd Kelbrick has operated as a registered migration agent for over 10 years.

Although he has broad experience with Australian migration and a wide range of skills from the independent permanent visas through to Migration Reviews, recently his main focus has been with visas associated with corporate and business areas of migration, especially the employment of staff from overseas for both temporary and permanent residence.

Lloyd himself was once a migrant, having arrived in Australia in 2001. Prior to becoming a migration agent in 2005, he operated a successful business in the IT communications and service industries.

For further information

To learn more, please contact:

ACL Migration Agents

8/81 Grand Boulevard,

Joondalup,

Perth,

Western Australia, 6027

Phone:

+61 (08) 9301 0660

E-mail:

info@immigrationagentaustralia.com.au

You can also learn more of the companys history by visiting their website http://www.immigrationagentaustralia.com.au/

###
Power. It's something many of us take for granted. When we lose it for, say, a couple hours, it's nothing more than a minor inconvenience.

Well, imagine not having power for several months, or up to a year. Imagine not being able to cook, bathe or eat in your own home.

Now, imagine it's not just you, but all around you. Imagine the entire electrical infrastructure is destroyed, and you're left in the dark  with no indication when you'll be up and running again.

In September 2017, the island territory of Puerto Rico found itself awash in black. When crews arrived in October  specifically, a fleet of linemen and engineers from PowerSecure, a subsidiary of Southern Company  they were met with unprecedented damage and millions of people without power.

The more rugged terrain of Puerto Rico made it difficult to access residents in need. Courtesy Southern Company

Indeed, it was a tall order for anyone. How do you put it all back together after such massive devastation? What do you say when one displaced family after another wants to know when they'll be able to return to their home?

As the emergency operations director for Georgia Power for 39 years, Aaron Strickland was all too familiar with the frustration and helplessness associated with power outages. But even Strickland, who's now senior vice president of client relations for PowerSecure, was disturbed by what he saw when he arrived in Puerto Rico in the days after Maria hit.

Linemen arrived on the island and immediately went to work to restore power. Courtesy Southern Company

"When we first got there, it was completely black," Strickland recalled. "There was a lot of damage. Some areas you couldn't even get to unless you're a mountain climber."

As they began to assess the damage to the western side of the island, a region that's mostly rural and remote, it was glaringly evident that the restoration effort would reach far beyond turning the lights back on. In addition to restoring power, PowerSecures operation included full logistics, which involved feeding and housing the entire team. PowerSecure acted as a full-service provider  encompassing restoration, damage assessment, traffic control, food and housing.

Tons of supplies were stored in warehouses throughout the island during the restoration. Courtesy Southern Company

PowerSecure has deployed its Damage Assessment Teams for every named storm to hit the U.S. in the past 8 years. For this storm, Strickland's crew began working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the early days of the response. Barges full of much-needed equipment and supplies arrived on the island, as well as additional personnel, including transmission and distribution, leadership and logistics.

And it was up to PowerSecure's team to coordinate the effort and make sure Puerto Rico's beleaguered citizens could resume life as they knew it.

Workers coordinated supplies that arrived by barge. Courtesy Southern Company

"In the end, we maxed out 10 helicopters, which we used for putting up power lines and for transporting our teams into areas that we could not reach by any other means," he said. "Our folks didn't sit around. No matter what little materials they had or what time it was, they went out and figured out what they can do to make some improvement, even if it was just clearing the lines of debris, stripping old material for reuse, or clearing trees. They were determined to do something, anything, to make a positive impact."

Repairing damaged power lines required tremendous manpower. Courtesy Southern Company

In just the first four hours of restoration work, PowerSecure was able to bring back power to 2,800 residents.

Progress was slow but promising. But through it all, despite Puerto Rico's vast devastation from shore to shore, its citizens still didn't hesitate to show their gratitude  and their generosity  for the workers who came to their aid.

Electrical crew members developed a rapport with many of the locals. Courtesy Southern Company

"The people we met down there were absolutely the nicest people in the world," Strickland recalled. "They didn't have much, they were going through so much, they had just lived through this horrible hurricane  but they still came out and brought food to my crew.

"And as the lights came on in one neighborhood after another after another," he continued, "they actually threw parties for us. It was kind of a bond that we developed with them."

Citizens showed their gratitude to PowerSecure crews. Courtesy Southern Company

By the time PowerSecure returned to the States in mid-May, power had been restored to approximately 98 percent of the island.

"I felt very, very good that we were able to help so many people," Strickland said. "There was a lot of devastation, sure. But there was also a lot of laughter, and celebration, and hope. I left there knowing we were able to make their lives better in some way."
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It's not every day that you hear about large families choosing to live together in the same house. Obviously there are many families who are forced to do it out of necessity, but when 'community living' is consciously chosen as a way of life, I've always found it intriguing.

Recently, I noticed on social media that a friend of mine, Toronto-based writer Christina Crook, had been interviewed by CBC Radio for a short documentary titled "10 people, 1 house: We met on Twitter and our families moved in together." It's the story of how Crook and her husband Michael, along with their three young kids under the age of 8, opened their home in the Junction neighborhood to another large family.

How 10 People Ended up in One House

Perhaps most interesting is that the two families had only met once prior to the Crooks extending the invitation. Christina first connected with Elissa Joy Watts last March, when she saw her name pop up on a list of recommended people to follow on Twitter, and an unexpected friendship flourished. Elissa lived in Vancouver, and it might have remained a long-distance friendship had Elissa's husband Steve not been given a research position at the University of Toronto. Suddenly the Watts family was moving to Toronto with three kids in tow, including a three-week-old newborn.

As Crook explains in the documentary, community living was something she and Michael had been interested in for a while: "We'd already been feeling and sensing and growing in our desire to live in community in some way... We were already warm to the idea." And so, they offered their home to the Wattses, who gratefully accepted.

That's how ten people ended up living in a three-story, six-bedroom house, with one functioning shower/bath. Whereas some community living arrangements might stagger the use of shared spaces or create apartments with separate kitchens and bathrooms, the Watts and Crook families share everything -- meals, cleanup, school runs. There's a level of intimacy and overlap of personal lives that is not typical of such arrangements.

The Pros and Cons

"It worked well for three weeks. And then it didn't," the two women laugh on the radio segment. Once the honeymoon period was over, there were plenty of details needing to be hashed out, including children not getting along and the Watts family feeling they didn't have sufficient space.

But overall, it has been a wonderfully positive experience. Christina jokes that the best part is coming home from school in the morning and finding a clean kitchen: "We're a team. We work together. I really can't underplay how mind-blowingly awesome that is."

Christina is the author of The Joy of Missing Out: Finding Balance in a Wired World, and last year she was the writer-in-residence at the Henri Nouwen Society. Nouwen was an internationally renowned Catholic priest and author who wrote 39 books on the spiritual life, and his teachings on the importance of hospitality have greatly influenced Christina. She told me in an email:

"Simply, we wanted to come closer -- to remove the outward obstacles to relationships, the silos that are so easy to live in and make room for others. We knew that the Watts [family] had no furniture and would be here short-term (10 months, with the possibility of extending) so the opportunity for them to move into a fully furnished home with a newborn baby eased their transition immensely."

Christina takes the highly unusual view -- particularly in Western society -- that "there is a lot of good in inconvenience." She says in the documentary:

"Relationships are painfully inconvenient. They are 100 percent inconvenient, in fact, but where do we experience the most joy in our lives? In relationship and in connection, often in really difficult and inconvenient work."

Making Community Living Mainstream

I find this story fascinating within the context of all the tiny houses, co-living spaces, and multigenerational homes that we feature on TreeHugger. While we often take a look at the physical layout of such spaces, and often hear the architects' and owners' praise for its design, rarely do we get the real, raw, inside scoop of how it actually feels to step away from societal norms of single-family dwellings and choose a different way of living.

Perhaps my fascination also stems from the fact that I feel a sense of connection to these women. I, too, have three young children and work as a writer, and yet the thought of inviting another similar-sized family into my home for an extended period of time fills me with apprehension. Their experience challenges me in ways I've never considered before.

As real estate prices climb and rental units are harder to find, as resources become scarcer and more expensive, as individuals seek more effective ways to minimize their impact on the planet and strive to build community with those around them, real-life stories like this one are increasingly relevant. For whatever reason families may choose to live in community, we all stand to learn something from the experience.

To finish with Christina's words:

"Is this way of life perfect? Far from it. Is it worth the inconvenience? No question. 'To be hospitable is to liberate fearful hearts,' writes Henri Nouwen. Even our own."

Link to documentary:
You Should Totally Be Getting Paid Sick Leave, City Task Force Says

By Austin Brown in News on Apr 4, 2016 8:47PM



via Shutterstock

A report from the City of Chicago's Working Families Task Force has come out recommending that employers in Chicago offer all of their workers five days of sick leave a year. The recommendation taps into a long-running debate about the effectiveness of paid leave in Chicago and around the United States.

"It is unacceptable that more than 200,000 workers in Chicago cannot take a sick day without worrying about losing their job or being unable to pay their bills," Mayor Rahm Emanuel told the Tribune in a statement. "This task force report provides the city with a road map for ensuring that our working families receive this important protection."

The task force began last June after a referendum in February 2015 showed more than 80 percent of voters were interested in adopting paid sick leave policies. Created in the model of Emanuel's Minimum Wage Working Group, the task force sought to find common ground on various issues of leave and work protection, including sick leave, for working-class families. It was made up of an assortment of Chicago business owners, City Council members, and employee advocates, who met with academics, focus groups and policymakers before releasing this first report.

The report proposes an hour of sick leave for every forty hours worked, with a maximum of five eight-hour days of sick leave a year. The number represents somewhat of a compromise for employee advocatesan earlier proposal to mandate sick leave offered an hour for every thirty worked, with a maximum of nine days for larger companies. But those invested in the decision still expressed hope that the recommendation could alleviate much of the difficulty of dealing with sickness in the workplace, for employees and employers alike.

Not all members of the task force were supportive of the recommendationsome, including the Illinois Retail Merchants Association and the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, felt that the 0.7 percent to 1.5 percent increase in labor costs would exacerbate wage problems in the city and discourage employers from investing in their employees. However, Anne Ladky, the co-chair of the task force and executive director for nonprofit organization Women Employed, told the Tribune the recommendation represented a "significant majority" of the members.

While a powerful step forward, The Working Families Task Force admits that its recommendations are far from an endpointother areas for future research include the complications that might arise from using sick leave interchangeably with family leave, the potential of discounting office supplies and the possibility of leveraging the resources of the city itself.

"While not necessarily within the scope of the Task Force," the report says, "[these options] provide avenues the City should separately pursue as part of its ongoing work to support businesses."
 Flash

Chinese President Xi Jinping's proposals at the Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) demonstrate China's resolve against nuclear terrorism and will boost world confidence in nuclear energy development, experts said on Sunday.

Xi joined some 50 world leaders on Friday for the fourth and final NSS, a process initiated by U.S. President Barack Obama to discuss how to ensure the security of nuclear materials and facilities and prevent nuclear terrorism.

Describing nuclear terrorism as a grave threat to international security, Xi called for "zero-tolerance for nuclear terrorism" and "removing its breeding ground" at the summit.

Despite growing attention to nuclear security around the world, the development of nuclear energy and increasing use of nuclear technology in agriculture and medicine mean risks for proliferation and loss could surge, experts said. They also warned against terrorists using nuclear devices to launch attacks.

"Leaders of the nuclear energy industry have demanded top priority be given to nuclear security and preventing terrorists from using the Internet to attack nuclear facilities," said Zhu Xuhui, a senior advisor with the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association.

Apart from reinforcing its commitment to countering nuclear terrorism, Xi stressed China has always been committed to development and use of nuclear energy while ensuring security.

"This is to bridge the gap in the energy supply, and address the challenges posed by climate change. China is the country with the fastest growth in nuclear power. At the same time, it has kept a good nuclear security record," Xi said.

Though China put its nuclear energy development on hold after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, it has highlighted nuclear power development as a priority for the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020).

Currently, China has 24 nuclear power generating units under construction, ranking first in the world. China is also trying to explore the international market, inking deals with Britain, Pakistan, the Czech Republic and other countries.

Observers said President Xi addressed concerns about security related to China's nuclear power development and sent a reassuring message that China will continue to enhance nuclear security, boosting domestic and global confidence in nuclear energy development.

"China applies the most stringent security monitoring to ensure the safety and security of nuclear power stations within China and those exported to other parts of the world. Nothing is left to chance," Xi said.

"With a good security monitoring system and a good record, China has expressed willingness to share technology, expertise and resources with countries interested in developing nuclear power as clean energy," said Fan Jishe, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
London, April 4

Two little-known financier brothers of a UK-based investment firm are working at a deal to revive the 'British Steel' brand name to buy out part of Tata Steel's plants in the UK, a media report said on Monday.

Marc and Nathaniel Meyohas, the brothers behind investment firm Greybull, are currently hammering out finer details to buy the Scunthorpe steelworks in the east of England from the Indian conglomerate, according to The Daily Telegraph.

Greybull plans to pump in 400 million pounds into the struggling plant, saving a total of around 9,000 local jobs.

Scunthorpe, one of the country's largest facilities and one of 12 Tata steel sites across the UK, makes specialist steel products including wire rods, steel beams and track for the building and rail industries.

The news came as steel unions in the country called on Prime Minister David Cameron to personally intervene in the ongoing emergency talks in London to save Britain's steel industry from collapse.

Unite union assistant general secretary Tony Burke said if the industry was "to be given a fighting chance then the government and Tata need to come clean on their intentions and prior discussions, because so far all we've had is more questions than answers".

He said: "The apparent lack of urgency from Sajid Javid and absence of a clear plan from the government is disturbing for the tens of thousands whose livelihoods hang in the balance and deeply troubling for British Steel's 140,000 pensioners".

Roy Rickhuss, leader of the Community union, said: "By now, no-one underestimates the scale of the challenge we face.

We have an entire industry to save and not a lot of time to save it.

"We must also ensure that we hold Tata to a commitment to be a responsible seller and honour its moral and social duties to UK steel communities."

UK business secretary Sajiv Javid is also set to meet Tata Steel's Chief Financial Officer (CFO) in relation to the group's plans to exit the UK steel industry.

Business department minister Anna Soubry is due to visit Rotherham steelworks later today.

Meanwhile, Indian-origin tycoon Sanjeev Gupta, founder of commodities firm Liberty House, has had initial talks over a potential purchase of the Tata Group's South Wales plant.

Liberty House said the talks had been "encouraging" and "positive" and described the response of ministers as "pro-active" and "keen to find solutions". Gupta is set to return to London from Wales this evening to continue the negotiations.

Tata Steel announced it was selling its loss-making UK businesses and would close its plant at Port Talbot unless a buyer was found last week.

The company directly employs 15,000 workers in the UK and supports thousands of others, across plants in Port Talbot, Rotherham, Corby and Shotton.

Britain's steel industry has been thrown into crisis by a combination of cheap imports from China, falling global demand, high-energy prices and a tougher tax regime than many rival nations.  PTI
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, April 4

Sri Lanka Member of Parliament Bimal Rathnayake today visited the offices of The Tribune as part of his familiarisation visit to the north of the country. Before visiting The Tribune offices, Bimal, from the Left-leaning Jana Vimukthi Perumana (Peoples Liberation Front), has also addressed intellectuals at Amritsar and Chandigarh.

At all these interactions, Bimal, member of the JVP think-tank, explained the trajectory of Sri Lankan politics since Independence to The Tribune Union, including the bloody passages in its history. Campaigning for alternate politics, JVP blends Marxism and ethnic nationalism.

Bimal conceded the JVPs 50-year journey has been marked both by successes and failures and despite being a minister for some time, he felt his party would have been better off had it not aligned with the Sri Lanka Freedom Party.

Bimal also explained how the party had avoided the trap of sole devotion to Parliamentary politics by consciously keeping most members of the apex decision-making bodies out of the electoral race. The personal example of frugality set by the leaders has helped the elected leaders as well as prominent members from adopting the path of ostentation and personal wealth accumulation.

The Sri Lankan MP appreciated The Tribune model of employee relations and felt this should be a must-visit destination for Sri Lankan journalists.
Rachel Revesz

Millions of confidential documents have been leaked from one of the world's most secretive law firms, exposing how the rich and powerful have hidden their money. The unprecedented cache of papers show the inner workings of the law firm Mossack Fonseca, which is based in Panama. The documents, dubbed The Panama Papers, reveal links to 72 current or former heads of state and accuse some of them of having vested interests in their own banks and looting their own countries.

The data shows links to families and associates of some of the most powerful people in the world, including the former president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, the former Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi and the current president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad.

In the UK, several elected officials are involved with the law firm, including Baroness Pamela Sharples, the MP Michael Mates and the former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party Michael Ashcroft. All three provided responses to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and have either denied any financial benefit to the offshore companies or have completely denied the allegations of working with the law firm.

Two close allies of the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, are linked to an alleged money-laundering ring thought to be worth $1billion, run by a bank based in St Petersburg, Bank Rossiya. One of those is the concert cellist Sergei Roldugin, who has known Putin for many years, is godfather to Putin's daughter Maria, and introduced him to his now ex-wife Lyudmila. The bank in question has already faced sanctions from the European Union and the US after Russia's invasion of Crimea in 2014.

The papers were initially leaked via the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung to the ICIJ. Gerard Ryle, director of the ICIJ, who has been analysing the documents, along with 107 media outlets across more than 70 countries, told the BBC: I think the leak will prove to be probably the biggest blow the offshore world has ever taken because of the extent of the documents. The leak will be the subject of a Panorama documentary tonight. The source of the leak remains unidentified. Another accusation in the files is that the prime minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, had an undeclared interest in the bailed-out banks in the country, hiding millions of dollars in Iceland's banks via an opaque offshore company.

Iceland was one of the few countries following the 2008 financial crisis to jail several of its bankers, who were accused of taking excessive risk which led to the collapse of their economy. Yet Gunnlaugsson and his wife bought Wintris, an offshore company, in 2007 but did not declare an interest in the company when they entered Parliament. The company was used to invest millions of inherited money. He then sold his 50 per cent stake in Wintris to his wife for 70 pence ($1) eight months later. Gunnlaugsson has faced calls for his resignation but has reportedly said he has done nothing illegal and his wife has not benefitted financially from the arrangement.

Offshore companies are often located in countries such as Panama and are subject to their own tax rules, often functioning as tax loopholes or requiring much lower taxes than in an investor's home country.

The law firm documents additionally show how individuals could take out large amounts of cash without revealing who they are to the public. In one case, the firm acted on behalf of a man who pretended to be the owner of $1.8m so that the real owner could take out the money without revealing their identity.

The ICIJ has listed 140 politicians from more than 50 countries who are linked to offshore companies in 21 tax havens, including countries such as Argentina, Georgia, Iraq, Jordan, Qatar and Ukraine.

Mossack Fonseca said it has operated "beyond reproach" for 40 years and has never been acused or charged with criminal wrong-doing.

If we detect suspicious activity or misconduct, we are quick to report it to the authorities, it said in a statement. Similarly, when authorities approach us with evidence of possible misconduct, we always cooperate fully with them.  The Independent

The lawyers whose firm is at the centre of global controversy

John le Carre's 1996 novel, The Tailor of Panama, tells the story of Harry Pendel, a British tailor who serves the great and good but whose refusal to come clean about his past almost leads to his downfall. In Panama, he believes, discretion is the only way. For more than four decades, the law firm Mossack Fonseca  whose saga may even have been beyond le Carres imagination  has adopted a similar strategy of discretion and survival. If the documents obtained and analysed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) are to be believed, the firm that has its headquarters not far from those of the fictional Harry Pendel, has had financial dealing with a total of 128 politicians and public officials around the world. The company has denied any wrongdoing. The ICIJ says the documents provide an insight into the financial affairs of 12 current and former world leaders. The company was formed in 1977 by Jurgen Mossack and Ramon Fonseca, and specialises in commercial law, trust services, investor advisory and international structures. Its website says it can help reduce costs, incorporate and manage Private Interest Foundations, conduct business in any country and carry out transactions in any chosen currency. Its offices are supported by "secure, state-of-the-art technology that is upgraded continually". The ICIJ says that Mossack is a German immigrant whose father sought a new life in Panama for his family after serving in Hitler's Waffen-SS during World War II. The elder Mossack also offered to spy for the US government on "former Nazis turned Communist or unconverted Nazis cloaking themselves as Communists,"according to US intelligence files obtained by the ICIJ. Jurgen Mossack studied at the Santa Maria La Antigua University School of Law in Panama. Fonseca is an award-winning novelist who has worked in recent years as an adviser to Panama's president, it said. From its base in Panama City, the company has created and established anonymous companies in Panama, the British Virgin Islands and other financial havens. The law firm has worked closely with big banks and big law firms in places like The Netherlands, Mexico, the United States and Switzerland, helping clients move money or slash their tax bills, the secret records show, the ICIJ said. An ICIJ analysis of the leaked files found that more than 500 banks, their subsidiaries and branches have worked with Mossack Fonseca since the 1970s to help clients manage offshore companies.  Andrew Bucombe
Raju Ramachandran

Even when the Constituent Assembly was debating the introduction of provisions enabling the imposition of President's rule in the states, apprehensions were expressed about their possible misuse. On August 4, 1949, in response to Pandit Hriday Nath Kunzru, Dr B.R. Ambedkar, Chairman of the Drafting Committee said, "In regard to the general debate which has taken place in which it has been suggested that these articles are liable to be abused, I may say that I do not altogether deny that there is a possibility of these articles being abused or employed for political purposes. But that objection applies to every part of the Constitution which give power to the Centre to override the Provinces. In fact, I share the sentiments expressed by my honourable friend Mr. Gupte yesterday that the proper thing we ought to expect is that such Articles will never be called into operation and that they would remain a dead letter."

In the S.R. Bommai vs Union of India case (1994), Justice Jeevan Reddy, taking note of the 90 plus occasions when Article 356 had been invoked, wryly remarked, "Quite a performance for a provision which was supposed to remain a 'dead-letter'." Today the tally has touched 128 though, to be fair, it must be conceded that there have been instances of invocation of Article 356 which were not partisan. On that same day, Ambedkar said something which is of great significance today, in the context of the Uttarakhand situation; "If at all they are brought into operation, I hope the President, who is endowed with these powers will take proper precautions before actually suspending the administration of the Provinces." It is a bit surprising that our constitutionally correct President, who sought clarifications in the Arunachal case did not seem to need any in the case of Uttarakhand.

The reasons which are available in the public domain for imposing President's rule are that the passing of the Appropriation Bill on March 18, was a matter of grave doubt and that any expenditure incurred after April 1 would have been unconstitutional. But it was precisely for this reason that the chief minister was asked to prove his majority on the floor of the House. The date fixed, that is March 28, was early enough to have the majority tested and to put the Appropriation Bill to vote again and by a division, if necessary.

But the alleged apprehension of pandemonium on March 28 and a sting were considered by the Governor to be enough to pre-empt the floor test! Pandemonium is surely not something new in the functioning of the legislatures of the country, both state and Central, and could surely not lead to a conclusion that the constitutional machinery had broken down.

In Bommai's case, the Supreme Court emphasises the importance of the floor test saying the House alone is the constitutionally ordained forum to test the majority of a Ministry. The assessment of the strength of the Ministry is not a matter of private opinion of any individual, be the Governor or the President. It is capable of being demonstrated and ascertained publicly in the House. Hence when such demonstration is possible, it is not open to bypass it and instead depend upon the subjective satisfaction of the Governor or the President. Such private assessment is anathema to the democratic principle, apart from being open to serious objections of personal mala fides. The only exception which the Supreme Court envisaged was "all-pervasive" violence, certainly not pandemonium.

In Rameshwar Prasad & Others vs Union of India case (2006), the Supreme Court held that the drastic and extreme action under Article 356 cannot be justified on the mere ipse dixit, suspicion and fancies of the Governor. It is the mere word of the Governor which has been eagerly accepted by the Central Government in this case. The sole aim of the weekend urgency (Cabinet meeting on Saturday late evening and meeting the President on Sunday) was to scuttle the floor test. There are grand silences in the Constitution, and it is a sense of morality and a culture of constitutionalism which were expected by the wise founding fathers to inform the exercise of constitutional powers. Of the many instances of breach of morality in the case of imposition of President's rule (with the Congress getting the prize for being the Big Sinner), this must surely rank as among the more egregious ones. It is interesting that an immoral exercise of constitutional power is sought to be justified by the need to prevent another immorality; that is "horse trading". This argument was used by the UPA Government to justify the dissolution of the Bihar Assembly in 2005. The Supreme Court said in the Rameshwar Prasad case that "the Constitution does not contemplate the dissolution of Assemblies based on the assumption of such immoralities for formation of the satisfaction that situation that (a) situation has arisen in which the Government cannot be carried out in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution." It is easy to say that the question of imposition of President's rule is a matter of "subjective satisfaction". In Rameshwar Prasad's case, the Supreme Court pointed out that after Bommai, there is need for objectivity even in subjectivity. The Court said that constitutionalism abhors absolutism. It is the settled position now that the exercise of powers under Article 356 is open to judicial review, and the legality of the Proclamation will now be examined from April 6 onwards by a Division Bench of the Uttarakhand High Court. There is enough guidance available to the Division Bench from Bommai's case when it commences the final hearing. The interim order passed by the Single-Judge Bench directing the holding of a floor test in the meantime was well-intentioned, but clearly wrong. The only interim relief which can be granted in a case challenging the imposition of President's rule is a stay of dissolution of the Assembly. That situation did not arise there, because the Assembly has only been put under suspended animation. The order directing the holding of a floor test effectively amounted to the reinstatement of the chief minister, because only he can seek a vote of confidence. This effectively meant that the Proclamation of President's rule had been stayed, which the Supreme Court does not allow. The Division Bench has rightly stayed the holding of the floor test till the writ petition is finally heard and decided, and the Congress has been wise in accepting this.

Nani Palkhivala once memorably said that what is legal might yet not be legitimate. It is the legitimacy of the invocation of constitutional provisions which has been severely tested in Uttarakhand.

The writer is a Senior Advocate practising in the Supreme Court.
 Flash

Azerbaijan has appealed to the international community to demand withdrawal of Armenian troops from the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

Azerbaijan has also urged the international community to engage constructively in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement process in accordance with the requirements of relevant resolutions of the UNSC and the norms and principles of international law, the statement said.

At night of April 2, 2016, Armenian armed forces had launched a massive attack on civilians residing in the territories adjacent to the frontline area and opened intensive heavy weapons fire at the positions of Azerbaijan's armed forces along the line of contact, said the statement.

"The attack resulted in deaths and injuries of the Azeri civilians. Substantial damages were also inflicted upon the private and public properties," it said.

The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry on Sunday declared to unilaterally suspend all military operations and response measures in the high-strung disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region with Armenia.

However, the Nagorno-Karabakh defense authorities said that heavy battles were still going on in the northeastern and southeastern directions, denying that the Azerbaijani side had implemented a real ceasefire along the contact line in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan on the contact line of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region have reportedly flared up overnight Saturday with the two countries' defense ministries blaming each other for triggering the escalation.

The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said 12 Azerbaijani soldiers have been killed in the fighting while the Armenian side confirmed that 18 soldiers died in the conflict.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a bitter dispute over the mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh first broke out in 1988, when the region claimed independence from Azerbaijan to join Armenia.

Peace talks have been held since 1994 when a ceasefire was reached, but there have been occasional minor clashes in the past along the borders and across the volatile frontline of the Karabakh area. The clashes obviously escalated last month.

On Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin urged the parties in the conflict to "observe an immediate ceasefire and exercise restraint in order to prevent further casualties," according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
This is yet another victory for women rights groups  they can now enter the sanctum sanctorum of Hindu temples in Maharashtra, under legal protection. Womens entry had remained banned in several temples as part of tradition. The Bombay High Court has stated that it is the fundamental right of women to enter any temple. The Maharashtra government too has given an undertaking to follow the order. It remains to be seen how it is implemented; the move may anger radical Hindu outfits. The state BJP, too, is divided on the issue. While Chief Minister Fadnavis has supported womens rights groups, his own Minister of Rural Development, Pankaj Munde, has called it an insult to the female fraternity.

The ruling may lead to the opening of Pandoras box in the rest of the country. While rituals, ceremonies and modes of worship are exclusive matters of religion, protected under Articles 25 and 26 of the Constitution, Article 14 ensures the right to equality. The Congress-led UDF government in Kerala has challenged the right to equality in a similar case in the Supreme Court, where womens rights groups had opposed the ban on the entry of women, aged 15 to 55, in Sabarimala temple. Interestingly, the previous Left Democratic Front (LDF) had supported womens rights groups by setting up a commission of scholars in 2007 for this politically relevant Gods abode.

The Bombay High Court is also dealing with a similar case involving Muslim women who want the judiciary to allow womens entry into the sanctum sanctorum of the Haji Ali dargah at Worli. The present ruling will certainly have a bearing on this case, which may ruffle many feathers. The bugle of war is also blown from other female quarters; right-wing organisations like the Mahila Dakshata Samiti, Sharada Mahila Mandal and Purohit Sangh are bent on stopping women activists from entering the controversial temples. For women demanding equality it's not going to be a cakewalk. The Maharashtra administration can set an example, if it believes in gender equality.
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 4

The government has formed a multi-agency group to probe Panama Papers exposea worldwide leak of financial information on offshore accounts in which around 500 Indians have also been mentioned.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said Prime Minister Narendra Modi discussed the issue with him this morning and on his directions the group was set up, comprising agencies such as the Central Board of Direct taxes (CBDT), RBI and Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU).

The special investigation team (SIT) on black money also said it would investigate the list exposed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

"The multi-agency group will comprise various government agenciesthe CBDT, FIU, FT&TR (Foreign Tax and Tax Research) and the RBI. They will monitor these (accounts) and whichever accounts are found unlawful, strict action as per existing laws will be taken," Jaitley said.

The list of Indians reportedly includes some prominent film personalities and industrialists. Some foreign heads of state have also been linked to Panama Papers. These refer to leaked documents of a Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca which is said to feature links of over 500 Indians to firms and accounts in offshore tax havens.

In a statement, the Finance Ministry said, In the context of the commitment of the Central Government to bring out undisclosed money, both from abroad and from within the country, information brought out by investigative journalism is welcome.

It said the government was committed to detecting and preventing generation of black money. The recent expose would further help the government in meeting that objective.

The multi-agency group will monitor the flow of information in each case. The government will take all necessary actions to get maximum information from all sources, including foreign governments.

The government said it was concerned that some countries in the world were being used as tax havens because of which other countries were suffering tax losses.

The recent initiative of Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) will help India and other countries in checking the practice of tax-avoidance through such tax havens. India is also fully committed to the BEPS initiative, it said.
New Delhi, April 4

A Special Investigation Team (SIT) inquiring into suspected cases of black money will investigate a recently reported list of 500 prominent Indians having hoards of money illegally stashed in offshore entities in Panama.

The list is believed to include names of prominent politicians, businessmen and even actors.

SIT Chairman MB Shah, a retired judge of the Supreme Court of India, said the team had received a list of names suspected of having illegally stashed money in Panama  considered a tax haven  on Monday.

"We will investigate it (the list) thoroughly," Shah said.

Read more:

Arijit Pasayat, another former judge of the top court also on the investigation committee, said the SIT has told investigation agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate, IT Department and the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence to submit a report of their assessment of the list.

"We want to know what is the truth behind these. The SIT did not have these reports. Maybe the investigative agencies had. So, once they submit a report to us then we can take the required action," Pasayat said.

The list  compiled by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in collaboration with news publications across the globe, including India  pertains to offshore investments made by Indians between a period of 1977 and 2015.

The latest list similar to the 'Swiss leaks' and the HSBC lists that also had Indian featured on them  related to Indians, claims it has sourced data in connection to millions of documents that show heads of state, criminals and celebrities using "secret hideaways" in tax haven country of Panama.

However, ICIJ adds a disclaimer that there were also "legitimate uses for offshore companies".

"The Panama papers expose the internal operations of one of the world's leading firms in incorporation of offshore entities, Panama-headquartered Mossack Fonseca. The 2.6 terabytes of data that make up the Panama Papers files were obtained by German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and shared with ICIJ and more than 100 media partners.

"ICIJ will release the full list of companies and people linked to them in early May," the ICIJ said on its web portal as it called the leaks The Panama Papers.

Sources in the government said the Income Tax department would investigate the claims made by a news report.

"Other agencies in the panel will act as and when the data is shared on the SIT platform," they said.

The ED and the IT departments were already investigating some names on the list, because of either the suspect disclosures they have made under the law or due to intelligence reports of illegally stashed money.

The international organisation said it possesses digital records and documents, emails and invoices to authenticate its claims that talk about multiple personalities and entities from across the globe.

The links published on Monday by ICIJ names at least two people with Indian connections whereas another report carried by an English daily names several people and entities.

The Central Government had announced it was instituting a SIT to investigate black money stashed abroad in 2014. PTI
WASHINGTON  A government-sponsored committee is recommending standards that could clear the way for commercial drone flights over populated areas and help speed the introduction of package delivery drones and other uses not yet possible, The Associated Press has learned.

The Federal Aviation Administration currently prohibits most commercial drone flights over populated areas, especially crowds. That ban frustrates a host of industries that want to take advantage of the technology.

Every TV station in the country wants one, but they cant be limited to flying in the middle of nowhere, because theres no news in the middle of nowhere, said Jim Williams, a former head of FAAs drone office who now advises the industry for Dentons, an international law firm.

Cellular network providers also want to loosen restrictions so drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles, can inspect cell towers, which often are in urban areas. Amazons vision for package deliveries entails drones winging their way over city and suburban neighborhoods.

The AP obtained a copy of the recommendations, which were sent to the FAA late Friday. The agency is not bound by the recommendations and can make changes when it writes final rules.

The recommendations call for creating four categories of small drones that commercial operators can fly over people, including crowds in some cases.

The first category of drones would weigh no more than about a half-pound. They essentially could fly unrestricted over people, including crowds. Drone makers would have to certify that if the drone hit someone, there would be no more than a 1 percent chance that the maximum force of the impact would cause a serious injury.

For the three other categories, the drones would have to fly at least 20 feet over the heads of people and keep a distance of at least 10 feet laterally from someone.

According to the recommendations:

Drones in the second category are expected to be mostly small quadcopters  drones with multiple arms and propellers, and weighing 4 pounds to 5 pounds  but there is no weight limit. Flights over people, including crowds, would depend on the design and operating instructions. Manufacturers would have to demonstrate through testing that the chance of a serious injury was 1 percent or less.

Drones in the third category could not fly over crowds or densely populated areas. These drones would be used for work in closed or restricted sites where the people that the drones fly over have permission from the drone operator to be present. Those people would be incidental to the drone operations and flights over them would be brief, rather than sustained. Manufacturers would have to show there was a 30 percent chance or less that a person would be seriously injured if struck by the drone at the maximum strength impact possible.

Drones in the fourth category could have sustained flights over crowds. Working with the FAA and engaging the local community, the operator would have to develop a congested area plan showing how flight risks would be mitigated. As before, the risk of serious injury would have to be 30 percent or less. Safety tests would be more exacting and the FAA would set a limit on how strong the drones maximum impact could be.

The risks are nominal, said Michael Drobac, executive director of the Small UAV Coalition. The reality is the technology would likely save lives rather than threaten them.

The FAA announced the formation of the committee in February as a way to circumvent traditional federal rule-making procedures, which can take years. The committee was made up of 27 companies or trade associations, including drone manufacturers and companies that want to fly drones, as well as airline and private pilots, airports, crop dusting companies and helicopter operators.

A last-minute disagreement nearly kept the committee from meeting the Friday deadline for the recommendations.

The Air Line Pilots Association and trade associations for the helicopter and crop dusting industries wanted to require that all commercial drone operators pass an aviation knowledge test administered in person by the FAA and receive a background check from the Transportation Security Administration, according to an industry official familiar with the discussions.

Most committee members opposed requiring anything more than an online knowledge test. The matter was resolved by the inclusion of a dissent by those in favor of the FAA test and TSA clearance. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about internal discussions.

The FAA initially described the panel as a micro drone committee. The agency defines such drones as those weighing less than 4.4 pounds. But the committee decided not to set a weight limit for most of the categories. That means its possible that any small drone, which the FAA defines as weighing less than 55 pounds, could win approval to fly over people if the drone met the safety criteria laid out in the recommendations. For example, a smaller drone that flies at higher speeds with fast-moving propellers may prove more of a risk than a heavier drone that flies more slowly and whose propellers dont rotate as quickly.
BAKU, Azerbaijan  Azerbaijans Defense Ministry announced a unilateral cease-fire Sunday against the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh, but rebel forces in the area said that they continued to come under fire from Azerbaijani forces.

Fighting in what was a dormant conflict for two decades flared up over the weekend with a boy and at least 30 troops killed on both sides. Each side blamed the other for Saturdays escalation, the worst since the end of a full-scale war in 1994.

The Defense Ministry said, in response to pleas from international organizations, it will be unilaterally suspending a counter-offensive and response on the territories occupied by Armenia. The ministry added it will not focus on fortifying the territory that Azerbaijan has liberated. It did not elaborate.

Nagorno-Karabakh, a region in Azerbaijan, has been under the control of local ethnic Armenian forces and the Armenian military since a war ended in 1994 with no resolution of the regions status. The conflict is fueled by long-simmering tensions between Christian Armenians and mostly Muslim Azeris.

Armenian forces also occupy several areas outside Nagorno-Karabakh proper. The sides are separated by a demilitarized buffer zone, but small clashes have broken out frequently.

Earlier Sunday, a spokesman for Azerbaijans Defense Ministry, Vagif Dargyakhly, said Azerbaijani positions came under fire overnight and that civilian areas also were hit.

On Saturday, Armenia said 18 soldiers were killed and Azerbaijan reported 12 dead.

Footage from the village of Gapanli, over 250 kilometers east of Baku, on the Azerbaijani side, showed Grad multiple missile launchers firing rounds from the field.

Officials in the self-proclaimed republic of Nagorno-Karabakh promptly disputed the reports of the unilateral cease-fire, saying that the town of Martakert has been heavily shelled all day despite Azerbaijans pledge. David Babayan, spokesman for the Karabakh president, told The Associated Press on Sunday that they had not seen any signs that fighting was suspended: The situation is quite the opposite.

The defense ministry of Nagorno-Karabakh on Sunday also claimed to have restored control over a strategic area near the front line. It said Nagorno-Karabakh forces went on a counter-offensive around the village of Talish after Azerbaijani forces shelled their positions just before dawn. Two Karabakh troops were reported injured.

It also said Azerbaijan was using rockets, artillery and armor against the region.

The self-proclaimed officials in Karabakh, however, said they will be ready to discuss a cease-fire with Azerbaijan as long as their respective positions on the ground are restored.

Armenias deputy defense minister at a Sunday briefing with military attaches based in Yerevan said Armenia will be ready to send troops to Karabakh if necessary.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed Sunday to back its ally Azerbaijan in the conflict, saying that the flare-up could have been avoided if fair and decisive steps had been taken.

We pray our Azerbaijani brothers will prevail in these clashes with the least casualties, he said.

The unresolved conflict has been an economic blow to Armenia because Turkey has closed its border with Armenia.
Broken Arrow Public Schools (BAPS) would like to remind parents/legal guardians that the State of Oklahoma requires all students entering into kindergarten to have the following immunizations:

 5  DTP/DTaP

 4  Polio

 2  MMR

 2 - Hepatitis A

 3  Hepatitis B

 1  Varicella (Chicken Pox)

Students entering seventh grade are required to receive one Tdap booster for immunizations against tetanus, diphtheria and acellular pertussis. This is a booster to the DTP students received before kindergarten. Students will not be allowed to pick up their schedules without this immunization.

Parents are encouraged to contact your childs healthcare provider as soon as possible to arrange for these immunizations.

To assist in obtaining these immunizations, BAPS is once again teaming up with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Oklahoma to offer the Caring Van program to students who do not have access to free immunizations through their health care provider.

A parent/legal guardian must accompany their pre-k student. Middle school students are only required to provide a signed parent release form (spanish) to their school nurse.

A current copy of your students immunization record is also required. After receiving the immunizations, a copy of the updated records should be brought to your students school site.

The Oklahoma Caring Van will be at each of the early childhood centers to provide immunizations to incoming kindergarteners for the 2016-17 school year on the following dates:

April 14  Creekwood ECC, 9 a.m.-1 p.m.

May 3  Arrow Springs ECC, 1:30 p.m.-3:30 p.m.

May 11  Aspen Creek ECC, 1:30 p.m.-3:30 p.m.

May 13  Park Lane ECC, 1:30 p.m.-3:30 p.m.

The Caring Van will also be at all five middle schools to provide the Tdap booster to incoming seventh graders for the 2016-17 school year on the following dates from 9:30 a.m. to noon:

April 27  Childers Middle School

May 6  Centennial Middle School

May 9  Oneta Ridge Middle School

May 10  Sequoyah Middle School

May 12  Oliver Middle School

Since the program began in 1999, thousands of children have received immunizations from registered nurses aboard the Caring Vans. Immunization information is entered in the Oklahoma State Immunization Information System (OSIIS), making vaccine history readily available.

For more information about the Caring Van, please contact your childs school nurse.
Oklahoma voters regularly reform the way the state operates by amending our state constitution.

Many of you may not realize it, but every time you vote on a state question, you are amending the Oklahoma State Constitution if the state question passes. For example, voters chose in 1941 to require state lawmakers to pass a balanced budget each year. In 1966, the state constitution was amended to allow annual legislative sessions, and then two decades later in 1989, voters mandated shorter legislative sessions. In 1990, we became the first state to place term limits on state lawmakers, and in 1992, voters approved an amendment to require a two-thirds vote to increase taxes in our state.

In November, you will once again be asked to vote on proposed amendments to the state constitution. Amendments are sent to voters either through the legislative process or by citizens collecting a large number of signatures to get the amendments on the ballot. The number of signatures required to qualify initiatives for the ballot in Oklahoma is tied to the total votes cast for governor in the last gubernatorial election. Amendments, statutes, and veto referendums must receive signatures equaling 15 percent, 8 percent, and 5 percent of the number of votes cast for governor, respectively. Signatures are presumed valid unless challenged. Currently, the required numbers of signatures are 123,725 for an amendment and 41,242 for a statute veto referendum.

HJR1062 will repeal the Blain Amendment so the Ten Commandments Monument can be returned to the Capitol grounds and has received quite a bit of attention in the media. This proposed amendment is going through the legislative process, and if it succeeds, it will appear on the ballot in November. Another proposed amendment you have probably heard about is the David Boren one penny sales tax for teacher raises and higher education funding. This proposition is an example of a citizen led petition-based amendment. If it gets the required number of signatures, this amendment will be on the ballot as well in November. Stay tuned. It looks like we will have lots of state questions to vote on this November.

Im happy to announce that last week my House bill 2544 passed through the senate committee and the senate Floor and is on the Governors desk for her consideration. This bill is a win for education because it gives local school districts the ability to combine reporting. It also allows local districts the ability to adopt and implement an extended day policy if they see the need to do so. The bill was recommended by the Oklahoma State Department of Educations Red Tape Task Force. Also last week the new Oklahoma Academic Standards went into effect and are reflective of the efforts of many hard working educators in Oklahoma including professional input from K-12 schools, higher education institutions, and career tech. Development of the new Oklahoma standards came about when the legislature passed a law in 2014 rejecting the Common Core Standards. I personally want to the thank everyone involved in crafting our new Oklahoma standards. Great job!

This week the House will be reviewing two bills designed to eliminate all K-12 common education End-of-Instruction exams not required by the federal government. HB1622 and SB1170 will end 9 of the 26 standardized tests self-imposed by Oklahoma. Currently our students lose nearly three weeks of classroom instruction each year because of the EOIs. The exams provide no benefit to teachers for student assessment, and are not used by our colleges in Oklahoma for entrance or scholarships requirements. By eliminating the nine EOI tests not required by the Federal Government, we can provide much needed relief for Oklahomas over-tested students and save common education millions of dollars in administration costs each year. I tried to get similar legislation passed four years ago when I first learned that our EOIs were self-imposed and not required for federal matching dollars. Im hopeful this year well have the political will to make this happen. Its a win-win for Oklahoma students, parents, and educators.

On a lighter note, this past week was an exciting week for me because I had the opportunity to see many friendly faces of my constituents from the Sand Springs/Tulsa area. Each day I was surprised and happy to see different groups such as Tulsa Tech Leaders, Tulsa Regional Chamber members, Sand Springs Education Leaders, and a Tulsa Community College student Jordan Cox, who was honored for her research poster featuring Neuronal Primary Cilia. It was very impressive. With plenty of pressing policy issues and a very difficult budget situation, seeing visitors from home reminds me of why Im here at the Capitol.

Until next time then, God bless.
OKLAHOMA CITY  Steve Buck, new director of the state Office of Juvenile Affairs, says he is convinced that the state agency he now heads has to start paying more attention to those youths in crisis before they end up behind bars.

We have an opportunity to bend the trajectory for these kids so they can succeed in their communities when they become adults, Buck said.

We shouldnt see ourselves as a feeder to the Department of Corrections, or a placeholder for these kids until they are old enough to be incarcerated in the adult prison system.

The agencys new emphasis is compatible with changes being urged for Oklahoma by the governor and Legislature while the states prison system continues to get even bigger.

I am encouraged because there appears to be a real appetite for this kind of change, Buck said.

Juvenile affairs has 165 youths currently housed in three detention centers. Two of those facilities house males. Those lockup centers are at Tecumseh in central Oklahoma and also at Manitou in the southwestern part of state.

The third center is one in Norman for troubled young women often trying to scratch out a living while providing for children as a single parent. Buck said possibly a third of those women have encountered sexual abuse.

The three detention centers require round-the-clock, 24-hour staffing seven days a week.

OJA also partners with contractors operating 14 group homes located throughout the state. Its residents have been adjudicated through the court system as needing special services. Those services strive for prevention, diversion and treatment.

Last year, OJA and its network of partners provided some kind of contact with about 40,000 youth throughout Oklahoma, said Paula Christiansen, OJA communications director. There were an estimated 15,000 referrals to OJA and its partners in 2015.

OJA also strives to help youths in the areas of educational attainment, learning about work force readiness and sometimes taking part in a faith community.

Buck comes to the juvenile affairs agency after serving several years as deputy commissioner for the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services where he worked with mental health commission director Terri White. Before that, he was state policy director for the National Alliance for Mental Illness.

Buck was chosen as OJA director in January and started to work in mid-February. Some questions have been raised as to his qualifications for the office. Current law requires that an OJA director needs to have work experience in corrections.

Michael Willis, an OJA board member from Tulsa, said it is evident that Buck has a more than adequate background for this position.

Buck was named director on Jan. 22. A day earlier, a bill revamping requirements was introduced by Sen. Nathan Dahm, a Broken Arrow Republican, to place emphasis on successful administrative experience as a key factor.

The measure, SB 1381, was passed by the Senate. It also has passed out of a House Committee and it is headed to the House floor where it must be considered before April 21.
Some of these college students hadnt been on bicycles since grade school, and they seemed a bit wobbly as they set off Monday on a guided tour along the west bank of the Arkansas River. But luckily, they wont be graded on their biking skills.

More than 50 architecture students from the University of Oklahoma spent the afternoon exploring west Tulsa as part of a class project to study and propose redevelopment schemes for the river, starting their bike ride at Turkey Mountain and heading north to RiverWest Festival Park.

Its an academic exercise, but not just an academic exercise, said Shawn Schaefer, the director of OUs Urban Design Studio, suggesting that the students will offer a glimpse of how future development could actually look. Theyre going to explore what is possible, what could happen. And I think their ideas could influence what eventually does happen.

For example, students will design a market bridge to span the river at 41st Street and create space for a potential farmers market. They will explore the possibility of turning the landmark PSO power plant into an industrial museum. And they will suggest ways to develop a River Business District along the west sides Interstate 44 corridor, complete with office buildings, apartments and hotels.

None of those projects seems remotely likely to break ground anytime soon, but all of them represent plausible long-term possibilities for development in the area, Schaefer said. And the students will consider at least one project that actually is a serious proposal: a bike park near Turkey Mountain.

Tulsa Tough, which organizes an annual bike festival and race in Tulsa, floated the idea of a bike park as a Tulsa Vision project, but it didnt make the final lists of proposals that voters are considering Tuesday. Nonetheless, Tulsa Tough will continue to build community support for the concept, said Malcolm McCollam, the groups executive director.

When people see the potential for something, McCollam said, it seems like Tulsa is the kind of city that always finds a way to make it happen. Were not giving up.

Schaefer hopes to arrange a public display of the student project in Tulsa this May, when he hopes it will attract attention from city officials and business leaders who could incorporate the ideas into real planning for the future.

I cant wait to see what the students come up with, he said.
OKLAHOMA CITY  A bill intended to capture some of an estimated $150 million in unpaid sales taxes on Internet purchases made by Oklahomans each year has cleared a House committee.

Members of the House Appropriations and Budget Subcommittee on Revenue and Tax voted 5-2 on Monday for the bill that would require some online retailers to notify Oklahomans who make purchases that they may owe state taxes. The bill would apply to retailers with annual sales of more than $1 million.

The bill is one of several being considered by the Republican-controlled Legislature to increase revenue from unpaid sales and use taxes.

Oklahomans are required to report and pay taxes on items they purchase online from out-of-state retailers, but the state Tax Commission estimates only 4 percent of taxpayers comply with the rule.
Correction: This story originally contained an incorrect county listing an incident in which an Okmulgee County deputy fatally shot a murder suspect. It has been corrected.

In just over three months, Oklahoma has experienced only a fraction of the number of fatal officer-involved shootings reported across the state compared to this time last year.

Saturday marked exactly one year since Robert Bates, then a Tulsa County Sheriffs Office reserve deputy, reportedly mistook his revolver for his Taser and fatally shot Eric Harris during an undercover gun sting.

Harris was the ninth person shot and killed by Oklahoma law enforcement in 2015 from New Years Day to April 4, according to a Tulsa World database of fatal shootings dating back to 2007.

So far, 2016 has seen only three fatal encounters with Oklahoma law enforcement, the latest of which occurred in early February. Two died in shootouts with police, and the third was shot in a scuffle with an officer in Oklahoma City.

Last year ended with 34 deadly officer-involved shootings, the most in Oklahoma in at least eight years. The number of fatal law enforcement shootings in Oklahoma has increased or remained the same each year since 2009. The state appears to be on track for 2016 to be among years with the fewest officer-involved fatal shootings.

I dont know that anything has really changed, and thats one of the those things that you never can really predict, Oklahoma Highway Patrol Capt. Paul Timmons said. Sometimes we go years and we dont have any officer-involved shootings or theyre really low. And then some years, like last year, we get a spike and nobody can really say what a reason for that is.

State troopers, who shot and killed four people last year, have been involved in only one fatal shooting this year, when Eufaula bank robber Cedric Norris died in an exchange of gunfire with three separate agencies on Jan 21.

Not much has changed in the past year as far as how law enforcement operates in dangerous situations. The Highway Patrol has not made any recent changes to its use-of-force training methods.

Timmons said national officer-involved incidents that have prompted public backlash and aggressive media coverage  such as the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray while in custody of Baltimore police  do not deter officers from using lethal force when needed.

Typically, everything unfolds so fast that guys have to rely on training and instincts, split-second decisions, he said. You hear that a lot, and its true. Thats just the way it is when youre involved in those kind of situations. Things happen, and your training kicks in. You do what youve been trained to do, and hopefully things work out for the best for everybody involved.

Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman Jessica Brown said she has noticed the significant decrease in fatalities but didnt want to speculate on a possible explanation.

Well just let the statistics talk for themselves, said Brown, whose agency handles inquiries into fatal altercations involving officers typically in rural counties.

The Tulsa Police Department has not had a fatal shooting since 2014, a year in which Tulsa officers were involved in five shooting deaths. Maj. Travis Yates, who oversees the Gilcrease Division in north Tulsa, also said theres no easy answer for why some years have more incidents than others.

Officers receive extensive training in de-escalation and handling mental illness, Yates said. They also are equipped with several nonlethal tools, such as pepper-ball guns and pepper spray. Tasers have been recently issued to more patrol officers.

I know when I look around at our officers here at the Gilcrease Division, the vast majority of them are carrying Tasers, and thats a good thing, he said. Every week, I read reports where Tasers are deployed, where if we didnt have a Taser something much worse may have occurred.

If youre looking at what has been the divide in the last 24 months that has created maybe a perceived less amount of deadly force being used, I think the Taser is the weapon that has really brought that upon us.

Yates said Tasers are not considered lethal weapons and if a death occurs, that person likely had either a pre-existing condition or asphyxiated from the way they lay on the ground while in custody. He also emphasized that stun guns arent used in deadly force situations. If someone pulls a gun on an officer, he said, that officer isnt going to pull out a Taser.

At the end of the day, suspects actions dictate officers responses, he said. We react to what were presented, and were very fortunate that (fatalities havent) happened in a couple years. And we also are realists and know we deal with some very, very bad people that are violent toward us and others.

Communication also is a significant factor in preventing fatal altercations. Yates said being transparent with the community regarding how officers are trained on public interactions and professionalism goes a long way in building trust between law enforcement and the community.

When it comes to fostering great community relations, which we take great pride in here in Tulsa, its what you do before the shooting that matters, Yates said. If you try to play catch-up after the shooting, then youre going to get yourself in trouble.
SAPULPA  A teacher at Sapulpa Public Schools alternative high school just returned from an international professional development opportunity in Morocco.

Carl Fisher, a science and technology teacher at Bartlett Academy, was one of 82 teachers across the country chosen to participate in the Teachers for Global Classrooms program, a year-long professional development fellowship funded by the U.S. Department of State for teachers with five or more years of classroom experience. More than 450 people applied for a spot this year.

The program consists of several components, including an eight-week online course about integrating global education into the curriculum, a global education symposium in Washington, D.C., and a two-week international travel fellowship.

You can really supercharge your teaching doing this kind of stuff, Fisher said.

Fisher and his cohort of teachers visited Morocco for their fellowship. Others will be visiting India, the Philippines, Georgia, Colombia and Senegal this year, he said.

It really is a cultural immersion for the teachers and then an exchange of ideas, Fisher said.

During the time Fisher and his group spent in Morocco, they were divided among several public schools. Members of the program had access to the classrooms and were able to watch teachers in action.

Fisher spent some time in his host schools science classrooms and labs.

They wanted us to go to places where we could actually help educators with new ideas, as well as learn from them how they educate, he said about program organizers.

Fisher said he brought back several ideas and some contacts from his trip.

The program has helped me add global components to classrooms, he said.

Fisher said he also got to bring back a firsthand account of another country to his students.

Sometimes a lot of our students are limited in their travel, or exposure to other cultures, he said.

His experience will help him lead his class in a more global way, he said, because its important for students to understand how the rest of the world works.

Our students need to know how other countries work, and how countries that impact our country work, he said.

Fisher encourages all teachers to apply for the fellowship.

Im always a better teacher when I get back, he said.
BROKEN ARROW  Investigators believe a pepper spray pellet caused several students and staff members at a Broken Arrow elementary school to have difficulty breathing Monday morning, prompting officials to evacuate the building.

A student brought the pellet to Leisure Park Elementary School, 4300 S. Juniper Place, creating fumes that caused irritation for students and staff in one of the classrooms, according to a news release.

The school was evacuated as a precaution, and those affected were evaluated by medical personnel. Parents of affected students also were notified.

Students were taken to Aspen Creek Elementary and Creekwood Early Childhood Center for the remainder of the day.

Further details were not available.
Pint-sized Batmen, Supermen and Wonder Women, along with a plethora of other superheroes, stood beneath a black, blow-up archway starting line. A kaleidoscope of intermittent capes billowed in the light, spring breeze.

The Star Wars theme played in the background over a loudspeaker as the tiny competitors, sometimes flanked by their parents or guardians, waited for an announcer to fire the starting gun that would send them barreling through hoops and over climbing walls and balance beams as part of the half-mile obstacle course.

About 1:30 p.m. Sunday, an announcer fired a pistol, and the runners were off.

A blond boy was leading in a full sprint as the group rounded the first corner. A variety of superheroes, including a spandex-clad and faux-muscled Spiderman, followed close behind as they wove through the trail at PostOak Lodge.

The runners were part of the second of seven Sidekick Challenge heats during Child Abuse Networks Superhero Challenge on Sunday, meant to raise money and awareness for the group to provide services for Tulsa County children involved in child abuse investigations.

Participants chose between two events at the third annual challenge: the all-ages-appropriate Sidekick Challenge or the Superhero Challenge, recommended for children ages 11 and older. The Superhero course spanned a 1.8-mile trail and added pulling and throwing obstacles to the basic jumping, climbing and crawling challenges presented in the shorter Sidekick course, according to the events website.

The money raised at the event, either through sponsorships or the $20-per-person registration fee, went toward Child Abuse Network, said Brandi Moore, the networks community relations director.

Coordinators and volunteers began setting up for the event Saturday, and about 100 volunteers steered the 1,000-person crowds around the lodge and ensured competitors completed obstacles and made it through the course Sunday, event co-chairwoman Ashley Neal said, decked out in a red cape and her sons race medal.

For Mike Adams, who ran the course with his niece, Mary Jane Panky, his favorite part of the race was seeing her take off at the starting line as fast as she could go.

After the quick start, Adams said Mary Jane never faltered, adding, Actually, no; I wish, when asked if she ever slowed.

The two, who both wore matching blue Superman T-shirts, initially planned better costumes, but ultimately ended up in Sundays garb when life got in the way. Adams didnt think it mattered much, anyway.

Thats all it takes, he said. Just matching shirts.

This was the first time the two had competed in the challenge, and Adams said it was likely something theyd do year after year because of the importance of the cause they were supporting.

Child Abuse Network provides services, such as a forensic interview and medical exams, for about one-fourth of the children involved in child abuse cases in Tulsa County, Moore said.

About 1 in 14 children in Tulsa County are involved in a child-abuse investigation, according to a news release from the network.

Its an epidemic, and its growing, Neal said.

The network provides services for the most egregious of those cases. The rest are handled through Oklahoma Department of Human Services and law enforcement agencies, Moore said.

This years Superhero Challenge raised $72,975 for the network to help fund operating costs and services, Moore said.

Philip Kin, who ran the course with his 6-year-old daughter, Ava, and 4-year-old son, John, said he thought of the network as a foundation everyone should support. His family attended Sunday as his daughters Girl Scout troop was presenting money to the network.

As for the course, It was surprisingly exhausting for somebody my age, he said  slightly winded  after finishing his heat just after 2:20 p.m.

We all cruised through the balance beams, but I actually thought climbing over the little A-frames was the best. They enjoyed that the most, Kin said.
ABC Chairman James Spigelman has rejected claims made in an article that incoming ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie was a captains pick by PM Malcolm Turnbull.

In a letter to The Australian he wrote:

I refer to the article Baptism of fire at Aunty in which Michael Bodey again repeats some third-hand gossip in a statement attributed to insiders, that Guthrie was, in essence, a captains pick by Malcolm Turnbull who made it known privately he was keen on a woman from Google.

I state categorically that, before the Boards decision, there was no communication with the Prime Minister about this appointment. When I informed him, he did not recognise her name, although he thought he had heard it. This is not surprising as she spent fifteen years abroad.

If he ever mentioned a woman from Google, it was not Michelle Guthrie.

I repeat, there was no political influence on the process of selecting the new Managing Director of the ABC.

Yours faithfully,

James Spigelman

Chair, Australian Broadcasting Corporation

No claim rejecting advertising to begin on Aunty though.!
The BBC has announced the cast for upcoming Doctor Who spin-off, Class, with filming now underway in the UK.

They are Greg Austin, Fady Elsayed, Sophie Hopkins and Vivian Oparah with Katherine Kelly, as a teacher and powerful new presence at Coal Hill School.These four Coal Hill School students have hidden secrets and desires, whilst facing their own worst fears. They must navigate a life of friends, parents, school work, sex, sorrow  and possibly the end of existence.

Coal Hill School has been a part of the Doctor Who Universe since the very beginning, but that has come at a price. All the time-travelling over the years has caused the very walls of space and time to become thin. Theres something pressing in on the other side, something waiting for its chance to kill everyone and everything, to bring us all into Shadow.

Fear is coming, tragedy is coming, war is coming.

Creator Patrick Ness, says: We searched far and wide for this amazing cast, fantastic actors who understand what were aiming for with this show. And how lucky we are to get Katherine Kelly! Shes been stunning in Happy Valley, The Night Manager and Mr Selfridge, just wait until you see her here.

Steven Moffat, Class and Doctor Who Executive Producer, says: Theres nothing more exciting than meeting stars that nobodys heard of yet. We had the read through of the first few episodes last week, and there was a whole row of them. Coal Hill School has been part of Doctor Who since the very first shoot in 1963, but this new show is anything but history. Class is dark and sexy and right now. Ive always wondered if there could be a British Buffy  its taken the brilliant Patrick Ness to figure out how to make it happen.

An Australian broadcaster is yet to be confirmed.
Tomorrow night on Foreign Correspondent, Liam Cochrane travels to Myanmar, the source of most of Australias heroin,where poppy production has more than doubled in a decade.

But what will it take to stop the opium trade?

When I look around the field, to me it looks so beautiful  Nang, young mother and opium poppy grower, Myanmar

Nang has never tried opium. She has only the vaguest idea that the alluring flowers she tends so carefully do any harm to anybody, or that what she does is technically illegal. As she sees it, opium is the only crop that puts food on her table and keeps her child in school.

What else can I do? Its made my life better  Nang

Nangs is just one of about 200,000 families that the UN says are involved in poppy cultivation across Myanmar, the worlds second biggest opium producer. Production has more than doubled in recent years

We are talking about tonnes and tonnes of heroin. I think most Australians would probably think its coming from Afghanistan, but its not true. Its actually from Myanmar  UN official in Yangon

South East Asia Correspondent Liam Cochrane ventures into the remote Myanmar valleys that produce most of Australias heroin. He then takes the trail to the China border where the bulk of the processed heroin heads to the outside world.

But as Cochrane discovers, not all the heroin is sold abroad. Pure, cheap and plentiful, the drug is scything through Myanmars townships.

My sons were washed away on a tide of heroin  Daw Lie, grieving mother, Nant Phar Kar town

In Nant Phar Kar the pastor reveals that he has buried 336 drug users from his congregation. By his reckoning, close to half the townspeople use heroin. He fears for his towns very survival.

Nant Phar Kar symbolises an entire countrys addiction to the poppy. Opium money helped bankroll six decades of civil war. It has underpinned much of Myanmars economic development and has fed corruption even as the country makes its painful transition to a fledgling democracy.

No one really expects Myanmars new government to raze the poppy fields. But after a series of failed attempts to coax poppy farmers into trying other crops, hopes are rising that the newest UN experiment might finally succeed.

9.30pm Tuesday April 5 on ABC.
This week Home Delivery features the last new episode of the series with guest Kerri-Anne Kennerley.

This episode was due to air a few weeks ago but was thoughtfully rescheduled following husband Johns accident.

The episode sees KAK head back to Sandgate in Queensland and to QTQ studios in Brisbane.

She will also answer Julia Zemiros question on her worst-ever career choice (it was a Nine show!).

Next week Home Delivery reverts to repeat episodes in the same timeslot.

Kerri-Anne Kennerley has spent 50 years on Australian television screens. She meets up with Julia back where it all began  in the Brisbane coastal suburb of Sandgate. But the house in which she grew up, built by her fathers own hands, no longer stands.

Kerri-Anne describes a typical Queensland childhood, one of four children in a close- knit family, and of how she was the annoying youngest sibling who always wanted to tag along with her brothers and sister.

She reveals she wanted to be in show business for as long as she can remember. Before the family had one of their own, she used to walk over the hill in her pyjamas to watch television through the electronics shop window, all the while dreaming of being on the tele herself.

Kerri-Anne and Julia then jump into a 1970s Valiant Charger to drive to a seemingly unchanged Sandgate State School.

And then its on to Sandgate Town Hall to meet her sister, Jan, where Kerri-Anne complains of the injustice of being made to wear hand-me-down fancy dress costumes while their mother created a prize-winning masterpiece for Jan.

The town hall was also the first place Kerri-Anne ever performed in public, recreating routines by her favourite comedians, and miming to My Boomerang Wont Come Back with her school friends.

They end the day at Channel 9 studios, where at the age 13, Kerri-Anne pestered her way to a television debut. She tells Julia about the highs and lows, from battling chauvinism to her long reign as daytime queen.

8pm Wednesday on ABC.
Perth-based SVOD and DVD rental company Quickflix is to cut 15% of its workforce and close Sydney and Auckland offices as it prepares to raise a further $2m through an equity sale.

The company has told the Australian Securities Exchange it will slash the salaries of founder and CEO Stephen Langsford and CFO Simon Hodge.

These additional ongoing savings amount to over $1m per annum and are not expected to have a significant impact on core day to day services, it said in a statement.

Quickflix has been in a trading halt on the ASX since the middle of 2015.

Source: AdNews, Mumbrella
SKY News will screen the first Peoples Forum of the election year with Opposition Leader Bill Shorten on Thursday, moderated by David Speers at Redcliffe RSL, Queensland.

With an election looming SKY News is giving real voters a chance to quiz the leaders in person and see how they perform without a script, said Speers.

Our Peoples Forum events have been a big success in recent campaigns. Voters often ask very different questions to journalists about issues that may not be on the media radar. Bill Shorten is in a much stronger position than six months ago, but how he performs under questioning from undecided voters will be revealing.

The forum will be held in the marginal Queensland seat of Petrie which is located in the northern suburbs of Brisbane and is shaping up as a key battleground in the federal election. Mr Shorten will take questions from undecided voters from the electorate as chosen by Galaxy Research.

SKY News Political Editor David Speers will moderate the one-hour event Live from the Redcliffe RSL, Thursday April 7 at 6:30pm AEST on SKY News Live (Foxtel Channel 601).

Lachlan Heywood, Editor The Courier-Mail said: The Courier-Mail is proud to partner with SKY NEWS on the Peoples Forum and hear how the Opposition Leader will respond to the real issues affecting Queensland during this election year.

Prior to the Peoples Forum David will anchor his award-winning program PM Agenda Live from the venue at 4:00pm. Following the forum, David will return for Speers Tonight at 8:00pm to discuss the issues raised and Mr Shortens responses.

The Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has been invited to attend this forum or to take part in another forum at a time and place of his choosing.

Thursday April 7 at 6:30pm AEST.
It was panned by critics, and (mostly) ripped apart by Twitter but new hypnosis series Youre Back in the Room may just be the answer to Nines prayers.

Last night Nine won the night thanks to the 1.16m viewers who couldnt resist test-driving the new Daryl Somers show. It was beaten only by My Kitchen Rules on 1.23m viewers. YBITR drew its biggest audience in Sydney at 394,000 (where it was the top how of the night) followed by Melbournes 330,000. It was also second in the demos. The real test will come next week given there were many on social media who were mocking what they viewed. But its a solid start for a network in need of a sugar hit.

Nines good fortune came at the expense of TEN which had a night of SBS proportions. It was unable to rise above its simulcast of Family Feud on 439,000 viewers. No way to spin those numbers.

Nine network won wth 32.8% then Seven 30.1%, ABC 17.7%, TEN 12.3% and SBS 7.1%.

Following YBITR Nine drew 1.13m for Nine News then 60 Minutes (927,000) and Movie: The Wolf of Wall Street (314,000).

My Kitchen Rules remained at #1 with 1.23m viewers for Seven followed by Seven News (1.15m) and Sunday Night (711,000). Castle was 349,000.

ABC News (792,000) was best for ABC then Matilda and Me (737,000), Call the Midwife (649,000) and Joanna Lumleys Trans Siberian Adventure (389,000). Compass was 267,000.

Modern Family was 375,000 / 365,000 then Scorpion (364,000), American Crime Story (339,000), TEN Eyewitness News (330,000) and NCIS: New Orleans (203,000).

On SBS it was The Story of Egypt (283,000), Vietnam: The War That Made Australia (221,000), SBS World News (168,000) and Inside Hestons World (135,000).

Peppa Pig was best on multichannels at 239,000.

OzTAM Overnights: Sunday 3 April 2016
9:28 a.m., April 4, 2016--Throughout the month of April, the University of Delaware will discover the science, history and culture of Arctic communities and landscapes while honoring UDs commitment to research and impact in this, the vast northernmost region of the world.

Arctic Month, hosted by the Institute for Global Studies, will feature more than a dozen lectures, programs and events on topics ranging from marine biosciences in the depths of the Arctic Ocean to modern-day Inuit interpretations of long-passed traditions.

The celebrations will kick-off Tuesday, April 5, with the final installment of this years Fulbright Lecture Series, spotlighting Mark Moline, the 2011 Fulbright Arctic Chair and director of UDs School of Marine Science and Policy. Alongside his colleague Jon Cohen, assistant professor of marine biosciences, the researchers will describe their six-year journey to discovering the life that thrives in the polar night.

This event will begin at 7 p.m. in the Harker Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Laboratory Atrium. Registration is encouraged and all in attendance will be invited to be the first to sample the months signature UDairy Creamery ice cream, Glacial Goodness.

On Thursday, April 12, at 7 p.m.in Trabant University Center Theatre, Jim Corbett, the associate director of the School of Marine Science and Policy, will lead an audience through the famous documentary Battle for the Arctic and share his expertise in maritime transportation, its effects on the rapidly changing Arctic environment, and the pollution policy that has ensued.

Those seeking a light-hearted movie should mark their calendars and bring their family and friends for a showing of Arctic Tale on Thursday April 7, at 7 p.m. in 006 Kirkbride Hall.

The month will feature many films, including the anthropological classic Nanook of the North and a recent remaking of an Inuit legend, Fast Runner.

An exclusive Arctic Month opportunity, the University Museums have uncovered items from the Inuit collection, exhibited for only a month in 2003, for two limited, behind-the-scenes tours led by curators Ivan Henderson and Jan Gardner Broske. Participants will experience a rich cross-section of the Inuit arts of Alaska (Yupik) and Nunavut (Arctic Circle), and see up-close-and-personal views and narratives of drawings, carvings, and artifacts of these Native American peoples.

Pre-registration for behind-the-scenes tours of the Inuit collection, to take place on April 12 and 26, are required. Those interested in attending are encouraged to register early, as space is limited to 15 participants per tour.

Arctic After Dark Weekend begins with a glow-in-the-dark skate party at the Fred Rust Ice Arena on Friday, April 15. Free transportation from the ice arena will be provided immediately following for the opening of Polar Night: Light and Life in the Dead of Night, an exhibit on loan from the Polar Museum in Tromso.

The exhibit, navigated in the dark by flashlight, will be open from 8-11 p.m., Friday, April 15, through Sunday, April 17, in the Kent Engagement Center in the Kent Dining Hall, and is free and open to the public.

Icebreaker! Talks, to take place on Tuesday, April 26, at 7 p.m. in the Harker Lab, will present a holistic view of UDs Arctic reach. In this short, interdisciplinary and consumable event, eight Arctic experts will present their research in eight slides and eight minutes. The number eight represents the number of Arctic Council Nations.

Other highlights of the month include talks on historic Arctic exploration by McKay Jenkins, Cornelius A. Tilghman Sr. Professor of English, and doctoral student Alyce Graham, a visit from Einstein of the Oceans Walter Munk, an Office for International Students and Scholars iced coffee hour, and a month-long Arctic Exploration exhibit housed in the Morris Library.

Visit the Arctic Month website for a complete calendar of events, to view details on UD in the Arctic, or to explore resources available at the Morris Library.

UD Arctic Month is has been generously co-sponsored by the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment, the Department of Anthropology, Environmental Humanities, the Delaware Environmental Institute, Morris Library, UD Sustainability Task Force, University Museums, Office for International Students and Scholars, and Student Wellness and Health Promotion.

For the latest updates on everything happening during the month or for fun facts about UDs Arctic impact, follow @UDGlobal on Instagram and Twitter, and engage using the hashtag #UDArctic.

Article by Nikki Laws
11:10 a.m., April 4, 2016--The University of Delaware Asian Studies Program, in association with the Center for Global and Area Studies, will present five lectures in a series titled Environmental Change in Asia, beginning Tuesday, April 12.

All the lectures, which are free and open to the public, will take place from 4:30-6 p.m. in 108 Memorial Hall.

April 12  Kimberley Thomas, a Mellon postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, will speak on "Hydrological Crises in Bangladesh: Does Conventional Wisdom Hold Water?"

Situated in the worlds largest river delta and downstream of the second most populous country in the world, hydrological crises in Bangladesh are widely ascribed to unfortunate geography by scientists, news commentators and policymakers. Damages from recurrent floods and droughts are now being compounded by a new suite of water hazards, as climate change leads to sea level rise and more frequent tropical storms.

Thomas talk will question the inevitability of these water crises through a combined environmental-historical-political analysis of state-making, flood management and agricultural development over the past 70 years. She argues that rather than emanating apolitically from a naturally hazard-prone environment, hydrological crises in Bangladesh can be better understood as legacies of imperial rule and technocratic land-use planning aimed at modernization.

April 14  Afton Clarke-Sather, assistant professor of geography at UD, will present "Will China Meet its Climate Change Commitments?"

Clarke-Sather will discuss whether, with its economic growth falling by half, China will consume less. A growing middle class and, with it, increasing consumption of energy and goods raise questions about the sustainability of Chinas environmental future. The government has pledged massive reductions in carbon emissions, and the lecture will consider if it can and will be able to deliver.

April 19  UDs Engineers Without Borders Philippines Team will present "Fishing for Water."

The Engineers Without Borders UD partnership with the small community of Ubujan, Philippines, began in 2014 after a student, Natalie Muneses, whose grandfather grew up in the community, introduced it to the UD chapter. Since then, the team has completed two assessment trips in which members found that the main issue is the lack of clean water.

The UD team is now working on the design and implementation of a water treatment and distribution system. Throughout the experience, the team has become familiar with cultural differences and similarities between the Philippines and the U.S.

April 21  Rachel DiNitto, associate professor of Japanese literature at the University of Oregon, will talk about "Filming Nuclear Environments: The Case of Fukushima."

DiNittos presentation will examine one documentary and two fictional films made in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster for their portrayals of the nuclear environment in a post-meltdown, irradiated Japan. These three films  311, Land of Hope (Kibo no kuni) and The Calm Everyday (Odayaka na nichijo)  range from disaster tourism to dramatic fatalism.

The talk will explore the films political stance on the crisis, their intersection with the realities on the ground where residents are being moved back into the former no-go zones and the ways they reflect and possibly shape public perception of the disaster.

May 3  Alan Fox, professor of Asian and comparative philosophy at UD, will speak about "Process Ecology and the Ideal Dao."

This presentation will take as its starting point the process-oriented understanding of Daoism as championed by the work of Ames/Hall and will then discuss the essentially normative attitudes one finds much in Daoism that can contribute to current discussions of ecology and environmental issues.

Global April

Environmental Change in Asia is just one of many events being sponsored this month by the Center for Global and Area Studies as a way for the UD community to explore the world from campus.

See a full list of the centers Global April activities at this website.
9:39 a.m., April 4, 2016--An interdisciplinary team of researchers led by University of Delaware professors Wei-Jun Cai and Mark Warner has successfully measured both pH and carbonate ion concentration directly inside the calcifying fluid found in coral, an important development in the study of how ocean acidification will affect marine calcifying organisms such as corals and shellfish.

According to Cai, Mary A.S. Lighthipe Chair of Earth, Ocean, and Environment, the research team, which includes colleagues from University of Georgia and Ohio State University, is the first to measure carbonate ion concentration inside coral using a specialized carbonate sensor developed in Cais laboratory.

The researchers reported their findings in a paper published in Nature Communications on April 4.

Unraveling a mystery

Ocean acidification (OA) is the ongoing decrease in pH in the global ocean due to the absorption of excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Scientists know that OA impacts shell formation and development in marine calcifying organisms, but they dont know exactly why.

With Prof. Cais microelectrode we now have the ability to probe through the corals stomach tissue and into the calcifying fluid next to the rock of the skeleton, and capture data about what the chemistry is like where calcification occurs, explained Warner, a marine science professor at UD.

This is very important, Warner continued, because while scientists know how OA is changing the seawater chemistry, they dont yet understand how the chemistry of the fluid deep inside the coral  where coral make their calcium carbonate skeletons  is changing.

You need two parameters to completely understand a carbonate system. If you only measure pH, as has been done historically, we can only guess what the other dissolved inorganic carbon parameters may be, said Cai.

Measurements were worth the wait

To measure pH, Cai and his colleagues inserted a miniscule electrode equipped with microsensors into the corals thin calcifying fluid layer, which is smaller than a human hair at only a few micrometers thick. They also inserted a second electrode equipped with a carbonate sensor developed in Cais lab to directly measure the concentration of carbonate ions.

A special chemical inside the carbonate sensor was designed to move carbonate ions across a membrane, creating a voltage difference that can be measured and used to quantify the carbonate concentration.

The work was challenging, and required many tries and great patience before they were successful. If you push too hard, the electrode misses the fluid and breaks at the hard skeleton, Cai said.

The researchers results confirmed what other scientists have measured before  the pH inside the corals calcifying layer is high. This finding supports the idea that coral are equipped with a proton pump that force protons away from this site in order to regulate pH and allow calcification to occur.

The team also measured high carbonate ion concentrations. The scientists then used the two measurements to calculate the amount of total dissolved inorganic carbon present.

Current hypotheses suggest that dissolved inorganic carbon is highly concentrated inside the corals calcification layer, however, the researchers findings indicate it might not be as highly concentrated as previously believed.

Our findings show it is similar to seawater or even slightly lower than seawater, Cai said.

The researchers hypothesize the reason is that the coral is rapidly using the carbon to make their skeletons. One hypothesis with OA is that a coral has to work harder to keep making the same amount of skeleton when there is a change in pH.

At least for the corals weve tested it on, when we back calculate the chemistry in this area, our findings indicate they may not have to work quite as hard as we thought. The work definitely opens up the scope of study to ask more questions related to ocean acidification and energy demand and how corals can potentially resist these kinds of stressors, said Warner.

It also could explain why the calcification rates of many species of corals are not affected by ocean acidification, said co-author Andrea Grottoli at Ohio State University.

Next steps

Now that the scientists have overcome the technical difficulties associated with taking these complicated measurements inside coral, the next step is to collect measurements under different conditions and from other species of corals. For example, Cai envisions taking measurements under various ocean acidification conditions, light conditions or temperatures, and while exposing the coral to different nutrients or environmental stressors.

We have a long way to go, he said, but I am confident that this work will help the scientific community to look at coral calcification mechanisms somewhat differently from the approaches weve seen in the past, Cai said.

It may also help scientists better understand carbon delivery  how carbon is moving inside the coral  and how external changes in pH may affect the corals biochemistry.

These tools and the results we obtained with them provided exciting new insight into calcification mechanisms and we are currently working to incorporate these findings into models of coral carbon processing, said Brian Hopkinson, a collaborator at the University of Georgia.

Some of the premises that scientists have been working under regarding OA are predicated on whats happening to the chemistry of the seawater, but the coral is changing these concentrations biologically as well. This is the kind of tool that will help us figure out what coral are doing differently, added Warner.

This work was funded in part by two awards from the National Science Foundation.

About the research team

University of Delawares Wei-Jun Cai is the papers lead author. Andrea Grottoli, professor in the School of Earth Sciences at Ohio State is principal investigator (PI) of one NSF award with Cai and Mark Warner as co-PIs. University of Georgia (UGA)s Brian Hopkinson is the lead PI of the other NSF award with Cai as co-PI.

Other co-authors on the study include colleagues at University of Georgia, Ohio State University, Zhejiang University, Texas A&M University Corpus Christi, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Western Australia Oceans Institute, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, State Oceanic Administration Second Institute of Oceanography in China, and Reef Systems Coral Farm (Ohio).

Article by Karen B. Roberts

Image of polyps by Andrea Grottoli, Ohio State University

Photo of Wei Jun Cai by Ambre Alexander Payne
11:28 a.m., April 4, 2016--After months of planning by students, faculty and staff, this is what it all comes down to: The University of Delawares Earth Month celebration aims to draw attention to issues of environmental sustainability and environmental justice.

The schedule of events is available on the Earth Month 2016 webpage, compiled by the Earth Month Working Group of the Universitys Sustainability Task Force.

Officially, Earth Day is Friday, April 22, but events are planned throughout the month.

This year we had the added bonus of working with staff from the Institute for Global Studies, who had designated April as Arctic Month, said Katie Morrison, assistant director in Residence Life and Housing and co-chair of the Sustainability Task Force. The two observances dovetail nicely and our coordination has resulted in an especially rich schedule of Earth-related events throughout the month.

Highlights include the third annual Lights, Camera, EARTH! film festival, which begins at 3 p.m., Friday, April 8, and continues through Sunday evening, April 10. The festival features six films on the theme of climate change, each followed by a faculty-led discussion.

On Saturday, April 9, the star and co-producer of A Sea Change will make a guest appearance for a question-and-answer session following the screening of the film. The festival is co-sponsored by the Environmental Humanities Program in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Delaware Environmental Institute (DENIN).

Students for the Environment will also host a film screening on April 14 at 6:30 p.m. Bag It: Is Your Life Too Plastic? begins as a film about plastic bags but evolves into a wholesale investigation of the effects of plastic on our oceans, environment and bodies.

On April 20, from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., UD alumnus Brian Atwater, this years Franklin medalist in the earth and environmental sciences, will be honored with a special symposium titled Rising Seas and Extreme Events on Vulnerable Coasts. Atwater received his doctorate in geological sciences from UD in 1980 and has had a distinguished career with the U.S. Geological Survey.

The Sustainability Task Force will host its annual Green Expo in the Trabant University Center concourse on Friday, April 22, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Any group or unit on campus is welcome to present information about how they are improving their community by minimizing environmental impact; use this online form to register.

That evening, April 22, a special event titled Music, Liberation, and the Environment: Its a Global Thing will be held outside Mechanical Hall from 4-7 p.m. The event will feature performances by internationally recognized Native American hip hop artist Frank Waln, along with Gambian performer Egalitarian, and Wilmingtons own Richard Raw.

The performances will be preceded by a panel of UD faculty and staff discussing environmental justice and sustainability, including Michelle Bennett, UDs sustainability manager, Elaine Rosa Salo, associate professor of political science and international relations, and Jeffrey Richardson, interim director of the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Program and instructor in Black American Studies. The event is free and open to the public and is sponsored by Global Arts, Black American Studies, University Museums, and the Center for Black Culture.

Students will also have opportunities to make their voices heard through two competitions held during Earth Month: a student video competition and an environmental case competition.

Finalists for the case competition, sponsored by the Blue Hen Economics Club, the University of Delaware Consulting Club and DENIN, have been chosen and will present their ideas for ways to make the UD campus more sustainable in public presentations on April 27. The winning team or individual will receive a $500 prize as well as a $10,000 grant from the Sustainability Task Forces Green Grants fund to implement their idea on campus.

Short, 30-second videos depicting actions students are taking to make their own lives more sustainable may be submitted to the DENIN Ambassadors video competition by posting on social media, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram using the hashtag #BeTheChangeUD through April 24. The winners of the video competition will be announced April 29.

Students will have two opportunities during the month to learn more about careers in the areas of environment and sustainability. A panel discussion and networking reception sponsored by the Career Services Center will be held from 57 p.m., April 21. A second panel discussion featuring sustainability professionals hosted by Bennett will take place from 6-8 p.m., April 26. Both events will be held in the Perkins Student Center.

The month-long celebration will conclude on April 30 with Ag Day, the annual festival hosted by the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources on the South Campus from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Members of the UD and surrounding community are encouraged to enjoy the music, exhibitors, vendors, food and fun available at this family-friendly event.

Article by Tom Aristone and Beth Chajes
1:07 p.m., April 4, 2016--Five University of Delaware students are on a mission. Nathan Hamilton of the College of Engineering and four colleagues from the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics  Eric Albers, James Celia, Matthew Rojas and Mathew Sobel  are fighting homelessness through a program that provides job placement skills to those without permanent housing.

The student team is participating in First Step Grand Challenges in an effort to win the $25,000 in prize, seed and grant money awarded to top entries. Hamilton, Celia, Albers and Rojas are in the University's Honors Program.

First Step Grand Challenges is a year-long, mentored challenge for undergraduate students to develop solutions to societal problems. The competition is set for Wednesday, April 6, at 6 p.m. in the Health Sciences Complex Atrium at UDs Science, Technology and Advanced Research (STAR) Campus.

First Step is a collaborative program of University of Delaware College of Health Sciences and the Horn Program for Entrepreneurship.

The teams social enterprise, Lazarus Rising, is a program model in which university student volunteers hold workshops at homeless shelters where they teach residents job placement skills.

The model calls for two workshops. The first focuses on resume writing and the second on preparing for job interviews and using job portal websites.

Presently, there are more than 600,000 people who experience homelessness on any given night in the United States, says Rojas, founder, chairman and CEO. A truly vicious cycle exists between the growing homeless population and the lack of competitive job placement skills amongst this group, ensuring that this crisis will continue to subsist unless something is done to break this cycle.

Lazarus Rising is currently active in Newark and Wilmington, Delaware.

According to Vince DiFelice, Horn Programs venture support lead, The Lazarus Rising team have proven their model at UD and now are bringing their social enterprise to other universities, empowering the homeless in other communities while providing a valuable learning opportunity to students in other parts of the county.

The idea came from an experience Rojas had as a freshman. While updating his resume, he realized that skill and training are required to write a polished resume, so he reached out to a local homeless shelter with the idea to host a resume workshop for its residents. This experience led to the founding of Lazarus Rising.

In fall 2015, the team was accepted as a VentureOn team in the Horn Program for Entrepreneurship. The VentureOn program supports and provides resources to promising and early stage startups at UD. Currently, the Horn Program supports 30 VentureOn teams.

About the Horn Program in Entrepreneurship

The Horn Program ignites imaginations and empowers world changers through entrepreneurial education.

The programs offerings emphasize experiential learning, evidence-based entrepreneurship and active engagement with entrepreneurs, business leaders and members of the broader entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Participation in Horn Program courses and co-curricular activities empowers students by providing them with the knowledge, skills, connections and access to resources needed to successfully manifest innovation and thrive in a rapidly changing world.
Hi, my name is Scott C. Waring and I wrote a few books and am currently a ESL School Owner in Taiwan. I have had my own UFO sighting up close and personal, but that's how it works right? A non believer becomes a believer when they experience their first sighting. You witnessed it, your perceptual field changes, so now you need to share it.





I created this site to help the UFO community get a little bit organized. I noticed that there was a lot of chaos when searching for UFO sighting reports, so I hope this site helps. I wanted to support those eyewitnesses who have tried to tell others about what they have seen, yet were laughed at by even closest of friends.





More and more each day the governments of the world leak bits and pieces of UFO information to the public. They have a trickle down theory in hopes of slowly getting citizens use to the idea that we are not alone in universe and never have been. The truth is being leaked drop by drop until one day we look around and find ourselves neck high in it.





The discovery of alien species in existence is the most monumental scientific event in human history, suppression of that information is a crime against humanity.





About me:

I live in Taiwan. I OWN MY OWN ENGLISH SCHOOL, AND ONCE HAD 5 SCHOOLS.

Am Former USAF at SAC base (flight line).

Age: 42

Educ: BA in Elem ed. Masters in Counseling ed.





I had two UFO sightings, (30+bus size orbs) in military and in 2012 personally saw the UFO over Taipei 101 building on New Years Day (and recored it).
Kharkiv city court has upheld the motion issued by the prosecutor's office and chose a measure of restraint in custody for a 43-year-old man who is suspected of the premises seizure at regional state administration in March 2014.

Head of a department at the prosecutor's office in the Kharkiv region Ihor Chub told Ukrinform.

"The suspect was arrested. He is facing charges under the criminal code article active participation in mass riots." According to preliminary investigation, on March 1, 2014 the suspect, armed with a wooden stick, took part in the mass riots leading to the seizure of the regional government building," said Chub.

According to him, the bond for the man was set at UAH 110,000.

"The maximum penalty under the article sentences to eight years of imprisonment," - said Chub.

Earlier, Ukrinform reported that on March 30 a Kharkiv resident, who had been wanted by police on suspicion of involvement in the mass riots, was detained at Hoptivka border crossing checkpoint when he attempted to cross the state border into Russia.
No Ukrainian servicemen were killed but three soldiers were wounded and two soldiers were taken captive in the ATO area in eastern Ukraine over the past day.

Spokesman for the Presidential Administration on the anti-terrorist operation, Colonel Oleksandr Motuzianyk said this at the briefing in Kyiv, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"No Ukrainian servicemen were killed but three our soldiers were wounded as a result of the armed hostilities over the past day. In addition, two soldiers were taken captive near Horlivka [Donetsk region]," Motuzianyk said.

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President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has approved the ratification of the agreement with Germany to establish German-Ukrainian chamber of commerce.

The official web portal of the legislature reports.

According to the agreement, the parties agreed to establish bilateral German-Ukrainian trade-industrial chamber in the city of Kyiv, which will replace the Delegation of the German economy in Ukraine.

The document is aimed at promoting bilateral trade relations, formalizing the recognition of Ukraine as an important trading partner of Germany and the development of perspective sectors for bilateral cooperation.
The European Union should offer Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova a prospect of EU membership, what will push these countries to further reforms.

Polands Minister of Foreign Affairs Witold Waszczykowski wrote this in an article for the German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung publication.

In the near future we should offer Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia a membership in the European Union, what will motivate these countries to carry out reforms. There should be also a more intensive dialog will Belarus, Waszczykowski said.

He also added that this could keep Europe from the emergence of a grey zone between the European Union and Russia.

Waszczykowski also noted that a real compromise is needed in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, which should not be confused with a decision under the scenario of one of the sides.

According to him, the fulfilment of a political part of the Minsk agreements without real ceasefire in Donbas is a mistake.

In addition, Waszczykowski said that threats for the EU from outside are the aggressive policy conducted by Russia and conflicts in the south, as a result of which illegal migration is taking place and terrorist threat is growing.

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The Head of the EU Delegation to Ukraine, Ambassador Jan Tombinski hopes that the political crisis in Ukraine will have no impact on the outcome of the referendum in the Netherlands on EU-Ukraine Association Agreement.

He told journalists today, Ukrinform reports.

"I hope that people, who vote in the Netherlands, realize the essence of the association that it doesnt relate to the current situation in Ukraine. It is an instrument to help Ukraine overcome the crisis. This is a program for many years," said Tombinski.

Meanwhile he noted that the current picture of events in Ukraine is not a very attractive one.

"This crisis, which has lingered for two months, paralyzes the work of the Rada and the government, it does not present a good picture of Ukraine," the ambassador said.

However he noted that the association agreement between Ukraine and the EU is not connected with the political crisis in Ukraine.

Tombinski, answering journalists' questions about the possible impact on the Dutch following the scandal with an offshore relating to Roshen confectionery company said that "he didnt have time to investigate "Panama leaks" and therefore he would not speculate on this topic."
With his youngest son Yusef in his arms, Syrian refugee Monzir has reached safety in Greece but says he worries about what the EU-Turkey will mean for his family's future.  UNHCR/H. Holland

LESVOS, Greece, April 4 (UNHCR) - It was in the early hours of a March morning when Monzir's rubber dinghy bumped against the shores of Lesvos, but it was already too late.

At midnight that day (March 20), the status of arrivals like Monzir, who have fled war and spent their life savings to chance a boat trip to Europe, underwent a seismic shift.

Three hours too late, Monzir found himself behind fences topped with coils of razor-wire in Moria, a detention facility where he awaits a possible return to Turkey.

Gathering his youngest son Yusef in his arms and clasping him to his chest, Monzir talked about the short journey across the dangerous stretch of sea between Turkey and the Greek island.

"We all thought we would drown. The boat was just a piece of plastic, we thought it would be torn apart (by the waves)," he said in tears. "This was my first and hope last time on such a boat."

The March agreement between the EU and Turkey is an attempt to stem the numbers of refugees landing on Europe's shores, which has increased more than 17-fold compared to the same period in 2015.

Under the deal, all new arrivals are being kept in detention until their asylum claims are assessed. UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is not party to the EU-Turkey deal and maintains that such an arrangement, in order to be consistent with international and European refugee and human rights law, must include clearly spelt out protection safeguards, both in Greece (where individual claims must be properly assessed) and in Turkey..

UNHCR has also warned that Greece is under-prepared and ill-equipped to manage the situation.

"Greece still does not have sufficient capacity on (the Greek islands) to process large numbers of asylum claims," says Boris Cheshirkov, a UNHCR spokesperson.

UNHCR is opposed to mandatory detention of asylum-seekers and has urged the Greek Government to provide alternatives to detention, Cheshirkov added.

Since March 20, when detention of new arrivals began, UNHCR has suspended activities in closed centres and is now focusing on providing information on asylum, identifying people at heightened risk, such as pregnant women, elderly, and torture survivors and monitoring procedures and conditions. On the shoreline,in the ports, and in open reception centres, UNHCR maintains assistance activities, alongside volunteers,NGOs and the Government.

Monzir's boat was the first to land on Lesvos after the agreement took effect.

Eight months ago his wife, and a son, Mohammed, and a daughter, Jawahar, fled to Germany.

Bombs had hit his home in Ariha, Syria, destroyed his brother's house and flattened the whole neighbourhood, including his son's school.

The former policeman was forced to live with remaining family members in a 3 metre-deep hole in the ground, emerging for only one hour a day to cook and eat. His right eye is marked by lumpy scar tissue where bomb shrapnel had chipped away part of his skull.

Monzir's eldest son Ismail,17, was arguably lucky. He travelled independently and arrived on Lesvos around March 8. He is now waiting in a camp near Drama on the Greek mainland, with around 50,000 other refugees and migrants. They are all uncertain about what the future holds.

Monzir and what remained of his immediate family finally fled after he saw images of militants allegedly slaughtering children on TV and Facebook.

They headed north-west towards the Turkish border.

Monzir paid a smuggler $1,000 to help the family walk six hours through the mountains to Turkey. It was an arduous hike, but it wasn't difficult to keep his family motivated.

"Would you stay and risk death or continue walking? Of course we walked," he said.

From Antakya in southern Turkey they boarded a bus to coastal town of Izmir, where he again paid smugglers - this time 1,200 for each family member to board a boat heading for the distant twinkling lights of Lesvos. Late in the evening of March 20, they set sail into the darkness.

"We were supposed to meet in Greece or in another European country," said Monzir. "I don't want anything more, just to be reunited with my children."

UNHCR hopes that, in accordance with EU law, Monzir and his sons will be able to reunite with his wife and children who are already in Germany.

Monzir added: "In Syria I was a prisoner of the war. I escaped so I can be free, but now again, I'm in jail. Even if they only give me a tent on a mountain, I just want to live with my kids in peace."

By Hereward Holland, Lesvos, Greece
Shehab, a DAFI scholar at Hacettepe University, Ankara, sits in front of statue of Kemal Ataturk on campus.  UNHCR/N. Bose

ANKARA, Turkey, April 4 (UNHCR) - Shehab, a 22-year-old Syrian student, poses proudly in front of a statue of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, at the entrance to Haceteppe University in Ankara.

A refugee from the city of Aleppo, he is in the second year of a health sciences degree course and is the recipient of a German-funded DAFI scholarship.

The Albert Einstein German Academic Refugee Initiative Fund scholarships, known by the German acronym DAFI, are funded by the German government. Launched in 1992, they provide for young refugees to study at universities, colleges and polytechnics in their host countries. There are 75 DAFI scholars in Turkey, of whom 70 are Syrian.

Shebab's family still lives in Aleppo and he last saw them in August 2014. "My parents pushed me so hard to leave Aleppo", he said. "I had to choose between danger and a safe place where I can study.

"My brother is older than me and has finished his military service. If I hadn't left, I would have been forced to do military service too as so many soldiers have died in the war."

He stays in touch with his family via the Internet, a link that is occasionally interrupted because of the war. "Last year, they bombed the technology centre in Aleppo and there was no internet for eight months. It is back now".

For personal reasons, Shehab is specialising in physiotherapy and rehabilitation. When he was 14, the family had a car accident near Aleppo and his father broke his leg. "I used to go with him and watched how they made him walk again."

As a result, he wanted to study physiotherapy, but the subject was not taught in Syria.

The DAFI scholarship, which helps refugees worldwide to access higher education, has made it possible for him to do so and he is profoundly grateful.

"In my first year, my parents supported me and I used to feel so guilty taking money from them in a situation of war," he said. "My father is old now and does not work. Now, with the scholarship this year, I can focus on my studies and I don't worry about the money any more. My family is happy and relieved."

For the 2016-17 academic year, Germany will offer a total of 1,700 scholarships over four years for Syrian students in the Middle East. One thousand of these will be in Turkey, making it the country with the most DAFI scholars.

From L-R: Dua, Raanya and Geyda, DAFI students at Harran University, Sanliurfa.  UNHCR/N. Bose

Another DAFI scholar, 20-year-old Mahmoud, is in his first year at Ankara University, studying engineering. His family is also from Aleppo, but had to move to Gaziantep in south-eastern Turkey. They fled because of the constant bombing and because he would have been forced to fight.

"I have always wanted to study engineering, though my family wanted me to do medicine," he said.

He dreams of a future where natural gas will replace oil. "I have heard about a new project where natural gas will provide clean energy  I want to be able to work in this too, that is my dream."

He said he would not have been able to finance his studies without the scholarship.

At the picturesque campus of Harran University in Sanliurfa, south-eastern Turkey, Dua, Geyda and Raanya are studying public administration, economics and food engineering respectively.

Geyda, 20, is in the second year of an economics degree. Her family is from Hama, and she tells a harrowing tale of her flight.

"I was waiting outside our home when the bombs started," she said. "I jumped on my brother, who was just two years old then, to save him but I hurt my stomach and my hand."

She had to have 20 stiches in her stomach and the hospital where she was being treated was also bombed and they had to finish off the stiches in the street. "We left as soon as we could."

They came to Turkey three years ago and her family lives in Harran camp. She is the eldest of five children.

At first, she had to commute from the camp to classes, a journey of an-hour-and-a-half, and was often late. Thanks to the scholarship, she now shares a flat just 15 minutes away from the campus, visiting her family at weekends.

She hopes to work in a bank or for a private company as an accountant, preferably in Ankara.

"It's a beautiful city, and is the capital. We have relatives there and there are job opportunities."

Nineteen-year-old Raanya came to Turkey with her family from Deir al-Zour in eastern Syria three years ago. She lives with them in Sanliurfa.

Raanya is in the first year of her food engineering degree. "I want to be able to go back to Syria when I graduate and work as a professional in food and nutrition," she said. "I want to be able to contribute to the nutrition and health of my country by working as a food engineer in a factory."

The DAFI scholarship has enabled her to achieve her dreams. "If there was no scholarship, my family would not have been able to afford an education for me," she said.

Dua,18, is from Aleppo and also lives with her family in Sanliurfa. She is in the first year of a public administration course. The subject is not taught in Syria and she read about it on the Internet.

With the scholarship, she was able to buy books and look forward to a future: "I dream of a society with equal rights and equal opportunities for all," she said.

She hopes she can go back and work in public administration where she can help create the society she envisions.

Mahmoud, a DAFI scholar at Ankara university.  UNHCR/N. Bose

Yousef is from Damascus and is in the first year of an environmental engineering degree at the Middle Eastern Technical University (METU) in Ankara, one of Turkey's best universities.

"I am really, really lucky," the 25-year-old said. "I am so proud to be here. METU is the best thing that has happened for me.

"I feel safe and am grateful to be supported by the scholarship. A university opens so many doors and a lot of different areas to work in, in the future.

"I could become an engineer, an academic, even a political activist. There are so many possibilities and these four years will shape what I become."

Like Shehab, his family - his parents and two brothers -- are still in Syria. Yousef last saw them three years ago, although they keep in touch through Skype.

""The situation is hard, and they just want the war to finish. Our Syrian cities have become battlefields, and its very hard to think about your family living in that situation," he said.

"You see the whole country falling apart, you see your people walking to Europe."

The DAFI scholarships give hope to these young people, protecting them from the realities of war and paying for an education they would otherwise be denied.

"No war will continue forever," Shehab said. "I want to open my own clinic in Aleppo when I graduate. This is my biggest dream."

By Nayana Bose, in Ankara and Sanliurfa, Turkey
English language test will no longer be a burden for promotion according to the new policy, issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

Seeking higher ranks in technical and professional fields will not anymore require passing of English language test as part of the promotion process.

The amendment was announced before the recent annual English test. As a result, a lot of people who registered to take the exam didn't show up at examination halls.

There were more than 10,000 people or 17 percent of the registered examiners in Sinchuan province, did not take the test.

The English test was introduced in the 1990s as a pre-requisite for professional and technical workers who are seeking promotion. It was made to encourage people to learn English so they could participate in international collaboration and relations.

College teachers, researchers, translators, accountants, lawyers, news reporters and editors are one of the people who are required to take the examination.

According to Yu Hao, a teacher at New Oriental Education and Technology Group, the test has just created headache to a lot of people, especially to those who are older ones working in positions that did not benefit from English language skills.

He added that the English language test requirement hinders talented people to get promotion.

"Many of my students were in their 40s or 50s and didn't have the ability or opportunity to learn English when they were young. They are excellent and rich in experience relevant to their professions, but they are unable to get higher titles, only because they didn't pass this exam," Yu said.

"You just can't imagine how painful it was for them to have to sacrifice their weekends to take courses and prepare for the test" Yu added.

About one-sixth of 500 students every year would return to the class after failing the English language examination.
MADISON  Wisconsin voters have the chance to recast the presidential election Tuesday with the national spotlight trained exclusively on the Badger State.

All five candidates have something at stake.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz could derail Republican front runner Donald Trumps chances at securing a majority of delegates before the partys convention in July. A Trump win in Wisconsin would demonstrate his ability to overcome the strongest, most unified #NeverTrump movement yet. And Ohio Gov. John Kasich could assert his relevance before the race heads east.

On the Democratic side, a convincing win by self-described Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator, could propel his case against Hillary Clinton, while a closer race allows Clinton to continue scooping up delegates and expand her lead toward the nomination.

Its possible well look back and say it was Wisconsin that changed everything, said Larry Sabato, director at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. Its got the floor in a very messy show for a month and that gives it more influence than 10 states on Super Tuesday.

Cruz leads Trump by 10 points and Kasich by nearly 20 points in the latest Marquette Law School Poll released this week.

Political observers say Cruz has the momentum to win especially after Trump had perhaps his worst two-week stretch of the campaign season.

Trump engaged in a petty Twitter battle over Cruzs wife, faced antagonistic interviews on conservative talk radio in Wisconsin, and reversed himself on his statement that women who have an abortion should be punished. Trumps campaign manager also was charged with simple battery after an altercation with a female reporter.

Sanders also has momentum, having rallied thousands of supporters in Madison, the Fox Valley, and elsewhere as Clinton has already turned her sights on New York.

Hes pulling even with Clinton in Milwaukee County, according to the Marquette poll, where she was expected to do well, and hes leading 49-45 statewide.

The race on both sides has highlighted divisions in the states political parties. Cruz is backed by conservative Republicans in control of state government, Kasich is the favorite of the more moderate Republicans and Trump has support among anti-establishment voters.

Given that Ted Cruz is certainly not a conventional establishment candidate based on his (voting behavior and relationship with his colleagues), its remarkable that voters who find themselves in that wing of the party have nevertheless gravitated to him and have separated him out, presumably because theyre so solidly against Trump, said Marquette poll director Charles Franklin.

Clinton has been endorsed by most of the states prominent elected Democrats  exceptions include U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan of Madison and Senate candidate Russ Feingold of Middleton, who have remained neutral  while Sanders is tapping anti-establishment liberals.

Issues divide voters

The political divisions among the supporters of each candidate were highlighted in the Marquette poll, which asked about views on free trade, immigration, taxes, wages, military intervention and the governments role in closing income inequality.

Trump, for example, draws more support than his opponents from those who oppose free trade and want to deport immigrants living in the country illegally. Cruz is leading among those who oppose raising taxes on the wealthy and those who say they are living comfortably.

Sanders has a 55-40 lead over Clinton among those who believe it is the responsibility of government to reduce income inequality. Hes also a strong favorite among those opposed to sending ground troops to fight Islamic militants.

Three in four Republicans said this country is a place where hard work and following the rules can lead to prosperity whereas a simple majority of Democrats said hard work and playing by the rules dont pay off. Trump and Sanders lead among those with the more pessimistic view.

What populism means is different between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, Franklin said. Thats why even though you might call Sanders and Trump populist in some sense, they are not appealing to the same set of voters.

Republicans battle over Trump

The central issue on the Republican side has become the emergence of Trump as the partys potential standard-bearer in November.

As establishment and conservative Republican forces have joined together to oppose the real estate mogul and reality television celebrity, Trump has dug in, even slamming Gov. Scott Walker during a campaign stop in Janesville the same day the governor endorsed Cruz.

Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke, R-Kaukauna, an early supporter of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio before he dropped out of the race, has been outspoken in advocating against Trump and has more recently endorsed Cruz. He highlighted Trumps criticism of Walkers resistance to raising taxes as something that doesnt sit well with the grassroots Republicans in Wisconsin who have helped secure a majority in state government and advanced a range of reforms.

Once Trump stepped foot into Wisconsin he kind of ripped off the mask and showed everybody what he would be like as a leader, Steineke said. It goes completely contrary to everything we believe in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin is a high-stakes battle for Trump because if Cruz comes away with all of Wisconsins 42 delegates, it makes the hurdle to get to the 1,237 threshold before the convention that much higher. The next primary isnt for two weeks, so Trumps opponents could turn a crushing defeat into a narrative that its the beginning of the end, Sabato said.

If Trump doesnt win statewide, he could still salvage some delegates if he can win more votes in certain parts of the state. The statewide victor receives 18 delegates and the winner of each congressional district wins three apiece.

Kasich also could pick up three delegates in the 2nd Congressional District in the states south central media market, where the Marquette poll showed him leading Trump 37-33 and Cruz far behind.

In the western part of that district, former state Sen. Dale Schultz, a moderate Republican who is backing Kasich, said his sense is that Trump is doing well on the Republican side, but that Kasich is gaining ground.

This is a historically very independent place and people resent being pushed in the direction of a party, Schultz said. What its coming down to is the establishment versus the non-establishment. Theres a lot of people out here who resent that the establishment has closed ranks behind Ted Cruz.

Melissa Larson, 40, of Lake Geneva, attending last weeks Trump rally with her son and his friend who both plan to join the military, said after retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson dropped out of the race she decided to back Trump because she didnt like how Cruz sent out misinformation about Carson dropping out of the race shortly before the Iowa caucuses.

She said Trump will strengthen the military to the point where the world will see the country as a powerhouse again.

The world sees us as weak now, Larson said. People may not like the way Trump speaks and I was taken aback by his language at first, but maybe thats what we need to hear. Maybe thats what the world needs to hear.

A common theme among Trump supporters is that he is a political outsider who has no allegiance to special interest groups because he is mostly self-funding his campaign.

Trumps rival candidates and outside groups opposing him are slated to spend a combined $3.8 million in advertising in the state. That includes about $1.7 million from Our Principles and Club for Growth Action, a conservative group that has endorsed Cruz.

We always saw this as a reset period where it would be possible to slow Trumps momentum or reverse it, said Tim Miller, who works for Our Principles PAC.

So far, the billionaires campaign is slated to spend only about $430,000 on radio and television advertising leading up to the primary, according to data from Kantar Medias Campaign Media Analysis Group.

Sanders seeking big win

The Democratic primary in Wisconsin has the potential to shake up the national race if Sanders can pull off a blowout victory, but thats a tall order given how far ahead Clinton is among so-called superdelegates, a collection of elected officials and party insiders who are free to choose whichever candidate they want. Half of Wisconsins 10 superdelegates have said they will back Clinton, while the other five havent backed anyone yet.

UW-Stevens Point political science professor Ed Miller said there is a strong anti-establishment sentiment in the state that is fueling both Sanders and Trump, but it might not be enough to give Sanders the kind of margin he needs to go on to win the nomination.

He needs to win by a landslide to make a great dent, Miller said.

Democratic strategist Paul Maslin, who hasnt backed a candidate, said the expectation is that Sanders will win the state, but even if its by 10 points, his share of delegates wont be enough to alter the race.

A narrow loss in Wisconsin (for Clinton) is kind of what everybody figured already, Maslin said. Its going to be a 4 to 8 point Sanders win. Which is fine for him, but it wont affect her very much.
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Kvenild Named Agnes Milstead Distinguished Librarian at UW

Cassandra Messersmith Kvenild was honored for her significant contributions to the University of Wyoming Libraries. (UW Photo)

Cassandra Messersmith Kvenild, associate librarian and head of the University of Wyomings Learning Resource Center (LRC), is the recipient of UWs 2016 Agnes Milstead Distinguished Librarianship Award.

The late Agnes Milstead, a former professor of education and library science at UW, established the prestigious award in 1993 to recognize significant contributions to University Libraries in scholarship, program development, teaching, fundraising and professional achievements.

As head of the LRC, Kvenilds vision transformed both the physical space and the literary programs at the LRC to create a model school library for the state of Wyoming. The LRC, which serves both the university community and the UW Lab School, is a branch library of University Libraries and houses K-12 curriculum materials.

Since joining UW in 2003, Kvenild has worked in a variety of roles, including serving as UWs distance learning librarian. In that role, she established innovative library support for outreach students and was awarded the Routledge Distance Learning Librarianship Award in 2011.

Kvenilds scholarship work has focused on embedded librarianship and assessment of student learning. She is the co-editor of Embedded Librarians: Moving Beyond One Shot Instruction (2011) and The Embedded Librarians Cookbook (2014). She also is the co-author of Classroom Assessment Techniques for Librarians (2015). A sought-after conference presenter, her instructional skills engage students and enhance their learning.

Larry Schmidt, head of the UW Brinkerhoff Geology Library, wrote in his nomination letter, Cass meets and surpasses the award criteria as a scholar in library sciences, innovations, teaching, collections and service to UW Libraries mission. She has significantly impacted UW Libraries while working as a librarian in multiple positions.

Casss leadership abilities and strategic thinking are invaluable to the university, says Lori Phillips, interim dean of UW Libraries.

Kvenild serves as an interim associate dean of UW Libraries. She earned her M.L.I.S. (2000) from the University of Washington Information School and her B.A. (1996) from UW.
UW Podcast Examines Disappearing and Endangered Species

Scientists are concerned that amphibians, like this Woodhouse toad, are disappearing. (Zach Benson Photo)

Specialists will discuss Wyomings leadership role in managing threatened species and explain how the state is affected by the worldwide phenomena of vanishing amphibians and disappearing honeybees on this weeks UW podcast, The University of Wyoming Today.

Guests on the program and their topics are Melanie Murphy, assistant professor in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management, Vanishing Amphibians; Scott Schell, Extension entomologist, Disappearing Honeybees; and Temple Stoellinger, assistant professor in the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources, Endangered Species Act Impacts in Wyoming.

To listen to the podcasts, go to www.uwyo.edu/uw/news/podcast/index.html or click on the link provided in the left-column navigation on the UW News home page. You can listen to the podcasts by clicking the link on the page, or subscribe to the RSS feed, which will deliver the podcast link to you via email each week. You also can click on the iTunes link and listen to or subscribe to the podcast there.

New podcasts are scheduled weekly and will be updated with new episodes every Thursday.
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SEOUL - China, South Korea and Japan will hold working-level talks on the trilateral free trade agreement (FTA) in Seoul this week, South Korea's trade ministry said on Monday.

The 10th round of working-level negotiations for the free trade deal among the three Asian powerhouses will be held from Tuesday to Friday in Seoul, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.

During the meeting, negotiators will focus on core issues such as modality, or basic guidelines, on how to liberalize goods trade and service industry.

Also on the agenda will be 20 issues, including country of origin, customs, trade remedy, sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures and technical barriers to trade (TBT).

Under the principle of a comprehensive, high-level, mutually beneficial FTA, the three countries have held nine rounds of negotiations since the talks began in November 2012.

During the trilateral summit in November in Seoul, leaders of the three Asian countries agreed to speed up negotiations on the three-way FTA.

Combined gross domestic product of China, Japan and South Korea accounts for about 20 percent of the world and some 70 percent of Asia's total.
Prime Minister David Cameron denied that his cabinet was split over Brexit. He accused journalist to be overly eager to hunt news on political rift.

Bloomberg reported he denied the issue when press was asking Prime Minister Cameron regarding his Cabinet minister comment on increasing minimum wage. The Culture Secretary John Whittingdale said that such flagship policy would drive up immigration. Journalists asked Cameron whether such comment breached the rules.

"You all go around setting each others' hair on fire and getting very excited about this but it's all a lot of process-ology. I can't see what the issue is," Prime Minister Cameron said.

According to the rules, ministers shouldn't publicly criticize the government. Bloomberg said Whittingdale comment that it will be difficult for Prime Minister Cameron to keep his Conservative intact. Furthermore Cameron criticized his Cabinet who opposed him.

"I make absolutely no apology for challenging those who want to leave to set out what the alternative is because it changes all the time. One minute it's a Canada free-trade deal, then it's not a Canada free-trade deal, then it's an easy deal with the European single market, then it's not an easy deal with the single market."

In regard to the Brexit referendum he stressed the importance of the event, "This is a really important decision for the future of our country, for our children and our grandchildren, and we've got to get it right."

Meanwhile one of his Cabinet member quit over the diference on the issue. The Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith resigned last month over the issue. Other five members of his cabinet oppose Cameron, and they are campaigning to leave the European Union bloc.

Iain Duncan Smith, a former Conservative Party leader resigned on March 18 over proposed cuts to welfare payments for people with disabilities. His subordinate Pensions Minister Ros Altmann accused him of seeking to do maximum damage to the party leadership to further campaign on Brexit. New York Times reported that Mr. Duncan Smith refused the argument.

He said the he considered the welfare cuts for people with disabilities were deeply unfair. It is because the cuts were set side by side with tax cuts for the wealthy.

South China Morning Post reported that resignation of Minister Iain Duncan Smith, which often referred to simply by his initials IDS, is perhaps the biggest blow for David Cameron administration. A Liberal Democral politician David Laws told BBC the divide in current government will have a huge impact. He said, "I hate to intrude into a civil war which is now dominating British politics."

Although Prime Minister Cameron denied the fissure in his government, but the tension regarding Brexit is getting high. He also accused journalist to be overly eager in hunting news on political rift.
Google has removed an application developed by Islamist fundamentalist militant network Taliban from Google's Play Store for Android. The application, launched last week, was going to be used by the group to establish its profile and presence worldwide.

The launch of the app, called Alemarah, was first reported by the SITE Intel Group based in the U.S. The agency, which monitors radical Islamic social media, reported Alemarah's launch on Friday. According to The Seattle Times, the app includes content such as official statements and videos from the Taliban. The app used Pashto language, spoken in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran.

On Sunday, a spokesperson for Google confirmed that the app is no longer available in Play Store. A spokesperson also stated, "Our policies are designed to provide a great experience for users and developers. That's why we remove apps from Google Play that violate those policies." However, a spokesman for Taliban Zabihullah Mujahed said that the app was removed by Taliban on Saturday to fix some technical issues. Mujahed noted that the app would be available shortly.

The smartphones application is a part of Taliban's ambition to expand their presence digitally to reach global audience. The militant group also have official Twitter and Facebook accounts, which provides updates and spread propaganda. The Taliban also has a channel on the encrypted messaging Telegram, as well as a website in five languages, including English and Arabic. The Afghan government has taken down Taliban's social media accounts and website several times as an effort to limit the group's propaganda coverage.

A militant Islamism researcher at the European University Institute, Tore Hamming, told The Guardian that the new app is also likely to be part of the Taliban's rivalry with Islamic State. The group is known for its proficient use of social media as well as other digital platforms to support its propaganda efforts. Last year, the Islamic State has also developed an Android app to secure its communications.

The use of the Pashto language also show that the target audience is likely to be mainly local, as opposed to the Islamic State, that embraced international online jihadi recruiting using digital platforms. According to Fortune, the Taliban has long been primarily focused on building its influence in Afghanistan, while still recruiting internationally.

The Taliban has released an app for Android smartphones last week. However, Google has made a move and removed the application from the Play Store. The militant group is seeking to establish its existence in Afghanistan, as well as globally.
In this upcoming launch of Falcon 9, it will carry Cargo Resupply Services Mission 8 (CRS-8) for International Space Station. Meanwhile NASA has also appointed SpaceX and Boeing Space Exploration to carry its astronauts by the end of 2017.

This launch is the return flight of SpaceX's Dragon CRS spacecraft, which exploded in last year's launch carrying CRS-7 supply. Dragon is a spacecraft carried by Falcon 9 rocket launch vehicle. In June 28's launch last year, Falcon 9 exploded en route to the International Space Station.

According to SpaceX, the explosion was an unauthorized rapid disassembly of the airframe that followed flight anomaly. Falcon 9 which exploded in just two minutes after liftoff was a surprise to every one. It is because previously SpaceX had launched the rocket successfully for 18 times.

The company upgraded its rocket after a series of investigation and in December, it successfully launched upgraded version of Falcon 9 rocket for three times. This Friday, on April 8 SpaceX will carry another supply for International Space Station. According to The Observer, this launch will be the eighth contracted mission to be carried out by SpaceX under NASA's Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract.

NASA appointed SpaceX in a $1.6 billion contract to carry 15 Cargo Resupply Services for the International Space Station. The last year's failed launch was the seventh cargo carrying 2,000 kg (4,000 lbs) of food and supplies for ISS crew. Along with the destroyed cargo bound for ISS, there is also Microsoft's Hololens technology and experiment from 8th grade students to study composting using live worms

In Friday's launch, Dragon CRS spacecraft will carry 4,400 lbs of scientific research, perishables, and hardware to the Expedition 47 crew. SpaceX will launch Dragon into space with reusable Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral.

The reusable rocket will reduce rocket launch cost significantly. Sputnik International reported that reusable booster will cut the cost of space launch by 30%. President and chief operating officer of SpaceX Gwynne Shotwell said that Falcon 9 rocket would only cost $43 million, rather than the current $61 million.

NASA has also anticipated to contract SpaceX along with Boeing Space Exploration to launch astronauts into space. Two years ago, NASA gave Boeing a $4.2 billion contract to develop and use CST-100 Starliner capsule, which capable to carry up to seven astronauts. While SpaceX received a $2.6 billion contract for its Dragon V2 capsule.

However, both companies must first complete their demostration first, including spacecraft carrying astronauts. Florida Politics reported NASA Chief Financial Officer David Radzanowsk reported to NASA Advisory Council, "It includes a whole bunch of other ground tests, and one un-crewed demonstration test (flight) and one crewed demonstration test, in 2017."

Prior to carry astronauts, SpaceX must continue its cargo mission first. The company will launch its Falcon 9 rocket carrying cargo for International Space Station on Friday.
Billionaire Richard Branson-owned Virgin America's offer to sell itself is a major reason for smaller airlines to cheer up. Smaller airlines in the US are finding it difficult to expand and grow. Some small airlines are also forming into a group to bid for acquiring Virgin America. Larger players may not bid however, owing to regulatory hurdles.

Lower oil prices are propelling margins of airlines upwards. The surge in profitability is giving more strength to airlines to go for acquisitions. However, four largest US carriers, which have over the 80 percent of the market share in US domestic aviation, may not participate in bidding for Virgin America in the wake of regulatory hurdles. Delta Airlines, United Airlines, America Airlines and Southwest Airlines have control over 80 percent of the domestic market share.

MarketPlace referring a report by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), said that JetBlue and Alaska Air have been in the process of bidding for Virgin America. However, so far no airline has come out with an official statement. After witnessing a robust year in 2015, Virgin America is on the block. Virgin America recorded encouraging profits for the year.



Samuel Engel, head of the aviation practice at ICF International, said "These companies are some of the few left to consolidate. Virgin America, JetBlue, Alaska and Hawaiian, as well, are carriers that are a meaningful size and yet, are not of the kind of scale that could easily compete with a 700- or 800-aircraft Delta, United or American."

Bloomberg further adds referring sources in the know that Alaska Air Group Inc have been nearing closer on buying Virgin America Inc. Negotiations on acquisition are at advance stage and on the other hand, JetBlue Airways Corp made its last minute bid for the acquisition. Consolidation phase in the US aviation sector that took off in 2005 swept off five of 10 major airlines in the US. Second-tier carriers are JetBlue, Alaska and Virgin America.

Virgin America's market value is estimated to be $1.37 billion on March 22 and $1.47 billion on April 1, 2016. VX Holdings, a Richard Branson-owned fund, and Cyrus Capital Partners hold 54 percent in Virgin America. Alaska Air's market value is pegged at $10.2 billion.

Richard Aboulafia, an airline analyst with the Teal Group, said "Last year was a phenomenal year. You had a combination of lower airfares and higher profits for everyone involved. The industry is at the tail end of a massive wave of consolidations that included Delta pairing with Northwest, United with Continental, and American with US Airways. Eventually that dynamic was going to catch up to the smaller players."

Virgin America, Alaska Airlines and JetBlue are smaller carriers competing in a tier below. Alaska Air is believed to be nearing a $1-billion buyout deal on acquiring Virgin America. The move is expected to combine tow popular smaller airlines. If the deal gets through, it'll be latest consolidation in the US aviation industry. Alaska Airlines needs to divest some airport slots since its network has some overlaps with Virgin America, as reported by The New York Times.



Virgin America has investments in Dallas Love Field airport. Airlines generally prefer larger scale of operations including bigger markets, higher efficiencies and attractive corporate contracts. Generally, these parameters are not reachable for smaller airlines. Delta Airlines has paired with Northwest, United Airlines teamed up with Continental and American Airlines with US Airways. Some aviation analysts see that the current situation is ripe for smaller players.
Google has got rid of an online application for Android smartphones developed by Taliban whose goal is to boost the militant group's presence around the world. The app was launched on Google Play Store on Friday based on the report of U.S.-based SITE Intel Group that monitors jihadist social media.

Alemarah, Pashto language app contains videos and official statements from the Taliban. It was the group's digital campaign to draw a wider audience worldwide. The activity has an updated website that is available in five languages including Arabic and English. It also has Facebook and Twitter accounts that provide every day updates on its rebellion. Their website and Twitter accounts had been condemned many times as the Afghan government attempted preventing communication efforts of the group, as reported by Bloomberg.

"The app will help Taliban to further psychologically weaken Afghanistan by their propaganda reports," said Jawid Kohistani, an independent Kabul-based security analyst.

With Taliban's invasion into smartphone apps, they are resorting to expand their visibility on the digital battlefield. Social media platforms have long been used to give out and exchange information between followers and detractors. They also run a channel on the encrypted messaging service Telegram.

According to Tore Hamming, the new app could possibly become a part of the Taliban's confrontation with Islamic State. ISIS is generally recognized for its proficiency in digital platforms and fighters faithful to the group have recently surfaced in pockets of eastern Afghanistan where their efforts of spreading false ideas have included radio station launch, based on The Guardian report.

The Taliban looks like they are playing catch-up with the Islamic States which are more technology cognizable competitors and has spread its visibility into Afghanistan. The Islamic State was cited by experts as masters of the art of worldwide online jihadi recruiting with the use of social media platforms and chat rooms to impact young and specific disenfranchised targets, said Fortune.

With the removal of the Taliban-developed app Alemarah in Google Play Store, less incidence of jihadi recruitment will be lessened if not eliminated fully.
DAVID LOE/Special to The Star The Cuban government now allows a touch of free enterprise for its socialist citizens who want an opportunity to increase their income. Opening a restaurant in one's home (a paladar) is one option. This one in Trinidad, Cuba is unique in that tables even spill into the bedroom.

SHARE DAVID LOE/Special to The Star Music is endemic to Cubans and the familiarization starts early. Here a young Arts School student demonstrates her skill to a group of American tourists visiting Cienfuegos. She is wearing the female version of the school uniform worn at all Cuban public elementary schools.

President Obama visited last month ... so did the Rolling Stones. Are you thinking about going to Cuba? Having just returned, I thought I could be of some help in planning that trip.

Just last week on this page in Escapes The Associated Press had an article about the very recent liberalization of travel rules for Americans going to Cuba. In short, unlike a month ago when you had to be with a group excursion, you can now visit Cuba on your own and make your own arrangements. That is not something I recommend unless you are a particularly adventuresome traveler. Here's why:

There are not enough hotels to handle the tourist crunch. They overbook. Your best chance of getting a reliable reservation is with a group. For now, the state controls the tourist industry and they run the tours regardless of which American company you book with.

If you want to see more than just the city of Havana (and you definitely should) getting around Cuba on your own is not easy. I saw no rental cars (believe me, you wouldn't want to drive there anyway) and public transportation is unreliable and quite uncomfortable by American standards. By contrast, the group tour busses are among the nicest I've seen anywhere.

Your cellphone probably won't work there so making on-the-go travel arrangements (like dinner reservations) is a no go.

For the present, American credit cards aren't accepted in Cuba. The same with ATMs. Going on a prepaid tour alleviates the need to bring tons of cash which has to be converted to Cuban money.

English is not widely spoken so unless you speak Spanish it could be a problem without a Cuban guide to assist.

The joy of seeing Cuba is to hear from a local what life is like, what you are seeing, what you'll be eating, how important music is to their existence, how their extended families share their limited resources, and so much more. This kind of experience is an essential part of the People-to-People group tours. Don't make the mistake of going just to look at buildings.

This is not to say that even a group excursion (I booked with Road Scholar) is not without what most Americans might term "hardships." The best hotels are owned by the state and leave a lot to be desired. Our guide gave us strict instructions upon getting our keys to immediately "go upstairs and check to see if the toilet will flush and if there is hot water." If not, we were to return in hopes of being assigned another room.

Fortunately I never had to report a malfunction, which is a good thing because all the hotel rooms are filled to capacity anyway. Still, my shower didn't drain properly, air conditioning was difficult to adjust, and room safes didn't always work. Although I reported these deficiencies to the front desk, nothing was ever repaired.

The hotel we stayed at in Havana, the famed Nacional, which is where President Obama stayed, was one of those problematic hotels. Yet the place is glorious to look at and a delight to prowl through its beautiful grounds. Breakfast buffets at the hotels were delicious and offered surprising selection. Surprising because the food that was plentiful for us is often difficult for locals to find in their stores.

My most surprising discovery about Cuba was the absolute freedom of speech exercised by our tour guide despite the fact that she is an employee of the state. Guides and guest speakers are not shy talking about the extreme challenges of being a Cuban citizen as well as all that makes their country great ... especially their resiliency. Considering what they have gone through in the past 50 years (including almost a decade of near starvation after the demise of the Soviet Union) they just keep finding a way to survive.

And Cuban experts talked to us about politics both at home and their observations about American politics. Yes, they are watching our election closely because they know that Obama's executive actions that have improved relations between the two countries could be quickly rescinded by the next American president.

As I waited for my charter flight back to Miami after spending a week in Cuba, I had one more surprise awaiting me. The stalls in the men's room at Havana International Airport had no toilet seats. I was informed the lady's restroom didn't either. It was something the group had run into previously when touring rural Cuba, but at the country's major airport?

Frankly, the country is a mess infrastructure-wise. The highways are terrible and many buildings have had no attention since the Communist revolution in 1959. Hey, even toilet seats are apparently at a premium. Yet, there is something definitely blossoming in Cuba. It's a palpable feeling of hope. The young people have latched onto the capitalist bones that President Raul Castro has thrown their way. They are turning their homes into private restaurants and renting out rooms to tourists. They get their hands on a classic 1950s American car and turn it into a taxi. These free-enterprisers are actually making more money than the doctors in this state-run socialist economy.

The Cubans are looking forward to their own 2017 presidential election. For the first time in over 50 years it appears that there will be no Castro on the ballot. They have hope that their next leader could be someone younger and more progressive. They have hope that Cuba could become something very special. I found their hope infectious.

David Loe was the co-owner of a travel business in Ventura County for 25 years. His column appears monthly. He welcomes your feedback at davidloe@sbcglobal.net.
KRISTIE AKIN/ SPECIAL TO THE STAR Members of the Veterans Book Club, who meet the second Thursday of the month at the Camarillo Library, say the meetings give them the opportunity to learn about books of common interest and share personal stories and experiences from their time in the service.

SHARE KRISTIE AKIN/ SPECIAL TO THE STAR Inside the Camarillo Library, Army veteran Moses Mora (left), from Ventura, and Ben Wilson of the Ventura County Military Collaborative listen to other members of the Veterans Book Club discuss their experiences in the service. The group meets the second Thursday of every month. KRISTIE AKIN/ SPECIAL TO THE STAR "What It Is Like To Go To War," by Karl Marlantes, is one of the books veterans are discussing the second Thursday of the month at the Camarillo Library. KRISTIE AKIN/ SPECIAL TO THE STAR Dale Dean and Connie Hanson, members of the Veterans Book Club, share a moment during the club's March meeting at the Camarillo Library. The next meeting is April 14. KRISTIE AKIN/ SPECIAL TO THE STAR At the Camarillo Library, Jess Echavarria (center) and other members of the Veterans Book Club exchange thoughts during the March meeting after discussing books related to times of war. The group's next meeting is April 14.

By Jeremy Foster, Special to The Star

More than 40 years after he served in the Vietnam War, Moses Mora still struggles to understand his wartime experience.

Over the years, the Ventura resident has found what helps: nearly 150 books related to Vietnam and conversations with other veterans.

So it seemed natural that in early March he would be among a handful of veterans heading to the Camarillo Library for its first book club meeting for veterans and active service members.

IF YOU GO

What: Veterans Book Club, for veterans and service members only

When: 6 p.m. April 14 and every second Thursday of the month, through February 2017.

Where: Camarillo Library, 4101 E. Las Posas Road, Camarillo

Cost: Free

Next book: "What It Is Like To Go To War," by Karl Marlantes

Information: 388-5222

As Mora, 66, puts it: "There was war, then 45 years of life, then the book club."

Organized by the library and the Ventura County Military Collaborative, the book club was inspired by a pilot project of the National Endowment for the Humanities. In March, the Military Collaborative provided a $1,200 grant to keep the club going through February 2017.

"We hope this will be a safe place for veterans and service members of all ages to come together and share ideas and feelings related to a common theme: their service to their country, and everything that comes with it," said Collaborative Vice Chairman Ben Wilson.

Wilson led the first meeting but told veterans that they would soon take the reins.

Wilson is a therapist who works with military families facing the challenges of a deployment, but he said he did not envision the club becoming a therapy group.

"I'm here because I love books and I love hearing stories from veterans," he said.

At their first meeting, Mora and others introduced themselves and shared their stories in part by relating them to the club's first book, "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien.

A story that resonated with Mora was one about a Vietnam War draftee who was a boat ride away from Canada, contemplating his future, before going to war.

"What's scarier?" Wilson asked club members. "The fear of war or what everyone is going to think of you if you don't go?"

Mora, who served in the Army, said he empathized with that inner struggle after he returned from Vietnam.

Stationed in the Mekong Delta in 1968 and in the Central Highlands the next year, Mora served in a unit that supplied heavy artillery support for ground troops. He sometimes traveled with infantry units that were subjected to ground assaults, rocket and mortar attacks and ambushes.

And yet, he "felt like I did the easy thing marching off to the war like my dad did in World War II."

"I think it was very brave for a young person to give up everything familiar they knew and go off to a foreign country and start over based on principles  that I didn't have," Mora told the group. "I have always thought that the draft and war resisters were just as brave as those of us who went off to war."

Dale Dean, an Air Force C-130 co-pilot who flew assault landings in Vietnam, described the book club as a safe place to share experiences, positive or negative.

His experience was that of seeing patriots who returned home and weren't honored by their country. And when he thought of critics of the Vietnam War, the person who came to mind was American actress and anti-war activist Jane Fonda.

Mora, he said, helped him ease up on some of those memories and better understand those with whom he disagrees.

"My risks were real and stressful, but much different than those on the ground in the jungle," he said. "Through Moses, I began to accept a different view."

Connie Hanson,who is retired from the California Air National Guard, said that regardless of when and where book club members served, there is a camaraderie that bonds them and brings together mutual understanding.

"I think we all found if you have a really diverse group of people  people from several different branches of service and wars  you get a lot of different perspectives," said Hanson, who served as a C-130 navigator in Iraq and Afghanistan. "I didn't know if I would have something in common with a Vietnam veteran, but then I meet someone who was a C-130 pilot. It's eye-opening."
STAR FILE PHOTO It's been awhile since the marquee was changed on the Ojai Playhouse. A water main break damaged the city's only movie theater nearly two years ago, and the historic building has been closed ever since.

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By Claudia Boyd-Barrett, Special to The Star

Almost two years ago, Ojai's only movie theater flooded because of a water main break.

Today, the still-shuttered Ojai Playhouse stands as a symbol of community anger toward Golden State Water, the private utility company that controls the city's water supply and is currently fighting a voter-approved ouster.

Initial repairs to the historic building and adjoining Village Jester restaurant ground to a halt more than a year ago because of a dispute involving Golden State's insurance carriers. After fighting for months to get work restarted, owner Khaled Al-Awar filed suit against the water company in November. No trial date has yet been set.

Now, city officials have joined the fray. The Ojai City Council recently voted 4-0 to send a letter to the state regulator of private utilities, the California Public Utilities Commission, urging the agency to investigate the damage done to the theater and the reason for the repair delays.

Both city officials and attorneys for Al-Awar argue that Golden State should take care of the repairs regardless of the insurance company dispute.

"We are talking about something that's not just some private piece of property," said Councilman Bill Weirick, who instigated the vote. "It's part of the cultural fabric of the community. It's a blight in the middle of the downtown in terms of being vacant for this long, and so it's having impacts on the community beyond the impacts of just to the theater owner."

Mayor Paul Blatz, who recused himself from the vote because his son, local attorney Ryan Blatz, will be drafting the letter, said he fully supports the move.

"It seems as though the Public Utilities Commission should be able to put some pressure on (Golden State) to pay for whatever damage they've done and then worry about how it's going to get reimbursed later," he said. "Our community has suffered for a year or more not having the movie theater, not having the Jester, and along with that our restaurants and peripheral businesses have suffered because people aren't going to them. It's a dead space in downtown."

Golden State spokesman Mike Gazda said he couldn't comment on the letter or the situation with the Ojai Playhouse due to pending litigation. Al-Awar also declined to speak because of what he said are ongoing negotiations with the firm.

However, Al-Awar's attorney, John Howard with Oxnard-based legal firm Lowthorp, Richards, McMillan, Miller and Templeman, said his firm is pushing for a trial date at the Ventura County Superior Court as soon as possible. He said attempts by Al-Awar and now his lawyers to negotiate with Golden State have so far been futile.

"We believe this should have been resolved amicably before we were hired," Howard said. "We're trying to make things happen too, and so far we haven't gotten anything done informally, so the track that we're on is.  'OK look, we're going to prepare this thing up and we're going to take you into court and we're going to get it resolved there if you guys can't figure out how to do the right thing.'"

Howard said Golden State's primary insurance firm has already spent $1 million on repairs, mostly on cleanup from the damage. However, it will take another $2.4 million to fully restore the theater and an estimated $250,000 to make up for some of Al-Awar's lost revenue due to the closure.

"That doesn't even include the emotional damage that's been done here and now some of the costs of litigation," Howard said.

Weirick said he believes the Public Utilities Commission has more power than even the courts to cut through the legal complexities of the situation and order Golden State to resolve it.

"I've learned never to be overly optimist about actions by the CPUC, but on the other hand, I'm cautiously optimistic that we have a case to make here, that this is something that compels their attention," Weirick said.
SHARE CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Sarah Ruiz, 15, is competing for a state Boys & Girls Club award Wednesday in the Silicon Valley.

By Staff Reports

A Ventura teen is heading to the Silicon Valley this week to compete for the California Youth of the Year title and a $5,000 scholarship from Boys & Girls Club of America.

Sarah Ruiz, who has been attending the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Ventura since she was 6, is representing the Coastal Area Council, which includes all seven Boys & Girls club divisions in Ventura County as well as clubs in Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Kern counties.

The 15-year-old, who attends the East Ventura club on Johnson Drive in Ventura, is a student at Foothill Technology High School. She was praised by club officials for her leadership, service, academic excellence and dedication to living a healthy lifestyle.

"We are all very proud of Sarah's accomplishments and recognize that she has the potential to not only build a great future for herself, but to also aid those in need along the way," said Patti Birmingham, CEO of the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Ventura. "Her tenacity to succeed will no doubt inspire others to do the same."

The California Youth of the Year celebration takes place at the Stanford Faculty Club on Wednesday. The winner will then compete against eight other state finalists at the Pacific Region Youth of the Year Celebration. That winner will compete against four others at the National Youth of the Year Celebration in Washington, D.C.

At the Boys & Girls Club in Ventura, Sarah has tutored youngsters and helped at the front desk. She wants to attend college and pursue a career in forensic science.

The Boys & Girls Club of Greater Ventura has three other locations besides East Ventura  Oak View, West Ventura and Saticoy  that provide services to 1,200 members.
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO An adult condor and a hatching egg in a sandy cliffside nest in the Hopper Mountain National Wildlife Refuge in Ventura County.

SHARE CONTRIBUTED PHOTO California condors No. 111 and No. 509 stand over egg, as the chick began vocalizing Sunday.

By Cheri Carlson of the Ventura County Star

A moments-old California condor chick made its worldwide debut Monday from a nest high on a craggy cliff in the hills above Fillmore.

Its adopted parents stood nearby, sometimes taking turns warming the hatching egg or seeming to help it along. The moments were all captured by a nest camera and broadcast live on the Internet. (Click here to watch: https://youtu.be/ynLl2g4FOuI)

Officials from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service called it the first time in history that anyone with an Internet connection has had the opportunity to watch a California condor chick hatch in the wild.

They hope the public will be able to follow the chick's progress until it leaves the nest, when it's about 6 months old and fully grown.

"Watching a chick develop is just a really incredible opportunity for someone to understand how a condor makes it in the world," said Joseph Brandt, lead condor biologist at Ventura County's Hopper Mountain National Wildlife Refuge.

The California condor had all but disappeared in the wild by the early 1980s, before extensive efforts to save the population. There are now 430 condors among captive and wild populations, up from just 22 in 1982.

Last year, cameras placed in wild nests in Ventura and Monterey counties were a first for groups working on recovery efforts for the endangered birds. The public could watch online from the time the chicks were 4 months old.

This year, the nest cam went live as the egg hatched.

The egg starts to hatch inside the sandy nest.

Condor parents, a 22-year-old female condor dubbed No. 111 and her 7-year-old mate, No. 509, have been courting since fall of 2014.

But the pair hasn't had the easiest go of it.

Condors lay one egg each year. Last year, the pair's first wild chick hatched successfully.

The public got to follow the chick's progress for several weeks. But then, the chick died when it was about 6 months old.

Necropsy results showed it died from acute lead poisoning, the leading cause of death among wild California condors. Condors ingest spent lead ammunition fragments when feeding on dead wildlife.

The pair had another egg this year.

But last month, as biologists tested the live-stream video, they saw the egg was missing, likely eaten by a raccoon or another predator.

Biologists decided to replace the missing egg with one incubated as part of a captive breeding program at the Los Angeles Zoo, a chance for the adult birds to gain experience rearing a chick.

But first, the team had to put a dummy egg in its place, to keep the breeding pair in the nest.

Fish and Wildlife Service photo: Biologist prepares to place the egg into the nest.

As soon as the egg went missing, wildlife biologist Eddie Owens grabbed his gear and headed out, a dummy egg in his pack. He rappelled down the steep cliff about 75 feet and left the fake egg in the nest.

A couple days ago, he made the trip again, this time with the real egg in a portable incubator.

Once he had driven into the hills and hiked to the cliff, Owens moved the egg into another cushioned container for the rappel down to the sandy nest.

Then, condors did what condors do, keeping the hatching egg warm and protected.

Fish and Wildlife Service video: Condor moves over to keep the egg warm.

About 9:30 Monday morning, the chick made its first appearance.

"This is a really awesome opportunity to draw attention to the work that's been done to recover the condor," Brandt said.

Early on, the parents will be feeding the chick a lot.

When it's 30 or 40 days old, the parents will both have to leave the nest to forage for food. They will come back every day or so to feed the chick.

"This live cam takes the viewer right into the nest cave with the condors to watch their behavior and hear the sounds they make," said Charles Eldermire, Bird Cams manager at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology.

Next week, condor biologists will answer questions about the condor nest during an online chat. Hosted by the Cornell Lab, the chat starts at 10 a.m. April 14 at http://cams.allaboutbirds.org/channel/49/California_Condor/.


Culinary Class in Pegasus International College

Education as key to development

Singapores education excellence has been proven by its top ranking in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test. PISA assesses key knowledge and skills on reading, mathematics, science, and the problem-solving skills of 15-year-old students. National PISA results ranked Singapore in the top five highest-performing countries and economies in reading, science and the top two performers in mathematics.

The latest report from the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published in May 2015, showed that Singapore took the top place in mathematics and science, whereas the United Kingdom and United States were ranked 20th and 28th respectively.

Founded in 1986 in Singapore, KinderWorld Education Group operates 16 campuses under the brand names of Singapore International School (SIS), KinderWorld International Kindergarten (KIK), Singapore Vietnam International School (SVIS), and Pegasus International College (PIC) in Vietnam, as well as Pegasus International School (PIS) in Malaysia. Its campuses provide international, integrated, and local education for students from Pre-Nursery to the University Foundation Programme, Higher and Continuing Education throughout Vietnam (Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Danang, Vung Tau, Binh Duong, and Nha Trang) and in Malaysia (Johor).

Singapore International Schools in Vietnam offer an International educational programme that is a combination of the Singapore curriculum on criteria set out by the Ministry of Education in Singapore and the Cambridge curricular from United Kingdom. KinderWorld Education Group of schools provide a high quality and holistic education programme for students to gain admission into universities across the world.

In ensuring the best outcome for students, Singapore International School is committed to continuously providing quality education programmes through international quality assurance and accreditation benchmark standards. Primary students are encouraged to take the iPSLE (Singapore international Primary School Examination) at the end of the primary level. Secondary students take the Cambridge IGCSE (International General Certificate of Secondary Education) in the final year of the secondary level. Students may choose to take the Cambridge International A Level, a two-year course of study which prepares students for University across the world, or the GAC (Global Assessment Certificate) University Foundation Programme of study which provides access to universities worldwide. The GAC includes preparation for the American College Test.

The groups next project  the Singapore Mixed Education Development will be developed on a 7.1ha land site at Hung Thang Urban and Tourism Area, Halong city, Quang Ninh province. Phase 1 of the project consists of Singapore International School @ Halong, which is the first international school in the province, offering high quality educational programmes and modern facilities according to international standards.



Students at Singapore International School

Perfecting through-train education

To provide quality education beyond High School, Pegasus International College was established to offer Vietnamese, ASEAN, and International pathways and qualifications in Hospitality, Tourism and Culinary Arts, Business and Commerce, and English Language courses.

Courses at Pegasus International College are conducted in a simulated training environment using a competency-based approach. Based on the different courses, students will receive hands-on training in our Training Kitchens, Beverage Training Centre, Coffee Academy, Hotel & Front Desk Training Room and Training Restaurant. Classrooms are equipped with state-of-the-art equipment used in international hotels and restaurants. Within its campus, Pegasus International College has a training restaurant  The Bistro, which serves as a venue for students industry training and is open to the public. This ensures our students graduate from Pegasus with employability skills to meet industry needs.

Pegasus offers 3-tiered qualifications which are aligned to national requirements like the Vietnam Tourism Occupational Standards (VTOS), the Malaysia Qualifications Framework (MQF), the Common ASEAN Tourism Curriculum (CATC), and the transnational Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) which articulates into undergraduate programmes.

Through agreements between Pegasus International College, Edinburgh Napier University (ENU) in the United Kingdom, and the Northern Sydney Institute (NSI) in Australia, upon completion of the two-year Advanced Diploma at Pegasus International College, students can articulate into the Bachelor Degree at Edinburgh Napier University (ENU) in the United Kingdom, or the Northern Sydney Institute and Charles Stuart University (Australia). As such, students will be able to complete a degree in three to three-and-a-half years.

The group aims to complete its through-train educational programmes by establishing Pegasus International University to develop knowledge and skills from a global perspective and foster globally competent graduates. Pegasus is working closely with Edinburgh Napier University to implement the offshore delivery of their bachelor degree programmes in Vietnam upon the successful establishment of Pegasus International University.



Sea expedition of Outward Bound Vietnam and Outward Bound Singapore in Quy Nhon

(Binh Dinh)

Innovative institutions at Outward Bound Vietnam

As part of KinderWorlds complete approach to education, the development of Outward Bound Vietnam was initiated to promote interpersonal, leadership, and survival skills, while instilling socio-environmental responsibility through unique outdoor activities and adventure-based experiential learning. Outward Bound Vietnam, will be developed in Quang Ninh, Vinh Phuc, Thanh Hoa, Danang and Binh Dinh. Participants will be encouraged to extend their perceived limitations, face challenges, cement friendships, have fun and develop a strong sense of self.

Outward Bound Vietnam have formed a collaborative partnership with Outward Bound Singapore to share knowledge, expertise, and the exchange of students/participants between the two schools.

In October 2014, the Vinh Phuc Peoples Committee awarded KinderWorld an Investment Certificate for its Pegasus Mixed Eco-tourism Development on a 24.87ha site at Dong Cau Lake, Binh Xuyen district, Vinh Phuc province. Additionally, in February 2016, the Binh Dinh Peoples Committee awarded KinderWorld a Land Use Right Certificate for the establishment of Pegasus Mixed Eco-tourism Development on a 60.86ha site in Quy Nhon city.
For the first time in its history, Vietnams National Assembly will be chaired by a woman, Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan. The election of Tran Dai Quang also marks the first time a Minister of Public Security has become State President

After Nguyen Phu Trong was re-elected to be General Secretary of Vietnams Communist Party for a second term during the 12th Party National Congress in late January, the National Assembly last week elected Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan as its new Chairwoman on Thursday and Tran Dai Quang as the new State President on Saturday. The two new leaders will remain in office until 2020.

Ngan, 62, has become the first Vietnamese woman to lead the countrys legislative body. With 472 (95.5 per cent) out of 484 deputies voting in her favour, Ngan has replaced Nguyen Sinh Hung, who was the legislative bodys Chairman during the 2011-2016 tenure.

After the ballot, Ngan took the oath of office, vowing to be completely faithful to the country, people and the Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

She told the media that this is the first time a National Assembly chairperson has made an oath at the National Assembly after the vote under the 2013 Constitution.

It has been quite a sacred moment and the elected person shoulders a great responsibility. I will keep my oath in my mind, in order to accomplish all tasks assigned by the Party, the State, and the people to the best of my ability, she said.

Over the past few years, Ngan has drawn the attention of the National Assembly with big headlines in the mass media thanks to her many achievements. Specifically, at the National Assemblys November 2014 confidence vote for officials with positions either elected or approved by the National Assembly, Ngan ranked first among 50 officials, with 390 votes in her favour, or 78.47 per cent of total National Assembly members. In June 2013, at a previous National Assembly confidence vote, Ngan also ranked first among 47 officials, with 372 votes in favour, or 74.7 per cent of National Assembly members.

Notably, in early March 2016, Forbes Magazine listed Ngan as the most influential woman in Vietnam.

Many National Assembly members, like Truong Trong Nghia from Ho Chi Minh City, also highly commended Ngan, saying that she had served in various positions and has valuable experience.

I believe Ngan will be able to meet the countrys new development requirements. In the time to come, we expect that under Ngans leadership, the National Assembly will produce high-quality laws, Nghia said.

The National Assembly last Saturday also elected top-ranking general Tran Dai Quang, 60, to be Vietnams new State President for the 2016-2020 term. Quang earned 452 (91.5 per cent) out of 483 votes in favour. For the first time in history, a Minister of Public Security has been elected state president. Quang, who is a professor and doctor in law, replaced Truong Tan Sang, who held the position since 2011.

In his oath made at the National Assembly, Quang stated that I vow to be completely faithful to the country, people and the Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

I will make great efforts to dutifully accomplish all tasks that the Party, the State and people have assigned to me, Quang stated. With the great honour and responsibilities that come with the head of state position, and as Chairman of the Defence and Security Council commanding the peoples army forces, I pledge to do my utmost to serve the country and the people, while inheriting and promoting the glorious tradition of national construction and protection, and drawing upon the experience of the former state presidents.

In the national solidarity bloc, I will be determined and steadfast in maintaining and protecting national independence, national sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the national interests and security, he said.

Deputy Vo Tuan Nhan from the south-central province of Quang Ngai said that Quang had a great wealth of experience. I hope that as the countrys new state president he will successfully accomplish his tasks assigned by the Party, the state, and people.

This Thursday, the National Assembly will also elect Vietnams new prime minister, who will replace Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung. Dung has led the charge on Vietnams economic reforms over the past 10 years. Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc is the sole candidate for the prime ministers position. He was elected to the Politburo in January 2016.
The project has total area of 2.8 hectares, a building density of 37.31 per cent, and includes apartments, shophouses, villas, a kindergarten and an area of services. The 504 apartments are going to have areas of between 71.4 square metres and 114.6 square metres each, with three bedrooms. The 41 shophouses are going to have areas of between 70.9 square metres and 166.4 square metres. The 20 villas are going to have areas of between 165.4 square metres and 324.8 square metres.

Saigon-Hanoi Commercial Joint Stock Bank is going to provide finance for the project and for homebuyers.

Green Pearl marks a new step in the development of Phong Phu-Daewon-Thu Duc, said Le Chi Hieu, chairman of the company, emphasising the projects prime location in the middle of the city, close to major schools, hospitals and malls.

Phong Phu-Daewon-Thu Duc is the joint venture between garment producer Phong Phu Corporation which produces fibre, fabric, towels and clothes.

Developer Daewon-Thu Duc. Daewon-Thu Duc has developed six office and apartments projects including Cantavil Premier and Cantavil An Phu in District 2 of Ho Chi Minh City and Cantavil Long Hai in the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau.
This $300-million project, which would be Vietnams largest ever research and development (R&D) centre, also marks the first time a global tech giant has chosen Vietnam as an R&D hub.

Foreign tech firms such as Bosch, HP, Intel, and Samsung have previously funnelled considerable funds into R&D activities in Vietnam. These investments, however, are project components  not independent projects as is Samsung case.

Once completed, the 116,000-square metre R&D centre will consist of 21 stories, as well as two basements, and is set to start operations in the first half of 2020, employing a workforce of about 4,000.

A Samsung Electronics Vietnam (SEV) representative said that the project may begin construction late this year, in accordance with Korean quality standards.

Despite the benefits that this centre will engender in terms of employment and raising the profile of Vietnam as an R&D hub, recent media reports have questioned what long-term gains Vietnam will enjoy from it. This suspicious interpretation of the project is due, at least in part, to the 12 demands that the Korean tech giant presented to the Vietnamese government before it would invest in the project. Some include land rent exemption for 50 years; tax exemption for machinery and equipment imports, building materials, and facilities serving R&D activities, and the right to transfer assets established on site, as well as granting land use rights to other parties without any limitations, provided that there is a reasonable cause.

However, Nguyen Mai, chairman of the Vietnam Association of Foreign Invested Enterprises, noted that interpreting Samsungs proposals as demands is somewhat unfair as many of the proposals are already enshrined in current Vietnamese laws, including the transfer of assets established on site and land use rights for another party.

For every investor, the more incentives they are given the better. Their proposals and what we can accept are two different stories. Saying that Samsung has demanded too much would be unfair, Mai commented.

Mai, a noted economist, cited a previous example concerning US chip-making giant Intel. He noted that before it would invest in Vietnam, the company presented the Vietnamese government with a list of 28 demands. The Vietnamese government accepted 22 of its demands, including the provision of financial support for the project, which is still an unprecedented privilege enjoyed by any foreign investor.

Mai said that this decision was justified because at that time Intels arrival was of great importance to help Vietnam appeal to other global players.

Indeed, a raft of global tech giants followed in Intels footsteps, including Samsung, LG, and Microsoft.

The Vietnamese government has poured a lot of money into building national R&D centres which have generated below-expected results. Now, Samsung willingly brings $300 million into Vietnam, then recruits and trains 4,000 hi-tech staff members. This alone is encouraging and worth the high incentives, Mai added.
Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc directed the Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST)  the administrative authority on industrial property rights  to refuse Vinatabas request to invalidate Sumatra Tobaccos Protection Title on its Jet and Hero tobacco brands.

Phuc also denied the firms extraordinary request to gain the rights to use the Jet and Hero trademarks for products that Vinataba planned to manufacture soon.

The state-owned cigarette maker, which holds a monopoly on tobacco products made in Vietnam, passed its demands off as an attempt to secure the nations and consumers interests, given the large number of Jet and Hero products being smuggled into the country. It argued that Sumatra Tobaccos trademark registration is, in fact, to disguise the smuggling of low-cost and low-quality tobacco into Vietnam. Vinataba estimated that the Jet and Hero brands account for over 80 per cent (approximately 17.8 billion cigarettes per year) of the total number of cigarettes illegally crossing Vietnams borders.

The company claimed that if it were allowed to own the trademarks, it could help control the brands trading activities and therefore eradicate smuggling of the brands, which would financially benefit both consumers and the state budget.

In response, the MoST said that such arguments were far from persuasive, as Vinataba failed to provide evidence to prove any relationship between Sumatra Tobacco and the smuggling of Jet and Hero cigarettes. Even if evidence for a relationship were found, according to the ministry, there would be no legal basis for the suspension of trademarks due to smuggling.

Since the trademarks still belong to Sumatra Tobacco, the MoST refused to grant trademark certificates to Vinataba, in keeping with domestic and international property rights laws. The MoST reported the issue to Deputy Prime Minister Phuc on March 9 and received a directive last week.

The governments rejection marked Vinatabas failure to sweep out its Indonesian competitor and take up the market share of Jet and Hero products, despite the fact that it had previously been granted cancellation of the majority of Sumatra Tobaccos trademark certificates. Sumatra has held 67 MoST certificates on trademarks for its two cigarette products since 1990, of which 46 were abrogated in January this year. Vinataba showed that these trademarks had not been used for the past five consecutive years; thus, under Article 93 of the Law on Intellectual Property, Sumatra Tobaccos rights had to be revoked.
Photo by ASSOCIATED PRESS

Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Patrol Detectives Steve Balonek, left, and Steve Thaxton enter a hallway in a building clearing scenario during Reality Based Training at the Mojave Training Center Feb. 17 in Las Vegas, Nev.
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Juan Armando Hinojosa Cantu

Toluca, Mexico, on April 30, 2008. The father, a contractor whose conglomerate has won scores of public contracts in the past decade, has seen his wealth soar under the wing of President Enrique Pena Nieto. The son died in a helicopter crash in July 2012. (Mario Vazquez de la Torre/McClatchy/TNS)
Why American workers arent changing jobs, and what it means for the economy
It has now been some time since the special summit between the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and U.S. President Barack Obama at Sunnylands, California, on Feb. 15-16. The meeting was the first of its kind to be held on American soil, and signaled the U.S. intention to step up engagement with Southeast Asia as China rises as an economic and military power.

For Cambodias government, the meeting offered a glimmer of hope for improved trade ties with the U.S., and enabled Prime Minister Hun Sen to take part in high-level talks on an equal standing other leaders.

We are doing our best to make sure that the U.S. opens up for Cambodia, as well as ASEAN, to continue to import products from Cambodia, especially agricultural products, said Kao Kimhourn, minister attached to the prime minister.

This also includes attracting investment and tourists from the U.S., too. Especially, we want the U.S. to continue to provide support on technical capacity building.

At the conclusion of the meeting, the leaders issued a 17-point-joint declaration calling for the reduction of tensions in the South China Seawhere several ASEAN states have territorial disputes with Chinaand the introduction of new initiatives, includes one known as U.S.-ASEAN Connect.

Connect will provide a new opportunity to investors, traders and business people from ASEAN and the U.S. to meet on a regular basis to boost the economy, said Kimhourn.

The volume of trade between the U.S. and the 10 countries of ASEAN totals about $240 billion, with the U.S. exporting goods and services to ASEAN worth more than $100 billion. This is relatively low compared to trade between China and ASEAN countries, which stands at $480 billion.

Currently, garments are the leading Cambodian export to the U.S., but Cambodian officials also want the U.S. to buy more rice from the country.

What we expect more of is agricultural products [exports], said Phay Siphan, a secretary of state at the Council of Ministers. In return, we hope to help the U.S. save a lot of money by buying cheap products from Cambodia, which will enable U.S. citizens to buy more.

Despite Cambodias small size and its status as one of ASEANs least developed countries, its close ties with China give it some diplomatic heft, especially when it comes to the issues of the South China Sea. During Cambodias chairmanship of ASEAN in 2012, its representatives resisted efforts led by the Philippines and Vietnam to specifically denounce Chinese aggression in maritime disputes with those countries.

However, the Sunnylands declarationwhich Cambodia supportedincluded commitments to solving the disputes multilaterally and through ASEAN. China prefers to deal with its small rivals in the South China Sea bilaterally, and rejects what it sees as U.S. meddling in its backyard.

We highly valued the [Sunnylands] summit. Thats why we supported the joint declaration, said Siphan. But ASEAN has not come up with a framework or how our commitment should be. We, the ASEAN community, have already committed on several issues, especially on human rights and economic fronts. We will continue to strengthen them.

Siphan said Cambodia was committed to pacifism in disputes in the South China Sea, and said the country did not take Chinas side.

Cambodia maintains the same position, which is to see talks taking place and we want to see China and the U.S. talk to each other, rather than armed confrontation, he said. We want China to solve the problem with claimant parties, not have armed confrontation.

The ruling Cambodian Peoples Party, for its part, sees the Sunnylands summit as evidence it has successfully steered Cambodia into a closer relationship with the U.S.

Through this ASEAN-U.S. summit, we saw that the position of U.S. President Barrack Obama is not discriminatory, said CPP spokesman Sok Eysan. His warm welcome of all 10 ASEAN leaders showed respect and equality.

And, of course, the summit also signals potential new economic opportunities.

We hope that after the ASEAN-U.S. summit there will be more foreign investment, especially from the U.S., coming to Cambodia, Eysan added.

However, the two-day summit was marred by protests from communities of U.S.-based Cambodians, Laotians and Thais, as well as activists who opposed the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. The Cambodian community demanded respect for human rights and broader political freedom in Cambodia.

CPP spokesman Sok Eysan had a different interpretation.

We saw that the president [Obama] did not follow the requests from some opposition groups and some organizations that wanted the U.S. president to put pressure on the government of Cambodia, he said. He [Obama] maintained a stance of mutual respect and equality.

The U.S. Ambassador to ASEAN, Nina Hachigian, has said the summit did touch on human rights issues in Cambodia. However, Cambodias ambassador to ASEAN, Norng Sakal, has insisted that human rights were only mentioned in general.

It is true that U.S. President Barack Obama raised the issue of democracy and respect for human rights in general without mentioning any country, said Sakal said in a statement.

While Cambodian officials preferred to put a spotlight on the economy and trade, observers say this does not relieve leaders of their responsibilities to respect human rights and political freedom.

In fact, the Sunnylands declaration, which Hun Sen supported, includes a commitment to ensure opportunities for all of our peoples, through strengthening democracy, enhancing good governance and adherence to the rule of law, promoting and protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms, encouraging the promotion of tolerance and moderation, and protecting the environment.
Zaha Hadid, the renowned Iraqi-born British architect who has designed a new research center dedicated to the victims of the Khmer Rouge regime, passed away on Thursday aged 65.

She suffered a sudden heart attack after contracting bronchitis and died at a hospital in Miami, Florida.

One of the worlds leading architects, Zaha Hadid was known for designing many magnificent buildings around the world, and won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004.

Among her best-known designs are the Vitra Fire Station in Germany, the Lois and Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, Ohio, Romes MAXXI art museum, the Guangzhou Opera House in China and the Aquatics Center for Londons Olympics.

In 2012, Zaha Hadid accepted a request from Youk Chhang, the executive director of Documentation Center of Cambodia, agreeing to design the ambitious Sleuk Rith Institute.

The design is already finished for the as-yet-unbuilt institute in Phnom Penh, which will be dedicated to memory, justice, and healing the wounds of the darkest part of Cambodias history. Sleuk rith refers to a leaf that was traditionally used in lieu of paper in Cambodia.

Zaha Hadid had planned to, but did not manage to visit Cambodia before her death.

She had completed her work, Chhang told VOA Khmer. What we are missing is her presence when the building is completed. I think, however, that this could be spiritual force for us to make the place amazing for the sake of her reputation.

Zaha Hadids name would be inscribed on part of the building, he added.

It is not only the loss of a female architect who would build a place for more than 2 million people who died [in Cambodia], but it is also a loss for world culture. A capable woman like her, a woman who had no geographical or political barriers, but was attached with humanity, is very rare.

Speaking in 2014, Education Minister Hang Chuon Naron said he hoped the Sleuk Rith Institute would enable the world to learn lessons from Cambodias history under the Khmer Rouge, whose brutal rule lasted from 1975 to 1979.

I hope that with the establishment of Sleuk Rith Institute, Cambodia will play an important role to show hardship and be one of the leaders of the world by telling about hardship and painful lessons, and other important messages by compiling documents and broadcasting information promptly and professionally, he said.
The ongoing presidential election campaign in the United States may be one of the more unseemly the country has seen, but observers and politicians in Cambodia say their country still has a lot to learn from the American democratic process.

Prime Minister Hun Sen and the oppositions chief whip, Son Chhay, have indicated that both sides of Cambodias political divide are watching closely. Hun Sen poked fun at the election campaign in the U.S., noting its roadblocks and bad words. Son Chhay said he was concerned over the aggressive style of leading Republican contender Donald Trump.

Trump has made outrageous comments about refugees from the Middle East, and says he wants to build a huge wall along the U.S.-Mexican border. His political rallies have been marred by clashes between his supporters and protesters, amid accusations that Trump himself incites violence in his speeches.

Regardless, said Ou Virak, president of Phnom Penh-based think tank Future Forum, There are some lessons that we could learn.

In the U.S., the political parties are conducting a primary process that is taking place in public. Campaigning involves numerous televised public debates, with candidates getting fairly equal opportunities to put forward their proposals to voters.

In Cambodian elections, meanwhile, candidates generally do not debate each other, on television or elsewhere. And among the oppositions complaints about past elections have been that the CPP enjoys greater access to mediaall private TV stations and most newspapers are controlled by people loyal to Hun Sen.

Like in the U.S., Cambodias political parties should each have the same chance to get exposure, said Virak. Televised debates would also give the public a chance to fairly compare candidates, he said.

Weve seen the [U.S.] campaigning on TV. The debates among candidates in the same party are live on TV multiple times in the U.S., he said. What we have not seen [in Cambodia] is competition within the parties.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Jay Raman told VOA Khmer that he hoped his countrys election campaign would set a positive example for the rest of the world and encourage countries to adopt a democratic model that fits their unique situation.

There is no one right or wrong way to run a democracy, Raman added. We do, however, believe that an open, transparent, and competitive multiparty democracy that reflects the will of the people is beneficial to peace, development, and economic growth.

The official spokesman of Cambodias National Election Committee, Hang Puthea, said that Cambodia could learn not only from the U.S. but also other countries around the world to improve its elections.

For its elections, Cambodia has retrieved experience from some countries, including the U.S., he said. The U.S. election could be a resource for Cambodian politicians to avoid negative points and absorb positive points, to succeed in choosing a leader, to make peoples lives better, and for the elections to be accepted by all relevant parties.

Puthea said he also advocated Cambodias political parties setting out clear policies on which they can be judged by voters. This requires politician to have clear strategies and plans in order to attract support from the people, he said.

The Cambodia National Rescue Partys Son Chhay also said Cambodia could learn from the open nature of debate in American politics.

The leaders have to show their stances and their policies on various issues that heavily affect the country. They do it freely, without fear, he said.

As well as ensuring all parties have equal access to media, Cambodia could improve voter registration and allow people to vote where they work, rather than having to make the journey back to their provinces during elections, he said.

Son Chhay added that in U.S. elections, There is no stealing votes or any provoking incidents that lead to suspicions about the voting result.

After the long stand off that followed the 2013 elections, Cambodias two main parties last year agreed to build something they called a culture of dialogue. While ill-defined, it was hoped this would encourage a more collaborative political atmosphere in which policy could be discussed without recriminations.

This scheme collapsed late last year amid new arrests of opposition lawmakers, however.

Council of Ministers spokesman Phay Siphan said that, given the current political climate, it would take Cambodia another 10 to 15 years to get to a stage where leaders could engage in public discussion in a way similar to American televised debates.

We have not even had a culture of dialogue yet, he said. The opposition party has not yet fully been involved in the issue, he said.

After the culture of dialogue, then we can have debates, Siphan added.
Prior to her death on Thursday last week, British architect Zaha Hadid was working to help Cambodia to rebuild after the tragedies of its history.

As was well known, she was designing a new institute in Phnom Penh to foster research and remembrance of the countrys darkest hours under the Khmer Rouge. However, it has emerged, she also had a more obscure aspiration: to provide an architectural masterplan for a redesign of the capital itself.

Born in Iraq, Zaha Hadid astonished the world with her signature designs characterized by the use of curves. In 2004, she became the first woman to win the coveted Pritzker Architecture Prize.

Her achievements included the Vitra Fire Station in Germany, the and Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, Ohio, Romes MAXXI Art museum, the Guangzhou Opera House and the Aquatics Center for Londons 2012 Olympics.

In a measure of her ongoing commercial success, her company, Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA), lists on its website 950 ongoing projects in 44 countries.

In 2014, she unveiled the designs for the Sleuk Rith Institute in Phnom Penh at the behest of Youk Chhang, the executive director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam). But that projectthe design for which is now finishedspawned a broader interest in Cambodia.

Although she never visited the country, Zaha Hadid had a vision of making Phnom Penh a better place for its inhabitants and a more healthy environment, according to Chhang. With that in mind, she decided voluntarily to work on plans for Phnom Penhs development over the coming decades.

She thought that the first thing to do was a specific masterplan that is usable rather than imaginative, he told VOA Khmer.

She wanted to draw on the presence of the citys converging Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers to create a balancepreserving historic areas while accelerating development in the city, said Chhang, explaining the British designers vision.

A document entitled Phnom Penh Vision 2050, seen by VOA Khmer, sets out how ZHA works on projects. With the assistance of our expert consultants we then begin to conceptualize what interventions may be needed, spatial restructuring, movement, landscape, infrastructure, etc. which can then begin to form the components that shape the future vision, it says. We aim to implement a similar process for Phnom Penh.

Due the lack of budget in the government, she worked on this voluntarily, Chhang said, adding that Zaha Hadid wanted to submit the proposal regardless of whether the government was already working with another company. The municipality has reportedly taken on a masterplan for the city proposed by French designers.

She just thought: its not too late for this project, which would last until 2050. She wanted to make [a plan to make] this city the best place possible, and then submit it to the government, Chhang said.

But such an ambitious plan, naturally, would need the support of Cambodias government and ultimately Prime Minister Hun Sen. She therefore made an official request, and received permission in a letter from Minister of Education, Youth and Sport Hang Chuon Naron to engage with the Phnom Penh municipality.

Ros Salin, spokesman for the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport, confirmed that a working group attached to Zaha Hadids company had been working with the Phnom Penh Municipality, as well as the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction, but said he didnt know what the progress of this work was.

Governor Pa Socheatevong said the cooperation had been limited. Of course, they just only had a plan to study and assist in the field of urban planning, he said. There are just researchers who help organize our master plan. Thats all what we have discussed so far.

Local urban campaigners said the citys administration could do with help from an international design firm like ZHA. They paint a picture of a citywhich has swelled to a population of 3 million peopleat breaking point after years of poorly planned development.

The citys expansion has made many made people worse off, said Ee Sarom, executive director of the group Sahmakum Teang Thnaut, which monitors development and advocates for habitat rights.

Particularly disastrous was the plan to build a high-end real estate development on the site of the former Boeng Kak lake by the ruling party-linked company Shukaku Inc. The lake itself was pumped full of sand, and the community was displaced in a mass eviction that has created the countrys most high-profile land dispute. Some of the 4,000 former residents who say they were not properly compensated have been protestingenduring police beatings and repeated arrestsfor years.

We support a redesign, a better master plan, because we previously saw there were a lot of impacts. The buildings are tall at some places, while at other places they are short, said Ee Sarom, referring to the governments slapdash planning efforts. Some places are filled with too much land, while the other places are flooded. Its very complicated in Phnom Penh.

Zaha Hadids death from a sudden heart attack at only 65 did not mean that her vision for a better Phnom Penh for all could not still be carried through, said DC-Cams Youk Chhang.

[H]er team is still working on the master plan at her own cost and I am hoping to use it to convince the city governor and the government of Cambodia, he wrote in an email.

Zaha wanted Phnom Penh to belong to all Cambodians at all levels, but not the luxury vehicles! he added, in reference to the elites penchant for gleaming SUVs.

But Cambodia had lost a rare and valuable ally, Chhang lamented.

We lost good friend because Cambodia is a country she wholeheartedly helped, he said.

She never sought interest or profit from her work, like what she did for the Sleuk Rith Institute. She loved and had an obligation for humanity due to the fact that our country has experienced genocide and her motherland, Iraq, has also experienced crimes against humanity.
Seventeen Maldivian journalists arrested during a protest the previous day were summoned to give statements on Monday evening.

We dont know if we will be formally charged yet, said Zaheena Rasheed, editor of the Maldives Independent.

The journalists, however, are bracing for the worst, considering how democratic gains in the Maldives have eroded in recent years, including a crackdown on the press.

Police in Male on Sunday unleashed pepper spray on dozens of demonstrators, which included journalists and activists, protesting the governments move to criminalize defamation and other actions recently taken against the media.

A statement issued by police says officers moved to break up the demonstration with minimum force after it moved into a protected zone near the presidential office and some people scaled barricades.

Rasheed denies the police version of events, saying the protestors had already been pushed back by authorities from the protected zone before they were arrested.

"By this time many journalists had been targeted and pepper-sprayed at close range. I got up to leave because I saw many members of my team getting arrested. And then the police official said I would not be able to go back, I'd have to get in the police van, she told VOA.

Maldivian media outlets and their journalists have been facing a variety of threats.

Media offices have been attacked and there's been numerous death threats against journalists, both over text messages and also in person, as well as assaults, said Rasheed. There's been no justice for any attack on journalists and media offices."

Oldest newspaper closed

The South Asian archipelago nations oldest newspaper, Haveeru,  which is also the most popular online news site in the Maldives  was effectively forced closed for an indefinite period by a court order last week, throwing 70 staff members out of work.

From Thursday we stopped our print edition and on Saturday online [also was halted], said Abdulla Jameel Ahmed, the assistant editor of the Haveeru Daily.

We cant use our name or logo anywhere, Jameel told VOA.

The ruling party of President Yameen Abdul Gayoom has put forward legislation that would inflict fines of up to $324,000 on those convicted of defamation. Those who fail to pay the penalty would be jailed for one year.

Newspapers and websites which publish defamatory content could face revocation of their licenses.

Legislation criminalizing defamation is one of the most commonly used tools by dictators and autocrats around the world to silence dissent and to suppress free speech, member of parliament Eva Abdullah of the opposition Maldivian Democratic Party told VOA. President Yameen is confirming his place among the worlds autocrats.

The draft law also says the constitutional right to freedom of speech can be narrowed or restricted if an expression contradicts a tenet of Islam, threatens national security, defames or causes damage to an individual, or violates societal norms.

This move by the government is aimed at silencing critics and weakening the countrys already fragile media, said the International Federation of Journalists.



Missing journalist

Reporters also took to the streets in Male Sunday to protest against some media organizations being barred from covering court cases and to pressure authorities to fully investigate the two-year old case of a missing journalist, Ahmed Rilwan, a colleague of Rasheeds.

It's been 600 days since he's been disappeared, notes Rasheed.

Police on Sunday said Rilwan had been abducted at knifepoint by a criminal gang.

Home Minister Umar Naseer last November said that former Vice President Ahmed Adeeb, detained two months previously on suspicion of links to an explosion on the presidents speedboat, had been

questioned over Rilwans disappearance.

The U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Maldives, Atul Keshap, met on Monday with some of the journalists arrested the previous day.

"He expressed his concern over the arrests. And we're very grateful to have support from the international community right now, said Rasheed.

Ambassador Keshaps visit to the Maldives was planned in advance and routine, an embassy official in Colombo told VOA on the condition he not be named.

The U.S. ambassador, accompanied by deputy assistant secretary for South and Central Asian affairs Manpreet Singh Anand, on Monday also paid a courtesy call on President Yameen, according to media release from the presidents office, which said the two sides held discussions about the strengthening of ties between the Maldives and America.

U.S. and Maldivian officials gave no public indication that the journalists arrests were discussed.
The Burundian government says it welcomes the adoption of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2279, which calls for the deployment of a U.N. police contingent to monitor the security situation in Burundi.

The resolution passed Friday also calls on all parties to reject any kind of violence and public statements inciting hatred. It urges the Burundian government to guarantee fundamental freedoms for all and adhere to the rule of law.

Burundian Foreign Minister Alain Nyamitwe said President Pierre Nkurunzizas government has always been open to an international presence in Burundi and would welcome the deployment of a U.N. police contingent as long as they are not U.N. troops.

I think that what the resolution is talking about is not a police force but a police contribution. And we think that it is not exactly against the interest of the Republic of Burundi because what we are opposed to is the idea of troops. But we have always said that we are open for an international presence, which by the way is materialized by the presence of AU [African Union] human rights monitors and AU military experts, he said.

Many fled Burundi

Over a quarter of a million Burundians have already fled the country since April 2015 in fear for their lives, and countless more have been internally displaced. The opposition claims President Nkurunziza, in office since 2005, violated previous accords in the way his latest election victory was conducted.

The Security Council noted what it called the ongoing repression, harassment and violence against the legitimate political opposition, the closure of free and impartial media, and widespread impunity for human rights violations and abuses  including those involving killings and alleged sexual violence by security services against political opponents and members of civil society.

Nyamitwe cautioned those he said are quick to indict the government about human rights abuses.

I always say that it is easier to indict, it is easy to accuse without any form of investigation. Now that we are about the U.N. High Commission for Human Rights coming to Burundi to look into all those allegations, lets wait. Why should we accuse the government on the basis of heresy or what NGOs talk without the due processes, Nyamitwe said.

The U.N. Security Council resolution also urged the government and all other stakeholders committed to a peaceful solution to cooperate fully with the East African Community-led, African Union-endorsed mediator and facilitator, former Tanzanian president Benjamin Mkapa in his efforts to move the process forward

Nyamitwe said, As far as we are concerned, we as a government have done our best. We have catered for the Burundian, at least those who are inside the country to engage in dialogue. Now, if we need to talk about dialogue outside the country, we have said that we have no opposition to that principle. What we have to work on is the list of participants and the topics to be discussed."

Government displeased with opposition representation

The Burundian government had said in the past it was not pleased with the choice of the National Council for the Restoration of the Arusha Accord, also known as CNARED to represent all opposition parties to the talks.

The government accused CNARED of being involved in seeking to overthrow the government.

The opposition has said it is in favor of a peaceful resolution of the Burundi conflict. It has accused President Nkurunziza of constantly creating roadblocks because it said he doesnt want to negotiate with the opposition.
Greece and the European Union began deporting migrants Monday from the islands of Lesbos and Chios, sending them to Turkey under terms of a controversial March deal between the EU and Ankara.

Despite predictions of violence, the departure of the first ferry from Lesbos early Monday happened without incident as a small number of protesters gathered at the port to condemn the deal.

Officials began moving busloads of people from the camp at Moria in the predawn hours and taking them to the port at the islands main city, Mytilini, where they boarded a Turkish ferry for the short trip to Turkey.

A Greek government official told VOA that 202 people were deported aboard three ferries Monday. Two ferries left from Lesbos carrying 136 migrants, while a third ferry took 66 migrants from Chios. The official said none of those deported had applied for asylum. He said almost all of those sent back to Turkey on the first day of deportations were Pakistani, while two were Syrians who chose to go to Turkey for personal and family reasons.

As part of a swap with Turkey, the EU has pledged to rehouse one Syrian in the bloc for every one deported from Greece, with numbers capped at 72,000.

Forty-three Syrian asylum seekers were flown to Europe on Monday under that part of the deal. Thirty-two of them arrived in the northern German city of Hanover.

Eleven other refugees arrived in Finland, with more expected Tuesday in the Netherlands.

Reporters were not allowed close access to the departure, which took place under the cover of darkness, with officials declining to make public the times of departures or any other details before they happened.

The deal aims to break up the lucrative people smuggling operations that operate out of Turkey.

Turkey is readying itself for the return of hundreds of migrants under the agreement with the European Union.

In the early hours of Monday, VOA observed a number of buses entering Moria camp, the main detention center in Lesbos where Greek authorities, with the help of European Union border officials, are trying to ease overcrowding. The camp was built for 2,000 migrants but currently houses about 3,000.

Human rights groups concerned

Not long after the first boatload of deportees left Mytilini, human rights activists gathered to protest near the port entrance, where they competed for space with journalists. On the water, protesters held a banner between two boats that read Ferries Are for Safe Passage, Not for Deportation, before a Greek coast guard vessel approached and its crew ordered the protesters to end their demonstration.

Others on shore held signs reading Stop the Dirty Deal, and Wake Up Europe. At the request of an international television news crew, one group broke into chant, saying EU, Shame on You.

Demonstrators were infuriated by what they said was an attempt by Greek and EU officials to carry out what they view as a dirty deed, in an antiseptic, secretive fashion.

Its a shame whats happening here. Its a shame for all of European countries who are letting this happen, a demonstrator from the Netherlands, who identified herself only by her first name, Mariella, told VOA. We are not talking about export products. We are talking about people."

WATCH: First refugees arrive in Turkey



EU, Turkey agreement

The deal reached by the European Union and Turkey in mid-March grants $3.6 billion dollars in aid to Turkey in exchange for Turkeys commitment to take back migrants, regardless of nationality, who arrived in Greece without inspection after embarking in Turkey.

People subject to deportation are those who arrived after March 20 and who are not eligible for, or do not want to apply for, asylum.

Still more migrants

Meanwhile, the influx of migrants continued. Officials said 300 arrived in Greece on Sunday alone, fueling complaints by the Greek government, which has accused Turkey of not doing enough to intercept the flow of illegal migrants.
The first group of Syrian refugees sent from Turkey under a controversial program have arrived in Europe. The 16 asylum seekers arrived in the northern German city of Hanover Monday morning. Another group of 16 is expected later Monday.

Meanwhile, deported migrants sent to Turkey from the Greek island of Lesbos have begun disembarking from the boats.

Officials say 131 migrants, mostly South Asians, arrived in Dikili Monday. They were escorted one-by-one from the boats to a registration center.

The migrant and refugee activities Monday mark the activation of a controversial plan to stem illegal migration into Europe; a plan criticized by human rights groups.

Under the deal between the European Union and Turkey, those who reach the shores of Greece unlawfully will be returned to Turkey, unless they qualify for asylum.

For every Syrian refugee returned to Turkey from Greece, another will be resettled from Turkey to the European Union.

The deal aims to break up the lucrative people smuggling operations that operate out of Turkey.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has acknowledged the sensitivity of the deal.

The prime minister says the government will show compassion as Turkey has received the first migrants turned back from Greece. He said the government will now send some Syrian refugees from camps in Turkey to Europe.

Watch: Refugees arrive in Turkey from Lesbos, Greece

Under the deal, for every Syrian deportation from Greece, the EU will receive a Syrian from a Turkish refugee camp. With Turkey hosting nearly three million refugees, opposition parties have criticized Ankara for agreeing to accept deported refugees.

Saturday in Dikili, locals protested, chanting, "We do not want any more refugees." Seeking to allay criticism, Interior Minister Efkan Ala said many of those deported would be sent home.

Ala said Syrians returned from Greece would be given the chance to register in Turkey, but that Iraqis, Afghans and Pakistanis would be sent back to their country of origin. Most of those deported Monday reportedly were Pakistanis.

A senior Turkish official said last month Turkey had signed a re-admission agreement with 14 countries, including what was described as major source countries for migrants.

International human right groups have said the EU-Turkey deal contravenes international law.

Last month, Amnesty International accused Turkish security forces of forcibly deporting as many as 100 Syrian refugees a day back to their country, a charge Ankara strongly denied.

But observers say the European Union may be hoping the images of the first deportations will discourage future migrants and refugees seeking to make the perilous crossing from Turkey to Greece.
Computer hackers have leaked an online database which they say contains the personal information of nearly 50 million Turkish citizens.

The information includes names, national ID numbers, addresses, birth dates and parents' names. It specifically highlights the personal data of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

The Associated Press was able to partially verify the information by cross-referencing 10 non-public Turkish ID numbers against information contained in the database. Eight ID numbers were a match.

The hackers posted a message with the leak: "Who would have imagined that backwards ideologies, cronyism and rising religious extremism in Turkey would lead to a crumbling and vulnerable technical infrastructure?''

They also posted "lessons to learn" for Turkey on Internet security, including "bit shifting isn't encryption," and "putting a hard-coded password on the UI [user interface] hardly does anything for security."

The database appears to be have been posted using servers in Romania.

If the hack is verified as authentic, it would be one of the largest leaks of public information and could make much of Turkey's population vulnerable to identity theft.

Last year, the U.S. government said that hackers gained access to the personal information of more than 20 million federal employees. U.S. officials have blamed a Chinese spy operation for the data breech.
The Republic of Congo says gunmen attacked police, military and government targets in the capital Monday, in the first major violence since the re-election of President Denis Sassou Nguesso.

A statement from the government says former "Ninja" militimen, once loyal to the father of a losing candidate in last month's election, attacked and set fire to the Mayanga military base, four police stations and the mayor's office in southern Brazzaville.

Witnesses said the shooting erupted around 3:00 a.m. local time in the Bacongo and Makeleke neighborhoods and continued until late morning, when troops fanned across the city. There has been no word on any casualties from the fighting.

The government said it does not have proof that opposition candidates were connected to the violence but added that investigations continue.

Sassou Nguesso was re-elected after getting voter approval to remove age and term limits in the constitution that would have barred from the March 20 vote.

Official results showed the president winning 60 percent of the vote.

An army general who finished third in the voting, Jean-Marie Michel Mokoko, accused the government of election fraud and called for a campaign of "civil disobedience" after the results were announced.

The 72-year-old Nguesso first served as Congo's president between 1979 and 1992, and after losing an election returned to power in 1997. He won disputed elections in 2002 and 2009.
Human Rights Watch said Monday the Syrian government has not lived up to commitments to allow unhindered humanitarian deliveries to besieged areas where the United Nations says hundreds of thousands of people are badly in need of aid.

HRW highlighted Daraya and Eastern Ghouta, saying Syria has not given aid groups permission to make deliveries. It insisted the government immediately allow aid into besieged areas and criticized U.N.-reported instances of medical aid being removed from those convoys that have been allowed in.

"The Syrian government cannot justify its ongoing starvation tactic of areas around Damascus or its removal of basic medicines from aid convoys," said HRW Middle East Director Nadim Houry.

Increased access for aid groups and a cessation of hostilities that went into effect five weeks ago have been greeted as cautious signs of progress alongside renewed U.N.-brokered peace talks to try to end the five-year-old conflict in Syria.

The cease-fire does not apply to fighting militant groups like Islamic State or the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said an airstrike Sunday killed Nusra spokesman Abu Firas al-Souri and at least 20 other militants in northern Syria. The Observatory said Syrian or Russian planes were believed to be responsible for the strike.
The chief of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, says the fund is "a good distance away" from a new economic bailout installment for ailing Greece.

Lagarde sent a letter to Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras Sunday and made it public, saying she wants the dialogue between Athens and the IMF to be "transparent."

Wikileaks posted a document Saturday in which IMF officials reportedly said they are looking for a crisis "event" in Greece that would force Athens into talks toward a deal.

Lagarde denied this in her letter, saying "any speculation that IMF staff would consider using a credit event as a negotiating tactic is simply nonsense."

"The IMF conducts its negotiations on good faith," Lagarde wrote, "not by the way of threats, and we do not communicate through leaks."

She said she is sending an IMF team back to Athens to continue the talks.

Tsipras has been angry at what he says has been IMF "stalling tactics" on a review of Greek economic reforms, which both the fund and European Union finance ministers say is necessary before more bailout cash is made available.

Last year's $94 billion bailout kept Greece from being forced out of the eurozone, which would have been a calamity for the country.

But the bailout came with strict conditions, including unpopular cuts in government spending, pensions, and other benefits.
Iran is bolstering its military presence in Syria, deploying a top army unit to the country in what commanders call an advisory mission, according to state-run media.

Iranian Brigadier General Ali Arasteh, deputy chief liaison of the army's ground force, said the unit comprises "commandos" in a force from the 65th NOHAD  a Persian abbreviation for Airborne Special Forces Brigade.

"We are sending commandos from army's Brigade 65 and other units to Syria as advisers," Arasteh told the Tasnim news agency.

The first unit of 35 elite members, also known as Green Beret Forces, are stationed near Aleppo in northern Syria. They are offering training to Syrian regime rapid reaction units, sources in Iran and Syria told VOA.

The move bolsters an already robust Iranian military presence in Syria, analysts say.

The commandos will supplement an elite Iranian military fighting unit that has been supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces in the civil war against Syrian rebels and Islamic State.

Previous support

In the last two years, Iran has sent thousands of its Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to fight ground battles for the Syrian regime, joining with Iranian-backed Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon.

Tehran reportedly increased the number of IRGC personnel in Syria in the final months of 2015, sending as many as 3,500 militia fighters to the frontlines to defend Zeinab Shrine, a holy site for Shi'ite Muslims in the southern suburbs of Damascus.

In the Iranian military structure, the IRGC and the army are separate units and are sometimes seen as rivals, analysts say.

The IRGC is a paramilitary force formed after the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and is designed to protect the Islamic system. The army is considered less elite and focuses on internal and border controls, analysts say.

"IRGC is the trustworthy military wing of the regime after Iran's 1979 revolution, and [the] Iranian army has always [been] considered second to IRGC as it was inherited from the Shah regime," said Daryoush Babak, a former member of the Iranian special forces.

"Despite its extraordinary strength and proven military capabilities, this unit has always been ignored by high-ranking military officials," he told VOA.

In recent weeks, though, Iran's army has looked to broaden its reach.

Countering IS

The army announced that it launched a rapid reaction force to counter IS, even though IS has not been a threat inside Iran.

Ahmad Reza Pourdastan, commanding officer of the ground forces of the Iranian army, said the unit will be permanently on high alert.

"This force is very agile and monitors all kind of threats as far as 40 kilometers of Iranian borders," Pourdastan told reporters last month. "This would be a very reliable force, able to deploy on a very short notice."

The addition of Iran's army into Syria signals that Tehran is attempting to expand its sphere of influence in Syria as Russian forces in recent weeks have withdrawn.

"The army has long desired to enter Syria, but was prevented by the IRGC, which jealously guards its monopoly over export of the revolution," said Ali Alfoneh, a Washington-based IRGC analyst. "Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei, however, authorized the army to deploy advisers in Syria."
A series of suicide bombings Monday killed at least 24 people and wounded 60 others across Iraq.

Several of the blasts targeted Iraqi troops and paramilitary fighters.

One bombing hit a security checkpoint in a northeastern Baghdad suburb, while another struck pro-government fighters north of the capital in Mashahdeh.

In the south, an attacker also detonated explosives at a restaurant popular with militia fighters in the city of Nassiriyah, and another hit the city of Basra.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks. Islamic State militants have frequently used suicide bombings against Iraqi security forces.

March was an especially deadly month for Iraqi security forces and pro-government militias with acts of terror and violence killing 544 troops, according to U.N. data.

That was the highest number of deaths since August, and only four months have registered more Iraqi troop deaths since Islamic State militants swept through large areas of northern and western Iraq in mid-2014.

The U.N. said about 1,500 Iraqi civilians were also killed in the first three months of this year with more than 4,300 people injured.
The leader of a pro-India party has become the first woman to serve as chief administrator of the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir.

Mehbooba Mufti was sworn-in Monday, just three months after her father, Peoples' Democratic Party (PDP) leader and former chief administrator Mufti Mohammad Sayeed died in office.

After Sayeed's death, the chief administrator position remained vacant as Mufti was reluctant to continue the coalition between the PDP, which is widely supported by the region's Muslim population, and the Hindu nationalist BJP party.

But Mufti reached an agreement following a meeting with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month. Details of the meeting have not been released.

Kashmir has been claimed by both India and Pakistan since 1947. The two countries have fought two wars over control of the Himalayan territory.
Russian President Vladimir Putins spokesman on Monday dismissed a report that alleges close friends of the president and top officials funneled some $2 billion through offshore accounts.

The report, dubbed the "Panama Papers," links hundreds of political leaders and celebrities worldwide to offshore companies set up through a law firm based in Panama called Mossack Fonseca.

It alleges that Bank Rossiya, which is owned by close associates and relatives of the Russian president and is under EU and U.S. sanctions, built a network of offshore companies through Putin loyalists to hide and move secret wealth.

News organizations

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung, along with over a hundred other news organizations, scoured through countless leaked documents from the law firm to produce the report.

While not finding any evidence of direct Putins involvement, the report states that classical cellist and conductor Sergei Roldugin, a longtime close friend of Putin, "directly or indirectly" controlled a network of offshore companies that carried out "dubious" transactions with shares of large Russian state enterprises, laundered donations from major Russian businessmen and received preferential loans from a Cyprus-based bank partly controlled by Russia's state-owned VTB Bank.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the report as having nothing specific about Putin except old speculation, telling journalists Putin appeared to be targeted because of Russias upcoming elections and what he deemed "Putinophobia."

He also denied that his wife, former figure skating champion Tatiana Navka, had ever owned an offshore company, as alleged in the report.

Leaked documents

Navka told the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which analyzed the leaked Mossack Fonseka documents involving Russia, that she has never owned offshore companies or had offshore bank accounts.

The report also claims that relatives of other top Russian officials had offshore companies, including Dmitry Ulyukaev, the son of Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukaev, and Alexei Patrushev, nephew of Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Kremlin's Security Council and former director of the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia's main security body.

Russian news agencies Monday quoted Alexei Ulyukaev as also denying any connections to offshore companies.

Kremlin spokesman Peskov also claimed that former employees of the U.S. State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, and other special services were behind the report and want to destabilize Russia.

Peskov said a week ago the Kremlin was preparing for what he called an "information attack" that would target Putin and people close to him.

Andrei Kolesnikov, an expert on Russian domestic politics at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said the Peskov's preemptive denunciation shows the Kremlin was nervous.

But, on the other hand, I don't think this will have a very strong impact on public opinion or the collective consciousness of Russians," Kolesnikov said.

There is a common view of Russian people, the majority of Russian people, that everybody are thieves at the top of this political system, he said. And paradoxically, it means nobody is a thief; nobody is responsible for this corruption.

Russian state television channels, the main sources of information for most Russians, were dismissive of the allegations linked to Putin, or did not report on it.

What Is Mossack Fonseca Group? Mossack Fonseca Group Who: Founded by Jurgen Mossack, who was born in Germany in 1948, and Ramon Fonseca, born in Panama, 1952 When: Established in 1977; became Mossack Fonseca in 1986, when the law firms merged What: A global company that provides comprehensive legal, trust and wealth management services. Incorporates, administers companies in offshore jurisdictions such as Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, the British Virgin Islands and Malta, as well as the U.S. states of Nevada and Wyoming Where: Located in Panama Global presence: Considered world's fourth-largest provider of offshore services Response to Panama Papers: Firm declined to comment on specific allegations, citing client confidentiality, but said it acted responsibly and complied with international protocols: The companies we incorporate are not being used for tax evasion, money laundering, terrorist financing or other illicit purposes." However, they added, "We regret any misuse of our services and actively take steps to prevent it.

It's just like in Soviet times when you're trying to keep some information in secrecy and to show another information which is good for Kremlin, Kolesnikov said.

Other than those linked to Putin, the ICIJ said it uncovered holdings of 140 politicians and officials in tens of countries.

World leaders

The report specifically names 12 current and former leaders, including the prime ministers of Iceland and Pakistan, the presidents of Argentina and Ukraine, and the king of Saudi Arabia.

Mossack Fonseca denied any wrongdoing and said the vast majority of its clients were law-abiding.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko deflected the allegations in comments on his official English-language twitter account.

I believe I might be the first top official in Ukraine who treats declaring of assets, paying taxes, conflict of interest issues seriously, he tweeted.

The Ukrainian president went on to tweet: Having become a President, Im not participating in management of my assets, having delegated this responsibility to consulting&law firms.

Ukrainian lawmakers called for an investigation into the allegations against Poroshenko.
Kurdish counterterrorism forces, or Diji Terror, are some of the best trained and equipped in the fight against the Islamic State. They were set up by the U.S. military in 2002 to battle extremists in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Today, they battle IS  or ISIL, as it is also known in broad daylight and in daring nighttime raids.

Lahor Talabani, who leads this force, believes in the importance of knowing your enemy well.

"There's a difference between the locals and the foreign fighters, he said. Some of the locals actually picked up weapons and joined ISIL because they had no choice. Their territory was taken over by ISIL by force. Some of them ended up joining ISIL.  The locals are not willing to die. They are in the ranks of ISIL and they give up easily, and we have a lot detainees who are locals. When they know that this is the end, they give up. They don't go all the way."

Understanding the needs and psychology of the local population is one of Talabani's strategies.

Though he's a Kurd, Talabani understands the importance of working with Iraq's Sunni population.

"Side by side of the military actions that we're taking, there needs to be some sort of political process, he said. There needs to be some sort of reassurance for the Sunnis, also, that they will be involved in the future of Iraq."

When the Iraqi military launched Operation Conquest on March 24 to retake Mosul, many  including Talabani  said they doubted the army's readiness to retake the city. It's not just about military capacity, he warned, it's also about sectarianism.

"Whatever force is going to take Mosul should be a Sunni-blessed force, he said. Don't forget that defeating ISIL cannot only be done by pushing in this front in Mosul. We need to take away this grass-roots support that's already there in Mosul, from the tribal leaders to ISIL.

The operation to liberate the city of Mosul is expected to take up to a year, but it could take much longer to push the extremists out of the entire country.

Elite forces like Diji Terror, backed by coalition airstrikes, have made significant headway against the militants. But Iraqis themselves know that it will take more than military might to defeat Islamic State.
An app made by the Taliban appeared briefly in the Google Play store.

The SITE Intel Group, which monitors terrorism online, said it found the Android app on Friday.

CNN Money reported that Google, which has removed the app, would not comment on it because the company doesnt discuss specific apps.

Called Alemarah, the Pashto-language app allowed users to keep abreast of Taliban activities and news, including videos made by the jihadist group, CNN Money said.

Jihadists, particularly Islamic State, have used social media and encrypted messaging apps like Telecom to spread their messages, but app stores like Google Play and Apples app store have been more difficult to penetrate.

According to Bloomberg, a spokesman for the Taliban said the app was part of our advanced technological efforts to make a more global audience."
Moderate Muslims in Indonesia say the countrys fight against terrorism and radical Islam must be conducted from the bottom up  in the streets and inside prisons  in a move away from the governments current top-down approach.

Critics say Jakarta is moving too slowly to combat Islamic radicalism, with programs held back by bureaucracy. They say one area of particular concern is radicalism in the prison system.

Prison links

After a January 14 attack at a central Jakarta shopping mall killed at least four civilians and four gunmen, Indonesian authorities took more than 40 people into custody. Investigators linked the siege to an inmate still in prison.

According to Taufik Andrie, an Indonesia terrorism analyst, inmates who are spiritual or combatant leaders are still able to communicate to outside followers.

"In the context of spreading ISIS ideology, for example, the pattern is always the same: It came from inside the prison," Andrie said. Terrorist leaders' rules and orders or fatwa develop inside the prison, get out and are implemented outside.

Andrie added the Indonesian government has not yet improved the handling, placement and counseling of terrorist prisoners.

According to the Indonesia National Counterterrorism Agency, the state has custody of more than 200 inmates involved with terrorism, held in 49 prisons scattered among 13 provinces. The agency also monitors 538 former terrorist prisoners who have been released.

Andrie said that the agency's guidelines on de-radicalization efforts are limited to its own programs and that it lacks a mandate for interagency cooperation.

Grassroots

Since the Jakarta attack, the agency has been strongly criticized for inadequate attempts to rehabilitate convicted terrorists in and out of prison.

Nahdatul Ulama (NU), the country's largest Muslim organization, contends de-radicalization must be addressed at the grassroots level.

Its deputy secretary general, Adnan Anwar, told VOA the governments approach is still too bureaucratic, limited to efforts such as seminars and accountability programs. He called upon the government to organize more dynamic face-to-face discussions.

Prevention

In the last two months, Indonesias government has had to deal with citizens wanting to go to Syria. It deported four young Indonesian men from Singapore; Indonesian immigration authorities later stopped 14 people.

The government needs to improve its prevention efforts and cooperation among institutions to confront terrorist dangers, Nahdatul Ulama's Anwar said.

The organization's members think "the radicalism movement in Indonesia has entered the red zone," he said. "We have told the government to deal with this, including taking action on the prevention level."

The Indonesian government has not yet directly addressed the criticisms of its approach to combating radicalism and terrorism.

But President Joko Widodo and the national parliament have agreed to strengthen the countrys anti-terrorism laws in a process that is underway.

A draft of the revisions includes laws to prohibit citizens from joining terrorist groups operating in conflict-ridden Iraq and Syria, and a ban on the return of citizens who went there to fight alongside Islamic State or other radical groups.

Looking ahead

NU has planned an international summit of moderate Islamic leaders May 9 to 11 in Jakarta to establish the contextual interpretation of jihad in the 21st century. It will attempt to disseminate tolerant teachings of Islam to counter the rise of extreme ideologies disguised as Islamic teaching.

To strengthen the terrorist fight, the Indonesian government last month installed Tito Karnavian as the National Counterterrorism Agency's chief. He previously led an elite police counterterror unit, which has had considerable success in tackling militancy. On his inaguration, Karnavian told the media that one of his priorities would be taking on terrorism in the Poso region of Central Sulawesi province, where members of the radical East Indonesian Mujahidin (MIT) have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group.

A joint collaboration between Indonesia police and military, named Operation Tinombala, is still working in Poso to apprehend MIT militants.

Fighting against radical Islamists and terrorism has been a continuous effort for the Indonesian government since the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov over the phone Monday about efforts to facilitate an immediate cease-fire in the escalated Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

"Topic number one was to discuss efforts to secure an immediate end of the violence that has erupted along the Nagorno-Karabakh line of conflict," said State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner.

Toner said the U.S. encouraged Armenia and Azerbaijan to resume settlement talks, and to avoid further escalation.

The mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh has been the subject of a long-lasting dispute between regional rivals Armenia and Azerbaijan. While it lies within the territory of Azerbaijan, it has been under the control of local ethnic Armenian forces and the Armenian military since the end of a war in 1994.

Azerbaijan says three of its soldiers were killed as fighting raged for a third day over the separatist region, with Armenia warning the situation could escalate into a full-scale war.



The Associated Press cites Azerbaijani Defense Ministry spokesman Vagif Dargyakhly as saying rebels were shelling Azerbaijani military positions and front-line villages, despite the government's announcement Sunday of a unilateral cease-fire.

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan accused Azerbaijan of continuing "offensive, provocative acts" which he says are targeting civilian areas. "Since the so-called 'unilateral truce' was announced, Azerbaijan's artillery has continued working in the direction of the populated areas of Karabakh," Sargsyan was quoted saying at a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

He warned that his country could formalize its ties with Nagorno-Karabakh by officially recognizing its independence if the fighting escalates.

The unilateral cease-fire was declared a day after clashes between the two sides left 30 soldiers dead.



The two sides are separated by a demilitarized buffer zone, but each side accuses the other of numerous violations.

Last week, Kerry told visiting Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev that the U.S. wants to see "an ultimate resolution of the frozen conflict of Nagorno-Karabakh that needs to be a negotiated settlement and something that has to be worked on over time."
Myanmar's ruling party leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has given up two of her cabinet positions, freeing her up to potentially take on a prime minister-like post the party wants to create for her.

Aung San Suu Kyi is constitutionally barred from the presidency but has promised to rule the country through President Htin Kyaw, a longtime friend and confidant sworn in last month.

The longtime democracy leader initially took four cabinet positions in the new government, which is dominated bay her National League for Democracy Party, or NLD. But on Monday the NLD announced she was dropping two of the portfolios.

NLD lawmakers are trying to pass a bill that would create a powerful "state advisor" position for the Nobel Peace laureate, in an attempt to formalize her new leadership roles.

The bill is expected to clear the parliament by later this week. But the move could be rejected by the military, which has effective veto power and which views the move as unconstitutional.

The NLD came to power following a landslide November election that ushered in the country's first civilian-led government in more than five decades.

But the military still remains a political force -- it holds 25 percent of all parliamentary seats, plus the key ministerial posts of home affairs and defense, enough to give it veto power over any proposed constitutional changes.

Myanmar's constitution -- drafted by the military junta before turning over power to a quasi-civilian government in 2010 -- bars anyone with a foreign-born spouse or children from becoming president -- a clause that applies to Aung San Suu Kyi, since her late husband was British, as are her two sons.
Health officials in Liberia say a five-year-old boy has tested positive for Ebola just days after his mother died of the virus.

A 30-year-old woman died of Ebola in Monrovia last week, months after Liberia was declared free of the virus. Her death followed a recent flare-up that took the lives of at least four people in neighboring Guinea.

Deputy Health Minister Tolbert Nyenswah, who is also head of Liberia's Ebola Incident Management System, said the latest flare-up has been traced to Guinea. But he said unlike in the past, Liberias health system has the capacity to deal with the flare-up.

Liberia has confirmed another case of the Ebola virus disease, making it two cases  the index case of the deceased mother, 30 years old and now her five-year-old son is in the Ebola treatment unit in Monrovia. But this is something that we are comfortable dealing with right now because of the capacity that country has to respond through our Incident Management System, he said.

Neighboring Guinea announced new cases of Ebola last month, and Liberia immediately closed its border with Guinea. It also dispatched health teams to various border crossings.

Nyenswah said From our investigation, there is strong indication that this is an imported case linked to the cluster in Guinea. The border is so porous. There are some that are official; there are some that are unofficial. And so this is the situation we are faced with."

He said health officials were able to track down all those who might have had close contacts with the deceased woman.

In less than 24 hours, our system was able to pick up the clinic that she went to and died. We were able to pick up health care workers who had contacts. They are under voluntary, precautionary observation. We were able to pick up the family members that she was visiting in Liberia. All of them are in the ETU (Ebola Treatment Unit), he said.

Nyenswah said the government has urged Liberians not to panic and to continue to take the preventive measures put in place at the height of the epidemic.

Report sick people; report dead bodies; hand-washing. In as much we were Ebola free, we didnt let our guard down. We are still applying heightened surveillance, vigilance and testing every sick people and dead bodies, Nyenswah said.
In a city known for violence, Fati Abubakar walks the streets of Maiduguri armed with a camera. Her mission: to rebuild the reputation of the Borno State capital, widely known as the birthplace of the brutal Boko Haram insurgency.

Since last September, the volunteer aid worker has taken pictures of people, interviewed them and posted the results on social media. She calls her project Bits of Borno.

Its everyday life in Borno State, something you dont usually see, Abubakar told VOA in an interview in Nigerias capital Abuja.

After years of deadly gun and bomb attacks, many Nigerians see Borno State and its capital Maiduguri as synonymous with Boko Haram. Much of the Borno countryside is unsafe, and the insurgents have effectively razed several of the states major towns.

In Maiduguri, the militants have bombed and shot their way through churches, mosques, bus stations and marketplaces, and last year made an unsuccessful attempt to overrun the city.

All told, more than 20,000 people are thought to have died in the groups seven-year quest to impose strict Islamic law in Nigerias north.

But Abubakar remembers growing up in a Maiduguri different from the one she lives in today. It was the kind of city, she said, where neighbors shared meals and watched each others children.

The way people view us as bomb blast city or something ... I want them to see us as people who are stronger because of what happened, Abubakar said.

Her subjects range from market traders, to billiards enthusiasts, to members of the self-defense groups that patrol Maiduguris streets. She posts their portraits, along with brief snippets from their interview, on the projects Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.

Social media, she said, is the ideal way to reach Nigerias large and far-flung population.

We dont really have a reading culture in Nigeria, Abubakar said. I felt like photography will ... show exactly what I want to show without saying much. It just will speak for itself.

While security has improved in recent months, attacks occur occasionally on Maiduguris outskirts and the city remains tense.

Abubakar sometimes faces suspicion from people she tries to interview and has been questioned by the soldiers who man checkpoints and patrol Maiduguris streets. But she says many people are relieved to talk about the stresses of life in the city, even to a stranger.

Its more like, 'I am just tired of this burden of carrying around what Im feeling, I would like to tell someone.' So people are very open, Abubakar said.

Maiduguri used to be a trading hub for Nigerias northeast and for merchants crossing into Nigeria from nearby Chad, Cameroon and Niger. But years of violence have driven away residents and traders alike.

For months, the citys airport was shut down, leaving a single treacherous road as the only way to reach the city.

Thats taken a toll on Maiduguris culture and neighborhoods, Abubakar said. Buildings are being neglected, and people are forgetting how life in Nigerias second-largest state once was.

When you take a picture of a building and you post it and people say, Oh this reminds of my childhood, this is where I used to live, Abubakar said. I think its helping people see what it was, what it is and, hopefully, what it will be.
Two weeks after the terrorist attacks in Brussels, U.S. President Barack Obama and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg marked the tragedy while reinforcing the importance of staying focused on the fight against the so-called Islamic State militant group.



This is obviously a tumultuous time in the world. Europe is a focal point of a lot of these stresses and strains in the global security system, said Obama, sitting alongside the secretary general in the Oval Office Monday.

In remarks to reporters following talks with Stoltenberg, the U.S. president praised NATO's contributions in countering Islamic State, particularly the alliances efforts to train and assist local forces in Iraq and Jordan.



Stoltenberg reaffirmed NATOs support for other countries in the region to stabilize and fight IS. He said "different ways of building local capacity is high on our agenda in NATO."

The two leaders also discussed Afghanistan, with Obama calling NATO an extraordinary partner in bringing stability to the South Asian country.



"The coalition there continues to focus on assisting the government and the Afghan National Security Forces, building up capacity, pushing back against the Taliban and helping Afghans to provide security for their own country and hopefully being able to arrive at some sort of political settlement that will end decades of conflict and violence there," Obama said.



Afghanistan will be one of the focal points of the July NATO summit in Warsaw, Poland. Obama noted, We expect to be able to follow through on the pledges we made to continue to support the Afghan people.

Ukraine conflict

Monday's talks also centered on the Ukrainian conflict. President Obama said the United States stands by its commitment to NATO allies.

"We continue to be united in supporting Ukraine, in the wake of Russian incursions into Ukrainian territory. We continue to work in the training and assist fashion in helping support Ukraine develop its military capabilities, defensively," he said.

The president said the United States continues to provide reassurance to frontline NATO allies that Article 5 means something, while working with Russia to try to find a resolution to the Ukrainian conflict and "reduce tensions and the dangers of potential escalation."

On the 67th anniversary of the creation of NATO, the American leader took time to praise the alliance, calling it a "linchpin" and a "cornerstone of our collective defense and U.S. security policy.

The visit comes as Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump continues to question continued U.S. involvement in NATO. Last week, the billionaire businessman called the organization "obsolete" and said he would be fine if it broke up.



During Mondays White House press briefing, Press Secretary Josh Earnest called Trumps comments ill-advised.



When asked whether Obama felt the need to reassure Stoltenberg following Trumps remarks, Earnest said, I am not sure that was necessary, quite frankly. President Obama has spoken at length about how important the U.S.-NATO relationship is.
Governments around the world are vowing to chase down the wealthy, powerful and famous who set up offshore bank accounts to hide their assets and possibly evade taxes, the immediate reaction to a massive investigative journalists' report.

What we see is that its very easy for people that want to hide their identity to set up secret shell companies in a variety of jurisdictions. And thats essentially to hide their connection to the money, said Maggie Murphy of anti-corruption campaign group Transparency International.

The Kremlin denounced the disclosures, saying they were mostly aimed at Russian President Vladimir Putin, and claiming former U.S. State Department and Central Intelligence Agency officials helped analyze the 11.5 million documents leaked from Panama's Mossack Fonseca law firm.

Putin allegations

The report said Putin associates have funneled nearly $2 billion through offshore accounts over the years.

"This Putinophobia abroad has reached such a point that it is in fact taboo to say something good about Russia or about any actions by Russia or any Russian achievements," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Governments elsewhere scrambled to start investigations for possible tax evasion, with key political figures left to explain why they had created the offshore accounts named in the report by the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

A reporter for the consortium, Will Fitzgibbon, told VOA's Jim Randle on Monday, "Certainly the examples of illegality or even moral suspicion that we found were in the minority. I think the problem with this offshore system is that when you're creating hundreds of thousands of companies, even if a small percentage of those are using those companies to facilitate corruption or bribery, let alone smuggle drugs or weapons across the world, then that alone in itself is, in the eyes of I think many advocates, reasons to scrutinize the offshore world and potentially to enact reforms."



Pressure to resign

Iceland Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson is under pressure to resign after the documents showed he and his wife, Anna Sigurlaug Palsdottir, bought an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands in 2007.

Gunnlaugsson said the couple has not hidden any assets, but stormed out of an interview with a Swedish public broadcaster when pushed to explain the nature of the investment.

"It's like you are accusing me of something," he said.

Investigation requested

Ukrainian lawmakers demanded parliament investigate allegations that President Petro Poroshenko moved his confectionery company, Roshen, to the British Virgin Islands in August 2014 to avoid taxes at a time when there was a peak in fighting between Kyiv's forces and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

A spokeswoman for British Prime Minister David Cameron declined to comment on whether his family had money in offshore accounts set up by his late father, Ian Cameron. She called it "a private matter."

The Australia Tax Office said it is investigating more than 800 clients of the Panama law firm for possible tax evasion.

One tax official said, "The message is clear: Taxpayers can't rely on these secret arrangements being kept secret, and we will act on any information that is provided to us."

India's Finance Minister Arun Jaitley declared anyone who did not take advantage of a government offer last year to disclose hidden offshore accounts would now find "such adventurism extremely costly."

Investigations opened

Norwegian, Austrian and Swedish authorities started investigations of key banks to determine their role in creating offshore accounts, while France said it would review the taxes of individuals mentioned and assess penalties for unpaid taxes.

French President Francois Hollande called the leaked documents "good news," saying, "investigations will be carried out, cases will be opened and trials will be held."

The U.S. Justice Department said it is reviewing the journalists' report and "takes very seriously all credible allegations of high-level, foreign corruption that might have a link to the United States or the U.S. financial system."

An anonymous source provided the millions of documents involving 214,488 companies and 14,153 clients of the Mossack Fonseca law firm to Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, which in turn engaged the investigative journalists' group to work on the project.

The Munich-based newspaper said the amount of data it received last year is several times larger than the U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks in 2010, and the secret intelligence documents given to journalists by Edward Snowden in 2013.

Panama law firm

The law firm at the center of the leak has strongly denied breaking any laws.

We are a company with almost 40 years in the national market and the international market, and we have never been found guilty of absolutely anything, said Ramon Fonseca, co-founder of Mossack Fonseca.

But campaigners want further investigations.

If it is money laundering, if it is sanctions busting, if it is tax evasion that is definitely illegal. One of the things that we have seen is that there are over 23 clients of this company are on international sanctions lists, said Robert Palmer of Global Witness.

Fonseca told the French news agency AFP that leaking the information to journalists is "a crime, a felony."

"Privacy is a fundamental human right that is being eroded more and more in the modern world. Each person has a right to privacy, whether they are a king or a beggar," the law firm co-founder said.

Putting money in offshore accounts is not necessarily illegal, and can be used to establish legal tax shelters or ease international business deals.

But the report said the documents show banks, law firms and other offshore players often fail to follow legal requirements to make sure their clients are not involved in criminal enterprises, tax dodging or political corruption.

The report covered transactions from 1977 through 2015.

ICIJ says these documents:

Reveal the offshore holdings of 140 politicians and public officials around the world, including 12 current and former world leaders. Among them are the prime ministers of Iceland and Pakistan, the presidents of Ukraine and Argentina, and the king of Saudi Arabia.

Include the names of 33 people and companies blacklisted by the U.S. government because of evidence they were involved in wrongdoing, such as doing business with Mexican drug traffickers, terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah, or rogue nations such as North Korea and Iran.

Show how major banks have driven the creation of hard-to-trace companies in offshore havens. More than 500 banks, their subsidiaries and their branches have created more than 15,000 offshore companies for their customers through Mossack Fonseca.

The Panamanian firm told The Washington Post it follows "both the letter and spirit" of financial laws that vary throughout the world.

It said in nearly 40 years of operation it has never been charged with criminal wrongdoing.

In an interview with VOA Sunday, Michael Hudson, a senior editor at ICIJ, said, "This is really the shadow side of our global economy  the money that flows around mostly unchecked, undetected.

"You can't say in every single case that someone is doing something wrong, or that they're hiding improper practices. But it certainly raises lots of questions about transparency when you have politicians, and especially top leaders of countries, moving their holdings offshore and using offshore entities to obscure what they're doing," Hudson said.

The report lists the British Virgin Islands as the most popular offshore tax haven, with Panama, the Bahamas and the Seychelles next.

ICIJ's report also sheds new light on a 1983 British gold heist that has been called the "crime of the century."

Gold heist

Seven thousand gold bars, cash and diamonds were stolen from the Brink's-Mat warehouse at London's Heathrow Airport, and much of the money was never recovered.

The report said a Mossack Fonseca document shows an official at a company the law firm created 16 months after the robbery was "apparently involved in the management of the money from the robbery.

The company itself has not been used illegally, but it could be the company invested money through the bank accounts and properties that was illegitimately sourced."

The law firm denies it helped conceal the proceeds of the London theft.
This years joint military exercises between the Philippines and the United States are underway with Japans Self-Defense forces observing for the first time and scores of Australian troops taking part in some special operations activities.

While the Philippines regional partners, which have been vocal about Chinas activities in the South China Sea, are playing a more noticeable role, officials have emphasized the exercises are not aimed at any one country.

Not aimed at China

Philippine exercise director, Vice Admiral Alexander Lopez, reiterated that message to reporters after the opening ceremony.

But this is not. This is not. Please believe us. This is actually our purpose in coming up with this capability. The Philippines is the least capable armed forces in the region and the U.S. being a big brother is a big help here, he said.

Lopez said Manila welcomed training with the Americans advanced technology.

US wants stability

U.S. Marine Lieutenant General John Toolan, who is heading U.S. forces for the drills, said Washington wants to see stability in the region, including averting a crisis in the South China Sea. He said understanding whats going on in the sea is a critical aspect of the drills.

"We don't have as good a picture of what's going on on the seas, 24-7, he said. So we've made some investments in some equipment, some radars etc., but we've gotta have the capability to make sure that we've got good coverage.

Officials from both countries said they also want to strengthen humanitarian and disaster response.

Thousands of troops

The Philippine military said about 8,500 U.S. and Philippine troops are taking part in the exercises called Balikatan, or shoulder to shoulder. Officials added that between 80-95 Australian troops would also participate in a special operations exercise for the first time, with eight Japanese self-defense officers observing.

Philippine assistant exercise director Major General Rodolfo Santiago said the special operations drills with Australia joining in would involve safeguarding an oil rig.He did not specify in which waters, but he confirmed they would not be in the countrys only natural gas operation in waters off the South China Sea.

The Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam have overlapping claims in the resource-rich, heavily traversed sea. China has said it has indisputable sovereignty over practically the entire sea. Over the past two years, it has built-out formations on artificial islands capable of docking large vessels and landing military craft.

In 2013, the Philippines filed a case with an international tribunal questioning the legality of what it calls Chinas excessive claims in the sea. China rejects arbitration and is not participating in the case. A decision is expected in the next few months.

Japan does not have any claims in the South China Sea, but it has its own dispute with China over a chain of islands in the East China Sea and it continues to fly in airspace China has deemed an Air Defense Identification Zone.

Freedom of navigation

In recent months, Australia has been vocal about supporting the arbitration case as well as freedom of navigation excursions into disputed areas, with defense officials saying there has been an uptick in radioed warnings from China to its military craft flying over disputed formations.

Geopolitical analyst Richard Heydarian of De LaSalle University in Manila said the more visible involvement of other major powers is in anticipation of the arbitral tribunals decision.

Analysts anticipate a partial ruling in favor of the Philippines, and Heydarian said enforcement of the binding decision would fall on those who could best monitor the disputed sea.

The signal to China is very clear that the rest of the region, U.S. and its allies are preparing for any contingency.And that the Philippines, the country that has the most toxic relationship with China in the region, is also getting maximum possible help and assistance from the U.S. and major allies like Australia and Japan.

Officials said a high-mobility artillery rocket capable of firing surface to air or surface to surface munitions would be tested during the drills, with U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter expected to watch during a visit to the Philippines next week.

The joint exercises will end on April 15.
With a Kremlin spokesman promptly dismissing allegations of Russian President Vladimir Putin's involvement in large-scale money laundering, Russian state media offered little, if any, coverage of the massive journalistic report that has dominated headlines worldwide.

Yet online, Russian opposition voices attempted to grapple with just what impact the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) investigation might have on the Russian political scene.

Leonid Volkov, an opposition blogger, took on state media journalists for their notable silence in the wake of the ICIJ report.

"The investigation has shown the complete absence of shame, conscience, and common sense among 95 percent of Russian journalists," noted Volkov in a post to his Twitter account.

Others commented that the ICIJ report  while remarkable  had simply scratched the surface of corrupt dealings.

"It's important to understand: this investigation is based on just one Panamanian firm," wrote Russian opposition politician and anti-corruption crusader Alexey Navalny in a post to his blog.

"So it's just the tip of the iceberg of offshore holdings by bureaucrats, and just a small piece," wrote Navalny, calling for Russians implicated in the investigation to face possible jail time.

Thefts matter

Elena Panfilova, the head of the anti-corruption organization Transparency International, said the Panama Papers reminded her of a favorite phrase of her grandmother's growing up in Russia.

"In the end," wrote Panfilova on her Facebook account, "the truth always comes out."

Vladimir Varfolomeev, a journalist with popular Echo of Moscow radio station, sought to remind Russians inured to corruption among the Russian elite that the findings were, indeed, significant.

"You say that millions and billions don't make an impression?" asked Varfolomeev. "It seems to me that it's important to remember one simple thing: Presidents or ministers who steal even a few thousand are still criminals."

Jokes, too, centered on the alleged role of Sergey Roldugin, a cellist and childhood friend of Putin's, implicated in the offshore schemes.

A widely shared video by Current Time TV, an online news service, jointly produced by VOA and RFE/RL combined a taped solo performance of Roldugin playing the cello with a speech by the Russian leader proclaiming an end to offshore holdings.

Political ramifications?

But Dmitry Gudkov, a rare voice of opposition in the state Duma, insisted that  in exposing Russian elites' shady financial practices  the report had elicited, in his words, "panic in the Kremlin."

"After this, it's clear that no quiet old age awaits the kleptocracy: their money will be seized, and with it, a widening ring that ends in handcuffs overseas," Gudkov wrote online.

Yet it was Volkov, the blogger, who suggested the ICIJ report might prove an ominous development for Russia's own internal politics.

Writing on Facebook, he noted that while the elite in other countries indicated in the Panama Paper report might face prosecutions, scandals, or perhaps even no charges at all, experience told him the news would ricochet in Russia in negative ways: The Kremlin, Volkov wrote, will "launch several criminal cases against the opposition and ban something on the Internet."



WATCH: Muscovites React to 'Panama Papers' Implicating Putin
The United States targeted a senior al-Qaida leader in an airstrike Sunday in northwestern Syria, the latest in a series of so-called decapitation strikes aimed at terrorist organizations.

Abu Firas al-Suri was described by Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook as a Syrian national and a legacy al-Qaida member who fought in Afghanistan and worked with al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden.

Al-Suri was also said to be a senior member of al-Qaidas Syria affiliate, Jabhat al Nusra, serving as the groups spokesman.

Cook said al-Suri was attending a high-level meeting at the time of the strike. He said several enemy combatants were killed but that defense officials were still trying to determine if al-Suri was one of them.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has been tracking the fighting in Syria, said earlier that al-Suri, along with his son, were killed in an airstrike in a village northwest of the city Idlib.

Other leaders targeted

The U.S. has previously targeted Jabhat al Nusra and other al Qaida-linked groups in Syria, though most strikes have concentrated on the Islamic State terror group.

Weve been targeting al-Qaida leaders for some time, as you know and that has always been a legitimate target, Cook told reporters at the Pentagon.

Al Nusra has its ties to al-Qaida, and that is something that weve been very up front about for years and continues to be an ongoing active part of our efforts, he said.

The Pentagon also confirmed Monday the death of another senior leader of an al-Qaida-linked group.

As first reported by VOA, al Shababs Hassan Ali Dhoore was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Somalia late Thursday.

Dhoore had led al Shababs Amniyat, the terror groups elite assassination force.

U.S. defense officials said Dhoore had been behind attacks that led to the deaths of three , and that his death would be a significant blow to al Shababs operational planning.

Defending 'decapitation' strikes

So-called decapitation strikes  strikes targeting key leaders of terror groups  have at times been criticized for failing to stem the tide of violence and for sometimes making such groups even more radical. But the Pentagon defended the tactic Monday.

We have seen success on the battlefield on the part of the local forces were supporting, both Iraqi and Syrian, according to Cook.

I dont know how much you want to attribute to the fact that ISIL leadership has been undermined by our airstrikes but we certainly feel like that is making a difference, he said.
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharifs family has defended ownership of their offshore companies and property, denying any wrongdoing in their development.

The defense came after the leak of a vast trove of documents and other data from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca revealed, among others, the names of Sharifs two sons and a daughter, with the records showing they owned London real state through offshore companies.



"Those apartments are ours and those offshore companies are also ours, and all of them registered under our names, the prime ministers son, Hussain Nawaz Sharif, said in interviews to Pakistani television stations.

"There is nothing wrong with it and I have never concealed them, nor do I need to do that. he added, saying he left Pakistan in 1992 and is therefore not a resident, not required to declare assets under the Pakistani tax laws.

He was speaking on behalf of his brother Hasan Nawaz and sister Maryam Safadar.

The Sharif family owns a network of businesses, including steel, sugar, paper mills and at home and extensive property abroad. But it has long been accused of tax evasion and secreting away money to offshore accounts.

Though Sharifs sons moved to London many years ago, they have been running family businesses from abroad.

Maryam is in Pakistan and many believe she is being groomed to take over leadership of her fathers political party.

Corruption and misrule allegations engulfed the two previous elected governments Sharif headed in the 1990s, ultimately leading to his ouster.

He lived in exile in Saudi Arabia after dismissal of his last government in 1999 and returned seven years later to rejoin politics.Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N party won 2013 national elections, allowing him to become the prime minister of Pakistan for a third time.But allegations of corruption and misrule engulf the current Sharif administration.

Wealth stashed abroad



Opposition Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) party leader Imran Khan called for the countrys anti-corruption body and tax authorities to investigate the matter.

Our stance vindicated again as Sharifs wealth stashed abroad exposed, Khan said, demanding the national election commission to take action against the prime minister for concealing property.

"All their assets are legal and established through white money, federal information minister Pervez Rashid told reporters while responding to Khan's assertions.

The "Panama Papers" leak contained names of 20 other Pakistani businessmen and politicians, including slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and her party's senior member, former interior minister Rehman Malik.
Somalia's central government and officials from the semi-autonomous Puntland region have agreed on a plan to revise the elections system after this years voting, a move that could ease decades of political instability and conflict.

The current clan-based formula, still in place for choosing the next president and parliament sometime this August, tentatively would be scrapped and replaced by a one-person, one-vote system for the 2020 elections.

In a statement to the media, Somali Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke welcomed the proposed reform to the Horn of Africa nations electoral process.

For years, Somali governments have been constructed using the so-called 4.5 formula, a system that gives equal representation to the country's four major clans and a smaller number of posts to so-called minor clans.

Whether the formula is blame or not, the country has had a string of unstable governments that failed to win popularity or exert much authority.

It might be hard to fulfill some aspects of the new plan, said Ali Adawe, a Somali politician based in Nairobi. He said that a similar 2012 proposal involved changing how representatives would be chosen and that this latest deal appeared to contain several loopholes.

Independent analyst Abdiwahab Sheikh Abdisamad said it would be up to the next government to establish the one-person, one-vote process.

"One man, one vote can work in Somalia," he said. "It depends how the incoming government  how they work on it, how they reconcile the warring clans, how they are going to build the government institutions, how they are going to empower the electoral body and how they are going to strengthen the capacity of the Somali security apparatus."

Authorities in Puntland, one of Somalias most stable areas, said they were open to helping other regions and constituencies deal with security challenges during elections.

Still, many fear the political bickering, clan politics and the continued threat of al-Shabab militants may derail the electoral process and Somalias future.
Afghanistans Taliban announced Monday its deceased leader Mullah Omars elder son has assumed command of the insurgency in 15 out of the countrys 34 provinces.

A Taliban statement said Omars son, Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, also has been inducted into the powerful decision making leadership council that the group calls Rehbari Shura.

Reports of a power struggle within the Taliban had been circulating since the announcement last July that Omar was dead. The longtime Taliban leader actually died in 2013, but the secretive group concealed his demise during months and years of fighting with Afghan forces and the U.S.-led coalition supporting them.

The Taliban also inducted Omars brother Mullah Abdul Manan Omeri in the leadership council, according to the statement.

Both the son and brother of the deceased leader had refused to pledge allegiance to his successor, Mullah Akthar Mansoor, splintering the Taliban into competing factions.

However, Yaqoob and Omeri were later persuaded by key Taliban and religious leaders to end differences in return for the key posts they now occupy.

Mondays announcement is likely to further consolidate Mansors leadership and his control over the Taliban as it prepares to launch its annual spring offensive later this month.

Omar had been the supreme commander and spiritual leader of the Taliban since 1996. Afghan officials asserted he fled to Pakistan and dropped out of sight after the 2001 U.S. invasion that ousted the Islamist group from power.

Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the support of the United States and China, have been trying to arrange direct peace talks between the Kabul government and the Taliban, and an initial meeting was expected to take place earlier in Islamabad.

But the insurgent group refused to attend and Mansour, has instead recently asked Taliban fighters to prepare for a decisive battle this summer to take advantage of battlefield victories over the past year.

Mullah Omars family was accommodated just days after a senior leader, Mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir, declared allegiance to Mansoor.

Zakir also was among influential leaders who earlier refused to accept Mansoor as Omars successor.
For the second year in a row, the iHeartRadio Awards became the iHeartTaylorSwift show.



Not only did Swift claim three prizes, including album of the year, but her bestie and her boyfriend took home trophies, too.



Swift, who swept the awards last year, won the first and last prize Sunday night - female artist and album of the year. In between, she claimed best tour honors for her star-studded "1989 World Tour,'' thanking boyfriend Calvin Harris (real name: Adam Wiles) from the stage.



"For the first time, I had the most amazing person to come home to when the spotlight went out and when the crowds were all gone,'' Swift said. "So I want to thank my boyfriend Adam for that.''



Harris won dance artist of the year. Gomez took the "biggest triple threat'' award.



Bono and the Edge from U2 accepted the show's Innovator Award, presented by last year's winner, Pharrell Williams.



"The thing that might be the most innovative about our band is we are a real band,'' Edge said. "We are still in our high school band.''



Song of the year went to Adele for "Hello.'' She accepted via video from a performance in Birmingham, England. Other winners at the fan-voted show included Fetty Wap (best new artist), Pitbull (Latin artist of the year) and Chris Brown (R&B artist of the year). All three men also performed during the show.



Brown thanked "everybody who supported me through all the worst times in my life and the positive times in my life.''



"I tend to not have a filter sometimes, and I go off on a lot of people,'' said Brown, who has been dogged by legal troubles since pleading guilty to felony charges in 2009 for beating then-girlfriend Rihanna. "But the music stays the same.''



There were as many performances as awards presented during the three-hour show, hosted by Jason Derulo and broadcast live on TNT and TBS from the Forum in Inglewood, California.



Justin Bieber was the first to perform, showing off his new dreadlocks during a mash-up of "Love Yourself'' and "Company.'' He returned to the stage twice as a winner, claiming male artist of the year and sharing in the dance song of the year award with Diplo and Skrillex for "Where Are U Now.''



Bieber thanked his fans for standing by him through what he described as "tough times.''



"It's just about our growth and learning,'' he said.



Meghan Trainor performed her new single, "No.'' Demi Lovato sang the heart wrenching "Stone Cold'' while Brad Paisley accompanied her on guitar. Iggy Azalea unveiled her new song, "Team.'' Zayn Malik made his solo awards-show performance debut, performing "Like I Would'' from his new album, "Mind of Mine.''



Other performers included DNCE, The Weeknd, show host Jason Derulo and Maroon 5, which was named duo or group of the year.


The U.S. released two inmates from its Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba on Monday, sending them to the west African nation of Senegal.

"The United States is grateful to the government of Senegal for its humanitarian gesture and willingness to support ongoing U.S. efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility," a Pentagon statement said.

The two men, identified as Libyans Omar Khalif Mohammed Abu Baker and Salem Abdu Salam Ghereby, had been held at the prison for 14 years without charges.

Both Khalif, who lost a leg from a 1998 landmine explosion, and Ghereby were opponents of the deposed Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi. Khalif was apprehended in Karachi in early 2002, while Ghereby was detained in late 2001 along the Afghan-Pakistani border. Six U.S. agencies reviewed their cases before deciding to release them to Senegal, the 26th country to agree to accept the U.S. detainees.



Their release cuts the Guantanamo prison population to 89 as U.S. President Barack Obama continues his efforts to close Guantanamo before he leaves office next January, an effort opposed by Republican lawmakers in Congress.



In all, 779 prisoners have been held at the facility, established to hold suspected terrorists as the U.S. launched military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

As Monday's prisoner release was announced, the U.S. State Department reiterated Obama's contention that "the continued operation of the detention facility weakens our national security by draining resources, damaging our relationships with key allies and partners, and serving as a propaganda tool for violent extremists."

U.S. news agencies reported last week that U.S. defense officials intend to soon release another 10 or so Guantanamo prisoners.

Human Rights Watch said Monday's release "shows meaningful progress" in closing the prison.
The U.S. military says it seized a cache of weapons it believes was being transported from Iran to Shi'ite Houthi rebels fighting for control of Yemen.

The USS Sirocco, a coastal patrol ship, confiscated the weapons in the Arabian Sea on March 28 from a small craft known as a dhow. The seized weapons included 1,500 Kalashnikov rifles, 200 rocket-propelled grenade launchers and 21 .50-caliber machine guns.

The U.S. Navy said the dhow and its crew were allowed to depart after the weapons were seized.

The weapons seizure marked the third time in two months a shipment to Houthi fighters has been blocked, with earlier seizures by Australian and French sailors.

We obviously are concerned about this development, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters Monday about the latest weapons seizure.

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook added the weapons seizure by the U.S. Navy is an indication of the kind of vigilance that the U.S. military will maintain in that part of the world.

But Cook added there is no indication Iran is ramping up its engagement in potentially destabilizing activities.

Thats always been a concern of ours, he said, adding "I don't think our picture of Iran has changed all that much.

A Saudi-led, U.S.-supported coalition is fighting in Yemen against Shi'ite rebels and their allies. The rebels have denied receiving support from Iran.
What if a street lamp could alert the authorities when the bulb goes out so they could fix it? Or, what if a smartphone app could let drivers know which streets are flooded? Some cities are already rolling out such technology, which systematizes the way they manage everything from crime to health care to trash collection.

Now, one local government in Vietnam is looking to hitch itself to this smart cities bandwagon.

Binh Duong province recently invited experts to the Smart City Summit to generate ideas on how it could govern more efficiently through innovation.

Some discussed self-driving cars, which could be folded into public transit, so that residents would give up private vehicles and shrink their carbon footprints. Others suggested software that would tell ambulance drivers which nearby hospitals have beds available or doctors specializing in treatment the patient requires.

The theme was to mechanize more public services. In this way, cities become smarter, like living organisms that can respond to residents needs. Functions once performed by bureaucrats can increasingly be transferred to robots and devices.

Beyond public services, a smart urban blueprint would tackle construction.

Pham Tuan Khoa, a green building services manager at the engineering firm Tebodin, noted that Singapore set a target for 80 percent of buildings to be green by 2030.

That might not be realistic for less affluent Vietnam, but Khoa said it could start small, by adding insulation to buildings to improve energy efficiency, or eventually by installing lights that dim when they detect sufficient sunlight in a room.

People should be aware, what theyre doing is not good for the environment, he said on the sidelines of the conference. So from my perspective, the most easy way to come at it is to create an incentive from the government. If the government pushes top-down, it becomes a standard, it becomes a must.

Binh Duong has signed a memo of understanding with the Dutch city Eindhoven as a consultant on smart development.

Peter Portheine, director of the Dutch think tank Brainport Development, said he has started to see some similarities between the two regions. For example, Eindhoven transitioned from manufacturing to a knowledge economy that runs on automation, which is what Binh Duong is now hoping to do.

But it also has a greenfield advantage, in that Vietnam remains an emerging market less bogged down by legacy systems and infrastructure.

Binh Duong doesnt have to invent the wheel itself, it can share many experiences from Eindhoven, but also from other regions in Asia, Portheine said in a speech at the summit, which was co-organized by the Dutch government. So we can bring together the best of many worlds to make sure that we are not making the same mistakes as we did in Eindhoven.

Tapping into smart innovation could get Binh Duong People's Committee chairman Tran Thanh Liem closer to his goal of creating a high-tech destination.

After nearly 20 years of reestablishment, industrialization, and modernization, Binh Duong has turned from an agricultural province to an industrial one, Liem said in the keynote speech.

Binh Duong is facing some stiff competition, however. Neighboring Ho Chi Minh City is the countrys commercial engine. The central city of Danang also wants to be a tech hub and boasts a port to facilitate trade. Then theres Hanoi, which receives twice as many foreign-investment projects.

But Binh Duong has still become a top contributor to Vietnams gross domestic product by actively courting foreign investors to its many industrial parks. The city has also experimented with reforms to improve the living environment, creating a new center now dubbed the Binh Duong New City.
Most villagers in Mashonaland West province are now surviving on piece jobs, selling their once-treasured property while the elderly are complaining that young people are grabbing all the drought relief aid in the region hit by a crippling drought.

Some villagers in the Mhangura, Doma, Kesi and Umboe communal lands say life is unbearable as serious food shortages are forcing them to sell property including land, scotch-carts, cattle and goats in order to buy food for their families.

One of the villagers George Phiri of Mhangura says the situation is critical in the mining region, where villagers are struggling to get food.

Another villager, Brian Tsoto, who is one of the lucky youth that got a piece of land when Zimbabwe embarked on its agrarian reforms in 2000, says it is disheartening that he is surviving on temporary jobs yet he has a piece of farm currently lying idle.

He says it is difficult to till the land due to the devastating drought, a situation that has forced him to depend on other villagers for food and basic necessities if he not doing some temporary work.

Seventy-five year-old Sekuru Handifari Mudyiwa of Hurungwe communal lands, says his family is now depending on the scarce state food handouts as most fields were reduced to dust bowls by the dry spell.

Indications are that some Zanu PF activists are grabbing food aid from elderly people, who can now hardly have a decent meal per day.

One of the affected elderly people is frail Sekuru Mudyiwa, who claims that his free food ration was recently snatched by suspected Zanu PF activists under the watchful eye of relief aid agencies.

Elderly Benjani Banda, who migrated from Malawi in 1960s and worked the whole of his life in the mines, is in the same predicament.

Most people that are supposed to be engaged in farming are finding it hard to cultivate crops under such difficult conditions due to lack of water.

Munashe Mukototsi, who depends on farming for survival, says he has not been able to grow crops in the last two years because of drought.

He says he is now doing piece jobs in order to generate money for his household. Phiri says the future looks bleak for most villagers. Some villagers now believe that the only way for them to get out of this misery is to change the current Zanu PF government.

Mukototsi supports this idea though he believes that this is an uphill task.

Zimbabwe says at least 4 million people need drought relief aid as a result of the devastating drought already declared as a state of disaster by President Robert Mugabe.
French President Francois Hollande said Monday France will launch an investigation into French tax evaders using offshore accounts to hide their wealth, as revealed in a massive leak of information on global figures.

A team of international journalists, working with leaked documents from a Panamanian law firm, has published some of its findings into the offshore financial dealings of the rich and famous, and politically-connected, as well as the leaders of some countries. The data has become known as the Panama Papers.

Hollande said "investigations will be carried out, cases will be opened and trials will be held."

An anonymous source provided the 11.5 million documents from Panama's Mossack Fonseca law firm to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ); a Washington-based organization.

The British government on Monday asked for a copy of the Panama Papers so it can do its own investigation, according to a Reuters report.

Ramon Fonseca, one of the founders of the Panamanian firm, told the French News Agency the leaking of the information to the journalists is "a crime, a felony."

"Privacy is a fundamental human right that is being eroded more and more in the modern world. Each person has a right to privacy, whether they are a king or a beggar," Fonseca said.

Tax dodging



Parking money in offshore accounts is not necessarily illegal, and can be used to establish legal tax shelters or ease international business deals. But the report said "the documents show that banks, law firms and other offshore players have often failed to follow legal requirements that they make sure their clients are not involved in criminal enterprises, tax dodging or political corruption."

The Kremlin last week did not answer questions posed by the journalists about the transactions, and it publicly accused the group of preparing a misleading "information attack" on the Russian leader and people close to him.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is a nonprofit organization based in Washington, DC.



Bigger than WikiLeaks



Sueddeutsche Zeitung, based in Munich, said Sunday it received the data from an anonymous source more than a year ago. It says the amount of data it obtained is several times larger than the U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks in 2010, and the secret intelligence documents given to journalists by Edward Snowden in 2013.

Australia's tax office told Reuters Monday it is investigating more than 800 wealthy clients of the Panama law firm for possible tax evasion.



Along with the links to Putin, ICIJ says these documents:

- Reveal the offshore holdings of 140 politicians and public officials around the world, including 12 current and former world leaders. Among them are the prime ministers of Iceland and Pakistan, the presidents of Ukraine and Argentina, and the king of Saudi Arabia.

- Include the names of at least 33 people and companies blacklisted by the U.S. government because of evidence that theyd been involved in wrongdoing, such as doing business with Mexican drug lords, terrorist organizations like Hezbollah or rogue nations like North Korea and Iran.

- Show how major banks have driven the creation of hard-to-trace companies in offshore havens. More than 500 banks, their subsidiaries and their branches have created more than 15,000 offshore companies for their customers through Mossack Fonseca.

The Panamanian firm told The Washington Post it follows "both the letter and spirit" of financial laws, which vary throughout the world. It said that in nearly 40 years of operation it has never been charged with criminal wrongdoing.

"This is really the shadow side of our global economy - the money that flows around mostly unchecked, undetected," Michael Hudson, a senior editor at ICIJ, said in an interview with VOA's Michael Lipin Sunday. "You can't say in every single case that someone is doing something wrong, or that they're hiding improper practices. But it certainly raises lots of questions about transparency when you have politicians, and especially top leaders of countries, moving their holdings offshore and using offshore entities to obscure what they're doing."

BVI tax haven



The report lists the British Virgin Islands as the most popular offshore tax haven, with one out of every two companies in Mossack Fonseca's files being incorporated there. Panama, the Bahamas and the Seychelles are next on the list.

ICIJ's report also sheds new light on a 1983 British gold heist that has been called the "Crime of the Century."

Robbers stole nearly 7,000 gold bars from the Brink's-Mat warehouse at London's Heathrow Airport, along with cash and diamonds. But the gold was smelted and sold, and much of the money was never recovered.

Epic heist link



The report said a Mossack Fonseca document shows that an official at a company the law firm created 16 months after the robbery was "apparently involved in the management of the money from the famous theft from Brink's-Mat in London. The company itself has not been used illegally, but it could be that the company invested money through the bank accounts and properties that was illegitimately sourced."

The law firm denied it helped conceal the proceeds of the London theft.



Michael Lipin contributed to this story
The National AIDS Council (NAC) says although it supports the use of post exposure prophylaxis in the prevention of HIV infection after exposure to the virus, it encourages the use of condoms and protected sex as a way of fighting against HIV/AIDS.

Post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) involves taking anti-HIV medications as soon as possible after one is exposed to the virus in order to reduce the chance of becoming HIV positive.

NAC spokesperson, Tadiwa Pfupa, told VOA Studio 7 in the event of sexual abuse such as rape, it is advisable to contact the nearest health center immediately so that one is put on post exposure prophylaxis to avoid contracting the virus.

"As the National Aids Council we continue to encourage people to use condoms rather than depend on post-exposure prophylaxis because it comes with a cost as these are medications that could be given to people who get infected by other means that are not deliberate, said Pfupa.

She added that although post-exposure prophylaxis has been proven to be very effective its important for people to prioritize the use of condoms for HIV prevention.

According to statistics from Zimbabwe National Statistics Office, 42% of women who reported rape cases over the last six years were found to be HIV.

Women's rights groups in the country are calling for easier access to post-exposure prophylaxis, especially for rape victims, as a way of reducing the number of women that end up contracting HIV/AIDS after they are raped or exposed to the virus.

Pfupa said her organisation will continue to educate people on the benefits of using protection in the form of condoms when having sex as way of fighting HIV/AIDS.

She said in cases where someone is exposed to HIV or is not certain of their partner's status it is imperative that they seek immediate medical attention as the post exposure prophylaxis should be taken within 72 hours after being exposed to the virus.
Government is widening its crackdown on social media platforms such as Facebook and the messaging WhatsApp arresting people for allegedly insulting and denigrating President Robert Mugabe.

President Mugabe at 92 is the worlds oldest president and jokes about his age are a staple in the country. But the state is now intensifying efforts to silence the critics by arresting them.

The latest victim is a 46 year-old Nyanga man, Ernest Matsapa, charged with the crime of criminal nuisance as defined in section 46 (2) (v) of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act Chapter 9.23.

Matsapa is alleged to have unlawfully and intentionally sent an audio and visual message on WhatsApp social media network platform group called Nyanga Free Range of which he is a member.

The audio and visual clip according to state papers has the impression that President Mugabe is incapacitated and has become a burden of the majority of people, including his family due to diminishing responsibility.

The state alleges that this is denigrating Mr. Mugabe and that, such material is likely to interfere with the ordinary comfort, convenience, peace or quiet of the public or any section of the public, or does any act which is likely to create a nuisance or obstruction.

The Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights or ZLHR says it has represented over 150 people charged with insulting Mr. Mugabe since 2010, though many cases were dropped.

In court, ZLHR has challenged the constitutionality of Section 33 of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act (Chapter 9:23) on several occasions, on the basis that it infringes on freedom of expression, particularly of a public figure, and one who must be subjected to scrutiny as a political candidate.

But Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who is also justice minister, has defended the law as necessary to prevent the breach of public order and public safety.

The Constitutional Court is yet to make a ruling. Lawyer Peggy Tavagadza of the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights old VOA Studio 7 that police do not have a legal leg to stand on. According to the ZLHR, Matsapa is the second Zimbabwean to be targeted this year by authorities.

In February, police officers in Bindura, Mashonaland Central province arrested Edson Chuwe, a school headmaster at Shamva Primary School, Edna Garwe who is employed as a typist at the same school and Leman Pwanyiwa, who serves as the secretary of Shamva Primary School Development Committee, and charged them for undermining the authority of or insulting President Mugabe in contravention of Section 33 (2) (b) of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act Chapter 9:23 or alternatively criminal nuisance as defined in Section 46 (2) (v) of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act Chapter 9:23.

The three school authorities were accused of mocking President Mugabe on social media after they purportedly posted satirical pictures of the ruling Zanu PF party leader on Facebook.

Police claimed that the trio had doctored some degrading photographs of President Mugabe using the school computer and had shared a message through WhatsApp, which read; Mr. President isnt it time to bid farewell to the people of Zimbabwe.
Junior doctors have refuted claims that they have reached an agreement with the Ministry of Health over revised contracts.

A statement attributed to Deputy Health Minister Aldrian Musiiwa over the weekend said the two sides have resolved their differences and the doctors were expected to go back to work.

But Dr. Martin Mlilo, who is one of the striking doctors, said the Friday meeting with state representatives did not produce any instant results because the doctors representatives only met with medical directors that were representing the Health Service Board.

So far we have spoken with the doctors on the ground and they are saying there is nothing like that, there was no agreement that was reached, Dr. Mlilo said.

The junior doctors were supposed to sign the adjusted contracts on March 1st but refused to do so claiming that the employment contracts violated their rights.

The strike by the junior doctors has resulted in the closure of the countrys two main referrals Harare Central and Mpilo Central hospitals outpatients departments. There was no comment from the Ministry of Health about the latest developments.

Dr. Mlilo says the junior doctors will only go back to work when their grievances are met.

What the junior doctors are demanding include open practice certificate to enable them to work in private hospitals and open their surgeries after the expiry of their two-year contracts with the government.

Dr. Mlilo added that the doctors also want to be allowed to belong to unions and enter into collective bargaining, among other issues.
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A large number of candidates play off against one another in the primaries. The media pay attention only to the Democrats and the Republicans, ignoring all the others, given that the system is devised so that they can never win.

The US primaries offer a depressing spectacle during which the main candidates do not seem to be aware that their reckless judgements and demagogic declarations will have consequences, both interior and exterior, if they should manage to become President.

Despite appearances, the Presidential function enjoys only limited power. Thus, it was obvious to everyone that President George W. Bush was incapable of governing, and that others did it for him. In just the same way, it is obvious that President Barack Obama is unable to inspire obedience in his own administration. For example, we can see men from the Pentagon waging a ferocious war against men from the CIA on the battlegrounds of Ukraine and Syria. In reality, the main power of the White House is not in commanding the armies, but in naming or confirming 14,000 senior civil servants  6,000 of whom are nominated when the new President takes office. Beyond appearances, the Presidency is therefore the guarantee of the maintenance of power by the governing class  which is why it is the power structure, and not the People, who decide the election.

Lets remember that, according to the Constitution (article 2, section 1), the President of the United States is not elected by universal suffrage, as the ignorant media pretend, but only by the 538 governing representatives. The Constitution states no obligation for these governors to nominate electors who correspond to the desires expressed by their citizens during the preceding ballot. Thus, in 2000, the Supreme Court of the United States refused to invalidate the electors designated by the governor of Florida, even when there was doubt concerning the desires expressed by the electors of that state.

Let us also remember that the primaries are not organised by the political parties, as in Europe, but by the states  under the responsibility of the governors and each according to his own system. The primaries are designed so that, in fine, the major parties each present a candidate for the Presidential function who is compatible with the interests of the governors. They are therefore organised on the Soviet model of democratic centralism in order to eliminate any individual with an original thought, or simply anyone who may risk questioning the system, to the profit of a consensual personality. In the case where the participating citizens are unable to nominate a candidate, or particularly if they manage to nominate one who is incompatible with the system, the party Convention which follows will decide, if necessary, by overturning the citizens vote.

The US primaries are therefore not a democratic moment, but on the contrary, a process which, on the one hand, allows the citizens to express themselves, while on the other, directs them to give up their own interests and line up behind a candidacy which conforms to the system.

In 2002, Robert A. Dahle, professor of Constitutional Law at Yale university, published a study of the way in which the Constitution had been written, in 1787, in order to ensure that the United States would never become a true democracy [1]. More recently, in 2014, two professors of Political Science, Martin Gilens at Princeton and Benjamin I. Page at Northwestern, demonstrated that the system has evolved in such a way that all laws are now voted at the demand and under the control of an economic elite, without ever taking into account the opinions of the population [2].

Barack Obamas Presidency was marked by the financial crisis, followed by the economic crisis in 2008, whose main consequence was the end of the social contract. Until now, it was the American Dream which united US citizens, the idea that anyone could rise out of misery and become rich by the fruit of their own efforts. All sorts of injustice could be accepted, as long as there was always the hope of being able to get clear. As from now, with the exception of the super-rich who continue to get richer, the best that can be hoped for is to avoid plummeting into oblivion.

The end of the American Dream first of all led to the creation of movements rooted in anger - to the right, the Tea Party in 2009, and to the left, Occupy Wall Street in 2011. The general idea was that the unegalitarian system was no longer acceptable, not because it had weakened, but because it had become fixed and permanent. The supporters of the Tea Party claimed that in order for the situation to improve, it was necessary to lower taxes and let people work their own way out, rather than waiting for social protection  while the people of Occupy Wall Street thought, on the contrary, that it was better to tax the super-rich and redistribute what had been taken from them. However, this stage was overtaken in 2015 by Donald Trump, a billionaire who has no argument with the system, but claims that he has profited by the American Dream and that he can relaunch it. In any case, thats how the citizens seem to have understood his slogan  America great again !  Trumps supporters have no intention of tightening their belts a few more notches in order to finance the military-industrial complex and reboot imperialism, but hope, in their turn, to be empowered to become rich, just like several generation of US citizens before them.

While the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street have legitimised respectively the candidacies of Ted Cruz for the Republicans and Bernie Sanders for the Democrats, the candidacy of Donald Trump endangers the positions acquired by those who protected themselves during the financial crisis in 2008 by blocking the system. It thus appears that he is not opposed to the super-rich, but to the senior civil servants and political professionals, all the hidden profiteers, who enjoy huge salaries without ever taking personal risks. If we were to compare Trump to certain European personalities, we would not be looking at Jean-Marie Le Pen or Jorg Haider, but at Bernard Tapie and Silvio Berlusconi.

How will the gouvernors react?

Who will they elect as President?

Until now, the US aristocracy - according to the expression of Alexander Hamilton  was composed exclusively of WASPs, or White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Originally, the P stood for Puritans, but with time, the concept widened to include all Protestants. However, a first exception was made in 1961, with Irish Catholic John Kennedy, whose election enabled a peaceful resolution of the problem of racial segregation, and a second, in 2008, with the Kenyan Barack Obama, which enabled the illusion of racial integration. In any case, in neither of these cases did the elected official use his power to to renovate the governing class. Furthermore, despite the promise of general disarmament by Kennedy and nuclear disarmament by Obama, neither of them was able to do make any headway at all against the military-industrial complex. It is true that in both cases, they had been obliged to accept a representative of the complex as their Vice-President - Lyndon B. Johnson and Joe Biden  a replacement measure which, in Kennedys case, was activated.

Donald Trump, with his straight-talking attitude, incarnates a form of populism which is opposed to the conventional manners of the politically correct so dear to the WASPs. The uneasy alliance between the President of the National Governors Association, the governor of Utah, Gary Herbert, and Donald Trump clearly demonstrates that an agreement between Trump and the ruling class will be very difficult to establish.

We are left with two other options - Hillary Clinton and Ted Cruz. Cruz is a Hispanic who, on the intellectual level, became a WASP after his conversion to evangelical protestantism. His nomination enabled an operation comparable to that of the election of Obama, but this time by manifesting a desire to integrate the Latinos after having favoured the blacks. Unfortunately, although he was launched by a company which works for both the CIA and the Pentagon, he is a totally artificial personage who will have a hard time fitting the costume. That leaves feminist lawyer Hillary Clinton, whose election will enable power to manifest a desire to integrate women. But her irrational behaviour and explosions of hysterical fury creates anxiety. Furthermore, she is currently the target of a serious legal enquiry which makes her easy to blackmail and therefore to control.

At no point in this analysis have I spoken of the candidates programmes. This is because, in the reality of the local political philosophy, they dont count. Since Oliver Cromwells Commonwealth, Anglo-Saxon political thought considers the notion of general interest as an imposture aimed at masking dictatorial intentions. So the candidates do not have a programme for their country, but positions on given subjects which enable them to collect support. The elected officials - the President, parliamentary representatives, governors, prosecutors, sheriffs, etc. - do not pretend to serve the Common Good, but to satisfy the greatest majority of their electors. During an electoral meeting, a candidate will never present his vision of the world, but will list the support that he has already won in order to invite other communities to trust him with their defence. This is why political treason in the United States does not mean changing parties, but acting against the supposed interests of his community.

The originality of this concept is that politicians are not expected to be coherent in their declarations, other than in terms of the interests that they are defending. For example, it is possible to affirm that a ftus is a human being and thus condemn abortion in the name of the protection of human life, and then, in the next sentence, commend the exemplarity of the death penalty.

There would not be any great difference between the policies followed by the evangelist Ted Cruz, the feminist Hillary Clinton or the Marxist Bernie Sanders. All three would have to walk in the footsteps already left by George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Ted Cruz quotes the Bible - in fact, the Jewish values of the Old Testament - and speaks to a religious electorate about the return to the fundamental values of the founding fathers. The job of unclogging the system therefore calls for personal morality, where money is seen as a gift from God to those who fear Him. From her side, Hillary Clinton is running a campaign directed at women, considering that she already has the vote of those people who got rich during her husbands Presidency. For them, unclogging the system is a family affair. Bernie Sanders denounces the capture of wealth by 1% of the population and calls for redistribution. His supporters dream of a revolution from which they would benefit without having to fight for it.

Only the election of Donald Trump could mark a change in the system. Contrary to what his declarations might seem to indicate, he is the only rational candidate, because he is not a political man, but a business man, a dealmaker. However, he knows nothing about the subjects with which he would have to deal, and has no a priori. He would be quite content to make decisions according to the alliances he creates. For better or for worse.

Strangely enough, the states that Bernie Sanders has won are approximately the same as those won by Ted Cruz, while those won by Donald Trump include almost all those won by Hilllary Clinton. This is because, unconsciously, the citizens are viewing their future either in terms of morality, which enables redemption and then the acquisition of wealth (Sanders and Cruz), or in terms of hard work and the material success that it should bring (Trump and Clinton).

At this stage, it is impossible to predict who will be the next President, or even if that would have any importance. But for ineluctable demographic reasons, the present system will collapse in the next few years, when Anglo-Saxons become the minority.
In the two weeks following the Brussels terror attacks, an important sea-change has occurred in American politics, to the detriment of the demagogic candidacy of Donald Trump. Those overseas events gave the Queens billionaire the opportunity to pose as a statesman and de facto Lord Protector of the American people, in much the same way that Oliver Cromwell posed as the protector of England in the seventeenth century. Trump wasted his opportunity to win over the Republican oligarchs and elite donor class, instead choosing to roll in the mud of attacks on rivals wives, the cad Lewandowsky, and police state measures to suppress abortions.

Recent polling highlights the pervasive unpopularity of Trump outside of the crazed and narrow confines of the GOP. It is therefore of compelling interest when a Republican consultant like the sophist Frank Luntz is quoted in the press speaking of how an outside event of terrorism could suddenly turn the tide in favor of Trump as dictator later this year:

Frank Luntz, an unaligned GOP pollster, said Trump could erase at least some his deficit if he capitalizes on the fall debates and other events, noting that history is littered with examples of candidates doing just that. [1] The big moments cause people to change, Luntz said. And lets face it, we may have a moment outside of conventions and debates thats even bigger. If you have a Paris or a Brussels on American soil, that can completely change the dynamic.

Americans need to go on RED ALERT to prevent this from happening!

Frank Luntz should be invited to tell exactly what he knows.

Elsewhere in the press, we read that GOP insiders view Trump as a possible zombie candidate, too maimed to win, but too strong to stop on his way to the nomination:

Republicans who once worried that Mr. Trump might gain overwhelming momentum in the primaries are now becoming preoccupied with a different grim prospect: that Mr. Trump might become a kind of zombie candidate  damaged beyond the point of repair, but too late for any of his rivals to stop him. Should Mr. Trump lurch into the convention so fatally compromised with general election voters and a sizable faction of Republicans, it could make it easier for the party to wrest the nomination away from him. But it would also make the consequences of failing to defeat him all the more ruinous if the specter of choosing a seemingly unelectable nominee does not deter Mr. Trumps supporters.

After Trumps unstable performance of the past week, there is increasing concern about putting the nuclear launch codes into the hands of a person whose invariant trait has been shown to be extreme cruelty towards the weak and the defenseless:

He needs to start acting more like the commander in chief, [A Republican consultant] said. At some point folks ask themselves, Am I comfortable in terms of wanting to give this person the nuclear codes?

The answer is that no serious and intelligent person could rest easy with the power of war and peace, life and death, in the hands of such a wreck as Trump.
The Class cast. Photo: Ray Burmiston/BBC America

According to Variety, The Night Manager actress Katherine Kelly has been cast as the teacher in the upcoming Doctor Who spinoff Class, because every generation needs, nay, deserves their own Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The show follows students, played by Greg Austin, Fady Elsayed, Sophie Hopkins, and Vivian Oparah, studying at the Whoniverses Coal Hill School. The eight-episode season will premiere later this year. According to EP Steven Moffat, the Harry Potter-esque sixth form school has been part of Doctor Who since the very first shoot in 1963, but this new show is anything but history. Class is dark and sexy and right now. Ah, so exactly like Harry Potter.
Hello! Im Kathryn VanArendonk, and Im stepping in to tackle the last few episodes of Girls this season.

Girls perpetually walks a line between being on the side of its characters and on the side of its audience. Its a show that delights in discomfiting grey areas: Are we supposed to support these characters or mock them? How should we judge their frequently unappealing behavior? In some cases, the series empathy for a particular character is clear, which is part of whats made Shoshannas Japan story so appealing. Shes confused in a way that Girls depicts as both familiar and admirable, and the shot that closed Queen for Two Days is an unusually straightforward depiction of loneliness for this show. (Its also very lovely.)

That kind of unpolluted compassion has never been extended to Hannah, a character whom Girls stubbornly refuses to simplify as someone easy to love or easy to hate. Part of that persistent complexity comes out of Hannahs obsession with how shes portrayed, how other people view her, and what it feels like to be seen and noticed. Its hard to feel happy or satisfied when watching a character who is so preoccupied with being watched, and who frequently fails to behave in a way that makes watching her fun. Its harder still when the narratorial eye doesnt offer any shortcuts  we very rarely get an easy answer to whether we should read Hannah as sad or funny or brave or tragic. Instead, Hannah continuously puts on a show, and Girls slyly watches our uneasiness as we watch her.

This business with audiences and performers is part of my reading on this whole series, but its also the specific preoccupation of this episode, Hello Kitty, which gives us a bounty of material on watching and being seen.

We open, for instance, with Hannah finally getting scolded by her boss for disparaging other teachers in front of the students and talking about her relationship with Fran. (One of the other teachers has a phantom centaur butt.) Part of why teaching has worked out pretty well for Hannah is that it meets her endless need to be the center of attention, but as per usual, she fundamentally disregards all the typical boundaries of what a professional performance should look like.

Confronted with the prospect of a real reprimand for her actions, Hannahs response is to pull a Basic Instinct, a move that she delightedly crows about to Fran afterwards. Honestly, men are so afraid of the female vagina, she tells him. Naturally, Fran is the grounded one here, calling Hannah on her immaturity and quite reasonably suggesting that he has an interest in Hannah not show[ing her] vagina to anyone but me. Hannahs obviously making an effort to end things with Fran by deliberately provoking him  but its not like her assessment of the typical male response to female anatomy is wrong, either.

Then, in the middle of this fight, Hannah and Fran show up at the play Adams performing in, a play Jessa has fretted about because it will no doubt end with Hannah seeing that Jessa and Adam are together. Hannahs fight with Fran continues to escalate, nearly to the point where Hannah breaks up with him.

And thats when Girls gets quite explicit with its fixation on seeing and performing. The play is called 38 Windows, and its about the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese, a young woman who was stabbed to death outside her Queens apartment. As the story goes  a story that has since been discredited  dozens of her neighbors heard or saw the attack and did nothing to help.

Real talk: I was hoping that the title of this episode, Hello Kitty, would mean a solid dose of Shoshannas adventures in Japan, but instead its a reference to Kitty Genovese, and a little joke about Hannahs, umm  kitty.

Anyhow, in 38 Windows, audience members are invited into various rooms in an apartment building, populated by actors who play the neighbors. The whole thing is done up like the sixties  Hannah watches a woman do a surprisingly aggressive version of the Jerk at her ticked-off sister; Adam plays a man arguing with his wife. Meanwhile, out in the buildings courtyard, two lit-up statues represent Kitty and her killer, and the audience and actors occasionally crane their heads out of the window to listen to screaming.

Its a play about indifference and performance and the line between apathy and criminality, and Girls does it up with characteristic ambivalence. The material is unquestionably serious, and Ray, at least, is righteously infuriated by its portrayal of societal apathy. I can even imagine some version of a play like this being quite moving. But 38 Windows is also undeniably silly. When cops come to question the neighbors, one responds, We were just living our boring lives, baby. And the statues of Kitty and her killer are reminiscent of bad museum dioramas, an impression thats bolstered by the shot of Adam preparing for the play with the Kitty statue slung casually over his shoulder.

More to the point, while the actor/neighbors and the audience witness Kittys death, Hannah watches something far more upsetting to her  when she looks out the window, she doesnt see the murder. She sees Jessa watching the play from a fire escape, staring lovingly at Adam. And so, the truth dawns on her. Hello Kitty doesnt add as much cinematographically as some previous episodes did this season, but this shot  circling around to capture all of the sight lines and the space of this courtyard  is really arresting.

Hannah, of course, flips out. Marnies not much help, either  shes been too busy Yelping divorce lawyers to worry about the sex lives of their second-tier friends, and as Hannah starts to fall apart, Desi comes charging in, gleefully announcing that Alex Patsavas wants a Marnie and Desi song for a death scene on Greys. As much as I hate Desi, I love how excited he is about the music of The OC. It might even be for a montage! Amid this surprising opportunity, Marnie manages to make her feelings clear: They obviously have to make this work, but theyll make it work just as a band.

While the others are witnessing the death of Kitty Genovese, Elijah is at a very fancy party with Dill. Hes happy, dangerously so, and thus it comes as no surprise when someone comes up to him in a line for drinks and tells Elijah all about Dills other relationships. Theres someone named Muzzy, whom Dill apparently took to a black-tie gala just last week, and also a guy named Shane, who lives in an apartment subsidized by Dill in tacit exchange for sex only when [Shane] feels like it.

Elijahs upset, and confronts Dill in his glamorously appointed bathroom (featuring a not-quite Emmy on a shelf by the mirror). Elijah does an admirable job of being clear about why hes upset, but Dill slips and slides away from each accusations. You know I would never disappoint you on purpose, right? sounds exactly like something Hannah might say to Fran. And I dont mean that as a compliment.

Back home after the party, Elijah opens the door to find a completely wasted Dill and resignedly lets him in. Corey Stoll plays Dills utterly charming loutishness perfectly, and its not hard to see why Elijah not only lets him in, but lets Dill take him to bed, and only sighs in mild exasperation when Dill falls asleep while giving him a blow job.

The aftermath of Hannahs revelation at 38 Windows is similarly mixed, but much sadder. She seems legitimately stunned by Adam and Jessa, especially after they walk away without any discussion of the relationship. Fran is understandably frustrated with Hannahs behavior, but completely clueless about why shes so upset  and frankly, hes acting much nicer to her than makes any kind of human sense. Shaken by Adam and Jessa, Hannah clings to the nice guy standing in front of her, and manages to sincerely apologize.

Hannah is grasping onto Fran as the most convenient port in a storm, but Girls doesnt let us off the hook. Unlike her obviously put-on anger in the opening scenes, Hannahs trauma here is  or more importantly, is presented as  serious, legitimate, and quite heartfelt, even while its also hilariously trivial in the context of Kitty Genovese and this (slightly) silly play.

This is, after all, Girls, a show that rarely makes clear who is in on the joke, or if theres even a joke at all. Laughing at Hannah is too easy, and so is hating her, but being fully in her corner is hard. And so, were stuck somewhere in the uneasy middle, just as Girls intends.
The Richard Rodgers Theater in happier times. Photo: Walter McBride/Getty Images

Saturday nights Hamilton performance reportedly had to be paused after a driver left his truck idling on 46th Street near the Richard Rodgers Theater. Police feared that the white box truck, which was parked outside the Marriot Marquis hotel with wires and gas canisters suspiciously exposed, was a bomb threat, and shut down Times Square accordingly. (It wasnt, but the driver received ten summonses for various offenses.) In a very Hamilton twist, media reports (including this one) originally said that the audience was evacuated from their seats into the theaters basement, but multiple people say that isnt true. Its hard to say for sure what really happened, unless you were in the room where it happened. Click boom!
Go for Gomez. Photo: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for iHeartRadio / Turner

Selena Gomez and Aaron Kaplan are developing a new series for Freeform (you know, that new name ABC Family is hoping sticks). The show, which is being described as a Latina Empire, is set in a low income Latino neighborhood and is told through the eyes of an 18-year-old girl destined for greatness, according to Deadline. The coolest part about the project is that its based on the actual experiences of a Los Angeles high-school student, 18-year-old Ana Cobarrubias. Aaron Kaplan was captivated by a speech Cobarrubias delivered last November at the Zimmer Childrens Museum Discovery Awards dinner, and approached her about the project. The speech was about what really happens in low-income neighborhoods, and Cobarrubiass determination to defy expectations others may have of her. The high-school senior will be a consultant on the project, which is way cooler than anything you ever did in high school.
Does it get better than this? (Nah.) Photo: Kevin Winter/ACM2016/Getty Images

If you had told us years ago that the woman who once wore cupcakes as a bra and shot actual fireworks from her boobs would one day duet with the woman whos pretty much been there, done that, wed  well, now that you mention it, the signs were all there. Sunday night, two of musics zaniest caricatures joined forces at the 2016 Academy of Country Music Awards (ACMs) in Las Vegas, where Dolly Parton chose to honor her legacy (specifically her NBC biopic) with a medley of her hits sung with rising country star-in-the-making Katy Perry. Yes, that Katy Perry. Would you believe us if we told you that wasnt even the most head-scratching moment of the night? Lets recap, shall we.





Bromance: Luke Bryan and Dierks Bentley technically hosted the show, but whats country music if not a total sausage fest? Those two had the country equivalent of a threesome with Ultimate Bro Blake Shelton in the form of a group hug, natch.

Chris Stapleton: He was the man of the three hours (six awards!), and youre damn right everyones jealous. All of Nashville spent the opening monologue humblebragging about how they made him famous way back when. But really, all that did was just prove that Stapletons been the genius behind Music Row for ages. Youre welcome.

Joey Feek: Last month, Joey Feek, of country husband-and-wife duo Joey + Rory, lost her battle with cervical cancer at the age of 40. Martina McBride and Darius Rucker honored her memory at the ACMs with a tribute that got a standing ovation. Tissues are necessary.

Dolly and Katy: Jolene and rump-shaking, what more could the world ever need?

Carrie Underwood: If Ridley Scott ever feels like making Gladiator 2, we have its star.

Thomas Rhetts wife: Shell die swooning.

Little Big Town and Trombone Shorty: Need we say more?

Nick Jonass guitar face: Over in L.A., Demi Lovato got a guitar assist from Brad Paisley at the iHeartRadio Awards. Not to be outdone, her BFF whipped out his, uh, skills to do the same for Kelsea Ballerini. Which makes us wonder: Can a woman get a guitar, too, or nah?

Ouch! Nick Jonas' solo last night at the ACM Awards. Posted by Thinking About Guitar on Monday, April 4, 2016

Blake Sheltons air guitar: We rest our case.

Kacey Musgraves: If Taylor Swifts awards-show hiatus is legit, we know someone who could fill her (former) Tony Lamas.
Lorena High School senior Rebekah Romer introduced 15 elementary students to the wonders of reading last summer through her program, Book Bag Buddies.

She coordinated with teachers to send books home with children who struggle with reading and then met as a group during the summer to act out the stories.

First, they were really shy, but by the end they were jumping around and having so much fun and loving reading, Romer said.

For her efforts, the Rotary Club of Waco and the Tribune-Herald named her Outstanding Youth Citizen during the 36th annual Youth Citizenship Awards on Monday.

Romer was one of 25 students nominated for the award recognizing volunteerism and service in the community.

Schools nominated students, who then filled out lengthy applications highlighting their community service. A committee chose five finalists, four of whom received $2,000 in scholarships. Romer received $4,000.

The other four finalists were Mason Tobola of West High School, Kaylee Wood of Riesel High School, Miranda Torres of Rapoport Academy and Madison Prestwood of China Spring High School.

Committee Chairwoman RoseMary Mayes said Romer stood out because of the long-term effects her efforts will have on those students.

This school year, it improved the reading level of those children, so it made a real impact, Mayes said. Thats something those kids will have forever, now that theyre good readers.

Romer is also the president of Lorena High Schools National Honor Society chapter, received the Top Student award in German II and enjoys painting and playing the violin. She said she plans to attend Brigham Young University in the fall in her journey to become a pediatrician.

But Mayes said it was her initative to help struggling students that truly impressed the committee.

We were just all so impressed that she conceived this idea of this summer reading program, Mayes said. All of them were outstanding, but of the finalists, that one seemed to have measurement.

Romer said she designed the program because her younger sister didnt read well and thus wouldnt read during the summer, falling behind. By providing an avenue to encourage a love for stories, Romer said she saw students improve and grow in their love for reading.

(Im) so happy to know that I can make an impact in their reading because reading is the foundation of education. If you cant read, you cant do anything else, she said.
This years Beall Poetry Festival at Baylor University features participants who know theres more to poetry than words on a page. Sometimes theres meaning added by performance, by music, even by the medium on which the words rest.

Poet Amaranth Borsuk, who presents the festivals first reading Wednesday night, has explored the physical surface of words, creating iPhone and iPad apps for one book and collaborating with a software programmer on another.

Catholic University of America English professor Ernest Suarez, who will deliver the festivals keynote lecture Thursday afternoon, is studying the intersection of poetry, blues and rock music and edited blues musician Jim Dickinsons memoir The Search for Blind Lemon.

Nicole Cooley, a New Orleans native teaching at Queens College-City University of New York, found inspiration for her 2010 poetry collection, Breach, from the effect Hurricane Katrina had on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, while Kevin Young touches on black culture, music, history and family in his recent retrospective Blue Laws: Selected and Uncollected Poems 1995-2015.

All share a strong sense of communicating their poetry and writing to audiences, festival director and English professor Richard Russell said.

The festival participants lectures and readings seen on YouTube played a part in their selection for this years event, Russell said.

All three (poets) read their work very well, he said.

Their work in communicating poetry to a broad audience dovetails nicely with the Beall Poetry Festivals mission, Russell said. Baylor alumna Virginia Beall Ball started the festival in 1994 to increase public access to and appreciation of poetry.

The festival will feature three public poetry readings at night. Afternoon sessions will include Baylor student literary awards; Suarezs lecture Contemporary American Poetry and Song; and a panel discussion by participants that Russell said is often the liveliest part of the festival.

Reading from their poetry are:

 Borsuk, assistant professor in the School of the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington, Bothell. Borsuks most recent work is the poetry collection Pomegranate Eater, published this year.

A book artist and letterpress printer as well, the poet explored poetry in a digital medium with her Abra, which was also released as iPhone and iPad apps.

 Cooley, English professor at Queens College-CUNY and director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation.

Cooleys works have won her the Poetry Society of Americas Emily Dickinson Award , the Academy of American Poets Walt Whitman Award and a fiction writing grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. She will read Thursday night.

 Young, Emory University professor of creative writing and English. Youngs For the Confederate Dead won him the 2007 Quill Award in Poetry, while his The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness won the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize.

He also was a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow in 2003. Young will read Friday night.

Suarez, an English professor at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., will be featured as a critic. Suarez has focused on Southern literature in his career, winning several Fulbright fellowships and presently serving on The Texas Review editorial board.

All Beall Poetry Festival events are free and open to the public.

Beall Poetry Festival schedule

Evening events are at Bennett Auditorium in Draper Academic Building. Afternoon events are in Room 101 of the Carroll Science Building.

Wednesday

3:30 p.m.  Student literary awards

7 p.m.  Amaranth Borsuk poetry reading

Thursday

3:30 p.m.  Ernest Suarez lecture, Contemporary American Poetry and Song

7 p.m.  Nicole Cooley poetry reading

Friday

3:30 p.m.  Panel discussion

7 p.m.  Kevin Young poetry reading
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UBS Group AG provides financial advice and solutions to private, institutional, and corporate clients worldwide. It operates through four divisions: Global Wealth Management, Personal & Corporate Banking, Asset Management, and Investment Bank. The Global Wealth Management division offers investment advice and solutions, and lending solutions to ultra high net worth and high net worth clients. This segment also provides estate and wealth planning, investing, philanthropy, corporate and banking, and family advisory services, as well as mortgage, securities-based, and structured lending solutions. The Personal & Corporate Banking division provides personal banking products and services, such as deposits, cards, and online and mobile banking, as well as lending, investments, and retirement services; and corporate and institutional solutions, including equity and debt capital markets, syndicated and structured credit, private placements, leasing, traditional financing, trade and export finance, and global custody solutions, as well as transaction banking solutions for payment and cash management. The Asset Management division offers equities, fixed income, hedge funds, real estate and private markets, indexed and alternative beta strategies, asset allocation and currency investment strategies, customized multi-asset solutions, advisory and fiduciary services, and multi-manager hedge fund solutions and advisory services. The Investment Bank division advises clients on strategic business opportunities and helps them raise capital to fund their activities; enables its clients to buy, sell, and finance securities on capital markets and to manage their risks and liquidity; and offers clients differentiated content on major financial markets and securities. The company was formerly known as UBS AG and changed its name to UBS Group AG in December 2014. UBS Group AG was founded in 1862 and is based in Zurich, Switzerland.
A Qantas flight from Melbourne to Dubai has back-tracked to Sydney Airport after flying halfway across the country before encountering engineering problems.

The A380 landed at Sydney Airport about 6.50am on Tuesday, more than eight hours after it left Melbourne.

A Qantas spokesman said there had been a "slight vibration issue" with one of the engines on the QF9 flight.

"The pilots decided to return the aircraft to Sydney where it is expected passengers will be transferred onto a replacement aircraft later this morning," the spokesman said.
Last Wednesday, the Prime Minister announced the biggest shake-up of Australia's federal funding system in decades. But by Friday, Malcolm Turnbull's proposal to give the states income tax powers and have the Commonwealth withdraw from public school funding had been dumped after resistance from the premiers and claims of "double taxation" by the Opposition.

According to Turnbull, his proposal is now dead and not going to return. In its place is $2.9 billion to offset the $57 billion cut from federal funding for hospitals over the next decade, and no movement on the $23 billion that is to be cut from education.

Some political pundits described it as a "humiliating backdown". Others speculated that the Big Idea was perhaps all just a ploy to distract attention from federal funding cuts. Either way, it made for depressing viewing for anyone who cares about quality education for the 3.5 million children in Australia's schools or about the stretched-to-breaking-point hospitals that every single one of us relies upon.

COAG (the Council of Australian Governments) is meant to be the top table of decision-making in this country. But after its 42nd meeting on Friday, we are still no closer to a serious proposal for sustainable funding for our health and education systems.
Tesla's new electric car is the industry's iPod moment, the start of a revolution that will kill the combustion engine and take the oil industry with it. It's an answer to global warming. It's the most important car the company will make.

Apparently.

Given that the first of Tesla's Model 3 cars is not due out until next year  and the company makes no promises  or not until 2018 in Australia, that is some seriously premature hype, backed by Apple-style queues outside its stores said to justify the parallels to the world's most valuable company.

By early on Sunday, Tesla chief executive Elon Musk said it had 253,000 orders for its Model 3, each of which required a deposit of US$1000, 1000 or A$1500.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has rebuffed suggestions that Tony Abbott will impede the Coalition's election campaign, saying he is "utterly undistracted" by the ousted former leader's ability to generate headlines.

Mr Turnbull also ruled out establishing a national anti-corruption body to help pass the government's Australian Building and Construction Commission bill, which could form the trigger for a double-dissolution election.

Asked how confident he was that Mr Abbott would not disrupt the campaign, Mr Turnbull said on Sunday: "I expect all of the members and candidates to be supportive and disciplined in the course of the campaign and generally in the lead up to it."

Mr Abbott has spoken out a number of times from the backbench since he was defeated in a leadership spill last September, when he vowed there would be "no wrecking, no undermining, no sniping" going forward.
Giving the states full responsibility for funding public schools, as proposed by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, would be the biggest mistake in the history of Australian education policy, according to NSW Education Minister Adrian Piccoli.

A war of words has erupted between the NSW and federal education ministers just months before the federal election, with Mr Piccoli accusing his Coalition colleague, Simon Birmingham, of making "incomprehensible" claims about the relationship between school funding and academic results.

Senator Birmingham shot back, accusing Mr Piccoli of perpetuating "class warfare" and "defying mathematical logic" by calling for extra money from Canberra for NSW schools.

Mr Turnbull last week said the federal government could withdraw from funding public schools, while continuing to fund non-government schools, if it gave state governments a share of income tax revenue.
An Indonesian fishing boat has been seized and its crew detained for allegedly operating illegally less than 100 kilometres off Western Australia's north coast.

The seizure is the third boat stopped in a week, following 28 Vietnamese fishermen on two boats who were arrested after being caught illegally fishing on the other side of the country in the Great Barrier Reef in far north Queensland.

Two Vietnamese vessels have been apprehended in waters off North Queensland. Credit:Australian Border Force

The Indonesian vessel KM Masrawati was spotted by an Australian Border Force surveillance plane about 10 nautical miles from Colbert Island, near WA's north coast.

A navy boat intercepted the Indonesians and detained the eight crew members who were taken to Darwin for questioning by the Australian Fisheries Management Authority.
The company entrusted by the Australian government to guard offshore detention centres, the Defence department and the Tax Office has been implicated in the unprecedented leak of shell company records that exposes the murky world of tax havens.

Controversial law firm Mossack Fonseca helped conceal the identities of the directors of major government contractor Wilson Security, ABC's Four Corners reported on Monday.

More than 11.5 million documents sparked a 12-month investigation by international media groups led by the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
Patrick Norman Pat Chapman is a 34-year-old, Caucasian male who was last known to be in Piedmont which is near the area of Greenville, Missouri on May 10, 2020.

Pat had stayed the night with a friend and his wife at their home. In the early morning when the friend woke to go to work.

Pat was gone in his own Burgundy color 1995 Ford Escort. That is the last anyone was known to have seen him. The vehicle was later recovered on May 29, 2020 in Mill Spring, Missouri.
The World Customs Organization (WCO), in cooperation with the WCO Asia/Pacific Regional Office for Capacity Building (ROCB A/P), has successfully held a Regional Workshop on Strategic Leadership on Information Technology at the Royal Malaysian Customs Training Center (RMCTC), in Melaka, Malaysia on 21 and 22 March 2016. The Workshop, supported by the Customs Cooperation Fund (CCF) Japan, was attended by 23 participants from WCO Member Administrations in the Asia Pacific Region. Mr. Syaidi Ismail, Director of the RMCTC emphasized in his opening remark the importance of IT to support Customs work in the digital era and the alignment between IT implementation and Customs Administrations objectives.

The goal of the Workshop was to raise awareness and understanding with regard to the strategic role of senior-management-level officials in Customs Administrations to oversee and steer the implementation of IT to support Customs modernization and reform. The facilitators of the Workshop shared the importance of strategic planning, appropriate governance of IT projects and aligning IT and organizational objectives. The participants acknowledged that the World Trade Organization (WTO) Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) had drawn the attention of political leaders and that this could be the golden opportunity to drive IT Implementation.
A pair of bodies discovered in Kentucky Lake this week
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By West Kentucky Star Staff

Apr. 04, 2016 | PADUCAH, KY

By West Kentucky Star Staff Apr. 04, 2016 | 02:14 PM | PADUCAH, KY

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By Paul Schaumburg, Graves County Schools Apr. 03, 2016 | 07:46 PM | MAYFIELD, KY

"I was working with the Lexington Convention and Visitors' Bureau, doing African-American research," said Elizabeth Lawson, "and I said to the Lord, 'I would love to bring our history to life because growing up I was ashamed of being a descendent of a slave."

The Lexington woman took the opportunity of a break between presentations to students at Graves County Central Elementary School to recall how she developed her portrayal of Charlotte Dupuy in "Suing for Freedom," a Kentucky Chautauqua presentation of the Kentucky Humanities Council.

"So, one day as I was searching the internet," she continued, "I found this story of a lady who had the nerve to sue Henry Clay! That was about ten years ago."

The Kentucky Humanities Council's web site explains, "The daughter of George and Rachel Stanley, Charlotte Dupuy was born in Cambridge, Md., in 1787. Her parents were owned and enslaved by Daniel Parker. Eight short years later, Dupuy was sold to James Condon for $100 and was forced to leave her family. As the only slave owned by the Condon family, Charlotte was forced to grow up quickly. Tasked with the household chores as well as caring for the Condon children, Charlotte worked tirelessly."

The same web site continues, "In 1805, at the age of 18, Charlotte was brought to Kentucky by Mr. Condon and she was registered as his slave. While in Kentucky she met Aaron Dupuy, who was enslaved by Henry Clay and his wife, Lucretia. Charlotte and Aaron were married in 1806 and Charlotte was sold to the Clay family. Charlotte spent life with the Clay family carrying out household chores and caring for the Clay's ten children, as well as raising her own two.

"In 1825, the Clay family moved to Washington, D.C., as Henry Clay served as Secretary of State. Charlotte found a lawyer who filed papers for her and her children, suing for their freedom. Her petition was denied and Charlotte was jailed for refusing to return to Kentucky with the Clays. She was later emancipated by Henry Clay in 1840. She died at some time after 1866."

"Today, I'm telling the story," Lawson said, "but I try to tell it where children can feel proud of their ancestors. I bring life to her by sharing her love stories, through singing and talking to engage the audience. I work closely with Henry Clay's estate in Lexington. I also have a historian working along with me. This is my first year with the Kentucky Humanities Council. Before that, I was doing it on my own at churches and other organizations in the Lexington area, including the African History Museum.

"When I present it to adults, it's like a stage production. I do the whole story," Lawson said. "When I'm working with the children I stop. I interact. I talk to them about the cooking and different experiences because Charlotte at the age of 8 became the only slave to a family of eight people. So, she had to leave her mother, father, and siblings  a very traumatic experience at a very young age. Her mother told her to never run away, do what the master says, and never, ever let them see you sad. I tell the children her story from a child's perspective. Sometimes, they really believe I'm Charlotte. One little boy came up to me and said, 'You're 300 years old,'" she laughed.

Lawson says the story inspires many who hear it to investigate their own roots.

As for Dupuy's story, Lawson concluded, "She lost her lawsuit, but the important thing is that here was a black woman in that time taking on a very powerful man. I think some people don't realize how powerful Henry Clay was. He was a force to be reckoned with. You would not want to take him on because he was quick to duel. And, if he would duel a white man, what would he do to a slave he owned as his possession? He would say, 'I will put you in my pocket.' A slave knew that when a master said that, you're ready to hit the auction block!"

History.com describes Clay as "Leader of the Whig party and five times an unsuccessful presidential candidate, Henry Clay (1777-1852) played a central role on the stage of national politics for over forty years. He was secretary of state under John Quincy Adams, Speaker of the House of Representatives longer than anyone else in the nineteenth century, and the most influential member of the Senate during its golden age. In a parliamentary system, he would have undoubtedly become prime minister."

Concerning the powerful politician, Lawson said, "Henry Clay had the image that he was against slavery, but that he actually was for it! He wanted the free blacks to go to Liberia. He was not talking about freeing the slaves! The Civil War did not come into existence until this man had died. That shows how much people feared him! Who would go up against him  especially a black woman who would sue him? After all that, he sent her away, but later brought her back to raise his own grandchildren."

Lawson "practices what she preaches" about individuals investigating their own histories. "I have never known much about my father's side of my family," she said in a telephone conversation with a member of the African-American Lawson family in Mayfield. The two exchanged contact information and plan to compare family history notes soon.
By Jim Waters Apr. 03, 2016 | 09:28 PM | LEXINGTON, KY





If you don't believe satirical journalist P.J. O'Rourke's quip that "giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys," start paying attention to what's happening in Frankfort and Washington.Better yet, try taking some of that money away or at least making politicians more accountable for how they spend it.Be prepared for the incessant whining and excuse-making sure to follow your demand that they live within their current means, work harder, pay debts, prioritize spending and save for rainy days just like responsible Kentucky families must do.For years, fiscally sane Kentuckians have been astonished by the absolute defiance on display in Frankfort toward the right spending decisions or even just some restraint, especially in challenging times.They must really be amazed at the approach taken regarding the new budget by House Speaker Greg Stumbo, a Prestonsburg Democrat, who moonlights as an ambulance chaser for a personal injury law firm marketing itself as "ForThePeople.com."Stumbo's been willing, for example, to hold up the commonwealth's entire budget in order to force inclusion of free community college tuition for all Kentucky high-school graduates, despite the fact that more monies must be found to address the nation's worst  and further worsening  public-retirement system.Reasonable Kentuckians must also be amazed that as this column is released, the legislative session is in its final throes and still no budget's been passed.Lawmakers have found time to file some 940 other bills, including legislation requiring men to be married and receive approval from their wives before using Viagra and banning teens under the age of 18 from using tanning beds.Yet the Speaker, as head of the majority party in control, has utterly failed to provide the leadership required to get House Bill 303  the budget  passed and thus fulfill the state House's singular constitutional duty.Even if some kind of spending plan gets approved by the time you read this, the process remains a frustrating failure and needs an overhaul built around accountability and transparency.The Frankfort press corps  eager for drama and pitting sides against each other while being inexperienced at covering a conservative, decisive governor  drives a narrative that presents all spending plans as equal.Plus, statehouse reporters frequently  if unwittingly  cover these final budget spasms in ways that portray political leaders sympathetically as really working hard "for the people," willing even to eat take-out and burn the midnight oil in order to meet the constitutionally determined April 15 deadline for making final decisions about how to spend $22 billion we taxpayers give them during the next biennium.Puh-leeze. They've had months to get this work done and have failed.Gov. Matt Bevin, despite being brand new to the process and having just won an election weeks earlier, met his constitutional responsibility to present the executive branch's budget proposal during the General Assembly's opening days.Bevin's two-year spending plan calls for 9 percent cuts to most state-government agencies and programs, including universities.Stumbo distorts the governor's intentions, claiming Bevin wants to harm education simply because he challenged university presidents to find inefficiencies and tighten their collective belts as several already have, so that the commonwealth can start down the long road toward saving our public-pension funds and tucking money away to address future pension needs so we don't repeat our retirement systems' messy history.That's like big-spending politicians in Washington labeling Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul "weak on national defense" because he wants the military to quit spending $640 for new toilet seats and put the money toward paying down the national debt.Such demagoguery  whether during a debate about national defense in Washington or an austere budget in Frankfort  is many things: a time-buster, resource-waster and confidence-diminisher.But "for the people" it's not.
Rita Redmond was a true lady who felt that every pupil had something to gift to the world
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 04/04/2016 (2393 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA  The Bank of Canada has appointed a group of people to develop a short list of Canadian women whose images could appear on a new banknote in 2018.

In announcing the panel Monday, the bank said it has received more than 18,000 submissions since issuing a public call for nominations last month. Those responses include the names of about 120 different women.

The advisory council will narrow the list to between 10 and 12 nominees and survey Canadians on those names. From there, the advisers will listen to expert advice as they trim the list further, to between three and five women.

Governor of the Bank of Canada, Stephen Poloz takes part in an announcement with students at Roberta Bondar Public School along with students from Ecole elementaire publique Gabrielle-Roy in Ottawa on Monday, April 4, 2016. The Governor was at the school to announce the members of the 2018 bank note advisory council who will develop a short list of iconic Canadian women who could be featured on the first bank note of the next series. Students at the schools showcased their artwork featuring women who inspired them. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

Bank governor Stephen Poloz and Finance Minister Bill Morneau will discuss the final candidates, with Morneau making the ultimate call.

Poloz and Carolyn Wilkins, the banks senior deputy governor, announced the council on Monday at an Ottawa elementary school named after astronaut Roberta Bondar.

Banknotes arent really just money  I like to think of them as being little pieces of art that tell Canadas story, Wilkins told students.

We want the banknotes to be inspiring.

The council members are: writer Gurjinder Basran; Michael Redhead Champagne, youth activist and founder of AYO! (Aboriginal Youth Opportunities); Margaret Conrad, professor emerita, University of New Brunswick; Francine Descarries, sociology professor, Universite du Quebec a Montreal; Perdita Felicien, world champion hurdler; Merna Forster, historian and author; Dominic Giroux, president and vice-chancellor, Laurentian University.

Only one woman has been featured on the currency since the Bank of Canada started designing and producing notes in 1937: the Queen.

Its 2016  its way, way overdue for this, said Felicien, a former Olympian.

I think that person has to be of the highest integrity  I think she has to be a woman that all Canadians can find inspiration from.

I really love trailblazers and people who create their own path, so thats one of the things I hope Canadians look for.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced last month that a woman would be featured on the next issue of banknotes due out in 2018.

Candidates must be Canadian women who have shown outstanding leadership, achievement or distinction in any field, benefiting the people of Canada, or in the service of the country. No fictional characters are allowed and nominees must have been dead for at least 25 years.

Members of the public can suggest candidates on the banks website until April 15.

Follow @AndyBlatchford on Twitter
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 03/04/2016 (2394 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MONTREAL  Prime Minister Justin Trudeau returned to his Montreal riding of Papineau on Sunday to join several thousand people at the citys Greek Independence Day parade.

Trudeau quickly left the head of the procession to shake hands with members of the crowd lining the sidewalk.

He later waved a Greek flag from the sidelines.

Graham Hughes / The Canadian Press Prime Minister Justin Trudeau greets members of the crowd as he attends the Greek Independence Day parade in Montreal on Sunday.

The parade, which has been taking place in Montreal for about 40 years, featured brightly-dressed dancers and schoolchildren waving Greek, Quebec and Canadian flags.

One float paid tribute to the Greek island of Lesbos and featured children wearing life jackets worn by refugees.

A spokeswoman for the Prime Ministers Office said Trudeau makes a point of attending the event every year since it takes place in his riding.

A day after Trudeau was mobbed by fans in a Halifax farmers market, he proved to be equally popular with an enthusiastic Montreal crowd.

John Kountourakis and Aglaia Panopalis ran through the crowds with their two young children to catch Trudeau, and the kids were rewarded with handshakes and high-fives.

The fact that he came here as a Prime Minister when no other Prime Minister has come to the parade is fantastic, Kountourakis said. It says a lot about him.

Spyros Montzenigos, a representative of Montreals Hellenic Community, said Trudeaus appearance was extra-special this year now that holds the countrys highest office.

Its the Greeks that voted for him, when he became a deputy, and then he became Prime Minister, he said. So the Greek community is supporting him pretty well.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 04/04/2016 (2393 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An idyllic-sounding place in Israel called Canada Park is at the centre of a controversy being aired Wednesday night in Winnipeg.

Canada Park covers the ruins of depopulated and demolished Palestinian villages, say organizers of a meeting where one of the former inhabitants of those villages will speak.

Heidar Abu Ghosh is from the village of Imwas, one of three villages that was depopulated and demolished by Israeli forces in 1967, said Harold Shuster with the human rights group Independent Jewish Voices. Its helping to organize the meeting with Abu Ghosh, who is speaking at events across Canada. In Winnipeg, hes speaking at Sturgeon Creek United Church at 7 p.m.

Shuster said Canada Park was established by the Jewish National Fund Canada.

The park continues to be subsidized by Canadian taxpayers through the charitable status of the Jewish National Fund of Canada, said Shuster. The presence of the park is denying its former residents the ability to reclaim their properties as is their right under international law, said Shuster.

The Jewish National Fund says, since its inception in 1901, that it has been the sole agency responsible for the development and infrastructure of land in Israel.

The JNF Canada website says its programs include land reclamation, reforestation, and road building as the caretaker of the land of Israel, on behalf of its owners  Jewish people everywhere.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 03/04/2016 (2394 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The future of a single-desk marketer for Manitobas fish is bobbing in the waves of the Manitoba election.

Progressive Conservatives say if theyre elected April 19, theyll allow commercial fishers to sell their catch to buyers other than the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corp., which buys, processes, markets and exports most of the fish caught in this provinces waterways.

The NDP has vowed to retain the corporations near-monopoly on freshwater fish exports while encouraging the federal Crown corporation to find new markets for Manitoba fish.

KEN GIGLIOTTI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Fish fillets fall off conveyor at the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation plant.

The Liberals, occupying middle ground, say Manitoba will opt out of the single desk only if the corporation fails to grant commercial fishers the right to sell rough fish, a catch-all term for less desirable species such as carp, freshwater drum and white sucker.

The corporation purchases fish from more than 1,700 commercial fishers in Manitoba, Alberta and the Northwest Territories and processes their catch at a plant in Transcona.

Fishers in Saskatchewan and northwestern Ontario no longer have to sell through the corporation after those provinces opted out of the single-desk marketer.

Without pledging they will do the same, Brian Pallisters Progressive Conservatives have made it clear they intend to give commercial fishers the freedom to make their own individual marketing decisions about their catch.

Many marketing opportunities, both domestic and international, are available to Manitoba fishers, yet due to the controls and restrictions of the (corporation), local fishers are being denied market access, PC spokesman Howard May said in a statement.

The Tories say an open market for Manitoba fish would increase incomes for commercial fishers.

Fishers themselves are divided about the prospect, as some fishing communities are better poised than others to take advantage of direct sales.

Greg Selingers New Democrats claim the Tories are out to destroy the federal Crown corporation and compared the effort to the former federal Conservative governments decision to end the Canadian Wheat Boards status as a single-desk marketer.

Brian Pallisters Conservatives decimated (the wheat board) against the democratic will of most western Canadian grain farmers, NDP spokesman Andrew Tod said in a statement.

We continue to encourage the (corporation) to be flexible in its approach to find more markets for fish and will work with fishers across Manitoba to ensure sustainable fishing practices.

Rana Bokharis Liberals said if the corporation cant find a way to market fish species other than the lucrative likes of walleye and sauger, commercial fishers will be permitted to market rough fish on their own.

Opting out of (the corporation), like other jurisdictions have, is a last resort, Liberal spokesman Mike Brown said in a statement.

The Green party said it is undecided about the corporations future, but said its disappointed the corporation is not enthusiastic about efforts to eco-certify Manitobas commercial fisheries.

Leader James Beddome criticized the Selinger government for making Harper-style cuts to fisheries science and mismanaging Manitoba fisheries to the point where Californias SeaChoice urged consumers to boycott fish caught in provincial waterways.

The PCs, meanwhile, assailed the NDP for failing to implement recommendations made in a 2011 report about the sustainability of walleye stocks before launching an eco-certification effort late in 2015.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 04/04/2016 (2393 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Sometimes global issues can be overwhelming for people wanting to make a difference on a local level, with climate change being a perfect example.

That is one of the reasons John Black Memorial United Churchs Green Interest Group is organizing Climate Change: Global Concerns and Local Engagement on Sat., April 16 at the church at 898 Henderson Hwy.

Guests will listen to a discussion between a quartet of panellists. Dr. Martin Entz is a professor of cropping systems and agronomy at the University of Manitoba. He will speak about food security and sustainable agriculture.

TREVOR HAGAN / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS - Author Mark Burch has written 4 books on how to live a simple life. 10-12-23

Curtis Hull is the project manager of Climate Change Connection, a non-governmental organization working to educate Manitobans about climate change and facilitate solutions. Sponsored by Manitoba Hydro, Tire Stewardship Manitoba and the Province of Manitoba, Climate Change Connection began in 2002 as part of Canadas efforts to meet its obligations under the Kyoto Protocol. Hull will speak about the science of climate change and the implications of the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement.

Mark Burch is the retired director of the campus sustainability office at the University of Winnipeg. He is a contributing author with the Simplicity Institute, an education and research centre focusing on the need to transition away from growth-based, consumer societies toward more resilient, egalitarian, and rewarding societies based on material sufficiency and renewable energy. Burch will address the causes of climate change and discuss steps people can take to lessen their personal impact.

The discussion will be moderated by University of Winnipeg professor Peter Denton. Dr. Denton also founded greenethics.ca, a green ethics consulting company.

A question and answer session will follow the discussion. Books from two of the panelists are among the books available for purchase.

The event begins at 1 p.m. and runs for two hours. Call 204-661-2579 to register.

Facebook.com/TheHeraldWPG

Twitter: @HeraldWPG
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 04/04/2016 (2393 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One candidate has been punted and a second is under a cloud as the bad news keeps coming for the Manitoba Liberals.

It began Monday morning when Leader Rana Bokhari announced the party had dropped Elmwood candidate Kurt Berger after his former common-law wife stepped forward alleging a pattern of abuse.

A pall hung over the Liberal party on the weekend after it was reported Berger was charged with assaulting his former partner in 2002. He pleaded guilty at the time and was given two years of probation.

JOHN WOODS / FREE PRESS FILES Kurt Berger

Bokhari said Monday she saw an email from the victim and asked Berger to step down.

I am a principled leader and I have said that there are things I cannot accept and I cannot accept victim-blaming, I cannot accept sexism, I cannot accept racism, Bokhari said.

For a woman to come out, if there is any air of truth, even the slightest air of truth to anything that is being said by this individual, I cant allow it.

When the charges were publicly revealed on Friday, Berger downplayed the allegations as a single incident.

Concern for a child

On Monday, he told The Canadian Press the new accusations were not true, but agreed to drop out the race out of concern for the child the couple has together. He did not respond to an email request for comment from the Free Press.

As much as I wanted to serve the province Im at a point where I want to protect those that I love, Berger said. I dont want to be dragged through the news for the next two weeks and have my child reading about it or hearing about it.

Bergers former partner sent an email to both the Manitoba Liberal Party and the Free Press detailing a different side of the story. Sandra, who did not want her last name published to protect her privacy, alleges he assaulted her several times. She said she felt his version of the events was victim-blaming and his actions were unfit for someone running for office.

Sandra applauded Bokharis swift actions in response to the allegations, calling it the wise thing to do.

It is sending a message, saying were not going to accept this and at least there is that, Sandra said. I appreciate that she took a stand on it.

Protection order against Dauphin candidate

Meanwhile, court documents show the daughter and wife of Garry Gurke, the Liberal candidate in Dauphin, have filed a protection order against Gurke. The Dauphin Court of Queens Bench records show the orders were filed on Nov. 16 and Nov. 18 of last year, stating Gurke can have no contact with his wife, daughter or grandchildren. Gurke has not been charged with a criminal offence.

Prevention orders are put in place by the Court of Queens Bench after the person has been convicted of an offence, whereas protection orders can be implemented without charges being laid.

Gurke did not go into detail about the allegations raised by his family, which led to a protection order being issued, but said it stems from anger over his decision to leave his wife five months ago.

We went through a separation that was tough, Gurke said. I have never touched my wife or grandkids. I am a pretty good guy.

Officials with the Liberal party said Gurke has been working through some challenges with mental illness and stand by their candidate. Spokesman Mike Brown said his party does not believe in stigmatizing candidates with mental health issues or preventing them from running.

Gurke did not comment specifically on what mental health challenges he was facing, other than to say he has no mental health issues.

Bergers departure leaves only 51 candidates running for the Liberals in 57 constituencies, bringing the total to six candidates lost in seven days. The Liberals lost candidates in Arthur-Virden, Lac du Bonnet and Agassiz ridings for using post office box numbers rather than residential addresses for some of the voters who had signed nomination papers. The Lakeside candidate did not turn in papers by last Tuesdays 1 p.m. deadline.

The Liberal candidate in Gimli, Joanne Levy, had her nomination revoked by Elections Manitoba after the NDP complained Levy had worked as an enumerator in another constituency before filing her papers.

kristin.annable@freepress.mb.ca
Pity poor Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington State. Nobody in Washington has a tougher job.

For McMorris Rodgers, its not being the No. 4 Republican in the House, and the only woman in House leadership, thats tough. Its not even juggling her responsibilities on Capitol Hill with raising three young children ages 8 and under. Her tough job? Trying to convince women theres a home for them in the Republican Party when her partys front-runner disparages women and treats them like third-class citizens.

Granted, Donald Trump has never run for political office before. But youd think even an amateur politician would have figured this out: You cant win the presidency with old white males alone. Or, in Trumps case, you cant alienate all Latinos, African-Americans, and women  and have any chance of winning the White House, even if you can attract enough hate-filled primary voters to steal the partys nomination.

Its Trumps treatment of women especially that worries sensible Republicans like McMorris Rodgers (there are still a few left), because its not only morally wrong, its politically suicidal. After all, women not only outnumber men in the population, they are also more likely to vote. In fact, in every presidential election since 1980, more women have voted than men. In 2012, for example, 63.7 percent of women voted, compared to 59.8 percent of men. And in every election since 1992, the majority of women have voted for the Democratic candidate.

According to the Center for American Progress, in 2012, 53 percent of all voters were women, and 55 percent of them voted for Barack Obama, who held a 12-point advantage over Mitt Romney among women. Clearly, women determined the outcome of that election, and will determine the outcome of this one, which is why Republicans should be reaching out to women, instead of turning them off.

Everybody seems to understand that but Trump. He began his campaign with mean-spirited, personal attacks against Megyn Kelly of Fox News. When she suggested he might have a problem with women, after calling some of them fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals, Trump proved her point by implying that she only asked him tough questions because she was menstruating: There was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.

Following the barrage of condemnation he received for that sexist remark, youd think Trump might have learned his lesson. No way. Hes continued to malign women during the course of his entire campaign, though never worse than last week  when, even for his own supporters, Donald Trump may have finally crossed the line between colorful and dangerous.

First was his treatment of Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields. After police charged his campaign manager Corey Lewandowski with misdemeanor battery for grabbing and pushing Fields, Trump not only defended Lewandowski  the one time Trump should have said, Youre fired, and didnt  he accused Fields of assaulting him.

Then Trump made the mistake of going on MSNBC, calling for a ban on abortion, and suggesting that any woman who had an abortion for any reason whatsoever should face either a fine or jail time. Even though he quickly backed down, retreating to the safer position that only the doctor who performed the procedure should go to jail, not the woman herself, the damage was done. Trump was roundly condemned, and not just by pro-choice groups, but also by anti-abortion activists, nervous that Trump had clumsily let their ultimate goal, the criminalization of abortion, out of the bag.

No wonder, in the latest CNN poll, Donald Trump has a 73 percent disapproval rating among women. Hes the supreme commander of the war on women waged by todays Republican Party, which is officially anti-choice, anti-health insurance coverage for contraception, anti-pay equity for women, anti-federal funding for childcare and anti-almost anything else women care about  all of which makes Rep. McMorris Rodgers task more difficult, if not impossible. I find them hurtful, she said of Trumps comments on women, and I think they are hurtful to the party.

So where does this leave Donald Trump? I know weve said it before, but this time I think its true: Hes not only killed any chance of winning the White House, hes provided the opening many Republicans have been looking for to deny him their partys nomination. How ironic: There were once 16 candidates running against him, but in the end, nobody could stop Donald Trump but Trump himself. It looks like he just did.
A local general contractor is being honored for its accomplishments.

Friede & Associates, a commercial general contractor on Utility Court in Reedsburg, recently won numerous ABC Projects of Distinction Awards and other accolades. Company Executive Vice President Scott Truehl said the awards are nice but they are only one of the many results of a job well done.

2015 was a great year for us and 2016 looks like its going to be another one, he said.

Friede & Associates noticed a spike in projects starting in 2014 and business has yet to taper off. The company serves clients across the region, including several in Wisconsin Dells. Truehl said Friede has experience with unique demands so Dells resorts often hire them to stay one step ahead of each other.

We are used to doing these challenging and unique projects, he said.

Around Reedsburg, its tough to avoid Friedes presence. The Reedsburg Country Club on Highway 33 has a large banner advertising Friedes services. The club hired Friede to build its 8,500-square-foot expansion. The $1.6 million project started in November and should be finished by mid-May, Truehl said. When finished, the club will have more banquet space, a new bar, the ability to host multiple events simultaneously and a new kitchen/backroom/employee area.

Jeb Scott, president of the Reedsburg Country Club, said he is impressed with Friede & Associates professionalism and skill. Country Club Vice President Bob Ginther added that Friede & Associates has experience with unique projects so the club decided to hire it.

Scott noted that the club made an effort to stay local when choosing a contractor because the money stays in the area.

Besides the country club, Friede & Associates is the contractor for an expansion at Seats Inc. in Reedsburg. The 58,000-square-foot expansion is expected to be complete in September.

The company also worked on improvements at the Reedsburg Municipal Airport. A dedication for the finished project is expected sometime this spring.

Friede & Associates makes an effort to not only provide distinct services but to also market its capabilities. Truehl said the company collaborates with ADCI to produce three-dimensional videos showing how projects will appear when finished. Clients can use the videos to advertise their growth and generate excitement among customers and prospective business partners.

Its a great tool to show people what they are getting, he said.

Friede & Associates also has a website, social media pages and a YouTube channel. The company can even set up private, secure portals for clients, Truehl said.

He added that business success also comes from being part of a community. Friede & Associates sponsors scholarships and supports nonprofits. Truehl said he speaks at schools to share the companys story and encourage young people to pursue careers in contracting.

When subcontracting, Friede & Associates tries to use as many local businesses as possible, he said.

Truehl said Friede & Associates is blessed to work in an area with so many distinct needs. Sauk and Dane counties arent building just warehouses; they need senior living facilities, resorts, restaurants, hotels and showrooms. Businesses that held off from expanding or renovating following the recession are starting to open their wallets, creating work for the likes of Friede & Associates.

This year, there are still a lot of good opportunities, he said.
For its one-year anniversary the Books & Beer monthly gathering is pleased to welcome bestselling mystery author Christine DeSmet to Columbus on April 21 at 7 p.m. at the Black Kettle, 139 N. Ludington St. DeSmet will talk about Five-Alarm Fudge, the latest novel in her Fudge Shop Mystery series set in Door County.

Five-Alarm Fudge is set in the fictional town of Fishers Harbor, Wisconsin, where fudge shop owner Ava Oosterling is busy preparing for the harvest festival and a visit from some royal relatives who live in Belgium. According to Avas grandpa, a famous divinity fudge recipe from the 1860s is hidden somewhere in a local historical church  a treat fit for a prince. But when a fire in the church reveals the body of a murdered man, it looks like someone is willing to go to any length to possess the valuable secret to the divinity fudge. As Ava searches for the killer  and the recipe  she could use a little divine intervention, because she may have bitten off more than she can chew 

In addition to writing mysteries, DeSmet is the author of an award-winning, romantic suspense novel Spirit Lake as well as a number of short story anthologies, scripts and stage plays. She teaches writing in the Continuing Studies division of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where shes the director of the annual Write-by-the-Lake Writers Workshop & Retreat and Weekend with Your Novel. You can learn more about DeSmet and her writing journey at: http://christinedesmet.com/.

The monthly Books and Beer gathering began in April 2015 to engage local and regional authors with readers in the community in a fun, casual setting. Since its inception the group has hosted 10 authors in many different genres. All interested readers in the area are welcome to attend. In addition to the April 21 event, upcoming featured authors include: James DeVita, author of A Winsome Murder on May 19; and Terri Karsten, author of A Mistake of Consequence on June 30. More information can be found on the groups Facebook page Books and Beer Columbus.
Friday will be a big day for America. Thats when well all find out weve been the butt of the greatest April Fools Day joke in history.

Donald Trump will step up to a podium, predictably sporting a Make America Great Again cap, T-shirt and hoodie  total retail price $98.99  and make a stunning announcement. He will bow out of the presidential race and give the nation the raspberry. This hoax has been huuuuuuuge, hell crow. April Fool!

Trump never intended to be elected. He just wanted to have a few laughs. And somehow, people kept voting for him in the primaries until he became the front-runner. Trump figured hed keep the ruse going until April 1  or the day journalists stopped putting microphones in front of him  whichever came first. As it turned out, the joke was on us.

What, you seriously thought a guy who had never held elected office would win the Republican nomination? The blowhard who demanded to see President Obamas birth certificate? The guy who has bankrupted four companies? Come on, people.

He may not be a business whiz, but Trump just may be a master of ironic comedy. How else could he explain walking into an interview with the Washington Posts editorial board and advocating looser libel laws?

Trumps brand of humor isnt for everyone. He takes a Sacha Baron Cohen approach that makes you twinge and giggle simultaneously. Consider his speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition: Im a negotiator like you folks were negotiators, he said. Is there anyone in this room who doesnt negotiate deals?

After unleashing a string of anti-Semitic stereotypes, he noted, I dont want any of your money. Thats good, Donald, because people dont generally hand you cash after you offend them.

Say this for Trump: Hes an equal-opportunity offender. We knew he didnt care about the Latino vote when he said hed build a wall on the Mexican border and make Mexico pay for it. When Mexico sends its people, theyre not sending their best, he said. Theyre sending people that have lots of problems. Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists. And some, I assume, are good people. Nice save.

While Trump claims to be on good terms with the blacks, hes unlikely to win any NAACP awards. He once said 81 percent of white murder victims are killed by African-Americans.

Trump has been careful not to leave out Arab-Americans. He inaccurately claimed there was cheering in New Jersey  due to its heavy Arab population  as the Twin Towers fell.

And lets not forget veterans: Trump criticized Republican U.S. Sen. John McCains status as a war hero. Hes a war hero because he was captured  I like people that werent captured, OK? he said.

Do you see where Im going? No serious GOP candidate would ridicule a Republican war hero. Trump is going for laughs. Ill grant you that his is a dark brand of humor, which might explain why so few seem to get the joke.

Trump is running out of material, no doubt because he never thought hed get this far. Why else, other than a preoccupation best diagnosed by a psychologist, would he spend so much time discussing his glove size and bragging (again, erroneously) that his plane is bigger than Air Force One. Perhaps hes compensating for a lack of liftoff.

Or maybe Trump just enjoys messing with us. How else can we explain his penchant for making wildly false claims and standing behind them? Tea Partiers applaud Trump for sticking to his guns, even though theyre loaded with blanks and are pointed nowhere in particular.

Check out these doozies: Trump has claimed Obama wants to accept 250,000 Syrian refugees. The actual number is 10,000. The Donald also has purported that his campaign is self-funded. But that pesky Federal Election Commission  a superfluous agency to be disbanded, of course  shows thats not true. Trump has loaned his campaign $1.8 million, but the bulk of his campaign cash has come from the sale of Make American Great Again merchandise. Self-funded? Try hat-funded.

Lets keep it real, America: Did you expect anything better from the man who brought you the Miss Universe pageant? Perhaps hell hire Steve Harvey to help deliver the surprise news Friday: Trump voters will be left feeling cheated, like Miss Colombia. But dont blame The Donald. He laid on the sarcasm pretty thick: It was up to the voters to get the joke.
The polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday for Wisconsins spring non-partisan election  which, for the first time, doubles as the states Presidential Preference Primary.

Here are some answers to questions that voters might have about the election:

How do I find out where my polling place is located?

If you live in Columbia County and do not have access to the Internet, you can find out where you vote by calling the County Clerks office at 608-742-9654, and giving your home address. If you live in Marquette County, the County Clerks office is at 608-297-3016.

If you have access to the Internet, there are several sites that can help you locate your polling place. Here are two of them:

The Columbia County Clerks site lists all the countys polling places, by municipality, at http://tinyurl.com/gmf7mml. Caution: the name of the community in your mailing address might not be the same as the location of your polling place. If you live outside of a village or city, you would vote in the town of your residence. For example, people with a mailing address of Pardeeville, but who dont live in the village limits, might vote in the towns of Wyocena, Pacific, Marcellon, etc. In Wyocena, the polling places for the village and the town of Wyocena are on opposite sides of Highway 22.

The Government Accountability Boards My Vote Wisconsin website, https://myvote.wi.gov, allows you to find not only your polling place, but also whats on your ballot, if you are already a registered voter, by entering your name and birth date.

I thought the spring election was supposed to be non-partisan. Why are the presidential choices separated by party?

This marks the first time that the Wisconsin Presidential Preference Primary has been held in conjunction with the spring non-partisan election. Thus, the only partisan part of the ballot deals with the voters choice for Democratic or Republican presidential nominee for the presidential election, to be held on Nov. 8. What youre really doing, when you vote Tuesday, is helping to pick delegates for your partys convention. When you vote for one particular candidate, that means that youre saying you want a delegate who is committed to that particular candidate at the convention. You may also choose to have an uninstructed delegate for the party convention.

But whether your vote results in a delegate for a particular candidate depends on which party you vote in, and on how many primary votes a candidate gets.

The Republican primary is winner-take-all. All 42 of the states delegates to the Republican National Convention  three from each of the eight congressional districts, for a total of 24, plus 18 at-large  are awarded based on the primary results. The candidate with the most votes statewide wins all the statewide delegates, and the candidate with the most votes in each district wins that districts delegates. (People who live in Columbia and Marquette counties live in Congressional District 6.)

The Democratic primary is proportionally based on statewide and district totals, but a candidate must get at least 15 percent of the vote, in the district and statewide elections, to be eligible to have any convention delegates. Wisconsin awards 86 pledged delegates based on statewide and district vote totals, plus there are 10 superdelegates whose convention vote is not based on the primary outcome.

Does a voter have to be registered with a particular party to vote in that partys primary?

No. And the slates of candidates for both parties (including some who have already announced that they have suspended their campaigns) are on each ballot.

So does that mean I can choose one Republican and one Democrat for president?

No. Vote in one party only, or your ballot will not count.

What is the main non-partisan statewide race?

All Wisconsin voters will choose Tuesday between two candidates for a 10-year term on the Wisconsin Supreme Court: Justice Rebecca Bradley, who was appointed to fill a vacancy, or JoAnne Kloppenburg.

Are there county elections as well?

All 28 seats on the Columbia County Board of Supervisors are up for grabs, but in most cases, the incumbents are running unopposed for re-election. There is just one contested race, in District 25 (town of Lodi), where incumbent Robert Collins faces a challenge from Steven Attoe. There are two districts where a newcomer is running unopposed: District 21 (Columbus area), where Henry St. Maurice is running for the seat now held by Brad Basten, who opted not to run again, and District 26 (Lodi and town of Lodi), where James Brooks is seeking a seat formerly held by Philip Baebler, who died Nov. 29. There is no one on the ballot for the District 1 seat, currently held by Robert McClyman, who chose not to run for re-election.

Are there town, village and city elections?

Yes. In the city of Portage, voters will choose between incumbent Mayor Bill Tierney and his challenger, Alderman Rick Dodd, for a three-year term as mayor. There also is a race in Alder District 2, where incumbent Richard Lynn is being challenged by Mark Hahn. In Alder District 5, Jeff Monfort is alone on the ballot for re-election, but Tim Zillmer has declared write-in candidacy for this seat. (Note: the only write-in votes for Zillmer that will be counted will be those cast by voters who live in District 5.) In District 6, Bill Kutzke is running unopposed for re-election. All Portage Common Council terms are for three years.

In Columbia Countys other cities and villages, there are few contested races. Two notable ones: A four-way race for three Pardeeville Village Board seats, with the ballot includes incumbent Robert Abrath, Brian Hepler, Tony Amelio and Phil Blader; and in Lodi, a challenge for Mayor Paul Fisk from Alderman Jim Ness. All these are two-year terms.

Are there school referendums on the ballot?

Yes. Both the Portage Community School District and the Rio Community School District have referendums related to school district taxation  as does the Montello School District in Marquette County.

Do I have to bring photo ID to the polls?

Yes. For most people, that means a Wisconsin drivers license or an ID card issued by the state. A passport also is acceptable, as are, in most cases, student IDs from Wisconsin universities, colleges and tech schools. For information on the states voter ID law, and how to get a free state-issued ID, go to http://bringit.wisconsin.gov. or call toll-free at 1-866-VOTE-WIS.
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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.
Changing lives: Major gift from alumna will benefit W&Ms top students

1693 Scholars: William & Mary has raised nearly $150 million for scholarships as part of its For the Bold campaign, with generous support from alumni like Sally Ives Gore 56, who recently made a $2 million commitment benefiting the 1693 Scholars. Courtesy photo Photo - of - Hide Caption

The following story originally appeared in the spring 2016 issue of the W&M Alumni Magazine - Ed.

William & Mary has raised nearly $150 million for scholarships as part of its For the Bold campaign, with generous support from alumni like Sally Ives Gore 56, who recently made a $2 million commitment benefiting the 1693 Scholars program.

Students selected as 1693 Scholars represent the very best of William & Marys applicant pool. The scholarships, awarded to both in-state and out-of-state students for academic achievement, provide significant financial support for tuition and general fees as well as room and board.

Gore's support of the program is emblematic of the way scholarships can change lives, which she knows firsthand. She is a former human resources executive at W.L. Gore & Associates. Her son, Chris Coons, is the junior senator from Delaware in the U.S. Congress. Gore has overcome hardships to get to where she is today, and scholarships played an important role in helping her and her family lead lives of remarkable achievement and success.

Now she is giving back so that others can pursue their aspirations and attend the university that helped shape the woman she has become  a philanthropist and member of numerous organizations that provide opportunities for young people. For Gore, W&M provided a strong foundation for developing leadership skills that she continues to put to use today.

We face great challenges in the world today that need to be resolved by kind, well-educated and wise leaders. I cannot think of a better way to invest my money than in scholarships for bright students to advance their education and attend college, said Gore. Scholarships can change a persons life forever. I hope my gifts can give students today the same wonderful experience I had at William & Mary.

After Gore graduated, she became an elementary school teacher for several years before leaving her job to have a family.

In the 1960s, society frowned upon women working after they had a baby, Gore said.

For 10 years, she stayed home to raise three children and then decided to pursue an advanced degree in psychology at the University of Delaware.

Without financial assistance, Gore would not have been able to attend. With the help of a donor, she was offered a full scholarship. She earned her masters degree and went on to become an accomplished psychologist and human resources executive.

I worked full-time, taught piano on the side for extra income and raised three kids at the same time as getting my advanced degree. I could not have done this without financial support, she said. As you can imagine, this scholarship changed my life, and I am very happy that I can give back and make a difference in the lives of many other students.

Gores gift will do just that. Each 1693 Scholar works closely with distinguished faculty mentors, planning his or her own course of study and enjoying access and support reserved at most universities exclusively for graduate students. They also take part in special events and programs, including meetings with leading scientists, artists, politicians and humanitarians of our time who regularly visit campus. There are currently 25 students in the 1693 Scholars program.

Sally is a role model for all of us  her story lifts us up and provides hope to others facing hurdles in life, said Sue Hanna Gerdelman 76, campaign chair. I am greatly inspired by this story, this gift and Sallys generosity. I am also incredibly moved that she is helping so many others achieve their dreams. I cant thank Sally enough.

Gore wasnt the only one in her family to receive a scholarship. Her son was also a recipient of the Truman Scholarship, a highly competitive federal scholarship granted to U.S. college juniors for demonstrated leadership potential and commitment to public service.

In todays world, it is hard for middle-class families to afford college, said Gore. It makes a lot of sense for me to give to this area because William & Mary is a premier institution which is doing a great job creating citizens who make a difference in the world. To be able to give this gift to someone so that they can access this kind of education is simply wonderful.

Vice President of University Advancement Matthew T. Lambert 99 added, Sallys generosity continues to have a profound impact on the lives of many William & Mary students. Her dedication to the university and to helping others achieve their educational goals is establishing a legacy of compassion consistent with our core values and mission.

Gore has previously given to the 1693 Scholars program as well as to the Kappa Kappa Gamma renovation project. She founded William & Marys child care facility, which carries her name. In 2003, she was appointed by former Gov. Mark Warner LL.D. 02 to serve on the Board of Visitors and was a member of the Campaign for William & Marys Steering Committee. She also served on the universitys foundation board for six years. In 1998, she received the Alumni Medallion, which recognizes professional accomplishments, leadership, dedication to the community and commitment to their alma mater.

Her philanthropic energies today are focused on support for the advancement of women and girls in the United States and in third-world countries.
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Wisconsin lifts nuclear moratorium

04 April 2016

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The state of Wisconsin has lifted a moratorium that had prevented it from considering applications to build new nuclear power plants. Governor Scott Walker signed Assembly Bill 384 into law at a ceremony held at the Wisconsin Energy Institute on 1 April, lifting the moratorium imposed in 1983.

Governor Scott Walker signs the bill into law (Image: Matthew Wisniewski/Wisconsin Energy Institute)

The moratorium had prohibited state regulators from authorizing construction of any nuclear power plant until a federal repository should be available to receive all used fuel from nuclear power plants in the state.

"Nuclear energy is an affordable, environmentally safe, and sustainable alternative to fossil fuel," Walker said. "The legislation we're signing into law here today at the Wisconsin Energy Institute provides the Wisconsin Public Service Commission with increased flexibility for Wisconsin's energy portfolio with the potential addition of nuclear facilities," he added.

The bill, introduced in October 2015 by Senator Frank Lasee and Representative Kevin Petersen and passed by the senate and house earlier this year, also specifies that regulators must consider nuclear energy as an option when designing new and replacement energy projects "Advanced nuclear energy using a reactor design or amended reactor design approved after December 31, 2010, by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission" appears ahead of non-renewable combustible energy in the prioritized list of options.

Wisconsin has two operating 591 MWe pressurized water reactors at NextEra Energy's Point Beach plant. Both have been in operation since the early 1970s.

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

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Steam generator dropped at French reactor

04 April 2016

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A used steam generator was dropped within the reactor building of unit 2 of the Paluel nuclear power plant in France, operator EDF has informed the country's nuclear regulator. The plant is currently offline for a maintenance outage, including replacement of all four steam generators.

Paluel 2 - a 1300 MWe pressurized water reactor - was taken offline in May 2015 for its third ten-yearly in-service inspection. The fuel has since been removed from the reactor and stored in the unit's used fuel pool. During this period, work has been undertaken to enable the unit to continue operating for at least another ten years.

The steam generator came to rest over the unit's reactor cavity (Image: ASN) [Click to enlarge]

Part of this work has involved the replacement of the unit's four steam generators. In order to remove the old steam generators, they are raised using the unit's polar crane, rotated from its original vertical position to a horizontal position and then placed on a trolley. The components - each measuring 22 meters in height and weighing 465 tonnes - are then extracted from the reactor building through a hatch.

EDF informed the French nuclear regulator, the Autorite de Surete Nucleaire (ASN), on 31 March that an incident had occurred during the operation to remove one of the steam generators. The component was in the vertical position, with its bottom resting on chocks on the removal trolley and its top supported by a system of slings attached to a handling beam, itself connected to handling machinery on the unit's polar crane. The steam generator became unattached at the top and tipped over on to the floor of the reactor building.

The steam generator came to rest partly on the reactor building's concrete floor and also on the protection plates covering the reactor cavity. Some of these plates were damaged by the fall.

One worker was said to be slightly injured in the incident.



A team of ASN inspectors has carried out an inspection of the reactor and is currently drafting a report of its findings.

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

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According to the latest research from international real estate consultancy Cluttons, while Bahrain's residential and office markets continue to soften against the backdrop of an economic slowdown, the retail sector remains the standout performer with rents stable in all of Manama's main markets during the first quarter of 2016.Cluttons'shows that retail at Al Seef continues to command the highest rents at BD 12.50 psm, representing a 4% increase over the 12 months from Q1 2015. Following closely behind Al Seef is Amwaj Islands, which has seen a rental increase of 33% since Q1 2015, to stand at BD 12 psm in Q1 2016. However, the report indicates that the overall picture of stable rents suggests that the market may be approaching a supply-demand equilibrium, with the level of new entrants tailing off.Harry Goodson-Wickes, Head of Cluttons Bahrain said, "We continue to see demand for retail across Bahrain with budgets remaining stable around the BD 12 psm mark. However, if supply continues to edge ahead of demand, headline rents may fall. Rents will also be impacted by the general economic slowdown that the Kingdom is facing and it will likely cause increased downward pressure as demand stabilizes this year."Cluttons' report shows that existing food and beverage (F&B) operators are amongst the most active groups in the retail market at present. The Mesk Restaurant Complex (MRC) in Adliya for instance, has been registering strong interest from F&B operators looking to take up space.Goodson-Wickes commented, "The Kingdom's retail sector is still perceived as being a key retail and hospitality hub for Saudi Arabia, with the weekend tourist traffic being a particularly big draw for domestic and international retailers. In addition, the government is focusing on its strategy to attract high-end tourists, which is driving an upturn in the number of five star hotels. However, we believe the family market remains vastly underserved, but there are signs to suggest that developers are now seeking to target this segment."Elsewhere in the commercial market, Cluttons data shows that office rents have remained unchanged between Q4 2015 and the first quarter of 2016, with the Financial Harbour and World Trade Centre retaining the top spots as the most expensive buildings for occupiers. Over the past 12 months, however, rents for fitted out office space in Al Seef have risen from BD 5.50 psm to BD 6 psm, whilst shell and core space in the same area has climbed by BD 0.50 psm to BD 5.50 psm over the same time period.The vast majority of occupier activity in Al Seef is being driven by a small amount of relocation activity within Manama, rather than by new entrants. While cost saving is the main driver behind the relocation of many businesses, some are taking advantage of the record low rates and using the weakness in the market to upgrade to more modern facilities.Faisal Durrani, Cluttons' Head of research explains, "There is no doubt that the office market in Bahrain is in a very challenging position. However, we see a significant opportunity for landlords to improve facilities for occupiers and focus on core pull factors such as high quality property management and adequate parking, both of which feature at the top of occupiers' wish lists. Also, where possible, the provision of smaller fitted office suites is likely to be well received by the market as this segment of the market continues to perform well and is reflective of the growing number of enquiries we are noting of this type."In the residential sector, the first quarter of 2016 marks the second consecutive quarter of rental stagnation. As a result, the annual rate of change decreased from 5.2% at the end of last year to 4.4%, at the end of Q1 2016. In Q1 2016, apartments on Amwaj Islands saw no change in rents, equating to an annual change of - 2.3%, which translates in to a little over BD 700 per month, on average.Durrani continued, "While apartment and villa rents have remained stable thus far in 2016, once the regular season of tenancy renewals commences in April, it is likely that there will be an increased amount of rent negotiations at renewal as tenants move to rein in costs. In particular, the removal of utility subsides remains a complex issue; with little clarity on whether the increased cost should be borne by tenants or landlords."A set monthly allowance is something being considered by some landlords, rather than utilities being all-inclusive. This should, in some instances, help to soften the squeeze on tenants' finances, while also curbing the risk of any sudden shocks to an increasingly fragile market."It is our view that average rent declines of up to 5% are likely this year, with some areas expected to remain stable. Our research shows that where landlords offer high quality property management and maintenance services, tenants are still willing to pay a premium and this is a trend that is unlikely to reverse. For instance, at the 110-unit Cebarco Towers, which offers luxury accommodation and the all two-bedroom scheme, Segaya Views, which caters to middle income families, we have seen strong demand since the schemes were brought to market."
Smoking (illustration)

By: Tanya Malhotra

A man was ambushed and robbed in Florida, while trying to buy drugs.

The couple of Cincinnati, Ohio, were on vacation in Destin, and were robbed at gunpoint after trying to buy drugs from a man near Fort Walton Beach.

aThe 30-year old male victim told police that his girlfriend was driving him around as he was trying to find someone to sell him $80 worth of marijuana,a the Okaloosa County Sheriffs Office wrote on Facebook.

An individual at a restaurant directed the couple to Lovejoy Road. The couple told deputies that once there, they were approached by a man in a red hoodie who said he could arrange the deal.

He ordered the couple to drive to Oak Street, where the individual in the red hoodie and another man got into the back seat of the car about 9:00 p.m.

At that point, the suspects put a gun to the boyfriendas neck and demanded the couple hand over all of their money.

The armed robbers also took the manas iPhone and the womanas purse.

An Okaloosa County Sheriffas Office deputy later located the stolen phone in front of a home on Oak Street.

The womanas purse was found near a home on Cypress Street.

Police are asking people for help in locating the armed robbers. The man who was wearing the red hoodie, is described as a black male, in his early 20as, and slender.

The second suspect was wearing a gray hoodie, and is described as 5 feet 6 inches tall, also in his early 20as, and with a awelcoming face.a
Michael Gordon

By: Wayne Morin

A man was arrested on a charge of assault after allegedly stabbing an elderly man who told him to remove a wet towel from a high-end dining room table, police in Connecticut said.

New Haven police said that they have arrested 54-year-old Michael Gordon, after being accused of using a knife to stab his roommate, 82-year-old Oswald Walters.

Gordon was charged with assault in the second degree of an elderly person and breach of peace in the second degree.

According to the police, around 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, officers were sent to 203 Rosette Street, on a report of a stabbing.

Walters opened the door and he was holding a blood soaked towel on his face. Walters had a cut on the tip of his nose, and another cut along his cheek.

Walters told police that after Gordon put a wet towel on the wood dining room table, he told him to take it off. A fight ensued before Gordon grabbed a knife from the kitchen and cut his face.
A young man wanted to make a point about racism in the United States, but his plan backfired when he was exposed for a liar by police. 20-year-old Khalil Cavil of Texas was working at the Saltgrass Steak House in Odessa when he claimed he was discriminated against because of his Muslim name. Cavil took
Elderly Man Dies After Being Hit By Train Early This Morning

This article is old - Published: Monday, Apr 4th, 2016

An elderly man has died after being struck by a train between Wrexham and Chester early this morning.

The incident, which was reported shortly after 5:30am this morning took place near the Balderton level crossing near Chester.

A spokesman for British Transport Police (BTP) said: We were called at 5.38am on Monday, 4 April to reports of a person being struck by a train close to a crossing on Lache Lane in Marlston cum Lache in Cheshire.

Colleagues from Cheshire Constabulary and North West Ambulance Service also attended and a man was pronounced dead at the scene.

The mans death is not currently being treated as suspicious and his family have been informed.

A file will be prepared for the coroner.

Earlier this morning Arriva Trains Wales released a statement noting that there would be delays of up to an hour for some services. Many services have since returned to normal, however passengers are being advised of some further delays.
Police Urge Public to Give up The Gun With Firearm Surrender Fortnight

This article is old - Published: Monday, Apr 4th, 2016

North Wales Police is joining forces from across the North West in appealing for people to Give up the Gun with a two week surrender of firearms and ammunition, starting 7am this morning.



Its been almost two years since the last firearms surrender, which saw forces across the country ask members of the public to surrender unlawfully held or unwanted guns and ammunition to prevent them from getting into the wrong hands.

The surrender will take place over a two week period from 7am this morning to 11.59pm on Monday 18th April. Surrendering unwanted, unlicensed weapons avoids the risk of them becoming involved in criminality and means that members of the community can dispose of firearms in a safe place.

During that period, those surrendering firearms will not face prosecution for the illegal possession and can remain anonymous.

Speaking about the firearms surrender, Chief Inspector Neil Thomas, form North Wales Police said: Many firearms are held in innocence and ignorance of their illegality or are overlooked and forgotten in peoples homes. Others are acquired and distributed by criminal networks to harm, threaten and intimidate their local communities.

The surrender gives the chance to dispose of the firearm or ammunition with no questions asked, by simply taking it to a local police station and handing it in  before a police operation to retrieve them takes place.

The fight against firearms is stronger than ever, thanks to round the clock disruption from police across the North West and we are working together with partners to safeguard, educate and intervene at the earliest opportunity. We are fortunate in North Wales not to witness the levels of gun and violent crimes in regional cities but we all have a collective responsibility to recover as many illegally held or unwanted firearms to ensure they dont end up in the wrong hands on our streets regardless of where that is.

This campaign is part of a regional programme primarily aimed at providing a period of time where people can surrender unlicensed weapons and ammunition without the fear of prosecution.

Chief Inspector Thomas continued onto say: Gun crime in the UK continues to fall however we cannot afford complacency which is why we are conducting a further surrender. In 2014 over 90 firearms were handed into stations across north Wales. One weapon off the streets is one less that can be used to harm or threaten our communities so Im hopeful of a similar return.

We enjoy an excellent relationship with our communities in north wales and Im certain theyll be fully behind this campaign and together we can help keep north Wales a safe place to live, work and visit.

Weapons and ammunition can be surrendered at the following police stations  Wrexham, Mold, Rhyl, Llandudno, Colwyn Bay, Caernarfon, Bangor and Holyhead. However if people are unable to visit any of these stations they are advised to contact North Wales Police on 101 to make alternative arrangements.

In Wrexham firearms can be surrendered at Wrexhams Police Station 8:30am-7pm Monday to Saturday and 9am-6pm on Sundays.

Anyone wishing to hand-in firearms should put them in a box or strong bag and put ammunition in a separate box or bag. Never attempt to take an uncovered weapon out in public and do not surrender a firearm/ammunition to a Police Officer/ PCSO in the street or open public area.

If it can be avoided do not use public transport to surrender a weapon or ammunition. To receive further advice on how best to transport the weapon responsibly from home to the police station phone 101 before travelling.

Police and Crime Commissioner for North Wales Winston Roddick CB QC added: There is no reason for using or carrying a gun. The misuse of one gun can destroy a whole family and cause unrest in the whole community. We must all work together to get rid of these weapons off the streets in north Wales and the north west of England. I therefore fully support this firearms surrender.

If you know of anyone in possession of illegal firearms call North Wales Police on 101 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. Alternatively, contact the control room direct via the new web live chat.

Information regarding the renewal of a firearms licence is available via North Wales Polices Advice and Support section or @NWPFALicensing

Further information regarding NABIS (National Ballistics Intelligence Service) is available via their .
In 2013, the Brazils Workers Party government (Partido dos TrabalhadoresPT) of President Dilma Rousseff, announced the More Doctors program (Programa Mais Medicos) in order to fill the shortage of doctors in the inner cities and on the outskirts of large cities in Brazil.

The program aimed to take 15,000 doctors to areas that were short on health care professionals by importing doctors from other countries, especially Cuba, through that countrys Medical Internationalism program that sends thousands of physicians and health professionals overseas every year.

Initially, the program was the Brazilian governments response to the refusal of physicians working in the Unified Health System (Sistema Unico de Saude-SUS), Brazils publicly funded health care system, to work in the countrys more remote areas. Most doctors argued that the working conditions in these areas, compared to bigger cities, were too risky even with the government offering slightly higher wages.

Twenty-two out of 27 states in Brazil have less than two physicians per 1,000 inhabitants. About 8 percent of doctors in the country work in cities with less than 50,000 people, which makes up approximately 90 percent of Brazil. Only major cities such as Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Curitiba have enough available physicians, as their levels surpass the national average. Meanwhile, states such as Maranhao, Alagoas and Amapa have serious problems with shortages of doctors, with an average of one doctor per 1,000 inhabitants.

In 2011, the solution offered by Brazils PT government was to create a program to attract young physicians to regions where there were less than two doctors per 1,000 inhabitants, by offering monthly wages of R$ 8,000 (U$ 2,129). However, the reception did not reach the expectations of the federal government. Of the 13,000 doctors needed in 3,000 cities across Brazil, only 4,392 professionals responded to the application and 3,800 ended up moving to the places that required doctors. Thus, the Brazilian governments solution to fill the gap in the small towns and rural areas was to import doctors from overseas, mainly Cubans.

Medical institutions and doctors from all parts of the country reacted with anger and criticism to the More Doctors program, accusing the Workers Party of helping the Cuban dictatorship and importing Castros agents disguised as doctors.

Conservative segments from medical institutions such as the Federal Medical Council and several Doctors Trade Unions throughout the country claimed that the More Doctors program was PTs strategy to win the presidential election in 2014.

With Brazils minimum monthly wages set at R$ 880 (US$ 234), a doctors actual income may reach R$ 10,000 (US$ 2,662) per month. In a country with a large inequality gap, at public federal universities, which are tuition free, medical schools are filled with upper middle class students.

That a recent poll by the Sao Paulo Regional Medical Council found that 74 percent of medical students are white compared to 2.3 percent who are Afro-Brazilians, who constitute roughly half of the population but are predominantly poor, is an indication of the countrys class-based medical system.

Another research study from National Exam for the Assessment of Student PerformanceEnaderevealed that most medical school students belong to families with incomes of 10 to 30 times the minimum wage monthly, equivalent to R$ 6,780 to R$ 20,340 (U$ 1,805 to U$ 5,415) per month. The same study showed that 84 percent of medical students do not have a part-time job and most have their education paid for by their parents. This data confirms that most of the men and women who are attending medical schools come from privileged backgrounds.

This privilege also affects the future physicians decision to work for the private sector instead of the SUS and to pursue a specialization instead of becoming general practitioners, which are in constant demand in the remote areas of the country. Recently, when asked why medical students are not interested in working for the public health system, the Coordinator of the Medical School at the Federal University in Alagoas Francisco Passos said that most medical students in federal institutions consider poor, African descendants and indigenous populations as mere guinea pigs.

Brazilian medical elitism became even more evident after the More Doctors program, which has revealed a new angry and racist side of many Brazilian doctors and their legal representatives. When Cuban doctors started to arrive at the Brazilian airports coming to work for the new program, doctors from different regions in Brazil gathered at the terminals to protest against them. On social media, white privileged Brazilian doctors wrote hate messages stating that the Cuban doctors didnt look like real doctors because they were dark skinned and looked more like servants or maids.

The tension between doctors and other workers in the country also demonstrates the contradictions of the populist agenda led by the Workers Party over more than a decade.

As the Workers Party government tries to solve a serious problem by bringing doctors from other countriessometimes without a contract, a decent salary or good working conditionsthe government also ignores the real demand from the Brazilian population, especially from the working class and poor to strengthen the universal healthcare programSUS.

But such a goal could only be achieved with public universal healthcare available to everyone, which would attract new doctors who could work under good conditions and at the same time would offer better services to the population, especially for those who cannot afford private health care. According to World Health Organization, Brazil invests less than 9 percent of its budget in public healthcare.

Ironically, earlier this year, the Brazilian Congresswhich is the most conservative it has been since 1964 (prior to the coup d'etat by the military)approved a bailout of Private HealthCare Plans for more than R$ 2 billion (U$ 532 million). This only shows that the Brazilian governments lack of interest in investing in the public health system also has to do with the elites plan of sabotaging SUS as an excuse for privatizing the system.

As Brazil debates the lack of physicians in the country, the Federal Medical Council fears the opening of new universities, especially private ones, claiming that it would hurt the quality of the medical curriculum, which could be compromised by deregulation and less qualified professors. Critics of the Federal Medical Council claim that the the institutions boycott has more to do with controlling the number of doctors in the country, thus keeping wages high, rather than any genuine concern for the quality of education in medical schools.

Last year, during the one year anniversary celebration of the More Doctors program, Ana Luiza, a medical school student at the Federal University in Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN) in northeastern Brazil, expressed her support for the program by explaining the positive impacts, especially for poorer families.

Doctors and medical students from all over Brazil reacted in outrage over Luizas statement, writing hate messages to her and attacking the student on social media. At the same time, a recent poll by the Federal University of Minas Gerais showed that most of the SUS patients approve the More Doctors program and rated the Cuban doctors as more humane than their Brazilian counterparts.

The contradictions of the More Doctors program are emblematic of the profound political crisis gripping the PT government amid the drive to impeach President Rousseff. By fully subordinating its policies to the profit interests of international and Brazilian capital, while pursuing minimal social assistance programs to ameliorate glaring social inequality, the Workers Party has succeeded in enraging sections of the middle class, even as it fails to stem the deepening immiseration of the working class and poor caused by the capitalist economic crisis.

A genuine answer to the lack of doctors for large sections of the Brazilian population can be found only through establishing truly free, high quality and universal health care. This requires reorganizing the entire health care system under workers control and on socialist foundations that place the social rights of the working class above the profit drive of the Brazilian capitalists and the transnational banks and corporations. The realization of such a program is possible only through the building of a new revolutionary party of the working class.
According to a recent Sacramento Bee review of US census data for the year 2014, the number of California seniors living in poverty has nearly doubled between 1999 and 2014, to a total of 520,000 in poverty today.

As of 2014, about 16 percent of Californians live under the federal poverty line ($11,880 in 2016). For a retired individual, the poverty line is as low as $11,400, qualifying some 520,000 seniors as living in poverty. However a newer measure, called the Supplemental Poverty Measure, first used by the US census for the year 2010, tracks additional factors such as prices and taxes and is generally considered to give a more realistic picture of the degree of economic hardship. The 2014 census found that the California poverty rate using this measure was 23.4 percent around 1 in 4, the highest rate in the nation.

According to this measure, of Californias 39 million people, nearly 10 million are in poverty.

Most of the seniors in question live primarily off of social security income, sometimes with a small pension, and many are even homeless. But with a high cost of living in many areas, an income of less than several thousand dollars per month is often not enough to cover even basic necessities such as rent, food, and medication.

When she was growing up, Faye Duncan (80) told the Bee, There never was a question whether youre going to have a place to live. Emphasizing the poor state of housing for the elderly, she reported having to wait a year and a half to get in here, referring to an affordable housing complex. Describing her quality of life, she said tearfully, Im in pain 90 percent of the time. And I mean pain.

Shannon Stevens, an intake specialist at the Maryhouse womens shelter in Sacramento, stressed, Theres no housing available for them because of the lack of affordable housing. Speaking of the vulnerable conditions for the elderly, she noted: And then theres also the issue of physical health issues that come with a great expense for prescription medications.

Especially in the larger cities, rent in California is notoriously high. A full third of the seniors who live in rental units find themselves spending over half of their income on rent. It is no accident that poverty rates are greater in Los Angeles and San Francisco, where rents are higher.

Add to this the increasing price of food, plus, according to the AARP, an increase in real terms of common prescription drugs used by seniors by more than 100 percent since 2005, and it becomes nearly impossible to get by on many incomes. Given that increasing prices are among the more immediate sources of impoverishment, the figure of 520,000 seniors in poverty in California is likely a conservative estimate.

Gary Passmore, the director of the Congress of California Seniors, said, People who are turning 65 over the next two decades are generally going to be worse off than people who are retired today.  The average 70-year-old today has fewer assets because of the recession and typically is less likely to have retirement income than their counterparts 15 years ago.

Rather than implement measures to reverse these disastrous trends, Democrats and Republicans in California are pursuing policies aimed at codifying these conditions as the new normal.

In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the state pension fund CalPERS, the largest public pension fund in the US, registered losses. Unlike the major banks, which were promptly bailed out, CalPERS losses were used as a lever to further attack pensions. The administration of governor Arnold Schwarzenegger responded to the crisis by implementing a two-tier pension structure in which newer pensioners contribute more and receive less. His administration also cut employer and state contributions, putting more of the burden on workers.

A few years later, under the administration of Democrat Jerry Brown, new attacks on pensions came in the form of increasing the retirement age from 55 to 67 for the majority of new public employees. The Brown administration has also implemented cuts to food stamps and affordable housing programs. All of these measures doubtless contributed to rising poverty rates among California seniors.

Today, CalPERS does not have the funds needed to meet its pension obligations, and has unfunded liabilities of over $70 billion.

More recently, the Obama administration moved to slash defined benefit plans for the Teamsters Central States Pension Fund, a move that marks a dramatic escalation in the drive to dismantle pension benefits.

At local and municipal levels, the Democratic Party has been no less severe than the Republicans in the drive to dismantle pension and social programs. Chuck Reed, the ex-mayor of San Jose, and a Democrat, has twice proposed pension reform bills that would eliminate constitutional protections for pensioners in the state.

The cities of Stockton and San Bernardino have both been taken into Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy proceedings, and the San Bernardino proceedings are still ongoing. As in the case of Detroit, municipal bankruptcies have been used to undermine obligations to pay retiree benefits such as pensions and health care.

The doubling of the poverty rate for California seniors exposes the claims by the Obama administration that the United States is in the midst of an economic recovery. Instead, the economic crisis is reflected in deteriorating conditions for the most vulnerable sections of society.
Tens of thousands of impoverished, unemployed adults were cut off food stamps Friday, the first wave of a social catastrophe that could affect more than one million people this year.

Some 22 states began terminating benefits for Able-Bodied Adults Without Dependents, or ABAWDs, in the jargon of the US Department of Agriculture, which administers the federally funded food stamp program, or Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), as it is formally known.

These adults, aged 18 to 49 years and without children, are generally the poorest section of the working class, earning only 17 percent of the official poverty rate, an average of barely $150-170 per month in income. But they are eligible for only 90 days of food stamp benefits unless they have paid employment or job training for at least 80 hours in a month. The 90-day clock began running January 1, so adults who no longer qualify under this rule began being terminated in state after state April 1.

The 22 states include Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Washington and West Virginia.

Another 22 states (see map) had already enforced work requirements to cut food stamp benefits for ABAWDs in 2015 or earlier. Those states account for 30 percent of the US population, while the states that are imposing work requirements this year account for another 35 percent.

The numbers in some of the larger states are staggering. Florida alone will cut off benefits to an estimated 300,000 childless adults; Tennessee 150,000 and North Carolina 110,000. New York state will cut off more than 50,000, including 3,000 people in Manhattan, home to the worlds biggest concentration of billionaires. Missouri cuts off 60,000; Alabama 40,000 and Massachusetts 23,000.

The work requirements for food stamp recipients were waived for most states during the deep recession that followed the 2008 financial crash. States had to have an official unemployment rate above 10 percent, or at least 20 percent above the national average, or demonstrate a weak labor market under other criteria set down by the Department of Labor.

The number of childless adults eligible for food stamps jumped from 1.7 million in 2007 to 4.9 million in 2013, then began to decline to 4.7 million in 2014, largely because states like Kansas and Ohio began to impose work requirements.

The harsh work for food requirements were first introduced for food stamps under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996. This is the notorious welfare reform bill sponsored by then-US Rep. John Kasich, who is now Ohios governor and a Republican candidate for president, and signed into law by President Bill Clinton, husband of the current frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

It is particularly noticeable that none of the presidential candidates of either capitalist party, including the self-proclaimed democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, has made an issue of the food stamp cutoff that is plunging hundreds of thousands overnight into hunger and destitution.

Senator Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are in the midst of a campaign in the April 19 New York primary, but neither has said a word on behalf of the more than 50,000 New Yorkers who began losing their food stamp benefits Friday.

On Tuesday, Bill Clinton will campaign for his wife in Erie County, which includes the city of Buffalo, devastated by the collapse of the steel industry. Some 2,800 Erie County residents were cut off food stamps April 1, but it is unlikely that the former president, who has raked in more than $100 million in income since he left the White House, will have anything to say about it.

Hillary Clinton gloried in the welfare reform legislation in her 2003 memoir Living History (for which she was paid $8 million). She wrote that Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the program the bill abolished, had helped to create generations of welfare-dependent Americans  I strongly argued that we had to change the system, although my endorsement of welfare reform came at some personal cost. The cost, of course, was to her political credibility as a supposed advocate of the poor.

Clinton claimed that the legislation her husband signed was a critical first step to reforming our nations welfare system. I agreed that he should sign it and worked hard to round up votes for its passagethough he and the legislation were roundly criticized by some liberals, advocacy groups for immigrants and most people who worked with the welfare system.

Sanders has criticized Hillary Clinton repeatedly for giving speeches to Wall Street audiences in return for six-figure fees, as well as raking in campaign contributions from the financial and fossil fuel industries. But he has not sought to make a connection between Clintons close ties to the super-rich and the record of the first Clinton administration, particularly its attack on the poorest sections of the working class.

Nor has Sanders, in general, made an issue of the cuts in vital social programs, particularly those implemented with the collaboration of the Obama administration, like the $8.7 billion cut in food stamp benefits pushed through in 2014 as part of a bipartisan deal with congressional Republicans, or this years drastic cutback in food stamp eligibility for childless adults.

Food stamp recipients, and particularly childless adults on food stamps, have become targets of abuse for big business politicians of both parties. Several of the states now implementing work requirements have gone well beyond the regulations set down by the federal Department of Agriculture or the provisions of the welfare reform law.

State governments are permitted to seek exemptions from benefit cutoffs for regions of the state with particularly high concentrations of unemployment, even if the state as a whole no longer qualifies. In New York state, for example, the boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx have such exemptions, although Manhattan does not.

But many states, like Florida, have refused to seek such exemptions. The Missouri legislature even passed a bill last year prohibiting the state government from seeking a waiver, with legislators claiming it was easy for the unemployed to find at least 20 hours work per week.

In Mississippi, with one of the highest unemployment rates and highest poverty rates in the country, Republican Governor Phil Bryant chose not to extend the waiver of the work requirement. We want people to go to work in Mississippi, he said in a statement. We want these individuals to get a good job and live the American dream, not just be dependent on the federal government.
A jury in Manhattan found General Motors not liable in an accident involving a car equipped with a defective ignition that has been tied to at least 169 deaths.

The trial was one of six cases meant as a bellwether for the settlement of hundreds of lawsuits against GM as a result of the ignition defect. General Motors selected three of the cases, choosing what it considered to be the weakest first.

The accident involved a crash on an icy bridge in New Orleans in 2014. Dionne Spain and Lawrence Barthelemy were riding in their 2007 Saturn Sky when it spun out of control. The couple suffered back injuries as a result of the ensuing crash.

The jury found in its decision that while the ignition was defective, making the car unsafe to drive, it did not contribute to the accident in question. It laid the blame on the icy road conditions that led to more than 30 other crashes that day in the same area.

In announcing the verdict, the judge said that lawyers for both sides should not read too much into the decision. Its obvious the outcome in this case might not dictate the outcome in other cases.

In 2014, GM recalled hundreds of thousands of Chevrolet Cobalts, Saturn Ions and other lower-end vehicles with faulty ignitions that could cut off suddenly, leading to possible loss of vehicle control under conditions where safety equipment such as airbags was disabled. GM knew of the defect for more than ten years, but refused to order a recall out of cost considerations.

In an earlier test case the plaintiffs lost their suit against GM after evidence emerged pointing to perjury on the part of the injured Oklahoma man, Robert Scheuer, a postal worker. The judge threw out the case over claims that a document submitted by the plaintiff, a pay stub used to show that he and his wife had the income required to purchase a new house, was doctored. The man had claimed that injuries he suffered in a May 2014 wreck involving their Saturn Ion caused him to lose the house.

In fact, the alleged perjury had nothing to do with the accident itself. The central fact of the case, that the defect kept the airbags on Scheuers car from deploying, was not in dispute. Scheuer said his quality of life deteriorated as a result of back injuries he suffered in the crash.

In the case of Spain and Barthelemy, the plaintiffs lawyer expressed disappointment with the jurys decision. We definitely disagree with the overall verdict, he said. But were pleased with the findings that the jury made with regard to the fact that our clients car was unreasonably dangerous.

The next trial is scheduled to start May 2. At this point GM says it is aware of 230 cases being brought against it. Most of the actions have been consolidated in the state of New York.

General Motors set up a compensation fund to pay off victims of the defective ignition in hopes of avoiding costly lawsuits. Before wrapping up late last year, the fund paid out nearly $600 million in cases involving 124 deaths and 275 serious injuries. However, the funds administrator Kenneth Feinberg rejected 90 percent of claims. Those who did not receive compensation are free to sue. However, due to provisions in GMs 2009 bankruptcy filing, the company says it cannot be held liable for accidents occurring before July 2009.

In addition to the death claims paid through the victim compensation fund, GM settled civil lawsuits, including 45 death claims, for which it took a $575 million charge against profits. An independent investigation by the consumer group Center for Auto Safety estimated that there were at least 303 fatal accidents involving the now recalled vehicles in which airbags did not deploy.

In the wake of the debacle of the first trial, Lance Cooper, the attorney who first exposed GMs cover-up of the ignition defect, raised questions about the legal competence of the lead attorneys in the Oklahoma case. If there had been adequate preparation, this case would never have been tried, Mr. Cooper told the New York Times. It was a disaster.

Cooper said the legal team in the Oklahoma case failed to properly vet the plaintiff before the case came to trial. He filed a motion with the judge in the case to remove the three attorneys leading the litigation against GM, accusing them of conflicts of interest.

The judge overseeing the case rejected Coopers claim as baseless.

In September 2015 GM settled 1,385 death and injury claims relating to the ignition defect for $275 million and a class action for $300 million. The current litigation was not part of that settlement process and involves cases that GM felt were weaker.

To date GM officials have avoided any jail time for the cover-up of the ignition defect. The US Justice Department ended a criminal probe of the automaker by imposing a $900 million penalty. It accepted uncritically the self-serving claims by GM officials that they were unaware of the defect until 2014, despite conclusive evidence that the company had been alerted to problems with the ignition switch as early as 2001.

The GM ignition scandal is following a well trodden path in which corporate criminals, from the Wall Street bankers who brought down the world economy in 2008 to officials at BP responsible for the Gulf oil spill, have gotten away without facing criminal charges for their actions. In the final analysis the fines imposed by the government represent little more than a cost of doing business for the corporate malefactors.
The Socialist Equality Party (UK), the British section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, is holding a series of public meetings in cities around the UK in May and June as part of its campaign for an active boycott of the June 23 referendum on the UKs membership of the European Union.

The statement issued by the SEP for the campaign, to be discussed at the meetings, can be read here.

The first meetings being held are detailed below. You can register to attend and purchase tickets at the SEPs Facebook page here.

Manchester

Wednesday, May 11, 7 p.m.

Friends Meeting House

6 Mount Street

M2 5NS

Sheffield

Tuesday, May 17, 7 p.m.

Victoria Hall Methodist Church

Chapel Walk Entrance

S1 2JB

Glasgow

Saturday, May 21, 2 p.m.

Hillhead Library

348 Byres Road

G12 8AP

London

Tuesday, May 24, 7 p.m.

Student Central, (formerly ULU)

Malet Street

WC1E 7HY (Nearest tube: Euston, Euston Square, Goodge St .)
March 27 marked 18 months since the disappearance in the city of Iguala in Guerrero state of the 43 Ayotzinapa teaching students (normalistas), a hideous state crime.

The normalistas had left Ayotzinapa on September 26, 2014, to go to protest deep cuts to education under President Enrique Pena Nietos so-called Pact for Mexico, a program instituted to eviscerate decades of gains won by workers. The students were monitored the entire time of their trip by the Guerrero state police. They were fired upon by local police in Iguala, rounded up while a garrison of federal troops stood by, and then disposed of.

The Mexican government continues to try to cover up the circumstances of the disappearance of the normalistas, in which all levels of the Mexican government are implicated.

The official version of the government continues to be that local Iguala police delivered the students to a local gang, who then killed them and burned their bodies in a dump by a river in the neighboring town of Cocula.

Government investigators claimed to have verified that the remains of two students were found at the Cocula site. But in December of last year a group of distinguished experts from the Interamerican Commission of Human Rights known as the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts that studied the case reported that evidence showed that the students were not incinerated at that location.

The Mexican government wants the independent experts to wrap up their investigation by April 30. But the parents of the 43 normalistas seek a six-month extension because they do not trust the government. They also continue to demand the return of their children, refusing to accept that they cannot be located.

According to Felipe de la Cruz, a spokesman for the parents, Mexican Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong had previously committed to extend the independent investigation if the case had not been solved by the end of April. De la Cruz said he expected to make a formal request for an extension to the Mexican Attorney Generals office (PGR) during the first week of April.

The normalista parents charge that the Mexican government has obstructed the efforts of the independent experts. For example, the experts have not been permitted to interview over a hundred persons, including suspects identified by the government, who some allege have been coerced to give statements supporting the governments line, as well as officials who may be implicated. Although the army was likely complicit in the students abduction, that investigative avenue has been shut off.

In order to continue the cover-up of the crime, government authorities have mounted a smear campaign against the independent expert group, questioning its members competence, and even their integrity.

Private lawyers have also sought legal recourse against the government for its failure to conduct a thorough investigation and punish those responsible. For example, the attorney for the Center for Human Rights has sued the PGR. In part the suit demands that potentially incriminating videotapes missing from material produced by the Guerrero state judicial authorities to the PGR that were made by local authorities in Iguala on the night of the disappearance be produced, and an investigation into the chain of command and chain of custody of those videos.

Given the course of the governments investigation its credibility with the Mexican populace remains virtually nonexistent. The governments hope that if it stalls long enough popular outrage will dissipate has proven to be wishful thinking.

In yet another effort to bury the case the government has sunk to trying to buy off the families of the normalistas. Recently the Interior Ministry confirmed that it will pay compensation for the missing students.

A statement by the Office of Human Rights in the PGR confirmed that under the law the government has an obligation to provide care, assistance, support, protection and reparations for the damage or impairment suffered by those whose human rights have been violated. However, the agency said, compensation could not be paid without first assessing the social and psychological condition of the students families.

De la Cruz, the families representative, responded that they would not accept money from the Mexican government as reparations. He added that this was not the first time that reparations had been mentioned; that previous offer of money by federal and state authorities visiting the parents homes had been rejected. De La Cruz said that they have come to offer money, but they forget that the parents of the 43 missing are not interested in that. We will not sell our children, and the posture of the Ayotzinapa movement remains the same.

Later at a March 26 rally in Mexico City marking 18 months since the Iguala disappearance, de la Cruz said, We call for the existence of a single movement, first to find the truth and do justice.  Full compensation for harm is much more than the payment of compensation; it should include concrete measures of restitution, rehabilitation, satisfaction and especially measures of non-repetition.  We prefer to ask for and receive help from you, the citizenry; that will keep the government from buying off the movement. De la Cruz also emphasized that donations were critical because they would fund continuing work by the independent expert group.

The courage, integrity and perseverance of the normalista families and their supporters cannot be questioned. But such atrocities can be prevented only if the Mexican masses tear down the Mexican ruling class and its corrupt and violent state. For its part, the Mexican state is quickly putting in place emergency powers to crush opposition to state policies in the Mexican working class.
Over the weekend, fierce fighting broke out between Azeri and Armenian forces over the disputed breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region, adjacent to southwestern Azerbaijan and eastern Armenia in the South Caucasus. Clashes reportedly left a total of 30 soldiers dead and caused civilian casualties.

Both countries blamed each other for the fighting, and it remains unclear how it began. On Saturday, Azerbaijan said that 12 Azeri forces had been killed and a Mi-24 helicopter shot down in the fighting. According to the Armenian government, 18 of its troops were killed and 35 wounded.

Armenia accused Azerbaijan of carrying out a massive attack along the Karabakh front line using tanks, artillery, and helicopters on Friday night. For its part, Azerbaijan said that it retaliated after coming under fire from large-calibre artillery and grenade-launchers.

The conflict threatens to escalate into a broader war between Russia, Armenias main backer, and Azerbaijans ally, Turkey, and behind Turkey the entire NATO alliance. Turkey backs Azerbaijan, where the Turkic Azeris are the ethnic majority, but relations between Turkey and Armenia are particularly fraught due to the massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman empire in 1915.

In this context, it is significant that American press reports attributed responsibility for the fighting to the Azeri side. The Wall Street Journal wrote, Late Friday, Azeri forces launched a bid to seize positions in Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly ethnic Armenian enclave that lies within Azerbaijans borders and was overtaken by Armenia during a six-year war that ended with a 1994 cease-fire.

Azeri officials indicated they were pushing for a military rather than a diplomatic solution to the conflict. Azeri ambassador to Russia Polad Bulbuloglu told state-owned Russia Today, The attempts of a peaceful solution to this conflict have been underway for 22 years. How much more will it take? We are ready for a peaceful solution to the issue. But if its not solved peacefully then we will solve it by military means.

On Sunday, although Azerbaijan announced a unilateral ceasefire in fighting Armenian forces, Armenia denounced Bakus claim, stating that the fighting was continuing and that Armenia was preparing to intervene.

Armenia has violated all the norms of international law. We wont abandon our principal position. But at the same time, we will observe the ceasefire and after that we will try to solve the conflict peacefully, President Ilham Aliyev said.

The statement by the Azerbaijan side is an information trap and does not amount to a unilateral ceasefire, said Artsrun Hovhannisyan, spokesman for the Armenian Defence Ministry. Deputy Defence Minister David Tonoyan said Armenia stood ready to provide direct military assistance to Nagorno-Karabakh forces if necessary.

The fighting between the two countries over the disputed region is the most intense since the 1994 Russian-brokered ceasefire ended a war between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Nagorno-Karabakh, a majority-Armenian mountainous region in Azerbaijan, declared independence in 1991. The conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh had begun in 1988, when Azerbaijan and Armenia were still part of the Soviet Union, and escalated into a full-scale war in the early 1990s, after the Stalinist bureaucracy dissolved the Soviet Union in 1991. The war between Azeri troops and Armenian separatists killed some 30,000 people by the time of the 1994 ceasefire.

The current fighting comes amid escalating tensions between NATO and Russia due to the US and European intervention in the region. The NATO powers orchestrated a fascist-led coup to oust pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine in February 2014. Since the coup, NATO powers have stepped up a massive military buildup against Russia in Eastern Europe as part of a plan to reduce Russia to semi-colonial status.

Russia and the NATO powers also clashed over Syria: while Russia backs President Bashar al-Assads regime, the US and the EU stoked a proxy war, backing various Al Qaeda-linked Islamist forces, including ISIS, to oust Assad. After the Kremlin oligarchy mounted its own reactionary military intervention to back Assad last yearfearing that the loss of its Syrian ally could undermine its global influence, encouraging Washington to step up Islamist destabilisation operations in Russia itselfTurkey shot down a Russian fighter jet outright last November in Syria.

Such reckless actions by the NATO powers have put conflicts in the region on edge and threaten to escalate conflicts like the one in Nagorno-Karabakh into a disastrous, all-out war.

The Christian Science Monitor quoted Jeffrey Mankoff, a former adviser on US-Russia relations at the US State Department, currently deputy director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies Russia and Eurasia Program. He said, Russia is not just looking for peace, but is rather looking for some arrangement that maximizes their regional influence over both countries. If theres going to be a settlement, it will have to be on Russias terms.

Russia doesnt want conflict because its trying to increase its influence over both countries. If they can do that through resolving the conflict, then thats an option, but failing that, the status quo benefits Russia fairly well, said Mankoff.

Russia has 5,000 troops in Armenia, in order to deter a Turkish war against Armenia, with the threat that this would escalate into a war with Russia, Mankoff explained: The Russian troops main role is to deter Turkish involvement, should there be a serious resumption of conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The war danger posed by the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis points to the disastrous geopolitical consequences of the dissolution of the USSR, and the reactionary character of the nationalist politics that predominate in all the former Soviet republics, including Russia. This provided the basis for the emergence of explosive ethnic conflicts and imperialist intrigue across the region.

In a statement, the US State Department declared, We urge the sides to show restraint, avoid further escalation, and strictly adhere to the ceasefire. We reiterate that there is no military solution to the conflict. It also condemned in the strongest terms the large-scale ceasefire violations ... which have resulted in a number of reported casualties, including civilians.

In regard to recent conflict, the Turkish government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned Armenia and took an aggressive stance. Declaring that he would back Azerbaijan to the end, Erdogan said, We pray our Azeri brothers will prevail in these clashes.

Erdogan also blamed the Minsk Group (France, Russia and the United States) for failing to implement a solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. If the Minsk Group had solved the problem in due time, we wouldnt have witnessed the events now taking place on the contact line, said Erdogan in the US during an opening ceremony of a Turkish-American Culture and Civilization Center in Maryland.

For their part, Russia and Iran urged Azerbaijan and Armenia to immediately cease fire. President Putin calls on the parties in the conflict to observe an immediate ceasefire and exercise restraint in order to prevent further casualties, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

We invite both of our northern neighbours to restraint and avoiding any action that can turn the situation more difficult, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossein Jaberi Ansari said.
Pennsylvanias Republican-controlled legislature and Democratic Governor Tom Wolf last week agreed to a budget deal for the 2015-2016 fiscal year ending a nine-month budget impasse, while pushing on to next years budget an estimated $2 billion deficit.

Wolf neither signed nor vetoed the $30 billion bill that underfunds public education and other state services, allowing it to pass into law last Monday. The budget does away with Wolfes campaign promises from the 2014 election and brings to an end the deadlock that had prevented the state from issuing funding for non-profit agencies and school districts, significantly exacerbating the social crisis in Pennsylvania.

However, it does so only by pushing the states fiscal crisis back by one year. The deal delays increases in various forms of regressive taxation targeting the working class, the destruction of pensions for state and school employees, and the privatization of the state-owned wine and liquor stores until the 2016-2017 fiscal year.

The current budget increases basic education funding by $376 million, significantly less than the $1 billion Wolf had proposed in his 2015 budget address, and still less by $200 million than the total amount allocated in 2010-2011. The deal also fails to make up for the highly unequal cuts of 2011-2012, which fell the hardest on the school districts with the lowest-income students, according to the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center. Indeed, poorer and working class school districts receive a lot less education funding than rich school districts.

Public education is in advanced state of decay across the state. In the southeast, York City School District is set to become the largest school district to be turned over to a single for-profit entity in US history. York Suburban School District over the past six years has laid off 23 teachers, even as enrollment and class sizes have increased. Almost one-third of York students live beneath the official poverty level. Among the student body, 16 different languages are spoken.

In the northwest, the Erie public school system was already approaching collapse prior to the budget deal, with bankruptcy imminent. Quoted in GoErie.com, Daria Devlin, the Erie School Districts coordinator for grants and community relations, summed up the miserable financial situation Pennsylvania schools will still encounter indefinitely: Ultimately, the end of the budget impasse does not mean the end of financial distress for Eries public schools due to our chronic history of state underfunding and the lack of a fair funding formula in Pennsylvania.

During the impasse, schools such as Chambersburg Area School District in southcentral Pennsylvania had to borrow money and were about to shut down. Quoted in WITF, Steven Dart, the Chambersburg district finance director, said, Its a big relief. Now that we are pretty certain we arent going to have to borrow $20 million or more (to keep the districts schools open past April), we can concentrate on other problems, such as the $2.2 million deficit in our own budget.

Teachers in Chester-Upland School District had been working without pay to provide education to their pupils until the school received its appropriate funds from the state.

The budget purposefully underfunds pension obligations, setting the stage for the destruction of retirement income for hundreds of thousands of state workers. The two state pension plans, the Public School Employees Retirement System (PSERS) and the State Employees Retirement System, combined have unfunded liabilities of $60.1 billion.

For fiscal year 2016-2017, Wolf is proposing to move PSERS off budget, disallowing the use of funds from the General Fund, while instead using a portion of the Personal Income Tax to provide funding. This will only exacerbate the debt problem, as tax revenue is down and this presumes a substantial increase in the income tax.

Credit rating agencies have criticized the budget deal, threatening the state with another debt downgrade. Moodys noted that the approved budget relies on nearly $1 billion of one-time measures to balance the budget, does not include a pension contribution at the fully actuarially required level and casts no light on the governments ability to reach compromise on its long-term fiscal challenges.

Standard & Poors issued a similar statement: Should the commonwealth continue to demonstrate weakened fiscal stewardship not commensurate with the current rating level into the next fiscal year, we would likely consider a downgrade.

Late last year, a budget agreement had been tentatively in the works, as Wolf agreed to a hybrid pension scheme and to a privatization plan for the state-owned wine and liquor stores, but it fell apart as Republicans obstinately refused to agree to Wolfs regressive taxation plan.

There is, in fact, a tacit choreography between Wolf and the Republicans. The budget impasse created a crisis that allowed Wolf to agree to the draconian Republican budget in the name of saving schools and non-profits that were on the verge of collapse. But the current budget only creates conditions for even deeper austerity in the coming years.
French youth and workers have carried out mass demonstrations to protest Labour Minister Myriam El Khomris reactionary labour law reform. They have done so in defiance of the state of emergency imposed by the Socialist Party (PS) government after the November 13 Paris terror attacks. These initial mobilizations mark a new stage in the international class struggle, with implications well beyond the borders of France.

The attempt to promote hysteria over terrorism to suppress popular opposition is failing in the face of a growing radicalization of workers and youth. The working class has not been intimidated by the state of emergency and is entering into struggle against the social counterrevolution being carried out by the PS government and the European Union as a whole.

University students are organizing on-going protests and meetings, hundreds of high schools are being blockaded by students, and growing sections of workers are taking strike action. Last Thursday, port workers, Air France employees and transit workers struck across France, while workers walked out at steel and auto plants in various cities.

As it enters into struggle, the working class finds itself compelled from the outset to define its aims and interests in opposition to all the forces that for decades have represented official left politics. There is deep anger against the PS government of President Francois Hollande, elected in 2012 with the support of the Left Front and the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), as it seeks to destroy social rights won in historic struggles of the working class in the 20th century.

The El Khomri Law would lengthen the workday by up to two hours, increase the precariousness of employment for young workers, and allow the unions, in violation of Frances Labour Code, to work out contracts with employers at the level of individual firms.

The fact that this regressive and unpopular proposal would violate existing law testifies to its illegitimate character. That it is being pushed by a supposedly socialist party, which depends for the implementation of its attacks on unions whose budgets are 95 percent funded by the state and big business, underlines the fraudulent and anti-working class character of the entire framework of what passes for left politics in France.

An explosive political dynamic is developing. Despite the relentless promotion of fear and national chauvinism in connection with the terror attacks, a deeply rooted mood of social militancy is developing among workers and youth. This has taken the PS government by surprise and frightened pseudo-left organizations such as the Left Front and the NPA, which are deeply integrated into the PS.

Something of 1968 is in the air. In the May-June general strike of that year, tens of millions of workers erupted into struggle against the seemingly impregnable government of Charles de Gaulle and in opposition to the Stalinist French Communist Party. What is emerging today is a similar explosion of the class struggle against a discredited PS government and its political allies. The broad popular opposition to PS austerity revealed by the protests has already deeply shaken the Hollande government, Frances most unpopular administration since World War II.

On Thursday, as over a million people across France marched against the El Khomri Law, Hollande withdrew a proposed amendment enshrining in the Constitution the state of emergency as well as a policy of depriving terrorists of French nationality. Though the Senate and the National Assembly had both passed versions of the amendment, Hollande did not attempt to reconcile the differences between the two measures.

The reversal provoked consternation in sections of the media close to the PS, which fear that it marks the end of any hope of the PS avoiding a wipeout in next years presidential election. Le Monde called it a major political disaster, warning that after this calamitous episode, Mr Hollande leaves behind him a field of ruins.

Liberation wrote: Francois Hollande wanted to build national unity above the parties He succeeded only in earning the opprobrium of his own camp and creating the spectacle of a petty political game, which citizens, even the most favourably disposed, did not understand and in many cases totally rejected.

The entire reactionary strategy pursued by the administration of Prime Minister Manuel Valls since it emerged from the governmental crisis of the autumn of 2014 is threatened with disintegration.

At its heart, this strategy relied on using the terror attacks carried out in Europe by Islamist forces mobilized by French imperialism and its allies for their war in Syria to present Hollande as a war president and promote the neo-fascist National Front (FN). The PS responded to each attack by seeking to create a right-wing, nationalist atmosphere and incite Islamophobia to divide the workers and suppress social opposition to its austerity agenda.

After the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo shootings, Hollande invited FN leader Marine Le Pen to the Elysee Presidential Palace. After the November 13 attacks, he promoted two policies linked to the far right: the state of emergency first implemented in 1955 to wage the Algerian war, and deprivation of nationality, forever associated with its use to launch the deportation of Jews from Occupied France during the Holocaust.

This politically criminal strategy encountered no meaningful opposition from pseudo-left forces such as the Left Front and the NPA, both of which have supported the Syrian war. Left Front deputies voted for the state of emergency in the National Assembly.

As the passage of versions of the constitutional amendment by both houses of parliament makes clear, there is no opposition in ruling circles to the rehabilitation of the bloodiest crimes of French imperialism in the 20th century. This is a serious warning to the working class.

In the face of rising social opposition, however, the PS did not feel the current political climate allowed it to proceed with negotiating a compromise version of its reactionary amendment.

These events signify that workers entering into battle against the El Khomri Law are facing a historic struggle. The attempt to rehabilitate the legacy of the French far right and the attack on workers social rights in the El Khomri Law are rooted not in the personal cynicism and corruption of the PS and its political and trade union accomplices, but in an objective global crisis of capitalism.

Amid an escalating spiral of economic collapse and war, every imperialist power is driven into ruthless competition for profits and strategic advantage. French capitalism, deindustrialized by decades of reactionary governments of all stripes and crumbling under a worn-out infrastructure and a mountain of debt, sees no way out other than wars of plunder from Mali to Syria, and a policy of plunder against workers within France itself. To create a suitable political climate for the economic policies they are driven to carry out, all of the bourgeois parties, including the PS and its satellites, fall in line with the rehabilitation of fascism and militarism.

The only way forward in the struggle against the El Khomri Law is the path of intransigent political struggle by the working class against capitalism, and, in particular, the so-called left parties of the bourgeoisie. No confidence can be given to proposals by the student unions and trade unions to negotiate with Prime Minister Valls over token changes to the El Khomri Law. These are simply attempts to impose this reactionary bill with the aid of the pseudo-left parties and their union allies.

Above all, the struggle must be liberated from the national straitjacket these forces seek to impose upon it. In the fight against the reactionary policies of Hollande, the main allies of the French workers and youth are the workers of all other countries, mobilized in a united struggle for socialism in opposition to austerity, war and attacks on democratic rights.
Last week, Socialist Party (PSOE) leader Pedro Sanchez announced that Podemos was prepared to take part in talks on the formation of a progressive, reformist government including the right-wing Citizens (Ciudadanos) party. The announcement followed a cordial two-hour meeting with Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias.

Sanchez said all three parties agreed the main goal was to oust acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoys Popular Party (PP) government.

Since elections on December 20 produced a hung parliament, attempts by Rajoy to form a new government and by Sanchez to form a coalition with Citizens failed after no confidence votes in Congress. Deputies have until May 2 to find a solution before a new election is triggered and held on June 26.

Following the meeting with Iglesias, Sanchez declared, I am serious about this. I dont want elections, I want a government of change that puts an end to Mariano Rajoy and the Popular Party.

Podemos is playing the instrumental role in the possible formation of a government led by the PSOE, which will be charged with continuing to impose austerity measures on the working class on behalf of big business.

The main step forward is that, finally, after 100 days of negotiations, Mr. Iglesias has said yes to beginning a dialogue with the PSOE and Citizens, Sanchez stated. To form a new majority administration in the 350-seat Congress, he explained, The Socialist Partys option is a 199-seat deal, which is what the PSOE, Podemos and Citizens add up to. He did not elaborate on how the three-way arrangement would function only that well see later on how to materialise that change.

Only a month ago Iglesias attacked Sanchez for his capitulation to the oligarchy and his attempts to form a coalition with Citizens which, he noted, is a thinly disguised rebranding of the PP. Now Iglesias is saying that that he is not asking Sanchez to break the PSOEs pact with Citizens and that he will take part in talks with its leader, Albert Rivera.

For the record, Iglesias said he still wanted a government like the one in Valenciaa coalition involving the PSOE, Podemos and Valencian-nationalist Compromis, that ousted the PP in last Mays regional electionsand that he would ask Rivera to support or abstain in a confidence vote. To facilitate that outcome, Iglesias said he was prepared to drop the demand he made in January to be appointed deputy prime minister. If in order to form a progressive coalition government it is convenient that I not be in it, I agree, he said, adding that, Sanchez has told me that my presence in that government is causing a lot of rejection in the PSOE. I told him theres no problem.

During the Sanchez-Iglesias press conference TV cameras focussed in on Iglesiass notebook, which was headed Positions that have moved. It showed Podemos was now committed to deficit reduction, that is, continued austerity, provided only it is supposedly carried out more slowly. Podemos also agrees to a less ambitious tax reform, not targeting the corporations and the rich, and that only the PP labour reforms need be reversed and not those imposed by the previous PSOE government. Podemos will also drop its initial demands for 90 billion in public expenditure to 60 billion.

Iglesias later explained the measures had not yet been discussed, but that Podemos was working to facilitate dialogue in the context of seeking common points between the programme of the PSOE and ours, which are many.

Following the press conference Podemoss number two, Inigo Errejon, put in a public appearance to support Iglesias after a two-week absence. His disappearance followed a faction fight inside Podemos over how quickly to join a government and drop the pretence of being a party of change.

Iglesias sacked Secretary of Organization Sergio Pascual and nine officials of the partys Madrid regional Executive Council who are close to Errejon, resigned, declaring their lack of support for pro-Iglesias leader Luis Alegre. Iglesias responded with an open letter to Podemos supporters, demanding that they respect party unity, and accused unnamed opponents of trying to sabotage the party by claiming there was a split.

Errejons words are a mending of relations between the two groupings on the basis that Iglesias is prepared to do whatever it takes in order to assume a position of power. He declared his relationship with Pablo had matured both personally and politically in recent days and that the Podemos leader had made a gesture of generosity that rebuilds the bridge [with the PSOE] and allows us to move further.

Podemos direction of movement is ever further to the right.

In reply to a question about Podemoss willingness to enter a coalition that included Citizens Errejon made a few cynical noises.

I find it very difficult. Citizens can be part of a government agreement and support actively or passively a government of change, he said. Imagine, a [Citizens] Equality Minister after what they say? A Minister of Labour after calling for easier dismissal? It is not compatible with what we defend.

But having said all that, Errejon declared that Podemos supported many things that Citizens said about democratic regeneration, greater independence of public media, of a fairer electoral system [and] the rules of the House, adding that a PSOE-Podemos government can be a government that makes democratic regeneration measures with which Citizens can agree.

Citizens leader Albert Rivera welcomed Podemos' moves, but said his party still preferred a coalition with the PSOE supported by the PP. Citizens undersecretary, Jose Manuel Villegas, explained that a three-way meeting with the PSOE and Podemos would make sense if it were to discuss changes and improvements to the pact we reached.

The statements made by Iglesias and Errejon prove that the political differences between the PSOE, Podemos and Citizens are minimal. A three-way agreement is entirely possible, as is evidenced by the situation in Greece, where last year Podemos ally Syriza formed a government with the far-right Independent Greeks and proceeded to impose savage austerity.

Following the collapse of the two party system after the 2008 economic crash, Podemos and Citizens gained electoral support as critics of institutional corruption and the caste. However, both reflect the interests of upper middle class layers of entrepreneurs, professionals, and academics who are seeking a greater share of power within the existing state. They are bourgeois parties that share a common hostility to the working class and support the framework of war and austerity imposed by the European Union.

Last Thursday, acting Finance Minister Cristobal Montoro announced that Spains deficit was 56.6 billion, representing 5.16 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). This figure is well above the 4.2 percent deficit target agreed with the European Commission, which has warned that this years target of 2.6 percent will be missed and is demanding adjustments to the budget are made. This means that whichever government is formed in Spain will be committed to imposing drastic austerity on the workers.

Neither the PSOE, Podemos nor Citizens have commented on this crisis in the deficit, as they manoeuvre between themselves, guided primarily by considerations over how best to impose austerity.
The Sri Lankan government presented a Right to Information Bill (RTI) to parliament last month, declaring that it was a significant democratic achievement that allowed citizens to seek the release of government-held information.

In reality, the legislation provides limited access, while entrenching broad areas that will remain off-limits, including on any matters that affect the national security, diplomacy or the economy of the countrya de facto form of censorship.

The legislation is long overdue. During the presidential election in January last year, Maithripala Sirisena promised to establish a Right to Information law as part of the so-called 100-day plan when he achieved office. The campaign propaganda sought to present Sirisena as the democratic alternative to the autocratic methods employed by President Mahinda Rajapakse who was defeated.

Sirisena, a cabinet minister in the Rajapakse government until late 2014, used such promises to obscure the anti-democratic character of the US-backed regime-change operation to remove Rajapakse. Washington did not object to Rajapakses trampling on democratic rights, but rather to his close ties with Beijing, and helped install Sirisena in order to bring Sri Lanka into the US pivot to Asia against China.

The crucial second section of the new bill deals with denial of information, which provides for sweeping exclusions to the disclosure of government information. These include anything that would undermine the defense of the State or its territorial integrity or national security.

A related clause prohibits the disclosure of information that would be or is likely to be seriously prejudicial to Sri Lankas relations with any State or in relation to international agreements or obligations under international law, where such information was given by or obtained in confidence.

Defence of the state, territorial integrity and national security has been repeatedly used by successive governments as pretexts not only to suppress information but also to take other repressive actions. During the protracted communal war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), government opponents were branded as traitors and jailed, tortured or killed.

Sirisena was part of the Rajapakse government that was responsible for human rights atrocities and war crimes. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who was installed by Sirisena, leads the United National Party (UNP) that started the war and has its own long record of human rights abuses.

The governments decision to deny access to information on relations with states, international agreements and obligations is significant. While secret diplomacy between nation states is not unusual, it is particularly sensitive in Sri Lanka at present.

Since taking office, the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government has rapidly shifted the countrys foreign policy into the camp of US imperialism and strengthened military ties not only with the United States but also with India.

Over the past year, a stream of high-level US officials have visited Sri Lanka to consolidate relations. In February, the first US-Sri Lankan Partnership Dialogue meeting was held in Washington to discuss issues including, security cooperation, international and regional affairs.

The last thing that Colombo wants revealed is just how closely Sri Lanka is being tied into US war planning against China. The political and media establishment has kept a lid on public discussion on the implications of Washingtons accelerating military provocations and preparations for fear of triggering protests by workers and youth who have a long tradition of opposing imperialism and imperialist war.

The denial of information also applies to: the disclosure of such information could cause serious prejudice to the economy of Sri Lanka by disclosing prematurely decisions to change or continue government economic or financial policies relating to exchange rates or the control of overseas exchange transaction; the regulation of banking or credit; taxation; the stability, control and adjustment of prices of goods and services, rent and other costs and rates of wages, salaries and other income; or the entering of overseas trade agreements.

In other words, the government intends to ban the release of virtually all information related to economic activity. Access to information on matters of commercial confidence, trade secrets, communication between professionals and public authority, confidential fiduciary relations and overseas trade agreements, including those under negotiations, are also denied.

These issues are also highly sensitive politically. Sri Lanka has been battered by the global economic slump and the government faces a serious balance of payment crisis and debt problems. An International Monetary Fund (IMF) team has arrived in Colombo and on Saturday will hold talks on its economic restructuring demands.

As in Greece, the IMF will certainly recommend another round of severe austerity measures including higher taxes, further cuts to welfare subsidies and the privatisation of state-owned enterprises. Under conditions of mounting popular hostility to deteriorating social conditions, the government wants to make sure that discussions such as those with the IMF remain secret.

Under the legislation, the government will establish a Right to Information Commission to rule on whether information should be released, and will appoint information officers in the various government institutions to provide or deny information.

The Commission will have broad judicial powers and its deliberations will be deemed to be a judicial proceeding. It is similar to the Bribery Commission set up under the Bribery Act and has the power to compel people to appear before it.

The draft bill has not specified what legal action could be taken if information denied by government bodies and the commission is published or disclosed by political opponents or the media. But the implication is that any breach of the commissions rulings will be a punishable offence.

The right to information has long been anathema to the ruling class and its governments not only in Sri Lanka but in every country internationally. Under conditions of growing economic and social crisis, governments are more and more suppressing democratic rights and resorting to police state measures.

The Right to Information bill in Sri Lanka is not an exception to the rule. Behind its threadbare democratic facade, the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government has maintained the extensive security apparatus built up in decades of communal war and will not hesitate to use it to suppress the opposition of working people to its agenda of austerity and war.
Tatas UK steel business is losing more than double the amount previously reported.

Last week the firm announced it planned to hive off its entire UK operation, threatening 15,000 jobs in Port Talbot, Wales and Scunthorpe and Rotherham in England, along with another 25,000 jobs in the supply chain.

It was widely reported that the company was losing around 1 million a day, but the Observer reported Sunday, It is understood that Tata Steel is losing 2.5m a day in the UK and that it will lose at least 100m in running a sales process until the end of April.

Tatas UK plants could be bought up by Germanys ThyssenKrupp, which is also interested in buying other parts of Tatas European operation, or even all of it. The Observer said ThyssenKrupp had not yet concluded a deal due to concerns about the losses being incurred by Tata in the UK, compounded by the fact that its pension fund has enormous liabilities. The Observer notes, The British Steel Pension Scheme (BSPS), which was inherited by Tata when it bought Corus in 2007, has 14.5bn of liabilities, making it one of the biggest pension schemes in the UK.

Accounts for the business show that last year Tata had to pump 129m into the scheme last year and will spend even more in 2016. The 130,000 members of the pension scheme, which has a deficit of 485m, face an uncertain future if Tata sells the business.

The Guardian and its sister Observer are among the major newspapers supporting the campaign led by the Labour Party and the trade unions in support of protectionism and trade war. On Thursday, the Guardian editorialised that Tatas decision to sell its plants represented a national summons to get serious. It complained, After the US imposed anti-dumping tariffs on Chinese steel, the EU could have followed suit, but the UK appears not to have voted for them.

On Saturday, a further editorial was headlined Port Talbot matters more than China.

The Observer stated that steel production in the UK was being decimated by the flooding of the global market with cheap, state-subsidised Chinese steel, and the lack of government action to shield UK steel from these extraordinary global headwinds.

Tariffs had to be imposed, even though an escalation of punitive tariffs between China and the rest of the world would be bad for the global economy. But they were a necessary evil: a tool to be deployed strategically against countries violating free trade principles.

Sections of the ruling elite everywhere are responding to the escalating crisis of the global economy and stepped up competition with a turn to protectionism. British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has come forward as the spokesman for this strategy, which is portrayed as guaranteeing national interests as well as safeguarding jobs.

He visited Port Talbot March 30 and reiterated his earlier call for a state buyout to protect our steel industry and not see it destroyed on the altar of global corporations that decided somewhere along the line Port Talbot is expendable.

Even when answering a question, from Jon Snow on Channel Four News, on whether the steel industry should be exempt from environmental legislation, he turned the issue towards protectionism: China doesnt have any such demands on these issues, he complained. And if someone is importing goods from a country that doesnt have very good standards then maybe we should do something about it and not allow those imports to come in.

On Friday, trade unions including the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union, staged a protest against a takeover of the Northern Rail franchise by Germanys Deutsche Bahn subsidiary Arriva, including raising the German flag over Manchesters main Piccadilly station. Corbyn sent a letter of support, urging the renationalisation of the railways.

These demands were put forward in explicitly anti-communist terms by Tim Roache, the general secretary of the GMB trade union, who said Friday, Never did we think the Tories would let the Chinese Communist Party dictate the fate of vital UK industries like steel. There was a time when the Tories sought to root out the reds under the bed. Now they want to get into bed with them.

Aside from calls for a temporary nationalisation of Tatas steel plants, until a new buyer is found, Labour is insisting that the steel industry must be the target of a vast multi-billion pound tax-payer funded subvention. The steel industry referred to is largely Tataa giant transnational corporation with a combined market capitalisation of about $134 billionor whichever corporate competitor takes over all or part of its operations.

Such measures only throw fuel on the fire of the intensifying trade war being waged between the major steel producing powers, under conditions of saturated global markets, and will lead to further job losses in the UK and internationally.

On Saturday, China announced it would impose import tariffs of 14.5 percent to 46.3 percent on some specialist, high-tech steel from the European Union (EU), South Korea and Japan. The flat-rolled electrical steel affected is the type of high-tech steel made by Tatas Cogent subsidiary in Newport, Wales. The United States has already imposed tariffs of 266 percent on Chinese steel, and the EU has imposed sanctions in 37 cases of steel exported to Europe at dumped prices, 16 on products coming from China. The EU planned to levy higher tariffs against Chinese steel, but was blocked from doing so by the British government.

The ruling Tories position is dictated by key economic concerns. Britain has forged close economic links with China, culminating in the state visit to Britain by Chinese President Xi Jinping last October. During the trip, it was announced that China would be involved in funding and constructing new nuclear reactors in Britain that could be worth up to 100 billion over the next decade. An estimated 30 billion in bilateral investment deals were also agreed. Earlier in the year, in the face of US opposition, Prime Minister David Cameron announced that Britain would become a founding member of the $50 billion China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

However, protectionism offers no alternative to the rule of global corporations. Rather it ties the working class to the struggle between these corporations and heralds a stepped up struggle of each against all that will leave hundreds of thousands of economic casualties in its wake.

The amount of overproduction of steel globally is vast. China is being targeted because it produces just over half of the worlds steel and now has an overcapacity in the steel sector of 400 million tonnesmore than double the total annual EU steel production of around 170 million tonnes. But every country has equivalent levels of overcapacity.

The OECD states that the global steel industrys capacity has more than doubled since the early 2000s, resulting in over-supply, low prices, weak profitability, bankruptcies and localised job losses. In 2013, crude steel demand stood at 1,648 mmt [million metric tonnes], or about 516 mmt below nominal capacity, representing one of the highest gaps in the history of the global steel industry.

More than 328,000 workers are employed in the steel industry in the EU and 8 million globally, with these workers and those in related industries all now threatened with job losses, attacks on wages and pension rights. China itself is shedding 500,000 jobs in steel, 11 percent of the total. Some 1.3 million jobs are going in the coal industry, fully 20 percent.

Only a socialist struggle by the working class against the steel corporations and the governments and parties that defend the profit system, one that rejects all forms of nationalism and class collaboration, offers an alternative to the international race to the bottom now underway.
25 Years Ago | 50 Years Ago | 75 Years Ago | 100 Years Ago

25 years ago: Mass workers movement defies Moscow bureaucracy

On April 10, 1991, leaders of striking Soviet workers won the right to 15 minutes of live air time in an unprecedented broadcast on Byelorussias television station. Strike committee member Georgi Mukhin declared, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union is guilty of the collapse of the economy, lies about Chernobyl and annihilation of the peoples and their languages. He added. The April robbery of the nation was the last straw for us, referring to the drastic increases in government-set prices on most consumer goods that took effect April 2.

The growing movement of Soviet workers against the attacks on their living standards by the Stalinist bureaucracy began to take on nationwide dimensions and pose a direct threat to the regime of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

A six-week strike of coal miners that began in the western Soviet republic of Byelorussia gained strength, closing all mines in the Kuzbass region of Siberia, continuing unabated in the Donbass in Ukraine and spreading to Sakhalin Island in the Soviet Far East.

Over 200,000 striking Byelorussian workers defiantly joined the 300,000 coal miners who began their strike one day after Gorbachev made a nationally televised speech presenting his proposals to deal with the worsening economic crisis and ordering an end to all strikes and antigovernment demonstrations. The strikes spread from the capital of Minsk to three more cities in the western Soviet republic, affecting over 60 plants.

The miners strike shut down 184 out of 600 Soviet mines. Minister for Metallurgy Serafim Kolpakov said that the production of coking coal, pig iron, steel, rolled stock, pipes and nonferrous metals had declined sharply, fueling the downturn in the national economy. Kolpakov said the losses of the metallurgical industry were 2 billion rubles, with the total losses from the six-week strike at many times that.

In Georgia, the Soviet Unions two key ports on the Black Sea, Batumi and Poti, were shut down by a warning strike and the critical rail junction of Samtrediya was paralyzed, as workers protested the presence of Soviet army troops in the Ossetian area. Together with economic demands, they took up the call of the coal miners for the resignation of Gorbachev.

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50 years ago: Police attack Mississippi civil rights protest

On April 5, 1966, Mississippi State Police used rifle butts, nightsticks and tear gas to brutally suppress a protest by black students, housewives and workers at Alcorn College in the town of Lorman.

One thousand men, women and children were forced to flee for cover into nearby woods, pursued by over 100 troopers who hurled scores of canisters of tear gas as they ran. Many received cuts, gashes and bruises in the police rampage that began on the second day of protests called by the NAACP. Many who sought refuge in a store and cafe were also attacked with tear gas. A squad of patrolmen smashed the windows of a car to get at protesters who had locked themselves inside to escape the melee.

The attack took place at the entrance to the historically black college after police ordered demonstrators off the main highway. Earlier in the day campus security police used tear gas and a fire hose to break up a group of demonstrators from a nearby high school. The students mocked the police, waving their coats in toreador style in front of them. Two hundred fifty National Guardsmen were meanwhile mobilized to guard the home of the Alcorn president.

The protests at Alcorn College were called by Charles Evers, brother of Medgar Evers, the murdered leader of the Mississippi NAACP, to demand the ouster of the president of the black college, John D. Boyd. They began following the dismissal of several students and staff members who were involved in civil rights activities.

Evers complained that many of the teachers in the college did not have degrees and were not qualified to teach. This is my alma mater. I went here four years and right now I couldnt pass a sixth grade examination, he said. Students complained about poor food, the infirmary and the grading system, as well as being subjected to humiliating searches at the library.

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75 years ago: Germany invades Yugoslavia

On April 6, 1941 Adolf Hitlers armed forces launched a blitzkrieg attack on Yugoslavia after a mass rebellion against the Yugoslav governments adherence to a pact with Nazi Germany. Wave after wave of the German air force passed over the capital city of Belgrade, dropping bombs on homes, hospitals, churches, schools and libraries. The three-day air campaign caused an estimated 10,000 to 17,000 deaths in the civilian population.

Hitler feared that the insurrectionary movement of the Yugoslav masses against the pact would endanger German security on the Balkan flank and delay his plans for invasion of the Soviet Union. He retaliated by seeking to both punish and dismember the Yugoslav state. Combined with the air attack, the bulk of the German army invaded through Bulgaria while other forces complemented attacks of the Romanian, Hungarian, and Italian armies.

During the two weeks from the time of the defiance of the pact to the German invasion, nothing was done to prepare the defense of the country. As the German forces advanced through Zagreb, Belgrade and other cities, the bourgeois government fled. Military leaders abandoned their posts or tacitly supported the Nazi invasion. When Yugoslav workers under the direction of the Communist Party demanded weapons to defend themselves, they were refused and threatened with arrest. By April 17, the Yugoslav Army had been defeated.

Under Hitlers direction, Yugoslavia was carved up, with Italian divisions occupying Montenegro, Dalmatia and the greater part of Slovenia. Hungary seized the fertile Backa plain in the north, while Bulgaria took Macedonia and parts of Serbia. Germany occupied the northern part of Slovenia. An independent state of Croatia was set up under Italian control, where the stooge regime of Ante Pavelic launched grisly pogroms against Serbs. In other areas the invaders incited nationalist elements against Croats, Muslims and Jews.

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100 years ago: Mass strike of Puerto Rican sugar workers

On April 6, 1916, the Puerto Rican Free Federation of Laborers, affiliated to the American Federation of Labor, issued an appeal to workers in the US and internationally calling for support for striking agricultural workers. It denounced the reign of industrial tyranny and oppression [which] is governing supreme over life and labor.

Under conditions in which sugar was selling at record high prices, the federation declared a general strike in the sugar-producing region of Puerto Rico, demanding wages of $1 for an eight-hour day. More than 20,000 agricultural workers had been on strike since January for better conditions, wages and the eight-hour day. Police and local magistrates collaborated with the major sugar trusts against the workers.

In the town of Juana Diaz, police fired on strikers and other townspeople without provocation. One was killed instantly while two more died in the hospital. Four women, two boys and 10 men were wounded. In the town of Rio Grande, police fired upon, clubbed, and cut strikers.

Police also opened fire on and clubbed striking workers in Loiza, killing one like a dog, according to the reports. Several others were wounded. In Arecibo, police killed one striker, wounded many more and made numerous arrests. Peaceful parades of women were also broken up with gunfire. In Bayamon police fired on the assembly hall of the AFL. The workers appeal stated that clubs and bullets are used freely to frighten poor laborers in the country.

At the same time it was reported that industry and commerce were booming in Puerto Rico, with net earnings of $80 million from the beginning of US colonial rule in 1898 to 1916. Property values tripled over the same period. The workers appeal also denounced the lack of schools for 250,000 children on the island, due to budget and tax cuts.

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6 years, 6 months ago QPD

Monica K. Yates, 48, Quincy for Aggravated Domestic Battery at 620 Harrison. Lodged

Laura R. Kindhart, 19, Quincy for No Insurance. PTC

Russell C. Miller, 51, Quincy for Disobey Traffic Control Device. PTC

Robert E Ward (30) 601 Oak St. Quincy, IL for driving while license suspended at 8th and York on 4-3-16. Cash bond.

Anthony Runnels (21) 1405 N. 12th St. Quincy, IL on a warrant for FTA blocking a driveway at 1310 Broadway on 4-3-16 at 1733 hours.
Jackson County, Fla.-- The Jackson County Sheriffs Office concluded an ongoing investigation into the illegal sales and distribution of methamphetamine in Alford, Florida on Friday.

Deputies executed a search warrant at a residence located off Pike Pond Road in Alford, Florida and discovered that the suspects, Dennis Kevin Whitehead and Gina Edwards Rowell, were regularly distributing methamphetamine and various prescription medications from the residence.

According to investigators, a series of items consistent with the sale of illegal narcotics were found at the residence. These items included various forms of drug paraphernalia including baggies, digital scales, used syringes containing liquid methamphetamine, and crystal methamphetamine commonly referred to as ICE.

Gina Rowell, Kevin Whitehead, and Nancy Barnes, were placed under arrest and transported to the Jackson County Correctional Facility to await first appearance.

Sheriff Lou Roberts and the Jackson County Drug Task Force say that they are committed to continuing to rid our community of any and all dangerous drugs and will continue to target and actively pursue anyone who chooses to manufacture, deliver, transport, distribute, and possess illegal narcotics in our Community.

Sheriff Roberts encourages anyone to assist us by reporting any and all suspicious activity and information by calling the Jackson County Sheriffs Office at 850-482-9624 or Chipola Crime Stoppers at 850-526-5000.
A US Forest Service firefighter starts more fires as smoke billows behind him during a controlled burn in the Little Rattlesnake Creek area June 11, 2014 to lessen the danger presented by wildfire. (GORDON KING/Yakima Herald-Republic file)
The writer and intellectual Alaa Al Aswany has been under media attack in his native Egypt because of the publication of a Hebrew translation of a novel of his in Israel last week. The writer, who opposes any kind of normalization, has long refused to have his work translated into Hebrew, and he condemned the translation as unauthorized.

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In 2002, Al Aswany penned the novel "The Yacoubian Building", in which he recounts the many ills of Egyptian society bravely and openly, including references to corruption and sexual harassment. The novel is one of the most successful in the Arab world, and it has since been adapted into a film and a television series.

For years, Al Aswany refused to permit his novel's translation into Hebrew, despite its publication in dozens of other languages. In October of 2010, for example, the then-Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information, a Jerusalem nonprofit think tank, announced that they had translated the book without the author's permission in an attempt to widen cultural understanding between the peoples.





Alaa Al Aswany (Photo: gettyimages)

Al Aswany dubbed the translation intellectual "theft." He further threatened to sue the Israeli translators because of his opposition to cultural relations with Israel.

Last week, the book was published by the Anglophone publishing house Toby with assistance from the Israeli publishing company Kinneret Zmora Dvir. Al Aswany, whose aggressively anti-Israel stance is well known, published a laconic denial on his Twitter account, which found its way into the Egyptian media.

The tweet claims that the novelist has "not at any time signed an agreement with an Israeli publisher to publish his works." Despite this denial, Egyptian parliamentarian and media personality Mustafa Bakri used his platform on Thursday to strongly attack Al Aswany for the translation.

Hebrew translation of "The Yacoubian Building"

"The Israelis are praising Alaa Al Aswany and the Hebrew translation of his book," said Bakri. "If you have a drop of patriotism, then you would say that there is no honor in your having been translated. But you haven't said that, and you are abandoning the Egyptian people, the Egyptian army and the Egyptian police. You and your ilk. But we have 90 million patriotic Egyptians, all of whom support defending and fighting for the homeland."

Bakri is the same member of parliament that led the malicious attack against former MP Tawfiq Okasha, who met with the Israeli ambassador in Cairo and was subsequently ousted from the parliament.

Another television presenter who attacked the author in a live broadcast was Tamer Amin: "He damaged Egypt and put his hand in Israel's." Amin accused Al Aswany of lying and having signed a contract with an Israeli company in the United States to have his book translated to Hebrew. "May Allah curse Israel. It chose this novel to hurt Egypt with the characters that appear in the book, which deals with homosexuality, prostitution, drugs, and corruption."

Further media personalities and an opinion piece in the newspaper Al Youm El Sabea condemned Al Aswany, ignoring his denial.

Al Aswany is considered one of the most controversial figures in Egypt in recent years, both because of his works and because of his uncompromising stands against the police's conduct following the revolution on January 25, 2011, which led to the end of the former president's, Hosni Mubarak, 29-year reign. Al Aswany supported that revolution and lent his voice to it, and "The Yacoubian Building" symbolized for many the circumstances that led to its occurrence.
The issue of foreign companies paying a lower tax rate in Israel has been on MK Yoav Kish and attorney Guy Ophir's radars for a while now. Recently, the two came out with an interesting form of protest, launching a blimp outside Google's offices in Israel, baring the writing, "Google must pay tax."

MK Kish (Likud party) is sponsoring a bill that will enforce Israeli tax laws more equally on foreign companies such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon. The bill is meant to deal with the new realities of the internet age, in which many companies who don't have a permanent physical presence in Israel can still make money by selling their services to Israelis, all without having to pay corporate or value-added taxes (VAT) in the country. Ophir, who has been championing this issue for the past three years, claims that this creates an unfair business environment which favors international companies over Israeli ones.

The blimp hovering in front of Google Israel's offices. (Photo: Ido Erez)

"Their gross and net (income) is the same, unlike (is the case with) the salaries for every one of us  and that's an impossible absurdity," Ophir says, "If this problem Isn't solved, these bodies will continue to gain more and more power, taking over the market."

"We're not talking about companies like Intel, which came here and is receiving investment incentives, but about companies that come into the Israeli market, earn their daily bread in the Israeli market, but don't pay taxes," says MK Kish. "There is a loophole here that allows (these companies) to avoid paying taxes. The sums are hard to estimate, but we're talking about tens or hundreds of millions that could be taken and used to improve the healthcare, welfare, and education fields. It's unacceptable that a small grocer will pay full taxes, while these giants avoid paying millions."

MK Kish says his bill focuses on VAT only at this stage, but that he plans on expanding his efforts towards income tax enforcement in the future. "Because these companies are multi-national," he explains, "Israel is operating under international conventions on matters relating to international taxation  something that is a top OECD priority. But VAT can be collected, since its local, and that's the way to start (this effort)."

MK Yoav Kish (left) and Guy Ophir (Photo: Ido Erez)

If google is forced to pay VAT, would it not transfer that burden to the customer?

"Look, we could say, 'let's cancel taxes for everyone then.' Once someone avoids paying taxes  the burden for everyone else grows. So I say: Let's start collecting VAT, and if we discover there are more taxes  lower the VAT."

"It's unacceptable that one Israeli company would pay and another would avoid (taxes), our intention is that the consumer not pay, but that Google pay the VAT. If we collect the taxes from companies the right way, I hope we can reduce everyone in the future."

Ophir added, "People have to understand the numbers  the losses to the state's treasury from Google alone are about NIS 1 billion a year. That money could be used to raise teachers' salaries by 20 percent, establish a new hospital in (Israel's peripheral areas), and more."
The High Court of Justice (HCJ) gave a ruling on Sunday, striking down the orders for sealing the homes of three of the five terrorists involved in the attack which killed Alexander Levlovich on Rosh Hashanah eve . Only the home of the central culprit in the attack, Mahmoud Abed Rabbo Dawiyat, will be demolished.

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Justice Esther Hayut stated, "The administrative evidence and the indictment show that the three are considered associated with the killing offense due to their presence during the incident, the stones they threw at other cars passing by, and (their) passing stones to Dawiyat. And still, no one is disputing that the throwing of the lethal stone is associated only to Dawiyat, who was standing  as stated  on a traffic island and threw it from a very short distance, while the others stood farther away."

The scene of the attack that killed Alexander Levlovich. (Photo: Arik Abulouf, Jerusalem Fire and Rescue)

She continued, "Even if you can see the three as associated with the inner circle of the killing offense, and I am not giving an opinion on that matter, the administrative evidence which have been detailed, as well as the indictment, show that their part in the incident was much smaller than Dawiyat's."

Justice Uzi Fogelman added that "The demolition of a person's home  even with the option of differing from this  and the same goes for its confiscation and sealing, greatly harms the rights of their family members, who did no wrong." He believed that Dawiyat's home should not be sealed either, and that other options, such as only sealing his room, should be explored.

The Levlovich responded to the ruling by saying, "We are disappointed. It's absurd that the same body that determined that sealing and demolishing homes are deterrent tools would make a ruling to not seal the homes of all of our father's murderers. The state of Israel is shedding responsibility for its citizens' security. Not making proper use of deterrent tools will not prevent the next attack."

Over 230 Palestinian terrorists have attempted to kill Israelis during the current wave of violence, but so far, only the homes of 11 of them have been demolished.
A prominent leader in Syrian Al Qaeda offshoot the Nusra Front was killed on Sunday in an air raid in the rebel held north western province of Idlib alongside at least 20 other militants including foreign jihadists, rebels and a monitoring group said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks violence in the country, confirmed reports on websites by militant sympathizers that Abu Firas, "the Syrian", was killed in a suspected Syrian or Russian air raid on a village northwest of the city of Idlib in northwestern Syria.
The incidence of prostate cancer, especially among men, in Israel has increased in the past two decades. However, Professor Avigdor Scherz and Professor Yoram Salomon of the Weizmann Institute have developed a groundbreaking treatment, bearing good news for the patients diagnosed with the deadly disease.

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Prostate cancer patients face a dilemma today: Undergoing prostate surgery and radiation, which often causes erectile dysfunction and urinary retention, or staying under "active surveillance," which could allow the cancer to metastasize. Most prostate cancer patients choose the latter.

Special prostate cancer treatment. (Photo: Yariv Katz)

However, the two professors' treatment does not require cancer patients to choose either. In fact, it narrowly targets tumors on the prostate without damaging genitalia, urinary tract, or general quality of life.

The treatment is injected intravenously for 10 minutes and does not harm the healthy tissue surrounding the tumor. Immediately after the injection, the malignant tissue is exposed to light for 22 minutes via tiny optical fibers.

Shining a light on the tumor causes a chain reaction, destroying tumor without damaging healthy internal tissue such as the urinary tract or genitalia. The procedure last an hour and a half and the drugs administered leave the patient's system after about two-to-three hours.

Scherz and Salomon based the treatment on 20 years of research in their in the departments of plant sciences and biological regulation, respectively.

(Photo: Yariv Katz)

"We did not ask ourselves, 'how can we treat prostate cancer,'" said Prof. Scherz. "We were curious about the possibility of developing a treatment that integrates the principles of photosynthesis and our understanding of cancer to narrowly destroy carcinogenic tissue without harming healthy tissue."

How effective is the treatment?

80 Mexicans prostate cancer patients underwent the treatment and have not seen a resurgence of the cancer, erectile dysfunction, or urinary complications. Moreover, 400 prostate cancer patients from 11 European states also participated in a clinical test in Europe and have also experienced positive results.

The Ministry of Health approved the treatment for 50 prostate cancer patients and just last week it was administered for the first time in Israel by Prof. Jack Baniel, head of the Section of Urology at Beilinson Hospital.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took advantage of his meeting with the Czech foreign minister to challenge Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday to pay him a visit.

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President Abbas said on Israeli television a few days ago that if I invite him, hell come, Netanyahu told Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek, according to a statement from the Prime Ministers Office. Im inviting him. Ive cleared my schedule for the week. Any day he can come, Ill be here.

The first order of business will be ending the Palestinian campaign of incitement to murder Israelis, Netanyahu added. My door is always open for those who want peace with Israel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek (Photo: AFP)

Last week, Abbas said in a televised interview with Israeli journalist Ilana Dayan that he would be willing to meet Netanyahu at any time to negotiate a peace settlement.

I suggested to him to meet, by the way, Abbas continued, before stopping himself mid-sentence. No, no, its a secret. Hell tell you, he chuckled, going silent at Dayans requests that he elaborate.

This is not the first time Netanyahu and Abbas have accused one another of refusing to meet.

Abbas told Israeli journalists in January that a meeting between the two men was arranged and he agreed and havent heard any response from Netanyahu ever since. Netanyahus spokesman, however, called this account not true.

Netanyahu dared Abbas that same day at the World Economic Forum in Davos to meet him during an interview with CNNs Fareed Zakaria.

I say, okay, you know what Fareed? Issue the invitation to Abu Mazen, President Abbas, and it will give me an excuse to stay in Davos a long time, and well just wait until he comes. Okay? Netanyahu announced. Ive said it any place that Ive been and hes refused to come. And that remains the problem.
After an investigation by the Israel Police, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Health, nine people were arrested early Monday morning on suspicion of smuggling meat from the Palestinian territories into Israel.

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The meat was smuggled into Israel by forging expiration and slaughter dates and kosher certifications. The meat that was illegally smuggled to Israel was sold to leading and well-known restaurants throughout the country. A network of Israeli and Palestinian smugglers brought in the meat from the Palestinian territories to Israel with trucks with double edges as well as other forms of concealment.

Some of the confiscated meat.

Several members of the network were arrested and brought in for interrogation. During the nightly searches about 30 tons of meat, tens of thousands of shekels in cash as well as vehicles used by the smugglers were found. The affair is now in the investigative stage and additional arrests are expected, as well as investigations of dozens of clients.

The investigation revealed that a Palestinian importer bought meat in South America that was intended for the Palestinian Authority , imported it to Israel via Haifa's port. From Haifa the goods were stored in A-Ram just outside of Jerusalem, and from there it was smuggled in various methods into Israel through various checkpoints under substandard conditions that are contrary to Ministry of Health regulations, thus endangering the public's health.

The smuggled goods arrived to a storage area in Atarot, and it was repackaged with forgeries of kosher certifications, expiration dates and veterinary authorizations. It was then distributed to leading and renowned restaurants as well as various stores for the sale of meat.

"The involvement of restaurant owners will be investigated," Chief Inspector Shmuel Jerbi, who is heading the investigation. He added that "some of the suspects admitted their culpabliity and in the coming days more suspects will be interrogated."

Some of the seized product. (Photo: Israel Police)

On Tuesday, 12 tons of expired meat originating in the Palestinian territories were seized in a meat plant in Kfar Kanna. Police suspect that this meat is from the same plant - Black Angus.

The meat was seized during a raid by the Nazareth police and the Ministry of Agriculture's enforcement unit. Police officials say that the information regarding the spoiled meat came from the Ministry of Agriculture. During the raid on the factory, many cartons and bags of meat and fat were seized and transferred for destruction. At first, the police and the Ministry of Agriculture suspected that this was the meat of camels and donkeys, but it was later concluded the meat was of anther sort that is still unfit for sale or consumption.

It is suspected that the labels on the meat, including the veterinary certificates and expiration dates, were forged. The origin of the meat is from the Ramallah area. According to the investigators, the meat arrived shortly before the raid and has not yet been distributed. Police say that this is a relatively small plant, and the meat was distributed to businesses and individuals in its surrounding area only. The business owner was arrested and was interrogated by the Ministry of Agriculture's interrogation section.

The main plant to which the meat was brught, Black Angus, which is located in Jerusalems Atarot Industrial Zone. The Judea and Samaria Central Police Unit aided the factory, seizing over 20 tons of meat.
The US Congress decided to limit the impact of giant corporations and associations on elections. There was bipartisan consensus on this matter. But the US Supreme Court decided to invalidate the law, because it violates the freedom of speech of corporations.

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The American leadership was furious. Even if Netanyahu and Ayelet Shaked made an effort, they did not attain the level of Obama's and the leading newspaper editorials' rage.

Needless to say the US Supreme Court's decision is a scandal: the intervention that serves the wealthy while trampling the legislature's just decision.

The High Court (Photo: Alex Kolomoisky)

A few days passed after the verdict was passed on the gas plan, and the president Israel's Supreme Court , Miriam Naor determined that the criticism leveled against the decision is "not worthy of a democratic state. "It is not clear from where Naor drew her assertion: it is doubtful whether there is a properly functioning country where judicial decisions on matters which involve governance do not receive sharp criticism from academics, politicians and journalists. Only in dark regimes are judge not criticized.

In general, it is doubtful whether there is another civilized country where the court assumes such authority and violates the separation of powers as Israel does.

It seemed that something had changed in recent years, but the decision regarding the gas plan may bring us back to the bad days of judicial imperialism that were created by Aharon Barak. It's unfortunate since Naor, as a judge, has led a sane, serious and restrained way of thinking.

In principle, there is no guarantee that judges make better decisions than politicians. One of the worst decisions the US Supreme Court made was in the case of Dred Scott, a former slave who was eligible to become a free man in accordance with the legislation of Congress. The court overturned the law and ruled that a black person is in fact an object.

Abraham Lincoln said at the time that "if government policy is irrevocably fixed by judges, people will cease to rule themselves. That court decision was one of the causes of the Civil War .

Judges appetites grew early last century, when the US Supreme Court abolished, for example, the law limiting the hours of work in bakeries, and a series of economic laws aimed at improving the economy and workers' rights. The president at the time, Roosevelt made outright threats. They had an effect. The judges began to restrain themselves.

The common assumption, that judges are better than politicians, has not received serious support in the history of democratic states, but lawyers continue to spread the legend. This is convenient for them. Sometimes it is just another means used buy the old elite to retain their power. Sometimes, just sometimes, it is not a mechanism for strengthening democracy but rather a mechanism to circumvent democracy.

Miriam Naor condemned the criticism of the court without referring to the crux of the issue and thus joined the mindset that all criticism is an attack on democracy. Rather than discussing specific allegations of the left, there are those who prefer to say "traitors," and instead of discussing other complaints of right , the response is "fascist." This is not the way to hold a public debate. That is how we cast it aside, and castrate it.

In most civilized countries, perhaps all of them, an issue such as the gas plan would never have gotten to the Supreme Court. The High Court's decision does not make Israel into more civilized or more lawful country. On the contrary, Israel is becoming a less civilized country. In the words of the late Justice Menachem Elon, there is a difference between the rule of law and the rule of judges. We did not get the rule of law. We received another completely unnecessary instance of the rule of judges.
Thirty-four of 35 (97%) leading economists and analysts in the finder.com.au Reserve Bank Survey expect the cash rate to remain at 2% at the RBA board meeting next Tuesday. The last time the central bank cut the cash rate was in May 2015.

The RBA will likely be on hold as the domestic economy continues to perform positively with minimal impact from the equity and capital markets volatility from the earlier part of the year, ING head of treasury, Michael Witts said.

The RBA will be concerned that the Australian dollar's move higher is contrary to the decrease in the terms of trade of recent years.

Over half (60%) of those surveyed predict no movement for the rest of the year, with the majority of this group forecasting a rate rise  but not until 2017 at earliest. Just three analysts (9%) expect a fall beyond 2016.

Of the economists (31) who weighed in on how low the cash rate could drop this cycle, 52% said it would drop no lower than its current value. Twenty-nine percent predicted a low of 1.75%, and 19% predicted the rate to drop to 1.50% or lower.
As a homeowner, you probably already know that you should be working to maintain your home. But, chances are, you Read More
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For someone who is an introvert and a loner of sorts, friends come in as angels to make life blissful. Times will change for sure but what will remain constant for another 69860000 million years is the special bond between friends. <br><br> And thanks to FBI mean Facebook for helping people re-connect with long lost friends. The letters FB occupy a very special place in my heart for it also means FRIENDS and BONDING to me. <br><br> I feel so proud of myself for deriving such a beautiful full form for FBI think I must fix up an appointment with Mark and suggest him to change FACEBOOK to FRIENDS & BONDING.wondering who Mark is? Mark Zuckerburg is the brain behind such a genius networking website <i>yaar</i><br><br> Theres none to laugh at my poor jokelet me keep it to myself<br><br> Jokes apart, with the help of FB, I have been able to virtually bridge the geographical distances between me and my friends, who are spread across the globe. I feel like thanking Mark a zillion times for creating such an incredible platform that helps people catch-up with old pals and even make new ones. What a genius he is! <br><br> A lot of controversies do surround Facebook for its credibility and its influence on people at largeand many have become FB addicts. Moreover, there are many, who refrain from getting hooked to social networking sites fearing they would becomes addicts. <br><br> However, I would beg to differ. In a way yes FACEBOOK has influenced regular users great deal and we tend to spend most of our times clinging onto our accounts to update the latest on our personal and even professional front. But that holds true for any other habit that becomes a part of our lifestyle. It is entirely up to us to ensure we dont go overboard! Isnt it? <br><br> I have least complaints about FACEBOOK and I believe its nothing less a boon to people who have friends far and wide; it is faster, easier and undeniably one of the cheapest mediums of constant communication. Of course, nothing brings bigger happiness than catching up with pals in person. But considering a busy schedule and the helpless physical separation one can do little but succumb to the inevitable. In such a scenario FB comes in handy. <br><br> Now let me shift the focus to friendsguess I have said too much about Facebookdoes that show how addicted I am to FBNo..Not allMay be! <br><br> I dont feel the need to celebrate friendship on the day that is solely dedicated to them and which falls on the first Sunday in the month of August. Friends are forever and eternal. What is more important than tying a friendship band and buying goodies for friends is that one needs to keep up the special bond through thick and thin. So to flood `Happy Friendship Day` messages on your friends FACEBOOK wall seems like a dud idea! Oh noNot againFB again finds a mention here.<br><br> Back to friends.there is this friend of mine who keeps posting weird status messages- My tummy feels sicksomething is cooking inside it.Have been visiting the loo regularly since morning. On reading his message I get to know he needs to visit a doc for sure.There is another crazy friend who keeps posting his love at first sight messages he might have posted 59478573 thousand times earlier. And like always I know he has yet again fallen in loveonly to fall in love once again the next day! <br><br> Recently, I viewed pictures of my school friends baby and those made me wonder and realize how old I have turned! But I was happy to see my darling friend put on oodles of weight, yet looking as pretty as ever before. I could even feel her baby in my arms. Oh what a wonderful feeling it was. <br><br> It has been months I have moved out of my cityyet I have traveled far and wideand even to the UKthere is where another friend of mine staysand I could see myself virtually traveling to the English countryside after seeing pictures posted by him on FB.<br><br> Virtual phones calls and traveling is cheaper, isnt itat least they dont burn a hole in your pocket! That is one of the reasons why I love FB.FB literally helps me save money that seldom manages to come to my handsit hardly does<br><br> Whateverif you think despite I having said I am not going to talk about FACEBOOKI ended up discussing it.I think I owe a lot to it for it has given me a wider horizon to get instantly connected to my friends who are very special. But one question that I need to ask myself is whether I am really a FB addict?I guess I amand I dont mind being oneas long as I am able to be in constant touch with my buddies.and btw are you too a FB crazy person like me? Let me clarify- here by FB I meant FRIENDS & BONDING! <br><br> What did you think?
My sole motivation behind letting myself into that abominable prison house called school was the little white stick that my mother allowed me to grab and lick after the classes were over. I used to look with wishful eyes the attractive white box of ice cream walla who also had other varieties-the red tangy one that came in twenty five paisa, the slightly yellow one that came in fifty paisa and the expensive white creamy one that came in full one rupee. My mother had warned me against eating the orange one as she said it contained worms that came out if you sprinkled salt on it! So my childhood remained deprived of that one single taste that so often contented the appetite of my not-so-affluent friends. <BR><BR> When I went to college I read about globalisation, about the invasion of markets by foreign goods and of absolute wiping out of the local economy by organized production houses. But I could not understand these things till one day while crossing from near my school my eyes failed to spot that old ice cream walla whose presence had become such an inseparable part of the entire set up. It came as a rude shock to me that his place was now taken by three four colourful wheeled vans endorsing attractive logos and pictures of branded ice cream. <BR><BR> That changes are always for better or worse is like putting an emotion into plain black and white. I may have in my own personal way some attachment with the white stick ice cream or with the more expensive soapy, frothy softie of my school days but the accessibility, taste and variety that the present day ice cream industry is offering is no doubt incomparable. <BR><BR> Who would have thought barely a decade ago of eating ice creams made of real fresh fruits- a la Gelato Vittorio or a cool creamy liquid fried in hot boiling oil or what is called today the fried ice cream. <BR><BR> In India the ice cream industry took sometimes to catch the global cue because the country has an indigenous rich and well developed dessert market. What ice cream would stand in competition against Indian sweets? But no you cant say so just because you are born in the land of Kulfi. You will have the authority only when you taste Baked Alaska (an ice-cream sponge cake dish topped with meringue), Arctic roll (British dessert made of vanilla and flour), Adzuki (Japanese red bean ice cream) and Dondruma( a Turkish ice made of salep and mastic resin). <BR><BR> We Indians who generally go gaga over a handful of varieties that Baskin Robbins offers are unaware of the fact that the company actually makes 1000 flavours! What we get in India generally as branded ice cream is nothing but milk and corn flour seasoned with a few chemicals and packed in attractive cones, cups and cornettos. Our knowledge of Ice cream is so poor that we do not even know what cornetto is! Most of us think it is the name of an ice cream that Kwality offers. Update your dictionary- it is actually the registered name of an improved variety of waffle cone that does not become soggy and that was invented and patented by an Italian firm called Spica in 1960! <BR><BR> The world offers so much in shape of that delicate, cool, tender delight called ice cream that I being a lover of it feel choked with emotion at my own minisculeness and misfortune of not having tasted even a fraction of that tremendous, rich and inexhaustible treasure. What is thy life O mortal, my heart cries out, if thou hast not known the glories of the Australian Giant Sandwich Monster, the Manoco Bar, the Irish Scottish Sliders, the Argentine Helado, the Greek Kimaki and the Japanese Macha! <BR><BR> Sometimes I wonder whether there is an intricate connection between the survival of a race and its appetite for ice cream! Otherwise why would the Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese and the Persians survive the ravages of time and the Glorious Harappan civilization fade into oblivion? And let us be pragmatic and not blame some harmless ecology or innocent river for their decline. The reason I am sure was hidden in their food habits-they having failed to secure the divine blessings of the Gods. Yes, thats precisely what the ancient Greeks called ice cream! Imagine what foodies they must have been that nearly 4000 years ago they got for themselves ice houses constructed at the banks of Euphrates and as early as 5th century BC they began its marketing by selling ice cones mixed with fruit and honey. A honey flavoured cornetto.! <BR><BR> Roman emperor Nero (62 AD) was fond of fruit ice cream and hence sent his servants to fetch ice from mountains! The Falooda that we eat today is actually a Persian dish Faloodeh made from starch and has its origin around 400BC. The Chinese who claim to be the pioneers in almost everything -be it the first currency notes, the first stint with silk or the first to flood the markets of neighbours with cheap plastic goods-were not far behind in making ice cream too. They are credited to have invented a device that made quick ice using salt peter (no, it was not imported from Bihar, China had enough of it). <BR><BR> The unfortunate Charles I whom the world knows as an autocrat, a despot, a tyrant, an enemy of democracy and parliament was also a lover of ice cream! It is said that he made his chef keep the formula a secret so that it remained a royal prerogative. <BR><BR> Our great Mughals, we should not forget were the die hard lovers of food and all that is rich and luxurious in the modern Indian cuisine has a Mughal origin. So they too loved ice cream and they too enjoyed it in royal feasts and ceremonies. When they could get choicest fruits from Farghana and Samarquand and the best wines from Persia, why couldnt they send relays of horsemen to bring ice from Hindukush for their aromatic fruit sherbets? <BR><BR> But were sending horsemen to run and fetch ice or storing ice in underground icehouses near rivers, the only way of making ice creams in those days? Sadly, yes. And thats why the common man remained deprived of and unknown to its delectable taste. But lets thank Nancy Johnson of Philadelphia who first got the patent for a small hand run ice cream freezer. Gradually with the coming of electricity there also came a revolution in ice cream making. Thereafter Giant corporates like Howard Johnson, Dairy Queen, Baskin Robbins, Gelato Vittorio, Ben and Jerrys, Haagen Dazs and Carvel changed the concept of ice cream in the world. Soft serves, Sundaes and super premiums began to be offered by shops next door. <BR><BR> Thanks to globalisation, the world has really become a small place to live in. Today I can access any ice cream from the world over in my local confectionary shop. but among the confused tastes of multitudinous flavours I some how always try to find that one singular taste of the white stick ice-cream which trickled through my fingers and ran into my nursery uniformspoiling it but leaving an imprint on my memory which has failed to faint in all these years.
New Delhi: Several Hindu Sena activists, including its chief Vishnu Gupta, were detained by police today when they were on their way to allegedly disrupt a music launch event of film 'Ghar Wapsi', starring Pakistani ghazal maestro Ghulam Ali, here.

The activists were detained at Ashoka Road around 2 PM as they were heading towards the music launch event venue in Royal Plaza Hotel in Connaught Place, a senior police officer said.

They were put in a bus and taken to a police station in New Delhi district.

Hindu Sena chief Gupta had allegedly threatened the film's director Suhaib Ilyasi, who lodged a complaint at Connaught Place police station yesterday, the officer added.

In his complaint to the police, Ilyasi said he received a "threat call" from Gupta on his cell phone.

He sought police protection for himself and his family and security cover for the event scheduled.

Gupta, meanwhile, had claimed the film was "anti-Hindu" and said, "We have sought cancellation of its music launch. We have decided to protest against it."

The music release of 'Ghar Wapsi' had to be cancelled in January following Shiv Sena's opposition in Mumbai. Ali, 75, had cancelled his visit to Mumbai for the music launch following threat of disruption by Shiv Sena.

Ali, whose several concerts in India had to be cancelled last year following Shiv Sena threats, is making his acting debut with the Hindi feature film.
New Delhi: A three-tier air quality monitoring will be put in place by Delhi government during the second phase of the odd-even scheme with a special focus on the border areas of the national capital where particulate matters are recorded on the higher side.

The government said that apart from making use of the existing real time monitoring network of Delhi Pollution Control Committee, it will go for manual monitoring and the hand-held light scattering system across the city and its border areas from April 6 itself.

The decisions were taken at a review meeting chaired by Environment Minister Imran Hussain for measurement of various parameters of ambient air quality of Delhi during the upcoming fortnight long odd-even period from April 15.

"Environment Department and DPCC have planned to undertake monitoring of major parameters such as PM 2.5, PM 10 and NO2 during the period from April 6 to April 30 in Delhi and its surrounding areas.

"Manual Monitoring stations will collect data twice before the start of Odd Even Part-2 period as well as twice during the Odd Even Part-2 period. Such data will be collected and monitored at 10 different locations near road side, 20 different residential areas and 15 industrial areas, thus, totalling 45 locations," an official statement said.

The hand-held light scattering system, that was employed during the first phase of the oddd-even, will also be used to collect data at 55 locations in Delhi.

"In addition, it will also be put in place at 21 points - essentially three different points at each of the seven border areas i.E one inside Delhi border, second on the border and third one outside Delhi border," it said.
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Monday adjourned to tomorrow the hearing of CBI plea against Himachal Pradesh High Court in state Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh's disproportionate assets case.

Singh's lawyer wanted the matter to be listed for hearing later in the day as senior counsel Kapil Sibal was away arguing a matter in the Supreme Court.

The judge, however, observed "You are already enjoying protection (from arrest/investigation) and are doing these delay tactics."

"There will be no more adjournments after this, argue the case if you want to," the court said.

The matter has now been posted for hearing at 2:15 p.m. on Tuesday.

The interim order passed by the Himachal Pradesh High Court says that CBI cannot interrogate, arrest or chargesheet Singh without its permission.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has attached some of the assets of Virbhadra worth Rs 8 crores in connection with the money laundering case.

On March 16, the Delhi High Court had refused to grant a stay on the proceedings initiated by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) against him.

The Enforcement Directorate had last year registered a money laundering case against Virbhadra and others under provisions of Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) after taking cognizance of a criminal complaint filed by the CBI in this regard.

(With agency inputs)
New Delhi: The AAP on Monday demanded a Supreme Court-monitored probe against companies and people named in the Panama Papers.

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) spokesperson Raghav Chadha said: "Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself has availed of the hospitality of industrialist Gautam Adani, whose brother's company is named in the Panama Papers investigation. Therefore, we don't trust the government for a fair probe into the matter."

"Therefore, a Supreme Court-monitored probe should be ordered in the Panama Papers investigations at the earliest," he said.

An investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and more than 100 other news organisations across the globe reveals offshore links of some of the world's prominent people, including over 500 from India.

In India, The Indian Express published the investigative report, alleging that, among others, Bollywood superstars Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai were directors in companies in Panama. The two did not immediately respond despite efforts to contact them. Rai's media adviser told the newspaper that the information was false.

Also named in the probe were Sameer Gehlaut of India Bulls for allegedly owning properties in the Bahamas, Jersey and Britain and K.P. Singh of realty firm DLF for having companies registered in British Virgin Islands.

Vinod Adani, elder brother of industrialist Gautam Adani, politician Shishir Bajoria from West Bengal and Anurag Kejriwal of the Loksatta Party were also accused of setting up companies in tax havens.

Meanwhile, the AAP leader said the Centre was planning to bring about "retrospective" amendments to the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act so that political parties can receive foreign fundings.

"The Delhi High Court ruled in 2014 that the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress received foreign funding. Therefore, the central government wants to bring in retrospective amendments in the Act so that they could not be charged with violation of the law in the past and continue to receive foreign fundings," Chadha said.

"If the government brings in the amendments, foreign companies will open their branches in India and fund different political parties. Hence, they will dictate policies to the government (of the day) for their own benefit," the AAP leader added.


New Delhi: After over 24 hours when one of its officer was gunned down by unknown assailants in Uttar Pradesh's Bijnor on Sunday early morning, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Monday said that it is investigating all possible angles into the murder of its officer Mohd Tanzil Ahmad.

"We are investigating all possible angle in killing of NIA officer Mohammad Tanzil in Bijnor including terror," said NIA IG, Sanjeev Kumar.

Mohd Tanzil Ahmad, a NIA officer probing terror cases related to Indian Mujahideen, was shot over 20 times on Sunday early morning. Ahmad's wife Farzana had also suffered four bullet shots during the incident. She is now out of danger.

Ahmad was returning home in Sahaspur village of Bijnor district with his family after attending his niece's wedding in another nearby village in the same district, which is about 150 km from Delhi.

Police termed the killing of Ahmad, posted as Inspector initially with the NIA's intelligence wing and later in its investigation department, as a "planned attack" and did not rule out the possibilityy of a terror angle behind the shootout.

In a "planned attack", the killers pumped 24 bullets at 45-year-old Mohd Tanzil Ahmad and four at his wife Farzana, as their daughter, 14, and son, 12, watched the gruesome incident from the back seat of the Wagon-R car they were travelling in, police said, adding the children were not injured.
Jammu/Srinagar: PDP president Mehbooba Mufti on Monday became the first woman Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir.

Here is all what happened at the swearing-in ceremony and who all from PDP, BJP took oath as ministers in the newly-formed J&K government:-

- Prime Minister Narezndra Modi on Monday congratulated the newly formed government in Jammu and Kashmir.

Congratulations & best wishes to Ms. Mehbooba Mufti, Dr. Nirmal Singh & all those who took oath today.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) April 4, 2016

May the new Government of J&K leave no stone unturned in fulfilling dreams & aspirations of the people & take J&K to new heights of progress  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) April 4, 2016

- Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad congratulates Mehbooba Mufti for assuming the office of Chief Minister of J&K

- National anthem after swearing in ceremony of Mehbooba Mufti as the first woman CM of J&K

- BJP MLA Priya Sethi takes oath as a minister in Jammu and Kashmir government

- Sunil Kumar Sharma takes oath as a minister in J&K Govt

- PDP leader Asia Naqash takes oath as a minister in J&K's PDP-BJP coalition government

- BJP leader Abdul Ghani Kohli takes oath as a minister in J&K government

- PDP leader Syed Naeem Akhtar Andrabi takes oath as a minister in J&K govt

- Governor NN Vohra administers oath of Chhering Dorje as a minister in J&K

- People's Conference leader Sajjad Lone takes oath as a minister in J&K Govt

- Haseeb Drabu takes oath as a minister in J&K Govt

- PDP's Syed Basharat Ahmed Bukhari takes oath in Koshur language as a minister in J&K Govt

- BJP leader Chaudhary Lal Singh takes oath in Dogri language as a minister in J&K Govt

- BJP MLA Bali Bhagat takes oath as a minister in J&K government

- PDP leader Ghulam Nabi Lone takes oath as Minister of state, by Governor NN Vohra

- Nirmal Singh becomes deputy CM of Jammu and Kashmir

- Mehbooba Mufti takes oath as J&K CM

- Two new BJP MLAs to be inducted in Mehbooba Mufti's cabinet, Sham Lal Choudhary and Ajay Nanda

- J&K Governor NN Vohra inspects the arrangements at Raj Bhawan for Mehbooba Mufti's oath taking ceremony

- Preparations underway at Raj Bhawan where Mehbooba Mufti will be taking oath as the first woman CM of J&K

- She is expected to take oath of office at Raj Bhawan in Jammu at around 11.00 AM.

- Mehbooba Mufti will head a coalition government with BJP in the only Muslim-majority state.

- The 56-year-old leader is the daughter of PDP founder Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.

- Mehbooba assuming office will be a landmark event in the history of Jammu and Kashmir as well as rest of the country.

- She will be the first woman to head a government in Jammu and Kashmir and the second Muslim woman to become the Chief Minister of a state in India.

Syeda Anwara Taimur was the first Muslim woman CM in Assam in 1980 and continued to hold the chair till June 30, 1981.

The PDP-BJP coalition, which also has Sajad Gani Lone led Peoples' Conference as a constituent, has 56 MLAs in the 87-member Assembly.

The PDP has 27 members while BJP has 25. Peoples' Conference has two MLAs while two other independents are supporting the coalition.

The revival of the PDP-BJP coalition government in the state -- after three months of stalemate -- became possible after several rounds of hectic negotiations between the two parties and apparent intervention by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
New Delhi: Pakistan may not give permission to the NIA team to visit the country or meet JeM chief Masood Azhar in connection with the Pathankot terror attack investigation, a media report said on Monday.

According to CNN-IBN, top Pakistani officials have told the channel that the NIA team may not be allowed to visit the country or meet Pathankot attack accused Masood Azhar.

Don't expect reciprocity in Pathankot attack probe. India (is) doing (a) shoddy probe and maligning Pakistan by dragging in ISI, the TV channel quoted an official as saying. He further added that Pakistan's JIT team was taken to the crime scene in Pathankot only for 45 minutes.

Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar is believed to be the mastermind of Pathankot attack.

A Joint Investigation Team (JIT) from Pakistan had toured India recently as part of its probe into the attack in which several security personnel were killed.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA), which is probing the case in India, had handed over the DNA samples of four slain terrorists involved in the attack and other evidences to the JIT so it could bring to book the perpetrators.
Jammu: As officials at the Jammu and Kashmir Raj Bhavan and the civil secretariat skipped their Sunday holiday to address protocol and legal issues related to Monday's swearing-in of an elected government, intense speculation did the rounds on who will get a berth or will be axed in new council of ministers.

Governor N.N. Vohra formally invited Mehbooba Mufti, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chief, on Saturday evening to be sworn-in as the new chief minister of the state on Monday.

Initial reports about the composition of the council of ministers said both the PDP and the ally Bharatiya Janata party would field the same faces for the 25-member council of ministers which was headed by the then chief minister Mufti Muhammad Sayeed.

Political circles were abuzz with speculations on Sunday that Mehbooba, who arrived in Jammu, has decided to drop some of the senior leaders who held important portfolios during her father's 10-month chief ministerial tenure. Sayeed passed away in New Delhi on January 7 following multi-organ failure.

"At least four senior PDP leaders are on the 'hit list' of Mehboobaji... They held important assignments in the council of ministers of her father," a top PDP source told IANS here.

"None among the previous lot of PDP ministers has so far received a formal word from her to be in readiness for tomorrow's oath taking ceremony as a minister," the source added on Sunday.

"But she is holding a meeting here at 4.30 p.m. today and things will become clear after that," the source said.

Similarly, three senior BJP ministers who held important portfolios in the last council of ministers are also likely to be dropped and new faces brought in to replace them.

"Out of these three likely to be axed, at least two are definitely being dropped," revealed a BJP source.

The new council of ministers headed by Mehbooba will be sworn-in at the state's Raj Bhavan in Jammu city at 11.30 a.m. on Monday.

The oath taking ceremony is to be a low-key affair.

Previously, it was said union Home Minister Rajnath Singh would attend the function, but now union Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Venkaiah Naidu will attend the function.

Union minister of state (PMO) Jitendra Singh is also scheduled to be present during the swearing-in ceremony. He represents the Kathua-Udhampur constituency from the state in the Lok Sabha.
New Delhi: BJP on Monday filed a complaint against a journalist for posting a morphed picture on social media that showed Prime Minister Narendra Modi bowing to touch the feet of Saudi Arabia's King Salman even as the government said it is looking into the matter.

Arvind Gupta, the party's technology cell in-charge, filed a complaint with the Cyber Cell of Delhi Police against the person working with a private TV channel for "tweeting morphed images of PM Modi".

"We have filed a complaint. The Cyber Cell will take due action in this regard," he told PTI.

The journalist, who later expressed regret for the "error", had posted a picture in which the Prime Minister is seen bowing before a Saudi leader. Modi returned from a visit to Saudi Arabia past last midnight.

The fake post led to anger on the social media, with BJP MP Maheish Girri drawing the attention of the I&B ministry.

Responding to Girri's tweet, in which he sought action against the person who had posted the fake picture, Minister of State for Information & Broadcasting Rajyavardhan Rathore said, "Dear Shri MaheishGirri Ji, I have instructed MIB_India to review the violations."

Rathore added in his tweet that he would also seek help of Communications and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad in this regard.

Meanwhile, the journalist involved, expressed regret for his act in a tweet, saying "I sincerely regret posting a morphed picture of the PM on my Facebook page. I should have also verified its authenticity before tweeting it."

"I apologise to everyone concerned for this unfortunate error on my part," he said in another tweet.

The private TV news channel also said that a morphed picture had been posted by one of its staff.

"The organisation was not aware of this unfortunate lapse of judgment. We apologise to everyone for this confusion & deeply regret the error," the channel tweeted.
Jammu: PDP Chief Mehbooba Mufti, who has stepped into the shoes of her late father Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, was on Monday sworn-in as the first woman chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir heading the coalition government with BJP after dropping two of her party leaders.

BJP, which got two of its leaders promoted to cabinet rank, retained Nirmal Singh as Deputy Chief Minister, a post he held under Sayeed who died on January 7.

Dressed in black, 56-year-old Mehbooba, who is still a member of Lok Sabha, took the oath of office and secrecy in Urdu.

The assumption of Chief Minister's office by Mehbooba, who floated PDP in 1999, assumes significance as she will be the first woman chief minister in the Muslim majority state. She is the 13th Chief Minister of the state and second Muslim woman to become the Chief Minister of any state in India.

Syeda Anwara Taimur was the first Muslim woman CM in Assam in 1980 and continued to hold the chair till June 30, 1981.

Governor NN Vohra also administered the oath to 21 other Ministers. BJP's share increased this time in the Cabinet from six to eight berths and three Ministers of State (MoS) while PDP has nine Cabinet Ministers instead of 11 last time.

Former Chief Ministers Farooq Abdullah and his son Omar, Union Ministers Venkaiah Naidu, Jitendra Singh (both BJP) and Harsimrat Kaur (Akali Dal) were among the host of VIPs present at the function held in Raj Bhavan. The Union ministers arrived late even as the function was in progress.

Earlier in the day, the Governor's rule that was imposed 86 days ago in the wake of uncertainty following Sayeed's death was lifted to enable popular government to be sworn-in.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi extended his best wishes to the new government and hoped it will fulfil the dreams and aspirations of people of the state.

"Congratulations & best wishes to Ms. Mehbooba Mufti, Dr. Nirmal Singh & all those who took oath today," he tweeted.

"May the new Government of J&K leave no stone unturned in fulfilling dreams & aspirations of the people & take J&K to new heights of progress," he said.

PDP, which has 27 MLAs, dropped Syed Altaf Bukhari and Javed Mustafa as cabinet ministers while replaced Minister of State Mohammed Ashraf Mir, giant-killer as he defeated former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, with Farooq Andrabi and Abdul Majid Paddar with Zahoor Mir.

While there was no official word from the PDP, sources claimed that Bukhari was dropped in the wake of reports that he along with some other PDP MLAs were planning a political coup during the interregnum.

Sajjad Gani Lone, son of late separatist leader Abdul Gani Lone, retained his cabinet berth in the BJP quota.

Within minutes of the swearing-in ceremony, rumblings started within the PDP with its Lok Sabha Member from Srinagar seat Tariq Hamid Karra openly criticising the composition of ministerial team.

"I have boycotted the swearing-in-ceremony. During the discussion on finalisation of council of ministers, I had certain reservations (over the induction of three PDP MLAs- Altaf Bukhari, Naeem Akhter and Haseeb Drabu) which I had put before the party chief in the first meeting in Srinagar", Karra said in Srinagar.

He claimed that the trio was responsible for Sayeed government's failures. "You are sending a message that you are rewarding the collaborators who had tried to engineer a coup against you. The message will be wrong," Karra said, adding she is keeping "snakes up her sleeves".

On its part, the 25-member BJP dropped Sukhnandan from the cabinet and replaced him with Prakash Kumar. Similarly, Minister of State Pawan Gupta, backed by BJP, was replaced with Ajay Nanda.

Gupta, an independent MLA from Udhampur, was Minister of State for Finance and Information and Technology.

"I will continue to work for development of my constituency and my support to the ruling alliance will be now issued-based," Gupta said, adding he will perform the role of a watchdog in the assembly.

A bitter Gupta said that BJP should have had the grace of "informing me in advance that my services are not required. Anyways, in any case I think it was right time for me to move out."

Besides Kumar, the saffron party promoted Chering Dorje and Abdul Gani Kohli as the new Cabinet ministers. They were Minister of State with Independent charge in previous ministries.

Law Minister in the Sayeed's ministry, Basharat Bukhari of PDP, took oath in Kashmiri again this year.
Thiruvananthapuram: The Congress on Monday evening released its list of 83 candidates for the assembly polls in Kerala that includes the names of 33 of 39 sitting legislators.

The list was released by the All India Congress Committee exactly a week after the final round of talks began in Delhi. The party said it will soon announce the names of candidates for three more constituencies.

As expected, six sitting legislators did not find place in the list.

Veteran leader and outgoing minister Aryadan Mohammed, his cabinet colleague CN Balakrishnan, as well as three-time legislator TN Prathapan -- who had expressed their desire to be left out -- were not named.

First time legislator PA Madhavan, and two-time speaker Therambil Ramakrishnan also did not figure in the list.

After a long tiff with state Congress president VM Sudheeran, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy managed to get included his cabinet colleagues K Babu, KC Joseph and Adoor Prakash and also legislator Dominic Presentation, but was unable to save his close aide Benny Behanan.

Behanan was reportedly ejected by party vice president Rahul Gandhi, meant as a move to placate Sudheeran.

Behanan, earlier in the day after getting clearance from his mentor Chandy, announced his decision to withdraw his candidature. In his place, former Lok Sabha member PT Thomas has been fielded.

Another highlight of the list are both children of late former chief minister K Karunakaran.

While K Murlaeedharan was cleared from his current seat in the state capital, his sister Padmaja Venugopal is contesting from Thrissur for the first time to the assembly, after unsuccessfully contesting the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, which she lost.

Chandy is contesting for a record 11th time from Puthupally constituency, which he has been representing since 1970.

"The party has come out with the best possible list of candidates and which will help the state government retain power," Sudheeran said on Monday.

Polls for the 140-member Kerala assembly will be held on May 16.
Kochi: Congress MLA Benny Behanan, a key aide of Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, on Monday expressed his willingness to withdraw his candidature, alleging that KPCC chief VM Sudheeran is against his renomination from Thrikkakkara Assembly constituency in Ernakulam.

"My candidature from Thrikkakkara constituency was endorsed by party workers and UDF leaders. But, I have come to know about the KPCC president's reservations against it. I understand that he has some other interests," PTI quoted Behanan as saying.

Adding further, Behanan said, "In such a scenario, it is morally wrong for me to contest the elections, particularly that is against the KPCC chief's wishes. So, I have informed the Congress leadership, expressing my willingness to withdraw my candidature."

His decision came even as the Congress High command is yet to announce the party candidates for the May 16 state Assembly polls.

A decision on Congress candidates is delayed due to the stand-off between Chandy and Sudheeran over candidature of state Excise Minister K Babu, Culture Minister K C Joseph, Revenue Minister Adoor Prakash and Behanan.

According to one of the party sources, Sudheeran suggested the name of Congress leader former Idukki MP P T Thomas, known for his environmental activism, for the constituency.

Sudheeran insisted that those facing corruption allegations and had contested more than four times should make way for fresh faces. However, this was not acceptable to Chandy, the sources said.

Chandy, Sudheeran and Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala had been in Delhi for the past one week to finalise the list of the candidates from the state and holding discussions with the party high command and returned to Kerala yesterday.
Indore: Police today claimed to have rescued, within a day, a three-month-old baby which was allegedly stolen form a hospital and arrested four persons, including a childless couple, in this connection.

Those arrested were identified as Ravi Aalekar (40), his wife Vaishali (35), Vinita Bais (36) and Suman Sharma (60), Additional Superintendent of Police (ASP) Bittu Sahgal told reporters here.

Vinita and Suman had allegedly stolen the baby, Vivek Dholi, from Maharaja Yeshwantrao Hospital yesterday, he said.

The two had engaged the infant's mother, Mamta, in a conversation and sent her to have tea. When she went outside, they picked up the child and fled from the spot, he said.

"Thereafter, the two women sold off the child for Rs 1 lakh to Ravi and Vaishali who do not have a child after 14 years of marriage," the ASP added.

Sahgal said they are probing the role of a sadhu (seer), who is suspected to have facilitated the sale of the child.

This is the second incident in which a child has been stolen from M Y hospital in the last 40 days. On February 25, a baby was stolen 20 minutes after he was born. The infant was found with a school teacher on March 1.

According to the ASP, hospital staffers are also under scanner in connection with both these incidents.
Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Monday dismissed an appeal filed by alleged ISIS recruit Areeb Majeed challenging a special NIA court order that had denied him bail in May last year.

"We find no merits in the appeal and the application seeking bail. Hence both stand dismissed," a division bench of justices R V More and S C Gupte said today.

Majeed approached the high court after a special NIA court rejected his bail application. He sought bail as a matter of right under the Criminal Procedure Code, considering that he has been in custody since November 2014 and as the investigating authorities have already filed a chargesheet in the case.

In the plea filed through his counsel Mubin Solkar, Majeed argued that his custody, which was extended by an order of the sessions court on February 25 last year, was erroneous and illegal since his case is being handled by NIA, and as per law, all proceedings of the case, including orders for extension of his custody, must be passed by a special NIA court only.

The NIA opposed Majeed's bail plea as well as the appeal, saying that he should have raised questions over the sessions court's jurisdiction at the time when his custody was being extended.

The National Investigation Agency defended its decision to get Majeed's custody extended by the sessions court, saying the NIA court was unavailable on February 25, 2015 and thus, it approached the special MCOCA sessions court.

According to NIA, Majeed, a student of a college in Panvel, had decided to join extremist outfit ISIS along with three other friends in May 2014.

It is alleged that Majeed and his friends went on a pilgrimage for eight days, after which they parted ways to participate in unlawful activities in Iraq and Syria.

In November 2014, Majeed was flown from Istanbul to India under the supervision of NIA.

Majeed is currently lodged at the Arthur road prison and has been charged under various sections of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), for conspiring to commit a terrorist act and being a member of a banned foreign terror outfit. He has also been booked under IPC for waging war against the nation.
Seoul: South Korea conducted a large-scale live fire exercise Monday on the East Sea, where North Korea has been upping tensions with a series of missile and rocket launches supervised by leader Kim Jong-Un .

The drill involving K-9 self-propelled artillery units and 130mm multiple rocket launchers was held in the coastal county of Goseong, which borders the North.

The aim of the exercise was to role play "the scenario of a possible North Korean maritime provocation", South Korean Defence Ministry spokesman Moon Sang-Gyun told reporters.

It comes during an extended period of elevated military tensions on the Korean peninsula, triggered by Pyongyang`s fourth nuclear test on January 6.

Over the past month, Kim Jong-Un has personally monitored numerous rocket and missile launches into the East Sea, including the North`s first test of a medium-range ballistic missile for two years.

Late last month, Kim watched what state media called the country`s largest-ever long-range artillery drill, involving multiple batteries of heavy-calibre units pounding an offshore island from a beach about 120 kilometres (75 miles) North of Goseong.

The muscle-flexing was largely a response to ongoing, large-scale military war games that South Korea and the United States hold every year -- much to Pyongyang`s fury.

Monday`s South Korean drill was focused on "mastering more efficient and accurate firing procedures at sea against enemy targets", the defence ministry spokesman said.

The North`s fourth nuclear test in January saw the UN Security Council -- backed by Pyongyang`s main ally China -- impose its harshest sanctions to date over the North`s nuclear weapons programme.

The North responded defiantly, claiming a series of key breakthroughs in its development of a long-range nuclear strike capability, and threatening Seoul and Washington with nuclear attack.
Islamabad: Britain's Queen Elizabeth-II cannot be made a respondent in Pakistan's bid to bring back the famed Koh-i-Noor diamond, a provincial official told a top court here.

Lahore High Court Justice Khalid Mahmood Khan reserved the decision on a petition seeking direction for the Pakistan government to bring back Koh-i-Noor, which which India has been trying to get from the UK for years, after a law officer of the Punjab government submitted a reply.

The law officer argued that the petition is not maintainable as British Queen cannot be made respondent. He said said the petitioner had was not an aggrieved person to agitate the matter thus it should be dismissed.

Barrister Javed Iqbal Jaffry had filed a plea in the Lahore High Court naming Queen Elizabeth II and British High Commission in Pakistan respondents and seeking direction to the federal government to bring the diamond to Pakistan from the British government.

Jaffrey said the British had snatched the diamond from Daleep Singh, grandson of Maharaja Ranjeet Singh and took to the United Kingdom.

"The diamond became part of the crown of incumbent Queen Elizabeth-II at the time of her crowing in 1953. Queen Elizabeth has no right on the Koh-i-Noor diamond, which weighs 105 carats and worth billions of rupees," he said.

He said Koh-I-Noor diamond was cultural heritage of Punjab province and its citizens owned.

According to reports, in 1849, after the conquest of the Punjab by the British forces, the properties of the Sikh Empire were confiscated.

The Koh-i-noor was transferred to the treasury of the British East India Company in Lahore. The properties of the Sikh Empire were taken as war compensations.

The diamond was shipped to Britain on a ship where cholera broke out and supposedly the keeper of the diamond lost it for some days and it was returned to him by his servant. The diamond was handed to Queen Victoria in 1850.

The 105-carat Koh-i-Noor is one of the Crown Jewels and is now on display in the Tower of London.

India has made regular requests for the jewel's return, saying the diamond is an integral part of the country's history and culture.

Koh-i-Noor, which means "mountain of light", is currently on display in the Tower of London along with other precious ornaments that comprise Britain's crown jewels.
Chennai: Congress senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad met DMK president M Karunadhi at his residence in Chennai on Monday for seat sharing talks for the May 16 Tamil Nadu Assembly election.

Azad, after meeting the DMK chief Karunanidhi at his residence in Chennai, announced the news to reporters, "Congress will be contesting on 41 seats in the upcoming Tamil Nadu Assembly polls."

"I am sure that under the leadership of Karunanidhi ji, we'll be able to form the government in Tamil Nadu," Azad added further.

After joining hands for 2004 Lok Sabha polls, DMK had walked out of the alliance with Congress-led UPA in 2013 over the vexed Sri Lankan Tamils issue. The DMK had then accused the then UPA government in Centre of not handling the Sri Lankan Tamils issue properly.

A Congress delegation led by Azad on February 13 this year met DMK chief Karunanidhi at his residence in Chennai after which it was decided that the two former allies will join hands once again for the Assembly polls, to be held in April-May this year.
Chennai: Hours after Congress announced on Monday that it will contest on at least 41 seats in Tamil Nadu in the upcoming Assembly elections in alliance with DMK, the ruling AIADMK released the final list of candidates for the May 16 polls.

Interestingly, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and AIADMK supremo J Jayalalithaa will be contesting once again from RK Nagar in Chennai.

"AIADMK will contest in 227 constituencies out of total 234 and remaining 7 seats will be allocated for alliance partners. Also, the party will contest in 30 constituencies in Puducherry and 7 Constituencies in Kerala." ANI quoted Jayalalithaa as saying.

AIADMK will contest in 227 constituencies and 7 will be allocated for alliance partners: Jayalalithaa  ANI (@ANI_news) April 4, 2016

AIADMK will contest in 30 constituencies in Puducherry and 7 Constituencies in Kerala: Jayalalithaa, Tamil Nadu CM  ANI (@ANI_news) April 4, 2016

(More details awaited)
Pilibhit: A special CBI court on Monday awarded life sentence to a group of 47 policemen for killing 10 Sikh pilgrims in Pilibhit, Uttar Pradesh in 1991.

The special CBI court had on Friday held these policemen guilty of killing 10 Sikh men in three fake encounters in a single night in Pilibhit district of Uttar Pradesh nearly 25 years ago in July 1991.

The CBI had investigated the case on the directions of Supreme Court.

A total of 57 policemen were chargesheeted in the case of which 10 died in the course of the trial.



On Friday, 20 policemen appeared before the court, which sent them to judicial custody. The court also issued non-bailable warrants against the remaining 27 accused.

Special Judge Lallu Singh held 47 policemen guilty of the fake encounters. Sixty-seven prosecution witnesses were examined before the court during the trial, CBI counsel Satish Jaiswal was quoted as saying by the ''The Indian Express''.

According to the prosecution, the case dates back to 1991 when the states Terai region witnessed a surge in militancy-related incidents. A local Hindi daily had published a report stating that some people involved in criminal activities were on a pilgrimage with their family members.

Acting on the news, police collected details and found that a group of men along with some women were on pilgrimage. They were travelling in a bus, which had obtained a temporary permit from the regional transport office in Bareilly.

According to CBI, the bus was on its way to Pilibhit on July 12, when a police team stopped it at Kachlapul ghat. Eleven Sikh men were allegedly dragged out of the vehicle. The other passengers, including women and children, were taken to a gurdwara in Pilibhit while the men were made to sit in another vehicle.

Late in the evening, additional force joined the police team and they divided the Sikh men into three groups.

On the intervening night of July 12 and 13, the policemen gunned down the Sikh men in three encounters in the thickets falling under three different police station areas - Bilsanda, Niuria and Pooranpur - in Pilibhit.

The police then claimed that these men had criminal cases against them and claimed to have recovered arms and ammunition from their possession.

The CBI probe found that the police got the autopsy done on 10 of the bodies and got them cremated the same day.
Baku: Deadly clashes between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces over the Nagorny Karabakh region continued for a third day today despite international pressure to halt the worst fighting in decades over the disputed territory.

Azerbaijan said three of its troops were killed overnight when Armenian forces shelled its positions using mortars and grenade launchers, taking the overall death toll in the latest surge of violence to at least 36.

"In the event of continued Armenian provocations, we will launch a full-scale operation along the entire front line, using all kinds of weapons," Azerbaijan's defence ministry spokesman Vagif Dargahly told journalists.

The Armenia-backed separatist authorities in Karabakh -- which claims independence but is backed by Yerevan -- said that Azeri troops "intensified shelling of the Karabakh army positions on Monday morning, using 152-millimetre mortars, rocket-propelled artillery and tanks".

The fresh outbreak of fighting over the region -- which was seized by Armenian rebels from Azerbaijan in a war that ended with an inconclusive truce in 1994 -- erupted on Friday night with the two sides accusing each other of attacking with heavy weaponry.

Azerbaijan claimed to have snatched several strategic positions inside the Armenian-controlled territory -- internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan -- in what would be the first change in the front line since the ceasefire 22 years ago.

In the Armenian capital of Yerevan, defence ministry spokesman Artsrun Hovhannisyan said Monday that Karabakh forces had "seriously advanced at certain sectors of the front line and took up new positions".

The report was quickly dismissed as "untrue" by Azerbaijan.

Russia and the West have called for a ceasefire, with President Vladimir Putin, a key power broker, pushing for an immediate end to the fighting, and Moscow's diplomats and military pressuring both sides.

"We are continuing contacts with Baku and Yerevan so that they hear the signals from Moscow, Washington and Paris," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday, mentioning the three capitals that have long mediated the conflict.

At least 18 Armenian, 15 Azeri troops and three civilians were reported killed, and one of Azerbaijan's attack helicopters was shot down.
Jerusalem: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said he was waiting for a visit from Mahmud Abbas, after the Palestinian president said he had already proposed such a meeting.

"A few days ago, on Israeli television, I heard president Abbas say that if I invite him to meet, he'll come," Netanyahu told reporters at a meeting with visiting Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek.

"I'm inviting him again," he said in English. "I've cleared my schedule this week. Any day he can come, I'll be here."

In an interview with commercial TV station Channel 2 on Thursday, Abbas said that he was ready to meet Netanyahu "any time."

"And I suggested, by the way, for him to meet," he said in English.

Asked what was Netanyahu's response to the offer he refused to answer.

"He will tell you," the Palestinian leader said.

US-backed peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel collapsed in April 2014 after nine months amid bitter recriminations and mutual blame.

The two men shook hands at a climate summit in Paris in November, but held no significant talks.

The last substantial and public meeting between them is thought to date back to 2010, though there have been unconfirmed reports of secret meetings since then.

Netanyahu today said that if the two met he would discuss a wave of violence which has left 200 Palestinians and 28 Israelis dead since October.

"We have a lot of things to discuss, but the first item is ending the Palestinian campaign of incitement to murder Israelis," he said.

Most of the Palestinians killed were carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks, according to Israeli authorities.

But Israeli forces have been also accused of using excessive force in some cases, charges which they have firmly denied.

Palestinians and many analysts say frustration with Israel's occupation and settlement building along with the lack of any progress on peace efforts have fed the unrest.

"Lack of hope. Lack of trust," Abbas, who has called for peaceful resistance, said in last week's interview as reasons for why the knife attacks have continued.

He said that if Netanyahu were to engage in serious peace talks Palestinian attacks would cease.

"If he tells me that he believes in the two-state solution and we sit around the table to talk about a two-state solution, this will give my people hope," he said.

"And nobody will dare to go and stab or shoot or do anything here or there."
Wellington: New Zealand`s former prime minister Helen Clark on Monday entered the race to be the next UN secretary-general, touting her decades of leadership as she aims to become the first woman to head the world body.

The search for a successor to Ban Ki-moon comes at a time of high anxiety in global affairs as the United Nations grapples with the biggest refugee crisis since World War II and raging conflicts in the Middle East and Africa.

"I am putting myself forward based on proven leadership experience over close to three decades, both in my own country and here at the United Nations," Clark told AFP in an interview, ending months of speculation.

"I do think I have the experience and the attributes to do this job."

Currently the UN`s highest-ranking woman, Clark heads its largest agency, the UN Development Programme (UNDP), a post she has held for the past seven years, overseeing the world body`s vast development agenda.

New Zealand formally put forward Clark, one of the most experienced women in global politics, as its candidate at a press conference in Wellington.

"Having served as the prime minister of New Zealand for nine years and held one of the top jobs in the United Nations for the past seven, Helen Clark has the right mix of skills and experience for the job," Prime Minister John Key said.

"There are major global challenges facing the world today and the United Nations needs a proven leader who can be pragmatic and effective.

"Coming from New Zealand, Helen Clark is well placed to bridge divisions and get results. She is the best person for the job."The 66-year-old former academic is among New Zealand`s longest-serving prime ministers, having headed the government for three successive terms from 1999 to 2008.

Next week, the UN General Assembly will hold public hearings for the candidates for the first time in the United Nations` 70-year history, with the race still wide open months before a vote.

Other than Clark, seven candidates including three women are vying for the top job. The candidates include UNESCO chief Irina Bokova of Bulgaria and the former High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, of Portugal.

Clark would become the first woman to lead the United Nations, after eight men in the top job -- although she downplayed her gender as a factor in her candidacy.

"I`m not putting myself forward because I`m a woman. I`m putting myself forward because I think I`m the best person for the job," she said.

"I happen to be a woman with a strong track record."

"I`ve given it a lot of thought," Clark said of her candidacy. "I think we face a very, very challenging world outlook."The United Nations has come under heavy fire over its failure to reform, with critics arguing it is ill-adapted to respond to evolving global crises.

Clark pointed to those shortcomings during the interview, saying she was "extremely keen" to steer the world body towards a more effective approach to addressing what she termed a "different kind of conflict."

Today`s warfare is about "civil wars, disparate non-state actors. It`s violent extremism. This requires new approaches," she said.

Turning to the UN bureaucracy, Clark called for reform to turn the world body -- with its 40,000-plus employees and annual budget of over $8 billion -- into a more "pro-active organization."

"We can be a clunky, old-fashioned-style administration," she acknowledged.

"I`m known for being a pragmatic, task-focused and results-oriented person."

UN diplomats see Clark as a prominent candidate for the top post, but it remains unclear how much support she will be able to garner from the permanent Security Council members: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.

Russia has said that the next secretary-general should come from eastern Europe, the only region that has yet to be represented in the top job.

Britain has said it would back a woman to be the world`s top diplomat.

After public hearings are held in the General Assembly beginning next week, the Security Council is expected to select the winning candidate in July, who would then be endorsed by the assembly.

The successful candidate will begin work on January 1, 2017.
Lesbos: Greece sent a first wave of migrants back to Turkey on Monday under an EU deal that has faced heavy criticism from rights groups.

A small Turkish ferry, the Lesvos, and a larger catamaran, the Nezli Jale, left the island of Lesbos carrying 131 migrants, mainly from Pakistan and Bangladesh, said EU border agency Frontex, which is escorting them to Turkey.

"The procedure was very calm, everything was orderly," Frontex spokeswoman Ewa Moncure told reporters at Lesbos harbour.

Turkish officials were present during the process, she added.

Another Turkish catamaran is transporting migrants from the neighbouring island of Chios. Officials have not yet confirmed how many people are on board.

A few dozen activists on Chios gathered near the embarkation site to protest the deportations, chanting "Freedom," an AFP photographer said.

Turkish Interior Minister Efkan Ala has said his country was ready to receive 500 people Monday and that Greek authorities had provided 400 names, although these numbers could change.

Police sources on Lesbos, a Greek holiday island that has served as the gateway for hundreds of thousands of people coming from Turkey, said there had been a flurry of last-minute asylum applications.

"We... have over two thousand people that have stated their wish to seek asylum and we need to see a credible process go ahead with the Greek asylum service for those that wish to express their protection concerns," said Boris Cheshirkov, the UN refugee agency spokesman on Lesbos.

Greek officials have been tight-lipped over how many migrants will cross the Aegean Sea back to Turkey.

State news agency ANA reported Sunday that some 250 migrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and African nations would be sent back daily between Monday and Wednesday.

Yiorgos Kyritsis, spokesman for Greece`s refugee coordination unit, insisted Monday`s operation only "involves people who have not requested asylum".

The European Union (EU) signed the controversial deal with Turkey in March, desperate to defuse the continent`s worst migration crisis since World War II, with more than a million people arriving from the Mideast and elsewhere last year.

Under the agreement, designed to halt the main influx which comes from Turkey, all "irregular migrants" arriving since March 20 face being sent back, although the deal calls for each case to be examined individually.

For every Syrian refugee returned, another Syrian refugee will be resettled from Turkey to the EU, with numbers capped at 72,000. Rights groups have criticised the deal, questioning whether it is legal and ethical.

"We don`t know what is going to actually happen," senior UN migration official Peter Sutherland said this weekend.

"But if there is any question of collective deportations without individuals being given the right to claim asylum, that is illegal."

Amnesty International says Turkey is not a safe country for refugees -- a charge Ankara rejects.

Many migrants on the islands have complained of not being given sufficient time and access to carry out the asylum procedure.

Vassilis Balas, manager of the Suda refugee camp in Chios, said many migrants had only just started applying.

"UNHCR (the UN refugee agency) is facilitating this process in the camps. It`s facilitating a process that actually should have been done by the police and other authorities in the hotspot," he said.

Turkish authorities say the first wave of returned migrants will arrive in the resort of Dikili, just opposite Lesbos. Tents have been put up by the town`s harbourside in anticipation of Monday`s arrivals, according to media reports.

Mustafa Toprak, governor of Turkey`s Izmir region, said the migrants would only be staying briefly in Dikili and the resort of Cesme -- a second reception point -- before being moved on.

The operation to resettle Syrians to Europe under the one-for-one arrangement also starts Monday.

Germany expects to take in a first group of about 35 Syrians from Turkey on Monday, the German interior ministry said. Several dozen others are expected to arrive in France, Finland and Portugal, according to German government sources.
Islamabad: A shrine setup in the memory of the Qadri, the assassin of former governor of Pakistan`s Punjab province, Salman Taseer, mirrors the two-faced reality of Pakistan -- one face meant for the world and the second and more realistic one, meant for militants like Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri and his associates.

Thousands of Pakistanis continue to flock to Qadri`s grave, located in the sleepy village of Athaal, about three miles from Islamabad, to salute his commitment of standing up and dying for his religion.Since gaining independence from Britain in 1947, Pakistan has faced a historical dichotomy.

At the time of independence, its founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, wanted Pakistan to be a land of liberal values, but over the nearly seven decades since, the country has slipped and slid towards a more Islamic fundamentalist train of thought, action and administration, backed by an all-powerful military that separately nurtures jihadi groups to serve its geo-strategic interests in Afghanistan and India.

Today, Jinnah`s brand of liberalism literally stands buried by fundamentalist dominant movements, such as those espoused by the Jamaat Ahle Sunnat, with which Qadri was associated well before his eventual execution. Qadri today is seen a hero of the Muslim world, because of what he did on January 4, 2011.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif`s attempts at turning the clock back towards having a less conservative and a more liberal Pakistan is also being challenged by fundamentalist elements. Sharif`s own son-in-law has backed Qadri`s action of assassinating Governor Taseer as `religious duty`, and has joined the chorus that has put his father-in-law`s liberal initiatives under the scanner.

Newspapers in Pakistan, such as the Dawn and The Nation, have said that Sharif`s liberal rhetoric is aimed at keeping Washington satisfied and happy, but at the same highlight the dichotomy of the longevity of liberalism in a region where militant groups like the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) or the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) are nurtured by the military establishment.

JeM - led by Maulana Masood Azhar, and LeT of Hafiz Muhammad Saeed are based in Punjab, Sharif`s home province; and both are not bothered by the American sanctions against them.According to Cyril Almedia, who works for the Dawn, there is an unwritten survival mantra for political parties in Pakistan.

Asha`ar Rehman, a columnist, says, "All parties practicing popular politics in Pakistan seek to maintain the same horses-for-courses profile. They must have variety so that they have a specialist for every situation, not the least among them the Ulema (religious scholars)".

Under the banner of liberalism, the Sharif government rejected Qadri`s clemency plea, but at the same time allowed zealots to turn a murderer into a saint.The dichotomy in the Pakistan story can also be seen in the case of the Imran Khan-led Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) that promotes liberal values, but during recent local body elections, its candidates sported life-size banners and posters of Qadri.

The Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman-led fundamentalist Jamaat Ulema Islami (JUI) is trying to bring together 35 religious parties and groups under the banner of Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, (MMA), to deal with "the ever-changing challenges facing the people of Pakistan.

"The attempt by the Sharifs to pass and give sanction to a tough domestic violence law in Punjab province was met with opposition and forced them to water it down, says The Nation.Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) Imam Maulana Abdul Aziz has as many as 33 criminal cases registered against him, but today weak investigation by the Sharif government allows him to roam around freely.

The Qadri phenomenon has given birth to `legal assassins for hire`, according to The Nation.There is a 700-strong network called the Khatm-e-Nubuwwat Lawyers` Forum that offers free service to "secure death for anyone who commits blasphemy".

Some observers see validity in the popularity of the Qadri Shrine, as Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri belonged to one of the four Sufi orders that exist in Pakistan i.e. Chishti, Suharwardi, Naqshabandi and Qadri.

Senior journalist M.A. Niazi said, "It is a very Sufi thing to resent blasphemy, and to resent the court system", but at the same time maintained that, "Sufi practices are closely linked to the Sharia".

"It should also be clear from the massive turnout at the funeral (of Qadri) that whether Sufi or Salafi, Barelvi or Deobandi, Muslims (of Pakistan) are united upon the honour of Holy Prophet," Niazi added.

The aftermath of Qadri`s hanging shows that Muslim exclusivism has become a "defining feature" of all main stream sects in Pakistan, and according to noted author Ayesha Siddiqa, has put the spotlight back on state support to the Deobandi and Ahl-Hadith militancy.

"The JeM leadership exhibits neither nervousness nor indicates haste in removing the armed guards around its main centre. The LeT, on the other hand, has a more expansive organisational structure, and is thus quite sensitive to managing the popular narrative," she remarks.

The Lashkar-e-Toiba stands banned, but its political arm, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa works in an unrestricted way despite the U N Security Council declaring it as a front of the LeT. Another charitable outfit of the LeT is the Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation, (FIF), which was established in 2009, and designated a terror entity by the U.S. State Department in November 2010.

In conclusion, there seems to be a well-crafted strategy in place to extend global outreach to gain acceptability as a humanitarian enterprise, while simultaneously attracting a regular inflow of men and money to sustain the pan-Islamic vision.
Beirut: The spokesman for Al-Qaeda`s Syrian affiliate, Al-Nusra Front, his son and 20 other jihadists were killed in air strikes Sunday in the northeast of the country, a monitor said.

Abu Firas al-Suri was meeting with other leading Islamist fighters in a Nusra stronghold in Kafar Jales when the raids struck, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

"Abu Firas al-Suri, his son and at least 20 jihadists of Al-Nusra and Jund al-Aqsa and jihadists from Uzbekistan were killed in strikes on positions in Idlib province," its chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

It was not immediately clear if the raids were carried out by Syrian regime warplanes or their Russian allies.

Two other targets belonging to Al-Nusra and allied jihadist group Jund al-Aqsa in the north of Idlib province were also attacked, Abdel Rahman said, leaving many seriously wounded.

Syrian Suri, real name Radwan Nammous, fought against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan where he met Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his mentor Abdullah Azzam before returning to Syria in 2011, according to supporters on Twitter.

A temporary ceasefire between government forces and rebels has largely held since February 27, but it does not cover Al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State group.

The break has, in fact, allowed Russia and the US-led coalition that has been bombing IS in Syria to concentrate their fight against the jihadists.

On Wednesday, a drone strike near IS`s de facto Syrian capital Raqa killed Tunisian commander Abu al-Haija, according to the Observatory, the latest in a series of blows to the jihadists in recent weeks.

Fifteen IS commanders accused of revealing his position have since been executed by the jihadists, and the fate of another 20 men accused of collaborating with the US-led coalition remains unknown.

"This is the highest number of executions of security officials by IS," said Abdel Rahman, whose Britain-based group has a wide network of contacts across the country.

Regime troops on Sunday also seized the city of Al-Qaryatayn, one of the last IS strongholds in central Syria, according to state television.

The Observatory reported violent clashes in the city during the day, but by evening the monitor said IS jihadists had finally been driven out.

The advance came after the Syrian army dealt IS a major blow on March 27 by retaking the ancient city of Palmyra, known as the "Pearl of the desert".

The recapture of Al-Qaryatain, some 120 kilometres (75 miles) to the southwest, allows the army to secure its grip over the ancient city, where jihadists destroyed ancient temples during their 10-month rule.

Once Al-Qaryatain returns to government control, "of the whole of Homs province, IS will only hold its bastion in Sukhna" northeast of Palmyra, Abdel Rahman said.


Beirut: Air strikes have killed several Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front members including its spokesman and regime forces have retaken a strategic town from the Islamic State group in the latest setbacks for jihadists in Syria.

Abu Firas al-Suri, whose real name was Radwan Nammous, fought against Soviet forces in Afghanistan where he met Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and the founding father of global jihad, Abdullah Azzam, before returning to Syria in 2011.

Suri was meeting with other leading Islamist fighters in an Al-Nusra stronghold in Kafar Jales in northwestern Syria when the raids struck yesterday.

He "was an old time Al-Qaeda member ... He was brought in from Yemen as an ideological counterweight" for rival jihadist group IS, said Pieter Van Ostaeyen, a historian and monitor of jihadist groups.

"His death indeed is a blow for Al-Nusra. However, that will not change a lot on the operational level," he added.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Suri, his son and at least 20 jihadists of Al-Nusra and Jund al-Aqsa and other fighters from Uzbekistan were killed in strikes on positions in Idlib province.

Seven were high-ranking jihadists, the Britain-based Observatory said, adding that the Syrian air force had likely carried out the strikes.

A temporary ceasefire between government forces and rebels has largely held since February 27, but it does not cover Al-Nusra and IS.

The break has, in fact, allowed Russia and the US-led coalition that has been bombing IS in Syria to concentrate on their fight against the jihadists.

Al-Nusra has generally kept a low profile since the truce brokered by the United States and Russia came into force.

But on Friday, the Al-Qaeda affiliate and allied rebel groups pushed regime loyalists out of Al-Eis, a strategic town in the northern province of Aleppo, killing 12 members of the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement.

"It was Al-Nusra's biggest operation since the ceasefire began," Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

Suri's killing may even be a warning by the regime to Al-Nusra against staging any more offensives in future.

Al-Nusra's rival IS has also lost a string of high-ranking members in recent weeks, mainly to strikes by the US-led coalition that launched an aerial campaign against the jihadists in Iraq and Syria in 2014.

On Wednesday, a drone strike near IS's de facto capital Raqa killed Tunisian commander Abu al-Haija, according to the Observatory.
Beirut: Air strikes have killed several al Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front members including its spokesman and regime forces have retaken a strategic town from the Islamic State group in the latest setbacks for jihadists in Syria.

Abu Firas al-Suri, whose real name was Radwan Nammous, fought against Soviet forces in Afghanistan where he met al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and the founding father of global jihad, Abdullah Azzam, before returning to Syria in 2011.

Suri was meeting with other leading Islamist fighters in an Al-Nusra stronghold in Kafar Jales in northwestern Syria when the raids struck on Sunday.

He "was an old time al Qaeda member ... He was brought in from Yemen as an ideological counterweight" for rival jihadist group IS, said Pieter Van Ostaeyen, a historian and monitor of jihadist movements.

"His death indeed is a blow for Al-Nusra. However, that will not change a lot on the operational level," he added.

Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, a research fellow at the Middle East Forum, a US think-tank, was of the same opinion.

Suri "was a very senior member of Al-Nusra, but organisations like Al-Nusra aren`t debilitated because they lose a single senior leader", he said.

"Their organisational structures are well prepared for targeted assassinations, which are usual business for them."

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Suri, his son and at least 20 jihadists of Al-Nusra and Jund al-Aqsa and other fighters from Uzbekistan were killed in strikes on positions in Idlib province.

Seven were high-ranking jihadists, the Britain-based Observatory said, adding that the Syrian air force had likely carried out the strikes.A temporary ceasefire between government forces and rebels has largely held since February 27, but it does not cover Al-Nusra and IS.

The break has, in fact, allowed Russia and the US-led coalition that has been bombing IS in Syria to concentrate on their fight against the jihadists.

Al-Nusra has generally kept a low profile since the truce brokered by the United States and Russia came into force.

But on Friday, the al Qaeda affiliate and allied rebels pushed regime loyalists out of Al-Eis, a strategic town in the northern province of Aleppo, killing 12 members of the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement.

"It was Al-Nusra`s biggest operation since the ceasefire began," Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

Suri`s killing may even be a warning by the regime to Al-Nusra against staging any more offensives, Abdel Rahman added.

Tamimi disagreed.

"One should not over-interpret the timing," he said, adding that assassinations of jihadists are usually carried out "when a window of opportunity opens".

IS has also lost a string of high-ranking members in recent weeks, mainly to strikes by the US-led coalition that launched an aerial campaign against the jihadists in Iraq and Syria in 2014.

Last Wednesday, a drone strike near IS`s de facto capital Raqa killed Tunisian commander Abu al-Haija.

Fifteen IS commanders accused of revealing his position have since been executed by the jihadists, and the fate of another 20 men accused of collaborating with the US-led coalition remains unknown.

"This is the highest number of executions of security officials by IS," said Abdel Rahman, whose Britain-based group has a wide network of contacts on the ground across Syria.On Monday, IS`s press officer in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor was killed in an air strike while covering fighting between the jihadists and regime troops, the Observatory said.

"It was unclear whether the air strike that killed Mohammad al-Lafi was Russian or Syrian," the group said, adding that the IS official used the nom de guerre Abu Abdallah Azzam.

On Sunday, the army seized the town of Al-Qaryatain, one of the last IS strongholds in central Syria, a week after the Russian-backed army scored a major victory in the ancient city of Palmyra, also located in the vast province of Homs.

The recapture of Al-Qaryatain allows the army to secure its grip over Palmyra, where jihadists destroyed ancient temples during their 10-month rule and executed 280 people.

It has also left IS with just one bastion in Homs province, Sukhna, where the focus of the fighting has now shifted.

In spite of the truce, hundreds of thousands of civilians living under siege across Syria remain deprived of essential medical and food assistance, according to Human Rights Watch.

"While aid delivery has improved in the last month, it`s still not nearly enough and too many Syrians are still not receiving the aid they need," said Nadim Houry, HRW`s deputy Middle East director.


Commune de Brazzaville: Thousands fled fighting in Congo`s capital Brazzaville on Monday as the government blamed hours of heavy clashes in opposition bastions on a rebel group known as "The Ninjas".

There was no official toll from what the government called "a terrorist action", as it said it was investigating whether the assailants were linked to opposition leaders contesting President Denis Sassou Nguesso`s re-election last month.

Late Monday, Congo`s constitutional court confirmed the March 20 election victory of the former paratrooper colonel, who has ruled the country for more than 32 years despite accusations from critics of rampant corruption and nepotism.

The results of the poll, in which Sassou Nguesso took more than 60 percent of the vote, had been denounced by the five defeated candidates who allege "massive fraud".

Streams of people panicked by gunfire fled districts loyal to the opposition in the south of Brazzaville, carrying their bags and pushing the elderly in wheelbarrows.

In a televised statement early afternoon, government spokesman Thierry Moungalla said the situation was "under control" and called on people to "remain calm and return to their usual business."

He blamed the fighting on "disbanded Ninja Nsiloulou" fighters, saying they had attacked an army position as well as four police stations.

The rebel group from a late 1990s conflict was headed by Protestant preacher Frederic Bintsamou, known as Pastor Ntumi, whose trademark colour is purple and who disbanded the group in return for a junior government position.

He recently came out in favour of presidential candidate Guy-Brice Parfait Kolelas, who ran second to Sassou Nguesso in last month`s vote.

The constitutional court on Monday ruled that Kolelas` request to have the results of four regions annulled was "inadmissable as it was filed after the constitutional deadlines".

"We live in a country where, whether you vote or not, peace is always under threat," said a woman in the city`s restive south who gave her name as Julienne.According to several witnesses, the crackle of automatic gunfire began after 2:00 am (0100 GMT) in the southern Makelekele and Mayana districts, and continued without stop until dawn. Intermittent shooting continued into the afternoon.

Government spokesman Moungalla said the Makelekele town hall was torched.

"Soldiers came and told us to leave before it was too late, now we don`t know where to go," said 24-year-old student Mercie.

As hundreds of people prepared to spend the night sheltering in churches or government buildings, streams of people continued to arrive in the city centre.

"We are scared," 52-year-old carpenter Fidele told AFP. "There was no sign that we would be able to spend a quiet night in our area. I thought it was better to leave with our wives and children."

Moungalla said the trouble had erupted in the wake of the March vote, which he dubbed "a great moment of peaceful democracy".

In an apparent reference to the opposition, he said the government "does not yet have proof that candidates or their supporters are involved in this affair", but that it intended "to advise national and international opinion that investigations are ongoing."Security forces threw up roadblocks on the main road between the south and the city centre, stopping all cars for checks.

"I couldn`t stand the sound of the bullets and the heavy arms, I`m terrified," a 55-year-old called Jerome told AFP.

Last week, there were strikes in several southern districts in protest over the election results.

Congo has been on edge since an October constitutional referendum that ended a two-term limit on presidential mandates, allowing the 72-year-old head of state to run again.

Former colonial power France on Monday called for "restraint" and urged French citizens to stay at home.

Sassou Nguesso served as president from 1979 to 1992 and returned to power in 1997 following a civil war.

He won two successive terms in 2002 and 2009, but the results of both elections were contested by opposition parties.


Reykjavik: Thousands of Icelanders took to the streets late Monday calling for their prime minister`s resignation after leaked tax documents dubbed the "Panama Papers" prompted allegations that he and his wife used an offshore firm to hide million-dollar investments.

Protesters filled the square outside Iceland`s parliament in Reykjavik, footage on public television RUV showed, answering a call from opposition parties to demonstrate against Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson.

Police provided no estimate of the size of the crowd, but said the demonstrators outnumbered the thousands who in 2009 brought down the right-wing government over its responsibility in Iceland`s 2008 banking collapse.

"Take responsibility" and "Where is the new constitution?" read some of the signs carried by demonstrators on Monday, referring to the country`s new charter drawn up after the 2009 political crisis and which has since been held up in parliament.

Financial records published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists showed that Gunnlaugsson, 41, and his wife Anna Sigurlaug Palsdottir bought the offshore company Wintris Inc. in the British Virgin Islands in December 2007.

The company was intended to manage Palsdottir`s inheritance from her wealthy businessman father, the amount of which has not been disclosed.

Gunnlaugsson transferred his 50-percent stake to his wife at the end of 2009, for the symbolic sum of one dollar.

But when he was elected a member of parliament for the first time in April 2009 as a member of the centre-right Progressive Party, he neglected to mention the stake in his declaration of shareholdings, as required by law.

Gunnlaugsson has meanwhile denied any wrongdoing or tax evasion and insisted Monday he would not step down. He said he never hid any money abroad and that his wife paid all her taxes on the company in Iceland.

A motion of no-confidence was presented to parliament by the opposition, and will be submitted to a vote at an as yet undetermined date.

"The prime minister should immediately resign," former Social Democratic prime minister Johanna Sigurdardottir said in a message posted on Facebook.

Almost 28,000 Icelanders, in a country of just 320,000 inhabitants, have also signed a petition demanding his resignation.


Milwaukee: Americans return to the polls for yet another presidential primary election in what has proven the most chaotic Republican contest in recent memory, with front-runner Donald Trump now pushing rival John Kasich to leave the White House race saying the nomination is beyond his grasp.

Trump, who is badly trailing Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in the polls ahead of Tuesday's primary in the Midwestern state of Wisconsin, argues that Kasich is unfairly siphoning off delegates who will select the party's candidate for the November general election.

Trump holds a significant lead over Cruz in primaries and caucuses so far, but looks as though he will be unable to gain the 1,237 delegates needed to lock up the nomination ahead of this summer's national convention in Cleveland.

Trying hard to right himself after a difficult week, Trump said it was unfair for Kasich, who has won only one primary in his home state of Ohio, to continue campaigning.

He suggested that Kasich, who has pledged to make it to the convention, follow the lead of former candidates Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush and quit.

"If I didn't have Kasich, I automatically win," Trump said Sunday evening in Wisconsin.

Trump said Kasich could ask to be considered at the Republican convention even if he stopped competing in the remaining nominating contests. He said earlier Sunday that he had shared his concerns with Republican National Committee officials at a meeting in Washington last week.

Kasich's campaign countered that neither Trump nor Cruz would have enough delegates to win the nomination outright. Trump faces major opposition in the mainstream of the party where he is seen as running an outlandish campaign that will make him unelectable in November.

"Since he thinks it's such a good idea, we look forward to Trump dropping out before the convention," said Kasich spokesman Chris Schrimpf.

Across the political aisle, Democrat Hillary Clinton told NBC's "Meet the Press" that the FBI had yet to request an interview regarding the private email server she used as secretary of state.

Clinton and her Democratic opponent, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, announced they'd agreed to debate in New York before the important April 19 primary, though their campaigns continued debating over when to schedule the face-off.

Sanders, meanwhile, fired up a crowd in Wausau, Wisconsin, hoping to continue a string of recent campaign victories even as Clinton maintains a sizable delegate lead.
Johannesburg:Veteran Indian-origin South African freedom fighter and Nelson Mandela's close aide Ahmed Kathrada has called on the country's embattled President Jacob Zuma to "submit to the will of the people" and resign in the wake of serious corruption allegations.

Kathrada in an open letter joined increasing calls for Zuma to resign after the country's highest judicial body, the Constitutional Court, last week found him to have breached his duties in terms of the Constitution.

Kathrada was involved in the movement for democracy and was jailed for 26 years alongside Mandela and others till the end of Apartheid in South Africa in 1994.

"Today I appeal to our President to submit to the will of the people and resign. I believe that is what would help the country to find its way out of a path that it never imagined it would be on, but one that it must move out of soon," Kathrada said.

But despite the call from Kathrada and others from within and outside the ruling ANC, the party's top executive has not yet taken a decision on whether to recall Zuma as president, the major reason cited by analysts being its feared impact on the party in a local government election later this year.

Tomorrow, parliament will debate a motion tabled by the opposition Democratic Alliance calling for Zuma's removal.

Zuma has been under attack recently for his close ties to the Gupta business family which hails from Saharanpur, amid claims by senior leaders of the African National Congress (ANC) that they had influenced ministerial positions in his government, something both Zuma and the Guptas have denied.

Zuma was also alleged to have carried about USD 400 million to the Guptas in Dubai on a personal visit.

With huge business interests in South Africa, the wealthy Gupta family, which reportedly enjoys close ties with 73-year-old Zuma, has been under fire for exerting undue influence on the government.

Zuma is also under pressure to step down after a damning ruling by the Constitutional Court found him in breach of the constitution for using public funds to upgrade his private home at Nkandla village.

The president who has long denied any wrongdoing for the work valued in 2014 around USD 24 million, last week apologised for the misuse of public funds.
By Nailia Bagirova and Hasmik Mkrtchyan BAKU/YEREVAN (Reuters) - Azerbaijan said on Sunday it would stop fighting Armenian-backed separatists over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region after two days of clashes, but the other side denounced Baku's gesture as hollow and said violence was continuing. Nagorno-Karabakh, which lies inside Azerbaijan but is controlled by ethnic Armenians, has run its own affairs with heavy military and financial backing from Armenia since a separatist war ended in 1994. But the situation along the tense "contact line" deteriorated in recent weeks, leading to clashes in which dozens were killed that drew international calls for an immediate ceasefire. Both sides also reported civilian casualties. "Armenia has violated all the norms of international law. We won't abandon our principal position. But at the same time we will observe the ceasefire and after that we will try to solve the conflict peacefully," President Ilham Aliyev said at a security council meeting broadcast by Azeri state TV. Aliyev also said Azeri troops had achieved a "great victory" in an apparent reference to territorial gains made on Saturday. Armenian officials, however, said the fighting had not let up and Deputy Defence Minister David Tonoyan said his country was ready to provide "direct military assistance" to Nagorno-Karabakh forces if necessary. "The statement by the Azerbaijan side is an information trap and does not amount to a unilateral ceasefire," Artsrun Hovhannisyan, spokesman for the Armenian Defence Ministry, said in a post on his Facebook page. Russian news agencies reported artillery attacks by both sides near the town of Mardakert in the north of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Azeri Defence Ministry said earlier on Sunday it would "cease retaliatory military actions" against the separatist forces. The previous day it said the Azeri army had "liberated strategic heights and settlements" in the north and east of the region. The Nagorno-Karabakh military said Baku's statement on a unilateral ceasefire was "disinformation" but that it was ready to discuss a ceasefire proposal from Azerbaijan on the condition both sides returned to their positions held before the clashes erupted. "The Nagorno-Karabakh armed forces are ready to meet and discuss a ceasefire proposal in the context of restoring former positions," the Nagorno-Karabakh military said. "UNRESTRAINED FANTASIES". The conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, a region home to around 150,000 people on the southern Armenian-Azeri border, broke out in the dying years of Soviet Union. By the time the 1994 ceasefire was brokered, some 30,000 people had been killed in the violence. Multiple efforts over the years to reach a permanent settlement led by France, Russia and the United states have failed. Baku frequently threatens to take back the mountain region by force. The Azeri Defence Ministry said its forces had destroyed 10 separatist tanks and killed multiple fighters in overnight clashes. The Nagorno-Karabakh military rejected the Azeri statements that it had suffered heavy losses as a "display of unrestrained fantasies", saying it had destroyed 14 Azeri tanks and five armored vehicles in the past 24 hours. "The enemy is trying to hide its helplessness, carrying out attacks with Grad rocket launchers and 152 millimeter artillery in the direction of the civilian population," the Armenian Defence Ministry said in a statement. STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE Crisscrossed with pipelines and sandwiched between the Caspian and Black seas, stability in the southern Caucasus is a major strategic objective for Azerbaijan and other large oil and gas producers in the region. World top oil producer Russia - which maintains a garrison of troops, jets and attack helicopters in northern Armenia - has been a key mediator in the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh and moved on Saturday to suppress the renewed violence. President Vladimir Putin urged the warring sides to immediately observe the ceasefire while Russia's foreign and defense ministers talked by phone with their Armenian and Azeri counterparts. Azerbaijan's presidential press service said Turkey, the other major power in the region along with Russia, had voiced support for Baku's actions, the RIA news agency reported. The United Nations has also called on the parties involved to put an immediate end to the fighting and to respect the ceasefire agreement. "The Secretary General... is particularly concerned by the reported use of heavy weapons and by the large numbers of casualties, including among the civilian population," a U.N. spokesman said in a statement late on Saturday. (Additonal reporting by Margarita Antidze in TBILISI and Jack Stubbs in Moscow; Writing by Jack Stubbs; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
A major New Brunswick daycare expansion plan that was put before voters in the 2014 provincial election and scheduled to get underway this week has been indefinitely shelved by the Gallant government, the second major daycare promise it has backed away from in two years

Daycare expansion was the single largest social program proposal made by Liberals in the 2014 campaign with Brian Gallant committing to spend $120 million over five years to add 6,000 new daycare spaces.

That campaign promise included a commitment to spend the first $40 million during the current fiscal year, which began on Friday.

But Education and Early Childhood Development Minister Serge Rousselle said he can't proceed with the promise because a report from a child care task force he appointed last spring is four months overdue and because he wants to see what the federal Trudeau government's daycare plans are first.

"Before making any major changes we want to see all those recommendations," Rousselle told CBC News on Friday.

It's the second multi-million dollar daycare promise the Gallant government has backed away from since its election.

It also promised to significantly enhance daycare subsidies for lower income working families by adding $62 million over four years in new funding to the program, including $15.5 million more in both its first and second budgets.

Instead it added nothing in its first budget and boosted spending by just $500,000 in its second budget.

That $500,000 is so far all of the new money set aside for the two daycare promises, even though according to filings with Elections New Brunswick the total commitment was to spend $182 million, including $71 million in the government's first two years.

Campaign promise won support

Lacey Long, a Riverview mother, was initially excited by the Liberal daycare promises and let down when they didn't come through.

At the time of the election she and her husband could not afford daycare despite both holding down jobs and had to juggle work schedules so one parent would be home at all times.

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"I would work the night shift, the overnight shifts anything I could find to not use daycare," said Long.

"We found ways, moved our shifts around and worked around daycare to not use it. We couldn't afford it."

Long felt the all the new daycare money promised by Gallant would help her family a lot and said so publicly.

"Loving the new Liberal platform," she wrote on the Liberal Party's Facebook page after the daycare plan came out.

"The little guy and your average [New Brunswicker] truly need this. It's not the rich leaving the province to find work."

One preschooler in full time daycare in New Brunswick costs between $140 and $180 per week but working parents with a combined income above $40,000 are eligible for less than $30 per week in provincial subsidies.

A combined income above $50,000 drops that help to less than $8 per week.

"Rent, food, car, immediately right there for a family of four $50,000 is a very, very tight budget," says Long, explaining why her family couldn't afford daycare.

But nearly two years later the help has not materialized and Long said looking back she should have known that would likely happen.

"It's something that he [Gallant] promised that he seriously couldn't do," she said.

"It's a pledge that just shouldn't be made. It's one of those I hope people didn't bank on."

Daycare spaces required

Inadequate access to licensed and inspected daycare spaces is a problem that has been acknowledged by the last three provincial governments.

It is considered a drag on the economy that keeps many parents out of the workforce and is felt to contribute to a shrinking population by discouraging some families from having children and increasing the incentive for others to leave the province.

A report from Rousselle's department last year suggested the province needed 23 per cent more spaces for infants below the age of two and 33 per cent more spaces for pre-school children over the age of two to adequately serve young families.

To address the problem, daycare improvements with significant new funding was a centrepiece of what Gallant called the Liberal Party's "Family Plan" in the 2014 election.

The idea was meant not only to address the province's child care shortage but also became a major piece of the Liberal party's job creation plan.

Gallant said a study by Jupia consultants, headed by the province's now chief economist David Campbell, showed the new spaces would create 982 daycare jobs and would likely free hundreds of parents to enter the workforce and take full time employment.

Liberals suggested that would make the program almost self funding.

It helped Gallant dismiss criticism that Liberal daycare and other commitments were vote generating gimmicks too expensive to be kept.

"We're going to be very honest with New Brunswickers and we are going to keep our promises by making promises we can keep," said Gallant during the campaign.

Daycare operator frustrated

But it's not just parents like Long who are disappointed at how things turned out.

Nathalie Harrigan is one of southern New Brunswick's largest daycare operators with 215 licensed spaces for children in two Happy Clown facilities in Quispamsis

Not only did the two big promised improvements to daycare get sidetracked, she said she's now battling against proposed reductions in provincial school bus service that is leading her to cut at least 30 of her approved after school spaces.

Many children who attend regular school but who are too young to go home until their parents leave work take a bus from school to Harrigan's facility for afternoon care instead.

But the school district said to save money that service will stop in September for children who attend school in one district and go to after school daycare in another.

Harrigan said that change affects the parents of 60 children in her care and she can't understand why a government committed to expanding daycare is letting it happen

"I haven't seen any improvement from any of the promises that they've set," said Harrigan.

"And now we're going to be losing some of our buses which means we'll have to downsize. So to me I don't feel the politicians or the province is really on our side."

Report, federal action coming

The education minister part of the problem is a two-person task force he appointed last May to recommend ways "to establish favourable conditions for daycare services" has taken much longer to do its work than expected.

The task force was instructed to report back by early December but Rousselle said as of Friday morning he had still not received its findings although he was expecting to receive the report that afternoon.

Also, Rousselle said the new Trudeau government in Ottawa has indicated it wants to talk about establishing a national daycare plan and so now it makes little sense for the province to anything until that is sorted out.

But Rousselle disagrees provincial Liberals are wrong to abandon promises made to voters about daycare because of a change in government in Ottawa.

"Did you think we knew that at that time? It's easy to say that two years after," said Rousselle

Riverview's Long said the federal election had one silver lining.

For the first time this fall she thinks she will be able to afford day care for her children, after the Trudeau government kept its election promise to increase child benefits for families like hers.

"Thank goodness for the federal Liberals. We're getting the help that we need that should have come on the provincial level," she said.
By Christian Elion BRAZZAVILLE (Reuters) - Gunbattles rocked the capital of Congo Republic on Monday, shattering a relative calm that had followed President Denis Sassou Nguesso's re-election in a disputed poll last month. Former members of the "Ninja" militia that fought Sassou Nguesso in a 1997 civil war raided and set alight military, police and local government offices but the attacks have been contained, said government spokesman Thierry Moungalla. Opposition leader Guy-Brice Parfait Kolelas came second in the March 20 election and his father led the Ninjas during the civil war. The group signed a peace accord with the government in 2003 after years of sporadic clashes, though rivalries persist along regional and ethnic lines. Kolelas was not involved in the attacks, an aide said. "The government ... does not yet have proof that the candidates or their supporters were involved in this affair but ... investigations are under way," government spokesman Moungalla said on state television. The fighting between security forces and unidentified gunmen was some of the worst to hit Brazzaville since 1997, when Sassou Nguesso returned to power after months of urban warfare between rival militia groups in the capital. He had previously ruled the oil-producing country from 1979 until he lost an election in 1992. Opposition supporters say they are frustrated in the wake of the March 20 election that one of Africa's longest-serving rulers can extend a tenure that has already totalled 32 years. Witnesses said young opposition supporters chanted "Sassou, leave!", erected barricades near the main roundabout in southern Brazzaville's Makelekele neighbourhood and set fire to the local mayor's office and police headquarters. The gunfire broke out in the opposition strongholds of Makelekele and Bacongo at 3 a.m. local time (0200 GMT) and lasted until 6 a.m. It resumed around 8 a.m. and intensified in late morning as military helicopters patrolled southern Brazzaville, witnesses said. Heavy weapons fire could be heard. Hundreds of residents of southern Brazzaville, some carrying their possessions on their heads, fled their neighbourhoods on foot toward the north of the city. Dozens of heavily-armed Republican Guard troops and police later headed towards the Kingouari neighbourhood of southern Brazzaville, where isolated gunfire persisted in the afternoon, while some residents took refuge in Catholic churches. ELECTION FRAUD ALLEGED Sassou Nguesso won re-election after pushing through constitutional changes in an October referendum to remove age and term limits that would have prevented him from standing again. At least 18 people were killed by security forces during opposition demonstrations against the referendum changes. Opposition candidates say the March vote was a fraud and have called for a campaign of civil disobedience. A general strike last week held in southern Brazzaville but was ignored in the north of the city, where Sassou Nguesso is popular. Michel Rodriguez Abiabouti, a spokesman for opposition leader and retired general Jean-Marie Mokoko, who came third in the election, said Mokoko's house had been searched and no weapons were found. "The other opposition candidates don't have weapons. They were chased and mistreated (during the campaign) but they wanted, at any price, to go to the election," he told Reuters. The U.S. State Department said after the election it had received numerous reports of irregularities and criticised the government's decision to cut all telecommunications including internet services during voting and for days afterwards. On Monday the U.S. embassy said on its Facebook page there was heavy gunfire and it would provide only limited operations. (Writing by Aaron Ross; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Andrew Roche)
By Crispian Balmer ROME (Reuters) - Italy's main opposition parties said on Friday they would present a no-confidence motion in Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's government after his industry minister quit in a scandal over allegations of influence peddling. While Renzi should be able to ride out this latest of several political storms, it comes as Italy gears up for pivotal elections in June and the economy shows signs of flagging. Federica Guidi quit on Thursday, hours after phone-tapped conversations released by police appeared to show the minister assuring her partner the government would pass legislation that helped his energy business. She told Renzi in a letter she had done nothing wrong, but felt it necessary to resign. Renzi, who took office two years ago vowing to end the cronyism that has often marred Italian politics, told reporters that although Guidi had committed no crime, she had made an "inappropriate" phone call and had been right to quit. The anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, Italy's second largest party, dismissed his comments and said it would present its no confidence motion in the upper house Senate next week. "This matter calls into question the whole government ...It always puts people in charge who are in the pay of the lobbies or who are looking out for themselves," said Luigi Di Maio, one of the 5-Star's leading lights. The 5-Star and other opposition parties also called on a close Renzi ally, Maria Elena Boschi, the minister for parliamentary relations, to resign over allegations that she connived with Guidi. The phone taps show Guidi telling her partner that Boschi had assured her the amendment would pass. Boschi faced down resignation calls in December following a banking scandal that left thousands of savers out of pocket. Newspapers on Friday quoted her as saying she had no idea that Guidi even had a partner. Renzi on Friday defended the contested amendment, which was added to the 2015 budget law and benefited the whole oil and gas sector by streamlining permissioning for projects. "We are talking about a provision that brings jobs," he said during a trip to the United States. "It is sacrosanct." Government critics say the scandal could help swing an April 17 referendum on whether Italy should restrict offshore oil and gas drilling. Renzi has urged voters to abstain. The opposition hopes the ruckus will also damage the center-left at municipal elections in a number of cities in June, with the government already under pressure over the economy. Data on Friday showed unemployment hit 11.7 percent in February, a disappointment to Renzi whose cornerstone economic reform has been an overhaul of labor norms aimed at encouraging companies to take on staff. (Additional reporting by Gavin Jones and Isla Binnie; editing by John Stonestreet)
Residents of an eastern Ontario township gathered Monday to discuss an alarming spike in domestic violence-related charges in their community.

The number of charges laid in Lanark Highlands rose from 22 in 2010 to 43 in 2014, a jump of 95%. Though the township contains just nine per cent of the total population of Lanark County, it accounted for 16 per cent of the domestic violence-related charges laid by Lanark County OPP in 2014.

OPP Insp. Derek Needham presented the numbers at an event called "Let's Talk in the Highlands." The community meeting was organized by Lanark County Interval House, a women's shelter in Carleton Place, and led by a survivor of domestic violence.

"The whole idea of presenting these stats was to get some dialogue started and say to people in the community, 'What are some of the reasons why?" said Needham.

Seventy-three per cent of the people charged in Lanark Highlands between 2010 and 2014 were male. The average age of the victim was 41, while the average age of the accused was 43.

'How do we fix it?'

Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox & Addington MPP Randy Hillier attended the meeting.

"That's why I'm here today, to encourage people to ask that question, 'Why?' And to find out, how do we fix it?" he said.

Hillier recently went public with his own family's harrowing story of domestic violence, and urged his colleagues in the Ontario Legislature to enact tougher laws.

"This is not about me. There are so many people that have their stories, and their stories are far more important than mine," Hiller said.

There have been several tragic incidents of domestic violence in eastern Ontario recently:

- In September 2015, 57-year-old Basil Borutski was charged in the murders of three women  all known to him  near the town of Wilno.

- In February, Travis Porteous entered the Almonte home of his ex-partner Sarah Cameron's parents, shot her and killed her father before turning the gun on himself.

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- That same month, 28-year-old Nikki Guimond and her ex-boyfriend Travis Sayyeau died in the Odessa area in what OPP called a "serious incident."

Lanark County Interval House provided 550 women and 118 children with shelter and outreach services, and crisis workers answered a total of 1,575 calls in 2014

Shift in attitude

The centre's executive director Erin Lee said the increase in criminal charges likely reflects improving awareness and response, and may not necessarily indicate an upward trend in incidents of domestic violence.

"When the incidents of reports of violence go up, I actually see that as a positive thing. It means that we are actually doing something. Education is working, something is working. People are calling 911."

Lee said her main message to attendees was to face the problem head-on. "In every case where there is a homicide, a neighbour, a friend or a family member knew something. Somebody knew something wasn't right. And we need to now empower people to do something to end violence."

Monday's meeting in Lanark Highlands was one of a series Lee is coordinating this month, including events in Renfrew, Almonte and Napanee. A final meeting takes place April 22 in Perth.

"We are going to shift our attitude in this county and say no to violence," Lee said.
A new poll released by a firm run by three Liberals suggests support for Rana Bokhari's party is on the decline in Winnipeg as election day nears.

Insight Manitoba polled a random sample of 3,454 Winnipeggers between March 26 and April 3 and found approval ratings for the Manitoba Liberal Party have slid by three percentage points in Winnipeg since the beginning of March. The party went from a 19 to 16 per cent approval rating in Winnipeg.

The drop coincides with a boost in support for the Manitoba Progressive Conservatives and the New Democrats in the Winnipeg battleground. Support for the NDP inched up from 21 to 24 per cent; approval for a Brian Pallister-led government rose from 35 to 38 per cent. The Greens remained steady at five per cent, according to the poll.

The number of undecided voters also shifted, from 20 per cent to 17 per cent in Winnipeg.

- Poll Tracker: 2016 Manitoba provincial election

- CBC Manitoba Vote Compass: Where do you stand?

- Manitoba election 2016: All your campaign coverage here

Reaction to Liberal decline

The poll results came as a surprise to Insight Manitoba co-founder Eric Stewart, he said.

"We didn't expect this much movement this soon in the election.... We think it's an indication of a trend," he said.

The poll also suggests province-wide, the PCs are still in the lead at 42 per cent; the NDP sits at 22 per cent; the Liberals at 15 per cent; the Greens at five per cent; and just two weeks away from the election, 16 per cent of Manitobans remain undecided.

Royce Koop, a political analyst at the University of Manitoba, said the dip in Liberal support is good news for New Democrats.

"If the Liberals' popularity keeps going down it will help both parties but it will help mostly the NDP," said Koop.

"The more the Liberal vote goes down in Winnipeg, the more the NDP is going to benefit from that and hold on to some of those seats that the Tories would have been able to pick up as a result of a split vote."

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As we near April 19, it will become more difficult for any party leader to turn voter opinion, Koop added.

"That includes Greg Selinger. It's getting harder for him to come back in the polls, and it includes [Rana] Bokhari, she's set a campaign narrative, a lot of these errors are cemented in the minds of voters," he said.

'We're all about sample size'

Insight Manitoba is new to the provincial polling game, but its directors already claim to be a more reliable source for voting statistics in Manitoba than other polling companies.

"We're all about sample size," said co-founder Eric Stewart, adding the company also prides itself on its low margin of error and "qualifying questions" it uses to eliminate certain results for more accurate data.

"That's why we think it's better than what's out there."

Stewart, Gerald Denais and James Cook surveyed 4,592 people in the province in the most recent poll  significantly more than any other poll the CBC has reported on during this campaign.

Insight Manitoba was born out of dissatisfaction with the quality of polling done on a national scale leading up to the 2015 federal election, Stewart said.

All three men count themselves as Liberals; all three worked on Liberal member of Parliament Robert-Falcon Ouellette's campaign. (Stewart was Ouellette's campaign manager during the 2014 Winnipeg mayoral election.)

Cook is running Michelle Finley's provincial campaign for the Liberals in St. James. Stewart had been acting in an advisory role for Finley's campaign until recently.

As far as the optics of three Liberal-affiliated people putting out a poll that doesn't reflect well on that party, Stewart said the data speaks for itself.

"I'm confidant in the numbers we have and the numbers we presented. If our goal is to present accurate numbers and data people can rely on, I am happy about that  regardless of the results towards a party which I have been known to be affiliated with," Stewart said.

A probabilistic sample of the size used in Insight Manitoba's poll for Winnipeg would yield a margin of error of +/- 1.65 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

Manitobans head to the polls April 19.
The Business Secretary has refused to rule out nationalising Tata Steel (BSE: TATASTEEL.BO - news) plants as the Government struggles to deal with the possible collapse of the entire British steel industry.

Sajid Javid said that while nationalisation was not the preferred option, "nothing" had been ruled out.

It (Other OTC: ITGL - news) will raise hopes at Port Talbot and elsewhere that the Government may be prepared to step in.

:: Public Sector Told To Buy British Steel

Speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, Mr Javid said: "I don't think nationalisation is a solution to this. Having said that, I also think it wouldn't be prudent to rule anything out at this stage, but I think that nationalisation is rarely an answer in these situations.

"I do feel, though, for lots of reasons after talking to Tata and many others involved in this, that there will be enough time to find the right buyer working with the Government and being able to take this forward.

"We will look at everything we can do to allow a sale going ahead and I wouldn't rule anything out at this stage."

The Conservative cabinet minister reiterated that the Government's aim was to find a buyer as soon as possible for Tata's UK business.

But he revealed Tata had accepted finalising any deal could be a lengthy process, potentially giving the Government more time.

"They know it is not just a matter of weeks. When they talk about weeks, that's the period you would take to get so-called expressions of interest. Then it will take much longer than that to work out a deal," Mr Javid said.

He added: "I want to see steel making continuing in Port Talbot, I want to protect as many jobs as possible, I want to find a buyer for the whole of the business.

"Tata will issue an offer document very soon. Alongside that, the UK Government know - I've known for a while - that we're also going to have to offer support to clinch that buyer and give that steel plant a long-term, viable future."

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Shadow business secretary Angela Eagle has said it is crucial for the Government to protect the assets of the UK's steel industry in the event a viable buyer is not found.

She (Munich: SOQ.MU - news) told Sky (LSE: BSY.L - news) 's Murnaghan programme: "Look what they did in Redcar. They sat on their hands they destroyed one of the most modern blast furnaces in Europe and the coke ovens went with it.

"We must not make same mistake with steel industry."

Mr Javid also defended travelling to Australia, instead of being in Mumbai where Tata made the decision.

He argued while he had learned weeks ago the plant in Port Talbot could face closure, he did not expect the announcement it would be sold.

Upon hearing on Tuesday that Tata was selling his British operations, Mr Javid said he immediately made the decision to return to the UK and visit steelworkers in Port Talbot.
By Elida Moreno PANAMA CITY (Reuters) - The head of a Panama-based law firm at the center of a massive leak of offshore financial data on Sunday denied any wrongdoing, and said his firm has fallen victim to "an international campaign against privacy". German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung said it received a cache of 11.5 million leaked documents from the law firm's database, and shared them with more than 100 other international news outlets as well as the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). Ramon Fonseca, the director of Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, specialized in setting up offshore companies, said in a telephone interview with Reuters that his firm had suffered a successful but "limited" hack. Fonseca, the firm's co-founder and until March a senior government official in Panama, said his firm has formed more than 240,000 companies, adding that the "vast majority" had been used for "legitimate purposes". The ICIJ report published on Sunday details billions of dollars of financial transactions moved through numerous offshore accounts. Britain's Guardian newspaper said the documents showed a network of secret offshore deals and loans worth $2 billion led to close friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin dismissed the report as aiming to discredit Putin ahead of parliamentary elections. Fonseca emphasized that the firm was not responsible for the activities of the companies it incorporates. "We're dedicated to making legal structures which we sell to intermediaries such as banks, lawyers, accountants and trusts, and they have their end-customers that we don't know," said Fonseca. He said that all of the firm's clients had been notified of "this problem", arguing that the firm has been caught up in an international anti-privacy campaign. "We believe there's an international campaign against privacy. Privacy is a sacred human right (but) there are people in the world who do not understand that and we definitely believe in privacy and will continue working so that legal privacy can work," he said. The law firm said in a separate statement published by the Guardian: "It appears that you have had unauthorized access to proprietary documents and information taken from our company and have presented and interpreted them out of context." When asked for reaction to the comments from the law firm about the source of the documents, an anti-privacy campaign and the accusation that the information had been interpreted out of context, a spokeswoman for Guardian News & Media said: "The files were obtained from an anonymous source by the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, which shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ)." "The ICIJ then shared them with a large network of international partners, including the Guardian," the spokeswoman said by email. "Mossack Fonseca was contacted prior to publication and we have published their response in full." Panama's government said in a statement on Sunday that it would cooperate with any eventual judicial proceeding relating to the allegations in the report. (Reporting by Elida Moreno; Additional reporting by Guy Faulconbridge in London; Writing by David Alire Garcia; Editing by Simon Gardner, Mary Milliken and Alison Williams)
By Kylie MacLellan and Elida Moreno LONDON/PANAMA CITY (Reuters) - Governments across the world began investigating possible financial wrongdoing by the rich and powerful on Monday after a leak of four decades of documents from a Panamanian law firm that specialised in setting up offshore companies. The "Panama Papers" revealed financial arrangements of politicians and public figures including friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin, relatives of the prime ministers of Britain, Iceland and Pakistan, and the president of Ukraine. While holding money in offshore companies is not illegal, journalists who received the leaked documents said they could provide evidence of wealth hidden for tax evasion, money laundering, sanctions busting, drug deals or other crimes. The law firm, Mossack Fonseca, which says it has set up more than 240,000 offshore companies for clients around the globe, denied any wrongdoing and called itself the victim of a campaign against privacy. Mossack Fonseca, in a statement posted on its website on Monday, said media reports had "misrepresented the nature of our work." "We routinely resign from client engagements when ongoing due diligence and updates to sanctions lists reveal that a beneficial owner of a company for which we provide services is compromised," it said. The law firm added that "excluding the professional fees we earn, we do not take possession or custody of clients' money, or have anything to do with any of the direct financial aspects" of their business operations. Leading figures responded to the leaks with denials as prosecutors and regulators began a review of the reports from the investigation by the U.S.-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The U.S. Department of Justice would determine whether there was evidence of corruption and other violations of U.S. law, a spokesman said. A White House spokesman said that "in spite of the lack of transparency that exists in many of these transactions," there were U.S. experts who could find out whether they violated sanctions and laws. Financial prosecutors in France announced the opening of a preliminary investigation for aggravated tax fraud. Germany would also pick up the ball in the case, a Finance Ministry spokesman said on Monday. Financial market watchdog Bafin is looking into the matter, said a source close to the regulator, which reports to the ministry. Australia, Austria, Sweden and the Netherlands were among other countries that said they had begun investigating the allegations based on more than 11.5 million documents. Banks came under the spotlight over allegations they helped clients hide their wealth offshore. In Argentina, political opposition parties demanded an explanation from centre-right President Mauricio Macri because he served as a director of an offshore company in the Bahamas related to his wealthy father's business in the past. In a short television interview, Macri denied any wrongdoing and said the company his father founded was legal. "It was an offshore company to invest in Brazil, an investment that ultimately wasn't completed, and where I was director," Macri said. "There is nothing strange about this." In Brazil, where a corruption crisis threatens President Dilma Rousseff's administration, the O Estado de S.Paulo newspaper said politicians from seven parties were named as Mossack Fonseca clients. They did not include politicians from Rousseff's Workers' Party. Brazil's tax agency said it would verify information about offshore tax avoidance in the documents and could impose fines on undeclared assets in offshore accounts of up to 150 percent of their value. FORTY YEARS The documents, covering a period from 1977 until last December, were leaked to more than 100 news organisations around the world in cooperation with the ICIJ. "I think the leak will prove to be probably the biggest blow the offshore world has ever taken because of the extent of the documents," ICIJ Director Gerard Ryle said. The Kremlin said the documents contained "nothing concrete and nothing new," while a spokesman for British Prime Minister David Cameron said his late father's reported links to an offshore company were a "private matter." Pakistan denied any wrongdoing by the family of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif after his daughter and son were linked to offshore companies. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko defended his commitment to transparency after lawmakers called for an investigation into allegations in the documents that he had used an offshore firm to avoid tax. Poroshenko purportedly moved his confectionery business, Roshen, to the British Virgin Islands in August 2014 as fighting between Ukraine and pro-Russian separatists peaked. "I believe I might be the first top official in Ukraine who treats declaring of assets, paying taxes, conflict of interest issues seriously," Poroshenko tweeted. Iceland's prime minister, Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, faced calls for his resignation after ICIJ said he and his wife were connected with a secretive company in an offshore haven. His political opposition filed a no-confidence motion. "I certainly won't (resign) because what we've seen is the fact that, well, my wife has always paid her taxes. We've also seen that she has avoided any conflict of interest by investing in Icelandic companies at the same time that I'm in politics," he told Reuters TV. Britain's Guardian newspaper said the documents showed a network of secret offshore deals and loans worth $2 billion led to associates of Putin, including concert cellist Sergei Roldugin, a childhood friend of the president. Reuters could not confirm those details. Putin's spokesman dismissed the reports as "Putinophobia". The British government asked for a copy of the leaked data, which could be embarrassing for Cameron, who has spoken out against tax evasion and tax avoidance. His late father, Ian Cameron, a wealthy stockbroker, is mentioned in the files, alongside some members of his Conservative Party, former Conservative lawmakers and party donors, British media said. Jennie Granger, head of enforcement and compliance at HM Revenue and Customs, said the government would examine the information "and act on it swiftly and appropriately." Cameron's spokeswoman declined to comment on whether the leader's family had money invested in offshore funds set up by his father, saying it was a "private matter". The Australian Tax Office said it was investigating more than 800 wealthy Mossack Fonseca clients and had linked more than 120 of them to an associate offshore service provider located in Hong Kong, which it did not name. "We regret any misuse of companies that we incorporate or the services we provide and take steps to uncover or stop such use," the law firm's statement said. Media reports said the leaked data pointed to a link between a member of global football body FIFA's ethics committee and a Uruguayan football official arrested last year as part of a U.S. probe into corruption in the sport. Mossack Fonseca said it had "no connection or involvement with these matters in any way." The British-based Tax Justice Network said too many offshore lawyers, accountants and bankers saw it as their role to shield their clients from financial regulations. Director John Christensen said in a statement that the law firm operated with "extreme secrecy and discretion" for their clients, "which was attractive to many clients engaged in tax evasion, fraud, hiding conflicts of interest, and other white collar crimes." The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, which has pushed for more transparency on taxes, said Panama "must put its house in order." OECD said it had warned G20 finance ministers before the leaks that Panama was backtracking on a commitment to share information on accounts with other governments. "The consequences of Panama's failure to meet the international tax transparency standards are now out there in full public view," OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria said in a statement. (Reporting by Reuters bureaux, Additional reporting by Andreas Kroener in Frankfurt and Matthias Sobolewski in Berlin; Writing by Angus MacSwan and Grant McCool; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli and Peter Cooney)
CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian officials have postponed a trip to Rome to discuss the investigation into the murder of an Italian student whose body was dumped on the outskirts of Cairo in February, judicial and security sources said on Monday. Human rights groups have said torture marks on the body of Giulio Regeni, 28, indicated he died at hands of Egyptian security forces, an allegation the Cairo government denies. The case has raised fresh questions about accusations of police brutality in Egypt, a strategic ally of the West and an important trade partner for Rome. Egyptian officials were initially due in Italy on Tuesday but have now put it off. They will now make the visit on Thursday and Friday, judicial sources said, giving no reason for the decision. They had earlier told Reuters there was no new date set for the visit. A senior Egyptian interior ministry official told Reuters the investigation concluded that Regeni - who was researching the rise of independent trade unions in Egypt - was being watched by security services but that it did not mean that they killed him as suspected by human rights groups. On March 25 Egyptian police said they had discovered Regeni's bag and passport following a shootout with a criminal gang whose members had posed as policemen. Italian officials dismissed the story and Regeni's family said it was clear Regeni had not been killed for criminal gain. The case has caused friction between Egypt and Italy, though it is unlikely to lead to a permanent rift because of the two countries' trade ties and Egypt's strategic role in the Middle East. On Sunday, Egypt's mass circulation Al-Ahram newspaper ran a front-page editorial by its chief editor calling on the government to take the case seriously or risk a break in ties with Rome, an unusual move for a state-run publication. (Reporting by Haitham Ahmed and Ahmed Mohamed Hassan; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Michael Georgy/Mark Heinrich)
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Media in the Nordic region has portrayed Nordea International Private Banking in Luxembourg as a provider of tax haven structures for its customers. We therefore want to make the following statement: Nordea strongly denounces tax evasion. Already in the end of 2009, Nordea International Private Banking in Luxembourg took proactive measures beyond the requirements to secure all customers holdings and incomes on their accounts were reported to the tax authorities. To ensure that activities related to offshore structures in Luxemburg are fully compliant to our policies, we will once again review all such structures. - Compliance is the banks absolute top priority. Our tax advice policy and ethical standard are clear: we do not encourage or facilitate tax schemes of our customers that are regarded as tax evasion. We help our customers to pay the tax they should by reporting to the authorities. However, we regret that we didnt have these procedures already earlier, says Casper von Koskull, Group CEO. Offshore structures can be used as a legal and administrative vehicle for some customers with very complex, international business. In these cases Nordea has a wide range of processes to ensure that the customers declare their accounts to the tax authorities. Today  as of 1 January 2016  new rules are in place and all relevant information will automatically be submitted to all relevant authorities. Other than in exceptional cases Nordea does not assist in setting up offshore companies, and we do not accept customers that are non-transparent towards relevant tax authorities. For further information: Magnus Nelin, Chief Press Officer, Sweden, +46 72 145 2640
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., April 4, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via PRWEB - OneNeck IT Solutions announces its participation in the Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider program. As a direct result, OneNeck is adding Managed Microsoft Azure to round out their hybrid cloud portfolio.

"We're excited to work with Microsoft and the opportunity to deliver an enhanced set of hybrid cloud solutions that will expand our client's IT capabilities," stated Clint Harder, CTO and senior vice president at OneNeck. "We see this as a strategic and calculated way to enhance and strengthen our client's IT platform while delivering greater access to a more flexible, agile and scalable environment."

According to Harder, adding Azure to OneNeck's hybrid cloud portfolio means more choices for customers. Now, when it comes to the cloud, OneNeck can:

1) Architect on premises cloud solutions for clients.

2) Build-out its hosted private cloud offering, ReliaCloud to meet clients' most demanding mission-critical computing needs.

3) Deliver a solid, extremely reliable public cloud solution via the Managed Azure Public Cloud solution.

4) Design and deploy any combination of the above solutions to best fit client's needs.

The Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider program enables partners, such as OneNeck, to manage a customer's complete Azure lifecycle. By offering Managed Azure solutions, customers can take advantage of cloud services while OneNeck maintains the entire billing process and directly manages the support.

"This is our chance to be the single source, ensuring accountability throughout the entire partnership," Harder said. "And, because we are able to provide direct billing, sell combined offers and services, as well as directly provision, manage and support products and services, it affords our clients greater efficiencies, too."

OneNeck expects to leverage this new opportunity to expand their cloud sales opportunities. Harder added, "We will help expedite our client's move to the cloud by providing a comprehensive end-to-end hybrid cloud platform. We will architect, deploy and manage cloud solutions powered by Azure. For added scale, we can also deliver a true hybrid cloud solution that incorporates any combination of Azure, ReliaCloud or on premises solution and custom-tailor them to meet our client's specific needs."

"To meet the growing demand of our cloud-based solutions, we're thrilled to expand the capabilities for cloud partners under the Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider Program," said Phil Sorgen, corporate vice president, Worldwide Partner Group at Microsoft Corp. "By joining the Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider Program, partners will deepen customer relationships and expand business opportunities in the cloud."

OneNeck is participating in Microsoft Envision this week. Attendees should stop by booth 203 to find out how to leverage OneNeck's new Microsoft partnership-Azure offering to improve their businesses IT performance.

OneNeck offers a full suite of hybrid IT solutions including cloud and hosting solutions, enterprise cloud services; managed services; ERP application management; professional services; and IT hardware. Visit oneneck.com for more information.

OneNeck IT Solutions LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Telephone and Data Systems, employs nearly 550 people throughout the U.S. The company offers a full suite of hybrid IT solutions including cloud and hosting solutions, managed services, ERP application management, professional services, and IT hardware. OneNeck has Tier 3 data centers in Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Oregon and Wisconsin. Visit oneneck.com.

TDS Telecommunications Corp., headquartered in Madison, Wis., operates OneNeck IT Solutions LLC, TDS Baja Broadband LLC, and BendBroadband. Combined, the company employs 3,400 people. Visit tdstelecom.com.

Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. [NYSE: TDS] a Fortune 1000(TM) company, provides wireless; broadband, video and voice; and hosted and managed services to approximately 6.1 million customers nationwide through its businesses U.S. Cellular, TDS Telecommunications, OneNeck IT Solutions and BendBroadband. Founded in 1969 and headquartered in Chicago, Telephone and Data Systems employs 10,400 people. Visit tdsinc.com.

This article was originally distributed on PRWeb. For the original version including any supplementary images or video, visit http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/04/prweb13311950.htm
WASHINGTON, April 4, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The International Associations of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) and Nymity are proud to announce that the Nymity Privacy Management Workbook and supporting materials are now available in both English and Spanish in the IAPP Resources. The Spanish version supports the IAPP's recent announcement of their expansions of the IAPP into Latin America.

One of the challenges facing privacy officers is finding a privacy management tool that helps them manage and report the status of privacy management as it exists across their organization. A tool that will allow them to build a business case justification for maintaining current privacy management and enhancements where applicable. A tool that will allow them to establish and work with a privacy team that does not report to them directly, and even hold that team accountable for privacy management. Ultimately, a tool that will allow the privacy officer to demonstrate success. Today, the IAPP and Nymity announce such a tool.

"As privacy operations grow more and more complex within organizations, our members are looking for better tools to document and categorize their many tasks and duties. Nymity's research and tools will surely be welcomed", states Trevor Hughes, President and CEO, IAPP.

Terry McQuay, CIPP, CIPM, Nymity's President states, "The Privacy Management Workbook is an unlocked Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet that can be used as is, or customized to meet a specific privacy officer's needs. In 2015, Nymity conducted workshops in 31 cities across 16 countries around the world with over 500 privacy professionals participating to ensure the Workbook and underlying methodology works well in all sectors and jurisdictions".

"The Workbook is a simple yet powerful tool that provides organizations of all sizes with a structured way to move beyond traditional privacy program approaches to focus on where privacy management is embedded throughout an organization. It is scalable and jurisdictionally neutral and thus provides a solution for demonstrating organizational privacy accountability for any organization around the world", states Hilary Wandall, AVP, Compliance and Chief Privacy Officer, Merck & Co., Inc and Vice Chairman of the IAPP Board of Directors.

"The Workbook's focus on privacy management across the organization includes the identification and indexing of documentation enabling accountability reporting to management and to Regulators, should it be required", states Jennifer Stoddart, Regulator Advisor at Nymity, Former Privacy Commissioner of Canada, and on the IAPP Board of Directors.

The Privacy Management Workbook is accompanied with the "Getting Started Manual", that provides an operationalized approach to privacy management accountability and step by step instructions on how to use the Workbook. For organizations with mature privacy management embedded throughout the organization, there is a second manual called the "Demonstrating Compliance Manual". This manual outlines an accountability approach to demonstrating compliance with privacy laws that is empowered by the documentation that was collected using the Privacy Management Workbook.

"With the new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) around the corner, data privacy officers will have to understand the new accountability requirements in the GDPR and implement and demonstrate an effective privacy program. The Nymity Privacy Management Workbook includes these new GDPR requirements and it will be of real help to privacy officers as they try to integrate different national and regional approaches in a single privacy management program", states Bojana Bellamy, President of the Centre for Information Policy Leadership at Hunton & Williams and former Chairman of the IAPP Board of Directors.

"The winds are changing in Europe and elsewhere, and companies will need to have the evidence in place that they have a data protection program that works. Tools such as Nymity's, will be a necessity for organizations trying to avoid barriers to data movement, and big fines and settlements", said Marty Abrams, Executive Director, The Information Accountability Foundation and winner of the 2008 Privacy Vanguard Award by the IAPP.

To obtain your copy of the Privacy Management Workbook and the supporting materials proceed to www.IAPP.org/Nymity-Structured-Privacy.

About IAPP

The International Association of Privacy Professionals is the world's largest association of privacy professionals with more than 25,000 members across 83 countries. The IAPP is a not-for-profit association that helps to define and support the privacy profession globally. More information about the IAPP is available at www.iapp.org.

About Nymity

Nymity is a leading global research company specializing in accountability, risk, and compliance solutions for the privacy office. Nymity's suite of solutions help organizations attain, maintain, and demonstrate data privacy compliance. Organizations all over the world rely on Nymity's solutions to proactively and efficiently manage their privacy programs  empowering them to comply with confidence.
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Panama Canal Opens Scale-Model Training Facility

The training facility fills 35.3 acres and features two lakes connected by a channel modeled after the canal's Culebra Cut. It has docking bays, replicas of the new and existing locks, and gates, all at a 1:25 scale, and is equipped with scale-model tugboats and ships.

The Panama Canal Authority has opened a new Scale Model Maneuvering Training Facility that will provide additional hands-on experience to pilots and tugboat captains to operate in the expanded canal. Authority officials also announced that the Panama Canal Expansion will be officially inaugurated on June 26, 2016. The president of Panama, Juan Carlos Verela, attended the training facility's opening ceremony, along with Panama Canal Board of Directors Chairman Roberto Roy and other board members.

"The Scale Model Training Facility will allow us to continue providing world-class service to the global maritime industry while guaranteeing safe and efficient transits through the soon-to-be inaugurated expanded canal," said Jorge L. Quijano. "The dream of expansion will become a reality when we inaugurate the biggest infrastructure project in the history of the canal and the country of Panama."

The training facility fills 35.3 acres and features two lakes connected by a channel modeled after the canal's Culebra Cut. It has docking bays, replicas of the new and existing locks, and gates, all at a 1:25 scale, and is equipped with scale-model tugboats and ships, including bulk carriers, a container ship, and a liquid natural gas ship that will be delivered by September 2016.

According to the authority's news release, the facility features wave and wind generators to provide a realistic training experience for canal pilots and tugboat captains and complements training already provided at the Center of Simulation, Research and Maritime Development.
Rx Drug Abuse Summit Maps Solutions for 'Community Problem'

Dr. Patrice Harris, chair-elect of the American Medical Association and chair of its Task Force to Reduce Opioid Abuse, said progress is being made: From 2014 to 2015, opioid prescriptions decreased 6.8 percent nationally, following a 2.9 percent decline the year before.

A who's who of Obama administration officials and congressional leaders spoke at the National Rx Drug Abuse & Heroin Summit, which took place March 28-31 in Atlanta. Presenters and speakers included President Obama; Chuck Rosenberg, acting DEA administrator; Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse; Kana Enomoto, SAMHSA's principal deputy administrator; Michael Botticelli, director of National Drug Control Policy; and U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy.

Dr. Patrice Harris, chair-elect of the American Medical Association and chair of its Task Force to Reduce Opioid Abuse, also spoke, detailing how AMA and individual physicians are working to reduce and prevent deaths from opioid overdoses. "The AMA's vision for ending this epidemic starts with a focus on what physicians can do in their practices and in their communities. We not only must take responsibility for ending this epidemic, we must take action to do so," she said.

Harris, a psychiatrist, said the nation's physicians are focused on safe opioid prescribing and are prescribing naloxone, a drug that can prevent opioid overdose deaths, to at-risk patients, as well as registering with and using their state prescription drug monitoring programs.

She also said from 2014 to 2015, opioid prescriptions decreased 6.8 percent nationally, following a 2.9 percent decline the year before, citing data from IMS Health.

DEA is sponsoring another National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day on April 30. "We're not going to prosecute, enforce, or jail our way out of this mess," Rosenberg said at the summit. "We must attack the supply side and double/triple/quadruple our efforts on the demand side. It's a community problem requiring a community solution."
Alaska Airlines parent company Alaska Air Group said on Monday it was acquiring Virgin America in a friendly takeover worth around $4 billion including debt to create the US's fifth-largest airline.

A definitive merger agreement had been unanimously approved by the boards of both companies, it said in a statement.

Alaska Air will pay $57 in cash per share for Virgin America, or a total of $2.6 billion. In addition Alaska Air is taking on Virgin's debt and aircraft lease operations.

Virgin founder Richard Branson is a major shareholder in Virgin America and took the airline public in 2014.

"The combination expands Alaska Airlines' existing footprint in California, bolsters its platform for growth and strengthens the company as a competitor to the four largest U.S. airlines," it said.

The newly-merged company will be headquartered in Seattle, it said.

The combined group is expected to have annual revenues of around $7 billion.

Synergies, or savings, from the merger are expected to come it at about $225 million per year once they are fully integrated, it said.
BEIJING (Reuters) - China's Defence Ministry denounced as gesticulation on Thursday speculation it would declare an air defence zone over the disputed South China Sea, after the United States said it had told China it would not recognise one. U.S. officials have 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 prompt China to declare an air defence identification zone, or ADIZ, as it did over the East China Sea in 2013. U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work said on Wednesday the U.S. would view such a move as "destabilising" and would not recognise such an exclusion zone in the South China Sea, just as it did not recognise the one China established over the East China Sea. Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun, asked about Work's remarks, said any sovereign state had the right to set up an ADIZ. "On this, there is no need for other countries to gesticulate," Yang told a monthly news briefing. "Whether or not to or when to set up an air defence identification zone depends on whether there is an aerial threat or the level of aerial threat. It needs many considerations," he added, without elaborating. China claims most of the South China Sea, through which more than $5 trillion in global trade passes every year. China drew condemnation from Japan and the United States when it imposed its ADIZ, in which aircraft are supposed to identify themselves to Chinese authorities, above the East China Sea. The ministry's comments come as President Xi Jinping arrived in Washington for a nuclear security summit, where he will meet U.S. President Barack Obama. Tensions between China and its neighbours Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines and Taiwan over sovereignty in the South China Sea have risen after Beijing embarked on significant land reclamations on disputed islands and reefs in the area. The United States has accused China of raising tension by its apparent deployment of surface-to-air missiles on a disputed island, a move China has neither confirmed nor denied. China, for its part, has accused the United States of militarising the South China Sea through its freedom of navigation patrols in the region and the expansion of military alliances with countries such as the Philippines. Yang said this month's agreement between the United States and the Philippines allowing for a U.S. military presence at five Philippine bases represented "outdated Cold War thinking" which the United States should ditch. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Robert Birsel)
The big day is tomorrow! Get ready for Echelon Indonesia, supported by BEKRAF, one of the most anticipated tech events of 2016.

Echelon Indonesia 2016 begins tomorrow, and were ready to bring you one of the most anticipated Indonesia and Asia tech and business event in the region! Its been an absolute blast for e27 and DailySocial to be organising this premier event that boasts over 65 global technology and business leaders, over 65 exhibitors, and original innovations from local and global tech companies.

Theres so much more that we can say, but youll have to experience the it for yourself at Echelon Indonesia 2016, and the following will give you a head start! Read on.



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1. Know the venue

VENUE INFORMATION

Kartika Expo Centre

Balai Kartini

Jalan Jendral Gatot Subroto Kav. 37

Setia Budi, South Jakarta City, Special Capital Region of Jakarta

12950, Indonesia

Please note that Kartika Expo Centre is behind the main Balai Kartini building.

GETTING THERE

Parking

The Balai Kartini has a basement parking area with 3,488 car space located at the exhibition area. It is open 7 days a week from 07:00 to 23:30, also supported with BCA Flazz merchant for payment made easier. Price charge per hour are Rp. 2000 and for the next hours, Rp. 1000.

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By cab/o-jek

Use any transportation hailing apps at your convenience! We recommend our Official Transport Partner, Grab.

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2. Go mobile with Presdo Match app

Help us save even more trees by having your exclusive Echelon Indonesia 2016 app downloaded and ready!

More info and guides can be found in your email with which you registered  or just download the Presdo Match app in your preferred app store. Get to know the conference agenda & your fellow attendees within! This is your best chance to make the right connections, at the right time! Download the app NOW to get connecting.

3. Register paperless

Help us save the trees by having your e-ticket ready when you register at Echelon Indonesia 2016.

Story continues

This is either found in your email with which you registered, or you can download the Eventbrite mobile app and get it from there. After you have been registered at your specific queue at the venue on event day, you will be given an Echelon Indonesia 2016 name badge and pass that will allow you access into the exhibition, conference area and the venue for the after-party (hang on to it tight!)

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4. Bookmark these conference highlights!

LOCAL & INTERNATIONAL SPEAKERS on 3 STAGES

Delegates will gain useful knowledge on how to grow and be at the top of their game from visionary thought-leaders, including:

START / Revolutionising Indonesias Transportation Industry

Ridzi Kramadibrata, Managing Director, Grab Indonesia

STEER / Empowering Indonesias E-Commerce Roadmap: The Fintech Fastforward, powered by Veritrans

Moderator: Ryu Kawano, President Director, PT. Midtrans

Panelist: Donald Wihardja, Partner, Convergence Ventures

Panelist: Ari Awan, COO & CTO, DIMO

Panelist: Ajisatria Suleiman, Director, Financial Technology Indonesia

SCALE / Navigating Indonesias Media Landscape For Your Startups PR Dian Noeh Abubakar, Founder & CEO, Kennedy, Voice & Berliner

See the full list of keynote speakers here or in your app!

DAY 2 START STAGE / TOP100 STARTUP SEARCH

In the Indonesia leg of TOP100, startups will step into the spotlight and pitch to a panel of esteemed judges. With 3 minutes of pitching time and 5 minutes of Q&A, these startups have to impress the judges to make it to the TOP100.

MAKE THE RIGHT CONNECTIONS WITH

Our exclusive conference app under Presdo Match

EC Connect, our invite-only structured networking sessions

Two community lounges set up for you to take a breather and meet your favourite community leader

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5. Swing by our exclusive After Party

We are excited to announce the venue of the Official Echelon Indonesia After-Party: Fable Nightclub  exclusive to Echelon Indonesia attendees only! Enjoy exclusive promotions when you flash your delegate pass! More information will be shared at the event.

Venue: Fable Nightclub

Date: 6 April 2016, Wednesday (Day 2)

Time: 8pm till late

Address: Fairgrounds Lot 14, SCBD, Jl. Jend Sudirman Kav 52-53 Lot 22, South Jakarta

Registration: Show your Echelon Indonesia 2016 pass at the registration desk to gain entrance to the After-Party.

6. Enjoy exclusive community benefits

Did you know that as an attendee to Echelon Indonesia, you are entitled to a world of perks? From free bites to drinks to partner discounts. Here are just a few:

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Experiencing FOMO? No need, tickets are still on sale at extremely affordable prices. Time is running out though, so hurry here to get your tickets today!

The post Heres everything you need to know to get the most out of Echelon Indonesia 2016 appeared first on e27.
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
By Dasha Afanasieva and Karolina Tagaris DIKILI, Turkey/LESBOS, Greece (Reuters) - The first migrants deported from Greek islands under a disputed EU-Turkey deal were shipped back to Turkey on Monday in a drive to shut down the main route used by more than a million people fleeing war and poverty to reach Europe in the last year. Under a pact criticised by refugee agencies and human rights campaigners, Ankara will take back all migrants and refugees who cross the Aegean to enter Greece illegally, including Syrians. In return, the European Union will take in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey and reward it with money, visa-free travel and progress in its EU membership negotiations. Two Turkish passenger boats carrying 136 mostly Pakistani migrants arrived from the island of Lesbos in the Turkish town of Dikili, accompanied by two Turkish coast guard vessels with a police helicopter overhead. A third ship carrying 66 people, mainly Afghans, arrived there later from the island of Chios. The EU-Turkey deal aims to discourage migrants from perilous crossings, often in small boats and dinghies, and to break the business model of human smugglers who have fuelled Europe's biggest influx since World War Two. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan excoriated European governments' response to the crisis even as his government cooperated with the EU scheme. "As Turkey, we embraced 3 million Syrian victims, but it is clear who tried to keep them away," He said in a speech in Ankara. "Did we send our Syrian brothers back? No we didnt. But they kept these people out of their countries by putting up razor-wire fences. EU authorities said none of those deported on Monday had requested asylum in Greece and all had left voluntarily. They included two Syrians who had asked to return to Turkey. European Commission spokesman Margaritas Schinas said the first returns were legal, even though Turkey has not yet made changes to its regulations that the EU said were necessary at the time of the deal. The EU said at the time of the deal that Ankara would need to change asylum laws to give international protection to Syrians who enter from countries other than Syria, and to non-Syrian asylum seekers returned from Greece. MIGRANTS KEEP COMING Altogether, more people arrived on the Greek islands in the 24 hours to Monday morning than were transported to Turkey, Greek authorities said, putting total arrivals at 339. A few hours after the first boat of returnees set sail from Lesbos, Greek coast guard vessels rescued at least two dinghies carrying more than 50 migrants and refugees, including children and a woman in a wheelchair, trying to reach the island. "We are just going to try our chance. It is for our destiny. We are dead anyway," said Firaz, 31, a Syrian Kurd travelling with his cousin. Asked if he knew the Greeks were sending people back, he said: "I heard maybe Iranians, Afghans. I didn't hear they were sending back Syrians to Turkey... At least I did what I could. I'm alive. That's it." Two groups of mainly Pakistani men, totalling around 100 people, were also intercepted by the Turkish coast guard on Monday near Dikili, a coast guard official said. Under the pact, the EU will resettle thousands of legal Syrian refugees directly from Turkey. German police said the first 32 Syrian refugees arrived in Hanover on two flights from Istanbul on Monday under the deal. The European Commission said more flights were due in Finland on Monday and the Netherlands on Tuesday. German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said on Sunday that the "high point of the migrant crisis is behind us", but migration experts say the pressure to reach Europe will continue, possibly via other routes. PROTESTS A few dozen police and immigration officials waited outside a small white tent on the quayside at Dikili as the returned migrants disembarked one by one, before being photographed and fingerprinted behind security screening. The returnees from Lesbos were mostly from Pakistan and some from Bangladesh and had not applied for asylum, said Ewa Moncure, a spokeswoman for EU border agency Frontex. Two buses escorted by gendarmes took the returned migrants to a "reception and removal" centre within a secure fenced compound in the town of Kirklareli near the Bulgarian border. Turkish EU Affairs Minister Volkan Bozkir said any Syrians returned from Greece would be sent to the city of Osmaniye, around 40 km (25 miles) from the Syrian border. For non-Syrians, Turkey would apply to their home countries and send them back, Bozkir told Turkish broadcaster Haberturk. Rights groups and some European politicians have challenged the legality of the deal, questioning whether Turkey has sufficient safeguards in place to defend refugees' rights and whether it can be considered safe for them. Amnesty International's deputy director for Europe, Gauri van Gulik, visiting Lesbos, told Reuters: "Its almost based on the assumption Turkey is a safe country for refugees, and weve documented very clearly that it is not right now." Amnesty last week accused the Turkish army of turning back thousands of Syrians trying to flee their country in the last few months, sometimes using force. "The most important thing we lose sight of is that these are individuals who are fleeing horrific scenes of war and were playing some kind of ping pong with them," van Gulik said. The EU was determined to get the scheme started on schedule despite such doubts because of strong political pressure in northern Europe to deter migrants from attempting the journey. There were small protests as the returns got under way. On Lesbos, protesters chanted "Shame on you!" when the migrant boats set sail. Volunteer rescuers aboard a nearby boat hoisted a banner that read: "Ferries for safe passage, not for deportation." Each migrant was accompanied on Lesbos by a plainclothes Frontex officer. They had been transported in a nighttime operation from the island's holding centre to the port. Greek riot police squads also boarded the boats. At the Moria holding centre on Lesbos, where more than 2,600 are being held, a group of men gathered behind the barbed wire fence and shouted to journalists, who are barred from the camp. An Iranian man shouted: Women just cry. All our children and women are sick (with the) flu epidemic." (Additional reporting by Gabriela Baczynska in Brussels, Thorsten Severin and Michael Nienaber in Berlin, Nick Tattersall and Seda Sezer in Istanbul; writing by Paul Taylor; editing by Peter Graff and Giles Elgood)
The human gut is a complex and amazing system, and the more we learn about it, the more amazed we are. It turns out
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.
BERLIN (Reuters) - Austria plans to deploy soldiers at the Brenner border with Italy to stem an expected increase in migrants trying to get to northern Europe, Defence Minister Hans Peter Doskozil told news outlets on Saturday. Austria, whose introduction of border restrictions in February has caused a sharp fall in the number of migrants to Germany, previously said it was preparing to introduce tighter controls if needed. But the minister's choice of words appeared to toughen the discourse. "As the EU's external borders are not yet effectively protected, Austria will soon ramp up strict border controls. That means massive border controls at the Brenner (Pass), and with soldiers," Doskozil told daily Die Welt. Separately, he told the Austrian newspaper Oesterreich he was leaving open-ended the number of soldiers who might be deployed for border duty at the Alpine pass, saying it would be based on need. "From the state of Tyrol alone, there are three companies with 100 men each ready to deploy," Doskozil told Oesterreich. "If we need more forces for border protection, we'll get them." Soldiers, already helping police handle migrants at borders, could help with border protection, migrant registrations, the humanitarian effort and deportations, he said. Doskozil also reiterated his call for a civil-military EU mission to support the bloc's border agency Frontex where needed at external borders, possibly in Greece, Bulgaria or Italy. With the main migrant route through the Balkans and Austria largely closed, the number of migrants entering Germany from Austria fell more than sevenfold in March to below 5,000, the interior ministry in Berlin said on Saturday. In February, 38,570 migrants arrived, already down sharply from 64,700 in January. Austria is the main entry point for migrants crossing into Germany. But Vienna believes new routes will develop through Bulgaria or Albania as Mediterranean crossings to Italy from Libya resume. On Monday, a deal takes effect between the EU and Turkey that is aimed at stopping the flow of migrants to Europe in return for political and financial rewards for Ankara, sealing off the main route by which a million migrants crossed the Aegean into Greece last year. "We expect strong use to be made of the central Mediterranean route in the coming weeks," said Doskozil, adding last week alone 5,000 refugees came that way. "When the weather gets better, these numbers will increase strongly," he said. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, under pressure to stem the influx of migrants to Germany after 1.1 million arrived last year, is critical of tighter border controls and is banking on the EU-Turkey deal being a success. Under that agreement, Germany is to take in 1,600 migrants initially. About 40 people could arrive on Monday, said an interior ministry official. Critics say the deal may make Europe soften its line towards Ankara on human rights, while aid agencies say safeguards needed to start returning refugees to Turkey from next week -- also part of the agreement -- are not yet in place. (Reporting by Madeline Chambers and John Miller in Zurich; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt and John Stonestreet)
By Brad Brooks RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - His manners and dress are so impeccable that the man who may soon be Brazil's next president is quietly known by political allies and enemies alike as "The Butler." Yet Vice President Michel Temer, a respected constitutional scholar who would step into the presidency should President Dilma Rousseff be impeached in coming weeks, is not quite what you might expect. Married to a former beauty pageant contestant 43 years his junior who has his name tattooed on her neck, Temer has also released a book of poetry titled "Anonymous Intimacy." Its terse verse was penned on airplane napkins while he traveled from the capital Brasilia to his base in Sao Paulo. It includes praise for the female form and oblique allusions to Brazil's polarized politics, which some hope he can ease with his consensus-building manner. It is by no means guaranteed that Rousseff will be impeached on accusations of accounting irregularities in the government budget. But the chances of that sharply increased when Temer's Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) broke with the ruling coalition this week. The impeachment push has gained force from widespread public anger over near-daily revelations of graft in Brazil's biggest-ever corruption investigation involving kickback schemes at state-run oil company Petrobras. Rousseff is not facing charges despite serving as chairwoman of Petrobras for several years as the schemes played out and testimony from state witnesses that she knew about the graft. Temer also faces no charges, although he has been accused by a senator turned state's witness of having a hand in shady Petrobras ethanol deals. Both leaders deny any wrongdoing. Temer, 75, has said he will not contest the next presidential election in 2018 - unsurprising, considering a recent survey from polling group Datafolha showed just 1 percent of those surveyed would vote for him. For 15 years, he has led the PMDB, a regionally fragmented party with no consistent ideology, yet which holds more Congressional seats than any other. Since Brazil's return to democracy in 1985, the PMDB has mostly been content to let other parties hold the presidency while it gravitated toward power regardless of who held it. The party positioned itself as the legislative power broker, winning pork barrel perks and control of ministries in return for support in Congress. That has now come to an end and the PMDB plans to field its own presidential candidate in 2018. Impeaching Rousseff would give it power within weeks. Temer's supporters say his long political career working across the ideological spectrum would make him a strong transition leader and help set the PMDB up for a presidential win two years down the line. "He is a good, experienced politician," said Wellington Moreira Franco, a top advisor to Temer and the main architect of the PMDB's plans to lead Brazil out of its economic crisis. "His values include temperance, prudence and wisdom ... He works more as a peacemaker than somebody who generates conflicts." Rousseff and her ruling Workers' Party say that impeachment would amount to a coup. NEGOTIATOR Temer honed his craft over several years in Brazil's bare-knuckle lower house of Congress where he served as speaker three times and was an ally to both centrist President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and leftist leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Despite the voracious and varied political food fights that played out in Brazil's lower house, Temer was known for remaining above the fray. He rarely raises his voice, is said not to curse and refrains from the seemingly obligatory wild gesticulation and theatrics his peers employ during debates. "In moments of crisis and transition, like now, the ideal leader is one who is neither too much nor too little of anything," said Eliane Cantanhede, a political commentator with the Estado de S.Paulo newspaper and Globo TV who has covered the vice president for decades. "Temer is assertive, but not aggressive. He speaks, but not too much. He's restrained. Yet he has shown he can negotiate with anyone, on the right or left." Despite his low-key demeanor, Temer is not above splashes of vanity. Several years ago, he had a nose job that corrected a deviated septum but also, he acknowledged, improved his looks. Then there is his marriage to Marcela, 32, an ex-beauty pageant contestant more than four decades his junior whom he met when she was 19. A year later they were married and the enamored youth tattooed her husband's name on the back of her neck. The son of Lebanese immigrants who arrived in Brazil in 1925, Temer was the youngest of eight children and began his political career in the 1960s as an aide in Sao Paulo state's education secretary under Governor Ademar de Barros - one of the politicians who inspired the Brazilian saying: "He steals, but he gets things done." As vice president since Rousseff took office in 2011, Temer has mostly been relegated to rallying support in Congress and ensuring his fractious party's support for her agenda. But that deteriorated in the past year as Rousseff's popularity plummeted to single digits in polls. Temer put his relationship with Rousseff on ice in December, when he sent her a letter full of laments that dramatically opened with the Latin proverb "Verba volant, scripta manent" - "Words fly, writings remain." "This is a personal letter. It's a rant I should have made long ago," Temer wrote in the note dated December 7. He complained about being sidelined and taken for granted, of only being used to win Congressional votes and to tackle crises, and about not being invited to a meeting with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. "Finally," Temer's 875-word break-up letter with Rousseff concluded, "I know, madam, that you do not trust me or the PMDB today, nor will you trust us tomorrow." (Reporting and writing by Brad Brooks; Editing by Kieran Murray and Daniel Flynn)
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain will ship 700 kilograms of nuclear waste to the United States under a deal to be announced by Prime Minister David Cameron at a nuclear security summit in Washington on Thursday, a British government source said. In return for the shipment, the largest ever movement of highly enriched uranium, the United States will send Europe a different type of nuclear waste that can be used to produce medical isotopes for the treatment of some cancers. "The prime minister will be announcing a landmark deal that we have agreed with the US and with (European Atomic Energy Community) Euratom," the British government source said, on condition of anonymity. "It is a win-win. We get rid of waste and we get back something that will help us to fight cancer." At the two-day summit, being attended by more than 50 world leaders, Britain and the US will also announce plans to host a joint exercise later this year to test the ability of their governments and nuclear industries to deal with a cyber attack in the civil nuclear sector. The source said this was not in response to intelligence about a specific threat, but "prudent planning". Last week, Belgian newspaper DH reported suicide bombers who blew themselves up in Brussels were originally considering an attack on a nuclear site in Belgium. Britain will also invest more than 10 million pounds ($14 million) in improving nuclear security standards worldwide and, separately, launch a scheme to help other countries strengthen their ability to withstand cyber attacks on their nuclear sectors. Japan, South Korea, Turkey and Argentina are among those expected to be involved in that scheme, the source said. "They have come to us and said they would like to benefit from expertise we have in this area and work with us on it," the source said. (Reporting by Kylie MacLellan; editing by Stephen Addison)
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron wants Britain and China to work together to tackle over-capacity in the steel industry and that the G20 could be a good forum to address it later in the year, his spokesman said on Saturday. Cameron, who spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping during a Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, is trying to salvage Britain's steel industry after Tata Steel put its British plants up for sale, putting thousands of jobs at risk. The government has said it is working to broker a deal with potential buyers after Tata Steel sought to end its almost decade-long venture in Britain, which employs 15,000 people but has been hit by high costs and Chinese competition. Steelmakers in Britain pay some of the highest energy costs and green taxes in the world, but the government says the fundamental problem facing the industry is the collapse in the price of steel, caused by overcapacity in China. Britain imported 826,000 tonnes of Chinese steel in 2015, up from 361,000 two years earlier, according to the International Steel Statistic bureau. China said on Friday it would impose import tariffs of up to 46 percent on some steel, including a type of hi-tech steel imported from Japan, South Korea and the European Union. (Reporting by Li-mei Hoang. Editing by Jane Merriman)
A small trickle of passengers have been arriving at Brussels Airport for the first day of flights since suicide bombers struck in a deadly attack.

The first of three 'symbolic' flights from the airport was to Faro in Portugal at 1.40pm local time, with up to 70 passengers expected.

Later in the day, flights are expected to leave for Turin and Athens, with return flights expected this evening.

Passengers had to be dropped off at car parks before being taken to check-in, which they were warned to do three hours before departure.

Special cameras were set up to read number plates and there were random checks of vehicles.

Normal train and bus services to the airport were not running.

Passengers were then taken to a large temporary marquee with security controls and check-in facilities.

On Monday, the airport will serve more destinations, including one flight to New York and two more to cities in Cameroon, Gambia and Senegal.

Other flights have been diverted to Belgium's regional airports or nearby ones in cities, including Amsterdam or Paris.

High-speed trains to and from Brussels are reported to be full.

Speaking at a news conference on Saturday, the airport company's chief executive Arnaud Feist said passengers will also have to go through metal detectors in addition to other security measures.

He said special arrangements had been made to check in luggage.

The airport is expected to fully reopen by the end of June or early July, he added.

"I am extremely grateful to all airport staff, federal police and the federal government for their efforts and commitment," he said.

"These flights are the first hopeful sign from an airport that is standing up straight after a cowardly attack.

"That we are able to make this start only 12 days after the devastating attacks is a sign of our collective strength at Brussels Airport."

The announcement comes almost two weeks after two suspected Islamist militants carried out suicide attacks in the airport's main departure hall.

The bombs, and a separate one on a metro train in the city, killed 35 people, including the bombers.

At least 270 people were injured in the attacks.
By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - By launching nuclear-capable missiles Iran has defied a United Nations Security Council resolution that endorsed last year's historic nuclear deal, the United States and its European allies said in a joint letter seen by Reuters on Tuesday. Iran's recent ballistic tests involved missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons and were "inconsistent with" and "in defiance of" council resolution 2231, adopted last July, said the joint U.S., British, French, German letter to Spain's U.N. Ambassador Roman Oyarzun Marchesi and U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon. The letter said the missiles used in the recent launches were "inherently capable of delivering nuclear weapons." It also asked that the Security Council discuss "appropriate responses" to Tehran's failure to comply with its obligations and urged Ban to report back on Iranian missile work inconsistent with 2231. Spain has been assigned the task of coordinating council discussions on resolution 2231. Council diplomats have said the case for new U.N. sanctions was weak, hinging on interpretation of ambiguous language in a resolution adopted as part of a July nuclear deal to drastically restrict Iran's nuclear work. Western officials say that although the launches went against 2231, they were not a violation of the core nuclear agreement between Iran, Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States. Russia, a permanent veto-wielding council member, has made clear it does not support new U.N. sanctions on Iran. Both Russia and China had lobbied against continuing restrictions on Iran's missile programme during last year's negotiations on the nuclear deal. The four powers' carefully worded letter stopped short of calling the Iranian launches a "violation" of the resolution, which "calls upon" Iran to refrain for up to eight years from activity, including launches, related to ballistic missiles designed with the capability of delivering nuclear weapons. Diplomats say key powers agree that request is not legally binding and cannot be enforced under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which deals with sanctions and authorization of military force. But Western nations, which view the language as a ban, say there is a political obligation on Iran to comply. International sanctions on Tehran were lifted in January under the nuclear deal. The commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards' missile battery said the missiles tested were designed to be able to hit U.S. ally Israel. The United States condemned the remarks and Russia said countries should not threaten each other. The letter said the four Western powers "note with concern that Iranian military leaders have reportedly claimed these missiles are designed to be a direct threat to Israel." Several diplomats said the most Iran could expect would be a public rebuke by the Security Council. Under the nuclear deal, the reimposition of U.N. sanctions would only be triggered by violations of the agreed restrictions on Iran's atomic work. But a council rebuke could provide a legal springboard for European countries to consider new sanctions against Iran, Western diplomats said. Last week the U.S. Treasury Department blacklisted two Iranian companies for supporting Iran's ballistic missile programme, and also sanctioned two British businessmen it said were helping an airline used by Iran's Revolutionary Guards. France has also suggested there could be unilateral European Union sanctions against Iran over the launches. (Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Andrew Hay)
By Phil Stewart, Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. administration is considering a plan to greatly increase the number of American special operations forces deployed to Syria as it looks to accelerate recent gains against Islamic State, U.S. officials told Reuters. The officials, with direct knowledge of the proposal's details, declined to disclose the exact increase under consideration. But one of them said it would leave the U.S. special operations contingent many times larger than the around 50 troops currently in Syria, where they operate largely as advisors away from the front lines. The proposal is among the military options being prepared for President Barack Obama, who is also weighing an increase in the number of American troops in Iraq. A White House spokeswoman declined comment. The proposal appears to be the latest sign of growing confidence in the ability of U.S.-backed forces inside Syria and Iraq to claw back territory from the hardline Sunni Islamist group. Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, controls the cities of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria and is proving a potent threat abroad, claiming credit for major attacks in Paris in November and Brussels in March. But there are mounting indications that the momentum in Iraq and Syria has shifted against Islamic State. U.S. officials say the group is losing a battle to forces arrayed against it from many sides in the vast region it controls. In Iraq, the group has been pulling back since December when it lost Ramadi, the capital of the western province of Anbar. In Syria, the jihadist fighters have been pushed out of the strategic city of Palmyra by Russian-backed Syrian government forces. Since U.S.-backed forces recaptured the strategic Syrian town of al-Shadadi in late February, a growing number of Arab fighters in Syria have offered to join the fight against the group, the U.S. officials said. U.S. forces have also had increased success in eliminating top ISIS leaders. Air strikes in recent weeks killed a top official called Abd al-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli, and an Islamic State commander described as the group's "minister of war" -- Abu Omar al-Shishani, or Omar the Chechen. The United States announced last December it was deploying a new force of special operations troops to Iraq to conduct raids against Islamic State there and in neighboring Syria. That followed its announcement in October that dozens of U.S. special forces would be deployed in Syria, the first U.S. ground troops to be stationed there. The additional U.S. forces in Syria would be primarily assigned to establishing sites where they would train Arab tribesmen who have been volunteering to fight ISIS. The tribesmen eventually would be provided weapons, paving the way for offensive against the de facto ISIS capital of Raqqa under U.S. air cover. The dozens of U.S. special operations forces now in Syria are working closely with a collection of Syrian Arab groups within an alliance that is still dominated by Kurdish forces. The United States has been supplying Arabs in the thousands-strong alliance with ammunition since October. While the strategy is showing results so far, U.S. officials and Kurdish leaders agree that a predominately Arab force is needed to take Raqqa, a majority Arab city whose residents would consider Kurds as occupiers. The new push by U.S. special operations forces in Syria would be separate from a revised U.S. military effort under way to train a limited number of Syrian fighters in Turkey. That effort is focused on teaching them to identify targets for U.S.-led coalition air strikes. (Editing by Stuart Grudgings)
BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany should support Austria in stemming an expected increase in migrants trying to get to northern Europe by sending police to help control the Brenner border with Italy, Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt said on Tuesday. Dobrindt, a member of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) which has sharply criticised Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door refugee policy, said the move would send a signal that Germany was not prepared to welcome all migrants with open arms. "Germany could contribute and support Austrian efforts at the Brenner (Pass) with manpower," Dobrindt told the Muenchner Merkur paper. Merkel has been critical of tighter border controls and is instead banking on a EU-Turkey deal that took effect on Monday and gives Ankara political and financial benefits in return for taking back refugees and migrants who have crossed to Greece. On Saturday, Austria's defence minister told a German newspaper it plans to deploy soldiers at the Brenner Pass to help with border protection, migrant registrations, the humanitarian effort and deportations. [L5N17508F] Border clampdowns imposed by countries along the main migrant route northwards from Greece through the Balkans, including Austria, have helped sharply reduce the number of new arrivals in Germany, which took in over one million last year. But many politicians believe that the numbers will rise again once migrants try alternative routes, for example by crossing by sea to Italy from Libya in North Africa or from Albania in the Balkans. Dobrindt said Germany could not rely on its neighbours to manage to protect borders against the flow of migrants. "We must show that we are also prepared and are in a position to do the same," he said, adding that Germany needed to send a signal that it did not have an "unconditional culture of welcome." (Reporting by Caroline Copley; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
GAZA (Reuters) - Israel on Sunday extended the distance it permits Gaza fishermen to head out to sea along certain parts of the coastline of the enclave, which is run by the Islamist group Hamas. The fishing zone was expanded from six nautical miles (11 km) to nine (16 km) along Gaza's central and southern shores, a step that Israeli authorities said should result in a bigger catch in deeper waters, where fish are more abundant. Israel, citing security concerns that include fears of Hamas weapons smuggling, maintains a naval blockade of Gaza, and the zone will remain at six nautical miles in northern areas near the Israeli border. Palestinians have complained of frequent Israeli interceptions and arrests of fishermen who have strayed from the zone and of the confiscation of their boats and equipment. Nizar Ayyash, chairman of the Gaza fishermen's union, called the expansion insufficient, noting that Israel's interim Oslo peace deals with the Palestinians call for a 20 nautical mile (37 km)zone in the Mediterranean. Hamas, which seized the Gaza Strip in 2007 from the rival Fatah movement, and last fought a war with Israel in 2014, rejects the Oslo accords. Ayyash said there are 4,000 fishermen in Gaza, home to 1.95 million people. (Writing by Nidal Almughrabi; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Andrew Bolton)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two more U.S. citizens have been confirmed killed in last week's Brussels suicide bombings, a State Department official said on Sunday, bringing the death toll for Americans to four. "We can confirm the deaths of two additional U.S. citizens in Brussels, and we express our deepest condolences to their loved ones," the official said. No other details were immediately available. The attacks on Tuesday at the Brussels Airport and on a metro train killed 31 people, including three attackers, and injured hundreds more. Islamic State has claimed responsibility. The State Department has declined to name any of the four people killed in the Brussels attacks, citing respect for their families. On Saturday, employers said that two of them were Justin and Stephanie Shults, residents of Belgium who were originally from Tennessee and Kentucky. They were last seen dropping off her mother at the Brussels airport shortly before the check-in area was rocked by a powerful explosion. "We are mourning the loss of our colleague and friend. Our hearts and thoughts are with their families, and with all those who are suffering during this terrible time," Mars Inc, Stephanie Shults' employer, said on its Facebook page. Justin Shults' brother, Levi Sutton, remembered him in a post on Twitter. "He was smart and kind and generous. I never met a single person who didn't like him. He worked hard his whole life and achieved goals that most could only dream about," Sutton said in the post. Of Stephanie Shults, he said: "Stephanie was always so happy. I really enjoyed any chance I got to be around her. The world lost two amazing people today. It's not fair." Justin Shults was employed by Clarcor Inc, a Tennessee-based filtration system company. "We grieve with his family and continue to offer our support as they mourn this unimaginable loss," the company said in a statement on its website. (Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; Additional reporting by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento, Calif.; Editing by Peter Cooney)
KKR has agreed to buy into seeds provider Advanta Enterprises in a deal which values the business at about $2.25bn.
Alain is responsible for CPPIBs international investment activities and the overall management of our global advisory relationships. Alain is based in London and is...
Modified On Apr 04, 2016 04:21 PM By Sumit for Honda Amaze 2016-2021

Honda is working on the next generation of the Amaze in Japan. The compact sedan will differ from the current version as it will have reworked interiors and exteriors. The next-gen model is India-bound and is likely to be launched here by mid-2018.

The Autocar Professional reports that a number of safety features would be added in the next-gen Amaze in order to comply with the soon-to-come stringent safety norms. The Government of India has announced that it has taken tough measures to boost the safety in cars, especially during front collision. These norms will be applicable from 01 October 2017 for all new models, and from 01 October 2019 for other existing models.

Honda has already announced that it will be employing dual front airbags as standard in all its variants from April 2017. Vehicle safety is a top priority for us at Honda. All Honda cars sold in India have the Advanced Compatibility Engineering body structure which ensures structural rigidity and integrity of the body shell of the car, in case of collision, said Mr. Katsushi Inoue, president and CEO of Honda Cars India, at an occasion. We can expect Honda to equip top variants of the next-gen Amaze with safety features such as Electronic Stability Control (ESC) and Seatbelt Reminder System (SBR).

Honda has sold 1,96,032 units of the Amaze since its launch in 2013. The carmaker recently introduced a facelift with upgraded interiors and exteriors. Some important additions include automatic climate control and a new dual-theme dashboard. The car rivals the likes of the Maruti Suzuki Swift Dzire, the Tata Zest, the Ford Figo Aspire, the Hyundai Xcent, and the upcoming Volkswagen Ameo (check our comparison). The Amaze starts at a price of Rs. 5.29 lakh (ex-showroom, New Delhi).

Watch First Drive of 2016 Honda Amaze Facelift

Read More on : Amaze
Whether you realize it or not, your credit union is already in the technology business. You offer all sorts of technology tools  online banking, mobile apps, personal financial management, debit cards, etc.  to help consumers manage their money and interact with your credit union. But while youve loaded up your retail members with all the conveniences that technology has to offer, many of your business members are struggling to remain relevant in a world dominated by major chains with major technology budgets. In this respect, business members are clearly underserved, and credit unions have done very little to change that, instead taking a thats not our problem approach. But the economic stability of the community is your problem  and your responsibility.

Consider your local pizza parlor.

Every pizza aficionado knows theres a trade-off. If you want a fast, predictable pie, you order from Dominos, Pizza Hut, Papa Johns or one of the other big chains. If you want a truly delicious pie  one that you know will taste just as good cold the next morning  you order from a local independent parlor. I dont know enough about the pizza business to know why the big guys all put out pizza that tastes like old shoes, but I suspect that the success of the local pizza shop has a lot to do with passion, family, and traditions, all of which are interwoven with the story of the community  more than likely right down to where they source their ingredients.

From 2014 to 2015, U.S. pizza revenue actually dropped .05 percent. However, you wouldnt know that looking at the big pizza chains. Leading the pack, Dominos enjoyed 9.2-percent year-over-year sales growth. (That was apparently enough to bankroll the development of Dominos new DXP pizza delivery vehicle.) The other big guys werent far behind either.

So where was the lost revenue lost? You guessed it. From the independent pizza restaurants. Collectively, independent pizza restaurants experienced a greater than five percent loss in year-over-year sales. Perhaps even more alarming, some 2,500 independent pizza restaurants shuttered their doors for good in 2015 alone.

Why is business booming for the purveyors of sub-par pizza while the true maestros of mozzarella barely manage to make ends meet? In a word, technology.

According to a recent report by Aaron Allen & Associates, a leading global restaurant industry consultancy, big pizza chains are beating their independent counterparts not with better pizza, but with better technology tools for their customers. In other words, in 2016, its much easier to buy a second-rate pizza than a premium pizza  and consumers are apparently willing to trade taste for technological convenience.

Think of where your credit union would be if it couldnt offer online or mobile banking, or if it couldnt participate in an ATM network, or if there were no shared branching networks. Credit unions are able to thrive, at least in part, because theyre able to go toe to toe with Chase and Wells and Citi by employing comparable technology while tapping into a unique collaborative spirit.

The same cant be said of your favorite pizza joint, though. Technology as a critical component of a pizza restaurants success is a brand-new phenomenon, so its not surprising that the mom-and-pop shops are having a hard time keeping up. Thats where your credit union comes in.

Think about this for a moment. Why do credit unions exist? I know thats a big question, so heres a big answer: to function as a collective of resources (financial and physical) that benefit a shared interest group. In other words, credit unions should exist to serve as an engine of the local economy by providing affordable access to tools that arent readily available elsewhere or to a single organization or individual. Or put even more simply, credit unions exist to level the playing field for the little guy  to ensure that local businesses dont lose their slice of the (pizza) pie to the big national chains.

This fundamental dynamic was true a century ago, and its still true today. The purpose of the community financial institution is the same; the tools and commodities required for businesses and individuals in the community have changed. And if you happen to have the owner of a pizza restaurant (or virtually any other business) as a member, their required tools for success now include cutting edge technologies (mobile apps, mobile payments, mobile CRM, mobile cash registers, etc.).

Some credit union executives will scratch their heads and wonder what the point is. After all, credit unions offer checking accounts and member business loans, not technology solutions. Others will recognize that local economies are changing and, therefore, the definition of leadership in the local economy is changing. The role of the community financial institution is being rewritten by technology and so too are the products/services it must supply to function as an actual engine of the community economy.

I had the privilege of participating in two merchant focus groups recently, one in Colorado and one in Utah. The premise was simple. Credit unions invited local merchants to preview a technology platform that theyre rolling out that can, among other things, equip each merchant with their own fully branded, world-class mobile app. This includes mobile payments, prepaid balances, rewards programs, electronic gift cards  the whole shebang.

The locations were different, but the results were the same. These credit unions discovered that many of their local merchants are paying more  to companies they dont really know  and getting less. In a word, the idea of getting great, affordable financial technology from a trusted local partner like their credit union got these business owners excited.

Technology s recasting of the trajectory for community financial institutions will provide a convenient moment of reawakening for credit unions and their fundamentals as collectives for community economies  that is, if credit unions are willing to seize the moment. The champions of tomorrows credit unions will realize today (or hopefully realized yesterday) that the technology challenges currently faced by local businesses represent nothing but opportunity  opportunity for the credit union, opportunity for the businesses, and opportunity for the resurgence of local economic collaboration as a whole. Sooner rather than later, I hope to write a follow-up to this article called Credit Unions and the Rebirth of Good Pizza.
State of Emergency by TJ Johnston for Street Sheet

The City of San Francisco could build new facilities serving the homeless population in the coming year. If a shelter crisis is formally declared, that might move things faster.

Residents of San Francisco say that with more homeless people living and dying on the streets, the city is in a state of emergency.



Now the Board of Supervisors is poised to make that official.



The boards Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee on March 24 agreed to declare the existence of a shelter crisis and send that declaration to the full board, where it is expected to pass.



The health and safety of homeless San Franciscans is in danger, according to Supervisor David Campos ordinance. Under California law, San Francisco could put new Navigation Centers  low-threshold shelters to transition people into housing  on the fast track and bypass city building and zoning laws to do so.



The declaration would liken homelessness to emergencies following natural disasters, such as earthquakes and hurricanes. And the homeless emergency has been ongoing and man-made, said several community members who spoke during the public comment portion.



The minute people hit the streets, its an emergency, a speaker who identified himself as Domino said.



The continuing crisis came to a head last month when The Department of Public Works and other agencies swept an encampment along Division Street, forcing about 300 people to relocate, some to neighboring streets in the Mission District.



The legislation calling for the state of emergency references the American Psychological Associations findings of higher hospitalization rates and mental illness among homeless people. It also cites estimates from the citys 2015 homeless count of an aging population: 22 percent are between ages 51 and 60, and 8 percent are over 60. In the same report, two-thirds report a disabling health condition.



Under the emergency declaration, the city would allow homeless people to occupy designated buildings.The City and County of San Francisco owns 1,800 to 2,200 pieces of property, he said. I believe we could find six for a Navigation Center.



So far, the one at 1950 Mission Street  which accommodates 75 people  has been the only center operating. Three weeks earlier at a Budget and Finance Committee hearing, Campos took Sam Dodge, Mayor Ed Lees homelessness czar, to task when Dodge said that a second Navigation Center wouldnt be ready for another six months.



Since then, Campos has called for three new centers to open, including one for young adults up to age 29, as well as others that allow harm reduction techniques for people undergoing substance abuse.



Also, Lee announced the opening of a second Navigation Center at the Civic Center Hotel, a single resident-occupied hotel which would house 93 people on 12th and Market streets. Its expected to open in June.



Supervisor Norman Yee added an amendment stating that the declaration wouldnt preclude any public notice or community outreach on the opening of any Navigation Centers.



The city would join Los Angeles; Seattle; Portland, Oregon; and the state of Hawaii in declaring emergencies in their respective jurisdictions.



###



U.S. CITIES AND STATES DECLARING EMERGENCIES



Portland, Oregon - allocated $30 million in homeless services and $67 million in affordable housing projects over next five years



Los Angeles - authorized shelters to operate in certain areas of city



State of Hawaii - allocated $1.3 million for family shelters



Seattle/Kings County, Washington - open 100 new shelter beds; request for rental vouchers from federal government


When heavily militarized police in Ferguson, Missouri, confronted African American protesters angry at the police murder of Mike Brown in 2014, Palestinians watching events unfold from Gaza began sending tweets about how to cope with the teargas filling the streets.Such an act of solidarity was more than a mere expression of support from people who, though half a world away, know firsthand about state repression. Police in cities across the U.S.  including police in Ferguson and Baltimore  have turned to Israel for training in how to deploy tactics honed in suppressing the Palestinian struggle for justice. The U.S. directly supports Israels dispossession of the Palestinians  to the tune of some $3 billion per year.Many of the issues facing the Black community in the U.S.  police violence, job discrimination, poverty, and environmental racism  are the same problems that Palestinians face.A new generation of activists is forging ties of solidarity between the struggles of Palestinians and African Americans  struggles for equal rights, for dignity, for freedom. This tour hopes to make a modest contribution to this project  by unearthing the inspiring history of Black/Palestinian solidarity and by making these lessons relevant for present-day efforts seeking to transform the future.FeaturingAaron Dixon is one of the co-founders of the Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party, chronicled in his 2012 book http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/My-People-Are-Rising . Dixon has since founded Central House, a nonprofit that provides transitional housing for youth, and was one of the co founders of the Cannon House, a senior assisted-living facility. Aaron ran for US Senate on the Green Party ticket in 2006.Khury Petersen-Smith co-authored, with Stanford alum Kristian Davis Bailey, the influential 2015 Black Solidarity Statement with Palestine, covered by Ebony and other outlets. Khury is a member of the International Socialist Organization and is active in Palestine solidarity and anti-racist organizing. He has written about the politics of Black liberation for Jacobin Magazine and the International Socialist Review.Wael Elasady* is a Palestinian-Syrian activist living in Portland. He is a co-founder of Students United For Palestinian Equal Rights at Portland State University and a member of the International Socialist Organization. He was co-host of One Land, Many Voices a community radio show bringing the question of Palestine to the Portland area.
Allow construction materials into Gaza Strip Tedr77 [at] aol.com) by Ted Rudow III, MA

Letters To The Editor

Allow construction materials into Gaza Strip

Nearly two years after the Operation Protective Edge (the military operation launched by Israel on July 8 2014 in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip), none of the 12,000 homes destroyed in Gaza have been rebuilt due to the ongoing Israeli blockade.

The World Bank warns that the economy of Gaza is on the verge of collapse. Overall unemployment rate now stands at 43 percent  the highest in the world. Sixty-eight percent of Gazans aged between 20 and 24 are unemployed. Two-thirds of Gaza's 1.8 million residents are now recipients of UN aid in ne form or the other.



Palestinian people have survived a very dreadful winter in the different parts of the Gaza Strip, simply because they don't have proper housing. Unless there is more international pressure on Israel to allow construction materials into the Gaza Strip, the situation will not improve.



Ted Rudow III, MA

CA, USA






The Auckland Ratepayers Alliance has a list of the 250 organisations Auckland ratepayers are funding through Auckland Council being a member of them. The list is staggering. ARA say:

Its bad enough Auckland Council is funding the Chamber of Commerce and the Property Council. Now we discover the Council is funding the Bibliographical Society of Australia and NZ; the Public Relations Institute of NZ and even the UK Institute for Archaeology.

Weve asked, but the Council has refused to tell us, how much it has spent on the Property Council to date. Its not good enough. Ratepayers deserve transparency.

Ratepayers will be aghast to learn how many overseas based organisations the Council has been funding with locals rates. Why on earth is the Council funding the likes of the Institute of British Engineers, the International Society of Automation, or the Oral History Association of Australia?
Biggest Horse Racing Bets: A good day at the races is any time you get back from the track having made a profit. Some punters have walked away a whole lot more than everyone else, and their winnings are amongst some of the biggest one off betting wins of all time.

Darren Yeats ($790,000)

In 1996 Frankie Dettori made horse racing history by winning all 7 races at Ascot. Few could have predicted such an incredible feat, except one Darren Yeats, who had wagered $84 on Dettori. His ambitious wager brought home $790,000, which is fortunate as he had recently been banned from betting by his wife.

Dettoris historic win cost the bookies millions in total, as punters began heaping money on the jockey as he won race after race.

Ron Nicholson ($1.2 million)

In 2004 Ron Nicholson from Bournemouth in southern England took home over $1.2 million after correctly predicting 6 correct wins, and putting down a $6 stake.

Very little is known about Ron, except internet rumors that he had lost all his money just a year later.

Fred Craggs ($1.4 million)

In 2013 the British press broke the news that an unknown man had become the first betting shop millionaire, thanks to a winning 8-horse accumulator. Fred, whose stake was just 70 cent, placed what is arguably the most amazing bet in UK bookies history.

The 60-year-old from Manchester cashed in his winning ticket on his birthday, and told the press he would put the money towards his retirement.

Interesting the first winner on his ticket was called Isnt That Lucky and the final winner was called Dream Come True.

Steve Whiteley ($2 million)

Steve Whiteley has the honor of being the most successful one-time horse racing punter in history, winning $2 million from a $3 stake. Having taken the bus to the racecourse, and entered with a free coupon, he left as a millionaire thanks to his winning Tote Jackpot wager.

The 6-fold accumulator had odds of 879,137:1, which is higher than the odds of being dealt a royal flush, and came in on the day of his wifes birthday no less.

A heating engineer by trade, he intended to keep working despite his huge payout.
Kentucky Derby Top 10: Caseys Picks: I know I said I would not move Mohaymen from the top spot last week, however, he looked like he was spinning his wheels a bit in the Florida Derby, and I am worried something might be wrong. Everything has been going so perfect for Mohaymen and his connections, and now, they have to regroup and figure out what was wrong in the Florida Derby. Maybe it was the wet dirt, or maybe it was something else. However, could a heavier track pose a challenge for this colt? If so, could the quirkiness of the Churchill Downs track pose a problem?

Lets look at how my list has changed with the news of Destin taking 8 weeks layoff into the Derby, Oscar Nominated getting points and booting Zulu off the list, and the Nyquist and Mohaymen facing off in the Florida Derby. Multiple probable starters for the Wood Memorial make the race a bit more appealing; with Outwork, Flexibility, Shagaf, Cherry Wine, and Malibu Sunset possibly running, anything is possible.

Mor Spirit (Eskendereya  Im a Dixie Girl, by Dixie Union; 44 points) Mor Spirit is normally a slow horse in the mornings and faster in the afternoons. However, in his last four works, Mor Spirit has been working willingly, usually working in company. Whether Baffert wants him to have a bit more speed or what, I like that his last three works were ranked 4th of 43 at 6F, 2nd of 29 at 4F, and 1st of 20 at 5F. Mor Spirit will only get better with distance and age. I am excited for his future potential, even if he doesnt win the Kentucky Derby.

Mohaymen (Tapit  Justwhistledixie, by Dixie Union; 80 points) I know I said that win, lose, or draw, I wouldnt move Mohaymen from spot one, but him spinning his wheels on a heavier track worries me. I have seen horses that enjoy shallower tracks and truly dont like how deep Churchill Downs can be. It also could be that it was the wet dirt. Rain is always a huge possibility in Louisville in May. Could he be a horse who needs a fast track?

Gun Runner (Candy Ride  Quiet Giant, by Giants Causeway; 151 points) Gun Runner is the first foal of the $3 million Keeneland 2011 Breeding Stock Sale mare Quiet Giant, purchased by Besilu Stable. Gun Runner ran extremely well in his 2nd race off the layoff and I believe he will be even better 3rd off his layoff. So far, Gun Runner is running slightly under the radar. He is not only bred to compete at classic distances, but he is bred to improve with age and maturation.

Lani (Tapit  Heavenly Romance (JPN), by Sunday Silence; 100 points) Lani not only earned his way into the Kentucky Derby over a quality field in Dubai, over arguably an amazing filly named Polar River, but he also has traveled the furthest of any colt/gelding on this list. Lani won the UAE Derby going 1 3/16 miles, the length of the Preakness. Lani, technically, only has to improve 1/16 of a mile to reach the Kentucky Derby distance. Whether he can get around 19 other horses with his late run is another story.

Nyquist (Uncle Mo  Seeking Gabrielle, by Forestry; 130 points) I did not like Nyquist going into the Florida Derby and, actually, I like him less now. Yes, I respect the horse insanely. I saw him win the Breeders Cup Juvenile with professional poise and when I got up next to him following the race, I knew the colt was special. However, his Florida Derby performance made me question his classic ability. His weaving was a sign on leg weariness and he needs to be able to go another furlong without his legs giving out on him.

Suddenbreakingnews (Mineshaft  Uchitel, by Afleet Alex; 10 points) I like this horse a lot, and honestly, I wouldnt be extremely upset if he missed the Kentucky Derby in favor of the Preakness and/or Belmont Stakes. However, if he can at least make 3rd in the Arkansas Derby, he will be in the starting gate at Churchill Downs. He is bred to love every amount of ground he can be given. He has a lot of growing to do, but he has a massive kick and speed to put himself where he needs to be. I have faith in him.

Destin (Giants Causeway  Dream of Summer, by Siberian Summer; 51 points) I have not lost faith in Destin, but I moved him down for one reason: Todd Pletcher. Pletcher has decided that this horse needs 8 weeks between the Tampa Bay Derby and the Kentucky Derby to rest and train. All the while, he sends Zulu to the Blue Grass and Outwork to the Wood Memorial. Destin is either going to train well and be okay for the Derby or he will not be fit enough and finish off the board.

Mo Tom (Uncle Mo  Caroni, by Rubiano; 32 points) Apparently Corey Lanerie retains the mount on Mo Tom after trying to be Calvin Borel in the Louisiana and getting his horse stopped multiple times on the rail. With a move like Mo Toms, the horse needs room to run. I have said it all along, he is not bred for classic distances, but his late move is something to behold. He will train for the Kentucky Derby and hopefully he got enough out of the disastrous Louisiana Derby to be effective May 7th.

Danzing Candy (Twirling Candy  Talkin and Singing, by Songandaprayer; 50 points) Danzing Candy has been working well toward a start in the Santa Anita Derby. Last out, he was a somewhat of a surprise winner in the San Felipe Stakes, where horses such as Exaggerator, Smokey Image, and Mor Spirit were the main focus of the race. Danzing Candy is not bred for classic distances, but his sire and damsire were both good middle distance horses, so him stretching out next out shouldnt be too bad.

Exaggerator (Curlin  Dawn Raid, by Vindication; 26 points) After making an insanely premature move in the San Felipe, he couldnt keep up to maintain second, taken over by Mor Spirit. Exaggerator is getting one last shot in the Santa Anita Derby before trainer Kent Desormeaux reassesses his colt. I have about had it with being burned on this guy, and this may be his last chance in my book.

In the stable

Whitmore (Pleasantly Perfect  Melodys Spirit, by Scat Daddy; 24 points) Whitmore has his first work back since the 2nd place finish in the Rebel Stakes, covering 4F in 48.60. I am baffled on why Whitmore cannot pass horses in stakes competition. I tossed out the Delta Downs due to the track, but he has every opportunity to improve off his allowance score in both the Southwest and the Rebel. However, he cannot pass the horses. I may be dropping him off if he cannot perform convincingly in the Arkansas Derby.

Cupid (Tapit  Pretty n Smart, by Beau Genius; 50 points) He showed versatility in the Rebel, taking the race start to finish in his first start in stakes company. He showed that he is not a one-dimensional horse. In his maiden before the Rebel, he came from off the pace, but then showed he can use speed to take a field on a game of catch me if you can. I dont like him at two-turns moving forward, but he will be a strong betting contender next out.

Shagaf (Bernardini  Muhaawara, by Unbridleds Song; 50 points) His win in the Gotham Stakes was not only unimpressive to the eye, but also on paper. He seems slow to me, but he has been training well at Belmont Park and looks to hopefully improve his record to 4-for-4 after the Wood Memorial. I am not sold on him, but he is trained by Chad Brown, who usually gets horses ready when they really need to be.

The Kentucky Derby is set to run, rain or shine, come May 7th. The 142nd Kentucky Derby follows a year where history not only was made by American Pharoah becoming a Kentucky Derby winner, but also a Triple Crown year. Whether that truly affects this year or not has yet to be seen. The top horses are truly starting to distinguish them and the best is yet to come!
Los Angeles, CA Countless independent contractors and employers, not only on-demand companies and Lyft and Uber drivers, are paying close attention to the proposed Lyft settlement. Many companies hire independent contractors, so whatever the outcome, it may have long-standing implications, says attorney Todd Scherwin, who specializes in labor and employment law. Under Countless independent contractors and employers, not only on-demand companies and Lyft and Uber drivers, are paying close attention to the proposed Lyft settlement. Many companies hire independent contractors, so whatever the outcome, it may have long-standing implications, says attorney Todd Scherwin, who specializes in labor and employment law. Under California labor laws , those drivers are currently classified as independent contractors rather than employees.

The misclassification class action , first filed in 2013, reached a proposed settlement this January: Lyft agreed to pay $12.25 million to affected drivers. The settlement will also see the driver terms and conditions agreement changed to more accurately reflect the independent contractor designation.drivers had filed the lawsuit seeking to be recognized as employees.The reason why U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria didnt approve the Lyft Settlement last week is because it created a number of questions. If the intention of the class action was about plaintiffs being misclassified as independent contractors rather than employees, the settlement may not solve anything. And therein lies the problem.Todd Scherwin defends companies in litigation similar to this one - a lot. So what is Lyfts rationale - why settle than battle it out in court? Litigation is expensive and if Lyft decides to fight, they could lose, says Scherwin. They may be thinking its better to pony up the money now and that will change things enough to have more power on their side - to show drivers are independent contractors. And if someone sues them later, theyll have a stronger argument. Maybe they want to let Uber fight or take the bullet.So Lyft can either fight tooth and nail and win, or maybe lose, and thatll cost them more. Or they can pay the settlement now and hope giant Uber wins in court this coming June.Whatever the Lyft outcome, these misclassification cases represent a challenge and not just for lawyers. Its a constant struggle for employers to decide how to classify their employees, one of the main issues with Scherwins clients.The Lyft and Uber outcomes will be determined by what standards the court and lawyers look at and what standards will be pushed forward to challenge current laws, Scherwin explains. When you look at the law over the years and what constitutes independent contractors versus employees, key factors suggest Uber and Lyft drivers are independent contractors. These factors are lack of control the company has over them; the ability to control when they work; and how much profit they make instead of companies telling them what to do.Scherwin predicts that Lyft will settle and Uber will fight. Under the law, the way the law is written and interpreted, I believe the Uber driver is an independent contractor, he says. Whatever the outcome, this issue is a challenge; there will be fighting and struggling over misclassification and it will become more obvious with our sharing economy. Guaranteed we will be talking about this for months and years to come.The Lyft lawsuit is13-cv-04065, US District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco). The Uber case is13-cv-03826 US District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).
Grapevine, TX Following a total mastectomy, Lynett underwent chemotherapy with Following a total mastectomy, Lynett underwent chemotherapy with taxotere . Five years later she is in remission but Lynett wont leave the house without wearing a wig. Her hair never grew back.

I hyperventilate at the thought of someone seeing me without my wig on, Lynett says.

After reconstructive surgery Lynett was referred to an oncologist. He told her that she needed to undergo chemo to increase my chances of living and the cancer not returning, and he also said that my hair would grow back immediately upon termination of the IV chemotherapy treatment, which was taxotere - I asked my doctor before filing a complaint, says Lynett.By the third treatment, my hair began to fall out and I was completely bald by the fifth session. I felt very ashamed. It was very embarrassing not to have one hair on my head so I bought a wig. I figured, if I could just get through this year of chemo, my hair will come back...But Lynett had a bad response to chemotherapy. Along with hair loss, she felt sick all the time and often felt too weak to move. By the time she began to feel better from a treatment, it was time to have another one. The biggest thing was getting my hair back, she says. At the beginning of 2011, peach fuzz began to grow, it wasnt even proper hair. I have so many bald spots. When I look at myself, I see Bozo the Clowns hair - just on the sides. That is how my hair is now.When the chemo ended, Lynett had a follow-up with her oncologist. He reasurred her that the hair loss was only temporary. Taxotere lawsuits allege that Sanofi, the manufacturer, failed to warn doctors that the drug could cause permanent hair loss, or alopecia. Lawsuits also claim that Sanofi hid research linking Taxotere to toxic side effects.I used to have a full, thick head of hair that I wore past my shoulders. I always thought it would grow back, but five years later, I had my doubts. Then I saw a TV commercial about Taxotere side effects and it clicked. Why wasnt I offered an alternative treatment?Lynett was on disability during her chemotherapy but she has since returned to work. I just want to be back to normal. Thank god my family is supportive - my daughter even offered to shave her head in solidarity, adds Lynett.Even back at work, she cant afford a good wig. If someone can come up with a way to put my hair back such as a transplant, I would be forever grateful, but I couldnt even afford it. Perhaps Sanofi could buy Lynett a good wig and a hair transplant. In 2009, the year Lynett was diagnosed with breast cancer, Taxotere made over $3 billion for Sanofi.
A 40-year-old television actress, Aranya 'Pui' Pathumthong,has put up a billboard in the Thai capital Bangkok to advertise herself for a prospective husband.

The billboard advert police tore down

According to reports, the actress who is a virgin decided to put up the billboard after failing to find a partner through dating agencies. The billboard has an inscription which suggests she is looking for a husband for sex. She had a sexy, cleavage-revealing image of herself with a caption: "I Want You."

READ ALSO: 5 Popular Nollywood actresses who married other womens men (photos)

The rest of the advert which includes her phone number - reads: "40 and a virgin. Pui Aranya is looking for a husband! Let me get it once before I die."

Police have however taken down the advert in Thailand. The advert agency responsible for the billboard has also been fined 10 (500 Baht) for public obscenity and has been ordered to take down the poster. A police spokesman told local media: "We also want to question the woman on the poster about her motives."

Hmnn..Nawao

Source: Legit.ng
Nigeria is reputed to have the highest number of billionaires in Africa. When the names of billionaires are being mentioned, it is easy for names such as Aliko Dangote, Mike Adenuga or Folorunsho Alakija to be called.

True success they say is not always in the limelight sometimes, it is inconspicuous and subtle.

Some billionaires find comfort in staying off the limelight for modesty or other personal reasons. They however live their lives far from the eyes of the public to make themselves relatively unknown.

Legit.ng presents to you 5 silent Nigerian billionaires:

1. Chief Michael Ade-Ojo

Chief Michael Ade-Ojo

He is the founder and executive chairman and a director of a number of companies such as Elizade (Nig.) Limited, Crown Motors (Nig) Limited, Classic Motors Ltd and Odua Creations Ltd.

Born on June 14, 1938, Ade-Ojo was one of the pioneer students pf the University of Nigeria, Nsukka where he graduated with a degree in Business Administration in 1965. He co-founded Elizade Independent Agencies with his late wife, Chief Mrs Elizabeth Wuraola Ojo.

The name of the company originated from the first four letters of his wifes name Eliz as well as the first three letters of his own name Ade. Today, the company has grown into Elizade Group of Company with as much as seven subsidiaries. He is also the founder of Elizade University. Ilara-mokin Ondo state, Nigeria.

READ ALSO: Nigerian billionaire Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, wife dedicate son

In August 2015, Forbes Africa dedicated its cover story to the entrepreneur, who was presented as one of the great business leaders on the African continent. He became a multimillionaire in the automobile industry starting with only $63 in capital.

2. Kola Aluko

Kola Aluko

He is the Nigerian energy and aviation tycoon who founded oil trading firm Fossil Resources in 2001. Aluko is the co-chief officer and an executive director of Atlantic Energy, an indigenous, private upstream oil and gas company, focused on independent exploration and production ('E&P") participation.

He diversified into the aviation industry in 2011, becoming a member of the Vistajet advisory board, assisting with the West-African expansion of the Swiss-based luxury aviation company.

Aluko was ranked by Forbes Africa as one of the 40th richest Africans, as well as included in the top ten list of successful African entrepreneurs to follow on Twitter.

The New African Magazine (November 2013 issue) included Aluko in their 100 Most Influential Africans listing and issue.

3. Oba Otudeko

Oba Otudeko

Oba Otudeko is the founder and chairman of Honeywell Group as well as the chairman of Airtel Nigeria, and Fan Milk of Nigeria. He was born on the 18th of August, 1943 and he is one of Nigerias most successful investor and entrepreneur. He finished with a Bachelor of Arts/Science, from Leeds College of Commerce.

He retired as the Chairman of First Bank of Nigeria Plc after 12 years on the Board of the Bank. Between September 2006 and August 2009, he was the 16th President and Chairman of Council of the Nigerian Stock Exchange. His conglomerates operations stretch across oil and gas, flour milling, real estate and marine transportation. Another piece of his fortune is in the oceanfront Radisson Blu in Lagos, Nigeria.

4. Tony Elumelu

Tony Elumelu

Tony has been a major player in Nigerias financial industry. A serial investor and businessman, Tony is the chairman of UBA Group, one of Africas most successful banks; Heirs Holdings, an investment company; and Transnational Corporation (TRANSCORP Plc), a conglomerate with investments in hospitality, oil, agriculture, and logistics.

Elumelu is also a renowned philanthropist; his Tony Elumelu Foundation sponsors several charity efforts in Nigeria and across the continent while his Africapitalism Institute studies the rise of capitalism in Africa.

He was listed as one of the 100 most influential people in Africa in 2011 by New African magazine and a year later, by Forbes magazine as one of "Africa's 20 Most Powerful People in 2012".

READ ALSO: Folorunsho Alakija reveals secret of her wealth

5. Cletus Ibeto

Cletus Ibeto

Ibeto a businessman from the industrial city of Nnewi was born on November 6, 1952. He is head of The Ibeto Group, the largest business enterprise from Nnewi, Anambra state.

A grass to grace billionaire, he grew from an apprentice in a spare parts shop to the owner of the largest conglomerate in Eastern Nigeria.

On October 2, 1996, he established Ibeto Petrochemical Industries Ltd. which is engaged in the blending of oil lubricants as well as the production of various types of petroleum products for local and international markets. The Company owns the largest liquid storage facilities for petroleum products in Nigeria with a capacity of over 60,000 metric tones located at Apapa Wharf and Ibru Jetty Complex, Lagos.

Source: Legit.ng
Ellandi has committed to appointing and training a retail property apprentice through Retail Path  an industry-wide apprenticeship programme operated by the British Council of Shopping Centres (BCSC) Educational Trust and National Skills Academy for Retail. Ellandi will join Hammerson, which piloted the scheme in 2015 and has now committed

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Some people with heart disease experience a restriction of blood flow to the heart in response to psychological stress. Usually silent (not painful), the temporary restriction in blood flow, called ischemia, is an indicator of greater mortality risk.

Cardiologists at Emory University School of Medicine have discovered that people in this group tend to have higher levels of troponin -- a protein whose presence in the blood that is a sign of recent damage to the heart muscle-- all the time, independently of whether they are experiencing stress or chest pain at that moment.

The results are scheduled for presentation by cardiology research fellow Muhammad Hammadah, MD at the American College of Cardiology meeting in Chicago on April 3, as part of the Young Investigator Awards competition. Hammadah works with Arshed Quyyumi, MD, and Viola Vaccarino, MD, PhD, and colleagues at the Emory Clinical Cardiovascular Research Institute.

"Elevated troponin levels in patients with coronary artery disease may be a sign that they are experiencing repeated ischemic events in everyday life, with either psychological or physical triggers," Hammadah says.

Doctors test for troponin in the blood to tell whether someone has recently had a heart attack. But the levels seen in this study were lower than those used to diagnose a heart attack: less than a standard cutoff of 26 picograms per milliliter, in a range that only a high-sensitivity test for troponin could detect.

The Emory team studied 587 people with known coronary artery disease who were asked to undergo both a mental stress test, involving public speaking on an uncomfortable topic, and a conventional exercise test on a treadmill. Blood flow to the heart was monitored by SPECT imaging. A few people were unable to exercise at a high heart rate and had to have a pharmacological stress test with a drug that dilates the coronary arteries.

Sixteen percent of the study participants developed mental stress-induced ischemia and 35 percent developed conventional -- either exercise or pharmacological -- stress-induced ischemia. In the mental stress ischemia group, the average baseline (that is, before stress) levels of troponin were markedly higher than in the rest: 5.9 picograms per milliliter compared to 4.1.

"This is the first study to date showing the effects of mental stress-induced ischemia on a marker of myocardial damage, however subtle that damage may be," Hammadah says. "Although this difference in troponin levels between those with and without ischemia is small, the difference has been shown by other investigators to predict increased risk of future heart attacks and death."

Seventy-five percent of the study participants who developed mental stress ischemia developed ischemia in response to exercise as well. Baseline troponin levels were also higher in the exercise-induced ischemia group: 5.4 pg/mL compared to 3.9.

When doctors tested for troponin 45 and 90 minutes after the mental stress test, they detected a small average increase in the mental stress ischemia group that was not statistically significant. The exercise test did result in a significant increase in troponin in the exercise-induced ischemia group. This may be because the exercise test lasts longer and puts more demands on the heart, Hammadah says.

The mental stress ischemia study was supported by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (5P01HL101398).
Hormonally active substances may contribute to global amphibian decline. Some compounds, for example from pharmaceuticals, occur in biologically relevant concentrations in freshwater ecosystems, and thus can affect the hormonal system and the sexual development of animals. Researchers from the IGB and the University of Wroclaw have compared the effects of the pill estrogen ethinylestradiol (EE2) in three amphibian species. The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, shows that EE2 can lead to a complete feminization of genetic males. Without molecular establishment of the genetic sex, this has remained partly unnoticed.

17-Ethinylestradiol (EE2) is a synthetic estrogen, which is a frequently used active ingredient of female contraceptive pills but naturally does not occur in the environment. As it is only incompletely removed in sewage treatment plants, it can reach water bodies in biologically relevant concentrations. The evolutionary biologist, Dr. Matthias Stock, principal investigator of the study and Heisenberg-Fellow, says: "Amphibians are almost permanently exposed to such threats. Only, if we will be able to actually access these risks, we will be able to eliminate them in the long term."

The sensitivity towards hormonally active substances, like EE2, is not the same in all amphibians, hypothesize the scientists. Some species have passed through several hundred million years of independent evolutionary history and have evolved different mechanisms of genetic sex determination. Thus, for the first time within the same experiment, the research team from the IGB and the University of Wroclaw tested the influence of EE2 on the development of three different amphibian species: In addition to the model species, the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis), tadpoles of the European tree frog (Hyla arborea) and the European green toad (Bufo viridis) have been raised in water containing different concentrations of EE2, and compared to control groups.

Remarkable in this experiment was that the genetic sex of all species was established using latest molecular approaches. At the same time, the researchers studied the phenotypic development of the sexual organs (gonads), i.e. the anatomical appearance and that of the tissues under the microscope. Only this comparison of genetic and phenotypic sex has allowed to completely capture the effects of EE2.

"In addition to other threats, the feminization of populations may contribute to the extinction of amphibian species," says Matthias Stock.

The results of the study show that after exposition to EE2, in all amphibian species, a sex reversal occurred reaching from 15 to 100 percent. However, the three species exhibit different sensitivity. IGB-researcher Prof. Werner Kloas, co-author of the paper, is an internationally renowned eco-toxicologist. He says: "EE2 is also part of our water supply and, together with other estrogen-like substances, it presents a serious risk not only for amphibians but also for humans. Our study shows that the clawed frog as model species is well-suited to study the effects of hormonally active substances in the environment. The effect established in this species, however, cannot be extrapolated to other amphibian species without caution."

For the study, the collaboration with the University of Wroclaw in Poland was essential. The collaborator there, Prof. Maria Ogielska, declares: "We have contributed our profound research experience from the investigation of reproduction of amphibians, namely from developmental biology, into the project." Ph.D.-student Stephanie Tamschick says: "Together with students, we have raised tadpoles over three months, under identical experimental conditions. It was new that we have established the genetic sex in all species, i.e. whether a tadpole was genetically male or female. In my thesis, especially by this approach, I could conclude that the feminizing effects of EE2 are so diverse among the examined frog and toad species."
Anabolic androgenic steroid (AAS) abuse is associated with severe blood pressure (BP) increase and hypertension, new research reports. The results of the study will be presented in a poster Saturday, April 2, at ENDO 2016, the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society, in Boston.

Daytime and nighttime blood pressures were considerably higher among ongoing AAS abusers than among former abusers and non-users, and most ongoing abusers had hypertension during the night.

"The results provide scientific evidence that anabolic steroids cause systolic blood pressure increase and hypertension that may be associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease," said lead study author Jon Bjarke Rasmussen, MD, doctoral fellow in the Department of Internal Medicine of Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark.

"Anabolic steroids are increasingly used in the broader population, and some studies suggest that approximately 20% of men who do recreational strength training have experience with anabolic steroids," he added.

To study the impact of AAS abuse on blood pressure, Dr. Rasmussen and his colleagues divided men 50 years of age and younger who were taking part in recreational strength training into three study groups: 37 ongoing AAS abusers, 33 former AAS abusers and 30 controls who had never used anabolic steroids.

In contrast to previous research that measured blood pressure by conventional sphygmomanometry and yielded conflicting results, the authors of this study used 24-hour ambulatory BP measurement (ABPM), considered to be a superior method to diagnose hypertension.

They measured the men's 24-hour ABPM every 20 minutes during the day and every 60 minutes through the night. Compared with the former abusers and the controls, the ongoing abusers' average day and night BPs were significantly  roughly 8 to 10 millimeters of mercury (mmHg)  higher.

Mean daytime systolic BP was higher among both the ongoing and former AAS abusers than among the controls, and nighttime systolic BP was higher among the ongoing AAS abusers compared with the controls.

The researchers considered daytime hypertension to be 135/85 mmHg or higher and nighttime hypertension to be 120/75 mmHg or higher. Nighttime systolic hypertension was more frequent among the ongoing AAS abusers than among the former AAS abusers and the controls, but diastolic BP was similar in all groups.

"Hopefully, our findings will contribute to increasing the awareness of the cardiovascular risk associated with anabolic steroid abuse and to the development of prevention strategies," Dr. Rasmussen said.

The authors recommend further related research to explore the association between AAS abuse and increased cardiovascular disease risk.

The study received no commercial funding. AntiDoping Denmark, Research Foundation of Herlev Hospital, Danish Heart Foundation and the University of Copenhagen funded the study.
One day, most likely, humans will visit Mars and begin to unravel its geological history and even determine if anything once lived there.

Until then, though, scientists have employed all sorts of techniques to study Mars from afar, including launching orbiting satellites and dispatching rovers to scurry over its surface.

Despite these efforts, much remains unknown about Mars. So, how do you do hands-on research with a planet that's at minimum 34 million miles away? You seek similar places on Earth.

University of Iowa volcano specialist Ingrid Ukstins Peate has found a spot in Iceland that appears to be a pretty good stand-in for the sand dunes that speckle Mars. The associate professor in earth and environmental sciences nabbed a $501,000 grant from NASA to visit the site and learn more about the sand and soil there.

The goal is two-fold: One, get samples from the sand sheet and learn more about how ash and other particles that landed there from a nearby volcano have changed over time, especially from the effects of wind -- a common, persistent weathering agent on Mars. Second, Ukstins Peate and her team aim to learn whether the Martian-like sand dunes harbor microbial organisms, perhaps even some that may be long dormant.

That's important because if the UI-led team finds evidence that the sand sheets hosted -- or could have hosted -- life, it may present NASA with another option in future missions' search for life.

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"On Earth, people have proposed that sand fields serve as 'bioreactors,' and things can live under the surface of that sand and survive," Ukstins Peate says. "So, if we identify areas on Mars that are wind-blown sand deposits in the same way, maybe it provides another opportunity to target the science of life on Mars."

In August, the team will head to Askja, a remote, cold, and windy expanse in the east-central region of Iceland. There, the researchers will take samples along the sand sheet created by the Askja volcano's past eruptions to learn more about changes in the sand's grain size, chemical composition, and shape. They hope that information from Askja will provide them with a better idea about the sandy environments on Mars and how they've changed.

"(Askja) looks barren, but it's beautiful at the same time," says Michael Sara, a master's student in earth and environmental sciences at the UI. "You have these lava flows popping out of the sand, sand blown everywhere. We're studying something that we believe to be very much like Mars, but we don't know for sure, and the only way we're really going to know is if we can get there and analyze it the way we're analyzing in Iceland now."

What scientists do know about Mars is that it's a cold, desolate place. Yet there are tantalizing clues that the Red Planet's climate was much more inviting in the past -- warm and wet, even -- with lakes, rivers, and other watery features we see on Earth. But that past is a mere geological whisper, and evidence of Martian life has proved elusive. Iceland's sand dunes could yield some valuable intel about Mars's geological history and where Martian organisms may have lived.

Sand sheets cover approximately 349,000 square miles of the Red Planet; if you put them together the state of Iowa could fit in six times over. The dunes also appear to have evolved similarly to those found on Earth, in that the original rocks have been deposited from somewhere else by volcanoes, oceans, rivers, etc. and then moved, shaped, and ground up by wind.

"The good thing about this study," Uskins Peate says, "is it's applicable to any time in Mars's history where you've had wind-blown material being deposited, which could be anywhere from the very first geological processes that were happening early on in Mars's history up until yesterday. There are winds and fine-grained material that are being blown around on Mars all the time. That process of wind-blown deposits forming is something that's been part of Mars's history for the entire time the planet has been geologically and environmentally active."

What also makes Askja special is that the sandy sediment -- some 30 feet thick in places -- is high in magnesium and iron, similar to the blackish sand dunes on Mars but rarely found on Earth. The team, including researchers from Brock University in Canada, the U.S. non-profit Planetary Science Institute, and the Nordic Volcanological Center in Iceland collected samples from Askja for the first time last summer. What they find on subsequent trips may write a new chapter in Mars's history.

"Why should we worry about studying sand on Mars?" Ukstins Peate asks. "For our understanding of the universe we live in. If there's the ability to figure out something basic about another planet using analogs from Earth, then I think it advances science in a really profound way."
New research on coral reefs led by the University of Southampton suggests that existing biodiversity will be essential for the successful adaptation of ecosystems to climate change.

About 25% of all marine biodiversity depends on coral reefs, the three-dimensional calcareous framework laid down by the coral animals together with their algal symbionts. Climate change, in particular increasing seawater temperatures, threatens to disrupt the functionality of this productive association with potentially devastating knock-on effects to ecosystem services that are provided by coral reefs including food supply, coastal protection, attraction of tourists and access to biopharmaceuticals.

Investigations of the symbiotic partnership between the coral host and their algal symbiont in the world's hottest coral reef environments -- the Persian/Arabian Gulf (PAG) and nearby seas -- lead an international consortium of scientists to conclude that natural selection of existing biodiversity is key to facilitating rapid adaptation of coral reef ecosystems to climate change.

The novel findings by the University of Southampton (UK), KAUST (Saudi Arabia), NYUAD (UAE) and Tel Aviv University /IUI (Israel) are published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Professor Jorg Wiedenmann, head of the University of Southampton's Coral Reef Laboratory and principal investigator of the project explains: "Corals of the PAG can survive exceptionally high salinity levels and temperatures of up to 35 degrees Celsius -- conditions that would kill corals elsewhere. However, the historic climate change that created this extreme environment, left coral communities in the Middle Eastern region only less than 6000 years to adjust to the drastic changes. Therefore, these coral ecosystems are ideal model systems to understand how reefs may respond to present-day climate change."

Dr Benjamin Hume, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Southampton and lead author of the paper, elaborates: "Using advanced molecular biological approaches, we recently discovered that corals of the Southern PAG host almost exclusively a species of symbiotic algae, Symbiodinium thermophilum, that was new to science. This finding suggested that this algal species was essential for the survival of the PAG corals and the question arose whether Symbiodinium thermophilum was the product of rapid evolution catalysed by the challenging conditions of the PAG, or whether this symbiont originated elsewhere."

To answer this question, the scientific team analysed close to a thousand corals along 5000 km of coastline in the PAG and adjacent seas.

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Professor Voolstra from the Red Sea Research Center at KAUST adds: "Next-generation sequencing technologies allowed us to analyse the DNA of the coral symbionts in unprecedented depth, a prerequisite to screen large numbers of samples for the genetic signature of Symbiodinium thermophilum."

While the unusual symbiont was prevalent within the PAG, it was also found in the Gulf of Oman and Red Sea, however, only at barely detectable levels. Analysing a suite of molecular markers, the researchers discovered a surprising genetic diversity among S. thermophilum from outside the PAG.

Dr Hume explains: "Our data suggest that this diversity resulted from a genetic radiation aged at approximately 13 million years ago. This is far earlier than the formation of the PAG that only occurred about 15 k years ago as a result of rising sea levels after the last ice age."

He adds: "Out of this diverse group only one genetic type dominates the PAG, suggesting that selection by the extreme conditions has favoured an existing variant that was best suited to promote coral growth in this environment."

Professor Wiedenmann continues: "Our example of the heat tolerant coral symbiont suggests that the genetic diversity that exists among populations can be key to survival if species are facing a rapid change in environmental conditions. These pre-adapted forms might exist only in low numbers among abundant, but more vulnerable individuals. Any loss of genetic material from coral reefs caused by habitat destruction, overfishing, nutrient enrichment and pollution could therefore reduce the capacity of species to adjust to a changing environment."

He concludes: "To save coral reefs for the future, we need to fight the rising levels of greenhouse gases which cause climate change. At the same time, we need to protect present-day biodiversity to facilitate adaptation to changing environmental conditions. This applies not only to coral reefs but to ecosystems in general."
The first team reached home plate in Oxfams Trailwalker, held in Whakatane, at 12.16 am this morning.

Oxfam reports that in a storming 10 minutes of action at the finish, we just had the three fastest teams cross the line within minutes of each other. And they were all mixed teams with 2 of them locals.
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBozUIVDZ8M&feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">YouTube/Animal Place</a></p>

Bella the baby goat is the newest arrival at Animal Place's Rescue Ranch in California. Her birth was a touching one, given that her mother, Butterscotch, almost didn't give birth in the safety of the ranch.

This browser does not support the video tag. YouTube/Animal Place

"Bella was a surprise baby," Jan Galeazzi, manager at Rescue Ranch, said in a recent video.

Dodo Shows Soulmates Dog Goes Everywhere In His Dad's Kangaroo Pouch

This browser does not support the video tag. YouTube/Animal Place

"When Butterscotch came to us, she was two and a half months pregnant," said Galeazzi. "We did not know she was pregnant because she's really a baby herself. She's only about a year old."

This browser does not support the video tag. YouTube/Animal Place

Butterscotch is a former dairy goat who presumably managed to escape from her dairy farm, according to the ranch. She was found roaming on her own by Napa County Animal Services and immediately taken to a nearby shelter. Not only was Butterscotch emaciated when she was found, but her horns were cut off.

This browser does not support the video tag. YouTube/Animal Place

"[Dairy animals] have to stay impregnated to produce milk and, when they do give birth to their babies, their babies are taken away," Galeazzi said. "It's really wonderful that this is a baby that gets to stay with her mother. They have strong, emotional ties."

This browser does not support the video tag. YouTube/Animal Place

Now Bella, who's just under a month old, gets to enjoy everything about being a goat under her mom's loving watch.

This browser does not support the video tag. YouTube/Animal Place

"She's with her mother 24/7," Galeazzi said. "She looks to her mother for constant guidance and reassurance."

This browser does not support the video tag. YouTube/Animal Place

See more of Butterscotch and Bella's story below:
Misha loves the beach. There's something about splashing around, the sun on her back, her worries far behind. "She has that irrepressible spirit that many pit bulls have that has allowed her to go through hell and come out on the other side with a huge smile on her face and a wagging tail," Misha's foster mom, Taylor Ellen, wrote in a recent blog post.

This browser does not support the video tag. Help Tulum Dogs

In Misha's case, that hell was a blazing rooftop in the Mexican resort town of Tulum, where she spent much of her life at the end of a chain.

A rescue devoted to the oft-neglected animals of this coastal town had heard about Misha's plight. Her owner was trying to give away her puppies. He was overwhelmed. When Cathy Cairelli and Lisa Edwards of Help Tulum Dogs found Misha, it wasn't a moment too soon. Just a slender board shielded the dog and her puppies from the searing Mexican sun. Food and water were scarce. "It was clear none of the puppies nor the mama were going to survive much longer," Cairelli tells The Dodo.

Dodo Shows Foster Diaries Scared Pittie Gets So Happy When He Meets This Guy And His Pack Of Dogs

The next day, Cairelli and Edwards brought food, water and tarps to the rooftop.

The day after that, Cairelli took all of the animals to a veterinarian for urgently needed care. Somewhere along the way, she decided none of them were going back to that rooftop.

"I could never return them to that horrible place," Cairelli says. As for Misha's owner? "I just returned to his house and I told him the truth - which was that the puppies were all very sick, that they would all die without proper care, and that we were willing to find good homes for them." He agreed.

The rescue doesn't have its own shelter facilities. Nor does the city of Tulum. So Cairelli took Misha and her seven puppies home. Two of the puppies would be lost to parvovirus. But nearly a year after that fateful rooftop meeting in July, Cairelli's group, with help from its partner in rescue, Lost Dog Foundation, found forever homes for the remaining puppies with families across North America.

They were transported far from that hellish rooftop to homes in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Richmond, Virginia.

Misha is being fostered in Vancouver, where she's been reunited with her daughter Pepita.

While her daughter has found a home there, Misha is still looking for one. But at least she has found the beach.

And somewhere in all that playful, wave-crashing bliss, her real age revealed itself. When Cairelli first met Misha, she seemed an old dog, beaten down by life.

This browser does not support the video tag. Help Tulum Dogs

The beachcomber's life seems to have turned back the clock. Misha, her caregivers realized, is only about three and a half years old. "She's younger than we originally perceived." Hardly more than a puppy. And, today, it shows.
This lamb was found by a highway as a baby, wounded and without a mother to care for him.

Greener Pastures Sanctuary

Today, Levy's forever home is at Australia's Greener Pastures Sanctuary, where he was the very first rescue lamb. "He was found on the side of a very remote highway as a newborn, next to his dead mom," Rachael Parker, the founder of the sanctuary, told The Dodo.

Greener Pastures Sanctuary

"It seems his mom was being transported to either a abbatoir [slaughterhouse] or, worse, a live export ship when she fell from the truck she was on," Parker added. "She managed to give birth to Levy before passing away." Without a mother to care for him, let alone protect him, young Levy became prey for a group of crows who pecked at him, leaving scabs on his back and face. Parker said that, thankfully, Levy's eyes were spared, though crows tend to tend to aim for them. A truck driver ultimately found Levy in his despondent state and immediately took him to a veterinary nurse in the city of Perth, where he'd be able to get the help he needed. The nurse then passed Levy along to Greener Pastures and directly into Parker's care.

Dodo Shows Foster Diaries Guy Falls In Love With His Little Meatball Of A Foster Dog

Greener Pastures Sanctuary

"I bottle-fed him around the clock and he slept snuggled up to me for the first couple of weeks until he settled in," Parker said.

Greener Pastures Sanctuary

In addition to spending time with the other farm animals, Levy naturally came to enjoy the company of his human caretakers - and their three dogs.

Greener Pastures Sanctuary

Given Levy's particular backstory, it makes sense that Parker was one day contacted by Stop Live Exports, a group dedicated to ending the practice of live export, where farm animals are shipped overseas. Australia happens to be the world's largest exporter of live sheep and the fourth-largest exporter of cattle. These animals are kept in cramped, dirty spaces aboard ships for days or even weeks at a time and are subject to extreme temperature changes and ammonia, according to Stop Live Exports. The final destination for the animals who survive such an arduous trek are slaughterhouses overseas, which often have less than rigorous welfare standards. "[Levy] had such an amazing temperment, we decided to see how he coped going out and about as an ambassador," Parker said. "He was perfect."

Greener Pastures Sanctuary

That was how Levy officially became an representative for Stop Live Exports, attending marches and becoming a regular fixture in local newspapers.

Greener Pastures Sanctuary

As an ambassador, Levy uses his story to help bring awareness to the cruel practice of transporting live animals like cargo to different countries. Fortunately, he was able to escape such a grim fate.

Greener Pastures Sanctuary

Levy is now almost 6 years old and loves spending his days with his group of friends, which include other sheep like himself, goats, an alpaca and two pigs.

Levy (the second sheep on the right) and his friends. | Greener Pastures Sanctuary

He grew up to become a fighter against the industry that possibly his mother's life - and, nearly, his own. As part of his duties, Parker said, Levy also helps introduce people to a different side to sheep. "[He's] often a favorite with tour groups who visit the sanctuary," she said. "He shows people that sheep are far from dumb. [They] are social, affectionate and sensitive."

Parker and her daughter walking Levy with the dogs. | Greener Pastures Sanctuary

Click here for more information on how you can help put an end Australia's live export industry.

Greener Pastures Sanctuary


Daniel Giusti outside Noma restaurant in Copenhagen. (Sarah Coghill/For The Washington Post)

He hasnt even signed an official contract yet, but former Noma chef de cuisine Daniel Giusti is already feeling the heat about his three-year plan to revamp the lunch program in the New London, Conn., school district. The Washingtonian, who fed the rich and famous at the celebrated fine-dining restaurant in Copenhagen, is facing criticism about his trial run to place chefs in the Connecticut towns six public schools, part of Giustis larger experiment to revamp the nations school lunches via his company, Brigaid.

[A top chef at a world-famous restaurant want to fix Americas school lunches]

Some community members are alarmed by the expected price tag once the contract is final: The school district reportedly will pay Brigaid $130,000 annually for the first two years and also hire the six chefs at $60,000 each per year. The salaries and fees are a sign, some suggest, that New London has its priorities out of whack. Why spend so much cash on chef-driven fare  on kids who will just sneer at it anyway  when the school system has other problems?

[Noma chef Daniel Giusti keeps the worlds top restaurant running.]

When I talked with the chef-turned-entrepreneur, who has returned to Washington after his stint at Noma, Giusti argued that his company may cost New London money up front, but the program eventually will pay for itself  and even generate cash to improve meals for the 3,300 students in the district. An edited excerpt of our conversation follows.

What do you plan to do with the current staff and menus?

Everyone who currently has a job there will continue to have a job. The first phase of it is really going to be getting chefs into those kitchens and having chefs observe, watch, get to know the team, start to implement basic ways to reorganize the kitchen. Start to get the staff to believe in that chef and what were trying to do. Talk to the students. What do you like? What do you not like?

Really, were just trying to build the culture of looking at school food as a different thing. Once we get that going, then well start to look at the food. Then well start to make changes in the menu. But it cant be drastic and all at once.

What do you think you can improve immediately?

The way a lot of school food programs are set up, the oversight is pretty limited. Thats where these chefs come into play. Think about it: Some of the larger school districts, you might have a food-service director whos overseeing hundreds of schools. Its not like theyre in each school every day. So who is ensuring that even the things that they think are happening are actually happening?

When I went around the country, I was getting taken around some school districts by the food-service director, and it happened several times where the food-service director was a bit surprised by what was actually happening in the school. People want to argue that paying a chef a good salary to oversee the feeding of 500 to 1,000 kids is excessive, but I dont think thats true at all. I mean, its a lot to worry about.

What will be the benchmarks to prove Brigaid is successful?

Unfortunately, for a lot of people, its going to be the finances. For me, theres a lot more to it. One of the most important benchmarks for me is that the kids are happy and that theyre openly enthusiastic about the food. Thats going to be a harder one to measure. As far as technical and specific metrics go, participation in meals is a big one.

What is the current participation in New London?

Its pretty high. Lunch participation, averaged out over the six schools, is in the range of 75 to 80 percent, which is very good. New London is also a community eligible district, which means the majority of their students qualify for free and reduced-price meals. Because of that, you typically have a higher participation rate.

Breakfast is a little more inconsistent at some of the schools. The average participation for breakfast is more like 50 percent, which would be really nice to increase. Then the supper program is something that could really be expanded, and if we can expand it, that would be a really great sign.

Will you and your fiancee, Annika de Las Heras, be moving from the District to New London?

Yes, were going to move there. My goal would be that I spend most of May and all of June in the schools, just spend time in the kitchens and see how things are going and get some ideas for next year. We want to start the student and community advisory boards. I want to get them going now so we can get feedback to start the programs off next year.

How do you plan to use your experience in New Lo ndon to help Brigaid in the long-term?

As far as a long-term business model structure, a lot of it will be ultimately very dependent on how this goes in New London. I know we can achieve what weve set out to achieve as far as making improvements in New London. But whats the best way to make that into a business model thats sustainable? I have my idea, but maybe moving forward that model evolves somehow.

Have your ideas about Brigaid changed since you first conceptualized the company?

I think there are two main things. One, the model kind of changed. Its always been about the chefs, but now the focus being that theres a chef in each school. Because you see people who are running programs: They seem like theyre really good, and some of the schools are really good. But its too dependent on people within that school going above and beyond to make it better. Youll see inconsistencies within the same district.

The other thing, the most important thing is that the kids are happy. You can talk about a million things, but the most important thing is that the kids are happy.

Will this career make you happy?

I think so. I know so. I mean, Ive enjoyed the whole process, but anytime I have the opportunity to talk to students, its amazing. I love it.
Its a 20-oz. beef patty with cheddar cheese and crispy bacon that is sandwiched between two 8-inch pizzas. It is available when the Washington Nationals play the Atlanta Braves on opening day at Turner Field. (McKenna Ewen/The Washington Post)

Of all the over-the-top ballpark concessions making their 2016 MLB Opening Day debuts, the Burgerizza at Turner Field in Atlanta has generated the most media buzz thus far. Its not hard to see why, as it contains basic college food groups and is bigger than the average human head. Billed as 20 ounces of grilled beef patty with cheddar cheese and bacon sandwiched between two eight-inch pizzas, the creations $26 price tag matches its heft.

Because the Washington Nationals kick off their season in Atlanta today, we figured a recipe test would provide a next-best taste of the action. We seasoned the ground beef with salt and pepper and tried to bake whole Burgerizzas in the oven per the pizza-box directions (we used DiGiorno; the kind used at Turner Field is not specified). But the meat failed to reach a safe internal temperature. So we pan-grilled each burger mound, topped with six slices of cheese (five used on the official Burgerizza, but we went for maximum coverage) and eight slices of crisped bacon, and then inserted it between the finished personal-size pizzas (cheese on the bottom, pepperoni on top  just like the Burgerizza.)

[Dumplings, gyros and BBQ ribs among the new concession items at Nats Park]

All the volunteer taste testers who lined up and tried our Burgerizzas approved them on all counts: concept, aroma, plate appeal, flavor and sheer goofiness.

Delaware North, the teams new food and beverage concessionaire based in Buffalo, developed the concept plus others in November of last year. It held tastings for the Braves executive team in February and March, and they were fun, says Victoria Hong, the vendors director of corporate communications.

As to the official number of servings, a Braves spokesperson said Monday that its described as shareable. Delaware North says the Burgerizza was designed to feed a family of four.

Nutritional analysis, based on four servings: 890 calories, 58 grams fat, 25 grams saturated fat, 2 grams trans fat, 47 grams protein, 160 milligrams cholesterol, 1580 milligrams sodium, 43 grams carbohydrates, 2 grams fiber, 6 grams sugar.

Heres hoping the fans in the stands dont bogart their Burgerizzas.


The authors Old-Fashioned Cinnamon Babka. (Deb Lindsey/For The Washington Post)

In some circles, Im acknowledged as a Jewish baking goddess, so it was a shock to discover that when it came to babka, I knew what I knew  but apparently there was more.

The classic loaf I had been teaching for years is a really good babka. But its not The Babka of the Hour. Babka, it should be explained, is a sweet yeast bread, like cake. Its dough is richer than that of a cinnamon bun but not as rich as Danish dough. It features a sticky, gooey, addictive filling of cinnamon sugar or chocolate sugar spread and either a glossy glaze or a crumb topping  or both.

Lately, babka has been getting its due online at various sites and blogs, perhaps prompted by the glorious cover shot on Food & Wine in January. Once that magazine put babka front and center, it seemed like a trend youd want in on.

Thing is, the babka recipe in those features, including the one I was used to making, is the same one your grandmother might have preened over and passed down until it achieved family legend status. That babka is amazing in its own right and one of those things thats great fresh, almost better toasted and not unlike the one many bakeries produce. Variations or derivatives of it are everywhere: Greek Easter breads, Italian panettone and Russian kulich.

[Make the recipe: Old-Fashioned Cinnamon Babka.]

Which brings us to some history notes: All indications point to babkas roots as Central European  at least thats the cinnamon connection. The word babcia (BAHB-cha) itself is Polish for grandmother; lots of folks contend that puffy babkas recall a grandmothers pleated, voluminous skirts. And although the bread seems tethered to Jewish bakeries, it is not baked for any particular Jewish celebration. Babka is as welcome at a Yom Kippur break-fast as it is at a brunch spread for a bris.

Chocolate babka is more of a mid-20th-century invention, purported to be descended from chocolate-making Spanish Jews who fled Spain around the time of the Inquisition. My bakers instinct favors another possibility: that baking in central Europe collided with France, because to me, chocolate babka has a strong connection to pain au chocolat. Of course, these days beyond the cinnamon-babka-vs.-chocolate rivalry (the Seinfeld Dinner Party episode comes to mind), theres poppy seed, cheese, almond, prune and Nutella. But I digress.

Happily, all Jewish baking seems to be getting a new glance. Clearly, the style of babka that inspired swoons was the chewy, sticky, dense, impossibly sweet one you can get only at some bakeries. Where I live, the best babka, bar none, is made at Montreals kosher Boulangerie Cheskie. And that is where this particular babka adventure took off.

Can you make Cheskies babka? a friend asked. Its the best.

I bought one to do reconnaissance in my own kitchen. Hefty and redolent of industrial bakers cinnamon (i.e., sweet and hot), Cheskie babka is sold by the hunk  that is, by weight  at about $6 per pound. It features multiple coiled layers and is indeed sweeter than a typical babka, dense with so much cinnamon or chocolate schmear that you have to sit down to savor it. (Also at Cheskie: a Russian babka, cut into squares, that comes in a cheese variety, too.)

A Cheskie babka rarely makes it home untouched; people tug and pull at it in their cars. There isnt a pervasive sense of butter in this yeasted loaf because its pareve, a.k.a. dairy-free. But the texture is remarkable and the sheer heft is impressive. Leftovers  mostly a result of my studying the loaf scientifically at my house  lasted for a week without going stale. I considered it a testimony to the shellacking of bakers sugar syrup, not to mention the cinnamon schmear bonding both interior and exterior of the luscious pastry.

Begrudgingly, I conceded that it was different from my babka. And maybe better. I like them both, though, and love a challenge. After all, I invented Matzoh Buttercrunch and figured out a way to re-create Montreal-style bagels and New Yorks H&H bagels. I could make this babka.

I called Cheskie and explained my quest. The woman I spoke with generously invited me to the crews early-morning baking to watch and learn, albeit with one condition: No recipe.

Fine by me; intel on the bakerys technique was what I was after. Upon arrival, I spent a good half-hour waiting, perusing the cases filled with black-and-white cookies, giant sprinkle cookies, Danish, challah, strudel and other mouthwatering goodies. The employee  whom Ill call Ms. Cheskie, honoring her request for anonymity  came out at last and told me politely: no. They had rethought the idea and would not grant me access to the production area. But she said she would offer a few technical notes.

First, roll it thin on the sheeter, she said.

A sheeter is a huge, standard commercial bakery machine that makes phyllo dough out of anything. That thin. A sheeter? That was news.

Yes, on the sheeter.

How thin?

Ms. Cheskie carefully folded a nearby paper envelope on the counter in half, maybe once more and showed me. It was about 1/8 inch, maybe less.

Then I asked: A cold rise or what, an hour or 90 minutes, egg wash and bake?

No, Ms. Cheskie said. No rise.

On a yeast bread! That also accounted for the dense texture. Truth is, Cheskie babka has swirls upon swirls of schmear. The layers are not especially bready and are almost compressed; I counted 12 to 14 of them.

The bakery notes paid off, and I am delighted to share the results. The accompanying babka recipe is the outcome of attempts that took more than 10 pounds of unsalted butter to produce. Im sure it could still be even more exact, but its pretty darned close to Cheskies. (If you want yours to be pareve, by the way, youll have to use oil or shortening.)

Mine is not pareve or non-dairy; original babkas most likely were butter-based as well. It has a few components: a sugar syrup, streusel crumbs and either a cinnamon or chocolate schmear. Overall, though, the recipes easy, and less time-consuming to make than a bready babka because of that no rise. Im thinking that the dough, rolled out so thin, would be a perfect vehicle for almond paste or my leftover hamantaschen fillings. But thats another story.

Goldman, a cookbook author, blogs at BetterBaking.com. Shell join Wednesdays Free Range chat at noon: live.washingtonpost.com.
William Rice, a journalist who trained at Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris, was a Washington Post food editor in the 1970s, and later became a prominent author and gastronome in Chicago, died April 3 at a nursing home in Chicago. He was 77.

The cause was Lewy body dementia, a progressive brain disorder, said his wife, Jill Van Cleave Rice.

Mr. Rice developed an intense interest in food while growing up in the 1940s and 1950s in Upstate New York  an era and a place in which, he once wrote, the only French item would be french dressing for the salad.

His more adventurous tastes, he explained, were forged by necessity. Steak, for example, was plentiful but half an inch thick and brown all the way through.

He became a journalist and held a range of writing and editing jobs after joining The Post in 1963. After the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, Mr. Rice was dispatched to help cover the riots that ensued in Washington and found himself hunched down in a cab to avoid being pelted with rocks during the upheaval.

William Rice in 1964. (The Washington Post)

It was a seminal moment in the citys history  and also, Mr. Rice noted with clear-eyed self-awareness, in his own journalistic ambitions.

He recalled thinking, I do not want to lie on the floor of cabs anymore.

At the urging of Craig Claiborne, the New York Times food writer, he spent the next two years in France. He attended Le Cordon Bleu, worked in a bakery and harvested grapes in Bordeaux before his francs ran out.

He soon rejoined The Post, where he held the title of executive food editor from 1974 to 1980. An energetic and supple writer, he reported on kitchen gadgets, wines, trade-group meetings, the rising cost of food and gastronomic trends such as pan-Asian cooking.

Mr. Rice interviewed culinary celebrities, including James Beard and Marcella Hazan, and he profiled Vincent Price, the popular horror-film actor who revealed that he was, in fact, not much of a red meat eater.

Mr. Rices rise in his field coincided with an increasing professionalism among food writers at major newspapers  a shift away from the tendency to serve as boosters for local markets and restaurants.

The great recent success of food journalism, Mr. Rice once told the publication Restaurant Business, is that weve finally made food journalism part of true journalism, instead of some sort of stepsister intended to sell supermarket ads.

Eating is an extremely important, serious part of our lives, he added. The turning point of realization came, I think, when people began to understand that we really are what we eat. From that time on, food writers got to be real reporters, instead of people who simply pumped out recipes.

After five years as editor in chief of Food and Wine magazine in New York, Mr. Rice became food and wine critic at the Chicago Tribune, a position he held until 2004. I chose Chicago, he once told Newsday. I had a sense you could lead a normal life, nobody would question why you went to the ball game instead of the wine tasting.

William Edward Rice was born July 26, 1938, in Albany, N.Y. He graduated in 1960 from the University of Virginia, served in the Navy for two years and received a masters degree from Columbia Universitys journalism school in 1963.

Mr. Rice, who once headed the James Beard Foundations restaurant awards committee, was the author of Feasts of Wine and Food (1987) and Steak Lovers Cookbook (1997).

His first marriage, to Carol Timmon, ended in divorce. Besides his wife of 33 years, of Chicago, survivors include a sister.

In a food-writing career spanning three decades, Mr. Rice said he witnessed a proliferation of fads and trends but that his favorite food remained a simple roast chicken.

He wrote in the Tribune, For most of my life, during the heyday of beef Wellington or Peking duck or  most recently  blackened redfish, my inquisitors have either shaken their heads in disbelief and asked what I really like best, or treated me as though I were Nicholas Nicklebys Smike, a pitiful creature unworthy of being allowed near the caviar jar.

But a properly roasted chicken, he continued, reveling in the thought of its bronzed skin and juicy meat, is sensual as well as chic.
Evan Kanz, 17, right, a senior at Northwest High School, along with Graham Blondes, an eighth-grader at Robert Frost Middle School, remove the tree stakes from a dead tree on March 31 in Gaithersburg, Md. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)

It was spring break last week in Montgomery County, and some high school seniors were away on beach vacations. But in Germantown, Md., Evan Kanz decided it was the perfect time to pull on work gloves and do an afternoon of community service.

A bright orange garbage bag in hand, he walked the edges of a marshy park, plucking up discarded water bottles and soda cans under a bright afternoon sun.

It feels good to help out, he said, working alongside other students at Germantown Town Center Urban Park and earning service hours that would bring him a step closer to his June graduation from Northwest High School.

With the school year heading into its final stretch, Kanz and other seniors are part of the yearly rush to meet Marylands graduation requirement for 75 service learning hours.

In Montgomery and Prince Georges counties, students earn some of their required hours as they take certain classes that include service projects. But they accumulate others by volunteering.

Evan Kanz removes the tree stakes from a dead tree. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)

As graduation day nears, the senior scramble is as reliable as spring itself.

School district figures show that in March, more than 2,300 of Montgomerys 10,700 high school seniors still had service hours to complete. In neighboring Prince Georges County, nearly 2,000 of the school systems 7,800 seniors had not yet finished.

More than two decades ago, Maryland became the first state to require student service for a high school diploma. D.C. public schools require 100 hours of community service. Virginia doesnt have a state mandate, but many students do such work through classes and organizations or on their own.

In Maryland, some popular volunteer spots look to capitalize on the student help during spring break.

For the past few years, park officials have scheduled cleanups during the break and on other days off school  hoping to create a happy coincidence of jobs that need to be done and students who need to do them.

Its been working really well, said Henry Coppola, stream and park cleanup coordinator for Montgomery Parks. We know students have time available then and are often looking for those SSL hours, and its a good time to present them with opportunities.

The seniors are not the only ones volunteering, he said. There are sometimes middle school students, starting their requirements early, often with a parent or sibling in tow. But the seniors tend to be more urgent.

They realize they are coming up on a deadline, and they are hustling to meet all of their requirements on time, he said.

[Spring break for high school seniors: Welcome to the mad rush]

At high schools, teachers and administrators say they see benefits of the requirement.

For the most part, I hear that kids really enjoy it, says teacher Laura Leffner, who coordinates the program at Seneca Valley High School. A lot of them learn something new, or they learn that theyre good at something they didnt know they were good at.

Leffner said some of her students help out at school sporting events, while others tutor younger children, work as summer camp counselors, help bag donated food or participate in service trips to other parts of the country.

Few students in Maryland have failed to graduate solely because they lacked their required service hours, state officials say.

In Montgomery, district data shows that more than 2,080 seniors already have gone well above and beyond the state mandate, documenting 260 hours or more  the level for a special tassel at graduation and recognition of meritorious service.

Leslie Stept, 18, a senior at Northwest High School, was working her way toward that higher goal as she joined in the park cleanup in Germantown. She had amassed 251 hours and had nine to put in before an April 8 deadline, she said.

She said she was following in an older sisters footsteps by striving for the 260-hour mark, which she would ultimately make. Its great to give to others, to help others, and to work on environmental causes, she said.

[High school seniors push to finish community service]

As she used a trash grabber to collect debris from the brush, the day was clear, but the breeze was gusty. She leaned in to get at grimy bottles and wrappers, surrounded by brambles. Its a lot of work, she said.

Not far away, Kanz filled his bright orange trash bag. Hed missed some of his high school lacrosse practice to attend the cleanup but was glad to be in the final stretch of finishing his service hours.

Its a requirement, he said, but it can make kids think about what its like to help out in the community.

By days end, Kanz and other volunteers picked up 425 pounds of trash, 250 pounds of recyclables and 10 pounds of bulk garbage items.

The projects coordinator, Coppola, said it was a good haul for 12 students, one older brother, two parents and one other adult. It made a really noticeable difference in the end, he said.
BLOOD DONATIONS

BLOOD DRIVES Saturday 9 a.m.-2 p.m., Leesburg Public Safety Center, 65 Plaza St. NE, Leesburg, 800-733-2767; April 11, 2:30-7:30 p.m., Village at Leesburg, 1603 Village Market Blvd., Suite 100, Leesburg, 800-733-2767; April 15, 2:30-7:30 p.m., St. James Episcopal Church, 14 Cornwall St. NW, Leesburg, 800-733-2767; April 20, 1:30-7 p.m., Foxcroft School, 22407 Foxhound Lane, Middleburg, 800-733-2767; April 23, 10 a.m.-3 p.m., Ashburn Library, 43316 Hay Rd., Ashburn, 800-733-2767; April 26, 3-7 p.m. Rust Library, 380 Old Waterford Rd., Leesburg, 866-256-6372.

INOVA BLOOD DONOR CENTER Mondays noon-8 p.m., Tuesdays 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Fridays 6 a.m.-4 p.m. and Sundays noon-4 p.m. Dulles Town Center, 45745 Nokes Blvd., Sterling. 866-256-6372 or inova.org/donateblood.

FIRST AID

FIRST AID/ADULT, INFANT AND CHILD CPR/AED Fauquier Hospital Medical Office Building, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. Call for schedule. 540-316-3588. Registration required.

HEARING

DISABILITY RESOURCE CENTER Technical assistance through the Virginia Department for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and presentations to businesses, civic groups and schools. Third Tuesdays 2-5 p.m., Workplace, 205 Keith St., Warrenton. Call for an appointment, 800-648-6324; TDD, 540-373-5890. Free.

FREE HEARING TESTS Age 18 and older. Mondays-Thursdays 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m., Blue Ridge Speech and Hearing Center, 19465 Deerfield Ave., Suite 201, Lansdowne. 703-858-7620. Registration required.

HEARING LOSS, TINNITUS AND MENIERES SYNDROME SUPPORT For all ages, including parents of children with hearing loss. First Fridays 2 p.m., Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling. 703-430-2906.

NORTHERN VIRGINIA RESOURCE CENTER FOR THE DEAF AND HARD OF HEARING Age 18 and older, second Tuesdays 10 a.m., Carver Center, 200 Willie Palmer Way, Purcellville. 571-258-3400.

HEARING LOSS OUTREACH Free referrals. Fourth Thursdays 10 a.m.-noon, Loudoun County Workforce Center, 102 Heritage Way, Leesburg; third Thursdays 10 a.m.-noon, Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling. Free appointments: 703-430-2906 or nvrcloudoun@aol.com.

MENTAL HEALTH

COUNSELING FOR SEXUAL VIOLENCE SURVIVORS Provided by Loudoun Citizens for Social Justice. 703-771-9020.

CRISISLINK Suicide and crisis intervention. The organization provides community education, has a volunteer crisis response team and offers CareRing, a daily telephone outreach program for the elderly and disabled. 703-527-6016, volunteer@crisislink.org or crisislink.org.

PIEDMONT CHAPTER, NATIONAL ALLIANCE ON MENTAL ILLNESS Serves Fauquier, Orange, Madison and Rappahannock counties. Support group, education classes and events for people living with mental illness, plus their family members. First Wednesdays 7-9 p.m. Fauquier Hospital, 500 Hospital Dr., Sycamore Room A, Warrenton. 571-426-8213.

NORTHERN VIRGINIA CHAPTER, NATIONAL ALLIANCE ON MENTAL ILLNESS A support group, classes and programs for people living with mental illness and their family members. naminorthernvirginia.org.

PREGNANCY, PARENTING

ADOPTIVE FAMILY PRESERVATION Adoptive families discuss common experiences; registration required. Third Tuesdays 12:30-2 p.m. Ashburn Library, 43316 Hay Rd. Call 703-941-9008, Ext. 23, or email jmellerio@umfs.org.

BIRTHRIGHT OF LOUDOUN COUNTY Free pregnancy tests, baby clothing, transportation and support throughout pregnancy, 823 S. King St., Leesburg. 703-777-7272.

BOND BETWEEN US Nonprofit group offers support to birth parents when children have been placed for adoption. Fourth Tuesdays 7:30 p.m. Call for location. 703-771-7844.

BREAST-FEEDING SUPPORT Mondays 9:30-10:30 a.m., Fauquier Hospital Family Birthing Center, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-316-3588.

DAD SUPPORT New and expectant fathers share ideas. First Tuesdays 7 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital, 44045 Riverside Pkwy., Leesburg. 703-858-6360.

FOR THE CHILDRENS SAKE A group for separating or divorcing parents to share advice. Four-hour session weekly. Information : 703-391-8599 or fitsfoundation.org.

LA LECHE LEAGUE Mother-to-mother support and breast-feeding information. 10 a.m. second Wednesdays in Warrenton, 540-351-6103. Third Fridays 10:15-11:45 a.m., call for location, 703-444-7386. Second Fridays 10:15 a.m., Ashburn Library, 43316 Hay Rd., 703-431-3852; Thursdays 10 a.m.-noon, Panera Bread, 43670 Greenway Corp. Dr., Ashburn, email lllashburn@gmail.com. Third Fridays 10:15 a.m., Christ the Redeemer Church, 46833 Harry F. Byrd. Hwy., Sterling, 540-338-4637.

LOUDOUN FATHERHOOD PROGRAM Fathers discuss the joys and challenges of being a parent. Meets every other Saturday for two hours for four months; sponsored by Northern Virginia Family Service. 571-748-2796. Free.

LOUDOUN NURTURING PARENTING PROGRAM Positive parenting techniques; children attend with parents. Registration required. Call 703-771-3973, Ext. 27, or email nurturingprogram@lcsj.org . Free.

MOTHERNET/HEALTHY FAMILIES LOUDOUN Program links first-time parents with medical, social and educational resources to give children a socially and physically healthy start in life. Family support workers meet with participants in homes. English-Spanish translation provided. 703-444-4477, Ext. 217, or inmed.org .

NEW MOTHERS SUPPORT Wednesdays 9:30-11:30 a.m. Inova Loudoun Medical Pavilion, 224 Cornwall St., Leesburg, main entrance. Babies welcome. 703-858-6360.

YOUNG PARENT SERVICES Support for teenage parents. Loudoun County Department of Family Social Services, 52 Sycolin Rd., Leesburg. Call for times. 703-771-5375.

ONLINE CHILDBIRTH EDUCATION PROGRAM Inova Loudoun Hospitals Web-based program uses animation, videos and interactive activities to guide users through the basics of childbirth, breast-feeding and caring for newborns. 703-858-6360. thebirthinginn.org/classes.

PARENTING ALONE GROUP For parents of school-age children who have lost a spouse or partner to cancer. Second Tuesdays 5:30-6:30 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital, Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. 703-698-2536 or email jennifer.eckert@inova.org .

PREGNANCY AND CHILDBIRTH SUPPORT Childbirth Solutions Resource Center, 8393 W. Main St., Marshall. 571-344-0438.

SENIORS

EXERCISE EQUIPMENT Weights, treadmills, bikes and a cardio-glide. Instruction provided. Age 55 and older. Weekdays 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St. NW. 703-737-8039. Free.

EYE CARE LensCrafters staff members will clean glasses and make minor repairs. Second Wednesdays 1-2 p.m. Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling. 703-430-2397. Free.

FITNESS FOR PEOPLE 55 AND OLDER Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays 1-1:45 p.m. Carver Center, 200 Willie Palmer Way, Purcellville. 571-258-3400. $36, 12-visit card.

INOVA LOUDOUN MOBILE VAN Blood pressure checks. Second and fourth Tuesdays 9:30 a.m.-noon, Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling, 571-258-3280; first Wednesdays 9:30 a.m.-noon, Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St. NW. 703-737-8039.

LAUGHING YOGA FOR SENIORS I mprove flexibility and balance. Thursdays 9:30-10 :30 a.m. Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St. NW. 703-737-8039. Free.

LOUDOUN ADULT DAY CENTERS For seniors with physical limitations or memory loss, a safe and social environment, therapeutic activities, individualized care and respite for caregivers. Limited transportation. Sliding-scale fees. Weekdays in Leesburg, 7:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m., 703-771-5334; Purcellville, 571-258-3402; and Ashburn-Sterling, 571-258-3232.

MEDICARE INFORMATIONAL SEMINAR April 23, 10-11:30 a.m. Loudoun County Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Services, 20145 Ashbrook Pl., Suite 170, Ashburn. Sponsored by the Loudoun County Area Agency on Aging. 571-258-3414 or email aaamedicare@loudoun.gov. Free; registration required.

SENIOR OUTREACH SERVICES Free and confidential assistance from an Area Agency on Aging case manager. Call for an appointment or sign up at the Senior Center at Cascades. First and third Wednesdays 11 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling. 571-258-3280.

SENIOR OUTREACH SERVICES Free and confidential assistance from an Area Agency on Aging Elder case manager. Sign up in the Leesburg Senior Center lobby. Second and fourth Thursdays 11 a.m.-noon and 12:30-4:30 p.m. Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St. NW. 703-737-8039. Free.

SENIOR OUTREACH SERVICES Free and confidential assistance from an Area Agency on Aging Elder case manager. Call for an appointment or sign up at the Carver Center. First and third Mondays, 12:30-5 p.m. Carver Center, 200 Willie Palmer Way, Purcellville. 703-737-8741. Free.

ZUMBA GOLD CLASS: For people 55 and older who are learning Zumba for the first time, or those who prefer a lower-impact version. The fitness program combines Latin and international music with dance.Thursdays 11 a.m. Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling. 571-258-3280. $12.

TAI CHI Stretching and strengthening movements. Mondays 11 a.m. Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St. NW. 703-737-8039. Free.

ZUMBA GOLD CLASS Age 55 and older. Wear rubber-soled shoes and comfortable clothing; bring water and a towel. Tuesdays 11 a.m., Tuesdays and Fridays at 1 p.m. Senior Center of Leesburg, 102 North St. NW, Leesburg. 703-737-8039. $24 per month.

SUPPORT GROUPS

AL-ANON SERVICE CENTER OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA A volunteer is available 24 hours with information for spouses, family members and friends of problem drinkers. 703-534-4357 or 877-339-8350. Mondays 8 p.m. Emmanuel Episcopal Church, 125 W. Washington St., Middleburg, 540-554-2747; Tuesdays 7:30 p.m. St. James Episcopal Church, 14 Cornwall St. NW, Leesburg, 877-339-8350; Fridays 8:30 p.m. Grace Episcopal Church, 6507 Main St., The Plains, 800-344-2666; Tuesdays 12:15 p.m. Warrenton Church of Christ, Route 29 N., 540-347-7448; Tuesdays 7 p.m. and Saturdays 8:30 p.m. Warrenton Presbyterian Church, 91 Main St., 800-344-2666.

ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS Various meeting times and locations in Loudoun County. 800-208-8649 or 703-876-6166. nvintergroup.org.

ALZHEIMERS CAREGIVER SUPPORT For those who care for people with Alzheimers disease and other forms of dementia. Fourth Wednesdays 4-5:30 p.m. The Villa at Suffield Meadows, 6735 Suffield Lane, Warrenton. 540-316-3800.

ALZHEIMERS SUPPORT First Tuesdays 10-11 a.m. Spring Arbor Assisted Living, 237 Fairview St. NW, Leesburg. 540-338-6520.

ALZHEIMERS CAREGIVERS SUPPORT For those caring for people with Alzheimers disease and other forms of dementia. Second Mondays 7-8:30 p.m. Galilee United Methodist Church, 45425 Winding Rd., Sterling. 703-430-9229. galileeumc.org.

ALZHEIMERS CAREGIVER SUPPORT Emotional, educational and social support for family members and friends of people with the disease. Third Saturdays 10 a.m. Loudoun County Area Agency on Aging, 20145 Ashbrook Pl., Ashburn. Call 703-771-5407 or email lesley.katz@loudoun.gov.

ALZHEIMERS SUPPORT First Wednesdays 4 p.m. Leesburg Adult Day Center, 16501 Meadowview Ct., Leesburg. 703-771-5334.

TALK ABOUT CURING AUTISM A nonprofit organization educating and supporting families affected by autism. tacanow.org.

AUTOIMMUNE SUPPORT Last Thursdays 6:30-7:30 p.m. Jackson Building, 209 Gibson St., Leesburg. Email autoimmunesupport@hotmail.com .

BEREAVED PARENT SUPPORT One-on-one counseling is available. Spiritual Care Support Ministry Center, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814. scsm.tv.

BEREAVEMENT SUPPORT For those experiencing loss because of the death of a loved one. Age 18 and older. Third Mondays 1 p.m. Fauquier Hospital Chestnut Room, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. Sponsored by Capital Caring. 703-957-1800.

BREAST CANCER SUPPORT Fourth Tuesdays 7-8 p.m. Fauquier Hospital Tower, Chestnut Room, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-349-0588.

BREAST CANCER SUPPORT For those with new diagnoses or starting treatment. Register if attending for the first time. Fourth Mondays 5:30-6:30 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. 703-858-8857.

BREAST CANCER SUPPORT For those who have finished treatment, have had a recurrence or metastatic breast cancer. Register if attending for the first time. Fourth Mondays 6:30-8 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. 703-858-8857. Free.

BREAST CANCER SUPPORT ASSISTANCE FUND Loudoun County residents who have received a diagnosis or have undergone treatment in the past 12 months are eligible to apply for financial assistance. Areas included are wigs, bras, puffs and prostheses, mammograms and medical bills, food and help with utilities, rent or mortgage, and transportation costs. The Pink Assistance Fund has been established by the Loudoun Breast Health Network. lbhn.org.

CANCER SUPPORT Oncology nurses, social workers and spiritual care providers offer education and support to patients, families and caregivers. Second Mondays 5:30-6:30 p.m. Fauquier Hospital Sycamore Room, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-316-2273.

CANCER SUPPORT Life with Cancer, for patients, family members and friends. Second Thursdays 7 p.m. Ashburn Presbyterian Church, Room 202, 20962 Ashburn Rd. 703-729-2012. ashburnpresbyterian.org.

CAREGIVER SUPPORT GROUP Third Saturdays 10 a.m. Loudoun County Area Agency on Aging, 20145 Ashbrook Pl., Ashburn. 703-771-5407. alz.org/nca.

CAREGIVER SUPPORT AND RESOURCE GROUP Wednesdays 10:30 a.m.-noon (no meeting first Wednesdays), Spiritual Care Support Ministry Center, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814. scsm.tv.

CARING FOR AGING PARENTS Support group. Confidential. Fourth Wednesdays 7:30 p.m., Family Focus Counseling Service, 20-B John Marshall St., Warrenton. 540-349-4537.

CHADD PARENTS SUPPORT For parents of children with ADD/ADHD. Fourth Sundays 3 p.m. KinderCare, 44051 Ashburn Village Shopping Plaza. chadd.nova loudoun@gmail. com .

CHRONIC ILLNESS SUPPORT Tuesdays 10:30-11:30 a.m. Spiritual Care Support Ministries, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814 or scsm.tv.

COFFEE AND CONVERSATION: Support for those discouraged because of illness, bereavement, caregiving or a loved one in the military. Thursdays 10 a.m.-noon. Spiritual Care Support Ministry Center, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814.

COMPASSIONATE FRIENDS For parents who have experienced the death of a child. First Wednesdays 7:30 p.m. St. James Episcopal Church, 14 Cornwall St. NW, Leesburg. 540-882-9707.

CREATING AND CONNECTING Two-hour art therapy and relaxation workshop for cancer patients. Every other month, 12:30-2:30 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. Call for dates. 703-858-8850.

DEPRESSION BIPOLAR SUPPORT ALLIANCE OF WESTERN LOUDOUN Saturdays 3 p.m. Purcellville Library, 220 E. Main St., Carruthers Room. Call 703-431-7160 or email kathy@dbsanca.org.

DROP-IN GRIEF SUPPORT For those coping with a death. Second and fourth Wednesdays 1-2 p.m. St. Davids Episcopal Church, 43600 Russell Branch Pkwy., Ashburn. Sponsored by Capital Caring. 703-597-1781.

GAY, LESBIAN, BISEXUAL AND TRANSGENDER YOUTH AND PARENT SUPPORT A group in partnership with Metro DC PFLAG. Fourth Sundays 4-6 p.m. Unitarian Universalist Church, 22135 Davis Dr., Sterling. 703-328-6518.

GRIEFSHARE Open to anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one. Tue sdays from 7-8:30 p.m. Purcellville Baptist Church, 601 Yaxley Dr., Purcellville. Call 540-338-0918 or email caring@purbap.org. Workbook, $15.

GRIEFSHARE Nondenominational seminar and support group. Tuesdays 7:30-9 p.m., and Wednesdays, 1-2:30 p.m. Spiritual Care Support Ministry Center, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814. Free.

GRIEF SUPPORT Sponsored by Hospice Support of Fauquier County. Individual counseling available. First and third Thursdays 3:30-5 p.m. Hospice Support Office, 42 N. Fifth St., Warrenton. Registration required. Call 540-347-5922 or email hospicesupport@verizon.net.

GRIEF SUPPORT Wednesdays, 10:30 a.m.-noon, Spiritual Care Support Ministry Center, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814.

HOSPICE SUPPORT Free medical-equipment loan facility for Fauquier County residents. Especially needed are donations of wheelchairs, bedside commodes, rolling walkers, electric hospital beds, shower benches and chairs, adult diapers, lift chairs, Ensure and hospital bed mattresses. 540-347-5922.

LOOK GOOD, FEEL BETTER For women undergoing or emerging from cancer treatment. Every other month, 6:45 to 9 p.m. ,Inova Loudoun Hospital Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. Call for dates. 703-776-2820. Free.

LOUDOUN CHADD SUPPORT Led by Children and Adults With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Third Thursdays 7 p.m. Leesburg Town Hall, lower-level conference room, 25 W. Market St. 703-669-2445.

LOUDOUN INTERGROUP OF OVEREATERS ANONYMOUS Fellowship and support. For locations and times, call 571-420-2012. oa.org.

LYME DISEASE SUPPORT Fourth Sundays 2-4 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital, 44045 Riverside Pkwy., Conference Room A and B, Leesburg. Go to natcaplyme.org or email loudounlymeadvocates@gmail.com.

LYME DISEASE SUPPORT Third Thursdays 7 p.m. Warrenton Church of Christ, 6398 Lee Hwy. Access Road, Warrenton. 540-347-7265 or email lymeinfauquier@gmail.com. Free.

MADD LOUDOUN VICTIM SUPPORT For those who have been affected by drunken driving. Third Wednesdays 7:30 p.m. 210 Wirt St., Leesburg. 540-338-6491.

MAN-TO-MAN CANCER SUPPORT Sponsored by Loudoun Cancer Care Center, for prostate cancer patients and their families. Second Tuesdays 6:30-8 p.m. Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling. Call 703-858-8857 or email karen.archer@inova.org.

MENOPAUSE SUPPORT Third Thursdays 6:30-9 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital, 44045 Riverside Pkwy., Leesburg (second floor, Patient Education Room). 703-858-8060.

MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS SUPPORT Saturdays 10:30 a.m. Fauquier Hospital Chestnut Room, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-349-2826.

MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS SUPPORT Last Sundays 2-4 p.m. Cascades Library, 21030 Whitfield Pl., Potomac Falls. 703-771-4256.

NAR-ANON FAMILY SUPPORT For those affected by loved ones with addiction. Meaningful Mondays, 7-8 p.m., Galilee United Methodist Church, 45425 Winding Rd., Sterling. 703-203-9792; Wisdom Wednesdays 7-8 p.m., St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church, 37730 St. Francis Ct., Purcellville, 703-606-7125; Serenity Thursdays, 7-8 p.m. Leesburg Presbyterian Church, 207 W. Market St., Leesburg, 703-606-7125.

PARKINSON'S SUPPORT Open to anyone with Parkinson's disease, family members and caregivers. First Tuesdays 1:30-3 p.m. Call for Ashburn location. 571-442-8851.

POST-PARTUM SUPPORT Second and fourth Wednesdays 1-2:30 p.m. Inova Loudoun Cornwall Campus, 224 Cornwall St., Leesburg. 703-909-9877. Email lamckeough@gmail.com. Registration required.

REACH TO RECOVERY Home visit program for mastectomy and lumpectomy patients. Temporary prostheses, exercise instruction and encouragement. 703-938-5550.

SEXUAL ASSAULT AND INCEST SURVIVORS GROUP COUNSELING Services provided by Loudoun Citizens for Social Justice and the Loudoun Abused Womens Shelter are free and confidential. 703-771-9020.

SEXUAL ASSAULT SURVIVORS EMPOWERMENT SUPPORT Sponsored by Sexual Assault Victims Volunteer Initiative. Child care available with 48-hours notice. Mondays; call for times and locations. 540-349-7720.

SPIRITUAL SUPPORT GROUP For cancer patients, family members and friends. Third Tuesdays 6:30-8 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. 703-858-8850.

STROKE SURVIVORS AND CAREGIVERS SUPPORT Second Wednesdays 11 a.m.-noon, Inova Loudoun Hospital, 44045 Riverside Pkwy., Leesburg, second floor, Patient Education Room. 703-858-6667 or robyn.thomson@inova.org.

SUICIDE COUNSELING Third Wednesdays 7-8:30 p.m. Leesburg Town Office, Conference Room 2, lower level, 25 W. Market St., Leesburg. 703-587-1618 or survivorsofsuicidelossleesburg@gmail.com.

WOMENS SUPPORT Sponsored by Services to Abused Families. Tuesdays 6:30-8 p.m. Confidential location. 540-825-8876.

WIDOW AND WIDOWER SUPPORT Third Mondays 11 a.m. Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St. NW. 703-737-8039.

WOMENS CANCER SUPPORT Woman to Woman, first Wednesdays 6:30-8 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. Registration required. 703-858-8850.

MISCELLANEOUS

BRAIN TRAUMA SURVIVORS BROWN BAG LUNCH For survivors and caregivers, first Tuesdays, noon-1:30 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital, 44045 Riverside Pkwy., Leesburg, second-floor Patient Education Room. Call 703-737-3150 or email jberg@braininjurysvcs.org. Free.

CHILD DEVELOPMENTAL SCREENINGS For ages 2-5. Children may not be kindergarten-age-eligible. Sponsored by the Loudoun County public schools Child Find Center. 571-252 - 2180.

CHOLESTEROL SCREENINGS Weekdays 6 a.m.-8 p.m. Fauquier Health LIFE Center, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-316-2640. Registration required. $35.

COMMUNITY WELLNESS WEEK The Loudoun County Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Services and Area Agency on Aging, Inova Loudoun Hospital, Life Line Scerrning, Minimally Invasive Centers, Anthem HealthKeepers and INMED Partnerships for Children will offer a series of health screenings and presentations, April 4-8 at Sterling Community Center, 120 Enterprise St., Sterling. Some screenings require appointments. For a schedule and information, call 703-430-9480 or go to loudoun.gov/prcs.

EMERGENCY FOOD SUPPLIES Loudoun residents who are in need can receive a free three-day supply of groceries. Supplies are distributed Mondays through Saturdays by Loudoun Interfaith Relief. 703-777-5911. interfaithrelief.org.

FAUQUIER FREE WALK-IN MEDICAL CLINIC Patients must call Thursdays from 12:30 to 1 p.m. to register for the clinic, which begins at 5:30 p.m. Patients are also seen by appointment Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Fauquier and Rappahannock residents only. Bring proof of address for the first visit. Patients cannot have Medicaid, Medicare or private insurance. Information: 540-347-0394 Tuesdays or Thursdays, 9 a.m.-4 p.m.

FAUQUIER HOSPITAL BISTRO SENIOR SUPPER CLUB Nutritious meals and fellowship for people 55 and older. Tuesdays and Thursdays 4:30-6:30 p.m. Fauquier Hospital Bistro on the Hill, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-316-3588. $5.49.

GAMERS UNION FOR TEENS WITH ASPERGERS Youths 12 to 21 interact through gaming; their caregivers meet for networking. Second Tuesdays 6 p.m. Rust Library, 380 Old Waterford Rd., Leesburg. 703-777-0323. Free.

HEROES (Hometown Enabling Relationships, Opportunities and Empowerment through Support) is a program for military families. A trained volunteer provides support to military members and their families, from pre-deployment up to two years post-deployment. Assistance includes financial help, job placement, family care and mental health services. heroescare.org or email caring@purbap.org .

INOVA LOUDOUN HOSPITAL MOBILE HEALTH SERVICES BLOOD PRESSURE SCREENINGS Monday 9-11:30 a.m. William Watters House, 22365 Enterprise St., Sterling; Tuesday 10 a.m.-noon, Dulles South Multipurpose Room, 24950 Riding Center Dr., South Riding; Wednesday 10 a.m.-noon, Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St., Leesburg; Wednesday 10 a.m.-nnon, Sterling Community Center, 120 Enterprise St., Sterling; April 12, 9 a.m.-noon, Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling; April 14, 10 a.m.-noon, Carver Center, 200 Willie Palmer Way, Purcellville. Information: 703-858-8818 or inova.org/mobilehealth. Free.

LOUDOUN CARES INFORMATION AND REFERRAL HELPLINE Call for help in finding resources for county residents who are dealing with rent eviction, utility cut offs, needed health care, employment and more. 703-669-4636.

NORTHERN VIRGINIA LONG-TERM CARE OMBUDSMAN Call for help in resolving complaints related to long-term-care facilities. 703-324-5861.

MOTOR SKILL SCREENINGS Birth to 21 months. First Thursdays, Blue Ridge Speech and Hearing Center, 19465 Deerfield Ave., Suite 201, Lansdowne. Call for an appointment. 703-858-7620. Free.

ROAD TO RECOVERY, for cancer patients who need rides to appointments. 410-781-6909. Email jen.burdette@cancer.org. Free.

SEVEN LOAVES FOOD PANTRY Individuals and families can receive a three-day supply of food, distributed Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays 10 a.m.-noon. 540-687-3489 or sevenloavesmiddleburg.org.

TREE OF LIFE FOOD PANTRY Serving western Loudoun County. Food is delivered Wednesdays and Saturdays. 703-554-3595.

 Compiled by Sandy Mauck

TO SUBMIT AN ITEM

Email: ldliving@washpost.com

Fax: 703-777-8437

Mail: Health Calendar, The Washington Post, 104 Dry Mill Rd. SW, Suite 101, Leesburg, Va. 20175

Loudoun County and Fauquier County health calendar

Loudoun County and Fauquier County health calendar

Loudoun County and Fauquier County health calendar

Loudoun County and Fauquier County health calendar

Loudoun County and Fauquier County health calendar

Loudoun County and Fauquier County health calendar

Loudoun County and Fauquier County health calendar

Loudoun County and Fauquier County health calendar
Online registration is open for Loudoun summer camps

Online registration for the Loudoun County Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Services summer camps is available.

Current and new customers should request household account numbers and passwords at loudoun.gov/webtrac.

Summer camps include Summer Daze, Summer Fest, an adaptive recreation camp and licensed trip camps. To register, go to loudoun.gov/prcsforms or call 703-737-8042.

In-person registration is available during regular business hours at parks and recreation centers or at the recreation departments administration office, 20145 Ashbrook Pl., Suite 170, Ashburn.

For information, call 703-777-0343 or go to loudoun.gov/camps.

Heart Associations National Walking Day is Wednesday

People who live or work in Loudoun County are invited to participate in the American Heart Associations National Walking Day on Wednesday.

Loudoun Board of Supervisors Chair Phyllis J. Randall and David Goodfriend, director of the Loudoun Health Department, will lead a 1.7-mile Walk About Leesburg beginning at 12:30 p.m. To take part, meet at the Loudoun Government Center, 1 Harrison St. SE, Leesburg. For information about National Walking Day, go to heart.org/walking.

Sheriffs office schedules public safety meetings

The Loudoun County Sheriffs Office is having a series of meetings on public safety.

The meetings will be led by Sheriff Michael L. Chapman or a member of his leadership team, plus a captain representing the service area hosting the meeting.

Items to be discussed include recent crime and crime trends and traffic safety concerns.

Below is the schedule of upcoming safety meetings, which will start at 7 p.m.

April 20, Eastern Loudoun Sheriffs Station, 46620 E. Frederick Dr., Sterling.

May 2, Dulles South Public Safety Center, 25216 Loudoun County Pkwy., Chantilly.

May 4, Round Hill Town Office, 23 Main St., Round Hill.

To locate the station area for a home or business, go to sheriff.loudoun.gov/findmystation.

For information about upcoming sheriffs office meetings and events, go to sheriff.loudoun.gov/lcsocalendar.

 Compiled by Sandy Mauck
David Trone, co-owner of Total Wine & More, is runnng for the Democratic nomination to represent Marylands 8th congressional district. Here are five little-known facts about the first-time candidate:

1) Midnight Runs: When he worked in his fathers egg business on a farm in Pennsylvania, he would drive trucks overnight to New York City to bring the eggs to market.

2) Beer Wars: Trones early business career, in the 1990s, was marked by bruising legal fights in Pennsylvania that pitted him against politically potent mom-and-pop package store operators and a Republican state attorney general who later went to federal prison on unrelated charges.

Trone was arrested for pricing, transportation and licensing violations and, in 1992, indicted by a grand jury on 23 counts. All charges were eventually dropped. He says his experience spurred his interest in criminal justice reform.

3) Business Couple: Trone met his wife, June, at Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. They both received MBAs in 1985.

4) Notable Quote: You need to kind of play like youre losing. Its an important point because that creates the paranoia and the intensity through your organization.  last year, stressing the need for continuous innovation in retail to a group of students and faculty at American University's Kogod School of Business.

5) Notable Quote: (part 2): Treat every customer is if they are your mom.

Read a profile of David Trone
First in a series of profiles of candidates running for the Democratic nomination in Marylands 8th Congressional District.



David Trone is a Democratic primary candidate in Marylands 8th Congressional District. (Marlon Correa/El Tiempo Latino)

David Trone was a kid on his familys chicken and hog farm in southeast Pennsylvania, not a Potomac wine retailer and philanthropist, when he first thought about entering politics.

He admired the local congressman, a moderate Republican named Bill Goodling. Most of all, though, he wanted to run as Tom Trones son.

My goal was to grow up on a farm, build Tom Trones Eggs into a real agribusiness so everyone knew Tom Trones Eggs, he said. Then I could run for Congress as David Trone and people would know us and love us, and I could do something that would make a difference.

The farm failed, as Trone explains in one of his ubiquitous, skillfully produced campaign ads. What the spot doesnt say is that Tom Trones alcoholism doomed the business. The memory is raw enough that his sons eyes well up as he tells that part of the story.

The bank took the farm, they took our home, they took everything, Trone said. And my mom divorced my dad, rightfully so.

Trone had planned on law school after studying government at Furman University in South Carolina. Instead, he borrowed money to attend Wharton business school at the University of Pennsylvania. By the time he graduated in 1985, he and his brother Robert had started building what is now Total Wine & More, a national chain of 132 big-box stores with projected sales of $2.5 billion this year.

At age 60, politics is Trones unfinished business. I dont need a job, he said. Im looking to do whats right.

Trone upended the race when he entered just before the Feb. 3 filing deadline, joining a field of eight whose front-runners were expected to be state Sen. Jamie Raskin (Montgomery) and former Marriott executive and WJLA anchor Kathleen Matthews.

[Polls by Matthews, Trone paint differing pictures of 8th District primary]

His decision to run, and to spend millions financing his candidacy, has made the April 26 primary a three-way contest. And his core message  that paying his own way leaves him unencumbered by special interests  echoes a Republican presidential candidate with a similar-sounding name.

Although Trone is a progressive Democrat who says he rejects everything GOP front-runner Donald Trump stands for, a Trumpian grandiosity comes through when he talks about his business success.

Every state I go, Im the pioneer. Im the trendsetter, he said in an interview. We are vilified by our competitors, and we are loved by the consumers.



David Trone, left, chats with Ana Sol Gutierrez during a forum of candidates for Maryland's 8th Congressional District. (Bill OLeary/The Washington Post)

Trones issue set is thoughtful and detailed. He shares most of his opponents prescriptives  higher minimum wage, fixes to the Affordable Care Act, curbs on gun violence. He wants to double the National Institutes of Healths funding for research on cancer, autism and Alzheimers, which claimed his father in 2011. Trone also favors college loan forgiveness in exchange for five years of national service.

When friends ask why, at the peak of a successful career, he aspires to be a freshman backbencher, he tells them he expects to be an exception. Ive been a leader all my life, he said.

[Why Trone is willing spend his own millions to win a Congressional seat ]

Trone has raised  and given  millions for the Democratic Party and candidates. He has also donated $150,000 to red-state Republicans, which he describes as the price of admission to make his case to regulators and officeholders. Trone insists that he has never used his access to seek tax benefits or other advantages, instead pursuing an agenda that is 100 percent pro-consumer  such as laws allowing Sunday store hours and sales of craft beer.

Last year, he and his wife, longtime supporters of the American Civil Liberties Union, donated $15 million to study criminal justice reform. Also last year, his company gave $6 million to charities in 18 states, according to Trone.

Despite the good works, his business background sometimes kindles suspicion among Democratic primary voters in the left-leaning 8th District. As a hard-charging chief executive more accustomed to asking questions than answering them, he can turn prickly when pressed.





Over breakfast with Silver Spring Democrats at the Tastee Diner last month, Trone spoke at length about pay and benefits for his 5,000 employees. Seventy percent have full-time jobs, unheard of in retail, he said.

Take care of your people, they take care of your customers, he said. You take care of your customers, everybody wins.

Toward the end of the one-hour session, a man sitting off to the side asked how many full-time workers made at least $15 an hour  the amount targeted by labor activists as a fair minimum wage.

Im not an HR fiend, Trone said, stretching out the last word before continuing. If you run a $2 billion business, Im just going to give you a heads-up. You dont know every stat in the business.

The questioner persisted: My follow-up is, since you dont know right now, could you find out this week and tell your prospective voters?

A seasoned candidate might have said, Sure, well be get back to you, even if he had no intention of doing so.

Instead, Trone pushed back: Im not here for gotcha questions. That was a gotcha. Im going to skip that one, thank you.

Next in the series: Joel Rubin.
Maryland must sharply reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and restore funding to preserve open space as a result of two bills that Gov. Larry Hogan (R) signed into law Monday.

With a week left in the legislative session, the governor also signed a bill to extend the age at which children of police officers who die in the line of duty can receive death benefits.

The House of Delegates, meanwhile, gave preliminary approval to mandatory sick leave and final approval to sweeping criminal-justice legislation that, among other things, would repeal mandatory minimum sentences for some drug offenses. The 105-to-31 vote on the latter bill set up a showdown with the Senate, which passed a significantly different criminal-justice reform bill.

[Two deputies killed in lunchtime shooting at a Maryland Panera Bread]

For his first bill-signing ceremony of 2016, Hogan was joined by lawmakers, environmentalists and the families of slain Harford County sheriffs deputies Pat Dailey and Mark Logsdon, whose deaths at the hands of a gunman in February spurred state lawmakers to approve the benefits bill.

The legislation, which takes effect immediately, raises the maximum age for receiving benefits from 18 to 26.

Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) was visibly moved by the sight of Daileys sons, ages 17 and 20, sitting in the front row. We saw these two young men, Miller said, before stopping.

Unable to finish his sentence, he motioned to Hogan to continue.

Marylanders were incredibly saddened by the tragic loss of two of our heroes, Hogan said. Our state owes families like theirs a tremendous debt, and providing these extended benefits is one small way that we can honor their sacrifice.

The environmental bill, which takes effect Oct. 1, reauthorizes and sets new targets for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act, a landmark bill passed in 2009 that required Maryland to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 25 percent below 2006 levels by 2020. The new target is to slash emissions to 40 percent below 2006 levels by 2030.

Del. Kumar P. Barve (D-Montgomery), who sponsored the House version of the bill, said it will allow Maryland to take a giant environmental leadership step in addressing climate disruption.

Environmentalist have hailed the bill as one of the strongest in the country for tackling carbon pollution.

Maryland is taking a historic and notably bipartisan step toward the protection of our health, our economy, and our childrens future, Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and a member of the Maryland Commission on Climate Change, said in a statement.

[Maryland sets bolder target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions]

The legislation for preserving the states open space includes a requirement that Hogan increase the amount of grant money that is provided to Baltimore City for parks. Instead of spending $4.5 million over the next three years, the bill allocates $10.5 million to parks in Baltimore over the next three fiscal years.

Miller, Hogan and House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel) made no mention at the ceremony of the battle that is expected to ensue in coming days, when the General Assembly plans to override Hogans recent veto of a transportation bill.

But Democratic Party officials did criticize Hogan for supporting the open-space bill, which includes automatic spending increases, even as the governor has strongly criticized other spending mandates. Patrick Murray, executive director of the Maryland Democratic Party, accused the Hogan of political doublespeak.

The criminal-justice bill approved Monday by the House is aimed at reducing incarceration and recidivism rates by altering criminal penalties and guidelines for sentencing and parole.

Much of the bill deals with penalties for nonviolent crimes such as low-level drug possession that disproportionately affect African Americans. But black lawmakers disagreed Monday in floor debate over whether the measure moves the state in the right direction.

If you keep lessening time on drug dealers, you are not doing the right thing, said Del. Jay Walker (D-Prince Georges), adding that drug dealers have created the most violent culture in the state of Maryland.

Del. Erek L. Barron (D-Prince Georges) countered that experts and evidence suggest that stricter punishment has increased incarceration and recidivism rates while not necessarily reducing the drug problem. This smart-on-crime act changes that, he said.

In addition to repealing some mandatory minimums, the House version of the bill would increase penalties for gang leaders and for child abusers who kill their victims; reduce from 65 to 60 the age at which inmates can receive geriatric parole; and give judges less discretion over sentencing those who commit technical probation violations.

The House and Senate must reconcile the differences between their versions of the bills before sending the legislation to Hogans desk.

The sick-leave statute would require employers of at least 15 workers to provide paid sick leave, putting Maryland at the forefront of a national push by progressive activists for that benefit.

A similar measure stalled at the committee level in the Senate, creating doubt about whether the House bill has enough support in that chamber to pass before the legislative session ends next Monday.


Maryland 8th District congressional candidate Joel Rubin. (Kate Patterson/For The Washington Post)

Second in a series of profiles of candidates running for the Democratic nomination in Marylands 8th Congressional District.

Joel Rubin calls Jan. 27, 2015, the best and worst day of his State Department career.

He spent nearly three hours at the witness table before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, answering questions from angry Republicans about the deadly 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Libya. Democrats regard the probe, still ongoing after nearly two years, as an attempt to undermine the presidential candidacy of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.

Rubin, then deputy assistant secretary for legislative affairs, deflected, demurred, denied and placated. He promised total cooperation. He told the chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), that the department was hard at work responding to the committees requests.

When Rubins young daughter asked him that night why the men on television were so mean and always interrupting him, he says, he figured out what he wanted for the next chapter of his life.

It really made me recognize that you have to be in the fight, he said.

[Rubin endorsed by actor and non-proliferation activist Michael Douglas]

Rubin left the State Department in July to found a foreign policy consulting group. Now he is running for his partys nomination to succeed outgoing Rep. Chris Van Hollen, hoping to use his years as an organizer, advocate and diplomat to advance the Democratic agenda in what is likely to remain a Republican-controlled House.

We have to remember there will be huge fights coming up, Rubin told an audience recently. It is important that we put people in Congress who are ready from Day One to take on those fights.

Slightly built and still boyish at 45, with dark hair and a light dusting of a goatee, Rubin clearly relishes the tactics and strategy of organizing.

The task is not to convince the diehards how to sign up. Its to get the gettable in the middle, he told a group of Young Democrats in Rockville.

He is running a scrappy, low-budget campaign, and struggling for attention in a nine-candidate field. Rubin was the first to directly confront wine retailer David Trone on Trones contributions to Republicans in states where his company, Total Wine & More, was doing business.

With all due respect, you are exactly what is wrong with Washington, he said at a Valentines Day candidate forum at Leisure World.



Maryland 8th District congressional candidate Joel Rubin, center, Will Jawando, left, and Kathleen Matthews, right. (Kate Patterson/For The Washington Post)

His campaign has benefited from the fundraising instrument most closely identified with big-money politics  the super PAC. William Benter, a Pittsburgh businessman and friend, has raised $100,000 for A New Voice for Maryland, a pro-Rubin group.

Rubins main challenge is that foreign policy expertise  the core of his resume  doesnt engage voters in a congressional race like jobs, taxes and other kitchen-table concerns do.

[Five things to know about Joel Rubin]

He likes to talk about how his work as the State Departments liaison to the House helped protect the Obama administrations Iranian nuclear agreement, making him the only candidate who has worked with the opposition on a high-stakes policy matter.

The House voted 269 to 162 against the pact, with every Republican in the nay column. But Rubin and his colleagues cobbled together enough Democratic support to avoid a veto-proof resolution of disapproval, which would have certainly scuttled the deal.

That means that we beat the Rs in Congress on behalf of a progressive agenda. A rare and unique victory, Rubin said.





He has drawn on some deeply personal events as he attempts to break through before the April 26 primary, highlighting womens health as a policy priority.

Rubin produced what might be the most harrowing ad of the campaign, recounting the forced sterilization of his Sri Lankan mother-in-law, Mithra Ratne, in 1972 by a doctor in Washington state who said this country has too many colored babies already.

When he discusses the need for affordable health care, Rubin often mentions his own health crisis, which began one morning in 2013 when he woke up with ringing in his right ear. He was diagnosed with a tumor on the nerves controlling balance and hearing on his right side. It was benign and successfully removed.

Rubin, the Pittsburgh-born son of an architect and a college English professor, said two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica set him on the path toward public service.

He worked at the Agency for International Development and the Energy Department before his first stint at the State Department. He was a fellow in the office of Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and an aide to Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) before becoming founding political and government affairs director for J Street, the liberal advocacy group that promotes diplomatic solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He also worked at the Ploughshares Fund, an anti-proliferation group.

Rubins bipartisan experience extends to his off hours at home in Chevy Chase. His wife, Nilmini Gunaratne Rubin, is a senior policy adviser to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. She is also a Republican.

We talk. We have differences, he said. Its good to have difference.

Next: Sen. Jamie Raskin.
Three weeks before Marylands up-for-grabs Democratic Senate primary, Rep. Donna Edwards has bought and broadcast her first television ad  a sharp attack on rival Rep. Chris Van Hollen.

In the ad, Edwards accuses Van Hollen of backing down against the National Rifle Association, considering cuts to Social Security, and taking money from Wall Street banks.

He is part, she implies, of a Washington that doesnt see and doesnt care.

Van Hollen, who is trailing Edwards by a statistically insignificant margin in a new Washington Post-University of Maryland poll, quickly pushed back in a debate Tuesday morning that aired on Baltimores WOLB radio.

Congresswoman Edwards is unfortunately doing what people hate most about politics, which is misleading people, Van Hollen said.

Rep. Donna F. Edwards (D-Md.) promises to stand up against the National Rifle Association and Wall Street in this campaign ad for the U.S. Senate. (Donna Edwards/YouTube)

The congressman also held a news conference Tuesday with several allies  state Attorney General Brian Frosh (D), state Sen. Joan Carter Conway (D-Baltimore), former lieutenant governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and gun control advocate Vincent DeMarco  all of whom criticized Edwardss attacks as inaccurate.

[Maryland Senate race very close, with stark racial divide]

Edwards is spending $156,000 to run the ad on cable and television in Baltimore, the battleground where both campaigns are focusing their efforts. Until now, she has relied on a super PAC run by Emilys List to air ads on her behalf. Those ads have been positive, focusing on her biography and progressive record.

Van Hollen, who by the end of last year had 10 times as much cash on hand as Edwards, bought his own television time in Baltimore starting last fall, and recently bought time in the more expensive Washington media market. A super PAC run by the National Association of Realtors is also airing ads backing Van Hollen.

A new poll from The Washington Post and the University of Maryland shows the race is very close, with Edwards holding a statistically insignificant 44 percent to 40 percent lead over Van Hollen going into the April 26 primary.

The charges Edwards lays out in her ad are ones that have played out throughout the campaign to replace retiring Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D). But it is the first attack ad launched by either side in the heated Senate campaign.

In news releases, debates and public appearances, Edwards has pointed to comments Van Hollen made in 2012 praising a plan that would cut Medicare and Social Security benefits as a framework for budget negotiations. The congressman, who is the ranking minority member of the House Budget Committee, was part of a budget super committee tasked with forging a bipartisan spending agreement.

But no consensus was reached, and Van Hollen never endorsed changes in Medicare and Social Security benefits, according to Democratic Party leaders. What he gave his backing to was the ratio of spending cuts to tax increases laid out in the Simpson-Bowles budget plan. The plan was defeated on the House floor, and both Van Hollen and Edwards voted against it.

Van Hollen did say in that 2012 interview that he was open to a conversation about raising the retirement age, but separately from deficit talks. But I think there are actually other ideas he added, that have more merit.

In Tuesdays debate, Van Hollen stressed that he opposed a proposal by President Obama that would have led to less-generous Social Security benefits and has been a longtime defender against efforts to cuts both that program and Medicare.

This is not something I only talk about, this isnt something I only vote for; I have been the [Democratic] point person on this, Van Hollen said.

Both candidates currently support an expansion of Social Security benefits.

He can rewrite that history now, Edwards said Tuesday, but he was not in the right place in 2012.

On the NRA, Edwards is referring to a campaign-finance bill Van Hollen put forward in 2010 that would have forced outside groups to disclose more information when airing ads on behalf of a candidate. A compromise meant to improve the bills chances of passage excluded the NRA and the Sierra Club from the new strictures.

Many liberals, included Edwards, balked at that move. However, as Van Hollen pointed out Tuesday, many Democrats supported the legislation, which passed the House but failed in the Senate. Those who voted for it include Mikulski and Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.). Van Hollen also pointed to his work passing gun-safety laws in the Maryland legislature before he was elected to Congress, and his work on Capitol Hill to encourage gun licensing.

Ive been leading the fight, he said.

With regard to Wall Street Money, FEC reports show Van Hollen has received about $10,000 in contributions from individuals who work for Wall Street banks, a fraction of the $3.6 million he had in the bank at the end of 2015. Edwards, too, has taken small amounts of money from people who work for Wall Street banks.

Contrary to the implication in Edwardss ad, neither candidate is taking money from bank political action committees.

Van Hollen has pointed out in debates that the Emilys List super PAC that has committed $2.4 million to help Edwards is supported heavily by people with ties to the financial industry.
Sunday, April 3

Dale City Farmers Market 8 a.m.-1 p.m. Dale City Commuter Lot, (behind Center Plaza Shopping Center), Dale Boulevard, Dale City. 703-670-7112, Ext. 227. pwcparks.org. Free.

Quilt show Cabin Branch Quilters and Stone House Quilters sponsor the show featuring more than 200 quilts, a silent auction, raffles and appraisals., 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Prince William County Fairgrounds, 10624 Dumfries Rd., Manassas. 571-285-5405. cabinbranchquilters.org. $8; seniors, $6; 11 and younger, free.

Colonial childrens games Learn about games played during the Revolutionary and Civil wars. For children 4 and older. 11-11:45 a.m. and 2-2:45 p.m. Leesylvania State Park, 2001 Daniel K. Ludwig Dr., Woodbridge. 703-583-6904. Free.

Bluebird Trail volunteer training Help monitor bluebird nesting boxes, sponsored by the Prince William Conservation Alliance. 12:30-2:30 p.m. Merrimac Farm Stone House Visitor Center, 15014 Deepwood Lane, Nokesville. 703-499-4954. Free.

Bingo Proceeds support local veterans. Doors open at noon Sunday with games beginning at 2 p.m. Doors open at 5:15 p.m. Mondays with games beginning at 7:15 p.m. Woodbridge American Legion, 3640 Friendly Post Lane, Woodbridge. 703-494-4304. $15 minimum.

Bluebird Trail volunteer training Help monitor bluebird nesting boxes, sponsored by the Prince William Conservation Alliance. 4-5:30 p.m. Veterans Memorial Regional Park, 14300 Featherstone Rd., Woodbridge. 703-499-4954. Free.

Impressions Osbourn High Schools student art show features mixed media, sculpture and drawings. Through April 17. Manassas Museum, 9101 Prince William St., Manassas. 703-368-1873. manassasmuseum.org. Free.

The Beauty of Spring An exhibit of mixed media by Anica Kriel of Vienna and mosaics by Diann Root of Alexandria. Through Monday. Artists Undertaking, 309 Mill St., Occoquan. 703-494-0584. theartistsundertaking.com. Free.

To be Sold Works of 19th-century artist Eyre Crow examine the story of enslaved African Americans sold into forced migration. This exhibit is from the Library of Virginia with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Through April 17. Manassas Museum, 9101 Prince William St., Manassas. 703-368-1873. manassasmuseum.org. Free.

Jerry Baker art exhibit This months exhibit features pencil sketches and charcoal drawings by the local artist. Through April 15, Manassas City Hall, 9027 Center St., Manassas. 703-257-8200. Free.

Monday, April 4

AARP income-tax preparation help Mondays 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Thursdays noon-8 p.m. through April 18, Bull Run Regional Library, 8051 Ashton Ave., Manassas. 703-792-4530. Free.

Job search network group Plus discussion of various topics related to the search process. 1-3 p.m. House of Mercy, 8170 Flannery Ct., Manassas. 703-659-1636. Free.

Bingo Proceeds support Dale City Knights of Columbus activities and charities. Doors open at 6 p.m. with games beginning at 7:30 p.m. VFW Post 1503, 14631 Minnieville Rd., Dale City. 703-491-2378. $9 minimum.

Lake Jackson Mid County Lions Club meeting 6:30 p.m. Great American Steak and Buffet, 8365 Sudley Rd., Manassas. 703-369-6791. Free.

Prince William Community Band Rehearsal, for musicians 19 and older, no auditions necessary. 7:30 p.m. Saunders Middle School, 13557 Spriggs Rd., Manassas. 703-791-4119. pwcb.org. Free.

Tuesday, April 5

AARP income-tax preparation help Tuesdays and Thursdays at 11 a.m.-3:30 p.m. through April 14, Chinn Park Regional Library, 13065 Chinn Park Dr., Woodbridge. 703-792-4800. Free.

Creativity Awakens An exhibit of pottery by Marianne Cordyack of Reston and photography and digital painting by David and Jane Ernst of Springfield. Through May 2, Artists Undertaking, 309 Mill St., Occoquan. 703-494-0584. theartistsundertaking.com. Free.

Wednesday, April 6

Lake Ridge Toastmasters Club Members 18 and older develop their public speaking and leadership skills. 7:30-9:15 p.m. Tall Oaks Community Center, 12298 Cotton Mill Dr., Lake Ridge. 703-491-3020. contact-8913@toastmastersclubs.org. lakeridge.toastmastersclubs.org. $34-$64 membership fee.

Thursday, April 7

Beauty and the Beast A cast of nearly 80 students presents Disneys musical. Thursday-Friday at 7 p.m. Saturday at 2 and 7 p.m. Gainesville Middle School, 8001 Limestone Dr., Gainesville. 703-753-2997. $8; seniors and students, $6; 3 and younger, free.

Prince William Living domestic abuse community forum A panel discusses how and why domestic abuse happens and what can be done about it. 7 p.m. Hylton Performing Arts Center, Merchant Hall, 10960 George Mason Cir., Manassas. 703-993-7759. hyltoncenter.org. Free; registration suggested.

Woodbridge Toastmasters Club An open house meeting. Learn effective communication and leadership skills. 7:30 p.m. Ebenezer Baptist Church, 13020 Telegraph Rd., Woodbridge. 703-898-7171. woodbridge.toastmastersclubs.org. $68 membership fee.

Friday, April 8

American Legion dinner The public is invited to dinner with a different special every week. Proceeds support local veterans and the community. Fridays at 5:30-7:30 p.m. Woodbridge American Legion, 3640 Friendly Post Lane, Woodbridge. 703-494-4304. vapost364.org. $5-$15.

Little Shop of Horrors Rooftop Productions stages the musical about a blood-thirsty plant named Audrey. Friday-Saturday at 8 p.m. through April 23, Candy Factory, Kellar Theater, 9419 Battle St., Manassas. 703-330-2787. center-for-the-arts.org. $18; seniors and students, $15.

Moscow Festival Ballet: The Sleeping Beauty Founded by Bolshoi Ballet principal dancer Sergei Radchenko, the Russian ballet company stages new productions of classics. 8 p.m. Hylton Performing Arts Center, 10960 George Mason Cir., Manassas. 888-945-2468. hyltoncenter.org. $34-$56.

Saturday, April 9

Home buyer seminar Presented by local real estate broker Bob Hummer. 10 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Strayer University, 13385 Minnieville Rd., Woodbridge. 703-878-4866. military-realestate.com. Free.

Brentsville Civil War Weekend The living history event focuses on soldiers and civilians in Brentsville shortly after the Confederates surrender at Appomattox. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Brentsville Courthouse Historic Centre, 12229 Bristow Rd., Bristow. 703-365-7895. pwcgov.org. Free.

Basement to Attic tours A tour of an 1825 house as it undergoes restoration. Noon, Liberia Plantation, 8601 Portner Ave., Manassas. 703-257-8453. manassasmuseum.org. $15; reservations required.

Family Day Celebrate the month of the military child with games and crafts. Noon-3 p.m. National Museum of the Marine Corps, 18900 Jefferson Davis Hwy., Triangle. 877-635-1775. usmcmuseum.com. Free.
Sunday, April 3

Al-Anon Family Group 8 p.m., Haymarket Baptist Church, parish hall, 14800 Washington St., Haymarket. 703-969-2726.

Monday, April 4

Potomac Mills Walkers Club Registration is 8-9 a.m. weekdays. Walk is 8-10 a.m. Monday-Saturday, Potomac Mills, 2700 Potomac Mills Cir., Woodbridge. Free. 703-496-9301.

Al-Anon Family Group Noon and 8:30 p.m. Mondays, 7 p.m. Tuesdays, 8:30 p.m. Wednesdays and Saturdays, 10:30 a.m. Thursdays, noon Fridays, Bethel Lutheran Church, 8712 Plantation Lane, Manassas. Free. 888-425-2666. al-anon.info.

Mental health support group 6 p.m. Mondays-Tuesdays, 7 p.m. Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Fridays, Trillium Drop-In Center, 13184 Centerpointe Way, Woodbridge. Free. 703-763-3865. trilliumdropincenter.org.

Al-Anon Family Group 7 p.m., St. Paul United Methodist Church, 1400 G St., Woodbridge. 703-534-4357.

Overeaters Anonymous/HOW 7 p.m., Bethel Lutheran Church, 8712 Plantation Lane, Manassas.703-823-6682. oanova.org.

Tuesday, April 5

Overeaters Anonymous sunrise meeting 7 a.m., St. Benedict Monastery, 9535 Linton Hall Rd., Bristow. Free. 202-437-5070. oanova.org.

Gentle Yoga Facilitated by registered nurse Pat Fitzsimmons, the class is adapted for the physiological and psychological needs of cancer patients. Bring a mat and water. 6-7:30 p.m., Sentara Northern Virginia Medical Center, 2300 Opitz Blvd., Woodbridge. Free; registration required. 800-736-8272. sentara.com.

Wednesday, April 6

Breastfeeding support group The Gathering Place meetings are facilitated by a lactation consultant. Bring a blanket for your baby. 10 a.m.-11:30 a.m., Sentara Northern Virginia Medical Center, 2300 Opitz Blvd., Woodbridge. Free. 703-670-1236.

Weight loss support group 11 a.m., Spirit and Life United Methodist Church, 4223 Dale Blvd., Woodbridge. Free. 703-878-7779.

Healing with Meditation Learn stress management through sound, visualization, breath and focused meditation. 6 p.m., Sentara Northern Virginia Medical Center, Worship Room, 2300 Opitz Blvd., Woodbridge. Free; registration required. 703-670-1236.

Thursday, April 7

Overeaters Anonymous Meditation and Writing meeting 7 a.m., St. Benedict Monastery, 9535 Linton Hall Rd., Bristow. Free. 703-361-0106 or 703-754-9237. oanova.org.

Celebrate Recovery meeting A 12-step, Christ-centered recovery program for those with hurts, habits and hangups. 6 p.m., Park Valley Church, 4500 Waverly Farm Dr., Haymarket. Free. 571-261-2136.

Dual Diagnosis support group A mental health and substance abuse group that promotes recovery through peer support. 6 p.m., Trillium Drop-In Center, 13184 Centerpointe Way, Woodbridge. Free. 703-763-3865. trilliumdropincenter.org.

Yoga for Cancer Focus is on breathing and body awareness. Bring a mat and water. 6-7:30 p.m., Sentara Northern Virginia Medical Center, 2300 Opitz Blvd., Woodbridge. Free; registration required. 800-736-8272.

Families Anonymous A 12-step program for adults with family members with substance-abuse problems. 8 p.m., Manassas Presbyterian Church, 8201 Ashton Ave., Manassas. Free. 703-928-9385. familiesanonymousva.com.

Friday, April 8

Alzheimers Association support group Facilitated by a trained group leader. 11 a.m., Westminster at Lake Ridge Retirement Community, 12191 Clipper Dr., Lake Ridge. Free; registration required. 800-272-3900. alz.org/nca.

Saturday, April 9

Overeaters Anonymous A Literature study meeting. 9 a.m., Trinity Episcopal Church, 9325 West St., Manassas. Free. 703-794-9774. oanova.org.

Anxiety support group Recovery, for people who have anxiety, depression, fear or other emotional problems. 10 a.m.-noon, Cokesbury United Methodist Church, 14806 Blackburn Rd., Woodbridge. 703-441-0840.

Spring into Health Fair Presented by the Prince William Chamber of Commerce and Project Mend-a-House, the event includes health screenings, exhibitors and a kids zone. 10 a.m.-2 p.m., Hylton Boys and Girls Club, 5070 Dale Blvd., Dale City. Free. 703-368-6600. pwchamber.org.

Vinyasa flow yoga workshop Some yoga experience recommended for this spring equinox workshop. 1-3 p.m., Soaring Spirit Yoga Studio, 308A Poplar Alley, Occoquan. $35; registration required. 703-499-9114.

Al-Anon Family Group 7 p.m., Trinity Episcopal Church, 9325 West St., Manassas.703-969-2726. al-anon.info.
Lee F. Satterfield, right, chief judge of the D.C. Superior Court, walks out during a fire alarm with Lori Gunn, left, and Tonya Coleman Fannin on March 9. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

Lee F. Satterfield, the District native who has served as chief judge of the D.C. Superior Court since 2008, has notified court officials that he will seek an unprecedented third term as the courts top judge.

Satterfield, 57, alerted the D.C. commission that oversees the selection of judges of his plans Monday.

Satterfield., who was appointed as a judge in 1992, was named chief judge in 2008. He was then reappointed as chief judge in 2012. But his second four-year term was a challenging one largely because of a series of health problems. Last fall, Satterfield underwent a heart transplant following recent years of heart troubles. And in 2011, a year before his reappointment as chief judge, Satterfield suffered a stroke while in the courthouse.

In a recent interview, Satterfield said he is healthier now as a result of the transplant.

In a statement, the judge said it has been an honor to serve the DC community as chief judge of the DC Superior Court.

Judge Lee F. Satterfield in 2006. (James M. Thresher/The Washington Post)

I continue to enjoy the work and the team that I work with, and if I am fortunate enough to be re-designated, I will continue to work hard to benefit the DC community, he said in the statement.

[D.C. Superior Court chief judge on health challenges, heart transplant ]

It is unclear whether anyone will challenge Satterfield for the position. When the judge sought his second term, he ran unopposed.

While several judges and court employees have voiced support for Satterfield, a few judges said privately that they have viewed his management style as divisive. Speaking on the condition of anonymity because Satterfield, their boss, did not give them permission to speak publicly, they said he sometimes openly criticizes colleagues in emails or group meetings, with one calling Satterfields approach a public beheading.

In the interview, Satterfield admitted he can sometimes rub people the wrong way but attributed this to his health problems. Im healthy now. When you dont have blood going to your brain, yes, it will affect your demeanor, he said.

The chief judge is chosen by the Judicial Nomination Commission, a seven-member group that includes U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, four attorneys and two city residents. The commission picks the chief based on interviews with applicants and letters of recommendation written by judges, attorneys and other members of the public.

Judges interested in applying for the position have until May 6 to notify the commission, according to a statement released by the group Monday on its website. The commission said it will publish the names and proposed mission statements of candidates on its website, and will give the public until June 6 to weigh in. The judge will be selected by September.

Should the commission reappoint Satterfield, he would become the first chief judge of the D.C. Superior Court to serve more than two terms. However, across the street at the D.C. Court of Appeals, Judge Eric T. Washington, who was appointed to the position in 2005, is now serving his third term.

As chief, Satterfield sets policies for the D.C. Superior Courts 112 judges and oversees its $123 million budget and operations.

During his terms, Satterfield has created a specialized behavioral court in which some juveniles charged with crimes who comply with treatment requirements may have their charges dropped. He also launched an effort that allows tenants to report infractions against their landlords.

In addition, he has overhauled the jury-selection process so that potential jurors are called only if they are likely to be needed for trial. And he is overseeing a $63 million renovation of the courthouse.

His tenure has not been without controversy. Last year, Satterfield fiercely defended the courthouses policy of having all juveniles who are in custody wear shackles on their wrists and ankles when they appear in court, but he relaxed the rule after it came under intense criticism. Now, the decision is made on a case-by-case basis.
Philip Harrington was arrested in a triple stabbing at a club in Prince George's County. (Courtesy of Prince George's County Police)

A Southeast D.C. man was arrested in a triple stabbing that left three people injured at a club in Prince Georges County.

Philip Harrington, 33, was charged with three counts of first- and second-degree assault after stabbing two patrons and a security guard during a fight inside Martinis Restaurant and Lounge, a Fort Washington club, around 2 a.m. Monday, police said.

Officers found three victims suffering from trauma, and they were taken to nearby hospitals for injuries that didnt appear to be life-threatening, police said. A club security guard was stabbed as he was trying to break up the fight, police said.

Harrington was arrested outside the club, police said.

Police said the club has closed because of public safety concerns. It was not clear how long the club would remain closed.

Lynh Bui contributed to this report.
Gov. Terry McAuliffe on Monday vetoed a bill that would have made Virginia the first state to allow parents to block their children from reading books in school that contain sexually explicit material.

The measure became known in the General Assembly as the Beloved bill because supporters have cited that seminal work of fiction by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison as an example of a book too graphic for some students.

The legislation would have required K-12 teachers to identify classroom materials with sexually explicit content and notify parents, who would have been able to opt out their children and request that the teacher give them an alternative assignment.

McAuliffe (D) said a state law is unnecessary because the Virginia Board of Education is considering changing state policy to accommodate parents concerns.

School boards are best positioned to ensure that our students are exposed to those appropriate literary and artistic works that will expand students horizons and enrich their learning experiences, he said in the veto message.

Opponents of the bill have said the approach could lead to book banning  a claim McAuliffe did not address, despite his criticism that the legislation would brand a book as unacceptable because of a few potentially troubling scenes, ignoring its overall value.

This legislation lacks flexibility and would require the label of sexually explicit to apply to an artistic work based on a single scene, without further context, he said.

But Republican supporters of the bill say parents have a right to control materials to which their children are exposed, even if the books are considered classics.

Del. R. Steven Landes (R-

Augusta), chairman of the House Education Committee, sponsored the bill at the request of House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford), making it a top priority for the overwhelmingly Republican House.

Landes called the veto disappointing and said he would introduce the legislation again next year if the state doesnt change the regulations.

Parents make decisions every day about what video games kids play, what movies they watch, and what material they consume online, he said in a statement. They should have the same opportunity within the classroom.

Supporters do not appear to have enough votes to override the governors veto this year.

[Special delivery to Va. lawmakers: 22 copies of Beloved, The Bluest Eye]

During the recent legislative session, Democrats in the House joined Republicans to vote for the bill in a block of other uncontested pieces of legislation. But as opponents expressed concerns, many Democrats voted no when it came back to their chamber for a second look. In the Senate, the only Democrat to join Republicans in voting for it was Sen. Lynwood W. Lewis Jr. (Accomack).

Anna Scholl, executive director of Progress Virginia, a progressive advocacy group, sent lawmakers who opposed the bill copies of Morrisons novels before the vote.

Thank goodness this ridiculous crusade against great works of literature is finally over, she said Monday.

The bill stemmed from a complaint made by Laura Murphy, a Fairfax County woman who said she was horrified to discover that one of her sons, a high school senior, was reading Beloved in his Advanced Placement English class.

It is unfortunate that the governor ignored the bipartisan support from lawmakers who agree that parents have a fundamental right to make decisions about the education of their children, Murphy said in reaction to the veto.

The National Council of Teachers of English and the National Coalition Against Censorship opposed the bill; the conservative Family Foundation of Virginia favored it.

About half of Virginia school districts require teachers to give parents warning of potentially sensitive or controversial materials in the classroom, according to a 2013 survey by the state Department of Education.
LC Technologies, based in Fairfax, is the maker of Eyegaze Edge, a communication system for people with disabilities. (Jamal Yusuf/ LC Technologies)

Cathy Manner once worked up to 18 hours a day caring for Ecuadors sickest children, running from cot to cot and hauling bulky medical shipments into a mobile hospital. Before and after her seven overseas missions, the pediatric nurse worked with very ill children at several Baltimore hospitals, then hopped in her car on weekends to drive from her Anne Arundel County home to the Eastern Shore to babysit her grandchild.

But her life changed abruptly early in 2012, beginning one day when she was assessing a young patient in Baltimore.

I went to tell her mother my name and could hardly say it, Manner said. I was slurring, and so badly my words werent recognizable.

Still, she took off for another mission, despite another alarming change.

I was getting weak, even needing help putting carry-on luggage overhead, said Manner, who is now 64.

But she does not vocalize these words. She can no longer speak. She can only nod and move her eyes. She gazes at letters on a keyboard that is connected to an assistive device. With her eyes serving as her cursor, she uses the device to compose messages.

Months after her first symptoms, Manner was diagnosed with ALS  amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrigs disease. The neuromuscular disease led to full-body paralysis that has left her locked in fully aware of everything around her but unable to respond other than to nod or use her eye-gaze machine.

[ALS patients press FDA for access to drug]

Manner is one of about 6 million people in the United States with paralysis, about 16 percent of whom are severely affected, according to the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation. The leading causes are stroke, spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy and ALS.

Many of the people I see [with degenerative conditions] are homebound, and often on ventilators. And communicating has become a challenge for them, said Erin Swann, manager of the assistive-technology program for the ALS Associations chapter that serves the Washington area.

But equipment such as Manners, which can convert typing to spoken words, is giving people their voices back, enabling some to work full time, go to school, surf the Internet, listen to music and bond with family and friends.

The voice, Manner said, sounds deliberate and somewhat like a robot, but you can slow it down, speed it up and change the sound.

(Jamal Yusuf/Eyegaze Edge Communication System/ LC Technologies)

Theres a female and male voice, a childs or adults, and even accents, she said. And you can change options. For a while, I had a British accent.

These aids include an application where people can scroll through a PowerPoint presentation with a switch they control, perhaps with a toe and, for people who are able to move their head, a device that allows them to point to letters with a reflective marker worn on their forehead. When they dwell on a letter with their eyes or with the reflective marker, the computer recognizes and selects the letter. There is even a piece of experimental technology being developed for people who cannot move at all: Implanted electrodes read their brain signals as they imagine moving their fingers on a keyboard. This mental imaging allows them to compose messages virtually.

While the devices now available arent quite as wondrous, they do allow people once considered unreachable to connect. For some, it means their thoughts in their last days can be heard.

It gives them a way to say goodbye if they are having to do that, said Laura J. Ball, director of hearing and speech research at Childrens National Health System. She recalls a message left behind by a patient.

Her final words were Im at peace. Im ready. I love you. Things she would not have been able to say but that her family had a chance to hear, Ball said.

The equipments cost, which insurance usually covers, varies. The eye-gaze device that Manner uses costs $10,000 to about $17,000.

But its getting to where some of the technology is available on iPads, said James McCarthy, executive director of the Maryland Technology Assistance Program, a state service that loans equipment to individuals. You can buy a device at a retail electronic store, he said, then purchase software with voicing abilities at an assistive-technology store for a total of about $2,000 or $3,000.

Still, learning how to use the equipment takes work. Swann teaches people with ALS how to line up the camera with their eyes and how to save common phrases into an easily activated blink button  maybe I have to go to the bathroom or Im hot or Im cold.

Communicating again, Swann said, means that people can call for help in an emergency. And for one veteran, it meant being able to earn a degree while living in a nursing home.

Ball works mainly with children who have spinal muscular atrophy, a condition that leaves them with almost no motor skills.

[They are] on ventilators because they have no muscles to support breathing, but they have potential to develop normal cognitive linguistic skills, Ball said. We look at language that would be typical for that age. Do they like storybooks? Do they follow along as parents read? We identify ways to evaluate that and provide a way to access communication.

She recalls a sixth-grader who was shuffled off to another room with an aide whenever his peers joined for reading circles and other interactive activities.

When he got a communication device and was asked what he wanted to say, his first words were Go Broncos. The boys were amazed. Until that moment they didnt realize he even knew who the Broncos were, Ball said.

Manner, who got her eye-gaze device in December 2014, said it has given her a reason to live. My brain is sharp and with the exception of this evil disease Im healthy, she said. And I am a talker.

A company called Eye Tech Digital Systems has added capabilities beyond language-related ones. Its devices have remote controls enabling people to turn on TVs or lights or to open doors using their eyes. And wheelchairs controlled by eye gaze are in the pipeline, according to Keith Jackson, the companys sales and marketing director.

Melanie Fried-Oken, a professor of neurology at Oregon Health & Science University, is hopeful about what may come from the research that leverages mental imaging.

Even if you cant use your arm from a stroke, she said, by thinking about making a fist you would be able to send a message from the brain to the hand and bypass the spinal cord to learn how to use your hand.

Manner is grateful for whats available to her today.

I have a voice now. Although typing with your eyes is a bit slow, she said, joking that sometimes she feels as though she is getting carpal tunnel of the eyeballs.

But it keeps me relevant. I am able to manage my own health care. . . . And I continue to enjoy life and the company of friends and family keeping me laughing through this journey.
President Barack Obama presents the 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom to Joseph Medicine Crow during ceremonies at the White House. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

Joe Medicine Crow, an American Indian who wore war paint under an Army uniform during World War II, conducting battlefield heroics that made him his tribes last war chief, and who distinguished himself as a guardian of his peoples history, died April 3 at a hospice center in Billings, Mont. He was 102.

A half-sister, Louella Whiteman Runs Him Johnson, confirmed his death and said she did not know the cause.

In 2009, President Obama presented Mr. Medicine Crow with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nations highest civilian honor. The award recognized him as a warrior and living legend whose military service, educational achievement and dedication to cultural preservation made him a symbol of strength and survival.

Mr. Medicine Crow once remarked that he had divided his life between two worlds. One was that of the Crow Nation, the small Northern Plains tribe to which he belonged, located primarily in Montana. The other was the world beyond the reservation, where he was known as an ambassador for American Indians.

He became the first member of his tribe to graduate from college and receive a masters degree, then joined the armed forces and was sent to wartime Europe. An ocean away from his tribal territory, he encountered the opportunity to complete the traditional war deeds, or coups, required for the designation of war chief.

Mr. Medicine Crow received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. (Fabiano/Pool/European Pressphoto Agency)

Among those deeds was the capture of an enemy  in his case, German  horse. Mr. Medicine Crow was credited with taking 50.

After the war, he became the official historian of the Crow. For more than six decades, he endeavored to preserve the memory of his ancestors, among them his grandfather Whiteman Runs Him, a scout for George Armstrong Custer during the American Indian Wars.

There is absolutely no one like him left in America, in Indian country, Herman J. Viola, a curator emeritus of the National Museum of the American Indian, said in an interview.

[President Obama praises last Crow war chief Joseph Medicine Crow]

Joseph Medicine Crow was born in Lodge Grass, Mont., on Oct. 27, 1913, and grew up on a reservation.

In those days Crow families didnt have furniture, he later recalled. There were no beds. Everyone slept on the floor on blankets. Softballs, he recounted, were fashioned out of buckskin and stuffed with fur from a deers tail.

Mr. Medicine Crow grew up with grandparents who had lived before the establishment of reservations. They schooled him in ancient customs, teaching him to run barefoot in the snow and wash himself in frigid river water.

He also absorbed the Crow traditions of loyalty and valor in battle. The Crow had been known for their patriotism since the 19th century, according to Viola, when they sought to defend themselves from encroaching tribes by allying themselves with Custer, a U.S. cavalry commander.

The National Park Service described Mr. Medicine Crow, who was 11 when his grandfather Whiteman Runs Him died, as the last living person with a direct oral history from a participant of the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876, where Custer was killed and his forces overwhelmingly defeated.

Years later, Mr. Medicine Crow would observe that the Indians had won the battle and lost a way of life.

As a tribal leader, Mr. Medicine Crow advocated on behalf of American Indians for educational opportunities greater than those initially offered to him. He attended schools with mixed student populations and recalled a white girl tormenting him by jabbing him with a safety pin. The Indian children, he said, belittled each other for trying to be a white man by speaking English.

At age 10, he could not read. But he persevered in his effort to gain an education. He would later say, according to Viola, that with an education, you are a white mans equal; without an education, you are his prisoner.

Mr. Medicine Crow received a bachelors degree in sociology and psychology from Linfield College in McMinnville, Ore., in 1938 and a masters degree in anthropology from the University of Southern California in 1939.

He was working toward a doctorate when he decided to enlist in the Army. In combat, he carried a feather for protection. His decorations included the Bronze Star Medal.

After the war, he became a land appraiser with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, donning a jacket and tie during the day. But after 5 oclock, he remarked to an interviewer, Id turn into an Indian.

For his historical and anthropological research, Mr. Medicine Crow conducted extensive oral histories with tribal elders. He became a sought-after speaker and published writings including the books From the Heart of the Crow Country: The Crow Indians Own Stories (1992) and Counting Coup: Becoming a Crow Chief on the Reservation and Beyond (2006).

His first wife, the former Charlotte Heminger, died in 1942. His second wife, the former Gloria Morrison, died in 2009 after 61 years of marriage.

Survivors include a son from an earlier relationship, Duane Brink of Salem, Ore.; a daughter from his first marriage, Diane Medicine Crow Reynolds of Three Forks, Mont.; a son from his second marriage, Ronald Medicine Crow of Lodge Grass; his half-sister; and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A daughter from his second marriage, Vernelle Medicine Crow, died in 2015.

In an interview with Linfield College, Mr. Medicine Crow once reflected on his distinction as the last Crow war chief. He observed that he would join the ranks of Sitting Bull, Geronimo, Black Hawk and all the brave warriors of the past protecting their lands and their way of life.
PAKISTAN

Rain, floods leave 45 dead in northwest

Flash floods triggered by torrential rains killed at least 45 people in northwest Pakistan on Sunday, officials said.

Rains started overnight Saturday and caused flash flooding in several districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, said a Pakistani national disaster management official, Latif ur Rehman.

Thirty-four people were admitted to hospitals with injuries, he said.

Flash floods are commonly triggered during South Asias summer monsoon season. Pre-monsoon rains like the current downpour frequently cause damage in Pakistan, particularly in villages with minimal infrastructure.

Residents of scores of villages close to rivers were given warnings to leave for safer places, Rehman said.

Were left on our own. Nobody from the government is coming to help us, said Habib Khan, a resident of the northern Swat Valley, talking to a local TV news channel.

 Associated Press

SYRIA

Troops take central town held by Islamic State

A week after taking back the historic town of Palmyra, Syrian troops and their allies on Sunday captured another town controlled by the Islamic State group in central Syria, state media reported.

The push into Qaryatain occurred under the cover of Russian airstrikes and dealt another setback to the Islamic State in Syria. An activist group that monitors the Syrian civil war said government forces are in control of most of the town after Islamic State fighters withdrew to its eastern outskirts.

The advance came a week after Syrian forces recaptured Palmyra from the Islamic State and is strategically significant. The capture of Qaryatain deprives the Islamic State of a main base in central Syria.

Qaryatain used to be home to a sizable Christian population and lies midway between Palmyra and the capital, Damascus. Many Christians fled the town after it came under attack by the Islamic State.

The Syrian army command said in a statement that troops have restored security and stability to Qaryatain and farms surrounding it. The statement said that the oil and gas pipelines in the area will be secured and that Islamic State supply routes between the eastern desert and the Qalamoun region will be cut.

 Associated Press

3 flights depart from Brussels: Brussels Airport reopened to a thin stream of passengers, 12 days after suicide bombers destroyed its departure hall and killed more than a dozen people. Officials at Belgiums main airport said the aim is to return to maximum capacity before the start of the summer holidays. The airport had not handled passenger flights since Islamist militants carried out the suicide attacks. Those bombs and a separate one on a metro train in the Belgian capital the same day killed 32 people, excluding the three bombers. On Sunday, the airport handled just three flights.

Liberia confirms 2nd new Ebola case: A second case of Ebola has been confirmed in Liberia months after the country had been declared free from transmissions, health officials said. The 5-year-old son of a 30-year-old woman who died from Ebola has been taken to a treatment center in Monrovia, said Deputy Health Minister Tolbert Nyenswah. The new cases are a setback for Liberia, which had been declared free from Ebola virus transmissions on Jan. 14 for a third time. More than 4,800 people have died of Ebola in Liberia.

Flight 370 investigators to examine debris found in Mauritius: A piece of debris found on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius will be examined by investigators to find out whether it came from missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Australian officials said. The discovery comes less than two weeks after officials confirmed that two pieces of debris found along the coast of Mozambique were almost certainly from the aircraft that vanished March 8, 2014, with 239 people aboard during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Accident kills 6 children, 9 others in Saudi Arabia: Two vans collided in southwestern Saudi Arabia, killing 15 people, including six children. Saudi Red Crescent spokesman Ahmed Asiri was quoted by the official Saudi Press Agency as saying that the accident occurred in the Wadi bin Hashbal region of Asir province. Two other people suffered severe injuries and were taken to a hospital. The Health Ministry says 17 people are killed in road accidents each day in Saudi Arabia.

 From news services
In the wake of Donald Trumps abortion gaffes, it should finally be clear that Trump is not a real conservative  he is the liberal caricature of a conservative.

In his now infamous interview with Chris Matthews, Trump not only declared that if abortion became illegal women who have abortions should face some form of punishment, but also asserted that conservatives, Republicans would say, yes they should be punished.

No, they would not.

This is not something a real pro-life conservative would say; it is something a liberal pretending to be a pro-life conservative would say.

Anyone remotely familiar with the pro-life cause knows that its advocates dont want to punish women. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, explains that the focus of laws restricting abortion is on protection, not punishment. Women were not punished by the legal system before 1973s Roe v. Wade decision and there is absolutely no drive to punish her now. As Mother Teresa famously put it, Abortion is profoundly anti-women. Three quarters of its victims are women: Half the babies and all the mothers.

Trump does not understand this, because he is deeply unfamiliar with what motivates pro-life Americans. The goal of the pro-life movement is to create a culture of life that upholds the dignity of every human person from conception to natural death. The objective is not punishment; it is to protect both mother and child.

Since Trump does not actually understand what pro-life conservatives truly believe, he mindlessly echoes the liberal caricature of pro-life conservatives. He mistakenly thinks this is what these conservatives want to hear. They dont. This is, however, what liberals want to hear. They want a Republican candidate who feeds their false war on women narrative. They want to run against the caricature of the pro-life position, because the caricature is ugly. And Trump is giving them precisely what they want.

If that were not bad enough, Trump then went on to compound his problems by reversing himself. In an interview with John Dickerson on Face the Nation, Trump said that he would not change the law to protect innocent unborn life, declaring that the laws are set. . . . At this moment, the laws are set. And I think we have to leave it that way.

Leave it that way? This is something no pro-life conservative would say. Its not even something a liberal pretending to be a pro-life conservative would say.

Its something Hillary Clinton would say.

Trump then twice declined to answer when asked whether he thought abortion is murder, saying Id rather not comment on it and I just dont think its an appropriate forum before finally, on the third try, grudgingly saying I dont disagree. Quite the profile in pro-life courage.

Trump likes to say he is a convert to the pro-life cause, just like Ronald Reagan. But Reagan would never have said that laws allowing abortion on demand should not be changed. As president, Reagan supported the Human Life Bill, which would have recognized the unborn as human beings and protected them as persons under our Constitution. Reagan would also never have said that women should be punished for having abortions. In his 1983 essay for the Human Life Review, Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation, Reagan declared: We should not rest until our entire society echoes the tone of John Powell in the dedication of his book, Abortion: The Silent Holocaust, a dedication to every woman carrying an unwanted child: Please believe that you are not alone. There are many of us that truly love you, who want to stand at your side, and help in any way we can. 

Much like when Trump referred to Two Corinthians instead of Second Corinthians, his comments on abortion are a tell demonstrating that he does not possess a basic understanding of the first principles that animate conservative thought on the sanctity of life.

So lets stop the charade. When it comes to the issue of life, Donald Trump is a caricature, not a conservative.

Read more from Marc Thiessens archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
CHINESE PRESIDENT Xi Jinping has a problem related to his nations growing demand for high-quality food and other agricultural products. In December 2013, Mr. Xi declared a strategic goal for China: to seize the commanding heights in biotechnology, in areas such as genetically modified organisms (GMOs). It must not let large foreign companies dominate the agricultural biotechnology product market, he said. However, China is still years behind the United States and Europe in research and development.

One way to square the circle would be to import products from the West to keep Chinese consumers supplied while hoping that the bracing stimulus of foreign competition would impel Chinese firms to catch up. Mr. Xis government implied such an approach at a U.S.-China high-level trade meeting in Guangzhou in November, which produced a promise that U.S. exporters would henceforth face a regulatory process based on international standards and science when they tried to sell in the Chinese market  as opposed to the rejection that had met nine out of 12 GMO varieties U.S. companies submitted for approval in recent years.

Now comes word, however, of a bid by Chinas state-owned chemical company to buy Swiss-based Syngenta, suggesting that Beijing has a rather different strategy in mind: to buy the Western biotech it cant develop on its own  and give one particular importer favored access to Chinas huge market. The strategic value China places on the deal is obvious from the price tag: $43 billion, the largest Chinese foreign investment ever. After paying so much for Syngenta, will China grant approval to a GMO made by Dow or Monsanto if its own captive company offers a similar product?

As is so often the case with Chinese mercantilism, it is hard to specify what the United States could do to counter this move. Raising the specter of Chinese control over Syngentas large U.S. subsidiary, which supplies 10 percent of U.S. soybean seeds and 6 percent of corn, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) has called for the U.S. commission that scrubs foreign investment deals for national security concerns to let the Agriculture Department weigh in on this one, and perhaps others. That might help  or create a precedent for defining investment-related security concerns beyond traditional law enforcement, military and intelligence considerations, with unintended consequences for the free flow of capital to the United States.

What is clear is that China has embarked on a buying spree of foreign firms, $92 billion worth so far this year, with motives that range from commercial to nationalistic  to murky, as was the case with the bid for Starwood hotels by Anbang, a previously unheralded Chinese insurance conglomerate with ties to the Deng Xiaoping family but, according to news accounts, no one answering its headquarters telephone. If China deploys its cash to create jobs in the West, well and good. But given the nontransparent and cronyistic nature of Chinese companies, both state-owned and private, there may be risks, too, of a kind not posed by investment from democratic allies such as Japan, say, or Germany. The United States needs a new approach to account for the new reality.
LAST SUMMER, Jamycheal Mitchell, a mentally ill young man arrested in Virginia for shoplifting a soda and two snacks worth $5 from a 7-Eleven, wasted away and died behind bars. Jail staff looked the other way or remained oblivious as he starved himself in plain sight. A judge had ordered that Mr. Mitchell be transferred to a psychiatric hospital not far away, but no one at the jail, or at the hospital, seemed to notice or care.

A file containing the judges order was found stuffed away in a drawer at the hospital in late August  several days after Mr. Mitchell died. Mr. Mitchell was never placed on the hospitals waiting list for a bed.

Those are the appalling conclusions of an internal report released by the department that regulates mental-health care in Virginia, which, unaccountably, took seven months to make its findings public. At every level, the report makes clear, the system designed to care for Virginias mentally ill broke down. In place of compassion, the state provided neglect and indifference.

Mr. Mitchell was 24 years old and in good physical health at the time of his arrest last April. He had spent just a few weeks at the Hampton Roads Regional Jail when Judge Morton V. Whitlow of Portsmouth General District Court issued the first of several orders that he be transferred to Eastern State Hospital, a psychiatric facility near Williamsburg.

At that point, the system ground to a halt. The judges initial order, sent by mail and fax, was apparently not transmitted or not received; the hospital had no record of it. As Mr. Mitchells condition deteriorated through the spring and into the summer, jail officials had every opportunity to take action. They didnt.

Neither a mental-health worker assigned to the jail, nor jail nurses from a private, for-profit firm (Alabama-based NaphCare) took any effective action or, it seems, even raised a red flag as Mr. Mitchells weight plummeted by 35 pounds and his psychiatric state deteriorated.

It wasnt until July 30, three months after he was incarcerated, that jail officials became sufficiently alarmed that he was sent to a local emergency room, where he refused treatment. The next day, back in court, Mr. Mitchell appeared so fragile and wasted that his relatives were shocked. Only then did officials figure out that the judges initial order had not been received by the hospital.

The judge reissued the order, to no avail. Transmitted by fax, it was stuffed in a drawer along with other such orders by an overwhelmed hospital employee, according to the report; Mr. Mitchells name was never added to the waiting list.

This is incompetence on a staggering scale, yet the states accountability remains in doubt. Officials say they have adopted reforms  to more closely monitor psychiatric hospitals waiting lists and find bed space more quickly for inmates ordered transferred from jail. But there is little indication of consequences for those whose negligence enabled Mr. Mitchells death. A second report, by the Office of State Inspector General, has still not been released. For now, the question of whether lessons have been learned from this senseless death remains open.
The April 1 Metro article A new community spirit was right to highlight the controversy surrounding Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogans participation in the opening of the Diyanet Center of America. But theres another point to be made. The freedom of religion enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and cherished by Americans  the very freedom to worship that Marylanders will enjoy at this new mosque  does not exist inside Mr. Erdogans country.

The bitter irony is that if Mr. Erdogan wanted to celebrate the opening of an important place of worship and build bridges between great faiths, he need not have come halfway across the world to Maryland. On any day of the week, he could travel to the Halki seminary and reopen it. He could walk to the Ecumenical Patriarchate and restore the religious freedom of this spiritual center of 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide, including millions of Americans. But Turkeys authoritarian policies keep the Halki seminary shuttered and reduce the ecumenical patriarch to the status of third-class citizen.

I am proud to be among the many members of Congress who repeatedly have called for the reopening of Halki and for the full restoration of religious freedom to the Ecumenical Patriarchate. We will continue to press Turkish authorities to do the right thing, though it is unlikely Mr. Erdogan will become sensitized to issues of religious freedom and human rights.

John Sarbanes, Towson

The writer, a Democrat, represents Marylands 3rd Congressional District in the House.
Regarding the April 1 Metro article George Mason renames its law school for Scalia:

I realize the $30 million the school will receive is a lot of money. Nevertheless, it is appalling that a public university may name its law school after one of the most polarizing and politically motivated justices ever to sit on the Supreme Court. If nothing else, the name change sends a message to law school applicants who are not conservative Republicans that this might not be the law school they should be attending, resulting in a student body lacking in political diversity.

Honors such as naming a public school, be it an elementary or law school, should be reserved for those who are respected by all segments of society. Just as no one in this day and age would name a law school after former chief justice Roger Taney, author of the Dred Scott decision, a law school, particularly a public law school, should not be named after a person whose legal views are anathema to many Virginians, including many members of the bench and bar.

Jeffrey Tureck, Springfield

Isnt it ironic, and kind of inappropriate, for George Mason law school to reject the name the schools founders gave it and rename the institution (even if to honor the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the father of originalism)?

John Schachter, Arlington
A paradox of our time concerns productivity. We are awash in transformative technologies  smartphones, tablets, big data  and yet the growth in labor productivity, which should benefit from all the technology, is dismal. This matters. Productivity is economic lingo for efficiency, and its the wellspring of higher living standards. If productivity lags, so will wages and incomes.

The latest figures are disheartening. From 2010 to 2015, average labor productivity for the entire economy rose a meager 0.3 percent a year. If maintained over a decade, this molasses pace implies a puny 3 percent wage increase, assuming (perhaps unrealistically) that the gains are spread evenly over the labor force.

Historically, we have done much better. From 1995 to 2005, labor productivity increased an average of 2.5 percent a year, reports the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This would support a roughly 25 percent increase in wages and fringe benefits over a decade.

In a broad sense, the election is about reviving productivity growth, which would automatically ease our economic problems. Who doesnt want higher wages, stronger consumer spending and heftier tax collections? But no candidate, from either left or right, has a plan to guarantee faster productivity growth  and none will.

Although productivity seems dry, it reflects something that is dynamic and amorphous  a nations economic culture, which includes its values, institutions, demographics, technologies, managers, workers and much more. Because it embodies so much, productivity is hard to influence and control. Economists have repeatedly failed. They regularly miss its turning points  productivity slowdowns and speedups. Neither the 1970s slowdown nor the 1990s pickup were anticipated.

Not surprisingly, the present slump has them stumped. It wasnt predicted, and its causes are unclear. In a paper, economist Martin Neil Baily of the Brookings Institution reviewed some common candidates:

 Innovation has slowed, resulting in weak business investment.

 The Great Recession clobbered the economy, also weakening investment.

 Venture capital has retreated, making it harder for start-up firms to obtain financing.

 The productivity slowdown is a statistical mirage, because the value of free Internet services (Google, Facebook and the like) is underestimated.

Economist Robert Gordon of Northwestern University blames diminished innovation, but even he thinks that productivity should grow at least 1 percent a year. Meanwhile, a new study by economists at the Federal Reserve and the International Monetary Fund rejects undercounting of the Internet as a major cause of the productivity slowdown. Free services are counted, the study says; theyre valued at the cost that firms pay for Internet ads.

So the paradox remains: How can all the new technologies, with countless industries being disrupted and forced to change, coexist with such poor productivity performance? The answer may be simpler than we think. The economy is supporting parallel technologies  old and new  to do the same thing. The cost of the overlap is substantial, especially in a slow-growing economy still suffering from the Great Recessions hangover.

The obvious example is retail. Traditional retailers, including big-box stores that once seemed invincible, face relentless competition from e-commerce. They cant abandon their stores, which often remain the largest source of their sales and profits. (Despite rapid growth, online sales in 2015 represented only 7.3 percent of total retail sales.) But if they dont invest heavily in digital technology, they will cede the future to Amazon and other successful digital firms.

Even powerful Walmart cannot escape this logic. In 2014 and 2015, its same-store U.S. sales, including e-commerce, were essentially flat. Yet, it made significant investments in its Web operations to defend against e-competition. Other industries straddle two technological eras. Newspapers publish print and digital editions. Phone service is split between expanding cellphone networks and receding landlines.

For the economy as a whole, this represents massive duplication. Businesses are splintering between wildly profitable firms and those that arent, argues White House economist Jason Furman. The same phenomenon may affect productivity. Some companies, presumably including many digital firms, are hugely productive. Many others are in the dumps, burdened by parallel technologies. It is the mediocre performance of this second group that drags down the economys overall productivity growth.

If this reasoning is correct (and, of course, it may not be), we have one explanation of how explosive new technologies can undermine average productivity growth, at least temporarily. Many Americans are now transfixed by the rowdy election campaign. But it is hardly a stretch to say that the countrys future may depend as much, or even more, on the fate of productivity as on the identity of the next president.

Read more from Robert Samuelsons archive.
LAST WEEK, some of the worlds autocrats came to town for the Nuclear Security Summit , men who have thrown their critics in prison and destroyed the fabric of civil society. They got polite treatment from the Obama administration. They deserved worse.

Take President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, who has regularly imprisoned his critics. He released a batch of prisoners before the summit, perhaps thinking that would take the edge off, although investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova remains behind bars for no good reason and rights activists Leyla and Arif Yunus are barred from leaving the country. When Secretary of State John F. Kerry appeared in the Treaty Room with Mr. Aliyev, the secretary offered praise for his guest as a leader in a complex region who has been very studious and thoughtful. Mr. Kerry and Mr. Aliyev spoke about energy, the conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijans role in Afghanistan. About democracy and human rights, they said nothing.

Vice President Biden also met with the Azeri president, and, according to a statement, welcomed the recent releases from prison of human rights and civil society activists and encouraged continued progress, underscoring the importance of civil society and rule of law. This is the polite, aspirational approach. In fact, Mr. Aliyev does not respect civil society or rule of law. Would it have been so hard to speak out for Ms. Ismayilova in public?

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey also has been attempting to silence his critics, including by means of a steadily closing vise on press freedom with the prosecution of journalists Can Dundar and Erdem Gul. Mr. Biden has spoken out against the press crackdown previously, but it was not mentioned in the statement issued by the White House after his meeting with Mr. Erdogan at the St. Regis Hotel. Nor did the crackdown come up in the White Houses description of President Obamas meeting with Mr. Erdogan on Thursday evening. After the summit ended Friday, Mr. Obama said he warned Mr. Erdogan against the repression of information and shutting down democratic debate.

President Xi Jinping of China discussed climate change, cyber-conflict and nuclear security with Mr. Obama, according to the White House statement that followed their meeting. Mr. Obama reiterated Americas unwavering support for upholding human rights and fundamental freedoms in China, the statement said. Mr. Xi does not share those values; he leads a party-state that does not respect individual rights or freedom. Mr. Obama might have named a few names, such as that of his fellow Nobel Peace laureate, Liu Xiaobo, who is rotting in prison for having sought freedom of expression and respect for human rights. Such direct talk might have offended Mr. Xi, but it also would have bolstered the spirits of brave dissidents everywhere who are repeatedly told by their jailers that the world has forgotten them.

Freedom is under siege from China to Russia to the Middle East. Now more than ever, the United States should speak up for individuals who continue to fight for liberty. Private conversations have value, but public messaging does, too. Even at the risk of being rude at a summit, it is critical to remind the tyrants  and indeed the world  that the human spirit cant be crushed.
Donald Trumps recent rhetoric about an obsolete NATO alliance has surely disturbed Germans and French who think about their nations security. But their anxiety level is probably low next to that of a dozen Eurasian nations that Trump has probably never considered  including a few that are not even members of NATO.

One of them is Georgia. This predominately Christian former Soviet republic of 4.5 million people bet its future a dozen years ago on the notion that it could pull away from Moscows sphere of influence  and its autocratic political model  and integrate into the West. With broad popular support, its political leaders have struggled to build a market economy and liberal political institutions, including free media, independent courts and competitive elections.

The results have frequently been mixed. There have been ups and downs, including a Russian invasion in 2008 that stripped Georgia of two of its provinces. Yet until now the nation has been kept largely on track by its single-minded pursuit of two big goals: membership in the European Union and admission to NATO.

Now, suddenly, both the union and the alliance appear in danger of crumbling at the hands of populists and nationalists who would retreat behind refortified borders, turn away migrants and abandon international commitments. What happens if the Trumpists win?

Definitely that will be a shock for [Georgian] society, the countrys elected president, Giorgi Margvelashvili, told me last week. And of course it would be a very serious problem for our security. Because we have a neighbor that has a very different idea of what Georgia should be. That, of course, would be Russia.

Listen to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump discuss some of his foreign policy positions with The Washington Post editorial board. "NATO is costing us a fortune," Trump said. "We're not reimbursed fairly for what we do." (The Washington Post)

As Margvelashvili pointed out, Georgia shares its potential dilemma with a larger region. Trumps complaints, and those of President Obama, about the free riders of NATO such as Germany and France ignore the critical role the alliance has played for a host of smaller and far less prosperous nations since the end of the Cold War. Under the alliances tutelage, countries that might have lapsed into dictatorships or chaos instead became functioning democracies. To earn NATO security guarantees, or even a looser association as partners for peace, they granted rights to ethnic minorities, tolerated opposition media and cracked down on corruption.

In the end, NATO oversaw what was probably the most successful nation-building effort in history. A score of countries  Poland and Hungary, Latvia and Estonia, Serbia and Croatia, and yes, Ukraine and Georgia  adopted the Western, liberal model of statehood under the allies scrutiny, even though not all have yet joined NATO or the European Union.

A Trump victory would put that historic geopolitical shift at risk. It would open the question of whether new NATO members such as the Baltic states  not to mention Georgia and Ukraine  were really safe from Russian aggression. And it would maroon a bunch of countries that are on their way to Western integration but havent yet arrived there.

Trump and his supporters might dismiss such a loss  but Margvelashvili said they would regret it. You cannot discount countries that are smaller because you think that is the way the world order works, he said. If you push cases like Georgia and Ukraine into some bad portfolio and forget about them, you will get further complications  not only vis-a-vis Russia, but in other parts of the world, where regional powers  China, say, or Iran  aspire to dominate their neighbors.

Georgia offers perhaps the clearest example of how the prospect of NATO membership and progress in consolidating democracy have been intertwined. In 2012, the pro-Western government was ousted in a parliamentary election  itself a democratic achievement of sorts. The new coalition was led by Bidzina Ivanishvili, a billionaire with distinctly Trump-like qualities, including a penchant for populist demagoguery and an inclination to autocracy.

For a while it looked like the new regime might reverse much of what the country had accomplished. Leaders of the previous government were hounded with criminal investigations; media not supportive of the government came under pressure. But Ivanishvili had promised that he would continue seeking E.U. and NATO membership, which gave Brussels and Washington extraordinary leverage. Thanks to their pressure, the political opposition is still functioning; the most watched television network remains independent and critical of the government; and elections scheduled for this fall look to be hotly competitive. Oh, and by the way, Georgia still has 750 troops under NATO command in Afghanistan.

The rhetoric from Trump has given a boost to pro-Russian parties in Georgias campaign. Their argument, said Margvelashvili, has been consistent: You might want NATO. You might want Europe. But it is not going to happen. Until now, it hasnt been a persuasive argument. Georgias president, and leaders like him across Eurasia, can only hope this U.S. political season does not make it so.

Read more from Jackson Diehls archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
David Cole, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, is author of the new book Engines of Liberty: The Power of Citizen Activists to Make Constitutional Law.

Liberals are understandably excited, and conservatives equally concerned, that the Supreme Court seat vacated by Justice Antonin Scalias death may be filled by a Democratic president  with either Merrick Garland, President Obamas nominee, or Hillary Clintons nominee, should she win the election. The courts ideological majority lies in the balance.

The conservatives have had a long run. While control of the presidency and both houses of Congress has changed hands multiple times over the past 40 years, the Supreme Court has been dominated by a consistent majority of conservative justices since the 1970s, even as some Republican appointees, such as David Souter and Harry A. Blackmun, proved to be liberal. The court is now evenly divided, with four liberal and four conservative justices. With a liberal majority in the offing, a whole new world of possibilities awaits.

Or does it? History suggests otherwise. The Supreme Court under Chief Justices Warren E. Burger, William H. Rehnquist and John G. Roberts Jr. has overruled relatively few liberal constitutional precedents. Despite strong invitations to do so, the court did not reverse Roe v. Wade (protecting the right to choose an abortion) or Miranda v. Arizona (requiring warnings and legal assistance in interrogations). It has not ended affirmative action or overturned decisions banning the public display of religious symbols. Even if Garland or some other Democratic nominee is confirmed, therefore, major changes in existing constitutional doctrine are unlikely. The force of precedent imposes significant limits on the courts ability to change direction, even when its personnel change.

Major transformations of constitutional law do occur, but they require much more than a new justice. They generally follow decades of persistent advocacy in a variety of forums, primarily outside the Supreme Court. The court is much more likely to recognize constitutional change than to generate it. And it tends to do so slowly, only after the ground of public opinion and state law has already shifted. Constitutional law changes incrementally, from the ground up, not suddenly, from the top down.

Four cases that could re-shape the country will be heard when the Supreme Court meets this term without Justice Antonin Scalia. Scalia consistently expressed conservative views when reviewing court cases. (Claritza Jimenez/The Washington Post)

Brown v. Board of Education, which said segregated schools violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, came only after a decades-long campaign by civil rights lawyers and activists. The court first recognized sex discrimination as a violation of equal protection only after the womens movement had transformed understandings of womens roles in society more generally. While some have criticized it as premature, the decision in Roe to protect a womans right to choose abortion similarly followed a political campaign for reproductive rights. The courts 2008 ruling that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms is attributable to three decades of concerted work by the National Rifle Association and its allies to develop and propagate the idea of a right to bear arms in other forums, including state legislatures, state courts, the political arena and the legal academy.

The same is true for the newest constitutional right  of gay men and lesbian couples to marry on the same terms as heterosexual couples. In 1972, the court unanimously ruled that a petition arguing that the Constitution requires recognition of same-sex marriage did not even present a serious legal question; it dismissed the petition with one line. Yet last year, in Obergefell v. Hodges, the court recognized a constitutional right to marriage equality. That remarkable shift cannot be explained by changed personnel. The court in 2015 was, if anything, more conservative than the court in 1972. Rather, one must look at the work that gay rights groups did in a wide variety of forums beyond the federal courts to change public opinion about the status of gay men and lesbians, and about the justice of their desire to marry. The Supreme Court did not so much change constitutional law on marriage equality as acknowledge that it had changed.

Constitutional law will continue to develop in the post-Scalia era. But the changes will come more from the sustained work of committed citizens than from the appointment of a new justice. Over the course of our history, the true catalysts of constitutional evolution have been not the justices  although they obviously play a necessary part  but the people, working together through civil society to make their own shared vision of constitutional ideals into law. Constitutional law reflects what we as a society deem to be our most fundamental values, and those values evolve. But in the most important sense, the impetus for change comes from us, not from the men and women who serve as justices of the Supreme Court.
Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee for president, but some conservative activists still want to stop him.

Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee for president, but some conservative activists still want to stop him.

Its time to go back to where we began: not only that Donald Trump will lose the Republican presidential nomination, but also that he could be so weakened by the end of the primaries that his party will not even have to worry about choosing someone else.

I feel your skepticism. Hasnt Trump so far defied all predictions of his demise? Absolutely. Hasnt every claim that now hes gone too far been wrong? Of course.

Lets be honest about journalists: We find a lot of ways of being wrong.

One trap is presentism, the idea that whatever is happening now will keep happening. And it is, indeed, easy to project Trumps impending doom after his most miserable week yet.

He responded rather ineffectually to criticisms from Wisconsin conservative talk show host Charlie Sykes. His campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, was charged with battery. Trump reacted by aggressively attacking the credibility of conservative reporter Michelle Fields, the woman Lewandowski is accused of hurting. The front-runner thus fed the perception that hes a misogynist.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's comments on his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski grabbing Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields before and after police released video footage. (TWP)

[Trump will attack Clinton as weak and old. Good luck with that.]

For good measure, Trump flip-flopped on whether women should be legally punished for having an abortion if the procedure were banned, underscoring that he really hasnt thought very much about the positions he is taking or even what he says from moment to moment.

But the killer news for the man who values winning above everything else is that he has dropped well behind Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) in the polls in Wisconsin, which holds its primary on Tuesday. A loss there, particularly a big one, would greatly complicate Trumps already difficult path to a delegate majority of 1,237.

You could look at the week as an aberration that Trump, the magician, will somehow surmount. In fact, these episodes tumbling one upon the other ratify what Trump skeptics said all along: that he is utterly unprepared to be a serious candidate, let alone president of the United States; that an endless stream of insults against all who get in his way wears thin over time; that he is winging it and stubbornly refusing to do the homework the enterprise hes engaged in requires; and that trashing ethnic and religious minorities can win you a fair number of votes but not, thank God, a majority of Americans.

The always instructive Yogi Berra explained the New York Yankees loss of the 1960 World Series to the Pittsburgh Pirates by saying: We made too many wrong mistakes. In the case of Trump, journalists are so worried about their old mistake of underestimating the mans staying power that they now risk making the wrong mistake of missing his fall.

[A transcript of Donald Trumps interview with The Washington Post editorial board]

Why does this matter to anyone except pundits? First, Trumps troubles threaten to go beyond Wisconsin. He could now lose in other big states that vote next, including Pennsylvania, California, New Jersey and possibly even his home state of New York. If this happens, it will be far easier for the Republican Party bosses (such as they are these days) to deny him the nomination. Trump will come to look less like the rank-and-file Republican favorite and more like a flash in the pan.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump sat down with The Post's Bob Woodward and Robert Costa. Here are five surprising statements he made during their meeting. (The Washington Post)

Second, Democrats Hillary Clinton or Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) would lose their ideal opponent. From their point of view, Trumps collapse may come too early. Its true that if the very right-wing Cruz were the Republican nominee instead of Trump, the Democratic winner  its still likely to be Clinton, despite Sanderss current surge  would be favored.

But an utter Trump implosion might free the Cleveland convention to turn to someone entirely outside the current crop of candidates, someone unsullied by the ugly and vulgar GOP primary campaign. A sinking Trump would have far less power to resist such an outcome. Democrats need to prepare now for the strong possibility that they will not be lucky enough to run against The Donald.

Most importantly, journalists need to remember that ratings and page views are not the same as votes and that Americans may love circuses but ultimately want elections to be more than Barnum & Bailey productions. Trump has entranced the media and ignited a minority of Republican primary voters. He has never, ever won over anything close to a majority of the American electorate. We demean ourselves as a people if we think that Trumpism is the wave of the future.

Journalists and citizens alike should cultivate, not resist, their most honorable instincts. The instinct that Americans would never choose as their president a clownish peddler of racial and religious stereotypes who made everything up as he went along was right from the start.

Read more from E.J. Dionnes archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
The Supreme Court rejected a conservative challenge to the one person, one vote rule that counts nonvoters, such as children and prisoners, in drawing districts. Heres what you need to know. (Victoria Walker/The Washington Post)

The Supreme Court rejected a conservative challenge to the one person, one vote rule that counts nonvoters, such as children and prisoners, in drawing districts. Heres what you need to know. (Victoria Walker/The Washington Post)

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled Monday that states may satisfy one person, one vote rules by drawing election districts based on the total population of a place, a defeat for conservative interests that wanted the districts based only on the number of people eligible to vote.

The case, Evenwel v. Abbott, was considered one of the most important on voting rights this term, and a decision the other way would have shifted political power away from urban areas, where Democrats usually dominate, and toward more Republican-friendly rural areas.

The courts ruling left open the possibility that other methods of reapportionment might be constitutional. But the decision was clear that using anything other than total population would face certain Supreme Court review.

The leader of the effort to use voting-eligible population as the standard said it was unlikely that any jurisdiction would test such a system until after the 2020 census.

The Supreme Court has never explained what metric should be used to satisfy the one person, one vote standard that the court advanced in the 1960s, and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. chose Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to write the majority decision.

What constitutional history and our prior decisions strongly suggest, settled practice confirms, Ginsburg wrote. Adopting voter-eligible apportionment as constitutional command would upset a well-functioning approach to districting that all 50 States and countless local jurisdictions have followed for decades, even centuries.

She added, As the Framers of the Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment comprehended, representatives serve all residents, not just those eligible or registered to vote.

She was joined by Roberts and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. agreed with the outcome but filed separate concurrences.

[Supreme Court considers challenge to how states reapportion]

Currently, all states, with some minor variations, use total population for redistricting, and that standard is used to allocate congressional districts to the states after each census.

The general population contains millions of people who arent eligible to vote: children, legal and illegal immigrants, prisoners, and those who are disenfranchised. Except for prisoners, they are largely concentrated in urban areas.

Latino groups were especially cheered by the courts ruling.

Rep. Linda T. Sanchez (D-Calif.), chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said the challenge was a conservative effort to undermine the growing influence of the Latino community. Todays unanimous decision is a victory and reaffirms the fundamental principle that in the United States each person counts.

The courts decision was supported by all eight justices because it chose a middle ground between several competing positions. The challengers wanted only the voting-eligible population to be counted for redistricting. The Obama administration said that only total population would be constitutional. The state of Texas, whose state Senate districts were challenged, wanted the option to use either.

But the court stopped after deciding that the total population passed muster, declining to rule on whether any other method of drawing districts could be used. Perhaps because the court has shown itself equally divided in other cases after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, Ginsburg wrote that anything more could wait.

The group that brought the challenge, the Project on Fair Representation, expressed disappointment that the justices were unwilling to reestablish the original principle of one-person, one vote for the citizens of Texas and elsewhere. The groups plaintiffs had said that the unequal numbers of eligible voters in the Senate districts diluted the impact of their votes.

The projects founder, Edward Blum, said: The issue of voter equality in the United States is not going to go away. Some Supreme Court cases grow in importance over time, and Evenwel v. Abbott may likely be one of those cases.

Blums tiny organization has brought challenges that questioned affirmative action in university admissions and led the court to strike a major portion of the Voting Rights Act.

Blums opponents said the court was simply recognizing what most people had always thought was the correct way to interpret court rulings demanding that states abandon redistricting practices that had kept power in rural white areas rather than letting it shift to rapidly growing urban areas.

Kathay Feng, director of redistricting for Common Cause, said in a statement that her organization joined cities and counties across the country  from Los Angeles, CA to South Bend, IN to Atlanta, GA  to argue that everyone  young, old, city-dwellers and small town residents  deserves equal representation when it comes to providing police, fire, schools, and other services.

Ginsburg struck a similar note. Nonvoters have an important stake in many policy debates  children, their parents, even their grandparents, for example, have a stake in a strong public-education system  and in receiving constituent services, such as help navigating public-benefits bureaucracies, she wrote.

By ensuring that each representative is subject to requests and suggestions from the same number of constituents, total population apportionment promotes equitable and effective representation, Ginsburg wrote.

Thomas and Alito departed from the majority as the opinion seemed to favor one method over another.

For starters, Thomas said, the court has never provided a sound basis for the one-person, one-vote principle. He said the court has become too involved in how states create districts.

The Constitution, Thomas wrote, leaves States significant leeway in apportioning their own districts to equalize total population, to equalize eligible voters, or to promote any other principle consistent with a republican form of government.

Alito also said the majority was reading too much into history. He said the issue was not completely settled by Mondays decision.

Whether a State is permitted to use some measure other than total population is an important and sensitive question that we can consider if and when we have before us a state districting plan that, unlike the current Texas plan, uses something other than total population as the basis for equalizing the size of districts, Alito wrote.
The Supreme Court on Monday said it will consider a case of alleged racial bias by a juror so severe that it may merit breaching the confidential nature of jury deliberations.

In most instances, state and federal laws prohibit defendants from challenging a jurys verdict by introducing testimony about statements made during deliberations. But lawyers for a Colorado man persuaded the court to review whether comments made by a juror in his case were so discriminatory as to violate the defendants right to an impartial jury.

A juror in Miguel Angel Pena Rodriguezs sexual assault trial told other jurors that the defendant was guilty because hes Mexican and Mexican men take whatever they want. The juror, identified in court papers as H.C., said it was his experience in law enforcement that nine times out of 10 Mexican men were guilty of being aggressive toward women and young girls.

The Supreme Court in 2014 unanimously turned aside a lawsuit that sought to challenge no impeachment rules that bar using jury deliberations as evidence in seeking a new trial. But in a footnote, Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted that case did not involve charges of racial discrimination.

There may be cases of juror bias so extreme that, almost by definition, the jury trial right has been abridged, Sotomayor wrote. If and when such a case arises, the court can consider whether the usual safeguards are or are not sufficient to protect the integrity of the process.

Pena Rodriguez, who is represented by Jeffrey L. Fisher of the Stanford Law School Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, said his case presented that opportunity.

When racial prejudice infects a jurys decision whether to convict, the integrity of the criminal justice system is brought into direct question, Fisher wrote. Groups such as the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund filed briefs urging the court to take the case.

Colorado responded that its no-impeachment rule had three goals: to promote finality of verdicts, shield verdicts from impeachment, and protect jurors from harassment and coercion. Proper questioning of potential jurors before the trial protects against bias, it said.

The case stems from an incident at Arapahoe Race Track in 2007. Pena Rodriguez was a horse keeper at the track, where three teenage sisters went into a restroom. A man entered behind them and asked whether they wanted to drink beer and party.

One girl left before the man turned out the lights and groped the others. They escaped and went to their father, who also worked at the track. Eventually they identified Pena Rodriguez as the man in the bathroom.

The jury deliberated for 12 hours and could not reach a verdict on a felony count of attempted sexual assault. It convicted Pena Rodriguez of three misdemeanors: one count of unlawful sexual contact and two counts of harassment. He was sentenced to probation and required to register as a sex offender.

After the verdict, two jurors went to defense attorneys to tell them what juror H.C. had allegedly said. Pena Rodriguez tried to use the statements to overturn the verdicts, but lower courts turned him down. The Colorado Supreme Court ruled 4 to 3 that the states no-impeachment rule barred the statements.

Pena Rodriguezs petition said that courts across the country are divided on the issue and that only the Supreme Court could decide whether such incidents violate the Sixth Amendments guarantee of an impartial jury.

The case, Pena Rodriguez v. Colorado, will be argued in the term that begins in October.
Bela Biszku, the only high-ranking communist-era official to be tried for his role in the repression after the 1956 Hungarian revolution, died March 31 at a Jewish hospital in Budapest. He was 94.

The Federation of Hungarian Jewish Religious Communities confirmed the death but did not disclose the cause.

Mr. Biszku was part of the Communist Partys ruling interim executive committee after the October 1956 uprising was crushed by Soviet forces. The committee created armed militias to carry out the repression, killing dozens.

Mr. Biszku, who also served as interior minister from March 1957 to September 1961, denied any involvement but was sentenced in 2014 to five years and six months in prison for war crimes and other charges, including his role in nearly 50 deaths.

A higher court voided the verdict and ordered a retrial, which concluded in December with Mr. Biszku given a suspended sentence on lesser charges, including the denial of crimes committed by the communist regime. The conviction was under appeal at the time of his death.

Historians long considered Mr. Biszku one of the main architects of the repression that followed the 1956 uprising when at least 225 people were executed and more than 10,000 imprisoned for their real or alleged role in the revolt.

In voiding his initial conviction, however, the Budapest Appeals Court said there were essential and substantive differences between establishing historical responsibility and criminal responsibility.

Mr. Biszku was born Sept. 13, 1921, in the eastern Hungarian village of Marok, now called Marokpapi.
Three ferries of deported migrants left Greece and arrived in the Turkish town of Dikili on April 4, under an E.U. plan that is raising concerns among human rights advocates. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

Three ferries of deported migrants left Greece and arrived in the Turkish town of Dikili on April 4, under an E.U. plan that is raising concerns among human rights advocates. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

The European Union began offloading its refugee crisis onto its Turkish neighbors Monday, sending back more than 200 migrants in the first stage of a plan to deport thousands that has drawn condemnation from human rights groups.

The returns  carried out at dawn and under heavy security  were intended to send a powerful message to others considering the journey from Turkey to Greece via a smugglers rubber raft: Dont even bother.

Authorities braced for demonstrations or other forms of resistance from those being turned away only days after crossing the Aegean Sea and arriving on European soil in search of a new life  part of a massive migrant wave that has tested Europes resources and highlighted the desperation to the east in war zones such as Syria.

[Europe strikes deal to return new migrants to Turkey]

But the expulsions were carried out quietly; two ferries packed with migrants and E.U. escorts slipped away from the island of Lesbos and charted an eastbound course toward the rising sun along the blue mountains of the Turkish coast.

Migrants from Syria and Iraq wait on a police bus which would bring them to a detention center after arriving to the port of Mytilene on the first day of forced deportations to Turkey. (Jodi Hilton/For The Washington Post)

A third ferry left the island of Chios, another popular landing spot, bringing the total sent back to 202 by late Monday  nearly all from Pakistan or Afghanistan.

The ferries later arrived in the Turkish town of Dikili, where the migrants were expected to be taken to temporary shelters before being transferred to other facilities elsewhere in the country. Turkish authorities said that Syrians would be given the right to register for asylum but that those from other nations would be sent home.

Under a deal struck with Turkey last month, all refugees and migrants who arrive on Greek shores aboard smugglers rafts from March 20 onward will be sent back.

In return, the E.U. has said it will accept one Syrian refugee from Turkey for every Syrian who is returned. Germany said Monday that it had accepted its first several dozen Syrians flown from Turkey under the new program.

[Gallery: As Europes doors close, migrants left in limbo]

And in a further attempt to discourage people from crossing on their own, those who are returned will be sent to the end of the line for possible European resettlement in the future.

Europe still faces a mammoth challenge, however, in deporting the thousands of people who remain on the Greek islands. And unlike those sent back to Turkey on Monday  all of whom declined to apply for asylum, according to authorities  the vast majority of those still being held have sought legal protection in Europe.

Migrants from Syria and Iraq line up for a bus carrying them to a detention center after arriving to the port of Mytilene on the first day of forced deportations to Turkey. (Jodi Hilton/For The Washington Post)

Human rights advocates said Monday that they are deeply concerned that people will be deported without a full and fair asylum review and that Turkey will simply return them to their homelands  countries that, in many cases, are riven by war or unrest, such as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is an easy way for Europe to push the problem into its back yard and let others deal with it, said Panos Navrozidis, country director in Greece for the International Rescue Committee. Its clearly a political decision. The agreement is illegal, and its illogical.

The deal is laden with incentives for Turkey.

The European Union has promised billions of dollars of financial assistance and has pledged to ease visa rules for Turks seeking to travel in the 28-member bloc. The E.U. has also said it will revive Turkeys long-stalled membership application.

The agreement reflects European desperation to halt the migrant flow that brought more than 1 million asylum seekers and others to the continents shores in 2015. The number was on pace to be even higher this year until countries up and down the migrant trail sealed their borders, effectively trapping people in Greece.

Spring could bring a fresh surge of refugees. But Europe isnt ready for them.]

Around 51,000 migrants remained scattered in shelters and other accommodations across the country Monday. The vast majority arrived before March 20, meaning they can stay in Greece for now. But they have been barred from going any farther.

The Greek police said that of the 202 people sent back to Turkey on Monday, 130 were Pakistanis, 42 were Afghans and 10 were Iranians. Among other nationalities were a handful of Indians, Iraqis, Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans, reflecting the wide array of people who have made the sea voyage to Europe.

The deportees, however, were not representative of the overall flows to the islands. About half the people arriving in Greece are Syrian, and Europe still faces the prospect of deporting Syrian families despite asylum acceptance rates that reach nearly 100 percent.

The pace of arrivals in Greece has fallen markedly since Europe announced its deportation policy. But even as Europe was sending people back to Turkey aboard ferries, migrants on rafts continued to arrive in Greece.

About 100 people made landfall on Lesbos on Monday morning.

[On Lesbos, endless waves of boats and fears of a more treacherous voyage]

At dawn, a group of them stood shivering under gray woolen blankets in the port, some clutching babies.

We were on the sea for six hours. We had so many problems, said Shahid Kamran, a 24-year-old Pakistani who said he was fleeing the Taliban.

Kamran said he had heard that Europe was sending people back but still hoped that authorities would reconsider.

If we can stay here, then we are totally safe, he said. But we dont know if theyll let us stay or tell us, Go. 

As he spoke, buses pulled up elsewhere in the harbor, having picked up dozens of detainees from the islands main detention facility.

Each migrant was escorted to a waiting ferry by a plainclothes officer from the European border control agency, Frontex. Armed Greek police were also on board as the boats set sail.

A smattering of protesters held aloft hand-lettered signs reading Turkey is not a safe country for refugees and Respect our rights.

The migrants themselves did not appear to protest, despite demonstrations in recent days at detention facilities, including one in which hundreds of migrants broke free on Chios.

Europes plans are premised on the idea that Turkey is a safe country for refugees and that asylum seekers can apply for protection there. Turkey has already taken in nearly 3 million refugees from the Syrian war.

But human rights advocates argue that the deportation plan is fundamentally flawed and represents an abdication of European responsibility to help those seeking haven from conflicts. Amnesty International has called it a historic blow to human rights.

Boris Cheshirkov, spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency, said neither Greece nor Turkey has put in place adequate systems to ensure that deportees have full access to their rights. In particular, he said, authorities do not have enough personnel to process such a large volume of asylum claims.

We are calling for a suspension of further returns until all safeguards are in place, Cheshirkov said.

Since last year, Lesbos has been the primary gateway to Europe for those seeking an escape from war, oppression and poverty.

But now Lesboss main detention center  set among olive groves, ringed by barbed wire and patrolled by twitchy soldiers and police officers who will not let journalists near  is becoming dangerously overcrowded. Some 3,000 people are being held in a facility that was built to accommodate 2,000.

Read More

Watch: Migrant camps swell in Greece

NATO ships seek to disrupt migrant flow in Aegean

Mapping the crisis
Congolese displaced residents from the southern districts of Brazzaville take shelter in a church after fleeing intense clashes between security forces and unknown assailants. (Agence France-Presse via Getty Images)

Gun battles rocked the capital of the Republic of Congo on Monday, shattering a relative calm that had followed President Denis Sassou-Nguessos reelection in a disputed poll last month.

Government spokesman Thierry Moungalla said that former members of the Ninja militia that fought Sassou-Nguesso in a 1997 civil war raided and set ablaze military, police and local government offices but that the attacks have been contained.

Opposition leader Guy-Brice Parfait Kolelas, whose father led the Ninjas during the civil war, came in second in the March 20 election. The Ninjas signed a peace accord with the government in 2003 after years of sporadic clashes, though rivalries persist along regional and ethnic lines.

Kolelas was not involved in the attacks, an aide said.

The government . . . does not yet have proof that the candidates or their supporters were involved in this affair but . . . investigations are underway, Moungalla said on state television.

The fighting between security forces and unidentified gunmen was some of the worst to hit Brazzaville since 1997, when Sassou-Nguesso returned to power after months of urban warfare between rival militia groups in the capital.

He had previously ruled the oil-producing country from 1979 until he lost an election in 1992. Opposition supporters said in the wake of the March 20 election that they are frustrated that one of Africas longest-serving rulers can extend a tenure that has totaled three decades.

Witnesses said young opposition supporters chanted Sassou, leave!, erected barricades near the main roundabout in southern Brazzavilles Makelekele neighborhood, and set fire to the local mayors office and police headquarters.

The gunfire broke out in Makelekele and Bacongo, opposition strongholds, at 3 a.m. local time and lasted until 6 a.m. It resumed around 8 a.m. and intensified as military helicopters patrolled southern Brazzaville, witnesses said. Heavy-weapons fire could be heard.

Hundreds of residents of southern Brazzaville fled their neighborhoods on foot toward the north of the city.

Dozens of heavily armed Republican Guard troops and police officers later headed toward the Kingouari neighborhood of southern Brazzaville, where isolated gunfire persisted in the afternoon.

Opposition candidates say the March vote was riddled with fraud and have called for a campaign of civil disobedience. A general strike was held last week in southern Brazzaville but was ignored in the north of the city, where Sassou-Nguesso is popular.
The "Panama Papers" consist of 11.5 million documents from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca. The papers apparently implicate a number of high-profile global figures in potentially illegal financial activities. (Deirdra O'Regan/The Washington Post)

The "Panama Papers" consist of 11.5 million documents from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca. The papers apparently implicate a number of high-profile global figures in potentially illegal financial activities. (Deirdra O'Regan/The Washington Post)

The Kremlin responded angrily on Monday to reports alleging that close associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin were involved in secret offshore transactions totaling about $2 billion.

The reports, published Sunday, are based on a leak of millions of documents from a Panamanian law firm that over decades helped set up offshore bank accounts and shell companies for some of the worlds most prominent leaders and businesspeople.

The reporting by an international consortium of journalists spans the globe, touching the father of British Prime Minister David Cameron, the prime minister of Iceland and one of Putins oldest friends, Sergei Roldugin. In many instances, the reports do not allege law-breaking, but the mere possession of offshore accounts can prove politically embarrassing.

[The Panama Papers are super awkward for Beijing]

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the allegations as part of an international campaign to smear Russia and to distract from what he deemed the success of its military operations in Syria. Putin was not connected to any of the alleged accounts, Peskov said in remarks carried by Russian news agencies.

The Panama City law firm Mossack Fonseca has helped set up shell companies for some of the worlds most prominent leaders and businesspeople. (Rodrigo Arangua/AFP/Getty Images)

There is nothing concrete, nothing new, no details about Putin, Peskov said. All the rest is built on arguments and speculations.

The spokesman warned last week that Western news outlets were planning an information attack against Vladimir Putin, and he said Monday that he expects further reports along the same lines.

[Piercing the secrecy of offshore tax havens]

The German daily Suddeutsche Zeitung said that it had received the documents from an unnamed source and that they covered decades of work by the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. Suddeutsche Zeitung shared the data with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and more than 100 news outlets worldwide.

Mossack Fonseca told Britains Guardian newspaper on Sunday that we are responsible members of the global financial and business community, that the firm had broken no laws and that it had conducted due diligence on its clients in line with international regulations.

Some of the reports focused on Roldugin, a childhood friend of Putin who is the godfather of the Russian leaders eldest daughter. Roldugin was said to be at the center of transactions totaling about $2 billion that involved Bank Rossiya. The bank is under sanctions imposed by the U.S. Treasury Department, which describes it as the personal bank for senior officials of the Russian Federation.

[Putin associates had $2 billion in offshore accounts, report says]

Roldugin, a prominent cellist in St. Petersburg, told reporters from Russias Novaya Gazeta investigative newspaper last week that he could not comment on the allegations. He said he was connected to some of the businesses long ago.

The reports have also reverberated elsewhere in the world. Icelands Parliament on Monday was considering whether to ask Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson for a snap election after allegations that he had owned an offshore company, with his wife, that he had not included in his financial disclosures. Gunnlaugsson has denied wrongdoing, and the Guardian and other news outlets did not find any evidence of tax evasion.

In Ukraine, President Petro Poroshenko was coming under criticism from allies in parliament after the revelation that he had set up an offshore company after his May 2014 election to hold the assets of his substantial business interests, including a candy conglomerate. He has said that the offshore structure was necessary to prepare his Roshen company for sale. The offshore company was set up in August 2014, but Poroshenko has not yet sold his business holdings. A spokesman declined to comment.

Read more:

Is Vladimir Putin hiding a $200 billion fortune? (And if so, does it matter?)

Russias remarkable trust in Putin has been shaken, poll finds
Fayez Serraj, center, head of the U.N.-backed unity government meets with his team in Tripoli, Libya, on March 31. (Mohamed Ben Khalifa/AP)

The shaky debut last week of a new unity government in Libya brings Western nations, including the United States, much closer to a renewed military mission there, and to a host of obstacles that will test their ability to secure a country gripped by Islamist extremism and civil war.

Tensions ran high on Wednesday after Fayez Serraj, a little-known Libyan technocrat selected as prime minister in a United Nations peace process, arrived by boat in Tripoli from Tunisia. Western officials hailed his installation in the Libyan capital as a sign that the countrys two-year political divide is finally coming to an end  despite the existence of rival governments in Tripoli and the countrys east.

The United States and European allies, including Italy, France and Britain, have made the unity governments establishment a key precondition for launching twin missions to begin an international stabilization effort and help combat a growing Islamic State affiliate there.

Each of those tasks will be strained by tensions among militia factions that Western nations hope will form a unified front against terrorist groups and by strong reluctance among European nations to wade into Libyas chaos  even among those countries most threatened by the Islamic States growth across the Mediterranean.

[In Libya, the Islamic States black banner rises by the Mediterranean]

Pro-UN-backed government protesters hold placards and shout slogans during a demonstration in the Libyan capital Tripoli on April 1. (Mahmud Turkia/AFP/Getty Images)

The tentative political progress comes as the United States moves forward with plans to launch intensified attacks against the Islamic States Libyan branch, which has up to 8,000 fighters and is the groups strongest affiliate outside Iraq and Syria.

Planners at the U.S. Africa Command are now developing dozens of targets across Libya that American or European warplanes might strike. They range from the coastal city of Sirte, where the extremist group has established a refuge, to Ajdabiya, Sabratha and the militant stronghold of Derna. U.S. jets have carried out strikes against the group there twice since last fall.

The Pentagon is also seeking to improve coordination between U.S. Special Operations forces and their French and British counterparts, which have established small cells on the ground, seeking in part to line up friendly militias that can take on the extremist fighters.

Ben Fishman, who was a White House official responsible for Libya earlier in the Obama administration, said the U.S. campaign against the Islamic State in Libya is likely to be much more modest in scope than ongoing U.S. and allied operations in Iraq and Syria.

The wild card is, of course, if there are connections between Libya and terror threats in Europe, he said.

Officials at the U.S. Africa Command will also have to contend with the challenges of launching an operation in a region that lacks the same military infrastructure the United States has elsewhere in the Middle East.

U.S. officials continue to seek permission from neighboring countries to launch U.S. flights, which would allow American planes more watch time on surveillance or strike missions. So far, Tunisia and Algeria have declined, meaning that manned and unmanned missions would probably be launched from military installations in Italy, Spain or Greece, or from as far away as Britain.

The prospect of another Western intervention in Libya has divided North Africa. Tunisia is facing increased terrorist threats and is reluctant to attract new attacks. Algeria is categorically opposed to outside involvement. And Egypt is already backing the eastern faction in Libyas civil war.

But the biggest challenge will probably be divisions among Libyas myriad armed factions, including militias formed during the 2011 revolution and remnants of former dictator Moammar Gaddafis army. Washington hopes to build a coherent force from among those groups to take on the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

According to one Libyan official, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss planning, the United States may try to muster forces to attack the Islamic State stronghold in Sirte from Misurata, a prosperous city just to the west, and from Ajdabiya, where local militia leader Ibrahim Jathran commands a significant oil-

protection force.

But analysts warn that ad hoc Western outreach to individual militia groups, many of which have fought one another repeatedly since 2011, could actually intensify factional violence and reduce the odds of national reconciliation.

I would caution [against] international intervention of this nature, in this form and at this time, without having a coherent plan for these groups to work together, said Anas El Gomati, director of the Sadeq Institute, a Libyan think tank. If they are all fighting one another, how are they going to fight ISIS?

U.S. officials envision a gradual absorption of militia forces into a new national army or at least a network of state-backed regional or tribal forces.

After months of talks, the United States and European and Arab nations have yet to make concrete military commitments to what is known as the Libya International Assistance Mission, potentially undermining the nascent government, which needs to establish its legitimacy and impose order.

Italy has promised to provide at least half of the resources for that effort, which could bring thousands of Italian or other European troops to Tripoli to advise local forces on securing the capital.

But, in a reflection of European nations reluctance to get pulled into a risky overseas campaign, Rome has also laid out a series of conditions for sending troops, including a U.N. Security Council resolution and  most problematic  adequate security in Tripoli before Italian troops will be deployed.

Karim Mezran, a Libya scholar at the Atlantic Council, said the Italian-led talks have not yet produced a coherent plan to help Serrajs would-be administration confront its militant foes.

It leads us to ask the question Ive been asking from the beginning: Whos going to provide the new government the support it requires on the ground?

U.S. and European officials say their cautious approach will give the new government time to determine and request the right outside help. But they also acknowledge there will be a limited window for helping the Serraj government prove its legitimacy.

Western plans dont yet appear to take into account the widespread radicalization that has made Libya a hotbed for Islamist groups since 2011.

Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter recently suggested that Libyans, once unified under a new government, will rise up to expel a largely foreign force. Libyans dont like foreigners who come into their territory. Thats what ISIL is, he said, using another acronym for the Islamic State.

While fighters from North Africa and other nations have flocked to join the groups ranks in Libya, U.S. intelligence officials believe the majority of fighters are Libyan.

Local supporters include marginalized tribesmen, loyalists to the Gaddafi regime and youths from some of the many extremist groups that have flourished in Libya since 2011. In western Libya, smugglers and criminal gangs have also fueled the Islamic States rise.

Claudia Gazzini, senior Libya analyst for the International Crisis Group, said the Islamic State retains some appeal among Libyans, many of whom see the group as a lesser evil compared with militias and other rival factions.

In the situation Libya is in at the moment, where you have military factions engaging in localized wars, its very much a case of survival, she said.

Raghavan reported from Cairo. Souad Mekhennet in Tunis contributed to this report.

Read more:
Protesters in the Italian village of Brenner on the Italian-Austrian border objected to new barriers after Austria's defense minister said his country will deploy soldiers to stop asylum seekers arriving from Italy. (Kerstin Joensson/AP)

European nations must step up humanitarian aid to countries in the Middle East hosting displaced persons so more people can stay there safely, and Europe should open its doors primarily to the most vulnerable asylum seekers, Austrias foreign minister said Monday.

Our goal is that we decide who can come to Europe, and we decide who we help, and that we dont let the smugglers decide, Sebastian Kurz said in an interview before he met with Secretary of State John F. Kerry.

[Europe begins sending people back across the sea, defying human rights outcry]

Kurz said many seeking safe haven in Europe are not asylum seekers from the Syrian war but economic migrants from other countries. Most want to resettle in three particular countries, he said.

I understand they are looking for a better life in Austria, Germany and Sweden, Kurz said. But its our job as politicians to create systems that can work. The concept of no borders is not going to work.

Austria warmly welcomed the first asylum seekers who arrived last year but took a stricter stance when it became clear, Kurz said, that things were out of control. Vienna imposed a cap this year and recently deployed troops to its Alpine border with Italy to block the migrant flow.

Like many European diplomats, Kurz used comparative math to underscore the burden that Austria, with 8.5 million people, faced when it took in 90,000 refugees last year, more than double this years cap of 37,500.

It would be like the United States getting 3.4 million new asylum seekers in one year alone, he said. Austria has done much more than most other countries in the world.

[No end to despair as Greece starts to deport refugees]

President Obama ordered the State Department to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees this fiscal year. Kurz said even more should be admitted.

Kurz credited new border controls and a deal to send newly arrived asylum seekers back to Turkey with stemming the tide this year. He said 20 displaced persons can be supported in Turkey for what it costs to support one refugee in Austria.

Women, children, the elderly and the sick should be given priority for resettlement, Kurz said, not able-bodied young men.

If we really want to help the people in Syria, we should invest more in humanitarian aid and we should work with resettlement programs to get those who really are in need to come to Europe, he said.

Read more:

7 things to know about the incredibly complicated migrant crisis

The mass migration of refugees from Turkey to Greece has stalled

Migrants find doors slamming shut across Europe
A Navy sailor walks with soldiers in the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (Lucas Jackson/Reuters)

The Pentagon has transferred two Libyan detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Senegal, Defense Department officials said Monday, the latest step in President Obamas accelerating effort to close the prison before he leaves office.

Salem Abdu Salam Ghereby and Omar Khalif Mohammed Abu Baker Mahjour Umar were captured separately in Pakistan and had been held in the military prison at Guantanamo Bay since 2002. The men were described in leaked U.S. military documents as members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), an Islamist faction that opposed Moammar Gaddafis authoritarian regime.

In the 1990s, a number of Libyans associated with the LIFG traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan. The leaked documents, which date to 2008, allege that both men associated with al-Qaeda militants during their time there and may have fought against U.S. forces after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Some of the allegations in the leaked Guantanamo assessments have since been discredited.

Both men came to Guantanamo Bay with significant injuries, the documents report. Ghereby lost fingers in some sort of explosive incident; Umar had a leg amputated, possibly after stepping on a mine.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry thanked the Senegalese government for agreeing to take the men.

The continued operation of the detention facility weakens our national security by draining resources, damaging our relationships with key allies and partners, and serving as a propaganda tool for violent extremists, Kerry said in a statement.

Under current U.S. law, the Obama administration cannot repatriate detainees from a small group of unstable countries, including Yemen and Libya.

The Libyans resettlement leaves 89 prisoners at Guantanamo, 35 of whom have been cleared to be transferred out.

While the Pentagon and State Department are racing to move cleared detainees as quickly as possible, the White House is continuing its effort to persuade lawmakers to allow others to be brought to the United States.

Some of those detainees are deemed too dangerous to release but cannot be tried, because prosecutors do not have adequate evidence they can present to a military judge.

Earlier this year, Obama made the case for shutting down the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, saying it was time to close a difficult chapter in American history.

In 2015, the State Department removed the LIFG from its list of foreign terrorist organizations. Since Gaddafis ouster in 2011, some former LIFG members have joined the Libyan government.

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U.S. Special Operations forces are using rifle sights that are supposed to help shooters accurately hit their targets but instead have a defect, acknowledged by the manufacturer, that potentially endangers the lives of service members in combat, according to court records and military officials. Wp Get the full experience. Choose your plan ArrowRight The U.S. government is aware of the problem and sued the sights maker in November for fraud, accusing the company, L-3 Communications, of covering up a variety of issues with the sight, which has been used by every branch of the military, the FBI, the State Department and local law enforcement.

The company quickly settled for $25.6 million. A sight that almost works is not acceptable, said Naval Criminal Investigative Service Director Andrew Traver in a news release the day the settlement was announced.

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But more than four months later, the equipment has not been recalled or replaced, say current service members and military officials. Instead, it is still used by some units under Special Operations Command (SOCOM), according to Navy Cmdr. Matthew Allen, a spokesman for SOCOM. Units under SOCOM include Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, Marine Corps Special Operation units, Delta Force and SEAL Team Six. The Marine Corps is also continuing to use thousands of the sights, said a Marine Corps spokesman, Maj. Tony Semelroth.

The company says it has fixed most of the problems raised in its dispute with the government  except for the one that could be the most serious, based on the governments allegations.

That problem, known as thermal drift because it is weather-related, can cause the holographic weapon sight, or HWS, to be off target by six to 12 inches when a shooter is 300 feet away from a target, a common distance in a combat zone, according to the governments lawsuit. Missing a target by as much as a foot can be disastrous for a soldier since it can be the difference between landing a fatal shot and missing the target.

In the lawsuit, an unnamed employee at the manufacturer was quoted as saying of this particular defect: This is likely one of the worst types of failure, since most users wont notice the problem until their life is on the line.

The defect tends to surface when the sight is exposed to extreme temperatures, both hot and cold, according to the company  a norm in some combat environments such as Afghanistan, where wide changes in temperature are common.

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The website of L-3s EOTech unit, which is responsible for the sight, acknowledges that the thermal-drift problem has not been resolved. There is no repair currently available to eliminate thermal drift, EOTechs website reads. If your HWS experiences a degree of thermal drift that is unacceptable to you . . . please contact EOTech . . . to obtain a refund of the purchase price.

We believe that many of our customers are satisfied with the performance of their holographic weapon sights, said Jason Maloni, a spokesman for EOTech, in an email. Maloni added that the company stands by its products and that it is pleased with the progress it is making toward remedying the thermal drift issue.

A joint force protection team of Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines practices advanced shooting techniques on a range in Kabul, Afghanistan. (Video: Marines)

The Pentagon acknowledges that some troops are using this particular sight. We take this matter very seriously and pledge an unshakable commitment to the safety and well-being of our U.S. forces, said Air Force Lt. Col. Eric Badger, a Pentagon spokesman.

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SOCOM spokesman Allen said the sights are only used in a role where the limitations of the equipment are not in conflict with the safety or effectiveness of our warfighters.

But others have moved more swiftly to remove the sights altogether. In December, just weeks after EOTech settled its lawsuit with the U.S. government, the Denver police department issued a department-wide memo to pull the sights off its rifles immediately.

A series of problems

Complaints about the sight and its various models date back to the mid-2000s, soon after the Pentagon began regularly purchasing the equipment, a small rectangular device that sits on top of the rifle and projects holographic crosshairs over the target to help the shooter aim.

In winter 2007, when the company tried to secure a contract with the Norwegian military, the Norwegians found that in temperatures below 20 degrees, the sight began to fail, court documents assert. The crosshairs would expand and distort, causing the sight to be inaccurate.

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EOTech tried to fix the cold-weather issue but never told the Pentagon, which had by then purchased large quantities of the sight, according to the U.S. governments lawsuit.

Around this time, court records allege, a sales and marketing employee wrote an email to EOTechs co-founder voicing concern that the company was not properly disclosing the cold-weather defect.

Is it worth risking one persons life on this? What if there is a guy in the mountains in Afghanistan, and he brings up his sight . . . on the enemy who has the drop on him with an AK[?], the employee wrote. He takes aim as quickly as possible and puts a shot that misses wide due to the distortion of the reticle [the crosshairs]. Hes dead a fraction of a second later. . . . This is a dramatic example, but this is the risk that is posed the longer the end-user is unaware of the risk.

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In spring 2008, EOTech presented the problem to the U.S. military and said it had a solution, according to the lawsuit.

In its proposal, the company stated that EOTech has not received a single report of a problem from the field regarding optical performance of the sight at cold temperature and failed to mention that the Norwegians had rejected the sights because the issue could put their soldiers lives at risk, according to the governments complaint. The firm claimed that the fix was undertaken on the companys own initiative, the lawsuit said.

Meanwhile, another problem was emerging with the sight  this one having to do with its performance in humid climates.

Despite EOTech advertising that some of its sights were waterproof after being submerged 66 feet underwater, the sights  through faulty seals  would accumulate moisture, causing the glass around the crosshairs to fog and the crosshairs themselves to dim, according to the lawsuit. Even though EOTech knew about the issue for years, as alleged in court records, the company did not tell the U.S. military until March 2013 during a contract review and after a video on YouTube appeared that showed the crosshairs fading.

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In July 2014, the company told the Pentagon it had fixed this other problem as well. In the run-up to the announcement, however, there were still worries inside the company, according to the lawsuit.

A project manager relayed concerns from an employee to EOTechs president, according to court records, saying, [The employee] is concerned that as an operator goes through that door in combat that the device will fail causing the operator to be killed or wounded.

In both cases  with the cold-weather problem and with the humidity issue  EOTech said the fixes were upgrades to a sight it claimed had already met the militarys specifications, according to the lawsuit.

But a year later, the FBI, which was also using the sights, stumbled on yet another issue with the equipment after conducting tests in its ballistic research facility.

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Unlike the problem discovered by the Norwegians, the crosshairs did not change shape. Nor did it dim as with the humidity problem. Instead, hot or cold temperatures were causing the reticle to move, unbeknown to the user.

With help from the U.S. Navys Crane division, the FBI presented EOTech with evidence of the problem, called thermal drift. In November, the U.S. government sued the company for fraud. The company settled on the same day the lawsuit was filed.

A disclaimer included with the equipment after the settlement acknowledges the thermal-drift issue. A month later, EOTech president Paul Mangano, who was also named in the governments lawsuit, resigned from the company. Mangano declined to comment for this article.

Marines still use the sights

By this time, the sights were widely in use by the U.S. military. Since 2001, according to publicly available contract data, EOTech has been paid about $24 million in the purchasing of the sights. Every branch of service, including the Coast Guard, has purchased them.

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The item is so ubiquitous that the Twitter account of the Navy SEALs, who are still using the sight, features a picture of a person holding a rifle mounted with the EOTech product.

According to Marine Corps spokesman Semelroth, the Marine Corps continues to use 6,000 of the sights purchased between 2007 and 2012  the years in which some of the most serious issues were found with the sights.

At this time, the Marine Corps has not been directed nor does it intend to dispose of these systems unless defects are discovered that jeopardize our Marines safety or negatively impacts their abilities to accomplish the mission, Semelroth said in an email.

Toward the end of last year, SOCOM issued a military-wide Safety of Use Message that highlighted the limitations of the sight, noting that the military was developing a bridging strategy for the equipment.

According to Allen, SOCOM is evaluating other sights, including a potentially improved version of the EOTech for a long-term replacement for SOCOMs close-combat sight requirements. Semelroth said the Marine Corps is conducting a similar search and running a series of tests on its EOTech inventory to confirm performance meets or exceeds the equipment requirement.

State Department security teams also use the sight at U.S. consulates and embassies around the world, though they do not use the sight exclusively, according to Aaron Testa, a State Department Diplomatic Security spokesman.

According to Testa, the State Department Diplomatic Security Service is in the process of procuring replacements for those EOTech optics we have deemed necessary to replace.

Following the lawsuits settlement, EOTech has also not issued a recall.

Anthony Tai, an EOTech co-founder who later served as the chief technology officer of the company until 2011, said that the company should have recalled the sight. As one of its original designers, Tai was consulted on a number of the equipments issues prior to his departure from the company, according to the lawsuit.

But you recall it and then what? said Tai, who still occasionally consults for the company and said the firm has struggled to resolve the problem. You need to replace it with something that has all the problems fixed. No point in replacing it with the same thing.

EOTechs sights are just one of many publicly available products that accomplish the same task. And some other government agencies have already gotten rid of the holographic weapons sights.

During an October visit to the FBIs armory, agency personnel were seen disposing of the sights in bulk. The FBI, which declined to comment, uses sights manufactured by Aimpoint.

Allen said EOTech is not fulfilling any new contracts with the militarys Special Operations forces. But EOTech has not been prohibited from submitting for future business.

Julie Tate and Steven Rich contributed to this report.

This story has been updated to clarify remarks by Cmdr. Matthew Allen, a spokesman for SOCOM.

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A Nevada inmate who was forced to rip out his own teeth after his requests for medical attention were denied was just granted a $60,000 settlement from the state.

During his 2012 stint in solitary confinement at High Desert State Prison, Michael Sanzo, 47, made multiple complaints to guards after the sharp pain he had been feeling in his bottom teeth became unbearable.

On an emergency grievance form he filed on October 9, 2012, Sanzo wrote that teeth were moving back and forth "like piano keys."

"I can barely take the pain any longer," the form read. "I can barely eat, I can't sleep at night."

Sanzo began to write letters to prison staffers in the hopes that someone would recognize his pain and offer assistance.

His sixth letter, written three months after the first, read, "I have had to cry myself to sleep in such pain!"

For eight months, guards gave Sanzo the same response: wait your turn.

The pain worsened, and Sanzo eventually took matters into his own hands. He removed six teeth on his own, and according to court documents eventually attempted suicide by asphyxiation with a bed sheet.

In a written letter to Sanzo, the a dental assistant for the prison cited the large population at the facility as an obstacle to treatment.

"You need to look at the big picture. A lot of inmates here," the assistant wrote.
PARIS (Reuters) - French luxury group Kering on Monday named Belgian designer Anthony Vaccarello, 36, as the new creative director of fashion brand Yves Saint Laurent. He will replace Hedi Slimane, who is stepping down after four years at the brand's creative helm. A source told Reuters on Friday that Vaccarello was set to take over. Italian fashion house Versace had announced earlier on Monday that Vaccarello would quit as creative director of its Versus Versace brand. Vaccarello will present his first collection for Yves Saint Laurent in October during Paris Spring-Summer 2017 fashion week, Kering said in a statement. (Reporting by Dominique Vidalon; Editing by James Regan)
Tripoli (AFP) - Libya's unity government received a boost to its authority Thursday, as 10 cities formerly under control of a rival militia-backed Tripoli body pledged support to the newly arrived prime minister-designate.

The arrival of UN-backed Fayez al-Sarraj at a naval base on Wednesday drew fury from the non-recognised authority in charge of Tripoli, which demanded he leave or surrender.

But 10 coastal cities in the west of the country called on all Libyans to "support the national unity government" in a major blow to the unrecognised authority that is refusing to give up power.

The announcement came in a statement on the official Facebook page of the Sabratha municipality, which also asked the government to "put an immediate end to all armed conflicts across Libya".

Gunmen stormed the headquarters of a Libyan television station overnight, apparently in support of the new government, but the capital appeared calm on Thursday.

Banks and shops were open, police were posted on the streets and flights had resumed at Metiga airport after being suspended the day before "for security reasons".

"The reactions have been better than we hoped for. The situation is good," an adviser to Sarraj told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The international community hailed the new government's arrival as a crucial step in restoring order to Libya, which has been wracked by chaos since the NATO-backed overthrow of Moamer Kadhafi in 2011.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said in a Thursday statement that Sarraj's arrival "marks an important step in Libya's democratic transition and path to peace".

Formed under a power-sharing deal agreed in December, the unity government is meant to take over from rival groups running the country.

Libya has had two administrations since mid-2014 when the militia alliance overran Tripoli, setting up its own authority and forcing the internationally recognised parliament to flee to the country's remote east.

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- Travel ban, asset freeze -

International leaders, increasingly alarmed by the rise of jihadists and people-smugglers in the impoverished North African state, have called on Libya's political rivals to back the unity government.

EU member states on Thursday agreed to impose sanctions on three Libyans for obstructing the formation of Sarraj's government.

One European source said the measures comprise "a ban on travelling in the European Union and a freeze on assets in the EU".

A European diplomatic source told AFP recently that EU sanctions would target the Tripoli government's prime minister Khalifa Ghweil, the head of the General National Congress Nuri Abu Sahmein, and Aguila Saleh, speaker of Libya's internationally recognised government.

Sarraj held talks with officials including lawmakers and local mayors on Thursday and was set to meet the governor of Libya's central bank to discuss the nation's crumbling economy.

"We have effectively started work today," the UN-backed body's vice president Moussa el-Koni told AFP.

Around 300 people gathered in the centre of Tripoli, waving banners and flags in support of the unity government.

But the prime minister-designate still faces an uphill battle, with the Tripoli government on Wednesday insisted he leave the capital or "hand himself in".

- 'Task to fight terrorism' -

Italy's Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni, who spoke by phone with Sarraj, said Rome would authorise urgent food and medical aid to be distributed by the new administration.

A total of 860 tonnes of aid including food and medicine for 30,000 patients would be handed out, his ministry said.

Western powers are especially worried by the growth of the Islamic State group in Libya.

The jihadist organisation has seized control of Kadhafi's coastal hometown of Sirte and launched a wave of attacks, both against rival Libyan forces and across the border in Tunisia.

Western countries are considering military action against the jihadists in Libya but want a unity government to request help first.
Wedding bells, funeral processions and baby notices all have their tax consequences. What happens in your life in a given year affects your tax return more than what Congress does.

Life changes drive many more tax benefits than standard end-of-year tax law changes, says Mark Steber, chief taxation office of Jackson-Hewitt. But not all life events are good for your bottom line. So, before you use past returns to help prepare this years, see if any of these 12 life events will affect your income taxes.

1. Going to college

The IRS offers the American Opportunity Credit for college students. It is worth up to $2,500 and applies to students who are enrolled at least half-time in the first four years of college. (Parents of college students also can qualify.) Student-loan interest is also deductible as long as the student can no longer be claimed as a dependent. It also doesnt matter if the students parents paid the interest, because the debt is in the students name. Students also can deduct qualified education expenses up to $4,000 using the tuition and fees deduction.

2. New job

A few tax deductions can apply to you if you get a new job. If you had to move more than 50 miles to take a new job or relocate for your current employer, the IRS will let you deduct the expenses you incur. That includes gas if you drive your own car for the move. Any specialized work clothes or uniforms unsuitable for everyday use can be deducted as an unreimbursed employee expense (no, you cant deduct those Manolos just because you got a job at Vogue.) If you join a labor union as part of your new job, any dues or initiation fees also can be deducted as an unreimbursed employee expense.

Related: Test Your Tax Knowledge: Are These 10 Deductions Legit or Not?

3. Got married

Getting married changes your tax filing status. There are two options: married filing jointly and married filing separately. The choice thats right for you and your spouse depends on your individual incomes. Spouses with very different salaries might benefit most from filing jointly. The one with the lower salary can pull the other spouse into a lower tax bracket, reducing their taxes. Those filing jointly also can get higher charitable contribution limits and jobless spouses can have their own IRAs.

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Spouses with similar earnings could consider filing separately to avoid a higher tax bracket. Spouses who file separately can hit the adjusted gross income requirements sooner for miscellaneous deductions or for deducting unreimbursed health care expenses. But filing separately can affect deductions for IRA contributions and can eliminate the child tax credit among other breaks.

4. Having a baby

Expenses related to trying to have a baby can be deductible. The cost of a pregnancy test kit as well as medical procedures such as in vitro fertilization and surgery to reverse a vasectomy can be deductible medical expenses. Typically, you can deduct medical and dental expenses that add up to more than 10 percent of your adjusted gross income. Once you have a baby, the cost of breast pumps and supplies that assist lactation are considered deductible medical expenses.

Parents also qualify for a $4,000 exemption for each qualifying child this year. On top of that, parents can get the child tax credit for any dependent child under 17, which is worth up to $1,000 per child. Working parents can claim the child care and dependent care credit to cover the cost of child care (up to $3,000 for one child and $6,000 for more) that enabled either spouse to work or look for a job.

5. Adopting a child

In addition to the above child exemption and credits, parents who adopt a child can get an adoption credit and exclusion. The credit is worth up to $13,400 per child this year and includes any expenses related to the adoption such as home study and other adoption fees, court costs, attorney fees, traveling expenses and other directly related expenses. The credit is nonrefundable, but any excess credit may be carried forward up to five years. If your employer provides any adoption assistance, the IRS excludes this from your income.

6. Buying a house

If you bought a house with a mortgage, you can deduct any interest you pay on that loan. That can also include a second mortgage, line of credit or home equity loan secured by your primary or secondary home. The deduction is typically limited to mortgages $1 million or less and typically up to $100,000 in interest on home equity debt can be deducted.

If you paid for points when you got your mortgage, you can deduct them all if you meet several requirements. Also, if you put less than 20 percent down for your home purchase and are paying for mortgage premium insurance, the IRS allows you to subtract those annual payments. Last, local or state real estate taxes on your home are deductible on your federal taxes.

Related: The 8 Most Common Tax Mistakes That Can Cost You Hundreds

7. Starting your own business

Fledgling businesses and their owners can deduct some startup costs, such as legal fees, marketing and advertising costs and any bank fees. Any interest on a business loan is a tax-deductible business expense. Similarly, any credit card interest you incur for business purchases is tax-deductible. Office supplies such as paper, computers, printers or scanners can be deducted if they are used only for the business. If you expect the equipment to last longer than year, it should be depreciated on the tax return. Repairs on business equipment are also eligible as a tax deduction.

8. Taking care of elderly parents

Adult children can claim their parents as dependents if they pass a series of tests. The parents gross income must be less than $4,000 and the adult child must provide more than half of a persons total support during the year. The elderly parent doesnt necessarily have to live with the adult child to qualify.

Additionally, the adult child may claim the child and dependent care credit if the parent is claimed as a dependent or would have been claimed as one except their gross income exceeded the exemption amount.

If you paid for your parents medical care, including the cost of prescription medicine, equipment, doctor's visits or hospital stays, you can deduct those expenses if they exceed 10 percent of your adjust gross income. This deduction is available even if the parent cant be claimed as a dependent.

9. Getting divorced

If you receive spousal support from a divorce, that amount must be included as income on your tax return. If you pay alimony to your ex-spouse, that amount is deductible in the year it was paid (including back alimony). The IRS also considers life insurance premiums, payments to a third party on behalf of your ex-spouse and payments for jointly owned home as alimony. You will need the alimony recipient's Social Security number to get the adjustment. If your spouse does not provide the SSN, they are subject to a $50 penalty. Child support isnt deductible for the person paying it and isnt considered taxable income for the parent who receives it. However, the parent who pays child support can claim the child as a dependent if the other parent signs a Release/Revocation of Release of Claim to Exemption for Child by Custodial Parent.

10. Job loss

Severance pay or unemployment benefits are taxable as are any payments for accumulated vacation or sick time. Make sure enough taxes are withheld from these payments. While looking for a new job, you can deduct certain expenses such as employment and outplacement agency fees, resume preparation, and travel for job interviews. Job seekers can claim the Lifetime Learning Credit, worth up to $2,000, if they take any higher education course or courses that are meant to lead to a new job.

Related: The 7 Taxes We Hate the Most

11. Retirement

Generally, your Social Security income will only be taxed if you have income from other sources and your combined income is more than a certain base amount. Regular IRA and 401(k) distributions are taxed as income. But you dont need to take distributions from those accounts until you reach 70.5 years. After that, you must take the required minimum distribution from your IRAs and Roths, which will be taxed, or face a steep penalty. But you can roll part of that distribution directly to a charity to reduce your adjusted gross income, up to $100,000. Retirees who want to enhance their education can also claim the Lifetime Learning Credit, which is worth up to $2,000 and applies to any higher education course or courses.

12. Spouses death

In the year of the spouses death, the surviving spouse can file as married filing jointly or married filing separately. If you have a dependent child or stepchild and havent remarried, you can file as a qualifying widow(er) with dependent child for the next two years. After that, you much file with either has head of household or a single filer. Most simple estates dont require an estate tax return. Those that do have combined gross assets and prior taxable gifts exceeding $5,430,000 in 2015. Estates can also pass any of the deceased spouses unused exemption to the surviving spouse. If the deceased spouse would have had to pay taxes on the retirement account distributions, then the surviving spouse will still have to pay those taxes.
Although admitted student days are often confused with prospective student days, these events are a distinct entity unto themselves. As their name implies, admitted student days are open only to students who have already been accepted to a particular college or university.

These are different from events aimed at prospective students, which are open to anyone who would like to attend. Admitted student days share several similarities with their prospective-student-focused counterparts, but as they are specifically designed for students with offers of admission, they can help families gauge what life on a given campus is like.

There are several clear reasons to take advantage of these spring events, including the following.

[Learn about five last-semester tasks for college-bound high school seniors.]

1. Their ability to ease the college transition. The transition from high school to college can be challenging for both students and their families. In many cases, your initial campus visit during the pre-admissions or admissions processes may have been your only visit to your new home, which can make it difficult to plan for the specifics of your transition.

Admitted student days can help in this regard. At these events, students can learn valuable information about academics, extracurricular opportunities, housing and support systems, and a number of other areas. For instance, what appliances are permitted in the dorms? How many people will you live with in your freshman year?

Because students who are attending these events have already fully researched the school, applied and been admitted, they can ask more targeted questions than those that they may have asked at a prospective student event. The more details students and family members learn about the college or university before matriculating in the fall, the more comfortable they can all be with the eventual transition.

2. Their ability to further inform the decision-making process. Since admitted student days are sometimes held before students must inform schools of their decision regarding enrollment, they can be powerful tools for still-undecided students and their parents to weigh institutions.

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The information that students can glean from panel presentations, as well as the targeted questions that they can ask, can be compared across multiple colleges and universities. Students can then select the school that best addresses their unique needs and interests.

For example, if you have a particular major in mind, you can evaluate the department opportunities and support at each institution. If you applied for financial aid, attending financial aid sessions during admitted student days can be a very useful exercise. These sessions can help you determine what sort of aid you can expect to receive from different schools, which will allow you to make an informed decision.

You can also take a second campus tour, this time in a group that consists entirely of admitted students -- and your potential peers -- during a time when classes are in session, thus enabling you to gain a deeper sense of the campus atmosphere.

[Find out what current students have to say about making your final college choice.]

3. Their ability to introduce the day-to-day college experience. The information that has been outlined above is crucial for students who are looking to ease their transition to college, and for those who are looking to choose between schools. But on-campus admitted student events offer a third advantage -- they are the ideal environment for students who hope to experience true college life at a given campus to do so.

In addition to campus tours, students can explore the city or town in which the college or university is located, and you may be permitted to stay overnight in the dorms with actual students at the university. Beyond learning about academics, extracurricular opportunities and financial aid, experiences such as these can often be the most important factor in a student confidently choosing a school to attend.

Although students and family members who have attended a college's prospective student day earlier in the college decision process may not feel as though they need to attend an admitted student day as well, there is useful information that can be gathered from such events.

Whether students are still in the process of making their decision about which school to attend in the fall, or whether they have made up their minds and simply wish to begin a seamless transition to college, they should take advantage of these opportunities for admitted students.

Bradford Holmes is a professional SAT and Latin tutor with Varsity Tutors. He earned his B.A. from Harvard University and his master's degree from the University of Southern California.
(Reuters) - 3D printer maker 3D Systems Corp said it appointed former HP Inc executive Vyomesh Joshi as its president and chief executive. Joshi, who headed HP's printing business, succeeds Andy Johnson, who was serving as the interim president and CEO, the company said in a statement on Monday. The past two years have been tumultuous for 3D Systems, with its stock crashing about 90 percent as investors raised questions about the viability of consumer 3D printers. The company's former chief executive, Avi Reichental, stepped down last year in a mutual agreement with the board. (Reporting by Narottam Medhora in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)
High schoolers will soon have another way to prepare for the ACT: the PreACT.

The PreACT, announced last month, will primarily serve as a practice test for the ACT college entrance exam, and is geared toward 10th-graders, says Paul Weeks, senior vice president for client relations at ACT, the organization behind the two exams. However, there will also be an education and career planning component to the new exam, he says.

Anathea Simpkins, director of college prep programs for Sylvan Learning, a private tutoring organization, thinks the PreACT will essentially be the ACT's version of the PSAT, the preliminary exam for another popular college admissions exam and ACT's main competitor -- the SAT.

[Get information on how parents, teens can make use of PSAT scores.]

The PreACT and PSAT have similarities -- both are aimed at 10th-graders and are designed to prep students for their corresponding college entrance exams. However, the PSAT is also the qualifying exam for the prestigious National Merit Scholarship. Weeks says the PreACT is not associated with any scholarship opportunities.

Before the PreACT makes its debut this fall, parents and high schoolers should know a few facts about the new exam.

1. Initially, students will only be able to take the PreACT if their school offers it. The only students who need to be concerned about the PreACT are those whose schools are offering it, says Simpkins.

Students will initially only have access to the exam if their school, district or state is offering it -- the organization won't be offering consumers the chance to sign up on their own, Weeks says.

2. The PreACT will closely mirror the ACT. The content, format and question types will simulate what students will see on the ACT, says Weeks, but the PreACT will be shorter than the ACT.

Both the PreACT and the ACT will test students in English, math, reading and science; however, the PreACT will not have an optional writing test like the ACT.

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Plus, both exams will be scored on a 1 to 36 scale. Schools should receive students' scores within five to 10 days of submitting completed tests to ACT, Weeks says. Schools will also receive an estimated ACT score range for each student.

And while there is an online option to complete the ACT, the PreACT will only be administered on paper initially, he says.

3. There's more to the PreACT than practicing for the ACT. PreACT test-takers will be asked to provide information on their interests, the courses they plan to take in high school and their expected college major, Weeks says.

That information will then be distributed to students with their results. The idea is to help parents and counselors start important conversations related to college and careers.

4. Teens shouldn't worry too much about prepping for the PreACT. The best preparation for the PreACT is to take courses like those in English, social studies, science and math, which tend to develop skills that are measured on the ACT, says Weeks. And the more rigorous, the better, he says.

Taking the PreACT as a 10th-grader might help a student determine what he or she has to do to get ready for the ACT, he says.

[Find out what students should know before starting SAT, ACT prep.]

Simpkins says the PreACT gives students an opportunity to practice for the ACT. But it will also provide students, parents and educators with a way to identify a student's strengths and weaknesses -- information they can use to build and refine the skills students will need to be successful in college and beyond.

She'd recommend students take the exam if they have the option.

Have something of interest to share? Send your news to us at highschoolnotes@usnews.com.

Alexandra Pannoni is an education Web producer at U.S. News. You can follow her on Twitter or email her at apannoni@usnews.com.
South America is a melting pot of culture, history and natural wonders. Considered the "middle of the world," Quito, Ecuador, offers travelers a unique opportunity to walk the equatorial line and immerse themselves in amazing cultures while reaching staggering heights. The city stands at 9,350 feet above sea level, and according to Quito Turismo, the city's official tourism bureau, Quito is the only place on earth where one can simultaneously have one foot in the Northern Hemisphere and the other in the Southern Hemisphere.

Quito extends along the western edge of the Andes Mountain Range. The climate varies, which is why it's best to always have a jacket handy, even on sunny days as temperatures can fluctuate. The city's dry season spans from May until September; the rainy season lasts from October to December. And regardless of when you want to visit, there are plenty of enticements to go. Without further ado, here are four reasons to visit Quito in 2016.

[See: 7 Cities in South America to Tack On to Your Rio Olympics Trip.]

There Are Plenty of Historic Spots

The capital's historic district, considered the largest and best preserved in Latin America, was declared a World Heritage site. Across the city, you'll find spots such as La Compania de Jesus, the Baroque masterpiece of America and La Plaza Grande, the center of Quito's historic achievements, which narrates the history of the city. After checking out storied sights, visit the San Francisco religious complex and walk along La Ronda, a cobblestone street filled with charming workshops and galleries.

There's Top-Notch Cuisine

One of the top reasons worth visiting Quito is its flavorful Latin-influenced traditional dishes. According to the Quito tourism board, the Locro (potato soup), seco de chivo (braised goat stew), fritada (fry-up), empanadas, envueltos (corn dough wrapped in leaves and steam cooked), chili pepper sauces, fruit juices and helado de paila (sherbet) are not-to-be-missed staples. These authentic plates can be found in traditional restaurants and markets across the city.

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[See: 10 Things Every Traveler Must Know Before Going to Brazil This Summer.]

The Unbeatable Location

As a gateway to geographic treasures across the region, Quito serves as an excellent jumping-off point for exploration. During your trip, make sure to check out the Pacific Coast's quaint fishing towns and beaches. Another geographic highlight: the Andes. Plus, Quito offers easy access to the Galapagos Islands and the natural wonders of the Amazon.

[Read: 6 Things Every Traveler Should Know About the Zika Virus.]

New Direct Flights From the U.S.

Recently, JetBlue Airways started offering daily flights aboard its spacious 150-seat Airbus A320 aircraft between Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport (FLL) and Quito's Mariscal Sucre International Airport (UIO).

"Quito is one of the fastest growing destinations in Latin America and a world-class tourism destination. We are thrilled to bring our award-winning service and low fares to this underserved market," says Dave Clark, vice president network planning at JetBlue Airways. Quito is one of more than 80 destinations served by JetBlue, which offers many flights to the Caribbean and Latin America.
The Hague (AFP) - Around 45 kilograms (99 pounds) of ammunition were found in an apartment in the Dutch city of Rotterdam that has been linked to a foiled terror attack on France, prosecutors said Monday.

French suspect Anis Bahri was arrested at the flat in the southern port city on March 27 at France's request. He is suspected of planning an attack in France for the Islamic State group along with Reda Kriket, another suspect arrested near Paris a few days before him.

"We have found around 45 kilos of ammunition, including two types of bullets which can both be used with Kalashnikovs," Wim de Bruin, a spokesman for the national prosecutor's office said.

He said no explosives or any arms had been found.

Bahri has been fighting extradition and is in custody until Dutch authorities take a decision on whether to send him to France.
The start of the day sets the tone for everything that follows. Therefore, it's important to be conscientious about how you jump-start your early hours if you want to generate more energy and enthusiasm throughout the workday. Here are five morning rituals that can help lead to a happier and more productive experience all day long, no matter where you work.

[Read: 6 Ways to Be More Productive at Work.]

1. Get started sooner. As tempting as it is to hit the snooze button again, early risers tend to be both happier and experience a higher level of general satisfaction in life, according to a 2012 study from the University of Toronto. With that in mind, therapist and social worker Jennifer Rollin notes that making the decision to wake up earlier has significantly improved her morning routine. "When I wake up early I have more time, and subsequently feel less rushed," says Rollin. "In addition, there is something peaceful about being awake before most people are up." Rollin cautions that, like any habit, this one may take some time to stick. "To start, try setting your alarm for 30 minutes earlier than you would usually wake up. It is also important that you go to bed earlier, as sleep deprivation will only serve to decrease your productivity and overall happiness."

2. No email with eggs. Many people launch their day sucked into the black hole of email. Yet this practice can drain your focus and productivity from your own priorities, putting other people's agendas front and center and derailing fresh morning momentum that could be spent on strategic initiatives. To avoid this poor start, Richard Humphrey, CFO of ImagineAir, an on-demand air travel service, is a stickler for allowing absolutely no email before breakfast. "I like to start my day with a fresh mind and real conversations with my family before starting into email," says Humphrey. "Simply put, let your brain wake up first before assuming the iPhone prayer pose."

[Read: 6 Steps to Spring Clean Your Workspace and Boost Productivity.]

3. Implement a "power hour." As an alternative to breakfast with email, Felicite Moorman, CEO of BuLogics, which designs, builds and certifies wireless solutions for The Internet of Things, recommends everyone in the company take a "power hour" at 10 each morning. "A power hour is a deep, uninterrupted dive into the hardest, most challenging thing on their list," Moorman says. "Our mental energies are at their highest and everyone in accomplishment mode creates an intensity, and respect for that intensity that is palpable." She adds that even if you can't do a team-wide power hour, the tactic provides a great way for individuals to get a feeling of efficacy and efficiency that lasts the whole day.

4. Suggest a walking meeting. Nothing says "yawn" like starting the morning with a boring meeting. Instead of sitting in a stuffy room watching PowerPoint or listening to long-winded discussion, suggest that your team take a walk together in the morning to discuss the day's agenda. Steven Handmaker, chief marketing officer of Assurance, an independent insurance brokerage, reports that this plan is currently being implemented in his office with the use of standing desk treadmills facing each other in the meeting room so that employees can get active during morning meetings. "People tend to have more creative thinking ability while they're active," Handmaker says. "Investing in just a few of those trendy standing treadmill desks is a great way to provide value to the whole staff and not have them feel the pressure of having to use it all day." He suggests that if the equipment investment is too high, teams can still take meetings outside and walk in a nearby park.

[Read: 3 Job Evils That Pollute Your Productivity.]

5. Nix the negative. Many of us are creatures of habit, which can serve us for good or for ill. If your morning rituals trend toward the mind-numbing, it may be time to make some changes. Marilyn Suttle, president of Suttle Enterprises, a professional training company located in Michigan, suggests taking a week to observe your typical morning patterns to determine what wastes your time and leaves you feeling drained or unproductive. "Is it a quick morning Facebook check that consistently steals a half hour or more of your morning?" Suttle says. "To be polite, have you become the victim of a co-worker's daily morning gabfest? Do you start with self-criticism and shortcomings from the previous day? Notice the pattern, and you can change it."
Iceland has become the place to go, mostly because you can't round a corner without stumbling upon an awe-inspiring landscape or a natural wonder. A few years ago, Iceland was just a hidden, under-the-radar gem known only by locals and intrepid visitors. But these days, more and more tourists are flocking to Iceland's stunning geothermal spas, dramatic fjords and majestic glaciers to catch a glimpse of the country's breathtaking landscapes. Offering more than just cascading waterfalls, the northern lights and dreamy landscapes, Iceland offers plenty for visitors to uncover -- from mouthwatering cuisine to genuine hospitality. Here are five enticements to plan a trip this year.

The Breathtaking Natural Wonders

The best way to embrace the natural beauty Iceland has to offer is to drive along Route 1 (or Ring Road), the 830-mile highway that circles the entire country. One can't-miss place is the Snfellsnes glacier in western Iceland. This scenic hike offers jaw-dropping views of neighboring fjords. And for an unspoiled view of the aurora borealis, visit Thingvellir National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Afterward, uncover the island's famed Seljalandsfoss waterfall, where you'll be bet met with stunning views of the sunset, or trek over 15 miles over the mountains of Thorsmork National Park and watch the horizon and vast landscape consisting of alpine lakes, lush forests and rolling hills unfold in front of you.

The Healing Hot Springs

Iceland is speckled with hot springs. Since you won't be able to visit every single hot spring the country has to offer in one trip, hit the highlights. Start by visiting the iconic Blue Lagoon, which stays at 96 degrees Fahrenheit or higher, and is located right outside Reykjavik, Iceland's capital city. Another well-known area is Geysir Hot Springs, which is located in Haukadulr, at the southern tip of Iceland, and is known for erupting water columns that can reach up to 150 feet into the air. And Snorralaug, which is located in the western region of Reykholt, is home to one of the oldest springs in Iceland, dating back to the 12th century. Meanwhile, a little lesser-known hot spring, Hveragerdi, is made up of two springs, the Blue Hot Springs and Riverside Hot Springs, and is located in southern Iceland.

The Fresh Nordic Cuisine

The cuisine in Iceland is primarily Nordic, but you'll also find Asian- and European-influenced dishes, too. If you're not sure what to eat, start with seafood. The island boasts an incredible bounty of seafood, from organic cod to lobsters, salmon and more. Start with dishes like plokkfishkur (fish mashed with potatoes), fresh scallop fish stew with bold seasonings or seared salmon with fresh berry jam. Iceland is also known for its grass-fed meats, such as beef and lamb. And you can't visit Reykjavik without stopping at the most popular eatery in town, the hot dog stand. Here, you'll enjoy an all lamb hot dog topped with mustard, crunchy onions and remoulade. And if you're feeling daring, try the fermented shark with a shot of Black Death (a popular Icelandic drink made with the spirit Brennivin) to wash it down.

The Welcoming Locals

Icelandic locals are known for their wit and genuine hospitality. Proud and passionate about their culture, many residents enjoy locals sharing stories and myths they've heard from their families. Also, if you happen to be visiting around Christmastime, make sure to embark on one country's many elf-time strolls and themed festivities. Icelandic residents are also resilient and daring, and are known for being up for late-night drinks, long hikes in the mountains and thrilling activities, such as ATV rides and ski jumps. For a taste of true Icelandic tradition, visit the Frystiklefinn (or The Freezer), which is a professional theater and hostel in the quaint town of Rif in West Iceland. If you can, catch the one-person show, Hetja, at the theater. Featuring the incredibly talented Kari Viarsson, the show tells the story of one of the local legends of Rif, and is packed with plenty of Icelandic humor.

The Convenience Factor

The flight from Washington, D.C., New York City and Boston airports to Reykjavik take less than five hours, and most routes are nonstop. Plus, Icelandair offers plenty of direct, year-round flights to Reykjavik from major hubs across the country, including Seattle, Denver, Orlando, Florida and Vancouver, British Columbia. Another benefit of flying Icelandair is that the carrier offers short or longer stopovers in Iceland, allowing you to explore the country while in transit to another destination. Plus, the airline helps connect visitors with local tour groups and hotels in the country, making the trip-planning process easy and stress-free.
Investors routinely encounter obscure financial-industry terms. This may be off-putting, and may even discourage people from learning more about investing and personal finance.

Advisors recognize that jargon-filled conversations are counterproductive.

"Although personal investing is complicated, explaining it should not be," says Hank Mulvihill, principal at Mulvihill Asset Management in Richardson, Texas.

[See: 10 Best ETFs for Large-Cap Stock Growth.]

"In plain English, your advisors should be able to tell you what they do, and what tools they use to do the work," Mulvihill says. "You say that you don't know the difference between, or even the definition of mutual funds, annuities, stocks, bonds, cash-value policies, partnerships, managed accounts, options, futures, hedge funds? Or the endless variations of all of these? Your advisors should be able to tell you without using strange-sounding terminology. Your responsibility in the conversation is to stop them when they use terminology you don't understand. It is your money."

He also cautions investors to be wary of unfamiliar terms. "Don't be bamboozled by fancy words. Advisors love to show off the buzzwords of the business. Most of the time such jargon is either insecurity on the part of the advisor, inflated description of the investment choice, marketing, or all of these together," Mulvihill says.

Here are some common terms that may be confusing:

Active versus passive management. Broadly speaking, an actively managed mutual fund holds investments chosen by managers with the intention of beating a benchmark. Passive management typically refers to an investment style that aims to capture market performance -- not outperform the market -- by tracking an index. "Advisors often use these terms and I do not think that investors are always clear about what they are referring to," says Jimmy Lee, CEO at Wealth Consulting Group in Las Vegas.

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[See: 7 Agricultural Stocks and ETFs to Buy and Hold.]

Fiduciary. In the financial world, a fiduciary is legally and ethically obligated to act in the best interest of his or her client. "Consumers often do not understand this term," says Will Kelly, managing director at United Capital in Baltimore.

Kelly frames the difference by contrasting the role of a registered investment advisor versus a stock broker. "All Securities and Exchange Commission registered investment advisors are held to the fiduciary standard," he says. State-regulated advisors are also held to the fiduciary standard.

"There is a lesser standard in the brokerage landscape referred to as suitability. As long as the broker reasonably believes an investment to be 'suitable' for a client, he or she may buy or sell it," Kelly says.

Exchange-traded fund. An exchange-traded fund is a basket of investments that tracks an index, either a widely commercial product or one that's created specifically for the fund. ETFs may be traded throughout the day, the same as a stock. That's one key difference between an ETF and a mutual fund. ETFs often have lower fees than actively managed mutual funds.

In recent years, many advisors have gravitated away from more expensive, actively managed funds, and toward ETFs.

"When explaining ETFs to consumers, I explain that they are essentially index investments that trade like stocks. An index mutual fund gets re-priced once daily, following settlement of all of the funds underlying holdings. An ETF on the other hand, trades all day long on an exchange so the price varies throughout the day," Kelly says.

[Read: How Your Home Stacks Up as an Investment.]

Managed account. Many registered investment advisors have discretion over a client's account. That means the advisor has the authority to buy, sell and rebalance, without getting the client's permission before each trade. That is a very different process than working with a stock broker, who requires permission prior to each trade, or from managing one's own brokerage account.

"I often hear advisors use the term to their clients, and sometimes wonder if the investor understands what that means versus any other type of account they have," Lee says. "In my experience, when advisors use the term, they are referring to accounts managed on a discretionary basis by the advisor, compensated by a fee, rather than commissions. But I am not sure that investor knows the difference between this and a standard brokerage account that is not a part of any advisory agreement."

Market cycle. This is a term investment managers and the financial media often use to describe the performance of an investment over some period of time, which is dubbed a market cycle.

"Simply put, a market cycle is the time period during which the market rises to a peak -- a bull market -- then falls to a trough -- a bear market -- and then prices begin to rise again -- a bull market," Kelly says. "We never know the exact length of time over which a market cycle will occur."

Kate Stalter is founder of asset-management firm Better Money Decisions. You can reach her at www.bettermoneydecisions.com or on Twitter @katestalter.
The Daily Beast

Sputnik/Gavriil Grigorov/Pool via ReutersWith dozens of newly drafted troops already dead and Russian troops laying the groundwork for a retreat from a key Ukrainian city, the Kremlin has now revealed it is hoping to give its war a second wind by making ordinary Russians feel it as much as possible.Sergei Kirienko, the first deputy chief of staff of the presidential administration, said as much Saturday in a speech to a national conference of teachers, declaring that the war the Kremlin has unti
Oxygen

A Tampa-area family's long wait for answers about the disappearance of their husband and father has come to an end. The Tallahassee Police Department announced this week that skeletal remains had been found in a wooded area off Apalachee Parkway, a commercial road dotted with strip malls and hotels on the east side of the city. Shortly thereafter, they announced that, with information received from the local medical examiner's office, they had identified the deceased as Jason Winoker, 52, of Lan
Cam took to the stage at Sunday's Academy of Country Music Awards in a lace, embellished teacup dress in her trademark yellow color.

The singer, who received a standing ovation, performed "Burning House" during the show, which aired live on CBS from the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.

The ceremony, produced by Dick Clark Prods., is hosted by Luke Bryan and Dierks Bentley.

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See More: ACM Awards: Red Carpet Photos
Carrie Underwood took to the stage at Sunday's Academy of Country Music Awards in a one-shoulder metallic mini and knee-high gladiator sandals. She was nominated for female vocalist of the year.

The country queen performed her new single, "Church Bells," during the show with a graveyard-themed set, complete with billowing dry ice and zombie-esque drummers.

The ceremony, produced by Dick Clark Prods., was hosted by Luke Bryan and Dierks Bentley.

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See More: ACM Awards: Red Carpet Photos
By Mohammad Stanekzai and James Mackenzie LASHKAR GAH/SORAB, Afghanistan (Reuters) - The surprise withdrawal of Afghan forces from parts of Helmand province may leave large areas under Taliban control, but it should bolster the defenses of the volatile southern region, the country's top defense official said. Acting Defence Minister Masoom Stanekzai said it made little sense to spread forces across sparsely populated districts like Musa Qala and Naw Zad, where government troops pulled out in February. "We needed reorganization. There was a lot of pressure in different parts of Helmand," he told Reuters in Helmand, where he met local tribal elders and commanders of the Afghan army's 215th Corps last week. "It was exhausting forces in desert areas where they have less influence on the security of the civilians," he said. "More importantly, when you look at the strategy the terrorist groups are adopting, they are moving, they're in small groups, they move from one place to another place." The decision to relocate forces corresponded with the views of NATO commanders, who say Afghan troops have been spread too thinly in static checkpoints, handing the initiative to the Taliban. Hundreds of U.S. troops have been deployed to Helmand since February to support local soldiers in advising roles, while U.S. warplanes have stepped up air strikes there this year. Helmand, a mainly desert region bordering Pakistan, is of strategic and symbolic importance as a heartland of the Taliban. More American and British troops died there than in any other province of Afghanistan since arriving after the fall of the Islamist government in late 2001. The province also sits along major smuggling routes for drugs and weapons and is the region that accounts for the biggest share of opium cultivation, a key source of revenue to the Taliban. The Islamist militants' gains in the province underline the danger they pose to Afghan security, now NATO has withdrawn most combat troops, leaving a smaller training and advisory mission. The guerrilla movement is opposed to any foreign troops on Afghan soil, and wants to return to power in Kabul and reimpose its strict interpretation of Islamic law. CONTROLLING MOVEMENT Government forces are now grouped closer to the provincial capital Lashkar Gah and nearby towns including Marjah and Gereshk, straddling the main Highway One that links the major cities of Kandahar in the south and Herat in the west. To the north of the highway, they are also holding on in Sangin and in Kajaki, where they are protecting a vital dam and power station that supplies electricity to Kandahar. Adding to the challenge of outwitting a nimble enemy, the Western-backed government in Kabul must overcome public distrust of the local armed forces. "They are busy filling their own pockets rather than taking care of security," said Mohammad Akhondzada, one of hundreds of tribal elders and scholars who met in the provincial capital to express their concern about worsening security. "The Taliban are now at the doorstep of Lashkar Gah and threatening the city." The complex and shifting tribal politics of the province have defied central government control for decades. But the loss of the province would severely undermine the credibility of President Ashraf Ghani's government and leave the strategic city of Kandahar, birthplace of the Taliban, exposed. Stanekzai acknowledged that the situation was "not rosy", but said that by positioning troops in strategic zones where they could block the flow of fighters in and out of the province, security forces could regain the initiative. "We have to get the fighting out of the villages, we have to close the border, we have to reach the areas where the movement of fighters is taking place," he said. As well as the Taliban, government forces in Helmand have been fighting foreign groups including Al Qaeda and Islamic State sympathizers, and Stanekzai said their presence underlined the need for continued international support. But troops are weary after months of continuous fighting, their morale sapped by corruption, poor equipment and lack of supplies. The 215th corps is undergoing retraining and refitting and dozens of senior officers, including the corps commander, have been replaced. The corps recently retook the isolated southern district of Khanishin close to the border with Pakistan after persuading local people to abandon support for the Taliban, and Stanekzai said winning over the population would be vital. But after months of steady reverses, patience with the administration in Kabul is wearing thin. "People are fed up with injustice of government officials," said Hafizullah Khan, another elder at the Lashkar Gah meeting. "Therefore they're much closer to the Taliban and welcome them." (Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi in Kabul; Editing by Mike Collett-White)
SHURO-OBOD, Tajikistan (Reuters) - Gunmen from Afghanistan have released two Tajik road workers kidnapped in a cross-border raid last week, Tajikistan's border guard service said on Monday. Their release was negotiated, a spokesman for the service said by telephone. The attack, blamed by the regional government on drug smugglers, took place last Friday near the town of Shuro-obod in southeastern Tajikistan and prompted a temporary closure of the main road connecting Tajikistan and China. The impoverished former Soviet republic routinely reports incidents related to drug smugglers crossing its border with Afghanistan. One border guard died in a firefight with a small group of militants this month. (Reporting by Nazarali Pirnazarov; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)
By Dasha Afanasieva CESME, Turkey (Reuters) - As the European Union and Turkey focus on stemming the flow of Syrian refugees attempting perilous journeys across the Aegean sea to Greece, another migrant community whose numbers are also swelling says it is being overlooked. Largely denied the chance for legal resettlement in Europe and struggling to find work or support in Turkey, Afghans account for around a quarter of the migrants risking their lives in the small boats leaving Turkey's shore. Ahead of an emergency European Union summit with Turkey on Monday, the EU executive has announced the first payouts from a 3 billion euro ($3.3 billion) fund meant to help Turkey cope with an influx of more than 2.7 million Syrian refugees and encourage them to stay put. But while Afghans are unlikely to be prevented from using services such as medical centers and education facilities set up with European funds in Turkey, the fact they speak Pashto and Dari, rather than Arabic, risks excluding them from projects designed for Syrian refugees, aid workers warn. "The EU is not even discussing these issues and is exclusively focused on Syria," Kati Piri, the European Parliament's rapporteur for Turkey, told Reuters last month. "Even if the Syrian crisis would be solved tomorrow, there would still be a serious refugee crisis, with a large number of refugees in Turkey who don't have access to their rights." Afghan migrants in Turkey interviewed by Reuters said that over the past few years they had been denied interviews with U.N. refugee agency UNHCR that would formally determine their refugee status, a key step in the journey to being resettled. Polat Kizildag, program coordinator at ASAM, an organization which registers asylum seekers in Turkey, said they were generally told they were ineligible because Turkey was the third country on their journey and the expectation was that they apply for refugee status in their second, in many cases Iran. Human rights groups have said Iranian forces deport thousands of Afghans without giving them a chance to prove their asylum status and that they are pressured to leave the country. "We want to stay (in Turkey) but ... there is no support here. It's too expensive," said Najebullah, 45, a father of four originally from Kabul waiting in Cesme, on Turkey's Aegean coast, to make an illegal crossing to the Greek Island of Chios. "In Europe we will get work and they will help us," he said, echoing a commonly-held belief among the migrants flooding to Turkey's shore that once they arrive in Europe they will be more easily able to build a new life. Selin Unal, UNHCR spokeswoman in Turkey, said the most vulnerable, including Afghans, still received interviews, adding that close to 500 Afghans had been interviewed last year. She said the sheer numbers meant those most at risk were prioritized among UNHCR's active case load of some 254,000 non-Syrians. RESETTLEMENT WOES More than 63,000 Afghans came to Turkey last year, a sharp rise from 15,652 in 2014, according to ASAM, counting only those who registered. Some came directly from Afghanistan, others from Iran, where they had tried unsuccessfully to settle. Kirikkale, near Turkey's capital Ankara, is one of several satellite towns where registered Afghans are allowed to reside. Hakima Rezai, in her late thirties, said she was trying to get to Europe to be reunited with her four children, taken to Europe by sea by her brother-in-law almost a year ago. She said UNHCR - which declined to comment on individual cases - had told her they could not help. Rezai lives in a single room with a coal-burning stove and relies on the charity of neighbors. She does not receive the cash cards given to some Syrian refugees by international NGOs and their local partners to help meet basic living costs because there is no such scheme specifically set up for Afghans. "I cry every day," she said, showing the identity documents of her absent children. The exodus from Afghanistan has been prompted by an increasingly precarious security situation, with 11,000 civilians killed or injured in 2015, as well as widespread corruption undermining faith in the future and a war-ruined economy that cannot provide enough work for its population. Kabul and other Afghan cities have seen a spate of suicide bombings and other attacks as the Taliban has stepped up its insurgency following the withdrawal of international troops from most combat operations in 2014. The insurgents, driven from power by a U.S-led campaign in 2001, are seeking to reimpose hardline Islamist rule and are now in control or threatening around a third of the country. FALSE PERCEPTIONS According to the European Commission, 64,109 asylum requests were registered in Turkey in 2015, more than 11,000 of them from Afghan citizens, but only 459 were concluded, either by granting or rejecting refugee status. Some are still waiting in Turkey, but others are among the thousands to have crossed illegally to Europe. Under a law passed two years ago, Afghans and other refugees have access to healthcare in Turkey and Unal said the most vulnerable could also benefit from social security schemes. In January, Turkey also passed a new law to give refugees access to legal employment, a move praised by the European Union, although the program has not yet been rolled out. But many of the Afghan refugees, hampered in part by language difficulties, are unaware of their rights and rely on illegal labor such as fruit picking to survive. Birnur Esen, a psychologist who works for IMECE, an organization which collects and distributes clothes and other supplies to migrants rescued at sea, said convincing migrants to stay in Turkey meant improving their lives there and making them realize conditions in Europe would be just as difficult. That, she said, should be the focus of European efforts. "We are trying to change their mind," she said. "Europe must stand behind Turkey. It must say that if you stay in Turkey, we will improve your conditions." (Additional reporting by James Mackenzie in Kabul, Ayla Jean Yackley in Istanbul and Tom Miles in Geneva; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Janet McBride)
Paris (AFP) - A nephew of South African President Jacob Zuma and the son of Ghana's former president John Agyekum Kufuor were among African figures named in the Panama Papers trove of leaked tax documents.

Zuma's nephew, Clive Khulubuse Zuma, is a cigar-chomping mining magnate who is thought to own up to 19 collectible cars.

The documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca show that Khulubuse Zuma was authorised to represent Caprikat Limited, one of two offshore companies that controversially acquired oil fields in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In 2010, as questions were raised about the acquisition, British Virgin Islands authorities ordered Mossack Fonseca to provide additional background information on Zuma. Later that year, Mossack Fonseca ended its relationship with the companies.

Zuma and representatives of the companies have rejected allegations of wrongdoing and claimed the oil deals are "quite attractive" to the DRC government.

Also implicated is John Addo Kufuor, the eldest son of Ghana's former president John Agyekum Kufuor, who led the country from 2001 to 2009.

A trained accountant, the younger Kufuor is said in the documents to have controlled a $75,000 bank account in Panama for his father and his mother that he ran through an offshore company. He did not respond to the ICIJ's requests for comment.

The son of Congolese President Denis Sassou Nguesso also appears in the Mossack Fonseca files, in the 1990s.

Denis Christel Sassou Nguesso is said to have approached Mossack Fonseca about setting up a company based in the British Virgin Islands, called Phoenix Best Finance, according to the French daily Le Monde, which is one of the media partners for the release of the documents.

Sassou Nguesso told Le Monde he did not know the law firm and had no knowledge of Phoenix Best Finance.

The documents were first obtained by German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung a year ago, led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and involving more than 100 publications from nearly 80 countries.
Paris (AFP) - Female employees of Air France will be allowed to opt out of working on the resumed flights to Iran so that they can avoid having to wear a headscarf, a company official said Monday.

The airline will appoint a "special unit" to replace those who do not want to fly to Tehran, he said.

"Any woman assigned to the Paris-Tehran flight who for reasons of personal choice would refuse to wear the headscarf upon leaving the plane will be reassigned to another destination, and thus will not be obliged to do this flight," human resources official Gilles Gateau told Europe 1 radio.

Air France is to resume on April 17 its Paris-to-Tehran service, which had been suspended since 2008 because of international sanctions against Iran over its nuclear ambitions.

Unions say company executives sent staff an internal memo regarding flights to Tehran saying that female cabin crew would be required to wear trousers on board with a loose fitting jacket and must cover their hair with a scarf when they leave the plane.

The headscarf rule is already in place when flying to certain destinations such as Saudi Arabia.

Unions, who held talks with the human resources chief on Monday, argue that an escape clause was already in place for flights to Conakry in Guinea during the Ebola crisis last year and for services to Tokyo following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.
LONDON (Reuters) - European planemaker Airbus Group <AIR.PA> said its future investment in Britain could depend on whether the country remains in the European Union, in a warning to its British employees ahead of a vote on June 23.

The economic impact of a 'Brexit' is one of the key issues for voters ahead of a referendum on Britain's EU membership. As the vote nears, some companies are becoming increasingly vocal on the potential impact of a vote to leave.

Airbus wrote to employees on Monday to warn of the consequences of leaving.

"We all need to keep in the back of our minds that future investments depend very much on the economic environment in which the company operates," the letter signed by Airbus's chief operating officer Tom Williams and its UK head Paul Kahn said.

It has already said it believes its British operations are more competitive because they are within the 28-member bloc.

Airbus's letter to its employees followed one sent by German carmaker BMW in March which also set out the risks the company would face if the country voted to leave.

France-based Airbus said in its letter that its business model is based on its ability to freely move products, people and ideas around Europe.

The bosses at more than a third of Britain's biggest companies including major oil firms Shell <RDSA.L> and BP <BP.L> and its largest telecoms group BT <BT.L> warned in February that leaving the EU would put jobs and investments at risk.

Some companies do, however, favor an exit from the EU. The campaign for Britain to leave the bloc has been backed by 250 business leaders including the former chief executive of HSBC, the Vote Leave group said in March.

(Reporting by Sarah Young; editing by Kate Holton)
By Jeffrey Dastin

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Alaska Air Group Inc said on Monday that it would buy Virgin America Inc for $2.6 billion in cash to become the top carrier on the U.S. West Coast and compete more effectively with larger airlines.

At $57 a share, the deal represents a premium of about 86 percent from Virgin America's stock price before reports in March that the company was considering a sale. Analysts characterized the price as steep but said the merger would strengthen Alaska Air.

"The perception is that they paid a very, very high price," said Sterne Agee CRT analyst Adam Hackel. However, he said Alaska Air could handle the cost because its strong balance sheet would allow it to raise capital at a low borrowing rate.

The merger would help Alaska Air compete against Delta Air Lines Inc and American Airlines Group Inc, which have embarked on major expansions in Los Angeles, Hackel added.

The deal appears to end what Alaska Air Chief Executive Officer Brad Tilden called a "hard-fought competition" to purchase the offshoot of billionaire Richard Branson's London-based Virgin Group, which had become famous for its mood lighting and media-rich entertainment on flights.

JetBlue Airways Corp had also made an offer but said in a statement that the price reached a point where it decided to withdraw from the bidding.

The Alaska Air deal would create the fifth-largest U.S. airline after a decade of mergers that have shrunk the industry to a handful of companies. The top four control more than 80 percent of the U.S. travel market.

Virgin America accounts for about 1.5 percent of U.S. domestic flight capacity, while Alaska Air and its Horizon Air subsidiary account for 5 percent, Deutsche Bank analyst Michael Linenberg wrote in a recent research note.

Shares of Virgin America were up 42.1 percent at $55.27 in afternoon trading. Alaska Air was down 5.2 percent, and JetBlue fell 3.4 percent.

Branson, whose holding company owned 24.9 percent of the airline as of March 25, expressed sadness that Virgin America was changing hands.

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The U.S. Department of Transportation stipulated he take some of his shares in Virgin America as non-voting stock, reducing his influence over any takeover, he said on a Virgin Group website.

"So there was sadly nothing I could do to stop" the Alaska Air deal, he said.

INTEGRATION ISSUES

Alaska Air said it might keep using the Virgin America brand in some form.

Because of the deal, Alaska Air plans to slow down its share repurchase program this year and probably next, Chief Financial Officer Brandon Pedersen said on a conference call.

Alaska Air said in a statement that the deal would generate $225 million in annual synergies once the companies are fully merged. It expects one-time integration costs of $300 million to $350 million.

The companies face major hurdles in combining, although Alaska Air expressed confidence in its ability to tackle them.

It must juggle the contracts of workers with disparate pay, benefits and seniority. Alaska Air said its unions and pilot leadership were on board with the merger.

The Seattle-based company would also have to train pilots and maintenance crews on a new aircraft type from Virgin America's fleet of Airbus Group SE A320-family planes. Alaska Air currently flies Boeing Co 737s.

Alaska Air said it was buying California-based Virgin America to expand in Los Angeles and San Francisco and offer more connections to international airline partners. It would also benefit from Virgin America's corporate contracts and cult-like status among travelers who work for technology companies.

S&P Capital IQ analyst Jim Corridore said in a research note that the deal would increase Alaska Air's access to transcontinental markets on the East Coast.

The companies said they expected the deal to receive the necessary approvals from Virgin America shareholders and U.S. regulators by Jan. 1.

Alaska Air Chief Operating Officer Ben Minicucci said he expected few antitrust concerns because the two companies have "minimal" overlap of routes.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch, UBS Investment Bank and Cowen & Co were financial advisers to Alaska Air, while Evercore Group LLC advised Virgin America. Legal advisers were OMelveny & Myers LLP to Alaska Air and Latham & Watkins LLP to Virgin America.

(Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in New York and by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila, W Simon and Lisa Von Ahn)
Washington (AFP) - Alaska Airlines said on Monday it was acquiring Virgin America in a friendly takeover worth around $4 billion to create the fifth-largest US airline.

Aiming to boost its market power in an era of industry consolidation, Alaska parent Alaska Air Group will pay $2.6 billion, or $57 a share, in cash for the nine-year-old US carrier created by British tycoon Richard Branson.

That amounted to a 46.5 percent premium on where Virgin America shares were trading on the Nasdaq Exchange at the close on Friday.

With Virgin debt added in, the total value of the takeover, already agreed by the boards of both companies, will run to about $4 billion.

The deal sent Virgin America shares soaring by 41 percent to $54.86 on Monday, while Alaska Air shares lost five percent to $77.89.

The announcement caps a contest reportedly between Jet Blue Airways and Alaska Air for Virgin America, as smaller US carriers seek to beef up now that the four largest control about 80 percent of the market.

The deal will bring together Virgin's 60 Airbus A320s with Alaska's Boeing 737s and Bombardier Q 400s, for a total fleet of about 280 operating a combined 1,200 daily departures.

The addition of San Francisco-based Virgin America's main routes connecting the US west and east coasts will strengthen Alaska's coverage, which has built up from a base of connecting the huge, remote northwest US state to the lower west coast.

The combined group will be headquartered in Seattle with annual revenues of around $7 billion. Savings from the merger are expected to come in at about $225 million per year once they are fully integrated, according to the two companies.

"The combination expands Alaska Airlines' existing footprint in California, bolsters its platform for growth and strengthens the company as a competitor to the four largest US airlines," Alaska Air said in a statement.

At least at the outset, the two brands, both highly ranked in national customer surveys, will be maintained.

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"Over the next few months Alaska will explore with the Virgin Group how the Virgin America brand could continue to serve a role in driving customer acquisition and loyalty to get the best from both brands," Alaska Air said.

Virgin America was founded in 2007 as a separate company affiliated with Branson's London-based group, which includes the Virgin Atlantic airline.

It gained popularity by offering more updated aircraft and full services at competitive prices for its flights connecting the two US coasts.

As a foreigner not permitted under US law to control more than 25 percent of a US-flagged airline, Branson took the company public in 2014.

On the Virgin Group corporate website, Branson rued selling off Virgin America, but called it inevitable.

"In 2007, when the airline started service, 60 percent of the industry was consolidated. Today, the four mega airlines control more than 80 percent of the US market. Consolidation is a trend that sadly cannot be stopped," he said.

The combined group will still trail far behind the leaders. Number-one carrier American Airlines runs around 1,500 aircraft and number four Southwest has 683 aircraft.
By Hamid Ould Ahmed ALGIERS (Reuters) - Algeria's energy exports stagnated in 2015, held back by lower oil and gas production and a rise in domestic consumption, official data seen by Reuters on Monday showed. The North African OPEC member is trying to increase oil and gas production which has stagnated for a decade. But many foreign oil companies are reluctant to invest because of Algeria's contract terms and the drop in world oil prices. Total energy sales reached 100 million tonnes of oil equivalent, unchanged from the previous year, while production declined 1.3 percent to 153 million tonnes of oil equivalent, the data from the energy ministry said. Energy sales make up 60 percent of the state budget and account for 95 percent of Algeria's total exports despite efforts to diversify the economy. Crude oil and condensate production fell 2.8 percent to 58.9 million tonnes of oil equivalent, while natural gas output dropped 1 percent to 82.5 billion cubic metres, the data showed. Liquefied natural gas (LNG) production declined 7.6 percent to 27 million cubic metres. Oil refined products output dropped 4.6 percent to 29.3 million tonnes, and petroleum liquefied gas output rose 2 percent to 9.6 million tonnes. Algeria relies on earnings from the energy sector to pay for its imports and a wide range of subsidies, from food to housing. But public finances have been hit by low oil prices, forcing the government to freeze some infrastructure projects and raise the price of some subsidised products. The government has also launched a campaign to reduce domestic energy consumption but demand is still on the rise. Demand for refined products, mainly gasoline and diesel oil, rose 5.5 percent to 18.3 million tonnes, while natural gas consumption increased by 5 percent to 39.5 billion cubic metres. Demand for electricity rose 8 percent last year. Foreign exchange reserves fell $35 billion in 2015 to $143 billion, while its trade deficit reached $13.71 billion in 2015, reversing a $4.306 billion surplus in the previous year. Algeria last year made 22 oil and gas discoveries, down from 32 in 2014, as it struggles to attract foreign investment to boost its energy sector. State energy firm Sonatrach's main partners BP and Norway's Statoil last month said they would withdraw foreign workers from two gas plants in the southern gasfield belt after an attack by militants on one site. In 2014, Algeria awarded only four of 31 oil and gas blocks on offer to foreign consortiums. It has postponed a round of bids for oil and gas exploration planned for 2015, but Sonatrach is in talks with foreign partners about how to improve their offers. (Editing by Susan Fenton and David Holmes)
By Julia Edwards and Julia Harte WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department is reviewing reports about the offshore financial arrangements of global politicians and public figures based on 11.5 million leaked files from a Panamanian law firm, a department spokesman said on Monday. The department is determining whether the findings point to evidence of corruption and other violations of U.S. law. "The U.S. Department of Justice takes very seriously all credible allegations of high level, foreign corruption that might have a link to the United States or the U.S. financial system, said Peter Carr, spokesman for the Justice Department's criminal division. The journalists who obtained the documents have not shared them with the Justice Department or any other authorities, according to Peter Bale, the Chief Executive of the organization that coordinated the investigation, which involved more than 100 media outlets around the world. The Justice Department "can read it like any other person in what we publish," Bale told Reuters. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published the investigation based on documents from the Panama-based Mossack Fonseca law firm, which specializes in creating offshore accounts. The "Panama Papers" revealed financial arrangements of tens of thousands of rich and powerful people, including friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin, relatives of the prime ministers of Britain, Iceland and Pakistan, and the president of Ukraine. Following the leak, the White House said on Monday the United States values greater transparency in international financial transactions, but did not offer specific comment on the reported allegations. "In spite of some of the lack of transparency that exists in many of these transactions, there are determined experts, at both the Department of Treasury and the Department of Justice who can examine these transactions," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. Earnest said U.S. experts can determine whether the financial transactions disclosed in the documents violate U.S. sanctions or other U.S. laws. (Reporting by Roberta Rampton, Mohammad Zargham, Julia Edwards and Doina Chiacu; writing by Susan Heavey; editing by Meredith Mazzilli)
Archaeologists have uncovered ancient human remains and various burial practices at the mysterious Plain of Jars in Laos, Australian researchers said Monday, as scientists attempt to unravel the puzzle of the stone vessels.

The Plain of Jars in Laos' central Xieng Khouang province is scattered with thousands of stone jars and scientists have long been perplexed by their original use.

"This will be the first major effort since the 1930s to attempt to understand the purpose of the jars and who created them," Dougald O'Reilly from the Australian National University's school of archaeology said in a statement.

He said excavations uncovered three types of burials at the site. In one practice, bones were buried in pits with a large limestone block placed over them, while other bones were found buried in ceramic vessels, separate from the jars.

The researchers also found for the first time an instance of a body being placed in a grave.

O'Reilly said while the jars were empty now, it is possible they were once used to hold bodies until the flesh had completely decomposed so the bones could then be buried.

"We don't have any evidence for cremation which is something that has been suggested in the past," said O'Reilly, adding that it was also unclear where those buried had lived.

Despite the finds, he said the original purpose of the jars remains unknown.

"The stone jars remain a mystery as to what they were used for," O'Reilly told AFP.

Only a few simple objects, such as a handful of glass beads, have been found with the human remains at the burial sites, which are thought to date from about 500 or 600 BC to 550 AD.

A joint Australia-Laos research team spent one month collecting data at the site and O'Reilly said he hoped a better archaeological understanding of the Plain of Jars would help with a bid to have it listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

About 90 sites make up the intriguing area in the Southeast Asian nation, with the carved jars ranging in size from one to three metres tall (three to 10 feet).

The excavations were conducted in February in conjunction with the Laos Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism and Melbourne's Monash University as part of a five-year project.
Designer Anthony Vaccarello is poised to take the reins at French fashion house Saint Laurent, according to reports.

The Belgian talent is set to take over from departing Creative and Image Director Hedi Slimane, after the latters departure following a four-year tenure at the label was announced last week, WWD reports.

Currently the Creative Director of Versaces Versus line, Vaccarello is known for his racy take on womenswear. He has also helmed his own eponymous line, Anthony Vaccarello, since 2009.

A statement confirming the news is widely expected to be released this week.
Paris (AFP) - Belgian designer Anthony Vaccarello took over Monday as creative director of Yves Saint Laurent, three days after the departure of the hugely influential Hedi Slimane.

His appointment, which had been rumoured for weeks after Slimane dropped some heavy hints of his exit, is a calculated risk for the French label, which has seen profits skyrocket under the man credited with reviving skinny jeans.

After Slimane's rock star chic, 36-year-old Vaccarello will bring a sexy, leggy look which he has developed since he first came to fame with a collection inspired by the Hungarian-Italian porn actress turned politician la Cicciolina.

Vaccarello's "modern, pure aesthetic is the perfect fit," YSL's CEO Francesca Bellettini said.

He "impeccably balances elements of provocative femininity and sharp masculinity in his silhouettes," she added.

YSL's parent company Kering said Vaccarello, who has served as Versus Versace's creative director for more than a year, had "long been recognised as one of the most talented emerging creative minds of our time".

- Shy star designer -

The rumour mill has been working overtime since Slimane left, with many fashion insiders convinced that Vaccarello would succeed him.

The young designer, who comes from an Italian family, had quit Versace's Versus label earlier Monday.

Making the announcement, Donatella Versace seemed to hint that Vaccarello was going on to greater things.

"In the past several years, I have worked with three great young talents on Versus Versace, Christopher Kane, JW Anderson and Anthony Vaccarello," she said in a statement.

Scottish-born Kane's own brand has since been bought by Kering, while Irishman Anderson now heads the Spanish luxury label Loewe.

Vaccarello's typically monochrome dresses, often with plunging necklines, have an almost wild edge to them, and have won him major fashion prizes, including the top prize at the Hyeres festival.

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Although his designs may be sexy and confident, he has a personal reputation for shyness.

He worked for Karl Lagerfeld at Fendi before setting up his own brand in 2009 and becoming a regular fixture of Paris fashion weeks.

While YSL has prospered under Slimane, with profits rising from 353 million euros ($402 million) in 2011 to 707 million euros in 2014, it had been clear for some time that all was not well.

Industry insiders claimed talks on renewing his contract had stalled, with the designer snubbing the Paris catwalk to hold his last menswear show in his adopted home of Los Angeles.

Slimane won an array of celebrity fans including Lady Gaga, Angelina Jolie, Kate Hudson, Amal Clooney, Jared Leto and Justin Bieber.

But the 47-year-old Parisian was accused by some of denigrating Saint Laurent's hallowed legacy with his grungy rock star chic, inspired by the American west coast music scene.
Buenos Aires (AFP) - Argentine President Mauricio Macri's political opponents urged him Monday to clarify his links to a company named in the Panama Papers offshore finance scandal.

The conservative president, his father, and his brother Mariano were on the board of directors of Fleg Trading, an offshore company registered in the Bahamas, the newspaper La Nacion reported.

Several top members of the Renewal Front, a center-right alliance that forms part of the political opposition, called for Macri to explain his role.

"There must be no doubt over the president's image. He should be on national television giving a very good explanation," said Marco Lavagna, a senior Renewal Front lawmaker.

The government said in a statement on Sunday that Macri was never a stakeholder in the company and was therefore not obliged to declare his "circumstantial" role as director.

The company was registered in the Bahamas in 1998 and operated until 2009, when Macri was mayor of Buenos Aires, La Nacion said.

He took office as president of Argentina in December last year after beating his leftist rival in a runoff election. During campaigning he vowed to fight corruption.

La Nacion is one of more than 100 newspapers that published leaked documents revealing offshore accounts allegedly used by public figures worldwide to avoid tax.

Before becoming president, Macri was convicted of tax evasion in 2001 for activities in an auto company that he founded with his father.
By Jane Wardell and Rebecca Howard SYDNEY/WELLINGTON (Reuters) - The Australian Tax Office (ATO) said on Monday it is investigating more than 800 wealthy clients of a Panama law firm for possible tax evasion. The probe follows the reported leak of more than 11.5 million documents from the files of law firm Mossack Fonseca, based in the tax haven of Panama, revealing details of hundreds of thousands of clients. The documents are at the center of an investigation published on Sunday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and more than 100 other news organizations around the globe. ICIJ is the international arm of the Center for Public Integrity. The leaked "Panama Papers" cover a period over almost 40 years, from 1977 until as recently as last December, and allegedly show that some companies domiciled in tax havens were being used for suspected money laundering, arms and drug deals, and tax avoidance. "Currently we have identified over 800 individual taxpayers and we have now linked over 120 of them to an associate offshore service provider located in Hong Kong," the Australian tax office said in a statement emailed to Reuters. It did not name the Hong Kong company. ATO Deputy Commissioner Michael Cranston said his office was working with the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Crime Commission and anti-money laundering regulator AUSTRAC to further cross-check the data from the documents. "Some cases may be referred to the Serious Financial Crime Taskforce," Cranston said in the statement. "The message is clear - taxpayers can't rely on these secret arrangements being kept secret and we will act on any information that is provided to us." Treasurer Scott Morrison told ABC Radio Monday that "our record when it comes to tax avoidance and particularly multinational tax avoidance is one of legislation and action." NZ GOVERNMENT UNDER PRESSURE The 800 individuals under investigation include some taxpayers who had previously been investigated and others who had reported themselves to the tax office under its so-called Project DO IT - Disclose Offshore Income Today. The voluntary disclosure initiative, which closed at the end of 2014, allowed people to come forward and avoid steep penalties and criminal charges. However, the tax office said the individuals under investigation also include "a large number of taxpayers who haven't previously come forward." In New Zealand, the tax agency is "working closely" with its tax treaty partners to obtain full details of any New Zealand tax residents who may have been involved in arrangements facilitated by Mossack Fonseca, said John Nash, Inland Revenues international revenue strategy manager, in comments emailed to Reuters. According to the Australian Financial Review, New Zealand's foreign trust regime allowed Mossack Fonseca to create trusts in New Zealand to protect controversial assets. On Monday, New Zealand Labour Party opposition leader Andrew Little called on Prime Minister John Key to come clean about what he knows about New Zealand becoming a "haven for rich foreign investors looking to hide their fortunes in secret trust accounts." New Zealand Revenue Minister Michael Woodhouse said in a statement that "we tax people who live, work and do business here. We dont tax foreign income earned by foreigners." According to Woodhouse, New Zealand's tax rules require foreign trusts to be registered. "We also have a strong tax treaty network with the express purpose of discovering and preventing tax avoidance by exchanging information between tax jurisdictions," he said. (Reporting By Jane Wardell and Rebecca Howard; Editing by Martin Howell)
VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria plans to introduce measures as early as May to restrict even further the number of migrants it lets into the country, the interior and defense ministers said on Wednesday. Austria said in January it would limit the number of asylum claims it accepts this year to 37,500 - less than half of last year's 90,000. It has received around 14,000 claims so far in 2016, according to the interior minister. The country has mainly served as a conduit into Germany for refugees and migrants from the Middle East and Africa but has absorbed a similar number of asylum seekers relative to its much smaller population. It coordinated a domino of border closures with nearby Balkan countries over the past few months, which has led to around 50,000 people being stuck in Greece. While Austria's approach has angered other European Union states, Vienna says this was necessary to safeguard public order and internal security. In the future, only people who are likely to suffer persecution if Austria sends them back and refugees who already have close family members living in the country will be granted asylum, Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said. "We will not accept any applications for asylum unless we have to due to certain criteria such as Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights," Mikl-Leitner said. Article 8 of the ECHR protects the private and family life of individuals against arbitrary interference by public authorities and private organizations. Migrants will only be able to file their application for asylum directly at border crossings in the future and not any longer at police stations inside the country, Defence Minister Hans Peter Doskozil said. A decision on whether to grant asylum will be made within an hour and those not accepted will be sent back immediately, he said. Wednesday's announcements came as the government's decision to introduce the cap on asylum claims was endorsed by independent experts in a legal opinion it had commissioned. "The legal opinion states that according to international as well as constitutional law Austria can introduce a number of measures to limit the number of migrants," Mikl-Leitner said. However, the Austrian parliament still has to provide a legal basis for the planned steps. The government expects the new legal framework to be approved in May. (Reporting by Kirsti Knolle; Editing by Gareth Jones)
By Francois Murphy and Kirsti Knolle VIENNA (Reuters) - Austrian regulators are investigating whether two banks named in an international data leak followed procedures to prevent money laundering, one of the firms having attracted attention for its lending to a confectionery company owned by Ukraine's president. The leaked "Panama Papers" cover a period over almost 40 years, from 1977 until last December, and allegedly show that some companies domiciled in tax havens were being used for suspected money laundering, arms and drug deals and tax evasion. Two Austrian media groups that were among the more than 100 news organizations that jointly investigated the documents' contents identified Raiffeisen Bank International and Hypo Landesbank Vorarlberg as companies named in the trove. "We are verifying whether the banks did their work thoroughly beforehand," a spokesman for Austrian financial markets regulator FMA said, citing required checks on matters such as the purpose of transactions and people involved. "We are verifying that in the course of an on-site inspection," he said, adding that the FMA can refer matters to the criminal authorities if it suspects wrongdoing. The Austrian news organizations involved in the investigation, broadcaster ORF and weekly newspaper Falter, reported a connection between Raiffeisen and the Roshen company owned by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. The bank had made a loan of $115 million to Roshen secured against the holdings of a company based in the British Virgin Islands, Linquist Holdings Limited, ORF and Falter reported. Raiffeisen said it had complied with legal provisions on the prevention of money laundering but could not comment on specific cases because of banking secrecy rules. There were also limits to its ability to carry out checks, it said in a statement. "As we are not a government institution, a thorough screening of customers and transactions is not possible," said Raiffeisen, which according to ORF and Falter performed similar transactions involving Linquist and other offshore firms. ORF said Hypo Landesbank Vorarlberg -- majority-owned by the province of Vorarlberg, which borders Liechtenstein and Switzerland -- was connected to offshore firms through trustees in Liechtenstein and much of the money trail led to Russia. "At no point have we violated money-laundering stipulations or sanctions, as legal stipulations are taken very seriously and followed very fastidiously in our company," Hypo Vorarlberg said in a statement. The criminal investigations bureau, a branch of the Interior Ministry, and the Austrian prosecutors' office in charge of economic crimes and corruption said they had taken no action so far as there was not enough concrete information. (Editing by Keith Weir)
By Nailia Bagirova and Hasmik Mkrtchyan BAKU/YEREVAN (Reuters) - Armenia's president warned on Monday that an outbreak of violence in breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh risked spiraling into all-out war, after a third day of fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenian-backed separatists. Ex-Soviet states Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a war over the territory in the early 1990s in which thousands were killed on both sides and hundreds of thousands displaced. The war ended with a fragile truce in 1994 marked by only sporadic violence over the years. But that ceasefire was shattered over the weekend with the fiercest fighting in years, killing dozens of people on both sides. Despite calls from international mediators for an immediate halt to the fighting, the two sides exchanged artillery fire and reported clashes at several locations on the fringes of the mountainous enclave on Monday. Azerbaijan's defense ministry said three of its soldiers were killed on Monday, while a representative of Nagorno-Karabakh's separatist leadership said four of its military personnel had died. "A further escalation of military action could lead to unpredictable and irreversible consequences, right up to a full-scale war," President Serzh Sarksyan said at a meeting with foreign ambassadors in the Armenian capital, Yerevan. A return to war would destabilize a region that is a crossroads for strategically-important oil and gas pipelines. It could also drag in the big regional powers, Russia and Turkey. Moscow has a defense alliance with Armenia, while Ankara backs Azerbaijan. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said a statement by Ankara strongly supporting Azerbaijan was one-sided. Nagorno-Karabakh is a mountainous enclave with a large ethnic Armenian population that lies inside the territory of Azerbaijan. The violence was a re-awakening of a long-festering ethnic conflict between the mainly Muslim Azeris and their Christian Armenian neighbors. Tensions flared as the Soviet Union started to disintegrate. With help from Armenia, the region's ethnic Armenians took up arms to try to throw off rule from Azerbaijan. By the time of the 1994 ceasefire, they had pushed Azeri forces out of almost all of Nagorno-Karabakh and taken control of surrounding districts. CONTACT LINE Armenian television cited the Nagorno-Karabakh military as saying 20 of its troops had been killed and 72 wounded in the three days of fighting to date. Armenia's Defence Ministry said an Azeri drone had attacked a bus carrying Armenian volunteers to Nagorno-Karabakh, killing five people. Each side blamed the other for starting it the weekend outbreak of violence. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday held phone calls with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and stressed the need for an urgent ceasefire. Envoys from France, Russia and the United States, joint mediators in the conflict, are to meet in Vienna on April 5 for talks on the latest fighting. The clashes were around the "contact line," a heavily-mined no-man's-land that, since the 1994 ceasefire, has separated the Armenian-backed forces, in the foothills of the Karabakh mountains, from Azeri troops dug into defensive positions in the plains below. Azerbaijan's military and the Armenian-backed forces attacked each other with tanks, helicopters, missile systems and artillery. Each said they had captured small chunks of territory from the other side. On Monday, the fighting was slightly less intense than in previous days. The two sides exchanged fire but there was no sign of any concerted offensives, accounts from Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh officials indicated. The Armenian-backed military said it had destroyed an Azeri army unit, while Azerbaijan said it had struck a separatist command point. Nagorno-Karabakh said that if Azerbaijan attacked Karabakh's largest city Stepanakert it would be met with a "very painful" response. In Paris, Hovhannes Guevorkian, a Karabakh representative, said Azerbaijan had ceased attacking with helicopters and armed vehicles, but was now firing heavy artillery "non-stop" at towns in the southern and northern parts of the territory. "There is an accumulation of Azeri forces all along the front line especially in the north and south of the country," he said. Reuters was not able independently to verify these assertions. Azerbaijan's defense ministry said it wanted to stop the fighting but that Armenian-backed forces were still "aggravating the situation", attacking Azeri positions and shelling nearby settlements, forcing Azeri troops to defend themselves. The separatists, and their backers in the Armenian government, said Azerbaijan was the aggressor. Underscoring the economic risks of a return to war, Azerbaijan's manat currency, which has already slumped in value because of low world oil prices, on Monday suffered its biggest fall against the dollar since December. Azerbaijan has always vowed to restore its control over Nagorno-Karabakh but in 1994, poor and riven by political infighting, it had to accept the truce. Since then though, it has grown wealthy from exporting oil, and spent heavily on rebuilding its military. (Additional reporting by Margarita Antidze in TBILISI, John Irish in PARIS and Caroline Copley in BERLIN; Writing by Christian Lowe and Alexander Winning; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
By Serajul Quadir DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladesh's central bank has hired a U.S. lawyer for a potential lawsuit against the Federal Reserve Bank of New York after hackers stole $81 million from its account with the NY Fed, according to an internal report by the Bangladesh bank. After the report surfaced on Tuesday in the Bangladesh capital of Dhaka, U.S. Representative Carolyn Maloney called for a probe of last month's cyber attack on Bangladesh Bank. In one of the largest cyber heists in history, the hackers ordered the New York Fed to transfer $81 million from Bangladesh central bank funds to accounts in the Philippines. This brazen heist from the Bangladesh central banks account at the New York Fed threatens to undermine the confidence that foreign central banks have in the Federal Reserve, and in the safety and soundness of international monetary transactions, Maloney, a New York Democrat, said in a statement. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is helping investigate the heist, which led to the ouster of Bangladesh's central bank governor. Maloney also sent a letter to New York Fed President William Dudley, requesting a private meeting with bank staff to discuss the cyber fraud. She said she wants to ask a series of questions, including whether it is appropriate to rely solely on the SWIFT global bank messaging system to authenticate outgoing payments from foreign central bank accounts.Her comments are the first sign that the attack could gain political traction in the United States. The New York Fed has faced separate political criticism since the financial crisis for missteps and perceived conflicts of interest in its role as the central bank's top Wall Street regulator. We fully intend to reach out to the congresswoman and will endeavor to address her questions," a New York Fed spokeswoman said on Tuesday. The New York Fed, which holds the accounts of some 250 foreign central banks and governments, has previously said very little publicly about the heist, beyond a March 9 statement that the payments were made in the usual way and that there was no evidence its systems were compromised. The office of the Fed's Investigator General has said it is aware of the situation but has not commented on whether it will conduct its own review. Meanwhile, Bangladesh Bank criticized the New York Fed in the incident report, which surfaced on Tuesday but was dated March 13. The report said that the New York Fed allowed five of 35 fraudulent payment instructions to go through. "We view this as a major lapse," Bangladesh Bank said in the report, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters. In her letter to the New York Fed, Maloney said she wanted to know why the bank treated the 30 transfers differently than the other five. The Bangladesh Bank interim report also said the bank was considering "preparing the ground to make a legitimate claim for the loss of funds" against the New York Fed "through a legal process." A source at Bangladesh Bank confirmed the authenticity of the report. Bangladesh police and forensics experts hired by Bangladesh Bank are still collecting information from its computer systems to determine what happened. (Reporting by Serajul Quadir in Dhaka; Additional reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston, Jonathan Spicer in New York, Shihar Aneez in Colombo; Writing by Sanjeev Miglani; Editing by Gareth Jones and Cynthia Osterman)
DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladesh police said on Monday they had found a big cache of weapons and explosives in a militant hideout they raided after two militants blew themselves up there by accident. The two suspected members of banned group Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh were killed while they were making bombs in Bogra in northern Bangladesh, police said. Police said they found 20 homemade live grenades and bomb-making ingredients in the hideout after the blast, which alerted neighbors. Bomb disposal experts defused them. "The evidence indicates that with these powerful explosives they were planing to destroy important installations in the country," said Mohammad Asaduzzaman, the chief of Bogra district police. Bangladesh has experienced a wave of militant violence in recent months, including a series of bomb attacks on mosques and Hindu temples. Some recent attacks have been claimed by Islamic State, including the killing of Hindu priest, a Japanese citizen, an Italian aid worker and a policeman. The government denies that Islamic State has a presence in the Muslim-majority country of 160 million people. (Reporting by Serajul Quadir and Hasibur Rahman Bilu; editing by Andrew Roche)
Barbara Broccoli has been named Vice President for Film' for the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTAs).

The producer, famous for her work on the last eight James Bond' movies, will act as an ambassador for the organization, alongside Vice President for Television Greg Dyke. The duo will work together with the academy's President, The Duke of Cambridge, aka. Prince William.

"I am passionate about BAFTA's role in educating, inspiring and celebrating generations of British film-makers," said Broccoli. "I am therefore honoured to accept the role of BAFTA's Vice President for Film."

Broccoli is the co-owner of EON Productions, which, aside from the Bond films, has executive produced "A Silent Storm," starring Damian Lewis, and "Radiator," starring Richard Johnson and Gemma Jones.
Berlin (AFP) - Bayern Munich will be without Netherlands star Arjen Robben for Tuesday's Champions League quarter-final, first-leg, at home to Benfica on Tuesday with France forward Kingsley Coman set to return.

Both wingers missed Bayern's 1-0 home league win over Eintracht Frankfurt on Saturday at Munich's Allianz Arena to warm up for the visit of the Portuguese league leaders.

Coman, 19, sat out the win over Frankfurt with a slight leg knock, while Robben, 32, has been out with a groin injury since mid-March.

"I think Kingsley can play, but with Arjen one must continue to be a little more patient," said Bayern's chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge ahead of the Benfica match.

Meanwhile, Rummenigge has said Bayern's Germany centre-back Jerome Boateng may be back on the pitch sooner than expected after tearing his groin in January.

The 27-year-old trained with the ball for the first time on Friday and had set himself the goal of mid-April for his return, but could be back for the German league leaders sooner.

"It looks quite good for Jerome, he has started training again and maybe he will come back a bit earlier than expected," added Rummenigge.
London (AFP) - Nick Blackwell has woken from the induced coma he was placed in following a British middleweight title defeat by Chris Eubank Jr, the former champion's promoter said on Monday.

Blackwell, 25, collapsed shortly after his tenth-round stoppage loss to Eubank Jr at London's Wembley Arena on March 26.

He was then taken to London's St Mary's Hospital, where doctors placed Blackwell in an induced coma.

They subsequently reduced his medication, with Blackwell waking last Saturday and talking to relatives and friends on Sunday.

Eubank Jr responded to Monday's announcement by saying on Twitter: "Very happy to hear Nick Blackwell has awoken from his coma.

"Nick I'd like to come see you if possible, I've got something for you bro."

Earlier, a statement released by Blackwell's promoter, Hennessy Sports, said: "It was the outcome everyone had been hoping and praying for; Nick had won his toughest fight yet.

"On behalf of Nick, his family, and very close friends, we'd like to thank everyone for their continued support and well-wishes. It has been overwhelming at times and has certainly not gone unnoticed.

"Nick Blackwell won the hearts of over three million (television) viewers on March 26 with an astonishing display of all-action bravery and determination.

"In the past week, however, he has humbled millions more. He's a fighter. He's a warrior. He's a true champion and gentleman."

During the fight Chris Eubank senior, the father of the new champion, could be heard telling his son to stop hitting Blackwell's head.

"Even in sparring, I tell Junior to stay away from the head because his punching is fast, powerful and dangerous," Eubank, a former middleweight and super-middleweight world champion, later told the BBC.

"So most certainly I was saying this to protect the fighter."

His ringside instructions were especially poignant as, 25 years ago, Eubank senior stopped Michael Watson in a world title fight that left his beaten opponent with irreparable brain damage and partially paralysed.
By Jan Strupczewski, Julia Fioretti and Alastair Macdonald BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Belgium's chief prosecutor named two brothers on Wednesday as Islamic State suicide bombers who killed at least 31 people in the most deadly attacks in Brussels' history but said another key suspect was on the run. Tuesday's attacks on a city that is home to the European Union and NATO sent shockwaves across Europe and around the world, with authorities racing to review security at airports and on public transport. It also rekindled debate about lagging European security cooperation and flaws in police surveillance. The attacks came four months after militants, also from IS, carried out bombings and shootings in Paris that killed 129 people. Some Belgian media reports said a forensic link had been established between one of the Brussels bombers, who may have been killed, and the Nov. 13 attacks in the French capital. Washington announced that Secretary of State John Kerry would visit Belgium on Friday to demonstrate support. The Belgian federal prosecutor told a news conference that Ibrahim El Bakraoui, 29, one of two men who blew themselves up at Brussels airport on Tuesday, had left a will on a computer dumped in a rubbish bin near the militants' hideout. In it, he described himself as "always on the run, not knowing what to do anymore, being hunted everywhere, not being safe any longer and that if he hangs around, he risks ending up next to the person in a cell" - a reference to suspected Paris bomber Salah Abdeslam, who was arrested last week. His brother Khalid El Bakraoui, 27, detonated a bomb an hour later on a crowded rush-hour metro train near the European Commission headquarters, prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said. Both men, born in Belgium, had criminal records for armed robbery but investigators had not linked them to Islamist militants until Abdeslam's arrest, when police began a race against time to track down his suspected accomplices. That seems to have prompted the bombers to rush into an attack in Belgium after months of lying low, according to the testament found on the laptop. At least 31 people were killed and 271 wounded in the attacks, the prosecutor said. That toll could increase further because some of the bomb victims at Maelbeek metro station were blown to pieces and victims are hard to identify. Several survivors were still in critical condition. The Bakraoui brothers were identified by their fingerprints and on security cameras, the prosecutor said. A second suicide bomber at the airport had yet to be identified and a third man, whom he did not name, had left the biggest bomb and ran out of the terminal before the explosions. Belgian media named that man as Najim Laachraoui, 25, a suspected Islamic State recruiter and bomb-maker whose DNA was found on two explosives belts used in the Paris attacks and at a Brussels safe house used by Abdeslam. De Standaard newspaper, however, citing an unidentified source, named Laachraoui as the second suicide bomber at the airport. Khalid El Bakraoui rented under a false name the apartment in the city's Forest borough, where police hunting Abdeslam killed a gunman in a raid last week. He is also believed to have rented a safe house in the southern Belgian city of Charleroi used to mount the Paris attacks. "BLACK DAYS" Turkey said it had detained Ibrahim El Bakraoui near the Syrian border last year and deported him to the Netherlands before he was briefly held in Belgium, then released. "Belgium ignored our warning that this person is a foreign fighter," President Tayyip Erdogan said. The Brussels attacks came days after a suspected Islamic State suicide bomber blew himself up in Istanbul's most popular shopping district, killing three Israelis and an Iranian. The Syrian-based Islamist group claimed responsibility for Tuesday's attacks, warning of "black days" for those fighting it in Syria and Iraq. Belgian warplanes have joined the coalition in the Middle East, but Brussels has long been a hub of Islamist militants who operated elsewhere. A minute's silence was observed across Belgium at noon. Prime Minister Charles Michel canceled a trip to China and reviewed security measures with his inner cabinet before attending a memorial event at European Commission headquarters with King Philippe, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and French Prime Minister Manuel Valls. "We are determined, admittedly with a strong feeling of pain in our stomachs, but determined to act," Michel told a joint news conference with Valls. "France and Belgium are united in pain more than ever." Valls played down cross-border sniping over security, saying: "We must turn the page on naivete, a form of carefreeness that our societies have known. "It is Europe that has been attacked. The response to terrorism must be European." EU justice and interior ministers will hold an emergency meeting in Brussels on Thursday, the Dutch EU presidency said. More than 1,000 people gathered around an improvised shrine with candles and street paintings outside the Brussels bourse. Belgium's crisis coordination center kept the level of security alert at the maximum as the man hunt continued. Some buses and trains were running but the metro and the airport were closed, along with key road tunnels in Brussels. The blasts fueled political debate across the globe about how to combat militants. Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination to succeed Obama in November's U.S. election, suggested suspects could be tortured to avert such attacks. He also said in a British television interview that Muslims were not doing enough to prevent that kind of violence. After a tip-off from a taxi driver who unwittingly drove the bombers to the airport, police searched an apartment in the Brussels borough of Schaerbeek late into the night, finding another bomb, an Islamic State flag, 15 kg of the same kind of explosives used in the Paris attacks and bomb-making chemicals. An unused explosive device was also found at the airport. CLOSING IN Security experts believed the blasts were probably in preparation before Friday's arrest of locally based French national Abdeslam, 26, whom prosecutors accuse of a key role in the Nov. 13 Paris attacks. He was caught and has been speaking to investigators after a shootout at an apartment in the south of the city, after which another Islamic State flag and explosives were found. About 300 Belgians are estimated to have fought with Islamists in Syria, making the country of 11 million the leading European exporter of foreign fighters and a focus of concern in France and other neighbors over its security capabilities. Reviving arguments over Belgian security policies following the Paris attacks, in which 130 people died in an operation apparently organized from Brussels, French Finance Minister Michel Sapin spoke of "naivete" on the part of "certain leaders" in holding back from security crackdowns on Muslim communities. Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders retorted that each country should look to its own social problems, saying France too had rough high-rise suburbs in which militants had become radicalized. Valls said France had no place teaching Belgium lessons and had problems with its own communities. Brussels airport seemed likely to remain shut for several days over the busy Easter holiday weekend, since the departure hall was still being combed as a crime scene on Wednesday and repairs can only begin once investigators are finished. (Editing by Paul Taylor, Ralph Boulton and Richard Balmforth)
Cotonou (AFP) - Voting passed off calmly Sunday in the deciding second round of Benin's presidential election, with Prime Minister Lionel Zinsou taking on businessman Patrice Talon for the tiny west African country's top job.

Some 4.7 million people were eligible to cast their ballots in the vote to elect a successor to outgoing President Thomas Boni Yayi, with the first results due out in a week.

He is bowing out after serving a maximum two five-year terms, marking him out among some African leaders who have tried to change constitutions to ensure third terms.

Polls began closing at 4 pm (1500 GMT).

"Everything went well, nothing serious to speak of," said Mathieu Boni, an election observation organiser, although he added that there had been some attempted ballot stuffing which was being investigated.

On the face of it, Zinsou -- who quit his job as head of one of Europe's biggest investment banks when he was nominated prime minister last year -- is the leading contender.

The 61-year-old candidate for Boni Yayi's Cowry Forces for an Emerging Benin (FCBE) has the support of the majority of lawmakers in parliament via the backing of two main opposition groupings.

He won 27.1 percent of the vote in the first round on March 6, with Talon, a 57-year-old entrepreneur who made his money in cotton and running Cotonou's port, second on 23.5 percent.

But since then, 24 of the 32 other candidates who stood in the first round have come out in support of Talon, including third-placed Sebastien Ajavon, who won 22 percent of votes.

The tight margins give Zinsou a potential uphill battle against Talon, who has billed himself as the authentic Beninese candidate and repeatedly attacked his opponent's dual French nationality.

Zinsou, who attended an elite French university and was a speechwriter for the former prime minister Laurent Fabius, has been called a "yovo" or "the white man" during the campaign.

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- 'World's laughing stock' -

On Thursday, the two candidates took part in Benin's first-ever presidential debate in which Zinsou ran through his key manifesto pledges to cut poverty, and improve power supplies and healthcare.

But Talon harped on the record of Boni Yayi, whom he said had created "a banana republic" that had become "the laughing stock of the world", as well as questioning Zinsou's knowledge of Benin.

Critics have claimed the prime minister is the preferred choice of France, the former colonial power in this country of 10.6 million people.

Talon bankrolled Boni Yayi's successful 2006 and 2011 presidential campaigns but fled to exile in France after being accused of masterminding an alleged plot to poison the president in 2012.

He only returned last October after receiving a presidential pardon.

Zinsou, whose supporters point to his distinguished record in business and top-level contacts, acted like "a governor in a land of savages", said Talon, in a string of personal attacks.

Tackling youth unemployment, corruption and improving health and education will be major issues for whoever is voted in.

Diversifying an economy that largely relies on agriculture, trade and exports with its neighbour to the east, Nigeria, will also be high on the agenda.

Counting of ballots is expected to begin after polling stations close at 1500 GMT, with results due within 72 hours.
By Saraswati Sundas THIMPHU (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Sonam Zangmo endured abuse at the hands of her husband for two years before finally walking out on him after the birth of her daughter. "He used to lay his hands on me at every opportunity," said the 28-year-old Bhutanese woman, who is now bringing up her daughter, 6, alone. She is happier as a single parent, she says, even though she earns just $100 a month working at a resort in Bumthang district in central Bhutan, popular for its ancient Buddhist temples and monasteries. "There were no better options," said Zangmo. "I want my daughter to have a good life." But without drastic changes in attitudes toward women in the tiny Himalayan nation wedged between China and India, it is likely her daughter will also suffer domestic abuse. A national health survey in 2012 revealed 74 percent of women in the majority Buddhist country had been victims of physical violence. Another survey from Bhutan's National Statistics Bureau revealed that 68 percent of Bhutanese women believe a man is justified in beating his wife if she neglects the children, argues with her husband, refuses sex or burns the dinner. The findings were a wake-up call in a society that enshrines non-discrimination in its constitution, and through its Gross National Happiness Commission prioritizes the happiness of its citizens, taking into account factors other than economic well-being. "It is surprising and shocking," said Karma Tshiteem, secretary of the happiness commission, formed in 2008. "The attitude is totally inconsistent with Buddhist teachings." Another victim of violence at home, retired schoolteacher Mewang Zam, 49, left her husband after 20 years of marriage. Her husband was a jobless alcoholic and would hit her and her children regularly. She decided to throw him out one night after he threatened to beat her with an iron rod. "I lived with him in the hope he would change but he never did," said Zam who now lives with her son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren in the capital, Thimphu. Her husband has tried to convince her to take him back but she has refused. 'FUTURE OF OUR DAUGHTERS' Since the non-governmental organization Respect, Educate, Nurture and Empower Women (RENEW) was established in 2004, more than 4,000 cases of gender-based violence have been reported. But many more go unreported in the country of around 780,000 people. RENEW's more than 2,400 volunteers work across the mountainous kingdom to raise awareness and offer information about domestic violence and sexual health, and provide support and shelter to families who have suffered abuse. "Violence against women is a serious health, mental and human rights issue," said 28-year-old Rinzin Lhamo, a teacher who works as a RENEW volunteer in the commercial hub, Phuentsholing. "We must stand up together now to secure the future of our daughters." Apart from giving counselling and providing protection, Lhamo teaches victims of domestic violence tailoring, baking and bamboo basket-making to boost their incomes. Another volunteer, Ambika Neopaney, herself a victim of domestic abuse, has worked with RENEW for more than 10 years. "There are a lot of women out there who need help," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "We help them come forward and get counselling and legal assistance," she said, adding at times they also help couples to reconcile. The NGO says it receives half a dozen complaints of violence against women every day, due to growing awareness of the problem. It deals with cases of assault, sexual harassment, child labor, sexual exploitation, physical abuse and rape. In 2014 alone, RENEW referred more than 50 cases to the high court, and the group currently houses 132 domestic violence victims in shelters. "Many women know about the service we provide, and many are coming forward," said RENEW's director, Pema Gyelsten. He said the most common complaints are physical abuse, including wife and maid battery, followed by emotional abuse, neglect, abandonment and extra-marital affairs. The National Commission for Women and Children and the women and child protection unit of the Bhutan police, established in 2007, have introduced an emergency number for reporting violence. Speaking at an International Women's Day event in Phuentsholing this month, the queen mother Sangay Choden Wangchuck, founder of RENEW, told the audience: "It is your duty to show and tell your sons that women deserve respect and love and should never be abused." The influential mother of King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck said sexual and gender-based violence were on the rise in Bhutan, with children bearing the brunt of the abuse. Prime Minister Lyonchoen Tshering Tobgay has promised strict implementation of the 2013 Domestic Violence Prevention Act, as well as increasing representation of women in parliament, and promoting women's participation in society, economics and politics. (Reporting by Saraswati Sundas; 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 www.trust.org)
By Himank Sharma and Devidutta Tripathy MUMBAI (Reuters) - Blackstone Group is buying a majority stake in Indian IT outsourcing services provider Mphasis Ltd from Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co in an up to $1.1 billion deal, in the U.S. asset manager's single-biggest investment in India. The all-cash deal reinforces Blackstone's bullish outlook on the outsourcing business, where western clients send IT jobs to countries such as India to cut costs. In December, Blackstone announced the purchase of a minority stake in India's IBS Software for $170 million. Blackstone is betting that India's IT industry will continue to grow in double-digits as companies move to high-margin digital services to offset a cut-back in routine IT spending by clients, a senior executive at the firm said. "The reason we have made a strong commitment to the Indian IT sector is because this is a sector which has delivered very strong returns to Blackstone and other PE investors in India," said Amit Dixit, Blackstone's senior managing director in India. "This sector is also poised for good growth ... and especially digital services, an area in which Mphasis is strong in," he said on a conference call after the deal was announced. India's IT and software services export revenue is likely to grow by 10-12 percent in the fiscal year beginning on April 1 to as much as $121 billion, according to trade body National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom). In what is one of the biggest M&A transactions in the country's outsourcing sector, Blackstone will pay 430 rupees ($6.49) per share for at least 84 percent of HP Enterprise Co's 60.5 percent stake in Mphasis. It also made an open offer to buy a 26 percent stake in Mphasis from public shareholders for 457.54 rupees a share to comply with Indian laws. Depending on the response to the open offer, HPE could get as much as $825 million for its complete stake, while the final cost to Blackstone of the transaction could be as much as 70.71 billion rupees ($1.1 billion). The deal is expected to close in the coming months, Blackstone said. Shares of Mphasis, which have gained more than 11 percent from the beginning of March till end of last week in anticipation of a deal, fell 2.9 percent on Monday to close slightly below the open offer price at 454.90 rupees on the Mumbai markets. 'LAST BIG ASSET' "This is a consolidating industry and Mphasis was the last big asset, you could see some more PE deals for smaller software companies in the sector going forward," said Ravi Menon, an IT sector analyst at Elara Capital. Sources had told Reuters Blackstone was the frontrunner in an auction run by HPE for its Mphasis stake. HPE had been looking to exit from the Indian venture to shore up its capital, the sources had said. Analysts have said that Mphasis' move away from HPE, which accounts for about a quarter of the Indian company's revenue, could hurt its sales. But Blackstone has ensured that HPE maintains its commercial partnership with Mphasis. The Indian company has signed a five-year revenue guarantee of at least $990 million through sales to HPE, the companies said. The U.S. asset manager is not alone in initiating outsourcing sector deals in India. In February, Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte [GIC.UL] and private equity investors Advent International and Bain Capital jointly bought a minority stake in outsourcing firm QuEST Global Services for $350 million. ($1 = 66.2200 Indian rupees) (Reporting by Himank Sharma and Devidutta Tripathy; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
DIKILI, Turkey (Reuters) - A passenger boat carrying migrants being returned from Greece to Turkey under a landmark European Union deal docked in the Turkish town of Dikili on Monday after sailing from the Greek island of Lesbos, a Reuters witness said. Under the EU-Turkey deal, Ankara will take back all migrants and refugees, including Syrians, who enter Greece illegally in return for the EU taking in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey and rewarding it with more money, early visa-free travel and progress in its EU membership negotiations. (Reporting by Dasha Afanasieva; Writing by Daren Butler; editing by David Dolan)
By Alwyn Scott

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Boeing Co <BA.N> said on Monday it had picked a new aircraft seat supplier for its most popular jet, the 737, a move that industry experts said adds competition to leading seat makers Zodiac Aerospace <ZODC.PA> and B/E Aerospace <BEAV.O>.

In response to questions from Reuters, Boeing said it will buy seats directly from the new supplier, LIFT by EnCore of Huntington Beach, California - a break from the past practice of allowing airlines to purchase seats that led to some costly delays in finishing aircraft because seats did not always arrive on time.

Boeing and LIFT planned to announce their agreement on Tuesday at the Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg, Germany.

Boeing said it already has 11 approved economy seat suppliers, but LIFT will be the first and only supplier selling directly to Boeing for the current 737NG and successor 737 MAX aircraft. The other suppliers sell to airlines, a process that has for decades allowed carriers to customize their respective cabins.

As plane production soared in recent years, suppliers had increasing problems delivering seats on time. The delays fouled production at Boeing and Airbus.

Last year, both plane makers took the rare step of criticizing Zodiac after missed deadlines caused plane deliveries to be delayed.

France-based Zodiac has issued several profit warnings as it failed to keep up with delivery schedules.

Boeing's shift is most likely to affect Zodiac and B/E Aerospace, which together supply about two-thirds of the global seat market worth about $4.6 billion a year, according to consulting firm AlixPartners.

"It appears Boeing is warning the two main incumbents that it isn't satisfied with their current performance," said Phil Toy, a managing director at AlixPartners.

LIFT by EnCore is a new venture that has not yet delivered a seat. But founders Tom McFarland and Jim Downey are industry veterans who sold their previous seat and interior company, known as C&D Aerospace, to Zodiac in 2005.

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LIFT plans to begin delivering the new seats, known as "tourist class" in mid-2017. LIFT designed its seat in consultation with Boeing, allowing it to gear the seat's dimensions, structure and weight for the 737 and Boeing's new "Sky Interior" cabin design.

The seat width of 17.9 inches (45.47 cm) is among the widest available. It uses lightweight composite materials and includes about two dozen options airlines can configure, such as headrests, cushions, power outlets and holders for tablets and personal electronics.

Boeing said its strong supply chain and the LIFT seat would "provide customers the stability and reliability they have come to expect from the 737."

(Reporting by Alwyn Scott, editing by G Crosse)
(Reuters) - Boston Scientific Corp on Monday said it has temporarily stopped selling a newer version of its Watchman atrial fibrillation treatment in Europe due to a higher-than-expected rate of embolisms associated with the implant. The FLX model, launched in some European markets in November, is a second-generation version of the Watchman device sold in the United States. The implant is designed to prevent strokes in patients with a form of atrial fibrillation, or irregular heartbeat. The device works by sealing off the left atrial appendage where blood can pool and clot and allows patients to stop taking the blood thinner warfarin. The company will look at whether physician training and implant technique are causing the higher-than-expected rate of device-related embolisms, Boston Scientific medical officers told an investor meeting at the American College of Cardiology scientific sessions in Chicago. The rate is comparable to what the company saw when its current Watchman product was first released, they said. Boston Scientific is the only company selling a left atrial appendage closure device in the United States. Watchman gained U.S. regulatory approval in March 2015. Suspending Watchman FLX sales in Europe will not affect the companys revenue forecast this year of $175 million to $200 million for its structural heart division that includes the device, company officials said. The U.S. Heart Rhythm Society estimates more than three million Americans have atrial fibrillation, the most common type of arrhythmia. Patients with atrial fibrillation are five times more likely to suffer a stroke than those without the condition. (Reporting by Susan Kelly in Chicago; Editing by Alan Crosby)
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Botswana's economy is projected to grow by 3.7 percent this year after an estimated contraction of 0.3 percent in 2015, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said. "GDP growth is estimated to have turned slightly negative in 2015 owing to a decline in the global demand for diamonds and copper," the IMF said in a statement late on Thursday. "A gradual economic recovery is projected in the next three years, based on an expected gradual increase in diamond prices and fiscal stimulus." (Reporting by Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo; Editing by Richard Borsuk)
KOLKATA (Reuters) - West Indies' Carlos Brathwaite smashed a remarkable four successive sixes in the last over as they beat England by four wickets to win their second World Twenty20 title on Sunday. Brathwaite's heroics alongside Marlon Samuels, who remained unbeaten on 85, saw West Indies, the 2012 champions, win with two balls to spare, sparking jubilant scenes at Eden Park. Put in to bat, 2010 champions England rode Joe Root's 54 to post 155 for nine wickets in their 20 overs as Dwayne Bravo and Brathwaite picked up three wickets apiece for West Indies. (Reporting by Sudipto Ganguly; Editing by Ken Ferris)
By Maria Carolina Marcello BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil's attorney general urged a congressional committee on Monday to dismiss impeachment charges against President Dilma Rousseff, saying there is no legal basis for the proceedings. Jose Eduardo Cardozo, the government's main legal advisor, told members of Congress that the decision by lower house speaker Eduardo Cunha to accept the impeachment request was motivated by Cunha's desire for political revenge against Rousseff, his bitter political rival. "The impeachment process was compromised from the start and as such it is invalid," Cardozo said, telling lawmakers that to conclude the impeachment would be to "rip up the constitution." The hearing came just weeks ahead of a vote that could suspend Rousseff from office in the middle of an economic crisis and a bribery scandal at state-run oil company Petrobras that has shaken Brazil's political establishment. Markets favor Rousseff's ouster on hopes it could usher in business-friendly policies under her substitute, Vice President Michel Temer. The opposition's impeachment request, which is not formally tied to the graft probe threatening her inner circle, alleges that Rousseff deliberately manipulated budgetary accounts to boost her re-election campaign in 2014. Cardozo, Rousseff's former justice minister, denied allegations that lending from state banks to the federal government was used to fund social programs. The testimony by the attorney general, appointed in March, is the latest step in a process that started with Cunha's acceptance of impeachment charges in December. The committee will recommend to the lower house whether there are grounds to impeach Rousseff. The full house would then vote on the committee's decision, which could happen as soon as mid-April. If the impeachment passes the lower house, Rousseff would be suspended for up to six months while facing trial in the Senate, making Temer acting president. Temer and Cunha's PMDB party, the largest in Congress, formally broke with the government last week. Rousseff's opponents need the votes of two-thirds of 513 deputies to take the impeachment case to the Senate. Rousseff has to get 171 votes or abstentions to block the process. Political consultancies, such as the Eurasia Group, see a 60-70 percent chance she will lose the vote. In an effort to rally her leftist base and consolidate support to defeat impeachment, Rousseff last month appointed her predecessor and political mentor, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, as cabinet chief. The move set off a wave of legal challenges from critics accusing her of shielding Lula from the snowballing corruption investigation that started at state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, known as Petrobras. Prosecutors have charged Lula with concealing a luxury beachfront apartment provided by Petrobras contractors snared in the multi-billion-dollar graft probe. If Lula takes office as Rousseff's minister, proceedings against him will remain under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. A dozen other impeachment requests are also waiting for consideration by Cunha, a fierce critic of Rousseff who himself is facing corruption charges for allegedly receiving millions in the Petrobras scheme through undeclared Swiss bank accounts. Cunha can accept a second bid to impeach the president in tandem with the current process but he is expected to do so only if the first case against Rousseff is defeated. (Reporting by Maria Carolina Marcello; Writing by Brad Haynes and Paulo Prada.; Editing by Frances Kerry and Andrew Hay)
BRASILIA (Reuters) - Politicians from seven parties in Brazil were named as clients of a Panama-based firm at the center of a massive data leak over possible tax evasion, O Estado de S.Paulo said on Monday. The newspaper was one of more than 100 other news organizations around the globe to publish this weekend details of more than 11.5 million documents from the files of law firm Mossack Fonseca, based in the tax haven of Panama. O Estado said names in the leaked files included politicians from Brazil's largest party, the PMDB, which broke away from President Dilma Rousseff's coalition last week. Political figures from the PSDB, the most prominent opposition party in the country, was also mentioned in the leaks, as well as others from the PDT, PP, PSB, PSD and the PTB parties. No politicians from Rousseff's Workers' Party were mentioned in the leaks, although it included at least 57 people or companies that had already been under investigation in Brazil for alleged involvement in a far-reaching graft scheme at state-run oil firm Petroleo Brasileiro SA. The leaked "Panama Papers" cover a period over almost 40 years, from 1977 until last December. They allegedly show that some companies domiciled in tax havens were being used for suspected money laundering, arms and drug deals and tax evasion. In many cases, though, the offshore activity was not illegal. The head of Mossack Fonseca has denied any wrongdoing but said his firm had suffered a successful but "limited" hack on its database. The firm's director, Ramon Fonseca, described the hack and leak as "an international campaign against privacy". Brazilian prosecutors in January said Mossack Fonseca helped members of the Workers' Party launder money through the purchase of beach-side apartments. At the time, Mossack said it had been "unjustly and erroneously included in matters with which we have no involvement at all." (Reporting by Silvio Cascione Editing by W Simon)
SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazil's tax agency plans to verify information about offshore tax avoidance from the "Panama Papers" and could impose fines on undeclared assets in offshore accounts of up to 150 percent of their value, the agency said in an e-mail to Reuters.

Politicians from seven political parties in Brazil were named as clients of Panama-based Mossack Fonseca, which is at the center of a massive data leak, newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo reported.

(Reporting by Caroline Stauffer; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
By Kylie MacLellan

LONDON (Reuters) - The British government sought on Monday to deflect any criticism of Prime Minister David Cameron over his late father's inclusion on a list of clients using a law firm in the tax haven of Panama and said it would investigate the leaked data.

Cameron's father, Ian, and members of his Conservative Party were among the tens of thousands of rich and famous people named in a leak of documents from Panama-based Mossack Fonseca which showed how clients had evaded tax and laundered money.

The documents, which emerged in an investigation published on Sunday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), are a blow to Cameron, a critic of tax evasion and tax avoidance.

In 2012, British media reported that Cameron's father ran a network of offshore investment funds to help build the family fortune. There is no suggestion he did anything illegal.

Asked on Monday whether she could confirm that no family money was still invested in those funds, Cameron's spokeswoman said: "That is a private matter."

Britain's HM Revenue and Customs said it had asked for a copy of the leaked data so it could examine the information.

"We have already received a great deal of information on offshore companies, including in Panama, from a wide range of sources, which is currently the subject of intensive investigation," Jennie Granger, director general of enforcement and compliance at HM Revenue and Customs, said in a statement.

"We have asked the ICIJ to share the leaked data that they have obtained with us. We will closely examine this data and will act on it swiftly and appropriately."

Opposition Labour finance spokesman John McDonnell said the Panama Papers showed Cameron had failed to end tax secrecy and crack down on offshore schemes and called for "real action".

But the government said Britain had brought in more than 2 billion pounds ($2.84 billion) from offshore tax evaders since Cameron took office in 2010 and that Britain was "leading the pack internationally" on tackling tax evasion and avoidance.

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Since Britain made the issue a central plank of its G8 presidency in 2013, 90 countries have signed up to the automatic exchange of tax information, Cameron's spokeswoman said.

She said Britain was pushing its overseas territories and crown dependencies, many of which are tax havens, to create public registers of who owns companies in their jurisdictions. Britain's own such register will go live in June.

Asked if Britain would legislate to force territories such as the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands to publish the information, she said: "The prime minister has made clear that should they fail to do so he rules absolutely nothing out."

(Editing by Angus MacSwan)
By Kylie MacLellan LONDON (Reuters) - The British government sought on Monday to deflect any criticism of Prime Minister David Cameron over his late father's inclusion on a list of clients using a law firm in the tax haven of Panama and said it would investigate the leaked data. Cameron's father, Ian, and members of his Conservative Party were among the tens of thousands of rich and famous people named in a leak of documents from Panama-based Mossack Fonseca which showed how clients had evaded tax and laundered money. The documents, which emerged in an investigation published on Sunday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), are a blow to Cameron, a critic of tax evasion and tax avoidance. In 2012, British media reported that Cameron's father ran a network of offshore investment funds to help build the family fortune. There is no suggestion he did anything illegal. Asked on Monday whether she could confirm that no family money was still invested in those funds, Cameron's spokeswoman said: "That is a private matter." Britain's HM Revenue and Customs said it had asked for a copy of the leaked data so it could examine the information. "We have already received a great deal of information on offshore companies, including in Panama, from a wide range of sources, which is currently the subject of intensive investigation," Jennie Granger, director general of enforcement and compliance at HM Revenue and Customs, said in a statement. "We have asked the ICIJ to share the leaked data that they have obtained with us. We will closely examine this data and will act on it swiftly and appropriately." Opposition Labour finance spokesman John McDonnell said the Panama Papers showed Cameron had failed to end tax secrecy and crack down on offshore schemes and called for "real action". But the government said Britain had brought in more than 2 billion pounds ($2.84 billion) from offshore tax evaders since Cameron took office in 2010 and that Britain was "leading the pack internationally" on tackling tax evasion and avoidance. Since Britain made the issue a central plank of its G8 presidency in 2013, 90 countries have signed up to the automatic exchange of tax information, Cameron's spokeswoman said. She said Britain was pushing its overseas territories and crown dependencies, many of which are tax havens, to create public registers of who owns companies in their jurisdictions. Britain's own such register will go live in June. Asked if Britain would legislate to force territories such as the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands to publish the information, she said: "The prime minister has made clear that should they fail to do so he rules absolutely nothing out." (Editing by Angus MacSwan)
LONDON (Reuters) - British double agent Kim Philby detailed his life of betrayal and the ease with which he was able to pass secrets to his Soviet controllers in newly-discovered video footage broadcast by the BBC on Monday. Philby was one of the Soviet Union's most successful spies who penetrated the heart of the British establishment and passed secrets back to Moscow for three decades, part of a ring of British double agents recruited in the 1930s. The video, discovered by the BBC in the official archives of the Stasi, the former East German Intelligence Service, shows Philby, who defected to Moscow in 1963 and died there in 1988, lecturing Soviet spies in 1981 about his life as an agent. "Dear Comrades," he begins, delivering his lecture to a rapt audience in his upper class English accent. Philby said he became interested in communism while at Cambridge University, and explained how he was recruited by Moscow in the 1930s to infiltrate Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, the foreign spy agency now known as MI6, the BBC said. He disclosed how easy it was to steal secrets as he began to rise through MI6's ranks. "Every evening I left the office with a big briefcase full of reports that I had written myself, full of files and actual documents from the archive," Philby said. "I used to hand them to my Soviet contact in the evening. The next morning I would get the files back, the contents having been photographed and early the next morning I would put them back in their place. That I did regularly year in year out." The shadowy world and double-dealing of Philby and others in the "Cambridge Five" spy ring - such as Anthony Blunt, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean - has long fascinated British audiences. In one excerpt from the Stasi lecture, Philby detailed how he was ordered to undermine his boss so he could take over as head of an MI6 section responsible for unmasking Soviet agents, calling it a "very, very dirty story". "After all, our work does imply getting dirty hands from time to time," he said. "So I set about the business of removing my own chief. You oughtn't to listen to this," he told the East German spies, provoking laughter. Philby, stationed in Washington as the liaison officer between the CIA and MI6 from 1949-51, said he escaped detection for so long because he was part of the British governing class system. Many MI6 colleagues had much to lose as they had been involved in his recruitment and promotion, he said. He fled to Moscow in 1963 when new evidence of his work for the Soviet Union arose. He alleged he was able to escape from Beirut because the MI6 agent sent to watch him was an avid skier and had gone off to the Lebanese mountains after hearing news of a snowfall. Philby's hour-long address ends with simple advice to the spies: 'Deny everything'. "My advice to you is to tell all your agents that they are never to confess," said Philby, who died in Moscow in 1988 aged 76. (Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Richard Balmforth)
By Abhirup Roy (Reuters) - Network gear maker Brocade Communications Systems Inc said it would buy Ruckus Wireless Inc in a $1.5 billion deal, aiming to tap into the growing demand for Wi-Fi access over large areas such as offices and stadiums. Ruckus, which counts the Marriott group and the Angel baseball stadium in Los Angeles among its customers, makes controllers and access points that help businesses offer high-speed Internet to their customers. Based on Friday closing prices, the deal values Ruckus at $14.43 per share, a premium of 44 percent. Ruckus shares were trading at $13 in morning trading on Monday, while Brocade dropped 15 percent to $9.04. Net of Ruckus's cash on hand, the deal value is about $1.2 billion, the companies said. Macquarie Research analyst Rajesh Ghai said the deal made sense as the companies offered complimentary products and would provide Brocade with "some more ammunition" to expand into the services industry. Ghai added it was unlikely that a second bidder would emerge. Ruckus stockholders will get $6.45 in cash and 0.75 share of Brocade common stock for each share held. The cash portion of the deal will be funded with cash on hand and a new loan, the companies said. "The reaction of Brocade's stock and their decision to offer a high mix of stock in this transaction despite clearly having enough cash for the deal, opens up the door for a competitive bidder," BTIG wrote in a note to clients. San Jose-based Brocade also raised its share buyback program by $800 million, taking the total remaining under the existing program to about $1.7 billion. The company said it expected the deal to add to its adjusted earnings by its first quarter of fiscal 2017. Chief Executive Selina Lo will continue to lead the Ruckus business, reporting to Brocade Chief Executive Lloyd Carney. Evercore was Brocade's financial adviser and Paul Hastings LLP was legal counsel. Morgan Stanley was financial adviser for Ruckus and Sullivan & Cromwell LLP provided legal advice. Up to Friday's close, Brocade shares had fallen 9.5 percent in the past 12 months, while Ruckus shares had dropped about 22 percent. (Reporting by Abhirup Roy in Bengaluru, additional reporting by Narottam Medhora; Editing by Anupama Dwivedi and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)
A new photography initiative is building a collection of high-resolution insect images and placing them online for anyone to download and use for free.

The project, named "Insects Unlocked," was launched in the summer of 2015 under the supervision of Alex Wild, a curator of entomology at the University of Texas at Austin (UTA). Wild, a photographer and writer as well as an entomologist, has long championed the importance of photography's role in science communication and outreach.

With UTA's support, Insects Unlocked involves students and curators in learning and mastering the use of professional photographic equipment to create public-domain images of a range of insects  and spiders, too  in the field and in curated collections. [In Photos: 'Insects Unlocked' Collection Shares Free Insect Images]

One of the project's goals is to represent the diversity of "Texas' smallest wildlife," said a statement on the project's fundraising page.

The high-resolution photos are released into the public domain, which means they are available for anyone to use at no charge and for any purpose  personal, educational or commercial  without permission or attribution required.

Many of photographs' insect subjects reside in the University of Texas Insect Collection, Wild told Live Science in an email. The collection holds between 1 million and 2 million specimens, focusing on species that are native to Texas and Mexico.

Wild, whose work as an entomologist explores ant evolution and taxonomy, began photographing insects more than a decade ago, and writes about insect photography for Scientific American. He built the imaging system that the Insects Unlocked group uses for the UTA insect collection. That group currently involves about 10 people, a mix of students at UTA and people in the larger Austin, Texas, community.

Response to the initiative has been very encouraging, Wild said, with Insects Unlocked images appearing in a number of different outlets: journal covers, news stories, Wikipedia pages, classroom presentations and corporate websites, to name a few.

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Insects Unlocked benefits the student photographers as well, imparting skills that can be applied to the students' future scientific efforts in species identification, collection and curation, Wild said.

"Visual art skills are an extremely valuable asset for scientists," Wild told Live Science. "And in that vein, I see the primary benefit of Insects Unlocked is to provide young scientists with training they might not otherwise receive.

"Of course, the free images that come out the other end are also useful," he added.

Images are available to download at full resolution from the Insects Unlocked Flickr photostream.

Follow Mindy Weisberger on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
By Nidal al-Mughrabi GAZA (Reuters) - Construction workers in Gaza have discovered ancient ruins that archaeologists say may be part of a Byzantine church dating from around 1,500 years ago, the Palestinian tourism and antiquities ministry said on Monday. The findings include segments of marble pillars with ornate Corinthian capitals, one nearly three meters (yards) long, and a 90 cm (35 inch) foundation stone bearing a Greek symbol for Christ. Fifteen pieces have been uncovered, with excavations continuing. "Our first thought is that the site is a cathedral or a church from the Byzantine period," said Jamal Abu Rida, the general director of the antiquities ministry. "During that era, there was a great interest among the Byzantine rulers to build churches in the Gaza Strip." Gaza was a prosperous seaport during the Roman period, with a diverse population of Greeks, Romans, Jews, Egyptians and Persians. Pagan temples were destroyed in the late 4th and early 5th centuries AD and there was widespread church-building. That continued until the Muslim general Amr ibn al-As conquered Gaza in 637 AD, after which most of the population adopted Islam and Christian places of worship were abandoned. "I dare say the place is of historical value," said Abu Rida, estimating the ruins to date from somewhere between 395 and the late 600s AD. Dozens of onlookers watched on Monday as a bulldozer and a digger continued to shift earth in Palestine Square, a busy shopping district in downtown Gaza. Bystanders used their phones to take pictures and video of the archaeological pieces laid out next to the digging site. SHOPPING CENTER SITE The discovery was first made on Saturday, as construction workers prepared the ground for a shopping center. The antiquities ministry was called in and immediately uncovered three large pieces. Then a dozen more were found. Abu Rida said the preparation for a shopping center may have to be halted should excavations lead to the discovery of more pieces. Construction workers showed no sign of stopping on Monday, with diggers shifting huge mounds of earth. "Our mission is to preserve our Palestinian history before Islam and after Islam," said Abu Rida. Over the millennia, Gaza has served as a trading post for Egyptians, Philistines, Romans and Crusaders. There are ruins from Alexander the Great's siege of the city and the arrival of the Islamic armies some 1,400 years ago. Several discoveries have been made in recent years but a lack of funding and skills has hindered the ministry's ability to excavate and preserve the findings, Abu Rida said. His ministry employs just 40 excavation workers. "The site we are talking about is 2,000 square meters and 10 meters deep and requires hundreds of workers and millions of dollars to carry out proper excavation to extract pieces and read the texts written on them," he said. The site is located not far from Gaza's old spice market, near the ancient Omari Mosque, built a thousand years ago, and the Church of Saint Porphyrius, dating from the 5th century. (Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Editing by Luke Baker and Tom Heneghan)
By Maria Sheahan BERLIN (Reuters) - Bulgaria is showing off its Black Sea resorts and lush nature at this year's ITB travel trade fair in hopes of attracting tourists scared away from formerly popular destinations such as Egypt and Tunisia following militant Islamist attacks. "Expectations are so great that many hotel operators are concerned about whether they'll have enough beds," Plamen Bakalov, Consul for Economic Affairs at Bulgaria's consulate in Frankfurt, told Reuters at ITB, the world's largest travel fair, on Friday. Attacks in tourist hotspots including a Tunisian beach resort and the city of Paris over the past year have rattled travellers' confidence, sending bookings for many destinations including Tunisia and Egypt plummeting and heralding a slowdown in demand for international travel. Bulgaria's southern neighbor Turkey has also seen a series of attacks by both Islamist militants and Kurdish separatists, while Greece, another neighbor, is on the frontline of Europe's migrant crisis. The beneficiaries are destinations perceived to carry a smaller risk of becoming the target of attacks, such as Spain, Portugal and Bulgaria. Tour operator Suntours, based in the Bulgarian seaside city of Varna, said summer bookings from Germany were currently up 12 percent compared with this time last year, and that it expected Russian bookings to gain 10-15 percent. "That is probably because we are perceived as a safe destination," Suntours manager Nina Chamova told Reuters at the ITB fair, which is held in Berlin. Boasting almost 380 kilometres (236 miles) of Black Sea coast dotted with beach resorts once popular with communist party officials as well as mountain ranges, medieval monasteries and classical ruins, Bulgaria markets itself as family-friendly and low-priced. Data from the World Travel & Tourism Council shows tourism accounts for about 13 percent of Bulgaria's national output. German travel search site kayak.de said online searches for flights to Varna and Bourgas, the two main tourist airports on the Black Sea coast, were up 13 percent and 15 percent respectively in the first two months of the year. The five-star Duni Royal Resort in Sozopol, which has more than 1,300 rooms, said reservations for the summer were currently up almost 20 percent from last year, largely thanks to German tourists. Last year, tourist arrivals fell by about 1 percent, largely hurt by a slump in travel by Russians, Bakalov said. (Reporting by Maria Sheahan; Additional reporting by Victoria Bryan; Editing by Gareth Jones)
Network effects (where services become more valuable the more people use them) are some of the most powerful factors in technology and no more so in the case of the Panama Papers, the huge investigation unleashed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and its partners.

It is undoubtedly the biggest story worldwide today  dominating radio bulletins, television and front pages from Munich to Montreal and Sydney to Sarajevo. The #panamapapers Twitter hashtag has been tweeted more than 1.58m times since Sunday afternoon.

Governments and corporations have been forced to react, some quizzically, some with denials and some lamely. Australian authorities said they were investigating 800 people already. The UK authorities asked if they could take a look at the documents. The Kremlin, which tried to pre-empt the story last week as part of a conspiracy against Vladimir Putin and Russia itself, reacted predictably by attacking the work saying journalistic standards had "sunk into oblivion.

As far as standards go I dont think any journalism organization could be prouder today of the work by ICIJ Director Gerard Ryle and his team and the extraordinary network of members and partners of the ICIJ. The genius of Gerards work in the past four years in managing the ICIJ collaborative network and in bringing major media companies on as partners played out in Panama Papers. But this is years in the preparation as last years Swiss Leaks, the previous Lux Leaks investigation and the original Offshore Leaks showed. [A huge vote of thanks to Gerards team, not least: Marina Guevara Walker, Mike Hudson, Mar Cabra, Hamish Boland-Rudder, Will Fitzgibbon, Cecile Chilis-Gallego, Matthew Caruana, Rigoberto Carvajal, Emilia Diaz-Struck, Sasha Chavkin and quite a few others who have made this work possible.]

The journalistic quality is clear also from the originator of the project, the organization which received the huge leak, the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung. Its handling of the leak, the engagement with the ICIJ to manage it and run it across the network and the professionalism of the work behind the whole effort is remarkable and beautifully described in this how to by the ICIJs partners.

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I believe the work on this project in unimpeachable, unlike some of the world leaders whose affairs have been exposed. It is a great advertisement for the non-profit model of the Center for Public Integrity and the ICIJ. We have had several hundred donations to the Panama Papers home page overnight and the reaction from our existing supporters has been overwhelmingly positive. This work simply could not be done without the philanthropic foundations and individual donors which back the ICIJ directly and the CPI as its parent. Thank you.

Pieces I would like to call out for particular attention include:

If I were you and wanting to check out what others have done, I would start with the English-Language version of Suddeutsche Zeitung, perhaps go on to the outstanding work of The Guardian, particularly on the Putin story. The BBC led its radio, television, and online news bulletins overnight and in to today on it and has a Panorama documentary this evening.

A gentleman from Charlotte, North Carolina, Mr J P Pritchard, called my office this afternoon: Are you the people who did this work on the Secret Shell Game I read about in the Charlotte Observer today? Bless your hearts. It doesnt get better than that.

I welcome feedback on this note.

Peter Bale

CEO, The Center for Public Integrity

This story is part of Inside Publici. Stories were working on, the impact of our investigations, news about our fundraising efforts, and other issues that shape our work. Click here to read more stories in this topic.

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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.
The weird weather pattern that hatched California's ongoing drought is becoming more common, and could bring more extreme dry spells in the future, a new study finds.

California is suffering its worst drought in 1,200 years because of a persistent atmospheric "high" parked just offshore. This high-pressure ridge  aptly named the "ridiculously resilient ridge"  deflects winter storms northward, away from California, according to the researchers.

Winter storms are critical for California's water supply; the state receives 75 percent of its precipitation in the coldest months. The blocking pattern also triggers higher temperatures on land and in the coastal ocean. [The 5 Worst Droughts in US History]

The ridge appeared in 2012 and received its nickname in December 2013 from Stanford University Ph.D. student Daniel Swain. At its greatest extent, the "RRR" stretched along the entire West Coast, from California north to Alaska. This sort of high-pressure system has emerged more frequently in recent decades, according to new research from Swain and his colleagues. The results were published today (April 1) in the journal Science Advances.

Swain analyzed historical data from the U.S. National Climatic Data Center to identify unusual weather years in the past. Along with high temperatures and drought, the researchers also looked for other extreme weather events, such as very wet or very cold years. Then, Swain worked backward to find out what the atmospheric pressure patterns were like when the weather took a severe turn for the worse.

"We're not using climate models; we're using real-world observations," Swain told Live Science. "We think it's critically important to consider the extremes, rather than changes in what's going on in the average, because for most practical purposes, a little above or a little below is manageable. The problems start to arise when you have these extreme events."

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On average, California still receives about the same amount of precipitation as in decades past, the study reported. (The historical data cover climate observations from 1949 to 2015.) But the variability between wet and dry cycles has increased in recent decades, Swain said.

The frequency of a specific North Pacific atmospheric pattern  one akin to the ridiculously resilient ridge  significantly increased over the 67-year period, the study reported.

That means more drought years, though the frequency of extreme wet years stayed the same. "We have high confidence that specific dry and warm patterns increased in recent decades, but the wet patterns have not decreased and may have actually increased," Swain said. "The problem is that we see the extreme droughts or flood events more frequently." [Dry and Dying: Images of Drought]

The new findings could help forecasters better understand how California's weather may shift in response to global warming. "The next step is figuring out why we're seeing this and what is the real cause. Then, we can assess whether climate-model predictions for the future are consistent with what we really should expect. We might be able to have some year-to-year predictability, which could help in preparing for these events," Swain said.

The research fits with climate-model predictions of more frequent and intense weather events in the coming decades  drier droughts and heavier rains.

California's current drought has been particularly severe because of rising temperatures, which several different research groups attribute to human-caused global warming. The heat bakes what little moisture there is right out of the ground. The ridiculously resilient ridge adds another level of aridity on top of these conditions.

The stubborn ridge mostly disappeared in winter 2015-2016, a casualty of a huge El Nino changing Pacific Ocean weather patterns. But the system could reappear when ocean temperatures revert from warm to normal or even below-average temperatures, which is what happens during La Nina events. The two patterns are part of the El Nino Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, a natural climate fluctuation in the Pacific Ocean.

Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Cambodia's parliament endorsed a new 26-member cabinet on Monday in a rare shuffle of an aging leadership as Prime Minister Hun Sen prepares for a 2018 election set to be his toughest political fight yet. During his three decades in power Hun Sen has surrounded himself with loyalists and changed ministers rarely. He said the shakeup was among a series of "necessities" to improve the government's performance. Cambodia now had a more qualified, experienced and healthier cabinet, he said. "The year 2016 is suitable for the government to check and evaluate again the work of the past half term and issue necessary measures to increase work efficiency," Hun Sen told the National Assembly. The lineup was supported by 70 of the 107 parliamentarians present on Monday. Most of the changes were reassignments to other portfolios and only two ministers were moved out of the cabinet. Many of the proposed changes had already been reported and the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) has dismissed them as cosmetic and unlikely to bring about reforms. Commerce Secretary of State Pan Sorasak was promoted to minister and Veng Sokhon became minister of agriculture, replacing Ouk Rabun, who is now minister of rural development. Sun Chanthol, the former commerce minister, became transport minister, replacing Tram Iv Tek, who was given the telecoms portfolio. Hun Sen's close ally Hor Namhong, his foreign minister for 18 years, was replaced by Prak Sokhon, the former telecommunications minister. Hor Namhong remains in the cabinet as a deputy prime minister. The gap between Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party and the revamped CNRP was narrowed in a disputed 2013 election that sparked a year-long parliamentary crisis and the opposition party is expected to mount a strong challenge in 2018. (Reporting by Prak Chan Thul; Editing by Martin Petty, Robert Birsel)
By Prak Chan Thul PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Cambodia's parliament approved a disputed trade union law on Monday without making changes demanded by labor groups and the opposition, who decried it as too strict and designed to limit workers' rights. The law is a hotly contested issue in Cambodia, where the $5 billion textiles and footwear sector is the biggest employer and economic driver, producing goods for Nike, H&M, Puma, Marks and Spencer and Inditex, among more than a dozen global brands. Some of about 100 protesters clashed with security guards outside the National Assembly before the bill was passed and at least two union activists suffered bloody head injuries. All 67 deputies present from the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) supported it and the 31 opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) delegates voted against it. "We're worried as it will affect our rights to hold strikes. They (the government) will interfere in our work, they can suspend and dissolve us," said Ath Thon, president of the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers Democratic Union, The law sets rules on how unions are formed, operated and dissolved and was passed in its original form, without alterations requested by unions, employers and rights groups. Business owners requested the rules in 2007 to prevent strikes by unions representing some 700,000 workers in an industry that has grown rapidly, partly because it undercuts China's factories. The unrest has dogged Cambodia, with protests over pay a perennial problem for the government and an issue for brands worried about interrupted orders and negative publicity. Unions and the CNRP had urged parliament to remove from the law all articles on suspending unions and requirements for them to prepare financial reports. Ath Thon said union leaders would push for amendments but would not hold large protests due to fears of a repeat of previous violence and crackdowns by the authorities. Labour Minister Ith Sam Heng told parliament the legislation would bring stability and bigger investment. Ruling party lawmaker Chheang Vun defended the bill and said it would ultimately benefit workers. "This sector is the rice pot for all of us," he said. "The government has the duty to protect this pot so there is rice for us to eat." (Reporting by Prak Chan Thul; Editing by Martin Petty; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada will feature a woman on an upcoming bank note and the country is seeking nominations from the public on which iconic female should receive the honor, the government said on Tuesday. Although the Queen of England is featured predominantly on Canada's currency, the new note will showcase a Canadian - either by birth or naturalization - who has shown leadership or achievement in the service of the country. Finance Minister Bill Morneau in making the announcement noted that, with the exception of the queen, women have "largely been unrepresented" on Canada's bank notes. Celine Dion need not apply - to the chagrin of at least one Twitter commentator - because candidates also must have been deceased for at least 25 years. Nominations submitted to the Bank of Canada will be reviewed by an independent advisory council made up of academics and other experts that will draw up a short list to be submitted to the finance minister. The new note will be issued in 2018. Following the announcement, which coincided with International Women's Day, the Bank of Canada tweeted that the first name submitted was Canadian suffragist Nellie McClung, who died in 1951. The Bank of Canada did not specify which bank note would feature the iconic woman. The move follows in the footsteps of the United States, which last year announced it would feature the face of a woman on a redesigned $10 bill to be unveiled in 2020. (Reporting by Leah Schnurr; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
By David Ljunggren and Matt Scuffham OTTAWA/TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada on Monday sought a copy of the "Panama Papers" revelations about potential tax evasion while a big Canadian bank defended its practices after documents allegedly showed it had used the services of the firm at the heart of the case. Governments across the world began investigating possible wrongdoing by the rich and powerful after a huge leak of documents from a Panamanian law firm revealed the financial arrangements of global politicians and other figures. Canada is closely watching the cases of citizens found to have set up offshore companies in Panama and elsewhere and will refer cases to prosecutors if necessary, said a spokeswoman for National Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier. "The Minister of National Revenue has instructed Canada Revenue Agency officials to obtain the list of data leaked through the Panama Papers," said Chloe Luciani-Girouard. Royal Bank of Canada said it had controls in place to prevent illegal activities after documents allegedly showed it had regularly used the services of Mossack Fonseca, the Panama-based firm. RBC, Canada's biggest bank, and its subsidiaries were associated with 378 shell companies registered in the Mossack Fonseca data, the Toronto Star newspaper reported. RBC said that it worked within the legal and regulatory framework of every country in which it operates and had an extensive due diligence process to understand what its clients' intentions were. Canada's opposition left-leaning New Democrats said the fact a prominent Canadian bank could be involved was "very worrying." A spokesman for federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau said that "at this point, we have no reason to believe Canadian banks have acted unlawfully." Canada's new Liberal government last month promised to invest almost C$450 million ($345 million) over five years to gather more information about tax evasion and tax avoidance. Since January 2015, Canada had already been monitoring all international transfers of funds worth more than C$10,000, including those from Panama, said Luciani-Girouard. "Compliance actions will be taken as appropriate - including referrals to Public Prosecution Services of Canada for possible criminal prosecution," she said in an e-mail. The Toronto Star named one Canadian listed in the documents as Eric Van Nguyen, who along with seven others was charged in New York in 2014 with duping investors out of $290 million. He could not immediately be contacted. (Writing by David Ljunggren; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli)
ROME (Reuters) - Art lovers are invited to immerse themselves in Italian painter Caravaggio's scenes of pain and pleasure in a Rome display with a difference - there is not a single canvas on show. Video artists are projecting films of the fiery Baroque master's renderings of Jesus being flogged, Roman wine god Bacchus and the severed head of the snake-haired monster Medusa on the walls of the Palazzo delle Esposizioni gallery. Music and perfumes accompany the display of 57 pictures famed for a theatrical use of light and shadow that matched the drama of the artist's life. Art historian Claudio Strinati, who advised the creators of the exhibition, said taking the characters out of their original contexts completely changed the viewer's experience. "There is an appeal here, the images present themselves to us like apparitions, characters coming from a far away world and arriving in our space," Strinati said. The "Caravaggio Experience" is starting shortly after the Victoria and Albert Museum in London also opened an exhibition that reinterprets the work of another Italian master, showing Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli's works alongside versions by pre-Raphaelite and pop artists. The technique of plucking certain characters from the original backgrounds used in the Caravaggio exhibition can also help art historians with their studies, Strinati said. "Caravaggio is a painter of people, of characters. This enlargement of the characters ... is like focusing with a big lens, isolating them from the works they are usually found in." The artist's roving existence and the years he spent as a fugitive after killing a man in a brawl are told using maps of Sicily and Malta projected alongside the works he painted there until his death aged around 38. (Reporting by Antonio Denti; Writing by Isla Binnie; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
[Warning: This story contains spoilers from Sunday's episode of The Carmichael Show, "New Neighbors."]

Once again, The Carmichael Show proved it dares to go where many other modern-day sitcoms - and modern day TV series, period - will not. And the beloved family at the center of the half-hour NBC multicam didn't even have to travel far to break new ground.

Sunday's episode tackled Islamophobia head-on when a young Muslin couple moved in next door to Joe (David Alan Grier) and Cynthia (Loretta Devine). Overly fearful in a post-9/11 world, the Carmichaels had an awkward first meeting with their neighbors and then decided to steal a package - of what was later revealed to be a teddy bear - from their doorstep when they saw it was shipped from Pakistan.

Their treatment of their neighbors inspired a heated discussion with their son (Jerrod Carmichael) and his girlfriend Maxine (Amber Stevens West) about bigger issues such as immigration and, yes, even brought up talk of a "wall" clearly inspired by Donald Trump's campaign rhetoric.

The episode was deftly written by Emily V. Gordon, a therapist-turned-writer who has witnessed such discrimination and prejudice first-hand as the wife of actor Kumail Nanjiani (Silicon Valley). (The two are now working on a movie inspired by their real life that will be directed by Michael Showalter and produced by Judd Apatow.)

The Hollywood Reporter spoke with Gordon about that wall talk, "Jerrod-isms" and the surprisingly personal question she was asked during her interview for the show.

How did the idea for this episode first come about in the room?

Everything's discussed endlessly and everything, ultimately, comes from what Jerrod is thinking about and what he wants to talk about it. He always says if we're in a room and we're arguing about something then you know we're in good territory. It was a discussion from the very beginning of, like, we want to do an episode addressing Islamophobia and addressing the way the culture is now and the fact that Muslims have been around for a long time, and Muslims are treated, in a lot of ways, the way black people have been treated in this country. It's just been an ongoing discussion that we've had since the beginning. I happen to be very married to a Muslim man, so half of my family is Muslim. I also grew up in North Carolina in the same town that Jerrod grew up in. I knew his sister-in-law but did not know him because he's much younger than me. (Laughs.) I grew up not really exposed to people of the Islam faith whatsoever until college, so I think I have quite a unique experience. As we kept talking about it, it fell into my lap to write this episode.

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Having these personal experiences to pull from, did you feel more pressure when writing this?

I mean, like any sitcom, it always ends up being a group effort, and Jerrod is always there to add in his own Jerrod-isms. But I would say that what I really wanted to focus on is I've seen both sides of it. I kind of experienced frustration for my Muslin family members of the way people look at them and see a certain thing that's not actually accurate whatsoever. There was pressure but I also think, with our show, it's opening up a discussion and just about having an honest discussion.

As a writer on the show, what would you define a Jerrod-ism in an episode?

This is the thing that I've always loved about Jerrod is he has a voice and he has a point of view and he is very sure of himself and that point of view. It's something that when I met him five years ago, I was, like, how does this child have such a sense of himself and know exactly what he wants to do? I tried to, especially my first draft, channel him as much as I could. It always ends up being parts of his stand-up that's informing parts of the show.  We always want to make room for that because, ultimately, it's his show and all the characters need to reflect something that he's interested in talking about it.

One of the parts of the episode that was really interesting was the talk about the wall. Because of Donald Trump, that's become a huge lightning rod. Can you talk about that scene and why that dialogue was important?

I think the main thing he really likes about that part, because we worked closely on that part, he really likes this idea that  for African-Americans in this country, they were very aggressively invited to this country. They weren't coming here to make a better life. They were brought here. For him, that was ultimately the part of that conversation that he really jelled to the most. And also, I think he think it's quite funny to talk about building a wall in such a way. He's a provocative dude, and that's what I love about him and that's what I love about this show.

When you were writing the episode, how much did you talk to your husband about his experiences, if at all?

Not as much as talking to him, as we've been married eight years now and we used to live 30 minutes from his parents, so I've just learned a lot over the years. Because there's a lot of customs and a lot of things that practicing Muslims do that are just different, there's greetings that are interesting and a lot stuff that I very slowly learned. It's kind of a bummer to me that people don't really know about this interesting stuff, they only know certain things about Islam and not the amazing compassionate stuff that I've gotten to see. So I was hoping to bring some of that stuff into the episode as well.

How did you go about actually crafting what the episode would be about, particularly Jerrod's parents taking that package? What were you trying to convey?

We wanted to show, ultimately, that somebody in the Carmichael family crossed a line. And to us, stealing mail is absolutely crossing a line. I'm not going to say that the Carmichaels were wrong, but we wanted to show that fear can sometimes drive people to do things that would normally be out of character for them, and that that's not OK. We all need to take a breath and realize that people are people.

What else are you hoping people take away from this episode?

I grew up in a town where there were no Muslims whatsoever, and there was not a lot of exposure. There's a line in the episode, like, "You only see Muslims when they're the bad guys in the movies." We don't have a lot of exposure to normal, everyday Muslims. A lot of people in the country don't, but a lot of people in the country do. I wanted to address that it's not a great point of view to have and that we need to speak out and get to know people and visibility is important. That's the kind of thing people will come away with: We can't let fear take us into places that are out of character for us and remember that we're dealing with human beings on everyday basis, all the way around.

While you were writing the episode, were there any notes from the studio or the network?

There was a version where Joe Carmichael got a little more obsessed with the neighbors [and] spying on them. I don't remember who had the note, but there was the note that it doesn't feel like Joe. We had to really thread the needle of Joe gets caught up in stuff and Cynthia gets caught up in it, but they're not turning into completely insane people; I think that was very important.

Before you were a writer, you were a therapist. How do you think that has influenced your writing and helped you as a writer when you're taking on subjects like this? Do you ever play mediator in the writer's room during some of these heated debates?

We have such a blast in that room and we like debating things. Everyone likes to debate. In my interview, specifically, it was a conversation of, "Are you OK debating stuff?" I would say as a therapist, what I end up bringing is a sense of empathy and wanting to really connect with - even if you're incorrect or wrong or your opinions are completely nuts - I want to make sure that we understand where you're coming from. Not that we excuse your behavior whatsoever, but we get why you're feeling the way you're feeling and that's true to me as a therapist and that's true to me as a writer. I want every character to not be behaving completely outlandish, but to have some kind of deep-rooted understanding of why they're behaving the way they are, even if it's not OK.

We also have a therapist-in-training character, and I think that has helped tremendously because honestly they'll ask questions like, "Is this something you do when you're in grad school?" and I say yes or no.

Were there any particularly unusual or funny questions they asked when you were first talking about joining the show?

I think maybe Jerrod asked me when was the last time I cried, which is a question I often ask at parties because I like to really get in deep and don't really love small talk. (Laughs.) I'm always like, "How many grandparents do you have left? When's the last time you cried?" Jerrod asked me that in my interview, which I thought it was such a lovely question and I liked the idea that he likes to really get in there. And his show likes to get in there.

I know you're working on another project now, but were there other topics you were hoping to tackle on the show or other topics you felt particularly passionate about in the writer's room?

They're doing this episode about depression that is coming up that I was really excited about that. I didn't write it, I just contributed to it, as we all do. I'm a mental-health advocate big time, so I think it's great when depression is a thing that's discussed out in the open because it's still way too stigmatized.

The Carmichael Show airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on NBC.
By Justin Madden

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The city of Chicago has agreed to pay the family of a black man who died after being dragged by handcuffs from a cell in a police lockup and down a hallway more than three years ago, an attorney for the family said on Monday.

Philip Coleman, 38, was arrested for domestic battery against his mother on Dec. 12, 2012.

After he refused to go to court the next morning, several police officers struggled with Coleman inside a cell, and he was Tasered, court records showed. In an incident caught on video, an officer dragged a motionless Coleman by his handcuffs.

Coleman later died at a hospital, according to court records. The Chicago Tribune reported that an autopsy showed he died of a reaction to an antipsychotic drug and also had bruises and abrasions on his body. Reuters was not able to confirm the cause of death.

Ed Fox, a lawyer for the family, told Reuters by phone that Coleman's family and the city of Chicago had reached a settlement over the family's civil rights lawsuit, but declined to confirm media reports that it was for $4.9 million.

The city's law department declined to comment.

If the city council approves the settlement next week, the amount will be public.

Chicago police and Mayor Rahm Emanuel have been under national scrutiny since protests erupted last year after the release of a video showing the November 2014 shooting of a black teenager.

Protesters have called for Emanuel to resign over the death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, who was shot 16 times. The officer, Jason Van Dyke, who is white, has been charged with murder, and Emanuel has apologized for the slaying.

In the wake of the protests, Emanuel fired his police chief and the Justice Department started an investigation of the Chicago Police Department to see whether there was a pattern of excessive use of lethal force.

In the Coleman case, a federal judge ruled in a December opinion that Officer Keith Kirkland and supervising officer Sergeant Tommy Walker were liable in their treatment of Coleman. Walker could have stopped the actions of Kirkland and intervened, but failed to do so. Both officers are black, Fox said.

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Coleman's family has said he had mental health issues.

Emanuel announced reforms in January to address how police and other emergency workers respond to the mentally ill, after a police officer shot dead an emotionally troubled college student and an innocent bystander.

(Story corrects name to Coleman instead of Campbell in second to last paragraph, corrects verb tense in third to last paragraph).

(Editing by Matthew Lewis and Fiona Ortiz)
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese telecom equipment and smartphone maker ZTE Corp will announce a new management team on Tuesday, a spokesman said. ZTE's board of directors will meet to approve the new team, and a stock exchange filing is expected on Tuesday afternoon, ZTE spokesman David Dai Shu told Reuters in a telephone conversation on Monday. Shu said ZTE reshuffles management every three years, and the changes to be announced on Tuesday are in line with the company's regular schedule. ZTE has found itself subject to some of the toughest-ever U.S. government export restrictions for allegedly breaking U.S. sanctions against Iran in 2012. Last month, the U.S. government said it would ease those restrictions until the end of June and could further ease them if ZTE cooperated in "resolving the matter". (Reporting by Clare Baldwin; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)
By Timothy Gardner WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Climate change can be expected to boost the number of annual premature U.S. deaths from heat waves in coming decades and to increase mental health problems from extreme weather like hurricanes and floods, a U.S. study said on Monday. "I don't know that we've seen something like this before, where we have a force that has such a multitude of effects," Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told reporters at the White House about the study. "There's not one single source that we can target with climate change, there are multiple paths that we have to address." Heat waves were estimated to cause 670 to 1,300 U.S. deaths annually in recent years. Premature U.S. deaths from heat waves can be expected to rise more than 27,000 per year by 2100, from a 1990 baseline, one scenario in the study said. The rise outpaced projected decreases in deaths from extreme cold. Extreme heat can cause more forest fires and increase pollen counts and the resulting poor air quality threatens people with asthma and other lung conditions. The report said poor air quality will likely lead to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths, hospital visits, and acute respiratory illness each year by 2030. Climate change also threatens mental health, the study found. Post traumatic stress disorder, depression, and general anxiety can all result in places that suffer extreme weather linked to climate change, such as hurricanes and floods. More study needs to be done on assessing the risks to mental health, it said. The peer-reviewed study by eight federal agencies can be found at: [https://health2016.globalchange.gov/] Cases of mosquito and tick-borne diseases can also be expected to increase, though the study, completed over three years, did not look at whether locally-transmitted Zika virus cases would be more likely to hit the United States. President Barack Obama's administration has taken steps to cut carbon emissions by speeding a switch from coal and oil to cleaner energy sources. In February, the Supreme Court dealt a blow to the White House's climate ambitions by putting a hold Obama's plan to cut emissions from power plants. Administration officials say the plan is on safe legal footing. John Holdren, Obama's senior science adviser, said steps the world agreed to in Paris last year to curb emissions through 2030 can help fight the risks to health. "We will need a big encore after 2030 ... in order to avoid the bulk of the worst impacts described in this report," he said. (Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Alan Crosby)
By William James LONDON (Reuters) - Campaigners who say Commonwealth ties should replace links with the European Union are offering voters a false choice ahead of Britain's June 23 EU referendum, Patricia Scotland, the newly appointed Commonwealth Secretary-General, said on Monday. Some of those pushing for an exit from the EU have backed the 53-country Commonwealth, whose members are mostly former British colonies and represent 2.2 billion people across the world, as an alternative trading network to the EU that would help Britain prosper. "I say the Commonwealth offers a huge amount, but the Commonwealth does not set itself up in competition with Europe - we are partners," Scotland told Reuters in an interview following her inauguration as head of the Commonwealth secretariat at a ceremony in London. "As far as I can see, partnership is a much better way forward than separation for any of us," she said, when asked to respond to those who say the Commonwealth could replace the EU. Britain's Queen Elizabeth is head of the Commonwealth. Scotland, a member of parliament's upper house and former government minister, will run the Commonwealth's administrative body. Her comments come as an evenly divided British electorate prepares to vote on whether Britain should remain a member of the 28-country European Union, or leave and seek to carve out a new role for itself in global politics and trade. The UK Independence Party, which wants Britain to leave the EU, last month described the Commonwealth as a "huge potential asset" and said it would have a crucial role in the country's future prosperity outside the EU. But Scotland said that was a false choice. "I don't think you substitute one for another... It can't be 'either/or' - it has to be 'and, and, and'," she said. The Commonwealth as an organization would not get involved in the final few months of the campaign, she said, and had no unified position on whether Britain should stay or go, but she added that she had not detected an appetite for Britain to sever its ties with the EU. "Commonwealth is not diminished in any way by Britain's current position and ... I haven't heard any Commonwealth country say they have an appetite for change," she said. (Editing by Stephen Addison)
The LSAT and the bar exam are two important hurdles to cross for aspiring lawyers. Many believe test-takers' performance on the former is an indicator of how they'll do on the latter, which could be bad news for law applicants with low LSAT scores.

"If you have a low LSAT score, you are more likely to have a low MBE score when you emerge from law school and take the bar exam," says Erica Moeser, president and CEO of the National Conference of Bar Examiners. The MBE, or Multistate Bar Examination, is one portion of the bar exam in most states.

[Learn which law schools have students with the highest LSAT scores.]

Students with high LSAT scores, however, aren't guaranteed to pass the bar the first time around. And some law schools appear to do a better job than others at preparing their students for the bar.

U.S. News examined the median LSAT scores and bar passage rates among 196 ranked law schools that submitted data in an annual survey.

At Yale University, the No. 1 ranked school in the 2017 Best Law Schools, the median LSAT score for all program entrants in 2015 was 173 -- not far from the test's highest score of 180. The pass rate for Yale graduates who took the New York bar exam for the first time in 2014 -- the most recent data available -- was 96.4 percent.

At Stanford University, which tied for No. 2 in the rankings, entering students had LSAT scores that were almost as high, but the pass rate for graduates taking the California bar was only 86.8 percent in 2014. On closer look, however, Stanford grads actually beat their state's overall bar passage rate by nearly 45 percent, while Yale grads beat the New York pass rate by just 32.1 percent.

Some states' bar exams are considered to be harder than others. California's overall bar passage rate for first-time test-takers in 2014 was just 60 percent, compared with New York's 73 percent.

At each school on the list, the largest number of graduates took the bar exam in New York, California or Illinois in 2014.

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Grads at the schools with the highest LSAT scores beat their state bar passage rate by an average of 29 percent. In contrast, graduates from the 10 schools with the lowest median LSAT scores did 17 percent worse, on average, than the overall bar passage rates in their states.

[Understand how bar passage rates should influence a law school decision.]

At many schools, LSAT scores for incoming students have declined in recent years.

At Georgetown University, for example, the bottom 25 percent of applicants who were accepted had a score of 168 or lower in 2010. By 2013, the bottom 25 percent scored 163 or lower, according to the National Conference of Bar Examiners.

The average among all U.S. schools approved by the American Bar Association has remained stable, according to the Law School Admission Council. In every testing year from 2007-2008 through 2013-2014, the mean LSAT wavered between 150 and 151.

During that same time period, however, data from the National Conference of Bar Examiners show the average pass rate for first-time test-takers of the bar exam across the country declined from 79 percent in 2007 to just 74 percent in 2014.

Schools have taken some heat from critics who say they are lowering their admissions standards too much or failing to prepare students for the bar.

Still, prospective students should know the LSAT isn't the only indicator of success on the bar exam, says Moeser from the National Conference of Bar Examiners.

[Excel at the LSAT as a second-time test-taker.]

"Students who have high law school grade-point averages are more likely to do well on the bar exam than those who have low law school grade-point averages," she says.

While passing the bar exam is the last step to becoming a practicing lawyer, it doesn't necessarily ensure a successful career, experts say.

"LSAT and bar performance are not always reliable indicators of legal skill and competence," Allen Mendenhall, an assistant attorney general for the state of Alabama, wrote in an email. Mendenhall, who emphasized that his views are his alone and not a reflection of the Alabama attorney general's, has long criticized the bar exam.

"I was recently a staff attorney to the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court and in that capacity viewed several bar disciplinary matters involving lawyer malpractice and legal incompetence. On a purely anecdotal level these cases demonstrated, to me, that the bar exam -- which the disciplined lawyers had all passed -- was not always successful in weeding out bad lawyers from good lawyers," he wrote.

He encourages law applicants to take both exams seriously.

"There's no formula for success on the LSAT or bar exam," he wrote. "A strict, regimented study schedule remains, in my view, the best mode of preparation."

Searching for a law school? Get our complete rankings of Best Law Schools.

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.
By Christian Elion BRAZZAVILLE (Reuters) - Gunbattles shook the capital of Congo Republic on Monday, shattering a relative calm that had followed President Denis Sassou Nguesso's re-election in a disputed vote last month. Former members of the "Ninja" militia that fought Sassou Nguesso in a 1997 civil war raided and set alight military, police and local government offices but the attacks have been contained, government spokesman Thierry Moungalla said. Gunfire had died down by mid-afternoon as security forces blocked access to southern Brazzaville, where exchanges of heavy caliber fire between police and unidentified fighters broke out around 3 a.m. local time (0200 GMT), witnesses said. The government did not say whether anyone was killed in the fighting. Thousands of residents streamed north, many carrying their possessions on their heads. Sassou Nguesso, who has ruled the oil-producing central African country for 32 of the past 37 years, regularly presents himself as a bulwark of stability in a turbulent region. State-run television on Monday broadcast images of damage from the fighting alongside reminders of Congo's violent past. The fighting between security forces and unidentified gunmen was some of the worst to hit Brazzaville since 1997, when Sassou Nguesso returned to power after months of urban warfare between rival militia groups in the capital. He had previously ruled the country from 1979 until 1992, when he lost an election. Sassou Nguesso won re-election on March 20 after pushing through constitutional changes in an October referendum to remove age and term limits that would have prevented him from standing again. Some residents of southern Brazzaville who had taken shelter in churches in the center and north of the city on Monday said they feared a resurgence of fighting after the government cast suspicion on the losing candidates in the election. "The government ... does not yet have proof that the candidates or their supporters were involved in this affair but ... investigations are under way," Moungalla said on state television early in the afternoon. Opposition leader Guy-Brice Parfait Kolelas, whose father led the Ninjas during the civil war, came second in the election. The Ninjas signed a peace accord with the government in 2003 after years of sporadic clashes, though rivalries persist along regional and ethnic lines. Kolelas was not involved in the latest violence, an aide said. Residents of southern neighborhoods said that they had seen armed men in civilian attire but could not say whether they were indeed former Ninja militiamen. Opposition supporters are frustrated in the wake of the election by Sassou Nguesso's unwavering stranglehold on power. Young protesters chanted "Sassou, leave!" and erected barricades in southern Brazzaville's Makelekele neighborhood as fighting raged in the morning. Dozens of heavily-armed Republican Guard troops and police later headed towards the nearby Kingouari neighborhood, where isolated gunfire persisted into the afternoon. The Constitutional Court confirmed Sassou Nguesso's victory on Monday evening in a statement read on state television. At least 18 people were killed by security forces during opposition demonstrations against the referendum changes. Opposition candidates say the March vote was fraudulent and have called for a campaign of civil disobedience. A general strike last week held in southern Brazzaville was ignored in the north of the city, where Sassou Nguesso is popular. The U.S. State Department said after the election it had received numerous reports of irregularities and criticized the government's decision to cut all telecommunications including Internet services during voting and for days afterwards. Congo's election has been closely watched across Africa, where several long-ruling presidents are seeking to stay on beyond constitutionally mandated term limits. (Additional reporting and writing by Aaron Ross in Kinshasa; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Mark Heinrich)
KINSHASA (Reuters) - People who rejected Congo Republic President Denis Sassou Nguesso's landslide re-election victory last month were behind heavy gunfire that erupted in the capital Brazzaville early on Monday, state-owned television said. "The people woke up this morning in fear because there was gunfire. The reason for that is that there are people who contest these elections," a presenter on Tele Congo said. The channel said the government was expected to make a statement on the violence. (Reporting By Aaron Ross; Editing by Joe Bavier)
MADRID (Reuters) - Spain's conservative People's Party (PP) and newcomers Ciudadanos could claim a small majority in parliament if a new election is called after months of failed coalition talks, according to a poll published on Monday. The poll, by Sigma Dos for conservative newspaper El Mundo, was the first to show a possible alliance between the PP - which runs the caretaker government in the political deadlock following December's general election - and the market-friendly Ciudadanos (Citizens) party. A Metroscopia poll for the left-leaning daily El Pais on Sunday also showed the PP and Ciudadanos gaining ground, but found no possible two-way majority except for a grand coalition of the PP and the Socialists, an option that has been widely rejected. Spain's main parties on the right and left have been struggling to assemble a group large enough to form a government, but wide ideological differences and months of failed talks mean a deal is looking increasingly unlikely. If there is no agreement by May 2, new elections will be held, probably at the end of June. The El Mundo survey said the PP would take 128 seats and Ciudadanos, which has shown willingness to form a coalition with acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's party, would take 52 seats. That would be enough to top the 176 seats needed to take an absolute majority in parliament and form the next government. The poll surveyed 800 people at the end of March. But with a margin of error of +/-3.5 percent, the poll suggests Spain may still end up with the four-way impasse echoed in other polls. A coalition plan by Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez failed on March 2 as rivals on the left and right voted against it in parliament. Rajoy has refused to attempt to form a coalition, claiming he lacks the necessary support. The El Mundo poll showed support rising support for both Ciudadanos, up 12 seats from December, and the PP, with five more seats than in the elections, at the expense of other newcomer, anti-austerity party Podemos (We Can). The El Pais poll, taken among 1,200 people at the end of March, also showed that Podemos had lost support since the December elections. (Reporting by Paul Day; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
By Wiktor Szary WARSAW (Reuters) - The paralysis in Poland's constitutional court puts Warsaw at risk of a lawsuit in the European Court of Human Rights, the head of the rights body the Council of Europe said on Monday. Poland's eurosceptic Law and Justice (PiS) party has faced growing pressure from the EU, the United States and other bodies since it swept to power in the bloc's largest eastern member state in October and increased controls on media and other institutions. The conservatives have enacted a law increasing the number of judges required to make rulings on the Constitutional Tribunal and changing the order in which cases are heard. Critics say the changes have made it difficult for judges to review new legislation, let along challenge it, and the court itself has struck them down as unconstitutional. The government has refused to recognize that ruling, effectively putting it in legal limbo. "The concern is that if the constitutional crisis continues a ... complaint or application to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg may arrive," the Council of Europe's secretary general, Thorbjoern Jagland, told reporters in Warsaw. The European Court of Human Rights is run by the 47-member state Council of Europe. In March, the pan-European rights body said the Polish reforms could endanger "not only the rule of law but also the functioning of the democratic system", recommending the government recognize the constitutional court's ruling on its legislation. While the opinion of the rights body is not binding, it will carry weight at the EU Commission, which has begun a process to monitor the rule of law in Poland that could end up in Warsaw being suspended from voting in the European Union. To prepare for the discussion with Poland's EU peers expected to start on Wednesday, Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans travels to Warsaw on Tuesday. (Writing by Marcin Goclowski and Wiktor Szary; editing by Andrew Roche)
Fossils belonging to an ancient human relative that were discovered on the banks of a Kenyan river suggest that hominids lived farther east than previously thought.

Researchers found the fossils  a forearm bone and teeth belonging to an adult Australopithecus afarensis male and two infants  along the Kantis River in Ongata-Rongai, a settlement just outside the capital city of Nairobi.

The fossil find represents the first Australopithecus member found east of the Rift Valley, a ridge that runs north to south through Kenya and other east African countries, the researchers said. Remains of Australopithecus bahrelghazali, another human relative in the same genus, were found in Chad (west of the Rift Valley), suggesting that members of this genus lived in central Africa. [Image Gallery: Our Closest Human Ancestor]

"So far, all other A. afarensis fossils had been identified from the center of the Rift Valley," study senior author Masato Nakatsukasa, a biological anthropologist at Kyoto University in Japan, said in a statement."[The new finding] has important implications for what we understand about our ancestors' distribution range, namely that Australopithecus could have covered a much greater area by this age."

A. afarensis is thought to have lived between 3.7 million and 3 million years ago. The species includes the famous 3.2-million-year-old Lucy, whom researchers uncovered in Ethiopia in 1974. Other A. afarensis specimens have been found in Tanzania, the researchers noted.

The scientists did an isotopic analysis of the site where the fossils were found. By studying the isotopes (variants of an element with differing numbers of neutrons) at the site, researchers can determine the region's ancient environment and climate. The analysis revealed that the area, known as Kantis, had a humid and plainlike environment. It also had fewer trees than other areas in which Australopithecus has been found, the researchers said.

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"The hominid must have discovered suitable habitats in the Kenyan highlands," said Nakatsukasa, who worked on the study with researchers from Japan and Mount Kenya University. "It seems that A. afarensis was good at adapting to varying environments."

An excavation at Kantis also uncovered hundreds of mammal fossils, including what is likely a new species of bovid (hoofed animal) and a baboon, the researchers said.

The team thanked the local residents for helping to uncover the fossils. In 1991, researchers came to Kantis after a farmer reported that he had found fossilized bones in the area. The farmer said he first noticed the bones in the 1970s but hadn't realized their importance until shows on paleontological research began airing on TV.

The finding will not only further anthropological research, but also could bring more business to the area.

"Kantis is in the vicinity of Nairobi, a major city," Nakatsukasa said. "We hope that the discovery of the new site and the fossils will aid in increasing tourism, and in improving educational awareness of the local community."

The study will appear in the May 2016 issue of the Journal of Human Evolution.

Follow Laura Geggel on Twitter @LauraGeggel. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Athens (AFP) - Greece on Monday resumed reform talks with its creditors, including the International Monetary Fund, amid leaks claiming the global lender was toying with the idea of a Greek default.

With IMF chief Christine Lagarde dismissing this as "nonsense", Greek ministers will try over the next few days to bridge differences on the country's budget goals and the scope of ongoing pension and tax overhauls.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said he was confident the latest audit would be concluded by April 22.

"For the first time in six years... there is nearly complete agreement on estimates on the fiscal effort required to close the audit between the Greek government and European institutions," Tsipras told his lawmakers, adding that he had "full backing" for his view that the talks had to conclude within days.

Before the speech, Tsipras had spoken by telephone to French President Francois Hollande and US Vice President Joe Biden.

The creditor talks opened days after Athens angrily demanded explanations over a WikiLeaks report saying the IMF was looking for a crisis "event" to push the indebted nation and European negotiators into accepting its fiscal targets.

The whistle-blowing website released what it said was a March 19 conversation between Iva Petrova and Delia Velculescu, who have been representing the IMF in the negotiations with Greece, and Poul Thomsen, director of the Fund's European department.

"In the past there has been only one time when the decision has been made and then that was when (the Greeks) were about to run out of money seriously and to default," Thomson is quoted as saying in the transcript.

Later in the conversation, Velculescu reportedly replied: "I agree that we need an event, but I don't know what that will be."

After Tsipras wrote to Lagarde to complain, she made public her reply on Sunday.

"Any speculation that IMF staff would consider using a credit event as a negotiating tactic is simply nonsense," she wrote.

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Tsipras's leftist government has rarely seen eye to eye with the global lender. Last year he said the Washington-based organisation carried "criminal responsibility" for Greece's austerity-driven recession woes.

More recently Tsipras has accused the IMF of employing "stalling tactics" and "arbitrary" estimates to delay the reforms review which is crucial to unlock further bailout cash.

- 'Unrealistic' IMF forecasts -

On Monday, he fired another broadside, arguing the IMF had repeatedly got its figures wrong about the impact its policies would have on stifling Greek economic growth.

"Nearly every IMF prediction has turned out to be unrealistic," he said, pointing to recession and growth estimates between 2010 and 2013 that were not borne out.

In July, Greece grudgingly accepted a three-year, 86-billion-euro ($94 billion) European Union bailout that saved it from crashing out of the eurozone. But the bailout came with strict conditions such as fresh tax and pay cuts.

Tsipras on Monday said the IMF is now pushing for wage cuts, layoff legislation and broader home foreclosures that are not part of this deal.

However, one key point that the IMF is fighting to convince the Europeans to accept is debt relief, which Greece itself badly wants.

Lagarde replied in kind earlier Monday, wondering whether this sort of atmosphere is conducive to an agreement.

"This weekends incident has made me concerned as to whether we can indeed achieve progress in a climate of extreme sensitivity to statements of either side," Lagarde wrote to Tsipras.

She also called on the Greek leader to make sure that no further leaks occur.

"It is critical that your authorities ensure an environment that respects the privacy of their internal discussions and take all necessary steps to guarantee their personal safety," she added.

The IMF worked with the EU on two previous bailouts for Greece since 2010 but the Washington-based lender said it would not participate in the third rescue plan without credible reforms and an EU agreement to ease Greece's debt burden.
Netflix has purchased the global streaming rights to the crime series "Marcella."

The platform acquired the rights to the eight-part drama from Hans Rosenfeldt, creator of the original Swedish/Danish co-production "The Bridge (Bron)," Deadline reports.

With a stellar cast including UK actress Anna Friel, "Downton Abbey" cast member Laura Carmichael and "Game Of Thrones" star Harry Lloyd, the series tells the tale of a troubled detective investigating a serial murder case after a long hiatus.

It will be available globally to Netflix viewers from July 1.
Buenos Aires (AFP) - Fresh from his landmark trip to Cuba, US President Barack Obama traveled Wednesday on to Argentina, where four decades later resentment still simmers over Washington's backing for its former dictatorship.

After calling for freedom and democracy as he stood alongside Cuba's communist leaders on the first leg of his regional visit, Obama touched down in another Latin American nation with a history of delicate relations with the United States.

Obama, who hopes to remake the United States' image in Latin America, met Argentina's new free market-friendly President Mauricio Macri at the Casa Rosada presidential palace in Buenos Aires on Wednesday morning.

Roads were closed as Obama's motorcade headed to the Casa Rosada, where he and Macri were scheduled to give a news conference shortly before 1600 GMT.

Tuesday's deadly bomb blasts in Brussels prompted Argentina to put its security forces on high alert as it received Obama, who is traveling with First Lady Michelle Obama, their two daughters and his mother-in-law.

There was a security alert when police arrested a man who burst into the offices of a state radio station near the presidential palace threatening to blow the building up, station employees told media. The building was evacuated and no one was reported hurt.

It is the first visit by a US president to Argentina since 2005. That year George W. Bush was met by angry protests at a summit where regional leaders blocked his plans for a free-trade deal.

Macri has reached out to Washington and other foreign powers since taking office in December after years of combative relations under his leftist predecessors.

But the delicate issue of US involvement in Latin America's violent history will rear its head during Obama's visit to Buenos Aires -- after the Havana visit touched on sensitivities over human rights in Cuba.

On Thursday morning Obama will pay homage to victims of the "dirty war" by Argentina's dictators against dissidents.

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That day marks the 40th anniversary of the military coup that started the 1976-1983 dictatorship. Declassified documents have shown that top US officials backed the coup and America's wider image in Latin America was tarnished by involvement in coups and death squads.

- US and the 'dirty war' -

After the talks with Macri, Obama was due to lay a wreath at Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral and meet local people, before attending a state dinner.

His administration said last week it would declassify military and intelligence records linked to Argentina's "dirty war."

"We're determined to do our part as Argentina continues to heal and move forward as one nation," said Obama's National Security Advisor Susan Rice.

The sensitive date of the Argentina visit angered some victims' groups. Several organizations have called on Obama to apologize for US support of the military regime.

But four opinion polls showed a majority of Argentines approved of Obama's visit.

Obama "believes that part of moving forward in the Americas or any other part of the world involves a clear-eyed recognition of the past," said Ben Rhodes, one of the president's top advisors.

"He will be more than willing to speak to what took place 40 years ago, to the suffering that took place after the coup and to the complicated history between the United States and Argentina as it relates to those events."

Adolfo Perez Esquivel, 84, an Argentine human rights activist who like Obama is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, recalled that US military academies trained troops from Argentina and other Latin American regimes in torture techniques.

"It would be good to have a public recognition of United States interventionism," he said.

- US 'vulture' funds -

Some small leftist groups called for demonstrations against Obama's visit in Buenos Aires and in the Andean resort town of Bariloche, where the Obamas are due to head on Thursday for a few hours' leisure time.

Demonstrations are also planned Thursday in memory of the dictatorship. Some vowed also to protest in anger at the treatment of Argentina by its US creditors.

Macri's government has reached a settlement with US hedge funds that his predecessor Cristina Kirchner branded "vultures."

The Obamas are scheduled to leave Argentina on Thursday night.
It was 48 years ago today that civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed by an assassins bullet in Memphis. The world has changed greatly since 1968, but Kings message survives intact.

King was in Tennessee to help support a sanitation workers strike. At the age of 39, King was already an internationally known figure. Starting with the Montgomery boycott in 1955, King had led a series of nonviolent protests against discrimination.

When King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, at the time he was the youngest Peace Prize winner ever, at the age of 35.

His acceptance speech in Norway included the famous statement, I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. King also donated his prize money of $54,123 to the civil rights movement.

On April 3, 1968, King had traveled to Memphis to support a movement seeking better compensation for black sanitation workers. He spoke at the Bishop Charles Mason Temple to a group of supportersknowing there were threats made against his life.

He told the audience about how he survived a 1958 assassination attempt by a mentally deranged woman named Izola Ware Curry, who stabbed King in the chest at a New York book signing. King had read in a newspaper that if he had sneezed just before the attack, the location of the wound have been fatal.

Link: Read the Mountaintop Speech

I want to say tonight that I, too, am happy that I didnt sneeze. Because if I had sneezed I wouldnt have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy, which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, he said.

The better-known part of Kings speech was its conclusion.

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I dont know what will happen now; weve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesnt matter with me now, because Ive been to the mountaintop. And I dont mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long lifelongevity has its place. But Im not concerned about that now. I just want to do Gods will. And Hes allowed me to go up to the mountain. And Ive looked over and Ive seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. And so Im happy tonight; Im not worried about anything; Im not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, King concluded.

At 6:05 P.M. on Thursday, April 4, 1968, King was shot while standing on a balcony outside his second-oor room at the Lorraine Motel. One shot was heard coming from another location. King was rushed to a hospital and died an hour later.

A young colleague, Jesse Jackson, had been below Kings balcony speaking with him when the civil rights leader was shot.

Senator Robert Kennedy was at a campaign rally when he learned of Kings death.

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black, Kennedy said.

As word spread about Kings death, protests started nationwide that included outbreaks of violence, resulting in more than 40 deaths. President Lyndon Johnson ordered a national day of mourning on April 7. Two days later, Kings funeral in Atlanta had more than 100,000 mourners.

In July 1968, a fugitive, James Earl Ray, was extradited from Great Britain to stand trial for the killing. Ray agreed to a controversial plea bargain, and was sentenced to 99 years in prison, where he died in 1998.

Ray later recanted his confession, and members of Kings family supported reopening an investigation into the shooting.

At the time of his death, King was trying to organize a protest in Washington against poverty, and he had become outspoken as an opponent of the Vietnam War.

A year earlier, King told an audience on April 4, 1967, at a New York City church that he was against the war overseas.

We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them 8,000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem, he said.

More Stories About Dr. King

10 famous quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

How Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.s birthday became a holiday

10 fascinating facts about the I Have A Dream speech
Twelve times a year, the president of the country chooses a project  picking up trash, painting houses, caring for the elderly  and then, on the last Saturday of the month, remarkably, every able-bodied citizen pitches in. This is not just goodwill; this is compulsion. Fines and ostracism await those who do not participate.

And it works.

The president is Paul Kagame, of Rwanda, known for his heavy hand  and for ending genocide and steering his country onto a more prosperous course. He is controversial: Most either revere him or loathe him. But you cant argue with the success of mandatory community service, or umuganda, as its known in Kinyarwanda. There is literally no trash in the streets of the capital, Kigali, and the Rwandan government credits umuganda with creating some US$60 million in impact since 2007, in hefty projects like hydroelectric plants and building clinics. Which, of course, leads to our plea to mayors from Seattle to Miami: Lets install our own version of umuganda  and yes, make it compulsory.

We hear you already, you lazy bums: Coercion by the state! Forced labor! Well, not quite: Rwanda is obsessed with self-reliance and weaning itself off the foreign aid that constitutes 30 to 40 percent of its governments budget. Home-grown solutions, like umuganda, have gotten them pretty far: The poverty rate dropped by 14 percent in a decade and child deaths decreased by two-thirds, among other things. When you think about umuganda as self-reliance, it sounds much more like the American dream than a Soviet gulag.

Even still, some are cynical about how Americans would react to such a plan 

cant get americans on board w universal healthcare now u wanna make them clean other ppls streets?



 good luck https://t.co/S0wKAyivGc Diablo Codeine (@avadakedoeuvre) March 16, 2016

Look, maybe the projects wouldnt look exactly the same in the U.S., but we still have our own urban and rural corners of poverty. Plus, we all know U.S. transportation budgets arent exactly brimming with cash. A little umuganda could help fill the holes in slashed budgets and put road repairs in the hands of the people. Anyway, as this tweet notes, many cities could use a cleanup.

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To be sure, Kagames version of umuganda is not perfect. The richest can treat the fines like a penalty if they want to pay hooky, but the poorest of the poor could really use that extra day a month to earn wages. Rwanda scholar Susan Thomson, of Colgate University, argues that for some communities, umuganda is very oppressive and almost a form of indentured servitude. Would umuganda (and its opt-out) work in the U.S., where inequality is a national scourge?

And yet, theres little doubt that umuganda helps promote unity and a sense of community  needed in a post-genocide country, even if it has been more than two decades. Umuganda, a tradition that predates Kagames regime, gives people:

@leemayol The ability for neighbours to meet each other & interact in order to better understand the community. Jonathan Beloff (@JewswithRwanda) March 16, 2016

Given the divisive nature of American politics, racial tensions and the rise in xenophobia, the U.S. could use a little more get-to-know-your-neighbor kumbaya. Forcing neighbors to paint a fence or pick up trash together might sound like something for people in orange jumpsuits or elementary students, but it may be just what we need.

How do you think this would go over in your community? Let us know in the comments.

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A Mexican-Canadian construction worker planted a Mexican flag atop Trump Tower in Vancouver and defiantly shared a photo of the act on social media at the weekend.

In an April 2 post, Diego Reyna said he's sick of hearing disparaging remarks about Mexicans from Donald Trump and his supporters so decided to make a statement.

"Because from the concrete pouring, finishing, drywall, taping, wood forming and general labour, Mexicans were there, building it," Reyna wrote, referring to the 69-story tower slated for completion this year.

WHY DID I PUT A MEXICAN FLAG ON THE ROOF TOP OF TRUMP TOWER VANCOUVER, ??????Because from the concrete pouring,... Posted by Diego Saul Reyna on Saturday, April 2, 2016

As of Monday morning, Reyna's post--in which he proudly flexes his arms in front of the flag with the Vancouver skyline visible beyond--had been shared nearly 2,000 times as media outlets across the web told his story.

Read: Chris Christie Says Trump 'Misspoke' When Talking About Abortion

"The comments Trump has made about us, did not stop us from doing the high quality work we have always done, in our home country or when we migrate to the US/Canada," Reyna wrote.

Trump first won the ire of Mexican people with comments he made last summer as he announced his candidacy.

When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending the best, he said during the announcement. They're not sending you, they're sending people that have lots of problems and they're bringing those problems. They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime. They're rapists and some, I assume, are good people, but I speak to border guards and they're telling us what we're getting."

Reyna spoke directly to those now-infamous comments in his Facebook post.

Read: Saturday Night Live Skewers Female Trump Supporter: "Crazy don't break!"

"While working on your tower Mexicans didn't steal anything nor raped anyone, we just did the best work we could possibly do, for ourselves, our families and the future tenants in your building," he wrote.

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The flag was taken down by Sunday morning, CBC News reports.

Holborn Group, the developer behind the tower, has declined to comment on Reyna's viral photo.

But it's Trump himself who Reyna wants to reach.

"PLEASE HELP ME SHARE THIS MESSAGE SO IT CAN GET TO MR TRUMP'S NEWS FEED, THANKS !!!," he wrote.



Watch: Donald Trump Supporter Sucker Punches Protester Being Escorted Out of Rally

Related Articles:
Deftones have released a new track ahead of their upcoming album release this week.

The US alternative metal band's song "Hearts/Wires" was played on BBC Radio 1 this weekend, offering a taste of the group's new album "Gore", slated for release on April 8.

The track is the third to be released from the new record, following "Doomed User" and "Prayers/Triangles". The album, which is the band's eighth, features 11 tracks in total. It is the follow-up to the group's 2012 record "Koi No Yokan."

To listen to the track, visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03pxlr8
New York (AFP) - US entertainment giant Walt Disney Corp said Monday that chief operating officer Thomas Staggs, viewed as the likely successor to chief executive Bob Iger, will step down next month.

Staggs, who previously served as chief financial officer and head of Disney's important parks and resorts division, had been seen as the frontrunner to replace Iger, who is scheduled to retire in two years.

No reason was given for his departure, but Disney made clear that it was now looking elsewhere for Iger's replacement.

In February 2015, Disney promoted Staggs to chief operating officer, tapping him over chief financial officer Jay Rasulo, who later left Disney.

Staggs has "made important contributions to this company," Iger said. "I'm proud of what we've accomplished together, immensely grateful for the privilege of working with him, and confident that he will be enormously successful in whatever opportunity he chooses."

In light of the unexpected news, Disney will "broaden the scope of its succession planning process to identify and evaluate a robust slate of candidates for consideration," the company said.

The shift comes as Disney faces tough questions over the future of its ESPN sports network given the shifts in cable broadcasting business. The move also comes as Disney prepares to unveil Shanghai Disneyland.

Disney shares fell 1.8 percent to $96.95 in after-hours trade.
By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With a seat vacant possibly until next year, the U.S. Supreme Court is accepting fewer cases and seeking compromises as it tries to avoid being hamstrung by 4-4 deadlocks on such contentious issues as abortion, birth control and immigration.

The court has shown a reluctance to accept new cases as it faces the prospect of the vacancy created by the Feb. 13 death of Justice Antonin Scalia remaining unfilled for an extended period. It has placed only three new cases on its calendar since Scalia died: a patent dispute and two criminal appeals, none likely to generate much controversy.

In the previous five years, the court had taken up an average of eight cases during the same period, from late February to early April, with a high of 11 in 2013.

The court's current approach suggests the justices, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, have an interest in avoiding the appearance they are crippled by having a vacant seat. That desire also has been signaled in the way the court has handled cases during the current term, which runs through June.

So far the justices have agreed to hear eight cases in total for the next term, which runs from this October through June 2017. That includes five cases they agreed to hear in January before Scalia died and is slightly below average for this time of year. The court generally hears about 70 cases a term.

"It is beginning to look like the court is being especially selective in choosing which cases to grant," said John Elwood, a lawyer at the Vinson & Elkins law firm who practices before the court.

President Barack Obama last month nominated centrist appellate judge Merrick Garland to replace Scalia. But the seat may remain empty for perhaps a year as Senate Republican leaders insist that Obama's successor, who will take office next January after the Nov. 8 presidential election, fill the vacancy.

BIRTH CONTROL COVERAGE

Last Tuesday, the court took the unusual step of suggesting a possible compromise in a dispute over objections from Christian nonprofit employers to providing female workers insurance covering birth control as required by Obama's 2010 healthcare law.

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The justices asked the two sides to suggest ways that birth control coverage could be provided to women through these employers' insurance plans without any involvement on the part of the employers.

The court could also split 4-4 on a challenge by abortion providers to a restrictive Texas abortion law and a lawsuit by Texas and other states to block Obama's execution actions to protect large numbers of people in the country illegally from deportation.

With the court evenly split with four liberals and four conservatives, the slow pace in filling the calendar indicates an increased cautiousness considering the real possibility of 4-4 deadlocks on anything ideologically divisive.

Such decisions leave lower court rulings in place but set no national precedent. The court has issued two 4-4 decisions so far, including one in a high-profile labor case.

In recent years the court has not shied away from taking up controversial issues such as abortion, affirmative action, voting rights, gay rights and religious rights.

It is too early to say if it will avoid controversial cases altogether, but Scalia's absence means it may now be restricting itself to disputes in which the justices are "more likely to reach consensus and clarify the law," said Jeffrey Wall, a lawyer at the Sullivan & Cromwell law firm.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Howard Goller and Will Dunham)
Arta (Djibouti) (AFP) - A French warship ploughs through the sparkling waters between Africa and Arabia on a joint training drill with the US that highlights Djibouti's growing strategic role for the world's militaries.

On the sun-blasted rocky shores of the tiny Horn of Africa nation, some 500 French troops march alongside 50 US Marines near the town of Arta, wearing full kit in the baking heat.

The training, designed to help the two allies work better together, also reflects growing international interest in the former French colony -- bordering Somalia, and just opposite Yemen.

Home to only around 800,000 people, Djibouti is now crowded with the military bases of several world powers.

Its port guards the entrance to the Red Sea and Suez Canal on one of the world's busiest shipping routes.

"This is certainly the reason why in addition to the French there are today many international forces wanting to establish a presence in Djibouti," said General Philippe Montocchio, the commander of French forces in the country.

"There are of course the Americans, the Japanese, the Italians, now the Chinese, and certainly in the near future, the Saudis."

It emerged four months ago that China has signed an agreement with Djibouti for the installation by the end of 2017 of a "naval logistics" base to accommodate up to 10,000 soldiers and serve to secure Beijing's considerable and growing interests in the wider region.

The hub will constitute China's first permanent overseas military deployment.

- Terror-fighting HQ -

Djibouti is already home to Camp Lemonnier, the United States' only permanent base in Africa.

It is used for covert, anti-terror and other operations in Yemen, as well as the US fight against the Islamist Shebab in Somalia and against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

Washington pays some $60 million (53 million euros) a year to Djibouti for the base.

US Major Paul L. Croom, a liason officer between the French and US militaries, said the joint drills in Djibouti "just makes sense" as the allies share key security interests in the region, including combating the jihadist threat in Africa.

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"Our operability -- between the French military and US military -- is as important as it's ever been right now, and is only gaining in importance," Croom said.

"Everybody knows that a lot of that threat emanates from areas in which the United States and France have mutual interests."

European and other international navies use Djibouti's port as a base in the fight against piracy from neighbouring Somalia. These are important -- and sometimes dangerous -- waters.

With international navies at sea, Somali pirate attacks have dropped off: 176 attacks were recorded in 2011, and none in 2015, according to the EU naval force.

And just 30 kilometres (20 miles) across the Gulf of Aden lies war-torn Yemen, devastated by a civil war that has pitched Shiite Huthi rebels -- backed by Iran -- against an internationally recognised government backed by Saudi-led air strikes.

Islamist groups, including Al-Qaeda's Yemen-based branch, one of the jihadist network's most dangerous franchises, as well as Islamic State forces, have also joined the battle for power in Yemen.

"Djibouti is located exactly at the epicentre of all this jihadist movement in the Horn of Africa and the southern part of the Middle East," Montocchio said.

China, beyond its new naval base, is bankrolling major infrastructure projects in Djibouti, including transport links for key markets in neighbouring landlocked Ethiopia.

"Everybody was surprised: why China? For Djibouti, there's no question," said Djibouti's Foreign Minister Mahamoud Ali Youssouf.

"China's presence, naval or military, is part of the same logic of countries that have the ability to contribute to peace and security in a region which is very troubled."

But China's entry into this "Great Game" is a risky bet for Djibouti -- it may well unsettle relations with traditional allies, especially the United States.
The register for Class, the Doctor Who spinoff, has been called.

New talents Greg Austin, Fady Elsayed, Sophie Hopkins and Vivian Oparah have been cast in the upcoming YA series, which started production Monday, alongside Katherine Kelly (Happy Valley, The Night Manager) who will play a teacher and "powerful new presence" at Coal Hill School.

According to co-producer BBC America, the four students are set to face their "own worst fears" and will be forced to navigate "a life of friends, parents, school work, sex, sorrow - and possibly the end of existence."

Steven Moffat, executive producer of Class and outgoing Doctor Who showrunner, said there was "nothing more exciting" than meeting a group of stars that "nobody's heard of yet."

"We had the read through of the first few episodes last week, and there was a whole row of them," he added. "Coal Hill School has been part of Doctor Who since the very first shoot in 1963, but this new show is anything but history. Class is dark and sexy and right now. I've always wondered if there could be a British Buffy - it's taken the brilliant [writer] Patrick Ness to figure out how to make it happen."

Further casting will be announced in due course.

Read More: 'Doctor Who' Showrunner Steven Moffat to Exit
On April 3, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made his last public speech, which referenced the Bible and the Constitution. His words still inspire millions today.

King was in Memphis, Tennessee to help support a sanitation workers strike. At the age of 39, he was already an internationally known figure. Starting with the Montgomery boycott in 1955, King had led a series of nonviolent protests against discrimination.

King spoke at the Bishop Charles Mason Temple to a group of supportersknowing there were threats made against his life.

Link: Full Text of Speech

The best-known part of Kings speech was its conclusion.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long lifelongevity has its place. But Im not concerned about that now. I just want to do Gods will. And Hes allowed me to go up to the mountain. And Ive looked over and Ive seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. And so Im happy tonight; Im not worried about anything; Im not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, King said as he ended the speech.

The we, as a people reference in the conclusion wasnt the only constitutional reference in his speech.

As you read the text of the Mountaintop speech, King gives an inspirational history of the civil rights movement and places it in the context of the ages and the late 20th Century. He then turns his attention to an injunction against the protesting sanitation workers.

We have an injunction and were going into court tomorrow morning to fight this illegal, unconstitutional injunction. All we say to America is, Be true to what you said on paper. If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand some of these illegal injunctions, King said.

Maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they hadnt committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right. And so just as I say, we arent going to let dogs or water hoses turn us around, we arent going to let any injunction turn us around. We are going on.

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The First Amendment right to peacefully protest was an integral part of Kings success in the civil rights movement. Later in the speech, King describes how the protesters can use an economic boycott to peacefully get their message across.

He also told the audience about how he survived a 1958 assassination attempt by a mentally deranged woman who stabbed King in the chest at a New York book signing. King had read in a newspaper that if he had sneezed just before the attack, the location of the wound have been fatal.

I want to say tonight that I, too, am happy that I didnt sneeze. Because if I had sneezed I wouldnt have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy, which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, he said.

At 6:05 P.M. on Thursday, April 4, 1968, King was shot while standing on a balcony outside his second-oor room at the Lorraine Motel. One shot was heard coming from another location. King was rushed to a hospital and died an hour later.

More Stories About Dr. King

10 famous quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

How Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.s birthday became a holiday

10 fascinating facts about the I Have A Dream speech
By Sharon Bernstein SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - Residents and businesses in drought-stricken California cut back water use by nearly 25 percent from June 2015 through the end of February 2016 - enough to supply nearly 6 million people for a year, officials said Monday. The state's first ever mandatory cutbacks in water use were imposed by Democratic Governor Jerry Brown as the state entered its fourth year of devastating drought last spring, leading to a savings of 1.19 million acre-feet of water, about the amount used annually by the cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego combined. "Californians rose to the occasion, reducing irrigation, fixing leaks, taking shorter showers, and saving our precious water resources in all sorts of ways," said Felicia Marcus, chair of the State Water Resources Control Board, which developed the regulations and is responsible for enforcing them. Under the rules, California residents and businesses were required to cut back their usage by up to 36 percent over 2013, in a range determined by a combination of geography and past conservation efforts. All told, they conserved by 24 percent, close to the 25 percent goal set by Brown in an emergency order issued by Brown last April. Regulators are weighing whether to lift or adjust the cutbacks following a wet winter that has left the northern part of the state with a plentiful water supply. The State Water Resources Control Board is set to reconsider the orders at a series of meetings later this month, as consumers and water utilities chafe under the continued burden. "We need to adjust to reflect the reality we're in, while still being mindful of the fact that we don't know what next year is going to bring," Marcus said Monday. One water district, responding to consumers who are irate that they must continue to conserve even as their local reservoir is reaching flood-control levels, has on its own told residents that they will no longer require cutbacks. "It's very hard to maintain your credibility when residents can see the lake spilling for flood control purposes," yet stringent cutbacks are still being enforced, said Keith Durkin, assistant general manager of the San Juan Water District, which serves the community of Granite Bay and other suburbs east of Sacramento with water from Folsom Lake. (Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Sandra Maler)
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch authorities will investigate allegations related to the Netherlands after millions of documents were leaked on the clients of a Panama-based law firm. The Finance Ministry said in a statement on Monday that the tax office will "actively look at whether there is data related to levying of tax," it said. Mossack Fonseca had an office in the Netherlands that closed last month after five years. (Reporting By Anthony Deutsch; editing by John Stonestreet)
Yangon (AFP) - A Myanmar student leader on trial over protests last year that were violently quashed by authorities called on Aung San Suu Kyi's new government Monday to abolish laws repressing political activists.

Hopes are growing that the first civilian-led government in decades can accelerate Myanmar's economic and political rejuvenation after nearly half a century of brutal military rule.

The country witnessed a historic transfer of power last week to an administration headed by Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party.

But hundreds of political activists remain in jail.

Among them are some 40 students facing a variety of charges including unlawful assembly and rioting over education reform protests. These were violently broken up by baton-wielding police in the central town of Letpadan in March 2015.

Another 30 or so students are on bail but facing similar charges.

"Now that there are many NLD MPs in the parliament... I want them to dissolve the laws that repress political activists," student leader Phyo Phyo Aung, who has been in jail for more than a year, told AFP after a day of court hearings in Mayagone township, Yangon.

She and her fellow student protesters could face up to ten years in jail if convicted.

Some 120 former political prisoners now have seats in parliament. Most are NLD activists who, like Suu Kyi, spent decades campaigning against junta rule.

Phyo Phyo Aung said she hoped they would now push through reforms to a series of laws on assembly and national security long used to target activists.

"They have more experience than us. They should abolish the laws under which they were sentenced by discussing with legal advocates. Then our country's future will be better," she said.

According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, 90 political prisoners were in jail and more than 400 activists were facing trial as of February.

The vast majority were arrested before last November's landmark polls under the government of army-backed president Thein Sein, who oversaw remarkable reforms but still cracked down on critics.

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Suu Kyi and her party have yet to make any public policy statements on either the student trials or whether they plan to abolish the laws that once targeted so many of their own.

An NLD spokesman declined to comment Monday.

The president has the right to pardon prisoners. But doing so might stoke the anger of the still powerful military, who retain control of the key home, border and defence ministries.
Ankara (AFP) - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday predicted that Ankara's ally Azerbaijan would "one day" regain control of Nagorny Karabakh, as deadly clashes between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces over the region raged for a third day.

"We are today standing side-by-side with our brothers in Azerbaijan. But this persecution will not continue forever. Karabakh will one day return to its original owner. It will be Azerbaijan's," Erdogan told a conference in Ankara broadcast live on television.
By Francesco Guarascio LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) - Anti-corruption activists and lawmakers have renewed their criticism of a planned EU law on tax avoidance, saying it would still not stop companies hiding their activities in tax havens outside the European Union. Pressure on the European Commission to amend the draft that it is due to present next week has grown since the leak of more than 11.5 million documents from Panama-based firm Mossack Fonseca, exposing how politicians and businessmen use shell companies in tax havens to reduce their taxes. The draft, posted by advocacy group Transparency International on its website, would oblige EU multinationals to publicly disclose tax and financial data for every EU country in which they operate. But it would not require them to reveal country-by-country information for their activities outside the bloc, for which only "aggregated" information would be required. "You can't have 28 reports for the EU and one report for the rest of the world," Transparency International said in a statement. "It defeats the purpose of this legislation and means that companies will still be able to use tax havens." It called for mandatory public registers of companies' beneficial owners to make it harder to hide stolen assets in secret companies and trusts. The Commission's draft would only apply to companies with an annual turnover of at least 750 million euros ($855 million), a threshold meant to avoid imposing unnecessary costs on smaller firms. "The proposed measures would cover too few companies," advocacy group Oxfam said in a statement, adding that the bill "makes us wonder if the European Commission is really willing to put an end to tax dodging." The Commission says it conducted an impact assessment to ensure the legislation would increase tax transparency without harming the global competitiveness of EU companies. A spokeswoman said the plan was "balanced" and the result of "carefully weighing the objectives, benefits, risks and safeguards of any actions involved". Foreign corporations operating in the European Union would also be obliged to disclose their tax data, or face fines. The European Parliament approved a draft law on shareholders' rights last July, requiring the country-by-country disclosure of companies' tax data wherever they operate, but it is currently being blocked by EU member states. The leak of the Panama Papers "shows even more clearly the need to quickly intervene to ensure transparency," said Sergio Cofferati, the Italian centre-left lawmaker who led the European Parliament's work on the shareholders' rights directive. Other members of the EU parliament, from centre-left and leftist groups, called for tougher anti-tax avoidance measures, beyond the Commission's draft and what it has already proposed. Earlier this year, the Commission proposed laws requiring the automatic exchange of tax data among EU states and setting stricter rules to reduce tax avoidance by multinationals, which, according to a study by the European Parliament, cost the bloc between 50 billion and 70 billion euros a year in lost revenue. (Reporting by Francesco Guarascio; Editing by Alissa de Carbonnel and Robin Pomeroy)
By Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A two-year investigation into whether Apple's <AAPL.O> tax deal with Irish authorities gave the iPhone maker an unfair advantage will take a lot longer because of the large amount of data involved, the EU antitrust chief said on Monday.

The European Commission accused Ireland in 2014 of dodging international tax rules by letting Apple shelter profits worth tens of billions of dollars from tax collectors in return for maintaining jobs.

European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said she had asked Ireland for more details, which in turn raised new questions that required a response from the authorities and occasionally from Apple as well.

"The first priority is the quality of the case work... And therefore it is very difficult to make predictions as to when the case will be ready for a decision," Vestager told a European Parliament hearing.

Both Ireland and Apple have denied any special tax deal.

Vestager also said she had asked British tax authorities for details on their back tax deal with Google <GOOGL.O> following a complaint from the Scottish National Party (SNP).

"We are in contact with the UK authorities on the Google tax case. It is still early days," she said.

The British government hailed the 130 million pound ($185.9 million) settlement, announced in January, as a major success but the opposition Labour Party dismissed it as "derisory" and other parties also criticized it.

Google has said it paid all due taxes.

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
By Gabriela Baczynska and Sara Ledwith BRUSSELS (Reuters) - In early March, Europe's migration chief Dimitris Avramopoulos squelched through a muddy refugee camp on Greece's border with Macedonia and peered through the barbed-wire topped fence that stands between tens of thousands of migrants in Greece and richer countries that lie to the north. "By building fences, by deploying barbed wire," he said, "it is not a solution." But Avramopoulos has not always preached that message  and his changing views capture the tangle Europe has got itself into as more than a million migrants and refugees have floated in on Greek waters since the start of 2015. In 2012, when he was Greek minister of defense, Greece built a fence and electronic surveillance system along its border with Turkey. The cement and barbed-wire barrier and nearly 2,000 extra guards were designed to stop a sharp rise in illegal immigrants. The 62-year-old former diplomat was not directly involved in the project. But in 2013 he defended it, telling a news conference the wall had borne fruit. "The entry of illegal immigrants in Greece by this side has almost been eliminated," he said. The official European response to Europe's migrant crisis  championed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel last August  is for member states to pull together and provide shelter for people, especially Syrians, fleeing war or persecution. But in reality, most members have failed to take their quotas of refugees and nearly a dozen have built barricades to try to keep both migrants and refugees out. The bloc is now trying to implement a deal which would see Turkey take back new arrivals. The European Union was founded in the ashes of World War Two, in part on a principle of freedom of movement among member states. But since the fall of the Berlin Wall, European countries have built or started 1,200 km (750 miles) of anti-immigrant fencing at a cost of at least 500 million euros ($570 million), a Reuters analysis of public data shows. That distance is almost 40 percent of the length of America's border with Mexico. Many of these walls separate EU nations from states outside the bloc, but some are between EU states, including members of Europe's passport-free zone. Most of the building was started in 2015. "Wherever there have been large numbers of migrants or refugees trying to enter the EU, this trend has been followed up by a fence," said Irem Arf, a researcher on European Migration at rights group Amnesty International. For governments, fences seem like a simple solution. Building them is perfectly legal and countries have the right to control who enters their territory. Each new fence in Europe has sharply curbed the numbers of irregular immigrants on the route they blocked. For at least one company, fences work. The firm which operates a tunnel between France and Britain says that since a major security upgrade around its French terminal last October, migrants have ceased to cause trouble. "There have been no disruptions to services since mid October 2015, so we can say that the combination of the fence and the additional police presence has been highly effective," Eurotunnel spokesman John Keefe said. But in the short term at least, they have not stopped people trying to come. Instead, they have diverted them, often to longer, more dangerous routes. And rights groups say some fences deny asylum-seekers the chance to seek shelter, even though European law states that everyone has the right to a fair and efficient asylum procedure. Forced to find another way, migrants and refugees often turn to people-smugglers. CROWD CONTROL Greece's border fence was one of the first, and Avramopoulos still defends it. He says Greece built it to divert people towards official crossings where they could apply for asylum. Much of Greece's frontier with Turkey is delineated by a fast-flowing river, the Evros. But there is a 12 km stretch where people used to sneak through on land after making the river crossing in Turkey. "The Evros river is a very dangerous river," Avramopoulos told Reuters in his upper floor office suite in February. "Hundreds of people had lost their lives there." At least 19 people drowned in the Evros in 2010, according to the United Nations refugee agency. Neither the Greek authorities nor Europe's border agency Frontex could provide more data. In practice, rights groups say Greece's barrier  and others including one built by Spain in Morocco  effectively turn everyone away, denying vulnerable people a chance to make their case for protection. This is partly because some new barriers have passport controls like those at an airport. People need travel documents to exit one country and reach the checkpoint of the EU country where they want to seek asylum. Many refugees don't have any papers, so they are automatically blocked. With barriers come security guards, cameras and surveillance equipment, which all make it harder for people to make their asylum cases. Rights groups have documented many reports of border officials beating, abusing, or robbing migrants and refugees before dumping them back where they came from. This approach, known as push-back, has become an intrinsic feature of Europe's external borders, according to Amnesty International. As a solution, some migrants and refugees buy fake papers. Others stow away in vehicles. Or they turn to people-smugglers. Greece's fence had a knock-on effect that continues to ripple through Europe as more countries wall themselves off. More migrants moving through Turkey began to enter Europe across the Bulgarian border, or by sailing to Greece in inflatable dinghies. In the eastern Mediterranean, the International Organization for Migration has recorded more than 1,100 migrant deaths since the start of last year. CULTURAL PURITY The EU refuses to fund fences, saying they don't work. As European Commissioner, Avramopoulos has tried instead to persuade fellow member states to show solidarity by offering homes to 160,000 refugees and migrants, mainly from Greece and Italy. As of March 15, just 937 asylum applicants had been relocated. For Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the idea of quotas is "bordering on insanity." Orban opposes a dilution of Europe's "Christian values" by multicultural immigrants and started building fences along Hungary's borders with Croatia and Serbia in late 2015. Since the ethnic cleansing of the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia, Balkan states have been particularly sensitive to the risks of ethnic and religious conflict. Other countries followed Hungary with fences  even if most said they installed them to control the flow of people, rather than to preserve cultural purity. When Austria started a barrier on its border with Slovenia in November 2015, it said it was necessary for crowd management. Then Austria capped the numbers of people it would admit, and how many it would allow through to Germany. By March, all these measures seemed to be having the desired effect: The number of migrants entering Germany from Austria had fallen more than sevenfold. Even so, there were new signs the fences were simply reshaping, rather than closing, the migration routes. The numbers making the perilous crossing from Africa to Italy had increased. Austria said it would add soldiers to defend its border with Italy. The fence Avramopoulos visited last month underlines the risks of such barriers. Built by Macedonia as part of a pact with states further north, it has sealed around 50,000 people into Greece. More than 10,000  a third of them children  are camped in flimsy tents near the fence. Many families have refused to leave the border, waiting instead for it to open, as respiratory infections spread and frustration mounts. "All our values are in danger today," Avramopoulos said. "You can see it here." (Ledwith reported from London; Additional reporting by Alastair Macdonald in Brussels, Renee Maltezou in Athens, Tom Miles in Geneva and Himanshu Ojha in London; Edited by Janet Roberts and Simon Robinson)
Brussels (AFP) - The eurozone unemployment rate improved only marginally in February, official data showed Monday, stoking concerns the economy could be slowing after only a modest recovery.

Analysts said that while the economy is holding up despite recent financial market volatility and concerns over the outlook for China, job gains may not be enough to help it get it through the current soft patch.

The Eurostat statistics agency said unemployment in the 19-nation eurozone fell to 10.3 percent in February, a four-and-a-half year low, from a revised 10.4 percent in January.

The January figure was originally given as 10.3 percent last month and analysts had expected the February jobless rate to come in unchanged at 10.3 percent.

Unemployment hit a record high 12.1 percent during the worst of the debt crisis.

Jennifer McKeown at Capital Economics said Monday's figures "suggest the labour market remains in reasonable health although it is still too weak to generate any real inflationary pressure."

Inflation -- a key reflection of consumer demand -- has bounced along the bottom for months, way short of the European Central Bank's target of near 2.0 percent.

"Looking ahead, survey evidence suggests that the eurozones labour market recovery is beginning to slow," McKeown added.

The ECB launched a massive stimulus programme in early 2015 but to little apparent effect and last month added even more unprecedented measures in an effort to get the economy back on track.

The ECB at the same time cut its eurozone growth forecasts for 2016 and 2017 to 1.4 percent and 1.7 percent, from the previous 1.7 percent and 1.9 percent, respectively.

More damaging still, it slashed its inflation estimates to just 0.1 percent from 1.0 percent for this year and to 1.3 percent from 1.6 percent for 2017.

Eurostat said there were 16.63 million jobless in the eurozone in February, down 39,000 from January.

The EU unemployment rate was unchanged at 8.9 percent in February, it said.

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The lowest jobless rates were in Germany, 4.3 percent, and the Czech Republic on 4.5 percent while the highest were in debt-laden Greece at 24 percent and Spain with 20.4 percent.

Howard Archer at IHS Global Insight said that while eurozone unemployment fell for a 15th consecutive month, "it is notable that the decline of 39,000 was the smallest drop since May 2015.

"This stokes concern that recent slower eurozone growth and softer business confidence could now be increasingly weighing down on the labour market," Archer said in a note.

On the positive side, the improvement might encourage the consumer to spend more, which will be crucial if eurozone growth is to be able "regain momentum over the coming months after stuttering recently."

The eurozone economy grew 0.3 percent in the last three months of 2015, unchanged from the previous quarter but down on the 0.4 percent gain of the second quarter and 0.6 percent in the first.
Now that a few days have passed since Tesla's Model 3 unveiling, I think it's safe to say that the company has a bonafide hit on its hands. While it was long assumed that the Model 3 would resonate with consumers, I don't think anyone could have predicted just how intense the interest in the Model 3 has turned out to be.

DON'T MISS: The Internet is furious about this years Walking Dead finale

Even before the world got a peek at the Model 3's features and design, Elon Musk said that over 115,000 reservations had already been made. In the days following the vehicle's introduction, the number of reservations continued to skyrocket, with Musk providing us with nearly daily updates via his Twitter account. The most recent tally from Musk relayed that the number of Model 3 reservations stood at 276,000 by the end of the day on Saturday. While Musk won't continue to provide daily updates, he did make a point of stating that he'll give one final reservation update this coming Wednesday.

What's interesting about the ever-growing number of Model 3 reservations is that the tally has thus far even exceeded Tesla's wildest expectations. In fact, as Elon Musk tells it, even he didn't think Model 3 reservations would be this high this early.

When asked about it on Twitter over the weekend, back when the tally stood at about 250,000, Musk said that he was anticipating reservations to be about "1/4 to 1/2 of what happened", somewhere in the 62,000 to 125,000 range. But again, Tesla nearly surpassed the 125,000 mark before the Model 3 was even introduced.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/716344348107878401

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This article was originally published on BGR.com
By Luciana Lopez

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders vowed to nominate Latinos into key cabinet posts in their administrations if elected, according to their answers to a questionnaire organized by the nations largest Latino coalition.

The 20-question survey was submitted by the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda to all U.S. presidential candidates on Feb. 25, but received responses only from the two Democratic contenders and none from the Republicans, according to the results reviewed by Reuters.

Latinos and African-Americans have emerged as key voting blocs in the Democratic race for the White House nomination so far, and are likely to play a large role in the outcomes of big contests looming in New York and California.

From special assistants to cabinet members, Latinos will play a key role in helping to shape my policy priorities and be effectively represented in our agencies, former U.S. Secretary of State and Democratic front-runner Clinton wrote.

U.S. Senator from Vermont Sanders promised to make his administration reflect the diverse make-up of the country I can think of no place more vital for such diversity than in the cabinet and the Senior Executive Service of the President of the United States of America.

President Barack Obama has nominated a number of Latinos to cabinet position during his time in office, two of whom are currently serving: Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro.

Both Clinton and Sanders have already promised comprehensive immigration reform, appealing to Hispanic voters ahead of presidential nominating contests in minority-heavy states. Leading Republican hopefuls Donald Trump and U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, meanwhile, have promised to tighten up the borders and deport undocumented immigrants.

The responses come as the Democratic contest for the partys presidential nomination is poised to roll into a slate of diverse states - including New York later this month and minority-heavy California in June.

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The NHLA will use the questionnaires to guide voter engagement ahead of the November election, and to hold the winner to promises made during the campaign, said Hector Sanchez, the chairman of the NHLA.

This is not just a piece of paper that were going to put out there, Sanchez said. If they want the Latino vote, they must engage with us.

(Reporting by Luciana Lopez; Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Marguerita Choy)
By Paul Tait FORWARD OPERATING BASE GAMBERI, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Intense fighting and unprecedented casualties suffered by Afghan forces in 2015 have put U.S. and NATO efforts to train a self-sufficient force behind schedule, the new commanding general in Afghanistan told Reuters on Monday. The impact of the violence in 2015, and the changing nature of the enemy Afghan troops face, will form an important part of an initial assessment of conditions in Afghanistan being conducted by new commander General John Nicholson. "This intense period of combat interfered with the glide slope we were on. The assumptions we made about our timelines, we have to re-look based upon the high casualties they took," Nicholson said in his first interview since taking command of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan last month. "It wasn't just the high casualties, which require replacement and retraining," he said. "There was also the fact that they had to stop training and fight all year. So this put us behind on our projections in terms of the growth and increasing proficiency of the army and the police." Nicholson is about a third of the way through the 90-day assessment he will present in Washington some time in June. It could be the most significant since General Stanley McChrystal recommended a "surge" in 2009 that took U.S. troop numbers to 100,000 and the overall NATO force to about 140,000. Under the current timeline, the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan will fall from 9,800 at present to 5,500 by the start of 2017, barring a dramatic change of thinking in Washington. The adherence to that timeline could be affected by the success of the mission to train Afghan soldiers and police, and to build a proficient air force to support them. Nicholson would not be drawn on his recommendations for future troop levels. Taliban gains, including their brief capture of the key northern city of Kunduz last year, led his predecessor General John Campbell to recommend dropping plans to cut U.S. troop numbers from the start of 2016 and instead maintain the 9,800-strong force before a reduction by the start of next year. Originally President Barack Obama had intended roughly to halve U.S. troop numbers in Afghanistan this year and cut the force to just 1,000 troops based at the U.S. embassy in Kabul by the start of 2017. HEAVY LOSSES Nicholson said Afghan forces suffered 5,500 killed in action and more than 14,000 wounded in 2015, significantly affecting the U.S.-led training and assistance mission. "This would be an enormous shock for any army, (including) a young army that is still growing. Yet they did not break," Nicholson said, after touring Forward Operating Base Gamberi in eastern Laghman province, one of the four main training bases. A recent report from the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction said it was unlikely that a "robust and sustainable" force would develop without a continuing strong U.S. and NATO presence. Nicholson said that the heavy fighting of 2015 and casualties suffered by Afghan forces would be among the conditions NATO leaders would consider when deciding when to withdraw. Nicholson added that "some more years" were needed to expand and train the fledgling Afghan air force now that U.S. and NATO aircraft take part in fewer operations. That effort in turn was affected by the heavy fighting in 2015. "The pilots that we're training are going directly into combat. The combat affects the speed with which we can train and field the air force," he said. "Until that airforce is fully fielded, the Afghans are at increased risk," he said. (Additional reporting by James Mackenzie; Editing by Mike Collett-White)
By Caroline Humer NEW YORK (Reuters) - Major drug companies took hefty price increases in the U.S., in some cases more than doubling listed charges, for widely used medications over the past five years, a Reuters analysis of proprietary data found. Prices for four of the nation's top 10 drugs increased more than 100 percent since 2011, Reuters found. Six others went up more than 50 percent. Together, the price increases on drugs for arthritis, high cholesterol, asthma and other common problems added billions in costs for consumers, employers and government health programs. Extraordinary price hikes by two small companies, Turing Pharmaceuticals and Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc , drew new attention to drug costs. Turing expected to book $200 million by raising the price of Daraprim, an antiparasitic used for a rare infection, by 5,000 percent, according to company documents released by Congressional investigators. Routine price increases by bigger players may draw less attention, but they add up. Sales for the top 10 drugs went up 44 percent to $54 million in 2014, from 2011, even though prescriptions for the medications dropped 22 percent, according to IMS Health data. At the top of the list was AbbVie Inc , which raised the price of arthritis drug Humira more than 126 percent, Reuters found. Next were Amgen Inc and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd , which raised prices for arthritis treatment Enbrel and multiple sclerosis drug Copaxone by 118 percent. The increases help explain federal data showing overall spending on drugs rose faster than doctor visits and hospitalization over the past five years. Reuters based its analysis on the top 10 drugs, according to 2014 sales figures from IMS, and on proprietary pricing data provided by Truven Health Analytics. Reuters used commonly prescribed approved indications. Reuters shared its method and findings with the eight companies that sell the top 10 drugs; none disputed the findings. In general, drug companies said they set prices to recoup investments in failed drugs, support new research and development efforts, and pay for clinical trials to broaden the use of approved drugs. Also, they said, medications prevent costly hospitalizations. Some of the companies noted that Reuters' analysis of list prices failed to capture negotiated discounts and rebates  information they closely guard. In a few cases, companies offered a limited view into proprietary prices. Amgen, for instance, told Reuters that, after most discounts, the average sales price for a dose of Enbrel is at least $200 less than list. And, while Reuters found arthritis drug Remicade went up almost 63 percent, Johnson & Johnson spokeswoman Caroline Pavis said average selling price increases were closer to 5.4 percent per year. For GlaxoSmithKline Plc's Advair asthma drug, Reuters found a 67 percent increase. But spokeswoman Jenni Ligday said that, with discounts and rebates, prices actually fell during the period. Even after discounts, pharmacy benefit managers told Reuters they pay annual price increases on top medications of up to 10 percent. By comparison, the U.S. consumer price index rose an average of 2 percent annually over the last five years. Dr. Steve Miller, chief medical officer of top U.S. pharmacy benefit manager Express Scripts Holding Corp , said the current level of drug price increases was "not sustainable." NEW FOCUS Drug prices have been a hot topic on the presidential campaign trail and in Congress since Turing hiked Daraprim and Valeant imposed triple-digit price increases on two heart drugs. Adding to the political pressure is the practice among employers and insurers of passing increases onto consumers. Patricia Calopietro, 70, said she once paid $20 for a three-month supply of Nexium. AstraZeneca Plc raised the list price of the acid reflux drug nearly 50 percent over the past five years, and Calopietro's insurer pushed her out-of-pocket share up to $250. She switched to a cheaper medicine but doesnt like how it works. "How can I pay something like that? I'm 70 years old, and I'm on a fixed income," said Calopietro, a retired sales manager for the U.S. Army & Air Force Exchange stores from Lorton, Virginia. Leading drugmakers say price hikes by Turing and Valeant are outliers. "Our industry invests on average 20 percent of our revenues into research and development. It's a fundamentally different business model," said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for industry lobby Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA. Sanofi SA , Teva, Amgen, J&J and AstraZeneca, which all have top 10 drugs, said they offer assistance to low income consumers. AstraZeneca spokeswoman Abigail Bozarth said the company sets prices based on market conditions, "a common practice across the industry." Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center oncologist Peter Bach said patients would be better served if drug prices reflected value, instead of bargaining power. Pharmaceutical "companies have complete control over pricing in the U.S.," he said. By Bach's estimate, increases last year on just one drug, Amgen's Enbrel, added up to $1 billion to care costs. In a statement, Amgen spokeswoman Kristen Davis questioned Bach's estimate, saying it is impossible to infer revenue growth from list price increases because of other factors, including rebates and discounts. Davis said Amgen prices reflect research and development costs of $33 billion over a decade. Rebates and discounts bring the average sales price for a weekly dose of Enbrel to $704.23, down from its list price of $932.16, she said.
Manama (AFP) - Formula One bosses met for 90 minutes on Sunday but were unable to reach agreement on a future format for qualifying.

Veteran commercial ring-master Bernie Ecclestone left the talks without any immediate comment after they were locked in stalemate over calls for a return to the previously successful structure after the failure of the new "elimination" system.

Mercedes motorsport chief Toto Wolff said that several options for the future had been proposed, but without gaining the necessary unanimous support.

"We haven't reach a conclusion on how we want to continue yet," he explained. "We have agreed to discuss matters internally and then talk again next week."

All the teams were represented at the meeting attended also by Ecclestone, the president of the ruling body, the International Motoring Federation (FIA), Jean Todt and tyres suppliers Pirelli.

The teams have agreed that they want to see a reversion to the previously successful qualifying as used until the end of last season, but there is opposition to this plan.

Saturday's qualifying session for Sundays Bahrain Grand Prix was run using the "new" progressive elimination qualifying system introduced without success at the Australian Grand Prix.

It produced another unsatisfactory session with long periods of inactivity. The teams again called for the system to be ditched and hoped this would be achieved on Sunday.

Instead, all involved have agreed to talk again on Thursday after evaluating more complex proposals put forward by Todt. He and Ecclestone are reluctant to dump the new system.

Wolff said: "We discussed the various qualifying formats and what the FIA and the Commercial Rights Holders would want to propose.

"It's various new formats -- or staying with the current format."

The sport requires unanimous support from teams, the FIA, Ecclestone and other parties to make a change to the rules.
By Caroline Humer NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hefty price increases bolstered revenues for manufacturers even as prescriptions declined over the past five years. Below is a breakdown for the top 10 drugs by U.S. sales, based on the most recently available data from IMS Health and interviews with price experts. List price increases were calculated using data from Truven Health Analytics and do not reflect rebates and discounts negotiated with insurers. U.S. revenue was based on company reports. AbbVie Inc increased the price of Humira, an injectible drug, by 126 percent for a typical monthly treatment to $3,797.10, compared with $1,676.98 on Dec. 31, 2010. The drug had $8.4 billion in U.S. sales in 2015 versus $6.5 billion in 2014. Amgen raised the list price of Enbrel by 118 percent to $932.16 for a typical weekly treatment from $427.24 on Dec. 31, 2010, including three increases last year. It had U.S. sales of $5.1 billion in 2015, up from $4.4 billion a year earlier. Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd raised the price of multiple sclerosis drug Copaxone by 118 percent, pushing its monthly price to $6,593.00 from $3,025.04 on Dec. 31, 2010. It had U.S. sales of $4.0 billion in 2015 versus $4.2 billion in 2014. AstraZeneca Plc increased the price of cholesterol fighter Crestor's three-month supply by 113 percent to $745.41 from $350.17. Sales fell about 3 percent to $2.84 billion in 2015. Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co Ltd <4578.T> raised the list price by 96 percent for a typical monthly supply of depression drug Abilify to $891.97, up from $454.07 on Dec. 31, 2010. U.S. sales were not available. Sanofi SA raised the list price of Lantus Solostar, an insulin glargine product used to treat diabetes by 94 percent for 5 pen devices to $372.76, up from $191.96 on Dec. 31, 2010. Its list price has not changed since the end of 2014. Total U.S. sales of Lantus, which includes other delivery mechanisms in addition to Solostar, fell 20 percent to 4 billion euros ($4.55 billion) in 2015 from a year earlier. GlaxoSmithKline Plc's asthma treatment Advair Diskus inhalation disks for a 30-day supply rose to $334.63, up 67 percent from $199.90 on Dec. 31, 2010. Advair, which includes other delivery mechanisms in addition to disks, had 2015 U.S. sales of $2.85 billion, a decline of 13 percent. Johnson & Johnson's arthritis treatment Remicade, which is administered as an infusion typically every 4 to 8 weeks, increased 63 percent to $1,071.48 from $657.87 on Dec. 31, 2010 per treatment. Remicade U.S. sales rose 7 percent to $4.45 billion in 2015. Amgen Inc's Neulasta, an injectible drug used to prevent infection in chemotherapy patients, rose 55 percent to $5,155.65 per treatment from $3,320 on Dec. 31, 2010. Its 2015 U.S. sales were $3.89 billion versus $3.65 billion. AstraZeneca Plc's Nexium treatment for acid reflux sold as a monthly supply rose 54 percent to $250.94 from $162.55 on Dec. 31, 2010. Nexium had U.S. sales of $2.5 billion in 2015, down 32 percent from a year earlier. (Reporting by Caroline Humer; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Lisa Girion)
By Richard Martin

BARCELONA (Reuters) - Barcelona forward Lionel Messi's family have denied Spanish media reports that arose following the leak of the 'Panama papers' that said he was involved in a tax evasion scheme.

Governments across the world began investigating possible financial wrongdoing by the rich and powerful on Monday after a leak of four decades of documents from a Panamanian law firm that specialized in setting up offshore companies.

The so-called 'Panama papers' revealed the financial arrangements of global political and public figures.

While holding money in offshore companies is not illegal, Messi, 28, was on Sunday accused by Spanish newspaper El Confidencial of creating a company with the aim of evading tax.

Reuters could not independently confirm this.

His family issued a statement on Monday denying allegations it said were published by various media organizations that Messi had created a corporate structure aimed at "setting up a tax fraud network".

It added: "The Messi family wish to make it clear Lionel Messi has not carried out any of the acts of which he is accused in the stories and that the allegations of him having designed a tax evasion project are false and injurious, as are those relating to the creation of a money laundering network.

"The Panamanian company referred to in said reports is a completely inactive company, which has never had any capital or active current accounts, and which dates from the old corporate structure set up by the Messi family's previous financial advisors, with the tax implications for Lionel Messi having been settled at the time.

"In light of the above the Messi family has instructed their current legal team ... to look into the prospect of bringing legal action against the media organizations who published the story."

Reuters could not immediately reach Messi's lawyers.

BARCA BACKING

His club have given Messi's family their backing.

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"Barcelona wishes to express the club trusts the arguments the Messi family have made public and that from the moment the documents linking Leo Messi with 'the Panama papers' were made public, Barcelona have shown their support and solidarity to the player and all his family," the European champions said in a statement.

"The club has put all its judicial, fiscal and administrative means at the disposition of the family should they need to clarify their position and repute in this case," the statement added.

A tax fraud case against Messi is to be heard in a Barcelona court between May 31 and June 3 after the World Player of the Year and his father Jorge were accused by the tax office in 2013 of defrauding the Spanish state of 4.2 million euros ($4.5 million) from 2007-09.

Revenue was hidden using shell companies in Uruguay, Belize, Switzerland and the United Kingdom to avoid paying tax, according to the prosecutor's office.

Reuters was unable to determine if or how this case relates to the details provided in the 'Panama papers'.

Last October a Spanish court ordered that Messi and his father stand trial. The state attorney has proposed jail terms of up to 22 months if they are found guilty.

Messi and his father, who has denied the accusations, paid five million euros to the tax authorities as a "corrective" measure after being formally charged in June 2013.

Messi is preparing to play for Barca in Tuesday's Champions League quarter-final first leg at home to Atletico Madrid.

(Editing by Tony Jimenez and Ken Ferris)
Greece ferried Monday the first group of migrants to Turkeythree boats of some 200 people that marked the start of a controversial European Union plan that will deport some migrants, and, in some cases, replace them with Syrian refugees who have properly undergone the asylum process.

The boats left the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios, then headed across the Aegean Sea, the same path many migrants risked death to cross. At the Turkish port of Dikili, The New York Times reported, migrants waited in line at tents, where theyd be registered, and given health checks.

Hundreds of migrants arrive in Greece every day, about half of whom are fleeing the five-year-long civil war in Syria. In just the first three months of 2016, nearly 151,000 have arrived, according to the International Organization for Migration. In the same period last year, 10,500 made the trip. The EU deal was an attempt to stop the massive influx, and the migrant traffickers who make it possible.

Recommended: The Political Fallout From the Panama Papers

The agreement between the EU and Turkey was reached last month at a summit in Brussels. Under the terms of the deal, migrants who arrived in Greece after March 20 will be deported unless they qualify for asylum. (Many of the people who arrive are not, in fact, from Syria. Some are fleeing unrest in other countries, like Afghanistan, and others are migrants from places such as Pakistan.) In exchange, the EU will accept Syrians who have already qualified for asylum.

In Hanover, Germany, the first of 16 Syrian refugees arrived by plane. Sixteen others are expected later in the day. Germany has an open-door policy for Syrian refugees.

Reuters reported that a spokeswoman for Frontex, the EU border agency, said many of the migrants sent back Monday were from Pakistan and Bangladesh, and had not applied for asylum. She said at some point, Syrians, too, would be deported, though theyd be returned to Osmaniye, a southern Turkish city 25 miles from the Syrian border.

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Human-rights groups have opposed the deal. Since some EU countries shut down their borders in early March, around 50,000 migrants have been stranded in Greece, with about 4,000 already detained for deportation, the Associated Press reported. The head of Amnesty International in Greece, Giorgos Kosmopoulos, said the EU is forging ahead with a dangerous deal.

Turkey is not a safe third country for refugees, Kosmopoulos said. The EU and Greek authorities know this and have no excuse.

Even as the EU shipped migrants back to Turkey on Monday, more crossed the Aegean in rickety boats. Two dinghies loaded with more than 50 migrants were stopped by the Greek coast guard. Reuters reported that one man aboard the boat, a 31-year-old Syrian Kurd traveling with a cousin, said, We are just going to try our chance. It is for our destiny. We are dead anyway.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
Youve heard your favorite TV crime stoppers say it a thousand times: You have the right to remain silent.... You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you at no cost to you. Its a familiar refrain that carries with it what seems like a simple guarantee. But in the real world, accessing a public defender isnt always easyand in some places, it doesnt happen at all.

In South Carolinas lower courtscalled magistrate, municipal, or summary courtslow-income defendants are routinely denied access to attorneys or not informed of their Sixth Amendment rights, according to a new report published Monday by the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

When you go to a summary court in South Carolina, you find yourself in a judicial netherworld, where the police officer who made the arrest acts as the prosecutor, the judge may not have a law degree, and there are no lawyers in sight, said Susan Dunn, legal director of the ACLU of South Carolina, in a statement.

As TakePart reported last August, operations in these local municipal courts, which handle low-level offenses ranging from traffic violations to criminal misdemeanor charges, such as theft and minor assault, vary widely from county to county. Some are staffed with public defenders, but many are notand thats where the problem lies.

TakePart observed numerous defendants waiving their right to an attorney without fully understanding the consequences and in other instances being denied counsel.

By operating as if the Sixth Amendment doesnt exist, these courts weigh the scales of justice so heavily against defendants that they often receive fines and jail time they dont deserve, said Dunn.

The reports authors watched court proceedings in counties throughout South Carolina from late 2014 to July 2015. In that time, they observed judges without law degrees sending people who couldnt pay fines to jail. In one instance, the authors observed an elderly black woman in North Charleston being charged with shoplifting meat and cake from her local Walmart. She requested a public defender, but the judge wouldnt assign her one. She was handcuffed and sent to jail in tears.

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Those who are able to access a public defender find that it isnt, in fact, free. A $40 application fee must be paid to the state in order to be screened and receive a lawyera prohibitive cost for some defendants. Another judge was observed informing defendants that requesting a public defender was a waste of this application fee, as they must be dirt poor to qualify.

I really thought I knew public defense, and then I got to this, Colette Tvedt of the NACDL told TakePart last year. The underbelly of whats happening in the U.S. is very differentthis is a crisis of indigent defense.

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Original article from TakePart
New Delhi (AFP) - Bollywood's Amitabh Bachchan and martial arts movie star Jackie Chan are among celebrities who feature Monday in a massive leak of documents, some of which reveal hidden offshore assets.

Bollywood legend Bachchan, simply known as the "Big B" in India, was appointed director of at least four shipping companies registered in offshore tax havens and set up 23 years ago.

The authorised capital of these companies ranged from just $5,000 to $50,000 but they traded in ships worth millions of dollars, according to the Indian Express newspaper.

The Express is among more than 100 media groups which have investigated a massive leak of 11.5 million documents from Mossack Fonseca, a Panama-based law firm with offices in 35 countries.

Bachchan, who has long since resigned from the companies and has not commented on the documents, is not the only member of his famous family named in the leaks.

His daughter-in-law, actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, was also director and shareholder of an offshore company, along with members of her family, before it was thought to have been wound up in 2008, according to the newspaper.

The media adviser of the former Miss World winner has rejected the documents as "totally untrue and false".

As with many of Fonseca's clients, there is no evidence that the Bollywood A-listers used their companies for improper purposes and having an offshore entity is not illegal.

But the documents, naming more than 500 Indians including real estate tycoons in Fonseca's list of offshore companies, foundations and trusts, come at a sensitive time in India.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has vowed to crack down on the "menace" of so-called black money -- vast sums stashed abroad to keep them secret from Indian tax authorities.

Hong Kong film star Jackie Chan has also been revealed to have at least six companies represented by Fonseca's firm, though he too may have used the companies legitimately for business purposes rather than for tax avoidance.

The stash of records was obtained from an anonymous source by German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and shared with media worldwide. The documents, from around 214,000 offshore entities, cover almost 40 years.
Lesbos (Greece) (AFP) - Greece sent more than 200 migrants back to Turkey on Monday, the first wave of deportations under a hugely controversial deal aimed at easing Europe's worst migration crisis since World War II.

The orderly return of the 202 migrants aboard three chartered Turkish ferries stood in stark contrast to the journey many have taken over perilous seas aboard crowded rubber dinghies.

Two boats left the Greek island of Lesbos at dawn, and another from the island of Chios, carrying mostly Afghan and Pakistani migrants who Turkey will eventually deport to their home countries.

The grim-faced deportees were boarded onto the boats by security guards from the EU's Frontex border agency, who wore sanitary face masks.

Facing an unprecedented influx that has threatened to tear the bloc apart, the European Union clinched a last-ditch deal with Turkey to take back all irregular migrants landing in Greece after March 20.

In a heavily criticised swap deal, the EU has pledged to rehouse one Syrian in the bloc for every one deported from Greece, with numbers capped at 72,000.

Forty-three Syrian asylum seekers were flown to Europe on Monday under that part of the deal. Ten children and an adolescent in a wheelchair were among 32 Syrians who arrived in the northern German city of Hanover.

A further 11 refugees arrived in Finland, with more expected Tuesday in the Netherlands.

European leaders hope the agreement will discourage migrants from risking the Aegean crossing that has claimed 366 lives this year alone, and break up the lucrative racket that smuggled about one million migrants into Europe last year.

But rights groups have slammed the pact as inhumane and a blow to the right to request asylum, and protesters on Lesbos brandished banners reading: "Stop the dirty deal", "Stop deportations" and "Wake up Europe".

Amnesty International has accused Turkey of not being a safe country for refugees by forcibly returning Syrians back home to their war-torn countries -- a charge Ankara rejects.

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"The returns today are in many ways symbolic," said Gauri Vangulik, Deputy Europe director for Amnesty International.

"They are the first starting point of what is to become really one of the most disastrous episodes in European asylum policy."

- 'Guests for a while' -

The first to be deported under the deal arrived at the Turkish resort of Dikili to a heavy security presence, with media kept at a distance by metal barriers.

"The taking of fingerprints, the landing at the port, medical checks ... the transport of the 202 people in buses to reception centres in Kirklareli (on the Bulgarian border) is all taking place successfully," said Mustafa Toprak, governor of Turkey's Izmir region.

Yorgos Kyritsis, Greece's migration spokesman, said the first wave contained citizens of Iran, Congo, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India, Ivory Coast and Somalia.

Only two were from Syria and they had requested to return for personal reasons, Kyritsis said.

Turkish EU Affairs Minister Volkan Bozkir told HaberTurk television that the non-Syrian migrants would be sent to the northern Kirklareli region for checks before being deported to their own countries.

"People who have migrated for purely economic reasons are to be sent back according to the rules," he said.

"We will apply to the countries of the illegal migrants. They can be our guests for a while and then bit by bit we will send them back."

The first group of migrants was already seen boarding buses for the long drive to Kirklareli.

- 'Disastrous episode' -

Despite the controversy surrounding the deal, it appeared to be reducing the flow.

Turkey's Interior Minister Efkan Ala said at the weekend that the numbers crossing had already fallen substantially in the last 10 days to just 300 people a day.

But some decided to chance it despite the risk of being sent back, and the Turkish coastguard on Monday blocked a boatload of about 60 mostly Afghan migrants, an AFP correspondent said.

Those in Greece are now rushing to speed up their asylum requests to avoid deportation.

"Lawyers came to talk to us through the fence and explain that it was best to do that," said Toufik, an Afghan in the Moria migrant camp on Lesbos.

Greek authorities are trying to relieve pressure on overcrowded makeshift camps on the border with Macedonia and at the port of Piraeus, where some 15,000 people are living in dire conditions following the closure of the migrant route through the Balkans to northern Europe.

Deputy defence minister Dimitris Vitsas on Monday said room for an additional 10,000 people would be available by April 10.

"Piraeus will be cleared before (May 1)," Vitsas told Mega TV.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has a particular interest in the deal, as her country accepted a record 1.1 million migrants last year after she refused to cap refugee numbers, earning her criticism at home and within the EU.

In return for its assistance in implementing the deal, Turkey will receive billions in EU aid, accelerated visa-free travel for its citizens and progress in its bid for membership of the bloc.
BERLIN (Reuters) - The first group of Syrian refugees arrived in Germany by plane from Turkey under a new deal between the European Union and Ankara to combat human trafficking and bring migration under control, German police said on Monday. The 16 migrants landed in the northern city of Hanover in the morning with a scheduled flight from Istanbul and as many were expected to arrive at the airport around 1015 GMT, a spokesman from the federal police said. (Reporting by Thorsten Severin; Writing by Michael Nienaber; Editing by Joseph Nasr)
Mehbooba Mufti was sworn in on Monday as Indian-administered Kashmir's first woman leader, taking over from her father nearly three months after he died in office.

India's only Muslim-majority state had been ruled directly from New Delhi since the death in January of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, who formed an uneasy alliance with the nationally ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) after a 2015 election.

His daughter, who heads the moderate People's Democratic Party (PDP) that he founded in 1999, had initially appeared reluctant to continue the unpopular coalition with the Hindu nationalist BJP.

The PDP's main support base is among Muslims in the Kashmir Valley, the epicentre of a separatist insurgency that broke out in 1989, although the party stops short of calling for independence for the Himalayan region.

"Her key task will be to recoup the PDP's credibility among her constituents (Kashmiri Muslims), which is at an all time low, and manage support from Delhi vis-a-vis economic assistance," political historian Siddiq Wahid told AFP.

Mehbooba Mufti reached an agreement at a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month, although the terms of their deal have not been disclosed.

Her swearing-in takes the number of female chief ministers in India to five, although she is the first woman to serve in the post in the deeply conservative state of Jammu and Kashmir.

Modi did not attend the swearing in ceremony in the state's winter capital, Jammu, but tweeted his congratulations.

Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan, both of which claim the Himalayan territory in its entirety.

Several rebel groups have for decades been fighting troops and police deployed on the Indian side of the divided region, seeking independence or a merger of the territory with Pakistan.

The fighting has left tens of thousands dead, mostly civilians.
Naameh (Lebanon) (AFP) - Imagine living near a trash dump so putrid that you would rather move to war-torn Syria.

That's what Fayyad Ayyash, his wife Riham and their four young daughters plan to do next week, leaving behind their home in Lebanon for neighbouring Syria.

Their modest two-storey house in the town of Naameh, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) south of the Lebanese capital, directly overlooks the infamous and odorous landfill by the same name.

"We're going next week. In Syria, there's a possibility I might die. Here, we'll definitely die," Fayyad tells AFP.

From his grassy backyard, dozens of large trucks carrying tonnes of waste can be seen -- and smelled -- lining up to add their load to the "trash mountain."

The July 2015 closure of the notorious landfill lies at the heart of Lebanon's trash crisis, which has seen rivers of trash spread across the Mediterranean country, triggering protests nationwide.

Then last month, the government made a controversial decision to reopen it -- and this was the last straw for residents like Fayyad.

Pulling out a bright blue inhaler, he says his family has been suffering from respiratory problems for months because of the dump.

His daughters, whose ages range from just under two to 10 years, all have trouble eating and sleeping.

"It's always worse at night than during the day. The whole area is swarming with the same smell and the same sickness," he says.

Fayyad says it's become so bad, he's decided to flee across the border to the town of Libeen in southern Syria, a country where a conflict has been raging since 2011.

- Costly medical bills -

The Naameh landfill opened in 1997 and was meant to be a temporary dump, but an alternative site was never opened.

For 20 years, the waste generated in Beirut and Mount Lebanon -- the country's most populous areas -- was dumped in Naameh.

The verdant valley swelled into a trash mountain of more than 15 million tonnes.

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Furious residents forced the closure of the site in July 2015, saying it was leading to high cancer rates, skin diseases and breathing problems.

Uncollected rubbish began piling up around Beirut and its suburbs, emitting a horrible stench that sparked protests in downtown Beirut demanding a long-term solution.

After months of political wrangling, Lebanon's cabinet announced a four-year plan to end the waste crisis -- and its first step was reopening Naameh for two months.

"When the dump reopened, my baby immediately started throwing up again," Fayyad says.

Fayyad and his Syrian wife, Riham, are both Druze, an offshoot of Islam.

Riham estimates that she spends about $1,000 (around 880 euros) per month on doctor's visits, inhalers, and other medication for her children.

Pointing to her bare finger, she says she had to sell her wedding ring to cover the costs.

"I wish my kids would eat food as much as they take medicine," she says.

Riham's family hails from Libeen, in Syria's southern Sweida province. That's where she will travel to next week, in the hope that the open plains there will be good for her children.

- Suitcase 'packed and ready' -

Sweida, the heartland of Syria's Druze minority, has come under attack by jihadists of the Islamic State group but has seen less fighting than other parts of the country.

"No, it isn't safe, but I'm forced to leave... I have a suitcase packed and ready on top of the closet," Riham says.

Farouk Merhebi from the American University of Beirut says the smell has probably made life incredibly uncomfortable for hundreds living within a one-kilometre radius of the dump.

Before the crisis began, trash trucks would dump between 2,800 to 3,000 tonnes of waste per day in Naameh, says Merhebi, who is AUB's director of environmental health, safety and risk management.

"Now it's about 8,000 to 9,000 tonnes. The operations almost tripled because they're playing catch-up with the trash that had accumulated," he says.

"The waste that has accumulated in streets has fermented, so the smell is offensive... The smell is worse because it's been there for seven to eight months."

But the long-term health effects of the dump on the surrounding area remain untested.

Merhebi is part of a team at AUB hoping for funding to complete research in the area "to test the surface water, ground water, and some samples of the soil as well as samples of ambient air."

But Fayyad and his family say they cannot wait.

"Riham's family said they were thinking of coming to Lebanon," he says.

"But we told them, 'do you want to die here from the smell?'"
On Monday, April 4, Saint Laurent's parent company Kering announced that Belgian fashion designer, Anthony Vaccarello, will succeed photographer and fashion designer, Hedi Slimane, as creative director of the fashion house founded by couturier Yves Saint Laurent. So who exactly is this designer who, in his early thirties, has already founded his own label, worked with some of the biggest fashion houses in the business, and made the asymmetrical black dress one of his signature pieces? Here's a look back over Anthony Vaccarello's career so far.

Born in Brussels to Italian parents, Anthony Vaccarello wasn't always destined for a career in fashion, focusing instead on studying more "serious" subjects. Ultimately, Vaccarello landed a place at La Cambre, one of Belgium's most prestigious schools of art and design, graduating in the mid-2000s.

A graphic and sexy signature style

With his unquestionable and unquestioned talent, the young Belgian soon made a name for himself with a first-place win at the 2006 Hyeres International Festival of Fashion and Photography, with a graphic and sensual collection inspired by pornographic movie star Ilona Staller, better known as "La Cicciolina." The win got him noticed by the fashion world, taking him straight to the forefront of the scene in Italy with a job at Fendi. Designing for the label's fur line, Anthony Vaccarello worked alongside fashion heavyweight, Karl Lagerfeld.

After a successful stint at Fendi, Vaccarello decided to go it alone, launching his own women's wear line with a first collection unveiled in 2009. His standout style immediately found its place in the crowded and competitive world of fashion, with instantly recognizable looks channeling a sophisticated, sexual, even sexy vibe, with a strong penchant for black, the rock-chic of leather and asymmetrical cuts.

Snapped up by Donatella Versace

The young Belgian designer went on to win the ANDAM (Association Nationale pour le Developpement des Arts de la Mode) fashion award in 2011. And, as the years went by, Anthony Vaccarello succeeded in carving out a place for himself in the world of fashion, receiving growing support and recognition from the biggest designers in the business.

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In September 2014, he designed a collection for Versace's sister label, "Versus," presented at New York Fashion Week in a catwalk show simultaneously broadcast live on the label's website. It was a new triumph for the designer, who was then promoted to creative director of Versus Versace in early 2015 by Donatella Versace herself.

Versace, who supervised his work, was an enthusiastic admirer of Anthony Vaccarello's creations. "I've followed Anthony's work from his very first collection .... I love his fresh energy and innovation, and I love being surrounded by a talent which brings newness to Versace," she said at the time.

An official announcement from the label recently confirmed that this collaboration has now ended. On April 4, Anthony Vaccarello posted a photo on social networks of himself posing alongside Donatella Versace with a heart symbol as the message -- a way of turning the page on this chapter of his career and thanking the designer for trusting and supporting him over the last few years.

A new adventure now awaits the Belgian designer, whose signature style should blend seamlessly into the rock n' roll vibe left at Saint Laurent by Hedi Slimane. Before the Los Angeles-based French designer took the helm, Alber Elbaz, Tom Ford and Stefano Pilati also enjoyed stints at the Saint Laurent label.
BANGKOK (Reuters) - Former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said on Sunday the military government should focus on dealing with the country's problems after soldiers seized thousands of red plastic bowls he and his sister sent supporters as a New Year gift. A decade of turbulent politics has pitted Thaksin and his sister, former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, against a royalist-military establishment that sees the Shinawatras as a threat. The junta led by Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, who toppled Yingluck's government in a 2014 coup, has reacted skittishly as Thaksin has become more vocal in his opposition to the military government this year. On Saturday, troops took the bowls from the offices of three former members of parliament of the Shinawatra-backed Puea Thai Party in the northern province of Nan. "I give gifts every year," Thaksin, who lives in self-imposed exile and was ousted in a 2006 coup, posted on his Instagram thaksinlive from Guangzhou, China. "I don't think it will cause any trouble or undermine the country's security. They should spend more time dealing with problems facing Thai people, such as drought, violence in the south and drugs." The bowls carry a message in white lettering, saying "Happy New Year" - according to a picture posted on Thaksin's Instagram. Local media showed a message in Thai on the other side of the bowl which reads: "Even though the situation is hot, I hope you will keep cool with water flowing from this bowl." Last week, a woman was charged with sedition for posting a picture of herself on Facebook holding one of the bowls. Police spokesman Dejnarong Suthichambancha told Reuters authorities are investigating the red bowls seized at Nan and has not charged the former MPs. Thailand is facing its worst drought for over 20 years, hurting a rural economy already struggling with debt and the removal of the generous subsidies Yingluck paid farmers. In the Muslim-majority provinces in the south of largely Buddhist Thailand, the number of attacks by insurgents has risen in recent months after falling to a decade-low because of increased security efforts in the region. (Reporting by Khettiya Jittapong; Editing by Simon Webb)
By Michelle Nichols and Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said on Monday she would campaign to be the next U.N. secretary-general, pledging to improve transparency and touting her leadership experience in a bid to become the first woman to head the world body. New Zealand submitted a letter on Monday to the president of the 193-member General Assembly formally nominating Clark, who heads the U.N. Development Programme, as a candidate to succeed Ban Ki-moon as secretary-general. Ban, a former South Korean foreign minister, will step down at the end of 2016 after two five-year terms. The top job at the United Nations has always been held by a man, since the body's inception 70 years ago, and there is a strong push for a woman to be elected. "I'm seeking election on the basis of the skills that I have, and I would expect in the 21st century to be given equal consideration to any male applicant," Clark, New Zealand prime minister from 1999 to 2008, told Reuters in an interview. At least 53 countries, led by Colombia, want a female secretary-general. Several civil society groups are also lobbying for a woman to lead the organization. New Zealand's prime minister, John Key, said Clark has the right mix of skills and experience for the job. "There are major global challenges facing the world today and the United Nations needs a proven leader who can be pragmatic and effective," he said. "Helen Clark has a vast amount of experience in international affairs which will be hard for other candidates to match." Clark is currently up against seven candidates, including three other women: U.N. cultural organization (UNESCO) Director-General Irina Bokova of Bulgaria; Croatia's former foreign minister, Vesna Pusic; and Moldova's former foreign minister, Natalia Gherman. The other four candidates are former Macedonian Foreign Minister Srgjan Kerim, Montenegro Foreign Minister Igor Luksic, former Slovenian President Danilo Turk and former U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres, who is also a former Portuguese prime minister. Clark's candidacy will come as a major blow to ambitions of former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who has been reported to be eyeing the top U.N. job. The 15-member U.N. Security Council, including veto powers China, Russia, the United States, Britain and France, will recommend a candidate for election by the General Assembly later this year to succeed Ban. "The biggest challenges (facing the United Nations) are the changing nature of the peace and security issues - they are not what the U.N. was founded to deal with," Clark said. "It requires a new set of tools." The General Assembly will hold a series of informal public meetings with each candidate next week. "Coming from New Zealand, we live in a very diverse region, we have a very diverse country, so trying to reconcile differences, bridge gaps, has been in my DNA," Clark said. "Those are very valuable skills here at the U.N." She said transparency was very important. When asked if she would like to see a U.N. freedom of information policy, Clark said: "Yes, I would like to see these policies operating ... through the organization." (Reporting by Michelle Nichols and Lou Charbonneau; Additional reporting by Ian Chua in Sydney; Editing by Peter Cooney and Leslie Adler)
CONAKRY (Reuters) - A fourth person has died of Ebola in Guinea in the latest flare up of an epidemic that has killed more than 11,300 people in that country, Sierra Leone and Liberia since 2013 but now claims few victims. "The young girl who was hospitalized at the Ebola treatment center in Nzerekore is dead," said Fode Tass Sylla, spokesman for the center that coordinates Guinea's fight against the virus. Three others have died of the virus since Feb. 29. Health workers on Saturday also stepped up efforts to trace anyone who could have come into contact with the family. The world's worst recorded Ebola epidemic is believed to have started in Guinea and killed about 2,500 people there by December last year, at which point the U.N. World Health Organization (WHO) said it was no longer actively transmitted. WHO warned, however, that Ebola could resurface at any time, since it can linger in the eyes, central nervous system and bodily fluids of some survivors. It was not immediately clear how the villagers from Korokpara, around 100 km (60 miles) from Nzerekore, had contracted the disease but the area had previously resisted efforts to fight the illness in the initial epidemic. (Reporting by Saliou Samb; Writing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg; Editing by David Gregorio)
PARIS (Reuters) - The French government on Monday launched a preliminary investigation into tax fraud after a huge leak of documents from a Panamanian law firm that specialized in setting up offshore companies.

Financial prosecutors said they were opening the probe to see if the leak linked any French taxpayers to aggravated tax fraud.

President Francois Hollande said tax evaders would be punished and pledged investigations into any leads turned up by the "Panama Papers".

The leak from law firm Mossack Fonseca could be a boon for France's Socialist government, which netted more than 12 billion euros ($13.67 billion) last year from a crackdown on tax dodging.

"I can assure you that as information emerges, investigations will be carried out, cases will be opened and trials will be held," Hollande said during a visit to a company in the suburbs of Paris.

"These revelations are good news because they will increase tax revenues from those who commit fraud."

The Finance Ministry said it would seek to gain access to the leaked files. Of 7,800 tax regularization cases French authorities dealt with last year, 515 involved a shell company registered in Panama, the ministry said.

French bank Societe Generale issued a statement after journalists handling the leaked files said the bank was among the biggest users of the law firm's services.

SocGen said it abided by all the rules of the countries in which it operates and was proactive in fighting tax fraud.

(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon and Leigh Thomas; editing by Andrew Roche)
PARIS (Reuters) - The French government will seek access to the documents behind the "Panama Papers" revelations about potential offshore tax evasion and will punish tax evaders, the finance ministry said on Monday. "In application of the tax conventions with its partners, France will seek the transmission of the 'Panama papers' data," Finance Minister Michel Sapin said in a statement. He added that once authorities have acquired and verified this information, it will review the taxes of the individuals concerned and any apply penalties, notably for non-declared foreign bank accounts and shell companies. French President Francois Hollande said earlier on Monday that the "Panama Papers" revelations were good news that would help boost tax revenues. (Reporting by Geert De Clercq; Editing Leigh Thomas)
BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany should support Austria in stemming an expected increase in migrants trying to get to northern Europe by sending police to help control the Brenner border with Italy, Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt said on Tuesday. Dobrindt, a member of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) which has sharply criticized Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door refugee policy, said the move would send a signal that Germany was not prepared to welcome all migrants with open arms. "Germany could contribute and support Austrian efforts at the Brenner (Pass) with manpower," Dobrindt told the Muenchner Merkur paper. Merkel has been critical of tighter border controls and is instead banking on a EU-Turkey deal that took effect on Monday and gives Ankara political and financial benefits in return for taking back refugees and migrants who have crossed to Greece. On Saturday, Austria's defense minister told a German newspaper it plans to deploy soldiers at the Brenner Pass to help with border protection, migrant registrations, the humanitarian effort and deportations. Border clampdowns imposed by countries along the main migrant route northwards from Greece through the Balkans, including Austria, have helped sharply reduce the number of new arrivals in Germany, which took in over one million last year. But many politicians believe that the numbers will rise again once migrants try alternative routes, for example by crossing by sea to Italy from Libya in North Africa or from Albania in the Balkans. Dobrindt said Germany could not rely on its neighbors to manage to protect borders against the flow of migrants. "We must show that we are also prepared and are in a position to do the same," he said, adding that Germany needed to send a signal that it did not have an "unconditional culture of welcome." (Reporting by Caroline Copley; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany is planning a new national transparency register that will oblige offshore companies to disclose the identity of their owners, Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported on Monday.

The Munich newspaper said the government planned to amend its money laundering law so that it was no longer possible for the beneficial owner of an offshore company to remain anonymous.

"Secrecy has got to stop," Justice Minister Heiko Maas told the paper, adding that more transparency was an integral part of the fight against tax evasion and terror financing.

The leak of the "Panama Papers" - four decades of documents from a Panamanian law firm specialized in setting up offshore companies - has prompted renewed calls for tougher action against tax abuses.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said the leak would increase pressure to tackle misuse of tax rules and said additional measures were needed.

"We cannot allow that one part of society works hard, sticks to the rules and pays taxes while another part of society cheats," Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel told the Sueddeutsche. "We need to impose a global ban on offshore companies and foundations whose beneficial owners remain anonymous," he added.

While a national transparency register would not have any bearing on offshore companies in Panama or the Caribbean, its aim is to send a signal to the European Union and other international organizations that Germany is cracking down and others should follow, the paper said, citing government sources.

The European Commission is due to present a planned law on tax avoidance next week, but critics say it would still not stop companies hiding their activities in tax havens outside the EU.

(Writing by Caroline Copley; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
By Anjuli Davies LONDON (Reuters) - Global investment banking fees fell 29 percent in the first quarter of 2016 from a year earlier as market volatility put a brake on dealmaking and equity and debt capital markets activity, Thomson Reuters data published on Monday showed. Global fees for services ranging from merger and acquisitions advisory services to capital markets underwriting reached $16.2 billion by the end of March, the slowest first quarter for fees since 2009. Regionally, fees in the Americas totaled $8.7 billion, down 32 percent from last year. Fees in Europe were down 27 percent at $3.9 billion and the Asia-Pacific region saw an 18 percent decline to $2.6 billion. Investment banking income was dragged down across all products as global markets were hit by volatility sparked by global growth worries, geopolitical tensions in the Middle East and a China slowdown. Company boards and their chief executives were deterred from pulling the trigger on big transformative deals, in contrast to the record levels of activity seen last year, although the quarter saw a flurry of Chinese companies seeking Western targets. Equity capital markets fees saw the steepest decline of 48 percent compared to a year ago, followed by a 26 percent fall in debt capital markets fees and an 18 percent decline in M&A revenue. JPMorgan topped the global league table for fees, drawing in $1.2 billion during the quarter, a decline of 23 percent compared to a year earlier but gaining slightly in overall wallet share. The top five banks were all American, but European banks Barclays and Credit Suisse each gained one place to rank sixth and seventh respectively. << >> (Editing by Susan Fenton)
Several business schools at black institutions are seeing a boost in the number of graduate students who enroll -- but those students aren't necessarily African American.

The strategy for recruiting and retaining students varies from school to school, but for some, a focus on international applicants and global business practices is a draw, experts say.

Enrollment at the graduate level has grown by nearly 37 percent at these business schools over the last five years, according to a February blog post from AACSB International--The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. There are 23 historically black schools with AACSB accreditation, and the number and types of programs have remained fairly stable during this period, AACSB says.

[Consider these resources as a minority MBA applicant.]

About 130 students are enrolled in the MBA program at the historically black Morgan State University Graves School of Business and Management, which offers an evening program, says Joseph I. Wells, director of the school's master's programs.

Last fall, there were between 25 and 30 matriculants, he says, but there will likely be between 40 and 50 for fall 2016. "We have a nice pipeline of Saudi students," Wells says.

Under university President David Wilson, the Baltimore school worked out an agreement with the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Education, says Wells.

In fall 2013, Saudi Arabia was the third most common country of residence for students from the entire university, with just 46 students from the Middle Eastern country. By fall 2015, Saudi Arabia was the most common country of residence, with 355 students.

Many applicants also come from Ghana, Nigeria and Nepal, Wells says.

Further down the East Coast in the District of Columbia, offering a global curriculum has become a selling point for the Howard University School of Business, says Barron Harvey, the school's dean.

The school has about 120 students in its full-time MBA program, says Harvey. In 2015, it started offering the Global Trilateral MBA Certificate Program.

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"It is for a select number of students who want an international experience," Harvey says. "They will take a certain number of courses but also work on projects with our partnering schools."

[Learn which business schools have the most full-time minority students]

Ten students each year are admitted to the program, which has partner schools in Beijing and Johannesburg. Howard MBA candidates travel abroad for conferences organized by the program as well as host program participants from overseas visiting the District of Columbia.

Overall, students get exposure to business practices, norms and cultures in different countries, Harvey says.

At other schools, keeping tuition low has attracted students.

"Our tuition is the lowest in the market," says Kenneth Russ, director of business graduate programs at the Jackson State University business school in Mississippi. It charges about $12,000 for the evening MBA, he says.

Students can get the master's degree through an evening program or online. Enrollment steadily climbed for the evening program between 2010, when it had 24 students, and 2014, when there were 56 students, Russ says.

Some of the students are from the Jackson region or previously attended Jackson State, says Russ, who also teaches marketing at the school.

For 33-year-old Cortez Gooch, having received his undergraduate degree from the school made him more inclined to return for an MBA. He graduated with the master's degree in 2015 and says teachers, such as Russ, helped to enrich the classes.

"He was able to bring some of his experiences into the classroom," says Gooch, who now works in Houston in logistics.

[Jump three common hurdles for international MBA Applicants.]

Many experts on historically black colleges and universities say the schools often have a nurturing environment and foster close relationships between professors and students.

Harvey, from Howard University, says that level of compassion doesn't necessarily stop at the undergraduate level. Business students, too, at his school can expect a warm environment where students are embraced.

"You're not a number," he says. "We don't take a student for granted."

Searching for a business school? Get our complete rankings of Best Business Schools.

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.
Australia's Great Barrier Reef corals are in trouble.

The northern part of the world's largest coral reef ecosystem is experiencing "the worst mass bleaching event in its history," according to a statement released Tuesday (March 29) by the Australian Research Council.

Documented by the National Coral Bleaching Taskforce (NCBT) in aerial surveys, observations of more than 500 coral reefs spanning 2,485 miles (4,000 kilometers) showed that the majority of reefs were undergoing extensive and severe bleaching.

"Almost without exception, every reef we flew across showed consistently high levels of bleaching, from the reef slope right up onto the top of the reef," said Terry Hughes of the NCBT, calling the surveys "the saddest research trip of my life." [Worst Coral Reef Bleaching on Record for the Great Barrier Reef | Aerial Video]

Bleaching happens when corals are exposed to stresses such as warmer-than-average waters for prolonged periods of time. The corals respond to the stress by expelling the algae that provide them with their color, which makes the corals look like they've been bleached white. Bleaching can be fatal for corals if the stress is too intense, or if it continues for too long and the algae are unable to recolonize them.

Ecosystem at risk

Australia's Great Barrier Reef (GBR) covers 134,364 square miles (348,000 square kilometers), making it larger than the U.K., Switzerland and the Netherlands combined, according to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. Recognized as a World Heritage Area in 1981, the reef contains 400 types of coral and hosts 1,500 types of fish and 4,000 mollusk species, as well as other marine life such as large green turtles and dugongs ("sea cows").

The GBR experienced bleaching events in 1998 and in 2002, but the current mass bleaching is much more severe, experts are saying. Rebecca Albright, a marine biologist with the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., has studied the GBR since 2011. Albright told Live Science that 95 percent of the GBR's northern reefs are currently showing signs of extreme bleaching, compared with 18 percent that experienced bleaching in 2002.

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Even the more robust corals are affected, Albright said, another sign that this event is particularly serious. She cautioned that it's still too early to assess the long-term impacts of bleaching on the corals, though estimates of coral mortality anticipate losses of about 50 percent.

Two factors are responsible for stressing the corals, Albright said: climate change, which is driving ocean temperatures upward, and a strong El Nino  a cyclical climate event associated with warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific. And with El Nino conditions expected to extend through 2016, that doesn't bode well for the corals' recovery.

"Corals are sensitive to not only the anomaly in temperature  how high it goes  but also the duration of that exposure," Albright told Live Science. "This kind of perfect storm of all these factors coming together makes this a catastrophic scenario right now." [Images: Colorful Corals of the Deep Barrier Reef]

A global event

But what's happening to the GBR is only part of the picture. A global bleaching event prolonged by El Nino is currently underway  "the longest coral die-off on record," according to a statement released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on Feb. 23.

Mark Eakin, coordinator of the NOAA Coral Reef Watch program, told Live Science that the event, which began in 2014 in the Pacific, could linger through 2017.

"We consider it a global bleaching event if it's widespread in all three of the major ocean basins  Indian, Atlantic and Pacific," he said. Eakin described current reports of bleaching that extend over half of the Southern Hemisphere, with severe bleaching in New Caledonia, Fiji and southern Indonesia, as well as in the GBR.

Even fast-growing corals take decades to develop, so damaged reefs will need time before they're restored to their former level of health, Eakin said.

And recovery time may be in short supply. Global bleaching events have been expanding their reach and increasing in severity since the first event was documented in 1998, Eakin told Live Science.

"Were seeing prolonged high temperatures that cause bleaching coming back repeatedly. We're seeing areas that have seen high temperatures for two to three years in a row. There's no time for corals to recover," he said.

The 1998 global bleaching event was associated with a strong El Nino  the strongest on record  but as ocean temperatures rise, even a mild El Nino can trigger a devastating effect on the world's corals. And the global bleaching event that's underway right now began in 2014, before the current El Nino was active, Eakin said.

For the GBR, in spite of the extreme bleaching there may yet be some hope for its recovery. The upper part of the reef that sustained the most damage was in very good shape beforehand, which should improve its prospects for "bouncing back," according to Albright.

"And the lower two-thirds of the GBR is still in very good shape  not a lot of bleaching in those areas. So a lot of people are holding on to that as another piece of hope," Albright said.

"Its really just a matter of whether or not we get another bleaching event in the next 10 years that would impede recovery," she added.

Follow Mindy Weisberger on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
By Jill Serjeant NEW YORK (Reuters) - In the movie "Demolition," actor Jake Gyllenhaal loses his wife in a traffic accident, pours his heart out to a vending machine company, and smashes up his home with a sledgehammer. But perhaps the biggest challenge in the drama-comedy about grief was having to free-style dance through throngs of New York city commuters as his bereaved Wall Street banker character throws out society's expectations. Gyllenhaal, 35, said the un-choreographed sequence, shot on a subway and on the streets of New York, was the scene that most terrified him. "I was really very nervous about that sequence. (Director) Jean-Marc Vallee said you're going to just dance around and I thought, 'Oh God, what is this going to be like?.' You have all those feelings of fear and embarrassment," he said. "And then I was also nervous (that) it was going to be recorded, you know, for film, for a long time," he added. Given this was New York, Gyllenhaal needn't have worried. The commuters barely batted an eyelid. "You can't really survive in this city if you don't just keep your head down. The majority of them just took it for granted and let me do my thing," he said. "Demolition," out in U.S. movie theaters on Friday, is Gyllenhaal's third film in 12 months after playing a boxer who also loses his wife in "Southpaw," and an American mountaineer in disaster movie "Everest." He plays Davis Mitchell, a man who has lived his life according to convention - good job, nice home, expensive clothes, loving wife - to such an extent that he has lost touch with who he really is. "When tragedy strikes and he loses his wife, he doesn't even know how to feel... he is just numb. It takes him about three quarters of the movie to even unlock a little bit of a feeling," Gyllenhaal said. Mitchell writes long letters to a vending machine company's complaints department, dismantles his refrigerator and desktop computer, and takes a sledgehammer and a bulldozer to his own home. No stuntmen were used in the demolition scenes and Gyllenhaal learned to operate the bulldozer himself. "There is something really expressive and emotive physically in tearing things apart. So yes, it was very cathartic in that way," the actor said. "Davis didn't all of a sudden have this huge epiphany. He just found what he is and his journey begins at the end of the movie." (Additional reporting by Reuters Television; Editing by Frances Kerry)
Yahoo Finance is tracking the stocks youre following, based on your Yahoo Finance ticker searches.

Groupon (GRPN)  The daily deals site announced an investment of $250 million from Atairos. As part of the deal, Comcast Corporation will work with Groupon on potential strategic partnership opportunities.

Facebook (FB)  The stock is lower after Deutsche Bank analyst Ross Sandler predicted shares will dip after Facebooks first-quarter earnings report, before charging toward $145 per share within the year.

Alaska Air (ALK)  Alaska Air reaches a deal to buy Virgin America (VA) for $2.6 billion in cash, ending a bidding war with rival JetBlue. Alaska Air will pay $57 per share for Virgin America, which represents a 47% premium to its Friday closing price of $38.90.

Apple (AAPL)  Credit Suisse (CS) adds the tech giant to its US Focus list, considering the tech giant as one of its top investment ideas. Credit Suisse has an outperform rating on the stock and a price target of $150 per share.

Gap (GPS)  KeyBanc Capital upgraded Gap to overweight from sector weight and boosted its price target to $36. The firm noted a shift in promotion strategy and the retailers new merchandise as reasons for the upgrade.

Tesla (TSLA)  Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted over the weekend that the company received 276,000 orders for its new Model 3 sedan. Potential car owners need to put down $1,000 deposits to reserve their vehicles.

Smith & Wesson (SWHC)  Shares are under pressure in early trading after both BB&T and Cowen lowered their ratings on the stock, citing valuation concerns. Cowen downgraded Smith & Wesson to market perform from outperform while BB&T lowered its rating to neutral from buy.
Guatemala City (AFP) - Guatemala's former president Otto Perez will find out at a later date if he is going to trial on corruption charges after a judge suspended a decision that was to be handed down on Monday.

The judge, Miguel Angel Galvez, said a defense motion had to be resolved before it could be announced whether a trial would take place.

Perez and former vice president Roxana Baldetti both lost their jobs last year over allegations that they were part of a ring of officials who took bribes to allow companies to import goods without paying import taxes.

Both remain in custody pending the trial decision and were in court on Monday.

Perez reiterated his innocence in the allegations, which were made public by a UN-backed body called the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG).

Perez accused the CICIG of being a "tool" of the United States, which he claimed brought about his downfall.

Baldetti arrived an hour late because of what her lawyers said were health problems. The judge ordered she undergo a medical examination.

Guatemala's new president, Jimmy Morales, a former television comedian, won office in October elections on promises of cracking down on corruption.
By Tiemoko Diallo and Adama Diarra BAMAKO (Reuters) - Gunmen on Monday attacked a hotel in Mali's capital, Bamako, that had been converted into the headquarters of a European Union military training operation, but there no casualties among the mission's personnel. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which began at around 6:30 p.m. local time (1830 GMT), but Mali and neighboring West African countries have increasingly been the target of Islamist militants, some of them affiliated with al Qaeda. One of the assailants was killed and two suspects were arrested and were being interrogated, the country's internal security minister said. A witness said the attack targeted Bamako's Nord-Sud Hotel, headquarters for the mission of nearly 600 EU personnel deployed to Mali to train its security forces. "The attackers tried to force through the entry and the guards posted in front of the entrance opened fire. One attacker was killed," he said. Sekou Tamboura was also near the hotel when the shooting erupted. "We were next to the Hamdallaye Cemetery when the first shot rang out, then there was a second and a third. There were a few seconds of pause, then it kicked off and did not stop. It was every man for himself," Tamboura said. The mission confirmed the attack on its official Twitter feed. "EUTM-MALI HQ has been attacked. No EUTM-Mali personnel has been hurt ... during the attack," it said. Azalai Hotels, which runs the Nord-Sud Hotel, later posted on Twitter that the assailants had been repelled and the building had been secured. "One of the assailants was killed. We are examining the sack he was carrying, which could contain explosives," Interior Security Minister Colonel Salif Traore said on state television. "Two suspects were arrested and are being interrogated." He added that security forces were carrying out operations around the EU headquarters and seeking to secure another building nearby. A photo taken of the dead gunman seen by Reuters showed a man who appeared to be in his 20s, possibly from northern Mali, dressed stylishly in jeans, a brown shirt and Nike trainers, lying on his back in a pool of blood beside a Kalashnikov assault rifle. A Reuters reporter at the scene of the attack said security forces, including Malian army special forces, had cordoned off the area while a cleanup operation was carried out. Vehicles from Mali's United Nations peacekeeping mission were also visible. The EU mission was deployed as part of efforts to stabilise Mali, which saw Islamist militants, some of them linked to al Qaeda, seize its desert north in 2012. France led an intervention a year later to drive back the Islamists, fearing that the lawless zone could be used as a base for attacks against targets in Europe. However, violence is again on the rise. Dozens of people were killed in a November raid on Bamako's Radisson Blu hotel claimed by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the group's North African branch. A similar assault on a hotel in Burkina Faso's capital, Ouagadougou, followed in January. AQIM also claimed responsibility for another attack that killed 19 people a beach resort town in Ivory Coast earlier this month. (Writing by Joe Bavier; editing by Mark Heinrich and G Crosse)
Manama (AFP) - Frenchman Romain Grosjean was celebrating his realisation of 'the American dream' on Sunday after finishing fifth for American newcomers Haas in the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Grosjean, who finished sixth in the US team's maiden Formula One race in last month's Australian Grand Prix, was clearly elated with his success.

"Unbelievable, guys!" said Grosjean over the team radio at the end of the race. "This is the American dream! What a great job from all of you, I love you  beautiful!

"I've got brakes this year and that really helps."

Grosjean said he had enjoyed being able to attack and use an aggressive three-stop strategy in Sunday's race at the Bahrain International Circuit.

"It was just unbelievable to be fighting with the Williams, the Red Bulls and the Toro Rossos," said Grosjean, who left the Lotus team last year to lead the Haas outfit.

"I didn't have any issues. I could drive the car the way I wanted on an aggressive strategy on the super-soft tyres," he added.

"There are plenty of areas where we can improve, but this continues the dream debut. I'm very happy in the car, I have big confidence in the braking, which allows me to attack

"I very much love the platform in the car and systems inside. It allows me to unlock its potential.

"But right now, we have to keep our feet on the ground."
Humans have been creating images of sex and genitalia for millions of years, but it is only in the past few centuriessince the 1600s, according to historiansthat these representations started meeting academics preferred definition of pornography, which involves both the violation of taboos and the intention of arousal. The first efforts to make money off of this new endeavor could not have come long after that.

With the publication of Playboy and Hustler in the mid-20th-century, porn started going corporate, and the industry has since bloomed into an enterprise so vast that people have a hard time estimating its size. Like any other industry, porn has its shady qualitieslabor abuses, content piracy, and a blemished supply chain, to name a few. But unlike nearly any other industry, these unseemly features are allowed to thrive, mostly unchecked, behind the curtain of social taboo.

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Shira Tarrant, a professor of womens, gender, and sexuality studies at Cal State Long Beach, recently took stock of porns financial side in the form of a book, The Pornography Industry. I spoke with her about what she found in her research, and the interview that follows has been edited and condensed for the sake of clarity.

* * *

Joe Pinsker: You mention in the book that some people have estimated that the porn industry brings in more money than Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Yahoo, combined. But then you note that that's totally wrong. Why is it so hard to estimate the size of the industry?

Shira Tarrant: It's hard for several reasons. Official records are hard to come by. Many productions don't even keep official records, and there are very few researchers looking at the economic side of porn, because a lot of times for academics and researchers, pornography is viewed as a sort of LOL, to-the-side kind of thing, rather than the very serious financial and economic matter that it is. This is true for the industry's revenues, but also for pay rates for individual actors. So those numbers get a little fuzzy, even though the industry is willing to say that it's suffering from piracy and after the Great Recession, and things like that.

Story continues

Pinsker: One thing I think many people might be surprised to learn is that many of the big-name porn sites are all owned by this one company, MindGeek. Do you have a sense of how much of the industry that company controls?

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Tarrant: No, I don't. Those figures are really hard to determine because porn is mostly online, as opposed to DVD sales or magazine sales, which you can track more easily. Tube sitessuch as YouPorn, RedTube, Pornhubare hugely popular and it's estimated that MindGeek owns 8 out of the 10 largest tube sites.

Pinsker: A distinguishing feature of tube sites is that a lot of their stuff is actually taken from other placesits pirated content. Is that a fair generalization?

Tarrant: Yes, and it's a huge problem within the industry because it's stolen, basically, and the tube sites are aggregators of a bunch of different links and clips, and they are very often pirated or stolen. So then the folks who made the content can go after them, and they do, but you have to have a lot of time and money and resources to stay on top of that.

Pinsker: Just to make sure I'm understanding how a significant portion of the industry is set up: There's this big company, and if you can imagine a building they own that says MindGeek at the top, there are all these front doors that have different labels, and the things that everyone is entering the building for is just a lot of stolen stuff. Is that kind of how this works?

Tarrant: That's exactly it. I don't think it should be a total surprise that there's a monopoly, because that mimics the way that other large corporate interests scoop up smaller companies. So yeah, those doors on that building, like you say, would include YouPorn, RedTube, PornHub, Xtube, and then, their business model, much like any other media-business model, features vertical integration and horizontal integration, so they're really monopolizing the industry.

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Pinsker: It seems like this industry and any monopoly or unfair things going on in it probably don't receive as much scrutiny as another industry might, because the industry itself is stigmatized and thought of as something to keep at arm's length.

Tarrant: Exactly. I think two things are happening. One is that monopoly doesn't seem to be getting a lot of attention in our culture right now in general. And then in addition, you're exactly right that it hasn't been the focus of serious business attention, but we're talking about a lot of money. I have a figure in the book estimating that just in San Fernando Valley, the industry employs 20,000 people. And it's estimated, again, that stolen porn impacts the adult industry by about $2 billion a year. So there are the questions about ethics and crime, but we're also talking about a lot of money.

Pinsker: When I hear all this, Im fascinated by the contrast between this industry and something like the food industry, where people are up in arms about factory farming and other things going on behind the scenes. Do you think some of the porn industrys darker sides persist because when people are interacting with these companies, they are in a different mental state than they are in other realms of their lives?

Tarrant: I think that that's right. People are getting sexually aroused and they just kind of go into a political or economic denial about what they're doing. And then also, we live in a culture that doesn't want to talk about sex or sexuality. For instance, as I was doing research for this book, if I talked about pornography, then all of a sudden my conversation was sexualized. I've had this experience so many times, where people, colleagues or what have you, aren't even listening to what I'm saying about the industry or the politics or the financial aspects of what's going on. They're just thinking about whether or not I'm watching porn. If I said I was working on voting behavior, they wouldn't get so excited that they lost sight of what I was talking about.

That's what my experience is, and it dovetails with your question about ethics. We wouldn't dream of walking into Whole Foods and stealing. But that part of people's ethical behavior turns off when they go online and they find free porn. Watching free porn is the equivalent of walking into the grocery store and walking out with food that you're not paying for.

Making ethical decisions about pornography means knowing where your porn comes from and the labor conditions under which it was made. Those are the sorts of questions that economists are concerned with. If we're willing to be concerned about those issues when it comes to sneakers or food, then we need to transfer those concerns to the adult industry as well.

Looking only at mainstream porn is the sex equivalent of eating all our meals at McDonalds.

Pinsker: There's been a lot of attention paid in the last couple of years to how the algorithms that big companies, like Amazon or Google, come up with can shape users' lives, and yet details about them are kind of hidden to users. Could you talk through some of the biggest decisions that users, whether they know it or not, are outsourcing to porn companies?

Tarrant: I like the comparison that you usethat the algorithm is not unlike algorithms that Amazon or Netflix use, or the ads on Facebook based on your browser history elsewhere. Again, there's that part of their rational brain that turns off and they think that pornography is this whole other kind of experience that is unlike the rest of their consumer history online. It starts with how pornography is keyworded. So, people put in search terms, but those search terms aren't all that original, really. Because where do we learn the search words that we're looking for? It's sort of a chicken-and-egg problem. And so porn gets keyworded in very stereotyped, often sexist, often racist ways, and also just with a narrow-minded view of sexuality.

If you are interested in something like double oral, and you put that into a browser, you're going to get two women giving one guy a blowjob. If you put double oral into a browser you're not likely to get two men or two people giving a woman oral sex. That's just not how it's keyworded. That then feeds into what the industry decides to make more of.

In addition, MindGeek, for example, uses algorithms to create highly curated personalized sites that are based on the user's search history. It's a lot like Amazon, where you look for a couple of books and they say, You might also be interested in this. Then you're being spoon-fed a limited range of pornography based on the keywords you use, based on your geographic location, based on their algorithms and the information that they're processing about time of day. They're doing a lot of data collection. Online-porn users don't necessarily realize that their porn-use patterns are largely molded by a corporation. We talk about the construction of wants and needs in other aspects of the economy, but that applies just as well to pornography.

Pinsker: And then, I would think, theres a trickle-down effect culturally, where the sorts of things people see online end up shaping social norms.

Tarrant: That's exactly right. It looks as if the very popular porn is MILF, or teen, etc. But in addition to reflecting a very spoon-fed range of desires, it does then look as if that's what's popular, and then people think that's popular, and it really shapes our views about female sexuality, about race, about gender, about trans status, about how we understand agency and desire.

Pinsker: In the book, you talk about the possibility of ethical or fair-trade porn. The conversation about ethical anything or fair-trade anything often is framed as a matter of "do the right thing." But the way you talk about it, it sounds like breaking free from the big main sites isn't just good for all the performers and producers involved, but would be good for average users. Do you think thats right?

Tarrant: I can't decide what good or bad is for peopleI don't want to make moral pronouncements about that. But I think moving away from those mainstream tube sites and being adventurous is important. To think, if we look at mainstream porn, that we're being wild or really sexy, we're kind of eating at McDonalds all the time. It's the sex equivalent of eating all our meals at McDonalds. Being more adventurous could really expand our definitions of sexuality, sexual pleasure, and sexual desire in ways that could be surprising.

Online-porn users don't necessarily realize that their porn-use patterns are largely molded by a corporation.

Pinsker: Do you even think it's possible for society on any wide scale to be creating and consuming, as you say, adventurous porn?

Tarrant: I think there's a possibility that we could move towards more adventurous, ethical, non-sexist, non-racist porn that is actually really exciting. I want to make the analogy again with food. Again, for the longest time, organic was a really small niche market, and then when corporations realized there was money to be made, they got onboard. That watered down the meaning of organic, but it did start to change the public conversation about what's healthy food, what really tastes good, and what is actually over-salted but some company told us we thought we should like. So I could see a similar thing happening with more attention getting paid to how many options and varieties we really could have.

Pinsker: One thing you didn't talk about in the book was brandinghow these companies present themselves to users. Are there any ways you can think of in which a site is designed to convey a certain feeling, or prompt people to view and think of sex in a certain way?

Tarrant: I would say my observation with the mainstream sites is they tend to bombard the viewer with multiple images really fastlike click on this! click on this! with moving images, and bells and whistles, kind of Vegas-Strip style. Some of the more independent queer or feminist sites I would say are more curated, and they dont bombard the user in the same way.

Pinsker: So what do you think are the messages that these sites then send?

Tarrant: The mainstream tube-site conglomerate is almost like fast foodget in, get out, do what you came to do. The other sites take more time at the beginning to say, Do you really want to enter this site? I would have to think more about what that means. I hope someone does more work on that.

Pinsker: Everyone wants to know about the future of porn. There are a lot of articles these days about what virtual reality will do to people and to the industry, but I want to flip that question a little. Are we currently living in a future that people of the past feared, where really vivid porn is available online for free from anywhere?

Tarrant: On the one hand, the way online technology makes pornography available I think has positive aspects, in the sense that, for instance, in the past if you wanted to get pornography you had to go to a place, you had to go to a store, and if you were female, or transgender, that would be a scary place. Women walking into a theater to watch a movie in the middle of the day surrounded by guys jacking off? That seems risky and very unappealing. So online pornography means that more people are able to explore sexuality in visual images.

At the same time, not even considering virtual reality necessarily, there can be an immersive experience where people can go down the rabbit hole and emerge hours later. That concerns me, and I do think in a sense that that's the sort of future that people feared.

Another cause for concern would be the amount of porn that's being viewed during work hours, among government workers, in the police force, among professionals. Online porn makes it easy to do that and I think that's concerning. So when you ask, "Is this the future that people in the past feared?" I don't even know if people could've imagined a future when it would be possible to go to work and spend your workweek looking at porn.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
Cairo (AFP) - The man accused of hijacking an Egyptian plane and diverting it to Cyprus did not enter the cockpit during the six-hour long ordeal, the pilot of the aircraft said Sunday.

Egyptian Seif al-Din Mohamed Mostafa is accused of using a fake suicide belt to force the Alexandria-to-Cairo flight to divert to Cyprus on Tuesday, and has been remanded into custody in Cyprus.

He said he acted out of desperation to see his ex-wife and children who live in the eastern Mediterranean island.

"Immediately after the hijacking, I asked the security officer to stay at the door of the cockpit and not leave," EgyptAir pilot Amr Al-Gamal told reporters in a meeting organised by Egyptian authorities.

Systems that lock a cockpit door have existed since the 1980s and strict procedures became standard after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

"Our main fear was that the hijacker may enter the cockpit, or that he knew how to fly a plane or use it to explode", said co-pilot Hamad al-Qaddah.

Mostafa released most of the 55 passengers soon after the plane landed in Larnaca, Cyprus. Hours later he surrendered to police.

Cypriot police say Mostafa -- described by officials as "psychologically unstable" -- faces possible charges of hijacking, kidnapping, reckless and threatening behaviour, and breaches of the anti-terror law.

For the crew it was an six-hour long emotional drama that saw a British passenger taking a photograph with Mostafa and a co-pilot escaping by jumping out of a window of the cockpit.

"The captain asked us to take a photo of the hijacker," said stewardess Nayera Atef al-Dabs, whose photograph with Mostafa wearing what appears to be a rudimentary suicide vest strapped to his chest has gone viral on the Internet.

She said she posed for a picture with Mostafa after a British passenger did the same.

"I was crying in the bathroom and I called my sister to tell her to take care of my three-year-old son. I was trying to look calm in front of the passengers," said Dabs, recalling Tuesday's ordeal.
Beni Mellal (Morocco) (AFP) - A man on trial for homosexuality and three others who allegedly attacked him appeared in court in central Morocco on Monday amid an outcry by human rights groups.

Rights organisations are demanding that Morocco decriminalise homosexuality, which is punishable by up to three years in jail.

The hearing in the central town of Beni Mellal lasted just a few minutes, said Hussein Harchi of the Moroccan Association of Human Rights.

The judge adjourned the trial against the four defendants until April 11, after the lawyer of one of the alleged assailants requested more time to study the case, said Harchi.

The investigation centres on an alleged assault of two reportedly homosexual men by a group of individuals in an apartment in Beni Mellal last month.

A video of the alleged attack appeared on YouTube on March 25, showing two half naked men with bloodied faces being attacked and dragged into the street.

Harchi said one 30-year-old man was accused of "sexual deviancy" and three were accused of "forced entry, resorting to violence and carrying weapons.

He added that another man accused of homosexuality had already been sentenced to four months in prison for "unnatural sexual acts" and that he had launched an appeal.

The trials have sparked outrage in Morocco, a conservative Muslim kingdom where rights groups have long called for the dropping of a law criminalising homosexual acts.

A group of more than a dozen activist organisations released a statement last month alleging that the case breached Morocco's human rights obligations.

A court in Rabat jailed two men to four months in prison in August for beating up a presumed homosexual because of his appearance.

The men were arrested after websites posted a video of the victim trying in vain to take shelter in a taxi to escape a crowd.

And in another incident in a string of controversies over homosexuality, two men were jailed for four months in June for kissing in public in the capital.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has said that the manned mission to the red planet is closer than ever before, predicting that humans will set foot on Mars in as little as 14 years time.

Speaking on CNBCs On the Money programme, the former astronaut and NASA boss said: We think were on the right trajectory to get humans to Mars in the 2030s.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden speaking at a recent event (NASA/AubreyGemignani)

The U.S. space agency chief has previously said that landing on Mars is essential to the survival of our species, explaining that its the only other planet in our solar system that scientists believe has been home to life at some stage.

He said that the mission is critically important in helping scientists understand Earth better because Mars has the same of amount of dry land as Earth with weather, seasons and volcanos.

Humans will travel to Mars on the Orion capsule (NASA)

NASA is currently working on the Space Launch System (SLS) which will launch the four-person Orion capsule into space.

The spacecraft is designed for long-duration space missions to Mars.

Bolden, a former Marine and veteran of four space shuttle missions, has regularly re-iterated NASAs long-term goal to land astronauts on Mars.

Image credit: NASA
The world isn't going to get to read Sir Ian McKellen's autobiography.

Last year it emerged that the celebrated and Oscar-nominated thespian would be penning his own memoir in a deal with publishers Hodder & Stoughton reported to be worth 1 million ($1.4 million). But earlier this month the 76-year-old stage and screen icon revealed that he'd pulled the plug on the contract.

Speaking on Sunday at the Oxford Literary Festival, the Lord of the Rings star and gay rights activist explained the decision.

"I put nine months aside to do it, and I got a very handsome advance. Then I sent the money back," he said.

"It was a bit painful. I didn't want to go back into my life and imagine things that I hadn't understood so far," McKellen continued. "The privacy of my life I don't quite understand myself, and it has nothing to do with what I do for a living. So there you go, I'm sorry."

McKellen first came out publicly in 1988, at the age of 49, and last year he admitted that he regretted not coming out earlier.

"I think I would have been a different person and a happier one," he said.

Read More: Oscars: Ian McKellen Says Gay Actors Have Also Been "Disregarded"
The world isn't going to get to read Sir Ian McKellen's autobiography.

Last year it emerged that the celebrated and Oscar-nominated thespian would be penning his own memoir in a deal with publishers Hodder & Stoughton reported to be worth 1 million ($1.4 million). But earlier this month the 76-year-old stage and screen icon revealed that he'd pulled the plug on the contract.

Speaking Sunday at the Oxford Literary Festival, the Lord of the Rings star and gay rights activist explained the decision.

"I put nine months aside to do it, and I got a very handsome advance. Then I sent the money back," he said.

"It was a bit painful. I didn't want to go back into my life and imagine things that I hadn't understood so far," McKellen continued. "The privacy of my life I don't quite understand myself, and it has nothing to do with what I do for a living. So there you go, I'm sorry."

McKellen first came out publicly in 1988, at the age of 49, and last year he admitted that he regretted not coming out earlier.

He said, "I think I would have been a different person and a happier one."

Read More: Oscars: Ian McKellen Says Gay Actors Have Also Been "Disregarded"
It's been a big year for Calvin Harris - and no one has been a bigger supporter than girlfriend Taylor Swift.

The power couple hit the 2016 iHeartRadio Music Awards on Sunday at the Forum in Inglewood, Calif. Not long after Swift was named female artist of the year, Harris nabbed dance artist of the year honors.

While Harris paid homage to inspirational competitors and comrades Diplo and Skrillex, Swift looked on, her face smiling and her eyes radiating pride, with her head cradled in her hands. It was a heartwarming, real moment amidst all the screaming fans and glamour.

Later that night, she thanked Harris by his real name (Adam) during her speech for best tour, saying how much it meant to her to go home to him each night.

See More: iHeartRadio Music Awards: Red Carpet Photos

This story first appeared on Billboard.com.

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20th Century Fox has released a new trailer for the upcoming "Independence Day: Resurgence."

Starring returning actors Bill Pullman and Jeff Goldblum, the sequel to the 1996 blockbuster sees an alien invasion of epic scale hit planet Earth, bringing the whole world to the bring of extinction.

Written by the movie's director Roland Emmerich alongside Dean Delvin, the movie also stars new cast members Liam Hemsworth, Jessie Usher, Maika Monroe and Charlotte Gainsbourg. It is set to be released on June 24.

To watch the trailer, see https://youtu.be/QEsRfqDUZAE
By Sanjeev Miglani NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party will fall short of a majority in a border state after a tense anti-immigrant campaign, an opinion poll showed as voters on Monday trickled into polling booths in the first phase of a five-state election. A disappointing showing in northeastern Assam, the only state where the ruling party has a chance to win power, will be a further blow to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ambition to consolidate strength in parliament and push reforms. Last year, Modi lost an election in the big northern heartland state of Bihar to a united opposition that has blocked his moves to reform state taxes and land transfers and deliver on his promise of rapid growth and jobs. The BJP is forecast to win 55 seats in the 126-member Assam state assembly, the poll by India TV-CVoter showed, more than its rival Congress, but not enough to win power. The party ran a fierce campaign to disenfranchise millions of Muslim immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh, long an emotive issue with Assam's Hindus who say they have taken away jobs and enjoy government welfare programs. Assam is one of the seven states in India's northeast that border Bangladesh, Bhutan, China and Myanmar, and the BJP's political rivals say it is trying to whip up divisive politics in the volatile region. "People don't want politics of confrontation," said Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, a leader of the Congress party. "How can there be any development if there is this kind of atmosphere?" Critics have long accused the BJP of a bias against minority Muslims and of trying to push a partisan agenda to undermine India's secular constitution. The BJP says it is opposed to appeasement of any community. The elections are also being held in the eastern state of West Bengal, and in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry in the south. The BJP trails in these areas dominated by regional parties, although its vote share is expected to rise in West Bengal, where party workers have toiled in villages for years. By noon, a third of voters in Assam and nearly 45 percent in West Bengal had cast their vote, the election commission said. (Additional reporting by Biswajyoti Das in GUWAHATI; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
London (AFP) - The only known footage of Britain's biggest Cold War traitor, Kim Philby, discussing his life as a double agent has been unearthed in Berlin, the BBC said Monday.

In the grainy 1981 video, Philby, who defected to the Soviet Union, is seen giving an hour-long lecture to spies in then communist East Germany.

The BBC said it found the footage in the official archives of the Stasi, the East German intelligence service.

It said the previously unseen footage shows Philby discussing how he went about betraying his country.

Philby was one of the Cambridge Five spy ring, a group of upper class men shockingly uncovered as traitors to Britain.

After his cover was blown, he fled from Beirut to Moscow in 1963 and spent the last 25 years of his life in the Soviet Union.

In the footage Philby begins his lecture with "Dear comrades", then says he is "no public speaker", having spent most of his life trying to avoid publicity.

He talks about how he rose through the ranks of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), the foreign intelligence agency dubbed MI6, while secretly passing on information to his Soviet contacts.

"You have probably all heard stories that the SIS is an organisation of mythical efficiency, a very, very dangerous thing indeed," he said.

"Well, in a time of war, it honestly was not."

He said he befriended the MI6 archivists by going out for drinks with them two or three times a week.

"Every evening I left the office with a big briefcase full of reports which I had written myself, full of files taken out of the actual documents -- out of the actual archives," he said.

"I used to hand them to my Soviet contact in the evening. The next morning I would get the file back, the contents having been photographed, and take them back early in the morning and put the files back in their place.

"That I did regularly, year in, year out."

He was appointed number two in a new SIS section devoted to countering Soviet espionage.

Story continues

He was then instructed by his KGB employers to unseat his boss in order to become head of the department, which he did.

"I set about the business of removing my own chief. You oughtn't to listen to this," he told the East German spies, drawing laughter.

"It's a very, very dirty story, but, after all, our work does imply getting dirty hands from time to time," he added.

Taking questions afterwards, he advises the East German intelligence officers to never confess during an interrogation.

Philby died in Moscow aged 76 in 1988 before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
By Gabriela Baczynska and Sara Ledwith BRUSSELS (Reuters) - In early March, Europe's migration chief Dimitris Avramopoulos squelched through a muddy refugee camp on Greece's border with Macedonia and peered through the barbed-wire topped fence that stands between tens of thousands of migrants in Greece and richer countries that lie to the north. "By building fences, by deploying barbed wire," he said, "it is not a solution." But Avramopoulos has not always preached that message  and his changing views capture the tangle Europe has got itself into as more than a million migrants and refugees have floated in on Greek waters since the start of 2015. In 2012, when he was Greek minister of defence, Greece built a fence and electronic surveillance system along its border with Turkey. The cement and barbed-wire barrier and nearly 2,000 extra guards were designed to stop a sharp rise in illegal immigrants. The 62-year-old former diplomat was not directly involved in the project. But in 2013 he defended it, telling a news conference the wall had borne fruit. "The entry of illegal immigrants in Greece by this side has almost been eliminated," he said. The official European response to Europe's migrant crisis  championed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel last August  is for member states to pull together and provide shelter for people, especially Syrians, fleeing war or persecution. But in reality, most members have failed to take their quotas of refugees and nearly a dozen have built barricades to try to keep both migrants and refugees out. The bloc is now trying to implement a deal which would see Turkey take back new arrivals. The European Union was founded in the ashes of World War Two, in part on a principle of freedom of movement among member states. But since the fall of the Berlin Wall, European countries have built or started 1,200 km (750 miles) of anti-immigrant fencing at a cost of at least 500 million euros ($570 million), a Reuters analysis of public data shows. That distance is almost 40 percent of the length of America's border with Mexico. Many of these walls separate EU nations from states outside the bloc, but some are between EU states, including members of Europe's passport-free zone. Most of the building was started in 2015. "Wherever there have been large numbers of migrants or refugees trying to enter the EU, this trend has been followed up by a fence," said Irem Arf, a researcher on European Migration at rights group Amnesty International. For governments, fences seem like a simple solution. Building them is perfectly legal and countries have the right to control who enters their territory. Each new fence in Europe has sharply curbed the numbers of irregular immigrants on the route they blocked. For at least one company, fences work. The firm which operates a tunnel between France and Britain says that since a major security upgrade around its French terminal last October, migrants have ceased to cause trouble. "There have been no disruptions to services since mid October 2015, so we can say that the combination of the fence and the additional police presence has been highly effective," Eurotunnel spokesman John Keefe said. But in the short term at least, they have not stopped people trying to come. Instead, they have diverted them, often to longer, more dangerous routes. And rights groups say some fences deny asylum-seekers the chance to seek shelter, even though European law states that everyone has the right to a fair and efficient asylum procedure. Forced to find another way, migrants and refugees often turn to people-smugglers. CROWD CONTROL Greece's border fence was one of the first, and Avramopoulos still defends it. He says Greece built it to divert people towards official crossings where they could apply for asylum. Much of Greece's frontier with Turkey is delineated by a fast-flowing river, the Evros. But there is a 12 km stretch where people used to sneak through on land after making the river crossing in Turkey. "The Evros river is a very dangerous river," Avramopoulos told Reuters in his upper floor office suite in February. "Hundreds of people had lost their lives there." At least 19 people drowned in the Evros in 2010, according to the United Nations refugee agency. Neither the Greek authorities nor Europe's border agency Frontex could provide more data. In practice, rights groups say Greece's barrier  and others including one built by Spain in Morocco  effectively turn everyone away, denying vulnerable people a chance to make their case for protection. This is partly because some new barriers have passport controls like those at an airport. People need travel documents to exit one country and reach the checkpoint of the EU country where they want to seek asylum. Many refugees don't have any papers, so they are automatically blocked. With barriers come security guards, cameras and surveillance equipment, which all make it harder for people to make their asylum cases. Rights groups have documented many reports of border officials beating, abusing, or robbing migrants and refugees before dumping them back where they came from. This approach, known as push-back, has become an intrinsic feature of Europe's external borders, according to Amnesty International. As a solution, some migrants and refugees buy fake papers. Others stow away in vehicles. Or they turn to people-smugglers. Greece's fence had a knock-on effect that continues to ripple through Europe as more countries wall themselves off. More migrants moving through Turkey began to enter Europe across the Bulgarian border, or by sailing to Greece in inflatable dinghies. In the eastern Mediterranean, the International Organization for Migration has recorded more than 1,100 migrant deaths since the start of last year. CULTURAL PURITY The EU refuses to fund fences, saying they don't work. As European Commissioner, Avramopoulos has tried instead to persuade fellow member states to show solidarity by offering homes to 160,000 refugees and migrants, mainly from Greece and Italy. As of March 15, just 937 asylum applicants had been relocated. For Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the idea of quotas is "bordering on insanity." Orban opposes a dilution of Europe's "Christian values" by multicultural immigrants and started building fences along Hungary's borders with Croatia and Serbia in late 2015. Since the ethnic cleansing of the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia, Balkan states have been particularly sensitive to the risks of ethnic and religious conflict. Other countries followed Hungary with fences  even if most said they installed them to control the flow of people, rather than to preserve cultural purity. When Austria started a barrier on its border with Slovenia in November 2015, it said it was necessary for crowd management. Then Austria capped the numbers of people it would admit, and how many it would allow through to Germany. By March, all these measures seemed to be having the desired effect: The number of migrants entering Germany from Austria had fallen more than sevenfold. Even so, there were new signs the fences were simply reshaping, rather than closing, the migration routes. The numbers making the perilous crossing from Africa to Italy had increased. Austria said it would add soldiers to defend its border with Italy. The fence Avramopoulos visited last month underlines the risks of such barriers. Built by Macedonia as part of a pact with states further north, it has sealed around 50,000 people into Greece. More than 10,000  a third of them children  are camped in flimsy tents near the fence. Many families have refused to leave the border, waiting instead for it to open, as respiratory infections spread and frustration mounts. "All our values are in danger today," Avramopoulos said. "You can see it here." (Ledwith reported from London; Additional reporting by Alastair Macdonald in Brussels, Renee Maltezou in Athens, Tom Miles in Geneva and Himanshu Ojha in London; Edited by Janet Roberts and Simon Robinson)
Earlier today, a note from KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo made its way around the internet. The note gave even more credence to the rumor that the iPhone 7 Plus would not only feature a dual-camera setup, but that the dual rear cameras would be exclusive to the larger model in the fall.

READ MORE: How to encrypt iPhone and Android, and why you should do it now

In addition to that note, someone on microblogging network Sina Weibo shared what they purport to be leaked images of the dual camera module that will appear on the iPhone 7 Plus at launch. The user that managed to get his hands on the component is confident that it's legitimate, but as with any leak this early in production, we have to take it with a grain of salt.

"Top hardware upgrade is dual-camera (5.5-inch model only)," Kuo said in the note, "though many competing models with dual-camera will launch soon, joining others already on the market; first impressions could underwhelm."

If the camera really is the biggest hardware upgrade between the iPhone 6 Plus and the iPhone 7 Plus, fans of the larger models might be a little disappointed. After all, they're paying a premium for the latest and greatest phones.

Take a look at some of the other photos below, and head to the link in the source to see the rest at Sina Weibo:

iPhone 7 Plus Camera Leak 1

iPhone 7 Plus Camera Leak 2

iPhone 7 Plus Camera Leak 3

Related stories

Apple's iPhone SE is as powerful as the iPhone 6s, but not nearly as durable

New evidence emerges on the iPhone 7 Plus's most hyped feature

Apple confident it'll find and patch the FBI's iPhone hack

More from BGR: The Internet is furious about this years Walking Dead finale

This article was originally published on BGR.com
Dublin (AFP) - Hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets of Dublin on Sunday to mark the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising, a rebellion against British rule that paved the way for independence.

Ireland staged the largest commemorative event in its history to mark the six-day revolt, when rebels seized buildings across the capital and declared an Irish republic on Easter Monday 1916.

Members of the global Irish diaspora and descendents of the rebels were among those who turned out to watch a parade by almost 4,000 members of the armed forces and emergency services, complete with tanks and military aircraft.

President Michael D. Higgins began the day's events by laying a wreath at Kilmainham Gaol, where 14 of the 16 rebel leaders executed by the British were killed by firing squad.

Under a clear blue sky, he later laid another wreath at the General Post Office (GPO), the rebel headquarters during the revolt, before leading a minute's silence for all those who died.

A military band played "Danny Boy", and an army officer read out the 1916 proclamation declaring "the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland".

"It is quite emotional," said Patrick Morrison, a 72-year-old who travelled from the US state of Pennsylvania with his grandson for the commemorations.

The government sought to stress the "inclusivity" of the events, highlighting the 250 civilians and 130 British armed forces who died alongside more than 60 rebels.

"It is important that we bear witness this centenary year to all those who gave their lives during Easter 1916," Prime Minister Enda Kenny said.

- Boost for independence -

The uprising began on April 24, 1916, when over 1,000 militants took over prominent buildings in the city centre.

Britain sent reinforcements and began shelling the city, sparking days of fighting that ended when the rebels surrendered on April 29.

Public opinion was initially against the rebels, but the arrests of thousands of people in the subsequent crackdown caused outrage and a surge in support for independence.

Story continues

Within six years, Britain had agreed to the creation of an independent nation, though without the northeastern part of the island, which still remains part of the United Kingdom as Northern Ireland.

The Rising "gave people the courage to believe we could achieve total independence", Eamon O'Cuiv, deputy leader of political party Fianna Fail and grandson of 1916 rebel Eamon de Valera, told AFP.

The rebels were ahead of their time with their promise of equality and religious liberty, but President Higgins noted that "in many respects we have not fully achieved the dreams and ideals for which our forebears gave so much".

Ireland currently has a caretaker government, after an election last month failed to give any single party a parliamentary majority, leading to deadlock.

- 'Inclusive' commemoration -

On an island where political violence is hardly a distant memory, the anniversary prompted debate over how best to mark the armed nature of the uprising.

Northern Ireland's first minister Arlene Foster, the leader of the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party, refused to attend any events commemorating what she described as "a very violent attack on the state".

Police also warned that militants were planning to mark the centenary with attacks on police and army targets in the province, which was once plagued by sectarian violence.

Britain's minister for Northern Ireland, Theresa Villiers, welcomed Dublin's efforts to ensure the commemorations were "inclusive and designed to promote reconciliation".

But Gerry Adams, leader of the left-wing Sinn Fein party, accused the Irish government of "betraying" the rebel leaders as he attended an Easter Rising event in Belfast.

"The southern state is not the Republic proclaimed in 1916," he said, according to local media, adding: "A united Ireland means the unity of the people of this island."
Ireland on Sunday marks the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising, a rebellion against British rule that paved the way for independence, with the largest commemorative events in the country's history.

The rebels who seized buildings across Dublin and proclaimed an Irish republic on Easter Monday 1916 will be honoured by a 4.4-kilometre (2.7-mile) parade through the capital for hundreds of thousands of spectators.

An army officer will lead a ceremony with a reading of the 1916 proclamation which declared "the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland" at the General Post Office (GPO), rebel headquarters during the revolt.

Irish President Michael D. Higgins, who will lay a wreath at the GPO, said the country had come a long way in the past 100 years.

But he said Ireland was still working to build a truly inclusive republic, adding: "We can see that in many respects, we have not fully achieved the dreams and ideals for which our forebears gave so much."

The wreath-laying will be followed by a minute's silence to remember the hundreds of people who died during the six-day rebellion, among them the 16 leaders who were executed.

Around 5,000 relatives of the rebels have been invited to the parade, which will be shown on large screens around Dublin.

The uprising began on April 24, 1916, when over 1,000 militants took over prominent buildings in the city centre.

Britain sent reinforcements and began shelling the city, and rebels were forced to abandon their headquarters, eventually surrendering on April 29.

Thousands were arrested over the uprising, but the response caused outrage and a surge in support for Irish independence.

Within six years, Britain had agreed to the creation of an independent nation, though without the northeastern part of the island, which still remains part of the United Kingdom as Northern Ireland.

The Rising "gave people the courage to believe we could achieve total independence," Eamon O'Cuiv, deputy leader of political party Fianna Fail and grandson of 1916 rebel Eamon de Valera, told AFP.

Story continues

- 'Violent attack on the state' -

On an island where political violence is hardly a distant memory, the anniversary has prompted debate over how best to mark the armed nature of the uprising -- an aspect which was controversial in 1916 and remains so today.

Events will take place to remember the British soldiers who died as well the civilians and rebels killed, with the government stressing the importance of "inclusivity".

But Northern Ireland's first minister Arlene Foster, the leader of the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party, said in January she would not attend any events commemorating "a very violent attack on the state".

The British-ruled province once plagued by sectarian violence is on fresh alert this weekend, after police warned that militants were planning to mark the centenary with attacks on police and army targets.

Britain's minister for Northern Ireland, Theresa Villiers, welcomed Dublin's efforts to ensure the Rising was marked "in ways that are inclusive and designed to promote reconciliation".

Junior foreign minister David Lidington added that the centenary was "a time to reflect on Britain and Ireland's shared, often painful history and to give thanks for our friendship of equals today".

- 'Pivotal moment in history' -

For some, the diplomatic approach has gone too far.

Controversy ensued when a large commemorative banner was unveiled along the parade route in Dublin, depicting four historical figures from a political tradition that opposed rebellion.

James Connolly Heron, the 66-year-old great-grandson of Edinburgh-born rebel leader James Connolly, told AFP that it was important to remember the rebels' unique contribution.

"We end up commemorating all who died when in fact we should be commemorating those who died for Irish freedom," he said.

"This is the event that led to the freedoms that we enjoy today, it's a pivotal moment in history."
AMMAN (Reuters) - Islamic State militants attacked Syrian army troops with mustard gas in an offensive against a Syrian military airport in the eastern province of Deir al-Zor that borders Iraq, state media said on late Monday. Syrian state media did not disclose how many casualties were sustained in the latest drive by the hardline fundamentalist Sunni militants to capture the heavily defended airport located south of Deir al Zor city, whose main neighborhoods are under the militants control. "The terrorists fired rockets carrying mustard gas," a statement said on state owned Ikhbariyah television station. Deir al-Zor is a strategic location. The province links Islamic State's de facto capital in Raqqa with its fighters in Iraq. Reuters could not independently verify the media reports. Amaq news agency, which is close to the militants, had earlier said Islamic State fighters had launched a wide scale attack on Jufrah village near the airport in which it said two of its suicide bombers rammed their vehicles into army defenses causing "tens of dead". "The battles continue on more than front and posts and we pray to Allah (God) victory for his Mujahdeen (holy warriors)," an official statement by the militants said. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitor which tracks violence across the country, said the militants had advanced with heavy aerial strikes aimed at repelling their offensive. The Syrian army backed by heavy Russian air strikes was able last January to drive back the hardline militants from several villages near the airport but has so far failed to dislodge them. Separately, the Observatory said fighting flared on several frontlines in the major northern city of Aleppo which is divided between government and rebel held sectors. Rebel shelling of Kurdish YPG outposts in Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood caused several casualties, the monitor said. The Syrian army had earlier said that at least four hundred al Qaeda affiliated Nusra Front led militants fully equipped with heavy arms staged a major attack on army outposts in the Aleppo countryside. The army statement also said at least eight civilians were killed in mortar attacks by rebels on residential areas of Sheikh Maqsoud with scores injured. A fragile "cessation of hostilities" truce has held in Syria for over a month as the various parties to the conflict try to negotiate an end to Syria's civil war. But the truce excludes Islamic State and the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front. Air and land attacks by Syrian and allied forces continue in parts of Syria where the government says the groups are present. (Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Editing by Bernard Orr)
Jerusalem (AFP) - Israel's state-owned energy company reduced power to a number of Palestinian areas including Bethlehem on Monday, officials said, citing unpaid debt by the Palestinian Authority.

"The power supply will be reduced by about 50 percent to Bethlehem on Thursday," a statement from Israel Electricity Corporation (IEC) said.

It added the "dramatic" step was a result of growing debt, which it said had reached 1.7 billion Israeli shekels ($450 million, 395 million euros).

It said the power outage was part of a plan to disrupt daily supply over the next two weeks over the failure to pay bills.

On Thursday the company took a similar measure in the city of Jericho in the northern part of the occupied West Bank. Full power was returned later the same day in that case.

The governor of Bethlehem Jibril al-Bakri confirmed the cut.

"Residents suddenly found themselves without electricity in Bethlehem, Beit Jala and Beit Sahour," he said, with around 50 percent of IEC customers without power.

He added that among the buildings impacted was the Church of the Nativity, built at the site where Christians believe Jesus Christ was born.

"They cut off electricity to the Church of the Nativity, to holy places, to the Beit Jala cancer hospital, the Caritas hospital and to the only mental illness hospital in Palestine," he said.

The district of Bethlehem includes Bethlehem, Beit Jala, Beit Sahour and 33 other villages and 3 refugee camps, and is home to around 210 thousand Palestinians.

The Palestinian Authority is struggling financially and depends largely on foreign aid. It relies heavily on Israel for electricity supplies, which also provides electricity to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

Ongoing talks with the IEC and Palestinian officials have so far not resolved the debt problem.

In January 2015, the IEC cut power to Palestinian cities for a number of hours every day over a similar debt, only to renew it a few weeks later.

Under an economic agreement signed with the PA in 1994, Israel collects around 600-700 million shekels each month in customs duties levied on goods destined for Palestinian markets that transit through Israeli ports.

It transfers the money after deducting approximately 100 million shekels for expenses such as Palestinian hospitalisations in Israel, sewage treatment and covering part of the electricity debt, which has remained largely stable in recent months.
Rome (AFP) - Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi will travel to Iran next week for a two-day trip that will make him the first major leader to visit since the lifting of international sanctions against Tehran.

Renzi's office said in a statement Monday that the centre-left premier would be in the Islamic Republic on April 12 and 13, without giving further details of his itinerary.

Italy has led the way among Western countries in re-establishing economic ties to Iran following the lifting of international sanctions imposed over concerns the country was seeking to develop a nuclear weapons capacity.

An accord to lift the sanctions was agreed last year and came into force in January.

Renzi's trip follows Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's visit to Italy and France at the end of January -- a trip which resulted in a string of major trade and investment deals being signed between Tehran and the two European countries.

Contracts worth an estimated 17 billion euros ($18 billion) were signed in Rome and Rouhani said he hoped that would represent only a start, as he pitched Iran as a safe base for investors looking to get into a regional market of 300 million consumers.

Iran has said it wants European help to modernise and expand its rail, road and air networks as well as seeking investment to boost its manufacturing base, notably in the automobile sector.

Italy was Iran's largest European trade partner before the impact of sanctions caused exchanges between the two countries to collapse.

- Nude statues row -

As he seeks to consolidate Italy's early lead in the race for business deals, Renzi has also unveiled plans for cultural and academic exchanges.

When Rouhani was in Rome in he talked of reconstructing a relationship between "two superpowers of beauty and culture" that dates back to the days of the ancient Roman and Persian empires.

Rouhani's visit however also prompted criticism that Renzi's government was going too far in its efforts to charm Iran's theocratic regime.

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It emerged just after Rouhani had left Rome that ancient nude statues in the capital's City Hall had been covered up by wooden boxes to spare the Iranian president any possible embarrassment.

The diplomatic niceties indulged in by the world's biggest wine producer also extended to ensuring that no alcohol was served at any of the official meals during Rouhani's stay -- a gesture France was not prepared to make, meaning plans for a state banquet had to be scrapped.

Renzi is not the first European leader to visit Tehran since the sanctions deal: Greek Prime Minister Tsipras went there in February.

He is the first leader of a Group of Seven country to make the trip but is unlikely to be the last this year.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced earlier this month that he plans to become the first Japanese leader to visit Iran since the 1979 revolution that created the Islamic Republic.
ROME (Reuters) - Italy's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi will visit Iran next week, his office said on Monday, three months after the Iranian president came to Europe to rebuild ties as years of economic sanctions ended. The two sides signed business deals worth billions of dollars during Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's visit in January, and Renzi said then that they were only the beginning of future cooperation. Europe countries and businesses are eager to establish trade ties with the $400 billion economy, which rejoined the global trading system in January following a deal to lift crippling sanctions in exchange for limiting its nuclear ambitions. Italian companies including shipbuilder Fincantieri, Ansaldo Energia and state railways Ferrovie dello Stato have all signed deals with various Iranian companies. Fashion house Roberto Cavalli and leather firm Piquadro have opened shops in the capital Tehran. Renzi's office said he would be in Iran on April 12 and 13, without giving further details of his itinerary. (Reporting by Isla Binnie; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
NIAMEY (Reuters) - Niger opposition leader Hama Amadou, jailed since November on baby trafficking charges, was granted a provisional release by a court on Tuesday a week after losing a presidential run-off election, his lawyer said. Amadou, a former speaker of parliament, has denied the charges, saying they were part of a strategy to sideline him politically. He is currently in France, where he was flown for medical reasons just days before the March 20 second-round vote. "Niamey's court of appeals agreed to our request and today it ordered Hama Amadou's provisional release," said lawyer Mossi Boubacar. President Mahamadou Issoufou won a second term with 92.5 percent of the vote, according to official results announced last week. Held in a prison several hours from the capital Niamey and suffering from poor health, Amadou was unable to campaign and an opposition coalition backing him called for a boycott, easing the way for Issoufou's victory. "The court should have freed him so that he could be on equal footing with Issoufou during the elections. It didn't. Hama is innocent and this case is a plot to push him out of political life," said opposition spokesman Ousseini Salatou. Police began making arrests in June 2014 in an investigation into the alleged trafficking of newborn babies into the West African uranium-producing country from neighboring Nigeria. A number of members of Niger's political elite, including Amadou's wife, were charged but later granted provisional release after spending up to six months in detention. Amadou fled Niger amid the wave of arrests. He returned in November and was arrested. Issoufou has positioned himself as an ally of Western nations in the fight against Islamist insurgents in the arid Sahel region. Critics, however, say he has become increasingly authoritarian and clamped down on dissent. (Reporting by Abdoulaye Massalaki; Writing by Joe Bavier; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
By Hilary Russ (Reuters) - New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's administration sued cash-strapped gambling hub Atlantic City on Monday, seeking to freeze city spending until it remits the millions of dollars it owes to its school district. In the civil action, State Education Commissioner David Hespe said Atlantic City owed the district $82 million of tax revenues collected for the school year. The city already paid $48 million of that, but must still remit the remaining $34 million by July 15, court documents showed. That might be impossible. As of April 1, the city had only $8 million of cash available for operations. Second-quarter tax collections that begin in May will not provide enough to fund required disbursements, the lawsuit said. Christie is seeking to stop the city from making its $3.2 million payroll on Friday, he said in a televised press conference. The state sued "to protect the property tax collections that rightfully belong to the Atlantic City School District and the children and families they serve," Christie said. In New Jersey, cities must act as collection agents by collecting property taxes on behalf of school districts and transmitting the money to them. The lawsuit is the latest in Christie's high-stakes game of chicken against city officials and some lawmakers over whether to take over the city's operations to avoid bankruptcy. Christie and state Senate leaders say city officials have not done enough to stop the bleeding. They supported a legislative package that links a full state takeover with one that would provide immediate revenue for the city. The nearly insolvent city has been under state oversight since 2011. Mayor Don Guardian threatened to close City Hall for three weeks beginning on Friday afternoon because it will not have enough money to pay workers after that. Christie twice vetoed - even after winning changes he sought - legislation aimed at stabilizing the city's tax base by letting casinos make fixed payments in lieu of property taxes. The city's state-approved budget relied on those revenues. In February, Christie pinned that legislation to the takeover measure, which Guardian initially supported but later called a "fascist dictatorship." The package is now stalled in the state Assembly, where Speaker Vincent Prieto has refused to bring it to a vote because he says its goal is to dismantle collective bargaining agreements. On Monday, Moody's Investors Service downgraded the city deeper into junk territory, to Caa3. (Reporting by Hilary Russ; Editing by Dan Grebler)
John Oliver continued to highlight what he sees as Donald Trump's inadequate leadership skills on his most recent show Sunday.

The host talked about the Nuclear Security Summit held in Washington D.C. last week, where President Obama and world leaders - minus noticeably absent Vladimir Putin - convened.

The same week, Donald Trump sat down with Anderson Cooper for a CNN town hall where, Oliver pointed out, "America's potential next president mentioned that he would be perfectly comfortable with other countries becoming nuclear powers including Japan and South Korea."

Trump said the world is "better off" if Japan and South Korea protect themselves from North Korea, and he "absolutely" would allow Saudi Arabia to get a nuclear weapon.

"He says that with the confidence of a man who could easily find Saudi Arabia on the map," joked Oliver, "If he was given three tries and the map only included countries ending with 'Arabia.'"

Oliver then played Obama's response, where at a press conference he said Trump "doesn't know much about foreign policy, or nuclear policy, or the Korean Peninsula, or the world generally."

"President Obama is basically implying there that you could fill a book with the things Donald Trump doesn't know," said the Last Week Tonight host. "That book being the encyclopedia."

Read more: John Oliver Says Jay Z Requested a "Donald Drumpf" Hat
By Sarah B. Boxer

In response to Ivana Trumps recent comments that immigrants are welcome in America in part because they vacuum our living rooms and clean up after us, Julian Castro, secretary of Housing and Urban Development told Yahoo Global News Anchor Katie Couric: The great American story is the story of immigrants.

Castro spoke of his grandmother coming to the U.S. from Mexico and said we need talented, smart, hardworking immigrants and leadership that handles this sensibly, not by building a wall.

Castro went on to say that Donald Trump is not prepared to be president, saying Trump has not put the kind of time in to really understand what leadership, or the presidency, is about.

Noting the strides the U.S. has made over the centuries in terms of equality movements, Castro asked: Why would we ever turn the clock back, especially to someone who clearly does not even get the basic functions of our government? Or understand the first thing about our relationship with countries around the world. And has shown himself so unprepared to be president. It just doesnt make sense.

Couric pressed Castro on whether hed be interested in serving as Hillary Clintons vice president. My hope is that whoever does get asked will take that decision very seriously. I dont believe thats going to be me, he responded.

Castro also discussed a new HUD initiative to extend affordable broadband access to families living in government-assisted housing. He stressed that one in four American families still dont access the Internet at home, particularly lower-income families with children.
DUBAI (Reuters) - Kenyan bank CFC Stanbic has secured a $135 million dual tranche loan to be used for general corporate purposes including trade finance, it was announced on Monday. Dubai-based Emirates NBD,the investment banking arm of Emirates NBD, and Mashreq, another Dubai lender, were the initial mandated lead arrangers and bookrunners for the financing, according to a statement from Emirates NBD. CFC Stanbic Bank is an affiliate of South Africa's Standard Bank. In October 2015 the bank secured a $155 million dual tranche loan to fund its business activities. Emirates NBD was the sole book runner for that financing. Al Ahli Bank of Kuwait, AfrAsia Bank, Bank Muscat, Commerzbank Aktiengesellschaft, Filiale Luxemburg, Investec Bank, SBM Bank (Mauritius) and United Arab Bank also joined the latest deal as lead arrangers. (Reporting By Tom Arnold; Editing by Greg Mahlich)
In her ongoing battle to extradite herself from a contract, Kesha Rose Sebert has added a legal heavyweight to her team. As the pop star prepares to take a judge's denial of an injunction up on appeal, she's tapped Daniel Petrocelli at O'Melveny & Myers to represent her.

Kesha is facing claims from songwriter-producer Dr. Luke (Lukasz Gottwald) of breaching contracts. In New York Supreme Court, Kesha has asserted counterclaims accusing Dr. Luke of drugging and raping her a decade ago and committing ongoing abuse that warrants an extraordinary contractual remedy. Despite her assertions, New York Supreme Court Justice Shirley Kornreich refused in February a preliminary injunction that would allow her to record outside of Dr. Luke's purview. Two weeks ago, an appeal was filed, and on Sunday, Kesha made news by writing on social media that she had rejected a settlement offer.

If Kesha is feeling confident, it could be because days earlier, Petrocelli officially joined Mark Geragos as her legal counsel. Perhaps best known for beating O.J. Simpson in a wrongful death civil case nearly two decades ago, Petrocelli is also a bit of a turnaround specialist, having entered cases in mid-stream on behalf of Disney and Warner Bros. in fights involving Winnie the Pooh and Superman, respectively, and pulling off huge comebacks. Petrocelli has been a fixture on THR's "Power Lawyers" list of the top 100 attorneys in Hollywood.

Petrocelli's latest engagement isn't exactly his first foray into this war. When Dr. Luke originally sued Kesha, a tortious interference claim was also brought against Jack Rovner of Vector Management for allegedly cajoling Kesha into repudiating her recording agreements. Petrocelli represented Rovner, and in early February, was successful in convincing the judge to dismiss the claim against the manager.

Kesha's next legal move isn't yet clear. The case is headed to a New York State appeals court, but there's still proceedings happening at the trial court. Also, Kesha's own lawsuit against Dr. Luke is still pending in California, but has been stayed while the New York one plays out. Then again, there's a status conference being held in California in May, and Kesha could have other legal options left to explore.
Kigali (AFP) - Top level Rwandan genocide suspect Ladislas Ntaganzwa appeared in a Kigali court on Monday but refrained from answering whether he was guilty of the charges including inciting massacres and mass rapes.

The 53-year-old fugitive was arrested in December in the Democratic Republic of Congo and extradited to his homeland to face justice.

Until his arrest, the former mayor was one of nine genocide suspects still being actively sought by an international tribunal for involvement in the 1994 Rwandan genocide which claimed the lives of 800,000 people, mainly ethnic Tutsis.

Ntaganzwa had a $5 million (4.6 million euro) US bounty on his head and has been indicted by a UN-backed court for genocide and crimes against humanity.

He is accused of organising "the massacre of thousands of Tutsis at various locations," the UN-backed Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT) said when he was arrested.

"He was also alleged to have orchestrated the rape and sexual violence committed against many women," it said.

Ntaganzwa said he was "abstaining" when asked by the judge if he was guilty of genocide, direct and public incitement to genocide, massacres, an extermination campaign and orchestrating mass rapes.

His lawyer Laurent Bugabo told AFP his client had not had enough time to examine his dossier, sent in 2012 to Rwandan authorities by the UN-backed International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), based in Tanzania.

No date was given for the start of the trial.

According to a 44-page ICTR indictment, Ntaganzwa helped to establish, train and arm the local Interahamwe militia, the ethnic Hutu youth wing of the political party he ran in the Nyakizu area, "with the intent to exterminate the Tutsi population and eliminate its 'accomplices'."

It also accuses Ntaganzwa of personally leading a series of massacres of Tutsi civilians, including an attack on a church where thousands had taken shelter.
By Ed Cropley and Tiisetso Motsoeneng JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Global accountancy firm KPMG and South African investment bank Sasfin have severed ties with a company owned by the Guptas, a family of Indian-born businessmen, due to a scandal over their relationship with South African President Jacob Zuma. In an email to KPMG staff seen by Reuters, local chief executive Trevor Hoole said he had decided to stop auditing Oakbay Resources and Energy, a Gupta mining firm, after consulting regulators, clients and KPMG's internal risk departments. "I can assure you that this decision was not taken lightly but in our view the association risk is too great for us to continue," Hoole said in the email. "There will clearly be financial and potentially other consequences to this, but we view them as justifiable." Oakbay confirmed the end of the 15-year relationship and said it understood it had been a "very reluctant decision" for KPMG. A KPMG spokesman declined to comment. Sasfin spokeswoman Cathryn Pearman said the bank had resigned as Oakbay advisers effective from June 1. The three Gupta brothers moved to South Africa from India at the end of apartheid in the early 1990s and went on to build a business empire that stretches from technology to the media to mining. They have also forged a close personal relationship with Zuma, whose son, Duduzane, sits on the board of at least six Gupta-owned companies, according to company registration papers. Zuma has denied numerous allegations of the relationship allowing the Guptas to wield undue influence. However, parts of corporate South Africa are turning their backs, especially since Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas alleged last month that the Guptas had offered him the top job at the Treasury before Zuma fired Jonas's boss, Nhlanhla Nene, in December. Pearman declined to give reasons for Sasfin's decision to resign, but confirmed it had been taken two days after a newspaper report suggested the Guptas may have had a hand in Zuma's abrupt sacking of Nene. PSG Capital, the investment banking arm of Stellenbosch-based PSG Group, was listed as an adviser to Oakbay in its purchase of struggling miner Optimum Coal from Glencore in December. However, a source close to the bank said there was no long-term relationship, describing the deal as a "once-off thing". FINANCE MINISTER ATTACKS "SELF-AGGRANDIZEMENT" Meanwhile Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, who is battling to prevent the credit rating for Africa's most industrialised country being downgraded to 'junk' status, said public institutions were being "trampled" on in the name of greed. "Democratic institutions and the well-being of our people are trampled upon in the pursuit of self-aggrandisement. Today it is not enough for some to steal 1 million, you must have 10 and when you have 10 you must have a hundred," he said at a function in Johannesburg. South Africa's "democratic institutions" have been under the spotlight after the Constitutional Court last week ruled that Zuma had failed to uphold the constitution by ignoring instructions to pay back some of the $16 million in state funds spent on renovations at his sprawling residence at Nkandla. In a televised address to the nation on Friday evening, an apparently contrite Zuma apologised and said he would pay back some of the money, as ordered. South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) party held crisis talks on Monday to discuss the fallout from the court ruling that triggered calls for Zuma to resign. (Additional reporting by Ed Stoddard; Editing by James Macharia, Greg Mahlich)
By Ed Cropley and Tiisetso Motsoeneng JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Three South African companies, including KPMG [KPMG.UL] and Barclays Africa, have severed ties with a firm owned by the Guptas, a family of Indian-born businessmen, due to concerns over their relationship with President Jacob Zuma. The third was investment bank Sasfin, which said it had decided to cut links with Gupta mining firm Oakbay Resources and Energy in March, two days after a newspaper suggested they may have had a hand in Zuma's sacking of finance minister Nhlanhla Nene in December. Sasfin's relationship with Oakbay will formally end on June 1, a Sasfin spokeswoman said. The decision had not previously been made public. Zuma has denied numerous allegations of the Guptas wielding undue influence. The Guptas have also routinely dismissed reports of their influence, saying they are pawns in a political plot to get Zuma out of office. After the newspaper report last month, Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas said the Guptas had offered him the top job at the Treasury before Zuma fired Nene. The Guptas also denied that allegation. In an email to KPMG staff seen by Reuters, local chief executive Trevor Hoole said he had decided to stop auditing Oakbay after consulting regulators, clients and KPMG's internal risk departments. "I can assure you that this decision was not taken lightly but in our view the association risk is too great for us to continue," Hoole said in the email. "There will clearly be financial and potentially other consequences to this, but we view them as justifiable." Oakbay confirmed the end of the 15-year relationship and said it understood it had been a "very reluctant decision" for KPMG. A KPMG spokesman declined to comment. Barclays Africa, which runs South Africa's biggest retail bank, Absa, also confirmed it no longer had a relationship with Oakbay, which is valued at 16 billion rand ($1.09 billion) on the Johannesburg stock market. In an annual report from last August Oakbay listed Absa as its bank. An Absa spokesman declined to comment any further. The three Gupta brothers moved to South Africa from India at the end of apartheid in the early 1990s and went on to build a business empire that stretches from technology to the media to mining. They have also forged a close personal relationship with Zuma, whose son, Duduzane, sits on the board of at least six Gupta-owned companies, according to company registration papers. Parliament will on Tuesday debate a motion to impeach Zuma after a top court ruled the president had violated the constitution by ignoring orders from the public protector that he repay some of the $16 million in state funds spent to renovate his private residence at Nkandla. Zuma says he never knowingly or deliberately set out to violate the constitution. The Africa National Congress majority in parliament will almost certainly give Zuma political cover against the attempt to impeach him. But the judicial rebuke may embolden anti-Zuma factions within the ruling party to mount a challenge. ($1 = 14.7085 rand) (Additional reporting by Ed Stoddard; Editing by James Macharia and Alison Williams)
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Media reports alleging links between Russian President Vladimir Putin and offshore transactions worth billions of dollars aim to discredit the Kremlin leader ahead of Russia's upcoming elections, his spokesman said on Monday.

"The main target of this disinformation is our president, especially in the context of the upcoming parliamentary elections and in the context of a longer-term perspective - I mean presidential elections in two years," Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with journalists.

"This Putinophobia abroad has reached such a point that it is in fact taboo to say something good about Russia, or about any actions by Russia or any Russian achievements. But it's a must to say bad things, a lot of bad things, and when there's nothing to say, it must be concocted. This is evident to us."

Peskov said the publications contained "nothing concrete and nothing new" about Putin.

(Reporting by Maria Tsvetkova; Wriitng by Maria Kiselyova and Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Christian Lowe)
One morning in mid-2014, before the summer sun had reached its peak, two elderly men in Aleppo, Syria, sat on plastic chairs, chatting quietly and drinking black coffee. From his perch outside his food stall, Sabri Wahid Asfur and his friend Abu Yassin watched their neighbors go about their day.

Suddenly, bombs hit the ground, scattering bricks and debris. Seconds later, they exploded, sending thousands of pieces of shrapnel  nails, rebar  in all directions. The crudely made barrel bombs had been designed for maximum human damage.

As the smoke lifted, Asfur reached for Abu Yassin.

I looked at my friend when I recovered my vision and saw his body in shreds, Asfur remembers. He was exhaling his last breath.

The attack was one of hundreds of aerial bombings that Syrian President Bashar al-Assads regime has carried out during the countrys six-year civil war, killing thousands of its own people. The deadly air campaign would not have been possible, U.S. authorities have charged, without a network of companies that dodged international embargoes by supplying the oil and gas that kept the military aircraft in sky.

Three of the companies that the U.S. alleges helped supply the fuel were customers of a global law firm, Mossack Fonseca & Co., which helped the companies incorporate and maintain offshore branches in Seychelles, a tax haven in the Indian Ocean.

The law firm continued doing work for at least one of these closely-linked companies after the three of them were blacklisted by the American government for supporting Syrias war machine  joining dozens of other Mossack Fonseca customers sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Departments Office of Foreign Assets Control.

Mossack Fonseca, which is based in Panama but has offices around the world, has worked with at least 33 individuals or companies that have landed on the Treasury Departments OFAC list, according to an analysis of the firms internal files by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and other media partners.

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In some cases, individuals and companies had ceased to work with Mossack Fonseca before being sanctioned. In other cases, the entities were active customers when the sanctions were put in place.

The reporting partners reviewed more than 11 million documents  emails, client accounts and financial records  that show the inner workings of Mossack Fonseca from 1977 to December 2015.

For years, the records show, Mossack Fonseca has earned money creating shell companies that have been used by suspected financiers of terrorists and war criminals in the Middle East; drug kings and queens from Mexico, Guatemala and Eastern Europe; nuclear weapons proliferators in Iran and North Korea, and arms dealers in southern Africa.

It sounds almost like a corporate death wish taking on that many horrible people, said Jason Sharman, a political scientist at Australias Griffith University and co-author of a groundbreaking study of anonymous companies. Youd think that, even if they were cynical, theyd be reluctant dealing with U.S. sanctioned entities and taking on the United States.

Mossack Fonseca denies wrongdoing.

A spokesman told ICIJ that the firm relies on intermediaries such as banks and other law firms to review the backgrounds of the customers that they refer to Mossack Fonseca. These middlemen are supposed to notify the firm as soon as they have knowledge of a client of theirs having been either convicted or listed by a sanctioning body, the spokesman said. Likewise, we have our own procedures in place to identify such individuals, to the extent it is reasonably possible.

Related story: Massive leak reveals offshore accounts of world leaders

This story is part of The Panama Papers. Click here to read more stories in this series.

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The time it takes to resign varies by jurisdiction, the spokesman said, and some authorities require the agent to remain in place to prevent interference with an investigation.

The spokesman added that Mossack Fonseca has never knowingly allowed the use of our companies by individuals having any relationship with North Korea, Zimbabwe, Syria and other countries that have been listed as sanctioned. If it did discover it had unknowingly represented a company that was being used for unlawful purposes, he said, the law firm would take any measures that are reasonably available to us to deal with the issue.

In 2010, the firm did resign from the Iranian oil company Petropars after it was sanctioned by OFAC. (The sanction has recently been lifted as a result of the United States-Iranian nuclear deal.) , Petropars was incorporated by Mossack Fonseca incorporated in 1998 and had been publicly linked to the Iranian government as early as 2001.It is a decision that may be 12 years too late, an employee who recommended dropping representation of Petropars emailed at the time, but one that must be taken in light of the circumstances.

And there were others.

Read more at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

This story is part of The Panama Papers. 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.
(Reuters) - Support for Britain to stay within the 28-member EU stood at 51 percent, ahead of support for Britain to leave the European Union, which stood at 44 percent, according to a poll conducted by Telegraph. The poll also found that 5 percent of respondents were undecided. The latest poll found that the percentage of voters wanting Britain to remain in the EU rose by four percentage points from Telegraph's previous poll last month. The date of the poll and the sample size used in the poll were not mentioned. (Reporting by Vishal Sridhar in Bengaluru; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)
KIEV (Reuters) - The Ukrainian general prosecutor's office has seen no evidence that President Petro Poroshenko committed a crime based on leaked documents regarding alleged offshore assets, a senior official for the office said on Monday. "According to a preliminary study of the information published by some media concerning the violation of law by President Petro Poroshenko, the general prosecutor's office does not see any elements of a crime," Vladislav Kutsenko told journalists. The leak over the weekend gave details of hundreds of thousands of clients in more than 11.5 million documents from the files of law firm Mossack Fonseca, based in the tax haven of Panama. (Reporting by Natalia Zinets; Writing by Alessandra Prentice; editing by John Stonestreet)
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's armed forces acquired three U.S. helicopters worth $26 million on Thursday to help in efforts to stop Syria's civil war spilling over its border, along with almost $29 million of British aid as EU countries also step up their support. The Lebanese armed forces have now received a total of nine Huey II multi-mission helicopters from the United States as part of $1.3 billion in security assistance given since 2004, U.S. interim Ambassador Richard H. Jones said. "We have no plans to slow down or alter that level of support," Jones said at Beirut's military air base. Fighting between Islamic State and al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front militants often overlaps Lebanon's mountainous northern border with Syria, where a civil war is now in its fifth year. Fighters briefly overran the northern Lebanese town of Arsal in 2014 before withdrawing to the hills after clashes with the army. Fighting in the border area killed at least 32 Nusra and Islamic State fighters this week. The helicopters will improve the army's ability to quickly reinforce "remote areas of tension along the border in support of the army's fight against terrorists", Jones said. Lebanon has a weak government and a number of nations support its armed forces, concerned that regional conflict and a power struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia could again destabilise a country which emerged from its own civil war 26 years ago. On a visit to Lebanon on Thursday, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond announced a further $22 million for border guard training through to 2019 and $6.5 million for general training of 5,000 Lebanese troops. "Lebanon is an important part of the front line against terrorism," Hammond said. "We are delighted by the way the UK support is being translated into strengthened border security and is enabling the armed forces to take the fight to Daesh and keep Lebanon safe from the incursions of Daesh," he said, referring to Islamic State. EU foreign policy head Federica Mogherini, who visited Lebanon last week, said that Lebanon's security was important for Europe's safety too and the EU was willing to expand its support for the Lebanese armed forces. In February Saudi Arabia suspended a $3 billion aid package for the Lebanese army in what an official called a response to Beirut's failure to condemn attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran. Lebanon's Iranian-backed group Hezbollah is also a significant military presence in the country, with extensive combat experience. It fought Israel in an inconclusive 2006 war and is supporting President Bashar al-Assad's forces in Syria. (Reporting by Lisa Barrington and Issam Abdallah; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Dr Siti Nurbaya Bakar, Indonesias Minister of the Environment and Forestry, has responded to reports that Leonardo DiCaprio could be blacklisted from the country after he voiced concerns about their palm oil plantations.



The Oscar winner recently visited the Sumatran rainforests and wrote about how Palm Oil cultivation is impacting the environment.

Copyright [Aflo/REX/Shutterstock]



In an Instagram post, he wrote: As the forest of the #Indonesian #LeuserEcosystem continues to be cleared to meet demand for Palm Oil, the critically endangered Sumatran #orangutan is being pushed to the brink of extinction.



Here, at the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programmes Orangutan Quarantine Center, rescued orangutans are rehabilitated so they can be released back into the wild.



If we dont stop this rampant destruction, the Leuser Ecosystem and the Sumatran orangutans that call it home could be lost forever. Click the link in the bio to support this important work. #Indonesia.

Copyright [Instagram/Leonardo DiCaprio]



At the weekend, Associated Press reported that Heru Santoso, the spokesman for the Directorate General for Immigration at the Law and Human Rights Ministry, had responded, saying: We support his concern to save the Leuser ecosystem.



But we can blacklist him from returning to Indonesia at any time if he keeps posting incitement or provocative statements in his social media.

However, Dr Siti Nurbaya Bakar has now denied these claims, saying Leonardos concerns are sincere and substantial.

Copyright [Instagram/Leonardo DiCaprio]



The minister told foresthints.news: My view is that DiCaprios concerns are both sincere and substantial, and he has certainly acted in good faith. In fact, we largely share his concerns on this matter.



In light of this and to reciprocate his sincerity and good intentions, I am open to working together with DiCaprio in a joint effort whereby both of us can have our concerns addressed, including those that pertain to the Leuser Ecosystem.
Tripoli (AFP) - Libya's unity government was trying to assert its authority in Tripoli Thursday after the new prime minister-designate's sudden arrival, as the EU imposed sanctions on three Libyans for obstructing peace efforts.

Fayez al-Sarraj's arrival at a naval base on Wednesday drew fury from the militia-backed authority in charge of Tripoli, which demanded he leave or surrender.

Gunmen stormed the headquarters of a Libyan television station overnight, apparently in support of the new government, but the capital appeared calm on Thursday.

Banks and shops were open, police were posted on the streets and flights had resumed at Metiga airport after being suspended the day before "for security reasons".

"The reactions have been better than we hoped for. The situation is good," an adviser to Sarraj told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The international community hailed the new government's arrival as a crucial step in restoring order to Libya, which has been wracked by chaos since the NATO-backed overthrow of Moamer Kadhafi in 2011.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said in a Thursday statement that Sarraj's arrival "marks an important step in Libya's democratic transition and path to peace."

Formed under a power-sharing deal agreed in December, the unity government is meant to take over from rival groups running the country.

Libya has had two administrations since mid-2014 when the militia alliance overran Tripoli, setting up its own authority and forcing the internationally recognised parliament to flee to the country's remote east.

International leaders, increasingly alarmed by the rise of jihadists and people-smugglers in the impoverished North African state, have called on Libya's political rivals to back the unity government.

- Travel ban, asset freeze -

The United States and its European allies have threatened action against those who undermine the political process.

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EU member states on Thursday agreed to impose sanctions on three Libyans for obstructing the formation of Sarraj's government.

One European source said the measures comprise "a ban on travelling in the European Union and a freeze on assets in the EU."

A European diplomatic source told AFP recently that EU sanctions would target the Tripoli government's prime minister Khalifa Ghweil, the head of the General National Congress Nuri Abu Sahmein, and Aguila Saleh, speaker of Libya's internationally recognised government.

Sarraj held talks with officials including lawmakers and local mayors on Thursday and was set to meet the governor of Libya's central bank to discuss the nation's crumbling economy.

"We have effectively started work today," the UN-backed body's vice president Moussa el-Koni told AFP.

UN envoy Martin Kobler said he was in "intensive discussions" with Tripoli-based lawmakers, tweeting that most supported Sarraj's administration.

But the prime minister-designate still faces an uphill battle as both of Libya's rival administrations have so far refused to cede power.

The Tripoli government on Wednesday insisted he leave the capital or "hand himself in".

Cracks of gunfire were heard around Tripoli late Wednesday and the armed men seized control of a television station in the centre, cutting transmissions and forcing out staff.

But there were no other reports of major violence.

"I just dropped off my girl at school. Everything seems normal but we are watching very carefully in case things degenerate," said Tripoli resident Jamal, on his way to join friends at a cafe.

Around 300 people gathered in the centre of Tripoli, waving banners and flags in support of the unity government.

- 'Task to fight terrorism' -

Italy's Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni, who spoke by phone with Sarraj, said Rome would authorise urgent food and medical aid to be distributed by the new administration.

A total of 860 tonnes of aid including food and medicine for 30,000 patients would be handed out, his ministry said.

Western powers are especially worried by the growth of the Islamic State group in Libya.

The jihadist organisation has seized control of Kadhafi's coastal hometown of Sirte and launched a wave of attacks, both against rival Libyan forces and across the border in Tunisia.

Tunis expressed hope Sarraj's government could help tamp down the threat of extremism and secure the two countries' shared border.

The foreign ministry urged "all Libyan parties to support the unity government (in) its work to fight terrorism, secure its borders and improve the living conditions of the Libyan people".

Western countries are considering military action against the jihadists in Libya but want a unity government to request help first.

Libya has long been a stepping stone for migrants seeking to cross the Mediterranean to Europe, and traffickers have also exploited its instability. Some 330,000 migrants have landed in Italy from Libya since the start of 2014.
By Stephanie Nebehay GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations voiced concern on Thursday over stalled aid deliveries to besieged areas in Syria, with convoys delayed or surgical equipment being removed, mainly by government forces. Jan Egeland, chairman of a task force on humanitarian aid, urged countries such as Russia, Iran, China and Iraq to pressure Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government to enable more deliveries of food and medicines. "We still have not gotten access, a green light to go at all to Douma, Daraya, east Harasta," he told reporters after major and regional powers in the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) met to review progress during the month-long ceasefire. More than 90,000 people in need are trapped in government-besieged Douma, while conditions are "horrendous" in Daraya, where the World Food Programme (WFP) has said some hungry people have been reduced to eating grass. The United Nations has reached 150,000 people living in 11 of 18 besieged areas in Syria, out of a total of nearly 500,000 trapped in such locations. Rebel forces are besieging Foua and Kefraya, two Shi'ite villages in Idlib that have received multiple convoys. The rest are besieged by the government or allied Hezbollah forces, except for Deir al-Zor, encircled by Islamic State militants. The government last week granted permission for three more besieged areas - Irbin, Zamalka and Zabadani - but the deliveries have yet to happen amid wrangling over the number of beneficiaries, Egeland said. He said Damascus has been less responsive to requests for aid convoys than it was after world powers agreed in Munich in early February to a cessation of hostilities to allow aid to be delivered. "It's like there are less answers, less quick answers, less momentum, less dynamics in the situation than we had immediately after the ministerial meeting in Munich," he said. "We must be able to get to the remaining besieged areas." Medical supplies and health services are being denied, in violation of international law, Egeland said. "Surgical equipment is still taken off convoys, medical personnel is still not allowed into the besieged areas and medical evacuations are still not allowed." Egeland said three children in government-besieged Madaya bled to death earlier this week because they could not be evacuated for medical treatment after an unexploded bomb they were playing with exploded. "Those children should have been alive today," he said. But the U.N. now had clearance to start air drops of vital supplies to Deir al-Zor, a town of 200,000 people, within two weeks, after a failed attempt last month, he added. (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
The Maldives government is "extremely worried" about the number of nationals from the tiny troubled honeymoon islands joining the Islamic State group, a top official said Monday.

Maldives foreign secretary Ali Naseer Mohamed said as many as 40 people have travelled to the Middle East from the Indian Ocean archipelago, which has a population of just 350,000 -- mainly Sunni Muslims.

"It is a big concern for us, it is a social concern, it's a security concern and we are extremely worried about it," the country's top diplomatic official told reporters in New Delhi.

"The total number of people we believe that have gone to the Middle East to engage in this illegal warfare is less than 40."

He said the Maldives, like bigger and more developed nations, is "finding it difficult to grasp the situation".

Former president Mohamed Nasheed, whose conviction and jailing last year has been widely criticised, has warned that up to 200 Maldivians were fighting for IS in Iraq and Syria.

Mohamed denied the figure was that high, but said vulnerable groups were being targeted for recruitment including online, and the island chain was "extremely vulnerable".

The Maldives last year introduced a tough anti-terror law intended to target suspected IS sympathisers among others. The opposition has criticised the law, warning it would be used to further crack down on dissent in a country that has been reeling from political turmoil.

Mohamed said the Maldives was being careful not to encroach on human rights as it tries to stem recruitment and carry out any prosecutions.

Experts say poor young people from outlying islands are vulnerable to recruitment, along with those caught up in organised crime including gang violence or targeted by radical preachers.

The Maldives' reputation as a luxury holiday destination has been tarnished by political turmoil since Nasheed, the country's first democratically elected president, was toppled four years ago in what he called a coup led by mutinous police and soldiers.

Mohamed said the prison office was awaiting more documents before deciding on Nasheed's request to extend his 30-day release from prison to travel to the UK for medical treatment.

Nasheed, who has met Prime Minister David Cameron since flying to Britain in January, was jailed last year on terrorism charges relating to the arrest of an allegedly corrupt judge in 2012, when he was still in power.
BAMAKO (Reuters) - Authorities in Mali have arrested 21 people in connection with an attack on the headquarters of an EU military training operation there, a senior police official said on Wednesday. In the foiled gun attack on Bamako's Nord-Sud Hotel on Monday, one assailant was killed and two others arrested. There were no reports of casualties at the hotel, where the EU Training Mission-Mali is based. The EU mission is comprised of nearly 600 personnel deployed to train security forces as part of efforts to stabilize Mali after the defeat of Islamist militants who had seized the country's desert north in 2012. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but Mali and neighboring West African countries have increasingly been the target of Islamists, some affiliated with al Qaeda. "Two individuals were arrested, and later we continued and arrested 19 other people," Moussa Ag Infahi, director general of the National Police, told state radio. Police at the scene recovered "a sack of grenades", ammunition, a sub-machine gun and a Kalashnikov assault rifle, he added. France led the military intervention that drove the Islamists from their control of northern Mail in 2013, fearing that the region could be used as a base for attacks against Europe. However, violence is again on the rise. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the group's North African affiliate, has claimed responsibility for three attacks in Mali, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast that have killed dozens in the past five months. (Reporting by Tiemoko Diallo; Writing by Joe Bavier; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
BOSTON (Reuters) - A Massachusetts man is due in court on Monday, accused of placing flammable devices on power lines near the New Hampshire border and leaving a note calling federal officials corrupt and warning the utility that owns the wires it faced "an expensive war."

Danny Kelly, 61, was arrested on Saturday at his home in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, not far from Tyngsboro, where he was accused of planting homemade flammable devices that resembled pipe bombs on Thursday, prosecutors said. He will be charged with one criminal count of trying to damage property.

The note called the devices "cutters" and threatened they would be used on gas lines and their design released on the Internet after they were tested on the Tyngsboro transmission lines operated by National Grid, according to an FBI affidavit filed in Boston federal court on Monday.

"The question is whether or not you will help me get the courts to actually respect the law and undo the damage they did to my family. If not, I might as well do my part in destroying the society," the note read. "It is going to be an expensive war if you want to play it."

Kelly pleaded guilty in 2005 to extortion for cutting communication cables operated by Comcast Corp and Verizon Communications Inc, demanding $10,000 monthly to stop, federal court records show.

He was sentenced to five years' probation and ordered to receive mental health treatment.

Kelly has represented himself in more than a dozen civil lawsuits in Massachusetts, against the town of Chelmsford and several telecommunications companies, contending that land and ideas have been stolen from him. None has prevailed.

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Dan Grebler)
One of the biggest stories in the world right now is the massive data leak of the so-called "Panama Papers" that reveal in great detail how the world's wealthiest elites use shell companies to avoid paying taxes in their home countries. The documents are also filled with scandalous details about the behavior of several major government officials, including the prime minister of Iceland and Russian president Vladimir Putin.

MUST SEE: Video reveals hidden Tesla Model 3 details

So what are the big takeaways so far? Here are the major political scandals unveiled so far:

However, as Vox's Matthew Yglesias points out, the Panama Papers mostly deal with the routine and completely legal ways that ultra-rich people avoid paying taxes.

"Incorporating your hedge fund in a country with no corporate income tax even though all your fund's employees and investors live in the United States is perfectly legal," he writes. "So is, in most cases, setting up a Panamanian shell company to own and manage most of your family's fortune. Tax avoidance is an inevitable feature of any tax system, but the reason this particular form of avoidance grows and grows without bounds is that powerful politicians in powerful countries have chosen to let it happen."

The Guardian has put together a video showing how infuriatingly easy it is for rich people to hide $1 billion away in offshore tax havens -- check it out for yourself below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6xUOF-d9Ig

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Brussels (AFP) - An enormous and complex logistical operation involving thousands of EU and other officials was launched on Monday to ship migrants from Greece back to Turkey under a controversial accord between Brussels and Ankara.

In the first wave of deportations, around 200 mostly economic migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and other countries were sent back to Turkey aboard chartered Turkish ferries sailing from the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios.

Under the hard-won deal with Ankara, the European Union accepted that for every refugee from war-ravaged Syria being returned to Turkey from Greek islands, another Syrian refugee will be resettled directly from Turkey to the EU.

- EU reinforcements -

Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the European Commission, the executive of the 28-nation bloc, appointed senior official Maarten Verwey to act as coordinator for the operation in Greece.

He oversees some 4,000 staff from Greece, other EU member states, the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) and Frontex, Europe's border control agency.

They comprise border guards, asylum case officers, police officers as well as judges to examine asylum claims and interpreters.

Turkey and Greece have also sent liaison officers to each other's country.

The Commission says 206 escort officers from Frontex were deployed in Greece over the weekend, along with 32 EASO officers. Thirty extra officers are expected by Wednesday.

Frontex received pledges from 21 EU member states to supply 40 readmissions experts and 702 escort officers for the mission. The border agency estimates it will need 50 experts and 1,500 officers.

- Costs -

The Commission estimates it will cost 280 million euros ($320 million) to implement the deal over the next six months.

The EU will help Greece to set up the infrastructure and reception capacity in order to carry out registrations, appeals and large-scale return operations.

- Fate of migrants -

The migrants will stay in so-called hotspots, reception centres on the Greek islands where they are identified and registered, according to the Greek authorities.

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Those who do not ask for asylum will be sent back to Turkey immediately, while the others will have their requests studied in line with international asylum rules.

The Commission says more than 6,000 migrants have been registered in Greece since March 20, the date the agreement took effect.

- Legal framework -

Migrants who do not apply for asylum in Greece or whose applications for asylum have been declared "inadmissible or unfounded" will be returned to Turkey.

They can be declared inadmissible and rejected if the country where they will be returned to, such as Turkey, is believed to provide adequate protection.

Under the EU-Turkey accord, Greece was supposed to change its laws to recognise Turkey as a "safe third country."

Greece's parliament on Friday adopted a bill bolstering its migration and asylum services, and activating a 2013 EU directive which says that migrants cannot be sent to a third country where they would face danger or discrimination.

Commission spokeswoman Tove Ernst said Monday: "No-one will be returned to Turkey if they have not received the necessary guarantees of protection from Turkey."

The Greek courts will deal with any appeals from rejected asylum seekers.

People feeling threatened, such as Kurds, will not be sent back.

Asylum requests in Greece, the Commission said, will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, in line with European and international law as well as the principle of non-refoulement, which bans sending people back to countries where they risk death or persecution.

- Modes of transport -

Migrants sent back to Turkey will either travel by bus through the land border or by boat from the Greek isles, the Commission says. Frontex is operating three ferries, which can each transport several hundred people, and around 10 buses.

- Cut-off date -

The migrants and refugees who arrived before March 20 face expulsion if found to be economic migrants or will be admitted into the EU relocation scheme if they qualify for refugee status.

Under the scheme, 63,000 people are due to be sent from Greece to other EU member states, even if only 581 have been relocated since the scheme was adopted last September.

Some 52,000 migrants are stuck in Greece after Balkan countries closed their borders to stop the biggest influx of migrants since World War II.

- Human rights critics -

Amnesty International has accused Turkey of illegally forcing Syrians to return to their war-torn homeland -- proof that Turkey is not a safe country for refugees, it says.

Turkey rejects the charge, insisting it has not changed its open-door policy for Syrian refugees.
(Reuters) - Four men have been arrested on charges of raping a 9-year-old girl in a Utah home on Easter Sunday as her mother smoked methamphetamine in the garage, authorities said on Monday.

The mother was visiting friends in the town of Vernal, about 175 miles east of Salt Lake City, the Uintah County Sheriff's Office said in a statement on Sunday. The mother was not officially identified.

Investigators said that as the child slept on a couch, the mother went into the garage and began smoking meth. The girl was taken to another room and raped by four men, according to the statement.

Sheriff deputies took a report of the rape on March 29 and arrested Larson RonDeau, 36, that day, the office said. The three others were arrested between March 31 and April 1.

RonDeau has been charged with first degree rape and sodomy of a child and is slated to appear in court on Tuesday, Uintah County Attorney G. Mark Thomas told Reuters by phone on Monday.

The three others - Josiah RonDeau, 20, Jerry Flatlip, 29, and Randall Flatlip, 26 - have been arrested and Thomas expects to file formal charges in the coming days.

The men could not be immediately reached on Monday for comment and it was not clear if they had obtained legal representation.

The child was not hospitalized after the attack and has been taken into protective government custody, Thomas said. The mother has not been arrested.

"As with any crime against a child, we take them very seriously," Thomas said.

(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Sara Catania and David Gregorio)
Wall Street getting off to a sluggish start. Stocks (^DJI, ^GSPC, ^IXIC) are not making any big move in either direction in early trading, as investors keep close tabs on the moves in oil prices (CLK16.NYM) and await more comments form Federal Reserve members.

Get the Latest Market Data and New with the Yahoo Finance App

Virgin America (VA) soared to a 52-week high. Alaska Air (ALK) plans to buy the airline for $2.6 billion in cash, or $57 a share, beating out rival JetBlue (JBLU). The combination will create the fifth-largest airline in the U.S. by traffic and expand Alaska Airlines' presence on the West Coast.

Tesla (TSLA) remains in the spotlight this morning after CEO Elon Musk tweeted over the weekend that the company received 276,000 orders for its new Model 3 sedan. That's about $11 billion worth of backlog orders.

SunEdison (SUNE) shares continued to tumble in early trading after the Wall Street Journal reported late Friday that the solar company is preparing to file for bankruptcy protection in the coming weeks. This follows news that the SEC was investigating the company about its public disclosures related to the amount of cash it had available.

Apple (AAPL) is also on investors' radars after Credit Suisse raised its price target on the stock by $10 to $150 a share and added it to its U.S. Focus list. The stock is now considered one of the bank's "top investment ideas." Credit Suisse analyst Kulbinder Garcha says that an in-depth look into Apple's service offerings showed that investors may be underestimating and underappreciating the growth potential of the annuity business.

What a New Valeant model could look like: DB



Deutsche Bank is out with a note today on what a new model for Valeant (VRX) could look like. This comes after the drugmaker delayed filing its annual report pending an internal investigation and said it would restate several quarters worth of results. Last month alone, shares plunged a record 60%.

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The "Panama Papers"

And a huge leak of confidential documents is sending shockwaves worldwide--Eleven million documents were released from a law firm in Panama detailing how the company has helped its clients launder money and evade taxes. The files show connections with 140 politicians from more than 50 countries, including 72 current or former heads of state, many of whom appear to have links with shell companies.
By Ben Klayman

DETROIT (Reuters) - A task force appointed by Michigans governor said on Wednesday state officials showed stubbornness, lack of preparation, delay and inaction in failing to prevent a health crisis in the city of Flint caused by lead contamination in the drinking water.

There were failures on all levels of government, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a report from the task force said. However, the report highlighted failures of state agencies, especially the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ), and said the state was "fundamentally accountable" for what happened.

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has been criticized for the state's poor handling of a crisis that garnered national headlines.

"It was a mixture of ignorance, incompetence and arrogance by many decision makers that created the toxic and tragic situation," Chris Kolb, task force co-chair and president of the Michigan Environmental Council, a coalition of non-profit groups, said at a press conference in Flint.(http://www.michigan.gov/documents/snyder/FWATF_FINAL_REPORT_21March2016_517805_7.pdf)

The 116-page report included 36 findings and 44 recommendations to be taken so the state can avoid a similar crisis in the future, including fixing the state emergency manager law to compensate for the loss of local government control.

Under the direction of a state-appointed emergency manager, Flint switched water supplies to the Flint River from Detroit's system in 2014 to save money.

The corrosive river water leached lead, a toxic substance that can damage the nervous system, from the city's water pipes. Flint switched back to the Detroit system last October.

The task force said MDEQ should receive primary blame for the crisis, citing its failure to use corrosion control chemicals in Flint's water system to prevent the lead leaching, and then resisting calls from others to take action after the lead poisoning was discovered.

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"They missed the boat completely," Kolb said.

Michigan this week outlined a plan involving several state agencies to help the city recover from the crisis. It included programs to address water infrastructure shortcomings and the health of children who have tested for high lead levels in their blood, expand support in Flint schools and boost economic development for the city.

The crisis has led to calls for Snyder to resign. Last week, several Democratic lawmakers criticized Snyder at a hearing about Flint, a working class, mostly African American city of 100,000 northwest of Detroit.

The crisis has led to several lawsuits in state and federal courts, and federal and state investigations.

This report is a damning indictment of Governor Snyders philosophy of running government like a business," U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Democrat from Maryland, said after the report was released.

Snyder said many of the task force recommendations were already being implemented by the state. "This is a problem that I've made a commitment to fix," he said.
Lesbos (Greece) (AFP) - Buses believed to be carrying hundreds of migrants for deportation to Turkey arrived at the Greek island ports of Lesbos and Chios early Monday morning, AFP reporters said.

The expulsion launches a controversial EU deal to send migrants back across the Aegean Sea that has been criticised by rights groups on ethical grounds.

Two Turkish leisure vessels on Lesbos and another one on Chios are waiting to pick up the migrants, who are to be escorted by police from EU border agency Frontex.

On Lesbos, crews were earlier seen loading supplies onto the ships -- a small ferry and a catamaran.

Turkish Interior Minister Efkan Ala has said his country is ready to receive 500 migrants on Monday and Greek authorities have provided 400 names, although these numbers could change.

The European Union signed the controversial deal with Turkey in March as it wrestles with the continent's worst migration crisis since World War II, with more than a million people arriving last year.

Under the agreement, designed to halt new arrivals along the most popular route through Turkey, all "irregular migrants" arriving since March 20 face being sent back. Each case is meant to be examined individually.

For every Syrian refugee returned, another Syrian refugee will be resettled from Turkey to the EU, with numbers capped at 72,000.
Stockholm (AFP) - Rising tensions worldwide helped push up military expenditure in 2015, the first increase after four years of declining spending, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in a report published on Tuesday.

For the full-year 2015, world military spending totalled $1.67 trillion, a rise of one percent from the previous year.

The increase was attributed primarily to more expenditure in Eastern Europe, Asia and the Middle East, while the decline in spending in the West was levelling off, SIPRI said.

The United States remains in pole position as the country that spends the most on its armed forces, by far.

Washington's military spending budget of $596 billion was down by 2.4 percent from the previous year, a smaller decline than in recent years.

SIPRI senior researcher Sam Perlo-Freeman said the United States now has "additional overseas contingency operations' (OCO) spending from the war against" the Islamic State (IS) group.

The world's second-biggest spender, China, dished out $215 billion, followed by Saudi Arabia which overtook Russia for third place at $87.2 billion. Moscow spent $66.4 billion.

During the 10-year period from 2006-2015, the US military budget shrank by four percent, while China's soared by 132 percent. Those of Saudi Arabia and Russia also increased significantly, by 97 and 91 percent respectively.

France, which had the fifth biggest budget in 2014, fell to seventh place behind Britain and India.

Military spending budgets continued to decline across Western Europe, albeit less sharply than in recent years.

"The reasons for the change in trend are Russia, IS and NATO politics," Perlo-Freeman said, noting that Alliance members have agreed to maintain spending at two percent of their gross domestic product until 2024.

In Asia, rising spending in Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan and Vietnam reflected tensions with China and North Korea, SIPRI said.
Even in the golden age of television drama which sees murder mystery after murder mystery on the small screen, Netflix's documentary series Making a Murderer has arguably been the most talked about show in the last year.

The ten-part show followed the story of Steven Avery, who had a wrongful rape conviction overturned before being convicted of murder, and resulted in tens of thousands of people to call for the investigation to be reopened and even resulted in a petition to the White House for President Barack Obama to pardon him.

The success of the show is also reverberating across the non-scripted television world as networks try to find their Murderer said panelists at this weekend's MIPDoc and MIPFormats, the two day precursor to MIPTV.

"Networks are reactive," said Oscar-nominated filmmaker Morgan Spurlock in his keynote speech. "Now what will happen on the heels of these smarter shows coming out is all the networks are betting on smarter non-fiction fare across the board - Discovery, Nat Geo, AMC. Spurlock sees this as an opportunity to increase the quality of non-fiction programming that has been dominated by phenomena such as Jersey Shore and Kardashian-based programming.

[readmore:880348]

"The opportunity is grand," he said. "You can push [executives] into something that is smart and challenging, something that is not exactly Making a Murderer or The Jinx, but is just as compelling and engaging for the audience."

"It's good for us as non-fiction producers and creators. This is smarter fare, it's not putting on gowns and dancing on a shin floor. It's going to be a tsunami wave of impact on programming around the world," he said.

Nesta Owens, director of programs for Discovery Channel UK, agreed. "If people are able to watch a whole ten hours of Making a Murderer, our shows might become a little more sophisticated."

"I do think it is changing the way people watch, and for the better, and the more competition there is in the marketplace the better it is for all of us," Owens told The Hollywood Reporter. "If people are watching slow factual it gives us hope for shows we have on the horizon."

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"Yes there is more competition, but it also means there is more money going into these kinds of programs," said Corentin Glutron, head of acquisitions for France's RMC Decouverte.

The "Netflix effect" and the water cooler conversation of a show like Making a Murderer can only boost the interest in factual programming, especially if audiences are willing to binge watch a slow-moving story. But because Netflix has such limited factual programming it is not a threat to the industry - yet. "It might be something to worry about in five years," said Glutron. "But not now."

"The average person's expectations have grown exponentially," said David Royle, evp of programming for Smithsonian networks. These types of programs "break through the media clutter," said Royle.

Read More: MIPTV: Netflix Takes ITV Drama 'Marcella' From 'The Bridge' Creator

"There are a lot of shows in the pipeline on the backs of these shows," said David Nath, director of the The Murder Detectives on the U.K.'s Channel 4. But if everyone is trying to find the next Making of a Murder, it's impossible to create an overnight hit. "These kinds of shows take a lot of time to produce, to research, to find these stories. They are slow moving productions."

In the formats trend analysis panel in the MIPFormats program, executives reported that as the popularity and subsequent channel focus on developing drama, audiences for non-scripted have been shrinking, and budgets along with that.

"For the big massive prime time shows [the money] is still there, but what you're finding that the level of drama productions means that budgets for other shows are falling which is why you are seeing a change in the types of shows that are developed," said Mike Beale, evp global development for ITV.

"We can't just make bigger sets and add more celebrities," he said. For game shows, even upping prize money is no longer a draw. "Giving away a million pounds doesn't move the dial," Beale added.

"The market is shrinking," added Kim Dingler, managing director of new media for Talpa Global. She predicted the next big thing will be "factual emotional stories."

One example showcased during the Formats section is A+E's 60 Days In, which sees upstanding citizens enter jail for two months to see if they are able to survive without other inmates or officers knowing their real status. "The world of unscripted reality is struggling for a breakout series," said A+E Networks head of international programming and production Hayley Babcock, noting that 1500 series were commissioned in the U.S. in 2015. Babcock said a U.K. remake will soon be announced.

Read More: MIPTV: Beta Film Takes Choose-Your-Own-Ending Drama 'Terror'

For documentary directors, VR is the next big thing, said Spurlock. His company Warrior Poets has two VR shows in the pipeline that will be announced later this year, he said. "VR is an empathy machine," he said and perfect storytelling tool for filmmakers.

Filmmakers will also have to work with brands on sponsored content as financing continues to be fragmented. "Brands are realizing 30-second commercials don't work," Spurlock said. As long as the filmmaker retains creative control and there is no egregious product placement, creators should have no qualms working with brands. "It's all about the story and if you can tell a good story brands are now willing to go along on that ride."
Among a number of high-profile British period dramas taking a bow at MIPTV, The Collection - being shopped by BBC Worldwide - perhaps arrives with the most impressive wardrobe.

An ambitious eight-parter delving into the world of haute couture in post-WWII Paris, the series comes from Lookout Point, most recently behind War & Peace, and is a co-production between France Televisions and Amazon Prime, marking the streamer's first original U.K. drama.

Ahead of its MIPTV debut, The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Lookout Point CEO Simon Vaughan about swapping the Napoleonic battlefield for the fashion studio.

Lookout Point has been behind the Ripper Street series and - more recently - the acclaimed War & Peace. What was it about The Collection that sparked your interest?

It gave us chance to do something that's got that real artistry, creative intelligence... it's politically thoughtful and at the same time it's really fun and entertaining. It's written by Oliver Goldstick, the showrunner who writes Desperate Housewives, Ugly Betty and Pretty Little Liars. These are smart, sassy, fast-paced American style shows. So it's doing an American-style narrative with the craft and the class and the sophistication of a quality period drama. To me it feels like a bit of an interesting fusion.

There was a period show on U.K. TV in the early 90s - The House of Elliot - about the fashion industry, but there hasn't really been anything since.

It's interesting. Sometimes the best ideas are right there in front of you. It's interesting that nobody had really tackled this for a really long time. Fashion and people's veracious appetite for fashion is probably bigger than it's ever been. But it isn't really about fashion - the fashion is the backdrop. It's about family and it's about loves and losses and rivalries and ambition. It's about all those human emotions and qualities. And ultimately it's about great writing and characters, set against the backdrop of fashion. My hope for it is that it transcends fashion. It's just a great drama, told on a big ambition canvas that's sexy as hell. Who doesn't want to go to that evocative world of Paris in the late 40s?

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How big are the hats?

The hats are big! And the trick is that it's not all about the hats.

I'm assuming there's scope for more after the initial eight-part first season?

We hope so if all goes well. Like all returnable series we hope that it will run and run. I think Oliver has a vision that goes out to five season or more. So we'll see.

You teamed with the Weinsteins for War & Peace. How did this deal come about?

I like to try and find things that are constructively disruptive. Not just for the sake of it but to move the conversation on, to get on the front foot of the way that drama is being financed and to think about the next move. Getting Harvey on board War & Peace... he wanted to get more involved in TV and War & Peace was a project that he loved.

War & Peace was very well received critically. Was it a financial success?

I think it's worked out very well for BBC Worldwide, from a sales perspective. But we were very proud of the way that people responded to it, that we could produce an epic period drama, shot in Russia, with Napoleonic armies and not go over budget and not blow our brains out. It was a success in that sense.

What else in on the cards for Lookout Point?

The next big event piece that were doing, with Andrew Davies who wrote War & Peace, is we're just starting to develop Les Miserables as a TV drama. It's back to the book, it's Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, no singing, no dancing. Not that there was dancing in the film. And that's an event mini-series, but we're in early stages.

Read More: MIPTV: What Will Be the Next 'Downton Abbey'?
Production giant Endemol Shine will set up a studio in Israel to act as a hub for producing TV series from around the world.

The new operation, based in Tel Aviv, marks a further move into scripted series for Endemol Shine, which is best known for its hit reality formats such as Big Brother, Deal or No Deal and Masterchef.

But in recent years the company has built up an impressive slate of fictional series, including Broadchurch, Humans and The Fall. In developing and producing fiction, however, Endemol Shine is looking to utilize some of the same production techniques that made it a leader in reality TV, including using regional production hubs to produce shows faster and more efficiently. The new Israeli studio fits into that model.

Read More: MIPDOC: 'Making a Murderer' Effect Hands Producers New Opportunities

Gal Zaid, director of drama and comedy at Endemol Shine, will head up the Israeli studio, reporting to Endemol Shine Israel CEO Elad Kuperman.

Endemol Shine Israel has several scripted series on its current slate, including thriller The Orpheus Project for the HOT network in Israel, drama The Harem for Reshet and sitcom Miller Junction for Keshet. Miller Junction is a follow-up to the hit series Traffic Light, which was sold for remake to Fox in the U.S.
International hit Scandinavian scripted crime series The Bridge is set to be adapted for the Russian market, Endemol Shine said Monday.

Russia's NTV Channel has commissioned Endemol Shine partner company Weit Media to produce 20 episodes to run over two seasons, with a storyline sparked by the discovery of a body on the Narva Friendship Bridge that connects the border between Russia and Estonia.

Based on the original scripted format for Bron/Broen from Scandinavian producers Filmlance International and Nimbus Film, it follows adaptations of the series for the U.S., French and U.K. markets.

Russian investigator Maxim Kazantsev (Mikhail Porechenkov) and Estonian Detective Inga Savisaar (Ingeborga Dapkunaite) team up to hunt down a serial killer operating in both countries.

Production will begin on the series in June for transmission in 2017, with season two being filmed consecutively.

The Bridge debuted in Sweden and Denmark in 2011 and has since sold to 157 territories. The U.K. adaptation aired on BBC4 to an average audience of 1.49 million viewers and the 10 episodes screened were the highest-rated shows for the channel in 2015.

"NTV is one of the key broadcasters in Russia, and their involvement is a real testament to the quality of the project," said Marina Williams, COO of Endemol Shine international operations.

Read More: 'The Bridge': TV Review
Rain greeted President Obama when he landed in Cuba on Sunday aboard Air Force One, but bad weather couldnt keep the crowds away.

Even in the rain yesterday, the downpour, people were lining the streets under umbrellas and waving, Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat traveling as part of a U.S. delegation with the president in Cuba, said in an interview. Theres just very much much excitement of the acknowledgment of an American president visiting for the first time since Calvin Coolidge  They were waiting to see the arrival of the president.

The presidents trip to the country is the continuation of a gradual thaw between the United States and Cuba. Obama announced last year that the U.S. embassy in Cuba would reopen after being shuttered for more than 50 years. Then, on Monday, the president met with Cuban leader Raul Castro in Havana. Advocates of breaking down barriers between the two nations are celebrating the occasion and seizing on it to argue that the United States and Cuba will benefit from closer ties. Cuba has prepared for the visit by paving roads and repainting buildings. The crowds that lined up to see the president arrive suggest that Cubans greet these developments with excitement.

For all the potential of the moment, however, it is impossible to know such a seismic shift in diplomatic relations will ultimately shake out.

They have a basic, beautiful city here, but as we know, a lot of the infrastructure is decayed and it still is, and thats why we need more private investment and a different kind of economic system, Klobuchar said, making a case for ending the long-standing U.S.-Cuba trade embargo. The senator added that as more American tourists visit Cuba, business people are saying: Boy, were booked. We need to have more restaurants, and we need more products. Klobuchar warned, If we dont lift the embargo, then pretty soon other companies from other countries will move in, and they gonna be eating food from China and sleeping in hotels from Spain.

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Even in the rain yesterday, the downpour, people were lining the streets under umbrellas and waving.

The embargos going to end, Obama declared on Monday, adding: When? I cant be entirely sure, but I believe it will end. Ultimately, however, that will take an act of Congress, and there are indications that U.S. lawmakers are in no hurry to undo the longstanding economic restrictions.

There is evidence of public support for the ongoing thaw. As my colleague Marina Koren wrote, [S]urveys of Cuban Americans show the majority support the administrations efforts to normalize relations between the two countries, while surveys of Cuban citizens suggest an overwhelming majority believe a better relationship with the U.S. would benefit Cuba.

Recommended: Donald Trump Claims He 'Had No Choice' But to Talk About His Anatomy

But there are also plenty of dissenting voices. Dozens of anti-government protesters were arrested by police in Havana just hours ahead of the presidents arrival on Sunday. And critics of the White House are lining up to protest Obamas visit in their own right. Obama has chosen to legitimize the corrupt and oppressive Castro regime with his presence on the island, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz argued in a Politico op-ed. Political prisoners languishing in dungeons across the island will hear this message: Nobody has your back. Youre alone with your tormentors. The world has forgotten about you, Cruz wrote, warning of the dangers of a diplomatic detente.

Cuba is in a period of transition. It remains unclear who will benefit the most from Americas closer ties with the island nationCuba with new jobs and new capital or the United States with a new market? Who will lose out? Will aspects of Cuban culture be lost or disappear entirely if American influence continues to expand? But as the differences between Klobuchar and Cruz suggest, achieving the congressional consensus necessary to advance that transition remains a heavy lift.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - About 25 people were killed on Monday across Iraq, most of them in suicide attacks targeting members of Shi'ite militias and military forces, security officials said. Islamic State, which controls territory in northern and western Iraq, claimed several of the attacks on statements on its Amaq news agency. More than 60 people were wounded. A suicide car bomb blew up in the center of Basra, the largest city in Iraq, killing five people, and another targeted a convoy of the Popular Mobilization Force (PMF), a coalition of Shi'ite militias, killing five, in the town of Mashahdeh, north of Baghdad. People wearing suicide belts blew themselves up at a military checkpoint in the north of Baghdad, killing five, and in the middle of a crowd of PMF outside a restaurant in the southern city of Nassiriya, killing four. Two members of the government's security forces were killed in suicide car bombs in the province of al-Anbar, west of Baghdad, and a third was killed south of Baghdad by an explosive device, local security sources said. Two people were also killed when mortar rounds hit the district of Abu Ghraib, west of the capital, they said. (Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Alison Williams)
Yangon (AFP) - Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi has dropped plans to run two major ministries but will act as spokeswoman for the country's new president, a ruling party official said Monday.

Banned from becoming president by a junta-era constitution, Suu Kyi has cemented control over the country's first civilian-led government in decades by taking on a string of senior roles in the new administration.

She has vowed to rule "above" the president, picking school friend and close aide Htin Kyaw for the role.

Lawmakers from her National League for Democracy party are also pressing for a special "state counsellor" position for the Nobel laureate, an appointment that would allow her to liaise between the presidency and parliament.

Last week the NLD said she would take on four cabinet posts -- foreign, energy, education and the ministerial position in the president's office.

But during a parliamentary session on Monday, the NLD put forward two new names for the energy and education portfolios, according to NLD spokesman Win Htein.

"Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will be the spokesperson for the president," he added, without elaborating on the rejig.

The move will free up the 70-year-old's already busy day-to-day responsibilities while reinforcing control over her proxy president Htin Kyaw.

Hopes are growing that the newly sworn-in government can accelerate the country's economic and political rejuvenation after nearly half a century of military repression.

Suu Kyi's party won a huge mandate at last November's elections.

But the constitution effectively bans her from the top post as it rules out anyone with foreign-born children or spouses from becoming president.

Suu Kyi married and had two sons with a British national.

The military also retains control of the key home, defence and border affairs ministries, while 25 percent of parliamentary seats are reserved for unelected soldiers.

The military has already balked at the NLD's plans to make Suu Kyi a "state counsellor" with army MPs in parliament last week saying the move bypasses the constitution.

The proposal is likely to sail through the NLD-dominated legislature.
Documents leaked Sunday from a Panama-based firm, which sells offshore shell companies, purport to show corruption and questionable business practices of the worlds politicians, billionaires, entertainers, athletes, drug barons, and others.

At the heart of the nearly four decades of records from Mossack Fonseca, the Panamanian law firm, are the names of people in more than 200 countries and territories. The 11.5 million records reveal the offshore holdings of 12 current and former leadersamong them the Saudi king, the pro-Western president of Ukraine, and the leaders of Iceland and Pakistan.

The papers appear to show Mossack Fonseca helped its clients launder money, dodge sanctions, and avoid paying taxes. Offshore services are not always illegal, but the documents released Sunday appear to reveal a clandestine web of shell companies, their real owners concealed under layers of secrecy, and connections to firms in different tax havens. The individual or group behind the leak is unknown, but the documents were published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Suddeutsche Zeitung, the German newspaper, and several news organizations around the world, including the BBC, after a yearlong investigation.

Recommended: The Political Fallout From the Panama Papers

Here are some key takeaways:

A close associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Bank Rossiya, a Russian bank that has been blacklisted by the U.S. and the EU, laundered hundreds of millions of dollars, the documents allege. The associate in question is Sergey Roldugin, a classical cellist and conductor who is a childhood friend of the Russian president. The records show Roldugin is a behind-the-scenes player in a clandestine network operated by Putin associates that has shuffled at least $2 billion through banks and offshore companies, the ICIJ alleges. In the documents, Roldugin is listed as the owner of offshore companies that have obtained payments from other companies worth tens of millions of dollars.  Its possible Roldugin, who has publicly claimed not to be a businessman, is not the true beneficiary of these riches. Instead, the evidence in the files suggests Roldugin is acting as a front man for a network of Putin loyalistsand perhaps for Putin himself. The Russian president is never named in the files. A Kremlin spokesman denied the allegations as a series of fibs. Roldugin, ICIJ said, did not respond to questions about his alleged actions.

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Among the world leaders named in the papers is Petro Poroshenko, Ukraines pro-Western president. The documents allege that at the height of Russias invasion of his country in 2014, Poroshenko scrambled to find a copy of a home utility bill for him to complete the paperwork to create a holding company in the British Virgin Islands. A representative for Poroshenko denied the move was connected to any political and military events in Ukraine. The firm was not included in Poroshenkos financial disclosure that yeara move his financial advisers said was because the holding company didnt have any assets. They said that the companies were part of a corporate restructuring to help sell Poroshenkos confectionery business, ICIJ reported.

Recommended: What Are the Panama Papers?

Also named is Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, Icelands prime minister, who was elected after that countrys financial collapse. The documents allege Gunnlaugsson hid millions of dollars of investments in his countrys banks in an offshore company. Gunnlaugsson and his wife, Anna Sigurlaug Palsdottir, bought the company in 2007, but he failed to declare his interest in it when he entered parliament two years later. The documents show Gunnlaugsson later sold half the company to his wife for $1. The prime minister denies any rules were broken, but he is facing calls for his resignation.

The documents also reveal offshore companies linked to the family of Xi Jinping, Chinas president who has cracked down on corruption in the country. Mossack Fonseca, the papers allege, has serviced enough Middle East royalty to fill a palace. Its helped two kings, Mohammed VI of Morocco and King Salman of Saudi Arabia, take to the sea on luxury yachts. The papers also appear to show secret offshore companies linked to the families and associates of Hosni Mubarak, the former Egyptian president, Muammar Qaddafi, the former Libyan leader, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

For further reading:

Giant Leak of Offshore Financial Records Exposes Global Array of Crime and Corruption

The Power Players

Inside the Secretive World of Tax-Avoidance Experts

What Can We Do With Our Shell Companies?

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
Donald Trump keeps criticizing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as obsolete.

Our big threat today is terrorism. Okay? And NATOs not really set up for terrorism. NATO is set up for the Soviet Union more than anything else. And now you dont have the Soviet Union, Trump said in an interview with The Washington Post.

President Obama on Monday defended the organization after a meeting with NATOs Secretary General. NATO continues to be the linchpin, the cornerstone of our collective defense and U.S. security policy," the president said. The Pentagon and Trumps election rivals Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton have also defended the alliance and blasted Trump for his remarks.

Related: Bernie Sanders Wants a New NATO, Including Russia, to Fight ISIS

Heres everything you need to know about NATO and the discussion Trump has sparked:

What is NATO?

The organization is the largest peacetime military alliance in the world. Established on April 4, 1949, NATO is an intergovernmental military alliance in which its 28 member states have agreed to defend each other in case of an attack by any external party. Article 5 of the NATO agreement says that an armed attack against one or more of the allies shall be considered an attack against them all and following such an attack, each ally would respond with such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

Why was NATO formed in the first place?

It was created after World War II in response to the growing threat of the Soviet Union. Several countries in Western Europe were fearful for their safety in the midst of increasing tensions with the Soviets. The alliance also served to promote European political integration.

Even though the Treaty of Brussels had been signed in 1948, the signing of a new treaty that included that U.S. was thought to be necessary to counter any possible revival of nationalist militarism. With the U.S. providing support to Western Europe, countries were less likely to deal with security concerns by negotiating with the Soviets.

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What countries are in NATO?

The treaty originally included 12 nations, but has expanded over the years to 28. The current members are Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States.

A number of other countries and international organizations  the United Nations, the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe  also cooperate with NATO in a range of capacities.

Can other countries join?

NATO employs an open door policy, in which any European country that meets specific political, economic and military criteria can join. Countries that want to join must also be able to carry out the commitments and obligations of membership, including military contributions to the alliance, a working democratic government based on a market economy, unbiased treatment toward minority populations, a dedication to peaceful resolutions of disputes and democratic institutional structures and civilian-military relations.

Do other countries want to join NATO?

Four countries have announced they would like to become members of NATO: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Montenegro and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Ukraine would like to be a member and has applied to join, but the process has stalled amid protests from Russia.

Related: NATO Countries Continue to Fail to Meet Defense Spending Promises

How is NATO run?

Each member nation has an ambassador or permanent representative on the North Atlantic Council who is supported by advisors and officials who sit on different NATO committees. The current NATO Secretary General, the Alliances top international civil servant and chief spokesperson, is Jens Stoltenberg, the former prime minister of Norway. A Secretary General serves for four years, but a fifth year is possible if all member states agree.

Have member states ever come to the military defense of another member state?

The first and only time Article 5 of the NATO treaty was invoked was on Sept. 12, 2001, the day after the 9/11 attacks. In response to the attacks, the Organization deployed the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to Afghanistan. Their main missions were to train the Afghan National Security Forces and help the country rebuild its government institutions.

How do individual countries participate?

All member countries voluntarily send troops and/or equipment for NATOs military force as well as contributing money to NATOs fund civil and military budgets. The civil budget is for personnel expenses and operating costs for NATOs headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. For 2016, the civil budget is just over $253 million. The military budget, which provides the funding for the entirety of the NATO Command Structure, is a little more than $1.3 billion.

Does the U.S. actually pay for the lions share of NATO like Trump claims?

How much each country contributes to the alliances direct budget is based on a cost-sharing formula tied to its Gross National Income. Under that formula, the U.S. provides about 22 percent of NATOs budget, The U.S. pays for 22 percent of the alliances budget, compared to 15 percent for Germany, 11 percent for France, 10 percent for the United Kingdom, 8 percent for Italy and so forth.

NATO

The real point of contention is the indirect funding of NATO. The organization asks all of its member states to put at least 2 percent of their GDP toward their own defense spending. But only five countries  Poland, the U.S., Great Britain, Greece and Estonia  actually meet or exceed that goal. The median spending of each country on defense is just 1.18 percent of GDP, compared to 3.7 percent for the U.S.

As NATO itself explains on its website: Today, the volume of the US defense expenditure effectively represents 73 per cent of the defense spending of the Alliance as a whole. This does not mean that the United States covers 73 per cent of the costs involved in the operational running of NATO as an organization, including its headquarters in Brussels and its subordinate military commands, but it does mean that there is an over-reliance by the Alliance as a whole on the United States for the provision of essential capabilities, including for instance, in regard to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; air-to-air refuelling; ballistic missile defense; and airborne electronic warfare.

This is not a new issue, either, as the NATO website makes clear: The combined wealth of the non-US Allies, measured in GDP, exceeds that of the United States. However, non-US Allies together spend less than half of what the United States spends on defense. This imbalance has been a constant, with variations, throughout the history of the Alliance and more so since the tragic events of 11 September 2001, after which the United States significantly increased its defense spending.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
(Reuters) - A Nebraska woman who snuck into an Omaha zoo enclosure and was bitten by a tiger she was trying to pet pleaded guilty on Monday to trespassing and was fined $250, prosecutors said.

Jacqueline Eide, 33, was bitten in November by the three-legged tiger named Mai after she entered Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium when it was closed. Eide suffered injuries to her left fingers. [ID:nL1N12X0S2]

Mai, an 18-year-old Malayan tiger that lost a leg after it was caught in a trap, was not injured in the incident.

Police at the time said Eide appeared to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

Eide could not be reached for comment.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)
Jerusalem (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said he was waiting for a visit from Mahmud Abbas, after the Palestinian president said he had already proposed such a meeting.

"A few days ago, on Israeli television, I heard president Abbas say that if I invite him to meet, he'll come," Netanyahu told reporters at a meeting with visiting Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek.

"I'm inviting him again," he said in English. "I've cleared my schedule this week. Any day he can come, I'll be here."

In an interview with commercial TV station Channel 2 on Thursday, Abbas said that he was ready to meet Netanyahu "any time."

"And I suggested, by the way, for him to meet," he said in English.

Asked what was Netanyahu's response to the offer he refused to answer.

"He will tell you," the Palestinian leader said.

After Netanyahu's remarks, Palestinian presidency spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said Abbas wanted a just peace based on "international legitimacy and agreements that have already been signed".

"Our position is that Israel must recognise the two-state solution and stop settlement building," he told AFP.

US-backed peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel collapsed in April 2014 after nine months amid bitter recriminations and mutual blame.

Abbas and Netanyahu shook hands at a climate summit in Paris in November, but held no significant talks.

The last substantial public meeting between them is thought to date back to 2010, though there have been unconfirmed reports of secret meetings since then.

Netanyahu on Monday said that if the two met he would discuss a wave of violence which has left 200 Palestinians and 28 Israelis dead since October.

"We have a lot of things to discuss, but the first item is ending the Palestinian campaign of incitement to murder Israelis," he said.

Most of the Palestinians killed were carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks, according to Israeli authorities.

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But Israeli forces have been also accused of using excessive force in some cases, charges which they have firmly denied.

Palestinians and many analysts say frustration with Israel's occupation and settlement building along with the lack of any progress on peace efforts have fed the unrest.

"Lack of hope. Lack of trust," Abbas, who has called for peaceful resistance, said in last week's interview as reasons for why the knife attacks have continued.

He said that if Netanyahu were to engage in serious peace talks Palestinian attacks would cease.

"If he tells me that he believes in the two-state solution and we sit around the table to talk about a two-state solution, this will give my people hope," he said.

"And nobody will dare to go and stab or shoot or do anything here or there."
HENDERSON, NV --(Marketwired - April 04, 2016) - Praxis Aerospace Concepts International, Inc. today announced it has entered into a partnership with the New York UAS Test Site, Griffiss International Airport, to provide the Test Site additional expertise as they accomplish requirements toward their support of NASA. The goal of which is to help integrate unmanned air vehicles into the world around us.

NASA has invited test sites to participate in NASA activities, as well as to encourage teaming across test sites to gain cost efficiencies and maximize research data that will be delivered to NASA. The Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration in the National Airspace System project, or UAS in the NAS, will contribute capabilities designed to reduce technical barriers related to safety and operational challenges associated with enabling routine UAS access to the NAS. Subsequently, Oneida County has been awarded a 5 year Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity contract for future NASA task orders. These Task Orders may require Praxis participation and expertise toward their accomplishment.

Praxis Aerospace Concepts International, Inc. is best known in the unmanned systems industry for its White Label services, supporting FAA UAS Test Sites, Universities and corporate partners with Robotics Management, Technical Services and Autonomous Technology Testing. PACI is a partner of ASSURE, the FAA's UAS Center of Excellence. "We are very excited to work with Oneida County and Griffiss International Airport," said Jonathan Daniels, CEO, Praxis Aerospace Concepts International, Inc. "Teaming up with the New York UAS Test Site to engage in NASA's UAS in the NAS research is an exciting development for our company."

"Praxis Aerospace Concepts International, Inc. is a great partner and this partnership reflects our desire to collaborate with companies such as Praxis that have the excellent reputation and expertise within the UAS community and share our commitment to the growth of the UAS industry locally, at the Nevada Drone Port and nationally," said Anthony J. Picente, Jr., Oneida County Executive and Operator of the New York UAS Test Site, Griffiss International Airport. The New York UAS Test Site at Griffiss International Airport is known for successfully testing UAS from small category to a full scale fixed wing aircraft and it's state of the art range instrumentation system that combines the SRC LSTAR 3-d Radar and the Saab Sensis WAM sensors as well as the soon to be added X-Band Surface Movement Radar.

About Praxis Aerospace Concepts International, Inc.

Founded in 2011, PACI is a service-disabled veteran-owned small business based in Southern Nevada. The company's mission is to develop practical solutions for multi-modal (ground-air-sea-industrial) robotics and unmanned systems (UxS) using a mix of proprietary technology, unique team domain expertise, and unique partnerships, PACI can develop and operate laboratory and field facilities for autonomous systems research, development, test, evaluation, deployment, commercialization, and training. Praxis Aerospace Concepts International, Inc. currently serves over 20 clients with military, public and civil robotics/unmanned systems across the globe. For more information about Praxis Aerospace Concepts International, Inc., visit its website at www.praxisaerospace.com.

About New York UAS Test Site, Griffiss International Airport

The NY FAA Designated UAS Test Site at Griffiss International Airport is operated by Oneida County through its Department of Aviation. It is one of six Test Sites nationwide designated by the FAA.

Additionally, clients have access to a system of data collection provided by range instrumentation that will consist of LSTAR, surface movement radar and WAM sensors. The data collected is provided to the client as well as safety data that is provided to the FAA. For more information about the NY UAS Test Site and Griffiss International Airport, please visit the website at http://ocgov.net
(Reuters) - U.S.-based advertising tracking company Nielsen Holdings Plc <NLSN.N> said it signed a multi-year agreement with Dish Network Corp <DISH.O> to use data from Dish households to improve its understanding of viewing habits.

The deal, Nielsen's first with a pay-TV network, will also help advertisers and networks improve their marketing and programming decisions, Dish said.

Nielsen, which is the dominant player in television ratings, considered the currency used to determine ad rates for commercials, said on Monday data provided by Dish would be used in its Local TV measurement service in 210 market areas.

The deal comes after data analytics provider ComScore Inc <SCOR.O> signed a similar agreement with Dish on Friday. ComScore bought viewership rating company Rentrak Corp last year in a deal with an implied value of about $771 million.

(Reporting by Narottam Medhora in Bengaluru; Editing by Anupama Dwivedi)
By Alexis Akwagyiram LAGOS (Reuters) - Nigeria's army arrested Khalid al-Barnawi, leader of Islamist militant group Ansaru which is a splinter faction of Boko Haram that has been accused of kidnapping and killing Westerners, a military spokesman said on Monday. But a security expert said al-Barnawi's supporters had assured him that the militant leader, who the U.S. State Department named in 2012 as having ties to Boko Haram and al-Qaeda's north African wing, had not been captured. Defence spokesman Brigadier General Rabe Abubakar said al-Barnawi, who is thought to be in his late 30s, was arrested in Lokoja, the capital of the central state of Kogi, on Saturday. Reuters has been unable to independently verify the details provided by the military which has not yet released photographic or video evidence, as it has with previous arrests. "He has been arrested. We have made that giant stride," said Abubakar, adding that some Boko Haram fighters had surrendered to Nigerian troops. Muhammadu Buhari, who took office last May, has made it a priority of his presidency to defeat Islamist militancy in Africa's most populace nation. The arrest of al-Barnawi, if independently confirmed, would be significant as jihadists have been pushed out of northeastern areas they once controlled and conflicting messages on social media suggest internal schisms. But Nigerian security analyst Fulan Nasrullah expressed doubts that he had indeed been captured. "Khalid's people and I have spoken and they have said that he is free and was not captured, whether in Lokoja or anywhere else," he said. "They have killed seven different people at seven different times thinking they were Khalid al-Barnawi. They have no photos of him, nor do they know any concrete information about him," he added. The defense spokesman could not immediately be reached to respond to Nasrullah's comments. The United States has put al-Barnawi and two other Nigerian militants on the blacklist of "foreign terrorists". Britain also put Ansaru on its official "terrorist group" list, saying the group was aligned with al-Qaeda and was behind the kidnapping of a British national and a Italian who were killed in 2012 during a failed rescue attempt. In 2012 Ansaru claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of a French engineer. Reports of the Ansaru leader's arrest come amid developments that suggest the Islamist militant movement in Nigeria may be losing momentum. Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau appeared in a video circulated last month in which he seemed to suggest he was ailing and Boko Haram was losing its effectiveness. But another video emerged last week saying there would be no surrender. Boko Haram controlled a swathe of land in northeast Nigeria around the size of Belgium at the start of last year but was pushed out by Nigerian troops, aided by soldiers from neighboring countries. It has since resorted to attacks on public places, such as markets and places of worship. (Editing by Richard Balmforth)
LAGOS (Reuters) - Nigeria's army arrested the leader of Islamist militant group Ansaru, a splinter faction of Boko Haram that has been accused of kidnapping and killing Westerners. In 2012 the U.S. State Department named Ansaru leader Khalid al-Barnawi one of three Nigerian militants blacklisted for ties to Boko Haram and al-Qaeda's north African wing. Defence spokesman Brigadier General Rabe Abubakar said al-Barnawi was arrested in Lokoja, the capital of the central state of Kogi, on Saturday. "We have made that giant stride," said Abubakar. He also said some Boko Haram fighters had surrendered to Nigerian troops. Muhammadu Buhari has made it a priority of his presidency to defeat Islamist militancy in Africa's most populace nation, which also has the continent's biggest economy. (Reporting by Alexis Akwagyiram; editing by John Stonestreet)
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea test-fired a short-range missile on its east coast on Tuesday, South Korea's military said, amid heightened tension over the isolated country's nuclear and rocket programs. The missile was fired from near the North Korean coastal town of Wonsan at 5:40 p.m. (0840 GMT) and flew northeast for about 200 km (124 miles) and then "made contact" with the mainland, South Korea's military said in a statement. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has presided over a string of short-range missile launches in recent weeks in what the communist-ruled nation's state media has characterized as a response to U.N. sanctions imposed for its fourth nuclear test in January. The U.S. State Department said it was aware of the report of the missile firing. "North Korea should refrain from actions and rhetoric that raise tensions in the region and comply with its international obligations and commitments," said Katina Adams, a spokeswoman in the State Department's East Asian and Pacific Affairs bureau. U.S. President Barack Obama will meet South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday to discuss North Korea's nuclear program, the White House said on Monday. The meeting on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington will take place the same day Obama talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping. (Reporting by Rebecca Jang and Ju-min Park; Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom; Wrting by James Pearson; Editing by Robert Birsel and Paul Simao)
By Terje Solsvik and Stine Jacobsen

OSLO (Reuters) - Norway's government invited the heads of top company boards to talks on corruption as offshore banking revelations added to a string of allegations over the ethics of some of the country's largest firms.

The invitation follows the leak of more than 11.5 million documents from the files of a Panama-based law firm, allegedly showing how clients avoided tax or laundered money.

Among the leaked material on hundreds of thousands of clients in multiple jurisdictions were revelations that top Norwegian bank DNB helped customers set up offshore companies in the Seychelles.

DNB, in which the state owns 34 percent, said it regretted assisting about 40 customers in setting up the firms between 2006 and 2010, and that the practice had ended.

"It's the customers' responsibility to report their own funds to tax authorities. Still, we believe we should not have contributed to establishing these companies," Chief Executive Rune Bjerke said.

"The structures could be abused for tax evasion."

Trade and Industry Minister Monica Maeland said in a statement on Monday she had invited board leaders of 30 firms to the talks in June.

"There has recently been revealed several cases of corruption and ethical issues in the broader sense. As owner we have clear expectations to how the companies work with corporate responsibility," she said.

"I want a status (report) on how the companies work to prevent corruption and have therefore invited the chairmen of the companies under my ministry to a meeting."

In July four former top executives at Yara, one of the world's biggest nitrate fertiliser makers, were sentenced to prison terms for paying bribes in Libya and India. They are appealing.

A parliament committee is looking into cases concerning oil firm Statoil, telecoms company Telenor and aluminium producer Norsk Hydro about their own or their affiliates' dealings in Angola, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan respectively.

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All three firms, in which the state has stakes, have denied wrongdoing.

Norsk Hydro said it expected it would attend the June meeting.

"Speaking generally, we have a good dialogue with our biggest owner (the state) and have had regular meetings with the ministry about these issues," said a Norsk Hydro spokesman.

In a separate statement, the minister said bank DNB must now provide a written explanation of its policy of helping clients set up offshore companies.

"DNB says this should not have happened and that the bank should not have participated. That I agree to," Maeland said.

Statoil was not invited to the June meeting as it is supervised by the oil ministry, the trade ministry said.

Yara said it was not able to comment on Monday. DNB and Telenor were not immediately available for comment.

(Additional reporting by Ole Petter Skonnord; Editing by Andrew Roche)
OSLO (Reuters) - Norway's biggest bank DNB must provide a written explanation of its policy of helping clients set up offshore companies in the Seychelles, the Norwegian industry minister said in a statement on Monday. "DNB says this should not have happened and that the bank should not have participated. That I agree to," Trade and Industry Minister Monica Maeland said. The Norwegian government is the bank's top owner with a stake of 34 percent. DNB's Seychelles activities were first reported by daily Aftenposten, quoting leaked documents from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca. The leak involves more than 11.5 million documents from the files of the law firm, revealing details of hundreds of thousands of clients in multiple jurisdictions. DNB said in a separate statement it regretted assisting about 40 customers in setting up the firms between 2006 and 2010, and that the practice had ended. "It's the customers' responsibility to report their own funds to tax authorities. Still, we believe we should not have contributed to establishing these companies," Chief Executive Rune Bjerke said, referring to the Seychelles firms. "The structures could be abused for tax evasion," the CEO added. Bjerke said an internal investigation would be conducted and he would later give a briefing to the bank's board. (Reporting by Terje Solsvik; Editing by Ryan Woo and David Holmes)
Havana (AFP) - President Barack Obama's visit to Cuba was heavy on symbolism and light on immediate results, but the after-shocks have the ability to shift Cuba's future, analysts said.

"The most important effect of the whole visit in my view is the 'I can hardly believe my eyes' factor that it is happening," said Paul Webster Hare, who teaches international relations at Boston University.

The three-day visit to Havana was the first by a US president in 88 years and, more importantly, the first since a communist regime took power in the wake of Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution, turning Cuba into a Soviet ally and bitter enemy of the United States.

Analysts said that by coming in peace and calling for full restoration of neighborly relations, Obama undermined the decades-old logic that helped keep the Cuban government in power as a self-declared bastion against US imperialism.

And if the once unimaginable visit could be successful, "why not many other things?" Hare asked.

"The visit fuels the expectation of all Cubans that urgent change is needed in economic opportunities and the suffocating government controls. Old revolutionary rhetoric and blaming the US embargo for everything is no longer enough."

The US embargo against Cuba remains in place and it has long provided Cubans and their government a powerful motive to unite against the exterior threat.

But Obama addressed that too, with a powerful call on the more hawkish US Congress led by his Republican foes to scrap the sanctions.

- Great communicator -

Obama's other principal achievement, analysts say, is having been allowed to speak directly to the Cuban people -- a first in a relationship long characterized by lack of communication or propaganda.

That he managed to get a message across in a state where the government controls all the media was even more groundbreaking.

Contact with ordinary Cubans was kept to a minimum by President Raul Castro, the 84-year-old younger brother of Fidel.

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But Obama made up for that with a barnstorming speech broadcast live on Cuban television Tuesday, the kind of speech Cubans are unlikely to hear from Castro.

"Obama gives a very good speech. I was never bored and he had a clear message about hope for the future," said Freddy Lafont, a 19-year-old guitarist who was listening.

"I think the speech was evidence that Obama believes that public diplomacy can work with Cuba in 2016," Hare said.

"In other words, a US president can effectively engage directly with an overseas public not just with its government."

Showing his comfort in front of the camera -- in marked contrast to the more awkward-looking Castro -- Obama even reached out to Cubans by taking part in a sketch with the country's most popular television comedy character.

- Castro faces questions -

Almost as unusual as a US president addressing Cubans was the Cuban leader having to take unscripted questions live on television from journalists.

A US reporter immediately asked about the most sensitive issue, Cuba's treatment of dissidents.

Castro answered angrily that Cuba did not have any political prisoners, then complained that there were too many questions, frequently looking highly uncomfortable with the experience.

But the event helped show that Castro is making an effort to roll back the old dynamics of the US-Cuban relationship.

"The goal for Obama is to make dismantling of the embargo something irreversible and for that he must turn Raul Castro into a partner," said Arturo Lopez-Levy, a political analyst at the university of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

Raul Castro showed "that despite his age he is still flexible enough to do what his brother Fidel wasn't able to do."

The timing was also important: in less than three weeks, the Cuban Communist Party will meet on future policy.

Jorge Duany, from the Cuban Research Institute at Florida University, said that Castro will probably push for economic change -- but not political.

"This visit will deepen ties between the two countries in terms of business, transport and communications and contact between the two peoples," he said.

"It's unlikely that this visit will have an impact on electoral reform."
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Monday that NATO could help Libya counter Islamic State militants as well as train and assist troops in Iraq, Jordan and elsewhere to fight the insurgent group. "We are continuing to cooperate on an ongoing basis about operations potentially in areas like Libya where you have the beginnings of a government," Obama told reporters after meeting Stoltenberg in the Oval Office. Western governments have been concerned that Islamic State is expanding in Libya as the U.S.-led coalition squeezes the militants' territory in Syria and Iraq. Stoltenberg said the 28-country North Atlantic Treaty Organization is looking at how it could help stabilize and support countries in the region where Islamic State is operating, including Libya. "NATO stands ready to provide support," he said, noting recent progress in Libya toward forming a national unity government. Obama and Stoltenberg said they also discussed support NATO can provide to prevent deaths of refugees making the dangerous journey to flee Syria for Turkey and Greece. On Afghanistan, NATO and the United States are working to help the government and train its security forces to push back against the Taliban, a topic Obama said would be further discussed at a NATO summit in Warsaw in July. Obama praised NATO, but did not respond to questions from reporters about recent comments from Donald Trump, the front-runner in the Republican race for the Nov. 8 presidential election, who called the group "obsolete" and too expensive. "NATO continues to be the linchpin, the cornerstone of our collective defense and U.S. security policy," Obama said in his remarks. "This is obviously a tumultuous time in the world. Europe is a focal point of a lot of these stresses and strains in the global security system," he said. Stoltenberg said NATO is working with its members to make good on their pledges to increase defense spending. (Reporting by Roberta Rampton and Timothy Gardner; Editing by James Dalgleish)
Moscow (AFP) - A virtuoso concert cellist who calls President Vladimir Putin a "brother", Sergei Roldugin has flown under the radar while other close friends of the Russia leader openly amassed vast fortunes.

But now the "Panama Papers" leaks have put the godfather to Putin's eldest daughter at the head of an offshore empire worth more than $2 billion and sparked fresh speculation on the Russian leader's personal wealth.

Documents from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, analysed by Russian journalists, offer a glimpse into a web of obscure deals between Russian state companies and offshore firms owned by Roldugin that made "tens of millions of rubles per day" over the decade between 2006 and 2015.

The firms, just one of which, Sandalwood Continental, funnelled a total of $2 billion, were managed by individuals linked with Bank Rossiya, according to Novaya Gazeta, whose reporters are part of an international group of journalists poring through the 11.5 million leaked documents.

The companies clinched cheap loans and appeared to make money out of thin air by signing deals with state firms and pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation when the deals were broken off.

Among the investments made by the firms linked to Roldugin were into yachts and resorts in Russia. One ski resort was reported as the location of the wedding of Putin's youngest daughter Yekaterina.

- 'Like a brother' -

The secretive web of Roldugin's assets appears to be just the latest evidence of how an elite close to Putin has amassed huge fortunes through favourable deals during his time in power.

From his former judo sparring partners to ex-KGB comrades, close associates of the strongman leader have become billionaires by winning state contracts in key energy and infrastructure sectors.

Beyond his official salary, the extent of Putin's personal wealth has never been revealed, but allegations are rife that he essentially controls the money his friends have amassed.

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The United States and European Union have slapped sanctions over Ukraine against close Putin associates, including Bank Rossiya, which the US Treasury identified in March 2014 as a "personal bank" for the Kremlin elite.

Up until now, Roldugin, 64, has appeared nowhere on these lists, although he is a close confidant of the Russian leader.

In the book "First Person", a collection of interviews published in March 2000, when most of the world had little idea of who Putin was, Roldugin takes centre stage as the Russian president's intimate friend.

A native of Putin's hometown Leningrad -- now Saint Petersburg -- he met the future Russian leader in 1977 and is the godfather of his oldest daughter Maria.

"We were not apart after that," the musician said in one of the interviews for the book. "He is like a brother to me."

While Putin headed into the KGB secret service, Roldugin turned to arts and rose to become a respected conductor and cellist working in Saint Petersburg's Mariinsky theatre who last year judged the prestigious Tchaikovsky Competition.

A source in the cellist's circle told Novaya Gazeta that Putin picked a modest man "he could trust without any doubt" for the job of guarding his fortune, comparing him with Prince Myshkin, the kind and simple "Idiot" protagonist of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel.

- No Russia fallout -

"Putin's idea was to store his personal stolen cash in the most unexpected of places, with the most unexpected of individuals," wrote protest leader Alexei Navalny, who has been looking into cronyism and suspicious state-backed deals for years.

He added that the leak from the Panama law firm revealed "not even the tip of the iceberg" of the vast capital amassed by Russia's elite, but even this fraction is "perfectly enough for impeachment."

In Russia, however, there is little likelihood that the revelations will rattle Putin's firm grip on power or dent his reputation.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov slammed the leaks as an attack on the Kremlin strongman designed to destabilise Russia.

Asked about Putin's connections with Roldugin, Peskov confirmed he is still a friend of the president but insisted that "Putin has a lot of friends".

"From the outside, Russia's leadership already has an image that is hard to tarnish further," said Nikolai Petrov, who lectures at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.

Inside Russia, public opinion is unlikely to swayed, although some of the elite "may be forced to think about themselves and their prospects."

"The main reaction will be that it's a special campaign against Russia," he said.
Oscar Isaac has carved out a space in his busy film and television schedule for a return to the stage, to play the brooding Danish prince in Hamlet for off-Broadway's Theatre for a New Audience in summer 2017.

Sam Gold, who won a Tony Award in 2015 for his direction of Fun Home, will stage the production at TFANA's Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn. The run is scheduled to begin previews next year on June 4, with an official June 22 opening. The limited engagement will play through July 30.

A Juilliard graduate whose stock as a film and television actor has soared in recent years, Isaac has long desired to come back to the New York stage, where his early appearances include two Shakespeare in the Park productions, Two Gentlemen of Verona and Romeo and Juliet, the latter in the title role opposite Lauren Ambrose. His most recent theater role was in Zoe Kazan's play We Live Here in 2011, which was also directed by Gold.

Since then, his run of acclaimed screen work has included Inside Llewyn Davis, A Most Violent Year, Ex Machina and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. He won a Golden Globe this year for his lead performance in the HBO limited series Show Me a Hero, and will next be seen on the big screen as the new villain in X-Men: Apocalypse, opening May 27. Isaac also will return as Poe Dameron in Star Wars: Episode VIII, currently in production.

Gold has been praised for his staging of new works, including Annie Baker's plays Circle Mirror Transformation, The Aliens, The Flick and John. He will tackle his first Shakespeare drama in a professional production next fall, with Othello for Classic Stage Company, starring Daniel Craig and David Oweloyo.

TFANA is currently wrapping its run of Pericles, starring Christian Camargo.

Read More: Daniel Craig, David Oyelowo to Co-Star Off-Broadway in 'Othello'
(Reuters) - Five people were killed on Monday when a sightseeing helicopter crashed and burned in a Smoky Mountains area of eastern Tennessee, authorities said.

No one on the ground was injured in the crash, said Tennessee Emergency Management Agency spokesman Dean Flener. He confirmed that five people were killed, but had no further information on the incident.

The owner of Smoky Mountain Helicopters said the crash occurred in Sevier County, about 200 miles east of Nashville, local TV station WVLT reported.

"(It's) just a burnt mess ... there's not much left," Jack Baldwin, the chief of police in Pigeon Forge, was quoted as saying by TV station WBIR.

Police and the helicopter company could not be immediately reached for comment.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said local authorities notified them that a Bell 206 sightseeing helicopter crashed near Sevierville at 3:30 p.m. The helicopter was destroyed by fire, local authorities told the FAA.

The FAA did not have details on fatalities and was awaiting information from the scene.

The helicopter company has been offering sightseeing flights of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and surrounding areas since 1964, according to its website.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas, and Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Chris Reese and Sandra Maler)
Rescuers were battling Monday to reach thousands of people stranded by floods and landslides in Pakistan's northwest and parts of Kashmir, officials said, as the death toll rose to 61.

Disaster management officials in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where 51 people have died since the downpour began Saturday night, said bad weather was hampering the rescue and relief operation.

"Death toll has been risen to 51, at least 150 houses have been destroyed," an official of the Provincial Disaster Management Authority told AFP, requesting anonymity as he was not authorised to talk to media.

Latifur Rehman, a spokesman for the Authority, told AFP that rescue workers had not been able to reach three affected districts in the far-flung mountainous north of the province.

"Bad weather is the main reason, we are yet unable to send helicopters to these areas," Rehman said.

Rehman said they had received reports that at least 180 houses had been destroyed in those areas.

"We need to get bodies and the injured out from under the rubble and provide food and tents to the survivors," Rehman said, adding that four truckloads of supplies had been sent to affected districts.

"All roads leading to villages and other areas have been blocked... There is no movement at all," Khalid Khan, a courier company owner in Shangla district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, told AFP, adding that local hospitals lack the facilities to deal with the injured.

In Pakistan-administered Kashmir's Neelum Valley, officials said thousands were stranded by landslides.

At least ten people, including five children, died there when two houses were buried in a landslide caused by the rains, Raja Moazzam, a spokesman for local disaster management authority told AFP.

Mainly dry weather was expected in most parts of Pakistan from Monday, according to the meteorological department's website, though thunderstorms were still predicted for Kashmir.

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Poorly-built homes across the country, particularly in rural areas, are prone to collapse during the annual spring rains, which are often heavy.

Severe weather hits Pakistan annually, and in recent years hundreds have been killed and huge tracts of prime farmland destroyed, which has delt a heavy blow to the largely agrarian economy.

During the rainy season last summer, torrential downpours and flooding killed 81 people and affected almost 300,000 across the country and in Kashmir.
By Elida Moreno PANAMA CITY (Reuters) - The head of a Panama-based law firm at the center of a massive leak of offshore financial data on Sunday denied any wrongdoing, and said his firm has fallen victim to "an international campaign against privacy". German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung said it received a cache of 11.5 million leaked documents from the law firm's database, and shared them with more than 100 other international news outlets as well as the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). Ramon Fonseca, the director of Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, specialized in setting up offshore companies, said in a telephone interview with Reuters that his firm had suffered a successful but "limited" hack. Fonseca, the firm's co-founder and until March a senior government official in Panama, said his firm has formed more than 240,000 companies, adding that the "vast majority" have been used for "legitimate purposes." The ICIJ report published on Sunday details billions of dollars of shadowy financial transactions moved through numerous offshore accounts. Britains Guardian newspaper said the documents showed a network of secret offshore deals and loans worth $2 billion led to close friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Reuters couldn't independently confirm those details. Fonseca emphasized that the firm is not responsible for the activities of the companies it incorporates. "We're dedicated to making legal structures which we sell to intermediaries such as banks, lawyers, accountants and trusts, and they have their end-customers that we don't know," said Fonseca. He said that all of the firm's clients have been notified of "this problem," arguing that the firm has been caught up in an international anti-privacy campaign. "We believe there's an international campaign against privacy. Privacy is a sacred human right (but) there are people in the world who do not understand that and we definitely believe in privacy and will continue working so that legal privacy can work," he said. The law firm said in a separate statement published by the Guardian: "It appears that you have had unauthorized access to proprietary documents and information taken from our company and have presented and interpreted them out of context." Panama's government said in a statement on Sunday that it will cooperate with any eventual judicial proceeding relating to the allegations in the report. (Reporting by Elida Moreno; Writing by David Alire Garcia; Editing by Simon Gardner and Mary Milliken)
Reykjavik (AFP) - Iceland's prime minister is in the hot seat after the leaked "Panama Papers" sparked allegations that he and his wife used an offshore firm to hide million-dollar investments, with thousands taking to the streets demanding he quit.

Huge crowds poured into the square outside parliament in Reykjavik late Monday calling for Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson to step down over financial records showing that he and his wife bought a company in the British Virgin Islands in 2007.

He sold his 50-percent share to his wife Anna Sigurlaug Palsdottir for a symbolic sum of one dollar at the end of 2009.

But when he was elected to parliament for the first time in April 2009, as a member of the centre-right Progressive Party, he neglected to mention his stake in his declaration of shareholdings.

As the crowds gathered outside parliament, he told public broadcaster RUV he regretted not revealing this sooner.

The issue is particularly sensitive in Iceland, a country marked by the excesses of the 2000s when senior bankers used shell companies in tax havens to conceal their dealings in risky financial products.

Police said the crowds that turned out in Reykjavik on Monday night outnumbered the thousands who in 2009 brought down the right-wing government over its responsibility in Iceland's 2008 banking collapse.

Iceland's big banks collapsed in October 2008 after borrowing beyond their means to fund ambitious investments abroad. Before their collapse, their liabilities were worth more than ten times Iceland's total GDP.

The crash led to an unprecedented financial crisis, a deep recession and a bailout from the International Monetary Fund.

Gunnlaugsson, a former journalist, insists that despite the financial turbulence he was never tempted to move his money offshore and that his wife paid all her taxes in Iceland.

"She has neither utilised tax havens nor can you say that her company is an offshore company," Gunnlaugsson said on his website.

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In an interview with Swedish public television SVT recorded last month, excerpts of which were aired in Iceland on Sunday, he became visibly upset after being repeatedly asked about his wife's company, eventually storming out of the room.

"It's like you are accusing me of something," he declared.

- 'Lack of faith' in Iceland -

Elected prime minister in 2013, 41-year-old Gunnlaugsson was seen as a refreshing change from the political old guard, which was accused of having turned a blind eye to the banks' reckless investments.

His wife, also 41, is the daughter of a businessman who made a fortune from having Iceland's only Toyota dealership.

On March 15, before the "Panama Papers" leaks in the international media, she took to Facebook to acknowledge the existence of Wintris, the company that she and Gunnlaugsson acquired in 2007 to manage her inheritance from her father.

She said that with the help of international consultancy KPMG, she had made sure to pay all her taxes in Iceland.

But the pressure on Gunnlaugsson continues to mount, with the left-wing opposition expected to table a motion of no confidence in parliament this week.

"The prime minister should immediately resign," former Social Democratic prime minister Johanna Sigurdardottir said in a message posted on Facebook.

Gunnlaugsson had "displayed his lack of faith in the Icelandic currency and economy by placing his money in a tax haven," she wrote.

While the opposition would likely back the call for his resignation, Gunnlaugsson's Progressive Party would probably oppose it, leaving the junior member of his governing coalition, the right-wing Independence Party, holding the balance of power.

Gunnlaugsson insisted Monday he would not resign.

"I have not considered quitting because of this matter, nor am I going to quit because of this matter," he told Channel 2 television.

A source of particular embarrassment for Gunnlaugsson, who led a public revolt against the drastic repayment conditions initially imposed by countries whose citizens lost money in the banking collapse, is the fact that Wintris is listed among the banks' creditors, with millions of dollars in claims.

"It is sad that those who... say they will lead by example (and) say that the big plan is to believe in Iceland then decide that their money is better kept elsewhere," prominent Icelandic historian and intellectual Gudni Johannesson told RUV.
Beirut (AFP) - Syria's regime has been able to circumvent international sanctions and fund its war effort through shadow companies, according to leaked "Panama Papers" seen by French daily Le Monde.

The newspaper reported on Monday that three Syrian companies, Pangates International, Maxima Middle East Trading, and Morgan Additives Manufacturing, used the services of Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca to create shadow companies in the Seychelles.

Le Monde, a partner in the year-long worldwide media investigation into a trove of 11.5 million documents leaked from Mossack Fonseca, said the shadow companies were "a way for the Syrian regime to circumvent international sanctions imposed since the start of the war".

The three firms are under US sanctions for allegedly providing petroleum supplies to President Bashar al-Assad's regime likely to be used by his military, including aviation fuel.

Since the start of Syria's war in 2011, tens of thousands of people have been killed and thousands of homes destroyed in air raids and barrel bomb strikes.

Le Monde said the leaked documents show Mossack Fonseca continued to work with at least one of the companies, Pangates, until at least nine months after the sanctions were announced.

Pangates belongs to the Damascus-based Abdulkarim group, which is close to the Syrian government, Le Monde said.

The probe, coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, has exposed a tangle of financial dealings by global elites.

Assad's billionaire cousin Rami Makhlouf, who is facing sanctions, was also shown by the leaks as long having registered companies in tax havens.

Syria's most notorious and powerful tycoon, Makhlouf founded shadow companies such as Drex Technologies SA, which was registered in the British Virgin Islands in 2000 and which it took Mossack Fonseca a decade to grow concerned about, Le Monde reported.

In 2011, the law firm cut ties with Makhlouf, just after the outbreak of the revolt calling for Assad's ouster.
Panama City (AFP) - Panama's government vowed Sunday to "vigorously cooperate" with any legal probe that might be launched in the wake of the "Panama Papers" data leak.

"The Panamanian government will vigorously cooperate with any request or assistance necessary in the event of any legal action occurring," it said in a statement.

The Central American nation is reeling from revelations that one of its high-profile but secretive law firms, Mossack Fonseca, allegedly helped major politicians and celebrities around the world hide assets from tax authorities, according to a data leak picked over by scores of media outlets.
Paris (AFP) - Stocks in French telecoms companies fell sharply on Monday after market leader Orange said talks to purchase the rival network owned by industrial group Bouygues had failed.

The company said that "after in-depth discussions, the Board of Directors of Orange has concluded that an agreement regarding a possible consolidation with Bouygues Telecom has not been reached.

"The decision has therefore been taken to end the discussions with Bouygues that have been ongoing since" January, Orange said in a statement Friday.

Shares in Orange closed 6.2 percent lower at 14.45 euros on Monday, Bouygues fell 13.5 percent to 30.42, Iliad, parent company of the Free operator, dropped 15.1 percent to 190 euros and Numericable-SFR closed 18 percent down at 29.90.

"There was much expectation surrounding the talks by the four operators," said HPC trader Xavier de Villepion. "It was in their interest to reach a conclusion."

Deutsche Bank's recommendation for Orange shares went from "neutral" from "buy", while Berenberg now calls Bouygues a "sell" from its previous "neutral" call.

Sources said that the valuation of the two companies was one of the main sticking points in the talks and would have resulted in the number of mobile operators in France dropping to three -- a number that many analysts believe is all the French market can bear, instead of the current four.

Another was the risks that the deal would be blocked by competition authorities over concerns it could lead to higher prices for consumers.

Bouygues chairman Martin Bouygues told daily Le Figaro's online edition that three of France's big players had wanted the merger to succeed but the fourth, whom he did not name, had put a spanner in the works.

"There were four of us around the negotiating table, but only three of us wanted to make it work," he said in remarks published Monday.

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"Clearly one the players had the ambition to get the most while paying the least, with the option of pulling out," he said.

Asked whether he meant Free chairman Xavier Niel, Bouygues said: "Everyone is entitled to their own interpretation."

The two companies announced publicly in January they were holding talks, the second time they have considered a tie-up, and the fifth attempt in two years to consolidate the market where operators have been slashing prices to capture customers.

"Orange will pursue the deployment of its strategic plan, launched in 2015, that is focused on investment in very high-speed broadband networks and providing an unmatched customer experience," said the company, adding its financial targets remain unchanged.

The deal would have seen considerable concentration of the market as Orange held 38.8 percent of the market at the end of last year, with Bouygues Telecom in third position with 16.3 percent.

A considerable portion of Bouygues Telecom's network was expected to be immediately sold off by Orange to the other two operators in the market in order to alleviate competition concerns.

The French state, which still owns 23 percent in Orange, the successor to the national phone operator, played a key role in the outcome of the talks, according to one source.

"The state wanted Orange shares to be valued at a price much higher than at the market" and imposed conditions that were likely to be difficult for the Bouygues group to accept, said the person familiar with the talks.

"It got so complex that it failed," said another source. "We ended up with a monster of a deal that contained too large uncertainties concerning competition and in the end Bouygues found it too risky."

Martin Bouygues told the Figaro that he was "not worried" about his company's future. "The company is perfectly viable in a four-player market," he said.
Washington (AFP) - The Pentagon confirmed Monday that a senior Shebab leader targeted in a drone strike in Somalia last week was killed in the attack.

Hassan Ali Dhoore, who was killed Thursday, allegedly was part of the Islamist insurgent group's security and intelligence wing, and had been involved in planning attacks in Mogadishu.

"The Department of Defense has confirmed that Hassan Ali Dhoore, a senior leader of Al-Shebab, Al-Qaeda's affiliate in Somalia, was killed as a result of a US military strike in Somalia carried out on March 31," Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said.

"He has planned and overseen attacks resulting in the death of at least three US citizens," he added.

Shebab jihadists have claimed responsibility for a string of recent attacks including a twin bombing at a busy restaurant in the Somali city of Baidoa in February.

The strike against Dhoore comes less than a month after US drones and warplanes hammered a Shebab training camp in Somalia, killing more than 150 fighters the Pentagon said were prepping for a "large-scale" attack.
Those of a certain age group undoubtedly remember the key moments in the O.J. Simpson trial. The gloves. Judge Ito and his courtroom antics. Johnnie Cochran's impassioned plea with the jury to acquit. That Bronco chase, perhaps. But with time comes a tendency to forget.

For The People v. O.J. Simpson scribes Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander, diving back into that case was like going down the proverbial rabbit hole. Reading Jeffrey Toobin's book, The Run of His Life, on which the series was based, was only the beginning. They claim to have 40 or 50 books sitting in their offices, including Simpson's tome If I Did It, which was ghostwritten by Pablo Fenjves - a witness for the prosecution in the original case. They also waded through a plethora of information, footage and interviews, resulting in the script viewers have seen unfold on FX each week for the past several weeks. It all culminates with Tuesday's finale, "The Verdict."

Read More: Emmys: Verdict Reached for 'People v. O.J. Simpson' Stars' Categorizations

"It was important to us that the last episode ends dramatically, but we also knew at the time that we were going to have to hint about what was going to happen afterwards," Karaszewski tells The Hollywood Reporter. "The essential thing was wrapping up O.J.'s personal story, which was that when he got out, he thought 'not guilty' meant he would be able to go back to his old life of doing Hertz commercials and Naked Gun movies. We had to communicate that his life was going to be ruined, that he could never go back to being the guy he once was."

Fitting everything into the tight timeline means that certain aspects of the trial wound up compressed (days of DNA evidence wound up warranting a dramatic three-minute scene), while other tidbits were left on the cutting room floor. Alexander and Karaszewski recall Vanity Fair writer Dominick Dunne being called away to do a Princess Diana profile in the middle of the trial, but being worried that he'd lose his seat until Ito convinced him to go. The first thing she asked about was the trial. Or an earlier script of their finale that included Marcia Clark's emergency dental surgery the night before closing arguments, in which she returned to her office immediately afterwards to continue working through the night.

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"There was also a police pal of O.J.'s named Ron Shipp who was at that time working security for O.J. and had this wackadoodle story that O.J. had told him about a dream where he had killed Nicole Brown," Alexander says. "Shipp actually testified and looked O.J. in the eye and said, 'This is sad O.J., this is sad.' Then suddenly Ron Shipp was being jumped upon in the press the next day as a traitor to the black community. It's endless, how much of this stuff there was."

Read More: 'People v. O.J. Simpson's' David Schwimmer: Robert Kardashian "Never Recovered" After the Trial

Once the cameras fade out on Tuesday, there are no plans for the scribes to follow-up with any more Simpson-related projects. The duo are still disappointed, however, that they weren't able to somehow incorporate E!'s coverage of the subsequent civil trial, which included nightly reenactments of the transcripts by paid actors when new judge Hiroshi Fujisaki disallowed cameras in the courtroom.

"There's a world where other writers would have said 'Oh, fun, we'll put it in anyway.' But we didn't want to fudge anything major," Alexander says

The duo will remain on board as producers for the second season of American Crime Story, but have no plans to write it. They're also developing Toobin's latest book, about Patty Hearst's kidnapping, into a big screen adaptation for Fox 2000 now that "the ink is wet" on that tome.

"It has a lot of parallels to the O.J. trial in the sense that it was this huge case in the middle of the 1970s in which the radical kidnappers sort of used the press to push their agenda and it became a bit of a media circus as well," Alexander says. "Obviously there are like 29 more O.J. programs that are going to show up on TV - a tidal wave, or a tsunami of O.J. projects. But I can't imagine the purpose of dramatizing anything further."

The People v. O.J. Simpson wraps Tuesday at 10 p.m. on FX.

What have you thought of the series? Sound off in the comments below.

Twitter: @amber_dowling
LIMA (Reuters) - Peru's presidential front-runner Keiko Fujimori signed a pledge at a debate on Sunday committing her to avoiding the authoritarian ways of her father, in a final appeal to middle-ground voters ahead of next week's ballot. Fujimori, 40-year-old daughter of ex-president Alberto Fujimori, has long enjoyed a double-digit lead over her nine rivals but she is not expected to win the simple majority needed to avoid a presidential election run-off in June. The center-right candidate has struggled to calm fears that she will reactivate the government of her father, now serving a 25-year sentence for human rights abuses and corruption. "I know how to look at the history of my country. I know what chapters should be repeated and I'm very clear on which ones shouldn't," Fujimori said during her final message in the debate. The document she signed committed her to respecting human rights, freedom of the press and democratic institutions that her father weakened as he consolidated power. "Never another 5th of April!" Fujimori said, referring to the day 24 years ago when her father shuttered congress and intervened in the courts with the backing of the military. Fujimori also vowed to give the opposition control of oversight and intelligence committees in congress and reiterated a promise to provide reparations to scores of women forcibly sterilized during her father's 1990-2000 government. Critics dismissed the pledge as a cynical ploy for votes. "The same mafia, the same sweet-talk," the collective No To Keiko said on Twitter. Opposition to Fujimori has eased as it looks increasingly likely that she will face 35-year-old leftist lawmaker Veronika Mendoza in a polarizing run-off race. Mendoza has risen to statistically tie for second place with 77-year-old investor-favorite Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in three recent opinion polls, as support for him remains largely flat. Mendoza, who wore her hair in a braid at the debate and opened her speech with a greeting in the indigenous language Quechua, appeared confident as she renewed promises to ditch the business-friendly constitution that Alberto Fujimori enacted in 1993 for a new one that empowers the poor. About 60 percent of Peruvians have made up their minds about who to vote for, according to Ipsos. President Ollanta Humala, who narrowly beat Fujimori during her first presidential bid in 2011, will hand over power on July 28. He is constitutionally barred from seeking a second term. (This version of the story corrects penultimate paragraph to say about 60 percent of Peruvians had decided who to vote for, instead of nearly 60 percent undecided) (Reporting By Mitra Taj)
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)
Paris (AFP) - Two pig's heads were found Thursday attached to the fence of the Moroccan ambassador's residence in a chic suburb of the French capital, police said.

"The pig's heads were discovered by security staff on Thursday at 9:00 am. The ambassador was present," a police source told AFP.

The embassy, situated in Neuilly-sur-Seine to the west of Paris, has filed a formal complaint to police.

"We don't want to interpret this act, it's up to the authorities to investigate," an embassy official said.

Anouar Kbibech, head of the French Council for the Muslim Faith (CFCM) and the Morocco-linked Group of Muslims in France (RMF), said there was an "unhealthy atmosphere" in France "in which Muslims are the target of acts of stigmatisation".

"The attack on the ambassador's residence shows that this provocation has moved up a level," Kbibech said.

"This latest desecration is aimed at the embassy of a country which is an ally of France, engaged in the prevention of radicalisation and the fight against terrorism," he added.

Pig's heads have been left outside mosques in several French cities in recent years and a rise in anti-Muslim acts was recorded in the wake of the gun and suicide attacks on Paris in November last year which left 130 dead.
Two passenger planes collided late Monday on an airport runway in the Indonesian capital, an airline spokesman said, causing minor damage but no injuries to passengers.

A Batik Air plane carrying 49 passengers and seven crew was taking off from Jakarta's Halim Perdanakusuma airport when it clipped a TransNusa plane being towed across the runway.

Andy Saladin, a spokesman for Lion Air Group, said the pilot aborted the takeoff of the Boeing 737-800 aircraft to ensure the safety of those onboard.

"All the passengers and crew are safe, and will be flown using a replacement aircraft," Saladin said in a statement.

Batik Air is part of Lion Group, which runs Indonesia's biggest low-cost carrier Lion Air.

Transport ministry spokesman J.A. Barata also confirmed there were no casualties and all passengers and crew were safely evacuated.

The left wing of the Batik flight was damaged in the clash and the tail of the ATR craft operated by TransNusa -- another domestic airline mainly serving the east of the archipelago -- was also mangled, Barata said.

Pictures on social media showed scorch marks around the damaged sections, with videos posted online capturing a brief fire before it was brought under control by emergency crews.

Barata said the airport in Jakarta's east -- primarily a military and government terminal that services some domestic routes -- would be temporarily closed following the incident.

Edward Sirait, the president director of the Lion Air Group, said the company would await the results of an official investigation.

Indonesia's air travel industry is booming, with the number of domestic passengers growing significantly over the past decade, but it has a dismal air safety record and reputation for chaotic regulation.

In 2013 a Lion Air jet with a rookie pilot at the controls undershot the runway and crashed into the sea in Bali, splitting the plane in two.

In December the following year an AirAsia plane crash between Indonesia's second-largest city Surabaya and Singapore killed all 162 people on board.
JAKARTA (Reuters) - Two planes collided on a runway at a city airport in the Indonesian capital late on Monday, forcing passengers to evacuate using inflatable ramps. No casualties were reported, according to a statement from the transportation ministry. A Boeing 737-800 operated by Batik Air, the full-service arm of one of Asias biggest airline operators Lion Air Group, was attempting to take off from Halim Perdanakusuma airport when its wing clipped the tail of a smaller plane being towed off the runway. All passengers and crew were safely evacuated, the transportation ministry said in a statement, adding the airport, which services mainly domestic flights, would be closed until further notice. TV images showed the wing of the Batik Air aircraft in flames as fire trucks and ambulances gathered on the runway. Indonesia has seen a boom in air travel and budget carriers have proliferated at among the fastest paces in the region. But airport infrastructure in Southeast Asia's biggest economy has struggled to keep pace. Indonesia has experienced two major air crashes since late 2014, when an Air Asia plane carrying 162 passengers crashed into the Java Sea. (Reporting by Kanupriya Kapoor; editing by John Stonestreet)
By Fiona Ortiz

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Chicago police shot people in four incidents in the first three months of 2016, marking a drop in police shootings in the second-largest U.S. city at a time of national outcry over police use of lethal force.

From 2008 to 2014, there were an average of 12 incidents per quarter in which Chicago officers shot someone, according to data from the Independent Police Review Authority, an oversight body. The figures include both fatal and non-fatal shootings, and an incident sometimes includes more than one person hit by a bullet.

That quarterly average fell to seven last year.

Chicago was rocked by protests over police shootings last year after the city was forced by a judge to release a video of a white officer, Jason Van Dyke, shooting a 17-year-old black youth, Laquan McDonald, who was apparently walking away from police when he was shot 16 times.

In the wake of the protests, Mayor Rahm Emanuel fired his police chief and the Justice Department started an investigation of the Chicago Police Department to see whether there was a pattern of excessive use of lethal force.

More than 74 percent of people shot by the police between 2008 and 2015 in Chicago were African American, while the population of the city is about one-third black.

According to a Reuters review of police shooting data from Chicago, New York, Houston and Los Angeles in the years from 2007 to 2014, Chicago consistently had more police shootings than the other biggest cities in the country.

Chicago police officers interviewed by Reuters have said they are policing less aggressively due to low morale.

The turmoil within the department, now led by a new interim chief appointed by Emanuel from its ranks, comes at a time when some violent crimes are surging in the city.

Nirej Sekhon, a professor of criminal law at Georgia State University College of Law who has studied Chicago police shootings, said it is too early to say what could be behind the drop in shootings.

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In his study of police shootings in the city from 2007-2014 he claimed there may be a connection between such incidents and practices such as "stop and frisk," a policing strategy that has been controversial because of racial profiling.

"Maybe some of the more aggressive forms of policing that occur in minority communities have eased somewhat and that might have to do with the drop in police shootings," he said.

(Editing by Bill Trott)
London (AFP) - An Indian tycoon who could step in to buy some of Tata Steel's assets in Britain said Monday he hoped to avoid mass redundancies if the deal went through, as the government scrambled to find a new owner.

Sanjeev Gupta, the boss of steel and metals company Liberty House, was arriving in Britain late Monday for talks and told the BBC that he had held "very encouraging" discussions with the government.

He added that he would want to change the kind of furnaces at the main asset, the Port Talbot steel works in south Wales, and retrain some 700 workers.

"I won't undertake something which will require mass redundancies," Gupta said.

"We will look to see how we can reposition the workforce from blast furnaces to arc furnaces.

"It will require a lot of planning and execution and it cannot be done overnight but be planned over a number of years."

Prime Minister David Cameron's government has been racing to find a buyer for the Tata Steel assets and save 15,000 jobs amid growing pressure from the opposition, trade unions and the press to safeguard the iconic British steel industry which dates back to the 19th century.

India's Tata Steel announced last week it would sell off its British assets due to a global oversupply of steel, cheap imports into Europe from countries including China, high costs and currency volatility.

Frances O'Grady, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, said: "The next few days will be crucial for UK steel. Ministers need to show British steelworkers that they are on their side."

Trade unions will present an emergency plan to save jobs at the Tata Steel plants to ministers on Tuesday.

Also Tuesday, Business Secretary Sajid Javid will travel to Mumbai to meet Tata chairman Cyrus Mistry, the minister wrote on Twitter. He met Tata executives on Monday and said afterwards: "Progress is being made."

The government is working on a plan to take on some pension liabilities and reduce energy costs in a bid to make a deal more attractive to a potential buyer.

Investment firm Greybull Capital is reportedly in the running to buy another of the Tata assets, the steel works at Scunthorpe in eastern England.
Scientists have uncovered what may be a previously unknown Viking settlement in Newfoundland, Canada, news sources report.

The newly identified site, known as Point Rosee, contains a hearthstone that was likely used for working iron, making it only the second known pre-Columbian, iron-processing site in North America, the researchers told National Geographic.

The team is still examining the site, which was discovered with the help of detailed satellite images. The public can follow their progress by tuning into "Vikings Unearthed," a 2-hour NOVA special that can be watched online Monday (April 4) and on TV Wednesday (April 6). [Fierce Fighters: 7 Secrets of Viking Seamen]

The new finding isn't the first evidence that Vikings lived in North America. In the 1960s, scientists uncovered a Viking settlement, also in Newfoundland, that dated to about A.D. 1000. That settlement, called L'Anse aux Meadows, proved that Christopher Columbus wasn't the first European to set foot in the New World.

The L'Anse aux Meadows discovery also suggested that the events described in two famous texts called the Vinland sagas actually happened, said Birgitta Wallace, a Parks Canada archeologist emeritus, who helped excavate L'Anse aux Meadows, but isn't involved with work on the new site.

Those sagas tell the story of how a group of Vikings living in Greenland got lost at sea, and accidently discovered a new land, southwest of Greenland.

Now, the discovery of a second possible Viking settlement could lend more credence to the Vinland sagas, Wallace said.

"The sagas suggest a short period of activity and a very brief and failed colonization attempt," Douglas Bolender, an archaeologist specializing in Norse settlements who is working at the new site, told National Geographic. "L'Anse aux Meadows fits well with that story, but is only one site. Point Rosee could reinforce that story or completely change it if the dating is different from L'Anse aux Meadows. We could end up with a much longer period of Norse activity in the New World."

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So far, radiocarbon dates from the Point Rosee site suggest that people lived there sometime between A.D. 800 to 1300, the researchers said.

Researchers uncovered the new site using satellite technology. The space-based reconnaissance allowed scientists to look at large swaths of landscape and find archaeological disturbances within the land, some as small as 11 inches (28 centimeters) long.

The team's leader, Sarah Parcak, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and a National Geographic Fellow, won a $1 million award from TED in 2016. She used the prize money to fund, in part, the investigation into Point Rosee after the satellite imagery had revealed an anomaly at the site.

During the excavation, the team found the iron-working hearth amid the remains of what is possibly a man-made turf wall, National Geographic reported. The scientists spent 2.5 weeks at the site, and found what may be evidence that the people there roasted a type of material called of bog iron. (Iron deposits can form naturally in some bogs, and the Norse would find it and smelt it.) [In Photos: New Viking Voyage Discovered]

There is no evidence that indigenous people in North America processed iron, except for some Inuit use of meteoric iron and turf structures in the Arctic, the researchers said. Only one known culture from that period processed bog-iron ore and built turf walls in North America: the Vikings, they said.

But more research is still needed to determine whether Point Rosee is, in fact, a Viking establishment.

"It would be very exciting if this really were a Norse site," Wallace told Live Science. "[But] I think that there is not sufficient evidence to very definitely nail it down as Norse. We need a little more."

For instance, the turf walls at Point Rosee don't look like turf walls from other Norse archaeological sites, she said. Moreover, the Vikings are thought to only have landed in Greenland in about A.D. 985, Wallace said. The settlement there was small  about 400 to 500 people  and any new colonies in Newfoundland would have required a substantial number of people to sustain.

There were likely about 70 Vikings living at the L'Anse aux Meadows site, and it would have been hard for Greenland to spare even more people for the Point Rosee camp, Wallace said.

Further excavations this summer will likely reveal whether Point Rosee has more clues linking it to the Vikings, she said.

The special, which also delves into Norse history and culture, and is co-produced with the BBC, will show on pbs.org/nova at 3:30 p.m. EDT/2:30 p.m. CDT Monday (April 4) and on PBS at 9 p.m. EDT/8 p.m. CDT Wednesday (April 6).

Follow Laura Geggel on Twitter @LauraGeggel. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
By Barbara Goldberg

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Princeton University will keep former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's name on campus buildings despite student complaints about his segregationist beliefs, the Ivy League school said on Monday, while also announcing new diversity efforts.

While recommending that Wilson's name and image not be removed from Princeton's public spaces and from its Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, a trustees report said it needs to be honest in "recognizing Wilsons failings and shortcomings as well as the visions and achievements that led to the naming of the school and the college in the first place."

Wilson served as Princeton's president from 1902 to 1910 and then was the 28th U.S. president from 1913 to 1921. He was a leader of the Progressive Movement but supported racial segregation, part of public policy at the time, particularly in Southern states.

"Princeton must openly and candidly recognize that Wilson, like other historical figures, leaves behind a complex legacy with both positive and negative repercussions, and that the use of his name implies no endorsement of views and actions that conflict with the values and aspirations of our times," the trustees report said.

The Princeton trustees adopted the recommendations of a special committee formed after students demonstrated and demanded the removal of Wilson's name on campus in November amid a wave of protests at colleges across the nation over the treatment of minority students.

The school also agreed to several new initiatives to encourage diversity on campus, from encouraging a broader range of students to pursue doctoral degrees, to displaying art and logos that reflect a more racially mixed Princeton.

Some alumni expressed disappointment at the decision. I know history is complex and Wilson did a lot for Princeton but I really would have liked to see Wilson College renamed," Nadirah Farah Foley, a 2011 graduate, said on Twitter.

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Others lauded Princeton for sticking with the Wilson name, condemning his views as racist by today's standards but arguing they should not overshadow his accomplishments.

"He was president of the United States and you don't erase that by the fact that he did things that today are unacceptable," said lawyer Eric Chase, Princeton class of 1968.

The Black Justice League, which demanded Princeton scrub the Wilson name to acknowledge the racism it says the school was built on, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In March, Harvard University scrapped a law school seal associated with slavery. In January, Amherst College dropped its unofficial mascot considered hostile to Native Americans.

(Additional reporting by Marcus E. Howard; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Bill Trott)
Last week, the Kremlin took the unusual step of pre-emptively attacking a news story that was expected to reveal evidence of international corruption that comes very close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. As it turns out, Russian authorities neednt have worried too much about news organizations around the world jumping on stories about his ties to suspicious transactions and shady business deals.

That isnt because the massive report released over the weekend by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists doesnt have evidence of Putins friends and close associates enriching themselves through their connections, and sending untold millions to tax havens around the world. It does. In spades.

Related: Putin Plays Defense in Advance of Corruption Report

The report is so vast, and implicates so many world leaders, banks, law firms and celebrities, that the activities of any one group of people  including the friends and family of Vladimir Putin  make up only a small part.

The story, which involved some 370 journalists in 76 countries, was based on the leak of 40 years worth of records from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. One of the most prolific creators of shell companies in the worlds many tax havens, the firm has some 500 employees in offices around the world. (Shell companies, in this sense, refers to firms where the identity of the beneficial owner is obscured.) It reveals a vast web of financial wrongdoing that enables criminals, corrupt politicians, royalty, and others to illicitly move vast sums of money around the world in contravention of anti-money laundering laws while simultaneously avoiding taxes.

John J. Byrne, the executive vice president of the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists, a respected trade group in the fields of both law enforcement and financial services, said the revelations from the ICIJ report will have worldwide repercussions.

The information disclosed in this investigation will resonate throughout the entire global anti-money laundering community, said Byrne. We can expect major focus on reporting tax evasion, beneficial ownership and identifying all methods of disguising source of funds.

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Related: More Legal Trouble for Team Trump as Protesters File Suit

Mossack Fonseca has consistently denied involvement in any wrongdoing, according to the report. In response to accusations of facilitating illegal activity in the past, the companys founders compared it to an auto manufacturer in the sense that Ford is not responsible if one of its cars is used in a bank robbery. In response to questions from ICIJ, a company spokesman said, for 40 years Mossack Fonseca has operated beyond reproach  Our firm has never been accused or charged in connection with criminal wrongdoing.

While the revelations from the report will have to be teased out over weeks, months, and years of follow-on reporting, one of the things many Americans may be surprised to learn from the coverage is that not all tax havens are located in sunny Caribbean islands. While the vast majority of the companies formed by Mossack Fonseca for its clients were in the British Virgin Islands, others crop up in more unexpected places, like Wyoming and Nevada.

Both Wyoming and Nevada have permissive state laws that make it possible to set up a shell company within their jurisdiction. Another US state that also allows for a greater degree of corporate secrecy is Delaware.

The report also found records indicating that 1,924 companies, including banks, law firms, and other middlemen that facilitate the creation of offshore companies for Mossack Fonseca operate in the United States.

Related: Heres How Budget Cuts Have Hammered the IRS

To be clear, creating an offshore company is not illegal. Many of the companies created by the firm and its intermediaries, were undoubtedly used for perfectly legitimate purposes. However, the evidence uncovered by ICIJ appears to show that the firm knowingly and purposefully collaborated with clients in transactions that were plainly illegal.

ICIJ has promised a full data dump next month that will identify all of the companies that worked with Mossack Fonseca  something that is undoubtedly causing a lot of indigestion in boardrooms across the US and the world.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
Moscow (AFP) - The Kremlin on Monday slammed the leak of the "Panama Papers" tax documents as an attack aimed primarily at Russian President Vladimir Putin, claiming that former CIA officials helped analyse the papers.

"Putin, Russia, our country, our stability and the upcoming elections are the main target, specifically to destabilise the situation," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists.

The year-long worldwide media investigation into millions of documents leaked from a Panama-based law firm exposed a tangle of confidential financial dealings by close friends and aides of Putin.

The documents analysed by Russian journalists from Novaya Gazeta opposition newspaper put Putin's close friend at the top of an offshore empire worth more than $2 billion that has made his circle fabulously wealthy.

The Kremlin spokesman, who himself figures in the leaked documents, said there was "nothing new or concrete" about the Russian leader in the leaks, but blamed them on a mood of rampant "Putinophobia."

"It's evident that the level of Putinophobia has reached such a degree that it's impossible to say anything good about Russia a priori," he said.

He dismissed the reports, saying "there is a lack of details," while "all the rest is based on allegations and speculation."

Peskov also claimed that the investigative journalists who worked on the leaked Panama Papers from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism include "former officials from the (US) Department of State, the CIA and other special services."

The Kremlin will not respond to the claims themselves, he underlined.

"Based on what I've said, we don't want to respond, and we're not going to."
Buckle up, roller coaster enthusiasts! The amusement park Six Flags has joined forces with Samsung to bump up the thrill factor of rides with virtual-reality roller coasters that are set to be the first of their kind in North America.

Virtual reality (VR) is already changing how people experience museum exhibits and conduct medical training, and now roller coasters that blend physical sensations with digital worlds can be added to the list. Park-goers will be able to experience these new rides at six different Six Flags locations, with another opening up next Friday (Apr 9) at Six Flags New England in Agawam, Massachusetts, and two more at Six Flags The Great Escape in Lake George, New York, and La Ronde in Montreal, Canada, later this spring.

"If you like coasters at all, it's going to be absolutely mind-blowing to ride this thing," said Sam Rhodes, Six Flags' corporate director of design. "It turns grownups into little kids again. It's absolutely amazing." [Photos: Virtual Reality Puts Adults in a Child's World]

Although the rides won't be entirely new attractions, they will be outfitted with Samsung Gear VR headsets that have been adapted specifically for safe and hygienic use on the coasters. Users will still physically be on the roller coaster as they experience either a "Superman virtual reality" or a "New Revolution virtual reality," Rhodes said. In the Superman coaster, riders will take a tour of the comic-book city Metropolis and encounter Lex Luthor, Rhodes said. In the New Revolution coaster ride, riders will take part in an interactive battle against futuristic aliens.

Combining the virtual-reality experience with the physical sensations of the roller coaster will increase the thrill factor up to 10 times, Rhodes told Live Science. And psychologists agree that the innovative VR roller coasters will probably achieve this effect by activating certain areas of a person's brain more than a typical roller coaster or virtual-reality experience alone would.

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"Basically, you're taking an already novel, exciting event and putting on top of it another exciting, novel event so you get an additive effect," said Michael Bardo, a professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, who has studied sensation-seeking behavior.

New and exciting events reinforce limbic reward circuits in the brain, said Bardo, just like food, sex and some drugs. These experiences trigger the release of a feel-good chemical called dopamine, and this, combined with the adrenaline from twists and flips on the roller coaster, gives people the feeling of excitement or fear, he added.

Generally, seeking such novel experiences is biologically advantageous. People who had new experiences and went out in search for food or better places to live had higher chances of survival, Bardo told Live Science.

But people are usually able to tell the difference between a virtual experience and a novel real-life experience, according to Mayank Mehta, a neurophysicist at the University of California, Los Angeles. In lab experiments on rats, he found that the brain does not form a mental map of virtual surroundings the way it does in real-world settings. Nearly 60 percent of the specialized "GPS cells" in the brain that create mental maps shut down when in a virtual setting, he said.

"If you are in virtual reality  no matter how compelling it is  you know that it is virtual and it's not real," Mehta said. "It's like when you're in an IMAX theater, you somehow know that it's not real because your neurons are able to tell the difference." [VR Headset Mega Guide: Features and Release Dates]

When making a map of space, the brain takes into account smells, sounds, body motion and other aspects of the environment, in addition to visual information. This is why virtual-reality technology makes some users feel nauseous. Inconsistent signals from the eyes and the rest of the body, especially regarding whether a virtual reality user is moving or not, disturb the brain and cause what scientists call "cybersickness," said Stefano Triberti, a psychologist at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, who studies how people mentally process being in a virtual space.

"In the case of the roller coaster, this inconsistency will be less strong because riders will be moving," Triberti said, adding that "there will more information coming from the environment that says we are moving in tune with the virtual experience  there will be wind in our faces, variations in gravity, etcetera."

As long as the virtual-reality experience and the twists of the roller coaster are in sync, riders will feel the physical forces and lean into the loops, without feeling nauseous. Riders may actually feel even less nauseous than they might on any other roller coaster, said Rhodes, because they would be so engrossed in the virtual experience, they won't even notice the track. And if the ride stops midway for some reason, the visuals will also stop to maintain the synchronization, he added.

In this way, the VR version of an amusement park ride will have a unique feel to it, almost like being in a video game, said Rhodes. It will be completely immersive, letting riders interact and shoot at aliens by touching a button on the side of the headset, for example. And each ride will be unique, Rhodes said. Users can look straight ahead, down or side-to-side and discover new scenery. In fact, each time they ride the roller coaster might be a slightly different virtual experience, he said, so those riding in the front are no longer the only ones with a good view.

"We are just scratching the surface with virtual reality technology," Rhodes said. "This is the beginning of major changes in all aspects of the theme park industry. At Six Flags, innovation is in our DNA, we're always looking at the next big thing, and as we like to say, this really changes everything."

Follow Knvul Sheikh on Twitter @KnvulS. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
On April 5, 1841, the news that President William Henry Harrison was dead shocked a nation. So what killed a man who had just entered the White House 30 days prior to his death?

William_Henry_Harrison_535

Traditionally, the story told for generations is that Harrison, 68, caught a cold while speaking outside while giving his inaugural address and never fully recovered. But recent research and other theories cast doubts on that story.

Harrison came to the White House as a populist candidate in the 1840 presidential election. He was a legitimate military hero who used the classic campaign slogan, Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too, despite the fact Harrison was born into an aristocratic Virginia family.

Harrison led troops that defeated an attacking American Indian force at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, which made him a national figure. Following his military career, Harrison had mixed success as a political figure over the next 25 years. In 1836, Harrison finished second to the victorious Martin Van Buren in a divided presidential race.

Four years later, he rode into office by taking the Electoral College vote easily, but the popular vote was very close. The Whigs had won with 240 electoral votes, compared with 60 for the Democrats. But Harrison only took the popular vote by about 150,000 votes.

On March 4, 1841, Harrison gave the longest U.S. presidential inaugural address at 8,445 words. He also appeared outside without a hat or gloves, despite cold weather conditions at an estimated 48 degrees Fahrenheit. The new President then attended a parade and three inaugural balls, possibly in the same wet clothing he wore outside during the speech. He also drank at the inaugural balls.

In the week before his death, stories in appeared in national newspapers that Harrison had fallen ill after dinner on March 27, 1841. By Saturday, April 3, rumors were all over Washington that Harrison was seriously ill and regular bulletins were issued to the press. We are led to fear the worst result, reported the Baltimore Sun.

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The next day, Harrison died of complications from what was believed to be pneumonia.

The official announcement came from his Cabinet, led by Daniel Webster. An all-wise Providence having suddenly removed from this life William Henry Harrison, late President of the United States, we have thought it our duty, in the recess of Congress and in the absence of the Vice-President from the seat of Government, to make this afflicting bereavement known to the country by this declaration under our hands, the statement read.

The official physicians report, also issued on April 4, said that Harrison fell ill shortly before March 27, 1841.

The next day pneumonia, with congestion of the liver and derangement of the stomach and bowels, was ascertained to exist, the report read. Different measures were taken, including the use of laxatives, mercury and opium, to help Harrison. The stomach and intestines did not regain a healthy condition. Finally, on the 3d of April, at 3 oclock p.m., profuse diarrhea came on, under which he sank at thirty minutes to 1 oclock on the morning of the 4th, the report concluded.

So for many, many years, the story persisted that Harrison was literally killed by his own inaugural speech in 1841, after which he developed pneumonia. His condition was aggravated by his age.

However, a 2014 New York Times article written by Jane McHugh and Philip Mackowiak theorized that in reality Harrison died from enteric or typhoid fever related to Washingtons water supply

A new look at the evidence through the lens of modern epidemiology makes it far more likely that the real killer lurked elsewhere  in a fetid marsh not far from the White House, they said. During that era, untreated human waste was routinely dumped near a public water supply six blocks from the White House.

As he lay dying, Harrison had a sinking pulse and cold, blue extremities, two classic manifestations of septic shock. Given the character and course of his fatal illness, his untimely death is best explained by enteric fever, the authors concluded. (Their research was also published in the journal of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.)

The Washington Post recently hosted Mackowiak on a podcast to commemorate Harrisons presidency.

The weather was not that cold and not that damp. The whole scenario really doesnt fit the association between the inaugural address and the illness because he didnt become sick until three weeks later, he said.

Doctors records also show the President initially thought his fatigue was related to presidential campaigning that had concluded the previous November. Mackowiak also noted that the fecal matter near the White House mostly likely came from some people who had prior illness.

Harrisons last words were for his doctor. I wish you to understand the true principles of government. I wish them carried out, he said.

His vice president, John Tyler, would immediately face a daunting task in that area. The Constitution was very unclear about the concept of presidential succession. Tyler didnt want to take the presidential oath, believing that his vice presidential oath covered the eventuality of his ascension to the presidency. His cabinet and many other officials disagreed, and Tyler decided to take the oath in public on April 6, 1841.

I am the President, and I shall be held responsible for my administration. I shall be pleased to avail myself of your counsel and advice. But I can never consent to being dictated to as to what I shall do or not do. When you think otherwise, your resignations will be accepted, Tyler said.

Tyler set the presidential succession precedent that stood until the 25th Amendment was ratified in 1967, making sure that it was clear that the Vice President became President upon a vacancy in that office.

Scott Bomboy is the editor in chief of the National Constitution Center.

Presidential Stories on Constitution Daily

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50 interesting facts about Abraham Lincolns life

10 little-known facts about President Theodore Roosevelt
Idomeni (Greece) (AFP) - For the past three days, 15-year-old Ola has clung onto a scrap of cardboard bearing the number 22, hoping her turn will finally come to cross the sealed metal fence on the Greek-Macedonian border.

But with other countries on the winding refugee trail to northern Europe announcing a near-complete border shutdown, that chance now seems remote.

"We are hoping a miracle will happen," says the Syrian youngster from Aleppo, who has lived in a tent at Idomeni with her mother and two younger brothers for two weeks.

"We thought Germany wanted us. That's why we took the boat and came here."

Macedonia on Wednesday confirmed it had not allowed any refugees through, but insisted the border was not closed.

"The authorities have decided to allow in an equivalent number of migrants who can leave (Macedonian) territory," police spokeswoman Natalija Spirova told AFP.

Slovenia and Croatia, two of the countries along the route used by hundreds of thousands of people in recent months, barred entry to transiting migrants from midnight. Serbia indicated it would follow suit.

EU member Slovenia said that the only exceptions were for people wishing to claim asylum in the country or for migrants "on humanitarian grounds and in accordance with the rules of the Schengen zone," Europe's 26-country passport-free zone.

The measures follow Austria's decision in February to cap the number of migrants passing through its territory, which has led to a gradual tightening of borders through the western Balkans.

Coupled with a steady flow of new arrivals from Turkey, the border restrictions have blocked more than 14,000 mainly Syrian and Iraqi refugees in an unhygienic camp operated by beleaguered aid groups.

Recurring rainfall has turned the area into a bog.

Yuso, a 20-year-old Syrian travelling with his brother, says he is aware of the new restrictions but will soldier on nonetheless.

- 'Nothing else to do' -

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"We know about Slovenia but we'll try to cross the border, we have nothing else to do," he says.

With people routinely falsifying their queue number to skip the line for border passage, women have to intervene to stop the simmering tension from breaking into open violence.

Hundreds are waiting to see a doctor or to get a sandwich. In contrast, there are only 100 people queueing in front a UN refugee agency stand to request relocation to another EU state.

This process can take months, and refugees have no say in which country they will eventually end up.

The European Union has in place a scheme to relocate some 160,000 asylum seekers from Greece and Italy, but so far, fewer than a thousand have left.

So it's no surprise that given the option -- and the money -- most here would pay a smuggler to get them through the fence.

"Some people crossed yesterday through the forest. But we can't go with the children," says Mirvat, a 30-year-old teacher from Aleppo travelling with her three children. Her husband is missing in Syria.

"In Syria there is a war. We can't stay there or in Turkey where there is no money to live. We want to go to Germany and have a decent life," says Mirvat.

Ola says she has seen traffickers demanding 2,500 euros ($2,700) per person to provide EU documents and passports to European countries.

The Greek government says there are nearly 36,000 migrants and refugees stranded in the country, but police in the north said there were another 4,000 people unaccounted for.
Despite the fact that most historical figures are male  such as Jesus, Muhammad and the Buddha  and that most conservative religious institutions rely on male leaders, including priests and Orthodox rabbis, new data shows that women today tend to be more religious than men.

The new survey results represent six faith groups (Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews and the religiously unaffiliated) from 84 different countries, according to the Pew Research Center, which collected the data from 2008 to 2015.

After sifting through the responses, Pew found that, in general, women are more devout than men on several measures of religious commitment. But among some groups, such as Orthodox Jews and Muslims, men tend to go to religious centers more than women do, likely because they are encouraged to take part in certain services, the report found. [8 Ways Religion Impacts Your Life]

Pew asked several questions to get a better idea of how religious people were. For instance, when asked whether they affiliate with a religion, more women than men said they identified with a faith group (83.4 percent versus 79.9 percent).

"This gap of 3.5 percentage points means that an estimated 97 million more women than men claim a religious affiliation worldwide, as of 2010," Pew said in a statement.

Moreover, women tend to pray more often than men do in about half, or 43, of the countries surveyed. Only Israel, in which about 22 percent of all Jewish adults identify as Orthodox, do men report praying more times per day than women. In the remaining countries, men and women reported praying an equal amount, Pew found.

Still, daily prayer had the largest gender gap (8 percent) of all of the survey questions. Even women who said they were religiously unaffiliated, including women in the United States and Uruguay, indicated that they prayed more times per day than unaffiliated men did.

When asked how important religion was in their daily lives, women in 36 of the 84 countries rated it higher than their male counterparts did. But in 46 of the countries, men and women were equally likely to say that religion was "very important" to them. Only Israel and Mozambique had results showing that men were more likely to consider religion more important than women did.

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However, nearly equal percentages of men and women reported belief in heaven, hell and angels, Pew found. But that wasn't universally the case: Women were more likely to believe in angels in 14 of the 63 countries that were asked this question. And men were more likely than women to believe in heaven and hell in Lebanon and in angels in Pakistan.

Muslims and Christians

Muslim men and women reported being about equally religious, but that wasn't the case with Christians.

Among Muslims, women reported praying more than men by only 2 percentage points in 40 of the countries surveyed. Moreover, Muslim men attended religious services, on average, 28 percent more often than women, likely because of social norms, Pew said. But on most other points, Muslim men and women reported similar levels of devoutness behaviors. [Evolution vs. Creationism: 6 Big Battles]

In contrast, Christian women reported being far more religious than Christian men did. In 54 countries, Christian women reported praying more by a gap of about 10 percentage points compared with men. Christian women were also more likely to say that religion was "very important" to them, giving them a 7-percentage-point lead over men in this category.

In addition, Christian women were about 7 percentage points more likely than Christian men to attend weekly religious services in 53 of the countries surveyed, Pew found.

It's not entirely clear why these gender disparities exist, but researchers have considered a range of sources, including varying biology, psychology, genetics, family environment, social status, workforce participation and a lack of "existential security" felt by many women because they generally are more afflicted than men by poverty, illness, old age and violence, Pew said.

The answer likely involves multiple factors, but there is still disagreement about which issues matter more, Pew reported.

Interestingly, women who work tended to report being less religious than women who don't earn a salary, even when the researchers accounted for other factors, such as education level, age and marital status, Pew said.

This analysis about the beliefs of employed women suggests that women are not universally more religious than men, but that their devoutness could be the result of nurture (for instance, social and cultural factors) rather than nature (for example, biological or evolutionary forces).

"[It] suggest[s] that social and cultural factors, such as religious traditions and workforce participation, play an important role in shaping the religious gender gap," Pew said.

Follow Laura Geggel on Twitter @LauraGeggel. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Cannes (France) (AFP) - After the bed-hopping Borgias and the head-chopping Tudors, it is now the turn of another Renaissance dynasty, the Medicis, to get the television series treatment.

The Florentine family, which spawned no fewer than three popes and two queens of France, have now got their own period drama, "Medici: Master of Florence," starring Dustin Hoffman.

The Hollywood star plays Giovanni de Medici the patriarch of the banking family, who like many in the Machiavellian clan came to a nasty end.

His charismatic son Cosimo is played by "Game of Thrones" heart-throb Richard Madden, who was Rob Stark in the dwarves and dragons epic.

The first of its 50-minute episodes is being premiered as part of the official selection of the world's best new series at the MIPTV festival in Cannes, France, which runs until Thursday.

While sexual intrigue and power were driving forces for the Borgias and the Tudors, the series producers say money was what made the Medicis tick.

"The Medici came to power at a time of great social and economic inequality," said writer Frank Spotnitz, one of the key people behind "The X-Files".

"They were great disrupters. Their banking practises led to the creation of a middle class, making them unimaginably wealthy."

He said they used that wealth to "challenge traditional thinking" as arguably the greatest patrons of the arts of their age, commissioning work from Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.

"They ushered in a new era of revolutionary art and science such as the world had never seen. It is a powerful story that resonates even now," Spotnitz added.

- Dark drama -

A second series has already been commissioned from Italy's Lux Vide and Britain's Big Light Productions, with the first to air in Italy at the end of the year.

But despite its star power, "Medici: Master of Florence" was beaten to the inaugural Coup de Coeur award late Sunday at the festival by the dark Belgian drama "Public Enemy".

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It tells the story of the controversial release of a reviled child killer, who is released on parole to live in a monastery only for a young girl to soon go missing.

Over ten one-hour episodes, the show "questions what we do with people we consider monsters", according to the makers, Playtime Films and Entre Chien Et Loup.

Four other dark or dystopian dramas were among the remaining ten high-end series selected for the competition that was dominated by European productions.

"Bordertown" follows a serial killer on the Russian-Finnish border, while Britain's ITV took inspiration from a real-life "perfect murder" case for "The Secret", where two lovers got away with killing their partners so they could be together until the burden of guilt led one to confess.

Only after one of the church-going Northern Irish pair, played by James Nesbitt, is hit by a series of disasters which he considers to be God's vengeance, does the truth come out.

The same broadcaster also hopes to find a more family-friendly audiences for its eight-part costume drama "Victoria", which follows in the train of the 2009 film "The Young Victoria", portraying the early life of the British monarch until her marriage to the German prince, Albert.
Former Coronation Street actor Oliver Mellors real life is like a soap opera.



Hes posted a defiant selfie amid the Vernon Kay texting scandal to show a united front with girlfriend Rhian Sugden.

Mellor, who proposed to Sugden in 2014, uploaded the snap on Twitter, below, showing him cuddling up in bed to the blonde glamour model.

It comes after his 29-year-old partner made headlines for swapping text messages with married TV star Vernon for the second time since 2010.

He also used the selfie to hit back at a report in the Daily Mirror the pair had broken up.

Mellor wrote alongside the snap: If your story is true then who the f*** is this in my bed??

The actor, who previously dated Kym Marsh, was said to be angry at Sugdens revelations last week she had been in touch with the TV host but it seems the couple, pictured below last year on a night out, are sticking together.

Sugden has claimed 41-year-old Vernon had been desperate to meet up with her last month.

Mellor reportedly asked Sugden to let him discuss the situation man to man with Kay  who is married to Strictly host Tess Daley  ahead of the story breaking, but she refused.

Strictly Come Dancing co-host Daly, 47, has branded the allegations a stitch up to pals, with a source telling the Sunday Mirror she and Vernon were determined not to let the incident damage their family.

They too put on a solid front as they attended a party together in Bolton on Saturday night and the couple  who married in 2003  also ate together at a restaurant in his hometown on Friday.

Kay previously sent sexts to Sugden in 2010, and described his behaviour as foolish and stupid.

The presenter, above with Daly last year at Wimbledon, said in a statement last week: I was contacted by Rhian out of the blue back in December regarding the story in 2010 claiming she had information she wanted to pass on.

I recognise how it may look when messages are pulled out of context but there was never any inappropriate intent to our communication.

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I was merely trying to find answers to questions that Ive had since 2010. Tess is aware of everything that has been discussed with Rhian.

Meanwhile, Sugden is said to be set to cash in on her the boost to her infamy.

Interest in the blonde online has rocketed since the Kay furore and she has been posting revealing photos on social media and plugging the products of an online fitness store.

The Daily Star also claims Sudden, above partying with pals in 2010, is set to tell all about her life in a 100,000 book deal.

A source told the paper: Its no surprise to Tess that Rhian is uploading sexy shots and plugging products. This latest media frenzy has boosted Rhians profile, its like 2010 all over again.

A Twitter user called Just Me wrote: Seems somebody is after some publicity.

Pictures Getty Images/REX Features/Twitter
About a third of Americans between ages 50 and 64 plan to move within the next five years or so, according to a survey by the Demand Institute. Some baby boomers -- especially those who have been renting all their lives or who never moved up from their starter house -- actually plan to spend more on their homes in retirement. But more often than not, the baby boomer move will involve downsizing. They will trade in the old family home for smaller digs, perhaps in a less expensive neighborhood.

[See: 10 Ways to Reduce Your Housing Costs in Retirement.]

Putting the old house on the market and clearing out decades worth of possessions can involve a lot of work and emotional unrest. Many people who do not plan to move actually cite their overwhelming amount of possessions as a significant reason they are staying put. But there are enormous benefits to cleaning out the clutter and changing to a simpler lifestyle. It helps to think of a move not as downsizing, which suggests sacrifice, but as a liberating choice that points us toward a less stressful and more rewarding lifestyle.

But whether we're moving across town, across the country or not moving at all, we shouldn't let our future lives be weighed down by our past commitments or former obligations. The best solution, for all of us, is not necessarily to downsize or upsize, but to rightsize. We should choose a home, neighborhood and lifestyle that allows us to pursue our true dreams in retirement.

Here are a few suggestions inspired by a new book by Kathy Gottberg, "RightSizing: A Smart Living 365 Guide to Reinventing Retirement". She also blogs at Smart Living 365 about making "conscious choices for a better lifestyle that more closely fits your new needs in retirement."

[See: 10 Best Places to Retire on Less Than $100 a Day.]

Step off the keep up with the Joneses treadmill. Some of us have our self-esteem wrapped up in the size of our house or how fashionable our neighborhood is. But at this point in our lives, we should be beyond such superficial comparisons. It's not what you have that's so important, but what you do. So stop trying to impress your friends and neighbors, and start enjoying life as you want to live it.

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More freedom in your life. A smaller home brings lower house payments in terms of taxes, insurance, utilities and maintenance. It also means less clutter, less work and less stress. Maybe you can even get your new home without a mortgage. The money you save on your home can be used to finance the things you like to do, whether it's travel, a new hobby, helping out your children and grandchildren or shoring up your retirement savings.

More time to do the things you want. The bigger the house, the more maintenance you have to do. The more stuff you have, the more you have to clean, store, fix and find. Once you rightsize your life for your new stage -- with no kids, no job, no obligations -- you can spend your time doing the things you enjoy. You no longer take care of things for other people, but have the time and energy to pursue your own interests and passions.

A more friendly neighborhood. If you give up the big suburban yard for a little patch of cityscape, what you lose in lawn maintenance you gain in convenience. It saves time and it's more fun to walk to the corner to get your morning coffee and hook up to wi-fi, compared to climbing in the car and fighting traffic for 15 minutes to do the same thing. Also, many people benefit from a closer-knit community, and develop more friends when they're walking the dog in the neighborhood or frequenting a local restaurant rather than ranging over miles of suburban highways. One caveat: If you're sensitive to noise or bothered by the idiosyncrasies of nearby neighbors, maybe your smaller home should be in the country, not the city.

[See: 50 Affordable Places to Buy a Retirement Home in 2016.]

You have everything you need, and nothing you don't want. The key to rightsizing is to stop living for other people and to live for yourself. Stop putting off happiness for some later date, and start living the life you've always dreamed of right now. You are no longer tied to a job and an office, so you don't need to live within commuting distance to work. You can go to the seashore, the mountains, a small city or large metropolis, or even to a foreign country. Rightsizing means keeping the things that are important to you, shedding everything that has become a burden and focusing on the things that enhance your current and future life.

Tom Sightings is the author of "You Only Retire Once" and blogs at Sightings at 60.
By Wiktor Szary and Justyna Pawlak WARSAW (Reuters) - European officials visit Warsaw this week to discuss allegations of undemocratic behavior in Poland but seem unlikely to start a row over amid the migration crisis and the looming vote over Britain's EU membership. Since sweeping into power last October, the conservative Law and Justice party (PiS) government has drawn criticism from the European Union and rights' bodies that its revamp of the country's top court undermines democratic checks and balances. Warsaw could face punishment such as the loss of voting rights from the European Union's executive Commission if Brussels finds it has violated EU standards. "This is not the time to go to war with Poland," one EU diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity. "My assumption is that everyone will make haste slowly." Two other EU diplomats said London and Berlin also wanted the Commission to show restraint. The eurosceptical PiS government has shown little willingness to compromise over the top court, saying it has a broad mandate to reform key institutions to purge them of post-communist influences. To prepare for the discussion with Poland's EU peers expected to start on Wednesday, Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans travels to Warsaw on Tuesday. On Monday, Thorbjoern Jagland, the head of the 47-nation Council of Europe which promotes democracy in Europe, was due in Poland for talks likely to influence the Commission. The EU stood by largely powerless to stop Hungary's Viktor Orban when he challenged democratic norms like the independence of courts and media after taking office in 2010. Hungary has also signaled it would block any attempts to sanction Poland. Underlining the extent of international concern over Poland, which is due to host a summit of NATO leaders in July, Washington has also sent senior officials in recent months to discuss the constitutional court revamp. But diplomats say the United States, Poland's traditional key ally, is not likely not confront Warsaw openly a time of Russia's renewed assertiveness in eastern Europe. "ABSOLUTELY NO RISKS" Domestically, public opinion polls show PiS' popularity remains largely stable despite protests and scathing criticism in independent media. Some polls show it at just under 40 percent, close to its election score. Since coming to power, PiS has strengthened its grip on Poland's key institutions, including the secret services and public media, and expanded state surveillance powers. Critics say the top court revamp cripples its ability to review and rule on legislation. The court itself has refused to implement the new rules, setting off a constitutional crisis. Experts say a mix of economic giveaways and nationalist rhetoric cements the government's popularity. This underscores a deepening polarization between the urban, liberal middle class and the poorer, the elderly and the inhabitants of smaller towns who welcome the government's promise of more economic equality and national pride. On Friday, the government launched a large-scale child benefit scheme worth an estimated 17 billion zlotys this year. It will see parents of at least two children receive over 100 euros per month, with more money for every additional child. "Most Poles don't even understand what the constitutional court crisis is all about, but they will understand the 1,000 zlotys in their bank account," a senior government official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. Rafal Chwedoruk, a Warsaw University political scientist, said he saw "absolutely no risks" in the short-term for PiS, adding that lowering the retirement age next year, another election pledge, would likely secure it another term. The party, which is run by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the twin brother of late President Lech Kaczynski, appears united despite the pressure, squashing any talk of early election. While certain new backbenchers may be a little concerned by the depth of state reform, "there are no visible cracks" in the ruling party's structure, the senior official said. (Additional reporting by Pawel Sobczak; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
LIBREVILLE (Reuters) - The leaders of a breakaway faction of Gabon President Ali Bongo's ruling party said on Thursday they would challenge him as he seeks to extend his rule over the oil-producing nation in elections later this year. Bongo won a disputed election in 2009 following the death of his father, longtime leader Omar Bongo, and is now nearing the end of his first seven-year term in office. He announced his intention to seek re-election late last month, and his Gabonese Democratic Party (PDG) is expected to confirm his candidacy at a party convention on Saturday. The open dissent from some PDG members, who plan to put forward their own candidate, underscores the internal divisions as he heads to polls in which his main challenger is likely to be former African Union Commission chairman Jean Ping. "Ali Bongo's track record is disastrous," said Alexandre Barro Chambrier, a member of parliament who is one of the dissident faction's leaders. "He's trying to force his way through and take the country hostage. He is a threat to the country. We are going to bring this nightmare to an end," he said. Citing dysfunction within the PDG and what they said was Bongo's mismanagement of Gabon, Barro Chambrier founded the breakaway group, called PDG-Heritage and Modernity, last year along with fellow MPs Michel Menga et Jonathan Ignoumba. The three men, who were formally expelled from the PDG on Wednesday, claim the support of around 50 ruling party MPs as well as senior party officials and former government ministers. The PDG currently holds 113 seats in Gabon's 120-seat National Assembly. Gabon's election is widely expected to take place in August although the date has yet to be confirmed by authorities. The single-round electoral system is seen as favouring the incumbent and most analysts expect Bongo to remain as president despite a sharp drop in oil prices that has cut into revenues. However, they also point to the risk of unrest due to tensions between PDG supporters and opponents. (Reporting by Gerauds Wilfried Obangome; Writing by Joe Bavier; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)
Saint Petersburg (AFP) - The director of Russia's renowned Hermitage Museum, which has an important collection of sculptures from Palmyra, has offered its expertise to help restore the ancient Syrian city retaken by President Bashar al-Assad's forces from the Islamic State group.

"Restoring Palmyra is the responsibility of all of us," Mikhail Piotrovsky told AFP, surrounded by displays of tomb stones, sculptures and coins from Palmyra at the museum in Saint Petersburg.

Following the IS campaign of destruction, "restoring Palmyra is a long-term task, and it's essential that we take our time," said Piotrovsky, estimating that up to 70 percent of the ancient historic site could have been damaged or destroyed by the jihadists.

"We will have to record where every stone was found before taking a decision on how to restore these historic monuments," he said of the painstaking work required.

The Hermitage director insisted that only an "international association" including UNESCO member countries and Syria's Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums should carry out the restoration of Palmyra.

Syria's antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim on Friday told AFP journalists at Palmyra that he was appealing for "archaeologists and experts everywhere to come work with us because this site is part of the heritage of all humanity."

Among the highlights of the Hermitage's collection from Palmyra are four stone slabs, weighing a total of 15 tonnnes with inscriptions in Aramaic and Greek that show the customs tariffs in the 2nd century AD, when the city became an important crossroads for trading.

The slabs were brought to Russia by an aristocrat who was an amateur archaeologist, Prince Abamelek-Lazarev after he travelled to Palmyra in 1882.

The value of such intact treasures is now even greater after the destruction at the historic site.

The Hermitage chief noted that Russia has "plenty of experience with restoring destroyed historic monuments", notably after World War II.

He gave the example of Tsarskoye Selo, the tsars' summer palace outside the imperial city, which was almost entirely destroyed in fighting between Nazi and Soviet forces.

Despite this, the palace was entirely restored to the tiniest detail and is now a major tourist attraction.
Riyadh (AFP) - Saudi Arabia's aviation authority said Monday it had banned Iran's Mahan Air from using its airports and air space over safety concerns.

The General Authority for Civil Aviation said it decided to "stop completely permits granted to Iran's Mahan Air, ban it from landing in the kingdom's airports or passing through its air space," according to a statement carried by SPA state news agency.

The authority cited "violations of national regulations related to safety of international carriers".

Saudi Arabia severed all air links with Iran in January after the two countries cut diplomatic ties following Riyadh's execution of prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr.

It is not clear when the violations refered to by the Saudi aviation authority were committed.

Mahan Air's website does not show any scheduled flights to Saudi Arabia.
Riyadh (AFP) - Top oil exporter Saudi Arabia will only freeze output if other key producers, including Iran, take a similar measure, its deputy crown prince told Bloomberg News in an interview published Friday.

"If all countries agree to freeze production, we're ready," Mohammed bin Salman said. "If there is anyone that decides to raise their production, then we will not reject any opportunity that knocks on our door."

His remarks come ahead of a meeting of major oil producers led by Russia and Saudi Arabia set to take place in Doha on April 17 to discuss measures to stabilise prices, including a proposal not to pump out oil above a certain level.

Iran indicated it was "ready to participate" in the meeting and demanded an exemption from the freeze in order to boost its exports, according to Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak.

Oil prices are being hit in part owing to the return of Iranian crude to markets after crippling economic sanctions on Tehran were lifted following last year's nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.

King Salman's powerful son who heads Saudi Arabia's main economic coordinating council, told Bloomberg that "without a doubt", Iran has to freeze its output.

"If all countries including Iran, Russia, Venezuela, OPEC countries and all main producers decide to freeze production, we will be among them," he said.

Riyadh severed diplomatic ties with Tehran this year after demonstrators stormed the kingdom's missions in Iran following Saudi Arabia's execution of a Shiite cleric.

Both regional heavyweights back rival groups in several conflicts rocking the Middle East.

The upcoming meeting in Doha is a follow-up to talks in February between Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela in which they first mooted the output freeze.

Prices have collapsed from levels above $100 seen in mid-2014 largely owing to supply outrunning demand as global economies, particularly China, suffer a growth slowdown.

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The Saudi deputy crown prince's remarks drove down oil prices on Friday.

Around 1130 GMT, US benchmark West Texas Intermediate for delivery in May slid 89 cents to $37.45 a barrel.

Brent North Sea crude for June delivery was down 82 cents at $39.51 a barrel compared with Thursday's close.
Dakar (AFP) - Senegal's president said Monday he would boost manpower and equipment for military and civil defence forces in the face of increasingly bold attacks by jihadists on neighbouring countries.

The west African nation has until now avoided the kind of deadly attacks mounted by Al-Qaeda-linked groups that have claimed dozens of lives in Burkina Faso, Mali and most recently Ivory Coast.

"I have decided to strengthen the human and material resources of all our defence and security forces to adapt to new challenges," said President Macky Sall during a speech to mark the 56th anniversary of Senegal's independence from France.

"We are living in an unprecedented situation, which requires us to be civil-minded and much more vigilant," he added, according to comments released by Senegal's APS news agency.

Sall did not specify figures for the additional support, but his decision will be welcomed by military officials who have called on the population to wake up to the threat facing the country.

Army spokesman Colonel Abou Thiam told journalists earlier this week that a tighter partnership between defence and security forces and the population would ensure "the best possible intelligence can be put to use".

Thiam called on residents to flag the presence of unknown people in their neighbourhoods, especially those wearing "unusual clothing".

Three men suspected of jihadist activity were released this week in Senegal due to insufficient evidence to charge them, all of whom first drew police attention by their "extremist get-up", reported L'As daily.

The theme of this year's independence day was "security challenges" and the event was notably more militaristic than in previous years, with large contingents from the armed forces taking part in the annual parade.

The government deployed its largest ever allocation of resources for the annual US-led Flintlock military exercise in February, including police and customs officers in counter-terror training for the first time.

The Pentagon meanwhile has banned US military personnel from travelling to Senegal, Ghana, Guinea, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast unless on official business, explicitly due to recent attacks in the region
Writer and showrunner Shonda Rhimes is to receive an International Emmy Founders Award at a November 21, 2016 ceremony, having presided over a string of TV hits including but not limited to "Grey's Anatomy," "Scandal" and "How to Get Away with Murder."

Bruce Paisner, president and CEO of the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, described Rhimes as being "in a league of her own."

"Not only does she have an entire night of primetime on ABC in the United States," he continued, "but her groundbreaking shows and iconic characters are avidly followed by over 300 million viewers worldwide, in 67 languages."

The television producer rose to prominence with her original treatment for HBO's 1999 African-American actress biopic "Introducing Dorothy Dandridge," which accumulated five Emmys, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a Golden Globe over the following year.

After working with Britney Spears ("Crossroads") and Walt Disney Pictures ("The Princess Diaries 2"), she returned to TV with medical drama "Grey's Anatomy" in 2005 before launching its spin-off "Private Practice" and then, in 2012, scoring another hit with the politically inspired "Scandal."

Episodic thriller "How to Get Away with Murder" arrived in 2014 and, along with "Grey's Anatomy" and "Scandal," is still in production as an ongoing series; crime drama "The Catch" debuted in March 2016.
Shonda Rhimes is set to add to her trophy cabinet when she attends the International Emmy Awards this November.

In an announcement made Monday, the International Television Academy revealed that it would honor the prolific TV writer and exec - whose latest show The Catch recently premiered on ABC - with its International Emmy Founders Award.

"Shonda Rhimes is in a league of her own. Not only does she have an entire night of primetime on ABC in the United States, but her groundbreaking shows and iconic characters are avidly followed by over 300 million viewers worldwide, in 67 languages," said Academy president and CEO Bruce Paisner.

Added Rhimes: "I am continually amazed by the global reach of television and have been so fortunate to have fans of my shows around the world."

The International Emmy Awards ceremony will take place in New York on Nov. 21.

Read More: Rihanna, Shonda Rhimes Honored at Black Girls Rock! Event
Freetown (AFP) - Ebola survivors jostled with police in Sierra Leone's capital on Monday as they protested perceived government inaction over their care in a health system badly hit by the virus.

Several hundred protesters in Freetown gathered in the city centre calling for the free health care and scholarships for their children they said had not been delivered.

Police pushed back male protesters while women and children stood behind barricades waving placards and shouting slogans.

A smaller protest in the city of Makeni attracted around 100 people, who delivered a petition to local government officials.

The president of the Ebola Survivors Association in Makeni, Mohamed Conteh, told AFP that planned provisions had "so far not had any impact on our lives."

"We were promised scholarships for child survivors, free health care, while adults were supposed to be given livelihood skills and other benefits," one demonstrator told AFP.

The group carried placards that read "our living conditions are deplorable" and "we demand to be cared for."

Sierra Leone's minister in charge of social welfare was recently sacked and his replacement has yet to take office, delaying already slow work.

According to Doctors Without Borders (MSF) there are more than 4,000 Ebola survivors living in Sierra Leone, while the virus killed many of country's already limited number of health workers.

The economy has also suffered from being paralysed for so long, limiting the government's ability to cope, experts say.

The Ebola virus can stay in semen for at least nine months after a patient has recovered, six months longer than previously thought.

Scientists are working to establish how long it can persist in other bodily fluids and tissues such as the spinal column and the eye, and for how long it could remain infectious.

"Ebola survivors are a particularly vulnerable group, who face continuing health challenges such as joint pain, chronic fatigue, and hearing and vision problems," MSF said in a recent report.

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"They also suffer from stigmatisation in their communities and need specific and tailored care."

A resurgence of Ebola in a rural Guinean community has killed seven people in the last few weeks, and two more cases were confirmed in Liberia last week despite the epidemic being declared over.

Although the outbreak -- the worst on record -- has officially claimed more than 11,300 lives since it first began in Guinea, a significant number of deaths are believed to have gone unreported.

The epidemic was first reported to have spread to Sierra Leone in May 2014.
Freetown (AFP) - A militia commander convicted of Sierra Leone civil war atrocities was on Friday back in custody after allegedly violating the terms of his early release, the UN-backed court that jailed him said.

Moinina Fofana was the leader of a notorious paramilitary unit that shot, hacked and burned to death civilians suspected of collaborating with rebels.

His pro-government Civil Defence Forces (CDF) recruited traditional hunters to fight rebels during the 1991-2002 conflict in the west African state.

Fofana was convicted in 2008 of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the The Special Court for Sierra Leone.

He was granted conditional release on February 10, 2015 after serving two-thirds of his 15-year jail term at Mpanga Prison in Kigali, Rwanda.

On Friday, however, he was again being held in custody for "allegedly violating the terms of his release from detention", the Special Court said in a statement.

He was brought to the capital Freetown on Thursday night under heavy security from his home in Sierra Leone's second city, Bo, his family told AFP, adding that they were surprised by the development.

The court's Kenyan president, judge Philip Waki, had sent the order as "one of the special conditions was for him to conduct himself honourably and peacefully in the community," and to stay away from meetings where civil unrest was planned, the statement added.

It did not specify exactly why Fofana was re-arrested, but Waki also ordered that Fofana appear before a Sierra Leonean judge within seven days.

The Special Court for Sierra Leone was established by the UN in 2002 to try those who bore "the greatest responsibility" for the atrocities during the civil war.

The conflict, financed largely by so-called blood diamonds, left 120,000 people dead and tens of thousands mutilated.
Mogadishu (AFP) - Somalia's Shebab insurgents said they carried out a suicide attack at a hotel in the central town of Galkayo Thursday in which six people died, including a senior local government official.

"There was a blast, a suicide bomber blew himself up killing several people including a senior official," said police officer Abdiweli Adan.

Witnesses said there was large blast near a cafe where people had gathered to drink tea.

"I heard a heavy explosion and I have seen parts of dead bodies, several bits of them were strewn across the area," said local resident Ahmed Sadaq.

Somalia's Al-Qaeda-affiliated Shebab rebels -- who are fighting to overthrow the country's internationally-backed government -- said they carried out the attack, in a statement broadcast on the insurgents' Radio Andalus.

"The mujahedeen fighters targeted the head of the finances for Puntland in the Mudug region, and together with five of his security guards they were killed in the attack," the radio broadcast said quoting Shebab commanders.

Galkayo, which straddles the border between the two districts of Puntland and Galmudug, lies some 650 kilometres (400 miles) northeast of the capital Mogadishu.

- Turkish hospital workers killed -

The suicide attack came a day after several people were gunned down in shootings in the capital.

On Wednesday evening, gunmen killed six people in a drive-by shooting, including two Turkish hospital workers, authorities said.

"Six civilians, two of them Turkish nationals, have been killed, and six more were wounded," said Abdifatah Omar Halane, spokesman for the Mogadishu city authorities, said Thursday.

Those killed also included the driver and security guards of the Turks.

Somalia's Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Sharmarke condemned the attack.

"We condemn this cowardly act, and our thoughts are with the relatives of the victims and the Turkish government," Sharmarke said in a statement. "These innocent Turkish citizens have lost their lives while supporting their Somali brothers."

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Turkey is a major investor in, and donor to, Somalia.

No group has so far claimed responsibility.

In a separate incident on Wednesday, witnesses said four people were killed, including three civilians caught in the crossfire, during a shootout between members of rival units within the Somali army.

"The soldiers were trying to shoot another soldier, but they have killed him together with three civilians who were passing by," said Abdirasak Ali, a witness. Several other witnesses confirmed the deaths.

The Shebab carry out regular attacks in Mogadishu but the seaside capital is anarchic and is still awash with weapons after decades of war.

Somalia, riven by decades of conflict, is also struggling to cope with severe drought.

Northern Somali areas, including self-declared independent Somaliland along the Gulf of Aden and semi-autonomous Puntland, are especially hard hit, with some 385,000 people in dire need of food aid, according to the UN, with that figure feared to quadruple without help.
Japanese revellers carried giant phalluses through the streets of Kawasaki on Sunday to worship the humble penis and fertility in one of the world's most unusual festivals.

Size matters at the Shinto Kanamara Matsuri, where groups of locals parade three heavy phalluses around the city -- the biggest as tall as a full-grown man.

Giggling festival-goers, including young children and grandmothers dressed in kimonos, sucked on penis lollipops and posed with phallus-shaped sculptures.

An anatomically correct radish-carving contest drew a large crowd of sniggering onlookers, while blushing parents perched babies on a giant see-saw of frighteningly accurate likeness to pray for fertility.

Tens of thousands gather every spring for the festival, where they can buy keepsakes such as key chains, trinkets, pens, chocolates and even toy glasses with a plastic penis nose.

For the local priest of the Kanayama Shrine, however, it is no laughing matter.

"If young children are not used to seeing (male genitalia), they could get into a bit of a panic when the time comes," Hiroyuki Nakamura told AFP, explaining the festival's educational role.

"People come to pray for good fortune and to ask the gods to protect them. The festival is steeped in the past but has still has a valuable part to play in modern society."

Known as the Festival of the Steel Phallus -- or colloquially as the "Willy Festival" -- legend has it that in the Edo Period (1603-1868) a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman's vagina castrated several unfortunate young men on their wedding nights.

- Iron dildo -

A local blacksmith came to the rescue by forging an iron dildo to break the demon's teeth and today a three-foot (one-metre) black steel phallus sits in the shrine's courtyard to honour the Shinto deities of fertility, childbirth and protection from sexually transmitted infections.

Over the centuries, sex workers also made a pilgrimage to the shrine to seek its powers of protection before the festival became a tourist attraction in the 1970s.

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"I think it's brilliant," said Sayuri Kubo, a 14-year-old schoolgirl proudly holding an erotic lollipop. "The mikoshi (portable shrine) parade was awesome."

Three mikoshi are lugged through the streets of Kawasaki, including a giant pink phallus called Elizabeth, donated by a local drag queen club.

There is a serious side to the frivolity, despite the bizarre sight of normally reserved Japanese housewives posing for snapshots with oversized dildos.

Proceeds from sales of the saucy memorabilia go to HIV research while the shrine itself is visited year-round by married couples hoping to start a family.

"It's about propagating the species," nursery school teacher Natsuki Kanayama told AFP, holding lollipops in both hands with another poking out of her cleavage. "I'm praying that I can have as many children as possible."

Not surprisingly, however, the festival drew curious stares from visiting foreigners.

"It's insane," said American tourist Jason Bradley. "I've heard about 'Cool Japan' -- I guess this is what they mean."
The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 changed the Social Security rules in several important ways, one of which goes into effect on April 30, 2016. Here's a look at who might be able to take advantage of a Social Security claiming option that will no longer be available beginning in May and what you can still do to maximize your Social Security payments under the new rules.

[See: 10 Social Security Claiming Strategies That Work .]

Retirees who are between ages 66 and 70 are allowed to sign up for Social Security benefits and then immediately suspend payments. Doing this allows a spouse and dependent children to claim payments based on your work record while you continue to accrue delayed retirement credits that will qualify you for larger payments when you restart your benefit later.

People who have already started this strategy or do so before April 30, 2016, will be able to use the old rules going forward. "If you suspend under the old rules, which are more advantageous, you get three rewards: Your payments increase while they are suspended, so when you resume payments they will be at a higher level, family payments are available for spouses and children, and you can unsuspend retroactively at any point from 66 to 70," says Andy Landis, author of "Social Security: The Inside Story." "You can not only resume your payments, but resume any or all of the payments you suspended. You can go back and get those suspended payments as a lump sum if it turns out it's to your advantage."

After the rule change, retirees between ages 66 and 70 will continue to be able to voluntarily suspend their payments, earn delayed retirement credits and boost their Social Security payments later on in retirement. "Even under the new rules, you can suspend your benefits and get a guaranteed 8 percent for the rest of your life for every year you delay," says William Meyer, founder and managing principal of Social Security Solutions, a company that analyzes Social Security claiming strategies. You could increase your monthly payments by 32 percent if you suspend them for four years between ages 66 and 70.

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[See: 10 Ways to Increase Your Social Security Payments .]

However, beginning on April 30, 2016, your current spouse and dependent children will no longer be able to collect payments based on your work record while your payments are suspended. "If you do not actually claim and collect your benefits, your spouse and dependent children may not collect your benefit," says Joseph Matthews, an attorney and author of "Social Security, Medicare & Government Pensions: Get the Most Out of Your Retirement & Medical Benefits." But a divorced spouse will continue to be eligible to receive payments based on your work record while your payments are suspended. If your Medicare premiums are deducted from your Social Security payments, you will get a bill for the premiums while your Social Security benefit is suspended.

If you voluntarily suspend your Social Security payments, you can elect to restart them at any time between ages 66 and 70. The benefit reinstatement will begin the month after your request because Social Security benefits are paid the month after they are due. Payments will automatically resume at age 70 if you don't make another election. Under the new rules, you cannot elect to receive your suspended payments as a lump sum but can only restart them at a higher rate going forward. "If they want to unsuspend their payments and request resumption of payments, it is effective the following month, not retroactively," Landis says.

[Read: How to Undo Claiming Social Security Early .]

The date you apply for the suspension will determine which rules you must follow, and only people currently between ages 66 and 70 are eligible to apply for a suspension. "The rules for file and suspend and voluntary suspensions of payments depend completely on the request date," Landis says. "If you request suspension on or after April 30, you are under the new rules."


By Stella Mapenzauswa JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) party held crisis talks on Monday to discuss the fallout from a court ruling last week that President Jacob Zuma flouted the Constitution, triggering calls for him to resign. The ANC backed Zuma, 73, after the Constitutional Court rebuked him for ignoring Public Protector Thuli Madonsela's order that he pay back some of the $16 million spent on upgrading his private Nkandla home. But the scandal, one of several which have dogged Zuma over the past decade, could strain relations between the ANC and its allies the South African Communist Party (SACP) and labour federation COSATU, which have helped it to retain power since the fall of apartheid in 1994. ANC officials declined to give details of Monday's meeting by the party's national working committee, which follows that of the ANC's top six leaders on Friday. The ANC could issue a statement later on Monday, a spokeswoman said. Analysts say the Constitutional Court ruling is a blow to Zuma's credibility and could harm the ANC ahead of municipal elections due between May and August. National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete, who is also the ruling party's chairperson, said on Sunday parliament would on Tuesday debate a motion by the opposition to impeach Zuma. The motion is, however, likely to fail in the house where the ANC, in power since Nelson Mandela became the first black president at the end of white minority rule, still enjoys a comfortable majority, with 62 percent of the 400-seat assembly. "Zuma remains in control of his party (even if slightly weakened) and with a significant degree of electoral popularity, especially in rural areas and KwaZulu-Natal," BNP Paribus Securities South Africa political analyst Nic Borain said. In a televised address to the nation on Friday evening, Zuma apologised and said he would pay back some of the money spent on the updgrades at Nkandla, but denied acting dishonestly. On Sunday, a jocular Zuma told a cheering crowd in his home province of KwaZulu-Natal that he was still youthful and remained South Africa's leader, making no specific mention of the Nkandla issue. Support for Zuma from ANC allies has been somewhat restrained. In a statement, the SACP applauded Zuma for publicly apologising on Friday for the debacle. But it warned that the Constitutional Court ruling was a signal to the alliance that "decisive action is now imperative, otherwise the continuing loss of moral authority, political paralysis and fragmentation of our movement will continue". The party said it was seeking an urgent meeting with ANC officials. (Editing by James Macharia)
By Stella Mapenzauswa JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) party held crisis talks on Monday to discuss the fallout from a court ruling last week that President Jacob Zuma flouted the Constitution, triggering calls for him to resign. The ANC backed Zuma, 73, after the Constitutional Court rebuked him for ignoring Public Protector Thuli Madonsela's order that he pay back some of the $16 million spent on upgrading his private Nkandla home. But the scandal, one of several which have dogged Zuma over the past decade, could strain relations between the ANC and its allies the South African Communist Party (SACP) and labor federation COSATU, which have helped it to retain power since the fall of apartheid in 1994. ANC officials declined to give details of Monday's meeting by the party's national working committee, which follows that of the ANC's top six leaders on Friday. The ANC could issue a statement later on Monday, a spokeswoman said. Analysts say the Constitutional Court ruling is a blow to Zuma's credibility and could harm the ANC ahead of municipal elections due between May and August. National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete, who is also the ruling party's chairperson, said on Sunday parliament would on Tuesday debate a motion by the opposition to impeach Zuma. The motion is, however, likely to fail in the house where the ANC, in power since Nelson Mandela became the first black president at the end of white minority rule, still enjoys a comfortable majority, with 62 percent of the 400-seat assembly. "Zuma remains in control of his party (even if slightly weakened) and with a significant degree of electoral popularity, especially in rural areas and KwaZulu-Natal," BNP Paribus Securities South Africa political analyst Nic Borain said. In a televised address to the nation on Friday evening, Zuma apologized and said he would pay back some of the money spent on the upgrades at Nkandla, but denied acting dishonestly. On Sunday, a jocular Zuma told a cheering crowd in his home province of KwaZulu-Natal that he was still youthful and remained South Africa's leader, making no specific mention of the Nkandla issue. Support for Zuma from ANC allies has been somewhat restrained. In a statement, the SACP applauded Zuma for publicly apologizing on Friday for the debacle. But it warned that the Constitutional Court ruling was a signal to the alliance that "decisive action is now imperative, otherwise the continuing loss of moral authority, political paralysis and fragmentation of our movement will continue". The party said it was seeking an urgent meeting with ANC officials. (Editing by James Macharia)
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) said on Monday it plans to launch an indefinite strike on Wednesday at Sibanye Gold to demand higher wages. AMCU members had voted in October to strike in the gold sector, including at Sibanye, but had agreed not to down tools immediately. AMCU spokesman Manzini Zungu said on Monday the union had given a 48-hour strike notice to Sibanye. "We will go on strike for as long as our members are saying 'stay on a strike'," he said. "Sibanye is on a shopping spree, acquiring other assets but their workers are paid very low wages." Sibanye, which in 2015 bought Anglo American Platinum's labour-intensive Rustenburg mine and Aquarius Platinum, signed an agreement with three smaller unions and extended the wage deal to AMCU members. Sibanye spokesman James Wellsted said the company had received the strike notice. "They have a right to strike but we have the right to limit the potential damage to our business," he said. "We have robust strike plans and will be implementing," he said, without elaborating how Sibanye would cope with the work stoppage. Zungu said the union aimed to get the salaries paid to its members in the gold sector to match the higher wages in coal and platinum. AMCU led a bruising five-month wage strike in the platinum sector demanding more than a doubling of wages in 2014 to 12,500 rand ($847) - the same demand sought in gold last year. In both instances the demands were unsuccessful. Wage talks in the platinum industry are set to begin in the next few weeks as a two-year wage deal expires end-June. "We will be receiving demands from branches. It is our wish to sign an agreement by 1 July because we do not want a strike," Zungu said. ($1 = 14.7532 rand) (Reporting by Zandi Shabalala; Editing by James Macharia)
South Korea conducted a large-scale live fire exercise Monday on the East Sea, where North Korea has been upping tensions with a series of missile and rocket launches supervised by leader Kim Jong-Un.

The drill involving K-9 self-propelled artillery units and 130mm multiple rocket launchers was held in the coastal county of Goseong, which borders the North.

The aim of the exercise was to role play "the scenario of a possible North Korean maritime provocation", South Korean Defence Ministry spokesman Moon Sang-Gyun told reporters.

It comes during an extended period of elevated military tensions on the Korean peninsula, triggered by Pyongyang's fourth nuclear test on January 6.

Over the past month, Kim Jong-Un has personally monitored numerous rocket and missile launches into the East Sea, including the North's first test of a medium-range ballistic missile for two years.

Late last month, Kim watched what state media called the country's largest-ever long-range artillery drill, involving multiple batteries of heavy-calibre units pounding an offshore island from a beach about 120 kilometres (75 miles) North of Goseong.

The muscle-flexing was largely a response to ongoing, large-scale military war games that South Korea and the United States hold every year -- much to Pyongyang's fury.

Monday's South Korean drill was focused on "mastering more efficient and accurate firing procedures at sea against enemy targets", the defence ministry spokesman said.

The North's fourth nuclear test in January saw the UN Security Council -- backed by Pyongyang's main ally China -- impose its harshest sanctions to date over the North's nuclear weapons programme.

The North responded defiantly, claiming a series of key breakthroughs in its development of a long-range nuclear strike capability, and threatening Seoul and Washington with nuclear attack.
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea has detected bird flu in ducks on a poultry farm near Seoul, an agriculture ministry official told Reuters on Monday, the first discovery in four months and a month after the country regained its bird flu-free status. The case involved a strain known as H5N8, the same type of influenza that occurred last November. All 11,604 ducks at the infected farm in the city of Icheon, 80 kilometers (50 miles) east of Seoul have been slaughtered, the official said. South Korea had resumed poultry meat exports to Hong Kong for the first time in nearly two years after it was declared an Avian Influenza-free nation, the agriculture ministry said on March 13. The bird flu discovery comes amid ongoing concerns about food safety in South Korea, where an outbreak of foot and mouth disease was discovered in pigs in January. (Reporting by Rebecca Jang; Editing by Tony Munroe and Richard Pullin)
Madrid (AFP) - Spanish prosecutors opened a money laundering probe on Monday after a massive leak of documents exposing the offshore financial dealings known as the Panama Papers, a judicial source said.

The investigation follows the leak of more than 11.5 million documents from the files of law firm Mossack Fonseca, based in the tax haven of Panama, revealing details of hundreds of thousands of clients, including in Spain.

The clients in Spain include the family of Barcelona football star Lionel Messi, an aunt of Spain's King Felipe VI, Pilar de Borbon, and Oscar-winning Spanish director Pedro Almodovar.

"We have opened an investigation for money laundering in relation to the law firm" Mossack Fonseca, a judicial source at the National Court, Spains top criminal court, told AFP.

The scandal erupted Sunday when media groups made public the results of a year-long worldwide investigation onto the trove of documents, which cover a period from 1977 until last December and expose a tangle of offshore financial dealings by the elite.

It comes at a time of mounting public concern in Spain over corruption scandals which have hit political parties of both the left and right, unions, footballers and even the royal family at a time of sky-high unemployment and government austerity measures.

While offshore holdings can be legal, they can also be used to hide wealth.

"Having an offshore holding is not a crime. What matters is knowing if these holdings in Panama, with Spanish shareholders or owners, are fullfilling their fiscal obligations," Spanish Justice Minister Rafael Catala said earlier on Monday when asked about the case.
By Eric Knecht CAIRO (Reuters) - When Egyptian lawyer Ahmed Gad stepped out of a cafe on the outskirts of Cairo to take a call last October, a gunman on the back of a motorcycle trained a semi-automatic rifle on him and opened fire. Three bullets ripped into Gad's right side before his attackers sped off. Gad, who survived, said the men were trying to silence him for his attempts to expose corruption in one of Egypt's most important commodity markets: wheat. Wheat can be a matter of life and death in Egypt. The country is the world's biggest importer of the grain, in large part because Cairo runs a bread subsidy program that feeds tens of millions of poor Egyptians. Wheat shortages have triggered riots in the past, and when Egyptians rose up against autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011 one of their signature chants was "Bread, freedom and social justice." The pressures have returned over the past few months as Egypt has faced potential wheat shortages because of its strict ban on imports of wheat infected with ergot, a common fungus. The hardest blight to eradicate, though, has been corruption. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has made ending corruption  including graft in the wheat industry  one of his government's priorities. In 2014, his government rolled out a system of smart cards designed to stop unscrupulous bakeries selling government-subsidized flour on the black market. Cairo says the system has been a big success, saving millions of dollars in bread subsidies, reducing imports, and ending shortages that once prompted long queues outside bakeries across the country. Supplies Minister Khaled Hanafi told Egyptian reporters in late 2014 that roughly 50 percent of the country's flour supply was stolen. In December last year he told Reuters that the new system had saved more than 6 billion Egyptian pounds ($766 million) worth of flour. But industry officials, traders and bakers say those reforms have failed  and even made abuse of the system worse. Eight sources in the wheat industry said the smart card system could be hacked, allowing some bakers to falsify receipts and request far more subsidized flour than they officially sold. Instead of reducing the amount of flour the state paid for, the critics said, the smart card system actually increased it. That triggered a wave of fraud higher up the supply chain that the sources say cost the country hundreds of millions of dollars last year. Internal statistics produced by the Supplies Ministry and reviewed by Reuters suggest the problems with the smart card system were considerable. The data show that consumption of state-subsidized flour rose in early 2015 in 12 of the 19 provinces where the smart card system had been introduced. In February 2015, consumption of subsidized flour was 955,000 tonnes, the data show, up from 750,000 tonnes the previous February. The government concedes there were teething problems in the smart card system that temporarily drove up consumption. But it said the problem was limited and was dealt with. Whatever the case, the extra consumption early last year drained government grain reserves. By last May, ministry data show, wheat reserves had fallen to just 435,000 tonnes, enough for about two weeks' supply and far below the stock of three to four months normally held by the state. Four traders said that the government tried to paper over the shortage by declaring a bumper domestic harvest last year and then quietly filling the gap by buying extra imported wheat. In fact, the traders and one former adviser to the Supplies Minister said, the harvest was no bigger than normal. It was not possible to verify the size of the harvest. Nader Nour El-Din, a former adviser to the supplies minister and now a professor of agriculture at Cairo University, said it was inconceivable for the harvest to have been as big as the government said because the area under wheat had not increased in size, production methods had not changed and fertilizer use had not increased. The Egyptian government denied that it faced a wheat shortage. In his December interview with Reuters, Supplies Minister Hanafi said that wheat levels were deliberately reduced in the first five months of 2015 to clear space in silos for the bumper crop the state was expecting. "We never, (and) we are not facing at all, a shortage in the reserves," he told Reuters. "The opposite is true." SMART SYSTEM HACKED The smart card system was designed to end corruption. The scheme provides each family with a plastic card allowing them to buy five small flat loaves of bread per family member a day. A family member must swipe their card through a machine every time they visit a bakery  so the Ministry of Supplies can track exactly how much bread each bakery sells. The government then pays each bakery a subsidy per loaf. Until the smart card system, the ministry relied on bakeries to report how much bread they sold. But many bakeries overstated the amount and then sold the extra on the black market. The government has said the new system stopped that over-reporting. But four bakers, three wheat traders and a miller told Reuters that the system was possible to cheat. The smart cards and the machine that reads them were produced by SMART, a private company based in Cairo. According to the traders and bakers, employees at SMART secretly produced cards that resemble the ordinary smart card but act as a "master" that overrides the system. By swiping a master card through their machine, bakers were able to reset the system and then swipe ordinary smart cards multiple times. SMART employees sold the cheat devices to bakeries for several thousand dollars, according to rival bakers. One grocer in the industrial suburb of Helwan, outside Cairo, described how merchants in his neighborhood cheated the system: "The card is entered into the machine and the ration spent but the device can then reset the card allowing more spending. So instead of spending once or twice a month you can spend 1,000 times," said the grocer. He said bakers and other shopkeepers who did not want to take part in the scam complained to the Supplies Ministry, which subsequently began clamping down. SMART did not respond to requests for comment. Supplies Minister Hanafi acknowledged the smart card system had been compromised but described the problems as "very marginal and minor." He said the ministry immediately investigated any suspicious increase in flour consumption. "Of course for any system for the Internet... there is a very minor percent of hacking," Hanafi said. But he added: "If there is any increase not justified in the consumption, our people directly go and take care of it." Attiya Hamad, head of the bakeries division at the Cairo Chamber of Commerce, said the government had closed scores of bakeries for cheating and thrown many bakers in jail. Sitting in his tiny office, tucked inside a government bakery in the working class Cairo neighborhood of Zawya, Hamad said that despite the crackdown and new caps on how much flour each bakery can buy, the system could still be manipulated using the unofficial master cards. Hanafi said the problems had been dealt with. A BUMPER CROP? Low wheat stocks fueled another scam. Last June, the Supplies Ministry said that thanks to Egypt's bountiful harvest, it had bought a record 5.3 million tonnes of domestic wheat, up from around 3.5 million tonnes a year in the previous few years. But traders and millers say the domestic harvest was no bigger than normal. They estimate that some 2 million tonnes of the 5.3 million tonnes the state said it bought was either imported or existed only on paper. The traders, millers and former ministerial adviser who spoke with Reuters also allege that companies sold imported wheat to the Ministry as Egyptian wheat so they could receive the better subsidized price. The state paid around $370 a tonne for domestic Egyptian wheat, according to the government's published data, or $150 a tonne more than the global spot price. Hesham Soliman, president of Med Star for Trading, a medium-sized wheat importer, said he complained to the central bank that the (harvest) number was inaccurate and made it hard for private companies to gauge demand and plan how much they should import. "This (such a large crop) has never happened in 30 or 40 years," he said. Waleed Diab, managing director of Egyptian Millers Company, one of the country's three largest millers, said the Supplies Ministry allowed a "corrupted" system to continue "to cover up for the decrease in strategic reserves." In all, the sources estimate, local suppliers made an extra 2 billion Egyptian pounds ($255 million) by selling the Ministry imported grain. PHANTOM WHEAT Cairo company Facilitation for Agricultural Crops (FAC) was one of several firms the sources said cashed in on last year's crisis. FAC is the company where Gad, the 29-year-old lawyer who was shot, worked. According to Gad, in the scramble to fill the massive wheat shortfall FAC sold the government wheat which did not exist. Gad told Reuters there was not enough space at the company's silos to hold all the wheat FAC said it had sold. Documents between FAC and the Ministry of Supplies and other government agencies show that the firm sold the government hundreds of thousands of tonnes of wheat in 2015. The documents, which Gad collated while he was still at the firm and which were reviewed by Reuters, include receipts from the government, import contracts and government silo appraisals. One FAC sales contract shows that the firm sold the government 102,652 tonnes of wheat from a FAC silo called Hanager al-Masna'a. But inspectors from the Supplies Ministry had examined the silo in 2013 and found it to have a storage capacity of just under 10,000 tonnes, an appraisal record from the Ministry of Supplies show. Gad said the inspectors returned last year to do a new appraisal and found the storage space to be 102,000 tonnes. He said the storage unit had been expanded between 2013 and 2015  but by only a very small amount, probably no more than a few thousand tonnes. Diab, the mill owner, said the government revised the storage capacity of many wheat silos last year to justify quantities that could never realistically have been stored. "It happened all over the country," he said. Hanafi, the minister, denied there was any fraud and blamed the confusion on changes in how the supply chain was managed. He and the Ministry have since declined to answer requests for more detailed comment. Facilitation for Agricultural Crops told Reuters it never falsified its wheat procurement. It said it did not know its total storage capacity and could not say how much wheat it had sold the government. It said that it was impossible to cheat the government, which it said had excellent oversight. It also said Gad had been caught trying to steal company money and then tried to blackmail the company. Gad denies the company's allegations. He resigned in early September and filed a case against the firm with the Administrative Control Authority, Egypt's anti-corruption watchdog, alleging the company falsified local wheat procurement. A month later, as the case drew local media attention, he was shot. In December, Egypt's Administrative Control Authority decided not to bring the FAC procurement case to trial. The Administrative Control Authority declined to comment on the case. Last month the government reversed a plan to reform the Egyptian wheat subsidy system. The proposed reform would have paid Egyptian farmers global prices for their wheat in addition to a smaller direct subsidy that cut out intermediaries like FAC. Many experts said that would have ended the corruption seen last year and are worried the decision to drop the reform will lead to more problems. "They did not learn from last season," said Med Star for Trading's Soliman after the reversal was announced. Gad, once hopeful that his case would shed light on the wheat industry's endemic corruption, said he has lost hope that anything will change. "The state has no will to deal with this issue," he said. "They're just going to keep doing the same thing  because no one told them they were doing anything wrong. We're used to this. This is Egypt." (Additional reporting by Mostafa Hashem in Cairo; Edited by Simon Robinson and Mike Georgy)
By Ed Stoddard KLERKSDORP, South Africa - South Africa will decide this month whether to push to end a global ban on buying and selling rhino horn, a move that could unlock a $2 billion bonanza and determine the fate of a critically endangered species. Rhino horn is prized in Asia for use in traditional remedies and surging demand has meant more poaching. A record 1,305 of the animals were illegally killed in Africa last year. Buying and selling rhino horn internationally was banned in 1977. But opponents of that ban say that, as rhinoceros' horns grow back if cut from a living animal, a properly monitored legal trade could help save the rhinos, rather than condemn them to extinction. The stakes are high. The government has not revealed the size of its rhino horn stockpile - those seized from smugglers as well as ones cut from animals that died naturally - but the Private Rhino Owners Association estimates its members have around 6 tonnes and reckons the state has close to 25 tonnes. Rhino horn on the street in Asia sells for around $65,000 per kg, according to off-the-record estimates by conservationists, so 30 tonnes could generate up to around $2 billion. Supporters of legalizing the trade say the money could be used for conservation by the South African government, whose finances are under mounting pressure as it faces possible debt ratings downgrades that could see its borrowing costs balloon. They also say the ban simply does not work. "We are losing rhino, we are losing the war. We have to change our tactics," said John Hume, a private rancher who owns 1,293 rhinos - 4.5 percent of a global population of around 28,000 in Africa and Asia. "It is not the demand that is killing our rhinos, its the way we supply that demand," he said on his sprawling 7,000 hectare (17,000 acre) ranch 170 km (100 miles) west of Johannesburg. Small groups of rhino cluster under thorn trees along the ranch's dirt roads. Some hulking brutes weigh over two tonnes, an intimidating presence which would be all the more so if they still had horns. Hume dehorns his animals, which makes them less enticing to poachers and adds to his stockpile than now amounts to five tonnes. Dehorning is done while the animal is sedated and does not hurt as the material is similar to human fingernails. Private ranching of wild animals is legal in South Africa, where about 6,200 rhinos are in private hands, a third of the national population. HORNS OF A POACHING AND TRADE DILEMMA If South Africa does decide to submit a proposal to lift the ban, it will face stiff resistance. Animal welfare organizations say a legal trade could encourage more poaching by criminal gangs seeking to launder "dirty" horns in clean markets. "Legalizing rhino horn trade would remove the stigma associated with consumption of endangered species, stimulate the insatiable demand for rhino horn, and fuel further rhino poaching," the International Fund for Animal Welfare said on its website. A 2013 IFAW-commissioned study concluded a legal trade would be fraught with uncertainty and that illicit dealers could respond by reducing prices to retain their market share. The South African cabinet will decide this month whether to table a proposal on lifting the ban when the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) meets in Johannesburg in September-October this year. Having the international ban overturned would require two-thirds support from the countries attending. One tool to prevent illicit horn from coming to the market is forensics. For both rhino horn and elephant ivory, science can pinpoint when an animal was taken and in many cases where. "They are doing a good job in South Africa of developing a comprehensive data base. It determines where the rhino horn has been sourced," CITES Secretary General John Scanlon told Reuters in a telephone interview. Scanlon said forensics could discourage speculators who hope to poach rhino now and then offload the horn if the global ban is lifted. Trading rhino horn within South Africa's borders is legal, after a high court late last year struck down a moratorium imposed in 2009. A permit is required for such transactions but no one has applied for one yet. The moratorium was briefly put back in place as the Department of Environmental Affairs filed to oppose its lifting but in January this was set aside. "As from 20 January 2016, the High Courts order setting aside the domestic moratorium on the trade in rhino horn is once more effective," said Roopa Singh, spokeswoman at the Department of Environmental Affairs. For Hume, a blunt-talking businessman who made money in the resort and hotel industries, the issue is clear. "The fact that we can't sell a renewable, sustainable product is absolute madness." (Editing by James Macharia and Robin Pomeroy)
By Lawrence Hurley WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A unanimous U.S. Supreme Court on Monday upheld the method all 50 states use in drawing legislative districts by counting every resident and not just eligible voters, rejecting a conservative challenge that could have given more sway to rural white voters. The eight justices ruled that Texas, in carving out its state Senate districts, did not violate the legal principle of "one person, one vote" endorsed by the court in the 1960s. The decision likely benefits Democrats over Republicans. The practice of counting all residents and not just those who are eligible voters boosts the electoral clout of locales, typically urban and often heavily Hispanic, with significant populations of people ineligible to vote. Those include legal and illegal immigrants as well as children and certain convicted criminals. Writing for the court, liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg stated that elected legislators "serve all residents, not just those eligible or registered to vote." Ginsburg said non-voters, including children, have "an important stake in many policy debates," including education, and sometimes need help navigating government bureaucracy. A victory for the conservative challengers could have shifted influence in U.S. state legislative races away from urban areas that tend to be racially diverse and favor Democrats to rural ones predominantly with white voters who often back Republicans. The dispute did not involve U.S. congressional districts. The Constitution requires seats in the U.S. House of Representatives to be distributed based on a state's total population, not just eligible voters. The conservative challengers asserted that Texas violated the guarantee of equal protection under the law under the Constitution's 14th Amendment. Ginsburg wrote that looking at total population not only meets the Constitution's equality guarantee but also ensures elected officials are "alert to the interests and constituent-service requests" of everyone in a voting district. Adopting a new approach "would upset a well-functioning approach to districting that all 50 states and countless local jurisdictions have followed for decades, even centuries," Ginsburg wrote. The ruling does not change the approach states currently use. It also does not foreclose states from trying different approaches. But the ruling's endorsement of counting all residents signals that variations might not pass legal muster. Nina Perales of the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund called the ruling an important victory that "protects the right of all people across the U.S. to be represented by their officials and be counted when electoral maps are drawn." Edward Blum, the conservative legal activist who spearheaded the case and for decades has challenged practices that benefit racial minorities, expressed disappointment in the ruling. "The issue of voter equality in the United States is not going to go away," Blum said, adding that he would look for a new legal challenge in upcoming years that could return the issue to the justices, perhaps tied to the number of U.S. citizens in an electoral district. The challengers said the Texas redistricting map signed into law by a Republican governor in 2013 failed to equally distribute voters, improperly expanding the voting power of urban areas. Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said he was pleased with the ruling. "My office is committed to defending the Constitution and ensuring the state legislature, representing the citizens, continues to have the freedom to ensure voting rights consistent with the Constitution," Paxton said. The Obama administration supported the Texas plan. Two Texas voters, Sue Evenwel and Edward Pfenninger, were recruited by Blum to file the lawsuit. Evenwel was a member of the Texas Republican Party's executive committee and Pfenninger worked as a security guard. Both lived in rural voting districts. Hillary Clinton, front-runner for the Democratic U.S. presidential nomination, praised the ruling, saying, "In our democracy, every one of our voices should count." Caroline Fredrickson, president of the liberal American Constitution Society, said it was important for the court to endorse voting rights at a time when Republican-governed states have enacted new restrictions, including identification requirements, that Democrats say are intended to suppress the vote of minorities. Two conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, concurred only in the judgment and did not sign on to Ginsburg's opinion. The court is one justice short following the Feb. 13 death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. The unanimous ruling suggested his presence would not have substantially affected the outcome. Blum's group, the Project on Fair Representation, orchestrated a lawsuit from Shelby County, Alabama that in 2013 led the high court to invalidate a portion of the 1965 Voting Rights Act mandating federal approval for election law changes in states with histories of racial discrimination. It also backed another important case heard by the justices in December, a white woman's challenge to a University of Texas admissions policy that considers an applicants' race among other factors in an effort to enroll more minority students. The court has not yet ruled in that case. (Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Sweden's Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) has contacted authorities in Luxembourg for information related to allegations that Nordea, the Nordic region's biggest bank, helped some clients set up accounts in offshore tax havens. The allegations against Nordea appeared in a leak of more than 11.5 million documents from the files of law firm Mossack Fonseca, based in Panama. While setting up offshore accounts is not necessarily illegal it could be in breach of Swedish money laundering rules. Nordea was found to have breached such rules last year and was fined the maximum 50 million crowns ($6.1 mln) and handed a severe warning by the FSA. "We take this extremely seriously," said Christer Furustedt, head of the FSA department that oversees major Swedish banks. "If the media reports are correct and they set up complicated structures to hide the actual beneficial owner then that is hardly in line with the rules," he said. Nordea said in a statement it would review all activities relating to offshore accounts in Luxembourg. The bank said it strongly denounced tax evasion and had taken proactive measures since 2009 to ensure all customers' holdings and income on their accounts were reported to the tax authorities. "However, we regret that we didn't have these procedures already earlier," Nordea CEO Casper von Koskull said. The FSA fined Nordea in May 2015 and said the bank had severe shortcomings in its approach to combating money laundering and that a case could even be made for revoking Nordea's banking licence. (Reporting by Johan Ahlander and Simon Johnson; Editing by David Goodman and Susan Fenton)
Beirut (AFP) - Syria's main opposition High Negotiations Committee on Wednesday flatly rejected a demand from President Bashar al-Assad for any transitional government to include his regime.

"International resolutions speak of... the formation of a transitional body with full powers, including presidential powers," HNC senior member Asaad al-Zoabi said, adding "Assad should not remain for even one hour after the formation" of this body.

"Bashar and his gang live outside of reality, on another planet... all of Assad's recent declarations are an attempt to evade the question" of the transition, Zoabi told AFP.

Assad made the demand in an interview with Russia's RIA Novosti state news agency published on Wednesday.

The Syrian leader said it would be "logical for there to be independent forces, opposition forces and forces loyal to the government represented" in any transitional body.

He did not specify which opposition groups should be included in the government but his remarks come with Damascus facing international pressure to compromise at UN-mediated talks aimed at ending the five-year conflict that has killed some 270,000 people.

The talks led by UN envoy Staffan de Mistura paused last week with the sides deadlocked over the fate of Assad, whom the opposition insists must leave power before a transitional government is agreed.

The form of the executive body that would lead Syria until its elections the UN says should be held in 18 months is the main bone of contention between the two sides.

UN Security Council Resolution 2254 vaguely suggests the establishment of a body to head the political transition.

For the regime, this amounts to a government reshuffle in which the opposition is included, but for the opposition it would be a transitional body with presidential powers and no role for Assad.

"We aren't concerned about Assad's interpretation of the transitional period... we must move to a new stage based on a pluralistic regime, civil and democratic," said Zoabi.
By John Irish and Suleiman Al-Khalidi GENEVA (Reuters) - The U.N. special envoy on Syria said he hoped a meeting between the U.S. and Russian foreign ministers on Wednesday would give impetus to peace talks where the divisive issue of a political transition is stalling progress. Syria's government delegation has rejected any discussion of the future of President Bashar al-Assad, who opposition leaders say must go as part of any transition. Damascus has repeated its long-held view that "counter-terrorism" - its reference to rebel foes of Assad - should be the main focus of the process. "We are looking with great interest, expectation, hope that the talks in Moscow will be productive," U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura said after meeting the opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC) in Geneva. "Honestly not everything will be solved in one day - but (it would be) productive ... to resume the talks with a much more in-depth address on the issue of political transition," he said ahead of the planned meeting in Moscow between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. De Mistura, who tried to keep an air of optimism before the talks adjourn on Thursday, describes Syria's political transition as "the mother of all issues." Emboldened by the Russian and U.S. muscle that pushed the warring parties to the negotiating table, he has refused to drop the subject. After five years of conflict that has killed over 250,000 and caused the world's worst refugee crisis, Washington and Moscow engineered a deal three weeks ago for a cessation of hostilities and crucial humanitarian aid to besieged regions. But the deal, not signed by any of the warring parties, remains fragile and diplomats are concerned that, after more than a week of talks, it is at risk of collapsing unless headway on the matter of political transition is made soon. "We always needed some help from Mr Kerry and Mr Lavrov because they proved in the past and I hope they will prove in the future that when they do have a common understanding, it helps enormously the process," de Mistura said. Russia, along with Iran, have been Assad's major allies in the conflict, while the United States and Gulf Arab powers have backed rebel forces to varying degrees. On Monday, the head of Syria's government delegation rejected any talk on the fate of Assad, reiterated that the Geneva talks must concentrate on counter-terrorism. Bashar Ja'afari accused de Mistura, a veteran Swedish-Italian diplomat, of "filibustering" and "wasting time" after Damascus received no responses to proposals made a week ago. Arguments over Assad's fate were a major factor in the failure of U.N. efforts in 2012 and 2014 to end the civil war. BARREL BOMBS, AID DELIVERIES Asaad al-Zoubi, head of the main opposition council's delegation, said on Tuesday it was "obvious that are no points of convergence" with the Syrian government. "There is a risk  and I dont know where the breaking point is  that if these talks go on without leading anywhere without coming close to the essential issue of transition, that surely there is a breaking point where the opposition will feel what is the use?" a Western diplomat told Reuters in Geneva. For the first time during the latest round of talks, the opposition accused the Syrian government of strengthening existing sieges, initiating new ones and stepping up a campaign of barrel-bombing across the country. "The government continues to flout international resolutions," Zoubi said. "Instead of lifting the sieges, the regime is tightening sieges on cities and ... the regime is renewing again its barrel-bombing of Syrian towns." A diplomatic source close to the talks said there were reports of barrel bomb attacks in the rebel-held eastern Damascus suburb of Ghouta. Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which monitors the war through a network of contacts on the ground, said fighting had resurged in the Ghouta area in recent days. Russia's Defence Ministry said on Tuesday it had registered six ceasefire violations over the past 24 hours in other areas of Syria. The fragile cessation of hostilities agreement has, however, reduced violence in western Syria, allowing more aid to be delivered. A group of Syrian villages north of Homs under siege by government forces since 2012 received on Tuesday the first delivery since October last year, according to the Swiss-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). A convoy of 27 trucks containing medical, food, water treatment and other aid was sent to al-Houla, a rural district containing five villages and over 70,000 people, an ICRC spokesman said. In coming weeks, the ICRC plans to enter other areas in northern rural Homs such as Rastan, Talbiseh, Ghanto, Termalie and Dar Kbiereh, where an estimated 270,000 people live. (Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay and Lisa Barrington in Beirut; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
ANKARA (Reuters) - Syrian migrants coming from Greece will be sent to the southern Turkish city of Osmaniye, Turkish EU Affairs Minister Volkan Bozkir said on Monday. In an interview with Haberturk TV, Bozkir also said that Syrians taken from camps in Turkey will be sent to Germany, from where they will be sent on to other countries. Migrants sent back from the Greek island of Lesbos began arriving in Turkey on Monday under a European Union deal aimed at stopping the influx of migrants and refugees into Europe since last year. (Reporting by Orhan Coskun; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Daren Butler)
Britain's new Tate Modern will open its doors to the public on June 17, 2016, bringing together works from the collection and new acquisitions. It was created by architects Herzog & de Meuron.

The new Tate Modern will offer visitors 60 percent more display space to view works by 250 artists from around 50 countries. Visitors can expect interactive and socially-engaged projects that reveal how art has evolved from the studios and salons where modernism was born.



Turbine Hall will be at the heart of the new Tate Modern, with the existing 6-storey Boiler House on one side and the new 10-storey Switch House on the other. The new Switch House will be on top of the underground Tanks, the gallery spaces dedicated to live art, film and installations. From the Tanks on the lower floor, visitors will be able to go all the way up to level 10 to enjoy a spectacular 360-degree view of the London skyline on the roof terrace.



Meanwhile the Boiler House will feature a completely re-hung collection. The artwork will explore connections between artists from across the globe. Performance, film, photography and installations will be integrated into the displays. There will also be space dedicated to digital engagements, reflection and debate throughout the museum.



20th century artists such as Pablo Picasso and Mark Rothko will be on view along with artists introduced by Tate Modern, including Meschac Gaba (b.1961, Benin) and Saloua Raouda Choucair (b. 1916, Lebanon). The new Tate Modern will also house new acquisitions that will be displayed there for the first time. This will include an installation of human hair and car bumpers by Sheela Gowda (b. 1957, India). An immersive multi-screen film by Cannes prize-winner Apichatpong Weerasethakul (b. 1970 Thailand) will also be shown for the first time.



Louise Bourgeois will be the first artist presented in the new Tate Modern's gallery dedicated to the ARTIST ROOMS collection owned jointly by Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. The works that will be on display include sculptures, works on paper and fabric pieces. The inaugural show will illustrate how Bourgeois worked in both modern and traditional techniques, using diverse materials such as bronze, marble and fabric, as well as text and drawing. Her imagery addresses relationships, cycles of life and issues concerning body, memory, observation, surveillance and acts of repairing and forgiveness. The exhibition will go on display for the opening of the new Tate Modern on June 17 and remain for a year. Afterwards the ARTIST ROOMS space will host exhibitions from the work of 40 artists from that collection.



For more information on the new Tate Modern visit: http://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern/new-tate-modern.
The Galaxy S7 is Samsungs best phone ever, but it doesn't come cheap. The good news is you don't have to pay for it all at once and there are plenty of buying options for the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge out there. Walmart currently offers a $150 discount on the Galaxy S7, but Best Buys got an even better deal for you. The retailer will give you a $200 gift card for any working smartphone, which is valid towards an on-contract Galaxy S7 purchase. The company said that customers who are on installment billing plans can also get the $200 gift card as long as they trade in a smartphone.

DONT MISS: Walmart offering $100 discount on all iPhone models and $150 off of Samsung's Galaxy S7

As amazing as this offer sounds, its only good if youre comfortable signing a new contract and trading in an older phone. You could always try selling the old device yourself and get even more money for it, which can be used for purchasing the Galaxy S7 outright or in installments.

That said, the offer also means you have to pay $0 down for the new device so the $200 gift card will be really helpful taking care of early monthly payments to your carrier to cover the cost of the phone.

To learn more details about Best Buys Galaxy S7 offer, check out this link, or head out to a local Best Buy store.

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One of the most persistent rumors about Apple's next-generation iPhones has been that at least one of the new devices will get dual rear-facing cameras. The advantage of this dual-camera setup is that it would feature both a standard wide-angle lens camera and a secondary telephoto lens that would be capable to capturing zoomed-in pictures and videos.

Intriguingly, most reports on this feature have said it will be exclusive to the iPhone 7 Plus, which means that you'll have to pay more upfront to get it. MacRumors points to a new research note from KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo that comes the closest we've seen to confirming this rumor is true.

FROM EARLIER: Apple confident itll find and patch the FBIs iPhone hack

"New iPhone shipments to be capped by similar form factor as iPhone 6s & 6s Plus," he writes. "Top hardware upgrade is dual-camera (5.5-inch model only), though many competing models with dual-camera will launch soon, joining others already on the market; first impressions could underwhelm."

Ming-Chi Kuo has been remarkably accurate in the past when describing details about new iPhone features, so if he's writing this in his note there's a good bet that Apple is at least strongly considering making the dual camera exclusive to the iPhone 7 Plus.

It's also interesting to see that he thinks the first impressions of the device could "underwhelm," which suggests that we shouldn't expect a major leap forward like the one we saw going from the iPhone 5s to the iPhone 6. That said, there's still a lot of time left before Apple unveils the device and a lot could change between now and September.

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Here are some of the stocks the Yahoo Finance team will be watching for you today.

Virgin America (VA) soared to a 52-week high. Alaska Air (ALK) plans to buy the airline for $2.6 billion in cash, or $57 a share, beating out rival JetBlue (JBLU). The combination will create the fifth-largest airline in the U.S. by traffic and expand Alaska Airlines' presence on the West Coast.

Tesla (TSLA) remains in the spotlight this morning after CEO Elon Musk tweeted over the weekend that the company received 276,000 orders for its new Model 3 sedan. That's about $11 billion worth of backlog orders.

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SunEdison (SUNE) shares continued to tumble in early trading after the Wall Street Journal reported late Friday that the solar company is preparing to file for bankruptcy protection in the coming weeks. This follows news that the SEC was investigating the company about its public disclosures related to the amount of cash it had available.

Apple (AAPL) is also on investors' radars after Credit Suisse raised its price target on the stock by $10 to $150 a share and added it to its U.S. Focus list. The stock is now considered one of the bank's "top investment ideas." Credit Suisse analyst Kulbinder Garcha says that an in-depth look into Apple's service offerings showed that investors may be underestimating and underappreciating the growth potential of the annuity business.
Older men with clogged arteries who took testosterone therapy seemed to have a lower risk of heart attacks than men who did not take the hormone, a study suggested Sunday.

Testosterone is currently considered risky to the heart, and the US Food and Drug Administration mandated last year that manufacturers of all approved testosterone products add labels to describe these dangers, which include heart attack and stroke.

The methods of the study were observational -- one of the weakest kinds of scientific research -- but its authors said the results should lead to more rigorous trials on the hormone therapy in the future.

The study by Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute in Salt Lake City included 755 men, aged 58 to 78, with severe coronary artery disease and low testosterone.

Those who did not take testosterone as part of their follow up were 80 percent more likely to suffer a heart attack, stroke, or death from a cardiovascular event in the next three years.

After a year, 64 patients who were not taking testosterone supplements suffered major adverse cardiovascular events, compared to 21 taking testosterone.

After three years, 125 patients not on testosterone therapy patients suffered major adverse cardiovascular events, compared to 60 patients receiving the hormone.

The findings were presented at the American College of Cardiology conference in Chicago.

"Although this study indicates that hypo-androgenic men with coronary artery disease might actually be protected by testosterone replacement, this is an observational study that doesn't provide enough evidence to justify changing treatment recommendations," said cardiologist Brent Muhlestein, co-director of cardiovascular research at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute.

"It does, however, substantiate the need for a randomized clinical trial that can confirm or refute the results of this study."
Thai authorities have confiscated about 8,000 red bowls bearing a message from ousted ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra, police said Sunday, in the junta's latest attempt to block the resurgence of the political party it toppled.

The raids followed the arrest last week of a woman seen posing with one of the bowls in photos on social media. She has been charged with sedition, a move slammed by a rights group as absurd.

The plastic scoops, used for pouring water in Buddhist ceremonies during Thailand's upcoming new year, bear a note signed by former prime minister Thaksin, whose political bloc has spent the past decade vying for power with a military-backed elite.

Thaksin was ousted in a 2006 coup and now lives in exile, while the government run by his sister Yingluck was toppled by the current junta in 2014.

The bowls -- cast in the Shinawatra's signature red colour -- were first distributed at a temple fair last week in the northern province of Chiang Mai.

The message printed on the side reads: "The situation may be hot, but brothers and sisters may gain coolness from the water inside this bucket."

On Saturday police and soldiers raided homes and offices of three former MPs from the Shinawatras' Puea Thai Party in the northern province of Nan to seize the bowls.

"If we allow these bowls to be distributed, it could benefit some political parties or result in losses to others," said officer Prayoon Chamnankong, who led one of the raids.

In a social media post Sunday, Thaksin urged the junta to focus on more important matters.

"I've done it (given out bowls) several times in the past and it never posed a problem to national security," he wrote, suggesting the junta spend its time tackling other issues such as an ongoing drought and a simmering Muslim insurgency in the far south.

The woman arrested last week could be jailed for up to seven years if convicted of sedition.

Human Rights Watch called the case evidence that the junta's "intolerance of dissent has reached the point of absolute absurdity".

Story continues

"When military courts try people for sedition for posting photos with holiday gifts from deposed leaders, it's clear that the end of repression is nowhere in sight," said Brad Adams, HRW's Asia director.

The junta has outlawed all political activities since its power grab, pledging to heal the kingdom's bitter divides.

But critics say the generals are chiefly bent on crippling the Shinawatra clan, who are wildly popular with their rural supporters in the north and northeast but hated by the Bangkok-centric military and royalist elite.

A similar attempt to quash the siblings' enduring popularity was made earlier this year when authorities banned a calendar featuring the pair in an embrace.

After keeping quiet for much of the past two years, the family's powerful political machine has recently become more vocal as the country gears up for the junta's promised elections in 2017.

But public criticism of the regime has landed many Shinawatra allies in brief spells of military detention, which the army describes as "attitude adjustment" sessions.
Sales of whiskies made outside Scotland are expected to grow to 363.4 million cases by 2020, driven primarily by consumption in countries like India, the UK, France, Nigeria and Japan among others.

According to the latest report from the International Wine and Spirits Research group (IWSR), between 2015 and 2020 sales of non-Scotch whiskies are expected to record a 4.7 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in response to growing interest in emerging markets.

Overall, nearly three-quarters of non-Scotch whiskey growth will come from India, where 98 percent of the segment's market is dominated by domestic whiskey.

In Europe, the thirst for non-Scotch whiskies is predicted to grow most in the UK (5.3 percent), France (3 percent) and Germany (1.6 percent).

Outside Europe, the markets that are expected to see major growth are Nigeria, Japan, Russia and the US, where sales grew nearly six percent between 209 and 2014.

Sales are expected to continue growing at a CAGR of 4.4 percent to 2020 in the US.

The thirst for American-made whiskies is also predicted to attain double-digit growth in countries like France, Poland, Russia, Turkey, Mexico as well as the Travel Retail Channel.

Meanwhile, Irish whiskey has been experiencing what the industry is dubbing a renaissance of sorts, hitting an 11 percent growth between 2009 and 2014 to become the fastest-growing spirits category globally.

The exceptions to the trend in rising whiskey sales are Spain and Russia, where sales are predicted to decline, and Canada, where sales are forecast to remain stable.
By Belinda Goldsmith STOCKHOLM (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The threat of terrorism and global migration will grow worse in both rich and poor nations without greater worldwide cooperation to tackle the root causes of poverty and extremism, leaders of an international forum on peace building said on Tuesday. The Swedish co-chair of the International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding (IDPS) said recent violent extremism - such as the attacks in Paris and Brussels - coupled with mass migration present major challenges to all nations. Sweden's Minister for International Development Cooperation Isabella Lovin called for all nations to speed up and scale up efforts to tackle the causes of conflict and achieve a global goal to end extreme poverty by 2030. Studies show the number of conflicts globally has been stable for the last decade at between 31 and 37 but 2014 was the most lethal year since the end of the Cold War, according to the Sweden's Uppsala Conflict Data Program. That spike was largely due to Syria and Iraq, it said. Conflict, poverty and climate change have forced 60 million people from their homes - the highest level since World War II - with up to 1.5 billion people living in fragile states, defined as poor nations with weak state structure. Lovin said failing to tackle causes of conflict or extreme poverty would exacerbate world volatility and called for a renewed commitment to support fragile and conflict-hit states. "Increasing refugee flows, violent extremism, a rise in wars and conflicts as well as climate-related disasters have changed the global landscape," she said in a statement at the fifth global meeting of the IDPS. A spokesman for the IDPS said: "Crucially, it could further precipitate the global humanitarian and refugee crises and heightened threats of terrorism with increasing repercussions on a global scale." The meeting comes in the shadow of the attacks in France and Belgium by Islamic State that killed 130 and 35 people respectively. Lovin said the changes in the global landscape highlighted the need for a stronger role by the IDPS. Launched in 2008, its mission is to find ways through political dialogue to support countries to move away from conflict and fragility to become peaceful and resilient. The IDPS includes more than 40 countries, nine multilateral organizations including the World Bank and the United Nations and a rising number of civil society groups. Studies show that by 2030, without coordinated international action, two-thirds of the world's poor will be living in countries and regions plagued by endemic violence and fragility, the IDPS said. Lovin called on IDPS nations to recommit to the so-called New Deal agreed in 2011 that proposed five peace and statebuilding goals - legitimate politics, security, justice, economic foundations, revenues and services. "It is now more important than ever to tackle the root causes of conflict, to fight against extreme poverty and to work on resilience," said Lovin. (Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith, Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)
DHAKA (Reuters) - Three people were killed on Monday when Bangladeshi riot police fired shots after coming under attack from demonstrators in a disturbance over a planned, Chinese-built power plant, authorities said. S Alam Group, a Bangladeshi company, signed a deal earlier in the day with SEPCOIII Electric Power Construction Corporation of China to build the coal-fired plant in the coastal Chittagong district to produce 1,320 megawatts of electricity. In the incident in the village of Banshkhali in Chittagong, 265 km (165 miles) southeast of the capital Dhaka, groups of villagers for and against the power plant clashed and at one point some protesters targeted police, authorities said. A police official said riot officers had sought to disperse the protesters peacefully and fired their weapons only after coming under attack. "Police opened fire on the mob and three people were killed," a police official told reporters. Those villagers who were demonstrating against the plant were unhappy with the amount of compensation paid them for land acquired for the $1.8 billion plant project while those in favor had accepted the settlement. A senior official of the state-run Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) told Reuters that the project was still at the green-field stage and would take at least four years to complete. He said that the BPDB had already signed a separate deal to purchase electricity from S Alam Group. (Reporting by Serajul Quadir; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
The director of "Blue Ruin" and "Green Room" is being linked with "Defection," working from one of Hollywood's hottest scripts and based on 1970s spy novel "The Defection of A.J. Lewinter."

First published in 1973, "The Defection of A.J. Lewinter" was reworked into "Defection" by the writer behind "Black Hawk Down."

Ken Nolan, who was nominated for a Writers Guild of America award for his work on the Ridley Scott movie, later collected a WGA trophy for his work on "The Company," a TV series based on a Robert Littnell novel.

With Littnell having made his fiction debut with "The Defection of A.J. Lewinter," and Nolan already experienced in adapting his work, The Tracking Board is now reporting that breakout filmmaker Jeremy Saulnier is in line to direct.

Saulnier's independent features -- savage thriller "Blue Ruin" and the upcoming April release "Green Room," with Patrick Stewart as a terrifying neo-Nazi club owner -- have seen him net prestigious awards from Cannes, Deauville, Neuchatel and a dozen more film festivals.

"The Defection of A.J. Lewinter" had an American scientist switch allegiance to Russia during the Cold War, though neither side is sure of his true motives; Nolan's modernized treatment shifts to North Korea and takes place in a landscape altered by Edward Snowden's public disclosures in 2013.
By Paul Carrel and Andreas Rinke BERLIN (Reuters) - At an hour-long meeting in Moscow on March 23, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov irritated his German counterpart by raising the case of a German-Russian girl who said she was raped by migrants in Berlin earlier this year. After the girl's claims were reported by Russian media in January, Lavrov accused Germany of "sweeping problems under the rug." The Berlin public prosecutor's office, though, said a medical examination had found the girl had not been raped. That was why Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was so upset when Lavrov raised the issue again. "I can only hope that such incidents and difficulties, as we had in that case, aren't repeated," he told reporters afterwards. The rape case is indicative of the mutual suspicion that officials from both countries say extends to the highest levels of government. At the root of those tensions lie opposing visions for Europe and the Middle East. Those rival visions have led to clashes at diplomatic negotiating tables, in cyberspace and in the media. German and other European security officials accuse Russian media of launching what they call an "information war" against Germany. By twisting the truth in reports on Germany's migrant crisis, the officials say, Russia hopes to fuel popular angst, weaken voters' trust in Chancellor Angela Merkel, and feed divisions in the European Union so that it drops sanctions against Moscow. "Russian propaganda is a danger to the cohesion of our society," Ole Schroeder, German deputy interior minister and a member of Merkel's conservatives, told Reuters. Russian officials deny their country is mounting a campaign against Germany. "These accusations are atrocious," said one Russian official, who said Moscow is the victim of an "indiscriminate information war" being waged from Germany. In February, Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, denied the Kremlin had exploited the rape case to stir up tensions around immigration in Germany. "We cannot agree with such accusations," Peskov said. "On the contrary, we were keen that our position be understood, we were talking about a citizen of the Russian Federation. Any country expresses its concerns (in such cases). It would be wrong to look for any hidden agenda." But officials in Berlin say Russia's aim is to muddy what is true and what is not and shake Germans' trust in Merkel. "The idea today is to get disinformation, which means you don't believe anything," Hans-Peter Hinrichsen, a Foreign Ministry official, told a recent meeting on Russia's role in Europe at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP). German and European officials say Russia's aim is two-fold: To exaggerate the problems the migrant crisis is causing Germany and to push Germany to relax its backing for European sanctions on Russia over Moscow's interference in Ukraine. While EU governments last month extended asset freezes and travel bans on Russians and Russian companies, there is less consensus on whether to prolong more far-reaching sanctions on Russia's banking, defence and energy sectors from July. Both sides agree on one point: relations between the two countries are at their lowest point since the early days of the Cold War. BIKINI TROLLS? Beginning in the late 1960s, the then West Germany pursued a policy of 'Ostpolitik', which encouraged warmer ties with Russia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the two countries grew even closer thanks to trade and cultural ties. But those ties began unraveling when Vladimir Putin returned as Russian president in 2012, and worsened further after the Ukraine crisis began in late 2013. "All the networks, all the personal ties  they just don't work anymore," said Stefan Meister, at the DGAP. The accusations of disinformation have spawned a whole new vocabulary. Officials at NATO now talk about the 'weaponization of information' by Russia. Colonel Aivar Jaeski, deputy director at the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, says Russia's campaign against Europe uses "angry trolls" who produce online hate speech, and "bikini trolls" to lure followers and then sow discord and doubt about news events. Jaeski pointed to a NATO StratCom report on trolling, which says the Guardian newspaper's online edition was targeted "in a troll attack that is considered to have been ordered by the Kremlin" over its reporting on the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied funding or backing online trolls, and has specifically denied any connection with a company based in St Petersburg whose ex-employees have said they were paid to spread disinformation, praise Putin and criticize the West. A GERMAN CAMPAIGN? In the rape case, Russian media reported the German-Russian girl  under German law she can only be identified as Lisa F.  had been abducted by 'Arab-looking men' and raped repeatedly over a 30-hour period. Janis Sarts, director of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, said Russian media continued to report that even after the Berlin authorities said the girl had not been raped. Europe's East StratCom Task Force has collected dozens of examples of Russian reporting on the migrant crisis that it says are clear cases of deliberate disinformation. German daily Bild reported in March that Germany's foreign and domestic intelligence agencies were warning of increasing Russian interference in German politics. Moscow rejects the idea of any coordinated campaign. One Russian official said there was a German media campaign to paint Russia in a bad light and "demonize" it. The official said that Russian media had formerly been too positive about Germany and were now more objective. "This ends the discrepancy that saw the German media be very critical of Russia and the Russian media paint a very favorable picture of Germany," he said. BLACK BOX At the March 23 meeting, the two countries reached an "academic cooperation accord." Both sides also continue to emphasize cultural ties. But repairing political ties may be harder. Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD)  junior members in Merkel's ruling coalition and the party behind "Ostpolitik" all those decades ago  seems increasingly ready to compromise with Moscow. Sigmar Gabriel, an SDP member and Germany's Economy Minister, said recently that the EU should try to lift sanctions on Russia by this summer. Merkel, though, has refused to ease the sanctions, insisting that Russia first needs to comply with an agreement to enforce a ceasefire, pull back heavy weapons, exchange prisoners, and hold internationally monitored local elections in eastern Ukraine. German officials say Merkel speaks to Putin more than any other Western leader and recognizes better than most that the Russian leader respects firmness. But the governments still struggle to understand each other. "The Kremlin is like a Black Box: we have a rough idea of who sits in the Black Box but we have no idea what they are thinking, what they are worried about, what they are thinking for 5-10 years' time," a senior German official said. (Additional reporting by Sabine Siebold in Berlin, Robin Emmott in Brussels and Andrew Osborne in Moscow; Edited by Simon Robinson)
The minimalist TiGr Mini bicycle lock has scooped a 2016 Red Dot Best of the Best Award for Product Design.

Stanton Concepts' titanium, bow-shaped TiGr Mini weighs in at 422g (0.93lbs) while meeting the standards required for ART Foundation security certification.

With the Red Dot Product Design Award winners informed of their elite status on March 30, subsequent public announcements are made at the discretion of each individual company, all in advance of a July 4 ceremony in Essen, Germany.

The Product Design awards will be held at the Red Dot Design Museum, where all 79 of Red Dot's Best of the Best winners will be shown in a Design on Stage exhibition before becoming part of a permanent collection.

"We are both humbled and thrilled to have our unique TiGr bike lock design recognized by such a prestigious body," said John Loughlin, co-founder of Stanton Concepts LLC. "Receiving the 2016 Red Dot Design award is a great honor for us and we can't wait to share TiGr Lock with our fellow honorees."
A bomb scare shut down New York's Times Square on Saturday night.

According to local news reports, the alert was triggered by an abandoned white box truck found on 46th St. near Broadway, which forced police to evacuate a busy Time Square at 8 p.m. on Saturday. The truck was left abandoned outside two theaters and the Marriott Marquis hotel.

After swarming the suspect vehicle, police determined it was no threat and called off the alert and all the affected performances were allowed to resume.

Local news reported that the driver of the truck, Ryan Frasier of Queens, was eventually located and taken into custody for questioning. Frasier was released by police on Sunday with a ticket.

April 4, 10:25 am Corrected story throughout to reflect that a Broadway performance of Hamilton was not evacuated. "Audience members remained in their seats until the show began at 8:30pm," a rep for the show stated.

Read More: 'Hamilton' Creator Lin-Manuel Miranda on Phife Dawg: He Was "So Unapologetically Himself"
A reader who grew up in eastern Montana flagged some sad news today: the death of Joe Medicine Crow. He was a Native American historian, the last war chief of the Crow Tribe of Montana, and the winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom:

Medicine Crow earned the title war chief for his deeds in Europe in World War II, which included stealing enemy horses and showing mercy on a German soldier he could have killed, Montana Public Radios Eric Whitney reports. He was also a living link to the 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn, having heard direct testimony from someone who took part in the battle and later chronicling it as a historian.

Our reader passed along this video of Medicine Crow talking about that fateful battle with General Custer, as well as recalling his deeds in WWII:

Joe Medicine Crow lived to the remarkable age of 102.

A few months ago, our Montana reader submitted a song from another member of the Crow Nation, rapper Chris Parrish, aka Supaman:

Hes a wonderful man and an inspiration and deserves all the success he can muster. In 2014 he was named Artist of the Week by MTVs Iggy blog and has received multiple awards in native music, etc. If you like the track and can find a theme for it, please play it if you have a chance.

(Track of the Day archive here. Access it through Spotify here. Submit via hello@)

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
More than 100 million passengers flew through Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in 2015, making the US hub the world's busiest airport for the 19th consecutive year.

According to the latest report from the Montreal-based Airports Council International, passenger traffic to the Atlanta airport grew nearly six percent in 2015, shattering previously held travel records.

In addition to being the primary hub for Delta Air Lines, Hartsfield-Jackson benefits from its strategic location as a major connecting hub and port of entry into North America: The airport is within a two-hour flight of 80 percent of the US population.

It serves 150 US destinations and 75 international destinations in 50 countries and sees more than 250,000 flyers pass through its halls daily.

Meanwhile, China's Beijing Capital International Airport has been steadily closing the gap, recording a 4 percent growth in passenger traffic last year for a total of 89.9 million travelers.

Dubai International Airport also leapfrogged from sixth to third spot, recording an 11 percent spike in passenger traffic in 2015 and stripping London's Heathrow Airport as the new titleholder for the world's busiest airport for international travelers.

Rounding out the top five spots on the index is Chicago O'Hare and Tokyo's Haneda Airport.

The fastest growing airport was Shanghai's Pudong International Airport which recorded a 16 percent growth in passenger traffic compared to the year previous.

The results also reveal that air travel is on the rise, with a growth of more than 6 percent recorded in total passenger traffic in 2015 compared to 2014. Likewise, the percentage of total international passengers grew more than 6 percent last year.

The report looked at traffic records for 1,144 airports around the world.

Here are the top 10 busiest airports for 2015:

1. Atlanta ATL

2. Beijing PEK

3. Dubai DXB

4. Chicago ORD

5. Tokyo HND

6. London LHR

7. Los Angeles LAX

8. Hong Kong HKG

9. Paris CDG

10. Dallas DFW
Trump adviser Barry Bennett during an interview in Alexandria, Va., last fall. (Photo: Yuri Gripas/Reuters)



Donald Trumps senior campaign adviser is urging the Republican frontrunner and his top staffers to ignore the political observers who say the real estate moguls tumultuous week will ultimately derail his presidential bid.

America is sick of them, Barry Bennett wrote in an internal memo obtained by the Washington Post. Their idiotic attacks just remind voters why they hate the Washington Establishment.

So this week the Media and the Washington Establishment bashed the campaign with energy yet ever seen against a Republican candidate, Bennett wrote in the April 2 memo addressed to Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and Team and titled Digging Through the Bull S***.

Bennetts memo (Washington Post)



You name the medium and it was dominated with Trump Attacks, Bennett continued. The media themselves couldnt wait to label the week, THE WORST WEEK EVER. DC Pundits scurried to the networks to proclaim the end was at hand for Donald Trump. Yet another pathetic display by the so called experts who line their pockets at the expense of our candidates and causes.

Bennett concluded with a handy scorecard:





Donald Trump 1

Washington Establishment/Media 0



Over the weekend, Bennett, who formerly served as Ben Carsons campaign manager, dismissed the notion that the Trump campaign was in damage-control mode.

As he had in his memo, Bennett pointed to Reuters polling data that shows the real estate mogul has expanded his national lead over Texas Sen. Ted Cruz by 6 percentage points.

So it turns out our worst week ever was a pretty good week, he said on Sunday in an appearance on MSNBC.

On Friday, Bennett told Yahoo News that Team Trump always assumed that we would lose Wisconsin.

But in an interview with CNNs Wolf Blitzer on Monday, Bennett insisted the race in Wisconsin  where Cruz leads Trump by 10 points, according to one recent poll  is getting tighter.

Story continues

Its been tightening, Bennett said, predicting that Trump would win some of the states 42 GOP delegates.

Trump himself tried to turn the page on his worst week in a pair of interviews on Sunday.

I dont know that its been the worst week of my campaign, he said on CBS Face the Nation. I think Ive had many bad weeks and Ive had many good weeks. I dont see this as the worst week in my campaign.

On Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace asked Trump if he was self-imploding.

This may sound harsh, Wallace said, but are you in the process of blowing your campaign for president?

I dont think so, Trump replied. I think Im doing very well. Was this my best week? I guess not.
Washington (AFP) - Voters in Wisconsin made their choices in the US presidential race on Tuesday, with the Midwestern state likely a speed bump for Republican frontrunner Donald Trump and top Democrat Hillary Clinton in the race for their parties' nominations.

Both are underdogs in the lone but crucial contest of early April, although the races were tightening in the run-up to Tuesday's primaries.

Should Clinton and Trump score come-from-behind victories, it would help solidify their leads in the all-important race for delegates who choose the presidential nominees at the Democratic and Republican conventions in July.

But if Trump loses the Badger State to chief rival Ted Cruz, it could alter the trajectory of the Republican race, making it tougher for the brash real estate tycoon to secure the nomination before the convention.

Cruz is eyeing Wisconsin, birthplace of the Republican Party, as a crucial firewall against the celebrity billionaire's march to become the GOP flagbearer.

"If we end up with a win tonight, it is going to have national repercussions," Cruz, an arch-conservative senator from Texas, told Wisconsin's WTMJ radio as voters trooped to the polls.

"All of the signs are encouraging" for a Cruz victory, he said.

Polls in Wisconsin, a state bordering Canada with more than three million registered voters, were due to close at 8:00 pm (0100 GMT).

The stakes are highest for Trump, whose long ride as the Republican frontrunner has run into turbulence over recent campaign gaffes including controversial comments on abortion, NATO, and his widely dismissed claim that he could eliminate the national debt in eight years.

A RealClearPolitics poll average showed Cruz leading Trump 39.2 percent to 34.5 percent, with Ohio Governor John Kasich trailing at 20 percent.

In the Democratic race, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was ahead of Clinton at 47.9 percent to 45.3 percent.

Should Trump prevail Tuesday, he could snuff out Cruz's campaign.

Story continues

"If he (Trump) wins Wisconsin, the contest is over," Karl Rove, a former aide to president George W. Bush, told Fox News.

"If not, it's going to go on and the math becomes somewhat more difficult."

Although his campaign had recently seemed bulletproof, recent controversial statements on abortion, Cruz's wife and a female journalist who said she was roughed up by Trump's campaign manager have further alienated women voters, polls indicate.

- 'He treats everyone equal' -

Cruz tried to cash in on Trump's recent campaign stumbles.

"He seems to have a problem with strong women," Cruz told Fox News Monday.

Trump's wife Melania joined him Monday for a rare campaign trail speech in Milwaukee, part of a likely effort to boost flagging support among women.

"He's fair," insisted Melania Trump, 45. "No matter who you are, man or a woman, he treats everyone equal."

Like Trump, Clinton risks losing Wisconsin, where she faces a surging Sanders, the self-proclaimed democratic socialist who has won five of the last six contests and is outpacing her in donations.

"The truth is, we were outraised and outspent last month, and we could very well lose the Wisconsin primary tonight," Clinton's campaign acknowledged in a fundraising email.

But the former secretary of state can look forward with some confidence to the next races. She leads Sanders by double digits in New York, her adopted home state which votes April 19, and Pennsylvania, which casts ballots a week later.

She also pointed to her own "very significant lead in delegates" during an appearance Tuesday on ABC morning program "The View."

Clinton has secured 1,742 delegates -- including 483 so-called "super-delegates" who are not bound by primary results -- while Sanders has 1,051 total, according to a CNN tally.

A candidate needs 2,383 delegates to secure the nomination.

Trump, the 69-year-old real estate mogul from New York, also leads handily in his home state of New York and in Pennsylvania.

The winner of Wisconsin's Republican primary will take most of the 42 delegates on offer.

Currently, Trump has 740 delegates, Cruz 474 and Kasich 145, according to CNN. A candidate needs 1,237 delegates to win the Republican nomination outright.

If none reaches the magic number before the Republican primary races wrap up on June 7, the nominee will be decided at a contested convention where, after the first ballot, delegates will be free to vote according to personal preference instead of being bound by the primary results.

Trump on Monday called for Kasich to "get the hell out" of the race.

Kasich has refused, insisting he would be the logical mainstream choice in the event of a contested convention.

"I've got news for him: I'm going to get a heck of a lot of his voters," Kasich told a crowd Monday while campaigning on Long Island in New York.

"I'm dropping in, I'm not dropping out."
(Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's string of luxury hotel properties, The Trump Hotel Collection, appears to be dealing with the second breach of its credit card systems in a year, KrebsonSecurity reported on Monday. The company was investigating the claims, the blog reported. (http://bit.ly/25HgQWb) The company could not be immediately reached. The luxury hotel fell victim to a credit card breach in July. The hotel industry has been hit by such breaches. Hyatt Hotels Corp had reported a malware attack to steal payment card data in January while Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc had reported a breach in November. (Reporting by Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Don Sebastian)
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.
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said on Monday that Turkey should stop its interference into the internal affairs of neighbouring nations and support of terrorism. "In general, it is important for our Turkish neighbours right now to aim at ending their meddling in the internal affairs of other states, be it Iraq or Syria," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. "There are enough facts and evidence that Turkey continues this interference and supports terrorism." Lavrov's also said that Ankara's statement expressing its strong support for Azerbaijan in renewed fighting over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region was "one-sided". (Reporting by Maria Kiselyova; Writing by Dmitry Solovyov)
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish authorities have arrested two alleged members of the Islamic State militant group near the Syrian border on suspicion that they were planning a suicide bombing, officials said on Monday. The two men had been on the interior ministry's wanted list and were detained on Friday in the southeastern province of Gaziantep, the local governor's office said in a statement. They were believed to be plotting suicide attacks in Gaziantep or other cities, according to the governor's office. Two other men were also detained alongside the two would-be suicide bombers, it said. An official for the interior ministry separately confirmed the detentions of the four. Gaziantep is near the Syrian border and part of it lies just across the frontier from the Islamic State-controlled Syrian town of Jarablus. Turkey, which faces multiple security threats, is on heightened alert after four suicide bombings already this year, two of which have been blamed on Islamic State. The most recent, a suicide bomb attack in Istanbul's most popular shopping district on March 19, killed three Israeli tourists and an Iranian and wounded dozens of people. The government later identified the bomber as an Islamic State member from Gaziantep. One of the attackers in the March 22 Brussels suicide bombings was deported from Turkey last year after being detained in Gaziantep. Turkey informed Belgium that the man, Ibrahim El Bakraoui, was a militant, but he was later released by Belgian authorities, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has said, calling the decision an intelligence failure on the part of Europe. As part of a U.S.-led coalition, Turkey is fighting Islamic State in neighbouring Syria and Iraq. It is also battling Kurdish militants in its southeast, where a 2-1/2-year ceasefire collapsed last July, triggering the worst violence since the 1990s. The spate of bombings has raised questions about Turkey's ability to protect itself from a spillover of both the Syria and Kurdish conflicts. (Reporting by Orhan Coskun and; Humeyra Pamuk; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Ankara (AFP) - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday lashed out at the West for giving Turkey "lessons in democracy", rejecting mounting US and EU criticism over an alleged clampdown on press freedoms under his rule.

"Those who attempt to give us lessons in democracy and human rights must first contemplate their own shame," Erdogan told a meeting of the Turkish Red Crescent in Ankara.

US President Barack Obama warned last week that Turkey's approach towards the media was taking it "down a path that would be very troubling."

Erdogan's comments came as local media reported the fresh arrest of five opposition journalists on Monday, without giving details on who they were.

Turkey's government has been accused of increasing authoritarianism and muzzling critical media as well as lawmakers, academics, lawyers and NGOs.

Two journalists from the leading opposition daily Cumhuriyet face life in prison after being charged with revealing state secrets over a story accusing the government of seeking to illicitly deliver arms to rebels in Syria.

Erdogan met with Obama in Washington last week, and defended press freedom in Turkey, saying some publications had branded him a "thief" and a "killer" without being shut down.

"Such insults and threats are not permitted in the West," he claimed.

Erdogan on Monday again slammed the Constitutional Court for allowing the two journalists to be released during their trial. The reporters had spent three months in detention until the decision was handed down in February.

He said that the Constitutional Court had "betrayed its very existence" with the ruling.

On Monday, a Turkish court issued arrest warrants for several opposition journalists, five of whom were detained, local media reported.

They are accused of of violating legal confidentiality by reporting on a corruption scandal which engulfed Erdogan's inner circle in 2013/14 and was centred on the illicit trading of gold with Iran.

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The reporters are also accused of belonging to a "terrorist group" -- the usual official parlance for the grouping run by Erdogan's arch foe Fethullah Gulen who is accused of being behind the graft claims.

- 'Wild Man of the Bosphorus' -

The fresh crackdown comes after Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that he was unhappy about the raft of stories criticising Erdogan in German media in recent weeks.

In a telephone call Davutoglu complained such stories "were incompatible with freedom of the press" and said there should be an end to the publication of such "unacceptable" material, he office said.

German weekly Der Spiegel ran a cover story deeply critical of Erdogan in its latest issue, with a caricature of the Turkish president -- whom the magazine called "the wild man of the Bosphorus" -- shaking his fist.

He looms large over a tiny Merkel, holding an EU briefcase with her head in her hand, while a paper airplane cut out of a newspaper pokes him in the backside.

The headline on the story read: "The fearsome friend: President Erdogan's crusade against freedom and democracy."

It is not the first time Germany has irked Ankara with its coverage of Erdogan.

Last month Turkey summoned Germany's ambassador to protest a two-minute song lampooning Erdogan that was broadcast on German television.

The TV show responded by re-broadcasting the tune "Erdowie, Erdowo, Erdogan" that ridicules the president, and adding Turkish subtitles.

The satirical song charges, among other things, that "a journalist who writes something that Erdogan doesn't like/Will be in jail by tomorrow".

The row comes as the EU is accused of selling out its principles by offering Turkey visa-free travel and a fast-racked EU membership process, in exchange for help on the migrant crisis.
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Monday ruled out reviving peace talks with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and vowed to stamp out the conflict, at its deadliest in two decades, once and for all. Two members of the security forces were killed in fighting in the mainly Kurdish southeast on Monday, officials said. The autonomy-seeking PKK abandoned its two-year ceasefire in July, reigniting a conflict that has claimed more than 40,000 lives, mainly Kurdish, since 1984. The violence wrecked a peace process, spearheaded by Erdogan, that was seen as the best chance at ending one of Europe's longest-running insurgencies. "We said 'resolution process', and they deceived us, their word cannot be trusted. That's over now, we are going to finish this off," Erdogan said in a speech to the state-run Red Crescent humanitarian organization. It was aired live by TRT. "The terrorists can choose two paths: surrender to justice or be neutralized, one by one. There is no third way left in Turkey. We tried that repeatedly in the past," he said, then denied rumors there had been recent contacts with the PKK. Almost 400 soldiers and police and thousands of militants have been killed since July, Erdogan said last week. Opposition political parties say between 500 and 1,000 civilians have also perished in the fighting, centered in towns and cities in southeast, home to most of Turkey's estimated 15 million Kurds. In the town of Nusaybin, located at the Syrian border, PKK militants used a rocket launcher to fire on soldiers, killing one and wounding two others, security officials said. In a separate attack, a member of the local village guard militia was killed while taking his children to a health clinic, they said. (Reporting by Seda Sezer in Istanbul and Seyhmus Cakan in Diyarbakir, Turkey; Writing by Ayla Jean Yackley; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Alison Williams)
Nicosia (AFP) - The ruling coalition in the breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) collapsed Monday, paving the way for its resignation at a time when talks over the island's reunification have been making progress.

Prime Minister Omer Kalyoncu is set to officially hand in his government's resignation to President Mustafa Akinci on Tuesday morning, said Mehmet Ali Talat, head of the ruling Republican Turkish Party (CTP).

The government, which is recognised only by Turkey, collapsed after ministers from the CTP's coalition partner the National Unity Party (UBP) withdrew in protest at the cash-strapped statelet's economic policy.

UBP chairman Huseyin Ozgurgun complained that his party did not accept a decision to pay civil servants salaries in instalments and was also unhappy with the water distribution on the parched territory.

"Having come to a point where there is no longer a possibility and capacity to serve our people, it is not our goal to form a government or share the office," Ozgurgun said.

Still largely cut off from the global economy, the TRNC is beset by economic problems and largely kept afloat by assistance from Turkey. It was unable to pay public sector staff their wages in March.

The alliance between the left-wing CTP and the conservative UBP, formed in July last year, was the first such grand coalition ever between the two main parties.

The CTP is the biggest party in the 50-member Turkish Cypriot government with 20 seats but is well short of a majority with the UBP holding 18 seats.

Talat indicated late Monday that the CTP was in discussions with all parties in a bid to form a new administration.

It is possible that the UBP could form a government along with independents and the Democratic Party of Serdar Denktash, the son of the TRNC's hardline former leader Rauf Denktash who died in 2012.

In 1974, Turkish troops invaded northern Cyprus in response to an Athens-engineered coup, and later occupied the territory.

The TRNC was declared in 1982, recognised only by Ankara, and decades of UN-brokered peace talks have failed to reach a peaceful conclusion.

However with Akinci, a moderate compared to his predecessors, forging a strong personal relationship Greek Cypriot counterpart Nicos Anastasiades, there is new hope that reunification is a genuine possibility.
By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Two former baggage handlers who prosecutors say used their security credentials to help a nationwide drug ring smuggle "samples" of cocaine through Los Angeles International Airport were arrested on drug trafficking charges on Monday.

Adrian Ponce, 27, and Alberto Preciado Gutierrez, 26, were each charged in federal court in Los Angeles with conspiracy to possess and distribute cocaine, U.S. Attorney Eileen Decker said.

"These defendants are charged with abusing their privileged access on behalf of drug dealers," Decker said in a statement. "This case is yet another example of employees associated with airports assisting drug traffickers."

According to prosecutors, Ponce and Preciado are accused of helping couriers smuggle one-kilogram (2.2 lbs) "samples" of cocaine onto commercial airliners at LAX to distribute to customers on the East Coast.

Law enforcement agents seized a kilogram from Preciado in December as he was delivering it to an alleged drug courier in an LAX terminal restroom, prosecutors said.

Under questioning by law enforcement officers, Ponce, who had been waiting for Preciado outside the terminal, admitted to working with a large-scale drug supplier, according to prosecutors

Ponce told authorities that Preciado would typically give the samples to couriers once they had passed through normal airport security, prosecutors said. If the East Coast customers approved of the samples, 100-kilogram shipments would be delivered by the drug ring using trucks driven across the country.

If convicted of the charges, both men face 10 years to life in federal prison.

In March a JetBlue flight attendant who ran from an LAX terminal moments before a search of her luggage turned up 66 pounds (30 kg) of cocaine was arrested in New York. Marsha Reynolds, 31, was charged with possession of cocaine with the intent to distribute the drug.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Dan Grebler)
Dakar (AFP) - The Pentagon announced Monday the transfer of two Libyan inmates from the Guantanamo Bay detention centre to Senegal, the latest move under President Barack Obama's contentious plan to shutter the notorious jail.

The two men -- Salem Abdu Salam Ghereby, 55, and Omar Khalif Mohammed Abu Baker Mahjour Umar, approximately 44 -- had been in the US military prison located in Cuba since 2002.

Both had ties to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and Al-Qaeda, according to their leaked prisoner files.

"The United States is grateful to the government of Senegal for its humanitarian gesture and willingness to support ongoing US efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility," the Pentagon said in a statement.

For its part Senegal said Monday it was glad to support the "historic" US decision to close Guantanamo.

"It is in the tradition of Senegalese hospitality and Islamic solidarity towards two African brothers who have expressed their wish to be resettled in Senegal after their release," read a foreign ministry statement, released by the national APS news agency.

The latest transfers mean the remaining population at the controversial jail inow stands at 89. Thirty-five of them have been approved for release to other countries, though the complex process is only completed after rehabilitation and monitoring measures are implemented.

Obama had promised, on his second day in office in 2009, to close the Guantanamo prison within a year, but his efforts floundered largely due to fierce opposition from Republican lawmakers.

In February, the president presented Congress with a new closure plan for Guantanamo, which he says serves only to stoke anti-US resentment and fuel jihadist recruitment.

But the plan is likely doomed. Republicans continue to oppose the jail's shuttering, especially because Obama wants to transfer the highest-risk detainees to a site in the United States.

"The administration is determined to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. The continued operation of the detention facility weakens our national security by draining resources, damaging our relationships with key allies and partners and serving as a propaganda tool for violent extremists," Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement.

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Senegal is one of 26 countries that have agreed to resettle nearly 100 detainees since 2009.

"This significant humanitarian gesture is consistent with Senegal's leadership on the global stage," Kerry said.

- 'Erase the stain of Guantanamo' -

Human Rights Watch said the latest transfers signalled "meaningful progress," but warned that the Pentagon needs to accelerate its pace of transferring detainees if Obama is to close Guantanamo before he leaves office in January 2017.

"Senegal's decision to welcome the two Libyans will help heal the harm the 14 years of unjust detention at Guantanamo has caused them," said Laura Pitter, senior US national security counsel at the rights campaign group, in a statement.

"Obama has less than a year in office to erase the stain of Guantanamo that taints his human rights legacy," Pitter added.

Mahjour Umar had been held on suspicion of helping re-establish Al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan following their destruction by US bombings in 1998, and was identified as an explosives and weapons trainer, according to his leaked file.

Ghereby's file says he had attended multiple training camps and received explosives training from a senior Al-Qaeda explosives expert. Neither man was ever charged.

The Pentagon said the men were approved for transfer after multiple agencies reviewed their cases.

Guantanamo Bay is a US naval base carved out of a remote chunk of land on the tip of southeastern Cuba. The administration of president George W. Bush opened a prison there to hold terror suspects soon after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001.

In all, it has housed about 780 inmates over the years.

Republican presidential candidates have vowed that, if elected, they would send more terror suspects to Guantanamo instead of closing it.
Istanbul (AFP) - Two people were killed on Monday when a wall collapsed above a tea house in a popular tourist spot in the historic centre of Istanbul, Turkish officials said.

Five people survived being trapped in the rubble that fell onto the tea house but two corpses were recovered by rescue services, Istanbul governor Vasip Sahin was quoted as saying by Turkish media.

The tea house is located in Gulhane Park, a green area much loved by tourists and locals with spectacular views of the Bosphorus and just below the famed Ottoman-era Topkapi Palace.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and its allies conducted two dozen strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria on Sunday, the coalition leading the operations said. In a statement released on Monday, the Combined Joint Task Force said 14 strikes near seven cities in Syria, almost half of them near Al Hawl, hit several tactical units and destroyed vehicles, buildings and improvised explosive devices. In Iraq, 10 strikes near seven cities denied Islamic State access to terrain and destroyed a weapons storage facility, a supply cache and a machine gun among other targets, the statement said. (Reporting by Washington Newsroom)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has carried out an air strike in Syria that killed a prominent leader of al Qaeda offshoot Nusra Front, Abu Firas al-Suri, U.S. officials told Reuters on Monday. Islamist rebel sources said Abu Firas, who was a former Syrian army officer discharged in the late 1970s because of his Islamist leanings, was a founding member of the militant group and had fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s. He was a senior member of Nusra Front's policy-making Shura Council. A Pentagon spokesman said a U.S. air strike on Sunday hit a meeting of high-level al Qaeda officials in northwest Syria at which Abu Firas was present. The spokesman, Peter Cook, said the United States was still confirming whether Abu Firas had been killed. The United States has targeted Nusra Front in the past, although the bulk of the U.S. military's firepower in Syria has been directed at Islamic State, which occupies parts of Syria and Iraq. Abu Firas was a fervent opponent of Islamic State's style and was ideologically at odds with the militant group. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks violence in the country, had said he was killed in a suspected Syrian or Russian air raid on a village northwest of the city of Idlib in northwestern Syria on Sunday. But rebel sources said the attack appeared to have the hallmarks of a U.S. drone strike. The U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, declined to offer details on the strike itself, including whether it was carried out by manned or unmanned aircraft. They also did not say whether the Nusra Front leader was specifically targeted. From Madaya, near Damascus, Abu Firas worked with al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in galvanizing support among Pakistani supporters of the fundamentalist Taliban movement in Afghanistan several decades ago, the rebel sources said. "May God accept him as a martyr, he was a commanding figure. This was engineered by the Crusader axis," said one of the sources. (Reporting by Phil Stewart Additional reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Beirut and Mark Hosenball and Yeganeh Torbati in Washington; Editing by Franklin Paul and James Dalgleish)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration does not plan to give Iran access to the U.S. financial system, a State Department spokesman said on Monday. "The administration has not been and is not planning to grant Iran access to the U.S. financial system," State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters at a briefing. On Friday, President Barack Obama said the United States was not looking to permit the use of its financial system for dollar-denominated transactions with Iran, and said foreign companies could work through European banks. (Reporting by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Leslie Adler)
By Julia Edwards WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Singapore man accused of illegally exporting U.S. parts found in explosives in Iraq, through Iran, has been extradited to the United States to face charges on Monday, the Justice Department said. Lim Yong Nam, 42, was indicted in 2010 for sending radio frequency modules from Minnesota to Iran between 2007 and 2008, violating a U.S. trade embargo. The parts were later found in unexploded improvised explosive devices (IED) in Iraq by U.S. coalition forces. The devices caused the majority of the casualties against Americans fighting in Iraq between 2003 and 2011, according to the U.S. indictment. Lim had been detained in Indonesia since October 2014, the Justice Department said. "After a long investigative process, Mr. Lim is back on U.S. soil to answer for his actions," Sarah Saldana, director of the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in a statement released by the Justice Department. The department said Lim and several co-conspirators had routed 6,000 radio frequency modules to Iran, 16 of which were discovered in Iraq. U.S. officials have blamed Iran for supplying Shiite militias with lethal explosives directed against U.S. service members in Iraq. Iran has said the claims are baseless. Lim will appear before a federal magistrate judge in Washington, D.C. at 1:30 Eastern (17:30 GMT) on Monday. (Reporting by Julia Edwards; Additional reporting by Yeganeh Torbati; Editing by Richard Chang)
GENEVA (Reuters) - The U.N. Syria special envoy said on Thursday he was targeting a start date of April 9 for the next round of peace talks, which he expects to focus on the thorny issue of a political transition. "I am expecting and hoping ... that the next round of talks will not be focusing on principles again - we have had enough of that - there are many valid points there, but we have to start focusing on the political process," Staffan de Mistura said. He said that none of the sides had refused a document he had drawn up with common guiding principles to underpin the talks and added that he aimed to reconvene on April 9, although some parties may come as late as April 14, a day after parliamentary elections in Syria. (Reporting By John Irish, Stephanie Nebehay, Tom Miles and Suleiman al-Khalidi)
By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations on Wednesday said it has widened an investigation of allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse by foreign peacekeepers in Central African Republic and notified authorities in France, Gabon and Burundi about the charges. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Monday the world body had received new sexual abuse allegations against U.N. peacekeepers from Morocco and Burundi in Central African Republic (CAR), including one that involved a 14-year-old girl. The U.N. press office released new information about the probe late on Wednesday, saying that a U.N. team led by the U.N. peacekeeping mission in CAR, known as MINUSCA, had traveled to the Kemo prefecture to investigate. "The exact number and nature of these extremely troubling allegations are still being determined," the U.N. statement said. "The team has identified the contingents in question as those provided by Burundi and Gabon." "Allegations made against the French Sangaris forces in the same area are also being investigated," the statement added. "Alleged victims are being interviewed and will be provided with assistance and psycho-social and medical support." The U.N. statement said a senior U.N. official met with Burundi's Ambassador Albert Shingiro and will meet soon with representatives of Gabon. "Allegations are allegations," Shingiro told Reuters. "We have to wait for investigation by a national team from next week. Our national policy on sexual abuse is zero tolerance." The U.N. statement added that the Burundian and Gabonese units accused of involvement in the abuse would remain confined to their camps for the time being. The statement said authorities in France and Gabon have been notified. The French and Gabonese missions were not immediately available for comment. There have been dozens of such accusations against peacekeepers in CAR, where MINUSCA assumed authority from African Union troops in September 2014. France has been investigating allegations against its Sangaris force, which is not under U.N. command, since last year. Earlier on Wednesday, the Code Blue Campaign run by the advocacy group AIDS-Free World issued a statement saying that the U.N. children's fund UNICEF recently interviewed 98 girls who alleged that they had been sexually abused by international peacekeepers. Code Blue said in its statement that three victims interviewed by MINUSCA reported that in 2014, "they and a fourth girl were tied up and undressed inside a camp by a military commander from the Sangaris force and forced to have sex with a dog." Reuters could not independently confirm the allegations raised by Code Blue. The U.N. has pledged to crack down on sex abuse allegations to avoid a repeat of past mistakes. MINUSCA's previous head, Babacar Gaye, resigned last August and some 800 Congolese peacekeepers were repatriated last month. In December, an independent review panel accused the U.N. and its agencies of grossly mishandling allegations of child sexual abuse and rape by international peacekeepers in CAR in 2013 and 2014. (Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Bernard Orr and Richard Pullin)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Navy ships in the Arabian Sea intercepted and seized an arms shipment from Iran likely bound for Houthi fighters in Yemen, the military said in a statement on Monday. The weapons seized last week by the warships Sirocco and Gravely were hidden on a small dhow and included 1,500 AK-47 rifles, 200 rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launchers, and 21 .50-caliber machine guns, according to the Navy statement. The weapons were seized on March 28 and are now in U.S. custody. The boat, which the Navy described as stateless, and its crew were allowed to leave once the weapons were taken. "This seizure is the latest in a string of illicit weapons shipments assessed by the U.S. to have originated in Iran that were seized in the region by naval forces," the military said in the statement. It cited a Feb. 27 incident in which the Australian Navy intercepted a dhow in late February and confiscated nearly 2,000 AK-47s, 100 RPG launchers, and other weapons. On March 20, a French destroyer seized almost 2,000 AK-47s, dozens of Dragunov sniper rifles, nine antitank missiles, and other equipment. Houthi forces seized Yemen's capital Sanaa in 2014, stoking concern in Saudi Arabia that Iran was exploiting turmoil in the region and extending its influence to the Saudi border. The Houthis, whose home territory is in northern Yemen, practice Shi'ite Islam, the majority faith in Iran. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Monday that Iran's support for the Houthis is an example of its "destabilizing activities" in the region, and that the weapons shipment could be raised at the United Nations Security Council. "We obviously are concerned about this development, because offering up support to the rebels in Yemen is something that is not at all consistent with U.N. Security Council resolutions," Earnest said. U.S. officials have said in the past that Iran's direct involvement with the Houthis is limited, but that Iranian military personnel were training and equipping Houthi units. A Saudi-led Arab coalition has been fighting to restore Yemen's President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power since last year, including via air strikes on Sanaa. U.N.-sponsored peace talks are scheduled to start in Kuwait on April 18. The two sides have confirmed a truce starting at midnight on April 10 ahead of the peace talks, scheduled to follow a week later. (Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
MANILA (Reuters) - About 8,000 U.S. and Filipino troops began annual military exercises on Monday against a backdrop of tension over China's greater assertiveness in the South China Sea though a Philippine commander played that down as the reason for the drills. Over the next two weeks, the allies will test their command-and-control, communications, logistics and mobility procedures to address humanitarian and maritime security, Philippine defense officials said. Their troops will also simulate retaking an oil-and-gas platform and practice an amphibious landing on a Philippine beach. "The Balikatan exercise is designed not to address a particular concern but the whole lump in the spectrum of warfare," Vice Admiral Alexander Lopez, the Philippine military's exercise director, told a news conference. "China is not part of the idea." Ash Carter, will be the first U.S. defense secretary to observe the exercises when he arrives next week, underscoring the significance of the war games for both countries. China's more assertive pursuit of its claims in the South China Sea over the past year or so has included land reclamation and the construction of air and port facilities on some isles and reefs. The United States has conducted what it calls "freedom of navigation" patrols in the area, sailing near disputed islands controlled by China to underscore its right to navigate the seas. The patrols have drawn sharp rebukes from China but despite that, U.S. officials have made clear the United States would continue to challenge what it considers China's unfounded maritime claims. China claims almost the entire South China Sea, believed to have huge deposits of oil and gas. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims to parts of the waters, through which about $5 trillion in trade is shipped every year. The Philippines has sought international arbitration on the dispute and a decision is expected late this month or in early May. China has declined to take part in the case. Lieutenant-General John Toolan, commander of U.S. Marine forces in the Pacific, told the news conference it was prudent to plan for any situation that could occur and to practice how the two allies would likely respond. Asked if that included a security crisis in the South China Sea, Toolan said: "It does, absolutely." Toolan said U.S. forces would for the first time in the Philippine exercises fire a long-range truck-mounted multiple-rocket launcher known as the high mobility artillery rocket system (HIMARS). A small contingent of Australian troops will join the exercises while Vietnam and Japan have sent officers to observe. (Reporting by Manuel Mogato; Editing by Robert Birsel)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke to his Russian counterpart on Monday to review efforts to stop the violence that has broken out along the Nagorno-Karabakh line of conflict and how to get Armenia and Azerbaijan to resume talks, the State Department said Kerry and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also discussed the cessation of hostilities in Syria, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said. "They did speak today via phone ... to discuss efforts to secure an immediate end to the violence that has erupted along the Nagorno-Karabakh line of conflict and encourage both Armenia and Azerbaijan to ... resume settlement talks under the auspices of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe)," Toner said. (Reporting by Arshad Mohammed and David Alexander; Editing by Eric Walsh)
By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected two corporate challenges in class action cases, refusing to hear bids by Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Wells Fargo & Co to throw out large judgments against them.

Wal-Mart had sought to get rid of a $187 million class action judgment over the retailer's treatment of workers in Pennsylvania. Wells Fargo & Co wanted the justices to toss a $203 million judgment over allegations the bank had imposed excessive overdraft fees.

The court's decisions on whether to hear the cases had been on hold pending its action in a separate class action case involving Tyson Foods Inc.

On March 22, the court in that case backed workers at a pork facility in Iowa who said they were entitled to overtime pay and damages because they were not paid for the time spent putting on and taking off protective equipment and walking to work stations.

Entering the court's current term, which began in October, the justices had issued a series of rulings in recent years clamping down on class action litigation, a goal of big business.

But that trend has not continued. The court has heard three important class action cases this term. In January, it ruled against advertising firm Campbell-Ewald and in March ruled against Tyson Foods.

The justices have yet to issue a ruling in a case argued in November in which online people-search service Spokeo Inc sought to avoid a class action lawsuit for including incorrect information in its database.

In declining to hear Wal-Mart's appeal, the court left intact a 2014 ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that largely upheld a lower court judgment awarding the $187 million to the plaintiffs.

The case affects about 187,000 Wal-Mart employees who worked in Pennsylvania between 1998 and 2006.

"We are disappointed the Supreme Court decided not to review our case. While we continue to believe these claims should not be bundled together in a class action lawsuit, we respect the court's decision," a Wal-Mart spokesman said.

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The Pennsylvania court mostly upheld a 2007 lower court ruling in favor of the employees, who said the company failed to pay them for all hours worked and prevented them from taking full meal and rest breaks. The appeals court threw out a $37 million attorneys' fee award and ordered the trial court to recalculate that portion of the judgment.

In the Wells Fargo case, the justices left in place a 2014 ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholding the class action judgment against the bank.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Recent satellite images have shown "suspicious" activity at North Korea's main nuclear site at Yongbyon, which could mean reprocessing is under way to produce more plutonium for atomic bombs, a report published by a U.S. research institute said on Monday. The report on the 38 North website said that in the past five weeks, exhaust plumes had been detected on two or three occasions from the thermal plant at Yongbyon's Radiochemical Laboratory, the site's main reprocessing installation to produce plutonium. "Exhaust plumes have rarely been seen there and none have been observed on any examined imagery this past winter. The plumes suggest that the operators of the reprocessing facility are heating their buildings, perhaps indicating that some significant activity is being undertaken, or will be in the near future," the report said. "Whether that activity ... means reprocessing additional plutonium is underway or will be in the near future remains unclear," it said. However, the report noted that in Feb. 9 congressional testimony, the director of U.S. National Intelligence, James Clapper, had said North Korea could begin to recover plutonium from spent fuel at Yongbyon "within a matter of weeks to months." The prospect of North Korea acquiring more plutonium will be looked on with concern by members of the United Nations Security Council, including Pyongyang's sole major ally, China. The council agreed to tough new sanctions on North Korea after it conducted its fourth nuclear test on Jan. 6 and a long-range rocket launch a month later. At a nuclear security summit in Washington last week, U.S. President Barack Obama, South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed to ramp up pressure on Pyongyang in response to its recent nuclear and missile tests. North Korea rejects criticism of its nuclear and missile program and its leader Kim Jong Un said last month it would soon test a nuclear warhead and ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Experts at 38 North, a website run by the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, predicted in February last year that North Korea's nuclear weapons stockpile could grow to 20, 50 or 100 bombs within five years, from an estimated 10 to 16 weapons at that time. (Reporting by David Brunnstrom; Editing by James Dalgleish)
By Matt Spetalnick WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two Libyans held for more than a decade without trial at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been transferred to Senegal, the Pentagon said on Monday, as President Barack Obama pushes to close the facility before leaving office in January. The two men were the first of a group of about a dozen who are expected to be transferred in coming weeks to countries that have agreed to take them, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity. With the latest departures, there are now 89 prisoners at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo. Most have been held for years without charge or trial, drawing international condemnation. Obama, who in February gave Congress a plan for shuttering the prison, is seeking to make good on his long-time pledge. But he faces stiff opposition from many Republican lawmakers, as well as some fellow Democrats. "We are taking all possible steps to reduce the detainee population at Guantanamo and to close the detention facility in a responsible manner that protects our national security," U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement. The Pentagon identified the two Libyans as Salem Abdu Salam Ghereby, 55, and Omar Khalif Mohammed Abu Baker Mahjour Umar, believed to be 43 or 44. They were among a group of prisoners, now numbering 35 following their departure, who have been cleared for transfer by U.S. government review panels. U.S. officials have said they expect to move out all members of that group by this summer, sending them to their homelands or other countries. Kerry thanked the government of Senegal, a Muslim-majority West African country, for accepting the two Libyans for humanitarian resettlement. The United States has ruled out repatriating detainees to countries like Libya, which is locked in civil conflict and where militant Islamist groups are active. Both had been accused of links to al Qaeda and were suspected members of a Libyan Islamist faction, according to leaked U.S. military documents. They were captured separately in Pakistan and held at Guantanamo since 2002. Obamas blueprint for closing Guantanamo prison calls for speeding up such transfers and bringing several dozen remaining prisoners to maximum-security prisons in the United States. U.S. law bars such transfers to the mainland, and Obama has not ruled out doing so by use of executive action. The most prominent of those to be resettled over the next several weeks is Tariq Bah Odah, a 37-year-old Yemeni on a long-term hunger strike. He has been force-fed by nasal tube since he stopped eating solid food in 2007. The latest transfers were the first to Senegal, a U.S. ally. Two Yemeni detainees were sent to Ghana in January. Others were sent recently to Oman. Guantanamo prisoners were rounded up overseas when the United States became embroiled in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. The facility, opened by Obamas predecessor George W. Bush, came to symbolize aggressive detention practices that opened the United States to accusations of torture. (Reporting By Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Bill Trott and Howard Goller)
DUBAI (Reuters) - A United Arab Emirates court sentenced two Lebanese nationals and a Lebanese-Canadian citizen to six months in jail followed by expulsion for setting up a group affiliated to the Lebanese Shi'ite militant group Hezbollah, local media said on Monday. The state news agency WAM did not identify the three but said they had set up a group of "international nature" linked to Hezbollah without a license. The English language Gulf News said the three, a Canadian Lebanese and two Lebanese nationals aged 62, 66 and 30, were convicted of setting up an office for Hezbollah and carrying out commercial, economic and political activities without licenses. The court said the charges date back to before October 2014. The UAE in November 2014 published a list of groups the cabinet had designated as terrorist organizations, including two affiliates of Hezbollah group in the Gulf. In February, the UAE along with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and Kuwait - all U.S.-allied Sunni Muslim states - declared the Iran-backed Hezbollah a terrorist organization and warned any citizen or expatriate against any links to it. Hezbollah has backed the government side in Syria's civil war while Sunni Gulf Arab states have supported rebels bent on toppling President Bashar al-Assad. (Reporting by Sami Aboudi; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
LONDON (Reuters) - A British scheme launched on Monday to cut insurance costs for homes in flood-risk areas should be able to cope without calling on the insurance industry for more cash, Chairman Mark Hoban said. The Flood Re scheme was set up by the government and industry in response to severe flooding in recent years. It is funded in part by a 180 million pound annual levy, or tax, on the industry. Flood Re can ask for a further levy - levy two - if it needs to. Analysts have speculated that a further levy could be needed, particularly as climate change leads to more flooding. "We do not expect to charge levy two," Hoban, a former government minister, told Reuters. "It's there as our protection ... levy two would be in extremis." Under new European solvency rules, insurers need to set aside enough capital for a 1-in-200 year event. Flood Re is designed to cope with even more extreme events, Hoban said. Flood Re has more than 2 billion pounds in reinsurance cover per year, to share the risk to insurers of providing insurance to up to 350,000 homes, nearly 2 percent of British households. The reinsurance protection will enable insurers to cut premiums for householders, as well as reducing the excess - the first part of the claim which customers need to pay themselves. The insurance costs of three large storms in Britain this winter, prior to the launch of Flood Re, was 1.24 billion pounds, insurance data company PERILS estimates. Price comparison websites on Monday showed a house in Cumbria in northwest England which had been hit by flooding in 2012 was being offered a Flood Re-backed policy at 810 pounds, with a 250 pound excess, Hoban said. Previously, the quote was for a premium of nearly 6,000 pounds and excess of 25,000 pounds. Listed insurers Admiral, Aviva, AXA, Direct Line, Hiscox, Legal & General and RSA are among insurers and brokers which have signed up to Flood Re. Home insurance sales in flood-risk areas are expected to rise due to the lower premium costs, bringing in a profitable new source of business. "Household insurance is one of the very few types of insurance where insurers can make money," said Mohammad Khan, general insurance leader at consultants PwC. The industry levy is expected to be passed onto homeowners across Britain, at an average of 10.50 pounds per policy. (Additional reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
By Pavel Polityuk and Alessandra Prentice KIEV (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko defended his commitment to transparency on Monday after lawmakers called for an investigation into allegations contained in the so-called Panama Papers that he had used an offshore firm to avoid tax. According to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Poroshenko set up an offshore company to move his confectionery business, Roshen, to the British Virgin Islands in August 2014 during a peak in fighting between Ukraine and pro-Russian separatists. In response, Poroshenko said he had handed over the management of his assets to consulting and law firms on taking office. "I believe I might be the first top official in Ukraine who treats declaring of assets, paying taxes, conflict of interest issues seriously," he tweeted. The law firm tasked with managing the sale of Roshen said the offshore firm was set up in accordance with Ukrainian law. "The creation of a foreign structure does not affect the tax liabilities of the Roshen group in Ukraine, which continues to pay taxes," Avellum said in an emailed statement. "Any allegations of tax evasion are groundless." Poroshenko's financial adviser, Makar Paseniuk, said the offshore firm was created to avoid a conflict of interests by allowing his assets to be controlled by third parties while he remained president. A senior official in the General Prosecutor's office said the leaked documents did not show that Poroshenko had committed any crime. Lawmakers, including from within Poroshenko's own faction, called for the creation of a parliamentary committee to investigate the allegations, which surfaced after a global leak of documents from a Panama-based law firm over the weekend. Under Ukrainian legislation, only parliament can initiate an investigation into a sitting president. "It is the height of cynicism to open offshore companies at a time when hundreds of our soldiers are dying," leader of the populist Radical Party Oleh Lyashko said on Facebook, adding any investigation could lead to Poroshenko's impeachment. The support of the Radical Party may be crucial in Poroshenko's efforts to cobble together a new government and avoid a snap election. The president has made several attempts to oust Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk's government, saying it has lost the trust of the people, but he will likely need the support of smaller parties to assemble a parliamentary majority. The IMF, the United States and the European Union are becoming frustrated with Ukraine's patchy performance in tackling graft, and the Fund has threatened to halt aid until matters improve. "The revelations of Poroshenko's offshore accounts will further destabilise the Ukrainian government, which has been in a state of crisis for over a month," said Daragh McDowell of the risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft. "Poroshenko's credibility in the eyes of Ukraine's Western allies will take a massive hit at a time when political infighting has already delayed the release of IMF loans." Poroshenko, who came to power after protests in 2014, has already faced criticism for not selling Roshen despite promising to do so. Paseniuk said there had been no credible offers for the company so far, prompting those managing the sale to consider selling it off in parts. Talks to sell Roshen's Russia-based Lipetsk factory were continuing, he said. (Writing by Matthias Williams; Additional reporting by Natalia Zinets; Editing by Alison Williams and Richard Balmforth)
Denmark has reclaimed the title of world's happiest country, bumping Switzerland to second place in this year's edition of the UN's World Happiness Report.

Released to coincide with World Happiness Day on March 20, the UN released the fourth edition of the index which ranks 156 countries by their "happiness levels."

After losing the title to Switzerland last year, Denmark stole back the crown of world's happiest country -- a title it's claimed three out of four years.

New this year, the report also took into consideration the "inequality" of happiness and well-being among citizens.

Dominating the top 10 list are Nordic and Scandinavian countries, with Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Finland and Sweden taking up half the spots.

To compile the ranking, editors considered the GDP per capita; the healthy years of life expectancy; social support; trust (measured by a perceived absence of corruption in government and business); freedom to make life decisions; generosity (measured by donations); and new this year, happiness inequality.

Because after studying rates of distribution, editors say they found a correlation between countries with more equal distributions of well-being and higher life evaluations.

Happiness is argued to serve as a better indication of human welfare than income, poverty, education, health and good government when measured separately.

The importance of making happiness and well-being a matter of public policy has also been recognized by four national governments: Bhutan, Ecuador, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela have all appointed ministers of happiness.

Denmark has repeatedly taken the top spot in happiness and life satisfaction rankings be it the UN or the OECD, thanks in part to generous parental leave policies, gender equality, work-life balance, and safety.

Here are the world's top 10 happiest countries:

1. Denmark

2. Switzerland

3. Iceland

4. Norway

5. Finland

6. Canada

7. Netherlands

8. New Zealand

9. Australia

10. Sweden

Landing at the bottom of the World Happiness Report index are Burundi, Syria and Togo.
MONDAY, April 4, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- Women with bothersome uterine fibroids saw improvements in their sex lives and significant symptom relief a year after undergoing a type of non-surgical treatment called uterine fibroid embolization, a French study finds.

Nearly eight in 10 women who completed surveys a year after treatment reported improved sexual function, a measure that reflects pain, desire, arousal and satisfaction.

About nine in 10 had better overall quality of life, researchers said.

"UFE [uterine fibroid embolization] is not a new intervention," said Dr. Marc Sapoval, one of the study co-authors. Sapoval is a professor of clinical radiology at Hopital Europeen Georges Pompidou in Paris.

"What's new in this data is the fact that we focused on sexual function," he said.

The study results were scheduled to be presented Sunday at the Society of Interventional Radiology's annual scientific meeting in Vancouver, Canada. Findings presented at meetings are generally viewed as preliminary until they've been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Uterine fibroids are a type of solid tumor. They are usually non-cancerous. Fibroids can form in and around the uterus and within the uterine walls, according to the U.S. Office on Women's Health.

Women with fibroids often experience significant symptoms and discomfort, Sapoval said. These symptoms may include heavy menstrual bleeding, pain during sexual intercourse, and pelvic, back and leg pain

Hysterectomy -- removal of the uterus -- is the only treatment that can guarantee fibroids won't return. But it's not the only treatment option available, the Office on Women's Health says.

UFE, also known as uterine artery embolization, is one alternative to surgery.

For the procedure, an interventional radiologist makes a tiny snip in the skin of the groin or wrist. A thin tube is inserted in the artery at the top of the leg. Using real-time imaging, the tube is snaked into the uterine artery, which supplies blood to the uterus, the researchers explained.

Then, sand-sized particles are released, blocking blood flow to the tiny arteries that feed the fibroid. With the blood supply choked off, the tumor shrinks and dies, the study authors said.

The study included more than 260 women from 25 centers throughout France who had the embolization procedure. The women completed assessments on their sexual function and quality of life before and one year after the procedure.

Initially, 189 women reported abnormally heavy menstrual bleeding. Just over 170 experienced pain due to fibroids, the study revealed. But a year after treatment, only 39 patients reported abnormal bleeding. And, only 42 still had pelvic pain, the study found.

After a year, the procedure was associated with significant improvement in all aspects of sexual function, the investigators found.

"Not only is UFE an effective treatment for uterine fibroids, but it allows women to return to a more normal life, increase their sexual desire, and enjoy an overall improved quality of life," Sapoval said.

One caveat: it's not recommended for women who want to get pregnant because there are still some unknowns about fertility after the procedure, he said.

Despite the positives, UFE is not widely used in the United States, noted Dr. Robert Vogelzang. He's chief of vascular and interventional radiology at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago and a past president of the Society of Interventional Radiology.

"Sadly, the patients who have fibroids are often not being told about embolization," Vogelzang said.

Asked why doctors aren't talking about it, Vogelzang said he believes "it's largely an economic issue," implying that obstetrician/gynecologists have no financial incentive to recommend a treatment they don't perform.

Not everyone agrees, however. Dr. Scott Chudnoff said that most obstetricians and gynecologists are forthright in discussing all of the surgical and medical options for treating fibroids, including embolization. He's director of gynecology at the Montefiore Health System Moses Campus in the Bronx, N.Y.

If surgery would be risk for a woman, Chudnoff said he often highly recommends embolization. But there are a lot of factors that go into the final decision, he said. One is the tumor's location. Another is a woman's personal history with fibroids and whether she wants to get pregnant, he noted.

Better answers about which uterine fibroid treatments work best are likely on the horizon. The U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality is building a nationwide registry of women undergoing fibroid treatment at centers across the country through 2019. This data will allow researchers to compare the effectiveness of various approaches.

More information

Learn what's being done to help women make informed decisions about fibroid treatment options through COMPARE-UF.
The Hague (AFP) - International judges at the UN's top tribunal on Thursday ruled they had the power to take up two bitter long-running maritime border disputes between Nicaragua and Colombia.

Dealing a sharp blow to Bogota, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) brushed aside Colombian objections that it was not competent to hear the two cases brought by Nicaragua.

By 14 votes to two, the judges ruled the ICJ "has jurisdiction... to adjudicate upon the dispute" in which Managua accuses Bogota of violating its sovereign rights in the Caribbean Sea.

And in a second split separate decision -- in which ICJ president Judge Ronny Abraham had to use his casting vote -- they ruled a case brought by Nicaragua to determine the "precise course" of a continental shelf between the two countries "is admissible."

Managua has asked the Hague-based ICJ to delimit the maritime boundary between the two countries beyond 200 nautical miles off the Nicaraguan coastline.

Colombia had argued the court no longer had jurisdiction in either case, because Bogota withdrew almost four years ago from a 1948 treaty known as the Pact of Bogota.

Under that treaty most countries of South and North America agreed to settle disputes between them through peaceful means and had conferred jurisdiction over such matters to the ICJ based in The Hague.

Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos slammed the court's rulings saying on his Twitter account Bogota would not appear before the court when the cases eventually open.

"Our country respects the law, but requires respect for the law," he wrote in his tweet, calling on all Colombians to make "a strong a common front to protect our Caribbean sea."

Although the two countries share no land borders, diplomatic relations have been strained for almost a century over disputed maritime limits.

Nicaraguan ambassador to The Netherlands, Carlos Jose Arguello Gomez, welcomed the ruling saying it was the "most logical and practical."

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"If the court had not accepted jurisdiction, then it would have let there be an eternal dispute between Colombia and Nicaragua," he told reporters.

Managua also accuses Bogota of failing to comply with a 2012 ICJ order handing it vast swathes of the Caribbean.

The November 2012 ruling established a new maritime boundary between Nicaragua and Colombia, and gave Managua several thousand square kilometres (miles) of territory in the Caribbean that previously belonged to Colombia.

Bogota has insisted, that since it is no longer a party to the Bogota pact, territorial and maritime borders should only be established through negotiations and bilateral treaties between the countries involved.

But the judges in the imposing Peace Palace which houses the ICJ, disagreed saying the treaty remained in force when Nicaragua filed its cases to the court in November 2013.
Washington (AFP) - The US Supreme Court said Monday it would examine a case involving alleged racial bias during jury deliberations of a Hispanic man's trial for sex crimes.

The case will center around two core concepts of the American judicial system: that defendants have the right to be tried by an impartial jury and that the jury's deliberations are secret.

Miguel Angel Pena Rodriguez was convicted of unlawful sexual contact and harassment in a 2007 incident involving two teenage girls at a racetrack in Denver, in the western state of Colorado.

But after the conviction, one of the jurors reported to Pena Rodriguez's lawyer that another juror made racist statements during the deliberations.

"I think he did it because he's Mexican and Mexican men take whatever they want," the juror allegedly said, among other statements.

The Supreme Court has previously affirmed the secrecy of jury deliberations in criminal proceedings.

However, the Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to a trial by an "impartial jury."

The high court will decide whether overt racism by a juror can override the secrecy of jury deliberations.

A date for the hearing was not announced.

In November, the Supreme Court heard testimony in a case related to racism in jury selection after a black man was sent to death row for killing a white woman, a unanimous decision by the all-white jury.

The court's decision in that case has not been announced.
Manila (AFP) - US and Philippine troops began major exercises on Monday as China's state media warned "outsiders" against interfering in tense South China Sea territorial disputes.

The official Xinhua news agency gave the warning as Manila and Washington launched the 11-day Balikatan (Shoulder-to-Shoulder) exercises with a low-key opening ceremony in Manila.

US Defence Secretary Ash Carter is to fly to the Philippines next week to observe live-firing of artillery and visit US Navy ships taking part.

Some 5,000 US troops are taking part along with nearly 4,000 Philippine soldiers and 80 from Australia.

"The... exercises caps Manila's recent attempts to involve outsiders in (a) regional row," China's official news agency Xinhua said in a commentary.

It cited Japan, which sent a submarine on a visit to the Philippines last weekend, and Australia.

"However, a provocation so fear-mongering and untimely as such is likely to boomerang on the initiators," Xinhua added.

"A big country with vital interests in Asia, the United States should first clarify the targets of its Pivot to Asia strategy, which so far has featured no more than unscrupulous inconsistency between fear-mongering deeds and peace-loving words."

China lays claim to almost all of the South China Sea, despite partial counter-claims by Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines.

In recent years it has built major structures including radar systems and airstrips over reclaimed reefs and outcrops, sparking international concern it could impose military controls over the entire area.

The US does not take sides in the territorial disputes but has asserted the importance of keeping sea and air routes open.

It has sent US bombers and warships on patrol close to the Chinese construction activity in recent months, infuriating Beijing.

Lieutenant-General John Toolan, commander of US Marine Corps forces in the Pacific, told reporters in Manila the exercises would help the allies improve maritime security and maintain regional stability.

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"Our alliance is strong. The United States is committed to this relationship and these are not empty words.... peace in Southeast Asia depends on our cooperation," Toolan added.

The exercises come ahead of a decision this year by a United Nations-backed tribunal on a legal challenge by Manila to China's territorial claims.

The Philippines is also preparing to host US troops at five bases under a defence pact born out of US President Barack Obama's plan to reassert American influence in the Pacific.
New York (AFP) - The Justice Department is reviewing the so-called Panama Papers and will follow up on wrongdoing or corruption linked to the US, an agency spokesman said Monday.

"We are aware of the reports and are reviewing them," Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr.

"While we cannot comment on the specifics of these alleged documents, the US Department of Justice takes very seriously all credible allegations of high level, foreign corruption that might have a link to the United States or the US financial system."

The comments came one day after the release of some 11.5 million documents by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, concerning some 214,000 offshore entities. The leaked documents came from Mossack Fonseca, a Panama-based law firm with offices in more than 35 countries.

The revelations have left powerful figures from countries including Russia, China, Argentina and Iceland scrambling to explain apparent connections to offshore financial vehicles that look to have been set up to hide assets.

France, Spain and Australia all opened legal probes Monday.

Jubilee USA Network, a faith-based anti-poverty group, called for Congress to prevent the establishment of anonymous companies in the United States.

"These companies fuel corruption, poverty, human trafficking and armed conflict," said Eric LeCompte, executive director of the Jubilee USA.
Moscow (AFP) - An American student was found dead in a mountainous region of Siberia on Monday a week after he disappeared in mysterious circumstances, Russian investigators said.

Colin Madsen, 25, disappeared in the mainly Buddhist Buryatia region of eastern Siberia after apparently walking out at night without a coat, prompting a massive search amid snowy and windy weather.

Madsen's body was found one and a half kilometres (a mile) from where he was staying in a village at the foot of the Sayan Mountains, located west of Lake Baikal, the Investigative Committee, which probes serious incidents, said.

A US embassy spokesman in Moscow told AFP: "We are aware of these reports and have been working closely with Russian authorities on the matter."

"I can confirm that Embassy consular officials are in the region to provide consular assistance," the spokesman added.

Investigators did not comment on the cause of Madsen's death, saying only that his body had no visible signs of injury and his wallet and ID documents had not been stolen.

According to police and investigators, Madsen walked out of the house where he was staying with friends between 2 and 5 am on March 27, wearing only a T-shirt and trousers, hours before they were due to set off on a hike.

His friends spent the day searching for him before reporting him missing to police in the evening.

Investigators said they need to establish "why the lightly dressed student left the guest house without warning his friends and walked into the forest."

A post-mortem will look to see whether Madsen had traces of alcohol or drugs in his blood, investigators said.

The group of friends -- two Americans and two Russians -- "had used a drug" the day before Madsen disappeared, the investigators said without giving any details.

The group had not drunk alcohol together and had not quarrelled, investigators said.

Madsen, who originated from Jefferson City, Missouri, had been studying in the Siberian city of Irkutsk at the local branch of Moscow State Linguistic University since 2013. He spoke fluent Russian and had made four previous visits to the area.


First German assistance to Metro project in the country





German Governments Development Bank KfW will provide a loan assistance of EUR 500 million (about Rs.3,750 cr) for the modern and sustainable metro system for Nagpur city being executed by Nagpur Metro Rail Corporation Limited (NMRCL). An agreement in this regard was signed today in New Delhi by the Department of Economic Affairs and KfW. Shri S.Selvaraj, Joint Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs and Shri Roland Siller, Director General of KfW.



The loan period is 20 years with a moratorium of five years and disbursal will be based on the progress of the project over three years.



Costing Rs.8,680 cr (EUR 1,240 million), Nagpur Metro is the first metro to be financed under the Indo German partnership for clean, socially inclusive and climate friendly mobility for people in cities.



German Ambassador Dr.Martin Ney, OSD (Urban Transport) in the Ministry of Urban Development Shri Mukund Sinha, Managing Director of Nagpur Metro Shri Brijesh Dixit and others were present on the occasion of signing of agreement.



Sanctioned by the Government of India in August 2014, Nagpur Metro Project envisages two corridors i.e 19.70 km North-South section from Automotive Square to Khapri and 18.60 km long line between Prajapati Nagar and Lokmanya Nagar. Physical works commenced in May, 2015 and the whole Metro would be operational by March, 2019.



Source: PIB
Washington (AFP) - The US Supreme Court on Monday upheld the principle of setting legislative districts based on total population, unanimously rejecting a conservative challenge that would have disadvantaged urban areas with large Hispanic populations.

The court ruled that the "one person, one vote" rule allows counting non-voters, including minors, prisoners, ex-convicts and immigrants -- a decision that traditionally helps Democrats.

"We hold, based on constitutional history, this court's decisions, and longstanding practice, that a state may draw its legislative districts based on total population," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg wrote in delivering the court's opinion.

The plaintiffs -- Sue Evenwel and Edward Pfenninger -- argued that Texas should count only eligible voters in drawing up legislative districts of roughly equal size.

That would have favored rural areas with a high proportion of eligible voters in the allocation of legislative districts, over urban areas with larger absolute populations but a smaller proportion of eligible voters.

Since urban areas tend to vote Democratic and rural areas lean Republican, how the population is counted has a direct political impact.

If a state bases its electoral districting on the total population -- and all 50 states do -- people who are ineligible to vote are counted in the process.

These ineligible populations, such as non-citizen Hispanic immigrants, are usually present in larger numbers in urban areas.

As a result, each eligible voter in those areas proportionally has greater clout.

"Even so, it remains beyond doubt that the principle of representational equality figured prominently in the decision to count people, whether or not they qualify as voters," the court said.

"Adopting voter-eligible apportionment as constitutional command would upset a well-functioning approach to districting that all 50 states and countless local jurisdictions have followed for decades, even centuries. Appellants have shown no reason for the court to disturb this longstanding use of total population," the court added.

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- Unanimous decision -

The justices heard oral arguments in the case in December before the sudden death of Justice Antonin Scalia on February 13, which has left the court evenly divided between liberals and conservatives.

But even before Scalia's death, the justices had expressed skepticism about the challenge to the Texas law, which was borne out by the unanimous decision.

Had the court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, legislative districts would have had to have been redrawn in states from New York to California.

Civil rights leaders and minority groups backed the status quo, arguing a change would negatively impact Hispanics.

"Our representatives represent people," said Nina Perales of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

"Representatives don't represent land. They don't represent acres. They don't represent counties."

The NAACP civil rights group said that 75 million children, 13 million of whom are black, "would have been counted out of the redistricting process" since children cannot vote.

The case, it said, harked back "to nefarious periods in our democracy similar to when black people were counted as 3/5ths of a person for redistricting purposes."

Meanwhile Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders chimed in from the campaign trail in support of the decision.

"In our democracy, every one of our voices should count. Glad the Supreme Court affirmed this fundamental right," Clinton tweeted.

- 'Significant leeway' -

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito were part of the majority, but wrote separate concurring opinions.

Alito, while agreeing with the majority, rejected the government's argument that there is a constitutional basis for requiring that legislative districts be equal in total population.

In a similar vein, Thomas noted that the court's decision did not provide clear guidance on what exactly "the one person, one vote" principle protects.

"The Constitution does not prescribe any one basis for apportionment within states. It instead leaves states significant leeway in apportioning their own districts to equalize total population, to equalize eligible voters, or to promote any other principle consistent with a republican form of government.

"The majority should recognize the futility of choosing only one of these options. The Constitution leaves the choice to the people alone - not to this court," he wrote.
Manchester (United Kingdom) (AFP) - Louis van Gaal is convinced Manchester United are on track to claim a Champions League place from the wreckage of one of Old Trafford's most difficult seasons in recent memory.

Van Gaal's job as manager, in his second campaign at the club, has been the subject of widespread speculation since United's early exit from the Champions League group stage in December.

That failure was compounded by United's defeat in the second-tier Europa League by arch-rivals Liverpool last month.

However, van Gaal, who has been tipped to make a summer departure to make way for Jose Mourinho, the former Chelsea manager, will lead his team into next Sunday's game against Tottenham at White Hart Lane in confident mood following their 1-0 win over Everton at Old Trafford on Sunday.

That was United's fourth win in five domestic league games and left them just a point behind fourth-placed Manchester City, currently occupying the final Champions League spot on offer to English clubs.

"I said in the dressing room after the match that it was very important to win today, otherwise the victory against (Manchester) City was worthless," said van Gaal.

"We keep in touch with City, one point behind, and we keep in touch with Arsenal, five points behind," the veteran Dutch boss added.

"We have to play Tottenham (next), not an easy match, but normally we are playing very well against the top teams. If we continue like that, I am very happy."

Van Gaal has been under fire from critics and fans alike, yet he can make great strides with his young squad in what will be a critical month of April.

Home matches against doomed Aston Villa and struggling Crystal Palace offer six points to a team that has grown in stature at Old Trafford in recent weeks, while Van Gaal can steer United into the FA Cup Final by first winning an admittedly tough replay with West Ham and then a Wembley semi-final against Everton.

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Van Gaal now needs to manage his players wisely at the stage of a season where fatigue can creep in, especially with international demands thrown in as well.

- Blind faith -

Daley Blind, who was superb in policing the menace of Belgium striker Romalu Lukaku at Old Trafford, is a case in point.

"Daley Blind has played nearly all the matches, so I need to give him rest," said van Gaal. "I dont want to, because he is playing very well. I shall give him two days off, so then he is alright, I think."

Anthony Martial, who scored United's lone goal against Everton on Sunday, has also been a willing workhorse in United's cause.

"I have already said that Anthony Martial, with his age (20) is an exception, because he has also played every match," said van Gaal.

"To play every match then you have to be very strong and consistent, because every week I shall compare every player with his competitor, so it is fantastic what he is doing."

Everton manager Roberto Martinez, meanwhile, has to ponder a fresh round of criticism from Toffees fans as he prepares for the weekend trip to Watford.

Told that many of Everton's 3,500 following at Old Trafford had booed at the final whistle because they were "fed up", Martinez replied: "We all are. You can hear our boos in the dressing room."

Martinez wants to take 12th-placed Everton forward without panicking.

"We are a club where there has been a bit of a change of generation," he said.

"A lot of players have come in. Incredible young talent needs know-how and lessons, and to develop," the Spaniard added.
By Bill Berkrot (Reuters) - A stem cell therapy developed by Vericel Corp helped reduce deaths and hospitalizations in advanced heart failure patients, according to data from a midstage study, potentially providing a treatment that could delay the need for heart transplants. However, the treatment failed to improve secondary goals of the trial, such as heart-pumping efficiency and six-minute walking distance, and Vericel shares fell more than 31 percent by afternoon trading on Monday. "It's a little baffling that you're keeping patients alive, but not having any effect on those secondary endpoints," said Needham & Co analyst Chad Messer. "People were looking for downside and they had one." The data compared Vericel's bone marrow-derived ixmyelocel-T stem cells with placebo in 109 well-treated patients with advanced heart failure who had exhausted medical and device therapies. After one year, the Vericel treatment led to a 37 percent reduction versus placebo in a composite of adverse events, including death, heart-related hospitalizations and unplanned clinic visits related to heart failure. Vericel last month reported that the study succeeded. Detailed results were unveiled on Monday at an American College of Cardiology meeting in Chicago and in the Lancet medical journal. The result was primarily driven by the difference in deaths of 13.7 percent in the placebo group, or 7 deaths, compared with 3.4 percent, or 2 deaths, for the ixmyelocel-T group. In addition, 38 percent of stem cell patients required hospitalization, versus 47 percent for placebo. "This is strong evidence in a well-designed trial that we can decrease events," said Dr. Timothy Henry, the study's lead investigator and chief of cardiology at Cedars Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles. "For patients, this is a really hopeful thing." Henry, who presented the data at the ACC meeting, stressed the need for larger trials to prove the benefit of ixmyelocel-T For the treatment, bone marrow is taken from the patient and enhanced over two weeks to increase two types of cells associated with healing. They are then injected directly into the patient's heart. With advanced heart failure, a leading cause of hospitalizations, blood-pumping ability is diminished as the heart's left ventricle becomes enlarged and weakened. If the disease worsens despite all available medicinal and interventional therapies, the only options are heart transplant or a pumping assist device. "The idea is to find a treatment for this group of people before they get to that stage," Henry said. Vericel shares were down $2.01, or 33 percent, at $4.02 on Nasdaq. (Editing by Bernadette Baum)
By Gary Robertson RICHMOND, Va. (Reuters) - Virginia's governor vetoed a bill on Monday that would have made the state the first in the country to require that parents be notified if students were assigned readings labeled "sexually explicit." A mothers objection to Toni Morrison's novel Beloved being taught in her son's classroom helped spur the legislation that would have given parents more control over classroom materials. This requirement lacks flexibility and would require the label of sexually explicit to apply to an artistic work based on a single scene, without further context, Governor Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, said in a statement. The bill passed the Republican-controlled legislature by votes of 77-21 in the House of Delegates and 22-17 in the Senate. That would not be enough to override McAuliffe's veto, which would require a two-thirds vote in each chamber. The measure would have made Virginia the first U.S. state to mandate that schools notify parents if teachers planned to use the labeled materials, according to the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom. McAuliffe said the Virginia Board of Education was studying the issue, focusing on existing local policies and potential state policies. The measure had been opposed by a number of free speech groups, including the American Library Association and the National Coalition Against Censorship. The novel by Morrison, a Nobel laureate, is the story of a runaway slave who kills her 2-year-old daughter to save her from a life in slavery. "Beloved" won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1988. The American Library Association has it on a list of banned or challenged classics. Virginia House Speaker William Howell, a Republican who was among the bill's sponsors, said he was unaware of McAuliffe's veto and had no reaction. "I have to see what his veto message said," he said. (Reporting by Gary Robertson; Editing by Ian Simpson and Peter Cooney)
By Lisa Rapaport (Reuters Health) - When it comes to urgent medical problems like ankle injuries or suspected strep, virtual MDs may be no match for the real thing, a new U.S. study suggests. Researchers got 67 volunteers to test out how well eight popular virtual visit companies diagnosed these problems and four other common medical issues  sore throat, sinus infection, low back pain, and urinary tract infection. About one in four patients got the wrong diagnosis or none at all from the virtual visits, the study found. Whats more, virtual doctors followed standard protocols for diagnosing and treating these problems only 54 percent of the time. One of the more surprising findings of the study was the universally low rate of testing when it was needed, said lead researcher Dr. Adam Schoenfeld, of the University of California, San Francisco. We dont know why, but it may reflect the challenges of ordering or following up on tests performed near where the patient lives but far from where the doctor is, or concern about the costs to the patient of additional testing, Schoenfeld added by email. Virtual visits using videoconferences, phone calls and web chats are becoming a more common way for patients to seek urgent care because it can save the inconvenience of a clinic visit or provide access to care when people cant get an appointment with their regular doctor. Some insurers are starting to pay for virtual visits in certain situations, making this option more viable for patients who worry about costs. For the current study, Schoenfeld and colleagues trained volunteers to act as if they had common acute medical problems and then sent them to virtual doctors provided by companies including Ameridoc, Amwell, Consult a Doctor, Doctor on Demand, MDAligne, MDLIVE, MeMD and NowClinic. Altogether, the volunteers completed 599 virtual visits in 2013 and 2014. The companies varied in how well they followed treatment guidelines, with standard care given anywhere from 34 to 66 percent of the time across the eight websites, the researchers report in JAMA Internal Medicine. Mode of communication  such as web chat or videoconference  didnt appear to influence how often treatment guidelines were followed. Virtual doctors got complete histories and did thorough exams anywhere from 52 percent to 82 percent of the time. Virtual visits resulted in correct diagnoses anywhere from 65 percent to 94 percent of the time. Often, virtual doctors failed to order urine tests needed to assess urinary tract infections, or to request images needed to diagnoses ankle pain, for example, and antibiotics were often prescribed inappropriately. One limitation of the study is that the researchers only looked at virtual visits, so they couldnt compare these online doctors visits to what might have happened with in-person clinical exams. Still, its possible that at least some of the variation in quality of care was the result of the remote visits, said Dr. Jeffrey Linder, a researcher at Brigham and Womens Hospital and Harvard Medical School who co-authored an editorial accompanying the study. There is a built-in barrier to getting testing, which led to worse care for ankle pain and recurrent urinary tract infections  for which the doctors should have ordered a test  and better care for low back pain  for which doctors should not have ordered a test, Linder said by email. In an ideal world, patients would be able to have occasional virtual visits with their primary care providers, who know their medical histories, said Dr. David Levine, co-author of the editorial and also a researcher at Brigham and Womens and Harvard. Although virtual urgent care and in-person urgent care have not been compared head-to-head, virtual urgent care has its downsides  indirect physical exam, difficult access to testing, and unclear follow-up, Levine said by email. While the quality of care is not perfect anywhere, a patients primary care doctor should be a persons first point of contact. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1qk5Yxq JAMA Internal Medicine, online April 4, 2016.
MUNICH (Reuters) - Volkswagen's truck division will spend about half a billion euros ($569 million) by the end of the decade to improve automated connectivity of heavy-goods vehicles, it said on Monday. MAN, part of VW's trucks division, used an event in Munich to demonstrate the feasibility of truck "platooning", in which a human-driven truck is followed in convoy by semi-automated trucks. German rival Daimler has been at the forefront of truckmakers' push into self-driving heavy-goods vehicles, citing improvements in driver safety and fuel efficiency. Volkswagen (VW), which started to beef up its truck operations before its emissions scandal broke last September, is pushing automized features and new mobility technologies as part of efforts to reposition itself and overcome the scandal. MAN has said platooning could help reduce diesel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions in road freight transport by as much as 10 percent. VW's Truck & Bus group said it would spend a "mid-range three-digit million-euro amount" over the next five years on automated features as it aims to improve communication of on-board sensors with automatic braking and other systems. "The future truck is fully connected, that provides a gain in safety and efficiency," VW trucks' chief Andreas Renschler said at the Munich event. However, investment in infrastructure is needed to keep pace for some of the new technology to work. "In future it will no longer be enough to build roads and repair bridges," said Renschler. "What we need as quickly as possible is mobile high-speed Internet alongside the road." Separately, Renschler told reporters in Munich that MAN was on target to reap the benefits from 2017 of a restructuring course that began last year. MAN is cutting 1,800 jobs at its main truck operations and reshuffling production in Germany, Austria and Poland to achieve several hundred millions of euros of cost savings by next year. MAN "is fully on target, perhaps even slightly ahead" of its goals, said Renschler, a former Daimler executive, without elaborating. (Reporting by Andreas Cremer; Additional reporting by Irene Preisinger; Editing by Susan Fenton)
ADEN (Reuters) - Warplanes believed to belong to the Saudi-led coalition bombed and set ablaze an al Qaeda compound in southern Yemen on Monday, residents said, the latest attack to target the militant group that controls at least two cities in the country. Islamist militants have exploited the Yemen war between Iran-allied Houthis and forces loyal to Saudi-backed President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to seize at least two provincial capitals in south and eastern Yemen, using them as bases to recruit more followers. Residents said two planes launched rockets into an old office of the local government in Zinjibar, the Abyan provincial capital, which is held by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), setting the building on fire. They said an unknown number of al Qaeda militants were in the compound at the time and were believed to have been killed or wounded. Apache helicopters, also believed by residents to belong to the Saudi-led coalition, were later seen flying over the city. A local official said on Sunday that warplanes launched four air strikes on an AQAP camp near the port city of Mukalla, killing and wounding a number of militants. It was not immediately possible to confirm the affiliation of the aircraft involved in Monday's reported air strike. A spokesman for the Saudi-led alliance could not be contacted for immediate comment. U.S. aircraft have staged attacks on AQAP fighters in Yemen in recent weeks. More than 6,200 people have been killed in the Yemen war that began in March last year, after the Houthis forced Hadi to flee to Saudi Arabia. (Reporting by Mohammed Mukhashaf; Writing by Sami Aboudi; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
How do Finnish farmers keep themselves occupied during the winter months up north? Apparently, they put their creative energies to work and come up with unusual projects, such as a killer drone that has a chainsaw attached to it.

As youll see in the following clip, the flying chainsaw drone might sound crazy at first  and it is  but it could have some great uses, especially in winter. One of them, as highlighted in the video, is cutting down icicles and small tree branches. However, this drone can't be used to chop down trees, although it can definitely wreck your neighborhood's snowmen.

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This isnt the first crazy drone design weve seen yet, as other people have mounted real guns or flamethrowers on drones. This time, around were looking at a DJI S1000 octocopter drone thats strong enough to carry around a working, vibrating, chainsaw.

Check the video below to see this do-it-yourself project in action.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Viwwetf0gU

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With the Tesla Model S featuring crazy settings like Insane Mode and Ludicrous Mode, it's only natural that we've seen a plethora of videos showcasing how a tricked out Tesla performs against any number of supercars. From a Model S in Ludicrous Mode racing a Lamborghini Aventador to a Model S trying to take on a McLaren 650S Spider, the Model S can, at the very least, hold its own early on in such matchups.

Now it's one thing for a Model S to take on a supercar, but what about a plane? Sure, such a matchup is completely crazy and wholly unnecessary, but that didn't stop Australian airline Quantas from pitting a Tesla Model S P90D against one of its Boeing 737s.

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"Plane versus car... pilot versus driver," the video description reads. "We raced our Boeing 737 against a Tesla Model S to celebrate innovation and sustainability with Tesla Motors."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFtJR5yhutU&feature=youtu.be

The Model S naturally got off to a quick and early lead thanks to its ridiculous acceleration, but in the grand of scheme of things, there was never really a question as to who would come out ahead.

According to a Qantas press release, the 737 used here "can generate more than 50,000 pounds of thrust" and can reach a cruising speed of 528 mph in the sky. At full throttle, the 737 can approach the speed of sound, or about 767 mph.

The Tesla was hard to catch off the start. But the 737 narrowed the gap as it barrelled down the runway. Both travelled neck and neck as the 737 reached its take-off speed of 140 knots (161 MPH) and the Tesla reached its max at around 250 kilometres an hour (155 MPH). The Tesla was in the shadow of the aircraft as it pulled up at the end of the runway  the clear early winner on the ground, just overtaken when the aircraft did what it was designed to do: fly.

Press release poetry aside, what type of cross promotion is going on here, you might naturally be wondering.

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Qantas explains:

Qantas  Australias national carrier  and Tesla, the California based and worlds leading maker of premium electric cars, are collaborating to drive innovation for their customers and sustainability in the transport industry. During the coming months Qantas and Tesla will introduce the following services and benefits for customers: Additionally Qantas will become Teslas airline of choice in Australia and offset all the car makers domestic corporate travel emissions as part of Qantas Future Planet Program. Regular meetings will occur between both companies to investigate future opportunities around sustainable transport. Qantas Head of Environment and Fuel, Alan Milne, said the collaboration was a meeting of minds. Both our companies are passionate about continuing to push the boundaries of customer service, innovation and sustainability in the transport industry. Were huge admirers of the way Tesla has transformed the electric car sector as a premium brand and we look forward to sharing our understanding and advance the work we started in 2012 on biofuels as an alternative to jet fuel. What better way to celebrate working together than having a unique race  car versus plane.

While we continue to work on long-term sustainable transport solutions, all carbon emissions from this race were offset, under Qantas Future Planet Program.

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New York (AFP) - Melania Trump, largely absent from the US presidential campaign, stumped for her husband Donald for the first time and called him a great leader who treats everyone equal.

Looking to bounce back after a rocky week, Trump called his better half to the rescue.

The 45-year-old former model of Slovenian origin is chic and stylish, but until now her public presence alongside her Republican frontrunner husband has been fleeting, including brief appearances at election watch parties. Her interviews have been limited.

But in the US state of Wisconsin, where polls show Trump trailing his arch-conservative rival Ted Cruz in the primary that the state hosts Tuesday, Melania is accompanying her husband at several campaign events.

Trump, whose apparent degrading of women and controversial remarks about Mexicans and Muslims have raised alarm bells in the Republican Party and more broadly across the American electorate, has confided that his wife has encouraged him to be "more presidential."

At a rally in Wisconsin, Mrs. Trump gushed praise of her husband, saying: "Im very proud of him. He is a hard worker. Hes kind. He has a great heart. Hes tough. Hes smart."

She added: "Hes a great communicator. Hes a great negotiator. Hes telling the truth. He's a great leader. Hes fair."

"As you may know by now, when you attack him, he will punch back ten times harder," she said. "No matter who you are, a man, or a woman, he treats everyone equal."

Melania unwittingly found herself in the eye of the storm last month in one of the low points of the campaign, when an anti-Trump political group unveiled a questionable ad on Facebook that used a photo of her lying naked and handcuffed to a briefcase.

The photograph, taken aboard Trump's custom-fitted private jet, was part of a shoot for the magazine GQ in 2000, before the couple married.

The political poster, released just before votes in Arizona and Utah, featured the photo with the words: "Meet Melania Trump. Your next first lady. Or, you could support Ted Cruz on Tuesday."

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Trump accused Cruz, a senator from Texas, of being behind the provocation and responded by retweeting a photo montage showing an image of Melania next to an unflattering picture of Ted Cruz's wife Heidi, along with the phrase: "The images are worth a thousand words."

On Monday night, speaking later to Sean Hannity on Fox News, Melania said, "I have a tough skin. I think its not fair that they're attacking family, wife, or children".

- '100 percent' behind husband -

The few times that Melania has spoken out, she gushed over her husband, telling MSNBC in February that she was initially attracted by his "great energy," charm and "amazing mind."

The couple have a 10-year-old son, Barron. "I am a full-time mom, and I love it," a smiling Melania proclaimed, adding that her maternal role was the reason she was not out campaigning more with Donald.

"But I support my husband 100 percent," she said.

Melania has defended Trump's more controversial statements.

"I don't feel he insulted the Mexicans," she said of his explosive remark last June that Mexico was sending "rapists" and other criminals across the border as undocumented immigrants.

"He said illegal immigrants," she added. "He didn't talk about everybody."

She also stressed that her husband had proposed only a "temporary" ban on Muslims entering the country.

"He wants to protect America... That's very important to him," she said, adding that he treats women the same way as men in the Trump organization.

Born in what was then Yugoslavia to a fashion-industry mother and a car-salesman father, Melania has recounted studying design and architecture before leaving for Milan and Paris to launch her modelling career.

She arrived in the United States in 1996 and met Trump two years later.

They married in January 2005 in Florida and her Dior dress was estimated at $200,000. Among the invited celebrities was Hillary Clinton, this year's likely Democratic presidential nominee.

- Lavish lifestyle -

Melania Trump speaks at least five languages, including English, Italian, French and German.

Her Twitter account -- inactive since Trump declared his candidacy -- reflects the privileged lifestyle of a jet-setter traveling between their lavish New York apartment and residences in in Florida.

She has tweeted photographs from high-society gatherings and landmark sporting events, as well as recollections of her red-carpet saunters and charity functions. In each image Melania appears impeccably dressed.

Initially, she was not entirely on board with the idea of Trump launching a White House bid, with the candidate acknowledging recently that Melania would have been content as the wife of a billionaire businessman and reality TV star.

"She said, 'We have such a great life. Why do you want to do this?'" Trump told The Washington Post in an interview published Saturday.

"I really have to do it," Trump said he told her, adding that his wife eventually backed his bid and was confident of his victory.
Kolkata (AFP) - Man of the match Marlon Samuels taunted Australian spin legend Shane Warne after his unbeaten 85 set the West Indies up for a sensational World Twenty20 title triumph on Sunday.

The right-handed batsman's 66-ball knock kept the Windies in with a chance of successfully chasing England's 155-9 total after openers Johnson Charles and Chris Gayle fell early for a combined five runs.

Samuels' measured 85 included nine boundaries and two sixes and laid the foundations for Carlos Brathwaite to dramatically hit four consecutive sixes as the Windies won with two balls to spare in Kolkata.

The 35-year-old cheekily dedicated the Windies' historic second World T20 title to Warne, who has clashed with Samuels on a number of occasions in the past.

The pair had an infamous run-in during Australia's Big Bash League in 2013 and Warne rekindled the feud when he criticised Samuels following his dismissal against India in Thursday's WT20 semi-final.

"I woke up this morning with one thing on my mind," said Samuels, holding the World T20 Trophy.

"Shane Warne has been talking continuously and all I want to say is this is for Shane Warne."

Samuels made just eight in the Windies' seven-wicket victory over India in the last-four, but his monumental innings on Sunday was reminiscent of his contribution in the final four years ago.

The West Indies won their first World T20 title in 2012 with Samuels scoring 78 against Sri Lanka in the final.

"I don't worry about semi-finals because when it comes to finals I always turn up for the team," he boasted.
By Steve Holland MILWAUKEE (Reuters) - Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump tried to put a difficult week behind him and rally his supporters on Monday ahead of a crucial nominating contest in Wisconsin, where he was in the unfamiliar position of underdog. Opinion polls show Trump trailing U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas in the Midwestern state, where a loss on Tuesday could dent the New York billionaire's aura of inevitability and make it harder for him to win the 1,237 delegates needed for the party's nomination for the Nov. 8 election. Trump hunted for support at two rallies in the state on Monday, telling voters in La Crosse, Wisconsin, they could propel him towards the nomination by delivering him a surprise victory over Cruz. "If we do well here, folks, it's over," Trump said. "This could be the real beginning. If it's not, I think we get there anyway and I'm pretty sure we get there anyway." Trump said an array of forces were aligned against him in Wisconsin, including the state's governor, Scott Walker, who has backed Cruz, a "very hostile media" and party establishment figures worried he will lead Republicans to a broad defeat in November. He ridiculed the "NeverTrump" movement to block his nomination and said the party establishment should have put the same effort into beating President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. "If they had worked this hard to stop Obama, Obama wouldn't have had a chance," Trump said at a rally in Superior, Wisconsin. He also said it was "unfair" that rival John Kasich, the governor of Ohio, refused to get out of the race despite trailing Trump and Cruz badly. Trump has won 736 delegates to the July nominating convention in Cleveland, but is till 501 short of the majority he needs to clinch the nomination. Rivals Cruz and Kasich hope to stop him short of a first-ballot victory and trigger a contested convention. "My eyes are wide open," Trump said in Superior of the possibility the party establishment would manoeuvre to deny him the nomination at the convention. "We're dealing with a corrupt system. We're dealing with a system that is not fair." Cruz told reporters the party was beginning to rally behind him, and said a win in Wisconsin would spark a surge of momentum for him in upcoming contests. 'A UNIFYING PARTY' "What were seeing is the party unifying behind our campaign," Cruz said in Madison. "I hope and believe tomorrow night's going to be a very good night here in Wisconsin." A Trump loss would cap a rough week, including an avalanche of criticism for his suggestion, which he later dialled back, that women be punished for getting abortions if the procedure is banned. Uncharacteristically, Trump also acknowledged that he made a mistake retweeting an attack on Cruz's wife, according to the New York Times. He also drew fire last week for saying he would not rule out using nuclear weapons in Europe and that Japan and South Korea might need their own nuclear arsenals to ease the U.S. financial commitment to their security. Cruz was eager to capitalize on Trump's missteps, talking about his family during a town hall session in an attempt to soften his strident image and appeal to women turned off by Trumps recent comments. At a later rally, Cruz told voters the entire country was looking towards Wisconsin. "Lets show the country that this race is not about yelling and screaming and insults," he said in Madison. Even with a victory in Wisconsin, Cruz still faces difficult odds to win the delegates needed to secure the nomination, given that the next states to vote, including New York on April 19 and five Northeastern states on April 26, are more Trump-friendly territory. Cruz has 463 delegates, 774 short of the total needed for the nomination, according to an Associated Press count. Kasich, with 143 delegates, has no chance to gather enough delegates to win on the first ballot but has refused to end his candidacy. He rejected Trump's call for him to get out of the race and poked fun at the front-runner's complaints. "I've got news for him. I'm gonna get a heck of a lot his voters," he told a town hall meeting in Hempstead, New York. "I know how to fix these things that the Trump voters care about." In the Democratic race, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has a small lead in opinion polls in Wisconsin over front-runner Hillary Clinton and is trying to add to his momentum after winning five of the last six contests. A Wisconsin win by Sanders would put the focus on the April 19 contest in New York, where Clinton was campaigning on Monday. Sanders still faces a tough task to overcome Clinton's lead of 263 pledged delegates in the Democratic race, which awards all delegates proportionally to their vote totals in each state. At a New York City event celebrating a hike in the state minimum wage to $15 an hour, Clinton noted Trump has said wages are too high. That drew boos from the crowd, which included a large number of labour union members. "I dont know what the calculation is by Trump and others but Ill tell you this: They are selling Americans short, Clinton said. (Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu, Mohammad Zargham, Luciana Lopez, Susan Heavey, Megan Cassella; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Bill Trott and Jonathan Oatis)
By Steve Holland

MILWAUKEE (Reuters) - Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump tried to put a difficult week behind him and rally his supporters on Monday ahead of a crucial nominating contest in Wisconsin, where he was in the unfamiliar position of underdog.

Opinion polls show Trump trailing U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas in the Midwestern state, where a loss on Tuesday could dent the New York billionaire's aura of inevitability and make it harder for him to win the 1,237 delegates needed for the party's nomination for the Nov. 8 election.

Trump hunted for support at two rallies in the state on Monday, telling voters in La Crosse, Wisconsin, they could propel him toward the nomination by delivering him a surprise victory over Cruz.

"If we do well here, folks, it's over," Trump said. "This could be the real beginning. If it's not, I think we get there anyway, and I'm pretty sure we get there anyway."

Trump said an array of forces were aligned against him in Wisconsin, including the state's governor, Scott Walker, who has backed Cruz, a "very hostile media" and party establishment figures worried he will lead Republicans to a broad defeat in November.

He ridiculed the "NeverTrump" movement to block his nomination and said the party establishment should have put the same effort into beating President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.

"If they had worked this hard to stop Obama, Obama wouldn't have had a chance," Trump said at a rally in Superior, Wisconsin.

He also said it was "unfair" that rival John Kasich, the governor of Ohio, refused to get out of the race despite trailing Trump and Cruz badly.

Trump has won 736 delegates to the July nominating convention in Cleveland, but is still 501 short of the majority he needs to clinch the nomination. Rivals Cruz and Kasich hope to stop him short of a first-ballot victory and trigger a contested convention.

Story continues

"My eyes are wide open," Trump said of the possibility the party establishment would maneuver to deny him the nomination at the convention. "We're dealing with a corrupt system. We're dealing with a system that is not fair."

Cruz told reporters the party was beginning to rally behind him, and said a win in Wisconsin would spark a surge of momentum for him in upcoming contests.

'A UNIFYING PARTY'

"What were seeing is the party unifying behind our campaign," Cruz said in Madison. "I hope and believe tomorrow night's going to be a very good night here in Wisconsin."

A Trump loss would cap a rough week, including an avalanche of criticism for his suggestion, which he later dialed back, that women be punished for getting abortions if the procedure is banned. Uncharacteristically, Trump also acknowledged that he made a mistake retweeting an attack on Cruz's wife, according to the New York Times.

He also drew fire last week for saying he would not rule out using nuclear weapons in Europe and that Japan and South Korea might need their own nuclear arsenals to ease the U.S. financial commitment to their security.

Trump told the crowd in Superior he has been advised that he should act more presidential but if he did, it would be boring and "only about 20 percent of you would be here."

Cruz was eager to capitalize on Trump's missteps, talking about his family during a town hall session in an attempt to soften his strident image and appeal to women turned off by Trumps recent comments.

At a later rally, Cruz told voters the entire country was looking toward Wisconsin.

"Lets show the country that this race is not about yelling and screaming and insults," he said in Madison.

Even with a victory in Wisconsin, Cruz still faces difficult odds to win the delegates needed to secure the nomination, given that the next states to vote, including New York on April 19 and five Northeastern states on April 26, are more Trump-friendly territory.

Cruz has 463 delegates, 774 short of the total needed for the nomination, according to an Associated Press count. Kasich, with 143 delegates, has no chance to gather enough delegates to win on the first ballot but has refused to end his candidacy.

He rejected Trump's call for him to get out of the race and poked fun at the front-runner's complaints.

"I've got news for him. I'm gonna get a heck of a lot his voters," he told a town hall meeting in Hempstead, New York. "I know how to fix these things that the Trump voters care about."

In the Democratic race, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has a small lead in opinion polls in Wisconsin over front-runner Hillary Clinton and is trying to add to his momentum after winning five of the last six contests.

A Wisconsin win by Sanders would put the focus on the April 19 contest in New York, where Clinton was campaigning on Monday. Sanders still faces a tough task to overcome Clinton's lead of 263 pledged delegates in the Democratic race, which awards all delegates proportionally to their vote totals in each state.

Clinton reported on Monday that she had raised $29.5 million in March for the primary campaign, trailing the $44 million Sanders reported raising in March. Clinton's campaign said she raised an additional $6.1 million for the Democratic National Committee and state parties.

At a New York City event celebrating a hike in the state minimum wage to $15 an hour, Clinton noted Trump has said wages are too high. That drew boos from the crowd, which included a large number of labor union members.

"I dont know what the calculation is by Trump and others but Ill tell you this: They are selling Americans short, Clinton said.

(Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu, Mohammad Zargham, Luciana Lopez, Susan Heavey, Megan Cassella; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Bill Trott and Jonathan Oatis)
By Anuradha Nagaraj CHENNAI, India (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - India's growing shoe industry relies on women who work from home, earn less than the minimum wage and lack any legal rights, activists said, urging companies importing from India to check their supply chains for signs of labour exploitation. Ambur town in Tamil Nadu is one of the centres of India's export footwear industry, and has one of the highest concentrations of homeworkers in the country. While factories in the area employ people at higher salaries to assemble the shoes, manufacturers find it cheaper to outsource the labour intensive process of stitching uppers to women who work from home, using middlemen, the campaigners said. "By doing this, they circumvent all labour norms that would ensure that the homeworkers had guaranteed work and basic rights under Indian labour laws," Gopinath Parakuni, general secretary of Cividep India, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on Monday. "They don't even get the minimum wage of 126 Indian rupees ($1.91) guaranteed by the Tamil Nadu government," he added. "These women from poor and marginalised communities ... are part of a clandestine production that exploits their vulnerability," said Parakuni, who campaigns on workers' rights and corporate accountability. The women, part of a global supply chain making high end shoes, are paid less than $0.14 per pair of shoes, which are sold in Britain for between $60 and $140, according to a joint report published last month by Cividep India and British NGOs, Homeworkers Worldwide and Labour Behind the Label. The work requires women to sit on the floor, crouched over shoes for long hours, repeatedly pulling a needle through tough leather. They suffer neck, back and shoulder pain, problems with eyesight and chronic headaches, and injuries to their hands and fingers, the report said. "At times I work late at night. But when I do so, I can't work the next day, my fingers are swollen," homeworker Sumitra told the report's authors. "After I complete a pair, it takes about an hour for my hands to return to their normal condition," she said. "No way is stitching this upper good work ... We develop pain in the chest. Our hands get infected because of the germs in the leather. I also developed fibrosis because of this work," she added. Despite the poor pay and working conditions, the women told the report's authors they felt they had little choice because their family responsibilites meant they were unable to work away from home. For those who were widowed or had a sick husband, the work provided the family's only source of income. India is the world's eighth largest exporter of footwear. Between 2012 and 2014, footwear exports in India grew by over 50 percent, with 200 million shoes exported worldwide in 2014, according to the report. The campaigners are urging companies sourcing leather and leather products from India to carefully map their supply chains, from the processing of leather to the final product. The NGOs contacted 14 companies for a response on what they were doing to address the risks in their supply chains. Some acknowledged the problem and others gave few details. The NGOs said India's footwear industry is not unique - shoe industries in many countries rely on homeworkers providing low-cost flexible labour. "From Portugal to Bulgaria, from Eastern Europe to north Africa to India, homeworkers are to be found in the shoe supply chain and experience similar working conditions whatever the location," the report said. ($1 = 66.0533 Indian rupees) (Reporting by Anuradha Nagaraj, Editing by Alex Whiting)
If someone were to walk off with your shopping bag in a crowded marketplace, would you judge the petty thief less harshly if he or she grabbed your bag by mistake?

The answer to that question may depend on your culture, finds a study led by University of California, Los Angeles, anthropologist Clark Barrett.

The researchers tested the degree to which intentions influence the way people judge the actions of others in societies across the globe. The result? The extent that intentions affect people's moral judgments varied across cultures. [Understanding the 10 Most Destructive Human Behaviors]

Moral intent hypothesis

According to most philosophical and anthropological research, and according to the law in many societies, intentions affect moral judgments, Barrett told Live Science. Take, for example, the distinction between first- and second-degree murder. The difference has to do not with the actual act itself, but rather with the state of mind of the perpetrator when committing the act, Barrett said. (A first-degree murder is premeditated; a second-degree murder is not.)

More generally, "there are many cases where how harshly you might blame someone for doing something or failing to do something might depend on your judgments about whether they did it on purpose or not," he added.

In fact, the scientific literature suggested that weighing intentions when making moral judgments was a universal human trait, an idea Barrett and colleagues termed "the moral-intent hypothesis." Most of the studies supporting this conjecture, however, took place in Western, industrialized countries. Barrett said he and his colleagues wondered if the hypothesis held true in small-scale societies in other parts of the world.

Intent versus accident

The study involved 322 participants in 10 populations on six continents. These populations included two Western societies, one urban (Los Angeles) and one rural (the Ukrainian village of Storozhnitsa), as well as eight smaller-scale communities from other parts of the world.

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To determine how study participants made moral judgments, researchers presented individuals with several stories in which a person, the actor, committed a harmful act of some kind; participants were then asked to rate the "badness" of the action, on a 5-point scale ranging from "very bad" to "very good." The scenarios included theft (of a shopping bag in a marketplace), physical harm (hitting someone), poisoning (a community water supply) and committing a food taboo (eating a culturally frowned-upon food).

Importantly, the scenarios also varied by whether the wrongdoings were accidental or intentional.

"The strong version of the moral-intent hypothesis would be that doing any of those things would be judged more wrong when one does it on purpose than when one does it by accident," Barrett said.

Pardonable or not?

Pooling data from all of the societies studied, the hypothesis held up: Overall, people regarded intentional actions about five times as severely as accidental ones.

However, among the 10 societies, the extent to which intent affected moral judgments varied. In the Western societies, Los Angeles and Storozhnitsa, intent seemed to influence people's moral judgments the most. Whether an act was purposeful or inadvertent mattered much less to participants on the Fijian island of Yasawa, and to the Hadza and the Himba, two populations in Africa, than it did in other populations, Barrett said. [Op-Ed: The Evolution of Moral Outrage]

For example, poisoning a water supply "was judged, essentially, maximally bad by the Hadza and the Himba regardless of whether you did it on purpose or by accident," Barrett said.

"People said things like, 'Well, even if you do it by accident, you should not be so careless,'" Barrett added.

In other societies, in contrast, while people still judged the accidental poisoning as bad, they viewed it less harshly than they did the malicious one.

The researchers also examined the way other "mitigating" factors  such as whether the agent acted in self-defense, acted based on misinformation or was insane  might soften participants' moral judgments. Across the board, people viewed acting out of necessity  the example of necessity given was knocking another person down to reach a water bucket to put out a fire  and acting in self-defense as factors that would mitigate a moral judgment. There were also some cross-cultural variations in the factors that people regarded as mitigating: the factors of insanity or acting on mistaken information were seen as mitigating in L.A. and Sorozhnitsa, but not on Yasawa.

"We in the West and people who have been educated in a Western scholarly tradition  think that intentions are quite relevant to moral judgments, so one of the surprises of the paper was that there were more contexts and places than we might have expected when they [the intentions] were less relevant than we thought," Barrett concluded. "That might mean that there are many other examples of moral variation that we have yet to discover."

The research was published online March 28 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Follow Ashley P. Taylor @crenshawseeds. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Riyadh (AFP) - A delegation of Shiite Huthi rebels from Yemen is holding talks in Riyadh, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said Monday, ahead of a planned ceasefire and renewed Yemeni peace negotiations.

"The Huthi delegation is in Saudi Arabia and the discussions are ongoing. I believe we have made good progress," Jubeir told reporters.

Saudi Arabia is leading an Arab coalition that has been bombing the rebels for over a year, in support of Yemen's internationally recognised President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.

"Talks with them are ongoing with the aim of finding a political solution for the Yemen crisis," Jubeir said.

Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was the first to reveal the presence of a Huthi delegation in Riyadh, in an interview with Bloomberg published Friday.

"There is significant progress in negotiations, and we have good contacts with the Huthis, with a delegation currently in Riyadh. We believe that we are closer than ever to a political solution in Yemen," the prince said.

The revelation came ahead of a UN-brokered truce slated to enter into effect on April 10, followed by talks in Kuwait on April 18.

Previous negotiations have failed and earlier ceasefires were not respected, but analysts say the prospects of a deal have improved.

Saudi Arabia and the Iran-backed Huthi rebels have recently exchanged detainees and agreed through tribal mediation to ease tension along the two countries' border.

The Huthis seized Sanaa in September 2014 then advanced south, raising fears in Riyadh that the rebels would extend the influence of Shiite Iran in the kingdom's southern neighbour.

The United Nations says about 6,300 people have been killed in the war, more than half of them civilians.
New York (AFP) - The governors of two major US states, California and New York, signed laws on Monday increasing their hourly minimum wage levels to $15, saying they would lift earnings for millions of workers.

The rises -- which will set the country's highest minimum wage rates -- will take place gradually to give businesses time to adjust.

The minimum wage in New York, $9, is already higher than the national requirement of $7.25. California's current rate, $10, is second only to Washington DC's at $10.50.

The move will put levels in the two US states on a par with the highest minimum wages currently in place among some of the world's wealthiest countries.

New York's hike will increase to $15 at different rates depending on the area of the state and type of business. In New York city, all minimum-wage earners will be paid $15 by the end of 2019.

The rise will lift earnings for more than 2.3 million people, according to the office of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who has crusaded to raise his state's minimum wage for nearly a year.

The law includes a paid family leave policy that gives new parents and those needing to care for sick family members 12 weeks of partially paid time off.

When fully implemented by 2021, those eligible will receive 67 percent of their average weekly wages, capped at 67 percent of the statewide average weekly wage.

Federal law currently mandates 12 weeks of family leave, but without pay. New York is the fourth state to adopt paid family leave after New Jersey, Rhode Island and California.

In California, Governor Jerry Brown enacted a minimum wage measure similar to New York's.

The law will increase minimum hourly pay to $15 by 2022, although businesses with 25 or fewer employees will be given additional time.

California has approximately seven million hourly workers, with around 2.2 million earning the minimum wage, the governor's office said.

"This is about economic justice, it's about people," Brown said. "This is an important day, it's not the end of the struggle, but it's a very important step forward."

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US President Barack Obama welcomed New York's bill on Twitter, writing: "Nobody should have to choose between losing a paycheck & caring for their family. I applaud @NYGovCuomo for taking a big step on paid leave."

"Now Congress needs to act to raise the federal minimum wage and expand access to paid leave for all Americans," he added in a statement.

After signing the bill into law, Cuomo headed to a celebratory rally attended by Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton.

Her Democratic rival Bernie Sanders welcomed the two states' wage increases in a statement, saying he was "proud" of the hikes that would raise wages for millions.
New Zealand's former prime minister Helen Clark on Monday entered the race to be the next UN secretary-general, touting her decades of leadership as she aims to become the first woman to head the world body.

The search for a successor to Ban Ki-moon comes at a time of high anxiety in global affairs as the United Nations grapples with the biggest refugee crisis since World War II and raging conflicts in the Middle East and Africa.

"I am putting myself forward based on proven leadership experience over close to three decades, both in my own country and here at the United Nations," Clark told AFP in an interview, ending months of speculation.

"I do think I have the experience and the attributes to do this job."

Currently the UN's highest-ranking woman, Clark heads its largest agency, the UN Development Programme (UNDP), a post she has held for the past seven years, overseeing the world body's vast development agenda.

New Zealand formally put forward Clark, one of the most experienced women in global politics, as its candidate at a press conference in Wellington.

"Having served as the prime minister of New Zealand for nine years and held one of the top jobs in the United Nations for the past seven, Helen Clark has the right mix of skills and experience for the job," Prime Minister John Key said.

"There are major global challenges facing the world today and the United Nations needs a proven leader who can be pragmatic and effective.

"Coming from New Zealand, Helen Clark is well placed to bridge divisions and get results. She is the best person for the job."

- 'Very challenging outlook' -

The 66-year-old former academic is among New Zealand's longest-serving prime ministers, having headed the government for three successive terms from 1999 to 2008.

Next week, the UN General Assembly will hold public hearings for the candidates for the first time in the United Nations' 70-year history, with the race still wide open months before a vote.

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Other than Clark, seven candidates including three women are vying for the top job. The candidates include UNESCO chief Irina Bokova of Bulgaria and the former High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, of Portugal.

Clark would become the first woman to lead the United Nations, after eight men in the top job -- although she downplayed her gender as a factor in her candidacy.

"I'm not putting myself forward because I'm a woman. I'm putting myself forward because I think I'm the best person for the job," she said.

"I happen to be a woman with a strong track record."

"I've given it a lot of thought," Clark said of her candidacy. "I think we face a very, very challenging world outlook."

- New approaches -

The United Nations has come under heavy fire over its failure to reform, with critics arguing it is ill-adapted to respond to evolving global crises.

Clark pointed to those shortcomings during the interview, saying she was "extremely keen" to steer the world body towards a more effective approach to addressing what she termed a "different kind of conflict."

Today's warfare is about "civil wars, disparate non-state actors. It's violent extremism. This requires new approaches," she said.

Turning to the UN bureaucracy, Clark called for reform to turn the world body -- with its 40,000-plus employees and annual budget of over $8 billion -- into a more "pro-active organization."

"We can be a clunky, old-fashioned-style administration," she acknowledged.

"I'm known for being a pragmatic, task-focused and results-oriented person."

UN diplomats see Clark as a prominent candidate for the top post, but it remains unclear how much support she will be able to garner from the permanent Security Council members: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.

Russia has said that the next secretary-general should come from eastern Europe, the only region that has yet to be represented in the top job.

Britain has said it would back a woman to be the world's top diplomat.

After public hearings are held in the General Assembly beginning next week, the Security Council is expected to select the winning candidate in July, who would then be endorsed by the assembly.

The successful candidate will begin work on January 1, 2017.
Harare (AFP) - Zimbabwe on Wednesday gave foreign businesses until April 1 to comply with controversial equity laws that compel them to cede majority stakes to locals or risk closure.

"The law is the law. The law must be adhered to," Indigenisation Minister Patrick Zhuwao said at a news conference.

The minister said the cabinet had on Tuesday "unanimously passed a resolution directing from 1 April 2016 all line ministries proceed to issue orders to licencing authorities to cancel licences of non-compliant business."

Zimbabwe's controversial indigenisation scheme, which came into effect in 2008, forces foreign companies to transfer 51 percent of their shares to local entities or individuals.

Government says the move is aimed at empowering the majority black population who were disadvantaged by colonial rule, but critics say the law has benefitted President Robert Mugabe's allies.

Zhuwao said some companies had "continued to disregard" the law, prompting the government's latest decision to order the closure of non-compliant companies.

"The failure to adhere with the laws to the laws of our land must attract immediate consequences that must be severe and dire enough to ensure that the law is respected and adhered to," he said.

Compliance with the regulation had been slow, despite the January 2014 deadline.

Critics say the law scares away desperately needed foreign investment.

But Zhuwao dismissed those fears.

"We are a market driven economy and when there is a vacuum others will come in," he said.

"From 1 April 2016 indigenous Zimbabweans will be looking with expectation to see the law that enables them to own their economy begin to be effectively enforced."

According to independent political analyst Earnest Mudzengi the latest announcement will worsen the struggling economy.

"That is unnecessary especially when our economy is on its knees," Mudzengi told AFP.

Story continues

"It (the decision) will worsen the economy, worsening the situation."

Opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)spokesman, Obert Gutu, also criticised the government's decision, saying it would not help the country attract investment.

"What we want is to resuscitate the economy, which is virtually dead. We all know the formal sector has been decimated, capacity utilisation is very low," Gutu said.

"The country is already facing a drought and there is a minister threatening the few operating businesses with closure...Zhuwao must stop whatever he is smoking that is toxic."

The International Monetary Fund has urged Zimbabwe to review the indigenisation policy to give potential investors confidence.

Major multinational firm operating in Zimbabwe include mining firms, banks and retailers.

This the second deadline government has issued in two years. A January 2014 deadline attracted little compliance.

Mugabe has in the past threatened to nationalise foreign companies that refuse to comply.

Zimbabwe's economy has been on a downturn for more than a decade-and-a-half since veteran Mugabe's government oversaw the often violent eviction of white farmers under controversial land reforms.
On Saturday, April 9, 2016, the Sheboygan Astronomical Society is hosting its ninth annual Swap N Sell. This years event, like the previous ones, will take place at the Aviation Heritage Center of the Sheboygan Airport in Wisconsin from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. For those of you who own a GPS or like to use Google Maps or MapQuest, the address is N6191 Resource Drive, Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin 53085.

Maybe you have some astronomy stuff like telescopes, eyepieces, accessories, cameras, or books you no longer use. If so, this event offers a great opportunity for you to sell or swap your items with other amateur astronomers.

Most visitors, however, stop by to see what kind of deals they can find on new or used equipment. Ill say that for a relatively small event, the pickings usually are pretty good. If you do make it to the Swap-n-Sell on Saturday, be sure to stay awhile to chat with like-minded individuals. You can learn a lot about a vast array of equipment. As for sales, the terms are cash, check, or swap; and dont be afraid to haggle a little.

In addition to the Swap N Sell, youll also have the opportunity to sit in on a talk by a guest speaker. Me. At 11 a.m., Ill be presenting The Dark Side of Science: The 2017 Total Solar Eclipse.

And theres something special this year. Well, apart from my talk, that is! Youll have a chance to fly a 3-axis full-motion flight simulator. The cost is $10 (cash) for a 15-minute flight. If youre interested, you can sign up by emailing dvanminsel1@gmail.com.

Because this is Wisconsin, theres alway a brat fry and (nonalcoholic) drinks for sale during the event.

See you there!
NOTICENOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that Letters of Administration in the Estate of MARY ELIZABETH WILSON late of Middlesex Township, Cumberland County, Carlisle, Pennsylvania (died October 30, 2019), having been granted to the undersigned, all persons indebted to said estate are required to make immediate payment, and those having all claims will present them without delay to: Lester Norwood Straub Jr. Executorc/o Mateya Law Firm, P.C.Mark A. Mateya, Esq.55 W. Church AvenueCarlisle, PA 17013(717) 241-6500
Ballast water bringing invasive species to Indian coasts: Scientists

Published: April 4, 2016

Scientists fear that ballast water carried by ships is providing a vehicle to bring in exotic invasive species across the Indian Coast.

In this regard, a survey was conducted by the Department of Aquatic Biology and Fisheries, University of Kerala.

In the survey the presence of as many as 10 invasive species was found in the biodiversity-rich intertidal habitats of the Kerala coast. Some of invasive species include one species each of seaweed, bryozoan, mollusc and seven species of ascidian. The distribution of invasive species from the Kerala coast is likely assisted by shipping.

What is Ballast?

Ballast is a compartment in a ship that provides it stability as it holds water which moves in and out of it to balance the ship.

The compartment usually remains below the water level in order to counteract the weight above the water level.

Fears

Ballast is one of the biggest transporter of non-native (exotic/invasive) marine species.

Over 10,000 non-native marine species are transported across the world in the ballast water.

The colossal loads of ballast water carried by ships mainly transports fish, viruses, algae, , zooplankton, bacteria and benthonic invertebrates to harbours at a faster pace.

Expansion of ports and minor ports could pave for the introduction of alien species in Indian marine and coastal areas.

Month: Current Affairs - April, 2016

Topics: Current Affairs 2016  Environment  Kerala  Science and Technology

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The pact will lead to improved network connectivity as well as quality. (Representational Image)

New Delhi: Telecom operator Aircel has signed 2G intra-circle roaming agreement with state-owned BSNL on pan-India basis.

"This is a first agreement between a state owned operator and a private telecom player. With this strategic tie up, both organizations will be able to enhance customer experience besides utilizing each other's assets and network strength," Aircel said in a statement on April 4.

The pact will lead to improved network connectivity as well as quality. The agreement will help Aircel widen its reach as BSNL has about 1.14 lakh mobile towers across country.

BSNL has second highest number of mobile towers in the country and also premium 900 Mhz spectrum that it is using for 2G services. With continued investment BSNL expects to have around 1,35,000 mobile towers, maximum owned by a company.
ITC's comments highlight the latest tussle between India's $10 billion cigarette industry and the government after new rules kicked in on Friday mandating health warnings should cover 85 percent of a pack's surface, up from 20 percent now.

India's top cigarette maker ITC Ltd, part-owned by British American Tobacco, said it was not ready to print bigger health warnings on its packs as mandated by the government and will keep its factories shut until clarity emerges on the new rules. ITC's comments highlight the latest tussle between India's $10 billion cigarette industry and the government after new rules kicked in on Friday mandating health warnings should cover 85 percent of a pack's surface, up from 20 percent now.

A parliamentary panel last year forced the government to delay the new rules, saying it was assessing how the industry would be impacted. But the health ministry later said the warnings must be adopted on April 1. The panel of lawmakers last month called for reducing the size of warnings to 50 percent to protect the interests of the industry and tobacco farmers.

ITC said the health ministry's push to go ahead with its rule was "contrary to its earlier decision to await the (parliamentary) committee's findings". "The industry was led to believe that the government would renotify new health warnings after considering the committee's recommendations," ITC said in its statement.

Health ministry officials could not be reached for a comment on Saturday. A senior official had told Reuters on Friday the government was committed to implementing new rules. A leading industry body had said on Friday that cigarette makers, including ITC and its rival Godfrey Phillips India Ltd, which is a partner of U.S.-based Philip Morris International, suspended production as the new policy created confusion.

Smoking kills about 1 million people in India each year, BMJ Global Health estimates. The World Health Organization has called the debate on reducing the warnings size in India "worrisome".
New Delhi: Amid reports of some Indians having unaccounted wealth in tax havens, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Monday morning said those who did not take advantage of the compliance window last year to declare illegal assets abroad will find "such adventurism extremely costly".

The minister said global initiatives to deal with the menace of unaccounted wealth abroad will be in place by 2017, and then it would become extremely difficult for individuals to hide assets. "With G20 initiatives, FATCA and bilateral transactions in place with effect from 2017, the world is going to be a far more transparent institution and therefore, this kind of an adventurism will prove to be extremely costly for those who have indulged in it," Jaitley said while addressing the annual session of industry body CII.

Read: Panama leak: Black money SIT to investigate Indians on the list

His statement comes on a day when a newspaper, based on leaked documents of Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca, reported that over 500 Indians including some well known names figure in the list of persons having association with firms in tax havens.

Jaitley said those who did not take advantage of the black money compliance window last year to declare undisclosed overseas assets will realise their mistake.

"I had come in for adverse comment including some of my friends here when in 2015 Budget we had announced a strong penal law against illegal assets abroad. At that stage I had said that those who committed mistakes in the past are getting last opportunity with a compliance window in place.

"The compliance window operated (and), many availed but probably some didn't. Today when I see contrarian reports appearing (in media), which are not only impacting India... which are impacting the rest of the world. I think it is a stern reminder to all of us," he said.

Last year, during the 90-day compliance window ended September 30, the government had received disclosures of undeclared overseas wealth totalling Rs 4,147 crore. Those wanting to come clean were required to pay 30 per cent tax and 30 per cent penalty.

Beside, the government in this Budget came out with a compliance window to encourage domestic black money holders to declare assets in the four-month compliance window, which will open in June. They will have to pay a total of 45 per cent tax and penalty. Jaitley further said the essence of the industry will have to be entrepreneurship and also credibility.

"If India aspires to be the fastest growing global leader, as far as the economy is concerned, we in government have a primary responsibility in terms of policy and guiding public opinion," he said adding the industry also has to work towards achieving the goal. Citing various initiatives taken by the government to boost economic activity, the minister said "... with all the new avenues of entrepreneurship available at globally competitive rates, corruption level significantly going down if not disappearing, a far more ease of doing business, more and more avenues are being made available to you."

With regard to mounting NPAs, he said some recent events haven't added to the industry's credibility as far as resolution of bad loans are concerned. "As far as industry is concerned, we always welcome entrepreneurship.

I also appreciate the kind of challenges, which you are facing today but I think Indian industry is also fighting a major battle for its own credibility. "Some recent events haven't added to their credibility, and therefore, in this entire debate which is going on non-performing assets... but the approach of the leaders of the industry will certainly have to be always positive and ethical because it is that approach which is going to add to their credibility," he said.
The government has also imposed a safeguard duty on certain steel products.

New Delhi: The Commerce and Industry Ministry is not in favour of more steps to check import of cheaper steel.

"We have imposed minimum import price (MIP) and at the moment, I am not looking into specifics. If the steel ministry is looking into it, we will have to wait and hear from them," Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on April 4 told reporters.

She was replying to a question on whether the ministry is considering more steps to deal with the problem of cheap steel import.

In February, the government imposed MIP on 173 steel products ranging between USD 341 to USD 752 per tonne (nearly Rs 23,065.24-50,865.28) to give relief to domestic steel producers against cheap in-bound shipments.

The MIP will remain in place for six months only. The government has also imposed a safeguard duty on certain steel products.
New Delhi: Indian Railway is passing through a tough time but the ministry has drawn up a comprehensive strategy to pull it out of this situation and make the public transporter financially viable, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu on April 4 said.

"Railways is passing through a difficult time. It is a challenging time. But, at the same time, we have to keep on doing expansion and upgrade in the Railways," Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu said. He was speaking at an event at the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) here.

Prabhu said, the ministry is hoping to come out with a long-term plan soon, adding, "we have drawn up a comprehensive strategy to come out of this situation. We are working on a comprehensive plan to make railway finacially viable. The idea is to make railways better."

"To begin with, we are working out for non-tariff operation to increase earnings which was never done before. Besides, we have also increased the capital expenditure substantially," he said. Railways have undertaken plans to earn substantial revenue through commercial uitilisation of surplus land and advertisement.

"We are preparing 2030 plan, It will be a vision for the future." Highlighting some of the changes taking place in the ministry, he said "Earlier Railway ministers were busy in announcing new trains, halts in the budget. For the last two years we have discontinued that practice. Now tenders or works contracts are not seen by me."

Referring to the partnership with state governments, other countries and private players, he said, "16 states have agreed to partner with Railways in executing rail projects in their states. Many countries have come forward for technological cooperation, besides private players showing interest in projects."

He said private players will have opportunities in the redevelopment of stations across the country. Railways have offered 400 major stations across the country for redevelopment with private participation. He said railways has also forged partnerships with NGOs and self-help groups.

Prabhu said many organisations like Axis Bank and Nomura have given positive reports about the railways, saying "we will move forward. So we are sure railway will emerge stronger." Highlighting the importance of customer service, Prabhu said, "We will come out with a long-term corporate plan soon and there will be a general manager for customer service."

Asked about the corporatisation plan, Prabhu said one has to be particular about the nomenclature. "If you say labour reforms then it will be a problem. But if you say employment generation scheme, then it is different.

So, change in nomenclature is required. Same objective will be achieved with the change in nomenclature. "So outcome is important not the process. If the outcome is good without much complications, we do need to find out that." He said many reform-oriented steps hav been taken in the railways in the recent past.

"Tendering process is now on e-platform. We are also changing Railway Board structure for bringing efficiency. Now railway recruitment examinations are also online." Prabhu, however, said though changes are good for railways these "cannot take place overnight".

On tie-up with Japan for the high-speed train between Mumbai and Ahmedabad, he said, "It is in the interest of the country and economy. It will change the entire ecosystem in the country. We will have Japanese technology as well as funds. Japan is giving soft loan."

It is not only high-speed rail, he said, Japan has agreed for helping in modernisation and research work also. Now our RDSO (Reserach Designs and Standards Organisation) will be completely revamped."

On the facility for differently-abled passengers, he said, railway is aware of the issue and will do its best to provide all support. "Railway has full support of the Prime Minister and the entire government. I hope industry will also support financially to move ahead," he said.
Ranchi: On the pattern of Central government's Start-UP India campaign, the Jharkhand government has introduced "Start-Up Jharkhand", earmarking Rs 50 crore to encourage entrepreneurs in different sectors, Chief Minister Raghubar Das said.

Informing this at the Think India 2016 Convention here, Das said a policy on Start-UP Jharkhand would be coming up. Innovation and Incubation Centres were being set up at a cost of Rs 10 crore, he said, adding an innovation lab would also be set up with the help of IIM Ahmadabad. Das said entrepreneurs were being encouraged in the sectors like Information Technology, Health, Tourism, Agriculture, Biotechnology and alternative energy.
MFs are investment vehicles made up of a pool of funds collected from a large number of investors for the purpose of investing in stocks, bonds, money market instruments and the like.

New Delhi: Mutual funds pulled out more than Rs 8,000 crore from stock markets in March on profit-booking, even as they invested over Rs 68,000 crore in the entire past fiscal. This also marks the first outflow since May 2014, when MFs had pulled out Rs 1,078 crore. Prior to that, they had been continuously infusing money into stock markets.

Wealthforce.com Founder Siddhant Jain said: "Coming month seems good as it is the start of a new financial year and a lot of retail investors start their SIPs with a new financial year. We expect good inflows into MFs leading to them to putting money into the market."

Despite huge outflow in March, MFs registered a big net inflow of Rs 68,281 crore in the financial year 2015-16, ended last month. In comparison, fund managers invested a net sum of Rs 40,722 crore in 2014-15 while they pulled out over Rs 14,000 crore in the preceding financial year.

"The reason for the huge outflow (last month) by MFs in the stock market could be twofold. First, since it is the financial year end, a lot of banks and corporates would have pulled out their investments to balance their books and meet the cash flow requirements."

"Second, the market is up about 8-8.5 per cent since a month ago. So a lot of investors, mainly institutional, could be doing some profit-booking and exiting their mutual fund positions, leading to outflows," he added.

According to latest data with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), fund managers offloaded shares to the tune of Rs 8,058 crore last month. However, Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs) pumped over Rs 21,000 crore into equities during the period under review.

Meanwhile, the 30-share benchmark BSE Sensex surged by 10.17 per cent last month. MFs are investment vehicles made up of a pool of funds collected from a large number of investors for the purpose of investing in stocks, bonds, money market instruments and the like.
Farah Khan posted this picture and wrote, "The King of action CAN dance n how!! Changing his name 2 Jackie Jackson!! #kungfu yoga"

Mumbai: Even though she has visited Jodhpur several times in the past, this visit has been a special one for choreographer Farah Khan. Farah flew down to the city to be a part of Jackie Chans film Kung Fu Yoga.

The special Bollywood song which will be shot on a lavish set in Rajasthan and later in Beijing, also stars Sonu Sood and Amyra Dastur.

Sonu Sood, who has worked with Farah in Happy New Year convinced Jackie to do a song by explaining how much Indians love music in their films. Reportedly, Jackie Chan will also be crooning the song in English and Hindi.

Farah Khan posted a picture with Jackie and wrote, "The King of action CAN dance n how!! Changing his name 2 Jackie Jackson!! #kungfu yoga"

She soon posted a picture from the wrap up party and wrote, "Legends of the fall!! Wrap party! Lov my job! Thank u Jackie for being the soul you are!"

Legends of the fall!! Wrap party! Lov my job! Thank u Jackie for being the soul you are! pic.twitter.com/xfs7NaYz6f  Farah Khan (@TheFarahKhan) April 4, 2016

Before commencing the journey, she had posted a snap with Geeta Kapoor and wrote, "En route Jodhpur wit@geetakapur to make Jackie Chan dance!! Thank u @SonuSood for chartering the whole flight 4 us!"

En route Jodhpur wit@geetakapur to make Jackie Chan dance!! Thank u @SonuSood for chartering the whole flight 4 us! pic.twitter.com/N5yfKs7Lzv  Farah Khan (@TheFarahKhan) April 2, 2016

Kung Fu Yoga is a part of the three-film agreement signed between India and China during Chinese President Xi Jinpings visit to India last year.

The multi-lingual action-adventure film recently wrapped up their international schedules in China and Dubai. The film is being directed by Stanley Tong, who also directed Rumble in the Bronx.

Well, we just cant wait to see Jackie donning a desi look and dancing on the beats of Bollywood tunes.
Rahul was quizzed about his and Pratyusha's incomes, their investments and expenses, previous relationships that the two had and allegations of assault.

Mumbai: As days go by, several shocking facts in Pratyusha Banerjees suicide case are coming to light. It has now surfaced that hours before taking the drastic step, she called up a friend and said she wanted to end her relationship with fiance Rahul Raj Singh. She was also supposed to meet a lawyer for legal advice as she intended to press charges against Rahul.

Read: Pratyusha Banerjee suicide probe: Injury marks on nose and under eyes spotted

Rahuls father, Hashvardhan Singh claims that the actress was upset because her parents landed her in a financial mess and she was also on the verge of sending them a notice. He further alleged that Pratyusha was under severe mental pressure because she did not have enough money left to sustain her expenses, and that her parents had used her name to take a loan of Rs 50 lakh, due to which she was being hassled by creditors.

Watch: Actress Pratyusha Banerjee cremated in full bridal attire

Speaking to Deccan Chronicle, Harshavardhan, who came from Ranchi after learning that Pratyusha had died, said that around two months ago when the family was celebrating the birth of Rahul's younger brothers daughter, Rahul and Pratyusha visited the family. Rahul introduced her to our family. Later, we matched their kundalis and gave a go-ahead for their marriage, said Mr Singh.

Read: Pratyushas boyfriend Rahul Raj Singh hospitalised, in state of depression

Rahuls father also asked Pratyusha why she had come by herself and not with her parents to talk about their marriage plans. She said that her parents had taken away her money and that she was not going to inform them for the time being, said Mr Singh. He added that Rahul was helping her financially and was in deep trauma since her death.

Read: 'Relationship woes did her in': Actress Pratyusha's friend speaks up

On the other hand, Pratyushas friends claim that Rahul was cheating on her with his ex-girlfriend. According to reports, Rahuls ex-girlfriend had assaulted Pratyusha on several occasions in Rahuls absence. But when Pratyusha complained to him, he took no action. He has even physically assaulted her in public.

On Saturday, Rahul was quizzed about his and Pratyusha's incomes, their investments and expenses, previous relationships that the two had and allegations of assault.

At the time of Pratyushas autopsy, Rahul told the media, We never had any serious fight. We were happy and planning to get married soon. I used to love her so much and I don't know why she took such a step. She was upset about her career but I tried to calm her down every time. This time too, I tried to save her but in vain

According to police, the actress, prima facie, committed suicide in her flat in 'At Harmony' building in Goregaon after which she was taken to Kokilaben Hospital in suburban Andheri by Rahul, where she was declared dead.
It all started off when Hrithik Roshan had sent Kangana Ranaut a legal notice after she referred to him as her 'silly ex' in public.

Mumbai: Theres no end in sight to the legal battle between Hrithik Roshan and Kangana Ranaut. It all started off when 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.

Earlier there were reports that Hrithik had popped the question to Kangana way back in 2014, a month after his divorce. However, in an interesting turn of events, it has surfaced that they were not in the city at the same time, at any point. Hrithik went to Paris only for two days during transit with his two sons.

Read: 5 shocking allegations made by Hrithik and Kangana in their legal notices

According to a report in DNA, a friend of the actor revealed, It is easy to ascertain by looking at his passport if Hrithik was in Paris at the time he was supposed to have gotten engaged to her. His close friends and family members have been telling him to put the facts out there and clear his name. He will do it in good time.

Read: Slapped with legal notice, Hrithik apologises for his dating Pope comment

In the notice sent by Hrithik through his lawyer Deepesh Mehta, the actor alleged that he has a record of 1,439 mails from Kangana, most of them senseless, personal and absurd". The notice had further revealed that the actor tried to ignore the emails for the longest time before it got out of hand.

The actor had further claimed that Kangana suffers from Asperger's syndrome which makes her imagine things. This insensitive statement didnt go down well with several families of people suffering from the condition.

According to the report, part of the legal notice was leaked by Kanganas side, sending the wrong message and the statement was taken out of context.

The notice actually read, Your sister told my client that you are suffering from Aspergers Syndrome and spoke at length about the handicap. She requested him to not tell anyone (about her drunken scene in his suite in Jordan during the last day of Krrish 3 shoot). Our client kept his word till date.
Priyanka Chopra has been invited for annual White House Correspondents dinner to be attended by President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.

Mumbai: Jetting across different time zones, with several projects in hand, Priyanka Chopra is caught up in a whir of activities since couple of months. Priyanka, who has taken over the west with a storm, has been invited for the annual White House Correspondents dinner later this month to be attended by President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.

According to reports, Bradley Cooper, Lucy Liu, Jane Fonda and Gladys Knight have also been invited for this event. However, given Priyanka's busy schedule, the actress is yet to give her confirmation for the same.

Read: Priyanka Chopra tried committing suicide in her struggling days, claims ex-manager

Priyanka has been lauded for her role as Alex Parrish in American TV series 'Quantico'. She also scored Favourite Actress in a New TV Series at the People's Choice Awards for her show.

She will also be seen in Seth Gordon's 'Baywatch' which also stars Zac Efron, Alexandra Daddario, Kelly Rohrbach, Ilfenesh Hadera and Jon Bass.

Recently in an interview to PTI, she said, "I am very strict about the fact that I have a certain position in Hindi film industry and that does not get compromised. I will never do that wherever I work in the world. The kind of position I have in Hindi cinema, I want something similar in my Hollywood projects too."
As we first wrote about Bharathiraja and Bala, the two top filmmakers of Kollywood, who are at loggerheads over the filming of the movie Kuttra Parambarai based on history, the former has gone one step ahead as he launched his film on Sunday with a formal pooja at the Martys Memorial at Perungamanallur near Usilampatti in Madurai.

Though, several big names like Lingusamy, Balaji Sakthivel, Suseenthiran, Pandiraj, Ponram, Ezhil, SS Stanley, Saravana Subbaiah, Magizh Thirumeni, cinematographer Kannan, Na Muthukumar and Kabilan Vairamuthu were said to attend the function, close sources said that only a few of them were part of the launch. KP is produced by Bharathirajas home banner.

The flick is set in the 19th century during British era and it will deal extensively about the denotified tribal community Kuttra Parambarai, who were notified by the British as criminals. According to historians, even today, lots of people who belong to these tribes face discrimination and are suffering silently. Reportedly, Bharathiraja said, KP is not just a story, but my fathers tears and my ancestors bloodshed behind the bar during British rule. KP is an attempt to eradicate the stigma forced upon my ancestors. The ace directors film is based on the writings of his regular Ratnakumar, and sources say that he has approached a London based company for investing in the mammoth project.

Balas KP is set on Vela Ramamoorthys book with the same name. And we learn that Lyca Productions have come forward to produce it at a massive budget. And Bala has already roped in Vishal, Arya, Atharvaa, Rana and Arvind Swamy and Anushka Shetty to play crucial roles.

Under these circumstances, we enquire about the Directors Associations plans to sort out the issue. We cant speak anything at this point of time. We have received a complaint from Ratnakumar. Based on that, we would be calling both the filmmakers and discuss the issue. We would also let the press know on the outcome of the meet, Vikraman, the president of Directors Association explained.
The 42-year-old is now supposed to keep his hand in the pouch for six weeks. (Photo: Youtube/ Screen grab)

Teams of surgeons have used a very wise technique to save a Brazilian mans hand from being amputated by put putting it inside a pocket in his belly.

Carlos Mariotti, a machine production operator, suffered from a horrific accident. The accident was so severe that it ripped off all the skin from his hand. The doctors decided to bury his left hand inside his abdomen and cover it with a flap of protective skin.

The 42-year-old is now supposed to keep his hand in the pouch for six weeks.

'Mr Marriott suffered a de-gloving injury which left him with very little skin on the palm and back of his hand, exposing the bones and tendons inside. This was a very large and delicate injury and the only place we could fit the whole hand was in the abdomen. Without this procedure, there would be a high risk of infection and the tissue and tendons would rot away, explained Orthopaedic and traumatology doctor Boris Brandao, who performed the rare operation to DailyMail.

Mariotti feels that he is indeed a lucky person.

(Photo: Youtube/ Screen grab)

I still get very emotional when I think about the accident. But it was only when doctors told me I could lose my hand that I realised the gravity of the situation, told Mariotti to DailyMail.

"When I woke up from the operation I didn't know whether it was still there. I couldn't believe it when they said they had tucked my hand inside me."

Heavy bandages are draped around mans midriff to keep the hand in place firmly and he has been advised to move his hand gently around to avoid the hand becoming stiff.

Mariotti lost two fingers, his index and middle fingers in the accident. However, he is grateful that he will be able to hold a fork, steering wheel and dress up without anyones help.

'It's a really weird feeling trying to wiggle my fingers inside my body and creepy seeing my tummy protrude slightly as I prod around, said Mariotti.

As per reports, he was operating a machine that makes coil when his hand was suddenly dragged into the equipment.

Mariotti was alone on the floor when he was working on the machine and was in immense pain when the machine chewed up his limb.

'It was like watching a movie play out in front of me. I saw the machine pulling my hand in and couldn't do anything about it.'

When everyone failed to hear his scream, he himself pulled out his hand from the machine. It was then that the people came in running and tried to help him.

Dr Brandao told the DailyMail that, Medics decided to perform an immediate 'salvaging' procedure because 'if we can save a hand we always try to find a way to do somIn order to keep the wounded hand alive, we opened the abdomen, took off the skin and put it inside the cavity to protect it.

'The patient's hand must stay in the pocket for about 42 days to ensure it develops new tissue and tendon material which is capable of receiving a replanted skin graft.Weekly check-ups will monitor the progress of the treatment and whether the hand is on the mend."

However the doctor have informed that Mariotti will suffer from some impaired function and will not get all the movement back in his hand.

Mariotti needs to make sure that he keeps his hand inside the pocket because pulling it out can be catastrophic.
Hormones like FSH and LH are being given to the donors for harvesting more eggs. (Representational image)

Hyderabad: Lured by agents, college-going girls in rural areas are donating eggs to fertility centres across the state without realising the health implications.

Students from backward areas like Devarakonda in Nalgonda district, tribal areas in Mahbubnagar, Warangal and Karimnagar are falling into these agents traps.

Many girls in these poverty and drought-affected areas suffer from nutrition related issues. Taking advantage of the situation, agents of fertility centres lure them with money for donating their eggs.

Ms Kavya (name changed), a senior intermediate student from Nalgonda district, who donated her eggs earlier, said that the agents select the girls based on their complexion, physical features, psychological fitness and family background.

Later they see the familys medical history and screen for infections. They give some medicines and injections related to hormones I am paid Rs 10,000 in a month for donating eggs, she said.

Drugs are used to get more eggs

A donor doing her degree course from Warangal district said that she has donated eggs twice. When DC asked her about future health issues, she said, I was not told about the issues by the agent. They paid the amount promptly twice  at the time of agreement and after donation.

Donors are pumped with fertility drugs and hormones so that the fertility centres can harvest more eggs in a month against one, as is normal. Drugs are used to release eggs from ovaries in order to increase success chances.

Clomifene blocks the effect of the hormone estrogen in the donors body, leading to increase in two other hormones  follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinising hormone (LH). FSH causes the eggs in the ovaries to ripen and ready to release and then LH triggers the release of more than one matured egg from the ovary follicles. Drugs like gonadotro-phins and bromocriptine are used for the same result.

Chairperson of the Womens Commission Tr-ipurana Venkataratnam, told DC that the agents were like a surrogacy and eggs collection mafia. We have counselled many college girls who are egg donors. They told us that they were donating their eggs for pocket money and essential requirements as they were from poor families. Now, they are thinking about money, but in the long term, they will face health problems. Acts are required to control such practices, she said.

Dr Anagani Manjula from Maxcure Hospital said the hormones being given to egg donors might lead to Hyper Simulation Syndrome. The syndrome causes health hazards. The donors may get infections due to the hormones and there may be changes in the functioning of ovaries. When they want to become pregnant, they may lose the chance due to increased hormones, she said.
The footage shows the couple trying to cover themselves up in a sheet as the police officers arrives. (Photo: Screen grab)

Are you and your partner randy? Do you love to explore each other in isolated places? If your answer is yes, then you might want to give it a second thought next time you decide to do it.

A couple recently became Internet sensation after their steamy sex clip went viral all over the internet. This randy couple picked up a deserted area on a hilltop for their hot sex session, unaware that there was a webcam on it.

Paragliding enthusiasts who logged into the live streaming feed got to watch something they totally didnt expect.

Police in Tangara, southern Brazil were informed about this couple and they sent a patrol car to investigate about them.

I began to receive calls and text messages on my mobile phone to say there was a couple having sex and I sent a patrol car to go and investigate.They were asked to stop and did so without saying a word. They were asked to put their clothes on before being taken to the station, told Police chief Cesar Luiz Danuns to Mirror.UK.

The footage shows the couple trying to cover themselves up in a sheet as the police officers arrives.

The webcam, on a hill called Morro do Agudo - English for Sharp Hill - belonged to a local paragliding club, they installed the webcam for enthusiasts who wish to check out their favourite sport from their living rooms.

The footage that was filmed was posted on YouTube

A local paragilder informed that the webcam was recently installed and the couple had no idea about it, however a local report claims that the couple were warned by the hillwalker before the police arrived, however they ignored the warning because they were too into the moment of passion.

Click here to watch the video:
Have your ever heard of a hospital that will allow your pets to visit you when you are sick?

Juravinski hospital in Ontario, Canada allows pets to visit their owners and loved ones.

(Photo: Facebook/ Zachary's Paws For Healing)

The hospital recently adopted a program called Zacharys Paws for Healing by Donna Jenkins.

(Photo: Facebook/ Zachary's Paws For Healing)

Her 25-year-old nephew, Zachary, inspired Jenkins. As per reports, Zachary was greatly benefited from having his dogs around when he was battling Hodgkins lymphoma.

(Photo: Facebook/ Zachary's Paws For Healing)

While Zachary was in the hospital for many weeks and very sick after having a stem cell transplant, he begged to see his dog, Chase. We sneaked Chase into ICU to see him and the effect it had on Zachary was remarkable. When Zachary realized he was not going to survive his cancer, he made me promise to start the organization. We had our official first patient visit September 15, 2015, Jenkins told Bored Panda.

(Photo: Facebook/ Zachary's Paws For Healing)

We know that when patients get to see their pet, it can improve vital signs, improve depression and the feeling of isolation, it opens communication back up and it is a reminder for a reason for the patient to get well and return home.

(Photo: Facebook/ Zachary's Paws For Healing)

The pets can visit their loved ones once a week and they are usually given an hour. Pets are thoroughly cleaned before they are allowed in the hospital and are kept away from other patients.

(Photo: Facebook/ Zachary's Paws For Healing)

Click here to watch the video:
Mumbai: A Muslim cleric has been arrested for sexually assaulting an eight-year-old girl on the premises of a madrasa in Chunabhatti. The police suspect the cleric attached to the Noorul Uloom Madrasa in Chunabhatti may have sexually abused other female students too.

According to the Chunabhatti police, the incident came to light after the young girl refused to attend the daily classes at the madrasa. The minor would attend a three to four-hour class at the madrasa everyday after school, to learn religious scriptures. On Saturday, the girls mother asked her to get ready for school but she refused to go. The mother probed her reluctance but the girl did not say anything. Worried, the mother insisted that she tell her the reason and it was then that the girl told her that her teacher at the madrasa would touch her inappropriately, said an official of the Chunabhatti police station.

The minors parents then rushed to the police station to register an FIR against the religious cleric who has since then been identified as 28-year-old Atifur Rehman Ansari. The accused who was a level below the Maulana in the madrasa would teach the students religious texts and also the Quran. The minor has said that Ansari would sit very close to the students and point out passages in the religious books during the class. While doing so, he would slide his hand through the girls scarf and dress and touch her genital areas, said the officer.

The officer further revealed that the accused had assaulted the girl repeatedly over the last year and the most recent incident occurred on Friday, following which the girl refused to attend classes. Ansari, hailing from Bihar, who stayed on the premises of the madrasa was earlier attached to a madrasa in Bhiwandi and moved to Noorul Uloom, a few years ago.

The madrasa located in Qureshi Nagar had four batches of children attending classes with the minors batch having eight boys and nine girls.

Officials suspect that the accused may have sexually assaulted other children too in the past. We are speaking to other children and their parents. Preliminary investigation shows he might have sexually abused one more female student too and we are trying to talk to her, the officer said.
The armed SIMI terrorists arrested in February in Rourkela used to move about freely in both AP, TS and other states.

Hyderabad: Tier-two cities like Guntur, Anantapur, Rajahmundry, Mahbubnagar and Sangareddy are being used as shelter zones by terrorists, as there is very little surveillance there. The armed SIMI terrorists arrested in February in Rourkela used to move about freely in both AP, TS and other states. They lived in rented houses for almost three years after their MP jail break. Apart from robbing banks they also stole bikes. In TS, the suspects committed offences in Choppadandi in Karimnagar and in Sangareddy and Mahbubnagar.

In December 2013 SIMI activists Abu Faisal, Aijajuddin, Aslam, Amjad, Zakir and Mahaboob escaped from a jail in Khandwa in MP. After that they moved around in Maharasthra, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and in AP and TS. They took the help of ex-SIMI cadres and inducted cadres like Saliq from Sambalpur into their fold. They travelled by train, bus and bikes.

A TS police source said, After Abu Faisals arrest in December 2013 the other suspects went to Mahbubnagar. They stole three motorcycles in Mahbubnagar Shadnagar and Kothakota and surveyed banks in and around Mahbubnagar town, but gave up efforts midway. Then they went to Warangal, Devarakonda and Khammam.

Later, they took two rooms in Mankammatota in Karimnagar and robbed Rs 46 lakh from a bank. After that they went to Peddapally by motorcycles and left the vehicles in the parking area of the local RTC bus stand. From Peddapally, they went to Yadgir in Karnataka. They took a room at Yadgir and shared the robbed amount of Rs 46 lakh among them.

After that the gang established its hideout at Rajahmundry in AP. The gang then met at RK Beach in Visakhaptanam on March 1, 2015. Later, they shifted to Guntur. While at the Guntur hideout, they stole a motorcycle in Vijayawada. Aijaz and Aslam used to move around Vijayawada to survey banks for robberies. Later, they decided to establish a base near Hyderabad.

Aijaj and Aslam visited Hyderabad three to four times and took a house on rent in Sangareddy on March 1, 2014. In March 2015, when police intercepted Aijaj and Aslam at Suryapet Hitech bus station, they opened fire and killed two cops and took their weapons. After two days Aijaz and Aslam were seen on the outskirts of Arvapalli village in Nalgonda district. and killed. After the shootout in August and September 2015, Amjad and Saliq went to Anantapur and stayed there for 15 days. They committed theft of a motorcycle at Bellary in Karnataka and left for Dhanbad.
Bengaluru: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) officer Tanzil Ahmad shot dead by two unidentified assailants in Bijnore in western Uttar Pradesh in the early hours of Sunday, was the man who tracked down and took part in the sensational arrest of Yasin Bhatkal - the co founder of the banned terrorist organization 'Indian Mujahideen.'

Mr. Tanzil, (45), who was on deputation from the Border Security Force

(BSF) to the NIA since its inception in 2009 was largely responsible for gathering and coordinating actionable Intelligence with other Central Intelligence agencies which led to Yasin's arrest from Raxaul in Bihar near the Indo-Nepal border in 2013.

An NIA team had closed in on Yasin much before he was arrested from his hideout in Nahar Chowk in Raxual with the help of local police. Mr. Tanzil was a key member of the team, that was co-ordinating with the Intelligence wing of the Sahastra Seema Bal (SSB), posted on the Indo-Nepal border, a source said.

He was very sure about his moves and had mobilised the team, which ultimately led to the ultra's arrest from his hideout. It was because of his proficiency in Urdu and expertise in gathering ground Intelligence that he was deputed to the NIA, said an officer on condition of anonymity, adding that he was not part of the investigation in the Pathankot airbase terror attack as was being reported.

Mr. Tanzil was fatally shot 24 times with a sophisticated indigenous 9-mm bore pistol near his house, when he was returning home after attending a family wedding. Yasin alias Mohammed Zarar Sidibapa is from Bhatkal in coastal Karnataka and was among the countrys top 10 most wanted fugitive-terrorists. He had unleashed terror in major cities in the country after his distant relatives and IM founder siblings Riyaz and Iqbal Shahbandari fled the country and sought shelter in Pakistan to escape arrest.
Mumbai: Defence lawyers of the 10 accused convicted for their roles in the Mumbai blasts during 2002 and 2003 on Monday concluded arguments on the quantum of sentence before the special POTA court here.

"From tomorrow the prosecutor will start her arguments," defence lawyer Sharif Sheikh said.

The defence lawyers pleaded for leniency and minimum sentences for the accused, saying they went through a lot of hardships from the time of their arrests.

Special POTA court judge P R Deshmukh on March 29 convicted 10 of the 13 accused.

Twelve people were killed in Mulund train blasts on March 13, 2003. Before that, on December 6, 2002, several persons were injured in a blast at McDonald's at Mumbai Central station, while a person died in a blast in a market in Vile Parle (East) on January 27, 2003.

While arguing for the key accused and bomb planter Muzammil Ansari, advocate Sheikh had told the court he was "just an arrow and not the archer". It was the wanted accused Tahir Janab Ansari who instigated Muzammil, the lawyer said.
New Delhi: With 500 Indians being named in leaked 'Panama Papers' for alleged offshore holdings, government on Monday formed a multi-agency group to monitor exposes in this regard and vowed to take action against all "unlawful" accounts held abroad.



Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told reporters that Prime Minister Narendra Modi discussed the issue with him Monday morning and on his advise the group has been set up comprising agencies like CBDT, RBI and FIU (Financial Intelligence Unit).

Read: Tax adventurism will prove extremely costly: Arun Jaitley on Panama leak



The Special Investigation Team (SIT) on black money also said it will investigate thoroughly the reported secret list exposed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).



"The multi-agency group will comprise various government agencies -- the CBDT, FIU, FT&TR (Foreign Tax and Tax Research) and RBI. They will continuously monitor these (accounts) and whichever accounts are found to be unlawful, strict action as per existing laws will be taken," Jaitley said.

Read: Amitabh, Aishwarya named in Panama list of firms in tax havens



His comments came on a day the Indian Express carried a report based on leaked documents of a Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca which is said to feature links of over 500 Indians to firms and accounts in offshore tax havens.



This included a well-known actor and his daughter-in-law, a leading real estate tycoon and a number of other industrialists and their family members, most of whom have denied any wrongdoing.

Read: Putin, Sharif among world leaders, celebs exposed in tax haven dump



The report said Onkar Kanwar, Chairman of Apollo Group, and his family members floated an offshore entity in British Virgin Islands in 2010 and two trusts in 2014.

Read: Panama Papers leak: Govt trying to brush aside expose, says Congress

Reacting to it, an authorised spokesperson said, "India lawfully permits foreign investments in accordance with certain regulations. Any investment abroad, that the Kanwar family may have, is in due compliance with the Indian laws, where applicable, including making disclosures wherever required. Much of the family members mentioned are NRIs. They are covered by other nation's permissible laws for their foreign investments and are not covered by Indian laws and restrictions on residents in matters such as Income Tax and RBI."
Chennai: Two senior Congress functionaries from South Tamil Nadu on Sunday asserted that the Congress was very much a viable force in Sivagangai parliamentary constituency and will continue to remain one under the leadership of Mr P Chidambaram.

In a rejoinder to the DC story titled Why Chidambaram failed to safeguard Congress bastion, published on April 3, Mr P Sathyamoorthi, Sivagangai district Congress president and Mr T. Pushparaj, former MLA and Pudukkottai district Congress president, said, We are deeply disappointed to see the correspondent file a biased story at the behest of vested interests.

Terming the story as malicious, false and devoid of facts, the office-bearers regretted that the two people who have been extensively quoted in the story, Mr Duraikarunanithi and Mr Ayothi, are members of the breakaway fringe political party TMC and the antecedence and background of these two persons is questionable.

Mr Duraikarunanithi is a washed up local functionary who has no influence even in his panchayat. He was questioned in the murder of the former DMK Youth Wing secretary Rousseau. There are PCR cases against him. Further, he has availed loans from nationalised banks which have gone bad, the two DCC presidents said. Secondly, Mr Ayothi is a known history-sheeter and his only claim to fame is that he pastes posters of Mr G.K. Vasan. There are cases of cheating against him, wherein a person from Madurai has alleged that he has taken money promising a position in the Port Trust during Mr Vasans tenure as Union shipping minister, they said.

The office-bearers said the report had completely ignored the fact that in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, when the Congress contested without any alliance partners, there were only two constituencies in the entire State (Sivagangai and Kanyakumari), where the Congress polled over one lakh votes in each. Karti P. Chidambaram secured more votes than all former ministers, including the current TNCC president.

The office-bearers also refuted Mr Sethuramans contention that there are 20 lakh votes in the five Assembly segments of Sivagangai, Karaikudi, Manamadurai, Tiruppathur and Ilayankudi. The total votes in the entire parliamentary constituency of six Assembly segments are only 14 lakh.

Denying the charge of nepotism against P. Chidambaram, the Congress office-bearers said, Nothing can be farther from the truth. In fact, the only time his son Karti P. Chidambaram, who has a long track record in party politics, contested was during the challenging 2014 election and not during one of the safe elections.

The Congress office-bearers also pointed out that in 1989, the Sivaganga Assembly ticket was given to Sudharsana Natchiyappan, who is also a Congress man. Many opportunities were given to Udayappan, who lost the 1998, 1999 (Lok Sabha) elections from Ramanathapuram and 2001 (Assembly) elections from Karaikudi, they pointed out.

As regards the Sivaganga Congress Welfare Trust, the office-bearers said it is a private trust constituted by Hon. Mr P Chidambaram and many average and poor workers benefited regularly from it, including Mr Jeyachandran who continues to be ardent supporter of Mr. P. Chidambaram and enjoys his patronage, the office-bearers said. While attaching a list of achievements in the constituency, the Congress district functionaries said the correspondent had failed to get our view on the issues raised.
APJ Abdul Kalam served as president for five years from 2002 and was known as India's 'missile man'. (Photo: Facebook)

New Delhi: Delhi government has decided to build a permanent memorial to APJ Abdul Kalam at a famous market here where belongings of the former President including his books and musical instruments would be on display.

"I am visiting Rameswaram tomorrow to bring back APJ Kalam's belongings to Delhi. At his family home, there are several of his belongings of the former President including books, veena and spectacles," Delhi Culture Minister Kapil Mishra said on Monday.

Kalam's possessions from his residence at 10, Rajaji Marg in the national capital, had been sent to Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu by the Centre, after his death.

"The belongings will be taken to Delhi from Rameswaram through trucks. They will be kept inside the Delhi Assembly till July 27 and thereafter, they will be permanently placed at Dilli Haat, INA where his memorial would be constructed," Mishra told reporters here.

The Delhi government will also have a permanent exhibition on Kalam at Delhi Haat where his books will be displayed and used for research and other purposes.

Mishra had criticised the Centre's move to allot Kalam's official residence at 10, Rajaji Marg to Union Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma after the former President's death.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday granted bail to former Delhi University professor G.N. Saibaba, who was arrested in May 2014 for alleged links with a banned Maoist outfit.

The apex court also pulled up the Maharashtra Government's counsel for opposing the bail.

"You have been extremely unfair to the accused, specially considering his health. If material witnesses have been examined, then why do you want him in jail. You are unnecessarily harassing the petitioner," Justice Khehar said.

Professor Saibaba was arrested in May 2014 for alleged links with the banned Communist Party of India ( Maoist).

He was initially granted bail in July 2015, but has been in prison since December last year after a single-judge bench of the Bombay High Court in Nagpur cancelled his bail.

The wheelchair-bound professor, who is paralysed from waist-downwards due to polio, is more than 90% disabled.

The professor had suffered damage to muscles in his left shoulder and the nerve system during his imprisonment due to inadequate facilities in the jail.

Speaking to ANI in July last year, Professor Saibaba had said that jail should be a correctional institution and not a torture centre, adding that the reason for his illness was the torture he went through.

"How a person feels when he or she loses his freedom and rights, I have experienced that feeling. After coming out of jail I have realised the value of freedom in a person's life. Jail should be a correctional institution and police officer should behave like a correction officer. Everyday people are tortured in the jail. People are beaten, insulted and mercilessly tortured," Saibaba he told ANI in July 2015.

Earlier, in a letter, Professor Saibaba had stated that he has been suffering from multiple ailments of severe nature, because of which he is taking regular treatment at the Indian Spinal Injuries Centre (ISIC).
Meanwhile, the journalist involved, expressed regret for his act in a tweet, saying "I sincerely regret posting a morphed picture of the PM on my Facebook page. I should have also verified its authenticity before tweeting it."

New Delhi: The government is looking into the posting of a morphed picture of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Facebook by a journalist working with a private TV channel.

The journalist, who later expressed regret for the "error", had posted a picture in which the Prime Minister is seen bowing before a Saudi leader. Modi returned from a visit to Saudi Arabia past last midnight.

The fake post led to anger on the social media, with BJP MP Mahesh Giri drawing the attention of the I&B ministry. Responding to Girri's tweet, in which he sought action against the person who had posted the fake picture, Minister of State for Information & Broadcasting Rajyavardhan Rathore said, "Dear Shri MaheishGirri Ji, I have instructed MIB_India to review the violations."

Rathore added in his tweet that he would also seek help of Communications and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad in this regard.

Meanwhile, the journalist involved, expressed regret for his act in a tweet, saying "I sincerely regret posting a morphed picture of the PM on my Facebook page. I should have also verified its authenticity before tweeting it."

"I apologise to everyone concerned for this unfortunate error on my part," he said in another tweet. The private TV news channel also said that a morphed picture had been posted by one of its staff.

"The organisation was not aware of this unfortunate lapse of judgement. We apologise to everyone for this confusion & deeply regret the error," the channel tweeted.
Bengaluru: Coming down heavily on Chief Minister Siddaramaiah for his alleged inept handling of the Mahadayi river water dispute as well as the PU question paper leak, Union chemicals and fertilisers minister, H.N. Ananth Kumar on Sunday demanded that the former should resign if he is unable to handle such crucial issues.

Further ridiculing Mr Siddaramaiah, Mr Kumar said that the Congress government which is in deep slumber needs to wake up. "Controversial decisions such as constituting the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) at the expense of the Lokayukta and the PU chemistry question paper leaking twice in a gap of just a week, are clear indications that Mr Siddaramaiah has lost direction when it comes to protecting the interests of the state," he alleged during an interaction with a section of the media.

Mr Kumar said, "It is painful to see Mr Siddaramaiah indulging in politicking over the river water dispute. PM Narendra Modi had categorically told the all-party delegation that had met him some time ago that the initiative to hold talks with the Maharashtra and Goa CMs should be taken by Mr Siddaramaiah and he would then certainly intervene and try to resolve the issue amicably.

He contended that Mr Siddaramaiah believed in the politics of confrontation and was adopting similar strategies with the union government too. "We (state BJP) are truly committed to protect the interests of the state and does not believe in playing with the sentiments of people, unlike the ruling Congress party which has failed to protect the interests of students," he alleged.
According to NIA, Majeed, a student of a college in Panvel, had decided to join extremist outfit ISIS along with three other friends in May 2014. (Photo: Representational Image/ AFP)

Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Monday dismissed an appeal filed by alleged ISIS recruit Areef Majeed challenging a special NIA court order that had denied him bail in May last year.

"We find no merits in the appeal and the application seeking bail. Hence both stand dismissed," a division bench of justices R V More and S C Gupte said on Monday.

Majeed approached the high court after a special NIA court rejected his bail application. He sought bail as a matter of right under the Criminal Procedure Code, considering that he has been in custody since November 2014 and as the investigating authorities have already filed a chargesheet in the case.

In the plea filed through his counsel Mubin Solkar, Majeed argued that his custody, which was extended by an order of the sessions court on February 25 last year, was erroneous and illegal since his case is being handled by NIA, and as per law, all proceedings of the case, including orders for extension of his custody, must be passed by a special NIA court only.

The NIA opposed Majeed's bail plea as well as the appeal, saying that he should have raised questions over the sessions court's jurisdiction at the time when his custody was being extended.

The National Investigation Agency defended its decision to get Majeed's custody extended by the sessions court, saying the NIA court was unavailable on February 25, 2015 and thus, it approached the special MCOCA sessions court.

According to NIA, Majeed, a student of a college in Panvel, had decided to join extremist outfit ISIS along with three other friends in May 2014.

It is alleged that Majeed and his friends went on a pilgrimage for eight days, after which they parted ways to participate in unlawful activities in Iraq and Syria.

In November 2014, Majeed was flown from Istanbul to India under the supervision of NIA.

Majeed is currently lodged at the Arthur road prison and has been charged under various sections of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), for conspiring to commit a terrorist act and being a member of a banned foreign terror outfit. He has also been booked under IPC for waging war against the nation.
New Delhi: India is likely to raise with China the issue of Beijing blocking its latest bid to have JeM chief Masood Azhar designated terrorist by the UN in the aftermath of terror strike at the Pathankot air force base.

India has been "disappointed" by the Chinese action at the UN and is expected to take up the issue at the "political-level" at the "first given opportunity", sources said.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj is travelling to Moscow later this week to attend RIC (Russia-India-China) ministerial meeting. On the sidelines, a bilateral meeting between Swaraj and her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi is expected during which the issue of China blocking the designation as terrorist of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief and Mumbai terror attack mastermind at the UN is likely to figure.

Last week, China stopped UN sanctions committee from designating Azhar as terrorist, maintaining that the case "did not meet the requirements" of the Security Council.

This is not the first time China has blocked India's bid to get Pakistan-based militant groups and leaders proscribed by the UN.

The UN had banned the JeM in 2001 but India's efforts for slapping sanctions on Azhar after the 2008 Mumbai terror attack also did not fructify as China, that has veto powers, did not allow it apparently at the behest of Pakistan again.

Last July, China had similarly halted India's move in the UN to take action against Pakistan for its release of Mumbai terror attack mastermind Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, saying that its stand was "based on facts and in the spirit of objectiveness and fairness" with Beijing again claiming at the time that it was in touch with New Delhi.

Expressing its strong "disappointment" over the development, India said it finds it "incomprehensible" that while the Pakistan-based JeM was listed by the UN Committee for its well known terror activities and links to the Al Qaeda, the designation of the group's "main leader, financier and motivator" has been put on a "technical hold".
Saritha, however, said Chandy Oommen had an affair with another woman accused in the solar case.

KOCHI: Saritha Nair, key accused in the solar scandal, told the Justice G Sivarajan Commission probing the issue on Friday that Chief Minister Oommen Chandy had asked her to form a company with his son Chandy Oommen as a partner.

Claiming that she only had business relationship with Chandy Oommen, Saritha denied a report that she had illicit relationship with the chief ministers son.

Saritha, however, said Chandy Oommen had an affair with another woman accused in the solar case and she had the evidence of the two traveling together to Dubai.

But, she declined to reveal the name of the woman and said that former home minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishan had collected the evidence of the relationship and used the same as a bargaining chip with the chief minister.

On the third day of her deposition before the commission, Saritha said during her meeting with the chief minister at Kadaplamattom, Oommen Chandy told her about the need for registering a firm as a cooperative society with his son and relatives as partners.

Saritha also refuted the chief ministers claim that the government had not provided any help to Team Solar Company of Saritha and co-accused Biju Radhakrishnan.

According to her, Team Solar was operating as a franchise of Hyderabad-based Surana Ventures, which had bagged several government projects in the state.

It got government tenders at low rates with the help of electricity minister Aryadan Mohammad. She said that a delay in payment of Rs 35-lakh from ANERT was resolved with the help of the chief minister. She said that the commission could call for the relevant files from ANERT.

Although government pleader Roshen D. Alexander made strong objections to Saritha seeking an adjournment of the deposition on Friday, the commission consented to her demand and fixed further hearing on Monday.

The commission, however, asked her to complete her deposition on Monday itself.
New Delhi: The Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi on Monday informed the Supreme Court that the NDA government has decided to withdraw the appeal against a Allahabad High Court judgment rejecting minority status to Aligarh Muslim University.

Initially the A-G gave this information before a Bench of Chief Justice T.S. Thakur and Justice Uday Lalit hearing an appeal relating to the appointment of Lt. Gen Zameer Uddin Shah as the AMU vice Chancellor.

Later in the afternoon he spelt the same stand before a three-judge bench comprising Justices J.S. Khehar, Madan B. Lokur and C. Nagappan hearing the appeals relating to minority status for AMU.

Tracing the history of the appeals, the AG said the AMU was set up as a Central university under a 1920 legislation. A Constitution bench in 1967 in Azeez Basha case had held that the AMU cannot be granted minority status. In 1981 an amendment was introduced in the Act restoring minority status to AMU and this was struck down by the Allahabad HC in the light of the Constitution bench judgment of Azeez Basha. The A-G said the then UPA government and the AMU filed appeals against this verdict.
IT minister K.T. Rama Rao (right) is congralutated by Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan (left) as Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao and Infosys Chairman Emeritus N.R. Narayana Murthy watch at the unveiling of the Telangana ICT Policy in Hyderabad on Monday. (Photo: Deccan Chronicle)

Hyderabad: Infosys chairman emeritus Dr N.R. Narayana Murthy wants Telangana to compete with the Silicon Valley in the USA, Cambridge Science Park and the ones in Tokyo and Beijing.

Benchmark yourself with the best in the world and the rest of the country follows you, he said on Monday during the launch of the states new IT policy.

Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao gave a red carpet welcome to the IT industry. Unlike other states, the IT policy is a single window without grills, he said. My government promises hassle-free and corruption-free clearances. Come join us. All of us will progress together," he said. Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan emphasised on taking technology to the rural areas and exuded confidence that TS would address it effectively as stated in the IT policy.

Priority to IT growth all over Telangana, says KT Rama Rao

The Telangana state government on Monday the launched of states new IT policy. Speaking on the occasion, IT minister K.T. Rama Rao stated that the government had accorded highest priority to growth of IT in the state, not just in Hyderabad but also in Tier-2, Tier-3 cities and smaller towns and villages.

Our policy focuses not only on consolidating our strengths but also on making pioneering efforts into new and emerging areas. We are targeting the top rank in the IT sector from our existing second position, he stressed.

NITI Ayog member V.K. Saraswat said that they were aiming for digital connectivity in 2.5 lakh villages in the country.

The central governments electronic policy needs Rs 1.13 lakh crore. TS policy is in sync with the national policy. Instead of just being a value addition, the industry should aim at design and assembling capabilities also, he felt.

The policy aims at making Telangana state a global hub for IT, technology entrepreneurship and innovation. It comprises four sub-policies, on electronics, rural technology centres, innovation and animation and gaming.
Chennai: While hectic efforts are on to finalise seat-sharing agreement with its allies, the BJP is in the process of getting its second list of candidates ready.

The party is eagerly awaiting its national president Amit Shah to hold a rally to introduce the party candidates.

The partys state election committee will meet on Monday to finalise the second list for the May Assembly election and send it to Delhi for approval by the party high command. Once the list is out and the seat sharing accord with allies, including IJK and other parties, is concluded, Shah would visit Tamil Nadu on April 11 and introduce his party candidates and those of the allies at a rally.

In an effort to help the candidates take up an effective campaign, the BJP has planned to come out with a one-liner catchphrase besides a logo to be used extensively by its candidates. The party would also encourage its candidates to bring out a separate poll manifesto specific to their constituencies to enable them to connect with the voters. Of course, the manifesto, which will be released soon, will be the guiding factor for them, a senior leader in the party said. Already, about 54 candidates who have been nominated have begun their campaign.
When there are more political controversies to handle, its a party spokesperson like Dinesh Gundurao who has to bear the brunt. The food and civil supplies minister is busy firefighting the PU question paper leak and the Anwar Manippady report row besides the controversial decision to constitute the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB). In an interview with Deccan Chronicle, Mr Gundurao said if the party and government work in tandem, no one can prevent the Congress from coming back to power in 2018.

Lets begin with the PU chemistry paper leak? Why did the government not apologise to students and parents?

Primary education minister Kimmane Rathnakar did apologise on the floor of the House and Chief Minister, Siddaramaiah regretted the inconvenience caused to students. We said we would take action against those involved. The minister said he would quit if this is repeated a third time. It is a sensitive subject no doubt. Both students and parents will take it emotionally. Definitely there is a flaw in the system. I think we should set right the system. We should take very strict action against those involved and it would act as a strong deterrent.

One of the IAS officers who was caught with crores of rupees at home remains untouched. But Pallavi Akurati, who had taken over the PU board a month back, was shunted out. What kind of message will the government send across with such an action?

People wanted some response from the government. Rame Gowda a senior officer has been posted there (PU Board). Even I do not think she (Pallavi Akurati) was involved in this mess. In hindsight, they (the government) could have avoided changing the head when examinations were round the corner. What we can do is- once the examinations are over, we could take action against those in the system for long.

After the second leak, the minister said he will stay in Bengaluru and oversee the examination preparations. He should have done this immediately after the first leak. Doesnt it clearly show that he faltered?

No, not really. He (Kimmane Rathnakar) took steps to ensure the exam was conducted smoothly. No one expected this would happen a second time. Now, he has sent out a strong signal.

Moving on, the decision to constitute the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) has sent signals that whenever the Congress comes to power, it systematically weakens institutions to encourage corruption.

We have not withdrawn the powers of the Lokayukta. If it wants to investigate a case, the Lokayukta can take the help of CID or ACB. Today the Lokayukta institution has collapsed not due to the police, but due to various developments happened inside. In the ACB, I do not see any harm. There are seventeen thousand cases pending with the Lokayukta. We only talk about high profile cases. There are thousands of cases involving the tahsildars and local officers which hurt people. These

should be sorted out. I can agree that the timing of launching the ACB was wrong. Separating work may strengthen the Lokayukta. What we can do is

let ACB investigate the corruption cases and let Lokayukta monitor it. Nothing wrong in it. Congress is the one which brought in the Right to Information Act, the Aaadhar card and so many schemes at the national level. We are not the ones who encourage corruption.

See the situation now. The ACB is attached to DPAR which is with the Chief Minister and the intelligence department is also with him. Using the inputs given by the intelligence department, the CM can engage in political vendetta against his opponents through the ACB...

In Lokayukta too, politically motivated cases were foisted on people. It is highly unlikely that you can get a 100 per cent fool-proof system.

One of the arguments of your government is that 18 states have ACBs, so there is nothing wrong in Karnataka having one. But the fact is: in those 18 states, corruption has not come down.

If you are saying that in 18 states, corruption has not come down, my question is: Did corruption come down in Karnataka because of the Lokayukta? If good people run the Lokayukta or ACB, then these institutions will work effectively. Our idea is, there should be checks and balances. One institution should not have too much power. Why did Karnataka Lokayukta fail? Because, it had too much powers. Officials attached with Lokayukta used to blackmail.

Many felt instead of constituting an ACB, you could have brought a comprehensive amendment to the Lokayukta Act to overcome the pitfalls in the system?

We tried to bring a comprehensive amendment, opposition parties stalled the move. Perhaps, we have to bring one now. I concur with the chief minister on the constitution of ACB. We posted good IPS officers to ACB. Give us some time, then check how the ACB is working.

Finally, the issue of Congress legislators meeting and voicing their grievances. Why are Dinesh Gundurao and R. Ramalinga Reddy upset with legislators?

We are not upset. You should remember they are our good friends. The CM wanted to carry out a reshuffle even before the ZP and TP polls. There were some issues, so it was delayed. It is bound to happen. Legislators coming out in the open and saying that 25 ministers should be dropped would send a wrong message. What is their intention? My point is there is no need to discuss these issues in public. This should be done within the party forum.

Who is behind this?

I do not know. It might be spontaneous. They wanted to keep it closed door, but the matter might have gone out of hand. But we should not allow this to happen. What if another group starts such activity tomorrow? After doing a good job, we got headlines for unnecessary issues like the D.K. Ravi suicide or the Hublot watch issue. No dissident activity happened, No one went to New Delhi. Even the Anwar Manippady report too did not happen in our time. It is a different issue that it was prepared in Keshava Krupa (RSS ehadquarters) . If the BJP was so serious, they could have gone to court or a police station. They wanted to defame Congress leaders, so the RSS leaders prepared a report. All these have nothing to do with our government. We have not committed the kind of disasters the BJP committed.

Leave aside the Anwar Manippady report. Last week, Upa Lokayukta Justice Anand gave a report on encroachment of wakf properties. It was rejected because it listed the names of senior Congress leaders.

Sorry, I do not know the content of it.

Finally, do you think the issues raised by legislators can be sorted out?

Yes. We have to move carefully. We have to involve legislators, instil confidence among them and at the same time, we have to reorganise the party. These are all part of the political strategy. It is quite natural that leaders and legislators have ambitions. But we have to balance it and it should happen within the party forum. Senior leaders should sit together and work out a right strategy. Party and government need to understand the situation and work together. We have a good leader in Siddaramaiah. He has given good administration so far. I think we have to consult seniors and work. Under the present situation, no unilateral decision should be taken.
Chennai: With the state to witness five-cornered contests in the Assembly elections for the first time, political parties in the state have taken to the social media to lure young, first-time voters whose vote may determine the victory of candidates in closely contested polls. From fledging DMDK-People's Welfare Alliance to the Dravidian majors AIADMK and DMK, all parties have launched aggressive social media campaigns.

They are trying to take a cue from the resounding success of Narendra Modi in the 2014 LS polls, who, made the social media like Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp an integral part of his election campaign. On Saturday, the supporters of DMDK-PWA Front set Twitter abuzz with hashtag #ThisTime4MNK that began trending. They came out with "#ThisTime4MNK" after the pre poll surveys predicted victory for the ruling AIADMK in the ensuing polls.

It is not a planned campaign by us. One supporter of the alliance came out with #ThisTime4MNK tweet and others joined to making it trending on twitter, says R. Sindhan of CPI (M)'s IT wing. He added that the hashtag trended for over four hours. Mr Sindhan said that the volunteers of the four parties  MDMK, VCK, CPI (M) and CPI  are working together in creation of social media content and handling of the Facebook, Twitter and website (www.makkalnalan.org) of the alliance. Unlike other parties who have engaged professional companies to handle their social media strategy, we are purely dependent on the support of volunteers to reach out, he said.

The DMK IT wing and its supporters had kept social media active for months with coverage of its party treasurer Stalins Namakku Namme road show. DMK Chennai West district secretary J. Anbazhagan, an active social media user, said that at least 10 per cent of voters in a constituency could be reached through social media in the city.
MS degree in Data Science

Massively Online Open Course (MOOC) pioneer, Coursera has announced the first ever online Masters degree course in Data Science  jointly with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The MCS-DS builds expertise in four core areas of computer science: Data visualisation, machine learning, data mining and cloud computing, plus honing skills in statistics and information science across 32 credit hours. Anyone who registers on Coursera will have access to all of the courses that make up the onsite degree. In order to earn the University of Illinois degree, learners who are accepted into the programme will also be expected to complete additional course assessments with access to guidance, feedback and support from Illinois faculty and staff. Like all, Coursera students can take up individual modules for free but to get the degree, the tuition fee is $19,200 (Rs 12.7 lakh). Links to course http://online.illinois.edu/MCS-DS

MBA on your phone

If you aspire for an management degree your spare time, The London School of Marketing has launched the worlds first ever MBA in association with the University of Northampton. For which students in India can study on their smartphones It allows its learners direct access to course tutors, all the essential books and learning materials theyll need, via their mobile phone. It has set up Local Access Points or contact centres in India.

The London School of Marketing MBA cost around $ 7000 (Rs 4.65 lakh); attending a UK university could cost 5-7 times as much.

Links to course: http://www.londonschoolofmarketing.com/mba-uon

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Remember that clunky old box hanging on the wall of your familys kitchen that gave you the power to make and receive phone calls? With the advent of mobile phones, landlines have been slowly dying off over the past 20 years.

But Google wants you to embrace the home telephone again only now with the power of the Internet behind it. So the tech giant has begun rolling out Fiber Phone service for Google Fiber subscribers.

For an additional $10 a month, Fiber Phone users get unlimited nationwide calling and texts, caller ID, and call waiting. The service can also transcribe voicemails and send them to you via email or text message.

You can keep your current home phone number, too, or pick a new one. Since Fiber Phone lives in the cloud, you can also push phone calls to any web-connected smartphone, tablet, or laptop.

Currently, Google Fiber is only available in a few select cities throughout the United States, but new cities are being added just as quickly as you can say rotary phone.

Source: www.mentalfloss.com

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Mumbai: Once one of the pioneers of the tech industry, Motorola has been has seen some tough years lately. Earlier owned by Google, in 2014 Lenovo completed Motorolas acquisition from its former owner.

All this while the name Motorola has lived around, however, in a recent announcement, Lenovo confirmed that it has plans to rebrand Motorola. Lenovo wishes to do away with the name Motorola and go with Moto instead. All high-end devices will carry the name Moto. The company also quoted specimen names like Moto by Lenovo.

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With BBM, what you share is always yours to control - even once its left your phone.

New Delhi: BlackBerry Limited, a leader in secure mobile communications, announced the launch of a new BBM release on iOS, Android and BlackBerry smartphones. With this new release, BBM users can now take advantage of enhanced privacy and control features that allow them to take control over the messages and content that they share without any subscription fees.

BBM users can Retract their message and pictures from recipients to take them back from their phone if they were sent as a mistake, or if they no longer wish them to be accessible. Plus, by setting a timer, users can control how long contacts can view messages and pictures that have been shared or communicate their location for only as long as they want to.

Building on the renowned immediacy, reliability and security inherent to BBM, the new release provides unmatched level of privacy and control to BBM users without any subscription fees, said Matthew Talbot, SVP, BBM at BlackBerry. Keeping control over the messages and content that they share, BBM users can be ensured that what they share is always theirs to control.

Additional key features include:

Forward messages from one chat to another

Ability to mute notifications for a multi-person chat on Android

Scroll through all pictures shared within a 1:1 or multi-person chat on Android

Choose if users want pictures taken within BBM chats saved to their device

Video sharing improvements  capture and share larger videos on iOS

Redesigned chat screen look and feel on iOS

Multi-select mode to allow multiple messages to be deleted, retracted, or forwarded at once on iOS

Retract and edit messages in group chats on BlackBerry 10

Retract chat  retract all sent messages when you end a chat on BlackBerry 10

Marshmallow (Android 6.0) support

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Islamic State is facing an "unprecedented cash crunch in its home territory", the report said citing US counter terrorism officials. (Representational image)

Washington: Islamic State is facing an "unprecedented" cash crunch with the terror group's revenue from the lucrative oil business plummeting by 50 per cent and oil production cut by about a third due to US-led airstrikes, according to a media report.

For the first time, US officials are seeing clear evidence of the financial strain on the group's leadership, as reports surface of clashes among senior commanders over allegations of corruption, mismanagement and theft, The Washington Post reported.

Islamic State is facing an "unprecedented cash crunch in its home territory", the report said citing US counter terrorism officials.

Months of strikes on oil facilities and financial institutions have taken a deep toll on the group's ability to pay its fighters or carry out operations.

Cash shortages already have forced the group to put many of its Iraqi and Syrian recruits on half-pay and accounts from recent defectors suggest that some units have not received salaries in months, the report said.

Civilians and businesses in the Islamic State's self-proclaimed homeland complain of being subjected to ever-higher taxes and fees to make up the shortfall.

US officials attribute the economic upheaval to a months-long campaign to destroy the group's financial underpinnings, including weeks of punishing strikes on oil facilities as well as on banks and other repositories of hard currency.

The strikes against oil fields, refineries and tankers have cut oil production by about a third, the report said citing several counter-terrorism officials.

Overall revenue from the Islamic State's oil business has plummeted by as much as 50 per cent because of falling oil prices and a diminished capability to make and sell refined products such as gasoline, the officials said.

"For the first time, there's an optimistic tone," Daniel Glaser, assistant secretary for terror financing at the Treasury Department, said of the financial war against the Islamic State. "I really do think we're having a significant impact."

But "they still make a lot of money, and we still have a long way to go," he added.

Moreover, because of the group's territorial losses in recent months -- military defeats have shrunk the size of the self-declared caliphate by about 40 per cent over the past year-- the terrorists now have a significantly smaller population to exploit for cash, US officials and analysts said.
Bangkok police chief Sanit Mahathaworn said an initial examination by police indicated that the man had been murdered at least three days ago.

Bangkok: A body believed to be of an Indian man with multiple wounds all over it has been found in a stuffed suitcase floating in a canal here in the Thai capital.

The body was spotted on Sunday in a canal near Samran Rat intersection after a worker at an ice factory found a bag containing what looked human remains with a head and shoulders protruding, police said.

Bangkok Post quoting a source close to the investigation said several items found in the bag indicated the man could be an Indian national. However, Indian Embassy sources said that the identity and nationality of the victim had not yet been confirmed. Bangkok police chief Sanit Mahathaworn said an initial examination by police indicated that the man had been murdered at least three days ago.
Brussels Airport, in Zaventem, after two explosions rocked the main hall of the airport, killing at least one person and wounding several others. (Photo: AFP)

Brussels: Brussels airport scheduled nearly 40 flights on Monday, officials said, as Belgium struggles to get back to normal after two suicide bombers blew themselves up in the departure hall nearly two weeks ago.

The number was a sharp rise over the three flights at Belgium's main air hub on Sunday, but a far cry from the 600 the airport usually handles per day, officials said.

"Some 39 passenger flights, most of them arriving from or departing to European cities, are planned," Brussels Airlines spokesman Kim Daenen told AFP, adding her company was the only operator on Monday.

On Tuesday, the airline will run 89 flights, with 48 heading to European destinations, five to Africa and one to New York. Some 40 return flights are planned.

Brussels airport spokeswoman Florence Mulls said other companies such as Dutch carrier KLM will operate from Wednesday.

The airport reopened Sunday for the first time since two Islamic State commandos blew themselves up in the departure hall on March 22 in coordinated blasts that also struck a metro station in the Belgian capital, killing a total of 32 people.

Brussels Airlines planes flew Sunday to the Portuguese city of Faro, then Athens and Turin before all three returned, officials said.

Two big white tents now serve as temporary check-in facilities and passengers were asked to come three hours before departure to allow time for tight new security checks.

There was also a strong security presence inside the tents where passengers walked through metal detectors and had their bags screened before checking in and being allowed to enter the main building.

Under the new system, only passengers with travel and ID documents are allowed into the makeshift departure hall, and all bags will be checked before entering. Once inside, travellers will still have to go through the usual security barriers.

The airport will initially only be accessible by car, with no access for buses and trains. Vehicles will be screened and subject to spot checks.

It will take months to repair the departure hall, according to airport chief executive Arnaud Feist.

The damage from the blasts was severe, with pictures from the scene showing the building's glass-fronted facade in shatters, collapsed ceilings and destroyed check-in desks.

Feist said he expected the airport to start running normally again from late June or early July.

Brussels airport, which claims to contribute some three billion euros ($3.4 billion) annually to the Belgian economy, has not released any figures on the economic impact of the shutdown, but Brussels Airlines has said it was losing five million euros daily.
The passenger, who was not named, was flying to London from Dubai on Flight BA0104 yesterday. (Photo: AP)

London: An unruly 21-year-old passenger on a British Airways flight has been arrested after he created a ruckus on board and bit a co-passenger who tried to intervene.

The passenger, who was not named, was flying to London from Dubai on Flight BA0104 yesterday. A Metropolitan Police spokeswoman said: "Officers attended and found a 21-year-old man who had assaulted a passenger. The man was arrested on suspicion of actual bodily harm and being drunk on board an aircraft.

"He was taken to a west London police station and has been bailed to a date in late May. The injured passenger received medical assistance for a minor injury at the scene."

Meanwhile, Christopher McNerlin, who was injured in the incident, had to go to hospital for a check-up after being bitten on the arm by the "violent passenger".

As a token of appreciation, he was allowed to sit in the cockpit by the pilot, the Sun reported today.

Chris posted pictures on social media of the bite mark, along with one of himself giving the "thumbs up" as he sat in the cockpit once the plane had landed and was safely in a hangar.

He wrote on Instagram: "That time when you help restrain and handcuff a nutter at 40,000ft. He bites you, but it's all OK because Captain Kendal lets you sit in the cockpit."

Later along with a picture of his bitten arm he tweeted: "At A&E after helping the British Airways stewardesses restrains a violent passenger on board yesterdays.

"Incredible team on the flight, especially Hayley, who put herself in harm's way to protect passengers. Thanks to British Airways Captain Kendal for showing me the cockpit. The bite and A&E were almost worth it."

British Airways thanked Chris, saying: "We hope you are all right. I'm sure Hayley would've appreciated your assistance on board. Thanks."

The airline said the matter was now being dealt with by police.
North terminal at Gatwick Airport. Experts have warned travelers against Brussels-style terror attacks in the country, home to the busy Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted airports.(Photo: AP)

London: Security experts in Britain have warned travelers against Brussels-style terror attacks at the country's airports, including the busy Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted, as they called for stepping up security measures at the entry to terminals.

Over 10 people were killed and many seriously injured after suicide bombers blew themselves up at Zaventem airport in Brussels on March 22.

"The events in Brussels have served to remind us that public area is vulnerable and there is more work to maximise airport security.

"Airports internationally have that vulnerability and struggle to cope with the challenge," aviation expert Matthew Finn, managing director of consultancy firm Augmentiq, told 'Daily Star'.

More than the risk of flying, security experts now believe the real danger to travelers is before they even get to check-in.

They have warned travelers against Brussels-style terror attacks in the country, home to the busy Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted airports.

Defence and aviation consultant Paul Edwards, managing director of Strategic Effect, said: "Attacks against airports aren't new but the terrorists' MO (modus operandi) in Brussels was new to Europe. They defeated security because they didn't go through security.

"Terrorist groups have a habit of repeating successful methods. The security of check-in areas needs to be improved and needs to be extended to include entry to terminals."

Edwards called on British airports to at least check that people have a passport and plane ticket when they attempt to enter terminal buildings.

He also advocated luggage and body scans at the entrance. Zaventem airport has introduced these measures when it reopened yesterday.
Air France is to resume on April 17 its Paris-to-Tehran service, which had been suspended since 2008 because of international sanctions against Iran over its nuclear ambitions. (Photo: Facebook)

Paris: Women employees of Air France will be allowed to opt out of working on the resumed flights to Iran so that they can avoid having to wear a headscarf, a company official said on Monday.

The airline will appoint a "special unit" to replace those who do not want to fly to Tehran, he said.

"Any woman assigned to the Paris-Tehran flight who for reasons of personal choice would refuse to wear the headscarf upon leaving the plane will be reassigned to another destination, and thus will not be obliged to do this flight," human resources official Gilles Gateau told Europe 1 radio.

Air France is to resume on April 17 its Paris-to-Tehran service, which had been suspended since 2008 because of international sanctions against Iran over its nuclear ambitions.

Unions say company executives sent staff an internal memo regarding flights to Tehran saying that female cabin crew would be required to wear trousers on board with a loose fitting jacket and must cover their hair with a scarf when they leave the plane.

The headscarf rule is already in place when flying to certain destinations such as Saudi Arabia.

Unions, who held talks with the human resources chief on Monday, argue that an escape clause was already in place for flights to Conakry in Guinea during the Ebola crisis last year and for services to Tokyo following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Nusra Front tank firing at Syrian troops and pro-government gunmen in the northern village of al-Ais in Aleppo province, Syria. (Photo: AP)

Damascus: A week after taking back the historic town of Palmyra, Syrian troops and their allies on Sunday captured another town controlled by the Islamic State group in central Syria, state media reported.

The push into the town of Qaryatain took place under the cover of Russian airstrikes and dealt another setback to the IS extremists in Syria. However, an activist group that monitors the Syrian civil war said the government forces for the moment control more than half of Qaryatain but have not fully secured the town.

The advance came a week after Syrian forces recaptured Palmyra from IS and is strategically significant for the government side. The town of Qaryatain used to be home to a sizable Christian population and lies midway between Palmyra and the capital, Damascus.

Activists said last summer that Qaryatain had a mixed population of around 40,000 Sunni Muslims and Christians, as well as thousands of internally displaced people who had fled from the nearby city of Homs. Many of the Christians fled the town after it came under IS attack.

Dozens of Qaryatain's Christians and other residents have been abducted by the extremists. While the town was under IS control, some were released, others were made to sign pledges to pay a tax imposed on non-Muslims.

While IS extremists blew up and destroyed some of the world's most precious relics at Palmyra's archaeological site during their 10-month reign of terror there, the ancient Saint Eliane Monastery near Qaryatain was also bulldozed and destroyed shortly after IS took the town in August.

Christians make up about 10 percent of Syria's prewar population of 23 million people.

State news agency SANA said government forces were currently dismantling bombs placed by extremists inside Qaryatain. The report said Syrian troops were fully in control of the town after "wiping out Daesh terrorists inside it," referring to IS by the group's Arabic acronym.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said intense fighting was underway in Qaryatain as government troops fight to capture all parts of the town. The Observatory's chief Rami Abdurrahman said IS fighters are still in control of eastern parts and southeastern areas of the town but "are on the verge of collapse." Abdurrahman added that some of the extremists have started withdrawing toward eastern parts of the mountainous Qalamoun region.

IS has suffered major defeats in Syria over the past months amid intense airstrikes by Russian warplanes.

Earlier Sunday, the Observatory reported that fighting in northern Syria the previous day killed several fighters belonging to the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group. Hezbollah has been fighting alongside President Bashar Assad's troops in Syria's civil war.

The Observatory said 12 Hezbollah fighters were killed and dozens were wounded in Saturday's attack by militants led by al-Qaida's Syria branch - known as the Nusra Front - on the northern village of al-Ais.

In southern Lebanon, social media postings on Sunday carried photos of seven Hezbollah fighters said to be among those killed in al-Ais.

Though Nusra Front is not part of a U.S.-Russia-engineered truce between the Syrian government forces and Western-backed rebels, the fighting has threated to undermine the cease-fire that has held for over a month.
Syrian refugee Samer Al-Kadri, founder and owner of Pages, a rustic three story-Arabic language bookshop, removes a book at his store in Istanbul, Turkey. (Photo: AP)

Istanbul: A rustic, three story-Arabic bookstore in old Istanbul has become an anchor for many Syrians who have stayed put in Turkey but crave a taste of home.

The founder and owner of Pages, Samer al-Kadri, a refugee himself, says the store strives to be a bridge between Syrians, Turks and the myriad of foreigners who visit the city.

Its weekly program includes music concerts and, starting soon, language exchanges in Arabic, English and Turkish. Books are available in all three languages. Al-Kadri is acutely aware that the language barrier "has made it difficult for Syrians to really integrate into society."

Turkey is hosting 2.7 million Syrian refugees and is due to receive many more under a plan with the European Union that aims to halt the smuggling of migrants into Europe. The deal stipulates that for every Syrian returned, another Syrian in Turkey will be relocated to a European country.

The plan has drawn considerable criticism from human rights groups, who worry that Turkey is not a suitable haven for asylum-seekers and fear it could pave the way for mass deportations. Amnesty International says Turkey has already scaled down its registration of Syrian refugees and is illegally sending back refugees to its war-torn neighbor.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry denies this and says the country maintains its open-door policy and adheres to the principle of not returning Syrians.

In the eyes of many Syrians, the deal has rendered them pawns in a political bargain that benefits everyone but them.

Ola Suleiman, a new employee at the bookstore, says there's a touch of "evil" to the deal because "they are deciding the fate of a people."

While her middle-class family is among the Syrians who are doing better for themselves in Istanbul, it hasn't been easy. The cost of life in Turkey is far higher than in pre-war or even post-war Syria. Most Syrian refugees live outside the camps and largely fend for themselves.

Suleiman and her siblings work six days a week without vacation just to keep their household afloat. Technically many Syrians do not have the right to work. Suleiman does not have a work contract let alone health insurance. This, she says, leaves Syrian workers vulnerable to exploitation while allowing Turkish business owners to evade taxes.

Turkey has committed to giving work permits to its Syrian "guests" but there are signs this perk may be riddled with caveats.

Still, Suleiman likes working in a bookshop and treasures the precious moments that allow her to read once again. It is a feeling shared by many customers, including Faiz Dakhil, who loves the scent of books and says this place makes him "feel at home."

Al-Kadri, Suleiman and Dakhil have stayed in Turkey because they want to be able to return to Syria as soon as the war is over. But those who fled to Europe have cut their losses and are dreaming of a better future elsewhere. For them, it will be extra hard to start a new life in Turkey.

"I hope that everyone who left with the intention of improving their situation can complete his journey, doesn't return to Turkey," says Dakhil.
Netanyahu and then defence minister Barak were reported to have given the order in 2010 for the military to prepare a strike against Iran, which was never carried out. (Photo: AP)

Jerusalem: A former head of Israeli spy agency Mossad harshly criticised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a posthumous interview published Monday, accusing him of putting personal interests above national concerns.

Meir Dagan, who died aged 71 on March 17, led the Mossad from 2002 through 2010, notably working to thwart Iran's nuclear programme while also opposing a military strike against it.

He held a series of conversations with a journalist from Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth before his death that was withheld until Monday.

"I knew a lot of prime ministers," he said.

"None of them were saintly types. But they had one shared trait: When they reached the point in which their personal interest intersected with the national interest, the national interest always prevailed. There are only two I can't say that about -- Bibi and Barak."

Bibi is Netanyahu's nickname, while Barak refers to former prime minister and defence minister Ehud Barak.

Netanyahu and then defence minister Barak were reported to have given the order in 2010 for the military to prepare a strike against Iran, which was never carried out.

Dagan strongly opposed such a strike, a position shared by the military's then-chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi.

"Bibi is the worst manager I know," said the former spymaster who suffered from liver cancer and underwent a transplant.

"The worst thing is that he's got a certain trait that's kind of like Ehud Barak -- the two of them believe that they''re the greatest geniuses in the world and that no one gets what it is that they really want."

On his opposition to a military strike against Iran, Dagan said that "the working assumption, as if it would be possible to fully stop the Iranian nuclear programme by means of a military strike, is incorrect."

"That military capacity doesn't exist," said Dagan.

"The only thing that can be accomplished is to suspend, and that would be for a defined period of time."

Under Dagan's leadership, the Mossad is believed to have assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists, caused explosions at nuclear facilities and used computer viruses to damage uranium centrifuges.

The Mossad has never confirmed such operations.

Further details of the interviews with Dagan are to be published on Friday, the newspaper said.
The recovery was made after a 12-member team of the bomb disposal unit from Dhaka started their investigation at the one-storey building beside Dhaka-Bogra highway at Mohipur village. (Representational image)

Dhaka: A huge cache of arms and explosives, including at least 20 grenades, were seized by Bangladeshi police on Monday from a militant hideout where two terrorists were killed in a blast while they were making bombs.

"The incident (blast) took place last night. The doctors declared one of the two dead immediately as they were rushed to the hospital while the other succumbed to his wounds later," a police official said.

The two deceased were not known in the neighbourhood in a village in northwestern Bogra and were residing in the house rented by an autorickshaw driver, who was not inside the complex when the blast took place.

"We suspect they are members of a militant outfit and the blast took place as they were preparing bombs for their outfit. Investigations have been launched to track down the autorickshaw driver," the official said.

According to local reports, police's bomb disposal team this morning recovered at least twenty grenades, firearms and ammunition from the building.

The recovery was made after a 12-member team of the bomb disposal unit from Dhaka started their investigation at the one-storey building beside Dhaka-Bogra highway at Mohipur village.

The grenades, four foreign pistols and 20 bullets were found from different rooms of the building, Mohammad Asaduzzaman, superintendent of police in the district, was quoted as saying by the Daily Star.

Police suspect that the explosion took place when a gang was making bombs there, the SP said. The blast area was cordoned off by policemen and members of Rapid Action Battalion.
Taliban fighters have stepped up their attacks against Afghan security forces since 2014, when the international combat mission ended and most foreign troops left the country. (Photo: AP)

Kabul: At least six police officers have been killed in a Taliban ambush on their convoy in Afghanistan's northern Balkh province, an official said on Monday.

Abdul Manon Raoufi, operational commander for police in the region, said insurgents attacked the convoy yesterday night in the Dawlat Abad district.

The police were on their way to neighboring Jawzjan province after conducting an anti-insurgent operation in Balkh when the ambush happened, he said.

No group has claimed responsibility. Raoufi said an insurgent leader of the Taliban was also killed in the gunfight.

Separately, in eastern Nangarhar province, two people died and six others were wounded in a bomb explosion Monday, said Hazrat Hussain Mashreqewal, spokesman for the provincial police chief.

The blast targeted police in the Khewa district, but only civilians were killed and wounded, he said. Taliban fighters have stepped up their attacks against Afghan security forces since 2014, when the international combat mission ended and most foreign troops left the country.
Lahore High Court Justice Khalid Mahmood Khan reserved the decision on a petition seeking direction for the Pakistan government to bring back Kohinoor, which which India has been trying to get from the UK for years, after a law officer of the Punjab government submitted a reply. (Photo: AP)

Lahore: Britain's Queen Elizabeth-II cannot be made a respondent in Pakistan's bid to bring back the famed Kohinoor diamond, a provincial official told a top court in Lahore.

Lahore High Court Justice Khalid Mahmood Khan reserved the decision on a petition seeking direction for the Pakistan government to bring back Kohinoor, which which India has been trying to get from the UK for years, after a law officer of the Punjab government submitted a reply.

The law officer argued that the petition is not maintainable as British Queen cannot be made respondent. He said said the petitioner had was not an aggrieved person to agitate the matter thus it should be dismissed. Barrister Javed Iqbal Jaffry had filed a plea in the

Lahore High Court naming Queen Elizabeth II and British High Commission in Pakistan respondents and seeking direction to the federal government to bring the diamond to Pakistan from the British government.

Jaffrey said the British had snatched the diamond from Daleep Singh, grandson of Maharaja Ranjeet Singh and took to the United Kingdom.

"The diamond became part of the crown of incumbent Queen Elizabeth-II at the time of her crowing in 1953. Queen Elizabeth has no right on the Kohinoor diamond, which weighs 105 carats and worth billions of rupees," he said.

He said Kohinoor diamond was cultural heritage of Punjab province and its citizens owned. According to reports, in 1849, after the conquest of the Punjab by the British forces, the properties of the Sikh Empire were confiscated.

The Kohinoor was transferred to the treasury of the British East India Company in Lahore. The properties of the Sikh Empire were taken as war compensations.

The diamond was shipped to Britain on a ship where cholera broke out and supposedly the keeper of the diamond lost it for some days and it was returned to him by his servant. The diamond was handed to Queen Victoria in 1850.

The 105-carat Kohinoor is one of the Crown Jewels and is now on display in the Tower of London. India has made regular requests for the jewel's return, saying the diamond is an integral part of the country's history and culture.

Kohinoor, which means "mountain of light", is currently on display in the Tower of London along with other precious ornaments that comprise Britain's crown jewels.
Dear Conservatives,There are millions of Christian Liberals so why do you continue to perpetuate the myth that Liberals are 'godless heathens'? This maybe surprise you, but I'm betting that there are millions of conservatives who embrace atheist/agnostic beliefs. We Liberal Christians look at Jesus Christ and see a man who dedicated his life to defending the needy, the impoverished and the sick. And those are the kind of values we think our government should share as well, although we dont think our religion should be mixed with our government. After all, this is a nation built on the freedom of religion  the antithesis to a theocracy. We also believe in a God of love and generosity.We believe that each of us is a child of God, but that we have the right to believe or not believe. Maybe thats why so many liberals seem godless  because were not out there trying to force our religion down other peoples throats like Republicans do almost constantly. For the most part, we keep our views to ourselves, our churches, and our families where they belong. Having said that.....there are exceptions.....there are zealots in every faith.So to summarize, our version of Jesus is a man who stood for love, forgiveness, tolerance, acceptance and devoted his life to helping the needy, the poor and the elderly. Meanwhile, Republicans seem to think Jesus would be a gun-loving, gay-hating bigot who vilified the poor and endorsed greed. And thats just absolutely ridiculous.Blessings,Clara
School 1957 versus 2016



Most of you reading this are to young to remember the schools of the 1950's.



School 1957 vs 2016















Just shows how screwed up our society is becoming

mainly due to politically correct.







By today's standards, none of us were supposed

to ever make it.



HIGH SCHOOL -- 1957 vs 2016





Scenario 1:

Jack goes duck hunting before school and then pulls into the school parking lot with his shotgun in his truck's gun rack.



1957 - Vice Principal comes over, looks at Jack's shotgun, goes to his car and gets his shotgun to show Jack.



2016 - School goes into lock down, FBI called, Jack hauled off to jail and never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors called in for

traumatized students and teachers.



Scenario 2:

Johnny and Mark get into a fist fight after school.



1957 - Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up buddies.



2016 - Police called and SWAT team arrives -- they arrest both Johnny and Mark.

They are both charged with assault and both expelled - even though Johnny started it.



Scenario 3:

Jeffrey will not be in class, he disrupts other students.



1957 - Jeffrey sent to the Principal's office and given a good paddling by the Principal.

He then returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class again.



2016 - Jeffrey is given huge doses of Ritalin. He becomes a zombie. He is then tested for ADD.

The family gets extra money (SSI) from the government because Jeffrey has a disability.



Scenario 4:

Billy breaks a window in his neighbor's car and his Dad gives him a whipping.



1957 - Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college and becomes a successful businessman.



2016 - Billy's dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy is removed to foster care and joins a gang.

The state psychologist is told by Billy's sister that she remembers being spanked herself and their dad goes

to prison. Billy's mom has an affair with the psychologist.



Scenario 5:

Mark gets a headache and takes some aspirin to school.



1957 - Mark shares his aspirin with the Principal out on the smoking dock.



2016 - The police are called and Mark is expelled from school for drug violations.

His car is then searched for drugs and weapons.



Scenario 6:

Pedro fails high school English.



1957 - Pedro goes to summer school, passes English and goes to college.



2016 - Pedro's cause is taken up by a radical group. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that

teaching English as a requirement for graduation is racist. ACLU files a class action lawsuit against

the state school system and Pedro's English teacher. English is then banned from the basic curriculum.

Pedro is given his diploma anyway, but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he cannot speak English.



Scenario 7:

Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers from the Fourth of July, puts them in a model airplane paint bottle and blows up a red ant bed..



1957 - Ants die.



2016 - ATF, Homeland Security and the FBI are all called. Johnny is charged with domestic terrorism.

The FBI investigates his parents - and all siblings are removed from their home. All computers are

confiscated. Johnny's dad is placed on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly again.



Scenario 8:

Johnny falls while running during recess and scrapes his knee . He is found crying by his teacher, Mary. Mary hugs him to comfort him.



1957 - In a short time, Johnny feels better and goes on playing.



2016 - Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces 3 years in State Prison.

Johnny undergoes 5 years of therapy.
About half of all Oregon students participate in outdoor school at some point in their education.

But Save Outdoor School for All, a Portland-based political action committee, is gathering signatures to create a new fund that would expand the opportunity.

Their proposal is Initiative Petition 67, which would require that about $22 million in lottery funds be set aside each year for the purpose of giving all fifth or sixth graders in Oregon one week of outdoor education. The petition must be signed by 87,000 registered voters to earn a spot on the November ballot.

Caroline Fitchett, campaign director for the political action committee advancing the petition, said the initiative had its origins in parent groups in Portland that had to raise money so their local schools could offer outdoor school programs, where kids get science-based education curriculum while staying at a camp for few nights.

Outdoor school is one of the most impactful experiences Oregon kids can have, said Fitchett.

According to reports filed with the Oregon Secretary of State, the campaign has received more than $251,000 in cash contributions thus far. Nike Inc. and Columbia Sportswear are two of the campaigns largest donors, having each contributed $10,000.

The PACs largest expenditure to date is nearly $148,000 to Fieldworks, LLC, an organization that advertises on its website that it provides canvassing operations using both volunteers and paid workers to gather signatures for ballot initiatives.

Save Outdoor School for All will also be holding a signature gathering kickoff event at the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library Wednesday at 6:30 p.m.

So far, Fitchett said, the campaign has gathered about 15,000 signatures.

If the measure makes the ballot and is approved by voters, Fitchett said the funds needed to run the outdoor school programs would be taken from Oregon lottery funds presently allocated for economic development. According to the Oregon Lotterys website, 57 percent of lottery funds already go to education, 27 percent is allocated for economic development and job creation, 15 percent goes to state parks and natural resources, and 1 percent goes to treating problem gambling.

According to state of Oregon budget documents, for the two-year budget period of 2013-15, the lottery contributed $125 million to economic development. A representative of Business Oregon, the states economic development agency, said about 25 percent of its budget comes from lottery funds.

According to Business Oregons annual report, in 2015 it created more than 2,200 jobs and helped retain nearly 6,800 more.

Fitchett said outdoor school supporters wrote the initiative to draw from economic development funds because they believe increasing the number of outdoor programs would benefit rural Oregon. She said a study commissioned by supporters concludes that by doubling the number of students attending camps from 25,000 each year to about 50,000, the funds would create 500 new jobs in rural Oregon to serve the facilities and programs the schools would use.

Outdoor school funds go directly back into local economies, she said.

However, Betsy Johnson, D-Scappoose, a state senator who is on the Business Oregon Commission, expressed skepticism about outdoor schools fit in economic development.

To talk about outdoor school in terms of economic development is a bit of a stretch, she said an interview Sunday.

Johnson gave examples of projects that have received economic development grants that she thought were a better fit for the definition, such as a roughly $200,000 investment in the Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery near Tillamook, which in 2008 saw most of its oyster larvae die unexpectedly. The Los Angeles Times newspaper reported on the event four years later and said that Whiskey Creek supplied the majority of the oyster seed stock used by independent shellfish farms on the West Coast before the collapse.

Overnight their production went to zero, said Johnson.

Johnson said with the investment of public funds the hatchery was able to bring in researchers from Oregon State University to investigate the larvae collapse. The researchers were able to discover the culprit, ocean acidification resulting from increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, and then found a solution to help the hatchery work around the issue. Its an example Johnson said has billions of dollars in impact.

There are examples where the states investment in economic development has  made all the difference in the world, she said.

Initiative 67s text says that it would place OSU in charge of distributing the outdoor school funds as grants to school districts throughout the state. Fitchett said OSUs Extension Service already handles smaller amounts of grants to create outdoor school programs. The service also houses the states Oregon Environmental Literacy Program, which helps schools with materials and curriculum for outdoor education.

It was a natural fit for outdoor school to sit at OSU Extension, said Fitchett.

Philomath outdoors

Philomath Middle School is rare in Oregon in that it offers a week-long residential outdoor school program for its sixth-graders, which is funded by the community and districts budget. Steve Bell, the schools principal, said outdoor school has value for the middle school students who attend and the high school and college students who serve as counselors and teach lessons.

While at outdoor school, the students learn with a hands-on discovery approach to science and the environment that surrounds them, Bell said. They also learn to live with their fellow students in an environment where they are responsible for taking care of themselves and the area they are living in. All of this learning is accompanied by songs, skits and a lot of laughter.

To read more about the proposal, visit www.outdoorschoolforall.org. To read more about Oregon economic development programs, visit www.oregon4biz.com.
Democrat-Herald reporter Neil Zawicki recently checked in with Linn County Circuit Courts Drug Court, the program in which drug-addicted defendants undergo a rigorous treatment program that emphasizes accountability and recovery instead of dealing with addicts the way we used to do, by tossing them in jail.

That didnt work out so well: For one thing, it made it much harder for addicts to get the help they needed to stay clean when they left jail. New research on drug addiction, as outlined in journalist Sam Quinones outstanding book Dreamland, suggests that addicts in thrall to what he calls the morphine molecule lose the power of choice: Only 1 in 10 rehabilitation attempts stick, Quinones reports, in part because so few people get the treatment they need.

But even if you dont buy into that argument, consider this: Someone who manages to stay out of the state prison system because of a successful run through Drug Court saves taxpayers big bucks. Community-based corrections programs are much cheaper than the state prison system.

Linn Countys Drug Court, funded through federal grant money, has been in place since 2005. Since 2008, its been attached to Measure 57, which provides a provision that mandates treatment rather than jail, but only for drug offenders who have not committed violent or sex crimes, have admitted to the crimes with which they have been charged, have no other convictions and have been deemed high-risk in terms of relapse. People convicted of dealing drugs and illegal immigrants are not eligible for the program.

It isnt an easy thing: Participants in the Drug Court undergo a five-phase intensive program that involves classroom work, testing for drug use and weekly court appearances. They are held to rigorous standards of accountability. Participants who stray from the straight and narrow path may well find themselves spending a night or two in the Linn County Jail. (These alternative courts, while they emphasize treatment, also rely on a big stick: They work only if theres a credible threat that an empty jail bed potentially awaits a participant who needs it.)

One of the keys to the programs success is providing some structure to the often-chaotic life of an addict: Drug Court participants get a place to live at one of nine Oxford houses, or through other arrangements, and their rent is paid for the first two months.

Other counties throughout Oregon have their own drug courts, and funding always is an issue. Thats why we were intrigued to come across a potential funding source in Dreamland, which is essential reading for anyone interested in how the nations growing addiction to opiates such as OxyContin helped feed a nationwide resurgence in heroin use that even has reached Oregon. Quinones reports about a facility in Tennessee that combines a drug court with a treatment facility. The judge who runs the facility, Seth Norman, has proposed a 1-cent tax for every prescription opiate pill sold in the state, with proceeds going to drug courts.

Small change, you think? Consider this: During a recent year, doctors wrote prescriptions for 400 million opiate pills in Tennessee, a state of 6 million people. That would result in a cool $4 million for drug courts there. The numbers for Oregon wouldnt be that different, considering that 1 in 4 Oregon residents got a prescription for an opioid medication in 2013.

Theres a clear link between opioid use and many of the defendants in Linn Countys Drug Court: A penny per pill might ensure that more of those participants get the help they need. (mm)
South Korea has decided to limit its number of Vietnamese workers to 3,500 in 2016 due to illegal employment issues.

Countries such as South Korea, Taiwan and Japan are concerned that Vietnamese laborers plan to work illegally or remain in their countries beyond their work permits, so they have cut their quotas for Vietnamese laborers.

A Vietnamese laborer. Photo: VnExpress

According to the Overseas Labor Department under the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, 10,000 Vietnamese laborers were allowed to work in South Korea back in 2012 under the Employment Permit System program, but due to the high rate of abscondence, so South Korea stopped the program.

South Korea signed a Memorandum of Understanding to accept a quota of 3,000 Vietnamese laborers in 2014 and 2015.

Among the 15 nations to sign the EPS program with South Korea, Vietnam has an abscondence rate of over 30 percent, while other countries register less than 20 percent. Seoul has asked Vietnam to reduce this percentage in order to keep the program running.

However, the rate of Vietnamese laborers who leave their jobs and stay in South Korea after their contracts expired in 2015 was still high at 31.9 percent, Seoul has decided not to accept large numbers of Vietnamese workers in 2016.

Vice director of the overseas labor department Tong Hai Nam said the ministry will strengthen the management and communication for Vietnamese laborers in South Korea in order to make them comply with the law.

Statistics from the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs show that 85 percent of illegal overseas workers come from just 15 provinces, and the ministry is considering banning laborers from these provinces from traveling to work overseas.
A project to expand production at a key steel producer came to a halt after the Chinese contractor withdrew four years ago, and discussions to get it back on track remain ongoing.

Around 10 years ago, Thai Nguyen Iron and Steel Joint Stock Corporation (TISCO) signed a contract with China's Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC) to build a steel factory with an output of 500,000 tons of steel billet and 500,000 tons of steel bars per year. The total investment was planned at more than VND3.8 trillion ($170 million).

The steel plant is still standing dormant after four years. photo by H.D

The project was first launched in September 2007, but not long after it was delayed due the global economic crisis. In 2009, the project started up again with investment capital projected at VND8.1 trillion ($360 million).

The project returned to a standstill in June 2012 after TISCO encountered capital difficulties, causing the Chinese contractor to withdraw from the project. A document sent by state auditors to the Ministry of of Industry and Trade said at that time 93 percent of machinery and equipment had been paid for MCC, but the contractor had not handed over important equipment like control devices.

Under the contract with MCC, as December 31, 2015, the total investment value of the project was VND4.4 trillion. TISCO said in a new report released on March 29 that it had raised a further VND3.5 trillion for the project .

"However, negotiations with MCC are ongoing, so the project is still in limbo," the report said.

To relaunch the project, TISCO will have to cover the cost incurred during the four-year delay, hiking up the total cost to as much as VND9 trillion. After adjusting the cost down, TISCO estimated the total cost for expanding the steel plant at VND7.8 trillion.

Thai Nguyen Iron and Steel Joint Stock Corporation is one of the five largest steel producers in Vietnam, with 42.11 percent belonging to the Vietnam Steel Corporation (VSC) and 35.21 percent to the State Capital Investment Corporation (SCIC).

The company made a loss of VND291 billion in 2013, a loss of VND79 billion in 2014 and a profit of VND87 billion in 2015, which came from interest of VND1 trillion contributed by SCIC.
Vietnams national oil and gas group PetroVietnam on Sunday resumed activities at its Block B gas project in the countrys southwest, following years of delays due to gas price issues.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung took part in a ceremony held by PetroVietnam in the southern province of Kien Giang on April 3. He urged the company to speed up the project to help ensure national energy security, according to a statement posted on the government's website on Sunday.

U.S. operator Chevron and PetroVietnam failed to agree on gas prices following some sizable gas finds at the project in 2002 and 2008. In a resolute decision to end the deadlock at Block B, PetroVietnam inked deals in June last year to take over the three oil and gas blocks by acquiring Chevron's stakes in the blocks and gas pipeline. These included a 42.4 percent stake in blocks B and 48/95, 43.4 percent in Block 52/97 and 28.7 percent of non-operated working interest in the Block B-O Mon pipeline project.

PetroVietnam plans to invest $6.8 billion by 2040 to construct a central processing platform; 46 wellhead and hub platforms; about 750 wells; a floating storage and offloading vessel; and living quarters. A 431km gas pipeline worth $1.2 billion will also be constructed to transport 20.3 million cubic meters per day of natural gas to fuel several power plants in the south with total capacity of 3,660 MW.

These projects will help PetroVietnam and other investors pump about 5.06 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year from 2020-2040. The three blocks in the project are estimated to contain 107 billion cubic meters of natural gas and 12.65 million barrels of condensate.

Joining PetroVietnam in blocks B and 48/95 are Japan's Mitsui Oil Exploration Co. Ltd. (25.62 percent), PetroVietnam Exploration and Production (23.5 percent) and Thai PTT Exploration and Production (8.5 percent). The other investors in block 52/97 are PetroVietnam Exploration and Production (30 percent), Mitsui Oil Exploration Co. Ltd. (19.6 percent) and PTTEP (7 percent).

Work is also under way at the countrys biggest ever gas discovery at Ca Voi Xanh in the central region. PetroVietnam signed an agreement with Quang Nam's provincial government in late March to begin selecting sites for petrochemical and power plant projects, which will consume natural gas from the field in the East Sea. The local provincial government has pledged to push forward infrastructure development in the area to support the projects, the company said.
April 4 was officially named Japan's Day of Pho, Vietnams signature noodle soup, during a ceremony at the EXPO City Osaka complex on April 2.

Vietnamese pho

It is the first time Vietnams signature has been internationally celebrated with an official day.

Vietnamese Consul General in Osaka Tran Duc Binh said that he hoped the celebration will give Japanese people a better understanding of Vietnamese cuisine and bring the two countries closer.

Muraoka Hiroshi, president of Acecook, a Japan-based instant noodle producer, said his company produces instant pho noodles for convenience stores in Japan. He added that instant noodles are made from Vietnamese rice to create the authentic taste of pho, while the broth is seasoned following popular recipes from pho restaurants across Vietnam.

April 4 was chosen as in English, 4 has a similar pronunciation to pho.

Vietnamese pho consists of broth, linguine-shaped rice noodles, herbs and meat. It is primarily served with either beef or chicken. The most popular street food in Vietnam has won the hearts of all those who have tasted it.
Nicolas Simon, the veteran line producer that helped create Transformers 3 and Avengers: Age of Ultron, shared his experience of making the first blockbuster to be filmed Vietnam.

Q: What brought you to Kong: Skull Island? Why was Vietnam chosen to be the film set for this blockbuster?

A: I began this project November 2014 when Ilt Jones, a very well known and experienced location manager with whom I collaborated on Transformers 3, approached me about various location options for Kong: Skull Island. The filmmakers were considering several places globally including Thailand. I pitched them Cambodia, Vietnam and the Philippines. I then worked with the production to scout Vietnam thoroughly from the Mekong Delta to the mountains of Sapa. When our director and producers arrived we made everything seamless - from acquiring visas to transportation on the scouts in special vans. I helped to show that not only did Vietnam have spectacular locations and the right look, but it truly had a film-friendly environment. From that stage, the director, Jordan Vogt-Roberts, made his creative decisions based on what he saw, and his films visual style was influenced by Vietnam's unique landscapes and vistas. We prepped for a long time and shot from mid-February to mid-March. Additional filming took place in Hawaii during October through December, and Australia during January and part of February.

Q: Tell us about your experiences of making Kong: Skull Island in Vietnam over the last two weeks?

A: It's been an incredible journey. My job is to set up everything in preproduction so that it runs smoothly during production, which I'm glad to say we accomplished. I think the best way to understand our crews pleasure of shooting in Vietnam would be to see the movie for themselves in March, 2017. We put all our wonderful experiences on the screen!

Nicolas Simon at the Kong film set in Ninh Binh, Vietnam.

Q: How did Vietnam compare to filming the rest of the movie in Hawaii and Australia?

A: Vietnam is exotic, unique, and, of our various other locations, will perhaps be something the global audience has never experienced before on the big screen. If you were to ask our director and our production designer, they would say that Vietnam helped set the visual tone for the entire movie.

Q: How did the production of Kong: Skull Island in Vietnam differ from the time you spent making Avengers: Age of Ultron in Bangladesh in 2015?

A: With Kong: Skull Island, we had the main unit with more than a dozen principal actors plus our director and 225 foreigners to support over a four-week shoot plus splinter units, nature units and an aerial unit. Avengers was second unit and aerial with around 25 foreigners and only three shoot days  and no principal actors.

Q: How was filming Kong: Skull Island different from making the film in Australia and America?

A: This was the first movie of this size and type to shoot here. Australia and the US have long supported a whole industry of films of this magnitude. To film in Vietnam, we needed to put a lot of the infrastructure in place, starting from scratch -- things that are already a given in Australia and the U.S. We imported tons of specialized equipment  airfreighted a helicopter with two specialized camera rigs; and also had to plan for things as mundane (but important) as transportation and accommodations for our crew and sourcing enough mobile toilets and ways to clean them -- all things that had not been done before on this scale.

Q: What are the prospects for Vietnam as an international filming location?

A: With the successful finishing of Kong: Skull Island, I think that the future is bright! However, Vietnam needs to grow from this experience, as mentioned before -- simplification of the tax structure and customs procedures would greatly aid attracting top-rate international productions.

Q: What do you believe Vietnam should improve for feasible future ventures?

A: I think that the more exposure Vietnamese filmmakers have to international training the better. It is good to have a strong local voice, but the global systems of filmmaking translate worldwide and make filmmaking easier.

I do not think that such elements take away from a directors voice/vision, it's just with proper systems you put the money on the screen, not losing it to confusion and bad organization.

Q: After many years of working in Southeast Asian countries, can you compare filmmaking in Vietnam to other countries such as Cambodia, Thailand or Bangladesh?

A: Thailand  serves as the basis of a country which through laissez-faire policies has successfully built a production service industry ($100+ million worth of foreign productions shot in Thailand).

Q: What changes have you seen in Vietnam since the first time you came here in 1994?

A: Wow  Vietnam has changed in so many ways since 1994, I think that the best is to talk about what has not changed!

Still some of the most incredible food in the world, a bowl of late night pho anywhere in Vietnam is one of the best experiences ever!

Q: After nearly 20 years of working in Vietnam, how have your viewpoints and feelings of Vietnam changed?

A: During that time, I have grown as a filmmaker, having produced projects shot in the U.S., Mexico, Europe and throughout Asia. I have a much more global view now and also have adapted to high-quality international standards that I did not know when I first started working in Vietnam.

Q: After Kong: Skull Island, what future projects do you have planned in Vietnam as well as Southeast Asia?

A: I am now in Thailand were we are prepping a lower budget feature film, "A prayer before dawn" directed by the Cannes-winning director Jean-Stephane Sauviere. We have television commercials and photo shoots at various stages of production in Singapore, Laos, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.We are working on enticing some projects of different budget ranges to consider shooting in Vietnam and the region, but nothing is yet at the stage that we can announce.

The other countries are all fantastic, each having their unique locations and subsequent challenges.

Q: What do you think young Vietnamese filmmakers should do to compete in the global film industry?

A: Make films, watch films, ask questions, listen and learn. Ego is your biggest enemy.

Q: What are your favorite Vietnamese movies? Could you share some details about them?

A: Wow, there are so many of late and so many coming out. I have enjoyed past films such as "Madam Phungs Last Journey" (by Nguyen Thi Tham, 2014) and "Living in Fear" (by Bui Thac Chuyen, 2005). For your information, I know the first film from The Luang Prabang Film Festival  known as The Sundance of South East Asia. It celebrates films from all over Southeast Asia. Vietnamese filmmakers and film lovers should make the trek to Luang Prabang next December to see all the region's rising talent.

Q: What is your basic philosophy as a producer?

A: Be honest, transparent, treat people with respect and you are only as good as your crew.
Congratulations sister! Youre our hope and pride! read Nguyen Thi Tus comment on Facebook addressed to the first woman elected to chair the National Assembly (NA), Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan.

Tu, director general of the Ethnic Minorities Department, couldnt hide her joy as she was scrolling down her phone screen filled with messages from fellow female politicians.

Ngan may have made history but the last two NA terms have seen a gradual fall in the number of female deputies. Despite significant increase in female participation in the 1990s, age old stereotypes and discriminatory regulations make it extra hard for women to reach to the top.

The outlook for the 2016-2020 term doesnt present a much brighter picture with the share of female candidates falling to 36.65 percent. Meanwhile, the National Strategy on Gender Equality targets women to make up 35 percent of deputies for the upcoming term, but without specifying clear lines of accountability.

Source: National Assembly

Contrary to popular belief, there is a huge pool of talented and highly resourceful women in Vietnamese politics, according to Jean Munro, UNDP Senior Technical Advisor.

But they usually have to try much harder than men to reach the same position in the government due to deeply rooted prejudice.

Age old prejudgment

Only 50 percent of young people believe women should aim to become high ranking government officials, economists or entrepreneurs.

A 2009 study by IOS and EOWP found that female party secretaries, chairs and vice chairs of Peoples Committees at commune level had better levels of education than their male colleagues.

When I chair a meeting, I need to be much more careful than my male counterparts because people think women talk too much and not to the point, said Tu.

Its even harder for ethnic minority women who lack experience and soft skills to begin with.

Yet, one would struggle to spot any sign of weakness in this radiant and confident woman, who is of the Muong ethnic group. She told her story with ease and charisma while people kept coming in and out of her office with queries.

Nguyen Thi Tu multi-tasking during the interview with VnExpress. Photo: LL

Tu wasnt always like this. The once ordinary government officer, who left her desk at 5pm everyday to return to her family, never considered trying for senior positions until she attended UNDPs capacity building workshop for women.

I realized that women make up half of the population, so there should be more female leaders in the government.

Biological differences make women have differing views [on certain social issues] than men, she added. A 2014 UNDP report confirms this, showing that female NA deputies are significantly more likely to raise womens issues than their male counterparts.

"Guilty" about "abandoning" family

Female role models like Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan have helped Tu overcome the insecurities she once had. "The most important factor is family support, said Tu, whose husband leads a state-owned company and son is doing a masters abroad.

Tu thinks that with the right approach, women can have it all: Its not about sacrifice, but time management.

On a typical evening, Tus family sit down together to watch the news, discuss politics and gender issues. Step by step, she turned the two men in her family into gender equality champions.

Whoever comes home first will make dinner. Whenever Im going away on a business trip, my husband and son prepare food for me, Tu said with pride.

A little girl suddenly run into the room as if she was at home.

Shes the daughter of one of our staff. Not everyone tolerates that in government offices though, said Tu.

Many female politicians struggle to balance their work and family commitments. According to Munro, women often feel guilty about abandoning their children to attend month-long political conventions.

They fear their sons will succumb to social evils when theyre away, said Munro.

However, she doubts childcare facilities are the solution. Instead, men should take a bigger role in caring for children.

Tus family moved to Hanoi so she could pursue her political career. The decision wasnt easy. Her son was just starting school and they were settled with stable jobs after six years in Hoa Binh, a mountainous province north of Hanoi. But Tu strongly believed and convinced her husband that the move was beneficial to all, especially their son due to the better quality of education in the capital. Today, theyre glad they made the move.

It all needs to start from within the family, said Tu, proudly looking at the awards her young department has earned in the last two years.

But Tus case is more of an exception than the rule.

Regulation bias

Vietnam ranked 83rd out of 145 countries in the world in the Gender Gap Index 2015 compiled by the World Economic Forum. When it comes to women in the NA, it jumps to 58th, but the country is among the worst in terms of women in ministerial positions, ranked 119, with only nine percent of female ministers.

A closer look at women representation in the 12th and 13th terms of NA reveals that a staggering 82 percent are only part-time deputies, who hold less power.

The women that make it to leadership positions usually have some kind of backing, said Munro.

Even someone with family support like Tu couldnt run for the upcoming NA elections because government officials have to be centrally nominated. Tus ministry had only one slot and that went to the minister.

The UNDP report says being centrally nominated is the most important factor predicting who will hold an upper leadership position in the NA. It increases chances of selection to deputy chairs or higher by 48 percent. Meanwhile, only 12 percent of all centrally nominated candidates are women.

To achieve greater equality, "the Communist Party needs to recognize that women have the capacity to be political leaders," said Ngo Thi Thu Ha, Vice Director of Center for Education Promotion and Empowerment of Women (CEPEW).

Despite a National Strategy on Gender Equality and Vietnams international commitment to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), Vietnams legislation and state propaganda still make it harder for women to advance in their political careers.

Men are more likely to be promoted than women because they retire at the age of 60, five years later than women. Furthermore, 59 percent of female civil servants have never attended a training course, a requirement for career advancement. Thats because trainees are required to have three to five years of work experience and be on average 26-28 years old, while women in their late 20s are much more likely to be occupied with raising children.

Propaganda and gender stereotypes

State-funded propaganda and campaigns targeting women for decades continue to reinforce gender stereotypes, says a joint report by Vietnamese NGOs. The most widely known is perhaps the campaign that encourages women to compete for the title excellent in public, responsible at home launched by Vietnam's General Confederation of Labor. Others include a Womens Union initiative approved by the Prime Minister that calls women to have Four virtues: Self-confidence  Self-respect  Kindness and Diligence or a movement on Families with 5-no and 3-clean.

The poster to celebrate International Women's day and the anniversary of the Trung Sisters' uprising reads: Ho Chi Minh City women actively study, work, create and build a happy family.

The problem with this propaganda is that it upholds the age old tradition that housework and caring for children is only a woman's job and it hinders women's participation in politics," said Ha.

Nevertheless, Ngans appointment is seen by many as the beginning of a new chapter, under which not only women but also other vulnerable groups will be inspired to break free.

Women leaders are also considered more progressive than men in modern civil rights such as same-sex marriage, transgender rights, prostitution, etc. As leader of National Assembly, I hope and believe that Ngan can contribute to the rights of vulnerable groups and create a new image for the highest organ of state power, said Luong The Huy, LGBT rights officer at iSEE.

Its a very arduous path for female political leaders, said Tu. But then she lightened up at the thought of her upcoming gender equality project. Tu doesnt have much time to sit and complain.
Vietnams Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Cao Duc Phat made a public apology over the weekend after angering many people by claiming most food in Vietnam is safe.

On April 1, Phat told the National Assembly that most of our food products are safe but people are unaware of that and think all food is unsafe. His statement quickly generated outrage among local people, many of whom are concerned about food safety.

The minister explained on Sunday that due to limited time, he had to cut his speech, which resulted in a misunderstanding.

I meant that given our data, the majority of our food products are safe, but its hard for people to distinguish safe food from the unsafe. Its our [state management agencies] responsibility to help people differentiate, said Phat. Im sorry for not clearly phrasing the statement and any misunderstanding it caused.

Phat shared the publics concern over food hygiene: I also eat out in cheap places. When I visit my mother in hospital, I eat at the canteen. Theres a cancer patient in my family so I deeply understand the pain of families whose members have cancer.

According to the minister, food safety and hygiene have been the number one priority for the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development for many years. In the last five months, the ministry has collected nearly six thousand food samples. Analysis showed that 5.17 percent of samples contained an excessive amount of plant protection drug residue, and 1.92 percent of the meat went beyond the permitted rate of antibiotics and banned chemicals.

The ministry has been running campaigns to prevent unhygienic food, but despite positive results, the progress remains slow. Authorities will take stronger action against unhygienic food this year, Phat said.
Some of the forty troop members of the Sudan People's Liberation Army in opposition (SPLA/M-IO) sit in a bus after their arrival at Juba airport on March 28, 2016, as part of the peace agreement signed between rebel forces and the Government in August 2015. This is the first military platoon that is transferred from rebel controlled areas to Juba, after the arrival of 23 generals on March 24. The operation, facilitated with United Nations aircraft, will continue the rest of the week and will finalise on April 1 with a total of 500 soldiers that will be permanently based in Juba. Photo: Albert Gonzalez Farran/AFP.
April 3, 2016 | 08:20 pm PT

Repairs to the Ghenh Bridge that stretches across the Dong Nai River need to be completed 15 days earlier than previously planned so the bridge can reopen by early July, said Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc during a trip to examine repair work to the bridge on Sunday.

We have to fast track repair work while ensuring quality and safety, said Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, asking the Vietnam Railways Corporation under the Transport Ministry to accelerate the work by half a month.

Deputy Prime Minister has asked for repairs to the Ghenh Bridge to be completed ahead of schedule. Photo: Phuoc Tuan

Phuc recently agreed in principle to fund the urgent repairs to the Ghenh Bridge with VND298 billion ($13 million) from this year's state budget.

We are having difficulties with budget revenue, but that doesnt mean we are just going to leave weak bridges out there and ignore public safety, added Phuc, who also instructed the Transport Ministry to make a list of all bridges nationwide that need to be repaired or replaced.

The 100 year-old Ghenh Bridge, a key bridge on the North-South railway line, collapsed at noon on March 20 after a barge crashed into it.

Due to the accident, railway services have been affected, forcing trains on the route to stop at Bien Hoa Station in Dong Nai province, which is about 40 kilometers northeast of Ho Chi Minh City.


The seizure of Chinese vessel 13056 near the Gulf of Tonkin on March 31 was the culmination of a 17-day surveillance patrol by Hai Phong's Border Defense Force around the Common Fishery Zone (CFZ) between Vietnam and China.

Chinese vessel no.13056 was towed to Hai Phong for further investigation. Photo: Vietnam Border Defense

It was just one of many Chinese boats that Vietnamese coast guards caught during their patrol in Vietnam's territorial waters.

Besides the seizure of the Chinese oil tanker, Hai Phongs Border Defense Force also drove away 112 Chinese fishing boats and issued warnings to 22 others for entering Vietnamese waters.

Pham Doan Duong, senior lieutenant colonel of Squadron 2, said that in the past, Vietnamese border guards used to capture and tow Chinese fishing boats that operated illegally in Vietnams territory.

However, in recent years, authorities in Hai Phong and other coastal provinces have been trying to drive these ships away instead to show Vietnam's goodwill and determination to resolve issues at sea in accordance with international law and to maintain relations with other countries in the region, according to Duong. Only deliberate and repeat offenders are issued with warnings.

In the case of the Chinese vessel, the decision to seize and tow the ship to the city for investigation after observing a number of unusual signs was considered a rare move by Vietnamese authorities.

Chinese vessel no.13056 disguised as a fishing boat. Photo: Vietnam Border Defense

On March 14, Flotilla 1 of Squadron 2 (Hai Phong Border Defense Force) headed out to sea on a planned patrol around Zone 2 in the CFZ. Visibility at the time was severely reduced due to heavy fog coupled with light rain.

At 3:20pm on March 31, the flotilla received information of the presence of an iron-hulled blue vessel numbered 13056 to the southwest of Bach Long Vi Island. The vessel was not flying a flag and had fishing nets hung across the deck with Chinese characters written on its bow.

Major Pham Dinh Thanh, deputy captain of Squadron 2, quickly assessed it was a Chinese vessel disguised as a fishing boat infringing on Vietnams sovereignty. He ordered the flotilla to pursue the vessel. Seeing the Vietnamese border guard closing in, the ship changed direction but was caught after a 10 minute chase.

Captain Dam Thuy Duong of Chinese vessel No. 13056 told Vietnamese authorities the vessel was carrying 100,000 liters of fuel from Hainan Island, China, to Chinese ships fishing illegally in Hai Phong. Photo: Vietnam Border Defense

Vietnamese authorities discovered 100,000 liters of smuggled fuel on board, and neither the ships captain or its two crew members could provide registration papers or job certificates.

The captain of the Chinese ship told Vietnamese officials that all the fuel onboard was being transported from Hainan Island into Vietnamese territory to resupply Chinese fishing boats operating illegally in Vietnamese waters. The ship was unable to resupply any fishing boats before it was seized by border guards.

Authorities in Hai Phong are waiting for the investigation to be concluded and for further instructions from the Vietnam Border Defense Force to deal with vessel 13056.

The three Chinese crew members have admitted to the intrusion, Duong said.

All property on board the ship has been recorded in detail and is in safe storage, he said.
The National Assembly is expected to allow Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung to step down on April 6 and approve his successor the following day.

Newly elected State President Tran Dai Quang is scheduled to nominate a new prime minister on Wednesday after Prime Minister Dung steps down, and the NA will issue a decision on the appointment the following day. The new prime minister will take the oath of office at an inauguration ceremony on Thursday.

The Party Central Committee, during the 12th National Congress held in January, recommended Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc for the position of prime minister. Phuc was born in the central province of Quang Nam in 1954.
World leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, have sent messages to congratulate President Tran Dai Quang and Vietnam's first-ever legislature chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, in his message sent on Saturday, affirmed that China attached extreme importance to its ties with Vietnam and was willing to work with Vietnam to maintain strategic dialogues and intensify result-orientated cooperation in all fields in order to make the bilateral ties develop sustainably.

Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of China Zhang Dejiang, in a congratulatory message to his Vietnamese counterpart, showed his willingness to promote cooperation between the two nations legislatures to contribute to stability and development in each country.

Russian President Vladimir Putin cabled a letter of congratulations to President Tran Dai Quang, expressing his belief that the new President will use his experience to address Vietnams urgent socio-economic development tasks efficiently.

He also expected a greater coordination between the two leaders to strengthen the Russia-Vietnam comprehensive strategic partnership.

Lao President Choummaly Sayasone expressed his strong belief that President Tran Dai Quangs capacity and rich experience will help Vietnam maintain its stability, develop the economy, improve peoples lives, and raise the countrys position and role in the international arena.



Earlier, Lao National Assembly Chairwoman Pany Yathotou sent a message of congratulations to Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, in which she wished to work with her Vietnamese counterpart to nurture the special relations between the two countries in general and the two legislative body in particular, for the interests of the peoples of the two countries and for peace, friendship, cooperation and development in the region and the world.



President Tran Dai Quang was sworn into office on last Saturday with 91.5 percent of votes in a secret ballot.



Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan was elected on Thursday as the new chairwoman of the National Assembly. She was also assigned to head the National Election Council.
A Russian tourist was mauled to death by a crocodile in a popular diving site in Eastern Indonesia, an official said Saturday.

The body of Sergey Lykhvar was discovered on Tuesday in Raja Ampat islands of West Papua, four days after he was reported missing.

Local search and rescue head Prasetyo Budiarto said Lykhvar was reported missing to the authorities last week, one day after he left to snorkel around the remote Minyaifun island.

Budiarto told AFP that rescuers spotted a large saltwater crocodile trailing behind Lykhvar's body when he was discovered.

"We believe he was killed by a crocodile judging from the missing body parts and the extent of his injuries," he said.

The 37-year-old normally snorkelled with his friends and a guide but decided go alone the morning before he was reported missing, Budiarto said.

He added that the location where Lykhvar's body was retrieved was quite remote, and dangerous because of the strong currents and sharp rocks.

The Russian tourist's body was later taken to Sorong, about a two-hour boat ride away from Raja Ampat. His was body cremated as per his family's request.

"We are still communicating with the Russian embassy, from what I've heard his family would come to pick up his ashes in Indonesia," Budiarto said.

The huge Indonesian archipelago is home to a vast array of exotic wildlife, including several species of crocodile.

Death by crocodiles is not uncommon in Indonesia but it is rare for foreign tourists to be killed.
The European Commission and the International Energy Agency will address the impact of the energy crisis on SMEs in an online event on 21 October.
The U.S. Department of State named fourteen reformers and civil society activists as recipients of the 2016 International Women of Courage Award. They included women from nations across the globe, from Mauritania to Malaysia and beyond. Thirteen accepted the award personally from Secretary of State John Kerry, who called the awardees role models whose lives convey a clear message: "Don't accept the unacceptable or wait for someone else to step up. Act in the name of justice.

But as the thirteen honorees sat on the dais at the State Department, Chinese honoree  Ni Yulan -- was absent.

Ni Yulan, a human rights defender, is known for her work in championing housing rights and freedom of religion. For her efforts, she has been subjected to harassment, imprisonment and torture. Although she was not allowed to travel to the United States to receive her award, Secretary of State Kerry praised Ni Yulan in absentia:

Her outspokenness has led her to imprisonment, during which she was beaten so badly that she became paralyzed from the waist down. But that hasnt stopped her. She continues to defend the property rights of Beijing residents whose homes have been slated for demolition. And she has launched the Ni Yulan Human Rights Office to connect activists and lawyers across China to advance the cause of justice. Ni Yulan, for your leadership in advocating for the rule of law and full, equal rights in China, we honor you today as a woman of courage.

The Chinese governments treatment of Ni Yulan is part of a concerning pattern of its targeting human rights defenders and civil society activists in China for reprisal. As U.S. Ambassador to China Max Baucus has said, the lawyers who bravely fight for the legal rights of religious believers, journalists, victims of forced evictionsshould be embraced as partners, not enemies, of the government.

Secretary Kerry has observed, Strong respect for human rightsactually unleashes a countrys potential, and helps to advance growth and progress. Thats a powerful reason why governments should celebrate, and not thwart the work of courageous human rights defenders like Ni Yulan.
PSOE chief Pedro Seanchez (l) speaks to party organization secretary, Cesar Luena. EFE

More than three months have passed since the December 20 general elections  three months of political stalemate, negotiations, photos, letters and WhatsApp messages that have only served to irritate voters and convince them that there will be new elections.

The number of people who consider the current political situation in Spain to be negative has reached a new record: 94% of those surveyed, according to a new Metroscopia poll for EL PAIS, the results of which were released at the weekend. And the second round of voting will not solve the problem: the survey reveals that a second general election would just turn up the same result: the incumbent Popular Party would take most votes but fall short of a majority, followed by the Socialist Party (PSOE), Ciudadanos and Podemos.

There are less than 30 days before May 2 arrives, the date at which the Constitution states that new polls must be held if no one manages to form a government. And according to the poll, citizens are already convinced that they will have to turn out to vote once more.

The majority of those surveyed are convinced that, in place of the two-party PP-PSOE system that had been in place since the return to democracy at the end of the 1970s, the new scenario, with a number of parties reaching deals, is better.

According to the voter intention section of the poll, the PP would take 27.7% of the vote, barely losing a point compared to the results obtained on December 20. The many corruption cases that have emerged related to the party since the elections appear not to have had an effect.

The PSOE, meanwhile, stays in second place, and holds the distance from the PP seen in December, of approximately seven percentage points. If they were to be held today, the Socialists would take 21% of the vote at elections, one point down on the December result  the worst in the partys history.

Emerging center-right group Ciudadanos, meanwhile, has improved its standing among the electorate, thanks to its efforts to reach a deal with the PSOE and the positive perception of its leader, Albert Rivera. The survey sees the group in third place, with 18.8% of the vote  almost five points above the result seen on December 20.

Anti-austerity group Podemos, meanwhile, has suffered the most from this period of post-election negotiation. The image of its leader, Pablo Iglesias, had already been seen to suffer in previous surveys, but there are now two other negative elements to add: the organizational crisis within the party, with Iglesias in conflict with his number two, Inigo Errejon, and the general perception among voters that the party has made scant efforts to break the political stalemate, given its unwillingness to do deals with the Socialists or Ciudadanos. Podemos scored 15.9% in the voter intention poll, almost five points down on the December results.

English version by Simon Hunter.
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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
Armenian Parlaiment expects adequate response to Azerbaijani actions (video)

STATEMENT BY THE POLITICAL FACTIONS AND MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT NOT INCLUDED IN ANY FACTION OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF THE REPUBLIC OF ARMENIA ON VIOLATION OF THE CEASEFIRE REGIME AND RESUMPTION OF LARGE-SCALE MILITARY OPERATIONS BY AZERBAIJAN ON THE KARABAKH-AZERBAIJANI LINE OF CONTACT The National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia strongly condemns the unprecedented escalation of the situation by Azerbaijan along the Line of Contact with Nagorno Karabakh. During the night of April 1-2, the Azerbaijani army resumed large-scale military operations. In 1994, after the trilateral ceasefire signed between Nagorno Karabakh, Azerbaijan and Armenia, for the first time the use of large quantities of heavy weapon, bombarding of the peaceful settlements of Nagorno Karabakh, targeting of the substructures deep in Nagorno Karabakh obviously show that Baku is on its short-sighted and dangerous way to bring to life its illusion to settle the conflict through military means. Azerbaijans adventurist policy caused many casualties, including civilians. The right to secure life of Nagorno Karabakh people is endangered. Azerbaijans terrorist policy is a serious threat for the security of the whole region. Azerbaijans dictatorial regime, suffering from the obsession to retain its power at any cost, tries to distract its attention and that of international communities from domestic problems, sacrificing human lives. We express our deepest condolences to the servicemen and the family members of the civilians perished in defensive battles, their close relatives and co-servicemen, share the grave grief of their loss, and wish quick recovery to the wounded. We highly assess the operations of the Defensive Army of Nagorno Karabakh directed to the stabilisation of the situation, the Armenian soldiers combat readiness, their selflessness and courage shown in defending the Motherland, as well as the consolidation and unity of our society. We condemn the breach of the 1994 Ceasefire Treaty by Azerbaijan, the violation of the Artsakh peoples right to live in peace, the targeting of the civilian population and settlements, the purposeful failure and denial of the efforts aimed at the solution of the problem by the internationally accepted format of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs and the policy of settling the Nagorno Karabakh conflict through military means. We call on the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs and the international organizations to targetedly and adequately respond to the Azerbaijani party responsible for the created situation, applying all the restraining mechanisms towards the aggressor for avoiding the further escalation and steps destabilizing the region. We expect our colleagues to raise their voice of complaint, condemning Bakus terrorist policy and to join the efforts of the international community in unleashing the Azerbaijan's authoerities.
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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".

UCOM AND PES-PES CONTINUE COOPERATION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF EDUCATIONAL PROJECT

The statement of the meeting between Prime Minister Pashinyan, President Aliyev, President Macron and President Michel of October 6, 2022

Largest Corporate Bond Program at the Securities Market of Armenia Completed Successfully

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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
Union of Informed Citizens: International Response to War in Karabakh

On the early morning of April 2 Azerbaijan unleashed large-scale military actions on the line of contact with Nagorno Karabakh. Accepting the enemys challenge, the Armenian side turned to defensive and counteroffensive actions, as a result of which the enemy suffered enormous human and material losses. As we sum up the international response by the evening of April 3, we can record that the international players have largely blurred statements that are not addressed to any of the parties. The international community tends to call on cease of hostilities, maintaining of the ceasefire and restarting of negotiations. The Countries Russian Federation and France have issued statements related to military actions provoked by Azerbaijan on the presidential level by urging the sides to immediately stop hostilities and maintain the ceasefire regime. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has not hesitated to call Aliyev, express his support and his condolences on the death of killed Azerbaijani soldiers. Erdogan did not even forget to mention about the so-called territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. President of Belarus Aleksandr Lukashenko has done approximately the same thing by calling Aliyev and asking the latter about the aggression that Aliyev himself has provoked. Foreign ministries of Germany, Norway, Turkey, Belarus, Kazakhstan and the United States have released statements on the matter. The European countries and the US urge both sides (without addressing any of them specifically) to cease the hostilities and maintain ceasefire. The Turkish Foreign Ministry states that Ankara supports Bakus actions. The ambassador of Belarus to Armenia is called to the Armenian Foreign Ministry in order to explain the inadequate behavior of their country, which is, by the way, Armenias ally within the framework of CSTO. The ambassador of Pakistan to Azerbaijan states that Islamabad will help Azerbaijan in its military actions against Armenia. The UK Minister of State for Europe David Lidington also addresses the escalation of the situation on the Karabakh-Azerbaijani border by urging the sides to stop the hostilities. Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani issued a statement on April 3: Iran urges Armenia and Azerbaijan to resolve the conflict in a peaceful manner. Distribution of Allies By putting together all of the aforementioned information, we can claim that the international response is mainly neutral. The statement issued by CSTO is to some degree pro-Armenian as CSTO puts the responsibility for the military operations on Azerbaijan. On the other hand, the behavior of CSTO member Belarus contradicts the position of the organization and arouses some doubts regarding the policy adopted by that institution. In contrast, Turkey expresses explicit support to Azerbaijan and the same may be said about Pakistan. Be it ironical or not, Armenias so called ally and partner Belarus is among those countries that have expressed their support to Azerbaijan. Vahe Ghukasyan, Union of Informed Citizens
With around 200 people, the protest aims to oppose the militarization activities of China, especially Chinas move to construct an artificial island and attacking Vietnamese fishing boats in the disputed East Sea.

The Association of Vietnamese Communities in South Korea issued a joint statement of public opinion relating to the strengthening of China's renovation activities and illegal construction on disputed reefs in the Spratly islands of Vietnam; the runway construction, organizing several civilian planes on Fiery Cross Reef; continuously building runway on Mischief, Subi reefs in Spratly islands of Vietnam; and accelerating militarization on the East Sea, as Chinese ships chased and rammed Vietnamese fishing ships around the Spratly and Paracel islands of Vietnam.

Photo: Hong Anh

Photo: Hong Anh

Photo: Hong Anh

Photo: Hong Anh

Photo: Hong Anh



Photo: Hong Anh



Photo: Hong Anh



Photo: Hong Anh China's actions have seriously violated the sovereignty of Vietnam; threatened maritime security, aviation and the regional security; breached the principle of peaceful settlement of disputes in the East Sea. This is a particularly serious violation to International law, United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982 (UNCLOS), as well as a serious violation of the Declaration on the Conduct of parties in East Sea (DOC) of which China is a signing party.



This extremely dangerous action was and is a direct threat to peace, stability, security, and safe navigation and aviation in the East Sea, they said.

The event attracted a lot of participants, from intellectuals, students, laborers, to Korean-Vietnamese families and Korean people who love peace, gathering in the two-hour long protest at Busan Station (near Chinese Consulate-General in Busan), displaying large banners proclaiming Paracel islands and Spratly islands belong to Vietnam and China, stop militarization in the East Vietnam Sea.

The protesters are requesting the Chinese government to immediately stop illegal activities in the East Sea, and strictly respect international laws and other related bilateral agreements. Vietnam as well as other countries really want to maintain peace and stability in the East Sea zone./.
Photo: vnexpress.net



The announcement ceremony and certificate presentation took place at EXPO Center in Osaka city on April 2nd.

Speaking at the ceremony, Mr. Tran Duc Binh, Consul General of Vietnam in Osaka, appreciated the recognition of April 4th as Day of Pho in Japan, in honor of the famous traditional Pho dish of Vietnam.

Consul General also expressed his belief that the "Day of Pho" would help introduce Vietnams traditional Pho to each Japanese citizen and contribute to developing the exquisite culinary culture of Japan.

Mr. Binh hoped that the event also helped Japanese people better understand the culinary culture of Vietnam with famous dishes and bring Vietnam closer to Japanese people.

After the certificate presentation ceremony, Mr. Muraoka Hiroshi, President of the Board of Directors of Acecook Company, said that Acecook started to put instant Pho into the system of convenient stores in Japan. The whole raw noodle made from Vietnams rice to faithfully reproduce the flavour of this delicate dish. The broth for the instant Pho is studied, tested and manufactured according to the taste of the famous delicious noodle shops across the country of Vietnam to create the delicious Pho, appetizing for Japanese people.

This is the first time Vietnams traditional Pho has a separate anniversary day. April 4th was selected because the number four in English is pronounced like sound Pho to help people easily remember.

The ceremony took place on the weekend when cherry blossoms were blooming so it attracted special attention from tens of thousands of people in Osaka and surrounding cities. Many overseas Vietnamese students and people in Kansai also joined the event./.
Ambassador Le Linh Lan invites Mexican friends to enjoy Vietnamese Pho (Photo: VNA)

At the event, Vietnamese Ambassador Le Linh Lan stressed the significance and important role of Pho (noodle) in Vietnamese culture; brief descriptions of the main components of beef noodle soup, way and space to enjoy the traditional dish and its practical effects.

She also said that the Japan Anniversary Association has officially chosen April 4th as the annual Vietnamese Pho Day in Japan to honour the delicious dish of the Vietnamese culture.

This is the first time Vietnams traditional Pho has a separate celebration day. According to the Ambassador, Pho is regarded as a pride of the Vietnamese culture and people. Pho has become more popular around the world, including New York, London and Tokyo.

After introducing Pho, a large number of people at the event witnessed Chef Duong Van Chung displaying a bowl of Pho and then enjoying it with a cup of Vietnamese coffee.

Mr. Arturo Perez Behr, Head of the a Mexican import-export association (ANIERM), and Ms. Therese Margolis, a friend of Vietnam, praised the excellent Pho dish and considered it part of the beautiful culture of Vietnam.

Ambassador Le Linh Lan hoped that through the event, Mexican friends would further understand Vietnams culinary culture and help them understand more about the Vietnamese culture and be increasingly closer to Vietnam./.
Photo for illustration (Source: dantri.com.vn) The information was announced by Le Van Huong, director of Bidoup Nui Ba National Park and the Lang Biang Biosphere Reserve, during a recent meeting to carry out the work in 2016.

According to Mr. Huong, his agency is working with the Dalat Tourist Company to build the park, named Highland Safari.

The project was agreed on by the Lam Dong provincial Peoples Committee and is to be financed by the Ministry of Planning and Investment.

So far the investors have worked with groups of consultants from Austria and Singapore to conduct surveys of geography, climate and rare or endangered animals in the province.

Highland Safari is expected to foster both domestic and international rare and endangered species, as suitable for the Central Highlands climate, in a semi-wild condition, which means that they will be raised in a natural surrounding with care from humans./.
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
Head of the Odesa customs office Yulia Marushevska has urged Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to support reforms in the customs area and to stop putting pressure on new customs officials.

"I ask to select your position: you are with those who hinder the process or you are with us who want to conduct reforms. I ask for radical and quick steps," she said in a video message posted on the Facebook page of Chairman of Odesa regional administration Mikheil Saakashvili.

Marushevska said that when she was appointed to the post Poroshenko gave green light to positive changes and reforms, but today the Odesa customs office does not see support and it is resisting to attacks of supervision agencies, particularly, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the State Fiscal Service. Kyiv officials divert cargos going to Odesa to other customs offices. This entails the losses of the local budget.

She said that without radical reform in the customs area new customs managers who believed that changes could be made would have to leave the office or start working as usual.

Marushevska called on Poroshenko to support the adoption of the draft law on 'open customs space' and to put a halt to inspections of the Odesa customs office.
The World Bank should revise its assessment of Ukraine as a middle-income country. This would help international donors  charitable funds and organizations  and global pharmaceutical companies to cut the price of medicines they supply to treat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis (TB) and other social hazardous diseases.

Representatives AIDS Healthcare Foundation office in Ukraine, the Ukrainian Center for Social Disease Control of Ukraine's Health Ministry and the All-Ukrainian Network PLWH presented their ideas at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine in Kyiv on April 1.

Head of AIDS Healthcare Foundation office in Ukraine Serhiy Fiodorov said that AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) in August 2015 created Raise the MIC campaign with 530 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) from 45 countries participating in. The campaign calls on the World Bank to change how it classifies Middle Income Countries. This makes pharmaceutical companies to set certain prices for countries of various groups in the World Bank's classification.

"Middle Income Countries are countries with daily average income of the public varying from $2.86 to $34.89. The campaign is calling to raise the bottom level for including the countries to Middle Income Countries group to 10$ a day to be realistic in assessing the situation public income in Ukraine and other countries. We understand that real population income does not equal the official gross national income (GNI). We demand that the World Bank revises the old classification," Fiodorov said.

He said that global pharmaceutical companies form the price policy, taking into account the World Bank classification. They sell HIV/AIDS and TB drugs at the prices set in developed countries.

"The World Bank indicates the rules for forming prices on the global market. The World Bank classification is a ruler used by everyone in their calculations," he said commenting on the possibility of agreeing the prices of drugs directly with pharmaceutical manufacturers.

He also said that Middle Income Countries do not have a chance of avoiding patent protection of pharmaceutical medications or enter the so-called 'patent pool' which would help to use cheaper generics to treat HIV/AIDS in Ukraine.

"It is very important for all of us, especially for patients with HIV/AIDS and TV, to achieve the revision of the classification," Chairman of the Coordination Council of the All-Ukrainian Network PLWH Dmytro Sherembei said.

Director of the Ukrainian Center for Social Disease Control of Ukraine's Health Ministry Natalia Nizova said that Ukraine is emblematic of the spread HIV/AIDS.

According to the center, Ukraine as of early 2015 had over 223,000 people with HIV. Each second person with HIV does not know about it and remains beyond medical care. Some 61,254 Ukrainian citizens with HIV got treatment in 2015, including 18,486 thanks to the UN Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Ukraine in 2016 will be able to finance HIV/AIDS and TB treatment only by 50%. The UN Global Fund would provide the rest of the funds.
The incumbent president of Ukraine is not in the jurisdiction of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and the Bureau has no powers to begin a pre-trial investigation against him, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau said in a statement posted on Facebook on Monday.

"In response to numerous media inquiries as to whether the National Anti-Corruption Bureau will investigate the [facts] mentioned in the materials on the 'Panama offshores', we report the following. In accordance with the Ukrainian law on the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Code of Criminal Procedure, Bureau jurisdiction applies to top officials authorized to fulfill the functions of the state or local self-government, in particular, the president of Ukraine whose powers have ended," the report says.

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau said that "analytical work for the purposes of establishing the grounds for conducting pretrial investigation" is now being carried out regarding those people mentioned in the media materials.
The decision of the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce to ban Odesa Port-Side Plant from alienating non-current assets would not influence its privatization, the State Property Fund of Ukraine has reported, referring to its head Ihor Bilous.

"The court decision on the plant's debt to Firtash [Dmytro Firtash, the beneficiary of the claimant Ostchem] has no relation to privatization," the press service said, citing Bilous.

The privatization implies the sale of shares, but not alienation of non-current assets banned by the court.

Now SPF lawyers are studying the circumstances of the case and could file a counterclaim, if warranted.
Avangard, the largest Ukrainian producer of eggs and egg goods, reduced egg production by 46% in 2015 compared to 2014, to 3.434 billion units.

According to a holding report on the website of the London Stock Exchange, total poultry numbers decreased by 42%, to 13.6 million birds, and the number of laying hens by 42%, to 10.7 million birds.

The reduction of poultry numbers is due to a suspension of farms in the east of Ukraine located in close proximity to the conflict zone. In addition, the domestic demand for eggs fell due to a lower purchasing power of consumers and the loss of markets in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.

According to Avangard, its egg sales to third parties decreased by 35% over last year, to 2.798 billion eggs. Egg exports for the year amounted to 421 million units, 26% down compared to the previous year.

Export sales declined for several reasons, including the aggravation of the military conflict in some Middle Eastern countries, one of the company's key export markets, as well as increased competition in some export markets. As a result, the company was forced to suspend deliveries to Liberia.
Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko has stressed that he transferred the management of his business assets to consulting and law firms and is expecting these organizations to provide explanations to Ukrainian and foreign media in response to their queries.

"On becoming president, I moved away from managing the assets, having entrusted this business to appropriate consulting and law companies. I expect them to provide exhaustive explanations for the Ukrainian and international press," reads a statement published on Poroshenko's official Facebook account on Monday.

Talking about declaring of his incomes, expenses and liabilities of a financial character, the head of Ukrainian state stressed that he took seriously official declaration of his income, expenses and liabilities of a financial character.

"I'm the first official in Ukraine, who has a serious attitude towards declaring of his assets, tax payment and the issue of the conflict of interests, which I settle under the Ukrainian legislation and international private law," he said.

According to an investigation by Ukrainian journalist Anna Babinets as part of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which was made public on the Hromadske TV channel, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko did not mentioned in his declaration of income, expenses and financial obligations for 2014 that he had established a company in the British Virgin Islands.

When asked why this company was not included into Poroshenko's income declaration, Makar Paseniuk, managing director of ICU investment company, who is authorized by the Ukrainian presidential administration to communicate with media in the matters related to Poroshenko's business affairs, said the shares of the Prime Asset Partners Limited have no par value. In accordance with the requirements for the declaration of incomes and property as of 2014, only the shares which had some nominal value needed to be included in the declaration, he added.

However, the documents obtained by OCCRP show that starting from the registration date of August 21, 2014, Prime Asset Partners Ltd.'s shares had a total value of $1,000 and Poroshenko was listed as the sole shareholder. However, in his declaration for 2014, the president left a blank space in the section 'contributions to the charter capital of the company, including those abroad.'

Meanwhile, Paseniuk said that there was more than one offshore company.

"Prime Asset Partners Limited was founded in the summer of 2014 in the course of corporate restructuring, which was a preparatory stage for the further sale of the Roshen Group. After its establishment, the company has not carried out any activities other than those mentioned below. In the fall of 2014, Prime Asset Partners Limited established CEE Confectionery Investments Limited in Cyprus, which in turn founded the Roshen Europe BV company in the Netherlands," the report says.

Poroshenko's legal advisers justify the creation of such a group of companies by the president. They say this was done "in keeping with the market practice in Ukraine for the companies which are to be sold to strategic investors."

According to editor for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Program Drew Sullivan, the information about Poroshenko's offshore companies are part of the Panama Papers, which are the documents obtained from a Panama-based offshore services provider.

Roshen Corporation includes confectionery factories in Kyiv, Kremenchuk and Vinnytsia, and the dairy producer Bershadmoloko. It also runs confectionary facilities in Klaipeda (Lithuania), Lipetsk ( Russia), and Bonbonetti Choco (Hungary).

Poroshenko in January 2016 stated he signed a contract, according to which he transferred his stake in Roshen Corporation to an independent "blind" trust."
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that he does not see a military way to de-occupy a part of Donbas and the Crimean Peninsula.

"No military solution to de-occupy Donbas and Crimea exists. I am 'a president of peace' and to effectively ensure concerted actions by Ukraine and those, who support us in the world, efforts of Ukrainian diplomats are needed," the head of state said in an interview with the Ukrainian television stations aired on Sunday evening.

He commented so on the previously voiced position regarding the inexpediency of severing diplomatic relations with Russia.
The United States will shortly allocate $335 million to Ukraine to fund the security and defense sector, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said.

"The first position is $335 million, which Ukraine will finally receive without any conditions as the funding for the defense and security sector. We have been waiting for these resources for a very long time, we were involved in the distribution of these resources for the first time, setting those priorities, for which we primarily need these resources," he said in an interview with the Ukrainian television stations, following the visit to the U.S., aired on Sunday evening.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko plans to raise an initiative to station the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) armed police mission in Donbas at the 'Normandy format' talks shortly.

"In the near future, I am going to raise this issue at the 'Normandy format' talks, and OSCE armed police posts need to guarantee the run-up to (local elections in separate districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions) elections, the holding of elections and the regime of transfer of power to the leadership elected in line with the Ukrainian legislation at free, transparent and democratic elections, whom we will do with," he said in an interview with the Ukrainian television stations aired on Sunday evening.
As of now, the actually agreed concept of the legislation to hold local elections in separate districts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions exists, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said.

"We already have the actually agreed concept of the election legislation, which needs to match the Ukrainian legislation and which needs to meet ODIHR/OSCE criteria," he said in an interview with the Ukrainian television stations aired on Sunday evening.

Poroshenko did not speak about any details of this concept.
Kyiv accuses Donbas militants of new attacks on Ukrainian army positions

Ukrainian army positions in Donbas have been attacked by the militants 23 times over the past day, the anti-terrorist operation (ATO) press center wrote on Facebook on Monday.

According to the press center, 16 attacks were conducted in the Donetsk sector, five near Mariupol and two in Luhansk area.

The militia's mortars delivered six strikes on Ukrainian army strongholds in Avdiyivka. Large-caliber machineguns were used near Mayorsk, and man-portable and automatic grenade launchers were fired towards Luhanske, Zaitseve, Opytne, Novhorodske and Butivka mine, the report said.

Militants shelled army positions in Shyrokyne in the Mariupol sector.

The army had to return fire four times "in order to keep its positions," the report said.
Poroshenko to go to Tokyo for negotiations

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko will pay an official visit to Japan on April 5-7, 2016 at the invitation of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the Ukrainian president's official website has reported.

"The program of the visit envisages meetings between the president and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the heads of both chambers of the Japanese parliament, other high-ranking officials, and also Japanese businessmen," the report says.

The meeting participants are expected to discuss bilateral cooperation issues and vital issues in the context of Japan's chairmanship of the G7.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said that the initiative on raising the security of Ukrainian nuclear power plants has been discussed at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington.

"We talked about the joint initiative, which will involve Norway and Sweden, to improve the security level of our nuclear power plants and our nuclear energy industry, starting from physical security and finishing with the cyber protection. The funds will be allocated, and we are taking part in the development of these programs and will make sure that the nuclear security of Ukraine should significantly improve," he said in an interview with Ukrainian TV channels about the results of his visit to the U.S. which was broadcast on Sunday evening.

According to the president, this is especially relevant ahead of the 30th anniversary of the Chornobyl disaster, as well as after a hacking attack on power grid facilities in the west of Ukraine. "We know that there was a hacking attack on the power grid facilities and we are stepping up the fight against cyber crime," Poroshenko said.
Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry press secretary Hikmet Hajiyev has accused Armenia of the ongoing escalation of tensions in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict zone.

"Despite the decision made by the Azerbaijani side on April 3 to unilaterally halt the counteroffensive and the countermeasures taken against the enemy, the Armenian Armed Forces continued intensive shelling of populated localities and the civilian population by use of artillery and other heavy weapons and carried on their offensive and provocative actions along the entire frontline, especially in the Terter and Agdara districts," Hajiyev said.

If the Armenian Armed Forces continue to shell Azerbaijani populated localities, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces will have to take countermeasures for providing security of the population in the Armenian-Azerbaijani front zone and Armenia will be fully responsible for that, the Foreign Ministry press secretary said.
Poroshenko at summit in Washington: It is necessary to introduce efficient security guarantees for 'non-nuclear' states

President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington urged the nuclear states to provide efficient guarantees for the countries that do not have a nuclear arsenal, according to the presidential press service.

At the plenary session of the summit chaired by President of the United States Barack Obama Poroshenko noted that international cooperation remained a key factor of success of all common efforts. Petro Poroshenko praised the progress achieved since the first nuclear security summit in 2010.

"We must decide how to improve the security guarantees of the permanent members of the UN Security Council for those countries who do not have a nuclear arsenal," the president stressed.

The president noted Ukraine's unique decision to voluntarily give up the third biggest nuclear arsenal in the world in 1994. He emphasized that the security guarantees were a significant challenge for Ukraine and other non-nuclear states. Unfortunately, the guarantees under the Budapest Memorandum have not only turned out to be inefficient, but also have been violated by the nuclear state - Russia.

The head of state emphasized that the Kremlin placed elements of its nuclear potential in the occupied Crimea violating the non-proliferation regime. In addition, Ukraine has gained a unique experience in ensuring efficient physical protection of nuclear materials and objects from possible subversive actions.

The president praised the results of a trilateral initiative of Sweden, Norway and Ukraine on the enhancement of nuclear security and safety of nuclear power plants. He also noted a successful launch of the first nuclear facility of global significance "Source of Neutrons" in Ukraine. Poroshenko called those projects an example of efficient international cooperation in the sphere of nuclear security and WMD non-proliferation.
Three Ukrainian servicemen have been injured in Donbas over the past day, the anti-terrorist operation spokesman Oleksandr Motuzianyk has said.

"No Ukrainian servicemen have been killed in the hostilities in the past 24 hours, yet three suffered injuries. In addition, two soldiers were taken prisoner near Horlivka. We will have more details after we take special measures, which will not be announced for now for the sake of security of our servicemen," he said at a press briefing in Kyiv on Monday.
CANCELLATION: Press conference 'How Prosecutor General of Ukraine Provides Cover for Shadow Currencies Exchange Market?' scheduled for April 5 at Interfax-Ukraine cancelled

A press conference "How Prosecutor General of Ukraine Provides Cover for Shadow Currencies Exchange Market?", which was scheduled for April 5, at 12.00, at Interfax-Ukraine, has been cancelled (8/5-A Reitarska Street).
The World Affairs Councils of America and the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council (USUBC) in partnership with Burisma, Ukraines largest independent oil & gas producer, became organizers of the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenkos meeting with top US public figures and representatives of key American companies. The address on the struggle for freedom in Ukraine delivered by President Poroshenko in the Congressional Auditorium of the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center was the first in a series of events in his three-day visit to Washington. President Poroshenko stressed critical importance of support from international partners in achieving peace in Ukraine, and that the West should not give up on Ukraine.

"It is important that our partners are helping us stay strong politically, economically and militarily,"  said the President of Ukraine.

The Member of the Board of Directors at Burisma Holdings Devon Archer and the Advisor to the Board of Directors Vadym Pozharskyi also joined the event.

According to Vadym Pozharskyi, the event at the U.S. Capitol Visor Center with the Head of state is an important element in the dialogue between the US and Ukraine, both in terms of politics and business, contributing to the development of bilateral trade and attraction of American investment in Ukraine.

"We need to continually inform world community that Ukraine is ready for profound reforms, and this process is irreversible. By opening markets and reducing administrative barriers, and, most importantly, implementing the Strategy on Energy independence declared by the government and the Verkhovna Rada, we can draw attention of the US companies to Ukraine, - noted Vadym Pozharskyi.

In addition, the US-Ukraine Business Council (USUBC) held its annual meeting in Washington. With more than 200 members, the USUBC is the most powerful Ukrainian business association outside of Ukraine, consulting the US government on economic development and business environment in Ukraine. This years event focused on Ukraine's Energy Security Future, where the President of the US-Ukraine Business Council Morgan Williams and Vadym Pozharskyi introduced the model for Ukraines energy sector development and shared expectations on reform and deregulation in the energy sector, the countrys strategic industry.

Vadym Pozharskyi also conducted a series of meetings with Offices of US Senators - Rob Portman, Jeanne Shaheen, Marcy Kaptur and their advisors on energy issues and international relations - to brief on current situation in the area of energy security, oil & gas market reforms and future development of Ukrainian gas market.
DUBAI, April 3 -- The United Arab Emirates' (UAE) business and trade metropolis Dubai attracted 2,000 millionaires last year, Dubai-based Saudi Al Arabiya TV channel reported on Sunday.

According to the report, many of the 2,000 millionaires came from Egypt, Algeria, Morocco and Turkey.

More traditional centers for the rich, such as London, experienced far more modest gains, a study titled New World Wealth was quoted as stating.

About 3,000 millionaires moved to the UK's capital in 2015, and 2,500 left, it added.

The rest of the UAE, such as Abu Dhabi, gained another 1,000 millionaires last year, reaching a total of 72,000.

"We expect that millionaire migration away from France will accelerate over the next decade as these tensions escalate," the report noted.

In the past, wealthy people like French actor Gerard Depardieu quoted the high rate of taxation for leaving France.
Chinese deputy finance minister Zhu Guangyao says some rating agencies do not have fully understood China's growth potential.

He made the remarks following China's credit outlook was downgraded to negative by some of these agencies.

Standard & Poor's said on Thursday that China's sovereign credit rating had slipped to negative because excessive government spending and debt may curb growth.

Meantime, Moody's also made a similar decision, based on expectations that China's fiscal strength would continue to decline.

Zhu Guangyao said China hopes the rating agencies making their assessments based on objective principles.

"We don't think that rating agencies have real comprehensive understanding of Chinese economic development potential, and don't understand our very hard determination to promote structural reform, particularly from the supply side. And we really hope that rating agencies can make their assessment on the real principle or policy to see the country with willingness and ability to pay debt."

The minister says this is a fundamental principle for rating agencies, in determining ratings for countries and even companies.

"This is a very important thing concerning rating agencies' credit and reputation. So why there is so many criticism in the world for the rating agencies, because people believe they are not objectively reflect the fact. We really hope that rating agencies will learn lessons from those mistakes they had made before, including in the 1998 Asian financial crisis and the 2008 international finance crisis."

Despite this, the CEO of Dow Chemical said the rating downgrade has no impact on the company's development plan in China.

CEO Andrew Liveris said his company believes in investing in people, and opportunities based on the Chinese government's emphasis on boosting domestic consumption.

Liveris says he was very optimistic about China's economy.
Photo taken on April 2, 2016 shows the upper part of the copycat sphinx statue in an industrial park in Shijiazhuang, north China's Hebei province. [Photo: Imagine China]

A copycat Sphinx statue has been torn down by authorities in Shijiazhuang, capital city of north China's Hebei province, after reportedly another complaint by cultural heritage department of Egypt.

The 20 meters high and 60 meters long statue, almost the same size of the real one in Egypt, was built in 2014 in a local industrial park for film and TV shooting.

After its completion, Egypt authorities filed a complaint to the UNESCO in May of 2014, saying the constructor of the statue should notify Egypt authorities if it was the purpose of shooting film and TV according to international conventions.

Egypt authorities also believed that the copycat statue differs greatly in details from the real one and this may affect people's appreciation to the real one and could possibly affect the tourism, film and TV shooting industries in Egypt.

The constructor of the statue started to bear more pressure after media reports questioning the purpose and legality of the copycat statue.

Experts note that actually relevant international conventions don't include items that ban the act of copycatting world cultural heritage sites.

However, after several complaints from Egypt authorities for the copycat sphinx statue, UNESCO may start to consider rectifying relevant laws and regulations.
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Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 4

By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend:

ADY Express LLC, which is engaged in multimodal cargo transportation in Azerbaijan, and the Lithuanian Railways JSC have signed an agreement in Vilnius on cargo transportation between the two countries, head of the press-service of the Azerbaijan Railways CJSC Nadir Azmammadov told Trend Apr. 4.

He said that the agreement provides for creation of a regulatory framework, defines obligations and rules for granting discounts and mutual payments for cargo transportation between Azerbaijan and Lithuania.

"The agreement will create conditions for expansion of cooperation opportunities in the field of transport and increase of the volumes of transit cargo between the two countries," said Azmammadov.

The document was signed by general director of the Lithuanian Railways JSC Stasys Dailydka and director of ADY Express LLC Azad Gasimov within the framework of the meeting of Azerbaijani and Lithuanian senior representatives in railway sphere in Vilnius.

Deputy Director General of the Lithuanian Railways JSC Stasys Gudvalis and Deputy Chairman of the Azerbaijan Railways CJSC Igbal Huseynov also took part in the meeting.

"The sides discussed Azerbaijan's participation in the Viking railway project, as well as the prospects of increasing the volumes of cargo transportation within the framework of the project," Azmammadov said.

Combined transport train 'Viking' started running in 2003. Participants of the project are Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, and since 2012 Bulgaria. The total length of the Ilyichevsk (Ukraine)-Minsk (Belarus)-Draugyste (Lithuania) route is 1,766 kilometers.

In September 2015, the Ukrainian Railways JSC announced about the possibility of cargo transportation by train 'Viking' from China to Europe. The corresponding protocol was signed during the meeting of heads of railways of Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Ukraine on the formation of competitive tariff conditions for cargo transportation in Asia-Europe-Asia direction September 11, 2015 in Odessa city.

In February 2016, Ukraine and Lithuania signed a memorandum on the accession of the container train 'Viking' to the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route from Europe to China through Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov
Details added (first version posted on 11:53)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 4

By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend:

ADY Express LLC, which is engaged in multimodal cargo transportation in Azerbaijan, and the Lithuanian Railways JSC have signed an agreement in Vilnius on cargo transportation between the two countries, head of the press-service of the Azerbaijan Railways CJSC Nadir Azmammadov told Trend Apr. 4.

He said that the agreement provides for creation of a regulatory framework, defines obligations and rules for granting discounts and mutual payments for cargo transportation between Azerbaijan and Lithuania.

"The agreement will create conditions for expansion of cooperation opportunities in the field of transport and increase of the volumes of transit cargo between the two countries," said Azmammadov.

The document was signed by general director of the Lithuanian Railways JSC Stasys Dailydka and director of ADY Express LLC Azad Gasimov within the framework of the meeting of Azerbaijani and Lithuanian senior representatives in railway sphere in Vilnius.

Deputy Director General of the Lithuanian Railways JSC Stasys Gudvalis and Deputy Chairman of the Azerbaijan Railways CJSC Igbal Huseynov also took part in the meeting.

"The sides discussed Azerbaijan's participation in the Viking railway project, as well as the prospects of increasing the volumes of cargo transportation within the framework of the project," Azmammadov said.

Combined transport train 'Viking' started running in 2003. Participants of the project are Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, and since 2012 Bulgaria. The total length of the Ilyichevsk (Ukraine)-Minsk (Belarus)-Draugyste (Lithuania) route is 1,766 kilometers.

In September 2015, the Ukrainian Railways JSC announced about the possibility of cargo transportation by train 'Viking' from China to Europe. The corresponding protocol was signed during the meeting of heads of railways of Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Ukraine on the formation of competitive tariff conditions for cargo transportation in Asia-Europe-Asia direction September 11, 2015 in Odessa city.

In February 2016, Ukraine and Lithuania signed a memorandum on the accession of the container train 'Viking' to the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route from Europe to China through Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 4

Trend:

Armenian armed forces have broken the ceasefire with Azerbaijan 121 times by using 60, 82, 120 mm caliber mortars in various parts of the contact line between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies in the last 24 hours, Azerbaijani defense ministry said April 4.

Armenian armed forces located in the nameless heights, Berkaber and Paravakar villages of Armenia's Ijevan district opened fire at the positions of the Azerbaijani armed forces located in the nameless heights, Gizilhajili village of the Gazakh district, Kohneqishlaq village of the Agstafa district.

Armenian armed forces located in Voskevan village of Armenia's Noyemberyan district opened fire at the positions of the Azerbaijani armed forces located in Qushchu Ayrim village of the Gazakh district.

Armenian army also opened fire from positions near Gulustan village of the Goranboy district, Goyarkh, Yarimja, Chilaburt, Chayli villages of the Tartar district, Shikhlar, Bash Garvand, Javahirli, Sarijali, Kengerli, Novruzlu, Nemirli villages of the Aghdam district, Kuropatkino village of the Khojavend district, Horadiz, Gorgan, Qarakhanbayli, Ashagi Seyidahmadli villages of the Fizuli district and Mehdili village of the Jabrayil district.

Armenians also opened fire upon the Azerbaijani army positions from nameless heights in the Goygol, Goranboy, Khojavend, Fizuli and Jabrayil districts.

Azerbaijani armed forces inflicted 125 strikes upon Armenian positions.

On the night of Apr. 2, all frontier positions of Azerbaijan were exposed to heavy fire from large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. In addition, Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled.

The counter-attack was made following provocations of the Armenian armed forces at night of Apr. 2, which resulted in deaths and injuries of civilians.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures have been destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank damaged by a mine.

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.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 4

Trend:

Georgia always supports Azerbaijan's territorial integrity, said Tinatin Khidasheli, Georgian defense minister, during a phone conversation with Azerbaijani counterpart Zakir Hasanov.

The two countries' defense ministers discussed the recent situation along the line of contact between the Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, said Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry in a message issued Apr. 4.

Khidasheli also expressed hope that the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will be settled in a short time in line with international law.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.

A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.

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.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.4



By Samir Ali - Trend:



Life goes on as usual in Azerbaijan's Terter district which was most of all subjected to the fire by Armenian armed units on the frontal zone, Mustagim Mammadov, head of Terter District Executive Power, told Trend Apr.4.



"All structures and organizations are operating. There are no problems in the district," he said.



The power transmission lines, destroyed as a result of the artillery fire by Armenians, have been completely restored, according to Mammadov.



Currently, all villages of Terter district are provided with uninterrupted electricity supply, he added.



On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.



A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.



Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.



Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.



Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.



On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.



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.

Edited by SI
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.4



By Samir Ali - Trend:



Restoration work has started in the villages of Azerbaijan's Aghdam district which were subjected to the artillery shelling by Armenians, Ragub Mammadov, head of the Aghdam District Executive Power, told Trend Apr.4.



He noted that currently, the situation in Aghdam is relatively quiet.



"We meet the people whose houses were damaged as a result of the shelling on the contact line and render them all the possible assistance," said Mammadov.



He added that the power transmission lines in Asadli and Garadaghli villages were destroyed as a result of the artillery fire by Armenians, but the power supply was immediately restored.



"Moreover, 24 families in Tezekend village were left without electricity, but its supply was restored on Apr.3 in the evening," Mammadov added.



On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.



A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.



Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.



Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.



Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.



On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.



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.

Edited by SI
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 4

By Samir Ali - Trend:

Armenians are spreading the photos of dead soldiers killed in Ukraine on the social media trying to hide their losses and claiming that the corpses on the photos allegedly belonged to Azerbaijani soldiers, says Vagif Dargahli, head of the Azerbaijani defense ministry's press service.

"This is a provocation and they resorted to it because they don't have any facts," Dargahli told Trend Apr. 4. "Armenians are spreading the photos that are not related to Azerbaijan, which they found on social networks."

Dargahli added that Armenians are also spreading false information that allegedly Azerbaijani armed forces use violence and brutality against the Armenian civilians.

"Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry declares that the personnel of the Azerbaijani armed forces is fighting only against the Armenians, who have invaded the Azerbaijani territories," said Dargahli. "The Azerbaijani soldiers, unlike the Armenians, do not use violence against civilian population."

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.

A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.

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.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.4



Trend:



It is necessary to immediately stop the ceasefire violation in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov Apr.4, during a joint press conference with Moldovan counterpart Andrei Galbur, 'Russia 24' TV channel reported.



No difficulties should be created in renewing the efforts for peaceful settlement of the conflict, he added.



Lavrov said that he and Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu contacted their Azerbaijani counterparts and expressed concern over the situation and urged for the immediate ceasefire.



"In contact with Baku and Yerevan, we continue to ensure that signals are heard from the US, Russia and France, which are co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group," said the minister.



Lavrov said that the OSCE Minsk Group has made a statement similar to that of Russia.



"OSCE Minsk Group is a sufficiently great mechanism and it has set the principles which should be the basis for the final settlement of the conflict," Russia's foreign minister said. "A more compact mechanism is needed for practical work and OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs are such a mechanism which works through its official representatives together with the OSCE special representatives."



"OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs are in permanent contact with the conflicting sides, they come to Baku and Yerevan, visit the contact line," he said. "OSCE Minsk Group is the most important mechanism for resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and this mechanism should be fully supported."



The progress achieved by the OSCE Minsk Group in contacts with the conflicting sides is of great importance, according to Lavrov.



The documents, as well as those signed by heads of the OSCE Minsk Group countries, envisage the peaceful political settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict based on the principles of the Helsinki Final Act in all their totality, he added.



On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.



A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.



Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.



Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.



Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.



On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.



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.
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 4



Trend:



Department of International Military Cooperation of Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry hosted a meeting with military attaches of foreign embassies accredited in Azerbaijan, a message of the ministry said Apr.4.



The head of the Department of International Military Cooperation, Major General Huseyn Mahmudov took part in the meeting.



During the meeting, military attaches were informed about tension arising in recent years on the contact line of the Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, including the causes of ceasefire violations, attempts of Armenians to attack the front line of defense, a constant bombardment by Armenian Armed Forces from large-caliber weapons of the Azerbaijani villages located along the front line.



Meanwhile, military attaches were informed that houses of civilian population, transport vehicles are under intensive artillery fire, but Armenia's provocative actions are being prevented.



On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.



A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.



Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.



Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.



Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.



On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.



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.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.4

By Ilhama Isabalayeva - Trend:

The education process has been disrupted in educational institutions in Azerbaijan's border regions located near the zone of military operations, Azerbaijan's Education Ministry told Trend Apr.4.

Azerbaijan's settlements along the frontline were subjected to heavy fire from Armenian positions.

"Seydimli village of Azerbaijan's Terter district was subjected to the artillery fire by Armenian armed forces," read a message from the ministry. "One of the shells hit the courtyard of the villager Sahib Veliyev, injuring the house owner and his 13-year-old grandson."

Moreover, as a result of the artillery fire on the frontline villages of Azerbaijan's Aghdam district on Apr.2, a shell hit the Sarijali school #1.

No casualties were reported, however, the school's building was seriously damaged.

One of the shells also hit a school in the village of Ayag Gervend.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.

A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against

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.

Edited by SI
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 4

By Anakhanum Khidayatova - Trend:

Azerbaijan has adequately responded to Armenia, says Mehmet Fatih Oztarsu, vice chairman of the Turkish analytical center Strategic Outlook.

"Armenia's aggression against Azerbaijan has intensified recently," Oztarsu, who is an expert on the South Caucasus, told Trend April 4.

"The Azerbaijani army is ready to repel any attack of the armed forces of Armenia," he added.

The expert also said the Armenian side launched a campaign to slander Azerbaijan after the recent events along the line of contact.

"Azerbaijan has also been able to successfully withstand the Armenians' anti-Azerbaijani campaign," added Oztarsu.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.

A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.

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.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Anahanum
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 4

By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:

Azerbaijan's army has proved its combat capability, adequately responding to Armenia's provocation, says Svante Cornell, director of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and Silk Road Studies Program of the John Hopkins University.

The recent incident testifies that the combat capability of the Azerbaijani army has greatly improved, Cornell told Trend Apr. 4.

Regarding Armenia's aggression, Cornell said the Armenian side carried out a similar provocation in 2014.

"Taking into account the period of Armenia's provocation, one can see that this provocation took place after the Nuclear Security Summit in the US," Cornell said, adding that this is not a coincidence.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.

A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.

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.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.4

By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:

Azerbaijan can count on Turkey's full support, Suleyman Latif Yunusoglu, former MP from Turkey's opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), told Trend by telephone Apr.4.

He said Ankara attaches special importance to Nagorno-Karabakh, adding that Turkey should render any assistance to Azerbaijan in this issue.

"The whole world knows that Nagorno-Karabakh is the age-old Azerbaijani land," said Yunusoglu.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.

A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.

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.

Edited by SI

---

Follow the author on Twitter:@rhafizoglu
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 4

By Ilhama Isabalayeva - Trend:

Pakistan, Belarus and Georgia have openly expressed readiness to support the fair settlement of the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, said Ali Ahmadov, deputy prime minister, deputy chairman and executive secretary of the ruling New Azerbaijan Party.

Speaking to reporters Apr. 4, Ahmadov praised this readiness, adding this indicates that the leaderships of those countries no longer want to tolerate the injustice against Azerbaijan.

"That, in turn, shows that Azerbaijan is not alone in this conflict," added Ahmadov. "All this is the result of the successful foreign policy pursued by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and the victory of diplomacy."

"Azerbaijan's policy of multiplying its supporters by bringing its fair position to the world is yielding positive results," said Ahmadov, adding this indicates the weakening of the positions of Armenians, who occupied Azerbaijan's lands, and the positions of their protectors.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.

A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.

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.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 4

Trend:

Azerbaijan's Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov sent letters Apr. 4 to leading states and international organizations over the situation along the contact line of Armenian and Azerbaijani armies.

The letters were directed to the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairing countries, OSCE chairperson-in-office and the three countries permanently chairing that organization, as well as the secretary generals of the UN, OIC and NATO, and the EU's high commissioner, said Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry.

The letters contain information about the facts of ceasefire violation by Armenia on Apr. 2, during which several civilians in frontline areas were killed.

"In order to ensure the security of civilians within the internationally recognized borders, Azerbaijani armed forces took necessary measures to stop the Armenian provocations," according to the letters.

It was also said in the letters that the main reason of the ceasefire violation and escalation of the situation is the presence of Armenian armed forces in Azerbaijan's occupied territories.

"The resolutions of the UN Security Council confirm that the Nagorno-Karabakh region is Azerbaijan's integral part and demand the unconditional and immediate withdrawal of Armenian troops from the occupied lands," read the letters.

"Armenia should stop deceiving its people and international community, put an end to the occupation policy, withdraw its troops from Azerbaijan's occupied territories, constructively participate in the negotiation process and fulfill its international obligations," the letters said.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.

A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.

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.

Edited by EA
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr.4

Trend:

A criminal case has been initiated in Azerbaijan's Terter district over the injury of two civilians as a result of the artillery fire by Armenians, read a message from the district's police department and prosecutor's office.

A number of settlements of Terter district in the frontal zone, including the Azadgaragoyunlu and Duyerli villages were once again subjected to fire by Armenians.

One of the artillery shells fired by Armenian armed forces towards the Azadgaragoyunlu village, hit a house owned by Mirza Rahimov at around 21:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours), Apr.3. Later, at around 14:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours), Apr.4, three artillery shells fired by Armenian armed forces towards the Duyerli village, hit Etibar Guliyev's house and completely destroyed it. Mehpara Aliyeva and Kamala Aghayeva, living in the neighborhood, received shrapnel wounds and were rushed to the hospital.

A criminal case has been initiated by the prosecutor's office of Terter district on each fact under the relevant articles of the country's Criminal Code and an investigation is underway.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.

A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.

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.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 4

By Orkhan Guluzade - Trend:

Turkey will always support Azerbaijan, said President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Apr. 4, TRT Haber news channel reported.

He was also quoted to say that Azerbaijan is a brotherly country for Turkey.

"I am confident that sooner or later, the Azerbaijani refugees will return to their historical lands," added Erdogan.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.

A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.

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.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 4

By Samir Ali - Trend:

Armenian armed units have shelled the Ahmadaghalilar village of Azerbaijan's Aghdam district, Ragub Mammadov, head of the district's executive power, told Trend Apr. 4.

A shell, fired from Armenian heavy artillery, hit a village mosque, he added.

The village's resident Garash Dadashov, who was in the mosque that time, died of the sustained injuries.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well. There are casualties among civilians as a result of the shelling.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

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.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 4

Trend:

The main concern now is to prevent the escalation and stop fighting in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone, says Ariel Cohen, founder of International Market Analysis Ltd., director of the Center for Energy, Natural Resources and Geopolitics, senior fellow at the Institute for Analysis of Global Security.

"The US or Russia could not arrange for a meaningful pathway forward to end the conflict and start moving toward the end of the occupation. An opportunity for a meeting in Washington was missed," he told Trend Apr. 4.

"Clearly, Russia would be interested in inserting its peacekeepers to the conflict zone, including Karabakh and the line of contact in the seven occupied districts," believes the expert.

"This approach worked for Russia in Transnistria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia," added Cohen. "It is a mechanism to control post-imperial space."

He also said Russia benefits from boosting its power by keeping its former dependencies down and selling weapons to both sides.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well. There are casualties among civilians as a result of the shelling.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

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.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 4

By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:

Armenia must immediately withdraw from the occupied Azerbaijani lands, Necdet Unuvar, chairman of the Turkey-Azerbaijan Interparliamentary Friendship Group at Turkey's Grand National Assembly, told Trend Apr. 4.

"OSCE's Minsk Group is responsible for the tension along the line of contact between the Azerbaijani and Armenian troops," he added. "The Minsk Group with its inaction over the years prolonged the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh."

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.

A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.

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.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 4

Trend:

Armenia's Defense Ministry made a statement Apr. 4 calling for starting working out technical terms of a truce, RIA Novosti reported.

"We agree with the calls for stopping the military operations," read a message from the ministry.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well. There are casualties among civilians as a result of the shelling.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

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.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 4

By Aygun Badalova, Trend:

Armenians must realize that the future of their children rests with making peace in the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Rob Sobhani, the US Caspian Group Holdings CEO, told Trend Apr. 4.

He outlined the role that France and the US can play to bring peace to the region.

"It is very important that Paris and Washington give this message to Moscow: you must assist in the process of bringing peace to the people of Armenia and Azerbaijan," added Sobhani.

He recalled that on June 28, 1914, the spark that lit the world on fire and led to First World War was one man's assassination of the Archduke of Austria.

"Today we may be witnessing the same spark," added Sobhani.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well. There are casualties among the civilians as a result of the shelling.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

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.
Details added (first version posted on 19:53)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 4

Trend:

Azerbaijan's army may carry out strikes on the city of Khankendi and other occupied settlements, read a message posted on the website of Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry Apr. 4.

"Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry has tasked all the types of the armed forces, including the rocket and artillery troops, to be ready to carry out crushing strikes from all heavy combat weapons on the Khankendi city and other occupied settlements, if the Armenians don't stop shelling Azerbaijani settlements in a short time," said the message.

Armenian armed forces are targeting densely populated residential areas and civilians in order to retaliate for heavy causalities along the frontline, added the ministry.

"Acting inhumanly, the Armenian side provokes Azerbaijan to take counter measures despite the continuous warnings made by Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry to the Armenian side," said the message. "Azerbaijan once again calls on Armenia to respect the international law and norms and stop the use of lethal force against civilians."

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well. There are casualties among the civilians as a result of the shelling.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

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.
Details added (first version posted 23:07)

Baku, Azerbaijan, April 4

Trend:

The representatives of the separatist regime of Nagorno Karabakh have recognized that as a result of Azerbaijan's strikes 20 people were killed, 72 injured, 26 people are missing, News.am reported.

The report noted that the Armenian side also lost seven tanks.

The Armenian Defense Ministry in its turn reported the death of seven volunteers in the conflict zone as a result of strikes of Azerbaijani Armed Forces' drone, according to RIA Novosti.

Earlier, Defense Ministry reported the death of five volunteers as a result of strikes of Azerbaijani Armed Forces' drone.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.

A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.

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.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 4

Trend:

On April 2, large-scale ceasefire violations took place along the line of contact in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone, leading to at least 33 fatalities, according to the report of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

"Official sources from Armenia and Azerbaijan state that at least 30 soldiers and 3 civilians have died as a result of the fighting," the report said. "The number of injured persons, both civilian and military, is yet to be confirmed by official sources. Unofficial sources estimated this number to be more than 200."

On the night of Apr. 2, all frontier positions of Azerbaijan were exposed to heavy fire from large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. In addition, Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were fired at.

The counter-attack was made following provocations of the Armenian armed forces at night of Apr. 2, which resulted in deaths and injuries of civilians.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures have been destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the fights.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank damaged by a mine

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.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 4

By Samir Ali - Trend:

Armenian armed forces have resumed shelling of Azerbaijani positions along the line of contact, head of the press service of the Azerbaijani defense ministry Vagif Dargahli told Trend Apr. 4.

"On the night of Apr. 4, the situation on the contact line deteriorated again," he said. "Despite the fact that on Apr. 4 morning the situation somewhat stabilized, the enemy renewed shelling of our positions using heavy artillery again, including the settlements in Azerbaijan's Aghdere, Khojavand, Aghdam and Terter districts. Azerbaijani armed forces returned the fire at the enemy."

On the night of Apr. 2, all frontier positions of Azerbaijan were exposed to heavy fire from large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. In addition, Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled.

The counter-attack was made following provocations of the Armenian armed forces at night of Apr. 2, which resulted in deaths and injuries of civilians.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures have been destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank damaged by a mine.

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.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 4

Trend:

Armenia continues to aggravate the situation despite the unilateral suspension of counteroffensive and response measures by Azerbaijani armed forces on the front line since April 3, Azerbaijani defense ministry said in a statement Apr. 4.

In order to regain the lost positions, the enemy attacks Azerbaijani positions in the Aghdere-Terter and Khojavand-Fuzuli directions, carries out intense shelling of the settlements near the contact line of Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, according to the statement.

During the fighting on Apr. 3 and on the night of Apr. 4, the Armenians suffered numerous losses in manpower and military equipment, the defense ministry said.

Three soldiers of the Azerbaijani armed forces were killed in the fights, according to the ministry.

On the night of Apr. 2, all frontier positions of Azerbaijan were exposed to heavy fire from large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. In addition, Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled.

The counter-attack was made following provocations of the Armenian armed forces at night of Apr. 2, which resulted in deaths and injuries of civilians.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures have been destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank damaged by a mine.

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.
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 4

Trend:

The Armenian leadership has been deliberately deceiving its people for a long time, for its own interests, deputy head of Azerbaijani presidential administration and defense issues assistant to Azerbaijani president, Lieutenant-General Vahid Aliyev said in an exclusive interview with Trend.

Aliyev was responding to a question regarding the Armenian side's accusations that Azerbaijani army was the one first violating the ceasefire and launching the offensive, using artillery, armored vehicles and aircraft.

"One thing is to deceive its own people, but another thing is to blatantly deceive the international community," he said.

"The matter rests in the fact that the violation of the ceasefire regime by Azerbaijan is illogical," he said. "As opposed to the Armenian side, the civilians continue living densely thanks to the Azerbaijani armed forces. Everybody knows about multiple, sometimes violent provocations of the Armenian armed forces against Azerbaijani citizens."

As an example, he brought up Armenians shooting at the wedding attendees near the border zone, shelling of shepherds, children, workers and burning of farmlands.

"It's impossible to list everything," Aliyev said. "This, becoming a habit of the Armenian side, couldn't last for long."

"On the night of April 1-2, the Armenian armed forces, more brutally and impudently, attempted to shell the civilian border villages by using large-caliber artillery weapons," he said. "This again resulted in civilian casualties. This could not and did not remain unanswered."

Aliyev went on to add that surely, in order to stop such attempts and protect the population in future, Azerbaijani armed forces had to suppress the enemy's firing points.

"Everyone knows how it all ended," he said. "Once again I'd like to express my condolences to the families of the deceased and pay tribute to our armed forces. When our army undertook the response measures, the Armenian side started to panic, flee, and our armed forces took the heights left by the Armenians. The Azerbaijani side always advocated for the peaceful resolution of this protracted conflict."

"I would like to emphasize that we advocate for a peaceful solution, not peaceful continuation of the conflict," he said. "It is clear that the Armenian leadership is guided by the 'rule of force' principle. They continue to think like it's the 1990s. They were, and remain people who came to power using the policy of war, blood of Azerbaijani and Armenian peoples, and continue to use the same principle."

"So, if they still don't want to understand all this, then they must be forced to understand - if judging by the 'rule of force' principle, we have this force and if they want new victims they may continue acting in the same manner, we can only regret about this and do our job," Aliyev said.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 4

Trend:

Azerbaijan is ready for a ceasefire, but the Armenian armed forces must withdraw from all the occupied territories of Azerbaijan in line with the UN Security Council resolutions, Azerbaijani foreign ministry spokesman Hikmat Hajiyev told Trend.

Hajiyev made the remarks following the statement by Armenia's President Serzh Sargsyan, who said Armenia is ready for compromises in the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Hajiyev went on to add that Azerbaijan's territorial integrity and sovereignty should be ensured within the internationally recognized borders. He also stressed that the country decided to unilaterally suspend the counterattack and response measures on April 3.

However, the Armenian armed forces continue intensely shelling of settlements and civilians along the contact line of the troops, he said.

"Azerbaijan has repeatedly stated that the main cause of the ceasefire violations and the escalation of the situation is the presence of the Armenian armed forces in the occupied Azerbaijani territories," Hajiyev said.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.

A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.

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.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 4

By Elena Kosolapova - Trend:

Pakistan has always condemned all the atrocities committed by Armenians and even today, at the time of escalation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Pakistan is standing along with brotherly country Azerbaijan, Ahmad Farooq, secretary to the Pakistani president, told Trend Apr. 4.

"Pakistan always stands by Azerbaijan," he said. "Azerbaijan is a brotherly and friendly country."

Farooq went on to add that Azerbaijan stood by Pakistan on the issue of Kashmir conflict and Pakistan has stood by Azerbaijan on the issue of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Earlier, the government of Azerbaijan received a military assistance offer from the defense ministry of Pakistan.

Pakistan's defense ministry offered assistance in the form of military equipment and ammunition. The move came following the recent developments along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.

A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.

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.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 4

By Azad Hasanli - Trend:

The foreign exchange reserves held by the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) increased by $39.5 million (0.98 percent) up to $4.065.8 billion in March 2016 compared to February, said the message on CBA's website on April 4.

According to the statistics, the CBA's foreign exchange reserves decreased by $5.406.3 billion (by 2.3 times) compared to March 2015.

The CBA's foreign exchange reserves have been reducing since July 2014. At the very beginning, this process was slow (around $20-50 million), but the volume has sharply reduced since December 2014, the statement said.

The reducing of reserves is connected with an increase in demand for US dollar supply in the country, as well as intervention by the CBA to keep the manat rate at a stable level, according to the statement.
Tehran, Iran, April 4

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

An Iranian court has delivered a death sentence formerly issued for billionaire Babak Zanjani.

Zanjani's lawyer Rasoul Koohpaye Zadeh said he received the sentence from Revolution Court Branch 15, ILNA news agency reported April 4.

"The delivery process has in fact begun today as the verdict comes in 318 pages and we should start taking notes, which takes time. When we are done taking notes, the verdict is considered as delivered, since which day we will have 20 days to plea," the lawyer added.

A ruling announced March 6 convicted Zanjani and sentenced him to death, according to the Islamic juristic laws.

In December 2013, Iranian judiciary officials accused Zanjani of massive fraud at the Oil Ministry and money laundering. He has been kept in custody and attended court hearing sessions since then.

After sanctions were imposed against the National Iranian Oil Company, Iran had to partially export its oil through Zanjani's channels. Meanwhile, the ministry said Zanjani still owes more than two billion euros for the oil exports he handled on behalf of the former government.
Tashkent, Uzbekistan, April 4

By Demir Azizov- Trend:

The Uzbek Foreign Ministry hosted a meeting Apr.4 with the delegation of the Foreign Ministry of Netherlands led by Special Envoy for UN Affairs Jan-Paul Dirkse, Uzbek Ministry's message said.

The state of bilateral relations in various fields was reviewed during the meeting, according to the message.

"The first round of political discussions between the two foreign ministries held in December 2015 allowed to focus on the most promising areas of cooperation of mutual interest and to expand the Uzbek-Dutch agenda," said the message.

The parties also discussed the practical aspects of preparations for the upcoming contacts at various levels, including the agricultural and other sectors.

Special attention was paid to the issues of cooperation within the UN, where the candidacy of Netherlands has been nominated as the UN Security Council non-permanent member in 2017-2018.
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 4



By Farhad Daneshvar - Trend:



Iranian Army's elite forces namely "the 65 Nohed Airborne Brigade" has deployed a group of its commandos in Syria to provide advisory support for President Bashar al-Assad's army in fight against terrorist groups, an Iranian commander said.



Brigadier-General Ali Arasteh, an Iranian Army commander, has said that in addition to the brigade, other units of the army have also deployed forces in Syria, Tasnim news agency reported.



Iranian officials have constantly confirmed that the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) provides the Syrian army with advisory support in fight against terrorist groups. However, this is the first time that reports have broken regarding the involvement of Iranian Army forces in Syria.



Recently, the Syrian army, backed by Russian warplanes, has advanced in fight against the IS terrorist group (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh) after recapturing the ancient city of Palmyra.



According to media reports Syrian army has launched offensives targeting IS-held towns including al-Qaryatain and Sukhnah.



Observers suggest that Russia's six-month air campaign as well as Iran's military support for Syrian army in fight against terrorist groups have had a key role in turning the tide of the five-year conflict in the Syrian government's favor.



More than 250,000 people have been killed in the Syrian crisis with hundreds of thousands displaced since crisis sparked in the country.
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 4



By Farhad Daneshvar - Trend:



Iranians have been observing and discussing the issue of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict following the escalation of military confrontation between Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan.



On the night of April 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns.



On the same day, responding to the Armenian aggression, Azerbaijani armed forces launched counter-attack operations that led to the liberation of several strategic heights and settlements. Situation on the contact line between the armies has remained tense since then.



While official Tehran has constantly expressed support for the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, a large number of social media users as well as a group of media outlets have cried foul at Yerevan condemning Armenian aggression of Azerbaijan.



"Iran supports Azerbaijan's territorial integrity in Karabakh conflict," Iranian Ambassador to Azerbaijan Mohsen Pak Ayeen was quoted as saying on April 3.



He further added that Karabakh is situated in Azerbaijani territory.



In turn, a group of social media users particularly Iranian Azerbaijanis have expressed support and solidarity with Azerbaijan over Karabakh conflict changing their profile pictures to Azerbaijani flags.



"Karabakh belongs to Azerbaijan and this region must get rid of Armenia," MP for Tabriz City Alireza Monadi-Sefidan was quoted as saying at a parliamentary session on April 3.



Official IRNA news agency, reporting on the recent Karabakh tensions, said that Karabakh was an Azerbaijani populated region but under the former Soviet Union's policies the Communist Party adopted policies in the region aimed at decreasing the number of Azerbaijani inhabitants.



Donya-e Eqtesad newspaper citing Russia Today said that Armenian army has taken provocative measures to escalate the tensions in the region.



"Armenia has violated ceasefire many times and continues its policies on occupying Azerbaijan's territories," Durna News said following reports on the escalation of clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan.



In addition to the recent comments, over the past two decades Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as well as a number of religious leaders have condemned the Armenian aggression against Azerbaijani Muslims in Karabakh several times.



"The occupation of Karabakh [by Armenia] has always been condemned by Iran," Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's representative in East Azerbaijan Province Ayatollah Mohsen Mojtehed-e Shabestari had said earlier.



In a recent development, Iran's Foreign Ministry has urged Azerbaijan and Armenia to show restraint and avoid any move that can escalate their tensions.



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.
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 4

By Ilgar Emil - Trend:

An Iranian house in East Azerbaijan Province was destroyed by a mortar shell, fired by Armenian troops on April 4, ISNA reported.

Saeid Shabestari-Khiabani, the deputy governor-general of East Azerbaijan Province for security affairs told ISNA that after investigation Iranian experts found out that the martor shell was fired by Armenian troops.

He added that a village house in Khudaferin County was destroyed, but no one was killed.

Shabestari-Khiabani further added that Foreign Ministry will discuss the issue with Armenian side.

Iran announced of April 3 also that three mortar shells landed in a village in Khudaferin Country.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.

A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.

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.
Yemen's internationally recognized President Abdu-Rabbu Mansour Hadi on Sunday sacked the current prime minister and appointed a new vice president, an official told Xinhua.

Hadi relieved Khalid Bahah of his duties as the prime minister, and appointed him as a political advisor to the president. A presidential source attributed his dismissal to "managerial incompetence."

Meanwhile, powerful army General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar was promoted to the vice president from the deputy of armed forces in less than two months, according to local political experts.

According to the presidential decrees issued by Hadi, Dr. Ahmed Obeid Bin Dagher, a senior leader of the General People's Congress party, was appointed as a new Yemeni prime minister to replace Bahah.

On Feb. 22, Hadi appointed General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar as the vice commander-in-chief in a bid to retake the rebel-held capital Sanaa from the Shiite Houthi group control.

The 70-year-old army general defected from the Yemeni army and joined the forces against former President Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2011. He was forced into exile after rebels controlled Sanaa in 2014.

The Iran-allied rebels, backed by Saleh's loyalist forces, seized Sanaa in September 2014, and forced Saudi-backed Hadi, along with his government, into exile.

The Saudi-led coalition has carried out daily air bombing the Shiite Houthi rebels and their allied forces since March 2015, vowing to drive out the rebels and retrieve Sanaa.

More than 6,000 people have been killed in ground battles and airstrikes, half of them civilians.
The anti-Islamic State coalition conducting airstrikes in Iraq and Syria has killed the IS militant believed responsible for an attack on U.S. troops in northern Iraq last month that left a Marine dead, it said on Sunday, Reuters reported.

Militant Jasim Khadijah, a former Iraqi officer not considered a high-value target, was killed by a drone strike overnight in northern Iraq, coalition spokesman U.S. Army Col. Steve Warren told reporters in Baghdad.

"We have information (that) he was a rocket expert, he controlled these attacks," said Warren, referring to the shelling of a base used by U.S. troops near the town of Makhmour, located between Mosul and Kirkuk.

That attack killed Marine Staff Sergeant Louis Cardin and wounded eight others, all part of a company-sized detachment of less than 200 troops. They provide force protection fire to Iraqi army troops, who are making slow progress in a campaign to clear areas around Mosul, an IS stronghold.

Cardin's was the second combat death of an American service member in Iraq since the start of the campaign to fight the militant group in 2014.

Warren said five other Islamic State fighters were killed in the air strike.
The death toll from flash floods triggered by torrential rains in northwestern Pakistan and parts of Kashmir has risen to 53, Press TV reported.

The victims lost their lives in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province and in the Neelam Valley in Pakistan-administered Kashmir after the heavy downpours that began on Saturday night caused landslides and the roofs of dozens of homes to collapse.

The districts of Shangla and Kohistan were the worst-hit areas, where 14 and 12 people were killed respectively.

Flooding also injured at least 60 people, hit huge tracts of farmland and washed away crops across the region.

Official figures show that heavy rains have killed at least 121 people, injured 124 and damaged 852 houses across Pakistan since March 9. Collapsed roofs and landslides have caused most of the fatalities.

Pakistan experiences severe weather patterns every year, which have affected millions of people, claimed many lives and wiped out millions of acres of farmland in recent years.

Monsoon, a rainy season that starts in mid-July and lasts until the end of August, strikes Pakistan hard each year.

Torrential downpours and flooding killed 81 people and affected almost 300,000 Pakistanis across the country during the rainy season last summer.

In 2010, flooding killed 1,200 people and impacted one-fifth of Pakistan's population of over 190 million.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 4

Trend:

The way to settle the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict lies through dialogue and compromise, said Sergei Naryshkin, speaker of Russia's State Duma (lower house of parliament).

Naryshkin made the remarks speaking to reporters, TASS news agency reported Apr. 4.

The way to the restoration of peace is always through dialogue, compromise, and both sides should constantly seek the peace and compromise, the official said answering to a question.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.

A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.

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.
At least six Afghan police officers have lost their lives after their convoy was ambushed by Taliban militants in the country's northern province of Balkh, an Afghan official says, according to Press TV.



According to Abdul Manan Raoufi, the police operation chief of the province, the militants attacked the convoy on Sunday night in the Dawlat Abad district of Balkh.



He said the ambush happened when the police were en route to the neighboring province of Jawzjan after conducting a military operation in the district.



Raoufi added that a Taliban leader was also killed in the gunfight between Afghan police and the militant group.


The Turkish General Staff announced on Sunday that a total number of 27 PKK terrorists were killed in operations in the southeastern provinces of Mardin, Sirnak, and Hakkari on Saturday, Anadolu reported.

The General Staff website reported that six PKK terrorists were killed in Mardin province's Nusaybin district, four were killed in Sirnak province, and 17 were killed in Hakkari province's Yuksekova district.

Many Kalashnikov rifles, magazines, walkie-talkies, and grenades were seized. In addition, many hand-made explosives were disposed of.

Meanwhile security forces seized 92 pieces of rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) ammo, 5,500 Dragunov sniper rifle bullets, and 137 grenades during an off-road search in Hakkari province's Cukurca district.

Tension is high in southeastern Turkey since the PKK - listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the EU - resumed its 30-year armed campaign against Turkey in July 2015.

Since then, over 350 members of the security forces have been martyred and thousands of PKK terrorists killed in operations across Turkey and northern Iraq.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 4

By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:

Turkey fully supports Azerbaijan, former speaker of the Grand National Assembly (parliament) of Turkey Mehmet Ali Sahin said, the Turkish newspaper 'Konya' reported Apr. 4.

He said that Turkey also urges Armenia to withdraw its occupying forces from Azerbaijani lands.

The whole world knows and understands that Armenia occupied Azerbaijani lands, said Ali Sahin.

He made the remarks in connection with the recent developments on the contact line of Azerbaijani and Armenian troops.

On the night of Apr. 2, all frontier positions of Azerbaijan were exposed to heavy fire from large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. In addition, Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were fired at.

The counter-attack was made following provocations of the Armenian armed forces at night of Apr. 2, which resulted in deaths and injuries of civilians.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures have been destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the fights.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank damaged by a mine.

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.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Turkey has offered to help Pakistan in every way in the aftermath of deadly flash floods in the country that have so far killed more than 60 people, Anadolu Agency reported.



Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement Monday that Turkey remains in solidarity with Pakistan and its Pakistani brothers. It also said that in case of any need, Turkey is ready to offer every kind of help.



According to initial reports, more than 60 people have been killed and dozens others have been injured during heavy rainfall in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhawa province and Gilgit-Baltistan region near the border with China.



"We wish Allah's mercy and grace for the victims, offer our sympathy to the families of those killed in the disaster and wish a speedy recovery to the survivors," the statement added.



Torrential rainfall and flashfloods have also caused landslides in several parts of KP and Gilgit-Baltistan, killing 63 people, blocking roads and cutting remote villages off from main districts, according to Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority.


Literatura Random House published in 2014 this award-winning novel from Spain. (Photo : El Corte Ingles)

Oh, yes, Im the great pretender.



So goes the first line of the 1955 R&B hit by the American singing group, The Platters.



It might as well be the perfect line to utter (or to sing) by Spanish Enric Marco who lied to his countrymen and to the rest of the world by presenting himself as a World War II (1939-1945) prisoner who survived the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps.



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The top honor in this years 21st Century Zou Taofen Foreign Novel of the Year Award went to Javier Cercass El Impostor (The Impostor), reported the Global Times.



Javier also received $10,000 as part of the prize.



The ceremony, held on March 25 in Beijing, saw five other winning books from Japan, Russia, France and Germany, two of which were non-fiction.



Marco, turning 95 on April 12, serves as the protagonist in Javiers 425-page, three-volume novel published in 2014.



The author met Marco in 2009. Spanish historian Benito Bermejo exposed the truth about Marco in May 2005, according to El Pais.



Truth, as they say, is stranger than fiction.



Beijing-based Peoples Literature Publishing House established the 21st Century Foreign Novel of the Year Award in 2002.



The literary award honors Zou Taofen (1895-1944), the Fujian-born journalist and publisher who openly opposed the Japanese army through his writings in the 1930s.



When he sat as editor-in-chief of Life Weekly in 1926, Zou injected into the magazine a reforming spirit. Soon its circulation soared and became the top-selling weekly magazine in the country, according to Shanghai Star.



A part of his three-story house in Chongqing Road in Shanghai, where he resided from 1930-1936, was converted into a museum.



The municipal government of Shanghai listed The Zou Taofen Memorial as a municipal-level historical site on May 26, 1959.



The museum houses, among other valued materials, original copies and reproductions of manuscripts and documents from some of the countrys prominent historical figures, including those by Mao Zedong (1893-1976), Soong Ching-ling or Song Qingling (1893-1981) and Zhou Enlai (1898-1976).



Brain cancer claimed the life of Zou, who proved that many of the courageous people in the world wield pens, not swords.


A brain model in a three-dimensional or 3D printer. (Photo : Getty Images)

For deaths associated with fire or vehicular accident or any incident that caused the disfiguration of the face or the loss of a body part, families may choose to have the coffin of their loved one closed.



Others might even resort to cremation.



There is now, however, something that can be done about it that will allow families, friends and other people to see, for the last time, the remains of someone who already passed away.



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3D printing or additive manufacturing can provide a missing ear, fix a damaged nose, or make a corpse to look like a live person sleeping.



Works like magic, people might say.



The website 3Dprinting.com provides a simple definition of what 3D printing is about: a process of making three-dimensional solid objects from a digital file.



Armand Valdes, a video producer at Mashable, said that it is also called additive manufacturing because through it, an object is created by adding material layer by layer.



Sand, edible food, precious metals, animal cells--even salt and dirt--can be used as source materials in 3D printing, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica.



The Shanghai Longhua Funeral Home set up a 3D printing facility on March 30, reported Shanghai Daily.



Liu Fengming, an official from the Shanghai Funeral and Interment Service Center, said that makeup cannot anymore do anything when it comes to incomplete faces or bodies.



Liu added that the 3D printing may take about a week, with a 95 percent success rate.



Longhua charges not more than 10,000 yuan or approximately $1,500 for partial repairs on a corpse.



Founded in 1954, this funeral parlor in Xuhui District could be the first one to use 3D printing technologies, according to CRIEnglish.



Another funeral parlor in Shanghai, this time in Minhang District, can do wonders on human ashes.



For those families who had the remains of their relations cremated, Yishan Funeral Parlor offers them a unique service where it will turn the ashes into life crystals, according to Shanghai Daily.



Yishan asks for 17,900 yuan (about $2,700) for its one-of-a-kind service.


Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon are two upcoming role-playing video games in the Pokemon series. (Photo : Twitter/Pokemon)

The latest Pokenchi episode proved quite a letdown as no solid gameplay details came out of the broadcast though GameFreak's Junichi Masuda managed to tease some info that the Holiday 2016 release date of the Pokemon Sun and Moon will apparently deliver. The Pokemons to come with the fresh titles are likely of the Generation 7 class and they will be aplenty.



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Masuda's appearance on Pokenchi did not live up to expectations but the show somehow has extracted things to look forward to. There were no specific Pokemons mentioned - no Volcanion nor Zygarde - but Masuda revealed that gamers can expect no less than 10 fresh Mons to drop come the unpacking time.



And if the previously leaked details are to go by, the chance is high that the next batch of Pokemons will be part of the Gen 7 class. "This seems like a no-brainer but for someone from GameFreak to confirm new Pokemon in Sun and Moon to be more support that this is indeed Generation 7," iDigitalTimes said in a report.



The online publication has earlier speculated that the Sun and Moon is a Gen 7 Pokemon release, meaning the storyline that centered on Kalos will continue but in a different setting or region. The coming of Gen 7 class was also hinted by the leak of characters like the multi-form Zygarde and Magearna, the latter was somehow discussed during the February issue of the Japanese manga CoroCoro.



So in the upcoming April 15 edition of the same magazine, a new era of Pokemon games will be up for revelation, Nintendo Insider reported. Fans are expecting that in the next few days, more juicy details will be provided such as specific character names and some bits on the Pokemon gameplay.



And while waiting, Cinema Blend pointed to a YouTube clip (can be viewed below) that could be source of the things to come. As the report said in trying to read between the lines, it might be that "you can spot something no one else can."



The Pokemon Sun and Moon release date, Nintendo said, will happen around the 2016 Holiday season exclusively for 3DS gamers.






China and the United States lead the involved nations in signing the landmark climate deal. (Photo : Getty Images)

China's foreign minister declares an "ease" in the South China Sea tension in the wake of President Xi Jinping's meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit.



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According to Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi as first reported in China Daily, the talk between the two leaders that lasted one and a half hour had positive effects on the heightened tensions related to the territorial dispute in the South China Sea.



The Meeting



The internationally monitored meeting between Obama and Xi finally occurred on Thursday, March 31, while the two leaders attended this year's NSS.



The meeting was an unrelated activity with the event, but it became one of the highlights of the summit especially after China's foreign minister revealed the gist of what the two most powerful men on the planet talked about.



"The Americans have said that they will not take sides (in the South China Sea issue), so it should not be a problem for the China-U.S. relationship," Wang declared, adding that China is confident that even the next president of the United States would want to retain the warming relations between their countries.



During the meeting, the two leaders discussed economic policies, nuclear security cooperation related to North Korea, and certain maritime issues that involve some of China's disputed territories.



According to China Daily, the Chinese president acknowledged the U.S.'s different view on the matter of their territories and admitted that it is important for all sides to participate in a dialogue to resolve the dilemma peacefully.



Disputed Territory



According to the International Business Times, the South China Sea serves as passage for over $5 billion worth of trade with a bonus of vast undersea resources.



Taking this into consideration, it is not surprising that China--one of the world's biggest countries--would declare "exclusion zone" as it navigates privileges it can claim under international law.



However, many other Asian countries including Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines have placed claims on different parts of the region that it sparked a long-running dispute on who holds the territorial power over the contested areas.



While China appears to be outnumbered, it goes without saying that the country is more powerful than the smaller nations claiming territory in the South China Sea.



Because of this, the U.S. government seemed to have taken the responsibility of intervening, something which China is not happy about.



In fact, Chinese President Xi warned Obama not to do anything rash in the guise of "freedom of navigation" ahead of their meeting during the NSS.






Ambassador to France Seeks Chinese Language in Billboards for France to Attract More Tourists from China

France Honours Attack Victims As The Nation Mourns (Photo : Getty Images)

Many countries which are the destinations of Chinese tourists, especially in Asia and Oceania, are adjusting to the needs of their foreign guests by hiring Chinese-speaking employees. As more Chinese become wealthier, many are traveling beyond Asia and the U.S.



Europe is one of their new destinations. In 2013, 1.7 million tourists visited France and spent $681 million. To attract more tourists from China, Chinese Ambassador to France Zhai Jun suggested the addition of Chinese language to billboards and brochures for tourists.



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Zhai noted that instructions at tourist destinations were in French, English and Japanese languages, but Chinese is missing. France, as the most popular tourist destination, welcomed 84.1 million tourists in 2014 before the Paris terror attacks.



Notwithstanding the negative impact of the terror attacks, including the one at the Charlie Hebdo office, France aims to attract 5 million Chinese tourists, according to French Foreign Affairs Minister Laurent Fabius, reported China Daily.



As of August 2015, more than 2 million Chinese tourists visited France, Fabius said. Among the places they frequented were Chateau de Chambrod and Chateau de Versailles.



But France showed it was not defeated by the two incidents by Pariss successful hosting of the Climate Change Conference weeks after the terror attacks. Zhia noted that the conference was not cancelled or delayed which is an indicator that France is capable of pulling itself together quickly after suffering heavy blows.



Tourist arrivals in France, nevertheless, went down. For Chinese tourists who still want to visit France, Zhia advised them to avoid showing off their wealth such as holding the expensive bags they just bought in French retail outlets and carrying too much cash for shopping.






Leaks are pointing out that Nokia will be releasing their first Android-based smartphone, called as Nokia D1C. (Photo : YouTube/Nokiamaster)

Finnish multinational communications company Nokia, known for its tough mobile phone's build, has finally made its way back into the smartphone arena. End of 2014 saw Nokia releasing their first android-based tablet, called the Nokia N1, and now, leaks are pointing out that Nokia will be releasing their first Android-based smartphone, called as Nokia A1.



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Unnamed sources of Android Authority claims that the much rumored Nokia smartphone running on Android OS will start shipping sometime this year, specifically come summer. The leaked image of Nokia A1 showed by the same publication strongly hints that it could be a mid-range smartphone, as A1 will reportedly feature 5.5-inch screen 1080p display, running on Qualcomm Snapdragon 652.



No other details about the specs of Nokia A1 were given, but the device is expected to be released with either Android M or Android N out of the box plus a pre-installed Z Launcher.



Meanwhile, in 2014, the same renders was obtained and leaked by a Chinese site TechWeb. However, contrary to the current leaks, the leaked images shown in 2014 have a different model name and specs. According to Techno Buffalo, Nokia's first Android-based smartphone will be named as Nokia C1.



The long rumored Nokia C1 is supposed to be a mid-ranged hardware, same as what the current rumored Nokia A1 is categorized, and will be equipped with a super thin bezels, 5-inch 720p screen display, Intel Atom chip, 8MP rear shooter, 5MP selfie snapper and 2GB of RAM.



Since Nokia's non-compete agreement signed with Microsoft (includes not manufacturing phones) will soon expire, fans believed that the smartphone market will shortly see Nokia shaking up the mobile industry. With Nokia rumors swirling around the Internet, on whether they will release the Android-based smartphone and naming it Nokia A1 or Nokia C1, the Finnish company is really prepping up to strike back and conquer the smartphone market - again.



For reference, Nokia was once the leading manufacturer of smartphones until its presence dramatically decreased due to a strong competition with Samsung and Apple. However, since Nokia wants to prove that they can still be on top, releasing an Android-based system with a touch of Nokia's toughness could be the perfect answer to take another swing at things this year.



Watch the video predictions about the rumored Nokia C1/A1 device below:





Disclaimer: Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of Yibada.


The speaker of Egypt's parliament said new legislation will be passed to 'contain the dangers of Facebook' regarding national security

Upon the request of many MPs in a plenary session on Monday, the speaker of Egypt's parliament Ali Abdel-Al said that there should be new legislation aimed at prosecuting certain users on Facebook and other social media networks.

According to an urgent statement by Gamal Abdel-Nasser, an Upper Egypt MP, "parliament should move quickly to draft new legislation aimed at containing the excesses of Facebook."

"The West has sold us this Facebook to extort us and launch an assault on our personal and national security freedoms," said Abdel-Nasser.

Abdel-Nasser also demanded that Minister of Interior Magdi Abdel-Ghaffar and Minister of Telecommunications Yasser Al-Qadi intervene to limit Facebook, especially in terms of safeguarding the national security of Egypt.

"Those who use Facebook to write things that are highly dangerous to our national security should be arrested and referred to trial," said Abdel-Nasser.

In response, parliament speaker Abdel-Al indicated that legislation should be passed by parliament to regulate the use of Facebook in Egypt.

Abdel-Nasser's request came just a few hours after Egyptian prosecutors ordered the arrest of leftist journalist Khaled Al-Balshi for "slandering" the interior ministry on his Facebook account.

Abdel-Al also ordered that MPs not open any debate on the murder of Italian student Giulio Regeni under mysterious circumstances in Cairo last January.

"I order a veto be imposed on this issue," said Abdel-Al, urging MP Mohamed Badrawi, the parliamentary spokesperson of the National Movement Party, and other MPs not to open any discussion on this issue in parliament.

Badrawi had told reporters that he wanted to put the murder of Regeni up for an open debate in parliament "in the same way the EU parliament opened it for a debate last month."

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Experts say that the disagreements between Egypt and Saudi Arabia over some regional issue will not affect the long term partnership

In June 2014, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah flew to Cairo to hold a meeting with newly-elected President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi.

The visit was a mark of the Saudi monarch's consistent support for El-Sisi; in July 2013, the king was the first Arab leader to support the ouster of Egypt's Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

King Abdullah passed away in 2015, but on Thursday, his successor King Salman is set to continue his legacy of support for Egypt, arriving for his first official visit to the country as monarch.

The trip aims at "boosting bilateral relations between the two countries in different sectors, according to the Saudi embassy in Cairo.

Behind the scenes, however, it seems that there are a number of disagreements between the two allies over regional issues such as the situation in Syria, in Yemen, and Egypts frosty relationship with Turkey, a vocal opponent of Morsis ouster.

Some Egyptian media outlets have been seen by many as opposed to Saudi foreign policy, but Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said last week that while Riyadh is "not comfortable with what is being circulated in the media, we can assure them that the Egyptian state is not directing any press views."

"The relationship with the Saudis is interdependent and inseparable," vowed the minister.

Experts say that despite the bubbling disagreements under the surface, the bilateral relationship is strong because neither party can risk losing the mutual benefits the alliance assures.

Yousri El-Azabawi, a researcher at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, believes that both countries are aware of the importance of being allies or at least maintaining a stable relationship, despite any differing views.

"Each country, without the support of the other, remains weak. The Saudis need Egyptian expertise in terms of military cooperation and Cairo needs Riyadh's economic assistance, while both states need to maintain strong ties and collaboration in international forums such as the Arab League and the United Nations," El-Azabawi told Ahram Online.

Last month, Egyptian forces participated in Saudi's "Thunder of the North" military exercise alongside over 20 other Arab and Muslim-majority countries.

Those countries are members of the Saudi-led "Islamic military alliance against terrorism" which was established in December 2015.

A few hours after Cairo said that it would join the alliance, Riyadh announced an economic aid package for Egypt in the form of agreement to supply five years worth of oil, and $8 billion in additional investments.

Saudi Arabia has supported Cairo with billions of dollars in aid, grants, oil products and cash deposits to help buoy the country's economy following the toppling of Morsi in July 2013.

Different perspectives

Mutual cooperation aside, both Cairo and Riyadh share different views on the Syrian civil war.

Riyadh has demanded an immediate removal of Bashar Al-Assad and his regime, whereas Egyptian diplomats do not consider his removal to be a prerequisite. Egypt has consistently called for the stability of the Syrian state institutions to be prioritised.

The two states are also diverging on Yemen. Experts argue that Cairo is opposing the rise of the Saudi-backed Islah Party to power in the conflict-torn state, given that it is affiliated with Egypts now-banned Muslim Brotherhood.

However, Egypt has extended its participation in the Saudi-led coalition which is fighting the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen for another more year.

Egyptian forces were originally deployed to the Gulf, the Red Sea, and the Bab Al-Mandab strait in March 2015, and has been limited to navy and air forces only, with some media reporting that Egypt had refused to deploy ground troops in the conflict.

Ahmed Rakha Hassan, a former diplomat and member of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs, explained to Ahram Online the reasons behind the Egyptian stances on both the Yemeni and the Syrian crisis.

"Egypt is not supporting Al-Assad's regime," Hassan said. "Egypt needs to keep the Syrian state institutions stable and in particular the national army, as Damascus in considered instrumental by Cairo when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Lebanese internal political crisis," he said.

"Also Egypt is against the circulating idea of making Syria a federal state, which will lead to a division and will produce a new sectarian Iraq," he added.

"Egypt fears that resorting to this option will help the Brotherhood rise to power in Syria."

Hassan also said that Egypt is uncomfortable with the idea of Saudi Arabia backing the Islah Party in Yemen due to its Brotherhood affiliation, but also because it is a Sunni union, whereas Yemen is a majority Shia state.

"Egypt is participating in the war against the Houthis mainly to secure the regional water way in the Red Sea which leads to the Suez Canal," he said, adding that in his view Egyptian diplomats are trying to seek a strategic balance, rather than looking into regional affiliations and whims," he explained.

Anwar Ishqi, a Saudi political commentator and director of the Middle East Centre for Strategic and Legal Studies in Jeddah, acknowledges that Saudi diplomats are now "implementing different policies than before due to the latest developments and the balance of power calculations in the region."

But Ishqi agrees that such changes and the aforementioned disagreements about regional issues won't affect the "strong ties" between the two countries.

"Each country has its vision," Ishqi told Ahram Online. "This will never make the relations frosty."

"We know quite well that Egypt is busy with its internal development process and its domestic war on terror and thus the Egyptian military is not required to participate in the war in Yemen with its full force," he said.

"Each country in the Yemeni war coalition has its strategic role which is agreed upon with Saudi Arabia," Ishqi explained.

Ishqi also argues that Egyptian fears about the rise of Brotherhood-affiliated groups in the current zones of conflict may be unfounded.

"I don't think that the Brotherhood rising to power in either Syria or Yemen would cause harm to Egypt," he said.

"We know that Egypt's Brotherhood is different from its counterparts in other countries and now each affiliated group has its very own strategy away from the leading group in Egypt, which is now much weaker due to the recent political developments," he explained.

Reconciliation with Turkey?

Some in Egypt questioned whether the decision to join the Saudi-led Islamic military coalition, dubbed by experts a "Sunni bloc" to counterbalance the power of Shia Iran, could lead to an eventual reconciliation with fellow coalition member Turkey.

On Sunday, Saudi columnist Khaled El-Dakheel, writing in London-based Al-Hayat Arabic daily, said that King Salman would raise the issue of Egyptian-Turkish rapprochement during his visit to Cairo on Thursday.

"Saudi Arabia has been playing a mediating role for a while between Egypt and Turkey, either to achieve a reconciliation or at least to ease the tension between them," he wrote.

"But why Riyadh is keen on this?" he added.

"Because, at the least, coordination between Riyadh, Cairo and Ankara is needed to restore balance in the region in the face of the US retreat, the Russian invasion, and Iran and its allies," he argued.

"This will achieve significant balance to maintain the interests of the three countries while discussing solutions to regional issues, especially the Syrian crisis," El-Dakheel added.

However, El-Azbawi argues that Saudi Arabia can't force Egypt to reconcile with Turkey.

"Even if there are efforts to reach a reconciliation, I think that the Saudis are aware that Turkey has good ties with Iran, so they might be cautious about considering it a tangible ally," he added.

Former diplomat Hassan stresses that despite such issues, both countries will not allow disagreements to affect "important strategic constants."

"The security of the Gulf is maintained from Egypt and the security of Egypt is maintained from the Gulf," he said. "This fact will always last."

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Gunmen shot dead a low-ranking police officer and injured an officer and a police conscript in an attack on a checkpoint on the outskirts of Cairo on Monday morning, an interior ministry source told state agency MENA.

An exchange of fire took place between the police and the unknown assailants at Al-Khosous checkpoint on the Cairo ring-road in Qalioubiya governorate, on the northern outskirts of Greater Cairo.

The injured police officer and conscript were transferred to hospital.

The assailants are still at large and security forces are searching for them, the source said.

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Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry met Sunday with his Palestinian counterpart as well as a French envoy to discuss ways to jump start the peace process

Egypt and Palestine have agreed to convene an urgent meeting of an Arab League anti-Israel committee, the Egyptian foreign ministry said on Monday.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry held talks with his Palestinian counterpart Riad Al-Malki in Cairo on Sunday, in which they discussed "regional and international propositions to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process," a foreign ministry spokesman said.

Both leaders agreed to hold an urgent meeting of the committee in order to discuss moves towards Arab-Israeli peace and curbing Israeli settlement activity.

The meeting will result in "a unified Arab vision for necessary steps needed to back the Palestinian issue, revive the peace process and put an end to Israel's settlement policy," spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid added.

The pair also discussed France's recent efforts to lobby for an international peace conference, slated to take place before May, that would bring in key players to end decades-long conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

Also on Sunday, Shoukry met with France's Middle Ease peace envoy Pierre Vimont, a former French ambassador to the United States, to discuss Paris' efforts to prepare for the conference.

During the talks, Shoukry urged the need for "results guaranteeing a two-state solution, restoration of the legitimate rights of Palestinians, as well as the implementation of relevant intentaional resolutions."

In November 2014, the French parliament backed a motion to recognise a Palestinian state automatically peace process remained in the deadlock, a stance that had worried Israel at the time.

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The number of Egyptians living inside the country will reach 91 million on 5 June, the deputy head of the state statistics body CAPMAS, Mohamed Abdel-Gelil, told Al-Hayat television channel on Sunday.

Egypt's domestic population  which excludes the estimated 8 million citizens living abroad  is increasing rapidly.

Abdel-Gelil said that the population has jumped from 80 million to 90 million in the past five years, whereas it took 50 years for the population to increase from 10 million in 1900 to 20 million in 1950.

Egyptians reached the 90 million mark on 6 December last year, according to CAPMAS's estimations.

Later this year Egypt will conduct a national census. The censuses, which began in 1882, take place every ten years. The poll in 2006 revealed the total population of the country to be 72.7 million.

The census "is very important for the governmental policies and programmes necessary to achieve sustainable and comprehensive development," CAMPAS said in a statement on Thursday in which it called for 40,000 young people to collect the data.

The data will be collected between 20 August and 9 February 2017, and will include information about citizens' residences, empty buildings, and people's access to utilities, Abdel-Gelil said.

The growing population is marked by flashing figures on a digital screen atop CAPMAS's headquarters in eastern Cairo. The figure is based on estimations of increases since the last census.

Abdel-Gelil said that the natural increase rate  the number of births minus the number of deaths  had decreased last year.

In 2014, the natural increase rate was 2.5 percent, while in 2015 it was registered 2.4 percent.

He added that by 2030, Egypt plans to reach a natural increase of 1.5 percent per year, as per its sustainable development vision.



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El-Balshy says a case was brought against him over statements he has made on social media that allegedly insulted the police

Egyptian prosecutors have ordered the arrest of one of the press syndicate's leading officials on charges including "insulting the police."

Khaled El-Balshy, the head of the syndicate's Freedoms Committee, said the office of the prosecutor-general had issued an arrest warrant for him relating to his statements on social media.

"I only learned about the decision to arrest me when they [the police] arrived at my house in Menoufiya to uphold it," El-Balshy told Ahram Online by phone, explaining that he is currently in Cairo.

The decision comes after a legal advisor to Interior Minister Magdy Abdel-Ghaffar filed a legal complaint against El-Balshy, accusing him of "libel and slander" against the ministry and of "insulting the police and calling for the disturbing of public order and the overthrow of the regime."

El-Balshy, who is editor-in-chief of independent news website Al-Bedaiah, is known for advocating democracy and supporting freedom of speech and expression.

"If they want to arrest me I'm in my office, I'm not better than those who are jailed," he said on his Facebook account.

Evidence against the veteran journalist and rights activist includes video footage as well as screen shots of his tweets and Facebook posts, Al-Bedaiah reported.

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Several deputies in Egypt's parliament attacked foreign-funded NGOs in plenary sessions on Sunday and Monday

A number of independent and opposition deputies in Egypt's parliament have put forward several requests to Prime Minister Sherif Ismail regarding NGOs in the country, asking him to take "a firm stand against foreign-funded NGOs operating in Egypt."

The most notable of these requests came in the form of an "urgent statement" on Monday by Abdel-Rehim Ali, an independent MP and a high-profile journalist who accuses foreign-funded human rights NGOs of leading a conspiracy against the Egyptian state.

"I am sure that foreign money in general and foreign-funded NGOs in particular have played a leading role in funding terrorist and criminal acts in Egypt in recent years, and now it is high time that all doors allowing foreign money in Egypt should be closed," said Ali.

Ali cited Minister of Social Solidarity Ghada Wali as disclosing before a parliamentary committee this week that as many as 61 foreign-funded NGOs were ordered by the ministry to comply with Egypt's NGO law (no.84/2002) and come under the umbrella of the ministry.

"A mere six NGOs have complied with our order," Ali quoted Wali as saying. "What about the remaining 56 NGOs that still refuse to be scrutinised by the Ministry of Social Solidarity?"

Ali asked that Prime Minister Ismail provide MPs with a list of all 56 NGOs that still refuse to comply with the NGO law, as well as how much money they have received in foreign and local funding in recent years.

Ali accused the government of "bowing to foreign pressure from the United States and the EU parliament" not to open the file of foreign funding of NGOs in Egypt. 

"We want to expose all the traitors who got foreign money to fund conspiracies in Egypt in the last few years," said Ali.

Ali said he believes the hijacking of an EgyptAir flight and its diversion to Cyprus last week was funded by foreign money.

"Why does the government still refuse to open the file of foreign funding in Egypt? Is it because it faces tremendous foreign pressure?" asked Ali.

In another "urgent statement" on Sunday night, Mostafa Bakri, an independent MP and a high-profile journalist, accused the British and American embassies in Cairo of exerting pressure on the government, forcing it not to open the file of foreign-funded NGOs.

Bakri accused the British ambassador in Egypt of directing a rebuke to health minister Amr Abul-Yazeed in a text message, "not to mention that he threatened an angry reaction if the minister took steps towards closing the Al-Nadeem Centre," said Bakri.

According to Bakri, the closure of Al-Nadeem Centre, which focuses on rehabilitating victims of violence and torture, has exposed Egypt to a wave of foreign attacks in recent weeks.

"The closure of this foreign-funded centre and the reopening of a judicial investigation into foreign funding of human rights NGOs have led US Secretary of State John Kerry and the EU parliament to issue two statements against Egypt in one week," said Bakri, asserting that "these two statements clearly show that there is a Western conspiracy to spread chaos in Egypt." 

"They feel regret that the agenda of chaos they spread in countries like Syria and Libya has not yet reached Egypt," said Bakri.

Bakri demanded that parliament play a more active role in stemming the flow of foreign funding in Egypt.

"The NGO law should be amended to impose a tight ban on foreign funding of NGOs, while the foreign ministry should move to defend the state against the attacks being led by foreign embassies against the health ministry and the government," Bakri said.

On Sunday, the speaker of Egypt's parliament Ali Abdel-Al heaped praise on NGOs that focus on reinforcing economic development and improving the lives of ordinary citizens in Egypt.

In a visit to the main office of the Heliopolis District Development NGO in East Cairo, Abdel-Al stressed that NGOs operating in Egypt should focus more on helping the government implement its development objectives.

"They should help the government in areas like rehabilitating slum districts, providing clean water to villages, and encouraging citizens to actively participate in public life," said Abdel-Al.

A 13-member parliamentary delegation is expected to travel to Brussels this month to discuss the situation of human rights in Egypt with EU parliament officials.

The visit comes as a response to a resolution issued by the EU parliament last month addressing human rights conditions in Egypt and the murder of Italian student Giulio Regeni in Egypt last January. 

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The meeting between Italian and Egyptian officials in Rome on the investigation into the killing of Italian student Giulio Regeni has been pushed back to Thursday

An Egyptian delegation postponed its Tuesday meeting with Italian officials in Rome where it is set to provide Italian authorities with reports on the investigation into the death of Italian student Giulio Regeni in Cairo earlier this year, the Italian ANSA news agency reported on Monday.

The meeting is now set to take place in Rome on Thursday as the visit will last until Friday.

Quoting officials from the Italian interior ministry, ANSA reported that the Egyptian delegation will include two members of Egypt's general prosecution and three police officials.

ANSA added that the Egyptian delegation will present to Italian officials a 2,000-page dossier on the latest evidence and developments in the case.

The body of PhD student Regeni, who was in Cairo conducting research on independent trade unions, was found with signs of torture by a roadside on the outskirts of Cairo on 3 February after he went missing on 25 January. He was 28.

Egypt has strongly denied claims that security forces were involved in Regeni's murder.

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Egyptian MP Sameh Seif El-Yazal, the coordinbator of the House of Representatives' largest bloc, died on Monday after a long battle with cancer.

Born in 1946 in Cairo, Seif El-Yazal graduated from the Military Academy in 1965 and was a war veteran, participating in the Six-Day War, the War of Attrition and the 6 October War.

El-Yazal joined Egypt's Republican Guard and then military intelligence and the Egyptian General Intelligence Service till early 1994.

According to his official Facebook page, during his work in military intelligence he worked as minister plenipotentiary at the Egyptian embassies in the UK and North Korea.

Before the 25 January 2011 uprising, Seif El-Yazal frequently appeared on Egyptian and Arab TV channels and newspapers as a national security expert.

Though he had officially left the intelligence services, he seemed to have access to inside information on crucial issues such as whether then-Field Marshal Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi would run for president.

Seif El-Yazal had repeatedly expressed views consistent with those of the Supreme Council of the Armed forces.

In December 2014, he announced that he would run in the parliamentary elections in Egypt.

In the following months, he became the coordinator of the 'For the love of Egypt' bloc, a pro-Sisi electoral coalition that won 120 seats in the parliamentary elections.

Despite denying allegations by political rivals that the coalition was made and supported by the state security institutions, the former intelligence officer was clear that 'For the love of Egypt' would be "El-Sisi's arm" in the House of Representatives.

The bloc, whose name was later changed to 'Support Egypt,' comprises around 300 MPs, making up about half of parliament.

Business background

After leaving the national security field in the early 1990s, Seif El-Yazel joined the business world, becoming the chairman of G4S Secure Solutions Egypt, the subsidiary of G4S, a multinational security service based in London.

Seif El-Yazel was also the chairman of the British-Egyptian Business Association.

In late 2014, he left G4S for an active role in Egyptian politics with his announcement that he would run in the parliamentary elections.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said he was waiting for a visit from Mahmud Abbas, after the Palestinian president said he had already proposed such a meeting.

"A few days ago, on Israeli television, I heard president Abbas say that if I invite him to meet, he'll come," Netanyahu told reporters at a meeting with visiting Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek.

"I'm inviting him again," he said in English. "I've cleared my schedule this week. Any day he can come, I'll be here."

In an interview with commercial TV station Channel 2 on Thursday, Abbas said that he was ready to meet Netanyahu "any time."

US-backed peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel collapsed in April 2014 after nine months amid bitter recriminations and mutual blame.

The two men shook hands at a climate summit in Paris in November, but held no significant talks.

The last substantial and public meeting between them is thought to date back to 2010, though there have been unconfirmed reports of secret meetings since then.

Netanyahu on Monday said that if the two met he would discuss a wave of violence which has left 200 Palestinians and 28 Israelis dead since October.

"We have a lot of things to discuss, but the first item is ending the Palestinian campaign of incitement to murder Israelis," he said.

The recent surge in violence has raised concern of wider escalation, a decade after the last Palestinian uprising subsided.

Since the start of October, Israeli occupation forces have killed at least 200 Palestinians. Meanwhile, almost daily stabbings, shootings and car-ramming attacks by frustrated and unarmed Palestinians have killed 28 Israelis and a US citizen.

The current wave of protests by Palestinians and repression by Israeli occupation forces started in late July when toddler Ali Dawabsha was burned to death and three other Palestinians were severely injured after their house in the occupied West Bank was set on fire by Israeli settlers.

Settlement-building, racial discrimination, confiscation of identity cards, long queues at checkpoints, as well as daily clashes and the desecration of Al-Aqsa Mosque, describe Palestinians' daily suffering.

The anger of Palestinian residents of Jerusalem has increased in the last three years after the Israeli authorities allowed increasing numbers of Jewish settlers to storm the Al-Aqsa mosque.

The surge in violence has been fuelled by Palestinians' frustration over Israel's 48-year occupation of land they seek for an independent state, and the expansion of settlements in those territories which were captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

Palestinian leaders say a younger generation sees no hope for the future living under Israeli security restrictions and with a stifled economy. The latest round of U.S.-brokered peace talks collapsed in April 2014.

*The story has been edited by Ahram Online.

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Air strikes have killed several Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front members including its spokesman and regime forces have retaken a strategic town from the Islamic State group in the latest setbacks for Islamist militants in Syria.

Abu Firas al-Suri, whose real name was Radwan Nammous, fought against Soviet forces in Afghanistan where he met Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and the founding father of global Islamist militancy, Abdullah Azzam, before returning to Syria in 2011.

Suri was meeting with other leading Islamist fighters in an Al-Nusra stronghold in Kafar Jales in northwestern Syria when the raids struck on Sunday.

He "was an old time Al-Qaeda member ... He was brought in from Yemen as an ideological counterweight" for rival militant group IS, said Pieter Van Ostaeyen, a historian and monitor of jihadist movements.

"His death indeed is a blow for Al-Nusra. However, that will not change a lot on the operational level," he added.

Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, a research fellow at the Middle East Forum, a US think-tank, was of the same opinion.

Suri "was a very senior member of Al-Nusra, but organisations like Al-Nusra aren't debilitated because they lose a single senior leader", he said.

"Their organisational structures are well prepared for targeted assassinations, which are usual business for them."

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Suri, his son and at least 20 militants of Al-Nusra and Jund al-Aqsa and other fighters from Uzbekistan were killed in strikes on positions in Idlib province.

Seven were high-ranking Islamist militants, the Britain-based Observatory said, adding that the Syrian air force had likely carried out the strikes.

A temporary ceasefire between government forces and rebels has largely held since February 27, but it does not cover Al-Nusra and IS group.

The break has, in fact, allowed Russia and the US-led coalition that has been bombing IS in Syria to concentrate on their fight against the Islamist militants.

Al-Nusra has generally kept a low profile since the truce brokered by the United States and Russia came into force.

But on Friday, the Al-Qaeda affiliate and allied rebel groups pushed regime loyalists out of Al-Eis, a strategic town in the northern province of Aleppo, killing 12 members of the Lebanese Shia Hezbollah movement.

"It was Al-Nusra's biggest operation since the ceasefire began," Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

Suri's killing may even be a warning by the regime to Al-Nusra against staging any more offensives in future, Abdel Rahman added.

Tamimi disagreed.

"One should not over-interpret the timing," he said, adding that assassinations of members of secretive organisations are usually carried out "when a window of opportunity opens".

IS group has also lost a string of high-ranking members in recent weeks, mainly to strikes by the US-led coalition that launched an aerial campaign against the militants in Iraq and Syria in 2014.

Last Wednesday, a drone strike near IS group's de facto capital Raqa killed Tunisian commander Abu al-Haija, according to the Observatory.

Fifteen IS group commanders accused of revealing his position have since been executed by the militants, and the fate of another 20 men accused of collaborating with the US-led coalition remains unknown.

"This is the highest number of executions of security officials by IS group," said Abdel Rahman, whose Britain-based group has a wide network of contacts on the ground across Syria.

Also on Sunday, the army seized the town of Al-Qaryatain, one of the last IS group strongholds in central Syria, according to state television.

IS militants withdrew from the town a week after the Russian-backed army and allied militia scored a major victory in the ancient city of Palmyra, which is also located in the vast province of Homs.

The recapture of Al-Qaryatain allows the army to secure its grip over Palmyra, where militants destroyed ancient temples during their 10-month rule and executed 280 people.

It has also left IS group with just one bastion in Homs province, Sukhna, where the focus of the fighting has now shifted.

Al-Qaryatain is "very important ... because it is located at the intersection of several roads, leading eastwards to Deir Ezzor and Palmyra, and westwards towards Homs and the international highway to Damascus", a general in the town told AFP.

But in spite of the truce, hundreds of thousands of civilians living under siege across Syria remain deprived of essential medical and food assistance, according to Human Rights Watch.

"While aid delivery has improved in the last month, it's still not nearly enough and too many Syrians are still not receiving the aid they need," said Nadim Houry, HRW's deputy Middle East director.

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Related US boosts maritime law enforcement aid to four Asian nations

The US Navy said the world's largest maritime exercise kicked off Monday bringing participants from 30 nations for training across the Middle East.

The International Mine Countermeasures Exercise (IMCMEX) is organised and led by Bahrain-based US Naval Forces Central Command, which is responsible for more than 2.5 million square miles of ocean.

"These participating nations are united by a common thread - the need to protect the free flow of commerce from a range of maritime threats including piracy, terrorism and mines," said Vice Adm. Kevin Donegan, commander, US Naval Forces Central Command in a statement.

"This region provides a strong training opportunity for nations worldwide as three of the six major maritime chokepoints in the world are here: the Suez Canal, the Strait of Bab Al Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz," he said.

The exercise will include mine countermeasures, diving operations, small-boat exercises, maritime security operations coordinated with industrial and commercial shipping, unmanned underwater vehicle operations, and port clearance operations, according to the statement.

The exercise ends on April 26.

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President Francois Hollande promised Monday that a massive leak of documents exposing the offshore dealings of wealthy individuals would lead to legal proceedings in France.

"All the information revealed will lead to investigations brought by the tax authorities and to legal proceedings," Hollande said.

He thanked "the whistleblowers" for bringing the so-called Panama Papers to light.

"It's good news that we are aware of these revelations because it will bring in tax revenue from those who have defrauded," Hollande said.

The president said that in 2015, French individuals were found to have hidden 20 billion euros ($22.7 billion) from French tax authorities and the state "has already clawed back 12 billion euros", although those cases were not linked to the Panama Papers.

"So I thank the whistleblowers, I thank the press which has taken action and I have no doubt that the investigators are absolutely ready and waiting to study these documents," Hollande said.

"It is thanks to a whistleblower that we have this information. These whistleblowers do useful work for the international community, they take risks and they must be protected," he said.

The leak of 11.5 million documents has exposed the secret hidden offshore assets of aides to Russian President Vladimir Putin, of around 140 other political figures, and of the rich and famous.

The identity of the person who leaked the documents, originally to German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung, is not known.

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Some male Muslim students in Switzerland will no longer need to shake hands with their female teachers, following a ruling that has caused an uproar and consternation in the country.

Education authorities in the northern Swiss municipality of Therwil, in the canton of Basel-Country, reached the controversial decision after two male students complained that the Swiss custom of shaking hands with the teacher is counter to their religious beliefs if the teacher is a woman.

They argued that Islam does not permit physical contact with a person of the opposite sex, with the exception of certain immediate family members.

The decision triggered an outcry across Switzerland with Felix Mueri, who heads the parliamentary commission on science, education and culture, insisting that "shaking hands is part of our culture."

"This is a gesture of respect and good manners," he told the 20Minuten news site.

Christoph Eymann, who heads the Swiss Conference of Cantonal Ministers of Education, meanwhile said that "such exceptions to the rules are not the solution."

"We cannot tolerate that women in the public service are treated differently from men," he told Swiss television.

Christine Akeret, in charge of the Therwil school system, told media she was not satisfied with the decision, but had not seen any other option.

"It is difficult when someone refuses to adopt our way of life," she said, complaining that she had not received any support from the surrounding canton when she had raised the problem with the authorities there.

Basel-Country canton authorities, who have the power to overturn the Therwil decision, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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The number of tourists visiting Egypt declined in February for the fourth consecutive month, as a deadly air crash last year continues to have an impact on the country's tourism industry.

Egypt saw 346,500 tourists in February, down 46 percent compared to the same month last year, state statistics body CAPMAS said on Monday.

According to CAPMAS, West Europeans top the visitor list, making up 35.6 percent of the total arriving tourists in February, followed by Middle Easterners with 26.7 percent and East Europeans with 14.1 percent.

The countries sending the most tourists in each region are Germany, Saudi Arabia, and Ukraine, CAPMAS said.

In February this year, tourists spent a total of 1.8 million nights in the country, versus 5.6 million in February 2015.

The current decline in tourist numbers comes after a Russian passenger jet crashed in Sinai on 31 October last year, killing all 224 people on board, most of whom were Russian holidaymakers.

Russia, the UK and a number of other countries have since suspended all flights to Sharm El-Sheikh airport, where the plane took off.

In a televised interview on Sunday, newly appointed Tourism Minister Yehia Rashed said that he would meet with 12 low-cost airliners by next week to put in place a plan to attract tourists from different markets worldwide, especially those which are not served by Egypts national carrier EgyptAir.

Rashed said that his ministry is eyeing high-spending tourists such as Arab Gulf nationals in an attempt to immediately increase industry revenues.

Last month, Prime Minister Sherif Ismail confirmed that "after the plane crash, over the past three or four months, [Egypt] has lost around $1.2 billion or $1.3 billion in revenues.

For his part, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that flights from Moscow to Egypt would be resumed if the highest level of security was provided.

Russia's government is also considering reopening its consulate in the Red Sea resort of Hurghada in the near future.

Egypt accrued $6.1 billion in tourism revenue in 2015, down 15 percent from the year before, as the total number of tourists dropped in 2015 by 6 percent to 9.3 million and the total number of nights spent in the country declined by 14 percent.



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Migrants are escorted by Turkish police officers as they arrive in the Turkish coastal town of Dikili, Turkey, April 4, 2016 (Reuters) Migrants are escorted by Turkish police officers as they arrive in the Turkish coastal town of Dikili, Turkey, April 4, 2016 (Reuters)

Syrian refugees walk past a hall after landing at Hanover airport, central Germany, on April 4, 2016 (AFP) Syrian refugees walk past a hall after landing at Hanover airport, central Germany, on April 4, 2016 (AFP)

Turkish police officers and officials provide security as migrants alight from a vessel transporting migrants from Greek island of Lesbos docked in Dikili port, Turkey, Monday, April 4, 2016 (AP) Turkish police officers and officials provide security as migrants alight from a vessel transporting migrants from Greek island of Lesbos docked in Dikili port, Turkey, Monday, April 4, 2016 (AP)

Turkish police officers and officials guide migrants as they alight from a vessel transporting migrants from Greek island of Lesbos docked in Dikili port, Turkey, Monday, April 4, 2016 (AP) Turkish police officers and officials guide migrants as they alight from a vessel transporting migrants from Greek island of Lesbos docked in Dikili port, Turkey, Monday, April 4, 2016 (AP)

An aircraft operated by Turkish Airlines stands on the tarmac after landing at Hanover airport, central Germany, on April 4, 2016, carrying among its passengers 16 Syrian refugees from Istanbul (AFP) An aircraft operated by Turkish Airlines stands on the tarmac after landing at Hanover airport, central Germany, on April 4, 2016, carrying among its passengers 16 Syrian refugees from Istanbul (AFP)

Refugees and migrants arrive in the port of Mytilini on a Greek navy vessel after a rescue operation in the Aegean sea near the shores of Lesbos island Monday, April 4, 2016, during the first day of the implementation of the deal between EU and Turkey (AP) Refugees and migrants arrive in the port of Mytilini on a Greek navy vessel after a rescue operation in the Aegean sea near the shores of Lesbos island Monday, April 4, 2016, during the first day of the implementation of the deal between EU and Turkey (AP)

Protester hold banners as they demonstrate against deportations planned at the port of Mytilini, Lesbos island, Greece, on Monday, April 4, 2016, during the first day of the implementation of the deal between EU and Turkey (AP) Protester hold banners as they demonstrate against deportations planned at the port of Mytilini, Lesbos island, Greece, on Monday, April 4, 2016, during the first day of the implementation of the deal between EU and Turkey (AP)

A small Turkish ferry carrying migrants deported from Greece to Turkey, arrives on April 4, 2016 in the port of Dikili district in Izmir (AFP) A small Turkish ferry carrying migrants deported from Greece to Turkey, arrives on April 4, 2016 in the port of Dikili district in Izmir (AFP)

A ferry carrying migrants from Greece to Turkey leaves the port of Mytilini in the island of Lesbos, Monday, April 4, 2016, during the first day of the implementation of the deal between EU and Turkey (AP) A ferry carrying migrants from Greece to Turkey leaves the port of Mytilini in the island of Lesbos, Monday, April 4, 2016, during the first day of the implementation of the deal between EU and Turkey (AP)

German activists show a banner during the arrival of a small Turkish ferry carrying migrants who are deported to Turkey on April 4, 2016 at the port of Dikili district in Izmir (AFP) German activists show a banner during the arrival of a small Turkish ferry carrying migrants who are deported to Turkey on April 4, 2016 at the port of Dikili district in Izmir (AFP)
Franco-Egyptian writer and historian Gilbert Sinoue will give a talk at Egypt's Supreme Council of Culture on Monday evening about his most famous book, Le Dernier Pharaon (The Last Pharaoh), a biography of Muhammad Ali, who is regarded as the founder of modern Egypt.

Sinoue will be joined by a group of Egyptian historians and intellectuals to discuss his book, which details the rise of Muhammad Ali from his origins as an Ottoman military commander to his rule as khedive of Egypt.

Sinoue was born in Egypt in 1947, and was originally known as as Gilbert Kassab. He migrated to France at the age of 19, where he became a musician. He began his writing career at the age of 40.

His most latest novel Les Cinq Quartiers de la Lune (The Five Quarters of the Moon) was published in February.

He gave a talk at the French Cultural Institute in central Cairo on Sunday.

Programme:

Monday, 4 April, 6pm

Supreme Council of Culture,

Opera Grounds, Zamalek

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(Beijing)  A court in the central province of Hubei has decided to proceed with a lawsuit against a chemical company that contaminated over 33 hectares of forest land by discharging untreated wastewater and another fertilizer firm that allegedly aided it to break the law, an NGO said.

China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation, a non-governmental organization in Beijing, said on its Weibo, China's version of Twitter, on April 2 that the court will hear the case filed against two subsidiaries of Hubei Yihua Group Co. Ltd., one of the major fertilizer and chemical producers in the country.

The lawsuit is among a handful of cases to get accepted among dozens filed by the NGO. The organization filed 21 cases from January to November last year, but only six have been accepted, the group's deputy secretary, Ma Yong, said.

An investigation found that a chemical producer, Hubei Yihua Chemical Industry Co. Ltd. in Yichang, a city on the banks of the Yangtze River, discharged wastewater produced when manufacturing sodium dithionite, a chemical compound used for lowering chlorine levels in tap water, in to a landfill used by its sister company, Hubei Yihua Fertilizer Co. Ltd., the local environmental protection bureau said in a statement on its website in September.

The wastewater had reacted with the residue of another chemical, phosphogypsum, which is a byproduct of making fertilizer and was dumped in the same landfill, the NGO said, and the toxic brew leached out resulting in the contamination of nearly 500 mu, or 33 hectares of land covered by forests.

Yihua Chemical Industry stopped production in September, following an order from the local environmental authority and was fined 100,000 yuan for flouting waste disposal regulations.

The company was told to draft a plan to clean up the contaminated land within 15 days, the statement said. However, it failed to act.

In December, the NGO filed a lawsuit against Yihua Chemical Industry and Yihua Fertilizer, for aiding and abetting the company to break the law, said Wang Zhenyu, a lawyer for the environmental activist group.

The NGO wants the two companies to remove the remaining phosphogypsum residue from the landfill and take steps to restore the contaminated soil within three months, Wang said.

"Hubei Yihua has directly jeopardized the health of people living nearby," said Wang Wenyong, a director in charge of legal affairs at the environmental organization. Many villagers living close to the fertilizer company have been diagnosed with cancer and the NGO is preparing another lawsuit on behalf of them, Wang Wenyong said.

The court has not announced a date for a first hearing.

Non-profits working on environmental issues were allowed to sue polluters on behalf of the public under an amendment to the Environmental Law that came into effect in January 2015. However, only a few NGOs have stepped forward since the amendment, said Wang Can, a professor at China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing.

(Rewritten by Chen Na)
North Korea's test launch of a KN-06 surface-to-air missile into the West Sea early this month appears to have been successful, South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin said at a hearing by the National Assembly's Defense Committee on Monday.

"We believe North Korea was testing its latest weapon system and we have concluded that it was a success," Kim said, offering the first such confirmation of the test launch.

North Korea unveiled the missile at a military parade celebrating the 65th anniversary of the founding of its Workers Party on October 10 last year. South Korea officially verified it as a KN-06 in its 2010 Defense White Paper.

The KN-06 is a surface-to-air missile that shoots down enemy fighters. Unlike previous North Korean missiles, such as the KN-02 inter-continental ballistic missile that follows an arch-like trajectory, the KN-06 is stored in a launching tube and fired vertically toward a flying target. It is similar to the Russian S-300, which is used to shoot down other missiles, and seems to be based on technology that North Korea secretly obtained from China, Russia and other countries. Showing its evolution from the S-300, which had a range of between 75 km and 90 km, the KN-06 is apparently capable of hitting targets up to 150 km away. Each launcher truck can hold two to three missiles.

North Korea developed its latest weapon after it encountered difficulties in acquiring new fighter jets from China and other countries. In contrast, the South Korean military has been able to upgrade its stable of fighter jets by acquiring cutting-edge F-15Ks. Seoul's Air Force will possess 60 such fighter jets by next year, capable of launching precision strikes against North Korean nuclear weapons and missile bases.
Brazilian prosecutors have charged Joseph Safra, the world's richest banker, in connection with an alleged scheme to reduce or waive fines on back taxes.

Prosecutors said in a statement Thursday that Safra knew about a 2014 plan by executives at Banco Safra to pay more than $4 million in bribes to government officials.

Bank executive Joao Inacio Puga, who allegedly negotiated the bribe-payment scheme, was also charged, based on recorded conversation with tax officials.

The statement said that Safra was not directly involved in the bribery negotiations, but the conversation showed that Puga reported to Safra on the scheme.
The first passenger flight took off from the airport in Brussels where suicide bombers carried out a deadly attack nearly two weeks ago.

The blasts there and at a nearby metro station killed 32 people and destroyed the airport's departure area.

A Brussels Airlines plane heading to the Portuguese city of Faro was the first of three flights scheduled to leave the airport Sunday evening. The airport is calling them "symbolic flights" with more to be added in the coming days.

"A restart of the operations, even only partially, as quick as this is a sign of hope that shows our shared will, and our strength to resurface and not to let our heads down," Brussels Airport Company CEO Arnaud Feist said Saturday.
North Korea on Saturday released launch images of a new surface-to-air missile that appears to be a home-grown version of the Patriot missile.

The missile has an estimated range of 100 to 150 km and is aimed at repelling South Korean fighter jets.

The North's official Rodong Sinmun daily carried about a dozen pictures of the missile being launched as leader Kim Jong-un looked on.

Also seen in the photos are trucks loaded with three cylindrical launching tubes. They also show the missile flying obliquely shortly after the vertical launch before hitting the target in the air.

The launch technology is the same as that used for South Korea's new home-grown surface-to-air Cheongung missile.

The KN-06 was unveiled during a military parade marking the 65th anniversary of the Workers Party in Pyongyang in October 2010, but no images of the test launch were available.

Military authorities here have noticed striking similarities to Russia's S-300 and China's HQ-9.

"The North probably didn't develop the missile and radar system completely on its own," an intelligence source here said. "Some equipment or technology may have been smuggled into the North from China, Russia or a third country that has S-300 missiles."

The publicity for the rocket seems to have been a response to recent South Korea-U.S. drills that practiced airstrikes on strategic North Korean facilities.


Domestic consumption, consumer sentiment and other key economic indicators are raising cautious hopes of an imminent recovery.

But pundits say the upturn is the result of temporary currency fluctuations and government pump-priming, rather than a solid recovery defying adverse external factors like the flagging Chinese economy.

The Bank of Korea on Sunday said the business survey index for March, based on a poll of 1,700 manufacturers, rose five points from February to 80 points, the highest in 10 months. But that still means pessimists heavily outnumber optimists, way short of the 100 points that mean they are evenly matched.

Shin Byung-gon at the Bank of Korea admitted that recovering global oil prices and a weak won played a big role in making the figures look good.

The second-quarter business survey index, based on a survey of 2,400 businesses, came in at 91 points, up 10 points on-quarter but still in pessimistic territory.

More solid signals came from major department stores, where sales have stagnated for the last two years but grew 3.2 to 4.2 percent in the first quarter this year.

Most economists urge caution. Kwak No-sun at Sogang University said, "A handful of indicators aren't enough to diagnose a recovery. We'll have to see if China's economy picks up further and industries here carry out more comprehensive restructuring."
North Korea fired a projectile from a multiple locket launcher last week which landed somewhere in Ryanggang Province after traveling some 200 km. If it had been aimed at South Korea, it could have landed in Seoul. The test launch came after a week of dire threats from the North to pulverize Cheong Wa Dae and proves that this would be well within its means.

Already the North has stationed more than 5,000 conventional artillery pieces along the demilitarized zone with a range of 70 km. The new artillery can hit any target in the Seoul metropolitan area. On top of that it is working very hard to miniaturize nuclear warheads so they can be fitted on a missile. All of that means that the new artillery poses a grave threat to South Korea's security, to say nothing of its longer-range missiles, some of which Seoul's current defenses would have difficulty intercepting.

But politicians in this country do not seem to have the slightest interest in the question. Neither opposition nor ruling-party lawmakers have commented even once on the threat, and if they pitch any defense policies at all it is vote-winners like shortening the mandatory military service.

Of course there is nothing politicians can immediately do about North Korea's artillery. But they can at least try to find out if the military is ready to deal with the latest threat and size up the budget that might be needed to remedy any shortcomings.



Read this article in Korean

South Korea is two weeks away from general elections, but this is no mere blip. Politicians here lost interest a long time ago. Out on the stump they are trotting out more welfare programs than you can shake a stick at, but to the real threat to the entire country's welfare they are deaf and blind.
Vignesh, a local leader of the Democratic Youth Federation of India, and his brother Vishnu were thrashed by cops at the police station on August 25.
Vietnamese-born world-famous engineers graduated from MIT

Mr Le Viet Quoc

In mid-March 2016, the artificial intelligence (AI) machine caused a shock when defeating the incumbent go champion Lee Sedol.

VietNamNet Bridge - A number of famous Vietnamese-born engineers have received their education from MIT (Massachuset Institute of Technology).In mid-March 2016, the artificial intelligence (AI) machine caused a shock when defeating the incumbent go champion Lee Sedol.However, the result of the match was not a big surprise to many people. Le Viet Quoc, 34, a software engineer at Google Brain, was one of the scientists working on the machine.Quoc, a Vietnamese born engineer, was honored by MIT as one of the 35 under-35 most talented inventors in 2014.Quoc soon began realizing the great ability of AI at the age of 14. Later, when studying at the Australian National University for bachelors degree and then at Stanford University for doctorate, he had more opportunities to create software and test with AI, and realized that computers can learn and think.Quoc found the solution and built a virtual neuron network capable to process data at the speed thousands of times faster than old methods. Google then decided to invite Quoc to work for Google Brain together with another AI scientist  Andrew Ng.In 2012, by analyzing 10 million images from Youtube, the AI system invented by Quoc and his co-workers in Google X project could recognize humans and 3,000 different things, an event that stunned scientists.Ubers CTO, a Vietnamese-born man, has had to deal with many upheavals in his life.In 1979, Pham Thuan, who was then 10 years old, left Vietnam with his mother and younger brother.Tech in Asia wrote that Thuan and his family members had to work hard to earn their living and experienced very difficult period in their lives. However, when talking about that time, Thuan said they did not panic. This is just a journey of a startup. Even if someone loses everything in one day, he can restart if he keeps calm.In 1986, Thuan began studying at MIT. In 1991, he graduated from MIT and then worked for HP Labs, Silicon Graphics, DoubleClick and VMWare.Sonny Vu and his wife Le Diep Kieu Trang are the famous Vietnamese in Silicon Valley.In November 2015, Sonny Vus Misfit was bought by Fossil Group at $260 million.However, Sonny Vu was well known in 2012, when Misfit Wearables was put into operation. This company specializes in making wearable health monitoring devices.

Buu Dien




#COVID-19 New COVID-19 cases post sharp on-week rise amid resurgence woes South Korea's new COVID-19 cases stayed below 30,000 for the fifth consecutive day Sunday, but the daily count recorded a sharp hike from the previous week amid rising concerns ove...

#illegal gambling China-based online gambling ring busted; 20 arrested Law-enforcement authorities here said Sunday they have busted an online gambling ring based in China for illicit operations in South Korea, worth a total of 5.7 trillion won (US$3....
You may remember back in January, the reports coming out of Sundance were that there is a comedy starring Daniel Radcliffe as a farting corpse that was causing all sorts of controversy.

Well despite the mixed reviews, that film went on to win the Directing Award at the festival and the first trailer has just surfaced online.

Starring Paul Dano as a suicidal cast away on a deserted island who suddenly discovers new hope when he makes friends with Radcliffe's washed up corpse, it's one of the most unique premises we've ever heard of and if this trailer is anything to go by it certainly won't disappoint.

The film also stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Radcliffe's girlfriend but as to what extent her role will amount remains to be seen.

Swiss Army man doesn't currently have an Irish release date and to be honest we can see it being a hard sell to distributors but we really hope there's one out there willing to take a chance on it because it looks like it could be something special.

Via Empire
A timely film from Jacques Audiard (Rust and Bone, A Prophet), Dheepan explores the complexity of everyday life of an illegal asylum seeker in Europe and that youll never escape what youre running from.

Assuming the name Dheepan, a former Tamil Tiger soldier (Antonythasan) flees the Sri Lankan Civil War incognito, taking with him refugee Yalini (Srinavasan) and orphan ten-year-old girl Illayaal (Claudine Vinasithamby) who pose as his wife and daughter respectively. They make it to France where Dheepan, despite his lack of French, is employed as a caretaker in a dangerous banlieue occupied by drug dealers who openly display their wares and readily dish out violence. With Illayaal struggling to make headway in school, Yalini earns a crust housekeeping for an elderly man whose apartment is used as a safe house for drug kingpin Brahim (Rottiers)

While the day-to-day machinations of living in a foreign country illegally could easily become ordinary, the writer-director finds ways to keep things interesting. But its when Audiard gets into the nitty gritty of the domestic situation of the three who are forced to behave like a real family that Dheepan really emotionally connects. Yalini initially exhibits no motherly traits, confessing to Dheepan that she would readily drop him and the girl if the opportunity to make it to her cousin in England if the chance arouse; at one point Illayaal, desperate for some love, touchingly pleads with Yalini to like her. But Dheepans determination to instil some parental responsibility in Yalini comes to the fore when she instinctively jumps on Illayaal to put her body between the girl and the flying bullets when Brahims crew go to war.

However, Dheepans story lacks bite. What hes running from will be vague for those who dont know their Sri Lankan history and when he meets up with a former commander, also living in France incognito, his refusal to get back into the cause would mean more if we knew where he stood in the first place. When the drug war escalates and Dheepan takes a hard-line approach to the violence on his doorstep, we begin to suspect that he all along is suffering from PTSD. This too needed some more oomph. Meanwhile, Yalinis relationship with the sensitive/dangerous Brahim is difficult to get on board with.
Sonja Bekker (The Swedish Institute for European Policy Studies)

Following the 2008 financial and economic crisis, it became obvious that the European Union needs to reform its economic governance. The intention was, among others, to harmonize the national fiscal and economic objectives with those at the EU level. The new measures that were introduced seem to be stricter because they introduce the strengthening of the financial and economic surveillance. Moreover, the agreement on budgetary policies, which constitutes a part of the Stability and Growth Pact, still plays an important role. The EU28 states should also be trying to correct macroeconomic imbalances and achieve the objectives outlined in the Europe 2020 Strategy. After the introduction of the above-mentioned measures, the question of wheth-er the EU Member States have enough freedom to develop their alternative policies is being voiced more and more frequently.

Although it seems that, on the one hand, the changes to the economic governance are strin-gent, on the other, based on the way EU Member States fulfill the Commissions annually published recommendations for individual countries, it is clear that they have a certain degree of freedom. The states often use the Unions priorities to help them explain what led them to implement individual political actions. For example, France defended its policy by saying that it is consistent with the objectives set by the Commission. Furthermore, the fact that postponing the deadlines for meeting the criteria of the Stability and Growth Pact is not a rare occurrence indicates that the European Union leaves a certain degree of autonomy for the Member States in the matters of national policies.

Last, but not the least, the flexibility of the EU Member States can also be demonstrated by the fact that different countries are given different recommendations proposed by the Commission. For example, in 2014, Germany was recommended to focus on implementing changes in its pension system, whereas Poland was suggested to try to tackle poverty among the unem-ployed population. Nevertheless, some EU countries (France, Germany, Poland, Spain) are still increasingly calling for greater freedom in domestic policy, while the Commission is, by contrast, pointing to the insufficient implementation of its recommendations. The question is how to meet the requirements of the Europe 2020 Strategy. Should not the Union instead lead a dia-logue with the individual members of the EU28 rather than continue setting unilateral goals?

(The study can be downloaded here: http://www.sieps.se/en/publications/reports/is-there-flexibility-in-the-european-semester-process-20161)
Female architect who left mark on China, dies at 65 Updated: 2016-04-02 02:41 By AGENCE FRANCEPRESSE in London(China Daily)

Zaha Hadid Photos by Reuters and Chen Jun

Zaha Hadid, the famed female architect known around the world for her works with sweeping curves and who drew occasional controversy when projects hit huge cost overruns, died on Thursday at the age of 65, her company said.

The award-winning Iraqi-British architect was best known in China for designing the Guangzhou Opera House, the Wangjing SOHO building in Beijing and the capital's Galaxy SOHO development. She also created the unusual aquatics center used for the 2012 London Olympics.

Hadid faced criticism last year after her futuristic $2 billion design for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Stadium was scrapped amid spiraling costs and complaints about the design.

Born in 1950 in Baghdad, where her father was a politician, Hadid forged a career in the male-dominated world of architecture, bringing her curvaceous, radical designs to life in glass, steel and concrete.

"It is with great sadness that Zaha Hadid Architects have confirmed that Dame Zaha Hadid died suddenly in Miami in the early hours of this morning," her firm said in a statement, adding that she had suffered a heart attack after contracting bronchitis this week.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi paid tribute to Hadid, describing her death as a loss for the "whole world".

She had "served the world through her creativity and, in losing her, the whole world has lost one of the great energies that served the community", al-Abadi said in a statement.

Hadid's other notable works include the Italian National Museum of 21st Century Arts in Rome, the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, Azerbaijan and the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, Ohio, in the United States.

"I believe that the complexities and dynamism of contemporary life cannot be cast into the simple platonic forms provided by the classical canon," she said in her speech when she accepted the Pritzker Prize, the most prestigious award in architecture, in 2004.

"The initial sense of abstractness and strangeness is unavoidable," she said of people observing her work. But she added that this was "not a sign of personal willfulness".
Several explosions rock industrial zone in southwestern France Updated: 2016-04-03 16:59 (Xinhua)

PARIS - Three consecutive explosions rocked an industrial zone near the southwestern French city of Bordeaux early Sunday, local media reported.

There were no immediate reports of casualties and damage.

The blasts, along with strong fire, broke out at around 6:40 local time (0440 GMT) in a company specializing in chemical products transportation at the industrial zone in Bassens, near Bordeaux, French radio France Bleu Gironde reported on its Twitter.

Firefighters had already been on the scene to conduct rescue operations.

"The situation seems under control," Mayor of Bassens Jean-Pierre Turon told news channel iTele, adding that two firefighters were slight injured in the rescue operations.

The outbreak of a fire may have caused the explosion of two or three tankers filled with gas, he said.
PLEASE NOTE!

Due to the March 23, 2020 NM DOH Public Health Order, These Event Listings Are Not Accurate!

All non-essential businesses are closed, public gatherings are prohibited!

(One day some of these events will be rescheduled or will resume, but they are not happening now!)
Over a dozen African elites and their family members have been linked to offshore holdings.

A huge trove of leaked documents from a Panamanian law firm thats a major player in offshore tax havens has revealed the secret companies controlled by members of the African elite, from Kenyas deputy chief of justice and Rwandas former intelligence chief to the son of former United Nations general secretary Kofi Annan.

Every year, Africa loses between $30 and $60 billion to illicit financial flows (pdf, p. 34), according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). A major enabler of these flows, UNECA says, are offshore tax havens like Panama, the British Virgin Islands, Seychelles, and other jurisdictions that happen to feature prominently in the Panama Papers leak.

There are legitimate uses for privacy-shielding offshore companies, and the firm from which the leak sprung, Mossack Fonseca, says it has operated beyond reproach in our home country and in other jurisdictions where we have operations.

Africas losses to illegal financial flows negate the impact of economic growth on the continent. (Indeed, these illicit activities appear to rise in lock-step with economic growth.) They also cancel out the amount of foreign aid the continent receivesthe OECD estimates that illicit financial flows from Africa are three times the amount of official development assistance it receives. The Tax Justice Network, an activist research group, says these flows are 10 times the amount of aid (pdf, p. 64).

For the past year, journalists led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, acting on the leak first received by the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung, have been analyzing millions of documents from Mossack Fonseca that link 72 current and former heads of state to shell companies and other obscure offshore vehicles. Here are a some of the noteworthy African names:

The son of Kofi Annan

Kojo Annan, the son of Kofi Annan, used a company registered in Niue, a tiny Pacific island, to buy an apartment in London for more than $500,000. He is also a joint shareholder and director of two companies listed in the British Virgin Islands. His lawyers say there is nothing untoward about Annans offshore holdings. He pays taxes in the jurisdictions in which taxes are due to be paid. In other words, any entity and account held by Mr. Annan has been opened solely for normal, legal purposes of managing family and business matters, according to the ICIJ.

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Joseph Kabilas twin sister

Jaynet Desiree Kabila Kyungu is the twin sister of Congolese president Joseph Kabila as well as a member of parliament. She is the co-director of Keratsu Holding Limited, which was incorporated in Niue a few months after her brother became president of the Democratic Republic of Congo. She is also the owner of a media conglomerate in the country, Digital Congo.

Kenyas deputy chief justice

Kalpana Rawal has been linked to 11 offshore companies. According to the files, Rawal and her husband used various offshore companies to buy and sell real estate in and around London. Rawal has responded to the report by defending the registrations as a perfectly legal and legitimate corporate practice in the UK, according to the Kenyan daily, the Nation.

Kagames former doctor-cum-intelligence chief

Emmanuel Ndahiro, a close confidant of Rwandan president Paul Kagame, is know for his harsh stance on corruption. He served as the presidents physician, security advisor, and spokesperson. According to the Panama leaks he was the director of an offshore company, Debden Investments, registered in the Virgin Islands and owned by Hatari Sekoko, a wealthy Rwandan businessman. The company was shuttered in 2010.

Hosni Mubaraks son

Alaa Mubarak, the son of ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, owned the Virgin Islands-registered firm Pan World Investments. When his father stepped down in 2011 amid the Arab Spring, local authorities acted on an EU order and froze the companys assets. Mossack Fonseca was fined $37,500 in 2013 for not vetting Mubarak carefully enough. Alaa and his brother were convicted last year of embezzling state funds and await trial on charges of insider trading.

The son of Ghanas former president

John Addo Kufuor hired Mossack Fonseca to manage his trust, the Excel 2000 Trust, in 2001, after his father, John Agyekum Kufuor, took office. The trust controlled a bank account in Panama containing $75,000, of which his mother was also a beneficiary. The younger Kufuor was linked to two other offshore companies also registered during his fathers term that are now inactive.

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Alaska Airlines Boeing 737

Seattle-based Alaska Airlines announced Monday that it would acquire Virgin America for $2.6 billion after a short bidding war with JetBlue.

The value of the deal, including Virgin's debt and aircraft-leasing obligations, could reach $4 billion.

Though Virgin America is regarded by consumer-ratings agencies as the best airline in North America, Alaska paid nearly twice what it last traded at.

"Fifty-seven dollars per share seems like a steep price for Virgin America, when it had been trading at between $26 and $37 over the last year," Warwick Business School professor of business strategy Loizos Heracleous told Business Insider.

"The bidding war for Virgin America has raised the price to levels that will make it challenging for Alaska Air to garner benefits that can justify this price, at least in the short term," Heracleous said.

The airline's $2.6 billion price tag is about 16 times the airline's 2015 earnings, Vinay Bhaskara, a senior business analyst at Airways News, told Business Insider.

"Even with cratering fuel prices and the airline earning cycle at its peak, Virgin America hasn't been able to be very profitable," Bhaskara said.

So what, exactly, did Alaska Airlines buy?

Although Virgin America operates a fleet of 60 Airbus A320-family jets, the airline owns only five of them, with the rest leased from various companies around the world.

As a result, Virgin America's most valuable assets are its terminal space at San Francisco International Airport and Los Angeles International Airport, along with landing rights at Love Field in Dallas, LaGuardia in New York, and Reagan National in DC, Bhaskara added.

richard branson virgin america

And then there's the cachet of the Virgin brand, which brings intangible value to the airline.

At first glance, forking out $4 billion for some terminal space, landing rights, and a few jets makes little sense, but a deeper analysis shows that Alaska's move, though risky, may be a smart buy for three key reasons.

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First, the acquisition of the San Francisco-based airline keeps Virgin America and its sizable West Coast presence out of JetBlue's control. New York-based JetBlue has a strong East Coast and transcontinental business, but it still lags behind Alaska, Virgin America, and Southwest in its ability to serve the western US.

Acquiring Virgin would have given JetBlue instant scale on the West Coast and bolster its already formidable transcontinental business.

Virgin American Airbus A320 LAX

Second, Alaska's acquisition of Virgin America makes it an instant powerhouse airline that's a viable competitor to juggernaut Southwest, Bhaskara told Business Insider.

Alaska, the seventh-largest airline in the US, now has additional resources to scale up operations in key markets around the country, such as Dallas and New York.

Virgin America's large presence in San Francisco and Los Angeles also allows Alaska to fortify its position in those two very competitive markets.

Third, Alaska Airlines is a major brand and big-time player in the western US. But it remains relatively unknown to a lot of travelers on the East Coast and abroad. The acquisition of an airline tied to a world-renowned brand allows Alaska to make a big splash outside its traditional market.

Time will tell if the Virgin America acquisition will pay off for Alaska, but there's no doubt the deal will greatly affect the landscape of the commercial air travel on the West Coast.

NOW WATCH: Richard Branson just unveiled Virgin Galactic's gorgeous new space plane





More From Business Insider


Allergan's shares have dropped as much as 20% in after-hours trading on Monday after the US government said that it will do more to stop tax inversions, or mergers aimed at helping a company move its domicile offshore in order to avoid paying taxes.

The Dublin-based drugmaker is in the middle of a merger with Pfizer that was touted as an effort to cut the taxes Pfizer pays in the US. Pfizer's shares are climbing in late trading.

The $160 billion megamerger, announced in November 2015, intends for Pfizer to relocate its headquarters to Ireland, where Allergan is incorporated and the tax rate for corporations is 12.5%, far less than the US tax rate.

Because the move can be seen as fleeing the US, tax inversions are not particularly politically popular. In November, when the deal was announced, everyone from US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) to Donald Trump took a stance against the deal.

US Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said in a release:

Treasury has taken action twice to make it harder for companies to invert. These actions took away some of the economic benefits of inverting and helped slow the pace of these transactions, but we know companies will continue to seek new and creative ways to relocate their tax residence to avoid paying taxes here at home.

In response to the Treasury's move, Pfizer said in a statement:

We are conducting a review of the U.S. Department of Treasurys actions announced today. Prior to completing the review, we wont speculate on any potential impact.

Allergan declined to comment.

Screen Shot 2016 04 04 at 5.26.16 PM

This isn't the first time the Treasury has tried to squash a tax-inverting merger. In 2014, AbbVie called off its inversion deal with Shire after Treasury announced executive moves to attempt to curb inversions.

Here's the Treasury's plan, according to the release:

Limit inversions by disregarding foreign parent stock attributable to recent inversions or acquisitions of U.S. companies . This will prevent a foreign company (including a recent inverter) that acquires multiple American companies in stock-based transactions from using the resulting increase in size to avoid the current inversion thresholds for a subsequent U.S. acquisition.

Address earnings stripping by :

Formalize Treasury's two previous actions in September 2014 and November 2015 .

Story continues

NOW WATCH: Ted Cruz speculates that Trumps tax returns may show mafia ties





More From Business Insider


Luxembourg, 4 April 2016

ArcelorMittal has published a convening notice for its Annual General Meeting of shareholders, which will be held on 4 May 2016 at 2 p.m. CET at the company`s office, 24-26, Boulevard d`Avranches in Luxembourg.

The ArcelorMittal shareholders entitled to vote at the Annual General Meeting will be those who are shareholders on the record date of 20 April 2016 at midnight (24:00 hours) CET.

The convening notice, the Annual Report 2015, the voting forms and all other meeting documentation will be available on ArcelorMittal`s website http://corporate.arcelormittal.com/ under "Investors - Equity investors - Shareholders` meetings -- General Meeting 4 May 2016" from 4 April 2016. Shareholders may obtain, free of charge, a copy of the Annual Report 2015 in English at ArcelorMittal`s registered office, by calling +352 4792 3198, sending a fax to +352 26 48 19 95 or +44 20 7629 7993, or by emailing privateinvestors@arcelormittal.com

About ArcelorMittal

ArcelorMittal is the world`s leading steel and mining company, with a presence in 60 countries and an industrial footprint in 19 countries. Guided by a philosophy to produce safe, sustainable steel, we are the leading supplier of quality steel in the major global steel markets including automotive, construction, household appliances and packaging, with world-class research and development and outstanding distribution networks.

Through our core values of sustainability, quality and leadership, we operate responsibly with respect to the health, safety and wellbeing of our employees, contractors and the communities in which we operate.

For us, steel is the fabric of life, as it is at the heart of the modern world from railways to cars and washing machines. We are actively researching and producing steel-based technologies and solutions that make many of the products and components people use in their everyday lives more energy efficient.

We are one of the world`s five largest producers of iron ore and metallurgical coal and our mining business is an essential part of our growth strategy. With a geographically diversified portfolio of iron ore and coal assets, we are strategically positioned to serve our network of steel plants and the external global market. While our steel operations are important customers, our supply to the external market is increasing as we grow.

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In 2015, ArcelorMittal had revenues of $63.6 billion and crude steel production of 92.5 million tonnes, while own iron ore production reached 62.8 million tonnes.

ArcelorMittal is listed on the stock exchanges of New York (MT), Amsterdam (MT), Paris (MT), Luxembourg (MT) and on the Spanish stock exchanges of Barcelona, Bilbao, Madrid and Valencia (MTS).



For more information about ArcelorMittal please visit: http://corporate.arcelormittal.com/



Contact information ArcelorMittal investor relations Europe +35247923198 Americas +13128993985 Retail +35247923198 SRI +442075431123 Bonds/credit +33171921026

ArcelorMittal corporate communications Sophie Evans

Paul Weigh +442032142882

+442032142419

E-mail:

press@arcelormittal.com France Image 7 Sylvie Dumaine / Anne-Charlotte Creach +33153707470

ArcelorMittal publishes convening notice for AGM







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: ArcelorMittal S.A. via GlobeNewswire

HUG#2000087


The Bouygues Telecom company logo is seen on a shop in Marseille, France, March 31, 2016. REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier

LONDON (Reuters) - Shares in French group Bouygues (BOUY.PA) slumped 15 percent and were heading for their worst day in 17 years after talks between the firm and Orange (ORAN.PA) on a deal to create a dominant telecoms operator collapsed.

Orange fell 5.2 percent. Other French telecom firms also fell sharply, with Iliad (ILD.PA) down 12.7 percent, SFR (NUME.PA) down 14 percent and Altice (ATCA.AS) dropping 15 percent.

The STOXX Europe 600 Telecommunications index (.SXKP) was down 1.5 percent, the top sectoral decliner, after falling to a one month low following the failure on Friday of the proposed 10 billion euro ($11.4 billion) cash-and-share deal.

The proposed tie-up was widely seen as a make-or-break chance to reduce the number of telecoms groups to three from four in France and prop up profits, which have been depressed since the arrival of low-cost operator Iliad.

"Orange had set clear conditions that were not met. Bouygues sees four reasons for the failure, of which execution risk and governance are the key ones, while a compromise could have been reached on valuation and employee protection," Deutsche Bank analysts said in a note.

(Reporting by Atul Prakash; Editing by Keith Weir)
BRASILIA (Reuters) - Politicians from seven parties in Brazil were named as clients of a Panama-based firm at the centre of a massive data leak over possible tax evasion, O Estado de S.Paulo said on Monday.

The newspaper was one of more than 100 other news organizations around the globe to publish this weekend details of more than 11.5 million documents from the files of law firm Mossack Fonseca, based in the tax haven of Panama.

O Estado said names in the leaked files included politicians from Brazil's largest party, the PMDB, which broke away from President Dilma Rousseff's coalition last week. Political figures from the PSDB, the most prominent opposition party in the country, was also mentioned in the leaks, as well as others from the PDT, PP, PSB, PSD and the PTB parties.

No politicians from Rousseff's Workers' Party were mentioned in the leaks, although it included at least 57 people or companies that had already been under investigation in Brazil for alleged involvement in a far-reaching graft scheme at state-run oil firm Petroleo Brasileiro SA (PETR4.SA).

The leaked "Panama Papers" cover a period over almost 40 years, from 1977 until last December. They allegedly show that some companies domiciled in tax havens were being used for suspected money laundering, arms and drug deals and tax evasion.

In many cases, though, the offshore activity was not illegal.

The head of Mossack Fonseca has denied any wrongdoing but said his firm had suffered a successful but "limited" hack on its database. The firm's director, Ramon Fonseca, described the hack and leak as "an international campaign against privacy".

Brazilian prosecutors in January said Mossack Fonseca helped members of the Workers' Party launder money through the purchase of beach-side apartments. At the time, Mossack said it had been "unjustly and erroneously included in matters with which we have no involvement at all."

(Reporting by Silvio Cascione Editing by W Simon)
BRASILIA, April 4 (Reuters) - A preliminary report by Brazil's antitrust regulator recommended imposing restrictions on Bradesco SA's purchase of the Brazilian unit of HSBC Holdings PLC, according to the official gazette on Monday.

The board of Brazil's antitrust regulator Cade said it should grant the deal final approval provided the banks agree on measures to minimize market concentration. The recommendation is not binding and is subject to approval by a separate Cade court.

According to Cade, despite HSBC's small market share in Brazil, any merger operation should be viewed with caution because of "clear evidences" of low competitiveness in Brazil's banking industry, in which lenders have one of the world's highest profit margins.

The central bank approved the $5.2 billion acquisition in January. Bradesco first announced the deal in August.

(Reporting by Silvio Cascione; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
By Kylie MacLellan LONDON (Reuters) - The British government sought on Monday to deflect any criticism of Prime Minister David Cameron over his late father's inclusion on a list of clients using a law firm in the tax haven of Panama and said it would investigate the leaked data. Cameron's father, Ian, and members of his Conservative Party were among the tens of thousands of rich and famous people named in a leak of documents from Panama-based Mossack Fonseca which showed how clients had evaded tax and laundered money. The documents, which emerged in an investigation published on Sunday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), are a blow to Cameron, a critic of tax evasion and tax avoidance. In 2012, British media reported that Cameron's father ran a network of offshore investment funds to help build the family fortune. There is no suggestion he did anything illegal. Asked on Monday whether she could confirm that no family money was still invested in those funds, Cameron's spokeswoman said: "That is a private matter." Britain's HM Revenue and Customs said it had asked for a copy of the leaked data so it could examine the information. "We have already received a great deal of information on offshore companies, including in Panama, from a wide range of sources, which is currently the subject of intensive investigation," Jennie Granger, director general of enforcement and compliance at HM Revenue and Customs, said in a statement. "We have asked the ICIJ to share the leaked data that they have obtained with us. We will closely examine this data and will act on it swiftly and appropriately." Opposition Labour finance spokesman John McDonnell said the Panama Papers showed Cameron had failed to end tax secrecy and crack down on offshore schemes and called for "real action". But the government said Britain had brought in more than 2 billion pounds ($2.84 billion) from offshore tax evaders since Cameron took office in 2010 and that Britain was "leading the pack internationally" on tackling tax evasion and avoidance. Since Britain made the issue a central plank of its G8 presidency in 2013, 90 countries have signed up to the automatic exchange of tax information, Cameron's spokeswoman said. She said Britain was pushing its overseas territories and crown dependencies, many of which are tax havens, to create public registers of who owns companies in their jurisdictions. Britain's own such register will go live in June. Asked if Britain would legislate to force territories such as the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands to publish the information, she said: "The prime minister has made clear that should they fail to do so he rules absolutely nothing out." ($1 = 0.7043 pounds) (Editing by Angus MacSwan)
A union banner hangs from a fence in front of the Tata steelworks in the town of Port Talbot, Wales, Britain April 1, 2016. REUTERS/Darren Staples

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain said on Sunday that UK steel producers must be considered for infrastructure and other government contracts involving steel supplies, as part of plans to find a long-term solution to a crisis in the industry.

The government is looking for ways to support domestic steel producers after India's Tata Steel (TISC.NS) put its loss-making British plant up for sale on Wednesday, putting thousands of jobs at risk.

Prime Minister David Cameron has said there was no guarantee of a buyer for Britain's biggest steel producer, which has been hit by high costs and Chinese competition, and a state takeover was not the answer.

Under its support measures, the government will create an approved supplier list for steel companies wanting to bid for public sector projects, such as Britain's 55 million-pound ($78.25 million) high-speed rail link, which will need two million tonnes of steel.

"By changing the procurement rules on these major infrastructure projects we are backing the future of UK steel - opening up significant opportunities for UK suppliers and allowing them to compete more effectively with international companies," Business Secretary Sajid Javid said in a statement.

The introduction of measures to ensure British steelmakers are considered for government contracts could take six to nine months, a spokeswoman for Javid's department said.

The government has faced criticism over its response to Tata's decision to sell its UK plant in south Wales, which employs 15,000, with opposition politicians saying it was "asleep at the wheel."

The government has said it is working to broker a deal with potential buyers after Tata's decision to pull out of its almost decade-long venture in Britain.

Investment firm Greybull Capital is interested in buying Tata's Scunthorpe steelworks and could announce a deal as early as Wednesday, a source familiar with the deal told Reuters.

The deal is expected to be for 400 million pounds, with about half of the investment coming from Greybull and the other half from a consortium and maybe a government loan of up to 100 million pounds, the source told Reuters.

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A Greybull spokesman said talks were continuing constructively.

British newspaper the Telegraph first reported on Sunday that the Meyohas brothers are set to buy the Scunthorpe plant from Tata. [http://bit.ly/1qhju51]

Liberty House Group, which produces steel in Britain, has begun talks with the government over a potential partnership but does not want to buy all of Tata's UK operations, its executive Chairman Sanjeev Gupta was quoted as saying by the Sunday Telegraph.

Javid told the BBC he would not talk about specific offers but said he wanted to find a buyer for the whole business and the government would engage with any willing and serious buyer.

He said the government was looking at how it could help with issues such as Tata's pension burden and costly energy supplies.

"These are the kind of things we have already thought of, we have already started working on and what I hope is that you will have the offer document from Tata, overlay on top of that the help the British government can provide and then you have the makings of a successful deal," he said.

Cheap Chinese imports have hit Britain's steel industry. Britain imported 826,000 tonnes of Chinese steel in 2015, up from 361,000 two years earlier, according to the International Steel Statistic bureau.

Cameron has said he wants Britain and China to work together to tackle overcapacity in steel. Last week, however, China imposed anti-dumping duties of up to 46 percent on specialist steel products from Japan, South Korea and the European Union.

(Reporting by Li-mei Hoang and Kylie MacLellan; Vishal Sridhar in Bengaluru and Freya Berry in London, Editing by Susan Fenton and Alan Crosby)
By Mathieu Bonkoungou

OUAGADOUGOU, April 4 (Reuters) - Burkina Faso's cotton association is seeking 48.3 billion CFA francs ($83.91 million) in compensation from U.S. seed company Monsanto after it said genetically modified cotton led to a drop in quality, association members said on Monday.

Cotton is the second-biggest source of revenue for the impoverished West African country after gold.

In an effort to increase yields, the Inter-professional Cotton Association of Burkina (AICB) began introducing Monsanto's Bollgard II trait into Burkinabe cotton varieties beginning in 2009 as protection against caterpillars.

However, the AICB, which groups together Burkina's three cotton companies and the national cotton farmers union (UNPCB), believes the trait has increased levels of short fibres in its cotton, reducing its market value.

The association said it met with Monsanto representatives last month, but the parties failed to reach an agreement on its financial claim. It also said it was asking farmers to stop using GM seeds until the technology is improved and fibre lengths are restored.

"We went from 39.2 billion (CFA francs) in losses to 49.3 billion in just one harvest. If we continue like that we'll just dig the hole deeper," said Wilfried Yameogo, managing director of SOFITEX, one of the cotton companies belonging to the AICB.

Monsanto said the Bollgard II varieties had consistently delivered increased yield potential since they were launched.

The company acknowledged that recent changes concerning fibre length had been observed, but added that fibre quality is influenced by both environmental conditions and genetic background.

"This variation exists between all cotton varieties (conventional or biotech) and is independent of the Bollgard II trait," spokesman William Brennan said in a reply to Reuters.

He said Monsanto would continue talks with its partners in Burkina Faso.

Yacouba Koura, vice president of the UNPCB farmers union, said growers should be able to replace the GM varieties with conventional cotton seeds for the 2016/17.

"There's no worry. If the conventional cotton seeds are available, if the farmers are trained and there is quality fertiliser, then there's no problem," he said.

($1 = 575.6000 CFA francs) (Additional reporting by Karl Plume in Chicago; Writing by Joe Bavier; Editing by Leslie Adler)
China's working age population is starting to decline, which could have dire consequences for the second largest economy in the world.

The number of workers aged 16 to 59 dropped by a record 4.87 million in 2015, down from the previous year's drop of 3.71 million, according to China's National Bureau of Statistics, cited by the WSJ.

The number of "potential workers"  or those aged 15 to 64  first started falling in 2012, according to the FT.

Moreover, the World Bank warned that China's working age population could fall by more than 10% by 2040  even with the end of the one child policy.

Although a 10% drop might not sound too scary, that adds up to about 90 million Chinese workers, which is approximately equal to the total populations of Germany and Sweden.

In short, "China's working age (15-64) population has peaked and is set to decline, which will weigh on China's long-term potential growth rate," wrote a Macquarie research team led by Larry Hu in a recent note to clients.

china population

At the same time, China's elderly population is set to skyrocket.

In a recent report on the global aging phenomenon, the US Census Bureau shared some comparisons between China's over-65 population and the total population of several developed markets to give a sense of how big this group of people is/will be:

In 2015, the number of older people in China (136.9 million) exceeded Japans total population (126.9 million).

By 2030, Japan and Egypt's combined total projected populations (231.8 million) will be smaller than China's projected 65-and-up population (238.8 million).

And by 2050, China's projected older population (348.8 million) will be approximately equal to the combined total projected populations of Japan, Egypt, Germany, and Australia.

So, while the percentage of China's population over the age of 65 may not be as large as that of Japan, South Korea, or various European countries, China's enormous overall population (roughly one out of every five people on Earth) means that the total number of older people living in China is and will be much larger than in other countries.

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Screen Shot 2016 03 29 at 8.25.39 AM

These two trends together lead to worries about what this will mean for the country's economy going forward. If these projections hold, there will be far more older residents who will likely want to retire, with fewer working-age citizens to support them.

Aging populations have generally been a problem that more developed markets like Japan have had to deal with, rather than emerging economies like China.

So, one could argue that China is basically an emerging market that is now struggling with a developed market problem.

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boardwalk empire

Atlantic City's credit is continuing to spiral downward.

The city has been facing issues due to its large public pension plans and funding.

According to NJ.com, the city's mayor Don Guardian said that the city will shut down any non-essential city services starting Friday if a plan is not reached.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Mayor Guardian have been presenting differing plans on how to address the debt issue. Guardian's plan would delay payment to unionized city workers, switching to a once-a-month payment plan. The plan is being put to a vote by the unions on Wednesday.

In Christie's opinion this is only a temporary fix, and more must be done. He has suggested that the state take over some of the city's operations, including handling debt and union contracts.

In addition, Christie's office filed a lawsuit Monday to compel the city to continue making payments to the city's school system according to the Press of Atlantic City.

On top of all of this, credit rating agency Moody's once again cut the debt rating for the New Jersey city to Caa1 from Caa3. This is the third-lowest credit rating from Moody's and well into junk territory.

The downgrade impacts $16 million of the $345 million of Atlantic City's debt.

"The downgrade to Caa3 reflects the greater likelihood of default within the next year and higher probability of significant bondholder impairment given an ongoing political stalemate over an Atlantic City fiscal rescue package," said a release from Moody's.

"The downgrade also incorporates renewed signals from the state that bondholders will face losses as part of a possible debt restructuring. The Caa3 rating indicates an expected loss to bondholders of up to 35% of principal, in light of the city's very large structural deficit with limited sources of relief without state assistance."

Christie said in a press conference Monday that the debt is now just as bad as Puerto Rico, which is facing possible bankruptcy. The island also has a rating of Caa1 on its debt from Moody's.

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Guardian said in a press conference that he understood the severity of the situation, and recognizes that the state will need to step in to assist the city. He said, however, that the state has shorted the city $33.5 million that was promised to it and the city was doing the best it could.

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Berlin (AFP) - Germany's interior minister voiced optimism Sunday that Europe's refugee influx had peaked but said agreements with North African countries may be needed to prevent mass arrivals in future.

A controversial EU-Turkey deal goes into effect on Monday under which Ankara has pledged to take back migrants from EU member Greece, while it plans to launch orderly transports of Syrian asylum-seekers to the 28-member bloc.

Germany -- which took in more than one million refugees and migrants last year -- has already seen arrivals drop sharply to an average of 140 a day on its Austrian border, said Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere.

"I can say with a great deal of caution that the peak of the refugee crisis is behind us," de Maiziere was quoted as telling the Tagesspiegel am Sonntag newspaper, speaking weeks after Balkan countries closed their borders to the wave of migrants.

The German minister added however that "there are still some questions that we must answer".

"This includes the implementation of the negotiated agreement achieved with Turkey, but also a search for solutions in case of possible alternative routes, such as via Libya and Italy," he said.

"If, once more, more people come via this route, we will need to search for similar solutions as we did with Turkey and also enter into negotiations with North African countries," he added.

"I could imagine reception centres in North Africa for refugees who are returned from Italy, and in turn a humanitarian admission programme with the North African country in question," he said.

He cautioned however that much "hard work" would lie ahead before any such programmes may be agreed.
NASHVILLE, TN--(Marketwired - Apr 4, 2016) - First Colombia Gold Corp. (OTC PINK: FCGD) is proud to announce that the company has executed an agreement to acquire one hundred percent (100%) interest in Singa Energy Solutions, an energy production and consulting company.

The signed agreement outlines the structure of the transaction, which will give First Colombia Gold Corp. full right and title to Singa's signature assets and contracts. The Company is excited that, with this agreement, comes the success-driven management team of Singa, which will move the company to higher levels of performance.

Additionally, the company announced that they would begin operating and doing business under the trade name of Singa Energy Solutions effective immediately. Simultaneous to this announcement, the company is unveiling a new corporate logo and a new digital presence.

"We are very excited about this acquisition, as well as the introduction of our new company name," said Jason Castenir, CEO of First Colombia Gold Corp. "We believe the name Singa Energy Solutions allows us to better represent our business and our future focus as we introduce new products and services. These services include utilizing Singa's current business model, which includes power plant construction and development, marketing petroleum fuels in new markets, and offering energy and fuel procurement consulting to a global consumer market. Our goal when we started nearly two years ago with our first oil and gas acquisition was to become a major energy producer and to offer products and services that span multiple markets and business sectors. In response to customer demand, we continue to aggressively pursue that focused objective and continue to evolve in the process."

Clarence Parks, President of First Colombia Gold Corp said, "All of our products and proven services are backed by the same experienced team and bring the same unique agile approach that our customers rely on. This includes our newest petroleum offerings. This news just enhances our ability to reach a variety of markets and to offer more developed, diversified customer solutions."

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"This acquisition and name change formalizes a shift in corporate strategy that has been underway for more than a year," added Mr. Castenir. "While we take great pride in our US operation, we have the vision to become a global company, and with the success of our previously-announced joint venture relationship with Singa Energy Solutions and our growing focus on energy products and distribution, our legacy name no longer fully describes our company. We want to ensure that our image and name accurately reflect what we do."

Additionally, First Colombia Gold announced that, under the new Singa Energy Solutions, Orrapun P. Misir would become Chairperson and member of the board. Ms. Misir stated, "I am very enthusiastic about the prospects for the company, and look forward to securing strong revenue growth internationally in the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries, a fast-growing region with a population of more than 600 million people."

Alexander Misra, the founder of Singa Energy Solutions said, "This unification of First Colombia Gold is a natural fit. It makes clear strategic sense, and creates exceptional value for both companies. Together, we can leverage our best practices to achieve even higher levels of sales, operational excellence and customer satisfaction. The combination of these two companies now offers sales and logistics of fuel from the rack, expanded storage capabilities, export of fuel coupled with future development of global energy projects."

Investor Inquiries: info@firstcolombiagoldcorp.com

Website: www.fcgdcorp.com / www.singaenergysolutions.com

Email: info@firstcolombiagoldcorp.com

Disclaimer

This release contains forward-looking statements that are based on beliefs of First Colombia Gold Corp. management and reflect First Colombia Gold Corp.'s current expectations as contemplated under section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and section 21E of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. When we use in this release the words "estimate," "project," "believe," "anticipate," "intend," "expect," "plan," "predict," "may," "should," "will," "can," the negative of these words, or such other variations thereon, or comparable terminology, are all intended to identify forward looking statements. Such statements reflect the current views of First Colombia Gold Corp. with respect to future events based on currently available information and are subject to numerous assumptions, risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to, risks and uncertainties pertaining to development of mining properties, changes in economic conditions and other risks, uncertainties and factors, which may cause the actual results, performance, or achievement expressed or implied by such forward looking statements to differ materially from the forward looking statements. The information contained in this press release is historical in nature, has not been updated, and is current only to the date shown in this press release. This information may no longer be accurate and therefore you should not rely on the information contained in this press release. To the extent permitted by law, First Colombia Gold Corp. and its employees, agents and consultants exclude all liability for any loss or damage arising from the use of, or reliance on, any such information, whether or not caused by any negligent act or omission. This press release incorporates by reference the Company's filings with the SEC including 10K, 10Q, 8K reports and other filings. Investors are encouraged to review all filings. There is no assurance First Colombia Gold Corp. will identify projects of merit or if it will have sufficient financing to implement its business plan. There is no assurance that the Company's due diligence on the potential acquisition of oil and gas assets will be favorable nor that definitive terms can be negotiated. Information in this release includes representations from the private companies referred to which has not been independently verified by the company. A downturn in oil prices would affect the potential profitability of the proposed acquisition negatively.
(Adds detail on tender procedure, previous tenders)

PARIS, April 4 (Reuters) - France plans to launch a tender to build turbines for the country's third offshore wind farm, Energy Minister Segolene Royal said in a statement on Monday.

The wind farm is to be off the northern harbour town of Dunkerque, Royal said without specifying the size of the tender nor when bidding would close.

France, unlike Britain, Germany and Denmark, does not yet have any offshore wind turbines installed. But it has already awarded two other tenders for offshore wind farms.

Royal said the new tender would include a new procedure of "competitive dialogue" with the bidders to fine tune bidding requirements and to give bidders the chance to improve their bids during the process.

She also said that studies of wind, wave and soil conditions would be done by public authorities before bidders have to make final bids. The government will also simplify procedures for building permits for the tender.

France awarded a first offshore wind tender for 2,000 megawatts of capacity in 2012, representing investment of about 7 billion euros ($8 billion).

A consortium of EDF and Alstom won three of the four sites, at Fecamp, Courseulles-sur-Mer (Normandy) and Saint-Nazaire (Loire). Spain's Iberdrola, in partnership with nuclear group Areva, won the fourth site at Saint-Brieuc (Brittany).

A second tender awarded 1,000 MW, for investment of 4 billion euros to a consortium led by French gas and power group Engie in 2014.

The Engie consortium included Portugal's EDP Renovaveis, France's Neoen Marine and Areva and will build 500 MW off the town of Le Treport in northern Normandy and 500 MW off the islands of Noirmoutier and Yeu on the Vendee coast. ($1 = 0.8800 euros) (Reporting by Geert De Clercq; Editing by David Goodman and Jane Merriman)
(Adds details of floating wind farm consortium)

PARIS, April 4 (Reuters) - France plans to launch a tender for turbines for a third offshore wind farm, the country's energy minister said on Monday, to be built off the northern harbour of Dunkirk.

Unlike Britain, Germany and Denmark, France has not yet installed any offshore wind turbines, though it has awarded two tenders for fixed-foundation offshore wind farms, and launched a tender for floating wind turbine projects.

Energy Minister Segolene Royal said in a statement the tender would include a new procedure of "competitive dialogue" with bidders to fine tune requirements and to give them the chance to improve their bids during the process.

The statement did not specify the size of the tender, nor when bidding would close.

Royal said studies of wind, wave and soil conditions would be done by public authorities before bidders had to make final bids and that the government would simplify procedures for building permits.

France awarded its first offshore wind tender for 2,000 megawatts (MW) of capacity in 2012 at four sites, representing an investment of about 7 billion euros ($8 billion).

A consortium of EDF and Alstom won three of the sites while Spain's Iberdrola, in partnership with French nuclear company Areva, won the fourth.

A second tender for 1,000 MW and an investment of 4 billion euros was awarded in 2014 to a consortium led by French gas and power company Engie including Portugal's EDP Renovaveis, France's Neoen Marine and Areva.

Engie, EDP Renovaveis, Caisse des Depots and Eiffage also said on Monday they had submitted a "pilot floating wind farm" proposal to the French Environment and Energy Management Agency.

France launched a tender in August for proposals for floating wind farms at four sites, with three to six turbines each with a capacity of at least 5 MW.

The companies said in a statement their proposed installation would include three to six turbines with a minimum capacity of 6 MW each.

($1 = 0.8800 euros) (Reporting by Geert De Clercq; editing by David Clarke)
Company logos for French telecom operator Orange, on a tablet screen, and Bouygues Telecom, on a mobile phone screen, are seen in this illustration photo taken in Nice, France, April 1, 2016. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard

PARIS (Reuters) - France's biggest telecom stocks all fell sharply on Monday following the breakdown of tie-up talks between Orange and Bouygues that would have reduced the number of competing operators in the country from four to three.

As of 0718 GMT, Bouygues (BOUY.PA) was 15.9 percent lower, with Numericable SFR (NUME.PA) down 14.9 percent, Iliad (ILD.PA) down 12.9 percent and Orange (ORAN.PA) down 5.4 percent.

Orange-Bouygues talks aimed at creating a dominant French telecoms operator collapsed on Friday, ending an attempt to ease a price war that has ravaged sector margins.

(Reporting by Laurence Frost; editing by Geert De Clercq)
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras looks on during a meeting with Mayor of Piraeus Yannis Moralis (not pictured) at his office at the Maximos Mansion in Athens, Greece, February 11, 2016. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis

By Lefteris Papadimas

ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece urged its international lenders on Monday to conclude a key bailout review swiftly, as talks on its fiscal progress resumed after the leak of a transcript in which IMF officials apparently mooted scare tactics to get a deal.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras hopes that a successful review, which will unlock an estimated 5 billion euros in bailout funds, will pave the way for talks on debt relief and convince austerity-weary Greeks that their sacrifices are paying off.

The 5 billion euros are needed to repay loans from the International Monetary Fund and maturing bonds to the European Central Bank, as well as unpaid domestic bills.

Greece signed up to a bailout worth up to 86 billion euros in 2015, its third international financial lifeline since 2010, which hauled it back from the brink of leaving the euro zone. So far, it has received 21.4 billion of an initial 26 billion euro tranche.

The review has been adjourned twice since February, mainly due to a rift among the lenders over the estimated size of Greece's fiscal gap by 2018, and disagreements with Athens on pension reforms and the management of bad loans.

"The negotiation must be concluded immediately, without unrealistic demands for additional measures beyond those set out in the July bailout agreement," Tsipras' office said.

The WikiLeaks site on Saturday published what it said was the transcript of a March 19 conference call by three senior IMF officials. In it, they discuss tactics to apply pressure on Greece, Germany and the European Union to reach a deal in April.

The IMF has fought shy of participating in the bailout without a firm promise of debt relief for Greece from the EU, but Germany, while keen for the IMF to take part, has said relief cannot be discussed until Athens has demonstrated compliance with the terms of the bailout.

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said on Sunday that suggestions that IMF staff planned to push Greece closer to default as a negotiating manoeuvre were "simply nonsense".

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WORRIES

Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos met inspectors from the European Commission, the European Central Bank, the European Stability Mechanism and the IMF in Athens. "The word (WikiLeaks) was not mentioned," he told reporters.

Another government official said Athens would present tax measures on Tuesday worth 1 percent of gross domestic product to plug a fiscal hole and meet a target of a 3.5 percent primary surplus in 2018.

Lagarde said in a letter to Tsipras that a bailout deal was "still a good distance away".

Germany's Finance Ministry said it still expected the review to be wrapped up in late April or early May, but a debt haircut was not up for discussion at the moment. A spokesman played down differences with the IMF, saying German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and Lagarde were in "constant, close contact".

But the transcript has renewed worries about Greece's public finances. Greek two-year bond yields jumped about 2 percentage points to a one-month high on Monday.

"Greece's deep-seated problems of unsustainably high debt and a fundamental lack of competitiveness inside the euro zone would see doubts about its future inside the currency union resurface regularly," said Jonathan Loynes, Chief European Economist at Capital Economics. "The next chapter of the Greek tragedy could be about to begin".

(Reporting by Renee Maltezou and Lefteris Papadimas; Additional reporting Noah Barkin, Joseph Nasr and Paul Carrel in Berlin; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
By David Brough LONDON (Reuters) - Indian and Thai white sugar exports to Myanmar, a gateway for smuggling into China, are set to slow further as harvests finish early due to drought and Indian domestic prices surge, diverting sugar to the local market. Indian mills, believed to be the main source of white sugar for Myanmar after gaining market share as Thai supplies ran out, are expected to prioritise the local market due to a jump in domestic prices, traders said. Chinese white sugar demand has remained strong in recent weeks, underpinning a whites-over-raws refining premium of just over $100 per tonne, a comfortable margin for refining. Flows of white sugar to Myanmar started to decline following a crackdown on smuggling into China. Volumes of white sugar shipped to Myanmar soared last year due to a jump in smuggling to China because of high domestic prices in the world's top sugar buyer. "After a sudden rise in prices here (in India), there is no export parity at all. It's a fact that most of our sugar exported so far in the current season has gone to Myanmar and to China via Myanmar," said Praful Vithalani, who owns Indian brokerage Jagjivan Keshavaji. "Clearly there's more potential for exports to Myanmar and China but as prices firm up here, I do not see India exporting, at least for now. If global prices go up further, I do see India taking advantage of falling supplies from Thailand." Drought has eroded sugar yields in India and Thailand, leading industry analysts to revise down output estimates. A senior Thai government official said he saw limitations in India's capacity to export sugar. "India is facing drought as well (as Thailand). India's output this year is also lower than predicted, and will mostly go to domestic consumption," said Boonthin Kotsiri, production director at Thailand's Office of Cane and Sugar Board. One senior analyst said India exported more than 900,000 tonnes of white sugar to Myanmar from October 1 2015 to March 31 2016 (i.e. the first half of 2015/2016 (Oct-Sept)), while Thailand exported 475,000 tonnes to Myanmar in the same period. Most of the sugar was believed to have been smuggled into China, trade sources said. Analyst Green Pool said in its latest weekly report that only 20 Thai mills remained operational (32 had shut) as the harvest wound down, compared to 30 at this time last year. (Additional reporting by Mayank Bhardwaj in India and Patpicha Tanakasempipat in Bangkok; Editing by David Evans)
A worker walks atop a tanker wagon to check the freight level at an oil terminal on the outskirts of Kolkata November 27, 2013. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri/Files

By Nidhi Verma

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's Iran oil imports topped 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) in March, highest in at least five years, as private refiner Reliance Industries (RELI.NS) resumed purchases after a multi-year lay-off, preliminary tanker data obtained by Reuters shows.

Indian refiners together imported 506,100 bpd oil from Iran last month, a jump of about 135 percent from February, the data showed. In March of last year, the refiners halted imports from Iran to keep shipments within the parameters of the temporary nuclear deal then in force.

The higher imports by India signals Tehran's success in beginning to regain market share after the lifting of Western sanctions targeting its nuclear programme. [nL3N173290]

Iran has said it will continue increasing its oil production and exports until it reaches the market position it held before the imposition of sanctions. [nL5N1770E8]

In the fiscal year ended on March 31, Indian refiners shipped in 14.4 percent more oil from Iran at about 251,100 bpd, the data showed. The increase was the largest annual growth since the 2007/08 fiscal year, according to Reuters data.

Essar Oil was the biggest importer of Iranian oil in March with about 207,400 bpd oil, followed by about 130,000 bpd by Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd (MRPL.NS) and about 90,600 bpd by Reliance, its first shipments in about six years.

Reliance had halted Iranian oil imports in 2010 because it was worried that the threat of U.S. sanctions on companies doing business with the Islamic republic would complicate its efforts to boost market share for its fuels in the United States.

Last month Reliance imported Forozan grade and South Pars condensate from Iran, the data showed. [nL3N15W4Q2]

Indian Oil Corp (IOC.NS), the country's biggest refiner and not a regular buyer of Iranian oil, shipped in 2 million barrels or about 67,000 bpd from Tehran last month.

(The tanker loading data was converted from tonnes to barrels using a conversion factor of 7.3 barrels per tonne.)

(Reporting by Nidhi Verma; Editing by Tom Hogue)
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's government aims to sign contracts for 80 percent of public works spending allocated under the new fiscal year's budget by the end of September as part of efforts to revive a flagging economic recovery, government sources said on Monday.

The target would mean front-loading most of the roughly 12 trillion yen (75.5 billion pounds) in funds set aside for public works projects under the state budget for the fiscal year that began on April 1.

By moving up most of the spending to the first half of the fiscal year, the government hopes to give an early boost to an economy skirting recession due to the pain from sluggish global growth and China's economic slowdown.

Finance Minister Taro Aso will present the front-loading target at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday and seek cooperation from other cabinet ministers, the sources said on condition of anonymity.

The government will also consider compiling a fresh fiscal stimulus package and reach a conclusion around the time Japan hosts a Group of Seven summit on May 26-27, the sources said.

(Reporting by Takaya Yamaguchi; Writing by Leika Kihara; Editing by Richard Borsuk)
* Arcos Dorados gets loan to pay off 2016 bonds * Marfrig buys back debt * Petrobras sought arbitration for Sete Brasil talks * IRSA completes liability management transaction By Mike Gambale and Paul Kilby NEW YORK, April 4 (IFR) - No deals priced in LatAm primary market on Monday.

Here is a snapshot of LatAm sovereign credit spreads: SOVEREIGN 4/1 3/31 3/30 1D 10D YTD 2015/16 HIGH BARBADOS 653 653 648 0 7 49 659 (2/11/16) BRAZIL 381 384 378 -3 -2 -105 542 (2/11/16) CHILE 99 101 98 -2 13 13 143 (2/11/16) COLOMBIA 272 278 275 -6 10 -17 412 (2/11/16) COSTA RICA 494 504 492 -10 -6 -23 587 (2/11/16) DOMINICAN REP 415 425 429 -10 -1 0 542 (2/11/16) ECUADOR 1121 1101 1155 20 67 -194 1765 (2/11/16) EL SALVADOR 669 670 664 -1 0 29 840 (2/11/16) GUATEMALA 296 300 297 -4 -10 -6 385 (2/11/16) JAMAICA 449 453 455 -4 -17 0 519 (2/11/15) MEXICO 195 199 196 -4 4 1 278 (2/11/16) PANAMA 195 200 197 -5 3 -11 272 (2/11/16) PERU 217 218 215 -1 12 -14 291 (2/10/16) TRINIDAD & TOBAGO 157 158 153 -1 -1 59 173 (1/15/15) URUGUAY 267 269 265 -2 -2 -1 344 (2/11/16) VENEZUELA 3172 3159 3089 13 277 380 3713 (2/12/16) Source: Bank of America Merrill Lynch Master Index SPREAD TRENDS: One-day change shows 13 out of 16 sovereigns tighter YTD, eight out of 16 LatAm sovereign credits tighter LATAM PIPELINE: Brazil could issue again this year if conditions allow, the treasury's interim debt coordinator Leandro Secunho said: "There is no need for new (global bond) sales, but if we see new windows of opportunity we will consider reentering the market." The sovereign sold a US$1.5bn 2026 dollar-denominated bond on March 10, tapping global markets for the first time since it lost its investment-grade rating.

Argentina named BBVA, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JP Morgan, Santander and UBS as joint bookrunners for a possible bond sale, a source familiar with the matter told IFR.

Timing and currency not yet certain, but the deal could come in early April.

Barring objections from Congress, the sovereign is likely to try to issue up to US$15bn of bonds to help pay litigant investors.

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Colombia has mandated BBVA, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan to organize meeting with fixed-income investors in Europe to discuss opportunities in the capital markets this year.

The board of Argentine real estate developer IRSA has approved the issuance of up to US$470m of debt, according to a filing with local regulators.

The Province of Mendoza is looking to raise US$300m in both the local and international markets to refinance debt, according to local reports.

Neuquen province is contemplating a bond issue.

The United Mexican States has filed an up to US$10bn debt shelf with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Proceeds will be used for general purposes, including refinancing and the repurchase of debt.

Argentine E&P company Medanito has wrapped up roadshows ahead of a possible transaction through Itau and UBS. Expected rating is CCC+ by Fitch.

Concesion Pacifico Tres, a toll-road concession in Colombia, held a roadshow through Goldman Sachs. The company is looking to raise up to US$272m of bonds, according to Fitch, which has rated the senior secured bonds BBB-.

Pacifico Tres is jointly owned by Construcciones El Condor SA, Mario Alberto Huertas Cotes, and Constructora MECO SA. Banca de Inversion is acting as its financial advisor.

Argentina utility Pampa Energia's shareholders have approved a US$500m debt program.

Uruguay plans to raise up to US$1.5bn in bonds this year.

(Reporting By Michael Gambale; editing by Shankar Ramakrishnan)
enrique pena nieto

In 2015, a Mexican contractor  and a close friend of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto  moved roughly $100 million into accounts outside the country amid a corruption probe, according to details posted online by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

The documents describing the transactions  which Business Insider has not seen  were part of a massive trove of financial documents revealing the offshore holdings of public officials, businesspeople, and other celebrities.

The records leaked by an international group of media outlets come from the Panama-based international law firm Mossack Fonseca, a global firm that also provides trust services and appears to have many high-profile clients.

One of those clients, Juan Armando Hinojosa Cantu, the contractor in question, enlisted Mossack Fonesca to help him create trusts for accounts worth $100 million after the Mexican government launched an investigation into allegations of special favors given to the Mexican president and his wife, according to an analysis of the documents by ICIJ.

That contractor's companies have won more than 80 government contracts and received at least $2.8 billion in state money, The New York Times reported last year.

In late 2014, Mexican journalists reported that Pena Nieto's wife, Angelica Rivera, had gotten a $4 million loan and bought a $7 million home in an upscale Mexico City neighborhood from one of Hinojosa's firms. The home was "built to their specifications on unusually favorable terms," according to The Times.

The scandal over the first family's home purchase stayed in the spotlight, and in February 2015, the federal comptroller, Virgilio Andrade, was appointed by Pena Nieto to investigate the alleged wrongdoing. Andrade is friends with Mexican Finance Minister Luis Videgaray, who was also implicated in the scandal, and he sits on Pena Nieto's cabinet.

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Mexican Finance Minister Luis Videgaray speaks during an official ceremony at the National Palace in Mexico City, February 4, 2015. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

Hinojosa started moving his money 42 days after the Mexican government opened its investigation into the possible conflict of interest involved in the first family's home purchase, according to Mexican news site Aristegui Noticias, which saw the Mossack Fonseca documents.

On July 1, 2015, an adviser at financial services firm D'Orleans Bourbon & Associates wrote to Mossack Fonseca, asking for help establishing a trust in New Zealand on behalf of Hinojosa, according to a screenshot of the email obtained by Mexico City-based newspaper Proceso.

The email requested secrecy and said that the transaction  which would help the client with the "restructure of his patrimonial vehicles outside his country of residence"  was urgent, according to Proceso.

The lawyer who wrote the email said that Hinojosa had quite a "number of people who greatly dislike him" and that there was "a great deal of negative publicity surrounding the client."

The email also underscored Hinojosa's importance, saying that he was "one of the most prominent business man in Mexico," according to Proceso.

grupo higa

Mossack Fonseca, according to Proceso, "participated in the design of an international network that consisted of the creation of British companies, Dutch foundations, and New Zealand trusts." The communications stated that the $100 million in question was "only a small part" of Hinojosa's portfolio.

When Mossack Fonseca asked for clarification about Hinojosa's role in the scandal ongoing in Mexico at that time, the firm replied that many of the newspapers linking Hinojosa to Pena Nieto were "owned by some business rivals" of Hinojosa, like Carlos Slim, who owns part of The New York Times.

In August 2015, Andrade cleared the subjects of his investigation  "his friend, his boss, and his boss's wife"  of wrongdoing.

pena nieto and wife

Allegations of influence-peddling have hurt the Mexican president's approval ratings. In August 2015, his overall approval rating was 44%, down from 51% the year before. On the issue of dealing with corruption, Pena Nieto's approval fell to 27%, down from 42% in 2014.

Hinojosa hasn't been charged with a crime, and anonymous company structures hidden in offshore holdings are not illegal. The documents released, however, do show how far high-level politicians and other figures have gone to conceal their wealth and avoid taxes and other scrutiny. Journalists who received the documents said that the activities revealed could offer evidence of money laundering, sanctions evasion, drug deals, and other crimes.

Numerous world leaders, their families, and others implicated by the documents have denied wrongdoing, and multiple governments have opened investigations into the allegations.

A memo from a Mossack Fonseca partner in the leaked documents reads, "Ninety-five per cent of our work coincidentally consists in selling vehicles to avoid taxes," according to The Guardian.

NOW WATCH: This is how Mexican drug cartels make billions selling drugs





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(Releads on trade minister calling summit on corruption)

By Terje Solsvik and Stine Jacobsen

OSLO, April 4 (Reuters) - Norway's government invited the heads of top company boards to talks on corruption as offshore banking revelations added to a string of allegations over the ethics of some of the country's largest firms.

The invitation follows the leak of more than 11.5 million documents from the files of a Panama-based law firm, allegedly showing how clients avoided tax or laundered money.

Among the leaked material on hundreds of thousands of clients in multiple jurisdictions were revelations that top Norwegian bank DNB helped customers set up offshore companies in the Seychelles.

DNB, in which the state owns 34 percent, said it regretted assisting about 40 customers in setting up the firms between 2006 and 2010, and that the practice had ended.

"It's the customers' responsibility to report their own funds to tax authorities. Still, we believe we should not have contributed to establishing these companies," Chief Executive Rune Bjerke said.

"The structures could be abused for tax evasion."

Trade and Industry Minister Monica Maeland said in a statement on Monday she had invited board leaders of 30 firms to the talks in June.

"There has recently been revealed several cases of corruption and ethical issues in the broader sense. As owner we have clear expectations to how the companies work with corporate responsibility," she said.

"I want a status (report) on how the companies work to prevent corruption and have therefore invited the chairmen of the companies under my ministry to a meeting."

In July four former top executives at Yara, one of the world's biggest nitrate fertiliser makers, were sentenced to prison terms for paying bribes in Libya and India. They are appealing.

A parliament committee is looking into cases concerning oil firm Statoil, telecoms company Telenor and aluminium producer Norsk Hydro about their own or their affiliates' dealings in Angola, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan respectively.

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All three firms, in which the state has stakes, have denied wrongdoing.

Norsk Hydro said it expected it would attend the June meeting.

"Speaking generally, we have a good dialogue with our biggest owner (the state) and have had regular meetings with the ministry about these issues," said a Norsk Hydro spokesman.

In a separate statement, the minister said bank DNB must now provide a written explanation of its policy of helping clients set up offshore companies.

"DNB says this should not have happened and that the bank should not have participated. That I agree to," Maeland said.

Statoil was not invited to the June meeting as it is supervised by the oil ministry, the trade ministry said.

Yara said it was not able to comment on Monday. DNB and Telenor were not immediately available for comment.

(Additional reporting by Ole Petter Skonnord; Editing by Andrew Roche)
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Apr 4, 2016) - Port Metro Vancouver's 2016 cruise season officially kicks off today with the arrival of the Star Princess at Canada Place. Vancouver expects to welcome approximately 830,000 passengers on 228 calls, reflecting a forecasted three per cent increase in passenger volume over 2015.

"2016 marks the 30th anniversary of Canada Place," said Robin Silvester, President and Chief Executive Officer at Port Metro Vancouver. "Our award-winning cruise facilities at Canada Place welcome thousands of visitors to beautiful Vancouver every year."

The results of a joint passenger survey by Port Metro Vancouver, Tourism Vancouver, Destination B.C., and Vancouver International Airport in 2015 indicated an increased percentage of international cruise passengers coming to Vancouver, boosting economic impact in the region.

The Vancouver cruise industry stimulates more than $2 million in economic activity for each ship that calls at Canada Place.

Port Metro Vancouver was recently awarded the Best Destination Experience by Cruise Insight Magazine at the 2016 Seatrade Cruise Global Conference, the cruise industry's premier global event, held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

"This award is a testament to the collective work of all the tourism partners who consistently deliver a dynamic pre-and post-cruise experience for the many cruise passengers visiting Vancouver each year," said Ty Speer, President and Chief Executive Officer of Tourism Vancouver.

Port Metro Vancouver is proud of the positive relationships built over many years with its cruise line customers.

"Holland America was the first cruise line to call the new Canada Place cruise terminal on April 28, 1986," continued Robin Silvester. "We value our partnership with Holland America Line very highly, and look forward to continuing to build on this great relationship for many years to come."

"Holland America Line has been sailing to Alaska from Port Metro Vancouver for more than 40 years, and our historic connection is deepened by the fact that one of our ships was the first cruise ship to berth at Canada Place back in 1986," said Orlando Ashford, President, Holland America Line. "Our guests rank Vancouver among their favorite cities, and the ease and convenience of the port make it all the more popular. Congratulations to Canada Place on celebrating its 30th anniversary, and we look forward to an extremely robust and successful Alaska season sailing from Vancouver."

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Environmental stewardship is a priority for Port Metro Vancouver. In collaboration with the cruise industry and BC Hydro, the port authority continues to work toward increasing the use of shore power by cruise ships calling Vancouver. Shore power reduces marine diesel air emissions by allowing ships to shut down their engines and connect to BC Hydro's electrical grid while at dock. Since inception in 2009, the shore power installations at Canada Place have reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 14,000 tonnes.

About Port Metro Vancouver:

Port Metro Vancouver is Canada's largest port and the third largest tonnage port in North America, responsible for Canada's trade with more than 170 world economies. Located in a naturally beautiful setting on Canada's west coast, Port Metro Vancouver is responsible for the efficient and reliable movement of goods and passengers, and integrates environmental, social and economic sustainability initiatives into all areas of port operations. Port Metro Vancouver is committed to meaningful engagement with the communities in which it operates and the shared obligation to improve the quality of life for Canadians. Enabling the trade of approximately $200 billion in goods in 2015, the port generates an estimated 100,000 jobs, $6.1 billion in wages, and $9.7 billion in GDP across Canada. As a non-shareholder, financially self-sufficient corporation established by the Government of Canada, Port Metro Vancouver operates pursuant to the Canada Marine Act and is accountable to the elected federal Minister of Transport.

For more information

Highlights in 2016:

We look forward to the return of the Disney Wonder, and all our returning homeported vessels from Princess Cruises, Norwegian Cruise Line, Celebrity Cruises and Royal Caribbean International.

Crystal Cruises returns to homeport in Vancouver this year, with eight sailings on the Serenity, bringing more than 13,000 passengers, making it the first time Crystal Cruises has homeported in Vancouver since 2005.

Holland America Line's Nieuw Amsterdam will make her inaugural call to Vancouver on April 30. The Nieuw Amsterdam will call Vancouver her homeport, offering 24 roundtrip sailings, bringing more than 100,000 passengers.

Compagnie Du Ponant's Le Soleal, sister ship of Le Boreal and L'Austral, will make her inaugural call on June 18.

March 2016, during Seatrade Cruise Global Conference, Cruise Insight Magazine presented Port Metro Vancouver with the award for "Best Destination Experience".

Audio quote: Robin Silvester, President and Chief Executive Officer, Port Metro Vancouver [MP3]

2016 cruise schedule
Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak adjusts his glasses during a session of the Gaidar Forum 2016 "Russia and the World: Looking to the Future" in Moscow, Russia, January 14, 2016. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin

NOVOKUZNETSK, Russia (Reuters) - Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said on Monday that he may meet his Saudi Arabian counterpart before a planned oil producers' meeting in Doha on April 17.

Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, will agree to freeze crude oil production levels only if Iran and other major producers do so, the kingdom's deputy crown prince said in an interview with Bloomberg last week.

"If there is such an opportunity, surely we will talk to our colleagues," he said about a possible meeting with his Saudi Arabian colleague.

Iran has said it will not join fellow OPEC and non-OPEC members in a plan to be discussed in Doha to freeze oil production to boost prices.

Novak also said he hoped that a common position would prevail at the oil producers' meeting.

"I hope that in this case a common position will prevail during the discussions and all sides will come to an agreement, ... especially given that Iran has confirmed its participation," he said.

(Reporting by Anastasia Lyrchikova; writing by Vladimir Soldatkin; editing by Alexander Winning and David Evans)
A passenger plane flies over a Shell logo at a petrol station in west London, in this January 29, 2015 file photo. REUTERS/Toby Melville/Files

OSLO (Reuters) - Oil major Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) has pulled its application from Norway's Arctic-focused oil licensing round, the firm said on Monday, in a blow to the Nordic country's ambitions to explore for oil and gas in its northern offshore areas.

"The decision is part of an optimisation of Shell's global portfolio following the acquisition of BG and a persistently low oil price," the company's Norwegian unit said in a statement. "Norway remains one of our core areas."

In December the Norwegian oil ministry said Shell was among the companies that had applied for drilling permissions in the so-called 23rd round, a licensing round set to move the search for hydrocarbons closer to the country's border with Russia.

As recently as last month, the head of Shell's business in Norway had told Reuters the firm had hoped that it could begin drilling in 2017 if it won licenses in the 23rd licensing round.

The Norwegian oil and energy minister said Shell's decision had no implication for the conduct of the licensing round. The awards would still be announced before July, he said.

"We have many other competent companies that are competing hard for our promising, new exploration areas," Tord Lien said in an emailed statement.

"Shell has told us that the decision is based on short-term cash flow priorities and consolidation after the acquisition of BG."

(Reporting by Stine Jacobsen, editing by Gwladys Fouche)
Solar panels of local mining company CAP, which were installed by SunEdison, are seen in the Atacama Desert, in this June 5, 2014 file photo. REUTERS/Fabian Andres Cambero/Files

By Nichola Groom

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Businesses ranging from Silicon Valley venture capitalists to a small Massachusetts solar installer say they are owed money by SunEdison Inc, underscoring the breadth of a breakneck expansion seen contributing to the solar and wind energy company's financial woes.

Two dozen legal claims have been made since the beginning of the year against SunEdison and its executives, mainly from shareholders who claim the company misled them about its financial position, a review of cases on Westlaw showed.

None of the lawsuits reviewed have yet been adjudicated, nor have the claims been validated. Most are too recent for SunEdison to have filed a response to, and the company did not respond to requests for comment.

SunEdison also faces a major lawsuit from solar installer Vivint Solar Inc for failing to complete its $1.9 billion acquisition of the company. In its annual filing in March last year it disclosed only two significant lawsuits.

Roughly half a dozen suits filed since February for breach of contract claims from partners and suppliers offer a window into the reach of SunEdison. In just a few years, the maker of silicon "wafers" for solar cells has transformed itself into the world's fastest growing renewable energy developer, taking on projects as small as a family home or as big as a desert solar array.

SunEdison's shares have fallen about 98 percent over the past 12 months. It faces a cash crunch, a $12 billion debt pile, and scrutiny from U.S. regulators over a failed deal, among other issues. [ID: nL3N1735EJ]

The breadth of partner lawsuits showed the results of an "out of control shopping spree" in 2014 and 2015, said Pavel Molchanov, an analyst who follows the solar industry for Raymond James.

"This was expansion on steroids and obviously we are seeing how that movie is ending very badly because the company is struggling to keep up with its bills," Molchanov said.

The claims themselves are still being adjudicated, and the number is not unusually high for a bankruptcy, but the variety of claimants indicates nervousness among creditors, said Rick Antonoff, a bankruptcy attorney with Blank Rome LLP, who is not involved in SunEdison cases.

Story continues

Westlaw did not show responses from SunEdison in the partner and supplier cases, aside from one request for time.

The company is expected to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection within weeks, the Wall Street Journal reported, [nL2N1742AI].

Clients big and small are seeking payments. Western, Massachusetts based Valley Home Improvement Inc says it is owed $37,000 for installing solar panels on two homes, while temporary staffing firm Aerotek Inc on Friday alleged SunEdison failed to pay more than $1 million at projects in Colorado, California and elsewhere.

And Silicon Valley green energy investor Vinod Khosla's firm, Khosla Ventures, and venture capital firm Sigma Partners and Fortis Advisors sued SunEdison in March for allegedly stopping payments for its 2013 acquisition of solar heating startup EchoFirst Inc.

Khosla and partners say SunEdison owes $6 million on the $27.5 million deal.

Suppliers are also lining up, particularly those that provided materials to the Pasadena, Texas polysilicon plant that SunEdison in February said it would close.

ECKA Granules of America LLC, which makes aluminum powder used to make solar cells in March claimed $1.4 million. It said SunEdison has not returned two railcars used to deliver powder.

Suppliers want to collect as much as possible before bankruptcy, said attorney Antonoff. They are "being proactive in taking action now to collect rather than waiting around to see what SunEdison does, he said.
Chairman Lim will step down in July.

Another top executive has opted to leave Singapore Post, the company revealed in a stock exchange filing late Friday.

Chairman Lim Ho Kee will step down as a director at the company's Annual General Meeting, which will be held in July 2016. Lim revealed his intent to leave his post at the conclusion of SingPost's financial year on March 31.

Lim's exit comes barely four months after chief executive Wolfgang Baier revealed that he is leaving the company "to pursue new endeavours".

When Baier announced his resignation in December 2015, SingPost had stated that Chairman Lim will "step up his involvement" to guide the management "over and above" his normal capacity as Chairman.

Lim said that he is stepping down because of family commitments.

"I have been planning to step down now for almost three years but had felt compelled to stay and guide management," he said in a letter to SingPost's board.

SingPost's board has unanimously agreed to appoint board member Low Teck Seng as Chairman, subject to regulatory approval.





More From Singapore Business Review


STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Sweden's Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) has contacted authorities in Luxembourg for information related to allegations that Nordea, the Nordic region's biggest bank, helped some clients set up accounts in offshore tax havens.

The allegations against Nordea appeared in a leak of more than 11.5 million documents from the files of law firm Mossack Fonseca, based in Panama.

While setting up offshore accounts is not necessarily illegal it could be in breach of Swedish money laundering rules. Nordea was found to have breached such rules last year and was fined the maximum 50 million crowns ($6.1 mln) and handed a severe warning by the FSA.

"We take this extremely seriously," said Christer Furustedt, head of the FSA department that oversees major Swedish banks.

"If the media reports are correct and they set up complicated structures to hide the actual beneficial owner then that is hardly in line with the rules," he said.

Nordea said in a statement it would review all activities relating to offshore accounts in Luxembourg.

The bank said it strongly denounced tax evasion and had taken proactive measures since 2009 to ensure all customers' holdings and income on their accounts were reported to the tax authorities.

"However, we regret that we didn't have these procedures already earlier," Nordea CEO Casper von Koskull said.

The FSA fined Nordea in May 2015 and said the bank had severe shortcomings in its approach to combating money laundering and that a case could even be made for revoking Nordea's banking licence.

(Reporting by Johan Ahlander and Simon Johnson; Editing by David Goodman and Susan Fenton)
DALLAS, TX / ACCESSWIRE / April 4, 2016 / A Texas man was recently executed in connection with multiple murder convictions stemming from a 1997 shooting. Texas criminal defense attorney Mick Mickelsen, who has no direct connection to the case reports that the man, was convicted of killing the five people, one of whom was his ex-wife near Houston after he claimed to have been taunted by his former wife.

Latest: Texas Man Executed for 1997 Rampage That Killed 5

"A man convicted of killing five people including his ex-wife in a 1997 shooting rampage near Houston has been put to death. Coy Wesbrook on Wednesday became the eighth inmate executed this year in the U.S. and the fourth in Texas, the most active capital punishment state. The execution was delayed about 90 minutes. Prison officials had anticipated an additional appeal would be filed by a death penalty opponent."

To read more visit http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/latest-late-appeal-texas-execution-case-rejected-37533166.

Days prior to the execution, an appeal was filed on behalf of the inmate, Coy Westbrook, citing mental impairment, which is grounds for a convicted felon being ineligible for the death penalty if a court finds the appeal to be proper. However, the highest criminal court in Texas, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that the late appeal was improper, rejecting the request.

Source: Fox News Report "The Latest: Late appeal in Texas execution case rejected"

"A death penalty opponents late appeal on an inmates behalf has been rejected by a Texas appeals court. Houston activist Ward Larkins appeal Wednesday came just hours before Coy Wesbrooks scheduled execution for a 1997 shooting rampage that left five people including his ex-wife dead. Larkin asked for Wesbrooks trial court to again review claims that the former security guard and delivery driver is mentally impaired and ineligible for the death penalty."

To read more visit http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/03/09/latest-late-appeal-in-texas-execution-case-rejected.html.

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Death Penalty Appeals

According to Texas criminal appeals attorney Mick Mickelsen of the Dallas based Broden & Mickelsen law firm, the appeals process for death penalty cases can be complex and lengthy. The criminal lawyer says that "appeals in death penalty cases take time because there are many steps to ensure that there is no room for error. Thats why it is important that a defendant on death row have the best legal advocate representing them to ensure that all of the available options for appealing their sentence are exhausted before the final stage is done."

Mickelsen says that there are multiple scenarios under which courts may find valid grounds to reverse a sentence or conviction making it even more important that one obtain highly skilled and experienced representation for their case, particularly when ones mental aptitude, or other circumstance may be called into question.

Individuals who need help with a federal or Texas state criminal appeal for a murder conviction can contact the law firm of Broden & Mickelsen directly for an assessment of their legal options.

Social Media Tags: #Dallas #Felony Criminal Lawyer #Texas Appellate Attorney

Connect with the Texas criminal appeals attorneys of Broden & Mickelsen on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or LinkedIn.

Follow Broden, Mickelsen on social media #dallascriminaldefenselawyer

http://www.brodenmickelsen.com/blog/texas-man-executed-for-multiple-murder-convictions-claimed-to-be-mentally-impaired/

SOURCE: Broden Mickelsen Helms & Snipes, LLP
chinese couple marriage photos eiffel tower paris france

A Wall Street-darling stock is buried in the world's most recent peek into how the rich and powerful guard their money.

The darling is the French telecoms firm Altice, which is down 12% on Amsterdam's stock exchange Monday thanks to a mergers-and-acquisitions deal gone sour.

That isn't the only cause for concern for Altice.

The firm is also mentioned in the Panama Papers, a leak of over 11 million documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

For decades, the firm has helped individuals and institutions incorporate their financial assets. On Sunday the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published its findings from the data dump, including assets incorporated by people close to world leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Altice says it used Mossack Fonseca back in 2008 and 2010 for "incidental transactions for reasons of strict confidentiality and in perfectly legal conditions with no tax impact, let alone foreign, near or far, for any purpose of evasion, concealment, or tax optimization."

So nothing to see here.

Holding

Altice counts American asset managers like Vanguard, BlackRock, T. Rowe Price, and Fidelity among its biggest shareholders.

It has also been popular in hedge fund land. Greenlight Capital's David Einhorn held a long position in the stock until the middle of 2015. At that point, the stock was trading about $30 a share.

But then in the fall it started to take a beating. Altice was presented as a short position at the influential Sohn Investor Conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, in October.

Stephen Levey and Jonathan Half of Ion Asset Management argued that the company wasn't that profitable and was simply the classic story of a company swept up in an M&A boom.

Now Altice is trading at about $13. At the start of 2016, two Tiger hedge funds  funds related to legendary investor Julian Robertson of Tiger Management  got caught in the fallout, Nehal Chopra's Tiger Ratan Capital, and John Auerbach's Hound Partners.

Story continues

A year in Altice:

altice

NOW WATCH: Why 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner products dont work





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* Poroshenko's law firm set up offshore company

* Poroshenko defends commitment to transparency

* Law firm: tax evasion allegations are groundless

* Lawmakers: leaks will erode trust in Poroshenko

* Radical Party says Poroshenko could be impeached (Adds quotes from president's financial advisor)

By Pavel Polityuk and Alessandra Prentice

KIEV, April 4 (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko defended his commitment to transparency on Monday after lawmakers called for an investigation into allegations contained in the so-called Panama Papers that he had used an offshore firm to avoid tax.

According to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Poroshenko set up an offshore company to move his confectionery business, Roshen, to the British Virgin Islands in August 2014 during a peak in fighting between Ukraine and pro-Russian separatists.

In response, Poroshenko said he had handed over the management of his assets to consulting and law firms on taking office.

"I believe I might be the first top official in Ukraine who treats declaring of assets, paying taxes, conflict of interest issues seriously," he tweeted.

The law firm tasked with managing the sale of Roshen said the offshore firm was set up in accordance with Ukrainian law.

"The creation of a foreign structure does not affect the tax liabilities of the Roshen group in Ukraine, which continues to pay taxes," Avellum said in an emailed statement.

"Any allegations of tax evasion are groundless."

Poroshenko's financial adviser, Makar Paseniuk, said the offshore firm was created to avoid a conflict of interests by allowing his assets to be controlled by third parties while he remained president.

A senior official in the General Prosecutor's office said the leaked documents did not show that Poroshenko had committed any crime.

Lawmakers, including from within Poroshenko's own faction, called for the creation of a parliamentary committee to investigate the allegations, which surfaced after a global leak of documents from a Panama-based law firm over the weekend.

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Under Ukrainian legislation, only parliament can initiate an investigation into a sitting president.

"It is the height of cynicism to open offshore companies at a time when hundreds of our soldiers are dying," leader of the populist Radical Party Oleh Lyashko said on Facebook, adding any investigation could lead to Poroshenko's impeachment.

The support of the Radical Party may be crucial in Poroshenko's efforts to cobble together a new government and avoid a snap election.

The president has made several attempts to oust Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk's government, saying it has lost the trust of the people, but he will likely need the support of smaller parties to assemble a parliamentary majority.

The IMF, the United States and the European Union are becoming frustrated with Ukraine's patchy performance in tackling graft, and the Fund has threatened to halt aid until matters improve.

"The revelations of Poroshenko's offshore accounts will further destabilise the Ukrainian government, which has been in a state of crisis for over a month," said Daragh McDowell of the risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft.

"Poroshenko's credibility in the eyes of Ukraine's Western allies will take a massive hit at a time when political infighting has already delayed the release of IMF loans."

Poroshenko, who came to power after protests in 2014, has already faced criticism for not selling Roshen despite promising to do so.

Paseniuk said there had been no credible offers for the company so far, prompting those managing the sale to consider selling it off in parts. Talks to sell Roshen's Russia-based Lipetsk factory were continuing, he said.

(Writing by Matthias Williams; Additional reporting by Natalia Zinets; Editing by Alison Williams and Richard Balmforth)
Why Genesee & Wyoming Has Taken a Dive these Last 12 Months

(Continued from Prior Part)

GWRs debt levels

Genesee & Wyomings (GWR) $761.0 million Freightliner acquisition was 100% debt financed. The company raised $650.0 million from the issue of the term loan. The balance was funded through a drawdown from an existing revolver. The company had a total debt of $2.3 billion on its books at the end of December 2015.

In February 2015, GWR expected Freightliner to contribute $785.0 million in revenues and a $93.0 million EBITDA (earnings before interest tax, depreciation, and amortization) in the latters first year of operation. Freightliner followed an AprilMarch financial year.

Actual versus predicted

Genesee & Wyoming (GWR) expected $28.0 million in depreciation and amortization expenses from Freightliner in the latters first year. That translated into a yearly operating income of $65.0 million from Freightliner.

On a pro-rata basis, for the year ended December 31, 2015, Freightliner should have contributed $589.0 million in revenues and $49.0 million in operating income. However, in reality, its revenue contribution was $531.3 million and the operating income was $33.4 million.

According to the companys press release in February 2015, The expected free cash flow generation of the combined business is anticipated to de-lever G&W to approximately 3.0x debt/EBITDA by the end of 2015. In reality, it came in at 3.9x.

High leverage in the industry

Genesee & Wyomings leverage rose more than two-fold at the time of the acquisition of RailAmerica in 2012. However, it brought it down to manageable levels in 2013. The point is, present debt levels when looked from a revenue angle, pose a worrying picture. Against a revenue of $2.0 billion, the company has a total debt of $2.3 billion. The only major railroad in the same situation is Canadian Pacific (CP).

In the current circumstance in which railroads are struggling to grow their core earnings, a debt-to-EBITDA ratio of 3.9x is certainly not welcome. Well compare the total debt-to-EBITDA levels for GWRs peers:

Story continues

Norfolk Southern (NSC): 5x

CSX Corporation (CSX): 2.2x

Union Pacific Corporation (UNP): 1.4x

Kansas City Southern (KSU): 2x

Canadian Pacific Railway (CP): 8x

Canadian National Railway (CNI): 6x

Investors who prefer a pure play in the transportation sector can opt for the iShares US Industrials ETF (IYJ). This ETF holds ~1.6% and ~5.2% in major trucking companies and railroads, respectively.

In the final part of this series, well assess Genesee & Wyomings valuation against the US Class I railroads.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
In what is becoming an almost weekly ritual of the 2016 election, House Speaker Paul Ryan on Monday emphatically rejected the idea that he would accept the Republican presidential nomination if the GOP convention this summer becomes deadlocked.

I do believe people put my name in this thing, and I say, 'Get my name out of that,' the Wisconsin lawmaker, who is visiting Israel, said during an interview with The Hugh Hewitt Show." "If you want to be president, you should go run for president. And thats just the way I see it.

Related: Paul Ryan Just Admitted One of the GOPs Biggest Mistakes

Im not that person. Id like to think my face is somewhat fresh, but Im not for this conversation. I think you need to run for president if youre going to run for president, and Im not running for president. Period, end of story.

Ryan made a similar Shermanesque statement to The Times of Israel over the weekend. I decided not to run for president, he said. I think you should run if youre going to be president. I think you should start in Iowa and run to the tape.

Yet despite Ryans repeated dismissals, top Republicans cant stop themselves from talking about the idea of having their 2012 vice presidential nominee at the top of the ticket.

Related: Trump Is the Wrong Messenger, But Hes Raised Some of the Right Issues

"He's the most conservative, least establishment member of the establishment," a GOP source told Politico. "That's what you need to be."

Despite his public claims, Ryan has, at times, fed the speculation. He received national media coverage last month for his State of American Politics speech, an address aimed at raising the tone above the venomous, sometimes vulgar, talk that has come to dominate the GOP presidential primary.

Ryan, 46, has also not shied away from taking on Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, like when the real estate mogul proposed to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. This is not conservatism, Ryan said at the time. What was proposed yesterday is not what this Party stands for.

Story continues

Related: GOP Accused of Stealing Delegates to Dump Trump

He has since called the former reality TV star out, though usually not by name, on several more occasions, such as when Trump was slow to disavow support from former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke.

That Ryan has taken shots at Trump and lived to talk about it has led some within the GOP to believe he has a strong enough jaw to survive a floor flight when Republicans gather in Cleveland in July. Ryan is slated to serve as chair for the convention.

Buzz is already building that the convention will be unlike any in recent history, with Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz (TX) and Ohio Governor John Kasich all prepping for an open meeting that could see multiple ballots before any of them garner the 1,237 delegates needed to capture the nomination.

In fact, Trump and Cruz, who have been at each others throats for weeks, are teaming up to keep Kasich off the ballot at the convention, according to NBC News. The thinking is that a two-man race would benefit both camps.

The overlapping interests show that the idea of horse-trading is very much on the minds of the Republicans months before the convention gavels in, ensuring that talk about Ryan being drafted, much the way he was for the speakership after the surprise retirement announcement by his predecessor John Boehner, will continue.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
By Margarita Antidze

TBILISI (Reuters) - The World Bank is likely to cut its economic growth forecast for Azerbaijan and recommend to the government that it reduce reliance on oil revenues and press ahead with structural reforms, the bank's local manager said on Monday.

A crash in oil prices last year sent the Azeri economy into crisis, forcing the central bank to adopt a floating manat rate and take measures to try to prevent a collapse of the banking sector.

"Current growth forecast for 2016 is 0.8 percent but it is most likely be revised in the wake of latest developments," Larisa Leshchenko said in an emailed response to Reuters questions.

She did not provide a new forecast. "Sharp fiscal consolidation, substantial fragilities in the banking sector and expected low oil prices are the main factors which adversely affect the economic outlook."

Azerbaijan's economy contracted by 3.2 percent year-on-year in January-February compared with growth of 4.2 percent in the same period last year, the State Statistics Committee said last month.

Economic growth slowed to 1.1 percent last year from 2.8 percent in 2014. The government forecasts 1.8 percent growth in 2016.

Leshchenko said Azerbaijan's economy was undergoing a painful process of adjusting to low oil prices, but there were also "substantial opportunities for diversification of the economy."

"In particular, tradeable sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing may benefit from the devalued currency and become more competitive in domestic and foreign markets," she said.

The oil and gas sector accounts for 95 percent of Azerbaijan's goods exports, 67 percent of fiscal revenues and 40 percent of the gross domestic product.

Leshchenko said the government would need to address several short term and long term challenges, including reducing reliance on oil revenues and reducing dollarisation and the amount of non-performing loans, as well as improving the business environment.

The World Bank was discussing with the government a set of medium- and long-term measures to move towards a new private-sector led growth model and increase the country's resilience to external shocks, she said.

Story continues

"We know that the government is developing a comprehensive programme of structural reforms, and the World Bank ... stands ready to provide necessary support," Leshchenko said.

She said the bank would soon start final negotiations on a $50 million loan earmarked for improving economic opportunities for internally displaced persons. The bank said last week it had decided to issue a $140 million loan to finance a road repair project in Azerbaijan.

Earlier this year, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were discussing possible financing aid for Azerbaijan. Yet, Baku did not take a final decision on requesting any support.

(Editing by Katya Golubkova and Richard Balmforth)
Do Current Crude Production Levels Bode Well for Doha Meeting?

Crude oil price movement

May WTI (West Texas Intermediate) crude oil futures contracts trading on NYMEX (New York Mercantile Exchange) fell by 4% and settled at $36.79 per barrel on April 1, 2016. Similarly, Brent crude oil futures fell by 1% to $39 per barrel on the same day. Prices fell due to renewed concerns of oversupply. ETFs like the United States Oil Fund (USO) and the ProShares Ultra Bloomberg Crude Oil ETF (UCO) fell on the same day by 3.8% and 7.6%, respectively, on April 1, 2016.

Saudi Arabia

On Thursday, March 31, 2016, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman of Saudi Arabia stated that Saudi Arabia will not join the crude oil production freeze program unless Iran and other major oil producers actively participate. Saudi Arabia is the largest oil exporter and one of the largest oil producers among OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) members. Consequently, Saudi Arabias position ignited concerns of oversupply, and oil prices tumbled. Read more about the oil producers meeting in How the Crude Oil Market Could React to the Doha Oil Producers Meeting.

In this series, well discuss global crude oil production in March 2016 ahead of the Doha meeting. The series also covers the US crude oil rig count, Cushing crude oil stocks, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commissions Commitment of Traders report, and the crude oil price forecast.

Crude oil prices affect oil producers like Carrizo Oil & Gas (CRZO), Synergy Resources (SYRG), Whiting Petroleum (WLL), EP Energy (EPE), Matador Resources (MTDR), and Bill Barrett (BBG). Prices also affect ETFs like the ProShares UltraShort Bloomberg Crude Oil ETF (SCO), the PowerShares DWA Energy Momentum (PXI), the Guggenheim S&P 500 Equal Weight Energy (RYE), the VelocityShares 3x Inverse Crude Oil ETN (DWTI), and the Direxion Daily Energy Bull 3x Shares ETF (ERX).

Read the next part of the series for more discussion of crude oil price drivers and oil price volatility.

Story continues

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Hold on to your butts.Keystone pipeline shut down after crude leak in South DakotaTransCanada Corp. has shut down its Keystone crude oil pipeline indefinitely after a leak was detected Saturday afternoon in South Dakota.The company is investigating the incident near its Freeman pump station, in a remote area of Hutchinson County.It is not clear how much oil was spilled but cleanup is underway."We've been given an early estimate, but until they actually dig down to the pipeline, I don't think they're going to have a firm number on the exact number of gallons that were involved," said Chris Nelson, chairman of the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission.TransCanada is in the process of removing the oil and investigating the source of the leak, reported at 4 p.m. Saturday.
--In what may be a new record for driving with a spouse clinging to the roof of a car, a Florida man was arrested last week after traveling six miles with his wife atop his vehicle, cops sayAccording to investigators, Richard Addy, 69, and his wife Elizabeth argued early Tuesday morning after they had consumed several drinks over the course of the night at a pair of bars. Richard told cops that he eventually decided to leave the scene without his 50-year-old spouse.Addy said that he drove away in a 2011 Toyota Sequoia, but did not realize that his wife was on the roof of the vehicle. It was only when he stopped at a traffic light that he heard her banging on the roof and realized that she was there. However, instead of stopping, Addy drove on, he claimed, because he did not have a cell phone to call the police. Addy said that he went by the county courthouse in the hope of finding a police presence, but when he spotted no officers, he continued driving.Addy finally came to a halt when Officer Christopher Ruediger of the Stuart Police Department spotted Elizabeth atop the auto and pulled the car over. Elizabeth, the cop noted, was yelling for help and waving her hands at me. The vehicle was stopped at an intersection six miles from where Addy began his trip.more
Kuwaits strategy for long-term tourism growth received a boost in 2015, with airport passenger volume growing from around 10 million travelers in 2014 to just over 10.2 million last year as the Gulf state ploughs ahead with plans to expand its transportation infrastructure.

According to a World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) report entitled Kuwait Travel and Tourism Economic Impact 2015, tourism accounted for 1.5% of total GDP in 2015, and is set to rise by 0.3% by 2025, although this is being revisited given the current low oil prices scenario. This would take total GDP contribution to 1.8%, or KWD1.6 billion in 2025.

The report also highlighted potential gains in leisure spend, which is expected to grow by 6.2% per annum to KWD 2.4 billion in 2025, while business travel is expected to grow by 5.6% per annum to KWD457.3 million in 2025.

WTTC predictions put tourist arrivals at 440,000 by 2024 - up from 270,000 in 2014  and increased capacity will be the catalyst for sector gains moving forward with leisure travel spending set to rise by 6.2% per annum through to 2025, and business travel, which saw a dip in 2015, forecast to pick up in the next 10 years with annual growth of 5.6%.

Kuwait also has a high domestic travel spend component, which generated 88.1% of direct Travel & Tourism GDP in 2014, and is expected to increase by 6.4% per annum through to 2025.

The countrys hotel pipeline is also adding new value to the tourism mix with an under-development collection of new luxury and more affordable accommodation options.

High-end brands such as Four Seasons, which will open its first 263-key Kuwait property at Burj Alshaya at the end of 2016, will be joined by the Mercure Kuwait (2017), Hilton Olympia Kuwait in 2019 and a Grand Hyatt in 2020.

It is also entering new mid-market territory with a number of upcoming projects including the 160-room Novotel Sharq (2017) and several Rotana properties, with a Centro Rotana set to debut in 2018 with 200 rooms.

Kuwait returns to Dubai this April to showcase its tourism offering at Arabian Travel Market (ATM) 2016, which takes place 25-28 April.

Kuwait is focused on adding new high profile brands to its hotel mix as well as opening up the country with its expansion programme for Kuwait International airport, said Nadege Noblet-Segers, Exhibition Manager, Arabian Travel Market.

As we are seeing in other GCC countries, an increasingly diversified tourism portfolio requires an equally broad hospitality offering, looking at both the luxury and mid-range categories, which is something that we are focusing on this year at ATM with midmarket travel our spotlight theme, said Noblet-Segers.

According to the Q3 2015 YouGov Travel Oracle insight report, one-third (36%) of surveyed leisure travellers from the region now choose budget hotels when travelling for pleasure, with Asian expats the most likely to opt for low cost accommodation (52%) and 35% of all respondents stating that reasonable cost is one of the most important elements when considering a leisure destination.

For more information on Arabian Travel Market 2016, please go to: www.arabiantravelmarket.com
Industry-leading Belgian event agencies Event Masters in Willebroek and Borealis in Bruges have entered into a merger agreement. As of 1 April 2016, the companies continue as one powerful, full-service event group.

The Borealis office will operate under the new name Event Masters Bruges. The merged entity offers complete event services, including teambuilding, tailormade events, destination management and incentives.

Bert Knuts (Event Masters) explains the merger with Borealis: Our companies share the same passion for events. And our industry experience is perfectly complementary and mutually reinforcing. The merger allows Event Masters to offer its total service package in the western part of Belgium. And thanks to Borealis international experience and field knowledge, well strengthen our position in Bruges.

Dries Jacobus (Borealis Bruges) is excited about the future: Our personalities and company cultures are well aligned. And we both attach great importance to a personal, tailor-made approach to create original and memorable experiences.

Event Masters employs 20 staff members, while some 50 experienced and specialized freelancers support them. The company is aiming to reinforce and further develop its ranking in the national top 3 of the event industry.

The merged company is a bit like Belgian chocolate: the top product of our country. If you team up with Event Masters, you get positive feelings such as trust and good vibes.

Turning an event into an experience  ultimately, thats why were doing it, Bert Knuts says, laughing and proud to continue its company slogan.
Both Australia and United States upgrade travel warning for Turkey. Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop announced that the travel advice for Ankara and Istanbul had been upgraded in light of a string of terror attacks.

I am conscious of the effect of this on the many Australians planning to attend this years Anzac Day commemorations at Gallipoli, she said in a statement.

The Australian Government is not aware of any specific threat to Anzac Day services planned on the Gallipoli peninsula or to other Australian interests in Turkey.

The overall level of advice for Turkey, including Canakkale and the Gallipoli peninsula, remains at exercise a high degree of caution.

Meanwhile 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. the Department of State ordered the departure of family members of U.S. government personnel posted to U.S. Consulate in Adana and family members of U.S. government civilians in Izmir and Mugla provinces, and restricted official travel to Turkey to mission-critical travel only. U.S. Consulate in Adana remains open and will provide all routine consular services.

The official warning also says, U.S. government personnel in Turkey remain subject to travel restrictions in southeastern provinces of Hatay, Kilis, Gaziantep, Sanliurfa, Sirnak, Diyarbakir, Van, Siirt, Mus, Mardin, Batman, Bingol, Tunceli, Hakkari, Bitlis, and Elazig. U.S. citizens should avoid areas in close proximity to the Syrian border.
Cans of Eden Organic beans are marked with a BPA-free notification Wednesday at River Valley Co-op in Northampton. SARA CROSBY

HADLEY  A report released Wednesday found that five of six food cans purchased at the Wal-Mart on Route 9 in Hadley tested positive for bisphenol A, a controversial chemical known as BPA that is a building block for plastics and resins.

The six cans tested locally were among about 200 tested from retail outlets and grocery stores across the country as part of a national effort to focus attention on BPA, a chemical believed by many health experts and activists to cause health problems, including breast cancer. Of those tested, 67 percent contained BPA.

Another big problem, according to authors of the report, is that efforts to remove BPA from packaging products are leading companies to use alternatives that can be just as harmful.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not taken a hard stance on the chemical, though the agency banned the use of BPA-based polycarbonate resins in baby bottles and sippy cups, as well as BPA-based epoxy resins in baby formula packaging.

Massachusetts is one of 14 states that place restrictions on the use of BPA in products. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health classified childrens food containers containing BPA as banned hazardous substances. Several states have similar regulations on reusable containers for children, and Connecticut took it a step further than the rest by banning the use of BPA in register receipt paper.

And increasingly more companies are abandoning the chemical in response to consumer demand.

Authors of the study released Wednesday said its purpose was to follow up on the promises made by major national brands and retailers in the years since public opinion began mounting against the chemical, which has found its way into food packaging since the 1960s.

Certain foods, the study found, are more likely to have BPA in their packaging. According to the report, 100 percent of Campbells products, 50 percent of General Mills cans and 71 percent of Del Monte cans sampled nationally contained BPA. All cans containing broth and gravy tested positive for BPA as well as 85 percent of canned milks.

BPA was least prevalent in the corn and peas categories, whose packaging often contains oleoresin, plant-based substitute.

The report calls on manufacturers and stores to stop selling products containing BPA, to take steps toward replacing the chemical and to be transparent about the process. It also calls on Congress to pass the Ban Poisonous Additives Act, which according to the reports authors would reform the FDAs fatally flawed system for reviewing and approving the safety of packaging materials.

Wal-Mart refers requests by reporters to a request form on the corporations website, and it did not return a request for comment.

The report, titled Buyer Beware: Toxic BPA & Regrettable Substitutes in the Linings of Canned Food, was sponsored by several national nonprofits, including the Breast Cancer Fund, Campaign for Healthier Solutions, Clean Production Action, Ecology Center and Mind the Store Campaign.

The toxic treadmill

Cindy Luppi of Clean Water Action, a Massachusetts group involved heavily in the research, said the investigation illustrates concerns about companies using BPA alternatives that can be just as harmful.

We call it the toxic treadmill, said Luppi, referring to the cycle of replacing one harmful chemical with another. Obviously thats not the goal or the point  the point is to make sure people arent exposed to toxic chems that could damage their health.

Luppi said the chemical is a known endocrine disrupter and that it negatively impacts women.

A lot of our members see this is a womens health issues, Luppi said, referring to relationships associated between the chemical and breast cancer as well as early puberty in girls. Its still a chemical thats very much being discussed by scientists.

Luppi said although there has been action at the state level, its time for federal regulation.

I think our laws have big loopholes that allow us to be continuously exposed to these types of chemicals, she said. Its time to update our laws and establish more of a principle  its been a long slog.

Laura Vandenberg, assistant professor in environmental health sciences at UMass, said she has been studying BPA for 10 years, which is why the reports organizers asked her to be part of its external review team.

She said exposure to BPA is endemic in our society.

Exposure in the general population is widespread, Vandenberg said. At least 90 percent of us have detectable BPA in our bodily fluids and 99 percent have exposure at some point every day.

Vandenberg said exposure to BPA is harmful even in small doses, with associated impacts such as cardiovascular disease, infertility, and behavioral issues.

Its like asking how much poison does it take to poison you? Vandenberg asked of the dose necessary to see negative health impacts.

Vandenberg said theres strong evidence in rodents showing a relationship between BPA exposure and mammary cancer.

BPA alters the development of the gland, she said. In some rat strains BPA alone can induce mammary cancer.

Vandenberg said theres enough evidence to warrant more action.

We have sufficient information to make better decisions than we are, she said. We could study any single chemical until we know every possible thing about it, but thats an academic exercise, not a public health exercise.

Health food stores

According to the Whole Foods website, the company was the first national retailer to ban BPA-containing baby bottles and cups.

Meanwhile, employees and customers at River Valley Co-op in Northampton saidWednesday they have been aware for many years about concerns over BPA.

Rochelle Prunty, general manager at River Valley Co-op, said the market switched to BPA-free receipt paper five years ago. Many products on the shelves were also labeled with some sort of BPA-free indicator.

This is nothing new, said Prunty. Natural and organic food manufacturers have been dealing with this topic for decades. What is new is that finally other manufacturers are having to pay attention to BPA because customers are becoming more knowledgeable.

Dee Dee Niswonger of Williamsburg said she routinely buys low-salt products, which may keep her from being exposed to BPA because they are more health-conscious.

I wish (food manufacturers) would all be responsible, know what theyre doing, and then do the right thing, said Niswonger.

Dan Emery of Northfield said he used to work in the sporting industry, and has been actively avoiding BPA for seven or eight years after hearing about the dangers in plastic water bottles. He said he quickly switched to stainless steel water bottles and glass mason jars.

Amanda Drane can be contacted at adrane@gazettenet.com.

Sarah Crosby can be contacted at scrosby@gazettenet.com.
Help with choosing my B-school [ #permalink

Hello all,



I'm currently an engineer working in Houston, TX looking to move away from a more technical role to a business operations management/ consulting type role. I'm a couple weeks away from giving my GMAT and I'm hoping to hit the 700 score range. With my current personal situation, I have only options of part time MBA or an online MBA. I'm trying to decide between these 3 schools -



1) Online MBA @ Kelley School of Business (Kelley direct) - Biggest pro is the program cost is the least and flexibility in program itself. However, I cannot seem to shake off the stigma associated with online MBAs. School itself is reputed top 25 B school.

2) Part time MBA at McCombs business school, UT Austin - program at Houston - Featured rank 7 for part time MBA this year, but is almost $40,000 more than Kelley.

3) Part time MBA at May business school, Texas A&M - program at Houston - lower ranked than above 2 schools, financially is middle of the road. As of now, this is my least favorite choice.



Any advice choosing among the 3 schools? Especially between option 1 and option 2?



Thanks
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It's almost time to march bravely into another full week of work, and while the temperature might become a half-frigid shitshow, we've got some delicious food events that will keep you warm and well-fed. Grab a good pair of gloves, a knit cap, and some napkins because things might get messyand we're not talking about wintry mix.



via instagram

Start off your week with chef David Santos's Monday nightPop-Up in the East Village. He'll be serving up both his famous Nashville-style hot chicken as well as hot catfish, both cooked to a tender and crispy deliciousness. It'll be served family-style at Noreetuh (128 First Avenue between 7th and 8th) and will come with plenty of sides like potato salad, cole slaw, white bread, pickles, and beer-brown sugar baked beans. $55 is a bargain price and seatings will take place every half hour from 6 to 9 p.m.

Also on Monday, stop in at Grand Central for Taste of the Terminal, an all-day event that will include Jacques Torres Ice Cream, Oren's Daily Roast coffee, eats from Tri-Tip Grill, snacks from Murray's Cheese, and live music all day long from 11 a.m. through the evening rush hour. The parties will take place in Vanderbilt Hall every Monday throughout the month, so if you can't make it this week be sure to pencil in a future date.

On Tuesday night, get extra-comfortable with sausage during The Wurst of Lucky Peach's Launch Party. You'll watch star sausage-makers Jocelyn Guest and Erika Nakamura prepare fresh links while they field questions from a panel that includes Ivan Ramen's Ivan Orkin and This American Life contributor Starlee Kine. A ticket will also get you access to an after-party that promises hot dogs, a toppings bar, and beer, plus your own copy of LP's new encased meat-themed book and a year-long subscription to their regular magazine. It's all happening at the Williams-Sonoma at Columbus Circle at 7 p.m.

It's almost certainly nicer in Napa Valley than it is this week in New York, and you'll at least be able to eat like you're in California wine country during chef Christopher Kostow's month-long takeover at the NoMad Bar. Kostow, who runs The Restaurant at Meadowood, will be serving avocado tempura with oyster dip, carrots with burnt cream, chicken rye pasta, date cakes, and so much more. The plates are all functioning as out-of-town previews of his new Charter Oak restaurant, which will open in Helena, California later this year. And so if you've ever wanted to serve as a practice patron for a world-star chefall at a discount pricenow's your chance. No plane ticket required.

And lastly, if we told you that free cocktail tastings were happening all week long at The Regal...that should be all you need to know. The newly-opened Williamsburg diner and drinks spot is welcoming the world in for an hour each night, Tuesday through Saturday, to try their new seasonal drinks menu. Selections will vary daily and are being curated by their beverage director, Steven Escobar. Stop in and you'll have a shot at catching his Powder Keg, which boasts barrel-aged rye and cinnamon clove syrup, mixed with apple cider, and lemon. Reserve your spot here.
The U.S. Navy just announced that this year's Fleet Week festivities will take place May 25 through May 31: "It is anticipated that nearly 4,500 Sailors, Marines and Coast Guardsmen will participate this year. "

Among the vessels in this year's Fleet Week are five U.S. Navy ships, four U.S. Naval Academy (USNA) Yard Patrol boats (YPs), two U.S. Coast Guard cutters (USCGC), and four Royal Canadian Navy ships. There will be ship tours every day in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island. Here are the ships and pier locations:

Manhattan, Pier 88S:

- Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Bataan (LHD 5), from Norfolk, Virginia

- Marines assigned to the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina

* Please note due to cruise ship operations there will be no public tours on Pier 88S on Sunday, May 29.

Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, Pier 86N:

- USCGC Juniper (WLB 201), from Newport, Rhode Island

- Four USNA YPs, from Annapolis, Maryland

Brooklyn Cruise Terminal:

- Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Farragut (DDG 99), from Mayport, Florida

- Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Bainbridge (DDG 96), from Norfolk, Virginia

- USCGC Forward (WMEC 911), from Portsmouth, Virginia

USS The Sullivan's Homeport Pier, Staten Island:

- Whidbey Island-class dock landing ship USS Fort McHenry (LSD 43), from Mayport, Florida

- Cyclone-class patrol (coastal) ship USS Shamal (PC 13), from Mayport, Florida

Manhattan, Pier 92S:

- Iroquois-class destroyer HMCS Athabaskan (D 282), from Canadian Forces Base Halifax

- Kingston-class coastal defence vessel HMCS Kingston (MM 700), from Canadian Forces Base Halifax

- Kingston-class coastal defence vessel HMCS Moncton (MM 708), from Canadian Forces Base Halifax

- Submarine HMCS Windsor (SSK 877) , from Canadian Forces Base Halifax

Fleet Week, which is also known as "Passover for Gays," features numerous exhibits and aviation demonstrations, plus the parade of ships and flyovers. More details to come.
Grilled cheese is no laughing matter, and it's time we had another contest to determine which grilled cheese rules all. Dairy-and-butter-and-bread fans will want to keep April 23 and 24 free, because that's when the Big Cheesy returns.

Organizers say they've "researched five of the most talked-about cheese wizzes from around the city and invited them to compete for the title, with you as the judge." The competitors are reigning winner Artisanal plus Campbell Cheese & Grocery, Depanneur, Randolph Beer and The Wheelhouse.

A $30 ticket will give you an hour to try all the varieties, two Goose Island drafts and a vote for your favorite. two ice-cold Goose Island drafts. Plus, 5% of the profits will go to the Food Bank For New York City.

The Big Cheesy will be held at 168 Bowery; there are slots from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, April 23 and Sunday, April 24.
Access to housing in the country's most unaffordable city is already a pipe dream for many New Yorkers with working class jobs, never mind rental vouchers or a history of arrests. And while the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 explicitly prohibits discrimination against homebuyers or renters based on race, national origin, religion, sex or disability, the law is not clear on the rights of tenants or buyers with criminal records. In an effort to extend the act's reach, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) today clarified that it does technically protect renters and buyers with criminal recordsunder most circumstances.

"When landlords refuse to rent to anyone who has an arrest record, they effectively bar the door to millions of folks of color for no good reason," HUD Secretary Julian Castro told WNYC this week. According to HUD, any landlord or home seller with a blanket policy against renters and buyers with criminal records is practicing racial discrimination, because black and Hispanic home-seekers are disproportionally impacted by the criminal justice system.

One in four Americans has a criminal record, which might include a serious conviction like assault or murder, a petty conviction like theft, or a laundry list of arrests that never even led to a conviction. Moving forward, HUD will require landlords to distinguish between convictions and arrests, and bar housing to convicted criminals only with acceptable justification (for example, if the conviction is a violent felony). They'll also be required to consider how much time has lapsed since the applicant was last arrested or convicted. The NY Times reports that HUD is now empowered to bring discrimination charges against bad actors, and that victims of housing discrimination based on a criminal record could win damages.

But even though landlords will now be required to prove whether a potential renter or buyer poses a safety threat, the new protections exclude anyone who has been convicted of manufacturing or distributing drugsa conviction that is more common in rural areas, where there's more space to manufacture methamphetamines, according to Legal Aid Civil Law Reform Attorney in Charge Judith Goldiner. Registered sex offenders and drug users are also excluded.

JoAnne Page, head of the Fortune Societyan organization that provides housing for formerly-incarcerated New Yorkersis hopeful about the new guidelines, noting that many NYC landlords rely on HUD for funding. "Because it's HUD, and because so much of the affordable housing has HUD funding in the mix, I think this has the potential to change behaviors," she said.

Similar anti-discrimination guidelines are already in place in NYCHA housingthe city authority is required to give housing applicants the opportunity to show that they have improved their track record since an arrest or conviction. However, Goldiner says that while Legal Aid is "pretty successful" at getting NYCHA to examine an applicant's records in court, applicants who don't have legal representation find the process "pretty difficult."

"What HUD is saying is that you should have a chance to show that you can be a good tenant," Goldiner said. "Demonstrating that can be a hurdle for tenants who don't have attorneys to help them."

Governor Cuomo in February announced that he was deploying a group of fair housing "testers," acting as potential renters, to root out landlords and sellers discriminating on renters or buyers based on age, race, disability or economic background. And last summer, the Fair Chance Act was voted into law, prohibiting employers from asking about an applicant's criminal record until the end of the hiring process. Many colleges still require applicants to check a box disclosing whether they have been convicted of a crimea practice that has prompted recent protests at NYU.

UPDATE: This piece has been updated with comments from the Legal Aid Society.
In a country where voter turnout is lower than many of its democratic peers, New York stands out as a state (and city) where voters are among the most apathetic or, as Comptroller Scott Stringer and a coalition of other politicians are arguing, discouraged from voting.

"As New Yorkers head to the polls to elect our next president, its important to remember that voting is not only a fundamental rightit is the most important tool we have to ensure accountability in our democracy," Stringer said in a statement. "Turnout in recent elections in New York has been abysmal and yet our laws often prevent, rather than encourage, people from participating."

Stringer's recommendations include allowing same-day voter registration and early voting, and scolding but not overhauling the dysfunctional patronage mill that is the city Board of Elections. From his announcement:

In the 2008 presidential election, just 61 percent of registered [New York City] voters showed up to vote, the lowest ratio in any major American city.

In 2012, only 58 percent of registered voters cast ballots in the general election - the lowest rate since 1996 and the second-lowest on record.

In 2013, only 26 percent of registered New York City voters went to the polls in the general election, the lowest rate ever recorded, continuing a decades-long slide.

In the 2014 gubernatorial and midterm elections, only 25 percent of registered voters in New York City filled out a ballot - and New York States turnout was ranked 48th out of the 50 states.

In the case of the 2013 election, Mayor Bill de Blasio won by "a landslide" with just 753,000 votes while the overwhelming majority of New York City's 4.2 million registered voters stayed home. In 2014, Governor Andrew Cuomo won reelection with just 1.9 million votes, as again the majority of the state's 10.9 million registered voters skipped the polls. To see how many eligible voters don't vote in your neighborhood, take a gander at this map made by WNYC from 2009 election data:

A report by Stringer [pdf] highlights a list of ideas that would expand voter access, many of which have already been proposed in whole or in part by city and state legislators. The reforms include:

The Democratic presidential contenders have both called for measures to counteract low voter turnout, with Hillary Clinton arguing for 20 days of early voting and automatic registration for all eligible people, and Sen. Bernie Sanders saying during the first debate, "We need to have one of the larger voter turnouts in the world, not one of the lowest." Republicans, generally, want to make it more difficult to vote.

De Blasio has said he's on board with doing something about the problem of low turnout"For a long time, I have believed we need to make a fundamental series of reforms"but he calls it a state issue. Cuomo, meanwhile, doesn't think it's an issue at all. From City & State's 2015 report:

In a radio interview a couple days after his re-election last November, Cuomo downplayed his poor showing. Despite New York underperforming nearly every other state, the governor laid the blame on the nationwide decline in voting and the lack of a strong gubernatorial challenger.

There was no real state issues or state excitement or state energy, he said in an interview with The Capitol Pressroom. My race was never close. There were no big issues that were driving a state turnout that would overwhelm the national phenomenon. Well, come out for the state Senate, was our best argument. You know what? State Senate? Its hard to motivate people about a state Senate.

Idea: all these proposals sound reasonable enough, but what about making voting compulsory? Sound crazy? Well, Australia does it, and the country is not alone. From the Washington Post:

[Australia is] one of 11 countries that have, and enforce, mandatory voting, according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, and the nation most culturally similar to the United States.

Australia adopted compulsory voting in 1924 after turnout plunged from more than 70 percent in 1919 to less than 60 percent in 1922. By contrast, recent turnout by eligible voters in U.S. presidential election years has barely cracked 60 percent; in midterm elections, it has been hovering in the low 40s.

Australians who fail to vote can be fined (or, in theory, jailed for repeated no-shows). Interestingly, the mandate to vote is overwhelmingly popular, with about three-fourths of those polled supporting the requirement.

The police-state possibilities posed by such a measure/Americans' individualist-streak-disguising-deep-selfishness-and-nihilism will likely prevent it from ever happening. In the meantime, we're stuck with these guys.
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Former Helena mayor Russell J. Ritter, who died March 31 at the age of 83, left a legacy thats reflected across Montana, his community and by his family.

Through his work with the Missoula-based Washington Cos. from 1991 into 2002, he was director of corporate and government relations. As director of the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation, he oversaw the distribution of millions of dollars through the foundation.

Among Helena organizations that benefited from the foundations generosity were the Florence Crittenton Home, Shodair Childrens Hospital and Habitat for Humanity.

Ritter, a 1953 Carroll College graduate who went from the classroom to the Marines and duty in the Korean War, spent some two decades in the colleges development office.

He was the vice president for college relations from 1976-1991 and director of development and community relations there from 1969 to 1976.

Ritter served as Helenas mayor from 1982 to 1991 and as a member of the city commission prior to that, from 1978 to 1982.

His oldest son Mike, 58, and eldest daughter Leslie Wozniak, 55, sat and talked about their father on Friday.

Russ had been a lobbyist prior to joining city government, service seen as serving him well in city politics.

He was also someone who his children say never sought out the limelight and would share any credit with others -- traits he carried from his upbringing as an only child.

He was very committed to God, his family and his community, Mike said.

His family, his wife and his kids, were his priority, Leslie said.

But his hometown was deeply important to him too.

Helena, Montana, was his love, Leslie said of what the city meant to Russ.

As mayor, Russ was the kind of person who acted immediately when he received a phone call on a wintry day from a homeowner whose driveway had been blocked by the berm left in the wake of a city snowplow.

In this case, rather than calling the citys public works department, he took a shovel and drove over to the residence where he cleared the property owners driveway, said Mike and Leslie.

He was also willing to be unpopular and advocate for improvement to the citys water treatment system and take the criticism for the higher bills it would create, they said.

Without improvements, the city could find itself without drinkable water, they explained of their fathers view of his role as mayor.

The nuclear-powered submarine USS Helena, launched in 1986, was named for Montanas capital city because of Russs efforts, Mike said.

Their mother, Linaire, who survives Russ, broke the bottle of champagne against the bow of the USS Helena for its launch, his children said.

In August, he and Linaire would have celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary.

Mike called Helena his fathers center and explained that it held memories and old classmates for Russ.

Every Tuesday Russ and four of his friends -- they began as a group that met to play poker -- would meet for lunch.

Russ and Linaire raised five children. In addition to Mike and Leslie, Russ is survived by Teresa Ritter and sons Greg and Dan.

He never wanted mom to work, Leslie said of her fathers approach to family life. He always wanted her at home taking care of us.

So he had an array of side jobs that supplemented the familys income in those early days.

While teaching high school history and government classes, he and a friend opened a drive-in theater in Kalispell, Mike and Leslie said.

Russ also taught at Billings Central and Missoula Loyola, where he also coached football, basketball and track, Mike said.

Leslie and Mike have several stories about their father, a man who they say drew his sidearm while in the Marines to deny entry to a military base he was guarding where nuclear weapons were stored. He refused admission to a senator from Massachusetts, John Kennedy, whose name wasnt on the list of those allowed on-base.

And Russ also met President Ronald Reagan in Billings on Aug. 11, 1982.

But this meeting, one for which their father had planned and prepared his remarks, the children said, didnt go as envisioned.

Russ greeted the president by saying, Hello mister mayor, Im the president of Helena, to which Reagan responded No, I think youve got that wrong, Mike said.

This left their father flustered, Mike continued, adding that Russ made his living talking to people and always knew the right thing to say.

Just before Christmas in 2015, Russs children noticed that their father was slurring his speech. They worried he might be over-medicating himself.

Or perhaps a fall decades ago while at the construction site where the family home was built in northwest Montana might now be producing complications, they thought.

Instead, doctors said Russ had a minor stroke.

He became very depressed, Leslie said. Ive never seen my dad not smile. In the last month, it got worse.

If something was bothering him mentally or physically, he would never show that, she added.

Their father had a public image and was widely known both in Helena and across the state. That public image, they said, was part of his self-esteem.

His condition worsened quickly, Mike and Leslie said.

When he couldnt express himself or people couldnt understand him, he kind of lost his zest for life, Mike said.

Their father served on countless boards and during his final years helped get support for the military museum at Fort Harrison.

He was a good man.
It is always amazing to me how, in the political arena, the good intentions and programs of some can be misconstrued in such a way that will actually cause harm to the very people the programs were designed to protect. The clientele at MDC, the good people of Boulder, and the state of Montana could potentially be taken for a ride if the citizens of Montana, and the Legislature, do not wake up and stay vigilant.

In the 2015 legislative session, we stood strong as a bipartisan Legislature to make the very difficult decision to close the Montana Developmental Center in Boulder. The decision was extremely difficult, but in the end was the right thing to do. With the testimony of abuse and neglect over the years, it was apparent the state was failing the very people we were charged with caring for. Gov. Bullock received the same information, and apparently agreed with the findings, by signing SB411. With the main objective being to protect those at MDC who are less fortunate than the rest of Montana citizens, the sponsor of the bill took great care, and worked across the aisle, to make sure the closing of MDC would be as painless as possible. Additionally, the sponsor of the bill included language in SB411 making sure the state of Montana would fulfill a perceived obligation to the people of Boulder to help in any way possible, making sure the small community could survive.

The directive in SB411 was very clear. Close the Montana Developmental Center, develop better solutions for people currently at MDC, and repurpose the facility at Boulder. It is with great disdain that I read in the headlines an attempt by some to confuse the issue of why the Legislature and the governor of Montana actually made the decision to close MDC. The misguided blame against the sponsor of the bill is nothing more than an ill-fated attempt to derail the process of the commission, appointed by Gov. Bullock, to carry out the tasks directed by SB411.

The most important objective should be to take care of the client base at MDC. The commission has begun that process by moving more than half of that clientele into a community-based program, where they belong. The commission is to be commended, and should continue to look at options to finalize the process, acknowledging that Montana still needs a secure facility for those forensic clientele than do not belong in our communities. This can be done. We need leadership on the commission that will allow the members to look at all options before finalizing their plan for closure. Many states do not have state-run facilities like MDC. Montana should be no different.

Secondly, I am saddened for the good people of Boulder who have to bear the brunt of this decision, but have asked the state to at least look at how we can repurpose the facilities at Boulder to allow the community to survive. As this process unfolds, I become agitated when I learn of the most recent 20-year, $25,000,000 new lease agreement signed at a facility in Galen not owned by the state. The leasing of this facility, completed without legislative oversight or knowledge, will house a forensic population from the overcrowded Montana State Hospital in Warm Springs. The good people of Boulder need to ask the question as to why Boulder was not considered for this population. Knowing that the directive of SB411 was to repurpose the state-owned facility at Boulder, would one not wonder why the Boulder facility was not high on this list? Without a doubt, some remodeling would have had to happen, but this clientele may have been perfect for Boulder. Has the commission, tainted by a lack of information needed to make good decisions, missed an opportunity to fulfill the legislative directive to repurpose Boulder? You can bet the 2017 Legislature will be asking these questions.

Gov. Bullock, where is your leadership? You appointed this commission, and the chairman is your budget director. You signed SB411 to protect the clients at MDC. We need to close this failed state institution, as directed with your signature on SB411, and we need to repurpose the facilities in Boulder. Stand by your decision, Gov. Bullock! The 2017 Legislature, the good people of Boulder and the citizens of Montana will stand for nothing less.

Republican Rep. Ron Ehli, House District 86, chairs the appropriation subcommittee on HHS, and is chair of the interim committee for CFHHS. He lives in Hamilton.
A voter marks a ballot for the New Hampshire primary inside a voting booth at a polling place Tuesday, Feb. 9, in Manchester, N.H. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
John grew up on a 200 acre dairy farm near Mount Horeb, Wis., the eldest of the five children of Elizabeth (Meier) and Francis Keller. After graduating from high school, John joined the U.S. Army in 1943, and served in Europe as a member of the 82nd Airborne. Following the war, he studied at the University of Wisconsin on the G.I. Bill, class of 1949 with a degree in accounting. During his time in Madison he met the love of his life, Barbara Dawn Mabbott. The two were married for the next 60 years, until Barbara's passing in 2010.

John began his career with the Miller Brewing Co. while working nights doing the books for the Milwaukee Braves' minor league affiliates. He moved on to the Maremont Corporation in Chicago, and received his MBA from the University of Chicago. He joined Heublein Inc. as CFO of Hamm's Brewery in 1968, re-locating to St. Paul, Minn. In 1971 he and the family moved to the Bay Area, assuming the role of CFO of Heublein's wine division where he would ultimately become chairman and CEO. He left the company in 1980, but continued to take on management roles with a number of California wineries. He also volunteered with the International Executive Services Corp., and in 1996 spent six months conducting an in-country feasibility study of developing a wine industry in southern Russia. He also served on the board of Catholic Healthcare West. John lived in Hillsborough for 40 years and served the town in a variety of capacities, including mayor from 1988-1990. Devoted to the Catholic Church, he was an active member of the Order of Malta, making annual trips to Lourdes for nearly 20 years where he assisted the sanctuary's elderly and infirm pilgrims. John was honored as a Knight of Obedience in the Order.
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Athens News Agency: Daily News Bulletin in English, 16-04-04 Athens News Agency: Daily News Bulletin in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/> Weekend News Bulletin Monday April 4, 2016 CONTENTS [01] ESM should take IMF's place a long time ago, says President Pavlopoulos [02] PM Tsipras sends letter to IMF chief Christine Lagarde [03] Gov't spokeswoman: Greece requests official explanations from the IMF [04] Greece is a safe country, says Alt. Defence Minister Vitsas [05] Wikileaks: IMF to threaten Greece with bankruptcy [06] Europarliament VP Papadimoulis sends letter to Schulz and Gualtieri on IMF and Greek review [07] Alt. Tourism Minister Kountoura meets with tour operators from Saudi Arabia [08] IMF: We do not comment on leaks and supposed reports [09] Refugees and migrants continue to arrive on the Greek islands [10] Curator of Athens Festival Jan Fabre resigns [11] Nadia Murad visits refugees in Idomeni [12] Frontex officers arrive on Lesvos to assist migrants' readmission to Turkey [13] Patras-Athens march for the unemployed [14] Weather Forecast [15] Athens Headlines at a glance Politics [01] ESM should take IMF's place a long time ago, says President Pavlopoulos President of Republic Prokopis Pavlopoulos had a phone contact on Saturday with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. According to government sources, Pavlopoulos noted that he as he has stated he believes that "from the moment the European Union and the eurozone have formed the ESM, it should have assumed IMF's mission and responsibilities (in the Greek programme) a long time ago. ESM's officials know-how is much better that the IMF's officials" he said. On his part, Tsipras underlined that "Greece meets its commitments and will ask for explanations from the IMF. I will brief the country leaders and institutions on our positions. We must not allow to anyone to play with fire and we will not leave the country and Europe unprotected. Some want to bring a new crisis in Greece and to affect the British referendum and to wound Europe". [02] PM Tsipras sends letter to IMF chief Christine Lagarde Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras sent a letter to IMF chief Christine Lagarde on Saturday. According to government sources, in his letter Tsipras expresses his concern over Wikileaks revelations and underlines that the negotiations should be carried out with conditions of credibility and confidence which is currently undermined by Wikileaks revelations. Moreover, the same sources said that Tsipras requests from the Fund to state clearly if these revelations are IMF's official positions. [03] Gov't spokeswoman: Greece requests official explanations from the IMF The Greek government asks for explanations from the IMF if the creation of bankruptcy conditions in Greece before the referendum in Britain is the Fund's official position, stated on Saturday government spokeswoman Olga Gerovassili referring to Wikileaks revelations and IMF's director in Europe Poul Thomsen phone conversation with IMF's Delia Vesculescu. [04] Greece is a safe country, says Alt. Defence Minister Vitsas "Greece is a safe country, however, whatever happens in other European countries is like it is happening in our country and for this reason we need to be constantly vigilant" said Alternate Defence Minister Dimitris Vitsas in an interview with the Sunday newspaper Free Sunday. He also expressed fears that "extreme voices in Europe that do not want Europe or democracy or the human rights may take advantage of these kind of (terror) attacks" he underlined and stressed the need to "react with more democracy and with better management of the safety issues as well as with the upgrading of the protection of the human rights". [05] Wikileaks: IMF to threaten Greece with bankruptcy IMF's intention to put pressure on Greece threatening it with bankruptcy in order to pass its harsh measures, reveals Wikileaks in a phone conversation between IMF director in Europe Poul Thomsen and IMF's mission chief in Greece Delia Velculescu. Poul Thomsen is allegedly trying the IMF to not return to Greece and the review of the Greek programme to be delayed until July; therefore, Athens will run out of cash and will be forced to accept IMF's demands for additional harsh measures not foreseen in the agreement. IMF's director in Europe also said that the IMF will not agree with the review and that it will not accept a small package of measures. He proposes Greece to be found with the back against the wall with no cash and on the brink of bankruptcy in order to be forced to impose the measures the IMF wants. So, the deliberations on the review will be delayed until July in order to coincide with the referendum for the Brexit and the Europeans to have additional time because they do not want to take decisions before the British referendum. He also reveals that he is planning to blackmail German Chancellor Angela Merkel with IMF's withdrawal from the programme which will raise a series of difficult questions in German parliament. On her part, Vesculescu said that July's agreement was a mistake because it offered to the Greek government a very strong argument to not accept the additional measures requested by the IMF, claiming that they are committed to implement only those agreed and nothing more. [06] Europarliament VP Papadimoulis sends letter to Schulz and Gualtieri on IMF and Greek review Europarliament Vice President and head of SYRIZA MEPs Dimitris Papadimoulis in agreement with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras sent a letter to Europarliament president Martin Schulz and to all the europarliament political party leaders (except Marine Le Pen) as well as to the head of the Financial Assistance Working Group for Greece Roberto Gualtieri. In his letter, Papadimoulis stresses that Wikileaks' recent revelations regarding Greece's programme and IMF's intention to put pressure on Greece, on the state-members and the European institutions gives rise to serious concerns because they "put in jeopardy the economic and political stability in a period that Europe is facing huge challenges as the financial and the refugees crisis, issues of safety and the British referendum". He also underlines that it is "important the IMF to state clearly its position and to clarify to what point the revelations express the Fund's policy and intentions". He also asks the recipients' contribution for a rapid and successful completion of the Greek review noting that the "successful completion of the review will give new incentives and a breath to the Greek economy and will create new perspectives for the Greek society". [07] Alt. Tourism Minister Kountoura meets with tour operators from Saudi Arabia Alternate Tourism Minister Elena Kountoura had a series of important meetings with representatives of tour operators and agencies of Saudi Arabia with aim the promotion of the Greek tourism and the attraction of tourists. Sixteen representatives of tour operators activating in Riyadh visited Greece within the framework of fam trips included in the broader planning for the opening of Greek tourism to dynamic markets of the Middle East. The minister thanked them for their visit and referred to the targeted programme of actions with aim the promotion of Greece in Saudi Arabia. She also referred to the imminent 2nd GreekTourism Workshop that will take place next week in Riyadh. [08] IMF: We do not comment on leaks and supposed reports "We do not comment on leaks and supposed reports of internal discussions" said IMF in an announcement referring to Wikileaks revelations. In its announcement the International Monetary Fund reaffirms its stable position which is the need for a durable solution for the financial challenges Greece is facing. A solution which puts Greece on the path of sustainable growth supported by a set of credible reforms matched by a debt relief from its European partners. The necessary reforms and targets (of the Greek programme) must be based on credible assumptions. As the IMF has already reiterated, says the Fund's announcement, there is a trade-off on what is feasible on reforms and the amount of debt relief needed. [09] Refugees and migrants continue to arrive on the Greek islands 888 migrants and refugees arrived on the island of Lesvos, 463 persons reached the coasts of Chios island and 31 migrants and refugees arrived on Samos in the last 48 hours. A few hours before the first readmission of migrants to Turkey and the implementation of EU-Turkey's agreement a large number of refugees and migrants continue to arrive on the Greek islands. General News [10] Curator of Athens Festival Jan Fabre resigns Newly appointed Curator of the Athens and Epidauros International Festival Belgian Jan Fabre resigned on Saturday following a series of reactions caused by his decision the first year of his tenure to "consist of a tribute to Belgium". [11] Nadia Murad visits refugees in Idomeni Nadia Murad Basee Taha, visited on Sunday the refugees' camp in Idomeni. The 21 year-old woman Nadia Murad Basee Taha was abducted by ISIS from her village last August, she was used as a sex slave and raped until she managed to escape and go to Germany. More than 3,000 Yazidi women and children remain prisoners of jihadists, according to estimates. Murad held talks with her compatriots that are in Idomeni and other refugees and met with representatives of non-governmental organisations. In statements to ANA-MPA, she said that the condition in Idomeni and Piraeus port is unacceptable and noted that what we are before a 'humanitarian crisis". She said that all the refugees told her that they are waiting the borders to open and she told them that the borders will not open and it would be for their own interest to be transferred to temporary hosting centers. Nadia Murad underlined that the transfer procedures must be accelerated and that additional hosting centers should be created. [12] Frontex officers arrive on Lesvos to assist migrants' readmission to Turkey Approximately 350 Frontex officers from Germany, France, Portugal, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania arrived on Saturday and Sunday on Lesvos to assist in the refugees and migrants readmission process to Turkey. EU-Turkey agreement on the readmission of migrants from Lesvos is scheduled to start on Monday and 250 migrants will be sent back to Turkey accompanied by a Frontex officer. The procedure will be carried out with two, leased by Frontex, Turkish-owned vessels. According to information, the first readmissions do not refer to families but to individuals from north African countries, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Congo. [13] Patras-Athens march for the unemployed A march from Patras to Athens organised by Patras municipality with aim the implementation of measures against unemployment started on Sunday at 09:30 from the port city of Patras. Patras mayor Costas Peletidis who is leading the protest march stated "we demand from the government to take immediate measures for the relief of the jobless and with our participation in the march we are sending a message of hope that the policy that was us passive spectators, sheep ready to be slaughtered without a word, will not pass. We protest demanding work for all as well as measures for the protection of the jobless". The protest will finish in Athens on Sunday 10 April. [14] Weather Forecast Mostly fair weather and north-northeasterly winds are forecast for Monday. Wind velocity will reach 7 on the Beaufort scale. Partly cloudy in the afternoon in the northern and western parts of the country with temperatures ranging from 06C-22C. Mostly fair in the eastern parts with temperatures between 07C-22C. Scattered clouds over the Aegean islands and Crete, 11C-21C. Fair in Athens, 08C-21C; the same for Thessaloniki, 10C-20C. [15] Athens Headlines at a glance AVGHI: The agreement on the taxes. ETHNOS: (Prime Minister Alexis) Tsipras' answer to IMF's conspiracy: We will not leave Thomsen dissolve Europe. KATHIMERINI: What Brussels and IMF ask for the completion of the Greek review. PROTO THEMA: Germans represent Greece on labour issues. REAL NEWS: Shame...Disgrace! RIZOSPASTIS: Escalation of the popular action before the antipopular developments. TO VIMA: Mr. Schulz, the matchmaker. 36, TSOCHA ST. ATHENS 115 21 GREECE - TEL: 64.00.560-63 - FAX: 64.00.581-2 INTERNET ADDRESS: http://www.ana.gr - E-MAIL: anabul@ana gr - GENERAL DIRECTOR: Michalis Psilos Athens News Agency: Daily News Bulletin in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article
Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-04-04 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/> CONTENTS [01] 136 refugees return to Turkey [02] Greek director Theodoropoulos is the new artistic director of Hellenic Festival [03] 4,800 refugees stranded at Piraeus port [04] Fishermen find ancient amphorae in waters near Limnos [01] 136 refugees return to Turkey The vessels "Nazli Jale" and "Lesvos" chartered by Frontex left Mytilene on Monday morning with 136 refugees on board as part of the EU-Turkey agreement for the return of refugees to Turkey. 136 of them are from Pakistan, 4 are from Sri Lanka, 2 are from India, 3 are from Bangladesh, 1 from Iraq and 2 from Syria. Refugees are accompanied by an equal number of Frontex policemen in order to ensure their safe transfer to Dikili port. [02] Greek director Theodoropoulos is the new artistic director of Hellenic Festival Greek director Vangelis Theodoropoulos was appointed as artistic director of the Hellenic Festival. "The task of the new artistic director is difficult, but we are sure that he will work constructively with the board of the Hellenic Festival and the Greek artists to have the best possible result under the current circumstances. And always with the eyes set on the future," the Culture ministry said in an announcement. [03] 4,800 refugees stranded at Piraeus port "Ariadni" ferry arrived at the port of Piraeus on Monday morning carrying 25 migrants and refugees from Mytilene. Another 73 refugees from Samos were transferred on Sunday night by "Nisos Mykonos." According to the latest data, 4,800 refugees are now stranded at Piraeus port. Despite the fact that three buses arrived at the port on Sunday to transfer migrants and refugees to accommodation centres, nobody boarded. Many of the refugees and migrants fear that the centers are far from the city and expressed their concern that they would be trapped there. [04] Fishermen find ancient amphorae in waters near Limnos The fishing boat "Panagia M" on Thursday "netted" a total of 21 ancient amphorae, a type of ceramic storage vessel used in antiquity, while fishing in waters northwest of the Mourtzouflos cape on the island of Limnos. The finds were of various sizes, ranging in height from 15 to 80 cm and the fishing boat's captain handed them over to the Myrina harbour authority, where the fishing boat is registered. Along with one more amphora recovered by the captain of the fishing boat "P.G. Psarros" from seas west of Limnos, the finds were handed over to the island's cultural ministry services. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article
Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-04-04 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/> CONTENTS [01] PM Tsipras to address SYRIZA parliamentary group that convenes on Monday [02] Negotiations between Greece and institutions to resume on Monday afternoon [03] Turkish General Consul Okan visits refugees in Idomeni [01] PM Tsipras to address SYRIZA parliamentary group that convenes on Monday SYRIZA parliamentary group will convene on Monday at the Greek parliament. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will address the meeting on the latest political developments. [02] Negotiations between Greece and institutions to resume on Monday afternoon Negotiations between Greece's economic staff and the institutions will start on Monday, at 4 pm, in the aftermath of the release of a secret transcript by Wikileaks. The discussions will focus on tax issues, pension reforms, deregulations and additional tax measures of 1.8 billion euros with the view to concluding the program review. [03] Turkish General Consul Okan visits refugees in Idomeni The Turkish General Consul in Thessaloniki Orhan Yalman Okan visited on Monday the refugees camp in Idomeni. The Turkish official toured the camp as well as tents scattered on the railway tracks that remain blocked for over two weeks. According to information, the Turkish consulate went to Idomeni to inspect the condition in Idomeni. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article
Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-04-04 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/> CONTENTS [01] Greece, institutions conclude first meeting in new round of talks [02] Greece returns 202 migrants and refugees to Turkey with Frontex's assistance [03] President Pavlopoulos urges for an end to war in Syria in meeting with Robert F. Kennedy HR head [01] Greece, institutions conclude first meeting in new round of talks The first meeting in a new round of talks between the Greek government's economic team and representatives of the institutions to conclude the review of Greece's programme ended in Athens on Monday. Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos said that it was "an introductory talk" that set a schedule for the first week of negotiations until next Monday and a road map until the Eurogroup meeting on April 22. According to the finance minister, there was no discussion regarding the Wikileaks transcript released at the weekend. Asked if the government was troubled by the fact that the European side appeared to be siding with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Tsakalotos declined to comment. Alternate Finance Minister George Chouliarakis also attended the meeting at the Hilton Hotel, which was surrounded by protestors taking part in a rally organised by the civil servants' union federation ADEDY against austerity measures, with slogans demanded that the IMF leave Greece. There was stringent security around the hotel, with riot police preventing protestors from approaching, while one lane on Vassilisis Sofias Avenue was closed. [02] Greece returns 202 migrants and refugees to Turkey with Frontex's assistance Greece completed the first 202 readmissions of refugees and migrants from Lesvos and Chios to Turkey with Frontex's assistance on Monday, as part of the EU-Turkey agreement, it was announced. The operation, which included 180 escort officers deployed by Frontex, as well as Greek officers, is coordinated between the Greek and Turkish authorities. According to information provided by the Greek authorities, 136 people boarded from Lesvos - 135 and one woman - of the following nationalities: 124 Pakistanis, 3 Bangladeshis, one Iraqi, 2 Indians, 4 Sri Lankans and 2 Syrians. Another 66 people boarded in Chios  56 men and 10 women: 42 Afghanis, 10 Iranians, 6 Pakistanis, one Indian, one Somali, one from the Ivory Coast and 5 from Congo. None of the migrants and refugees who were readmitted applied for an asylum in Greece, including the two Syrians who asked to return to Turkey. The readmission operation will continue in the coming days. [03] President Pavlopoulos urges for an end to war in Syria in meeting with Robert F. Kennedy HR head The world must aim at stopping the so-called Islamic State and ending the war in Syria President Prokopis Pavlopoulos said on Monday, during a meeting with Kerry Kennedy, President of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, who was accompanied by the UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador, Marianna Vardinoyannis. "Please relate to your country, the United States  that the entire civilized world should have two aims at this point: First, finishing with ISIS. It is inconceivable for civilization and our democracy to have this new outbreak of barbarism, called ISIS. And secondly, the war must end immediately so that refugees can return to their homes," Pavlopoulos told Kennedy. "These refugees didn't leave [their country] looking for a better fate in other European countries. They left because there was a war," he added. On her side, Kennedy mentioned the way Greeks have welcomed refugees despite the economic crisis. "The day before yesterday I was fortunate enough, because Mrs. Vardinoyiannis and I were able to visit Schisto [refugee camp]. And I have to admit that, considering the economic crisis facing Greece, it is very impressive the fact that Greeks were so accepting and open towards these refugees," she said. "The compassion t=Greeks showed towards them is impressive." Vardinoyiannis also commented on her visit to Schisto, saying it was emotional and also expressed her satisfaction with Kennedy's assessment that the camp was well organized. She also said that her institution is willing to cooperate with the State to organize a center that will accommodate unaccompanied refugee children, adding this issue was discussed in a meeting with Interior Minister Panos Kouroumblis earlier today. "This center will be a model for other such centers abroad," Vardinoyannis said. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article
Beginning in 1478, the Spanish Inquisition systematically silenced any citizen who held views that did not align with the kings. Using the powerful arm of the government, the grand inquisitor, Tomas de Torquemada, and his henchmen sought out all those who held religious, scientific, or moral views that conflicted with the monarchs, punishing the heretics with jail sentences, property confiscation, fines, and in severe cases, torture, and execution.

One of the lasting results of the Spanish Inquisition was a stifling of speech, thought, and scientific debate throughout Spain. By treating one set of scientific views as absolute, infallible, and above critique, Spain silenced many brilliant individuals and stopped the development of new ideas and technological innovations. Spain became a scientific backwater.

As an old adage says, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. So we now have a new inquisition underway in America in the 21st centurysomething that would have seemed unimaginable not too long ago.

Treating climate change as an absolute, unassailable fact, instead of what it is an unproven, controversial scientific theory, a group of state attorneys general have announced that they will be targeting any companies that challenge the catastrophic climate change religion.

Speaking at a press conference on March 29, New York Attorney General EricSchneiderman said The bottom line is simple: Climate change is real. He went on to say that if companies are committing fraud by lying about the dangers of climate change, they will pursue them to the fullest extent of the law.

The coalition of 17 inquisitors are calling themselves AGs United for Clean Power. The coalition consists of 15 state attorneys general (California, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Virginia, Vermont, and Washington State), as well as the attorneys general of the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands. Sixteen of the seventeen members are Democrats, while the attorney general for the Virgin Islands, Claude Walker, is an independent.

The inquisitors are threatening legal action and huge fines against anyone who declines to believe in an unproven scientific theory.

More on the Daily Signal.
CHICAGO - Chicago Teachers Union Executive Board member Sarah Chambers was on hand last Friday when several Leftist groups gathered with striking teachers in front of Chicago's Thompson Center. She posted several Tweets and photos of those that spoke to the crowd from those demanding more benefits and pay for teachers to other demanding Black Lives Matter and a $15 per hour minimum wage.

After leaving the video up for three days, Chambers suddenly took down a video of Chicago activist Page May calling on the crowd to "F*** the Police!" after CTU President Karen Lewis said the police were "not their enemies."

Page May is prominent among Leftist causes on the web, including an organization called Assata's Daughters named after cop killer and FBI fugitive Assata Shakur - who worked with the Black Panthers. Here is Page May on a YouTube interview recorded in October 2015:

On one blog, Page May wrote this:

I am a Black, queer, woman who grew up in rural Vermont. That upbringing, my family, and our experiences have deeply influenced my awareness of oppression and commitment to organizing. I spend a lot of time reading and thinking about connections between Blackness/Anti-Blackness, the PIC, and how categories of citizen/human/nature/animal are constructed and related to violence. Moving to Chicago four years ago was profoundly politicizing for me. The citys rich community of activists and deep history of struggle have connected me to organizing and supported my ongoing political education. My activism has centered on youth, environment, and the PIC. In addition to We Charge Genocide, I organize with Black & Pink: Chicago and am a member of the PIC Teaching Collective. Throughout all of my work, I strive to challenge anti-blackness and develop a Black, queer, feminist politic.

Others that addressed the CTU rally included:
As per the data submitted by the Bihar government on Friday in the legislative council, 5871 primary schools in the state do not have their own buildings.

By India Today Web Desk, Press Trust of India: As per the data submitted by the Bihar government on Friday in the legislative council, 5871 primary schools in the state do not have their own buildings and now, it is being reviewed whether or not these schools are required anymore.

According to newspaper reports, BJP member Sanjay Prakash alias Sanjay Mayukh, put up a query regarding the number of schools which do not have buildings, to which, Education Minister Ashok Choudhary replied that out of 21,419 primary schools which have been sanctioned under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, 21,100 schools have been set up in the state so far.

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He further said that of 21,100 primary schools, the district administration from across the state has furnished reports of construction of buildings for 15,229 after getting land for the purpose. However, the process of identification of land is yet to be completed for construction of buildings for 5871 schools in the state. He said that the government is reviewing whether or not these schools are required anymore, on the basis of which building will be provided to them.

The government would open schools as per the requirement after carrying out a proper review of the prevailing ground situation, he said, adding that district magistrates and district education officers (DEOs) have been given instructions in this regard.

While replying to another query by BJP member Lal Babu Prasad, the minister said that the state government has approved a new payscale with effect from July 1, 2015 for teachers appointed on consolidated pay by rural and urban local bodies.The department makes salary payment from the grant provided by the state government and funds provided under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) by the Centre, he added.



Read: India invites Canadian faculty to teach at higher education institutions



Read: Gujarat Higher Education Council Bill-2016 passed! All you need to know about the bill



For information on more latest news and updates, click here.



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These roads are really beautiful, but at the same time, they are believed to be haunted. Drive at your own risk, if you must.

By Samonway Duttagupta: One of the best ways to discover new places is driving long distances. Although these road trips take travellers on memorable journeys across beautiful locations, one must have complete knowledge about the dangers on the route. India, like many other countries, is home to several haunted roads that are located in different parts of the country. And it is our duty to keep you informed, so that you can avoid these roads while travelling.

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Kasara Ghat

Picture courtesy: Flickr/Kashif Pathan/Creative Commons

Highways cutting through lush green landscapes are often very tempting for travellers who like to go on road trips. One such road is the Mumbai-Nashik highway that has acres of thick vegetation on both sides of the road. But beware! The Kasara Ghat stretch on this highway is said to be haunted -- a lot of people claim to have seen a headless lady sitting on the trees. Avoid staring at the trees if you ever happen to cross this stretch.

Sathyamangalam Wildlife Sanctuary corridor

Picture courtesy: Wikimedia/Suniltg/Creative Commons

A part of National Highway 209 (NH-209) passes through the Sathyamangalam Wildlife Sanctuary in Tamil Nadu, a forest which was once resided by the infamous bandit Veerappan. Although driving on a road with forest cover is always exciting, this particular road is said to be one of the most haunted places in the state of Tamil Nadu. Both locals and travellers have claimed that they have heard loud screams, seen floating lanterns and experienced other paranormal sightings. Some believe that it's Veerappan's ghost which haunts this place. Also read: Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve: Home to a new breed of bears



Delhi-Jaipur highway

Picture courtesy: Flickr/Dinesh Bareja/Creative Commons Picture courtesy: Flickr/Dinesh Bareja/Creative Commons

If you are planning to drive to Jaipur via Alwar, you might come across National Highway 11 A, which is an alternate route. This is also the road that can take you to the Bhangarh Fort, which is well-known for its hauntings. Well, that's another reason you might lake to take this road -- just to pay a quick visit to the haunted fort on the way to Jaipur. But then, this highway is said to be as haunted as the fort itself. In fact, the stretch passing the Bhangarh Fort area is believed to have been affected by the same spirits that haunt the monument. Explore at your own risk!

Kashedi Ghat

Picture courtesy: Pinterest/Lehuka Hanaike

Those driving to Goa from Mumbai might come across Kashedi Ghat, a stretch on the highway that one must avoid if possible, especially during the night. People say that the ghost of a mysterious person tries to stop vehicles passing this stretch, and when someone refuses to do so, the car meets with a major accident. Creepy, isn't it?

Also read: Cursed places in India that are bound to give you the shivers



East Coast Road

Picture courtesy: Pandiyan V/Creative Commons Picture courtesy: Pandiyan V/Creative Commons

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If you go on a road trip from Chennai to Puducherry, you will come across the East Coast Road, which is considered to be a driver's delight. The two-lane highway is known to provide a smooth ride, along with picturesque sceneries on either side of the road. But it is better to avoid driving on this road after sunset. The road is badly lit and is believed to be haunted by the ghost of a lady wearing a white saree who distracts drivers, leading to deadly accidents. Travellers have also experienced a sudden drop in temperatures on this particular stretch of the road.

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A truck driver, 2 labourers and six others were arrested by the Bengaluru police for allegedly attacking noted Kannada writer Pustakamane Hariharapriya and vandalizing his home on Saturday in the city.

By Aravind Gowda: A truck driver, 2 labourers and six others were arrested by the Bengaluru police for allegedly attacking noted Kannada writer Pustakamane Hariharapriya and vandalizing his home on Saturday in the city.

According to the police, the 9 people were illegally dumping construction material near the home of Hariharapriya and he took objection to the same. This led to an altercation and the 9 people attacked the writer. They locked him up inside his home and damaged the exteriors of the house.

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The writer informed his son over the phone and he in turn alerted the police and they rescued the writer. The incident had led to unrest in the locality, as the assailants had fled by the time the police arrived at the spot. Multiple cases have been registered against the 9 accused.

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By Shashank Shekhar: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government wants bureaucrats posted outside Delhi to vacate government flats allotted to them while they were in the national Capital. The Cabinet has set a deadline of June 30 for these IAS and DANICS officers to vacate the premises.

According to senior officials in the Delhi government, close to 40 bureaucrats will be affected by this decision. Recently, many officers were transferred from Delhi to other states and union territories but they are still occupying houses allotted to them by the PWD. The last one year has seen repeated friction between the Delhi government and bureaucrats on several issues. The cabinet took the latest decision citing acute shortage of government houses. The Delhi government also hit out at the Centre and asked for an equivalent number of same category government houses in place of Delhi government houses occupied by officers posted outside Delhi.

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"Serving officers in Delhi are not able to get suitable accommodation, resulting in a crisis," a letter issued by the PWD department to the Ministry of Urban Development said (a copy of the letter is with Mail Today)."

According to a senior official, the Delhi cabinet took up the matter on March 22. The cabinet decided that as the central government is the cadre-controlling authority when it comes to IAS/DANICS officers, it should be asked to provide equivalent number of same category government houses to the Delhi government.



Provisions

"The Central government should make provisions for equal number of same category houses for officers attached with the Delhi government. Officers have been complaining that they do not get suitable government houses due to acute shortage. Many officers who were earlier working with Delhi government and are now posted outside the state have retained their houses. In many instances, their families continue to live in them," a senior government official told Mail Today.

The cabinet also decided that if the Centre fails to allocate an equal number of houses to the Delhi government by June 30, officers in possession of Delhi government houses would be asked to vacate them. Some officers who moved out of Delhi recently see this as the Delhi government trying to get back at bureaucrats. The tussle between the Delhi government and bureaucrats began soon after the Aam Aadmi Party came to power in February 2015.

Protest

In December 2014, Delhi government bureaucrats went on mass leave to protest against the suspension of two DANICS cadre officers even as the Union Home Ministry declared the suspension as null and void. Last month, many senior bureaucrats who had a rough stint with the AAP government were transferred out of the national Capital. This included Shakuntala Gamlin, principal secretary (power), who has been posted as chief secretary, Arunachal Pradesh. She was at loggerheads with the AAP government after she was appointed acting Chief Secretary of Delhi by the Ministry of Home Affairs.

The IAS officer was on leave ever since a tug of war erupted between the AAP-led Delhi Government and the Centre over her appointment. Earlier, Delhi's Home secretary S N Sahai had a tough time over the issue of 'suspension' of his two special secretaries. Sahai even stood up for them and wrote to the home minister, calling the suspension illegal. Sahai has been transferred to Goa.



Also read: AAP government presents its second budget, slashes VAT





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The Centre today decided to withdraw from the Supreme Court an appeal filed by the previous UPA government challenging the Allahabad High Court verdict which said the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) is not a minority institution.

By India Today Web Desk: The Centre today decided to withdraw from the Supreme Court an appeal filed by the previous UPA government challenging the Allahabad High Court verdict which said the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) is not a minority institution.

Representing the government, Attorney General Mukul Rohtagi told the top court today that he is making the statement only on behalf of the Centre and not the AMU, which has also filed an appeal in the case.

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In effect, it means the current government has decided not to challenge the Allahabad High Court verdict and file a fresh affidavit, claiming that the AMU is a non-minority institution. The court has granted the Centre eight weeks to withdraw its appeal while allowing the Aligarh-based university to file a counter affidavit.

The Centre had earlier made it clear that since the AMU was set up through a parliamentary act, any privilege on religious grounds would be "contrary to the country's secular policy". The revised stance had created a political storm, with the opposition accusing the government of being anti-Muslim.

In January 2006, the Allahabad High Court had struck down the provision of the AMU (Amendment) Act, 1981 by which the status of a minority institution was accorded to the AMU by the then Indira Gandhi government. Both the then UPA government and the AMU had challenged the verdict.

The university currently has 50 per cent reservation for internal students, irrespective of their religion.

According to the Centre, minority status to the AMU and New Delhi-based Jamia Millia Islamia is "unconstitutional" and "illegal" since these two government-run institutions were "discriminating" against the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes by using the minority tag.

Last month, AMU Vice-Chancellor Lt General Zameer Uddin Shah met Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking the government's support in restoring the university's minority status. The withdrawal of the minority status "would have a salutary effect on minorities who are agitated and apprehensive that their rights are being trampled upon", Shah said.

In his memorandum to Modi, Shah added, "AMU students have behaved in an exemplary manner and have not agitated over this issue. We have full faith in your sagacity and your slogan 'sab ka saath, sab ka vikaas'."

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By PTI: an arrangement with AsiaNet. PTI takes no editorial responsibility for the same.) Doosan Skoda Power Helps India Become Electric Powerful

PILSEN, Czech Republic, Apr. 2 /PRNewswire-AsiaNet/ -- India is home to over a billion people and an installed electrical capacity of 280GW. It is also a traditional trading partner for the Czech Republic, with economic and commercial ties dating back to the beginning of the 20th century. For Czech turbine specialist Doosan ?koda Power, this special relationship is manifested in the 120 steam turbines the company has delivered so far to Indian customers.

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In India, Doosan Skoda Power operates through 100% subsidiary, Skoda Power Pvt. Ltd. As well as being local business partner, the team in India also supports the implementation of projects in the territory through the delivery of local supplies and services, as well as providing maintenance and services for equipment already in operation.

Recent high-profile projects in India include the commissioning of a 130MW turbine for the Pioneer combined cycle power plant (CCPP) in Maharashtra state, and the supply of a 210MW steam turbine as part of the upgrade of the existing Bandel coal-fired power plant in West Bengal. An installation of a 180MW turbine at the OPG coal-fired unit in Tamil state are another recent success story, as the first single-body reheat turbine in the Indian market and one of the largest turbines of its kind in the world. Doosan Skoda Powers ability to secure such prominent contracts when importing key equipment from the EU is also considered an extraordinary success. (MORE) AsiaNet TLS TLS

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The Bengaluru police arrested 4 people, who were robbing people, by posing as transgenders in the north part of the city.

By Mail Today: The Bengaluru police arrested 4 people, who were robbing people, by posing as transgenders in the north part of the city.

According to the police, Dinesh (22), Bhyre Gowda (45), Madhu (20) and Ravi (29), all residents of the city, would dress up as transgenders and stop two-wheeler riders during evenings in Jalahalli and Mathikere. Then, they would relieve the victims of their jewellery and belongings by threatening them with weapons.

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The police recovered Rs 1.12 lakhs cash, 7 gold finger rings and 2 gold chains from them. The police tracked them after they had relieved a man of Rs 50,000 cash in Jalahalli. All the 4 robbers, who are now behind the bars, told the police that they dressed as transgenders, as it was easy to rob people.

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By PTI: From Anisur Rahman

Dhaka, Apr 4 (PTI) Two militants have been killed in Bangladesh in blast while allegedly making bombs for their terror outfit.

"The incident took place last night. The doctors declared one of the two dead immediately as they were rushed to the hospital while the other succumbed to his wounds later," police official said.

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They were not known to the neighbourhood at a village in northwestern Bogra and were residing in the house rented by an autorickshaw driver, who was not inside during the blast.

"We suspect they are members of any militant outfit and the blast took place as they were preparing bombs for their outfit. Investigations have been launched to track down the autorickshaw driver," official said.

According to local reports, polices bomb disposal unit this morning seized at least twenty grenades, four pistols with 20 bullets from the building at the village. PTI AR UZM

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By PTI: From Jaishree Balasubhramanian

Bangkok, Apr 4 (PTI) A body believed to be of an Indian man with multiple wounds all over it has been found in a stuffed suitcase floating in a canal here in the Thai capital.

The body was spotted yesterday in a canal near Samran Rat intersection after a worker at an ice factory found a bag containing what looked human remains with a head and shoulders protruding, police said.

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Bangkok Post quoting a source close to the investigation said several items found in the bag indicated the man could be an Indian national.

However, Indian Embassy sources told PTI that the identity and nationality of the victim had not yet been confirmed and they were working together with the Thai police.

Acting Bangkok police chief Sanit Mahathaworn said an initial examination by police indicated that the man had been murdered at least three days ago.

The body had multiple woulds all over it received after being hit with a hard object. The injuries to his head and neck were the fatal blows, police said.

The man was an Asian about 150-160 centimeters tall. He was wearing only underwear, the report said.

The victim may have been tortured for information before being killed and the body subsequently dumped in the canal, police assumed, adding that a business conflict may have been the reason behind the murder. PTI JB MRJ AKJ MRJ

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More than what it seems, it looks like a hard job to justify anything that comes from Donald Trump. But this time, it comes from a Mexican construction worker who hung a Mexican flag atop Vancouver's Trump tower to send out a really great message to Donald Trump.

By Mohak Gupta:

Donald Trump has been on a roll with his political career, screaming to make America greater, by insulting and shaming the very people. But this Mexican construction worker climbs up Vancouver's Trump tower to send Donald Trump a message by hanging a Mexican flag on top the building.

The purpose of hanging the Mexican flag atop the tower was to send a message to Donald Trump.

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Diego Saul Reyna posted a photo on Facebook with a message for Donald Trump on his negative comments about minorities and how Mexican workers play an integral part in the construction of the tower.

Photo Credit: facebook.com/princecharming00



Reyna climbed up all the away to send out the message to Donald Trump where he is seen sitting all relaxed and smiling, with the Mexican flag hanging atop the tower.



After posting the message with the photo, the post got shared greatly over social media portals and also rendered many discussions as some supported Reyna while others discussed Trump's foreign policy.



Donald Trump has made many such comments and extrapolations about Mexicans, blatantly calling them rapists and even went ahead saying that he wants to construct a wall along US-Mexico border.

It's not the first time we have heard this, since Donald Trump has never hesitated to make such comments or generalisations.



Reyna though does not work there at the Trump's tower - construction site, but has many Mexican and Muslim friends working to build the same tower and are quite foiled that they cannot say anything.

So Reyna, willing to face the consequences, climbed to the top of the 63-storey tower to hang the Mexican flag and send out this message to Donald Trump.



It's really hard for the workers of different religions and races who work on the project, to construct Vancouver's Trump tower, as Donald Trump has been quite against Mexicans and other religions.

The message here was to tell Donald Trump that it's time he starts respecting people around him as even Donald Trump needs these people as much as these people need Donald Trump.

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By Parmita Uniyal: She called her laado, and portrayed one of the most loving mothers-in-law we have ever come across on-screen. Sumitra and Anandi were inseparable on Balika Vadhu, on screen as well as off it.

Smita Bansal, who played Sumitra--Pratyusha Banerjee's doting mother-in-law on Colors' popular show Balika Vadhu--is shell-shocked with the news of her suicide, as she remembers her as a "happy and loving child" who adored life. "It's beyond me; what could have led her to take such a drastic step," she tells us in an exclusive telephonic conversation, as she struggles to come to terms with Pratyusha's sudden departure. "We were good friends. We (Pratyusha, Neha Marda and I) used to spend every minute with each other, while being on the sets and even used to go out together," she says, adding, "Pratyusha never showed any signs of depression at that time."

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"Pratyusha liked being happy. She wanted happiness in her life. She didn't like being low. She would snap out of it even if she felt low at times," says Smita. In an exclusive conversation with India Today online, Smita Bansal opens up about the Anandi she knew.

Also read: Pratyusha Banerjee death: Friends reveal shocking details



"Pratyusha literally grew up in front of us

Pratyusha was absolutely new when she joined Balika Vadhu. She literally grew up in front of us. She was 18-19 at that time. It was her first major show; she had come from a small town. She was very loving. For us (Balika Vadhu team) the transition was a little tough, with a new Anandi coming in, after Avika Gor's exit. Avika was very popular and the expectations were very high from the new Anandi. But Pratyusha met all expectations and in fact rose above them. She was a good performer, she made herself Anandi, which was commendable. We spent a lot of time together in all those years. We had good on-screen chemistry. And naturally so because we were very good friends off screen also.

Pratyusha liked being happy

She was a very happy and loving child. And when you are happy and loving, you attract happiness also. We were working together for 20 hours in a month and spent so much time in the make-up room. Neha Marda (who played Gehna), Pratyusha and I particularly shared a very good bonding. I was the senior-most, but they never made me feel like a senior. Pratyusha used to say let's go out together, and all three of us hung out a lot.

Pratyusha liked being happy. She wanted happiness in her life. She didn't like being low. She would snap out of it even if she felt low at times. People are saying she was depressed, but when she was working with me, I could not see any signs of depression. She couldn't have hidden it. She used to discuss all the details with us. She wasn't the kind of person who would hide her woes. Even if she had a small argument with somebody, she used to discuss it and get it out of her system. It is difficult to believe that she had depression. But as they say, anybody could get depressed. It could be possible agar usey suddenly ho gaya ho. But she wasn't depressed at all and a happy person when she was working with me.

Smita Bansal, Neha Marda and Pratyusha Banerjee in Balika Vadhu Smita Bansal, Neha Marda and Pratyusha Banerjee in Balika Vadhu

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Also read: 10 things you need to know about Pratyusha Banerjee's death



She loved life

I never thought she would do something like this. I would not like to comment whether she could or could not have committed suicide. Because I have come to believe that anybody can do anything. But there has to be some reason behind it. She loved life. She was the kind of person who used to start singing out of the blue. She was always updated about the latest movies and songs.

I left Balika Vadhu two years back, and Prayusha left the show way before. We were in touch on and off, but not constantly. In our industry, as we move on to other soaps, we don't have much time to hang out with friends. Even when we talk, we don't really discuss our lives in detail. I don't know how her nature has changed in all these years.



Maybe it was a moment

I considered her a very good friend of mine. She didn't give me any hint about it. If only she would have made that one call to any of her good friends who could have put some sense into her. Maybe it was a moment and later she also must have thought--what the hell I am doing.

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I knew Kuljeet Randhawa (another TV actress who committed suicide) and I had also worked with her. I had done a show with her and had spent a lot of time with her also. It wasn't the same like Pratyusha, but we shared a good equation. I never felt that she could commit suicide. But as we see in the past two-three cases, it comes from the most unexpected people.

Also read: Pratyusha Banerjee death: A call for help is all that was needed



Don't think there was any financial trouble

I don't think she had monetary trouble. I have been in the industry for 20 years. Paisa to aata hi rahta hai. She was constantly working. She did so many shows. After Balika Vadhu, she did Bigg Boss, Sasural Simar Ka, Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa etc. She used to do events also. How could she have no money? Even if you are doing one event in a month, there's enough money for a month. She was a very big name, she wasn't a nobody.

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Also read: Pratyusha Banerjee case: Police examining her bank accounts



Pratyusha was excited about her wedding

She was offered a lead role in &TV's show by Vikas Gupta, but she rejected it. You don't refuse work if you have financial trouble. She wanted to take a break, get married and that's probably the reason she didn't want to do another show. The last time I spoke to her, she was discussing what she wanted to wear on her wedding. Kahan par karenge... kaise karenge... wo bhi Jamshedpur ka hai, main bhi Jamshedpur ki hoon and all that. She wasn't the type who would get depressed about work. She wasn't insecure. And why would she be? She saw the heights of success. She became a star overnight.

Pratyusha was very close to her mother

She was loved by her mother. I have seen them together. She was so close to her mother. And she didn't even call her before she took that step. I find it very strange. What mental condition she must have been in is beyond me.

Message for actors: it is most important to be sane in life

But there is a message I want to give to the new breed of actors. Work is important, money is important. But it is most important to be sane in life. A family keeps you grounded and bounded. I am saying this because I feel sad. Our families are very important. I have been married for 14 years and even then if I have the slightest of problems, I call my mother. In Pratyusha's case, I never saw it coming. I have spent so much time with that girl.

Only if she had been with the right people...

I read in a paper that Sara Khan said Pratyusha had tried to commit suicide two times earlier too. If somebody knew about it, somebody should have done something about it. If she had been with the right people, this day wouldn't have come.

She was cut off from the world when she was dating Rahul

A lot of my industry friends were telling me that after Rahul came into her life, she was cut off from the world. Though I understand that when somebody is in love, it happens, you tend to distance yourself from others.



Need for a proper investigation

There should be a proper investigation in her case. There was no suicide note, nor any last messages found. In cases of suicide, generally there is at least one last message, in her case there was nothing, no message, no note."

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"We have to understand the context in which these statements are made. The RSS chief never said to force, he said to teach people to say Bharat Mata Ki Jai. No religion in the world asks you to not to hail your motherland," RSS ideologue Ratan Sharda told India Today.

To the Point with Karan Thapar

By India Today Web Desk: An enormous controversy has once again erupted on the slogan 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'. This time it has been sparked by Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendre Fadnavis. On Saturday, Fadnavis said that if you want to live in this country, then you have to say Bharat Mata ki Jai, otherwise you have no right to live here. On Sunday, he attempted to contextualise his remarks but didn't deny he'd made them.

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"We have to understand the context in which these statements are made. The RSS chief never said to force, he said to teach people to say Bharat Mata Ki Jai. No religion in the world asks you to not to hail your motherland," RSS ideologue Ratan Sharda told India Today.

"Devendra Fadnavis made that 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' comment in jest, it was rhetorical. If you don't want to say 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai', what else will you say? The Darul Uloom says it is Un-Islamic to say Bharat Mata Ki Jai whereas in all Islamic nations, people hail motherland," said BJP spokesperson GVLN Rao.

Ashish Nandy, a sociologist, responded to both Sharda and Rao saying - "This kind of nationalism is the last refuge of scoundrels. I don't think Bhagat Singh ever said 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'."

On his show To The Point, India Today TV's Karan Thapar asked these 10 relevant questions to a panel of experts.

10 Big questions



What's BJP's stand on Bharat Mata Ki Jai? Was Fadnavis speaking for the BJP, or only for himself? Does Fadnavis disagree with Mohan Bhagwat? Why is Congress' position so unclear on this issue? Is the BJP raising temperatures by foolishly tying itself in knots? Is there an alternative to 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'? Why can't one refuse to say 'Bharat'? Does the Constitution that grants us freedom of expression, also grant us freedom of silence? Sloganeering only way to prove one's nationalism? Can people be forced to chant 'Bharat mata ki jai'? Politics being played in the name of patriotism? Why are certain sections objecting to saying 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'?

The experts in discussion included BJP spokesperson GVL Narsimha Rao, RSS supporting author and thinker Ratan Sharda, Congress spokesperson and MP Abhishek Singhvi, highly regarded sociologist Ashis Nandy and the former editor in chief of the Times of India Dileep Padgaonkar.

Who said what

March 14: "Mohan Bhagwat I will not chant that slogan. What will you do? I won't say it even if you put a knife to my throat... Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that one should say Bharat Mata ki Jai." - AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi

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March 16: Waris Pathan, an MLA of Asaduddin Owaisi's AIMIM, suspended from the Maharashtra Assembly after he refused to say Bharat Mata ki jai

March 27: Mohan Bhagwat: Bharat Mata ki jai should be chanted voluntarily across the world

April 2: Devendra Fadnavis: "Those living in India should say 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'.

April 2: "Those who can't praise 'Bharat Mata' should not be staying in India." - Fadnavis

April 3: "The Slogan has nothing to do with religion. Divisive forces are opposing it." - Fadnavis

April 3: "No problem if someone says 'jai hind' 'jai bharat' jai hindustan'." - Fadnavis

April 3: "We respect this country's law and Constitution, otherwise if anybody disrespects Bharat Mata, we have the capability of beheading not one but thousands and lakhs" - Baba Ramdev

What Darul Uloom says

- 'We cannot worship our motherland, we worship only Allah.'

- Muslims should not chant bharat mata ki jai because it is against Islam.

- People are being forced to chant bharat mata ki jai

RSS Sarkaryavah Bhaiyyaji Joshi's comments

- 'Saffron flag is also national flag'

- 'Vande mataram is the real national anthem'

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- 'Jana Gana Mana is constitutionally mandated'

- 'Constituent assembly had adopted the tricolour as our state flag'

- 'Sentiments expressed in Vande Mataram denote nation's character'

- 'Tricolor is India's state flag, saffron flag is the symbol of our ancient culture.'

Top quotes from the discussion

- "We have to understand the context in which these statements are made. RSS chief never said to force, he said to teach people to say Bharat Mata Ki Jai" - RSS ideologue Ratan Sharda

- "No religion in the world asks you to not to hail your motherland." - Sharda

- "It is comic to say that someone has no right to declare that he/she will not say Bharat Mata Ki Jai." - Ashis Nandy

- "You cannot be forced to say Bharat Mata Ki Jai and not be punished either for not saying that." - Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi

- "We should say 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' with happiness and pride, but we can't force anyone to say this." - Singhvi

- "The Sangh Parivar is a confused lot, they say one thing one one day and backtrack on the other day." - Dileep Padgaonkar

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- "Why are they compelling people to not say 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' through a fatwa." - GVLN Rao

- "Congress leaders will go to JNU to support anti-nationals but then say they don't support them." - Ratan Sharda

- "If anybody tries to force adult human beings say something, they won't say it." - Ashis Nandy

- "First Fadnavis, now Baba Ramdev, I feel this an attempt to mobilise middle class support." - Ashis Nandy

- "I fear for country's security, this growing rhetoric is alienating a large section of the country." - Dileep Phadgaonkar

- "Bangladesh in its national anthem has a para dedicated for motherland." - Ratan Sharda

- "There is a sinister plan in India to give India a bad image across the world." - GVLN Rao

- "It was MIM leadership and their MLA Waris Pathan who provoked others." - GVLN Rao

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: New Delhi, Apr 3 (PTI) HRD Minister Smriti Irani will participate in an international conference on the zero in France this week.

The idea for holding an event on the relevance of "zero" was conceived when Irani participated in a Leaders Forum at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris in November last.

"The HRD Ministry together with the Pierre and Marie Curie University, Paris, will host an International Conference on the Zero on April 4-5 at the UNESCO headquarters.

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"It will share the rich and remarkable history of mathematics through the participation of some brilliant minds," an official statement said here.

The concept of zero as a digit in the decimal place value notation was developed in India, presumably as early as during the Gupta period (5th century) with the oldest unambiguous evidence dating to the 7th century. PTI ADS NAB KKM ZMN KKM

--- ENDS ---
AIADMK general secretary and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa announced on Monday that she will seek re-election from the Radhakrishnan Nagar constituency here.

By Indo-Asian News Service: AIADMK general secretary and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa announced on Monday that she will seek re-election from the Radhakrishnan Nagar constituency here.

At a time when other parties are finalising seat sharing arrangements with others, Jayalalithaa released the list of AIADMK candidates for Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Kerala assembly elections.

The AIADMK will contest in 227 of the 234 assembly constituencies in Tamil Nadu. It has allotted seven constituencies to its alliance partners.

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In Puducherry, the AIADMK will contest in all the 30 seats and in Kerala it will put up seven candidates.

Also read:

Tamil Nadu polls: Congress, DMK reach seat-sharing deal







--- ENDS ---
Jewellers have been on an indefinite strike to protest the excise duty of one per cent proposed in the Union Budget.

By Shashank Shekhar: Coming out in support of jewellers, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said imposition of excise duty on jewellery items will bring back Inspector Raj in the country. Taking jibes at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Kejriwal also urged him to leave Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's side if he did not want to lose the support of traders. Thousands of jewellers across the country have been protesting since March 2, demanding roll-back of the budgetary proposal that has impacted the trade.

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Kejriwal while addressing jewellers at Jantar Mantar emphasised that the excise duty will have a strangulating impact on the jewellery sector. "It flies in the face of Modi's 'Make in India' initiative. You go to America, Japan seeking investments. But you are strangulating a flourishing business in the country. I don't get the logic behind it. First, save your own countrymen, then call the foreigners," Kejriwal said.

Making a direct attack on the PM, Kejriwal said, "The notion was that BJP is a party of traders. Then what has happened now? I want to tell the PM that Jaitley ji will not have to gather votes or contest elections. You need votes so please be a little careful. If jewellers are cheated, then traders will leave BJP's side."

Kejriwal claimed that BJP MPs and even Union Ministers are in favour of the jewellers' demands contrary to the PM's adamancy. "Even MPs are wondering as to what Jaitley has explained to the PM.

BJP is on one side and PM on the other. But why? PM is under the total control of Jaitley. I am smaller in terms of age, experience than Modi ji but have a small suggestion for him. Please leave Jaitley ji's side, he will take you down," Kejriwal said. He also read out a series of tweets made by Modi in his capacity as Gujarat CM where the latter had opposed a similar move by the erstwhile UPA government to impose one per cent excise duty on non-silver jewellery.

"What has changed? People thought the PM is with them but you have cheated them. Congress used to impose excise duty and people brought you to power thinking you won't repeat the same," Kejriwal said.

Kejriwal said that due to the budget proposal having impacted their business severely, four to five traders have committed suicide in the last one month. Some jeweller friends told me that one more person committed suicide last evening over the policies, he said. "The excise duty was introduced without consulting the jewellers. The government is not going to benefit with this tax. Rather it will give rise to corruption.

The excise inspectors will ask for bribe from the traders," he said. The chief minister also claimed that President Pranab Mukherjee had extended his full support to the cause of the jewellers when he had taken a delegation to the Rashtrapati Bhavan. "The President told me he was aware that imposing the excise duty would lead to corruption and thus it should not be introduced, Kejriwal said while pointing to Delhi government's prompt decision to roll back VAT on certain items after traders expressed unhappiness over the same.

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Also read: Delhi Budget 2016-2017: Education bags major share of total plan





--- ENDS ---
By PTI: Gurgaon, Apr 3 (PTI) Haryana Chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar today praised the people of Odisha calling them "hard-working" and launched a mobile application for the Odia population in the NCR through which they can connect with each other.

Khattar spoke at the Pravasi Odia Utsav organised by Kalinga Bharti Foundation in association with Pravasi Odia organising committee in Om Shanti Retreat Centre, Bhora Kalan here.

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Applauding the skilled people from Odisha who work Haryana, Khattar said, "unhone Haryana ki pragati me yogdaan diya hai (They have contributed in the development of Haryana)."

He also announced that the Haryana government is soon going to open the first Efficiency Development College in the state for skill upgradation.

The Chief minister also spoke in Odia language during his address at the event in which people hailing from Odisha and residing in NCR-- Gurgaon, Faridabad, Noida, Ghaziabad-- participated.

Union Minister Dharmender Pradhan later made a reference to Khattars address in Odia language and said," the Haryana Chief Minister speaking in Odia, what else can be a better example of cultural exchange than this?."

Drawing similarities between Haryana and Odisha, Khattar said the war of Mahabharta was fought in Haryana where in Lord Krishna gave the eternal message of Gita to the mankind which teaches us the way to live life while war of Kalinga was fought in Odisha which changed the heart of King Ashoka and he adopted Buddhism.

"Odisha is called the soul of India. It is known for its culture and heritage," he said.

Governor of Odisha, Dr S C Jamir, who was also present at the event, said the Odia Utsav gives opportunity for introspection that how much has the state progressed after it came into existence.

He hoped that Odisha and Haryana will further work together in service sector.

Pradhan, who also hails from Odisha, said that for people present here Odisha is their Janambhoomi (birth place) but Haryana has become their ?Karmbhoomi? and he can assure that the Odia people will work more hard and contribute in the progress of Haryana as well as the nation.

He said that a temple of Lord Jagannath has been constructed in Faridabad of Haryana which is perhaps the biggest Jagannath temple in the country.

Pradhan said that the Odia people think more in "scientific way", that is the reason the Sun Temple in Konark constructed at the sea shore hundreds of years ago, still stood magnificently without any sign of damage on its walls. PTI CORR PVI

--- ENDS ---
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) president Mehbooba Mufti was sworn in as the first woman chief minister of Jammu & Kashmir today.

By India Today Web Desk: Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) president Mehbooba Mufti was sworn in as the first woman chief minister of Jammu & Kashmir today. The 56-year-old daughter of PDP founder Mufti Mohammad Sayeed is not only the first woman to head a government in Jammu and Kashmir, she is also the first Muslim woman to become the chief minister of any Indian state.In Pics



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BJP's Dr Nirmal Singh was sworn in as Mufti's deputy in a ceremony at the Governor's Residence in Jammu. Sources said the two parties have decided to contniue with the portfolios they held before Sayeed's death in January this year, leading to a three-month stalemate.

Those who attended the swearing included Union ministers Jitendra Singh, Venkaiah Naidu, Harsimrat Kaur, and senior BJP leader Ram Madhav, who was instrumental in ensuring the PDP-BJP alliance continued in the state.

Former chief ministers and Mufti's bitter rivals, Farooque Abdullah and his son Omar Abdullah were also present at the ceremony, while the Congress boycotted it calling it an "unholy alliance".

The PDP-BJP coalition, which also has Sajad Gani Lone led Peoples' Conference as a constituent, has 56 MLAs in the 87-member Assembly. The PDP has 27 members while BJP has 25. Peoples' Conference has two MLAs while two other independents are supporting the coalition.

The revival of the PDP-BJP coalition government in the state became possible after several rounds of hectic negotiations between the two parties and apparent intervention by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Following Sayeed's death, Governor's Rule was imposed in the state as the PDP and the BJP did not stake fresh claim for government formation in the state.

Also Read: Mehbooba Mufti: Know the first woman CM of Jammu and Kashmir

Also Read: Omar Abdullah expects PDP-BJP leaders to chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' after swearing in



--- ENDS ---
Mohammad Tanzil Ahmad was a deputy superintendent of police posted in the National Investigation Agency (NIA). His wife was also wounded in the attack. The incident occurred when they were returning home from a wedding near UP's Bijnor town.

By Ankur Sharma, Rajat Rai: A National Investigation Agency (NIA) officer, probing terror cases related to Indian Mujahideen, was on Sunday shot dead by two unidentified motorcycle-borne assailants at Bijnor in Uttar Pradesh.

Mohammad Tanzil Ahmad was a deputy superintendent of police posted in the National Investigation Agency (NIA). His wife was also wounded in the attack. The incident occurred when they were returning home from a wedding near UP's Bijnor town.

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In a planned attack, the killers pumped 24 bullets at 45-year- Ahmad and four at his wife Farzana, as their daughter (14) and son (12) watched the incident from the back seat of the Wagon-R car they were travelling in, the police said and added that the children were not injured. Late in the evening, NIA IG Sanjeev Kumar said Farzana was out of danger.

"There is no damage to her vital organs. She is recovering. Ahmad was a brave officer who never hesitated in taking up any challenge. It is a big loss to NIA. We will rise to the occasion and both NIA as well as UP Police has taken this as a challenge to bring the culprits before the law," he said.

Ahmad was returning home in Sahaspur village of Bijnor district with his family after attending his niece's wedding in a nearby village of the same district. Police termed the killing of Ahmad, posted as inspector initially with the NIA's intelligence wing and later in its investigation department, as a planned attack and did not rule out the possibility of a terror angle behind the shootout.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh told reporters in Lucknow that he had been apprised of the incident. "Whatever is necessary is being done. We are talking (to NIA officials)," Singh said. Police suspect Ahmad's movements was being tracked by the assailants, who used at least one 9mm pistol in the attack. Confirming the incident, IG (Law and Order) of UP Police, Bhagwan Swaroop said the NIA officer was shot dead by two motorcycle-borne assailants while he was returning after a marriage ceremony.

Ahmad, who has been with the NIA ever since the organisation was formed in February 2009, had been investigating many cases related to the banned Indian Mujahideen. His superiors termed him as a thorough professional in intelligence gathering as well as investigation.

According to the police, Ahmad left his home in the evening along with his family to attend a at Sohara village. On their way back, their vehicle was stopped barely 200 metres from his home by two youths, who fired at a very close range.

Ahmad was taken to nearby Cosmos hospital where he was declared brought dead. The Uttar Pradesh Police have sealed the borders of the district and launched a manhunt for the assailants.

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Additional Director General of Police Daljit Chowdhry said nothing can be ruled out, when asked whether there was a possibility of terror angle behind the attack. "A very serious offence has taken place in the district and we have taken it very seriously. The body has been sent for postmortem and details of what actually happened will soon come out.

Borders of the state have been sealed and checking is on in the nearby villages to trace those involved in killing of the officer. We are trying to find out the accused and the motive behind the murder," he said.

The police are also trying to ascertain whether the 9 mm pistol used for the crime was country-made or factory-made. UP Director General of Police Javeed Ahmad said IG Special Task Force (STF) and IG Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS) have been sent to Bijnor and the matter is being probed. We are also in touch with NIA officers and coordinating with them. We will go deep into it and ensure those involved are arrested, Ahmad said.

Meanwhile, Ahmad's mortal remains were brought to his home in Delhi and his last rites were performed in Shaheen Bagh area of south Delhi.

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Also read:

NIA officer Mohammed Tanzil given martyr status, probe into murder widens

NIA officer Tanzil Ahmad shot dead in Uttar Pradesh's Bijnor, wife critically injured





--- ENDS ---
By India Today Web Desk: Star Plus' popular show Yeh Hai Mohababtein is gearing up for a time leap following which a few characters will not be seen on the show.



Coincidentally, show's vamp Nidhi Chhabra played by Pavitra Punia will also go missing from the show, albeit for a short while.

The gorgeous actress was recently admitted to the hospital after she complained of severe stomach ache. She has taken a three-week break to recover from the illness. The actress is allergic to prawns which she had by mistake.

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"I am allergic to prawns. But I ate it by mistake. It generated heat in my body due to which I was suffering from severe stomach ache for the past week," Pavitra told Tellychakkar.

"My doctors have asked me to get hospitalised to keep me on observation for a day. I have already taken 20 days leave from shoot to get well," she added.



In the upcoming track on the show, Nidhi Chhabra will be seen eloping with Ruhi to Dubai and settling down there with her. The cast will be seen going to Dubai to get her back.

The cast and crew will soon travel to Dubai to shoot in the city's tourist locations. Also read: Karan Patel aka Raman to go bald post leap



A source from the production team revealed: "The look and story line is being kept very confidential. The new cast is still getting locked and everything will only be decided once Ekta has her meeting with a pandit, who is going to give the right kind of advice for the entire leap track.

As of now, Nidhi's character will be eloping with Ruhi to Dubai is locked, and we're looking forward to lock an actress who will play the elder Ruhi on the show." Also read: Yeh Hai Mohabbatein spoiler: Nidhi to elope with Ruhi to Dubai, post leap

Also read: Aditi Bhatia to play grown-up Ruhi in Yeh Hai Mohabbatein?



--- ENDS ---
"There is still a dispute over saying Bharat Mata Ki Jai and those opposing to say it should not have any right to stay here. Those living here should say Bharat Mata Ki Jai," Fadnavis said at a public meeting.

By Mail Today: While Prime Minister Narendra Modi was greeted with chants of Bharat Mata Ki Jai in Riyadh, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis stoked the nationalism debate saying those unwilling to raise the slogan had no right to stay in the country.

"There is still a dispute over saying Bharat Mata Ki Jai and those opposing to say it should not have any right to stay here. Those living here should say Bharat Mata Ki Jai," Fadnavis said at a public meeting.

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The Maharashtra chief minister also accused Congress vicepresident Rahul Gandhi of backing those who chant anti-national slogans. He said the opposition parties should voice their protest against BJP but not oppose the slogan. Fadnavis also cautioned that the people of the country would not tolerate it.

Contending the CM, the Congress pointed out that dictating terms to others was against the basic tenets of Indian democracy. Senior Congress leader PC Chako said: "Every individual has freedom. Dictating what others should do is against the basic tenets of our democracy. People have the freedom. People have the right. People have the discretion what to say and what not to say. If the RSS and BJP are going to dictate, that will only boomerang and they should have the common sense to understand this."

Defending Fadnavis, BJP spokesperson Nalin Kohli accused the Congress of finding fault with nationalist slogans for political reasons. "This is very unfortunate. Before Independence, people very proudly said Vande Mataram and Bharat Mata Ki Jai irrespective of whether they were Hindus, Muslims or Christians. Anyone and everyone ensured that India got its Independence," he said.

"But now, 70 years later, people are finding fault with all these nationalist slogans for political reasons. There is no more love for the country," Kohli added.

With regard to the raging debate over women's entry being prohibited at some places of worship, Fadnavis said as per Hindu culture there was no discrimination based on gender or caste and hence it was not proper to deny entry to women in any temple. He said in the coming times women would not be prevented from entering any temple.

Also read: If you want to live in this country, you have to say Bharat Mata Ki Jai: Fadnavis





--- ENDS ---
Media reports alleging links between Russian President Vladimir Putin and offshore transactions worth billions of dollars aim to discredit the Kremlin leader ahead of Russia's upcoming elections, his spokesman said.

By Reuters: Media reports alleging links between Russian President Vladimir Putin and offshore transactions worth billions of dollars aim to discredit the Kremlin leader ahead of Russia's upcoming elections, his spokesman said on Monday.

"The main target of this disinformation is our president, especially in the context of the upcoming parliamentary elections and in the context of a longer-term perspective - I mean presidential elections in two years," Dmitry Peskov said in a conference call with journalists.

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"This Putinophobia abroad has reached such a point that it is in fact taboo to say something good about Russia, or about any actions by Russia or any Russian achievements. But it's a must to say bad things, a lot of bad things, and when there's nothing to say, it must be concocted. This is evident to us," he said.

Peskov said the publications contained "nothing concrete and nothing new" about Putin.

The documents are at the center of an investigation published on Sunday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and more than 100 other news organizations around the globe. The German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung said it received the huge cache of documents and shared them with the other media outlets.

The leaked "Panama Papers" cover a period over almost 40 years, from 1977 until last December, and allegedly show that some companies domiciled in tax havens were being used for suspected money laundering, arms and drug deals and tax evasion.

"I think the leak will prove to be probably the biggest blow the offshore world has ever taken because of the extent of the documents," said Gerard Ryle, director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Britain's Guardian newspaper said the documents showed a network of secret offshore deals and loans worth $2 billion led to close friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The head of Mossack Fonseca has denied any wrongdoing but said his firm had suffered a successful but "limited" hack on its database. The firm's director, Ramon Fonseca, described the hack and leak as "an international campaign against privacy".

Fonseca, who was up until March a senior government official in Panama, said in a telephone interview with Reuters on Sunday the firm, which specializes in setting up offshore companies, has formed more than 240,000 such companies. The "vast majority" of these have been used for "legitimate purposes", he said.

ALSO READ



Panama Papers name Amitabh Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai among 500 Indians with hidden assets

Panama Papers list Putin's aide, Nawaz Sharif, hundreds of Indians: 10 things to know Panama Papers reveal global nexus of corruption



--- ENDS ---
The government today formed a multi-agency team to probe into the Panama papers leak and vowed to take action against all unlawful accounts held abroad.

Rajdeep Sardesai on his show News Today was joined by senior advocate of the Supreme Court Prashant Bhushan, associate editor of the Indian Express Jay Mazoomdaar, taxation expert Ved Jain and former CBI Director DR Kartikeyan to discuss the leaked docume

By India Today Web Desk: With 500 Indians being named in the leaked Panama papers for alleged offshore holdings, the government today formed a multi-agency team to monitor exposes in this regard and vowed to take action against all unlawful accounts held abroad.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi discussed the issue with him this morning and on his advise the team has been set up comprising agencies like the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU).

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The Special Investigation Team (SIT) on black money also said that it will investigate thoroughly the reported secret list exposed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

"The multi-agency group will comprise various government agencies - the CBDT, FIU, FT&TR (Foreign Tax and Tax Research) and RBI. They will continuously monitor these (accounts) and whichever accounts are found to be unlawful, strict action as per existing laws will be taken," Jaitley said.

As many as 500 Indians have been named in a massive leak of 11.5 million tax documents exposing their secret offshore dealings. An investigation by The Indian Express claimed that Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan are also named in the massive leak of documents from the secret files of Mossack Fonseca, a law firm based in tax haven Panama.

Other noted Indians named in the leak are real estate giant DLF's owner KP Singh and nine members of his family, and the promoters of Apollo Tyres and Indiabulls. Adani Group's Gautam Adani's elder brother Vinod Adani also feature on the list, the report said.

According to the report, two years before he launched the Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Limited (ABCL) in 1995, the Bollywood superstar was appointed director in at least four offshore shipping companies. Records of international law firm Mossack Fonseca and subsequent inquiries show that the four companies, in which Bachchan was appointed director, were registered in tax havens - one in the British Virgin Islands and three in the Bahamas in November 1993.

Rajdeep Sardesai on his show News Today was joined by senior advocate of the Supreme Court Prashant Bhushan, associate editor of the Indian Express Jay Mazoomdaar, taxation expert Ved Jain and former CBI Director DR Kartikeyan to discuss the leaked documents.

Asked if he is per-judging the situation, Prashant Bhushan said, "Why would a person holding legitimate money invest in companies where the beneficial owners of the shares is sought to be concealed by these layers of secrecy which are provided by registration in these tax havens."

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"If a person was holding legitimate money which has been declared to the RBI, then he would invest the money abroad in some legitimate company, not in these secret companies which have layers of secrecy, where the beneficial owners are sought to be concealed," he added.

Jay Mazoomdaar, who is part of the team investigating on The Indian Express story, said that the individuals named in the report may be within the legal boundaries and no presumption should be made on the basis of the list released.

"There is no presumption at all, we are not claiming anything more than what we claim in our stories. The facts are that these are the individuals whom we found in the pool of data... It is entirely possible that the firms can be used within the laws..." Mazoomdaar said.



Explained - What are offshore accounts and how they are used

What are offshore accounts?

Offshore bank accounts and other financial dealings in another country can be used to evade regulatory oversight or tax obligations. Often, companies or individuals use shell companies, initially incorporated without significant assets or operations, to disguise ownership or other information about the funds involved.

Where are most offshore accounts?

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Panama, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda are among more than a dozen small, low-tax locations that specialize in handling business services and investments of non-resident companies.

Legitimate uses for offshore accounts:

Companies or trusts can be set up in offshore locations for legitimate uses such as business finance, mergers and acquisitions and estate or tax planning, according to the global money laundering watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force.

Illicit uses of offshore accounts:

Shell companies and other entities can be misused by terrorists and others involved in international and financial crimes to conceal sources of funds and ownership. The ICIJ says the files from Mossack Fonseca include information on 214,488 offshore entities linked to 14,153 clients in 200 countries and territories.

Efforts to crack down on financial havens:

The Financial Action Task Force and other regulatory agencies publish assessments identifying weaknesses in enforcement of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing efforts of specific countries and territories. Financial and legal professionals get training on how to spot potential violations, since in some cases lawyers and bankers are unaware they are handling illicit transactions. The EU has stepped up efforts to crack down on tax avoidance by multinational corporations.

Past scandals over offshore accounts:

advertisement

Banking secrecy laws tend to obscure offshore financial dealings. But the disclosure of other leaked documents by the ICIJ and other organizations in late 2014 drew attention to sweet tax deals offered by the tiny European country of Luxembourg to multinational companies and ultra-wealthy individuals. In the 1980s, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, an international bank founded by a Pakistani financier, was found to have been involved in wide-scale money laundering and other illegal financial dealings.

(With inputs from PTI and AP)

ALSO READ



Panama Papers name Amitabh Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai among 500 Indians with hidden assets

Panama Papers list Putin's aide, Nawaz Sharif, hundreds of Indians: 10 things to know



--- ENDS ---
The government today formed a multi-agency team to probe into the Panama papers leak and vowed to take action against all unlawful accounts held abroad.

By India Today Web Desk: With 500 Indians being named in the leaked Panama papers for alleged offshore holdings, the government today formed a multi-agency team to monitor exposes in this regard and vowed to take action against all unlawful accounts held abroad.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi discussed the issue with him this morning and on his advise the team has been set up comprising agencies like the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU).

advertisement

The Special Investigation Team (SIT) on black money also said that it will investigate thoroughly the reported secret list exposed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

"The multi-agency group will comprise various government agencies - the CBDT, FIU, FT&TR (Foreign Tax and Tax Research) and RBI. They will continuously monitor these (accounts) and whichever accounts are found to be unlawful, strict action as per existing laws will be taken," Jaitley said.

As many as 500 Indians have been named in a massive leak of 11.5 million tax documents exposing their secret offshore dealings. An investigation by The Indian Express claimed that Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan are also named in the massive leak of documents from the secret files of Mossack Fonseca, a law firm based in tax haven Panama.

Other noted Indians named in the leak are real estate giant DLF's owner KP Singh and nine members of his family, and the promoters of Apollo Tyres and Indiabulls. Adani Group's Gautam Adani's elder brother Vinod Adani also feature on the list, the report said.

According to the report, two years before he launched the Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Limited (ABCL) in 1995, the Bollywood superstar was appointed director in at least four offshore shipping companies. Records of international law firm Mossack Fonseca and subsequent inquiries show that the four companies, in which Bachchan was appointed director, were registered in tax havens - one in the British Virgin Islands and three in the Bahamas in November 1993.

Explained - What are offshore accounts and how they are used

What are offshore accounts?

Offshore bank accounts and other financial dealings in another country can be used to evade regulatory oversight or tax obligations. Often, companies or individuals use shell companies, initially incorporated without significant assets or operations, to disguise ownership or other information about the funds involved.

Where are most offshore accounts?

Panama, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda are among more than a dozen small, low-tax locations that specialize in handling business services and investments of non-resident companies.

advertisement

Legitimate uses for offshore accounts:

Companies or trusts can be set up in offshore locations for legitimate uses such as business finance, mergers and acquisitions and estate or tax planning, according to the global money laundering watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force.

Illicit uses of offshore accounts:

Shell companies and other entities can be misused by terrorists and others involved in international and financial crimes to conceal sources of funds and ownership. The ICIJ says the files from Mossack Fonseca include information on 214,488 offshore entities linked to 14,153 clients in 200 countries and territories.

Efforts to crack down on financial havens:

The Financial Action Task Force and other regulatory agencies publish assessments identifying weaknesses in enforcement of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing efforts of specific countries and territories. Financial and legal professionals get training on how to spot potential violations, since in some cases lawyers and bankers are unaware they are handling illicit transactions. The EU has stepped up efforts to crack down on tax avoidance by multinational corporations.

Past scandals over offshore accounts:

Banking secrecy laws tend to obscure offshore financial dealings. But the disclosure of other leaked documents by the ICIJ and other organizations in late 2014 drew attention to sweet tax deals offered by the tiny European country of Luxembourg to multinational companies and ultra-wealthy individuals. In the 1980s, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, an international bank founded by a Pakistani financier, was found to have been involved in wide-scale money laundering and other illegal financial dealings.

advertisement

(With inputs from PTI and AP)

ALSO READ



Panama Papers name Amitabh Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai among 500 Indians with hidden assets

Panama Papers list Putin's aide, Nawaz Sharif, hundreds of Indians: 10 things to know

--- ENDS ---
The Panama Papers reveal complex offshore financial deals of a network of people and companies linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

By India Today Web Desk: The Panama Papers reveal complex offshore financial deals of a network of people and companies linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

According to the leak of more than 11.5 million documents from the files of law firm Mossack Fonseca, based in the tax haven of Panama, nearly $2 billion was secretly shuffled through banks and shadow companies linked to Putin's associates.

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The revelation was done following a year-long investigation by the ICIJ (The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists) and published today in the Indian Express and a number of foreign newspapers.

The leak says that Bank Rossiya, described by the US as Putin's "personal cashbox", was instrumental in building a network of offshore companies, which were sold loans worth hundreds of millions of dollars for as little as $1 or less.

The Panama Papers reveal a man named Sergey Roldugin, a classical cellist and conductor also known in Russia as Putin's best friend. Documents reveal that Roldugin may have been the front man of the clandestine network operated by the aides of Putin.

The secret files also suggest that St Petersburg-based Bank Rossiya built the network, with its employees creating the offshore companies, "assigning ownership to Roldugin and others and shepherding the transactions through banks in Russia, Cyprus and Switzerland," the ICIJ said on its website.

Also read:

Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Panama Papers list Putin's aide, Nawaz Sharif, hundreds of Indians: 10 things to know



--- ENDS ---
By PTI: From Sajjad Hussain

Islamabad, Apr 4 (PTI) Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was at the centre of a political storm today after three of his children were named in the Panama Papers as having "offshore holdings", prompting the opposition to demand a probe even as his family denied any wrongdoing.

A massive leak of 11.5 million tax documents has reportedly exposed the secret offshore dealings of around 140 political figures globally.

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The vast stash of records, covering around 40 years, was obtained from an anonymous source by German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and shared with media worldwide by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

According to the documents, three of Sharifs four children -- Maryam, Hasan and Hussain -- "were owners or had the right to authorise transactions for several companies".

Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf Chairman Imran Khan today demanded that the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) initiate a thorough investigation into the financial holdings of Prime Minister Sharif and his family members.

"Nawaz Sharif should explain how his children made all this money," Imran said.

Amid the furor, Sharifs son Hussain Nawaz said he had already stated that he owned the offshore companies and he owned many apartments under them.

He said Nawaz Sharifs name was being used wrongly and all accusations being levelled against him were baseless.

"I have already said that my sister Maryam is a trustee of our offshore companies. Her name has been included as a trustee like various other people," he was quoted as saying by the News. He argued that a trustee is not the owner.

Hussain said his family did not indulge in corruption, did not whiten black money and what was earned was through labour.

Meanwhile, Pakistans Information Minister Pervaiz Rashid said that Panama Papers had vindicated his governments stand that Prime Minister Sharif and his brother Shahbaz Sharif do not own any business abroad.

The Sharif brothers have not been mentioned but Maryam, tipped to be the Premiers who political successor, along with her two brothers has been mentioned in the papers.

"Panama documents show what we have been saying that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif or (his brother) Shahbaz Sharif do not have any property or business in any other country," Rashid said.

He said Sharifs children have nothing to do with his politics as they had been living abroad for years and are also doing business.

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"They are like many other Pakistanis who live abroad and do business," Rashid said.

The Sharif family owns Ittefaq Group, a multi-million dollar steel conglomerate. PTI SH ASK AKJ ASK

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The police is looking at late actor Pratyusha Banerjee's bank accounts to probe the angle of financial distress in her suicide case.

By India Today Web Desk: According to reports, the police team investigating TV actor Pratyusha Banerjee's suicide case is scrutinising at least three of her bank accounts, all of them joint ones.

"No reason has been found yet to make a cognisable complaint of the incident and neither have we recovered any suicide note. We are studying Pratyusha's bank accounts. The suicide is believed to be due to severe financial distress. According to the statements of Pratyusha's family, she did not have a lot of money, as she did not have a regular income," The Indian Express quoted an investigating officer as saying.

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Also read: Pratyusha Banerjee's boyfriend Rahul Raj Singh hospitalised



The officer also said that the police will check the beneficiaries of the joint accounts, and the kind of loans Pratyusha had taken.

Pratyusha's boyfriend, Rahul Raj Singh, who was questioned by the police on Saturday, told the police that he had recently helped Pratyusha with a loan installment.

"Rahul has also told us that he had recently given a large installment to help Pratyusha with a personal loan. We are trying to check that with the bank details. We have not found evidence to book Singh yet," added the police officer.

Also read: Pratyusha Banerjee's friends reveal shocking details



"Doctors who conducted Pratyusha's postmortem believe it is a case of suicide, but we are checking everything," said an officer.

The police also visited Rahul and Pratyusha's Kandivli house, where she hanged herself on April 1.

Also read: Pratyusha Banerjee death-A call for help is all that was needed



Meanwhile, Rahul's father Harshwardhan Singh said that Pratyusha had money troubles and had taken a loan of Rs 50 lakh for her parents.

"Pratyusha had come to Ranchi. She told me she wanted to get married to Rahul...Pratyusha had said she wanted to file a case against her parents. She never had any bank account. It was a joint account and her money was being handled by her parents," Harshwardhan told reporters.

"All her money was taken by her parents. She had taken a loan for more than Rs 50 lakh for her parents. She was under pressure because of this. Financiers used to call her. I used to send money to Pratyusha, sometimes Rs 10,000. If she was earning well, why did she go bankrupt?" added Harshwardhan.

See: Actor Pratyusha Banerjee's last rites held, friends and family bid final farewell



(With PTI inputs)

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Priyanka Chopra might soon be seen posing for photos with Barack and Michelle Obama inside the White House. Reason? The Quantico girl has been invited to the White House Correspondents' Dinner this year.

By India Today Web Desk: Priyanka Chopra is constantly giving India more reasons to celebrate her. The Desi Girl, who has been winning the hearts of people all over the world, be it with her Oscars 2016 appearance or her role as Alex Parrish in ABC's Quantico, is now on her way to the White House.

ALSO READ: Priyanka Chopra tried committing suicide 2-3 times during her struggling days, claims ex-manager

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ALSO READ: Why is Priyanka Chopra missing from the first look of Baywatch?



Reports say that Priyanka Chopra might be part of Barack Obama's final White House Correspondents' Dinner this year.

Chopra will be apparently be joining Hollywood actors like Bradley Cooper, Lucy Liu, Jane Fonda, among others. The Bajirao Mastani star will get to participate in the annual gala hosted by the first family of the United States.

Barack Obama will be hosting his last White House Correspondents' Dinner this year

The White House Correspondents' Dinner this year will see as the entertainer Larry Wilmore, the host of The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore.

This is the Obamas' final WHC dinner. The gala is basically aimed at raising funds for journalism scholarships and recognising exemplary work in the profession.

The White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) dinner is traditionally attended by the President and the First Lady, who are joined by other senior government officials and members of the press corps, says the official site of the WHCA.

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Despite receiving criticism from the human rights group, the EU continues to be firm on the implementation of its plan to limit the amount of migration to Europe. But, what future will those migrants hold?

By India Today Web Desk: The implementation of European Union's plan to limit the amount of migration to Europe has begun as the first set of migrants and refugees are being deported to Turkey.

A total of 135 migrants were escorted onto small boats by officers from the EU border protection agency, Frontex. Despite receiving criticism from the human rights group, EU will continue to implement the plan and send the refugees to Turkish coast.

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The plan even saw protest against deportations in the island of Chios. The agreement that came into effect on March 20 will see 4,000 migrants and refugees being detained on Greek islands.

Turkey is not being considered a safe country for refugees and the implementation of the EU agreement is just the beginning of a difficult time for refugee rights.

Those migrants who did not apply for asylum or had their applications declared inadmissible were deported. Moreover, no details of the nationalities of migrants being deported was given out. The deportation is seen as a symbolic kick off of a dangerous practice.

This agreement will affect 50,000 migrants and refugees stranded in EU after it closed its border for further intake.

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By India Today Web Desk: After several rounds of talks, M Karunanidhi's DMK and the Congress today sealed a deal to contest the upcoming Assembly election together in Tamil Nadu.

The DMK has conceded 41 seats to the Congress, which in the last election had contested on 63.

The DMK was part of the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre, but it left the alliance in 2013 after a number of its leaders were charged with corruption in what came to be known as the 2G scam.

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Congress in-charge for Tamil Nadu, Ghulam Nabi Azad, announced the revival of the alliance by agreeing to contest 22 seats less than what they had contested in 2011.

The DMK has allotted five seats each to its other allies--MMK and IUML. It has also given one seat to N R Dhanapalan's Perunthalaivar Makkal Katchi, Pon Kumar's TN Peasants and Workers Party and former IAS officer Sivakami's Samuga Samathuva Padai.

Polling for the 234-member Tamil Nadu Assembly will be held on May 16. Votes will be counted three days later.

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By Astha Saxena: On Sunday afternoon, UPSC aspirants burnt DoPT Minister Jitendra Singh's effigy at Jantar Mantar and raised slogans against him. Students allege that a day before, on Saturday, a student delegation of 11 had gone to the minister's residence in order to seek an appointment. But instead of meeting them, the minister called the police.

DoPT Minister Jitendra Singh

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Students allege they were beaten, dragged and manhandled by the police without any provocation. They were later taken to the South Avenue Police Station where they were roughed up yet again. To agitate against this police brutality, students gave up food and water all day. They were later released from the detention at 9 in the evening. Students are also resentful of the fact that when the minister called the delegation to his office later, his attitude was insulting and cavalier towards their plight.

Anurag Nigam, one of the delegates, says, "first the hon'ble minister gets us beaten up by the police and then later rubs salt to the wound by misbehaving with us. He called us Faliures. My question is if hon'ble minister thinks of all Hindi Belt Students as faliures?". It is to be noted that students have been pursuing the government for last 6 months regarding their demands related to the controversial CSAT issue.

Aspirants point out that the CSAT was introduced in the preliminary stage of the Civil Services Exam in 2011 and lasted for 5 years. The 5 years that CSAT paper was a part of the exam pattern, it unfairly and drastically eliminated aspirants coming from regional language background, especially the Hindi belt and rural India students. Government statistics and UPSCformed Nigvekar committee corroborate this claim. After massive student protests in 2014, the government made this paper as qualifying. Aspirants say this was in fact "incomplete justice".

Because of the discriminatory nature of the CSAT paper, students coming from rural and regional India lost 5 attempts and 5 precious years in the process. To compensate for this loss, students are demanding 3 attempts for the affected candidates to appear in the exam again.

It was in this context that students had gone to meet the DoPT minister at his residence on Saturday morning when the incident happened.

One of the student agitators, Abishek, who had come all the way from Gorakhpur, said, "On one hand, the PM talks about the power of youth and demographic dividend. But on the other hand, his ministers get innocent and unarmed students beaten up by the police. In this context Prime Minister's speeches seem a little shallow."

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It is interesting to note that this is third such student movement that has emerged against the Modi government within the last 6 months. This, to some extent, indicates towards the eroding popularity of the government amongst youth.

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James Pooley:

The Trade Secrets King

James reminds us about

the power of criminal

trade secrets

prosecutions

Professor Mark Schultz explains recent

dropped criminal trade secrets prosecutions

as examples of "when you have a hammer,

everything looks like a nail"

Victoria Cundiff notes the power

of publicity in cases

where trade secrets are

effectively enforced

so much that she ripped the pageShe was so excited for the discussion on one her favorite areas during a year which sees the introduction and likely introduction of important trade secrets legislation in Europe and the US. As is often the way, the AmeriKat unfortunately missed the first part of the session where John Richards of ( Ladas & Parry ) introduced the panel and Paul Maier ( Director, EU Observatory on Infringements of IP Rights, EUIPO ) spoke on the impending European Trade Secrets Directive. The European Parliament plans to approve the new Directive this April and the provisions will have to be adopted by Member States in less than 3 years. Paul also pointed out that, as well as the US's proposed Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) (on which see posts here ), the EU Trade Secrets Directiv e expressly provides that trade secrets are not "intellectual property rights". This is where the AmeriKat picks up the tale...addressed the provisions in the EU Trade Secrets Directive and DTSA which state that trade secrets are not intellectual property rights. The philosophy behind the respective provisions was to avoid application of other laws that apply to intellectual property rights, such as the Enforcement Directive. Notwithstanding some academic arguments, James continued, that really all of us here know that trade secrets are IP; otherwise we wouldn't be talking about them at this IP conference. Indeed, surveys consistently show that secrecy is the IP of choice to protect the intangibles that now constitute the backbone of the modern economy. Clearly, there is special and growing interest in trade secrets, reflected in part by all the headlines about hacking. However, James said he was here to talk about the fact that, thanks to strong pressure from industry there are legislatures on both sides of the Atlantic looking at ways to make trade secret remedies more robust. James focused on a comparison of those two efforts which are both on the verge of coming to fruition. As Paul had stated earlier, the EU Trade Secrets Directive is about to be approved. This coming Monday there will be an unusual event in Washington, as a floor vote will be taken in the U.S. Senate to approve the Defend Trade Secrets Act. There are 65 co-sponsors out of 100 Senators, with broadly bipartisan support also in the House of Representatives. So things are looking pretty good. Trade secret law in the U.S. has traditionally been determined by individual states. The federal government entered the area only in 1996 with the Economic Espionage Act, which however addressed only criminal process and remedies. The DTSA would amend the EEA to provide trade secret owners with the option of filing civil claims directly within the federal court system. It also includes the possibility of applying to the court for a seizure order to prevent the destruction or dissemination of misappropriated secrets, a provision that has drawn some controversy. James instead focused on the comparison between the U.S. and European legislative efforts and two other provisions of the DTSA: one on employee mobility and the other on whistleblower protection.On the first, the draft DTSA included language taken directly from the Uniform Trade Secrets Act , allowing judges to issue injunctions against threatened misappropriation. Opponents expressed concern that this might be used by federal courts to apply the so-called inevitable disclosure doctrine to prevent employees from moving to a competitive job simply because they knew too much. The ultimate solution to this concern was specific and narrow: in concluding the existence of a threat, courts had to have evidence of untrustworthy behavior and could not rely simply on what someone knows. The DTSA whistleblower provision is similarly specific and narrow, providing immunity to individuals who reveal confidential information about wrongdoing, but only for communication in confidence to law enforcement officials. The EU Trade Secrets Directive is of course a step forward in European harmonization of definitions and remedies, but it mostly re-states the language and standards already required by TRIPs . It does add provisions covering confidentiality of information in judicial proceedings, but there is a requirement that at least one party representative always be given access, so the common U.S. practice of attorneys eyes only protective orders appears to be unavailable under the EU Trade Secrets Directive . In addition, the Directive does not require countries to provide criminal remedies, and it fails to address the fundamental challenge of every trade secret case: how can the trade secret owner get access to information to prove the misappropriation? This probably reflects the tension between common law and civil law systems, but the need is real. James is even more concerned about the broad and undefined exceptions of the Directive, allowing the use or disclosure of information for exercising the right to freedom of expression or for the purpose of protecting a legitimate interest recognized by Union or national law. As for whistleblowers, the exception broadly applies to any disclosure to anyone, so long as this is done for the purpose of protecting the general public interest. What James concludes from all of this is that the U.S. remains the leading jurisdiction in meeting customer needs and expectations for the protection of trade secrets. With the EU Trade Secrets Directive, we will need to wait for rulings from the CJEU to see whether the exceptions will present serious problems for trade secret owners.addressed the use of criminal prosecution of trade secret theft under the Economic Espionage Act . He stated that the number of EEA prosecutions between 2012-2013 have increased by 30%. This is not surprising given we are in the Cybercrime Age. The question for trade secrets owners is to determine if they have the kind of case where it makes sense to involve the FBI. FBI involvement is likely to be suitable if the product is commercially significant. However, there are pros and cons in getting the FBI involved. On the upside, the government does most of the work and has additional tools at their disposal that private companies and the courts do not have access to. On the downside, trade secret owners will lose control, even though they are often kept involved. If a trade secrets owner wants the involvement of government, it is important that they obtain and package up a convincing bundle of evidence to present to the government to get them interested in their case. James highlighted the case ofwhich concerned the Kevlar trade secrets (read about the case here in the testimony from Karen Cochran) - and recent cases concerning Chinese espionage (and) as examples of criminal trade secrets prosecution. On the latter, James stated that the US government is particularly interested in pursuing a case if a foreign entity is involved.focused on the need for a multilateral governmental dialogue about best practices for reforming national laws regarding trade secrets and coordinating cross-border enforcement. He agreed that criminal investigations are a really important tool. However, they are limited as they are resource intensive and require specialist knowledge on behalf of the investigators. Recent research indicated that there has not been more than 13 trade secrets cases under federal criminal law. This is a small fraction as compared to the number of civil cases. Trade secret owners may have the kinds of cases that are suitable for criminal investigation, for example if they involve a foreign defendant or actor. If they do then they probably really do need the help of the government as the government has tools to help trade secrets owners do things that they can't do via civil enforcement. He also noted that there are certain cases which grab the attention of the courts and authorities in that they involve a product or a company that is important to a judicial district (i.e. Monsanto trade secret theft via a Chinese agricultural body). More than half of the cases since 2013 have had a Chinese link. This seems to be a sweet spot for the government and the courts, even when its a bad case (e.g., where the government is so focused on Chinese hacking some innocent individuals are wrongly charged such as the Temple University professor). Mark said that some of the overzealous prosecutions have caused him to reflect on the fact that when you have a hammer, everything looks like is a nail. Indeed, the FBI has dedicated significant resources to Mandarin-speaking technical specialists, so perhaps they are suffering from this a bit.wondered whether actually the publicity of these cases (even the bad ones) has a peripheral benefit of publicizing how serious the US government is tackling trade secret theft (for example in the case of the recent GSK indictment insee indictment here ). Marty Adelman commented that he thought it was fascinating that there were only three cases against Chinese nationals, when we are told that China is hacking the US all the time; there should be more cases, he thought.responded that the constant focus on China is understandable, but it is also dangerous because hacking comes from many different directions and is very difficult to attribute to a particular source. Some of these cases have been brought a little too hurriedly and are examples of how prosecutors have to think a bit harder about the evidence. Trade secret owners may benefit from criminal prosecutions being free and fierce, but they lose control. Even if they want to settle the case, they cannot. Further, many things can and do happen during prosecution which you may not want to have happen. But, you are stuck.Picking up on the issue of criminal liability,noted that the margin between a defendant being subject to a criminal prosecution (potentially spending years in jail) and the defendant walking away without even a civil case being brought, can be very fine. These cases can turn on whether the would-be claimant finds any smoking gun evidence - with such evidence criminal prosecutions can occur (e.g. for computer misuse offences in the UK), but without it even a civil claim can be difficult to bring. Disclosure can therefore be an important tool in exposing the extent of any wrongdoing and it is a shame that the EU Trade Secretes Directive did not include disclosure provisions, particularly given that it contains numerous safeguards that serve to protect defendants' interests. If you really want to strengthen trade secret protection, Mark said, you need to provide for the possibility of disclosure in appropriate circumstances. Otherwise, absent the defendant doing something plainly wrong, claimants are potentially left without recourse.agreed, noting that if you do not provide some mechanism to find out basic facts of a transaction you won't have the ability to identify facts. In such a case, you will never get before a judge. Jim hopes that is an issue the EU will confront at some point and make the means of obtaining disclosure a fundamental predicate available to trade secret owners. Although Jim noted the lack of disclosure was a structural issue between common and civil law countries, it is what industry needs.commented that trade secret cases are incredibly difficult. Much will depend on how the judges address the issues. If we want something that looks like a common EU approach to trade secrets, he stated, the only possible way of doing that is to make sure that the judges who deal with these cases get together and discuss the issues. However, unlike in other areas of IP such as patents and trade marks where those judges meet to discuss issues, it is incredibly difficult to identify the relevant judges who will hear trade secrets cases.concluded the session by reminding the audience that trade secrets misappropriation sometimes occurs through hacking. However, not all hacking results in trade secrets misappropriation. Hacking may actually have the aim of obtaining other types of information such as personal data. Trade secret protection is only one aspect of information theft.
His health is failing and doctors have advised against stopping his specialized medical care, which he cannot receive in prison, the human rights group warned in an Urgent Action appeal on 1 April to its supporters.

The following is the text of Amnesty Internationals Urgent Action:

Date: 1 April 2016

URGENT ACTION

HOSSEIN RONAGHI MALEKI ON HUNGER STRIKE

Iranian blogger Hossein Ronaghi Maleki, a prisoner of conscience, has been on hunger strike since 26 March in protest at the prison authorities withholding his medication. His health is failing and doctors have advised against stopping his specialized medical care, which he cannot receive in prison.

Iranian blogger Hossein Ronaghi Maleki has been on hunger strike since 26 March in protest at the Evin Prison authorities withholding his medication, and his continued imprisonment. He has several illnesses, including kidney disease, gastro-intestinal, bladder, heart, and chest problems. He has only one functioning kidney and needs constant monitoring and regular specialized medical care outside prison. He has also been complaining of back pain. He was taken to a Tehran hospital on 5 and 9 March for tests, including an examination by an orthopaedic doctor, but was returned to prison without receiving adequate treatment on either occasion. He was not allowed to attend a hospital appointment for a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scan. His health has deteriorated from being kept in prison, in poor conditions, without adequate medical facilities to treat him, and being denied the specialized care he needs continually. His health is so poor that even the prison doctors have advised that he needs to be treated outside prison. Hossein Ronaghi Malekis parents have travelled from their home in the city of Malekan, near Tabriz, East Azerbaijan province, to follow up on his case with the authorities, including a meeting on 27 March with the Office of the Prosecutor in Tehran. Their repeated requests for help have so far been ignored.

Hossein Ronaghi Maleki had been arrested on 13 December 2009 and sentenced to 15 years in prison after an unfair trial, in which he was convicted of membership of the internet group Iran Proxy, insulting the Supreme Leader and spreading propaganda against the system in connection with articles on his blog. After his arrest, he was held for 13 months in solitary confinement in Section 2A of Evin Prison, under the control of the Revolutionary Guards, where he has said he was tortured and otherwise ill-treated: this included severe beatings by his interrogators, which apparently have contributed to him developing several medical conditions. He was pressured to make televised confessions. He was told in June 2015 that his sentence had been reduced to 13 years.
On Saturday, Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani confirmed reports that had appeared in some media shortly after the cancelation, claiming that the Austrian government had refused Iranian requests for the obstruction or revocation of licenses for protests that had been planned to coincide with Rouhanis visit.

Of particular issue were the demonstrations organized by the exiled resistance group, the Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK). In remarks carried by INSA and Tasnim News Agency, two of Irans state-run media outlets, Larijani said that the Austrians had ignored requests by the Iranian presidents security team for the withdrawal of a permit for the PMOIs planned demonstration.

But Austrian President Heinz Fischer had originally said. We have taken all necessary security precautions, but Austria cannot prohibit assembly and demonstrations, he said. The right to assembly is deeply rooted in the Austrian constitution Assembly cannot be prohibited in our democracy.

Despite Rouhanis cancellation, the PMOI sup[orters went ahead with its planned protest actions aimed at calling attention to the persistence of Irans poor human rights record during Rouhanis presidency, and advocating for the avoidance of any unconditional expansion of European relations with the Rouhani government.

Supporters of the PMOI chanted slogans describing Rouhani and Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as terrorists and enemies of Iranians and calling for the end of the fascist system of government defined by the principle of clerical rule. The PMOI and its umbrella organization, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, have long called for regime change leading to a democratic system based on free and fair elections.

The groups accordingly rejected media reports of reformist victories in late-February elections for the Iranian parliament and Assembly of Experts. This narrative expands upon their insistence that the Rouhani government is not moderate in any meaningful way, contrary to the statements of many Obama administration officials and other Western policymakers.

While claims of moderation hinge upon Rouhanis role in concluding a nuclear agreement with Western powers, the PMOIs assessment of his presidency is buttressed by data such as the rate of executions by the Iranian judiciary, which reached a higher level in 2015 than at any time in the previous 25 years.

Supporters of the PMOI and the NCRI believe that the exposure of this and other relevant facts poses a threat to an Iranian foreign policy strategy that involves limited reconciliation with the global community at a time when the regime is continuing with familiar human rights violations and destabilizing activities in the Middle East.

NCRI member Shahin Gobadi commented upon the cancellation of the Austria visit by saying, It vividly indicates the mullahs concern and anxiety over the Iranian Resistances growing impact at home and abroad. It has reached a point that the regime can no longer even hide its concern about a demonstration by the Resistance several thousand kilometers away from Iran.

Iranian Health Minister Qazi-zadeh Hashemi, who was set to accompany President Rouhani to Austria, appeared to undermine the official claim that the cancellation was related to immediate security concerns. In defending the administrations move, Hashemi said that taking a stand on the issue of PMOI protests was a matter of the regimes honor.
The European Iraqi Freedom Association (EIFA) strongly condemns the cruel and criminal siege of Fallujah, which, together with the denial of access to medicine, has led to the starvation and death of large numbers of innocent civilians. The unfolding tragedy has included the horrific death of a young mother who attached rocks to herself and her children and jumped into the River Euphrates. The people of Fallujah are the victims of crimes committed by Daesh (ISIS) who control the city, on the one hand and the bombing of residential areas by the Iraqi army and the sectarian Shiia militias affiliated with the Iranian regime, on the other.

EIFA calls on the government of Dr. Haider al-Abadi, in line with his recent notable government reforms, to adopt immediate measures to bring food, medicine and basic necessities to the people of Fallujah and to resolve this humanitarian crisis. It also urges the Iraqi Prime Minister to prevent any meddling by the militias affiliated with the Iranian regime who have no objective but to slaughter Sunnis to further their scorched earth tactics. The Iraqi army should create safe corridors to enable people to escape from Fallujah.

EIFA also calls on the UN, the US, the EU and its Member States, especially members of the international coalition, to take urgent steps to bring food and medicine to the people of Fallujah, including through air-drops. EIFA similarly calls on Iraqs religious leaders, particularly the Shiite leaders, not to keep silent in face of this criminal siege and to employ their extensive resources to save the people of Fallujah.

Imposing a siege on the people of this city not only fails to help in the fight against Daesh, but by escalating the criminal acts by the militias affiliated with the Iranian Qods Force, politically and socially pours fuel on the flames of conflict and prolongs the existence of Daesh.

Struan Stevenson

President of the European Iraqi Freedom Association (EIFA)

(Struan Stevenson was a Member of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2014 and was President of the European Parliaments Delegation for Relations with Iraq from 2009 to 2014.)
[April 04, 2016] Announcing Verifone Carbon - the New Center of Connected Commerce

Verifone (NYSE: PAY), a world leader in payments and commerce solutions, today unveiled Verifone Carbon- a beautiful, flexible and integrated POS that leverages powerful capabilities and applications to transform the checkout process into an experience merchants and consumers will love. Partnering with Danish beverage bar, Joe & the Juice, Verifone Carbon is being showcased this week at Money20/20 Europe where guests can experience Verifone products and services at stand #D6. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160404005425/en/ Verifone Carbon (Photo: Business Wire) New Commerce Experiences for a Connected World Verifone Carbon embodies the company's vision for how commerce operates in a connected world. It is the result of Verifone's commitment to transforming the POS, where we are connecting merchants to new differentiating opportunities and consumers to intuitive, enjoyable experiences. "Today, merchants need trusted tools and services to create simple, secure and engaging consumer shopping experiences and new ways to grow their businesses," said Glen Robson, executive vice president of Verifone Systems. "Verifone Carbon is our most well-designed and technologically advanced product ever." Robson adds, "It uniquely delivers on our vision of the future of commerce in a connected world by bringing together payments, applications, customer service functions and other solutions for running a business into a single integrated system. It's a cutting-edge solution for merchants who want to experience the joy of truly frictionless commerce." Why Design and Connections Matter The point of purchase has been evolving over 30 years, but today the need to be connected - and the endless possibilities those connections represent - require a new approach and different design ethos. Verifone Carbon offers a secure business solution that is designed perfectly for cafe owners, quick service restaurants and retail stores. Featuring dual high-resolution screens that are optimized for merchants and consumers, the system integrates into a sleek stand with built-in high-speed printer, and optional cash drawer at the base - requiring minimal counter space and offering portability for mPOS activities. Every detail of Verifone Carbon has been engineered with the intention of making the most of the interactions between merchants and consumers at the POS, including: Integrated design with dual screens: Merchants run register and business apps from the tablet screen and consumers pay and interact with personalized, targeted messagin from a smaller screen.

Merchants run register and business apps from the tablet screen and consumers pay and interact with personalized, targeted messagin from a smaller screen. World-class processor and operating systems: Merchant side powered by Intel (News - Alert) running an open Android OS; consumer side powered by the Verifone Engage platform.

Merchant side powered by Intel (News - Alert) running an open Android OS; consumer side powered by the Verifone Engage platform. Portable and countertop: Detach and reattach the system when needed, with an ergonomic handle for perfect balance and mPOS activities.

Detach and reattach the system when needed, with an ergonomic handle for perfect balance and mPOS activities. Accepts all forms of payment: Swipe, tap or dip with the chip slot positioned for both portable and countertopwith no knuckle scraping.

Swipe, tap or dip with the chip slot positioned for both portable and countertopwith no knuckle scraping. Built to last: Enhanced scratch and impact resistant surfaces with optimal screen clarity using Corning (News - Alert) Gorilla Glass.

Enhanced scratch and impact resistant surfaces with optimal screen clarity using Corning (News - Alert) Gorilla Glass. Connectivity: Always on, always connected with USB, Ethernet, WiFi and Bluetooth.

Always on, always connected with USB, Ethernet, WiFi and Bluetooth. Battery Life: Get up to six hours of uninterrupted mPOS power.



Connect to Scalable, Open Commerce Verifone Carbon will come loaded with Verifone's Commerce Platform, an open, cloud-based and secure engagement platform where businesses can quickly customize applications and services. New and interesting commerce experiences will be possible for merchants as they enhance consumer interactions beyond payments. This capability will be available through Verifone's commerce-enabled MX and VX products as well as next-generation devices such as Verifone Engage.

With Commerce Platform, merchants can reward their best customers with loyalty and points programs, display promotional media and coupons, leverage beacons for store analytics, and invite customers to redeem personalized offers in real time. "While those of us in the industry can easily rattle off words like omni-channel, mobile wallets, mPOS, NFC, and EMV, what matters most to businesses are the things that will help them do more of what they love and less of what they don't," said Thad Peterson, senior analyst at Aite Group. "As payments become more integrated into commerce, products like Verifone Carbon will make running a business more efficient and fun with engaging solutions and high-value applications, while playing a pivotal role in taking consumer experiences to the next level. This is where all channels work together to deliver value to merchants and their customers." To attract and serve a generation of shoppers raised on e-commerce sites, Verifone is going beyond efficient and secure payment acceptance or the latest in shiny objects with Verifone Carbon. Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 for Verifone Systems, Inc. This press release includes certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on management's current expectations or beliefs and on currently available competitive, financial and economic data and are subject to uncertainty and changes in circumstances. Actual results may vary materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements herein due to changes in economic, business, competitive, technological and/or regulatory factors, and other risks and uncertainties affecting the operation of the business of VeriFone Systems, Inc., including many factors beyond our control. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those associated with: successful rollout of our Verifone Carbon payment solution, execution of our strategic plan and business initiatives and whether the expected benefits of our plan and initiatives are achieved, short product cycles and rapidly changing technologies, our ability to maintain competitive leadership position with respect to our payment solution offerings, our assumptions, judgments and estimates regarding the impact on our business of the continued uncertainty in the global economic environment and financial markets, our ability to successfully integrate acquired businesses into our business and operations, our ability to protect against fraud, the status of our relationship with and condition of third parties such as our contract manufacturers, distributors and key suppliers upon whom we rely in the conduct of our business, our dependence on a limited number of customers, the conduct of our business and operations internationally, our ability to effectively hedge our exposure to foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations, and our dependence on a limited number of key employees. For a further list and description of the risks and uncertainties affecting the operations of our business, see our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our annual report on Form 10-K and our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. The forward-looking statements speak only as of the date such statements are made. Verifone is under no obligation to, and expressly disclaims any obligation to, update or alter its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, changes in assumptions or otherwise. About Verifone Verifone is transforming everyday transactions into opportunities for connected commerce. We're connecting payment devices to the cloud, merging the online and in-store shopping experience and creating the next generation of digital engagement between merchants and consumers. We are built on a 30-year history of uncompromised security with approximately 29 million devices and terminals deployed worldwide. Our people are known as trusted experts that work with our clients and partners, helping to solve their most complex payments challenges. We have clients and partners in more than 150 countries, including the world's best-known retail brands, financial institutions and payment providers. Verifone.com | (NYSE: PAY) | @Verifone View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160404005425/en/

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[April 04, 2016] Acceleration of Wireless to Drive Industry Forward at the 2016 International Microwave Symposium

SAN FRANCISCO, April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Dr. Martin Cooper, known as "the father of the cellphone," will deliver the plenary session address on Monday, May 23 at the IEEE MTT-S 2016 International Microwave Symposium (IMS), kicking off a week of more than 160 technical sessions focused on the latest RF and microwave innovations driving the wireless future. Dr. Cooper's opening keynote, "The Birth and Death of the Cellphone," will focus on how personal wireless connectivity has the potential to revolutionize heath care and education. Dr. Cooper believes the biggest contribution of wireless will be improving the interaction between humans and machines. "Dr. Cooper will offer perspective on the evolution of the industry and will spur stimulating discussion around the exciting future of wireless technology," said IMS2016 General Chair Dr. Amarpal Khanna. "Furthermore, the demand for speed and the increasing enthusiasm for wireless gadgets are driving growth across the entire RF and microwave industry." Closing IMS2016 on Thursday, May 26 is National Instruments' President, CEO, and Co-Founder Dr. James Truchard and University of California, Berkeley Donald O. Pederson Distinguished Professor Jan M. Rabaey. Truchard will discuss the vital role of a software-based approach to enable the explosion of wireless communications for high data rate voice, data, and video applications, from early prototyping and research all the way to fully deployed systems, in his talk, "Software's Role in Next-Generation 5G RF and Microwave Systems." In his keynote, "The Human Intranet- Where Swarms and Humans Meet," Rabaey will discuss how the Internet of Things and Swarm concepts relate to how humans interact with the world and technology, and how advancements have altered interaction patterns. "Dr. Truchard and Professor Rabaey provide two unique views from both a software and human-centric perspective when looking at the future of opportunities for RF and microwave engineers," said Khanna. IMS2016, the centerpiece of Microwave Week alongside the RFIC Symposium and the ARFTG Conference , will be held May 22-27, 2016 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.



About the Speakers

Dr. Martin Cooper

Dr. Martin Cooper conceived and led the effort to develop a personal portable cellular radio handset, which led to the first truly mobile telephone in 1973. He has contributed to most of the systems advances in personal communications, including formulating the Law of Spectral Efficiency (Cooper's Law), which asserts that the amount of information that can be transmitted in the useful radio spectrum has doubled every 30 months since the wireless telegraph was patented. An IEEE Life Fellow and recipient of the IEEE Centennial Medal, Cooper is widely published on wireless communications, health care, technological innovation, the Internet, and R&D management. He has received numerous awards, including the 2009 Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research, and is a member of the FCC Technology Advisory Council and the Department of Commerce Spectrum Advisory Committee. He has bachelor's and master's degrees and an honorary doctorate degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology. Dr. James Truchard

As President, Co-Founder and CEO of National Instruments, Dr. James Truchard led the company from a three-man team to a multinational organization. Elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, Truchard was inducted into Electronic Design's Engineering Hall of Fame and earned the IEEE Fellow distinction. He received his doctorate in electrical engineering, as well as a master's degree and bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Texas at Austin.

Professor Jan M. Rabaey

Jan M. Rabaey holds the Donald O. Pederson Distinguished Professorship in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department of the University of California, Berkeley where he also serves as the scientific co-director of the Berkeley Wireless Research Center (BWRC) as well as the founding director of the Berkeley Ubiquitous SwarmLab. Rabaey, who has made high-impact contributions to advanced wireless systems, sensor networks, configurable ICs and low-power design, is an IEEE Fellow and a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Sciences and Arts of Belgium. He received his Ph.D. in applied sciences from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. Registration

Early Bird registration for IMS2016 is available until April 25 for the discounted rate. Online registration continues in the advance registration phase from April 26 until May 20, followed by onsite registration after that date. For more details on IMS2016 registration visit http://bit.ly/IMS2016Registration. About IMS

The International Microwave Symposium (IMS) is the annual conference and exhibition of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S). IMS features a large trade show with a large commercial exhibition featuring over 600 companies and a technical program offering technical sessions, interactive forums, plenary and panel sessions, workshops, short courses, application seminars, and a wide variety of other technical and social activities. The program will cover the latest microwave and RF advancements in emerging areas such as 5G, automobile radar, wearable electronics, the Internet of Things, wireless HDMI, medical applications, satellite communications, and more. For more information, visit www.ims2016.org or follow IMS2016 on Facebook and Twitter. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/acceleration-of-wireless-to-drive-industry-forward-at-the-2016-international-microwave-symposium-300245325.html SOURCE IMS

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[April 04, 2016] BlueTide Communications Introduces Cybersecurity Solution

BlueTide Communications (BlueTide) strengthens remote site network defense with its industry-leading Security-as-a-Service (SECaaS) solution. Perfectly suited for remote maritime and offshore sites including yachts, merchant ships, offshore supply vessels, liftboats, rigs and platforms, the enterprise-grade network protection combines anti-malware, intrusion prevention, application control and content filtering. The all-in-one cybersecurity solution features deep packet inspection, anti-malware and application control to protect against network vulnerabilities, malicious attacks and potentially compromised BYODs traversing the network. With the ever-increasing risk of malware-a number than nearly doubled to 8.19 billion samples in 2015 according to the 2016 Dell (News - Alert) Security Annual Threat Report- advanced threat protection is necessary to secure vessel systems and applications including navigation systems, dynamic positioning systems, manifest documents, other operational systems and third-party applications. "Our customers realize the need for increased network security; but without the resources to monitor, detect and prevent threats, it became evident a managed solution isoptimal," says BlueTide Managing Director Emil Regard. "When a vessel's sensitive systems are made increasingly vulnerable by improperly maintained BYODs and the rising number of cyber threats, it's imperative to apply robust security measures without compromising network performance."



The BlueTide global network operating center provides 24/7 real-time event monitoring, analytics and reporting on application traffic, bandwidth utilization, threats and suspicious activity. As a managed service, customers rely on BlueTide to identify trends on their remote networks and offer recommendations to improve network security. Additionally this cybersecurity solution becomes a powerful troubleshooting tool to minimize downtime related to malicious applications, and with new vulnerabilities emerging and morphing each day, the firewall is continuously updated without interruption or a reboot. About BlueTide

BlueTide is based in Broussard, Louisiana providing expertise in maritime VSAT communications for commercial and leisure markets since 2009. Originally formed as the Communications Division of ESSI Corporation, BlueTide was established as an independent division of ESSI in 2014. BlueTide serves customers around the globe including the Gulf of Mexico, Trinidad, Brazil, the North Sea, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. BlueTide provides primary and back-up broadband satellite communications as well as value-added services including video surveillance, VPN, commercial-grade voice services, mapping and monitoring services. BlueTide supports industry leaders whose communications needs are critical to their success. To learn more, visit www.bluetidecomm.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160404006455/en/

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Steltix recently announced that its Version Workbench 3.6 has successfully integrated with Oracles (News - Alert) JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.2 and meets Oracle Validated Integration (OVI) standards.

Based in Utrecht, The Netherlands, Steltix provides IT solutions and is an Oracle Platinum Partner dealing in JD Edwards systems like EnterpriseOne or WorldSoftware. EnterpriseOne is a suite of enterprise resource planning tools including financial, project, asset lifecycle, order, and manufacturing management.

Achieving OVI is not an easy task. In the first place, it is only available to Gold, Platinum or Diamond Level partners. Integrations must pass validation testing with the current release of Oracle Application or Oracle Fusion Middleware, and also Oracle Technology, such as the Oracle Database or WebLogic Server. Such validation testing determines whether or not the integration meets data integrity and security standards. Complete documentation of the solution must also be provided.

According to a company source, Version Workbench 3.6 deals with customer-specific configuration data used by EnterpriseOne applications that are known as versions in JD Edwards-speak. Without a tool like Version Workbench, it is more difficult to maintain and manage these configurations.

The benefits of achieving OVI are pretty much win-win for all concerned parties. Partners like Steltix get exposure through press releases, mention on Oracles website, exhibitor marketing at Oracle events, and access to lead generation channels. These are huge, especially considering Oracles influence over several technology industries.

Oracle gets its solutions out to more companies with the assurance that its partners are compliant with how it wants to operate.

From the customers point of view, they know that they will be adding a solution that will behave well with their existing Oracle installations, which are a significant financial investment, and that they are not taking a vendors word for it, but also have Oracles blessing as well.

This is significant, because in spite of all the talk about platform independence, many enterprises still commit to a particular platform when they go with companies like Oracle or Microsoft (News - Alert). Switching platforms is a huge undertaking that they cannot afford to do on a regular basis. These businesses will not be willing to commit to using a new tool with a given platform if it does not function or integrate well.

Edited by Rory J. Thompson
MATTOON -- The Lake Land College Adult Week celebration is scheduled for April 18-22. During this week, Lake Land will hold two events designed exclusively to invite adult students to explore their opportunities.

New adult students who register for summer or fall classes may qualify for a tuition-free class up to three credit hours.

The first event will be held on campus in Mattoon on Tuesday, April 19, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Individuals are encouraged to call 217-234-5429 to schedule a visit and meet with an academic adviser one-on-one to learn more about Lake Land College and how to reach their goals.

The second event will be held at the Kluthe Center for Higher Education and Technology in Effingham on Thursday, April 21, from 4-6:30 p.m. Adults are encouraged to stop by the Kluthe Center and explore their options during this open house.

Lake Land College faculty and staff understand that adults experience a variety of challenges in returning to school. These events are designed to create an environment where adults will feel welcome to explore their interests in coming to Lake Land. We are here to help individuals identify their objectives and to begin working toward their goal of taking a class or earning a degree or certificate, said Chris Strohl, director of community outreach.

Strohl added that, at Lake Land, adult students make up a good portion of the student body.

More than 40 percent of our students are 25 or older, she said. You are very likely to be in classes with people your own age.

Investing in a college education at any age is economically beneficial, according to a recent state study. Lake Land College graduates can expect an average 20 percent annual return on their investment in their degree. They can also expect an average immediate post-graduation wage increase of more than $6,700, according to a study conducted by the Illinois Community College Board, in collaboration with the Illinois Department of Employment Security and Northern Illinois University Center for Governmental Studies.

To learn more about Adult Week, call Strohl at 217-234-5429. To learn more about Lake Land College, visit lakelandcollege.edu.
Govt urged not to reverse from free visa, ticket decision

The government has been urged not to reverse its earlier decision of providing free visa and tickets for foreign job aspirants going to six gulf countries and Malaysia under any circumstance.
Call to scrap faulty railway tracks at Birgunj dry port

Two out of the 12 railway tracks at Sirsiya dry port in Birgunj have become useless because of an alleged design fault that was overlooked during their construction.
Inspiring a new generation

The measure of success, as the old adage goes, is not money or fame but rather the ability to inspire those that come after you.
Korean language test on June 18-19

This year's Korean language test under the Employment Permit System (EPS) is to be held on June 18-19.
Mind your own business

Nepali politicians have managed to constantly block long-term socio-economic development of the country
Ministry told to simplify forest land acquisition

A joint meeting of Agriculture and Water Resources and Development Committees of the Parliament on Sunday directed the Forest Ministry to put in place a legal provision under which infrastructure projects can acquire forest land by paying a certain amount.
NC amends its Parliamentary Party statute

The largest party in Legislature-Parliament, Nepali Congress (NC) has amended its Parliamentary Party statute.
Pakistan floods kill at least 45 after heavy rains

At least 45 people have been killed by flash floods caused by torrential rain in northwest Pakistan, officials said.
Panama Papers: Iceland PM's investments questioned

The prime minister of Iceland has been accused of hiding millions of dollars of investments in his country's banks behind a secretive offshore company.
Six aspiring Nepali migrant workers make a narrow escape from Afghanistan

Six aspiring Nepali migrant workers, who made a narrow escape from what they describe as a hostage-like situation in Afghanistan, have came in contact with Delhi-based Nepali Embassy.
US dweller fugitive in net

Nepal Police have apprehended the main culprit in a case dating back to 1995.
Government is asked to declare the Rwenzori clashes a crisis, following the latest killings.

The call is made by the Citizens Coalition for Electoral Democracy in Uganda, which says further unrest in the Rwenzori region threatens the peace and stability of the entire country especially in this fragile post-election period.

The groups national coordinator Crispy Kaheru says the current situation in the Rwenzori is causing loss of lives and destruction of homes resulting into internal displacement of people.

He asks government to act fast, decisively and responsibly together with the affected communities to bring an end to the escalating violence in the area.

The call comes days after the NRM vice chairperson for Eastern Region Captain Mike Mukulawent to Rwenzorion a peace and reconciliation mission.

The region has been struck by outbreaks of post-election

violence in which over 30 people have died in Bundibugyo and 11 others in Kasese.
Donald Trump has demonstrated a worldview that could undo everything the United States has done to build its presence and influence around the world, especially in Asia, including the alliances with South Korea and Japan, a U.S. expert has warned.



Robert Manning, a senior Asia affairs expert at the think tank Atlantic Council, made the case in a recent article, refuting Trump's arguments one by one and warning that his election as president "could unravel the entire post-World War II order."



"Most dramatically, Trump expressed a willingness to withdraw U.S. troops, rip up longstanding treaty alliances with Japan and South Korea, and have them obtain their own nuclear weapons," Manning said in the article posted on the think tank's website.



Trump has long argued that the U.S. has been defending wealthy nations like Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia in exchange for almost nothing and those countries should pay more for the protection. He also suggested arming South Korea and Japan with nuclear weapons as a way to reduce U.S. security burdens.



"Trump does not view the United States' overseas presence and alliance network as public goods that enable U.S. global leadership, deter adversaries and enforce a rules-based international system," Manning said.



"For Trump, it seems a matter of 'protection money.' Never mind the shredding of U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policy that, with a few notable exceptions, has fostered a norm against the spread of fissile material and nuclear weapons," he said.



The expert pointed out Trump's ignorance of the fact that Japan and South Korea have long shouldered sizable amounts of the costs necessary for the upkeep of American troops stationed in the two countries -- 50,000 troops in Japan and 28,500 in South Korea.



"In any case, without a forward-based air and naval force, the United States would not be able to project force across the region and quickly ebb as a Pacific power," he said. "The U.S. nuclear umbrella and extended deterrence in Asia has underpinned peace and unprecedented prosperity in Asia."



U.S. trade with Asia exceeds $1.6 billion annually, including some $600 billion in exports of goods and services, he added.



The expert also said that Trump has chosen "a peculiarly odd time" to raise the specter of U.S. withdrawal and nuclearization of Northeast Asia, saying North Korea is working feverishly to build intercontinental ballistic missile capability and nuclear weapons, and China is growing assertive in its maritime claims.



"Since World War II, U.S. global leadership has underpinned security and economic prosperity in Europe and Asia. In the Asia-Pacific, the U.S. military presence, the power of the U.S. market and the appeal of the values of an open, rules-based system has helped the region become an engine of unprecedented economic growth," he said.



"But Donald Trump appears ready to change all that," he added.



U.S. President Barack Obama has also openly criticized Trump for suggesting nuclear armament for South Korea and Japan, saying the statements "tell us that the person who made the statements doesn't know much about foreign policy or nuclear policy or the Korean Peninsula or the world generally."



Speaking at a news conference at the end of the Nuclear Security Summit, Obama also said the alliance with South Korea is one of the foundations and one of the cornerstones of the U.S. presence in the Asia-Pacific region and has underwritten the peace and prosperity of the region.



"It has been an enormous boom to American commerce and American influence. And it has prevented the possibilities of a nuclear escalation in conflict between countries that in the past and throughout history have been engaged in hugely destructive conflicts and controversies," he said.



"It is an investment that rests on the sacrifices that our men and women made back in World War II, when they were fighting throughout the Pacific. ... We don't want somebody in the Oval Office who doesn't recognize how important that is." (Yonhap)




South Korea plans to conduct a flight test of two new reconnaissance planes in the United States this week, which can help the country better detect signs of North Korean missile launches and other threats, officials said Monday.



The planes, part of the enhanced Baekdu program, will undergo their first flight tests in an airfield in Texas later this week, according to officials at the Defense Acquisition Program Administration.



The test is intended to examine the operability of the aircraft with internal mission equipment in development by local manufacturers including LIG Nex 1. The U.S. partner of the program is providing the technology to integrate them into the aircraft's central mission computer.



In a major upgrade program, the military is seeking to adopt and deploy the two updated spy planes by 2017. The new functions of the planes include the detection of electronic signals emitted by machines before the North fires missiles. They could also track down heat sources in the event of a missile launch.



If the plan moves ahead of schedule and there are no problems with performance, they can be deployed as early as this year, according to military sources.



The platform for the new spy planes is the France-based Dassault Aviation's Falcon 2000 jet, which is bigger in size compared to the military's fleet of four spy planes built on the Hawker 800 platform. These Hawker jets employ equipment that was developed some 20 years ago, making them less fit to deal with the latest conditions.



North Korea has been making strides in its nuclear and missile capabilities in recent years, having conducted its latest long-range rocket launch in early February.



Pyongyang claims the rocket placed a satellite into orbit, but most outsiders think the launch was a cover to test long-range missiles that, if completed, could hit the mainland U.S.



The communist country's progress in the development of submarine-launched ballistic missiles is also raising concerns since such a weapons system can allow the North to fire off a ballistic missile from an unexpected location under the sea. This kind of capability will make it that much harder to detect and intercept such missiles. (Yonhap)




South Korea's ICT ministry said North Korea's disruptions of GPS signals, which started last week, continued to affect local airplanes and ships on Monday.

The Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning said the GPS disruptions that began Thursday have been repeating at intervals ever since, impacting Seoul's adjacent city of Incheon, and the surrounding Gyeonggi and Gangwon provinces.

The ministry said 746 airplanes and 621 vessels experienced disruptions, but no significant damage has been reported so far. The disruptions can cause mobile phones to malfunction, and affect planes and ships that rely on GPS for navigation.

Seoul's defense ministry earlier said that the North's actions are aimed at raising tensions on the divided peninsula amid mounting international pressure on the North to give up its nuclear weapons programs.

The defense ministry added that there has been no reported negative impact on the South Korean military due to the North's GPS-jamming provocations. It warned that it will make North Korea pay a "due" price if Pyongyang does not cease its actions. (Yonhap)
South Korea's unification ministry said Monday it has slapped five pastors with 2 million won ($1,740) fines each for meeting North Koreans without the government's approval.



The pastors belonging to the National Council of Churches in Korea (NCCK) met with their North Korean counterparts in China in late February without receiving the ministry's approval for their contact.



The fines mark the first time Seoul has penalized the NCCK for breaking rules regarding the meeting of North Koreans.



South Korean nationals need the government's approval when meeting people from North Korea. The two sides are still technically at war since the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.



The government has not allowed South Koreans to visit North Korea or contact North Koreans in response to the North's January nuclear test and long-range rocket launch in February.



The pastors said that they notified the ministry of their contact with the North Koreans after reaching China, a move which they said did not lead to any problems in the past.



They said that they are considering lodging a lawsuit against the government and stage a protest against what they called the government's hostility against inter-Korean reconciliation.



"The group is seeking to help turn a confrontational mode on the peninsula into reconciliatory one," Noh Jong-sun, an honorary professor at Yonsei University, told reporters on Monday. Noh was one of the five pastors.



But the ministry rejected their claims, saying that its punitive actions were made as they clearly violated a law on inter-Korean exchanges.



The government said that the group met the North Koreans despite its warnings.



"A submission of a report of contact with North Koreans afterwards is only allowed when there is an accidental encounter," said a ministry official. "This case is different as they pushed ahead with the meeting with North Koreans despite the government's decision not to allow it." (Yonhap)




Kendallville, IN (46755)

Today

Sun and clouds mixed. High near 75F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

Partly to mostly cloudy. Low 56F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph.
WEST SALEM  A full slate of candidates are in the running for three seats on the West Salem School Board this spring.

Incumbent board members Thomas Helgeson, Tom Grosskopf and Scott Scafe are joined on the ballot by challengers Greg Brickl, Melinda Kopnisky-Bloomfield and Fred Perri. The three with the top vote totals in the April 5 election will get three-year terms on the board.

The Coulee News sent questionnaires to the candidates. Here are their responses to a question about issues facing the school board. For their unedited responses to more questions, see this story at lacrossetribune.com.

What are the three most important issues facing the board and what would your approach to dealing with those issues be?

Brickl: We know there are many important issues before the board, but those with the greatest strategic importance are facility planning and achieving competitive advantage in the areas of staff recruitment/retention and curriculum development.

Facility planning has certainly been one of the more prominent issues facing the board in recent years. I believe my background in the construction industry will be very helpful as we attempt to identify practical, timely and cost-effective solutions to current and future facility needs. Im eager to help develop a plan the community can support and that meets district needs.

Regarding staff and curriculum development, Id like to see the board engage creative efforts to strengthen the most important elements influencing a childs education, the man or woman standing in front of the classroom, and the subject matter they teach.

Current and future students in our schools can benefit from the development of an innovative plan to compete with other districts to recruit and retain the highest quality teachers and administrators. Everybody knows excellent teachers are more apt to achieve excellent results, and the board has the ultimate responsibility for ensuring those teachers choose West Salem schools.

Just as top educators need unique and compelling reasons to consider West Salem, so do parents. Educational opportunity often influences parents to choose one community over another, and educational opportunity is directly tied to curriculum offerings.

My view is that West Salem can improve curriculum and guidance for students headed for vocational schools, the trades, the farm or the workforce at large just as we can improve offerings for college-bound students. All are equally important. Unfortunately, for the college-bound, we currently lag Holmen, Onalaska and La Crosse in advanced placement opportunities (four AP classes versus 10, 11, and 13, respectively), and we also lag in a variety of vocational offerings, particularly in the area of agriculture.

In closing, the district is strong but it can improve in many areas. We owe it to our kids to make that happen, and Im eager to help.

Grosskopf: School Growth: Build an addition to the middle school to accommodate 5th  8th grade. This would move the 5th grades from the elementary school to the middle school, allowing for the added space needed in the elementary.

Academic Achievement: Supporting and rewarding our teachers who are working hard to help serve our children. Start reviewing the teachers who seem to be having a class average score of a C or less. Basically the ones who feel tenured and may be costing in the system.

Student Drug Use: We need to start looking at solutions to eliminate the massive use of drugs in our schools. This is a major problem in West Salem and many other district around the area. I believe we should start reviewing the extracurricular activity requirements like drug testing. Companies, professional sports, Olympics, some states for welfare, driving, etc., all require a clean test, but in our schools where it all starts we turn a blind eye.

Helgeson: Ensuring that our students graduate and possess the knowledge and skills needed to succeed in their future educational endeavors or the workforce has to be our primary concern. In order to achieve this, the board must focus on leadership responsibilities that provide a direct correlation to improving student achievement. Much of this is directly linked to establishing and maintaining an effective strategic plan. In the past few years the board has made significant progress developing the districts strategic plan, but much work is left. The vision and strategic goals drive all the districts programs.

The board must establish budget priorities and ensure resource allocation strategies that maximize teaching and learning. Our district is fortunate to have incredibly talented administration and staff members who work with the board to accomplish this goal. Moving forward, I believe that we need to quantify that spending on programs or initiatives truly improves student achievement. In short, we need to validate the effectiveness of our spending.

The district should enhance its focus on what is called the 21st-century skills. This is generally defined as the knowledge and skills that students need to succeed in work, life and citizenship. Collaboration, digital literacy, communication, critical thinking, creativity and problem solving are key skills needed in todays world. Incorporating Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) and project-based learning initiatives into all grade levels allow students to demonstrate the practical application of knowledge. When students participate in these interactive learning environments, they develop enhanced 21st-century skills. Research indicates that these students are more confident and competent, and overall better prepared for college or their future career.

Kopinsky: Our school district should try to prepare our students for success and employment in 21st century America to help our students join a workforce that competes with the world. I think all students deserve to have their educational needs met by our school district. There has to be a realistic balance between academics and vocational training. I think we can do more in the way of vocational training for our students who are inclined towards those types of occupations. We should strive to have our students ready for post high school opportunities.

Student safety is very important to me not only as a mother of four boys, but as a concerned citizen of West Salem. I believe I have a lot to contribute towards the renovations of the buildings by securing all the entrances and exits of the campus doors. By expanding the middle school, the fifth graders can move from the elementary building to the middle school, thereby creating less crowded conditions within the elementary school hallways and classrooms.

I think the West Salem School District is a very pro-education community. It is a credit to the citizens of the West Salem School District that we have such beautiful facilities on such a large campus. The educational facilities in West Salem, I think, are better than most school districts. This reflects on the wisdom and generosity of the people in our school district for providing good educational facilities for our students. I respect the taxpayers who provide the tax money to pay for education in West Salem. I will always look out for the best interest of the district taxpayer; I will try to balance their needs with the needs of our students and educational staff.

Perri: School buildings and the upgrading of athletic facilities.

Positive well-thought-out progressive concepts for students in the second decade of the 21st century, engaging with and giving support to faculty and other staff.

Addressing the challenges of changing student needs and concerns educational, social, developmental, emotional, substance abuse, ADHD concerns, the Autism spectrum, and mental health issues.

Scafe: The three most important issues facing the Board are the budget challenges facing the district over the next few years, needing to update our middle school building and doing these while keeping taxes reasonable.

While West Salem is one of the most efficient districts when it comes to spending per student, we need to look for innovative ways to continue the programs important to our community while creating more efficiencies wherever possible.

Our middle school building is in need of some repairs and updating. We need to take care of this while interest rates are low and at the same time some of our other debt is ending to minimize the effect to our taxpayers.
The U.S. Supreme Courts vacancy in a contested presidential election year has ignited a political firestorm over who will replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia, possibly tipping the ideological balance of the countrys high court.

Last month, President Obama nominated Merrick Garland, chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, for the position. The Republican-held Senate says it will not consider the nomination as Democrats increasingly seek to make their refusal a campaign issue for vulnerable senators up for re-election.

Ryan Owens, a professor of political science and an honorary fellow for the Institute for Legal Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studies the U.S. Supreme Court. He recently spoke with the Cap Times and offered insights on the legacy of the late Justice Antonin Scalia and put the current battle over the courts open spot into judicial and political context.

Whats been Justice Antonin Scalias legacy on judicial politics on the U.S. Supreme Court?

If you look at Scalias impact on the court, one of the things he was successful in doing was getting attorneys to talk less about legislative history and more about the text of statutes or the text of the Constitution. Those are the things people had been doing quite regularly before he got on the court, previous drafts of legislation, things like that to figure out what Congress meant when it passed a bill.

His argument was, you cant really look at that stuff, you cant look at comments made by people in committee or comments made by drafters behind the scenes because those arent things that get voted on. He was by and large successful in getting attorneys to not do that sort of thing. His absence on the court, Im not sure if it means attorneys return to that sort of thing. I suspect it will be a little while before they do that, but nevertheless, he did have that impact.

What are the effects of the vacancy on the court right now?

The effects of the vacancy now are pretty significant though not unprecedented. So obviously theres a 4-4- split ideologically on the court right now; were likely going to see a number of decisions get decided or potentially remanded to the lower courts. Were not going to see the same set of landmark decisions we expected at the beginning of this term.

What happens when there is a 4-4 tie on a case?

Basically, (a tie) affirms the lower courts decision. It doesnt set any precedent on a national level. It has binding effect on the parties, so it does have an influence on the parties. It has what we call res judicata effect, meaning that those same parties cant come back filing that same lawsuit again. For the rest of us, it's (a tied decision), it means nothing. And justices dont really like this, thats why they are loathe to recuse themselves from cases unless they absolutely have to because they want to avoid this.

What notable cases is the court considering now where a 4-4 tie might occur?

The court recently heard oral arguments in the Sisters of the Poor case, and this was an Obamacare case dealing with the contraceptive mandate for religious institutions that arent deemed to be churches. They dont want to have to provide contraceptive services to their employees and they object to it on First Amendment grounds. What the court did was, in sort of a unique move, they asked the parties to provide additional briefing by the middle of April. Typically if the court asks for additional briefing, it usually occurs before oral arguments, but here it occurred after oral arguments. Thats really unusual. The point is what we saw there is the court seemingly going out of its way to find additional information that might help it get around a 4-4 split.

Is the Senate obstructing the process? Is their rationale that they need to let the American people decide valid?

With these things you have to split them off in political perspective and legal perspectives. From a constitutional perspective, the Senate is well within its right to say, "Were not going to act on this." Theres no question about that. So I think we need to set that question aside, that theyre not fulfilling their duty, theyre not being constitutional. The Constitution says the Senate provides its advice and consent and theyre doing that right now; theyre saying, We dont consent. Of course thats wholly separate from the question of, do we want this behavior to occur?

Politically, historically, there are some precedents for this, but this really is a unique situation. It is, without question, politically motivated by both parties. In 1991, the Democrats, Senator (Joe) Biden, when he chaired the Judiciary Committee, he held up many judicial nominations from George H.W. Bush on the grounds that this is the final year in office, were going to have an election pretty soon and my party might win the White House. He did that with all of Bushs lower court nominations at that point.

Of course the Republicans were in the same position then as the Democrats are in now. There wasnt an actual vacancy the Supreme Court in 1992, so it never came to fruition, but the threats were there. And I think it just highlights the fact that this is all about whose ox is gored. The arguments both sides are making here, they are somewhat valid, they are also very hypocritical.

Its all partisanship. Its not a common thing for a vacancy to occur in a presidents last year in office, especially in recent years. Vacancies on the Supreme Court in a presidents final year in office, roughly June or July, are pretty much off limits. Once that time period hits, everybody knows were just going to wait this out at this point. There are many Democrats and Republicans on record having said that.

How does Merrick Garland stack up as a choice? Was it a politically manipulative move by Obama?

In terms of qualifications, Merrick Garland is well qualified. I dont think theres any dispute about that. In terms of the politics of it, Im surprised the President picked him as opposed to somebody else. I think the probability of getting this thing through is small. The President would have politically benefited more from selecting someone who would have alienated more people, would have motivated more people at the polls.

One thing thats unusual about the Merrick Garland nomination is his age. Hes 63. Since 1937, there have only been two justices nominated that were older than him. Politically, maybe the President was thinking this would ameliorate things. Maybe Senate Republicans would be less worked up from a political standpoint. This is not the kind of nomination that liberals want to see and its not the kind of nomination Republicans are going to get on board with.

What are the chances the U.S. Supreme Court will take Wisconsins John Doe case that Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm is pursuing?

I have not followed the John Doe that closely. But a few of the things they really target is conflict among the lower courts, different circuit, different state courts. If they differ over the same provision of federal law, then justices will step in and try to clarify what the law means.

If this is something thats relatively narrow, and only affects Wisconsin, the court is unlikely to hear it. The courts are more likely to hear cases that are really highly salient or when there are lots of interest groups filing briefs either in support of or in opposition to the court reviewing a case. The courts more likely to review if they have the ability to impact substantial portions of the law.

Im not sure if I see those things being triggered in this case. One thing we have noticed in the Supreme Court over the last couple of terms is a growing discomfort with prosecutorial discretion and the kinds of things prosecutors are charging people with. Its possible that this is something that gets framed within that.

How legitimate are criticisms that the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court have gotten too mired in partisan politics?

I think people have a tendency to flip out anytime politics comes up in court matters. To be clear, we want courts to be independent, but theres also a strong argument to be made that they want them to be somewhat accountable to the public. There are courts that are much more political than (Wisconsins). In terms of just the overall quality, there doesnt seem to be a huge difference among the various ways we select and retain judges.
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.


Frances national airline will allow female staff to volunteer for a new route to Iran rather than require them.

Air France announced that female flight attendants must wear a headscarf, also known as hijab, on arrival in Iran.

Some flight attendants objected.

The union representing crew members said they worried that females would face discipline if they refused to work the flight.

The airline now says female participation on the route to Iran will be on a volunteer basis.

The airline begins three flights a week between Paris and Tehran on April 17.

The headscarf issue puts the two cultures in conflict. Women in Iran have been required to wear hijab since a revolution in 1979. In France, religious headscarves are not allowed in some schools and offices. It is also against the law to wear the full-faced veil in public in France.

Im Kathleen Struck.

VOANews.com reported on this story. Jim Dresbach adapted the report 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.

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Words in This Story

headscarf  n. a piece of cloth worn over a woman's or girl's head

hijab  n. a head covering worn in public by some women


Over the past five years, the number of Chinese travelers has grown to 120 million people. One in 10 international travelers is from China.

New airports and better infrastructure have made travel easier for Chinese citizens.

Young Chinese citizens are benefiting from reduced visa restrictions around the world.

James Roy, a business analyst at China Market Research Group, said Chinese travelers are going to many more destinations than they did in the past.

You know, in the past where it was more about buying an expensive watch or a bag, and showing that off. Now its much more about sharing on social media all of the exotic places that youve been to, Roy said.

The World Travel and Tourism Council says that the number of Chinese tourists grew by 53 percent in 2015. Last year, travelers from China spent $215 billion outside the country.

Economic slowdown

The increased spending on tourism outside of China comes at a time when Chinese officials are dealing with a slowing economy at home.

Exports fell 20 percent in February, leading to fears of domestic job losses.

Concerns about the economy have not stopped Chinese travelers. Instead, concerns about the economy may encourage Chinese to look for investments abroad.

Wolfgang Arlt, the director of China Outbound Tourism Research Institute in Hamburg, said China's growing investments make trips abroad necessary.

First of all, its not all about leisure. There is an increasing part of outbound tourism which is simply business tourism, as China is investing overseas and as China has a lot of trading relations and business relations overseas, Arlt said.

Other countries benefit from Chinese tourism

Some countries have benefited from tourism from China.

Iceland, a popular destination for Chinese tourists, saw its tourism industry grow by 19.4 percent in 2015. Japan had 37 percent growth in visitor spending.

The growth in the number of Chinese travelers is contributing to the global growth of the tourism sector, which has added 7.2 million jobs worldwide.

Mark Tanner, the managing director of the marketing agency China Skinny, said as Chinese tourists travel in their own country, many will look for new experiences in other parts of the world.

They are getting a little more adventurous and going a little further afield. And I think that is the same with domestic tourism. They may whet their appetite with some of the local destinations, and increasingly travel abroad, he said.

Shannon Van Sant reported on this story for VOANews.com. John Russell adapted the report for Learning English. Kathleen Struck was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page.

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Words in This Story

infrastructure  n. the basic equipment and structures (such as roads and bridges) that are needed for a country, region, or organization to function properly

tourism  n. the activity of traveling to a place for pleasure

domestic - adj. of, relating to or made in your own country

destination - n. a place where an individual is going or something is being sent

sector - n. an area of an economy


Amnesty International says Turkey has been forcing about 100 refugees back to Syria every day since January.

The rights group recently released a report that said many people in southern Turkey know about the forced removals. The report also strongly criticized the refugee agreement reached last month between Turkey and the European Union.

John Dalhuisen is the European and Central Asian director for the group. He said in their desperation to seal their borders, EU leaders have willfully ignored the simplest of facts: Turkey is not a safe country for Syrian refugees and is getting less safe by the day.

He said the deal to return Syrian refugees and others from Greece to Turkey can only be carried out with the hardest of hearts and a disregard for international law.

Amnesty says children and a woman who was to give birth in a month are among those who have been forced to return to Syria.

Turkey has not answered the report.

About three million Syrian refugees are in Turkey now. That is more than any other country in the area.

Turkey and the EU agreed that war refugees who arrive in Greece would be sent to Turkey after their requests for asylum are considered. Under the deal, for every Syrian sent to Turkey, one refugee would be settled in a European Union country.

In exchange, the EU would help pay the cost of caring for the refugees. Also, Turkish citizens would be able to travel to EU countries without visas. The EU also agreed to quickly consider Turkeys request to join the organization.

The agreement was reached to help deal with the worst refugee crisis in Europe since World War II. But human rights groups say the deal is illegal. They criticize the way the agreement deals with people trying to escape war, poverty and terrorism.

On Friday, the UN refugee agency said the agreement should not be put into place until a process is created to protect refugees. And it said conditions in Greece and Turkey are worsening.

Im Christopher Jones-Cruise.

VOA News writer Ken Schwartz wrote this story from Washington. Christopher Jones-Cruise adapted it for VOA Learning English. Hai Do was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section, or visit our Facebook page.

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Words in This Story

seal  v. to prevent someone from going into or through (an area or place)

disregard  n. the act of ignoring something or treating something as unimportant

asylum  n. protection given by a government to someone who has left another country in order to escape being harmed


Security agencies trying to break up Islamic State (IS) terror cells in Europe fear that IS supporters will use guerrilla tactics to attack major targets.

Concerns were raised when images and floor plans of the Belgian prime ministers office were found on a laptop computer. The computer was found during a search related to the suspects in the Brussels bombings.

There is also the evidence that two of the Brussels bombers had video recordings of a scientist at Belgiums Tihange nuclear center.

These developments suggest some terror cells are ready to give up attacks on what have been called soft targets, such as train stations or eateries. Islamic State supporters instead might be preparing to attack bigger, more symbolic places.

Theyre very invested in the pageantry of it all, so I wouldnt be surprised, said one U.S. official who knows about the intelligence on IS. "There is no question that they see Europe as a battlefield.

European officials are worried. And their ability to find and stop possible terror plots differs from one country to the next.

We still have a very high level of concern for new terror attacks, a Western diplomat told VOA. The level of engagement and commitment to discover potential attacks is very high. The official agreed to speak after VOA promised not to release his name.

Another concern is Islamic States growing use of the Internet to share intelligence between its leadership at home and their terrorist groups around the world.

IS has specialized in putting all its combat lessons learned online, said Malcom Nance, a former intelligence and anti-terrorism officer. He now heads the Terror Asymmetrics Project.

Nance said that armor-plated vehicles used in Ramadi are now showing up in Somalia and in Benghazi, Libya. And all of their intelligence sharing is happening at a very rudimentary (or simple) level, and its very hard ... (to capture).

At first, intelligence was centered on IS militants using the November 2015 Paris attacks as a model. In other words, they were hitting many soft targets at once, and killing or wounding many civilians. But the Brussels attacks suggest the group is growing bolder  unafraid of its enemies.

U.S. officials now believe IS is deeply rooted in Europe, making the situation more dangerous. There could be hundreds of jihadists who have returned home from Syria and Iraq, working to make thousands more into guerrillas who can still attack after suffering losses.

Experts on terrorism like Malcolm Nance say the video of the Belgian nuclear scientist, and the laptop plans of the prime ministers office, mean it is only a matter of time before IS fighters hit high value targets.

You absolutely should just assume that they are all ready to attack, Nance warned.

In the event of an attack on a nuclear center, Nance said, the goal would be to cause a meltdown inside. It would turn the reactor into a dirty bomb, and release radioactive material.

But Belgian officials have said there is little to show such attacks are about to take place.

However, in France, officials say a terror cell did appear to be on the edge of taking action. On Wednesday, government lawyers announced terror charges against 34-year-old Frenchman Reda Kriket. They said the supply of explosives and arms found in his home was a sign that he planned an act of extreme violence very soon.

Im Anne Ball.

VOAs Jeff Seldin reported on this story. Anne Ball adapted his report for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section and visit us on our Facebook page.

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Words in This Story

tactics - n. methods

symbolic  adj. expressing or showing an idea or quality without using words

pageantry  n. use of special clothing, traditions and ceremonies are part of a special event

potential - adj. possible

combat - adj. related to fighting

jihadists  n. one engaged in armed opposition to Western influence and culture


More than 11 million leaked financial documents show world leaders have used their power to hide money and avoid taxes.

It is being called the biggest global corruption scandal in history.

The leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin as well as his friends, moved $2 billion through secret accounts.

The documents were leaked to journalists. A group of journalists, called a consortium, reviewed the documents. The group is called the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

The documents show the secret financial dealings of the wealthy and powerful.

(You can read the consortiums reports here.)

People often open up offshore accounts to avoid taxes and giving information to the public about their financial holdings, the consortium said. Some of the accounts were used by wealthy men to hide money in divorce cases.

Among the world leaders linked to offshore accounts are Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson, Argentinian President Mauricio Macri and Saudi King Salman.

News reports in Pakistan said the leaked documents show three children of Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had money in an offshore account.

Most of the world leaders named in the reports denied wrongdoing. But there were immediate calls for investigations.

In Iceland, some members of Parliament Monday demanded a vote of no confidence for the prime minister. The Associated Press said the account was opened for Gunnlaugsson in 2013 when Iceland was going through a major financial crisis.

Here is how the information came out:

Tax records for more than 200,000 companies and 14,000 clients from a law firm in Panama were obtained by an unnamed person. That person offered the documents to a German newspaper. The person did not ask for money, but asked for unspecified security procedures.

The documents were reportedly hacked from the Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca.

The firm specializes in creating offshore accounts. It denied wrongdoing.

The impact of the disclosures has been dramatic.

A Washington Post column Monday called it the biggest global corruption scandal in history.

Russian television Monday did not cover the news about offshore accounts of people linked to Putin. One of Putins friends identified from the leaked documents is Sergei Rodulgin. He is a well-known cellist.

Putins spokesman is Dmitry Peskov. He said the lack of details made it impossible to respond. Last week, he predicted an information attack on Putin. He said the leaks are timed for Septembers Russian Parliament elections.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reported on the divorce proceedings of Dmitry Rybolovlev and his wife, Elena. Elena Rybolovlev said her husband, a Russian mining executive, had hidden money.

The consortium said the leaked documents show Rybolovlev had purchased a New York City penthouse for $88 million and art work for $630 million. The artwork was obtained with the help of Mossack Fonseca, the consortium said.

Among those found to have offshore accounts were former top government leaders of Georgia, Iraq, Jordan, Qatar, Sudan, Abu Dhabi, and Ukraine.

In India, the Associated Press said 500 people were connected to offshore accounts. They include Indian superstars Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Amitabh Bachchan.

Indias Finance Minister said those who did not declare illegal overseas assets by last years deadline would face extremely costly penalties.

In France, President Francois Hollande said the leaked documents are good news because it will help the government recover money hidden in offshore accounts.

In Norway, the DNB Bank apologized for helping about 40 customers open offshore companies. That it was legal to set up this type of companies doesnt mean that it was correct for us to do it for these customers, the bank said.

The Czech Center for Investigative Journalism said it found 283 Czech citizens with off-shore companies. That includes Petr Kellner, the wealthiest businessman in the Czech Republic.

And in Australia, officials said they are investigating more than 800 wealthy residents for possible tax evasion related to off-shore accounts.

I'm Caty Weaver.

Ken Bredemeier reported on this story for VOANews.com. Bruce Alpert adapted his report for Learning English. Kathleen Struck was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section or share your views on our Facebook Page.

_______________________________________________________________

Words in this Story

scandal  n. an occurrence in which people are shocked and upset because of behavior that is morally or legally wrong

account  n. a record of money that has been paid and money that has been received

offshore  adj. located in a foreign country

journalist  n. the activity or job of collecting, writing, and editing news stories for newspapers, magazines, television, or radio

divorce  n. ending a marriage by a legal process

confidence  n. a feeling or belief that you can do something well or succeed at something

hacked  v. to secretly get access to the files on a computer or network in order to get information, cause damage

impact  n. to have a strong effect

disclosure  n. the act of making something known

dramatic  adj. sudden and extreme

respond  v. to say or write something as an answer to a question or request

proceedings  n. a meeting

penthouse  n. an apartment on the top floor or roof of a building

client  n. a person who pays a professional person or organization for services

firm  n. a business

obtain  v. to gain or get something

specify  v. to be specific about something

procedure  n. a series of actions that are done in a certain way or order

specialize  v. to limit your business or area of study to one specific subject

superstar  n. an extremely famous and successful performer or athlete

asset  n. a valuable person or thing

penalty  n. punishment for breaking a rule or law

resident  n. a person who lives in a community

evasion  n. the act of avoiding something that you do not want to do or deal with
The smartphone screen resolution arms race has led to a growing number of phones with 2560 x 1440 pixel displays. But there arent a lot of phones that go much further than that.

Last year Sony introduced the Xperia Z5 Premium with a 4K display, but its not available in the United States. Now it looks like BenQ also has a 4K smartphone on the way although I wouldnt expect it to come to North America either.



The BenQ F55 made an appearance on the Red Dot design awards website recently, and the website describes the phone as having a 4k2k display, 60 frames per second motion photography capabilities, and a body featuring concentric shapes and delicate metallic design.

There arent many other details about the phone available on the Red Dot site, but the F55 seems to feature a micro USB port and headset jack on the bottom. There are front and rear cameras, and the side bezels for the display appear to be pretty thin.

In the United States, BenQ is probably best known for its computer monitors, not its phones. But over the past few years, the Taiwanese company has also produced a number of smartphones and tablets which are sold in other markets.

Theres no word on when the F55 will launch or what markets it will be available in.

Incidentally, BenQ is a subsidiary of Qisda, which is the company name listed on the Red Dot website, even though the phone itself clearly has the BenQ name on the front and back.

thanks Meir H!
Sub-Saharan Africa is expecting a real GDP growth of +4% in 2016 - up from 2015, making it still a viable region for investment.

Hennie Heymans

Over the past few years, Africa has been top of mind for foreign business investment, often referred to as one of the last frontiers for economic growth and development, despite the recent economic downturn and headwinds that the continent is experiencing.

Hennie Heymans, MD of DHL Express sub-Saharan Africa, says that the company firmly believes that the African continent is still one of the last frontiers for growth, and that the region will continue to grow as it has over the past decade due to the vast number of unexploited opportunities available for local and foreign investors.

The World Banks January 2016 Global Economic Prospects reported that sub-Saharan Africas real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew at its lowest rate since 2009 in 2015 with a growth of a 3.4%. This was down from the 4.6% and 4.9% growth that was reported in 2014 and 2013 respectively.

The drop in GDP growth for the region over the past year shouldnt deter investors. Africa will continue to thrive, albeit, at a slightly slower pace as previously experienced, says Heymans. Similar to the global environment  which reported growth of 2.4%1 in 2015 (down 0.2% year on year)  it was a tough year economically for Africa. Compounded by a drop in the demand for the continents commodities resulting in falling prices, declining currencies, political instability and El Nino causing widespread drought, have all contributed to the regions challenges. However, despite this, the region remains abound with untapped prospects and offers growth opportunities in 2016 for those willing to seek them out.

This is supported by the latest World Bank Africas Pulse. Author and acting chief economist: World Bank Africa Region, Punam Chuhan-Pole, said of the reports findings, The good news is that domestic demand generated by consumption, investment, and government spending will nudge economic growth upwards to 4.4 percent in 2016, and to 4.8 percent in 2017.

The report also highlights that specific regions have higher growth prospects than others. Cote dIvoire, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Rwanda and Tanzania were listed as countries expected to sustain a growth of approximately 7% per year in 2015-17. This was attributed to large-scale investment into energy and transport projects, consumer spending and investment in the resource sector.

Country growth opportunities

Heymans says that based on the groups experience, each country offers unique growth opportunities. For example, in Ethiopia, the telecommunications sector is a large contributor to GDP. It was reported that the country had 40 million mobile subscribers and 10 million internet connections in 2015. However, with a population of over 90 million, the sector has capacity to double its contribution to GDP.

In Mozambique, the retail sector is offering huge opportunities. With a growing middleclass and shopping culture, coupled with a limited availability of common products, this sector offers opportunities for both small and large businesses.

With Rwandas ambition to become a regional ICT hub, there has also been a stronger demand for communication devices and ICT-related equipment. Similarly, weve seen an influx of medical supplies in the country with a booming healthcare sector.

Heymans adds that more countries in the region could be thriving if not for underdeveloped infrastructure and bureaucracy. He points to the mining sector in Madagascar as one example. This could be a potentially lucrative opportunity for investors due to the countrys coal, nickel and ilmenite resources; however, several legislative reforms are still needed.

The opportunities are clearly there, its all about having a long-term, sustainable focus on the region. As we move into the second quarter of 2016, DHL Express will continue to invest in the SSA region, in our people and our network, with the ultimate goal of seeing Africa thriving, concludes Heymans.
Mumbai: Two days after TV actress Pratyusha Banerjee was found dead at her residence, her boyfriend Rahul Raj Singh was hospitalised after he complained of breathing problems before he was to face a second day of questioning by police over her death.

Rahul, a TV producer, was taken to Shree Sai Hospital in suburban Kandivali after he complained of chest pain, low blood pressure and a bout of depression.

"Rahul has been admitted to ICU. His condition is very fragile. He hasn't eaten. He is in a state of depression after Pratyusha's death. The doctors say if this continues, he will have brain haemorrhage," his lawyer Neeraj Gupta said.

24-year-old Pratyusha, who shot to fame with the portrayal of Anandi in hit TV series Balika Vadhu, was found hanging from a ceiling fan at her home on April 1, in what appeared to be a case of suicide.

The reason for the extreme step is not yet known, but Pratyusha was reportedly facing problems in her relationship with Rahul.

Speculation was rife that Pratyusha was two months pregnant at the time of her death. This was, however, scotched by the investigating officer, who said they have not received any report by the doctors which suggest that the actress was pregnant.

"She wasn't pregnant because the doctors have not informed the police verbally or in writing about it. Her viscera report which will come in a month will give a proper analysis. If there is any pregnancy indication in that report, then we will ask Rahul and her friends about it," an investigating officer told PTI.

Police said that Pratyusha and Rahul's common friends told them that the couple were planning to get married on April 14, on the auspicious occasion of Bengali New Year.

Rahul's father Harshwardhan has said that Pratyusha had money troubles and had taken a loan of Rs 50 lakh for her parents.

"Pratyusha had come to Ranchi. She told me she wanted to get married to Rahul... Pratyusha had said she wanted to file a case against her parents. She never had any bank account. It was joint account and her money was being handled by her parents," Harshwardhan told reporters.

"All her money was taken by her parents. She had taken loan for more than Rs 50 lakh for her parents. She was under pressure because of this. Financiers used to call her. I used to send money to Pratyusha, sometimes Rs 10,000. If she was earning well then why did she go bankrupt?"
Mumbai: Actress Sonam Kapoor says awards for one's work are surely an "icing on the cake", but one must not work towards such goals.

"I don't think you should work towards a goal. You should work towards something to better yourself. I work for myself as human being as we are here to evolve. My work is towards being a better human being, artiste, Indian and that's about it," Sonam told IANS.

"If the awards come in, it's an icing on the cake, it's a great encouragement," she added.

The actress, who is the brand ambassador of L'Oreal Paris, recently attended the Women of Worth awards, and plans to make a documentary on the winners.

"Every year, the Women of Worth awards are getting bigger and better. I hope this becomes a travelling award show. Don't you think it's a good idea? I have lots of ideas. I want to do a documentary on all the women who win as well," she said.

"I am putting out a lot of ideas because there is so much more we can do and I am glad hopefully this platform will widen our horizons."

Sonam, along with other L'Oreal Paris brand ambassadors Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Katrina Kaif gave away awards for causes close to their heart at the event.
The Panama Papers have set off a tornado that has so far swept many countries across the globe, current and former heads of state, the rich and famous in films, sports, their family and associates besides criminals in its wake.

What are the Panama papers?

On April 3, 2016, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) put out an in-depth, investigated and analysed report that blows the lid off tax evasion and secret offshore dealings of the powerful, rich and famous across the globe in 21 offshore jurisdictions such as Nevada, Niue, Samoa, British Anguilla, Hong Kong, Tortola, Seychelles and the British Virgin Islands. The 12 current and former heads of state from Iceland, Ukraine, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Argentina also figure on the list. It also provides data on some 214,000 companies.

The whopping 11.5 million confidential Mossack Fonseca documents were leaked, revealing 2.6 terabytes of data, covering nearly 40 years of records.

It allows a never-before-seen view inside the offshore world providing a day-to-day, decade-by-decade look at how dark money flows through the global financial system, breeding crime and stripping national treasuries of tax revenues, the ICIJ said.

Why is it called the Panama Papers?

The tax evaders stashed funds in Mossack Fonseca, a law firm and corporate service provider based in Panama.

The Republic of Panama is located between North and South America.

Mossack Fonseca, founded in 1977 by German-born Jurgen Mossack and Ramon Fonseca, specializes in commercial law, trust services, investor advisory and international structures. The law firms website claims it is one of the largest firms in the corporate services industry and has over 40 offices globally. It also offers intellectual property protection and maritime law services.

The Munich-based daily, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, which got the secret papers and shared it with ICIJ, says in its report that Mossack Fonesca sells anonymous offshore companies around the world. These shell firms enable their owners to cover up their business dealings, no matter how shady.

Mossack Fonesca is the worlds fourth biggest offshore law firm.

Why would anyone invest in a shell company?

It is not illegal to own a shell company. Usually, the worlds famous people who do not want to be seen as the real owners of assets prefer to invest in a shell company anonymously. However, that is not legal. Buying a shell company is a good source of stashing away money that you dont want anyone to know bankers, government, the taxman, and also your wife or husband. If the money is ill-gotten wealth, all the more reasons to invest in a shell company. A lawyer is a brilliant cover to buy a shell company, if you dont want to do it yourself.

Who leaked information?

The story has the pulsating adrenalin rush of a James Bond film. The Munich-based daily Sueddeutsche Zeitun received 11.5 million data spanning a time-frame of 40 years (1997 to 2015) through an encrypted channel. Bastian Obermayer, a reporter of the daily, says the whopping information was given gratis with a request for security in return.

After receiving the records of 214,488 offshore entities through emails, financial spreadsheets, passports and corporate records, the ICWJ put 370 journalists from across 80 countries on the job of tracing the hidden offshore assets of a roster of people in over 200 countries.

What is the India link?

The Panama Papers have a few Indian names from business families, well-known lawyers and family members, Bollywood actors and also criminals.

Amitabh Bachchan Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan Kushal Pal Singh, DLF owner and 9 members of his family Sameer Gehlaut, Chairman & Founder, Indiabulls Group Vinod Adani, industrialist Gautam Adanis elder brother Shishir K Bajoria  promoter of SK Bajoria Group and politician from West Bengal Anurag Kejriwal, former chief of the Delhi unit of Loksatta Party Onkar Kanwar, chairman of Apollo Group Anil Vasudeva Salgaocar , Goa-based mining baron and former MLA Mohan Lal Lohia, chairman emeritus, Indo Rama Synthetics, Chairman  Indo Rama Holdings Ltd (late) Indira Sivasailam, wife of Anantharamakrishnan Sivasailam, chairman of Amalgamations Group. Her daughter, Mallika Srinivasan  chairman and CEO of Tractors and Farm Equipment Ltd Harish Salve, former Solicitor General of India (1999-2002) Tabasum and Abdul Rashid Mir, Founder and CEO, Cottage Industries Exposition Zavaray Poonawalla, head, managing committee, Royal Western India Turf Club (RWITC) and brother of Dr Cyrus Poonawalla Rajendra Patil owns medical and engineering colleges in Davangere. He is the son-in-law of Congressman and Karnataka horticulture minister Shamanur Shivashankarapppa Jehangir Soli Sorabjee, honorary consultant physician, at Bombay Hospital. He is the son of former attorney general Soli Sorabjee Iqbal Mirchi, underworld don, now dead

Who is the global whos who?

Mauricio Macri, President, Argentina Vladimir Putin (to be fair, his name does not appear in the records) but his inner circle including his family and best friend and professional musician, Sergei Roldugin Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson, Prime Minister, Iceland Salman bin Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al Saud, King of Saudi Arabia Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates and emir of Abu Dhabi one of the wealthiest man in the world Pavlo Lazarenko, former PM of Ukraine, one of the world's 10 most corrupt politicians by Transparency International, Petro Poroshenko, President of Ukraine and billionaire chocolate king

Fifa players

Lionel Messi and his father who was his agent Michel Platini Leonardo Ulloa, a top scorer for Leicester City Gabriel Ivan Heinze from Argentina who played with Manchester United and Real Madrid

Who are the other beneficiaries?

Li Xiaolin, the second child and only daughter of former Chinese Premier Li Peng Ian Cameron, father of British Prime Minister David Cameron. He died on September 8, 2010 Mariam Safdar, daughter of Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his sons Hasan and Hussain Alaa Mubarak, a wealthy Egyptian businessman, is the eldest son of ousted former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Mounir Majidi, a businessman and entrepreneur, who was the personal secretary to the King Mohammed VI of Morocco, in 2000. Clive Khulubuse Zuma, nephew of South Africas president Jacob Zuma.

Where were the intermediaries set up?

Fonseca worked with over 14,000 banks, law firms, company incorporators besides other middlemen to set up companies, foundations and trusts for customers. The top preferred 10 countries are: Hong Kong, United Kingdom, Switzerland, United States, Panama, Guatemala, Luxembourg, Brazil, Ecuador and Uruguay

Reactions from Mossack Fonseca

"This is a crime, a felony," Ramon Fonseca, one of the founders of the Panamanian firm Mossack Fonseca, told AFP, describing the data that was leaked as a 'limited hack'. He was an advisor to Panama's President Juan Carlos Varela until last month. The company washed its hands off the expose and said that the role of the firm was limited to that of an intermediary.
Housing.com has received an investment of an undisclosed amount from Vineet Singh, former business head of 99Acres.com. As part of Info Edge's executive leadership team for a decade, Singh built 99Acres.com and Naukri.com from start-ups to scaled companies, and he will now closely work with the Housing.com management team in a senior advisory role.

Singh is a veteran in the real estate industry with a proven track record in the offline and online space to deliver high-growth results. Having spent a decade in the online space, he is a specialist in B2B and B2C marketplaces. Prior to joining Info Edge, Vineet worked with Xerox and Thomas Cook and is an expert in the areas of strategic planning, large scale execution, and sales & operations management. Currently, Vineet is Co-Founder, CEO & MD of Buildczar.com, India's largest marketplace for building materials and finishing products.

Jason Kothari, Chief Executive Officer, Housing.com said, Vineet brings with him enriching experience, deep understanding of the ecosystem, and a decade of high-achieving sales leadership in the online real estate space. On board as a personal investor, Vineet will also serve as a senior advisor to the company working closely with the management team. We believe that his association will further fuel the ambitious growth plans of Housing.com.

Housing.com has been a disrupter who has redefined the way consumers buy and sell homes in the marketplace. I look forward to further this company on its path to becoming the largest and most trusted player in the online real estate space," said Singh, Senior Advisor, Housing.com.

In January, the company received 1 billion rupees ($14.7 million) in fresh funding from its largest investor SoftBank Group Corp, months after a restructuring that saw hundreds of job cuts at the real estate classifieds company. SoftBank last year committed to investing $10 billion in India over 10 years and CEO Masayoshi Son had said the Japanese conglomerate will accelerate investments into India.

Founded in 2012, Housing.com is a technologically innovative real estate platform that has raised over $100 million in capital from Softbank, Nexus Ventures, Falcon Edge, Helion Ventures, Nirvana Ventures, Qualcomm, DST founder Yuri Milner, Viacom 18 co-founder Haresh Chawla, Snapdeal founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, among others.
Among the many Indian names that have propped up in the global list of tax evaders, that has now come to be known as the Panama List, is a Kalpana Rawal, who has been largely missing in the Indian media.

Rawal is the deputy chief justice of Kenya. She was born in Bhuj (Kutch), Gujarat, 15 January 1946.

According to ICIJ, Kalpana Rawal became Kenya's Deputy Chief Justice in June 2013. She has been fighting an attempt by the Judicial Services Commission to force her to retire from Kenyas Supreme Court on her 70th birthday in January 2016.

"She filed suit in September, arguing she was appointed under a previous constitution that let judges work until they turn 74. In December , a five-judge panel ruled against her, but she has appealed. She has noted that the issue is bigger than just her case and could effect the retirement and pension rights who were appointed under the previous constitution," says the note on the ICIJ site.

According to ICIJ Rawal moved from India to Kenya in 1973. She had assisted the International Criminal Courts investigation of Kenyas post-election violence in 2007-2008 and also led the probe of a 2012 helicopter crash that killed Kenyas security minister.

A profile in Kenya Law says Rawal has 40 years of experience in the law profession. She was the first woman lawyer in Kenya and also the first woman judge of Asian origin there. She did her LLB and LLM from India and practised under PN Bhagwati, who was the 17th chief Justice of the Indian Supreme Court.

Her father UJ bBhatt had served as a judge in the Gujarat High Court, while her grandfather Jaduram Bhatt was a law minister.

How is Kalpana Rawal involved?

As per the Panama Papers investigated by ICIJ, Rawal and her husband were directors of two companies based in the British Virgin Islands, before she joined the Kenyan Supreme Court.

"The family used other offshore companies to buy and sell real estate in London and nearby Surrey. Montague Real Estate SA was used in 2004 to buy a London flat for $1.12 million, which they sold in 2006. Innovate Global Limited was used to buy a house in Surrey for $2.74 million and a London apartment which they bought for $967,000 in 2004 and sold for $1.62 million in 2013. Through Arklyn International Limited, they bought another two London apartments, one bought for $1.66 million in 2005 and sold for $2.23 million in 2011, and the other bought for $1.57 million in 2005 and sold for $2.15 million in 2012," ICIJ says revealing the details of the deals.

However, Rawal has said she had not been involved with the family businesses except for generally knowing they were involved in real estate.

She told ICIJ that she was listed as director on two of them without her knowledge by her husband when he was told two directors were required. The first one never did any transactions and is dormant. The second one acquired a property, she told ICIJ.

"My family members include my two adult sons residing in London, both of whom are British subjects and run the business as per the laws applicable in U.K," she has been quoted as saying on the ICIJ website.

She also said she has never had "any involvement direct or indirect and have no interest or control" in the other companies.

A report in the Daily Nation on Monday noted that Rawal and her husband Hasmukhrai Rawal were directors of Forrell Real Estate Inc during 2001-2007 and Rocklane Properties during 2001-2003. Both these stints were after her appointment to the judiciary in 2000, the report notes.

It also notes that Rawal was linked to as many as 11 shell companies. While she was director or shareholder in four companies, her husband was a director or shareholder of seven companies.
Twenty-seven of the 47 policemen found guilty, by a CBI court in Lucknow, of killing Sikh pilgrims in a fake encounter in Pilibhit that took place about 25 years ago, have gone missing, reported The Times of India.

In the 1991 incident, 11 Sikh pilgrims were gunned down as the police claimed that they were terrorists.

The Times of India report said that the CBI had later found the Sikhs innocent and were killed in a fake encounter. CBI judge Lalloo Singh, quoted in the report, said that there was enough evidence against the policemen for "kidnapping and conspiring to kill the pilgrims in the name of terrorists."

In the latest report, sources told The Times of India that some of the cops went underground after retirement, while the others just disappeared after applying for long leaves. The report stated that the Uttar Pradesh police have launched a search to trace these missing cops and have succeeded in locating six of them.

As per the report, the court will announce the punishment on Monday during which these 27 cops need to be produced before the court as non-bailable warrants have been issued against them. Reports suggest that rest of the 20 cops were sent to judicial custody.

The incident took place in 1991, when Uttar Pradesh saw an increase in militant activities. According to The Indian Express, a local daily had reported that a few criminals have come as pilgrims. The report said that after conducting investigations, the police found a group with criminal background, including men and women, travelling in a bus on route to Pilibhit. The report further stated that eleven Sikh men were dragged out and later divided into three groups and gunned down.

As many as 57 policemen were charge-sheeted and 10 died during the course of the trial, as per the report. CBI counsel Satish Jaiswal was quoted saying that 67 prosecution witnesses were examined before the court.
New Delhi: As global ripples spread, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday ordered a multi-agency team to investigate the 'Panama Papers' expose which names 500 Indians for alleged offshore holdings and vowed to take action against all unlawful accounts held abroad.

Within hours of the news break, India's rich and famous made it to world headlines as the revelations sparked worldwide investigations.

In its explainer on the Panama Papers, CNN says the leaked documents do not necessarily indicate illegal activity.

Among the 500 Indians named for secret offshore dealings, Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan also find mention in documents recovered from Mossack Fonseca, a law firm based in tax haven Panama.

Business Standard says the report suggests that many of the Indians, featured in this leak and who set up these offshore entities prior to 2013, "are likely in violation of the Reserve Bank of India's Liberalised Remittance Scheme  introduced in February 2004."

Writing in The Indian Express, Ritu Sarin says one of the names that pop up in the Panama Papers is that of Iqbal Mirchi who's dead and gone 3 years ago. Mirchi was on Mumbai Police's most wanted list for his links to underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.

"A multi-agency group is being formed to monitor the black money trail," Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said here after the expose was published in The Indian Express. "Details of the assets worth Rs.6,500 crore has already been found," he added.

As per a statement issued by his ministry, the probe team will comprise officers from the Central Board of Direct Taxes' Financial Intelligence Unit, its Tax Research Unit as also officials from the Reserve Bank of India.

"The group will monitor the flow of information in each one of the case. The government will take all the necessary actions as required to get maximum information from all sources including from foreign governments to help in the investigation process," the statement added.

The journalists' consortium had said late on Sunday that its members and more than 100 other news organisations around the globe have found offshore links of some of the planet's most prominent people. The list included over 500 Indians.

The details of the Indians with such offshore funds were published in The Indian Express. But whether or not such funds exist, and also if they were illegal is what the probe team ordered by Modi is expected to look into.

"In terms of size, the Panama Papers is likely the biggest leak of inside information in history - more than 11.5 million documents - and it is equally likely to be one of the most explosive in the nature of its revelations," the consortium said of its investigation published.

In the context of the commitment of the central government to bring out undisclosed money both from abroad and from within the country, information brought out by any investigative journalism was welcome, the finance ministry said.

The ministry said in the past too, based on the investigations by ICIJ in 2013 -- that showed the links of 700 Indians with business connection with off-shore entities -- the agencies of the government were able to identify 434 persons as Indian residents.

It also said 184 persons admitted their relationship with such off-shore entities/transactions.

"Although, in the previous report of ICIJ, information relating to financial transactions/bank accounts was not available, the government authorities have detected credit in the undisclosed foreign accounts of such Indian persons in excess of Rs.2,000 crores."

As a consequence, 52 prosecution complaints have been filed against the alleged offenders so far.

"The government is committed to detecting and preventing the generation of black money. In this context the expose of Panama Papers will further help the government in meeting the objective," the finance ministry added.

The government expressed concern that tax havens were making countries like India suffer tax losses.

"The recent initiative of 'Base Erosion' and 'Profit Shifting' (BEPS) will help India and other countries in checking the practice of tax-avoidance through such tax havens. India is also fully committed to the BEPS initiative."

In India, The Indian Express ran several pages of the investigation reports alleging, among other names, Bollywood superstarts Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai, being directors in companies in Panama.

The two did not immediately respond despite efforts to contact them. Aishwarya Rai's media adviser told the newspaper that the information was false. The spokesperson for Aishwarya Rai said "no" when IANS asked her if she intended to issue a statement.

Among those named in the report were Sameer Gehlaut of India Bulls and K.P. Singh of DLF. Vinod Adani, elder brother of industrialist Gautam Adani, politician Shishir Bajoria from West Bengal and Anurag Kejriwal of Loksatta Party were also alleged to have set up companies in tax havens.

Bajoria told the paper that that "erroneous beneficial owner information" was given by mistake.

The Express said it had carried out the investigations spread over eight months with several global newspapers. Many of the other persons named in the Express reports responded, some denying while others maintaining that they had worked within the laws of the country.

Among the global leaders named were 12 current and former world leaders, including Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's family members. It also sought to reveal how associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin secretly shuffled as much as $2 billion through banks and shadow firms.

In Russia, the state-run media organisations were silent on the subject. In Pakistan, however, Sharif's son Hussain told Geo News that his family had not done anything wrong.

With IANS
Lucknow: A special CBI court on Monday sentenced 47 policemen to life imprisonment for killing 10 Sikh pilgrims in a fake encounter in Pilibhit in Uttar Pradesh 25 years ago.

Special judge Lallu Singh had on 1 April held the policemen guilty of a "fake encounter".

On 12 July, 1991, the policemen stopped a luxury bus filled with Sikh pilgrims and forced 10 passengers to get off. A chargesheet said they were divided into groups, taken to different areas in a jungle and killed in "cold blood".

The policemen claimed the next day that 10 Khalistani terrorists had been killed. They claimed that some of the Sikhs in the bus had criminal cases and were armed.

The case dates back to 1991 when the state's Terai region witnessed a surge in militancy-related incidents.

The CBI investigated the case on the orders of the Supreme Court and said the motive behind the killings was to earn awards and recognition for killing "terrorists".

According to CBI, the bus was on its way to Pilibhit on 12 July, when a police team stopped it at Kachlapul ghat. Eleven Sikh men were allegedly dragged out of the vehicle. The other passengers, including women and children, were taken to a gurudwara in Pilibhit while the men were made to sit in another vehicle.

Late in the evening, additional force joined the police team and they divided the Sikh men into three groups.

On the intervening night of 12 and 13 July, the policemen gunned down the Sikh men in three encounters in the thickets falling under three different police station areas  Bilsanda, Niuria and Pooranpur  in Pilibhit.

The police then claimed that these men had criminal cases against them and claimed to have recovered arms and ammunition from their possession.

The CBI probe found that the police got the autopsy done on 10 of the bodies and got them cremated the same day.

Fifty-seven policemen were charged in the case, but 10 have died since.
Thiruvananthapuram: A TV channel on Sunday released a letter written by solar scam accused Saritha Nair in which she says she was sexually exploited by Chief Minister Oommen Chandy at his official residence. Chandy said he suspected a "conspiracy" behind it.

Nair on Sunday appeared on the Asianet News channel and confirmed that she had written the 24-page letter in 2013.

"Yes, this letter is mine and I wrote it in police custody. I will not discuss the contents, but all that I have written is correct," she said.

The solar scam case surfaced when Nair and her live-in partner Biju Radhakrishnan were arrested in 2013 on charges of cheating numerous investors who paid money for solar panels.

Asked for his reaction, Chandy said the timing of the letter was "a bit baffling" as the state is heading towards assembly elections.

"I suspect a conspiracy behind this. This is the latest attempt to bring down my government, and for three years, this has been happening in various forms.

"Did you all not hear in the past, what she said about me?" Chandy asked media persons, referring to a time when Nair had described the chief minister "as a father-like person".

"Since this first came out, the state had a few elections, and it was discussed numerous times. And now with the Assembly polls, this has surfaced again," he said.

The letter came out on a day when Chandy managed to convince the Congress high command in Delhi to clear the candidature of five candidates, whose names were being opposed by state Congress president VM Sudheeran.

Over 30 cases of cheating against Nair and Radhakrishnan are registered in various courts. Police estimate that they cheated investors to the tune of over Rs six crore.

While Nair is out on bail, Radhakrishnan is in jail on charges of murdering his first wife.
When it comes to the idea of India  everyone has an opinion and opinions come in binaries. National/Anti national. Patriotic/Seditious. Beef eating pariah/Pious bhakt. As the row over the phrase  Bharat Mata ki Jai  escalates, Baba Ramdev, the bearded yogi, who teaches the country how to breathe, has contributed a line of sanskari noodles (not the chow mein that makes men rape women), has something to say too.

On Sunday, Ramdev said that if there wasn't a law that forbid decapitation, then he would have beheaded lakhs.

Ramdev, who was speaking at a Sadbhavna (compassion) rally, ironically said, "Koi aadmi topi pehan kar ke khada ho jaata hai, bolta Bharat Mata ki Jai nahi bolunga, chahe meri gardan kaat do. Arey is desh mein kanoon hai, nahi toh teri ek ki kya, hum toh lakhon ki gardan kaat sakte hain. (If someone wears a cap (referring to the skull cap worn by Muslims, especially Asaduddin Owaisi) stands up and says that he won't chant Bharat Mata Ki Jai even if someone kills him. There is a law in this country, so I won't kill, but I can behead lakhs of people.)"

According to The Indian Express, Ramdev said that a religion that doesn't respect "maatrubhoomi (motherland)" is not in the interest of the nation at all.

Earlier, in March, Ramdev had said the law should be amended to make it mandatory for everyone to chant the slogan, his reasoning?  "Even though it is not written in the Constitution that one should say 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai', there should be no problem in chanting it... Therefore, an amendment should be made in the law so that everyone says it."

Ramdev's comments are the latest rhetoric in a growing pool of loud opinion. The issue took centre-stage when AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi said that he would never chant Bharat Mata Ki Jai. Since then, a good number of politicians and public figures have aired their opinion about the phrase.

WATCH: Asaduddin Owaisi to RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat- Won't say "Bharat Mata Ki Jai" in Latur (Maharashtra) (March 13)https://t.co/nRNtaBfi6z  ANI (@ANI_news) March 14, 2016

Here's a look. Venkaiah Naidu The senior BJP leader said that there was nothing wrong with worshipping the mother on 28 March. "During the freedom movement, 'Vande Mataram' united all Indians. It means 'Mata' (mother), salutation to you. What 'Mata'? not Christian 'Mata', Hindu 'Mata', 'Muslim 'Mata', forward 'Mata', backward 'Mata'. 'Mata' is 'Mata'. What is the objection in that. Why, (it is said that) there is worship in that. Which religion said not to worship mother. Let me know. I am trying to know. I am ready for a debate," he said. Omar Abdullah "I look forward to seeing all the members of the PDP-BJP alliance say this (Bharat Mata ki Jai) as soon as they take their oath tomorrow," said the former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister.

I look forward to seeing all the members of the PDP-BJP alliance say this as soon as they take their oath tomorrow. https://t.co/R6rWYHzUww  Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) April 3, 2016

Darul Uloom Deoband

The Islamic seminary issued an edict asking Muslims to refrain from raising the slogan as it is equivivalent of "idol worship".

"We received thousands of queries on the issue so Darul Uloom Deoband has issued a 'fatwa' saying 'Bharat mata ki Jai' is not in consonance with Islam and we will not say it. But we love our country immensely and we can raise slogans like 'Hindustan Zindabad' and 'Madre Vatan'," said Ashram Usmani, public relations officer of the seminary.

Devendra Fadnavis

Maharashtra Chief Minister on 3 April said, "There is still a dispute over saying 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' and those opposing to say it, should not have any right to stay here. Those living here should say 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'."

Ram Naik

UP Governor Ram Naik said, "If there is no Bharat Mata ki Jai in India, how will the world acknowledge it?"

Salman Khurshid

"It gives us pride when we sing national anthem, to see our flag, to say 'Vande Matram'... Some people don't want to do it, it's their choice," Khurshid said after addressing a conference on Freedom of Speech and Expression in Universities.

Kailash Vijayvargiya

General Secretary, BJP, Vijayvargiya said that those who don't wish to chant the slogan "have no right to stay in India. They should go to some other country."

Javed Akhtar

Akhtar in his retirement speech from Rajya Sabha took a dig at Owaisi and said, "The Constitution even does not ask him to wear sherwani (dress) and topi (cap)... I don't care to know whether saying 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' is my duty or not but it is my right."
Thiruvananthapuram: The Congress on Monday evening released its list of 83 candidates for the assembly polls in Kerala that includes the names of 33 of 39 sitting legislators.

The list was released by the All India Congress Committee exactly a week after the final round of talks began in Delhi. The party said it will soon announce the names of candidates for three more constituencies.

As expected, six sitting legislators did not find place in the list.

Veteran leader and outgoing minister Aryadan Mohammed, his cabinet colleague C.N. Balakrishnan, as well as three-time legislator T.N. Prathapan -- who had expressed their desire to be left out -- were not named.

First time legislator P.A. Madhavan, and two-time speaker Therambil Ramakrishnan also did not figure in the list.

After a long tiff with state Congress president V.M. Sudheeran, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy managed to get included his cabinet colleagues K. Babu, K.C. Joseph and Adoor Prakash and also legislator Dominic Presentation, but was unable to save his close aide Benny Behanan.

Behanan was reportedly ejected by party vice president Rahul Gandhi, meant as a move to placate Sudheeran.

Behanan, earlier in the day after getting clearance from his mentor Chandy, announced his decision to withdraw his candidature. In his place, former Lok Sabha member P.T. Thomas has been fielded.

Another highlight of the list are both children of late former chief minister K. Karunakaran.

While K. Murlaeedharan was cleared from his current seat in the state capital, his sister Padmaja Venugopal is contesting from Thrissur for the first time to the assembly, after unsuccessfully contesting the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, which she lost.

Chandy is contesting for a record 11th time from Puthupally constituency, which he has been representing since 1970.

"The party has come out with the best possible list of candidates and which will help the state government retain power," Sudheeran said on Monday.

Polls for the 140-member Kerala assembly will be held on May 16.
The political scenario in Punjab, which had been a two-horse race for the longest time, is about to become a three-way battle with the entry of the AAP into the fray ahead of the state assembly elections in Punjab next year. In the previous years, it had been either been the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), in collaboration with the BJP, or the Congress which had been in power. But this time around, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will throw a real challenge to the other two.

In its bid to come back to power in Punjab after a gap of 10 years, Congress is focusing on the youth, rising unemployment and the growing drugs problem in the state. It is another matter that the AAP too is focusing on similar issues. However, their approach is different.

The Congress party has hired a professional agency - the Indian Political Action Committee (IPAC) run by Prashant Kishore to run its campaign. After handling successful political campaigns for the Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the general elections of 2014 and Nitish Kumars JD( U) in Bihar, now IPAC has been given the task of bringing Congress to power under the leadership of Capt Amarinder Singh.

AAP has not hired any agency to run its campaign. Short on money, the party cannot afford to do so.

Therefore, AAP is relying on its `fund raising dinner programmes. People pay for their dinner and get to meet Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, along with other top leaders of the party.

On the other hand, Congress leader Capt Amarinder Singh is spending money lavishly to run his campaign.

A brainchild of IPAC, the Coffee with Captain programme is being organised in different cities of Punjab like Amritsar, Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Patiala, Jalandhar etc. A gift hamper containing a cap, T-shirt, a notebook and a pen, along with a cup of coffee, water bottle and a packet of snacks is distributed to all the participants of the programme.

This programme is aimed at addressing the youth and their issues - including education and employment. So far, the response to the programme has been encouraging giving a boost to the Congress campaign. The IPAC team has been handling the campaign quite well till now, which has been evident from the responses in different cities.

Both the Congress and the AAP are using the social media to reach out to the youth. The strategy is not just economical, but highly effective as a large number of people can be reached in a very short time.

Capt Amarinder has also launched a programme to enroll volunteers in each of the 117 constituencies of Punjab. The programme, called `Jago Punjab, is aimed to reach out to the people in the entire state during Captain Amarinders march along the Sutlej Yamuna Link (SYL) canal route.

It was the Congress, under Captain Amarinder Singh as Chief Minister, that had made the historic move of terminating the water sharing agreements in 2004. The Congress party is making it a major propaganda during its campaign, and is projecting itself as the champion of the interest of the farmers in the state.

Another common point in the strategies employed by the Congress and AAP parties is that they both have employed a dedicated team of volunteers to reach out to people on the grass root level. The `door-to-door campaign proved to be highly effective during the Bihar elections, and IPAC hopes to reap rich dividends by using the same formula in Punjab.

Since January this year, AAP supremo and Delhi Chief Minister, Arvind Kejriwal - the star campaigner for his party - has made three visits to Punjab to address rallies in different parts of the state. Kejriwal received tremendous response from people, giving a boost to AAPs campaign.

Just as Kejriwal likes to present himself as the face of the AAP party, the Congress too is projecting Capt Amarinder as the party commander in the poll battle. Both leaders also display similar traits. Members of both the parties say that their respective leaders operate in a dictatorial manner, are inaccessible, and take decisions without consulting them.

Both AAP and Congress are leaving no stone unturned to woo the young voters of the state. There is no doubt that the youth have emerged as the most important constituent in the changing atmosphere of the state. Both the Congress and the AAP have recruited a young force of volunteers, who are running the campaign all over the state.

Durgesh Pathak, AAPs national organisation building head, said that , "connecting with the youth is necessary as they provide the right momentum to any movement or campaign. No party can afford to neglect the aspirations of the youth today."

"The Congress partys `Coffee with Captain is based on connecting with the youth. So far the response has been tremendous, said a woman member of the IPAC while talking to Firstpost in Chandigarh.

AAP has claimed to have online contact with 50 lakh voters in Punjab so far. Congress on the other hand are targeting users through their Facebook page and website.

On the other side of the political divide, the Akalis are almost dismissive of both the Congress and the AAP campaign. Their main vote bank is farmers. They have successfully run the 'panthic' agenda in the past and are willing to bet on the same issue in the 2017 assembly elections as well.

Akalis very cleverly raised the SYL issue in the Vidhan Sabha recently and made it into an emotive issue for the farmers. So successful was the Akali strategy that the Congress and the AAP were forced to follow their agenda of filling the SYL canal.

Kejriwal had earlier declared that Punjab had scarce water resources and that it was not possible to share it with other states. However, it was the SAD which managed to turn the growing anti-incumbency against it in the state to become a champion of the farmers.

On the 'panthic' agenda too, the Akalis have been trying to gain peoples support, although not very successfully. The Akalis have been trying to prove how their nine-year rule has been a success for Punjab. Through facts and figures, they are trying to prove how their rule is behind the growth and progress of the state. The Congress and the AAP have naturally dismissed such claims as false propaganda.

On his vision for Punjab, Capt Amarinder Singh, while talking to Firstpost, said that, "the state will have to tighten its belt and concentrate on priority areas such as education and employment. Taking the youth away from drugs is also a big challenge but something that is absolutely necessary for the survival of the state,"

Commenting on the challenge thrown by AAP, Capt Amarinder said that, "the party (AAP) is divided in factions and the people of Punjab are confused as to which is the real AAP. As for the Akalis, I feel that the people have understood their game plan well in the last nine years and will not give them another chance in the next elections."
New Delhi: JD(U) is set to elect a new president in its National Council meeting in New Delhi on 10 April, bringing an end to the over 10-year long tenure of Sharad Yadav, who has decided not to seek a fourth consecutive term.

"Sharad Yadav as party president has completed his three successive terms. He has now refused to make any amendment in the party constitution so as to elect him for the next coming term," party spokesperson KC Tyagi said in a statement on Monday.

Yadav, one of the founder leaders of the party along with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, has been at the helm since 2006 and was reelected for a third term in 2013 by amending the party's constitution which then allowed a maximum of two tenures.

There is a buzz in the party that Kumar himself may become the party chief as he seeks to expand its footprints beyond Bihar with a merger with Ajit Singh-led RLD and former Jharkhand chief minister Babulal Marandi-led Jharkhand Vikas Morcha.

Sources close to Yadav said he had conveyed to Kumar his view that he was not keen on continuing after leading the party for 10 years and that a new person should be put in command.

It was with the support of Kumar that Yadav became the party chief for the first time in 2006 after ousting its then head George Fernandes in in an election and then was elected again in 2009 and 2013.

The change of guard in JD(U) will indicate the changes in its internal dynamics at a time when Kumar is being seen to be preparing the party for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls along with election strategist Prashant Kishor, who has emerged as his most dependable ally after playing a vital role in the party's rout of BJP in 2015 Bihar assembly polls.

Though the party chief's tenure is of two years, elections in several states delayed the organisational polls and it recently conveyed to the Election Commission that it will complete the process by 30 June.

The EC has in turned asked the party to send to it all the details of organisational elections by 15 July.

Under Yadav's third tenure soon after it began in April 2013, JD(U) broke up with BJP after Kumar made clear his strong reservations on Narendra Modi, who was then tipped to be the saffron party's prime ministerial candidate.

JD(U) suffered a humiliating loss in 2014 Lok Sabha elections but bounced back in the 2015 Assembly polls after striking a new alliance with Lalu Prasad-led RJD and Congress.
NEW YORK: Jisne pee nahin whisky, kismat phoot gayi uski  Amitabh Bachchan in Sharaabi, released 1984.

31 years later, thats a fairly accurate picture of how the average Indian gets hammered, says a sweeping 82 page WHO report on global alcohol usage.

9 in 10 Indians knock back whisky, rum, vodka - anything thats not beer and wine. The local stuff - hooch and its many deadly cousins are not included in this data set.

After fighting and winning a five phase election - with the Opposition campaign headlined by Indias prime minister in a state of more than 100 million people, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumars first big announcement of no booze has kicked in. Bihar on Sunday also banned the sale of toddy in public places after reports that locals have turned to toddy shops.

Non resident Biharis are positive this will continue to drive poorer folks to more deadly potions and roll out a new gravy train for Bihars police in the name of enforcement.

Jharkhand, Maharashtra and opposition parties in Tamil Nadu have also joined the prohibition clamour, raising a toast to hero Nitish Kumar.

Gujarat, which Modi ruled before he became prime minister, is nominally dry since 1950.

You planning to come? I can offer you enough booze to soak yourself, says Preeti Das, Gujarats only woman stand-up comedian. Das lives in the heart of Ahmedabad.

Outright prohibition has a poor record, Gujarats hooch mafia is flourishing, people continue to die from bad moonshine.

The Economic Times calls banning booze Nitish Kumars first blunder, the story is informed by similar experiments which lost fizz in Indias north east region. The Mint says ditto.

What do Biharis in America say?

In a final swipe against Modi before the final phase of voting in Bihar, Nitish Kumar called upon Biharis to vote for one of them rather than a Bahari (outsider), referring to Modi.

What about Biharis in America, part of the diaspora that increasingly underwrites Indian politicians veneer abroad?

Bhawesh Choudhary, chief of the Bihar and Jharkhand Association of North America, populalrly called BAJANA, came to New York from Patna 20 years ago, he will vote for the next American president and continues to have strong links back home.

Acceptance and image in social circles dominated by Americas immigration boom takes centrestage here when he drinks.

We conduct ourselves very nicely here. What people think of you is important. We cant do what we may have done in Patna says Choudhary.

Anil Mishra, a financial risk manager with Deutshe Bank, also Bihari and BAJANA member, is more folksy: Yahaan daroo peekar naale mein girte hue kisi ko nahin dekha. (Unlike in Bihar, Ive never seen anyone in Europe or America sloshed and tumbling into a wayside drain.

A liquor ban wont work, says Mishra, a Jamshedpur-bred engineer.

When I go back to Bihar and I dont find liquor, Ill drive to Jamshedpur. Tying liquor consumption to driving will work, bans have never worked, says Mishra, a social drinker during his longish stint in Europe and America.

Even Biharis in Bangalore agree: "They had to ban something to avoid civil war, so they banned liquor instead of the real killer Khaini -- local tobacco," says Manish Jaiswal, who has carved out a new life in this southern city.

In America, a Driving Under the Influence (DUI) ticket is the first in a series of blows, which usually ends up in higher insurance premiums, and depending on the state laws, jail terms too.

Americas drink driving laws across its 50 states are mirrored in both how liquor stores are stocked and the WHO data: 5 in 10 Americans drink beer and only 3 in 10 go for hard liquor.

America quaffs less hard liquor and much more wine and beer. Californian wine, Pinot and Merlot are bestsellers; sweet wines rank lowest on the pecking order. Jack Daniels? Whats that?

Average Indian swigs 8 litres

Walk into any bar in India, after 7 pm. Small chance youll find anyone raising their glasses to a wet yesterday and dry tomorrow.

At 8.3 litres of alcohol per citizen per year, Keralas consumption is the highest in India. Most Muslims and many Hindus in Kerala are teetotal, as are most women. Keralas chief minister is bulldozing his way to close dozens of liquor shops each year; his aim: to make Indias hardest drinking state booze-free in a decade.

Does that make a difference? Inconvenience, yes. Deterrent, no.

Neighbouring Mahe is selling liquor at Union Territory rates, guided tours available.

India, China drinking more

Globally the world is drinking more as Indian states rush to shutter down liquor shops or claim they will.

This trend is mainly driven by an increase consumption in China and India, which is linked to increased income in these countries, says the WHO report.

In China, the bulk of the spirits market is supplied by local stuff.

The average Indian drinker consumes 8 litres of alcohol per year;

9 in 10 women are lifetime abstainers.

If you weave these abstainers into the data analysis, it just means many are drinking far more than the average amount.

Indians are tipping the scales on the dangerous side in the number of years of life lost. On a scale of 1-5, the Indian average is 4, which is not adjusted to state averages which may be higher because of the number of teetotals.

Bad moonshine

Indias alcohol dependance is also higher than the South Asian average. What theyre getting tipsy on is hard liquor.

The taste for whisky, a hard glare at anyone suggesting a peg measure, bias for European brands and single malts all trace roots to the British empire.

In high-income countries only 8.5% of all alcohol consumed consists of unrecorded alcohol, whereas in low-income and lower middle income countries more than 40% of all alcohol consumed is unrecorded alcohol, which is commonly cheaper and accounts for more swigs per person.

The 8 litre figure for average Indians consumption does not factor in illicit liquor which accounts for nearly a quarter of the alcohol consumed globally.

Drinkdriving countermeasures, not outright prohibition, are cost-effective strategies to reduce harmful use of alcohol and the burden of alcohol-attributable traffic crashes, which are more likely when drivers have blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) above 0.04%.

Younger Indians, better booze

Indias constitution aspires to prohibit alcohol for all but medicinal purposes.

Permits are required to import, manufacture, bottle, transport and sell alcoholand even, in some places, to drink it.

Booze is also heavily taxed  import duty on bottled scotch is 150%, a rate that encourages graft. In some states, government oversees retail.

More than 19 million Indians reach the legal drinking age each year, they also have fatter wallets and ditch illicit moonshine for branded stuff.

Dry weddings are passe. Now, a single malt served wedding ups image.

India is the worlds biggest whisky market by volume, if not by value, according to multiple business intelligence reports.

Everyone is drinking better, say Indias whisky bosses.

That means, hic, smashed.

(An earlier version of this story appeared in Firstpost, November 2015.)
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud met in Riyadh during the formers two-day official visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, from 2-3 April, it was natural that they'll discuss issues such as maritime security in the Gulf and the Indian Ocean, and bilateral trade. Heads of states, responsible for the development and security of their countries, usually hold long talks, promoting their interests. However, amidst all this, what was special was the acknowledgement of each others achievements and culture.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was conferred Saudi Arabias highest civilian honour  the King Abdulaziz Sash by King Salman at the Royal Court. This was preceded by Modi gifting King Salman a gold-plated miniature replica of the Cheraman Juma Masjid situated in Kerala.

Located in Thrissur district, the Cheraman Juma Masjid is believed to be the first mosque built in India by Arab traders around 629 AD. The Prime Minister, in a series of messages, conveyed the significance of the mosque in highlighting the important place that Islam has in the Indian subcontinent.

Cheraman Juma Masjid is symbolic of active trade relations between India and Saudi Arabia since ancient times. pic.twitter.com/SoypfTUVlS  PMO India (@PMOIndia) April 3, 2016

According to oral tradition, Cheraman Perumal was the Chera King & a contemporary of the Holy Prophet.  PMO India (@PMOIndia) April 3, 2016

Cheraman Perumal went to Arabia and embraced Islam after meeting the Holy Prophet at Mecca.  PMO India (@PMOIndia) April 3, 2016

The mosque has an ancient oil lamp that is always kept burning and believed to be over a thousand years old.  PMO India (@PMOIndia) April 3, 2016

People from all religions bring oil for the lamp as an offering.  PMO India (@PMOIndia) April 3, 2016

Talking about the significance of the mosque, the Prime Ministers official website read, According to oral tradition, Cheraman Perumal was the Chera King and a contemporary of the Holy Prophet who went to Arabia and embraced Islam after meeting the Holy Prophet at Mecca. Some years later, he sent letters to his relatives and the ruling chieftains of Malabar through his friends Malik bin Dinar and Malik bin Habib who, along with their companions, were then given permission by the local rulers to build the mosque at Kodungallu.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in a press note talking about the Saudis highest civilian honour being conferred upon the PM said, The BJP sees this as yet another instance of the global respect and appreciation of the guiding principle of Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas and the inclusive development efforts of Shri Narendra Modi. This honour conferred by Saudi Arabia is also another recognition of the progressive and dynamic foreign policy of the NDA government under the leadership of Shri Narendra Modi.

It added, Under the leadership of Shri Narendra Modi, the NDA governments foreign policy has led to record foreign investment coming to India and enhanced Indias prestige on the world stage. Relations with existing friends have significantly improved and at the same time avenues of cooperation with other regions and nations have been accelerated at a historical pace. At the same time, India has risen to the occasion and helped every Indian in duress be it in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen to name a few.
Lesbos: Buses carrying hundreds of migrants for deportation to Turkey arrived at the Greek island ports of

Lesbos and Chios this morning.

The expulsion launches a controversial EU deal to send migrants back across the Aegean Sea that has been criticised by rights groups on ethical grounds.

Two Turkish leisure vessels on Lesbos and another one on Chios are waiting to pick up the migrants, who are to be escorted by police from EU border agency Frontex.

On Lesbos, where five buses arrived, crews were earlier seen loading supplies onto the ships - a small ferry and a catamaran.

At the port of Chios, a single busload a few dozen activists gathered near the embarkation site chanting 'Freedom', an AFP photographer said.

Turkish Interior Minister Efkan Ala has said his country is ready to receive 500 migrants today and Greek authorities have provided 400 names, although these numbers could change.

The European Union signed the controversial deal with Turkey in March as it wrestles with the continent's worst migration crisis since World War II, with more than a million people arriving last year.

Under the agreement, designed to halt new arrivals along the most popular route through Turkey, all "irregular migrants" arriving since 20 March face being sent back. Each case is meant to be examined individually.

For every Syrian refugee returned, another Syrian refugee will be resettled from Turkey to the EU, with numbers capped at 72,000.

Turkish authorities say the first wave of returned migrants will arrive at the resort of Dikili, just opposite Lesbos. Tents have been put up by the town's harbourside in anticipation of Monday's arrivals, according to media reports.

The operation to resettle Syrians to Europe under the one-for-one arrangement also starts today.

Germany expects to take in a first group of about 35 Syrians from Turkey on Monday, the German interior ministry said. Several dozen others are expected to arrive in France, Finland and Portugal, according to German government sources.

Campaigners have criticised the deal with Amnesty International saying Turkey is not a safe country for refugees, a charge Ankara rejects.
Today the legendary Grand Hotel Tammer in Tampere reopens its doors and becomes the eighth Radisson Blu hotel in Finland. Built in 1929, this striking hotel has been the scene for many great events. With all its rich tales, the newly renovated Radisson Blu Grand Hotel Tammer is a grand setting for a stay full of culture and history.

"It is a great pleasure to welcome the eighth Finnish Radisson Blu hotel to our Nordic portfolio. With its combination of interesting history and renovated features, this legendary hotel is the perfect venue for all types of events. The guests can look forward to experience superior hospitality in a grand atmosphere," said Tom Flanagan, Area Vice President for The Rezidor Hotel Group in the Nordics.

The Radisson Blu Grand Hotel Tammer is the third oldest hotel in Finland and has been the setting for many Finnish literary and cinematic works. The city architect Bertel Strommer designed this 87-room hotel in 1929, and it is a stunning example of Nordic Classicism. Many honored guests, among them the Finnish Marshal C.G.E. Mannerheim and the first human in space Yuri Gagarin, have spent the night in in Grand Hotel Tammer. Today, the hotel is known as a unique banquet venue and the lounge for all kinds of cultural events.

Renovated grand atmosphere

As part of the rebranding, the Radisson Blu Grand Hotel Tammer has been restored to its former splendour. The interiors are carefully redecorated to create a harmonious style, which enhances the original grand atmosphere and classic ambiance. The new functional and visual elements and the new room and service concepts now give the guests an entirely new experience. The hotel's conference and banquet operations are also enhanced, strengthening the property's position as the most prominent venue for events and negotiations in Tampere region.

"Radisson Blu Grand Hotel Tammer is a hotel that provides a unique ambiance for both the big and small events in life. At the Grand Hotel Tammer, anyone can enjoy the atmosphere of bygone days combined with modern, exclusive hotel service. During its long history, the hotel has won its place in the hearts of visitors and Tampere residents alike. Some of our guests have been clients for several decades," commented Mika Riuttanen, General Manager for Radisson Blu Grand Hotel Tammer.

The guest experience is further improved with design and usability features, like the Blu Dreams sleeping experience. The concept is developed by the Radisson Blu Hotels in Finland, and focuses on comprehensive sleeping comfort and individual needs from going to bed to waking up.

Even the Grand Hotel Tammer's breakfast is updated and now the guests can enjoy the new Super Breakfast concept, an experience nourishing all senses. The breakfast is based on high-quality produce, local specialities and a unique and visually stunning presentation.

The hotel operations of Radisson Blu Grand Hotel Tammer will be run by Sokotel Oy, SOK's subsidiary in the travel and hospitality business.

Facts about Radisson Blu Grand Hotel Tammer

1 kilometer from the bus and train stations and 18 kilometers from Tampere-Pirkkala Airport

City center location near array of attractions

87 rooms with Free high-speed, wireless Internet

2 on-site restaurants, in addition to a stylish bar and lounge area

Fitness center

371 square meters of meeting space

For more information, please contact:

Tomi Peitsalo, Business Vice President of SOK International Hotel Business and Radisson Blu Regional Director, Finland, Sokotel Oy, tel. +358 50 609 31

Mika Riuttanen, General Manager, Radisson Blu Grand Hotel Tammer, tel. +358 50 388 3378

Alexandra Lindvik, Area Director PR and Communications Nordics, The Rezidor Hotel Group, tel. +46 737 406 757

About Radisson Blu

Radisson Blu is one of the world's leading hotel brands with nearly 300 hotels in operation in 69 countries and territories. Radisson Blu's vibrant, contemporary and engaging hospitality is characterized by a unique Yes I Can!SM service philosophy, and all of its first class hotels offer a range of signature features that are empathetic to the challenges of modern travel, including the 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Distinguished the world over as the brand with Hotels Designed to Say YES!SM, Radisson Blu offers a vivid visual celebration of leading-edge style where the delight is in the detail. Radisson Blu hotels are located in prime locations in major cities, airport gateways and leisure destinations across the world.

Radisson Blu is a part of Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group, which also includes Quorvus Collection, Radisson, Radisson RED, Park Plaza, Park Inn by Radisson and Country Inns & Suites By CarlsonSM. For reservations and more information visit, www.radissonblu.com. Connect with Radisson Blu on social media: @RadissonBlu on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook.com/RadissonBlu.

It is eight Radisson Blu Hotels in Finland; four which are located in Helsinki, and one in Espoo, Turku, Tampere and Oulu. The business of the hotels is on the responsibility of Sokotel Oy in the Helsinki region, Tampere and Oulu, and Turun Osuuskauppa in Turku. The hotels focus on offering unique experiences, and they have an internationally recognized quality of service in common. All hotels in Finland are Green Key certificated.

Radisson Blu Hotels in Finland:

Radisson Blu Plaza Hotel  The stage for your story

Radisson Blu Royal Hotel  In the heart of the action

Radisson Blu Seaside Hotel  Helsinki state of mind

Radisson Blu Hotel Espoo  The Log out Zone

Radisson Blu Marina Palace Hotel Turku  License to thrill

Radisson Blu Hotel Oulu  The house of opportunities

Radisson Blu Aleksanteri Hotel Helsinki  A gem in the hearth of life

Radisson Blu Grand Hotel Tammer  The scene for grand stories

Sokotel Oy

is SOK's subsidiary in the travel and hospitality business, operating seven Radisson Blu Hotels and fourteen Sokos Hotels in Finland. Sokotel Oy has operations in the Greater Helsinki region, Tampere, Oulu and Vaasa. Radisson Blu Marina Palace Hotel in Turku is operated by Turun Osuuskauppa.

See more at: http://www.rezidor.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=205430&p=mediaRelease&ID=2152084#sthash.bzPTBshm.dpuf

About Radisson Hotel Group

Radisson Hotel Group is one of the world's largest hotel groups with nine distinctive hotel brands, and more than 1,600 hotels in operation and under development in 120 countries. The Group's overarching brand promise is Every Moment Matters with a signature Yes I Can! service ethos.

The Radisson Hotel Group portfolio includes Radisson Collection, Radisson Blu, Radisson, Radisson RED, Radisson Individuals, Park Plaza, Park Inn by Radisson, Country Inn & Suites by Radisson, and prizeotel brought together under one commercial umbrella brand Radisson Hotels.

Radisson Rewards is our international rewards program that delivers unique and personalized ways to create memorable moments that matter to our guests. Radisson Rewards offers an exceptional experience for our guests, meeting planners, and travel agents at over 550 hotels in Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific.

Radisson Meetings provides tailored solutions for any event or meeting, including hybrid solutions placing guests and their needs at the heart of its offer. Radisson Meetings is built around three strong service commitments: Personal, Professional and Memorable, while delivering on the brilliant basics and being uniquely 100% Carbon Neutral.

The health and safety of guests and team members remain a top priority for Radisson Hotel Group. All properties across the Group's portfolio are subject to stringent health and safety requirements, as outlined in the Radisson Hotels Safety Protocol.

More than 100,000 team members work at Radisson Hotel Group and at the hotels licensed to operate in its systems. For more information, visit our corporate website. Or connect with Radisson Hotels on:

LinkedIn | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube
Berlin, Germany  In the upcoming months, teams of experts from SnapShot GmbH will conduct a series of briefings on hotel analytics and hotel data usage in key cities in Germany, Austria, the UK, and Belgium. The company will also demonstrate the full capabilities of its flagship product, SnapShot Analytics, and will offer a series of one-on-one demo sessions.

"The presentation part will give valuable insights on how hotels are impacted by big data and how they can use it to benefit their operation," said Dr. Stefan Tweraser, CEO. "Hoteliers will then have the chance to experience the functionalities and benefits of SnapShot Analytics first-hand in one-on-one demo sessions. "

SnapShot Analytics, the highly anticipated, flagship product of the company, is a cloud-based hotel analytics tool that presents a comprehensive overview of a specific's hotel data on a powerful yet intuitive dashboard. The product was publicly introduced for the first time at ITB Berlin 2016, the global travel's industry leading trade show, where it was received with great interest by hoteliers and data experts. The upcoming roadshows are part of SnapShot GmbH's strategy of growth, and aim to raise awareness among hoteliers on the key features and benefits of SnapShot Analytics, a new, essential tool for any hotel management team.

"Access to SnapShot Analytics offers new, previously unavailable ways for hotel management teams to unlock new potential for any hotel," said Dr. Stefan Tweraser.

SnapShot will be in Edinburgh on April 12th, Vienna and Glasgow on April 13th, Liverpool on May 11th, Manchester and Brussels on May 12th and in Hamburg on May 24th.

If you would like more information about this topic, please contact Martin Soler at +49 30 217 82 800 or email at: [email protected].

About SnapShot

Founded in 2012 with the vision to build hospitality's premier data platform independent of any brand or software provider, SnapShot is now one of the largest hospitality data processors in the world, managing transactional data of over 6,000 independent and branded hotels worldwide, with over 45 different connected PMS systems, and growing. With the release of the Hospitality Data Platform, SnapShot enters its third phase, which brings forward its founding vision: a secure data platform, visualization capabilities, and marketplace.

To find out more, please visit snapshot.travel.

Martin Soler

CMO

49 30 217 82 800
Bellamy's Organic chief executive Laura McBain says demand for the company's products in China will continue to soar despite the country slapping an 11.9 per cent tax on goods bought from foreign websites.

From Friday, Beijing will impose the levy, which is aimed at eliminating the advantage held by overseas companies that to date have been subject to the same taxes as their Chinese retailers.

Bellamy's chief executive Laura McBain: The company's shares have plunged since revealing problems in China. Credit:Bret Salinger

But the tax will not be applied to products sold on the lucrative grey market, or customers selling products to one another.

Fairfax Media revealed in December that about half the infant formula sold by Australian supermarkets was being onsold on the grey market to help meet soaring demand in China.
"I thought about it, I played it out in my mind that if I missed, and there was a good chance I would miss, he could kill someone then and there." Elly Chen inside the Lindt cafe during the siege on December 15, 2014. Credit:Seven Network Mr Herat thought about Monis' shotgun and the pellets that could spray across the cafe if he pulled the trigger. This was one of the reasons Mr Herat couldn't bring himself to stab Monis. Lindt cafe waitress April Bae runs into the arms of armed tactical response police officers. Credit:AP

"If I did something it could help and get us out of there but if it didn't it could be a catastrophe," he said. Monis later found the scissors in Mr Herat's apron and asked the waiter where he got them. Tori Johnson who died during the siege in Sydney Mr Herat told the gunmen he had used them earlier in his shift to cut boxes. About 2am, Monis held hostage Fiona Ma in front of him and had Selina Win Pe hold on to his backpack as he made his way to the kitchen and rear fire exit door.

John O'Brien and Stefan Balafoutis flee from the Lindt cafe during the siege. Credit:Getty Images Mr Herat said he then looked at Mr Morton-Hoffman, who said he was going to get some help, before he went out the cafe doors. Mr Herat grabbed the arm of fellow employee Harriette Denny to make sure they were going out of the cafe at the same speed. Protective: Jarrod Morton-Hoffman. Credit:Janie Barrett He said he heard two gunshots as they escaped and felt "bullets whizzing past my ears".

"I thought he [Monis] was going to come out and follow us onto Martin Place and shoot us dead or shoot whoever was left in the cafe," he said. Gunman: Man Haron Monis. Credit:NSW Department of Justice Mr Herat also recounted to the inquest the terrified moment he thought Monis was going to shoot someone after three hostages escaped. He was standing on a chair as he heard the rumbling of the cafe glass doors opening before he caught a glimpse of John O'Brien running out. Mr Herat said he then dived towards a nearby couch as he feared Monis would shoot someone.

He said Monis grabbed hostage Louisa Hope, stood her up, used her as a body shield and had his gun behind her back. Monis then said "someone has to die now". "Everyone was terrified to say the least," Mr Herat, who still works at the Lindt cafe, told the inquest. Mr Herat earlier described Mr Johnson, his manager and friend, as "exceptional, inspirational and a mentor". Earlier in the day, about 5pm, Elly Chen and April Bae, who both worked at the Lindt cafe, had escaped the siege.

As Ms Chen hid under a table in the cafe and prepared to flee, she texted a friend: "If I don't talk to you tonight, it's all good. "See you on the other side." Moments later, she quietly crept out of the cafe doors, careful not to make a sound that would have alerted gunman Man Haron Monis to her exit. Ms Chen confirmed to the inquest on Monday that she had grave concerns she might be killed on the way out. About 5pm that day, she followed Ms Bae, who had spent five minutes pulling down a latch to unlock the cafe door bit by bit, out on to Martin Place.

Despite spending several hours as a hostage by the shotgun-toting Monis, a situation that at one point left her hyperventilating and vomiting, Ms Chen told police after escaping that her hostage taker was nice. "He kept telling us he was a nice person, he was giving us water, giving us food ... I guess it was a manipulation thing but I believed him that he was nice," Ms Chen said. Before Ms Chen and Ms Bae, also a waitress, escaped, three other hostages had escaped out of the cafe doors, angering an already agitated Monis. The sound of the hostages fleeing about 3.40pm had sent Ms Chen from her place lying on the floor to hiding under table 40 around the corner. It was there she found Ms Bae near a door.

"She said that it was her mum's birthday and she needed to escape," Ms Chen, 23, told the inquest. "She said that she would just open the door and leave." Ms Chen had been working at the Lindt cafe for only three days before Monis held her and 17 others hostage. While Ms Bae wanted to leave immediately, Ms Chen said Monis was very angry after the escape of the first three hostages and said it would be cafe manager Tori Johnson's fault if anyone escaped. "He was really pressing us not to go," she said.

The inquest heard Monis said that, for every person who escaped, he would kill one person and it would be the manager's fault. Ms Chen said Monis also claimed Mr Johnson would be "tried" and "prosecuted". "I really believed him, whereas April was ready to go whenever ... I felt guilty for the other people in the cafe as well," Ms Chen said. "We waited until we were sure he wouldn't be able to hear us if we left." As Ms Bae finally pulled down the latch, Ms Chen covered the subsequent clicking sound with a cough.
Around 10 a.m. Monday, Agma  a Pakistani electrician in a tiny tent city on a rocky Greek beach  got a call from two of his friends. They had been swept up in the systematic deportation of hundreds of people, mostly Pakistanis, from Lesbos Island.

The deportees came from Moria, a locked-down camp housing thousands of people. Surrounded by fences and barbed wire, they were not allowed to leave.

With one European Union soldier for every deportee, the travelers quietly boarded ships at daybreak. Some later arrived where many had started their harrowing journey to Europe: Izmir, Turkey.

Farak and Amjad, Agma's friends on the phone, said that after they docked, they registered with the Turkish police. They expected to be detained again, and have not been heard from since Monday afternoon.

"We are afraid they will arrest us, too," Agma told VOA at the No Borders Kitchen, Lesbos' last "free" camp where anyone can stay, and no one is locked in.

According to residents, police say the shantytown on the beach needs to be evacuated by Wednesday.

When asked where they plan to go, residents insist they will not willingly go to a camp they call a prison. "I don't know," said Mohammad, who is from Morocco. "I guess we will go to the hills."

Road of Death

With the camps closing looming and nowhere to go but the forest or a detention center, Agma and others in the camp say they have moved beyond fear and into panic.

"Every day we are scared," said Amir, a 25-year-old Algerian. "The police are coming. The army is coming to scare us."

Beyond fear is utter despair.

The road to Europe from Turkey is sometimes called "The Road of Death" because so many people die. Those who survive but are caught can be sent back, and become trapped in Turkey  penniless and despised by a public tired of bearing the brunt of the refugee crisis.

"You see that dog?" asked Younis, a young Moroccan man, pointing to one of Lesbos' many street dogs. "That dog has more rights than me."

A few young men gather around, some angry, wondering what crime refugees and migrants committed to deserve to be locked up or shipped away without even having the chance to apply for asylum.

One young man wonders if part of the plan is to throw people into the sea. Another speculates that the deportations are intended to support Islamic State militants.

"The people deported now have no money, so maybe they will go to Syria to fight with Islamic State," he said bitterly, miming a machine gun in his hands. "Boom, boom, boom!"

About an hour later, what was a small group of young Pakistani men holding signs saying "We want asylum" and "We'd rather die here than get deported to Turkey," broke out in chants.

"We are human!" they shouted, before one man collapsed in the sun. Aid workers pulled him aside while the group continued to chant. Pakistanis here say they cannot go to the hospital, lest they be arrested.

Legal rights

Many travelers do not want to apply for asylum in Greece, a country that was facing financial woes even before the refugee influx. But at this small protest, Pakistanis say they want to stay in Greece but aren't being given the chance to apply for asylum.

And despite a common misconception, international law gives them the right to apply for asylum.

The law does not define a refugee exclusively as a person running from a war. However, it is more likely that a person running from war is entitled to legal refugee status because "owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion" they left their country and don't want to return.

Agma, the electrician, says he left Pakistan because he was being targeted by extremist groups as a religious-freedom activist. Others among the protesters say they were businessmen, blackmailed by gangsters who threatened to kill them and their families. And other young men freely admit to leaving home because they were poor, and they heard there might be a future in Europe.

Greece says everyone is welcome to submit their applications. But Pakistanis, who make up the vast majority of the recent deportees, say they are not given the chance to exercise that right.

"If I go to the office to apply there, they will arrest me there and maybe the next day they will deport me," said Farham, a Pakistani.

Additionally, written information about asylum is distributed to newcomers in Arabic and Greek, not Urdu or English, their native and second languages.

"All the people in the European Union are not against refugees," Agma said. "Please help us."

WATCH: Pakistani migrants protest deportations
A total of 19 people gambled 1.37 billion pesos (USD30 million) of the $81 million stolen from Bangladesh foreign reserves at a Philippine casino in February before a fraction of the funds was frozen by the gaming operator.

The high-roller players gambled under two Chinese junket operators at Solaire Resort & Casino and withdrew 278.6 million pesos in total winnings, according to reports Bloomberry Resorts Corp. submitted to the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee and casino regulator seen by Bloomberg News. Bloomberry owns and operates Solaire in Manila.

Solaire stopped the gamblers on March 10 after five weeks, and froze 107.4 million pesos remaining from six people, according to the document. Another 1.35 million pesos in cash was also confiscated, and the casino operator said it will hold the funds until it receives a court order, according to the report.

We are disappointed that the casinos are now being made a scapegoat in this unfortunate affair, Silverio Benny J. Tan, compliance officer at Bloomberry, said in the report to the Senate. We are not the culprits here.

Joy Wassmer, a Bloomberry spokeswoman, declined to comment on the reports.

The $81 million transferred through a Philippine lender made this one of the largest bank heists in modern history, with the channeling to at least two Philippine casinos where the money trail has gone cold. A further $20 million that the hackers managed to transfer to a Sri Lankan bank was recovered.

Kim Wong, the Philippine gambling junket operator dubbed the missing link in the case, said on in a Senate hearing earlier this week hes willing to return as much as $14.3 million he received from two Chinese nationals linked to the stolen funds. He returned $4.6 million on Thursday. Norman P. Aquino, Bloomberg
BELGIUM Brussels Airlines flight heading to the Portuguese city of Faro has taken off from Brussels Airport  the first passenger flight to leave the airport since suicide bombings on March 22 blew up its departures terminal.

SINGAPOREs central bank will give financial institutions room to experiment with new technologies as it seeks public feedback on how a regulatory sandbox could work, Managing Director Ravi Menon said. The responsibility to assess any risks in the adoption of new financial technologies lies with the boards and management, he said at a conference on Saturday.

Philippines Suspected Filipino Muslim militants seized four Malaysian crewmen of a tugboat in the second such attack at sea in recent weeks, sparking a new security alarm, officials said Saturday.

INDONESIA Leonardo DiCaprio may be banned from returning to Indonesia over his criticisms that palm oil plantations are destroying the countrys rainforests and endangering wildlife, an immigration official said Saturday. The Oscar winner made a one-day visit to protected Mount Leuser National Park in northern Sumatra last weekend and uploaded photos to his Instagram account, expressing concerns over species whose habitats are threatened.

SYRIA A week after taking back the historic town of Palmyra, Syrian troops and their allies captured another town controlled by the Islamic State group in central Syria, state media reported.

VANUATU A strong earthquake hit off of the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu yesterday, but authorities said any threat of a tsunami had mostly passed, and there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

POLAND Thousands of Poles took part in street demonstrations yesterday to protest a possible tightening of the countrys abortion law, already one of the most restrictive in Europe.
The lead poisoning in Flint, Mich. has Idaho environmental authorities taking extra steps to ensure such an event cant happen here.

Jerri Henry, who runs the drinking water program for the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, saw what happened in Flint and asked herself: Are we doing enough?

Idaho has 900 drinking water systems, ranging from some serving a few dozen people in a subdivision to Suez Boises system serving 240,000 people. Henry has asked every Idaho water utility to look at its system and paperwork and make sure they are safe for lead, and gave them until July to get it done. DEQ knows at least three systems in Southwest Idaho, including the one at Tamarack Resort, are not in compliance.

But people like Paul Flory and hundreds of other residents of North Idahos Silver Valley worry that the new national focus on lead comes 40 years too late. Florys lead poisoning came from the air, not the water. But like the Flint nightmare, a breakdown at the state and federal levels left generations of Idahoans at risk.

WHAT HAPPENED AT BUNKER HILL?

In 1973, a fire destroyed the smokestack filter at the Bunker Hill Mining Co. smelter in Kellogg, where ore was heated in a furnace to extract lead and zinc. But the company kept operating the plant for 18 months, sending tons of lead up its stacks, covering the surrounding communities in lead and heavy metal-laced dust.

Flory, 46, of Smelterville, went to school and played in the shadow of smelter smokestacks where backyards, playgrounds and parks were covered with lead pollution so serious that many children in 1974 started showing up with signs of severe lead poisoning  loss of energy and appetite, constipation, irritability and abdominal pain.

Doctors from the Centers for Disease Control tested Kellogg children and found some had lead levels of 80 micrograms per deciliter of blood. The health limit at the time was 40 micrograms; today, the recommended limit is 5 micrograms.

Of 172 children living closest to the smelter in January 1975, all but two had dangerously high levels of lead in their bloodstreams. Hundreds of others throughout the valley also were poisoned. They could expect developmental problems, mental health issues and kidney and heart problems the rest of their lives.

Flory didnt know about any of this when he was a child. His parents told him nothing at the time and it wasnt until 2004 that he learned from friends that he could see the results of his boyhood tests for lead. By then, the effects of even low levels of lead were well known to health officials.

Florys tests showed that at 9 years old, his lead level was 28 micrograms. At 10, it was 27 micrograms and at age 12, 23 micrograms.

When they told me what the symptoms were I said, Thats me, thats my life, Flory said. Ive had mental health issues all my life, so when I found out, it was great to finally know.

HIGH LEAD LEVELS IN SILVER VALLEY In Flint, lead levels in drinking water rose sharply when the city, under a state-appointed manager, switched its water source from Lake Huron to the more corrosive Flint River. Health and environmental officials began seeing a rise in the numbers of children with blood levels of 5 micrograms or more. Some exceeded 10.

Thats well below what the North Idaho children experienced in the 1970s.

I knew something was wrong all the time, and a lot of other people were in the same boat, Flory said. The thing at Flint ... got people thinking again.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency designated a 21-square-mile area around the Bunker Hill smelter as a Superfund site in 1983. In the 1990s, crews removed the upper 12 inches of soil in more than 1,600 yards, replacing it with a barrier and then clean topsoil and sod. The EPA has since expanded the Superfund site to the entire Silver Valley, and the mining companies whose operations over a century contributed to the heavy metal contamination paid $700 million for the cleanup, which continues.

IDAHO REGULATORS TAKE ANOTHER LOOK Lawsuits that followed showed the Bunker Hill disaster was caused by a company that made a calculated decision to keep the smelter running to take advantage of high prices even though it threatened childrens health. Like Flint, state and federal environmental officials failed to catch it or prevent it. Bunker Hill lost an early lawsuit, and went bankrupt in 1981.

By any yardstick, the cleanup work of the last 20-plus years has made the people of the Silver Valley significantly safer, said EPA regional director Dennis McLarren. That said, much work remains. ... We need to redouble our efforts to improve water quality and address lead exposure risks in recreational areas.

In the 1970s, lead was much less of a concern than it is today. It spewed from auto exhausts  lead was a gas additive  and was routinely used in paint until 1978. Today, health officials say no level of lead is safe for children. Every organ in the body can be affected.

Its against that background that DEQs Henry decided that Idaho needed to redouble its water-monitoring efforts.

Any time one of Idahos 900 drinking water systems makes a change, it must do tests at the most at-risk homes. Those are usually homes with pipes installed before lead was banned in 1986 or those with pipe joints soldered with lead-copper solder.

If lead levels in the water exceed 15 parts per billion, the state can force utilities to take corrective action, which usually means helping them get back into compliance.

But Henry wanted to do more. Thats why she gave the systems the July deadline to doublecheck.

These arent required, she said, but they make sense.

Henry said she has gotten a positive response. The city of Meridian had decided on its own to conduct a full evaluation of the lead levels in its water.

TAMARACK REPORTS HIGH LEAD DEQ records showed three water systems in the Southwest Idaho region out of compliance on lead, which is limited to 15 parts per billion. Two are subdivisions near Crouch in Boise County, Castle Mountain Creeks and River at Pine Tree, which together serve about 300 people. DEQ is working with the systems to bring them back into compliance.

The largest is Tamarack Resort, which has 350 connections but just a sporadic seasonal population. Its violation comes from its large size and low use, which leaves water sitting in the systems pipes, Henry said. Because the resort is new, it has modern and compliant water pipes. The lead is coming from soldered joints.

The resort went through the two six-month water-monitoring periods and still was in violation, so it hired an engineering firm that recommended it add soda ash in filtration to raise the waters pH and reduce its corrosiveness. Properly treated, the water wont leach the lead from the solder.

With any home or water faucet that is used rarely, Henry recommends running the water for a while before drinking. If people for any reason think they arent getting clean water, they should call their water utility, Henry said. If the utility is not responsive, the customer should contact DEQ.

LEAD LEVELS DROP AS CLEANUP PROCEEDS The Idaho Panhandle Health District has been testing and monitoring children since the 1980s. As the cleanup has progressed, the levels of lead in the blood of Silver Valley children have dropped.

The test is administered at the end of the summer, when children playing outside in the still-contaminated landscape would have the highest dose. A sample of 100 children between 6 months and 9 years old are tested. Of that sample last summer, six Silver Valley children tested above 5 micrograms.

Kids who test above 5 micrograms are offered free consultations to help them and their families learn to reduce contamination.

In 1983, 25 percent of Silver Valley children had blood levels of lead higher than 25 micrograms.

Today, blood lead levels above 10 micrograms per deciliter are rare, said Andy Helkey, Panhandle Health Districts manager of its lead-intervention program.

Helkey attributes the reduction in lead blood levels in the Silver Valley not just to the cleanup of local yards and public places, but also to parents taking precautions to avoid lead exposure.

It wasnt always easy to get families to cooperate.

The mining industry is a major employer even today in the Silver Valley and many people saw the cleanup and the lead- testing program as threats to their livelihoods.

Barbara Miller, who since the 1980s has led the Silver Valley Community Resource Center, a grassroots non-profit pushing for the cleanup, was often demonized in the press and on the streets.

But today the antipathy has died down as the scope of the contamination and health effects have become known. In 2003, her group won a federal court decision ordering Idaho to require lead testing of all children eligible for Medicaid.

Miller said the state still has not complied with the decision and hundreds of children in Shoshone County, the center of the cleanup, still arent being tested. Millers resource center helps get health services to people like Flory.

But shes also trying to get the EPA to fund a clinic specifically for those in the valley affected by lead.

Poisoning is scary, but its preventable and once it happens there is a way to help, Miller said. You can never stop trying to improve the quality of life.

CANT FORCE PARENTS TO TEST The challenge for Helkey and state officials is that forcing families to test their children for lead, even if they get Medicaid, is politically impossible. Families in Silver Valley can get a $30 incentive if they come to Panhandle Health District for testing, but even that doesnt work with all families.

But the furor over Flint has helped their efforts.

What Flint has kind of done is focus the medical field back on lead, which is a good thing, Helkey said.

Flory is working with Miller on the clinic while seeking care for her personal ailments that have gotten worse over the years. Flory understands and shares the communitys loyalty to the mining industry: His father, Ronald, was a miner who survived the Sunshine Mine Fire in 1972 that killed 91 miners.

He knows getting people to seek treatment isnt always easy.

Its really hard for somebody who has been exposed to come forward and say theyre leaded, Flory said. I know how they feel.
Moroccan Interior Ministry has announced the netting in Casablanca and Had Soualem of 2 more members of the ISIS Libyan branch who are allegedly connected to the 10-men cell arrested in Morocco on March 24.

The two men were according to security accounts arrested on April 1 and 2 at Casablanca and Had Soualem following investigations related to the captured cell in the south of the kingdom, in the cities of Marrakesh, Sidi Bennour, Smara and Had Soualem on March 24.

The members of the cell believed linked to the IS branch in Libya were planning to join IS Libyan local franchise where they were to receive training before returning to Morocco to launch terror attacks.

The Interior ministry statement also revealed that the captured terror cell was in possession of serious and heinous plans to destabilize the kingdom through terror attacks against security institutions and strategic sites.

Some members of the 10-men cell were reportedly acting as liaison agents and provided to Moroccans eager to join the terrorist group in Libya.

A recent report by security experts pointed out that 500 locally based Moroccans have pledged loyalty to IS while 1,500 Moroccan youths have been fighting in the ranks of the terrorist group around the world mostly in Libya, Syria and Iraq.

Moroccan authorities are waging tireless war against Islamist extremists and fanatics. They have disrupted over 160 terror cells since 2002, and nearly forty over the past three years.

Morocco has become an important target for terrorist organizations after it emerged as one of world leading successful fighters of terror groups thanks to its effective anti-terror strategy and powerful intelligence service.

French authorities announced last month they would beef up their intelligence agencies and anti-terror squads by new recruits from Morocco and other Maghreb countries as the terror threat is increasing against France and the entire of Europe.
Hopes of an agreement between major oil producers to freeze production could be fading away after the Iranian oil minister Bijan Zanganeh said that exportation of the countrys oil and gas condensate has exceeded 2million barrels per day after daily production was increased by 250,000bpd in March.

His comments coupled with the interview of Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman with Bloomberg, published on Friday, signal that a deal is unlikely to be reached during the next meeting on April 17 between OPEC members and non-OPEC members for a freeze on production based on the production levels of January 11.

Salman said Riaydh will only halt its production levels if all the other major producers, including Iran, make the same decision, warning that they will otherwise increase sales.

The warning cast doubts on the outcome of the upcoming meeting amidst reports that other OPEC members are boosting their production levels ahead of the talks.

Iran has unveiled plans to boost its production after the lifting of sanctions.

Semi-official Mehr News Agency reported on Sunday that Minister Zanganeh would only attend the talks if he had time but the oil ministry refuted the statement arguing that it was made during an interview on March 10 without clarifying if the minister will be present in Doha.

Kuwaits acting oil minister Anas al-Saleh in March had stressed that a common agreement on a positive stand will serve market stability but also underlined that Ill go full power if theres no agreement. Every barrel I produce, Ill sell.

The oil market is reportedly being supplied with more than 2milion bpd than the needed demand and reports of an agreement looming away would lead to a fall in oil prices after speculations of an agreement increased prices by 14% in March. With Iran aiming to increase its production capacity to 4million bpd, global oil prices could further slip.
Israel extended the fishing zone of Gazas fishermen to nine nautical miles (16km) from six (11km) with effect from Sunday but the measure will only be implemented in the central and southern shores of the Gaza Strip.

The decision was welcomed but still falls short of the required twenty nautical miles (37km) into the Mediterranean as agreed upon at the Oslo peace accord.

Areas close to the Israeli border will continue to be limited at six nautical miles due to fears of attacks from Hamas militants. Israel exercises a naval blockade on Gaza to stop weapons from reaching Hamas which controls the coastal city after forcing Fatah out in 2007. The latest hostilities between Hamas and Israel were in 2014.

Chairman of Gazas fishermen union, Nizar Ayyash, said there are more than 4,000 fishermen in Gaza and the latest expansion is insufficient considering that there are 1,95million people living in the area. He deplored the frequent interception and arrest of fishermen who breach the imposed limits as well as the confiscation of their boats and equipment.

Sources close to the Palestinian Authoritys civil administration committee stated that an agreement was reached with the Israeli authorities to allow the entry of fishing materials.

There have been numerous reports of Israeli coastal guards opening live fire on fishermen but Tel Aviv deems it necessary to deter possible security threats outside of the designated fishing zone.

Before being increased to six nautical miles, Gazas fishing zone was limited to three nautical miles. An Israeli army spokesman said the expansion would contribute 400,000 shekels to Gazas fishing industry.

On Sunday, Israel informed Palestinian officials that it was immediately stopping cement deliveries to Gaza without providing any reason for the decision.
President Hadi relieved Khaled Bahah of his duties as Prime Minister and Vice-President of his government on Sunday and named him as his advisor.

Local and international media claim the removal was due to the two mens differing opinions on tactics and strategies in the ongoing war.

Bahah known to be supportive of a political agreement with the Houthi Movement is now replaced by Brigadier General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar as Vice president and Ahmed Obeid bin Baghr will occupy the post of Prime Minister.

Ahmar served in the military under former President Saleh as the commander of the First Armored Division in Sanaa before he joined Hadis camp. He had been appointed deputy supreme commander of the army in February.

Baghr was a former official in Salehs political party and once served as deputy prime minister and minister of communications before being appointed as an adviser to Hadi in August.

The appointment of Ahmar and Baghr is seen as a positive move by hardliners who are not supportive of a political agreement with the Houthis. A Yemeni government official hinted that the reshuffle could undermine the upcoming UN-led peace talks scheduled to take place on April 18 in Kuwait.

Saudi Arabias Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman last week said there is significant progress in negotiations with the Houthis and expressed hope that this opportunity would materialize on the ground. But if things relapse, we are ready, he said.

Bahah was serving as Prime Minister when the Houthis overran Sanaa and forced him together with president Hadi to resign. They took up their posts after escaping from the Houthi house arrest but differences between them came to public attention in December when Bahah publicly criticized the president for reshuffling the government without consulting him.
The implementation of the expulsion of failed asylum seekers and migrants reached between the EU and Turkey in March began over the weekend with Germany and Greece sending the first contingents.

A spokesperson at the German interior ministry said most of the migrants arriving on Monday in Turkey will be families with children while Turkish state news agency Anadolu reported that the first batch of those from Greece on board a ship were mainly Pakistanis.

According to the EU-Turkey agreement reached in March, migrants who have entered Greece illegally starting from March 20, will be subject to return to Turkey if they do not apply for asylum or if their request is rejected.

For every Syrian returned from the Greek islands to Turkey another Syrian will be resettled from Turkey to the EU.

Giorgos Kyritsis, a spokesman for a government refugee crisis committee in Greece, said there is no immediate timetable for returns because examining the applications will take some time.

Heavily criticized by human rights groups over ethical and legal issues, the agreement is seen by the EU as a way of curbing the number of migrants. Germany accepted more than a million migrants but Chancellor Angela Merkel is under intense pressure to stem the flow.

Ankara has however rejected accusations from rights groups that it was forcibly returning Syrian refugees with the foreign ministry stating that the allegations do not reflect reality in any way.

Amnesty International alleged that Turkey is not a safe country for refugees and the head of its branch in Greece, Giorgos Kosmopoulos, said the expulsion is the first day of a very difficult time for refugee rights claiming that the EU is forging ahead with a dangerous deal.
Southern Madagascar has been suffering from a severe drought for almost a year that severely impacted agricultural activities.

The government of the Indian Ocean Island has declared a state of emergency in the southern region which is the most badly affected by the drought.

The drought impacted agricultural activities and put at stake access to food, healthcare, water and sanitation in the region, increasing cases of acute malnutrition. The UN had drafted an emergency response plan with a budget of $70 million, of which only 9% has been secured so far.

In a statement published last month, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Program (WFP) said they were expanding their operations in response to growing food insecurity as a result of poor harvests across the region, which is facing the risk of another poor rainfall season.

Meteorology forecasts had expected El Nino weather phenomenon to be severe in Madagascar from Oct. 1, 2015 to April 30, 2016.

According to these forecasts, the entire southern part of Madagascar will suffer from insufficiency of rainfalls, while other parts of the country will suffer from abundance of rain, which may cause inundations.
Egyptian minister of Industry and Foreign Trade Tarek Qabil on Friday said the North African nation will ban rice exports as of April 4 in order to preserve stocks for the local market and price stability.

Rice exports were banned on Sept. 1 to satisfy domestic consumption. The agriculture ministry said at the time it expected white rice production to reach 2.7 million tons in the 2015-2016 season, less than the estimated annual consumption of 3.6 million tons.

But the banning decision was later cast in doubt after the agriculture minister resigned and was subsequently arrested on corruption charges.

Qabil said the new ban aims to meet the needs of the domestic market, which is growing significantly.

The ministry is coordinating with all the ministries and concerned entities to tighten controls at customs and borders to prevent rice smuggling out, Qabil said, adding that deterrent measures will be taken against violators.

The decision will positively contribute to rice prices stability, he said.

Egypt first imposed a ban on exports in 2008 saying it wanted to save rice for local consumption and also to discourage rice farmers from growing the crop to save water.

According to Bloomberg, food shortages and price jumps carry a political risk for Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi as millions of Egyptians depend on state subsidies to eat.
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Two companion papers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) research teams suggest that targeting multiple angiogenesis pathways simultaneously could help overcome the resistance to anti-angiogenic treatment inevitably developed by the devastating brain tumor glioblastoma. Appearing in PNAS Early Edition, the reports describe how two different methods of inhibiting both vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and angiopoietin-2 (Ang-2) in animal models not only normalized tumor blood vessels to a greater extent than anti-VEGF therapy alone but also shifted the action of tumor-infiltrating immune cells from a pro-tumor to an anti-tumor state.

"These papers offer a potential solution for glioblastoma's escape from anti-VEGF therapy, which is mediated by activating alternative growth factor pathways," says Rakesh K. Jain, PhD, director of the Steele Laboratory of Tumor Biology in the MGH Radiation Oncology Department and co-corresponding author of both papers. "In our back-to-back papers we not only provide proof-of-principle data that dual treatment strategies can slow glioblastoma growth and improve survival but also reveal the underlying mechanisms for these benefits."

The most common malignant tumor arising in the brain, glioblastoma is characterized by a highly abnormal, leaky and inefficient blood supply, caused by the overexpression of angiogenic factors like VEGF. These vascular abnormalities lead to swelling around the tumor and poor blood perfusion within the tumor, causing it to become more aggressive and resistant to chemotherapy and radiation treatment. While anti-VEGF treatment has become part of standard postsurgical treatment for glioblastoma, its beneficial effects are temporary and do not extend patient survival.

Previous studies from members of these MGH teams revealed that glioblastoma patients receiving anti-VEGF treatment also had a transient drop in blood levels of Ang-2. Levels of that factor rebounded as tumor progression resumed, suggesting that Ang-2 activity may contribute to resistance to anti-VEGF treatment. The researchers also found that, similar to VEGF, Ang-2 is expressed by all types of glioblastomas. To capture the diversity of different glioblastoma types, the investigators designed two methods of testing whether inhibiting both pathways could overcome treatment resistance.

One approach combined the use of the experimental oral anti-VEGF drug cediranib with an Ang-2-neutralizing antibody in two mouse models of glioblastoma and found that dual therapy improved blood vessel normalization and extended survival compared with cediranib treatment alone. Dual therapy also attracted tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) to the tumors and increased the proportion of the anti-tumor form of those immune cells. Importantly, blocking the migration of TAMs to tumors reduced the benefits of dual therapy.

The second study used an antibody that targets both VEGF and Ang-2 and showed that dual treatment improved the architecture of tumor vessels in a mouse model with abnormal vessels. TAMs were reprogrammed to an anti-tumor state in both this tumor model and in another model not characterized by abnormal vasculature, indicating that vascular normalization was not the only mechanism of benefit. In fact, dual therapy promoted anti-tumor immunity by shifting the population of TAMs towards an anti-tumor form, consistent with the first study but regardless of whether or not surrounding blood vessels were abnormal.

"Our studies indicate that dual targeting of VEGF and Ang-2 could overcome some of the shortcomings of currently available glioblastoma therapies," says Jain, who is the Andrew Werk Cook Professor of Tumor Biology at Harvard Medical School. "Clinically accessible agents are currently available for this dual targeting strategy, and our finding that dual therapy can also improve anti-tumor immune responses, irrespective of its effect on blood vessels, is particularly timely given the rapid development of new immunotherapies. These results open new avenues of research on novel combinations to obtain more durable results against this devastating disease."

Explore further A culprit behind brain tumor resistance to therapy

More information: Dual inhibition of Ang-2 and VEGF receptors normalizes tumor vasculature and prolongs survival in glioblastoma by altering macrophages, PNAS, www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1525349113 Dual inhibition of Ang-2 and VEGF receptors normalizes tumor vasculature and prolongs survival in glioblastoma by altering macrophages, Ang-2/VEGF bispecific antibody reprograms macrophages and resident microglia to anti-tumor phenotype and prolongs glioblastoma survival, PNAS, www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1525360113 Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Two established techniques for correcting the root cause of the heart rhythm disorder atrial fibrillation show similar effects and safety outcomes, according to research presented at the American College of Cardiology's 65th Annual Scientific Session.

The study, called FIRE AND ICE, is the largest randomized trial to compare radiofrequency and cryoballoon ablation, two techniques designed to treat atrial fibrillation by disabling small portions of the heart that generate out-of-sync electrical signals. Radiofrequency ablation uses heat energy to disable the targeted heart tissue, while the cryoballoon, a newer technique, uses extreme cold to achieve the same effect. The trial revealed no differences between the two techniques for the study's primary outcomesthe recurrence of an irregular heart rhythm or the need for medication or subsequent procedures to address atrial fibrillation. It was funded in part by Medtronic, which makes the cryoballoon device.

"The FIRE AND ICE trial demonstrated that the cryoballoon, a newer, easier-to-use ablation catheter, worked as well as the established technology, which ultimately means that more patients can be treated for atrial fibrillation without having [to go to a] specialized cardiac center," said Karl-Heinz Kuck, M.D., Ph.D., head of cardiology at St. Georg Hospital in Hamburg, Germany, and the study's lead author. "In addition, there was, in general, a low risk of procedural complications in both groups, demonstrating that catheter ablation has become much safer over the years."

Atrial fibrillation, estimated to affect more than 33 million people worldwide, is an irregular heart rhythm that can cause fatigue, lightheadedness, shortness of breath, chest pain and an increased risk for stroke. Although medications and lifestyle changes can help manage the condition's risk factors and symptoms, about 30 percent of patients do not benefit from available medications or cannot take them due to side effects or other reasons. Ablation is one option for treating these patients. During ablation, a physician threads a small medical device through a vein in the groin to kill a small number of cells around the heart's pulmonary veins, preventing them from issuing electrical signals that are out of sync with the rest of the heart.

The trial, conducted in eight European countries, enrolled 769 patients needing ablation for intermittent atrial fibrillation. Patients were randomly assigned to receive either the radiofrequency or cryoballoon technique; both patients and physicians were aware of which technique was being used. The two groups were similar in terms of demographic factors, such as age and gender, as well as health status, based on parameters such as body mass index, blood pressure and various measures of heart function.

In addition to using different methods for disabling the target heart tissue, the two techniques involved different procedures to help the physician locate the target tissue. For radiofrequency procedures, physicians were guided by 3-D electroanatomical mapping to create tissue lesions in a point-by-point ablation approach. For cryoballoon procedures, physicians used a type of X-ray imaging known as fluoroscopy to create tissue lesions in a single-step ablation approach.

Outcomes were assessed through in-person patient visits conducted three months after the procedure, six months after the procedure and every six months thereafter. Each visit included an electrocardiogram test to assess heart rhythm and function, as well as the use of a Holter monitor, in which the patient wears a monitor for 24 hours to check for any abnormal heart rhythm. Patients were tracked for just over 18 months, on average.

The results revealed no significant difference in the rates of recurrence of an irregular heart rhythm or the need for medication or subsequent procedures to address atrial fibrillation, outcomes that collectively occurred in 64.1 percent of patients receiving radiofrequency ablation and 65.4 percent of cryoballoon patients within 12 months after the procedure.

There were also no significant differences in the overall safety profile of the two techniques. Safety was assessed with a composite endpoint of death, stroke and procedure-related serious adverse events; 87.2 percent of patients receiving radiofrequency ablation and 89.8 percent of cryoballoon patients had not experienced any of these safety endpoints by 12 months after the procedure.

In both groups, there was generally a low rate of procedure-related complications such as infection, dangerous heart rhythms or accumulation of fluid in the heart. However, patients receiving cryoballoon ablation were significantly more likely to experience injury to the phrenic nerve, which can affect the functioning of the diaphragm and require patients to use an artificial ventilator. Such injuries occurred in 2.7 percent of cryoballoon patients and zero patients receiving radiofrequency ablation. In all but one of these cases, functioning was restored by 12 months post-operation.

The study revealed some significant procedural differences between the two techniques. Because it involved 3-D anatomical mapping, radiofrequency ablation required about five minutes less fluoroscopy time and, thus, exposed patients and physicians to radiation for a shorter period of time, though Kuck said that the overall usage of fluoroscopy was relatively limited in both groups, at 21.7 minutes and 16.6 minutes total on average for the cryoballoon and radiofrequency procedures, respectively. Cryoablation was associated with a shorter overall procedure time by 18 minutes per procedure, on average, and a similarly reduced amount of time in which the catheter was present inside the heart's left atrium while the ablation was carried out.

"The procedure time was interesting because there are more cost pressures on the healthcare system for more efficient tools that keep procedures short and predictable," Kuck said.

Kuck said the findings could help inform future medical guidelines on the use of different catheter ablation techniques for treating atrial fibrillation. One limitation of the study is that it did not investigate ablation for treating patients with more advanced stages of atrial fibrillation. A separate trial would be needed to assess the ablation techniques' effectiveness and safety for that patient population, he said.

Explore further Improved imaging takes x-ray risks out of the picture

More information: Karl-Heinz Kuck et al. Cryoballoon or Radiofrequency Ablation for Paroxysmal Atrial Fibrillation, New England Journal of Medicine (2016). Journal information: New England Journal of Medicine Karl-Heinz Kuck et al. Cryoballoon or Radiofrequency Ablation for Paroxysmal Atrial Fibrillation,(2016). DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1602014
A large randomized controlled trial of ischemic postconditioning in patients who had experienced the deadliest form of heart attackST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI)failed to show that this procedure significantly reduces death from any cause or hospitalization for heart failure, according to research presented at the American College of Cardiology's 65th Annual Scientific Session.

STEMI is a severe form of heart attack caused by prolonged blockage of blood supply in the heart. It requires immediate angioplasty, a non-surgical procedure in which a balloon is fed into the blood vessels through a catheter and inflated to open narrowed or blocked arteries, allowing blood to flow. A stent is often placed at the blockage site to keep the artery open. In the United States, about 250,000 people experience a STEMI every year.

Ischemic postconditioning is a variation on angioplasty that involves using 30-second bursts of blood flow interspersed with 30-second pauses to restore blood flow to the heart.

"Abrupt reperfusion by angioplasty may itself damage the heart muscle," said Thomas Engstrm, M.D., Ph.D., of Rigshospitalet University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and lead author of the study. "The thinking was that performing the reperfusion in a gentle, graded fashion would protect the heart against reperfusion injury."

Studies suggest that up to 35 percent of patients may experience reperfusion injury during angioplasty, he said.

Earlier studies in STEMI patients showed that ischemic postconditioning improved ST-segment resolutionan important marker of arterial blockage on electrocardiogramreduced damage to heart muscle, and in some patients limited the extent of reperfusion injury. It was unclear, however, whether these improvements ultimately reduced hospitalizations or improved patient survival.

The DANAMI-3 iPOST trial, which took place in Denmark, included 1,234 patients (average age 61; 79 percent male) with acute STEMI symptoms of less than 12 hours' duration who were randomly assigned to receive standard angioplasty or ischemic postconditioning prior to stent implantation in the blocked artery. The primary endpoint was a composite of death from any cause and hospitalization for heart failure. Patients were followed for a minimum of two years, with an average follow-up time of 39 months.

Deaths from any cause and hospitalizations for heart failure  the primary endpoint, were reduced by 7 percent in patients who received iPOST compared with those who received standard angioplasty, but this result did not reach statistical significance, Engstrm said. Although the primary endpoint was not met, a statistically significant 4 percent improvement was seen in a secondary endpoint, left ventricular ejection fractiona measure of how much blood is being pumped out of the left ventriclein patients whose STEMIs involved the front wall of the left ventricle (the heart's main pumping chamber), he said.

"This may translate into improved survival over more years of follow-up," Engstrm said.

This study was the first large clinical trial designed to evaluate clinical outcomes in STEMI patients, as opposed to surrogate endpoints such as ST-segment resolution, Engstrm said. He said larger trials may be required to definitely establish whether ischemic postconditioning improves clinical outcomes.

A limitation of the study is that the physicians performing the angioplasties cannot be blinded to the treatment group that patients are assigned to, Engstrm said.

The DANAMI-3 iPOST trial was funded by the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation and Danish Council for Strategic Research.

Explore further Complete angioplasty safe for certain heart attack survivors
T cells are the 'foot soldiers' that fight cancer inside the body. Cancer cells can fight the foot soldiers back by pushing a brake on the T cells that will turn them off. This 'brake' is a molecule on the surface of T cells called CTLA-4. Until now, most scientists agreed that CTLA-4 was only present on T cells and other cells of the same lineage. But Baylor College of Medicine researchers have discovered that CTLA-4 is also produced and secreted by dendritic cells, which are the 'generals' of the T cells in the battle against cancer. The results appear in Stem Cells and Development.

"These results are relevant to the battle against cancer because we showed that dendritic cell CTLA-4 performs a very critical regulatory function. Its presence inhibits the generation of downstream anticancer responses, whereas its absence permits robust priming of such responses. These new data provide a strong rationale to use the drug ipilimumab in new and better ways, for instance in conjunction with cancer vaccines," said Dr. William K. Decker, assistant professor of pathology & immunology at Baylor and the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy, a member of the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center, and senior author of this paper.

Ipilimumab is a Food and Drug Administration-approved drug to treat melanoma. Scientists think that ipilimumab helps the body fight cancer cells by removing the 'brake' cancer cells place on the T cells. Ipilimumab binds to CTLA-4 on T cells, blocking signals that turn off the T cells. As a result, scientists think, T cells resume their fight against the cancer.

In this study, Baylor researchers have contributed a new piece to the puzzle of how the immune system regulates T-cell responses. Decker and his colleagues provide solid evidence that dendritic cells, the 'generals' that direct the activity of the T cells, produce and release CTLA-4, which until now has been controversial. When activated, dendritic cells secrete CTLA-4-studded microvesicles into their environment. The microvesicles can bind to other dendritic cells, be internalized, and turn off the dendritic cells, which then cannot proceed to activate T cells.

"To show the relevance of turning off the dendritic cells in the body's response against tumors, we studied a mouse model of melanoma," said Dr. Matthew M. Halpert, an instructor in immunology and first author of the paper. "We tested two types of dendritic cells: normal dendritic cells expressing CTLA-4 and dendritic cells treated with CTLA-4 siRNA, a strategy that dramatically diminishes the production of CTLA-4. One group of mice received melanoma cells and a vaccine against the tumor made with normal dendritic cells. A second group of mice received melanoma cells and a vaccine made with dendritic cells that produce little amounts of CTLA-4. The mice that received normal dendritic cells, which produce CTLA-4, were not able to slow down the growth of the tumor. On the other hand, the mice treated with dendritic cells that produce little CTLA-4 were able to develop an immune response that markedly limited tumor growth. These results suggest that priming an immune response against melanoma in the absence of CTLA-4 triggers a response that can control tumor growth in this mouse model."

These results have encouraged the Baylor researchers to suggest that strategies that combine taking away CTLA-4, or blocking it with ipilimumab, with specific tumor vaccines, of which many already exist in experimental settings, may result in better immune responses that can control tumor growth.

Vanaja Konduri, Dan Liang, Yunyu Chen, Silke Paust, Jon Levitt, all from Baylor, also contributed to this work. James Wing, an assistant professor at the Immunology Frontier Research Institute at the University of Osaka in Japan, was a key collaborator as well.
Yuan Bo Peng. Credit: UTA

Abuse of prescription opioid medicines used to treat chronic pain has reached epidemic proportions, so much that the White House has announced new efforts to combat addiction and prevent the thousands of overdose-related deaths reported in the U.S. each year.

But a University of Texas at Arlington research team has been working on an alternative solution: electrical stimulation of a deep, middle brain structure that blocks pain signals at the spinal cord level without drug intervention. The process also triggers the release of beneficial dopamine, which may reduce the emotional distress associated with long-term pain, researchers said.

"This is the first study to use a wireless electrical device to alleviate pain by directly stimulating the ventral tegmental area of the brain," said Yuan Bo Peng, UTA psychology professor. "While still under laboratory testing, this new method does provide hope that in the future we will be able to alleviate chronic pain without the side effects of medications."

Peng and J.-C. Chiao, an electrical engineering professor, detail their discoveries in a new paper published in the leading neuroscience journal Experimental Brain Research. Professor Xiaofei Yang, an electrical engineering professor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China also participated in the study.

The project was supported partly by grants received from the Texas Norman Hackerman Advanced Research Program, Intel Corp. and the Texas Medical Research Collaborative, a research partnership among universities, health care providers and corporations that gives grants to jump-start research around real-world problems.

Nearly two million Americans abused or were dependent on opioid medicines in 2014, and 165,000 died between 1999 and 2014 from overdoses related to opioid prescriptions, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

In their experiments, Peng and Chiao used their patented custom-designed wireless device to demonstrate that stimulation of the ventral tegmental area reduced the sensation of pain. They also confirmed that this stimulation reduced pain signals in the spinal cord, effectively blocking the perception of pain.

Morteza Khaledi, dean of the UTA's College of Science, commended the researchers on this important work.

"Solutions for chronic pain are at the forefront of current medical research," Khaledi said. "Dr. Peng and Dr. Chiao's research is high-impact work focused on health and the human condition, a key theme within UTA's Strategic Plan 2020: Bold Solutions | Global Impact."

Chiao has constant pain from slipped discs and pinched nerves in his neck and also witnessed his uncle suffer after chemotherapy for prostate cancer. His uncle used an early implant device to electrically stimulate his spinal cord and relieve the pain. The technology was the best available, but he had to manually change the stimulation dosages every 15 minutes, and suffered without much sleep before he passed away.

These difficult experiences have fueled Chiao and Peng's decade-long commitment to finding a solution for chronic pain by devising advanced wireless implants that take patients out of the equation, treating their pain in the background as they go on with their lives. Dr. Peng initiated the idea and worked with Chiao, Yang and other researchers to develop new technology, methods and knowledge across disciplines.

Chiao earned his doctorate in electrical engineering from California Institute of Technology and holds several patents, including in the area of wireless medical sensor technologies. Currently, he is the Janet and Mike Greene Endowed Professor and Jenkins Garrett endowed Professor of Electrical Engineering and Joint Biomedical Engineering Program at UTA.

Peng has specialized in pain relief throughout his career. He was a medical doctor and holds a doctorate in neuroscience from University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. He has held postdoctoral fellowships focused on pain at Johns Hopkins Medical Institute, as well as the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Health and Human Services.

Other participants in this research were Ai-Ling Li, a postdoctoral fellow in Indiana University who earned her psychology doctorate with Peng at UTA, and Jiny Sibi, a medical student at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, who was previously an undergraduate student in Peng's laboratory at UTA.

"Until this study, the ventral segmental area of the brain was studied more for its key role in positive reinforcement, reward and drug abuse," said Peng. "We have now confirmed that stimulation of this area of the brain can also be an analgesic tool."

Explore further Study shows spinal cord stimulation reduces emotional aspect of chronic pain
Human heart. Credit: copyright American Heart Association

Heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide and the burden is increasing - much of which could be reduced through modifiable risk factors.

A new review in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology examines the role of the family for heart health by focusing on interdependence of the family, shared environment, parenting style, caregiver perceptions and genomics.

According to the study authors, reducing the global burden of heart disease requires continuous heart health promotion and prevention throughout life and the family plays a central role in this process.

Effective promotion of heart health will require family-based approaches that focus on both caregivers and children, encourage communication among the family, and address the conditions in which families live and operate.

Explore further Barriers to an integrated family-based health promotion program in Harlem
The communications director for U.S.. Rep. Alan Grayson, all around pro Ken Scudder, is leaving the Orlando Congressman's office to work at the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee, which researches a wide range of economic issues.

"It's a fantastic opportunity," said Scudder, who joined Grayson's staff less than a year ago and has spent a good deal of his time dealing with questions, controversies and and ethics investigations concerning Grayson's management of a hedge fund. Scudder said his departure had nothing to do with the notoriously volatile Grayson, who is running for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination against U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy.

The senior staff of Grayson's U.S.. Senate campaign quit late last year.

- Adam Smith, Tampa Bay Times
U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz's Democratic challenger says he raised more than a half-million during his first fundraising quarter in a South Florida district.

The fundraising report for the quarter is due April 15th but Tim Canova said in an email to supporters today that he raised $557,000 from more than 15,000 donors.

"Not only are we the fastest growing grassroots campaign for Congress in the country, but we also raised more than any first quarter for any first-time candidate in the history of South Florida," he wrote in an email. "And unlike my opponent, we did not take a penny from any corporate political action committee (PAC) or Super PAC. Rather, with an average contribution of only $20, our campaign is powered by working families  teachers, nurses, small business owners, union members, students, and seniors."

Canova, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University, is running for elected office for the first time in a Broward/Miami-Dade congressional district.

Wasserman Schultz raised about $1.1 million for her campaign committee through the end of 2015 -- and she has raised about $763,000 for her leadership PAC. Her campaign has not yet announced how much she raised the first quarter of 2016. As the Democratic National Committee chair and a longtime incumbent, she has the ability to out-fundraise a newcomer by large amounts.

In March, President Barack Obama endorsed Wasserman Schultz -- a sign that she is taking her primary opponent seriously. Wasserman Schultz, who was first elected in 2004, has never faced a primary challenger and has easily beaten GOP opponents in the left-leaning district.

Canova has modeled his campaign somewhat after Bernie Sanders by emphasizing issues such as campaign finance reform and income inequality. But he will have to draw support from more than Sanders' supporters because Clinton won the congressional district by more than two-to-one.

Canova has attacked Wasserman Schultz for her position on payday loans. She co-sponsored a bill that would give preference to Florida's payday law -- a law that some consumer activists have said has continued the cycle of debt for the poor.
@MichaelAuslen

Carlos Lopez-Cantera is headed to Israel.

The lieutenant govenror's campaign for U.S. Senate has delayed a statewide tour -- originally set to begin Monday -- so he can go on the trip, spokeswoman Courtney Alexander said. She could not confirm further details of the trip because of safety concerns.

As a result, the Florida First Tour has been postponed to April 19.

"The lieutenant governor will continue, as he has since the beginning of his campaign, to hold roundtables with Floridians to find common-sense solutions to fix the mess that is Washington, D.C.," Alexander said in a statement. "The tour will highlight job creation, economic opportunity, education and ensuring our veterans are taken care of."

Congressman David Jolly, R-Indian Shores, also a Senate candidate, returned from Israel last week, where he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and called for increased military support to the country.

"Let's be clear - if Israel's security is breached, our own U.S. national security is immediately compromised, our U.S. interests around the globe are at risk, and our very homeland, the continental United States, is immediately threatened by a new state-funded international terror coalition like we have never before seen," he said in a statement then.

Lopez-Cantera is not the only Senate hopeful planning a tour. Congressman Ron DeSantis, R-Ponte Vedra Beach, on Monday kicked off a series of events he's called the "Defeat the Jihad Tour."

Lopez-Cantera, DeSantis and Jolly are running against Orlando defense contractor Todd Wilcox and Bradenton homebuilder Carlos Beruff to replace Marco Rubio in the Senate.
In March, the GOP and Democratic presidential candidates faced off at separate debates in Miami before Floridas March 15 primary.

Donald Trump won the GOP primary -- prompting Marco Rubio to suspend his campaign -- while on the Democratic side Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders. U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of South Florida also drew attention for her role as Democratic National Committee chair and because she is facing a primary opponent for the first time in a decade.

Heres a look at the most clicked on new fact-checks in March counting down to the most popular from PolitiFact Florida.
Instead of worrying about ISIS infiltrating the country, U.S. Senate candidate and Rep. Ron DeSantis is concerned that members of other terrorist groups have already been caught trying to sneak across the border from Mexico.

The Ponte Vedra Beach Republican called a hearing of the House Oversight Committees National Security subcommittee to discuss what to do about what he considered a growing threat.

"Recent reports state that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection has apprehended several members of known Islamist terrorist organizations crossing the southern border in recent years," he said March 23, 2016.

DeSantis has made terrorism a central issue in his campaign. On April 4, 2016, he embarked on a series of town hall-style events in Florida he dubbed the "Defeat the Jihad Tour."

Weve checked hyperbole by politicians that ISIS is invading via the southern bordertime and time and time again. Because theres no hard evidence it is happening, those claims range from Mostly False to Pants On Fire!

But we dont often hear politicians warn about about immigrants with ties to other terrorist organizations being caught secretly heading into the United States. According to some reports, those apprehensions do happen, although experts told us any true threat may be a bit exaggerated.

Keep reading Joshua Gillin's fact-check from PolitiFact Florida.
@MichaelAuslen

Nick Duran, the head of a group that advocates for free and charitable clinics in Florida and a longtime health care advocate, filed Monday for an an open House seat in Miami.

Pointing to large numbers of uninsured people and the amount of money being spent on incarcerating juveniles, Duran told the Times/Herald that he will make health care and education centerpieces of his campaign. Before being executive director of the Florida Association of Free and Charitable Clinics, he was state director of Enroll America, which works to help people find coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

But, he said, he doesn't expect to see changes like Medicaid expansion -- which House leaders oppose -- right off the bat.

"I'm going to focus on ensuring we have the right kinds of conversations and use the right kinds of data sets to find ways to solve the problems," he said.

The District 112 seat, currently held by Democratic Rep. Jose-Javier Rodriguez, who's running for the Senate, includes parts of downtown Miami and stretches down to Coral Gables. More than 70 percent of the district is Hispanic.

Four candidates have already declared for the seat. Two Republicans: teacher and onetime city commission candidate Rosa Maria Palomino and real estate lawyer Michael Davey. And two other Democrats: Tony Diaz, who ran a recall campaign against Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, and Waldo Faura Jr., who ran in Miami Beach in 2012.

The Democratic establishment appears to be gathering behind Duran. He's having a fundraiser 5:30 p.m. April 13 at lobbying firm Ballard Partners' Miami office. Expected to be in attendance are incoming House Democratic Leader Janet Cruz of Tampa, Rep. David Richardson of Miami Beach, former Miami Mayor Manny Diaz and lobbyists Ron Book, Brian Ballard and Bill Rubin.
Enterprise Florida exists for one main reason: to create jobs. But the 20-year-old public-private partnership now must eliminate some of its own jobs on orders from Gov. Rick Scott, following the Legislature's refusal to support a new $250 million incentive program to attract employers.

Scott issued an edict last week calling for $6 million in savings by cutting jobs and ending expensive office leases, and he handed this unwelcome assignment to former state child welfare secretary David Wilkins, who will work with the agency's departing chief executive officer, Bill Johnson. Their reorganization is expected to be voted on at EFI's next board meeting on May 10 and 11 in Naples.



Enterprise Florida has about 90 employees and a payroll of more than $9 million, the governor's office said.

A salary roster shows 10 employees, including five senior vice presidents, who make a minimum of $130,000 a year and can earn up to $215,000 a year. Another 15 staffers, all vice presidents, earn from $80,000 to $120,000 a year.

Enterprise Florida has a senior vice president for marketing, vice president for marketing, director of marketing and marketing coordinator. It has in-state regional directors in Tampa, Jacksonville and Pensacola. It has a senior vice president for government affairs and a director of government affairs.

"We have to make the hard decisions now to do more with less, and privatize many functions at Enterprise Florida so we are not dependent on state financing," Scott said in a recent letter to EFI board members.

Here's the list Enterprise Florida provided to the Herald/Times of employees and their salary ranges, as of March 14. Not listed here is Johnson, whose most recently reported salary was $265,000 a year, or about twice as much as the salary of the governor (Scott does not accept a state salary as governor).
Idaho asks utilities to double-check water systems

BOISE (AP)  Idaho environmental authorities are asking every water utility in the state to double-check their systems after problems surfaced with the drinking water in Flint, Michigan.

Jerri Henry with the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality has asked every Idaho utility to make sure water is safe from lead. She has given them a July deadline to complete the work.

The agency says it knows at least three systems in Southwest Idaho are not in compliance.

Whether local water systems are tainted with lead has been of heightened concern since the crisis in Flint, Michigan, erupted as a national story.

The Flint crisis has also recalled Idaho's own "Flint moment" four decades ago when a North Idaho mine smelter spewed tons of lead into the air and ground. Dozens of children who were tested in 1975 had dangerously high levels of lead in their bloodstreams.

Graham to Arabs: U.S. hasn't changed despite Trump

CAIRO (AP)  Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham sought to reassure the Arab world Sunday over the prospect of Donald Trump becoming president, saying in Cairo that Congress would continue to play a primary role in foreign policy, "regardless of what Mr. Trump says or does."

"The Congress is going to be around no matter who is president," Graham told reporters after meeting with Egyptian President Abdel-Fatah el-Sissi as part of a Republican congressional delegation touring the Middle East.

"All of us, regardless of what Mr. Trump says or does, we are going to keep being who we are, so don't let the political scenes at home get you too upset," Graham said. "That's what I told the president."

Graham's comments regarding the front-runner for his party's nomination reflect a growing concern in Washington over the effect a Trump presidency could have on U.S. foreign policy and international relations. Trump has stirred controversy both at home and abroad with proposals that include a blanket ban on Muslim immigration to the U.S. and the building of a massive wall along the entire U.S.-Mexican border.

Chihuahua leads CHP in bridge chase

SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  A Chihuahua is in animal custody after leading police on a chase across the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge.

The California Highway Patrol tweeted the small black dog "led us on quite a chase" Sunday and posted a video of it running furiously on the upper level of the bridge while being trailed by a motorcycle officer.

After it was captured, the Chihuahua was taken to a San Francisco animal shelter where staff members named it Ponch, after the CHP Officer Frank Poncherello played by Erik Estrada in the TV series "CHiPs."

A spokeswoman for the city's Department of Animal Care and Control said the dog wore a tag decorated with a human skull, but it had no identification. Deb Campbell said the dog was recovering from its misadventure.

Activists try to calm transgender bathroom fears

NEW YORK (AP)  Stung by setbacks related to their access to public restrooms, transgender Americans are taking steps to play a more prominent and vocal role in a nationwide campaign to curtail discrimination against them.

Two such initiatives are being launched this week  evidence of how transgender rights has supplanted same-sex marriage as the most volatile, high-profile issue for the broader movement of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender activists.

One initiative is a public education campaign called the Transgender Freedom Project that will share the personal stories of transgender people. The other, the Trans United Fund, is a political advocacy group that will engage in election campaigns at the federal and state level, pressing candidates to take stands on transgender rights.

"We welcome the support of our allies," said Hayden Mora, a veteran transgender activist who's director of Trans United. "But it's crucial that trans people build our own political power and speak with our own voices."

From a long-term perspective, there have been notable gains for transgender Americans in recent years  more support from major employers, better options for health care and sex-reassignment surgery, a growing number of municipalities which bar anti-transgender discrimination.

WW2 vet awarded medals 70 years later

HERMISTON, Ore. (AP)  A 92-year-old Oregon man has been honored for his military service 70 years after he returned home from World War II.

William Jones on Saturday was presented with five medals including a Presidential Citation, Good Conduct Medal, campaign medals for the American and Euro-African-Middle-Eastern campaigns and the World War II Victory Medal.

Jones says he didn't apply for the medals after returning to the United States in 1945 because he believed he would be reassigned to Japan. When that conflict ended, he forgot about medals as he slipped back into civilian life.

Jones's niece applied for the medals for him. She received offers to help from the offices of two Oregon Congressmen, Rep. Greg Walden and Sen. Ron Wyden.
BILLINGS  A Billings man who admitted abusing his 10-week-old twins, one of whom died on Dec. 27, 2014, has been sentenced in accordance with his October plea agreement.

Brandon Tory Edwards, 29, admitted to strangling his children and hitting his daughter with an open hand, according to a plea agreement signed by Juli Pierce, deputy chief Yellowstone County attorney, on Oct. 20.

Edwards pleaded guilty to three felonies, two counts of aggravated assault and and one count of assault on a minor.

The Yellowstone County Attorney's Office recommended 30 years with the Montana State Prison system, with 15 of those years suspended, which was imposed Friday by Judge Mary Jane Knisely.

Edwards was charged with two counts of aggravated assault and one charge of assault on a minor on Dec. 29, 2014.

Police began an investigation Christmas Day after Brandon Edwards' wife, Kayla Edwards, called 911 at about 8 p.m. and reported that her infant son had stopped breathing, court records state.

Medical personnel responded with police to the couples residence on the 200 block of Terry Avenue and performed CPR on the boy. They were able to restart the babys heart, and he was taken to St. Vincent Healthcare, records say.

Tavaris Michael Edwards died at 3:48 a.m., Dec. 27, 2014, at Childrens Hospital Colorado in Aurora, after being taken off life support.

Doctors examined his twin sister, who had bruising on her head, nose and eyes, court records indicate.

Both parents abused their children in the past, including by hitting them and leaving them suspended in an upside down car seat, charging documents state.

Kayla Edwards pleaded guilty in July to deliberate homicide and assault on a minor, and will be sentenced later. She confessed at her change of plea hearing to regularly abusing her son and daughter and admitted to critically injuring her son.
STEPANAKERT, Azerbaijan  The old soldiers spilled out of buses into a square, fired up by a desire to fight, and to die if necessary, in a new war with an old enemy: the Azerbaijanis.

The arrival on Monday of hundreds of Armenian volunteers in Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan, was just one sign of old animosities blazing anew as the latest fighting entered its third day.

I think this is war, Lev Gevorkyan, 67, a farmer and a veteran of the last conflict, said while stepping off a bus that brought the volunteers from Armenia to this city, Nagorno-Karabakhs capital.

This land was never Azerbaijan, he said. And by the way, Azerbaijan is not even a country.

In Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, the defense minister, Zakir Gasanov, issued a statement threatening to begin a military assault on Stepanakert if Armenian forces continued what he characterized as shelling of residential areas.
" " "Finally close the wage gap!" is written on a banner at an Equal Pay Day event at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany. Equal Pay Day is worldwide and is intended to draw attention to the wage gap between women and men. Paul Zinken/picture alliance via Getty Images

Would you work three months every year for free? If you're an American woman, you just might. Every March or April, one Tuesday is dubbed Equal Pay Day by the National Committee on Pay Equity (a coalition of groups working toward equal pay for all sexes and races). This 24-hour period symbolizes the gender pay gap, showing how far into the next calendar year women must work to earn the same amount of money as men. Similar days are also commemorated across the world.

The National Committee on Pay Equity has been holding an Equal Pay Day in the U.S. since 1996, but the issue of gender-based pay differences has been around long before that [source: National Committee on Pay Equity].

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While comprehensive data on gender inequities in pay wasn't collected until 1950, research shows women were earning a mere 30 cents per dollar compared to men during America's early years, when its economy was largely driven by agriculture. During the Industrial Revolution (1820 to 1850) women fared better, netting 50 percent of the wages men took home; by the early 20th century, that rate inched up to 56 percent (i.e., women earned 56 cents for every dollar men earned).

Despite the fact that Congress mandated equal pay for equal work in 1963, the wage gap remained at 60 percent for years. In the 1980s it began to climb again, rising to around 70 percent by 1990. But some 30 years later (the latest available statistics are for 2020), the gap had only nudged up to 83 cents per dollar, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This is only slightly better than 2015, when the gap was around 80 cents per dollar.

Economists say one-third to one-half of the gender pay gap may be explained by differences in education, experience and the number of hours worked. But the reason for the remainder is a bit of a mystery, although many say it's due to gender discrimination. To put the pay gap in perspective, consider this: In 2019, a typical 25-year-old woman employed full-time earned $5,000 less per year than her male counterpart. If that gap persists until those employees hit age 65, she would have lost out on more than $406,000 compared to the man, an astonishing figure.

The gender gap is even steeper for women of color. In 2020, according to census data, white non-Hispanic women working full-time, year-round earned median annual incomes that were 79 percent of what their white, non-Hispanic, male counterparts scored. For African American women, the figure dipped to 64 percent; for Hispanic females, it was a dismal 57 percent. (While these discrepancies are big, the gaps are less than they were five years ago.) As far as Asian women were concerned, the American Association of University Women, which compiles these stats using census data, wrote, "It is not possible to compare this year's pay gap between Asian women and white, non-Hispanic men with last year's due to limitations in this year's data collection" because of COVID-19. However, in 2017, Asian women earned about 85 percent of what white males did, higher than even white women.

Women of color are so far down in the wage gap, the American Association of University Women pegged "Equal Pay Day" for African American women as happening in September and in December for Latinas in 2022.
"When we started our business, Extension connected us with resources to get the answers we needed. Thats whats so amazing about Extension: they find a way to help you get to the next step."

- Scott Hicks

Cutting Edge Meat Company

In Green County
The Stillwater Mining Co. has donated an underground loader, MTI LT270 LHD, to Montana Tech. It was delivered on Friday, the first day of the International Mining Competition.

The loader is made for underground mining and will be used in the Mining Engineering Department's Practical Underground Mining Class held at the Underground Mine Education Center. The machine is a 2006 model and was refreshed in 2010 with the installation of a new Cummins QSB4.5 engine.

Stillwater Mining Co., with mining and processing operations in south-central Montana, is the only U.S. producer of platinum group metals (PGMs) and the largest primary producer of PGMs outside of South Africa and the Russian Federation, according to a news release.

Jason Palin, Stillwater Mine manager, Tech alumnus, and Industry Advisory Board member, helped in acquiring the donation.

"This LHD had very low utilization, and the Stillwater Mining Company thought it would be better utilized by Montana Tech for training the future leaders of our industry," Palin said.

Scott Rosenthal, Tech Mining Engineering Department head and instructor for the Practical Underground Mining Class, said the loader will give students hands-on experience in drilling, blasting, mucking (removing shot material using an underground loader), and set ground support.

Since the class started in January 2013, Tech has rented machines to muck with. The acquisition of the underground loader will reduce the program's costs.

Dale Andrews and Joy Global arranged for the re-painting and delivery of the machine.

Tech's Underground Mine Education Center is the only on-campus underground mine facility in the United States.
When the 38th Intercollegiate Mining Competition was over and done, student organizer Lydia Huckeby was exhausted. But it was a good exhaustion.

"We got nothing but positive feedback," said Huckeby, trying to get her bearings Monday morning after three intense days of competition at Montana Tech. "It was all very positive. It was the biggest competition held in Butte."

Tech hosted 40 teams that hailed from national and international colleges. Mining engineer majors and assorted majors duked it out in seven events harking back to old-time mining: mucking, Swede saw, hand steel, gold panning, jackleg drilling, track stand and survey.

Top teams overall were the Wombats A and Wombats B teams of Australia; they finished 1-2 in men's. The Wallabies Women of Australia captured the women's first-place trophy.

Top winners in each men's event were Camborne School of Mines Great Britain in mucking, Wombats B in gold panning, University of Arizona in jackleg, Wombats A in hand steel, and Colorado Blasters in survey.

Overall, the Tech teams made their mark as the Men's Copper squad finished in third place, Co-Ed Copper placed fourth, Co-Ed Green fifth, and the Men's Green sixth.

The Men's Green and Copper teams each won their respective track-stand events. Copper shined, clocking a 4 minute, 17-second winning time.

Co-Ed Copper fielded a team for the first time  and performed well.

"Our Co-Ed Copper team did awesome," Huckeby said. "Our two first-place wins were in jackleg and Swede Saw. The Swede-saw win was unexpected. We made sure we won the jackleg  so we really put it out there."

Alumni competed in their own category, too, while drawing previous and new competitors and graduates from Tech, Australia, Great Britain and numerous U.S. schools. The annual awards ceremony and banquet was also a smash hit Saturday night, said Huckeby, who thanked the sponsors:

"We couldn't have done it without our sponsors. We had lots of fans, too  a huge turnout. It was crazy. We had a lot of team parents come back to watch.

"I'm really impressed," she said. "We stepped up to the plate and got it done. We had so much fun, it should be illegal."

The 2017 competition will be held in Kentucky.
5 | Tuesday

STORY TIME AT LIBRARY

Story time at the Butte Public Library, 226 W. Broadway St., starts at 6:30 p.m. in the children's room. The subject is "Bugs," and youngsters will listen to stories, sing songs, and do a build-your-own-bug craft. All ages are welcome. Details: Cathy at 406-723-3361.

ECON MEETING

Butte-Silver Bow is hosting a meeting at 4:30 p.m. to present a draft of a proposed Basin Creek Targeted Economic Development District (TEDD) and get public feedback. The meeting is in the Highlands College common room, 25 Basin Creek Rd. Details: Lori Casey at 406-497-6255 or Kristen Rosa at 406-497-6248.

6 | Wednesday

EMPTY BOWLS

The Empty Bowls event  a dinner that supports the Butte Emergency Food Bank's Backpack Program  will be from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Butte Civic Center, 1340 Harrison Ave. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased at the Butte Food Bank, 1019 E. 2nd St., or at Poore, Roth & Robinson, 1341 Harrison Ave. Details: 406-782-6230.

RIBBON CUTTING

A ribbon-cutting ceremony for The Pour House Pub, 1815 Harrison Ave., starts at 5:30 p.m. After 5 and Top Deck were once located there.

IRISH DANCE FOR KIDS

Butte's Tiernan Irish Dance School invites boys and girls to try a free Irish dance class in the Butte library basement meeting room, 226 W. Broadway St. Kids ages 3 through 5 will meet 5 to 5:30 p.m., and kids ages kindergarten and up will meet from 5:30 to 6 p.m. Details: buttetiernan@yahoo.com.

7 | Thursday

AMMO AND WILDLIFE

A presentation on the effects of lead ammunition on wildlife starts at 6:30 p.m. at the Madison County Fairgrounds in Twin Bridges. Featured speaker is Chris Parish from The Peregrine Fund. The free public talk is presented by the Ruby Habitat Foundation and The Peregrine Fund. The talk is titled "Traditional Ammo & Wildlife." Details: rubyhabitat.org.

INTERNATIONAL DINNER

Pintler Pets' International Dinner will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. at the American Legion Hall, Cedar and Third, Anaconda. The cost is $15 per person for all you care to eat. The menu includes French onion soup, chicken tetrazzini, lasagna, Chinese dishes, homemade macaroni and cheese, sarma, Polish sausage and sauerkraut, country ribs with an Oriental glaze, Indonesian noodles, Thai curry, taco bar, chop suey, salad bar, and more. Price includes dessert, coffee, and punch. To-go orders available. There will also be a silent auction. All proceeds benefit the animals at Pintler Pets.

TERRIFIC TREE TRIMMING

Terrific Tree Trimming is back. Beginning April 7 through May 12, MSU Extension and Butte-Silver Bow Parks and Recreation will be hosting a free tree-trimming activity for the community each Thursday. Details: MSU Extension, Butte-Silver Bow County Agent Kellee Anderson, 406-723-0217 or kellee.anderson@montana.edu.

CLASSICAL CONCERT

Aldersgate United Methodist Church will host the Piatigorsky Foundation Concert at 6:30 p.m. at 1621 Thornton Ave. The free, one-hour classical music event featuring solo pianist Richard Dowling is sponsored by David Andersen and Mary Harsh. Details: Rev. Dave Andersen, 406-782-2425.

'LET'S TALK' SERIES

St. James Cancer Center is hosting a new eight-week free educational series, "Let's Talk," for cancer patients and their families. The series begins 4 to 5 p.m. at the St. James' dining room. Each week a subject-matter expert will present information and then lead a discussion with participants. Thursday's topic is "Financial support services and questions." For each session you plan to attend, register by calling the St. James Cancer Center at 406-723-2621 at least one day before the session.

8 | Friday

BURLESQUE SHOW

S.H.G.F. Productions and Butte Depot present the Cigarette Girls Burlesque  Most Excellent '80s Adventure at the Butte Depot, 818 S. Arizona. Doors open at 7 p.m., and the show starts at 8. Advance tickets are $10 or $15 at the door. VIP tickets, which are limited, are $25. Tickets can be purchased at the Butte Depot; Headframe Spirits; or online at holdmyticket.com/event/242025.

9 | Saturday

SCIENCE MINE

Special event  Club MET at the Science Mine, one day only. Enjoy hands-on activities and demos separating metal ores, brought to you by Montana Tech's Club MET metallurgy students. Also explore our many permanent activities: Tesla coils, vortex rings, stream table, laser mazes, etc., and build something cool at our new hands-on engineering corner. The Science Mine, 36 E. Granite St., is open 12:30 to 3:30 p.m. Members admission is free. Non-members is $5 each or or $12 per family.

10 | Sunday

DANCE AT STAR LANES

The Butte Dance Group is sponsoring a dance from 1 to 5 p.m. at the Star Lanes Family Center, 4600 Harrison Ave. Music will be by The Highlites with John Fox on the keyboard. The band plays all types of music from the 1940s to the 1960s, including waltz, Latin, polka and country. Tickets are $10. Everyone is welcome. Details: 406-494-3251.

CLUBS AND MEETINGS

BUTTE:

Butte Elks Lodge bingo runs Monday and Wednesday each week at 7 p.m. All bingo players are welcome. Payout is determined by the number of players. The more players, the larger the payout. Details: Frank Snyder, 406-494-6614.

Uptown Toasters meet at noon Tuesday at the Butte Archives, 17 W. Quartz. Guests are always welcome. Details: 406-782-6605.

Butte Retired Teachers will have their monthly luncheon at noon Tuesday at the Butte Country Club, 3400 Elizabeth Warren Ave. Details: 406-494-2394.

Butte Exchange Club meets at noon Tuesday at 16 E. Granite St. (second floor). Details: Steve 406-782-4253.

Butte High School class of 1961 will have a luncheon at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday at Christina's Cocina.

Butte Sunrise Kiwanis Club meets Wednesday at 7 a.m. at Perkins Restaurant. Guest speaker will be Taryn Ann Quayle, choreographer for the Orphan Girl Theatre.

Warped Weavers meets 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesdays at the Butte-Silver Bow Public Library, third floor, 226 W. Broadway St. Curious about weaving? Come watch and ask questions; there may be a loom for you to try. Details: 406-782-5784.

Belly-dance class runs Thursdays 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Butte-Silver Bow Public Library basement, 226 W. Broadway St. No experience necessary. A $5 donation per class is suggested. Details: 406-723-3164.

Retired Mine Workers meets Friday at the Legion Oasis with lunch at 12:30 p.m. and meeting to follow.

Big Butte Mile High Cribbers play Grassroots American Cribbage Congress-sanctioned cribbage at 6:30 p.m. Thursdays at the East Side Athletic Club, 3075 Dexter St. Details: Phil at 406-494-2618.

Open AA meeting starts at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the United Congregational Church, 2945 Bayard St. Details: 406-560-7330.

Overeaters Anonymous meets at 6:15 p.m. Wednesday at the Gold Hill Lutheran Church, 934 Placer St. Details: 406-533-5454.

Chess club meets from 2 to 4:45 p.m. Friday at the Uptown library, 226 W. Broadway. It is free, and no experience is necessary.

Gamblers Anonymous meets Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. at Aldersgate United Methodist Church. Details: 406-490-3312.

An anxiety and depression support group meets at 1:30 p.m. every Saturday at 721 S. Utah St.

Adult Children of Alcoholics meets at 10 a.m. Saturday in the Atherton Apartments community center room, 4500 Continental Dr. Details: 406-396-4112.

Al-Anon meetings: 7:30 p.m. Monday, Congregational Church; 7 p.m. first Tuesday, business meeting, Comfort Inn; 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Gold Hill Lutheran Church; 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Sharing and Caring, 1500 Cobban.

ANACONDA:

Anaconda Retired Educators will have a luncheon meeting at the Copper Village Art Center Thursday at noon. The cost is $10 for a sandwich, salad and dessert buffet. Guest speaker is Karen Richardson from MREA. We will sell 50/50 tickets and pass a tip basket. Details: 406-563-5066.

Anaconda Retired Men's Breakfast Club will meet at 9 a.m. Thursday at the First Presbyterian Church. Invitation is extended to veterans' spouses. For reservations, call 406-560-7405 or 406-560-7265.

Mountain Village Quilt Guild will meet at 11:30 a.m. Thursday at the Copper Village.

Anaconda DAV Memorial Chapter 13 will hold its next meeting on Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Classic Cafe, 627 E. Park Ave. Social begins at 6. All vets welcome. Details: 406-980-0340.
March 15 was National Agriculture Day. Across the country and at home here in Montana, many growers, organizations, government agencies, universities and families joined together to celebrate the abundance provided by American agriculture. We have much to be thankful for. Montana agriculture remains the cornerstone of the states economy. It continues to shape us in a state blessed with diverse and vibrant landscapes, dedicated people and rich natural resources.

We salute and honor the people across the state who are leading and delivering agriculture in Montana: from certified seed growers and sellers, large acreage and small acreage production, family businesses and those who continually endure the risk, challenge and uncertainties of the climate and markets. Thank you for your commitment to an industry and economy that demands an investment and dedication thats only second nature to most Montanans. Perhaps thats why Montana is comprised of 27,800 farms and ranches (65 percent of our land base), contributing $4.4 billion dollars a year to the United States economy.

Montana State University and its College of Agriculture will celebrate their 125th anniversary in 2018. We continue to see students from all walks of life enroll in our many programs, and were proud of our enrollment growth for the eighth straight year. We think the strong student interest in agricultural-related careers reflects the many ways in which agriculture is changing: young people are increasingly concerned with food production and safety, healthy economies, access to nutritional foods, environmental quality and public health  all of which stem from the products we produce and consume.

MSUs College of Agriculture continues to be recognized nationally for its curriculum, research, fields, farms and faculty. They are a force of people and programs committed to strengthening Montanas highest grossing industry, and they possess the ability to respond to world challenges. In addition to the college, faculty and staff at the eight research centers under MSUs Montana Agricultural Experiment Station are able to deliver agricultural solutions through relationships and support from many of you. Because of our sound partnerships with growers and production groups across Montana, we are able to focus on the most critical needs of the industry.

Of course, we in agriculture continue to face major challenges. Water remains a competitive commodity, new invasive pests and plants are making their presence known, and volatile markets and policies create pressure on those working their hardest. On a global scale, the world continues to face food insecurity while Americans at home are hungry even as vast amounts of food are wasted each year. The pressure on our communities and landscapes to meet the challenges and demands of 21st century agriculture is real.

Agriculture  on this national day of recognition and every day  is something that touches all of us. I challenge you to reflect on the role agriculture plays in your life. You shouldnt have to look far to do so. Perhaps this might be buying a Montana-made product, visiting a local market, asking a farmer or rancher about their successes and challenges, or thinking about the important role of food banks in feeding your community. Or, talk to an MSU agriculture student about their own vision for the future. You might be surprised and renewed with optimism.

The beauty of an agriculture community is that it takes everyone to ensure success -- whether thats your own hands in soil or learning more about the sources of your food and products.

Join me as we steward agriculture at MSU and across Montana, today and into the next 125 years.

***

-- Charles Boyer is the vice president of agriculture, dean and director of the College of Agriculture and Montana Agricultural Experiment Station at Montana State University. Boyer has a bachelors degree in biology from Eastern Oregon State College, and a masters and doctorate in genetics, both from Pennsylvania State University. MSUs College of Agriculture has approximately 1,028 students with 11 bachelor's degree programs, nine master's degree programs and four doctoral degree programs from five departments and one division.
MUSCATINE, Iowa Misty Urban, the president of Writers on the Avenue, hopes to help shape the literature scene in Muscatine. After teaching in Idaho, Urban said her family began to miss the Midwest, and they are excited to be back and in Muscatine.

While Urban stated that she is not a poet, she is currently working on several projects, including a book of short stories, and she is co-editing a volume of essays compiled by a group of international scholars about the medieval figure of Melusine.

"My whole family has been so happy here, were close to his family, were close to my family, there is a great literary scene in this region, and everything seems to be flowing for a family, its been a great move for us," Urban said, "we like being on the river, we like it a lot."

Name: Misty Urban

Hometown: I was born and raised in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin  a small industrial town on a river that also, at this point in time, happens to be flooding.

Education: BBA (Bachelor of Business Administration) from University of Wisconsin, MA from Florida State University, MFA and Ph.D. from Cornell University in fiction writing and medieval literature

Professional Experience: Began as a management consultant, after grad school taught at Lewis-Clark State College for four years

Family: Husband Doug Vogel, daughter Clio, son Vincent

How did you find Writers on the Avenue?

It had a core group of people who held it through a lot of changes, its been different sizes, its done different things, but its core mission I think has always been to support area writers, to support Muscatine writers, especially those who arent part of the publishing scene, who arent writing for publication or recognition, theyre writing for different reasons.

The membership was down to about four when I joined, and I just basically did a search for Muscatine writers and an article in the Muscatine Magazine came up, so I tracked down the president and I said I wanted to join and she said o.k. And they switched their meeting times to accommodate me because when I got hired at MCC I was teaching the night that they met, so they switched their meeting so that I could come which was completely generous and wonderful. So, not only do I get to work with the writers at the Muscatine college, I also get to work with Writers on the Avenue, so its been a great experience.

What do you teach at MCC?

Composition. And then I coordinate the new writing center. We have brand new writing center that is one of the many initiatives that the new president has undertaken and it helps student writers from any class whatever project they have whatever stage of the process. They come in, they talk about their assignments with the facilitants, and we do our best to help them with their assignments and help them evolve as writers, so I get to talk about writing every day.

How has finding Writers on the Avenue shaped your experience in Muscatine?

That was the thing that made me feel like I could live here quite honestly, it was very soon after I moved here so I had just put my resume in at MCC and I didnt know if they were going to hire me. I had just atarted to contact area schools and none of them were hiring either, I was doing freelance editing on the side and I thought that might be it, that might have to sustain me but I have a novel Im working on and I wanted to find people who can help me with that and Id always been in a community of writers.

Even when I was a management consultant I was taking a creative writing class as an auditing or as a special student so I always had a group of writers that were around, and when I spent three years in central Illinois, for two years I didnt have that and finally a friend of mine said well why dont we start and online writing group and I said yes! and that kind of saved my life.

That and I got a reviewing gig so I had to be writing and that saved my life too. But finding Writers on the Avenue here really made me feel like I was part of the community, and that was what I needed. You know, everybody says writers work alone, but we dont, we need to be read, we need to learn we need to be inspired by other people by being outside and away from our computer, and so even though everybody in the group has really different goals and works on completely different things, its really been so inspiring and supportive. I hope to bring that to more people. I hope to make it a group that offers a lot of things to a lot of people, helps writers find what they need.

What does writing and literature mean to you?

I was reading the news before I came here and it broke my heart, and I was thinking, we in the humanities always talk about how the humanities get the squint-eye when something needs to be cut departmentally - art, music, creative writing - theyre seen as hobbies.

People have different ideas whats wrong with the world today. There are economic explanations and there are environmental explanations and there are scientific explanations, but, what helps us find our shared humanity? What helps us connect to one another? What helps us feel like we belong to something? What helps us explain our experience? What helps us articulate our feelings? What helps us feel like were part of something bigger than ourselves?
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 []
Millions of traffic fines issued in Johannesburg and Pretoria are unenforceable, according to a report by Moneyweb.

According to the report, the Road Traffic Infringement Agency has failed to pay its bill at the SA Post Office  which has resulted in uncertainty over whether infringement notices have been served.

Post Office E-Business head Nkosinathi Tolom told Moneyweb that the Agencys account has been suspended since October 2015 due to non-payment.

The Agency is responsible for the administration of the Aarto Act, which is due to roll out countrywide on 1 July, stated Moneyweb.

Fines issued by Johannesburg and Tshwane metro police are administered by the Agency if they are not paid within 32 days.

The Agency must then send letters to motorists by registered mail. Failing to send these notices means the Agency has missed prescribed timelines, stated the report.

Fines for e-toll non-payment

The news of the Agencys failure to pay its Post Office bills follows claims by Outa that a Department of Transport Gazette published in December could be a veiled attempt by government to fine motorists who are boycotting the e-toll system.

The gazette sought to amend the Aarto Act, with Outa stating it was an attempt to make it easier to include e-toll infringements into the adjudication process by the Road Traffic Infringement Agency.

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A Congolese preacher in the city has hit out at the exchange of rings during weddings.

Brother David Bosongo of The Early Church of The Lord Yeshua, says that wedding rings are not Biblical at all that they are an attempt to make man and woman equal by exchanging rings and vows which is contrary to biblical teachings.

The preacher, whose preachings mostly revolve around the end days, explains that women ought to wear rings to prove that they are taken, but what is required of men is only for them to love to their wives.

Even in the Holy book, Solomon and David had hundreds of women each and we are not told anywhere in the Bible that they exchanged rings. The rings from all their women would not fit on their fingers, explained the preacher, whose mother church is based in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In fact, people are misled that ring the finger has veins that run all the way to the heart. This is not true. The ring ought to be put on index finger because it is kind of authoritative, He told The Nairobian.

The outspoken preacher also took issue with Kenyans who greet each other Bwana asifiwe, arguing that even Jesus in the Bible greeted people by saying Peace be with you.

He explained when to use the bwana asifiwe: We should use the Bwana asifiwe phrase only when celebrating the good things we have achieved through Christ and not as a greeting.
Former Prime Minister Raila Odinga, his wife Ida and their daughter Winnie paid a courtesy call to Tanzanian President John Magufuli and his wife at their home in Chato, Geita.

The two families have been close for many years, and it was Magufuli who represented the then President Kikwete at Fidel Odingas funeral. Raila was also present at his inauguration.

State House in Tanzania released this statement regarding the visit.



Here are some photos.
















The St. Helena Police Department is installing a camera outside City Hall, on a 30-day trial basis, to monitor traffic and collect information that could help police fight crime.

The free pilot program, a partnership with Odin Systems of Southern California, is scheduled to start Tuesday. After 30 days the equipment will be removed and the pilot program will be assessed for possible future consideration, according to a statement from the St. Helena Police Department.

The fixed camera, placed at Main Street and Britton Way, will capture three images simultaneously: a wide view of the vehicle, its license plate and its driver. The photos will be sent to a server at the Police Department, and will not be released or shared with any other agency, police said.

The Police Department, in response to concerns from residents regarding the ability to locate fleeing suspects after the robbery at Davids Jewelers in 2014, began researching various types of moving and fixed traffic cameras, police said in a statement.

The purpose of the pilot program is to determine if this system fulfills the Citys desire to identify and locate vehicles coming into or leaving the City. The cameras will be focused solely on Main Street traffic, will not be looking at or into buildings, and are stationary, meaning they are not capable of being remotely manipulated to change their area of focus.

According to Police Chief Bill Imboden, Police departments around the state are assessing or using various types of technology to support community safety and aid in crime prevention. Pilot programs are a great way to assess what type of technology works for our community.

The Police Department is inviting public feedback on the pilot program and on the use of traffic monitoring cameras in general. Email comments to camerapilot@cityofsthelena.org.

I encourage our citizens, businesses and visitors to take a minute and share your thoughts about a traffic monitoring camera in St. Helena, said Mayor Alan Galbraith. Ensuring the safety of our community remains a top priority for the City Council and decisions about the use of technology should be made together.

This summer the City Council will hear a report on the results of the pilot program, a summary of the public feedback, and options for the council to consider.
Xi Jinping elected Communist Party of China Central Committee general secretary

Armenia envoy presents credentials to Bosnia and Herzegovina Presidency chair

Hungary to approve by years end Sweden, Finland petitions to join NATO

US researchers debunk main theory for origin of life

Iranian MP: Iran will conduct military exercises wherever it deems necessary

Finnish delegation to visit Ankara to discuss NATO membership

Social media giants are likely to oppose Turkey's new law

Pastor steals $900,000 to buy stocks and car in U.S.

Lithuanian President Nauseda is named most popular politician in country

Charles III will embark on longest tour of world in history of royal family

Deputy Director of Institute of Oriental Studies of RAS: Baku's goal is that Karabakh has no Armenian population

Hurricane Roslyn in Pacific Ocean intensifies to third category

Italy's new prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, begins forming government

U.S. Treasury Department records budget deficit of over $429 billion in September

Why does Baku need aggravation on border with Armenia? Skakov assesses likelihood of new aggression

Iranian Foreign Minister: I had important meeting with Pashinyan in Armenia

Johnson spotted in economy class on flight from Dominican Republic to Britain

Armenian PM and European Parliament Resident Rapporteur for Armenia discuss Karabakh situation

Authorities in Kherson urge residents to immediately leave city

Russian expert: Baku's attempts to open corridor by force will cause negative response not only from IRI or Russian

Telegraph: Britain to send about 60 old tanks to NATO base in Germany for exercises

Artak Beglaryan: You will see me in new position

Netanyahu: Iran nuclear deal could bring Russia 'hundreds of billions'

Russia and Turkey begin to develop gas hub project

PM Pashinyan discusses agenda of bilateral relations with Iranian FM

Anna Hakobyan meets Armenians in Paris

Sargsyan: Recognition of Artsakh people's right for self-determination must be reflected in legal documents

Italy's first female prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, sworn in

Private jet goes missing off coast of Costa Rica

Times of India: India tests nuclear-capable Agni Prime missile

Spiegel: German Foreign Minister and Defense Minister ask to allocate 2.2 billion for military aid to Kiev

Deputy PM of Armenia and Head of Sharjah Heritage Institute discuss strengthening of Armenian-Emirati relations

Biden allows participation in U.S. presidential election in 2024

Secretary of Security Council of Armenia and representatives of AIISA discuss security issues

Kakhovka reservoir increases water discharges in case of possible destruction of HPP

Pashinian's spouse: Yesterday at Elysee Palace I was received by dear Brigitte Macron

At least 15 people killed in bus-truck collision in India

Explosion at Uzbek Defense Ministry depot injures 16 people

Armenian NA Speaker receives Iranian FM: Tehran opposes obstacles on border with friendly Armenia

President Harutyunyan receives group of members of Union of Artsakh Reserve Officers NGO

Newspaper: Armenia restores diplomatic ties with Hungary?

China hit by 5.5 magnitude earthquake

Armenian Defense Ministry denies Azerbaijani report on shelling, calling it disinformation

Blinken: Moscow is not interested in stopping aggression against Ukraine

Japan and U.S. will hold joint military exercises

France withdraws from Energy Charter Treaty

CNN: White House is in talks with Elon Musk to create satellite Internet service Starlink in Iran

Baku outraged by Iran's statements and frightened by IRGC military exercises

Who are main beneficiaries of 'Zangezur' corridor?: Another anonymous article by 'Haykakan Zhamanak' newspaper

Ankara decides to stand up for Riyadh amid deteriorating relations between Saudi Arabia and U.S.

French Foreign Minister considers it vital to keep lines of communication with Russia open

Pentagon refuses to give details of conversation between Austin and Shoigu

Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin: Head of Caucasus Muslims Department again made slanderous and false statements

Erdogan denies using chemical weapons against Kurds and threatens those who dare to talk about it

Saudi Arabia and China will strengthen their ties in energy sector

Governor of Gegharkunik province receives representatives of OSCE fact-finding mission

Penny Mordaunt runs for Prime Minister of Great Britain

Sweden expects ratification of NATO membership application by Hungary and Turkey to be completed soon

European Union will allocate 1.5 billion euros per month to Kiev in 2023

An Israeli-built flight school opened in Greece

Russian Railways is negotiating with Azerbaijan and Iran to launch the Rasht-Astara route

Overchuk: Construction of road through Meghri, whose sovereignty is not in question, depends on Armenia's position

Armenian Defense Minister's working visit to India is over

Hungary will not agree to limit prices for imported gas

Iranian Foreign Minister: Iran considers Armenia one of most important transit countries

Naribekyan participates in meeting of secretaries general of PACE parliaments

Delegation from United Arab Emirates visits Armenia at invitation of head of MONKS: Two agreements signed

Dollar, euro drop in Armenia

Iran consul general in Armenias Kapan: We do not accept any change of borders

Baza: Mobile military registration and enlistment offices will be removed on Russian-Georgian border

Iranian Consul: Countries of region do not need presence of foreign armed forces

Armenia FM: Iran consulate general in Kapan will be important for regional security

Iranian Consul General advises Kapan residents not to worry anymore: Iran is here for Armenian people

FM reaffirms Armenia plan to open consulate general in Irans Tabriz

Turkey to open consulate in occupied Armenian Shushi city of Artsakh

Turkish Ministry of Finance: Ankara can buy Russian oil without Western funding

Armenia Security Council chief briefs European Parliament rapporteur on recent Azerbaijan military aggression

British bookmakers name favorite for post of prime minister

Erdogan: Armenia-Azerbaijan relations progress will contribute to Armenia-Turkey relations normalization

Iranian Consulate General opens in Kapan

Erdogan: Turkey is looking for alternative to American F-16 fighters

Iran consul general: We are here for Armenian people

Turkey FM slams OSCE decision to send needs assessment mission to Armenia

Peskov reacts to Erdogan's words about Putin's softening on Ukraine negotiations

European Parliament rapporteur on Armenia visits Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan

European Parliament rapporteur on Armenia to legislature speaker: Attack was from Azerbaijan, naturally

Armenia President to EEU PMs: We will manage to take another confident step by respecting mutual interests

EUSR Toivo Klaars exclusive interview with NEWS.am on EU Monitoring mission,Nagorno Karabakh future and violence videos

Explosions rock Ukraines Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia

President meets with newly formed Artsakh Public Council members

Armenia PM: We need understanding in price horizon, at least in medium term

Lawyer: 20 of fallen solders parents detained from Yerevan military pantheon are recognized as injured party

PM: Armenia trade with other EEU countries increased by 74%

France region to provide 300,000 to Armenias Syunik Province affected by Azerbaijan military aggression

Eurasian Intergovernmental Council extended meeting underway in Yerevan

MOD: Armenia did not fire at Azerbaijan positions, vehicle

MPs in Strasbourg, present threatening dangers: Armenia has powerful support in European Parliament

Years first snow falls in Armenias Shirak Province

World oil prices on the rise

Newspaper: Russia dismisses Armenia PM's news on Karabakh
WASHINGTONThe Secretary General of the Organization of American States, Luis Almagro, issued a declaration Sunday condemning Azerbaijan for violating the Nagorno-Karabakh cease-fire, calling it a serious violation of international law.

Stability and peace, and the achievement of peaceful solutions to conflicts between nations are values that go beyond our hemisphere.

Therefore, the use of military action by Azerbaijan is particularly serious because it constitutes a manifest violation of the ceasefire established in 1994 as well as well as a violation of the principle of good faith negotiations in the framework of the Minsk Group.

We condemn the serious violation of the principles of international law.

Moreover, taking civilian objectives as military targets in these attacks is a complete violation of the most basic rules governing armed conflict. These practices must be banished.

Any act of violence to resolve a territorial dispute is inadmissible and when such acts of violence cause civilian deaths they are acts of barbarism.

We urge the Azeri authorities to resume meetings have been postponed with Minsk Group authorities.

The basic principles for the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh are based on the Helsinki Final Act (1975), and are:

 The non-use of force,

 Territorial integrity as well as

 Equal rights and

-the self-determination of peoples.

We demand the fullest respect for these principles.

The Organization of American States is the worlds oldest regional organization, dating back to the First International Conference of American States, held in Washington, D.C., in 1889. The moderns iteration was established in 1948 in Bogota, Colombia.
YEREVAN.  If, indeed, the military actions continue and take on an extensive scale, Armenia will recognize the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh. President Serzh Sargsyan on Monday noted the abovementioned at his meetingat the Office of the Presidentwith the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) member countries ambassadors to Armenia.

I appreciate your quick response to my invitation and thank you for being here. I am confident that all of you are informed about the situation on the Nagorno Karabakh line of contact. The purpose of inviting the Ambassadors of the OSCE participating states is to provide you with firsthand information.

As you already know, over the night of April 2 at around 3 am the Azeri side undertook a pre-planned and unprecedented provocation along the entire line of contact with Nagorno Karabakh, carrying out massive military actions and employing the entire complex of their arsenal  armored vehicles, heavy artillery and air force.

From the first hours of the hostilities, the adversary also targeted civilians. Schoolchildren were killed and wounded in the school yard; elderly people were viciously killed in their homes  all of them peaceful residents, including a 92 year old woman. And it was carried out by the so-called sabotage and reconnaissance group because no regular unit of the Azeri armed forces entered into any residential area. It is true, that right after this, the group was eliminated, however this is the fact. Footage featuring this scene also appeared in the mass media yesterday. You can watch that footage and juxtapose with the repeatedly uttered words of the leader of the neighboring state on the protection of the rights of the people of Karabakh within the island of tolerance - Azerbaijan.

Timely and professional actions of the NK Defense Army allowed to bring the entire situation under control.

Hostilities of this magnitude have not been registered since the establishment of the ceasefire in 1994. Provocative attacks of the Azeri side resumed the next morning and continue as we speak. Azerbaijan continues to target civilians, using multiple rocket launchers and mortars. After the so-called unilateral ceasefire, the Azerbaijani armed forces continued their active military actions along the line of contact as well as shelled the residential areas of Nagorno Karabakh.

The Republic of Armenia, as a party to the 1994 Ceasefire Agreement, will continue to fully implement its obligations to ensure the security of the people of Nagorno Karabakh. Moreover, I have instructed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to work with Nagorno Karabakh to elaborate an agreement on mutual military assistance. And here I would like to state what I have declared on many occasions - should military actions continue and escalate into larger scales, the Republic of Armenia will recognize the independence of Nagorno Karabakh.

Further escalation of the military actions may result in unpredictable and irreversible consequences, including an all-out war. It will obviously affect the security and stability not only of the South Caucasus but also the entire European area.

Clearly, the cessation of the hostilities and a peaceful resolution of the issue, in general, stem from the interests of the European states. The OSCE, as a structure which plays a crucial role in preserving the security in Europe, has a special role.

Regrettably, multiple warnings of the Armenian side that sooner or later Azerbaijan would become hostage to its own Armenophobic rhetoric and would plunge into a new military adventurism and therefore the aggressor must be contained by all possible means, fell short of desirable results. When Azerbaijan was bragging about the acquisition of arms and weaponry in profound quantaties, the international commuity remained silent or almost silent; when statements about seeking military solution to the problem were being made at the highest levels, the international community remained almost silent, when Azerbaijan was derailing the work of the OSCE Minsk Group and turning down the proposals to create confidence building mechanisms, the international community again kept silence. And today, international community is again silent as we see how Azerbaijan uses heavy artillery and bombards the peaceful population. By the way, literally minutes ago the Azeri armed forces for the first time used heavy flame-thrower system, ognemyot in Russian; the type is called TOS-1. Meanwhile, when the Defense Army of Nagorno Karabakh is taking counter measures against the armed forces of Azerbaijan that has manifold numerical superiority over NK, they are urged to show restraint.

I have three messages I would like you to convey to your capitals:

First, the Ministry of foreign affairs of Azerbaijan, why only the MFA, it was obvious from the speech of the President of Azerbaijan as well, and other official sources have publicly stated that for some purposes - which is perhaps clear to them but do not echo the logic of the so far occuring processes in any ways - Azerbaijan was the one that had initiated the offensive. According to their explanations, Azerbaijan attacked the Nagorno Karabakh Republic to resolve problems that assumingly had to be addressed through the peaceful talks under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs. We expect all the parties concerned with the regional peace to clearly demand an explanation from Baku concerning the launch of the millitary operations.

In recent days many heads of states and international organisations expressed their concerns over the situation, and made statements calling to establish peace. They cannot be effective as long as they are not directed to a specific adressee, the one who provoked the offensive, and as long as they do not foresee consequences for disregarding them: this is exactly why I refer to the international community as being silent.

Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh are in favor of hostilities to be ceased and the 1994 ceasefire regime to be fully respected with all the parties returning to their initial positions and barracks as of the 1st of April, 2016. To preserve the ceasefire the OSCE needs to come up with stabilizing measures, which under these conditions should primarily include the urgent introduction of the ceasefire violations investigation mechanism and considerable increase of the monitoring capacities of the personal representative to the OSCE Chairman-in-office. It is also necessary to increase the number of field assistants to the personal representative to the OSCE Chairman-in-office in the conflict zone so that they can record the violations.

Second, I have repeatedly stated that to settle any conflict, especially when it is a conflict concerning the destiny of peoples fighting for their right to self-determination, it is necessary to address the cause of the conflict and only after that to proceed to other matters stemming from that cause.

The Armenian side has never declined reasonable concessions to resolve the conflict. The OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs and the Ambassadors of those countries that are present here are well aware of this. But talking about them is meaningful only when the root cause of the conflict is solved and the Nagorno Karabakh Republic is freed from the threat of being re-colonized. No one can force a people to live within a state that does not reflect aspirations and values of that people.

And third, one of the recent manifestations of the cynical behavior of Azerbaijan was the statement of Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense, according to which Azerbaijan unilaterally suspends the counter-offensive against the enemy due to the humanitarian concerns and starts implementing the program of fortifying the protection of the liberated territories. I can assure you that Azerbaijan hasnt liberated any territory. At this moment along the whole line of contact there is only a tiny segment in the south and another tiny segment in the north (which hopefully will no longer exist by the end of this meeting). This means that Azerbaijan has made an advance of merely 200-300 meters. For every meter they have lost more than one person. It is obvious that by this Azerbaijan is again misleading the international community and trying to create preconditions to guise both the hostilities it has unleashed and further continuation thereof.

Alleged unilateral ceasefire is out of question, since the tripartite Agreements on the Ceasefire from 1994 and on the Strengthening of the Ceasefire Regime from 1995 without time limits, signed by Azerbaijan, are in force and Azerbaijan must adhere to the letter and spirit of those documents as an international obligation and not as a gesture of good will. By the way, I believe that the mediators of the ceasefire have an important role to play. I think that they are also the guarantors of the preservation of the ceasefire regime. Nagorno Karabakh is a party to those documents and Azerbaijan must start to speak directly with the authorities of Karabakh whether they like them or not. Moreover, I believe that every incident of violation of the ceasefire must be thoroughly examined and evaluated since that is the guarantee and motivation of effective negotiation process.

As an OSCE participating state Armenia finds necessary to call upon all the OSCE participating states to be principled in their positions. If there is a will and desire to fix the situation, effective measures have to be implemented to that end and respect of the 1994 ceasefire regime must be enforced upon Azerbaijan.

And finally, one of the OSCE participating states, Turkey, which often reminds about its membership to the Minsk Group, is acting from a position of inciting a great war in the region and is explicitly encouraging the adventuristic policy of the Azerbaijani leadership. Azerbaijan is bragging about its alleged victory and Turkey congratulates it on that occasion. While the international community condemns the use of force in Nagorno-Karabakh although only in words. Turkey is the only country to provide unwavering support to the Azerbaijani adventurism. The statements made by Ankara before and after this situation- through which this country seems to compete with Azerbaijan with its anti-Armenian stance - can form a new hotbed of tension in the region, something of which Turkey has experience in the Near East. All those who wished to see Turkey among the mediators, now understand, that the country, having adopted the approach of the so-called blood-kinship security, should be completely kept away from the process of the Karabakh conflict resolution.

To conclude with, I would like to once again thank you for being here and express my hope that my messages and concerns will be heard in your capitals for the sake of the pan-European peace and security.

If you have questions, I am ready to answer."
YEREVAN.  One of the OSCE participating states, Turkey, which often reminds about its membership to the Minsk Group, is acting from a position of inciting a great war in the region and is explicitly encouraging the adventuristic policy of the Azerbaijani leadership, President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan said during his meeting with the ambassadors of OSCE member states on Monday.

Azerbaijan is bragging about its alleged victory and Turkey congratulates it on that occasion. While the international community condemns the use of force in Nagorno-Karabakh although only in words. Turkey is the only country to provide unwavering support to the Azerbaijani adventurism. The statements made by Ankara before and after this situation- through which this country seems to compete with Azerbaijan with its anti-Armenian stance - can form a new hotbed of tension in the region, something of which Turkey has experience in the Near East. All those who wished to see Turkey among the mediators, now understand, that the country, having adopted the approach of the so-called blood-kinship security, should be completely kept away from the process of the Karabakh conflict resolution.

To conclude with, I would like to once again thank you for being here and express my hope that my messages and concerns will be heard in your capitals for the sake of the pan-European peace and security, he said.
STEPANAKERT. - As of Monday, the Armenian side has suffered 20 casualties, another 26 being missing and 72 being wounded during the last four days of battles.

Head of the Karabakh Defense Army Operative Division, Colonel Vitali Arustamyan, said the aforementioned at the meeting with journalists in Stepanakert.

According to the colonel, two of the casualties are children, three of them being minors from among civilian population, as reported by Armenian News  NEWS.am special correspondent.

During the battles the Azerbaijani side suffered over 300 casualties, the number of the wounded is being ascertained.

No Armenian settlement is under Azerbaijani control. Eight positions were lost. In the sections where the enemy managed to crash to the ground, the depth is 200-300 m, there being no settlements. This means that no Armenian settlement is under the enemys control, the Colonel said.

On Monday the enemy went on to increased the types of weapons used, for the first time applying Russian TOS-1 "Solntsepyok", but it missed and wasnt able to achieve its goals. The Azerbaijani side also tried to use Kamikazedrone, but Karabakh Air Defense managed to destroy it.

According to the Colonel, everything started in the early hours of Saturday, when infiltration attempts were made in the northern direction. During the first hours, 1350 shells were launched from Grad, this being unprecedented.

As to the military equipment, the Armenian side has lost only seven tanks. The Azerbaijani side has lost eighteen tanks, two helicopters, one item of engineering equipment, three infantry fighting vehicles (IFV), six drones and one BM-21 Grad launch vehicle.
Emory College Class of 2020 Fast Facts  Admitted students come from high schools in 48 states, plus the District of Columbia.  Their top 10 states of origin, in descending order, are Georgia, California, New York, Florida, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Maryland.  They represent 78 countries (by citizenship).  For the first time, admitted students from India outnumber those from China.  Top countries of origin beyond the United States, in descending order, are India, China, South Korea, Canada, Turkey, United Kingdom, Mexico, Brazil and France.  61 percent of admitted students are from public high schools.  59 percent are women (up from 57 percent last year).  24 percent of all admitted students and 28 percent of domestic students are under-represented minorities, which places Emory in a leading position nationally.  The average SAT score is up 15 points over last year and the highest ever at Emory (Critical Reading/Math/Writing averages are 704/720/711).

Each spring, the pool of students invited to create Emory's newest first-year class reflects its own unique identity, as individualized as a thumbprint.

From engagement beyond the classroom to high test scores, academic excellence has emerged as the hallmark quality that distinguishes the spectrum of applicants eager to join the Class of 2020, says John Latting, dean of admission and assistant vice provost for undergraduate enrollment.

Throughout the year, weve been seeing a more diverse pool of applicants and in particular increased numbers of truly top scholars," Latting says. "From an academic standpoint, that was noticeable."

Beyond improved test scores  average SATs were up 15 points over last year, marking the highest ever for Emory College of Arts and Sciences  admissions officers also saw students who exemplified what they most hope to see in applicants, a sense of academic engagement, preparation, talent and scholarship potential that has really moved forward, he says.

Prospective and current undergraduate students tell us that they are attracted by the Emory undergraduate experience, says Claire E. Sterk, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. Specifically, they mention Emorys academic reputation, opportunities to pursue research, and the partnership between a liberal arts research university with a strong health sciences center.

Were seeing people gravitating to Emory because of their academic aspirations, Latting says. Its really clear that were increasingly coming to the foreground for students who deeply value educational quality.

This week, some 3,989 high school students will receive packets inviting them to join the next freshman class at Emory College, after initial regular admission decisions were released online March 30. Hundreds of others were previously contacted through the early admissions process, Latting says.

The total number of admitted freshmen for the 2016-2017 academic year is 4,927 for Emory College and 3,282 for Oxford College; over 1,000 of those students won admission to both Emory and Oxford College and may choose between them.

Emory College received applications from 19,924 students, marking Emorys second-highest year for admission applications and just under last years record-breaking 20,519 applicants.

Emory said in its strategic plan 11 years ago that we wanted to be the destination for not only the brightest but also the best students, and we seem to have attained that goal remarkably well, thanks to the good work of many people on our staff," says Emory President James Wagner.

"Not only will the Class of 2020 enrich the intellectual life of our campus, but it also appears to have a breadth of engagement, a depth of commitment, and a creative energy that will enliven our community," notes Wagner, who will step down at the end of August. "They will be coming in with a new president, who can only be proud of such a fine cohort."

The academic quality of admitted ECAS applicants is reflected in stronger academic measures, such as the following mean values:

High School GPA (unweighted): 3.81

SAT overall score: 2135

ACT composite score: 32

By all measures, this is an absolutely spectacular admitted class, says Robin Forman, dean of Emory College of Arts and Sciences.

Nothing is more rewarding for our faculty than to have a class of brilliant, engaged, ambitious students, so I am confident that our faculty are going to love our next freshman class," he says. "I look forward to watching these students thrive at Emory.

Engaged learners

For Latting, there is also a story beyond the numbers.

We look at many dimensions of each applicant, and some of those can be quantified, such as test scores, GPAs and the quality of curriculum, transcripts, the courses students have decided to take, how they are doing in their classes, he says. But we also look at what the teachers are saying, the overall level of engagement."

Through essays and letters of recommendation, admissions officers apply more subjective measures. As evidence of the kinds of scholars within this years admitted class to Emory College, the following are examples of teacher descriptions:

She sees the world differently and kept asking her classmates to do the same.

He models for his classmates an energetic critical inquiry that has enlivened many a discussion in our class.

A talented, driven young man who comes from a place of generosity.

She easily mastered the content and even made me want to strive to become a better teacher. Her thirst for knowledge and critical thinking skills are unmatched by her peers.

In the end, selecting and shaping a new class is a process that rests on judgment and trying to know the person  a very personal process in that sense, Latting notes. Its also pulling from the applicant pool the class thats right for Emory, people that we think can benefit most from an Emory education and contribute the most to the campus community.

I feel very proud of this class, he adds. Its a wonderful cohort of students.

International appeal

Emory also remains competitive on the global stage, with admission letters going out to a broad pool of international applicants, says Mark Butt, associate dean of admissions and international recruitment. Last year, the University unveiled a new "Global Vision for Emory," designed to guide strategic global engagement through 2020.

This is the first year that the offers for admission going to students in India will exceed the number of admission offers to students from China, he says, a difference he credits to both changes in the global economy and Emory's international recruitment efforts.

The top countries among international applicants this year, in descending order: India, China, South Korea, Canada, Turkey, Great Britain, Mexico, Brazil and France.

Butt says that in reviewing applications from students representing 78 countries and 100 different nationalities across the globe, hes been consistently impressed with not only the quality of applicants drawn here, but the name recognition that Emory has globally.

Primarily, international applicants say they are drawn to Emory by the overall quality of the academic experience. The idea that students can attend a highly reputable research university with global scholarship is very important, he says.

They also want to be in a major city with deep roots and connection to business, industry and non-profit organizations, and they want to be in a close network and close university community, he adds. Emory fits that intersection. Having the city of Atlanta as a backdrop is a huge draw.

As with applicants from the U.S., Butt says that this years cohort of international students are deeply engaged in their communities, and in many cases have command of multiple languages.

When I read applications from Africa, you see students who speak several languages, which is not only relevant for Emory in being a global institution but also makes the classroom extremely enriching.

Oxford admissions

At Oxford College, admissions officers also saw a robust pool of prospective students who demonstrated notable academic strengths, says Kelley Lips, dean of enrollment services for Oxford.

Out of a total application pool of 8,644, Oxford sent acceptance letters to 3,282 students whose average SAT scores remained strong with an average total score of 2064.

This is the second highest year of applicants in Oxford's history, says Lips. Oxford's entering class continues to reflect a student body with exemplary academic credentials from the U.S. and around the world."

Among this years admissions pool, Lips says students expressed interest in Oxford based upon the relationships they can cultivate with faculty both in and outside the classroom, leadership opportunities and the Oxford College leadership program, small class sizes within an intimate campus community, and the opportunity to graduate from a renowned university.

Its really profound what theyve accomplished in a relatively short time, really making an impact, she adds. Were seeing students with dedication, commitment and involvement who are seeking an environment that will continue to support those accomplishments.
Erika Hall, assistant professor of organization and management at Goizueta Business School, is making headlines. Beyond the attention to her academic research, she was recently named to the Atlanta Business Chronicle's "30 Under 30" list.

Hall joined the Goizueta faculty in fall 2014. While she teaches negotiations to BBA and MBA students, her passion for research is driven by racial and gender inequalities she sees on a day-to-day basis both inside and outside the business world.

Some inequalities are implicit in racial titles. In a 2015 paper published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Hall suggests the terms "black" and "African American" take on different meanings in different settings.

White Americans, her research indicates, view the word "black" as having more negative connotations than "African American." Hall and her fellow researchers found employees identified as "black," while equal to "African American" counterparts were deemed to be of lower socioeconomic status and assumed to have less education.

Hall and her colleagues also found distinct biases in the media when the term "black" was used to describe those of African descent. Hall told NPR's Bob Garfield that news articles using "black," in general, had a more negative emotional tone.

Hall knows, however, that racial bias isn't limited to titles.

Her most recent work focuses on how race  and the many biases associated with skin color  plays a role in law enforcement and the judicial system. Her new paper, "Black and Blue: Exploring Racial Bias and Law Enforcement in the Killings of Unarmed Black Male Civilians," is scheduled to be published in American Psychologist this month.

Hall spoke with Emory Report about her latest research and the impact of her work.

What's the difference between your new paper and previous work?

It's actually a review paper, so it reviews literature in social psychology and industrial and organizational psychology on racial bias and law enforcement. The paper reviews several studies that look at how certain law enforcement strategies may cultivate bias.

The other side of the paper talks about how, even though there are these mechanisms within police organizations, the bias itself is rooted in the people, not the police. So it says everybody's biased, but then there might be some additional mechanisms within the police that might exacerbate these biases. But we can change those, right, because those are organizational things.

The real problem  the root cause  is these biases in the general population from which police officers stem.

Has your work had any tangible effect on law enforcement or in changing the judicial system?

My highest professional achievement was a letter from an inmate at a correctional facility in New York. The inmate wrote that he didn't have access to the Internet to search academic papers in prison, but that he was extremely interested in reading my research and learning about its implications.

I cite this as my highest achievement because I truly felt that my impact extended past the ivory tower to the underserved communities that it could help most. The article that he mentioned focused on biases in the criminal justice system. Thus, the work could be significant for a defendant's rightful vindication in the justice system.

How do you hope that inmate  and other people  can use your work to affect change?

The paper the inmate was asking for was the paper about "African American" versus "black." In my opinion, language would greatly factor into somebody's court case, because when in court, the words that you use and the terminology that you use often affect how the jury perceives the case. So, that's how my work can have that tangible effect.

But there's also a study in that paper of news blasts you get if there's a crime on campus. We did a study and sent different reports, saying a black suspect was seen running on Lake Street and had stolen this, or an African American suspect was seen doing the same thing, and people actually felt warmer to the African American suspect, which suggests that the little change of the label has implications.
22:58

The Anil Ambani group-run Mumbai Metro is yet to pay Rs 28.55 crore rent to the regional planning body the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority for the land at the northwestern suburb of Versova

where the metro operator had put up the casting yard, reveals a Right to Information answer from the authority.

The MMRDA in a response to an RTI query filed by activist Anil Galgali said, "Mumbai Metro One Pvt Ltd was handed over the Home Guard land measuring 2.4 hectare at Versova for a casting yard in January 2009 for a period of 15 months."

The MMRDA said the company originally owed Rs 30.63 crore in rentals, out of which it cleared only Rs 3.97 crore to the MMRDA on July 29, 2015. But with interest and delayed fees, the total outstanding is Rs 28.55 crore, shows the RTI answer.

For using the Home Guard land, MMOPL, run by Anil Ambani's Reliance Infrastructure, had agreed to pay rent to the MMRDA. But it failed to do so, but continued to occupy the land for 55 months.

"Since metro construction jumped several deadlines, the MMOPL sought four extensions from the MMRDA to use the land. In its bid to continue to use the land, it even promised to build a training centre for the Home Guards which was never fulfilled," the MMRDA said in its RTI reply.
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KOLKATA: With over $4 billion lined up for investments in India's solar industry, its viability depends much on exemptions continuing on related equipment under the proposed goods and services tax (GST) regime to power 4.8 GW of electricity generation, stakeholders maintain.

GST seeks to simplify the complex network of state and central taxes by subsuming them into a single tax. But the renewable energy sector, currently enjoying several indirect tax exemptions, may be "caught unprepared" as the new regime proposes to withdraw most of the exemptions.

"If solar cells and modules come in the list of standard GST rate and there is no exemption, we fear that the industry might be caught unprepared," said Jasmeet Khurana, associate director with Bridge To India, a consultancy and knowledge services provider on renewable market.

"This can have an adverse impact on a significant number of planned investments and the overall investment climate," Khurana told IANS, adding the impact could primarily be on the investments planned for 2017 while also affecting several recently allocated projects.

According to a report of the consultancy firm, around 4.8 GW (Gigawatt) of solar capacity is expected to be installed with an investment of around 27,000 crore. This number is likely to swell by around 50 percent for investments planned in 2017.

"It's a matter of serious concern. Over 5,000 MW of projects that have been awarded and are under implementation would be affected if solar equipment does not fall in the exemption list of GST," said Pranav Mehta, chairman of the National Solar Energy Federation of India.

The union ministry of new and renewable energy (MNRE) has taken up the matter and the federation is also seized with it proactively to resolve the issue, added Mehta, who also serves as the co-chair of the global solar council.

"All projects under construction or where it is yet to begin will definitely be impacted. Project viability is likely to be questionable unless this issue is addressed," Sunil Jain , executive director of Hero group's renewable energy arm, told IANS.

He also said while the GST regime will not be a major obstacle in the roll-out of solar projects, an upward movement of solar tariffs could be in the offing. But a further fall in panel prices is likely to nullify some of the impact of GST.

Jain said: "Since GST works on a principal of netting taxes from input till output, it is likely to result in increase in cost of solar equipment, as tax credits will not be available to manufacturers."

Service tax is also likely to increase to 18 percent, leading to a five percent rise in operation and maintenance charges. Thus, tariff is likely to be impacted by 50-60 paise per unit, since the project cost will go up by 8-9 percent, he said.

Solar power tariffs have sunk to a new low in India at 4.34 per unit. Developers are keeping their fingers crossed, hoping a standard GST rate will not be considered for projects that have bid at aggressive tariffs.

"But there is no guarantee it will happen. For all such projects where the procurement remains incomplete by the time GST is implemented, economic viability would surely come under question, if standard GST rates are made applicable on solar equipment," Khurana said.

Yet, Solar module maker First Solar India's country head Sujoy Ghosh told IANS: "For projects that sign power purchase agreements prior to GST notification, its impact needs to be covered under the change-in-law provisions."

It implies any increase in capital expenditure has to be passed on to the consumer, Ghosh said. "For projects that would be bid after the GST regime is notified, the developers would need to factor in the implications and price the tariff accordingly."

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Stanford's Codiga Resource Recovery Center to open in May

The new Codiga Resource Recovery Center, which opens in May on Bonair Siding, could revolutionize the 100-year-old wastewater treatment paradigm while it helps accelerate the commercialization of promising new technologies.

Kate Chesley Sebastien Tilmans is operations director of the William and Cloy Codiga Resource Recovery Center, which is set to open in May.

This May, Stanford will open the William and Cloy Codiga Resource Recovery Center (CR2C), which is designed to test and accelerate the commercialization of promising technologies for the recovery of clean water and energy from wastewater.

The center, located at the end of Bonair Siding near the Stanford Federal Credit Union, is a collaborative effort among water resource researchers from the School of Engineering and the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and water management specialists from the university's Department of Sustainability and Energy Management. Its humble appearance  it resembles an Erector Set of pipes and pumps  belies its mission to dramatically change the way we think about wastewater treatment and recovery.

"We know this is a transformational moment in our sector," said Sebastien Tilmans, CR2C operations director. Tilmans earned his PhD in civil and environmental engineering at Stanford and worked at the San Francisco Public Utility Commission's Oceanside Wastewater Treatment Plant. He was enticed by CR2C faculty director and civil and environmental engineering Professor Craig Criddle to return to the Farm.

Tilmans believes CR2C can provide a blueprint to help municipalities confront the dual challenges of coping with water shortages while replacing aging wastewater treatment plants built in the 1970s with federal funding from the Clean Water Act. At that time, electricity was cheap, water plentiful, funding easier to access and climate change a distant threat. The center's work is also applicable to universities, private water and wastewater organizations, and corporations.

Changing the paradigm

"We have a narrow window of opportunity when we can demonstrate the viability of alternatives to the 100-year-old paradigm," Tilmans said.

Instead of viewing wastewater treatment as a way to eliminate hazardous materials, Tilmans said he hopes the Codiga center will help policymakers see that wastewater treatment can produce energy and water clean enough for irrigation and drinking. The technology exists to make that vision possible, affordable and sustainable. The challenge is proving that what works in a laboratory can be scaled up to work when millions of gallons of water are at stake. No government agency will want to spend millions  or potentially billions  on unproven technology.

That's where CR2C comes into play. The center, funded by the university and a gift from Stanford alumnus William Codiga and his wife, Cloy, employs several different testing methods that scientists can utilize to design new technology and techniques. For instance, four test beds can accommodate visiting researchers who need access to a sufficient amount of wastewater at different grades to make their studies viable. CR2C provides wastewater drawn from a sewage pipe below Serra Street that leads to the Palo Alto treatment plant.

The facility can also serve researchers  including some at Stanford  who are trying to improve remote sensing and monitoring equipment designed to more efficiently test the quality of water. Finally, the Codiga center will test an anaerobic technology that Tilmans said "achieves what we used to think was impossible."

Wastewater plants traditionally have relied on aerobic treatment processes, which typically employ oxygen-consuming bacteria to digest the biological waste. Such processes, however, use large amounts of energy and generate considerable biosolids that must be disposed of.

By contrast, CR2C will test an anaerobic process  the Staged Anaerobic Fluidized Bed Membrane Bioreactor  that converts organic material into methane. That methane can, in turn, be used to power the treatment process. Such a system would cost less, use less energy, take up less space, result in fewer biosolids and more effectively remove such stubborn materials as pharmaceuticals and beauty products. The system relies on the creation of a colony of insatiable organisms that, once established, become the perfect biowaste eating machines.

Tilmans, a man with an uncanny knack for analogies, explained, "Think of it like a hog farm. But, instead of pigs, we have bacteria."

National network

When CR2C opens, it will be the fourth and largest Staged Anaerobic Fluidized Bed Membrane Bioreactor in the world, and the first time such a system is tested and demonstrated in the Western Hemisphere. The Department of Energy, the Water Environment Research Foundation, the National Science Foundation and the Environmental Protection Agency have created a National Test Bed Facility Network to bring experts at the very few such facilities together to collaborate. CR2C is a Level 4 test-bed facility, meaning that it is a fully staffed facility dedicated to testing and demonstrating new technologies. Tilmans is looking forward to the first gathering in May.

Tilmans' vision for the center includes additional facilities that would expand Codiga's reach into technologies for processing other organic wastes and producing safe, sustainable materials like biodegradable plastics. He also imagines classroom facilities that will teach the next generation of wastewater engineers how to create and maintain sustainable treatment processes. He also hopes that the work of Codiga researchers will help policymakers evaluate new wastewater treatment technologies for future investment.

Equally important is the partnership with Stanford water experts, who hope the Codiga center can eventually play a role in the university's long-term sustainable water management plans. Stanford currently relies on the Hetch Hetchy water system for its potable water, while also using groundwater and surface water for much of its non-potable water needs. In the long run, however, as Stanford's water needs grow with its population and campus development, those sources alone may not meet all demands.
Stanford historian examines age-old inquiry about what it means to be 'living'

In research covering four centuries of scientific debate, Stanford historian Jessica Riskin investigates different views of man and machine, and how this debate laid the groundwork for later theories of evolution and science.

Jim Block Stanford historian Jessica Riskin explores the decades-old debate of what differentiates humans from machines.

What do human beings and machines have in common?

Stanford historian Jessica Riskin argues that philosophical debates stretching back to the 17th century have profoundly shaped current ideas in the life sciences about what makes a living thing alive  and what makes it act and change.

For centuries, philosophers and scientists have regularly compared living things to machines, but they have meant very different things by the word "machine," according to Riskin, a professor of history who writes about these issues in her new book, The Restless Clock.

Riskin investigates the history of lifelike machines and the philosophical and theological debates surrounding them, and explores how we can better understand the current state of theories of life and sentience in the areas of evolutionary biology, genetics, cybernetics and robotics.

Riskin's project led her through the "clockmakers route" that winds through the mountains of Switzerland. There, she observed working "automata"  moving mechanical figures of people and animals  dating from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. These life-like figures encouraged philosophers to understand living things in terms of mechanism and machinery.

Fast forward to the 21st century, and while visiting the artificial intelligence robotics lab at MIT, Riskin observed a strikingly similar approach in evolutionary and behavioral robotics. Seeking to understand humans as machines was not a 20th century development, but dates back to philosophers Rene Descartes and Gottfreid Wilhelm Leibniz.

Man and machine

The 17th century discussion about men and machines was less concerned with whether humans were machines, and more with what kind of machines they were, she said. Two main ideas of "machine" competed in the 17th century, and each idea led to different conclusions about living things' capacity to act in the world in a self-directed way: that is, their agency.

One idea was that living things were designed machines, works of engineering that simply functioned as they had been designed to function by a "divine engineer" of sorts, Riskin said. For 17th century philosophers, God was this outside force, and the fact that living things worked so well was evidence of God as a rational engineer.

In the course of her research on Leibniz, Riskin uncovered a surprising alternative view about "machines" and, with it, a whole other history of the life sciences. Instead of being moved by outside forces, machines were seen as active and responsive.

Riskin noted a passage from Leibniz, who says that in German, the word for the balance of a clock is unruhe, which she translates as 'restless.' "Clocks, like bodies, had to be perpetually disquiet, always adjusting and responding to things happening outside themselves," she said.

In this alternative tradition in the life sciences, she said, people seek to understand the world in terms of moving parts and machinery, and yet it's a completely different kind of machinery because the parts are active, and the machinery is intrinsically active.

The idea of active machinery supported the notion that living things were not designed all at once, but instead could transform themselves, she said. However, this was a dangerous argument that threatened the idea of God, so it was ultimately cast into the shadows.

Evolution debates

Still, the debate over active and passive machines set the stage for philosophical discussions about emerging theories of evolution, according to Riskin.

Most notable were those of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, a 19th century biologist, who proposed that an organism could develop inheritable characteristics over its life span. Riskin suggests that the expulsion of Lamarck from mainstream science was due to the threat he posed to the theological notion of an external designer. He actually coined the term "biology" to denote a science of life, she added.

She argues that neo-Darwinism's turn from Lamarck erased the possibility of an organism's agency in the evolutionary process. In a neo-Darwinian model, living organisms are made of dumb, mechanical parts that can only change through random variation and natural selection.

But Riskin challenges such beliefs.

"There are assumptions that are tacitly shared by the members of a discipline like evolutionary biology  such as the conviction that you can't ascribe evolutionary agency to an organism. I want to question those convictions  not as a biologist, but as a historian, by showing their unexpected historical roots," said the history professor.

In the course of her research, Riskin critiqued the evolutionary and cognitive theories of prominent figures such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Stephen Pinker. This scientific tradition, which is generally termed the New Atheism movement, reduces the mind to passive mechanical parts.

A great irony exists in this view, Riskin said "I don't think any of these thinkers and writers realize that the view they are espousing against religious and theological views of nature actually originated as part of a theological program, the argument from design."

In other words, she said, the New Atheists' view of passive living organisms that are unable to shape their own evolutionary destiny, actually originated in theological arguments from design.

On the other hand, the "restless clock" model of living things as active machines capable of transforming and evolving has roots in the work of Leibniz and Lamarck, thinkers who sought a science of life that did not make continual appeals to a supernatural God.

Riskin suggests that understanding the historical context behind these different views of man and machine can help us today in our fast-accelerating technological age.

"It's important to understand the stakes of current debates in science  those stakes often have long histories and you can't understand the stakes without knowing about their histories," she said.
The migrants will first go through the camps set up on the dock for health check and registration, Xinhua reported.

Under a deal finalised last month with the European Union, Ankara agrees to take back those who have crossed illegally into Greece via Turkey from March 20 and are deemed ineligible for asylum.

Hundreds of migrants are expected to be sent back to Dikili town in Turkey on Monday.

--Indo-Asian News Service py/vm

( 103 Words)

2016-04-04-12:49:33 (IANS)
New Delhi, April 4 (ANI-NewsVoir): Karmic Ishq, a book released last year by Goan author Savio Rodrigues has been sold to an Indo-Hollywood production company, Houseful Motion Pictures for an undisclosed amount and will be made into an English-language film to cater to the global movie audience. Speaking on the tie-up, Utpal Acharya, Managing Director, HMP, said, "Having been associated with Indian, Regional and International films for several years now, the ability to spot good content for a movie is ingrained. Karmic Ishq is a touching story of love, passion and Karma. It delves on the social evil of child abuse and its impact on the psyche of its survivors." "Sometimes you read a book and know that it needs a larger canvass to show its true value, Karmic Ishq is one such book that needs to be made into a movie for the global and Indian audience that appreciates a good realistic story with a message of hope. Our vision is to make an English movie for the global audience. We are in talks to partner with a Hollywood production company to co-produce the movie with us," added Utpal Acharya. Karmic Ishq follows the life of its two main protagonists Kevin and Alisha through their growing up years. It portrays their love, lust and passion for each other. Both are survivors of child-abuse in their growing years and both have dealt with their trauma differently yet love binds them together. Speaking on the deal, Savio Rodrigues, Author, Karmic Ishq, stated, "I am thrilled that someone as experienced and knowledgeable in the global movie business as Utpal Acharya and his team have liked the book and decided to purchase the movie rights of the book to make it into a Hollywood movie for the global audience. I am also equally excited that I would also be a part of the film-making process to co-write the screenplay for the movie. Karmic Ishq is a story for a global audience. I am also excited that as a Goan author, my work is creating a platform for other Goan authors on an International level." (ANI-NewsVoir)
In the first sentencing in a coal block allocation case, a special court here on Monday sent to jail, for four years, two directors of Jharkhand Ispat Pvt. Ltd. whom it had convicted of criminal conspiracy and cheating in bagging a coal block, saying "white collar criminals" are "more dangerous" to society". Special Central Bureau of Investigation Judge Bharat Parashar awarded four years' jail terms to JIPL directors R.S. Rungta,79, and R.C. Rungta, 60, and slapped a Rs.5 lakh fine each on them. The court also imposed a fine of Rs.25 lakh on Jharkhand Ispat Pvt. Ltd. (JIPL). Defining "white collar criminals" as "a person of the upper socio-economic class who violates the criminal law in the course of his occupational or professional activities" and including businessmen, industrialists, entrepreneurs, traders, politicians, bureaucrats or well-qualified professionals, the court said: "Such white collar crimes are in fact more dangerous to the society than ordinary crimes, firstly, because the financial losses are much higher, and, secondly because of the damages inflicted on public morale." "Off late the anti social activities of persons of the upper socio-economic strata of the society in their occupation and which have came to be known as 'white collar crimes' have attracted attention. "The average loss from ordinary crimes such as burglaries, robberies and larcenies etc. may run into few thousand rupees only but the loss which the white collar crimes may cause run not only in lakhs but in crores of rupees," it said. It added that to find criminality committed by "white collar criminals" is often a difficult task because they are committed after much deliberations and planning undertaken by well trained minds having a higher status in the society. The court observed that crime committed by "white collar criminals" is due to their greed or lust to acquire maximum material resources in the name of their business, taking benefit of open competition, economy and individual freedom. "However the inevitable result of all the aforesaid acts is the large scale exploitation of the public by the businessmen and professionals in the course of their occupational activities." Noting coal is an important element for the infrastructural and industrial development of a developing country like India, it said such kind of unscrupulous businessmen and industrialists were the reason that "despite 69 years of independence, our country is still lagging behind than most of the countries in the world in industrial/infrastructural development". The court last week convicted JIPL and its directors R.S. Rungta and R.C. Rungta for the offence of cheating and criminal conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code, observing that they had "fraudulently" and with a "dishonest intention" deceived the government in allocating the North Dhadu coal block in Jharkhand to the firm. The Rungtas, who are already in judicial custody, were present in the courtroom when the sentence was pronounced. Besides this case, 19 other cases investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) are pending before the court, set up to exclusively deal with all the coal scam matters. Two other cases probed by the Enforcement Directorate are also pending before the court. --Indo-Asian News Service akk/vd ( 534 Words) 2016-04-04-19:19:32 (IANS)
Icelands prime minister is this week expected to face calls in parliament for a snap election after the Panama Papers revealed he is among several leading politicians around the world with links to secretive companies in offshore tax havens, the Guardian reported. The financial affairs of Sigmundur Dav Gunnlaugsson and his wife have come under scrutiny because of details revealed in documents from a Panamanian law firm that helps clients protect their wealth in secretive offshore tax regimes. The files from Mossack Fonseca form the biggest ever data leak to journalists. Opposition leaders have been discussing a motion calling for a general election -- in effect a confidence vote in the prime minister. On Monday, Gunnlaugsson was expected to face allegations from opponents that he has hidden a major financial conflict of interest from voters ever since he was elected an MP seven years ago. The former prime minister Jhanna Sigurardttir said Gunnlaugsson would have to resign if he could not regain public trust quickly, calling on him to give a straightforward account of all the facts of the matter. Former finance minister Steingrmur Sigfsson told the Guardian: We cant permit this. Iceland would simply look like a banana republic. No one is saying he used his position as prime minister to help this offshore company, but the fact is you shouldnt leave yourself open to a conflict of interest. And nor should you keep it secret. Leaked papers show Gunnlaugsson co-owned a company called Wintris Inc, set up in 2007 on the Caribbean island of Tortola in the British Virgin Islands, to hold investments with his wealthy partner, later wife, Anna Sigurlaug Plsdttir. The couple were living in Britain at the time and had been advised to set up a company in the tax haven in order to hold and invest substantial proceeds from the sale of Plsdttirs share in her familys business back in Iceland. Gunnlaugsson owned a 50 percent stake in Wintris for more than two years, then transferred it to Plsdttir, who held the other 50 percent, for one dollar. The prime ministers office now says his shareholding was an error and it had always been clear to both of them that the prime ministers wife owned the assets. Once drawn to the couples attention in late 2009, the error was corrected. --Indo-Asian News Service ahm/dg ( 401 Words) 2016-04-04-21:43:31 (IANS)
Actor Martin Freeman, who loves clothes and shoes, says that he likes people who have an affinity for good clothes and immediately tends to trust them. "I like people who like clothes. I immediately trust men who are into clothes, even though they could turn out to be horrible people. There is an intelligence about caring about what you wear, The Times newspaper's Luxx menswear supplement quoted Freeman as saying, reports femalefirst.co.uk. "I was always into fashion and, as I've got older, it's got worse. I know there are more important things in the world. Outside my normal life, aside from music, it's where most of my energy goes. I'm not very proud of that. Some people's energy goes on saving Syrian refugees. Mine goes on shoes, he added. The 44-year-old actor described his fashion addiction as a "sickness", and shared that it infuriates his partner of 16 years, Amanda Abbington. "I can't leave the house unless I'm happy with my appearance. It's a sickness. It's a nightmare for Amanda, he said. --Indo-Asian News Service ks/rb ( 187 Words) 2016-04-04-03:19:31 (IANS)
Over 45 per cent voters cast their ballots in first four hours of polling in 18 West Bengal constituencies spread over three districts in the first phase of Assembly elections today.Official reports said the polling was peaceful and there had been no reports of untoward incidents so far.According to Election Commission figures, Paschim Medinipur's six assembly seats reported 47.14 per cent votes in first 4 hours since polling began at 0700 hours, followed by Bankura's three seats 45.02 per cent and Purulia's nine seats had 43.43 per cent polling. However, the CPI(M) alleged that two booths-143 and 191 have been"captured", but the district magistrate denied it. Snag in EVM machines forced suspension of polling for the time being in two booths under Rani bandh constituency. The polling resumed after replacement of the voting machines. Large number of voters, including women and those voting for the first time, lined up before polling booths since morning to exercise their franchise.The polling is being held for 18 of the state's 294 Assembly seats. It is being conducted across three districts- West Midnapore (6), Bankura(3) and Purulia (9), which form the tribal-dominated Jangal mahal region, once the hotbed of Maoist extremists that has witnessed prolonged bloodbath and power struggle among the key political forces. Jangal mahal has a total of 40 seats, 22 of which will go to polls on April 11(First phase-1A). The constituencies where polling is being held are Nayagram (ST), Gopiballavpur, Jhargram,Salboni, Medinipur, Binpur (ST), Bandwan(ST), Balarampur, Baghmundi, Joypur, Purulia, Manbazar (ST), Kashipur, Para(SC), Raghunathpur (SC), Ranibandh (ST), Raipur (ST) and Taldangra. As many as 40,09,171 electors including 19,57,453 female voters are expected to exercise their franchise in the first phase which has 133candidates in the fray. All the major parties - the ruling All India Trinamool congress (AITC), the CPI(M) led Left Front-Congress combine and the BJP among others have fielded candidates for all the 18 seats. There are total 4,945 polling stations out of which 1,962 have been classified as critical ones by the Election Commission. Voter Verifiable Audit Trails (VVAT) are being done in 562 polling stations. The 2016 elections features a unique phenomenon as the Left Front and the Congress, which had been at daggers drawn for decades have come to a poll understanding to take on the might of the Trinamool Congress. In all Left-wing extremism affected polling stations, the EC has decided to deploy a minimum of one section of force, which has around ten security personnel. There is a minimum of three security layers including sector forces and a quick response team. Central forces are present in every polling booth. Two choppers are making aerial surveillance.UNI TEAM-PC KK ADG SB1400 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0059-667032.Xml
The Aoleang, a premier sowing festival of the Konyak Naga community invoking the spirit for bountiful harvest, was celebrated in all Konyak inhabited towns and villages with traditional all traditional fervour since Saturday. The main function was held in Hongphoi village in Min district, traditional home of Aoleang, the festival was organized by the Hongphoi Students' Union (HSU)on Saturday the village local ground with Tingyeih, BDO of Wakching, as the chief guest. Speaking at the programme, Tingyeih, encouraged the youth to preserve the culture and respect the elders as it has been the traditional practices since the time of their ancestors. He also encouraged the youth to be competitive in the educational field while at the same not to neglect the rich culture and tradition. Besides, the chief guest also said youth are the main force to preserve the rich culture and tradition which should be passed on to the next generation.Speaking on the significant of Aoleang festival, Ganjon highlighted that Aoleang took its root in Hongphoi village which subsequently spread to the whole land of the Anghs. He said Aoleang festival is marked by beating of log drums and echoing of folk songs which are heard from far distance.Meanwhile, the Chen Union Dimapur (CUD) celebrated its 20th Aoleang festivalon Saturday in the residence of its treasurer and former Lok Sabha MP, W Wangyuh Konyak in Dimapur town. CUD President, Chenlip Yakha Salymn, briefed on the activities of the union since its inception in 1996, which it has been persevering towards the cause of the community on all fronts. He also spoke on the theme "Making good society" in relevance to the contemporary world. The president also extended appreciation to the treasurer, W. Wangyuh, for serving the union for the past 20 years in all fields of the union activities and for providing practical and logistic support. UNI AS KK SW AS1440 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0212-667036.Xml
Police today arrested a local milkman for selling branded milk which had been heavily diluted with contaminated water. Vakola police station have arrested the accused Saidul Lingaya Madeboina (42), who would not only buy milk packets with the sole intention of mixing and reselling them, but also collected used packets from garbage bins, and then filled them with milk and sold it to the customers. The accused Saidul, is a resident of Lokhandwala Chawl at Dowry Nagar locality in Vakola in Santacruz (E) area of the subarb. He would buy packets of milk from brands such as Amul Taza, Mother Dairy Standard, Govardhan, and would then dilute it with contaminated water. Sometimes he added as much as 10 litres of water to 3 litres of milk. He would also visit tea shops and ask them for empty milk bags, or picked up used packets from garbage bins fill them with the contaminated milk. He has been in this business for more than a year, police said. He would convert 50/60 litres of milk into 100 litres, this is not the first time that we have arrested him, earlier also he was arrested for committing asimilar crime, they added. Acting on a tip-off, police raided Saidul's shanty and recovered the adulterated milk. We have seized around hundred litres milk from the spot and it has been sent for testing to the BMC. He was booked under Sections 272 (adulteration of food or drink intended for sale), 273 (sale of noxious food or drink), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 482, 486 and other sections of FDA.''UNI AAA NV CJ AS1655 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-667284.Xml
Mahila Bachat Gat (Women Saving group) will avail restaurant, fruit stalls, juice centre at the State Transport depots across the state, state transport minister Diwakar Raote informed the legislative council members today. Replying to a query raised by Sandeep Bajoriya and other that whether Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) has any plan to provide restaurant, stalls and juice centres to Mahila Bachat Gat (women Saving group) in the state, Mr Raote said corporation will issue tenders for the vacant restaurant, fruit stall, and juice centre. The women saving group would be given priority to launch the business surrounding theST depot. Mr Raote further said there are a total of 249 restaurant at ST Stand, the agreement of 47 stalls have been expired and some placed are vacant. The corporation will issue tender to issue the place, maximum bidder will get the place. UNI ST NV CJ AS1652 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-667291.Xml
Police today recovered three bodies from inside ahouse located at Kalynapur located under Hatia Police Station area ofthe state capital. Police sources said the bodies were of those of Vinay Gograi and his wife and his daughter. Police said that Vinay murdered hiswife and daughter late last night and later committed suicide byhanging himself. The incident came to light after none of the family members opened the door in the morning. Neighbours and the owner of the house where the trio lived as tenants broke into the house only to find the bodies. Later the police was alerted, who has sent all the bodies for postmortem to RIMS. ASP Hatia Prashant Anand said prima facie it appears that the incident was result of frequent quarrels between the couple. However,further details would be revealed after the autopsy report isreceived. He said the police was probing the case. Vinay was a resident of Purulia district of West Bengal and was staying in the state capital where he used to earn his living while working as a labourer. UNI AK PL SW RAI1705 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0211-667208.Xml
Police said that the youth had allegedly made an extortion call to the JD (U) MLA Mr Sharfuddin on his personal mobile phone at his residence in the state capital last Saturday. The MLA had lodged an FIR at Gardanibagh police station in Patna in this connection.

Later, the police put mobile number of the caller on surveillance for monitoring his movement. The nabbed youth is being brought to Patna for interrogation.UNI XC-DH CJ VP1758

-- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0213-667337.Xml
These policemen were on Friday convicted by the court for gunning down 11 Sikh pilgrims in cold blood in Pilibhit on July 12, 1991, while the latter were returning from a pilgrimage.

The police had dubbed the victims as terrorists and said they had fired at the police personnel when intercepted.

The court held the policemen guilty under sections 302 (murder), 364 (kidnapping or abducting in order to murder), 365 (kidnapping or abducting), 218 (public servant framing incorrect record) and 117 (abetting commission of offence) read with 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

The Supreme Court handed over the probe to the Central Bureau of Investigation after a public interest litigation.

The CBI said the Sikhs killed in the staged gun battle were innocent. The agency charge-sheeted 57 police officials in the case. Ten of the accused died during the trial.

The CBI court framed charges against the accused on January 20, 2003.

--Indo-Asian News Service md/tsb/dg

( 199 Words)

2016-04-04-18:11:32 (IANS)
A complaint has been lodged with Haryana police against Yoga Guru Baba Ramdev for delivering hate speech at 'Sadbhavna Sammelan' today.The complaint was lodged against Ramdev by a group of civil society members led by former Haryana Home Minister Subhash Batra. While addressing the 'Sadbhavna Sammelan' yesterday, the Yoga guru said that he respected the law of the land and the Constitution, otherwise "lakhs of heads would have been cut for opposing the chanting of 'Bharat Mata ki jai'".Without naming AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi who had recently said he would not chant 'Bharat Mata ki jai' even if a knife is put to his throat. Ramdev said the chant is about the motherland and not any religion. "If any religion prohibits chanting of 'Bharat Mata ki jai' it is against national interest." Chanting the slogan is not worship of any religion, the yoga guru said.Himachal Pradesh Governor Acharya Dev Vrat and Jain Muni Tarun Sagar, were prominent persons who spoke on 'Sadbhavna Sammelan' organised under the aegis of 'Samajik Samrasta Manch' in this town, which had been the epicentre of the recent incidents of violence during the Jat stir for caste-based quota.UNI NC/DB VJ CJ SB 1836 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0400-667643.Xml
After being sworn in as Chief Minister of J&K, Mehbooba Mufti today had a one on one meeting with Governor N N Vohra at the Raj Bhavan. The Governor informed the Chief Minister about some of the major issues awaiting her attention. The Governor wished Ms Mufti good luck and high success in all her future endeavours to move the state speedily forward on the path of growth and development. Later, the Chief Minister was accorded traditional Guard of Honour on her arrival at the civil secretariat here.Welcomed to the seat of power with a rousing reception, Ms Mehbooba was offered the Guard of Honour by Jammu and Kashmir Police contingent. The Chief Minister took salute and was escorted by the Director General of Police K Rajendra on the occasion. She straightway drove to the civil secretariat from Raj Bhawan and was received warmly by the Council of Ministers, Chief Secretary, B R Sharma and other top civil and police officers and employees of the secretariat.Deputy Chief Minister, Dr Nirmal Singh and other members of the Council of Ministers were also given a warm reception on their arrival at the civil secretariat.UNI VBH CJ SB 1826 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0400-667679.Xml
In the sting video footage, the then union minister Dilip Singh Judeo was allegedly caught on camera while accepting cash in a hotel room.

Besides Amit Jogi, CBI Special Judge Rajneesh Kumar Gupta acquitted Judeo's then personal secretary Natwar Rateria, journalist Bhupinder Singh Patel alias Rahul, Arvind Vijay Mohan and Rajat Prasad, Amit's counsel Rahul Tyagi told IANS.

Charges against Judeo were dropped after his death on August 15, 2013.

A case was registered against Judeo and others in December 2003 after an inquiry into allegations that Judeo, then a minister of state for environment and forests, accepted a bribe from Patel in exchange for future assistance with regard to mining projects in Chhattisgarh. Judeo denied the allegations.

Later, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) accused Amit Jogi, the son of the then Chhattisgarh chief minister Ajit Jogi, of planning the sting for deriving political mileage in favour of the latter.

Rahul was in close contact with Mohan, who made arrangements to secretly record the exchange of money on videotape, the CBI had said.

Mohan was in frequent communication with a particular phone number registered in the name of Ajit Jogi and his son Amit, the first information report in the case said.

The CBI claimed that the analysis of Patel's mobile phone conversations revealed that apart from Mohan, he was in touch with Rajat Prasad, who was connected to a local media channel.

All were booked under the Prevention of Corruption Act.

--Indo-Asian News Service akk/tsb/vt

( 284 Words)

2016-04-04-19:34:07 (IANS)
: Mumbai-headquartered Yes Bank, India's fifth largest private sector bank, today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with T-Hub, a unique public/private partnership between the government of Telangana, three of India's premier academic institutes (IIIT-H, ISB and NALSAR) and key private sector leaders. The agreement was held between the YES Bank and T-Hub just before launching of the IT policy 2016 by Chief Minister K.Chandrsekhar Rao at HICC this evening. The MoU is first of its kind in nature which will enable the Indian startups across segments; with primary focus towards Financial Technology (FinTech) space. As per the agreement, YES BANK and T-Hub would be setting up a World Class Centre of Excellence (CoE) and will collaborate in the areas of FinTech, Agri, Healthcare, EGovernance at T-Hub. This association will help create a conducive business environment and support system for a large number of FinTech startups. T-Hub will engaged and invite the bank to partner and advise FinTech companies so as to enable them to create applications and use cases for Financial services. In addition, Yes Bank will offer its various products and payment gateways and open APIs to the start-up community. Speaking on the association, Ritesh Pai, Senior President and Country Head, Digital Banking, YES BANK said "YES BANK has been in the forefront of revolutionizing the Indian FinTech startup segment. Currently, our nation holds a range of innovative FinTech startups that are working in areas such as payment processing with an eye to reduce frauds, create newer channels for savings and investments, financial planning, analytics amongst others, which are superior enablers of the large Indian banking industry. Sharing his thoughts about the partnership, Jay Krishnan, CEO, T-Hub, said, Fostering growth for the FinTech startups, T-Hub has signed an MoU with YES BANK. The signing of this MoU will give start-ups at T-Hub access to banking technology, the finest minds in the world of banking as mentors and guidance to the markets amongst various other facilities. We hope that start-ups make the most of this opportunity and climb the ladder of success, he added.UNI KNR KVV ADB 2005 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0414-667906.Xml
The trial court, hearing the case of murder of senior Communist Party of India leader Govind Pansare, today took strong objection to the failure of the Kalmba district jail authority in producing prime suspect Sameer Gaikwad in court on account of security reasons and directed the police to produce himin court on next hearing on April 11. Gaikwad has been lodged in judicial custody in Kalmba jail from September 28, following his arrest on September 16 last year. Special public prosecutor (SPP) Harshal Nimbalkar also could not attend today's hearing. Earlier, Additional Superintendent of Police S Chaitanya, who is also investigating officer (IO), today submitted a confidential report on the progress of investigation as sought by the court. When Additional Sessions Judge L D Bile asked him as to when he will submit the final report on investigation into the murder case, Mr Chaitanya could not give a definite answer. The Judge chided him that he cannot keep adjourning the matter as he has to frame charges against the arrested. Then, public prosecutor Chandrakant Budhale, through an application, requested the court to adjourn today's hearing as Mr Nimbalkar was not present in court. He further told the court that the jail authority also could not present the accused in court due to security reasons as policemen were deployed on 'bandobast' duty as well as some of them were engaged in work related to the recruitment of candidates into the police force. Defence lawyer Sameer Patwardhan, representing Gaikwad, objected to the prosecution's demand and told the court that it was tantamount to contempt of the court as even after court's order, the prosecution and jail authority could not produce the accused before the court.MORE UNI SSS SS SW SB VN1952 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-667708.Xml
Bihar BJP today castigated RJD Chief Lalu Prasad for inducting incarcerated former RJD MP Mohammed Shahabuddin in the party`s national executive and asked Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to intervene as Mr Shahabuddin`s growing stature in the ruling alliance partner was ominous for the state. Senior BJP leader and former Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi told newspersons here that Mr Prasad did not have any moral compunction in accommodating Mr Shahabuddin in the national executive as he himself was on bail in a criminal case (fodder scam). He said Mr Kumar, who had always boasted of establishing rule of law in the state should exercise his influence and persuade Mr Prasad to drop Mr. Shahabuddin from the national executive. Mr Modi said the way he had included controversial RJD MP in the party`s national executive, it would not surprise anybody if he gave similar honour to RJD MLA from Nawada Rajballabh Yadav, who is facing charges of outraging the modesty of a minor girl. Mr Shahabuddin was sentenced to life imprisonment by a Siwan court in 2015 after he was convicted in a murder case. He is presently lodged in Siwan Jail. Mr Modi said the memory of controversial meeting between state Minority Affairs Minister Abdul Ghafoor and Mr Shahabuddin in Siwan Jail was still fresh in the mind of the people. He said the people were disturbed at the way Mr Shahabuddin had started "dictating terms" once again after the grand alliance government came to the power in the state. He said the clout of Mr. Shahabuddin was certainly going to rise further following his induction in the party's national executive. As it is more than 50 criminal cases including those of murder, extortion and kidnapping were pending against Mr Shahabuddin.UNI DH IS BM SB VN1959 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0214-667831.Xml
The Supreme Court on Monday commenced the final hearing on the appeals by four December 16, 2012 Delhi gangrape accused challenging the Delhi High Court verdict upholding their death sentence. As the bench of Justice Dipak Misrra, Justice V. Gopala Gowda and Justice Kurian Joseph commenced the hearing, counsel M.L.Sharma appearing for accused Mukesh and Pawan told the court that there was haste and hurry on the part of the high court in deciding the matter without deciding on the application relating to their torture by police. Arguing the high court was in a hurry to decide the appeals of his clients the moment they reached before it, Sharma said that applications alleging torture of his clients were not even taken up by the court. At this, Justice Misra said: "Let us hear the case as if fresh case is being raised" and asked Sharma to proceed in the matter in his own way. "We have to deal with the matter in its entirety," the judge added. After making his preliminary objections on the manner his clients were allegedly not given a fair opportunity before the trial court and later the high court, Sharma sought to take the apex court into the judgment pronounced by the trial court with an objective to point gaps that could be read in favour of his clients. The other two convicts are Vinay Sharma and Akshay Thakur. On March 13, 2014, the Delhi High Court bench of Justice Reva Khetrapal and Justice Pratibha Rani had upheld the death sentence of all four. "Society's abhorrence to atrocious crimes perpetrated upon innocent and helpless victims has resulted in the death penalty being retained on the statute book to remind such criminals that human life is very precious and one who dares to take the life of others must lose his own life," the high court had said in its order. Mukesh, Pawan, Vinay Sharma, Akshay Thakur and Ram Singh along with a juvenile were accused of gang rape and assault on a 23-year-old paramedical student inside a private bus. The victim and her friend were thrown out of the bus after the crime. Ram Singh allegedly committed suicide while in incarceration. The victim died of grave intestinal injuries Dec 29, 2012 at Singapore's Mount Elizabeth Hospital. --Indo-Asian News Service pk/vd ( 397 Words) 2016-04-04-20:59:31 (IANS)
Reverand Bishop Udumala Bala, patron of Confederation of Diocesan Priests of India (CDPI), today said that religious intolerance in the country is matter of concern. ''It is not only concern of the media but also of people,'' he told in response to a question during a press conference. ''Bishop's body had a meeting in New Delhi last month wherein the issue was discussed. We had conveyed to the central government our apprehensions and fear over the issues and some statements madeby even cabinet ministers. We were concerned about the silence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a long time. He has never openly supported the statements, but seemed to be condoning,'' he said. Father Bala, who is also chairman of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of India (CCBI) Commission for VSCR and Bishop of Warangal, recalled that two years ago all the bishops had taken outa candle light procession in protest. ''We thought after the protest, the incidents will stop but stray incidents are still taking place. We are anxious specially more about incidents taking place in north India,'' he said. Fr John Crasta, vice-president of National CDPI, who works in Ranchi (Jharkhand), said, ''We do have instances of intolerance specially in form of prayer meetings getting disrupted and prayer halls have been attacked. However, we have protested as silently as possible. We are forgiving each other and trying to set an example of forgiveness and mercy which is the teaching of Pope Francis.'' ''It has become a real issue and matter of concern in north India, where intolerance is affecting each of us,'' he added.UNI AKM SS NP SB BL2142 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-668177.Xml
According to a release by the director of the Nagaland Industries and Commerce this evening said, Mr Gangwar will lay the foundation stone and will unveil the monolith of the apparel & garment making center at 6th Mile at the district industries centre complex in Dimapur. This is the first apparel & garment making centre inaugurated and funded by the ministry of textiles, govt. of India in the north east region.

He will then leave or Mokokchung to lay foundation stone for muga p3 basic seed station at Kobulong of Mokokchung town.

The Union Minister will depart from Mokokchung and will arrive at Dimapur airport and at 1520 hrs, the union MoS Gangwar will leave Dimapur to Guwahati, the release said. UNI AS AKM SB VN2127

-- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0213-668055.Xml
A buoyant East Bengal is all set to take on Mumbai FC here at the Barasat Stadium in the Hero I-League round-15 encounter tomorrow. The Red and Golds have answered the critics in style as they defeated arch rivals Mohun Bagan comfortably in the second leg of the Kolkata Derby in Siliguri. East Bengal gaffer, Biswajit Bhattacharya did not accept that he is under any pressure even when they are very much in the title race. "Obviously, there is pressure but we have to take one match at a time and we have to win all our remaining matches and that is how we can go about this," said Bhattacharya. Do Dong-Hyun who was the hero of the derby, having scored a brace, can be rewarded with a start along with Ranti Martins who is looking determined to finish as the top scorer second season on a trot. Speaking about Mumbai FC, Biswajit stated, "Mumbai FC is a very good team. You can't go by their standing in the Hero I-League. Every team lose to some other team and so the standings does not reflect directly on the performance." Arnab Mondal, who was show caused for his alleged racist remark in the derby encounter, is all set to link up with Bello Rasaq at the centre of defense. Khalid Jamil, meanwhile, needed a turnaround soon as they languish at the bottom of the table but his boys were really unlucky in losing out against Bengaluru FC by a solitary goal the other night. "Yes we are last in the league right now but we drew against Kingfisher East Bengal at home, but this is an away match so we have to fight hard", Jamil sounded confident yet grounded ahead of the herculean task ahead. Jamil had his full contingent available to him save Eric Brown who was absent. Taisuke Matsugae will have to work hard in the midfield to come out with a positive result from the encounter. The former Indian defender did not say that they would have any special plans for the dangerous duo, Ranti Martins, and Do Dong-Hyun. "All of them are very good players and we have to defend as a unit. I don't have any special marking plans for any individual," Khalid admitted. In the closely-contested Hero I-League, a win for Mumbai can take them to as high as fourth in the table while the Red and Golds have a chance to ascend to the very top. Both teams will look to eke out a win nonetheless with very different motivations whatsoever. The Hero I-League encounter will kick off at 1905 hours.UNI BM SB BL2156 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0214-668189.Xml
Justice Madhvendra Saran Commission constituted to inquire into Forbesganj police firing, has recommended action against the then District Magistrate of Araria M Sarvanan and Station House Officer (SHO) of Forbesganj police station for their lapses in discharging their duties. Justice Saran Commission in its report found that the then District Magistrate of Araria Mr Sarvanan and the then SHO of Forbesganj police station Anil Kumar Gupta, had not performed their duties properly which led to police firing at Bhajanpura village on June 3, 2011. "Mr Sarvanan did not take any action at his own level to solve the dispute on construction of boundary wall on plot of Bihar Industrial Area Development Authority (BIADA)," the commission pointed out and recommended action against him. Similarly, the then SHO of Forbesganj police station Mr Gupta was informed by the Chowckidar about tension brewing at Bhajanpura village over construction of boundary wall but he also did not take any action to handle the situation, the commission noted andrecommended action against him. The Commission also held responsible, the intelligence officials in providing inputs to authorities concerned on brewing tension at Bhajanpura village which led to the trouble resulting into police firing. Four people were killed and over a dozen were injured on June 3 when police opened fire at a group of protesters in Forbesganj. UNI KKS BM SB BL2149 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0214-668204.Xml
" He (King Salman) said that he is encouraged by India's interest in the region and India's supports a peaceful and sustainable solution in the region," said Secretary (ER) Amar Sinha during a press briefing after the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Saudi King.

"He also mentioned that he is very happy to cooperate with India and coordinate with India in combating terror," added Sinha.

Sinha said the Saudi King also talked about deep and historical relations and praised economic ties between the two countries.

King Salman also expressed his desire to further strengthen trade and investment ties between both countries.

The Secretary (ER) further said Prime Minister Modi in response talked about his memorable visit to the L&T Workers' Residential Complex and TCS.

Prime Minister Modi also thanked the Saudi King for the welfare of the Indian Diaspora living in the kingdom.

He also earmarked energy, security, trade, technology and investment which would actually accelerate development both in India and Saudi Arabia. (ANI)
The Inter-Services Public Relations issued a statement on Sunday about the developments made by the security forces.

"Major terrorist hubs in Mana, Gurbaz, Lataka, Inzarkas and Magrotai areas have been cleared of militants.The battle to

clear the last pocket close to the Pak-Afghan border continues," the Dawn quoted the statement as saying.

At least eight army men were killed while 39 have been injured since February.

"Terrorists' hideouts were destroyed, a cache of arms and ammunition recovered and there was virtually no communications infrastructure remaining in the Shawal area once the operation was launched in Feb this year," the statement said.

The operation, which began in June 2014, was underway in Shawal heights which are fully covered in snow.

Since the last phase of Zarb-i-Azb, 37,012 families in North Waziristan Agency which means 36 percent of Temporarily

Displaced Persons (TDPs) have returned to their homes.

Meanwhile, several development projects have kick started and is being reviewed by Army Chief General Raheel Sharif.

Military operation Zarb-i-Azb was launched in North Waziristan following militant attack on Karachi's international airport and failure of peace talks between the government and Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan negotiators. (ANI)
The meeting will be held in preparation for the Gulf-US summit on April 21 in Riyadh, Xinhua quoted Alzayani as saying on Sunday.

The White House announced in March that US President Barack Obama will visit Saudi Arabia in April for a meeting with Arab leaders to repair relations strained by last year's nuclear deal with Iran.

Alzayani said that the meeting will discuss the outcome of the working groups formed in cooperation with the Camp David summit which was held in May 2015 as well as efforts to develop Gulf-US ties.

He also said that the meeting will address regional conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Libya and topics of shared interest.

--Indo-Asian News Service py/

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2016-04-04-09:03:31 (IANS)
Female cabine crew of Air France, backed by the French carrier's union, have strongly objected to a management decision to wear pants, a loose-fitting jackets and headscarves during flights to Iran. According to reports, staff of the airline have threatened to go on strike over the issue which they see as an infringement on individual freedom. Air France flights to Iran's capital Tehran are to begin soon. Union groups have strongly condemned the new dress code and said cabin crew will refuse to fly when flights resume to Tehran on April 17. French radio station RFI quoted union leader Franoise Redolfi, as saying, "We have to let the girls choose what they want to wear. Those that don't want to must be able to say they don't want to work on those flights." Redolfi further revealed that femal cabin crew have told her that it is out of the question to wear headscarves, as they see it as an insult to their dignity. The French minister for women's rights and families, Laurence Rossignol, has been informed of the Air France staff dress code protest. Iranian women have been instructed to cover their heads since the Islamic revolution in 1979, while in France, headscarves have been banned in schools and state offices and full-face veils are banned in public areas. In a statement, Air France said: "Iranian law requires the wearing of a veil covering the hair in public places for all women present on its territory. This obligation is not required during the flight and is respected by all international airlines serving the Iranian Republic." The airline will begin three daily fights between Paris and Tehran on April 17, eight years after the flights were suspended in light of crippling international sanctions against Tehran. Those sanctions were lifted in January after Iran agreed to shrink its nuclear program. (ANI)
Migrants sent back from the Greek island of Lesbos began arriving in Turkey today under a European Union deal aimed at stopping the influx of migrants and refugees into Europe since last year.The first of two Turkish-flagged passenger boats carrying 131 migrants arrived in the Turkish town of Dikili early on Monday, accompanied by two Turkish coast guard vessels and a police helicopter buzzing overhead, a Reuters witness said.Under the EU-Turkey deal, Ankara will take back all migrants and refugees who enter Greece illegally, including Syrians, in return for the EU taking in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey and rewarding it with more money, early visa-free travel and progress in its EU membership negotiations.A few dozen police and immigration officials waited outside a small white tent on the quayside as the migrants began to disembark behind security fencing.The returnees were primarily from Pakistan and some from Bangladesh and they had not applied for asylum, said Ewa Moncure, a spokeswoman for EU border agency Frontex.Asked if Syrians would be returned, she said: "At some point, but I don't know when."On Lesbos, a small group of protesters outside the port chanted "Shame on you!" when the migrant boats set sail as the sun rose over the Aegean Sea. Volunteer rescuers aboard a nearby boat hoisted a banner that read: "Ferries for safe passage, not for deportation."Each migrant was accompanied on Lesbos by a plainclothes Frontex officer. They had been transported in a nighttime operation from the island's holding centre to the port. Greek riot police squads also boarded the boats.Moncure said there were plans to return migrants from the nearby island of Chios as well but did not say when.The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and rights groups have said the deal between the European Union and Turkey lacks legal safeguards.Amnesty International has called it "a historic blow to human rights", and was sending monitors to Lesbos and Chios on Monday.More than 3,300 migrants and refugees are on Lesbos. About 2,600 people are held at the Moria centre, a sprawling complex of prefabricated containers, 600 more than its stated capacity. Of those, 2,000 have made asylum claims, UNHCR said. REUTERS PS PR1256 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-666888.Xml
Ukrainian lawmakers said today that parliament should investigate allegations that President Petro Poroshenko used an offshore firm to avoid tax, following a global leak of documents from a Panama-based law firm over the weekend.According to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Poroshenko set up an offshore company to move his confectionery business, Roshen, to the British Virgin Islands in August 2014 during a peak in fighting between Ukraine and pro-Russian separatists.Poroshenko has not commented publicly. His office said a law firm representing companies named in the leaks would make a statement later today.A senior official in the General Prosecutor's office said the leaked documents did not show Poroshenko committing any crime.The ICIJ on its website published a response from an unnamed spokesman of Poroshenko. The spokesman said the company, Prime Asset Partners Limited, of which Poroshenko became the sole shareholder, was part of a corporate restructuring to help sell the Roshen group in line with prevailing market practices."It is the height of cynicism to open offshore companies at a time when hundreds of our soldiers are dying," leader of the populist Radical Party, Oleh Lyashko, said on Facebook, adding any investigation could lead to Poroshenko's impeachment.The support of the Radical Party may be crucial in Poroshenko's efforts to cobble together a new government and avoid a snap election.The president has made several attempts to oust Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk's government, saying it has lost the trust of the people, but he will likely need the support of smaller parties to hold a parliamentary majority.The IMF, the United States and the European Union are becoming frustrated with Ukraine's patchy performance in tackling graft, and the Fund has threatened to halt aid until matters improve."I think it will have an impact in terms of further erosion of confidence in Poroshenko," Serhiy Leshchenko, a lawmaker in Poroshenko's faction, told Reuters.Leshchenko and a fellow reformist lawmaker - Mustafa Nayyem - said Ukraine's parliament, the Rada, should launch a special investigation into the allegations."The only way out of this situation is with complete openness and transparency at all stages of the unravelling of this scandal," Nayyem said on Facebook.Under Ukrainian legislation, only parliament can initiate an investigation into a sitting president.Poroshenko, who came to power after protests in 2014, has already faced criticism over Roshen for not selling it despite promising to do so. Last year Poroshenko had said unfavourable market conditions made selling Roshen difficult.Austria's financial watchdog announced on Monday it was investigating whether lenders Raiffeisen Bank International and Hypo Landesbank Vorarlberg followed rules against money laundering, following the leak, which prompted renewed scrutiny of tax affairs around the world.Two Austrian media outlets that were among the more than 100 news organisations that jointly investigated the documents' contents reported a connection between Raiffeisen and Roshen. Raiffeisen said it had complied with legal provisions, Hypo Landesbank Vorarlberg had no immediate comment.The leak has details of hundreds of thousands of clients in more than 11.5 million documents from the files of law firm Mossack Fonseca, based in the tax haven of Panama. The head of Mossack Fonseca has denied any wrongdoingREUTERS CJ RAI1749 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0400-667581.Xml
Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) has approved the application of the Indian ONGC to acquire a 15% stake in Rosneft subsidiary Vankorneft, a source in FAS told Tass news agency today."The application from ONGC has been approved," the source said.The decision on preliminary approval of the deal has been submitted to the company, the regulator said. "The transaction is important from the viewpoint of attracting foreign investment in the Russian economy and will obviously strengthen the partnership relations between Russia and India," Head of FAS Department for Control over Foreign Investments Armen Khanyan was quoted as saying.On March 24, the government commission on monitoring foreign investment approved the acquisition of a stake in Rosneft's Vankorneft by the Indian ONGC. Head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service Igor Artemyev said then ONGC would pay $1.3 bln for a stake in Vankorneft.In September 2015, Rosneft inked an agreement with Indian state-owned company ONGC on sale of a 15% stake in Vankor. The deal stipulates two seats in Vankorneft board of directors for ONGC, with Rosneft keeping control over the Vankor cluster infrastructure.On March 16, Rosneft signed with ONGC Videsh Limited a memorandum of understanding for cooperation in respect of the Vankor project, which stipulates the prospective increase to 26% of the share of the Indian company in Vankroneft. Also, Rosneft, Oil India, Indian Oil and Bharat Petroresources signed a heads of agreement in respect to the acquisition by a group of Indian investors of a 23.9% share in Vankroneft.UNI XC CJ 1851 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0400-667657.Xml
Dortmund (Germany) (AFP) - Borussia Dortmund coach Thomas Tuchel says his team's confidence is sky-high for Thursday's Europa League quarter-final, first-leg, at home to Liverpool in what has been dubbed the 'Jurgen Klopp derby'.

The Liverpool manager enjoyed seven stellar years at Signal Iduna Park and can expect a warm welcomed in Dortmund, ahead of the return leg at Anfield on April 17.

Klopp steered Dortmund to the Bundesliga title in 2011, the league and cup double in 2012 and the 2013 Champions League final, but walked away at the end of last season when they finished seventh in Germany's top flight.

Tuchel, his successor, has given Dortmund fresh impetus and they are second only to Bayern Munich in Germany this season.

Winger Henrikh Mkhitaryan is enjoying a stellar season alongside Germany star Marco Reus and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, who has scored 23 league goals, to form a trio which has netted 43 times in the Bundesliga.

But it was super subs Shinji Kagawa and Adrian Ramos who netted late goals in Dortmund's 3-2 fight-back win over Werder Bremen on Saturday as they warmed up for Liverpool.

The win, which secured Dortmund's place in the Champions League next season, was down to their 'diligence and attitude', according to Tuchel, while Klopp dubbed Borussia's gritty team 'monsters of mentality' during his reign.

"To come from behind and stay calm showed a great reaction from the team," said Tuchel.

"It's an extra quality to have someone like Ramos who can come on, but it is a testament to all the players how intensive our training sessions are.

"My players are setting the standard in terms of attitude and diligence.

"Due to the number and type of our victories this season (36 wins in 46 games in all competitions), the team has developed a great confidence.

"I didn't get the feeling that the Liverpool game was a factor, but from now on we'll be concerning ourselves with the 'Reds'."

Story continues

Tuchel had his three first-choice centre-backs missing against Bremen with Neven Subotic injured, Sokratis ill and Mats Hummels rested.

Nevertheless, Aubameyang opened the scoring in the second-half before Kagawa put them level and Ramos headed the late winner after Bremen had gone 2-1 up on 74 minutes thanks to an own goal from Gonzalo Castro and a neat strike from Zlatko Junuzovic.

While Tuchel was not talking about Klopp's return, Dortmund's CEO Hans-Joachim Watzke certainly was and he says his friendship with the Liverpool manager will be put aside until the final whistle.

"We will be clear opponents on Thursday, there is no need for mucking around in a friendship," Watzke told broadcaster ZDF.

"My concern is that he will bring the (home) fans to his side and create a atmosphere like you get in a friendly."
BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - Two guards were killed in an attempted attack on an oil field in eastern Libya by suspected Islamic State militants on Saturday, a guards spokesman said. Ali al-Hassi said guards had repelled the attack on Bayda field, about 250 km (155 miles) south of the major oil terminals of Es Sider and Ras Lanuf. A security official from the nearby town of Maradah said the militants were in a convoy of about 10 vehicles. Militants loyal to Islamic State have carried out repeated attacks in the area, but have not taken control of any oil facilities. (Reporting by Ayman al-Warfalli; Writing by Aidan Lewis; Editing by Andrew Roche)
By Olivia Oran (Reuters) - From his seat atop the Fed's smallest bank, in a region known for fracking, farming and ranching, Neel Kashkari wants to make sure he's heard well beyond the northern plains. Since becoming president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis this year, the 42-year-old Kashkari has gone on a media blitz, visiting nine major media outlets in two days and creating a Twitter hashtag to promote his view that the biggest U.S. banks should break up. On Monday, he will host a symposium at his bank in downtown Minneapolis entitled "Ending Too Big To Fail," giving fierce critics of Wall Street's behemoths a platform to present their views. Becoming the Fed's bad cop is the latest ambitious move in a high-flying career that has taken Kashkari from Goldman Sachs Group Inc , to the Treasury Department at the height of the financial crisis to a run for California governor. "He's trying to swing way above the weight of the Minneapolis Fed. He didn't come from California just to rub elbows with ranchers in Helena," said Dick Bove, an analyst with Rafferty Capital Markets, referring to the capital of Montana, a state in the Minneapolis Fed's region. Kashkari's critics argue he is using the "too big to fail" issue as a springboard to higher places of authority. He says he's only working toward prudent financial regulation. Kashkari's crusade kicked off with a Feb. 16 speech, in which he compared the aftermath of large bank failures to that of a nuclear reactor meltdown. He told Reuters a few days later that the symposium is intended to come up with a plan to prevent big banks from receiving big taxpayer bailouts, the way they did in 2008. That's a subject he knows intimately. At Treasury, he ran the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which infused $700 billion into banks, automakers and insurers. The bailout played an important role in stabilizing the financial system during the crisis, but remains controversial. Kashkari now says "bolder, transformational options" are needed beyond a post-crisis regulation that requires big banks to outline plans to unwind themselves if they fail  known as their "living wills." Kashkari launched a social media campaign with the hashtag #EndingTBTF to promote his event and encourage the public to contribute ideas. He has amassed 10,300 followers on Twitter, where his retweets of economic news mix with musings on the superiority of Yuengling beer and photos of his dogs. MEDIA MAGNET Kashkari is not the first Fed official - even within the Minneapolis Fed - to argue that much more should be done to prevent future bailouts of big banks. Gary Stern, who led the Minneapolis Fed for 24 years, was vocal about the problems created by big banks. Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher has also called for breaking them up. There are plenty of critics outside the Fed, too. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders bashes Wall Street at every campaign stop. Even former Citigroup Inc CEO Sandy Weill, who created the so-called "universal" banking model in the 1990s, now says big banks are better off broken up. Kashkari, however, may have more of a knack for bringing mainstream attention to a subject long the purview of policy wonks and left-leaning politicians. During and after his time at the Treasury, he was the subject of admiring media profiles  including a photo spread in the Washington Post that showed him splitting logs and building a shed at a cabin in rural California. With his clean-shaven head, thick brows and intense gaze, he made it into People Magazine's 2008 "Sexiest Man Alive" issue alongside Prince Harry and actor James Franco. As the Republican challenger to California Governor Jerry Brown in 2014, he spent a week on the streets of Fresno pretending to be homeless and posted a YouTube video about it. "Up against a hugely popular incumbent, he had to find ways of getting attention," said Claremont McKenna College politics professor Jack Pitney. He lost to Brown by 20 percentage points. The son of Indian immigrants, Kashkari earned an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and joined Goldman Sachs. In 2006, he followed former Goldman CEO Hank Paulson to the Treasury Department, where Paulson served as secretary under President George W. Bush. Between that stint and his gubernatorial run, he spent a few years at bond-fund giant Pacific Investment Management Co. As Minneapolis Fed president, Kashkari oversees a bank with $35 billion in assets in a region where oil, timber, farming and ranching are among the important industries. Although none of the U.S. banks considered "too big to fail" are based there, Kashkari said his staff highlighted the issue as a top priority. Kashkari's position puts him at odds with peers who have spent years crafting rules to make the financial system safer. In coming weeks, a group of regulators is expected to release the latest information on banks' "living wills." 'CRITICIZE THE MESSENGER' Regional Fed presidents are arguably less influential than their Washington-based colleagues. Most vote on monetary policy once every three years, while Fed governors have a permanent vote on the policy-setting committee. Fed presidents typically have even less sway on regulatory matters. Their bank supervisory powers are largely limited to carrying out policies set by Washington. When Fed presidents have raised alarms on regulatory issues, they have rarely budged national policy. Ten current and former regulators, bankers and lobbyists who spoke to Reuters said they believe Kashkari's "too big to fail" campaign is motivated by his career ambitions. They asked not to be named because they did not want to damage relationships with Kashkari. In his February interview with Reuters, Kashkari said he had no motive beyond responsible regulation. On Friday, he said critics are trying to distract from the real issues he is addressing at Monday's event. "The Wall Street critics can't argue with me on the substance of too-big-to-fail, so they criticize the messenger," he told Reuters in an email. "I welcome their criticisms because they are an implicit admission that I am right." Kashkari has plenty of supporters, too. They believe his experience in banking, regulation and politics makes him a credible advocate. "As a moderate, he may be offering some sort of aid and comfort to the notion of breaking up the banks," said Jim Angel, a professor at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business. (Additional reporting by David Henry and Ann Saphir; Editing by Lauren Tara LaCapra, Carmel Crimmins and Mary Milliken)
Beirut (AFP) - A US air strike in Syria targeted Al-Qaeda members, reportedly killing its spokesman, and the Islamic State group has been forced from a key town in the latest setbacks for the jihadists.

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said the US military conducted an air raid on a meeting of officials of Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front on Sunday in northeast Syria, targeting Abu Firas al-Suri and other leaders.

"We assess that Al-Qaeda senior leader Abu Firas al-Suri was in that meeting and we are working to confirm his death," Cook said on Monday.

He said Suri was a Syrian national and a "legacy" Al-Qaeda member who fought in Afghanistan in the late 1980s and 1990s.

He "worked with Osama bin Laden and other founding Al-Qaeda members to train terrorists and conduct attacks globally," Cook said, adding that Sunday's strike killed several enemy fighters.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Suri, his son and at least 20 jihadists of Al-Nusra and Jund al-Aqsa and other fighters from Uzbekistan were killed in strikes on positions in Idlib province.

Seven were high-ranking jihadists, the Britain-based Observatory said.

Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, a research fellow at the Middle East Forum, a US think-tank, said Suri was a top jihadist official.

Suri "was a very senior member of Al-Nusra, but organisations like Al-Nusra aren't debilitated because they lose a single senior leader", he said.

"Their organisational structures are well prepared for targeted assassinations, which are usual business for them."

Suri, whose real name was Radwan Nammous, fought against Soviet forces in Afghanistan where he met Bin Laden and the founding father of global jihad, Abdullah Azzam, before returning to Syria in 2011.

- Warning to Al-Nusra? -

A temporary ceasefire between government forces and rebels has largely held since February 27, but it does not cover Al-Nusra and IS.

The break has allowed Russia and the US-led coalition that has been bombing IS in Syria to concentrate on their fight against the jihadists.

Story continues

Al-Nusra has generally kept a low profile since the truce brokered by the United States and Russia came into force.

But on Friday, the Al-Qaeda affiliate and allied rebels pushed regime loyalists out of Al-Eis, a strategic town in the northern province of Aleppo, killing 12 members of the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement.

"It was Al-Nusra's biggest operation since the ceasefire began," Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

IS has also lost a string of high-ranking members in recent weeks, mainly to strikes by the US-led coalition that launched an aerial campaign against the jihadists in Iraq and Syria in 2014.

Last Wednesday, a drone strike near IS's de facto capital Raqa killed Tunisian commander Abu al-Haija.

Fifteen IS commanders accused of revealing his position have since been executed by the jihadists, and the fate of another 20 men accused of collaborating with the US-led coalition remains unknown.

"This is the highest number of executions of security officials by IS," said Abdel Rahman, whose group relies on sources in Syria for its reports.

- Recapture of Al-Qaryatain -

On Monday, IS's press officer in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor was killed in an air strike while covering fighting between the jihadists and regime troops, the Observatory said.

"It was unclear whether the air strike that killed Mohammad al-Lafi was Russian or Syrian," the group said, adding that the IS official used the nom de guerre Abu Abdallah Azzam.

On Sunday, the army seized the town of Al-Qaryatain, one of the last IS strongholds in central Syria, a week after the Russian-backed army scored a major victory in the ancient city of Palmyra, also located in the vast province of Homs.

The recapture of Al-Qaryatain allows the army to secure its grip over Palmyra, where jihadists destroyed ancient temples during their 10-month rule and executed 280 people.

It has also left IS with just one bastion in Homs province, Sukhna, where the focus of the fighting has now shifted.

In spite of the truce, hundreds of thousands of civilians living under siege across Syria remain deprived of essential medical and food assistance, according to Human Rights Watch.

"While aid delivery has improved in the last month, it's still not nearly enough and too many Syrians are still not receiving the aid they need," said Nadim Houry, HRW's deputy Middle East director.

Russia's renowned Hermitage Museum, which has an important collection of sculptures from Palmyra, said Monday it was willing to help restore the ancient Syrian city.
KINSHASA (Reuters) - The U.N. peacekeeping mission in Democratic Republic of Congo said late on Friday that it has received allegations of sexual abuse against Tanzanian peacekeepers based in Congo's northeast, the latest in a series of such accusations against U.N. forces. The mission said in a statement that it received the allegations against members of its Force Intervention Brigade, tasked with offensive operations, in the village of Mavivi on March 23 and immediately launched an investigation. "Initial results suggest that there is evidence of transactional sex and sex with minors," the statement said. "There are also a number of paternity claims." The statement did not say how many cases of abuse had been alleged or provide any further details about the accusations. U.N. peacekeeping missions have been beset by accusations of sexual abuse. The United Nations reported 99 such allegations against staff members across the U.N. system last year. The United Nations said this week that it has expanded an investigation into new allegations of sexual abuse by foreign peacekeepers in Central African Republic. U.N. officials said they have interviewed some 108 alleged victims, most of them minors. The U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo, which was initially put in place during a civil war that took place in 1998-2003, is the world's largest, with around 20,000 uniformed personnel. The Security Council renewed its mandate earlier this week for one year. (Reporting by Aaron Ross, editing by Louise Heavens)
Escaped prisoner caught hiding under jetty

Police believe, based on information they received from the escaped prisoner, he was attempting to flee to Venezuela when he was captured.

According to reports, Henry, also known as Sheldon Henry, attempted to hide under a jetty at Marine Drive, Chaguaramas, for almost one hour before he was recaptured at about 9 pm.

Head of the Western Division acting Snr Supt.

Basdeo Ramdhanie, along with a party of officers including members of the Western Division Task Force went to the Chaguaramas area after receiving information at about 8 pm on Saturday that Thomas, also known as Rhino, was seen on the compound of Lennox Petroleum Industries.

PC Narad Seebaran of the Western Division Task observed a man clad in a black shirt and black three quarter pants fitting the description of Henry.

The officer called out to the suspect but he fled in a southerly direction jumping into the nearby waters.

The Coast Guard was called in and Henry was found hiding under a jetty along with a Venezuelan national, identified as Louis Alfredo Garcia, aged 26.

Police said the Coast Guard officers used a dinghy and approached the jetty.

A CG diver spotted Henry, whose head was only visible under the jetty.

The diver grabbed hold of the prisoner and along with other CG officers he was hauled into the dinghy.

Thomas was said to have cuts and bruises about the body which he received from his hiding place under the jetty.

He allegedly told officers he preferred to drown rather than return to prison.

Investigators said Thomas planned to escape to Tucupita, Venezuela, but believed he was betrayed by someone in the Carenage area whom he suspected tipped off the police as to his whereabouts.

Thomas was handed over to the officers of the Western Division Task Force who took him to the St James Infirmary to be treated for the cuts and bruises.

He was then transferred to the Belmont Police Station where he was being kept up to late yesterday.

His relatives were allowed to bring him a change of clothing.

Thomas was among six prisoners who escaped from the St Anns Hospital, however, the other escapees were recaptured within hours and appeared before a Port-of-Spain Magistrate, charged with escaping lawful custody.

Thomas will also be charged with escaping lawful custody after he is questioned by investigators.

A statement from the Coast Guard said yesterday, three interceptors were involved in the apprehension of the escaped prisoner.
Enriching the learning experience

The programme will culminate on November 20, at Environmental Story Fest, an event where the children will perform their stories publicly as part of Universal Day of Children celebrations.

Project AWARE is now in its second year and is the brainchild of Culture House, an arts education centre based in Portof- Spain. Speaking at the launch on March 21 at the Arima Public Library, which was timed to coincide with the celebration of International Day of Forests, Theodora Ulerie, a theatre arts practitioner and the centres creative director, said the project aimed to enliven and enrich the learning experience of the children taking part. She said Culture House had, since 1999, developed an approach called Learning Through the Arts (LTA) to work with students.

It is a methodology and a practice that utilises the arts and culture for active learning with a focus on the needs of the target group, she said. In this case it is to engender and instill in the children not only a desire to come forward in November at Environmental Story Fest and tell a great story, but it is to nurture in them a love for storytelling which we see as a dying art. Bemoaning the lack of arts and culture education in schools, Ulerie stated: To overhaul the education system is nigh impossible.

What we would want to do is pitch light into a dark system because from our research, there is not a lot of creativity happening in schools. Brian Brooks, principal of Arima Boys Roman Catholic School, one of the participating schools, welcomed the initiative and said his school had for a number of years embraced the visual and performing arts, the creative arts generally and culture as being an integral part of delivering the curriculum. He said memories of engaging in the creative arts and sport were often what stayed vividly in peoples minds after they had left school.

He added: For me it was in 1970 when I had the opportunity to represent the very school I am principal of now at the Music Festival as a member of the then choir. We came first in our category and later we were featured on 12 and Under with the late, great Aunty Hazel Ward. Explaining why Culture House had focused on the environment, the organisations director Shabaka Thompson said: We have a responsibility to make sure our environment is secure and the same way we met it and benefited from it, we leave it [for] our children and childrens children to benefit also. Cheryl Quamina-Baptiste, librarian III, on behalf of the National Library and Information Systems (Nalis) applauded the work of Culture House. She said staff at NALIS strongly believe that information, oral tradition and empowering persons to make informed decisions are all critical to our existence and way forward as a nation. Republic Bank, the sole sponsor of Project AWARE since its inception in 2015, will be donating $2,000 to each participating school. Senior manager in the IT Management Division Marlon Persad said the projects vision worked well with the social mandate of the bank.

He said: When we learned of what (Culture House) wanted to do, how they wanted to power up the national conversation starting from perhaps the most invaluable resource of all  the youth  we knew this was a project worth our investment.

Persad said it was easy to feel dismayed when one considered the myriad problems facing the environment such as deforestation, destruction of eco-systems and mismanagement of water and other resources. However, he advised that people should look at the big picture to chart a way forward.

The big picture when it comes to environmental awareness must take into account two things: First, how we are going to change prevailing attitudes that have brought us to this state; and secondly, the roles and roads to change must get complete buy-in from future generations if they are to fully understand their role in bucking the trend. Students and teachers from the majority of participating schools attended a Rise N Shine workshop after the launch where they learned the rudiments of storytelling.

Culture House facilitators will be visiting the schools in the coming months to continue the work started at the launch.

The schools taking part in Project AWARE are:

* Good Shepherd Anglican School, Tunapuna

* St Xaviers Private School

* St Joseph TML School

* St Joseph Government Primary School

* Arouca Anglican School

* San Juan Presbyterian School

* Atwells Educational Institute, Trincity

* Arima Boys RC School

* Tunapuna Government Primary School

* Aranguez Hindu School

Forthcoming events in the project include:

* World Earth Day Celebrations on April 22 at Tunapuna Hindu Primary School

* The Inner Self: Spoken Word for the Environment, an evening or oral traditions, on June 5 at the University Inn and Conference Centre, St Augustine

* Teachers Workshop on Disaster Preparedness on September 8 at UWI Learning Resource Centre, St Augustine

* Environmental Story Fest November 20 at Republic Bank Exodus Pan Theatre, Tunapuna.
Advice for daily living

THE thirst for inspiration is inexhaustible and the literary world has shouldered the responsibility to guide and heal our wounds.

But not every writer is believable.

Words, we know, carry feelings, stoking the embers of readers when used intuitively. The inspirational writer is never deliberate and calculated but delivers with an incorrigible gusto that gushes from the subtle influence of spirit.

Sharon Parris-Chambers comfortably sits in this class.

Poetry from the Rose of Sharon peels through layers of clutter that suffocate, obfuscating a light, a spark of divinity lodged in our bosom. If only we know.

We discover this light - the I AM principle that speaks to us, if only we could hear; that consoles, if only we open our hearts; that instructs, if only we listen. Such is the nature of our divinity  sparks of the indefinable, immutable God, some argue.

Chambers collection serves as counsel for daily living, nudging us to be steadfast, patient, as challenges mount. It can be relentlessly assertive, evoking the legionnaire within; but speaks ever so softly when it matters.

The Rose conjures the inexorable spirit of Victor Frankl and the transcendentalism of Neo-Platonists.

Chambers shifts between the worlds of spirit and matter, drawing energy from the former as she navigates the muddied water of the latter. Ye are gods, we are reminded, in the vein of Psalm 82:6.

She presses home this theme in I am a Divine Being: I AM here to lead by example: to love, to heal, to teach. I am love, I am that I am. I am one with divine spirt. In Spirit Purify Me, she intones: Purify my mind and soul. Work in and through me. So that all people may know the god or goddess within. And the metaphysician in her surfaces, unbridled, in Eye AM all that. Her passion is never more evident.

You are a Divine Spirit having an earthly experience.

Spirit. Morphing into full consciousness as the Eye. Manifesting in the flesh, to live, to learn, to grow. I AM the constitution of the Universe. Consciousness. I AM all that. Infinity, Spirit, Consciousness. Chambers explores a range of subjects: the environment, business, prayer, metaphysics, medical bioethics, and ontology. Her poems shine, but her inspirational counsel, her proverbial-like philosophy (Section V) proves indelible, the seal of this transformational work. It is concise, witty, and effectively penned. When we are like water, nothing stops our flow, she writes with Taoist sensitivity.

Take yourself, your personality out of the way, she exhorts. Trust your inner self to lead you, Surrender the ego, Gone will be the pride, gone will be the need to be right. And in like vein she continues, Your eyes reflect images that are transmitted by your thoughts.

Change your thoughts and you change your vision. Chambers strength and appeal are carved in her authenticity. She speaks to our ubiquitous impulses to self-destruct. She rallies our beaten spirits and quiets the dark, discomforting whispers of the Negative One. We can do better, for we are infinitely resourceful, she iterates. And she is convincing because she too has experienced the weight of Providence. She now lives to tell an instructive tale, to lead a resistance rooted in spirituality. There may be more aesthetically defined works but for raw pedagogy, The Rose of Sharon is content rich; a resounding triumph.

Feedback: glenvilleashby@ gmail.com or follow him on Twitter@ glenvilleashby Poetry From The Rose of Sharon by Sharon Parris-Chambers Publisher: Temple of Inner Peace, Jamaica ISBN 978 -0- 9779716-19 Rate: Recommended Available at Amazon
Integrity Commission closes Range Rover complaint

In a letter, dated March 22, acting Registrar Jasmine Pascal, informed Ramlogan of the Commissions decision to close the matter.

The Commission, having conducted an investigation into the complaint and having examined the evidence gathered, concluded that no breach of the Integrity in Public Life Act has been has been disclosed. As a result matter is closed, Pascal wrote.

Ramlogan was being investigated in 2013 on a complaint filed by then Opposition Senator Fitzgerald Hinds.

Hinds indicated at a media conference in October 2013, that he had written the commission about Ramlogans Range Rover V8, which carried the registration number PCX 2. Ramlogan also bought a Range Rover with the registration number PCR 2.
Jennifer: totally unacceptable

Minister of Labour Jennifer Baptiste-Primus yesterday accused the company of being far from truthful in its dealings with her and the Government and expressed profound disappointment over what she said was an unacceptable state of affairs in relation to the issue of pension payments. However, the company yesterday yesterday described as misleading and non factual claims that the pension plan was amiss.

Be that as it may Minister yesterday indicated her intention to confer with Minister of Finance Colm Imbert and Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi and yesterday would not rule out legal action, saying the Government will explore all options available to it.

ArcelorMittal has a responsibility to the workers of this country and they cant just walk away without meeting their obligations in relation to their workers pensions, the Minister told Newsday. This is an issue that I raised with ArcelorMittal previously and they were far from truthful to me as Minister of Labour and I want to express my profound disappointment that they would engage in such an action to deprive the workers of their pension.

It is unconscionable. The Minister said the company had, during prior talks with her, given a particular assurance.

I raised the issue with the company and the CEO indicated the company would do what they have to do, Baptiste-Primus said.

That I am not seeing happening. They have been less than straightforward. On the range of possible legal action the company now faces, the Minister said, The Government will be exploring all options in our attempt to protect the rights of the workers with regard to the pension payments. People participate in a pension plan so that in their twilight years they are catered for. This situation is unacceptable. The Ministers comments marked a shift in tone on the part of the Government in relation to the companys moves to fold its operations.

Last month, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley knocked the firm for what he described as punitive actions taken in the wake of an Industrial Court ruling which upheld workers rights at the firm. But though he deemed the companys abrupt determination that it would close operations disrespectful, the Prime Minister indicated the Government was willing to engage company in talks. Minister of Finance Colm Imbert met with officials of the firm, as well as union representatives.

Yesterday, Baptiste- Primus said the question of pensions, however, was never intended to be within the scope of talks as they were legal requirements.

This discussion on the pension plan ought not to be part of any discussion, the Minister said. The company had a legal responsibility in relation to the pension plan.

Therefore, there ought not to be room for discussion on that.

It is an obligation that the company ought to have taken care of. It is unconscionable what ArcelorMittal wants to do with the workers.

They already dont have separation benefits. In a media release yesterday, ArcelorMittal said it has made the required contributions to the plan and kept the plans trustee abreast of all developments.

The Company has complied with the recommendations made by the Actuary and paid contributions up to September 30, 2015 at 6 percent and for the period October 2015 to March 2016 paid contributions at 23.7 percent, the firm said. Both the Trustee and the Actuary are informed of the current status of the Company and the termination of all employees having had both telephonic conversations and a meeting with the Company as early as on March 14, 2016.
Tobago PNM to elect leader by one-man one-vote

A total of 392 delegates voted in favour of the amendments. There was no abstention and no one voted against. The 50-minute period set aside to debate the motion proposing the amendments was reduced to a few minutes after people accepted the various sections without hesitation. Hundreds of delegates including Political Leader of the Tobago Council, Orville London, attended the convention which took place yesterday at St Johns Ambulance Brigade Headquarters, Port-of-Spain.

PNM Political Leader, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley said the amendment to the partys constitution to allow for the one-man onevote system was a continuation of the expansion of democracy in the party. When the party amended the constitution for the one-man one-vote system in 2012, he said it did not cover elections for the Tobago Coucnil of the PNM, but covered voting for the partys national executive.

It was not imposed for Tobago, he said, Tobago Council met and decided on the system they wanted to use. Noting that the party has made some significant progress in the last three years including its system of voting, he said, 100 delegates no longer have to vote for its 100,000 plus membership.

Party Chairman Franklin Khan said the amendments also provided for instant run off voting for the officer of political leader and political leader of the Tobago Council in the event that no one candidate for the office obtains 50 percent of the votes cast.

Instant run off voting, he said, is to take place within 30 days of the elections according to the partys regulations. The amendments, he noted, were taking place ahead of an active political season for the party in Tobago and in Trinidad.

Following elections for the Tobago Council, he noted that elections for the Tobago House of Assembly will be held in January or February 2017. After yesterdays special convention, he said, the party will hold its annual convention in September, ahead of Local Government Elections - which will be held before the end of the year.

As I speak, he said, We are preparing for this (LGE). Also due in the coming months are elections for party executives at different levels. The partys general secretary, he said will be informing the membership to initiate the process.
Newly-converted Mississippi cheerleader confesses ISIS ties, wannabe terrorism to the FBI

The daughter of a school administrator and a police officer who served in the Navy reserve, Jaelyn Youngs childhood in Mississippi mirrored that of millions of girls across America.

(Article by Chris Pleasance, republished from //www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3515790/How-Mississippi-student-went-cheerleader-homecoming-maid-wearing-burqa-shunning-non-Muslims-fantasizing-joining-ISIS.html)

In high school she eagerly participated in school traditions, becoming a cheerleader and a homecoming maid while also studying hard, graduating as an honors student.

But while studying chemistry at Mississippi State University that all changed as she converted to Islam and had her mind warped by online propaganda videos from the likes of ISIS.

Yesterday Young pleaded guilty to attempting to join ISIS in Syria along with her fiance Muhammad Dakhlalla, after unwittingly telling undercover agents they were planning to use their honeymoon as cover to travel to the Middle East and become medics for the terror group.

According to prosecutors, Youngs transformation from model high school student to wannabe terrorist began in March 2015, when she announced her conversion to Islam.

Like many followers of the religion she began wearing a burqa, a modesty covering worn by some Muslim women in keeping with a strict interpretation of the Koran.

More troubling, however, was her rejection of family and friends, believing that associating with non-Muslims would be a bad influence, court documents show.

As her views grew more extreme, prosecutors say Young began to complain about the treatment of Muslims in western nations, particularly the US and UK.

Little did her loved ones know that, behind the outward trappings of her new-found piety, Youngs thinking was being influenced by terrorist propaganda videos, aimed at poisoning the minds of impressionable youths.

Prosecutors say that Young began to view the fighters as liberators, even going so far as to condone a video showing ISIS troops throwing a gay man off the roof of a building to his death.

In a conversation with one of their undercover agents, Young also praised Mohammad Abdulazeez, the shooter who killed four marines at a military office in Chattanooga, Tennessee, last year.

Writing to an undercover FBI agent, she said: What makes me feel bette[r] after just watching the news is that an akhi [brother] carried out an attack against US marines in TN!

Alhamdulillah [Thanks be to God], the numbers of supporters are growing,

Meanwhile, she was trying to save money to move to Syria with Dakhlalla, who is also from Mississippi, to join the Islamist extremist group.

The only thing keeping me away is $ but working all of this overtime will be worth [it] when I am finally there, Young allegedly wrote in the online chat.

It comes just two years after she was ranked 19th best in her year at Warren Central High School with a 4.089 GPA and an H. Dean Andrews Scholarship to MSU.

Dakhlalla graduated from Mississippi State University last May with a bachelors degree in psychology.

Young was enrolled until May as a sophomore chemistry major but had not signed up for any more classes since. Young, originally from Vicksburg, was a 2013 honors graduate from Warren Central High School.

According to The Vicksburg Post, Young had spoken for years about plans to be a doctor. In her online chats with undercover FBI agents she allegedly expressed plans to treat ISIS fighters injuries.

I just want to be there, she allegedly told the FBI agent.

In later conversations peppered with Arabic phrases, she said she planned a nikkah, or Islamic marriage to Dakhlalla so they could travel without a chaperone under Islamic law.

In June, the first FBI agent passed Young off to a second FBI agent posing as an Islamic State facilitator.

The charge says Young asked the second agent for help crossing from Turkey to Syria, saying We dont know Turkey at all very well (I havent even travelled outside U.S. before.)

Young specified her skills with math and chemistry and said she and Dakhlalla would like to be medics treating the injured.

Later, the charge says, she told the second FBI agent that Dakhlalla could help with the Islamic States Internet media, saying he really wants to correct the falsehoods heard here and the U.S. media is all lies when regarding the group, which she called by its preferred internal name, Dawlah.

Dakhlalla told the first FBI agent in an online conversation in June that he was good with computers, education and media and that his father had approved him and Young to get married.

In July, the charges say, he expressed a desire to become a fighter for the group. I am willing to fight, he is quoted as saying.

Young later told the FBI that she and Dakhlalla had got married June 6 and they planned to claim they were traveling on their honeymoon as a cover story. She also expressed a desire to raise little Dawlah cubs.

The FBI said Dakhlalla and Young both expressed impatience with how long it was taking for them to be issued passports, and the charges say Dakhlalla paid $340 to expedite passport processing on July 1.

Though the charges say earlier messages indicate the couple planned to fly to Greece and then take a bus to Turkey, the couple later bought tickets on Delta Air Lines leaving Golden Triangle bound for Atlanta, Amsterdam and ultimately Istanbul. Young expressed confidence that security at the small airport would not detect them.

After pleading guilty to terror charges yesterday, Young now faces up to 20 years in prison, $250,000 in fines and lifetime probation.

Dakhlalla, 22, pleaded guilty on March 11 to a similar charge and awaits sentencing. Prosecutors have said Young prodded Dakhlalla into the plan.

Read more at: //www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3515790/How-Mississippi-student-went-cheerleader-homecoming-maid-wearing-burqa-shunning-non-Muslims-fantasizing-joining-ISIS.html

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Sexual assault by Middle Eastern refugees becoming routine occurrence in culturally diverse Sweden

The sexual crime wave that is sweeping through Europe can be laid squarely at the feet of the continents various politicians who agreed to accept millions of migrants and refugees from the war-torn nations of the Middle East, since the massive bump in such crimes is largely due to young Middle Eastern men who dont know how to behave in a different culture.

As reported by The Daily Caller, citing local media sources, even culturally diverse Sweden is experiencing a wave of migrant-related sexual assaults  but police have gone out of their way to cover up what is happening.

The DC noted further:

Sexual assaults by gangs of refugees  similar to the events in Cologne, Germany on New Years Eve  happened two years in a row at a music festival in Stockholm, Sweden. Police allegedly kept the events quiet in attempts to avoid public debate on immigration.

Its a sore spot

Many of the assaults took place at a music festival known as We are Stockholm in August of 2014 and 2015, according to an investigation published by a local daily newspaper, Dagens Nyheter. Most of those who attended the festivals were teenage girls, with some even as young as 11 years old, police said.

The investigation into the assaults turned up emails that police officers exchanged during and after the festivals. Most allegations were lodged against newly arrived Afghan refugees, however thus far there is little data on how many people were assaulted, since most of the incidents went unreported.

In addition, the migrant gangs beat and assaulted teenage boys who tried to protect girls who were under attack, the paper noted.

The youngest girls were just 11 or 12 years old, an anonymous police officer told DN. I would have never let my own daughter go to the festival if I was aware of what happened.

The investigation found that on at least one occasion a case was severe enough to have been classified as rape against a young female attending the 2014 festival. However, that incident was not made public, because the alleged perpetrators were young immigrants, and police were not ready to have a debate over Swedish immigration policies.

In particular, police officials were concerned that Sweden Democrats, a political party that seeks a pause in immigration, and which has been growing steadily in power and influence in recent years, would use the assaults as fodder for changes to immigration policy.

Its a sore spot. Were sometimes scared to tell the truth because we think it will benefit the Sweden Democrats, Police Chief Peter Agren told DN. This one is on us.

An organizer of the events, Roger Ticoalu, said claims of assaults from girls were so rare that event officials thought they must have been made up.

These cases are very special. Its groups of guys that deliberately target girls to circle and sexually abuse, Ticoalu told DN. We were shocked to hear their strategies. When we got the first reports we didnt believe it had happened.

One assault victim named Fanny described her 2015 assault to a tabloid, Aftonbladet, in a recent interview. At the time she was assaulted, she was 16.

Blame the victims

They were touching our butts and breasts and everywhere, said Fanny, who went to the festival with friends. You felt so powerless, it was really unpleasant. When we tried to get out they stopped us and even hit us.

The DC noted that police have admitted to making a handful of arrests at the events each year, but most of the cases were unsolved because the perpetrators just disappeared into crowds.

But Sweden is certainly not alone in this refugee-related sexual crime wave. Scores of people  mostly women  suffered similar abuse in Cologne, Germany, over the New Years Eve holiday, and again, with local authorities downplaying or ignoring much of the violence because of who was committing the acts.

In fact, as reported by NewsTarget, the mayor of Cologne actually blamed the women who were assaulted, saying they should be better prepared for groups of migrant men preying on them.

Sources:

DailyCaller.com

NewsTarget.com

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The complete list of government false flag attacks that have been used to shape history

In the following instances, officials in the government which carried out the attack (or seriously proposed an attack) admit to it, either orally, in writing, or through photographs or videos:

(Article by George Washington, republished from //www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-31/governments-admit-much-modern-history-has-been-manipulated-false-flag-attacks)

(1) As admitted by secret Russian police files that are part of the Hoover Institutions archives, the Russian Tsars secret police set off bombs and killed people in order to blame and arrest labor agitators. And see this.

(2) Japanese troops set off a small explosion on a train track in 1931, and falsely blamed it on China in order to justify an invasion of Manchuria. This is known as the Mukden Incident or the Manchurian Incident. The Tokyo International Military Tribunal found: Several of the participators in the plan, including Hashimoto [a high-ranking Japanese army officer], have on various occasions admitted their part in the plot and have stated that the object of the Incident was to afford an excuse for the occupation of Manchuria by the Kwantung Army . And see this.

(3) A major with the Nazi SS admitted at the Nuremberg trials that  under orders from the chief of the Gestapo  he and some other Nazi operatives faked attacks on their own people and resources which they blamed on the Poles, to justify the invasion of Poland.

(4) Nazi general Franz Halder also testified at the Nuremberg trials that Nazi leader Hermann Goering admittedto setting fire to the German parliament building in 1933, and then falsely blaming the communists for the arson.

(5) Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev admitted in writing that the Soviet Unions Red Army shelled the Russian village of Mainila in 1939  while blaming the attack on Finland  as a basis for launching the Winter War against Finland. Russian president Boris Yeltsin agreed that Russia had been the aggressor in the Winter War.

(6) The Russian Parliament, current Russian president Putin and former Soviet leader Gorbachev all admit that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered his secret police to execute 22,000 Polish army officers and civilians in 1940, and then falsely blamed it on the Nazis.

(7) The British government admits that  between 1946 and 1948  it bombed 5 ships carrying Jews attempting to flee the Holocaust to seek safety in Palestine, set up a fake group called Defenders of Arab Palestine, and then had the psuedo-group falsely claim responsibility for the bombings (and see this, this and this).

(8) Israel admits that in 1954, an Israeli terrorist cell operating in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including U.S. diplomatic facilities, then left behind evidence implicating the Arabs as the culprits (one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to identify the bombers, and several of the Israelis later confessed) (and see this and this).

The U.S. Army does not believe this is an isolated incident. For example, the U.S. Armys School of Advanced Military Studies said of Mossad (Israels intelligence service):

Ruthless and cunning. Has capability to target U.S. forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act.

(9) The CIA admits that it hired Iranians in the 1950s to pose as Communists and stage bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its democratically-elected prime minister.

(10) The Turkish Prime Minister admitted that the Turkish government carried out the 1955 bombing on a Turkish consulate in Greece  also damaging the nearby birthplace of the founder of modern Turkey  and blamed it on Greece, for the purpose of inciting and justifying anti-Greek violence.

(11) The British Prime Minister admitted to his defense secretary that he and American president Dwight Eisenhower approved a plan in 1957 to carry out attacks in Syria and blame it on the Syrian government as a way to effect regime change.

(12) The former Italian Prime Minister, an Italian judge, and the former head of Italian counterintelligence admit that NATO, with the help of the Pentagon and CIA, carried out terror bombings in Italy and other European countries in the 1950s through the 1980s and blamed the communists, in order to rally peoples support for their governments in Europe in their fight against communism.

As one participant in this formerly-secret program stated: You had to attack civilians, people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security  so that a state of emergency could be declared, so people would willingly trade part of their freedom for the security(and see this) (Italy and other European countries subject to the terror campaign had joined NATO before the bombings occurred). And watch this BBC special. They also allegedly carried out terror attacks in France, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the UK, and other countries.

The CIA also stressed to the head of the Italian program that Italy needed to use the program to control internaluprisings.

False flag attacks carried out pursuant to this program include  by way of example only:

The murder of the Turkish Prime Minister (1960)

The Piazza Fontana massacre in Italy (1969)

The Peteano bombing in Italy (1972)

The bombing of the Bologna railway station in Italy (1980)

(13) In 1960, American Senator George Smathers suggested that the U.S. launch a false attack made on Guantanamo Bay which would give us the excuse of actually fomenting a fight which would then give us the excuse to go in and [overthrow Castro].

(14) Official State Department documents show that, in 1961, the head of the Joint Chiefs and other high-level officials discussed blowing up a consulate in the Dominican Republic in order to justify an invasion of that country. The plans were not carried out, but they were all discussed as serious proposals.

(15) As admitted by the U.S. government, recently declassified documents show that in 1962, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan to blow up AMERICAN airplanes (using an elaborate plan involving the switching of airplanes), and also to commit terrorist acts on American soil, and then to blame it on the Cubans in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. See the following ABC news report; the official documents; and watch this interview with the former Washington Investigative Producer for ABCs World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.

(16) In 1963, the U.S. Department of Defense wrote a paper promoting attacks on nations within the Organization of American States  such as Trinidad-Tobago or Jamaica  and then falsely blaming them on Cuba.

(17) The U.S. Department of Defense also suggested covertly paying a person in the Castro government to attack the United States: The only area remaining for consideration then would be to bribe one of Castros subordinate commanders to initiate an attack on Guantanamo.

(18) A U.S. Congressional committee admitted that  as part of its Cointelpro campaign  the FBI had usedmany provocateurs in the 1950s through 1970s to carry out violent acts and falsely blame them on political activists.

(19) A top Turkish general admitted that Turkish forces burned down a mosque on Cyprus in the 1970s and blamed it on their enemy. He explained: In Special War, certain acts of sabotage are staged and blamed on the enemy to increase public resistance. We did this on Cyprus; we even burnt down a mosque. In response to the surprised correspondents incredulous look the general said, I am giving an example.

(20) A declassified 1973 CIA document reveals a program to train foreign police and troops on how to make booby traps, pretending that they were training them on how to investigate terrorist acts:

 The Agency maintains liaison in varying degrees with foreign police/security organizations through its field stations .

[CIA provides training sessions as follows:]

a. Providing trainees with basic knowledge in the uses of commercial and military demolitions and incendiaries as they may be applied in terrorism and industrial sabotage operations.

b. Introducing the trainees to commercially available materials and home laboratory techniques, likely to he used in the manufacture of explosives and incendiaries by terrorists or saboteurs.

c. Familiarizing the trainees with the concept of target analysis and operational planning that a saboteur or terrorist must employ.

d. Introducing the trainees to booby trapping devices and techniques giving practical experiencewith both manufactured and improvised devices through actual fabrication.

***

The program provides the trainees with ample opportunity to develop basic familiarity and use proficiently through handling, preparing and applying the various explosive charges, incendiary agents, terrorist devices and sabotage techniques

(21) The German government admitted (and see this) that, in 1978, the German secret service detonated a bomb in the outer wall of a prison and planted escape tools on a prisoner  a member of the Red Army Faction  which the secret service wished to frame the bombing on.

(22) A Mossad agent admits that, in 1984, Mossad planted a radio transmitter in Gaddaffis compound in Tripoli, Libya which broadcast fake terrorist transmissions recorded by Mossad, in order to frame Gaddaffi as a terrorist supporter. Ronald Reagan bombed Libya immediately thereafter.

(23) The South African Truth and Reconciliation Council found that, in 1989, the Civil Cooperation Bureau (a covert branch of the South African Defense Force) approached an explosives expert and asked him to participate in an operation aimed at discrediting the ANC [the African National Congress] by bombing the police vehicle of the investigating officer into the murder incident, thus framing the ANC for the bombing.

(24) An Algerian diplomat and several officers in the Algerian army admit that, in the 1990s, the Algerian army frequently massacred Algerian civilians and then blamed Islamic militants for the killings (and see this video; and Agence France-Presse, 9/27/2002, French Court Dismisses Algerian Defamation Suit Against Author).

(25) In 1993, a bomb in Northern Ireland killed 9 civilians. Official documents from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (i.e. the British government) show that the mastermind of the bombing was a British agent, and that the bombing was designed to inflame sectarian tensions. And see this and this.

(26) The United States Armys 1994 publication Special Forces Foreign Internal Defense Tactics Techniques and Procedures for Special Forces  updated in 2004  recommends employing terrorists and using false flag operations to destabilize leftist regimes in Latin America. False flag terrorist attacks were carried out in Latin America and other regions as part of the CIAs Dirty Wars. And see this.

(27) Similarly, a CIA psychological operations manual prepared by a CIA contractor for the Nicaraguan Contra rebels noted the value of assassinating someone on your own side to create a martyr for the cause. The manual was authenticated by the U.S. government. The manual received so much publicity from Associated Press, Washington Post and other news coverage that  during the 1984 presidential debate  President Reagan was confronted with the following question on national television:

At this moment, we are confronted with the extraordinary story of a CIA guerrilla manual for the anti-Sandinista contras whom we are backing, which advocates not only assassinations of Sandinistas but the hiring of criminals to assassinate the guerrillas we are supporting in order to create martyrs.

(28) An Indonesian government fact-finding team investigated violent riots which occurred in 1998, and determined that elements of the military had been involved in the riots, some of which were deliberately provoked.

(29) Senior Russian Senior military and intelligence officers admit that the KGB blew up Russian apartment buildings in 1999 and falsely blamed it on Chechens, in order to justify an invasion of Chechnya (and see this report and this discussion).

(30) As reported by the New York Times, BBC and Associated Press, Macedonian officials admit that in 2001, the government murdered 7 innocent immigrants in cold blood and pretended that they were Al Qaeda soldiers attempting to assassinate Macedonian police, in order to join the war on terror. luring foreign migrants into the country, executing them in a staged gun battle, and then claiming they were a unit backed by Al Qaeda intent on attacking Western embassies. Macedonian authorities had lured the immigrants into the country, and then  after killing them  posed the victims with planted evidence  bags of uniforms and semiautomatic weapons at their side  to show Western diplomats.

(31) At the July 2001 G8 Summit in Genoa, Italy, black-clad thugs were videotaped getting out of police cars, and were seen by an Italian MP carrying iron bars inside the police station. Subsequently, senior police officials in Genoa subsequently admitted that police planted two Molotov cocktails and faked the stabbing of a police officer at the G8 Summit, in order to justify a violent crackdown against protesters.

(32) The U.S. falsely blamed Iraq for playing a role in the 9/11 attacks  as shown by a memo from the defense secretary  as one of the main justifications for launching the Iraq war.

Even after the 9/11 Commission admitted that there was no connection, Dick Cheney said that the evidence is overwhelming that al Qaeda had a relationship with Saddam Husseins regime, that Cheney probably had information unavailable to the Commission, and that the media was not doing their homework in reporting such ties. Top U.S. government officials now admit that the Iraq war was really launched for oil  not 9/11 or weapons of mass destruction.

Despite previous lone wolf claims, many U.S. government officials now say that 9/11 was state-sponsored terror; but Iraq was not the state which backed the hijackers. (Many U.S. officials have alleged that 9/11 was a false flag operation by rogue elements of the U.S. government; but such a claim is beyond the scope of this discussion. The key point is that the U.S. falsely blamed it on Iraq, when it knew Iraq had nothing to do with it.).

(Additionally, the same judge who has shielded the Saudis for any liability for funding 9/11 has awarded a default judgment against Iran for $10.5 billion for carrying out 9/11  even though no one seriously believes that Iran had any part in 9/11.)

(33) Although the FBI now admits that the 2001 anthrax attacks were carried out by one or more U.S. government scientists, a senior FBI official says that the FBI was actually told to blame the Anthrax attacks on Al Qaeda by White House officials (remember what the anthrax letters looked like). Government officials also confirm that the white House tried to link the anthrax to Iraq as a justification for regime change in that country. And see this.

(34) According to the Washington Post, Indonesian police admit that the Indonesian military killed American teachers in Papua in 2002 and blamed the murders on a Papuan separatist group in order to get that group listed as a terrorist organization.

(35) The well-respected former Indonesian president also admits that the government probably had a role in the Bali bombings.

(36) Police outside of a 2003 European Union summit in Greece were filmed planting Molotov cocktails on a peaceful protester.

(37) Former Department of Justice lawyer John Yoo suggested in 2005 that the US should go on the offensive against al-Qaeda, having our intelligence agencies create a false terrorist organization. It could have its own websites, recruitment centers, training camps, and fundraising operations. It could launch fake terrorist operations and claim credit for real terrorist strikes, helping to sow confusion within al-Qaedas ranks, causing operatives to doubt others identities and to question the validity of communications.

(38) Similarly, in 2005, Professor John Arquilla of the Naval Postgraduate School  a renowned US defense analyst credited with developing the concept of netwar  called for western intelligence services to create new pseudo gang terrorist groups, as a way of undermining real terror networks. According to Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh, Arquillas pseudo-gang strategy was, Hersh reported, already being implemented by the Pentagon:

Under Rumsfelds new approach, I was told, US military operatives would be permitted to pose abroad as corrupt foreign businessmen seeking to buy contraband items that could be used in nuclear-weapons systems. In some cases, according to the Pentagon advisers, local citizens could be recruited and asked to join up with guerrillas or terrorists

The new rules will enable the Special Forces community to set up what it calls action teams in the target countries overseas which can be used to find and eliminate terrorist organizations. Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador? the former high-level intelligence official asked me, referring to the military-led gangs that committed atrocities in the early nineteen-eighties. We founded them and we financed them, he said. The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we arent going to tell Congress about it. A former military officer, who has knowledge of the Pentagons commando capabilities, said, Were going to be riding with the bad boys.

(39) United Press International reported in June 2005:

As part of his plea bargain, Perez implicated scores of officers from the Rampart Divisions anti-gang unit, describing routinely beating gang members, planting evidence on suspects, falsifying reports and covering up unprovoked shootings. (As a side note  and while not technically false flag attacks  police have been busted framing innocent people in many other ways, as well.)

(59) A former U.S. intelligence officer recently alleged:

Most terrorists are false flag terrorists or are created by our own security services. (60) The head and special agent in charge of the FBIs Los Angeles office said that most terror attacks are committed by the CIA and FBI as false flags. Similarly, the director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan  Lt. General William Odom said:

By any measure the US has long used terrorism. In 78-79 the Senate was trying to pass a law against international terrorism  in every version they produced, the lawyers said the US would be in violation. (audio here).

(61) Leaders throughout history have acknowledged the benefits of of false flags to justify their political agenda:

Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death.

 Adolph Hitler

Why of course the people dont want war  But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship  Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

 Hermann Goering, Nazi leader.

The easiest way to gain control of a population is to carry out acts of terror. [The public] will clamor for such laws if their personal security is threatened.

 Josef Stalin

Postscript: The media plays along as well. For example, in 2012, NBC News chief foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, was kidnapped in Syria. NBC News said that Engel and his reporting team had been abducted by forces affiliated with the Syrian government. He reported that they only escaped when some anti-Syrian government rebels killed some of the pro-government kidnappers.

However, NBC subsequently admitted that this was false. It turns out that they were really kidnapped by people associated with the U.S. backed rebels fighting the Syrian government  who wore the clothes of, faked the accent of, scrawled the slogans of, and otherwise falsely impersonated the mannerisms of people associated with the Syrian government. In reality, the group that kidnapped Engel and his crew were affiliated with the U.S.-supported Free Syrian Army, and NBC should have known that it was blaming the wrong party. See theNew York Times and the Nations reporting.

Of course, sometimes atrocities or warmongering are falsely blamed on the enemy as a justification for war  when no such event ever occurred. This is sort of like false flag terror  without the terror.

For example:

The NSA admits that it lied about what really happened in the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964  manipulating data to make it look like North Vietnamese boats fired on a U.S. ship so as to create a false justification for the Vietnam war

One of the central lies used to justify the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq after Iraq invaded Kuwait was thefalse statement by a young Kuwaiti girl that Iraqis murdered Kuwaiti babies in hospitals. Her statement was arranged by a Congressman who knew that she was actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the U.S.  who was desperately trying to lobby the U.S. to enter the war  but the Congressman hid that fact from the public and from Congress

Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind reported that the White House ordered the CIA to forge and backdate a document falsely linking Iraq with Muslim terrorists and 9/11  and that the CIA complied with those instructions and in fact created the forgery, which was then used to justify war against Iraq. And seethis and this

Time magazine points out that the claim by President Bush that Iraq was attempting to buy yellow cake Uranium from Niger:

had been checked out  and debunked  by U.S. intelligence a year before the President repeated it.

Read more at: //www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-31/governments-admit-much-modern-history-has-been-manipulated-false-flag-attacks

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Voting begins today in West Bengal and Assam

New Delhi, Mon, 04 Apr 2016 NI Wire

Voting for 18 seats in West Bengal and 65 in Assam is going on under the first phase of General Assembly elections

The First phase of assembly polls in West Bengal and Assam has begun today. Currently in Assam Congress is in power and in West Bengal power is in the hand of Trinamool congress led by Mamata Banerjee. Assam has been ruled by congress for past 15 years, but this time it seems congress is getting neck to neck competition from BJP Alliance. Assam state Assembly consists of 126 seats out of which in 2011 congress capture 78, Bjp alliance won 8 and AIUDF with 18 seats. The minimum required seats to form government in Assam is 64.The reason why this poll is going to be crucial for CM Gogoi lay back in result of 2014 General elections where BJP won 7 seats out of 14 seats and left congress with 3.In Assam anti incumbency will going to be a big factor not only this but unemployment, Illegal Bangladeshi immigrant, law and order are some other points where congress is getting criticism. During the election's rally PM Modi accused former Prime Minister Manmonhan Singh who represents the State in Rajya Sabha and CM Gogoi over 'lack of development'.

Mr. Modi also announced that the people of Karbi community living in the plains of Assam and Bodos living in hill areas would be granted tribal status and central government has already started the process. For, congress it's necessary to remain in power as Congress lost Arunachal Pradesh and Uttrakhand after a high voltage political drama.

For the first Phase out of 126 Assembly seats in Assam, 65 constituencies are voting today to decide the fate of 536 candidates out of which 63 are woman. Voting will be taking place in 12,190 polling booths. In the first Phase of election congress will fight for all 65, Bjp for 54 and 11 AGP.

In order to eliminate the Chaos heavy security has been imposed in these areas and all liquor shops besides bars and other liquor-selling retail outlets would remain closed as the government has banned selling and consuming of intoxicating liquors.

Whereas in West Bengal, this time it's not going to be a neck to neck fight but still CM Mamata Banerjee will be facing a tough competition and may loss some seats. In west Bengal the major parties are Trinamool congress with 190 seats and Left with 62. It was quite a surprise in 2011 when TMC thrown Left out of government, West Bengal was ruled by Left for about 34 years.

In first Phase of Assembly elections which started today voting is going on for 18 seats, where total 133 candidates will be competing. Trinamool Congress and the BJP have fielded candidates for all 18 seats, Communist Party of India (Marxist) nominated for 13 seats and congress in alliance with left will go for 5 seats. In 2011 election where Congress was in alliance with Trinamool congress this time they are no longer together. TMC decided to go for elections on there on.

Oppositions in West Bengal are not leaving any opportunity to target CM Mamata Banerjee, from Scams like Saradha to law and order problem in state. BJP who is trying to get into West Bengal politics is working hard to get few seats, although it's not easy as party need to increase their vote percent. Left which is in alliance with Congress seems not been able to come out of 2011 election shock. It seems CM Mamata has high chances to form government in the state once again, but it will be interesting to see the final result. Elections are going under heavy securities as election commissions don't want any violence to interrupt these elections.
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Mission-critical networks such as those used by power utilities, transportation authorities and critical industries such as oil and gas have been relying on supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. Many of these SCADA systems have been in use for more than 20 years, making them the definition of legacy equipment.





With the migration away from time division multiplexing (TDM) technology toward the newer IP/MPLS communications technology, however, these legacy SCADA systems are in jeopardy of being stranded during the organizations IP/MPLS transformation.

One solution is having a reasoned migration capability for moving TDM traffic to IP/MPLS, as noted in a recent application note by Nokia (News - Alert) Networks, Transforming mission-critical networks. As the paper noted, however, this requires an IP/MPLS network with the adaptability and versatility to reliably carry legacy SCADA traffic as well as modern IP-based SCADA data and other new bandwidth-intensive applications.

There are three key challenges for organizations that dont want to leave their SCADA servers stranded in the face of IP/MPLS transformation:

Connecting to the SCADA equipments legacy interface

Transporting and bridging SCADA traffic

Securing that traffic

One example of how this can be achieved is illustrated in a Nokia video, Enabling Legacy SCADA Migration to IP/MPLS Networks.

To handle connecting to the SCADA equipments legacy interface, a good IP/MPLS solution will offer several ways to connect with SCADA servers, including both direct connection from the router to the SCADA server, as well as the option for connecting to the SCADA server via T1 or E1 interfaces on the existing TDM multiplex.

For transporting and bridging SCADA traffic, a good IP/MPLS solution will use packetization and label switching to bridge the gap between the legacy protocols used by the SCADA server under TDM and the more modern packet methods used by IP/MPLS.

As for security, IP/MPLS comes with built-in security such as label-switched path tunnels. But given the need for mission-critical networks, a good IP/MPLS solution also will use isolated VPNs and security in the form of built-in firewalls and encryption to additionally secure SCADA traffic.

IP/MPLS transformation can strand aging SCADA equipment. But it doesnt necessarily have to be the case.

Edited by Peter Bernstein
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The fact that various groups of first responders were unable to communicate with one another via radio in the wake of the 9-11 terrorist attacks is now widely understood. In response, the U.S. Congress four years ago erected the First Responder Network Authority and set out to fund the effort with $7 billion from spectrum auctions.





However, the U.S. isnt the only place where organizations are working to make public safety communications more efficient. New Zealand is another part of the world in which efforts are afoot to leverage new technologies for life-saving efforts.

In fact, Vodafone (News - Alert) New Zealand recently demonstrated Nokia Network in a Box, which is part of Nokias end-to-end LTE (News - Alert) solution for public safety. NIB is small enough to fit in the trunk of a vehicle, such as an ambulance or fire truck, and allows users to get mobile broadband up and running in minutes.

The solution includes an eNodeB base station and core network that can serve neighboring eNodeBs if available, and no backhaul is needed. In the New Zealand demonstration, Vodafone showed how the solution worked with its Z-Car, a prototype 4G mobile cell site in a vehicle with a low-profile satellite antenna on the roof.

For mobile operators, geographical white spot areas such as remote locations, islands and deep valleys represent unique challenges in building network coverage, according to a press release Nokia (News - Alert) issued on the topic. In New Zealand, the low population density and rugged landscape mean that commercial mobile networks simply cannot reach 100 percent of the population. Being able to establish network connectivity for mission-critical public safety communications anytime, anywhere in areas of missing or compromised coverage is a true game changer.

Nokia also discusses the fact that public safety authorities need interoperable communication systems that are affordable, support broadband, and deliver economies of scale. LTE mobile broadband meets at these requirements, Nokia says, and it can support database access and real-time video streaming for enhanced situational awareness.

Edited by Peter Bernstein
The Canadian government in March, 2016 announced $206 million in support of clean technology initiatives, including a $18.5 million in grants for next-generation nuclear power companies Terrestrial Energy and General Fusion.

Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) provided a $12.75 million package for General Fusion and $5.7 million for molten salt nuclear fission company Terrestrial Energy.

General Fusions grants are staged across a number of milestones that requires matching funds equal to twice the amount of the grants, indicating a $38.25 million investment for the company. General Fusion (GF), which was established in 2002, said it had raised more than $100 million from a global syndicate of investors.

GF said it was working with McGill Universitys Shock Wave Physics Group and Toronto-based engineering firm Hatch, which will focus on design of the full-scale energy demonstration system that is the next step to the companys mission to develop its Magnetized Target Fusion technology on an industrial scale.

General Fusion is working on compressing a Compact Torus in liquid metal using an acoustic wave generated by compressed gas pistons. This approach has attractive reactor engineering features: strongly reduced neutrons damage (1E-5 reduction in neutron flux with E>2 MeV), high tritium breeding ratio (1.5), and low cost (~$2/W). General Fusion is developing reactor subsystems and presently forming long-lived spheromaks. Experiments also include an ongoing program to compress spheromaks in 80 s using a fast liner.

General Fusion is nearing significant milestones. General Fusions Approach is Magnetized target fusion (MTF). Magnetized target fusion is a hybrid between magnetic fusion and inertial confinement fusion. In MTF, a compact toroid, or donut-shaped magnetized plasma, is compressed mechanically by an imploding conductive shell, heating the plasma to fusion conditions. General Fusion has a full-scale prototype [of the injectors and other subsystems], twin plasma injectors resembling five-metre-long cones, each attached to opposite ends of a three-metre-diameter sphere, would pulse a few milligrams of hydrogen gas, heat it until it becomes a plasma, and inject it into a vortex of swirling liquid metal. Electricity circulating in the plasma would create magnetic fields that bind the plasma together and confine the heat. From there, an array of as many as 300 huge pistons attached to the spheres shell would act like synchronized jackhammers, ramming it at 200 km/hr. This would send shockwaves into the very centre of the chamber, compressing the hydrogen isotopes to 100 million degrees celsius  hot enough for fusion to occur, and good enough to generate clean electricity from steam turbines. General Fusion reached its milestones on the piston timing about two years ago. Technicians are now perfecting functionality of the plasma injectors.

It is often proposed that pulsed rather than steady-state approaches may be more practical for fusion. Most pulsed systems, such as inertial confinement, use targets made of lead, aluminum, and even gold, which are destroyed on each pulse. The amount of electricity produced from a single pulse would be worth only a few dollars, so these targets must be very inexpensive for these pulsed systems to be practical. In contrast, the target in General Fusions system is a spheromak plasma composed entirely of fusion fuel  there are no consumables.

General Fusion is developing full scale subsystems to demonstrate that they can meet their performance targets. This includes full scale plasma injectors and acoustic drivers, and liquid metal vortex compression tests. Every step is matched with simulation to guide ongoing development work.

In the next phase of development, General Fusion will be constructing a full scale prototype system. The prototype will be designed for single pulse testing, demonstrating full net energy gain on each pulse, a world first.

Molten Salt Terrestrial Energy

Terrestrial Energy, which recently announced its engagement with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission involving a pre-licensing review for its Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR) design, said its award would help it step up pre-commercial activities for IMSR project development, which will conclude with construction of an electrically-heated non-nuclear mock-ups that will test and demonstrate many aspects of IMSR operation.

Terrestrial Energy said it was on a 30-month time line on the data collection designed to validate safety analysis computer codes.

Terrestrial Energy in January 2015 announced a collaboration with ORNL (US Oak Ridge National Lab) to develop its IMSR design to the engineering blueprint stage.

The conceptual design stage is anticipated to be completed in 2017.

Canadian David LeBlanc is developing the Integral Molten Salt Reactor, or IMSR. The goal is to commercialize the Terrestrial reactor by 2021.

Molten Salt and Oilsands

* Using nuclear produced steam for Oil Sands production long studied

* Vast majority of oil only accessible by In-Situ methods

* No turbine island needed so 30% to 40% the capital cost saved (instead of steam to turbine for electricity just send it underground to produce oil from oilsands)

* Oil sands producers expected to pay 200 Billion$ on carbon taxes over the next 35 years, funds mandated to be spent on cleantech initiatives

* Canada Oil Sands in ground reserves of 2 trillion barrels, current estimate 10% recoverable (likely much higher with cheaper steam)

* 64 GWth nuclear to add 6.4 million bbls/day (200B$/year revenue)

* 64 GWth needed as about 200 small 300MWth MSRs

* Oil Sands a bridge to MSRs then with time, MSRs a bridge to not needing oil

So each 300 MW thermal MSR would generate $1 billion per year in oil revenue from the oilsands.

A 300 MW thermal reactor would be the same as a 100 MW electrical reactor. Even if costs were as much proportionally as a $10 billion 1 GWe conventional nuclear reactor (the high costs of the most expensive european or US projects.) the $1 billion cost would be recovered in about 2-4 years. Also, they indicated that there is no turbine to produce electricity since only steam is used. So the costs should be $700 million max.

This profitability means that the first 200 units should easily be profitable. Usually making more units has a improvement rate in lowering costs by a few percentage points for each later unit. The oilsand units would also generate the money to help payoff research and development costs, which would initial come from oilsand taxes and oilsand partners.

In previous design discussions about a similar Denatured Molten Salt Reactor , David LeBlanc believed that capital costs could be 25% to 50% less for a simple DMSR converter design than for modern LWRs (light water reactors).

The 25 MWe version of the IMSR is the size of a fairly deep hottub
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Moroccan security services have captured last weekend two terrorists tasked with funding and coordinating with jihadists of the Libyan branch of the terror organization ISIS.

The two operatives were arrested in Moroccos economic city of Casablanca and its suburban region of Had Soualem within the frame of the ongoing investigations on Libyan affiliates of ISIS.

The 10-member terror cell, which was broken up lately, was operating in Marrakech, Essmara, Sidi Bennour and Had Soualem, and was planning to carry out attacks targeting Moroccan security services and other strategic sites.

According to Moroccos Central Bureau of Judicial Investigation (BCIJ) chief Abdelhak Khiame, the ISIS cell had smuggled in weapons from nearby Libya and was planning chemical attacks on four cities plus a suicide bomber strike.

He also said that the security services of the North African country have foiled 25 terror plots in the past year alone  including one in February involving mustard gas.

According to press reports, US Special Forces had captured last month ISIS chemical weapons chief who admitted the group was planning to use mustard gas in future attacks.

In February, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan for the first time openly accused ISIS of using chemical weapons, including mustard gas, in Iraq and Syria.

During the latest international Nuclear Security Summit held in Washington DC, US President Barack Obama has warned that the prospect of ISIS or other terrorists getting hold of a nuclear bomb is among the most serious threats faced by the world.

He said it was clear that these mad men would use such a device to kill as many people as they could.
Morocco flatly rejects any change or modification of the nature of the United Nations role in the handling of the Sahara issue and any plots seeking to bury the autonomy plan which could, as recognized by many world powers, fulfil the aspirations of the people in the Western Sahara to run their own affairs in peace and dignity.

The remarks were made by Moroccan Junior Foreign Minister, Mbarka Bouaida, in an interview published Monday by Arabic-language daily Assabah.

The Sahara issue is at the heart of all democratic projects launched in Morocco, whether political, constitutional, institutional or related to development, she said insisting that the Kingdom opposes any change of the nature of the UN role in the issue, especially after it became clear that there was a secret plan to bury the autonomy proposal.

The situation we have reached today is the result of an old strategy, she said, adding that Morocco was aware of such strategy and had already warned against the risk of any manipulation.

Touching on the blunders committed by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon during his tour in the Maghreb early March, the official described these missteps as unacceptable, inadmissible and serious professional mistakes, on the part of the chief of the world body. He made a partial and provocative visit to the region, told members of MINURSO they were in the Sahara for the implementation of the referendum and called Morocco occupant, she said, when enumerating his blunders.

However, she said, Bans stand is not surprising and is part of a plot dating back to 2007, when Morocco presented its autonomy plan. Morocco had thus evidenced its resolve to reach a settlement of the conflict and stood out as the only side presenting proposals and making concessions, while the other parties stuck to obsolete options, she said.

Mbarka Bouaida insisted that Moroccos commitments vis-a-vis the UN do not in any way mean ignoring the excesses of UN officials and that no pressure whatever its nature can force Morocco to reconsider its sovereign decisions.
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty; Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Most contested presidential primaries, in both parties, reprise the same argument. A candidate of ideological purity runs against one of pragmatism, and supporters of each marshal their case  arguments that are familiar enough that they can be repurposed from year to year by replacing a few key nouns  to position the party closer to or farther from the center. On the Republican side, candidates of purity have ranged from Barry Goldwater to Ronald Reagan to Steve Forbes to Ted Cruz, and the candidates of pragmatism from George Romney to George W. Bush to Mitt Romney to John Kasich. On the Democratic side, the purist tradition runs from George McGovern (its patron saint) to Jesse Jackson to Howard Dean to Bernie Sanders, pragmatists from Ed Muskie to Michael Dukakis to Bill Clinton to Hillary Clinton. This years Republican primaries have veered into unknown territory, shaped by the cultural-revanchist revolt led by a candidate who horrifies both purists and pragmatists. But the Democratic-primary contest between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, which arrives in New York this month, is classic purist-versus-pragmatist. Indeed, it is primarily a rehash of these debates, and only secondarily about the beliefs and qualities of the candidates involved.

The pragmatists in both parties have a roughly shared understanding of the political landscape. Republican and Democratic pragmatists alike would have agreed in 2000 that Bush would have a better chance of winning than Forbes, or in 1972 that Muskie would have fared better than McGovern, and so on. The purists in each party disagree not only with their own partys pragmatists but also with the opposing partys purists. Republican purists believe a right-wing majority of the general public would naturally support a staunch conservative if offered a clear choice, while Democratic purists believe the same from the left. (The purists in each party tend not to acknowledge each other, perhaps because that would undermine their belief that their party, uniquely, is in the grips of a timid or nefarious elite.)

Arguments by purists have an emotional appeal to political activists that pragmatic arguments lack  they promise freedom from the vise grip of trade-offs between ones ideological goals and the fickle loyalties of swing voters. Purist arguments are usually wrong. But not always. In 1980, Republicans disregarded the pragmatic choice  centrist candidate George H.W. Bush  to nominate conservative darling Reagan, whose presidency yanked the terms of public debate rightward for more than a generation. So Sanderss version of a purist argument deserves not to be dismissed in generalized terms but taken seriously in its specifics. And Democrats in New York, or at least the ones who find Sanderss ideas attractive, are currently wrestling with exactly this question: Just how much purity can we afford?

A Sanders nomination would have certain clear benefits. His public image is more hazily defined, which could be advantageous in comparison with that of Clinton, who is well known to, and disliked by, the public as a whole. A much smaller percentage of Americans have already decided not to like him (specifically: 40 percent to her 55 percent). The cranky white-haired Vermonter has some personal qualities that recommend him even to voters who dont subscribe to his worldview: Hes forthright about his beliefs and untainted by the routine low-grade corruption that has sucked in much of the political class (including both Clintons, whove wrung every cent out of the speaking circuit). Voters sometimes admire principled politicians even if they dont share all the principles in question. And just as Reagan introduced a new, anti-government language into mainstream discourse, Sanderss economic program, if he were elected, might reframe the terms of the domestic debate.

But a Sanders nomination comes with potentially enormous risks. As a candidate, he is laden with positions likely to alienate or even terrify a majority of the electorate. Sanders, who calls himself a democratic socialist, would increase taxes on the middle class. (A recent poll found that just 7 percent of Americans share his belief that the middle class pays too little.) Sanderss health-care plan would move 200 million people off private health insurance onto a new public plan  a frightening prospect given that disruptions on a far tinier scale have alienated the public from health-care reform in the past. Oh, and according to a 2011 poll, Americans disapprove of socialism by about two-to-one.

Clinton has largely abstained from exploiting these liabilities, since many of the voters she needs agree with Sanders. A Republican would show no such restraint, and Sanders could quickly become less popular than Clinton. There is a longer record of Americans seeing fit to vote for a candidate whose character they vaguely distrust  Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson  rather than for a candidate who seems to pose a danger to their pocketbook. (Reagan had to renounce his initial opposition to Medicare to get elected.)

There is also the question of whether the political risks of a Sanders nomination would bring a proportional upside, or any upside at all. The entire promise of a Sanders presidency rests on his ability to effect a political revolution, a concept he has expounded for years and appears to believe in with complete sincerity. Sanders is certain that money poses the primary obstacle to enacting his proposals. Does it? He speaks as if Republicans secretly agree with him about the science of climate change but refuse to admit it out of sheer greed. They are so owned by the fossil-fuel industry and their campaign contributions that they dont even have the courage, the decency to listen to the scientists, he has said, not entertaining the possibility that they are genuinely in the grip of anti-government dogma. Sanders even attributes opposition to ideas like rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure to big-money interests, when in fact corporate lobbyists heavily favor new infrastructure spending.

The closer you look, the more remote Sanderss analysis gets from the reality of American politics. He hinges his program on overturning Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruling that unleashed so much cash into our politics. But the pre-2010 world was not especially receptive to Sandersism. In fact, the most restrictive campaign-finance regime in modern politics began with tight limits passed in the wake of the Watergate scandal. That coincided with a sharp rightward turn in the political climate. Sanders also believes, as purist candidates do, that he will mobilize an army of voters. But he has attracted fewer votes than Clinton and many fewer than Barack Obama did at this stage of the 2008 primary. He may have enough loyalists to make Clinton sweat, but not nearly enough to trouble Republicans in Congress.

Matt Taibbi, writing recently in Rolling Stone, argued that Sanderss youthful enthusiasts had grasped a deep truth: Theyre voting for Sanders because his idea of an entirely voter-funded electoral revolution that bars corporate money is, no matter what its objective chances of success, the only practical road left to break what they perceive to be an inexorable pattern of corruption. The key phrase here is no matter what its objective chances of success, a mystery Taibbi does not get around to addressing. A vote for Sanders is less an attempt to achieve concrete strategic goals than an expression of virtue. Susan Sarandon, a Sanders surrogate, recently mused that she might prefer to elect Donald Trump over Clinton, since he might hasten the revolution.

Max Weber called politics a strong and slow boring of hard boards. Unfortunately, this process is slow, hard, and boring. The revolution Sanders invokes suggests a politics that is fast, triumphant, and thrilling. Those are qualities in perpetual demand among the faithful. For all Obamas pragmatism in 2008  his odes to the virtues of compromise, his praise for the value of markets, his insistent warnings that progress wouldnt be easy  he promised a fundamental change from the status quo. Sanders is promising that, too  and attracting support from many disillusioned that Obama didnt do more. Clinton promises a continuation. She, and Obama, can point to health care, climate, financial regulation, and on and on  a pile of hard boards through which they have bored, and more of them to work through.

*This article appears in the April 4, 2016 issue of New York Magazine.
Russian president and confirmed billionaire Vladimir Putin. Photo: Pavel Golovkin/AFP/Getty Images

Good morning and welcome to Fresh Intelligence, our roundup of the stories, ideas, and memes youll be talking about today. In this edition, a massive leak exposes the hidden wealth of world leaders, Clinton and Sanders debate about debates, and Teslas Model 3 is a hit. Heres the rundown for Monday, April 4.

WEATHER

A large winter storm is blowing in from the Great Lakes and will hit New England today. New York will miss the worst of it but should still see showers all day and into the evening. [Weather.com]

FRONT PAGE

Unprecedented Data Leak Lays World Leaders Finances Bare

A huge leak from one of the worlds most important offshore-services companies has revealed the hidden wealth of world leaders, celebrities, and captains of industry. Data from the Panama Papers leak was first obtained by German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung, and in the last year, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has corroborated the information. Yesterdays release, which included the hidden offshore finances of 12 current and former world leaders and 128 politicians from more than 50 countries, was only the first round of what could be many information releases. Among the biggest revelations is the considerable wealth of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, whos connected to $2 billion in offshore accounts.

EARLY AND OFTEN

Ted Cruz Victorious in Americas Most Baffling Primary, Says Ted Cruz

Ted Cruz has declared victory in the weekends North Dakota primary even though, due to the states esoteric rules, no candidate actually wins there. Cruz claims 18 of the 25 available delegates have agreed to support him, although theyre not technically obligated to support anybody. Democracy. [CNN]

Clinton Says She Will Not Be Questioned by the FBI

Hillary Clinton said in an interview on Sunday that she does not expect to be questioned by the FBI in connection to her use of a private email server while acting as secretary of State. Her announcement came a day after the State Department announced it would not go forward with a planned internal review of the incident at the request of the FBI. [NBC]

Trump Unveils Foolproof Campaign Strategy: Ask Other Candidates to Drop Out

Speaking in Wisconsin yesterday, Donald Trump called on John Kasich to drop out of the Republican race before that states primary tomorrow. Trump questioned why Kasich was allowed to run in the first place and said all Kasich does is go from place to place and lose, which seems a bit harsh. [Politico]

Democratic Debate Debate Gets Confusing

Both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have agreed to participate in a debate in New York before the states primary on April 19. Unfortunately, while Sanders has agreed to a debate on NBC on April 10, Clinton has agreed to a debate over at ABC on April 15. Get it together, guys. [Bloomberg]

THE STREET, THE VALLEY

Tesla Orders Hit Quarter-Million in Less Than Two Days

More than 253,000 people ordered Teslas first mass-market offering, the Model 3, in the first 36 hours after it went on sale. Unfortunately for its eager customers, the company wont actually be able to deliver the cars for up to a year-and-a-half. [Reuters]

Google Pulls Taliban Propaganda App

Just when you think the Taliban couldnt get any less likable, they go and get into the app business. Their first tech outing hit a considerable snag yesterday when Google decided to pull the app: a Pashto-language Android app that launched on April 1 and gave users access to Taliban propaganda articles and videos. [The Guardian]

Alaska Air to Purchase Virgin America

Bloomberg Businessweek reports that Alaska Air is close to finalizing the purchase of Virgin America, the last bearable American carrier. But its not too late for the deal to fall through, especially because there are rumors JetBlue could derail everything with a last-minute offer. [Bloomberg]

FBI Just Rubbing Apples Face in It Now

Following its success  with the help of a third party  in unlocking an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters, the FBI has published a letter saying it would be delighted to help other law-enforcement agencies hack iPhones in their investigations where possible. [CNet]

MEDIA BUBBLE

Second-Most-Popular Country-Music Awards Hit Las Vegas

The 51st annual Academy of Country Music Awards kicked off in Las Vegas last night and saw big wins for Chris Stapleton, who took home four awards including album of the year, song of the year, and male vocalist of the year.

Ariana Huffington Says Media Too Easy on Trump

Speaking on CNN yesterday, Ariana Huffington said that by not consistently challenging Donald Trumps more outlandish statements, the media is helping to make him mainstream. Every story on the Huffington Post that references Trump includes an editors note reminding readers that Trump is a a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist, and birther. [HuffPo]

Gay Talese: Women Write Now?

At a conference at Boston University over the weekend, pioneering New Journalism standard-bearer Gay Talese said, speaking to an audience including many female journalists, that he cannot name one female writer who has inspired him. That must have been a very tense room. [Jezebel]

PHOTO OP

Amtrak Recorders Recovered

The recorders aboard an Amtrak train have been recovered after its deadly crash yesterday outside of Philadelphia. Hopefully they can tell investigators how fast the train was going; they may also contain video footage of the collision.

The Amtrak train crashed on Sunday, killing two. Photo: Mark Makela / Stringer/2016 Getty Images

MORNING MEME

The internet is obsessed with Taylor Swifts unflappable bodyguard. This is clearly a man who has seen it all.

OTHER LOCAL NEWS

Punk-Rock Chihuahua in Bay Area Police Chase

A black Chihuahua wearing an oversize human-skull collar led the California Highway Patrol on a long, low-speed chase over the San Francisco Bay Bridge on Sunday. The criminal pooch was eventually captured and is now in animal-control custody. [AP]

Expected Influx of Sociopaths Will Feel Right at Home in Cleveland

The childhood home of famed serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is available to rent for $10,000 a month  just in time for the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. These real-estate guys really know an opportunity when they see it. [Reuters]

HAPPENING TODAY

Trial of the Century Enters New Stage

Gawker Media is filing court papers today to have a recent verdict, which found Gawker owed Hulk Hogan $115 million after the media company published excerpts of Hogans sex tape on its website, thrown out, or at the very least decreased. [NYT]



Republicans Campaign Hard in Wisconsin

Republican candidates are going all out in Wisconsin ahead of the tightly contested primary there on Tuesday. Trump even spent last night in the state, which is almost unheard of, as he reportedly prefers to sleep in his own super, super luxury bed in New York. [NYT]

Today Is Yankees Opening Day, Maybe

Today is supposed to be opening day at Yankee Stadium, but theres talk of pushing everything back a day due to rain. Wed hate for anyone to get chilly. [NYT]
Migrants embark on a small ferry headed to Turkey from Lesbos. Photo: Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images

The first boatloads of migrants sent away from Greece landed at Turkeys ports on Monday, marking the first wave of deportations for non-asylum-seekers as part of last months deal to stem the flow of illegal immigrants to Europe.

Refugee escorted by a Turkish police officer makes their way to a registration center following their arrival in Turkey from a Greece. Photo: Cem Oksuz/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Officials deported nearly 200 migrants from the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios. Border police said the migrants all went back willingly, and had not applied for asylum in Greece. Most of those steered to Turkey were from South Asia, including Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh. The Guardian reports at least two Syrian refugees were aboard those ferries  both of whom reportedly voluntarily returned to Turkey and hadnt sought asylum. People who apply for asylum cannot be deported until those applications have been fully reviewed.

Refugee gives his fingerprint during their registering process after being deported from Greece to Turkey. Photo: Cem Oksuz/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

The migrants sent back to Turkey must register there. Economic migrants  basically all but Syrians and Iraqis  will stay in camps and await deportation back to their home countries. In return for taking back the migrants and refugees  and cracking down on land and sea smuggling operations  Turkeys gets 6 billion euros in aid from the EU. The European Union also agreed to loosen travel restrictions for Turkish citizens in the Schengen zone and reenergize decades-long EU ascension talks. European countries will also accept Syrian refugees who are registered and stuck in Turkish refugee camps, and resettle them legally on the continent.

Activists protests during the arrival of a small Turkish ferry carrying deported migrants. Photo: Ozan Kose/AFP/Getty Images

Still, Europe has only committed to welcoming approximately 72,000 Syrian refugees from Turkey per the terms of the deal. By contrast, more than 170,000 migrants and refugees have already sailed to Europe so far this year  adding to the approximately 1 million who arrived in 2015 alone. Then there are the more than 2.5 million Syrian refugees who have fled to Turkey since the start of the Syrian civil war.

Some of the 138 refugees escorted by Turkish police arrive in Turkey from Moria Refugee Camp in Greek Island of Lesbos. Photo: Cem Oksuz/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

So far, the agreement between Turkey and EU, which technically went into force March 20, hasnt exactly deterred migrants: Reuters reports that more than 330 people crossed from Turkey to Lesbos and Chios on Monday  more than the total number that had just been deported from those very islands.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. Photo: DON EMMERT

When the MTA announced it would close the L train for up to three years, Brooklynites resigned themselves to a year or more of miserable commutes. Whether officials choose to close both sides of the Canarsie Tube  the tunnel that carries the L train under the East River from Brooklyn to Manhattan  at once, or whether they close one side at a time and maintain reduced service, the shutdown wont be pretty.

There was no mention, however, of the shutdown affecting Manhattan. But according to The Wall Street Journal, people familiar with the matter say an L train shutdown in Manhattan has been among the scenarios under consideration. In other words, in addition to the Bedford Avenue stop closing down, L train stops between First Avenue and Eighth Avenue might be defunct as well.

L stops in Manhattan could be out of commission as well.

As WSJ points out, shutting down Manhattan stops might prevent train cars from getting to a yard in East New York where they undergo inspection and repair. Those trains could then be trapped, said the unnamed source. It all depends on the construction schedule and the plan. A Manhattan shutdown would also cut off a key crosstown route, throwing a wrench into the plans of even more commuters.

In response to WSJs inquiries, an MTA spokesperson simply said, all options are still being examined, and plans are still fluid, which is sure to be a comfort to the 400,000odd commuters who take the L every weekday.
plagued

What We Know About the New and Rising COVID Variants

The next generation of more immune-evasive Omicron subvariants is beginning to take over from BA.5, including the fast-rising BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 strains.
The amazing thing about the art world is that I actually know other people who, like me, bounce around between those same cities. Photo: Bobby Doherty

Suzanne Egeran, Art Adviser

What a festive turtleneck.

Its Isabal Marant  I got it in Istanbul over the winter. The week I was there, it was unusually cold and it snowed three times. I was freezing! I sort of have a bit of a nomadic existence. Throughout the year, I live between Istanbul, New York, and London, which is where my clients are. The amazing thing about the art world is that I actually know other people who, like me, bounce around between those same cities, so often Ill hang out with the same people in all three different cities. Youll meet people who have different triangles; theres a friend of mine who lives between New York, Sydney, and L.A.

Any tips for being a nomad?

You need a good phone plan or multiple SIM cards. When I land in a city, I just turn on my local number, hop into an Uber, and go. I also find that WhatsApp helps me feel connected. Texting feels more formal and more stilted; WhatsApp lends itself to a more conversational tone, and I never feel like Im far away from the person Im talking with. Anything that you can do to try to erase your distance from people, even if its just an illusion, can help.

Lightning Round

New York neighborhood: I live in the Gehry building on Spruce Street.

London neighborhood: Notting Hill.

Istanbul neighborhood: I stay at Airbnbs there.

Workout: Yoga. The first thing I do when I land in New York is take a 9:10 yoga class with Dechen Thurman at Jivamukti. I also go to their London branch. They dont have a branch in Istanbul, though.

*This article appears in the April 4, 2016 issue of New York Magazine.
Air Frances planes. Photo: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

The French have long had a fraught relationship with headscarves, whether its banning them in schools or debating whether designers should be courting Muslim markets. Now Air France has become the center of controversy after their announcement that women flight attendants working their route to Tehran would have to wear trousers, jackets, and headscarves when they left the plane in the Iranian capital.

The flight crews were not thrilled with the new dress code decree. Every day we have calls from worried female cabin crew who say they do not want to wear the headscarf, said a member of the flight crews union. He also mentioned that Air France might penalize those who refused to abide by the dress-code ruling.

Air France will be resuming their flights to Tehran later this month  the route had been suspended for the last eight years due to sanctions against Iran. The airline said in a statement that they were complying with Iranian law that requires the wearing of a veil covering the hair in public places for all women present on its territory (the ruling does not apply while in the air). They also noted that flight attendants who worked on flights through Saudi Arabia followed a similar stricture that required the wearing of an abaya.

While it may be an Iranian law for women to cover their hair on Iranian soil, demanding that their female flight attendants to wear a headscarf could be construed as a violation for French law. They are forcing us to wear an ostentatious religious symbol. We have to let the girls choose what they want to wear, a representative for the crew union told RFI radio. Those that dont want to must be able to say they dont want to work on those flights.
Victims of Boko Haram. Photo: EMMANUEL AREWA/AFP/Getty Images

Yesterday, the Washington Post issued a report on what happens to the victims of Boko Haram upon rescue. Even though many women have been recently freed, they now find themselves homeless  their cities destroyed  and under surveillance by armed men suspicious of their loyalties.

Boko Haram made international news in 2014, when the group kidnapped 276 Nigerian schoolgirls. While most of these women are still missing, the ones who are rescued have been shunned.

According to the Post, authorities say they have good reason to distrust the women because in 2015 39 of 89 Boko Haram suicide bombings were carried out by women, according to UNICEF. Twenty-one of those female attackers were under the age of 18, many of them girls apparently abducted from villages and cities and converted into assassins.

While in captivity, the women were held as sex slaves, routinely raped and forced to bear the children of their attackers.

And when they were rescued, it didnt feel so liberating. Writes the Post, Soldiers burned the huts while women were still inside and shot wildly at everyone, they said. Several women were killed or disappeared during the operation, according to accounts from several former captives.

Because there was an increase in female suicide bombers after the last rescue, victims of Boko Haram are not put into camps run by the United Nations or other international aid groups. Instead, theyre guarded by the Nigerian military. Their children  whose fathers are members of Boko Haram  are scorned because people believe that the fathers blood courses through the veins of his child, so that at some point in the future they will be likely to turn against their own community, according to UNICEFs head of child protection in Nigeria, Rachel Harvey. International aid groups refuse to work with these women because of security threats.

Some women, unable to handle this unimaginable pain, drink bottles of cough syrup to cope.

The government did open a deradicalization center last year to help re-integrate the former victims, but it closed late last year, after admitting only 311 people. They did not respond to the Washington Posts phone calls seeking an explanation.
Photo: BSIP/Getty Images

California passed a bill in 2013 allowing pharmacists to prescribe birth control directly to women, and the law finally went into effect on Friday.

Women can now get pills, patches, or rings from a trained pharmacist after filling out a 20-question screening about their health history (this isnt considered over-the-counter). While theres no age restriction, women need health insurance for the prescription to be covered, or they have to pay out of pocket. California will not require pharmacies to offer birth control; businesses will decide on their own whether to offer the service.

The laws objective is to make birth control easier to access and thereby reduce unintended pregnancy rates. Its not meant to replace preventive care: Experts believe that most women will still visit their doctors for gynecological exams plus screening for STDs and cervical cancer.

California is the third state to offer this service. Oregon has a similar law, which went into effect on January 1. It requires that women be over 18 or have evidence of a prescription from another provider; that provision will be reviewed in five years.

Meanwhile, this has been a thing in Washington state for more than 30 years. Lets all move to the West Coast?
To: David Cameron, PM

From: Unofficial Independent Energy Maven Advisory Policy Group (UIEMAPG)

Re: UK Nuclear Policy

Subject: Mr Cameron, Please Consider a Plan B, Not Just Hinckley Point C

In a speech last November titled A New Direction for a UK Energy Policy, your estimable new Department of Energy and Environmental Change Secretary, Amber Rudd, outlined her goals for Britain's energy future. With respect to electric power generation she made four key points.

First, coal fired power stations lacking environmental abatement would be phased out by 2030. More natural gas plants, like the Carrington unit, would be built. Needless to say the government expressed its commitment to "renewables" in preparation for a lower carbon emitting world. And lastly about mid way through her published remarks she spoke of the government's desire for an expanded nuclear fleet.

There has been much attention lately focused on efforts to get the Hinckley Point C nuclear project underway. The final investment decision was expected more than a month ago. EDF, the French utility that purchased most of Britain's nuclear infrastructure in 2009, has apparently been agonizing over this decision. EDFs finance chief reportedly quit in opposition to the proposed plant. It appears that France will have to pump more money into EDF so that it can continue its efforts. And the pink paper reports that EDFs engineers want a delay and a rework of the specs. Related: Oil Falls As Saudi Arabia Questions Freeze Deal

We realize that you have invested much political capital in Hinkley Point and may be preoccupied fighting the Brexit campaign, but we urge you to take time out to reconsider your nuclear strategy.

There are three other places where the AREVA designed EPR type reactor is being built.

 In Flamanville, France the project is at least five years behind schedule and costs have tripled.

 The Olkiluoto EPR in Finland is almost a decade behind schedule and two times over budget.

 Two Chinese EPRs, the Tianshin units in Guangdong, are believed to be somewhat behind and over budget.

This is not a track record that inspires confidence.

But regardless of the Hinckley Point C decision, a significant part of Britain's energy planning relies on a total of thirteen additional nuclear power stations.

Four groups have purchased sites where nuclear plants may be built. In addition to the Hinckley Point in Somerset, EDF also owns the Sizewell site where it may place two more EPRs, Sizewell C units 1 & 2. These would also be the relatively large 1670 MW units although no in service date is being publicly discussed.

Horizon Nuclear Power, formerly a joint venture between German energy companies, RWE and E.ON, is now owned entirely by Hitachi (Japan), which presently plans to build four ABWR type reactors at two sites, one at Wylfa in Wales and the other at Oldbury. There are several ABWRs operating presently in Japan and another planned for Visaginas in Lithuania. Horizon has filed for a General Design Assessment from British regulators, the first in a multi-step approval process. In service dates for these four units are presently described as being in the late 2020's. Related: Crude Crushed As Production Freeze Hopes Thaw

NuGeneration, also a former joint venture between Iberdrola and GDF-Suez, is now majority owned by Toshiba (Japan). NuGeneration purchased land at the Sellafield site and promptly renamed it Moorside, an excellent move considering the sites history. It plans to construct three Westinghouse AP 1000 reactors rated at 1135 MWs which might go into service in the late 2020s. NuGeneration said it would make a final investment decision in 2018, although we would caution that Toshibas accounting issues and recent losses could impact the timing and investment decision.

And lastly, EDF's Chinese partner in Hinckley Point C, China General Nuclear (CGN), has purchased the Bradwell site outside of London. CGN, which has made no secret of its desire to enter the European market, has plans to construct two 1150 MW nuclear units of its own design, the Hualong One. EDF is also a minority owner in this venture with a 33.5 percent stake.

Several observations are in order.

First, the principal reason that the French and later the South Koreans could continually lower construction costs of their nuclear fleets is that they picked one design, standardized it and built lots of them. What the UK is proposing is almost bespoke nuclear construction with six sites and four different plant designs one of which, EDF's, is already proving difficult". Think of it this way: more people can be clothed, per pound spent, at Marks & Spencer than at Savile Row. Well, maybe the cuts are different, but not the electricity. Related: Saudi Policy Tied to Weak Economy

In her address, Secretary Rudd extolled the virtues of privatization. Somehow she neglected to mention that these proposed nuclear units will not be built unless heavily subsidized by the government and the consumer. For example in 2013 the UK government announced a 10 billion loan guarantee for Hinckley Point C under the Guarantee Scheme for infrastructure financing. In addition the government agreed to a fixed price of 92.50 per MWhr for the plant's output a price roughly twice the market price for electricity. And even with both loan guarantees and a generous fixed price contract, indexed to the cost of living, the project is having difficulty getting traction. Maybe the capital markets are telling us something.

Our point here is simple. The Cameron government, despite its supposed faith in free markets, finds that it must provide extensive almost extraordinary guarantees for these nuclear projects. This will add to the government's debt burden and commit electricity consumers to decades of high prices. For these and other reasons the government should be working on a Plan B.

By William Tilles and Leonard Hyman

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Solar Powers biggest problem is predictably simple  the sun does not shine all the time. To combat this issue, power companies have traditionally relied on peaker power plants to supply electricity at times when demand is high but solar generation is not available  such as in the evening.

Another alternative is to use grid-scale battery storage from the firms like Tesla. But that market, while potentially game-changing, is still in its infancy. There is a less well-known third alternative though that is toiling away in the Nevada desert  thermal solar.

Solar Reserve recently unveiled a thermal solar plant set in the middle of the Nevada desert which will supply power for roughly 75,000 homes. The plant operates by using more than 10,000 mirrors arrayed around a 640 foot central tower. The tower holds more than 3 million gallons of liquid salt which is heated to a balmy 500+ degrees by the solar array and then used to heat water which in turn becomes steam and spins a turbine. Related: Crude Crushed As Production Freeze Hopes Thaw

The whole project cost slightly under $1 billion and Solar Reserve holds a 25-year contract to supply power to NV Energy for $135 per megawatt hour. The tower produces 110 megawatts of energy for 12 hours a day according to the company, which works out to roughly 1 million megawatts per year. This in turn implies a gross ROA of ~13.5% (before SG&A expenses)  not bad as investments go.

Still, its less clear if thermal solar will be a long-term solution. At present natural gas prices, a new natural gas plant can supply power for around $52 per megawatt-hour. Solar Reserves deal with NV Energy was signed several years ago when natural gas prices were much steeper. In todays climate, even with the environmental benefits, its less clear if the deal would still be done. Related: Saudi Policy Tied to Weak Economy

Nonetheless, the plant is noteworthy for what it accomplishes  it is the first truly 24-7 solar plant in the world. For many applications that is a very big deal. Having to build a second power plant to back up a solar array is not an ideal solution to say the least. Thermal solar resolves that issue all while letting facilities like Solar Reserves store 1,100 megawatt-hours of energy.

The other benefit to thermal solar is that it does not rely on any type of fuel to generate power. As a result, it should be a good source of energy in niche applications and in areas where conventional fuels are very expensive. For instance, in Japan natural gas is much pricier than in the U.S., which until recently had led the country to be an avid user of nuclear power. Since the Fukushima disaster though, Japan has turned away from nuclear, which may leave thermal solar as an attractive option. Similarly, in places like France and Spain which already have robust solar incentives, thermal solar may be an attractive addition to the renewables portfolio. Related: As Net-Long Positions Near Records, Is The Oil Rally Overdone?

All things considered, thermal solar is probably too expensive to become a wide spread mainstream source of power  the industry seems to be moving away from the type of large megaproject that thermal solar would entail given upfront capital costs. In addition, the plant has only just begun operations, which means there is certainly a proving period that is needed to show that the technology works on a commercial scale without hiccups reliably day after day and week after week. If thermal solar can achieve that kind of reliability though, then over time it might become an attractive supplemental source of renewable energy.

By Michael McDonald of Oilprice.com

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Iraq may be the fastest-growing oil producer as of 2015, but its about to fall apart at the seams, with the war against the Islamic State in full swing, the back-and-forth with the Iraqi Kurds over oil exports, and rampant corruption that has the Iraqi prime minister pushing to replace his ministers with technocrats, prompting Iraqs oil minister to throw in the towel.

Amid all of this, influential Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has organized poignant demonstrations in Baghdad, demanding a direct share in Iraqi oil revenues for all Iraqis. His voice is being heard by fellow Shiite prime minister, and he wants a new government with technocrats that are not connected to the political parties that are breeding unforeseen levels of corruption.

In an attempt to get out ahead of the government reshuffle, Oil Minister Abd al-Mahdi submitted his resignation late last week, naming his deputy, Fayadh Nema, to deal with all of his duties for the most part. Al-Mahdi has cancelled all appointments and official activities, and is no longer gracing the Ministry halls, but will continue to sign documents that only the oil minister can sign. Related: Impatient Banks: A Real Red Flag For The Oil Patch

Al-Mahdis decision is in direct response to Prime Minister Haider al-Abadis plan, announced in February, to replace all ministers with technocrats in order to debilitate the system of patronage that has rendered Iraq one of the most corrupt governments in the world. But the process of nominating the technocrats for these traditionally lucrative ministerial positions will itself be a corrupt one. Iraqs influential elite will not roll over so easily.

The timing is also important and has everything to do with oil revenues. Endemic corruption tends to suddenly be a problem to be dealt with when a governments revenues are dwindling, so this is largely fallout from low oil prices and the costs of waging war against the Islamic State.

The corruption, low oil prices and the high-level Shiite protests bring Oil Minister al-Mahdi to the forefront here. Not only is he the countrys oil ministerhes also a member of the very powerful Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) party. Related: Indias SPR Ambitions Could Help Soak Up The Oil Glut

For investors, this particular aspect of the chaos engulfing Iraq is troubling because it lends a great deal of uncertainty to IOCs (international oil contracts) as well as to exports from the national oil company. What one of the worlds largest oil exporters will do without a functioning Oil Ministry is anyones guess.

In the meantime, the Iraqi Kurds continue to gain the upper hand in the verbal conflict with Baghdad over oil export autonomy, and al-Mahdi was a key player in this game on the central governments side.

Already, Iraqs exports show signs of losing steam. Theres been no growth at least for March. While the status quo has been maintained for this month, the fact that Iraq is paying lip service to an output freeze ahead of a Doha meeting planned for 17 April indicates that Baghdad is aware that things are about to get worse. Related: Forget The Tough Talk  Saudi Arabia Is Desperate For A Production Freeze

Part of the lack of growth in exports for March has to do with outages in Iraqs northern pipeline, which is now back online, but there are signs that the rebound in oil prices is only temporary.

From the south, Iraq exported an average of 3.35 million barrels per day during the first 23 days of March, according to Reuters data. The record for Iraq is 3.37 million barrels per day, which was achieved in November last year. Production for February was at 4.38 million barrels per day.

Indeed, under Oil Minister al-Mahdi, who assumed the post in October 2014, Iraq increased oil production to 4.5 million barrels a day in Januaryup from 3.3 million barrels a day when al-Mahdi took office, according to Bloomberg data.

The Shiites want to see more benefits from Iraqs oil revenues because the lions share of Iraqi oil is produced in their territory. The weakening of the central government by the Islamic State conflict has both empowered the Kurds and the Shiites, and this is likely to gain further momentum, which will in turn upset the oil status quo.

By Charles Kennedy of Oilprice.com

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Two days ago we brought you excerpts from a Huffington Post investigative report on Unaoil, a previously obscure Monaco company that allegedly functions as a kind of Bribery Incorporated for state actors looking to curry favor with the worlds oil exporters.

A treasure trove comprising hundreds of thousands of leaked e-mails and documents led Huff Post and Fairfax Media to publish an expose on the jet-setting Ahsani clan which apparently has links to nearly every producing country on the planet and knows just which palms to grease when Western governments need to make inroads. "They rub shoulders with royalty, party in style, mock anti-corruption agencies and operate a secret network of fixers and middlemen throughout the worlds oil producing nations," Huff Post wrote, on the way to documenting the Ahsani family's connections to Bashar al-Assad, Muammar Gaddafi, and the regime in Tehran, among other governments.

Pictured below are Ata Ahsani and his two sons, Cyrus and Saman. Apparently, the family is worth more than $200 million which Huff Post reckons makes them part of the "global elite." The shady family business has been certified by anti-corruption agency Trace International which the Post rightly says "raises serious questions about the worth of such international accreditation."

Related: Crude Crushed As Production Freeze Hopes Thaw



On Friday, we learn that the Ahsanis' homes as well as Unaoil's offices have been raided by authorities at the request of Britain's Serious Fraud Office. "Authorities in Monaco have raided the headquarters of an oil company, as well as the homes of some of its bosses, as part of a British-led investigation into a corruption scandal implicating businesses all over the world," The Guardian writes. "In a statement released on Thursday, it said that the Monaco-based firm Unaoil was at the center of the inquiry and that officials had acted after an urgent request for assistance from the UKs Serious Fraud Office (SFO)." Related: Saudi Policy Tied to Weak Economy

These searches and interviews were carried out in the presence of British officials as part of a vast, international corruption scandal implicating numerous foreign oil industry firms," Monaco said in a statement. "The information collected is going to be examined by the British authorities as part of their investigation."

The company's executives were interrogated interviewed earlier in the week, but the SFO isn't ready to say whether or not they're "interested" in the investigation. We are aware of the allegations but can neither confirm nor deny our interest in the matter," a statement reads. "Due to recent developments it would be inappropriate for the company to comment at this time," a Unaoil spokesman remarked.

British police are reportedly working with authorities in Australia as well as the US DoJ and FBI to investigate Huff Post and Fairfax's claims. Related: Oil Falls As Saudi Arabia Questions Freeze Deal

The problem, of course, is that this is essentially a case where governments will be investigating themselves. While the original investigative report implicates "Western companies" - i.e. multinational energy conglomerates - it seems like a foregone conclusion that this was a two-way street when it came to dealing with state actors. That is, if the Ahsanis were dealing with governments in oil producing countries they were probably working with Western officials as well and may function as a back channel in all manner of clandestine dealings. Perhaps police "accidentally" destroyed a document or two while ransacking the offices.

"[The company creates] political instability, turns citizens against their own governments, and fueled the rage that would erupt during the Arab Spring  and be exploited by terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL)," Huff Post claims.

By Zerohedge

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As the Syrian refugee crisis reaches a critical impasse, both in terms of European security and refugee human rights, Brussels has found itself having to deny accusations of a secret pact between Malta and Italy to swap refugees for oil exploration rights.

The Maltese opposition leader has claimed that Malta and Italy cut a secret deal in which Malta would surrender oil exploration rights in an offshore area disputed with Italy, while Italy would return the favor by picking up Maltas share of migrant rescues at sea.

In late March, the European Commission was forced to respond to the accusations as the Syrian refugee crisis has hit a fever pitch, denying the accusations; but its a complicated issue.

Maltese opposition leader Simon Busuttil of the Nationalist Party, and a member of the European Parliament until 2013, accused the Maltese government late last year of allowing the Italian government to drill for oil in Maltese waters in a dubious oil-for-migrants swap. Related: The Worlds First 24/7 Solar Power Plant

His accusations were boosted by the reporting of an Italian newspaper, Il Giornale, which claimed that Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi had agreed to the deal with Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat.

Last September, Maltese Home Affairs Minister Carmelo Abela stated that Malta had an informal agreement with Italy take on irregular migrants from Malta, but the minister later altered that statement to a situation of close collaboration between Italy and Malta, according to the Italian media report.

While Malta has admitted to close collaboration, the countrys officials maintain that there is no agreement concerning migrants or linking migrants to oil exploration.

Now the European Commission has had to step up to the plate.

Malta is the European Union member country that is closest to the Libyan coast. And with that in mind, Italian centre-right lawmaker Elisabetta Gardini has recently asked the European Commission to explain why there are such low migrant arrival numbers in Malta.

Her question was poignant. Related: Why Britains Bespoke Nuclear Program Wont Work

Since 2015, out of the 142,000 people who fled their homes bound for Europe, leaving from the North-African coast, only around a 100 arrived in Malta. Its an odd situation during this heightened refugee crisis.

In 2013, Maltese officials registered 2,008 arrivals. During the same period, Italy accepted some 150,000 refugees. The argument that there was no deal would suggest that refugees simply have no desire to try for Malta.

Late last month, the European Commission finally replied to the allegations, with European Commissioner for Home Affairs and Migration Dimitris Avramopoulos saying that it was not aware of any such bilateral agreement between the Maltese and Italian authorities concerning Search and Rescue (SAR) operations in the Mediterranean Sea.

Not aware certainly does not put this issue to rest.

That said, as reported by the Independent, the Commission noted that coincidentally the area of oil exploration in question overlaps with the migrant rescue areas. Related: Irans Masterplan To Ramp Up Energy Exports

While not being aware of any agreement, the Commission said that if there was an agreement, it would be in line with normal burden-sharing.

When it comes to the emergency relocation mechanism, the Commission sees it as establishing concrete measures of solidarity and contributing to the fair sharing of responsibilities between member states, in line with Article 80 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, according to the Commission.

Whats at stake here in terms of the oil play? Quite a lot, potentially. According to an independent review, Malta has a potential 260 million barrels. But Malta and Italy have been locked in dispute over offshore exploration zones as well as over what their migrant rescue zones are.

The crux of the issue is a 2012 law passed by Italy that essentially doubled Italys continental shelf southeastwards of Sicily and towards the Libyan coast. Malta balked because this cut into maritime territory it claims. In late 2015, Malta and Italy reached an informal agreement to suspend exploratory oil drilling in this area.

Perhaps one open-ended question is this: With an EU-Turkey deal in place that will see Turkey (in return for some EU favors and a bunch of financial aid) take back refugees landing in Greece, it will essentially cut off the Aegean Sea human smuggling route. It might mean a renewed interest in the Libya route. And if Malta has traded off its rescue area, it will mean problems for Italy, which would have to intercept them all.

By James Burgess for Oilprice.com

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Iran, which possesses the second-largest natural gas reserves in the world, has recently announced its intention to dramatically increase its energy production. It is also positioning itself to increase its energy exports, a long-stated goal of its post-sanctions economic program.

In January 2016 it was announced by Irans Prime Minister Hassan Rouhani that the South Pars natural gas field, Irans portion of the enormous Persian Gulf field it shares with Qatar, will be fully developed and in operation by March 2018. The 24-phase project has just surpassed stage 15 and 16, which together will add 50 million cubic meters per day (MMcm/d) of gas and 80,000 barrels per day of condensate. Last year production from South Pars in total increased by 15 percent to 130 billion cubic meters (bcm). Production from the field could add as much as $4.5 billion in revenue for the Iranian government, which has indicated that getting South Pars fully on-line is a top priority.

The Iranian portion of the South Pars field is roughly 3,700 square and represents the largest accessible source for new gas production. Much of this gas is intended for export in liquid form: Iran has made no secret of its hope to rival Qatar as a major LNG exporter. In late 2015 it announced plans to build five LNG export plans in the next three years. But as the U.S. and Australia have recently discovered, LNG is currently a questionable investment. The market remains soft, energy prices are low while new supply comes on line. That is likely to change in the near future, but investment in LNG is hugely expensive and Iran already faces substantial challenges: upgrading its existing oil and gas infrastructure is expected to cost $200 billion. Related: Crude Crushed As Production Freeze Hopes Thaw

Experts have scoffed at Iranian claims to increase production. Recent Iranian plans to begin exporting LNG to Europe and Asia within two years time have been met with skepticism. Iran itself has no LNG export capacity. But its neighbor and energy partner, the Sultanate of Oman, has LNG capacity to spare: around 1.5 million tonnes, out of a total capacity of 10.4 million tonnes per year. Plans set down to construct a pipeline from Iran to Oman in 2014 have been ongoing, with a lasting agreement reached last December.

In late March, Omans minister of oil and gas announced talks were in still in progress to hammer out remaining details. The 400km pipeline will stretch from Hormuzegan province in Iran to Sohar in Oman and carry gas both for Omani domestic consumption and export. Iran is bound by its 2014 agreement to supply Oman with natural gas, a 25-year deal valued at $60 billion. The pipeline once completed will carry 1 billion cubic feet per day, a deal which Irans oil minister Bijan Zanganeh has valued at $1.5-$2 billion. Oman has agreed to liquefy 1.5 million tonnes of Iranian gas for export. The pipeline is to be constructed by Korea Gas Corporation (KOGAS). Reports indicate that KOGAS may sign a memo of understanding with Iran and Oman before June 2016 for a project valued at $1.5 billion. Related: Saudi Policy Tied to Weak Economy

The scheme would allow Iran to increase its natural gas production and enter into the LNG market before completing its own LNG trains. It also serves Tehrans long-term goal of expanding its influence in the Persian Gulf. Ties between the two countries will likely grow stronger, with one Iranian official predicting bilateral trade to reach $4 billion in five years.

Meanwhile, the long-contemplated pipeline from Irans southern oil fields to Pakistan is moving closer to becoming reality. Originally planned in the 1990s and occasionally referred to as the peace pipeline, this project has gone through multiple rounds of negotiation, with both sides hesitant to commit to the costs of building the nearly-2000 km. long pipeline.

Since 2010, Pakistan has been under significant pressure from both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia not to carry out the project. The pipeline agreement was ratified by Pakistan in 2013, and there has been considerable speculation on whether the project will act as Pakistans energy lifeline. Pakistan suffers from regular energy black-outs and is in desperate need of greater energy imports. It also seeks a revival in its trade with Iran, which fell from $1.32 billion in 2009 to $432 in 2011. If and when it is completed, the pipeline will provide about 3,000 MW of electricity. At the moment Pakistan receives only about 75 MW of power from Iran. Related: As Net-Long Positions Near Records, Is The Oil Rally Overdone?

When sanctions on Iran fell in January 2016, progress on the project was set to continue. In late March, Rouhani visited Pakistan and declared that Iran had finished its portion of the massive pipeline, calling on Pakistan to complete its share. Pakistan and Iran have signed an agreement to increase bilateral trade to $5 billion by 2021. While Pakistan desires Iranian energy, it hopes to export textiles and agricultural products. Work on the Pakistani side of the pipeline was held up over concerns regarding sanctions against Iran, but since early March work in Pakistan has begun again in earnest. India, which dropped out of the pipeline plan in 2009 over cost and security concerns, is also in talks with Iran: plans are forming to build a $4.5 billion undersea pipeline.

Like the pipeline agreement with Oman, the completion of the long-awaited peace pipeline to Pakistan could mark an increase in Irans regional profile and indicate that it is delivering on its promises of increasing its energy production and reclaiming its former status as a major energy exporter.

Gregory Brew for Oilprice.com

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I am a little older now, (turning 61 in March). There was a time when that age seemed beyond attainable and utterly ancient. And my story begins some forty plus years ago when I was a freshman at Boston University, in a city where my entire family came from; actually, the northern suburb of Chelsea. My Uncle Sam was a successful Harvard law school educated attorney and I thought I might follow in his footsteps. So I enrolled in a Philosophy/Political Science double major. I had migrated to the left of the political spectrum in deference to my parents who actually got to meet John Kennedy a few months before his death at an event in the White House. But I was not at 18, and won't be if I see 80, what one would call a deep thinker. I am persistent and I read every day.

As importantly, I like to read the left and the right to try to better understand both perspectives and the debate between them.

So first semester I gradually balanced out drinking with studying and reached all the way up to a C/B average. Second semester I buckled down and began to eat up the concepts in my books and spit them out with some alacrity. I had a seminar class in humanities that not only included a minority of freshman, but sophomores, juniors and even a smattering of seniors. It was taught by a large, really smart man who weaved lots of stories about his life and times into the teaching of the coursework. This was something new. I noticed as well that the students, virtually all of us, seemed more than a little over our heads in the discussions that he lead. I was more than dumb enough to find this inspiring and to want to know more in my newly acquired state of semi-serious student-hood. So I looked up his office hours and showed up the following week to find myself in line with a very few upper classmen. I asked him to enlarge upon a couple subjects he covered in class and found myself returning again and even again because the conversation was inspiring.

I looked him up of course and found that William Bennett had a JD from Harvard and a PhD from the University of Texas that had been bestowed upon him by the Chair of its Philosophy Department and current President of BU; John Silber. William Bennett was someone special in 1974 and followed his academic career with a career some of you may know a little about, running the National Humanities Center, having been appointed Secretary of Education by Ronald Reagan and Drug Czar, formally known as Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy by President George H.W. Bush. On Thursday he concluded a 12 year run as Host of "Morning in America," a radio show on conservative Salem Broadcasting network that I happen to listen to some mornings on the way to work.

At the conclusion of my sophomore year I felt it necessary/desirable to find some kind of a legal internship where I could learn something more directly about the law. I had a fascination for Washington and though BU lacked an internship program signed up to spend the summer as a DC political intern through a program at Goucher College. I landed by chance at the Center for Law and Social Policy, a public interest law firm with an internship program that included interns from Yale, Penn, Michigan and UCLA law schools. I, as the only undergraduate was placed on the third floor with the other interns behind my own old wooden desk under the tutelage of Herbert Semmel who was investigating the relationship between the elderly and long term care before it was covered by the Federal government. I learned quickly that the kids to my right and left were well beyond bright and that I had to work my tail off if I wanted to make a meaningful contribution, small as it may be, to the work of this place, or just to almost keep up. I became Herb's legs and visited a number of Federal model programs where doctors, nurses, social workers and others were trying to take care of the elderly in lieu of proper Federal programs. I got to know the new House Select Committee on Aging and became fast friends with its Minority Staff Director who was looking into many of the same things as I. The Minority was run by Congressman John Heinz and the Majority by Congressman Claude Pepper. I created a lot of information to go with the travel vouchers that took me to Pennsylvania, New York and even Connecticut. I did some telephone based interviews with sites on the West Coast and every time I said I represented the Center for Law and Social Policy they assumed I was a lawyer.

On my second week there I returned from lunch one day to find a man sitting on my desk talking to the interns about a case I knew nothing about. He was Kenneth Donaldson, the case was Donaldson v. O'Conner, which the Center had won that day as a result of its argument before the Supreme Court. Donaldson was finally free after being incarcerated for years in a mental hospital as a non-violent patient with no right to leave. The Center was one of a number of institutions that opened the doors of mental hospitals to release those who were non-violent back into the community. Unfortunately some forty plus years later our two parties have not been able to work together to create an adequate after-care program that relieves society of the tragedy of homelessness and establishes a treatment regimen that helps to heal millions of lost souls.

I dug deep enough to provide Herb with much of the information he needed and he asked if I could try to convince my college to let me stay another semester. Let's face it; I was free and sincerely dedicated help. I did some research and made some calls and found out while BU lacked a Washington internship they did give credits for Directed Study that was supervised by a professor. But it was usually for one course a semester. I wanted to carry a full semester and get credit in DC. I figured I needed a professor with clout who I also happened to have some experience with. I had another incredible philosophy professor, Alasdair McIntyre as my advisor, but figured I needed someone with a broader tolerance for student discovery who might see the value in this legal internship. That made William Bennett my best chance. I talked to him by phone and sent him letters of support from Herb and Elliot Stern, Minority Staff Director of the House Select Committee on Aging and got him to agree to see me and entertain the idea. We discussed it and he promoted it with the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts who ultimately approved it as written even though she had some issues with the 16 credit full academic load I would be assigned for my work with Bill Bennett as my advisor.

In the fall I went one day with Herb to the Capital and listened as he testified before the House Select Committee on Aging. At the beginning of his testimony he introduced his assistant to members of the Committee, one Larry Snider a student from Boston University. It's more than forty years later and while I never became a lawyer I got involved and learned an enormous amount from my time in Washington, my internship with Goucher and most importantly my short but meaningful relationship with my Direct Study advisor William J. Bennett.

What these experiences taught me is that we have to communicate with both the left and the right, Republican and Democrat, to develop the understanding necessary to generate the legislation our country so desperately needs to keep us safe and to promote the health and welfare of our citizens and the process for others, not so unlike ourselves, to find their way legally to an America built on freedom and opportunity for all. I wish Bill well as he goes on to do more to define and support conservative American values and fight more battles. Even those I happen to disagree with.
That the mainstream media helped to create the political monster (and disaster) that today is Donald J. Trump is not in dispute. And, aided and abetted by its willing lackeys in the neo-conservative television and radio movements, they helped to over-inflate his insatiable mega-sized ego that told him he could win the ultimate prize -- the presidency of the United States.

Indeed, Republican hatred of President Barack Obama and his policies, and their spineless prevaricating cowardice to privately embrace what Trump is saying and vocalizing in public, allowed a loud mouth and blowhard mediocre businessman to hijack the Republican Party from its conservative moorings.

They both conspired and fornicated with each other to produce this bastard political horn-child now genuflecting to his every whim and outrageous pouting all in the interest of the continued cancerous metastasizing hating Barack Obama. Embraced by the most rabid sections of the Republican Party, the Tea Party zealots, traditional GOP establishment leaders were powerless to stop the rise of this ultra-Right Wing faction within the party that see Trump as "speaking their language" and identified with his particular odious brand of extremism and xenophobia.

They are ALL complicit in the rise of the GOP's Political Pretender. Establishment Republicans should have seen the writing on the wall when Eric Cantor, then the party's majority leader in the House, was defeated in his bid for re-election in June 2014 by Dave Brat, an unknown Tea Party member. They should have known that the extreme wing of the party was now calling the shots when a freshman senator from Texas, Ted Cruz, one year before Cantor's defeat, was able to orchestrate a temporary shut down of the Federal Government in October 2013. And they should have been put on the alert when the 40 or so Tea Party members in the House successfully hounded Speaker John Boehner out of office on October 31, 2015.

But even with all that these signs and developments Republican leaders still so hung up on hatred from Barack Obama did absolutely nothing. They continued to be an obstructionist force and rejected any and all compromise. Talk about unintended consequences! Now they have laughingly launched a "Stop Trump" movement to deny the party's present frontrunner the presidential nomination. The party's conservative wing, joined by a whorish mainstream media, and sundry political pundits and talk show hosts, are desperately seeking ways and means to stop Trump up to and including a controversial "brokered convention" -- not that they are calling it that.

If no GOP candidate -- Trump, Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich -- reaches the magical number of 1,237 delegates the party's national convention in July would be the last place where Trump can be stopped. But it will be very, very messy and unpopular with the Republican Party's base, especially its Tea Party section. It that happens, the political civil war will be waged between the white collar sections of the party and its ruling class elements pushing proxy candidates like Florida's former governor Jeb Bush, and, perhaps Senator Marco Rubio. What this will boil down to is a party willing to deny and reject the will of the vast majority of Republican voters, no matter how misplaced, in favor of a hand-picked, anointed, party establishment candidate.

The split, already evident, will be between white collar Republicans and their angry blue-collar brethren from where the Trump and the Tea Party draw its members and support. The ultra-Right Ted Cruz is now attempting to position himself as the Trump alternative and the "stop Trump" candidate. However, it appears increasingly that the GOP leadership and its establishment wing is in favor of a so-called "contested convention."

So what exactly is a contested convention?

Well, for starters, during the early days of American politics there was no need for the present system of primaries across the states. There was no 24-hour news cycle that hung on the every word of posturing, bombastic candidates and their surrogates. So for decades both parties -- the Democratic and Republican Parties -- chose candidates in large convention halls and negotiated, horse-traded, in smoke-filled hotel rooms near and around the main convention center.

Ultimately, these systems became corrupt and were simply mechanisms for protecting party favorites. They were ultimately replaced by primaries where delegates were selected and apportioned based on who won (or lost). This process was accelerated in the 1970s that literally did away with brokered party conventions. The last Democratic political convention to go more than one ballot round was in 1952. On the Republican side their last brokered convention was in 1976 when Ronald Reagan forced Gerald Ford into a primary contest. Reagan was unsuccessful and had to wait until 1980 before becoming the GOP's candidate and win the presidency for two terms.

Contested or brokered conventions are very messy things. There are still many arcane and obscure rules and procedures that govern delegate behavior depending on the state they come from. For example, there are rules instituted by party organizations in, say, Ohio, that may compel its delegates to behave in a particular way in the first round of balloting in a contested convention and if there are no clear results may or may not apply to them in future rounds.

Delegates may be "bound" to a frontrunner candidate in the first round of balloting and "freed" in the second round if no winner emerges. If they are "freed or unencumbered" then they can pretty much vote for who they choose. Here is where "politricks" and corruption sets in: candidates can woo delegates with promises that will materialize after they win the nomination. That's called bribery but its quite legal in BOTH parties since its called "negotiating and advocacy." It's "horse-trading" at its best.

When you add the anger that now permeates BOTH the Republican and Democratic parties and the growing distrust of the American electorate then the recipe for political chaos looms very large are is a very real possibility. For the Republican Party this convention is about the battle for the heart and soul of the party. It's about how the party will look in the next decade and how far on the extreme will the Trump and Cruz wings take it.

On the Democratic side of things are different, but there is an important fight. The party is fighting to redefine its very identity having been caught in a socio-political crisis for more than a decade. In 2016 the party that once identified with poor and working class Americans is no more. That is why Democratic party establishment figures and leaders cannot understand or come to grips with the anger and dissatisfaction that has been the meteoric rise of Senator Bernie Sanders on the Left pitted against the establishment candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton on the Right.

Today, the Democratic Party is the party of the hyper-educated elite and the so-called "professional class," a veritable meritocracy that is status driven and not welcoming of dissenting voices, especially from its blue-collar wing. It is a party that has and is now identified more with Wall Street than with Main Street. In many ways the political dialectics that drove the rise of Donald Trump are partly due to the unbelievable shortsightedness of policy decisions made by Democrats in government and on Wall Street.

For example, many Southern conservative Democrats in Congress did nothing when their Republican colleagues were excoriating and attacking President Barack Obama left, right and center. They stood by and twiddled their thumbs or abandoned the party's position and sided with Republicans. Their dislike of their own president (I'm loath to use the word "hatred") helped to legitimize people like Trump. They never condemned a member of Congress, Joe Wilson for South Carolina, who called the president a liar during a September 2009 speech. And they have done very little to help push the president's domestic and foreign policy agendas.

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Reprinted from Other Words

Inmates on their deathbeds should be free to spend their final days with their loved ones.





Over the past three decades, judges and juries have filled America's prisons with non-violent offenders.

Many are serving draconian sentences for first-time offenses. Indeed, while only about 5 percent of the world's people live in the United States, our country is locking up nearly 25 percent of the world's prison population.

President Barack Obama has at least begun to address this issue by creating the Clemency Project, which connects prisoners to pro-bono lawyers who can argue for them to have their sentences reduced. Inmates are eligible if their sentences would have been shorter today than when they received them -- as long as they've already served at least half their time.

That doesn't help prisoners who haven't yet served half of their sentences. It's an especially glaring gap for prisoners who are elderly and gravely ill. Where is their relief?

A handful of prisoners on their deathbeds might go free under a federal practice called compassionate release. To qualify, an incarcerated person must be at least 65 years old and suffering from a deteriorating medical condition that diminishes their ability to function in a correctional facility.

And they have to have served 10 years of their sentence.

Last year, the federal government released 110 prisoners under the compassionate release program. While this was a record high, it was also statistically insignificant as we've got 2.24 million people behind bars.

To make matters worse, although the regulations for eligibility are clear, the entire program is "clouded in secrecy and bureaucracy," according to the Clemency Report.

I watched the failure of this program unfold in real time when I was incarcerated for blowing the whistle on the CIA's torture program. I was friendly with a prisoner I'll call Bill.

Bill was 68 years old and doing 30 years for a non-violent organized crime conviction. He'd served more than half his sentence.

I saw him in the hall one day, doubled over in pain. He told me that he'd never before experienced back pain like this. I suggested that he go to sick call in the morning and ask for Tylenol, the go-to painkiller in U.S. prisons.

He did, but he got no relief.

A couple of weeks later, Bill was walking with a cane and in obvious distress. He told me again that his back pain was excruciating. He'd asked the medical unit for an X-ray, and he'd been denied. The physician's assistant had just given him more Tylenol.

Two weeks later, Bill was in a wheelchair. I went to the chaplain and said that Bill was being denied medical care. He agreed to intervene.
THAT "TERRORISM" IS a malleable term of propaganda, with no fixed meaning or consistent application, is now quite well-established. Still, its recent application to a spate of violence targeting Israel's occupying soldiers in the West Bank is so manipulative and extreme that it's well worth highlighting.

Israel has militarily occupied the West Bank for decades (it's also still functionally occupying Gaza, as this two-minute video proves). The West Bank "occupation is illegal under international law and the United Nations has repeatedly told the country's government to vacate Palestinian territory." Even ardent defenders of Israel admit that "the West Bank is under a legal regime of belligerent occupation" and "Israel's settlement enterprise is, and has always been, grossly illegal under international law." Despite this world consensus, Israeli settlements continue to grow rapidly. Israel is not engaged in any meaningful efforts to negotiate an agreement to end the occupation, and leading Israeli ministers now openly oppose such efforts.

In response to this, there has been a series of attacks over the past year by Palestinians on Israeli occupying soldiers in the West Bank. In the Israeli and American press, the Palestinians attacking these occupying soldiers are invariably called "terrorists" and their attacks are denounced as "terrorism" ("The two soldiers were stabbed while at a guard post at the Har Bracha settlement, located in the northern West Bank. ... Troops were searching for the terrorists").

For those (such as myself) who have long contended that the term "terrorism" now has little meaning beyond "violence by Muslims against the West and its allies," and no purpose other than to delegitimize violence by one side while legitimizing the other side's, can there be any better proof than this?

There have been Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians of course (while far more Palestinian civilians have died at the hands of the Israeli army), but in these specific cases, these Palestinians are attacking purely military targets, not civilians. Those military targets are soldiers deployed to their soil as part of an illegal occupying army. In what conceivable sense can that be "terrorism"? If fighting an occupying army is now "terrorism" simply because the army belongs to Israel and the attackers are Palestinian, is it not incredibly obvious how this term is exploited?

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Reprinted from Wikileaks

Today, 2nd April 2016, WikiLeaks publishes the records of a 19 March 2016 teleconference between the top two IMF officials in charge of managing the Greek debt crisis -- Poul Thomsen, the head of the IMF's European Department, and Delia Velkouleskou, the IMF Mission Chief for Greece. The IMF anticipates a possible Greek default coinciding with the United Kingdom's referendum on whether it should leave the European Union ("Brexit").

"This is going to be a disaster" remarks Velkouleskou in the meeting.

According to the internal discussion, the IMF is planning to tell Germany that it will abandon the Troika (composed of the IMF, European Commission and the European Central Bank) if the IMF and the Commission fail to reach an agreement on Greek debt relief.

Thomsen: "Look you, Mrs. Merkel, you face a question: you have to think about what is more costly, to go ahead without the IMF -- would the Bundestag say 'The IMF is not on board?' or [to] pick the debt relief that we think that Greece needs in order to keep us on board?"

Remaining in the Troika seems an increasingly hard sell internally for the IMF, because non-European IMF creditor countries view the IMF's position on Greece as a violation of its policies elsewhere of not making loans to countries with unsustainable debts.

In August the IMF announced it would not participate in last year's 86 billion Greek bailout, which was covered by EU member states. IMF Chief Christine Lagarde stated at the time that the IMF's future participation was contingent on Greece receiving "significant debt relief" from creditors. Lagarde announced that a team would be sent to Greece, headed by Velkouleskou.

Thomsen said internally that the threat of an imminent financial catastrophe is needed to force the other players into a "decision point." For Germany, on debt relief, and in the case of Greece, to accept the IMF's austerity "measures" -- including raising taxes and cutting Greek pensions and working conditions. However the UK "Brexit" referendum in late June will paralyze European decision making at the critical moment.

"I am not going accept a package of small measures. I am not..." said Thomsen. "What is going to bring it all to a decision point? In the past there has been only one time when the decision has been made and then that was when [the Greeks] were about to run out of money seriously and to default. [...] And possibly this is what is going to happen again. In that case, it drags on until July, and clearly the Europeans are not going to have any discussions for a month before the Brexits..."

Last year Greek Finance Minister Tsakalotos accused the IMF of imposing "draconian measures," including on pension reform. While Velkouleskou concedes in the meeting that "What is interesting though is that [Greece] did give in... they did give a little bit on both the income tax reform and on the... both on the tax credit and the supplementary pensions."

But Thomsen's view is that the Greeks "are not even getting close [to coming] around to accept[ing] our views." Velkouleskou argues that "if [the Greek government] get pressured enough, they would... But they don't have any incentive and they know that the Commission is willing to compromise, so that is the problem."

Velkouleskou: "We went into this negotiation with the wrong strategy, because we negotiated with the Commission a minimal position and we cannot go further [whereas] the Commission is just starting from this one and is willing to go much further. So, that is the problem. We didn't negotiate with the Commission and then put to the Greeks something much worse, we put to the Greeks the minimum that we were willing to consider and now the Greeks are saying [that] we are not negotiating."

While the Commission insists on a Primary Government Budget Surplus (total tax minus all government expenditure excluding debt repayments) of 3.5%; the IMF thinks that this target should be set at 1.5% of GDP. As Thomsen puts it, "if [Greece] come around to give us 2.5% [of GDP in tax hikes and pension-wage-benefits cuts]... we should be fully behind them" -- meaning that the IMF would, in exchange for this fresh austerity package, support the reduction of the Primary Surplus Target imposed upon them from the 3.5% that the European Commission insists on to 1.5%.

These targets are described as "very crucial" to the IMF. The IMF officials ask Thomsen "to reinforce the message about the agreement on the 2.5%, because that is not permeating and it is not sinking very well with the Commission."

At one point, Velkouleskou refers to an unusual solution: to split the problem into two programs with two different targets: "The question is whether [the Europeans] could accept the medium term targets of the Commission, for the purposes of the program, and our targets for the purposes of debt relief." Thomsen further explains that "They essentially need to agree to make our targets the baseline and then have something in that they hope that will overperform. But if they don't, they will still disburse."

The EWG [Euro Working Group] needs to "take a stand on whether they believe our projections or the Commission's projections." The IMF's growth projections are the exact opposite of the Commission's. The Commission projects a GDP growth of 0.5%, and the IMF a GDP decline of 0.5% (even if Greece accepts all the measures imposed by the IMF).

Read the PDF or HTML transcript of the IMF internal meeting.
I am a 78 year old father and grandfather. Actuarially, and much to my chagrin, I have perhaps 10 to 11 years left in my life. And yet, my unborn great granddaughters have 80 or 90 or perhaps even more years to live. My great-great and great-great-great grandchildren even more. If you are anything like me, my progeny have meaning to me. They are of my blood and my soul and I care about the world they will live in as I do of my six grandchildren.

I have read about the "7th generation principle taught by Native Americans which says that in every decision, be it personal, governmental or corporate, we must consider how it will affect our descendents seven generations into the future." So that the pristine sky, field and mountains in this photo will still be here for them to enjoy.



The article I saw here goes on to say that "A generation is generally considered to be 25 years, so that's 175 years. It is clearly not embraced by most governments and corporations in the world today. I mean, when was the last time any of us thought about who's coming along seven generations from now?"

What do you want your legacy to be for your progeny in the year 2190? I won't get into too much depth on any of these points because you can look up anything you want to know by searching with Google where most of the following is copied from. I will touch on areas of our planet that I would like to have left for my progeny.

The following are issues I would love you to think about before you go into the voting booth. If these issues are as important to you as they are to me, I suggest you ask the people who are seeking your votes for public office where they stand on these points. If they support your views, vote for them. If not, don't vote for them but find someone who supports your views in the main. I recognize there are other issues on which to base your voting decisions, but these are some key ones I care about because they define the world I would like to leave as my legacy. And, talk to your children and grandchildren about these issues.

Clean Air to breathe -- According to Wikipedia, "Air pollution is the introduction into the atmosphere of chemicals, particulates, or biological materials that cause discomfort, disease, or death to humans, damage other living organisms such as food crops, or damage the natural environment or built environment". "Everyone on earth knows that air pollution is hazardous to health. The effects of air pollution can have devastating effects on your health and the environment." At a website I viewed it stated as factual that "Inhaling air pollution takes away at least 1-2 years of a typical human life." It also said, "The number of people who die in America every year due to air pollution is above 50,000" and "65% of the deaths in Asia and 25% deaths in India are due to air pollution." It would seem to me that polluted air is polluted air and will eventually affect us all, i.e., Asian air doesn't stay in Asia.

Most of this air pollution we cause results from the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal, oil, natural gas, and gasoline to produce electricity and power our vehicles. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a good indicator of how much fossil fuel is burned and how much of other pollutants are emitted as a result. Did you know that 52% of the United States electricity is generated using coal as fuel?

Note that in the NY Times article on November 2, 2015 entitled, "More Than Half of Entire Species of Saigas Gone in Mysterious Die-Off, it said, "Scientists now estimate that at least 211,000 endangered saiga antelopes -- 88 percent of the Betpak-dala population in Kazakhstan and more than half of the species -- died in May. Dr. Kock and his colleagues reported that they had narrowed down the possible culprits. Climate change and stormy spring weather, they said, may have transformed harmless bacteria carried by the antelopes, called saigas, into lethal pathogens. Are your great grandchildren the next saigas?

Clean, fresh water to drink -- "Wherever they are, people need water to survive. Not only is the human body 60 percent water, the resource is also essential for producing food, clothing, and computers, moving our waste stream, and keeping us and the environment healthy."

"Unfortunately, humans have proved to be inefficient water users. (The average hamburger takes 2,400 liters, or 630 gallons, of water to produce, and many water-intensive crops, such as cotton, are grown in arid regions.)"

"According to the United Nations, water use has grown at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century. By 2025, an estimated 1.8 billion people will live in areas plagued by water scarcity, with two-thirds of the world's population living in water-stressed regions as a result of use, growth, and climate change." Do you wonder if they will be migrating to places that have water?

In another article it says, "Earth's population could grow by three billion in the next 50 to 75 years. More thirsty people means even greater demand on already-scarce resources and, paradoxically, a greater chance that existing water sources will become polluted. Many of the world's major aquifers are being over-pumped, and in some river basins governments have allocated more water than is actually available."

"Freshwater resources are also feeling the squeeze from Mother Nature. There is high seasonal and annual variability of rainfall and snowmelt, and the resulting streamflow, in many regions. Climate change could spell the end of some critical--but nonrenewable--water sources like snowmelt. Coastal dwellers may see their groundwater tainted by brackish flows as sea levels rise."

How will this affect your progeny?

Consistent climate -- Global climate change has already had observable effects on the environment. Glaciers have shrunk, ice on rivers and lakes is breaking up earlier, plant and animal ranges have shifted and trees are flowering sooner.

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Congress Switchboard: 202-224-3121

"Rob Kall has been in on the modern bottom-up revolution from the ground floor. While the last two years have put the dangers of social media and connectivity at the forefront of our national debate, Rob Kall knows as well as anybody the infinite positive potential of our new world."



Jesse Lee, former White House Director of Rapid Response and Social Media Director for Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi
Reprinted from Thom Hartmann Blog

As a member of our nation's highest court, Justice Antonin Scalia was a champion of so-called Conservative values. With his passing, however, the Justice's absence has led to liberal groups declaring victory on a number of cases.Since his death in February, cases about the EPA, Texas abortion restrictions, and class action lawsuits have all gone differently than they probably would have if Justice Scalia was still on the bench. And last week, his absence was a major factor in the Court's split decision on public sector unions.Back in January, Justice Scalia made clear his views on so-called "fair share fees." Those fees, also known as agency fees, help cover the legal costs of representing all workers in a union shop, even when some choose not to become a member of that union.Current law requires unions to negotiate on behalf of everyone in a workplace, and the agency fees, which are less than regular dues, make sure that the non-union workers aren't getting a free ride. However, Scalia appeared to side with the argument that those fees represent forced political speech because they subsidize collective bargaining.Back in January during oral arguments, he said, "The problem is that everything that is bargained for with the government is within the political sphere, almost by definition." But, thanks to his passing, the Supreme Court just issued a split 4-to-4 decision, which means the lower-court ruling protecting unions stays in place for the time being.The case will likely wind up back before the court in the future, but for now, our public unions will have the power to fight another day. And, if the U.S. Senate stops refusing to do their job, President Obama could appoint a new Justice who isn't opposed to our vital labor unions.In the meantime, let's celebrate these small victories from our nation's highest, divided court and continue to push the Senate to consider Obama's nominee.
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Advice from a Billionaire: Forget Charity, Do Good While Making a Profit This is a very interesting interview with Bobby Turner, who is the partner of Andre Agassi in opening new charter schools for profit across the country. He seems to think that destroying public education is a way to perform good works. Charity is laudable, Bobby Turner says, but if you really want to raise enough" Friday, October 30, 2015This is a very interesting interview with Bobby Turner, who is the partner of Andre Agassi in opening new charter schools for profit across the country. He seems to think that destroying public education is a way to perform good works. Charity is laudable, Bobby Turner says, but if you really want to raise enough"

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Arne Duncan's Children Will Enroll in Chicago Lab School-- Untouched by The Policies He's Subjected America To Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's children will attend the private University of Chicago Lab School, where his wife works. Of course, everyone is free to send their children wherever they wish. What's interesting about Duncan choosing this school is that it does not practice any of the policies that Duncan has promulgated. It is" Thursday, July 16, 2015Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's children will attend the private University of Chicago Lab School, where his wife works. Of course, everyone is free to send their children wherever they wish. What's interesting about Duncan choosing this school is that it does not practice any of the policies that Duncan has promulgated. It is"

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Bernie Sanders on Education When Bernie Sanders responded to the candidate questionnaire of the American Federation of Teachers, he explained his views on a wide range of issues. Tuesday, July 14, 2015When Bernie Sanders responded to the candidate questionnaire of the American Federation of Teachers, he explained his views on a wide range of issues.

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Guns, Rights & Public Safety Looking at the politics of gun control through an educational lens. Thursday, October 5, 2017Looking at the politics of gun control through an educational lens.

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Newtown CommUnity Vigil A Community Building Response to the Violence and Terror in Charlottesville. Tuesday, August 15, 2017A Community Building Response to the Violence and Terror in Charlottesville.

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Politics 2016: Trick or Treat? It's time to vote for a stable future for America and that means all of us must come out to vote our conscience. One candidate is damaged and the other is simply unqualified to be President... Monday, October 31, 2016It's time to vote for a stable future for America and that means all of us must come out to vote our conscience. One candidate is damaged and the other is simply unqualified to be President...

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Trump's not a Loser. So the Election must be Rigged! Trump playing a game as only he can in which he can't lose because he will blame Hillary, the Democratic and Republican Parties, the Media, cry that the election was rigged and change direction to focus on the development of a Third Party and Trump TV as the vehicle to keep him before the public. Wednesday, October 19, 2016Trump playing a game as only he can in which he can't lose because he will blame Hillary, the Democratic and Republican Parties, the Media, cry that the election was rigged and change direction to focus on the development of a Third Party and Trump TV as the vehicle to keep him before the public.

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Making Peace in a Messy World In a time of dynamic change Middle East Peace is caught between the velocity and the barriers erected by the principals. It is necessary to see beyond all of that to the countless efforts to build bridges happening every day by people and organizations on the ground working tirelessly on behalf of peace. We must open our eyes and ears and hearts to understand and make peace the work of everyone. Wednesday, November 9, 2011In a time of dynamic change Middle East Peace is caught between the velocity and the barriers erected by the principals. It is necessary to see beyond all of that to the countless efforts to build bridges happening every day by people and organizations on the ground working tirelessly on behalf of peace. We must open our eyes and ears and hearts to understand and make peace the work of everyone.

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Fairy Tales, Death and Middle East Peace Middle East Peace will remain a dream until the people of Israel and Palestine each engage the other in a conversation that enables them to hear the other well enough to move beyond the pain and fear and anger to accept each other as human beings with needs and rights in place of simply as the enemy. Monday, October 10, 2011Middle East Peace will remain a dream until the people of Israel and Palestine each engage the other in a conversation that enables them to hear the other well enough to move beyond the pain and fear and anger to accept each other as human beings with needs and rights in place of simply as the enemy.

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Building Trust + Security = A Framework for PEACE Middle East Peace is stuck between unilateral initiatives by both sides and large scale popular disbelief in its availability. Trust must be re-established and timing is critical. Accordingly, I present a tradeoff that costs each side dearly but offers something each side desperately wants. The other vital process is to begin a program of national conversations on both sides to help reinvigorate interest in peace. Sunday, July 3, 2011Middle East Peace is stuck between unilateral initiatives by both sides and large scale popular disbelief in its availability. Trust must be re-established and timing is critical. Accordingly, I present a tradeoff that costs each side dearly but offers something each side desperately wants. The other vital process is to begin a program of national conversations on both sides to help reinvigorate interest in peace.

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37th death anniversary of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto is being observed

ISLAMABAD: The 37th death anniversary of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto is being observed today (Monday).



The PPP will hold public rally in Garhi Khuda Bux on the occasion, while Quran Khawani and prayers will be offered at all divisional, district, tehsil and city offices of the party.



All preparations to mark the event have been finalised by the committee formed by PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto in this regard.



Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah said Bilawal Bhutto would attend the death anniversary of his grandfather, which, according to him, would be attended by thousands of party supporters.



Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged on April 4, 1979 during the military dictator General Ziaul Haq regime.



The Sindh government has announced public holiday in the province today. According to a notification issued by the provincial government, all Sindh government and semi-government offices, autonomous bodies, corporations and local councils under the administrative control of Sindh government will remain closed today.



Activists of the Pakistan Peoples Party have started arriving in Garhi Khuda Bux from all over the country to participate in the event. Groups of PPP activists from Lahore and other areas of Punjab have also started their journey towards Larkana to take part in the events marking Bhuttos death anniversary.



Officials said foolproof security arrangements had been made to avoid any untoward incident and observe the anniversary in a befitting manner. The security arrangements include installment of CCTV cameras at the venue of the rally besides deployment of 7,000 police personnel and 300 Rangers personnel to keep watch on the premises of the rally. Traffic police officials and female police officials will also discharge their duties to ensure maximum security for the participants of the rally.



Camps have been set up and areas have been decorated with PPP flags throughout all districts of Sindh.



Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was the founder and chairman of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). After serving in military dictator Ayub Khans cabinet, Bhutto formed the PPP and swept the 1970 elections in then-West Pakistan. After the 1971 war, Bhutto was sworn in as Pakistans first elected prime minister. He was deposed by army general Ziaul Haq, under whose regime he was later found guilty of murder and hanged. Bhutto garnered immense fame for his mercurial politics and charismatic speeches. Considered as one of Pakistans best orators, Bhuttos fiery speeches as foreign minister and prime minister are still popular with masses. His daughter Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in a ghastly gun and bomb attack on December 16, 2007 in Rawalpindi.
Opposition parties to discuss PIA bill

ISLAMABAD: Opposition parties will be meeting in Karachi on Tuesday to devise a strategy on the controversial PIA bill ahead of the joint sitting of parliament slated for April 11.



The meeting will be held at the residence of Syed Naveed Qamar of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) a day before the Committee of the Joint Sitting on Bills takes up the Pakistan International Airlines Corporation (Conversion) Bill 2016, seeking to convert the national flag carrier into a limited company and two pro-women bills.



Talking to repoters on Saturday, PPPs Saeed Ghani said that Asad Umar of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) and Dr Farooq Sattar of Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) were expected to meet PPP representatives on Tuesday to finalise their recommendations and amendments to the PIA bill. They also would review the new draft of the bill had the same been provided by the government by that time.



At the last (March 29) meeting of the committee headed by Law Minister Zahid Hamid, the government and the opposition had come closer to an agreement after Finance Minister Ishaq Dar expressed his readiness to amend the draft in order to remove the concerns of opposition parties.



Mr Dar had assured the committee that PIA would not be privatised and that interests of its employees would be protected. He had also said that management control would not be handed over to anyone and the private sector would not be offered any shares and that no PIA employee would lose his or her job.



The opposition members had said that they were ready to support the bill and suggested that the minutes of the meeting containing the ministers assurances be made part of the draft. The minister had agreed to the proposal.



Responding to a question, Mr Ghani said that so far they had not received any new draft. He said they had not been waiting for any draft and would prepare their own amendments and recommendations for the bill.



Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Human Rights Barrister Zafarullah Khan said the new draft would be sent to the opposition members by Monday or Tuesday.



Mr Zafarullah, who has been tasked with preparing the new draft, claimed that an agreement had already been reached with the opposition and that it was only a matter of the wording of the draft law. He said the government would welcome the positive amendments of the opposition parties so that the bill could be passed with consensus.



The committee consisting of members from both houses of parliament has also been tasked with suggesting changes to other bills on the agenda of the joint sitting.



There were six bills on the agenda for the joint sitting of parliament that had been passed by the Senate but which could not go through the National Assembly within stipulated 90 days. As regards the PIA bill, it has been passed by the National Assembly but the Senate has rejected it.



Besides the PIA bill, other bills which the committee is reviewing are the Emigration (Amendment) Bill 2014; the Civil Servants (Amendment) Bill 2014, the Anti-Rape Laws (Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill 2015; the Anti-Honour Killing Laws (Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill 2015; and the Privatisation Commission (Second Amendment) Bill 2015.
RAW interference in Balochistan had been continuing for many years: Yousaf Raza Gilani

RAHIM YAR KHAN: Former prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said on Sunday that interference in Balochistan by the Indian intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), had been continuing for many years.



Talking to reporters after arriving at the Sheikh Zayed International Airport, he said India had always provided assistance to the separatists of Balochistan.



He said that during a meeting in 2008 with former Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh, he had discussed the issues of Kashmir, Balochistan, Siachen and Sir Creek and provided proofs of RAWs interference in the province.
We are producer of firewood from Ukraine, Lviv region searching for a new partners in Central and Eastern Europe. We are able to produce firewood from oak, hornbeam and beech and packaging may verify (box 1RM -1m:1m:1m, 2RM- 1m:1m:2m, netting bags, length 0,25 or 0,35m ). We can sell dry firewood (moisture up to 22%) as well as fresh firewood. Minimum order - 1 truck (EXW, FCA,DAP) wich can be combined with pallets.If you are interested please contact us via email or phone and we will send you our commercial offer.
Worlds first miniature fingerprint scanner inside a credit card to be launched at #PaymentsSummit

New York NY  April 4, 2016  SmartMetric, Inc. is the developer of the worlds first sub-micro miniature fingerprint scanner that sits inside SmartMetric debit and credit cards. https://youtu.be/zSX59uHoHqU

These advanced and innovative biometric cards are ready for market and will be launched at the Orlando Smart Card Alliance April 5-7.

Chaya Hendrick, President and CEO, SmartMetric, Inc. states, Starting today, I will begin advising the card-issuing banks at the Summit that we are launching now and can ship up to one million cards a month with our sub-micro miniature fingerprint scanner inside.

(Ms. Hendrick will address the Alliance at 9:00am Wednesday April 6)

SmartMetric is exhibiting at:

Booth 106

The Payments Summit  Smart Card Alliance

Loews Royal Pacific Hotel

Hollywood Way, Orlando FL 32819

561-255-0075

AGENDA: http://www.scapayments.com/conference-agenda/

About THE PAYMENTS SUMMIT  Smart Card Alliance

The Payments Summit is the premier industry event covering all things payments including FinTech, EMV chip technology, mobile wallets, NFC, contactless, open transit systems, and more. 2016 will mark the first time that the Smart Card Alliance and the International Card Manufacturing Association are co-locating events giving attendees a broader perspective from the core manufacturing and personalization of a card to the rapid evolution in secure payments.

About SMARTMETRIC, INC. (OTCQB:SMME)

Registered in the State of Nevada and based in the U. S, SmartMetric, Inc. is a technology engineering, research and development company with centers in Argentina, Palo Alto, and Tel-Aviv. SmartMetric specializes in miniature electronic systems and software for use in Biometric identification and validation. Hardware and software engineering are done internally. The Company can deliver unique and cutting edge enterprise-class products to the Payments industry, as well as Corporate and Government sectors.

Video: https://youtu.be/zSX59uHoHqU

Corporate Website: www.smartmetric.com

SAFE HARBOR STATEMENT

Certain of the above statements contained in this press release are forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Such forward-looking statements are within the meaning of that term in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Readers are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, and that actual results may differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors.



Other Point of Sale blogs that may interest you:




As religious tensions in Pakistan continue to mount, amid violent attacks on places of worship, one story of religious harmony is having an impact in the southern city of Karachi.

It is there, that after a month spent observing Lent, the Christian community celebrates Easter with famous hot cross buns made by a Muslim baker.

The business has been running in Karachi for more than a century now.

Asia Callings correspondent, Naeem Sahoutara, has the story.









The market in Karachis commercial area is buzzing with last-minute shoppers ahead of Easter Sunday.

Christians are busy buying new clothes and gifts for their friends and family.

And many are also lining up to buy hot cross buns from JC Misquita Bakery, one of Pakistanis longest-running bakeries.

Maria, 30, says it isnt easy to buy Karachis famous hot cross buns.

Easy? No its not easy because it becomes a very big rush and that is why we come in advance so that we can have it on that day, she says.

Its early morning of Holy Wednesday, but Maria has arrived at the bakery to buy three dozen hot cross buns for her family.

The shopkeeper, Muhammad Raza, asked her to place her order two days in advance.

There are other bakeries that sell hot cross buns during Lent but the most delicious are from JC Misquita, she says.

They are fresh, they are nice, she says, They are tasty also compared. And the other bakeries they have, you know, they stick.

Marias parents started buying the buns from the bakery many years ago and she is doing the same for her four children.

The bakery was initially opened in 1858 by a Christian man, Joseph Cason Misquita, in Central Karachi, a city where hundreds of families settled from the Portuguese colony of Goa.

Those from the tiny religious minority are known as Goans, and for bringing the Portuguese flavor of culture and food to Pakistan. Including, of course, hot cross buns.

Mechanic, 64-year-old Stanley Francis has been going to JC Misquita for years.

He is very famous and very tasty and thats why during our young days we had always been coming to him, he says, So, that is why the flavor is still over there, the art is still over there. How he makes the bun.

Stanleys parents used to buy buns at the bakery before he was born.

And the Easter buns have since become a family tradition.

It is the tradition, it has been going on for my great, great-grandfather. And hot cross buns are for the Good Friday actually. The bun is something special because its Good Friday. There is a cross there, our symbol is cross, yeah, he says.

You come here tomorrow morning, there will be a big rush here. On Friday after service you wont have any place to stand here, he adds.





In the backyard of the shop workers are busy getting ready to place the unbaked buns in two large ovens.

After the death of its Christian owner many years ago, the bakery has since been run by a Muslim.

Today, no one knows Misquita, it has become our identity now. And we are Muslim people.

After his fathers death, Syed Abbas Zaidi took over the family business.

During Easter, the bakery sells up to 5,000 hot cross buns made by their loyal staff, he says.

We have employed three generations of workers, who also worked with my father. We do not hire any outsiders. On special occasions we personally supervise the work, we cannot leave it to the workers only. This is how we have maintained this taste, he explains.

Syed inspects each tray of baked buns that comes out of the hot ovens.

He explains to me how all the ingredients are mashed together before being dividing into small pieces.

Then the crosses are placed onto the buns before they baked again and then packaged.

On Good Friday the Christian community offered special prayers countrywide to remember the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and for victims of terrorism.

Attacks on religious minorities such as Christians, Hindus and Shia have been on the rise in Pakistan over recent years.

But Syed Haider Abbas Zaidi, who is a Shia Muslim, says that for him religious should unite not divide.

There is no difference between Muslims and Christians, says Zaidi, The entire Christians community living in Karachi knows us. We dont differentiate between who is Christian and who is Muslim because our generations continue to live together.

Despite the troubles here in Pakistan, there is hope that unity will triumph.




Dozens of Acehnese Christians, men, women and children have gathered for a service on the eve of Easter Friday in tarpaulin tents. (Photo: Rio Tuasikal)

Over recent months nine churches have been torn down by authorities in the Indonesian province of Aceh, while two more were torched by hardliners.

For almost six months now, the minority Christian community in Aceh has been forced to hold their church services in tarpaulin tents.

As Rio Tuasikal reports, it was a somber Easter for Acehnese Christians this year.

Its a rainy afternoon here in Singkil, a remote area of Aceh province.

Dozens of Acehnese Christians, men, women and children have gathered for a service on the eve of Easter Friday.

Among the worshipppers at the makeshift tent church is Rosmayanti Manik.

In one hand she is holding a bible, in the other, an umbrella.

I am really really sad about this condition, says Manik, Last week when we went to this tent, it was raining and we were all wet and unable to sit.

The temporary tent has been pitched inside a palm oil plantation.

The government has forbidden their place of worship from being visisble from the street. And as many Christians are farmers, they have set up the tent church in the plantation where they live.

Sheets of blue tarpaulin have been fastened to poles above the earthen floor.

But its rainy season now so often its a soggy service.







Church elder, Efrika Munte, is praying for a new house of worship.

The hope is still there. We deeply wish for a proper building, a comfortable place for us to pray, says Munte.

Their church, the Mandumpang church which was attended by 300 people, was burned down last August.

Police say the fire was caused by an electric shortage, but others believe that religious extremists were behind the attack.

Local residents say they saw jerry cans around the church area the day it was set alight.

And since then, the Christian community has been forced to worship in tents.







Like most provinces in Indonesia, Aceh is a majority Muslim province, but it is more coservative than most.

The province is ruled by sharia law and relations between the Christian and Muslim community havent always been harmonious.

In 1979 the local government issued a law limiting the number of churches in Singkil to 4, and small churches called undung-undung to 16.

But there is no restriction on the number of mosques...

Tension and resentmnet has been building up between the two communities  culminating in the destruction and burning of the churches last October.

Yet Ramli Manik, one local Muslim leader, said Christians and Muslims have been living in harmony for decades.

He was visiting his Christian neighboor the day before Easter Friday.

We are Muslim. All we know is that Islam never tought us to be violent. Islam is blessing for entire universe, he says, Its shameful if we become destroyers or provocateurs.





But not everyone shares the same view as Ramli Malik. And it is still an uphill battle for the Christian community in Singkil.

Without a permit from the government, which they have been waiting on for years, the community is unable to build new houses of worship.

Its created a somber mood this Easter, explains church elder Norim Berutu.

We should of held services this whole week. But we are not able to do that because of the situation, no lights, and we have to go through the bush to get into our tent.

Visiting the remains of her old church over Easter, Listiwati Silalahi looked at the debris and started to cry.

We cannot handle it anymore, she says, Sometimes when we have a service under the tent now, we see this wreckage.

Wati remembers Easter last year, when the children had an Easter egg hunt and the community prayed in their church together.

But this year, its all silent in Singkil.


Inventory needs to be managed and managed well, or you are going to get in recurring trouble, and lose your credibility and hard-earned conversions, whether 

Read more
READ MORE:Farmers urged to plant high yielding cocoa varieties

Ashanti Regional Manager of the Cocoa Health and Extension Division, Mrs. Faustina Asamany , said the move is to help affected farmers get their lives back and assure them of sustainable income.

Speaking at a forum held in Gyereso, Mrs. Asamany hinted that 10.2 million early maturing high-yielding disease resistant cocoa seedlings will be supplied to farmers across the region during this year's planting season.

She urged cocoa farmers to register with the agricultural extension agents to enable them benefit from the free fertilizer supply.

She also assured the farmers that the fertilizers will be distributed in a fair and transparent means so as to achieved high yields.
The terrible incident which lasted for 20 minutes happened moments before his domestic abuse court case was about to begin on March 31.

According to reports by the Daily Mail, he arrived at the courthouse at 1.30pm and upon entering the building, he started a small fire at the entrance, managing to evade the shots of a security officer before storming the judge's office and grabbed her around the throat, then poured gasoline over her.
Yes, Dr. Drone may sound futuristic, but it could be a way to get ahead of neighboring Kenya, which has banned the use of this tech for fear of the terrorist group al-Shabaab. And unmanned aerial vehicles, as theyre technically known, could also be a game-changer for humanitarian purposes and trade in countries such as Rwanda, with few roads to rural areas. Indeed, this tiny East African country, known as the land of a thousand hills, is leading the continent into the future of drone use  its even home to what could become the worlds first drone port by the end of 2017.

The word drone tends to conjure up images of terrified children running for cover in parts of the Middle East, or chubby nerds scaring passersby in San Francisco with their silent toys.

And there are plenty of skeptics about how far this technology may go  many think deploying a large network of drones over developing countries is naive at best, and dangerous at worst. But for those like Jonathan Ledgard, a director at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, people have only begun to scratch the surface of this potentially world-changing technology. Drones could do for transportation in Africa what mobile phones have done for banking, he says.

Despite their difference in beliefs, both sides agree that the lack of infrastructure for transportation is one of the main factors holding back sub-Saharan economies. According to a study by the University of Sydney, only 34 percent of rural Africans live within two kilometers of an all-season road, compared to 65 percent in other developing regions, like Southeast Asia. Even in nations like Nigeria and South Africa, where the economies are growing close to the double digits annually, the lack of infrastructure is getting in the way of farmers being able to sell their produce and e-commerce ventures distributing their goods.

Drones could be part of the solution. At least thats what people like Ledgard and his group of scientists say. Theyve spent the last few years developing and testing carrier drones for civilian purposes, and theyll also be the ones in charge of filling Rwandas drone hub with solar-powered flying machines. (The design will be the work of the world-renowned architect Norman Foster, who has already envisioned a series of clay-made domes overlooking a lake, where the port will be built.) Drones offer us such a great opportunity for development, says Eric Rutayisire, founder of CHARIS, Rwandas first drone-making company.

But what about locals? While drones are likely to become cheaper and more accessible in the years to come, these machines currently cost thousands of dollars, putting them outside the reach of most folks here. And while some Western companies may heavily market their drones in this area, we need to be wary of people promising quick fixes, says Kristin B. Sandvik, director of the Norwegian Centre for Humanitarian Studies.

What most tech optimists also forget to mention is that Africa already has a history of drone use: The devices were used by colonial powers to bomb rebellions in the early 20thcentury. More recently, theyve been used by the United Nations in Congo, and a couple of them fell near Goma, hurting civilians and burning down fields of crops. Its hard, too, to make sure the power of drones is not abused when the laws and regulations are being created on the fly  some of the countries that could benefit from this technology have governments that are arguably undemocratic.

Yet fear is a bad advisor, says Rwandas minister of youth and ICT, Jean Philbert Nsengimana. He recently signed a new agreement with the San Francisco-based company Zipline, whose aerial vehicles  aka vampire drones  will be able to deliver blood to more than 22 transfusion facilities throughout the country. The life-saving potential of this technology has been tested by Doctors Without Borders, which used drones to fight tuberculosis in Papua New Guinea. And if the Rwandan experiment works, it wont be long before other countries in the region decide to follow suit. For Rutayisire, the prospect of aerially connecting hospitals, tech hubs and markets across the continent is simply too exciting not to try. With so much potential, he says, its hard to not be optimistic.
Nii Lante Otanka II, Acting Lante Djan We Mantse, who made this known added that the body of the late chairman will be brought to Ghana, from the United Kingdom, on Tuesday, April 12.

The first part of the funeral will be a pre-burial service on April 21, 2016 at the Accra Ridge Church, from 6pm to 10pm. This will be a Celebration of his Life, and in accordance with his wishes, the attire will be Joyful Colours he said.He added, The second part will be a Burial, Funeral and Thanksgiving Service on April 22, 2016, at the forecourt of the State House, and again, in accordance with his wishes, the attire will be white.

Nii Lante Otanka II, Acting Lante Djan We Mantse revealed details of the burial when he, together with members of the family of the late Chairman, including his brothers, Afadi and Nii Lantey, paid a visit to the 2016 flagbearer of the NPP, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, at his Nima residence on Monday, April 4, 2016, to inform him of the final funeral arrangements.

The party assured the family of the late chairman of maximum support for the burial.
DSP Mahmud Yussif, the District Police Commander for Techiman, told the media that on March 25, detective corporal Lopaw Yaw, 34, was killed by Barri and his accomplice Mohammed Musah, 32, during a hot chase after an armed robbery.

He said detective Lopaw surrendered and was shot at the ribs and he died instantly when the robbers met him because they felt he was going to give out information on them.

He added that Musah was arrested by the Sawla-Kalba District Police Command on March 26 and he named Barry as the killer of Detective Lopaw.

READ MORE: Two shot dead by Police

According to him, Musah is currently on remand at the Tamale Central Prison.
The data released focuses on a company, Mossack Fonseca, based in Panama, hence the name Panama Papers. Often, the source of funds remains unexplained.

One of the two Ghanaians explicitly mentioned in the report is Kojo Annan. The other is John Addo Kufuor, son of Ghana's former president, John Agyekum Kufuor.

Kojo Annan is the only son of former United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, who served from 1997 to 2006.

The Swiss company Cotecna hired Kojo Annan in 1995 for work in Nigeria. By early 1998, he had quit to become a consultant to Cotecna. Months later, the United Nations awarded the firm a contract as part of Oil-for-Food humanitarian program in Iraq, prompting allegations of impropriety.

An independent panel investigated the program, including Kojo Annan, and issued a report in 2005 that found no evidence that he tried to influence or to use family connections to benefit from the program. Kojo Annan and Cotecna have consistently denied allegations of wrongdoing.

According to the report, the offshore company was used to buy $500,000 London apartment for Kojo Annan.

Kojo Annan was sole director of the Samoan company Sapphire Holding Ltd, originally incorporated in Niue in 2003, which he had used to buy an apartment in central London. The apartment was purchased in a transaction completed in 2003 for more than $500,000, according to U.K. records. Sapphire Holding used unnamed shareholders until 2015 when Kojo Annan became a listed shareholder with a Ghana address.

However a lawyer of Kojo Annan has addressed the report, claiming no wrong-doings.

According to the lawyer who spoke to the ICIJ, Mr Annan's companies "operate in accordance with the laws and regulations of the relevant jurisdictions and, insofar tax liabilities arise, they pay taxes in the jurisdictions in which taxes are due to be paid. In other words, any entity and account held by Mr. Annan has been opened solely for normal, legal purposes of managing family and business matters and has been fully disclosed in accordance with applicable laws."
It reveals the underhand dealings of 12 current and former world leaders and 128 more politicians and public officials around the world.

Mossacks files (about 2.6 terabytes of data) include the offshore holdings of drug dealers, Mafia members, corrupt politicians and tax evaders.

What has been leaked?

The leaked report include financial records, correspondent dating 40 years back, passports, and 214,000 offshore entities across more than 200 countries.

Who is implicated?

The report implicates 140 offshore companies with ties to current and former world leaders including Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, former Prime Minister of Iraq Ayad Allawi and Saudi Arabian monarch King Salman named in the list.

Family members and associates of Pakistans Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, President of South Africa Jacob Zuma, Syrian President Bashar Assad and Chinese President Xi Jinping have also been implicated.

John Addo Kufuor, eldest son of Ghanas former president,John Agyekum Kufuor, has been mentioned in the leaked documents.

In early 2001, shortly after the start of his fathers first presidential term, Kufuor appointed Mossack Fonseca to manage The Excel 2000 Trust. Later that year, it controlled a bank account in Panama worth $75,000. His mother - Theresa Kufuor, then-Ghanas first lady - was also a beneficiary.

Son of former UN general secretary, Kofi Annan was also mentioned in the report.

According to the report, Swiss company Cotecna hired Kojo Annan in 1995 for work in Nigeria. By early 1998, he had quit to become a consultant to Cotecna. Months later, the United Nations awarded the firm a contract as part of Oil-for-Food humanitarian program in Iraq, prompting allegations of impropriety.

Transfer of wealth

Mossack acted as agents to register over 200,000 companies in tax havens, with the most popular destination being the British Virgin Islands.

British Virgin Islands held 100,000 companies, the report revealed.

READ MORE: Investigations reveal corrupt deals by world leaders

Hidden owners

It was difficult establishing real owners of the companies but the report notes that the real owners had hidden behind nominees who lend their signatures.

The law firm

Mossack Fonseca is a Panama-based law firm but also with presence in several countries with tax haven such as British Virgin Islands, Switzerland and Seychelles.
The app allows users to access the groups Pashto website, it included official statements and videos from the group.

Google told the Guardian: While we dont comment on specific apps, we can confirm that we remove apps from Google Play that violate our policies.

The Taliban has a growing digital campaign, in an attempt to grow its audience, much like ISIS has, international media reported.

The Taliban website is in five languages, and the group is on social media, but social networks take down the accounts when these are discovered.

The extremist group's spokesman told Bloomberg the app had been removed because of "technical issues" and would reappear.
Joseph Benjamin was born November 9, 1976 and got his big break as the co-host of MTN Project Fame West Africa Season II.

With a confident aura, drop dead gorgeous physique and melting chocolate like skin, Benjamin has been slaying hearts nationwide.

A model, Voice-over artist and television presenter, Benjamin attended primary school in Benue State and completed his secondary education in Lagos State. He attended University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where he earned a diploma in Computer Literacy.

The TV hunk got married in 2004, although he and his wife are now seperated. Their union was blessed with two kids.

Benjamin has starred in several television series, including 'Edge of Paradise', 'Tango With Me' and has appeared in TV and radio commercials.

He has co-hosted, with Adaora Oleh, MTN Project Fame West Africa since 2009.

Benjamin was also nominated for Golden Actor in the Golden Movie Awards which held on May 21, 2015.
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This is contained in a statement issued on Sunday in Abuja by Mr Laolu Akande, Senior Special Assistant, Media and Publicity to the Vice President.

The statement said Osinbajo made the remark at the weekend in Niamey, Niger, at the inauguration of President Issoufou Mahamadou for a second term in office.

According to Osinbajo the re-election of the Nigerien leader is significant for the sub-regional coalition against insurgents and terrorists.

Mahamadous investiture has great significance because Nigeria understands him well.

"He is an old hand and Nigeria has worked well with him as a partner.

"So, his re-election brings continuity and is good for the fight against Boko Haram and the insurgency in general.

Osinbajo, who represented President Muhammadu Buhari at the ceremony, said that Nigeria hold the Nigerien President in high esteem.

"He is an old friend of President Buhari who is abroad attending the nuclear security summit in Washington DC, which is why he could not attend this event, he said.

The VP added that the inauguration of the Nigerien President was also an opportunity to honour a strong ally and to reinforce all our important diplomatic and military ties.

In his inauguration address, President Mahamadou noted that concern over insecurity is global, transcending boundaries.

He restated Nigers renewed commitment to join forces with Nigeria and other neighbours to fight insurgency at the sub-regional level.

The Nigerien President explained that defeating Boko Haram had several benefits particularly for economic integration in the region, adding that it would facilitate trade between Niger and Nigeria.
The army also said that one of the freed captives was delivered of a son after being rescued.

This was disclosed via a statement released by army spokesman, Colonel Sani Usman on Monday, April 4, 2016.

It reads:

Troops of 152 task force battalion in conjunction with troops of sector one of Multinational Joint Task Force yesterday, Sunday April 4, 2016 carried out clearance operation in suspected hideouts of Boko Haram terrorists around Madawaya general area, cleared and improvised-explosive -device (IED)-making factory, killed 15 terrorists and captured some weapons.

The troops cleared terrorists in Madawaya, Jere, Kardile, Koujili, Ngenere and Maksamari, as well as Douse, Bembem, Zombulum and Taraji villages. In addition, they recovered several vehicles and motorcycles.

They also discovered and destroyed the Boko Haram terrorists IED making factory at Bula Umara and killed 15 terrorists in the same area. In addition, the troops recovered an AK-47 rifle, four fully loaded magazines with 7.62mm ammunitions, two power generating sets, welding machines, assorted batteries and solar panels.

Other items recovered include drums of beans and other grains as well as Bandolier. The gallant soldiers also rescued 275 persons held hostage by the Boko Haram terrorists.

One interesting thing is that, one of the rescued persons gave birth to baby boy shortly after her liberation. Both mother and the child are doing fine. The troops have continued with their clearance operations to other suspected hideouts of the Boko Haram terrorists in their areas of operations.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian military has confirmed the arrest of the second-in-command to Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau.

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This was disclosed by Director of Defence information, Brigadier Rabe Abubakar to PR Nigeria, an agency which releases statements on behalf of the Nigerian government.

With ongoing aggressive military operations in the North-East, some Boko Haram terrorists have surrendered to the Nigerian troops just as some top commanders were arrested while fleeing from the theatre of war, Abubakar said.

The improved synergy and inter-agency collaborations have enhanced the various operations towards the massive arrest of members of the terrorists groups.

We are conducting series of investigation including background checks on some of those arrested and those that surrendered to the security agencies for proper identifications. So far most of the operations are going on smoothly.

Our concern is for Nigerians to support the military and other security agencies with useful information especially now that most of the Boko Haram camps have been destroyed; while the stubborn members may be fleeing to new locations.

We urge Nigerians to report any strange movement and people, including suspicious objects in their localities to ensure that suspects do not have new haven to hide where they may later disrupt such communities, he added.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian military has confirmed the arrest of the second-in-command to Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau.

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Adesina made the disclosure during a recent interview with Osasu Igbinedion on The Osasu Show.

Dont forget that it was in the public domain even before he became president that when one of his children needed to go abroad he had to sell his property; maybe it was his house in Lagos or somewhere, Adesina said.

Anybody that wants to train a child abroad must be sure that he or she can afford it. If you can afford it no problem.

At a time like this when there is paucity of foreign exchange, what the president is simply saying is that central bank may not be able to provide forex but you can always buy your forex at the parallel market if that is what you want, he added.

Buhari had earlier said that no foreign exchange would be provided for Nigerians who have children schooling abroad.

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It also seeks to stop the indiscriminate use of loud speakersfor religious purposes other than inside a mosque or church and the surrounding areas.

Critics have argued that the law is the first step towards the Islamization of Nigeria.

The bill has also led Apostle Johnson Suleman, the Senior Pastor of Omega Fire Ministries, to place a curse on El Rufai.

I want to place a curse on those that fight the gospel. I hear that in Kaduna now theyve released a circular that church should not use instruments at certain times, Suleman said during a conference held by his ministry in March 2016.

I told you before that we have a government that will fight the church check my prophecies for the yearI want to warn the governor of Kaduna StateI have no problem we can test powers now. There are certain laws that cannot happen in this countryIm saying this to the governor of Kaduna, revoke this law or die, he added.

In response, El-Rufai explained that the law was necessary because of people who use religion as an excuse to commit atrocities.

He also dared Apostle Suleman to tell him the exact date of his death since the fact that he would die one day was already common knowledge.

Kaduna State, more than any state in Nigeria, if you take out the Yobe, Borno and Adamawa axis, which suffered from Boko Haram insurgency, has suffered the most from death and destruction of property due to misuse and abuse of religion, El-Rufai said during a recent interview with journalists, according to Punch.

Thus, when you have such things happening in your country, I think as leaders, we have to sit down and examine ourselves and the society and see what we can do to prevent it. In my opinion, it is the lack of regulation of religion that led to all these circles of death and destruction. Just recently, we had the Shiite problem in Zaria, following a similar pattern.

The logic behind this law is to strengthen the 1984 laws so as to regulate and ensure that those that are given the opportunity to preach at least know what they are doing, they have a level of responsibility to develop the society rather than divide it. This is our goal; we dont have anything against any religion or anybody.

Are you telling me it is okay for someone to put up speakers in the night and start making a noise, be it Islam or Christianity, disturbing people? Is that okay? Which chapter in the two holy books says that Jesus or Muhammad (SAW) did that? Are we not trying to copy them? Are they not the perfections of both our religions? Jesus said, Give to God what is Gods and to Caesar what is Caesars. Government is the Caesar.

Most of the people that say I would die, as if I would not die, are people who call themselves Christian clergy. Of course, I will die. If that apostle is truly an apostle, he should mention the day I will die. There is nothing in that law that prevents or infringes the practice of religion. It seeks to ensure that those that preach religion are qualified, trained and certified by their peers to do it, El-Rufai added.

Frankly speaking, the governor of Kaduna State deserves commendation and not criticism for his bravery in taking a step that most Nigerian leaders should, but are afraid to.

Nigerians repeatedly use religion as a reason to inconvenience their fellow citizens and most people suffer in silence because they dont want to look like the devils children.

Many houses of worship turn their speakers on to the loudest at odd hours of the day, preventing residents of the area from getting a good nights rest. There are also the bus preachers and those who walk down streets early in the morning condemning all sinners to hell.

Too much harassment has been meted out to innocent citizens in the name of religion, some preachers even have the guts to walk up to women and tell them theyre going to hell because theyre wearing trousers or earrings.

The Nigerian constitution allows for freedom of religion, but every freedom given to citizens must be regulated so it isnt enjoyed at anothers expense.

Hence, Kadunas preaching regulation law is a step in the right direction and every Nigerian state should have one just like it to ensure that the abuse of religion is brought to a final stop nationwide.

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The Executive Director of the organization, Dr Keziah Awosika, stated this on Monday, April 4, 2016, in Lagos.

"The Gender and Equality Opportunity Bill that was sent out of Senate is really unfortunate, because it shows that the Nigeria of the twenty-first century is backward," Awosika told NAN.

"Other countries have gone miles ahead.

"In fact, when we heard this, we as Nigerians, felt really ashamed. Later on when we sat down to look at it and see what we could do and all that, we realised that something was wrong with our constitution.

"And we Gender and Constitutional Review Committee have been mentioning this for years, but suddenly they brought in this Sharia thing. So, everything came into conflict.

"But there is nothing in the Gender and Equal Opportunity Bill that is really conflicting seriously that cannot be amended and this is why I am glad the Senate said we should bring it back, but they must not water it down to the level that it becomes useless.

She stated that Nigeria must be actively engaged in opening doors of opportunities for the women folk to be able to advance as other countries have.

"The whole world is moving towards equality; we are moving backwards and I think we must do a lot to address this at every level, not only in terms of national appointments, (but also) in terms of elections.

"The men are not encouraging us; if they do not encourage us, the nation will not be better off for it.

"Most growth-oriented countries in the world are the places where women play a major role in governance, she said.
But clarifying the issue, the Deputy Governor of Kaduna State Arc Barnabas Bala Bantex in a written speech he presented at Ham Day on Saturday, March 26, 2016 said the traditional institutions are over-staffed.

He said even though the payment of traditional rulers is a responsibility of local government councils which had in the past allowed the payroll to balloon to unsustainable levels, he added that the state government is going to correct the issue.

I wish to address the issue of payments to the traditional institution. This is a responsibility of local government councils which had in the past allowed the payroll to balloon to unsustainable levels, Bantex said.
For today, April 4 2016:

THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER

Government rules out fuel price increase, return of subsidyFuel subsidy has not been re-introduced by the Federal Government, according to the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA). READ MORE

Army sacks general over Ekiti guber electionCiting the report of a panel of inquiry which established unprofessional conduct during the governorship election in Ekiti State last year, authorities of the Nigerian Army have confirmed the compulsory retirement of Brigadier General Aliyu Momoh. READ MORE

Budget details, Sarakis trial may pit Buhari against lawmakersThere are indications that the details of the 2016 budget and the trial of Senate President Bukola Saraki for an alleged false declaration of assets may pit the federal legislature and the executive against each other. READ MORE________________________________________

VANGUARD NEWSPAPER

Fuel crisis: IOCs agree to sell forex to oil marketers  NNPCABUJA  The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, yesterday, disclosed that a number of international oil companies, IOCs, in the upstream oil and gas sector have agreed to provide. READ MORE

I criticise Buhari as most senior governor in Nigeria  FayoseLagosDescribing himself as the most senior governor in Nigeria, Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State yesterday said his attacks on President Muhammadu Buhari flowed from his sense of responsibility and not related to any 2019 presidential aspiration as alleged by critics. READ MORE

EFCC probes $40m pipeline security contractABUJA The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, may have started investigating confidants and companies close to some prominent politicians in the last dispensation in its corruption fight. READ MORE________________________________________

THE NATION NEWSPAPER

Osun doctors call off seven-month strikeStriking medical doctors in Osun State under the aegis of Association of Medical and Dental Officers yesterday suspended their seven-month-old industrial action. READ MORE

More states support The Nations Economic ForumMore states are supporting The Nations Economic Forum billed for Thursday and Friday at the Lagos Airport Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos. Benue, Nasarawa and Plateau states joined the train at the weekend. READ MORE

Ekiti, Osun polls: Military retires Gen. Momoh, othersAliyu Momoh, the Brigadier-General indicted alongside others for unprofessional conduct during the Ekiti and Osun governorship elections in 2014 and the 2015 general elections, has been retired. READ MORE________________________________________

BUSINESS DAY NEWSPAPER

Mining, agric campaigns hold ace to Buharis envisaged industrial revolutionThe mining and agriculture blueprints of President Muhammadu Buhari hold keys to Nigeria achieving its industrial revolution, as the vitality of the two sectors will have positive multiplier effects on the manufacturing sector. Buhari has set plans in motion to stimulate the mining sector to ensure the country becomes diversified amid oil price drop. Analysts READ MORE

Equity investors lose N1.2trn to risk as Mutual funds gain tractionInvestors demonstration of preference for mutual fund asset classes over equities, due to risk induced by negative sentiments may have spurred about N10billion in its value addition, BusinessDay analysis of the market shows. The development on the other hand, resulted in a rough ride for the equity buyers with a loss of about N1.2 trillion READ MORE
This is contained in a statement issued on Sunday in Abuja by Mr Laolu Akande, Senior Special Assistant, Media and Publicity to the Vice President.

The statement said Osinbajo made the remark at the weekend in Niamey, Niger, at the inauguration of President Issoufou Mahamadou for a second term in office.

According to Osinbajo the re-election of the Nigerien leader is significant for the sub-regional coalition against insurgents and terrorists.

He said: ``As you know, Niger is an important partner, and also an important ally in the war against terrorism and we are good neighbours, he said.

Mahamadous investiture has great significance because Nigeria understands him well.

``He is an old hand and Nigeria has worked well with him as a partner.

``So, his re-election brings continuity and is good for the fight against Boko Haram and the insurgency in general.

Osinbajo, who represented President Muhammadu Buhari at the ceremony, said that Nigeria hold the Nigerien President in high esteem.

``He is an old friend of President Buhari who is abroad attending the nuclear security summit in Washington DC, which is why he could not attend this event, he said.

The VP added that the inauguration of the Nigerien President was also an opportunity to honour a strong ally and to reinforce all our important diplomatic and military ties.

In his inauguration address, President Mahamadou noted that concern over insecurity is global, transcending boundaries.

He restated Nigers renewed commitment to join forces with Nigeria and other neighbours to fight insurgency at the sub-regional level.

The Nigerien President explained that defeating Boko Haram had several benefits particularly for economic integration in the region, adding that it would facilitate trade between Niger and Nigeria.
According to a letter with reference number NJC/F.3/FHC.49/1/421 and dated March 16, 2016, Justice Yunusa was given 14 days to submit his response to allegations of judicial abuse, compromise and misconduct leveled against him by the Civil Society Network Against Corruption (CSNAC).

The letter was signed by the Chief Justice of Nigeria and Chairman of the National Judicial Council, Justice Mahmud Mohammed.

I forward herewith a petition dated 21st December, 2015 against you by Mr. Olanrewaju Suraju, Chairman, Civil Society Network Against Corruption, on the above subject matter.

The petition speaks for itself. I shall be glad to have your comments within 14 days from the date of your receipt of this letter, please, Justice Mohammed's letter read in part.

In a petition dated December 15, 2015, CSNAC had accused the judge of consistent refusal to abide by judicial precedents, laid down by superior courts, in granting orders and injunctions against the EFCC.

It said the actions of Justice Yinusa were serving as leeway for unscrupulous and corrupt individuals, who will stop at nothing to truncate their arrest, investigation and prosecution by the appropriate law enforcement agencies, to render our criminal law ineffective, as well as allowing corruption fester in the society.

The grant of the orders of mandatory and perpetual injunctions by Justice Yunusa against the EFCC is a grave departure from the established principles in the mentioned cases, as laid down by the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal which are binding on the Federal High Court, being a lower court.

Honourable Justice Yunusa, by the grant of these orders, has stripped the Economic and Financial Crimes Commissions of its constitutional powers as a law enforcement agency, as well its powers under the enabling law, the Economic and Financial Crimes (Establishment) Act, LFN 2004, a Federal Legislation.

It is also a gross abuse of his powers as a judicial officer, the petition also stated.
The arrested terrorist has been identified as Khalid Albarnawi, a top leader of the Ansaru sect which recently reunited with Boko Haram, according to The Cable.

The confirmation was given by Director of Defence Information, Brigadier General Rabe Abubakar.

We have confirmed as the one being arrested. We are sorting it out and looking for full details. The moment we finished our investigation we will inform the members of the public, Abubakar told ThisDay.

The most important thing is the breakthrough the security agencies have achieved. Not only Albarnawi, other commanders in the Boko Haram hierarchy were arrested recently, the spokesman also told The Cable.

The effort is geared towards eliminating the sect completely. We will keep on doing that. We have a lot of them that have surrendered. We will give you details of what transpired, he added.

Albarnawi was reportedly trained in Algeria and is said to be as important as Shekau.

His arrest had earlier been announced by Ahmad Salkida, a journalist, with ties to Boko Haram.

According to Salkida, Albarnawi was arrested by operatives of the Department of State Services (DSS) in Lokoja, Kogi State and moved to Abuja.

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The intelligence report further indicated that due to the said strategic alliance with Boko Haram, attacks will be carried out on military formations and other government buildings. Ordinarily we wouldnt have even reacted to this latest intelligence report had it not been due to the frequency with which the report is being peddled across the intelligence community, since we have in the past reiterated our stance vis-a-vis terrorism and terrorist groups, the group said.

While distancing itself from any attempt to associate it with violence and other militant activities, Shiites said their leader, Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky, has said it many times without number that: Our weapon is positive reasoning, truth and good conduct. Guns are for the reckless and foolhardy ones.

We have been conducting our affairs peacefully, calling people to the truth for the last 36 years. So you cannot come overnight and attribute violence to us that we now resort to killing people. This is impossible. We save lives not kill them.

This is the teaching of Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky for the past almost four decades, and we will not derail from that in the face of many provocations as wished by the Nigerian government and its security agents, the group said.

We hereby state categorically that there are no connections or any links whatsoever between the Islamic Movement in Nigeria and Boko Haram. IMN in the first place is not the creation of any foreign security agencies, which is common with all the various terrorist groups globally.

It was borne out of the desire of Muslims to live according to the teachings of Islam. IMN has been around at least in Nigeria for almost four decades now, with its various educational programs now commonly known in many Nigerian villages, towns and cities and with all its activities peacefully and transparently conducted, the statement said.

The group said there was no basis for any comparison with the Boko Haram that is a terrorist organization and a creation of global imperialism with the intention of tarnishing the image of Islam.

Moreover it is the same so called Boko Haram that bombed our brothers and sisters during an Ashura procession in Potiskum, Yobe state in 2014 and also sent suicide bombers to the Arbaeen trek along Kano Zaria highway killing many innocent people including women and children. It beats any sane imagination that IMN will now turn to the same group in what the intelligence agents term strategic alliance, the statement added.
While appreciating the positive developments in our democratic experience, especially the attempts by past and current governments to eliminate systemic leakages, I shall seek to prove that, by a fair preponderance of the credible evidence, the state of the nation calls for a revolution, Bakare said according to Punch.

This is a revolution that transcends politics or policies; a revolution that means far more than any change of government; a revolution that means a radical reformation of values as they impact upon the social, economic and political landscapes of our nation.

In a three-dimensional strategic arrangement, this national rebirth process can go on seamlessly alongside socio-economic development, championed by the economic team of this administration, headed by the Vice-President (Prof. Yemi Osinbajo) as well as a national security and anti-corruption strategy, spearheaded by the President Muhammadu Buhari, he added.

Bakare also said that Nigeria could not afford to wait for global oil prices to rise before reviving its economy.

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Responding, the "Jenifa" actor asked "What is illiteracy? Can you give me the terminology for illiteracy? We dont speak English Is English our language?

Whoever says that, tell that person hes a very stupid person, the actor passionately added. "Ask that person ' is English your mother tongue?' If the person says 'no,' then tell him 'you're stupid.'

I cannot be forced to speak another man's culture, it's stupidity on my own personality. Until we realize that we need to uplift our culture and language, we will be nobody.

ALSO READ:

According to the actor, he is yet to decide what Nollywood stands for in Nigeria. He further stated that he doesn't see himself as a Nollywood actor, but as a Nigerian actor.

"Personally, I don't know. I'm sorry but I'm still trying to get the meaning of Nollywood. I don't know where Nollywood is in Nigeria. If you want to go to Hollywood in USA, at any point of entry, ask anybody 'sorry, I want to visit Hollywood,' you will be directed to Los Angeles in California. So, where's Nollywood in Nigeria? What's Nollywood?

"Hollywood in America has got history, so what is Nollywood in Nigeria? I see myself as a Nigerian actor, and that's just it," he added.

ALSO READ: undefined

On Sunday, March 20, 2016, Nollywood actress, Mercy Aigbe Gentry, reacted to a This Day Style cover,

Her response led to people addressing the existing gap between Yoruba actors and English speaking movie industry.

Fash Lanso is popular for movies like "Dazzling Mirage," "Kadara Mi," "Opolu" among others.
The statement alleged that the security forces besieged the mosques from the early hours of the morning chanting no more Shiah in Katsina!

Even though the brothers of IMN took the decision to cancel the preaching session in order to avoid spilling of blood of innocent unarmed Muslims by the military and other security agents, the security agents dispersed worshippers from the mosque immediately after the Jumaat prayers, Musa said.

The group which said worship places are supposed to be held in high regard added that the team of Nigerian Army and other security agents chose to violate the sanctity of the mosque and right to religious freedom by their actions.

Thereafter, there was a heavy security patrol across the main streets of the town ostensibly to provoke and instill unnecessary fear in the residents. Such a horrendous situation continued throughout the night.

Also in Yauri town in Kebbi state, there were similar measures taken by the security agencies there. And just like in Katsina, brothers of the Islamic Movement in the town suspended their preaching session in order to foil the determined efforts by the authorities to kill innocent Muslims.
He said the school is expected to commenced academic session at the end of 2016.

"The schools will promote cultural ties between the two governments and will train new set of students that will be proficient in both English and French," Tambuwal said.

He said Sokoto have long cultural and historical ties with its neighbours across the border adding that government will introduce wide ranging policies that will enhance the ties.
According a report by AP, which has a bureau in North Korean capital Pyongyang, the government named YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Voice of America, a number of South Korean websites, porn and gambling websites on a list of Internet sites that will be blocked for a certain period of time.

The report further reveals that the announcement reportedly also stated that anyone trying to access the sites in an improper way or distribute anti-republic data would be punished, although it did not specify how.

Normally, Internet access is generally reserved for government officials or other high-level positions - even though the country has a reported 2 million mobile phone users - and this is a step further to shutting down the country and restrict access to information.
Although the police in Jacobabad say the murder is a highly suspected case of 'honor killing', the information that the bride was killed by the groom who is now on the run hasn't been verified.

17-yr-old KhanzadiLashari married her cousin Qalandar Bux Khokhar, the night before her lifeless body was found by family members.

The Pakistan Express Tribune reports that Khanzadi's mother had called the police after she realised there was no response coming from the newlyweds' apartment the morning after the wedding.

The policemen and the bride's brother, Ali Sher Lashari, forcefully gained entery into the house only to discover Khanzadi's lifeless body on the bed, her new husband was nowhere to be found.

Ali Sher lodged an FIR against Qalandar Bux and his four brothers, accusing them of killing his sister by strangulating to death.

The victims mother told reporters that Qalandar Bux and Khanzadi were cousins and the marriage took place with their consent.

Sources in the area claimed the groom killed his bride because not a virgin, while others claim the couple had a heated argument regarding a delay in the wedding ceremony due to certain customs.

The police say arrests are yet to be made.
During his three decades in power Hun Sen has surrounded himself with loyalists and changed ministers rarely. He said the shakeup was among a series of "necessities" to improve the government's performance.

Cambodia now had a more qualified, experienced and healthier cabinet, he said.

The lineup was supported by 70 of the 107 parliamentarians present on Monday. Most of the changes were reassignments to other portfolios and only two ministers were moved out of the cabinet.

Many of the proposed changes had already been reported and the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) has dismissed them as cosmetic and unlikely to bring about reforms.

Commerce Secretary of State Pan Sorasak was promoted to minister and Veng Sokhon became minister of agriculture, replacing Ouk Rabun, who is now minister of rural development.

Sun Chanthol, the former commerce minister, became transport minister, replacing Tram Iv Tek, who was given the telecoms portfolio. Hun Sen's close ally Hor Namhong, his foreign minister for 18 years, was replaced by Prak Sokhon, the former telecommunications minister.

Hor Namhong remains in the cabinet as a deputy prime minister.
Touadera, a former prime minister and mathematics teacher, was elected president in February, ending a transitional government that has led the landlocked nation since early 2014.

"The president of the republic, head of state, in light of the constitution of the Central African Republic of March 30, 2016 ... decrees Mr. Simplice Sarandji to be named prime minister, head of the government," the decree read.

Touadera has pledged to bring peace and development to the former French colony, which was seized by religious and inter-commununal conflict from 2013, when mostly Muslim Seleka rebels overthrew longtime ruler Francois Bozize.
The documents, which emerged in an investigation published on Sunday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), are a blow to Cameron, a critic of tax evasion and tax avoidance.

In 2012, British media reported that Cameron's father ran a network of offshore investment funds to help build the family fortune. There is no suggestion he did anything illegal.

Asked on Monday whether she could confirm that no family money was still invested in those funds, Cameron's spokeswoman said: "That is a private matter."

Britain's HM Revenue and Customs said it had asked for a copy of the leaked data so it could examine the information.

"We have already received a great deal of information on offshore companies, including in Panama, from a wide range of sources, which is currently the subject of intensive investigation," Jennie Granger, director general of enforcement and compliance at HM Revenue and Customs, said in a statement.

"We have asked the ICIJ to share the leaked data that they have obtained with us. We will closely examine this data and will act on it swiftly and appropriately."

Opposition Labour finance spokesman John McDonnell said the Panama Papers showed Cameron had failed to end tax secrecy and crack down on offshore schemes and called for "real action".

But the government said Britain had brought in more than 2 billion pounds ($2.84 billion) from offshore tax evaders since Cameron took office in 2010 and that Britain was "leading the pack internationally" on tackling tax evasion and avoidance.

Since Britain made the issue a central plank of its G8 presidency in 2013, 90 countries have signed up to the automatic exchange of tax information, Cameron's spokeswoman said.

She said Britain was pushing its overseas territories and crown dependencies, many of which are tax havens, to create public registers of who owns companies in their jurisdictions. Britain's own such register will go live in June.
Over the next two weeks, the allies will test their command-and-control, communications, logistics and mobility procedures to address humanitarian and maritime security, Philippine defence officials said.

Their troops will also simulate retaking an oil-and-gas platform and practice an amphibious landing on a Philippine beach.

"China is not part of the idea."

Ash Carter, will be the first U.S. defense secretary to observe the exercises when he arrives next week, underscoring the significance of the war games for both countries.

China's more assertive pursuit of its claims in the South China Sea over the past year or so has included land reclamation and the construction of air and port facilities on some isles and reefs.

The United States has conducted what it calls "freedom of navigation" patrols in the area, sailing near disputed islands controlled by China to underscore its right to navigate the seas.

The patrols have drawn sharp rebukes from China but despite that, U.S. officials have made clear the United States would continue to challenge what it considers China's unfounded maritime claims.

China claims almost the entire South China Sea, believed to have huge deposits of oil and gas. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims to parts of the waters, through which about $5 trillion in trade is shipped every year.

The Philippines has sought international arbitration on the dispute and a decision is expected late this month or in early May. China has declined to take part in the case.

Lieutenant-General John Toolan, commander of U.S. Marine forces in the Pacific, told the news conference it was prudent to plan for any situation that could occur and to practice how the two allies would likely respond.

Asked if that included a security crisis in the South China Sea, Toolan said: "It does, absolutely."

Toolan said U.S. forces would for the first time in the Philippine exercises fire a long-range truck-mounted multiple-rocket launcher known as the high mobility artillery rocket system (HIMARS).
Finding Peace of Mind: Discover These Five Places in Europe to Unwind
The day before his father died, Gary W. Moore learned something about him that he had not known before.

They were in a restaurant eating dinner after a hospital visit for the dad's chest pains. Although the medical staff had given the elder Moore a clean bill of health, his son thought the time had come to press him about a subject he had long denied.

What really happened in those years right before, during and after World War II?

His father finally acknowledged that he had been a baseball prodigy, playing in the minor leagues for the Pittsburgh Pirates and Brooklyn Dodgers and had a promising Major League career ahead of him when World War II broke out. He joined the Navy and eventually organized a Navy team where he was stationed in Louisiana. Near the end of the war, in his last game, he slid into home base, injuring his ankle so badly that, ultimately, his professional baseball career was lost.

Because his broken dream was so painful, he chose not to talk about it.

But for 20 years after his father's death  a heart attack took his life the day after the hospital visit  son Gary would do research to piece together the puzzle of his father's life.

The result was a 2006 book titled "Playing with the Enemy" that has been selected for "Scott County Reads Together," a project organized by the librarians of Scott County.

It's a project in which residents are invited to read the same book, then get together to discuss it and hear the author speak. The purpose is to help build community and to promote thinking and the appreciation of literature and where it can lead you, Hedy Hustedde, a Bettendorf librarian, said.

Moore, of Bourbonnais, Ill., will be in the Quad-Cities on April 12-15 for nine different public appearances. They will include everything from a discussion of "Playing with the Enemy" to how to write your own book.

Moore also has a talk titled "You are the author of your life. Make it positive and exciting!"

That is because Moore, in addition to having a degree in music education and being an author, is also an expert in direct sales and marketing and a motivational speaker.

Part of that positivity comes from his dad who overcame the death of his dream (and the depression and drinking that followed) to become a successful businessman.

"He did not let it ruin his life," Moore said in a telephone interview of his dad's baseball-ending injury. "He was successful."

That said, everyone should definitely "go for their dreams," Moore said. To have a talent or gift and not use it is a tragedy. "We are the masters of our destiny. Abraham Lincoln said, 'People are about as happy as they decide to be.'"

Moore also will encourage researching history and preserving family stories.

"When a person dies, it's as though a library has burned to the ground," he said. That is why he encourages people to interview and record the stories of their elders before they are gone.

Finally, he will speak on "How Reading Positively Impacts Your Life."

"Reading raises your IQ  it enhances your imagination," he said. "When you go to the movie, all the work is done for you. When you read a book, you are producing a movie in your mind. Some of the happiest, most successful people I know are readers. The unhappiest people are those who haven't picked up a book in years."
A roundup of legislative and Capitol news items of interest for Monday:

GOVERNMENT COMPLAINTS UP: Complaints to Iowa citizens watchdog over government increased 7 percent in the past year. Acting Iowa Ombudsman Kristie Hirschman said complaints and questions were up in 2015, and those numbers may be higher this year. The Ombudsman opened more than 4,400 cases last year  more than two thirds of which were jurisdictional complaints, according to the offices annual report. Issues pertaining to state and local governments ranged from unreasonable water bills and unemployment denials to delays in prescription approvals and decisions of state licensing boards. Cases involving state government agencies made up 46 percent of the cases; local government represented 39 percent of the cases opened in 2015. Hirschman said she anticipates complaint numbers to increase again in 2016 due to two recent developments. The states transition to managed care for Medicaid recipients is expected to spur questions and concerns among recipients and providers. Hirschman said she has requested additional employees to handle the anticipated increase in these contacts. Prison inmates also have begun to call the office more frequently after a decision by the Federal Communications Commission prompted the Iowa Department of Corrections to dramatically lower phone rates, she said. The Ombudsmans report can be found online at www.legis.iowa.gov/Ombudsman.

STATE BUDGET TALKS CONTINUE: Closed-door talks continued Monday aimed at resolving differences among House Republicans, Senate Democrats and Gov. Terry Branstad over the fiscal 2017 state budget. Among the issues standing in the way of agreement are funding for water-quality efforts, infrastructure and potential cuts to erase a $23 million shortfall created by a downward revision in expected state tax collections. At the moment, we are agreeing to disagree, Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, said. Branstad told reporters on Monday the state budget is a tough situation for everybody even though several of the biggest issues  school funding, tax coupling  have been resolved. Branstad said the key is setting a budget that is sustainable without overpromising with spending commitments the state cant deliver with some certainty in the coming year. Sen. Bob Dvorsky, D-Coralville, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, the fiscal 2017 spending plan is a really tight budget, and I think its fairly difficult to try to come up with the answer on this one.

ENVIRONMENTAL AWARD: Nominations for the Iowa Farm Environmental Leader Award, which recognizes farmers who have taken voluntary actions to improve or protect the environment and natural resources, are due by June 15. The nomination form and other information can be found at www.iowaagriculture.gov/EnvironmentalLeader.asp. The award is a joint effort between the governor, lieutenant governor, and the departments of Agriculture and Land Stewardship and Natural Resources. Farmers who are nominated should have made environmental stewardship a priority on their farm and incorporated best management practices into their farming operation. Farm owners and operators are eligible for consideration. An appointed committee of representatives from both conservation and agricultural groups will review the nominations and select the winners who will be announced at the Iowa State Fair.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Im hopeful we can. Do I think we will? Im not yet to where I think we will, but I think we could and Im hopeful that we do. Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, discussing the prospects for resolving fiscal 2017 budget differences with House Republicans and Gov. Terry Branstad this week.

 Times Bureau
With a journalists eye for detail, John Vaillants fictional Hector gives a voice to the many people illegally immigrating from the Oaxaca region of Mexico to the United States. Abandoned by their guides, Hector, his friend Cesar, and other strangers find themselves stranded in a sealed, broken-down water truck. As the hours pass with hope dwindling for rescue and no hope of escape, Hector reflects on the circumstances that led to his current dilemma as well as the ancient culture and family history he has been forced to leave behind.
SPEARFISH | Leo Edwin Marsh, 96 of Spearfish, SD, passed away April 2, 2016 at Spearfish Regional Hospital in Spearfish.

Leo was born August 21, 1919 as the only child to Clover Edwin and Mattie Frances (Bell) Marsh in Rapid Valley in a home that his father built. Leo grew up in Rapid City and graduated from Rapid City High School in 1937. Leo was an accomplished saxophone player. As a high school senior and the years following graduation, his good friend, Cedric Burgquist and friends had a dance band that played all over the Black Hills area, including the second floor of the Alex Johnson Hotel and Gardees Roller Rink on Main Street in Rapid City which were favorites. Leo also enjoyed cruising around Rapid City in his 34 Ford Convertible and a 37 Ford Coupe. He went to Metalsmithing School in Denver, CO. He then went to work for Lockheed Aircraft Cooperation in Burbank, California in 1941, as a group supervisor in sheet metal fabrication of the P-38 Lightning. While working for Lockheed, he met his future mother-in- law, who introduced him to her daughter, Mary Margaret Turner. It was love at first sight, they married just a few weeks later on Halloween, October 31, 1943. Mary Margaret would always say, Leo married a witch and she married a spook. They were happily married for 71 years. Their only son, Richard Edwin Marsh was born in September 1944.

Leo joined the U.S. Navy in 1945. He finished Naval Training School in Great Lakes, IL and the Naval Air Technical Training Center in Norman, Oklahoma. He served on the USS Antietam (CV 36) and with the NAB Navy 939 on the island of Guam. He was Honorably Discharged in April 1946. Leo, Mary Margaret and Richard returned to the Black Hills after WWII. Leo went to work for Larry Memmott, and also Charles Bradsky. The next Phillip 66 jobber Leo worked for was Floyd Fenex, who eventually sold the business to Gilbert D. Moyle. Leo and his father Clover Marsh were the first employees of Moyle Petroleum. Leo retried from Moyle Petroleum after more than three decades.

Leo and Mary Margaret moved to Spearfish in 1992 to live closer to their son. Leo was a member of several fraternal organizations. Leo and Mary Margaret loved to travel, especially to Hawaii. He loved to fish on the local lakes and he loved chocolate with macadamia nuts. Leo was an avid coin collector and enjoyed working puzzles. He was a kind and caring man, always concerned for others and their needs.

Leo was preceded in death by his parents and his wife of 71 years who passed away on Christmas Day 2014. Leo is survived by his son and daughter in law, Richard and Helen Marsh of Spearfish, SD, four grandchildren; Ryan of Cheyenne, WY, Rochelle (Trevor) McClintock of Omaha, NE, Rich (Kristin) of Rapid City, SD and Regan (Stevie) of Cheyenne, WY and seven great- grandchildren, Landon, Hannah, Connor, Madison, Emma, Leo and Mia.

Visitation begins at 10 a.m. with funeral service at 11 a.m., Tuesday, April 5, 2016 at Fidler-Isburg Funeral Chapel in Spearfish, SD. Private family burial will take place in Rapid City, SD. Memorials in Leos name can be made to the Rapid City Club for Boys.

Arrangements are under the care of Fidler-Isburg Funeral Chapels and Crematory Service of Spearfish.
Russian national to be tried in court for alleged terrorist recruitment

MOSCOW, April 4 (RAPSI)  The Prosecutors Office in Khabarovsk Krai has transferred a case against local resident, who was allegedly recruiting people for terrorist activity in Syria, to a local court, RIA Novosti reported on Monday.

During the preliminary investigation process, it was revealed that the accused is a follower of radical forms of Islam. In 2013-2015 he was meeting residents of Khabarovsk and was trying to turn them in radical Islamists and join terrorist cells in Syria. The accused was not able to fulfill his plan in reality because people declined his proposals.

The accused has admitted his guilt in full.

Investigation was conducted in cooperation with local Federal Security Service Department.
Russian Railways v. Finance Ministry dispute set for June

MOSCOW, April 4 (RAPSI)  The Moscow Commercial Court has scheduled for June 27 the hearing of a lawsuit filed Russian Railways seeking 7 billion rubles ($104.3 million) in compensation from the Finance Ministry and the Labor and Social Protection Ministry, RAPSI reported from the courtroom.

Russian Railways demanded compensation for its losses from the transportation of benefit recipients in 2009. Under an agreement on the transportation of benefit recipients in 2009, Russian Railways was to receive compensation for profit shortfall resulting from this agreement.

The rail monopoly said the transportation of benefit recipients in 2009 cost the company 11 billion rubles ($164 million), but only 4 billion rubles ($60 million) were issued in compensation from the federal budget.

Another lawsuit lodged by Russian Railways demanding 1.74 billion rubles ($26 million) from the Finance Ministry for the transportation of benefit recipients in 2010 will be also reviewed in June.

Moreover, the Federal Passenger Company, a subsidiary of Russian Railways, in November filed a claim for recovery of more than 7.4 billion rubles ($110 million) in damages from the Finance Ministry.




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Here's where to get a pumpkin in central Kansas for fall

Local farms are preparing for the upcoming pumpkin harvest. Here's where to go pumpkin picking in the greater Salina area.
 Might the US be willing to learn from the German prison experience? | Main | "Subconstitutional Checks" 

April 3, 2016

A more positive spin on clemency developments and more positive aspects

Regular readers may grow somewhat tired of hearing me kvetch about President Obama being much more willing to talk the talk than walk the walk when it comes to criminal justice reform generally and clemency developments in particular. For that reason (and others), I invited always sunny Lisa Rich to provide for blogging her sunny perspective on clemency events that transpired at the White House last week. Here is what she was kind enough to send my way for posting:

A somewhat sentimental post by Lisa A. Rich, former director of Legislative & Public Affairs at the U.S. Sentencing Commission and current director of the Texas A&M School of Law Residency Externship Program in Public Policy:

Last Week, I had the privilege of joining not only the tireless advocates of the Justice Roundtable and White House staff but over two dozen recipients of clemency spanning four presidencies during the Justice Roundtable and White House Briefings on Life After Clemency.

Personally, it was a joy to see all of the people  Nkechi Taifa, Mark Osler, Cynthia Rosenberry, Jesselyn McCurdy, Julie Stewart, Margy Love, and so many others who have been working tirelessly to answer the Obama Adminstrations call to action on clemency. I am in awe of the ceaseless dedication these advocates demonstrate every day in their pursuit of hope and justice for those human beings who deserve a chance to be something so much more than a statistic in our cycle of mass incarceration. These advocates and those for whom they do their jobs are the role models I discuss in my classes and they are the ones who inspire me to be better.

But more than my personal connection with those I miss because I am no longer living in D.C., the events over these past three days were important for two reasons. First, all of us, including the President and White House staff saw and heard what hope is all about. We heard from clemency recipients about heartache, mistake, and loss being turned into determination, faith, and commitment. We heard people who genuinely want to make their communities and their lives better, stronger, and happier. I am delighted that policymakers inside and outside of Washington are taking the opportunity to get to know these people  as people, not numbers, not workload, not files on a desk.

Second, I was pleased that two of my students were in the audience  and in fact had been given the opportunity to be involved in preparing for these events. As part of Texas A&M School of Laws new externship program in public policy, these students got to see policymaking in action from start to finish; they got to see firsthand the effects of both good and bad policy decisions. Their experiences may not seem all that different from the hundreds of law students who go to D.C. and elsewhere each semester to partake in policy but it actually was a defining moment for me and them. These students are the future policymakers and advocates. To me, the events of these past three days were not just about hope for those impacted by outdated laws and poor decision making, but hope that the next generation of lawyers, policymakers, and advocates being trained by the brilliant people who participated in these events will learn from our mistakes; that they will engage in sound decision making based on evidence and best practices; that they will carry on the work done so well by so many. As an advocate and a teacher that is what hope is all about.

April 3, 2016 at 08:12 PM | Permalink

Comments

Here's a question for you Doug--as you can see one of Obama's clemency grantees was Ernest Spiller--obviously, DoJ worked a lot on his file, and maybe that was good; maybe not, but if you go back and look at the DoJ's treatment of those whose USERRA rights were violated by the federal government, you'll note that the DoJ did not do a good job at protecting their rights---so is it fair to say that the DoJ cared more about a crackhouse operator than those called to active duty and who served in combat areas? Sure looks that way from my vantage point.

Posted by: federalist | Apr 4, 2016 12:42:03 PM

I know nothing about the DOJ's treatment of those whose USERRA rights were violated by the federal government, federalist, so it would be hard for me to assess what DOJ has done in that arena. (I can say that hundreds, if not thousands, of persons current in federal prisons are veterans who were once on active duty and who served in combat areas. Ergo, work on clemency requests for convicted federal prisoner can overlap with concern for vets. Indeed, I have long urged vets to be on the top of clemency lists at both the federal and state level.)

As for Spiller, it seems (based on his failed 7th Circuit appeal in 2001) that he got a 30-year guideline sentence after his jury convictions for selling 5.2 grams of crack from his home to a confidential informant and for related firearm possession charges. I am not sure it is fair to call someone found guilty of selling a small amount of crack from his home to be a "crack-house operator," though the case does show that the government alleged and the judge concluded that Spiller had been involved in a lot more crack dealing. Of course, the Blakely/Booker made unconstitutional how his sentence was calculated, and the FSA greatly reduced what sentence he would be likely to face were he convicted of the same offenses now.

Long story short, Spiller has already served roughly 20 years (assuming good time credit) for a few small sales of crack from his home based on laws that have been now procedurally found unconstitutional and substantively amended by Congress. You may not care much about whether he had to serve another decade for these crimes, and you may want DOJ to be more focused on USERRA rights, but I have a hard time being too troubled that this single grant of clemency is going to save the federal taxpayer perhaps as much as $400,000 in prison expenses. Indeed, federalist, if you can urge the next Prez to reinvest these Spiller savings in more DOJ lawyers to help vets under USERRA, perhaps we can have our clemency cake and vets can eat, too.

Posted by: Doug B. | Apr 4, 2016 4:37:33 PM

Interesting answer--but (a) we don't know what Spiller's going to do now that he's (about to be) free, so we don't know the costs that will be saved and (b) one would think that DoJ would spend at least as much time righting the wrongs faced by combat zone vets coming back to their federal government jobs. But they didn't (Google USERRA and Washington Post). This looks like misplaced priorities from this vantage point.

Here's the opening lines of the Seventh Circuit: "Based on the confidential informant's purchases, the next day federal agents obtained a search warrant for the residence. During the search, the agent recovered numerous incriminating items, including $6000 cash (including the marked buy money), an elaborate home security system, a scale with crack residue, a cocaine user handbook and other drug paraphernalia such as cans with false bottoms, plastic baggies, bongs, test tubes and beakers. The agents also found approximately 12 weapons in the home." Given that, I think it fair to call this guy a crackhouse operator, unless this was his safe house and only a little crack was sold from the house. Either way, your "5.2 grams of crack" euphemizes considerably Mr. Spiller's culpability. And, by the by, had the sentencing regime been different, the feds would have likely charged differently to get the same result since this guy obviously looks like he was a player. 12 guns--that's a lot.

Contrast him to some federal government employee called to active duty who then served in a combat zone who then came back only to find he'd been fired or demoted or what have you. By any measure, DoJ should have gone to battle stations, but it didn't. And now it spends considerable resources to hook up a gun-toting crack dealer who apparently was knee-deep in the trade. This may be ok with you, but it doesn't sit well, and it's interesting that you try to defend it.

Posted by: federalist | Apr 4, 2016 6:01:57 PM

Here's s/b Here are

Posted by: federalist | Apr 4, 2016 6:02:16 PM

If you're worried about veterans, you may want to advocate for clemency for Kenny Kubinski who earned 3 Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and Army Commendation Medal in Viet Nam. He's serving a sentence of life without parole for a nonviolent offense.

Kenny is now 68 and has been incarcerated since 1994 for a nonviolent marijuana and cocaine offense. Of course, he was charged with conspiracy and elected to exercise his sixth amendment right to trial. You may be interested in supporting commutations for these offenders.

A Veterans Day Salute http://clemencyreport.org/military-veterans-prison-drug-war/

Posted by: beth | Apr 4, 2016 9:35:07 PM

beth--it's fascinating though to see how ideology overrides common sense--while I am not anti-clemency (you should be able to glean that from my numerous posts on the issue), it's totally fair to ask why DoJ apparently is more interested in Ernest Spiller than protecting the USERRA rights of combat vets who worked for the federal government, and that beth is indefensible, and I suspect you and Doug know it. You just cannot say it.

Doug even resorts to half-truths to minimize Spiller's culpability. Now it's easy to say that DoJ is a big place and things are always going to slip through the cracks--but even after the problems were noted, DoJ didn't do much.

Does Kubinski "deserve" clemency--I don't know that "deserve" is the right word. Perhaps 22 years is enough. We'll see if Obama agrees.

Posted by: federalist | Apr 5, 2016 9:22:37 AM

I think I understand. We just don't have the same vision of the role of the federal government.

Certainly the government should live up to the obligations of USERRA - like all disputes about the intent of the law - litigation seems to be the only way to determine what the intent or obligation is. This is an example of the excesses of litigation where taxpayers bare the cost of both sides of the disagreement or conflict.

I don't see clemency as being "deserved" I see it as an act of compassion and mercy. An incidental side effect is that billions of dollars are saved by reducing the sentences of citizens serving egregiously long sentences.

Take a look at the nonviolent veterans serving these sentences. Many of them served when the military still had the draft as opposed to voluntary enlistment. These individuals not only lost their jobs and families - they lost their freedom. This in no way discounts the promise of userra, I just don't see how one discounts the other. I think we just have a different vision of governments role in the lives and decisions of citizens.

Posted by: beth | Apr 5, 2016 11:08:24 AM

Beth, DoJ is charged with enforcing USERRA vis-a-vis people who work for the federal government. No one who looks at the record can say that it took that obligation seriously--clearly, this isn't normal litigation, so I think you're mistaken there.

Bottom line--Ernest Spiller got more attention than some returning vet. You and Doug can spin that all you want, but it shows that DoJ has some skewed priorities, and it's fair game to call them out on it.



Posted by: federalist | Apr 5, 2016 12:46:19 PM

federalist, I have now read a 2012 article from WaPo discussing the USERRA issue that quoted DOJ saying it looked into every allegation/complaint by a vet but only brought litigation in a few cases. I would assume/expect that DOJ has looked into each USERRA complaint as much (if not more) than it has looked into each clemency petition that has been filed.

Are you asserting, federalist, DOJ should file suit based on any and every single USERRA complaint? I am not sure how many DOJ lawyers have been working on this front during the Obama years, but I suspect it is a lot more than have been looking at clemency petitions until very recently.

As for Spiller, the fact remains he was only duly convicted of low level crack dealing. As you note, uncharged facts suggest he may have been involved in regular dealing. But none of that changes the fact he has served 20 years of a sentence that was imposed in violation of his constitutional rights and subject to sentencing mandates that have been significant reduced by Congress. These facts do not mean he is somehow more deserving of DOJ attention than a combat vets' claim his labor law rights were not respected, but this is not a zero sum game in which it make sense to say DOJ lawyers need to seek to right every wrong in the nation before it gives any time to any clemency petitions.

Of course, federal tax dollars to pay for "justice" is not unlimited, which is why a few dollars spent now to make sure some people sentenced extremely get clemency can be a wise long-term investment. Less money spent on BOP prison guards can free up more DOJ resources to go after USERRA violations.

Do you have any basis, federalist, for thinking DOJ has taken its resources away from investigating USERRA complaints to process clemency applications?

Posted by: Doug B. | Apr 5, 2016 5:41:30 PM

Doug, you misunderstand---DoJ is supposed to act when the federal government blows off the USERRA rights of government workers. Litigation really isn't the issue.

You can dance all you want--but DoJ dropped the ball with vets, but is chill with freeing a serious criminal like Spiller.

Posted by: federalist | Apr 5, 2016 11:20:09 PM

federalist, it seems you misunderstand: there is every reason to believe that DOJ is "acting" on USERRA concerns as much, if not much much more, than it has ever "acted" on clemency petitions. I will ask again, hoping you will actually speak to the reality of your curious and peculiar DOJ attack: what evidence do you have to support the suggestion/assertion that DOJ is "acting" less in response to thousands of complaining USERRA vet than it is acting in response to tens of thousands of clemency petitions?

As you should know, lots and lots of clemency folks (myself included) think DOJ should have NO formal role in clemency decision-making. I personally think the Pardon Office should be an independent judicial branch agency, like (or a part of) the US Sentencing Commission. Would that be a change you would endorse?

Posted by: Doug B. | Apr 7, 2016 10:12:38 AM

Doug, were I president, I (and I know this is a break from most of my law and order allies) would take Hamilton's view seriously and I would ask for information about people we could let out (a prison bed being a scarce resource) and I would look at data from prosecutions to make sure that prosecutorial resources were being used wisely (and morally--prosecuting the guy for defending kids against grizzly bear was immoral). I would also liberally use the pardon power to remove convictions from people who have lived law-abiding lives after a conviction.

How all that happened is less important, but I suspect someone looking over DoJ's shoulder is probably the best way to go about this.

AS for USERRA--clearly there was some heavy lifting by DoJ to look at Spiller's record--I juxtapose that will the studied indifference to the plight of returning vets WHO HAD A RIGHT TO HAVE DOJ WORK HARD TO RIGHT A WRONG. Holder's DOJ simply didn't care, and Holder's yapping about all the people in prison showed to me just where the priorities are.

Personally, Spiller doesn't seem a good candidate for clemency, but I don't know all the facts. But what I do know for sure--the resources expended by DoJ to evaluate his case would be better spent protecting the USERRA rights of returning vets screwed over by the government. The upshot, Doug, is that I don't trust people with such misplaced priorities to release criminals.

Posted by: federalist | Apr 7, 2016 11:32:40 AM

Heck Doug, DOJ is working hard to protect Hillary staffers from being deposed. Think that's good?

Posted by: federalist | Apr 7, 2016 11:33:28 AM

As I suspect you know generally, federalist, I do not have much trust in the work of DOJ under any administration. And, of course, the main reason clemency power is needed and important is because there is a long-standing reason to fear, as the Framers fully understood, that prosecutors might often have misplaced priorities in the heat of the prosecutorial moment. I certain think seeking to throw the book at the likes of Weldon Angelos was a misplaced priority at the time. Especially disconcerting in cases like Angeloes and perhaps Spiller (and I speculate many other clemency grants) is that the defendant got especially slammed for exercising trial rights and/or refusing to cooperate.

I think we both agree that DOJ should be priortizing righting government wrongs, but arguably they do so in both the USERRA and clemency settings. As for protecting the Clintons and their cohorts, that is not high on my priority list either.

Posted by: Doug B. | Apr 9, 2016 4:07:32 PM

Post a comment
A roundup of legislative and Capitol news items of interest for Monday:

GOVERNMENT COMPLAINTS UP: Complaints to Iowa citizens watchdog over government increased 7 percent in the past year. Acting Iowa Ombudsman Kristie Hirschman said complaints and questions were up in 2015, and those numbers may be higher this year. The Ombudsman opened more than 4,400 cases last year -- more than two thirds of which were jurisdictional complaints, according to the offices annual report. Issues pertaining to state and local governments ranged from unreasonable water bills and unemployment denials to delays in prescription approvals and decisions of state licensing boards. Cases involving state government agencies made up 46 percent of the cases; local government represented 39 percent of the cases opened in 2015. Hirschman said she anticipates complaint numbers to increase again in 2016 due to two recent developments. The states transition to managed care for Medicaid recipients is expected to spur questions and concerns among recipients and providers. Hirschman said she has requested additional employees to handle the anticipated increase in these contacts. Prison inmates also have begun to call the office more frequently after a decision by the Federal Communications Commission prompted the Iowa Department of Corrections to dramatically lower phone rates, she said. The Ombudsmans report can be found online at legis.iowa.gov/Ombudsman.

STATE BUDGET TALKS CONTINUE: Closed-door talks continued Monday aimed at resolving differences among House Republicans, Senate Democrats and Gov. Terry Branstad over the fiscal 2017 state budget. Among the issues standing in the way of agreement are funding for water-quality efforts, infrastructure and potential cuts to erase a $23 million shortfall created by a downward revision in expected state tax collections. At the moment, we are agreeing to disagree, said Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs. Branstad told reporters on Monday the state budget is a tough situation for everybody even though several of the biggest issues  school funding, tax coupling  have been resolved. Branstad said the key is setting a budget that is sustainable without overpromising with spending commitments the state cant deliver with some certainty in the coming year. Sen. Bob Dvorsky, D-Coralville, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, the fiscal 2017 spending plan is a really tight budget and I think its fairly difficult to try to come up with the answer on this one.

ENVIRONMENTAL AWARD: Nominations for the Iowa Farm Environmental Leader Award, which recognizes farmers who have taken voluntary actions to improve or protect the environment and natural resources, are due by June 15. The nomination form and other information can be found at iowaagriculture.gov. The award is a joint effort between the governor, lieutenant governor, and the departments of Agriculture and Land Stewardship and Natural Resources.

Farmers who are nominated should have made environmental stewardship a priority on their farm and incorporated best management practices into their farming operation. Farm owners and operators are eligible for consideration. An appointed committee of representatives from both conservation and agricultural groups will review the nominations and select the winners who will be announced at the Iowa State Fair.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Im hopeful we can. Do I think we will? Im not yet to where I think we will, but I think we could and Im hopeful that we do. Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, discussing the prospects for resolving fiscal 2017 budget differences with House Republicans and Gov. Terry Branstad this week.
Is there really a drug that lengthens your eyelashes? Will that harm you in some way?

Indeed, there is a medication in the form of an eye drop currently on the market for treatment of hypotrichosis of the eyelashes, which is defined as a loss or reduction of growth of the eyelashes. Interestingly, this medication was initially used for the treatment of glaucoma (increased pressure inside the eye) and as a side effect, some individuals noticed their eyelashes had increased growth.

This reported side effect led to further studies to document the effectiveness of this medication for treating eyelash hypotrichosis. The majority of randomized studies done over a 16-week period showed no benefit of this medication for eyelash hypotrichosis. However, a non-randomized, prospective study of 44 individuals did report benefit of this medication for eyelash hypotrichosis with a longer course of therapy showing that after being treated for two years, complete or moderate eyelash regrowth occurred in about 25 percent of individuals and no growth was seen in the 10 patients not using the medication.

Side effects with use of this medication for eyelash hypotrichosis can include eyelid reddening and discoloration, discoloration of the skin around the eye, and other eye-related symptoms such as dry-eye, eye irritation, and others. This medication should not be prescribed for individuals without eyelash hypotrichosis who simply desire an increase in the length of their eyelashes as all medications do have potential side effects that could result in the medication causing more overall harm than good.
Just because you build a business website, does not mean that prospects will come. But once someone visits your site, how can you keep them there through effective engagement? The goal is to increase the number of pages they view and the overall time they spend on the site. More time will ultimately mean a deeper impression of the companys brand and a higher prospect of them eventually buying.

Remember that in this fast paced Internet world, most prospects will not pick up the phone and call the number listed on the website. They see it as too time consuming. In fact, by 2020, customers will manage 85 percent of their relationships without talking to a human.

Lets look at five ways to increase engagement of website visitors so they will ultimately convert to customers.

Effective Customer Engagement

1. Chat

This is a very inexpensive tool that can become a huge marketing machine. Hamid Shojaee, CEO of Pure Chat, says his company helps small businesses turn website visitors into customers with our live chat software. Generating leads and driving sales is a critical challenge for small teams and were thrilled to provide a ridiculously easy way to help solve that problem.

Research shows that almost 50 percent of sales typically go to the vendor that responds first. Being able to easily chat with visitors to the website is the best way to quickly foster engagement. The prospect knows that someone is there to answer their questions. Make the chat box design inviting with very few fields (name and email only) and be available to talk at the peak hours. This can be determined through the websites analytics. Remember that chat can be responded to through a mobile app too and should be available on every page of the website.

2. Link to Internal Pages

One way to keep prospects on the site longer is not to let them leave! Links to external sites may be useful, but they do not further engagement of the prospect for the company. Craft the visitors journey by linking to many internal website pages from information on each page that will further the brand impression.

3. Search Feature

There is nothing more frustrating than visiting a website and not finding the information that is needed. Always have a search box on the site so the visitor can get what they require. It is easy to add a custom Google search engine to any website.

4. FAQ

As previously discussed, most customers do not want to take the time to call the number on the website. They would like to find the answer themselves in the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section. List the top 10 questions customers ask and their answers. On this page, make sure the chat window is available if there are further issues that still need to be addressed. With texting and social media, people are more comfortable sending messages, says Patrick Henshaw, General Manager of ETI Limousine & Charter in Texas Live chat is just another way of texting with businesses.

5. Enable Comments

Everyone wants to leave their opinion. On informational pages, give the visitor the ability to comment on the content that is presented. This is an excellent way to engage a prospect especially when the company responds to their comment.

A small business can even take it one step further. With tools like PureChat, users can see a list of active website visitors, find out which pages theyve viewed and look up past interactions with returning prospects. With this context about an individual on their website, small businesses can start more relevant chat conversations.

Do you use chat or any of these other tools on your website? How do you engage your customers?
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
PRINCE FREDERICK, Md.

Disclaimer: In the U.S.A., all persons accused of a crime by the State are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. See: http://so.md/presumed-innocence. Additionally, all of the information provided above is solely from the perspective of the respective law enforcement agency and does not provide any direct input from the accused or persons otherwise mentioned. You can find additional information about the case by searching the Maryland Judiciary Case Search Database using the accused's name and date of birth. The database is online at http://so.md/mdcasesearch . Persons named who have been found innocent or not guilty of all charges in the respective case, and/or have had the case ordered expunged by the court can have their name, age, and city redacted by following the process defined at http://so.md/expungeme.

(April 4, 2016)The Prince Frederick Barrack of the Maryland State Police (MSP) today released the following incident and arrest reports.THEFT: On 3/30/16 at 5:08 pm, Trooper Warrick investigated a theft from a home on Pawnee Lane in Lusby. The victim reported Steven O. Harrod, 28 of Lusby was witnessed on camera going through clothing and a night stand, removing money. Charges are pending.THEFT: On 4/1/16 at 11:34 am, Trooper First Class Esnes investigated a theft from a home on Sharon Dr. in Lusby. The victim reported jewelry, hand tools and violins had been stolen from the residence. A pawn check revealed the items had been exchanged for cash at a pawn shop in Lexington Park by Nick C. Brown, 21 of Lusby. Charges are pending.DUI ARREST: Scott W. Vogan, 48, of Port Republic, arrested on 03/31/16 @ 11:08 am by TFC K. Rowe
PRINCE FREDERICK, Md.

Disclaimer: In the U.S.A., all persons accused of a crime by the State are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. See: http://so.md/presumed-innocence. Additionally, all of the information provided above is solely from the perspective of the respective law enforcement agency and does not provide any direct input from the accused or persons otherwise mentioned. You can find additional information about the case by searching the Maryland Judiciary Case Search Database using the accused's name and date of birth. The database is online at http://so.md/mdcasesearch . Persons named who have been found innocent or not guilty of all charges in the respective case, and/or have had the case ordered expunged by the court can have their name, age, and city redacted by following the process defined at http://so.md/expungeme.

(April 4, 2016)The Calvert County Sheriff's Office today released the following incident and arrest reports.WEEKLY SUMMARY: During the week of March 28 through April 3, deputies responded to 1,404 calls for service throughout the community.THEFT CASE #16-18133: On March 29, 2016, Deputy R. Kreps responded to Southern Md. Blvd., in Dunkirk, in reference to a theft. A Rigid K-380 Drain cleaning machine was stolen from the victim's front porch between the hours of 6:20 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. on March 29.ATTEMPTED THEFT AND DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY CASE #16-18061: On March 29, Deputy M. Trigg responded to Mills Field Lane, in Port Republic, for an attempted theft and a destruction of property report. The victim advised that between March 18 and March 27 an unknown suspect(s) entered the property and attempted to steal the hardtop to a Jeep Wrangler which is kept in the backyard. The hardtop was left upside down, disassembled and the fence was damaged.CDS VIOLATION CASE #16-18627: On March 31, Deputy A. Locke was conducting a patrol check at the Dash-in located on East Chesapeake Beach Rd. in Owings. He observed a subject slumped forward and not moving in a stationary vehicle., was charged with CDS possession-not marijuana (Heroin) and CDS possession paraphernalia. Mr. Peresta was transported to the Calvert County Detention Center.CDS VIOLATION CASE #16-18972: On April 2, Deputy M. Trigg responded to the intersection of Route 2 and Kent Road, in Sunderland, for a motor vehicle accident. The driver,, was charged with CDS possession with intent to distribute a Narcotic, CDS possession-not Marijuana (Oxycodone) and CDS possession-not marijuana (Oxycodone, Buprenorphine, Naloxone, Alprazolam).CDS VIOLATION CASE #16-118911: On April 2, Deputy A. Curtin responded to the area of 2nd St. and Erie Ave., in North Beach, for the report of a suspicious vehicle. The vehicle was parked in the middle of the roadway and the two occupants were standing on the outside of the vehicle., was charged with CDS possession paraphernalia and, was charged with CDS possession paraphernalia and disorderly conduct. They both were transported to the CCDC.
LA PLATA, Md.

Disclaimer: In the U.S.A., all persons accused of a crime by the State are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. See: http://so.md/presumed-innocence. Additionally, all of the information provided above is solely from the perspective of the respective law enforcement agency and does not provide any direct input from the accused or persons otherwise mentioned. You can find additional information about the case by searching the Maryland Judiciary Case Search Database using the accused's name and date of birth. The database is online at http://so.md/mdcasesearch . Persons named who have been found innocent or not guilty of all charges in the respective case, and/or have had the case ordered expunged by the court can have their name, age, and city redacted by following the process defined at http://so.md/expungeme.

(April 4, 2016)The Charles County Sheriff's Office today released the following incident and arrest reports.POSSESSION WITH INTENT TO DISTRIBUTE: On April 3 at 1:40 p.m., Kwame Diallo Truesdale-Delgiudice, 18, of Waldorf, was stopped for a traffic violation in the area of University Drive at Greystone Circle in Waldorf. Upon making contact with the driver, the officer detected the odor of marijuana emitting from the vehicle. Further investigation revealed a large amount of marijuana inside the vehicle. Truesdale-Delgiudice was arrested and charged with possession with intent to distribute marijuana. Officer K. Collins investigated.THEFT FROM LOCKERS: Sometime between 11 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. on April 3, unknown suspect(s) removed locks from several lockers in the locker rooms at a fitness center located in the 2900 block of Festival Way in Waldorf. Two victims had items stolen from their lockers while two other victims had their items tampered with. Officer C. Chamblee is investigating.OFFICERS INVESTIGATE VEHICLE THEFTS / CRIME SOLVERS OFFERS REWARD: On April 3 at approximately 3:51 a.m., officers responded to the 4100 block of Falcon Place in Waldorf for the report of an attempted theft of a motor vehicle. An interview with the victim revealed that when he went outside to check on his Honda motorcycle, he noticed it was missing, and he also saw a green pick-up truck with a cap on the bed driving slowly away from the building. When the victim attempted to approach the operator of the truck, it accelerated and the victim's motorcycle fell out of the back, subsequently breaking the truck's tailgate off of the truck.Shortly after on the morning of April 3, there was a report of a stolen motorcycle also in the 4100 block of Falcon Place. An investigation revealed that sometime between the hours of 5:15 p.m. on April 2 and 9:15 a.m. on April 3, unknown suspect(s) stole a Honda motorcycle from outside of the victim's residence.On April 3 at 11:15 a.m., officers responded to the 19500 block of Lariat Place in Waldorf for the report of a stolen vehicle. An investigation revealed that sometime after 7 p.m. on April 2, unknown suspect(s) stole the victim's green 1997 Dodge Ram 1500 truck from in front of his residence. Based on information obtained during their investigation, officers believe all three thefts are related.Anyone with information about the location of the pick-up truck, stolen Honda motorcycle, or the identity of the suspect(s) is asked to contact Officer C. Gustafson at (301) 932-7777. Tipsters wishing to remain anonymous may call 1-866-411-TIPS, text CHARLES + the tip to CRIMES (274637) or submit a tip online at tipsubmit.com.FIRST-DEGREE ASSAULT: On April 3 at approximately 1:24 a.m., officers responded to the 4300 block of Eagle Court in Waldorf for the report of an assault. An investigation revealed that three individuals were involved in an altercation at a restaurant in Waldorf. A 24-year-old female left the restaurant alone in her vehicle, at which time two other females,, and, followed her to Lancaster Circle. Suspect Johnson pulled in front of the victim's vehicle, backed up, and struck the driver's side. The victim then drove her car around the suspects' vehicle and pulled into Eagle Court, and the suspects followed behind her. Once parked, the victim and suspect Johnson exited their vehicles and a fight ensued. Several individuals left a residence on Eagle Court and attempted to break up the fight, and two of those individuals were subsequently struck by suspect Johnson. Suspect Thomas then entered the driver's seat of the suspect vehicle and drove towards two of the individuals breaking up the fight, forcing them to move out of the vehicle's path to avoid being struck. Tajae Johnson and Tyesha Thomas were arrested and charged with first and second-degree assault. Johnson was also charged with driving under the influence and Thomas with driving while suspended. Officer R. Logsdon investigated.Charles County Crime Solvers offers rewards of up to $1,000 for information that leads to the arrest or indictment of a person responsible for a crime in Charles County. Anyone with information about an unsolved crime or the location of a fugitive may contact Charles County Crime Solvers by calling 1-866-411-TIPS, texting CHARLES + the tip to CRIMES (274637) or submitting tips online at tipsubmit.com. All individuals who provide tips through Crime Solvers will remain anonymous. Learn more at the CCSO's website.
To show support to the transgender community, a Wells Fargo building in Charlotte, N.C. lit up with the colors of the transgender flag last week in the wake of the state's anti-LGBT measure, Jezebel reports.



The 54-story Duke Energy Center tower owned by the by the banking company beamed with the colors of blue, pink and white, which formed the shape of an upside-down triangle on March 31. Jezebel reports the event also coincided with Trans Day of Visibility, which raises transgender awareness.



A spokesperson for Wells Fargo spoke with the Charlotte Observer and explained why the company showed support for the trans community and its allies.



"As a reflection of our company's vision and values, Wells Fargo has a long history of support against discrimination of any kind and for LGBT rights overall. This is fundamental to who we are as a company and what we stand for in terms of equality and basic human rights," the spokesperson told the newspaper. [Wells Fargo] opposes laws that would allow people or businesses to discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community members or individuals."



The move comes in response to the state's new law, which was approved in a special legislative session and signed by Gov. Pat McCrory last month. The measure prohibits transgender people from using bathrooms matching their new gender identities, which McCrory said was a "radical breach of trust and security."
Government employees and private businesses in Mississippi could deny services to same-sex couples who want to marry under a bill passed by the House on Friday - one of numerous attempts across the country to enact so-called religious protection statutes after a Supreme Court ruling that effectively legalized gay marriage.

Now, Republican Gov. Phil Bryant must decide whether to sign the bill into law.

Mississippi is among 10 states that have passed or are considering such legislation. Work on this bill started months ago, but the House vote Friday came a day after a federal judge blocked Mississippi from enforcing the last state law in the nation to ban same-sex couples from adopting children.

Bryant has often said he believes marriage should be between a man and a woman, but would not say Friday whether he will sign House Bill 1523 (http://bit.ly/1Mq4DyE ).

"I haven't gotten to it yet. As soon as it gets to us we'll look at it and decide," Bryant said as he walked away from reporters after a Capitol news conference about a youth jobs program.

The governor's spokesman, Clay Chandler, tried to block reporters from asking questions by saying repeatedly: "Not today. Not today."

Bryant said of the bill: "I'm going to look at it like I do every piece of legislation and as soon as I make that decision, I'll let you know."

He signed a 2014 bill promoted by gay marriage opponents, saying government cannot put a substantial burden on religious practices. This year's bill is similar to the one Georgia's Republican governor vetoed Monday amid objections from businesses that said it would permit discrimination.

The Mississippi bill is also similar to North Carolina's first-in-the-nation law that limits bathroom options for transgender people in government buildings. Business executives are urging North Carolina Republican Gov. Pat McCrory to repeal the bill he signed March 23. The Mississippi bill says people could not be punished for a belief that gender is set at birth. It says schools or businesses can set gender-specific rules about how a person dresses or which bathroom a person must use.

The Mississippi House passed the final version of the bill 69-44 Friday, two days after the Senate passed it 32-17. Republicans hold a majority in both chambers. Under the margins for final passage, there would not be enough votes to override if Bryant vetoes the bill.

Some corporations in Mississippi oppose the bill, including Nissan North America, which has a plant near Jackson; MGM Resorts International, which has casinos in Biloxi and Tunica; and Huntington Ingalls Industries, which has a shipyard in Pascagoula. All three are among the state's largest private employers.

Republican Rep. Andy Gipson of Braxton, an attorney and pastor of a small Baptist church, told the House on Friday that reporting about the bill has been biased against it.

"Ladies and gentlemen, don't buy the deceptions, the untruths of these articles that you've seen. The talking heads - they're wrong. This is an anti-discrimination bill," said Gipson, chairman of the House Judiciary B Committee and one of the bill's sponsors.

Democratic Rep. Christopher Bell of Jackson called the bill "an open container for discrimination across the board."

"We're asking to legalize discrimination," Bell said. "What comes next? Are we going to start discriminating against interracial marriages? Are we going to start discriminating ... against African-Americans? Asians? Jews? When does it stop?"

The bill says the state could not punish people involved with foster care or adoption who teach children that marriage should only be between a man and a woman, that sex should only take place inside such a marriage and that gender is set at birth.
Dolly Sods, West Virginia SpaceRef

A NASA-led team of scientists has developed the first-ever method for detecting the presence of different types of underground forest fungi from space, information that may help researchers predict how climate change will alter forest habitats.

Hidden beneath every forest is a network of fungi living in mutually beneficial relationships with the trees. Called mycorrhizal fungi, these organisms spread underground for miles, scavenging for nutrients that they trade with trees for sugars the trees make during photosynthesis. Nearly all tree species associate with only one of two types of mycorrhizal fungi, explained coauthor Richard Phillips of Indiana University, Bloomington.

Because the two types of fungi are expected to respond differently to a changing climate, knowing where each type predominates may help scientists predict where forests will thrive in the future and where they will falter.

Creating maps of forests and their fungi has traditionally relied on various methods of counting individual tree species, an approach that cannot be done at large scales. In a new study published in the journal Global Change Biology, a team led by Joshua Fisher of NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, and UCLA found a way to detect this hidden network using satellite images.

Every tree species has its own spectral signature  it absorbs or reflects light in a specific pattern across all the wavelengths in the spectrum of light. Using satellite images of forest canopies, Fishers group probed whether they could identify any patterns in the spectral signatures of tree species associated with one type of fungus that did not appear in species associated with the other type.

Fisher explained, Individual tree species have unique spectral fingerprints, but we thought the underlying fungi could be controlling them as groups.

The team studied images of four U.S. forest research plots that are part of the Smithsonian Institutions Forest Global Earth Observatory. In these forests, which include 130,000 trees across 77 species, the tree species associated with each type of fungus had already been mapped from the ground. The researchers analyzed images of the forest canopies taken by the NASA/U.S. Geological Survey Landsat-5 satellite from 2008 to 2011 in many different ways, searching for similarities that lined up with areas of fungus dominance. They found what they were looking for when they examined various milestones throughout the growing season, such as when the trees leafed out in spring and when they reached peak greenness. There were significant differences in the timing of these milestones between regions dominated by the two types of fungi.

Having identified the timing sequences related to each type of fungus, the researchers developed and tested a statistical model to predict the areas of fungus domination in any particular Landsat image from canopy changes alone. They found they could predict the fungus association correctly in 77 percent of the images. They went on to produce landscape-wide maps of fungi associations, uncovering intriguing patterns in forests that will be studied in greater depth in the future.

Fisher said, That these below-ground agents manifest themselves in changes in the forest canopies is significant. This allows, for the first time, some light to be shed on their hidden processes.

For more information about NASAs Earth science activities, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/earth
NASA International Space Station On-Orbit Status 1 April 2016. NASA

The Expedition 47 crew will receive a space delivery from Russia this weekend. SpaceX is counting down to the launch of another space shipment on its Dragon space freighter scheduled for April 8 from Florida.

Onboard the International Space Station, the crew checked out U.S. spacesuits and advanced science hardware. The station residents also explored life science and human research to benefit life on Earth and crews in space.

Commander Tim Kopra scrubbed cooling loops in U.S. spacesuits and installed new gear inside the Combustion Integrated Rack research facility. NASA astronaut Jeff Williams set up equipment for an experiment that is researching new exercise techniques for living in space. British astronaut Tim Peake swapped hard drives in a laptop computer that is recording data collected for a dark matter detection experiment.

Russias newest cargo craft, the Progress 63, is on its way to the station carrying over three tons of food, fuel and supplies for the crew and will dock Saturday at 2 p.m. EDT/6 p.m. UTC. The following week, another delivery from the United States will liftoff aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, carrying more science and gear inside the Dragon cargo craft. Both missions will be covered live on NASA TV.

On-Orbit Status Report

Strata-1 Payload Activation: Earlier this morning Peake moved the Space Acceleration Measurement System (SAMS) sensor enclosure from the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) to the Strata-1 payload for activation and checkout activities. When Peak switched the main power switch on, an overcurrent trip occurred on the Solid State Power Control Module (SSPCM) channel for Express Rack 8 where Strata is connected. Activation has been deferred to allow assessment of the locker trip. Strata-1 investigates the properties and behavior of regolith on small, airless bodies. Regolith is the impact-shattered soil found on asteroids, comets, the Moon, and other airless worlds, but it is different from soil here on Earth in that it contains no living material. Strata-1s goal is to provide answers about how regolith behaves and moves in microgravity, how easy or difficult it is to anchor a spacecraft in regolith, how it interacts with spacecraft and spacesuit materials, and other properties. It is important to NASA to know how to set anchors in regolith, how to safely move and process large volumes of regolith, and predict and prevent risk to spacecraft and astronauts visiting these small bodies.

Cell Biology Experiment Facility (CBEF) Cell Mechanosensing Humidifier Installation: Williams disconnected the vent fan cables in Micro-G and 1G, and installed the CBEF incubator unit (IU) humidifier in the CBEF IU Micro-G. Cell Mechanosensing is a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) investigation that identifies gravity sensors in skeletal muscle cells to develop countermeasures to muscle atrophy, a key space health issue. Scientists believe that the lack of mechanical stress from gravity causes tension fluctuations in the plasma membrane of skeletal muscle cells which changes the expression of key proteins and genes, and allows muscles to atrophy. Muscle cells from rats, and kidney cells from African clawed frogs are tagged with fluorescent gene markers, and attached to an extracellular matrix to study their performance under different tensions, simulating use on earth.

Sprint VO2 Operations: Williams completed video setup for Sprint operations, then performed instrument calibrations, exercise protocol and data downlink. Sprint VO2 is a test that measures oxygen uptake, ventilatory threshold, and other physiological parameters.

Education Payload Operations (EPO) Destination Space: Peake recorded messages that will be used in shows and demonstrations at 20 science and discovery centers around the United Kingdom. The messages will be aimed at younger children. EPO includes curriculum-based educational activities that demonstrate basic principles of science, mathematics, technology, engineering and geography. These activities are videotaped and then used in classroom lectures. EPO is designed to support the NASA mission to inspire the next generation of explorers.

Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-02 (AMS-02) Hard Drive Change Out: Peake changed out the battery and hard drive in the AMS-02 laptop, then loaded new software onto the new hard drive. AMS-02 is a high profile space-based particle physics experiment. Orbiting the Earth at an altitude of 200 nautical miles attached to the ISS, AMS-02 will pioneer a new frontier in particle physics research. As the largest and most advanced magnetic spectrometer in space, AMS-02 collects information from cosmic sources emanating from stars and galaxies millions of light years beyond the Milky Way.

Habitability Human Factors Directed Observations: Williams completed a session of the Habitability experiment when he recorded and submitted a walk-through video documenting observations of an area and activity. The Habitability investigation collects observations about the relationship between crew members and their environment on the ISS. Observations will help spacecraft designers understand how much habitable volume is required and whether a missions duration impacts how much space crew members need.

Combustion Integrated Rack (CIR) Alignment Guide Installation: Kopra installed three Alignment Guides on CIR to lock down PaRIS hardware. CIR provides sustained, systematic microgravity combustion research and it houses hardware capable of performing combustion experiments for research of combustion in microgravity.

Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) 3005, 3008 Loop Scrub: Kopra completed ionic and particulate filtration (scrubbing) and biocidal maintenance (iodination) of EMU and Airlock cooling water loops. This procedure accomplished an EMU checkout, post-scrub cooling loop samples and Display Control Module (DCM) flow checks. Following the loop scrub, Kopra took a 250 mL sample of the EMU cooling loop water to determine the effectiveness of the Ion filter in scrubbing the EMU and Airlock cooling water. Ten mL of this water sample will be sent to the ground for chemical analysis.

Common Communications for Visiting Vehicles (C2V2) Health and Status Checkout: The ground performed a checkout of the recently installed C2V2 units. Both units were powered on with Unit A configured to primary and Unit B configured as backup. All data was nominal.

Todays Planned Activities

All activities are on schedule unless otherwise noted.

Weekly Housekeeping

SM Ventilation Subsystem Preventive Maintenance, Group E

Vacuum Cleaning FGB Circulation Fan 2 (panel 203)

Vacuum Cleaning SM, DC1, MRM1, MRM2 Dust Filters.

Inspection of Air Conditioner for moisture / Thermal Mode Control System

Cleaning Auxiliary Computer System [???] / r/g 0788

Vacuum Cleaning FGB Circulation Fan 2 (panels 203)

Vacuum Cleaning SM, DC1, MRM1, MRM2 Dust Filters.

Inspection of Air Conditioner for moisture / Thermal Mode Control System

Cleaning Auxiliary Computer System [???] / r/g 0788

HABIT  Video Recording

CBEF  Hardware Removal

Unlatching N2 Nadir Hatch Hardstops

Node 3 Hatch Unlatch and Latch to test the Hatch mechanism

Standardized Breakfast

HABIT  Terminate Video

EMU cooling loop scrub.

CBEF  Cable Removal

Conference on specifics of Progress 432 docking r/g 1825

SPRINT  Hardware Power Up

CMS3  Hardware Setup

CIR  Hardware Setup

VELO Exercise, Day 1

HMS Defibrillator Inspection

SPRINT Experiment Ops

??? Maintenance

EMU cooling loop scrub

24-hour ECG Monitoring (termination) / r/g 1798

EMU  Conductivity Test

24-hour BP Monitoring (end) r/g 1799

SPRINT  Equipment Stowage

Video Footage of Greetings / r/g 1827

EMU cooling loop scrub.

On-orbit Hearing Assessment using EARQ

IMS tagup (Ku-band)

End of Battery Stowage Assembly (BSA) Operations

Initiation of Battery Stowage Assembly (BSA) Operations

EMU  Cooling Loop Maintenance  EMU Reconfig

EMU  Long Dryout

SHD  Weekly Questionnaire

HAM radio session from Columbus

EMU  Cooling Loop Maintenance  Deconfiguration

Stow Syringes used in ?2? Conductivity Test

SPRINT  Closeout Ops

Completed Task List Items

None

Ground Activities

All activities are on schedule unless otherwise noted.

C2V2 initial activation

Nominal ground commanding

Three-Day Look Ahead:

Saturday, 04/02: 63P dock, ENERGY ops, crew off duty, weekly housekeeping

Sunday, 04/03: Crew off duty

Monday, 04/04: MARES, Emergency OBT, Thermal exchange data transfer/stow

QUICK ISS Status  Environmental Control Group:

Component  Status

Elektron  On

Vozdukh  Manual

[???] 1  SM Air Conditioner System (SKV1)  On

[???] 2  SM Air Conditioner System (SKV2)  Off

Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Lab  Override

Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Node 3  Operate

Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Lab  Idle

Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Node 3  Operate

Oxygen Generation Assembly (OGA)  Process

Urine Processing Assembly (UPA)- Standby

Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Lab  Off

Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Node 3  Full Up
Choice of members reflects continued neglect, advocates say.

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A far-right extremist, pro-life activists and a supporter of the political regime in Belarus look set to be among those dealing with the countrys human rights issues over the next four years.

Such nominations for the parliamentary committee for human rights and national minorities are drawing criticism from human rights advocates who believe that it continues to reflect the long term disinterest in human in rights issues.

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On the contrary, only politicians who want to restrict the human rights for certain groups show interest, Martin Macko, executive director of the Initiative Inakost non-governmental organisation, told The Slovak Spectator.

The proposed composition of the human rights committee is, however, not the only problem. Several media outlets have reported about complaints of some MPs on their placement, so the parliament promised to deal with the problem at its next session.

Controversial members

Marian Mesaros, executive director of the Slovak National Centre for Human Rights, says that the current makeup of the human rights committee is an important warning that observance of human rights cannot be taken for granted in central Europe, even in the 21st century.

One of the most controversial MPs nominated to the human rights committee is Milan Mazurek from Peoples Party  Our Slovakia (LSNS) of Marian Kotleba. He gained publicity during the 2015 protest against immigration in Bratislava, when he called a Muslim family foul names. Several other extremists then attacked the family.

He has also published several posts on a social network, calling the Holocaust a fairytale. The statements will be checked by the Prosecutor Generals Office, spokeswoman Andrea Predajnova confirmed to the Aktuality.sk website.

When approached by several media, Mazurek has denied ever writing anything which would deny the Holocaust.

He, however, is not the only person who caught the attention of the human rights activists. Erika Jurinova of the Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OLaNO) is set to chair the committee. She was among 19 deputies who during the previous tenure supported the draft amendment proposing prison as a punishment for abortion or artificial insemination.

Her deputy, according to press reports, should become former TV presenter Martina Simkovicova from the We Are Family party led by Boris Kollar. She was dismissed after publishing untrue statements about refugees. She also said in the past that gender ideology is part of neo-Marxism and its aim is to destroy a traditional family, Aktuality.sk reported.

Another member is Anna Veresova (OLaNO), member of the Alliance for Family which organised the pro-family referendum in February 2015. Also Maria Janikova of Smer, who reportedly described Belarus as an inspirational country, will sit on the committee. Janikova has since disassociated herself with the statement.

Moreover, Smer nominee Lubomir Zeliezka was accused of brutal attack on a senior citizen in Banovce nad Bebravou (Trencin Region) in the past. The pensioner claimed that Zeliezka punched him into face and he had to be hospitalised, Aktuality.sk wrote.

Committees follow certain rules

Irena Bihariova of the People against Racism considers the members of the committee incompetent to deal with this agenda.

The attitudes of the members rather suggest that they have completely different information about this topic, they perceive them differently and I am afraid that this approach will be reflected in their professional work, Bihariova told the Pravda daily.

Speaker of Parliament Andrej Danko (SNS) however says that the committees are constituted by the law, so they need to follow certain rules.

Every parliamentary party has to nominate one member of the committee, Danko told Aktuality.sk. We cannot individually decide in which committees it is appropriate and in which it is not.

Marek Rybar from the Comenius Universitys school of political science confirms that every party has a certain number of members which correspond with the division of power between the coalition and the opposition in the parliament. Every party nominates the deputies, preferably based on their specialisation, but the parliament as a whole has a final word in the selection, he explained.

He also thinks that the controversial politicians, who sit in the human rights committee, would be problematic also in any other committee, but in this case it just stands out more.

Human rights agenda neglected

The committee has never acted as some kind of parliamentary opposition or watchdog of human rights agenda and tolerance, notes Laco Oravec, programme director of the Milan Simecka Foundation.

We have already witnessed that it was kind of a storage room for politicians, Oravec told The Slovak Spectator.

Among the controversial personalities on the committee in the past were three-time prime minister and former chair of the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) Vladimir Meciar or ex-leader of the Slovak National Party (SNS) Jan Slota, adds Kalman Petocz of the Slovak Helsinki Committee. Moreover, during the last tenure one of its members was Vladimir Janos, who now faces charges for abusing his ex-wife.

Human rights are not an attractive topic for many politicians or MPs, Oravec said, so it does not have as much prestige as the other key parliamentary committees, which is a pity.

Rybar admits that certain committees are more preferred than the other ones, but the human rights committee does not belong to this group, as was confirmed also by one of the surveys his school carried out in the past.

Yet this does not mean that for people in this committee it is not an important issue, he told The Slovak Spectator.

What with the human rights agenda?

As for real results, the committee has not played an important role in the human rights agenda, and during the last tenure there was hardly any activity by its members, Macko says. It even did not adopt any stance to the most important document adopted by the previous cabinet, the national strategy for human rights, he added.

Its invisibility and inactivity was partially replaced by activities of its chairman Rudolf Chmel, who is advocate of the universality of human rights, especially the rights of minorities, Macko said, adding that this cannot be expected from the current chair Jurinova.

However, regarding the current members of the committee, he hopes that it will stay as invisible and unimportant as in the past.

Rybar says that the impact of the parliamentary committees and their work on parliaments decision-making is not big under the Slovak conditions, unlike in the United States or the European Parliament where the committees statements are binding for the whole parliament. The most important is affiliation to the political parties, which is also reflected in voting of the committees members, he explained.

They however have an important function: they are certain tool of the opposition to control the government, Rybar said.

Though some committee members deal with human rights, the fact is that they focus only on certain segments, Petocz says.

Members of parliamentary committees should have certain knowledge about the human rights agenda as they discuss and decide on the draft laws, Bihariova says.

I think that at least for the next four years this topic will be completely static in Slovakia, she told Pravda.
Slovak police investigate the case of a Muslim woman robbed and attacked in downtown Bratislava on the same day as terrorist attacks in Brussels, March 22.

The incident took place close to the Presidential Palace in Hodzovo Square. (Here, flags are lowered as tribute to the victims of Brussels attack.) (Source: TASR)

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The woman travelled in Hodzovo Square with her son, aged 3, and she wanted to take bus No. 83 to the Main (railway) Station at the stop near the Presidential Palace when an unknown man tried to take off her veil and pulled her handbag. When she looked back, she saw he took her purse and gave it to the woman standing next to him, the Dennik N on April 2 quoted the web of the Islamic Foundation in Slovakia, islamonline.sk.

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Unlike ordinary thieves, they did not even try to conceal their deed or run away, the web writes. Instead, they started shouting at her and cursing, while she understood only words like black, dirty, terrorist and Muslim. The woman, coming from an African country, has been living in Slovakia for two years. The woman, who wants her name to stay undisclosed, contacted the Islamic foundation.

She says, moreover, that she shouted for help but, although it was around 15:30, passersby and passengers on the bus did not react. The bus driver asked her whether she wanted to travel, or preferred to stay. She returned to the site of the attack and called police who took her to police station.

Police are now investigating the case, although it is not clear as a crime or as a mere misdemeanour. As it is already three weeks old, police will comment on the case beginning this week when more details are confirmed.

The woman had already been attacked once, also in Bratislava, following the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris, Dennik N wrote.
Outgoing Government Proxy for Roma Communities, Peter Pollak, officially resigns from his post on April 4, with the Most-Hid coalition party expected to fill it.

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Pollak is to step down in the village of Jarovnice in the district of Sabinov (Presov Region, eastern Slovakia) where he, as government proxy, opened a prefabricated primary school and introduced a project involving Roma citizen patrols. He also wants to evaluate his performance in the post that he has occupied since October 1, 2012, the TASR newswire wrote.

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Peter Pollaks period in the government proxy post has been associated with introducing inclusive measures of Roma reform aimed at improving the living conditions of the Roma community, at increasing their feelings of responsibility and at better and more effective integration into society.

He is the sixth government proxy for the Roma communities. His predecessors in office were Vincent Danihel, Klara Orgovanova, Anita Botosova, Ludovit Galbavy and Miroslav Pollak.

Pollak should be replaced by a Most-Hid nominee, both TASR and the Hungarian-language daily Uj Szo wrote. Uj Szo first broke the information and specified that the probable candidate is Abel Ravasz, the director of the Matej Bel Institute. A new man has to be there as quickly as possible, Most-Hid chairman Bela Bugar told the Sme daily, without confirming Ravazs nomination, however.

The partys spokesman Matej Kovac mentioned Ravasz, too, but did not say it officially.

Bugar also told Uj Szo that establishing an independent institution focused on minorities is planned.

Stefan Vavrek, who ran for Most-Hid from the 18th spot of its slate in the recent election but failed to make it to parliament, was also a potential candidate, experts said, as quoted by Sme. Ladislav Oravec of the Milan Simecka Foundation says that the most important question is not who will replace Pollak but whether the way the government shelters the human rights agenda will change.
AFTER some meagre years, the Febiofest film festival has expanded in Slovakia and offered nearly 150 movies in 10 sections over six days in Bratislava.

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Many of the films are still showing at cinemas around the country.

Febiofest is still in transition from mere film screenings to a festival, Art Director Premysl Martinek said.

Indeed events this year, which ran from March 17 to 23, included discussions with filmmakers, master classes open to the public, introductions by directors, and audience polls about the competing movies. The event that runs simultaneously in the Czech and Slovak republics hails the two homelands of founder Fero Fenic.

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This years opening evening saw the producers of a Slovak-Czech-Polish-French film I, Olga Hepnar on hand. The black-and-white movie evoking the atmosphere of 1960s and 1970s communist Czechoslovakia tells the story of an unhappy teenage girl with lesbian inclinations who feels misunderstood and eventually, fed by a mental disorder, drives a truck into a group of pedestrians on a Prague street, killing eight of them and injuring many more. The character, Olga Hepna-rova, is a figure who became the last woman to be executed in Czechoslovakia.

Me, Olga Hepnarova (dir. Tomas Weinreb, Petr Kazda, 2016, CZ/POL/SK/FR (Source: Coirtesy of Febiofest)

The most visited films included this film; the Czech documentary Mallory (Helena Trestikova) and With a Trabant until the Last Breath. The winner of the section In the Middle of Europe was Austrian Bernhard Wenger and his documentary The Balance.

The Slovak Association of Audio-visual Producers chose it as the best MFFK Febiofest 2016 film. Special prize of international jury went to the film Process by Czech director Johana Svarcova; the audience selected as its favourite Slovak film We Are Leaving This Country by Dominik Jursa.

Announcing Febiofest 2016 awards on March 23. (Source: Jan Koller for MFFK Febiofest)

Czech documentary filmmaker Trestikova appeared at the Film Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava on March 18 to discuss her film Zkaza krasou / Doomed Beauty, which describes the life story of Lida Baarova. The Czech actress known for her love affair with Joseph Goebbels, the German minister of propaganda before and during World War II, when she was working for the major German film producer of the time, UFA.

Czech filmmaker Petr Zelenka, French/Georgian Otar Iosseliani and Spanish experimental filmmaker Albert Serra offered master classes.

Serra screened his most recent movie Stories about My Death (2013). It describes the meeting of Casanova and Count Dracula somewhere in the depths of the historical Romanian countryside. It uses the two universes, the world and the life of the 18th century as perceived by sensual but rational Casanova  which has to be confronted with the more romantic, darker, esoteric, obscure world of a romanticist, as he himself explained before the screening on March 19.

The Catalonian filmmaker is known for his specific, expressionist and experimental film language and tools, in which he makes no compromises, as well as for frequent inspiration from literature.

Albert Serra at his masterclass (Source: Robert Tappert for MPhilm )

I am happy when they show my films, Serra told The Slovak Spectator. But for me, I did the master class mostly because of the young audience, to expand their horizons, and to show and explain to them other things apart from the mainstream.

Farid Eslam, a German director and co-producer of the documentary about musicians and artists in the Arab world called Yallah! Underground was also on hand. The film follows the artists work and lives before, during and after the Arab Spring. Eslam told The Slovak Spectator that he was primarily interested in how the Slovak audience perceived the film and thought it might help eliminate bias.

Farid Eslam (Source: Robert Tappert for MPhilms)

When I was growing up in an immigrant family in Germany, I was biased, he said. Then the other, unwitting and more typical Europeans would be even more biased.
Wind the clock back 30 years and Seattles coffee landscape looked something like this: a handful of neighborhood cafes were in business along with Starbucks and Stewart Brothers (later to become Seattles Best), Monorail Espresso was pulling shots from the citys first coffee cart, Kent Bakke had imported a handful of La Marzocco espresso machines to Seattle cafes, and Visions Espresso Service was born. The two decades to follow would solidify Seattle as an important player in American specialty coffee, and early pioneers including Visions helped the city become a catalyst for specialty coffee in the States.

Fast forward to 2016 and youll find the commercial and home espresso machine, equipment, and parts supplier founded by Dawn Loraas going strong in its Seattle warehouse. Visions introduced a shiny new showroom at the front of its 9,000-square-foot space last February under the watchful eye of Michael Panda Fernandez, the companys savvy new New York-based marketing manager (and a onetime Sprudge contributor).

Visions does a brisk online and wholesale business, and in an economy increasingly centered on e-commerce, dedicating resources to a revamped brick-and-mortar space is a bold move. Fernandez says the decision to invest in remodeling a physical showroom was an intentional choice to extend hospitality to customers. Sure there are a lot of folks that do the majority of their shopping online, myself included, he says. But theres something about being able to go to a space and engage with a team that is passionate about what they do in every way. Its energizing for the consumer and it fosters loyalty in what we offer.

Visions HQ fits in with its changing neighborhood, SoDo. The company has been operating out of the burgeoning industrial area since 2004. With winemakers, distillers, and a flashy new Filson store for the lumbersexual set, Fernandez says foot traffic is on the rise. You can come in and we can make you a cup of coffee or we can talk about brewers and you can feel welcome and get that service, he adds.

There are a lot of moving parts to Visions, including resale and wholesale programs for espresso machines, a coffee education lab, an online store selling grinders, brewers, and miscellaneous equipment like cleaning brushes, filters, cup printing services, and a 24/7 service department working domestically and internationally, with team members zipping around Washington state in a fleet of branded Priuses. Staff maintain a meticulously organized parts library in the back of the warehouse.

The new showroom includes gear and live machines for demoing from Synesso, Mavam, Modbar, Slayer, and more; a new retail wall; and a couple of shelves for its Visions in Focus program selling whole beans from Northwest and out-of-town roasters.

Fernandez says the remodel of the Visions showroom is one part of a complete company refresh. Connecting with the community has and will always remain important to us at Visions, he says. Our showroom and coffee education lab are a way to connect with customers, baristas, owners, and coffee enthusiasts. Weve also put a lot of time into relaunching our website and creating public education and training courses, as well as showcasing out-of-town and local roasters in our showroom, Fernandez says.

Home enthusiasts and professional baristas are welcomed at brewing and milk-art classes in the coffee education lab down the hall from the showroom. The tricked-out space has been booked for baristas training for competition; Fernandez namechecks 2015 Northwest Barista Champion Sam Schroeder and Maxwell Mooney as really cool baristas who have clocked time in the lab.

Fernandez will focus next on amping up social media, representing Visions at coffee events, and promoting the companys brand on the East Coast, where its less of a household name. Having a bicoastal presence is pretty huge. Were able to personally introduce our brand to a whole new group of folks, he says. With the advent of social media and digital marketing, we needed to change our approach. I like to say that Im responsible for reminding people of how awesome we are.

Sara Billups (@hellobillups) is a freelance journalist based in Seattle. Read more Sara Billups on Sprudge.
ANKARA (Sputnik)  On Sunday, Turkey's court in the western province of Izmir arrested Alparslan Celik for killing the pilot of the Russian Su-24 downed by the Turkish Air Force in late November.

Earlier in that day, Celik plead guilty for the murder of Russian pilot Oleg Peshkov whose Su-24 was shot down by the Turkish Air Force last November, according to Turkish Dogan News Agency.

Celik has been arrested on charges of illegal arms possession, which were denied by the detainee, CNN Turk reported.
Nowadays, Yakuza gangs need to save their troops as even for a small-scale confrontation several of their members could get arrested. If in the past, killers would get no more than 10 years in prison and upon release they would get a high-ranking position; now they could be facing at least 30 years behind the bars, which means a person's life is essentially over and that changed things dramatically, Suzuki said.

Furthermore, new Japanese anti-gang rules now hold Yakuza bosses responsible for crimes committed by lower-status members of a criminal syndicate, said Atsushi Mizoguchi, another expert on the Japanese crime scene.

"So the bosses will be reluctant to get into a struggle," Mizoguchi told journalists during a press conference last year in Tokyo.

Despite harsh anti-Yakuza laws implemented by Japanese authorities, gangs will continue to fight each other, Suzuki told Sputnik.

"An intense struggle will continue, however one cannot call it a real war," Suzuki said.

Slowly but surely it looks like the once-powerful Yamaguchi-Gumi Yakuza gang is losing its influence. Following the split last year, the Yamaguchi-Gumi decreased from around 23,000 to 14,000 members. The introduction of the harsh anti-gang laws by authorities has also decreased the power of Japanese criminal groups.

Keino Suzuki became involved in the world of Yakuza at the age of 17. One day he was nearly killed and was forced to go on the run. It was then he decided to drastically change his life. He repented for his past crimes and converted to Christianity. After that he started an organization which aims to rehabilitate former criminals.
Probably, the members of Group of Seven are viewed as a democratic bloc, while BRICS members belong to the latter. Thus, BRICS can be compared with autocratic blocs like Axis powers or Warsaw pact that were true prime threats to democracy worldwide. Such an analogy fails and its easy to see why.

The survival of both Axis powers and Warsaw Pact rested upon their autocratic influences in specific way. There wasnt any their member that has adopted any sort of democratic system! However, the recent example when former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva was detained proves how the analogy fails.

Even very adored national leader is inferior to basic democratic principles. However, this example also shows where the only threats to democracy actually are these times.

They are in the domain of inside threats. Practically, it can be the corruption that grows due to the economic crisis. Threats could lead to further deviations of democracy, including the most severe ones such as freedom violations and autocratic leaderships that resemble autocracies, but crucially dont belong to them. What actually makes true autocracy is its geopolitical sustainment (excluding well-known example, though devoid of any autocratic influence). Democracies that are strong enough inside are not much susceptible to autocratic influences.
Just as I am writing this it happened again! At least 60 innocent people were killed by a terrorist attack in Lahore, Pakistan and again it went largely ignored by the world leaders and world media. It looks like some people are more important than others, Hashem noted.

With their extensive coverage of barbaric acts perpetrated by terrorists groups in the West the media actually plays into the hands of people like Behring Breivik, who say that Islam and Muslims are at war with the West, she added.

Daesh mostly kills Muslims

The hard fact is that the Muslim world suffers more from Daesh than any other nation or ethnic group, Manije B.Hashem wrote.

Daesh has killed more Muslims than anyone else. It is responsible for the present migrant crisis and it has given Islam a very bad name.

Online papers and Facebook are full of hateful comments about Islam and Muslims made by people who think that Daesh kills Westerners only while sparing fellow Muslims.

I wish those who write these comment realized that we, Muslims, despise Daesh and other terrorists groups as much as they do, she noted.

Unless we realize that Daesh is against the whole world, including Muslims, that terror is terror be it in Turkey, Syria, Paris or Brussel, and learn to value people regardless of their nationality or creed, we will never prevail over our common enemy, Manije B.Hashem wrote in conclusion.
To make sure that tourists keep coming over all year round the Greek companies are promoting agro-, gastronomical and wine tourism, which is particularly popular in Russia. We also offer all kinds of sea cruises and yachting and scuba diving programs.

Family tourism is also very popular in Russia, just like medicinal and health-building ones, the Minister said.

When asked if the high cost of vacationing in Greece, compared to what was traditionally offed by Egypt and Turkey, Elena Kountoura said that even though Greece was an EU country, the prices there are pretty affordable.

Instead of jacking up prices just like many non-EU countries are doing now, Greek tour companies offer very good prices and financially attractive package deals too, she added.

When asked about the number of Greek tourists coming to Russia, Elena Kountoura said that despite the economic downturn of the past few years 7 percent more Greek tourists visited Russia in 2015.

Unlike Egypt and Turkey, Russians need a visa to visit Greece. When asked if Russians travelers were turned off by this the Minister said that there were 28 Greek visa centers currently at work in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Samara, Nizhny Novgorod and other cities across Russia.

We already have increased our staff to speed up the visa process. Besides, we have service desks available at banks and we are now setting up six mobile biometric centers elsewhere in Russia, Elena Kountoura said.
Letter from IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde to Greece Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras https://t.co/SaKEpdneY7  IMF (@IMFNews) 3 April 2016

Tsipras is  in fact  on the side of the IMF, as he has been calling for debt relief  an avenue blocked principally by German's Angela Merkel, who is pressing for Greece to make major changes to its tax and state pension schemes. The suggestion that the IMF was threatening to leave the Troika plays into Tsipras' hands.

According to the internal discussion published by WikiLeaks, Thomsen said:

"Look you, Mrs. Merkel, you face a question: you have to think about what is more costly, to go ahead without the IMF--would the Bundestag say 'The IMF is not on board?', or [to] pick the debt relief that we think that Greece needs in order to keep us on board?" In the account, Velkulesku is said to have remarked "This is going to be a disaster."

Debt Relief Demands

Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek Minister of Finance who reigned over the bailout deal, wrote in Der Spiegem: "Ever since the first Greek 'bailout' program was signed, in May 2010, the IMF has been violating its own 'primary directive': the obligation not to fund insolvent governments. As a result, the IMF's leadership has been facing a revolt from its staff members who demand an exit strategy arguing that, if the EU continues to obstruct the debt relief necessary to restore the solvency of the Greek government, the IMF should leave the Greek program.

"Five years on, this IMF-EU impasse continues, causing a one-third collapse of Greek GDP and fueling hopelessness to a degree that has made real reform harder than ever."

Proof that the troika = a rogue cabal of incompetent unaccountable apparatchiks Must be disbanded for Europe's sake https://t.co/u23Ek5jtkz  Yanis Varoufakis (@yanisvaroufakis) April 2, 2016

"Back in February 2015, when I first met Poul Thomsen (the IMF's European chief) in a Paris hotel, a fortnight after assuming Greece's finance ministry, he appeared even keener than I was to press for a debt write off: 'At a minimum', he told me ' US$61 billion of Greece's debt left over from the first 'bailout' should be written off immediately in exchange for serious reforms.' "

Speaking today in response to the WikiLeaks revelations regarding the Greek debt situation Gianni Pittella, president of the S&D Group in the Europan Parliament said:

"If the recent news on the International Monetary Fund leak is confirmed, this would again call into question the credibility and authority of the IMF, which under no circumstances should give the impression it is acting as a political body, pursuing political goals. We do expect an official denial from the IMF.

"The European Commission and the Greek authorities have paved the way for an agreement on the review and we urge the IMF not to create unjustified obstacles to it. An agreement on reasonable fiscal targets must be found as soon as possible," Pitella said.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Earlier in the day, the March deal between the European Union and Turkey, under which Ankara pledged to take back any illegal migrants who arrive to the bloc through its territory and instead send legal Syrian refugees to the bloc, came into force.

"On Monday, Frontex assisted Greece in transporting 202 migrants on three ferries from the islands of Lesbos and Chios to Turkey," Frontex representative Paulina Bakula said, adding that operation involved 180 escort officers deployed by the agency.

According to earlier reports, the first boat carried 136 migrants, mostly Pakistani nationals, and landed at the Turkish coastal town of Dikili.
The meetings  known as "Trilogues" as they are a dialogues between the three institutions  are called to agree policies which are then put before lawmakers as a fait accompli. The campaign group says there were more than 1,500 trilogues in the last parliamentary session and that democracy is not being seen to work.

"Most people have never heard of Trilogues. The word trilogue does not appear in the European Treaties and is not officially part of the EU legislative procedure. Yet, since the Lisbon Treaty the number of trilogues has skyrocketed and during the last legislative term more than 1,500 trilogue meetings took place," the group said.

"Almost all EU law now go through this process in which the European Commission, the Parliament and the Council informally attempt to reach early agreements. But trilogues are exempt from normal transparency provisions. The view that most deals in Brussels are made behind closes doors is probably more true for trilogues than for any other part of the legislative process  a process that is often more transparent than in most member states."
The IMF representatives believe that the referendum in the UK, scheduled for the end of June, may paralyze the decision-making process in Europe at a critical moment.

According to Thomsen, Greece is not even close to the adoption of European demands. Velculescu, for her turn, said all creditors should exert further pressure on the Greek government and force it to pay back.

"They want Greece to continue to pay. [] So it's a game of pushing, and pushing to screw the Greeks, to make them pay and to use these threats  and they are very very serious threats, basically: If you don't pay we'll just smash you,'" professor of binary economics Rodney Shakespeare said in an interview with RT.

"The West and Germans, in particular, are going to reinsure that Greece becomes a debt peon and agrees to pay more and more forevermore. It's a nasty situation. And on top of that, they want to use Greece as a lesson for the UK, and to say if you dare pull out of Europe we will do to you what we are doing to Greece," Shakespeare said.

The problem for the IMF is that the European Commission wants to reach a compromise and takes a softer line on the issue. The main disagreement between them is whether to pressure the country to the end, until it is unable to pay and withdraws from the Eurozone, or stick to a more careful approach, pulling money out of Greece step by step.
But despite the increased police presence in Brussels, the terror attacks were not stopped and the prime reason for that is that the attackers werent immigrants, but were born and raised in Brussels.

Bikovtsova believes that this tolerance will be the downfall of Brussels.

Now, when it comes to talking about terrorist acts, Belgians prefer to remain silent. Their policy is this: yes, there is a problem, but we will not discuss it. They say, Well, what can we do? They have brought in a terrible tolerance and love even those who kill them. After terrorist attacks in Paris, when reporters spoke with the families of the victims, they said, we do not hold any grudge because we do not want to raise children in an atmosphere of hatred towards others. Here it is a similar story and I think that this tolerance will destroy them, Bikovtsova said.

She further stressed that even now she hasnt heard from any of the locals that it is necessary to tighten immigration policy and to carefully inspect the Arab population residing in Brussels.

But there is a certain tension in the city. When Arab looking people walk into the metro there is a sense of forbidding that sweeps the people. But the migrants feel this sense of fear as much as the local people do.

Bikovtsova further told that there is very large Arab population in Belgium. Arab women are very polite; they always give their seat to elderly or children in public transport. But the Arab men especially teenagers, are rowdy and never speak French, only their own language.

Regarding Russians living in Brussels, Bikovstova said that there is no prejudice against Russian living here, and they are very well treated.

I recently bought on the street from a seller some waffles. He was Italian, we started talking and he said that he loves and respects Putin  and he is not the first person who said it to me.

Many Russians receiving Belgian citizenship do not give up their Russian ones just because they are not sure what will happen next.

According to Bikovstova sooner or later, everybody will live under the Sharia law in Brussels. So I cannot say with certainty that we will stay here forever  I do not want to live in the Arab world, by the Arab laws.
The bus station in the overall quiet historical town of Skara has long had a reputation for being unsafe, especially in the evenings. The municipality was even forced to hire extra guards to fight off crime . The town's reputation has recently been tarnished by a number of fights and robberies, which is why asylum-seekers from the nearby accommodation center voluntarily began patrolling the area in order to maintain order and prevent any commotion.

The association Skara United, which is topped by Sahlemariam Tesfai, decided to take action after the bus station was plagues by violent crime. A number of volunteers among the asylum-seekers have divided themselves into smaller groups in order to patrol the station area in the evenings.

"By keeping an eye on the area, we hope to help regain Skara's safety and security," said Sahlemariam as quoted by Skaraborgs Lanstidning.
Moreover, the organization has entered into discussions with the Turkish authorities on how to ensure the safety of refugees who have or will be deported from Greece under the recent EU-Turkey deal.

"UNHCR is in discussions with the Turkish authorities about how people of concern would have access to effective protection in Turkey. These discussions are ongoing," Zoran Stevanovic, spokesman for UNHCR Regional Representation for Northern Europe, said.

The UNHCR has already expressed concern over the lack of safeguards in place regarding the implementation of the EU-Turkey deal, under which Ankara pledged to take back illegal migrants who cross the Aegean Sea to enter the European Union through Greece and instead send legal Syrian refugees to the bloc.

The UN agency hopes that Turkey will soon endorse the amendment of the Temporary Protection regulation in order to grant a protected status to Syrians readmitted from Greece, Stevanovic said.

"As part of our broader mandate, including our monitoring role, we are seeking access to those returned in Turkey in order to see that they can access effective international protection and to prevent risk of refoulement," Stevanovic added.

The agency also monitors asylum procedures inside the detention centers in the Greek islands of Lesvos, Chios, Samos and Leros.

UNHCR provides humanitarian assistance to almost 50,000 people in Greece, as well as supporting the Greek government in identifying people with specific needs and vulnerable groups, Stevanovic added.
Moscow notes with regret lack of interest on the part of Washington in any cooperation on the Syrian historic city of Palmyra that has recently been recaptured from Daesh.

"I note with regret that we see no particular enthusiasm and keen approach to a possible engagement in tackling issues related to humanitarian demining [of Palmyra] on the part of Washington," the diplomat told RIA Novosti adding that a Russian Defense Ministry special unit has already been directly involved in the operation.

The Syrian army and militias supported by Russian Aerospace Forces gained full control of Palmyra, seized by Daesh militants in May 2015, last week.

Russia, US Will Never Share Common Stance on Assad's Future

Moscow and Washington will never reach common ground regarding the future of Syrian President Bashar Assad, Sergei Ryabkov said.

"We will never find common ground with our colleagues from Washington and from some other capitals who think that we should work under the motto 'Assad must resign,'" he told RIA Novosti.

"We will never find common ground on the matter not only because it contradicts our entire foreign policy doctrine, under which regime change, 'color revolutions' and social engineering from the outside are unacceptable, but also simply because such a condition leaves no future for any political process," the deputy foreign minister said.

Moscow believes that its Western partners are not fully implementing the requirements enshrined in the UN Security Council resolution on Syria, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said.

Like in many cases before Palmyra [liberation] we feel that Washingtons approach depends upon certain priorities and preferences, Ryabkov said adding that in particular the United States continues to reject Damascus as a legitimate partner for these or those actions or decisions.

That is why, unfortunately, our Western colleagues, and not only Western, are so obsessed with Bashar Assad and the demonization of the Syrian government that  they fail to comply with the requirements of corresponding UNSC resolutions to the full extent, the Russian diplomat elaborated.

However, despite some differences, Moscow and Washington continue working daily on "specifying and expanding" the UN lists of terrorists, Ryabkov said.

Kurds Must Join Next Round of Intra-Syrian Talks

Moscow expects that the participants of the intra-Syrian talks will be able to make progress on the settlement at the next round.

"We expect the next step to be taken, which envisages talks among the participants, after working on [UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan] de Mistura's document and summing up what they heard during the previous round, formulating what is acceptable in his proposals and what requires adjusting and in what way. Thus, the next step will be taken and the participants of the negotiations will be able to note progress," Ryabkov told RIA Novosti.

The negotiating process is more or less moving along, despite certain difficulties and despite absence of Kurds. This, by the way, is an extremely serious issue and the next round must definitely take place with full-fledged involvement of Kurdish representatives from Syria.

Otherwise, the diplomat added, we would contradict ourselves by stating that the future of Syria, as a unified, secular, territorially intact, independent [state] must be decided by the citizens of this country.
The EU hopes to stop the flow of illegal migrants through Turkey. A top United Nations official has warned that the EU-Turkey refugee deal could be illegal.

United Nations Special Representative for International Migration Peter Sutherland said on Saturday that deportation of migrants and refugees without considering their asylum applications first would violate international law.

Under the latest agreement, the EU will send all illegal migrants and refugees who have reached the Greek islands since March 20 back to Turkey in exchange for legal Syrian refugees on a one-for-one basis.

The deal goes into effect on Monday. Radio Sputnik discussed the EU-Turkey agreement with Director of Bridging Europe think-tank Dimitris Rapidis in an interview.

Turkey is not at all prepared for this process. We do not have any strategic information on how this will be done. Some media are saying that 500 migrants will be sent back to Turkey but even if this is done we need to see the development of this deal in the coming weeks. So far the European Union has no specific plan. Turkey had a problem on implementing the deal one month ago and in Greece there is complete chaos.

Rapidis further said that this move violates Geneva Convention because Turkey is not a part of it and Turkey cannot be considered as a safe country for these refugees.

Turkey has already received more than two million refugees from Syria. Jordan, Libya for instance are way smaller countries than the EU and have received more than two million refugees from Syria with a population of five to six million, Rapidis said.

He further spoke about the efforts that Turkey has made to accommodate the refugees and how the rest of the countries should assist Turkey in its efforts.

I think we will have another round of failed decisions by the European Union and I see a new round of negotiations with Turkey with respect to the amount that Turkey will receive to accommodate the refugees.
Alex was born in the city of Volgograd in central Russia. His father is a respected professor in the university. Alex himself had a science degree, a good job, a loving wife and three children. Therefore, it came as a shock to Alexs dad when he took his family and joined Daesh terrorists in Syria.

The RT correspondent met with Alexs father in Volgograd. He said, He ended up there along with his wife, his young children and what happened to them I don't know, the father told Finoshina. I tried to make him understand, I said: Aren't you scared that your children, my grandchildren, will be killed for their organs?

His father further said that Alex converted to Islam a decade ago. One Egyptian, who was studying at the medical faculty and went to the gym with him, got him hooked. Meanwhile Tamara wasn't really into all that (Islam), she did it all for him, according to her friend.

Daesh has deployed millions of dollars to organize online and in person recruitment campaigns worldwide, mostly focusing on outcast youths who are eager to give up their lives for the perverse jihadist ideology.
The Su-30SM went through a baptism by fire during the Russian air campaign in Syria. Several Su-30SM jets were involved in the operation.

"It is an exceptionally reliable aircraft. We faced no technical problem during flights," a source involved in the operation told Gazeta.ru.

The two-seat jet fighter is equipped with a phased array antenna radar, thrust vector control engines, and horizontal stabilizers.

The manufacturer does not provide official information on the Su-30SM flight and technical specifications because the "aircraft is delivered to the Russian Defense Ministry."

However, it is known that the jet is capable of carrying modern and advanced air-to-air and air-to-surface weapons.

The ministry noted that the maneuvering specs make the Su-30SM capable of performing new aerobatic maneuvers, including controlled spin and low-velocity horizontal flight with an elevation angle of 60 degrees.

The Su-30SM has upgraded combat capabilities, including acquiring and destroying targets. The potential of the aircraft is equal to the capabilities of two previous-generation jets.

"It can fly not only with positive and negative g-forces but also with lateral acceleration. This allows for new possibilities in maneuvers needed in aerial combat," Maj. Gen. Alexander Kharchevsky explained.

"The use of super maneuverable jets creates new combat tactics in the air," he added.
The new FS Marjata IV will be one of the two ships which Norway and NATO will send into the high Arctic seas in an attempt to find lurking Russian submarines which have been terrifying the imagination of Scandinavians for the last couple of years.

The new Marjata IV is the significantly improved and bigger version of its predecessors which have been operated by the Norwegian Intelligence Service since the days of the Cold War. The fourth model of the reconnaissance ship is 126 meters (413 feet) long and 23.5 meters (77 feet) wide. The ship's equipment was developed by experts at the Chatham naval base in the United States. The Marjata project ended up being one of the most expensive ones in the history of the Norwegian military  approximately 149 million euros ($170 million), according to the Swedish newspaper.

Furthermore, in addition to the new Marjata IV, the Norwegian Navy plans to re-equip its older, third-generation Marjata and send it back to keep an eye out for potential Russian submarines. For the first time in history there will be two Marjata ships sent by the Norwegian Navy.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The letter was posted online a day after WikiLeaks published a transcript of a phone call between IMF European Department chief Poul Thomsen and the IMF Mission Chief for Greece Delia Velculescu where they agreed that a threat of imminent financial catastrophe was needed to make Athens agree to tighter austerity.

The same day, the Greek authorities demanded explanations from IMF whether it was planning to coerce Athens into new austerity measures, according to Greek government spokeswoman Olga Gerovasili.

"My view of the ongoing negotiations is that we are still a good distance away from having a coherent program that I can present to our Executive Board. I have on many occasions stressed that we can only support a program that is credible and based on realistic assumptions, and that delivers on its objective of setting Greece on a path of robust growth while gradually restoring debt sustainability," Lagarde said in a letter issued on Sunday.
Leitl stressed that Russia is one of the most important partner for Brussels. According to him, Moscow played constructive role in the Iranian nuclear talks and contributed a lot to resolving the Syrian crisis.

Tensions between Russian and the West have deepened over the crisis in Ukraine. Since 2014, the US and Brussels have imposed several rounds of sanctions against Russian companies and individuals. In response, Russia introduced a food imports ban against a number of Western countries.

The politician also said that a joint trade zone should be created "across the entire continent, from Lisbon to Vladivostok." The initiative would strengthen the positions of Europe among other global regions, he added.

Negotiations would take two-three years, and by that time sanctions may be lifted, Leitl said.

He also plans to share his ideas with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Next week, Leitl will join Austrian President Heinz Fischer during their visit to Moscow.
The joint statement issued at the end of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's official visit to Saudi Arabia has triggered a major controversy with both sides perceiving the statement differently.

Issued on April 3, the statement calls upon, "All states to reject the use of terrorism against other countries; dismantle terrorism infrastructures where they happen to exist and to cut off any kind of support and financing to the terrorists operating and perpetrating terrorism from their territories against other states; and bring perpetrators of acts of terrorism to justice".

India perceived this as an oblique reference to Pakistan and hoped that it would give a major boost to the cooperation on counter terrorism. However, media reports claim that as per a Saudi Arabian official, they read the statement as largely aimed at Iran, which they believe, is fostering sectarian violence in the Kindgom, signaling their reluctance to consider the statement as a blanket remark on terrorism worldwide. This has watered down India's expectations vis-a-vis Saudi Arabia's support in controlling Pakistan's terror activities on Indian soil.
MOSCOW (Sputnik), Alexander Mosesov  Following the outbreak of renewed violence in Nagorno-Karabakh, the Minsk Group's co-chairs  Russia, France and the United States  announced that a meeting will be held in Vienna on April 5 to discuss the situation. The Netherlands is one of the participating members in the Minsk Group.

"The key objective of the Netherlands is to support immediate negotiation under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs such that a comprehensive and lasting settlement of the conflict can be achieved," the spokesperson said.

"The unstable situation on the ground demonstrates why the sides must enter into an immediate negotiation under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs on a comprehensive settlement of the conflict. The Netherlands reiterates that there is no military solution to the conflict and finds the reports of heavy fighting along the line of contact deeply worrying," the spokesperson said.
Justin met his future wife, Natalya, on the Internet in 2009. Interest in Native American culture sparked a friendship between the two on an online forum.

Drawn together by their shared dislike of big cities and a desire to set up a prosperous farm, they eventually started looking for a house in a village in the Russian outback to settle down and start a new life.

For Natalya, a single mom at the time, the adventure led to love, marriage and a second child.

When asked how come they decided to live in Russia and not to move Stateside, Justin said: The United States? This is what they call it, but we call it Turtle Island. They killed off all the bison, they destroyed the nature. I dont want my kids to live in a reservation. I want to raise them here in Russia. Living in America is like being inside a concrete trap. The system the white people built there is not for us, he said.

Irwin said he likes genuine Communism. Not Marxism, but the original Communism derived from commune, community.

This is how we once used to live, working together as part of large communities, he added.

Big Wolf also traces his roots to the matriarchate where men, hunters and warriors, did nothing without the advice and consent of the ruling council of their mothers and grandmothers.

He said that people in Russia have everything they need to develop without capitalism and the system created by the whites.

The genocide in America still goes on and it never stopped, thats why they will never have a memorial to the Indian genocide there.

He described the ongoing wars in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East as a continuation of the genocide that once happened in North and South America.

Take a look at Africa, the Middle East Oil, money Why is it so? We should have an agreement between Russia and Lakota Indians on cultural cooperation and exchanges, Big Wolf said.
The Sanders campaign has urged supporters of the Senator to avoid the Trump rally, as the followers of each campaign have notoriously clashed. Just last month, Trump canceled a rally in Chicago when it was flooded with protesters, many of whom support Sanders. In response, the Republican frontrunner posted to his Twitter account: be careful Bernie, or my supporters will go to yours.

The rally for Vermont Senator Sanders is taking place at the BMO Harris Bradley Center, with a 19,000-seat capacity. The venue is nearly five times larger than the 4,000 seat Milwaukee Theater booked by Trump. Both events are set to begin at 7:00 PM local time  and are directly across the street from one another.

Its a free country with First Amendment rights, and certainly Donald Trump has said some things that you can understand people would disagree with, and make a point of disagreeing with him on, Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs told the Guardian at a rally in Madison on Sunday. But from our standpoint, the best way to direct those energies and all that enthusiasm tomorrow night is to come out and root for Bernie.
"Nixon, as many Republicans would later do, used the anger and distress of the black masses as fodder for a racist Southern strategy," he said. "It wasnt just Nixon. George Wallace came into Michigan, the center of the great automobile workers union at the forefront of the Civil Rights movement, and won in Michigan. White supremacy as a reaction to black resistance was on the move at this time."

"In cities across the country, the establishment was collapsing under the weight of black resistance and what Nixon promises is to give the silent majority, meaning the white supremacists, a say in these matters. He called for a war on crime which was a war on the black Civil Rights movement, black anger, and black protests."

So whats the relationship between the Black Lives Matter movement and Bernie Sanders style of Socialism?

"In this period, the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement  the anti-police terror movement that found root in the wake of Ferguson and Baltimore  that has thousands of people and has made significant but not yet fundamental changes, rises and so does Bernie Sanders movement calling for an end to neoliberal capitalist management and organization of society, wealth redistribution, free university education, universal healthcare, and an end to inequality," Monteiro said.

Dr. Monteiro sees the Sanders movement as an extension of the Black Lives Matter movement, and a culmination of the struggles of the Civil Rights movement, rather than at odds with these movements  a conflation commonly deployed by mainstream media. "Bernies movement is a political movement, not just an economic movement, putting it in collision with leadership of trade unions and the Democratic Party who believe workers should have an economic plan, but leave politics to others."
To celebrate the New Jerseys Month of the Horse, Fair Winds Farm in Cream Ridge, New Jersey will open its doors to visitors on Sunday, June 26 from 1 to 4 p.m.

The third annual free open house will be held at the farm, which is located at 74 Red Valley Road in Cream Ridge, and will allow visitors to see the inner workings of the highly successful Standardbred breeding farm, where 2011 Hambletonian winner Broad Bahn was bred and raised.

Visitors will be able to tour Hogan Equine clinic, where top flight Standardbred and Thoroughbred athletes are treated by surgeon Dr. Patty Hogan, and get a tour of the farm via horse-drawn wagon.

There will be demonstrations on the life of the Standardbred, featuring a young foal (baby horse) and his mother, along with an adult racehorse and their trainer. Other Standardbreds will show their talents off the track in under saddle disciplines, jumping, trail riding and more.

For those that just want a horse to pet and take a selfie with, retired racehorses and goodwill ambassadors Independent Act (Indy) and his pal Osbournes Shy Cam (Ozzy) will be on hand to say hello. Farrier Tom Mulryne will demonstrate how to care for a horses feet and have free lucky horseshoes for visitors to take home.

Horse centric exhibitors will also be on hand, including Rutgers Universitys Equine Science Center, the Harness Horse Youth Foundation, Future Farmers of America (FFA), 4H Clubs Knight Riders, Hearts and Horseshoes, Chapel Hill Hoofbeats and The Curry Combs. Visitors can learn about adopting or providing foster care for a horse at the Standardbred Retirement Foundation booth or buy a souvenir to support their horses.

The event will be held rain or shine. Refreshments will be available for purchase. There is ample parking available, but few paved surfaces, so visitors should wear sensible shoes and strollers may have a rough ride. Please leave dogs at home. For more information, call 732-780-3700 or email [email protected].

(USTA)
The situation in Nagorno Karabakh is the main subject not only for Armenians living in Armenia , but also Armenians living abroad. A lot of celebrities have already expressed their thoughts on this subject having joined the actions against Azerbaijan . Famous reality show star Khloe Kardashian also expresses her support and prays for Armenia .

Pray for Armenia. Pray for peace! Pray for our world! May the Lord hear our prayers,-writes Kardashian.

In the night of April 4 Azerbaijani Armed Forces have continued bombing the territory of Nagorno Karabakh Republic. The battles are still going on along the line.

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tech2 News Staff

A Gartner report claimed that Acer is the worlds leading Chromebook brand with over 33 percent market share in 2015. Now, it further expands the lineup with a new touchscreen Chromebase (CA24V), an all-in-one system dedicated for video-conferencing.

The new Chromebase includes all the hardware, software and services that one may require in a small video conference room, says Acer. It also includes 24 x 7 technical support. It features a large 24-inch Full HD (1920 x 1080) display with IPS technology with up to 178-degree wide viewing angles. To ensure that participants can hear and respond properly, it has four microphones and two speakers. There's the adjustable HD webcam and a chassis that tilts from 5 to 30 degrees.

The Chromebase for meeting solution utilises Google Hangouts to host videoconferences with up to 25 participants, supporting multiple device platforms such as laptops, tablets, and smartphones. A meeting link will allow colleagues to join the call, irrespective of where they are.

Moreover, enterprise IT administrators can deploy and manage multiple Chrome devices via Chrome Device Management. It reduces the workload of technical support and eventually the cost, claims the company. The Chromebase for meetings also integrates with other videoconferencing systems and existing phone systems.

Automatic updates will be released every six weeks to ensure security, says Acer. All the data stored will be encrypted and protected by its TPM (Trusted Platform Module) 1.2 chip. On each boot up, Verified Boot will check the integrity and validity of system files.

The Chromebase for meetings will be available at $799 that translates to approximately Rs 52,900 in the US. The amount is inclusive of the first year's $250 management and support fee. It is available for users in Canada, UK, Ireland, and Australia.
tech2 News Staff

Apple's plan to sell refurbished or used iPhones is facing stiff opposition from local players such as Samsung, Micromax, Intex and Karbonn.

According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple had applied to become the first company to import and sell used iPhones in 2015, but the environment ministry had rejected its request. Why even consider allowing import of used phones when import of other used goods such as cars are precluded by 300 percent duty levies? asked Ravinder Zutshi, chairman of the newly formed Mobile and Communications Council, which issued the letter.

Currently, Apple's application has gone to so-called inter-ministerial discussion, said Asha Nangia, a director in the Department of Electronics & Information Technology. The government could chose either way, however, it could face a great encounter from local opposition.

At the moment, Apple own less than 2 percent of the Indian market. The report points out that by selling cheaper re-furbished devices "can help convert price-sensitive consumers, who previously would have had to fork over a months earnings or more to own the coveted brand."
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The Federal Bureau of Investigation has assured law enforcement across the United States that it will help unlock mobile devices such as iPhones involved in investigations when it is allowed by law and policy.

The FBI said in a letter to local authorities that it understands the challenges they face and that they lack necessary tools to monitor and investigate the communications of suspects who use encrypted mobile devices, according to the correspondence obtained by Reuters on Friday.

"As has been our longstanding policy, the FBI will of course consider any tool that might be helpful to our partners," the FBI said. "Please know that we will continue to do everything we can to help you consistent with our legal and policy constraints."

The letter came five days after the U.S. Justice Department announced that it had dropped its legal case against Apple Inc and that it had successfully unlocked an iPhone used by Syed Farook, who went on a shooting rampage in San Bernardino, California, in December, when he and his wife killed 14 people and wounded 22.

The abrupt end to the legal confrontation that transfixed the tech industry was a victory for Apple, which vehemently opposed a court order obtained by the Justice Department.

The justice department sought to have Apple write new software to get into the iPhone and access data on it that was secured by encryption.

The FBI said in the letter that it was aware of the "worldwide publicity and attention" that was generated by the Apple litigation and that it was committed to maintaining "an open dialogue" with local law enforcement.

"We are in this together," the FBI said.

Here is the full letter sent by the FBI to local law enforcement agencies.

Since recovering an iPhone from one of the San Bernardino shooters on December 3, 2015, the FBI sought methods to gain access to the data stored on it. As the FBI continued to conduct its own research, and as a result of the worldwide publicity and attention generated by the litigation with Apple, others outside the U.S. government continued to contact the U.S. government offering avenues of possible research. In mid-March, an outside party demonstrated to the FBI a possible method for unlocking the iPhone. That method for unlocking that specific iPhone proved successful.

We know that the absence of lawful, critical investigative tools due to the Going Dark problem is a substantial state and local law enforcement challenge that you face daily. As has been our longstanding policy, the FBI will of course consider any tool that might be helpful to our partners. Please know that we will continue to do everything we can to help you consistent with our legal and policy constraints. You have our commitment that we will maintain an open dialogue with you. We are in this together.

Kerry Sleeper

Assistant Director

Office of Partner Engagement

FBI

With inputs from Reuters
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The FBI's method for breaking into a locked iPhone 5c is unlikely to stay secret for long, according to senior Apple Inc engineers and outside experts.

Once it is exposed, Apple should be able to plug the encryption hole, comforting iPhone users worried that losing physical possession of their devices will leave them vulnerable to hackers.

When Apple does fix the flaw, it is expected to announce it to customers and thereby extend the rare public battle over security holes, a debate that typically rages out of public view.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation last week dropped its courtroom quest to force Apple to hack into the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters, saying an unidentified party provided a method for getting around the deceased killer's unknown passcode.

If the government pursues a similar case seeking Apples help in New York, the court could make the FBI disclose its new trick.

But even if the government walks away from that battle, the growing number of state and local authorities seeking the FBIs help with locked phones in criminal probes increases the likelihood that the FBI will have to provide it. When that happens, defense attorneys will cross-examine the experts involved.

Although each lawyer would mainly be interested in whether evidence-tampering may have occurred, the process would likely reveal enough about the method for Apple to block it in future versions of its phones, an Apple employee said.

"The FBI would need to resign itself to the fact that such an exploit would only be viable for a few months, if released to other departments," said Jonathan Zdziarski, an independent forensics expert who has helped police get into many devices. "It would be a temporary Vegas jackpot that would quickly get squandered on the case backlog."

In a memo to police obtained by Reuters on Friday, the FBI said it would share the tool "consistent with our legal and policy constraints."

Even if the FBI hoards the information - despite a White House policy that tilts toward disclosure to manufacturers - if it is not revealed to Apple, there are other ways the method could come to light or be rendered ineffective over time, according to Zdziarski and senior Apple engineers who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The FBI may use the same method on phones in cases in which the suspects are still alive, presenting the same opportunity for defense lawyers to pry.

In addition, the contractor who sold the FBI the technique might sell it to another agency or country. The more widely it circulates, the more likely it will be leaked.

Flaws of this nature have a pretty short life cycle, one senior Apple engineer said. Most of these things do come to light.

The temporary nature of flaws is borne out in the pricing of tools for exploiting security holes in the government-dominated market for zero-days, called that because the companies whose products are targets have had zero days warning of the flaw.

Many of the attack programs that are sold to defense and intelligence contractors and then to government buyers are purchased over six months, with payments spaced apart in case the flaw is discovered or the hole is patched incidentally with an update from the manufacturer, market participants told Reuters.

Although Apple is concerned about consumer perception, employees said the company had made no major recent changes in policy. Instead, its engineers take pride in the fact that a program for breaking into an iPhone via the web was recently purchased by a defense contractor for $1 million, and that even that program is likely to be short-lived.

They said most iPhone users have more to fear from criminals than from countries, and few crooks can afford anything like what it costs to break into a fully up-to-date iPhone.

Reuters
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Video provider Netflix did not violate any U.S. regulations when it "throttled" the picture quality for AT&T and Verizon wireless customers and the FCC has no plans to investigate, FCC chairman Tom Wheeler said.

Wheeler said Netflix's conduct was "outside" the FCC's net neutrality rules adopted last year, because the FCC is not regulating "edge providers" or websites. Asked if the FCC had authority to investigate, Wheeler said that this "is outside the open Internet" order by the Federal Communications Commission.

Last week Netflix acknowledged degrading the picture quality for AT&T and Verizon mobile users because of data caps.

Ken McEldowney, executive director at advocacy group Consumer Action, said Netflix actions "demonstrate a complete lack of transparency with customers, but the news is also confusing: Netflix settings have long allowed users to choose their own preferred balance of picture quality vs. data usage."

He added that "most consumers that encounter video playback issues are likely to unfairly place the blame on their broadband providers."

Last week, AT&T Senior Executive Vice President Jim Cicconi criticized Netflix. "We're outraged to learn that Netflix is apparently throttling video for their AT&T customers without their knowledge or consent," Cicconi said.

Netflix didn't return a message seeking comment.

Netflix told The Wall Street Journal last week it had taken the actions for more than five years to "protect consumers from exceeding mobile data caps."

Wheeler was asked if Netflix actions were pro-consumer, but he declined to venture an opinion.

Reuters
tech2 News Staff

Samsung may soon unveil a game-changing device for consumers in 2017. The company is reportedly planning to introduce a 5-inch smartphone, which when folded, can turn in to a 7-inch tablet!

According to a report by ET News, a prototype of foldable display is finished with development and the company is hoping to mass-produce the device starting from second half of this year. Currently, the device is being referred to as 'smartlet.'

The device can bend a screen in half by using OLED Display and one can simply carry it like a wallet and use it by opening it. "Although mass-production cannot be concluded hastily since Samsung Electronics still has few other major tasks to complete, Ive heard that Samsung Electronics had made considerable amount of results in the time being," said a representative of an industry that is familiar with development of Samsung Electronics foldable smartphone.

A previous report pointed out that Samsungs foldable phone was expected to debut in January this year. Citing a source from China related to the matter, it was pointed out that the project dubbed Project Valley was undergoing testing.

The foldable device was being tested in two configurations  one featuring Snapdragon 620 processor and the other with a Snapdragon 820 chipset. Some other specs include microSd card slot, 3GB RAM and a non-removable battery.
tech2 News Staff

Paul Smith, founding advisor of Spark10, Indias first European accelerator and co-founder and CEO of Ignite100, Europes angel-led acceleration fund and investor has said that Hyderabad has a chance to be world leader in technology. "But, you need people and skills to support. Our vision through Spark10 is to see every house in India has an entrepreneur," he said.

"Spark10 will expand to other cities in Telangana and different parts of the country. Spark10 plans to invest $100 million in Indian startups in next two years. Our vision is to have 500 plus mentors. We have already roped in 100 plus mentors, who have already given their consent," informed Atal Malviya, founder -- Spark10.

Some of these mentors include Masato of Japan, the brain behind Avatar, the American science fiction film; Jon Bradford, the Startup Accelerator expert in UK; Jonathan Quigley, Director of World Economic Forum; Director of CHC (Consumer Health Care) at BoehringerIngelheim, a global group of companies in Japan and Founder CEO Sleep out UK; Kevin Wilkins, founder of Trepwise, an entrepreneurship consultancy firm, Apurva Roy Chowdhary, Apple Evangelist, Deepak Narayanan, CEO of MyCFO, an implementation services company; Jaroslab Berce, a leadership professor and author of Leadership by Virtue book from University of Slovania; Nichelle N. McCall, Startup Strategist and CEO at BOLD Guidance; Navneeth Nayagam, Head of Operations, Novartis, Switzerland and others.

Vivek Reddy another associate of Spark10 disclosed that they would soon expand to Warangal, the next IT destination in the newly formed state of Telangana where they would set up an Accelerator and an Incubation Center. We are in negotiation with institutes of national reputation and various government bodies in Warangal for tie ups. We would like to reach as many tier-II and tier-III cities as possible for our future expansion, he shared.
tech2 News Staff

Uber had recently withdrawn their bike taxi service and revamped it into a pilot scheme without commission. Now even the pilot scheme seems to be in trouble as the Transport Department again seized 12 bike taxis as reported by The Hindu.

Uber had restarted its bike taxi pilot in Bengaluru, pivoting it to a ride-sharing model in order to navigate the restrictions put in place by the Karnataka government. The department seized 62 bike taxis a week after the scheme was launched by Uber in the city early on March 18. Soon after this, the aggregator had stopped operations for a while before re-launching it by branding it as a pilot.

The report pointed out that after seeking legal advice, the department resumed its crackdown. Uber also stated in a blog post that it would not charge a commission and would present the findings of the pilot project to the government. Since it was not offering services for hire or reward, the Transport Department was unsure about stopping the bike taxis.

Indias motor vehicle act does not have a provision for yellow boards on two-wheelers, which is required for commercial operations. Karnataka had asked ride-hailing services such as Uber, Ola and Ridingo to approach the Road Transport Authority (RTA) in order to seek provisions for operating bike taxis legally, informs Business Standard.
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An initial flurry of orders has put Tesla Motors' new Model 3 sedan off to a fast start, but the company may need to raise more cash if it hopes to deliver the new electric vehicle to customers on time, analysts said on Friday.

Tesla's stock price bounced around $237 in afternoon trading after opening at nearly $248, the highest mark in six months. Up to Thursday's close, Tesla stock had soared 60 percent since hitting a 12-month low in February.

Chief Executive Elon Musk's ambitious plans include launching the Model 3, Tesla's first mass-market car, in late 2017 and boosting the company's annual production tenfold to 500,000 by 2020.

But there are concerns among some investors in Tesla, which has promised to turn profitable this year, even after the hoopla and exuberance surrounding the unveiling late on Thursday of a Model 3 prototype.

On Friday, Musk said the company had taken orders for 198,000 Model 3s in the first 24 hours. Analysts questioned how long it could take to deliver those cars after the slower-than-expected launch of the company's Model X sport utility vehicle late last year.

Higher-than-expected demand could mean that some customers making early reservations may not take delivery until 2019 or 2020, analysts said.

Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas, a longtime Tesla booster, predicted the Silicon Valley car maker's sales will hit just under 250,000 in 2020, but maintained a bullish $333 price target on the stock.

Barclays analyst Brian Johnson, with a bearish $165 price target, believes the surge of Model 3 reservations - each accompanied by a refundable $1,000 deposit - could reach 300,000 by the end of June.

The higher-than-expected number of orders could "set the stage for an equity offering" after the company's first-quarter results are posted, Johnson said.

Much of any additional cash raised this year will be needed for Tesla's new U.S. factories, as well as for further product development, Johnson said.

While the Model 3 will have a starting price of $35,000, some analysts expect the first cars will sell for an average of $50,000-$60,000. Tesla prices its current models in several "tiers," depending on content and optional features.

RBC analyst Joseph Spak, who has a $180 price target, said strong initial orders for the Model 3 could help Tesla achieve positive free cash flow - a persistent issue for the company as it has struggled to build production capacity at its Fremont plant in California and finish construction of a battery "gigafactory" near Reno, Nevada.

In February, the company said it expected to be cash-flow positive in March.

Tesla still faces a challenge in ramping up production for the Model 3.

Spak said Tesla may not be able to fulfill many of the early orders before 2019: "Demand was never really our concern, it is more about execution and getting production up to meet demand."

Tesla, established in 2003, had sold less than 110,000 vehicles in its history through December, Sanford C. Bernstein analysts noted.

By the time the Model 3 goes into production, it could face stiff competition from several entrants.

One key competitor is General Motors Co's Chevrolet Bolt EV, which is expected to launch later this year and also will be priced from around $35,000.

Another is BMW's i3, which is slated soon for an extensive makeover, as well as a redesigned version of the Nissan Leaf that's due late next year.

Underscoring investor wariness about Tesla's prospects, financial service Markit says short interest in the company's stock has been around 25 percent of shares outstanding since early in the year. Short interest is a measure of investors who expect shares to fall.

Reuters
tech2 News Staff

Xiaomi announced its 'Mi Ecosystem' last week with the launch of the Mi Induction Heating Pressure Rice Cooker which is priced at RMB 999 (approximately Rs 10,200). It is said to be 40 percent the price of comparable high-end Japanese induction heating pressure rice cookers.

The Chinese phone maker expects the Mi Ecosystem, with products such as power strips, air purifiers, Ninebot and so on, to bring in $1.5 billion in sales this year. According to Liu De, Xiaomi's vice president of industrial design and ecosystem quoted in the Wall Street Journal, this is double the revenue from last year.

According to Liu De, Xiaomi does not make the Mi Ecosystem products itself but its partners make them. He said that these Mi Ecosystem products offer better net margins than its phones due to the fierce competition in China.

"Its like, our phones are so well-made, so cheap, the margins are so thin, De said. Buying a power bank from us is like giving us a tip, in a way.

To build the Mi Ecosystem, Xiaomi has so far reportedly invested in 55 companies that design and manufacture products beyond its three core product categories which include smartphones, smart TVs and smart routers. Among these, 29 companies including Zhimi (which makes the Mi Air Purifier) and Viomi (which makes the Mi Water Purifier) have been incubated by Xiaomi.
Azerbaijan, Armenia locked in deadly clashes over Karabakh

AFP, Baku :

Azerbaijan said Armenian forces had killed three of its troops yesterday, as clashes over the disputed region of Nagorny Karabakh continued for a third day despite international pressure to stop fighting. The Azeri defence ministry said three servicemen were killed when Armenians shelled their positions using mortars and grenade launchers.

"In the event of continued Armenian provocations, we will launch a full-scale operation along the entire front line, using all kinds of weapons," ministry spokesman Vagif Dargahly told journalists.

Separately, the rebels, in a statement from their unrecognised capital of Stepanakert in Nagorny Karabakh, said Azeri troops "intensified shelling of the Karabakh army positions on Monday morning, using 152-millimetre mortars, rocket-propelled artillery and tanks."

In the Armenian capital of Erevan, defence ministry spokesman Artsrun Hovhannisyan said the rebels "seriously advanced at certain sectors of the front line and took up new positions." The report was quickly dismissed as "untrue" by Azerbaijan.

Its defence ministry said it was in control of several strategic heights in Karabakh that were captured by Azeri troops on Saturday..

Russia and the West appealed to all sides for restraint after the fighting-the worst outbreak of violence in decades over the disputed territory-erupted on Friday night.

At least 33 troops and two civilians have died.

On Sunday, Azerbaijan said it had decided to "unilaterally cease hostilities" and pledged to "reinforce" several strategic positions it claimed to have captured inside the Armenian-controlled territory.

The authorities in Karabakh-which claims independence but is heavily backed by Armenia-said they were willing to discuss a ceasefire but only if it saw them regain their territory.

Ethnic Armenian separatists backed by Yerevan seized control of the mountainous Nagorny Karabakh region in an early 1990s war that claimed some 30,000 lives. The foes have never signed a peace deal despite the 1994 ceasefire.
5-point demand memo of auto-rickshaw owners given to Mayor

Members of Chittagong CNG Baby Taxi Owners\' Association brought out a procession to press home their 5-point demands yesterday.

Chittagong Bureau :

The auto-rickshaw owners consist of four associations of Chittagong submitted memorandum to the City Mayor AJM Nasir Uddin yesterday morning with 5-points demand including registration of 4 thousand newly procured CNG run auto-rickshaws .

During handing over the memorandum owners, workers and leaders of 5 owners associations were present on the occasion. Before handing over memo , a huge rally as organized jointlyby Chittagong Autorickshaw-Auto Tempo, 4-stroke CNG Owners Association, Chittagong CNG Baby Taxi Malik Kaylan Samity,Chittagong CNG 3-Wheler Baby Taxi Malik Samity and Chittagong Auto-rickshaw- AutoTempo Sramik Union at DC hill premises in the morning.

Out of the 5-demands beside the new registration are - formulation of new service rule for CNG, parking of CNG autorickshaw, new driving license issue as per existing govt fees, alleviation of corruption from BRTA office and stoppage of extortions in the name of M.V case in district and highways by law enforcing agencies. Copies of the memorandum also sent to Police commissioner, BRTA, and other concerned offices, sources said.


Two killed while 'making bombs' in Bogra

Two people were killed in a blast while making bombs at a house in Sherpur Upazila in Bogra on Sunday night. Police on information recovered grenades, pistol and ammunition from the spot.

Bogra Correspondent :

Two people were killed in an explosion reportedly while making bombs at Juanpur Kuthibari village in Sherpur

upazila on Sunday night.

The identities of the deceased could not be known yet. Locals said a bomb went off with a big bang at the house of one Mahbubur Rahman at the village around 8:15pm which left one dead on the spot and another injured.

On information, police rushed in and sent the injured to Shaheed Ziaur Rahman Medical College Hospital where he died around 11:3pm, said town sub-inspector Shah Alam, in-charge of the hospital police camp.

Police also recovered 16 crude bombs, two modems, one magazine and a mobile phone set from the spot.
5 killed : 60 hurt in police firing

Triangular clash over construction site of coal-based power plant at Banshkhali of Ctg: Sec 144 violated

Staff ReporterAt least five people were killed and 60 other injured including six policemen in a triangular clash between police and two groups of villagers over constructing a coal-based power plant at Banshkhali upazila in Chittagong on Monday.Banshkhali Upazila Nirbahi Officer (UNO) Mohammed Shamsuzzaman told The New Nation last night that he knew three people were killed in the clash whose identity could not be found immediately.The UNO said the locals swooped on police and the magistrate during the clash between two groups of villagers at the Gondamara union on Monday afternoon. "At one stage of the clash, police opened fire on the unruly people to save lives and properties." he said.Chittagong District Additional Superintendent of Police (DSB) Mohammed Abdul Awal said the local authority imposed section 144 at the Gondamara Union area as the two local groups called for rallies at the same place and same time centreing the coal-based power plant to be set up by S Alam Group. "Around 2500-3000 villagers gathered at the place at around 2:30pm defying Section 144 and attacked police with lethal weapons and firearms. They cordoned the law enforcers," he said. "The law enforcers tried to disperse the two groups. At one stage of the melee, police were forced to open fire to save their lives."Abdul Awal said at least six police sustained bullet-hit and were sent to the upazila health complex for treatment.Additional Superintendent of Police (South) Md Habibur Rahman told media that villagers swooped on the policemen prompting them to fire to bring the situation under control where more than 10 police persons were injured.The situation was under control but tension was mounting in the area following the three-hour long clash, added Habib.A sub-Inspector at Chittagong Medical College Hospital (CMCH) police outpost Jahirul Islam said two bullet-hit villagers - Mujibur Rahman, 28, Ansar Uddin, 30 - were admitted to the hospital at around 7:30pm.Local sources said there was long standing feud between the two groups of villagers over favouring and opposing the 1,320 Megawatt coal-based power plant to be set up at the coastal area.The two groups had called rallies on Monday at the same place and same time while the local authorities imposed Section 144 to avert any untoward incident.S Alam Group and SEPCOIII Electric Power Construction Corporation of China inked an agreement recently to set up the 1,320 megawatt coal-fired power plant at Banshkhali upazila.A joint venture company (JVC) is going to build two 660 MW (1320 MW gross capacity) power plants to be run with imported coal. The government has selected SS Power-1 Ltd for the construction of first unit through a tender process while SS Power-2 Ltd was given an unsolicited deal to construct the second unit.
DU students block Shahbagh protesting Sujon murder

DU students block Shahbagh inter-section protesting death of their fellow Sujon Mridha in police firing during UP polls in Madaripur. This photo was taken on Monday .

Dhaka University students blocked the Shahbagh intersection stumbling vehicular movement, protesting at the murder of a Marketing Department student Sujon Mridha.

Witnesses and the family sources said Sujan was shot by police during the Union Parishad election at Madaripur Sadar on 31 March.

The protest was continuing 4:30pm to 7:30pm. The protesters chanted slogans demanding justice for Sujon and exemplary punishment to the killers. They also demanded withdrawal of the case filed against the family members of Sujon.

Saikot Kumar Riki, convener of the movement and Marketing Department student, said they are continuing the movement for 3 days demanding trial of the killers of 3rd year Marketing Student Sujon. They will organize a human chain at Shahbagh intersection at 11 AM today.

The protesting students said, Sujan's grandfather Abdul Motalib Mridha was among the chairman candidates in the Dhurail Union Parishad election. Motalib was declared winner initially, but the result was changed and the rival candidate was declared elected, the students said.

Police shot at Sujan in the throat from point blank range as he protested against the election result, DU students alleged.

Tofazzal Hossain, a fellow of Sujon, said, we want a fresh investigation of the murder. We also demand highest penalty of the Police S.I Enamul, who ordered to fire Sujon. It's a planned murder.

Kamal Hossain, a 3rd year student of SM Hall, said the police initially said that Sujon was shot during the hijacking of ballot box. But now the police say that he was killed during a clash between two rival groups. Their statement faults proved that it's a planned murder. So we want exemplary punishment of the Police S.I Enamul and others.

Severe traffic jam has created in the area due to the blockade.
Tonu murder mystery still in dark

Army officer's son among others quizzed First autopsy report gets no rape sign: Viscera test shows no poisoning evidence: Nobody detained so far: Investigators seize Tonu's diary

Sagar Biswas :

Like looking for a needle in a haystack, the CID reportedly dug through a vast area inside the Mainamati Cantonment for the last few days, where Sohagi Jahan Tonu, 19, a second year History student of Victoria College, was killed by unidentified assailants.

Not only that, the investigators of CID [Criminal Investigation Department] also have grilled over a dozen people, including son of senior army official, in connection with the sensational murder. But no significant progress was made till the date though fifteen days have already been elapsed after the recovery of bloodstained body of Tonu, daughter of Yar Hossain, an employee of Cantonment, at a bush adjacent to their home, on the night of March 20.

When contacted, Special Super of CID [Comilla] Dr Nazmul Karim Khan told The New Nation Monday night: "In fact, we're still in the dark. We're searching a needle to get a clue. Investigators are interviewing the suspects. Interrogation is yet not started. We can't tell you more just this moment."

A source close to the investigators said that CID officials grilled the army officer's son named as Pear Ahmed, a student of BBA first Semester at a private university, at the CID office in Comilla on Sunday. Later, the CID team, comprising officials of Dhaka and Comilla offices, took the suspect [Pear] to the spot at Cantonment.

According to information available, Tonu and Pear almost of same ages were grown up in the cantonment area and they had a close link. Pear's number was identified after verifying call list of Tonu's cell phone.

At the same time, the CID investigators have also quizzed five persons who were present during the recovery of Tonu's body and those took her to hospital. Special Super of CID Abdul Kahar Akhand, who is monitoring the investigation, was present at that time.

Apart from them, the CID team also Interviewed a Sergeant and a soldier on suspicion of involvement in the murder. Tonu was engaged in tuition in their houses, the source said.

"Yes we have interviewed son of a Honourary Lieutenant Pear Ahmed, among others. We have detained none so far. We are verifying their statements by check and cross-check method," Special Super of CID [Comilla] Dr Nazmul Karim Khan said.

"Tonu was used to write diary regularly. The investigators have seized the diary along with other evidences from her house. There may be a vital clue in the diary if it is examined properly," an investigating official said.

Meanwhile, the forensic experts of Comilla Medical College have not found any sign of 'rape' in Tonu's body after completion of first post mortem. And strangely, the physicians of Forensic Department did not mention 'specific reasons' behind the victim's death in the post mortem report.

"We didn't find any sign of rape in victim's body. The reasons behind the death also could not be mentioned in the autopsy report. We found two injury marks in the body, but those were not fair enough to know reasons for the death," KP Saha, head of Forensic Department of Comilla Medical College, said on Monday.

Dr Saha said, "We also didn't get any sign of poisoning in the victim's body in viscera test that was conducted in Chittagong Medical College and Hospital."

However, the second spell of post mortem which is now undergoing being directed by court five days ago is yet not completed. Besides, the evidences [parts of kidney, liver and stomach] for the second viscera test have been sent to CID chemical laboratory in Chittagong under heavy protection, sources said.

"In preliminary investigation it was found that Tonu might be strangulated to death. But we are not sure whether she was raped before the killing, or not. In fact, the second autopsy is going on to get the real picture," Shah Abid Hossain, Superintendent of Police in Comilla, said.

Differing with first autopsy report, Special Super of CID [Comilla] Dr Nazmul Karim Khan further said, "It is hard to believe that the victim was not raped. We suspect, the criminals had used protection to hide their activities."

Meanwhile, the slow-motion investigation into the killing has been fuelling discontent among the general people, especially the students; those are demanding trial of killers by staging demonstrations and observing strikes in educational institutions across the country.
SIM without re-regn to be disconnected

UNB, Dhaka :State Minister for Posts and Telecommunications on Monday said the SIM cards of those who will fail to re-register their SIMs in biometric system by April 30 will be disconnected. "Those who'll fail to re-register their SIM cards will be closed temporarily. Later, a message will be sent to SIM cardholders asking them for re-registration, and if they don't respond those will get deactivated," said the minister while talking to reporters at the Secretariat.The re-registration of the SIM cards through biometric method began on December 16 last and it will continue till April 30 next.Some vested quarters are spreading propaganda against biometric system for stopping it and they have also spent a whole lot of money on this, said Tarana.At least 24 webpages have been opened from outside the country to spread the propaganda against SIM card re-registration though biometric system and those who are doing this from the country are somehow involved in politics, she said. Replying to a question about confusion over biometric system, the State Minister said the fingerprints of the SIM cardholders are being taken for verification and no fingerprint is being stored during the re-registration of SIMs. Besides, if mobile operators violate the directives of the Bangladesh Telecommunication and Regulatory Commission they will have to pay Tk 300 crore as fine, she added.The junior minister also said a directive has been given to conduct re-registration of SIM cards at post offices across the country so that people from remote areas can do it easily.Besides, Tarana also said Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina also assured us that she will complete her SIM registration through biometric system soon. "So, there'll be no confusion over it," she said.
Five including 4 Nigerians held under ICT Act

Police raided in city\'s Nababerbagh area near Shah Ali Police Station and arrested IT crime suspects including four Nigerian nationals and a Bangladeshi womon.

BSS, Dhaka :Police arrested four nationals of Nigeria and a Bangladeshi woman on charges of fraudulence using mobile and internet. "We arrested four Nigerians and a local woman from Nababerbagh of Shah Ali Police Station in connection with a case filed under ICT Act with Paltan Model Police Station," an official of Police Bureau of Investigation (PBI). Four laptops, eight mobile phones, cheques of bank, many SIMs and pen drives were seized from their possession, he also said.According to the case filed on March 27, 2016, the arrestees misappropriated over Taka 37.87 lakh from people through SMS and email, he added.
Kim Wong surrenders addl $0.83m to AMLC

Staff Reporter :

Casino junket operator Kam Sin Wong, also known as Kim Wong, on Monday surrendered an additional P38.28 million or US$0.83 million to the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) for safekeeping in the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) headquarters in Manila.

The amount was the part of $81 million stolen by hackers from a reserve account of Bangladesh Bank held with the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, according Philippines media reports.

Wong surrendered the amount by his legal counsels Victor Fernandez and Inocencio Ferrer.

Julia Bacay-Abad, AMLC Executive Director, Emmanuel Dooc, AMLC member, Vicente Aquino, Deputy Governor of BSP, Shahnaz Gazi, Chief of Mission of Bangladesh Embassy in Manila and Bangladesh Bank representatives witnessed the turn over.

But the turnover was hit a slight snag when authorities found two fake P500 banknotes amid the mountains of cash.

Later, Wong's lawyer had to shell out P1,000 to replace the fake banknotes.

Julia Bacay-Abad confirmed that they found two counterfeit bills during the two-hour long counting that started at 11 a.m. and ended 1 p.m.

"All P38.28 million were in denominations of P500 and P1,000," Bacay-Abad said.

Kim Wong believed to the mastermind of the cross border money-laundering scam earlier surrendered $4.63 million to the AMCL.

His company Eastern Hawaii Leisure Company Ltd (EHLCL) got hold of P1 billion or $21.575 million of the stolen funds.

"We turn over to the central bank exactly $0.83 million or P38.28 million," Fernandez told reporters after the accounting of the funds by the BSP Cash Department.

He said, this is in addition to the $4.63 million which Wong turned over to AMLC on March 31.

Fernandez said the amount represents the abandoned money of junket player Gao Shu Hua, in EHLCL and or Midas Casino.

The lawyer said it would take 15-30 days to raise some more funds before could return another P450 million that was borrowed by Casino player Gao Shuhua.

According to the BSP, the money will be held for safekeeping by AMLC at the BSP vault.

Wong's lawyers also locked in a legal argument with AMLC officials over the deposition of the fund.

"We have no mandate to turn it over to the Bangladesh government. Our client, Mr. Kim Wong, has no business directly with the Bangladeshis. Our clear understanding is that after turning over the funds to AMLC 'for safekeeping', its disposition should be subject to a government-to-government agreement," Fernandez stressed.

Earlier, in the morning Fernandez and Ferrer went to the AMLC office to deliver the second tranche of the laundered funds.


Crimes of rape rising without fear of police

THE incidents of rape and torture on women are continuing unchecked as if we have police only for starting criminal cases.

Amidst nationwide outrage demanding punishment for Victoria College student Sohagi Jahan Tonu who was murdered inside Comilla Cantonment two weeks ago, a female garment worker was raped in a running bus in Tangail on Saturday. It took place two days after two sisters were gang-raped in Laxmipur. In another incident a young student of Cox's Bazar Government College was killed two days back by her husband failing to fulfil demands of dowry.

It appears that the criminals have no fear of police. The fact is that there is a serious breakdown of moral and legal protection to women. Needless to say our women were never so unsafe and vulnerable as they are today. There is hardly any indication that there is concern or competence on the part of police to offer the general public protection. To the police VIPs are all important.

The killing of Sohagi has created outrage all over the country as students and people from all walks of life are holding rallies calling for punishment to her killers. Similar social protest is taking place at Cox's Bazar demanding trial of the killers of another ill-fated girl. What should worry us all is that the people are getting disappointed with the police. The people and police clashes have occurred in some places. Police must maintain its reputation as people's friends and enforcing law to save people from criminals.






Pre-purchase property inspection is a relatively new thing in the United Kingdom. Its not something that most people have heard about, but it has become increasingly popular over the last few years with the rise in property prices and increased demand for high quality homes.

What are the benefits of pre-purchase building inspection? What can you expect to find out when you pay someone else to inspect your home before you buy it? And what should you look for during an inspection?

Many people want to know if theyre buying a house thats been well maintained or if its had any serious problems. If youve found a place on the market that seems attractive, but then discover some issues after moving in, you may not be as excited about buying it as you thought you were.

Its important to do your due diligence when looking at properties. A lot goes into making a property appealing to potential buyers, from the landscaping to the flooring to the kitchen appliances. The same applies when inspecting a property  there are many things that need checking over to make sure everything is running smoothly.

Here are some of the benefits of performing a pre-purchase inspection:

You get to see exactly what will happen to your money

When you go shopping for a new car, youll probably be shown several different models. You might even be shown one that looks like a great value, but doesnt fit around all of the extra features that you want. When it comes time to actually buy the vehicle, however, you wont have seen how your money will be spent on it once you drive it off the showroom floor.

Likewise, when you shop for a new home, you dont really know what youre getting yourself into until you move in. In order to get a feel for whether the home youre considering is what you want, you normally have to spend quite a bit of time inside it. This allows you to learn more about everything that youre going to be spending your hard-earned cash on.

A pre-purchase building inspection gives you much the same kind of experience without having to spend thousands of dollars. Since youre paying for the service, you can expect to see exactly what youre paying for, instead of just seeing a vague idea of what you might end up with.

You find out about potential major repairs

Some buildings are very expensive to maintain, which means that owners often neglect them for the sake of saving money. While youre paying for a building inspection, youre also paying for a professional who knows how to spot signs of trouble and repair work that needs doing.

If you notice that a particular area of your new home needs fixing right away, you can call in an expert to take care of it quickly. If you find that theres something wrong with your boiler, you wont have to wait weeks for a plumber to come over and fix it. Instead, youll have access to a solution immediately.

You can save hundreds of pounds by finding out about potential problems early on

One of the biggest expenses when you first buy a home is the cost of moving in. Many people dont realize this until its too late. Buying a home involves not only paying for the actual house, but also for moving costs, furniture, and other items that have to be moved along with the home.

Having a good idea ahead of time of what youre likely to encounter can help you avoid these kinds of costs. If you know youll need to replace the plumbing system, for example, youll be able to put together a budget for the expense and plan accordingly.

You can protect your investment by finding out if the homes been well cared for

While there are plenty of people who think that houses always look better when theyre newly built, youd be surprised at how well maintained older residences can still look nice. Sometimes, though, those homes need some additional maintenance to keep them looking their best.

This could involve repairs that arent so noticeable or small improvements that you wouldnt consider otherwise. Even worse, some houses have fallen into disrepair without anyone noticing. This is why having a professional perform a building inspection prior to purchasing a home is such a big benefit.

Not only will it give you insight into the state of the property, but it will also give you peace of mind knowing youre not getting taken advantage of. As long as youre aware of the potential pitfalls, youll have less reason to worry about the state of your new home.

You can use information gathered during a building inspection to negotiate a lower price

If youre worried about buying a home because you suspect that it may need extensive renovation work, you may already have a rough idea of how much work youll need to do to bring it up to scratch. That knowledge can come in handy if you decide to buy the home.

You can use all of the details that you gather during a building inspection to present a realistic picture of what the home is worth to prospective buyers. If a potential buyer thinks that the home is worth more than what you paid for it, you can try negotiating a lower price.

You can sell your home faster and for more money

If you decide to list your home on the market soon after buying it, youll need to price it accurately in order to attract buyers. But if youve already done a thorough building inspection, youll know exactly what work is needed and what the current market conditions are.

In other words, youll be able to make a more accurate estimate of the amount of money youve invested in the home and how much its worth. If you find that youre selling your house for close to its full market value, you can use this information to convince the potential buyer that your home is worth the asking price.

Even if youre planning to stay in the home for a while before you decide to sell, the fact that you did a thorough building inspection will give you more confidence when listing it. Prospective buyers will know exactly what theyre paying for.

Your home will hold its value longer

As mentioned earlier, the value of a home depends heavily upon the condition of the building itself. If your home is in bad shape, potential buyers wont be interested in buying it. On the other hand, if youve performed a thorough building inspection and know what sort of repairs are necessary, you can offer your prospective buyer a compelling reason to invest in your property.

When you buy a home, youre essentially agreeing to have it inspected periodically to ensure that it stays in top shape. Not only does this allow you to avoid expensive repairs down the road, but it can also increase the value of your home.

You can make smart decisions about property investments

Buying real estate isnt as simple as just driving a couple of minutes to pick up a house. There are lots of considerations involved, ranging from location to cost. The same is true when youre investing in property.

If you find a house that meets all of your requirements, youll want to make sure that you have a solid understanding of where it stands with regards to the rest of the market. If you havent spent enough time researching the area, you could inadvertently end up with a bad deal.

There are lots of resources available online that can help you determine the overall level of competition in your area. They can also help you figure out if there are any properties that meet your requirements that you didnt know about.

If you own rental property, you can use the information to identify tenants who might cause damage

If you own rental property and youve noticed that certain tenants consistently cause damage, you can use the results of a building inspection to identify them. You can then contact them directly to let them know that youre watching them closely and that you dont appreciate the problem theyre causing.

They might start taking better care of their homes, which would be good news for everyone. It could also be the case that youll find out that theyre responsible for previous damages that werent caught during a previous visit.

You can make smarter decisions about hiring contractors

If youve hired contractors to build or repair your home, you might want to ask them for references. However, unless you perform a thorough building inspection, you might not know exactly what to look for.

For instance, maybe you only checked the roof for leaks or the walls for cracks. You might not have looked underneath the foundation for anything that could cause a future issue. By performing a building inspection, you can ensure that you hire reputable contractors who will be trustworthy with your money.

You can avoid purchasing a home thats in poor condition

Of course, the main benefit of structural inspections perth is that it helps you avoid purchasing a home thats in poor condition. Before you make the decision to buy a home, you should do whatever you can to find out about the state of the building.

You can also ask your realtor about what sorts of inspections are typically recommended. Some agents say that its standard practice to check the heating system, the roof, the electrical wiring, and the floors. Others will tell you that they recommend that you check the entire structure.

Either way, if you choose to hire an inspector, youll find out exactly what needs to be fixed and how much it will cost to do so.

As a result, it can be concluded that a pre-purchase building inspection is highly important for the buyers because it provides transparency regarding the current conditions of the structure. Additionally, the building owner is made aware of any upgrades or repairs that are required, which could lead to a fair deal throughout the purchasing and selling process.
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The sextoy market is growing quite rapidly in India right now.

Although it is not a big trend, it is a hot topic on the internet as it is secretly expanding its market.

In this article, we will focus on sextoy and introduce recommended sextoy for Indian beginners of sextoy by gender.

India, the birthplace of the Kama Sutra, is very strict about sex.

Also, premarital sex is basically not allowed. Therefore, there are many people who are sexually restricted.

But what happens when you continue to be sexually restricted?

Frustration may build up and you may end up taking your sexual stress out on your partner.

If you are able to adopt sextoy in a timely manner, you can get rid of those problems.

I want to have more exciting sex than Im having now.

I want more variation in masturbation

I want to get even stronger pleasure than I do on my own.

If you have any of these problems, please stay with me until the end.

What is sex toys for Indian?

Sextoy, as the name implies, is a toy used during sex and masturbation.

It is a generic term for vibrators, Egg-vibrators, Electric massagers, dildo, handcuffs and condoms.

They are used to make regular sex more exciting or to make masturbation more pleasurable.

Because sextoy is very stimulating, it can help you to get rid of the problems and frustrations of being in a rut of sex with your partner for a long time, or if you are unhappy with the lack of pleasure in sex with your partner.

The ability to satisfy your desires with movement, texture, and size, which cannot be done by a normal human being, can help you to be satisfied with sex and, as a result, improve your relationship with your partner.

It is also said to help improve sexual dysfunction (inability to get an erection or ejaculate) and difficulty in feeling during sex (insensitivity), which is attracting more attention than in the past.

In recent years, the demand for sextoy has increased due to the spread of smartphones and the Internet and the increasing number of people using online shopping.

Even those who are concerned about the appearance of sextoy (and find it difficult to purchase) can now easily obtain it by using mail order.

In the case of online shopping, most of the stores have taken steps to ensure that the contents of the products delivered to you are not revealed, so you can purchase them without your family members knowing.

Until a while ago, you had to go to the store where the adult goods were sold to buy them, so it was quite a hurdle to overcome.

Also, many people may have an image that sextoy is somehow embarrassing to own.

But nowadays, some of them are so stylish and cute that you cant believe they are sextoy at a glance.

More and more people are using them for travel and outdoor use because they are not too bulky and are suitable for carrying around.

Sextoy situation in India

Before introducing the recommended sextoy for Indians, lets talk about one of the sextoy situations in India in recent years.

In India, due to the high concentration of population, the following six cities have particularly high sales of sextoy in India.

Mumbai

Kolkata

Bangalore

Delhi

Chennai

Hyderabad

These cities account for roughly 70 percent of sextoy sales in India.

In the future, the percentage of sextoy use will gradually increase in other cities in India as well.

If you never talk about sextoy publicly, that girl in your neighborhood might be a sextoy user too.

If you are interested in sextoy, you dont have to suppress your desire for it.

What are Sextoys for beginner?

Among all sextoys, sextoy for beginners are vibrators, dildo, masturbators, Sex Lubricants, and condoms.

Sex Lubricants and condoms, which are familiar to people who have had sex, are also a great beginners sextoy.

I will explain the details of each toy later, but there are many sextoy products that are painful to use and can only be used after some anal expansion.

I assume that the Indian readers of this article are people who have not had much experience with sextoy.

If such people use professional sextoy suddenly, they are at risk of injury or trauma.

Therefore, to introduce sextoy, you need to start with a beginners version and gradually become familiar with it.

Advantages of using sextoy for Indians

There are three advantages of using sextoy for Indians

You can masturbate in a wide variety of ways.

Can have stimulating sex

Can develop new sexual zones

If you try to masturbate with your own fingers or hands, it tends to be a pattern.

However, with sextoy, you can easily masturbate in a variety of ways.

You will definitely be fascinated by the attraction of new stimulation.

Also, your daily sex life will be more exciting than ever.

There are many things in sextoy that are visually stimulating and give you a strong and intense feeling of pleasure.

This allows you to see your partners promiscuity in a way that you wouldnt normally see it.

When you are in a relationship, sex with your partner may become a pattern, but it can also eliminate these problems.

It can also lead to the development of new sexual zones (which is the training of sexual stimulation to allow you to feel orgasms).

For more information on the development of new sexual zones, see the following articles

[Women's Erogenous Zone]How to find and develop, 7 hidden sexual zones !![In India] In this issue, we will dissect the female erogenous zone! ..." Many of you may be like that. Men, in particular, shou...

Thus, the use of sextoy can only be a good thing for the men and women of India.

Sextoy for beginner men in India

So, lets continue with the recommended goods for Indian sextoy beginners.

For ease of understanding, we will introduce them by gender. Lets start with the men!

The following five goods are recommended for novice Indian sextoy men

Masturbator

Cock rings

Love Doll

Sex Lubricants

Toys for the prostate

Lets check each one in detail.

Masturbator

The masturbator is a sextoy for men that elaborately reproduces a womans vagina, mouth, and anus, and is one of the most popular sextoy products.

It is used by men to masturbate, and it is popular because it provides stronger stimulation and pleasure more easily than using hands.

Most are made of good quality silicone, and their softness is something that cannot be achieved with ones own hands.

They can provide stronger pleasure than a real womans vagina, so be careful not to overuse them. (You wont be able to have an orgasm in a womans vagina anymore.)

Again Male masturbators are a wonderful toy. I do not need any favourite timing, bothersome bargaining. You do not have to worry too much.

Revolutionize your masturbation time! ! !

Made in Japan is a wonderful kinky toy.#sextoysindia #SexToyIndia #Japanhttps://t.co/4k70QGzoTP pic.twitter.com/tRVdxTKPpa   SEXToys India PR  (@SextoysIndia) November 12, 2018

Some of them are disposable, while others can be washed and used over and over again, so its fun to buy a few to use depending on your mood.

If you want to know more about masturbator, please click here

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Cock Ring

A cock ring is literally a ring-shaped sextoy that is worn on a mans penis.

It maintains an erection by binding the penis with a ring of rubber and blocking blood flow.

It is sometimes used as an accessory to be worn on the penis, and may be made of metal or plastic as well as rubber.

In some cases, cock rings have parts or vibrators attached to them that stimulate the vagina, so they kill two birds with one stone, giving a woman pleasure while maintaining an erection.

Cock rings are also sometimes used to treat erectile dysfunction.

It can help with erectile dysfunction, where the penis doesnt get hard when you get an erection or doesnt last long when you try to insert it.

Men who are prone to breakage or who are unsure of the hardness and size of their erections can use a cock ring to increase the size of their penis and maintain an erection for a longer period of time.

Cock rings vary in price from around RS700 to over RS2000 with a vibrator function.

Some of them do not fit your penis, so you should check the size of the cock ring before you buy.

You should know the size of your partners or your own penis when it is erect.

[Penis enlargement] What is a cock ring? Types and usage Cock rings can make your penis bigger and harder. It also makes sex with women more fulfilling and increases your sat...

Love Doll

Love dolls, also known as Dutchwives, are dolls with the appearance of a woman who can experience simulated sex.

There are dolls that look like a woman, but they have no face and only have their breasts and lower torso cut off, and some dolls are so realistic that they can actually be mistaken for real women.

Some expensive dolls can cost more than 1 million yen, and the quality of the doll is easily influenced by the price.

The higher the price, the higher the quality of the doll will be, the closer it will be to the real woman, and the cheaper the doll will be, the less elaborate it will be, making it look like a real doll! Something is wrong! That is also true.

You cant go wrong if you choose a balance between price and taste.

There are stores that allow you to make custom-made love dolls, so you can create a girl of your choice.

You can make a girl of your choice. You can start with inexpensive love dolls at first, and once you get used to it, you can try custom-made love dolls.

If you want to know more about Love doll, please click here

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Sex lubricants

Sex lubricants are used as a substitute for lubricating fluid during sex or as a lubricant for men to use masturbator rules.

It is not uncommon for women to have difficulty getting wet, depending on their physical condition, or to have difficulty getting wet due to their constitution.

Forcing the penis into the vagina at such times can cause painful intercourse.

There are various types of Sex Lubricants, some with a warming effect, some with a cooling effect, and some with a scent.

Changing the Sex Lubricant used during play is recommended as a good sex accent.

If you want to learn more about Sex Lubricants, click here.

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Toys for the Prostate

Another sextoy for men is prostate toys.

The most famous prostate toys include Enemagra, which was originally a prostate massager developed by an American urologist to treat an enlarged prostate line.

Modern prostate toys are imitations of Enemagra that have spread as sextoy for men.

Many people think of prostate toys as being used by gay men, but in fact they are often used by straight men.

What is the prostate?

The prostate is an organ found only in men. It is a walnut-sized organ located deep in the pelvis, just below the bladder, and its primary role is to protect and nourish sperm.

You cannot touch the prostate gland from outside the body, but you can touch it by inserting a finger or sextoy through the anus.

By inserting a finger or sextoy through the anus and touching the prostate and developing it, you can feel intense orgasms.

Orgasms felt in the prostate are mainly dry orgasms, which are orgasms that do not involve ejaculation. (You can also feel orgasms with ejaculation through prostate stimulation.)

The prostate is called the male G-spot, and dry orgasms can be much more intense than ejaculation.

Therefore, men who are able to develop a prostate can become addicted to the pleasure.

sextoy for beinner women in India

The following are the recommended goods for Indian women who are new to sextoy.

The following three are recommended for use by women who are new to sextoy.

Vibrator.

Dildo

Electric Masserger

Lets check out what each one is in detail.

If you want to check out womens toys, click here.

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Vibrators

A vibrator is a sextoy that vibrates with an Egg-Vibrator to provide stimulation and is often referred to simply as a vibrator.

Some vibrate as well as rotate, and there are many variations of sextoy.

It is quite a popular sextoy, and is well recognized by people who do not know much about sextoy.

Its usage is similar to that of a massager, but it is more compact and easier to carry than a massager, and many of them look as cute as a lipstick or a macaroon, so they are popular among women.

For a while, a famous influencer on twitter said, This is good! You may have heard of the topic of this article by introducing the recommended vibrators.

Vibrators are great for women to use on their own, but they are also recommended for men who have difficulty satisfying women with sex.

Since it is powered by electricity, it is far less tiring than moving your hands by yourself.

This makes it easier to satisfy a woman with sex because you can caress her for longer than usual.

Vibrators are mainly used on the female side, but they can also be used on men.

When used on men, they are used to attack the nipples and glans, and in both cases it is recommended to wear a condom for hygiene reasons.

Introducing how to use the vibrator, its purpose, and how to choose it! Vibrator uses the vibrations caused by the rotation of the motor to provide stimulation. It is one or two of the most...

Dildo

A dildo is a model sextoy made to mimic a male penis.

It can be made of silicone, elastomer (think of it as a material similar to PVC), metal or glass.

A dildo can be used by a man for his female partner during sex, or by a woman for masturbation to get pleasure from it.

They are mainly inserted into women, but some can be used in the male anus as well.

It is sometimes used synonymously with vibrators, but the vibrator is not the same thing as a vibrating device.

A model of a penis that does not vibrate is a dildo.

Some of them have suction cups that can be attached to the floor or wall so that you can enjoy realistic masturbation without using your hands.

For fun, there is a dildo made in the shape of your partners penis.

This one is also popular as a gift, and if youve been together for a long time and are having trouble finding a gift for your partner, you might want to pick one.

To learn more about dildo, please click here.

What is Dildo: Orgasms with Dildos for Men and Women A dildo is a model of a male organ that is used by women for masturbation and by men to stimulate the prostate gland. Th...

Electric Masserger

A Electric Masserger is a hand-held electric massager, also known as a handheld massager, and can usually be purchased at electronics stores.

It was originally designed to relieve stiff shoulders and back pain, so the hurdle of buying one in a physical store is quite low.

Many people may have seen or used it in some form or another, as it is often installed in leisure hotels.

Such a massager is highly recommended for beginners because it is easy for women to get pleasure from it when they use it during masturbation.

It is larger than Egg-Vibrator and vibrations are stronger than those of Egg-Vibrators and vibrators, so even just hitting the clitoris can give you a great deal of pleasure.

For those women who have never had an orgasm during sex with their man, the massager may be a good way to get a feel for what it feels like to have an orgasm.

It looks and feels like an electric massager, so you wont have to feel awkward if your roommate finds out.

If you are in a rut of having sex with your partner, if you want to feel an orgasm through masturbation, or if you are thinking of using a sextoy, why dont you try it from a simple massager?

To learn more about Electric Masserger, click here.

What is a massager? Introducing types, selection methods, and usage Originally, the Magic-wand vibrator and the massage machine were sold as a home massage machine used for the back and th...

How to choose a sextoy for Indian

Now that weve covered the different types of sextoy, heres how to choose one.

Especially if you are trying sextoy for the first time, pay attention to the following three points:  Does the size fit you (the partner)?

Does the size fit you (your partner)?

Is the environment able to produce sound without problems?

Price range

First of all, the choice of size is quite important.

Most sextoy are used against or inserted into the genitals, but the genitals are very delicate organs for both men and women.

For this reason, using an inappropriate size may cause damage.

Secondly, the environment should be able to produce sound without problems.

Some sextoys not only wear, but also rotate and vibrate. Its easier to get pleasure from something that moves than something that doesnt, but the fact that it moves means that the internal rotors make some noise.

If you live in a house with thin walls or if you have roommates, you may not be able to concentrate because of the noise, so it is best to choose one that is silent or has a low noise level.

Especially in India, where many people live with their families, it is very important that you dont have to worry about sound when you use it.

Finally, there is the price range.

The price range of sextoy ranges widely, from around RS500 at the cheapest to RS10,000 or more at the highest.

Its good to consider how much money you can afford and how much you want to buy.

Do you want your family to not find out about sextoy?

I live with my family and want to use sextoy without them finding out! If you are a man, you should buy a camouflage sextoy that does not look like a sextoy at first glance.

For men, there are many masturbators that do not look like a sextoy, and for women, there are vibrators that only look like cosmetics.

If you choose such a type, youll be safe in case your family members find out.

How to buy sextoys in India

The best way to purchase sextoy is through online shopping.

For more information on how to purchase sextoy, please see the article below.

Sextoy is one of them.

Therefore, you can easily get sextoy in India by using online shopping.

SexToysINDIA is a long established and stable sextoy store and you can have sextoy delivered to any place in India.

They also offer cash on delivery, so those who are worried about shopping with a credit card do not have to worry.

Of course, the latest security is in place, so your information will not be taken out when you use your credit card.

To begin with, many people may be concerned about whether they are legally allowed to purchase sextoy.

ikmAs it turns out, its not illegal.

Right now, it is not open to the public because the Indian adult market is still in the development stage, but it will gradually spread from now on.

Take advantage of sextoy and open the door to new pleasures and culture.

Cautions for Indians using sextoy

When using sextoy, keep the following three things in mind

Keep sex toys clean

Watch out for electrical leakage

Beware of the heat generated by the body while using a sex toy

As I mentioned earlier, many sextoy products are used for the delicate zone.

Therefore, it is most important to keep the sextoy itself clean. It is very important to keep the sextoy itself clean, because if a slight scratch is created by friction, bacteria can enter and breed there.

It is safe to wear a condom when using the masturbator, just in case.

In addition, many sextoy devices are powered by a power source, so if they are not waterproof, there is a possibility of electric shock or malfunction due to wetness.

Some may even develop heat during continuous use. If the fever becomes too much, you may get burned, so be careful.

If you get a fever during use, stop driving the sextoy immediately and refrain from using it.

You will enjoy sex more if you keep it safe and use it correctly.

Summary

What did you think?

In this article, we have introduced the recommended sextoy for the beginners of sextoy in India.

The sextoy market is growing rapidly in India and it will continue to grow steadily in the future.

As India is a rather closed-minded country, it can be difficult to be open about ones sexual habits and values.

However, being faithful to ones desires by properly dissolving ones sexual desire is very effective for ones physical and mental health.

If this is your first time to learn about sextoy, or if you are interested in using sextoy, why not give it a try?

Indian Sextoys for ur best! will introduce you to sextoy and other trivia about sextoy, sexuality, and sexuality for men and women.

I want to read more! If you think its a great idea, please bookmark it.
MOUNT VERNON  Anyone who says manufacturing in Illinois  specifically Southern Illinois  is dead, hasnt recently taken a trip through the Continental Tire plant in Jefferson County.

This factory cranks 24/7, rolling out millions of tires annually. The sprawling 80-acre campus is so noisy that it requires visitors taking a tour, as well as employees, wear ear plugs for safety.

That noise is the hard rock of manufacturing: screeching machines and beeping fork lifts occasionally piercing through a blanket of heavy white sound  somewhat like the roar of an extremely high-powered vacuum cleaner  that permeates the factory floor.

More symbolically, its the sound of a huge economic engine that churns through this region, employing roughly 3,200 people who travel to work from a 65-mile radius around the plant that takes in 150 zip codes.

Were in a constant state of expansion, Norman Galloway, a training coordinator at the plant, said over the production sounds, as he ushered a reporter and photographer from the newspaper around the factory on a golf cart.

Stopping occasionally to explain the surprisingly detailed tire-assembly process, Galloway zoomed through the plant, ending the tour at a huge warehouse, where tires were stacked from floor to ceiling, creating the image of a sea of giant dark chocolate donuts stretching out as far as the eye can see.

Plant officials said Continental is the largest private employer in Illinois south of Peoria, home of Caterpillar, a global earth-moving machine manufacturer located about three hours to the north.

In just the past six years, Continental Tire has invested more than $350 million in two massive expansions, and increased the employee count by about 1,100 people. Thats an impressive number regardless, but especially considering that tire manufacturing continues to advance, and is increasingly robotic.

Contis growth story

I think we have a good story here, said Benny Harmse, vice president of manufacturing at Continental Tire, and manager of the Mount Vernon operation, in a recent sit-down interview with the Southern Business Journal at the plant, prior to the tour.

Continental Tire  or Conti, as it is known  is a story that defies the conventional storyline about manufacturing in Illinois these days, one that states that employers are ditching Illinois for neighboring states at alarming rates because of a bum business climate, leaving behind a trail of Rust Belt communities that struggle to rebound. And Conti isnt alone. Southern Illinois has been adding manufacturing jobs over the past five years.

Illinois's population loss could result in loss of House seat Illinoisans are leaving the state in droves  and it might cost the state a seat in the U.S. House.

The tire manufacturers roots in Mount Vernon date back more than 40 years  to 1973, when General Tire began operations there. Continental Tire acquired General Tire in 1987, and has written a manufacturing growth story in Southern Illinois. At the Mount Vernon plant, the company produces more than 10 million passenger and light truck tires, and more than 3 million commercial vehicle tires, annually.

In the world, and specifically in the U.S. and Canada, Continental Tire ranks fourth in tire sales, behind, in order, Bridgestone Corp., Groupe Michelin, and Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., according to a recent report by the publication Modern Tire Dealer.

Continental Tire of the Americas, LLC  the companys parent is German-based Continental AG  is expanding not only in Mount Vernon, but throughout the United States. Continental broke ground in September on an expansion of its plant in Sumter, South Carolina, which is only four years old. In a news release, the company said its intentions are to increase capacity at that plant to eight million tires, and double the employee base to about 1,600. In total, the companys investment in Sumter is expected to exceed $500 million by 2021.

Additionally, the company announced in February that it plans to break ground this spring on a new plant near Jackson, Mississippi. Continental Tire says it will produce commercial tires at the plant when it comes online in 2019. In a news release, the company stated it planned to invest $1.4 billion in Mississippi, and eventually employ about 2,500.

Thats on top of what the company stated was a $1.5 billion investment in the past five years for manufacturing, technology, facilities and product development in the U.S., which included past expansions in Sumter, and the two in Mount Vernon.

Part of the U.S. growth in tire manufacturing can be attributed to a slowly shifting trend. After years of both domestic and foreign-headquartered manufacturers moving plants overseas in the chase for cheaper labor and fewer regulations, some are now returning, building for the first time, or expanding, on U.S. soil, said Nick Mitchell, senior vice president, equity research analyst with the California-based Northcoast Research, an institutional equity research firm.

Everyone is trying to add capacity domestically, he said. Theyre trying to put the production assets closer to the markets they serve. Its different than the more recent strategy of putting everything in low-cost production centers.

In the U.S., the auto industry is back on the upswing. Another motivating factor for companies to manufacture closer to their customers is that new tariffs have been placed on imports, resulting from claims filed by the United Steelworkers. For example, The USW filed unfair trade cases on May 30, 2014, alleging that certain tires from China had been dumped and subsidized, harming the domestic market and its employees. In a statement, Wayne Ranick, spokesman for the USW, said the union has been vigilant in monitoring unfair trade practices.

He added: Our trade cases have protected all jobs in the domestic industry, union and nonunion alike, by assuring domestic producers have a level playing field on which to compete.

Our successful trade cases have also led to expansions in existing facilities and new domestic facilities being built, further assuring that we keep a strong and vibrant tire manufacturing base in the U.S. and good-paying jobs in the American tire industry. While the USW represents workers at many tire plants, the workforce at Continental is nonunion.

Still, even within that atmosphere of growth, it appears Continental is making a bold play for an even bigger share of the U.S. tire market. The U.S. tire market is growing slowly, Harmse said, but we are growing more rapidly.

Growth good for region

When Continental announced its massive expansive plans for Mississippi, Jonathon Hallberg, executive director of the Jefferson County Development Corporation, said he there were a number of people posting concerns on social media that Continental was making plans to ditch Illinois for southern states that enjoy reputations as being more business friendly. Their concerns followed some logic, as other companies have moved south, and right-to-work states have generally been more successful in drawing new manufacturing plants that are large-scale employers.

Hallberg said he wasnt immediately concerned, as companies often seek to diversify their manufacturing base. But people were saying The sky is falling, he noted. So we made a point to ask. One part of our job is to prepare for damage control.

Hallberg said he was assured that there were no plans in place to make major changes, either closures or downsizing, at the plant in Mount Vernon.

Harmse repeated that sentiment to the newspaper. He said Continentals commitment to Southern Illinois remains strong, and noted the company would not have invested tens of millions of dollars here in recent years if it had plans to uproot in the near future.

Bucking the Illinois storyline

Harmse said he would be supportive of workers compensation reform, but overall said hes found Southern Illinois a good place in which to do business. Asked whether the business climate was troublesome in Illinois, Harmse said there are some things that could be improved, but added that those were not things that affected Continentals operations greatly, or that were at the top of his agenda on a daily basis.

I would say we have been very successful in Illinois, Harmse said. There are some difficult differences between other states and the state of Illinois. But at the end of the day, weve had a business friendly environment here. We havent really faced many challenges.

Harmse spoke with the newspaper on a Monday, and the following Wednesday, Gov. Bruce Rauner visited the plant to tour the expansion of its commercial vehicle tire assembly production. The March 23 event that included a town hall meeting with about 100 employees marked Rauners first visit to Continental since taking office in early 2015.

Its frustrating as all heck we dont have a budget, Rauner told employees that day. But he said he would not acquiesce to a tax increase  period, end of story  unless and until lawmakers also sign off on some of his reform proposals, which include several aimed at improving the business climate. Squarely in Rauners sights are workers comp and tort reform, stabilizing the tax climate, and weakening union labor.

Im a competitive son of a gun, Rauner said. I want to get the changes made, and I want to go around the world. I want to go into Germany, to China, Japan and recruit companies to come here. I want to go to Texas, and Indiana and Tennessee and Michigan and bring companies from there here.

He added: We should be kicking tails.

Decline of manufacturing

Job numbers, at least where manufacturing is concerned, do back up Rauners claim that Illinois has taken a huge economic hit as businesses fold or move, but they dont tell the entire story.

Overall, since the turn of the century, Southern Illinois is down 6,400 manufacturing jobs. Statewide, Illinois bled about 300,000 jobs during the same time frame.

There were 18,900 manufacturing jobs in 2000 in 19 southern counties that make up the Southern Economic Development Region, according to the Illinois Department of Employment Security. By comparison, there are about 12,500 today  a roughly 33 percent industry decline. In Illinois, there remain just under 600,000 manufacturing jobs, according to Mark Denzler, vice president and chief operating officer of the Illinois Manufacturers Association. That means the 19-county area cited above claims about 3 percent of the statewide share.

Denzler said the 30,000-foot view for manufacturing in Illinois is a mixed bag. The state has lost manufacturing jobs, he said, but this past year, manufacturing companies in Illinois still managed to provide a total economic output of $101 billion. Denzler said the association is a strong proponent of many of the business reforms pushed by Rauner. Specifically, he said, the industry would like to see workers compensation and tort reform. He also called for the renewal of a research and development tax credit utilized heavily by manufacturers, and extension of an incentive program for businesses that build or expand in the state, set to expire at years end, one he said Continental Tire has benefited from in the past. Legislation including those items would be helpful to make Illinois more competitive, he said.

But he also acknowledged that a good deal of the loss of manufacturing jobs is attributable to forces outside the states control  such as federal policies affecting trade, global factors, and market forces.

For example, Mitsubishi announced in June it was closing its plant in Normal that employs about 1,280. But a big factor in that loss was attributed to the decline of demand for the Mitsubishi brand. Caterpillar has also contracted, though again, that company also experienced a dip in demand, driven in part by a decline in the energy sector, a primary Cat customer, Denzler said.

Southern Illinois loss of manufacturing jobs also have been caused by a variety of factors. Some may have centered on the business climate in Illinois, but not all.

Manufacturing company to occupy Herrin Maytag building HERRIN  Part of an empty building on East Lyeria Drive in Herrin that was once home to a ma

When Whirlpool, which had bought out Maytag, closed the Herrin plant in 2006, some 1,200 people were left unemployed, delivering a devastating blow to the region. Around the same time, Technicolor University Media Services, or TUMS, in Pinckneyville, was also downsizing and then closed, leaving several hundred more unemployed. TUMS produced CDs and DVDs and other media, and was hammered by changing consumer consumption habits. It wasnt long before that  about 15 years  that Anna lost two major manufacturers with the closure of Florsheim Shoes and Bunny Bread.

The region, like other places, also suffered during the Great Recession, posting the lowest number of manufacturing jobs of 11,500 in 2009.

The silver lining

Still, given all that, theres a lesser told story inside the numbers. The silver lining on the Rust Belt  if you will  is that Southern Illinois is rebounding in the manufacturing sector. This area has posted steady, modest increases in manufacturing jobs since 2010  growing by about 1,000 jobs over a five-year period, the IDES figures show. Continentals boom in Mount Vernon accounts for part, but not all, of that upward trajectory.

Aisin Manufacturing Illinois Marion operation also has enjoyed success and steady growth in the region. The company, which like Continental, feeds the automotive industry, started with just a few hundred workers at the Southern Illinois location in 2002, and now employs about 2,000 between all of its operations. The company produces sunroofs, door components and other items.

There also are many smaller manufacturers humming along in Southern Illinois, and helping push manufacturing job figures upward since 2010.

If you look at long-term trends, it does not necessarily show it as a growth industry, but every single day we have job openings in manufacturing, said Kathy Lively, CEO of Man-Tra-Con Corp., which is a nonprofit that serves as a regional One-Stop Business and Employment Center. It is not unusual to have 100 opportunities available in manufacturing in a month.

Thats why Lively said that a consortium of leading economic development officials in Southern Illinois have identified manufacturing as this regions core economic driver, with health care, and then transportation, logistics and warehousing, close behind.

The purpose of identifying the drivers, Lively said, is it helps them hone strategies for recruiting new businesses that may fit well within these economic clusters. Large percentages of Southern Illinois residents also are employed in government jobs, but the group is focused on the private sector, with a long-term goal of further diversifying the regions job pool.

Other smaller area manufactures include Penn Aluminum LLC, based in Murphysboro, another company that adds to the regions growing automotive supply chain cluster. The plant makes extruded shapes and tubing, and employs about 260.

In Carbondale alone, manufacturers include Com-Pac International, a maker of plastic bags and other specialty plastic containers for the food and medical industry, Prairie Farms, which pumps out more than 33 million pounds annually of cottage cheese and sour cream, and Intertape Polymer, which makes specialized adhesive tape for the automotive and electronics sectors. Combined, these manufacturing companies employ upwards of 400 people.

And there are many others of various sizes, from General Cable in Du Quoin to Mount Vernon Mold Works, a Continental Tire supply company, to Swanson Industries, a hydraulic cylinder manufacturing company that recently announced plans to start operations with a small workforce inside the former Maytag building in Herrin on Lyeria Drive. But while Swanson Industries move into town was highly celebrated, public officials also made efforts to tamper expectations.

How has the landscape of the manufacturing industry changed in the past 30 years? The role of manufacturing in the US economy is often discussed and has been at the center of

While no official job figures have been released by Swanson, the company is advertising for only about a dozen jobs at the onset.

Back at Continental Tire, Harmse credits the plants success the fact that two major interstates  Interstate 57 and Interstate 64  run through Mount Vernon, making it easy to access from any location. The company also enjoys strong relationships with area community colleges and SIU, and has been able to recruit dedicated employees who often work at the plant for years, Harmse said.

Harmse said many employees in this region possess a deep-seated work ethic that he attributed to the farming influence. Harmse declined to provide average wages for factory workers or skilled professionals, but said wage and benefit packages are very competitive for the region. Ranick, from the USW, said there have been campaigns to unionize the workforce in Mount Vernon in the past, and said the union remains in contact with some who are still interested in doing so.

But Jon Hawthorne, a Continental employee from Mount Vernon, said he feels like his commitment and that of many of his co-workers to Continental springs from the fact that many people are acutely aware that the company provides a good, but rare opportunity in Southern Illinois, to bring home a decent wage.

I think the No. 1 thing is that all of us, we value our jobs, because we know the climate, the job market especially for guys who dont have a degree, its scarce, Hawthorne said. For us here, to come here and make the money we make, you have to be loyal.
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Azerbaijan is ready for a ceasefire, but the Armenian armed forces must withdraw from all the occupied territories of Azerbaijan in line with the UN Security Council resolutions, Azerbaijani foreign ministry spokesman Hikmat Hajiyev told Trend.

Hajiyev went on to add that Azerbaijans territorial integrity and sovereignty should be ensured within the internationally recognized borders

He also stressed that the country decided to unilaterally suspend the counterattack and response measures on April 3.
The problem between Azerbaijan and Armenia must be solved immediately, Turkeys foreign minister said on Sunday, Anadolu reported.

"It (the problem along the contact line) should be solved within the framework of Azerbaijan's territorial integrity," Cavusoglu told reporters in Turkey's southern province of Antalya.

He said that Karabakh and Azerbaijan's occupied-territories issue must be overcome through peaceful means.

Cavusoglu criticized the Minsk Group  an international organization co-chaired by Russia, the U.S. and France  for not taking necessary steps or making efforts to solve the Karabakh issue.

The Minsk Group says it leads the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)'s efforts to find a peaceful solution to the dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Azerbaijan reclaimed land occupied by Armenia during the clashes on Friday and Saturday, which saw 12 Azerbaijani soldiers martyred.

Azerbaijans Defense Ministry said that its army had launched operations in the Agdere, Terter, Agdam, Hocavend and Fuzuli regions to protect civilian lives.

During the operations, the Azerbaijani army reclaimed some strategic hills and residential zones.

Pro-Armenian militia have occupied Azerbaijans Karabakh region since 1993, similar to how pro-Russian militia have illegally occupied parts of Ukraine since 2014.

Three UN Security Council Resolutions (853, 874 and 884) and United Nations General Assembly Resolutions 19/13 and 57/298 refer to Karabakh as being part of Azerbaijan.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe refers to the territory as being occupied by Armenian forces.
If someone calls the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict "frozen", they are completely wrong, said in an interview with AzTV channel Novruz Mammadov, deputy head of Azerbaijani presidential administration, chief of the administrations foreign relations department.

The international community, all organizations, OSCE Minsk group co-chair countries should take steps to resolve the conflict, Mammadov said.

He added that Azerbaijan will not tolerate Armenia's provocations.

It's been 25 years since Armenia occupied Azerbaijan's territories, holds military exercises there and shells Azerbaijani villages, Mammadov said.

"This is unacceptable," he said. "This is no frozen conflict and this conflict must soon find its solution."

Mammadov noted that the OSCE and the international organizations are very passive in finding the solution to the Karabakh conflict.

"There are reasons for that," he said. "On one side, the co-chairs have monopolized the entire process, and what they do is send out open messages to other organizations and even countries not to get involved."

Mammadov said that the latest provocations of the Armenian side on the contact line once again show the shortcomings in the policy pursued by the OSCE Minsk group co-chairs.

"Armenia uses this, takes provocative steps, trying to attract attention," Mammadov said. "Once again, I repeat, our territories cannot remain under occupation forever. We will never settle for that, thus Armenia has to stop similar provocations."



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.
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada Stephane Dion calls for restraint in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Canada is concerned by the recent escalation of violence between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces in Nagorno-Karabakh. We call on all sides to show restraint, immediately return to a true ceasefire, and actively resume dialogue within the framework of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group. Canada firmly believes that there is no alternative to a peaceful, negotiated solution to this conflict., web site of the Ministry reported.

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.
I am extremely worried at the reports of violence in Nagorno-Karabakh and deeply saddened at the loss of life yesterday, said Pedro Agramunt, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. I call on both sides to honour the cease-fire and swiftly resume negotiations towards a peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, PACE website reported.

Recalling that both Armenia and Azerbaijan committed themselves, when joining the Council of Europe in 2001, to use only peaceful means for settling their conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, Agramunt urged both governments to refrain from using violence and welcomed the news of a unilateral cease-fire reportedly announced by the Azerbaijani authorities.

Agramunt also called for "the withdrawal of all Armenian armed troops from occupied Azerbaijani territories in compliance with the UN Security Council resolutions."

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.
/By Azernews/

By Aynur Karimova

Every day since the announcement of the ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan back in 1994, Armenian militaries violated the ceasefire. Ignored for over 20 years, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict once again occupied the agenda of world with the eruption of hostilities.

The clashes that burst out following Armenias intense firing of the Azerbaijani positions on April 2 show that its high time to come to definite decision and solve the conflict.

Yerevan, which has pursued an aggressive and occupation policy for over two decades, tries to tarnish Bakus image by provoking war and repeatedly violating the ceasefire and firing on civilians.

The international institutions one after the other make statements supporting the just position of Azerbaijan, and calling for withdrawal of the occupier troops from the Azerbaijani lands.

Pedro Agramunt, who serves as the President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, has called for "the withdrawal of all Armenian armed troops from occupied Azerbaijani territories in compliance with the UN Security Council resolutions."

I am extremely worried at the reports of violence in Nagorno-Karabakh and deeply saddened at the loss of life yesterday, he said. I call on both sides to honor the ceasefire and swiftly resume negotiations towards a peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict."

Recalling that both Armenia and Azerbaijan committed themselves, when joining the Council of Europe in 2001, to use only peaceful means for settling their conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, Agramunt urged both governments to refrain from using violence and welcomed the news of a unilateral cease-fire announced by the Azerbaijani authorities.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation has also urged Armenia to immediately liberate occupied territories of Azerbaijan.

"I am very concerned about the exacerbation of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict", Iyad bin Amin Madani, the Secretary General of the OIC said, Turkish media reported.

However, despite Azerbaijan's decision on unilateral suspension of the counter-attacks and response measures in the territories occupied by Armenia, Armenian Armed Forces have resumed shelling of Azerbaijani positions along the line of contact.

Spokesman for Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry Vagif Dargahli told Trend on April 4 that on the night of April 4, the situation on the contact line deteriorated again.

Despite the fact that on April 4 morning the situation somewhat stabilized, the enemy renewed shelling of our positions using heavy artillery again, including the settlements in Azerbaijans Aghdere, Khojavand, Aghdam and Terter districts. Azerbaijani armed forces returned the fire at the enemy," he noted.

On the night of April 2, all frontier positions of Azerbaijan were exposed to heavy fire from large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. In addition, Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled.

The counter-attack was made following provocations of the Armenian armed forces at night of April 2, which resulted in deaths and injuries of civilians.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures have been destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank damaged by a mine.




/Azernews/

By Nazrin Gadimova

Armenian armed units violated ceasefire with Azerbaijan and opened intense firing on the Azerbaijani positions with heavy weapons on April 4 despite the fact that Azerbaijan unilaterally announced ceasefire on April 3.

Azerbaijans Defense Ministry reported that the enemy forces do not stop provocative actions and continue shelling Azerbaijans populated areas and civilians densely residing in the territories adjacent to the frontline area, open intensive heavy weapons fire at the positions of Azerbaijans armed forces along the line of contact mainly in the direction of Agdere-Terter and Khojavand-Fizuli regions.

Armenian armed forces have broken the ceasefire with Azerbaijan 121 times by using 60, 82, 120 mm caliber mortars in various parts of the contact line between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies in the last 24 hours. Azerbaijani armed forces inflicted 125 strikes upon Armenian positions.

During the last day and night, the Armenians lost numerous soldiers and military equipment in an attempt to return the lost positions.

In the battles, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces lost 3 servicemen.

Azerbaijani Defense Ministry has refuted the reports disseminated by the Armenians that they took control of new positions.

Spokesman for the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry Vagif Dargyahli said that Azerbaijani troops did not lose any position, and Azerbaijani Armed Forces fully control the operational situation."

On the night of April 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns.

Azerbaijani settlements near the contact line, densely populated by civilians, were fired at as well. Civilians were killed and wounded as a result of the Armenian attacks.

As a result of the counter-attack, the heights near the village of Talish, which were posing a threat to the Goranboy district and Naftalan city, as well as the Seysulan settlement, have been cleared of the enemy forces.

In order to protect the city of Horadiz, the Azerbaijani army took the height Lale Tepe under its control, which allowed to carry out supervision of a large area.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures have been destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts. Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank damaged by a mine.
President of the Association of Friends of Azerbaijan in Paris Jean-Francois Mancel has issued a statement condemning the latest provocation perpetrated by the Armenian Armed Forces against Azerbaijan.





The statement says that the Association offers deepest condolences to the relatives and families of the deceased military servicemen. The Association wishes the fulfillment of the four resolutions of the UN Security Council and also expressed regret that The OSCE Minsk Group Co-chair countries still ignore the unjustified and tragic situation continuing since many years. The Association also welcomes the news of a unilateral cease-fire reportedly announced by the Azerbaijani authorities and calls Armenia to stop the violence.




By Nazrin Gadimova

/By Azernews/

Russian Ekho Moskvy radio station reports that Armenians living in the occupied Azerbaijani territories are being evacuated from the Nagorno-Karabakh.

Furthermore, Komsomolskaya Pravda informed that Armenians are leaving the settlements in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region. Shusha is almost deserted, correspondent Shagen Nazarian told the Russian media, adding that people are afraid and are hiding at home.

Strong fights continue in the southern direction, in Hadrut. My cousins and sister are living there,and my mother is planning to take them out in case of a large-scale war. If the situation keeps unchanged, probably, they will take the children to Yerevan, Nazarian added.

Armenians residing in the Armenian-occupied Aghdere region of Azerbaijan has begun to leave their homes, the Armenian bureau of the Radio Liberty reports.

Reportedly, the government has set up posts at the outskirts of the town of Askeran to prevent population, mostly young people, leaving their homes. A number of pictures and videos proving mass evacuation have been disseminated in social networks.

Azerbaijani Armed Forces strong response to the provocation of Armenian militaries have also caused panic among the Armenian military and led to massive losses in the army.

Local media reports that the commanders of the Armenian armed forces shot 17 people, who refused to take part in military actions in Nagorno-Karabakh and tried to flee.

On April 2, the Armenian military units located in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan made another provocative action along the entire length of contact line as the Azerbaijani positions along the frontline came under fire from large-calibre weapons, mortars, artillery and grenade-launchers. Some residential areas and refugee settlements close to the frontline also came under fire.

This resulted in the killing of two civilians and injuring of 10 another, including a 13 year old child. More than 10 houses as well as local people`s property were also damaged.

The Azerbaijani armed forces command took an immediate decision to launch counter attacks in order to prevent the activation of the Armenian military units in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh and other regions and to protect civilian population. Located in the most tense Aghdara-Tartar-Aghdam and Khojavand-Fuzuli directions, the Azerbaijani military units immediately carried out retaliatory actions against the Armenian troops.

As a result of these measures the Azerbaijani armed forces broke the first defensive line, where the Armenian units had carried out fortification and engineering work for years, and also took over several strategic hills and residential areas.

The Azerbaijani troops retook hills around the village of Talish capable of posing threat to Goranboy region and the town of Naftalan, as well as Seysulan settlement, and also took over Lele Tepe hill located in the direction of Fuzuli region.

Six Armenian tanks and 15 artillery units and engineering installations were destroyed, tens of Armenian servicemen were killed or injured.

Twelve Azerbaijani servicemen were killed in the fighting, a Mi-24 helicopter was shot down, and a mine blast damaged a tank.
During a counter-attack on Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of Armenian armed forces, said Azerbaijani Defense Ministry.

Armenias military units tried to attack Azerbaijani positions Apr. 4 in the direction of Khojavend-Fizuli districts, according to the ministry. Crushing blows were inflicted on the enemy positions by return fire.

One more enemy battery was destroyed, said the ministry.

Azerbaijans Armed Forces fully control the operational situation on the front line and ready to prevent any possible provocation, says the Defence Ministry.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.

A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

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.
/By Azernews/

By Aynur Karimova

Armenia, keeping 20 percent Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territories under the occupation for over 20 years, has once again resorted to provocations on the frontline with an aim to tarnish Azerbaijan's fair and reliable image in the world.

The oligarch and corrupted Sargsyan regime in Yerevan, which not only fails to provide economic growth in the country, but also has no chance to recover the already bankrupt budget, attempts to divert the population's attention from the domestic by launching hostilities along the line of contact, and targeting civilians living near the occupied territories.

By targeting both the civilians and soldiers, Armenia tries to irritate the Azerbaijani side and achieve a negative image of the country, and thus to zero Azerbaijan's successes achieved on the global arena during the years of independence.

On the night of April 2, all frontier positions of Azerbaijan were exposed to heavy fire from large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline were shelled, which resulted in the killing of two civilians and injuring of another 10.

The Azerbaijani armed forces immediately launched counter attacks to prevent the activation of the Armenian military units and to protect civilian population. Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures have been destroyed and more than 100 Armenian servicemen were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank damaged by a mine.

Despite Azerbaijan's decision on unilateral suspension of the counter-attacks and response measures in the territories occupied by Armenia, the Armenian Armed Forces resumed shelling of Azerbaijani positions along the line of contact on the night of April 4, further deteriorating the situation on the contact line.

Armenias provocations and irresponsible decisions prove that Yerevan is doing its best to block all peace initiatives and keep the existing status-quo. The occupant country has always tried to mislead the international community over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and ignored all peace calls. The peace efforts initiated by the OSCE Minsk Group, which mediates a peaceful resolution to the long-lasting conflict, were rejected by Yerevan due to its destructive position in this problem.

The removal of Levon Ter-Petrosyan from power in 1998, shooting of the Armenian Parliament in 1999, aggravation of tensions on the frontline after the historical Paris meeting of the Presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia in 2014 and other facts show that the Armenian government makes extensive use of military provocations and attacks when it is in a deadlock situation.

This time, the Armenian authorities were angered by Azerbaijans success in Washington at the 4th Nuclear Security Summit.

Azerbaijan's diplomatic achievements on the international arena, in particular President Ilham Aliyev's participation in the Summit, his meetings with the U.S. Vice President, Joe Biden and State Secretary John Kerry, and support of the U.S. to Azerbaijans territorial integrity and sovereignty caused panic in Yerevan.

The Washington Summit showed that the U.S. sees Azerbaijan as a reliable partner in counterterrorism, and in ensuring the energy security of Europe with its Southern Gas Corridor projects. All these achievements of Azerbaijan, a leading country in the South Caucasus region, exasperated Armenia.

Thus, Yerevan has mobilized all its dirty tools to tarnish Azerbaijan and to keep the tense situation on the contact line. However, the occupant country should realize that it cannot keep the status-quo for years and the renewed hostilities is an open message to the international community that it is time to resolve the long-lasting conflict, which started over two decades ago.




None of the enemy's provocations will remain unanswered. The enemy will continue to receive an adequate response. The Azerbaijani army is capable of doing that. The sons of Azerbaijan are defending the homeland, fighting for their country and becoming martyrs. Memory of all our martyrs will live in our hearts forever, said President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev as he chaired a meeting of the Security Council.





Armenia does not want peace. Armenia does not want to vacate the occupied lands, and all of its efforts are aimed at maintaining the status quo to the maximum extent possible. These words rest on a lot of evidence.





The President said: The process of negotiations has been going on for more than 20 years. Over these 20 years, at decisive moments, Armenia has always resorted to provocations. Armenia constantly creates tension on the line of contact. The terrorist act in the Armenian parliament at the end of last century also pursued this goal  to prevent the achievement of a possible agreement in connection with the conflict and thus to preserve the status quo.




Azerbaijan can count on Turkeys full support, Suleyman Latif Yunusoglu, former MP from Turkeys opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), told Trend by telephone Apr.4.

He said Ankara attaches special importance to Nagorno-Karabakh, adding that Turkey should render any assistance to Azerbaijan in this issue.

The whole world knows that Nagorno-Karabakh is the age-old Azerbaijani land, said Yunusoglu.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.

A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.

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.
Iranians have been observing and discussing the issue of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict following the escalation of military confrontation between Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan.

On the night of April 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns.

On the same day, responding to the Armenian aggression, Azerbaijani armed forces launched counter-attack operations that led to the liberation of several strategic heights and settlements. Situation on the contact line between the armies has remained tense since then.

While official Tehran has constantly expressed support for the territorial integrity of the Republic Azerbaijan, a large number of social media users as well as a group of media outlets have cried foul at Yerevan condemning Armenian aggression of Azerbaijan.

Iran supports Azerbaijans territorial integrity in Karabakh conflict, Iranian Ambassador to Azerbaijan Mohsen Pak Ayeen was quoted as saying on April 3.

He further added that Karabakh is situated in Azerbaijani territory.

In turn, a group of social media users particularly Iranian Azerbaijanis have expressed support and solidarity with Azerbaijan over Karabakh conflict changing their profile pictures to Azerbaijani flags.

Karabakh belongs to Azerbaijan and this region must get rid of Armenia, MP for Tabriz City Alireza Monadi-Sefidan was quoted as saying at a parliamentary session on April 3.

Official IRNA news agency, reporting on the recent Karabakh tensions, said that Karabakh was an Azerbaijani populated region but under the former Soviet Unions policies the Communist Party adopted policies in the region aimed at decreasing the number of Azerbaijani inhabitants.

Donya-e Eqtesad newspaper citing Russia Today said that Armenian army has taken provocative measures to escalate the tensions in the region.

Armenia has violated ceasefire many times and continues its policies on occupying Azerbaijans territories, Durna News said following reports on the escalation of clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

In addition to the recent comments, over the past two decades Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as well as a number of religious leaders have condemned the Armenian aggression against Azerbaijani Muslims in Karabakh several times.

The occupation of Karabakh [by Armenia] has always been condemned by Iran, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khameneis representative in East Azerbaijan Province Ayatollah Mohsen Mojtehed-e Shabestari had said earlier.

In a recent development, Iran's Foreign Ministry has urged Azerbaijan and Armenia to show restraint and avoid any move that can escalate their tensions.

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.
/By Azernews/

By Amina Nazarli

Armenian militaries once again raised their hands against the civilian population of Azerbaijan and fired settlements along the frontline on April 4.

The enemy forces are intentionally shelling human settlements in Azerbaijans territory. There are old men and children among the dead and injured.

The Seydimli village of Azerbaijans Terter region was subjected to the artillery fire by Armenian Armed Forces on April 4, local media reports. One of the shells hit the courtyard of villager Sahib Veliyev, injuring the house owner and his 13-year-old grandson.

The injured boy, Sanan Valizada has been hospitalized.

Two mope civilians were wounded in Terter regions Sarijali-Duyerli village, Head of the village municipality Ildirim Duyerli said.

The shells wounded Mehbara Aliyeva and Kamala Aliyeva, who are 28-29 years old. The shells hit their leg, arm and face, he noted.

The Education Ministry reported that the education process has been disrupted in educational institutions in Azerbaijans border regions and areas located near the zone of military operations.

The enemy forces earlier fired the Sarijali school #1 in Azerbaijans Aghdam region on April 2. No casualties were reported, however, the schools building was seriously damaged. One of the shells also hit a school in the village of Ayag Gervend.

Meanwhile, restoration work has started in the villages of Azerbaijans Aghdam and Terter regions, which were subjected to the artillery shelling by Armenians.



On April 2, the Armenian military units located in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan made another provocative action along the entire length of contact line as the Azerbaijani positions along the frontline came under fire from large-calibre weapons, mortars, artillery and grenade-launchers. Some residential areas and refugee settlements close to the frontline also came under fire.



This resulted in the killing of two civilians and injuring of 10 another, including a 13 year old child. More than 10 houses as well as local people`s property were also damaged.



The Azerbaijani armed forces command took an immediate decision to launch counter attacks in order to prevent the activation of the Armenian military units in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh and other regions and to protect civilian population. Located in the most tense Aghdara-Tartar-Aghdam and Khojavand-Fuzuli directions, the Azerbaijani military units immediately carried out retaliatory actions against the Armenian troops.



As a result of these measures the Azerbaijani armed forces broke the first defensive line, where the Armenian units had carried out fortification and engineering work for years, and also took over several strategic hills and residential areas.



The Azerbaijani troops retook hills around the village of Talish capable of posing threat to Goranboy region and the town of Naftalan, as well as Seysulan settlement, and also took over Lele Tepe hill located in the direction of Fuzuli region.



Six Armenian tanks and 15 artillery units and engineering installations were destroyed, tens of Armenian servicemen were killed or injured.



Twelve Azerbaijani servicemen were killed in the fighting, a Mi-24 helicopter was shot down, and a mine blast damaged a tank.
Pakistan has always condemned all the atrocities committed by Armenians and even today, at the time of escalation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Pakistan is standing along with brotherly country Azerbaijan, Ahmad Farooq, secretary to the Pakistani president, told Trend Apr. 4.

Pakistan always stands by Azerbaijan, he said. Azerbaijan is a brotherly and friendly country.

Farooq went on to add that Azerbaijan stood by Pakistan on the issue of Kashmir conflict and Pakistan has stood by Azerbaijan on the issue of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Earlier, the government of Azerbaijan received a military assistance offer from the defense ministry of Pakistan.

Pakistans defense ministry offered assistance in the form of military equipment and ammunition. The move came following the recent developments along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.

A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.

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.
Turkey will always support Azerbaijan, said President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Apr. 4, TRT Haber news channel reported.

He was also quoted to say that Azerbaijan is a brotherly country for Turkey.

I am confident that sooner or later, the Azerbaijani refugees will return to their historical lands, added Erdogan.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.

A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.

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.
Azerbaijans army has proved its combat capability, adequately responding to Armenias provocation, says Svante Cornell, director of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and Silk Road Studies Program of the John Hopkins University.

The recent incident testifies that the combat capability of the Azerbaijani army has greatly improved, Cornell told Trend Apr. 4.

Regarding Armenias aggression, Cornell said the Armenian side carried out a similar provocation in 2014.

Taking into account the period of Armenias provocation, one can see that this provocation took place after the Nuclear Security Summit in the US," Cornell said, adding that this is not a coincidence.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.

A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.

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.
Armenias armed forces have again shelled the villages along the contact line of the Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, Ragub Mammadov, head of the Aghdam District Executive Power, told Trend Apr. 4.

He said Armenian armed units fired at the villages of Khindiristan, Garadagli and Uchoglan of Azerbaijans Aghdam district for few hours.

Houses havent been damaged. Fortunately, there are no casualties, but sowing areas have been damaged, said Mammadov.

He added that the Azerbaijani armed forces give a worthy rebuff to the enemy.

Azerbaijani Defense Ministrys press service confirmed the fact of ceasefire violation in the said areas.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well. There are casualties among civilians as a result of the shelling.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

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.

/By Trend/




The main concern now is to prevent the escalation and stop fighting in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone, says Ariel Cohen, founder of International Market Analysis Ltd., director of the Center for Energy, Natural Resources and Geopolitics, senior fellow at the Institute for Analysis of Global Security.

The US or Russia could not arrange for a meaningful pathway forward to end the conflict and start moving toward the end of the occupation. An opportunity for a meeting in Washington was missed, he told Trend Apr. 4.

Clearly, Russia would be interested in inserting its peacekeepers to the conflict zone, including Karabakh and the line of contact in the seven occupied districts, believes the expert.

This approach worked for Russia in Transnistria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, added Cohen. It is a mechanism to control post-imperial space.

He also said Russia benefits from boosting its power by keeping its former dependencies down and selling weapons to both sides.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well. There are casualties among civilians as a result of the shelling.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

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.
Armenians must realize that the future of their children rests with making peace in the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Rob Sobhani, the US Caspian Group Holdings CEO, told Trend Apr. 4.

He outlined the role that France and the US can play to bring peace to the region.

It is very important that Paris and Washington give this message to Moscow: you must assist in the process of bringing peace to the people of Armenia and Azerbaijan, added Sobhani.

He recalled that on June 28, 1914, the spark that lit the world on fire and led to First World War was one mans assassination of the Archduke of Austria.

Today we may be witnessing the same spark, added Sobhani.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well. There are casualties among the civilians as a result of the shelling.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

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.

/By Trend/




Armenia must immediately withdraw from the occupied Azerbaijani lands, Necdet Unuvar, chairman of the Turkey-Azerbaijan Interparliamentary Friendship Group at Turkeys Grand National Assembly, told Trend Apr. 4.

OSCEs Minsk Group is responsible for the tension along the line of contact between the Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, he added. The Minsk Group with its inaction over the years prolonged the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.

A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.

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.
Everton's slide continues with Old Trafford defeat

, 3 April,



Manchester United 1 - 0 Everton



Phil Jagielka came closest to salvaging a point but saw a header cannon off the bar and David de Gea deny him later with a point-blank reaction save Phil Jagielka came closest to salvaging a point but saw a header cannon off the bar and David de Gea deny him later with a point-blank reaction save

Everton slumped to a fourth defeat in their last five League games as Anthony Martial's second-half strike was enough to overcome Roberto Martinez's toothless side.

The French striker stole in behind a napping Seamus Coleman and converted Fosu-Mensah's low cross from the right off Joel Robles in the 54th minute in what was a rare moment of incision from either side on an afternoon short on goalmouth action.

Phil Jagielka thumped a header off the crossbar and was later denied by a reaction save from David de Gea from another set-piece but that was as close as the Blues came to rescuing anything from the match.

Martinez's response to the dire home defeat to Arsenal before the international break was to drop Ramiro Funes Mori back to the substitutes' bench and reinstate John Stones to the back line. Gerard Deulofeu was also recalled from his recent exile on the bench, deployed mostly on the right flank, although he and Aaron Lennon traded places to decent effect in the first half.

Article continues below video content

The Spaniard was lively in the early going, skinning Marcos Rojo on two or three occasions down the flank and later skipping dangerously into the box before over-running the ball at the last moment.

Looking to largely contain their hosts in the first half, Everton struggled to create anything meaningful in front of the opposition goal and it was Louis van Gaal's men who carried the greater threat.

Martial flashed a 17th-minute shot inches wide of Joel Robles' post as United looked to exploit the space in front of Everton's back four while Stones's last-ditch tackle eight minutes from the break was required to stop the teenager from bursting through on goal.

With neither side looking all that convincing in the first half, the match felt like it was there for whichever side could grasp it by the scruff of the neck and it looked, for the first few minutes after the interval, that that might be Everton.

Leighton Baines's perceptive pass into the heart of United's area in the 49th minute found Romelu Lukaku superbly in front of goal but while the Belgian rolled Daley Blind, his shot on the turn deflected off the Dutchman's leg and behind for a corner.

Deulofeu was then fouled by Blind and Tom Cleverley's fired a shot into Smalling's body but it was a spell of Blues pressure that was broken a couple of minutes later by Martial's goal.

After Jagielka hit the woodwork, Jessie Lingard came close to doubling the Red Devils' lead when he slid in trying to connect with Juan Mata's low cross while Martinez's men struggled for fluidity and incisiveness.

The Catalan withdrew Deulofeu in favour of Kevin Mirallas but Lukaku continued to toil as the lone striker and it wasn't until an 83rd-minute corner that Everton threatened again when Jagielka's close-range shot was parried away by De Gea.

Oumar Niasse was thrown on in place of Ross Barkley on as a fruitless last throw of the dice but apart from a low Coleman centre that just eluded Lukaku, the Blues didn't really look likely to salvage anything from the match.

The defeat, just the second away defeat in the League all season, leaves Everton adrift in 12th place, albeit with two games in hand on some of the clubs above them, and one game closer to finishing in the bottom half for a second successive season.

Full coverage: ToffeeWeb match page

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The majority shareholders of UAE Exchange and Travelex have closed an $890 million loan that will be used to support the two foreign exchange companies' growth plans, according to a statement on Monday.



The loan, which can be increased by an additional $75 million at the request of the shareholders, will also be used to refinance an existing bridge facility that was used to acquire Travelex in 2015, the statement said.



Centurion Investments, which is part of Abu Dhabi-based KBBO Group, and Indian-born billionaire Dr B R Shetty, completed a deal to buy Travelex in January 2015 for 800 million pounds ($1.14 billion). The pair are now the majority shareholders in UAE Exchange and Travelex.



Nine banks including Goldman Sachs, Qatar National Bank and Doha Bank backed the loan, the statement said.



The companies will continue to operate as two brands but will offer products through both platforms. Growth plans include increasing distribution channels and expanding into new markets, it added.



Khaleefa Butti Al Muhairi, chairman of Travelex, said: We are pleased to have strong support from the international banking community for this financing, which demonstrates the strength and growth potential of both Travelex and UAE Exchange. This transaction will allow us to accelerate the growth of both businesses as two distinct leading brands, while benefitting from synergies arising due to each others networks, shared expertise and infrastructure.



Dr B R Shetty, chairman of the UAE Exchange Group and vice chairman of the Travelex Group, said: This is an exciting time for Travelex, the worlds leading independent retail foreign exchange business, and UAE Exchange, the most widely networked remittance institution globally.



The combination between the two will give us a strong foundation to grow both businesses through sharing of a number of complementary offerings. We would like to thank our existing banking partners, who assisted us in the acquisition of Travelex and our new banking partners, who joined the facilities, he added.  TradeArabia News Service & Reuters
Bahrain-based Falak Consulting, a leader in financial consultancy services, held an event with top business leaders to discuss the role of the government as well as the private sectors in boosting the countrys economy.



Zayed R. Alzayani, Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism was the guest of honour at the FC Power Lunch.



Speaking on the occasion, Suhail Algosaibi, chairman, Falak Consulting said: The purpose of FC Power Lunch is to have a dialogue about the business environment, to share ideas and thoughts, and to be brought up to speed by government officials on the latest reform efforts. It is my honour and pleasure to host this august session with Zayed R. Alzayani, Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism as well as some of the most prominent people in Bahrains business community.



The discussions of this session of the FC Power Lunch were initiated with the Minister emphasising the proactive delivery mechanism adopted by the MoICT. He mentioned that the MoICT is trying to be more active and is moving ahead with much needed reforms.

In order to implement the same the MOIC has undertaken some very effective steps such as:

 Measures to make the CR process simpler are underway. This includes a measure to issue a preliminary CR within minutes and to make final CR turnaround working time 5 days. There were 22 transactions related to the CR in Bahrain that required inter-ministerial interactions, which are now being reduced to only 6. Additionally, certain mandatory requirements, like minimum capital, address restrictions etc have been eradicated to ensure the ease of processing while not compromising on security concerns



 The Ministry is also concentrating on improving the monitoring of its operations. This includes assigning of KPIs for all employees as well as a weekly reporting of tracking against those KPIs



 The MoICT is also in the process of introducing the concept of shelve companies (dormant registered companies that can be bought) and virtual CRs (for 12 categories of one person owned and operated enterprises)



Alzayani also emphasized the importance and involvement of the private sector in developing the economy. He specifically mentioned the need to increase the participation of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and to enable the same. The MoICT has been formulating various programmes such as:



 Access to capital will be made easier. This includes measures to build a secondary market for the Bahrain Stock Exchange with lower entry barriers and pre-determined pricing



 Bahrain will set up an Export Centre that will support all Companies that wish to enter other markets



 The need for bankruptcy loans is also currently being studied



 The need to share success stories of entrepreneurs was also stressed upon by the Minister. He mentioned that this would encourage aspiring entrepreneurs





The session concluded with a focused discussion on the tourism sector and the measures being taken to boost this industry. The Minister specified that the MoICT has formulated a 4 As Programme which focuses on Awareness, Attraction, Access and Accommodation.



Awareness will focus on promoting Bahrain in a positive way as well as hosting prestigious international events on the island, inviting prominent personalities and increasing the number of conventions held every year.



Attraction will concentrate on increasing the number of family attractions such as parks, beaches, family destinations, amusement parks within the country.



Access will ensure improving the access to the island by improving the causeway, increasing routes of Gulf Air as well as providing Bahrain with its new state-of-the-art airport.



Accommodation will help improve the quality of accommodation for leisure and business tourists as well as increase the availability of beach front properties, affordable short stay hotels etc. He added that the new convention centre close to the BIC will also be able to cater to a larger number of tourists and will also be connected to a small shopping mall. The MoICTs next area of focus within the tourism sector would be concentrated on Medical and Education tourism and a plan to increase footfalls to the Hawar Islands.  TradeArabia News Service
Euromoney Conferences, a leading organiser of conferences for cross-border investment and capital markets, is returning to Amman, Jordan on April 25.



The annual financial conference was last held in Amman in 2012.



This years conference, titled Finance for an Invigorated Economy, will be held under the patronage of His Majesty King Abdullah II and co-hosted by the Ministry of Finance.



The conference, supported by senior lead sponsor Arab Bank and co-sponsor, Jordan Kuwait Bank, will bring together 300 financiers, investors, business leaders, entrepreneurs and government officials to address the development of Jordans innovation economy.



This one-day conference will examine Jordan's economic outlook, exploring the macroeconomic and geopolitical challenges the country faces as well as assessing the role of the financial sector in the country's wider economic development. The conference will also address Jordans growing role as a hub for entrepreneurship and innovation in the region. Topics will include micro- and SME-financing and the development of the innovation and digital ecosystem in Jordan. Highlights of the upcoming event will include keynote addresses from Omar Malhas, Minister of Finance, and Eng. Imad Fakhoury, Minister of Planning and International Cooperation.



Victoria Behn, director of Middle East and Africa at Euromoney Conferences, said: We are delighted to be returning to Amman to re-launch our annual event. We will bring together a high-level line-up of speakers, including financiers and some of Jordans most innovative and exciting start-ups and SMEs, to debate and discuss the impact that the innovation economy can have on Jordans economic development.



The conference will be highly interactive and audience participation will be encouraged, with attendees invited to vote in the pre-conference poll, found on the event webpage. The event will also feature a Twitter Wall to allow the public to put their questions directly to the speakers. Interested participants will be able to join the debate and voice their opinions on the conference themes on Twitter, using the hashtag #emJordan. - TradeArabia News Service
Chestertons, an international property agency with a hub in Dubai, said investors from the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region had pumped more than Dh265 million ($72.1 million) into London's real estate market in 2015.



The UK's capital was the most attractive market for Chestertons Mena investors, representing more than 70 per cent of their total sales of nearly Dh379 million ($103 million).



London has long been a favoured destination for investors from the Middle East region; it is a mature, well-regulated market with a solid track record for capital appreciation and many Middle East investors are familiar with London, visiting on a regular basis, said Declan McNaughton, the managing director UAE, Chestertons Mena.



The global property expert said it had closed UK property sales worth over Dh610 million ($166 million) on behalf of its Middle East investors last year.



Based in its Dubai office, Chestertons has a dedicated team of London property experts, who provide prospective investors with up-to-date market insight and a comprehensive database of investment opportunities.



Investors from Kuwait topped the GCC list, accounting for 21 per cent of total London sales through Chestertons, followed by Saudi Arabia (17 per cent), Qatar (10 per cent), UAE (10 per cent) and Bahrain (7 per cent). The balance of the buyers was made up of nationals from the UK, Switzerland and Iran.



However, it was not all capital outflow from the region; Chestertons Dubai office sold properties worth almost Dh232 million ($63 million) in the UAE, with almost 40 per cent of the total sales value coming from Middle Eastern investors.



Emirati investors topped the nationality breakdown accounting for around 25 per cent of investment, with single digit percentage contributions from investors in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Lebanon. Indian and UK nationals were also prominent nationalities contributing 15 per cent and 10 per cent respectively.



Our nationality breakdown for UAE sales is more or less in line with the Dubai Land Departments (DLD) nationality breakdown, stated McNaughton.



In the Middle East, Chestertons has grown from a single Abu Dhabi office in 2008, to a network of locations that includes the existing Dubai headquarters, Qatar and presence in three key Saudi Arabian hubs, namely Riyadh, Jeddah and Al Khobar.



Due to increased investor appetite, our focus moving forward is to enlarge our regional footprint in key locations across the Gulf, starting with the addition of a third Dubai office, located in the Al Barsha area and one in Ajman, added McNaughton.



Chesterton's expansion strategy focuses on increasing both investor and developer/landlord awareness of and access to a wide-ranging portfolio of services as the market dynamic continues to shift with multiple opportunities across the different vertical asset classes from residential and commercial through to industrial and hotels.



Naturally with an expanded footprint, increased headcount and a strategy focused on specific vertical sectors of the real estate market, we are confident that our 2016 revenue performance will comfortably exceed the excellent figures we returned in 2015, he added.-TradeArabia News Service
Epicor Software Corporation said two regional building material firms - Gemini Technical Industries (GTI) and Sahara Trading Company - have selected its next-generation enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution to improve their key business processes.



GTI is the manufacturing arm of Gemini Building Materials (GBM) and one of the leading importers and traders of building materials in the GCC region, while Sahara Trading is the regional provider of top-of-the-line products for the construction sector.



A global provider of industry-specific enterprise software to promote business growth, Epicor said both the companies are set to integrate the user-friendly ERP solution into their operations to enable further business growth.



Upon full implementation, both will effectively integrate and enhance their processes and other aspects of their operations -- including procurement, assessment, distribution, warehousing and logistics, sales, manufacturing, and project management, it stated.



With the support of Index InfoTech, an authorised value-added reseller in the UAE, Epicor ERP was selected for both businesses due to its flexibility.



GTI and Sahara Trading also cited the systems easy deployment and ability to handle expanding workloads as key to their ERP choice - qualities that will support the businesses as they continue to grow in the region, said a statement from Epicor.



Utilising GBMs experience and expertise at its Abu Dhabi-based manufacturing facility, GTI relies on state-of-the-art machinery to efficiently address its clients unique building requirements.



Vineesh Babu, the director for GTI, said: "The integrated Epicor ERP solution is a good fit to our business requirements and we will be implementing the technology in one of our main offices to achieve a more efficient workflow."



"We are confident that the Epicor ERP system will significantly help us reach our overall goals, resulting in improved efficiency and profitability," he added.



Sahara Trading, established in 2001, provides the construction sector with a diverse line of products, including windows patch and sliding door fittings, stainless steel door handles, handrail accessories, glass partitions, shower accessories, and glass tools.



Mohannad Saleh, the internal audit and finance head for Sahara Trading, said: "We chose Epicor ERP because it can be easily tailored to meet our objectives and further improve our operations. The advanced software will integrate our complex processes, thus giving our employees ready access to critical information in real time."



"The ERP solution will be rolled out across our multiple branches in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman to streamline our operations. We look forward to working closely with Epicor and Index InfoTech during the implementation, stated Saleh.



Sabby Gill, the executive VP for Epicor International, said: "With this tie-up, both GTI and Sahara Trading will experience enhanced visibility across all of their operations, giving them a single-pane view of the entire supply chain."



"The businesses will be able to identify spikes in demand, resourcing issues and external trends, allowing them to plan accordingly, make better decisions and remain competitive in this fast-paced market," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
Sharjah Airport International Free Zone (SAIF Zone) recently organised road shows across several Indian cities aimed at attracting more business to the free zone.



The road shows, titled Business Opportunities in SAIF Zone, were organised in Delhi, Faridabad, Jalandhar, Chandigarh and Gwalior, said a statement from SAIF Zone.



Saud Al Mazrouei, director of SAIF Zone and Hamriyah Free Zone, said: The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has been extending its support to us in order to organise road shows in India to project the facilities made available by us for setting up manufacturing, assembling, distribution, warehousing, and branch office activities in the UAE.



Indians have emerged as important investors within the UAE and the country has become an important export destination for the UAE's manufactured goods. India is UAEs third largest trading partner for the year 2014-15 after China and the US, he said.



In Gwalior, the event was chaired by Satyendra Kumar Jain, director of Saffron Transformers Components Ltd. The event was attended by major industrialists and entrepreneurs who showed great interest in expanding their business to the UAE, said the statement.



The SAIF Zone delegation also met several industrialists in Gwalior and visited Kurlon Limited which is India's leading mattress manufacturer, it added.



Raed Bukhatir, deputy commercial director of SAIF Zone, said: Equipped with state-of-the-art facilities, the free zone offers unbeatable trade incentives and benefits to its investors making it the free zone of choice. Tax exemptions and its world-class infrastructure make it the premiere destination for investment.



SAIF Zone is located centrally and well-connected with three major sea ports, adjacent to Sharjah's airport and three major highways connecting UAE and GCC countries, he added.  TradeArabia News Service
Governments across the world began investigating possible financial wrongdoing by the rich and powerful on Monday following a leak of documents from a Panamanian law firm which allegedly showed how clients avoided tax or laundered money.



The documents detailed schemes involving an array of figures from friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin to relatives of the prime ministers of Britain, Iceland and Pakistan and as well as the president of Ukraine, journalists who received them said.



While the "Panama Papers" detail complex financial arrangements benefitting the world's elite, they do not necessarily mean the schemes were all illegal.



The Kremlin said the documents contained "nothing concrete and nothing new" while a spokesman for British Prime Minister David Cameron said his late father's reported links to an offshore company were a "private matter".



Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson could not immediately be reached for comment on the naming of his wife in connection with a secretive company in an offshore haven which brought opposition calls for him to resign.



Pakistan denied any wrongdoing by the family of Prime Minister Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif after his daughter and son were linked to offshore companies. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has not commented on his reported offshore links.



Opponents said Poroshenko should be impeached for allegedly transfering his confectionary business to an offshore company in 2014, amid fierce fighting between Ukraine and pro-Russian separatists. A senior official from the General Prosecutor's office said there was no evidence he had committed a crime.



Australia, New Zealand, India, France and Austria were among countries which said they had begun investigating the allegations, based on more than 11.5 million documents from law firm Mossack Fonseca, located in the tax haven of Panama. Banks as well as individual clients came under the spotlight.



The documents were leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and more than 100 other news organisations. Mossack Fonseca has denied any wrongdoing.



"I think the leak will prove to be probably the biggest blow the offshore world has ever taken because of the extent of the documents," ICJC director Gerard Ryle said.



ARMS AND DRUGS?



The material covers a period over almost 40 years, from 1977 until last December, and allegedly show that some companies domiciled in tax havens were being used for suspected money laundering, arms and drug deals, and tax evasion.



Britain's Guardian newspaper said the documents showed a network of secret offshore deals and loans worth $2 billion led to close friends of Putin, including concert cellist Sergie Rolddugin. Reuters could not confirm those details.



Putin's spokesman dismissed the reports, saying they aimed to discredit him ahead of upcoming elections.



"This Putinophobia abroad has reached such a point that it is in fact taboo to say something good about Russia, or about any actions by Russia or any Russian achievements. But it's a must to say bad things, a lot of bad things, and when there's nothing to say, it must be concocted. This is evident to us."



The publications contained "nothing concrete and nothing new" about Putin, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.



The British government asked for a copy of the leaked data, which could be embarrassing for Prime Minister Cameron, who has spoken out against tax evasion and tax avoidance.



His late father, Ian Cameron, is mentioned in the files, alongside some members of his Conservative Party in the upper house of parliament, former Conservative lawmakers and party donors, British media said.



Jennie Granger, director general of enforcement and compliance at HM Revenue and Customs, said the government had a great deal of information from a wide range of sources.



"We will closely examine this data and will act on it swiftly and appropriately," she said.



Cameron's spokeswoman declined to comment on whether the leader's family had money invested in offshore funds set up by his father, saying it was a "private matter".



Tax authorities in Australia and New Zealand said they were probing local clients of Mossack Fonseca.



The Australian Tax Office said it was investigating more than 800 wealthy clients and had linked more than 120 of them to an associate offshore service provider located in Hong Kong, which it did not name.



DATABASE "HACK"



The head of Mossack Fonseca, Ramon Fonseca, has denied any wrongdoing but said his firm had suffered a successful but "limited" hack on its database. He described the hack and leak as "an international campaign against privacy".



Fonseca, who was up until March a senior government official in Panama, told Reuters that the firm, which specialises in setting up offshore companies, has formed more than 240,000 such companies, the "vast majority" used for "legitimate purposes".



The papers also showed the use of off-shore companies by Pakistini Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's family, including his daughter Mariam and son Hussain. Pakistani Information Minister Pervez Rasheed denied any wrongdoing on their part.



"Every man has the right to do what he wants with his assets, to throw them in the sea, to sell them, or to establish a trust for them. There is no crime in this in Pakistani law or in international law," Rasheed said. - Reuters
Future Travel Experience (FTE) has announced the Airline Passenger Experience Association (Apex) as the Headline Partner of Future Travel Experience Global 2016, which will take place in Las Vegas this September.



The 11th edition of the annual FTE Global show, which will run from September 7 to 9 , will attract nearly 1,000 air transport and travel industry leaders from around the world. Senior figures from airlines, aircraft manufacturers, airports, vendors, government agencies, destination partners, consumer technology giants, and various other industry stakeholders will gather in Las Vegas. The event will provide a platform to share the latest passenger experience plans and visions, showcase the best products and concepts, and collectively define the end-to-end passenger experience of the future.



Apex chief executive officer Joe Leader will participate in FTEs latest future-focused Think Tank project, the findings of which will be exclusively revealed in the Up in the Air conference at FTE Global 2016. This pioneering Think Tank will tackle the theme of Harnessing the full potential of the connectivity pipeline between now and 2025. Leader will work closely with FTE and various other air transport industry experts on this unique project, which will provide priceless insight to airlines and the wider industry.



Leader said: FTE and Apex share a goal to improve the passenger experience. In that spirit, we are delighted to be partnering on FTE Global in Las Vegas. Apexs membership base has rapidly expanded to serve more areas both in the air and on the ground. With our annual Expo this year taking place in Singapore alongside FTE Asia Expo, FTE Global in Las Vegas offers a unique opportunity to collaborate in the Americas.



Apex will work closely with the Future Travel Experience team to help craft the FTE Global 2016 event to provide another valuable meeting platform for our strong membership base. I have every confidence that FTE Global 2016 with Apex will provide a vital forum for our members to take advantage of the educational, exhibiting and networking opportunities.



Daniel Coleman, founder, Future Travel Experience, added: Enhancing the in-flight passenger experience is a key element of FTEs overall mission of improving every stage of the end-to-end travel experience, and we are very pleased that our working relationship with Apex now extends to our FTE Global show. Like us, Apex is dedicated to strengthening the air transport community, promoting innovation and ultimately improving the passenger experience, and their support in delivering our biggest event in the Americas to date will add great value.



We are pulling out all the stops to inspire our delegates at FTE Global 2016, which will host Up in the Air and On the Ground conference streams, an inspirational end-to-end exhibition, the first ever FTE Terminal Design & Delivery Summit, interactive co-creation workshops, the sixth Future Travel Experience Awards ceremony, and an unforgettable social and networking programme. We are delighted to have Apexs invaluable support in delivering this. - TradeArabia News Service
Hawthorn Suites by Wyndham Jumeirah Beach Residence will be targeting family travellers, particularly from the GCC region, during the annual Arabian Travel Market taking place in Dubai this month.



Highlighting its newly-launched room categories  the family one-bedroom suite and three-bedroom suite, the property aims to tap the growing family travel segment and reinforce its position as the preferred hotel accommodation in JBR.



Its new family one-bedroom suites can accommodate two adults and two kids, or as many as four adults, providing an affordable option for families; while the new three-bedroom suite connects a two-bedroom and a deluxe suite, which is ideal for large families and groups.



Samir Arora, general manager, Hawthorn Suites by Wyndham, said: We are looking to find new leads in the GCC, especially from Saudi Arabia, as well as other regions during ATM. On top of our new offers, we will showcase our upgraded products and services, and secure continuous business with our current partners.



Arabian Travel Market 2016 will run from April 25 to 28 at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre. - TradeArabia News Service
Minor Hotel Group (MHG), a hotel owner, operator and investor, has announced the addition of two new properties to its pipeline in the UAE.



Anantara Jebel Dhanna and Avani Jebel Dhanna in Abu Dhabi will soon begin development and both are scheduled to open in 2018.



The owner and developer of these two new properties is Dhabi Contracting and Aecom has been appointed as the lead architecture and interior design consultant for the project, said a Minor statement.



Jebel Dhanna is located along the coastal area of the Al Gharbia region in the emirate of Abu Dhabi, close to the ferry departure point for Sir Bani Yas Island, 240 km from Abu Dhabi city and 360 km from Doha (Qatar) and 125 km from the border of Saudi Arabia.



The Jebel Dhanna peninsula is relatively under-developed, with a royal palace bordering the new hotel developments and an industrial area close by. To the south east is Ruwais Industrial Zone and a neighbouring residential area, which will provide substantial demand for the two new properties, it said.



Anantara Jebel Dhanna Villas will have a total of 60 keys across three villa types: 20 one-bedroom villas, 38 two-bedroom villas and two impressive three-bedroom villas. The new Anantara will offer two restaurants and a pool bar, a gym, a swimming pool and an Anantara Spa.



The neighbouring Avani Jebel Dhanna Hotel will have 230 keys across two different room types: 170 deluxe rooms and 60 superior rooms including a kitchenette. Other facilities will include multiple dining options, a gym and a swimming pool. Shared facilities will include flexible meeting and banqueting space, a kids club and outdoor recreation areas.



Anantara, a luxury hospitality brand, currently has 35 hotels and resorts in 11 countries. Anantara celebrated its 15th birthday in March this year. Launched in 2011, Avani is a vibrant upscale brand offering relaxed comfort and contemporary style in city and resort destinations.



These new properties in Abu Dhabi will join the growing Anantara and AVANI portfolio in the UAE. There are currently six Anantara properties in operation in the country  five in Abu Dhabi and one in Dubai (Anantara The Palm Dubai). In addition, a new Anantara resort is under development in Ras Al Khaimah and a second Anantara resort will open in Dubai in 2018. The first Avani announcement for the country was made in September last year for the development of a resort in Dubai to open in 2018.



Dillip Rajakarier, CEO Minor Hotel Group, said: "Minor Hotel Group is already well established in Abu Dhabi through our existing Anantara portfolio in the city, desert and on Sir Bani Yas Island and we are excited to today announce the first Avani in Abu Dhabi, to be developed alongside what will be our sixth Anantara. We are looking forward to partnering with Dhabi Contracting in this exciting new project. - TradeArabia News Service
#instead suicide prevention campaign begins

The Natrona County Suicide Prevention Task Force has begun a new interactive campaign to prevent suicide by working together as a community to share ideas about suicide prevention that we hope will keep people from suicide.

Using Facebook, our website and developing additional materials, we ask others to share what they have done, what they currently do, and what they hope others will do #instead of suicide. Together we will spread the messages suicide is preventable, there are other options, help is available.

The #instead event is now live on the task force Facebook page, facebook.com/NCsuicideprevention

Visit the task force website, www.natronacountysuicideprevention.org

Email your ideas, words, images, to tblevins@mercerwy.org

Questions? Call Traci Blevins, (307) 233-4277.

Chicken fried steak at the Elks

Wednesday Night Special at the Casper Elks Lodge is chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans and corn. All you can eat for $7, children 5 to 12 are $4. Serving from 6 to 7 p.m. or until gone. Members, significant other and guest accompanied by a member. For more information, call 234-4839.

Tim Stubson at Five Trails Thursday

The Five Trails Rotary Club will hear from Tim Stubson on Thursday at noon at the Casper Petroleum Club. Community members are welcome to attend this presentation as guests of the Five Trails Rotary Club.

Mr. Stubson has been an attorney in Casper, WY supporting small businesses. He wanted government to facilitate progress in federal regulations for small businesses rather than impede it so, in 2008, he ran for a seat in the Wyoming State Legislature. He is running for Congress because he wants to fight for Wyomings people, Wyoming jobs and for Wyoming values. He pledges to fight for Wyomings energy industry and help Wyoming businesses by closing tax loop holes that benefit a few and lower tax rates for all.

Mr. Stubson grew up across Wyoming oilfields, he was educated here and raises his family here. He is one of us and does things the Wyoming way with hard work and honesty. He wants to go to Washington to preserve our way of life and make sure Wyoming continues to be the nations best place to work and raise a family.

If you or someone you know of would like to present at a future Five Trails Rotary Club meeting, please contact Brian McCash at 259-3444.

Beekeepers meet April 14

Thinking about become a beekeeper? Or you already have hives? Join us to learn more about beekeeping. Natrona County Beekeepers Association will meet Thursday, April 14, 7 p.m., in room 207 of Strausner Hall, Casper College.

Trial of Tom Horn at library

he Natrona County Library will sponsor a free presentation by John Davis on Saturday, April 23 at 5:30 p.m. in the Crawford Room. The Trial of Tom Horn examines the conviction of Tom Horn which marked a major milestone in the hard-fought battle against vigilantism in Wyoming. Davis, an experienced attorney, presents every twist and turn of a fascinating trial, and his account illuminates a larger narrative between the power of wealth and the forces of law and order. Participants will understand what an enormous challenge to democracy vigilantism was in early Wyoming and how the fight against willful cattle barons shaped the history of the state.

John W. Davis is a published author who graduated from Worland High School in 1961, earned a B.A. in mathematics from the University of Wyoming in 1964 and graduated from the University Of Wyoming College Of Law in 1968. He taught Algebra II 1964-65 at the New Hampton School in New Hampton, New Hampshire and served as a Captain, Army Judge Advocate General Corps from April 1969 until March of 1973. He practiced law in Worland for over 42 years, retiring in 2015.

The Trial of Tom Horn is presented by the Wyoming Humanities Council as part of its ThinkWY Road Scholars Tours program. The Wyoming Humanities Council provides public humanities-based programs in partnership with local organizations and is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities with additional support from private donors and the Wyoming Legislature.
Tuesday support meetings

Alcoholics Anonymous: 6:30 a.m., 917 N. Beech; 8:30 a.m., 500 S. Wolcott; 10 a.m., 328 E. A St.; noon, 500 S. Wolcott, Ste. 200; 5:30 p.m., 456 S. Walnut; 7 p.m., 520 CY Ave., Quick Fix (in back, basement); 7 p.m., 500 S. Wolcott, Ste. 200; 7 p.m., Edgerton, 763 Center St.; 7:30 p.m., Douglas, 628 E. Richards; 8 p.m., 917 N. Beech. Unless otherwise noted, all meetings are open. Casper info: 266-9578; Douglas info: (307) 351-1688.

Narcotics Anonymous: Noon, 500 S. Wolcott, 12-24 Club; 7 p.m., 15th and Melrose, at the church. Web site: http://www.urmrna.org.

Free tax help offered

The Wyoming Free Tax Service runs through April 13. Our hours will be from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday; 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday. We will be closed on Sunday and Monday as well as Friday and Saturday because of Easter. Our location is the Aspen Creek Building, 800 Werner Court, Suite 180. This service is offered on a first-come, first-served basis, so no appointments will be scheduled. Please bring your Social Security card, photo identification and appropriate paperwork.

If you have questions, please feel free to call 307-315-1830 during our hours of operation or visit www.wyomingfreetaxservice.org.

Reading the West book discussion

The Natrona County Library and Fort Caspar Museum will continue their book discussion series celebrating all things Western, from rugged heroes and horses to books that ride off into the sunset. Please join us at 6:30 p.m. at the Library to discuss Give Me Eighty Men: Women and the Myth of the Fetterman Fight, by Shannon Smith. The discussion is free and open to the public. To participate, pick up your copy at the librarys second floor Reference Desk. Call 577-READ ext. 2 or email reference@natronacountylibrary.org for more information.

Concert benefits mission

The Central Wyoming Rescue Mission presents Tenth Avenue North on its All the Earth is Holy Ground tour, along with Hawk Nelson and I Am They at 7 p.m. at Highland Park Community Church. Tickets are $20, $30, $40, and $50 each. For more information, visit CWRM.org or http:www.itickets.com/events/354610.html

Civil Air Patrol meets

Civil Air Patrol meets from 7 to 9 p.m. the first Tuesday of the month at Casper National Guard Armory, 5905 CY Ave. For more information, call 259-0855.

CAP Cadets meet

Civil Air Patrol Cadets (ages 12-18) meet from 7 to 9 p.m. every Tuesday at Casper National Guard Armory, 5905 CY Ave. For more information, call 259-0855.

Register for

Beginning Experience

Beginning Experience of Wyoming is a weekend program that offers healing and renewal to divorced, widowed and separated men and women. It is a nonprofit, faith-based comprehensive program offered to all persons, regardless of religious preference. A Beginning Experience weekend offers support and direction to help resolve grief or anger that can follow the end of a marriage by divorce, separation or death. The weekend can be a time for a real awakening, a re-evaluation and a new beginning. You can anticipate an intense reflective, possibly painful, but spiritually honest self-encounter. You will also find support, warm fellowship, and community. The next Beginning Experience weekend will be in Douglas and starts at 7 p.m. on Friday, April 8, and runs through around 4 p.m. Sunday, April 10. The cost is $150, which includes lodging, meals and materials.

Scholarships are available. Registration deadline is Tuesday.

Ask these team members for more information: Curtis at 307-240-1232 or email westcurtis2014@gmail.com; Diane at 262-4142, Paulette at 267-6375.

Register for

business lunch

Casper Business Roundtable is 11:45 a.m. to 1 p.m., on Wednesday at First Interstate Bank, 104 South Wolcott, 2nd Floor. Register by noon Tuesday to Kate McNally at Kate.mcnally@fib.com or 235-4338.

Presenter is Lauri Gobble, field engineer with Manufacturing Works, Increase revenue and decrease costs with the E8: Efficiency, Energy, Environment, Engineering, Effective Business Management, Essential Business Growth and Education and Empowering Partners.

Sherry Hughes, Energy Efficiency program manager with the Wyoming Business Council, will be presenting: Small Business Energy Audits and Retrofit Grant Program.

First Interstate Bank provides lunch.
CHEYENNE  Wyomings coal, although experiencing challenges, has an important role to play in the countrys energy mix, former President Bill Clinton said Monday morning in Cheyenne.

The challenge is natural gas competitive pricing, Clinton said.

In the end, were going to be phasing into a new energy future, Clinton said. Its going to be a long time, and Wyoming has the most efficient and lowest sulfur (coal) in the world.

Over 500 people packed the Kiwanis Community House to hear Clinton stump for his wife, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The former president spoke for about an hour.

Jane Sanders, wife of Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, was scheduled to speak Monday night in Casper and Tuesday afternoon in Cheyenne. Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, is speaking at the University of Wyoming Tuesday night.

Clinton highlighted his successes as president in the 1990s and said his wife is even better at effecting change than he. He described domestic and international successes that Hillary Clinton guided.

Everything shes done all her life, shes gotten people to help her who otherwise didnt agree with her, he said.

He encouraged supporters to call their friends and neighbors to stir up interest in Hillary Clinton ahead of Saturdays Democratic county caucuses.

The caucuses are the first step in Wyoming Democrats process of nominating a presidential candidate. Wyoming will send 18 delegates to the July Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, with four superdelegates already committed to Clinton. The proportion of delegates each Democratic candidate receives Saturday will be the proportion the state sends to the national convention.

Shes the only person left in the race in either party who can be commander-in-chief and can be chief executive on Day 1, Bill Clinton said.

Clinton said the 2016 presidential election is important because the country is on the cusp of a great economic uptick and shared prosperity.

We are just this close to being able to rise again, he said. I know the headlines in Wyoming are not good today because of the coal layoffs.

Last week, almost 500 people lost their jobs at Gillette-area coal mines.

Wyoming has abundant wind and sunshine, he added, and the state can be a leader in renewable energy. A California law requires that by 2030 half the states energy come from renewables. Wyoming can provide it, Clinton said.

Every Native American tribe, for example, west of the Mississippi could be doing the same thing, he said. And think about the jobs that could be created in Wyoming if we decided to maximize your capacity to export wind as you export coal.

The Northern Arapaho Business Council and leaders of the Eastern Shoshone tribe announced Sunday they were supporting Hillary Clinton. Leadership for both tribes were seated near Bill Clintons podium.

The former president said about 90 percent of Americans now have health coverage, since the passage of the Affordable Care Act.

You need to pass this Medicaid expansion, Clinton said, referring to the Wyoming Legislatures rejection of the Obamacare provision. He applauded Democrats in the Republican-controlled Legislature and Gov. Matt Mead for pushing the program to extend coverage to low-income people. He said Wyomings rural hospitals are vulnerable and expansion would help them.

Sanders wants to make college free for all, but Bill Clinton said its not that simple.

If you read the fine print, the free tuition comes two-thirds from the federal government and one-third comes from the state, Clinton said.

If the Wyoming Legislature refuses to accept up to 90 percent of the costs of Medicaid to be covered by the feds, theres no way lawmakers will find tuition money, he said.

Hillary Clintons plan to make college more affordable is to expand the federal Pell Grant program and opportunities for work study. That will keep down the cost of higher education, he said.

Hillary Clinton thinks people should be able to refinance their student loans to tap into better interest rates, as they can with mortgages and other loans, he said.

For K-12 education, Hillary Clinton wants to cut some of the mandatory standardized testing and use the money instead on improving teaching.

The things that sound good cant always be done. But we can do a lot to truly revolutionize the future for these kids, he said, pointing at a class of elementary students from Cheyenne in the audience.

Charles Schmechel of Cheyenne plans to support the former secretary of state Saturday at the Laramie County Democratic Party caucus.

I think Secretary Clinton is the only one with the appropriate experience and confidence to do the job well, he said.

Patrick Kelley and Corey Tarwater of Laramie also will support her. Tarwater said Clinton appeals to her because of her stances on education and womens rights.

We support most of her policies, she said. We think she has a realistic path.

Ray Macchia of Cheyenne took time off work to see Bill Clinton, as its not every day that he travels to the Cowboy State. He doesnt know yet who he will support on Saturday but said he likes Bill Clinton.

Four protesters who work as contractors traveled here from Gillette and Wheatland, holding pro-coal and anti-Hillary signs. Clinton made a comment that her energy plan would put coal miners out of business. Clinton has a $30 billion plan to help ailing coal communities, from the Powder River Basin to Appalachia. But Yvette Land of Gillette said she doesnt want a handout or new job training.

Anybody who says they want to put people out of work has no business in the White House, said Land, who left Gillette at 2:30 a.m. to protest in Cheyenne.
We like to think of Phoenix as a big fat chimichanga, stuffed with filler then wrapped in freeways and fried to a crisp.

But if you dig a little deeper, this city of four million people has a sizable immigrant community with restaurants from every region of Mexico. Unlike Tucson with its palpable Sonoran vibe, the metropolitan center attracts people from the bustling streets of Mexico City as well as Mexico's culinary capital of Oaxaca.

After a little research, I was able to find two major neighborhoods* for great Mexican food. The highest concentration of restaurants is northwest of downtown Phoenix in an area called the 16th Street Corridor. Here you'll find everything from 24-hour fast food joints to the gourmet Barrio Cafe. (And strangely one of the city's best Chinese places, Gourmet House of Hong Kong.) You can even walk most of it, heading north from 16th Street and McDowell Road.

If you continue north for several miles, you'll hit the Sunnyslope neighborhood straddling the base of North Mountain. In "Little Oaxaca," we found tlayudas and black moles from the central Mexican state as well as the tortas and huaraches of Mexico City.

*Over in the East Valley, you can also head to the Pascua Yaqui community of Guadalupe for Sonoran tacos and Baja seafood. But for this feature, we decided to focus on central and southern Mexican dishes that you can't get in Tucson ...

TLAYUDAS (Origin: Oaxaca)

The Tlayuda combinada, $12, at La 15 y Salsas in northern Phoenix

These colorful Mexican pizzas are a staple item at Elizabeth Hernandez's sunny Oaxacan restaurant La 15 y Salsas, 1507 W. Hatcher Road. (Named that because the cross street is 15th Avenue.) The disks are actually much lighter than their Sonoran cheese crisp counterpart, with stringy white Oaxacan cheese rather than the melted yellow variety. The richness here actually comes from the black beans and the asiento pork lard that Hernandez slathers across the base. The name tlayuda refers to the tortilla itself, a crackly baked corn disk that she imports from her hometown of Oaxaca de Juarez. She'll make one up for you there, or you can purchase a bag at the little Oaxacan shop in the front.

CHAPULINES (Origin: Oaxaca)

Chapulines tacos, $3 apiece, at La 15 y Salsas in northern Phoenix

Toasted grasshoppers are a common snack in southern Mexico, and here at La 15 y Salsas you can buy by them by the bagful. Some people spice them up with chile, but Hernandez does them up simply on the comal with some salt and a squeeze of lime. (The citrus tones down the dirt flavor a little bit.) But it's the texture rather than the taste that gets you: snappy and spindly, with threats of sharp extremities about to poke the crap out of your tongue. In other words, fun! Find these Oaxacan beauties on the botana appetizer platter or munch on some grasshopper tacos with handmade corn tortillas, topped with her vibrant salsas.

HUARACHES (Origin: Mexico City)

The Huarache Sencillo, $6.60, at El Rinconcito del D.F. in northern Phoenix

There's a million ways to smash corn in Mexico City, and this is one of the most interesting: The huarache is a street food made from masa that's been pressed down on an oblong paddle in the shape of a giant pill. It's then fried up crisp and topped with various meats and cheeses like spongy queso fresco. (A meatless version is pictured above.) At El Rinconcito del D.F. at 8901 N. Twelfth Street, they stuff the huaraches with black beans for a savory boost, then top them with anything from the tart red chile chicken tinga to a fat glistening slab of bistek beef.

GELATINAS (Origin: Outer space)

Gelatinas artisticas, $2.50 apiece at El Rinconcito del D.F.

El Rinconcito del D.F. also makes these edible works of art they call Gelatinas Artisticas, or artistic jellies. They look like delicate flower blossoms hovering in translucent snow globes, but they're actually 100 percent jello. To make them, you insert a syringe-like object into a jello mold and very carefully squeeze out different colors to make the flower petals. To be honest they taste rather ordinary, "like watered down Orange Kool-Aid" according to my dining companion. But they look so pretty!

MOLLETES (Origin: Spain)

Molletes, $5.99, at Los Reyes de la Torta's Tempe location

"There's no tortillas, there's only bread!" But thankfully it's the addicting crusty kind you might find in one of Europe's great cities. The mollete appetizer at Los Reyes de la Torta could be considered Spain's greatest contribution to the New World (aside from Rocio Durcal) because it is simple and lovely, so effortless I was scratching my head as to why I've never seen it before. Slathered with beans, spicy chorizo and melted cheese, it tasted like a torta mated with a Sloppy Joe and made a beautiful bubbly baby.

INSANE TORTAS (Origin: Mexico City)

The Torta del Rey, $10.25, at Los Reyes de la Torta in Tempe
Camp Cooper has embarked on its second major fundraising campaign to cover staffing and operations costs.

The Cooper Center for Environmental Learning provides overnight experiences in the desert to elementary and middle school students from across the region.

Operated as a partnership between the Tucson Unified School District and the University of Arizona College of Education, Camp Cooper relies on about $100,000 in community funding raised through grants and donations.

Last years fundraising campaign brought in more than $80,000 in just four months. This time, the center hopes to raise at least $20,000 by the end of the month for the 2016-17 school year.

Donations can be made online at crowdfund.arizona.edu/Cooper2016. For more information, visit coopercenter.arizona.edu
A free breakfast program for elementary and middle school students in the Sunnyside Unified School District has led to a significant increase in the number of students eating at school.

The number went from 3,000 per day two years ago, to 10,000 students now, said John Oakley, the districts director of food services. The program started three years ago as a pilot program.

Sunnysides universal free breakfast program delivers bagged breakfast meals to elementary and middle school students every school morning, he said. Being hungry is not conducive to learning, he said.

With a high number of students from low-income households, Oakley said there may be students who may not have enough food at home. Parents can rest assured kids have something to eat in the morning, he said.

The district uses funds it receives for the free and reduced lunch program to help pay for breakfast for all the students.

Making it free for all students has helped with the increasing number of breakfast participation, Oakley said. Some students who might have been embarrassed to go get a meal bag can now get it with the rest of the class.

Another thing that contributed to the increase is better partnerships and communication with schools and principals about their students needs, he said.

Were here to educate the kids and allow them to reach their full potential, he said.

Sierra 2nd-8th School Principal Donna Samorano said the universal free breakfast program has been quite successful at her school.

Now its become more of a community where the classroom together is eating breakfast, she said.

The free breakfast helps especially during testing season because the school can make sure kids eat before they have to take their tests, she said.

fresh produce included

Another update in Sunnysides food services program is that the district received $219,500 in grant money to provide fresh fruit and vegetables to six schools.

Those schools are Drexel, Elvira, Esperanza, Rivera and Summit View elementary schools and Sierra .

That program has an educational component to it, said Oakley, the food services director.

Students are given snack-size samples of fruits or vegetables, and they learn about food and nutrition.

Its a way to get kids to try fruits and vegetables that they may not have tried at home, said Samorano, Sierras principal.

Some of the examples include blood orange, rainbow carrots, Asian pears and jicama.

Its all about trying something different, she said.
Tensions are growing in a university-area neighborhood as a shelter for homeless women tries to move in next door.

Dozens of people from the neighborhood and the shelter spoke at a city meeting last week about a request by Sister Jose Womens Shelter to get special permission to move into the West University area near North Seventh Avenue and East Fourth Street.

Those in favor of the move cited the importance of the shelter to the Tucson community and the benefit of a larger space for the women. The shelter plans to serve 15-20 women at a time at the new location.

Those opposed say they believe the proposed shelter is actually a soup kitchen and that they were not properly informed of the plan. They worry the shelter will attract more homeless people to the area, and said they dont want the shelter in their neighborhood.

Theron Miller, a property owner in West University, said, I love yall, but that is absolutely the wrong place to put this thing.

The city zoning examiner, Jim Mazzocco, said because the new location is within 20 feet of an R3 residential zone, the city requires a special exception before the shelter can move there.

Under current zoning rules, shelter care must take place 500 feet from an R3 residential zone.

Rory Juneman, an attorney for Sister Joses, said the implementation of the shelter should receive a special exception because it wont adversely impact the surrounding neighborhood.

Sister Joses puts great importance on being a great neighbor, Juneman said.

Judi Sensibar lives in West University, and would be one of the shelters new neighbors if the request is approved  an opportunity she hopes is not granted.

She said every neighbor within close vicinity of the property is against the shelter moving in.

Sister Joses wants neighborhood support, and it does not have it, Sensibar said.

She and other neighbors tried to make a case that Sister Joses meets the citys definition of a soup kitchen, not a shelter.

She said allowing a soup kitchen in West University would adversely affect the community.

At its current location south of downtown, Sister Joses is open from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., with hours until 5 p.m. over the summer and nighttime hours in the winter.

Neighborhood residents worry what homeless women would do after the shelter closes for the day and whether the shelter would increase the presence of homeless people in West University.

Penny Buckley, who works at Sister Joses, said that would not be an issue.

We will be an addition, not a detraction, to West University, because we will bring services to the women who are already there, Buckley said.

Others who spoke worried about the shelter being located near a school.

Aida Samuel, a shelter volunteer, discounted that fear.

As a mom, I welcome this opportunity, Samuel said. Help us to teach the new generation about social justice.

In the end, the zoning examiner decided he needed more time before coming to a conclusion.

Mazzocco said he would reconvene with his staff, check with zoning administrators as to what qualifies as a soup kitchen or a shelter, look into the devaluation of real estate, the rate of crime and how often male partners hang around Sister Jose Womens Shelter.

He asked the shelter to be more specific in addressing these issues that are being challenged.

Mazzocco asked the neighborhood and the shelter to meet to better understand the Sister Jose program and its code of conduct.

The zoning examiner meeting will continue on April 21.
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.
Q: I recently booked two tickets to Scotland on American Airlines for this summer. A few weeks ago, I saw that the cost of the tickets had dropped considerably. I called American about this, and said I felt I was being penalized for booking early.

The representative spoke to her boss about the discrepancy in price, and said the airline would issue two vouchers for $494 each. She said the flight had to be booked within a year, but I could travel later than a year. She also told me they were transferable.

Later that night, I received an email from American saying it had deducted $600 from the value of my ticket credit. I called the next day, and a representative told me that American charges a $300 change fee. But there was no change; Im on the same flight in the same seat.

The representative said it was an American Airlines policy. She then gave me the email for Sean Bentel, Americans vice president for customer service. I emailed him immediately. In the meantime, I have received two vouchers for $249 each. They are nontransferable. There has been no response from Mr. Bentel.

I would like the two vouchers for $494 each that I was promised by the original representative. I dont care if they are transferable.  James Ertel, Chalfont, Pennsylvania

A: American Airlines should have sent you the $494 vouchers as promised and not dinged you $600. But the first representative you spoke with didnt tell you everything.

Yes, you could get a voucher for the fare difference, but you also would have to pay a $300 change fee on each ticket.

In other words, American was following its own rules, but it failed to adequately inform you of its policy when you called.

By the way, an airline ticket purchase is no place for buyers remorse. Why? Most airlines wont refund the fare difference without significant strings attached. In Americans case, the change fee more than negated the fare difference. You paid another $600; it offered you $498 in funny money. Preposterous.

It looks as if you were on the phone with not one, but two trainees. The first one didnt mention the fee, and the second one gave you Sean Bentels email address. That has to be a mistake. I met Bentel the last time I came through Dallas, and he told me that his email address is the wrong way to get a service problem resolved (he responds, but you can only imagine how many requests the guy gets).

I publish a more useful list of American Airlines executives on my consumer-advocacy site: elliott.org/company-contacts/american . Hint: Use the form. Its the fastest way to get help.

The takeaway: After you buy an airline ticket, dont look back. Dont pay attention to the fare sales. Dont listen to your friends who found a cheaper flight. Youll spend too much time chasing money.
Help India!

By Shafee Ahmed Ko, TwoCircles.net,

Chennai: A delegation of representatives of Muslim social and political organizations (including Jamaats) met the Tamil Nadu Law Minister Thiru Durai Murugan at his office in state Secretariat on March 6 and made their presentation on the state governments marriage registration law.

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The delegation met the minister to thank him for his assurance that he would consult all prominent and concerned Muslims as well as all the Muslim political parties with regard to Tamil Nadu Marriage Registration Act 2009 to clear the doubt about the act among the Muslim minority. The Minister had given the assurance on 19 February 2010.







The delegation also discussed various aspects of the issue with the minister.

The details of the high official present on 6 March 2010:

The representatives of the parties who were present during this meet included Indian Union Muslim League, TMMK, Board of the Jama-atul-Ulema-National League, Muslim Social Movement, Indian Tawheed Jamat, Marumalarchi Muslim League, Makkal Jananayaga Katchi, Muslim Law Academy, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind.

Apart from the law minister, the government side was represented by Thirumathy S Malathy I.A.S, Home Secretary, Thiru R.Sivakumar I.A.S, Director of Registration, Thiru.K Deena Bhandu IAS, Secretary to the Hon. Deputy Chief Minister, Thiru K.Raghupathy I.A.S., Deputy Secretary, Thirumathy Janaki, I.A.S., the Additional Secretary, Law Department.
Help India!

By IANS,

New Delhi : Muslim groups Tuesday welcomed the Supreme Court decision to allow the Allahabad High Court to deliver its verdict on the Ayodhya dispute.

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The Darul Uloom Deoband, one of the countrys leading Muslim seminaries based in Uttar Pradesh, told IANS that any delay in pronouncing the verdict would have only vitiated communal peace and harmony and generated an atmosphere of mistrust.

The issue has lingered on for the last sixty years it is time the matter is sorted out, said Maulana Abdul Khaliq Madrasi, a teacher at the seminary.

The All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) also reacted similarly.

Welcoming the apex court decision, board member and legal convenor Zafaryab Jilani said: We are hopeful that the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court will be able to deliver the judgment by Oct 1.

This will be good for all, he said.

Maulana Niaz Ahmed Farooqi of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, one of the oldest Muslim organisations in the sub-continent, said the Supreme Court decision would help in doing away with the uncertainty that hovers around the dispute.

Lingering on the dispute would have made it more complicated It would have disturbed the peace People have prepared their mind for the high court decision and they are ready to hear that, Farooqi said.


Help India!

By TwoCircles.net staff reporter

Dr. Irfan Ahmad is the Associate Professor of Political Anthropology at the Australian Catholic University (ACU) in Melbourne. In a talk as part of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)s Global Meeting on Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) organized in Oslo, Norway from March 14th to 16th he said that inter-faith dialogue is an everyday reality in India. However, Indian media hampers the inter-faith dialogues by their biased reporting.

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Without naming Praveen Swami, Dr. Ahmad said that reporting on Indian Mujahideen (IM) is now even getting academic attention even though the only source seems to be Mr. Swami himself:

Interestingly, there is one key Indian journalist source on IM. It is that journalist who blamed Muslims for terrorist attacks on mosques and other Muslim sites. Obviously, facts were opposite. It is same journalist who international analysts writing on IM cite. My point is: discourses of terrorism exist without evidence.

Wath the video of his talk here: https://youtu.be/_Q6zGSpTo4M?t=15m40s

A copy of the presented paper is here :

https://www.academia.edu/23713947/Religion_and_Violent_Extremism_An_Anthropological_Perspective_from_India
Help India!

New York : A US school teacher accused of calling at class 7 student a terrorist during a class discussion on India has been sent on leave following a demand for her ouster from the students family.

The student, Waleed Abushaaban, who is of Middle Eastern descent, stood and gave his input regarding the subject matter.

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According to students, the teacher told him to sit down and referred to him as a terrorist. Some students then laughed and threw themselves to the floor screaming: Hes got a bomb!.

Abushaaban left the classroom and called his father.

Standing in agreement with the family, Minister Quanell X has asked for cultural sensitivity training to be implemented and for the removal of that particular teacher.

Earlier, the Abushaaban family demanded that the teacher should be fired, and the school removed the English and Language Arts teacher from the classroom while it investigates the incident. However, Waleeds family want her permanently dismissed.

Just because my son is a Muslim doesnt mean he is a terrorist, said Malek Abushaaban, Waleeds father. Hes an American. Hes as American as anybody else. He was born here thats all he knows is how to be an American.

The Abushaaban family says Waleed will stay enrolled at First Colony Middle School and, in addition to firing the teacher in question, would like religious sensitivity training for both students and teachers.
Going beyond Angkor wat Updated: 2016-04-04 09:12 By Craig Mcintosh(China Daily)

Besides the famous temple ruins, this country also boasts beautiful beaches, wildlife and a fascinating modern history

After watching the sun slowly sink into the horizon, we dived into the water with our snorkels and were immediately surrounded by a galaxy of "stars".

The spectacle, created by bioluminescent plankton, can be witnessed inmost places along the southwestern coast of Cambodia and is a treat for any nighttime swimmer.

When the water level in Cambodia's Tonle Sap Lake drops, the long stilts supporting homes in Kampong Phluk, a floating village, are left exposed. Photos by Shen Ye / For China Daily Clockwise from top left: The night market in Siem Reap is the place to find souvenirs and local handicrafts; inside the Royal Palace in the capital, Phnom Phen; Otres beach in Sihanoukville offers a calm, laid-back experience; a relic of the Cambodian civil war, one of many on display at the War Museum.

Our small group had moored a boat near the coral off Bamboo Island, a short ride from the white-sand beaches of Sihanoukville. As dusk approached, we drank a beer and enjoyed the silence, which was broken only by our captain performing acrobatic dives from the hull into the warm, clear water.

When darkness fell, the sparkling plankton came alive, providing just one of the many visual feasts that visitors to this country can expect.

Although largely known for the Angkor Wat Archeological Park, a massive collection of centuries-old ruins in the north, and the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia also boasts beautiful beaches, forests and wildlife reserves, as well as myriad sites providing insight into the country's fascinating yet often harrowing modern history.

For many tourists, Phnom Penh, the capital, is the first port of call. While not the most picturesque place, it does offer a taste of modern Cambodian life.

The city's two main attractions are the National Museum and the Royal Palace, both a short walk of each other in the center of town. The museum ($5 admission) houses a modest collection of ancient artifacts, but you can probably skip it if you're planning on heading to Siem Reap, which has the larger and more-impressive Angkor National Museum.

A visit to the stunning Royal Palace (a rather steep $13 entry fee) will take only about an hour, with several exhibition areas added in recent years to give a fuller visitor experience. Paying $10 for a guide is worth it to learn more about the history. The palace is open 9-11 am and 2-5 pm, but its best to visit early to avoid the afternoon heat.

Around the museum and palace are dozens of restaurants offering Khmer and Western options and coffee shops, while Street 240, just around the corner, is lined with boutique stores selling clothes, organic foods and cosmetics.

Head to Sisowath Quay, which offers views of where Tonle Sap River merges with the Mekong River, and walk north and you will quickly arrive at the city's tourist center, ideal for shopping, dining and drinking. When the sun goes down, however, the area can feel a little seedy, and you need to be careful with your belongings.

A tuk tuk can also be hired to take you to the Killing Fields, about 17 kilometers to the south, where the Khmer Rouge executed many of its victims during its four-year reign. Today, the site features a Buddhist stupa packed with thousands of skulls. A visit here can be combined with the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, a former prison.

Life's a beach

Ultimately, one or two days are enough in Phnom Penh. From here, most head to the splendid ruins of the north or to the relaxing beaches and sea views of the southwest.

We took a minibus southwest ($10 a seat) and arrived just under five hours later in Sihanoukville. This coastal city has a beach for all tastes: from Serendipity and Ochheauteal, backpacker favorites and nighttime party spots, to Otres, a laid-back stretch about 10 minutes from the center.

Kayaks, jet skis and surfing equipment can be hired at most beaches, while boat tours and ferries are available to take you to the outlying islands, such as Koh Rong (also known as Monkey Island) or the smaller but equally calm Koh Takiev. The islands all have beach bungalows for those who want to stay overnight.

As many tour operators stick to a fairly rigid schedule and tend to overload their vessels, we opted instead to rent a private boat for a day ($50 after haggling), which allowed the luxury of staying out after dark to snorkel among the sparkling plankton.

From here, you can also visit Kampong Nup Lok, an old fishing village that offers some nice views, and Ream National Park, a large mangrove nature reserve about 30 minutes' drive east. A boat tour to the park will cost about $25, but they can be disappointing. Alternatively, you can arrive there by tuk tuk and hire a park ranger to lead you on a walking tour (usually $5, although best to call ahead).

After relaxing on the beach for a few days, we boarded a plane at Sihanoukville airport bound for Siem Reap. Flying takes about an hour, although buses are available and take about eight to 10 hours.

Ancient history

Siem Reap boasts Cambodia's most famous attraction, while the city itself has grown into a fun and relaxing destination for international travelers.

A visit here would not be complete without a tour of the 12th century Angkor Wat and the many other ancient and varied temples "rediscovered" by French explorers about 300 years ago.

Most are located within two circuits to the north, both of which take a good 10 hours to cover, either starting at sunrise or finishing at sunset. Those in town for only a day or two will probably be content with the smaller of the two, which includes Angkor Wat and Bayon. However, if you do have the time, doing both circuits and adding a third day to see sites further out, such as the 1,000 year-old Banteay Srei or the jungle-covered Beng Melea, is well worth it to see the variations in carving styles and architecture.

Trips to temples further out can also be combined with other activities, such as a visit to the Landmine Museum ($5), which raises awareness and money for families affected by landmines, and Bantreay Srei Butterfly Park ($4).

For those interested in learning about Cambodia's recent history, the War Museum ($5), not far from the city center, features a comprehensive collection of weaponry and photos from the civil war. Guides offer free tours and most themselves are former soldiers who can regale visitors with firsthand accounts of the conflict.

Just to the south of Siem Reap is the vast Tonle Sap Lake, which is surrounded by floating villages and boasts abundant wildlife.

Chong Khneas, a small fishing community, is probably the most popular among tourists, but you can escape the crowds by heading out early to Kampong Phluk. In the dry season (November to April), you can see the tall stilts that support the houses, offering an otherworldly experience. When the rain arrives, travel here can be accomplished only by boat.

After a tiring tour in Siem Reap's beautiful wilderness, you'll be spoiled for choice on where to unwind. Most of the city's nightlife is spread between three areas - Old Market, Wat Damnak and Wat Bo - and all have an abundance of bars, restaurants, markets, and massage parlors.

The only downside is that you may never want to leave.

Contact the writer at craig@chinadaily.com.cn

Things to know

Money: The riel is the official currency of Cambodia, but US dollars are more commonly used by businesses, even in the markets. Riel is generally used for only small purchases. ATMs accept most bankcards, including Union Pay. Check your change, though, as stores and restaurants will not accept notes that are even slightly ripped, nor can you use $2 notes.

Visas: Landing visas for tourists cost $30 per person at custom entry points in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. Try to fill out the paperwork on the plane to save time, and if possible pay with the exact money.

Scams: Be wary of staff members inside temples who demand an extra fee to enter "closed-off" sections; more often than not they are the ones who closed off that section. Also, the people casually offering incense near statues will expect money if you take it off them.

NGOs, orphanages: There are many ways in which tourists can contribute to aid organizations, such as buying from stores that support impoverished families, eating at restaurants that help vulnerable young adults, or donating blood. However, carefully research any orphanage you plan to visit, as some are scams using children to profit from the so-called pity industry.

(China Daily 04/04/2016 page10)
American Airlines, Delta in turf battle over nonstop LA-Beijing routes Updated: 2016-04-05 06:02 By William Hennelly in New York(China Daily USA)

An air war for Beijing has begun, with Los Angeles as the staging ground.

American Airlines announced on March 28 that it had submitted an application to the US Department of Transportation (DOT) for daily service between Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and Beijing Capital International Airport (PEK).

The bid came about two weeks after rival Delta Air Lines applied to the DOT for the same route. It will now be up to the US government to decide who gets the coveted slots to Chinas capital, as there are only seven available.

Because this is a contested matter pending before the department, we cannot comment substantively, said Caitlin Harvey, DOT public affairs specialist.

Air China, based in Beijing, currently has the only direct flights from Los Angeles to Beijing.

This new route would solidify Los Angeles as Americans West Coast gateway to Asia and it would be our only Beijing access from the western United States, creating new connections to one of Asias major business and leisure destinations, said Andrew Nocella, chief marketing officer for American Airlines, in a statement.

Beijing is one of the worlds great cities, and nonstop service from LAX would be a great complement to our existing China service, he said.

Speaking for Delta, Ranjan Goswami, a vice-president of sales, said: Delta's new nonstop service to Beijing continues our expansion in China, providing our business customers with access to Beijing and beyond through our partnerships with the market's leading carriers, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines."

If approved, Fort Worth, Texas-based American would begin LAX-PEK service on Dec 16  and so would Delta.

The route-jockeying is the latest salvo in the ongoing competition between the two major US carriers.

They are the two largest airlines in the world and  in terms of total dollars  the two most profitable too, wrote Airline Weekly in February. And they are at each others throats. American and Delta are at war.

This escalating war, however, is about much more than just talk. Its also about philosophy. Each carrier, for example, adopted diametrically opposed approaches to managing fuel risk. American abstained from hedging completely. Delta? Forget mere hedging. Sure, it did that. But it also bought itself an oil refinery! Airline Weekly wrote.

American also has formally opposed Deltas application.

In a March 28 filing to the DOT titled Answer of American Airlines, Inc and Motion to Institute a Carrier Selection Proceeding, Howard Kass, American Airlines vice-president of regulatory affairs, wrote: Wherefore, American objects to Deltas application and respectfully urges that the Department institute a carrier selection proceeding to allocate the remaining China frequencies, consider Deltas application contemporaneously with Americans application, and grant such further relief as the Department deems warranted.

Ted Reed, a veteran airline industry reporter with TheStreet.com, assessed the situation for China Daily.

Not to try to guess what the DOT will do, but American could really use this route, Reed said. American badly trails rivals United and Delta in Asia, particularly in West Coast-to-Asia flying.

United has the best West Coast hub in San Francisco, where it serves about a dozen Asia destinations, Reed said. Over the past few years, Delta has built a hub in Seattle, and it is increasing Asia flights from there.

Reed said Delta would say it should not be penalized for taking the risk of trying to build a hub in Seattle, defying the wishes of Wall Street, which favors stringent capacity discipline for airlines, not aggressive expansion, he said.

Delta, which is based in Atlanta, currently offers nonstop service to Beijing from Seattle and Detroit.

American operates nonstop service to Beijing from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and Chicago OHare International Airport. It also offers flights from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport through its code-sharing agreement with Chinas Hainan Airlines.

In February, American began running direct flights from LAX to Tokyos Haneda Airport, taking slots previously used by Delta for service from Seattle. The two airlines also are expected to compete for new daytime slots at Haneda.

Sadly for American, LAX is a tough place to operate, Reed said. Although all three US global carriers operate hubs there, LAX is too congested for any of them to accumulate sufficient gates to build a major hub.

Also, LAX is extremely competitive because so many foreign carriers fly there, so it is impossible for US hub carriers to control pricing, he added. Nevertheless, American has said repeatedly that it plans to grow at LAX and to build a trans-Pacific hub there.

There will be no battle for Shanghai, though. Both American and Delta already offer nonstop service from Los Angeles to Shanghais Pudong International Airport.

Contact the writer at williamhennelly@chinadailyusa.com
Cui hails China's new normal Updated: 2016-04-04 11:18 By Hezi Jiang in Philadelphia(China Daily USA)

Ambassador browses in Philadelphia Chinas Ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai (left) visits the grocery store of Ye Huimin (right) in the Chinatown of Philadelphia on Sunday afternoon after the first annual Penn Wharton China Summit at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Cui greeted local people and spoke to Chinese community leaders. The Chinese consulates in the US is a home for overseas Chinese community, the doors are always open for you, he said.

"China and the United States will always have disagreements, but at the same time, we will always cooperate and go forward on the bumpy road," Chinese Ambassador Cui Tiankai told young people on Sunday. "This will be the new normal of US-China relations."

Held by the Chinese undergraduate students at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the first annual Penn Wharton China Summit invited entrepreneurs, scholars, government officials and leaders from various fields to Philadelphia over the weekend to discuss "China's New Normal".

About 1,300 young people from four countries, 34 US states and 72 cities attended the conference.

In his speech, Cui addressed the future of the US-China relationship, a topic many Chinese students in the US care deeply about, he said.

"Our diplomatic efforts make sure we never enter the Thucydides Trap," said Cui, referring to the ancient Greek historian's theory that says when a country rises to power, there is inevitably a war with the existing power.

China has proposed a new type of major power relationship to avoid the trap. It's a relationship based on "No confrontation, respect and win-win cooperation", Cui said.

"The bottom line is no confrontation," said Cui, who quoted President Xi Jinping: "The goal of China is to fulfill the Chinese people's dream of a better life."

Cui said China didn't want to challenge any country's power, but at the same time it will hold on to its own rights.

Touching on the topic of the South China Sea, Cui said China is a strong supporter of freedom of navigation laws, but freedom of navigation grants no one the liberty of provocation.

"We don't have the intention. But, we can't allow others to keep taking our territory. Like President Xi said, 'We can't lose a foot of the land our ancestors left us'," he said.

Cui said China and the US are on the right track in managing and controlling differences to ensure that cooperation goes deeper and further.

Using examples of the rising number of Chinese and American students studying in each other's countries, Cui said the bond between the two countries is getting stronger.

"Maybe in the future, a Chinese ambassador to the US and a US ambassador in China will both be graduates of Wharton. Communication will be so much easier," said Cui.

"Sometimes, we have to look at issues from a different angle. A difference between our countries may be an opportunity for cooperation," he said.

"Taking cybersecurity as an example, what had been seen as a major crisis between our countries brought us together to form a high-level organization to combat the problem side by side.

"The road in front of us won't be easy, but it's clear that we have more common interests than differences," said Cui.

And when it comes to differences, the ambassador believes, China has to go forward bearing in mind its own culture and history.

"We use a fork to eat steak," he said, "but when it comes to noodles, we still prefer chopsticks."

hezijiang@chinadailyusa.com
Xi's summit trip seen as success in diplomacy Updated: 2016-04-04 11:18 By Chen Weihua in Washington(China Daily USA)

President Xi Jinping's participation in the fourth Nuclear Security Summit in Washington has won positive reviews.

Dong Zhihua, deputy director of the arms control and disarmament department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said top Chinese leaders have paid great attention to nuclear security and demonstrated their firm support for the global fight against nuclear terrorism.

Chinese presidents have attended all four summits, including two recent ones by Xi, who attended all the formal agenda sessions of the March 31-April 1 summit.

Dong applauded China's proposals made by Xi at the summit, which she said "led the discussion to a positive outcome".

The summit, which was attended by leaders from more than 50 countries, issued a communique on April 1 pledging continued commitment to nuclear security as an enduring priority.

It also announced action plans to support a list of international organizations such as the United Nations and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Xi delivered speeches at several events, such as the welcome dinner on March 31, the plenary session and the scenario-based discussions on April 1.

In a briefing after the summit, Dong characterized the four proposals by Xi as strengthening political input, national responsibility, international cooperation and nuclear security culture.

She said Xi's remarks have drawn a positive response from other leaders and also are reflected in the outcome documents of the summit.

"The proposals are a major contribution China has made to the summit. It will point the direction for strengthening global nuclear security architecture after the last summit," she said.

Xi also put forward five initiatives in his speech. They include conducting training and technical exchange at the newly inaugurated Nuclear Security Center of Excellence (COE) in Beijing and at the China Customs Radiation Detection Training Center in Qinhuangdao, Hebei province. Both are joint programs between China and the US.

US President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz all mentioned the new state-of-the-art COE in China in their speeches during the summit as a demonstration of China-US cooperation.

Meanwhile, China is also helping Ghana to convert a highly enriched uranium (HEU)-fueled research reactor to using low enriched uranium (LEU) within the framework of the IAEA.

China pledged at the summit to strengthen the monitoring of radioactive sources in China, cooperate with other nations and organizations in civil-use nuclear material research, and help other nations elevate their management.

Dong believes the Chinese initiatives will provide public good in nuclear security to the Asia-Pacific region and the international community. China has an ambitious plan for developing renewable energy, including nuclear energy. It also has been exporting nuclear reactors to other nations.

The initiative is also expected to help the destination nations of China's nuclear energy export, countries along the One Belt and One Road project and many developing nations. The One Belt and One Road is a Chinese initiative that focuses on the connectivity and cooperation among nations, mostly in Eurasia.

Dong said China has kept its commitments made during previous summits, adding that it "demonstrates the sense of responsibility of China as a major country".

chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com
Chinese factories to be blueprints of future African deals Updated: 2016-04-04 04:09 By Lucie Morangi(chinadaily.com.cn)

Paul Jourdan, a mineral policy analyst, said that "Chinese factory-relocation is the way to go for Africa." LUCIE MORANGI / FOR CHINA DAILY

A paradigm shift is set to take place with the planned relocation of Chinese factories to Africa.

Paul Jourdan, a mineral policy analyst from South Africa, said the transfer highlights the need for Africa to steer away from deals focusing on the extractive industries.

By developing value-addition, future treaties should instead drive industrial development, which is behind China's economic success.

"China entered into deals that directed foreign investments into powering existing factories while allowing new ones to be set up," he said. "Technology transfer led to increased job opportunities that is key in reduction."

For Africa to realize it Agenda 2063 and its Sustainable Development Goals, "this is the way to go", said Jourdan, former president and CEO of Mintek, a South African mining, processing and minerals beneficiation science council.

He was speaking on the sidelines of an experts meeting during the African Development Week in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where the topic was the need for due diligence by African states before they sign bilateral treaties.

Several countries are facing litigation over the cancellation of contracts that have been deemed unresponsive to prevailing economic challenges.

"What the Chinese are proposing by setting up industries under the Special Economic Zones (SEZ) concept is helping Africa overcome the aid dependency syndrome and own the process of industrialization," Jourdan said.

"This will see investments translated into long-term benefits, unlike when resources are exported," he said. "Africa needs to industrialize. We need to start beneficiation and product differentiation to enable us to enter the global value chain."

A report prepared by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), titled Investment Policies and Bilateral Investment Treaties in Africa, states that there are more than 2,750 bilateral investment treaties and 2,894 double-taxation treaties globally. Africa claims more than 1,000 deals.

"Sixty-nine percent are agreements with countries located outside the continent, while 31 percent are within the continent," the report stated.

An uptick was recorded in the early 1990s, when Africa pushed for foreign investments to fund economic and social projects.
Fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh resumed: Azerbaijani Defense Ministry Updated: 2016-04-04 04:32 (Xinhua)

BAKU -- The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said in a statement on Sunday that military operations in some places along the contact line in Nagorno-Karabakh region have resumed.

The ministry said since Armenian armed forces have broken the ceasefire with Azerbaijan on the frontline in Fuzuli, Terter and Aghdam districts, the counter-attack by the Azerbaijan side was carried out.

It also said that Azerbaijani troops had shot down an Armenian drone near Azerbaijan's Fizuli district.

Th ministry on Sunday declared to unilaterally suspend all military operations and response measures in the high-strung disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region with Armenia. However, the Nagorno-Karabakh defense authorities said that heavy battles were still going on in the northeastern and southeastern directions, denying that the Azerbaijani side had implemented a real ceasefire along the contact line in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan on the contact line of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region have reportedly flared up overnight Saturday with the two countries' defense ministries blaming each other for triggering the escalation.

The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said 12 Azerbaijani soldiers have been killed in the fighting while the Armenian side confirmed that 18 soldiers died in the conflict.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a bitter dispute over the mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh first broke out in 1988, when the region claimed independence from Azerbaijan to join Armenia.
I told you about my other Black American neighbor, the one I called the witch. She used to live right under us, but she has now moved out. Woo hoo! Now we have a new White neighbor living there and has not complained about noise from our apartment.

Across from us, however, we have new Black neighbors. Before them, our neighbors there were a White couple, and I did not know their names. Well, I knew the name of the guy, only because a police detective had come looking for him and had left a note posted openly on the door. Its not my fault that I saw it. I was not snooping. Thats my story, and Im sticking to it.

We did not know these neighbors well at all. Apart from knowing the name of the guy (and the fact that the police wanted to talk to him for whatever reason), the only other thing I knew was that he and his partner ordered food every evening (the delivery man was always at their door) and they owned a German Shepherd dog, or maybe they were dog-sitting a German Shepherd dog.

I remember when I was pregnant with Ada Verastic, that dog would be in their apartment wailing and seeming to trash the whole place. It always sounded like she was renovating the house everyday. She was a puppy, but she looked and sounded like an adult dog.

I dont know why anyone would own a German Shepherd dog in an apartment. Theres barely enough space for the humans, so a dog  especially a German Shepherd one  is out of the question for me. Anyway, the dog had a dog walker that used to come every morning to take the dog out when her parents were out for work. Oyibo people have time. When Ive not finished sending money to Naija, its a dog walker Ill start paying for.

But this post is about my new neighbors! So, the White ones with the German Shepherd dog have moved out, and our new neighbors are Black. Theyve been living here for about two to three weeks now and we dont know yet exactly how many people live in this apartment because there is so much foot traffic. From dusk to dawn, someone is always going out and coming in, so we dont even know how many new neighbors we have.

So far, I have met Quentin, a young guy who is about 25. We spoke for the first time last week when I was coming in with Ada Verastic and he was coming in at the same time. He said, Hi, Neighbor! and then we introduced ourselves. He asked me how old Ada Verastic was (5 months) and proceeded to tell me that his Baby Momma just had his first child two days ago, and in fact, he was just coming from the hospital, and she was not even discharged yet. He showed me the adorable picture of his new baby and told me her name, which I dont remember now.

The other day, I met a beautiful lady who seemed to be in her very early forties, and she introduced herself to me as Ann, Quentins mom. She, too, lives with Quentin (or maybe Quentin lives with her)  or maybe they are equal owners, I dont know. I congratulated her on her new grand baby and she seemed very excited.

Quentin drives a new Black Chevy Impala that has a black leather interior and looks fully loaded. Its quite a sexy beast. He often pulls into parking with loud music decorated with colorful naughty words blasting from his speakers. I think the music is on his phone and his phone is connected to the car via bluetooth because when he gets out of the car, he sometimes continues listening to the music on his phone while climbing up the steps.

I dont care for his brand of music, but I do LOVE listening to loud music in my own car, too. The only difference is that its people like Phyno, Olamide, Brymo, Timi Dakolo, and Davido who are blasting in mine (and I dont continue listening while climbing up the steps). Im usually wondering why on earth Ada Verastic and her car seat are so darn heavy!

I dont know if the baby momma and new baby live in the new apartment, too because the rate at which people have been coming to visit, I only hope that its the new baby who is attracting them. Otherwise, Im curious about why so many people keep coming. The other day, I was looking snooping through the peephole and I saw one woman come with five little kids.

My new neighbors also love playing violent video games late at night, and they possibly have surround sound or speaker bars because the shooting sounds are one shot away from knocking my walls down. But it doesnt really bother me. I understand that this is an American apartment, and maybe the luxury ones (like Trumps) are sound proof, but these regular ones arent, and Im okay with that.

By the time I move out of this apartment, I may possibly have written about all my neighbors. And when Igwe and I buy a house, Ill start writing about my new neighbors again.

P.S. Have you gotten your Africa tee yet?
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Hoc sinh thuong uoc thay co day ieu tot ep, nhung khi ve nha hay ra ngoai xa hoi lai thay nhung ieu trai nguoc. Ban than cac em se cam thay mau thuan nen se kho long hanh phuc, truong hoc cung kho la truong hoc hanh phuc uoc.
VASCO was expected to operate 10 airplanes.  Photo vnexpress.net

HA NOI (VNS)  Newly-established airline VASCO will be renamed SkyViet, the Ministry of Transport said in a report submitted to the Government.

National flag carrier Vietnam Airlines announced the establishment of the new VN300 billion (US$13.4 million) airline early last month, based on the restructuring of its subsidiary, Vietnam Air Services Company, or VASCO.

VASCO was expected to operate 10 airplanes.

It received a certificate from the Civil Aviation Authority of Viet Nam (CAAV) to operate aircrafts, and was granted a transportation code by the International Air Transport Association, the report said.

The HCM City Department of Planning and Investment certified SkyViets business registration on March 3, and the airline was set to begin operations last Friday.

Flight booking information is now available at the VASCO website, vasco.com.vn.

Viet Nam News called the VASCO head office in HCM City on Friday, but reached no officials for further comment on flight services.

VASCO has been reorganised as a joint stock company, in which Vietnam Airlines owns a 51 per cent stake, and affiliates of the Viet Nam Technological and Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Techcombank) hold the remaining equity.

More specifically, Vietnam Airlines contributes capital with its tangible assets being managed and operated by VASCO, including ATR72-500 planes and engines. It also contributes capital worth about VN53.7 billion.

Investment management service provider Techcom Capital contributes 48 per cent to the equity of VASCO, and project development firm Techcomdeveloper contributes 1 per cent.

According to the transport ministry, VASCO will operate domestic routes not capable of receiving jet airplanes, such as routes to Con ao, Ca Mau, ien Bien and Kien Giang.

The ministry said these routes were economically and socially meaningful, although the company was likely to face certain challenges in its first stages.

Vietnam Airlines expected VASCO to carry about 650,000 passengers by 2018.

The new airline was established as Vietnam Airlines continued to lose its market share to budget carrier VietJet Air. This occurred despite Vietnam Airlines holding a 70 per cent stake in another low-cost carrier, Jetstar Pacific.

The former VASCO, which was established in 1987, reportedly used AN2, AN30 and KingAir B200 aircrafts to provide services such as topography and geological surveys, emergency aid, rescues and commercial transportation for some short routes.

Late last month, the finance ministry also asked the Government to grant an air transport business licence to Vietstar Airlines to operate as a passenger and cargo carrier.

However, CAAV Director Lai Xuan Thanh told Government portal chinhphu.vn that SkyViet and Vietstar would not make a significant difference in domestic aviation market shares over the next three to five years.

Vietnam Airlines and VietJet Air would continue to be the two giants in the market, he said.  VNS
Businesses with charter capital of under VN10 billion would pay VN3 million per year.  File Photo

HA NOI (VNS)  The business licence fee for enterprises is likely to double or triple in the coming period, according to a draft decree by the Ministry of Finance.

Under the draft decree, the ministry has proposed four fee levels for businesses.

For instance, businesses with registered capital of between VN10 billion (US$447,828) and under VN100 billion would have to pay a fee of VN5 million per year, while those with over VN100 billion would be regarded as large businesses and would have to pay a business licence fee of VN10 million per year.

Businesses with charter capital of under VN10 billion would pay VN3 million per year.

Business households and individuals with an annual turnover of over VN300 million would have to pay VN1 million per year. Those earning between VN100 million and under VN300 million per year would have to pay VN300,000.

Business households and individuals with an annual turnover of below VN100 million would be exempt from paying this fee.

To encourage fishermen to hold onto their sea-based business, the ministry proposed an exemption for salt-making households, fisheries and aquaculture households and fishery logistics service providers.

If the draft decree is approved by the Prime Minister, it will replace the current business licence tax from January 1, 2017, when the new Law on Charges and Fees takes effect.

Under the new decree, it will be called a fee rather than a tax.

Currently, the State budgets annual revenue from business licence tax is around VN1.7 trillion. Once the draft decree is enacted, the ministry expects to collect some VN2.7 trillion per year.

Speaking at a press conference held by the Finance Ministry in Ha Noi on March 31, Deputy Minister Vu Thi Mai said the current decree was outdated as it was issued in 2002, when the minimum salary was VN290,000 per month. Meanwhile, the current minimum salary is VN1.15 million, which will be raised to VN1.21 million in the future.

"The new decree does not originate from the State budgets difficulties. Its intended to match the business situation of the last 14 years," Mai said.

"The business licence tax was based on the minimum salary level. Therefore, the current tax level is not suitable for the increased minimum salary," Mai said.

Mai said the ministry was gathering ideas from other ministries, sectors and localities to revise other unreasonable issues or to provide an explanation for them.

The draft decree was made public on March 25. The ministry will complete it and submit it to the Government in July.

It is expected to go into effect on January 1, 2017.  VNS
Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung launchs the Block B-O Mon gas project by PetroVietnam in Kien Giang yesterday.  Photo VNA

KIEN GIANG (VNS)  Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung launched the Block B-O Mon gas project by the Viet Nam National Oil and Gas Group (PetroVietnam) in the southern province of Kien Giang yesterday.

The project hopes to collect 107 billion cubic metres of gas and 12.65 million barrels of condensate from offshore Block B.

Around 5.06 billion cubic metres of gas are expected to be brought ashore per year from 2020 to 2040 to fuel power plants in Kien Giang and O Mon District of Can Tho City.

The development of Block B will cost US$6.8 billion within 20 years, covering one technology centre and 46 drilling platforms, one accommodation platform, one condensate tank, and approximately 750 drilling wells.

The Block B  O Mon gas pipeline worth US$1.2 billion is designed to have a capacity of 20.3 million cubic metres. It will transport gas from Block B to An Minh District in Kien Giang province and supplement gas for the PM3  Ca Mau pipeline.

The 431km pipeline is also expected to provide gas for a number of gas turbine power plants in the two Mekong Delta localities.

The projects will be put into operation in the second quarter of 2020.

Prime Minister Dung hailed PetroVietnams endeavours and asked it to ensure project safety, quality, efficiency and progress.  VNS
HA NOI (VNS)  Regional connectivity amid economic restructuring and a shifting growth model in Viet Nam was in the spotlight at a workshop in Hanoi yesterday.

Head of the Party Central Committees Economic Commission Vuong inh Hue said that the regional economic and connectivity issues received due attention from the Party and State since the 8th National Party Congress.

A report delivered at the 12th Party Congress in January stressed the need to promote each regions potential with developing key economic areas a priority.

Since 2000, the Government and Prime Minister have issued many relevant documents and region-related issues have been included in socio-economic development orientations, economic restructuring and growth model shifting, Hue stated.

Regional economic development has yet to fully use the market economy as a foundation for sustainable socio-economic growth.

Development gaps between regions have yet to be narrowed, regional connectivity among cities and provinces remains weak and value chains of intra-regional and inter-regional economic connectivity are still absent.

It is a must to clarify the role of the State in zoning and building development plans for economic regions and discuss mechanisms and policies to address regional economic development-related issues, according to Hue.

German Ambassador to Viet Nam Carl Georg Christian Berger pointed out that strong regional co-ordination will help localities address issues and contribute to socio-economic development.

Victoria Kwakwa, World Bank Country Director for Viet Nam, said that the bank would collaborate with international organisations and the Vietnamese Government in promoting regional development and co-ordination in Viet Nam.

Development partners in Vietnam released a joint statement backing an initiative to foster regional co-ordination in Viet Nam initiated by the Party Central Committees Economic Commission and the Government.

According to participating delegates, region-level urgent issues that cannot be handled by one locality include climate change and saltwater intrusion in the Mekong Delta, drought and water resources management in the Central Highlands, forest management in the northern region and infrastructure upgrade and pollution and investment management in the western central region.

They emphasised the need to build and issue a socio-economic development strategy for each region.

For key economic zones, participants proposed promulgating policies to boost competitiveness with economic centres in ASEAN, Asia and the world.

Held by the Party Central Committees Economic Commission, the German Embassy in Viet Nam and the Coordination Committee for the Central Coastal Region, the event aimed to collect ideas on regional economic and regional connectivity development to facilitate the implementation of the 12th National Party Congress resolution in the next five years.  VNS
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh (left) and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.  Photo mofa

Washington, D.C. (VNS)  Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh held meetings with the leaders of foreign countries and international organisations on the sidelines of the ongoing Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C. on Thursday.

They included Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha, Italian PM Matteo Renzi, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, Norwegian PM Erna Solberg, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and US National Security Advisor Susan Rice.

At the meetings, the leaders compared notes on regional and international situations as well as areas of shared concern in order to promote bilateral ties, especially in trade, investment, and green and renewable energies.

Earlier, Minh attended a work dinner hosted by US President Barack Obama and joined by leaders from over 50 countries worldwide, and much of the conversation surrounded threats to nuclear safety.

Participating countries reviewed the achievements of the previous Nuclear Security Summits, given the heightened public awareness of ensuring nuclear security. There are now more countries participating in international treaties in this field and more nations committed to cutting the use of highly-enriched uranium.

They also stressed the need to pay more heed to threats to nuclear security, especially nuclear terrorism, in the context that terrorist organistions are continually expanding their operations.

This is President Obamas fourth and final nuclear security summit. The previous events were held in Washington, D.C. in 2010, in Seoul in 2012 and The Hague, Netherlands, in 2014.  VNS
New President Tran ai Quang is sworn into office Saturday morning after 91.5 per cent of total National Assembly (NA) deputies elected him to the position by a secret ballot.  VNA/VNS Photo Thong Nhat

HA NOI (VNS)  New President Tran ai Quang was sworn into office Saturday morning after 91.5 per cent of the total National Assembly (NA) deputies elected him to the position by a secret ballot.

Quang, who is a Politburo member and Minister of Public Security, was born on October 12, 1956, and currently serves as a deputy of the 13th parliament.

Among the 481 valid votes, 452 (or 91.5 per cent of the total 494 NA deputies) elected him as the President.

A resolution on the election of the new State leader was also approved by 93.12 per cent of the deputies at the plenary session.

In the following swearing-in, Quang thanked the lawmakers for voting for him.

He vowed to be absolutely loyal to the Fatherland, the People and the Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, and make concerted efforts to fulfill the tasks assigned by the Party, the State and the People.

He also promised to devote himself to serving the Fatherland and the People, uphold the nations glorious traditions, and solidify the national great unity bloc, while adamantly and persistently protecting the countrys independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity.

He will also push forward with comprehensive reforms and raising Viet Nams stature and prestige in the international arena, so as to help ensure peace, national independence, democracy, and social progress in the world.

At the ceremony, the newly-elected NA Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan and former President Truong Tan Sang congratulated Quang on his election.

New President vows to fulfill assigned tasks

In a brief interview granted to Vietnam News Agency reporters, the newly-elected President said being elected to the Presidency was a great honour and responsibility. The experience of his predecessor Truong Tan Sang and other former State leaders would be invaluable to him in realising the tasks assigned by the Party, the NA and the people.

Quang said he would apply himself to fine-tuning the legal system to constitutionalise the Resolution of the 12th National Party Congress and the amended 2013 Constitution, and also improve the effectiveness of State management.

He would steer the building of the regular, elite and modern peoples revolutionary armed forces, so as to firmly safeguard the countrys independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, along with political stability and peace for national development.

The new leader added that he would work with, and ask the Politburo and the NA to detail the duties of the President as General Commander of the peoples armed forces, and the organisation and operations of the Council for National Defence and Security, as suggested by Truong Tan Sang at the ongoing 11th meeting of the 13th NA.

He would also bolster the implementation of a consistent foreign policy of independence, self-reliance, peace, cooperation and development. He would also promote proactive international integration, and ensuring a peaceful and stable environment while optimising external resources to develop the country.

Another focus of his tenure would be to press ahead with judicial reforms, thus ensuring pure, strong, democratic and strict justice and the protection of human rights, Quang noted.

The President would also actively coordinate with the Viet Nam Fatherland Front and its member organisations, to better peoples living standards, protect the rights and legitimate interests of Vietnamese expatriates, enhance democracy and strengthen national unity.

He added that he hoped Vietnamese people living in the country, and around the world, would join hands in upholding patriotism, grasp opportunities and weather challenges to secure and build a prosperous Viet Nam.

On Saturday afternoon, the parliament conducted a secret ballot on some senior NA posts.

As a result of voting, a majority of lawmakers agreed to relieve Huynh Ngoc Son from his duty as NA Vice Chairman; Ksor Phuoc from Chairman of the Council of Ethnic Affairs; Nguyen Van Hien from Chairman of the NA Committee on Judicial Affairs; and Phung Quoc Hien from Chairman of the NA Committee on Financial and Budgetary Affairs

The parliament also let Nguyen Kim Khoa step down from the position as Chairman of the NA Committee on National Defence and Security; ao Trong Thi from Chairman of the NA Committee for Culture, Education, Youth, Adolescents and Children; Truong Thi Mai from Chairwoman of the NA Committee on Social Affairs; and Nguyen Huu Van from Auditor General of the State Audit Office of Viet Nam.

Delegates voted to approve resolutions relating to the discharge.

The NA is scheduled to convene a plenary session today, with scheduled group discussions on a list of nominees to the positions of NA Vice Chairmen and members of the NA Standing Committee.

The deputies will touch upon the ratification of a diplomatic note on visa issuance between Viet Nam and the US.

Biography of President Tran ai Quang

- Date of birth: October 12, 1956

- Native land: Quang Thien Commune, Kim Son District, Ninh Binh Province

- Ethnicity: Kinh

- Academic title, degree: Professor, PhD in law

+ Political theory training: High level

+ Foreign language: Chinese (masters degree)

- Date of Party admission: July 26, 1980

- Deputy of 13th National Assembly

- Summary of career:

+ July 1972 - October 1975: Student at peoples police school and school of foreign languages under Ministry of Home Affairs (now Ministry of Public Security).

+ October 1975 - June 1987: Officer at Political Protection Department I, and deputy head of Political Protection Department IIs professional office under the Ministry of Home Affairs (now Ministry of Public Security).

+ June 1987 - June 1990: Head of staff office and head of professional office, Political Protection Department II, under the Ministry of Home Affairs (now Ministry of Public Security).

+ June 1990  September 1996: Deputy Secretary of Party Committee and deputy head of Security Staff Department, Ministry of Home Affairs (now Ministry of Public Security).

+ September 1996  October 2000: Head of Security Staff Department, Ministry of Public Security; member of General Security Department Party Organisation; member of General Security Department Party Standing Committee; and Secretary of Security Staff Department Party Committee, Ministry of Public Security.

+ October 2000  April 2006: Deputy Secretary of Party Committee and Deputy head of General Security Department, Ministry of Public Security; promoted to Major General (2003); and conferred the title of Associate Professor (2003).

+ April 2006  January 2011: Member of 10th Party Central Committee, member of Central Public Security Party Committee, member of the Central Public Security Party Standing Committee, Deputy Minister of Public Security, Promoted to Lieutenant General (2007), and conferred the title of Professor (2009).

+ January 2011  August, 2011: Politburo member, member of Central Public Security Party Standing Committee, Deputy Minister of Public Security.

+ From August 2011  now: Politburo member (11th and 12th tenures), member of National Defence and Security Council, member of Party Delegation to the Government, Secretary of Central Public Security Party Committee, Minister of Public Security, promoted to Senior Lieutenant General (2011) and General (2012), Head of Central Highlands Steering Committee, deputy of 13th National Assembly, Deputy head of Central Steering Committee on Anti-Corruption, Deputy head of central internal political protection sub-committee.

+ Elected President of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam at the 11th session of the 13th National Assembly on April 2.  VNS
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh reaffirmed Viet Nams support of comprehensive nuclear weapon disarmament .  Photo mofa.gov.vn

WASHINGTON DC (VNS)  Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh reaffirmed Viet Nams support of comprehensive nuclear weapon disarmament and nuclear weapon non-proliferation, while emphasising the rights of countries to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

The Vietnamese official made the remark at the 4th Nuclear Security Summit in Washington DC last week, which focused on issues related to nuclear security.

Minh along with senior officials from 52 other member nations at the Summit approved the meetings Statement and Action Plans for five international initiatives and organisations in the field.

In his speech at the Summit, the Vietnamese official appreciated the efforts made by member countries over the last six years to ensure nuclear security, stressing that the global nuclear security structure and public awareness of nuclear security was improved, and international treaties on nuclear security were widely ratified.

He also highlighted the role played by international organisations and multilateral initiatives, especially the leading role of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in ensuring nuclear security.

He said terrorism, especially nuclear terrorism, and nuclear weapons proliferation continued to threaten peace and security, and undermine the legitimate rights of countries in using nuclear energy for their development.

Viet Nam strongly backed the Summits Statement and five Action Plans, he said.

Minh also underlined the need to promote co-ordination and information sharing among international mechanisms, as well as among countries, to fight potential nuclear terrorism and to enhance nuclear security.

Viet Nam was a member of almost all international treaties on nuclear weapon disarmament and non-proliferation, Minh stated, adding that the country was ready for its participation in the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism.

In the post of Chair of the IAEA Board of Governors 2013-2014, Viet Nam contributed to the activities of the organisation, especially in ensuring nuclear security and safety, Minh said.

He also affirmed Viet Nams commitment to facilitating the application of peacful nuclear technology, including ensuring security for nuclear power development.

On the sidelines of the summit, the Vietnamese official had separate meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Swiss President Johann Schneider-Amman, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Romanian Foreign Minister Lazar Comanescu.

During the meetings, they discussed specific measures to further boost multi-faceted co-operation for the development of Viet Nam and relevant countries, and for peace and stability in the region and the world.  VNS
In an incredible work of co-ordinated investigative journalism, The Investigative Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and The Indian Express newspaper have unravelled the world of offshore accounts.

More than 11.5 million documents totalling 2.6 terabytes of data were obtained by ICIJ  emails, bank accounts and client records  which represent the inner workings of Mossack Fonseca, the Panama-based law firm which specialises in hard-to-trace offshore companies for clients around the world who, in most cases, do not want their entity to be revealed.

The data that was scanned was for a period of forty years  from 1977 to December 2015. It reveals the offshore holdings of individuals and companies from more than 200 countries and territories.

So what do the reveal and is there a case of fraud or money laundering involved? We take a stepwise approach in trying to understand the .

The Firm: Mossack Fonseca



A Panama-based legal firm, which ICIJ likes to describe as gatekeeper to the secrets of its clients, even those who are crooks, mafioso, drug dealers, corrupt politicians and tax evaders. Mossack Fonseca is considered one of worlds five biggest wholesalers of offshore secrecy. It has more than 500 employees and collaborators in more than 40 offices around the world, including three in Switzerland and eight in China.

Modus Operandi



The law firm helped clients clandestinely create a maze of accounts and front entities to prevent a trace for the money they want to hold in tax havens. It helped clients respond swiftly to changes in laws, shifting business from one secret jurisdiction to another. Mossack Fonseca has been accused of providing structures designed to hide the identity of the owners.

According to ICIJ, the real owners of bank accounts that appear under the name of anonymous offshore companies registered by Mossack Fonseca may be hidden behind so-called nominee directors  stand-in directors supplied by Mossack Fonseca  who provide cover for the real owners.

Depending on how much a client pays, more than one jurisdiction and more than one anonymous company can be involved, adding to the frustration of authorities if they try to trace the real owners.

In Panama, Mossack Fonsecas products include private foundations, which are not subject to taxes in Panama and operate under a law that does not require the names of the founders or beneficiaries to be revealed.

Other activities found in the files by ICIJ include Mossack Fonseca changing and backdating documents when a client is in trouble and allowing customers to hide their assets by setting up foundations in Panama that initially list non-profits such as the World Wildlife Fund as the beneficiary but allow the customer to change the beneficiary at will.

The Indian angle



Among the many personalities involved worldwide more than 500 Indian names have also been featured in the list of people who have taken the services of the law firm. Among them are Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan and his daughter-in-law Aishwarya Rai Bachchan; real estate mogul K P Singh, promoter of DLF; two politicians  Shishir Bajoria and Anurag Kejriwal; and the erstwhile don Iqbal Mirchi.

Around 36,000 files were filtered out from the 11.5 million documents by The Indian Express team which contain 500 Indian names on the firms list of offshore companies, foundations and trusts. There are also 234 Indian passports details that were handed over as part of the incorporation process which the journalists extracted.

Need for offshore entities



Because of the high tax structure in India, some Indians who earned foreign income preferred to keep their money abroad. But individual Indians were not allowed to convert their rupee to foreign currency and invest abroad prior to 2004 as per RBI guidelines. Companies however, were not bound by this rule and were able to buy out companies abroad after taking requisite permissions from the central banker and the government.

Since individual Indians were not legally allowed to open bank accounts abroad or buy assets they needed a structure to do so, where the money or the asset is not under their name but is held by some other trusted person holding a power of attorney (POA). The law firm Mossack Fonseca provided the trust element on account of its size and standing in the market, being among the top five in the business.

How RBIs lack of clear guidelines resulted in mushrooming of offshore entities



RBI guidelines till 2004 were very clear: no individual could convert money and invest abroad. Since RBI did not allow individual Indian to take their money out of the country or invest in assets abroad till 2004, anyone who has opened an account in any of the tax haven prior to that is prima facie in violation of the law as defined at that time.

However, in February 2004 RBI allowed $25,000 (steadily increased to $250,000 presently) a year to be taken outside India under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) by those going abroad, but it did not specify the purpose where it cannot be used. RBI said that the money can be used for medical expenses, donation, college fees and even buying and selling shares.

An Indian Express explainer video says that the confusion arises when buying of shares was interpreted as buying in shell companies which are used as investment vehicles. Mossack Fonseca was in the business of selling shares of shell companies.

It took six years for the central banker to issue a clarification which came in September 2010 when it clearly said that Indian individuals cannot set up companies abroad. This was interpreted by experts who advised the individuals that though you cannot set up companies abroad, you are allowed to take over companies. Mossack Fonsecas services again came in handy as it had a product where it sells shell companies off the shelf.

Finally, in 2013, the RBI came out with a notification allowing a window for setting up a 100% subsidiary or allowing to enter into a joint venture through an overseas direct investment (ODI) window.

The Indian Express video says that a RBI notification says that those individuals who set up companies abroad prior to 2013 were in technical violation of the rules of LRS.

The fraud angle



What is clear is that anyone investing before 2004 is in violation of the act. As per RBI notification, those setting up or buying companies before 2013 are in technical violation of the act.

However, the key to the entire is the disclosure element. If individuals have kept the central banker and the government of their investments abroad through these companies, then there is a weak case. But if the authorities were not informed of the assets held abroad then there are various acts that are triggered, such as the money laundering act and FEMA, among others.

Indian individuals earning income abroad too need to disclose it to Indian government authorities. If they have used the vehicles provided by law firms like Mossack Fonseca to hide their earnings they are clearly evading taxes and should be prosecuted.

The important point going forward is to look out for those individuals whose names have been provided by ICIJ and The Indian Express is to find out if they have disclosed their assets to the government. If not, then we have a tax evader.
A section of workers in Tamil Nadus knitwear cluster are on strike demanding the rollback of a recent amendment in the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) scheme, according to which the employers component in the EPF corpus can only be withdrawn when the employee turns 58.

Currently, the workers are striking in three units in . Exporters fear the strike might spread to more units. Exporters Association (TEA) has asked the Union labour minister to address the problem immediately as it could cripple the Rs 23,500-crore sector. The amendment was done by the Union labour ministry through a notification in February.

The amendment in PF norms has created a lot of resentment among the workers, said TEA president A Sakthivel. The cluster employs around 400,000 workers directly, and out of which 70 per cent are women. There are around 70,000 workers from other states including Odisha, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. There are workers from Nepal as well.

Notably, its mostly the north Indian workers who are on strike in Tirupur. These workers typically leave their jobs after working for four or five years owing to various reasons such as marriage, better job prospects in their native states, starting their own ventures, etc. These workers cant afford to wait to turn 58 years to claim their PF money.

Due to the strike, production has been got affected and the units will have difficulty in meeting their export delivery schedule. These units might also incur financial losses and lose out on future orders, said Sakthivel.

Manpower is critical to the garment sector and the success of Tirupur exports is mainly attributed to the prompt delivery schedule. With the shortage of labour, no export unit will take big orders, Sakthivel added.
Bangladesh's beleaguered former Prime Minister will surrender before a court here on Tuesday and seek bail in a case against her for instigating a deadly petrol bomb attack on a bus during an anti-government protest last year, her lawyer said on Sunday.

"Khaleda will surrender before the Court of Metropolitan Sessions Judge on April 5," Sanaullah Mia, one of her lawyers, told reporters here.

"We will submit a petition seeking her bail in the arson case after her appearance in the court," the lawyer added.

The development came four days after the Metropolitan Sessions Judge's Court on March 30 issued an arrest warrant against the 70-year-old chairperson of the main opposition outside parliament Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and 27 others from her party after accepting police's chargesheet in the case.

Judge Kamrul Hossain Mollah, after accepting the charges against 38 people, including the 28, ordered Zia's arrest in connection with the arson attack in Jatrabari area here in January last year when her party spearheaded a violent nationwide campaign to topple Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's Awami League government.

An official of the Metropolitan Sessions Judge's court said Judge Mollah passed the order and asked police to execute the warrant and submit the compliance report by April 27.

Last year, Zia was charged by police with masterminding the arson attack on the bus that left one person dead and 30 others injured, nine critically, days after Hasina said the former premier could be put on trial for recent violence.

The incident was one of many bomb attacks that Bangladesh witnessed in the three months since early January last year when the BNP-led 20-party alliance started an indefinite blockade.

The arrest order was another blow to the embattled two- time former premier, who has described previous cases, including corruption-related, against her as politically motivated and aimed at keeping her out of the country's .
A decade ago, the industry in India was riding a wave of optimism. There were talks of global giants considering investments in India. Leading domestic retailers had positioned themselves for exploring strategic partnerships with global players. Wal-Mart formed a joint venture with Bharti Enterprises in August 2007 with plans to open wholesale stores and build a supply chain network. In 2010, Carrefour, the world's second biggest retailer, started operations in India. The going seemed good for a while, until three years ago.

By the end of 2013, Wal-Mart had parted ways with Bharti Enterprises and Carrefour had announced it was shutting shop in India. Any other partnership plans that global retailers or their Indian counterparts may have harboured have since met with a political and regulatory impasse. It will be interesting to see where the Indian retailers concerned go from here, but first it is essential to examine why the situation today is as it is, starting with the considerations that drive foreign retailers to explore new markets abroad.

The lure of globalisation is almost irresistible. Many companies in the developed world are keen to follow in the wake of corporations such as Boeing, Coca-Cola, DuPont, General Electric, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Oracle, Unilever and Disney that appear to have succeeded in going global. Globalisation is no panacea, however. Overseas success varies widely and it's often tough to boost profits by investing overseas. A closer look at the grocery retailing industry, for instance, reveals that, with a few exceptions, globalisation's benefits had not accrued to retailers.

In contrast to other industries, grocery is still dominated by local players in most countries. International players are almost entirely absent from even the largest retail markets. Every grocery retailer that has ventured overseas has failed as often as it has succeeded. It could be argued that the grocers' failures are due to differences in consumer tastes, particularly for food products. However, companies like Mars, Nestle, Kraft, P&G, Danone and Unilever have succeeded in creating global food brands over many long years, so the unsuccessful attempts must be attributable to other factors.

In emerging markets such as India, only a few chains have large networks of stores. Retailing is usually of a local nature, and the industry is highly fragmented. Consumers perceive foreign retailers to be premium players, not offering the services that local grocers do, such as free delivery, credit and custom packaging. In addition, in many parts of the world, including the otherwise open market of India, laws protect local retailers from foreign competition.

The challenges of doing business in India, especially, are well-documented. In the World Bank's 2014 Ease of Doing Business index, India was placed 134th out of 189 countries, behind even Pakistan and Yemen. Persistent corruption compounds challenges. Foreign investors are influenced as much by fear as by optimism, compelled by the belief that they must invest in India to achieve ambitions, although they know the risks are great and the outcome is highly uncertain.

Let's consider the facts. The accumulated losses of India's top 10 food retailers, who account for about 40 per cent of the organised retail sector's revenue, stood at Rs 13,000 crore in 2013-14 on revenue of around Rs 23,500 crore, according to a May 2014 report by Crisil ratings. The supply chain, too, has its share of problems. The fragmented agri-supply base coupled with an inadequate legal framework make it difficult for retailers and food processors to procure quality produce at competitive costs directly from farmers. The small size of the food processing industry further limits the supply options. Rentals account for 7-7.5 per cent of the total costs for organised retail in India against global benchmarks of less than three per cent. Complex and changeable rules governing foreign direct investment have made it tricky for rich world chains to set up shop.

India's home-grown supermarkets account for only two per cent of food and grocery sales and are struggling to make a profit. Revenues have not kept pace with rising rents. Supermarkets are not a compelling draw in terms of price and service. Most shoppers in India buy dairy products, vegetables and fruit either daily or every two to three days, and conventional trade has a strong hold on these frequent purchases. Even affluent consumers, in general, prefer traditional stores, because they are closer to home, usually open longer and offer credit. Many deliver free of charge. That supermarkets offer a greater variety of groceries than the neighbourhood store is not considered as big a competitive edge as it may seem.

On the whole, it would appear that incentives for foreign investors, while they may or may not have diminished, have certainly not brightened either. Indian retailers would do well to park optimism awhile and focus on reviving growth in key local markets through re-inventing or re-structuring their business or operating models. One way to do this could be to achieve the optimum balance between margins and volumes. The food business is largely what generates the volumes; high margins are derived from consumer durables, apparels and other goods. The trick is for retailers to select the product categories carefully and offer a value proposition that will drive consumer preference for their respective formats. It's easier said than done, but it would be a prudent way forward while the industry hopes for the next winds of globalisation.

Rajiv Lal

Stanley Roth, Senior professor of retailing, Harvard Business School
Chinas former leader mysteriously removed A rare public spectacle has drawn attention at the closing ceremony of China's Communist Party's National Congress, as President Xi Jinping prepares to be handed a third term in office.

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.
WATERLOO  The Greater Cedar Valley Alliance & Chamber Small Business Task Force is charting a path to boost the local economy by challenging Cedar Valley businesses and institutions to increase business with each other, the organization said Thursday.

The new Value in the Valley initiative encourages Cedar Valley businesses and institutions to shift 5 percent of their buying to local businesses.

The economic impact of a 5 percent shift could reach $500,000, the Alliance said. Economic Modeling Specialists International data analysis by the University of Northern Iowa Center for Business Growth and Innovation, in collaboration with MidAmerican Energy Co., projects a potential economic benefit $494,269,337 in the local economy with as many as 3,089 new jobs.

When businesses buy from each other in the Cedar Valley, our money stays in the Cedar Valley, Cary Darrah, vice president of community development for the Alliance & Chamber, said in a news release. Buying local has a multiplier effect, enabling businesses to prosper and create jobs.

Businesses and organizations are encouraged to visit the Alliance & Chamber website to sign the Value in the Valley pledge and learn more about the impact of buying local. The pledge can be found at cedarvalleyalliance.com/valueinthevalley. Companies searching for local vendors also can access the business directory on the website or call the office for referrals to businesses and organizations who invest in the Alliance & Chamber.

Businesses are quickly getting on board, the Alliance said.

The Cedar Valley thrives when we keep the local dollars local. It keeps people employed and we all prosper, said Dave Krejchi, owner of Dalton Plumbing, Heating & Cooling Inc. We believe buying local is the right thing to do. From building materials to paper towels, we buy our products here and support local contractors. I challenge every business owner to look local first and buy in the Cedar Valley.

Value in the Valley benefits extend beyond purchases, said Tim Godfrey, owner of Witham Auto Centers.

There is a misconception that you will pay a premium to do business locally, but the return on investment outweighs any price differential, Godfrey said. There is real value in doing business face to face, with a handshake.

The Alliance & Chamber will launch the initiative at the Strictly Business Expo on Tuesday at Park Place Event Centre.

For more information about the Value in the Valley initiative, contact Cary Darrah by calling 232-1156 or cdarrah@cedarvalleyalliance.com.
Response to letters

Cedar Falls School District

CEDAR FALLS  The Cedar Falls School District is clarifying or correcting information written in letters to the editor in Fridays Courier.

School board members are not paid positions, they are volunteer positions, thus they did not receive a pay increase.

Open enrollment: 85 percent of the students open enrolled into Cedar Falls fit into the continuous category, meaning they lived in our district, established residency, but then moved out of Cedar Falls and requested open enrollment back into our district to finish their education. The district cannot deny these, even if open enrollment is closed. By Iowa law we still need to allow those students to finish their education in Cedar Falls Schools. Once students have been accepted through open enrollment, the district cannot deny them from attending its schools for the duration of their educational program. There are 342 students open enrolled in and 101 students open enrolled out of the Cedar Falls School District. Dollars for open-enrolled students are transferred from their home district and paid to the open-enrolled district. The per pupil allotment ($6,366/per student for 2015-16), set by the state, is transferred from the home district to the open-enrolled district, to educate the student. So dollars do follow the student. Open-enrolled students are placed in buildings that have capacity at the grade level they are in; they are not allowed to choose which building they will attend. For this school year, closing open enrollment would have kept six students out of the district.

Maximum tax amount: By state law the tax rate cannot go above $1.23 per $1,000 assessed value and the bond dollars can only be used for the projects on the ballot. The bond would be for 19 years, with provisions to pay it off early. The tax impact would begin fiscal year 2018.

Janesville vote

MIKE ZWANZIGER

JANESVILLE  Im asking residents of the Janesville School District to join me in supporting our kids by voting yes on Tuesday for expansions at the school. The school has grown and provides great educational and extracurricular opportunities for our students. The school has been responsible with our money and not asked for a general obligation bond since 1974. Compared to area districts, our school taxes are very low at $11.98/$1,000 taxable value. The existing facilities have been well maintained and continue to provide great spaces for our kids.

Our enrollment continues to grow, and we are in need of classrooms and other spaces. This is a very practical project that adds four classrooms and constructs and adequate multipurpose/gym space in order to provide additional opportunities for concerts, plays, PE classes, sporting activities, art shows and other activities. We have excellent teachers who deserve adequate facilities to educate our future leaders.

Thanks to the school board and administration for bringing forward a reasonable project. I also want to thank previous generations that had the forethought to invest in education. Please vote yes to support the future!

No to C.F. vote

CHRISTIE HINZ

CEDAR FALLS  In the 1980s my daughters attended North Cedar, and there was money from a previous bond to be used to update electric and heating, put on an addition and add some new playground equipment. Guess what got done? Playground equipment, thanks to PTA and the school carnival. The rest of the money went to other schools. Id love to see North Cedar receive the long-overdue updates. But after waiting for all these years, I feel the new school will be built and will need extra funding, so once again North Cedar will be forgotten.

Then, with a new school, who needs North Cedar? As with our fire station, according to then Mayor Jon Crews, theres nothing of value in this area. Now that were on a fixed disability income, and with our assessed value going up $10,500, Im gonna say vote no!
WATERLOO, IA  A sparkling roster of soloists led the wcfsymphony to two inspired concerts Saturday, at the Brown Derby Ballroom in downtown Waterloo. These (identical) concerts, led masterfully by the orchestras Music Director and CEO Jason Weinberger, completed a two-part presentation of orchestral works of J.S. Bach, the earlier concerts occurring in the same venue on February 6.

The Brown Derby offers audiences a chance to hear concerts up close and personal, not unlike attending a secular concert in the Baroque era itself, which were often given in a citys tavern or public hall. In fact, drinks were served at Brown Derby for the concerts.

The orchestra employed reduced forces, probably similar to performances of the time. It is unfortunate that the programs were printed so early that no names were included, and these concerts were played in anonymity. First violins were Anita Tucker, Beth Hoffman and Todd Williams. Seconds included Daniel Kaplunas and Robert Espe, and violists were Kathleen Siehler and Sally Malcolm. The continuo was formed by Isaac-Paster-Chermak, cello; Alexander Pershounin, bass; and Jason Weinberger at the harpsichord.

I attended and am reviewing the earlier concert, which began with Bachs Orchestral Suite No. 2, BWV 1067 (Bachs works are identified by number  BWV in English means catalogue of Bachs works). Claudia Anderson, the orchestras principal flutist, was absolutely masterful in the soloists role, playing the demanding work on her modern flute, not that different from the wooden traverso used at the time (she also spoke informatively about performance tractice). As in most Baroque suites, the piece began with a French overture, followed by a series of stylized dances, much in fashion at the time. Of particular interest were the spritely bourrees, with an almost Mendelssohnian effervescence.

As is often the case, the solo part was written without much concern for breathing, an issue that Anderson handled capably. The final movement, the "Badinerie," is an iconic work for flute, beyond the reach of all but the most accomplished when played at this breakneck tempo. Anderson was up to the task, but exhibited also in earlier movements the ability to bring to life Bachs intertwining lines in his slow movements, as well as finely executed ornamentation of her own design  even in the "Badinerie." The orchestra supported her in precise and energetic fashion in this well-played and difficult work.

Bach wrote at white heat, generally under tremendous time pressure, burdened as he was with a host of administrative and non-musical duties. It is only natural that he recycled many of his works (and even those of others). We find the same scores reappearing in other guises throughout his writing. This is the case with the second suite and the two pieces that followed.

We next heard an instrumental movement (BWV 1040), which also appeared in two different cantatas. It is known as the Canonic Trio Sonata  a trio sonata being played by two soloists and continuo. A canon is a compositional form already in use for hundreds of years in the imitative counterpoint that formed the basis of Western art music. In a canon, the second voice repeats a measure later what has just happened in the first. The two soloists, the orchestras concertmistress Anita Tucker, violin; and principal oboe Heather Armstrong rendered a faultless and intriguing performance of this light work, particularly notable to me for superb intonation. Even the cellist departed from his bass lines to weave a melody or two. Canons being by nature unsuitable for extended composition, the work lasted less than two minutes, and was followed by the Sinfonia from the Cantata BWV 156.

This instrumental work is a suitably solemn first movement for the cantata, entitled somewhat forbiddingly I Stand With One Foot in the Grave, and was supposedly borrowed from an earlier oboe concerto of Bachs, and later appeared most famously as a part of a harpsichord concerto. Weinberger discussed the use of figured bass, a method of indicating harmonies to be played by the keyboardist, similar to a jazz pianists notation today, and then turned the soloist chores over to Heather Armstrong, oboe. Armstrong exhibited a beautiful solid tone, not disguised by excessive vibrato, and impeccable intonation, as she worked her way through this familiar piece.

The concert ended with the Brandenburg Concerto No. 2. The concerto was one of a series of six written as part of Bachs job application to the Margrave of Brandenburg  one of the many minor potentates of the bewildering labyrinth of petty fiefdoms that comprised what we now know of as Germany. We have Bachs obsequious letter to the Margrave  he did not get the job, and the Margrave ignored the works, which ironically succeeded in making his name immortal.

The major uniqueness of the second Brandenburg lies in the eclectic makeup of its four soloists  violin, oboe, clarino (high) trumpet and flauto dolce (which we know today as recorder). A major issue is one of balance, particularly between the latter two instruments. This problem was somewhat ameliorated by the use of the modern flute, instead of the intimate wooden timbre of the recorder, but it is also necessary to have the trumpet play in a decidedly unbrasslike volume  which was accomplished at these concerts.

Soloists were Anita Tucker, violin; Heather Armstrong, oboe; Claudia Anderson, flute; and James Bovinette, trumpet. Dr. Bovinette, long-time trumpet professor at Iowa State University, gave a brief explanation of the intricacies of his part and instrument. In the era before the advent of changing tubing by valves, trumpets and horns could only play stepwise melodies in the very highest of their registers, where the available notes were closer together. This is why Baroque writing for high brass was so stratospheric. Indeed, a curious chapter in music history ensued, where the techniques of high brass playing were actually lost in the early 1800s, and not revived until the latter part of the 20th century.

The slow movement featured accomplished interplay between Tucker, Armstrong and Anderson, in a texture described by Weinberger as a quartet sonata. The outer two movements exhibit complex contrapuntal work between soloists and orchestra. As excellently as all soloists and orchestra played, special praise must be given to Dr. Bovinette. This trumpet part may be the most difficult in the literature, with its demands on high register and nerves. I have seen two nationally acclaimed trumpet players crash and burn on the work  this was emphatically not the case with Bovinette, who exhibited spectacular accuracy, pitch, dynamic control and confidence, and had to do it again at the later concert! An absolutely top-tier performance.

All in all, the evening offered the orchestra at its best, in a convivial atmosphere  it is hoped that they will return to the venue.

Sponsors of the evening included Radio 1250, Midwest One Bank, JSA Developers and Cedar Valley Eye Care.

The next concert will be April 23, and is a celebration of bicycling (one of conductor Weinbergers main passions). It will feature British composer Edward Elgars Enigma Variations (with a cycling connection), as well as other works celebrating the sport.

Thomas Tritle holds emeritus status at the School of Music of UNI, and is the former principal horn and program note writer for the Waterloo/Cedar Falls Symphony Orchestra.
By West Kentucky Star Staff Apr. 02, 2016 | 09:05 AM | PADUCAH, KY

A Paducah man faces charges after a woman was hit by a vehicle early Saturday.

According to the McCracken County Sheriff's Department, shortly before 3:30 am Saturday, deputies responded to the 3600 block of Benton Road for a report of an injured woman laying beside the roadway. Deputies said 52-year-old Deborah Debaun of Paducah had been struck by a motor vehicle.

Debaun was transported to Lourdes Hospital for severe injuries. She was then airlifted to Vanderbilt University Medical Center for further treatment of her injuries.

The investigation showed that Debaun had been walking westbound on Benton Road toward Louisiana Street when she was struck from the rear by a passing motor vehicle traveling in the same direction. The vehicle in question was white in color and believed to be a passenger car, but the make and model was not known. The vehicle sustained damage to the right side front and right side rear view mirror.

Saturday afternoon, the vehicle believed to be involved was located behind the Papa Johns on Clarks River Road. The vehicle, a white, 2005 Chevrolet Impala, had damage to the right front and right side rear view mirror. Upon further investigation, detectives learned that the vehicle had been driven by 22-year-old Garrett Smelosky of Paducah in the area of the collision around the same time the incident occurred. Detectives were also able to correlate evidence located at the scene of the collision with the suspect's vehicle.

After being interviewed by detectives, Smelosky was charged with leaving the scene of an accident/failure to render aid/assistance with death or serious physical injury.

He was lodged in the McCracken County Regional Jail.
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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.
Apr 4, 2016 | By Alec

Canon is, of course, world-leader in imaging solutions and no stranger to 3D printing. Six months ago, they even showed off their first own 3D printer concept. But subsidiary Canon Europe is dabbling in 3D printing in a completely different way, as an important reseller of 3D printers by 3D Systems in Europe. The company just revealed that they will expand their distribution agreement with 3D Systems to include the Austrian market as well.

This announcement follows a predictable pattern that has been taking place over the last year or so. In February 2015, Canon Europe announced a distribution agreement with 3D Systems to market, sell and support 3D Systems' 3D printers in the UK and Ireland, including the ProJet 1200, 3500 series, 4500, 6000 and 7000. Since then, they have been steadily rolling out their distribution across Europe and is now already representing 3D Systems in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, the Nordic countries and France. Austria, it seems, is logically next in line.

As part of the agreement with 3D Systems, Canon provides marketing, sales, support and help sustain overall professional and technical environments. Experts say the partnership is just another expression of Canons growth strategy, which sees them adopting new technological areas such as 3D printing. They will especially focus on the market segments of engineering, production and architecture, for which the 3D Systems hardware is of course particularly suited.

Unsurprisingly, the responses from Canon were very optimistic. Chris Blake, the EMEA Sales and Marketing Director for 3D Printing, said he was very pleased with the expansion of the agreement. Our partnership provides us with a good start in those countries where our offers are already available. We are very pleased to be able to provide our customers in Austria with the best 3D printing solutions, extensive services , expertise and support, he said.

3D Systems similarly responded optimistically. It's great to continue our cooperation with Canon to offer our portfolio of professional 3D printing solutions and to now expand them to Austria. Through the comprehensive, proven service and support provided by Canon, a broader spectrum of customers can now benefit from our advanced technologies, said Charlie Grace, Chief Revenue Officer, Professional Products at 3D Systems.

Peter Saak, the CEO of Canon Austria, further argued that 3D printing can definitely revolutionize the way Austrian businesses work and listed some advantages. This innovative and pioneering technology conserves resources because material is only applied where it is needed. New products can be placed in the market much more quickly. And a production of 3D printed parts is possible with very little manual effort, he says. Whats more, 3D printing has a shorter development cycle, increased design flexibility, low costs and saves time on prototyping. We want to ensure that our customers optimally reap the 3D printing opportunities for their business. With the entry of Canon in the Austrian 3D printing market, we can offer our customers not only the necessary hardware, but also the consulting and implementation expertise that are necessary for them to develop new opportunities.

Posted in 3D Printer Company

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Apr 4, 2016 | By Tess

A team of researchers from the American University in Washington D.C. have successfully managed to 3D print chemically active structures using a commercial 3D printer, a development which could have a big impact on mitigating pollution.

The study, which details the research process of the 3D printed chemically active structures, was published earlier today in Science and Technology of Advanced Materials and is called The chemical, mechanical, and physical properties of 3D printed materials composed of TiO2-ABS nanocomposites.

The project, led by chemistry professor Matthew Hartings, effectively shows how a commercial 3D printer can be used to create a 3D printed structure with an active chemistry that could help break down pollutant particles. To explain further, the American University researchers created a design for a small structure, about the size of a handheld sponge, which they additively manufactured using a 3D thermoplastic printer. For the print itself, the researchers used a standard ABS plastic filament, but added nanoparticles of a chemically active titanium dioxide (TiO2) throughout it, that were effectively printed into the sponge-like matrix structure.

TiO2, also known as titania, is an naturally occurring oxide of titanium which is used in a wide range of applications, including sunscreen and cosmetics, food colorings, and paints. What is particularly notable about the chemical formula is its ability to break down pollutant particles when it interacts with natural light, meaning it could potentially be used in controlling and mitigating pollution in the air, water, and in agriculture.

Considering this, Hartings and his team of scientists set out to determine whether nanoparticles of TiO2 would still be active if they were 3D printed with plastic filament into a structure, and whether their pollutant combating properties would still be viable after this process. To test this, the team of researchers placed the 3D printed structure into water and subsequently added an organic molecule, or pollutant, to the water. After testing the water, the researchers found that the pollutant was effectively destroyed by the matrix structure, meaning that the TiO2 nanoparticles did remain active.

Hartings explains of the potentials of 3D printing chemically active structures, "It's not just pollution, but there are all sorts of other chemical processes that people may be interested in. There are a variety of nanoparticles one could add to a polymer to print.

While the research marks an impressive first in the 3D printing world and demonstrates the potentials of 3D printing chemically active materials, there are of course still a number of limitations to the bourgeoning field. For instance, as the study points out, the concentration of nanoparticles of the active ingredient needs to remain below 10% of the total mass structure of the object to be 3D printed. To be most chemically effective, however, the structure would need a higher concentration than 10%.

So far, the team of researchers from the American University in Washington D.C. have only worked with simple 3D printed structures and shapes, though they will soon use additive manufacturing to create more complex geometries and shapes to see what effect the printed structure might have on the materials chemical reactivity. They are hoping to ultimately find an optimal geometric structure to use in breaking down harmful environmental pollutants.

Posted in 3D Printing Technology

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by Akim Reinhardt

You can fool all the people some of the time

and some of the people all the time,

but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

For example, some people will always believe that Abraham Lincoln first uttered this famous aphorism, even though there is no record of him ever having written or said those words.

A French Protestant named Jacques Abbadie authored an early incarnation of the adage in 1684.

In 1754, the French editors Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert helped cement its popularity.

The phrase doesn't show up in American letters until some Prohibitionist politicians started using it in 1885. Twenty years after Lincoln died.

Until recently, I simply took at face value the common claim that these were Lincoln's words. It's not a very important issue, so what would push me to question it?

My decision to title this article.

A little healthy skepticism is all it took. After all, lots of famous quotes are misattributed to famous people, ergo the Yogi Berra line: I really didn't say everything I said. Which he really did say.

So before titling and publishing this essay, I looked up the maxim at a reputable site with citations, just to be sure. And presto: suddenly I am, at least in this regard, all of the people some of the time, and not some of the people all of the time.

You really don't want to be some of those people who get fooled all the time. Which brings us to Donald Trump.

He's very good at fooling people. At the moment, he's successfully fooling millions of Republican voters into thinking he'd be a good president generally, and more specifically, that if elected he could actually do many of the outlandish things he's claiming, like getting Mexico to pay for a wall.

Thus, the question lurks forebodingly: Are we living through some of the time?

Is this the moment when Donald Trump fools all of the people, or at least enough of the ones who call themselves Republicans, that he lands the GOP's presidential nomination?

I'm on record, here and elsewhere, saying Trump will not be the lead elephant in November, much less the next president. I even promised to buy people tickets out of the country if he wins. I'll follow up on that promise next month; who knows, maybe you'll be a lucky winner even as the nation loses a wrestling contest with sanity.

But however this shakes out in the long run, we owe it to ourselves to try and understand why so many people have done the unthinkable and fallen head over heals for a preposterous hair pie.

No doubt, many forces are at work to create the ludicrous horror unfolding before us. But I'd like to focus on just two of them.

The first part of the equation is a superlative con man. Donald Trump is very experienced at conning people. He's a craftsman of that art, if you will, a first rate mountebank, a scammer of the highest order who has spent decades using his bluster and braggadocio to bully critics and to woo sycophants and suckers.

But even the greatest con men are typically only good enough to fool some of the people all of the time. So we need another variable to help explain why this extraordinary moment might be the some time in which The Donald successfully fools all of the people (or at least millions of Republican voters). And that brings us to the second part of the equation: The Suckers.

If you want to understand why so many Republican voters are so gullible, why the elephant tent is teaming with easy marks, then look no further than the Republican party itself, and particularly its attendant media such as FOX News, AM radio's Conservative brigades.

GOP leaders and their mass media mouthpieces have spent more than a quarter-century softening up their constituents by continually fooling some of them into believing wild conspiracy theories, and even into disbelieving plain facts.

Now the chickens are coming home to roost.

Yes, most politicians lie, or at the very least play fast and loose with the truth. That's a bit of a given. But it's not quite the same thing as unleashing wave after wave of pure partisan propaganda in the form of vast conspiracies and stubborn opposition to proven facts, which over time, dull many of your followers' critical faculties, leaving them intellectually afloat and unmoored from reality.

Let's quickly review some of the many lunacies that Conservative media and politicians have shamelessly peddled during the past quarter-century.

 Evolution isnt real

 The government is coming to take your guns

 The Clintons murdered Vince Foster

 Barack Obama was born in Kenya

 Barack Obamas Hawaii birth certificate is fake

 Barack Obama is Muslim

 Climate Change isnt real

 If Climate Change is real, humans have no role in it

 Government death panels will euthanize your grandmother

 Hillary Clinton knew about the Benghazi attack ahead of time

 Planned Parenthood is selling fetal body parts on the black market for profit

And on and on and on.

Honestly, when you look at that list, Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction almost seems like an innocent mistake. Or at least like a typical politician's lie compared to the ponzi scheme-grade nonsense that Conservative media and politicians shamelessly hawk on a routine basis.

Rush Limbaugh and an army of lesser AM radio propagandists have spent nearly three decades advancing these and other ridiculous conspiracies. FOX News began bolstering the chorus twenty years ago, and now leads the way. And Conservative propaganda websites large and small have been metastasizing across the internet since the turn of the century.

Think about it. Today's Conservative voters in their early forties and younger have spent their entire adult lives enmeshed in this crap. No wonder so many of them can't spot the bullshit.

The last seven years in particular have seen an onslaught of Conservative media madness. It seems the apparition of a half-black president has clearly been too much for the far right psyche to handle. And in a post-civil rights America where the popular culture publicly eschews racism, amazing intellectual contortions have been required to paint a smart, thoughtful, articulate, but perhaps mediocre president as the Devil incarnate. It began with the rise of the Tea Party in Obama's wake, and it's been full steam ahead ever since.

And so Obama's two terms have coincided with a noticeable up tick in right wing media babble, each assertion seeming crazier than the next.

Death panels! Seriously.

Meanwhile, establishment GOP politicians have failed to publicly disown these conspiracies, and sometimes have even publicly validated them. Click here if you'd like to revisit Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) endorsing the myth of government death panels looking to pull the plug on grandma.

Of course there is tremendous pressure on politicians like Grassley. Republicans who fail to fall in line run the risk of being discredited as RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) by Limbaugh and other media arbiters of Conservative authenticity. After that, they're vulnerable to a primary election challenge from someone further to the right who will more openly embrace the madness.

But that's no excuse. Republican politicians who placed their careers and partisan victories ahead of the truth and the welfare of the republic must shoulder the blame for this mess. Because it's no longer just words in the wind. The effects of all this wild eyed propaganda are real and deliterious. Many Republican voters are now conditioned to believe all kinds of cockamamie nonsense.

And then in walks Donald Trump.

The great irony of Trump's current success, of course, is that he is not the direct product of Conservative propaganda; rather, he is the Frankenstein monster it has created but can no longer control. FOX News loathes Donald Trump. Most Conservative AM yakkers are yammering endlessly, imploring listeners not to vote for him.

But while media propagandists are long accustomed to setting the Conservative agenda, their fear mongering and ballyhoo has taken on a life of its own, channeled through the monster arising from the table, replete with gold plated neck bolts. And as the right wing pundits furiously swing the unresponsive laboratory levers up and down, the theremin scores their impotence, each of them a flustered Dr. Frankenstein afraid to admit theyre not quite so brilliant as they thought.

It must be quite the shock to them. After all, in the past Donald Trump was just a minor sideshow. For many years it has been de rigeur for him to half-heartedly run for president, a go nowhere proposition that served mostly to burnish his brand. He first publicly flirted with the idea as far back as 1988. He actually tried to gain a presidential nomination as far back as 2000 with Ross Perot's Reform Party. In 2008 and 2012 Trump announced bids for the GOP nod, but they very quickly fizzled.

Yet here we are in 2016, watching him lurch towards Cleveland.

So what's different this time? What has changed so much in just four years that he has gone from publicity stuntman to being on the cusp of a major party nomination?

We shouldn't be reductive. There are a lot of reasons beyond years of propaganda turning Republican voters into suckers for a slick con man. As suggested above, white conservative resentment over a black president is probably part of it. More broadly, Americas shifting demographics, specifically the dwindling share of white population, is likely part of the story. So too is the ongoing economic malaise that sees America's middle class shrinking while college tuition skyrockets and quality blue collar job opportunities shrivel. In other words, it's probably no coincidence that Trump's triumphant moment is coming at the exact same time an actual Socialist is threatening Hillary Clinton's Democratic coronation; nationwide, there is a general thirst for outsider candidates. And on a practical level, there was no obvious choice for the GOP nomination, but rather a large field of weak candidates, which created an opening for Trump to possibly power through by garnering little more than a rabid third of Republican voters.

But beyond these and other important factors is the simple truth that Donald Trump is a hustler pitching horse pucky to a Republican electorate that has been primed to believe it's sirloin.

We need not list the litany of Trumpian chicanery, everything from Trump University to dubious real estate deals. We need not cite the endless array of fly-by-night products he has hawked, from steaks to airplanes. It has all been very well documented elsewhere.

And we certainly need not speculate about the kind of narcissistic and sociopathic mental disorders that are a hallmark of many professional con men, the best and most relentless of whom believe their own grifts.

The pertinent points are:

1. Donald Trump is a professional charlatan with longstanding political ambitions.

2. Thanks to decades of relentless propaganda, the Republican electorate is currently very susceptible to charlatanism.

And now, as Conservative media pundits turn red yelling into the void, and Conservative politicians breathe into brown paper bags while contemplating their next move in a game that slowly angles towards checkmate, Donald Trump grins his shit eating grin and picks their pockets. The huckster is poaching the pigeons that they have spent years training to fly in circles.

Well, at least you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

Akim Reinhardt's website is ThePublicProfessor.com
by Matt McKenna

Heres the concept: two powerful white dudes fight each other until theyre forced to confront a common enemy, which more often than not is another powerful white dude. Are we talking about the plot of Batman v Superman or the sad reality of American presidential politics? Could be either, right? Well, both the movie and the current election cycle have left critics displeased and audiences entertained. Although Batman v. Superman has received only a 29% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, it has received a much better 71% from the audience. The primary election season has experienced a similar dichotomy between critics and the general audience: hardly a moment passes without a cultural critic decrying the base nature of this election cycle, yet audiences are tuning into election coverage on cable news channels in record numbers. Personally, I find the film much less offensive than the current (or any) election cycle if only because the film is fictional.

Batman v Superman is the narrative linchpin for Time Warners DC Extended Universe, which is an attempt to cash in on its ownership of the DC Comics characters the way that Disney has cashed in on its ownership of the Marvel Comics characters through developing a film franchise in which all the heroes fight on the same team in recurring, ever more expensive summer blockbusters. Therefore, although the film is called Batman v Superman, viewers shouldnt be surprised to find out that Batman and Superman eventually stop fighting each other so they can go after the real bad guy, which (spoiler!) is exactly how the United States primary election process will play out. For all the jabs Republicans Ted Cruz and Donald trump take at each other, they will ultimately join forces to attempt to defeat the Democrat candidate in the general election. The same goes for Democrats Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, who will somehow forget all their prior complaints and support each other in defeating the Republican candidate.

If Batman and Superman becoming buddies sounds a lot like presidential primary opponents supporting each other in the general election, then the similarity between Supermans struggles and Donald Trumps campaign will be downright obvious with the one major discrepancy being that Superman is famously known for his good haircut.

In Batman v Superman, the American population is split in their feelings towards Supermanhalf the population deifies him and the other half think hes a harbinger of doom. Everywhere Superman goes, angry protests and angrier counter-protests follow. Indeed, director Zack Snyder inserts a goodly number of shots of protesters and supporters waving signs, screaming, and appearing on the verge of riot. It hardly needs to be said that Trump has been a similarly polarizing figure, causing real Americans to attend his rallies nearly as much in protest as in support.

While there are certainly other similarities between Superman and Trump such as their nuance-free morality and their inability to include collateral damage among their decision making criteria, the most glaring relationship between Batman v Superman and the troubling reality we all share is in how the films contempt for humanity reflects the real-life medias contempt for humanity. In the film, the humans that Batman and Superman are ostensibly attempting to save are not very likeable. Indeed, when these normal folks arent being depicted as too stupid to understand what is happening (e.g. they blame Superman for things that arent his fault), they exist mostly to provide padding for collapsing buildings (e.g. the film's favorite mode of dispatching people is to blow up the buildings they're standing in). The job of normal people in the DC universe is therefore to merely yell and crythey yell at the superheroes for no good reason, and they cry when the bad guys blow up their stuff.

Clearly, Batman v Superman doesnt think much of normal people. If youve watched cable news at all recently, this disdain for normal people should sound pretty familiar. The way it usually works is Rachel Maddow of MSNBC will introduce a clip of an altercation at a Donald Trump rally, show the cell phone video footage that includes screaming and/or tears, and then cut back to her shaking head and rolling eyes, which lets the audience know that, yes, these people sure are stupid. Of course, Fox News has their own version of this sort of thingthey might show footage from a college campus fracas just so they can cut back to Megyn Kellys condescending smirk. Either way, by the time you add up all cable news depictions of normal people, you are forced to presume that everyone is awful.

Batman v Superman is certainly better than critics would lead you to believe, although its a film best watched before turning eighteen years old. Not that you cant derive enjoyment out of the film as an adult, but the plot certainly wont surprise you. The same can be said of this election, which people seem to find entertaining because Donald Trump himself resembles some a comic book character. However, this election wont surprise you eitherit will still involve Republicans uniting against Democrats and Democrats uniting against Republicans.
by Evert Cilliers aka Adam Ash



Paul Krugman has become our most original and insightful commentator on the American scene. In his essential NY Times column, he was the first pundit to attack George W Bush, way before 9/11 or the Iraq War. He called Bush Jr a liar, and said Bush fudged his economic numbers.

But lately, Krugman has been a disappointment, because of his persistent sneering at Bernie Sanders.

What's up with that? Bernie Sanders may be our first honest politician, a straight-up progressive, who is doing America the favor of moving Hillary over to the left. He is an authentic dyed-in-the-wool liberal who complained about income inequality decades before Occupy Wall Street made it part of the national conversation. He voted against the Iraq War. His prescriptions would turn us into a socialist democratic state with a strong social safety net and a better single-payer health system. He stands for a $15 minimum wage. Free community college tuition, paid for by a Wall Street transaction tax. Big infrastructure spending for more jobs. Money out of politics. Break up the big banks.

What's not to like about Bernie?

But Krugman finds stuff  usually sucked out of his thumb. Why? Is Krugman's nose so deep up the butt of the Democratic Establishment that he can't see past it, or out of said posterior? Here is his latest smear on Bernie:

The Sanders campaign has come much further than almost anyone expected, to the point where Sanders can have a lot of influence on the shape of the race. But with influence comes responsibility, and it's time to lay out some guidelines for good and bad behavior.

The first thing to say is that it's still very unlikely that Sanders can win the nomination. Don't tell me about national polls (and cherry-pick the polls that show your guy getting close); at this point it's all about delegate counts, where Clinton has a substantial lead with the voting more than half over  To overtake Clinton in pledged delegates, Sanders would need to win by about a 13 point margin from here on in:

Nothing in what we've seen so far suggests that he'll come anywhere close to that. He'll probably win Wisconsin next week, but that's a demographically favorable state for him, so unless it's a huge blowout (which the polls aren't showing), Clinton will still be very much on track for the nomination.

Now, as the bumper stickers don't quite say, stuff happens. But at this point it's something like a 90 percent probability that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. Anyone denying that arithmetic is basically pulling a con job on Sanders supporters.

So what does that say about appropriate behavior on the part of her rival? Two things, I'd argue.

First, the Sanders campaign needs to stop feeding the right-wing disinformation machine. Engaging in innuendo suggesting, without evidence, that Clinton is corrupt is, at this point, basically campaigning on behalf of the RNC. If Sanders really believes, as he says, that it's all-important to keep the White House out of Republican hands, he should stop all that  and tell his staff to stop it too.

Second, it's time for Sanders to engage in some citizenship. The presidency isn't the only office on the line; down-ballot races for the Senate and even the House are going to be crucial. Clinton has been raising money for other races; Sanders hasn't, and is still being evasive on whether he will ever do so. Not acceptable.

Oh, and the Sanders campaign is saying that it will try to flip superdelegates even if it loses the unpledged delegates and the popular vote. Remember when evil Hillary was going to use superdelegates to steal the nomination? Double standards aside, what makes the campaign think that he will get any backing from a party he refuses to lift a finger to help?

It's important to realize that there are some real conflicts of interest here. For Sanders campaign staff, and also for anyone who has been backing his insurgency, it's been one heck of a ride, and they would understandably like it to go on as long as possible. But we've now reached the point where what's fun for the campaign isn't at all the same as what's good for America.

Sanders doesn't need to drop out, but he needs to start acting responsibly.



Unbelievable pettiness. Aimed at the only politician in the running who has consistently acted the gentleman. Here is how a NY Times reader rebutted Krugman in a most-readers-picked comment:

At one point in time I thought we were on the same side, and I could easily see myself backing Clinton. Unfortunately, thanks to her and her supporters, I don't hold those sentiments anymore.

The smears, lies, dishonesty, and victim playing by the Clinton camp and her supporters is outrageous. It was Hillary who lied numerous times about Sanders and the auto bailout. It was Hillary lying about his support from the Clean Power Plan. It was Hillary who tried to link Sanders to the racist minutemen. It was David Brock, a Hillary surrogate, calling Sanders a racist and questioning his health. It was Krugman and many others calling Sanders supporters sexist with the debunked Bernie Bro label. It was Chelsea Clinton telling people that Bernie was going to take away their Obamacare and lied about the cost of his educational policies. It was Thorpe who lied about the cost of single payer. It was Hillary supporters who lied about Sanders' Civil Rights Record. It was Krugman, who for years arguing we had an output gap worth rectifying via fiscal stimulus, only to use a study by serious economists that showed we have no output gap in order to invalidate Sanders spending policies. It was Hillary who promised to have more debates, only to turn around and play the victim.

I realize that Clinton supporters believe that she is pure as the driven snow, and Sanders is some evil, radical commie out to destroy her and the Democratic Party, but that is simply not the case.

There you have it. Krugman is so in the tank for Hillary, he has become blind, nasty, narrow-minded and one-sided. It is high time the Democratic Establishment got in touch with their progressive base. That's the future of the party: Bernie gets 80% of the under-30 vote. Right-of-center Democrats like Rahm Emmanuel and now, seemingly, Paul Krugman, run the risk of being dinosaurs.

Pity. One hopes Krugman manages to live down this sorry episode in his otherwise admirable punditry.


Keysbrook Mineral Sands Project officially opened

Perth, April 4, 2016 AEST (ABN Newswire) - MZI Resources Ltd ( ASX:MZI ) is pleased to announce the official opening of its flagship Keysbrook Mineral Sands Project today by the Honourable Tony Simpson, MLA for Darling Range, and Western Australia's Minister for Local Government; Community Services; Seniors and Volunteering; Youth.



The opening of the Keysbrook Project, 70km south of Perth, follows the successful commencement of operations at the $75 million project in October 2015, and the commencement of mineral sands product sales in December 2015.



The Project represents one of the largest new project developments in the Peel Region in recent years, and is designed to produce over 95,000 tonnes of high value mineral sands products annually for export to global customers.



Keysbrook is also WA's first - and the world's largest - primary producer of leucoxene, a naturally occurring high value alternative to rutile as a source of titanium dioxide used in pigments for paints and paper, and in the production of lightweight titanium metal. It is also a major producer of zircon concentrate used in ceramics, refractories and specialty industrial applications.



MZI Managing Director Trevor Matthews said "Today's official opening of the Keysbrook Project is a tremendous milestone not just for MZI and all those who have worked tirelessly to bring it to fruition, but also for the broader Peel region and WA. Keysbrook represents a unique type of mining project that is closely integrated with the surrounding communities, with almost 90% of employees living within a half hour's drive and a number of local suppliers and contractors providing services to the site.



"It is also a sustainable project with a light footprint that shows mining and environmental stewardship are not mutually exclusive. With total Ore Reserves equivalent to over 15 years of production, we look forward to Keysbrook being a major contributor to the Peel region for many years to come."



The Keysbrook Project represents a major positive addition to the Peel economy, with a strong focus on maximising local content. Almost 90% of Keysbrook's 60 workers reside within a 30 minute radius of the site, while the operation has to date engaged the services of a number of local contractors and suppliers.



MZI is committed to partnering with its host communities through a wide range of community investment initiatives and vocational development programs (see over for details).



Keysbrook is also a sustainable business with a light environmental footprint. Ore processing is chemical free and involves sluicing, screening and gravity separation of naturally occurring sands to produce heavy mineral concentrate which then undergoes simple electrostatic and magnetic separation at a facility near Bunbury to produce the final zircon and leucoxene products. There is no waste, with over 85% of all process water recycled, and more than 97% of extracted material returned to the mined area, following which the land is progressively rehabilitated to its pre-mining state. The first phase of rehabilitation work has commenced on the initial pre-mining void, which has been backfilled. Typically, rehabilitated land will be available for grazing within 2 - 3 growing seasons.



KEYSBROOK BENEFITS AT A GLANCE



- Largest new project development in Peel region in recent years (approximately $75 million)



- WA's first, and the world's largest, primary producer of leucoxene



- Approximately $40 million spent annually for labour, supplies and services, predominantly within WA



- Direct employment for 60 mining and process workers, plus substantial contractor and third party employment associated with related activities, including product transport, equipment maintenance, and final processing of Keysbrook concentrate at Doral's Picton facility.



- Locally based workforce - almost 90% of Keysbrook employees reside within a 30 minute radius of the site



- Substantial participation by locally based contractors and suppliers, including local steel fabrication



- Major supporter of local community initiatives, including $50,000pa in direct funding for distribution through the Keysbrook Community Consultative Group, targeting:



-- Local schools

-- Local bushfire and emergency services

-- Sporting clubs

-- Youth groups

-- Community organisations



- MZI has entered into a strategic partnership with Fairbridge Western Australia Inc. to help achieve positive sustainable change in the lives of young people, their families and communities in the local area, including the Fairbridge Bindjareb program to help provide indigenous inmates with lasting work opportunities on their release from local correctional facilities. MZI employed its first graduate from the program in January 2016.







About MZI Resources Ltd





MZI Resources Ltd (ASX:MZI) is a mineral sands company focused on the high value minerals of zircon, rutile and leucoxene based in Perth, Western Australia. Its flagship operating asset is the Keysbrook Mineral Sands Project, located 70km south of Perth. At the Keysbrook mine, mineral sands are mined and processed to produce heavy mineral concentrate (HMC) which is processed into final products under a toll treating arrangement with Doral Mineral Sands Pty Ltd at the Picton Mineral Separation Plant (MSP) near Bunbury.

The Keysbrook mine hosts a world-class zircon / leucoxene ore body with total Ore Reserves equivalent to over 15 years of production at design output rates, and total Mineral Resources equivalent to over 30 years of production. Production commenced in late 2015, making the Keysbrook Project Australias first  and the worlds largest - primary producer of high value leucoxene.
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Banks that deal with international tax reporting are facing a slew of upcoming deadlines and regulations.

Among them are those related to FATCA, the Foreign Account Tax and Compliance Act that was included as part of the HIRE Act of 2010. The controversial law was delayed several times to give the Treasury Department the opportunity to negotiate intergovernmental agreements with the tax authorities of other countries, and to allow banks and the IRS to set up systems for exchanging tax information. The system fully got underway last fall after years of preparation (see IRS Begins Exchanging Tax Info with Other Countries under FATCA).

Now a slew of deadlines are kicking in, including one last week on March 31 in which foreign financial institutions had to file Form 8966, known as a FATCA Report, for calendar year 2015 with the IRS.

Two more deadlines are coming up April 30 and May 31 for banks in the Cayman Islands to do their reporting for both FATCA and the United Kingdoms version of FATCA.

The next key deadline for a major country is April 30 when there is the requirement for the FFI to notify the Cayman Islands that they are going to be reporting both for FATCA as well as for U.K. CDOT rules, which are also effective this year for reporting, said Deloitte global FATCA leader Denise Hintzke. That is the U.K.s version of FATCA, where theyre looking for U.K.-specified persons from their Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories. Cayman is an overseas territory, and therefore any FFI in that jurisdiction is subject to those reporting rules this year as well. The next deadline after that is actually May 31, and that is the deadline in Cayman for filing the report, both for FATCA and U.K. CDOT. All of the FFIs need to submit either information about any specified U.S. persons, or if they choose to, a no report, basically telling the government that they have nothing to report.

Another deadline for foreign financial institutions is coming up at the end of June.

June 30 is the last date that an FFI has for remediating their pre-existing accounts under FATCA, said Hintzke. There is a requirement for the FFI to go out to all of their pre-existing accounts and get them properly documented and classified under FATCA. That deadline is June 30 and there will in the future be a certification that the responsible officer will need to do back to the IRS that they met that deadline for the due diligence.

Later in the year are lots of other deadlines for foreign financial institutions in so-called Model 1 jurisdictions, under which they first report the financial information to their own countrys tax authority, which in turn passes it along to the IRS, as opposed to Model 2, in which they report it directly to the IRS.

Sprinkled throughout the year, all of the countries in Model 1 jurisdictions have their reporting deadlines, said Hintzke. A couple of them were earlier on in the year for nonconsenting accounts and things like that. Most of them are falling in the June-July timeframe, but each country can be different. Probably two-thirds of the FFIs in the world are sitting in the Cayman Islands, so they always have the biggest reporting impact.

Many foreign banks are having a tough time dealing with all of the complex FATCA requirements.

Institutions are still struggling with it somewhat, said Hintzke. Last year was a very difficult reporting year and this year is kind of lining up the same way.

Complicating matters even more is the additional information that needs to be reported this year. They need to report income stream payments, and for the fund industry at least they need to report gross distributions, said Hintzke. Thats been causing some issues. As far as the remediation of the accounts, I think in general most organizations are well on their way. But I think theyre finding it more difficult than they envisioned it was going to be. They have what we would call a population of recalcitrant account holders, meaning theyre having difficulties getting the actual documentation they need from the investor, from the account holder. Thats been a little surprising to some of them, so theyre trying to figure out exactly how do they deal with that.

As with previous regulatory regimes, the banks are going to need some time to adjust. Ive been doing information reporting for a long, long time, and when new rules come in like this, and when theyre as expansive as this, it takes a few years to really get your arms around the process, said Hintzke.

Another concern is the Common Reporting Standard that the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has developed in response to a request from the Group of 20 finance leaders, calling on jurisdictions to obtain information from their financial institutions and automatically exchange that information with other jurisdictions on an annual basis.

Its FATCA on steroids, said Hintzke. Thats kicked off in several countries already, so there are all these requests for self-certification going out. The first reporting there will be early next year. People are starting to scramble to get their arms around that as well. Most clients are trying their hardest. Theyre trying to do the best they can to comply with all these different complicated rules.

While the Common Reporting Standard bears some resemblance to FATCAs Model 1 intergovernmental agreements, its also much more far-reaching.

Its based on the Model 1 IGAs, but you have a couple of key differences, in that this is multiple governments, said Hintzke. Its not just one government. There are actually 96 of them. Sixty-three of them went live already on January 1, even though the majority of those 63 havent given specific guidance. The documentation requirements are more onerous. There are requirements that you dont have the same de minimis thresholds that you had under FATCA. There arent all of these compliance statuses that are available. In terms of the amount of heavy lifting around making sure youve got proper documentation, its a bigger undertaking.

Banks are facing some new documentation demands with the Common Reporting Standard. The documentation that they collected for FATCA does not work for CRS, said Hintzke. There needs to be self-certification. Even though theyve gone through this whole exercise of documenting entities for FATCA, they now need to go back for CRS. In addition, each country is deciding who theyre going to treat as participating. For example, youve got the U.K., which has 96 countries on their list, and you have Ireland, and that has 77. The reason that is important is because entities in non-participating jurisdictions receive some negative treatment and are treated differently. For example, if you were an entity in Brazil and you were to open up an account in the U.K., everything would be fine. If you were that same entity in Brazil and you went to open up an account in Ireland, they would treat you as non-participating, and the negative impact would kick in. That makes things much more complicated.

Banks will need to keep track of how their country views other countries financial institutions and taxpayers. You need to track not only which countries are participating, but who does each country view as participating, said Hintzke. Youve got issues because every single country has different definitions of what a tax resident is, so when youre determining what your tax residencies are, that can be difficult. Some countries dont have tax residencies, like Cayman, so thats raised a lot of concern about what people are calling tax nomads, meaning that somebody will attempt to reside or claim residence in one of these countries that dont have a tax residency in order to not have any reporting anywhere. There is discussion of how that gets dealt with. Because its all of these countries, it just makes it much more complicated.

Hintzke likens FATCA to a wheel-and-spoke model, while the Common Reporting Standard is more like a spider web. With FATCA, youve got the U.S. government in the middle and it goes out to all of these countries, and the countries are coming back into them, she said. Here this is a spider web because it is 96 different countries that are coming up with their own rules and will be deciding who they will be sharing with and how to treat different entities.

A further wrinkle to watch for is the OECDs country-by-country reporting requirements that are part of its BEPS, or Base Erosion and Profit Shifting, project. The country-by-country reporting requirements will require multinational companies to provide aggregate information annually, in each jurisdiction where they do business, on the global allocation of income and taxes paid, together with other indicators of the location of economic activity within the multinational group, as well as information about which entities do business in a particular jurisdiction and the business activities in which each entity is engaged.

Ive been watching it from the U.S. side, said Hintzke. There was some discussion where the U.S. was not going to be participating, and now theyve said that they will participate, probably in about two years, but theyre not using the exact same format as the rest of the world. There have been a lot of discussions around leveraging some of the portals that have been put into place for both FATCA and CRS, for the purposes of transferring this information and piggybacking on it. Its all about sharing information and getting information into the hands of the various governments so that they can then decide, in the case of country-by-country reporting, which amount of revenues should belong to their jurisdiction for purposes of taxation.

The goal is to discourage multinational companies from setting up structures to avoid any taxation. Country-by-country reporting is all about letting each country collect the information it needs to really figure out whether theyre getting their share of the revenue that belongs to them, which is similar to FATCA and CRS, said Hintzke. Can you leverage the same portals? The OECD is in the process of looking at what kind of engine theyre going to be building to collect all this data thats coming in under CRS, and the thought is that maybe it can also be used for country-by-country reporting. Its starting to converge with FATCA.
(Bloomberg) Alexander Hamilton nuzzled Pierce Thiots chin bristles. Washington took to his mustache. Lincoln hung from his mutton chop.

The presidents were posing for a picture in the Instagram star's beard, which was stuffed with cash as part of a social media stunt for a tax preparer. Thiot (Tee-oh) is well-known on the Internet for Will It Beard, an Instagram account with over 125,000 followers where the 29-year-old art director tries to stick various items (Peeps, carnival beads, Legos) in there to see if they will, in fact, beard.

He had bartered his advertising services for free tax prep from a firm called Fishback Tax, which offers certified-public-accounting services online and by phone.

We find the people most comfortable with our services are millennials, said Catherine Fishback, head of marketing. It just connected to me that he might be a good person to reach out to."

"It made sense for the account as well," Thiot said, "because I hadn't stuck any money in [my beard] yet."

The U.S. tax prep industry, from small players like Fishback, a three-year-old Nevada shop, to big ones like Intuit Inc.'s TurboTax, is stepping up its efforts to reach America's 83 million millennials. They are increasingly of tax-filing age and present their own business opportunitiesand challenges.

TaxSlayer, an online service, says 60 percent of its customers who file electronically are millennials. Twitter, where TaxSlayer has launched a marketing campaign geared to the group, is used mainly by 18- to 32-year-olds, according to the Pew Research Center.

TurboTax has turned to mobile devices and apps, including SnapChat, the platform of self-dissolving images, where it ran a 10-second ad in January 2015 and plans to run another this tax season.

As for Fishback's gambit, the vast majority of Instagram users are millennials, most of whom Pew determined earn between $30,000 and $74,999 a year.

The challenge of reaching this group is authenticity, said Jeff Fromm, president of the marketing consultancy FutureCast and author of Marketing to Millennials.

I think that a hashtag works if the brand has a passionate group of followers and the hashtag is relevant to the conversation, he said. Otherwise its #EpicFail, if its a piece of marketing stuffed in my face.

Even when social media marketing is entertainingWill It Beard's sponsored post gained over 7,000 likesit isn't necessarily pushing business for the brand. Fishback said reaction to the post, which she praised as creative and fun, was less than she expected, partly because people scroll fast on Instagram and don't always read the captions.

#TaxSwag, a campaign that TaxSlayer launched two weeks ago to target taxpayers between 21 and 44, enters e-filing customers in a sweepstakes for stereotypically millennial prizes. There's a belt buckle featuring bacon, a retro 80s mug, and, of course, a poster of the worlds most beautiful beards. (Marketers seem a little obsessed with millennials and beards, perhaps emboldened by Google Trends, which shows a steady rise in searches for "beard" and "hipster beard.")

Though millennials increasingly consume marketing through mobile and social media rather than television, "if all things are equal they will prefer a trusted brand, Fromm said, based on a survey he took. To build that brand, he said, and name recognition for it, you have to consider various media, including TV.

TaxSlayer ran a television campaign this tax season in which e-filers declared, "I am not a tax expert." The spot was viewed on YouTube more than 1.1 million times. Across Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, #TaxSwag reached over 3.2 million users. This tax season's crop of TV commercials from TurboTax, which features famous brainiacs such as the theoretical physicist Dr. Michio Kaku showing an ordinary person how to file a return, emphasizes filing through mobile devices.

Its a nod to where we feel the puck is going, said Cathleen Ryan, TurboTaxs director of advertising. She said TurboTax also gears its app to younger taxpayers but doesn't focus whole campaigns on millennials.

Indeed, Fromm cautions clients not to treat the group as a monolithic cohort.

Maybe not monolithic, but the way Thiot arrived at his barter deal with Fishback is kind of ... millennial. Fishback offered a base price "of under $500, with commission for each referral we received," as she described it. He declined.

"I've never wanted to do a [brand] collaboration," he said. "But being a millennial myself and hating doing taxes, I said I would help out if they helped me out."
(Bloomberg) Donald Trump and Ted Cruz oppose a carbon tax, putting them in league with the Republican National Committee on the issue but at odds with some oil companies and economists who view a levy on those heat-trapping emissions as an effective way to combat climate change.

The top two Republican presidential candidates positions on that and other environmental issues were detailed in their responses to a survey by the American Energy Alliance, a free-market, fossil-fuel advocacy group that shared the results with Bloomberg.

The circus-like atmosphere of the 2016 campaign has so far overshadowed substantive debate over energy and environmental issues, including the future of oil and gas development and how the U.S. should tackle climate change. Completed questionnaires were not returned by John Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio, or Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, a senator from Vermont.

The survey responses provide the deepest details yet on where Trump stands on energy subsidies, biofuel mandates and the management of federal lands. Unlike Cruz, a senator from Texas who has cast votes on environmental regulation and introduced legislation to expand oil and gas drilling, Trump has been viewed as a wild card on energy issues because he lacks a track record that could foreshadow his approach if elected.

Useful Insight

The answers provide useful insight into how some of the candidates will handle the most pressing energy issues if elected, said American Energy Alliance President Thomas Pyle. Although Cruz has more of a track record on these issues, Trumps responses give us a sense of the way he is thinking about these things, said Pyle, whose group has received funding from billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch.

Cruz has made no secret of his skepticism of climate change and previously signaled that he opposes taxing the carbon dioxide emissions blamed by scientists for rising global temperatures. The biggest surprise, Pyle said, was Trumps flat rejection of a carbon tax, a position that runs contrary to the views of BP Plc, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Statoil ASA and other companies, which favor the policy as a predictable way of tackling greenhouse gas emissions.

The carbon tax is a legitimate threat, because there are companies that have basically been building it into their books as a liability, Pyle said. Theyre all sort of individually picking a number, and I think some of them would love there to be a uniform number thats lower than they price.

Regulatory Overreach

Both Trump and Cruz took aim at regulatory overreach by President Barack Obamas administration on environmental issues, including the Clean Power Plan that slashes carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. Each promises, if elected, to review the administrations conclusion that carbon dioxide endangers public health and welfare.

The two candidates also said they opposed the administrations decision to use the social cost of carbonan estimate of the potential costs of rising seas, intense storms and other climate change effectsto justify regulations that can impose high initial costs on energy companies and manufacturers. But Cruz went a step further by disputing the science of climate change, volunteering in a survey response that the observed temperature evidence does not support the claims that carbon dioxide is dangerous.

Ethanol Requirements

There were stark differences in Cruz and Trumps approach to the Renewable Fuel Standard, an 11-year-old mandate that requires refiners to blend steadily escalating amounts of ethanol and next-generation biofuels into gasoline.

Cruz maintained the position he staked out while campaigning through Iowa cornfields that the program should be phased out over five years and then repealed, rather than leaving biofuel quotas to the Environmental Protection Agencys discretion after 2022 as ordained by current law. I support ending all energy subsidies and mandates, Cruz said.

Trump said Congress shouldnt repeal the biofuel mandates. Until this nation sets its sights on total energy independence, we must support all energy sources, the billionaire said in a survey response. If we can truly achieve energy independence, then there would be no need for subsidies or any other form of mandate or market interference.

Federal Lands

There were subtle distinctions in the two candidates approach to management of public lands, where federal regulators oversee oil and gas development. The Obama administration recently halted new coal leasing on federal lands, and environmental activists have lobbied Clinton and Sanders to thwart new oil and gas development there. Some Republicans, meanwhile, want to see the U.S. pare its land holdings.

Cruz said the federal government should divest most of its current land holdings, while Trump suggested the first step should not be a widespread sale but rather establishing a shared governance structure with the states.

Trump cast overregulation as a major business cost with an outsize effect on smaller companies.

Large companies have the wherewithal to mitigate these burdens, but smaller companies do not, he said.

The candidates also disparaged energy subsidies, such as tax incentives for wind and solar power, with Trump saying they distort markets and Cruz saying all energy sources should compete on an even playing field.

It wasnt clear from the survey responses whether their skepticism would extend to tax deductions used by oil and gas companies, including an accelerated depreciation of some drilling costs. Cruz previously has likened those breaks to ordinary business deductions used widely by other sectors.
Digital Terrestrial Television services of Doordarshan started its operation from 25 February 2016 at 16 cities, thereby providing mobile TV to the users. The sixteen cities are- Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Guwahati, Patna, Ranchi, Cuttack, Lucknow, Jallandhar, Raipur, Indore, Aurangabad, Bhopal, Bangalore and Ahmadabad. Mobile TV can be received in and around these cities using DVB-T2 Dongles in OTG enabled smart phones and tablets, Wi-Fi dongles for moving vehicles, besides the TV sets having built in DVB-T2 Tuner which are called as integrated digital TV (iDTV).

While iDTV are available in plenty like Sony, LG, Panasonic, Samsung etc., the dongles are also available in online Shopping sites like FLIPKART, Ebay, Snapdeal etc. It requires the user to download the softwares and plug these dongles in the smartphones and tablets to receive DD Signals. There will be no charges for watching the DD Channels. Also, no internet is required after installation of the software. The Public and private transportation vehicles and public places are potential environments for Mobile Television. Currently DD National, DD News, DD Bharati, DD Sports, DD Regional/DD Kisan are being relayed. Only one time investment of Dongle will be required by viewers and no extra expenditure unlike streaming with internet. The TV pictures are free from "ghosting" and "snowing".

Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) secures greater plurality in Platform ownership, ensuring that no single platform owner is so powerful that they can exert undue influence on public opinion or political agendas. The digital transition offers an opportunity to increase the production of local content. This in turn creates job opportunity and increase creativity and entrepreneurship. A strong DTT platform is critical for healthy competition in the TV market and to the realisation of a wide range of social benefits and most essentially an all weather reliable platform. There is no risk of catastrophic failure of total network. It provides alternative distribution platform.

Television has strongly shaped the lives of Indians for decades  from black & white TV of the late 50s, it has changed to colours and now in the latest stage with digital terrestrial TV DD channels can be received in smart Phones, tablets and in moving vehicles. The new audience on move are the key beneficiary of this technology. Currently, mobile TV can be received using a dongle for mobile and tablets. But the day is not far when it will be embedded inside the devices. Watching TV from a phone is interested in many situations. Public and private transportation vehicle in public places are potential environment for mobile TV services. In the DTT Transmission everybody watches the same content at the same time and it guarantees everybody the same high level of service, since they are all bathed in the same signal. So Tablets and smartphones and moving vehicles find new way of watching DD Channels in India in 16 cities, which are going to increase in near future.
OnePlus India launched its #OneMore campaign last week, which is its first brand campaign in India. For this campaign, unlike conventional category approach, OnePlus isn't focusing on selling its products through this film. Rather, it's focusing on the brands Never Settle philosophy. The film is made up of many small stories and moments that convey the spirit of not settling for what exists. The film is held together by an inspiring narrative that is the anthem of OnePlus.

Commenting on the campaign launch, Karan Sarin, Head of Marketing at OnePlus, said OnePlus started with a simple, bold idea: to make a better phone. But, not just a better phone  a better way of doing things. Our Never Settle philosophy drives us to strive for the best and not rest till we've found it. We believe this OnePlus spirit exists in all of us. While we may have achieved something, we still believe that we can do better. With this campaign, we want to send out our brand message and build that philosophical connect with our community and future users and get them to be part of the Never Settle way of life.

The campaign is conceptualised by Orchard Bengaluru, part of the Leo Burnett group, the film has been shot by well-known Stockholm headquartered Seventy Agency, which has previously worked on Google and IKEA amongst others.

Vinod Eshwer, Executive Creative Director, Orchard Advertising, added, Never Settle comes out of divine discontent  the desire to endlessly improve by giving it one more shot. And one more. Because the best is always yet to come. The film was shot in Spain as the landscape offered a wide variety of locations that suited the situations. It lends much grace to the campaign, a touch of superiority, authenticity and perfection. The narrative will inspire young minds to simply be the best, thus symbolising what the brand stands for.



A 90-second spot, that was launched on YouTube recently has already crossed 1 million views. Karan Sarin, added, the campaign is intended to be ongoing, and could potentially air TV spots. Other media in the campaign include display ads, along with a social media hashtag #OneMore, where OnePlus will encourage users to take photos illustrating Never Settle spirit.
V.I.P Industries leaders in the luggage industry announced the launch of their mega campaign When you are very important for their homegrown brand VIP. The campaign features reigning heartthrob Hrithik Roshan as their Brand Ambassador illustrating the transformation of Indias pioneering luggage brand, creating a niche positioning for itself.

Leaving no stone unturned the campaign is created by a team of globally acknowledged creative minds such as Thomas Krygier - Director of Oscar winning commercials, Olivier Schneider - Stunt Director for classics like James Bond 24: SPECTRE, Fast & Furious 6 and conceptualised by the team of Whyness Worldwide.

Filmed in Prague, one of the largest cities in Europe, the campaign showcases the superstar trying to escape a gang of thugs who want to steal a precious jewel which he carries in a VIP strolley. Against a beautiful backdrop depicting the magnificent cultural sights; the scene is shot on the streets where Hrithik is seen fighting the gang. Aesthetically choreographed the fight sequence shows Hrithik using the strolley to defend himself and at the same time demonstrating the durabili ty and toughness of the bag.

Commenting on the new campaign Radhika Piramal, Managing Director, V.I.P Industries says, VIP is a brand with which we pioneered in the luggage industry. Almost 4 decades old; brand VIP continues to reign as one of the most preferred luggage companions. Through this campaign we offer our consumers another reason to continue to associate with brand VIP, as the campaign tag line says When you are very important. We are extremely delighted to associate with Hrithik Roshan; there couldnt have been anyone else who could match the classic legacy of our brand.

Speaking about his association with the company Hrithik Roshan, Brand Ambassador, VIP says, I am extremely honored to be an ambassador of a brand that I have known since my childhood. Shooting for this campaign gave me an opportunity to work with some of the best creative minds as well as a great stunt director, easily being one of the toughest action scenes that I have ever performed with a unique prop like a VIP strolley.

Detailing the marketing strategy for the brand Sudip Ghose, Vice President-Marketing, V.I.P Industries says, This campaign is an amalgamation of two very important personalities i.e. VIP and Hrithik Roshan. With When you are very important campaign we want to entice the audience with the features of the new collection that Hrithik displays in the commercial. Adopting a different approach; apart from a 45 second television commercial viewers on the digital platform will get to watch a 2.45 minute film which will be exclusive to social media and will go live sometime soon.

Expressing his thoughts on the campaign Ravi Deshpande, Founder and Chairman, Whyness Worldwide says, VIP as a brand has a unique charm just like the Brand Ambassador-Hrithik Roshan. Our attempt was to ensure that both the personalities are stitched together displaying the features of the product, thus offering the audience an action packed commercial that we hope stands out from the rest.

Going live on 2nd April the campaign features the tough and scratch resistant artic blue Tube strolley. Designed in attractive colors offering toughness and scratch resistance the collection is definitely a must have. Enhancing its reach the campaign will be promoted across all platforms such as TV, social media and OOH.


Eielson selected to receive operational F-35A aircraft

Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, was selected as the new home for the Air Forces first operational overseas F-35A Lightning IIs.



Air Force officials chose Eielson AFB after a lengthy analysis of the locations operational considerations, installation attributes, environmental factors and cost.



Alaska combines a strategically important location with a world-class training environment. Basing the F-35s at Eielson AFB will allow the Air Force the capability of using the Joint Pacific Alaska Range Complex (JPARC) for large force exercises using a multitude of ranges and maneuver areas in Alaska, said Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James. "This, combined with the largest airspace in the Air Force, ensures realistic combat training for the (Defense Department).



Proximity to the JPARC will enable the Air Force to take advantage of approximately 65,000 square miles of available airspace for realistic, world-class training in the Air Forces most advanced fifth-generation fighter.



The decision culminates a three-year process that included an extensive environmental impact statement that examined impacts on such factors as air quality, noise, land use and socioeconomics.



"The decision to base two F-35 squadrons at Eielson AFB, Alaska, combined with the existing F-22 Raptors at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, will double our fifth-generation fighter aircraft presence in the Pacific theater," said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Welsh III. "Integrating that fifth-generation force with Navy, Marine, and allied F-35 forces will provide joint and coalition warfighters unprecedented survivability, lethality and battlespace awareness in contested environments. It's an exciting time for Pacific airpower."



The base is projected to receive two squadrons of F-35As, which will join the wings F-16 Fighting Falcon aggressor squadron currently assigned to Eielson AFB.



On-base construction to prepare for the aircraft is expected to start in fiscal year 2017 in order to be ready to accept the first F-35As, which are currently scheduled to begin arriving in 2020.



Preliminary estimates had the new aircraft arriving a year earlier, but officials say the 2020 arrival will provide the Air Force more time and grow its active-duty maintenance force.



The Air Force is facing a shortage of experienced, active-duty fighter aircraft maintainers as we transition from legacy aircraft to the F-35A, said Lt. Gen. John B. Cooper, the deputy chief of staff the Air Force for logistics, installations and mission support. Adjusting the initial plan and slightly accelerating F-35A arrivals at Burlington Air Guard Station, Burlington, Vermont, to fall 2019 will allow the service to stick to the overall F-35 rollout schedule, while capitalizing on the Air National Guards experienced fighter aircraft maintenance force as we put additional measures in place to increase the number of trained active-duty maintainers.



The F-35A, manufactured by Lockheed Martin, is a fifth-generation fighter aircraft intended to be the Air Forces premier strike aircraft through the first half of the 21st century. It is a multi-role fighter that is expected to eventually replace the services legacy air-to-ground fighter fleets.




The April issue of Airman magazine is now available to download and is viewable through a Web browser.Featured on our cover, The perfect storm gives a birds-eye view of the F-35 Lightning II as it goes through rigorous testing and evaluation in order to be declared initial operational capability within the projected deadline later this year.Next, we follow a maintainer and his jet from the battlefield to the boneyard in Struck by the Thunderbolt.In our final feature, the past mingles with the present during a heritage flight experience at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona.Airman magazine provides an interactive experience for tablet readers and a limited interactive version is viewable in Web browser format.You can download Airman magazines April issue for your tablet here:To read this issue on a PC/Mac, click here For more stories, visit Airman Online , the website for the official magazine of the U.S. Air Force.
Opinion piece ran March 26, 2016



By Jacob Puliyel

Dr Puliyel, paediatrician at Delhis St Stephens Hospital, describes in Sunday Guardian Live how the direction of Indias National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (NTAGI), the equivalent of USs Advisory Committee on Immunization (ACIP)or the UKs Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has been handed over to the direction of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with potentially disastrous consequences for Indian health. The situation has disturbing parallels with what is now happening in the UK.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations (BMGFs) prescription of foreign drugs for Indias poor and the way in which it has become a major influence within key ministries in Government of India was mentioned in this newspaper recently (The Sunday Guardian, 7 February 2016). The links with the Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunisation (GAVI) and Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) were described. The article also highlighted the investments of the foundation and the board members in US-EU Big Pharma stocks and the resulting possible conflict of interests.

The vaccine market in India is potentially one of the largest in the world. The government is advised on what vaccines to include in the national immunisation programme by a committee of experts called the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (NTAGI).

This body is expected to evaluate the vaccines, their costs and benefits for the country. Vaccines whose cost far exceeds the benefits are not to be recommended. But the entire secretariat of the NTAGI has now been outsourced to the BMGF. Called the Immunisation Technical Support Unit (ITSU), the secretariat is funded by the Gates Foundation and has been moved out of the Nirman Bhawan, where the Ministry of Health is located, into the PHFI.


By Tim Welsh (Tannner's Dad)



I was blessed to be one of the first to see this movie premiering TODAY in New York City at the Angelika Film Center. It was a riveting roller coaster for those with their eyes and minds open to the possibility that greed and corruption at the Centers for Disease Control may have built over years. Each lie for the "Greater Good" laying a deeper foundation of receipt. The only way justice can be done for this film is to recommend EVERYONE see it for themselves. I have seen, been involved in production and marketing dozens of Autism documentaries and this by far is rated a "must see". By Tim Welsh (Tannner's Dad)I was blessed to be one of the first to see this movie premiering TODAY in New York City at the Angelika Film Center. It was a riveting roller coaster for those with their eyes and minds open to the possibility that greed and corruption at the Centers for Disease Control may have built over years. Each lie for the "Greater Good" laying a deeper foundation of receipt. The only way justice can be done for this film is to recommend EVERYONE see it for themselves. I have seen, been involved in production and marketing dozens of Autism documentaries and this by far is rated a "must see".

Before I unpack this let me disclose that:

I am a parent of a vaccine injured child.

I am not in any way shape or form a medical professional.

I have not been paid to write this review.

I am a British Citizen who resides in Illinois.

I have been studying Autism and advocating for better health for all for fourteen years.

I am a contributing editor at The Age of Autism Age of Autism dot com.

I am behind #CDCwhistleblower.

I am biased but not bought.

I wish I had seen it...before.

Things to take into this movie . 1. Tissues. Yes humans attending this movie will be moved. Dramatic and graphic yet not over the top. 2. An open mind. For those new to the Vaccine Safety world there will be a lot that forces you to come face to face with a lot of your programmed beliefs about the medical establishment, doctors and pharmaceutical business practices. 3. Bring a Friend. I was shaking and crying and needed a hand to hold and hug when it was over.
By Dave White and Bruce Knight

Stretching from the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of California, the Colorado River extends 1,400 miles across seven states and Mexico (or should when it isnt running dry). Nearly 40 million Americans rely on the Colorado River system for drinking water and to support livelihoods ranging from farming to industry to recreation. The importance of the Colorado River cannot be overstated; it is the heart of the southwestern United States.

The Basins long-term drought, combined with increasing water use, has deeply affected the natural environment. Simply put, too much water is being diverted from the river. There is not enough water to meet human, ecosystem, and wildlife needs.

The recently released White House Drought Resilience Plan provides some much needed guidance. The report outlines a host of long-term solutions, and also points out areas where we can immediately start work on mitigating the effects of the drought with the tools and programs we have at hand. Collaborating across Federal agencies is an excellent place to start.

Thanks to bipartisan Congressional support, the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) operates the most effective and well-funded on-farm conservation programs in the country. Programs like the Environmental Quality Incentives Program help farmers deploy more efficient irrigation practices while the Regional Conservation Partnership Program has the unique ability to look at watershed-scale resource concerns and engage partners to implement conservation practices to solve them.

Within the Department of Interior, the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) operates two highly effective programs -- WaterSMART and Conservation Systems  which provide matching grants to allow communities to vastly improve the efficiencies of water delivery systems.

Whats needed now is for both NRCS and the BOR to act on the White House plan and develop a holistic and collaborative strategy to address resource concerns throughout the Colorado River Basin.

There are examples of past success. NRCS was the catalyst behind the federal-state-landowner effort to restore and protect sage grouse habitat; an effort that was so successful that it resulted in the decision not to list the species under the Endangered Species Act. There is a rich history of cooperation between the agencies in dealing with salinity in the Colorado River issues and in carrying out the Snow Survey, but more is needed.

Both the NRCS and the BOR are already heavily engaged in drought response efforts in the Colorado River Basin and the synergies gained by increasing the cooperation would be enormous. With a focus on improved water management, the Bureau could target its resources to improving critical irrigation delivery systems while the NRCS focuses on working with landowners to install on-farm water conservation and efficiency practices. Together, the water savings would be immense, benefiting in-stream flows, wildlife, and downstream water users.

Developing a joint strategy would also serve to establish a long-term framework for improved water management throughout the Colorado River Basin and lay the groundwork for additional collaborative projects in the future.

As former Chiefs of the Natural Resources Conservation Service, under both Democratic and Republican Presidents, we believe that developing an effective response to drought in the Colorado River Basin transcends politics and is vitally necessary for the health of all who live in this incredible landscape. Its time to cross the Department lines and work together to benefit not only the people who live within the Colorado River Basin, but also its wildlife and the ecosystems upon which we all depend.

Dave White, Co-Founder and Partner, the 9b Group; Former Chief, Natural Resources Conservation Service (2009-2012)



Bruce Knight, Principal and Founder, Strategic Conservation Solutions; Former Chief, Natural Resources Conservation Service (2002-2006)
April 4, 2016

CAIRO  The antiquities sector in Egypt has been shaken by several crises over the past four years. Home to many of the worlds antiquities, Egypt has been losing its historic legacy on a daily basis. Years of instability helped expand illegal excavation activities, and via smugglers, ancient Egyptian artifacts are now sold in major auctions around the world.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Antiquities once again tried to draw the worlds attention to its monuments, this time by focusing on a new potential find in King Tutankhamuns tomb, in what Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh al-Damaty described as the discovery of the century.

Al-Monitor interviewed Egyptian archaeologist and former Minister of Antiquities Zahi Hawass, who spoke about the main challenges facing Egypt in this field and offered his take on possible solutions.

The text of the interview follows:

Al-Monitor: What do you think are the main causes for the crisis plaguing the archaeological sector in Egypt, which faces continued smuggling of antiquities and neglect of archaeological sites and museums?

Hawass: The security turmoil in the aftermath of the January 25 Revolution has given rise to more illegal excavation in the areas surrounding historic sites and under private homes. Nearly two-thirds of Egyptian antiquities were smuggled abroad in 2011, 2012 and 2013. Antiquities trafficking is ongoing, but to a lesser degree thanks to strict security measures at historical sites and their vicinities. Several museum-looting and antiquities-trafficking incidents took place in the wake of the revolution. Moreover, the decline of tourism led to inadequate funding of antiquities bodies that, as a result, have been unable to develop museums and sites.

Al-Monitor: How should the government deal with the issue of antiquities trafficking?

Hawass: I would suggest ongoing training of the personnel guarding historic sites in order to improve their performance. The antiquities law should be amended to ensure that the act of theft is dealt with as a felony rather than a misdemeanor. I would also suggest the reinstitution of antiquities seizure units at airports and ports, as well as the establishment of advanced warehouses to preserve the discovered artifacts, just like the 60 warehouses established by the military.

Al-Monitor: What is the nature of cooperation between the Egyptian government and other governments to combat antiquities trafficking?

Hawass: Cooperation usually takes place between the Ministry of Antiquities and Egyptian embassies and consulates around the world. The Egyptian consul in New York, Ahmed Farouk, said that Egyptian embassies take the necessary measures to stop any Egyptian antiquities auctions abroad whenever information is available. Illegal artifacts are then returned to Egypt. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also cooperates with foreign governments in this regard, and the ministry has been able to retrieve 700 smuggled artifacts. However, a considerably larger number has yet to be retrieved.

Al-Monitor: How would you explain the public sale of Egyptian antiquities at exhibitions and auction houses?

Hawass: Exhibitions take advantage of the lack of evidence proving that artifacts were exported illegally to sell them in public.

Al-Monitor: Several artifacts have fallen victim to negligence. For example, reports emerged in 2014 that King Tuts burial mask had been damaged during a botched repair. Are antiquities on the list of the current Egyptian administrations priorities?

Hawass: We are talking about damage to Tutankhamuns mask and the partial collapse of the Pyramid of Djoser during renovation, in addition to many other individual mistakes that do not add up to a collective trend. But the Egyptian administration should now seek to prevent such mistakes in order to protect Egyptian antiquities.

There is also an exaggeration in reporting these mistakes by the media, for King Tuts mask was distorted as a result of an individual error. German restoration specialist Christian Eckmann was called in to repair the damage, which he did, but Egyptian restorers should be constantly trained to prevent future errors.

Al-Monitor: How is archaeological forgery harming Egypts cultural tourism sector?

Hawass: Article 34 of the Antiquities Protection Law of 2010 prohibits authentic-appearing imitation of Egyptian antiquities without the Ministry of Antiquities permission. Despite some Egyptian archaeologists objections, archaeological forgery  like Chinas full-size replica of the Great Sphinx  only promotes our antiquities without affecting Egypts share of cultural tourism.

Al-Monitor: What do you think of some Egyptian archaeologists attempts to bring legal proceedings against replicas through international law?

Hawass: I dont understand their objection. Their opinion shows a lack of knowledge of the issue. For instance, Egypt profited from the Great Sphinx replica in China, as the number of Chinese tourists in Egypt since increased considerably. It would be unfair to resort to international bodies since they were granted official permission. Had the Chinese replica been genuine, Egypt could have sued China and other countries according to international law.

Al-Monitor: What is your take on the recent discovery announced by the Ministry of Antiquities concerning the possibility of two additional chambers in King Tuts tomb?

Hawass: I have evidence to disprove British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves theory about a hidden chamber containing Nefertitis remains behind Tutankhamuns resting place. In theory, Nefertiti could not have been buried in the Valley of Kings, as she used to worship King Tut. The High Priests of Amun would not have allowed it. The radar Reeves used to prove his theory did not offer conclusive results, and in 2009, Reeves used the same radar to prove the existence of a tomb in front of Tutankhamuns. Later on, excavation results showed that it was only a fissure in the rock formation. To validate his latest theory, Reeves must dig through the northern wall of King Tuts tomb, and this would cause the whole tomb to collapse.

Al-Monitor: If the predictions are true and there are additional chambers, what impact would this have on Egypts tourism sector?

Hawass: There is no way to predict the outcome of such a discovery as long as we are speaking theoretically. Once the theory is proven, we can then speak of an outcome for tourism in Egypt.

Al-Monitor: If the theory is proven false, how would this harm Egypt and Egyptian archaeologists reputation?

Hawass: In such case, Egypts credibility would be compromised around the world. In this respect, Ive presented the minister with a proposal consisting of appointing a committee of six Egyptian and foreign archaeologists to discuss the theory with Reeves and assess the radars results by comparing them to another digital radars findings. The committee will then present its verdict on Reeves theory. After that, we can announce the first steps toward a scientific discovery.

Al-Monitor: Tell us more about your latest book. What are the major discoveries you wrote about in the book?

Hawass: I have revealed the secrets of several mummies, like Queen Hatshepsuts. Contrary to the theory suggesting she was murdered, the findings indicate that she actually died of cancer at the age of 55. The book also disproves the theory that Tut died after falling on his neck. Mummy forensics revealed that the hole in the kings neck occurred during the mummification process to help with the application of the embalming fluid. The Judicial Papyrus of Turin [an ancient Egyptian record of the trials of conspirators plotting to assassinate Ramesses III in what is referred to as the "harem conspiracy"] was also decoded. It showed that Ramesses wife and son Numandi conspired to kill the pharaoh, who escaped this attempt only to be assassinated at the hands of two men, one of whom was able to slit Ramesses throat.

Al-Monitor: What are you doing these days? Are there any plans to revive the reality show Chasing Mummies that aired in 2010?

Hawass: Im working on uncovering the secrets of the 19th and 20th dynasties via DNA profiling of the two embryos discovered in Tutankhamuns tomb. Soon we will start working on a show similar to "Chasing Mummies." The new show will air on an Arab channel and will consist of 16 episodes. We havent yet chosen a title for the show, which will be directed by Italian director Sandro Vannini.
April 4, 2016

Israel has been torn in half for the past 10 days over the soldier who took the law into his own hands and shot and killed a wounded Palestinian March 24 in Hebron after the latter had already been neutralized. The country is divided into two warring factions furiously arguing. The vast majority of the public, along with a group of agitated right-wing politicians, have been verbally attacking Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot and the entire IDF senior command. The military establishment has determined that the soldiers actions were in breach of IDF values and has opened a criminal investigation against him.

Amid this chaos, one encouraging development has almost been overlooked: The wave of Palestinian "individual attacks" that began in October 2015 is receding. According to Shin Bet data, the numbers speak for themselves: there were 609 attacks in October, 322 in November, 239 in December, 166 in January, 153 in February and about 115 in March. The attacks in March were less than a fifth of those in October. This is not a widespread uprising of large swathes of the Palestinian public but a local eruption of Palestinian Generation Y, an upheaval that has long since peaked.

Nevertheless, the IDF and Shin Bet are far from resting on their laurels. The situation is dangerous, said Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon behind closed doors, according to senior security official who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. A flare-up can take place at any given moment, although we are succeeding in containing events and finding a way to lower the level of violence to a minimum.

To date, 32 Israelis, one foreign national, a Palestinian from Hebron and about 250 Palestinian attackers have been killed. The terror wave has involved about 100 stabbings, some 70 shooting incidents and about 20 vehicular attacks.

The peak of the wave has apparently passed. The event in Hebron involving the soldier was almost the only incident during the weekend it occurred. Incitement on social networks is also dying down, while incitement through the Palestinian Authoritys (PA) state-run media has almost disappeared. After inflaming the atmosphere in speeches last September and October, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas grasped that it was too risky to ride the tiger of terror, and as a result, changed direction.

The Palestinian security apparatus is working overtime to locate potential attackers and arrest them and attempting to calm the atmosphere. They have even conducted surprise searches in schools to collect knives from pupils.

If we give up security coordination, there will be chaos, Abbas said in an interview with Channel 2 on March 31. Abbas added that his security forces are preventing a deterioration of the situation and for the first time condemned the terror attacks.

The dramatic changes in Abbas position and conduct are only part of the reason for the decline in violence. Israels wise policy, under the leadership of Yaalon and Eizenkot, has succeeded in keeping the overwhelming majority of the Palestinian public outside the circle of violence. The PAs security apparatuses as well as Fatah, including its Tanzim militia, do not participate or deal in terror. Even the refugee camps, which are potential hubs of incitement, have remained outside the frame. In segmentation studies conducted by Israel, it was found that only 25 of the 250 Palestinian attackers hailed from refugee camps. Half of them were under 20 years of age, and slightly more than 10% were females.

Israeli security sources say that ultimately what is at work is protest by the young Palestinian Facebook generation. It is not fueled by unmistakably religious motives although in some instances, the fury derives in part from religious indoctrination connected to Al-Aqsa Mosque. This is the belated arrival of the spirit of the Arab Spring to the PA's domain. This spirit has mainly consumed frustrated, confused youths seeking to rebel against the establishment and the sad scenario that awaits them in life. Often, the assailants were influenced by the deaths of friends or by discussions on social media of attackers who were shot or executed by Israel.

The phenomenon we are witnessing is almost romantic in nature although of course it is difficult to use a word like that [in this context], said a highly placed Israeli military source. In some of the cases, these youths believed that perpetrating a terror attack in Israel with a knife would end or change their lives and bump them up to a higher [status]. It became a tool for social mobility and an expression of fury and rebellion.

Thus, Israeli policy succeeded in dividing and conquering the Palestinian public. Close to 200,000 Palestinian workers earn their living in Israel, and these workers feed more than a million people in the West Bank. Even during the most violent days of the individual intifada, Israeli policy, led by Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, advocated a soft approach.

We rarely imposed closures and encirclements, said Yaalon in his closed-door statements. After all, thats the best way to get the masses out into the streets. We transfer the requisite tax money to the [Palestinian] Authority. After all, its Palestinian money. Security cooperation is good; neither of the two sides has any other choice.

In the medium range, this policy has been quite successful. The overwhelming majority of Palestinian society stayed on the sidelines, away from violent incidents, and kept the peace.

In recent weeks, weve started to solve the terrorist attacks even before they take place, said an upper-echelon Israeli security figure speaking on condition of anonymity. We developed methods. He cited new algorithms developed by Israeli cyber and intelligence experts that facilitate the monitoring of social networks and locating posts that point to potential terror plans of participants. Increasing numbers of Palestinian youths, male and female, were stopped or apprehended on their way to perpetrate stabbing attacks. The numbers on the ground are harbingers of success.

All this, together with a significant deployment of forces on the ground  there are about 30 IDF battalions currently in the West Bank  and police forces flooding Jerusalem show signs of beginning to curb the terror wave. The question is, of course, What now?

In his Channel 2 interview, Abbas claimed to be willing to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at any given moment. He said that he even tried to coordinate such a meeting to convince Netanyahu to give the order to the IDF to cease activities in Palestinian cities and give the PA an opportunity to reign in the terror by itself. Netanyahus side said the situation is the polar opposite  that Netanyahu is willing to meet with Abbas and enter into negotiations without preconditions at any given moment. If both are ready and willing to meet, one wonders why it isn't happening. 
April 1, 2016

Saudi Arabia represents a unique case of a country floating on vast oil wealth but lacking renewable water resources, which are necessary for its continued existence. The kingdom has no natural rivers, waterfalls or lakes. Half of its land is desert. And it has among the lowest yearly rainfall in the world, according to the most recent World Bank figures.

But nature is not the only reason why Saudi Arabia is lacking water. During the oil boom years that followed the rise of crude prices in 1973, Saudi Arabia faced the rising food demand by resorting to a self-sufficiency policy. It cultivated crops such as wheat, grains and fruits. At the same time, the higher demand for meat and dairy made the country expand its cultivation of green feed crops for cows and goats.

While this massive project to cultivate the desert has succeeded over the past four decades in securing the Saudis' basic food needs and in transforming Saudi Arabia into an active center of food production in the Gulf region, it came at the expense of Saudi Arabias underground water reserves.

In its 2013 study that monitored the water demand around the world, the World Resources Institute concluded that Saudi Arabia is among the countries that face the most pressure on its renewable water resources, which means that more than 80% of the usable water for agriculture, industry and daily consumption is withdrawn annually.

This growing threat is increasing the pressure on Saudi policymakers to change how they manage water resources. Therefore, over the past years, Saudi Arabia exerted great efforts to reverse its decades-old agricultural and water policies.

In January 2008, the Saudi government decided to reduce its purchases of wheat from local farmers by 12.5% a year, to save water and achieve complete dependence on wheat imports to meet local needs by the year 2016. It is difficult to know whether this goal was achieved; however, it seems the government is committed to refusing wheat from local farmers.

In the same year, King Abdullah started an initiative encouraging Saudi agricultural investments abroad. The initiatives aim was to promote Saudi investments in countries rich in water and agricultural resources in order to provide Saudi Arabia with a secure strategic stock of commodities that would give the country food and water security.

However, the policy to stop growing wheat was not well designed. Dispensing with wheat cultivation has made farmers shift to alfalfa, which consumes even more water. Perhaps it was this error that prompted the Saudi government on Dec. 7, 2015, to stop the cultivation of green feed within three years.

In its annual report of 2015, Almarai food and dairy company announced that it will start fully relying on imported feed for its farms by January 2019. There is no doubt that this new direction for a company that controls 45.5% of the food and dairy market in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries will drive forward Saudi Arabia's strategy of relying on imported food.

In return for providing water through agricultural policies, Saudi Arabia reacted to the growing demand for water by resorting to desalination. In 1969, the kingdom built its first desalination plant. Twenty-eight desalination plants are spread along the kingdoms western and eastern coasts of the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf.

According to the Ministry of Water and Electricitys 2014 annual report, these plants produced 1,685 million cubic meters of water. In 2014, the private sector produced 34.5% of the total water production in the kingdom while the Saline Water Conversion Corporation produced the rest.

Desalinated water contributes to meeting about 59% of Saudi Arabias water needs, with groundwater and water dams making up the remaining 41%. The Saline Water Conversion Corporation posted on its Twitter account on March 9 that in 2015 the company produced 1.2479 billion cubic meters of desalinated water, an increase of 13% compared to the previous year.

Although desalination is a practical option for the kingdom to meet its growing water needs, it also imposes energy challenges. According to the report prepared by the Pacific Institute in 2013, producing 1 million gallons of desalinated water requires 15,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity. The same report indicated that the cost of energy alone accounts for between one-third and half of the cost of desalination.

Abdul Rahman al-Ibrahim, the head of the Saline Water Conversion Corporation, revealed at a press conference held at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Riyadh in May 2014 that his company consumes the equivalent of 80 million barrels of oil a year.

These indicators prompted the Saline Water Conversion Corporation to use more energy-efficient technologies. As Ibrahim pointed out in an interview with Saudi newspaper Al-Yaum on Nov. 18, 2015, "The new company projects the use of reverse osmosis technologies and thermal technologies in a 70:30 ratio. This means that the new reverse osmosis projects are larger and more numerous than the current and future plans on both coasts. The project of Jeddah and Ras al-Khair are first in that regard. Ibrahim said that his company is seeking to reduce the fuel consumption of desalination plants by 10% by 2018.

In addition, Saudi Arabia is seeking to promote "combined-cycle power plant" technology in desalination plants in order to use it in producing electricity as well as desalinated water. The Ras al-Khair project, the largest combined-cycle power plant in the world, is a cornerstone of this plan. The first operational phase of this project was launched on April 22, 2014; it generates about 2,400 watts of electricity.

Today, Saudi policymakers face challenges not only from the countrys difficult topography, but also from decades-old policies. The developments happening in water management in Saudi Arabia reveal a close relationship between water and food security. This requires designing comprehensive strategies to reach the optimum balance between them and to avoid errors that may have adverse effects, particularly on agricultural workers. The desalination plant will increase energy consumption, which should induce Saudi Arabia to increase its investments in energy-saving innovations, develop alternative energy sources and promote a culture of energy conservation at all levels.
April 1, 2016

QAMISHLI, Syria  Janet and Immanuel decided to speak about their daughter Mary, who had been captured by the Islamic State more than a year ago. They sat together holding a large photo of the entire family, whose surname they preferred to withhold.

Eyes filled with tears, Janet said in a sad voice, This picture was taken a month before she was captured. We were attending a concert and she insisted that we take a group photo. She looked stunning that night.

Marys family is from the area of Tal Shamiram, in the southwest neighborhood of Tell Tamer, in Hasaka city, where she was captured along with 234 others, including her parents, by IS militants. The abduction followed a major IS offensive on Assyrian villages at dawn on Feb. 23, 2015.

On Nov. 7, 2015, IS freed 37 Christians, including Immanuel, after nine months of detention. He told Al-Monitor that prior to his release, he asked IS officials about my wife and Mary, but to no avail. He contented himself with believing that they would soon be freed as well.

On Dec. 25, 2015, IS released another 25 Assyrians, mostly women and children. Janet was among them. She said, They called my name, but Marys name was not among those who would be released. I passed out. Later on, I insisted on staying there with her until we were both freed. But IS did not grant her request and said that Mary and the other detainees will be released once a deal is concluded.

Janet said that IS is still holding seven Assyrians, including her daughter, and asking for a higher ransom for them. She said, When I was held by IS, the militants used to tell us that we would be freed once our relatives pay the ransom.

The BBC Arabic site quoted Talia Younan of the Assyrian Democratic Organization as telling the Associated Press Feb. 22 that the release came after mediation led by an unnamed senior Assyrian priest. Younan reported that IS demanded a ransom of $18 million for the Assyrian Christians, and that the figure was later lowered following negotiations. No one knows the final figure paid to IS.

Janet is afraid that Mary might be raped or forced to marry during her detention. She said, This has caused Mary extreme panic attacks and continuous treatment at the hospital. She went on, She is by herself now, and I wonder how she is doing without me by her side.

Immanuel said they know nothing about their captured daughter, who has been kept prisoner for a year and one month now.

The United States has labeled IS crimes as genocide against Yazidis, Christians and Shiite Muslims. US Secretary of State John Kerry said March 17, IS is also responsible for crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.

Tens of thousands of Kurds and Yazidis have been displaced following IS offensives on their areas in Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq in August 2014. Thousands of people were besieged for several months, while others were massacred. The fate of many men, young people and children is still unknown.

Susan, a Kurdish Yazidi from the Sinjar Mountains in Iraq who gave only her first name, told Al-Monitor about being captured by IS. She said, I was captured in the summer of 2015, and I was sold in a slave market in Mosul. She said that IS sorted women by age, and then based on whether they were single, married, or had one child or more.

She said, I will never forget those moments as long as I live. They brought me to Raqqa and forced me to marry a Saudi national, who was an IS emir. Susan was already married and the mother of a baby girl. She said that she has learned nothing about her family since her capture.

Susan managed to escape after a year of terror and fear, having begged the emirs first wife for help. She had pity for me, because I am married and Im looking for my child. She helped me get out of Raqqa.

She finally managed to reach an area under Kurdish control in Aleppo, in northern Syria. From there she went on to Afrin and to Nowruz Camp in al-Malikiyah, in the northeast of Hasaka city. When she learned that the US administration considered IS crimes to be genocide, she said, The ordeal the residents of my village went through cannot be limited to a statement or discourse. Tough measures need to be taken.

Sevan (a pseudonym), an Armenian woman from the village of Ain al-Arous in the Tell Abyad district bordering Turkey, said that she will never forget the image of IS seizing her village. IS militants beheaded three youths for fighting against the organization. She said, They forced the residents to watch the show trial and hung their heads at the main entrance to the village.

Accusations against IS include mass killings and other crimes in areas under its control in Syria and Iraq. Kerry said, The 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.
April 4, 2016

The Turkish military appears to be taking a hands-off approach to the country's toxic political environment, refusing to get stuck between the president's impassioned followers and fervent foes.

In recent years, Turks had come to believe that the word coup had been discarded from the lexicon of the civilian-military relationship and that the news media had forgone using the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) as a tool for shaping perceptions among the public. The virulence of the current political atmosphere is evident in recent speculation and media commentary that the military might once again intervene in politics. Efforts by both the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the opposition to benefit from this situation will only erode confidence in civilian politics.

The TSK high command evidently have had enough of the allegations about it and felt compelled to share its uneasiness with the public in a rare political statement issued March 31. Discipline, absolute obedience and firm chain of command are the basic elements of the TSK, the General Staff remarked in a post on its official website. It is inconceivable to think that the TSK would tolerate any illegal phenomenon or action that would digress from the chain of command. We have initiated legal action against those who spread such news and comments, which have absolutely no legal and logical basis and which contravene media ethics. The statement continued, News and comments in some media organs without any foundation naturally negatively affect the morale and motivation of our personnel.

Of interest, the Turkish media have split over the identify of the intended recipient of the generals' message. Some believe it was a stern response to a March 27 article, Operations Targeting Turkey and Erdogan, by Rasim Ozan Kutahyali in the daily Sabah, which is close to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In the article, Kutahyali claims that the Russian plane shot down on Nov. 24 was intentionally targeted by Gulenist pilots in the Turkish air force, and he said 50% of F-16 pilots are pro-Gulenist. Kutahyali added that all such pilots will be dismissed from the TSK en masse in 2016, and if Chief of the General Staff Hulusi Akar resists the move, he will have to resign.

Another possible explanation for the statement is the TSK's discomfort over allegations, particularly in the international media, that it might stage a coup against Erdogan. One such piece is Could There Be a Coup in Turkey?, a column by former Pentagon official Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. According to Rubin, if the army were to intervene against Erdogan as was done in Egypt, there would not be much opposition to it.

Will there be a coup in Turkey? If so, how? If not, why? A couple of retired military officers shared their opinions with Al-Monitor.

Retired Col. Ali Bilgin Varlik of the Ankara-based Central Strategy Institute noted that Turkey has maintained a democracy for 100 years, albeit with some hiccups. He said, There cant be any more coups in Turkey. Grounds for a coup could become fertile [if there were] extreme conditions of ideological and societal fragmentation, economic collapse, lost wars, etc. But I dont see any of this happening in the near future.

Why then is such speculation making the rounds? I think the AKP is using coup rumors to suppress the domestic opposition, Varlik said. With these rumors, it prevents its policies from being questioned while it concocts an internal threat to unite its base behind the party.

A retired general who requested anonymity agreed with Varlik, saying, Actually, the issue that had forced the TSK to release that statement is precisely the thing we should be discussing. Why is the TSK still a popular tool both for the media and the politicians? Why cant civilians refrain from reverting to the TSK for issues they should be dealing with themselves, and why is it there are always these expectations of the TSK? There is something missing in respect for the army. These are the matters we should discuss.

What is happening today is that Turkish society is splitting not over the role of the AKP, but over Erdogan. Today, if the committed anti-Erdogan front is approached, one will hear a virtual chorus of, It doesnt matter if the country is set on fire, if there is a crisis or a plot, as long as Erdogan goes. Meanwhile Erdogan partisans proclaim, Let there be instability, polarization and clashes, as long as Erdogan remains in power.

In a country squeezed between fervent, unquestioning Erdogan lovers and those who despise him with a passion, both sides have their expectations of the military. Their intensity is so deep that they dont hesitate to provoke the TSK or use it to intimidate the opposing side. This is why the TSK is basically saying, Leave us out of this. We are busy enough.
The owner of a natural cemetery in Madison County is suing the state of Alabama over its requirement that only licensed funeral directors can sell caskets and burial shrouds.

Shelia Champion, founder of The Good Earth Burial Ground in Hazel Green, filed a federal lawsuit today with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama against Alabama Board of Funeral Service members Mark N. Craddock, Lorenzo Wright, Sammy Seroyer, Bart Kirtland, John C. Rudder, Calvin Meadows and Jason Wyatt.

The lawsuit said Champion is not allowed under state law to sell caskets, burial shrouds and urns to the public because she is not a state-licensed funeral director.

"Alabama enforces this prohibition even though a casket is just a box and a shroud is just a piece of fabric," the lawsuit reads. "In fact, the Alabama Board of

Funeral Service has ruled in response to Plaintiff Champion's petition for a declaratory ruling that her specific plans to sell caskets and shrouds are illegal."

Champion announced last fall she was in the process of launching a privately-owned, 100-percent "green" cemetery for humans and pets on a five-acre plot on 1955 Carter Grove Road in Hazel Green.

The idea was simple. Bodies would be prepared without embalming fluid, dressed in biodegradable clothing, placed into an earth-friendly shroud or casket, and buried without a vault to allow nature to take its course. Only live flowers would be permitted inside the cemetery, which also accepts cremated remains in an economical container.

Champion, who had a serious death phobia for nearly 50 years, became an advocate for the "going back to basics" approach after the deaths of her parents.

"Plaintiff Champion believes that traditional, full-service funerals are too expensive and leave too great an environmental impact," the lawsuit said. "Plaintiff Champion also believes that traditional, full-service funerals lack

intimacy because professionals, rather than the family, handle the care of the dead."

Champion and her Virginia-based law firm The Institute for Justice (IJ) will hold a press conference outside the federal courthouse in Huntsville on Tuesday to discuss the lawsuit. IJ said it has successfully represented the monks of Saint Joseph Abbey in their challenge to Louisiana's casket-sales law.

"(The plaintiff) wants to sell these simple items herself, but she is banned under the law," IJ said in a media advisory. "In order for Shelia to sell these items legally, she must spend at least a year attending mortuary college, serve as an apprentice for two years and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars turning her small business into a full-fledged funeral home."

AL.com has contacted the Alabama Board of Funeral Service for a statement. The board is a regulatory and licensing agency for the funeral home profession created in 1975 by Act 214 of the Alabama Legislature's Regular Session.
The Women's Business Center of North Alabama is seeking applicants for its inaugural Entrepreneur Awards next month in Huntsville.

The ceremony will be held in conjunction with Innovate Huntsville 2016, a collaborative project supporting the startup ecosystem of north Alabama May 1-7. The Entrepreneur Awards will take place May 4 at the new Campus No. 805 development on Clinton Avenue.

"We have so much talent in our own backyard and WBCNA wanted the opportunity to celebrate and honor the local entrepreneurs in our community," said WBCNA Program Director Erin Bloxham Curtis. "What better way than hosting the Entrepreneur Awards to not only highlight their achievements, but their importance to our region's economy."

Entrepreneurs will have the opportunity to apply for up to seven awards:

Entrepreneur of the Year:

Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year:

Creative Entrepreneur of the Year:

Intrapreneur of the Year:

People's Choice:

To apply, you must live or work at a company in the north Alabama area. The deadline for submission is April 15. Click here for the application.

A committee will also award the WBC Entrepreneur of the Year, which will go to an outstanding female entrepreneur in north Alabama. The Entrepreneur Champion of the Year will be awarded to someone with a track record of championing for the entrepreneurial journey through volunteering, mentoring, investing or collaborating.
stories, in all their forms, help people understand one another.png

Earlier this year, I read an article about Ted Bundy's mother. I had not previously given her any thought; I barely knew anything about her serial-killer son, although his killing spree included my college campus, two decades before my arrival. The profile was fascinating, offering insight into this woman's plight.

I don't know anyone who has been in Mrs. Bundy's shoes, and I hope I never do. But that 5,000-word essay allowed me a glimpse inside the woman's world and, in doing so, offered some understanding of another's life.

A story doesn't have to be as dramatic as Mrs. Bundy's tale; it can be as simple as a 140-character tweet depicting a moment in someone's day. But stories, in all their forms, help people understand one another.

Some writers, journalists in particular, are drawn to the field because they hope to wield that power to change a community. I wasn't one of those; I decided to become a writer at age 10 because I liked it more than watching TV. Journalism called my name because I thought it easier than making up a story myself.

As I progressed through school and internships, I sometimes teetered on embarrassment. My classmates' motives seemed nobler than mine.

I soon saw firsthand how sharing someone's struggle could affect another. During my first month as a reporter at The Tuscaloosa News, I was assigned the story of a family's tragedy. A kindergartener, Cassidy, was a brain tumor patient at Children's of Alabama. Her grandparents and younger brother had traveled north for the weekend to visit family in Tennessee. On the way home, Cassidy's grandfather, who was driving, had a heart attack, drove the car into a tree and died instantly. Her grandmother was admitted to a Huntsville hospital. Cassidy's brother was unharmed.

Cassidy's parents began trekking between their daughter's hospital room in Birmingham and her grandmother's room in Huntsville, planning their days around visiting hours for each. In the midst of this turmoil, they shared their story with me.

Days later, I spotted a stand-alone photo in the newspaper. The caption described a lemonade stand run by a girl close to Cassidy's age. The child had spotted Cassidy's story in the newspaper, asked her mother what it was about and decided to raise money for Cassidy's family. Her lemonade stand raised more than $1,000.

Cassidy's story affected that young girl, and it changed me. I always believed story was important--I began reading myself to sleep at age 4, a practice I've repeated nearly every night since. But for the first time, I saw how my words could play a part. I saw how a seemingly ordinary life could trigger something in a reader.

That's the power of story. That's why I do what I do.

Join me at Birmingham Creative Roundtable, where I'm speaking about storytelling and how to tell your own. Posted by Carla Jean Whitley on Thursday, April 7, 2016

Carla Jean Whitley is a features reporter for AL.com as well as an author and teacher. She'll speak about the art of storytelling and how to apply it to your life at this month's Birmingham Creative Roundtable. The free event, to be held 7:30 a.m. Thursday at Cahaba Brewing, will include Revelator Coffee and Baking Bandits pastries. RSVP to the event on Facebook, or learn more about the organization at facebook.com/bhamcr.
In wrapping up the Womens History Month series, Marine Corps Logistics Base Albanys spotlight rotates to a retired Marine officer, who has traded in her mud-soaked camouflage warfighter gear for a civil service job, which allows her to still support her comrades from the sideline.

Madeleine Tringali transitioned not too far from her 22-year active-duty career to her current civilian-Marine role as a management and program analyst, Command Operations Directorate, Marine Corps Logistics Command.

Prior to her time in the Marine Corps, Tringali said she had considered joining the Air National Guard to gain employment, but her father, who had been a Marine, told her, "Join the Marine Corps, because it's better." So, with that bit of advice, she went to talk with a recruiter and the rest is history.

I enlisted in the Marine Corps as a reservist," Tringali said. My intent was to finish the college where I was attending. At that point, where I was in boot camp, I would have had two years (of college) under my belt and I would have had two years left in school.

I went to boot camp in July 1983, she recalled. I was scheduled to return to college in September, but some crazy things happened when I was there for my physical; my shipping date got delayed two months.

Tringali planned to return to college after boot camp; however, her plans were deferred when the school notified her she would not be allowed to enroll two weeks late for classes. With that, she decided to go ahead and attend her Military Occupational Specialty school, at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Aberdeen, Maryland, to learn to be a small arms repairman.

It was two years later, following in the footsteps of and on the advice of her father, the Nashua, New Hampshire native, began her own 22-year career as one of The Few, The Proud.

Tringali discussed her time serving in one of the nations fiercest fighting forces  from beginning to end; her experiences as a young Marine and the opportunities as well as some of the challenges she faced.

I enjoyed serving in the Marine Corps, she revealed. When I was a young Marine, it was clear to know what I needed to accomplish in order to be promoted. Physical Fitness Training, rifle range, Marine Corps Instruction courses, proficiency and conduct marks all figured into the cutting score, which was the determining factor of promotion eligibility.

I had many opportunities, Tringali added. I worked hard and took advantage of those opportunities. I liked meeting the challenges placed before me and achieving the goals I set for myself. Once I met those goals, I made new goals and set out to achieve those.

Throughout her career, Tringali has held a diversity of ranks and titles; however, when she became a commissioned officer, there is one role as the first she is particularly proud to have accomplished.

As the adjutant/personnel officer, Command Element, 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, she led six Marines and supervised the direct administrative support to 220 Marines assigned to the Command Element and provided indirect support for 2,000 Marines assigned to the 26th MEU. This was a milestone in Tringalis active-duty career as she was the first female officer selected to serve on a command element staff for an east coast MEU.

Other notable highlights in her career include her serving as the senior administrator for Exercises Dynamic Response and Dynamic Strike -- multinational exercises conducted in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, and her serving as the headquarters commandant and assistant headquarters commandant for two major exercises. During the planning phase, she served as the headquarters commandant for Exercise Strong Resolve in 1998.

Tringali was the adjutant/series commander/company commander, 4th Recruit Training Battalion, Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, South Carolina, serving as the officer-in-charge and training program administrator in the execution of the Recruit Training Standard Operating Procedures. She supervised roughly 30 drill instructors (staff noncommissioned officers and noncommissioned officers) during this time.

The retired officer offered advice for Marines, particularly women, transitioning from active duty to a follow-on career after the Corps.

(My chosen career) is civil service, she noted. I had a broad range of experience, from leading Marines to supervising the training recruits to serving with the 26th MEU. As I was serving in the Marine Corps, I saw the role of women grow as more opportunities became available.

I was willing to go outside of my comfort zone in order to gain experience, Tringali explained. I wanted the quality of my work to define who I was, not being a woman who was doing something out of the norm.

My best advice (to young Marines) would be to seek opportunity and seize it, she concluded. Strive to do the best you can; be professional; seek out a mentor and, if possible, earn your degree or get as much training as you can.

The United States has observed Womens History Month during the entire month of March since 1987; however, it is never too late to celebrate womens contributions to history, culture and society. Read more on womens contribution to history on the website: http://www.history.com/topics/holidays/womens-history-month
As conditions become more desperate, some refugees give up hope of crossing the English Channel and stay in France.

Calais, France  Ahmad al-Ahmad revealed sores on his hand that were  he said  remnants of a three-month stay in the Calais refugee camp, known as the Jungle.





The Syrian refugee from Damascus gave up on his plans to go to the UK in September last year and is trying to convince his former neighbours to do the same.

Ahmad decided to apply for asylum in France after talking to friends who had reached England and found themselves frustrated with the length of time taken to process their asylum applications, as well as the high living costs in the country.

His declining health and a fledgling love interest with a local woman helped influence the decision.

Between heavy drags of a shisha pipe and sips of Arabic tea at a small apartment in central Calais, Ahmad explained the benefits of claiming asylum in France.

The (French) government gives me 500 euros ($565) to live and 300 euros ($340) for an apartment, its not a lot but its enough to survive day to day  the most important thing is that Im not in the Jungle, he said.

Life in France is better than anything the Jungle can offer, Ahmad said, adding he did not see the point in refugees putting themselves through the suffering of living in the camp for such little gain.

The memories of the Syrian refugee from the camp consist largely of unsanitary conditions and poor weather, but despite his negative experiences at the camp he returns there often, primarily for cheap shisha coal from one of the many businesses that have opened up in the camp.

The (shisha) coal is five euros there. Its three times as much in the city, he said.

During one such visit Ahmad made frequent stops to take selfies next to blazing tents and to greet old friends and strangers interested in following in his footsteps.

A group of Syrian teenagers flagged him down to ask questions about the asylum process in France, the speed with which benefit payments were made, and whether the amounts given are enough to survive on.

Ahmad answered every question with an almost evangelical zeal, eager to help his countrymen and others out of their ordeal.

READ MORE: Bidoon fleeing Kuwait, stuck in the Calais Jungle

Langauge barriers

For most of the residents, however, even Ahmads testimony is not enough to persuade them against holding out in the Jungle in the hope they will one day make it to the UK.

Al Jazeera spoke to a number of refugees on their motivations for wanting to cross the channel. Their responses ranged from knowledge of the English language to family ties, and a perception of better religious freedom, among other reasons.

Ali, a teenage Syrian refugee from Aleppo who hopes to study medicine, said he has relatives already in the UK and did not want the war back home to have a lasting impact on his education.

In France I would have to learn the language from scratch  it would take years to reach a standard where I could study at university, Ali said, describing his knowledge of English as good enough to continue his studies in the UK.

For Khalil, a Syrian-Palestinian from Damascus, issues of religious freedom were a concern.

Its complicated but in France there are issues with the headscarf and other Muslim symbols, he said, adding that the recent attacks in the country had increased hostility towards Muslims.

Smuggling business

The desperation, justified or not, has given birth to underground people smuggling gangs who charge refugees around $6,000 each to get them on to trucks heading to the UK.

For those who can muster the sum, there is no guarantee they will reach their destination and most attempts end in failure.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, an Iraqi refugee who has dealt with the gangs described the help being offered.

They drop you off near where the trucks are parked and keep a lookout while the driver is away, the refugee, who Al Jazeera has not named for safety reasons, said. The gangs had weapons and often fought one another over customers and territory, he added.

Longing for home

Its such profiting from misery in the Jungle that further fuels Ahmads cynicism and his longing for the life he had in Damascus before the war.

REFUGEE CRISIS: Calais eviction sprouts new jungles

Ahmad left Syria to avoid a military call-up by the government that would have forced him to fight in a brutal war he had no interest in taking part in.

If they could guarantee me that I wouldnt have to do military service, I would go back  but of course I cant trust them, he said.

Loneliness, detachment from the culture he was raised in, and the gloomy Calais weather were all eating away at him but were preferable to the Jungle.

For Ahmad the damage done mentally and physically by living in the Jungle far outweighed the benefits of eventually reaching England.

My message for the people of the Jungle is they have to get out any way they can .. .stay in France, go to Germany, or return to their own country, he said.

The most important thing is that they leave the Jungle or they will have psychological problems  it messes with their minds.

Its a message few of the 5,000-plus residents of the refugee camp are willing to act on.

Follow Shafik Mandhai on Twitter: @ShafikFM
We need to decouple economic progress from fossil fuels if we are to survive as a species.

It is easy to poke fun at United States Republican frontrunner Donald Trump. He provides an endless supply of material for criticism and ridicule.

But there is a real issue here: The electorate is furious in both sides of the Atlantic. In a democracy this matters.

The European Union faces a one-two punch: in June UK voters decide whether the United Kingdom remains in the EU, while Germanys Chancellor Angela Merkel suffered a setback as voters-backed right-wing populists due to her contentious refugee policies.

It is mass migration that fuels the electorates fear and anger on both sides of the Atlantic. Trump fuels discontent about immigrants: he wants to return Mexicans to Mexico, and not to allow Muslims into the US.

This is new in Western democracy but will be with us for some time. And in fact, it is the reality of climate change.

The poor suffer

Climate change intensifies conflicts and creates mass migrations. Tens of millions of people are displaced owing to climate change, according to the United Nations. Severe droughts and heatwaves in Syria and the Middle East at large preceded the war, leaving people without jobs, food or hope  and migrating for their lives.

This unprecedented wave of refugees into the EU is unravelling Merkels successful government. Germany was until now the EUs economic backbone.

New global financial institutions are needed to get things right. We need to limit the exploitation of the planet's atmosphere, its bodies of water and its biodiversity. These are basic needs for human survival by

The massive migration waves caused by climate change fuel ethnocentrism, fear and political xenophobia which underlie Trumps appeal.

Massive migration waves can lead to geopolitical unravelling of Western democracy. These migration waves are new but they are connected to climate change, and they are here to stay.

Climate change is a result of the Bretton Woods institutions and their deliberate policy to globalise the world economy based on extensive exports of natural resources from poor nations. This means petroleum, coal and gas, minerals, metals, forest products and meat.

Since their creation in 1945, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization have been based on hyper-exploitation of natural resources that they encouraged and even coerced from poor nations.

Low prices of natural resources have contributed a several fold increase in the wealth gap between the poor and the rich nations since World War II. This was the most successful period of industrialisation the world ever saw. It was based on extensive overconsumption of natural resources, and the direct result is climate change.

The worlds poor suffer the worst consequences. Over-mining in Bolivia  which has one of the largest natural gas deposits in South America  and dried water resources of the Uru-Murato, an ethnic group that is one of the oldest cultures in the Andes.

They survived as fishermen on the shores of the salty Lake Poopo, one of Bolivias largest water bodies. They outlasted the Inca empire and the Spanish conquest but they are about to go extinct because of the resource-based globalisation created by the successful Bretton Woods institutions.

OPINION: Climate change and the right to food

Now there is no food to eat: the water is gone, so the fish and birds are gone. That is why  we are facing extinction, remarked Felix Condori, the mayor of the Uru-Murato village of Llapa Llapani.

Bolivian President Evo Morales recently announced he would open up 22 protected areas for hydrocarbon exploitation. Whatever it says, the government has based its political economy in extractive activities  so this was bound to happen.

Almost a decade ago, the UN warned that indigenous people are among the first to face the direct consequences of climate change owning their dependence upon, and close relationship with the environment and its resources (PDF). In Bolivia, largely an indigenous country, this is already happening but it is a microcosm of a global trend.

Water is now one of the scarcest resources globally, according to the UN. The story is the same around the entire developing world.

What to do?

We need to replace the Bretton Woods system. They were the first global financial institutions the world ever saw. They fulfilled their mission and now they are dragging the world into an environmental disaster.

New global financial institutions are needed to get things right. We need to limit the exploitation of the planets atmosphere, its bodies of water and its biodiversity. These are basic needs for human survival: we need clean water, clean air and food without which we cannot survive. All this is possible and must be done.

The limits on resource use can be flexible over time with the creation of equitable and efficient global markets for the global commons.

OPINION: A policy agenda for Sustainable Development Goals

Limits on the use of water, air and biodiversity is what humanity needs to survive. This parallels the limits on emission of CO2 nation by nation, which was achieved by the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 and its carbon market that became international law in 2005.

The carbon market traded $176bn in 2011 and transferred more than $100bn to poor nations for clean technologies. The Kyoto nations decreased their emissions drastically (PDF).

The recent Paris Agreement  which has no emission limits and no teeth  must be improved. The establishment of a new system that respects our planets vital resources for life will change the global capitalistic system  as they value the global commons, clean air, clean water and biodiversity. These have no economic value today, but it can be and should be done.

We need to decouple economic progress from fossil fuels if we are to survive as a species. The International Energy Agency recently reported that this is already starting. A detailed footprint and the attendant economic policies must redress economic growth to be harmonious with the worlds resources and with the survival of humankind.

Graciela Chichilnisky is a professor of economics and of statistics at Columbia University and the Director of the Columbia Consortium for Risk Management.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
As Iraqi and coalition forces prepare for Mosul offensive, more people are seeking shelter in Iraqs Kurdish region.

Makhmour, Iraq  Omar, 29, slowly hobbles his way through a small courtyard, where dozens of people, including women and children, finish a meal of rice and beans.

All of them recently escaped territory held by fighters with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) by crossing into Iraqs Kurdish region. They are now living in a temporary transit camp in the town of Makhmour, an hour south of Erbil.

I fell into a trench; it was three metres deep, Omar, who did not provide a last name, told Al Jazeera, recalling his night-time escape from Mosul, east across the Tigris river to Makhmour.

Abandoning ISIL is punishable by death, but each week, hundreds of people have been taking the risk to cross into Makhmour, said Peshmerga Brigadier Mehdi Younes.

They began coming a year ago, but a month ago, more started arriving, Younes told Al Jazeera. [In early March], 300 people arrived in one night  women, children and men.

INTERACTIVE: Enemy of enemies  The rise of ISIL

Younes believes this escalation is due to civilians growing awareness of the massing of Iraqi forces south of Mosul, in preparation for an offensive to retake the city from ISIL. Late last month, Iraqi security forces working with local tribesmen launched an offensive west of Makhmour, prompting an estimated 2,000 people to flee in less than 24 hours, according to local aid agencies.

Civilians who remain in ISIL-held territory are also facing increasing pressure to join the group, Omar said.





On Fridays, they ask people to take up arms and fight. If you dont obey, they will force you to fight, said Omar, who was ultimately planning to relocate to Baghdad.

Financial hardships and an increase in coalition air strikes have also prompted more civilians to flee ISIL-held territory in recent days, said Aymenn Tamimi of the Middle East Forum think-tank.

Another less common and very expensive route some Iraqis take is traversing Syria to get to Azaz area in north Aleppo countryside, and from there, try to get to Turkey, Tamimi told Al Jazeera. But this route is only available to those who can afford to pay thousands of dollars to smugglers  a difficult prospect for many Iraqis, who are struggling day by day to survive.

Sahar, a married mother of two from a small town near Hawija, lamented that only ISILs staunch supporters are able to lead a comfortable life in territory that the group controls. She fled to the Makhmour area early last month.

Sahar, 24, who declined to provide her last name, says her family is desperate for money, and her brother has vowed to take any job that becomes available.

Even the military, anything to get money, said her brother, Ahmad, squatting next to Sahar in the barren courtyard of the temporary transit camp.

Ayad, a 35-year-old from ISIL-held Hawija who spoke to Al Jazeera under a pseudonym, relocated to Makhmour in early March after walking for 13 hours with his wife and children to escape their crippling financial hardship.

I was unemployed for six months, said Ayad, noting he lost his cafe business after ISIL demanded taxes that he could not afford. We were hoping that someone would come and rescue us Some people have started eating shrubs [because there is no money for food].

READ MORE: Fallujah crisis  We are being left to slow death

Some residents who can afford it have paid hundreds of dollars to smugglers to be relocated from ISIL-held territory  including Adila, a 39-year-old electrical engineer who spoke to Al Jazeera under a pseudonym.

All of the people [of Mosul] want to leave, but [for many] there is no way, Adila said, noting she was planning to head next to the Kurdish capital of Erbil to meet other family members.

The social fabric of much of Ninevah province has been shredded, and the challenges of reconciliation are looming before us. by Tom Robinson, director of the Rise Foundation

Civilians fleeing ISIL-held territory often travel with rusty Kalashnikovs for protection, relinquishing the weapons to the Peshmerga once they reach Kurdish territory, Younes said. Kurdish security forces are tasked with questioning new arrivals to ensure they do not pose a threat.

The people we dont have information about we keep for a few days, but others are just here for a few hours, then theyre free to go, Younes said.

However, the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, recently expressed concerns over the situation in the Kurdish-controlled Nazrawa camp for displaced persons in the Kirkuk area, saying civilians were being forcibly transferred to camps where restrictions on their freedom of movement are imposed in a manner disproportionate to any legitimate concern, including those related to security.

In other cases, some people who have fled from ISIL-held territory have been banned outright from entering Iraqs Kurdish region. For months, more than 500 men, women and children who belong to the Juhaish tribe, which is widely viewed as an ISIL affiliate, have been living in no-mans land northwest of Makhmour: denied entry into Kurdish territory, but unable and unwilling to return to ISIL.

They have not been allowed across the Peshmerga lines for security concerns, said Tom Robinson, director of the Rise Foundation, an NGO based in the Kurdish region. They lived under ISIL and the village that they are from supported ISIL, and put up significant resistance when the recent Sinjar operation took place. Letting these people through could be viewed as a betrayal of those who suffered at the hands of ISIL and its affiliates, Robinson added.

The social fabric of much of Ninevah province has been shredded, and the challenges of reconciliation are looming before us, he said.

READ MORE: Tension mounts between Iraqi Arabs and Kurds

Today, the displaced people from the Juhaish tribe live on a barren patch of land on the eastern side of the Sinjar Mountains, surviving on dirty water and scraps of food donated by sympathetic Peshmerga fighters.

We have been without bread for over a week  We are completely isolated from the world, Mahmoud Saleh, one of the stranded people, told Al Jazeera in a telephone interview in early March.

Five in the group have died so far, he said  including a woman and her newborn during childbirth. Skin diseases and malnutrition have also become common, Saleh added.

While Robinson acknowledged that preventing a civilian population access to safety would be in direct conflict with international humanitarian law, the issue here is that to some key players, this group of stranded tribespeople are not considered civilians due to their alleged affiliation with ISIL.

The Kurdistan Region Security Council, in charge of security and intelligence in Iraqs Kurdish region, declined Al Jazeeras request for comment on the matter.

Saleh, meanwhile, denied allegations that the group of displaced persons was shielding ISIL members.

They can check, he said. If there are people who have been with ISIL, we will kill them ourselves.
Fighting erupts between troops and assailants on day constitutional court says President Nguesso has won re-election.

Gunbattles rocked the capital of the Congo Republic on Monday, shattering a relative calm that had followed President Denis Sassou Nguessos re-election in a disputed poll last month.

Fighting erupted in the southern part of Brazzaville, with heavy fire in opposition bastions between troops and unidentified assailants sending thousands of residents fleeing, AFP news agency reported.

AFP reporters saw streams of people panicked by the gunfire heading north away from districts loyal to the opposition, which is contesting President Nguessos recent re-election.

According to several witnesses, the crackle of automatic gunfire began after 2am local time (01:00 GMT) in Makelekele and Mayana districts, and continued without stop until dawn.

Several explosions were heard and two police stations were reportedly torched in the restive run-down districts, strongholds of the opposition.

Following the violence, hundreds of police and troops, some in armoured vehicles, fanned out across the citys southern areas and threw up roadblocks on the main road between the south and the city centre.

The reason for the clashes was not immediately clear, but government spokesman Thierry Moungalla told Reuters news agency that former members of a militia that fought President Nguesso in a 1997 civil war were behind the violence.

Reuters reported that young opposition supporters, chanting Sassou, leave!, also erected barricades near the main roundabout in Makelekele and set fire to the local mayors office and police headquarters.

READ MORE: Congo in media blackout for presidential elections

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not permitted to speak to the press, said militiamen known as the Ninjas were fighting with police.

The government battled the rebels in the early 2000s when they demanded a larger role in government and the military.

The Ninjas were also one of the main anti-government forces in the 1998-99 civil war. A peace deal was signed in 2003.

The violence comes on a day when the Constitutional Court published final election results showing that President Sassou Nguesso had won re-election.

Results given by the head of the court, Auguste Iloki, show that Sassou Nguesso won 60 percent of the March 20 vote, trailed by challenger Guy Brice Parfait Kolelas with 15 percent and Jean Marie Michel Mokoko with nearly 14 percent.

Sassou Nguesso has ruled the Central African oil producer for 32 of the past 37 years. He won re-election on March 20 after pushing through constitutional changes in an October referendum to remove age and term limits that would have prevented him from standing again.

Opposition candidates have described the election as a fraud and called for a campaign of civil disobedience.

A general strike last week was largely observed in southern Brazzaville but ignored in the capitals north, where Sassou Nguesso is popular.

At least 18 people were killed by security forces during opposition demonstrations before the October referendum.
Around 200 arrive smoothly as part of deal aimed at stemming crisis but rights fears persist over future asylum seekers.

An enormous and complex logistical operation involving thousands of EU and other officials was launched to ship migrants and refugees from Greece back to Turkey under a controversial accord between Brussels and Ankara.

In the first wave of deportations on Monday, around 200 mostly economic migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan were sent back to Turkey aboard chartered Turkish ferries sailing from the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios.

Under the hard-won deal with Ankara, the European Union accepted that for every refugee from war-ravaged Syria being returned to Turkey from Greek islands, another Syrian refugee would be resettled directly from Turkey to the EU.

While the operation ran smoothly on the first day, human rights groups feared for the future of asylum seekers.

Many worried that Greece was overwhelmed with potential asylum seekers, and that authorities did not have the resources to process their applications  meaning that some refugees would be deported without exercising their right to apply for refuge.





There are many questions over the legality of this deal, largely because we have little information as to whether or not people have a fair chance of having their asylum claims assessed. This [deportation process] appears to have been fast-tracked, Brad Blitz, who researches migration in the southern Mediterranean at Middlesex University, told Al Jazeera.

Some [migrants and refugees] did leave voluntarily. The first two boats [on Monday] contained principally Pakistani migrants. The third boat contained Afghans.

He added that migrants and refugees from South Asia were more likely to face return at the initial stage of the operation, as opposed to those fleeing war-ravaged countries such as Syrians.

Everyone has the right to seek asylum, Blitz said. People have the right to fair process. Their claims should be assessed. We know very little about how decisions are being made.

The governor of Turkeys Izmir province, Mustafa Toprak, said that three boats carrying 202 refugees had reached the shores of Dikili, adding that there were no Syrians on board.

READ MORE: UN urges leaders to accept more Syrian refugees

Later on Monday, 16 Syrian refugees landed in Germany on a flight from Turkey as part of the deal, which caps the number of those who will be allowed to enter Europe under the agreement at 72,000.

All irregular migrants arriving in Greece from Turkey since March 20 face being sent back across the Mediterranean under the deal.

What happened on Monday morning was a message from Europe that the door for illegal migration is closed, said Al Jazeeras Zeina Khodr, reporting from Lesbos.

They wanted to send this strong message because just yesterday 500 refugees landed on Greeces shore, just a day before the deal was to be implemented.

Gauri van Gulik, deputy Europe director at Amnesty International, said that she feared refugees fleeing war and persecution would eventually be forced to go to Turkey.

Were deeply concerned this is the first of many mass returns to Turkey. Were mostly worried about the next groups  whats going to happen when Syrians and people who are clearly refugees are going to be put on these boats?

Common policy needed

Two Turkish ferries on Lesbos, and another one on Chios, picked up the refugees who were escorted by police from the EU border agency Frontex.

Turkish Interior Minister Efkan Ala had said his country was ready to receive 500 refugees on Monday and Greek authorities had provided 400 names.

READ MORE: The dark side of the refugee deal

The European Union signed the deal with Turkey as it wrestled with the continents worst refugee crisis since World War II, with more than one million people arriving last year.

About 4,000 refugees have been detained on Greek islands since the agreement came into effect.

The long-term challenge is that it is absolutely clear that a common European policy is the only way Europe can address this [crisis], said Peter Sutherland, the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary General (SRSG) for International Migration.

Refugees are entitled to asylum. Theres very little sign that this principle is being accepted across Europe.
Armenia and Azerbaijan ramp up rhetoric as fighting continues for third day in disputed region.

Fighting has continued in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, with Azerbaijan saying three of its troops were killed in the past 24 hours and both sides ramping up their rhetoric.

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan warned on Monday that his country could formalise ties with Nagorno-Karabakh by officially recognising it as independent if the fighting escalates.

He warned that any such escalation could lead to a large-scale war.

Azerbaijans defence ministry said that if Armenian-backed forces continued to fire on civilians near Nagorno-Karabakh, its army would prepare to attack the regions capital, Stepanakert.

The fighting that erupted on Saturday was the worst since a war that ended in 1994, leaving Nagorno-Karabakh under the control of local ethnic Armenian forces and the Armenian military.





Hikmet Hajiyev, a spokesman for Azerbaijans foreign ministry, told Al Jazeera on Monday that Armenian forces continued to shell residential areas despite a unilateral ceasefire announced by Baku.

For more than 20 years we have had a ceasefire and the ceasefire was always relative. But in such a situation as yesterday Azerbaijani armed forces declared that we are holding all counter measures but the Armenian side are still attacking Azerbaijan civilians.

In such circumstances Azerbaijan armed forces are compelled to take all necessary precautionary measures to guarantee the security of Azerbaijan civilians, and also to deter Armenia from further acts of aggression and provocation  therefore all responsibility lies on the republic of Armenia for taking such kind of provocative steps, Hajiyev told Al Jazeera over the phone from Baku.

READ MORE: Armenia accuses Azerbaijan of all-out war

Artsrun Ovannisian, the Armenian Defence Ministry spokesman, said that the Karabakh militia advanced overnight, liberating new positions.

He said that the Armenian artillery hit Azerbaijani units as they were moving to the frontline.

Armenian forces also occupy several areas outside Nagorno-Karabakh proper.

International efforts to settle the conflict, fuelled by long-simmering tensions between Christian Armenians and mostly Muslim Azeris, have brought no results.

READ MORE: Azerbaijan calls unilateral truce in Nagorno-Karabakh

At least 30 troops were killed on both sides on Saturday as the warring parties used heavy artillery and rocket systems. A civilian boy was also killed.

Self-proclaimed officials in Karabakh said fighting intensified in the morning in the southeast and northeast with the Azerbaijani troops using Grad multiple rocket launchers.

In Moscow, President Vladimir Putins spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin was seriously worried about the continuing fighting in the region and added that Russia will continue its efforts to ensure a cease-fire.
Homes belonging to Palestinians accused of targeting Israelis have been razed in Occupied West Bank, leading to clashes.

Ramallah, Occupied West Bank  Seven Palestinian homes have been demolished in the past 24 hours across the Occupied West Bank  a move dubbed by Palestinian leaders as collective punishment.

The list of demolished structures includes three houses in the town of Qabatiya, south of Jenin, belonging to families of a trio gunned down in February after they killed an Israeli soldier.

Overnight on Monday, Israeli forces destroyed the family homes of Ahmad Zakarneh, Mohammad Kmeel and Ahmad Abu el-Rub, who fatally shot an Israeli border policewoman near Jerusalems Damascus Gate.

Four other homes were also razed in Occupied East Jerusalem and the villages of Surif and Duma in the West Bank.





Clashes erupted in Qabatiya following the demolitions, with five Palestinians taken to hospital in Jenin after they were shot with rubber-coated steel bullets.

The family of a fourth man  incarcerated by Israel following accusations of aiding the three young men  was also handed a demolition order.

Qabatiya, home to 20,000 Palestinians, has been completely sealed off by the Israeli army twice in recent months, and many of its inhabitants have had their work permits revoked.

At least 10 Palestinians from the town have also been killed by Israeli forces since October last year.

In a wave of attacks since October last year  carried mostly by young, disgruntled Palestinian youths  at least 33 Israelis and foreign nationals have died.

Nearly 200 Palestinians, including civilians, assailants and others whom Israeli officials claim were armed with knives, have been killed.

Since September last year, 57 houses belonging to Palestinians have been levelled, according to the Palestine Liberation Organisations negotiations affairs department.

READ MORE: How impunity defines Israel and victimises Palestinians

Israel halted the punitive practice it regularly uses against Palestinians in 2005 after an internal commission found that it did not deter attacks. But the policy was revived last year despite the recommendations, and slammed by rights groups as a form of collective punishment.

This is an arbitrary policy that affects everyone indiscriminately, said Ahmad Kmeel, Mohammads father. How is [it] the fault of the father, mother and the children? No one knew what he was going to do.

Israels Supreme Court paved the way for the demolitions after it turned down appeals made on behalf of the families. Rajeh Zakarneh, Ahmads father, said the family dismantled and moved furniture after losing the petition.

I built this house with my own two hands, Zakarneh told Al Jazeera. But my son is worth more than a thousand homes.

Earlier on Sunday, the court had cancelled home-demolition orders for three of four Palestinians convicted of being involved in a stone-throwing attack in September that led to the death of an Israeli motorist. Najeh Abu el-Rub, Ahmads father, had hoped the court would also overturn the decision to raze his family home.

We turned to the courts but that did nothing for us. They insisted on destroying the houses, Abu el-Rub said.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said the house demolitions were tantamount to acts of collective punishment that were being reported to the International Criminal Court.

Granting impunity for continued Israeli crimes will not achieve a resumption of negotiations. Rather, it is killing any realistic political horizon to end the Israeli occupation of the State of Palestine, Erekat said.
Abu Firas al-Suri was targeted in a suspected US strike along with his son and 20 other fighters, monitor says.

The spokesman for al-Qaedas Syrian affiliate, al-Nusra Front, his son and 20 other fighters have been reported killed in air strikes in the northeast of the country.

Abu Firas al-Suri was meeting with other leading fighters in an al-Nusra stronghold, Kafar Jales, when the raids happened on Sunday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Sources in the north of the country told Al Jazeera they believed the raids were carried out by the US-led coalition operating over Syria and Iraq. Other sources told the Reuters news agency the attacks appeared to have the hallmarks of US drone strikes.

A US security official said Washington was aware of reports on the killing but had no further information to offer on Sunday. Coalition forces have previously targeted al-Nusra Front leaders in Syria.

READ MORE: Al-Nusra Front arrests US-backed fighters in Syria

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights had earlier said the strikes may have been launched by Syrian government or Russian fighter jets.

Al-Suri, whose real name was Radwan Nammous, fought against Soviet forces in Afghanistan when he met Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his mentor Abdullah Azzam before returning to Syria after the uprising began in 2011.

Raqqa strike

A temporary ceasefire between government forces and rebels has largely held since February 27, but al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group (ISIL) were not involved in that deal.

The cessation has, in fact, analysts say, allowed Russia and the US-led coalition that has been bombing ISIL, also known as ISIS, to concentrate their battle against the fighters.

On Wednesday, a drone strike near ISILs de facto capital, Raqqa, killed Tunisian commander Abu al-Haija, according to the Observatory, the latest in a series of blows to the group in recent weeks.

Fifteen ISIL commanders accused of revealing his position have since been executed, the Observatory said, and the fate of another 20 men accused of collaborating with the US-led coalition is unknown.

On Sunday, the Syrian army seized the city of al-Qaryatain, one of the last ISIL strongholds in central Syria, according to state television.
At least 62 killed and 83 wounded in string of car bombs and suicide attacks targeting the military and civilians.

At least 62 people have been killed and about 83 wounded in a wave of suspected Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) attacks on military posts and civilian neighbourhoods across Iraq, officials said.

In the worst of Mondays attacks, at least 26 troops were killed when a car bomb went off in the city of al Baghdadi, which is west of the strategically vital Anbar province and near Ain al-Asad airbase.

A police source from Salahuddin province, north of Baghdad, told Al Jazeera that at least six pro-government militia fighters were killed and 18 others injured in two separate ISIL attacks there.

Thirteen other members of the security forces were killed in an attack on a military barracks east of Fallujah.

In a suicide blast that targeted the Iraqi prime ministers convoy as it travelled through the Meshahda area of Baghdad, at least three pro-government militia fighters were killed and 10 wounded.

Three people were killed and 12 wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up at a security checkpoint north of Baghdad. The incident happened near Al-Muthana bridge, which links the capital with northern towns and cities such as Samara and Tikrit.

In the southern city of Nassiriyah, police sources said at least five civilians were killed and 23 wounded in a bombing at a local restaurant in Tel Al-Laham town.

READ MORE: Civilians flee ISIL-held territory in Iraq

In the centre of Basra city, at least five civilians were killed and 11 wounded after a parked car exploded at an intersection.

Two civilians were killed and seven injured when two mortar shells hit the residential area of Al-Nassar neighbourhood  part of Abu Ghraib town  west of Baghdad.

The series of bombings came as Iraqi forces continued a campaign to wrest back control of parts of Anbar province and Mosul city  which was seized by ISIL in 2014.

Iraqs army said in a statement that its operations against ISIL in Mosul continued on Monday, having been on pause for several days.

It also said that it was advancing towards the ISIL-held town of Makhmour, south of Mosul, as a US-led coalition backed it with air support.
A 10-member political group supports appointments of new vice president and prime minister ahead of planned peace talks.

A group of Yemeni political parties, organisations and forces has welcomed a cabinet reshuffle, offering its utmost support to President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

The statement was signed by: The Southern Movement Yemeni Congregation for Reform Yemens Al Rashad Union The National Solidarity Party Peace and Development Party The General Peoples Congress The Yemeni Socialist Party The Nasserist Unionist Peoples Organisation Justice and Building Party Al-Nahda for a Political Change Movement

The 10-member group said in a statement on Monday it completely supports the appointments of General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar as the new vice president, and Ahmed Obeid bin Daghr as the new prime minister.

They will replace Khaled Bahah, who held both posts.

The reshuffle, announced a day earlier by President Hadi, reinforced national and political unity, the group said in the statement, a copy of which was sent to Al Jazeera.

The signing parties included The Southern Movement and The General Peoples Congress.

The statement came as a UN-brokered ceasefire is planned in the coming days between Yemens warring parties, which is expected to pave the way for the peace talks due to be held in Kuwait on April 18.

The reshuffle boosted the push for peace in the conflict-torn country and would facilitate the success of the upcoming Kuwait negotiations, the statement said.

The group also expressed its appreciation and profound gratitude to the Saudi-led coalition, including the United Arab Emirates, for their continuing support for the Yemeni people, Yemens political leadership and national government in order to end the coup, restore the states authority and reconstruct the country.

The welfare of Yemenis, security, reconstruction and the building of a modern, democratic, civil unionist state were the foundations of the republics values and the principles and objectives of the Yemeni revolution, the statement continued.

The Yemeni conflict intensified in March last year, after Iran-allied Houthi fighters and soldiers loyal to Ali Abdullah Saleh  the former Yemeni president  swept across southern Yemen, taking the port city of Aden and forcing President Hadi into exile.

An Arab military coalition began an air campaign on March 26, 2015, to overthrow Houthi rebels.

In October, the coalition began sending regular ground troops to help Hadi loyalists secure their gains, including the recently recaptured Aden.

Five years ago, the Yemeni capital Sanaa echoed with thousands of people calling for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down and demand a regime change.

Inspired by the Arab Spring revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, protests continued for months.

Emboldened by the political infighting, the Houthis took control of the capital, Sanaa, in September 2014.
UF students surrounded the stage as a Pakistani pop artist sang Justin Bieber and Pakistani songs Saturday night.

Asim Azhar, an emerging pop artist from Pakistan, performed at the UF Pakistani Students Associations 20th annual cultural show for the first time. Students listened to music and watched traditional Pakistani dances at the Phillips Center for the Performing Arts.

About 300 people attended the event, which cost between $12,000 and $14,000, to learn about Pakistan, said Haider Ali, the president of PSA. Volunteers from International Student Affairs funded it, Ali said.

PSA members have rehearsed for the show since the beginning of Spring, he said.

We shared the culture of Pakistan with those who might not know about it, the 22-year-old UF nutritional sciences senior said.

Ali said he wanted to showcase Pakistans beauty. Other UF clubs also performed traditional Pakistani dances.

Its not just the old country that people think, you know, with dirt roads and poverty, Ali said.

More than 85 people also donned long, colorful pants, vests and dresses during a fashion show. The traditional Pakistani outfits are known as salwar kameez.

Later, Akbar Chaudry, a 25-year-old UF aerospace engineering first-year graduate student, performed stand-up comedy. He joked about stereotypes, such as how all Pakistani parents expect their children to be doctors.

Zachary Sandoval, a UF biology freshman, said he enjoyed the energy of the show.

Its about them showing elements of their own culture that they feel make them special, the 19-year-old said.

Ali said he was proud of the show.

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You can see when people are out there on the stage, theyre having so much fun, he said.

Members of the Nashaa dance group perform a dance to the song Prem Ratan Dhan Payo, from the eponymous Bollywood film at the UF Pakistani Students Association 20th annual cultural show. Asim Azhar, an emerging pop star from Pakistan, performed at the show for the first time ever.
While she may at one point have been a real Democrat, Debbie Wasserman Schultz has increasingly grown out of touch with the people.

She has been catering more to donors than to voters.

The most recent example of this was her use of her position as Democratic National Committee chairwoman to set the debate schedule in a way that is deliberately favorable to Hillary Clinton.

Wasserman Schultz hasnt always been so quick to cater to the establishment, or The System, as we call it here at UF. During her time at UF, she ran against the Blue Key party to become president of the Student Senate and ultimately won that seat.

Shes spoken about being an independent candidate at UF and not being a part of the system.

However, since leaving UF, she seems to have forgotten that.

While its not necessarily a bad thing to want to work within a system to change it, that is not what Wasserman Schultz is doing.

Instead, shes working within the system, against the poor.

While the fight between the establishment and an outsider candidate plays out at the national level with Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, a similar race is happening in South Florida for Wasserman Schultzs seat.

This election cycle, Wasserman Schultz has a challenger, Tim Canova, who is a law professor at Nova Southeastern University and once advised Sanders.

Canova similarly fought the Democratic Party for voter data files, which are not given to those who are challenging incumbents.

He won the right to see voter data, though only for himself and not as a policy change.

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Instead of calling for Wasserman Schultzs resignation, Canova became her first primary challenger, calling out how Wasserman Schultzs voting record aligns more with what her corporate donors want than what the voters from her area want.

Like Clinton, on the surface Wasserman Schultz appears to truly believe in liberal policy, but when you delve deeper into her record, thats not the case.

Wasserman Schultzs establishment tactics just wont cut it anymore.

Even though shes only received $68,000 from payday lenders, according to PolitiFact, this seems to inform her stance on payday lending.

Also according to PolitiFact, Wasserman Schultz is among Florida lawmakers who have defended Floridas payday law despite the fact that some consumer advocates have bashed it and say it traps the poor in a debt cycle.

Essentially, as the poor take out loans they must pay them back with interest from their next paychecks, feeding into a cycle where they are never able to free themselves of debt.

Instead of fighting for the poor, Wasserman Schultz contributes to the cycle of poverty and upholds business as usual. While there are regulations in place already, they are often not properly enforced.

Not only is this a class issue, but its also a race issue. According to a Vice article titled Inside the Battle over Floridas Racially Charged Payday Loan Racket, the majority of payday loan locations in major Florida cities are in African-American and Latino communities.

The very essence of being a Democrat is supposed to be fighting for poor and marginalized communities, but that isnt what Wasserman Schultz does.

This presidential season, Wasserman Schultz has been unable to be impartial, continually working debates in Clintons favor until she was called out on it.

While the DNC is supposed to be impartial in the primaries, it is far from it.

Its still unclear if ousting her as DNC chairwoman will solve anything, since she will probably be replaced by just another establishment shill, but voting her out of office could be a start to actually helping the poor and marginalized.

Nicole Dan is a UF political science sophomore. Her column appears on Mondays.
They shut down the school Thursday. They shut it down the Thursday before, too, and the Thursday before that. They stack desks and chairs in front of the doors  canary yellow paint and pine, legs rounded like childrens handwriting. They scrawl signs in green and red and blue, in jaunty all-caps of acrylic. They tape a sign that says Lifes an apple, the labor laws a worm. I think, Lifes an apple, and nudge the chairs from the handle.

The governments perplexed: Unemployments at 10 percent, and they complain about capping severance pay and negotiating a few hours past 35 a week? Long-term contracts are terrifying, the government says: Thats why you youths are stuck in short-term garbage. They assure me its bullshit.

Thursday one: Latin American literature is sliced in half for the protests. The students unwrap tuna sandwiches and croissants in class. Theyre breaking at noon; the mood is festive. The professor asks me to go, and I say I dont think 40-hour weeks are evil: Its paradise here.

We must defend paradise, he says, and his lips curl into dimples. He likes it. He repeats it. The most vibrant and vocal student hands me a flier: I understand that you are American, but we have different realities. Two different realities: I like how that sounds. In America, we float belly up.

Thursday two: They blocked the building and shut down the cafeteria, but they got free muffins! a girl says. We squat on the lawn while the communists debate about canceling classes. She filters the megaphone blur to me and reapplies her lipstick. Its bullshit, she says: Politics is fashion. But the laws shit. Theres a fire behind us. Theyre just barbecuing.

Thursday three: National strike. The school librarys shut down, the city librarys shut down, so I buy tank tops. I deliberate between pink and peach. I walk to the Franco-American Institute. They smash empty wine bottles on the quai. They wear bandanas and bombers and throw rocks at passing tires. The police look like tortoises.

Ensconced in walnut and leather, I watch the windows blacken and a stampede hurtle down the boulevard. They smash storefronts. The police throw smoke bombs  I hear  and tear gas. They throw tear gas and cobblestones back. The bourgeoisie pull their drapes. Rocks batter the roof.

Its disgusting, the secretary says, her blue eyes glassy and pale in the sun. Im against the law, of course. Precariousness. Young people need jobs, but real jobs. This is what the government is promising.

But these protestors discredit the movement. We always protest, and the government doesnt care anymore. The light catches her glasses and large teeth. Im sorry if Ive offended you, she says.

High-schoolers race through smoke, pulling tacky sweaters over their mouths, green Adidas slapping the esplanade. You Americans are more liberal, she says. Were quite conservative here. She says groups pay kids to get violent. When the metro reopens, I hear a toddler shout, Wow! Its the police!

Theyre mobilized. Theyre vigilant. You never see this in America. In 1968, their signs said, Make love, not war! Now they say, Make love, not extra hours! And others tell me that theres no point to voting if the socialists can do this. Others tell me you cant trust anyone. Others tell me that France is over.

Posters of cartoon eyes warn you of the state of emergency. Red block letters scream, VIVE LA COMMUNE. They wave yellow and red and blue and purple flags that no one can tell you the meaning of. They throw chairs on the subway tracks. I dont know why.

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The universitys lunar hellscape of high rises bristles with excitement. It feels political, however that feels. Like a child of the Depression, I want them to suffer as much as us Americans, suffocating six or seven endless days a week, fungible, forgettable.

And yet this feels like the end of something: the end of paradise.

Ann Manov is a UF French, English and Spanish senior. Her column appears on Mondays.
With less than three weeks left of classes for the semester, some of you are getting ready to head home, backpack through Europe or earn some cash with a summer job. But there is an unfortunate group of Gators stuck in Gainesville (or attending another state university as a transient student) to fulfill the state requirement of Summer semester classes. A moment of silence, please.

Now, we at the Alligator are not saying summer in Gainesville is entirely awful. But what totally sucks about summer isnt extra-long classes, blistering heat or freezing-cold classrooms, but rather the fact that Bright Futures doesnt cover tuition for summer classes  classes we are required to take.

Currently, every student who attends a Florida state university is required to take nine credits during the summer in order to graduate. We get it: The state wants to find a way to ensure attendance during Summer classes doesnt completely plummet. But not only is it absolute malarky to force us to take classes in the summer when we could be taking advantage of study-abroad or internship opportunities, its ridiculous these classes are not covered by Bright Futures.

College is hard. Its even harder when you have to pay your way through school, especially when some financial help, such as Bright Futures, doesnt cover everything. With each credit costing $212.71, thatll cost you $1,914.39 in tuition for nine credits during the summer, according to the Fall 2015-2016 cost of attendance. And thats not including all the books, food and rent youll have to pay for the summer, considering most apartment complexes in Gainesville require yearlong leases  but thats a complaint for a different day.

The only students allowed to receive Bright Futures benefits during the Summer are those in the Innovation Academy. For these students, the Fall semester functions as a traditional Summer semester. However, the Innovation Academy does not require its students to take classes during the Fall, specifically so they can take advantage of opportunities for internships, study abroad, etc. Funny how that works.

State universities, or at least UF, clearly understand the advantages to having a semester off to pursue extracurricular interests or professional development, as evidenced by the Innovation Academys structure. However, why doesnt this apply to more traditional students? The answer, it would seem, is purely a financial one.

Of course we understand that at the core, universities are businesses, and businesses by definition need to make money. But the universities dont technically stand to lose anything because the money funding Bright Futures comes from the state. So it seems to us that institutions supposedly existing to provide an education for all pupils, regardless of background or income, should not require academically excellent in-state students to pay out of pocket for a semester that isnt even necessary to graduate in most cases.

We would love to suggest Bright Futures cover Summer semester classes, but we understand the impracticality of this. With the amount of money awarded by Bright Futures already shrinking, adding another semester of study to cover for thousands of students would be unreasonable. So if that option is off the table, universities need to adapt and revise the Summer semester requirement policy. In a financial world where many students need all the help they can get, being forced to pay out of pocket for a required, and sometimes unnecessary, semester is unfair.




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]
Bank technology Bank Fintech Accelerators Are Destined to Die Unless banks devote the same amount of investment as standalone incubators, the innovation labs launched by financial institutions will be a short-term fad. January 28

Bank technology Fintech Boot Camp Promises Tough Love for Fledgling Startups Startupbootcamp's fintech accelerator in New York boasts an unusually large faculty of 225 mentors, trained to give candid feedback and prepare the class of 10 startups for the real world. March 22

In recent years, investors have poured money into startups, giving 152 of them vaunted "unicorn" valuations of more than $1 billion  and more than a dozen of them are in the fintech space. But now, investors are starting to back off and valuations are beginning to deflate. In the past four months, Social Finance Inc. has canceled its IPO, while OnDeck has seen its valuation fall significantly since its own IPO, for example.

One experienced venture capitalist, Jim Breyer, founder and CEO at Breyer Capital, told Business Insider he believes 90% of unicorns will be repriced or die, and calls it "blood in the water." Our company's research supports this view and indicates that devaluation is leading to consolidation, acquisition, and  perhaps most importantly  fewer unicorns in the near future.

Executives at financial providers tend to have one of two reactions to signs of trouble in the fintech world: smugness or a killer instinct. Some see devaluation as proof that fintech was always more hype than a true-blue market shift that they should lose sleep over. The other reaction is to make some acquisitions on the cheap.

Both reactions are dangerous.

While some fintech firms are indeed just smoke and mirrors, digital disruption itself is here to stay. Consumers, who are increasingly empowered with more information, more access, and more options than ever before, are the main driver.

Startups have used digital technology to target underserved customer segments, to deliver new value to customers or to attack ingrained inefficiencies. These opportunities are still there, although they're probably not large enough to justify inflated valuations. Well-funded and carefully managed startups will survive and come back stronger. The weaker ones will be snapped up by banks eager to pick up emerging technology and talented employees at a discount.

But this is where incumbent firms need to be careful. While devaluation among fintech firms does increase the leverage and opportunity for incumbent financial providers, it also amps up the competition among incumbents and exposes them to the risk of poor acquisitions. Chaos in the fintech space makes razor-sharp focus and strategic matchmaking crucial to digital strategy.

This phase of disruption can be described as the "havoc" stage, and it's one of the three phases that all technology markets go through: a market pivot driven by disruptive innovation, the havoc of consolidation and acquisitions, and the apparent emergence of stability. The havoc stage is typically marked by a tumultuous set of acquisitions and mergers as both startups and incumbent players reposition themselves. Executives at incumbent firms tend to approach this in different ways: buying up fintech firms, as BBVA has done with its acquisition of Simple; partnering and collaborating with fintech firms, as Toronto-Dominion Bank has done with Moven; or starting their own fintech projects or venture funds, as Umpqua Bank has done with its Pivotus Ventures subsidiary.

For acquirers with eyes set on a specific disruptor, this is indeed the time to act. However, tread lightly and only invest in companies that are addressing a genuine problem; that do so with sophisticated, patented technology that is scalable and can be integrated into your company; and that fit into your business strategy.

Compared to the other disruption phases, the havoc period has a relatively short time window. The market will soon stabilize. When it does, what will remain are either weak fintech companies that are barely surviving or those that have emerged from the shakeout successful. Financial firms  particularly the ones with new and inexperienced venture capital and acquisition teams  should be wary of "walking dead" disruptors.

So yes, there are wounded unicorns among us. And many fintech firms are being forced to think more realistically and pragmatically about their relationships with incumbent providers. But disruption in financial services will not stop or dramatically slow. In the long run, the role of digital leaders at incumbent financial firms will be to embrace digital business transformation and to partner with fintech companies that center on customers' increasing empowerment and evolving needs.

Peter Wannemacher and Oliwia Berdak are senior analysts at Forrester.
The first task of the Obama administration should be to fight and eliminate Islamist terrorism. A document just issued by ISIS is perplexing because it is unclear whether the terrorist caliphate is helping the U.S. administration in this task or teasing it by revealing the essence of its terrorist strategy. The document, a February 2016 article in the French edition of the ISIS online propaganda magazine, Dar al-Islam, has explained its campaign to wage war against the West.

In a surprising revelation, ISIS's article rediscovers the basis of German maneuver warfare. It says it is copying the 19th-century tactics of Auftragstaktik, a combat doctrine of the German army similar to Mission Command in the U.S. and U.K. That doctrine was adopted as a response by Germany after its military defeats by Napoleon.

The article cites a 1908 German infantry manual asserting that there is nothing more important in tactics than educating a soldier to think for himself. Though a little un-Germanic, it asserts that a soldier's autonomy and sense of honor push him to do his duty even when it is not in front of his superiors.

The ISIS article explains that the terrorists plan three types of attacks. These include large-scale plots coordinated by the leaders, though these now seem a lesser priority. More important is a warning to the West that the attacks also include isolated actions of individuals who have no direct contact with ISIS but act in its name. This means that followers of ISIS will carry out terrorists attacks without them being traced to the central chain of command.

The concept of Auftragstaktik means a method by which leaders give subordinates a mission, a target, and a time frame by which it should be accomplished and allow those subordinates to carry out their tasks independently. This implies allowing the subordinates complete tactical autonomy and flexibility at the operational level. The leadership is not informed of tactical details of the "lone wolf" operators. The perpetrator adapts tactics to the local situation in flexible fashion.

The concept also means that the subordinates understand the orders, are given general guidance, and are trained to act independently. This means decentralized warfare, terror by autonomy, while following centralized orders.

Perhaps by coincidence, the ISIS strategy bears a striking resemblance to and echoes the U.S. War Marine Corps Manual of June 1997, with its doctrine of maneuver that places a premium on individual judgment and action. This kind of doctrine, with implicit communication through mutual understanding, using a minimum of well understood phrases or even anticipating thoughts, is faster and more effective than using detailed, explicit instructions. All people involved have a shared philosophy.

The result of the ISIS tactics is reminiscent of the assaults and massacres in Madrid, Paris, London, and Brussels. A number of the individual lone wolves have become familiar. The Belgian-Moroccan Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who had spent time in Syria, where he trained ISIS fighters and was linked to ISIS leadership, was responsible for a string of terrorist attacks and the mastermind of the November 15, 2015 massacre in Paris that killed 130 people before Abaaoud himself was killed in a police raid in Paris.

In prison, Abaaoud was in contact with Salah Abdeslam, a Belgian-born French national of Moroccan descent who was also involved in the Paris attack and was a key figure in the Brussels attack on March 22, 2016 that killed 32 people. Abaaoud was linked to Mehdi Memmouche, a French national of Algerian origin who was responsible for the murder of four people in the Jewish Museum in Brussels on May 24, 2014.

ISIS is becoming ever more aggressive. Its images and graphics call on German Muslims to carry out high-profile attacks, like that in Brussels, on significant targets  for example, the office of Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin and the Cologne airport.

The British Daily Mail revealed the most recent attempt at a lone wolf operation in Britain in March 2016. A 25-year-old Muslim named Junead Khan, a driver who delivered pharmaceutical goods, had scouted two U.S. Air Force bases in East Anglia and planned to kill U.S. soldiers in the U.K. The plan was to run his van into a U.S. military vehicle near a U.S. base in Suffolk and then attack the American occupants. At his trial, his uncle testified on his behalf and told the court the Islamic truth: the BBC and Sky television were part of the Zionist conspiracy, together with the diabolic stores Marks and Spencer, Sainsbury, and Tesco, and the usual suspects, the Freemasons and the Illuminati.

Khan's identification with terrorist groups and his connection with individuals in central command of ISIS became clear. Photos showed him posing, wearing what seems a Ralph Lauren (Jewish) shirt, holding the ISIS black flag, and possessing an al-Qaeda bomb manual. After his deed, he was preparing to go to Syria to join ISIS.

More revealing in this story was that earlier, Khan exchanged messages with a man named Junaid Hussain, an ISIS recruiter in central command and a British-born jihadist who was killed in a U.S. drone attack. It became apparent from reading the exchanges that ISIS fighters in Syria have addresses in the U.K. of British servicemen.

For the U.S. and its allies, the lesson to be drawn from the ISIS document is clear. It involves two intersecting policies. Critical vulnerabilities must be identified to undermine the enemy. In practice, more attention must be paid to the "sleeper cells" of ISIS and those attracted to fundamentalist Sunni Islam and those dabbling in crime, by a variety of means  military, police, and above all collaboration in intelligence information. For security, it also means assessing U.S. vulnerabilities that ISIS associates and sleeper cells may attack.

ISIS has given warning, and the U.S. administration must act accordingly.
The news that Hillary Clintons closest aides have retained well-connected D.C. attorney Beth Wilkinson to represent them in their boss email scandal is bad news for those that held out some hope that justice would be done in the case. Instead, their joint hiring of Wilkinson, without objection from the Justice Department, strongly suggests that that Attorney General Loretta Lynch has no intention of pursuing charges against any of them, much less Hillary. The timing and terms of Wilkinsons hiring have Clintons fingerprints all over them, demonstrating once again that when it comes to corruption and pulling strings to escape the consequences, nobody tops the Clintons.

When reports emerged several weeks ago that Justice had given former Clinton IT aide Brian Pagliano some type of immunity in return for his testimony a number of experienced commentators speculated that a grand jury had been seated in the case. I was more skeptical that things had gone that far, and it seems such doubts were justified. The FBI apparently only intends to interview the Clinton aides, rather than subpoena them before a grand jury. It was in anticipation of these interviews that the group hired Wilkinson.

Wilkinsons joint representation would present a huge conflict of interest if the FBI and Justice Department were actually intent on prosecuting this matter. The best tool available to prosecutors going after a joint criminal enterprise (other than uninvolved eyewitnesses or physical evidence) is the testimony of one suspect against another. This is obtained by interviewing the suspects in isolation, and perhaps misleading them as to the status of the investigation and who has dropped a dime on the others. In the Clinton case such a tactic is now impossible, since all of Clintons aides will be represented by the same attorney, allowing them to create a joint narrative, and preventing investigators from keeping any of the aides in the dark about what the others may have said. Experienced former federal prosecutor Joseph DiGenova (who a few weeks ago was among those confident a grand jury had been convened) now opines that in accepting this arrangement, Justice has essentially thrown in the towel.

Clintons fingerprints are all over this arrangement, most notably in the selection of Wilkinson and the terms of her engagement. Wilkinson left a comfortable sinecure at a prominent D.C. area law firm in January which likely guaranteed a steady seven figure income to open up an independent boutique white collar defense shop of her own. This is unusual -- why take such a risk other than for a major political and professional payback from the likely next president? More damning, in terms of demonstrating that this is Cliintonesque maneuvering, is Wilkinsons strange announcement that the new firm will handle her presumably well-healed clients on a fixed fee basis.

Fixed fees are common enough in the down and dirty world of blue-collar defense work, but not in the rarified office space of the white-collar defense lawyer, who makes his or her substantial nut by charging deep pocketed clients hour by expensive hour. The average criminal defendant cant afford uncapped defense fees, and so to attract clients your ordinary small town or big city criminal lawyer takes a gamble and fixes fees at a set rate, hoping that over the long haul that they will profit by not putting too much time into any one case. Thus, lawyers who operate with fixed fees usually are small shops or sole practitioners who run a volume business, since only high volume reduces the risks of wasting too much time on a difficult and unprofitable client. Almost any of these attorneys would give their right arm for a job like Wilkinson just gave up.

That doesnt seem to be the kind of business that a highly credentialed lawyer like Wilkinson would want to run, does it? In fact, on opening her new shop, Wilkinson bragged about her existing list of big name clients (other than the Clinton aides) such as Pfizer, Medtronic, and the NFL. These are corporations that do not need and are unused to paying fixed fees.

So whats the angle? Well, the fixed fee lawyer doesnt have to account for her hours, whereas with clients on an hourly fee, even with a large retainer, time has to be meticulously kept. At good firms, like the one Wilkinson left, most likely even on those few cases that fixed fees are occasionally taken, lawyers are required to document their hours, so that (should a client demand it) the firm can demonstrate that the fee was fair, and also so that the firm can keep track up what the its lawyers are up to.

On her own though, Wilkinson can chose to run her fixed fee cases (like those of Hillarys aides) without keeping detailed records of what shes actually been doing with her time. Thus, in the event there are future accusations of conflict of interest, these would be much harder to prove without detailed accounts of Wilkinsons activities, which she will probably (and deliberately) not have. Yet more suspicious for longtime Clinton observers is the knowledge that Clinton herself is well aware of the troubles a lawyer can run into when required to keep detailed records of their activities. Remember Hillarys own billing records from the Rose Law Firm, which she did her utmost to conceal, almost undid her (and her husbands presidency) during the Whitewater scandal. Hillary more than anyone knows the dangers of hourly fee records. And since Hillary, or a Clinton connected organization is likely paying Wilkinson -- and since Hillary is in effect Wilkinsons real client -- the fixed fee arrangement was probably part of the deal.

It seems that FBI Director James Comey is either content with Justices action, or is keeping mum about it. Comey is widely hailed as a stand-up guy, and he had past dealings with Hillary Clinton during the Whitewater scandal when he worked as deputy special counsel to the Whitewater committee. Comey believed Clinton engaged in wrongdoing, but nothing came of it, except a critical investigative report. He parlayed that Whitewater gig into a highly successful Washington career, while maintaining a reputation for integrity. At this point it appears Comey has two choices. He can issue a strongly worded but legally meaningless report ala Whitewater, or resign. Im not betting on the latter.
Do you know who is selling you that souvenir T-shirt in the airport? You might want to.

In the late 1970s, it became known to international security agencies that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) owned a variety of duty-free shops in airports across Africa. They didnt get too excited -- selling newspapers and snack food didnt seem particularly dangerous, and the breech of security posed by terrorists with all-airport access passes doesnt seem to have aroused any great level of concern.

But that was before we stripped to our skivvies and dumped our lattes in order to board a plane. After years of hijackings and the horrors of 9/11, surely were smarter now.

Or not. Following the ISIS-orchestrated bombing at the Brussels Zaventem airport, part of a two-pronged attack that killed 31 people and injured more than 300, Belgian police disclosed that more than 50 known ISIS supporters are working in the airport as baggage handlers, cleaners, and catering staff. They have unprecedented access to passenger areas, back hallways, runways, and onto the airplanes themselves. The situation was so dire before the March 22nd bombing that Israeli inspectors warned the Belgian authorities of the danger. Similar warnings may also have come from the United States. No matter -- nothing at all was done.

Some European countries, particularly the UK, have stepped up security around airports and other major facilities. But their focus is almost entirely on people passing through the system -- passengers and their families -- while the truth is the insider threat receives only perfunctory consideration in most Western venues.

Apart from airports, insider threats have been noted at nuclear power plants. In Belgium at least two atomic power stations have had jihadists working inside -- at least two of whom went off to Syria to fight for ISIS. A plot, uncovered in Belgian authorities in February, appears to have targeted a senior scientist in hopes of acquiring nuclear material. Time magazine reported that 12 nuclear plant workers were stripped of their access badges -- eight before the Zaventem bombing and four after.

The threat of an attack on a nuclear facility raises many horrific possibilities: a reactor meltdown, the theft of radioactive material for a dirty bomb, or holding a nuclear plant hostage threatening to destroy it unless specific conditions are met. But the most immediate and dire danger is a combination of an airplane hijacking and a 9/11 style hit on an atomic power plant.

This is not a threat directed only at Europe. The East Coast of the United States has a number of nuclear power plants that could be seen as targets. An international flight from Europe to the U.S. could be crashed into any one of these facilities. The reaction time once the hijacking was known -- if it became known at all -- would not be enough to head off disaster.

"External" security -- preventing hijackings or keeping bombers from sneaking into presumably secure facilities -- is not enough to head off a potential disaster. Internal security at airports and nuclear facilities urgently must be improved. Belgium did nothing, even in the light of clear warnings. There is little reason to think the United States is taking better -- and more proactive -- steps to protect American assets.

The first step would be to put proper and thorough background checks in place -- including recent activities, police records, and social connections. This clearly was not done in Brussels, where some of the 50 ISIS supporters working at Zaventem had police records. Yet they were hired and had full access throughout the airport.

Is the U.S. system any different? Are you sure?

Internal security measures, especially checking employees when they show up to work at airports and nuclear plants, are urgently in need of improvement. Periodic rechecking of all employees is also highly important; how many times have families said of radicalized members that they had recently become more religious? Recently begun attending religious services? Recently grown a beard or changed their style of dress? Behavior is a moving target; checking once is insufficient.

And much more compartmentalization is needed in terms of employee access, so that an airport or power plant badge is not an all access pass -- or passport to infamy. Explosives and weapons checks need consistent implementation at every sensitive location.

In addition, coordination between facilities managers and law enforcement and intelligence officials also must be stepped up and clearly focused on potential threats. Airport, subway, power plant and other officials who disregard security warnings should be held criminally liable -- a move that will stimulate management to shoulder the full responsibility of ensuring security. Labor unions need to be brought into the plan. Belgian Police Union has now revealed that they also warned about the danger at Zaventem, but no action was taken. Union workers elsewhere, including power plants, need to be engaged in the process.

Right now, the West faces a huge danger because we have focused too much on passengers and not at all on the insider threat. Leadership has been almost entirely absent. Continuing in this manner has already been a recipe for disaster in Belgium. The next target is out there.

Stephen D. Bryen is a former DOD official and author of the new book Technology Security and National Power: Winners and Losers. Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of the Jewish Policy Center and Editor of inFOCUS Magazine.
The man captured on airport surveillance video wearing a white jacket and black hat, is unidentified and reportedly on the run. The two jihadist brothers are dead -- killed in the suicide bombings. Radical Najim Laachraoui is also reportedly dead -- and a second unknown who took part in the metro attack is missing. But one day before the Brussels bombings, Belgian police named Laachraoui as a major suspect in the Paris attacks back in November. On top of that, his DNA was found on the suicide vests in Paris, in a Brussels apartment and a house at Auvelais in southern Belgium, which were both used by the Paris bombers before those attacks. Until this week, he had only been known by an alias, Soufiane Kayal, and had rented the Auvelais house using the false name.

Laachraoui, age 24, was born in Morocco, holds a Belgian passport and grew up in the northern Brussels district of Schaerbeek. Records indicate that he studied electromechanical engineering at a local Catholic high school, the Institut de la Sainte-Famille dHelmet. In February 2013 he traveled to Syria where he reportedly received training in constructing explosive devices from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). He returned to Belgium last year and is thought to be the weapons expert for one of the ISIL cells operating in Belgium. On top of all that, he was named as an accomplice by the main suspect in the Paris attacks.

Just a few months earlier, eight people, three teams, AK47 rifles and suicide vests resulted in the murder of 130 people and wounding of 368 more across Paris in mid-November. Three weeks later in California a husband and wife team armed with pistols, rifles, thousands of rounds of ammunition, pipe bombs and remote activated IEDs (improvised explosive devices) killed 14 and wounded 21 more.

The attacks were spread across thousands of miles, but there are common links  dots. Dot one was their radical interpretation of Islam. The second dot was ISIL being vocal about them all. Dot number three is that every shred of intelligence and evidence collected in Paris and California pointed to radical Islamist terrorism and preliminary collection in Brussels mirrors the same.

So with all these apparent dots on the map, why didnt the intelligence services connect them? The problem is not necessarily connecting dots, but determining what were dots needing connecting -- and that requires dedication, manpower and dollars.

Compared to the French, the Belgian security service, Surete de l'Etat, which falls under the Ministry of Justice, is small and had only 600 personnel to keep tabs on 900 persons of interest, many of them potential jihadis who have travelled to Syria and Iraq. Many of these targets required 24-hour surveillance, which is no small task and requires extensive manpower, vehicles and technical support. As the echoes of the Paris bombs still rang in the air, the Belgian service increased its budget a modest 20 per cent to 50 million.

The other Belgian service of note, the General Intelligence and Security Service (GISS), known in Belgium as the Service General du Renseignement et de la Securite (SGR) and falling under the direction of the Ministry of Defense, is equally lacking in manpower and money. Following the Paris attacks last November, it became apparent that the real intelligence failure had not been French but Belgian. Perhaps due in part to their limited intelligence collection capabilities, the Belgian people have suffered as a result. Simply, the Belgians dont have the people or the infrastructure to properly investigate and monitor hundreds of individuals (440 as of last count out of a Muslim population of over 650,000) suspected of terror links. The Belgians are the weak link in the EU -- and a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

Today, many European Union governments who chastised other, larger intelligence collection systems are asking to share that product -- the very thing they decried as outrageous just a few months ago. Blood on the streets definitely focuses your attention on the necessary things. In a recent piece, I suggested that if the rebels werent supported by our allies or us that Islamist radicals would come in and wed have a problem on our hands. That advice, like the advice of intelligence professionals the world over, went unheeded and now we have exactly that -- radical Islamists attacking Europe and the U.S. mainland.

When things go wrong, intelligence services get shot at by everyone from politicians covering their rear ends, to the press, and by everyone in between. But we rarely hear when things are done correctly, which is far more often than not.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is at the top when it comes to ranking the best intelligence agencies in the world today, in spite of often-feckless political leadership. Thats just a cold, hard reality and is not based on any biases I hold. They simply are the best -- with their global reach, people excellent at collecting information, and near geniuses at conducting analysis. The CIA, with the skills of its personnel and a mountain of cash to back things up, has paramilitary capabilities that can win wars and defeat armies, and is ever increasing its achievements in the digital age. There is simply none better.

The CIAs Counterterrorism Center, which had three hundred employees on the day of the 9/11 attacks, now has more employees than al-Qaidas core worldwide. But no organization is perfect, and weak political leadership coupled with CIAs kinetic operations pulled the agency from its traditional espionage mission, undermining its ability to interpret global developments such as the Arab Spring.

However, the CIA is a reflection of America, and just as our country rises to the challenges and adapts, overcomes, and plows ahead, so does the agency. Its learning from the mistakes, improving, growing, and getting better by the day.

Certainly, there are a number of other good services in the world today and many with global reach, such as the British, Russian, and Chinese. The French have an amazingly efficient internal security organization in the Direction generale de la securite interieure, or DGSI. Their surveillance capabilities are outstanding. Then there are crack outfits like the Israelis and the Jordanians, but they have both been historically focused on their regions to the exclusion of a larger global focus, and for good reason. No doubt Britain, Jordan, and Israel all land in the top five or six, despite their shortcomings in other areas.

Which countrys intelligence service is the worst? Thats a more difficult question to answer -- do you include their counterintelligence capabilities or their covert action programs, or lack thereof? Many services dont get involved in those things at all. Its a race to the bottom.

Just as the CIA is a reflection of the United States, European Union (EU) intelligence services, for the most part, reflect those governments. If the EU doesnt wake up to the fact that intelligence collection is a necessary endeavor requiring investment not only of fiscal capital, but political capital, and begin systematic reform of those intelligence and security services, it wont be long before they look around and discover the Moors have taken over and the EUs remaining days will then have a number.

Jamie Smith is a decorated former CIA officer, author of Gray Work: Confessions of an American Paramilitary Spy (WmMorrow/HarperCollins 2015), former advisor to the Chair of US House Intelligence Terrorism, HUMINT, Analysis, and Counterintelligence Subcommittee, founding Director of Blackwater Security and frequent commentator for FOX News, CNN, MSNBC, and advisor to GRAY | Solutions and holds a doctorate in law.
Fifty intelligence analysts at CENTCOM headquarters are being retaliated against for exposing a scandal involving altered intelligence reports about ISIS that put a far more optimistic spin on military progress against the terrorists than the analysts originally reported. The reports were changed by high-ranking officers at CENTCOM and were used by the Obama administration to "prove" that we are winning the battle against Islamic State.

Some analysts have lost their jobs, and higher-ups at CENTCOM have been looking at which analysts may have talked to the media or the Pentagon inspector general who is investigating the allegations.

Daily Beast:

One of the analysts alleging reprisals is the top analyst in charge of Syria issues at CENTCOM. He and a colleague doubted rebels capabilities and their commitment to U.S. objectives in the region. The analysts have been effectively sidelined from their positions and will no longer be working at CENTCOM, according to two individuals familiar with the dispute, and who spoke on condition of anonymity. The analysts skeptical views put them at odds with military brass, who last year had predicted that a so-called moderate opposition would make up a 15,000-man ground force to take on ISIS in its self-declared caliphate. An initial $500 million program to train and arm those fighters failed spectacularly. And until the very end, Pentagon leaders claimed the operation was more or less on track. Lawmakers called the plan a joke when Gen. Lloyd Austin, the CENTCOM commander, finally testified last September that there were just four or five American-trained fighters in Syria. Earlier allegations from CENTCOM, the military command responsible for overseeing the Middle East, had focused on leaders there fudging intelligence reports about U.S. efforts to attack ISIS and undermine its financing operations. That analysts are now raising red flags around reporting on Syrian rebel groups suggests that, at least from the analysts perspective, there is a broader systemic problem than was previously known. The Pentagon inspector general and a congressional task force are investigating allegations of doctored intelligence reports about ISIS. The working environment at CENTCOM has been described as toxic and hostile. As The Daily Beast previously reported, more than 50 CENTCOM analysts have said that senior officials gave more scrutiny and pushback on reports that suggested U.S. efforts to destroy ISIS werent progressing. Analysis that took a more optimistic view of the war effort got comparatively less attention from higher-ups.

The inspector general's report is expected shortly. But CENTCOM's head of intelligence, General Steven Grove, along with his civilian deputy Gregory Ryckman, has been accused of deleting emails and other documents related to the case. It's unknown whether the I.G. got a complete picture of what was going on at CENTCOM due to a lack of cooperation by senior intelligence officers.

This wouldn't be the first time a president, or those loyal to him, fudged intelligence for political reasons, and it probably won't be the last. Congress would like to get to the bottom of where the impetus for altering intel reports came from. Was it ambitious officers at CENTCOM who wished to please superiors in Washington who were politically connected? Or did the order come from the White House?

Keep an eye on this scandal, as it will likely explode when the I.G. releases his report.
Several state attorneys general have joined in a campaign to prosecute energy companies for misleading investors on global warming.

These A.G.s claim a conspiracy, implying that investors are unaware that climate changes may impact investments, and have committed to using the power of the state to prove it. In November 2015, ExxonMobil was targeted by New York State attorney general Eric T. Schneiderman, who is pursuing a strategy based on claimed similarities to the way tobacco companies were found guilty in 2006 of suppressing their own research showing tobacco being both harmful and addictive.

Virginia A.G. Mark Herring joined five other A.G.s and former vice president Al Gore in the goal of determining whether fossil fuel companies misled investors and the public on the impact of climate change on their businesses. Herring is also a supporter of the EPAs Clean Power Plan (CPP).

When scientific argument fails its cause, governmental legal prosecution becomes Plan B. Attorneys general and law enforcement officials around the country have long held a vital role in ensuring ... the progress we have made, according to Gore. That is the inconvenient truth of governmental dogma.

Claiming disastrous climate change related to human activities, alarmists disregard eons of natural climate variations. Climate change is a vague term and is often undefined. No student of history denies that the climate changes. These A.G.s posturing as legal determiners of scientific truth join the current vogue to label variations in some idealized concept of an unchanging normal climate (the Goldilocks Climate) as a disaster. The evidence is otherwise: sea level rate of rise remains about 7 inches per century, droughts are cyclical, tornadoes are less frequent and less deadly, fewer hurricanes are hitting the U.S., and even the polar bears are thriving. Global temperatures have plateaued for 18 years even as CO2 levels have increased 10 percent (the recent El Nino caused an expected temperature spike).

Virginias A.G. Herring supports the EPAs CPP proposal, estimated to reduce global warming a mere 0.01 degrees Celsius. EPA administrator Gina McCarthy, asked if she considers 0.01 degrees a significant contribution to halting climate change, said, No. It is the righteous feeling and thought that count, not the actual change achieved. Progressives base their actions on emotional satisfaction, not scientific analysis.

The tidewater/Hampton Roads/Norfolk, Virginia coastal areas are cited as a source of justification for climate control legislation. Rising sea levels secondary to climate change are targeted as the driving force of coastal flooding. Such dogmatic political posturing ignores the findings of scientists at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. Dr. John Boon reported that the good news is that absolute sea level in Chesapeake Bay is rising only about half as fast as the global average rise rate. The bad news is that local subsidence more than makes up for it. Coastal flooding is a disaster, but it results from land sinking secondary to ongoing geological forces, not climate change.

Folklore law strategy for the lawyers: 1. If the facts are against you, argue the law. 2. If the law is against you, argue the facts. 3. If the facts and the law are against you, yell like hell...to which one can now add forget the facts, forget the law, and sue into submission.

Charles G. Battig, M.S., M.D., Piedmont Chapter president, VA-Scientists and Engineers for Energy and Environment (VA-SEEE). His website is www.climateis.com.
The Moche people lived in northern Peru near present-day Moche and Trujillo, between 1,900 to 1,200 years ago, long before the Inca Empire. The Moche lacked written language, but were incredibly skilled in pottery and ceramics which they used to communicate ideas and express their lives by depicting detailed scenes of hunting, fighting, sacrifice, ceremonies, and sexual encounters in startlingly explicit detail. This last item, the so called Sex Pots, have been the subject of much research and study of sexual values in pre-Columbian Peru.

The Moche Sex Pots are actually functional clay post, with hollow chambers for holding liquid and stirrup-shaped spouts for pouring, often in the form of a phallus. They depict men, women and animals engaging in a variety of sexual acts, the most common of which is anal sex. When Spanish invaders discovered them, the unabashed depiction of sodomy and masturbation so affronted their Christian belief that they had the posts smashed.

Photo credit: www.metmuseum.org

The anal sex in particular is reproduced over and over, in a variety of styles, indicating that it was produced by different artists over a long period of time. To remove any doubt that may arise in the minds of the viewer regarding the gender of the penetrated figure, the artist often carved the genitalia carefully, despite their small scale, so as to demonstrate that it is the anus, not the vagina that is being penetrated. Scenes of vaginal penetration are itself extremely rare. Sometimes, accompanying the couples, one can see an infant suckling onto the breast of the female while she is having sex. There are also figures depicting women administering fellatio, or masturbating. Some depict male skeletons masturbating, or being masturbated by living women.

These pots clearly reflect very different notions of sex and reproduction from ones that prevail in the West, and, because of this, a lot of researchers have had trouble making sense of them, writes UNEARTHING [Update: website no longer available].

The absence of vaginal penetration, for instance, has been interpreted by some as to illustrate birth control methods, while some suggest it emphasizes male dominance and male pleasure. While modern viewers may find the presence of the child during a sexual act distasteful, according to Mary Weismantel, it suggests that the Moche believed that the seminal fluid that transfers from men to woman is the same vital substance that transfers from the mother to the child. Weismantel argues that like many cultures, Moche saw sexual reproduction not as a single event or act but as a series of practices that occur over long periods of time, involving various transfer of bodily fluids into various orifices. Similarly, pots depicting women masturbating skeletons may show the transfer for vital bodily fluids that came from their long-dead ancestors.

The Moche sculpted hundreds of thousands of pots, of which some one-hundred thousand survive till date. About five hundred or so deal with the subject of sex. These pots are distributed all over the world in museums and in the hands of private collectors, the largest of which is found in the museum of Rafael Larco Hoyle in Lima. Rafael Larco was one of the first who made a detailed modern study of Moche pottery. His chronological categorization of ancient Peruvian cultures is still used today.

Sources: Wikipedia / Mary Weismantel / Handbook of Gender in Archaeology by Sarah M. Nelson
The ancient city of Avila is located in central Spain, in the autonomous community of Castile and Leon, about 100 km to the west of Madrid. Regarded as one of the finest walled city in Europe, Avila is built on the flat summit of a rocky outcrop which rises abruptly in the middle of a vast treeless plain strewn with immense grey boulders and surrounded by lofty mountains. Its 2,500-meter long city wall is almost completely intact.

Avila was once part of the Roman Lusitania, before falling to the Arab and Berber invaders in 714 CE. For the next three and a half centuries the northern Iberian Christian kingdoms tried repeatedly to seize control of the city, but it was King Alfonso VI of Leon and Castile, who eventually managed to conquer the Muslims in 1088 ADE. The King immediately started building a great stone wall around Avila to protect his latest conquest from further attacks. The job was supervised by his brother-in-law, Raymond of Burgundy, who was a legendary figure himself.

Photo credit: Never House/Flickr

The walls of Avila is an impressive 2.5 km barrier of stone and granite that surrounds the citys almost rectangular layout. The walls are up to 10 feet thick and 40 feet high, and topped by a continuous battlement rampart-walk and parapet with merlons and cernels. Protruding out from the walls are eighty-eight semi-circular defensive towers, placed at uniform intervals. The walls are punctured by eight (or nine?) entrance gates. Originally, there was a moat and a barbican outside the walls, but they no longer exist. The massive fortification was completed in less than a decade.

The area enclosed by the walls is now designated the Old Town, and contains all of the citys historic landmarks including the Gothic cathedral, the Convent of Santo Tomas, containing the tombs of Tomas de Torquemada, who was the first grand inquisitor of Spain, and of Don Juan, the only son of Ferdinand and Isabella, and several Romanesque churches.

Today it is possible to walk upon the walls for roughly half their circumference. At night the entire circumference of the wall is lit up by yellow-orange halogen lights, making it the largest fully illuminated monument in the world,

The Old Town of Avila was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985.

Photo credit: Allan Reyes/Flickr

Photo credit: jorcolma/Flickr

Photo credit: Leticia Ayuso/Flickr

Photo credit: jorcolma/Flickr

Photo credit: jorcolma/Flickr

Photo credit: itsthinking/Flickr

Photo credit: Carlos/Flickr

One of the gates. Photo credit: Son of Groucho/Flickr

Photo credit: Allan Reyes/Flickr

Photo credit: Yildori/Wikimedia

Photo credit: Son of Groucho/Flickr

Photo credit: Anual/Wikimedia

Photo credit: jorcolma/Flickr

Photo credit: Carlos/Flickr

Sources: Wikipedia / UNESCO / Architecture of Spain by Alejandro Lapunzina / Britannica
Google is of course a US-based company, and so its unsurprising that their products launch in their home nation before they end up heading to other markets. Even so, across the pond the UK has often been pretty quick to catch on when it comes to new Google products, and when Android Wear was first launched it launched in the UK at the same time as it did in the US  as well as elsewhere. Since then, practically every model of Android Wear watch has been available in the UK, but one of the latest  and perhaps most intriguing for some wearers  Android Wear watches; the Casio WSD-F10.

Charming model number aside, Casios first Android Wear watch sets itself apart from the rest of the options out there by not only being rugged and adhering to military standards, but by offering a different look altogether. One of the first watches to launch in an orange hue, as well as featuring mil-spec waterproofing, the Casio WSD-F10 is a fairly unique entry into the world of smartwatches. It might not stay like that for long however, as Nixon and Qualcomm have partnered up to launch the Mission, a watch that features many of the features of the new Casio, but with a little more of a modern twist to it.

Speaking to Wareable, a Casio representative is quoted as saying that there are only plans for the WSD-F10 to be stocked in the US and Japan, with no confirmed date for UK release. Of course, this is partnered with the all too familiar at the moment which means this is subject to change no doubt. Not releasing such a watch outside of Japan or the US seems like a poor idea on Casios part, as theres a market in the UK as well as parts of Europe for these watches, if sales of the Apple Watch and Samsungs Gear devices are anything to go by. Not to mention that Casio is a watch brand people will know and trust throughout Europe, and consumers are perhaps more likely to purchase a smartwatch from a watch brand more than just another gadget brand. Regardless, as of right now, it appears as though Casios first foray in Android Wear is going to be an exclusive one for those in the US and Japan.
Messaging apps are a dime a dozen these days, and although BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) from the Canadian smartphone vendor was once all the rage, it has been relegated to the back seat over the past several years with the advent of various cross-platform mobile messaging apps, such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Hike, Viber, Line, WeChat and the like. However, BBMs dwindling popularity can mostly be attributed to the falling market share of BlackBerrys smartphones amidst an explosion of consumer-oriented mobile platforms like Android and iOS. Having accepted the declining nature of its own, in-house operating system, BlackBerry (formerly Research in Motion) made its BBM app cross-platform back in 2013, meaning, it wasnt exclusive for BlackBerry handsets anymore.

However, the damage was done, and BBM, the service that was once the first and last word in the world of instant mobile messaging, was now hard pressed to find new users, who had, by then, hopped onto the bandwagon of some of the newer kids on the messaging block, like WhatsApp or iMessage. As for BBM, even as the Canadian company was trying to gain more users for its messaging app, it withdrew a couple of its newer features  Retract and Timer  from the free version of the software. The features were originally introduced to BBM in late 2014, and was available for free with the basic version of the app. However, as part of its push to monetize software in face of fast-declining hardware sales, BlackBerry introduced a $1 monthly fee for a premium tier, and incorporated the two aforementioned features within that subscription plan.

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However, the latest update to the BlackBerry Messenger app on the Google Play Store has now reinstated the Retract and Timer features to the free version of the app, although, the paid-for premium subscription tier continues to remain an option. While most of the features on BBM are now available for free with the Privacy and Control subscription tier being done away for good, users can still opt to pay a monthly fee to get rid of the ads and avail of a couple of other features, called Sticker Club and Custom Pin.
After having a pretty mediocre  by Samsungs standards  2014 and 2015 with the Galaxy S5 and Galaxy S6 family of devices, Samsung looks to be back on track with the Galaxy S7 family (this includes the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge). After receiving great reviews from just about every reviewer out there, Samsung has reportedly shipped 10 million Galaxy S7s, according to a report out of CNBC. The report didnt say whether this was just Galaxy S7s or if it included the Galaxy S7 Edge as well. Either way, shipping that many units in just a month is definitely a good sign. However, its important to remember the difference between shipped and sold. These are the number of units that have been shipped to retailers and carriers around the world. The number of units sold may be much different.

We likely wont hear official numbers from Samsung until their earnings, which should be later this month or next month  seeing as Q1 ended on March 31st. Its likely that Samsung will also beat expectations for the first quarter, considering the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge were available for a few weeks in the first quarter, with them releasing it pretty quickly after the announcement at Mobile World Congress in February. Although Q2 may look even better for the South Korean company.

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Samsung had some competition from LG at Mobile World Congress, but that doesnt appear to have phased them so far. The Galaxy S6 was a great device, however the Galaxy S7 and by that token the Galaxy S7 Edge, improved on their predecessors in basically all of the right areas. Adding in larger batteries (jumping from 2550mAh on the Galaxy S6 to 3000mAh on the Galaxy S7, and 2600mAh on the Galaxy S6 Edge to 3600mAh on the Galaxy S7 Edge), as well as bringing back microSD card support, and waterproofing. Something that was in the Galaxy S5 but not the Galaxy S6. Both of these devices are great devices from Samsung, and they are likely to continue to sell very well throughout 2016. Being available in about 60 countries already, with more to come, itll likely outsell their predecessor, which is what Samsung really wants.
When Samsung first launched the Gear VR, they did so alongside the Galaxy Note 4 and Galaxy Note Edge as an Innovator Edition. Since then, its become a fully-fledged consumer product in the $99 Gear VR and now works with the Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy S6 Edge+, Galaxy Note 5 and of course the newly-launched Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge. Samsung have taken a smart approach to virtual reality, partnering with the firm behind the Oculus Rift and more recently giving the headsets away free with the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge. Now, it appears as though Samsung is starting to add more and more to the overall experience the Gear VR has to offer. Most recently, that means adopting the WebVR standard.

WebVR is an in-development Javascript API that will allow virtual reality headsets to browse the web and experience VR content on web pages. Right now, its available in nightly or experimental builds of both Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. As well as this, Samsung has recently added support for WebVR to their Samsung Internet for Gear VR app. This is an app that users can install through the Oculus app on their Samsung smartphones and essentially extends the Samsung browser to the VR headset. With WebVR support, it means that this browser will be able to display and interact with VR content found on the web. It is however, using a pre-1.0 version of the API, which is unfortunate, but updates should be coming soon, either way.

Right now the amount of content thats available online using the WebVR standard is fairly thin on the ground, but with big names like Samsung now adopting the standard, this could lead to more content hitting the web. Regardless, this does bring a somewhat novel web browser that Samsung developed for the Gear VR up to standard with an emerging API that should become more useful and better utilized in the future. This is just one more example of more and more content becoming available for Gear VR and were sure before long that Samsungs offering could be one of the most fully-featured mobile headset out there.
Twenty-first century terrorist organizations are often accused of following brutal practices from medieval times, but the way they infiltrate the hearts and minds of many an impressionable youngster is anything but medieval. While social network accounts for terrorist organizations spewing venom at anybody and everybody is old news, recent reports have indicated that these groups are finding newer ways of reaching and influencing disenchanted, disillusioned and disenfranchised young men and women with their twisted ideology (or whatever passes for it at any rate). According to a report from last week, even mobile app stores are now starting to get infiltrated by software created and maintained by the information and technology wings of terrorist organizations like the Taliban and Islamic State (variously known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh).

With apps that disseminate terrorist propaganda proliferating on the Play Store, Google has now sat up and taken note. According to reports, the tech giant has now removed an app called Alemarah, which apparently was publishing news and videos related to the Taliban. An official Google spokesperson refused to speak on this particular case, but reportedly reiterated that the company periodically reviews and removes apps from the Play Store that violate its policies against hate speech. Those policies clearly state that Google reserves the right to remove apps that advocate against groups of people based on their race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, or gender identity, which is believed to be the clause under which the company acted against Alemarah. However, the Taliban is far from a one-trick pony, with a well-established digital footprint that includes multiple websites, social media accounts and channels on mobile messaging apps.

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The one alarming thing, however is the fact that while the Taliban-controlled app is now a thing of the past on the Google Play Store, an app allegedly created by the Islamic State (IS) is still very much available for download officially from Google, thanks to a technicality. According to reports, a messaging app called Alrawi thats currently listed on the Play Store, is a product of the notorious group that has claimed responsibilities for a number of terrorist attacks around the world over the past few years, including the recent atrocities in Brussels, Paris and Lahore. The only reason Google has been unable to act in this case, is because being a messaging app, Alrawi and its creators are not technically responsible for how its users use the software, even if it means that theyre almost exclusively using it to propagate violence against innocent civilians.

Meanwhile, a tweet from Bloomberg reporter, Mr. Eltaf Najafizada, says that a Taliban representative has claimed that Alemarah is only temporarily off the Play Store because of technical issues and will be back soon. Its not yet known whether theres even an iota of truth in the claim or if the organization is just refusing to accept that it has been dealt a blow by Google.
Xiaomi has been founded back in 2010, which makes this companys success even harder to believe. In less than 5 years Xiaomi managed to become Chinas number 1 smartphone manufacturer, and the company was still placed no.1 at the end of last year. Huawei is still above Xiaomi in global terms, but Xiaomi still has an edge as far as China is concerned. That being said, Xiaomi was founded on April 6th, which means that their anniversary is coming up in two days, and as its the case every year, Xiaomi plans to hold the so-called MI Fan Festival, read on.

The Mi Fan Festival is essentially another name for Xiaomis anniversary, during which the company sells a ton of their products for a fraction of their price. We knew that Xiaomi will offer such discounts in China, but it seems like the company plans to do the same in India as well, which is not that surprising considering this is their second most important market at the moment. Xiaomi has officially announced the Mi Fan Festival in India, and the company also said that they will offer new devices for sale on their official site on Wednesday from 8am to 10pm IST. New accessories will be available for sale on Wednesday as well, including the 20,000mAh Mi Power Bank, LED Light Enhanced Blue, and the Mi in-Ear Headphones Pro. Now, the Mi 5 flagship will also go on sale on Wednesday, though we already knew this considering the company said so the other day. Keep in mind that only the 3GB RAM (32GB of internal storage) Mi 5 variant will be available in India this Wednesday, the company did not even announce the other 3GB RAM (64GB of internal storage) model, nor the Mi 5 Pro (4GB of RAM + 128GB of native storage). Also worth noting is the fact that the Mi 5 will be available through a flash sale, so the device wont be available for open purchase just yet.

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Xiaomis flagship will be priced at Rs. 24,999 on Wednesday, while the Mi In-Ear Headphones Pro will cost Rs. 1,399. The LED Light Enhanced Blue will set you back Rs. 249 if you opt to purchase them, and the Mi USB Cable 120cm is priced at Rs. 149. Now, if you need an external battery to carry around, the 20,000mAh Mi Power Bank will b be available for Rs. 1,699. This is not all though, you can expect more products to be available, stay tuned.
Wife shoots husband in testicles over affair

To Florida, where 60-year-old Victoria Reid has been arrested on charges of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon domestic violence and aggravated assault domestic violence.

She is said to have challenged her husband of 16 years over his affair.

Reid demanded that her husband sit on the couch and told him that she was going to maim him and give him post-traumatic stress disorder, from which she said she also suffers, according to deputies. Reid taunted her husband and threatened to shoot him in the face and chest and kill him, officials said. Reid shot her husband in his left knee, but the bullet travelled up his thigh and lodged in his testicles

The affair is now on hold, indefinitely

Anorak

Posted: 4th, April 2016 | In: Strange But True Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
(ANSA) - Cairo, April 4 - A 2,000-page dossier has been prepared in view of Tuesday's visit by a delegation of Egyptian investigators to Rome to share information on the murder of Italian researcher Giulio Regeni, daily newspaper 'Al Shourouk reported Monday, citing security sources. Regeni, 28, went missing in Cairo on January 25, the heavily policed fifth anniversary of the uprising that ousted former strongman Hosni Mubarak, and his mutilated body was found on February 3 in a ditch on the city's outskirts. Egypt has denied speculation its security forces, who are frequently accused of brutally repressing opposition, were involved in the death of the Cambridge doctoral student. "The interested bodies have prepared a dossier of 2,000 pages on the case giving an outline of the crime and the disappearance of the body, as well as investigations on 200 people of different nationalities who had relations with the victim".


(ANSA) - Cairo, April 4 - A 2,000-page dossier has been prepared in view of a visit by a delegation of Egyptian investigators to Rome to share information on the murder of Italian researcher Giulio Regeni, daily newspaper Al Shourouk reported Monday, citing security sources. Regeni, 28, went missing in Cairo on January 25, the heavily policed fifth anniversary of the uprising that ousted former strongman Hosni Mubarak, and his mutilated body was found on February 3 in a ditch on the city's outskirts. Egypt has denied speculation its security forces, who are frequently accused of brutally repressing opposition, were involved in the death of the Cambridge doctoral student. "The interested bodies have prepared a dossier of 2,000 pages on the case giving an outline of the crime and the disappearance of the body, as well as investigations on 200 people of different nationalities who had relations with the victim," Al Shourouk reported.

Italian and Egyptian investigators will meet in Rome to discuss the case of the murder of Italian researcher Giulio Regeni on April 7 and 8, the interior ministry's department of public security said on Monday. Two magistrates and three police officials will take part for the Egyptian delegation. The meetings had been expected to take place on Tuesday.

Rome has complained of a lack of cooperation over the case after a series of possible Egyptian versions of how Regeni might have died met incredulity in Italy.


(see related) (ANSA) - Rome, April 4 - Italian and Egyptian investigators will meet in Rome to discuss the case of the murder of Italian researcher Giulio Regeni on April 7 and 8, the interior ministry's department of public security said on Monday. Two magistrates and three police officials will take part for the Egyptian delegation. The meetings had been expected to take place on Tuesday. Rome has complained of a lack of cooperation over the case after a series of possible Egyptian versions of how Regeni might have died met incredulity in Italy.


(ANSA) - Rome, April 4 - Premier Matteo Renzi told his Democratic Party (PD) executive Monday that unlike former premier Silvio Berlusconi he was not trying to "impede" judicial probes such as one into a southern Italian oil project that has rocked the government. "The profound difference with others is that they spoke of legitimate impediment, I say question me, the others spoke of the statute of limitations where I ask for sentences and I say do the trials, but quickly. We are not the same as others: let that be printed on the heads of anyone who has doubts. We are not those who asked fo legitimate impediments, but we ask for sentences to be issued seriously, quickly". Industry minister Federica Guidi quit last week over a government amendment that benefitted the Tempa Rossa oil project in Basilicata.

Being leftwing means cutting taxes for business and boosting public and private investments to grow the economy, Premier Matteo Renzi told an executive meeting of his centre-left Democratic Party (PD) Monday. He said Italy, having achieved key reforms, now had the authority to transmit this message to the whole of the EU via the European Socialist caucus (PES) in the European Parliament. "Before now we didn't have alternatives, we were stuck between a rock and a hard place", he said.

Italy must free up private and public investment to boost growth above its current fractional amounts, Premier Matteo Renzi told a meeting of his Democratic Party executive Monday. "My idea is that alongside structural reforms Italy must unblock public and private investments if it is to rise above growth percentages higher than a telephone area code," he said. "That is the government's underlying thesis".

"We need a more organic project rather than a mere reaction," he said, exhorting PD lawmakers to "read and reread" US President Barack Obama's comments on Libya in a recent interview in The Atlantic magazine. As well, the center-left premier said "the security problem won't get solved by barricading the borders - even if it were possible to do so - but rather by remaining vigilant against (Islamist) terrorism and also by focusing on outlying neighborhoods". The current international scenario "highlights the difficulties of the European Union," Renzi added, saying the EU faces "three great crises" - one of ideals, one of political stability, and one of the European left. Building walls against asylum seekers will only "destroy the last 25 years of European policymaking," he said. The European Socialist Party must take the lead in defining the EU agenda, Renzi said.




(ANSA) - Rome, April 4 - Premier Matteo Renzi told a meeting of his Democratic Party (PD) executive Monday that an "organic" plan not a kneejerk military intervention is needed in Libya.

"We need a more organic project rather than a mere reaction," he said, exhorting PD lawmakers to "read and reread" US President Barack Obama's comments on Libya in a recent interview in The Atlantic magazine. As well, the center-left premier said "the security problem won't get solved by barricading the borders - even if it were possible to do so - but rather by remaining vigilant against (Islamist) terrorism and also by focusing on outlying neighborhoods". The current international scenario "highlights the difficulties of the European Union," Renzi added, saying the EU faces "three great crises" - one of ideals, one of political stability, and one of the European left.

Building walls against asylum seekers will only "destroy the last 25 years of European policymaking," he said. The European Socialist Party must take the lead in defining the EU agenda, Renzi said.


(ANSA) - Rome, April 4 - Fresh doubts have emerged over the conviction of Somali man Omar Hashi Hassan in the 1994 murder in Mogadishu of Italian reporter Ilaria Alpi and cameraman Miran Hrovatin.

According to the Italian diplomat who investigated the case in Somalia, former ambassador Giuseppe Cassini, the driver who acted as a key witness for the prosecution was "an unreliable individual who would do anything to survive".

Cassini's declassified testimony was published by La Repupbblica newspaper Monday.

In January a Perugia appeals court granted a defence motion to reopen the trial of Hassan.

The court agreed to admit new evidence that has since emerged that could reverse the conviction.

The defence is seeking exoneration for their client, who was released to the custody of social services in June last year after serving 16 years of a 26-year sentence.

Alpi, 32, and Hrovatin, 45, were ambushed and shot in their jeep in Mogadishu by a seven-man commando on March 20, 1994.

Photos taken of the dead body of Alpi, who worked for public broadcaster RAI's third channel, and a medical report on the deaths, along with other key evidence including Alpi's notes, camera and video cassettes, mysteriously went missing on the journey back from Africa to Italy, fuelling suspicions of a cover-up.

In February last year, a key witness for the prosecution said that Hassan was "innocent".

Speaking to RAI Channel 3, Ahmed Ali Rage claimed that he was asked to testify against Hassan.

"I did not see who fired the shots," he reportedly told RAI 3, recanting his testimony.

Alpi, 32, and Hrovatin, 45, were ambushed and shot in their jeep in Mogadishu by a seven-man commando unit on March 20, 1994.

Initially, it was thought that the journalist was murdered as revenge for clashes which had broken out between the militias of Somalia's warlords and Italian peacekeepers.

But a 1999 book by Alpi's parents called The Execution alleged that Alpi and Hrovatin were killed to stop them revealing what they knew about an international arms and toxic-waste ring implicating high-level political, military and economic figures in both countries.

The book accuses the Italian secret services of playing a major role in this ring.

Hassan, who travelled to Italy in 1998 to give evidence in a probe into brutality by Italian soldiers, was acquitted of involvement in the two murders at the end of a first trial in July 1999.

But he was found guilty by an appeals court in 2000 and sentenced to life in prison.

Italy's supreme Cassation Court upheld the guilty verdict in October 2001 but reduced the sentence from life to 26 years because it said the crimes were not premeditated.

Hassan's lawyers have claimed he was not in Mogadishu at the time of the killing, and say he was tricked into coming to Italy.


(ANSA) - Rome, April 4 - Italy is a cultural superpower, Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said Monday at a meeting with the newly appointed president of the Italian National Commission for UNESCO, business executive and economist Franco Bernabe. "The cultural dimension of diplomacy, foreign policy, of the way Italy projects itself into the world is absolutely key," Gentiloni said. "One could say Italy is a cultural superpower. The relationship with UNESCO is very important from this point of view".

The government is "very proud" of the fact that Italy is the country with the most UNESCO World Heritage sites - 51 in all, Gentiloni added.

The National Commission for UNESCO has twin objectives, the minister added - that of coordinating Italian proposals to the UN agency and that of defending Italy's cultural heritage, including from "the menace of terrorism".

Preserving cultural heritage means "not only valuing the legacy of the past, but to make sure the future also has resources upon which to build," Bernabe said.

"I make this commitment with extreme seriousness...in view of the creation of humanity's future cultural heritage - the one present generations will leave future ones".


(ANSA) - Rome, April 4 - Premier Matteo Renzi told his Democratic Party (PD) executive Monday that unlike former premier Silvio Berlusconi he was not trying to "impede" judicial probes such as one into a southern Italian oil project that has rocked the government. "The profound difference with others is that they spoke of legitimate impediment, I say question me, the others spoke of the statute of limitations where I ask for sentences and I say do the trials, but quickly," Renzi said. "We are not the same as others: let that be printed on the heads of anyone who has doubts. We are not those who asked for legitimate impediments, but we ask for sentences to be issued seriously, quickly". Industry minister Federica Guidi quit last week over a government amendment that benefitted the Tempa Rossa oil project in Basilicata.

The government is ready to pass a conflict of interest bill, the premier said, denying critics' claims his administration is being influenced by the oil lobby. "People who steal from a public works project must go to jail (and) if they plea bargain they must return everything up to the last cent because that is one of our reforms," he said. "We passed a bill on environmental crimes and we want to vote a bill on conflict of interests." He also called on "the Italian judiciary not only to investigate (the Tempa Rossa deal) as quickly as possible but also to reach a verdict". "Some investigations by the Potenza judiciary have an Olympics-like timing and they never resulted in a verdict," Renzi said. "A civilized country is one where verdicts are reached". The premier said he wants the judiciary to be "inflexible" in identifying wrongdoers and putting them behind bars. "I ask the magistrature, which has all our respect, to be inflexible in nabbing those who commit crimes and in sending them to prison," he said. The premier added anyone alleging the PD took kickbacks from oil companies "will have to answer for it in court". "A political battle is one thing, talking about the PD as though it were a community of criminals is another," Renzi said.

"We are a community of decent people".

The center-left premier went on to talk about an October referendum on constitutional reforms abolishing the Senate in its present form to make government leaner and more efficient. Renzi has said he will resign if that vote goes against him.

"I'm much more interested in the constitutional referendum than the one on energy, and not because my job is on the line but because the October vote is a watershed in the reform process," he said. "Let's see who wins and who loses and then we'll decide who goes home," he said, shrugging off attacks from the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S) led by Beppe Grillo.

Renzo went on to say it was "fun" to see what he called a "Holy Alliance" between ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi, rightwing Northern League leader Matteo Salvini and the M5S regularly lose confidence motions against the government. He predicted the same would happen over a confidence vote on the Tempa Rossa southern Italian oil project which has seen industry minister Federica Guidi quit over a tapped phonecall to her oil-man boyfriend about a government amendment benefitting the project. The no-confidence vote on the government's handling of the case is expected later this week.

Renzi also said being leftwing means cutting taxes for business and boosting public and private investments to grow the economy. He said Italy, having achieved key reforms, now had the authority to transmit this message to the whole of the EU via the European Socialist caucus (PES) in the European Parliament. "Before now we didn't have alternatives, we were stuck between a rock and a hard place", he said.

Italy must free up private and public investment to boost growth above its current fractional amounts, he said. "My idea is that alongside structural reforms Italy must unblock public and private investments if it is to rise above growth percentages higher than a telephone area code," he said.

"That is the government's underlying thesis".

On the international front, Renzi called for "a more organic project rather than a mere reaction" on Libya.

As well, the center-left premier said "the security problem won't get solved by barricading the borders - even if it were possible to do so - but rather by remaining vigilant against (Islamist) terrorism and also by focusing on outlying neighborhoods". The current international scenario "highlights the difficulties of the European Union," Renzi added, saying the EU faces "three great crises" - one of ideals, one of political stability, and one of the European left. Building walls against asylum seekers will only "destroy the last 25 years of European policymaking," he said. The PES must take the lead in defining the EU agenda, Renzi said.


Egypt has 2,000-page dossier on Regeni ready Italian and Egyptian investigators to meet in Rome on april 7-8

(ANSAmed) - Cairo, April 4 - A 2,000-page dossier has been prepared in view of Tuesday's visit by a delegation of Egyptian investigators to Rome to share information on the murder of Italian researcher Giulio Regeni, daily newspaper 'Al Shourouk reported Monday, citing security sources. Regeni, 28, went missing in Cairo on January 25, the heavily policed fifth anniversary of the uprising that ousted former strongman Hosni Mubarak, and his mutilated body was found on February 3 in a ditch on the city's outskirts. Egypt has denied speculation its security forces, who are frequently accused of brutally repressing opposition, were involved in the death of the Cambridge doctoral student. "The interested bodies have prepared a dossier of 2,000 pages on the case giving an outline of the crime and the disappearance of the body, as well as investigations on 200 people of different nationalities who had relations with the victim".



Italian and Egyptian investigators will meet in Rome to discuss the case on April 7 and 8, the interior ministry's department of public security said on Monday. Two magistrates and three police officials will take part for the Egyptian delegation. The meetings had been expected to take place on Tuesday. Rome has complained of a lack of cooperation over the case after a series of possible Egyptian versions of how Regeni might have died met incredulity in Italy. (ANSAmed)
TUNIS - The ''National dialogue on labor'' promoted by Tunisian Premier Habib Essid with representatives from entrepreneurial confederation Utica (Union Tunisienne de l'Industrie, du Commerce et de l'Artisanat) and the trade union Ugtt (Union Generale Tunisienne du Travail) has ended with an agreement on a 16-point reform plan. The dialogue, with the participation of officials from the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, African Development Bank and the European Union, is aimed at tackling youth unemployment that led to violent protests across the country in mid-January.



The plan aims to cut down unemployment to 11% by 2017 by supporting entrepreneurs and through partnerships between public and private actors, the development of a social and solidarity economy and the approval of legislation that is up to speed with new regional and international economic scenarios.



The project also provides for the qualified training of people looking for a job to help the offer meet employment demands, free services (mainly in the healthcare and transport sectors) for those who have a university degree and are looking for a job, assistance to those fired, the approval of a code for professions and capabilities, the creation of a sole structure for the coordination and the monitoring of funding and projects for small and medium-sized firms, boosting incentives for companies hiring employees, the promotion of investments in sectors like energy, agriculture, tourism and trade. Moreover, a superior council for the promotion of employment under the government's direction will be created.



The Tunisian reform plan benefits from the support of the IMF, which has pledged three billion dollars over the next four years starting from April, as well as the African Development Bank and the European Union, which will allocated another 500 million dollars.



World Bank president, Jim Yong Kim, who attended the last day of the Dialogue, has said that a partnership strategy is being defined with Tunisia that will be finalized in May and will develop in three directions: boosting the economic growth of the country, reducing regional disparities and social inclusion initiatives mainly aimed at the young with a total investment of five billion dollars in five years. And Italy will also play its part. On May 9 and 10 in Tunis, an Italian-Tunisian economic forum will be held with the participation of a delegation of the Renzi government and representatives of the main national companies that mean to invest in Tunisia. (ANSAmed).
ROME - The first groups of migrants were deported from Greece to Turkey on Monday as a deal between the European Union and Ankara on easing the asylum-seeker crisis came into effect.



Over 136 migrants, mostly Pakistani nationals, were taken from the Greek island of Lesbos to Dikili in western Turkey.



Another 66 were dispatched from the island of Chios.



Under the deal the EU will accept a Syrian refugee for every Syrian migrant returned to Turkey after a failed bid for asylum.



Indeed, German media said a first group of 16 legal Syrian refugees landed in Hannover as part of the agreement. Syrian refugees who reached Hanover from Turkey include a number of ''seriously ill'' cases, a spokesman of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees BAMF told ANSA.
ROME - A ''healthcare network'' in Catania is aimed at responding quickly and effectively to the emergency of epidemics. The project, presented on Monday morning in the Sicilian city during the first Euro-Mediterranean congress on biocontainment called ''Management of the infectious emergency'', organized by the hospital unit Azienda Ospedaliera di Rilievo Nazionale di Alta Specializzazione Ospedale Garibaldi (Arnas) - in cooperation with the Sicily region and the city of Catania - involves the Garibaldi hospital, the port and the airport Fontanarossa. They are all able to immediately treat patients with symptoms of serious infectious illnesses, as well as ''isolate, with sophisticated lab tests, the infectious agent''.



''The airport of Catania is the most important national hub in the south with a few million passengers in transit each year'', said Claudio Pulvirenti, director of Catania's Usmaf (Offices of maritime, air and border health).



''We have focused our attention on prevention and managing of the sick, creating inside the airport system, together with Sac (the company managing security at Catania's airport), a structure able to manage passengers presenting signs and symptoms of an infectious disease and prevent contagion and its spread in our territory''.



The need to promptly and effectively respond to the risks posed to public health and healthcare emergencies of national interest, through the network, is dictated by the constant inflow of migrants, dealt with by the navy and coast guards.



''As Catania has become a bridge and point of arrival in the Mediterranean for migrants - explained Giorgio Santonocito, director general of Arnas - the hospital Garibaldi is getting organized as a center of excellence of Sicilian healthcare for infectious diseases. The migrant who arrives at the port goes through a screening, at dedicated docks, to detect potential illnesses. If the tests are positive, the migrant has to go through the biocontainment route and is taken to the High Containment by the Italian Red Cross - at the high biocontainment unit of the hospital Garibaldi, where all exams are carried out''.



''Catania, like other Italian cities, is in a condition that lead emergency rooms to be crowded - said Sergio Pintaudi, director of the emergency department of the Garibaldi hospital -. Everyday there are patients with meningitis, tuberculosis and infectious diseases we thought we had left behind and are instead once again present. The emergency is possible and it is real, just think about SARS and the recent Zika virus that could spread thanks to globalization and the ease with which people move, but beyond the moment, it is necessary to get ready to deal with these circumstances''.


ZAGREB - Croatia has set two conditions for Serbia to continue its path towards EU membership: ending interference of its judiciary in trying war crimes committed across the whole territory of former Yugoslavia and regulating the rights of the Croatian minority in Serbia with a bilateral agreement, Croatian Foreign Minister Miro Kovac said.



''Without these two points, which must be carried out before the adhesion, Serbia will not be able to continue the negotiations'', explained Kovac.



Two weeks ago, Croatia had already vetoed the opening of talks with the EU on the chapter regulating human rights and justice. Kovac recalled that Germany and the United Kingdom had set as a condition for the opening of talks with Belgrade the start of the normalization of relations with Kosovo.



''For this reason, Serbia had two wait two years before starting negotiations and in Belgrade nobody protested'', he added. Croatia, in a similar way, does not mean to give up on its two conditions which, according to Kovac, are based on the same presuppositions to those tied to relations with Kosovo: ''reconciliation and good neighborhood relations''.



The law Zagreb wants to see abolished allows Serbia to judge war crimes committed by all sides in the conflict during the 1990s, also in Bosnia and Croatia, thus extending its jurisdiction outside the Serbian State's territory. The law allowed many ethnic Serbian suspects to be tried by Belgrade, as requested by the international community. Meanwhile, it has also opened the possibility for Croatian citizens, former soldiers and officers, to stand trial in Serbia, if arrested. So far, only one such trial has taken place, sparking protests in Croatia.



The Croatian minority in Vojvodina numbers some 50,000 people, against 80,000 before the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Its status is regulated by internal Serbian law, and Zagreb now insists on an agreement with an international reach.


The commercial team changes are a further testament to Emirates strategic direction to keep its competitive edge in these regions.

Orhan Abbas has been appointed senior vice president commercial operations Africa, and will lead growth efforts across the continent and will report directly to Thierry Antinori, executive vice president and chief commercial officer. Since joining Emirates in 1998 as a management trainee, he has held senior positions in Tanzania, Iran, South Africa and the Middle East as well as the position of Vice President for India and Nepal. In 2012, he was appointed senior vice president, commercial operations, The Americas, and in August 2013 was later appointed as senior vice president commercial operations - Latin America, Central and Southern Africa.

Adil Al Ghaith, the new senior vice president commercial operations Gulf Middle East & Iran will lead a number of Emirates markets in the Middle East. Having been with Emirates for 17 years, Adil is a seasoned commercial executive in this region who led markets like Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Yemen for several years. He also previously held the position of Vice President in Pakistan and senior vice president in North and West Africa.

Rob Gurney is taking an additional responsibility for Latin America as he becomes the senior vice president of commercial operations (The Americas). He joined Emirates in October 2014 as a Divisional Vice President Australasia following an extensive career in aviation, travel and tourism; and was promoted to Senior Vice President Commercial Operations for North America in 2015.

Thierry Antinori, executive vice president and chief commercial officer of Emirates Airline said: The industry is constantly evolving and we remain committed to looking at new ways at developing our services and expanding our commercial footprint across a number of regions, including Africa, the Middle East and the Americas. With an excellent track record in growing our business, I am confident that Orhan, Adil and Rob will excel in their new roles so we stay competitive in a new year of growth.
The new flights will be operated by a combination of Airbus A330-200 and Boeing 777 aircraft, offering a total of 2,200 additional seats in Business Class and 21,500 additional seats in Economy Class over the three-month period.

These additional flights offer greater flexibility for the large numbers of guests travelling between the UAE and the GCC region, and South Africa over the summer period, said John Friel, Etihad Airways general manager, South Africa. They also provide our guests travelling from South Africa with greater access to a large number of popular holiday destinations across our global network, in Asia, the Indian Sub-continent, Australia and the USA.
The route, which is currently operated by an Airbus A320 with 132 seats, will be served by the state-of-the-art Boeing 787 Dreamliner, almost doubling capacity on the direct daily service to 254 seats. The introduction of the 787 Dreamliner will further enhance the onboard experience for passengers between the two cities, in addition to increasing capacity to 80 tonnes of cargo per week carried to and from Geneva.

Qatar Airways is delighted that the high level of demand for travel to Geneva from our worldwide network warrants a higher-capacity aircraft equipped with our award-winning on board premium product, which will be introduced on the route, said Qatar Airways Group chief executive, Akbar Al Baker. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner represents one of the most modern aircraft in the skies and we look forward to welcoming passengers on board.
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The Metropolitan Museum wanted attention this spring, this year, what with the opening of the Met Breuerand its sure getting it. Another magazine has had its crack at interpreting the Mets renewed attention to contemporary art: The New Republic published State of the Art: The Metropolitan Museum makes a bid for the modern the other day.

I have to say it is disappointing. So why I am commenting on it? I tried mining for nuggets of insight but found more points that need amplifying, questioning and, yes, correcting.

Taking its points from its top to bottom, I am posting direct quotes from the article followed by my comments in italics and bolded:

the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the beaux arts behemoth on Manhattans Upper East Side, has been rather a dowdy operation The word dowdy to describe the Met is very tiresome and utterly wrong. Elegant, sophisticated, tastefulthose are better adjectives for the Met. But the Met does not lack for style, which is the definition of dowdy. Queen Elizabeths wardrobe may be called dowdy, but not the Duchess of Cambridgesshes classic and stylish, like the Met. and not trendy.

the courtly Frenchman Philippe de Montebello No, not right: French-born is accurate.

Susan Sellers, who was hired by Campbell in 2013 as the head of a newly reinvigorated department of design, described de Montebellos Met as being like a university, a gaggle of somewhat disjointed faculties. Now, how would she know? de Montebello left the Met in 2008. Ms. Sellers arrived five years later. Is she relating hearsay? She did not come from the museum world. Previously, she had been a founding partner and the creative director of 24 and Senior Critic in Graphic Design at Yale School of Art. Not a great source for that particular point. It is, of course, in her interest to say that what she inherited was a mess; it makes whatever she does look better.

The move into the Met Breuerwas arranged in part to accommodate a massive trove of modern art donated to the Met by cosmetics magnate Leonard Lauder. Well, not exactly. Lauder bequeathed his collection to the Met; aside from the occasional loan, it resides in his apartment. The Met has an eight-year lease on the Breuer, though it is, I believe, renewable. But that sentence implies that the Met has that massive trove now, or will havebecause Lauder diesbefore the lease expires. I wouldnt count on that.

The $1.1 billion Lauder gift instantly made the Met into a prime destination for twentieth-century paintings and sculpture. Again, not reallynot until Lauder dies. Definitely not instantly.

Sheena Wagstaff, installed in 2012 as the first curator of Campbells department of modern and contemporary art. Technically, this is true. But only because the Met has changed the name and dimensions of the department over the years. William Lieberman, you will recall, was hired in 1979 as chairman of the Mets department of 20th-century art. It was renamed the department of modern art in 1999, and in 2004 it became the department of 19th-century, modern and contemporary art. No matter what you think of Liebermans view of contemporary art, he was the head of that department.

A lumbering, top-heavy exercise in quasi-Brutalism, [the Breuer building] was not a building that played nicely with its Upper East Side neighbors Lumbering? Not the adjective Id choose.

More importantly, the show [Unfinished] affords a convenient device for cutting into a deep core sample of the Mets collectionfeaturing, of course, some of the recent Lauder contributions Again, not quite. According to the press materials provided to me by the Met, there is one painting in Unfinished from The Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection: Cezannes Bouquet of Peonies in a Green Jar, ca. 1898.

Unlike Lauder, the Rockefellers were not major players in a white-hot art scene that has seen the worlds wealthy turn to auctioneers, gallerists, and private dealers as de facto bagmen for converting cash into portable artistic investment vehicles. Now this does a real disservice to Lauder; he is far from a bagman who converted art to cash. I believe (but would have to double-check) that Lauder bought most of his collection in the 80s and 90s, though he keeps buyingfor more than one collection; I know he assembled the Cubist collection quietly, when it was not fashionable to collect Cubism, with a careful vision and sold rarely, if ever.

The Whitney, smaller and more nimble, charged with an experimental sensibility that it sees as intrinsically American, was perhaps better able to produce shows of greater originality and freshness during its Madison Avenue residency than the slower, larger Met can hope to do in the same setting. And if the Met, with all its historical baggage tries too hard to be the Whitney, the results could be awkward. This is revisionism: for how many years was the Whitney, right or wrongly, known as the enfant terrible of the NYC museum scene, the place that got so many things wrong? The author did use the word perhaps. Good thing.

No longer just a storehouse for Greco-Roman artifacts and impressionist blue-chip paintings, the Met is now a serious contender in the fast-paced modernist marketplace. Cmonthis leaves out the Islamic, Asian, Egyptian, American, decorative arts, costume and other departments.

Im writing this for one reason only: I dont want these points to be taken as gospelor worse, repeated. I dont want people who dont know the Met to be guided by the impression this article leaves.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Guardian
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.
For the heads of the Eastern Churches, meeting in Bkerke, the election of a new president is a question of the highest importance. Political leaders must solve the "economic and social crisis" that has brought the country to the brink of collapse, unable to handle the migrant emergency. For Card al-Rahi, "only mercy save Lebanon.

Beirut (AsiaNews)  The patriarchs of the Eastern Churches gathered today for a spiritual meeting in Bkerke, seat of the Patriarchate of Antioch of the Maronites, under the guidance of Card Bechara al-Rahi.

At the end of the meeting, they issued a statement concerning the failure of the countrys parliament to elect a new president for almost two years, calling it a question of the highest importance, since the presidential vacancy weighs heavily on the functioning of state institutions. The prelates also called for a stop to the exodus of Christians in the Middle East, particularly from war zones in Iraq and Syria.

Since 25 May 2014, when President Michel Suleimans term of office ended, Lebanon has been without a head of state. Since then, the Lebanese Parliament and its political factions have failed to agree on a successor.

In recent months, the Maronite Patriarch and local Church leaders have repeatedly called - in vain so far  for lawmakers to elect a new president. Today, at the end of the spiritual meeting, the patriarchs of the Eastern Churches renewed their call for the election of a new head of state.

The prelates also urged lawmakers to "work hard and honestly" to solve the countrys "economic and social crisis," whose impact is especially hard "on young people," and to do so on the basis of "fairness".

As the possibility that Lebanese nationals might be expelled and their bank accounts frozen, the progressive deterioration in the relationship between Lebanon and other Arab countries was another point highlighted by the Christian leaders gathered in Bkerke. All this, they warned, has "a negative impact on the people of Lebanon and its interests."

The patriarchs  Catholic and Orthodox, together with the leaders of Protestant Churches  have been engaged for some time in finding a common response to the major local and international challenges. In today's meeting, they also addressed the issue of the exodus of millions of refugees from the wars in Iraq and Syria, many of whom are Christians.

For months, Lebanon, like neighbouring Jordan, has had to face a real emergency, which the local Church has been closely following.

"Lebanon does not have the means to accommodate Syrian, Palestinian, and Iraqi refugees, the Christian leaders said. For this reason, political solutions are needed from the international community to encourage repatriation.

What is more, The exodus of Christians from Iraq and Syria has reached the proportions of a genocide," like what happened last century to the Armenians in the late Ottoman Empire."

The prelates discussed other issues as well, like the importance of citizenship as an element of national unity, care for the environment in the middle of an unprecedented waste emergency, and the need to fight religious and sectarian extremism.

Yesterday, Patriarch al-Rahi celebrated a solemn Mass for the Festivity of Divine Mercy. During his homily, the cardinal said that "it is useless to hope in Lebanons salvation, if mercy has no place in the heart of our rulers. Mercy, for Christians, must be reflected in everyday actions and deeds.
The first deportees from the hundreds on the islands of Lesbos and Chios. They are being brought to Dikili, Turkey, to be registered and accommodated in tents. The Turkey-EU deal criticized as "illegal and inhuman".

Istanbul (AsiaNews / Agencies) - Three Turkish ships with dozens of migrants on board have left the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios this morning to begin deportations of migrants to Turkey, under a controversial agreement between the EU and Turkey.



This morning a small ferry, the Lesvos and the catamaran Nezli Jale boarded about 131 people mostly Bangladeshis and Pakistanis. In Chios, another island in the Aegean Sea, a Turkish boat boarded other migrants, of an unknown number. They are being shipped to Dikili, in the west of Turkey, where two camps that can accommodate at least 500 refugees have been prepared.



The government of the Izmir region has stated that the migrants will stay in Dikili and in Cesme (another camp) for a short time before being transferred elsewhere.

Under the agreement, all illegal migrants arriving in Greece, or whose application for asylum has been rejected, will be deported to Turkey. For every Syrian who is sent back, the EU will accept a Syrian from a Turkish refugee camps provided that they have all the necessary documentation.

In exchange for accepting the migrants, Turkey will receive a donation of  3 billion from the EU, in addition to faster steps for the integration of Turkey into the Union. The agreement was strongly criticized by many groups as "illegal and inhuman".

Last year, at least one million migrants and refugees arrived in Greece from Turkey. Many of them wanted to go to Germany and other northern European countries, but several EU nations have closed their borders for security and political reasons, in response to the xenophobia of certain social groups.
The clashes between farmers and police in Kidapawan caused two deaths and dozens of serious injuries. The president of the Episcopal Conference: "We pray for the victims, that they may find peace. And we appeal to families: do not seek revenge, but work for dialogue". The Redemptorists of Manila: "You can not meet peoples hunger with weapons".

Manila (AsiaNews) - The death of a person "is always a tragic event, but it becomes even more so when it strikes the innocent and the poor, dear in the eyes of God. Let us pray for our farmers in Kidapawan, that they may find peace, and we appeal to their families: Do not seek revenge, rather work for dialogue" writes the President of the Filipino bishops' conference, Msgr. Socrates Villegas, following violent clashes between farmers and police in the Davao area.



The violence erupted on April 1 after days of protests and demonstrations by about 6 thousand farmers. These, for the most part of Lumad ethnicity, demanded more decisive government action against drought caused by El Nino and accused the authorities of having diverted funds meant for the farmers. In response several departments of riot police were deployed: the overall toll from the violence is two dead and dozens injured.

In addition to condemning the violence, Msgr. Villegas asked the police and the army "to return to its mandate, which is to preserve peace in our nation, but also protect the weak and serve justice". A missionary of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions, Fr. Peter Geremiah, confirms that several dozen farmers were arrested: he was able to visit them in prison yesterday.

The Redemptorists of Manila have harshly condemned the episode, in a statement they write: "These criminal acts are unacceptable. You cannot offer only one alternative to the hungry: stop complaining and go home. It is indefensible that a police force should respond with murder to the demands of those who defend their rights".
Inspired by the solemnity of the Annunciation Francis says that "we all, throughout each day, have to say 'yes' or 'no' and think if we always say 'yes' or if we often hide, with our head down, like Adam and Eve for ... do not say 'no', but pretend to be those 'that do not understand ... that do not understand what God is asking".

Vatican City (AsiaNews) - Being men and women who know how to say "yes" to the Lord, like Abraham, Jesus and Mary and not like those who look "the other way to avoid responding", said Pope Francis at Mass this morning in Casa Santa Marta House.

The Pope was taking his cue from the Feast of the Annunciation, the "yes" of Mary, to remember the "humanity of men and women" who while "elderly" like Abraham or Moses, "said yes to the hope of the Lord".



Abraham, he recalled, obeys the Lord, says "yes" to his call and to leave his land without knowing where he was going. And we also think of Isaiah who, "when the Lord tells him to go and tell the people," says he has "unclean lips". The Lord "purifies Isaiah's lips and Isaiah says yes!". The same goes for Jeremiah he thought he was unable to speak, but then he says 'yes' to the Lord.

"And today the Gospel tells us the end of this 'chain of yes' but the beginning of another 'yes', which begins to grow: Mary's yes. And that 'yes' that God does not only look at how man is progressing, not only walks with His people, but becomes one of us and takes on our flesh. Marys yes which opens the 'door of Jesus: 'I have come to do your will', the 'yes' that goes with Jesus throughout his life, even to the Cross. " It's the 'yes' of Jesus who asks the Father to take the cup from him, but adds: Father "Thy will be done." In Jesus Christ, therefore, "there is the 'yes' of God: He is the 'yes'".

This, he continued, is "a beautiful day to thank God for teaching us that the  path of Yes', but also to think about our lives." A thought that the Pope addressed in particular to some priests present celebrating the 50th anniversary of their ordination. "All we all, throughout each day, have to say 'yes' or 'no' and think if we always say 'yes' or if we often hide, with our head down, like Adam and Eve for ... do not say 'no', but pretend to be those 'that do not understand ... that do not understand what God is asking. Today is the 'Feast of yes'. In the 'yes' of Mary is the 'yes' of the whole history of salvation, and there begins the last 'yes' of man and of God. " There, "God recreates, as in the beginning with a 'yes' He made the world and man, that beautiful creation" and now with this 'yes', "most wonderfully recreates the world, recreates all of us." And '' the 'yes' of God who sanctifies us, that keeps us going in Jesus Christ. "

"It 's a day to thank God and ask ourselves:' Am I a man or woman who says 'yes' or a man or woman who says no or do I look the other way not to avoid responding? '. May the Lord give us the grace to walk on this path of men and women who were able to say yes".
How The Panama Papers Leak Will Impact The US Presidential Election

Trending News: Bernie Sanders Was Just Given A Gift That Will Make Him President

Why Is This Important?

Because at a time of surging popular anger at the political and economic elite, the revelation that the rich are benefiting on a massive scale by screwing over everyone else may lead to the political upheaval they so are so terrified of.

Long Story Short

A huge scandal over offshore tax havens has just exploded, so expect the five remaining presidential hopefuls to answer some questions that will leave some of the squirming. Probably no one will squirm more so than Hillary Clinton  and no one will benefit more than her rival Bernie Sanders.

Long Story

When you think of the term global elite, few names spring to mind more readily than Bill and Hillary Clinton. And while the former and perhaps future First Couple have had a pretty good run despite some spectacular ups and downs, the Panama Papers scandal may permanently dash their hopes of moving back into the White House.

The leak of 2.6 terabytes worth of data from a Panamanian law firm that specializes in facilitating tax dodging by rich people around the world is going to lead to some very uncomfortable questions for some world leaders (it already has, in Icelands case). That could include Hillary Clinton, one of the most insider-y of all Beltway insiders.

UPDATE: Panama Papers scandal topples first government.

Sanders has regularly railed against Clintons coziness with some of the most morally questionable financial companies out there, notably Goldman Sachs.

Email shows Clinton State Dept pushing Panama pact amid warnings it would help the rich hide money #PanamaPapers pic.twitter.com/OA3Z22Jgjq  David Sirota (@davidsirota) April 4, 2016

So when Sanders tells his throngs of adoring fans that the system is designed to favor a small, wealthy circle, the Panama Papers appear to back him up. And while neither Clinton nor any of her friends have been linked to any mischief, yet, there is no denying that she is part of that same elite that benefits from devious offshore tax havens.

And Bernie so clearly is not. His hands appear clean, and that is a huge part of his appeal to a generation that feels the odds have been deliberately stacked against them for the gain of others. The longer this scandal is kept alive, the better it is for the Sanders campaign.

The reason that our campaign is doing well is that we are doing something unusual in American politics: we are telling the truth.  Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) April 4, 2016

With the Wisconsin primaries set for Tuesday, his campaign can use the help. He holds a slight lead over Clinton, but some observers, including the New York Times, appear ready to eulogize it already, in face of what they say are near mathematically impossible odds of securing the delegates needed for the nomination.

But If Sanders can hammer the point that Clinton belongs to that demographic, an enraged and powerless electorate can swing even further against her, and line up firmly behind him.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question: Would even the slightest hint of Panama Papers impropriety be enough to sink the Clinton machine?

Disrupt Your Feed: Not many Americans have been named in the Panama Papers yet. But expect big revelations over the course of the week.

Drop This Fact: No matter where you look, news outlets will be discussing the Panama Papers for a while. The 11-million-plus leaked documents have been shared with 109 media organizations in 76 countries.
Panama Papers Leak Details Secret Corruption Of World's Most Rich & Powerful

Trending News: Panama Papers Leak Is Potentially The Biggest Scandal Of Our Time

Why Is This Important?

Because Bond villains are real  it just turns out that they're in charge of governments.

Long Story Short

The system is rigged. The rich and powerful are stealing from the masses, cooperating with criminals and hiding the money in secret offshore holdings. Documents leaked from a Panamanian law firm implicate presidents, prime ministers, kings and other world leaders from dozens and dozens of countries. Billions of dollars have been stolen from the pockets of citizens and quietly moved into the dirty accounts of greedy and corrupt world leaders. This scope of the scandal is unprecedented.

Long Story

Mossack Fonseca. Remember that name. Its the name of the law firm based in Panama that might be responsible for the collapse of companies and countries alike.

The bombshell investigation conducted and published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) went live on Sunday, sending shockwaves across the political and financial worlds. The ICIJ is an initiative that was launched in 1997 by the Center for Public Integrity  an organization devoted to "to reveal abuses of power, corruption and dereliction of duty by powerful public and private institutions in order to cause them to operate with honesty, integrity, accountability and to put the public interest first."

More than 2.5 terabytes of information, including 11.5 million documents that span almost 40 years, were anonymously leaked to the ICIJ. Mossack Fonseca has a foothold in 42 countries and has helped the rich hide money in offshore accounts in tax havens like the British Virgin Islands. Over the past year, a team of 370 journalists from 70 countries have poured over the massive amount of information in order to trace the trail of corruption back to the most powerful people in the world.

Vladimir Putin and a network of his associates are connected to nearly $2 billion in money that has been moved though secret accounts and shadow companies.



Egypt's former president Hosni Mubarak, the King of Saudi Arabia, Libya's former leader Muammar Gaddafi and Syria's president Bashar al-Assad, are among some of the world leaders named in the files.

The Prime Minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, was found to have created a secret offshore company, where money was stashed. This was his reaction when reporters asked him about the holding:



He then walked out of the interview. People have already called for his resignation and snap elections.

The ICIJ released this short video to explain the investigation. It's wildly explosive, accusing the firm of working with tax-dodging companies, arm's dealers and even pedophiles:







Basically, it's how politicians hide money from bribery and corruption; it's how companies avoid billions in taxes; and how criminals launder money from drugs, guns and human trafficking.

So far, most of the people named in the scandal are from outside the US. After the 2008 financial crisis, laws were put in place to help stop these types of shady dealings. Remember, however, that the documents go back nearly four decades and that if you really want to break the law, you'll find a way.

Editor of Suddeutsche Zeitung responded to the lack of U.S. individuals in the documents, saying "Just wait for what is coming next"  Mathew Ingram (@mathewi) April 3, 2016



What's next? More details will emerge in the coming days and weeks as more dots are connected by studying the documents. CEOs will resign, politicians will be ousted and, hopefully, some will even go to jail.

This scandal could also ignite a movement similar to 2011's Occupy Wall Street, except on a global scale. It could also be the unexpected event that changes the course of the Presidential election. Both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, who are positioned as anti-establishment figures, could benefit massively. There will be a public backlash against those shady backdoor dealings conducted by the ruling elite that both candidates have railed against so vocally in the past.

Or, like so many of the times that we've seen the vile perversity of those that control the system  the system that bleeds us of our future and our self-determination  we will avert our eyes and do nothing.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question: How many will actually see assets seized or the inside of a jail cell?

Disrupt Your Feed: Imagine all the files being destroyed at other firms right now.

Drop This Fact: Mossack Fonseca is only the fourth largest company in the world that provides these types of services.
Australia is likely to see an uptick in resource sector deals this year according to M&A partners at Minter Ellison.



Partner Ron Forster said private equity companies and large strategic buyers are looking for opportunities in distressed sales.



Some of the companies are finding their balance sheets are under pressure and are being forced into asset sales, Forster told Australasian Lawyer.



That's one of the drivers to increased M&A activity in the sector. While this is a general trend across the sector, it's the smaller cap oil and gas companies that are most vulnerable.



Companies with balance sheets under pressure still need financing even if the asset isnt currently producing anything, Forster said, providing an opportunity for lawyers.



We're seeing more companies trying to fundamentally restructure their businesses, he said.



These are opportunities for lawyers to work with their clients to help them over the hump.



In many cases, efforts to reduce costs have been passed onto the services sector which has seen heavy knock-on effects.



Some companies took on too much debt during the mining boom and it's now clear that reducing the business's cost base is no longer enough, said Minter Ellison partner Michael Hughes.



What we're seeing are more companies trying to fundamentally restructure their businesses, with or without formal processes.



Forster predicts the trend will continue for the remainder of 2016 and possibly into the 2017.




Though The Advertiser reported that Beazley hasnt commented on exactly why he made the decision, insiders said he believes temporary judges wont help the backlog and that the government should adequately resource the courts.Beazley has been praised by the SA Law Society for taking a stand against the ongoing judge shortage in the state.Judge Beazley has distinguished himself by refusing this appointment because he has done it for all the right reasons, namely the need for our courts to be rejuvenated with respect to judicial succession and I commend the judge on a decision which puts the public interest ahead of his self-interest, said Law Society president David Caruso.[Appointing auxiliary judges] is a politicisation at least from the point of the public perception about the way our courts operate.According to the ABC, Caruso said the appointment of temporary judges is an attempt to save money. The Law Society said Beazleys rejection of the appointment is good for the independence of the judiciary.These appointments are for a limited tenure, Caruso said.Judge Beazley was one of three auxiliary appointments of three District Court judges to the higher Supreme Court  now judges should be appointed on a full-time, permanent basis for the sole reason that it ensure their independence from government.He said he hopes the message that permanent appointments should be made will get through to Attorney-General John Rau Use of auxiliary judges is a matter for the courts, said a statement from Raus office.They are necessary from time to time to hear cases that may require specific legal expertise, or in cases where local judicial officers have a conflict of interest.
New Zealand trusts have been found to be at the centre Panama papers scandal by law firm Mossack Fonseca.



According to a report by Stuff this morning, the criminal underbelly of the tax haven industry has been using New Zealand to hide their wealth, and the country has fought hard to keep foreign profits tax-free and invisible for beneficiaries of offshore trusts.



Most of the offerings provided by the off shore industry are legal, provided they are used by law abiding customers, the ABC reported.

The details of the 200,000 companies registered by Mossack Fonseca have emerged from 11.5 million tax haven records, obtained by German newspaper Suddenusche Zeitung and investigated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.



A Stuff report has revealed that Mossack Fonseca set up a New Zealand trust for a client titled Humanitarian Intervention Relief and Research Trust with a Panama company, the chief beneficiary would be Gabriel Jose Pretus Becerra.



Becerra had been prosecuted by the Criminal Court of Spain for a presumable fraud and money laundering, but the Court ruled in favour of Becerra absolving him from any charge, a Mossack Fonseca operative noted.



The report by Suff has also revealed that Mossack Fonseca set up two Panama companies back in 2013, outwardly controlled by a Mossack Fonseca firm, ATC Administrators. But these two companies were in reality controlled by Maltas energy minister, Mizzi and the other by the Malta PMs chief of staff, Schembri.



The companies were dormant until 2015 when Mossack Fonseca set up the Rotora Trust for Mizzi and the Haast Trust for Schembri, with the ownership of the two Panama companies transferred to the trusts, which faced no tax scrutiny in New Zealand of any Panama income.



Mossack Fonseca then applied for Dubai bank accounts for the two companies which was knocked back for several reasons but principally because the Ultimate Beneficial Owners were Politically Exposed Persons.



As both settlors [that is, the parties that set up the trust] are PEP, our NZ colleagues need to be comfortable that sufficient due diligence has been carried out to ascertain that funds being settled are not subject to any corruption risk, and ideally that they come from income generated prior to the settlors' political appointment, a Mossack Fonseca operative in Panama wrote.



With respect to Haast Trust, it would appear that there was some negative coverage regarding the tender process for supply of paper to the government shortly after the settlor's appointment as Chief of Staff, so if you could also include a detailed information about this, that will be a very important information for us as well.



Stuff reported that the documents showed that the firm was concerned with being able to show they had taken steps to verify their clients.

My New Zealand-based trust, together with any attached company, which has not traded so far, was opened as a contingency for this reason upon advice from my financial advisers, Schembri told journalists in Malta earlier this year.



I will also be asking a reputed auditing firm, independent of my financial advisers, to audit the New Zealand-based trust and related operations, and will make this report available to the media.


People are dissuaded from using legal services by three key barriers: inaccessible language and communications; lack of trust; and failure to cater for the needs of vulnerable consumers.Thats according to a new report published by the Legal Services Board, the legal profession super-regulator for England & Wales. It says that the profession should learn from other sectors in overcoming the issues, as they are not specific to lawyers.On language, the LSB references an Australian paper by Tahlia Gordon and Steve Mark, released in April 2015 which noted: The legal profession speaks a fundamentally different language to the general public. Although many jurisdictions have implemented measures to bridge the language gap through plain language initiatives, many people continue to feel overwhelmed by the concept of approaching a lawyer for help.The report highlights the efforts of financial and medical professions in the use of plain English (with multiple translations) to enable consumers to better understand processes.International law firm Quinn Emmanuel Urquhart & Sullivan has hired Damian Scattini as a partner in its Sydney office. As one of Australias leading corporate plaintiff and class action lawyers, Scattini was a principal and head of Maurice Blackburn s Queensland class actions practice.A surge in the number of lawyers in the last two decades has not created a good marketplace for law firms, says the Wall Street Journal. Following Tokyos push to double the number of lawyers with a westernisation of the legal system, lawyers are often struggling to find work amid a low crime rate and falling bankruptcies.Its getting a lot harder to make ends meet, no doubt about it, law firm co-owner Shinichi Sakano told the WSJ.Private attorneys income almost halved between 2006 and 2014, to an average of AU$0.11 million and there has been a drop in the number of students applying to Japans law schools.Shinjiro Takagi has joined the Tokyo office of Morgan Lewis as part of the firms strategic growth in Asia. The former judge is a prominent bankruptcy lawyer and is recognised in Japan for his leadership in some of the countrys most high-profile corporate restructurings.
Staccato said: New Zealand Citizen Family Relationship (Temporary) visa (subclass 461)



Hi everyone,



I am a Kiwi here in Australia. I just got married to my wife who is a Canadian citizen. She is here with me in Australia on a Working Holiday Visa I would like to apply for the following visa so that she could continue to live & work with me here. I have a few questions regarding this visa.



1) I believe this visa requires her to have a health checkup. Where do I begin with this? Do i proceed with the health checkup prior to lodging the application or after I lodge the application.



Can I also use "My Health Declarations" ?



2) The applications also asks us to prove our relationship is of a genuine one by showing joint bank accounts, proof that we share utility bills etc etc. She has only been here for 6 months and we don't have any of the following. Is it as easy as just opening a joint bank account ?



Can anyone please explain the following. Would be of great help to us both



Thanks & regards,

S Hi everyone,I am a Kiwi here in Australia. I just got married to my wife who is a Canadian citizen. She is here with me in Australia on aI would like to apply for the following visa so that she could continue to live & work with me here. I have a few questions regarding this visa.1) I believe this visa requires her to have a health checkup. Where do I begin with this? Do i proceed with the health checkup prior to lodging the application or after I lodge the application.Can I also use2) The applications also asks us to prove our relationship is of a genuine one by showing joint bank accounts, proof that we share utility bills etc etc. She has only been here for 6 months and we don't have any of the following. Is it as easy as just opening a joint bank account ?Can anyone please explain the following. Would be of great help to us bothThanks & regards, Click to expand...

I have no idea about that particular visa, however with the relatively short processing time for this visa listed on the DIBP website, then you may wish to get it done prior to lodging - via My Health Declaration to save time.As to your second question, the information you need to provide is the same as for the 820 visa, (which is the visa my husband applied for) so you may wish to have a look at the 820 waiting room thread - http://www.australiaforum.com/visas-immigration/38930-820-temporary-onshore-waiting-room.html ).Opening a joint bank account now will likely not satisfy the requirement, however it certainly won't hurt.While you do need to discuss all of the categories listed in the partner migration handbook http://www.border.gov.au/Forms/Documents/1127.pdf its normal if you have more evidence in one category than another....immigration are trying to get an overall picture of your relationship.As like you we didn't have joint bills (they were in my husbands name when I first moved to Norway and we never changed them) or a joint bank account (not common in Norway) - so we provided evidence of money transfers, and bank statements highlighting payments for bills, groceries etc from our individual accounts - to show how we both contributed to the cost of things, and transferred money to each other as needed.notsure
The three Mercedes-Benz Actros trucks aren't just individually autonomous but also connected. This allows them to travel much closer together, since they will all react at the same time in case of an emergency - brakes are deployed simultaneously and with the adequate force in order to prevent a chain crash. This style of driving in a close convoy is called platooning and is credit for a drop in CO2 emissions and fuel consumption of 10 percent compared to regular conditions.With our autonomous and connected trucks, we are pleased to participate in the European Truck Platooning Challenge initiated by the Netherlands. I wish our drivers to have a good and successful trip on their way to Rotterdam. We consider platooning as a meaningful part of the integrated approach in which all stakeholders in road transport contribute to reduce fuel consumption and CO2, said Dr. Wolfgang Bernhard, responsible for Daimler Trucks & Daimler Buses in Daimlers Board of Management.Driving in a convoy is one of numerous examples to raise the performance of goods transport extensively with connected trucks. Today already 365 000 commercial vehicles of Daimler are connected. We are consequently pushing this development, he continued. The Highway Pilot Connect is a more advanced version of the Highway Pilot, the world's first and only system for automated driving of heavy trucks.The three Actros trucks departed from the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, and are expected to reach the Dutch port of Rotterdam in two days, on April 6. The tour of the three Mercedes-Benz trucks leads from Stuttgart over Heilbronn (A81) on the highways A61 and A67 across the federal states Baden-Wurttemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia towards Venlo for passing the border into Holland.As we've said before, it's very likely that heavy trucks will cut in front of passenger cars and become the first road-going vehicles to use autonomous and connected driving on a large scale. And if they do, you can bet that Mercedes-Benz will be the leading brand. Unless Tesla decides to do something about it.
DCT

We recently reported on the latest rumors in the industry , regarding the possibility that Honda might have aoption available for its high-performance sport bikes shortly. So far, the DCT system is only available on rather few models, but it looks like customers are starting to like it more and more.Currently, Honda offers the following models that can be equipped with Dual Clutch Transmission : theVFR1200X Crosstourer, the VFR1200F, CRF10000L Africa Twin, NM4 Vultus, NC750X and NC750S, the CTX700 and CTX700N middleweight cruisers, and the Integra maxi scooter.Industry rumors mention that the 1,000cc and 600cc CBR models might receive a thorough update soon, and the DCT option is on the list as well. Seeing Honda working to make this technology more popular may be a solid hint regarding the maker's immediate plans.Available only in English and Japanese at the time of writing, the new Honda DCT website will receive more languages soon, a Honda press release informs. Such a move speaks clearly about Honda's intentions to draw more customers from international markets.Whether the DCT technology is the yellow brick road for Honda or not is, at least now, impossible to tell, but we do reckon that things are moving in such a way that appears to indicate this.We'd surely like to see Honda delivering even more info about the DCT gearboxes, explaining how they work and thus offering customers a deeper understanding of the technology.If we didn't know anything about DCT, the current info on the website is rather skimpy, and it does not make things too clear as to the possibility to use this dual-clutch transmission in fully automatic mode, or with the bar-mounted buttons, or even with the accessory shifter pedal.Something tells us that we will see more DCT models quite soon. Reportedly, DCT bikes are faster around the bends than traditional ones, despite their extra weight, and this might appeal to more riders than expected.Will Honda show a new CBR1000RR generation this fall? Difficult to guess, but we certainly hope they do. Head over to Honda's DCT website to find out more.
NHTSA

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

In the description ofcampaign number 16V168000, Fiat Chrysler highlights that the left front brake caliper is prone to cracking because it was made from an incorrect material. Yes, as stupid as it sounds, only the left front brake caliper is the culprit here. FCA doesnt explain what an incorrect material is, but the truth of the matter is that the manufacturer used the wrong type of cast iron ally.If the front brake calipers were to crack, this condition lengthens the distance needed for the vehicle to stop, increasing the risk of a crash. According to Fiat Chrysler, 14,768 vehicles from the 2015 and 2016 model years are affected. To be more specific, the Jeep Grand Cherokee mid-size SUVs and Dodge Durango full-size SUVs manufactured from December 9, 2015, through January 14, 2016.FCA US LLC promised to notify affected owners. Jeep and Dodge service technicians have been instructed to inspect the front left brake caliper. Even if no cracks have developed whatsoever, the dealership will replace the caliper free of charge. Unfortunately, FCA hasnt provided a notification schedule yet.For up-to-date information on this recall, affected owners may contact FCA US LLC at 1-800-853-1403. Dont forget to mention that the internal number for this recall is S16. If the customer service line is busy, you may ring theat 1-888-327-4236 (TTY 1-800-424-9153).In related news, Jeep presented the 2017 model year Grand Cherokee Trailhawk and an updated Grand Cherokee Summit at the New York Auto Show. More info on these models is available in this story.
Medu Capital (Pty) Ltd., a South African private equity firm, announced that it has acquired 100% ownership stakes in Universal Paints and Elite Truck Hire for R450 million ($30.6 million) through the company's private equity fund Medu III. The investments will include a management buy-in component.

Elite Truck Hire has provided short- and long-term truck hire and full-maintenance leasing for over 25 years in South Africa. The company has two offices in Midrand and Cape Town and more than 150 customers with a fleet strength of more than 1,200 vehicles. The company also offers refrigeration equipment and crane trucks. Elite Truck Hire also has two associated businesses: Elite Line Haul, a heavy, long distance transport operator, and Elite Forklift Rental, a range of forklift trucks available for full-maintenance leasing and short-term rental.

Universal Paints was founded in 1982 by Tony Ferreira and manufactures and supplies decorative paint and coatings. The company is solely supplied through its 16 dedicated factory outlets in Gauteng.

Medu Capital invests in established medium-sized enterprises in South Africa and the rest of Africa. The executive management team invests alongside its investors. Medu Capital executive Paul Moeketsi, who was involved in the deals, said he managing directors who have been appointed invested alongside Medu Capital.

Both Elite and Universal deliver high quality products and services to its customers and have experienced and successful management teams. In the case of Elite, we have increased our initial 27% stake acquired in 2007 to 100%, which we believe sends a clear signal of our confidence in the company and its management, Moeketsi said.
Czech automobile company Skoda Auto has signed an agreement with Volkswagen and SAIC Motor Co., Ltd. to invest 2 billion ($2.3 billion) over the next five years for the development of Skoda's model range in China.

This investment will also go toward pioneering electric drive concepts, connecting Skoda cars to the Internet and digitizing individual mobility, according to the company. Pending approval by the Chinese authorities, Skoda will also assume an equity position in joint venture SAIC Volkswagen Automotive Company, Ltd.

"Our aim is to double Skoda deliveries in China by 2020. For this, were now laying the foundations together with SAIC Volkswagen," said Skoda CEO Bernhard Maier.

The focus of this investment will be on expanding Skodas model range and investing in pioneering automotive technologies. Skoda will present their design study for SUV VisionS to the Chinese public at the Beijing Motor Show in April. The brand also plans to bring in a crossover utility vehicle (CUV) for China in response to a significant increase in sales for the Skoda Yeti.

"The investment of around two billion euros is a strong signal for the future research and development of new vehicle concepts and environmentally friendly technologies in China. The agreement between the two partners is an important step towards the future," said Jochem Heizmann, board member of Volkswagen AG and president and CEO of Volkswagen Group China.

With commercial agencies in the country as early as 1936, Skoda is considered a pioneer of the Chinese automotive market. Skoda began production in China in 2007. To date, the company has sold over 1.7 million vehicles in China. Six Skoda models produced at four SAIC Volkswagen Co., Ltd. plants and available on the Chinese market.
Hicks

Toyota will expand an existing partnership with Microsoft as part of a new data-driven initiative by the automaker to enhance connected-car technologies that will benefit its fleet services unit, Toyota has announced.

Toyota has formed Toyota Connected, Inc., to spearhead two mandates, including delivering seamless and contextual services, and using cutting-edge data analytics to support product development for customers, dealers, distributors, and partners.

The new company consolidates Toyota's existing initiatives in data center management, data analytics, and data driven services development. The company will be based in Plano, Texas.

Toyota is also expanding its partnership with Microsoft to accelerate research and development to deliver new connected-car solutions and elevated customer experiences, according to Toyota.

Microsoft engineers will work with Toyota Connected in Plano to provide support across technology areas and leverage a broad range of data analytics and mobile programs. Toyota Connected will adopt Microsoft's Azure cloud computing platform.

Toyota Connected is designed to centralize company initiatives across various emerging technology fields. Program areas include in-car services and telematics, home/IoT connectivity, personalization, safety, smart city integration, and a broad range data services for Toyota affiliates, dealers, and fleet services.

The unit is already providing a range of data and computer science services across Toyota's operations, including support for ongoing research into artificial intelligence and robotics and the Toyota Research Institute.

Zack Hicks has been named chief executive officer of Toyota Connected and chief information officer of Toyota Motor North America.
After the Tesla Model 3 had been launched last Thursday, preorders for the $35,000 electric vehicle came rushing up in numbers as expected. Just a few days after, Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk revealed Saturday that there had already been 276,000 preorders.

Although the initial deliveries are still a long way from being actualized in late 2017 according to BBC News, consumers from all over the world are already lining up so they could reserve a unit before Tesla announces a close for orders.

To date, a total of 276,000 preorders have been made as Musk posted on his Twitter writing, "276k Model 3 orders by end of Sat." The orders, although cannot yet be translated into actual sales besides receiving $1,000 per deposit, have also gained an anticipation of more than $10 billion in revenue after sales.

Venturebeat reports that the expected revenue would of course only be actualized when the electric-car Tesla Model 3 are delivered starting this 2017. And in light of the demand for the revolutionizing mass-marketed car which is said to reach 200 miles at a single charge, Musk also revealed that the company may rethink production planning, as per his Twitter account.

But of course, the car brand is definitely pleased with how consumers reacted since the launch of Tesla Model 3 in California. "Token of appreciation for those who lined up coming via mail. Thought maybe 20-30 people per store would line up, not 800. Gifts on order," Musk wrote on Twitter.

In fact, preorders also reached further than the U.S. reaching Canada. According to CBC, Canadians are lining up even through the bad weather outside the Tesla dealership just so they can make their deposit.

"We weren't prepared for this weather. We thought they would set up tents or something instead of making us freeze," Guillaume Tardif of Montreal told the publication.

"I worry if I wait too long that we won't get the government incentives. If this becomes a mass market car like they think it will, then the incentives are going to be pulled out. So if you save $8,000 by being here this morning it was worth it," Tardif added.


4 April 2016 10:47 (UTC+04:00)

Armenia continues to aggravate the situation despite the unilateral suspension of counteroffensive and response measures by Azerbaijani armed forces on the front line since April 3, Azerbaijani defense ministry reported on April 4.

To regain the lost positions, the enemy attacks Azerbaijani positions in the Aghdere-Terter and Khojavand-Fuzuli directions, carries out intense shelling of the settlements near the contact line of Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, according to the statement.

During the fighting on April 3 and on the night of April 4, the Armenians suffered numerous losses in manpower and military equipment, the defense ministry said.

Three soldiers of the Azerbaijani armed forces were killed in the fights, according to the ministry.

On the night of Apr. 2, all frontier positions of Azerbaijan were exposed to heavy fire from large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. In addition, Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled.

The counter-attack was made following provocations of the Armenian armed forces at night of Apr. 2, which resulted in deaths and injuries of civilians.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures have been destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank damaged by a mine.

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.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
4 April 2016 11:27 (UTC+04:00)

By Nazrin Gadimova

Armenian armed units violated ceasefire with Azerbaijan and opened intense firing on the Azerbaijani positions with heavy weapons on April 4 despite the fact that Azerbaijan unilaterally announced ceasefire on April 3.

Azerbaijans Defense Ministry reported that the enemy forces do not stop provocative actions and continue shelling Azerbaijans populated areas and civilians densely residing in the territories adjacent to the frontline area, open intensive heavy weapons fire at the positions of Azerbaijans armed forces along the line of contact mainly in the direction of Agdere-Terter and Khojavand-Fizuli regions.

Armenian armed forces have broken the ceasefire with Azerbaijan 121 times by using 60, 82, 120 mm caliber mortars in various parts of the contact line between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies in the last 24 hours. Azerbaijani armed forces inflicted 125 strikes upon Armenian positions.

During the last day and night, the Armenians lost numerous soldiers and military equipment in an attempt to return the lost positions.

In the battles, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces lost 3 servicemen.

Azerbaijani Defense Ministry has refuted the reports disseminated by the Armenians that they took control of new positions.

Spokesman for the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry Vagif Dargyahli said that Azerbaijani troops did not lose any position, and Azerbaijani Armed Forces fully control the operational situation."

On the night of April 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns.

Azerbaijani settlements near the contact line, densely populated by civilians, were fired at as well. Civilians were killed and wounded as a result of the Armenian attacks.

As a result of the counter-attack, the heights near the village of Talish, which were posing a threat to the Goranboy district and Naftalan city, as well as the Seysulan settlement, have been cleared of the enemy forces.

In order to protect the city of Horadiz, the Azerbaijani army took the height Lele Tepe under its control, which allowed to carry out supervision of a large area.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures have been destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts. Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank damaged by a mine.

--

Nazrin Gadimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @NazrinGadimova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
4 April 2016 12:43 (UTC+04:00)

By Nazrin Gadimova

Russian Ekho Moskvy radio station reports that Armenians living in the occupied Azerbaijani territories are being evacuated from the Nagorno-Karabakh.

Furthermore, Komsomolskaya Pravda informed that Armenians are leaving the settlements in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region. Shusha is almost deserted, correspondent Shagen Nazarian told the Russian media, adding that people are afraid and are hiding at home.

Strong fights continue in the southern direction, in Hadrut. My cousins and sister are living there,and my mother is planning to take them out in case of a large-scale war. If the situation keeps unchanged, probably, they will take the children to Yerevan, Nazarian added.

Armenians residing in the Armenian-occupied Aghdere region of Azerbaijan has begun to leave their homes, the Armenian bureau of the Radio Liberty reports.

Reportedly, the government has set up posts at the outskirts of the town of Askeran to prevent population, mostly young people, leaving their homes. A number of pictures and videos proving mass evacuation have been disseminated in social networks.

Azerbaijani Armed Forces strong response to the provocation of Armenian militaries have also caused panic among the Armenian military and led to massive losses in the army.

Local media reports that the commanders of the Armenian armed forces shot 17 people, who refused to take part in military actions in Nagorno-Karabakh and tried to flee.

On April 2, the Armenian military units located in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan made another provocative action along the entire length of contact line as the Azerbaijani positions along the frontline came under fire from large-calibre weapons, mortars, artillery and grenade-launchers. Some residential areas and refugee settlements close to the frontline also came under fire.

This resulted in the killing of two civilians and injuring of 10 another, including a 13 year old child. More than 10 houses as well as local people`s property were also damaged.

The Azerbaijani armed forces command took an immediate decision to launch counter attacks in order to prevent the activation of the Armenian military units in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh and other regions and to protect civilian population. Located in the most tense Aghdara-Tartar-Aghdam and Khojavand-Fuzuli directions, the Azerbaijani military units immediately carried out retaliatory actions against the Armenian troops.

As a result of these measures the Azerbaijani armed forces broke the first defensive line, where the Armenian units had carried out fortification and engineering work for years, and also took over several strategic hills and residential areas.

The Azerbaijani troops retook hills around the village of Talish capable of posing threat to Goranboy region and the town of Naftalan, as well as Seysulan settlement, and also took over Lele Tepe hill located in the direction of Fuzuli region.

Six Armenian tanks and 15 artillery units and engineering installations were destroyed, tens of Armenian servicemen were killed or injured.

Twelve Azerbaijani servicemen were killed in the fighting, a Mi-24 helicopter was shot down, and a mine blast damaged a tank.

--

Nazrin Gadimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @NazrinGadimova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz

    :


4 April 2016 14:09 (UTC+04:00)

By Nazrin Gadimova

CIS member states are concerned over the aggravation of situation on the contact line of Armenian and Azerbaijani troops.

Sergey Lebedev, CIS Executive Secretary made the remark while talking to media on April 3.

A number of officials representing CIS member states have already appealed to Azerbaijani and Armenian counterparts urging them to take immediate steps to cease hostilities and resume the search of ways for a peaceful resolution of the conflict, according to Lebedev.

The Commonwealth of Independent States, friends and partners of Azerbaijan and Armenia sincerely hope that both sides have the will and prudence to stop the bloodshed and find a the possibility to immediately resume peace talks for the benefit of peoples of both countries, Lebedev said.

Meanwhile, speaker of the State Duma, the lower house of Russias parliament, Sergey Naryshkinhas voiced belief that the way to the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is through dialogue and compromise.

"The way to the restoration of peace is always through dialogue, compromise, and both sides should constantly seek this peace and compromise," the official said.

Another member state of the CIS, Belarus, stands for peaceful resolution of the conflict in accordance with the requirements of relevant resolutions of the UNSC, the OSCE and the norms and principles of international law, according to the statement issued by countrys foreign ministry.

"Belarus is deeply concerned about the resumption of active hostilities with the use of heavy weapons in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, the ministry stressed.

Azerbaijans western neighbor Georgia, in turn, believes that the country can play the role of mediator in the long-lasting conflict.

Chief of the Georgian Armed Forces General Staff, Major General Vakhtang Kapanadze told local media that Georgia is one of the countries that have good relations with both parties to the conflict.

Kapanadze believes that the conflict is a painful process for the entire region.

The Armenian armed forces continue to intensively shell the settlements and civilians along the line of contact using heavy artillery, and continuing provocations

On the night of April 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns.

Azerbaijani settlements near the contact line, densely populated by civilians, were fired at as well. Civilians were killed and wounded as a result of the Armenian attacks.

The Azerbaijani armed forces immediately launched counter attacks to prevent the activation of the Armenian military units and to protect civilian population. Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures have been destroyed and more than 100 Armenian servicemen were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank damaged by a mine.

Despite Azerbaijan's decision on unilateral suspension of the counter-attacks and response measures in the territories occupied by Armenia, the Armenian Armed Forces resumed shelling of Azerbaijani positions along the line of contact on the night of April 4, further deteriorating the situation on the contact line.

--

Nazrin Gadimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @NazrinGadimova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
4 April 2016 15:51 (UTC+04:00)

Department of International Military Cooperation of Azerbaijans Defense Ministry hosted a meeting with military attaches of foreign embassies accredited in Azerbaijan,the ministry reported on April 4.



The head of the Department of International Military Cooperation, Major General Huseyn Mahmudov took part in the meeting.



During the meeting, military attaches were informed about tension arising in recent years on the contact line of the Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, including the causes of ceasefire violations, attempts of Armenians to attack the front line of defense, a constant bombardment by Armenian Armed Forces from large-caliber weapons of the Azerbaijani villages located along the front line.



Meanwhile, military attaches were informed that houses of civilian population, transport vehicles are under intensive artillery fire, but Armenias provocative actions are being prevented.



On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.



A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.



Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.



Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.



Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.



On April 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.



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.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
4 April 2016 17:49 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

Armenian militaries once again raised their hands against the civilian population of Azerbaijan and fired settlements along the frontline on April 4.

The enemy forces are intentionally shelling human settlements in Azerbaijans territory. There are old men and children among the dead and injured.

The Seydimli village of Azerbaijans Terter region was subjected to the artillery fire by Armenian Armed Forces on April 4, local media reports. One of the shells hit the courtyard of villager Sahib Veliyev, injuring the house owner and his 13-year-old grandson.

The injured boy, Sanan Valizada has been hospitalized.

Two mope civilians were wounded in Terter regions Sarijali-Duyerli village, Head of the village municipality Ildirim Duyerli said.

The shells wounded Mehbara Aliyeva and Kamala Aliyeva, who are 28-29 years old. The shells hit their leg, arm and face, he noted.

The Education Ministry reported that the education process has been disrupted in educational institutions in Azerbaijans border regions and areas located near the zone of military operations.

The enemy forces earlier fired the Sarijali school #1 in Azerbaijans Aghdam region on April 2. No casualties were reported, however, the schools building was seriously damaged. One of the shells also hit a school in the village of Ayag Gervend.

Meanwhile, restoration work has started in the villages of Azerbaijans Aghdam and Terter regions, which were subjected to the artillery shelling by Armenians.



On April 2, the Armenian military units located in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan made another provocative action along the entire length of contact line as the Azerbaijani positions along the frontline came under fire from large-calibre weapons, mortars, artillery and grenade-launchers. Some residential areas and refugee settlements close to the frontline also came under fire.



This resulted in the killing of two civilians and injuring of 10 another, including a 13 year old child. More than 10 houses as well as local people`s property were also damaged.



The Azerbaijani armed forces command took an immediate decision to launch counter attacks in order to prevent the activation of the Armenian military units in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh and other regions and to protect civilian population. Located in the most tense Aghdara-Tartar-Aghdam and Khojavand-Fuzuli directions, the Azerbaijani military units immediately carried out retaliatory actions against the Armenian troops.



As a result of these measures the Azerbaijani armed forces broke the first defensive line, where the Armenian units had carried out fortification and engineering work for years, and also took over several strategic hills and residential areas.



The Azerbaijani troops retook hills around the village of Talish capable of posing threat to Goranboy region and the town of Naftalan, as well as Seysulan settlement, and also took over Lele Tepe hill located in the direction of Fuzuli region.



Six Armenian tanks and 15 artillery units and engineering installations were destroyed, tens of Armenian servicemen were killed or injured.



Twelve Azerbaijani servicemen were killed in the fighting, a Mi-24 helicopter was shot down, and a mine blast damaged a tank.

--

Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



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4 April 2016 23:39 (UTC+04:00)

By Nazrin Gadimova

Armenia, realizing that it will fail to keep control over the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region, resorts to every kind of falsification.

Since the eruption of new hostilities on the frontline following the Armenian provocation, the enemy has been spreading false photos and videos on alleged losses of the Azerbaijani side.

Azerbaijans Defense Ministry announced that Armenians used the photos taken in the conflict zone in Ukraines Donbas as the evidence of the mass murder of the Azerbaijani Special Forces.

Moreover, Ministrys Spokesperson Vagif Dargahli accused Armenians in spreading false information regarding death squads that shoot deserters. This is another lie and a provocation of the Armenian side, he said.

He further reported that the morale and combat readiness of the Azerbaijani army are at a high level.

All the information distributed by the Armenian side is provocative, he stressed. One does not need to believe in these rumors. Our army is beating off enemy attacks worthily.

The situation on the frontline aggravated on April 2 after the Armenian military units in the occupied lands started shelling Azerbaijans positions.

To protect civilian population, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces launched counter attacks and as a result, the Azerbaijani troops retook hills around the village of Talish, as well as Seysulan settlement, and also took over Lele Tepe hill located in the direction of Fizuli region.

The hostilities renewed in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan on April 4, as the Armenian side continued to shell the Azerbaijani positions although the Azerbaijani side announced unilateral ceasefire on April 3.

As a result of the counter-attack, Azerbaijans Armed Forces neutralized up to 170 servicemen and 12 units of armored vehicles of the Armenian side, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry reported.

The Azerbaijani Army destroyed about 270 enemy soldiers since the start of the hostilities, according to the ministry.

--

Nazrin Gadimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @NazrinGadimova

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4 April 2016 19:05 (UTC+04:00)

By Aynur Karimova

Yerevan, ignoring all international calls to respect ceasefire agreement and reduce tension on the frontline, continues its occupation policy while constantly aggravating the situation on the contact line of Armenian-Azerbaijani troops.

Long-simmering tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan flared again on April 2 when the Armenian side began to shell the Azerbaijani positions and settlements along the frontline. To protect civilian population, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces launched counter attacks and repulsed the enemy forces back.

Since the escalation of the situation on the frontline, both neighboring and world countries have expressed their concerns over human losses from both sides.

Moscow has already urged the sides to immediately stop the ceasefire violation in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone.

The Russian President, ministers of foreign affairs and defense have already expressed the country`s position on the incidents in the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Defense minister Sergey Shoigu and I contacted our colleagues in Baku and Yerevan, said Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov during a joint press conference with his Moldovan counterpart.

We expressed our serious concern and reiterated the Russian president`s call to immediately stop violating the ceasefire regime. We hope our calls are heard, he added.

Earlier, the Turkish side announced that Ankara will always support Azerbaijan over the conflict.

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has voiced the importance of resolving the problem between Azerbaijan and Armenia immediately. "It [the problem along the contact line] should be solved within the framework of Azerbaijan's territorial integrity," Cavusoglu told journalists in Turkey's southern province of Antalya on April 3.

He said that Karabakh and Azerbaijan's occupied-territories issue should be overcome through peaceful means and urged the international community to stop the expansion of Armenian expansionism and to make efforts to liberate the Azerbaijani territories annexed by the Armenians.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to hold Security Conference on April 4, one of the main topics of which will be the worsening of situation on the frontline of the Azerbaijani and Armenian Armed Forces.

Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili has held a meeting with the country's Foreign Minister, the power ministers, the heads of relevant agencies and chairmen of parliamentary committees of Georgia on April 4.

The prime minister expressed concern due to the escalation of the situation and the resumption of hostilities, as a result of which there are casualties, including among the civilian population. He voiced hope that the efforts of the international community will be possible to de-escalate the situation, which is important for peace and stability in the whole region.

Iran supports Azerbaijans territorial integrity in Karabakh conflict, Iranian Ambassador to Azerbaijan Mohsen Pak Ayeen made the remakr while commenting on the hostilities.



He further added that Karabakh is situated in Azerbaijani territory.

Furthermore, Tehran has warned Yerevan not to open fire on the Iranian territory, after the mortar shells fired by Armenian militaries landed in its territory.

Three mortar shells fired during military clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia fell to one of the villages of Iran, located near the border with Nagorno-Karabakh, the governor general of the East Azerbaijan province said, Farsnews.com reported.

"Currently, security is restored on the borders of East Azerbaijan province. But we will firmly respond to any aggression on the territory of our country," the governor general noted.

The Azerbaijani Government also received an offer of military assistance from the Pakistani Defense Ministry. Islamabad has proposed its assistance to Baku in providing military equipment, ammunition and equipment.

Belarus also voiced its support to the peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The country's Foreign Ministry reported that Belarus is deeply concerned about the resumption of active hostilities with the use of heavy weapons in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Belarus supports peaceful solution to the conflict in accordance with the generally recognized principles and norms of international law - respect to the sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability of borders, as well as the relevant resolutions of the UN Security Council and OSCE decisions.

Tbilisi also voiced its support to Azerbaijan's territorial integrity, as Defense Minister Tinatin Khidasheli made a telephone conversation with her Azerbaijani counterpart Zakir Hasanov. They discussed the latest situation on the contact line of the Azerbaijani and Armenian troops.

The Georgian minister expressed hope that the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will be resolved in a short term on the basis of norms of international law.

Azerbaijan and Armenia for over two decades have been locked in conflict, which emerged over Armenian territorial claims. Since the 1990s war, Armenian armed forces have occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions. The UN Security Council has adopted four resolutions on Armenian withdrawal, but they have not been enforced to this day.

A precarious cease-fire was signed in 1994. However, the Armenian forces commit armistice breaches on the frontline almost every day.

--

Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova

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4 April 2016 20:02 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijani armed forces may carry out strikes on Khankendi city and other occupied settlements, read a message posted on the website of the countrys Defense Ministry on April 4.

Azerbaijans Defense Ministry has tasked all types of the armed forces, including the rocket and artillery troops, to be ready to carry out crushing strikes from all heavy combat weapons on Khankendi city and other occupied settlements, if Armenians do not stop shelling Azerbaijani settlements in a short time, said the message.

Armenian armed forces are targeting densely populated residential areas and civilians in order to retaliate for heavy causalities along the frontline, added the ministry.

Acting inhumanly, the Armenian side provokes Azerbaijan to take counter measures despite the continuous warnings made by Azerbaijans Defense Ministry to the Armenian side, said the message. Azerbaijan once again calls on Armenia to respect the international law and norms and stop the use of lethal force against civilians.

On April 2, the Armenian military units located in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan made another provocative action along the entire length of contact line as the Azerbaijani positions along the frontline came under fire from large-calibre weapons, mortars, artillery and grenade-launchers. Some residential areas and refugee settlements close to the frontline also came under fire.



This resulted in the killing of two civilians and injuring of 10 another, including a 13 year old child. More than 10 houses as well as local people`s property were also damaged.



The Azerbaijani armed forces command took an immediate decision to launch counter attacks in order to prevent the activation of the Armenian military units in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh and other regions and to protect civilian population. Located in the most tense Aghdara-Tartar-Aghdam and Khojavand-Fuzuli directions, the Azerbaijani military units immediately carried out retaliatory actions against the Armenian troops.



As a result of these measures the Azerbaijani armed forces broke the first defensive line, where the Armenian units had carried out fortification and engineering work for years, and also took over several strategic hills and residential areas.



The Azerbaijani troops retook hills around the village of Talish capable of posing threat to Goranboy region and the town of Naftalan, as well as Seysulan settlement, and also took over Lele Tepe hill located in the direction of Fuzuli region.



Six Armenian tanks and 15 artillery units and engineering installations were destroyed, tens of Armenian servicemen were killed or injured.



Twelve Azerbaijani servicemen were killed in the fighting, a Mi-24 helicopter was shot down, and a mine blast damaged a tank.

--

Nazrin Gadimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @NazrinGadimova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
4 April 2016 20:42 (UTC+04:00)

Armenias Defense Ministry made a statement Apr. 4 calling for starting working out technical terms of a truce, RIA Novosti reported.

We agree with the calls for stopping the military operations, read a message from the ministry.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well. There are casualties among civilians as a result of the shelling.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

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.
4 April 2016 17:47 (UTC+04:00)

By Dambisa Moyo

When voters in the United Kingdom go to the polls on June 23 to decide whether their country should leave the European Union, the issues they will have to reckon with will include the impact of their decision on unemployment, trade flows, and the stability of financial markets. But there are other less quantifiable considerations that must also be weighed in the balance.



The economic arguments against a British exit from the EU  or Brexit  have been well rehearsed. Many have suggested that if the UK were to leave, manufacturers would secure continued access to the European market by fleeing across the English Channel, costing the country millions of jobs. Similarly, withdrawal from the EU risks undermining Londons position as a global financial center, which depends on the citys integration into European markets. Trade agreements, too, would have to be renegotiated in the wake of a Brexit.



Another area of concern for many voters regards the UKs sovereignty  the idea that independent countries should have ultimate decision-making authority over what happens within their borders. Membership in the EU sometimes requires ceding control to a complex web of often-inefficient Brussels-based supranational institutions.



I hold a doctorate in economics and work with businesses whose employees and operations benefit from the UKs membership in the EU. I also have a pronounced disdain for red tape and inefficiency. And yet I do not believe that economic considerations or concerns about sovereignty offer compelling arguments for Brexit.



Much more important is the potential impact of such a decision on the UKs global standing. Membership in a European community of 500 million people provides the UK with considerable influence over geopolitics and the global economy. As the world becomes ever more daunting and complex, maintaining that influence is clearly in the countrys interest.



The referendum campaign is playing out against a global economic and political backdrop that is nothing if not foreboding. The International Monetary Fund has warned that global growth is unlikely to return to the levels that it attained before the 2008 financial crisis. Indeed, the global consulting firm McKinsey predicts that global growth rates during the next 50 years will be half of what they were over the previous five decades.



Meanwhile, Martin Dempsey, a retired army general and former Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said that the world has entered the most dangerous period he has ever witnessed. Developing countries are home to roughly 90% of the worlds population, and some two-thirds of their residents are younger than 25. Stagnant growth or shrinking output in many emerging economies has serious consequences. The UKs Overseas Development Institute predicts that by 2025, roughly 80% of the worlds population will live in fragile states.



Job-eroding technological advances, worsening income inequality, demographic shifts, dwindling natural resources, and environmental depletion are adding even more straws to the camels back. The world is already undergoing the worst refugee crisis since the end of World War II, with some 60 million people having been driven from their homes. The mounting instability will only exacerbate the problem.



Leaving the EU will not shield the UK from the vagaries of the global economy. It will only deprive the country of a leading voice in shaping the response to new and existing challenges. The UK is far better placed to influence the global policy agenda from inside the EU than from outside it.



To be sure, leaving the EU would not strip the UK of its historical prominence in international organizations  most notably its permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council. But a non-European Britain would be less likely to secure the same standing and influence in whatever institutions emerge in the years ahead.



Within the EU, the UK is a critical part of an influential economic and political bloc with undeniable heft. Amplified by the EU, its voice can influence world events, providing the country with what the British like to describe as an ability to punch above its weight.



Should the UK leave, however, its influence would be limited to its true size on the global stage: a relatively small country with limited economic and political power. As British voters prepare to cast their ballots, they should weigh carefully the consequences of international irrelevance.

Copyright: Project Syndicate: Will Britain Choose Irrelevance?

---

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4 April 2016 10:20 (UTC+04:00)

The problem between Azerbaijan and Armenia must be solved immediately, Turkeys foreign minister said on Sunday, Anadolu reported.

"It (the problem along the contact line) should be solved within the framework of Azerbaijan's territorial integrity," Cavusoglu told reporters in Turkey's southern province of Antalya.

He said that Karabakh and Azerbaijan's occupied-territories issue must be overcome through peaceful means.

Cavusoglu criticized the Minsk Group  an international organization co-chaired by Russia, the U.S. and France  for not taking necessary steps or making efforts to solve the Karabakh issue.

The Minsk Group says it leads the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)'s efforts to find a peaceful solution to the dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Azerbaijan reclaimed land occupied by Armenia during the clashes on Friday and Saturday, which saw 12 Azerbaijani soldiers martyred.

Azerbaijans Defense Ministry said that its army had launched operations in the Agdere, Terter, Agdam, Hocavend and Fuzuli regions to protect civilian lives.

During the operations, the Azerbaijani army reclaimed some strategic hills and residential zones.

Pro-Armenian militia have occupied Azerbaijans Karabakh region since 1993, similar to how pro-Russian militia have illegally occupied parts of Ukraine since 2014.

Three UN Security Council Resolutions (853, 874 and 884) and United Nations General Assembly Resolutions 19/13 and 57/298 refer to Karabakh as being part of Azerbaijan.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe refers to the territory as being occupied by Armenian forces.

---

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4 April 2016 10:33 (UTC+04:00)

Landing several mortar shells fired during the recent fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia is not a serious security problem for Iran, but in the long term the conflict can pose threats for Islamic Republic, Hassan Shariatmadari an Iranian politician told Trend on April 3.

Shariatmadari who is the son of Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Kazem Shariatmadari believes that Iran should leave the biased position and approach more to Azerbaijan. At the same time, Baku should eliminate some remained tensions with Iran. Then Iran can help both neighbors to settle the conflicts and prevent the expansion of war, which can pose a serious threat against Irans security, he said.



According to Shariatmadari, the remaining conflict in the Caucasus can lead to attracting terror groups in the region or involving other nations in the war between Baku and Yerevan. The international community should attend more attention to settle the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as soon as possible.

An Iranian provincial official has announced that three mortar shells fired during the recent fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan have landed in the territories of Irans East Azerbaijan Province.

Saeid Shabestari-Khiabani, the deputy governor-general of East Azerbaijan Province for security affairs, said that the mortar shells dropped in a village near Khudaferin County, Tasnim news agency reported.

Shabestari-Khiabani further added that the mortar shells did not leave any casualties in the Iranian territory.

The Iranian official did not mention which country fired the mortar shells that hit the Iranian territory.

On the night of April 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns.

Later on the same day, Azerbaijani defense ministry announced that the countrys armed forces launched counter-attack operations against Armenia that led to the liberation of several strategic heights and settlements.



However, later on taking into account the international organizations appeals, Azerbaijan announced unilateral suspension of the counter-attacks and response measures in the territories occupied by Armenia.



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.

---

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4 April 2016 10:43 (UTC+04:00)

Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada Stephane Dion calls for restraint in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Canada is concerned by the recent escalation of violence between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces in Nagorno-Karabakh. We call on all sides to show restraint, immediately return to a true ceasefire, and actively resume dialogue within the framework of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group. Canada firmly believes that there is no alternative to a peaceful, negotiated solution to this conflict., web site of the Ministry reported.

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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4 April 2016 10:00 (UTC+04:00)

I am extremely worried at the reports of violence in Nagorno-Karabakh and deeply saddened at the loss of life yesterday, said Pedro Agramunt, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. I call on both sides to honour the cease-fire and swiftly resume negotiations towards a peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, PACE website reported.

Recalling that both Armenia and Azerbaijan committed themselves, when joining the Council of Europe in 2001, to use only peaceful means for settling their conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, Agramunt urged both governments to refrain from using violence and welcomed the news of a unilateral cease-fire reportedly announced by the Azerbaijani authorities.

Agramunt also called for "the withdrawal of all Armenian armed troops from occupied Azerbaijani territories in compliance with the UN Security Council resolutions."

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.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
4 April 2016 10:10 (UTC+04:00)

Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) urged Armenia to immediately liberate occupied territories of Azerbaijan, Iyad bin Amin Madani, secretary general of the OIC said, Turkish news agency Anadolu reported.

"I am very concerned about the exacerbation of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict", he added.

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.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
4 April 2016 10:23 (UTC+04:00)

Armenian armed forces have resumed shelling of Azerbaijani positions along the line of contact, head of the press service of the Azerbaijani defense ministry Vagif Dargahli told Trend Apr. 4.

On the night of Apr. 4, the situation on the contact line deteriorated again, he said. Despite the fact that on Apr. 4 morning the situation somewhat stabilized, the enemy renewed shelling of our positions using heavy artillery again, including the settlements in Azerbaijans Aghdere, Khojavand, Aghdam and Terter districts. Azerbaijani armed forces returned the fire at the enemy.

On the night of Apr. 2, all frontier positions of Azerbaijan were exposed to heavy fire from large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. In addition, Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled.

The counter-attack was made following provocations of the Armenian armed forces at night of Apr. 2, which resulted in deaths and injuries of civilians.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures have been destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank damaged by a mine.

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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YEREVAN, APRIL 3, ARMENPRESS. Razm.info portal published photos of eliminated soldiers of Azerbaijani Special Forces.

Along the entire length of the contact line of Nagorno Karabakh- Azerbaijani opposing forces, on April 1 and throughout the morning of April 2, the adversary undertook large-scale offensive military actions, during which the adversary shelled with missile-artillery units not only Armenian defense positions, but also civilian settlements.

According to the data of the Defense Army, the Azerbaijani armed forces fired MM-21 (Grad) multiple rocket launcher on April 2, at 08: 30 in the direction of Martuni (NKR), killing 12 year old Vaghinak Grigoryan and wounding two other children.

During the military operations on April 1 and April 2, the Azerbaijani side sustained over 200 causalities.

Due to the timely and professional actions of the Nagorno Karabakh Defense Army, it was possible to take the situation under control, and also make the enemy suffer considerable losses. The Armenian side sustained 18 casualties and 35 wounded.

On April 3, starting from 06:00, the adversary continued aggressive military operations by using missile-artillery systems and armored vehicles.

The Defense Army undertook counteroffensive measures and dominated the strategic base in the direction of Talish, which was earlier occupied by Azerbaijani forces. By withstanding the enemys artillery and rocket attacks, the Defense Army units destroyed 2 enemy tanks and 1 battle vehicle.

The UN Security Council adopted four resolutions between April and November, 1993, calling for effective and permanent ceasefire, as well as immediate implementation of the reciprocal and urgent steps in that direction. Armenia has been under effective land blockade not only by Azerbaijan since the early days of fighting in Nagorno Karabakh, but also by Turkey  a staunch ally of Azerbaijan and a NATO member -- since April 1993.
4 April 2016 11:09 (UTC+04:00)

By Aynur Karimova

Every day since the announcement of the ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan back in 1994, Armenian militaries violated the ceasefire. Ignored for over 20 years, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict once again occupied the agenda of world with the eruption of hostilities.

The clashes that burst out following Armenias intense firing of the Azerbaijani positions on April 2 show that its high time to come to definite decision and solve the conflict.

Yerevan, which has pursued an aggressive and occupation policy for over two decades, tries to tarnish Bakus image by provoking war and repeatedly violating the ceasefire and firing on civilians.

The international institutions one after the other make statements supporting the just position of Azerbaijan, and calling for withdrawal of the occupier troops from the Azerbaijani lands.

Pedro Agramunt, who serves as the President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, has called for "the withdrawal of all Armenian armed troops from occupied Azerbaijani territories in compliance with the UN Security Council resolutions."

I am extremely worried at the reports of violence in Nagorno-Karabakh and deeply saddened at the loss of life yesterday, he said. I call on both sides to honor the ceasefire and swiftly resume negotiations towards a peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict."

Recalling that both Armenia and Azerbaijan committed themselves, when joining the Council of Europe in 2001, to use only peaceful means for settling their conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, Agramunt urged both governments to refrain from using violence and welcomed the news of a unilateral cease-fire announced by the Azerbaijani authorities.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation has also urged Armenia to immediately liberate occupied territories of Azerbaijan.

"I am very concerned about the exacerbation of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict", Iyad bin Amin Madani, the Secretary General of the OIC said, Turkish media reported.

However, despite Azerbaijan's decision on unilateral suspension of the counter-attacks and response measures in the territories occupied by Armenia, Armenian Armed Forces have resumed shelling of Azerbaijani positions along the line of contact.

Spokesman for Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry Vagif Dargahli told Trend on April 4 that on the night of April 4, the situation on the contact line deteriorated again.

Despite the fact that on April 4 morning the situation somewhat stabilized, the enemy renewed shelling of our positions using heavy artillery again, including the settlements in Azerbaijans Aghdere, Khojavand, Aghdam and Terter districts. Azerbaijani armed forces returned the fire at the enemy," he noted.

On the night of April 2, all frontier positions of Azerbaijan were exposed to heavy fire from large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. In addition, Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled.

The counter-attack was made following provocations of the Armenian armed forces at night of April 2, which resulted in deaths and injuries of civilians.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures have been destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank damaged by a mine.

--

Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
4 April 2016 11:15 (UTC+04:00)

Turkey fully supports Azerbaijan, former speaker of the Grand National Assembly (parliament) of Turkey Mehmet Ali Sahin said, the Turkish newspaper Konya reported Apr. 4.

He said that Turkey also urges Armenia to withdraw its occupying forces from Azerbaijani lands.

The whole world knows and understands that Armenia occupied Azerbaijani lands, said Ali Sahin.

He made the remarks in connection with the recent developments on the contact line of Azerbaijani and Armenian troops.

On the night of Apr. 2, all frontier positions of Azerbaijan were exposed to heavy fire from large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. In addition, Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were fired at.

The counter-attack was made following provocations of the Armenian armed forces at night of Apr. 2, which resulted in deaths and injuries of civilians.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures have been destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the fights.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank damaged by a mine.

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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4 April 2016 13:34 (UTC+04:00)

By Aynur Karimova

Armenia, keeping 20 percent Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territories under the occupation for over 20 years, has once again resorted to provocations on the frontline with an aim to tarnish Azerbaijan's fair and reliable image in the world.

The oligarch and corrupted Sargsyan regime in Yerevan, which not only fails to provide economic growth in the country, but also has no chance to recover the already bankrupt budget, attempts to divert the population's attention from the domestic by launching hostilities along the line of contact, and targeting civilians living near the occupied territories.

By targeting both the civilians and soldiers, Armenia tries to irritate the Azerbaijani side and achieve a negative image of the country, and thus to zero Azerbaijan's successes achieved on the global arena during the years of independence.

On the night of April 2, all frontier positions of Azerbaijan were exposed to heavy fire from large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline were shelled, which resulted in the killing of two civilians and injuring of another 10.

The Azerbaijani armed forces immediately launched counter attacks to prevent the activation of the Armenian military units and to protect civilian population. Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures have been destroyed and more than 100 Armenian servicemen were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank damaged by a mine.

Despite Azerbaijan's decision on unilateral suspension of the counter-attacks and response measures in the territories occupied by Armenia, the Armenian Armed Forces resumed shelling of Azerbaijani positions along the line of contact on the night of April 4, further deteriorating the situation on the contact line.

Armenias provocations and irresponsible decisions prove that Yerevan is doing its best to block all peace initiatives and keep the existing status-quo. The occupant country has always tried to mislead the international community over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and ignored all peace calls. The peace efforts initiated by the OSCE Minsk Group, which mediates a peaceful resolution to the long-lasting conflict, were rejected by Yerevan due to its destructive position in this problem.

The removal of Levon Ter-Petrosyan from power in 1998, shooting of the Armenian Parliament in 1999, aggravation of tensions on the frontline after the historical Paris meeting of the Presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia in 2014 and other facts show that the Armenian government makes extensive use of military provocations and attacks when it is in a deadlock situation.

This time, the Armenian authorities were angered by Azerbaijans success in Washington at the 4th Nuclear Security Summit.

Azerbaijan's diplomatic achievements on the international arena, in particular President Ilham Aliyev's participation in the Summit, his meetings with the U.S. Vice President, Joe Biden and State Secretary John Kerry, and support of the U.S. to Azerbaijans territorial integrity and sovereignty caused panic in Yerevan.

The Washington Summit showed that the U.S. sees Azerbaijan as a reliable partner in counterterrorism, and in ensuring the energy security of Europe with its Southern Gas Corridor projects. All these achievements of Azerbaijan, a leading country in the South Caucasus region, exasperated Armenia.

Thus, Yerevan has mobilized all its dirty tools to tarnish Azerbaijan and to keep the tense situation on the contact line. However, the occupant country should realize that it cannot keep the status-quo for years and the renewed hostilities is an open message to the international community that it is time to resolve the long-lasting conflict, which started over two decades ago.

--

Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova

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4 April 2016 12:50 (UTC+04:00)

If the Armenian military continues violating ceasefire, targeting settlements and civilians, Armenia will bear the responsibility for counter-attacks and response actions taken by the armed forces of Azerbaijan to ensure full safety of civilians living densely along the contact line, Hikmat Hajiyev, spokesman for Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, told Trend Apr. 4.

Hajiyev said the Azerbaijani armed forces demonstrated goodwill and unilaterally suspended counter-offensive and response actions with peaceful intentions on April 3.

However, the Armenian armed forces continue to intensively shell the settlements and civilians along the line of contact, in particular in the direction of Terter and Aghdere districts, using heavy artillery, and continuing provocations, said Hajiyev.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.

A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures have been destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged by a mine.

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.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
4 April 2016 13:52 (UTC+04:00)

President of the Association of Friends of Azerbaijan in Paris, Jean-Francois Mancel has issued a statement condemning the latest provocation perpetrated by the Armenian Armed Forces against Azerbaijan.

The statement says that the Association offers deepest condolences to the relatives and families of the deceased military servicemen, Azertac state news agency reports.

The Association wishes the fulfillment of the four resolutions of the UN Security Council and also expressed regret that the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chair countries still ignore the unjustified and tragic situation continuing since many years. The Association also welcomes the news of a unilateral cease-fire reportedly announced by the Azerbaijani authorities and calls Armenia to stop the violence.

Armenian armed units violated ceasefire with Azerbaijan and opened intense firing on the Azerbaijani positions with heavy weapons on April 4 despite the fact that Azerbaijan unilaterally announced ceasefire on April 3.

Azerbaijans Defense Ministry reported that the enemy forces do not stop provocative actions and continue shelling Azerbaijans populated areas and civilians densely residing in the territories adjacent to the frontline area, open intensive heavy weapons fire at the positions of Azerbaijans armed forces along the line of contact mainly in the direction of Agdere-Terter and Khojavand-Fizuli regions.

On April 2, the Armenian military units located in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan made another provocative action along the entire length of contact line as the Azerbaijani positions along the frontline came under fire from large-calibre weapons, mortars, artillery and grenade-launchers. Some residential areas and refugee settlements close to the frontline also came under fire.

This resulted in the killing of two civilians and injuring of 10 another, including a 13 year old child. More than 10 houses as well as local people`s property were also damaged.

The Azerbaijani armed forces command took an immediate decision to launch counter attacks in order to prevent the activation of the Armenian military units in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh and other regions and to protect civilian population. Located in the most tense Aghdara-Tartar-Aghdam and Khojavand-Fuzuli directions, the Azerbaijani military units immediately carried out retaliatory actions against the Armenian troops.

Six Armenian tanks and 15 artillery units and engineering installations were destroyed, tens of Armenian servicemen were killed or injured.

Twelve Azerbaijani servicemen were killed in the fighting, a Mi-24 helicopter was shot down, and a mine blast damaged a tank.

---

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4 April 2016 13:43 (UTC+04:00)

The Armenian leadership has been deliberately deceiving its people for a long time, for its own interests, Deputy head of Azerbaijani presidential administration and defense issues assistant to Azerbaijani president, Lieutenant-General Vahid Aliyev, said in an exclusive interview with Trend.

Aliyev was responding to a question regarding the Armenian sides accusations that Azerbaijani army was the one first violating the ceasefire and launching the offensive, using artillery, armored vehicles and aircraft.

One thing is to deceive its own people, but another thing is to blatantly deceive the international community, he said.

"The matter rests in the fact that the violation of the ceasefire regime by Azerbaijan is illogical, he said. As opposed to the Armenian side, the civilians continue living densely thanks to the Azerbaijani armed forces. Everybody knows about multiple, sometimes violent provocations of the Armenian armed forces against Azerbaijani citizens.

As an example, he brought up Armenians shooting at the wedding attendees near the border zone, shelling of shepherds, children, and workers and burning of farmlands.

"It's impossible to list everything," Aliyev said. "This, becoming a habit of the Armenian side, couldn't last for long."

On the night of April 1-2, the Armenian armed forces, more brutally and impudently, attempted to shell the civilian border villages by using large-caliber artillery weapons," he said. "This again resulted in civilian casualties. This could not and did not remain unanswered."

Aliyev went on to add that surely, in order to stop such attempts and protect the population in future, Azerbaijani armed forces had to suppress the enemys firing points.

Everyone knows how it all ended, he said. Once again Id like to express my condolences to the families of the deceased and pay tribute to our armed forces. When our army undertook the response measures, the Armenian side started to panic, flee, and our armed forces took the heights left by the Armenians. The Azerbaijani side always advocated for the peaceful resolution of this protracted conflict.

I would like to emphasize that we advocate for a peaceful solution, not peaceful continuation of the conflict, he said. It is clear that the Armenian leadership is guided by the rule of force principle. They continue to think like it's the 1990s. They were, and remain people who came to power using the policy of war, blood of Azerbaijani and Armenian peoples, and continue to use the same principle."

So, if they still dont want to understand all this, then they must be forced to understand - if judging by the rule of force principle, we have this force and if they want new victims they may continue acting in the same manner, we can only regret about this and do our job, Aliyev said.

---

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4 April 2016 15:56 (UTC+04:00)

By Fatma Babayeva

The Azerbaijani Health Ministry ensures all necessary conditions for treatment of Azerbaijani soldiers injured during the hostilities on the frontline.

The ministry announced that all healthcare centers situated in the frontline zone are ready to receive the injured. Hospitals are also fully equipped with medical devices, the ministry said, noting that Health Minister Ogtay Shiraliyev keeps the situation under control.

The ministry sent experts to the hospitals located in the front-line, and severely injured soldiers are transferred to the hospitals located in Ganja and Baku.

Furthermore, the Barda branch of the Central Blood Bank (CBB) provided enough blood supply to the hospitals near the front area such as Tartar District Central Hospital, Sarijali, Naftalan and Barda District hospitals.

Earlier, the Sheki branch of the CBB sent blood supply to the areas close to the front area in order to meet needs as well, said Parvana Hajiyeva, head physician at CBB.

The information shared in social networks telling that injured soldiers are in urgent need of blood is false. These announcements have no ground. If the CBB faces the risk of running out of blood supply, the public will be officially informed about it, she added.

She further announced that despite there is no need, residents of Barda region went to the CBB regional and voiced a will to donate blood, Hacyeva stressed.

Meanwhile, Azerbaijan National Agency for Mine Action (ANAMA) announced readiness to start mine neutralization in the territory liberated by the Azerbaijani army during the last days.

Director of ANAMA Ghazanfar Akhmedov said that first the military personal must ensure the security of the liberated territory and strengthen the position before sending a brigade of minesweeping specialists to conduct clearance operations there.

The presence of mines in the areas liberated from Armenian aggression within last days is particularly acute, he added.

A problem with mines is very serious in liberated territory, even more serious than in other areas where ANAMA specialists work. Because all mines laid there are new. Most likely, the territory was further mined by Armenians when they were retreating from the area, he said.

On the night of April 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns.

Azerbaijani settlements near the contact line, densely populated by civilians, were fired at as well. Civilians were killed and wounded as a result of the Armenian attacks.

The Azerbaijani armed forces immediately launched counter attacks to prevent the activation of the Armenian military units and to protect civilian population. Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures have been destroyed and more than 100 Armenian servicemen were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank damaged by a mine.

Despite Azerbaijan's decision on unilateral suspension of the counter-attacks and response measures in the territories occupied by Armenia, the Armenian Armed Forces resumed shelling of Azerbaijani positions along the line of contact on the night of April 4, further deteriorating the situation on the contact line.

---

Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
4 April 2016 14:12 (UTC+04:00)

It is necessary to stop the ceasefire violation in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said during the joint press conference with Moldovas foreign minister.

No difficulties should be created in renewing the efforts for the peaceful settlement of the conflict, he added.

Lavrov said that he and Russias Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu contacted their Azerbaijani counterparts and expressed concern over the situation and urged for the immediate ceasefire.



In contact with Baku and Yerevan, we continue to ensure that signals are heard from the US, Russia and France, which are co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, said the minister.



Lavrov said that the OSCE Minsk Group has made a statement similar to that of Russia.



OSCE Minsk Group is a sufficiently great mechanism and it has set the principles which should be the basis for the final settlement of the conflict, Russias foreign minister said. A more compact mechanism is needed for practical work and OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs are such a mechanism which works through its official representatives together with the OSCE special representatives.



OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs are in permanent contact with the conflicting sides, they come to Baku and Yerevan, visit the contact line, he said. OSCE Minsk Group is the most important mechanism for resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and this mechanism should be fully supported.



The progress achieved by the OSCE Minsk Group in contacts with the conflicting sides is of great importance, according to Lavrov.



The documents, as well as those signed by heads of the OSCE Minsk Group countries, envisage the peaceful political settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict based on the principles of the Helsinki Final Act in all their totality, he added.



On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.



A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.



Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.



Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.



Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.



On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.



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.

--

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
4 April 2016 16:22 (UTC+04:00)

By Nazrin Gadimova

A new wave of fighting broke out in the Nagorno-Karabakh region on April 4, as the Armenian side continued to shell the Azerbaijani positions although the Azerbaijani side announced unilateral ceasefire on April 3.

The Azerbaijani forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of Armenian armed forces during a counter-attack launched on April 4, Azerbaijans Defense Ministry reported.

The enemy units tried to attack Azerbaijani positions in the direction of Khojavend-Fizuli regions, according to the ministry. Crushing blows were inflicted on the enemy positions by return fire. One more enemy battery was destroyed, said the ministry.

Azerbaijans Armed Forces fully control the operational situation on the front line and ready to prevent any possible provocation, says the Defense Ministry.

Moreover, the Armenian command and staff point on the occupied territories of Azerbaijan has been destroyed by an exact response blow inflicted by the Azerbaijani troops.

As a result, a lot of enemy troops, including a general and a colonel, have been destroyed, according to the defense ministry.

Currently, there is no need to attract additional forces because the regular Azerbaijani army copes with the tasks, spokesperson for Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry Vagif Dargahli stressed.

The ministrys various structures receive a large number of appeals with a request to join the ranks of the armed forces, according to Dargahli. Citizens are willing to join the fight for the liberation of the territories. They are expressing readiness to render any assistance to the armed forces.

Dargahli added that Azerbaijanis living along the frontline also express readiness to join battle with the enemy.

Meanwhile, Azerbaijani Forces response to the provocation of Armenian militaries have caused panic among the Armenian military and led to massive losses in the army. Local media reports that the commanders of the Armenian armed forces shot 17 people, who refused to take part in military actions in Nagorno-Karabakh and tried to flee.

The Armenians also put up checkpoints in the conflict zone and do not let those wishing to leave.

On April 2, the Armenian military units located in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan made another provocative action along the entire length of contact line as the Azerbaijani positions along the frontline came under fire from large-calibre weapons, mortars, artillery and grenade-launchers. Some residential areas and refugee settlements close to the frontline also came under fire.

This resulted in the killing of two civilians and injuring of 10 another, including a 13 year old child. More than 10 houses as well as local people`s property were also damaged.

The Azerbaijani armed forces command took an immediate decision to launch counter attacks in order to prevent the activation of the Armenian military units in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh and other regions and to protect civilian population. Located in the most tense Aghdara-Tartar-Aghdam and Khojavand-Fuzuli directions, the Azerbaijani military units immediately carried out retaliatory actions against the Armenian troops.

As a result of these measures the Azerbaijani armed forces broke the first defensive line, where the Armenian units had carried out fortification and engineering work for years, and also took over several strategic hills and residential areas.

The Azerbaijani troops retook hills around the village of Talish capable of posing threat to Goranboy region and the town of Naftalan, as well as Seysulan settlement, and also took over Lele Tepe hill located in the direction of Fuzuli region.

Six Armenian tanks and 15 artillery units and engineering installations were destroyed, tens of Armenian servicemen were killed or injured.

Twelve Azerbaijani servicemen were killed in the fighting, a Mi-24 helicopter was shot down, and a mine blast damaged a tank.

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.

--

Nazrin Gadimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @NazrinGadimova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
4 April 2016 14:46 (UTC+04:00)

None of the enemy's provocations will remain unanswered, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said at a meeting of the countrys Security Council on April 2.

"The enemy will continue to receive an adequate response. The Azerbaijani army is capable of doing that. The sons of Azerbaijan are defending the homeland, fighting for their country and becoming martyrs. Memory of all our martyrs will live in our hearts forever, said President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev as he chaired a meeting of the Security Council, AzerTac state news agency reports.

Armenia does not want peace. Armenia does not want to vacate the occupied lands, and all of its efforts are aimed at maintaining the status quo to the maximum extent possible. These words rest on a lot of evidence," the President said.

The process of negotiations has been going on for more than 20 years. Over these 20 years, at decisive moments, Armenia has always resorted to provocations. Armenia constantly creates tension on the line of contact. The terrorist act in the Armenian parliament at the end of last century also pursued this goal  to prevent the achievement of a possible agreement in connection with the conflict and thus to preserve the status quo.

On the night of April 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns.

Azerbaijani settlements near the contact line, densely populated by civilians, were fired at as well. Civilians were killed and wounded as a result of the Armenian attacks.

The Azerbaijani armed forces immediately launched counter attacks to prevent the activation of the Armenian military units and to protect civilian population. Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures have been destroyed and more than 100 Armenian servicemen were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank damaged by a mine.

---

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YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. The residents of Talish village were not evacuated yet and were on the other side of the village when the Khalapyans were shot dead by Azerbaijani soldiers, Head of Talish community Vilen Petrosyan told Armenpress.

The Azerbaijani army committed a war crime in the territory of Nagorno Karabakh Republic. Azerbaijani soldiers shot Valera Khalapyan and his wife Razmela to death in their house and then cut off their ears. Azerbaijani soldiers also executed Marousya Khalapyan, born in 1924 who was in severe health condition. The Khalapyans were originally from Talish village.

Since the night we were instructed to evacuate children and the elderly as a priority. Early in the morning we called the residents to the municipality to organize the evacuation. Just at that moment fierce shelling started. The family of the Khalapyans lived in proximity with enemy positions. Shelling was much more intensive in that direction. Khalapyans' son managed to take away his children before the incident. I believe, when the Azerbaijani subversive group entered the house, the shootings could be heard even from the other side of the village , Petrosyan said.

The community head informed that the Khalapyans' son is a father of 6. He did not manage to take away his parents, because of heavy artillery shelling, Petrosyan said.

By now some shootings can be heard around Talish, not as intensive as two days before, Vilen Petrosyan said.
4 April 2016 18:21 (UTC+04:00)

By Aynur Karimova

Heavy fighting erupted between Armenian and Azerbaijani Armed Forces in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region on April 2 is the result of the ignorance policy of the international community.

The fresh fighting which is regarded as the worst since the ceasefire deal signed, is nothing but the very result of inactivity of the international community, which turned blind eye to the injustice towards Azerbaijan.

Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions of Azerbaijan have been under the control of the Armenian military and separatists since a war between Armenia and Azerbaijan ended in 1994. Over 20 years of negotiations have brought little progress in resolving the conflict, though a fragile truce has been in place.

The world powers paid no attention to the unjustified and tragic situation over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which again aggravated on April 2 after the Armenian military units in the occupied lands started shelling Azerbaijans positions.

To protect civilian population, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces launched counter attacks and as a result, the Azerbaijani troops retook hills around the village of Talish, as well as Seysulan settlement, and also took over Lele Tepe hill located in the direction of Fizuli region.

Despite Azerbaijan's decision on unilateral suspension of the counter-attacks and response measures in the territories occupied by Armenia, as well as calls of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs and world community to cease military operations and restore the ceasefire, the Armenian forces resumed shelling of Azerbaijani positions along the line of contact on the night of April 4, the situation on the contact line deteriorated again.

Baku, which has suffered from Yerevan's aggressive policy for more than two decades, has repeatedly stated that the presence of the Armenian Armed Forces in the occupied territories is a major obstacle to the settlement of the conflict and threat to the regional stability.

Despite the fact that the UN Security Council adopted four resolutions (822, 853, 874 and 884) demanding the Armenian troops to withdraw from Azerbaijan's occupied territories, they were ignored and have not been implemented by Yerevan yet.

Although the OSCE Minsk Group, which is in charge of resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, as well as other international institutions have repeatedly made statements on the conflict resolution, all of them stayed on paper without implementation.

The world countries, being well informed about the massacre carried out by the Armenian militaries in the occupied Azerbaijani territories against ethnic Azerbaijanis - not depending on their sex and age - have not imposed any sanction on Armenia, which has led to today's complicated situation in the region.

Today, Armenia, with an attempt to undermine the peace process, commits acts of sabotage on the contact line of troops, and tries to prevent a peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

The Armenian leadership is blocking all peace initiatives and refusing peace through making everything possible to maintain the status quo.

Baku has repeatedly announced that it seeks peaceful settlement of the conflict, but it does not mean that the negotiations are the only way of the settlement. Azerbaijani Army has no difficulties in liberation of Nagorno Karabakh from the occupation, and the country enjoys every right to liberate its historical lands, including the military option.

--

Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
4 April 2016 15:20 (UTC+04:00)

Restoration work has started in the villages of Azerbaijans Aghdam district which were subjected to the artillery shelling by Armenians, Ragub Mammadov, head of the Aghdam District Executive Power, told Trend Apr.4.



He noted that currently, the situation in Aghdam is relatively quiet.



We meet the people whose houses were damaged as a result of the shelling on the contact line and render them all the possible assistance, said Mammadov.



He added that the power transmission lines in Asadli and Garadaghli villages were destroyed as a result of the artillery fire by Armenians, but the power supply was immediately restored.



Moreover, 24 families in Tezekend village were left without electricity, but its supply was restored on Apr.3 in the evening, Mammadov added.



On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.



A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.



Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.



Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.



Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.



On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.



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.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
4 April 2016 16:27 (UTC+04:00)

Baku ready for a ceasefire, however the Armenian armed forces must withdraw from all the occupied territories of Azerbaijan in line with the UN Security Council resolutions, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hikmat Hajiyev told Trend.

Hajiyev went on to add that Azerbaijans territorial integrity and sovereignty should be ensured within the internationally recognized borders

He also stressed that the country decided to unilaterally suspend the counterattack and response measures on April 3, but, the Armenian side did not obey the ceasefire.

---

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4 April 2016 16:49 (UTC+04:00)

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict can be solved only peacefully, said Dmitry Mironchik, press secretary of Belarusian Foreign Ministry, Belta news agency reported on April 4.

Explaining the stance of Belarus on the issue, Mironchik recalled that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs made a statement April 2 on the aggravation of situation around Azerbaijans occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Belarusian sides key position is a clear call to refrain from the use of force or threat of force in international relations, as reflected in the UN Charter and other authoritative international documents, said Mironchik.

There is still confidence that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict can be resolved only by peaceful means and in accordance with universally recognized principles and norms of international law, he added.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.

A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.

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.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
4 April 2016 17:20 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijan has adequately responded to Armenia, says Mehmet Fatih Oztarsu, vice chairman of the Turkish analytical center Strategic Outlook.

Armenias aggression against Azerbaijan has intensified recently, Oztarsu, who is an expert on the South Caucasus, told Trend April 4.

The Azerbaijani army is ready to repel any attack of the armed forces of Armenia, he added.

The expert also said the Armenian side launched a campaign to slander Azerbaijan after the recent events along the line of contact.

Azerbaijan has also been able to successfully withstand the Armenians anti-Azerbaijani campaign, added Oztarsu.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.

A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.

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.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
4 April 2016 17:29 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijan can count on Turkeys full support, Suleyman Latif Yunusoglu, former MP from Turkeys opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), told Trend by telephone on April 4.

He said Ankara attaches special importance to Nagorno-Karabakh, adding that Turkey should render any assistance to Azerbaijan in this issue.

The whole world knows that Nagorno-Karabakh is the age-old Azerbaijani land, said Yunusoglu.

On the night of April 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns.

Azerbaijani settlements near the contact line, densely populated by civilians, were fired at as well. Civilians were killed and wounded as a result of the Armenian attacks.

The Azerbaijani armed forces immediately launched counter attacks to prevent the activation of the Armenian military units and to protect civilian population. Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures have been destroyed and more than 100 Armenian servicemen were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank damaged by a mine.

Despite Azerbaijan's decision on unilateral suspension of the counter-attacks and response measures in the territories occupied by Armenia, the Armenian Armed Forces resumed shelling of Azerbaijani positions along the line of contact on the night of April 4, further deteriorating the situation on the contact line.

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.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
4 April 2016 17:52 (UTC+04:00)

Iranians have been observing and discussing the issue of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict following the escalation of military confrontation between Armenia and Azerbaijan.



While Tehran has constantly expressed support for the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, a large number of social media users as well as a group of media outlets have criticized Yerevan condemning the Armenian aggression against Azerbaijan.



Iran supports Azerbaijans territorial integrity in Karabakh conflict, Iranian Ambassador to Azerbaijan Mohsen Pak Ayeen was quoted as saying on April 3.



He further added that Karabakh is situated in Azerbaijani territory.



In turn, a group of social media users particularly Iranian Azerbaijanis have expressed support and solidarity with Azerbaijan over Karabakh conflict changing their profile pictures to Azerbaijani flags.



Karabakh belongs to Azerbaijan and this region must get rid of Armenia, MP for Tabriz City Alireza Monadi-Sefidan was quoted as saying at a parliamentary session on April 3.



Official IRNA news agency, reporting on the recent Karabakh tensions, said that Karabakh was an Azerbaijani populated region but under the former Soviet Unions policies the Communist Party adopted policies in the region aimed at decreasing the number of Azerbaijani inhabitants.



Donya-e Eqtesad newspaper citing Russia Today said that Armenian army has taken provocative measures to escalate the tensions in the region.



Armenia has violated ceasefire many times and continues its policies on occupying Azerbaijans territories, Durna News said following reports on the escalation of clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan.



In addition to the recent comments, over the past two decades Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as well as a number of religious leaders have condemned the Armenian aggression against Azerbaijani Muslims in Karabakh several times.



The occupation of Karabakh [by Armenia] has always been condemned by Iran, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khameneis representative in East Azerbaijan Province Ayatollah Mohsen Mojtehed-e Shabestari had said earlier.



In a recent development, Iran's Foreign Ministry has urged Azerbaijan and Armenia to show restraint and avoid any move that can escalate their tensions.



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.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
4 April 2016 18:01 (UTC+04:00)

Pakistan has always condemned all the atrocities committed by Armenians and even today, at the time of escalation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Pakistan is standing along with brotherly country Azerbaijan, Ahmad Farooq, secretary to the Pakistani president, told Trend on April 4.

Pakistan always stands by Azerbaijan, he said. Azerbaijan is a brotherly and friendly country.

Farooq went on to add that Azerbaijan stood by Pakistan on the issue of Kashmir conflict and Pakistan has stood by Azerbaijan on the issue of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Earlier, the government of Azerbaijan received a military assistance offer from the defense ministry of Pakistan.

Pakistans defense ministry offered assistance in the form of military equipment and ammunition. The move came following the recent developments along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.

A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.

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.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
4 April 2016 19:59 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijans army has proved its combat capability, adequately responding to Armenias provocation, says Svante Cornell, director of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and Silk Road Studies Program of the John Hopkins University.

The recent incident testifies that the combat capability of the Azerbaijani army has greatly improved, Cornell told Trend on April 4.

Regarding Armenias aggression, Cornell said the Armenian side carried out a similar provocation in 2014.

Taking into account the period of Armenias provocation, one can see that this provocation took place after the Nuclear Security Summit in the US," Cornell said, adding that this is not a coincidence.

On April 2, the Armenian military units located in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan made another provocative action along the entire length of contact line as the Azerbaijani positions along the frontline came under fire from large-calibre weapons, mortars, artillery and grenade-launchers. Some residential areas and refugee settlements close to the frontline also came under fire.



This resulted in the killing of two civilians and injuring of 10 another, including a 13 year old child. More than 10 houses as well as local people`s property were also damaged.



The Azerbaijani armed forces command took an immediate decision to launch counter attacks in order to prevent the activation of the Armenian military units in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh and other regions and to protect civilian population. Located in the most tense Aghdara-Tartar-Aghdam and Khojavand-Fuzuli directions, the Azerbaijani military units immediately carried out retaliatory actions against the Armenian troops.



As a result of these measures the Azerbaijani armed forces broke the first defensive line, where the Armenian units had carried out fortification and engineering work for years, and also took over several strategic hills and residential areas.



The Azerbaijani troops retook hills around the village of Talish capable of posing threat to Goranboy region and the town of Naftalan, as well as Seysulan settlement, and also took over Lele Tepe hill located in the direction of Fuzuli region.



Six Armenian tanks and 15 artillery units and engineering installations were destroyed, tens of Armenian servicemen were killed or injured.



Twelve Azerbaijani servicemen were killed in the fighting, a Mi-24 helicopter was shot down, and a mine blast damaged a tank.

--

Nazrin Gadimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @NazrinGadimova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
4 April 2016 20:44 (UTC+04:00)

Armenias armed forces have again shelled the villages along the contact line of the Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, Ragub Mammadov, head of the Aghdam District Executive Power, told Trend Apr. 4.

He said Armenian armed units fired at the villages of Khindiristan, Garadagli and Uchoglan of Azerbaijans Aghdam district for few hours.

Houses havent been damaged. Fortunately, there are no casualties, but sowing areas have been damaged, said Mammadov.

He added that the Azerbaijani armed forces give a worthy rebuff to the enemy.

Azerbaijani Defense Ministrys press service confirmed the fact of ceasefire violation in the said areas.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well. There are casualties among civilians as a result of the shelling.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

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.
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. The Organization of American States condemns the gross violation of international right by Azerbaijan, Armenpress reports the declaration issued by the Secretary General of the OAS, Luis Almagro, reads as follows,

Stability and peace, and the achievement of peaceful solutions to conflicts between nations are values that go beyond our hemisphere.



Therefore, the use of military action by Azerbaijan is particularly serious because it constitutes a manifest violation of the ceasefire established in 1994 as well as well as a violation of the principle of good faith negotiations in the framework of the Minsk Group.



We condemn the serious violation of the principles of international law.



Moreover, taking civilian objectives as military targets in these attacks is a complete violation of the most basic rules governing armed conflict. These practices must be banished.



Any act of violence to resolve a territorial dispute is inadmissible and when such acts of violence cause civilian deaths they are acts of barbarism.



We urge the Azeri authorities to resume meetings have been postponed with Minsk Group authorities.



The basic principles for the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh are based on the Helsinki Final Act (1975), and are:

- The non-use of force,

- Territorial integrity as well as

- Equal rights and

-the self-determination of peoples.



We demand the fullest respect for these principles.
4 April 2016 21:01 (UTC+04:00)

Baku has informed the world community that Armenia attacked civilians close to the frontline and shelled positions of the Azerbaijani armed forces on the line of contact.

Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov stated about it his letter sent to member states of the OSCE Minsk Group, CIS countries, OSCE chairperson-in-office and three countries chairing the organization, secretary-generals of the UN, OIC, NATO, as well as EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini.

The Azerbaijani army took necessary measures to stop the Armenian provocations and ensure security of the civilians in its internationally recognized borders, the letter further reads.

The main reason for the continuation of the conflict and escalating tension is the illegal presence of the Armenian armed forces in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan. According to resolutions of the Security Council, the United Nations reaffirmed that Nagorno-Karabakh region is an integral part of Azerbaijan and demanded unconditional, complete, immediate withdrawal of the Armenian occupying troops from Azerbaijan`s lands.

The FM also noted that Armenia must stop misleading its people and international community, end its policy of invasion, withdraw its troops from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, fulfil its international commitments, and participate in the negotiations in a constructive manner.

The situation on the frontline aggravated on April 2 after the Armenian military units in the occupied lands started shelling Azerbaijans positions.

To protect civilian population, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces launched counter attacks and as a result, the Azerbaijani troops retook hills around the village of Talish, as well as Seysulan settlement, and also took over Lele Tepe hill located in the direction of Fizuli region.

Despite Azerbaijan's decision on unilateral suspension of the counter-attacks and response measures in the territories occupied by Armenia, as well as calls of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs and world community to cease military operations and restore the ceasefire, the Armenian forces resumed shelling of Azerbaijani positions along the line of contact on the night of April 4, the situation on the contact line deteriorated again.

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.

--

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4 April 2016 20:52 (UTC+04:00)

Armenians must realize that the future of their children rests with making peace in the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Rob Sobhani, the US Caspian Group Holdings CEO, told Trend Apr. 4.

He outlined the role that France and the US can play to bring peace to the region.

It is very important that Paris and Washington give this message to Moscow: you must assist in the process of bringing peace to the people of Armenia and Azerbaijan, added Sobhani.

He recalled that on June 28, 1914, the spark that lit the world on fire and led to First World War was one mans assassination of the Archduke of Austria.

Today we may be witnessing the same spark, added Sobhani.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well. There are casualties among the civilians as a result of the shelling.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

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.
4 April 2016 23:16 (UTC+04:00)

Pakistan, Belarus and Georgia have openly expressed readiness to support the fair settlement of the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, said Ali Ahmadov, deputy prime minister, deputy chairman and executive secretary of the ruling New Azerbaijan Party.

Speaking to reporters Apr. 4, Ahmadov praised this readiness, adding this indicates that the leaderships of those countries no longer want to tolerate the injustice against Azerbaijan.

"That, in turn, shows that Azerbaijan is not alone in this conflict," added Ahmadov. "All this is the result of the successful foreign policy pursued by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and the victory of diplomacy."

"Azerbaijan's policy of multiplying its supporters by bringing its fair position to the world is yielding positive results," said Ahmadov, adding this indicates the weakening of the positions of Armenians, who occupied Azerbaijan's lands, and the positions of their protectors.

On the night of Apr. 2, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from Armenians, who were using large-caliber weapons, mortars, grenade launchers and guns. Azerbaijani settlements near the frontline densely populated by civilians were shelled as well.

A counter-attack was carried out following the provocations of the Armenian armed forces on the night of Apr. 2.

Six Armenian tanks, 15 gun mounts and reinforced engineering structures were destroyed and more than 100 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces were wounded and killed during the shootouts.

Twelve servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces heroically died, one Mi-24 helicopter was shot down and one tank was damaged on a mine.

Three more soldiers of Azerbaijan were killed during the past day and night as a result of the ceasefire violation.

On Apr. 4, Azerbaijani armed forces destroyed three tanks and eliminated around 30 servicemen of the Armenian armed forces.

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.

--

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
4 April 2016 10:58 (UTC+04:00)

The foreign exchange reserves held by the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) increased by $39.5 million (0.98 percent) up to $4.065.8 billion in March 2016 compared to February, said the message on CBAs website on April 4.

According to the statistics, the CBAs foreign exchange reserves decreased by $5.406.3 billion (by 2.3 times) compared to March 2015.

The CBAs foreign exchange reserves have been reducing since July 2014. At the very beginning, this process was slow (around $20-50 million), but the volume has sharply reduced since December 2014, the statement said.

The reducing of reserves is connected with an increase in demand for US dollar supply in the country, as well as intervention by the CBA to keep the manat rate at a stable level, according to the statement.

---

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4 April 2016 12:22 (UTC+04:00)

By Fatma Babayeva

Development opportunities for the Ashgabat seismic network have been considered within the framework of cooperation with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in order to improve monitoring earthquakes, the Turkmen government reported.

Three digital seismic stations and 10 sets of equipment (including installation on high-rise buildings) are planned to be installed around the Turkmen capital, the government said.

Turkmen specialists will be sent to have trainings on modern techniques of seismological data processing in Japan according to intergovernmental agreement between Japan and Turkmenistan.

Earlier it was reported that JICA will provide Turkmenistan with modern seismological equipment, digital seismic stations and software for data processing and interpretation.

Turkmenistan is located in a seismic zone. Ashgabat experienced a catastrophic earthquake on the night of October 6, 1948, with magnitude of 10 on the Richter scale claiming many lives.

Turkmenistan is characterized by having structurally unstable soils. Because of the climatic conditions, high corrosion activity is observed in the country. The high salinity of groundwater, intensity of solar radiation and other environmental factors also are among issues that local seismologists need to address.

--

Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
4 April 2016 14:49 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

Azerbaijan and Lithuania will expand cooperation in transport sector, as the two sides have inked an agreement on cargo transition.



The document was undersigned between Azad Gasimov, Director of the ADY Ekspress, engaged in multimodal cargo transportation in Azerbaijan, and General Director of the Lithuanian Railways, Stasys Dailydka in Vilnius

The agreement envisages creation of a regulatory framework, defines the obligations, rules for granting discounts and mutual payments for cargo transportation between the two countries.

The agreement creates the conditions for the expansion of opportunities for cooperation in transport, and increase the volume of transit cargo between two countries Head of the Press Service of the Azerbaijan Railways Nadir Azmammadov said.

Deputy Director General of Lithuanian Railways Stasys Gudvalis and Deputy Chairman of the Azerbaijan Railways Igbal Huseynov also attended the event.

The meeting further discussed Azerbaijan's participation in the Viking transportation project, initiated by Lithuania, as well as the perspectives in increasing the volume of freight traffic in the project.

Earlier, Lithuanias ambassador in Baku, Valdas Lastauskas said that Lithuania and Azerbaijan enjoy big opportunities for development of railway transit connecting east and west, north and south. Further development of railway transit coincides with the interests of both countries.

The participation of Azerbaijan Railways in the Viking project will make it possible to extend the container train route to more distant Asian countries, an alternative route to reach Kazakhstan and China. It is expected that once Azerbaijan Railways joins the project, more freight will be transported to the Baltic region from Kazakhstan and China, and the new Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway will be used to transport containers from Turkey to Ukrainian ports.

Combined transport train Viking started running in 2003. Participants in the project are Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, and in 2012 Bulgaria joined the project. The total length of the route Ilyichevsk (Ukraine) - Minsk (Belarus) - Draugyste (Lithuania) is 1,766 kilometers.

In 2015, "Ukrainian Railways" announced the possibility of freight train from China to Europe by Viking. The protocol was signed during a meeting of heads of railways of Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Ukraine on the formation of competitive tariff conditions for transportation of goods through Asia - Europe - Asia.

This February, Ukraine and Lithuania signed a memorandum on the accession of the container train to the Trans-Caspian international transport corridor from Europe through Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan to China.

--

Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



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4 April 2016 21:52 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

Azerbaijan is interested in exchange of experiences with the states of Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia in the sphere of interaction of postal and customs services.

Deputy Chairman of the State Customs Committee Shahin Bagirov announced about this while talking to Trend.



A joint workshop of the World Customs Organization (WCO) and the Universal Postal Union, with participation of representatives from Azerbaijan, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan will be held in Baku on April 4-7.

The event will discuss international experience in the field of joint cooperation of postal and customs services, electronic exchange of information on postal items, e-commerce, the joint fight against illicit and dangerous goods and other issues.

Bagirov said the seminar is important for the exchange of experience and information between the countries.

Today in Baku the seminar was attended by representatives of postal and customs services of various countries. All of them showed great interest in the event. We are also interested in exploring additional international experience in the sphere of interaction of postal and customs services. Moreover, the seminar could be the beginning of a strong cooperation between customs and postal services of the countries, he said.

One of the issues to be discussed in the framework of the seminar will be security and protection in this sphere.



WCO has framework of security standards in the international supply chain. Taking into consideration the prevalence of postal services, the seminar will mainly discuss postal security issues, he noted.

Other major issues, according to Bagirov, are simplification of the customs clearance and control, and supply of relevant customs declarations, which are approved by the UPU International Bureau, as well as the transfer of preliminary data in electronic format.

--

Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
4 April 2016 11:45 (UTC+04:00)

Turkeys National Intelligence Organization (MIT) has warned of the threat of new terrorist attacks by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the country, the Turkish newspaper Huriyyet said Apr. 4.

The country's intelligence has information that the militants of the PKK terrorist organization plan terror attacks using suicide bombers in several major cities.

A car bomb attack in Ankara on March 13 killed 37 people. Istanbul was also targeted by a suicide attack on March 19 leaving five people dead.

The conflict between Turkey and the PKK, which demands the creation of an independent Kurdish state, has continued for over 25 years and has claimed more than 40,000 lives.

The UN and the European Union listed the PKK as a terrorist organization.

---

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4 April 2016 22:23 (UTC+04:00)

By Fatma Babayeva

Polymetal International plc, the leading precious metals mining company in Russia, has signed a deal to purchase Orion Minerals- the company which holds license for the Komarovsky gold deposit located in the northeastern part of Kazakhstan, the Russian company reported.

The agreement was signed with the Kazakh company Kazzinc, a subsidiary of Glencore plc. The completion of the deal is expected to take place in 2016 depending on receiving approvals from the relevant regulatory bodies in Kazakhstan.

Komarovsky is a low-sulfide quartz gold deposit. The estimated reserves amount to 28 million tons with a gold content of 1.5 gram / ton (approximately 1.4 million ounces) at the end of 2015. Resources evaluated only to a depth of 280 meters, while the mineralization traced down to 450 meters.

The asset comprises an active open pit mine and a 500 ktpa heap leach facility with grid power available on site. Mining at the property commenced in 2006 and has been focused on the oxide mineralization, which now is largely depleted. Over 200 ounces of gold was produced so far.

Mining of primary ore and its sale to Varvara commenced in 2010. A total of over 1 Mt at an average grade of 2.5 g/t have been processed at Varvara in 2010-2013 with average recovery of 88%.

The initial investment is expected to be less than US$ 5 million as mine fleet will be mostly transferred from Varavara and complemented by contractors. Ore processing at Varvara plant is expected to start within three months after transaction completes.

In accordance with the financial statements of 2015, the value of the gross assets of the company is subject for the transaction which amounts to $28 million, and the loss before tax deduction related to these assets equals to $23 000.

---

Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
4 April 2016 10:00 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

The Azerbaijani government is committed to take further measures to improve tourism sector, which could bring huge revenues to the country.

Effective reforms will still occupy the governments highest priorities, since they will positively impact the sectors ability to face the global economic crisis caused by law crude prices. Thus, the state came up with the efficient reforms to boost the tourism development this year.

A new bill On Tourism, targeting to improve the national tourism, has already been submitted to the Parliament for further discussions. The parliamentary committee on labor and social policy already held relevant discussions.

Culture and Tourism Ministry Tourism Department Head, Mahir Gahramanov, who attended the meeting, noted that the main task in developing this sector is creation of tourist infrastructure.

The road and infrastructure projects are implemented in the countrys regions. However, if we want to turn Azerbaijan into a strong tourism destination such as Turkey, Italy and Spain, we must create tourist and recreational zones, he explained his view.

Gahramanov noted the need to maximize the number of hotel rooms with the support of both local and foreign investors, along with the large-scale promotion of the county.

The bill stipulates establishment of tourist offices for the promotion of Azerbaijans tourism potential both at domestic and foreign level.

These offices will contribute to the formation of tourist services in the countrys regions. In addition, the bill raises the issue of enlarging the network of tourist information centers, which will meet requirements of the modern period, Gahramanov emphasized.

The official further added that resources allocated by the National Entrepreneurship Support Fund to local businessmen and foreign investments are not enough to solve all the problems in the tourism sector.

Therefore, the head of the department underlined the importance of creating tourist funds and more flexible financial mechanisms to regulate them under the state.

Another important issue discussed at the meeting was ensuring safety and security of tourists. Although Azerbaijan is recognized as the most secure and stable state among Eastern Europe and the CIS countries, the regulation will secure from any possible problems in this field.

Henceforth, issues on the safety of foreign tourists and security of Azerbaijani citizens, who are traveling abroad, as well as guarantees in tourism and insurance issues in the tourism sector will be regulated by law.

An important issue, according to the head of the sector, is creation and certification of tourist routes to ensure the safety of tourists.



Existing intangible and tangible monuments in Azerbaijan allow us to create a tourist route for turning the country into a fairly attractive tourist area, he said.

The new bill also covers health, social, eco, rural green and adventure tourism.

However, Gahramanov said, this does not mean that today Azerbaijan has only these types of tourism, as the country is suitable for nearly every type of tourism.

The abovementioned types of tourism are included in the bill because of their importance, and given the experience of other countries and recommendations of the World Tourism Organization, he said.

Earlier, Deputy Culture and Tourism Minister Nazim Samadov highlighted the fact that prices in the countrys tourism sector are much cheaper than in regional countries.



While comparing hotels prices before Novruz holiday, we revealed that cost of 5-star hotels in Azerbaijan are 3-4 times and 4-star hotels are two times cheaper than in Georgia, he said.

Developing budget tourism plays a decisive role in the countrys plan on turning into the tourist attraction. Experts have repeatedly noted that reducing the cost of airfare and hotel services will increase the number of tourists coming to Azerbaijan and contribute to the tourism development.

Along with a decrease in hotel fares, there is a need to build more three-star hotels. The country can accommodate over 35,000 tourists in over 530 hotels, but Azerbaijan still needs more low cost hotels to meet the demands of its budget tourists.

Azerbaijan mostly attracts tourists from Russia, Turkey and Europe, and they are accustomed to fly at more favorable prices.

--

Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



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YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. US Congressman Brad Sherman urged the US administration to stop the aid to Azerbaijan as long as the country continues its aggression. As "Armenpress" reports, this was informed by the ANCA.

The Congressman called Azerbaijans recent aggression deeply disappointing. "Azerbaijani President Aliyev launched new attacks against Nagorno Karabakh. I strongly condemn this aggression and believe that the United States will stop the aid to Azerbaijan until it causes aggression and until it obliges to resolve the conflict peacefully, "Sherman said in a statement.

Along the entire length of the contact line of Nagorno Karabakh- Azerbaijani opposing forces, on April 1 and throughout the morning of April 2, the adversary undertook large-scale offensive military actions, during which the adversary shelled with missile-artillery units not only Armenian defense positions, but also civilian settlements.

According to the data of the Defense Army, the Azerbaijani armed forces fired MM-21 (Grad) multiple rocket launcher on April 2, at 08: 30 in the direction of Martuni (NKR), killing 12 year old Vaghinak Grigoryan and wounding two other children. 4 other civilians were wounded later.On April 3 the subversive group of Azerbaijan brutally killed 3 elderly and vandalized their corpses in Talish village.

Due to the timely and professional actions of the Nagorno Karabakh Defense Army, it was possible to take the situation under control, and make the enemy suffer considerable losses. On April 1 and 2, the Azerbaijani forces sustained 200 casualties. 20 enemy tanks and 1 Grad missile system were destroyed.

The Armenian side sustained 18 casualties and 37 wounded.

On April 3, starting from 06:00, the adversary continued aggressive military operations by using missile-artillery systems and armored vehicles.

The Defense Army undertook counteroffensive measures and dominated the strategic base in the direction of Talish, which was earlier occupied by Azerbaijani forces.
 

       3.0 (      -       -         ): editor [at] bahrainmirror.com
Aberdeenshire biscuit maker Duncans of Deeside is to boost production by 300% and almost double its workforce.

The news comes after the shortbread and oatcake maker opened a new warehouse, after securing an undisclosed funding deal with Clydesdale Banks Aberdeen Business and Private Banking Centre.

Up to ten new jobs are expected to be created and a double shift system introduced at the Laurencekirk-based bakery, which now has space for a new production area.

Paul Duncan, business development manager of the third-generation family business, said: We anticipate a very busy 2016. We recently introduced four new flavours of biscuits, and the implementation of the extension will create much more opportunity for product development.

As Scotlands reputation for fantastic food and drink continues to grow, demand is increasing for our quality hand baked goods.

Duncans of Deeside shortbread and oatcakes are stocked at larger supermarkets in Scotland including Tesco and Morrisons, as well as independent retailers, and are also exported all over the world.

Strengthened knowledge

Stephen Hepburn, head of Clydesdale Banks Aberdeen Business and Private Banking Centre, added: We welcome the opportunity to support Duncans of Deeside ...working closely with industry organisations has strengthened our knowledge of the sector and helps us to provide unparalleled support to our food and drink customers.

Last week, a partnership to produce gluten-free biscuits was announced by Duncans of Deeside and Pulsetta Foods.
Bidvest Foodservice has expanded its Premium Selection range with the launch of its first savoury muffins.

The farmhouse cheddar cheese & onion, and farmhouse cheddar cheese, tomato & spinach muffins are being distributed frozen in cases of 24.

Rachel Cook, bakery, desserts and fine foods category manager at Bidvest Foodservice, said: The key USP of the product is they are very versatile, so they can be enjoyed in place of a croissant or a sweet muffin, or can be dressed up as a lunch option.

She added: We wanted to show we are not afraid to be a little bit innovative and a little bit different.

Cook also said Bidvest Foodservice was looking to launch a range of savoury Viennoiserie in the summer, including three savoury twists and three mini croissants.

The twists will come in Monterey Jack & smoked paprika; basil, pesto & sun-dried tomato; and goats cheese & honey. Meanwhile, the mini croissants will come in pesto, gouda, and sun-dried tomato.
High street coffee chain Pret A Manger is covering the cost of the new national living wage (NLW) by charging customers more for their coffee.

The NLW means that basic pay has risen from 6.70 to 7.20. It came into effect on 1 April and, in response, Pret has put the price of its coffee up.

A latte, cappuccino and a flat white, which all cost 2.15, will now be 2.25. The cost of an Americano rose from 1.75 to 1.85.

The company said in a statement that the change was due in part to the increase in labour cost.

A Pret A Manger spokesperson said: Increasing costs, including those around our ingredients and our people, mean we do need to increase prices from time to time. These are done very rarely and we do our best to keep them minimal.

Last week, Costa Coffee became one of the few companies in the UK to offer the NLW to workers of all ages, not just those over 25  at the same time, it also revealed that 55% of its staff were younger than 25.

Elsewhere, John Whittingdale, the Culture Secretary, and Chris Grayling, the Commons Leader, both suggested last week that British workers may lose out, because the higher wages will attract more European workers to the UK and fuel immigration.

In response, David Cameron said: I think the National Living Wage is a well-deserved pay rise for some of the lowest paid people in our country, and I am very proud to be the Prime Minister who introduced it.

Last December, UK bosses were urged to better prepare for the NLW and avoid potential legal action by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) as it emerged only 45% of employers had updated their payrolls at the time.
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. Defense Ministry of Azerbaijan has started to admit its losses caused by its aggression against Nagorno Karabakh Republic. Armenpress reports, citing APA agency, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry press release mentions that on April 3 during clashes with Armenian army 3 Azerbaijani soldiers were killed.

Along the entire length of the contact line of Nagorno Karabakh- Azerbaijan opposing forces, on April 1 and throughout the morning of April 2, the adversary undertook large-scale offensive military actions, during which the adversary shelled with missile-artillery units not only Armenian defense positions, but also civilian settlements.

The Azerbaijani armed forces fired MM-21 (Grad) multiple rocket launcher on April 2, at 08: 30 in the direction of Martuni (NKR), killing 12 year old Vaghinak Grigoryan and wounding two other children. Later, 4 more civilians were taken to Stepanakert hospital. On April 3 the subversive group of Azerbaijan brutally killed 3 elderly and vandalized their corpses in Talish village.

Due to timely and professional actions of Nagorno Karabakh Defense Army it was possible to take the situation under control inflicting considerable losses on the enemy. Armenian forces downed 2 enemy helicopters, destroyed 20 tanks, 3 UAVs and one MM-21 (Grad) multiple rocket launcher. Over 200 Azerbaijani servicemen have been eliminated during this period.

Armenian side has suffered 18 victims and almost 37 wounded.

Since 06:00, April 3, the adversary resumed aggressive military operations using missile-artillery and armored vehicles in the southern direction of the frontline. Defense Army takes deterrence measures and has taken control of a tactical position in Talish direction occupied by Azerbaijani forces the previous day.
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. The escalation and bloodshed in Nagorno Karabakh caused deep sorrow and great emergency among all the CIS countries. Armenpress reports Chairman of CIS Executive Committee  CIS Executive Secretary Sergei Lebedev told the reporters about this.

All of us in the CIS, friends and partners of Armenia and Azerbaijan, hope that both sides will demonstrate will and prudence, will stop bloodshed and will immediately find an opportunity to resume peaceful dialogue for the sake of the peoples of the two countries, he said. Lebedev mentioned, that a number of presidents and foreign ministers of CIS states have already applied to their Azerbaijani and Armenian partners with a confident plea to cease military operations and resume seeking for peaceful ways to settle the conflict. Young Azerbaijanis and Armenians die, thousands suffer, both sides sustain huge damage, atmosphere of hatred and enmity inflames and all these undermine the basis for returning to peace process, Lebedev said.
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. Press Secretary of the Ministry of Defense of Armenia reports about Azerbaijani eliminated units. As Armenpress reports, Hovhannisyan said:  Azerbaijani units, which were trying to attack and move forward, came under the accurate artillery fire of the Nagorno Karabakh armed forces, and were completely destroyed.

Along the entire length of the contact line of Nagorno Karabakh- Azerbaijani opposing forces, on April 1 and throughout the morning of April 2, the adversary undertook large-scale offensive military actions, during which the adversary shelled with missile-artillery units not only Armenian defense positions, but also civilian settlements.

According to the data of the Defense Army, the Azerbaijani armed forces fired MM-21 (Grad) multiple rocket launcher on April 2, at 08: 30 in the direction of Martuni (NKR), killing 12 year old Vaghinak Grigoryan and wounding two other children. 4 other civilians were wounded later. On April 3, it became known that Azerbaijani forces violently executed 3 civilians in Talish, who hadnt yet been evacuated.

Due to the timely and professional actions of the Nagorno Karabakh Defense Army, it was possible to take the situation under control, and make the enemy suffer considerable losses. On April 1 and 2, the Azerbaijani forces sustained 200 casualties. Around 20 enemy tanks and 1 Grad missile system were destroyed.

The Armenian side sustained 18 casualties and 37 wounded.

On April 3, starting from 06:00, the adversary continued aggressive military operations by using missile-artillery systems and armored vehicles.

The Defense Army undertook counteroffensive measures and dominated the strategic base in the direction of Talish, which was earlier occupied by Azerbaijani forces.
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YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. Hackers of the Armenian Cyber Army hacked the official Twitter account of the Embassy of Azerbaijan in Russia. As Armenpress reports, Armenian news publications and statements are currently posted on the account, with hashtags #NKpeace, #stopAliyev, #KharabakhNow.
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. Prominent US-Armenian rock-musician Serj Tankian again referred to ongoing clashes since April 2 on the contact line of Karabakh and Azerbaijan blaming the President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan for this situation. As Armenpress reports, Tankian shared his comments in Facebook.

He mentioned that US Vise President Joe Biden a few days ago expressed his concern about continued violence, called for dialogue, and emphasized the importance of a comprehensive settlement of long-term stability, security and prosperity of the region. However, Azerbaijan then immediately started large scale attacks on positions in Karabakh. Aliyev took the bait of Erdogan seemingly wanting to distract the attention from the annual Armenian Genocide commemorations on April 24. This is a complete rebuke to the Vice President and Secretary of State of the U.S. by Azerbaijan. Its time Obama used G word this month to show Erdogan who is boss,- says Serj Tankians post on facebook.

Along the entire length of the contact line of Nagorno Karabakh- Azerbaijani opposing forces, on April 1 and throughout the morning of April 2, the adversary undertook large-scale offensive military actions, during which the adversary shelled with missile-artillery units not only Armenian defense positions, but also civilian settlements.

According to the data of the Defense Army, the Azerbaijani armed forces fired MM-21 (Grad) multiple rocket launcher on April 2, at 08: 30 in the direction of Martuni (NKR), killing 12 year old Vaghinak Grigoryan and wounding two other children. 4 other civilians were wounded later.On April 3 the subversive group of Azerbaijan brutally killed 3 elderly and vandalized their corpses in Talish village.

Due to the timely and professional actions of the Nagorno Karabakh Defense Army, it was possible to take the situation under control, and make the enemy suffer considerable losses. On April 1 and 2, the Azerbaijani forces sustained 200 casualties. 20 enemy tanks and 1 Grad missile system were destroyed.

The Armenian side sustained 18 casualties and 37 wounded.

On April 3, starting from 06:00, the adversary continued aggressive military operations by using missile-artillery systems and armored vehicles.

The Defense Army undertook counteroffensive measures and dominated the strategic base in the direction of Talish, which was earlier occupied by Azerbaijani forces.
A Tampa man facing sexual battery charges who cut off his electronic monitoring device and left town has been apprehended in Texas.



According to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, Kevin McGruder, 21, left his home Friday at 11:45 a.m. without authorization while wearing the device.



McGruder was arrested Sunday in Kimble County, Texas, and will be held there until he can be brought back to Hillsborough County.



Two arrest warrants had been issued for McGruder. One was issued for escape from custody and altering and damaging an electronic transmitting device. The other is for armed kidnapping, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and carjacking with a deadly weapon.



In February 2015, McGruder was arrested and charged with with raping a teenage girl in Okeechobee County, then tying the 17-year-old to a tree and taking her baby.



Deputies said McGruder had taken the teenager and her baby against her will, and that during the course of their journey, McGruder raped the girl.



Deputies said McGruder then tied the girl to a tree with an electrical cord and left her in a wooded area in Okeechobee County, taking the baby with him.



Two weeks later, authorities in Osceola County found McGruder and the baby near the Desert Inn in Yeehaw Junction and took him into custody, returning him to Okeechobee County.
Some voters in Hillsborough and Polk counties will cast ballots in local elections Tuesday.

Plant City

Voters will choose from David Cook, Ricardo Coronado and Nate Kilton in the Commissioner Group 1 race.

Bartow

Two candidates - Gerald Cochran and Bill Simpson are running for seat 3 on the city commission.

In addition, voters will weigh in on two charter amendments. One will give the commission the authority to create or abolish inferior boards or authorities and the other will remove the obsolete office of city auditor from the city charter.

Davenport

Voters will choose between two candidates - Deborah Burress and Rob Robinson - for seat 2 on the city commission.

Haines City

Seats 3 and 4 on the city commission are up for grabs. Three candidates are running for seat 3: LaRon Adams, Ronnie Cotton and Morris West. Two candidates are running for seat 4: Jim Kipp and Roy Tyler.

Voters will also weigh in on four amendments:

Amendment 1: Allows municipal elections to be established by ordinance

Amendment 2: Allows seating of elected officials in the month following the election

Amendment 3: Requires city clerk to be appointed by commission

Amendment 4: Increase time for a run-off or special election to within 30 days.

Lake Wales

City Commission Seats 3 and 5 are up for grabs. Ed Bowlin and Terrye Howell are competing for Seat 3, while Robin Gibson, Christopher Lutton and Bob Wood are vying for Seat 5.

Voters will also have their say on a charter amendment that would require fees under home rule authority to approved by majority of qualified electors and would revoke authority to levy fire protection assessment fees issued under home rule authority.

Polk City

Voters will cast ballots on two charter amendments. The first will create four commission districts, designate an at-large commission seat and establish district boundaries. The second will delete the office of the city clerk and merge the duties with those of the city manager.


Following one of the worst weeks of his campaign, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was on defense Saturday as he kicked off a three-day sprint to Wisconsin's primary.



Trump began the afternoon with a rally in the Milwaukee suburb of Racine, where he defended a series of controversial comments in recent days on NATO, abortion and nuclear weapons.



"This politics is a tough business," said Trump, whose performance in Tuesday's contest will help determine whether he can seize the Republican nomination without a fight at the convention. "Because you can say things one way and the press will criticize you horribly. You say it another way and the press will criticize you horribly."



Offstage, Trump expressed regret that he had retweeted an unflattering photo of rival Ted Cruz's wife, Heidi, paired with a glamorous photo of his own wife, Melania, as part of a bitter feud between the two men.



"Yeah, it was a mistake," he told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. "If I had to do it again, I wouldn't have sent it."



Among his biggest missteps have been Trump's recent comments on abortion, which have managed to unite both abortion rights activists and opponents in their criticism.



During a taping of "Face The Nation" on Friday, Trump said he believed that, when it comes to abortion: "The laws are set. And I think we have to leave it that way." His spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, quickly issued a clarification that Trump meant that laws won't change until he's president and appoints judges who can interpret them differently.



It was the second time in days that he'd stepped in hot water over the issue. On Wednesday, he'd said women should be punished for getting abortions if they're ever banned - a position the notoriously unapologetic campaign quickly reversed.



Trump told one audience on Saturday that his words had been repeatedly taken out of context, and complained he was being held to a different standard than his rivals. He called his comments on "Face the Nation" ''perfect" and "so good."



"They took words out that I said," Trump told the rally, implying CBS had edited his answer about keeping abortion laws as they are. But the video made clear there was no editing in the exchange about abortion and his response was given in full.



Speaking to a friendlier crowd in Eau Claire Saturday night, Trump said that, on the plus side, he gets millions of dollars worth of free media coverage, "so I can't complain that much."



Trump's abortion comments raised concerns in the Republican Party about whether his unpopularity with women as measured in preference polling would make him unelectable in a general election match-up against Democrat Hillary Clinton.



In an apparent effort to address that concern, Trump said his wife will be campaigning with him Monday. His daughter Ivanka, who just had a baby, will also be returning to campaign with him in another week or so, he said.



Trump's three events Saturday passed peacefully, though some of his supporters waiting in line to enter the Eau Claire rally exchanged harsh words with the several dozen protesters gathered outside.
Birding and Blues Fest on N. Oregon Coast Takes Flight April 29

Published 04/03/2016 at 5:51 PM PDT

By Oregon Coast Beach Connection staff





(Pacific City, Oregon)  One part of the Oregon coast adds new meaning to put a bird on it. In this case, it's many, many birds with the Pacific City Birding and Blues Festival on April 29 through May 1. (Photo: Pacific City as seen from Tierra Del Mar, to the north).

It all starts with classic Birding & Blues activities that include a free community open house on Friday April 29, featuring a live sea bird presentation and a childrens art activity. The festival is also bringing a new excursion to attendees on Friday called Historical Backroads. This one will be a wild ride, as you're accompanied by an expert and chauffeured to local back roads in Tillamook County that are rich with wildlife.

Top-notch birding experts lead field trips to locations well known for their wildlife viewing opportunities, including Neskowin Marsh. They will also teach birders who are just getting started at identification.

The 2016 Festival will bring fresh topics such as Behind the Scenes Nature Walk, Seabird Watch, Feeders & Birding, and the incredibly exciting Evening Owl Search.

Also new to the festival is avian researcher John Marzluff, who will be the 2016 Key Note Speaker. Professor Marzluff will present his most recent book Welcome to Subirdia (2014 Yale) which discovers that suburban neighborhoods host a splendid array of biological diversity and suggests ways in which we can steward these riches to benefit birds and ourselves.

The fun continues into the night when the town comes alive with the sound of Blues. There will be concerts on both Friday and Saturday evenings at the Kiawanda Community Center which offers an intimate setting for enjoying music up close and personal and dancing like a crazy bird.

The musical lineup also takes flight and soars. Headlining is Franco Paletta & the Stingers on Saturday night, April 30th from 8 pm to 11 pm. On Friday night, look for Oregon coast favorite The Rockhounds. Information about each band can be found at the Birding and Blues website. Concerts are all ages, children ages 6 and under will have a $10 admission; all other ages are $15. Tickets can be bought in advance on the website or at the door.

Swooping in from Astoria is the Wildlife Center of the North Coast, whose work with birds and other species will be featured during the free, community open house night on Friday April 29. This happens at the Kiawanda Community Center at 5:30 pm and includes a live seabird presentation.

Friday will also feature the new "Talk on Pelicans" at The Pelican Pub & Brewery from 6 pm - 8 pm. This event is also free and will feature new speakers while guests can enjoy fabulous views, food, and drink.

Once again there will be kayaking partnered with Nestucca Adventures out of the Pacific City area. You can take a sunset kayak trip down the Nestucca River with naturalists in attendance on Friday evening. There will be a second kayaking adventure on Saturday morning. Pacific City Hotels, Lodging for this event - Where to eat - Map and Virtual Tour

A host of other interesting and notable new events will be taking place this year. You can take a look at the old Pixieland site and the marshland restoration happening there with one nature field trip. There are the nighttime owl excursions, a presentation on backyard bird feeders and the Coastal Woodland Walkabout Field Trip. www.BirdingandBlues.org. (503) 965-6247. More about this area at the Pacific City, Oceanside Virtual Tour, Map.



















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Tim Burton's 2003 film Big Fish follows the fantastical life of Edward Bloom, played by Ewan McGregor as a young man. With stories of giants, witches, and werewolves, the line between reality and embellishment is always blurry in Bloom's tall tales, but we've always been especially smitten with young Edward's discovery of the curiousbut enchantingtown of Spectre, tucked away behind a haunted forest. Years after his first visit, Edward returns to Spectre to find that the once quaint and beautiful little town has fallen into decay and disrepair.

The town of Spectre was actually custom built for the Tim Burton-directed movie on Jackson Lake Island, a small private island situated on the Alabama River outside of Millbrook, Alabamaand it still exists! The now-crumbling set is covered in Spanish moss, but shoes still dangle between the poles marking the town's entrance (in the movie, the town's residents all walked around barefoot).
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. The Defense Ministry of Armenia, Nagorno Karabakh armed forces and the Armenian society express their deepest condolences for the deaths of the soldiers who gave their lives for their Motherland, and are proud for their immortal heroism and valor. As "Armenpress" reports, the Press Secretary of the Defense Ministry Artsrun Hovhannisyan is publishing photos of the fallen soldiers of the recent battles in Nagorno Karabakh on his Facebook page, and is giving brief information about them. Information about their funerals is also available. Within minutes these publications gather more than a thousand comments and hundreds of shares.

Reconnaissance -machine-gunner, contractual serviceman

Private Sasun F. Mkrtchyan

Born in 1989, serving in the Armed Forces since 2011, Arabkir Military Commission

Dirge ceremony will be held on 04.04.2016 at 17:30

Funeral will take place on 05.04.2016 at 14:00

Address: Kond, St. Hovhannes church

Platoon driver, contractual serviceman

Private Nodarik A. Margaryan

Born in 1963, Madaghis Military Commission

Dirge ceremony will be held on 04.04.2016 at 17:00

Funeral will take place on 05.04.2016 at 13:00

Address: Lori Province, village Gugark / Meghrut /

Unit commander

Captain Hovsep G. Kirakosyan

Born in 1988, serving in the Armed Forces since 2006, Echmiadzin Military Commission

Dirge ceremony will be held on 04.04.2016 at 18:00

Funeral will take place on 05.04.2016., 14:00

Address: Armavir province, Apaga village, House of Culture

Names of fallen soldiers:

Commander, Captain Armenak Urfanyan (b.1990, in service since 2007, Nork Military Commission, address  Yerevan, Nork 2nd d., Moldovakan str. 48/16 apt. 37).

Machine-gunner, Private Kyaram Aloyan (b. 1996, 2014/1 conscript, Ashtarak Military Commission, address  Aragatsotn province, village Artashavan).

Commander, Sergeant Yuri Paramazyan (2014/1 conscript, NKR Martuni Military Commission, address  Martuni village).

Unit service head, Major Rafael Mayilyan (b.1978, in service since 1998, Hadrut Military Commission, address  Hadrut region, village Tumi).

Along the entire length of the contact line of Nagorno Karabakh- Azerbaijani opposing forces, on April 1 and throughout the morning of April 2, the adversary undertook large-scale offensive military actions, during which the adversary shelled with missile-artillery units not only Armenian defense positions, but also civilian settlements.

According to the data of the Defense Army, the Azerbaijani armed forces fired MM-21 (Grad) multiple rocket launcher on April 2, at 08: 30 in the direction of Martuni (NKR), killing 12 year old Vaghinak Grigoryan and wounding two other children. 4 other civilians were wounded later. On April 3, it became known that Azerbaijani forces violently executed 3 civilians in Talish, who hadnt yet been evacuated.

Due to the timely and professional actions of the Nagorno Karabakh Defense Army, it was possible to take the situation under control, and make the enemy suffer considerable losses. On April 1 and 2, the Azerbaijani forces sustained 200 casualties. Around 20 enemy tanks and 1 Grad missile system were destroyed.

The Armenian side sustained 18 casualties and 37 wounded.

On April 3, starting from 06:00, the adversary continued aggressive military operations by using missile-artillery systems and armored vehicles.

The Defense Army undertook counteroffensive measures and dominated the strategic base in the direction of Talish, which was earlier occupied by Azerbaijani forces.
The four Woodville ISD track athletes hospitalized overnight after the school bus they were riding in rolled over Thursday did not suffer life-threatening injuries or require surgery, officials said on Friday.

All 31 riders on the bus, which was not fitted with seat belts, sought medical treatment, Woodville ISD Superintendent Glen Conner said.

Students hospitalized overnight suffered pelvis, head and back injuries, Department of Public Safety trooper Stephanie Davis said.

None of the hospitalized students required surgery, and their injuries were not life-threatening, Conner said.

They were kept overnight for "testing and observation" and it appeared at least some could be sent home Friday evening, he said.

Davis said the right tires of the bus left the road and the vehicle entered a side-skid after the driver "over-corrected." The bus rolled over at least one time, officials said.

The bus was en route to Kirbyville for a track meet.

Davis said troopers found no evidence that occupants were ejected from the bus during the crash.

Community members gathered at the high school Friday morning for a multi-faith prayer vigil, Conner said.

The superintendent said Woodville might consider installing seat belts on its buses.

"We're always going to consider what's in the best interest for our kids," Conner said. "That would be a decision myself and members of the administration would be doing some research on and then taking a recommendation to the board as far as additional expenses for either retrofitting or buying new buses."

The Texas Legislature passed a law in 2007 requiring school buses to include seat belts, but less than a half-million dollars of $10 million set aside for that purpose has been awarded to school districts.

EBesson@BeaumontEnterprise.comTwitter.com/EricBesson_news
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Deweyville ISD, which bypassed a flood-specific policy for its riverside district, has been confronted with the same issue Southeast Texas homeowners discovered long ago: Your policy doesn't cover water.

The district faces a possible $11.5 million gap in insurance coverage because it did not carry a policy specific to floods, Superintendent Kevin Clark said on Friday.

Administrators believed a larger policy insuring damage against the district's property would also cover rising water, Clark said.

"I was a little bit shocked to be honest," Clark said. "Common sense says the school district should be covered."

It's unclear how the district, whose fund balance is less than $3 million, will close the coverage gap and secure the money necessary to either refurbish or rebuild the elementary school and other flooded buildings, Clark said.

The district could seek federal and state assistance for rebuilding costs, Clark said. Another option, he said, would be to ask voters undertaking their own rebuilding projects to support a debt proposition.

Clark, who joined the district in July, said he does not know why Deweyville ISD did not buy a flood-specific insurance policy. The school board's president directed questions to Clark.

The district is negotiating with its insurer, Property Casualty Alliance of Texas, about how to bridge the $11.5 million gap between estimated damages and what its PCAT has indicated it would pay, Clark said.

The district's broker is Cypress-based North American Solutions. NAS chief executive Jack Melton said the district purchased a flood limit of $1 million, and that is what PCAT has offered to pay.

The district's total insurance coverage exceeds $30 million, but the insurer is arguing the cap is lower for flood damage, Clark said.

Two messages left at NAS Friday were not returned.

Clark said negotiations between the district and the insurer are ongoing.

Deweyville ISD's insurance coverage mirrors that of the small riverside community it serves: Most of the roughly 400 homes there did not have flood insurance policies, according to interviews with residents and FEMA policy numbers.

The town took on several feet of Sabine River flooding last month following heavy rains on the Toledo Bend Reservoir and tributaries that drain into it.

Deweyville's elementary school, located in the heart of town, was among the hundreds of buildings inundated by floodwaters.

Because Newton County participates in the FEMA-adminstered National Flood Insurance Program, the school district could have secured flood insurance backed by the federal government.

Such a policy, however, would have covered only $500,000 in building damage and $500,000 in contents, according to flood insurance experts.

The district could have also opted to enroll in the NFIP for an initial layer of flood coverage and then gone into the private market to round out the coverage, said Roy Sedwick, executive director of the Texas Floodplain Management Association.

Some homeowners and business owners layer their policies that way to make sure all potential losses are covered, he said.

A Texas Education Agency spokeswoman said she believes school districts make their own flood-insurance decisions.

*This story was clarified April 4 to note NAS is the broker for Deweyville ISD's insurance policy, not the insurer, according to an attorney representing the company. The Enterprise received incorrect information.

It was also updated to include comments from NAS chief executive Jack Melton.

EBesson@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/EricBesson_news
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Southeast Texas cops made fewer traffic stops and searched fewer vehicles last year than they did in 2014, with departments in the three-county area totaling about 150 stops per day.

Of the 12 Southeast Texas agencies that made at least 1,000 traffic stops last year, just four police departments stopped more vehicles than the previous year: Groves, Kountze, Lumberton and Nederland.

Texas law enforcement agencies are required to document how many traffic stops result in citations, arrests and vehicle searches as part of annual racial-profiling reports on file with the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement.

Regionally, the 20 Southeast Texas departments that filed those reports in each of the past two years reported a 5 percent decline in the number of stops and a 39 percent drop in the number of vehicles searched.

Beaumont police, who made the most stops, posted a nearly 12 percent year-to-year decline, according to the reports.

In Kountze, officers made nearly 1,400 stops last year, an 83 percent jump from two years ago.

"We had a discussion during my takeover that we wanted to be more proactive," said Brent Slaughter, who was named police chief in September 2014. "'If you're not doing an actual report (at the station), don't be sitting around. Work a little traffic and patrol the subdivision.'"

Lamar University Police in 2014 searched a greater share of the vehicles they pulled over than any of the other 12 regional agencies that made at least 1,000 traffic stops, according to previous Enterprise reporting.

Last year, the campus department made about half as many traffic stops and cut the number of vehicle searches by nearly two-thirds, according to the new reports.

Assistant Chief Gary Rash said that's because Chief Hector Flores, who took over in November 2014, has prioritized on-campus policing.

"(Flores) redid the patrol zones," Rash said. "He wanted more people on campus and closer to campus. He wanted them to utilize their bike patrol more."

Department officers are licensed to make traffic stops or arrests anywhere in Jefferson County.

The Port Neches and Silsbee police departments, which each made about 1,110 stops last year, searched vehicles at a 15.1 percent rate, tops in the area among agencies with at least 1,000 stops.

The regional average was 4.7 percent.

EBesson@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/EricBesson_news
The Texas Attorney General on Friday sided with the U.S. Justice Department's claims that the City of Beaumont misinterpreted state laws when officials forced people with disabilities out of their homes.

The Justice Department and three disabled Beaumont residents filed a federal lawsuit against the city last year, claiming the city burdened group home owners with zoning and fire code restrictions not in place for the rest of the community, an allegation the city's attorneys blame on a state mandate.

Attorneys for the city have sought to include the State of Texas as a third party to the lawsuit.

In a brief filed on Friday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the state's laws do not need defending. According to Paxton, the city should answer for its misapplication of the laws and failure to comply with federal guidelines.

At the heart of the discrimination suit is a half-mile spacing rule that is designed to protect people with disabilities.

Laura Odom and Todd Hicks lost their homes because the city incorrectly looked to a state law to regulate where multiple people with disabilities can live together, according to the lawsuit.

Group homes in Texas can house up to six residents with physical or mental disabilities and two supervisors, as laid out in a state law. Those homes are supposed have a half-mile spacing rule that would prevent segregation, according to the law.

Odom and Hicks lived in separate Beaumont homes managed by Jubilee Group Homes. The city in November 2008 informed Jubilee that three of its homes, including the residences of Odom and Hicks, were too close to one another.

In March of 2009, Jubilee closed Odom's and Hick's homes at the city's behest. They were moved to separate apartment units Jubilee leased at a Major Drive apartment complex.

In January 2011, city officials threatened to shut the complex down unless Jubilee's tenants were evicted, according to the suit.

At the time Odom and Hicks were evicted, the city required that every community home, regardless of size, include commercial-grade ventilation systems, lighted exit signs on every bedroom door, fire alarm systems directly connected to the fire department and other features.

These local fire codes, stricter than state laws, were not mandated for unrelated people who lived in the same home or even in-home day-care providers of up to 12 children, according to the lawsuit.

The suit seeks to stop Beaumont officials from enforcing the spacing rule and allegedly discriminatory fire codes, and asks for a payout to disabled residents affected by the laws.

The case is scheduled for trial in October.

Reporter Eric Besson contributed to this article. BScott@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/BrandonKScott
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. The political factions of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia, as well as independent MPs issued a statement in relation with the ceasefire violation by Azerbaijan and resumption of large-scale military operations. Armenpress reports, the declaration reads as follows,

The National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia strongly condemns the unprecedented escalation of the situation by Azerbaijan along the Line of Contact with Nagorno Karabakh. During the night of April 1-2, the Azerbaijani army resumed large-scale military operations. In 1994, after the trilateral ceasefire signed between Nagorno Karabakh, Azerbaijan and Armenia, for the first time the use of large quantities of heavy weapon, bombarding of the peaceful settlements of Nagorno Karabakh, targeting of the substructures deep in Nagorno Karabakh obviously show that Baku is on its short-sighted and dangerous way to bring to life its illusion to settle the conflict through military means. Azerbaijans adventurist policy caused many casualties, including civilians. The right to secure life of Nagorno Karabakh people is endangered. Azerbaijans terrorist policy is a serious threat for the security of the whole region.

Azerbaijans dictatorial regime, suffering from the obsession to retain its power at any cost, tries to distract its attention and that of international communities from domestic problems, sacrificing human lives.

We express our deepest condolences to the servicemen and the family members of the civilians perished in defensive battles, their close relatives and co-servicemen, share the grave grief of their loss, and wish quick recovery to the wounded.

We highly assess the operations of the Defensive Army of Nagorno Karabakh directed to the stabilisation of the situation, the Armenian soldiers combat readiness, their selflessness and courage shown in defending the Motherland, as well as the consolidation and unity of our society.

We condemn the breach of the 1994 Ceasefire Treaty by Azerbaijan, the violation of the Artsakh peoples right to live in peace, the targeting of the civilian population and settlements, the purposeful failure and denial of the efforts aimed at the solution of the problem by the internationally accepted format of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs and the policy of settling the Nagorno Karabakh conflict through military means.

We call on the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs and the international organizations to targetedly and adequately respond to the Azerbaijani party responsible for the created situation, applying all the restraining mechanisms towards the aggressor for avoiding the further escalation and steps destabilizing the region.

We expect our colleagues to raise their voice of complaint, condemning Bakus terrorist policy and to join the efforts of the international community in restraining the Azerbaijani authorities.
It's official. Toll roads in Texas can be categorized as, "Can't live with them, can't live without them."

That's been evident for some time, but an estimate last week by the executive director of the Texas Department of Transportation reinforced the point. James Bass said it would cost taxpayers about $38 billion to pay off all the debt for more than 50 toll roads bridges and make them free to drivers. That amount is of course about $38 billion more than the Legislature would like to spend on the effort.
Massachusetts physicians are beginning to make it part of their routine to question patients about guns in the household, according to The Boston Globe.

Here are five things to know:

1. The practice of voluntary gun-safety screening is supported by the Massachusetts Medical Society, the state chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and other professional groups.

2. The topic of physicians, patients and guns is on the agenda for a Massachusetts Medical Society public health leadership forum on firearm violence scheduled for April 5.

3. A study published in Injury Prevention reported Massachusetts' gun ownership rate of 22.6 percent is below the national average of 29.1 percent.

4. A 2013 national survey by the American Academy of Pediatrics found that about half of pediatricians sometimes ask patients about guns, and one in five always do.

5. A 2014 report published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that a gun in the home makes it more likely for someone to commit suicide or to shoot someone else.
On March 31, Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) visited Cumberland (Md.) Outpatient Clinic, according to WCBC.

Here are five facts:

1. The center is the second VA community-based outpatient clinic in the state.

2. In 2015, Cumberland Outpatient Clinic had 44,000 patient visits.

3. The clinic is one of 12 VA outpatient clinics in the state and 800 around the nation.

4. After undergoing renovations in 2004, the Cumberland Outpatient Clinic has expanded by almost 50 percent.

5. At the center, Sen. Mikulski toured the facility and learned about their telemedicine services.

"Maryland veterans who have fought for our freedom deserve a government on their side. I'm so pleased to visit the Cumberland VA Clinic to ensure that promises made to our veterans are promises kept, " Sen. Mikulski said.

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As payers and providers battle over reimbursement rates for medical services, balance billing has been a hot topic at both state and national levels.

The practice of balance billing refers to a physician's ability to bill the patient for an outstanding balance after the insurance company submits its portion of the bill. Out-of-network physicians, not bound by contractual, in-network rate agreements, may bill patients for the entire remaining balance.

Balance billing leaves patients with unanticipated medical bills that can have detrimental financial effects.

Here are four things to know about the latest efforts to end balance billing.

1. In Florida, lawmakers recently passed legislation that limits the charges patients receive when they have to use out-of-network medical providers, according to an article published by Consumer Reports. This legislation was submitted to Florida Gov. Rick Scott March 30, and he has 15 days to sign or veto it, the article notes. The bill will automatically become law if the governor does not act.

2. In total, 23 states are currently working toward or already have some consumer protections against balance billing, according to Consumer Reports. That includes Tennessee, where Farm Bureau Health Plans and state Rep. Ron Travis (R-Dayton) are working on legislation aimed at curbing balance billing.

3. New York has among the strongest consumer protection laws for out-of-network billing in the nation, according to Consumer Reports. The law requires that patients in emergency medical situations pay no more to out-of-network providers than they would have paid to those that are in-network, according to the publication. Any dispute over medical bills is settled between the insurer and the medical provider.

4. At the federal level, President Barack Obama's budget proposal for 2017 includes a provision aimed at eliminating balance billing and "surprise medical bills." The provision would eliminate the balance billing of privately insured patients by requiring physicians who regularly provide services in hospitals to accept in-network rates for reimbursement, even if they aren't in the insurer's network. Separately, CMS now requires disclosure when an out-of-network physician will be providing services to protect consumers from balance billing in emergency situations, according to Consumer Reports.

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Twenty-five of Baltimore's most prominent businesses are launching a $69 million initiative to increase their investments in the community through more inclusive contracting and hiring, according to the Baltimore Sun.

Johns Hopkins University and Health System, Baltimore Gas and Electric Company and Under Armour are among those who have signed on to the plan, called BLocal.

Participating companies have pledged to enter into more design and construction contracts with minority and women-owned businesses and buy more goods from local vendors. They expect to invest $53 million in renovation and construction projects and $16 million in goods and services from minority and women-owned businesses over the next three years, according to the report. The companies will also hire more residents from distressed Baltimore neighborhoods.

The BLocal effort strives to improve the economic potential for minority-owned businesses and low-income residents. HopkinsLocal, a program that is already underway at Johns Hopkins, supports the initiative by using local resources for hiring, construction and purchasing goods. Johns Hopkins also proposed last year that hospitals throughout Baltimore and the state of Maryland create 1,000 entry-level jobs for residents of areas that are struggling the most. However, the state only approved rates to pay for about 375 new positions, according to the report.

"HopkinsLocal is our comprehensive approach to leverage Johns Hopkins' economic power to do more to build, buy and hire locally," Ronald J. Daniels, president of JohnsHopkinsUniversity, said in the press release. "Building on that promise, BLocal aims to help bolster a local economy, not on a project-by-project basis, but through a collective, deep-seated change approach."

Mr. Daniels will co-chair the BLocal effort with Ronald R. Peterson, president of JohnsHopkinsHospital and Health System, and Calvin G. Butler Jr., CEO of BGE, according to the report.

The companies participating in BLocal include: 1st Mariner Bank, A&R Development, ABS Capital Partners, Banks Contracting Co., BCT Architects, Beatty Development, BGE, Brown Advisory, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, The Cordish Companies, Cushman & Wakefield, DLA Piper, Grant Thornton, Hogan Lovells, Johns Hopkins University and Health System, KPMG, Legg Mason, M&T Bank, OneBaltimore, PwC, RSM, T. Rowe Price, Under Armour, Whiting-Turner, WPM Real Estate Management.
The economic boon promised by the Austen BioInnovation Institute of Akron when it launched in 2008 with approximately $70 million in funding never actualized, and now the biomedical center is nearly broke, according to Ohio.com.

Bill Considine, president and CEO of Akron (Ohio) Children's Hospital and chairman of ABIA's board, on Monday plans to appear before the Summit County Council to answer questions about why the institute should receive taxpayer support, according to the report.

At the same time, ABIA's board of directors will vote to disperse and put new faces at the table, though Mr. Considine will continue in his role as chairman.

ABIA is seeking a loan deferment and about $500,000 in grants over five years to help it offset the debt on its headquarters. The institute received about $14 million in loans and tax-free bonds to purchase and renovate what was previously known as the Ohio Edison building.

The county guaranteed all of the money because at the time, SummitCounty believed the potential economic benefit ABIA could bring to the community made the project a worthwhile risk. ABIA leaders had forecasted the center would create 2,400 jobs and attract at least $50 million in investments annually within a decade, according to the report.

However, those gains have not occurred. While ABIA has not missed any payments and is not at risk of defaulting, its sustainability is uncertain. A recent $1 million cash infusion from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation will keep the institute afloat into next year, but if ABIA fails, SummitCounty could be responsible for more than a decade of $700,000 annual payments, according to the report.

ABIA continues to face challenges as the county considers stepping in to help. The nonprofit venture reduced its staff from 38 employees in 2011 to four full-time and two part-time employees currently. Most of its founding partners have pulled out, and now Summit County Job and Family Services stopped renting the top three floors of the building, ending the $86,739 in annual rent payments that covered ABIA's mortgage.
Two of the leading campaigners for the UK to leave the European Union will today join forces to lobby fishermen and farmers ahead of a major debate in Belfast tonight.

Former Conservative Secretary of State Owen Paterson and the Northern Ireland-born Labour MP Kate Hoey are due to meet representatives of the fishing industry in Co Down, before travelling to the Science Park in Titanic Quarter for the Big EU Debate.

They'll come head to head with shadow Secretary of State Vernon Coaker and the former Tory MEP John Stevens, who are arguing for the UK to remain in Europe.

The event, to be streamed live across the UK on the Belfast Telegraph's website, will see a clash of strongly held views on both sides of the debate. Mr Paterson said that while it was assumed that most farmers favoured remaining in the EU because of the agricultural subsidies, he believed that many were in favour of leaving.

"Farmers are far more balanced on this issue than people are making out," said Mr Paterson, whose most recent Cabinet post was as Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Secretary.

"They are thoroughly fed up with the rules and regulations that come from Europe.

"The current CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) regime only goes up to 2021 and there are clear indications that the EU wants to reduce the amount. Countries outside the EU, like Iceland and Switzerland, pay higher levels of subsidy than in the EU.

"If Britain left and it was felt that it was appropriate to do so, then we could pay more, but we would get power back and we would be massively better off because we could target the money in a much more effective way."

During his time in Northern Ireland Mr Paterson was a strong supporter of the campaign for a lower rate of corporation tax at 12.5%, which is to be introduced in 2018. And he dismissed fears that investors will be deterred from locating in Northern Ireland if the UK is no longer part of the EU.

"That's simply not the case. US firms will be attracted to Northern Ireland because of the skills on offer, the legal structures and the low corporate tax regime.

"We will ensure that there's access to European and world markets."

The North Shropshire MP also dismissed concerns that UK trade could suffer if there's a Brexit.

"That's part of the black hole scare narrative that's emerged in this debate, with people saying that if we leave the EU we will be leaping into a black cavern.

"We're the fifth biggest economy in the world, so the EU has a strategic interest in continuing to trade with the UK. We'll come to an economic and markets arrangement with the EU, but we won't be sending huge amounts of money every week and we won't be overruled by Europe.

"When Northern Ireland business people say they're worried about the uncertainty of leaving the EU, I would wholly disagree with them.

"There's more uncertainty and danger by staying in because of the way in which the eurozone is consolidating. The time has come for us to get out and wish them well."
Arlene Foster will launch her first manifesto as DUP leader in West Belfast today - a constituency usually regarded as a political wasteland for unionism.

The First Minister will make the trek from her Fermanagh and South Tyrone constituency to West Belfast to present her party's blueprint.

And in a different approach to her predecessor, the DUP will be the first of the main parties out of the blocks with a manifesto for May's Stormont election.

The DUP will be standing a total of 44 candidates across Northern Ireland - but has surprisingly decided to prioritise West Belfast.

Regarded widely as a republican heartland, the constituency is still home to a sizeable loyalist minority, mainly in the Shankill Road area. In the 2011 Assembly election, Sinn Fein took five of the six available seats, with the other one going to Alex Attwood of the SDLP.

While it might seem an unlikely place for the DUP to cause an upset, Diane Dodds won her 2003 West Belfast seat with 2,544 votes - a 7.7% share.

Frank McCoubrey, a former Belfast deputy Lord Mayor first elected to the City Council in 1997 as a member of the UDA-linked Ulster Democratic Party, took 2,773 votes last year - a 7.8% share.

Mrs Foster is expected to say today: "Make no mistake, we are here today to demonstrate our determination to see Frank McCoubrey win a seat for unionism in West Belfast on May 5. From the upset victory of Diane Dodds in 2003 we know that this can be done, and the West Belfast seat can be won.

"But to do it unionists from all backgrounds and traditions must turn out to vote and transfer to one another.

"So what was done for unionism in 2003 I believe can be done again in 2016."

Last year Sinn Fein's Paul Maskey topped the Westminster poll in the worst SF performance in West Belfast since 1996. People Before Profit's Gerry Carroll came a surprise second, and pundits predict he could take one of those seats and upset Sinn Fein vote management.

The DUP has traditionally left manifesto launches until later in the campaign. Last year Peter Robinson left it until April 21, when polling was on May 7.

But Mrs Foster said: "This year we are launching our plan early so that people have plenty of time to read and consider our blueprint for the next five years.

"I want this plan to be the backbone of our campaign and our pledge to the country for the next Assembly term - a plan I want to implement as First Minister on the morning of May 6.

"This is more than just a plan between now and election - this is our pledge as a party, and my pledge as First Minister, to the voters, for the next Assembly term.

"The DUP has a clear vision for a stronger, safer future - we are ambitious for Northern Ireland and want the opportunity to build on what we have achieved to date.

"We do not underestimate how far Northern Ireland has come in recent years; nor do we pretend there is nothing more that needs to be done.

"Northern Ireland today is a far cry from what it was like when I was growing up, and our plan will go some way to building a stronger future for next generation."

While the party has kept the manifesto contents close to its chest, Mrs Foster outlined her priorities in her first speech as party leader at the DUP's annual spring conference last month.

They included creating jobs and increasing incomes, protecting family budgets, prioritising spending on the health service and raising standards in education. And when she took over the reins in December, Mrs Foster vowed that "no child will be left behind in the Northern Ireland that we are building".
The family were approached by three beggars in Belfast. Picture posed

A family visiting Belfast from England have said their trip was ruined by aggressive beggars on the street.

Steve Beattie, who is originally from east Belfast, made the Easter holiday trip from Newcastle-upon-Tyne with his two young sons aged 10 and 11.

Now he says he would think twice about coming back to his home city due to the "aggressive behaviour of foreign individuals begging on the streets".

Mr Beattie said his sons had been enjoying Belfast's tourist experience which included a visit to the Titanic Museum, but an aggressive encounter with three individuals on Donegall Street on Wednesday morning scared his children.

"We were accosted by three of them asking for money, just the general norm. But this one individual just wouldn't let it go," he explained.

"While crossing the street one individual accosted my 10-year-old out of sight of me, and went on and on for 20 pence until he saw me coming on the scene. Which soon changed his outlook."

He continued: "It could have proved something different. I'm not a man of violence but I'll stand for my own and protect my children.

"It could have turned out a lot worse than it was."

Mr Beattie said other guests staying at his hotel had reported similar incidents on their visit to Belfast. "I just thought this isn't the Belfast I remember," he said.

Mr Beattie said hotel staff had explained to him that five homeless people had died on Belfast's streets this year but that "a lot of people coming in from eastern European cities are putting a dark light on it".

He added: "It certainly would (put me off coming back to Belfast) especially with children.

"If that's what's going on during the day, what's going to happen in the darkness of the evenings?"

In January the issue of so- called professional beggars was raised after the PSNI said that 100 of the 130 people they had arrested in five years for begging had a residential address.

Paul McCusker from the outreach group Homeless Aware said several complaints had been made to Belfast City Council about the problem.

"Those people who are begging, we've received lots of calls about them, they look homeless but aren't actually homeless," he said.

"We're trying to look at a project to tackle that problem. The council are looking at that too because it's been brought to them on several occasions.

"These people, the conditions they live in when they go home, are quite poor. It's criminality and sources tell me it's orchestrated by certain individuals. I think they're vulnerable people who we should be looking at trying to support in some way to get them off that sort of behaviour.

"There's young girls and young men on the streets from different countries doing that type of activity. But certainly the council and police need to address it because it is on the increase," he added.
Arlene Foster has launched her first election manifesto as leader of the Democratic Unionists with a five point plan she insisted would deliver a stronger and safer future for Northern Ireland.

Mrs Foster, who succeeded Peter Robinson as both Stormont First Minister and the leader of the region's biggest party upon his retirement last year, promised a focus on the health service, jobs, protecting family budgets, education and infrastructure investment.

In a break with tradition, the DUP launched its manifesto at a relatively early stage of the campaign for May's Assembly poll.

Mrs Foster said she wanted to give voters plenty of time to consider the party's blueprint.

The document is built around the five central themes and includes pledges to increase health service spending by 1 billion; to create " tens of thousands" of new jobs; not to raise household taxes "a penny more than is needed"; raise education standards for everyone; and build a number of new schools, roads and hospitals.

"The DUP has a clear vision for a stronger, safer future - we are ambitious for Northern Ireland and want to use the opportunity to build on what we have achieved to date," she told supporters at the launch event in Belfast.

"We do not underestimate how far Northern Ireland has come in recent years, nor do we pretend there is nothing more that needs to be done.

"Northern Ireland today is a far cry from what it was like when I was growing up and our plan will go some way to building a stronger future for the next generation.

"Now is not the time to take a chance with the future of our people and the future of our country. We have a chance to make Northern Ireland a stronger, safer place and I want to secure the progress we have made."

Mrs Foster also pledged to support victims of the Troubles and said she would not tolerate any "rewriting of history" with regards to the conflict.

The DUP is fielding 44 candidates in the election. It won 38 of the 108 seats available in 2011.

In a speech to party faithful last month, Mrs Foster made multiple references to Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness, claiming the election boiled down to a choice between him or her for first minister, insisting it would be "bad for Northern Ireland" if the veteran republican secured the top job.

Some critics characterised her comments as a negative throwback to the "them and us" politics of the past.

Mrs Foster made no reference to the Sinn Fein stalwart as she launched the party's manifesto, but afterwards she dismissed the suggestion the omission was a reaction to the criticism.

"There's no point hiding away from the fact that the person who is going to be first minister after this election is either me or Martin McGuinness," she said.

She added: "I am not going to ignore the reality of Martin McGuinness or indeed of Sinn Fein but certainly we go into this election to win, as every political party does as they go into an election campaign."

In his speech at the event, DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds challenged those who have claimed it does not matter who is first minister, as the post holds the same authority as the deputy first minister's job.

"What world are they living in?" he asked. "In my long experience in politics I have never heard of an election anywhere in the world where those who are taking part claim that it does not matter who actually wins."

The DUP is at odds with the four other main parties in the Assembly in respect of support for a Brexit. Mrs Foster said she did not believe the party risked losing traditional supporters, particularly those with backgrounds in agriculture and business, due its stance on the EU referendum.

"There will be plenty of time to discuss the issues around the European referendum in May and in June but as for now it is important that, whatever happens in June, that we have a strong Assembly with strong leadership in the Assembly for Northern Ireland moving forward," she said.

Mrs Foster said it was wrong to assume that all those in the farming or business communities were pro-EU.

"As I go around provinces I hear differing views from farmers and I hear differing views from business people," she said.

The party staged its manifesto launch in the Spectrum Centre on the Shankill Road to demonstrate its desire to win a seat in the constituency of west Belfast. The Shankill, despite being a predominantly unionist area, sits within an electoral area that is otherwise nationalist/republican in make-up, with Sinn Fein winning five of the six seats in 2011.

In an apparent reference to this year's republican commemorations of the 1916 Easter Rising against British rule, Mrs Foster said: "How fitting it would be for unionism to take a seat directly from Sinn Fein in this historic year."
An Audi Q7 like the one in which the family got trapped

Algae on the slipway which would have made it difficult for the vehicle to get any traction

Rescue services at the pier in Buncrana where a family of five perished after their car slide into Loch Swilly

Emergency services on the pier at Buncrana after yesterdays tragic accident

Tributes left at the scene of the tragedy. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker

Francis Crawford Who raised the alarm, at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal, after Five people, including children, have died after a car went off a pier. Picture Joe Bolan / Press Eye

Francis Crawford Who raised the alarm, at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal, after Five people, including children, have died after a car went off a pier. Picture Presseye

Francis Crawford Who raised the alarm, at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal, after Five people, including children, have died after a car went off a pier. Picture Presseye

Garda at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal, after Five people, including children, have died after a car went off a pier. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker

Francis Crawford Who raised the alarm, at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal, after Five people, including children, have died after a car went off a pier. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker

Francis Crawford Who raised the alarm, at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal, after Five people, including children, have died after a car went off a pier. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker

Flowers left at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker

Flowers left at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker

John McCarthy from the RNLI at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker

Martin McGuinness at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker

The scene at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker

The scene at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker

The scene at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Margaret McLaughlin

The scene at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Margaret McLaughlin

The scene at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Margaret McLaughlin

The scene at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Margaret McLaughlin

The scene at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker

Buncrana pier tragedy: Former Ballymena United footballer Davitt Walsh heroically dived into the water and saved baby. Image: RTE News

Remains of the five members of the same family who drowned at Buncrana pier are taken to the family home on Tuesday morning. Photo: Joe Boland / Press Eye

Remains of the five members of the same family who drowned at Buncrana pier are taken to the family home on Tuesday morning. Photo: Joe Boland / Press Eye

Sean McGrotty and his two sons Evan and Mark died at the scene. His partner Louise wasnt present at the time of the tragedy, but her baby Rioghnach-Ann, whom she is cradling here, was rescued

Remains of the five members of the same family who drowned at Buncrana pier are taken to the family home on Tuesday morning. Photo: Joe Boland / Press Eye

Remains of the five members of the same family who drowned at Buncrana pier are taken to the family home on Tuesday morning. Photo: Joe Boland / Press Eye

Remains of the five members of the same family who drowned at Buncrana pier are taken to the family home on Tuesday morning. Photo: Joe Boland / Press Eye

Remains of the five members of the same family who drowned at Buncrana pier are taken to the family home on Tuesday morning. Photo: Joe Boland / Press Eye

Remains of the five members of the same family who drowned at Buncrana pier are taken to the family home on Tuesday morning. Photo: Joe Boland / Press Eye

Louise McGrotty with baby Rioghnach-Ann, who survived the tragedy, and son Evan (8), who lost his life

Louise McGrotty and brother Josh carry remains of their sister Jodi-Lee into their Hazelbank home

Louise James, in black, places her son Evan in a hearse. The funerals of Sean McGrotty, 46, his two young sons Mark 12, and Evan James, 8, Ruth Daniels, 57, the mother of Mr McGrottys partner Louise, who was in England at the time and Ms Daniels teenage daughter Jodie-Lee,15, who died when their car slipped into the water from a slipway in Buncrana at the weekend. The only survivor of the tragedy was Mr. McGrottys baby Rioghnach James. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 24.03.17

The funerals of Sean McGrotty, 46, his two young sons Mark 12, and Evan James, 8, Ruth Daniels, 57, the mother of Mr McGrottys partner Louise, who was in England at the time and Ms Daniels teenage daughter Jodie-Lee,15, who died when their car slipped into the water from a slipway in Buncrana at the weekend. The only survivor of the tragedy was Mr. McGrottys baby Rioghnach James. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 24.03.17

The funerals of Sean McGrotty, 46, his two young sons Mark 12, and Evan James, 8, Ruth Daniels, 57, the mother of Mr McGrottys partner Louise, who was in England at the time and Ms Daniels teenage daughter Jodie-Lee,15, who died when their car slipped into the water from a slipway in Buncrana at the weekend. The only survivor of the tragedy was Mr. McGrottys baby Rioghnach James. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 24.03.17

The funerals of Sean McGrotty, 46, his two young sons Mark 12, and Evan James, 8, Ruth Daniels, 57, the mother of Mr McGrottys partner Louise, who was in England at the time and Ms Daniels teenage daughter Jodie-Lee,15, who died when their car slipped into the water from a slipway in Buncrana at the weekend. The only survivor of the tragedy was Mr. McGrottys baby Rioghnach James. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 24.03.17

The funerals of Sean McGrotty, 46, his two young sons Mark 12, and Evan, 8, Ruth Daniels, 57, the mother of Mr McGrottys partner Louise, third from left and Ms Daniels teenage daughter Jodie-Lee,15, who died when their car slipped into the water from a slipway in Buncrana at the weekend. The only survivor of the tragedy was Mr. McGrottys baby Rioghnach James. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 24.03.17

The funerals of Sean McGrotty, 46, his two young sons Mark 12, and Evan, 8, Ruth Daniels, 57, the mother of Mr McGrottys partner Louise, who was in England at the time and Ms Daniels teenage daughter Jodie-Lee,15, who died when their car slipped into the water from a slipway in Buncrana at the weekend. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 24.03.17

The funeral of five pier victims takes place at Holy Family Church, Ballymagroarty on Thursday. The victims were Ruth Daniels, her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels, her son-in-law Sean McGrotty, and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight. The only survivor was Mr McGrotty's four-month old daughter, Rionaghac-Ann. They died after their car slid off a pier in Buncrana County Donegal. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press

The funeral of the five Buncrana pier victims takes place at Holy Family Church, Ballymagroarty on Thursday. The victims were Ruth Daniels, her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels, her son-in-law Sean McGrotty, and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight. The only survivor was Mr McGrotty's four-month old daughter, Rionaghac-Ann. They died after their car slid off a pier in Buncrana County Donegal last Sunday night. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press

The funeral of five pier victims takes place at Holy Family Church, Ballymagroarty on Thursday. The victims were Ruth Daniels, her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels, her son-in-law Sean McGrotty, and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight. The only survivor was Mr McGrotty's four-month old daughter, Rionaghac-Ann. They died after their car slid off a pier in Buncrana County Donegal. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press

The funeral of five pier victims takes place at Holy Family Church, Ballymagroarty on Thursday. The victims were Ruth Daniels, her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels, her son-in-law Sean McGrotty, and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight. The only survivor was Mr McGrotty's four-month old daughter, Rionaghac-Ann. They died after their car slid off a pier in Buncrana County Donegal. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press

The funeral of five pier victims takes place at Holy Family Church, Ballymagroarty on Thursday. The victims were Ruth Daniels, her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels, her son-in-law Sean McGrotty, and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight. The only survivor was Mr McGrotty's four-month old daughter, Rionaghac-Ann. They died after their car slid off a pier in Buncrana County Donegal. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press

The funeral of five pier victims takes place at Holy Family Church, Ballymagroarty on Thursday. The victims were Ruth Daniels, her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels, her son-in-law Sean McGrotty, and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight. The only survivor was Mr McGrotty's four-month old daughter, Rionaghac-Ann. They died after their car slid off a pier in Buncrana County Donegal. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press

Funeral of Derry family who drowned in Buncrana Co Donegal pier accident. Picture Margaret McLaughlin

Louise James (front left) who lost her partner, two sons, sister and mother carries a coffin out of the Holy Family church, Ballymagroarty in Londonderry after the funeral of the five people who were killed when their car slid off a slipway in Co Donegal. PA

Louise James (right) who lost her partner, two sons, sister and mother carries a coffin out of the Holy Family church, Ballymagroarty in Londonderry after the funeral of the five people who were killed when their car slid off a slipway in Co Donegal. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Thursday March 24, 2016. Sean McGrotty and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight, died along with his mother-in-law Ruth Daniels, 57, and her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels after their SUV sank after sliding off the pier slipway in Buncrana, Co Donegal. See PA story FUNERAL Pier. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

Mourners outside the Holy Family church, Ballymagroarty in Londonderry after the funeral of the five people who were killed when their car slid off a slipway in Co Donegal. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Thursday March 24, 2016. Sean McGrotty and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight, died along with his mother-in-law Ruth Daniels, 57, and her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels after their SUV sank after sliding off the pier slipway in Buncrana, Co Donegal. See PA story FUNERAL Pier. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

Louise James (right) who lost her partner, two sons, sister and mother carries a coffin out of the Holy Family church, Ballymagroarty in Londonderry after the funeral of the five people who were killed when their car slid off a slipway in Co Donegal. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Thursday March 24, 2016. Sean McGrotty and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight, died along with his mother-in-law Ruth Daniels, 57, and her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels after their SUV sank after sliding off the pier slipway in Buncrana, Co Donegal. See PA story FUNERAL Pier. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

Louise James (front left) who lost her partner, two sons, sister and mother carries a coffin out of the Holy Family church, Ballymagroarty in Londonderry after the funeral of the five people who were killed when their car slid off a slipway in Co Donegal. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Thursday March 24, 2016. Sean McGrotty and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight, died along with his mother-in-law Ruth Daniels, 57, and her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels after their SUV sank after sliding off the pier slipway in Buncrana, Co Donegal. See PA story FUNERAL Pier. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

Coffins are place into hearses at the Holy Family church, Ballymagroarty in Londonderry after the funeral of the five people who were killed when their car slid off a slipway in Co Donegal. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Thursday March 24, 2016. Sean McGrotty and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight, died along with his mother-in-law Ruth Daniels, 57, and her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels after their SUV sank after sliding off the pier slipway in Buncrana, Co Donegal. See PA story FUNERAL Pier. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

Mourners arrive at the Holy Family church, Ballymagroarty in Londonderry for the funeral of the five people killed when their car slid off a slipway in Co Donegal. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Thursday March 24, 2016. Sean McGrotty and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight, died along with his mother-in-law Ruth Daniels, 57, and her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels after their SUV sank after sliding off the pier slipway in Buncrana, Co Donegal. See PA story FUNERAL Pier. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

Hearses arrive at the Holy Family Church, Ballymagroarty in Londonderry for the funeral of the five people killed when their car slid off a slipway in Co Donegal. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Thursday March 24, 2016. Sean McGrotty and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight, died along with his mother-in-law Ruth Daniels, 57, and her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels after their SUV sank after sliding off the pier slipway in Buncrana, Co Donegal. See PA story FUNERAL Pier. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

The final hearse arrives at the Holy Family chapel, Ballymagroarty in Londonderry for the funeral of the five people killed when their car slid off a slipway in Co Donegal. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Thursday March 24, 2016. Sean McGrotty and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight, died along with his mother-in-law Ruth Daniels, 57, and her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels after their SUV sank after sliding off the pier slipway in Buncrana, Co Donegal. See PA story FUNERAL Pier. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

Funeral of Derry family who drowned in Buncrana Co-Donegal pier accident. 24-3-16 The funeral for five members of the McGrotty/Daniels family taking place at Holy Family Church in Derry city on Thursday. Louise James lost her partner Sean McGrotty, sons Mark and Evan, sister Jodie-Lee Daniels and mother Ruth Daniels. The jeep the victims were in slipped off the pier at Buncrana in Co-Donegal on Sunday night. A four month old baby girl was rescued from the vehicle. Picture Margaret McLaughlin  please by-line 24-3-16 see story

LOUISE JAMES (BLACK COAT) CARRIES ONE OF HER YOUNG SONS - Funeral of Derry family who drowned in Buncrana Co-Donegal pier accident. 24-3-16 The funeral for five members of the McGrotty/Daniels family taking place at Holy Family Church in Derry city on Thursday. Louise James lost her partner Sean McGrotty, sons Mark and Evan, sister Jodie-Lee Daniels and mother Ruth Daniels. The jeep the victims were in slipped off the pier at Buncrana in Co-Donegal on Sunday night. A four month old baby girl was rescued from the vehicle. Picture Margaret McLaughlin  please by-line 24-3-16 see story

Funeral of Derry family who drowned in Buncrana Co-Donegal pier accident. 24-3-16 The funeral for five members of the McGrotty/Daniels family taking place at Holy Family Church in Derry city on Thursday. Louise James lost her partner Sean McGrotty, sons Mark and Evan, sister Jodie-Lee Daniels and mother Ruth Daniels. The jeep the victims were in slipped off the pier at Buncrana in Co-Donegal on Sunday night. A four month old baby girl was rescued from the vehicle. Picture Margaret McLaughlin  please by-line 24-3-16 see story

Alan Lewis- PhotopressBelfast.co.uk 24-3-2016 Today's funerals in Londonderry of the family of five who drowned at Buncrana pier tragedy at the weekend in Donegal.

PACEMAKER BELFAST 24/03/2016 Francis Crawford ( who raised the alarm) during The funeral of five pier victims takes place at Holy Family Church, Ballymagroarty on Thursday. The victims were Ruth Daniels, her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels, her son-in-law Sean McGrotty, and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight. The only survivor was Mr McGrotty's four-month old daughter, Rionaghac-Ann. They died after their car slid off a pier in Buncrana County Donegal. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press

PACEMAKER BELFAST 24/03/2016 The funeral of five pier victims takes place at Holy Family Church, Ballymagroarty on Thursday. The victims were Ruth Daniels, her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels, her son-in-law Sean McGrotty, and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight. The only survivor was Mr McGrotty's four-month old daughter, Rionaghac-Ann. They died after their car slid off a pier in Buncrana County Donegal. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press

PACEMAKER BELFAST 24/03/2016 The funeral of five pier victims takes place at Holy Family Church, Ballymagroarty on Thursday. The victims were Ruth Daniels, her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels, her son-in-law Sean McGrotty, and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight. The only survivor was Mr McGrotty's four-month old daughter, Rionaghac-Ann. They died after their car slid off a pier in Buncrana County Donegal. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press

PACEMAKER BELFAST 24/03/2016 The funeral of five pier victims takes place at Holy Family Church, Ballymagroarty on Thursday. The victims were Ruth Daniels, her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels, her son-in-law Sean McGrotty, and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight. The only survivor was Mr McGrotty's four-month old daughter, Rionaghac-Ann. They died after their car slid off a pier in Buncrana County Donegal. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press

PACEMAKER BELFAST 24/03/2016 Louise James (front -left) one of five Coffins during The funeral of five pier victims takes place at Holy Family Church, Ballymagroarty on Thursday. The victims were Ruth Daniels, her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels, her son-in-law Sean McGrotty, and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight. The only survivor was Mr McGrotty's four-month old daughter, Rionaghac-Ann. They died after their car slid off a pier in Buncrana County Donegal. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press

PACEMAKER BELFAST 24/03/2016 The funeral of five pier victims takes place at Holy Family Church, Ballymagroarty on Thursday. The victims were Ruth Daniels, her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels, her son-in-law Sean McGrotty, and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight. The only survivor was Mr McGrotty's four-month old daughter, Rionaghac-Ann. They died after their car slid off a pier in Buncrana County Donegal. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press

PACEMAKER BELFAST 24/03/2016 The funeral of five pier victims takes place at Holy Family Church, Ballymagroarty on Thursday. The victims were Ruth Daniels, her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels, her son-in-law Sean McGrotty, and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight. The only survivor was Mr McGrotty's four-month old daughter, Rionaghac-Ann. They died after their car slid off a pier in Buncrana County Donegal. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press

PACEMAKER BELFAST 24/03/2016 Louise James (front -left) one of five Coffins during The funeral of five pier victims takes place at Holy Family Church, Ballymagroarty on Thursday. The victims were Ruth Daniels, her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels, her son-in-law Sean McGrotty, and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight. The only survivor was Mr McGrotty's four-month old daughter, Rionaghac-Ann. They died after their car slid off a pier in Buncrana County Donegal. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press

PACEMAKER BELFAST 24/03/2016 The funeral of the five Buncrana pier victims takes place at Holy Family Church, Ballymagroarty on Thursday. The victims were Ruth Daniels, her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels, her son-in-law Sean McGrotty, and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight. The only survivor was Mr McGrotty's four-month old daughter, Rionaghac-Ann. They died after their car slid off a pier in Buncrana County Donegal last Sunday night. Photo Mark Marlow/Pacemaker Press

PACEMAKER BELFAST 24/03/2016 The funeral of the five Buncrana pier victims takes place at Holy Family Church, Ballymagroarty on Thursday. The victims were Ruth Daniels, her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels, her son-in-law Sean McGrotty, and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight. The only survivor was Mr McGrotty's four-month old daughter, Rionaghac-Ann. They died after their car slid off a pier in Buncrana County Donegal last Sunday night. Photo Mark Marlow/Pacemaker Press

PACEMAKER BELFAST 24/03/2016 The funeral of the five Buncrana pier victims takes place at Holy Family Church, Ballymagroarty on Thursday. The victims were Ruth Daniels, her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels, her son-in-law Sean McGrotty, and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight. The only survivor was Mr McGrotty's four-month old daughter, Rionaghac-Ann. They died after their car slid off a pier in Buncrana County Donegal last Sunday night. Photo Mark Marlow/Pacemaker Press

PACEMAKER BELFAST 24/03/2016 The funeral of the five Buncrana pier victims takes place at Holy Family Church, Ballymagroarty on Thursday. The victims were Ruth Daniels, her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels, her son-in-law Sean McGrotty, and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight. The only survivor was Mr McGrotty's four-month old daughter, Rionaghac-Ann. They died after their car slid off a pier in Buncrana County Donegal last Sunday night. Photo Mark Marlow/Pacemaker Press

PACEMAKER BELFAST 24/03/2016 The funeral of the five Buncrana pier victims takes place at Holy Family Church, Ballymagroarty on Thursday. The victims were Ruth Daniels, her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels, her son-in-law Sean McGrotty, and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight. The only survivor was Mr McGrotty's four-month old daughter, Rionaghac-Ann. They died after their car slid off a pier in Buncrana County Donegal last Sunday night. Pictured is Martin McGuinness. Photo Mark Marlow/Pacemaker Press

PACEMAKER BELFAST 24/03/2016 The funeral of the five Buncrana pier victims takes place at Holy Family Church, Ballymagroarty on Thursday. The victims were Ruth Daniels, her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels, her son-in-law Sean McGrotty, and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight. The only survivor was Mr McGrotty's four-month old daughter, Rionaghac-Ann. They died after their car slid off a pier in Buncrana County Donegal last Sunday night. Pictured is eye witness Francis Crawford. Photo Mark Marlow/Pacemaker Press

PACEMAKER BELFAST 24/03/2016 The funeral of five pier victims takes place at Holy Family Church, Ballymagroarty on Thursday. The victims were Ruth Daniels, her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels, her son-in-law Sean McGrotty, and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight. The only survivor was Mr McGrotty's four-month old daughter, Rionaghac-Ann. They died after their car slid off a pier in Buncrana County Donegal. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press

PACEMAKER BELFAST 24/03/2016 The funeral of the five Buncrana pier victims takes place at Holy Family Church, Ballymagroarty on Thursday. The victims were Ruth Daniels, her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels, her son-in-law Sean McGrotty, and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight. The only survivor was Mr McGrotty's four-month old daughter, Rionaghac-Ann. They died after their car slid off a pier in Buncrana County Donegal last Sunday night. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press

The funeral of five pier victims takes place at Holy Family Church, Ballymagroarty on Thursday. The victims were Ruth Daniels, her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels, her son-in-law Sean McGrotty, and his sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight. The only survivor was Mr McGrotty's four-month old daughter, Rionaghac-Ann. They died after their car slid off a pier in Buncrana County Donegal. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press

The funeral of the five Buncrana pier victims takes place at Holy Family Church, Ballymagroarty on Thursday. Photo Mark Marlow/Pacemaker Press

A Sunday newspaper has apologised to a Derry woman who lost five members of her family after publishing an "interview" without her consent.

Louise James's mother, sister, partner and two little boys perished in the Buncrana pier tragedy.

She was left in further anguish after a journalist posed as a well-wisher to infiltrate the family home.

Last weekend the Irish Mail on Sunday claimed it had secured an exclusive interview with Louise, publishing the story on its front page and inside.

The paper proclaimed in a headline: 'The courage and dignity of Louise James moved us all this week as she buried five members of her family. She speaks to the Irish Mail on Sunday'.

The "interview" and story was spread over pages 4, 5, 6 and 7 of the newspaper.

The report appeared under the byline of Alison O'Reilly, who says she is a journalist with the Sunday paper and has an email address there.

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However, heartbroken mother Louise said she never consented to it. She claimed the journalist who wrote the article did not identify herself as a member of the media until much later in the conversation.

The reporter had arrived with her two children, with Louise believing she was a well-wisher.

She was said to have been left "hurt and angry" after unwittingly speaking to the reporter about her loss and grief.

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 Evan McGrotty, aged eight, died alongside his father Sean McGrotty (49), 12-year-old brother Mark, grandmother Ruth Daniels, 59, and her 14-year-old daughter, Jodie Lee Daniels, when their SUV sank after sliding off a "slippery as ice" slipway in Buncrana in March 2016. Louise McGrotty with baby Rioghnach-Ann, who survived the tragedy, and son Evan (8), who lost his life Jodie Lee Daniels Remains of the five members of the same family who drowned at Buncrana pier are taken to the family home on Tuesday morning. Photo: Joe Boland / Press Eye Sean McGrotty Proud granny Ruth Daniels gives Mark and Evan McGrotty a hug Sean McGrotty (49) with son Mark (12) Ruth Daniels (59) with daughter Jodi-Lee (14) Sean McGrotty and his two sons Evan and Mark died at the scene. His partner Louise wasnt present at the time of the tragedy, but her baby Rioghnach-Ann, whom she is cradling here, was rescued Remains of the five members of the same family who drowned at Buncrana pier are taken to the family home on Tuesday morning. Photo: Joe Boland / Press Eye Jodi-Lee playing with nephew Evan Remains of the five members of the same family who drowned at Buncrana pier are taken to the family home on Tuesday morning. Photo: Joe Boland / Press Eye The familys Q7 which slid into Lough Swilly Buncrana pier tragedy: Former Ballymena United footballer Davitt Walsh heroically dived into the water and saved baby. Image: RTE News Mark (12) and eight-year-old Evan. The scene at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker The scene at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Margaret McLaughlin The scene at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Margaret McLaughlin Sean McGrotty The scene at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Margaret McLaughlin The scene at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Margaret McLaughlin Ruth Daniels The scene at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker Jodie Lee Daniels. The scene at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker Jodie-Lee Daniels. Photopress Belfast Martin McGuinness at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker Jodie Lee Daniels Photopress Belfast Garda Superintendent Colm Nevin speaks to the media. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker John McCarthy from the RNLI at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker Flowers left at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker Flowers left at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker Jodie Lee Daniels Photopress Belfast Francis Crawford Who raised the alarm, at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal, after Five people, including children, have died after a car went off a pier. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker Francis Crawford Who raised the alarm, at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal, after Five people, including children, have died after a car went off a pier. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker Garda at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal, after Five people, including children, have died after a car went off a pier. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker Francis Crawford Who raised the alarm, at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal, after Five people, including children, have died after a car went off a pier. Picture Presseye Francis Crawford Who raised the alarm, at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal, after Five people, including children, have died after a car went off a pier. Picture Presseye Francis Crawford Who raised the alarm, at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal, after Five people, including children, have died after a car went off a pier. Picture Joe Bolan / Press Eye Tributes left at the scene of the tragedy. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker Emergency services on the pier at Buncrana after yesterdays tragic accident Rescue services at the pier in Buncrana where a family of five perished after their car slide into Loch Swilly The pier in daylight Algae on the slipway which would have made it difficult for the vehicle to get any traction An Audi Q7 like the one in which the family got trapped / Facebook

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Whatsapp Evan McGrotty, aged eight, died alongside his father Sean McGrotty (49), 12-year-old brother Mark, grandmother Ruth Daniels, 59, and her 14-year-old daughter, Jodie Lee Daniels, when their SUV sank after sliding off a "slippery as ice" slipway in Buncrana in March 2016.

Louise's partner Sean McGrotty (46) died on March 20 alongside eight-year-old Evan and 12-year-old Mark, Ruth Daniels (57) and 14-year-old Jodi-Lee Daniels when their car sank after sliding off the slipway in Co Donegal.

Yesterday the Irish Mail on Sunday printed an apology.

It read: "We wish to make it clear that Louise understood she was speaking to our reporter in a purely private capacity and had not consented to being interviewed. She did not wish to give interviews to any media outlets."

It added: "We are happy to make this clear and to apologise to Louise and her family for any upset caused."

However, the interview also ran in the national edition of the Mail on Sunday last week, but it did not carry the apology, despite the "interview" taking place in the UK.

Family priest Fr Paddy O'Kane told the Belfast Telegraph he believed the woman may have claimed she was visiting from the Dublin area.

Fr O'Kane said: "She (Louise) felt very hurt, she could not believe the journalist could stoop so low. She was angry and hurt by it.

"The woman came to her home with two young children and pretended she was also a mother and wanted her children to meet her daughter.

"She went into her home and talked with Louise. Then she began asking for photographs of her children with Rioghnach-Ann (the infant who survived).

"But they are such nice people that they didn't tell her to get out of the house. They just told her they had to leave the house as they had something to do.

"As if she doesn't have enough to go through, then she has this to deal with.

"It calls into question the ethics of journalism.

"She has had to deal with some journalists whose work has been done in very bad taste. I could not get over the extent of what some of them would do. Some were hiding then taking photos of family members, and others were taking photos through the kitchen window.

"She is relying on her faith."

It is understood the family may lodge a complaint with the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso).

Under the harassment clause, it states that a reporter must identify themselves when asked: "They must not persist in questioning, telephoning, pursuing or photographing individuals once asked to desist; nor remain on property when asked to leave, and must not follow them.

"If requested, they must... identify themselves and whom they represent."

Ipso also enforces the Editors' Code of Practice, which states: "In cases involving personal grief or shock, enquiries and approaches must be made with sympathy and discretion and publication handled sensitively."

It also states: "Engaging in misrepresentation or subterfuge, including by agents or intermediaries, can generally be justified only in the public interest and then only when the material cannot be obtained by other means."

The National Union of Journalists' code of conduct states a journalist should do "nothing to intrude into anybody's private life, grief or distress unless justified by overriding consideration of the public interest".
Michaella McCollum Connolly with rugby star Tommy Bowe while doing promotional work at an official Ulster Rugby event

Police escort Michaella McCollum Connolly (right) and Melissa Reid (front) in handcuffs as they are moved from the National Police anti-drug headquarters to a court to be formally charged for drug trafficking in Lima, Peru, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2013

Michaella McCollum Connolly, handcuffed, arrives for a court hearing in Lima, Peru, clutching the book 'Secrets About Life Every Woman Should Know: Ten principles for spiritual and emotional fulfillment' (AP Photo/Karel Navarro)

Michaella McCollum Connolly in one of the Ibiza clubs where she worked as a dancer

CAUGHT ON CAMERA: Michaella and Melissa caught on CCTV loading bags into a car in Peru

Michaella McCollum during her first interview release from prison in Peru

Michaella McCollum during her exclusive first interview with the Irish broadcaster RTE (RTE/PA)

Convicted drugs mule Michaella McCollum has revealed that she wants to become an anti-narcotics campaigner to prevent people from going through the jail hell she has just emerged from.

In her first interview since being released from prison in Peru, the glamorous 23-year-old appeared on television to claim that she had repented and now realises that her attempt to smuggle 1.5m worth of drugs into Europe was wrong.

The Dungannon woman said she had to complete the rest of her sentence on parole in Peru - which is four years - but there is an opportunity to apply for expulsion which would mean she being deported back to Northern Ireland.

She will apply for that and hopes to be home as soon as possible.

McCollum said she now wanted to help steer young people away from drugs.

"I want to be a help to young people, to prevent them from committing this kind of crime; to prevent people who have went off the way of life to help put them back on a good way; to show people that after a bad decision you can turn your life around," she told RTE One.

There was a mixed reaction on social media to the interview but many people were cynical, believing McCollum is trying to set herself up to make money out of what she did by writing a book or selling the rights to a movie.

In the RTE programme entitled 'Prison in Peru: Michaella's first interview' McCollum had a new look and was barely recognisable from when she was last seen in public.

Instead of her dark hair being tied up in a bun, she had long blonde hair and was wearing red lipstick.

The convicted drugs mule, one of the so-called Peru Two, was released from prison last Thursday.

Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Michaella McCollum Connolly in one of her club hostess outfits Michaella McCollum Connolly in one of the Ibiza clubs where she worked as a dancer PARTY SCENE: Michaella in Ibiza Michaella McCollum after her arrest AP Photo/Martin Mejia CAUGHT ON CAMERA: Michaella and Melissa caught on CCTV loading bags into a car in Peru Michaella McCollum's mother Norah McCollum and sister Samantha McCollum vist the Peru prison Melissa Reid Michaella McCollum and ex-boyfriend Dwayne Mullan Dungannon drugs mule Michaella McCollum Michaella McCollum Connolly, handcuffed, arrives for a court hearing in Lima, Peru, clutching the book 'Secrets About Life Every Woman Should Know: Ten principles for spiritual and emotional fulfillment' (AP Photo/Karel Navarro) AP Michaella McCollum Connolly arrives to court for her sentencing in Callao, Peru (AP Photo/Martin Mejia) AP Police escort Michaella McCollum Connolly (right) and Melissa Reid (front) in handcuffs as they are moved from the National Police anti-drug headquarters to a court to be formally charged for drug trafficking in Lima, Peru, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2013 AP Michaella McCollum Connolly with reality TV star Mark Wright at a promotional night hosted by Belfast's M Club Michaella McCollum Connolly with Brad Houston from England Michaella McCollum Connolly Michaella McCollum Connolly with rugby star Tommy Bowe while doing promotional work at an official Ulster Rugby event / Facebook

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Whatsapp Michaella McCollum Connolly in one of her club hostess outfits

McCollum and Melissa Reid, from Scotland, were imprisoned in 2013 for six years and eight months after admitting trying to smuggle cocaine worth 1.5m from Peru to Spain. The two women had been held at the Virgen de Fatima prison in Lima. However, they were later transferred to the Ancon 2 facility.

The Tyrone woman was a photography student and dancer living in Belfast and she said it was sectarianism that forced her to go to Spain, where her problems started.

She said she was told to leave an area where she was living in Belfast in 2013 because of her religion.

McCollum decided to go to Ibiza where she said she was targeted by a drugs gang who promised her money if she agreed to a drugs run.

Before trying to board a plane with the drugs in Peru she said she was "too scared to walk away".

When detected by police and strip-searched she said: "I wanted to crawl up in a ball and die."

She feared she could have been in jail for 15 years.

She said she found it difficult to phone her mum and tell her the news but in prison she decided to work in a beauty salon to learn a new trade.

McCollum revealed she was delighted her mother Norah was waiting at the prison gates last week when she was released.

"Seeing my mother there broke my heart, that this is the end that my mum is here to take me back home."

"It feels like a dream, it feels like it is not real. It feels like I am going to wake up any moment and be back in a nightmare.

"It was a world I had forgotten, waking up in a bed, having your family next to you."

McCollum added she had been young and naive to get involved in the drugs trade but said she was not "a bad person". She said she had now learnt a lot and said she "made a decision in a moment without thinking". She admitted: "I potentially could have hurt a lot of people, I potentially could have filled Europe with a lot of drugs. I can see the harm I could have done to people who consume drugs. If the drugs had got back I probably would have had a lot of blood on my hands."

She added her family wanted to know why she did it.

"They know I am a good girl, that I have never been in trouble with the law before. I have never intentionally set out to hurt somebody and I guess that is why they supported me because they know I was just a young girl who made a mistake."

She said she was "totally grateful for my mother, this is the love each mother has for their daughter. I would love some day to do the same for my daughter and be an amazing mother like my mum was for me".

Her solicitor Kevin Winters explained how she came to be released last Thursday.

"She made an application to apply for parole with benefits. Firstly she had to serve a sentence of two years and three months. She's done that," he said.

"Secondly she had to undergo psychological profiling and she submitted herself to analysis.

"She had to be seen to be someone who was undergoing work and various studies so the cumulative effect of all of that meant that Michaella McCollum became eligible for the earlier release scheme under this parole process."
Saoirse Ronan, Jennifer Lawrence, Miley Cyrus - Who's bookies' favourite for lead role if Michaella McCollum's life was made into a movie? Close

Michaella McCollum has only just been released from Peruvian prison and already bets are being cast as to who would play her if her life was made into a film.

The 23-year-old was freed from the Ancon 2 prison under new legislation on early prison release introduced in the South American country last year.

The Tyrone woman was arrested alongside Scot Melissa Reid in August 2013 as they tried to leave Peru aboard a plane bound for Madrid, with Majorca as their final destination.

They were found with 24lbs of cocaine with a street value of 1.5m hidden inside food packets in their luggage.

Her first interview since her release was aired on Sunday night on RTE where she insisted she made the decision in a "moment of madness".

"I made a decision in a moment of madness. I'm not a bad person. I want to demonstrate that I'm a good person."

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The interview has divided opinion online with many saying it was creating a celebrity out of the convicted drug smuggler.

But now Paddy Power have started taking bets on who will play Michaella in a movie of her life, if it was ever to be made.

In two "Michaella McCollum specials" it also asks what reality show she will take part in.

At the moment Celebrity Big Brother is the firm favourite with odds of 7/1 with the least likely Strictly Come Dancing with odds of 50/1.

Leading the line up for actresses to play McCollum is Oscar nominated Brooklyn star Saoirse Ronan with odds of 8/1 and close behind her is Oscar winner for best actress Brie Larson.

Check out our gallery for full odds on those in the hypothetical running.
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. Minister of Justice of the Republic of Armenia Arpine Hovhannisyan gives legal assessments to Azerbaijani aggression. She states that the Azerbaijani actions contradict to all the international laws and conventions. Armenpress reports Minister Hovhannisyan made a not about this on her Facebook page.

I am deeply concerned by recent disturbing news from the line of contact between Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan as well as from bordering residential areas where innocent civilians, including children, are being targeted indiscriminately. The Azerbaijani military forces continue to grossly violate the basic international human rights and humanitarian law. On April 3, the Azerbaijani forces raided Talish village, which is situated a few kilometers inside the Nagorno Karabakh territory, and brutally tortured to death in their own home Valera Khalapian and his wife Razmela, and mutilated their bodies. This appalling, barbaric act must be condemned without further delay by the international human rights organizations and international community at large, she wrote, adding that according to the 51st article of the 1st Additional Protocol the civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack.

Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited. Moreover, International humanitarian law (Geneva Conventions of 1949 and its Additional Protocols of 1977) provides general protection for children as persons taking no part in hostilities, and special protection as persons who are particularly vulnerable. Article 38 of the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child provides that States Parties undertake to respect and to ensure respect for rules of international humanitarian law applicable to them in armed conflicts which are relevant to the child, Minister Hovhannisyan stated.

Referring to the incident of April 3 in Talish, when breaching its international obligations, on 3rd April Azerbaijani military units temporarily overrun Talish village, located a few kilometers inside the Artsakh border with Azerbaijan and attacked the civil population of the village and shot Valera Khalapyan and his wife Razmela to death in their home and then cut off their ears, Arpine Hovhannisyan said that this barbaric act has no reasonable explanation. She assessed this incident as a war crime.

Azerbaijan violated one of the most important principles of International Humanitarian Law, which prohibits indiscriminate attacks against the civilian population or civilian objects. According to the 51th article of the I Additional Protocol the civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited. Moreover, International humanitarian law (Geneva Conventions of 1949 and its Additional Protocols of 1977) provides general protection for children as persons taking no part in hostilities, and special protection as persons who are particularly vulnerable. Article 38 of the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child provides that States Parties undertake to respect and to ensure respect for rules of international humanitarian law applicable to them in armed conflicts which are relevant to the child. I call upon the my fellow colleagues, Justice Ministers to respond at once to this medieval atrocity and bring this case to the attention of relevant human rights bodies, since these intentional and horrendous killings of civilians is a war crime, Justice Minister concluded.
The abortion drug Mifepristone 'blocks the hormone that makes the lining of the womb suitable for the fertilised egg' according to the NHS website

A young woman who bought drugs on the internet to induce a miscarriage after failing to raise enough money to travel to England for a termination has been handed a suspended prison sentence.

A barrister for the woman told Belfast Crown Court that had his client lived in any other region of the UK, she would "not have found herself before the courts."

The 21-year old, who cannot be named due to a court order, bought two types of drugs online, took them then miscarried on July 12, 2014. The male foetus, which was between 10 and 12 weeks, was later found in the bin of a house she shared with two other people.

She appeared in court today where she pleaded guilty to two charges - namely procuring her own abortion by using a poison, and of supplying a poison with intent to procure a miscarriage.

Handing the woman a three-month prison sentence, which was suspended for one year, Judge David McFarland spoke of the difference in legislation surrounding abortion in Northern Ireland, compared to England, Scotland and Wales.

The Belfast Recorder also spoke of the potential dangers of taking these drugs, which are readily available on the internet but which should only ever be taken under medical supervision.

Prior to sentencing, Crown prosecutor Kate McKay said that on July 20, 2014 police were contacted by the woman's housemates and were made aware that she had bought drugs online which had induced a miscarriage on July 12.

When officers arrived at the rented accommodation in south Belfast, they conducted a search and located various items - including a foetus which was located in a black bag in the household bin.

A subsequent post mortem confirmed that the male foetus was between ten to 12 weeks and was the woman's biological son.

Mrs McKay said that when the woman moved into the house in May 2014, she told her two housemates that she was pregnant but that she was trying to raise the money to travel to England for a termination.

However, after she was unable to raise enough money, she contacted an abortion clinic in England for advice. She claims that she was told by the clinic about two drugs - mifepristone and misoprostol - that were available on the internet and which would induce a miscarriage.

She miscarried on July 12, and the following day her housemates found both blood-stained items and the foetus in the bin. One housemate described the foetus as a "wee baby" around four inches long.

Mrs McKay said at this point the housemates were in a dilemma about what to do and were "taken aback by the seemingly blase attitude" adopted by the woman. Around a week later, they contacted the PSNI.

When she was arrested, the then 19-year old gave a 'no comment' interview.

Defence barrister Paul Bacon said his client's prosecution highlighted the difference in legislation between here and the rest of the UK. He told the court "had she lived in any other jurisdiction, she would not have found herself before the court", adding she felt "victimised by the system."

Regarding the incident, Mr Bacon that at that time the woman was living in Belfast with people she barely knew and when she fell pregnant she felt "isolated and trapped ... with no-one to turn to."

Mr Bacon said the drugs she took were normally administered under medical supervision only, meaning that she put her own health at risk. He branded her actions as "a 19-year old who felt trapped" and who turned to "such desperate measures."

The barrister concluded by revealing the woman is now 21, has a new baby with her partner and is "trying to put her life back together again."

Before passing sentence, Judge McFarland said there were no guidelines or similar cases to compare this to, adding in his experience there have been no other prosecutions under this specific piece of legislation - namely Section 58 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861.

Judge McFarland said the legislation was 150 years old and had been substantially amended in England, Scotland and Wales but not in Northern Ireland.

Acknowledging that as a UK citizen the woman could legally have travelled to England for a termination, Judge McFarland said that the advice given by the clinic "without knowledge of her background and details was perhaps inappropriate".

He also said that while there are agencies in Northern Ireland that give advice on such issues "unfortunately they are part of a polarised debate that can be part of a more toxic debate."
A security alert at a Co Antrim Royal Mail postal sorting office sparked when white powder leaked from a package has ended.

Two fire appliances were sent to the scene the Mallusk building to the report of an unidentified substance found at Royal Mail Centre in Enterprise Way.

Part of the centre was cordoned off as a precaution.

A spokeswoman for Royal Mail said in a statement that the item has been confirmed as harmless and did not pose a risk to workers.

"Royal Mail can confirm that white powder that had leaked from a package was found at the Northern Ireland Mail Centre at Mallusk this morning.

"The safety of our people is of the utmost priority and in line with our policy and procedures, the police and fire brigade attended and the area where the powder was found was cordoned off for a period of time. Following their investigation, they gave the all clear and confirmed that the item was harmless and did not pose a risk to postal workers.

The building was not evacuated and there is no impact on our collection and sorting operations.
Forensic tests are being carried out to establish exactly how a fault at an electricity substation in west Belfast on Friday night led to a brilliant night-time flare and huge bang that rumbled out across the city.

Shortly after 11pm on Friday, witnesses reported seeing huge flashes light up the night sky and the bang that could be heard for miles.

Rumours quickly spread of everything from a lightning strike and thunder to a terrorist bombing.

Lights flickered and dimmed in thousands of homes, with many householders thinking a power cut was imminent.

Others reported that radio broadcasts lost a signal after the incident at Suffolk Road.

However, after speculation on Twitter went wild, NIE Networks said there is no evidence a meteor or some sort of solar flare was to blame.

One witness said: "There were lights flashing blue, red and everything.

"I came out of my house and there was a thick black smoke and a horrible smell."

The actual explanation was much more mundane. NIE Networks spokeswoman Sara McClintock told the Belfast Telegraph: "A piece of equipment failed in one of our substations.

"We haven't yet got the exact cause of why the equipment failed.

"There will be a range of forensic tests on that and that will be done over a number of days."

She said that fortunately such incidents are rare and the pieces of equipment are "fairly robust" - but as with any piece of equipment there can be failures. Ms McClintock added that after the incident, the story "took a life of its own" through social media.

"Because there is electric going through it there could be a bang and a flash, which would be an unusual flash because it is electrical," she said.

"Because they are very sensitive pieces of equipment and feeding power out to many thousands of houses across Northern Ireland, we would have protection systems in place which are designed to kick in and transfer the load so service can continue.

"It would have dipped and a lot of people would have seen their power dip - they were not off - maybe for a second or two."

She said as far as they were aware the incident was not caused by a meteor or some out-of-this-world cause as had been speculated on social media.

"I have been asked that question before," said Ms McClintock.

"It is just a piece of equipment which failed. What I presume people were talking about was solar flares and things like that which can cause disruption because of the electrical fields."

Meanwhile, power went off in homes in the Braniel area of east Belfast on Sunday at 6.08pm due to a fault in an underground cable but was back on at 7.24pm, NIE Networks said.
A man lay dead for up to two days after hitting his head when he fell down a hole in his back yard.

Dennis Rodgers (43) was eventually discovered by a neighbour at the rear of the house he was renting in Rathfriland late on Wednesday night.

It is believed he had fallen two days earlier, on Monday night.

One of his younger brothers, Darren, told the Belfast Telegraph that a health and safety investigation is currently under way into the circumstances surrounding the tragedy.

Dennis was separated from his wife, Sharon, and together the couple had a son, Patrick (6) and a daughter, Rebecca (8).

It is understood construction work had been taking place at the rear of the house.

"Monday night was very cold and the house that Dennis rented had run out of oil," Darren said.

"He had walked to the local filling station and brought back a jar of oil to keep him going.

"There was some construction work going on in the back yard and Dennis was trying to empty the oil into the tank.

"It looks like he slipped and fell into a deep hole in the yard, hitting his head on the concrete.

"Dennis was a big lad at six feet tall and must have hit the concrete hard.

"The last calls on his phone were on Monday evening so sadly he lay in the hole from then until he was found late on Wednesday evening by his neighbour.

"The family want to find out exactly what happened."

Darren described his brother as "a real outgoing fella who loved life," adding, "He was a plasterer by trade and everyone knew him.

"I was speaking to him myself on Monday night just after six o'clock and all was OK.

"He was separated from his wife and deeply loved his kids. They have been hit bad by this.

"When people called to his house on Wednesday evening they found the door was open and the TV was on.

"It was only when they asked the neighbour if he had seen Dennis that he actually went out the back to look and found him in the hole. It was a very deep hole and was quite full of water as there had been heavy rain on the Monday night.

"It is sad to think he lay there all that time before being found. He was a good brother and would have done anything for anyone. We will miss him dearly."

SDLP South Down MP Margaret Ritchie offered sympathy to the family.

She said: "I want to offer my deepest sympathies to Sharon, to her children and the wider Rodgers and Morgan family.

"I'm acquainted with both families. I also know Sharon's father Paddy Morgan very well, who has been a stalwart for the SDLP for many years."

Mrs Ritchie added: "I know people in Downpatrick who know the Rodgers family will want to support them and help them in whatever way is possible.

"They want to be there to support the family and to stand in solidarity with them."

The funeral service for Dennis is being held today at noon in St John the Baptist Church, Ballygorain in Hilltown.

Burial will take place in the adjoining cemetery afterwards.
Video posted by Willie Frazer as an April Fool shows him putting on a black balaclava and army combat

Video posted by Willie Frazer as an April Fool shows him putting on a black balaclava and army combat

He then puts on a balaclava and combat jacket and asks would that be acceptable?

Im just one of the boys Mr Frazer quips before being allowed to proceed

Mr Frazer is stopped by a bogus policeman... who tells him: Put your flag away, good man'

Mr Frazer is stopped by a bogus policeman... who tells him: Put your flag away, good man'

Northern Ireland victims campaigner Willie Frazer has caused a storm online after posting a skit about how to "blend in" while travelling in south Armagh.

He is shown driving along a country lane before a person who appears to be posing as a police officer stops the car and asks him where he is going.

The best way for me to travel in South Armagh, thanks to ACC Martin for the advice. Posted by William Frazer on Friday, 1 April 2016

The bogus officer warns him not to display a Union flag in the area, and tells him no flags in public, adding: put your flag away, good man.

Frazer is filmed asking why not, and says its the flag of the country, before setting the flag out of sight.

He then reaches into his car and pulling out a black balaclava and army combat jacket which he puts on, and is then allowed to proceed.

Frazer asks: "Would that be acceptable", and is told, "oh yes, yes ... that ticks every box".

He then quips, "I'm just one of the boys" before driving on.

The video was posted as an April Fool and has gone down a storm online with over 122,000 views and almost 1,000 shares.

It comes after police were criticised for an incident on the Ormeau Road where CS spray was used during a Junior Orange parade after officers had not been seen to tackle a number of dissident parades in Belfast, Lurgan, Londonderry and Coalisland over the Easter weekend.

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At the dissident republican parade in Lurgan, marchers wore masks over their faces before one read out a statement from the Continuity IRA which contained a threat against British forces.

As he posted the video on April 1, Mr Frazer commented: The best way for me to travel in south Armagh, thanks to ACC Martin for the advice.

The PSNI has defended its policing of parades and on Friday Assistant Chief Constable Stephen Martin said parades are policed in an impartial way.

I can tell you that I police those [parades] in an impartial, consistent way, he said.

Yes I have to make different decisions based on different contexts, unfortunately we are a divided society where often it comes down that if Im celebrating, you will condemn, and vice versa, these are difficult decisions.

First Minister Arlene Foster said last week that she did not believe there is a two-tier policing in Northern Ireland.

She said the PSNI need to get to the bottom of issues causing concern but it had a very difficult job to do.

Willie Frazer regularly posts video on his Facebook page reacting to various news stories.
The pack of cyclists with Slovakian Peter Sagan of Tinkoff (C) ride in action at the 100th edition of the 'Ronde van Vlaanderen - Tour des Flandres - Tour of Flanders' one day cycling race, 255km from Zedelgem to Oudenaarde, on April 3, 2016. / AFP PHOTO / Belga / DAVID STOCKMAN / Belgium OUTDAVID STOCKMAN/AFP/Getty Images

OUDENAARDE, WEST-VLAANDEREN - APRIL 03: The riders gather at the start prior to the 100th edition of the Tour of Flanders from Bruges to Oudenaarde on April 3, 2016 in Bruges, Belgium. (Photo by Bryn Lennon/Getty Images)

A 56-year old Irish cyclist died after becoming unwell while riding the amateur Tour of Flanders cycling sportif yesterday, Belgium news agencies have reported.

Some 16,000 cycling enthusiasts from all over the world were taking part in the event which is a curtain raiser for todays Tour of Flanders professional race  one of the so-called Spring classics.

Belgium media reported that the Irish competitor became unwell on the Oude Kwaremont, one of the cobbled roads leading up the Kluisberg hill and a notoriously difficult part of the course.

A huge number of foreigners compete in the event and his year the number of foreigners exceeded the number of Belgians for the first time..

The Dutch (3,300) and British (2,300) riders headed the list.

Belgium media reported that, despite the quick intervention of first aid teams, a 56-year-old Irish national died after becoming unwell during the event.

The Department of Foreign Affairs confirmed that they are providing consular assistance to the family of an Irish person who died in Belgium today.

Source Irish Independent
Michael Bruton claimed the Port Navas oyster farm on the Prince of Wales's private estate is causing damage to the natural habitat

The Prince of Wales's private estate has won an appeal against a ruling which could have opened up its dealings to increased public scrutiny.

Representatives for the Duchy of Cornwall successfully challenged a decision that it is a ''public authority'' and must disclose environmental data about a controversial oyster farm it owns.

In November 2011 the estate was ordered to hand over information said to concern the environmental impact of the Port Navas oyster farm in Cornwall to local campaigner Michael Bruton, who claims that the farm is causing damage to the natural habitat.

But, in a ruling just released, an appeal tribunal declared that the estate "is not a public authority" under environmental information rules.

Mr Justice Charles, president of the Upper Tribunal (Administrative Appeals Chamber) ruled that "the Duke of Cornwall is under no obligation" to provide the information sought by Mr Bruton.

The farm, owned by the Duchy of Cornwall Oyster Farm Ltd, cultivates non-native Pacific oysters in the Lower Fal and Helford special area of conservation, near Falmouth.

The environmental information disclosure order was made after John Angel, principal judge of the First-Tier Tribunal on information rights, a court that deals with legal battles relating to freedom of information, overturned a ruling by the Information Commissioner in October 2010 that the Duchy was not a public body subject to the regulations.

He ruled that, under the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) 2004, the Duchy is a public authority.

But the appeals tribunal disagreed and ruled in favour of the Duchy.

Mr Justice Charles said in his written ruling: "The information sought does not exist but no point has been taken that this appeal is academic.

"This is because the underlying legal issues are relevant to another request Mr Bruton has made, other requests that he and others would like to make, and more generally."

The appeals tribunal accepted arguments by lawyers for the Duchy that, for the purposes of the EIR and the Environmental Information Directive 2003/4, the estate does not have ''legal personality'' and does not exercise any public functions.

The EIR are part of the freedom of information regime in the UK which implements a European directive requiring public authorities to disclose environmental information unless an exception applies.

Mr Bruton first submitted a request for information in September 2008, and it was refused by the Duchy on the basis that the EIR did not apply because it was not a public authority, the hearing at the Rolls Building in central London was told.

The Duchy of Cornwall is the estate given to the heir to the throne, comprising around 53,628 hectares of land in 23 counties, mostly in the South West of England and including the whole of the Isles of Scilly.

It also has an extensive financial investment portfolio.

It was created in 1337 by Edward III for his son and heir, Prince Edward the Black Prince, who became the first Duke of Cornwall. Its website says its primary function is ''to provide an income from its assets for the Prince of Wales''.
David Cameron is linked to Panama Papers by his late father Ian Cameron who is said to have 'ran offshore fund that paid zero UK tax for 30 years'

David Camerons father, senior Tory peers and former Conservative MPs are among the hundreds of individuals named in the the so-called Panama Papers leak of confidential documents showing how the worlds richest people shield their wealth offshore.

Though he is not named in the reports himself, the British Prime Minister is linked to Panama Papers by his late father Ian Cameron, who died in 2010.

According to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which coordinated the research into the 11 million secret files handed over by an anonymous source, Mr Cameron used Mossack Fonsecas services to shield his investment fund, Blairmore Holdings Inc.

A 2006 prospectus for Blairmore Holdings Inc described Mr Cameron, a stockbroker and multi-millionaire, as instrumental in [its] formation.

It said the fund should be managed and conducted so that it does not become resident in the United Kingdom for UK taxation purposes.

The ICIJ said there was no suggestion that the individuals named in the Panama Papers had done anything illegal.

Asked whether the Prime Ministers family was still holding money in offshore arrangements on Monday, his spokesperson replied: That is a private matter, I am focused on what the Government is doing.

She noted that the elder Mr Camerons investment funds were previously revealed in British media reports in 2012.

Critics reacted angrily to the response on Twitter, arguing that the Prime Ministers position demands transparency on the issue.

It is NOT a private matter for the flipping Prime Minister, one person wrote.

Another accused Downing Street of showing complete contempt for the British public.

So can we say it's a private matter if HMRC came knocking on our door, wanting to do an audit? a man wondered.

Three senior Tory figures were also named in the papers, including the former party donor and MP Lord Ashcroft.

Belize Corporate Services (BCS), a subsidiary of Ashcroft's company BCB Holdings, began using Mossack Fonseca to provide shell corporations for its clients in 2006 when Ashcroft was in the House of Lords, it was reported.

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Lord Ashcrofts spokesman Alan Kilkenny said allegations he had partnered or done business with Mossack Fonseca in any way were entirely false, and suggested records had been falsified.

The long-serving former MP Michael Mates, who was Northern Ireland minister under John Major in 1992/3, was also named as a client. The ICIJ said a company Mr Mates chaired, Haylandale Limited, was created in the Bahamas and registered with Mossack Fonseca.

And the Baroness and life peer Pamela Sharples was named as a shareholder and one-time director of Nunswell Investments Limited, a Bahamas-based company she used to make investments.

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In response, the law firm which handled Sharples affairs, reportedly in conjunction with Mossack Fonseca, said she became a director of Nunswell in 2000 and that the company was registered in the UK at that point.

Mr Mates said he was asked to chair Haylandale Limited by a friend and that his shares were not of any real value.

David Cameron is due to host a major summit to discuss the issue of offshore tax havens in May. More than half of the 300,000 firms listed as Mossack Fonseca clients were registered in British-administered tax havens.

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell told the Mirror: The Panama papers revelations are extremely serious. Cameron promised and has failed to end tax secrecy and crack down on morally unacceptable offshore schemes, real action is now needed.

Independent
President Francois Hollande promised Monday that French tax authorities will investigate the disclosures of the Panama Papers and that legal proceedings will follow. AFP/Getty Images. [File photo]

A populist Ukrainian party leader said on April 4, 2016 he would launch impeachment proceedings against President Petro Poroshenko over his use of offshore accounts revealed by the "Panama Papers" leak. AFP/Getty Images [File photo]

View of a sign outside the building where Panama-based Mossack Fonseca law firm offices are placed in Panama City on April 3, 2016. AFP/Getty Images

British Prime Minister David Cameron's father Ian was among the hundreds of individuals named in the the so-called Panama Papers leak of confidential documents. HMRC could not confirm whether or not the affairs of Blairmore Holdings would be investigated (Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images)

David Camerons father was allegedly involved in hiring what has been called a small army of Bahamas residents  including a part-time bishop  to sign paperwork for an offshore fund in what may have been an effort to avoid paying UK tax.

Papers leaked from the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca are said to suggest Ian Cameron was part of the scheme as a director of Blairmore Holdings Inc.

The investment fund was reportedly run from the Caribbean but named after Cameron familys ancestral home in Aberdeenshire.

The fund, created in the early 1980s with the help of the prime ministers late father, is believed to still exist today.

The Guardian, one of the 109 international media organisations given access to the massive tranche of data from Mossack Fonseca, has claimed that in 30 years Blairmore has never paid a penny of tax in the UK on its profits.

Blairmores 2006 investment prospectus also stated: "The directors intend that the affairs of the fund should be managed and conducted so that it does not become resident in the UK for UK taxation purposes. Accordingly... the fund will not be subject to UK corporation tax or income tax on its profits."

Asked to confirm whether David Camerons family still had any money invested in Blairmore Holdings Inc, the Prime Ministers spokesperson said today it was a private matter.

HMRC has told The Independent it could not confirm whether or not the affairs of Blairmore Holdings would be investigated.

However, Jennie Granger HMRCs director-general of enforcement and compliance has said that tax inspectors have asked the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists to share the leaked data with HMRC, and pledged to closely examine this data.

This means there is a possibility that Blairmore Holdings tax affairs could come under scrutiny.

Blairmore, incorporated in Panama but based in the Bahamas, appears to have been a longstanding customer of Mossack Fonseca, the law firm from whom 11.5 million documents have been leaked, referring to work stretching back nearly 40 years.

The leaked documents suggest Blairmore used up to 50 Bahamas residents a year.

They were allegedly used to sign paperwork and fill roles such as treasurer and secretary. Among them, according to the leaked documents, was the late Solomon Humes, a lay bishop with the non-denominational Church of God of Prophecy, who acted in various roles including vice-president over a number of years from the mid-1990s.

There is no suggestion that retaining Bahamas residents in this way was illegal. Other offshore funds also made similar arrangements. Clients of Blairmore may also have been using the fund simply to preserve their privacy.

Ian Cameron was one of five UK-based directors of Blairmore until shortly before his death in 2010. Six other directors from Switzerland and the Bahamas was recruited, meaning a majority of the board was foreign-based and the fund therefore had offshore status.

Board meetings were often held in the five-star Hotel Beau-Rivage in Geneva.

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The Panama Papers suggest Blairmores European-based directors regularly flew to the Caribbean. There is said to be little reference to their Bahamas-based counterparts flying to meetings in Europe, which may raise questions about how involved in the funds decision making the Caribbean board members really were.

The leaked documents also suggest that until 2006 Blairmore was run using a financial instrument known as bearer shares. This was once a common arrangement in offshore funds. Like banknotes, bearer shares do not carry the name of the owner and are deemed to belong to whoever is holding (bearing) the certificate.

Bearer shares are entirely legal and there is no suggestion Blairmore ever used them for anything illegal. Bearer shares have, however, been abolished in some countries because they have allegedly been used by organised criminal gangs.

The Guardian reported that Blairmores bearer shares were kept securely locked and, according to the leaked documents, Ian Cameron had to count piles of the certificates to check none had been lost or stolen.

Minutes from 2001 also show Blairmores directors discussing the importance of monitoring news about Panama to ensure that the jurisdiction is in keeping with the companys pristine reputation.

In 2006 Blairmore switched to using traditional shares, where owners are named in a register.

In 2015 David Camerons government banned bearer shares in the UK.

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The Prime Minister has also called for an international crackdown on aggressive tax avoidance and evasion.

After viewing the leaked documents, Richard Brooks, a Private Eye journalist and former HMRC tax inspector, told the Guardian: If HMRC had seen the papers they would have had some very serious questions. The clear intention for Blairmore was to avoid becoming UK tax resident and the test for this, even in 2006, is the location of the central management and control.

This means where the key business decisions are taken. The evidence here suggests in this period they werent taken outside the UK, in which case it is hard to see how the company was not managed and controlled, and therefore tax resident, in the UK at the time.

Clients of Blaimore are thought to have included Isidore Kerman, an adviser to Robert Maxwell who once owned the West End restaurants Scotts and J Sheekey, and Leopold Joseph, a private bank used by the Rolling Stones. There is no suggestion that these clients signed up to the fund to avoid tax in any way.

The Prime Ministers spokesperson said today he had responded to the allegations about his fathers tax affairs in the past. In 2012 Downing Street responded to revelations about Blairmore Holdings by declining to comment on a private matter.

Independent
YERVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. The Press Secretary of Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Armenia Artsrun Hovhannisyan released new information about the destruction of Azerbaijani military equipment. Azerbaijani forces, unable to break the resistance of Armenian bordering units, tried to use heavy equipment, as well as TOS 1multiple rocket launchers and military UAVs. However, Armenian artillerymen threw out these systems and Air Defense Forces destroyed one combat UAV, Armenpress reports Hovhannisyan saying.

The UN Security Council adopted four resolutions between April and November, 1993, calling for effective and permanent ceasefire, as well as immediate implementation of the reciprocal and urgent steps in that direction.

Peace talks between Armenia, Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan have been facilitated by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe since March 1992 within the frameworks of Minsk Group, co-Chaired by Russia, United States and France since mid-1990s.

Ceasefire agreement between Armenia, Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan, facilitated by Russia's representative to the CSCE/OSCE Minsk Group Vladimir Kazimirov, was signed on May 5, 1994, which had been maintained with only sporadic violations along the Line of Contact and international border till the latest Azerbaijani large scale offensive in the night of April 2, 2016.

Over the last two years Armenia, Nagorno Karabakh, the OSCE Minsk Group co-Chairs and over 80 U.S. Congressmen (Royce-Engel bill) proposed concrete measures to de-escalate situation and establish ceasefire monitoring equipments along the borders. Azerbaijan has been repeatedly rejecting these calls.
Union leaders will today meet to discuss the crisis gripping the steel industry as efforts continue to save thousands of jobs.

Shop stewards from steelworks across the country will hold emergency talks in London and will continue pressing the Government for help.

Business Secretary Sajid Javid has signalled ministers were working on plans to reduce energy costs and take on some of the pension liabilities in an effort to attract a buyer for Tata's loss-making UK assets.

He faced calls from Labour for his resignation after he disclosed he had been aware Tata had been meeting last week in Mumbai to discuss the future of its UK operations but chose to go ahead with a trip to Australia.

The Business Secretary played down suggestions that Tata could close down its UK operations, with the loss of 15,000 jobs, in as little as six weeks if a buyer was not found in time.

However, he acknowledged that the Government would have to come forward with some financial assistance if there was to be a deal.

"Tata will issue an offer document very soon. Alongside that, the UK Government know - I've known for a while - that we're also going to have to offer support to clinch that buyer and give that steel plant a long-term, viable future," he told BBC1's The Andrew Marr Show.

"I do feel, though, for lots of reasons after talking to Tata and many others involved in this, that there will be enough time to find the right buyer working with the Government and being able to take this forward."

Unite assistant general secretary Tony Burke said of today's meeting: "After a tumultuous few days this will be the first time representatives from all the steel unions from across Tata Steel can come together to discuss the industrial crisis facing the industry."
A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin says he is the "main target" of the media investigation into offshore accounts, but that he is not implicated in any wrongdoing.

The documents published by more than 100 media outlets alleged that Mr Putin's friends, including a leading cellist, were engaged in an offshore scheme.

Mr Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov says "it's obvious that the main target of such attacks is our president", and claimed that the publication was aimed at influencing Russia's stability and parliamentary elections scheduled for September.

Mr Peskov said international media had wrongly focused on Mr Putin instead of other world politicians, even though he was not implicated in any wrongdoing, and suggested the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a key player in the publication, had ties to the US government.

Meanwhile, the French president said the leaked documents from a Panamanian law firm are "good news" because it will help the state to recover money from people who have committed tax evasion.

Francois Hollande, speaking to reporters during the visit of a tech company in the Paris suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt, said "the whistleblowers do a useful work for the international community; they're taking risks, so they must be protected".

Last year, the French tax administration recovered 12 billion euro (9.6bn) from people who had committed tax evasion or tax avoidance, according to the French president.

Regarding the French clients of the Panamanian firm Mossack Fonseca, "all the investigations will be made" and potential trials "will be held", Mr Hollande says.

India's Finance Minister Arun Jaitley says that those who did not take advantage of a government compliance window last year to declare their illegal assets stashed abroad would find "such adventurism extremely costly".

He said that the recent media investigation, which details widespread use of offshore accounts by world leaders, executives and others, were "a stern reminder to all of us". Mr Jaitley's comments were reported by the Press Trust of India news agency.

According to the new reports, the names of Indian superstars Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Amitabh Bachchan feature among the more than 500 Indians with connections to offshore financial firms in Panama.

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has promised to prosecute those who evade taxes and to bring back money parked in tax havens, but his government has made little progress on that front.
Michaella McCollum Connolly with rugby star Tommy Bowe while doing promotional work at an official Ulster Rugby event

Police escort Michaella McCollum Connolly (right) and Melissa Reid (front) in handcuffs as they are moved from the National Police anti-drug headquarters to a court to be formally charged for drug trafficking in Lima, Peru, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2013

Michaella McCollum Connolly, handcuffed, arrives for a court hearing in Lima, Peru, clutching the book 'Secrets About Life Every Woman Should Know: Ten principles for spiritual and emotional fulfillment' (AP Photo/Karel Navarro)

Michaella McCollum Connolly in one of the Ibiza clubs where she worked as a dancer

CAUGHT ON CAMERA: Michaella and Melissa caught on CCTV loading bags into a car in Peru

Michaella McCollum and members of her family in the back of a taxi in the Peruvian capital Lima yesterday

As the world waited anxiously to see what toll a "hellhole" South American jail would have on a young girl from Co Tyrone, few would have predicted the results.

After two-and-a-half years beneath the sweltering Peruvian sun, convicted drug smuggler Michaella McCollum emerged from the Ancon 2 desert prison on Friday.

Yesterday while out on parole for attempting to smuggle 1.5m worth of pure cocaine to Europe, one half of the aptly named Peru Two sauntered around Lima's trendiest and most affluent district.

The 23-year-old from Dungannon fluttered along streets lined with top designer labels and trendy cafe bars with not a care in the world looking more as though she had just stepped out of the spa rather than a prison.

Accompanied by her mother Nora, brother Keith and other friends and family, the young model and her entourage fled when approached by this reporter.

Dressed in a black top and black ripped jeans, a newly blonde Michaela and her companions ran to a nearby taxi, snaking through side streets to escape being pictured.

Desperately trying to prevent the glamorous young drugs mule's face from being photographed, they piled into the car in an attempt to shield her from the photographer. The group shouted at the taxi driver to "drive" several times.

McCollum, who appeared on RTE television last night with blonde hair, glistening white teeth and a manicured appearance, looked like she was in full holiday mode.

It's believed the documentary was produced by Fine Point Film, a Belfast-based production company. Sources said RTE, Fine Point Films and Michaella all signed a number of confidentiality agreements prior to its production.

While RTE says it did not pay the convicted drugs mule for her time, it is not clear if she received payment from Five Point Film.

The 23-year-old had been partying in Ibiza in 2013 when she and pal Melissa Reid from Scotland disappeared. Their families had notified Spanish police before they both turned up a week-and-a-half later in Lima Airport, where they were arrested with 11kg of the killer drug hidden in mayonnaise packets.

Michaela is now living in the same affluent neighbourhood of the city where she picked up her consignment in 2013.

Nestled metres from the beach and one of the country's best shopping districts, it's understood the former model may spend up to 50 months in the idyllic surrounds before she can return home to Ireland.

McCollum was freed under new legislation on early prison release and she must pay some 2,800 to the Peruvian Government to cover the cost of her incarceration.
President Francois Hollande promised Monday that French tax authorities will investigate the disclosures of the Panama Papers and that legal proceedings will follow. AFP/Getty Images. [File photo]

View of a sign outside the building where Panama-based Mossack Fonseca law firm offices are placed in Panama City on April 3, 2016. AFP/Getty Images

A populist Ukrainian party leader said on April 4, 2016 he would launch impeachment proceedings against President Petro Poroshenko over his use of offshore accounts revealed by the "Panama Papers" leak. AFP/Getty Images [File photo]

While fighting between pro-government forces and rebels for a small Ukrainian town raged on in 2014, representatives of Petro Poroshenko were preoccupied hunting around for a utility bill, it has emerged.

The representatives of the Ukrainian president were trying to find the bill to allow Mr Poroshenko to create a holding company, Prime Asset Partners Limited, in the British Virgin Islands.

The revelation is one of many remarkable details to emerge from the Panama Papers, more than 11 million documents reportedly showing how Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca helped a number of current and former world leader to use offshore tax havens.

The information was sent by an anonymous source to German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung and then, in coordination with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), given to over 100 media organisations.

Although there is no indication that named individuals in the papers have done anything illegal, the head of Ukraines populist Radical party said an impeachment investigation needed to be launched into allegations that the President used an offshore account to avoid tax.

Referring to the company being set up at the peak of violence in Ukraine in 2014, Oleh Lyashko said: It is the height of cynicism to open offshore companies at a time when hundreds of our soldiers are dying.

In a statement, Mr Poroshenko denied any wrongdoing.

The company, Prime Asset Partners, is believed to have been registered on 21 August 2014, according to a share register published by the ICIJ.

At the time, Mr Poroshenkos troops were being killed in the battle against insurgents. Both sides were trying to claim control of Ilovaisk, a small town in the Donetsk region of Donbass.

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When he ran to be President in 2014, Mr Poroshenko pledged to his voters that he would sell his confectionery manufacturer Roshen.

But according to the ICIJ, a Cyprus law firm representing Prime Asset Partners said it was set up as a holding company for the Cyprus and Ukrainian companies of Roshen.

The firm said the company had nothing to do with the political activities of the person who set it up. A memorandum of the sole director, published by the ICIJ, shows Mr Poroshenko is the only shareholder.

According to the ICIJ, a spokesperson for Mr Poroshenko said the creation of the company had nothing to do with any political and military events in Ukraine.

In a response given to the ICIJ, financial advisors to the President said Prime Asset Partners had been set up to help him sell Roshen.

Following the information leaked in the Panama Papers, a senior official in the General Prosecutor's office said the documents did not show that Mr Poroshenko had committed a crime.

In a statement published on Facebook, the President said: "I believe I might be the first top office official in Ukraine who treats declaring of assets, paying taxes and conflict of interest issues profoundly and seriously, in full compliance with the Ukrainian and international private law."

"Having become a President, I am not participating in management of my assets, having delegated this responsibility to the respective consulting and law firms. I expect that they will provide all necessary details to the Ukrainian and international media."

On Monday, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine said it had no power to investigate the President.

In a statement posted on Facebook, according to the Interfax news agency, the bureau said: In accordance with the Ukrainian law on the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Code of Criminal Procedure, Bureau jurisdiction applies to top officials [authorised] to [fulfil] the functions of the state or local self-government, in particular, the president of Ukraine whose powers have ended.

Independent
People sit next to a tree covered with hangers, symbolising an illegal abortion, in front of the Polish parliament (AP)

Thousands of Poles have taken part in street demonstrations to protest a possible tightening of the country's abortion law, already one of the most restrictive in Europe.

The rallies in Warsaw and other cities were held under the slogan "No to the torture of women" and came as the influential Roman Catholic Church launched a campaign for a total ban on abortion, something supported by Prime Minister Beata Szydlo and ruling party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

Abortion is currently illegal in Poland in most cases but there are exceptions if the pregnancy poses a threat to the woman's health or life, if it results from a crime like incest or rape or if the foetus is damaged.

Protesters say a total ban would lead to women dying or force them to travel to other countries for abortions. In Warsaw they strung up coat hangers, a symbol of primitive underground abortions.

The current abortion law dates to 1993 and was a compromise between the country's liberal and Catholic circles.

Priests across Poland read out a letter from bishops in churches calling for politicians to initiate legislation that would impose the total ban on abortion. The letter argued there can be no compromise on the matter, citing the Biblical precept "Thou shalt not kill".

The ruling Law and Justice party has a majority in parliament and would be in a position to change the abortion law if all of its lawmakers support that change. It is not yet clear if most would follow party leader Mr Kaczynski in supporting the ban.

The party won elections last year promising deep changes to the country, including a return to traditional Catholic values.
Belfast City Centre manager Andrew Irvine (48) talks to Claire McNeilly about tackling street drinking, keeping the city safe and how Northern Ireland is currently bucking the national trend on retail crime.

Q. What does Belfast City Centre manager actually do?

A. Belfast City Centre Management is an arm's-length company. A third of our funding comes from Belfast City Council but we're not part of it. BCCM takes in everywhere geographically from the Belfast Telegraph building at the top of Royal Avenue in the north to Shaftsbury Square in the south. Our western boundary is Millfield and the Lagan is our eastern boundary. Our business plan has 23 projects live at the moment across three different themes - economic performance, managing the public space and making the city safer. We do a lot of work around research on things likes footfall and sales performance.

Q. What does the Public Space function of your role entail?

A. The big ones are the festive lighting programme. City council do the festive lights for City Hall but we do the rest. The other one is the city centre dressing banners that you see whenever an event like Giro d'Italia is in town. Also, we inspect 64 Belfast streets every week - checking for loose paving stones, broken street lights, and getting them fixed.

Q. What does the Safer City element involve?

A. The city centre beat police team is one of the big ones. For the last 11 years we've raised 60,000 a year of private sector money for an initative with Belfast Chamber of Trade and Commerce (although my team do all the work on it) that delivers two police officers into the city centre every day. Funding these officers means we have our own dedicated team. The businesses have their mobile numbers and if they have any issues the officers go to see them. Eleven years at 60,000 a year; we've raised a considerable sum of money to make that happen.

The other one is our restorative justice scheme for retail criminals. If someone is caught shoplifting in the city the retailer will offer them a choice of getting prosecuted (criminal record) or volunteering to join the city centre management retail crimewatch scheme, which was set up by us internally in 2007. They agree to their photograph being taken and shared with 200-plus retailers and they are excluded from those stores between six months and a year. We've had 3,000 shoplifters through that scheme. Our experience is that it's hugely effective for those who are caught for the first time. It really is the short, sharp shock that stops them from doing it again. We've now got to a stage that while retail crime has been rising in every other UK city, it has been declining here every year. We're bucking the national trend.

I operate the night-time volunteer steering group. I brought street pastors to Northern Ireland; I'm one myself. We operate from 11pm until 4am. On Friday and Saturday we're out there with the SOS bus and the Welcome Organisation and other volunteers taking care of people on the streets.

On a Friday or Saturday there could be up to 130 volunteers on the streets. The Community Rescue Service is one of the groups involved. They started patrolling the Lagan at nights after Joby Murphy drowned. On one occasion they found a drunk guy who'd gone for a swim. CRS got him out of the river and handed him over to the street pastors. We took him to the SOS bus for medical attention - so that individual went through three volunteering groups in the space of 20 minutes.

Q. What are the major challenges facing Belfast at present?

A. We need to get a message to the population outside Belfast that Belfast is easily accessible. Belfast can't survive on Belfast residents alone. We also have a particular issue with around 40 people with highly complex needs who are choosing to sleep on our streets. One of our big challenges is to communicate to the public that these people aren't being left to freeze and starve. Of the 40 individuals who are out there regularly, at least one a week is being case managed by a multi-disciplinary social work team. The Housing Executive is funding the Welcome Organisation to be out there from 6am until midnight seven days a week to try to get those individuals to engage with the help on offer, which includes three hot meals every day, day facilities and night-time accommodation. The job is to get those individuals to engage with that help.

Q. Five people have died on Belfast's streets already this year. What is your take on the current homeless issue in the city centre?

A. Most of these people have somewhere to go with a roof over their head, so they are not roofless. From my own experience on the streets at night, each of these individuals has a myriad of highly complex needs. The vast majority have addiction issues - alcohol or drugs. There's a real prevalence of mental health issues in that community. Some of these clients don't want to be alone in a hostel so they default back to being with their friends on the street. As a city, we must find a solution.

Q. Have you had complaints from businesses about people sleeping in their doorways?

A. They're not complaining about the individuals who are sleeping, they're complaining about the soup runs and the sandwich runs and the sleeping bags. The businesses are very educated about this and keen to be part of the solution, but they know that if you give someone a sleeping bag and feed them in a doorway, whenever the Welcome Organisation come along and says we want you to get in a vehicle, we're going to give you food and clean clothes and we have some people who can help with your addiction, they are less likely to accept that help if they're already in a sleeping bag and well fed.

Belfast's Lord Mayor spoke to the people doing the sandwich run and said it wasn't in the best interest of the individuals. When you feed them in a doorway and make them feel comfortable in a doorway, they're less inclined to accept the more long-term help that's available. The businesses know that, and it's the businesses which are left to pick up the sandwich wrappers and the sleeping bags - which can be full of needles. So you've got a member of retail staff arriving to open a store at 7.30am faced with not just a sleeping bag, but human faeces, urine, needles and all sorts of stuff.

Q. There now seems to be a problem with homeless people drinking alcohol in Royal Avenue in broad daylight. Does that concern you?

A. That's actually illegal, and it's one reason why businesses fund the city centre beat police. They're our only resource to deal with someone sitting in the street during the day drinking a bottle of vodka. The trouble is that they have no power to seize that alcohol. A police officer only has power to take alcohol from people under 18. The by-law only allows for people to be reported to the court for drinking alcohol. The sentences, if it gets to court, aren't prohibitive.

In the absence of legislation our city safe officer has got all of the city centre off licences on a scheme where they will not sell alcohol to known street drinkers - so they can't buy it in the city centre. That's how we attempt to cut off the supply to those who we know will drink it on the street.

We need police officers and council officers to have the power to seize that alcohol. At the minute our hands are tied because of a lack of legislation. Is it not unfair that the retail community is having to pay a bill for the policing around it?

Q. What about Brexit - how much of an effect would that have on retail in Belfast?

A. It's more difficult for Northern Ireland than it is for the rest of the UK because of our land border with the Republic. There are issues of cross-border trade and cross-border security for us. I'm concerned that if we exit there would be barriers - either financial or physical - to hinder cross-border trade. I'm also concerned about the impact it might have on the decision of residents of the Republic to come and shop in Belfast.

Q. Do you think Royal Avenue has lost its edge as the city's main shopping street?

A. Belfast Streets Ahead and the 28 million investment that went into 14 streets looks wonderful. We're about to break ground on the next phase of it which will cost 30m. I think the city looks well.

Q. What do you make of John Lewis and the ongoing problems over Sprucefield?

A. John Lewis should be in Belfast. And if they're not in Belfast and insist on going into Lisburn they should go to Lisburn city centre. They shouldn't be allowed to develop out-of-town because out-of-town sucks the heart out of town centres. We have planning permission for them in the anchor store in the Royal Exchange development (in Belfast). That footprint was designed to meet John Lewis's needs so we're ready to go. Let's have the public inquiry and get it done.

Q. What is your position on Sunday opening hours? Should they be extended?

A. Retailers are asking for more flexibility on the hours they open, not more hours.

They would say that they don't do particularly well after 4pm so our position, in support of Belfast Chamber, is that we need more flexibility around their hours. Retailers are saying they'd prefer to open from 10am until 4pm and we support that.

Q. How much to you think Victoria Square has helped Belfast's retail offering?

A. It has helped it hugely. It brought a 30% addition to retail floorspace on the day it opened so it just provided much more choice. Having two shopping centres also allowed for a market segmentation that we never had before.

Q. There's a big shop vacancy rate problem in Belfast. What is being done to address that?

A. We need decisions from the public inquiry around Sprucefield because that's core to retail in Belfast city centre. There's also the rates issue.

Q. What is your view on bus lanes?

A. The public don't understand when they're operating and when they're not, so they never drive in them.

The operating hours are also too long.

They should only operate during rush hour and we would favour much more restricted operating hours of the lane.

Our third point is that you shouldn't put bus lanes in and take 13m off Translink.

If you're trying to get people to shift from their car to public transport how can you then reduce the budget of the bus operator? It doesn't make any sense.

Q. Retailers are always complaining about rates. What's the issue there?

A. The commercial landlords in the city have really stretched themselves financially to come up with solutions to bring tenants in. They've given away millions of pounds in reduced rent and in rent-free periods.

What we haven't seen is any real contribution in terms of a reduction in rates from the Government. Our property cost in terms of rate and tax is still higher than it is in Britain and therefore when we get retailers coming over from Britain to look compared to what they're used to paying in English cities we are expensive so that's an issue for us.

Q. Tell us about your career path leading up to now.

A. My first job, when I was 17, was working as a retail assistant for Boots, selling cameras. In 1993 I began working for a commercial property company called BDA Property Projects Ltd in east Belfast for seven years.

During that time I did an HND in business and finance and then studied part-time at the University of Ulster in Jordanstown to turn that qualification into a degree.

I left in 2000 for a job at Business Management Forum, who are conference organisers, for a year.

I then got my first job in Belfast City Council in the building control service. But within nine months, in September 2001, a job came up to manage St George's Market and Smithfield Market.

Q. What does managing a market involve?

A. My job was to develop St George's Market. There were plenty of traders there on a Friday, the only day the market operated.

In 2004 I brought around the Saturday food and craft market and started to look at events. The first gig I booked was Snow Patrol. I was astounded by the queues for that gig. They weren't internationally huge then but very popular locally - I didn't know that because it's not really my type of music.

From that we developed the market as a conference and exhibition venue working with the Waterfront Hall.

If the Waterfront Hall had a big conference in we used St George's Market for the exhibition or the dinner.

On one occasion I had 1,800 ladies from 34 different countries from Soroptimist International all in their evening dresses for a full formal dinner in the market following their conference.

The market became a massive dining room - carpeted, draped in silk.

But now that you have Friday, Saturday and Sunday markets it's more difficult to do that sort of thing.

Q. St George's Market on Saturday is a huge hit. Is it true that it was initially difficult to attract traders?

A. The Friday market traders wouldn't do it because they operate at a different location every day.

I wrote to every food business in Ireland - manufacturers, processors, marketers - and said my ambition was to create a Borough market in Belfast. It's an old wholesale market in Southwark, London, that was established in the 12th century.

Eventually 55 businesses signed up and within a year it was full. There's now 150 traders on a waiting list. In 2007 it was voted the best market in the UK by National Association of British Market Authorities, and again in 2014. I was also behind the Spring and Christmas Continental Markets at Belfast City Hall, which started in 2004.

Q. What do you say to those who think the Christmas Market is too expensive and has lost its appeal with people living in the city?

A. I didn't get that feedback. Any product continually needs innovation. Everything has a life cycle. We need to launch a conversation early this year with Belfast people to see what they think. It's a city council issue but as Belfast City Centre manager I have a deep interest in it, and a personal interest, having founded it.

Q. Tell us something that might surprise people about you.

A. I'm a ministerial student for the Methodist Church. I'm actually a trainee minister at the minute.
Michaella McCollum Connolly with rugby star Tommy Bowe while doing promotional work at an official Ulster Rugby event

Police escort Michaella McCollum Connolly (right) and Melissa Reid (front) in handcuffs as they are moved from the National Police anti-drug headquarters to a court to be formally charged for drug trafficking in Lima, Peru, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2013

Michaella McCollum Connolly arrives to court for her sentencing in Callao, Peru (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

Michaella McCollum Connolly, handcuffed, arrives for a court hearing in Lima, Peru, clutching the book 'Secrets About Life Every Woman Should Know: Ten principles for spiritual and emotional fulfillment' (AP Photo/Karel Navarro)

Michaella McCollum Connolly in one of the Ibiza clubs where she worked as a dancer

CAUGHT ON CAMERA: Michaella and Melissa caught on CCTV loading bags into a car in Peru

Michaella McCollum Connolly in one of her club hostess outfits

Michaella McCollum has had a makeover and it's certainly no accident. The newly-dyed blonde hair and the white jacket combined to convey an image of innocence and purity on our TV screens last night.

Her 'mea culpa' wouldn't have sounded so convincing from someone in a T-shirt and black leather jacket with her dark hair scraped into a bun. That's the Michaella we first saw in Lima Airport standing with those huge suitcases filled with cocaine.

She looked shady and shifty, exactly as you would expect someone in the drugs underworld to appear. This Michaella is all clean lines and simple sophistication.

Far from resembling someone who has just been freed from a Peruvian prison hellhole, she could easily be an up-and-coming actress stepping off a Hollywood film set. She has the look of a young Helen Hunt, an astute colleague observed.

That comparison is apt because Michaella's first post-prison TV appearance has one objective only - to launch her media career. Don't be fooled into thinking that what you saw last night was an expression of genuine contrition, coming from the heart.

It was about rebranding Michaella so she can start making money. The chat show circuit beckons. Nolan Live, The Late Late Show, Celebrity Big Brother and much more. An army of agents will be vying to represent her.

There will be a big book deal, probably with movie rights too. Michaella is on course to make a mint.

Last night's RTE appearance was neither spontaneous nor sincere. The very fact that Michaella is scrubbed up and on our screens so speedily - just 72 hours after being released from jail - shows how manufactured and manipulative the whole thing is.

We shouldn't be surprised by her new look because, as a former model, Michaella is well aware of the power of the visual image. What irks me is that a man wouldn't get away with this. Indeed, I can't even imagine any having the nerve to try it.

If RTE flew a team across the world to interview a male drug dealer - who presented himself with a new hairdo and a jazzed-up wardrobe - he, and the station, would be subject to endless ridicule.

Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Michaella McCollum Connolly in one of her club hostess outfits Michaella McCollum Connolly in one of the Ibiza clubs where she worked as a dancer PARTY SCENE: Michaella in Ibiza Michaella McCollum after her arrest AP Photo/Martin Mejia CAUGHT ON CAMERA: Michaella and Melissa caught on CCTV loading bags into a car in Peru Michaella McCollum's mother Norah McCollum and sister Samantha McCollum vist the Peru prison Melissa Reid Michaella McCollum and ex-boyfriend Dwayne Mullan Dungannon drugs mule Michaella McCollum Michaella McCollum Connolly, handcuffed, arrives for a court hearing in Lima, Peru, clutching the book 'Secrets About Life Every Woman Should Know: Ten principles for spiritual and emotional fulfillment' (AP Photo/Karel Navarro) AP Michaella McCollum Connolly arrives to court for her sentencing in Callao, Peru (AP Photo/Martin Mejia) AP Police escort Michaella McCollum Connolly (right) and Melissa Reid (front) in handcuffs as they are moved from the National Police anti-drug headquarters to a court to be formally charged for drug trafficking in Lima, Peru, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2013 AP Michaella McCollum Connolly with reality TV star Mark Wright at a promotional night hosted by Belfast's M Club Michaella McCollum Connolly with Brad Houston from England Michaella McCollum Connolly Michaella McCollum Connolly with rugby star Tommy Bowe while doing promotional work at an official Ulster Rugby event / Facebook

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Michaella referred to her drug trafficking as "a moment of madness". That's not true. It was a lengthy process during which she had endless opportunities to change her mind.

She didn't do so because she was greedy for money and she sees an opportunity to earn easy cash now.

Of course, people can make mistakes and had Michaella thrown up her hands after she was arrested, I'd salute her. But she told us a pack of lies about being kidnapped and held at gunpoint by bad men who threatened her family.

She persisted in spouting the same fantasy to a Sunday Life journalist who interviewed her in prison five months after her arrest, despite the fact that she had secretly confessed to police three months earlier.

Given her track record, I see no reason to believe she is telling the truth to an interviewer now. Apparently, Michaella is to work with Aids sufferers.

From drugs diva to angel of mercy, it's been some transformation.

I, for one, don't buy it.
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. Press Secretary of the Ministry of Defense of Armenia announced that thousands of volunteers are continuing to apply, even from Diaspora.

The volunteers are kindly requested to apply by groups. It is impossible to reply to individuals. Currently, the number of volunteers is so great that only the most-experienced are being accepted, Hovhannisyan wrote.

Thousands of patriotic Armenians throughout Armenia, Artsakh and the Diaspora are willing to volunteer and head to the frontline in Nagorno Karabakh, after the large-scale military operations unleashed by Azerbaijan.

The UN Security Council adopted four resolutions between April and November, 1993, calling for effective and permanent ceasefire, as well as immediate implementation of the reciprocal and urgent steps in that direction.

Peace talks between Armenia, Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan have been facilitated by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe since March 1992 within the frameworks of Minsk Group, co-chaired by Russia, United States and France since mid-1990s.

Ceasefire agreement between Armenia, Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan, facilitated by Russia's representative to the CSCE/OSCE Minsk Group Vladimir Kazimirov, was signed on May 5, 1994, which had been maintained with only sporadic violations along the Line of Contact and international border till the latest Azerbaijani large scale offensive in the night of April 2, 2016.

Over the last two years Armenia, Nagorno Karabakh, the OSCE Minsk Group co-Chairs and over 80 U.S. Congressmen (Royce-Engel bill) proposed concrete measures to de-escalate situation and establish ceasefire monitoring equipments along the borders. Azerbaijan has been repeatedly rejecting these calls.

Azerbaijan has unleashed unprecedented offensive military actions in the contact line of Nagorno Karabakh. Due to the timely and professional actions of the Nagorno Karabakh Defense Army, it was possible to take the situation under control, and make the enemy suffer considerable losses. On April 1 and 2, the Azerbaijani forces sustained 200 casualties. Around 20 enemy tanks and 1 Grad missile system were destroyed.
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. President of the Republic of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan is currently holding a meeting with the Ambassadors of OSCE countries at the Presidential Palace.

Armenpress reports that the President had convoked a Security Council meeting before, where he had mentioned Azerbaijan made provocative actions along the entire line of contact with Nagorno Karabakh. These are the largest by-scale operations after the establishment of ceasefire in 1994, which Azerbaijani armed forces attempted and still attempt to carry out. Due to timely and professional actions of Nagorno Karabakh Defense Army it was possible to take the situation under control and not only take the situation under control, but also inflict considerable losses on the enemy.

The Republic of Armenia has fully carried out its responsibility in terms of ensuring the security of the people of Nagorno Karabakh and we have the legal right to that as we are a party of the ceasefire agreement signed in 1994.
Masks like these created by Faculty of Fine Arts students to celebrate Pahela Boishakh will be banned this year over fears of attacks by militants, April 5, 2014.

Two men believed to be members of a banned militant outfit were killed while assembling grenades as Bangladeshis prepared to celebrate the countrys largest cultural festival, the Pahela Boishakh, officials said Monday.

The two died in an explosion Sunday night in northern city of Bogra, as they were preparing to carry out attacks, police said.

Police recovered a sack of explosive gel, at least 20 handmade grenades, four foreign-made pistols and bullets from a house in Bogras Sherpur sub-district, Bogra superintendent of police Md Asad-uz-Zaman told BenarNews on Monday.

As a preventive measure, the government banned the wearing of traditional masks in Pahela Boishakh (first day of the Bengali calendar) rallies scheduled for April 14.

The two were making grenades at a rented house in Sherpur (sub-district). One of them lost his hand and the other lost his leg as grenades exploded. One of them asked for water before breathing his last, while the other was unconscious when we took them to the hospital, Asad-uz-Zaman said.

The man who asked for water did not identify himself to officers. Asad-uz-Zaman said the suspects were 25 to 26 years old.

Man who rented house missing

They were preparing for a big attack as one of their accomplices rented the house six months ago, the superintendent said, adding that auto-rickshaw driver Mizanur Rahman, who rented the house, had gone into hiding.

Local resident Abdul Baten told BenarNews that area residents used to see a woman wearing a veil and a man living in the house owned by Mahbubur Rahman, who lives in Dhaka and is not related to the tenant. He said he also saw the two dead men at the house.

We suddenly heard a huge explosion at around 9:30 p.m. The firefighters came to the house and called the police to take them to the hospital, Baten said.

Asad-uz-Zaman said the weapons and ammunition recovered from the house were similar to those recovered from a Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) house in December.

So, we suspect that they were the JMB members, he said.

On Dec. 24, police in Dhaka recovered at least 20 hand grenades, suicide vests and bomb making materials from a rented house Mirpur area. Police said the JMB was preparing to attack Christmas Day celebrations.

Bangladeshs tiny Christian minority has been targeted by Islamic militants in a spate of attacks dating to last year.

Restriction on Pahela Boishakh

Meanwhile, authorities have declared a curfew on the upcoming festivities.

The Pahela Boishakh celebration must end by 5 p.m. and we have decided to ban the use of masks for security reasons. By wearing masks, anyone can mix with the stream of people and carry out attacks, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal told BenarNews on Monday.

On Sunday, he chaired a home ministry meeting on Pahela Boishakh. He said police and intelligence officials would be in the field to thwart any attempt to harm revelers.

Every April 14, people from all walks of life pour on to the streets of Dhaka and other parts of country to welcome the first day of the Bengali calendar.

Cultural organizations across the country, including Chhayanaut, organize programs beginning at dawn to welcome the first sunrise of Boishakh.

In 2001, the Chhayanaut celebration at Dhakas Ramna Botomul was attacked by the militant outfit Harkat-ul Jihad, which branded Pahela Boishakh a celebration against Islam. At least 10 people were killed and the mastermind, Abdul Hannan, is now in jail.
Ending a weeks-long deadlock, Mehbooba Mufti on Monday took her oath as the first woman chief minister of Indias northern Jammu and Kashmir state, bringing calls from political commentators for the new government to adopt a people-friendly approach.

The Muslim-majority Himalayan state had been under the governors rule since the death in office of Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, Muftis father, on Jan. 7.

Since then, Muftis Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Indias ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had struggled to agree on terms of their coalition government in J&K.

Governors rule in Jammu and Kashmir is similar to Presidents rule in the rest of the country, and is imposed when, as per the constitution, the government is unable to function and the central government takes direct control of the state government.

The stalemate ended on March 23 after a meeting between Mufti, 56, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi.

Mehbooba had delayed taking over as head of the restive state, whose ownership has been a flashpoint between India and Pakistan since the sub-continents partition in 1947. She said Modis government had to first announce Jammu and Kashmir-specific confidence building measures to create a friendly atmosphere.

I feel, if both parties (PDP and BJP) would opt for a people-centric approach, the government will not face many problems during its rule, Ravinderjit Kour, a political science professor at the Srinagar-based Kashmir University, told BenarNews.

While welcoming the states first female leader, Kour said the only problem Mufti might face initially is reversing the negative impression that was created in peoples mind due to the delay in forming the government.

Srinagar political commentator Noor Baba agreed.

Although it is a good thing that the state now finally has a government, she (Mufti) is bound to face a few challenges in the coming days, Baba told BenarNews. People are under the impression that the Governors rule in the state was efficient. She will have to work hard to run a government that people would appreciate.

Much paperwork that was pending for years was cleared during the Governors rule, said Amin Ashraf, a Srinagar resident. I hope this new government can be as efficient.

Mufti plans to carry on fathers legacy

A leader with grassroots popularity, Mufti, who is often credited with outshining her father in connecting with common people, said she would do her best to carry forward her fathers legacy of corruption-free governance.

I am passionate about getting things going and I need your support in realizing the vision of the former chief minister, Mufti said after being sworn in.

Works initiated and reforms brought in by Mufti Sahab (Sayeed) will be carried forward, also along with those initiated by the governor. All the projects initiated in tourism, horticulture, power, health and other sectors need to continue with greater synergy and commitment, Mufti said.

An important step in this regard will be to simplify the procedures and processes through e-governance.

Giving clean governance to the people of the state shall remain my focus and there can be no scope for corruption at any level, Mufti said.

Soon after the ceremony, Mufti met with her ministers, reportedly telling them: If we dont perform, people wont give us a second chance because there are other alternatives available.

In a congratulatory message on Twitter, Modi, too, underlined the importance of a people friendly approach to governance.

May the new government of Jammu and Kashmir leave no stone unturned in fulfilling dreams and aspirations of the people and take the state to new heights of progress, he tweeted.
Amid the expansion of international criminal probes on three continents into the indebted 1Malaysia Development Berhad state fund, Malaysias top economic planner said Monday that 1MDB was unsustainable from the start.

Prime Minister Najib Razak, who chairs 1MDBs advisory board and is the finance minister, has faced calls to resign since last year over financial scandals linked to the state fund, particularly a deposit of nearly U.S. $700 million into his private bank accounts.

The model that they took was low capitalization and huge borrowings, and I think as they found out, it wasnt a sustainable model. With that came debt realization, where the board has now embarked on a rationalization plan, Abdul Wahid Omar, a minister in the Prime Ministers Office who oversees the Economic Planning portfolio, said in an interview on CNBCs The Rundown.

The design of 1MDB, which was established in 2009 to promote economic development projects in Malaysia, was an exception, not the norm, compared with other government-linked firms, and rather than being publically listed, the firm was setup as wholly owned by the Ministry of Finance, Abdul Wahid said.

A so-called rationalization program was launched in May 2015 to reduce 1MDBs debt burden, which had grown to 42 billion ringgit (U.S. $11 billion) by selling off assets, CNBC reported.

On Monday, the Finance Ministry announced in a written reply to a question from an MP that the firm no longer had any outstanding debts and it had never failed to repay its debts, including interest on loans.

Probes widen across the globe

Abdul Wahids TV interview came as authorities in at least three countries stepped up or opened investigations during the past few days into allegations of financial wrongdoing linked with 1MDB.

In the United States, the FBI is looking into Red Granite Pictures, a film production company owned by Najibs stepson, Riza Aziz. According to a report published in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on Friday, Rizas company allegedly received U.S. $155 million from 1MDB to fund The Wolf of Wall Street, a Hollywood movie.

Investigators in two countries believe that $155 million originating with 1MDB moved into Red Granite in 2012 through a circuitous route involving offshore shell companies, WSJ reported, quoting people familiar with the probes.

The FBI has also served subpoenas to several current and former employees of Red Granite and to a bank and an accounting firm used by the company, WSJ reported.

A spokesman for Red Granite Pictures told WSJ the company was fully cooperating with inquiries from the FBI, adding the company had no reason to believe that the source of its financing was irregular.

On Sunday, 1MDB rejected the latest WSJ report, which has been covering the story in-depth since it broke the story about the deposit of U.S. $681 million of 1MDB-linked money into Najibs accounts.

In a statement, 1MDB officials denied financing the movie that stars Leonardo DiCaprio or transferring any funds for the film, whether directly or through intermediaries.

Najib has maintained that he never used any of the $681 million for personal gain. In January, Malaysias attorney general cleared Najib of potential charges of financial wrongdoing in Malaysian investigations into that and other scandals associated with 1MDB.

Elsewhere in the U.S., Department of Justice officials have asked two major financial and banking firms, Deutsche Bank and J.P Morgan, for details into their dealings with 1MDB, but the two banks were targets of investigations linked to the fund, Reuters reported on Friday. American officials had traveled to Kuala Lumpur to interview people with close ties to 1MDB, Reuters said.

In the United Arab Emirates, authorities have imposed travel bans and frozen assets of two former executives of Abu Dhabi-based sovereign wealth fund International Petroleum Investment Co. (IPIC), who had extensive dealings with 1MDB, WSJ also reported last week.

UAE citizen Khadem Al Qubaisi, was the managing director of the investment fund, valued at U.S. $80 billion, while U.S. citizen Mohammed Badawy Al Husseiny was the chief executive of Aabar Investments PJS, which is owned by IPIC, WSJ reported.

Authorities in the emirates are focusing on whether Al Qubaisi and Al Husseiny had used British Virgin Islands-based Aabar to funnel money from the Malaysian investment arm into various accounts and companies throughout the world, according to WSJ.

Luxembourg joins fray

On Thursday, Luxembourg opened a money-laundering probe into a lawsuit over financial transactions involving money linked to 1MDB, according to reports.

The suit concerns money laundering of funds likely to have come from the embezzlement of public monies, the Luxembourg prosecutors office said, adding it had launched an investigation following revelations about the alleged diversion of funds from 1MDB, Agence France-Presse reported.

The announcement by the Luxembourg prosecutor came after authorities in Switzerland earlier this year announced that up to $4 billion in 1MDB money may have been embezzled from the Malaysian fund.

And in Singapore last week, authorities said they were working with Swiss investigators in investigating possible money-laundering and other offenses linked with 1MDB money, The Australian reported, saying Singaporean officials had questioned about 40 banks in their investigations, including two of Australias biggest banks, ANZ and NAB.

On Friday, the Monetary Authority of Singapore  the central bank there  issued a statement in response to the report in The Australian.

The authority said it had been conducting a thorough review of various transactions as well as fund flows through our banking system. MAS has requested a number of financial institutions to furnish information relating to the review.

In February, the Singaporean central bank announced that it had seized a large number of bank accounts over possible money-laundering and other offences linked to 1MDB.

Apart from probes in the United States, United Arab Emirates, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Singapore, investigations into international transactions involving funds tied to the Malaysian fund have been launched in Britain and Hong Kong.
Protesters shout slogans against former Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra during a demonstration outside a private club in New York City where he was speaking, March 9, 2016.

Red bowls inscribed with a Thai New Years greeting from ousted prime ministers Thaksin and Yingluck Shinawatra are part of an agenda to stoke turmoil in Thailand, a government spokesman said Monday after soldiers confiscated more than 10,000 bowls over the weekend.

There are many ways to sincerely express well-wishes to the nation on the (Thai New Year) festival, Government spokesman Maj. Gen. Sansern Kaewkhamnerd told reporters in Bangkok,

He accused the Shinawatras Pheu Thai party of reaching out to supporters in an inappropriate way through these red bowls, which are used for scooping and splashing water during new years festivities.

The action which had a hidden agenda and can only be interpreted as exploiting the festival to instigate division and turmoil in the society, Sansern said.

The brouhaha over the bowls deepened in the past few days amid a growing clampdown on political dissent.

According to reports, these included moves by the junta that threatened to send dissenters and critics to the insurgency-wracked Deep South for so-called attitude adjustment sessions, and a government ban that forced the cancellation of an event at a bookstore, where a discussion on the countrys proposed constitution had been scheduled.

The bookshops owner, Rodjaraeg Wattanapanit, only last week became the first Thai recipient of the U.S. State Departments International Women of Courage Award.

The situation is hot

On Saturday, more than 30 Thai soldiers raided an office of Sirindhorn Ramasutra and Poonsuk Lohachote, seizing 8,862 red bowls. In two other raids, the military seized another 1,500 red bowls each from Cholnan Srikaew and Nattapong Supariyasilp. All four are members of the Pheu Thai Party  whose official color is red  and former members of Thailands House of Representatives.

Police did not file a report or press charges against the four. But last week Theerawan Charoensuk, a woman who posted a photo of herself holding up one of these red bowls, was arrested and charged with sedition.

In an Instagram post on Sunday, Thaksin Shinawatra, who was toppled in a coup in 2006, claimed the military had threatened sedition charges against his former party members.

The military threatened Section 116 [a sedition charge] and forced the house representatives to tell them where they got the bowls. The bowls bear my name and Pheu Thai MPs handed them out, if you they want to charge me just do it, he said.

Thaksin, who lives in exile, dared the government to arrest him because the bowls bore his signature.

The message inscribed on the bowls reads, "Happy Songkran [Happy Thai New Year] 2016, and even though the situation is hot, hope all brothers and sisters will cool down from water in this bowl.

The Pheu Thai party has been out of the limelight since the May 2014 coup that ousted Thaksins sister, Yingluck Shinawatra. She is facing trial for alleged corruption in a rice mortgage scheme. A Thai court expects to issue a verdict late this year or early 2017.

Bowls are part of political campaign: expert

A Thai political observer said the handout is a symbolic gesture for Red Shirts, the pro-Shinawatra movement, to uproot the Prayuth regime before the verdict on Yinglucks case is reached.

The government knew about the move that they would use red bowls as a symbol [for Red Shirts] to vote against the charter and to overthrow the government before the trial progresses further or before the judgment day of Yingluck, Sutin Wannabovorn told BenarNews on Monday.

The delivery of red bowls is a political campaign that exploits Songkran New Year festival, he added.

Winyat Chatmontri, the secretary general for Free Thai Legal Aid, who represented a few Pheu Thai party members as clients, disagreed with the way that the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO)  the juntas formal name  handled the bowl issue.

As a lawyer, I can say that to possess a red bowl is not wrong and the red bowl cannot be used to do wrong, he told BenarNews, adding Having the inscription on them does not mean they have a political agenda or have breached Section 116.

It does the NCPO no good to scare people and to force them to support it on whatever they do such as new charter or whatever coming up, he added in a phone interview.

Attitude adjustment sessions in Deep South?

Returning home Sunday from the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha, addressed the issue, questioning whether it was appropriate to possess bowls as symbolic support for the former prime ministers.

To share the photos with the public to draw attention, right or wrong, I dont know. It could be legal but is it appropriate? he asked reporters.

Since taking seizing power nearly two years ago, the NCPO has summoned several politicians and reporters for attitude adjustment detention sessions for speaking out against the government.

According to Thai media reports published over the weekend, Army Commander-in-Chief Gen. Teerachai Wongwanich said he had devised a seven-day attitude adjustment course to stop government criticism, and was considering sending critics to such sessions in the Deep South.

Bookstore talk canceled

Meanwhile, the junta banned a discussion at the bookstore, scheduled for Sunday in Chiang Mai, on the nations draft constitution.

A government commission last week unveiled the proposed constitution amid warnings from the junta that it would go after people who criticized the draft charter. The new constitution is to be voted on in a nationwide referendum set for Aug. 7.

On Saturday, Rodjaraeg, the owner of the independent Book Re:public, posted regrets on the shops Facebook page, saying it would not be able to host the discussion because of the government ban, the Thai news website Khaosod English reported.
STEPANAKERT, APRI 4, ARMENPRESS. Clashes continue on the contact line of Karabakh and Azerbaijani opposing forces. According to Armenpress, NKR Defense Ministry Press Service released a statement about this.

Adversary, terrified with human and equipment losses, today at 11:20 for the first time used TOS heavy flamethrower systems. Karabakh side has no losses as a result of this weapon. Adversary used two military drones towards the same direction, and another towards southeast, however, their fired missiles were not effective and did not cause any damage. All the three military drones were destroyed by air defense units of Defense Army. We will inform about further developments in our upcoming releases, reads the release of the Defense Army.
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YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS.The Ombudsman of Republic of Armenia Arman Tatoyan along with human rights lawyers Artak Zeynalyan and Ara Ghazaryan has departed for the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh on a special work visit. The aim of the visit is to directly examine and observe with the Nagorno Karabakh Human Rights Defender the atrocities against civilian settlements committed by Azerbaijani military forces and the situation caused by violations of civilians rights.


Media Advisory, April 4, 2016 Contact: Rebecca Franke, Alameda County Against Fracking, dontfrackcal@gmail.com

Patrick Sullivan, Center for Biological Diversity, (415) 517-9364, psullivan@biologicaldiversity.org

Ella Teevan, Food & Water Watch, (510) 922-0416, eteevan@fwwatch.org Alameda County Residents to Urge Planning Commission to Support Fracking Ban Ordinance Recent Livermore Oil Field Spill Highlights Risks to County Water Supplies HAYWARD, Calif. Members of Alameda County Against Fracking, Food & Water Watch and the Center for Biological Diversity will attend a county planning commission meeting tonight to urge commissioners to support an ordinance that would ban fracking and other extreme oil and gas extraction techniques. The measure would modify Alameda County zoning rules to prohibit high-intensity oil and gas operations, including fracking and acid fracturing, in unincorporated areas of the county. The ordinance also seeks to protect water supplies by prohibiting the disposal or storage of oil waste fluid in pits or sumps. What: Planning commission meeting featuring Alameda County residents testifying in favor of ordinance that would ban fracking and other extreme oil and gas extraction techniques. When: Monday, April 4, at 6 p.m. The fracking ordinance is the first item on the commissions agenda. Who: Alameda County residents and members of Alameda County Against Fracking, Food & Water Watch and the Center for Biological Diversity. Where: Public Hearing Room in Alameda County Buildings (room 160), 224 West Winton Avenue, (about two blocks east of I-880), Hayward. (The meeting room is in the left wing as you face the U-shaped building from the parking lot.) A major leak discovered last year at a Livermore oil field highlighted the risks of oil production in Alameda County. The Alameda County Environmental Health Department investigated the Livermore spill and cited the oil company for eight violations, including improperly disposing of hazardous waste and failing to immediately notify authorities about the release of hazardous material. Fracking blasts huge volumes of water mixed with toxic chemicals into the ground to break up rock formations. The technique has been linked to air and water pollution across the country. Disposal of wastewater from fracking and other oil operations is also triggering earthquakes: A recent U.S. Geological Survey report found that more than 7 million Americans live in areas at risk of oil industry-induced quakes. 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. Food & Water Watch works to ensure the food and water we consume is safe, accessible and sustainable. So we can all enjoy and trust in what we eat and drink, we help people take charge of where their food comes from, keep clean, affordable, public tap water flowing freely to our homes, protect the environmental quality of oceans, force government to do its job protecting citizens, and educate about the importance of keeping shared resources under public control. www.foodandwaterwatch.org


Media Advisory, April 4, 2016 Contact: Dune Lankard, (907) 952-5265, dlankard@biologicaldiversity.org Alaskans to Rally Against Offshore Oil Drilling During Tuesdays Hearing ANCHORAGE, Alaska A large, colorful protest on Tuesday will greet a U.S. Interior Department public hearing on its proposal to expand offshore oil and gas leasing in the Arctic region, Cook Inlet and Gulf of Mexico. The rally will include visuals, political theater, Native Alaskan speakers and an appearance by the Center for Biological Diversitys Frostpaw the polar bear.



This is among the first in a series of public hearings Interior is holding around the country on the draft 20172022 offshore oil leasing plan, which rejected Atlantic leases but proposed expanded leasing around Alaska and Gulf of Mexico. In announcing the plan on March 15, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said the administration would consider withdrawing the three Arctic-area leases from the final plan based on public testimony, making this hearing a potentially pivotal moment for Alaskas future. Alaskas people and wildlife cant take more offshore oil drilling. As a lifelong subsistence and commercial salmon fisherman, I continue to experience the lasting devastation caused by the Exxon Valdez disaster. The risk of more oil spills is just too high, and were already experiencing climate change in the form of melting glaciers and sea ice and dangerously rising oceans, said Dune Lankard, an Eyak tribal leader and senior Alaska representative of the Center for Biological Diversity. People need to speak out now and say no new oil leases. Keep it in the ground. What: A broad cross-section of environmentalists, Native Alaskans, fishermen and concerned residents will testify against federal plans to issue new offshore oil leases in Cook Inlet and the Chukchi and Beaufort seas. The group of dozens to 100 will also hold a colorful rally (with eye-catching visuals for photographers) during the hearing and record public comments for submission to the department. When and where: The rally will begin at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, and the official public meeting is 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Embassy Suites, 600 E Benson Blvd., Anchorage. Public testimony will occur in the hotels Explorer Room. Who: Speakers will include Rick Steiner from Oasis Earth, Faith Gemmill from REDOIL, Dune Lankard from the Center for Biological Diversity, fisherman Kory Blake of Cordova, and Janet Mitchell, administrator from the city council in Kivalina, an Alaska community being displaced by climate change. Why: If the United States is going to tackle climate change, the federal government needs to halt all new offshore fossil fuel leases in federal waters, something the Center has formally petitioned President Obama to do. Banning new fossil fuel leases in federal waters would prevent nearly 62 billion tons of greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere and exacerbating climate change, according to a study commissioned by the Center. Polar bears, walruses, salmon and other vulnerable species around Alaska are threatened by oil spills now and climate change in the long run. Offshore drilling is inherently risky, and thats particularly true in the treacherous seas around Alaska. The Department of the Interior admitted Shells project last year had a 75 percent chance of causing a major oil spill that would be nearly impossible to clean up. Allowing new offshore leases in the Arctic region would undermine U.S. climate change commitments and leadership and encourage other countries to pursue dangerous drilling projects in the Arctic. The federal governments latest five-year plan calls for one new lease each in Cook Inlet and the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, and these leases would last for decades, delaying the transition to renewable-energy sources. Oil companies already have enough currently identified fossil fuel reserves to last for decades  more than enough to get through the transition to clean power. Fighting offshore drilling around Alaska is part of a growing national movement to keep it in the ground that is targeting federal auctions for coal, oil shale, natural gas, crude oil and tar sands on federal lands and oceans. 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.
Some major newspapers have raised their cover prices at a time when online publishing is giving print media a lot of competition and when Nigerians are wading through financial difficulties

Five newspaper houses had by last Monday, March 28, added N50 to the cover prices of their daily and weekend titles, all raising their daily titles from N150 to N2OO and most raising Saturday and Sunday editions from the previous N200 to N250.

The Leadership Group Ltd, was the first to move up cover prices. "Due to skyrocketing prices of newsprint and printing consumables, we have come to the painful decision to slightly raise our cover price to N200 on Monday to Thursday," The Leadership Group announced on March 21, specifying that the Leadership Friday edition would be selling N250 while Leadership Weekend and Leadership Sunday would remain at the N300 that they had been.

The Sun newspapers followed what became the trend the next day, March 22, and published repeats till March 26, passing the same message in varying words. "In the face of rising operational cost occasioned by escalating cost of imported materials among our daily consumable, we are constrained to announce an upward review of our cover price from N150 to N200 with effect from Monday March 28, 2016," the newspaper said.

Vanguard Media Ltd, publishers of the Vanguard titles, published on March 22 and 23 its own decision to raise cover prices, similarly pleading 'skyrocketing prices of newsprint and printing consumables', and stipulating that from March 28, the daily editions of Vanguard would cost N200 and the weekend editions, Saturday and Sunday, would go for N25O each.

The Vintage Press Ltd which publishes The Nation newspapers, took much trouble to make its case for the upward cover price review, publishing a lengthy notice on March 23, stating, "The economy is in turmoil. Prices of practically all valuable items have skyrocketed. Foreign exchange to bring in essential materials for production is hard to come by... Our industry is hard hit as most production materials are imported. With forex difficult to source, there is scarcity of production materials, particularly newsprint. Expectedly, the prices of the limited quantity available have soared astronomically. We have absorbed the huge extra cost in our resolve to serve you... But the reality of the times demands that few adjustments be made in our collective interest."

The notice then specified that The Nation (daily) would be donning N200 cover price while the Saturday and Sunday editions would wear N250 new cover price each.

Punch (Nigeria) Limited, publishers of The Punch newspapers, stated in a front page notice on March 23, "Dear esteemed readers, from Monday March 28, 2016 your favourite newspaper, The punch, goes for N200.00. We appreciate that times are hard, but we are constrained to increase the cover price because of the huge rise in the cost of production over the months, a direct consequence of the current economic challenges... "

So, five major Nigerian newspapers currently sell at prices between 25 and 33 percent higher than what they previously attracted. And it is quite likely that many other newspapers will join the wagon sooner than later, and at a time when the print business is facing increasing challenge from online media where more and more Nigerians are flocking to for what the newspapers are providing.

While many appear quite sympathetic to publishers, many also express the view that at a time readers are switching to online newspapers, raising the cost of printed newspapers portends grave implications.

Malam Aliyu Abubakar, a veteran journalist-turned public relations specialist, says the cover price review, undesirable as the effect may be in point of view of readership, is not unexpected. "Prices of commodities generally are going up as a result of changing circumstances, so I'm not really surprised that some newspapershave changed cover prices," Malam Abubakar said, adding that newspaper cover prices cannot be expected to remain constant for over too many years. "Upward review of newspaper cover prices is as old a culture as the newspaper industry itself, so there is really nothing that is so wrong with what we've just seen with some newspapers and possibly more soon," he stressed.

When pressed that times have changed drastically with online publishing quickly eroding print media patronage, Abubakar said, "The internet challenge cannot be wished away by even reducing print newspaper prices. Newspapers will have to do much more than pricing mechanism to withstand the pressure from online publishing. I'm not a publisher and I have nothing to do with any of the publishers who have pushed up the prices of their newspapers, but they have given reasons for their action and the reasons are convincing enough. I think that the newspapers could sooner die with below-par cover pricing than they would do if they continue now to sell at a loss. They have not exactly said so but it's what I read from between the lines of their published notices."

A public commentator, Abedo Siaka, is of the opinion that the N50 extra that publishers are asking for a newspaper copy should not put off traditional buyers of newspapers. "People go online to read newspapers these days, but there are still people who buy newspapers as a matter of course because they get from the papers what they cannot get from online publications. Such people are not going to keep off newspapers because of the price issue," Siaka said.

He however did not rule out the possibility that lack of means could be the deciding factor, saying, "I feel that the situation is unfortunate for publishers because times are hard now, and the N50 extra cost can prove too much for some Nigerians at a time like this when there is no fuel and no electricity and when there is so much heat and when prices of virtually everything have gone up."

A lecturer of Mass Communication with the University of Jos, Dr John Galadima, was more critical Friday when he spoke to Daily Trust on Sunday. He said the upward review in cover price was badly timed not only for the reason of the upsurge in the popularity of online media but also because Nigerians were currently facing difficulties and could not afford higher prices of things not strictly essential for daily living.

"The newspapers that have raised cover prices are losing a lot of customers and any others that may join the cover price hike will lose customers," he asserted. Using his personal experience, he said, "I usually buy The Nation, Daily Trust and a couple of other newspapers, but the day they told me that others now cost N200, I stopped buying them. I go instead for others still selling at N150. The day these others raise their own cover price, I just might drop them and restrict myself to what I get online using my phone."

He asked print publishers to be careful not to price their newspapers out of the market, saying, "Often when your customer leaves you, he does not come back. If they increase cover price to get more money per copy, what happens if what they sell now becomes so few that they probably incur more losses than they set out to avoid?"

He said newspapers' traditional source of profit is advertisement and that the newspapers should have worked more on advertisement than seeking to pass so much burden to copy buyers. "They want profit, but we as professionals advice caution," Dr Galadima said, explaining, "Nigerians are going through tough times and when faced with making decisions on non-essentials like newspapers, they will immediately know what to do. We can do without newspapers because even if we must know the news, there are other sources. There were other sources of news even before online publishing. The radio and television sets were there and they are still there."

So far, the first few days have not been smooth in Abuja with the sale of the newspapers with the N200 price tag. Vendors and distributors have been having an issue with the profit margin for the vendors and the vendors have officially boycotted the sale of the newspapers since last Monday.

"We are not selling the newspapers because what we are offered as our profit for each copy is not good for us," a vendor in Wuse, Simon Chika said, adding that while they were getting the newspapers at N105 when the cover price was N150, they were being asked to take the newspapers at N170 now that the cover price is N200.
Debonairs Pizza, the 25-year-old quick service restaurant that leads the pizza category, is launching a new flavour of its famous Triple-Decker - the Ultimate, a man-sized 5 sausage Triple-Decker.

Developed by FCB Joburgs Creative Director Gareth Paul, Art Director Vukani Mpanza and Copywriter Robert Storom, the new 30-second television commercial was shot in Johannesburg by Ian Difford from Hungry Films.

Called Ultimate Delivery and targeting males, the commercial uses a simple storyline and great character-acting to elegantly communicate the esteem in which these Debonairs Pizza fans hold their Debonairs Pizzas, and especially the Ultimate 5 sausage Triple-Decker.

The Debonairs Pizza delivery man arrives at an office and he is welcomed inside by a group of young men who are obviously thrilled to be in his presence. Well, thats what he thinks. The group is really in awe of the 5 sausage Triple-Decker, its three layers and five sausage topping. In their opinion, it truly deserves the red carpet.

Credits:

Creative agency: FCB

Executive Business Director: Mike Di Terlizzi

Account Director: Sarah Caradoc-Davies

Account Executive: Blaine Roper

Executive Creative Director: Jonathan Deeb

Copywriter: Robert Storom

Art director: Vukani Mpanza

Strategic planner: Jane Jacob

TV production: Vanessa Borthwick

Media planners: Jedd Cokayne - The Media Shop

Production companies: Hungry Films

Directors: Gareth Paul; Ian Difford

Editor: Tessa Ford

Post-production: Tessa Ford Post Production, Bladeworks






New COO, MD, Joburg office and product development kickstarts agency's expansion

Charlie Stewart

Thanks to a near ubiquity of mobile phones and significantly improved internet access, everywhere, digital is gaining traction among South African and international brands and businesses and is no longer viewed as a nice-to-have, but a strategic business tool that provides market intelligence, aggressively drives sales and provides a clear read on ROI. So says Charlie Stewart, CEO of digital marketing agency, Rogerwilco, this years IABs best Organic Search Marketing team.

Awards aside, he and co-founder Jakes Redelinghuys are focused on the industrys and their agencys future. Having recently appointed Reghardt Marais as COO  a position he previously held at Saatchi & Saatchi Synergize - it is ramping up its business capabilities to respond to the increased interest from international brands and local blue-chip clients looking for specialist skills in SEO, content marketing and Drupal web development.

Reghardt joins myself and Jakes to propel Rogerwilco forward. His role will see him enhance processes at the company providing us with the foundation necessary to sustain our growth ambitions, explains Stewart.

Hes also opened a Joburg office to service clients including Tiger Brands and WesBank. It will be run by Geoff Masuti, previously client service director at Aqua and a digital strategist at M&C Saatchi. While production will continue to be run out of Cape Town, Geoffs mandate is to drive strategy and business development in Gauteng.

Innovation is also on Rogerwilcos 2016 agenda and will now be headed up by Jakes Redelinghuys who moves from his COO role into an MD function. Notwithstanding our core capabilities, were also investigating product development in e-commerce photography as well as an African entrepreneurship publishing platform  both areas we believe are commercially viable, says Stewart.

Buoyed by the international interest in South Africa thanks to a competitive currency, favourable timezones and cultural affinity to the US and UK, Stewart says that local agencies have what it takes to compete on the global stage. Many of our clients are international as they can acquire world-class development and content skills without the price-tag.

Its also why Rogerwilco is so invested in Drupal web development versus the more common Wordpress or Joomla platforms. Governments, universities and large news organisations like the Economist use Drupal because it can handle higher volumes and complexity and offers far greater security. While this is predominantly an international trend, he anticipates its only a matter of time before South African companies follow suit.

In the meantime, Stewart will continue to invest in internal skill and location expansions. Over the past eight years, Rogerwilco has established itself as a key player in the local digital marketing environment. In 2016, we will build on this foundation and continue to engage business and organisations on the power of digital as a competitive, commercial and necessary tool, he concludes.

Visit www.rogerwilco.co.za and follow @rogerwilco_sa for more.




Robyn Smith is the head and heart behind Faithful to Nature, an online retailer that only stocks ethical products that are light on the Earth, consumer-friendly and cruelty free. With eight years under her belt, Smith dreams of running the "Green Amazon" of Africa.

Robyn Smith

Where does your passion for product ethics and sustainability come from? What inspired this venture eight years ago?

I started this business because I really wanted people to find a haven in our hectic world where they could shop in peace. We all deserve to know exactly what it is that we are buying  this determines so much of the kind of world we wish to live in. I believe that you deserve to be able to purchase products where full product description is enclosed from absolutely honest ingredient lists; to country of origin and the cruelty free status of the item. The products that we choose to buy have a massive impact on the health of every creature on our planet. Its a really big deal that we are all empowered to make the best purchasing decisions that we can.

Apart from the products themselves, how do you keep your business green?

One of the five values that we live and work by is responsibility and that guides all our decisions in the business. Responsibility for us is about always taking the highest road and this translates into the fact that we repurpose all paper in the business for packaging; we only use biodegradable packaging in our orders; we even re-use boxes from stock that has come into the business into orders that leave the business. We obviously recycle and do all the usual green business practice like using recycled printing paper and drinking organic coffee. Any marketing material is printed onto recycled paper and we make a point of only creating marketing collateral that adds value.

We also encourage our customers to make donations to Food and Trees for Africa and Greenpop reforest projects when they checkout. It is an informal but very simple way that they can help keep their purchases more carbon friendly.

How much of a role does social media and content creation play in the marketing of your business? How have you used these marketing techniques to grow your consumer base?

We primarily grow our customer base by word-of-mouth  that is, we aim to over-deliver all the time so that our customers help recruit new customers for us. As a result, our social media efforts are more to build our brand and give our customers a sense of community. We are a very content-centric organisation though  so much of the work we do is around educating our customers on how they can live greener lives and so we put a lot of resources into our blog and newsletters, which of course is shared via social media.

For local businesses, what's the easiest way of getting their products on your virtual shelves? What is the local organic supply and demand market like from your point of view as a business owner?

We ask any potential suppliers to send ingredient lists of their products to our purchasing department at az.oc.erutan-ot-lufhtiaf@sesahcrup. This is the most important part of the vetting we do of new suppliers. Once we are confident that the product is as safe as it claims to be, we will further the conversations with requests for samples, prices and terms. The local organic and natural industry is amazing  we see fantastic green innovation all the time and there is an abundance of products. The market is still quite a cottage industry but it is maturing with time.

What is the biggest challenge for you in running an online shopping store in SA?

I would say that the delivery infrastructure in the country is probably one of our biggest challenges. Although there are constant improvements and I do feel positive about the future, we would obviously love to be able to offer our customers more delivery options and faster lead times.

Is there any possibility of Faithful to Nature trying out a bricks and mortar store in the future?

We talk about this often but I dont think so. There are so many other future projects in the pipeline that we feel have stronger advantages over a brick and mortar business. We truly believe that e-commerce is the future, as it is so much more convenient and efficient.

What are your expansion plans, if any?

We are looking to be able to serve more of Africa. We are also constantly growing our catalogue with the dream of being the Green Amazon of Africa. We are also looking to get more involved in the manufacture of green products to ensure that the growing demand of products is met with a very healthy and consistent supply of ethical product options.

Robyn Smith is the founder and director of South African online organic and natural store, Faithful to Nature. She started the business in 2007 after returning from a stint in London where she worked as an innovation consultant, supporting top businesses across the world with insights and learnings on creating a sustainable innovation culture within their corporations.

For more on Faithful to Nature, go to www.faithful-to-nature.co.za.
E-commerce and online shopping are on the rise in Africa. Sure, a 2014 study by Ernst & Young indicated that e-commerce represented less than 1% of the retail market, but, in the digital age, two years is a long, long time for improvements. Increased availability of the internet, computers, and smartphones has facilitated a year-over-year growth in e-commerce trends, which means that the number of 'new' internet users in Africa is growing at almost seven times the global average. The internet hasn't made traditional retailers obsolete , but it is changing how many Africans shop.

With that in mind, I've gathered some of the best tips for saving money and shopping wisely when you're buying on the internet. Ideally, no matter where you're from, you can take advantage of this advice to save big on shopping and shipping.

Comparison shopping online

If you were shopping for an item at a traditional brick-and-mortar retailer, you'd be able to compare prices of similar items at a similar store, and decide which is cheaper and better suited to your needs. And you can effectively do the same thing while shopping online. Don't buy a product just because it's on your favourite shop's website; do a quick internet search to see what other stores sell the same product, and if you can save.

Make sure to search thoroughly! Some online shopping sites act as price aggregators, so that you can view the price of a single item at different stores and compare. And don't make the mistake of not including the cost of shipping in the final price.

Discount and Coupon Codes

Many big retailers offer frequent discount and coupon codes. Many of these are published in newspapers and mailers, but many websites exist that collate and gather all of the varied discounts and coupon codes that stores offer, and publish their details for the public.

If there's a store you know you want to shop from, take the time to search the internet for discount or coupon codes for that retailer. You'd be surprised how much you can save with this trick. Often, it's as simple as copying a coupon code and pasting it into a special field during the checkout process. You can also subscribe to the email alerts and newsletters on the stores of some retailers, which typically allows them to email you with information on sales, discounts, and other opportunities to save money.

If you aren't often at a computer and have a smartphone, there are even some apps you can install that will let you browse coupons and savings on the go, if you're planning to do some shopping online. Using this tactic can help ensure that your email inbox isn't cluttered with advertising emails.

Set price alerts

Did you know that some websites will allow you to set price alerts on specific items and will let you know when they go on sale? Amazon.com and several other retailers will do this right from their own websites, but if the website you want to shop from doesn't have its own internal system to allow this, don't worry. PriceZombie, CamelCamelCamel, and Slickdeals will all track prices for you from many different websites.

Follow your favourite brands on social media

Social media is very hot for advertisers and marketers, and many big brands now manage their own social media accounts. If there's a brand you love, make certain to follow it on social media websites like Twitter and Facebook. They will often publish special savings and discounts only for dedicated fans who follow them on social media.

Never forget to shop safely online

Savings are great, and online shopping is incredibly convenient, but it also carries some risks. No matter how much you want to save, be careful about the websites you visit, and try to ensure that they're legitimate, well-known companies. Unscrupulous website owners will sometimes set up online shops to scam unwary buyers, so always look for SSL security certificates and other signals that you're working with a trustworthy website.
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. Today the Azerbaijani side again made a number of attempts to infiltrate into Artsakh Republic territory, but the attempts were a failure. Moreover, they suffered dozens of casualties and have 5 destroyed T-90 tanks, which is a huge blow for them. In total, Azerbaijan has already lost over 2 dozens of tanks, Artsakh President Spokesperson David Babayan told Armenpress. Though the situation continues to remain tense on the frontline, but overall it is under control, Babayan said adding the aggression of the enemy are suppressed by all possible methods.

He documented that the both the army and the population are in a high psychological state, there is no panic, which is best demonstrated by non ending flow of volunteers wishing to leave for the frontline. There are schoolchildren, even girls, who come and try to enroll; of course, they are not accepted for age and other reasons. There are also young girls and women ready to serve, of course they are not conscript as well, but this demonstrate the psychological state, there is no fear or panic, David Babayan mentioned, adding that at this moment the Defense Army is capable of protecting the borders of the motherland by its own.

As refers to the barbarism of the Azerbaijani subversive group in Talish that took place on April 2, when elderly people were tortured and killed in their house, David Babayan noted that it is the true portrait of insane Azerbaijan. An Azerbaijani subversive group infiltrated into Talish, entered an ordinary house, where elderly people lived, tortured and killed them. This is their handwriting and psychological state. They torture and kill elderly people, who are unable to self-defense. This is fascism and terror; we deal with an abnormal adversary, rational beings cannot act like that, David Babayan said.

He added that Azerbaijan will hardly take lessons and regret for its deeds, at the same time stating that it is the mistake of the international community, which must restrain and sober up Azerbaijan. In any case, we will continue to defend our freedom and independence and will give a powerful blow to Azerbaijan, NKR Presidents press secretary David Babayan said.

Peace talks between Armenia, Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan have been facilitated by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe since March 1992 within the frameworks of Minsk Group, co-chaired by Russia, United States and France.

Ceasefire agreement between Armenia, Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan, facilitated by Russia's representative to the CSCE/OSCE Minsk Group Vladimir Kazimirov, was signed on May 5, 1994, which had been maintained with only sporadic violations along the Line of Contact and international border till the latest Azerbaijani large scale offensive in the night of April 2, 2016.

Over the last two years Armenia, Nagorno Karabakh, the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs and over 80 U.S. Congressmen (Royce-Engel bill) proposed concrete measures to de-escalate situation and establish ceasefire monitoring equipments along the borders. Azerbaijan has been repeatedly rejecting these calls.

Azerbaijan has unleashed unprecedented offensive military actions in the contact line of Nagorno Karabakh. Due to the timely and professional actions of the Nagorno Karabakh Defense Army, it was possible to take the situation under control, and make the enemy suffer considerable losses. On April 1 and 2, the Azerbaijani forces sustained 200 casualties. Around 20 enemy tanks and 1 Grad missile system were destroyed.
The Competition Commission is set to request an extension to Tuesday's deadline for completion of its investigation into the Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev) takeover of SABMiller.

In the middle of last month, the competition commissioner said he expected to meet Tuesdays deadline, but at the weekend, the commission confirmed there were issues that still needed to be considered.

Itumeleng Lesofe, the spokesman for the commission, said the merging parties were aware of the outstanding issues. "The assessment of the transaction is unlikely to be completed by 5 April as previously anticipated," Lesofe said.

This will be the third extension requested by the commission. Extensions are granted by the Competition Tribunal, after input from the merging parties, generally for 15 days. But after objections from the merging parties, the previous extension was granted for only 10 days.

No details were given of the outstanding issues and whether they related to last-minute input from Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel. The department did not respond to approaches for comment.

Katishi Masemola, general secretary of the Food and Allied Workers Union (Fawu) confirmed on Friday that he would be making the unions submission this week.

The AB InBev team  which has put itself under a tight deadline for completion of this $102bn transaction  may have been troubled by signs of continued difficulties and delays in the processing of SABMillers proposed restructuring of Coca-Colas African bottling infrastructure.

After extensive and delayed input from Patel, the parties finally agreed to a timetable for tribunal hearings: they are set for three weeks next month. AB InBev CEO Carlos Brito wants to minimise the period of anxiety.

Last week, the merging parties notified the European Commission of the planned merger. The commission has set an initial phase 1 deadline to rule on the deal, which can be extended. In the US, the Department of Justice is continuing to evaluate the merging parties proposal to sell MillerCoors to Molson Coors.

Meanwhile, analysts have dismissed as "unlikely" a suggestion by a Bloomberg columnist that the Brexit battle (to decide whether the UK will stay in the European Union) could cause disruption because of the offers dual format. Investors can either take 44 for each SABMiller share or a mix of cash and AB InBev shares, which are listed in Belgium and denominated in euros. When details of the offer were announced in November, the cash and share offer was valued at 41.85.

The recent Brexit-related slide in sterling has lifted the cash and share offer to 46.

One analyst said such a value differential would not be enough to persuade significant numbers of SABMiller shareholders to opt for the cash and share offer, as the AB InBev shares offered will be unlisted and subject to a five-year lock up. The option chosen must be for the full amount of SABMiller shares held.

The cash and share offer was designed for the benefit of SABMillers two major shareholders, Altria and Santo Domingo. They own a combined 41.6% of SABMiller and wish to remain major shareholders in the merged entity.

The partial share offer is subject to a maximum 326-million AB InBev shares being issued.

To the extent the other SABMiller shareholders opt for the cash and share mix, Altria and Santo Domingo will have to scale back their allocation.

Completion of the deal is now expected to be September.
Gold Brands Investments has secured the exclusive rights to bring the Harry Ramsden's restaurant chain to South Africa. Gold Brands, which owns the ChesaNyama fast food braai brand has, according to its cautionary announcement, entered into detailed negotiations with the British brand to define an Area Development Agreement through which it will roll out the Harry Ramsden's concept in this country.

The Area Development Agreement fees are as yet undisclosed as they may be subject to change until the detailed agreements are concluded. The JSE AltX-listed company expects to announce the value of the deal at a later date.

The iconic British brand, established in 1928 by Harry Ramsden, has over 40 outlets throughout the UK. While the first Harry Ramsden restaurant opened in Guiseley, West Yorkshire, the firm has expanded well beyond its original Yorkshire heartland, including recently to Doha, Qatar. Bringing the brand to South Africa depended on securing the right local partner.

Closely guarded secret recipe

This is exciting news for the South African public as the international brands proud heritage was built on the still closely guarded secret recipe of Harry's famous batter, which is what the franchise is most famous for  its fish and chips. These days it serves up a diverse menu beyond its original famous fish and chips and operates in a variety of formats from traditional large format restaurants, to quick service restaurants and take-away formats, including a new addition of a pub format.

Harry Ramsden's is now owned by UK-based Ranjit Boparan, who is a renowned British businessman who owns and operates a number of food businesses, but it was previously owned by the Compass Groups SSP.

Joe Teixeira, the CEO of Harry Ramsdens, speaking from London, said: I am personally very excited to be expanding into a new market with a partner like Gold Brands. The experience, skills and financial resources inherent in the team means that we are really looking forward to working together to bring Harrys to a whole new nation.

A wooden hut next to a tram stop

The first Harry Ramsden was a wooden hut next to a tram stop, offering fish and chips, tea, and bread and butter. Within three years Harry had opened his first fish and chip palace with grand oak panelling and crystal chandeliers, which is now part of the iconic style of Harry Ramsdens restaurants across the UK. The company is the current world record holder for the largest fish and chip shop in the world, which seats 417 people and serves almost a million customers a year.

Menus now include pies, burgers and hotdogs, as well as desserts, in addition to its traditional battered fried fish and chips. For the health-conscious market, it offers poached fish and salads.

At this early stage it is uncertain whether the full menu will be offered locally, or whether it will see some adaptions for local tastes, but certainly Gold Brands founder and COO, Stelio Nathanael, has the skill to deliver an authentic experience.

International Franchise Expo

Besides founding the Fish and Chip Co, which was later sold to Taste Holdings, Nathanael operates The Original Blacksteer rib and burger steakhouse franchise in addition to delivering through the 300-strong ChesaNyama franchise chain. Both these brands will be strongly featured at 2016s International Franchise Expo at Sandton Convention Centre this week.

Gold Brands also owns 1+1 Pizza, Wild Wings Chicken and Pitaland.

Praxia Nathanael, CEO of Gold Brands Investments, said: This is an exciting development for us. We have previously proven how popular fish and chips is with the South African market, but this time the authentic flavours of a UK fish-and-chip experience will deliver something a bit different in the restaurant segment. We believe it will really appeal to all South African consumers and not just those who travel abroad and know the brand.

As always, Gold Brands is committed to delivering wholesome food at value for money prices and we will leverage our logistics and supply chain to ensure that Harry Ramsdens can delight all South Africans.
President Jacob Zuma's performance approval rating has dropped significantly to its lowest point of 21% in February 2016. The previous lowest score was an approval rating of 33% in March 2015. This is the proportion of South Africans, living in metro areas, who feel that Zuma is doing a good job as president.

Although the ratings have dropped across all race groups, the current results show a marked shift by black respondents in their approval of the president, dropping from 43% in March 2015 to 27% in February 2016, with 59% stating that the president is not doing a good job and 14% stating dont know.

This is according to TNSs first omnibus study of 2016, conducted between 16 and 29 February this year amongst 2,000 South African adults living in the seven major metropolitan areas and representative in terms of area, race and gender.

TNS has been measuring sentiment in terms of whether President Zuma has been doing a good job since his inauguration as the president in 2009.

The decline in approval ratings is driven largely by shifts in metropolitan areas in Gauteng (down to 22%) and KwaZulu-Natal (down to 33%), and to a lesser extent by the Western Cape (down to 12%).

Consistent with previous results, older people are more likely to state that Zuma is not doing a good job as president, 74% (aged 50 years and older) versus 62% (aged 25 to 34 years). The overall level of disapproval has, however, risen in the current survey from 56% in March 2015 to 67% in February 2016.

In line with previous trends, Zulu speakers are more likely to agree that the president is doing a good job, but the current results show that this sentiment has dropped substantially from an average of 58% (in 2015) to a new low of 33% in 2016.

Using Twitter conversations to size events

TNS turned to Twitter to further unpack the public conversations around the Zuma presidency and South African society in general. The Twitter population skews towards urban and young users and thus broadly aligns with our metro samples. By analysing millions of tweets, TNS was able to measure the magnitude of the various social issues and events that have arisen so far in 2016. The political and social events that generated the most conversation on Twitter relate to President Zuma:

Technical note:

TNSs omnibus survey was conducted among 2,000 adults (age 18+) between 16 and 29 February 2016, in the seven major metropolitan areas. The study was conducted as part of TNSs ongoing research into current social and political issues.

Twitters public APIs were used to collect tweets. The APIs impose limits on the number of tweets returned for particularly high volume queries. This means that we might not have collected every single tweet on a topic and the real counts might be slightly higher. Twitter analysis was conducted by the TNS Global Brand Equity Centre (GBEC) Data Science Team. For further information, please contact Kyle Findlay, Head of Data Science and Knowledge Creation - +27 (0)21 673 9703 / moc.labolgsnt@yaldnif.elyk.

About TNS

TNS advises clients on specific growth strategies around new market entry, innovation, rand switching and stakeholder management, based on long-established expertise and market-leading solutions. With a presence in over 80 countries, TNS has more conversations with the worlds consumers than anyone else and understands individual human behaviours and attitudes across every cultural, economic and political region of the world. TNS is part of Kantar, one of the worlds largest insight, information and consultancy groups. Please visit www.tnsglobal.com for more information.

About Kantar

Kantar is one of the worlds largest insight, information and consultancy groups. By uniting the diverse talents of its 13 specialist companies, the group aims to become the pre-eminent provider of compelling and inspirational insights for the global business community. Its 28,500 employees work across 100 countries and across the whole spectrum of research and consultancy disciplines, enabling the group to offer clients business insights at each and every point of the consumer cycle. The groups services are employed by over half of the Fortune Top 500 companies. For further information, please visit us at www.kantar.com.




Seeking to reduce its dependence on coal-fired power, South Africa is shifting its energy mix toward natural gas and renewables.

The country currently consumes around 180bn standard cu feet (scf) of gas per year and remains heavily reliant on imports to satisfy demand. Roughly two-thirds of total consumption is imported from neighbouring Mozambique.

With the authorities announcing plans to add 3.1GW of gas-fired generation capacity by 2025, compared to a total of 1.35GW at present, identifying new domestic gas reserves and boosting imports both rank high on the agenda.

Commercialising conventional reserves

Efforts to commercialise the Ibhubesi gas field, located 105km off the Northern Cape coast, have taken another step forward, with Australias Sunbird Energy  which holds a 76% stake in the joint venture alongside national oil company PetroSAs 24%  signing an agreement with Eskom last year.

Ibhubesi ranks as the largest proven gas field in the country, with 540bn scf of deposits and an additional 7.8trn scf believed to lie in the surrounding Orange Basin.

Under the deal, Eskoms Ankerlig power stations, 40km north of Cape Town, will take delivery of 30bn scf of gas per day for up to 15 years beginning in 2018, when production at Ibhubesi is expected to come on-line.

Exploration efforts are also progressing in nearby Saldanha Bay, where 14 oil and gas exploration licences have been issued for blocks off the coast.

Discovery and drilling in the area could help fuel ongoing development of the nearby industrial development zone (IDZ) specialising in oil and gas services and marine repair.

According to Willem Roux, Saldanha Bay port manager, the IDZ, which is scheduled to see R9.2bn worth of investment over the next five years, is ideally positioned to serve oil rigs operating off the west and east coasts of Africa; around 120 oil rigs pass by the South Africa coastline each year.

While much of the hubs capacity will be geared toward supporting offshore production, work is also beginning on a liquefied petroleum gas import terminal in the bay, due to come online by June 2017.

Shale potential

In addition to conventional reserves, shale gas presents an attraction avenue for boosting domestic supply, with South Africa home to the eighth-largest shale reserves in the world.

Numerous energy firms, including Shell, Falcon Oil & Gas and Bundu Gas & Oil, have long sought permission to explore shale gas potential in the Karoo Basin in the south of the country.

The Karoo is thought to hold between 390trn and 485trn scf of recoverable reserves. According to a study commissioned by Shell, extracting just 50trn scf of these reserves could add up to $20bn per year to South Africas economy  equivalent to 0,5 GDP percentage points  for the next 25 years and create as many as 700,000 jobs.

If granted a licence to drill, the company has said it would invest some $200m during the first exploration phase of six planned wells.

However, there is strong public opposition, particularly from environmental groups, against the proposition. But in early March, the government announced that shale gas exploration would begin within 12 months.

One area of real opportunity for South Africa is the exploration of shale gas, a joint statement by cabinet ministers responsible for the economy said in March. Exploration activities are scheduled to commence in the next financial year. This will lead to excellent prospects for beneficiation and add value to our mineral wealth.

Water worries

Despite the discovery of commercially viable reserves, extracting the shale gas may not be an easy feat.

According to a recent strategic environmental assessment for shale gas development in South Africa, in order to disrupt the substrata and release the gas, vast amounts of water would be required as part of the fracking process, water the arid Karoo region does not naturally possess. Average rainfall ranges from just 100mm in the west of Karoo to 400mm in the east.

The potential solutions  either piping-in water or finding deep aquifers  would likely be expensive and drive up baseline costs, while the extensive use of water could also damage the local ecosystem.

Increasing imports

While commercialising domestic reserves remains a long-term priority, South Africa is relying on a new 2600km pipeline from Mozambique to help bolster supply in the medium term.

Mozambique has an estimated 100trn cu feet of proven natural gas reserves, according to press reports, making it the third-largest holder in Africa after Nigeria ad Algeria.

In early March South Africas SacOil Holdings announced an agreement with Mozambiques national oil and gas company, Mozambican private-sector consortium, Profin Consulting, and the China Petroleum Pipeline Bureau (CPP) to construct a $6bn natural-gas pipeline from the Rovuma Basin in northern Mozambique to Gauteng, with offtakes to other neighbouring Southern African Development Community countries.

Funding for the project will come primarily from China, with the CPP responsible for procuring 70% of debt financing from Chinese financial institutions. Though the details of the financing have yet to be finalised, pipeline completion has been tentatively set for as early as 2020.
An important decision by the labour appeal court was made last week to finally determine the long-running dispute between the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), the Chamber of Mines and major gold producers. In finding against the appellant AMCU, the court supported the primacy of majority unions which engage in collective bargaining at the workplace.

Section 23 extensions

According to director in the employment practice at Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr, Fiona Leppan, the decision finds favour with a provision in the Labour Relations Act (LRA) which allows collective agreements, concluded outside a bargaining council, between the employer and majority union at the workplace or at enterprise level, to be extended to bind non-unionised employees and any minority unions that are not party to such an agreement. These are known as s23 extensions.

Single workplace

AMCU argued that the gold producers' individual mines were separate workplaces. The labour court had held that the test is not whether a union has a majority or particular level of representivity at a specific mine within each gold producer, but focuses instead on "whether the operations carried on by the employer in different places are 'independent' of one another".

The chamber contended all the mines of each gold producer constituted a '"single workplace" for centralised collective bargaining purposes. This was the result of rich historic, powerful bargaining patterns that served the purpose of ensuring parity in conditions of employment and hence labour stability could be achieved.

The s23 extension impacted AMCUs members as it curtailed their constitutional right to collectively bargain and strike at those specific mines where it had majority representation.

Argument not sustainable

According to Leppan, the labour appeal court concurred that the chamber is not a bargaining council and that AMCU's quest for ministerial approval ahead of any extension of a collective agreement taking effect had no application.

AMCUs argument that it could not be bound by a wage agreement that it did not sign was found to be not sustainable, as it was, according to the labour appeal court, contrary to the clear wording of s23 which does not require a signature to make such agreement binding by extension, she says.

Argument undermines collective bargaining

The labour appeal court went further and held that AMCU's argument undermined collective bargaining and the policy of majoritarianism which had been carefully selected by the lawmakers when the LRA was first constructed.

The fact that s23 limits a minority union's right to strike over wages, once the wage agreement is concluded with the majority union and is extended, was found to be a limitation that is reasonable and justifiable and not in conflict with the Constitution.

Majoritarianism causing consequences

The challenge is that the LRA does not address minority unions' complaint that private actors, outside a bargain council structure, are determining their fate in collective bargaining outcomes without their consent.

According to Leppan the framework agreement concluded by representatives of government, organised labour and business in the mining sector during October 2013 recognised that while majoritarianism has served South Africa's system of industrial relations effectively in the past, it appeared to be causing some unintended consequences in infringing upon the rights of minority unions.

Aim to maintain industrial peace

It is important to place the decision in context, as in 1995 the drafters of the LRA made a policy choice to discard the previous duty to bargain in favour of a system of voluntary collective bargaining, preferably at sectoral level, underpinned by the principle of majoritarianism with the aim to maintain industrial peace and the democratisation of the workplace.

Leppan explains that this has not always been achieved, as the disruptions experienced in the mining and agricultural sectors in 2012 bear testimony.

It was apparent to the labour appeal court that AMCU had accepted the legitimacy of such extensions but only took issue with s23 because it did not carry the ministerial oversight that applies when a collective agreement concluded in a bargaining council is extended to non-parties.
StreetSmart SA has launched in Knysna and is rallying restaurants to become involved in helping to rebuild the lives of children at risk in the town.

Liesel Battell (StreetSmart Knysna Committee), Melanie Burke (StreetSmart SA chairman) and Sue Mills (StreetSmart Knysna coordinator)

StreetSmart SA is a registered public benefit as well as a non-profit organisation and ensures that every cent donated by diners goes towards social and educational upliftment projects for street children.

StreetSmart is one of the best examples of how a little donation can go a long way. It shows how those who enjoy a meal, can with agreement of those who cook and serve, help people who are less fortunate than themselves, so that they too can become productive citizens of our country, said Sue Mills, Knysna hotelier and co-ordinator of the Knysna Committee of StreetSmart SA at the launch event. Lets give these StreetSmart recipients a means to obtain dignity and hope.

Funds are raised by adding a voluntary R5 donation to each table's bill at participating restaurants and since its inception in Cape Town in 2005 under the patronage of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, StreetSmart has raised a total of over R11.5m.

Sinethemba, the beneficiary

The beneficiary selected for StreetSmart Knysna is Sinethemba. Established in 2003, the organisation works with children at risk and their families to enhance self-sufficiency and giving hope through well-structured development programmes, in order for them to become active change agents in their society.

Sinethemba received R30,000 that was raised by the three restaurants that started the ball rolling in Knysna - Carolines at Belvidere Manor, Knysna Hollow Restaurant and the Bell Tavern at Belvidere Manor. These funds will be used towards the salary of an auxiliary social worker.

We are thrilled to launch StreetSmart Knysna, expanding StreetSmarts reach to assist greater numbers of street children and children at risk. Every cent raised here in Knysna goes to support local programmes for vulnerable children. Well done to the local committee, restaurateurs and diners, and I wish them great success in growing StreetSmart Knysna, said Melanie Burke, chairperson of StreetSmart SA.

At the time of the launch, two more Knysna restaurants had already joined the StreetSmart initiative - Chatters and Earth & Fire Restaurant. There are currently 88 StreetSmart restaurants running this worthy initiative in Knysna, Plettenberg Bay, Oudtshoorn, Cape Town, Franschhoek, Stellenbosch, Paarl, Somerset West, Swellendam, Johannesburg and Pretoria.
The Western Cape Funding Fair, in partnership with Deloitte and the regional Department of Economic Development and Tourism (DEDAT), takes place on 25 May 2016 at the Cape Town International Convention Centre. The province's entrepreneurs can present their business proposition to investors for funding of up to R20 million and over.

Wendy Smith, Western Cape leader of BPaaS and Accounting & Financial Advisory at Deloitte, says, If you are applying for funding, getting your business cash flow positive will go a long way in ensuring the success of your application. If you plan to expand, merge or sell your company, a positive cash flow will make it easier to attract a quality business partner or purchaser.

Taking charge of your finances keeps you operational and puts you in a position to face unforeseen contingencies. Positive cash flow ensures that creditors can be paid timeously, which is good for your credit rating and will potentially open doors in terms of getting a loan, a line of credit, or funding in the future.

While cash flow challenges are common for most businesses, there are three key measures to implement that will allow you to take charge of your business finances and, ultimately, your cash flow.

Know your ABCs

Accurately tracking your cash flow means you can make informed decisions when it comes to stock management and helps you to manage the timing of monthly payments such as rental, salaries, and suppliers or creditors. It also means you can plan for ad hoc, but necessary, expenses such as maintenance, marketing, promotions etc.

A cash flow statement consists of three categories:
The alluring African continent is host to some of the best UNESCO Heritage Sites. Not only is it the cradle of mankind, but it boasts beautiful forests, natural reserves that are home to thousands of wildlife and parks among many others. The continent is also home to renowned conservationists including the Leaky family who has contributed to the discovery of human fossils.

However, this sweet story is slowly turning soar, as Africas heritage sites gradually get damaged. According to UNESCO, out of the 89 sites in Africa, 16 are included on the List of World Heritage Sites in danger by the World Heritage Committee. Jovago, online hotel booking company, has put together a list of some of the most endangered Sites in Africa.

Source: africannaturalheritage.org

Air and Tenere Natural Reserves  Niger

Located in northern Niger within the Sahara Desert, the Air is famous for its rock art dating from 6000 BC to around AD 1000. The Natural Reserves also has a variety of landscapes, plant species and wild animals. Though it is considered one of the largest protected areas in Africa covering approximately 7.7M hectares, Air and Tenere Natural Reserves became endangered in 1992 as a result of political instability in Niger.

Conflict among the populations has also become a big threat, with poaching and illegal grazing posing a great danger to the reserves. Measures to protect the reserve include tough penalties against poachers.

Sites in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has most of its heritage sites facing damage threats. Garamba National Park, for example, was home to the world's last known wild population of Northern White Rhinoceros. Poaching of the rhinos made the park endangered, but efforts to save the wildlife were successful. However, the Garamba was later impacted and destroyed again in 1991 when the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA) attacked and captured a nearby town. An influx of the towns inhabitants sought refuge in the park while SPLA hunted game from among the remaining wild animals. As a result, Garamba Park was once again listed as a World Heritage Site in danger.

Other sites destroyed or endangered in Congo especially due to political instability associated with the 1994 Rwandan Genocide include: Salonga National Park, Virunga National Park, Kahuzi-Biega National Park and Okapi Wildlife Reserve.

Ruins of Kilwa Kisiwani and Ruins of Songo Mnara

Both Kilwa Kisiwani and Songo Mnara are located in Stone Town, in East Africas Tanzania. Mosques, cemeteries and most houses along these two sites are built from rough coral and mortar; reminiscing a feel of the centuries old slave and spice trade. Years of neglect and lack of rehabilitation of the once vibrant heritage sites has led to the two being listed among the endangered ones in Africa.

Timbuktu

During the 12th and 14th Centuries, Timbuktu was a thriving trade center that was the envy of many empires in West Africa. The town that is currently in Mali no longer exudes the glow of a burgeoning city, but rather an impoverished state that has greatly suffered desertification. According to UNESCO, this is attributed to continuing rapid urbanisation, with modern-day buildings towing the ancient architectures of Timbuktu. Among the affected features include the Tomb of Askia, which is also on the list of the heritage sites in danger in Africa.

Tombs of Buganda Kings at Kasubi

Ugandas Tombs of Buganda Kings at Kasubi is a burial site for four Kings of Buganda popularly known as Kabakas, plus other members of the Buganda royal family. The tombs remain a major spiritual site for the Baganda people. Unfortunately, a fire tragedy that occurred in March 2010 destroyed some of the major buildings comprising the Tombs of Buganda Kings at Kasubi, rendering the site among the endangered Heritage Sites in Africa.

Many countries view danger-listing as a blow to tourism because it reduces the number of visitors and takes away the countrys opportunity to attract new tourists. Most African countries make it to the list of endangered heritage due to lack of budget and attention to sights. Experts suggest that governments, as well as concerned stakeholders, should put in place and implement measures to regulate tourism activities not only in Africa but also across the globe. This will go a long way to preserving Heritage Sites and protecting them from possible endangerment.
To engage with China's travel and tourism business leaders, the Minister of Tourism, Derek Hanekom completed a three-day working visit to the country as part of South African Tourism's promotional roadshow to key tourism source markets. During the visit to China, Minister Hanekom and SA Tourism officials discussed the latest market trends, listened to the emerging issues raised by the local tourism trade, and shared strategies to grow tourism to South Africa.

Optimism over Chinese tourism to South Africa

China is a key source market for South Africa. In 2015 Chinese tourist arrivals in South Africa dropped by about 8% compared to the previous year. However, a resurgence in growth began in the last quarter of 2015, with November 2015 recording 58% growth over November 2014.

People from the Chinese mainland spent $215 billion travelling abroad in 2015, 53 % more than in 2014, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council. This puts China ahead of the United States and other developed countries as the top global source of tourists.

The China National Tourism Administration and the United Nations World Tourism Organization report that Chinese tourists made a record 120 million trips overseas last year, which means that one in every 10 international travellers was from China.

The Minister had interactive sessions in Shanghai and Beijing with Chinese travel trade and media. Chinese tour operators believe there is great potential for further growth for Chinese tourism to South Africa and were very enthusiastic about South Africa as a most attractive tourism attraction.

Easing access to SA

The challenges brought to the attention of the SA delegation included the ease of access to South Africa, relating to visas and airlift. Other key issues raised related to language, which includes communicating with tour guides, signage at our airports and tourism sites, and the translation of tourism information.

Minister Hanekom said the visit to China would strengthen the already strong bilateral ties with South Africa, with an even greater focus on tourism, and will provide opportunities for further cultural and business exchanges. We have had very useful discussions with the tourism trade, and several constructive ideas and plans have emerged, said Minister Hanekom.

Chinese travel and tourism leaders have welcomed the new visa application process and all the steps taken by South Africa to make it easier to travel to our country.

South Africa has implemented an Accredited Travel Company Programme in China (through the Chinese Approved Destination Status program) to process visa applications on behalf of travellers. Chinese travellers to South Africa no longer need to make in-person applications at visa processing centres. In addition, Chinese nationals also no longer require transit visas to travel to neighbouring countries.

We are confident that the number of tourists visiting South Africa from China will grow significantly this year. Our discussions with the Chinese travel trade have included measures on how to make the best of the expected boom, said Minister Hanekom. The trade responded very positively and have taken up the challenge to showcase more of South Africas hidden gems to the Chinese traveller.

South Africa has opened two new visa facilitation centres in Chengdu and Guangzhou, in addition to the centres in Beijing and Shanghai, for travellers who want go to the centres directly. Five additional centres are expected to be opened at the end of April in Shenyang, Xian, Wuhan, Jinan and Hangzhou.
State-owned company Broadband Infraco supports the government's plan to merge it with Telkom, and believes it should receive state assistance as soon as possible to prevent further erosion of its value.

Pieter-ZA via Wikimedia Commons _Telkom SA Head Office

Broadband Infraco's corporate plan for 2016-21 and its integrated report for the 2014-15 financial year that have been tabled in parliament, make it clear its executives believe it is preferable for the company to be acquired as a going concern to preserve its value and assets.

Telecommunications and Postal Services Minister Siyabonga Cwele confirmed last month that Telkom and Broadband Infraco were in discussions over possible collaboration as part of the government's restructuring of state entities to remove duplication. But according to Broadband Infraco's corporate plan, the project goes much further than collaboration and involves the merger of the two entities.

Broadband Infraco anticipates that the merger would take 12-18 months to finalise. It has a 14,676km footprint of fixed-line infrastructure while Telkom has more than 147,000km of fibre.

Rationalisation process

The company notes in its 2015 integrated report that, in its view, "Rationalisation would entail a consolidation of the state's broadband assets under one umbrella to form a national broadband network that would provide wholesale services on an open-access basis through a state-owned company."

The first phase of this rationalisation process should involve close collaboration between state-owned companies and phase two by due diligence investigations, the development of a national broadband implementation plan, and the incorporation of the new broadband network company.

A going concern

Broadband Infraco was more than six months late in tabling its 2014-15 financial statements because of the concern by its auditors over its going concern status. The company lost R245m in 2014-15, compared to the previous R144m loss on revenue of R366m (R302m).

The cash-strapped company has been on a cost-reduction drive, and has had to cut back or defer capital projects, which have been limited to critical refurbishment and maintenance. It has projected capital expenditure of R105m in this financial year for "urgently required" work on its telecommunication connectivity infrastructure, but only if it received the necessary funding from the government.

The integrated report said that Broadband Infraco had applied for a recapitalisation of R3.4bn over the medium-term expenditure framework, as well as a R698m government guarantee. However, this was substantially trimmed down in the corporate plan, which noted that R90m was needed for the company's short-term cash and working capital requirements by the end of last month; R105m for urgent refurbishment work on its ageing infrastructure; and R50m for the Neotel arbitration payment in June.

A government guarantee of R246m, the plan said, would "mitigate the going concern risk" of the company and allow it to source funding from banks.

Source: Business Day
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. Head of the International affairs committee of the Council of Russian Federation Konstantin Kosachov announced that Turkeys position, which cooperates with Azerbaijan only around the Nagorno Karabakh issue, contradicts the policy of the world powers and adds oil to the fire. As Armenpress reports, Kosachov stated this on his Facebook page.

He noted that Russia is in contact with all relevant parties for the settlement of the conflict. Other responsible world policy members act similar to Russia, including New York (UN Secretary Generals urge), Washington, Brussels, London, Berlin, Paris and others, he said, adding that only Ankara is behaving otherwise. If I am not mistaken, the only leader that has contacted only one side and apparently supported that relevant side, is Turkish President Erdoghan, Kosachov stated.

Similar one-sided and irresponsible position, apparently adds oil to the fire, prompting one side of the conflict to continue it, Kosachov said.

According to him, Ankaras actions are directed against all interests of the international community, where both Russia and NATO countries are currently objectively united. Everyone, except Turkey, understand that there will be no winner in this conflict, but many victims, - the Russian Senator noted.

He reminded that, by the same model: based exclusively on its own interest, rather than collective interests, Turkey acted and continues to act towards Syria, and now starts to act towards Ukraine. And this is becoming very dangerous, Kosachov added, TASS reported.
Absa Group Limited; Coega Development Corporation; Dormac Marine & Engineering; FNB Commercial Banking; KPMG; McKinsey & Company; Netcare Limited; Super Group Limited; Total SA; Volkswagen Group South Africa; Woolworths; SAMSA; Transglobal; Metropolitan Holdings and the SA Post Office have been accelerating transformation for the past 15 years.

These legends of empowerment will be honoured at the 15th annual Oliver Empowerment Awards on 14 April 2015 at Emperors Palace in Johannesburg.

This is a special year for the awards, our 15 year anniversary. It only seems right that we take this time to honour those organisations who have generated real impact in the transformation space. Being a legend is much more than compliance, it means you are beyond average and have made a major and significant contribution to transformation in South Africa, Ryland Fisher, Editorial Director, Topco Media. These organisations have gone through milestones and have tackled the challenges that make South Africa unique.

Diversity is important to us because we exist within an environment that has a history and it is critical for us as a business to contribute toward the normalisation of society and our own workforce. What we have gotten right in our business is to integrate diversity in our human resource, recruitment, people development and cultural change strategies. Nceba Ndzwayaba, Transformation Manager at Netcare Group.

Since 1998, two Netcare hospitals have been at the forefront of pioneering the establishment of dedicated centres where any survivor of rape would receive holistic and comprehensive treatment and support, free of charge in a caring and sensitive environment. This initiative has rendered Netcare Group the only private hospital group in South Africa to offers medico- legal services and care for those seeking assistance in all of its emergency departments. Since inception of the first unit (the Albertina Sisulu Rape Crisis Centre at Netcare Sunninghill Hospital in 1998), have assisted over 10 400 survivors in our 43 emergency departments. With the initiative and the close working relationship between Netcare and the South African Police Services, 77.4% of victims have been encouraged to press charges, supporting efforts to address this crime in SA.

We have started an earlier transformation journey a few years ago and really giving back to the community - developing enterprises and institutions around us, so it is fantastic to be recognised for the work we have been doing, Prakash Parbhoo, Partner at McKinsey & Company.

The McKinsey Leadership Programme was established in 2011 with the vision of creating leaders for South Africa and McKinsey. Talented candidates from all academic and professional disciplines are invited to apply for the two-year, full-time programme, which trains participants in McKinseys tools, methodologies and working style, and offers an unrivalled springboard to a high-impact career.

To date, 40 exceptional black South Africans have been recruited into the programme. They receive exposure to the countrys and the continents thought leaders and top executives. 90% of these candidates have received the opportunity to complete an international mini-MBA, and 82% of the graduates have received full-time offers to join McKinseys traditional consulting stream. Those who have left McKinsey have gone on to successful careers

It is a such a great thing to be recogised for an effort we have put in this. Our company is committed to the development of the youth, Jerry Gule, GM: Competency Center, Total SA.

This is a very positive endorsement in the work that we do both in social and economic development, Christopher Mashigo, Executive Manager: Business Development, Coega Development Corporation. Every year Coega Development Corporation spends 3% of its net profit after tax to support initiatives aimed advancing and promoting the SMMEs.

The honorary Legends of Empowerment Award celebrates success and honours those who have made a major and significant contribution to transformation in South African. This award aims to inspire and encourage other organisations, it is given at the discretion of the Oliver Empowerment Awards Editorial Board and not necessarily awarded every year.

The award recipients must meet at least one of the following criteria:

The organisation would have won an Oliver Empowerment Award in the past 15 years



The organisation may have been a winner more than twice



The organisation has made an exceptional and sustained contribution to transformation



The organisation must have an established reputation in driving transformation



The organisation has a valid SANAS B-BBEE certificate



The organisation has implemented strategic B-BBEE policies



The organisation has had sustainable increase in financial performance

For more information contact Rose Setshoge on 086 000 9590 | az.oc.ocpot@egohstes.esor




Continental Outdoor, now JCDecaux in Africa, were recognised for their continuous and generous contribution to the Nelson Mandela Foundation at the unveiling of the donor wall at a function at the Centre of Memory on 30 March 2016.

Mr Tokyo Sexwale and Mr Bazil Lauryssen

The event was officiated by Sello Hatang, Chief Executive of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, and Tokyo Sexwale, the Chairman of the Resource Mobilisation committee for the Foundation. Bazil Lauryssen, CEO of JCDecaux sub-Saharan Africa, was one of the three donors invited to share their shared commitment in contributing to the facilitation of Nelson Mandelas living legacy.

Bazil Lauryssen said, We would like to show our gratitude and respect for Madiba, particularly in these difficult times that South Africa faces, and do our part to keep his legacy and his vision for South Africa alive.

Mr Tokyo Sexwale, Mr Bazil Lauryssen and Mr Sello Hatang

We are honoured to be involved in celebrating the life of Madiba, and with our new shareholders, JCDecaux and Royal Bafokeng Holdings, wish to continue our relationship with the Foundation to continue the magnificent work that Nelson Mandela spearheaded.

Our relationship with the Foundation goes back seven years. Key campaigns that are currently being flighted are 'Make every day a Mandela Day', and the ARNSA and Nelson Mandela Foundations anti-racism campaign, ends Lauryssen.




South Africa's premier awards event celebrating business and arts partnerships is now open for entry.

The 19th Annual BASA Awards, partnered by Hollard and Business Day, will once again shine a spotlight on the imaginative and diverse ways that business partners with arts projects, events and initiatives bring the arts to the public in different parts of the country.

We love the space the awards gives us to explore and deepen our enduring passion for all facets of the arts. Its great to be working with BASA and Business Day again in growing something that we know is so important to the arts in South Africa, says Heidi Brauer, Chief Marketing Officer at Hollard.

Newly named in 2016 is the Beyond Borders Partnership Award, which will be awarded to a global-level partnership that builds brand reputation and audience for both the business and an arts organisation across international borders, through an event or marketing project showcasing South Africa within Africa and the rest of the world, and/or bringing international arts projects to South Africa.

The Cultural Tourism Award, supported by Nedbank, has replaced the Art and the Environment category as a way of recognising business support of arts and culture projects which contribute towards the growth of communities and jobs, and support the opportunities provided by local tourism.

To be eligible for entry, partnerships must have been activated between 1 January 2015 and 31 December 2015. Long-term or ongoing sponsorships current during that period also qualify for the awards.

The 19th Annual BASA Awards, partnered by Hollard and Business Day, cover a broad spectrum of the arts, including visual arts, dance, theatre, physical performance, music, architecture, fashion and design. The categories have been designed to recognise different kinds of business and arts partnerships  from small to substantial.

When considering entries, the judges will look at a number of carefully considered criteria, including innovation, sustainability and the shared value that emerged from the arts and business partnership.

Entries open on 4 April 2016 and close on 15 June 2016.

Entry into the 19th Annual BASA Awards, partnered by Hollard and Business Day, is facilitated by an online system that is continually streamlined to ensure ease of use. A team at Business and Arts South Africas Johannesburg office is also available to assist with entry queries and applications.

It is important to note that the entries can be completed by the sponsoring business and/or the recipient arts organisation, but must be approved by both the business and arts partners.

The awards are a highlight in our very busy calendar and the event itself is always a powerful, and hugely enjoyable, reminder of just what business and the arts can achieve when they join in creating shared value, says Michelle Constant, Business and Arts South Africa CEO.

19th Annual BASA Awards, partnered by Hollard and Business Day, categories:

Innovation Award  This award recognises the most innovative and progressive partnership in all mediums of creativity; one that served all partners purposes effectively between January and December 2015, and highlighted creativity and originality in the process. First Time Sponsor Award  This award is for a business supporting the arts for the first time, regardless of size, budget, whether it is CSI, marketing, HR, BBE or other. Increasing Access to the Arts Award  This award celebrates a partnership that has encouraged specific audience engagement with the arts or has made a significant contribution to brand, market and audience development, while still promoting the business through above-the-line media or a partnership that has made a significant contribution to regeneration or sustainable growth, through a marketing and CSI budget or other. Beyond Borders Partnership Award  Awarded to a global-level partnership that builds brand reputation and audience for both the business and arts organisations across international borders through an event or marketing project showcasing SA to Africa and the rest of the world, and/or bringing international arts projects to South Africa. Long-Term Partnership Award  A company which has significantly developed and expanded its commitment to an arts project over three years or longer. The value to the arts project, the broader community and the business, must be apparent. Media Sponsorship Award  For consistent and innovative support given by electronic, print, broadcast and web-based media. Strategic Project Award  For outstanding initiative, with best use of a project, which is an integral part of the business strategy. Small Business Award  For vital support given to the arts by a small company with up to 200 hundred full-time employees and an annual turnover of no more than R10 million. Sponsorship In Kind Award  For a company giving a quantifiable non-monetary support to the arts. Development Award  For projects with an implicit educational and development element. Cultural Tourism Award, supported by Nedbank  For business support of arts and culture projects which contribute towards the growth of communities and jobs, and support the opportunities provided by local tourism.



About BASA (NPC):

Business and Arts South Africa (NPC) is an internationally recognised South African development agency with a suite of integrated programmes implemented nationally and internationally. BASA encourages mutually beneficial partnerships between business and the arts, securing the future development of the arts sector in South Africa and contributing to corporate success through Shared Value. Business and Arts South Africa (NPC) was founded in 1997 as a joint initiative of the Department of Arts and Culture and the business sector as a public/private partnership. For more information on Business and Arts South Africa contact us on 011 447 2295 or visit our website: www.basa.co.za.




YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. The Spokesman of the President of Nagorno Karabakh Republic David Babayan says, Stepanakert has grounds to believe that Azerbaijan has recruited mercenaries from the Turkish Grey Wolves organization and Islamic State terrorist organization.

Although facts have yet to be finally confirmed, there are reliable grounds to believe that mercenaries have appeared in the Azerbaijani army. Generally this is typical to Azerbaijan, mercenaries have always been there. During the 1988-1994 war, many mercenaries from Afghanistan, Grey Wolves, Chechen mercenaries and Al Qaeda terrorists were recruited by Azerbaijan. And during the post-war years, until recently Al Qaeda terrorists were relaxing and recovering in Azerbaijan,- Babayan noted in an interview with Armenpress.

According to David Babayan, the brutal and violent executions of the civilians in Talish are the actions of these types of people.

Babayan says, the relations between the mercenaries and the Azerbaijani population of the bordering villages, are tense.

The population of the bordering villages of Azerbaijan are in panic and have left their homes, while these mercenaries are looting their houses, and there are even reports of murder and rape cases in that region. This is enough ground to say that there are mercenaries and terrorists from Grey Wolves and Islamic State on the frontline, Babayan said.

The Azerbaijani army committed a war crime in the territory of Nagorno Karabakh Republic. Azerbaijani soldiers brutally and violently executed Valera Khalapyan and his wife Razmela in their house and then cut off their ears. Azerbaijani soldiers also executed Marusya Khalapyan, born in 1924 who was in severe health condition. The Khalapyans were originally from Talish village.
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. Nagorno Karabakh conflict can have no military settlement. The Minsk Group format is the only acceptable one for the settlement. Armenpress reports Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told about this in a joint briefing with his Moldovan counterpart.

Our position on the developments in Nagorno Karabakh has been expressed by President Vladimir Putin, Foreign Ministry and Defense Ministry. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and I have contacted with our partners in Baku and Yerevan. We expressed serious concern and repeated the same call as the President to immediately put end to ceasefire violations and not to create further complications for resuming peace settlement efforts. We hope that hose calls reached where they were directed. Anyway, the sides have announced about that they have given appropriate instructions, but today we again hear announcements that the situation has not completely been smothered. We continue keeping in touch with Baku and Yerevan, so as finally the calls from Moscow, Washington and Paris serve their aim, Sergey Lavrov mentioned.

Referring to the Minsk Group format, the RF Foreign Minister stated that the group is a large mechanism which has clarified the principles upon which the final solution to Nagorno Karabakh issue will be based. Lavrov documented that the Minsk Group Co-chairs take active measures; they are in permanent touch with the countries, visit the region, meet with the Presidents, Foreign Ministers, go to the conflict zone and visit the contact line.

This is the universally acknowledged trio of the Co-chairs, the role of which is enshrined in the decisions of both the OSCE and the UN. We must by all means support their activities. It would be correct not to try to undermine the role of the Minsk Group Co-chairs and not to try to neglect that role and the works that are of key importance and to which the Co-chairs reached as a result of nearly 10 years of works with the sides. Moving the conflict settlement process out of Co-chair format will be used by those who wish either to fail of create difficulties for the conflict settlement. And such attempts are made by those for who the respective approaches for the settlement of NK issue are not beneficial that are enshrined in numerous documents of the USA, RF and France, Lavrov said.

The Foreign Minister of Armenia has announced for much time that Armenia is grateful to the Minsk Group Co-chairs for the important and consistent mediation efforts.
Reached for comment Lt-Col Naw Bu from the Kachin Independence Organization's (KIO) Laiza headquarters confirmed that the clashes had taken place. He said the clashes were not the result of an offensive by either side instead the fighting was a result of the KIA forces and their foes from the Tatmdaw encountering each other. According to local residents, the battle took place between the KIA and a joint team of the Burma Armys Bhamo based Infantry Battalion 237 and Mongmit based Infantry Battalion 276. Casualties figures from both sides are still unknown at this point.

While the KIA and the Burma Army have been fighting nearly every day in KIA Brigade 4 and 6 in northern Shan State in recent months, clashes in Kachin State have not been very common as of late.

Hostilities between the KIA and the Burmese army resumed in June 2011 following the collapse of a 17 year ceasefire. The conflict has displaced more than 100,000 people.

Translated by Thida Linn with editing by BNI staff.
Villagers from Udaung village market reported to Kaladan Press Network that a 50 kg bag of rice is being sold at between 20,000 to 21,000 Kyat--a substantial increase from January when it went for 18,000-19,000 Kyat. The price of meat, oils and onions has increased by as much as twenty percent in recent days. Garlic costs about one third more.

An anonymous villager said fish shortages in markets were related to restrictions on Rohingya barred from fishing in Naff River and the Bay of Bengal.

Other food items such as egg, chili, and vegetables have also increased and putting more pressure on impoverished villagers struggling to survive said local Nurul Huda.

Kaladan Press Network has obtained information that onion and garlic is now being smuggled from Bangladesh.

Edited by BNI Staff
Mi Kayin community, a coalition of local villagers and Karen environmental civil society groups put out a statement on March 29, 2016 to voice their concerns over the cement plant proposal.

The Mi Kayin community statement quoted Ko Kyaw Hla, a Mi Kayin villager who raised a number of concerns. We are concerned that the cement project will harm our local environment, health, sustainable livelihoods and traditional way of life. We pray that the company will respect the voice of the local community and that our natural resources will be protected for future generations, he said.

The first proposal to build a cement plant on Mi Kayin Mountain was put out by the Myanmar Cement and Mineral Production Co. Ltd and Myanmar Ji Dong Cement Co. Ltd in 2013 and 2014, but it was halted after local villagers strongly rejected it.

The proposal was again revived by Colonel Saw Chit Thu, a senior figure with the Karen Border Guard Force (BGF), which transformed from the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army. The Mi Kayin community members claim that Chit Thu has a well known record for corrupt business deals.

On March 19, a pre-consultation meeting organized by Colonel Saw Chit Thu was held in Hpa-an and attended by over 70 people including local villagers, representatives from community based organizations, Karen State government officials, Karen Literature and Culture Committee members, religious leaders and Karen armed groups such as the Karen National Union,

Democratic Karen Benevolent Army (DKBA) and Karen Peace Council (KNU/KNLA-PC).

Speaking at the meeting Colonel Saw Chit Thu talked about his grand plans for the cement factory. To build this cement plant, I visited China and observed a cement plant in Yunnan province. Their technology is high. So well use high technology that does not affect the environment. If it is allowed, people will get jobs and Karen state will also be developed. This meeting is being held to learn public opinion, whether we should do it or not, he said.

According to information shared at the pre-consultation meeting, the proposed cement plant will be funded by a Chinese company and managed by Colonel Saw Chit Thus Chit Lin Myaing Company. The estimated amount of money to be invested in this proposed plant is US $3 million. The power for the plant will be generated from a coal power plant that is included in the proposal.

During the pre-consultation meeting, Mi Kayin villagers, monks and government officials asked for more time to hold discussion with the local community. This was supported by the KNU representatives who also urged for more time to be taken before proceeding.

Saw Kyaw Hla, a villager from Mi Kayin who attended the pre-consultation meeting told KIC that many local people are worried.

We are very much worried about our mountain. [So far] No one has talked about how much accountability and responsibility will be taken and by whoif the locals dont accept the plan, dont misunderstand us, he said.

Karen community-based-organizations working on social and environmental issues have repeatedly called for all large-scale developments in Karen State to be halted while there is not any meaningful political settlement in the country.

In their press statement, the Mi Kayin community said that large-scale projects take local peoples natural resources and make it difficult for them to practice their sustainable livelihoods. Among these projects in Karen State, the proposed cement project in Mi Karen Village will have some of the worst impacts on local people.

According to sources from the Karen Environmental and Social Action Network (KESAN), Mi Kayin village is one of 11 proposed cement production sites in Hpa-an township, that many fear will cause serious damage to local livelihoods.

In the Mi Kayin community statement, Saw Tha Phoe from KESAN said that economic development for ethnic people should be based on the participation and desires of the local community, and must respect traditional culture and livelihoods. Most development projects in Karen State, according to the statement, have actually created more poverty and trouble for local people.



Mi Kayin villagers hold a prayer service at the base of Mi Kayin Mountain on March 29 2016 (Photo-KESAN)
KAGU comprises of the Karen National Union (KNU), Democratic Union Democratic Karen Benevolent Army (DKBA), the KNU/KNLA Peace Council, and the Border Guard Front (BGF).

Gen. Saw Jonny, commander of the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), the military wing of the KNU, told local residents it was suspended because they respected the peoples wishes.

The KNU has principles and policies concerning the cement factory project. If I were to speak based on our policy, it is too early [to carry out the project]. We will only carry it out if we receive public support after carrying out political dialogue and [the Karen State] becomes peaceful and stabilized. We wont carry it out if the public doesnt support it. We wont do anything that will make the public, who are our parents, suffer, said General Saw Jonny.

About 3,000 people that included representatives from KAGU, Buddhist monks, local artists, and residents from 17 villages in Mi Kayin village tract attended the half-day meeting.

A Phi Sein, an elderly woman from Kawphai village present at the meeting, told KIC: If the cement factory is built, the guests will enter and the hosts will have to leave. The elder said they are dependent on the mountain for their livelihood and without they have nothing.

Col. Saw Chit Thu, BGF central advisory and management member, said they will do as the people want, but pointed out that five percent of the expected revenue from the cement factory was initially earmarked for them.

Various attempts to build Mi Kayin Cement Factory have been made by Myanmar Cement and Mineral Production Company and Myanmar Ji Dong Cement Company Ltd from 2013 to 2014 but were prevented by locals.

Translated by Thida Linn

Edited by BNI Staff
An NLD State MP, who requested not to be named, said other MPs have better qualifications than U Min Min Oo and the president-elects nomination of him as both a speaker and as chief minister seems to have belittled his NLD colleagues.

This is the centralization system practiced by the NLD. He has been appointed Chief Minister even though he has already been appointed as the Hluttaw (parliament) Deputy Speaker. There are many people left. There are many people who are better than him. This seems to mean that the rest of the people are useless, said the NLD MP.

He also said he was unsatisfied with the Mon State Hluttaw for failing to seek the opinions of MPs before appointing U Min Min Oo as the Chief Minister on 28 March. The anonymous MP added that he can't accept U Min Min Oo's appointment no matter what reason is given.

Another NLD MP had equally scathing things to say about the appointment. I dont like the system where we have to say yes because the higher [level] said yes. I want to change this. In a democracy, one should ask the views of the majority. I didnt like it when he was appointed as the State Parliament Deputy Speaker. I only didnt say anything because he wouldnt able to do much as a Deputy Speaker, the MP said.

Not all NLD MPs are opposed to the appointment however. The NLDs Mon State Hluttaw MP, Min Htin Aung Han told IMNA that there is no reason why the public cannot accept the chief minister's appointment because he was chosen by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and she is trusted by the public.

U Min Min Oo is a 46 year electronics degree graduate from Taungzone Village in Mon State's Belin Township. He is the vice-chairman of Belin Townships NLD and head of finance for Belin Townships rubber plantation association as well as a member of the management committee of the Taungzone Administrative Hospital.

Translated by Thida Linn

U Min Min Oo, the new Mon State Chief Minister (MNA)
Maj. Mai Aik Kyaw, information officer of the Palaung State Liberation Front/Taang National Liberation Army (PSLF/TNLA); one of the groups that is fighting with the Burma Army and Restoration Council Shan State (RCSS), claimed that the army was using the NCA as a divisive tool against the ethnic minorities.

The ethnic people take up arms to resolve political issues. As I see it, the Burma Army has been using RCSS to wage war against us. Nothing happened in the northern Shan State before the NCA was signed. There were MNDAA, KIA, SSPP, UWSA, and other groups [in the northern Shan State]. Everyone cooperated together. Now, the RCSS marched from the south to the north after signing the NCA. There is a long distance [between the north and the south]. There are many Burma Army battalions there. Why didnt they stop them? Now, they [the Burma Army] only ask them [RCSS] to go back after war has started. RCSS said they are not going back. In my opinion, the Burma Army has been creating these conflicts, said.

The Panghsang summit was attended by 34 representatives from UWSA, Kachin Independence Organization, KIO/KIA, SSPP/SSA, PSLF/TNLA, MNDAA, ULA/AA, NDAA, to discuss the current political situation in the country.

The final statement stated all the concerned groups expressed interest in cooperating with the new government in line with the consensus reached from the two Panghsang summits. It called for political dialogue in order to build peace in the country, an immediate ceasefire between the RCSS and the TNLA and for the Burma Army to cease its offensives in northern Shan State.

RCSS leader Lt-Gen Yawd Serk said they expanded their troops in northern Shan State because the public wanted them to. He accused the TNLA of starting the problem.

The TNLA has been detaining the Shan people and trying to create an ethnic conflict. I want to know who is supporting the TNLA from behind. We are ready to meet and discuss with the TNLA. I dont want to meet anyone else, he said told the media in Rangoon early last month.

Starting in late November heavy fighting between the RCSS and the TNLA has erupted in Kyaukme, Kutkai, and Namhkam townships. Since March, fighting with the RCSS has subsided but it has increased between the Burma Army and the TNLA. Over 4,000 local residents have already been forced to flee from their homes.

Translated by Thida Linn

Edited by BNI Staff
During the recent meeting, U Khaing Soe Naing Aung of the Arakan Liberation Party (ALP) and Pado Saw Kwe Htoo Win of the Karen National Union (KNU) led the grouping of armed groups that had signed the National Ceasefire agreement. Khoo Oo Reh of the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP) led the non NCA signatory delegation.

An individual familiar with the talks who does not want to be named said both sides are planning to hold a summit in the near future.

We didnt discuss any specific topic so no decision has been made. We only exchanged our views. Both sides want to meet as soon as possible. We dont know when explained U Khoo Oo Reh, a key figure in the non-NCA signatory group.

The NCA signatory delegation leader, U Khaing Soe Naing Aung remained hopeful that other groups would sign the NCA. They havent signed it yet. They intend to sign it during the administration of the new government. We only need the view of the NLD government, he explained. He added that a meeting is expected to be held in April, likely after the Thingyan water festival, but the meeting could also happen before the holiday period.

Apart from the RCSS/SSA the rest of the ethnic armed groups that met in Chiang Mai on March 27 are members of the Nationwide Ceasefire Coordination Team (NCCT), which was established at the Kachin Independence Origanization's (KIO) Laiza headquarters in 2013. While this group was meeting in Chiang Mai last month, the United Wa State Army (UWSA), Burma's largest armed group hosted a conference of ethnic armed groups who had not signed the NCA, in their capital Panghsang. These groups included the KIO, the Mong Las based Myanmar National Democratic Aliance Army (NDAA) as well as the Kokang group known as the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA).

Translated by Thida Linn with editing by BNI staff.
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS: Azerbaijan, as it used to do in 1994, applies punitive squads that shoot those who retreat. The Press Secretary of the Ministry of Defense of the republic of Armenia Artsrun Hovhannisyan reports about this. According to received information, the efficiency of Azerbaijani units has declined to an extent that even the mercenaries who have many years of experience in terrorism are unable to help them. Currently in that part Azerbaijan, like in 1994, applies punitive squads that shoot the retreating soldiers, Armenpress reports Hovhannisyan mentioning.

The UN Security Council adopted four resolutions between April and November, 1993, calling for effective and permanent ceasefire, as well as immediate implementation of the reciprocal and urgent steps in that direction.

Peace talks between Armenia, Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan have been facilitated by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe since March 1992 within the frameworks of Minsk Group, co-Chaired by Russia, United States and France since mid-1990s.

Ceasefire agreement between Armenia, Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan, facilitated by Russia's representative to the CSCE/OSCE Minsk Group Vladimir Kazimirov, was signed on May 5, 1994, which had been maintained with only sporadic violations along the Line of Contact and international border till the latest Azerbaijani large scale offensive in the night of April 2, 2016.

Over the last two years Armenia, Nagorno Karabakh, the OSCE Minsk Group co-Chairs and over 80 U.S. Congressmen (Royce-Engel bill) proposed concrete measures to de-escalate situation and establish ceasefire monitoring equipments along the borders. Azerbaijan has been repeatedly rejecting these calls.

Azerbaijan has unleashed unprecedented offensive military actions in the contact line of Nagorno Karabakh. Due to the timely and professional actions of the Nagorno Karabakh Defense Army, it was possible to take the situation under control, and make the enemy suffer considerable losses. On April 1 and 2, the Azerbaijani forces sustained 200 casualties. Around 20 enemy tanks and 1 Grad missile system were destroyed.
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Ohio Governor John Kasich has no chance of becoming the Republican nominee for president and his campaign is facing increasing calls to drop out of the race, but Kasich seems determined to keep going.

There is every indication that a contested convention would be an epic disaster that could literally spark riots in the streets of Cleveland -- a scenario the city of Cleveland is preparing for -- but Kasich says a contested convention would be fun for the whole family.

Kasich spoke to ABC's George Stephanopoulos and said the coming shitstorm will draw the attention of The Youngs who love the Kardashians.

"We just have to keep going and were going to have an open convention. And, George, youre the guy that gets open conventions. Its going to be so much fun," Kasich said. "Kids will spend less time focusing on Bieber and Kardashian and more time focusing on how we elect presidents. It will be so cool."

"So cool."

I have no doubt a pro-Trump riot in Cleveland would draw the attention of the entire country, but not for good reasons.

It's increasingly clear to me the Republican party is completely fucked this year regardless of who they nominate at their convention. I'm not saying Democrats should be complacent (personally, I can hardly wait to vote for the first woman to be president) but let's face it, the GOP is screwed. Democrats should focus on down ticket races where the Republican party will be vulnerable under an extraordinarily weak nominee.
In a unanimous 8-0 decision written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Supreme Court has rejected a challenge to the principle of "one-person, one-vote."

Evenwel v. Abbott was filed by plaintiffs who wanted districts to be drawn by counting only eligible voters which would not include children and immigrants, among others. The obvious result would have been to concentrate white power and disenfranchise large swaths of people.

via Ian Millhiser at ThinkProgress

As Justice Ginsburg notes in her opinion, every state uses a similar method to carve up legislative districts within the state. Under the one person/one vote doctrine, states are required to draw districts with roughly equal population. Currently, all States use total population numbers from the census when designing congressional and state-legislative districts, and only seven States adjust those census numbers in any meaningful way. Thus, a congressional district in one part of a state will have roughly the same number of people as a congressional district in another part of a state, even if different numbers of people actually vote in these two districts. The plaintiffs in Evenwel asked the Supreme Court to change this equation. Had they prevailed, states with large numbers of non-voters would still receive extra representation in Congress, but they also would have been required to carve up districts according to the number of eligible voters who live in the state. This would have mattered a great deal in states like Texas, the state specifically at issue in Evenwel, where a large number of non-citizen Latinos reside.

In the unanimous opinion, Justice Ginsburg wrote that rewriting the rules to only count eligible voters would violate the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.

While Justice Antonin Scalia is no longer available to regale us or enrage us with a nonsensical, dissenting opinion, Justice Clarance Thomas did step up to the plate and write something that reads like a dissent even though he voted with the majority.

In my view, the majority has failed to provide a sound basis for the one-person, one-vote principle because no such basis exists, he wrote. Instead of continuing the misguided search for one, Thomas instead urged his colleagues to leave the question of apportionment to the states themselves. There is no single correct method of apportioning state legislatures, he concluded.

Justice Thomas voted with the majority to affirm States' Rights, not to affirm "one-person, one-vote."

Justice Thomas is a very twisted man.
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. President Serzh Sargyan met with the Ambassadors of the OSCE member countries on April 4, to provide them with information regarding the situation on the line of contact; Armenpress was informed by the Department of Public Relations and Mass Media of the Presidential Administration.

Serzh Sargsyan said:

"I appreciate your quick response to my invitation and thank you for being here. I am confident that all of you are informed about the situation on the Nagorno Karabakh line of contact. The purpose of inviting the Ambassadors of the OSCE participating states is to provide you with firsthand information.

As you already know, over the night of April 2 at around 3 am the Azeri side undertook a pre-planned and unprecedented provocation along the entire line of contact with Nagorno Karabakh, carrying out massive military actions and employing the entire complex of their arsenal  armored vehicles, heavy artillery and air force.

From the first hours of the hostilities, the adversary also targeted civilians. Schoolchildren were killed and wounded in the school yard; elderly people were viciously killed in their homes  all of them peaceful residents, including a 92 year old woman. And it was carried out by the so-called sabotage and reconnaissance group because no regular unit of the Azeri armed forces entered into any residential area. It is true, that right after this, the group was eliminated, however this is the fact. Footage featuring this scene also appeared in the mass media yesterday. You can watch that footage and juxtapose with the repeatedly uttered words of the leader of the neighboring state on the protection of the rights of the people of Karabakh within the island of tolerance - Azerbaijan.

Timely and professional actions of the NK Defense Army allowed to bring the entire situation under control.

Hostilities of this magnitude have not been registered since the establishment of the ceasefire in 1994. Provocative attacks of the Azeri side resumed the next morning and continue as we speak. Azerbaijan continues to target civilians, using multiple rocket launchers and mortars. After the so-called unilateral ceasefire, the Azerbaijani armed forces continued their active military actions along the line of contact as well as shelled the residential areas of Nagorno Karabakh.

The Republic of Armenia, as a party to the 1994 Ceasefire Agreement, will continue to fully implement its obligations to ensure the security of the people of Nagorno Karabakh. Moreover, I have instructed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to work with Nagorno Karabakh to elaborate an agreement on mutual military assistance. And here I would like to state what I have declared on many occasions - should military actions continue and escalate into larger scales, the Republic of Armenia will recognize the independence of Nagorno Karabakh.

Further escalation of the military actions may result in unpredictable and irreversible consequences, including an all-out war. It will obviously affect the security and stability not only of the South Caucasus but also the entire European area.

Clearly, the cessation of the hostilities and a peaceful resolution of the issue, in general, stem from the interests of the European states. The OSCE, as a structure which plays a crucial role in preserving the security in Europe, has a special role.

Regrettably, multiple warnings of the Armenian side that sooner or later Azerbaijan would become hostage to its own Armenophobic rhetoric and would plunge into a new military adventurism and therefore the aggressor must be contained by all possible means, fell short of desirable results. When Azerbaijan was bragging about the acquisition of arms and weaponry in profound quantaties, the international commuity remained silent or almost silent; when statements about seeking military solution to the problem were being made at the highest levels, the international community remained almost silent, when Azerbaijan was derailing the work of the OSCE Minsk Group and turning down the proposals to create confidence building mechanisms, the international community again kept silence. And today, international community is again silent as we see how Azerbaijan uses heavy artillery and bombards the peaceful population. By the way, literally minutes ago the Azeri armed forces for the first time used heavy flame-thrower system, ognemyot in Russian; the type is called TOS-1. Meanwhile, when the Defense Army of Nagorno Karabakh is taking counter measures against the armed forces of Azerbaijan that has manifold numerical superiority over NK, they are urged to show restraint.

I have three messages I would like you to convey to your capitals:

First, the Ministry of foreign affairs of Azerbaijan, why only the MFA, it was obvious from the speech of the President of Azerbaijan as well, and other official sources have publicly stated that for some purposes - which is perhaps clear to them but do not echo the logic of the so far occuring processes in any ways - Azerbaijan was the one that had initiated the offensive. According to their explanations, Azerbaijan attacked the Nagorno Karabakh Republic to resolve problems that assumingly had to be addressed through the peaceful talks under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs. We expect all the parties concerned with the regional peace to clearly demand an explanation from Baku concerning the launch of the millitary operations.

In recent days many heads of states and international organisations expressed their concerns over the situation, and made statements calling to establish peace. They cannot be effective as long as they are not directed to a specific adressee, the one who provoked the offensive, and as long as they do not foresee consequences for disregarding them: this is exactly why I refer to the international community as being silent.

Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh are in favor of hostilities to be ceased and the 1994 ceasefire regime to be fully respected with all the parties returning to their initial positions and barracks as of the 1st of April, 2016. To preserve the ceasefire the OSCE needs to come up with stabilizing measures, which under these conditions should primarily include the urgent introduction of the ceasefire violations investigation mechanism and considerable increase of the monitoring capacities of the personal representative to the OSCE Chairman-in-office. It is also necessary to increase the number of field assistants to the personal representative to the OSCE Chairman-in-office in the conflict zone so that they can record the violations.

Second, I have repeatedly stated that to settle any conflict, especially when it is a conflict concerning the destiny of peoples fighting for their right to self-determination, it is necessary to address the cause of the conflict and only after that to proceed to other matters stemming from that cause.

The Armenian side has never declined reasonable concessions to resolve the conflict. The OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs and the Ambassadors of those countries that are present here are well aware of this. But talking about them is meaningful only when the root cause of the conflict is solved and the Nagorno Karabakh Republic is freed from the threat of being re-colonized. No one can force a people to live within a state that does not reflect aspirations and values of that people.

And third, one of the recent manifestations of the cynical behavior of Azerbaijan was the statement of Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense, according to which Azerbaijan unilaterally suspends the counter-offensive against the enemy due to the humanitarian concerns and starts implementing the program of fortifying the protection of the liberated territories. I can assure you that Azerbaijan hasnt liberated any territory. At this moment along the whole line of contact there is only a tiny segment in the south and another tiny segment in the north (which hopefully will no longer exist by the end of this meeting). This means that Azerbaijan has made an advance of merely 200-300 meters. For every meter they have lost more than one person. It is obvious that by this Azerbaijan is again misleading the international community and trying to create preconditions to guise both the hostilities it has unleashed and further continuation thereof.

Alleged unilateral ceasefire is out of question, since the tripartite Agreements on the Ceasefire from 1994 and on the Strengthening of the Ceasefire Regime from 1995 without time limits, signed by Azerbaijan, are in force and Azerbaijan must adhere to the letter and spirit of those documents as an international obligation and not as a gesture of good will. By the way, I believe that the mediators of the ceasefire have an important role to play. I think that they are also the guarantors of the preservation of the ceasefire regime. Nagorno Karabakh is a party to those documents and Azerbaijan must start to speak directly with the authorities of Karabakh whether they like them or not. Moreover, I believe that every incident of violation of the ceasefire must be thoroughly examined and evaluated since that is the guarantee and motivation of effective negotiation process.

As an OSCE participating state Armenia finds necessary to call upon all the OSCE participating states to be principled in their positions. If there is a will and desire to fix the situation, effective measures have to be implemented to that end and respect of the 1994 ceasefire regime must be enforced upon Azerbaijan.

And finally, one of the OSCE participating states, Turkey, which often reminds about its membership to the Minsk Group, is acting from a position of inciting a great war in the region and is explicitly encouraging the adventurist policy of the Azerbaijani leadership. Azerbaijan is bragging about its alleged victory and Turkey congratulates it on that occasion. While the international community condemns the use of force in Nagorno-Karabakh although only in words. Turkey is the only country to provide unwavering support to the Azerbaijani adventurism. The statements made by Ankara before and after this situation- through which this country seems to compete with Azerbaijan with its anti-Armenian stance - can form a new hotbed of tension in the region, something of which Turkey has experience in the Near East. All those who wished to see Turkey among the mediators, now understand, that the country, having adopted the approach of the so-called blood-kinship security, should be completely kept away from the process of the Karabakh conflict resolution.

To conclude with, I would like to once again thank you for being here and express my hope that my messages and concerns will be heard in your capitals for the sake of the pan-European peace and security.

If you have questions, I am ready to answer".
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation called the statements by Turkish government on clashes since April 1 in the contact line of Karabakh-Azerbaijan as biased. As Armenpress reports, Foreign Minister of Russian Federation Sergey Lavrov said about this during press conference with the Foreign Minister of Moldova.

We do not blame any side of causing a new manifestation of NK conflict escalation. We do not blame Ankara. Of course, we have heard the biased statements by Turkish politicians. For our Turkish neighbors it is important thereafter to take the path of not intervening in the domestic policy of other states be it Iraq or Syria. However, despite such calls, Turkey continues to intervene and support terrorism.

I do not want to judge what role Turkey has made or makes in Nagorno Karabakh issue, but for sure I can confidently say that for all, and for Turkish people as well it is important that Ankara concentrates on stopping terrorism support, and we should come for it, Lavrov said.

Lavrov hinted on who brings out the negotiations from the Minsk group. This is the universally acknowledged trio of the Co-chairs, the role of which is enshrined in the decisions of both the OSCE and the UN. We must by all means support their activities. It would be correct not to try to undermine the role of the Minsk Group Co-chairs and not to try to neglect that role and the works that are of key importance and to which the Co-chairs reached as a result of nearly 10 years of works with the sides. Moving the conflict settlement process out of Co-chair format will be used by those who wish either to fail or create difficulties for the conflict settlement. And such attempts are made by those for who the respective approaches for the settlement of NK issue are not beneficial and which are are enshrined in numerous documents of the USA, RF and France, Lavrov said.

Along the entire length of the contact line of Nagorno Karabakh- Azerbaijani opposing forces, on April 1 and throughout the morning of April 2, the adversary undertook large-scale offensive military actions, during which the adversary shelled with missile-artillery units not only Armenian defense positions, but also civilian settlements.

According to the data of the Defense Army, the Azerbaijani armed forces fired MM-21 (Grad) multiple rocket launcher on April 2, at 08: 30 in the direction of Martuni (NKR), killing 12 year old Vaghinak Grigoryan and wounding two other children. 4 other civilians were wounded later.On April 3 the subversive group of Azerbaijan brutally killed 3 elderly and vandalized their corpses in Talish village.

Due to the timely and professional actions of the Nagorno Karabakh Defense Army, it was possible to take the situation under control, and make the enemy suffer considerable losses. On April 1 and 2, the Azerbaijani forces sustained 200 casualties. 20 enemy tanks and 1 Grad missile system were destroyed.

The Armenian side sustained 19 casualties and 37 wounded.

On April 3, starting from 06:00, the adversary continued aggressive military operations by using missile-artillery systems and armored vehicles.

The Defense Army undertook counteroffensive measures and dominated the strategic position in the direction of Talish, which was earlier occupied by Azerbaijani forces.
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. The Kremlin is deeply concerned about the situation in Nagorno Karabakh. As Armenpress reports, this was stated at a press conference on April 4 by Press Secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov.

There is concern in the Kremlin. The situation is very worrying. As you know, vigorous efforts are made by Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, as well as relevant international institutions. These efforts will continue to above all return the ceasefire, Peskov said, answering to whether or not actions will be taken to normalize the situation.

The main thing is to return to the ceasefire and minimize the damage and resumption of these kind of military operations in the settlement process, Peskov said, answering to a question whether Russia will decide to suspend military aid to Armenia and Azerbaijan, if the clashes continue, Ria Novosti informed.
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. The Defense Ministry of Armenia continues publishing the valor and heroism of Armenian soldiers in the frontline. As Armenpress reports, Press Secretary of the Defense Ministry Artsrun Hovhannisyan posted on his Facebook page the story of 4th rifle brigade commander, 26 year old Captain Armenak Urfanyan. Captain Urfanyan along with his crew engaged in a long lasting firefight with the enemy. Under the pressure of the exceeding enemy forces, he ordered his crew to retreat, and continued the battle alone, eliminated an enemy tank and 10 enemy soldiers. In the end, he threw several grenades and didnt let the enemy surround him. He used the last grenade to sacrifice himself by eliminating the approaching enemy. Glory to our heroes, he wrote.

4th rifle brigade commander, Captain Armenak M. Urfanyan

Born in 1990, in service since 2007, Nork Military Commission

Dirge ceremony will take place on 05.04.2016 at 17:00

Funeral will take place on 06.04.2016 at 14:00

Address  Yerevan, Proshyan Street, St. Hovhannes church

Along the entire length of the contact line of Nagorno Karabakh- Azerbaijani opposing forces, on April 1 and throughout the morning of April 2, the adversary undertook large-scale offensive military actions, during which the adversary shelled with missile-artillery units not only Armenian defense positions, but also civilian settlements.

According to the data of the Defense Army, the Azerbaijani armed forces fired MM-21 (Grad) multiple rocket launcher on April 2, at 08: 30 in the direction of Martuni (NKR), killing 12 year old Vaghinak Grigoryan and wounding two other children. 4 other civilians were wounded later. On April 3, it became known that Azerbaijani forces violently executed 3 civilians in Talish, who hadnt yet been evacuated.

Due to the timely and professional actions of the Nagorno Karabakh Defense Army, it was possible to take the situation under control, and make the enemy suffer considerable losses. On April 1 and 2, the Azerbaijani forces sustained 200 casualties. Around 20 enemy tanks and 1 Grad missile system were destroyed.

The Armenian side sustained 18 casualties and 37 wounded.

On April 3, starting from 06:00, the adversary continued aggressive military operations by using missile-artillery systems and armored vehicles.

The Defense Army undertook counteroffensive measures and dominated the strategic base in the direction of Talish, which was earlier occupied by Azerbaijani forces.

The Azerbaijani army committed a war crime in the territory of Nagorno Karabakh Republic. Azerbaijani soldiers brutally and violently executed Valera Khalapyan and his wife Razmela in their house and then cut off their ears. Azerbaijani soldiers also executed Marusya Khalapyan, born in 1924 who was in severe health condition. The Khalapyans were originally from Talish village.
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. In case military operations in Nagorno Karabakh continue and grow larger by scale, the Republic of Armenia will recognize the independence of Nagorno Karabakh. As Armenpress was informed from the Department of Public Relations and Mass Media of Republic of Armenia Presidents Office, President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan announced about this in the meeting with the Ambassadors of OSCE member states.

Operations of such a large scale have not been recorded since the establishment of ceasefire in 1994. Azerbaijan continues targeting civilians, using multiple rocket launchers and artillery. After the so called unilateral ceasefire, Azerbaijani artillery fired in the direction of Nagorno Karabakh settlements. The Republic of Armenia, as a party of the ceasefire agreement signed in 1994, will continue to fully implement its commitment of ensuring the security of Nagorno Karabakh people. Moreover, I have assigned the Minister of Foreign Affairs to work with Nagorno Karabakh on signing an agreement of military partnership. And I have to mention here, it is not the first time I announce it, that if the military operations continue and grow larger by scale, the Republic of Armenia will recognize the independence of Nagorno Karabakh, President of Armenia said.

He stated that the further escalation of military operations can lead to unpredictable and irreversible consequences, even to a full-scale war. This will have an impact not only on the security and stability of South Caucasus, but also the European region, Serzh Sargsyan mentioned.
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian side never rejects reasonable compromises towards the settlement of Nagono Karabakh conflict, but it will make sense to speak about this only when the root cause of the conflict will be solved, said Armenias President Serzh Sargsyan during the meeting with the ambassadors of the OSCE member states in Yerevan.

I have talked a lot about the fact that in order to resolve any conflict, especially when it relates to the faith of people struggling for their right to self-determination, it is necessary to eliminate the cause of the conflict and only then to proceed to all settlements pertaining to it. The Armenian side, and the Minsk group co-chairs and here sitting ambassadors of different states are well aware of this, never refused from reasonable compromises towards conflict settlement. But it will make sense to speak about this only when the root cause of the conflict will be solved and the Nagorno Karabakh Republic will get rid of the danger of being colonized. No one can force people to live in such a state that does not reflect the aspirations and values of that people,- said the President.

The UN Security Council adopted four resolutions between April and November, 1993, calling for effective and permanent ceasefire, as well as immediate implementation of the reciprocal and urgent steps in that direction.

Peace talks between Armenia, Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan have been facilitated by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe since March 1992 within the frameworks of the Minsk Group, Co-chaired by Russia, United States and France since mid-1990s.

Ceasefire agreement between Armenia, Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan, facilitated by Russia's representative to the CSCE/OSCE Minsk Group Vladimir Kazimirov, was signed on May 5, 1994, which had been maintained with only sporadic violations along the Line of Contact and international border till the latest Azerbaijani large scale offensive in the night of April 2, 2016.

Over the last two years Armenia, Nagorno Karabakh, the OSCE Minsk Group co-Chairs and over 80 U.S. Congressmen (Royce-Engel bill) proposed concrete measures to de-escalate situation and establish ceasefire monitoring equipments along the borders. Azerbaijan has been repeatedly rejecting these calls.




NEW DELHI (PTI): Opting to go solo in its ambitious Chandrayaan II project, India has decided not to take Russia on board and keep the mission completely indigenous with "minor" help from the US.



ISRO chairman A S Kiran Kumar said Chandrayaan II, having an indigenously built Lander and Rover, will be launched by December 2017 or first half of 2018. The spacecraft will also have instruments that will collect samples and send the data back to Earth.



Chandrayaan, the country's Lunar Exploration Programme, is an ongoing series of outer space missions by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).



In its Chandrayaan Mission I, ISRO was able to make the important discovery of water on the Earth's sole satellite.



India has now jettisoned Russia in the Chandrayaan II project and would be embarking upon an indigenous venture but with a bit of help from the United States.



During 2010, it was agreed that Russian Space Agency ROSCOSMOS would be responsible for lunar Lander and ISRO for Orbiter and Rover as well as Launch by GSLV. Later, due to a shift in the programmatic alignment of the mission, it was decided that the Lunar Lander development would be done by ISRO and Chandrayaan-II will be a totally Indian mission.



"There were issues with the Russian Lander and they had said it would need some more testing. In the meantime, we decided to develop it indigenously," said a senior ISRO official.



Although indigenous, ISRO will be taking services of NASA for the project.



"You cannot track satellite from one location...because of that you need support from other locations. With NASA the collaboration is restricted to its services from the Deep Space Network for Chandrayaan purpose. We are not using Russian help in this project," Kumar said.



ISRO's space cooperation with NASA has been growing over the past few years. Interestingly, the collaboration between the two agencies had come to a halt after nuclear tests done by India in 1974 and 1998. But with relations between the two countries improving, the cooperation between the space agencies too have increased.



The two are also collaborating on their project on Mars.



On the other hand, although India is going solo in the Chandrayaan project, it has been collaborating with Russia on different projects.



"In future, for semi-cryogenic engine some facilities are required to carry out the tests. So we are still looking at possibilities of working with them. All space agencies have realised that unless we work together many of the missions cost cannot be shared," Kumar said.






PANAJI (PTI): Tata Motors will deliver 300 all terrain vehicles (ATVs) to the armed forces per quarter, a senior company official has said.



"We delivered 39 ATVs in December last year and another 100 in March. We will now increase the delivery rate to 300 ATVs per quarter and we are confident of meeting the schedule," Veron S Noronha, Vice-President (Defence and Government Business) Tata Motors, told PTI.



He, however, did not specify how many such vehicles are to be delivered to the armed forces.



Tata Motors has order backlogs worth Rs 1,400 crore related to supply of logistic vehicles, light armed vehicles, ATVs and 6 by 6 trucks to the security forces, he said.



The private company, which makes an array of vehicles, ranging from passenger cars to ATVs, presented its products and technology at the just concluded 'Defence Expo 2016' in Goa.



The expo was a very good opportunity for Tata Motors to meet foreign entities and discuss prospective technical collaborations, he said.



Talking about Make In India initiative, Noronha said the manufacturing project will definitely help companies like Tata Motors as funding by the government for research and development has become more transparent.



"Exchange rate variation and other items have been specifically introduced (under the project) which put companies like Tata Motors on level playing field."



DRDO can now become production partner in initial stages of product development, Noronha added.


Hey there, time traveller!

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A mentally challenged man originally charged with sexual assault for having sex with an underage runaway girl has had that charge dropped.

It was part of an unusual agreement in which Crown and defence mirrored the work of Winnipegs mental health court.

We were going through a mental health court process, as we dont in fact have a formal court here, Crown attorney Deidre Badcock told Judge John Combs in Brandon provincial court on Thursday.

File Brandon court house

The resolution was pursued, Badcock said, due in part to the mans mental health issues and cognitive impairments.

In this case, The Brandon Sun has opted not to name the accused because the charges against him werent formally proven in court.

However, back in January 2015 he admitted that hed had sex with a 14-year-old girl whod run away from Patrick House in late 2013.

Patrick House is a city group home run by Child and Family Services of Western Manitoba that houses youth with troubled backgrounds such as abuse and mental health issues.

After running away, the girl needed a place to stay, and a friend introduced her to the accused who was 21-years-old at the time.

The man allowed her to stay with him and they had consensual sex during that time, although she was too young to legally consent. At times, the man gave her marijuana.

The girl told police that shed informed the man she was 14. However, he told investigators that the girl had said she was 17, and only told him she was 14 after they had sex.

The man stressed the sex wasnt forced but, due to his cognitive impairment, police explained that the girl hadnt been old enough to consent.

Badcock told court that, had the matter had gone to trial, there may have been reasonable doubt as to whether the man had made an honest mistake about the girls age and the legal age of consent.

The legal age of consent in Canada is 16 years.

On his part, the accused acknowledged he should have done more to determine the girls age before having sex with her.

Given the doubts surrounding a conviction and the mans cognitive limitations, Badcock and defence lawyer Ryan Fawcett reached a resolution.

They based it on the workings of the Winnipeg Mental Health Court that was set up in 2012.

Such a court was on Brandon judges wish list for years, and last November the provincial government announced the program would expand to Brandon.

However, its not here yet and in the meantime local Crown and defence have had to improvise.

About 14 months ago, this accused pleaded guilty to sexual assault as a formality  a condition required by probation services to have him enter counseling.

Since then, hes appeared in court regularly for rehabilitative remands and updates as he took extensive sex offender counseling to prevent offences.

He has also been on court conditions to protect the girl since April 2014 and hasnt broken them.

He has no prior criminal record.

As of mid-March, he completed his counselling and on Thursday agreed to sign a one-year court order that forbids him from having any contact with the girl.

Hes not to be within 100 metres of her, or her home, school or church.

The guilty plea to the sexual assault charge was then withdrawn, and the charge stayed.

Another man is still before the courts on sex offences allegedly committed against the same girl from around the same time period.

The girl isnt the only Patrick House runaway who is reported to have been sexually exploited.

In August, 30-year-old Josh Duff was sentenced to prison for giving underage girls drugs for sex. At least one of his victims was another Patrick House runaway.

Another Patrick House girl was believed to have been exploited by Duff but he was never charged as they later had a relationship.

While he no longer lives in Brandon, the mentally challenged man who had his charge dropped last week appears to have been part of a circle of friends that included chronic runaways and girls who had stayed at Patrick House.

 ihitchen@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @IanHitchen
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This article was published 04/04/2016 (2393 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Make no bones about it, Brandon Universitys anthropology department is the new owner of a pretty special teaching tool.

Last week, the family of late Brandon neurologist Dr. Robert Tang-Wai gifted the school a number of the doctors prized possessions  the crown jewel being a partial human skeleton named Henry.

He acquired him before any of us were born, so hes been a part of our family for my entire life, Tang-Wais daughter Karen Sutton said.

Bruce Bumstead/Brandon Sun Brandon University professor Emily Hollande with the vintage microscope and slides that are part of a donation by the family of the late Dr. Tang-Wai. The donation included a valuable partial skeleton.

Tang-Wai purchased the skeleton in the early 1960s when he was studying medicine at the University of Ireland. The doctor-in-training ordered the complete skull and bones of the right side of the body from a company in England to the tune of 50-pounds.

Its bizarre, but these things were mail-order, Sutton said, adding that the price of the skeleton was likely equivalent to her fathers rent and food allowance for two months. He felt it was worth it  he was going to be a good clinical doctor and he said he needed the real thing.

Since the partial skeleton was that of a male, and because he had arrived from England, Tang-Wai decided Henry was a perfectly good English name.

Growing up as a doctors daughter, Sutton says there was nothing strange about having a human skeleton in the house.

The neurologist kept the specimen close at hand so he could teach patients about bodily trauma  particularly head injuries.

The skull actually sat on his desk because he used it so much, Sutton said, adding that the entire skeleton used to hang in his office, but was put away after several patients voiced their discomfort with it.

Tang-Wai also had an audience with local lawyers whose cases dealt with physical injuries. On at least one occasion, Henry was used as evidence during a murder trial at the Brandon Court House.

After Tang-Wai passed away suddenly at the age of 75 in December of last year, the family had to decide what to do with Henry.

Sutton says they toyed with the idea of having him laid to rest, but decided against it because they didnt know anything about the person they would be burying.

To us, the best thing for Henry, and his second purpose in this life, is to be a teaching aid, she said.

Before Sutton could drop him off at BU, she literally had to get the skeleton out of the closet.

Actually, he was in my old bedroom closet, she said.

Henry is now in the care of Emily Holland, a biological anthropologist and assistant professor in BUs anthropology department.

Holland says the skeletal donation, made in Tang-Wais name, is unique in a number of ways.

Usually, if we get these kinds of donations its from academic institutions  to get a donation from a member of the community is quite rare, Holland said. This sounds like a terrible thing to say, but buying human skeletal remains is not cheap so the fact that its being donated is such an incredible gift.

Holland estimates an ethically-sourced full human skeleton would costs about $4,000.

Henry is set to be a valuable addition to the anthropology lab because he has signs of healed trauma, osteoarthritis and the skeleton hasnt been chemically processed.

All of our other teaching materials are blinding white and bone doesnt naturally look that way, bone is naturally a dusty yellow, Holland said.

While anthropologists usually avoid giving skeletons names, Henry will keep his 50-year-old moniker.

We kind of avoid it because  people tend to then joke about the individual more or feel its appropriate to make up stories that might not always be positive, Holland said. These skeletal individuals have donated their bodies for teaching and research and that is an incredible gift and they deserve to be respected.

Holland adds that skeletal remains should only photographed for specific educational purposes  which is why The Brandon Sun has not included a picture of Henry with this article.

Tang-Wais family also donated a vintage microscope, human tissue slides and an opthalmology camera to the university.

 ewasney@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @evawasney
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VICTORIA - British Columbia's Opposition New Democrats are urging a federal environmental agency to withhold approval of the proposed the $36-billion liquefied natural gas project near Prince Rupert.

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WINNIPEG  Neechi Commons is outraged by Liberal Leader Rana Bokharis plan to spend $20 million to create a Crown corporations fresh-food market downtown.

A fresh-food market is exactly what the aboriginal community grocery store, restaurant, and art gallery already offers the inner city and Manitoba producers at 865 Main St.  without the help of $20 million in public money, Neechi president Louise Champagne said Friday.

Really? Thats pretty insulting. Thats pretty outrageous, said Champagne, who found it amazing that Bokhari would claim her government-run market would not compete with Neechi Commons or the St. Norbert Market.

WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Manitoba Liberal leader Rana Bokhari listens to a reporter's question regarding a Brandon Liberal candidate's comment there were "too many hospitals" in Manitoba. She was making a campaign announcement in Old Market Square Friday regarding downtown revitalization by promising to build a year-round fresh food market in downtown Winnipeg.

We could take that $20 million and put it to good use. Weve got a pretty heavy debt load were carrying, Champagne said. Were pretty invisible, I think. When they talk about a food desert, they ignore us.

Bokhari had earlier told reporters the Liberals would get the government into the grocery business  shed open a $20-million fresh-food market downtown.

Were thinking (in) a warehouse, Bokhari said.

If she couldnt interest the private sector, Bokhari said it would run as a Crown corporation and open the space to local producers.

Thered be no packaged or canned goods, but lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, along with meat and eggs. The Liberals would have an inspector on site.

In no way is this going to replace farmers markets, nor would it compete with other community food enterprises such as Neechi Commons, but it will help attract people to live downtown while boosting her farm-to-table campaign promise to help local producers, Bokhari said.

She said the Liberals would finance the project with the money from privatizing the Liquor and Lottery Corp., whose building could also potentially be a market site.

Ideally, the private sector would operate the market in future, Bokhari said, though, Weve been trying to get people to come in here. It just doesnt work.

But Champagne pointed out that Neechi Commons already offers everything that Bokhari envisions for the government-run market.

Weve got our Three Sisters fresh produce market here. We see ourselves as a fresh fruit regional centre that also has a wide variety of meat, fish, baked goods, jams, wild rice, all local. In season, theres a farmers market, and Neechi Commons buys whats left from the producers at days end: We see ourselves as the allies of the producers, Champagne said.

Meanwhile, while it might be counterintuitive and be a denial of the political stereotype, the NDP declared Friday that theyd prefer working with the private sector to creating an expensive Crown corporation.

Said the NDP: Another day, another confusing policy announcement from the Bokhari Liberals  and this one is no April Fools joke.

The Bokhari Liberals would sink $20 million into a government-run grocery store, but they want to privatize liquor sales and cancel the new Liquor and Lotteries headquarters that would bring hundreds of people downtown and help create the critical mass needed to sustain a grocery store, the NDP said. That just doesnt make sense and doesnt add up.

The NDP is supporting downtown development through new housing, the Winnipeg Art Gallerys Inuit Art Centre, the new headquarters for Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries and key projects like True North Square. With more people living, working and visiting downtown, its becoming a more and more attractive spot for a grocery store, and we are working with private partners to make it happen, the NDP said.

Also, Bokhari lashed out at the media Friday for continuing to raise questions about Billy Moore, the Brandon West Liberal candidate who proposed closing hospitals.

There is no fairness here, Bokhari lectured reporters Friday in Old Market Square.

Greg Selinger lies every single day, yet the media accept that, said Bokhari. She said the media are OK with Fort Rouge NDP candidate Wab Kinews having posted sexist and homophobic tweets in the past and having used sexist and homophobic language in the music he performed in the past.

Bokhari said the media are OK with the alleged activities of St. Vital Conservative candidate Colleen Mayer  the Winnipeg Free Press broke the story about allegations that Mayer used her St. Vital BIZ office for political purposes.

Earlier in the campaign, Bokhari had said she shares the belief of lots of people that the media ignore stories because they need money from government ads. She would not cite any stories the media allegedly ignored.

Bokhari said she first met Moore about a week ago. I dont vet candidates, she declared.

The Brandon Sun reported that Moore is a 76-year-old resident of Portage la Prairie who registered as the Brandon West candidate barely two hours before the nomination deadline.

On Thursday, Bokhari said, I had a conversation with him  I can assure you it was a very stern conversation.

Well keep an eye on him, Bokhari said. Moore will come to Winnipeg for aggressive media training, Bokhari said, but Im not Brian Pallister, I dont believe in putting a muzzle on my candidates.

Bokhari said its well past time that the media let the story go. Lets have boundaries on how far were going to take this, she said.

Bokhari demanded the media stop giving her grief about Moore, who now says he suggested closing hospitals only as a way to get publicity for his campaign.

This isnt a four-day story, Bokhari said. He didnt misuse anyones money. He didnt say anything sexist, racist or homophobic.

Bokhari appeared ready to continue letting reporters have it, but Liberal communications director Mike Brown persuaded her to leave.

 Winnipeg Free Press
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This article was published 04/04/2016 (2393 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TORONTO  Today, in all but two Canadian provinces, virtually anyone can call themselves a home inspector  regardless of whether or not they have completed any sort of professional training.

Here are a few things for homebuyers to bear in mind when choosing an inspector:

Most provinces dont regulate the industry

Only British Columbia and Alberta currently have legislation in place requiring home inspectors to be licensed, while Ontario says its planning to introduce regulations this year.

While there are myriad designations out there that home inspectors can obtain, the educational requirements to obtain those designations can vary widely, even in B.C. where inspectors are licensed.

Experts recommend doing some research to determine what the various designations really mean  and what sort of training is required to obtain them.

Word of mouth is key

Real estate lawyer Mark Weisleder recommends getting a referral from a friend or family member that you trust  rather than from one of the real estate agents that stands to benefit from the sale.

Inspectors who get referral business from real estate agents could be hesitant to point out the flaws in a home so as not to risk that business, Weisleder says.

If a home inspector becomes known for finding too many problems with a house, its very possible they may not get too many referrals from realtors, he says.

Insurance matters

Some, but not all, inspectors carry errors and omissions insurance, which can protect the buyer if the inspector is negligent.

Experts recommend asking to see the home inspectors proof of insurance.

Keep limitations in mind

Home inspectors base their opinions on what they can readily see within the home.

An inspector cannot see through walls or underneath floors.

As such, there are some issues that could slip under the radar of even a highly experienced and well trained inspector.

Experts say its important to keep that in mind when deciding whether or not to purchase a home.



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YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian side expects all parties concerned with regional peace to make a clear demand of explanations from Baku for starting military actions. As Armenpress reports, President Serzh Sargsyan announced about this during meeting with the ambassadors of the OSCE member states.

Foreign Ministry of Azerbaijan, and not only the Foreign Ministry, it was obvious from the Azerbaijani Presidents speech, and other official sources publicly announced that for several reasons, perhaps understandable for them , but so far not fitting in the ongoing processes, Azerbaijan started the first attack. According to their explanations, Azerbaijan attacked Nagorno Karabakh Republic in order to solve issues that are assumed to be solved within the framework of peaceful negotiations mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs. We expect all parties concerned with regional peace to make a clear demand of explanations from Baku for starting military actions, -said Serj Sargsyan.

The President mentioned that in recent days heads of numerous states and international organizations came with their speeches, calls for peace and statements that were expressing their concern on the situation. These statements are not effective, for that reason I state that the international community was silent, unless they are directed to addressee who started specific military actions and do not provide consequences for their neglect. Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh want the military actions to be ceased and the 1994 ceasefire regime to be strictly maintained and that both Armenian and Azerbaijani troops to be returned to their initial positions and barracks of 2016 April 1, the President highlighted adding that for the maintenance of ceasefire it is necessary that the OSCE acts with stabilizing means which in these conditions should be first and foremost the emergent input of ceasefire violations investigation mechanism and the increasing monitoring capacity of the the Personal Representative of the Chairperson-in-Office dealing with Nagorno Karabakh conflict issues. According to Serzh Sargsyans speech, there is a necessity of increasing the number of the field assistants of the OSCE Personal Representative of the Chairperson-in-Office who deal with ceasefire violation records.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 04/04/2016 (2393 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA  Backers of the radical Leap Manifesto have come up with a two-step plan aimed at getting federal New Democrats to end their flirtation with mainstream moderation and sign on to a more left-wing agenda.

The manifesto calls for dramatic change, urging a swift transition away from fossil fuels, a rejection of new pipelines, and an upending of the capitalist system on which the economy is based.

Leading left-wing thinkers released the creed in September in the middle of the election campaign, jolting NDP Leader Tom Mulcair as he attempted to convince Canadians that his party was a safe, moderate alternative to the Conservatives.

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair speaks with the media while attending the Progress summit in Ottawa, Friday April 1, 2016. Backers of the radical "Leap Manifesto" have a plan to push their agenda to the forefront of the NDP's convention later this week. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

Now, as Mulcairs leadership is up for debate and the party questions its own identity and direction, key New Democrats are pushing the Leap Manifesto principles into the mix.

Former MPs Libby Davies and Craig Scott, as well as the head of the influential Toronto-Danforth riding association and documentary filmmaker Avi Lewis, are circulating a plan to entrench the manifestos ideas.

But they dont foresee a wholesale adoption of the manifesto all at once.

Rather, theyre proposing a two-step process: first, have New Democrats at this weeks convention approve a resolution declaring that the manifesto is a high-level statement of principles that is in line with the aspirations, history and values of the party.

If that passes, theyre proposing another resolution calling for meaningful debate of the manifesto by riding associations, leading up to a full, detailed discussion on how to implement it at the next convention in 2018.

We agree that the time is clearly right to embrace the analysis and values in the manifesto, but we believe that the party also needs a chance to debate and articulate the many policies that flow from it, says a letter set to be circulated to rank-and-file NDP members at the Edmonton convention, a copy of which was provided to The Canadian Press.

In other words, we believe the NDP needs to take some ownership over this agenda through a democratic process.

In an interview, Lewis, one of the key drivers of the manifesto, said there also needs to be an online mechanism to allow members to have a strong voice in the policy-making process.

Nearly two dozen NDP riding associations have drafted their own resolutions urging the party to embrace the manifesto as rank-and-file members mull the future of the party following Octobers disappointing election results.

As a result of that increased interest, Lewis said he worked with Davies, Scott and others inside the NDP to help craft an appropriate procedural path which they hope will lead to eventual acceptance of the manifesto.

Scott emphasized that the two-step push to adopt the manifesto is in no way a challenge to Mulcairs leadership.

It is nothing of the sort  neither in inception nor now, he said in an email.

Rather, it is a challenge to the entire NDP from bottom to top, including a challenge to ourselves to ensure that true, transformative dialogue around Leaps vision is pursued vigorously and inclusively over the next two years  in order to see what concrete policies can be generated for the 2018 NDP policy convention.

The letter predicts the manifesto can play a key role in the renewal of the NDP, rooting the process in a bold, inspiring, left vision of Canada.

Among other things, the manifesto declares that no further money should be invested in building fossil fuel infrastructure, such as pipelines. Lewis acknowledged that could prove a difficult sell, particularly with the convention being held in oil-rich Alberta.

The (provincial) NDP government in Alberta feels that being against pipelines is a no-go zone, Lewis said.

In fact, the premier of Alberta speaks about climate change and pipelines in the same breath every time she talks about their climate change policy  She always points out that this will give the province the credibility to get its bitumen to tidewater.

Yet science clearly indicates governments cannot continue to build fossil fuel infrastructure if Canada wants to tackle climate change, Lewis added.

But its not just Alberta New Democrats who might have a problem with the manifesto. Former Nova Scotia MP Peter Stoffer, who calls himself a firm supporter of the Energy East pipeline proposal, said the manifesto is unrealistic and too far to the left.

I would definitely love to see the day when we as a society can wean ourselves off fossil fuels but that is not going to happen tomorrow, Stoffer said in an interview.

In the meantime, Stoffer said hed prefer using Canadian oil and gas to heat his home or power the planes he flies on.

At the end of the day, you still have to support our basic economies in this country and use our resources as environmentally friendly as you can for the benefit of Canadians as well.

When the manifesto was released during the election campaign, it was a stark contrast with the cautious platform Mulcair was offering voters, including balanced budgets and sustainable development of Albertas oil sands. He didnt embrace the manifesto but said he appreciated the debate of ideas.

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This article was published 04/04/2016 (2393 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MONTREAL  Quebec is standing tall and the world should make space for the new country, the late premier Jacques Parizeau said in a speech prepared in the event of a Yes victory in the 1995 sovereignty referendum.

Parizeaus comments  made in English and French  were destined for media organizations but were not aired because of the No sides win on Oct. 30, 1995.

The French version of the videotape was broadcast in January during a television show on Radio-Canada but Quebecs national library uploaded the English copy to its website last week.

Quebec Premier Jacques Parizeau gestures during his speech to Yes supporters after losing the referendum in Montreal Monday night, Oct. 30, 1995. Quebec's national library has released the 1995 English-language videotape recording of the speech then-premier Parizeau would have given had the Yes side won the sovereignty referendum. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz

The first task for us all tomorrow will be to take off our Yes and No labels so we can come together behind the democratic decisions Quebecers have made, says Parizeau, sitting behind a desk in front of a Fleur-de-lis flag.

Discussions with Canada on a new political and economic partnership will begin immediately, he says, adding his government will choose a few members from the No side to sit on the negotiating committee.

Parizeau tells Quebecers it will take about one year for the legislature to declare independence and after that things will become more simple.

Lisette Lapointe, Parizeaus widow, donated a copy of the videotape to Quebecs national library and archives.

The tapes official release by the library comes a few months after the 20th anniversary of the 1995 referendum and not long after Parizeaus death last June.

During the last years of his life Parizeau often lamented the state of the sovereigntist movement and said the current edition of the political party he once led, the Parti Quebecois, was facing a field of ruins.

In the video, Parizeau tries to reassure anglophones that an independent Quebec will guarantee that the identity of their community and institutions are preserved in the new countrys constitution.

Refugees and new immigrants waiting for Canadian citizenship will get the right to stay on the territory and apply for Quebec citizenship, he says.

Jean-Franois Lisee, a PQ member of the legislature and the man who wrote the words being read by Parizeau on the tape, said part of the speechs goal was to reassure anglophones, natives and the world that the transition toward independence would be peaceful.

Every box was checked (in the speech) in terms of reassuring people this would be an orderly, respectful transition, Lisee said.

Before signing off, Parizeau looks at the camera, and says all Quebecers will be able to tell their children and grandchildren in a few years: Look at this new Quebec  I contributed to its birth, and now Im giving it to you.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 04/04/2016 (2393 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WASHINGTON  Imagine being an international-affairs expert, mortified by the views of Donald Trump and you suddenly discover youve helped create his foreign-policy slogan.

Welcome to Ian Bremmers world.

The author and international-risk consultant recently spotted a consistent concept in a Trump foreign policy most people consider incoherent.

Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, is seen at the National Summit in Detroit, Tuesday, June 16, 2009. -- Imagine being a international-affairs expert, mortified by the views of Donald Trump, and you suddenly discover that you've helped coin his foreign-policy slogan. Welcome to Ian Bremmer's world. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Carlos Osorio

Trump himself brags about its unpredictability  he says he wants to keep rivals guessing.

Build up the U.S. military, but withdraw it from foreign bases; encourage the spread of nuclear weapons to Japan and South Korea, so they stop relying on the U.S. for defence; avoid military adventurism, but take Mideast oil while bombing ISIS; build the Keystone XL pipeline, but only if Canada pays more; call NATO obsolete; cancel trade deals; build a wall with Mexico, make Mexico pay.

In all these Trump policies, Bremmer noted a recurring theme: American resentment.

Its the persistent notion that America is being ripped off. In Trumps world view, its time to make others pay. Bremmer began referring to Trumps foreign policy in speeches and emails to clients as: America First.

He didnt mean it as a compliment.

I said, This is clearly America First. Its not, Make America Great Again, because it wont make America great again. This is viewing international relations through a purely zero-sum, winners-and-losers kind of frame, Bremmer said in an interview. Its blaming everyone else in the world for Americas challenges. 

I was not suggesting this was a good thing.

The term carries deep, negative connotations in U.S. history. The America First Committee was the isolationist group which pilot Charles Lindbergh belonged to that opposed war with Nazi Germany.

The phrase has just been endorsed, however, by a surprising source: Trump himself. A New York Times reporter asked the candidate about the term Bremmer coined.

Trump replied, I am America First, he said. I like the expression.

The newspaper then used the term in a headline. It also published the entire interview transcript, allowing readers to assess his policy for themselves. Trump suggested in it, more than once, that hed be fine with new countries getting nuclear weapons  a drastic reversal in long-standing American policy.

If it saves Americans money, he said, why shouldnt Japan and South Korea get their own nukes? We cannot be the policeman of the world.  You may very well be better off if thats the case.

America First has now surfaced in various media stories.

Its an unexpected career development for Bremmer  author of numerous books on foreign policy, president of the Eurasia Group and writer for Time magazine.

Bremmers latest book, Superpower: Three Choices for Americas Role in the World, argues the U.S. needs to pick a clear foreign-policy path after stumbling around since the end of the Cold War.

He argues that indecision has had disastrous results. One example Bremmer cites is Russia  while the U.S. was repairing relations with it in the 1990s, it was simultaneously provoking it with NATO expansion. Every recent president has been guilty, he says, of unpredictable vacillation that has confused friends and foes alike.

He suggests the U.S. choose one of three paths: A leader-of-the-free-world approach that aggressively promotes democracy; a so-called moneyball approach, where the U.S. makes clear itll only pick priorities that serve its interests; or a domestic focus, where the U.S. tries setting an example abroad by having an ideal democracy at home.

Bremmer ultimately sides with the third option  which he refers to as Independent America.

He suggests Trump offers a distorted, unattractive version of that: Its independence on very large steroids (We) wouldnt be an example for the world. (Wed) be a great example for Putin.

Its not the first foreign-policy concept Bremmer has named.

Hes coined the J-curve  which illustrates how some countries become more stable with repression, and others with openness. Hes also offered a twist on the G7  the G-Zero world, a post-Cold War order defined by a dangerous power vacuum.

He notes some irony in his contributions to the language of international affairs.

Maybe Im destined to coin terms for things I dont like, he said.

The current president isnt persuaded his would-be successor has put much effort into the conversation. Barack Obama said last week: What do (Trumps nuclear) statements tell us? They tell us the person who made the statements doesnt know much about foreign policy or nuclear policy or the Korean peninsula or the world, generally.

___

Twitter: @alex_panetta
Most employees believe they would be more productive if they could split their working week between home and the office, according to a new study in the UK.

A survey found that four out of five workers would favour working from home two days a week.
A body has been recovered in Co Clare where a massive search had been taking place for a missing man since Saturday.

The discovery was made at around 11.20am today at Quay Island in the Shannon Estuary south of Bunratty.
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. All those who once wished to see Turkey as a mediator of Nagorno Karabakh conflict, today realize that the country having adopted blood-based security approach must be kept away from Karabakh settlement process. As Armenpress was informed from the Department of Public Relations and Mass Media of Republic of Armenia Presidents Office, President Sargsyan told about this at the meeting with the Ambassadors of the OSCE member states at the Presidential Palace on April 3.

One of OSCE member states, Turkey, which often reminds about its membership to the Minsk Group, speaks from the position of inciting a major regional war and explicitly encourages the adventurist policy of the Azerbaijani authorities. Azerbaijan boasts over its alleged victory and Turkey congratulates it on that occasion. While the international community condemns use of force in Nagorno Karabakh, though merely by words, Turkey is the only state that shows indubitable support to Azerbaijani adventures. The announcements of Ankara before and after those developments, by which that country seems to enter into competition with Azerbaijan in terms of anti-Armenian approaches, can create a new regional hot spot, the experience of which Turkey has accumulated in the Middle East. All those who once wished to see Turkey as a mediator of Nagorno Karabakh conflict, today realize that the country having adopted blood-related security approach must be kept away from Karabakh settlement process, President of Armenia said.

The UN Security Council adopted four resolutions between April and November, 1993, calling for effective and permanent ceasefire, as well as immediate implementation of the reciprocal and urgent steps in that direction.

Peace talks between Armenia, Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan have been facilitated by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe since March 1992 within the frameworks of Minsk Group, co-Chaired by Russia, United States and France since mid-1990s.

Ceasefire agreement between Armenia, Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan, facilitated by Russia's representative to the CSCE/OSCE Minsk Group Vladimir Kazimirov, was signed on May 5, 1994, which had been maintained with only sporadic violations along the Line of Contact and international border till the latest Azerbaijani large scale offensive in the night of April 2, 2016.

Over the last two years Armenia, Nagorno Karabakh, the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs and over 80 U.S. Congressmen (Royce-Engel bill) proposed concrete measures to de-escalate situation and establish ceasefire monitoring equipments along the borders. Azerbaijan has been repeatedly rejecting these calls.
More than 300 companies in Ireland have been linked to the so-called 'Panama Papers' release.

The leak of secret off-shore accounts includes the

Read More:

The law firm in Panama at the centre of the leak - Mossack Fonseca - denies any wrongdoing.

Update 5.22pm: FIFA's independent ethics committee has

Read More:

Uruguayan lawyer Juan Pedro Damiani is the subject of the investigation which will look at alleged links between him and his compatriot Eugenio Figueredo, the former FIFA vice-president who was arrested last year on corruption charges by the United States Department of Justice.

Update 4.28pm: Anti-Austerity Alliance TD has commented on the findings of the report.

Paul Murphy TD said: It is not acceptable for government ministers and TDs to bemoan the loss of taxation through these tax havens when they and their predecessors have facilitated Ireland becoming a tax haven for multi-nationals.

He added: "In Ireland, Revenue should be brought in to investigate the dealings of any Irish based bank, company or individual who has assisted people in avoiding tax here and go after them for losses to the state. These measures are robbing ordinary people of funds for public services.

Update 3.04pm: Iceland's prime minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson insists he will not resign after documents leaked

Going on Icelandic television, Mr Gunnlaugsson said he would not resign and added there was nothing new in the information contained in the Panama Papers data leak.

Iceland's foreign minister also said on a trip to India that the prime minister had not done anything illegal.

"There is nothing strange there," said Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson, the minister for foreign affairs and external trade.

Update - 12.40pm: The political future of Iceland's prime minister is in danger because of his reported links to an offshore account in the British Virgin Islands.

Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson faces a vote of no confidence in parliament after news reports linked him and his wife to an account that was created with the help of a Panamanian law firm at the centre of a massive tax evasion leak.

The revelation concerns offshore company Wintris Inc, which Mr Gunnlaugsson allegedly set up in 2007 along with his wife Anna Sigurlaug Palsdottir.

The opposition has called for a vote against the centre-right government. Public protests are also scheduled outside parliament.

Mr Gunnlaugsson, the head of the centre-right Progressive Party, began his four-year term in 2013, five years after Iceland's financial collapse.

Update - 12.10pm: Russia says

Read More:

Earlier: A company registered on Botanic Avenue in Drumcondra, Dublin, has been linked to international arms deals in India, the Philippines and elsewhere.

It is reported that the documents show that Intertrade Projects Consultants Ltd, a company with a registered address on Botanic Avenue in Drumcondra, north Dublin, acted as a sales agent for customers which included one of the worlds largest aerospace and defence conglomerates.

The Italian firm, Finmeccanica, deals in military aircraft, torpedoes, and electronic warfare equipment.

Intertrade Projects Consultants is 19 years old, and has one shareholder.

A second firm involved in the leak is said to be a trust and secretarial service called Pegasus Trusts and it is reported that this is a very small part of their business.

The company is shown to have acted as an intermediatory between Intertrade and Mossack Fonseca.

Pegasus told The Irish Times that these clients are historical and that no new clients have been taken on in over a decade.

The services we provided to these companies, and to Intertrade specifically, were of a company secretarial/administrative nature. We had no decision-making role in any of these companies, including Intertrade, the company added.

Reacting to the publication, Oxfam Ireland's chief executive Jim Clarken said that the most vulnerable people are still footing the bill for the wealthy.

He said: "The most vulnerable people here in societies here in Ireland and elsewhere are the ones that are denied the access to services because governments can't pay for them".
A woman who fell on a cliff path at Howth Head this morning has been taken to Beaumont Hospital.

It's understood she may have slipped near Whitewater Brook and sustained a head injury.
Argentinian prop Cipriano Martinez is in serious trouble after being caught on camera kicking an opponent into the face.

The violent assault was filmed during a club game between his side Pucara Club and San Albano at the weekend.
Barry Geraghty was left shocked after being handed a 30-day ban by the Limerick stewards for his ride on Noble Emperor in the Book Online At www.limerickraces.ie Handicap Hurdle, ruling him out of the Punchestown Festival.

All the jockeys bar Barry Cash, who rode the winner Velocity Boy, were invited in by the officials to explain why they allowed the eventual victor so much of a lead, one which proved unassailable.

Geraghty on the Tony Martin-trained runner finished strongly in second, but was still beaten 11 lengths.

Despite the JP McManus-owned Noble Emperor - who was sent off the 7-4 favourite - losing a shoe he was found to be post-race normal.

Acting under Rule 212, which governs running and riding, the stewards were of the opinion Geraghty had failed to take all reasonable and permissible measures to obtain the best possible placing, banning him for 30 days, with the horse prevented from running for 60 days and Martin fined 3,000.

The report from the stewards said Martin had stated his instructions were "to get some cover and try switch him off, bearing in mind that the horse can be keen".

He added that the horse "has disappointed in the past but should have enjoyed today's heavy conditions over two miles, despite having form over further".

He expressed satisfaction with the ride and that the lost shoe had no bearing on the run on today's ground.

It added Geraghty had confirmed the instructions adding that the horse "needs to be covered up and delivered late" and that the winner "quickly established a good lead at the start and circumstance meant that he was unable to chase the leader until the straight as he was riding strictly to instructions".

He confirmed the horse felt healthy at all stages, the report said.

Geraghty's ban is due to begin on April 17, taking in the conclusion of the British jumps season at Sandown and the five-day Punchestown fixture.

Beyond expressing his shock, Geraghty, who could be expected to have a host of big rides at Punchestown in his first season as retained rider to McManus, declined to comment afterwards when asked for his reaction. He was also ordered to forfeit his riding fee.

None of the other riders interviewed were punished, although Robbie Colgan had left the track to ride in a point-to-point.
Air France is to allow female flight attendants to refuse to work the company's new route to Iran, for which they must wear a headscarf.

The French national carrier's management met with unions worried that female cabin crew could be disciplined if they declined to work the flight.
Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump is calling on rival John Kasich to get out of the White House race, arguing that the Ohio governor should not be allowed to collect future delegates because the nomination is already beyond his grasp.

Trying hard to get back on track after a difficult week, Mr Trump said it was unfair for Mr Kasich, the winner of only his home state's primary, to continue campaigning.

He suggested that Mr Kasich, who has pledged to make it to the summer convention, follow the lead of former candidates Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush - and quit.

"If I didn't have Kasich, I automatically win," Mr Trump said on the campaign trail in West Allis, Wisconsin, on Sunday evening.

Mr Trump said Mr Kasich could ask to be considered at the GOP convention in Cleveland in July even without competing in the remaining nominating contests. He said earlier on Sunday that he had shared his concerns with Republican National Committee officials at a meeting in Washington in the last week.

Mr Kasich's campaign countered that neither Mr Trump nor Texas Senator Ted Cruz would have enough delegates to win the nomination outright in Cleveland.

"Since he thinks it's such a good idea, we look forward to Trump dropping out before the convention," said Kasich spokesman Chris Schrimpf.

Across the political aisle, Democrat Hillary Clinton told NBC's Meet The Press that the FBI had yet to request an interview regarding the private email server she used as secretary of state.

Mrs Clinton and her Democratic opponent, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, announced that they had agreed to debate in New York before the important April 19 primary, though their campaigns continued debating over when to schedule the face-off.

Mr Sanders, meanwhile, fired up a crowd in Wausau, Wisconsin, hoping to continue a string of recent campaign victories even as Mrs Clinton maintains a sizeable delegate lead.

Mr Trump's call for Mr Kasich to bow out came as Republican concerns grew about the prospect of convention chaos if Mr Trump fails to seal his party's nomination - or even if he does.

Behind Mr Cruz in the polls in Wisconsin, Mr Trump faces the prospect that a loss on Tuesday there will raise further doubts that he can net the necessary number of delegates, making it far easier for his party to oust him in a floor fight at the convention in Cleveland in July.

Mr Cruz, Mr Trump's closest challenger, has only a small chance to overtake the real estate mogul in the delegate hunt before the convention. Mr Cruz spent Sunday rallying supporters, including conservative Wisconsin talk radio hosts who oppose Mr Trump's candidacy.

Mr Kasich acknowledges that he cannot catch up in the delegate race, leaving a contested convention his only path to victory. He has faced calls in the past to step aside, but those nudges became less frequent following his decisive victory last month in his home state.

Nevertheless, Mr Kasich has suggested that a contested convention would not involve the chaos that party leaders fear.

"Kids will spend less time focusing on Bieber and Kardashian and more time focusing on how we elect presidents," he told ABC. "It will be so cool."

Republicans fear a bruising internal fight would damage the party in November's general election. Mr Trump is also not ruling out the possibility of running as an independent if he is not the nominee, making it that much harder for the GOP to retake the White House.

Such talk has "consequences", said GOP chairman Reince Priebus, though he tried to quell the prospect of a convention fight. He told ABC that the process will be clear and open, with cameras there "at every step of the way".

Frustration with the GOP field has stoked calls in some Republican corners for the party to use a contested convention to pick someone not even on the ballot. Mr Priebus acknowledged that was a remote possibility, but said he believed his party's nominee would be "someone who's running".

Mr Trump has been on the defensive as he struggled to explain away a week of controversies over abortion, nuclear weapons and his campaign manager.

"Was this my best week? I guess not," he told Fox News Sunday.
Counter-terrorism officers in England have arrested a man at Gatwick Airport on suspicion of Syria-related offences.

The 24-year-old was detained before boarding a flight, West Midlands Police said.

A woman aged 20 has also been arrested at an address in west London.

The pair are being held at a police station in the West Midlands, while searches are being carried out at two addresses in Birmingham.

A police statement said: "There was no risk to any passengers at Gatwick Airport or to the wider public in relation to these arrests."
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. Defense Ministry of Armenia attaches great importance to the response and calls of the international community addressed to the conflicting parties. Armenpress reports the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Armenia issued a statement, stating that the international community has been actively expressing concern over the de-stabilization of the situation around Nagorno Karabakh since April 2. Particularly, all the international and regional organizations, as well as a number of states call on the conflicting sides by various formulations to display restraint, cease military operations and refrain from measures that can escalate the situation, the statement reads.

The Armenian Defense Ministry states that the Republic of Armenia is the security guarantor of the people of Nagorno Karabakh. At the same time, as a party not involved in military operations, the Defense Ministry of the Republic of Armenia appreciates the fact that those calls are directed at the parties de-facto involved in those operations, the authorities of Azerbaijan and Nagorno Karabakh. Supporting the calls on ceasing military operations, the Defense Ministry of the Republic of Armenia draws the attention of the international community on the fact that for the establishment of ceasefire between Azerbaijan and Nagorno Karabakh, in addition to political announcements concrete steps are needed to be coordinated and implemented, such as to define the technical conditions for the ceasefire, implement withdrawal/separation of conflicting sides and create mechanisms for the preservation of ceasefire regime.

At the same time the Defense Ministry of Armenia draws the attention of the international community, including international organizations dealing with human rights and humanitarian issues on the fact that the military operations unleashed by Azerbaijan is a violation of UN charter, OSCE Final Act of 1975 and other Helsinki processes. During the military operations unleashed by Azerbaijan a lot of actions with the handwriting of international terrorist organizations committed by Azerbaijani armed forces and militia against the servicemen and civilians of Nagorno Karabakh came onto surface, which, according to international humanitarian law, are assessed as war crimes, reads the statement, bringing the example of numerous brutal executions and vandalism against civilians in areas temporarily occupied by Azerbaijani forces.

The Defense Ministry of Armenia announces: Both the Azerbaijani authorities and those who committed the war crimes must be brought to legal responsibility for the violation of international laws and war crimes, including before the international community, reads the statement.
Two men who took cash from fruit machines across the UK were caught after they took selfies of themselves to celebrate their crimes, police have said.

Benjamin Robinson and Daniel Hutchinson were sentenced on Monday at Bradford Crown Court after pleading guilty to conspiracy to steal, North Yorkshire Police said.

Robinson was jailed for 32 months and Hutchinson received a six-month sentence, suspended for two years, officers said. Both men are from Skegness, Lincolnshire.

Detective Chief Inspector Matt Walker said: "We knew we hit the jackpot when we investigated these lemons."

Daniel Hutchinson

A force spokesman said Hutchinson, 24, and Robinson, 29, took balaclavas with them during theft sprees but came unstuck after they decided to photograph themselves celebrating, posing and grinning after pocketing the cash.

He said the men were stopped in a Vauxhall Insignia in June last year on the A65 at Gargrave, near Skipton, North Yorkshire, by officers working on an operation to target cross-border criminals using the force's road network.

A search of the car found more than a thousand 1 coins, 2,000 in notes, balaclavas and a screwdriver.

Mr Walker said: "These offenders carried out a string of crimes with no thought for the businesses they were targeting - but ultimately their greed, arrogance and affinity for selfies proved to be their downfall.

"We are pleased that our operation to target cross-border criminals continues to disrupt the activities of offenders such as Hutchinson and Robinson.

"The investigation showed that that they were targeting fruit machines around the country.

"It sends out a clear message that anyone travelling into North Yorkshire to commit crime will be caught and brought to justice."
A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin says he is the "main target" of the media investigation into offshore accounts, but that he is not implicated in any wrongdoing.

The documents published by more than 100 media outlets alleged that Mr Putin's friends, including a leading cellist, were engaged in an offshore scheme.

Mr Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov says "it's obvious that the main target of such attacks is our president", and claimed that the publication was aimed at influencing Russia's stability and parliamentary elections scheduled for September.

Mr Peskov said international media had wrongly focused on Mr Putin instead of other world politicians, even though he was not implicated in any wrongdoing, and suggested the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a key player in the publication, had ties to the US government.

Meanwhile, the French president said the leaked documents from a Panamanian law firm are "good news" because it will help the state to recover money from people who have committed tax evasion.

Francois Hollande, speaking to reporters during the visit of a tech company in the Paris suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt, said "the whistleblowers do a useful work for the international community; they're taking risks, so they must be protected".

Last year, the French tax administration recovered 12bn from people who had committed tax evasion or tax avoidance, according to the French president.

Regarding the French clients of the Panamanian firm Mossack Fonseca, "all the investigations will be made" and potential trials "will be held", Mr Hollande says.
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YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. The Cypriot Government is closely following the worrying developments in Nagorno Karabakh/Artsakh (formulation of Cypriot Government), the ceasefire violations by the Azerbaijani armed forces.

As Armenpress reports, the statement released by the Cypriot MFA states that there is no alternative to the peaceful settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Cyprus stresses the important role of the OSCE Minsk Group and its Co-Chairs in the peaceful settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. At the same time we urge Turkey to refrain from any step or statement which may further destabilize the situation, the statement reads. The Government of Cyprus condemned the use of force, which resulted in causalities, in particular civilian deaths. We urge Azerbaijan to respect the status quo ante, the statements reads.

Along the entire length of the contact line of Nagorno Karabakh- Azerbaijani opposing forces, on April 1 and throughout the morning of April 2, the adversary undertook large-scale offensive military actions, during which the adversary shelled with missile-artillery units not only Armenian defense positions, but also civilian settlements.

According to the data of the Defense Army, the Azerbaijani armed forces fired MM-21 (Grad) multiple rocket launcher on April 2, at 08: 30 in the direction of Martuni (NKR), killing 12 year old Vaghinak Grigoryan and wounding two other children. 4 other civilians were wounded later. On April 3, it became known that Azerbaijani forces violently executed 3 civilians in Talish, who hadnt yet been evacuated.

Due to the timely and professional actions of the Nagorno Karabakh Defense Army, it was possible to take the situation under control, and make the enemy suffer considerable losses. On April 1 and 2, the Azerbaijani forces sustained 200-300 casualties. Around 20 enemy tanks and 1 Grad missile system were destroyed.

On April 3, starting from 06:00, the adversary continued aggressive military operations by using missile-artillery systems and armored vehicles.

The Defense Army undertook counteroffensive measures and dominated the strategic base in the direction of Talish, which was earlier occupied by Azerbaijani forces.
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. President of the Republic of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan on April 4 visited the soldiers who were wounded in the military operations in the Nagorno Karabakh-Azerbaijan line of contact. The soldiers are hospitalized in the Armenian Defense Ministrys Central Military Hospital.

As Armenpress was informed by the Department of Public Relations and Mass Media of the Presidential administration, President Sargsyan spoke with doctors regarding the health condition of the soldiers, expressed his support to the servicemen and wished them speedy recovery.
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YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. A new so-called "unilateral cease-fire" is out of question, as the 1994 truce agreement signed by Azerbaijan, and the 1995 trilateral truce agreement are still in force, and Azerbaijan, not as a goodwill gesture, but as an international obligation has to follow these documents. This was stated by the President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan at the meeting with the ambassadors of OSCE member countries.

By the way, I think that the mediators of those times have roles here, who are the guarantors of the ceasefire. Nagorno Karabakh is a side of that document, and Azerbaijan shall start direct talks with the Nagorno Karabakh authorities. Moreover, I think that each case of ceasefire violation should be subject to thorough investigation and assessment, as that is the motive and guarantee of an effective negotiation process, Armenpress reports the President saying.

Serzh Sargsyan noted that as an OSCE member country, Armenia considers important to urge all OSCE member countries to be principled in their positions. If there is will and desire to improve the situation, practical steps have to be taken in this direction and oblige Azerbaijan to respect the 1994 ceasefire, the President said.

Serzh Sargsyan told the OSCE member country Ambassadors that Azerbaijan has not achieved any territorial advantage. The latest manifestation of Azerbaijans arrogant behavior is the statement of the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry, which states that as if based on humanitarian policy, Azerbaijan is unilaterally ceasing operations against the enemy and is starting the protection operations of liberated territories. I assure you that no territories have been liberated by the Azerbaijanis, currently along the entire contact line, a little area in the south and a little area in the north, 200-300 meters territory ,which I hope until we finish our discussion will no longer be, have been captured by Azerbaijan, sustaining more than 1 causality per meter. Isnt it clear that Azerbaijan is misleading the international community and is trying to create prerequisites for covering its unleashed military actions and their continuation, noted Serzh Sargsyan.
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YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. A serviceman has been wounded by Azerbaijani fire in the Karmiraghbyur village of Tavush Province. As Armenpress reports, this was informed by the Press Secretary of the Ministry of Defense of Armenia Artsrun Hovhannisyan. The situation is calm in Tavush, this is the only registered case, Hovhannisyan said.

According to him, no intensive firefight has been registered in the bordering areas of Tavush.
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When Tahadesse Kahsai walked out of Calvary Hospital and disappeared in December last year, police searched a surrounding two-kilometre radius of air, ground and water.

On Saturday, three months after he went missing, the remains of Mr Kahsai's body were found in a patch of bushland in Bruce three kilometres from the hospital door.

Rezina Kahsai with missing posters for her father Tad Kahsai in January. Credit:Rohan Thomson

Now Mr Kahsai's family is demanding answers. First, as to how a 61-year-old man who was reportedly agitated, disoriented and possibly hallucinating was permitted to leave the hospital unopposed. And why it took more than 24 hours for authorities to begin a search after he went missing.

"The family is calling for a full inquiry into the circumstances surrounding his death including the role of the hospital in not preventing him from leaving when he was in great distress, disorientated, unsteady on his feet, and clearly at the time a danger to himself," his family said in a statement.
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. The Muratsan Central Military Hospital hosts 12 wounded military servicemen. The health condition is identified as stable heavy and moderate. Hayk Torosyan, a wounded soldier, is identified with extremely critical health condition, the Head of Muratsan Central Military Hospital Aram Asaturyan told to Armenpress.

All necessary medical interventions were carried out. They are in average health condition. There are three wounded at the intensive care unit, he said.

Aram Asaturyam told that the wounded are relocated according to medical need and indication, moreover the hospitals located near the border are being unloaded.

Aram Asaturyan told that expect Hayk Torosyan who is in critical condition (artificial respiration), all other servicemen during the Presidents visit have reassured of their willingness to return to the unfinished job.

Along the entire length of the contact line of Nagorno Karabakh- Azerbaijani opposing forces, on April 1 and throughout the morning of April 2, the adversary undertook large-scale offensive military actions, during which the adversary shelled with missile-artillery units not only Armenian defense positions, but also civilian settlements.

The Azerbaijani armed forces fired MM-21 (Grad) multiple rocket launcher on April 2, at 08: 30 in the direction of Martuni (NKR), killing 12 year old Vaghinak Grigoryan and wounding two other children.

During the military operations starting from April 1 the Azerbaijani side sustained over 200 causalities. Due to the timely and professional actions of the Nagorno Karabakh Defense Army, it was possible to take the situation under control, and also make the enemy suffer considerable losses. By now Azerbaijan has already lost nearly 20 tanks, a number of UAVs, and a Grad multiple rocket launcher.

The Armenian side sustained 19 casualties and 35 wounded. On April 3, starting from 06:00, the adversary continued aggressive military operations by using missile-artillery systems and armored vehicles.
A leading think tank has criticised the business case for Canberra's tram line, saying it substantially overestimates the economic benefits of the project.

The Grattan Institute's latest report on transport planning in Australia found governments spent about $170 billion on transport projects in the past decade, but cost-benefit studies had not been properly evaluated. The report, by Grattan transport program director Marion Terrill, says political considerations often come before the wider public interest.

Canberra Metro Consortium chairman Mark Lynch and Deputy Chief Minister Simon Corbell. Credit:Jeffrey Chan

Released on Monday, it points to political considerations involved in planning the 12-kilometre city to Gungahlin light rail line, noting it was a key commitment in the governance agreement between ACT Labor and Assembly Green Shane Rattenbury.

The report questions the use of disputed wider economics benefits as part of the project's benefit-cost ratio, a key point of the debate locally. The report said the 2014 business case included an estimated benefit-cost ratio of 1.2, which considered land use benefits and wider economic impacts.
The fate of more than 200 students at the Islamic School of Canberra remains in flux, with the school seeking an extension in order to appeal its loss of $1 million in federal funding.

Sydney's largest Islamic school, Malek Fahd, meanwhile, has lost its appeal against the Commonwealth revoking its $20 million in funding. This leaves it with just three days luntil its 2400 students have to find alternative schools.

Education Minister Shane Rattenbury hopes the Canberra Islamic School can become financially viable despite federal funding cuts. Credit:Jay Cronan

A statement from the Malek Fahd interim board on Monday said the school would immediately apply to the Commonwealth Administrative Appeals Tribunal to seek continuation of public funding.

The cuts to both schools follow a long-running investigation into the way they have been operated by the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils.
Advocates from Philip Nitschke's aid-in-dying organisation will hold a demonstration in Canberra on how to test the purity of controversial euthanasia drug Nembutal.

In the demonstration on Tuesday, Exit International group members will be shown techniques for testing which they can use at home, "to establish with certainty that the drug they have obtained will provide them with a reliable peaceful death at the time of their choosing".

Head of Exit International Philip Nitschke. Credit:David Mariuz

Tom Curran, Exit International's European co-ordinator, said the demonstration was necessary because "many" Canberra members had imported euthanasia drugs.

"When people know they have the correct drug in sufficient quantity, they stop worrying, and are less inclined to act impetuously. They know that if they drink the dissolved powder they will peacefully die, and that there will be no chance of survival in an even more disabled state," he said.
Police have launched a probe into allegations a Canberra plumbing company boss instructed an employee to falsify paperwork that was handed to the trade unions royal commission.

Allegations that Advanced Plumbing and Drains owner Jason Hooper provided fake documents to the royal commission and the Fair Work Commission were referred to ACT Policing late last year.

Advanced Plumbing and Drains boss Jason Hooper gives evidence during the trade unions royal commission.

The alleged falsified documents lodged in the TURC were said to include fake pay slips that concerned a former staff member's employment and other information attached to Mr Hooper's statement.



ACT Policing confirmed it had received formal notification and materials, including documents, from the TURC and Commissioner Dyson Heydon in mid-February in relation to the allegations.

"This information is currently being assessed along with other holdings," a spokesman said.
ANZ Bank deputy chief executive Graham Hodges has defended ANZ's representatives who have sat on the board of its partially owned Malaysian subsidiary AmBank, which is embroiled in a corruption scandal centring on Prime Minister Najib Razak.

ANZ owns 24 per cent of AmBank and until recently had three board members while former ANZ executives are AmBank's chief financial officer and chief risk officer.

ANZ is facing a lot of criticism, not least because it appears in 7548 of the Mossack documents. Credit:Glenn Hunt

Until late last year, ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott sat on the AmBank board, while ANZ institutional banking boss Mike Whelan has also stepped down in recent months. ANZ head of HR Suzette Corr remains on the board of AmBank. Mr Hodges said he will soon join the AmBank board.

Mr Hodges was grilled over ANZ's alleged knowledge of more than $US1 billion flowing into the AmBank accounts of the Malaysian PM by ALP Senator Deborah O'Neill at a parliamentary inquiry on the impairment of customer loans.
After making banks around the world take on billions in extra capital, the global banking regulator's next front will be governance standards, risk management and computer systems. says Bill Coen, the secretary-general of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision.

Bill Coen, the secretary-general of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, said some market analysts and bankers focused too much on short-term profits. He said the Swiss-based organisation intends to create a global financial system that will be resilient throughout economic cycles.

Bill Coen, secretary-general of the Basel Committee, in Sydney on Monday. Credit:Ben Rushton

"When it comes to safe, resilient banks and banking systems, strong capital is only one factor," he said. "Exclusive focus on capital is too narrow and misses the big picture."

The comments by Mr Coen, who will give that keynote speech to The Australian Financial Review's Banking & Wealth Summit on Tuesday morning, illustrate that Australia's banks may have a lot more work in coming years to respond to global regulation.
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. President of the German-Armenian Forum, MP of the German Bundestags Christian Democratic Union Albert Weiler expressed deep concern about the escalations of the military situations in Nagorno Karabakh. As Armenpress reports, the MP of Germanys leading party strongly condemned the Azerbaijani attacks in Nagorno Karabakh.

It is sad that during this time the civilian population of Karabakh has been attacked, including the killing of a 12 year old child. The escalation of the military situation in Nagorno Karabakh shows that the ceasefire agreement is not being respected. By doing so, Azerbaijan is ignoring the peace process of the Minsk Group. Besides, it is very concerning that the Azerbaijani aggression is being protected by the Turkish authorities, Albert Weiler stated.

The German MP urged to immediate cessation of military operations by respecting the ceasefire regime. This conflict can only have a peaceful solution, and I join our Minister of Foreign Affairs Steinmeiers call to return to the Minsk Group negotiations. The Co-chairs have our full support within this framework. I hope that our government will be able to use OSCEs German chairmanship in order to guarantee a peaceful negotiation process between the sides. This subject is very dear to me. I have been in Nagorno Karabakh, and had the opportunity to observe the situation personally. I have stated numerous times that democratic developments in this country should get support. Violence is not an option. In this difficult times my thoughts are with the victims and their families, Weiler said.
Commonwealth Bank told a powerful parliamentary inquiry on Monday that it has overhauled its processes for handling whistleblowers, as committee chair David Fawcett raised concerns over the ability of staff to raise concerns internally.

The comments come after three incidents in recent years in which former staff say they have raised concerns about misconduct within the bank but these have been overlooked.

CBA's treatment of whistleblowers was raised in a hearing on Monday. Credit:Glenn Hunt

In a sometimes-heated hearing Sydney, CBA group executive David Cohen also faced fended off suggestions a royal commission may be needed to get to the bottom of claims the bank deliberately defaulted some business customers, an accusation it has repeatedly denied.

Mr Cohen, appearing before the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services, said CBA's whistleblower policies had been revamped in the last year. The committee is inquiring into the impairment of commercial loans, especially relating to customers of Bankwest after it was bought by CBA in 2008.
STW Communications shareholders have overwhelmingly voted in favour of a merger with the Australian arm of Martin Sorrell's WPP.

More than 99 per cent of shareholders voted in favour of STW acquiring WPP's local businesses and then issuing 61.5 per cent of the company to WPP. STW will issue new shares to WPP at 91.5 per share.

Mike Connaghan will lead the merged STW and WPP business. Credit:Ben Rushton

The business will remain listed on the Australian Securities Exchange but will change its name to WPP AUNZ.

STW shares have risen close to 40 per cent since the merger was announced in December.
The same people who campaigned for the Palaszczuk Government on the back of its promise to protect the Great Barrier Reef turned on the minority administration on Monday, in scenes reminiscent of the Newman years.

On Monday, protesters gathered outside Queensland's parliament to protest the approval of Adani coal mining projects in the Galilee basin and at Abbot Point.

Using recycled Labor candidate placards, painted over with protest messages and contact details for ministers, including Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Mines Minister Anthony Lynham, more than 150 people gathered outside Queensland Parliament House to express their sense of "betrayal".

With Ms Palaszczuk's name greeted with calls of "traitor", the group, which included Greenpeace and GetUp supporters, as well as those who had backed Labor, waved cutouts representing bleached coral, while a protester, dressed as a clownfish, made famous by the Pixar movie Finding Nemo 'died'.
Adani is not going to happen; the construction, that is, of the leviathan Carmichael mine, the world's largest thermal coal mine in the hinterland of the Great Barrier Reef.

Much is the wailing and gnashing of teeth at the move by the Queensland government to approve the project but this approval is entirely political.

It is all about the appearance of commitment to jobs, jobs that will never occur unless the coal price doubles, and it is about the government not getting bashed up by the opposition for being anti-jobs and abandoning its election commitments.

Even Adani is coy. No sooner had the Indian conglomerate been granted approval than it deferred the project for another year. Buried in the detail of its press release was this: "opportunity for final investment decision and construction in 2017".
Australian thermal coal miners are set to take another price hit, with Japanese power utilities close to agreeing to a contract price that will be more than 10 per cent below last year's contract price.

The annual round of price negotiations with the Japanese buyers is close to completion, and Marian Hookham from coal data provider IHS said the Japanese customers were increasingly reluctant to pay a premium.

The challenges facing coal mines are piling up. Credit:Bloomberg

Japanese utilities have traditionally purchased more than half of Australian thermal coal, and the annual contract price has traditionally been set higher than the market or "spot" price.

But with coal markets oversupplied and prices in the doldrums, the premium paid for security of supply is increasingly being questioned.
Australian private hospital operators Ramsay Health Care and Healthscope are set to be among the main beneficiaries of China's health system shifting from a predominantly public model to more private enterprise.

The Chinese government will move the care provided in about 7500 public hospitals to the private sector in the next decade as its middle-class and ageing population soars.

China plans to shift the care provided in about 7500 public hospitals to the private sector in the next decade. Credit:Bloomberg

The country's policymakers are looking to Australia to help implement a more effective heath system to cope with the increased demand, a new report shows.

The study from the University of Sydney, The George Institute for Global Health and National Australia Bank found Australia's health system was a standout compared with other developed nations, including the world's biggest economy, the United States.
Consumers will be able to pick up ready-made meals, bottles of wine, online purchases and dry-cleaning from Caltex service stations under ambitious plans by the fuel distributor to reinvent convenience retailing.

After completing its transformation from fuel refiner to distributor and marketer, and cutting ties with US parent Chevron last year, Caltex is close to finalising plans to become a major force in convenience retailing by augmenting its store network and supply chain infrastructure with new digital platforms, acquisitions, partnerships and joint ventures.

Head shaving

Caltex chief executive Julian Segal says the company's vision is to be the market leader in complex supply chain and the evolving convenience marketplace by delivering the everyday needs of customers through its networks.

Mr Segal told Fairfax Media that Caltex had no intention of competing directly against supermarket chains Coles or Caltex's fuel partner Woolworths.
Spending in Australia's hospitality industry has slowed because of a downturn at cafes, restaurants and takeaway stores in Western Australia and Queensland, figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show.

ABS data released on Monday show that year-on-year spending growth in hospitality fell from 4 per cent in February 2015 to 2.4 per cent in February 2016.

Hospitality has gone backwards in Western Australia and Queensland but is booming elsewhere. Credit:Rob Homer

Ben Dorber, manager of the ABS retail survey, said the industry's performance varied wildly from states affected by the downturn in the mining sector, where hospitality sales went backwards, and non-mining states, where it was booming.

"Queensland and WA are both really weak  both of those states are down over 5 per cent compared to the same time last year  whereas for every other state growth is up," Mr Dorber said.
Under Mr Xi's leadership, China has sought to tighten the reins on its self-described "internet sovereignty" even further and mainland journalists have come under increasing pressure to toe the party line, particularly as the party leadership struggles to steer the country's slowing economy through a difficult transition.

In 2012, separate investigations by Bloomberg and the New York Times revealing the wealth and business dealings of the families of Mr Xi and then Premier Wen Jiabao prompted Beijing to retaliate by blocking the news sites in China, as well as the denial of journalist visas for several years.

While there are legitimate uses for shell companies registered in offshore tax havens, any insinuation of impropriety within Mr Xi's extended family could prove toxic given he has waged a far-reaching anti-corruption campaign to restore his party's credibility in the eyes of a Chinese public fed up with endemic graft. Discussion of the wealth of the party elite and their relatives is regarded as strictly off-limits by the Chinese leadership.

As well as the president's brother-in-law, Deng Jiagui, among the high-profile names listed in the year-long investigation led by Suddeutsche Zeitung and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is Li Xiaolin, the energy tycoon daughter of former Premier Li Peng. The document dump revealed Ms Li held a Hong Kong passport, which became a talking point  albeit an abortive one  on Chinese social media.

Both Mr Deng and Ms Li had been previously named in another major investigation coordinated by the ICIJ published in January 2014, detailing the "secretive offshore companies in tax haves that helped shroud the Communist elite's wealth". That investigation was notable for the involvement of Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao, as well as journalists from a prominent Chinese publication who pulled out after being warned by the Chinese government.

In February 2014, Ming Pao's chief editor Kevin Lau was stabbed repeatedly in a brutal attack, prompting ICIJ director Gerard Ryle to condemn the attack. Police later said the assailants, some who had triad connections, were likely "hired hands".

"While many have speculated about the motives behind the attack, we are not aware of any evidence linking the violence to Ming Pao's reporting partnership with ICIJ on the Offshore Leaks investigation," Ryle, a former Sydney Morning Herald reporter, said at the time. "Such speculation, however, does reflect the real concern and anxiety felt by many in the Hong Kong press corps over continuing threats to press freedom."

The chilling effect on the freedom of the press by growing mainland influence on the city has been exacerbated by the disappearance of five Hong Kong booksellers who specialised in the publication of literature critical of the Communist Party.
Just as Britain raises its minimum wage and as Bernie Sanders' demands for a 50 per cent increase in minimum pay keep winning him votes in the US, some politicians in one of the world's most socialist countries, Sweden, are in favour of going in the opposite direction. They could be right, especially if nations can find a way to unhitch basic subsistence from work.

Sweden, along with some other countries with big social safety nets  Denmark, Norway, Switzerland  doesn't have a legally mandated minimum wage. Instead, the minimum salary is collectively bargained. The country's strong unions and socially responsible employers make sure that, at 20,000 kronor ($2468) per month, it reaches about 64 per cent of the average wage  more than twice the US rate. Now, though, three opposition parties in the Swedish parliament are in favour of legislating to lower it as a way to adjust for the arrival of an army of immigrants with relatively low skills.

Money for nothing or a way of encouraging more people to work? Some countries are experimenting with the idea of a universal basic income, which means people could take part-time jobs which they may have avoided for fear of losing their benefits. Credit:Tanya Lake

It's not happening yet, since the ruling coalition is against government interference with the labour market's workings, but it's a logical idea. Though Sweden's unemployment rate, at 7.6 per cent, is not alarmingly high, it's not exactly comfortable for a country where only slightly more than 5 per cent of the workforce was unemployed before the 2008 financial crisis. Besides, Sweden has one of the rich world's biggest gaps between native and immigrant employment rates. Youth joblessness is 70 per cent higher among the foreign-born than among Swedes. Lowering the minimum wage could draw more of the new, mainly Middle Eastern population, into the workforce and reduce social and ethnic tension.

Minimum wage laws or strong unions that bargain up wages are a problem in any country with big immigrant inflows. Newcomers are at a disadvantage because of poor language skills and educational backgrounds that are often incompatible with the host countries' labour market requirements. No one wants to hire them at a high minimum wage, especially when locals are readily available. Instead of working for social justice, high minimum wages create an extra barrier for the integration of the least socially secure people into society. Such barriers can result in ghettos, rioting and the recruitment of disenfranchised immigrant youths by terrorist groups. Britain, France and Belgium, all among the top 10 European countries by minimum wage size, have recently seen their share of those ills. Germany, which only introduced a national minimum wage last year and then opened its doors wide to immigrants, is in the process of manufacturing a similar problem.
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. The Azerbaijani mass media has once again found itself in an absurd situation. Throughout the renewed conflict, the Azerbaijani mass press has flooded the media with news undermining the successes carried out by the NKR army and depicting themselves as heroes them. Minutes ago, a fake letter was posted from NKR President Levon Mnatsaknyan to the Republic of Armenia Minister of Defense Seryan Ohanyan, with a made up story and numerous grammatical mistakes.

Armenpress reports the letter is improvised by haqqin.az news agency, which falsely asserts that the Armenians near the line of conflict are fleeing from the villages and informs the Armenian Minister of Defense on taking punitive measures against them. From the fake letter it is clear that the writer has no knowledge of Armenian language and is simply made up by the Azerbaijani side for political ends.

The Speaker of Ministry of Defense, Artrun Hovhannisyan, has noted in his Facebook page that the subsequent misinformation by the Azerbaijan is ridiculous. After spending billions on military buildup, they do not have servicemen with proper knowledge of Armenian, even the month April is misspelled. The knowledge of Azeri intelligence servicemen can be graded as poor, because there is no numbering on this kind of reports. Moreover, the address and blank are wrong, claims Artrun Hovhannisyan.




No one should forget that Labor took over in 2007 with cash in the bank: from that moment onwards their spending never stopped. To make matters worse, Julia Gillard's massive unfunded promises have worsened our country's future.

When I heard Turnbull explain his thinking on Sunday, I couldn't help but wonder if the COAG meeting was not quite a disaster after all. In fact, the real outcome is that the premiers have been required to listen to a lesson in financial responsibility. And Turnbull has forced the states to acknowledge that all they can think of is asking for another handout instead of trying to find a common solution to Australia's growing deficit.

Late on Friday, I thought that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's two-day wonder on income tax reform for the states had gone down in flames. But a day can be a long time in politics.

Delivering a message: Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull with state premiers and chief ministers for COAG at Parliament House on Friday. Credit:Andrew Meares

It reminds me that Turnbull faced a not dissimilar situation when he was first opposition leader. As the problems of the GFC were waning in 2009, Kevin Rudd proposed a massive $42 billion Keynesian spending spree. That second Rudd tranche was completely misjudged and, with the Gillard "fantasy" money, it has been the cause of a big slice of the problems we face today. It was Turnbull in opposition who demonstrated better judgment and the willingness to stand up to Rudd's plans for a spending spree. It was not that easy then because many, including some of his supporters, were calling for more spending. How history is repeated! Labor leader Bill Shorten is now the big spender and Turnbull is the one seeking to restrain spending in the public interest.

Labor's position is that Australia does not have a debt problem. Deputy leader Tanya Plibersek even says that Labor has the money for Labor's next spending. I'd really like to see how. And as long as Labor believes there is no fiscal problem our country is unnecessarily put at economic risk. And even if the Coalition wins the next election, even after the recent Senate reforms, it is most likely that any reforms will be constantly opposed by Labor and the Greens in the Senate. The consequence of that will be that the only path to ongoing reform will be more double dissolutions starting sometime in 2017 or 2018. Given the near certainty of more filibusters in the Senate the government needs to push reform at a solid pace.

The other thing that is not new was the Treasury point made to Scott Morrison when he was first briefed in his new job: "Budget repair is essential. Regardless of how economic conditions evolve, Australia will be better placed to respond if the budget is in a stronger position. We therefore cannot wait for economic growth to fix the budget line."

Nor was the COAG meeting new. The premiers were not ambushed on the Turnbull state income proposal. The concept was around last December and earlier. I mentioned the idea in my column last December.
It is the moment  the dramatic, irreversible moment  that everything changes. The stunning, nauseating moment you realise you might die; that in all probability you will die; that the humdrum, everyday things you were just doing are now part of another world, the normal world. It is as if you pass through a door. Will it close for ever behind you?

For Ben Innes and 61 other passengers and crew on board an Egypt Air flight 181 last week, this moment came shortly after their aircraft took off on an internal flight from Alexandria to Cairo. As they busied themselves with laptops, or settled back for a snooze, Seif Eldin Mustafa, an apparently unremarkable man in his late 50s, stood up and revealed he was wearing a suicide belt. Suddenly, passengers were forced to confront a very different reality  one that involved them being blown from the sky, their lives coming to an end in the most violent of circumstances.

The instant of realisation that such traumatic life-and-death events are not happening to other people but to yourself is one of the most bizarre experiences we can undergo. Fortunately, most of us never have to. But if, God forbid, it ever does happen to you, don't count on knowing how you will react.

That sheer unexpectedness is what is so wonderfully delightful about Innes' decision to wander up the aisle and ask for a photo with the man who, as far as he knew, had Western passengers at the top of a kill list. Innes, like everyone else, has spent the past few years being bombarded by the grim images of Islamic State's very real torture and murder. He wouldn't have forgotten, as Mustafa unveiled his explosive harness, that a Russian plane was blown up flying out of Egypt just six months ago. He couldn't have convinced himself, just days after the attacks in Brussels, that everything was going to be fine.
COMEDY FESTIVAL

PHILIP NITSCHKE: DICING WITH DEATH 1/2

Athenaeum Theatre, April 3



Euthanasia advocate Dr Philip Nitschke doing a show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival? Really? It's the weirdest idea since disgraced AFL manager Ricky Nixon tried to put the St Kilda schoolgirl affair behind him with an abortive career in stand-up.

Derryn Hinch volunteers to demonstrate Dr Philip Nitschke's Destiny machine in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival show Dicing With Dr Death. Credit:Paul Jeffers

Unlike Nixon's effort, Dicing With Death isn't a repulsive attempt to deflect blame. Quite the opposite. Nitschke is clearly a man of principle, who believes that the terminally ill should be able to control the method and circumstances of their deaths, and that physicians should not be prosecuted for helping them do so.

Nitschke's talent for humour pales in comparison to his gift for publicity  a sizeable and largely silver-haired audience attended his "suicide course" at the Athenaeum. Laughs were sparing, thanks to repetitive and somewhat overeager delivery.
"Over the years Australia has really been a beacon for many good things  we cite what you've done with guns here constantly," he says. "But, and I would begin the sentence with 'sadly', you have copied too much of us.

"I hope this film in Australia is a warning to be careful what you wish for when it comes to emulating the United States. Hang on to the great ideas you've got  they've made you a better country; they've made you a better people. Yes, there's all these things that are wrong, all these flaws in the system, but the solution is not the kind of capitalism that America is practising."

None of this will come as a surprise to anyone who has followed Moore's work over the years, though what may shock is that this is his first feature as director since 2009's Capitalism: A Love Story.

In the new film, the 61-year-old looks a little unsteady on his legs at times, and I wonder if he has been unwell. But he deflects my question about his health with "I'm fine, thanks for asking". In February, though, he did have a health scare, coming down with a bout of pneumonia that had him in intensive care for five days.

But really, my concern is of a slightly different order. After nearly three decades spent pointing out the flaws in America  the havoc wrought by globalisation in Roger & Me (1989); the bloodshed that could be averted through gun control (Bowling for Columbine, 2002); the links between the Bush and Bin Laden families in Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004); the injustices that spring from leaving healthcare to the private sector (Sicko, 2007)  does he ever want to simply throw his hands up in despair?
To be able to leave a song as good  what am I saying, "good"? I mean as devastating and brilliant  as Elephant to the encore and not have us think beforehand that we were missing out on anything is something impressive.

If Jason Isbell had left the stage before the encore no one would have felt deprived.

This is a song about cancer and death and friendship that hurts to the core without having to lay on anything florid musically or vocally.

A song that is unsentimental almost to the point of brutal: "She said Andy you're taking me home, but I knew she planned to sleep alone/I'd carry her to bed, sweep up the hair from her floor."

But one that leaves you pretending you've got something in your eye and grateful the room is darkened, each and every damn time you hear it: "There's one thing that's real clear to me, no one dies with dignity/we just try to ignore the elephant somehow."

If Jason Isbell had left for the night, heading straight to the airport at the end of his 90-minute set, no one would have felt deprived for time, performance or songs.

We'd still have been talking about how Cover Me Up, another of his bona fide standards-to-be, seemed a peak of the night on its own.
The decision came after a Federal Department of Education investigation found the private school was operating for profit following allegations of six-figure loans to board members while basic services went unfunded.

On Monday, the Malek Fahd Islamic school in Greenacre lost an appeal to have $19 million in federal government funding reinstated.

Schools in western Sydney will have to absorb up to 2400 students as one of the state's largest schools looks set to shut down.

In March, police had to be called to a meeting of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, the charity that formerly oversaw the 26-year-old school and five other Islamic schools across the country, after tensions between competing factions spilled over and students protested against the school's management.

Australia's largest Islamic school has lost up to $19 million in Commonwealth funding. Credit:Nic Walker

AFIC and the school's lawyer, Rick Mitry, said the public infighting had not helped the school at a crucial time.

"They are all mad to be honest," he said. "It has got to hurt. I would imagine that the powers that be know that there is a lot of trouble there. It is just madness to conduct these public disputes at such a fragile time for the school."

The decision from the Federal Department of Education means funding will dry up by Friday, the last day of term. Despite being a private institution, the school and five others operated by AFIC rely on public funding for 75 per cent of their income.
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. In a phone conversation Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Sergei Lavrov and U.S Secretary of State John Kerry urged Armenia and Azerbaijan to immediate cessation of military operations. As Armenpress reports, citing TASS, the top diplomats of the two countries expressed deep concern over the escalation of the situation in Nagorno Karabakh.

An agreement has been reached to activate efforts of the conflict settlement by Russia, USA, France, as Co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, the Russian Federations MFA statement reads.

Lavrov and Kerry also condemned the attempts of external players to escalate the situation in Nagorno Karabakh, TASS reports.

Along the entire length of the contact line of Nagorno Karabakh- Azerbaijani opposing forces, on April 1 and throughout the morning of April 2, the adversary undertook large-scale offensive military actions, during which the adversary shelled with missile-artillery units not only Armenian defense positions, but also civilian settlements.

According to the data of the Defense Army, the Azerbaijani armed forces fired MM-21 (Grad) multiple rocket launcher on April 2, at 08: 30 in the direction of Martuni (NKR), killing 12 year old Vaghinak Grigoryan and wounding two other children. 4 other civilians were wounded later. On April 3, it became known that Azerbaijani forces violently executed 3 civilians in Talish, who hadnt yet been evacuated.

Due to the timely and professional actions of the Nagorno Karabakh Defense Army, it was possible to take the situation under control, and make the enemy suffer considerable losses. On April 1 and 2, the Azerbaijani forces sustained 200-300 casualties. Around 20 enemy tanks and 1 Grad missile system were destroyed.

On April 3, starting from 06:00, the adversary continued aggressive military operations by using missile-artillery systems and armored vehicles.

The Defense Army undertook counteroffensive measures and dominated the strategic base in the direction of Talis on April 3, which was earlier occupied by Azerbaijani forces.
The Department of Immigration and Border Protection says it supports its staff's right to strike, despite forcing the Community and Public Sector Union to can its planned industrial action.

Strikes in Australia's airports scheduled for Monday were called off after the Fair Work Commission approved a federal government bid to suspend industrial action due to a possible threat to national security.

Airport workers have remained without a new employment agreement and pay rise for almost three years. Credit:Joe Armao

The CPSU will fight the interim order in a hearing on Tuesday, after the federal government lodged an urgent application to the industrial watchdog late on Friday to avert industrial action on national security grounds.

The injunction prevents customs and immigration staff from striking from 12.15am on Monday.
The extraordinary lengths public service bosses will go to in pursuit of internal critics has been exposed by a Fair Work Commission unfair dismissal case.

Details of the hunt by Department of Human Services managers for one its employees who criticised the department in online forums, read more like an FBI crime thriller than routine public service business.

A public servant has been reinstated after being sacked for comments he made on social media. Credit:Louise Kennerley

And the Commission's decision has dealt a serious blow to the Australian Public Service's crackdown on the social media use of its employees.
Murder accused Ricky Whelan told police the sight of Stephen MacLeod being repeatedly kicked in the head "scared the hell out of me" and that he felt physically sick and "like spewing" when he later heard the alleged bashing victim had taken a turn for the worse, Newcastle Supreme Court has heard.

Mr Whelan, now 28, his friend Kris Mitchison and Mr Mitchison's mother Caron Anne Wells have been charged with Mr MacLeod's murder, with the prosecution arguing the group were parties to a joint criminal enterprise to "pay back" Mr MacLeod for an assault on Ms Wells.

Charged: Ricky Whelan walking into Newcastle courthouse. Credit:Jonathan Carroll

Mr MacLeod was allegedly bashed by the trio at a home in East Maitland about 4am on March 16, 2014 and 10 days later succumbed to the injuries he suffered, which included a bleed to an artery at the back of his brain.

A Newcastle Supreme Court jury on Monday played the three accused's police interviews, with Mr Whelan telling detectives he had punched Mr MacLeod in "self defence" after Mr MacLeod swung a couple of punches at him.
Commuters in Western Sydney were stuck for over an hour on Monday night as urgent track repairs brought trains running from Parramatta to Blacktown to a complete halt.

The delays were due to urgent track repairs at Westmead, one of five smaller stations in-between the two transport hubs. A spokesperson for Sydney Trains said that response teams had fixed a track failure which was affecting signals at the station.

The delays were due to urgent track repairs at Westmead. Credit:Carlos Furtado

A spokesperson for the Transport Management Centre said that the stoppages started at around 5:10pm and although services were sporadically starting up again by 6:30pm, "they have to go really slowly through that Westmead area, so there's a bank up of trains."
A "centrally relevant" witness in a multimillion-dollar cartel conduct case against Moses and Paul Obeid and Sydney businessmen John McGuigan and Richard Poole has vanished overseas, the Federal Court has heard.

The hearing of the cartel conduct case, launched by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission last year, kicked off on Monday with allegations the Obeids received "substantial benefits" including $28 million in cash for rigging a NSW government tender for two lucrative coal exploration licences.

Moses Obeid and and Paul Obeid, right, leave the ICAC in April 2014. Credit:AAP

One of the licences was over Cherrydale Park, the Obeid family's farm at Mount Penny in the Bylong Valley.

The court heard an alleged Obeid frontman, Andrew Kaidbay, left the country last year and "attempts to locate him haven't been successful".
A mother-of-four is in a critical condition in hospital after being allegedly bashed in her home in Sydney's west on Monday.

Robynne Fraley, 54, was discovered with serious head injuries by ambulance officers at her house in Athlone Street, Cecil Hills, just before 1pm.

NSW Police at a house in Athlone Street, Cecil Hills, where a 54-year-old woman was found suffering from serious head injuries. Credit:TNV screengrab

It is believed she was found bleeding heavily after receiving a blow to her head and was taken to Liverpool Hospital.

Her 54-year-old husband was at home at the time of the attack but "left the scene before emergency services arrived", was arrested nearby a short time later.
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. The Azerbaijani army has lost 18 tanks, 2 helicopters, 6 infantry fighting vehicles and other military equipment. According to the NKR estimates, the Azerbaijani military has 300 casualties. "Armenpress" was told during the press meeting in the NKR.

Along the entire length of the contact line of Nagorno Karabakh- Azerbaijani opposing forces, on April 1 and throughout the morning of April 2, the adversary undertook large-scale offensive military actions, during which the adversary shelled with missile-artillery units not only Armenian defense positions, but also civilian settlements.


The Newman Government's hallmark bikie sentencing law, the Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment Act, "should be repealed in its entirety" a taskforce set up to investigate the legislation has found, recommending a "workable" model that combats "all forms of serious crime" be put in its place.

Led by retired Justice Alan Wilson, and already dismissed by the LNP before it was released, the review's 416-page report recommended the bulk of the laws that made up the bikie laws, including VLAD, a sentencing act, and the anti-association laws themselves, be either repealed or overhauled.

Police Minister Bill Byrne, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Attorney-General Yvette D'Ath announce the outcome of the review of Queensland's anti-bikie VLAD laws. Credit:Amy Remeikis

The taskforce warned the 2013 laws would not stand up to a full challenge in the High Court and that it was only a matter of time before that challenge came.

In essence, it recommended Queensland review the laws other states have used to combat organised crime and create new legislation that would withstand legal challenges.
The search for two men missing off the coast of Queensland has been suspended for the night and will be scaled back on Wednesday.

The search will continue on Wednesday but will be reduced to a land-based search after debris from the capsized trawler washed up on Fraser Island.

Land-based search crews will begin scouring the eastern beaches of the island for signs of the men at first light.

Earlier
"The QPU does not support repealing the VLAD laws, merely amending them in line with the proposal put forward by Deputy Commissioner Ross Barnett for an amended VLAD regime that he developed in consultation with Taskforce Maxima which champions mandatory sentencing for organised crime." Mr Leavers remained hopeful a common ground could be found. "I explained that any amendments need to ensure there continues to be a "declared criminal organisations" list that ensures there will never again be OMCG "clubhouses" and "poker runs" and that the State Government should seriously consider adding emerging criminal groups to this list as well as broadening the target of these laws to target paedophiles as well and the Premier agreed. "This taskforce was very much a differing of views divided along the lines of the theoretical and the views of the practical users of these laws. Instead of focusing on the organisation we will focus on the individuals who are engaged with organisations. Attorney General Yvette D'Ath

"I have asked the Premier to side with the practical users of these laws, the police, who feel safer as a result of these laws and in turn are keeping Queenslanders safer. "As a result the Premier has offered the Queensland Police Union a position on her legislative implementation group. "As the Commissioner of Police has said to all police today "whilst the Report recommends a range of changes to the existing legislation relating to criminal organisations, it is important that officers are aware that the law of the State of Queensland remains unaltered'." How that will work is still a work in progress. In October 2013, in response to a public brawl, the Newman Government rushed through legislation aimed at criminal gangs, in particular the state's identified outlaw motorcycle gangs, passing the laws just weeks after they were first mooted, bypassing the Parliamentary committee review system.

Dozens of bikies were involved in the brawl at Broadbeach. Credit:Twitter/BorisCeko The legislation, which included the sentencing instrument the Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment act, known as VLAD, and anti-association laws, was challenged in the High Court the following year. The court upheld the anti-association challenge and associated bans on tattoo parlour licences. But it refused to hear a challenge against wider sections of the legislation, as the man who brought the challenge had not been charged under the legislation. After first vowing to repeal the legislation, then review it, as public sentiment changed the Palaszczuk Government formed a Taskforce on Organised Crime Legislation in 2015, appointing retired Justice Alan Wilson to lead the review. The LNP dismissed the taskforce as soon as the terms of reference, which included an instruction on how best to repeal or replace the laws, were released as having a pre-determined outcome.

On Monday, Justice Wilson's report revealed the taskforce followed through on that instruction, recommending VLAD be repealed and replaced with other legislation, it says would withstand a High Court challenge. The Newman laws, it warned, did not carry that same guarantee. The government was still working its way through the 60 recommendations from the 400-plus page report on Monday and did not have a response for all of them. But it did commit to repealing VLAD, replacing the anti-association laws, and amending the majority of the 2013 reforms, which will see police now focus on the individuals carrying out the crimes, rather than the over-arching criminal organisation itself. That's because the report found that the definition of a criminal organisation within the acts was too narrow, and not uniform, which provided loop holes.

Attorney-General Yvette D'Ath, who has had the report since Thursday, said Labor intended on closing those loopholes and preventing any losses in the High Court with "strong and robust" laws. Attorney-General Yvette D'Ath. Credit:Glenn Hunt "When I say strong and robust, I mean constitutionally, legally for getting convictions, but also, robust enough operationally on the ground for police and that is where the VLAD laws failed  the fact is, the definition is too narrow, the CCC said that, the taskforce and the taskforce members acknowledged that the definition of a criminal organisation is too narrow and consequently, as organisations change and as circumstances change, and new criminal organisation evolve that the code definition would not allow us to follow those people," she said. "So instead of focusing on the organisation we will focus on the individuals who are engaged with organisations  so that, no matter what that individual is doing and where they are going and whatever organisation they call themselves, we can still follow that individual. "We will move from anti-association provisions to targeted consorting laws. The taskforce have been very clear that the anti-association laws as they exist currently are flawed and seriously at risk of constitutional challenge."

The difference between the anti-consorting laws, which New South Wales uses, and Queensland's anti-association laws, comes down to convictions. In Queensland, you don't have to have been convicted of a crime to be targeted under the laws  being a member of a criminal gang, or an associate, is enough. In NSW, a conviction is necessary before bans on who you can consort with, is put in place. Ms D'Ath said that equated to convictions, with the NSW courts securing 20 convictions from 32 people charged last year, under the anti-consorting laws, compared with the 42 people charged in Queensland  and no convictions. "What the taskforce shows is that there are real challenges in sufficiently meeting the evidentiary requirements to succeed in these cases," she said. "There are cases which have gone before the court and been withdrawn and cases which have not been successful.

"So any claims, and I put this to the Opposition, so any claims that we haven't seen convictions is that they were on hold is not accurate. "The fact is there are cases that have not been successful and there are cases that have been withdrawn due to evidentiary problems with the current laws. "We believe that our proposed laws will ensure that those convictions can be received." But the government can't say whether those changes will mean criminal gangs  of which outlaw bikie gang members have been overwhelmingly the most public presence - will be able to once again gather in public. "We are saying to you, that as a government, we are committed to ensuring we have laws that will deal with outlaw motorcycle gangs in public places, for example, mass rides up the roads," Ms D'Ath said.

"So we are still to consider the 60 recommendations, we are not making a decision today on all the recommendations, but what we are saying is we will look at new laws to do that, because the anti-association laws do not stack up. "The flaw in anti-association and the message that came through very clear from the public is those laws indiscriminately look at people, not based on their criminal activity, but based on their organisation. "We will look at criminal activity, yes, because the public made the message very clear on that, that they believed the anti-association laws went too far. We will tackle criminal activity." Which the Opposition said was just not good enough. "The report's recommendations and the Palaszczuk Government's response is worse than expected - rather than watering down the VLAD Act, Labor is scrapping it altogether and putting Queenslanders safety at risk," acting LNP leader John-Paul Langbroek said.

John-Paul Langbroek. Credit:Glenn Hunt "The Premier's rollback of laws will take away harsher sentencing for criminal gang activity, allow criminal gangs to again gather in large groups, as they did at Broadbeach in 2013, and will remove police powers to stop, search and detain people suspected of criminal activity. "How can the Premier say she's 'tough on crime' when she's taking away the most powerful parts of the existing laws? "The LNP will not support rolling out the welcome mat for criminal gangs and will oppose Labor's plans every step of the way." The government, which also plans on introducing mandatory control orders, which will mean, those convicted of organised crime activity  not just bikies  will be subject to on-going surveillance, similar to counter-terrorism suspects and the State's dangerous sex offenders, says it's laws will be tougher than the LNPs. But able to withstand legal challenges.

"A cornerstone of the new laws is making serious organised crime an aggravated circumstance with a mandatory jail penalty," Ms D'Ath said. "Offenders convicted of serious organised crime will also be subject to a mandatory organised crime order, which gives authorities the power to monitor offenders, similar to international counter terrorism laws, in a way which draws also on Queensland's tough dangerous sex offenders supervision laws. "I believe these laws will do what our current laws could never do  secure convictions for serious organised crime offenders. "The laws rushed through parliament in 2013 were about exploiting fear for political gain, rather than facing the real challenges combating organised crime. "The fight against organised crime should never be a gamble.

"This package will help police fight not only criminal bikie gangs, but all forms of organised crime in this state, and we know from the Byrne report [into organised crime] that child sex gangs, boiler room frauds and drug trafficking syndicates often exist in the underground." Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, who now faces the task of selling the laws to not only a split public, but also the cross bench, also has to hose down suggestions her government's election had given criminal gangs the opening they were waiting for. Data published in the report found that over the last two years since the Newman Government legislation was introduced, 124 outlaw criminal bikie gang members have left the state, leaving about 800 remaining. A Crime and Corruption Commission submission, left out of the taskforce report and not published publicly until NewsCorp was released a section under Right to Information legislation, was released in full by CCC Chair Alan MacSporran on Monday, following the Wilson report release. It paid credence to those fears, which have been fanned by the LNP, that bikie gangs were waiting in the wings for Labor to weaken the laws.

"The timing of the recruitment activities suggests that, following the change of government in January 2015, it is perceived by clubs that there is a softening of the stance against OMCG activity," Mr MacSporran wrote in the submission. "While there has been no evidence obtained as to the particular factors which have contributed to this resurgence, it may be inferred that OMCGs perceive that the laws will be repealed or reduced, and are positioning themselves to take control of 'turf once any relaxation occurs." Ms D'Ath said the proposal Labor was putting forward, refuted that idea. "I want to make it very clear here today, to those outlaw motorcycle gangs and criminals out there who think that the doors are going to be re-opened, not only are they closed, but we are wedging them shut," Ms D'Ath said. Colours and insignias will also stay banned in licensed premises under the Labor legislation proposal.

"At the end of the day, colours are a very important issue and that is identified  at the end of the day, outlaw motorcycle gangs have not disappeared from Queensland, and let's be clear of that, they are still there, but they are operating underground, they are operating behind the scenes," Ms D'Ath said. "We will retain the liquor act provisions to make it unlawful to be wearing any sort of prohibited items or carrying any prohibited items which includes colours and insignias and that kind of thing. "Our cabinet has made a very clear decision, we do not want to see bikies riding en masse in their colours on our streets again, that is very clear. "We will work through what the legal mechanism should be to deal with that public safety issue. "But let's be clear, we do not want to see that back on our streets. "Now the taskforce has said the anti-association laws do not work properly, they are flawed laws.

"So we need to work through what the new laws would be, but let's be clear, our position is we do not want to see outlaw motorcycle gangs wearing their colours, back on the streets in large numbers. "We understand, and the taskforce recognises that even though they make up a small percentage of criminals and crimes in this state, they do intimidate people and the broader public that people have the right to go to a restaurant or a licensed venue and feel safe and not feel intimidated by that presence of outlaw motorcycle gangs." Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. Credit:Robert Shakespeare But any changes  which assumes the cross bench is on-board  will not be made until after August, with Ms Palaszczuk announcing the government plans on taking its time before introducing any legislation. "This is the first time that a government is tackling serious organised crime," the Premier said.

"I believe these will be the benchmark of laws that other states will follow. "The former laws  parts of them worked, parts of them didn't. "In Queensland, you see they wanted workable, enforceable, robust laws. "What my government is doing is taking it to the next step. Serious organised crime is a big issue  it is a big issue in this state, it is a big issue across the nation. "So we want to make sure that we tackle all the elements of serious organised crime, whether it is outlaw motorcycle gangs, whether it is people involved in child exploitation, illicit drugs, money laundering  we are going to tackle this head on.
The search for two men missing off the Queensland Coast has been suspended at nightfall.

The two men were on board a prawn trawler that capsized off Fraser Island and they haven't been seen since.

A flotilla of of trawlers joined the search on Monday which also involved two rescue helicopters, a plane and two volunteer marine rescue units.

As darkness descended the trawlers returned to shore, leaving the aircraft to continue searching until it became too dark.
Motoring advocate the RACQ has urged the state government to explore options to upgrade Steve Irwin Way.

Motorists on the Bruce Highway on Sunday faced delays of up to two hours after a fatal motorbike accident and the congestion flowed over onto Steve Irwin Way, leaving those heading south at the end of the weekend few options to avoid the traffic.

RACQ spokesman Michael Roth said the highway coped well with traffic in some sections but other areas faced major problems if there were any incidents.

"Our broad view of the Bruce is that it works relatively well in the six-lane section up through Caboolture," he said.
A woman has been charged after allegedly leading a 22-year-old man into a violent robbery on the Gold Coast.

Five men are being questioned after he was allegedly assaulted and robbed on Sunday night on Surfers Paradise beach.

A woman has been charged over the bashing of a man she approached in Cavill Avenue.

Police alleged the 17-year-old Wynnum woman approached the man in Cavill Avenue, the heart of the suburb's nightlife strip, about 10.20pm.

Following the alleged assault, paramedics took the victim to the Gold Coast University Hospital in a stable condition.
A Brisbane man is facing a raft of charges after allegedly grabbing a woman by the throat while forcing her to drive him around.

Police say the 19-year-old went to a house at Salisbury on Sunday night and forced a woman to drive him to a second property.

A man allegedly grabbed a woman by the throat and jumped on the bonnet of her car.

It's alleged that during the trip, he refused the woman's demands to get out of the car, and at one point grabbed her by the throat and jumped on the bonnet of the car and kicked the windscreen. The woman didn't need medical treatment.

The man will front court on Monday on charges including assault, deprivation of liberty and domestic violence.
Plus, Murdoch fraudulently accepted public and private research money for the bogus study, published in 2011 in the highly reputable European Journal of Neurology.

Plus, Murdoch forged consent forms for study participants, one of whom had died before the alleged study took place.

There was no evidence, she declared, that Murdoch had even conducted the clinical trial on which his supposed findings were based.

Scientific integrity took another hit on Thursday when an Australian researcher received a two-year suspended sentence after pleading guilty to 17 fraud-related charges. The main counts against neuroscientist Bruce Murdoch were for an article heralding a breakthrough in the treatment of Parkinson's disease. And the judge's conclusions were damning.

"Your research was such as to give false hope to Parkinson's researchers and Parkinson's sufferers," said Magistrate Tina Privitera, who heard the case in Brisbane. Still to go to trial is Murdoch's co-author, Caroline Barwood, who has also been charged with fraud.

Since 2000, the number of US academic fraud cases in science has risen dramatically. Five years ago, the journal Nature tallied the number of retractions in the previous decade and revealed they had shot up tenfold. About half of the retractions were based on researcher misconduct, not just errors, it noted.

The US Office of Research Integrity, which investigates alleged misconduct involving National Institutes of Health funding, has been far busier of late. Between 2009 and 2011, the office identified three cases with cause for action. Between 2012 and 2015, that number jumped to 36.

While criminal cases against scientists are rare, they are increasing. Jail time is even rarer, but not unheard of. Last July, Dong-Pyou Han, a former biomedical scientist at Iowa State University, pleaded guilty to two felony charges of making false statements to obtain NIH research grants and was sentenced to more than four years in prison.

Han admitted to falsifying the results of several vaccine experiments, in some cases spiking blood samples from rabbits with human HIV antibodies so that the animals appeared to develop an immunity to the virus.
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. Spokesperson of the Defense Ministry of Armenia Artsrun Hovhannisyan responded the announcement of the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry spokesperson Vagif Dyargahly that allegedly the photos and footages publicized by the Armenian Defense Ministry do not correspond to reality. In an interview with Armenpress Artsrun Hovhannisyan mentioned that he invites his Azerbaijani counterpart to see the corpses of Azerbaijani subversive group by his own eyes. If they are not their soldiers, we were right when saying that there are mercenaries or other elements. Anyway, I invite him to get convinced in that. I ensure his personal security, Hovhannisyan said.

Along the entire length of the contact line of Nagorno Karabakh- Azerbaijani opposing forces, on April 1 and throughout the morning of April 2, the adversary undertook large-scale offensive military actions, during which the adversary shelled with missile-artillery units not only Armenian defense positions, but also civilian settlements.

According to the data of the Defense Army, the Azerbaijani armed forces fired MM-21 (Grad) multiple rocket launcher on April 2, at 08: 30 in the direction of Martuni (NKR), killing 12 year old Vaghinak Grigoryan and wounding two other children. 4 other civilians were wounded later. On April 3, it became known that Azerbaijani forces violently executed 3 civilians in Talish, who hadnt yet been evacuated.

Due to the timely and professional actions of the Nagorno Karabakh Defense Army, it was possible to take the situation under control, and make the enemy suffer considerable losses. Starting from April 1 the Azerbaijani forces have sustained 200-300 casualties. Around 20 enemy tanks and 1 Grad missile system were destroyed.

On April 3, starting from 06:00, the adversary continued aggressive military operations by using missile-artillery systems and armored vehicles.

The Defense Army undertook counteroffensive measures and dominated the strategic base in the direction of Talis on April 3, which was earlier occupied by Azerbaijani forces.
When Telstra offered its mobile customers unlimited data for two separate days this year as compensation for network outages, some customers took it as a challenge to download as much as they possibly could in one day.

On Sunday, 27-year-old Sydney resident John Szaszvari outdid himself and everyone else by ploughing through almost a whole terabyte of data.

That's more than double what he managed during the first free data day in February  an already mammoth 425GB.

Szaszvari's data guzzling even caught the attention of Telstra chief operating officer Kate McKenzie, who mentioned his heroic 994GB effort during a speech at the CommsDay conference in Sydney.
They were once all the rage for gifted and talented students.

But the Education Department has stopped accrediting select-entry accelerated learning (SEAL) programs in mainstream schools, and has warned against making early enrolment offers to gifted students.

The Education Department has stopped accrediting select-entry accelerated learning (SEAL) programs in mainstream schools. Credit:Dean Osland

The changes have triggered concerns that some gifted children will miss out on the program for high achievers.

Balwyn High School principal Deborah Harman  who chairs a new group called the Academy of Accredited SEAL Schools  said the department's emphasis had shifted to the needs of all students.
Known as the "keeper of secrets", a key bishop responsible for moving paedophile priests around Victorian parishes for decades, has died.

Ronald Mulkearns, who was the Catholic bishop of Ballarat for nearly 30 years, died on Sunday night at the age of 85 after a long battle with colon cancer.

The Catholic Diocese of Ballarat confirmed his death on Monday morning.

Bishop Mulkearns headed the Ballarat diocese between 1971 and 1997, when Catholic clergy, including teachers, abused hundreds of children.
One of Victoria's highest-ranking police officers has blasted the leadership of anti-fascist and anti-Islamic groups for harbouring violent members, and flagged tougher measures including the banning of masks from protests because they promote a "mob mentality".

Assistant Commissioner Stephen Leane said it appeared a bloody clash at the Halal Expo at the Melbourne Showgrounds on Sunday occurred when a group of anti-fascist supporters on their way to a rally in Federation Square noticed the right-wing Party of Freedom peacefully protesting and decided to remonstrate.

He defended the police response to the brawl, and said that once the violence started, officers were focused on separating the battling groups, rather than arresting those responsible for the violence.

Mr Leane said the investigation into the brawl, which left one anti-Islamic protester bleeding heavily from the head and others injured after being punched, kicked, and beaten with flag poles, was continuing, but that police had little cooperation from the leadership of the respective groups.
Parents are refusing to buy tablets or laptops in a stand against the spread of digital devices in schools.

Nearly all secondary schools have rolled out a one-to-one digital device model and an increasing number of primary schools are following suit.

Irene brown with her children, Amelie and Patrick, who are not part of Preston Primary School's iPad program. Credit:Simon O'Dwyer

Parents, speaking out about why they refused to buy or provide a device for school, have questioned whether students as young as five are able to take care of iPads, and raised concerns about excessive screen time.

Many cite a lack of evidence proving that technology use in classrooms boosts grades, pointing to a landmark OECD report, which found that Australia is one of the highest users of technology in schools, however frequent use of computers in schools was often associated with lower results.
A former Perth Glory player accused of fraud and promoting fake events across Perth has resurfaced promoting a new business venture targeting aspiring models.

Ex-Glory youth representative, Million Butshiire, faces several fraud charges from July 2015 relating to more than $300,000 in alleged scams across Australia, New Zealand and Africa.

Million Butshiire has been sentenced to 20 months behind bars for his role in an insurance scam. Credit:Facebook / Millionn Butshiire

In January, the 24-year-old came under fire from angry customers who paid nearly $200 a ticket to attend a "luxury" New Year's Eve boat cruise on the Swan River promoted by his former business, Privilege TRL.

Guests claimed one of the "84-foot yachts" chartered was actually a fishing boat, while the promised "gourmet canapes" were cheap sausage rolls and half-heated chicken.
A man was rushed to hospital on Sunday night after being knocked unconscious while trying to rob a business in Greenfields.

Around 7pm, the Rouse Road business owner, 49, and his son, 29, attended the premises after its alarm was activated.

The attempted robbery set off a security alarm, and when the business owner and his son arrived, the intruder was knocked unconscious during a struggle. Credit:Nine News Perth

A police spokesman said when the men arrived, they saw a truck and trailer reversed into the rear of the workshop.

"The men approached the workshop where they disturbed an intruder within the premises," he said.
A Donnybrook man faced Bunbury Magistrates Court on Monday charged with two child exploitation offences.

Police allege between March 11 and 12, 2016, the man used social media sites to communicate in a sexual manner with a 14-year-old girl.

A Donnybrook man has been charged with using social media sites to communicate in a sexual manner with a teen girl. Credit:Bunbury Mail

He has been charged with one count of using electronic communication to procure a child believed to be under 16 years old to engage in sexual activity and one count of using electronic communication to expose a child under 16 years old to indecent matter.

The maximum penalty for each of the offences is five years imprisonment.
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. The military attache of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the Republic of Armenia, Colonel Hossein Sheykhi was invited to the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Armenia. Deputy Minister of Defense of the Republic of Armenia Davit Tonoyan received the attache, Armenpress was informed by the Information and Public Relations Department of the Ministry.

The reason for the meeting was the announcement made by the governor of the Northern Aterpatakan region of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the resulting speculations in Azerbaijani media, which claim that there are wounded individuals and damages in the Upper Kolibeglu village of the mentioned region as a result of shelling by NKR forces. The Iranian attache did not confirm the information concerning the wounded, and stated that Iran has referred to both the Armenian and Azerbaijani sides to exercise caution to eliminate similar incidents.

Checking the geographic coordinates of the region, the Armenian side states that the given residential region lies behind the Armenian positions, therefore meaning that shelling of the mentioned region by Armenian forces is unlikely. During the meeting, it has been stated that the claims are likely to be provocations, and do not correspond to the interests of the Armenian side.

An agreement was made to continue direct communications, in order to eliminate risks of misinformation. In this context, the Defense Army of Artsakh will investigate the case and inform the Iranian side accordingly.
Paris/Berlin: Air France said it would allow female cabin crew and pilots to opt out of flying routes to Tehran after some staff said they did not want to be forced to cover their hair when in Iran.

Air France, part of the Franco-Dutch group Air France-KLM , is preparing to restart flights to Tehran from April 17 after an eight-year hiatus due to sanctions.

The airline is resuming flights to Iran on April 17. Credit:AP

After a meeting between Air France management and unions on Monday, the French carrier said it would offer female staff the choice of opting out of the flights.

Under Iranian law, women must cover their hair in public places. Unions had raised concerns over an Air France ruling obliging female crew to wear a headscarf on leaving a plane.
Istanbul: Hackers have posted a database online that seems to contain the personal information of nearly 50 million Turkish citizens in what is one of the largest public leaks of its kind.

The Associated Press on Monday was able to partially verify the authenticity of the leak by running 10 non-public Turkish ID numbers against names contained in the dump. Eight were a match.

Hackers have apparently stolen a database that contains personal information about millions of Turks.

The leaked database contains 49,611,709 entries and divulged considerable private information, putting people at risk of identity theft and fraud. Entries include data such as national ID numbers, addresses, birthdates and parents' names.

The hackers spotlighted the information for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his predecessor Abdullah Gul, and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.
Peshawar: Flash floods triggered by torrential rains have killed at least 45 people in north-west Pakistan, officials say.

Rains started overnight on Saturday and caused flash flooding in several districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, a Pakistani national disaster management official, Latif ur Rehman, said.

Another 34 people were admitted to hospitals with injuries, he said.

Flash floods are commonly triggered during south Asia's summer monsoon season. Pre-monsoon rains such as the current downpour frequently cause damage in Pakistan  particularly in rural villages with minimal infrastructure.
Cairo: The editor of Egypt's top state newspaper called on authorities on Sunday to seriously deal with the case of an Italian student tortured and killed in Cairo, saying officials who don't realise the gravity of the case are risking a break in Egyptian-Italian relations.

In a front-page column, Al-Ahram's Editor-in-Chief Mohammed Abdel-Hadi Allam subtly suggested that Giulio Regeni's killing might have the same impact in Egypt as the 2010 beating to death by police of an Egyptian youth in the coastal city of Alexandria. The brutal death of Khaled Said helped ignite a popular 18-day uprising that began on January 25, 2011 and toppled the 29-year regime of autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

President El-Sissi has come under fire for the handling of death of Italian student Giulio Regeni. Credit:AP

"The Khaled Said case, despite its circumstances, did not go away like some thought at the time," he warned. "The naive stories about Regeni's death have hurt Egypt at home and abroad and offered some a justification to judge what is going on in the country now to be no different from what went on before the January 25 revolution."

Regeni's death has roiled Egyptian-Italian relations. Last month Egyptian authorities implied that Regeni had been killed by a criminal gang specialising in kidnapping foreigners. Authorities said all members of the gang had been killed in a shootout and that Regeni's passport and several personal items had been found in the gang leader's home. The announcement was immediately rejected by Italian media and by Regeni's family, who have publicly stated a belief that Regeni was killed by Egyptian security forces.
United Nations: Former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark said on Monday she would campaign to be the next UN secretary-general, pledging to improve transparency and touting her leadership experience in a bid to become the first woman to head the world body.

New Zealand submitted a letter on Monday to the president of the 193-member General Assembly formally nominating Ms Clark, who heads the UN Development Program, as a candidate to succeed Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Mr Ban, a former South Korean foreign minister, will step down at the end of 2016 after two five-year terms. A man has held the top job at the United Nations since its inception 70 years ago and there is a strong push for a woman to be elected.

"I'm seeking election on the basis of the skills that I have and I would expect in the 21st century to be given equal consideration to any male applicant," Ms Clark, New Zealand prime minister from 1999 to 2008, said in an interview.
New York: In the biggest financial corruption crisis to rock the United Nations since the Oil-for-Food scandal, the United Nations' internal investigations office has uncovered serious lapses and due-diligence failures connected with an alleged bribery scheme involving a former UN General Assembly president.

The 21-page confidential report by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services' (OIOS) outlines the results of an audit ordered by Secretary-General Mr Ban Ki-moon in response to charges against John Ashe, the UN General Assembly president in 2013-2014, and six other people.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in Sweden last week. Credit:AP

The report gave the UN an overall grade of "partially satisfactory" in the March 22 report, which is available to UN member states on request. It noted "important deficiencies" in the way the United Nations and its staff interact with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and oversee UN employees.
London: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is facing a new challenge, this time from within, as a group of religious leaders from his powerful Alawite sect threaten to abandon him.

In an unusual move, a group of Syrian "sheikhs" or religious leaders has circulated a document demanding a change in its relationship to the regime and "dissociating" itself from his leadership. Its authors showed London's The Daily Telegraph the document, and have also briefed European states on its contents. It is unclear how much support it is likely to have on the ground.

Syrian religious leaders have circulated a document dissociating themselves from the leadership of President Bashar al-Assad. Credit:SANA/AP

The authors, acting anonymously for fear of their security once back in Syria, said they had been forced to act because of the danger the sect was facing. Its young men have been the vanguard of Mr Assad's fighting forces, both in the army and in militias, but have had huge losses, amounting to a quarter of all the sect's men of fighting age, by some counts.

Many Alawites also fear possibly genocidal vengeance being wrought if Mr Assad is ultimately forced out by militant jihadists, who regard the Alawites as heretical as well as intrinsically tied to the regime.
Latest News NAB reveals six market megatrends for brokers More opportunities for investors, first home buyers

Firstmac shifts up a gear on auto loans National sales manager appointed to pursue growing market

ASX-listed mortgage brokerage, N1 Loans, has expanded its lead generation partnership with a national mortgage group as it focuses on interstate expansion.N1 Loans previously held an agreement with 1300HomeLoan which saw the mortgage group provide leads to the brokerage in New South Wales only. The partnership provided approximately 10 to 15 leads per month, representing approximately $9 million in loans with a conversion rate of 20% to 30%.However, under the expanded agreement, 1300HomeLoan will provide N1 Loans with additional leads in Queensland and Victoria.The chief executive of N1 Loans, Ren Wong says this expanded partnership forms a part of N1s strategy to expand into and grow market share in those two states.We are pleased to announce the growth of our partnership with 1300HomeLoan. It is anticipated that the addition of source leads from Queensland and Victoria will assist N1s expansion into Brisbane and Melbourne, a part of the companys geographic diversification strategy.Wong says the expanded partnership will also provide further revenue opportunities to cross sell other services and products, such as car loans and insurance.
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. On the way to Martakert Azerbaijani artillery fired at the bus of Sisian volunteer group. There are 5 victims, Armenian Defense Minister Spokesperson Artsrun Hovhannisyan informed Armenpress. He added that there are heads of communities among the victims.

The UN Security Council adopted four resolutions between April and November, 1993, calling for effective and permanent ceasefire, as well as immediate implementation of the reciprocal and urgent steps in that direction.

Peace talks between Armenia, Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan have been facilitated by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe since March 1992 within the frameworks of the Minsk Group, Co-chaired by Russia, United States and France since mid-1990s.

Ceasefire agreement between Armenia, Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan, facilitated by Russia's representative to the CSCE/OSCE Minsk Group Vladimir Kazimirov, was signed on May 5, 1994, which had been maintained with only sporadic violations along the Line of Contact and international border till the latest Azerbaijani large scale offensive in the night of April 2, 2016.

Over the last two years Armenia, Nagorno Karabakh, the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs and over 80 U.S. Congressmen (Royce-Engel bill) proposed concrete measures to de-escalate situation and establish ceasefire monitoring equipments along the borders. Azerbaijan has been repeatedly rejecting these calls.
Latest News NAB reveals six market megatrends for brokers More opportunities for investors, first home buyers

Firstmac shifts up a gear on auto loans National sales manager appointed to pursue growing market

One in five mortgage brokers are writing very low volume, according to a recent report released by the Mortgage and Finance Association of Australias ( MFAA ).In February, the MFAA released its Industry Intelligence Service (IIS) report. The report is based on data from over 95% of the industry with the cooperation of 16 leading aggregators and broker businesses. It follows on from the quarterly broker market share report and, according to the association, is an industry-first for broker benchmarking.Siobhan Hayden, the chief executive of the MFAA has just wrapped up a series of national events to discuss the reports findings with brokers. Speaking to Australian Broker, Hayden said she was surprised to find that one in five brokers are writing a very low volume of loans.The MFAA is very excited to deliver broker benchmarking insights with the delivery of the IIS Report and it has provided invaluable insights into the broker industry, she said.A key finding that surprised me was that 20% of surveyed brokers wrote less than $1m during the six months up to September 2015. This represents a trend of $2m annually which is very low volume for 20% of the broker market.She said the MFAA is interested to learn more about this performance.According to Hayden, the report has been well-received by brokers and will be used to guide discussions with industry regulators and media.The IIS Report is a great addition to the current data the MFAA is delivering on the broker industry (Ernst & Young, May 2015; Deloitte, June 2016) and provides valuable insights which the MFAA can reference and use in discussions with industry regulators, media as well as broader stakeholder engagement, Hayden told Australian Broker.
The University of Wyoming lists 357 students from Colorado on the 2015 fall semester academic Deans and Deans Freshman Honor Rolls.

The honor rolls consist of regularly enrolled undergraduates above freshman standing who earned a 3.4 or better grade point average, and freshmen who have earned a 3.25 or better grade point average.

To be eligible, students must have been enrolled for a minimum of 12 credit hours taken for letter grades.

From Brush were:

Cameron Alexander, Devin Richter and Grayson Simmons.

The University of Wyoming provides quality undergraduate and graduate programs to 12,841 students from all 50 states and 94 countries. Established in 1886, UW is a nationally recognized research institution with accomplished faculty and world class facilities. Offering 200 areas of study, UW provides an environment for success. A low student faculty ratio allows for individual instruction and attention, and undergraduates often participate in cutting edge research projects.

For more information about the University of Wyoming, view the Web page at: www.uwyo.edu.
STEPANAKERT, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. Military operations continue on the contact line of Karabakh-Azerbaijan opposing armies. Armenpress was informed from the press service of NKR Defense Ministry about the following: Today the adversary used some types of weapons that yesterday were not used, TOS-1 heavy flamethrower systems, combat drones and other modern military equipment. But even with all these the Azerbaijani armed forces did not manage to change the course of events to their advantage. Moreover, the Defense Army units in all the directions of the front line not only successfully carried out positional battles, but also destroyed 5 tanks, 3 drones, different types of equipment and dozens of manpower due to professional and pertinacious operations.

Maybe the unbalanced announcement of Azerbaijans military leadership is conditioned by the mentioned achievements of our army, by which they threat to bombard the civilian settlements of Artsakh Republic and particularly capital Stepanakert.

The NKR Defense Ministry warns personally Hasanov and his supreme leader that in case of such developments the retaliation will be unproportionate and more severe.

The UN Security Council adopted four resolutions between April and November, 1993, calling for effective and permanent ceasefire, as well as immediate implementation of the reciprocal and urgent steps in that direction.

Peace talks between Armenia, Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan have been facilitated by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe since March 1992 within the frameworks of Minsk Group, co-Chaired by Russia, United States and France since mid-1990s.

Ceasefire agreement between Armenia, Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan, facilitated by Russia's representative to the CSCE/OSCE Minsk Group Vladimir Kazimirov, was signed on May 5, 1994, which had been maintained with only sporadic violations along the Line of Contact and international border till the latest Azerbaijani large scale offensive in the night of April 2, 2016.

Over the last two years Armenia, Nagorno Karabakh, the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs and over 80 U.S. Congressmen (Royce-Engel bill) proposed concrete measures to de-escalate situation and establish ceasefire monitoring equipments along the borders. Azerbaijan has been repeatedly rejecting these calls.
Media advisory: Getting to know Buffalo is a priority for these medical students

First-ever community immersion program set for spring break

There is a core of students here that is really interested in global health and wellness in the underserved... 

BUFFALO, N.Y. Visits to a mosque, an Eastside church and a Buddhist monastery in Buffalo, meetings with refugees, and lectures and discussions with community leaders about poverty and public health are on the agenda this week for 13 first-year students in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo.

The schools first-ever community immersion program takes place April 4 - 8, during the students spring break. A schedule of events is below and many are open to members of the media. Interested media should contact Ellen Goldbaum, goldbaum@buffalo.edu, 716-645- 4605.

The idea for the pilot community immersion program came from students involved with the Center for Medical Humanities in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. The center focuses on psychological, social, cultural, and economic forces that influence the practice of medicine and the doctor-patient relationship.

The students said to me, We want to spend spring break making connections with members of the community outside of the medical school on their own turf, said Linda Pessar, MD, professor emerita of psychiatry and director of the UB Center for Medical Humanities. They thought it was important for them to understand the Buffalo community in which they were learning about medicine and the people who came for care.

Pessar said that these concerns are being expressed nationally, especially in academic medicine circles.

Throughout medicine, there is increased interest in becoming more accessible to the average person and not putting up so many hierarchical obstacles, which are especially true for people living in poverty and from other cultures, she said.

Its part of a trend Pessar has seen increase over the past few years at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

There is a core of students here that is really interested in global health and wellness in the underserved, which is wonderful to see and which the medical school is nurturing, she said.

At the same time, she added, with the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences moving downtown by 2017, outreach to the community will be more important than ever.

Involvement of our school with the community is of enormous importance to the medical school as we move downtown, Pessar said. We want very much to be good neighbors.

The students want to meet people in the community on their own terms and speak to them in a context in which they feel comfortable.

Topics students want to discuss include how people in the community experience health care, what they think are impediments to health and wellness, what could make a difference to how comfortable they feel within the health care system and what changes would improve access for them.

Pessar said the response from Buffalos community organizations was amazingly positive.

Everyone was immediately on board, she said.

She added that strong support came from the administration of the medical school including Alan Lesse, MD, senior associate dean for curriculum and David Milling, MD, Senior Associate Dean for Student Affairs.

The schedule is below:

History of Buffalo and its neighborhoods, April 4

10 a.m. to noon - Eastside tour with Sam Magavern, co-director, Partnership for the Public Good; lunch at Towne Restaurant.

1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. - Tour of Allentown, Richmond Ave., Delaware Park with urban activist Mark Goldman.

Poverty including race and culture, April 5

10 a.m. to 11 a.m. - Hopewell Baptist Church, meeting with Henry Louis Taylor, professor, UB Department of Urban and Regional Planning and director, Center for Urban Studies; Pastor Kinzer Pointer, Greater Buffalo United Ministers and Pastor Dennis Lee.

11 a.m. to 1 p.m. - Walking tours of the neighborhood.

Immigrants and refugees, April 6

9 a.m. to 10 a.m. - Introduction to Yemeni community in Lackawanna with Gamileh Jamil.

10 a.m. to 11 a.m. - Conversation with Yemeni women.

Noon to 1 p.m. - Mosque visit.

2 p.m. - Meeting with Burmese Community Support Center with Ba Zan Lin at monastery and discussion with former Myanmar political prisoners.

Public health and wellness, April 7

9 a.m. to 10:15 a.m. - Visit to Child Advocacy Center.

10:45 a.m. to noon - Visits to local agencies.

1 p.m. to 3 p.m. - Program at the United Way, discussion with Michael Weiner, Buffalo United Way and Gayle Burstein, commissioner, Erie County Department of Health.

Wrap up session, April 8
5 changes to you, your seafood and the Shore from warming Atlantic
Adrian Sarbu, the owner of Mediafax, has been indicted at the end of March, on charges of tax evasion, abetting embezzlement and money laundering. Prosecutors allege through the entire criminal activities conducted in his own name and through the companies that he used to control and also given the fact that some amounts were recycled some amounts through the circuits created, the total losses caused by Adrian Sarbu to the consolidated state budget amount to about 14 million Euros.

In order to recoup the money, prosecutors seized several properties located in France, which were identified with the help of the National Office to Combat Criminality and Collect Claims resulting from Criminal Acts of the Ministry of Justice.

Between 2000 and 2003, BURSA published dozens of articles (you can review the Media Pro Dossier on www.bursa.ro), which have presented evidence of the fiscal maneuvers committed by Adrian Sarbu, maneuvers tolerated by the authorities, regardless of their political orientation. The only media entity to consistently write about the topic was BURSA, the newspaper which was shunned by the rest of the press, even though the European institutions have acknowledged the situation that we reported on, of the mass-media being subordinated to the state, and the "Securities and Exchange Commission" (SEC) of Washington started an investigation on the dealings of Adrian Sarbu's business partner, Ronald Lauder, based on what we published in Bucharest.

Between 1995 and 2002, Media Pro, which owned the TV station Pro TV, paid nothing to the state budget, no taxes, no social security contributions, nothing at all.

Those debts were repeatedly cancelled. That wasn't enough, and in 2002 Media Pro received about 168 billion lei in state aid "for culture"), approved by the Competition Council.

Adrian Sarbu was so convinced that he would be bailed out again, that according to the prosecution case, he used to tell people in the management that "Adrian Nastase is going to become prime-minister and he will grant a tax amnesty", according to their statements.

 Mediafax Group, taken to court

Mediafax Group SA, which is currently insolvent and whose main creditor is ING Bank, has also been sued for tax evasion.

Prosecutors have also indicted Roxana Grigoruta (former administrator of SC Mediafax Group SA, Mediafax SA and Apropo Media SRL) on charges of tax evasion and embezzlement; Eugenia Balan (former administrator of SC Mediafax Group SA), Cosmina Noaghea (former managing director of SC Publimedia International SA), Orlando Nicoara (former managing director of SC Mediafax Group SA, Mediafax SA and Apropo Media SRL), Dinu Sorin (former CFO of SC Publimedia International SA and SC Mediafax Group SA), Daniela Cozac (former CFO of SC Mediafax Group SA, Mediafax SA and Apropo Media SRL), on charges of tax evasion, embezzlement and money laundering; Gheorghe Gradinaru (managing director with SC Teleferic Prahova SA) on charges of embezzlement and money laundering; Liana Petrovici (lawyer) on charges of money laundering; Gheorghe Chis (lawyer) on charges of complicity to tax evasion and money laundering.

In order to recoup the losses produced through the crimes committed, the prosecutors have decided to seize several immovable assets owned by defendants Sarbu Adrian, Nicoara Ilie Orlando, Petrovici Liana, Chis Gheorghe Dragos.

The authorities claim that between 2006 - 2014, the companies of the Mediafax group, owned directly or indirectly by Adrian Sarbu used a system which consisted of paying salaries partially on the basis of employment contracts and partially in the form of royalties, which represented the skeleton of a mechanism to evade the taxes owed to the state budget.

The losses caused to the state budget through the application of this system amount to 27,908,783.25 lei.

Prosecutors further state: "Because the use of the tax evasion system was also intended to cover the personal expenses of defendant Sarbu Adrian or to allow the off-the-books payment of the wages of the company's employees, in parallel with its implementation, defendants have set up fictitious commercial circuits through which the amounts resulting from the crime of tax evasion would return to the company's accounts.

Following the prosecution several types of financial circuits have been created to conceal the true nature and source of the amounts which were returned to the company's accounts. A total amount of 22.424.284.7 lei was laundered through these fictitious commercial and financial circuits.

The evidence administered in the cases in question showed that the administrators, managing directors and chief financial officers of the Publimedia International SA, Mediafax Group SA, Mediafax SA and Apropo Media SA, have acted following the constant requests of defendant Sarbu Adrian, who owned those companies, to find concrete methods to avoid paying the taxes owed to the state, requests addressed as the unwritten law of the group was not to pay taxes. Also, their actions were caused by the need to ensure the money that defendant Sarbu Adrian constantly demanded in order to cover his personal expenses".

Prosecutors are also saying that between December 9th, 2009 - June 23rd, 2014, Adrian Sarbu concealed personal earnings resulted from transactions with the CME group, thus avoiding his fiscal debts, as the consolidated budget of the state suffered a loss of 11,255,092 lei.

 Orlando Nicoara in 2014: "Mediafax Group pays its taxes on time"

Orlando Nicoara, former managing director of SC Mediafax Group SA, Mediafax SA and Apropo Media SRL, currently being arraigned by the prosecutors on charges of tax evasion, embezzlement and money laundering, posted a reply to the comments posted on the BURSA website in response to the article "The open letter addressed to finance minister Ioana-Maria Petrescu", claiming that Mediafax Group was paying its taxes on time: "In the same spirit of correctness that you call on, I think it would be fair if you mentioned that Mediafax Group pays its taxes on time, both its current taxes as well as those for which it was granted a rescheduling. The rescheduling of taxes is a normal procedure, and any other company can resort to this solution for paying its taxes, of course, as long as it complies with the laws which regulate such a form of payment. Considering that your entire article is based on the claim that Mediafax Group isn't paying its taxes, a statement which is untrue, as I've said above, please make the necessary corrections in the article".

In response to the statements made by Mr. Nicoara, BURSA published the evolution of the outstanding debts of Mediafax Group SA, obtained through journalistic means, since the incorporation of the company, in August 2010, and up to the last quarter of 2014 (see chart).

The chart showed that a progressive accumulation of the unpaid liabilities existed, since the incorporation of the company, for three years, and then two quarters of slight reductions of the amount of outstanding liabilities occurred.

In their indictment, prosecutors now claim that tax evasion, money laundering and embezzlement were common offenses within the group.

Orlando Nicoara.

That's some nerve, isn't it?
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. The losses of the sides during the recent military actions in the line of contact of Nagorno Karabakh-Azerbaijan are the following:

Adversarys losses: 18 tanks, 3 battle vehicles, 1 military/engineering hardware, 2 helicopters, 6 UAVs, 1 MM-21 artillery system, more than 300 casualties. Number of wounded has yet to be clarified.

Nagorno Karabakh losses: 7 tanks, 20 casualties, 6 of whom officers and non-commissioned officers, 72 wounded, 8 of whom officers and non-commissioned officers. 4 casualties among civilians, 1 of them a child.

As Armenpress reports, this data was published by the Defense Army Operative Division head, Colonel Viktor Arstamyan during a press conference in the operative information center in Stepanakert. The Colonel stressed that the Defense Army forces are combat-ready and are able to carry out their military duty.

Regarding the territories, Viktor Arstamyan noted that the depth of the adversarys penetration is 200-300 meters, and there are no settlements there. Currently 5 military positions are under the adversarys control in the Kazakhlar-Nyuzger direction, and 3 positions in the Talish-Matakhi-Tapkatakoyunlu direction.

On early morning of April 3, the adversary carried out new attacks in the Horadiz-Nyuzger direction by using armored vehicles. Defense Army units and civilian settlements in Martakert and Talish were bombarded. These attacks were suppressed. The battles in the Kazakhlar-Nyuzger and Tapkarakoyunlu-talish directions continued throughout the day. On the morning of April 4 the adversary carried out new attacks by using armored battle vehicles. The attacks were blocked. Battles continued throughout the day, Viktor Arstamyan said.

He informed that the adversary for the first time fired the TOS heavy flamethrower system, which had no result. The adversary tried to use a UAV, which was destroyed by the Defense Army. The adversary is widely using UAVs as reconnaissance striking machines. The Defense Army has destroyed some of them.
Delhi-based company Promto has launched the city's first ever eco-friendly two-wheeler electric bike-taxi service in the national capital to address the gap of last mile connectivity for local commuters. In the first phase, Promto has deployed a fleet of 20 battery operated bikes, which will be available from Connaught Place to give rides within a radius of five km with a minimal charge of Rs. 5 per km. The ambitious team of four at Promto - Nikhil Malik, Karan Chadha, Pawneesh Rampal and Romesh Kumar - decided to roll out a greener way of tackling Delhi's ongoing war against air pollution through battery operated bikes equipped with in-built GPS systems, verified and well-mannered drivers as and when required. Commenting on the launch, Nikhil Malik, promoter of Promto said: "As the capital is heading towards its second phase of odd-even rule among numerous other initiatives of tackling pollution, we have come up with our eco-friendly take of curbing pollution." Promto will help single office goers, students and general commuters experience the advantages of switching over to zero polluting electric mobility and reach last mile destinations from a public point such as metro stations or a busy bus terminal. To ensure safety measures, we have in place a comprehensive insurance policy worth up to Rs. one lakh for drivers as well as the passenger for the duration of the bike ride," he added. Meanwhile, all drivers at Promto go through stringent background verification and training on aspects of safety and efficiency. Taking care of hygiene concerns, commuters will be provided with disposable hair nets to use underneath the helmets provided by them. Promto is looking at expanding it to 500 battery-operated bikes in another six months and 10,000 electric bikes in the next three years. In the first few hours of the launch, the companys call centre saw a number of queries from office goers, students and tourists, and saw a booking of 107 orders till 12:28 PM on the launch day itself.

Source : BS Motoring
has sold its civil engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) business to Thailand's GP Group, headed by Kirit Shah, in a Rs 250-crore deal. GP will invest in tranches of Rs 26 crore and Rs 224 crore into Gammon Retail Infra Pvt Ltd, the group's EPC arm, and reconstitute the latter's board of directors. The deal is expected to be completed in 12 months.

In December last year, had informed the stock exchanges that its lenders would convert Rs 245 crore of debt to a 60.1 per cent equity stake under the Strategic Debt Restructuring norms. The company has been restructuring its nearly Rs 15,000 crore of debt through the corporate debt restructuring mechanism since September 2013.

Read more from our special coverage on "GAMMON INDIA" Gammon India to invest up to Rs 675 cr in Gammon Power

As part of the package, Gammons 19-lender consortium agreed to divide the company into three parts  power transmission and distribution, the EPC unit and all residual businesses.

The current market capitalisation is Rs 477 crore. The promoters holding stood at 13.07 per cent; institutions and non-institutions held 67.5 and 19.4 per cent, respectively. The stock closed on Monday at Rs 13.56 on the BSE exchange, up 3.8 per cent.

The company's board has also approved divestment of up to 30 per cent of its share holding (56 per cent) in Gammon Infrastructure Projects, held through a wholly owned subsidiary, Gammon Power. The said shares have been pledged with lenders as security for the financial facilities extended by ICICI and IDBI Bank. The company will use the sale proceeds to repay both these banks.

The company expects the completion of sale or disposal within six to 12 months.

In October 2014, rating agency CARE had downgraded Gammons loans (Rs 11,304 crore) and debentures (Rs 324 crore) to D, a default grade, from C. This was after delays in servicing of interest on non-convertible debentures and overdrawals in fund-based limits.

Liquidity was constrained by delays in recoveries from customers and project delays, resulting in high inventory. It blocked working capital funds and there were cost-overruns.
Industries in Gujarat have elicited mixed response over recent cuts in electricity tariff and natural gas prices in the state.While the ones using conventional energy being distributed through the four state-run discoms have found the tariff cut unsatisfactory, those consuming compressed natural gas (CNG) have welcomed the move.

Recently, in accordance with New Domestic Natural Gas Pricing Guidelines, 2014 issued by Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MoPNG), domestic natural gas price stood revised from $3.82 per mmbtu to $3.06 per mmbtu at 'Gross Calorific Value (GCV)' basis. Following the same, players like state-run Gujarat Gas Company Limited (GGCL) and Adani Gas Limited (AGL) slashed prices for CNG by 90 paise per kg and Rs 73 paise per kg, respectively.

On the other hand, state power regulator Gujarat Electricity Regulatory Commission (GERC) recently reduced by 10 paise per unit for all residential consumers and 14 paise of HT consumers in Gujarat. With GERC also capping the FPPPA charges at Rs 1.35 per unit as against the present FPPPA of Rs 1.98 per unit. for the consumers of private sector power producer, Torrent Power Limited, the latter revised downwards by 18 paise per unit for power consumers of all the categories in Ahmedabad, Surat and Gandhinagar cities.

However, according to Jitu Vakharia, president of South Gujarat Textile Processors Association (SGTPA), the cut would result in cost savings of around two per cent for industrial members of the association. "The cost saving would be hardly negligible. We were expecting the tariff cut to be more, given the fall in overall fuel prices such as coal and others," said Vakharia.

GGCL on Friday had slashed prices of CNG to Rs 44.75 per kg from Rs 45.65 per kg, while that for piped natural gas (PNG) came down from Rs 26.35 per standard cubic metre (scm) to Rs 23.58 per scm. Consequently, Adani Gas revised CNG prices in Ahmedabad and Vadodara to Rs 45.80 per kg from Rs 46.53 per kg including all taxes while price of PNG (domestic) was revised to Rs. 19.96 per scm excluding VAT from Rs. 22.69 per scm excluding VAT, with effect from midnight of April 3, 2016.

Welcoming the move, B K Patel, president of Morbi Dhuva Glaze Tiles Association said that the price cut in CNG would result in savings of about 7-8 per cent in costs. "While the price cut does not synchronise with the global price fall, nevertheless, it is a welcome move.

The industry had been reeling under rising input costs. Fuel costs tend to be around 35 per cent of overall costs for the industry," Patel said. With around 500 units, the Morbi ceramic cluster pegs a turnover of Rs 2000 crore annually, with substantial exports share.
It is not only Flipkart and Amazon which are trying to restructure their seller universe after the 25 per cent cap on vendors, part of the guidelines issued by the department of industrial policy & promotion (DIPP) on 100 per cent foreign direct investment (FDI) in e-commerce.

Jabong, Zivame, Koovs and Limeroad are among those in the sector with significant inventory and backed by foreign investors, exploring options to comply with the guidelines, wherein DIPP has said, "FDI is not permitted in the inventory-based model of e-commerce.

None of the marketplace entities operating in India as an inventory-based model would ever admit to this, from fear of being branded as not compliant with the present guidelines, said Amarjeet Singh, partnertax, KPMG in India.

There have been select third-party vendors which have been carrying inventory on behalf of the platform owners listed as marketplaces, according to Singh. While a transition could be painful for some, a majority of the marketplace entities can achieve it with minimal changes in their business model, he said.

According to sector insiders, a majority of online fashion accessories and apparel companies, including Jabong and Zivame, own a sizable chunk of inventory. Fashion portal Koovs follows a completely inventory-led model. Myntra, acquired by Flipkart in 2014, has inventory but owned by a separate entity which is not related to the marketplace, said a sector watcher. It is then sold to vendors hosted on the marketplace. They have other business models at play as well, he said. Myntra could not be reached for comment.

Jabong is believed to follow a hybrid model of inventory and marketplace but is trying to move towards the latter format. Koovs refused to comment.

Recently, taking a rap at Indias largest e-grocer, Bigbasket, Future Group's chief executive, Kishore Biyani, said the online portal should immediately shut shop under the new guidelines, as it owns the inventory it sells. While Bigbasket claims it complies with all guidelines and regulations, other entities say such models in the grocery segment do exist.

We have a pure-play marketplace model. We source from supermarkets, hyperlocal grocers and do not own any inventory. However, there are companies which do own inventory and they would have to make changes in the way they function, said Milind Sharma, co-founder and vice-president at PepperTap.

Legal experts believe a company would have to either restructure the business by a slump sale or a court process. Historically, FDI has been allowed in pure-play marketplaces (business to business companies) and not in business to consumer companies. Press Note 3, 2016, while clarifying the position, has also defined an e-commerce entity to broadly mean a company which is foreign owned and controlled (FOCC), said Ganesh Prasad, partner at Khaitan & Co.

The contours of PN32016 would only apply to FOCCs engaged in the business of e-commerce and not to an Indian-owned or controlled company, says Prasad. An FOCC engaged in the business of e-commerce might have to explore options of restructuring its business by a slump sale or a court process. A transaction reversal might also be considered but the practical challenges of returning inventory to suppliers needs to be explored.



However, the legal firm made a distinction for private labels that many e-commerce companies have under their banners. "Private labels can be owned by marketplaces and are different from the inventory sought to be captured by the recent guidelines.



While a company can seek legal recourse and interpretation of PN32016, with respect to retrospective applicability, one must bear in mind that policy decisions of the government might not come under a court of law, Khaitan & Co said. That said, specific post facto approvals from the Foreign Investment Promotion Board and compounding of offences from the Reserve Bank might also be an option for existing inventory-based models of e-commerce companies, said Mukund Srikanth, senior associate, Khaitan & Co.

INVESTORS' GALAXY

Koovs: Exicom Telesystems (Singapore), Bready, Henderson Global



Exicom Telesystems (Singapore), Bready, Henderson Global Zivame: IDG Ventures, Kalaari Capital, Unilazer Ventures



IDG Ventures, Kalaari Capital, Unilazer Ventures Jabong: Investment AB Kinnevik, Rocket Internet SE



Investment AB Kinnevik, Rocket Internet SE Limeroad: ILightspeed Venture Partners, Matrix Partners, Tiger Global

Jabong, Zivame, Koovs and Limeroad are among those with significant inventory and backed by foreign investors
In the first judgment in the coal block allocation scam case, a special court has awarded four-year jail term to R C Rungta and R S Rungta, chairman and director, respectively, in Jharkhand Ispat Private Ltd (JIPL).

The court also imposed Rs 5 lakh fine on each of the convicts held guilty for deceiving and defrauding the government to bag a coal block in Jharkhand. Besides, a fine of Rs 25 lakh was imposed on JIPL, also convicted in the case.

This is the first coal block allocation scam case in which the special court, set up to exclusively deal with coal scams, has delivered its judgment. After a Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report in 2012 alleged Rs 1.86 lakh crore windfall gain to companies, the CBI had started probe against allotment of coal

JIPL and the Rungtas were earlier put on trial by the court, which had framed charges against them for securing allotment of North Dhadu coal block in Jharkhand allegedly on the basis of false and forged documents.

In its chargesheet, the CBI said JIPL "grossly misrepresented" a number of aspects before the steel and coal ministries to inflate their claim, thereby inducing coal ministry officials and the screening committee to allocate the coal block to them.

In its 132-page judgement, the court had held that the "intention to defraud on the part of accused persons is writ large on the face of record."

JIPL runs a steel plant at Ramgarh in Jharkhand. R S Rungta had last year moved an application before a special court seeking to summon former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former Minister of State for Coal Dasari Narayana Rao as witnesses in his defence in the case. Singh was also the Cabinet minister for coal at the time of allocation of mine. The court, however, rejected the plea.

The court acquitted both R S Rungta and R C Rungta for the alleged offences under IPC sections 467 (forgery of valuable security), 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating) and 471 (using a forged document as genuine) saying they were not proved against them.

WHO ARE THE RUNGTA BROTHERS?



R C Rungta is the chairman of the R C Rungta Group. JIPL is one of the six fully owned companies under the Rungta Group. The websites of these two companies mention R C Rungta as the promoter who hails from the reputed business family having business network across the country and having Interest in mining, highway and civil project, steel industry, cement industry, manufacturing of irrigation system, leasing and finance, transportation and education etc. The website also mentions him as an eminent industrialist of Jharkhand, with business experience of more than 20 years. There is no mention of his brother R S Rungta on any of the websites even though the court submissions mention him as one of directors in JIPL.
Infosys Foundation, philanthropic arm of Infosys, on Monday said it would provide grants of Rs 24 crore over the next three years to the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Delhi to establish the Infosys Center for Artificial Intelligence on its Okhla campus.The centre will initially be headed by Dr Srikanth Saripalli, an expert in robotics and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), currently spending his sabbatical at IIIT-Delhi. It will facilitate work on both fundamental and applied aspects of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and focus on areas such as, robotics, machine learning, computer vision, AI for software systems, large-scale data analytics, etc. Several faculty members of IIIT-Delhi will be associated with the center, and research will be conducted by PhD scholars, post-docs, students, and visiting researchers, a statement said.

"Research is the backbone of our scientific advancements - our collective aspiration.

Research requires investments in time and effort. The objective of the Infosys Center for Artificial Intelligence is to facilitate research in Artificial Intelligence that will greatly benefit our society. The team, led by Dr Saripalli, comprises some of the most skilled research experts. Our endeavor is to facilitate the creative exchange of ideas in collaboration with IIIT-Delhi and the government. We will also provide training opportunities for students and teachers in AI and robotics," Sudha Murty, Chairperson, said.
Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), which has been the site of mass protests of late over charges of sedition levelled against some of its students, is the third best university in the country, a new ranking from the Ministry of Human Resource Development shows. Hyderabad Central University, which has also been rocked by student protests, has been ranked fourth best in the country.

HRD Minister Smriti Irani on Monday released the Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), a domestic list of top universities, ahead of the new academic year. The ranking system, evaluates higher educational institutions in Engineering, Management, Universities & Pharmacy categories. The information submitted by various universities was vetted by the Bureau of Accreditation, an independent agency.

The Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru has been adjudged the best in the country, followed by the Mumbai-based Institute of Chemical Technology, the ministry tweeted. However, both of them are only institutes, and are technically not designated as universities.

The Engineering category was dominated by the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), led by IIT-Madras, and followed by IIT Bombay and IIT Kharagpur in second and third places, respectively.

In the management category, too, the Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) took top honours, with IIM Bengaluru taking pole position, ahead of IIM (Ahmedabad) and IIM (Calcutta).

The complete list is available here: https://www.nirfindia.org/univ




In an effort to instill a sense of respect and aspiration in the society towards skilled manpower, the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship is planning a convocation where Prime Minister Narendra Modi will distribute degrees and certificates to young men and women who have passed with distinction courses like nursing, drilling, welding, carpentry and other such trades.

Speaking at the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) Annual Session 2016, Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Rajiv Pratap Rudy today said the intent was to create aspirational value to imparting and learning of skills. "You would see these young men and women in gowns and academic regalia being given certificates by the PM. We want to make skilling more aspirational," Rudy said, pointing out how the PM created a separate ministerial portfolio for skill development instead of it being a department in the Labour ministry.

The minister said that according to the Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) data a mere 4.5 per cent of India's workforce is identified as skilled. "Compare this with 55 per cent in the US, 68 per cent in the UK, Japan's 80 per cent and 96 per cent of South Korea's workforce is skilled," Rudy said. He said this was because the Indian society had a bias against being "skilled" and in favour of being "educated".

The Minister said it was time that the industry in India recognized that it had to lead the way in training manpower, while the government will play the role of an enabler. Rudy said that of the over 6,000 blocks in the country as many as 2,500 had no Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs). He said that while Kota in Rajasthan had 300 ITIs, in the tribal district of Palamau in Jharkhand, a district affected by Left Wing Extremism, there is only one ITI.

"My job is to make the industry a partner in training of manpower. The government is not looking for money, we want industry's partnership. Do pitch in, we will provide you a red carpet" Rudy said during a session also addressed by Shobhana Kamineni, Executive Vice Chairperson of Apollo Hospitals, and by Genpact's Pramod Bhasin, who is currently chairman of CII's committee on skill development.

Rudy said the country had 13,000 ITIs which produce 1.3 million youth trained in 11 trades. He said according to one data there were 300 million Indians who need skilled training. The Minister said it requires Rs 20,000 to train each such person, and the total amount required over the next five years to train all of them is Rs 6 lakh crore, or approximately Rs 1 lakh crore a year. "My ministry has a measly Rs 1,700 crore," Rudy said, underlining the need for the industry to lead the way.

The minister said there was enormous demand for trained manpower. He said in the next five years the construction sector would need 30 million trained hands, while the retail sector was in the need of 17 million trained people. Every year there was requirement of nearly two million trained commercial and non-commercial drivers, Rudy said. He said 500 driver training institutes with modern simulators will be set up across India in the next six months.
The central government wants to take one more shot at land reforms. Wiser after the botched attempt to change the land legislation through Parliament last year, the new approach will try revamping the programme for digitalisation of records at the state level, including possible use of drones.

The government has been attempting for a few years to bring some order into land records by converting those into digital ones but the difference this time is the explicit backing it has been provided by PM Narendra Modi. To make it a top draw in the competing world of bureaucrat led schemes in India a nod from the Prime Minister was needed, said an official from his office. "It was very necessary," the officer said.

This was secured last week by making it the top agenda item in the monthly review meeting which Modi holds with secretaries of the central government, where the chief secretaries of states also tune in through video conferencing. A bland release issued after the meeting noted Modi, "called for integration of all land records with Aadhaar at the earliest. He emphasised that this is extremely important... ". The wordings are, however, meant to make the state government bureaucracies to respond with alacrity. The digitisation programme aims to make it easy for land to be traded in India, instead of being ringed in by state level silos.

One key pitch by the departments has been that it will aid the success of the Make in India programme since it will provide industry the accurate rights, cutting court battles. This will cut down the need for states to acquire land. It will also make the ambitious scheme to reach fertiliser subsidy to the farmer error free since it will now be calculated against his real holdings than what the fragmented land records show.

Critically the programme sits well with the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act of 2013 passed under the UPA government in 2013 to replace Land Acquisition Act, 1894.

Surprisingly the renewed push for digitisation happens when the Budget allocation at the central level for land titling has dropped off: Rs 339.75 crore was provided in the Budget for FY14 for the erstwhile National Land Records Modernisation Programme but has since come down to Rs 90.49 crore by FY16 of which only Rs 36 crore was spent. In FY17 under the new programme it will rise only to Rs 150 crore. An officer in the ministry of rural development explained that since the programme can only be executed by state governments the money with the Centre was a red herring, meant to finance studies in the sector. The support from the Centre will be technical like coordinating with departments and importing best practices from abroad, all, however, riding on the sort of push that the Prime Minister has offered.

The digital plan involves several components. At the first level, the states would begin to map the rural land using a combination of aerial and satellite imaging allied with ground markers. Till now, states have only changed their written records to computerised ones under the digitalisation programme. Some states have also asked to use drones for the purpose but the clearance has to be provided by the home ministry."We are examining it since there are security issues involved", said a spokesman from the home ministry. At the next phase the data would be matched with existing land records held by the district administrations. Currently there are no ground level observation techniques that can identify land holdings with a precision of less than a foot. For the farmers this difference can mean a lot.

As the price of land near urban boundaries after the passage of the LARR act has shot up, such errors can mean differences of a few lakh rupees in the price of even an acre. The new technology for which the states have begun to put out tenders will reduce the errors to nearly zero. This will give greater power to the farmers when they decide to sell land or when they negotiate for loans and insurance policies for their land. But the more dramatic change would come up in the next stage. The states will then begin to link the data on land holdings across districts. This is likely to prove contentious as it can immediately throw up data on how much land a person holds across districts.

The concentration of land holdings by middle level politicians, powerful bureaucrats and others could potentially come out in the open provided the states decide to make the data public. Since the Benami Act enjoins on the states to share such data with the tax departments there are more possibilities of the data coming out in the public than not.

The final element of the plan involves seeding the data with the Aadhaar numbers which will conclusively prove the identity of the land holders.

This huge source of information will not only throw up information on the perceived inequality of land holdings in rural India it will also make it easier to create a redistributive policies like imposing tax on land holdings above a threshold level - measures that had been jettisoned in the 1970s and 1980s. "Once actual titling begins to roll out instead of presumptive ones for land, it will show plenty of inconsistencies between records and actual holdings", said Rita Sinha, former secretary, department of land resources at the centre.

Along with the rural development ministry, the finance ministry has also got interested in the project, mainly because of the subsidy angle. The precise identification of who owns a piece of land and its usage can be used to decide how much compensation for fertiliser subsidy should be handed out. For the finance ministry this can translate into sizable savings from the current Rs 70,000 crore provisioned for in budget 2016-17.

NARENDRA MODI'S LAND RECORD DIGITISATION PUSH
The department of telecommunications (DoT) will soon approach the Cabinet for its nod to reduce spectrum usage charges (SUC) to three per cent from existing five per cent of the adjusted gross revenues earned by telecom companies.

The highest policymaking body of the department, Telecom Commission, in its meeting last week, cleared Trais proposal to charge SUC at three per cent on spectrum that will be bought in the next round of auction.

It will be sent to the Cabinet for final approval and will be applicable to the spectrum bought in the auction this year," a senior ministry official said.

The finance ministry will be involved in the process as the reduction would mean lesser revenue for the government.

The government is expected to conduct the next round of auctions, where the sought after 700 Mhz spectrum will be up for grabs for the first time, around August. However, no official announcement has been made on the dates.
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. The Foreign Minister of Nagorno Karabakh Karen Mirzoyan spoke about the current situation in Nagorno Karabakh line of contact live on CNN.

As Armenpress reports, citing CNN, the Minister gave clarifications while speaking to CNNs Becky Anderson.

In the early hours of April 2 Azerbaijan initiated an unprecedented escalation at the line of contact between the armed forces of Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan, using military equipment, artillery and aircraft, NKR Foreign Minister Karen Mirzoyan told CNN.

The Azerbaijani side fired artillery shells not only on the military positions, but also the populated areas, which resulted in many casualties, including among the civilian population, Mirzoyan added.

Elmar Mammadyarovs stated that Azerbaijan is most interested in a peaceful settlement, but said we need a result from the point of view that our territories are under occupation.

In response to the statement, the NKR Foreign Minister said its not a matter of territories; its a matter of self-determination. Twenty five years ago these people voted for independence, and now the current regime in Baku is trying to oppress this people not only by diplomatic, but also military means, which is a dangerous development.

We are looking for a diplomatic settlement, for a mechanism that will provide us with an opportunity of co-existence in this region, the NKR Foreign Minister said.

Karen Mirzoyan added that Karabakh highly appreciates the efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group, the international community, but added that any unaddressed calls to both parties are received by Azerbaijan not as a sign of concern, not as a sign that its time to stop the violence, but as a sign that it could continue its policy.
Ahead of the Supreme Court hearing on Vijay Mallya's loan repayment plan on April 7, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) is preparing questions for the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) regarding the restructuring of corporate debt of Kingfisher Airlines (KFA).

The agency has come across vital clues against banks while furnishing several loan documents submitted by 17 lenders in connection with the Rs 6,963-crore loans (excluding interest) extended to KFA.

"During the verification of the credit documents, some key issues have been raised which need to be answered," a highly placed source in the ED told Business Standard.

"The major contention was with regards to clearance of the corporate loan restructuring to KFA," he said.

Under corporate debt restructuring (CDR) norms, restructuring needs RBI approval. The ED wants to know if due-diligence was followed before giving clearance to banks.

These apart, there have been cases where fake bills of entries were used for huge remittances. "We need to understand the checks and balances of the foreign exchange movements in all these years," said an enforcement sleuth on condition of anonymity.

In 2010, RBI widened CDR to include the aviation sector, and the agency would like to know the scale of the policy decision. This was used by airlines, including Kingfisher, to restructure debt.

Meanwhile, ED issued a third summons to Mallya to present himself before its investigators on April 9 in Mumbai for questioning. Mallya had earlier sought time till May to depose expressing his inability to keep the scheduled date of April 2.
As the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government pads up to enter its third year in office, its focus would be on key areas such as banking, defence, retail, manufacturing, infrastructure and job creation.

If the first two years were about announcing signature schemes and campaigns, and setting the agenda for the NDA, the next three are going to be about getting results from the schemes such as Make in India, Swachh Bharat, Smart Cities or Digital India.

Consolidation of what has already been announced, rather than any new big-bang scheme, is expected to be the way forward, senior government officials told Business Standard.

Boost for banking

Consolidation in the banking sector is high on the priority list of the government, because of the accumulating non-performing assets (NPAs).

Due diligence is in progress and the government is giving it a big push, said a source. Banking has been a weak link in the first two years of the NDA rule and the sector must show results in the remaining three years.

Direction to defence

In internal assessments by the government, defence is also a sector that must pick up speed.

The pace of defence acquisitions has been a cause of worry, an official pointed out. At the centre of concern is an estimated $10-billion (Rs 66,000 crore) deal to buy 36 French-built Rafale frontline combat aircraft - the agreement was signed but it is yet to be finalised over issues such as pricing and determination of life-cycle costs and liabilities.

Prime Minister Modi had visited Paris last year and had announced India's plans to buy the fighter jets directly from the French government.

Retail reform

Retail sector reform is likely to continue too, officials indicated.

The government could even drop its hard stand on foreign investment in multi-brand retail or supermarket chains such as Walmart and Tesco, though not immediately.

While the preceding United Progressive Alliance government in 2012 permitted 51 per cent foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail, subject to approval by state governments concerned, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led NDA has been opposed to it.

There are ideological differences on FDI in multi-brand retail over fears of job losses in neighbourhood stores, but the government is open to the idea of change.

As a test case, 100 per cent FDI was permitted in marketplace e-commerce a week ago.

Even as companies funded by marquee international investors have operated in the e-commerce sector for several years, there was no policy so far. While the conditions that came with the e-commerce marketplace policy said platform owners (Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal and others) should not influence pricing of products directly or indirectly, a senior officer pointed out that pricing was driven by the market and the government was unlikely to dictate norms on discounting or deals offered in the online space.

Job generation

While job creation had been a focus area for the BJP even during 2014 Lok Sabha election campaign, major results are yet to be seen. In fact, 134,000 jobs were created in eight labour-intensive industries during July to September 2015 according to the latest Labour Bureau survey. It was the lowest compared to same quarters in the earlier years since 2009. The government is keen to deliver its poll promise on job creation - BJP had said its goal was to create 250 million jobs in a decade.

Focus on infrastructure

Even as quicker environment ministry nods has reduced the number of blocked road and infrastructure projects, the government has to stay focused on the growth of projects, according to a senior civil servant. In fact, this government's concern linked to the banking sector is also because of its thrust on infrastructure. "Banks' inability to finance big infrastructure projects is a worry," an official said.

Eye on manufacturing

Along with infrastructure, another area which will continue to remain in the limelight is manufacturing.

Modi government's Make in India has been a high-pitch campaign in the recent past, including an event in Mumbai where company heads gathered from across the world.

While some promises have been made and pacts signed, serious investment is yet to come into manufacturing. The defence sector is crucial for Make in India as well, and that hasn't gained traction yet, according to an official.

"We need results in job creation, manufacturing and infrastructure to clock double-digit growth," an official said while summing up the mood of the NDA government as it readies to complete two years in office in May.
Japan Credit Rating Agency (JCR) on Monday affirmed ratings for India's sovereign rating at "BBB+" on buoyant economic growth, improving macroeconomic and ample foreign exchange reserves.

However, the ratings are constrained by the bottlenecks to productivity improvement and export growth, notably in infrastructure and business environment.

The ratings agency also flagged looming deterioration of the soundness of public sector banks (PSBs) and strong need for fiscal consolidation.

It has affirmed both long-term foreign and domestic currency issuer rating at "BBB+". The outlook of the ratings is stable. The environment surrounding emerging market economies was increasingly becoming difficult. India also confronts headwinds such as declining exports, a sharp fall in foreign portfolio investment inflow and currency depreciation, JCR said.

Nevertheless, thanks to the fallen oil prices and its carefully calibrated monetary policy, India has seen alleviation in inflationary pressure and the current account deficit. Along with the improving macroeconomic stability, the economy has grown robustly at more than seven per cent year-on-year led by domestic demand, it added.

The central government has been pressing ahead with modernisation of the economic system by improving the business environment and facilitating competition while maintaining fiscal discipline.

The ratings agency said India is a large country with a population of nearly 1.3 billion and inherits the legacy of vested interests and bureaucracy. It is not easy to pursue measures that will require law amendments as the ruling alliance is a minority in the upper house of Parliament.

Moreover, the PSBs, which account for 70 per cent of the total banking system, have seen their non-performing loans surge, making it inevitable for the government to inject capital. In order to sustain robust economic growth for the medium- to long-term, it will be crucial for the government to tackle these structural issues effectively.

JCR will pay attention to the authorities' initiatives and their progress, especially regarding the introduction of a nationwide Goods and Services Tax (GST) and banking reforms.
Amid rising cases of wilful default on loans, including the one by liquor baron Vijay Mallya, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said Monday industry is fighting a battle of credibility and it should adopt positive and ethical approach towards NPAs or bad debts.

"Indian industry is also fighting a major battle for its own credibility. Some recent events haven't added to their credibility," he said, without naming Mallya who has defaulted on Rs 9,000 crore loan and has gone to the UK to avoid action by investigative agencies and lenders.

"In this entire debate which is going on non-performing assets, I am quite conscious of the fact that an adverse business environment can lead to non-performing assets.

"When the cycle reverses, the NPAs can also be reversed but the approach of the leaders of the industry will certainly have to be always positive and ethical because it is that approach which is going to add to their credibility," he said while addressing while addressing the CII Annual session here.

There are about 7,686 wilful defaulters who owe Rs 66,190 crore to public sector banks. Of these, suits have been filed in 6,816 cases and FIR has been lodged 1,669 cases.

Banks have initiated action under the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act (Sarfaesi) Act in 584 such cases.

Jaitley also said the government has been trying to address the problem of NPAs in sectors like steel, textile, highways and infrastructure, which are on account of economic slowdown.

"In the last one year, pro-active steps have been taken as far as steel industry is concerned, the revival of highway industry is concerned, the sugar industry is concerned, the step which has been taken in power sector, each of these are going to lead to better consequence as far as these sectors are concerned in coming one year," he said.

The Finance Minister also said there are still some sectors which have been adversely impacted by business environment around the world, more particularly in this country.

"The government and industry will have to put their heads together, work in tandem to address each of the sectoral concerns. Obviously, those sectoral concern have fallout on the overall economy," Jaitley said.

The gross Non Performing Assets (NPAs) of public sector banks (PSBs) increased from 5.43% as on March 2015 to 7.30% as on December 2015. Gross NPAs of PSBs increased from Rs 2,67,065 lakh crore in March to Rs 3,61,731 lakh crore in December.

Talking about the stalled project, he said, the Prime Minister's Office is directly looking at them.

A large number of them have got started in several sector, he said.
After the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority fixed ceiling prices of 103 formulations last week, an immediate impact of Rs 647 crore (price to retailer) is estimated. The cardiac segment is the most hit, with a loss pegged at Rs 250 crore.

Data analysed by AIOCD-AWACS, market research wing of the All India Organisation of Chemists and Druggists (AIOCD), representing about 500,000 medicine sellers across India, shows the coverage value of these 103 formulations is 4,839 crore or 5.3 per cent of the in the country.

Read more from our special coverage on "PHARMA MARKET" Drug ban may erode 12% of pharma market turnover

After the cardiac segment's loss of Rs 250 crore comes anti-infectives at Rs 123 crore and neuro-CNS at Rs 84 crore.

At present, the government caps prices of essential drugs based on the simple average of all medicines with sales of more than one per cent. The government had notified the Drug Price Control Order, covering 680 formulations, with effect from May 15, 2014, replacing the 1995 order that regulated prices of only 74 bulk drugs.

Viranchi Shah, vice-chairman of the Gujarat State Board of the Indian Drug Manufacturers' Association, complained while the prices of formulations had been capped, there was hardly any control on input prices.

By AIOCD analysis, the coverage value for Sun Pharma is Rs 348 crore. For Lupin, Zydus, Cipla and Pfizer, the cap would cover drugs worth Rs 301 crore, Rs 225 crore , Rs 213 crore and Rs 163 crore, respectively.
Talks between the Congress and DMK for the upcoming assembly elections in Tamil Nadu concluded here, with the two parties agreeing that the Congress will contest in 41 constituencies.

Senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad today met DMK President M Karunanidhi and other party seniors, including M K Stalin at Chennai. After the meeting he told media persons that DMK has allocated 41 seats in Congress.

He expressed confidence that under leadership of Karunanidhi, DMK will form the Government in the state. Azad noted that in Tamil Nadu it had always been the trend that if one term AIADMK rules, next term it will be DMK's turn, "so this time we are confident that under Karunanidhi's leadership, a new government will be formed". Read more from our special coverage on "TAMIL NADU ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS" AIADMK to field 227 candidates, Jaya to fight from R K Nagar

BJP national secy, 2 state VPs in first list of TN poll nominees

In the first round, the Congress had demanded 63 seats, the number of seats that was allotted to it in 2011. However the DMK categorically refused to allot 63 seats. The Congress was offered around 30 seats.

Stalin said that today evening DMK and Congress leaders will start discussions over which constituencies the Congress will contest and who will represent the Party.

Till now, the DMK has allocated 54 constituencies to its allies, including Congress. The Dravidian party continues to hold discussion with other regional parties. Totally Tamil Nadu has 234 assembly constituencies.

Earlier, the DMK had concluded seat-sharing arrangement with three parties-Indian Union of Muslim League (IUML), MMK and SSP. The party had allotted five seats each to two Muslim parties-IUML and MMK- and one seat to SSP.

It may be noted, after joining hands for 2004 Lok Sabha polls, DMK had walked out of the Congress-led UPA in 2013.

However, the two revived the alliance on February 13, with Azad, in charge of Congress affairs in Tamil Nadu, holding the first round of seat-sharing talks with Karunanidhi on March 25. He met DMK leadership twice in the last few months.

Congress had contested 63 seats in the 2011 elections in alliance with the DMK.
Voting for the first phase of in 18 constituencies in West Bengal and 65 in Assam have begun today. This phase, the first, of elections is crucial for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Assam, as these areas, largely in upper Assam, are mostly populated by the Hindu majority in a state that has the second highest Muslim population in India. Most of the constituencies in West Bengal that will go to polls are in areas affected by Naxalite violence, called the Jangalmahal areas.
In an unprecedented scenario, the Reserve Bank of India has cancelled Governor Raghuram Rajan's meeting with bank chiefs on Tuesday to discuss the monetary policy, as the bankers will be in Delhi to attend the launch of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Standup India initiative.

The bank chiefs have also cancelled the customary media conference after the bi-annual policies.

"Bankers have clearly preferred to attend the PM's function over the Mint Street's key event - the first bi-monthly monetary policy for 2016-17," said a banker.

RBI, in a statement to media, said "due to unavoidable circumstances, the Governor's meeting with bankers as well as the Indian Banks' Association's press conference on April 5, 2016 stand cancelled".

The prime minister will launch the Standup India scheme and its web portal in Noida on Tuesday. When asked, the chief executive of a public sector bank said, Stand-up India pertains to financial inclusion, which is also the aim of the central bank. "Being away does not mean it (the policy event) is low on our priority list. We will very much be watching and studying it for our business. Stand-up India is being launched to promote entrepreneurship among Scheduled Castes/Schedule Tribes and women by providing easy loans of Rs 10-100 lakh," he said.

The scheme is expected to benefit a large number of entrepreneurs from weaker sections of the society as every branch of scheduled commercial banks would issue at least two loans to such entrepreneurs.
The Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh inaugurated a 3-day International Conference & Exhibition on Space under the aegis of Asia Pacific Remote Sensing Symposium" here today. .

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Speaking on the occasion, Dr Jitendra Singh said, the experience gained from various Space missions and its benefits have universal application and therefore, coming together of Space Scientists from different leading centres of the world does not only augur well for todays global world, but would also help in pooling our resources and inputs for a faster progress in the area of Space Technology. He expressed satisfaction at the fact that the major world centre of NASA is working in close collaboration with ISRO with the Indian Space Scientists and not only there is an exchange of scientific visits between the two centres from time to time, but many of Indian origin scientists like Sunita Williams have contributed richly to the NASA. At the same time, he also lauded participation of Space Scientists from France, Japan and China. .

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Dr Jitendra Singh said, it is a matter of pride that during the last two years of the Modi Government, Indias Department of Space and ISRO have been regularly launching foreign satellites from its launching stations at Sriharikota and the collaboration with Space centres across the world has been reinforced due to the personal initiative and interest taken by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi which has resulted in signing of a number of MoUs and further exchange of technical knowhow with countries across the world. .

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At the same time, Dr Jitendra Singh said, ISRO is expanding its activities and is now working with as many as 60 Ministries in Government of India and offering its inputs for developing Smart Cities", laying of new Railway tracks, construction of roads, assessment of soil and agricultural conditions, etc. He said ISRO portals Bhuvan" and MOSDAC" are providing satellite data which is being globally used across the world. .

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Similarly, images provided by Mangalyan Mission are also being borrowed by other Space Centres in the world, he added. .

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The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), along with the Ministry of Earth Sciences and the SPIE (the International Society for Optics and Photonics), is organising the four-day, Asia Pacific Remote Sensing Symposium, 2016 (APRS-2016) beginning today. The Indian Society of Remote Sensing (ISRS), which is a professional society of more than 4000 scientists/researchers, is hosting this Symposium. The symposium aims to focus on the applications of remote sensing technologies for disaster mitigation and to better monitoring of global climate change. The deliberations of the symposium will generate new initiatives and collaborative international efforts. .

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About 100 International participants and 300 National participants are attending the symposium. Many Heads of Space Agency including the Administrator of National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), President of French National Space Agency (CNES), Vice President of Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Vice Administrator of China National Space Administration (CNSA), Director General of EUMETSAT and Mexican Space Agency (AEM) are participating in the Symposium. .

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Todays symposium consisted of Special Plenary session on Next Steps in Space Observations - Vision for International Collaboration" with Chiefs of Many Space Agencies as distinguished speakers followed by a Panel discussion on 'Space, Earth and Humanity'. Another Plenary session on 'Roadmap to Space based Earth Observations & Applications' was held with distinguished speakers from India and abroad. .

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During the symposium, 7 parallel conferences distributed in 80 technical sessions and 10 poster sessions and an International Exhibition will be held. These conferences will be focussing on remote sensing for atmosphere, clouds, and precipitation, land surface and cryosphere, oceans and inland waters, Lidar for environmental monitoring, hyperspectral and ultraspectral technology, techniques and applications, earth observing missions and sensors, modeling of the atmosphere, oceans and interactions, etc. The participants from India and abroad will present their scientific work related to various aspects of remote sensing, the latest developments and applications, discuss cutting-edge technologies, exchange research ideas, and promote international collaboration. .

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The symposium was preceded by two-day pre-symposium tutorials on 'Trends and Challenges in Remote Sensing & Geoinformatics', 'Satellite Meteorology and Data Assimilation', Remote Sensing Optical Sensor Calibration and Characterisation, and 'Designing the Climate Observing System of the future. .

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Later in the evening, Shri A. S. Kiran Kumar, Secretary, Department of Space and Chairman, ISRO, Major General Charles Frank Bolden, Jr., Administrator, NASA and Mr. Jean-Yves Le Gall, President, CNES addressed a Press Conference. .

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Union Minister for Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation Sushri Uma Bharti has said that all sections of the society will have to work together for water conservation. Inaugurating India Water Week 2016 in New Delhi today. The Minister said that water conservation is very essential for the sustainable development of the country. She said that increasing demand for water for various purposes on account of growing population, industrialization and urbanization pose serious challenges of creating facilities for conservation and proper utilization of available water resources. She said, at the same time, the deterioration of the water quality of river water as also of the ground water are serious issues. The likely impact of climate change on water resources adds to our challenges. The Minister said We have to address these issues on priority. Efforts are required at all levels and joint efforts are necessary to ensure that all sections of the society get benefitted from water, the precious gift of the nature to us". Sushri Bharti said Water for All: Striving Together" is not merely the theme for this years India Water Week but also the need of the hour for all of us. .

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Referring to inter-linking of rivers the Water Resources Minister said Government of India is fully committed for water security through implementation of Interlinking of Rivers Projects. She said ever since the Government has come to power in 2014, Interlinking of Rivers (ILR) Programme under National Perspective Plan (NPP) has been taken up on a high Priority in right earnest. Sushri Bharti said I am confident that the work on Ken-Betwa link would commence shortly". .

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Referring to Jal Kranti Abhiyan the Minister said, I wish to pursue water conservation as a mass movement". She said the objectives of Jal Kranti Abhiyan are strengthening and grass root involvement of all stakeholders including Panchayati Raj Institutions and local bodies in the water security and development schemes like Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM) and to encourage the adoption/utilization of traditional knowledge in water resources conservation and its management. .

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Welcoming the participation of Israel as a partner country the Minister said that she considers Israel as her guru" who can teach the world how to save water". .

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The Union Minister for Finance, Corporate Affairs and Information and Broadcasting Shri Arun Jaitely underlined the importance of water conservation in the agricultural development of the country. He said investment in irrigation projects show immediate results vis-a-vis investment in other sectors. Underlining the contribution of agriculture in Indias economy the Minister observed that during the past two years we had erratic monsoon which calls for more attention on water management. While noting that irrigation is a state subject, Shri Jaitely said that centre will extend all out help to states in completing their irrigation projects. .

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Speaking on the occasion Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Shri Prakash Javadekar said that Government has managed to release industrial pollutant flowing into river Ganga by 30 per cent. Union Agriculture Minister Shri Radha Mohan Singh said that per capita availability of water in the country has gone down drastically which requires better water managements efforts. Union Minister for Rural Development, Drinking Water and Sanitation and Panchayati Raj Chaudhary Birendra Singh said the prime concern of the Government is, therefore, not just the creation of additional water related infrastructure but also of ensuring quality, sustainability and efficiency in water supply service. The Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shri Shivraj Singh Chouhan said that his state has extended its full support to the Ken-Betwa river link project. .

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The Agriculture Minister of Israel Mr. Uri Ariel thanked the Government of India for inviting his country as partner country of the event and expressed the hope that India and Israel both will benefit from each others experience in the field of water conservation and management. .

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The Union Water Resources Minister Sushri Bharti also launched a user friendly android based mobile application Jal Sanchayan" which comprises all components of rainwater harvesting in single platform. It allows user to know from location conditions and interactive module enable user to calculate potential rainwater to be harvested in users location. .

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The fourth edition of India Water Week will be observed upto 08 April, 2016. The theme for this years India Water week is Water for all: Striving together". Israel is associated as the partner country for this mega event. About 1500 delegates from India and 20 other countries are attending the conclave. .

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The event has been divided into Seminars (eight nos.), Brainstorming sessions (six nos,), Panel Discussions (seven nos.), Case studies (six nos.) and Side Events (five nos.). These events will take place at ITPO, Pragati Maidan. Apart from this, an Exhibition Water Expo-2016 showcasing the technologies and solutions in water resources sector has also been organised at Hall No. 9, Pragati Maidan for the benefit of delegates. .

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It is a multi-disciplinary conference enriching the theme with dialogue by national and international community alongwith the exhibition. Delegates at the event will be immensely benefitted from Israeli experience in efficient management of water resources as well as other national and international experiences. Many reputed National and International Organizations, Research Institutes, Educational Institutions and NGOs from water resources, agriculture, power sectors etc. are participating in the event to share their knowledge and experience in the sector. Most important stakeholder of water, i.e. farmers from different parts of the country are also participating in this important event as a part of INPIM Programme on Participatory Irrigation Management and share their experiences. .

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The multi-disciplinary dialogue will be addressing the important initiatives of the Water Resources Ministry and priority programmes like Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojna (PMKSY), Jal Kranti Abhiyan, More crop per drop, Interlinking of Rivers, etc. apart from other important topics such as (a) Water and Health managing water quality (b) Agriculture and Irrigation (c) Water and Power hydro and thermal (d) Industrial water efficiency (e) Water supply and sanitation for rural and urban areas (f) Environment, climate change and water resources sector. .

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Partner country Israel will exclusively organise two sessions viz. (i) Role of Micro Irrigation in existing command and (ii) Israel makes in India COEs and commercial success stories, water management. International Commission for Irrigation and Drainage (ICID) has organized first in the series India Irrigation Forum-2016" as a part of India Water Week-2016. .

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Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, Government of India has been organising India Water Week since 2012 as an international event to focus on water related issues. Three editions of India Water Week have been organised so far in 2012, 2013 and 2015. .

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Samir/jk
YEREVAN, APRIL 4, ARMENPRESS. U.S Vice President Joe Biden discussed the situation in Nagorno Karabakh with the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan.

As Armenpress reports, this was stated by the U.S Vice President on his Twitter account.

I told Presidents Sargsyan and Aliyev that the comprehensive settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict is of vital importance for the stability, security and prosperity of those countries, the statement reads.
The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change is organising the 22nd meeting of Brazil, South Africa, India and China, called the BASIC Group. The meeting is being organized in New Delhi on 6th and 7th April 2016. This is the first meeting of the BASIC Group, after the Paris Agreement was adopted in December 2015. The meeting is extremely relevant, as it will help to further consolidate the positions of the countries and secure the interests of developing countries, before the 196 UNFCCC member countries meet for the first time in May 2016 after the adoption of the Paris Agreement. It aims to discuss climate change related issues, including how to take forward the decisions adopted in the Paris Agreement. The Ministers will reflect and deliberate on various provisions of the Paris Agreement and related decisions including Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC), transparency framework for action and support, matters relating to global stocktake, progress towards achieving the 20 C goal and the Pre 2020 Actions and review issues. .

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On the first day of the meeting, negotiators of all four countries will meet and prepare the groundwork for the Ministerial meeting. On April 7, the Ministerial meeting will be followed by a press conference. At the end of the two-day meeting, a Joint Statement will be issued by the Group of Ministers, highlighting the BASIC group position on the way forward for the implementation of the Paris Agreement and its decisions. .

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Minister of State (Independent Charge) of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Mr. Prakash Javadekar, Special Representative for Climate Change Affairs of China, Mr. XieZhenhua, Deputy Minister of the Department of Environmental Affairs of South Africa, Ms. Thomson Barbara and Ambassador Jos Antonio Marcondes de Carvalho, Under Secretary-General for the Environment, Energy, Science and Technology of the Ministry of External Relations of Brazil will be attending the meeting, along with other officials of their country. .

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During the 21st meeting of the BASIC Group held in Beijing, China, in 2015, the Ministers had highlighted the importance of cooperation among developing countries. They had voiced their support for further strengthening common positions of developing countries in Paris through the Group of 77 and China. .

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The President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee will confer the National Geoscience Awards - 2014 tomorrow (April 5, 2016) at a function to be held at Rashtrapati Bhavan at 1300 hrs. .

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The National Geoscience Awards, previously known as the National Mineral Awards, was instituted by the Ministry of Mines in 1966, to honour individuals and teams of scientists for their extraordinary achievements and outstanding contributions in fundamental and applied geosciences and mining and allied fields. .

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Thirty-three geoscientists will receive the National Geoscience Awards (NGA-2014) tomorrow which include one Award for Excellence, one Young Scientist Award and nineteen individual and / or team awards in 16 fields of geosciences. Prof. A.K. Singhvi, Honorary Professor, PRL Ahmadabad will receive the Award for Excellence for his outstanding contributions in the field of Quaternary Geology and Dr. Indra Kumar Sen, Assistant professor, IIT, Kanpur will receive the Young Scientist Award for his contributions in the field of geochemical evolution of earth. .

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The National Geoscience Awards carries a cash prize and a certificate. Till date (i.e. up to NGA-2013), seven hundred twenty one geoscientists have been honoured with the National Geoscience Awards. .

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Indian Naval Ships Tir, Sujata, Sail Training Ship (STS) Sudarshini alongwith Indian Coast Guard Ship Varuna, comprising the 1st Training Squadron entered Phuket, Thailand today and shall stay till 08 Apr 16 as part of Overseas Deployment during Spring Term 16. The Senior Officer of the 1st Training Squadron, Captain SR Ayyar, would be embarked on board INS Tir. .

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The First Training Squadron forms part of Southern Naval Command (SNC) and comprises Indian Naval Ships Tir, Shardul, Sujata, ICGS Varuna and two Sail Training Ships Sudarshini and Tarangini, all of which have been built in India. The primary aim of the Squadron is to impart sea training to Naval and Coast Guard trainees, with a 24 weeks ab-initio sea training being imparted. All the trainees are trained in Seamanship, Navigation, Ship Handling, Boat Work, Technical aspects, etc. whilst being exposed to the rigours of life at sea, so as to earn their sea legs. .

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The Southern Naval Command (SNC) is the Training Command of the Indian Navy, which provides both basic and advanced training to officers and sailors of the Indian Navy. Vice Admiral Girish Luthra, AVSM, VSM is the Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Southern Naval Command. The Indian Navy has also been providing training to personnel from friendly foreign countries for more than four decades, wherein more than 13,000 personnel from over 40 countries have been trained. The Indian Navys focused approach for providing high quality training by constantly adapting to evolving tactics and technologies, has gained it a reputation of being one of the finest training destinations. .

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India and Thailand have a close, long-standing relationship covering a wide spectrum of activities and interactions, which have strengthened over the years. The present deployment of the Training Squadron to Phuket provides opportunities for extensive maritime engagement, contributes to the maintenance of good order at sea and further cements the close relations between the two nations and the two navies. .

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DKS/CKP .

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21/16
The Central Government attaches a lot of importance to tertiary healthcare services and medical education. Our Government has announced the setting up of as many as 11 new AIIMS like institutions in various parts of the country", stated Shri J P Nadda, Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare. He was speaking at the 6th convocation ceremony of PGIMER & Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, here today. He stated that the institution is working towards realizing Honble Prime Ministers vision of Digital India as well as Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. PGIMER and RML are also working towards full implementation of E-HOSPITAL, he stated. Dr. Jitendra Singh, MoS (Prime Minister Office, and Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions Department) was also present at the Convocation Ceremony. .

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While addressing the gathering, Shri J P Nadda said that to realize the dream of Swachch Bharat, Ministry has launched a scheme KAYAKALP to promote Swachchta in public health facilities. He further said that the Institute is also going to set up an AMRIT Pharmacy (Affordable Medicines and Reliable Implants for Treatment) which will make available anti-cancer, cardio-vascular drugs and implants at discounted prices to the patients. .

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The Government also encourages the setting up of new medical colleges and strengthening the existing ones. Existing medical colleges are being upgraded by setting up of Super Specialty blocks in 70 such medical colleges in the entire country", said Shi J P Nadda. He further informed that the Government is expanding the network of the medical colleges in a big way by upgrading 58 district hospitals to medical colleges. 20 State cancer institutes and 50 Tertiary cancer care centers are being set up, he informed. .

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The Health Minister urged the Institute to harness the tremendous potential of the IT services in Medical Education and Health Care Delivery. He further said that the Ministry is taking concrete steps to expand the scope of Telemedicine --- bringing in tele-education, tele-consultation, tele-radiology. He informed that the National Medical College Network (NMCN) is going to link 35 Government Medical Colleges with National Resource Centre and 6 Regional Resource Centres to utilize high bandwidth connectivity provided by NMCN for better use of Telemedicine. .

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Dr. Jitendra Singh highlighted the importance of empathy and compassion, and urged the graduating students to concentrate and work upon their communication skills with the patients. .

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Also present at the function were Shri Bhanu Pratap Sharma, Secretary, HFW, Dr. Jagdish Prasad, DGHS, Dr. A. K. Gadpayle, MS and Director, Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital. .

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In the context of the commitment of the Central Government to bring-out undisclosed money both from abroad and from within the country, information brought-out by any investigative journalism is welcome. .

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In the past also based on the investigative journalism of ICIJ in 2013 in which the links of 700 Indian persons were shown to have business connection with off-shore entities, the Revenue Department, Ministry of Finance, Government of India has been able to identify 434 persons out of them as Indian residents. 184 persons out of these have also admitted their relationship with such off-shore entities/transactions. Although, in the previous report of ICIJ, information relating to the financial transactions/bank accounts was not available, the Government authorities have detected credit in the undisclosed foreign accounts of such Indian persons in excess of Rs.2,000 crores. 52 prosecution complaints under the provision of Income-Tax Act have been filed against offenders so far. .

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Similarly, in response to information received in 2011 from Government of France, relating to the bank accounts of 628 Indian persons in HSBC, Switzerland, a lot of progress has been made in the investigation by the Department. Out of the list, 569 persons have been traced. However, in the information received, details of HSBC amount were shown against 339 persons only. Out of 628, 214 were found not actionable on account of no balance or being non-residents or being non-traceable. Out of the remaining cases, assessments have been completed in 390 cases in which undisclosed income of Rs.5018 crore and tax demand of Rs.4584 crore has been raised. Also the concealment penalty of Rs.1213 crores has been levied in 157 cases. Also 154 prosecution complaints have been filed in HSBC cases. Based on the prosecution complaints of predicate offences, ED has also initiated investigation in 23 cases of HSBC and 20 cases of ICIJ expose of 2013. .

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The Government is committed to detecting and preventing generation of black money. In this context, the expose of Panama Papers will further help the Government in meeting this objective. As per the directions of Honble Prime Minister given today, a special multi-agency group is being constituted today consisting of officers from Investigative Unit of CBDT, FIU and FT & TR division and representative of RBI. The group will monitor the flow of information in each one of the case. The Government will take all necessary actions as required to get maximum information from all sources including from foreign governments to help in the investigation process. .

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India is also concerned that there are countries in the world which are being used as tax havens because of which all other countries of the world suffer loss of tax. The recent initiative of Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) will help India and other countries in checking this practice of tax-avoidance through such tax havens. India is also fully committed to the BEPS initiative. .

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The Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Gen Dalbir Singh, is embarking on a four day goodwill visit to USA from 05 to 08 Apr 2016. The visit assumes special significance in light of enhanced defence cooperation between the two countries. The visit is a part of the ongoing High Level Exchanges between India & USA. .

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India-U.S. ties have been transformed in recent years with a renewed Defence Framework Agreement, supply of defence equipment, sharing of technology and military-to-military exchanges. .

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During his four days visit, the COAS is scheduled to meet the UNSG at the UN HQ to strengthen Indian Armys commitment towards UN Missions. He will also visit CENTCOM, SOCOM & HQ 1 Corps & Maneuver Centre of Excellence (MCoE) where he will meet the Commanders & have extensive discussions. In Washington he will meet US Secretary of Army, Chairman Jt Chiefs of Staff, Chief of Staff of the US Army & Commander US Marine Corps, along with other officials. .

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Col Rohan Anand, SM PRO (Army)
The European Union has begun deporting hundreds of people, most of them from Pakistan and Bangladesh, from Greece to Turkey, days after they crossed the Aegean Sea in rubber rafts in search of a new life.

According to a report filed by the Brisbane Times, bus loads of men were taken aboard two ferries under heavy police and military escort at Mytilene Port in the Greek island of Lesbos and put out to sea in the direction of the Turkish town of Dikili early on Monday.

Ewa Moncure, a spokeswoman for EU border agency Frontex, was quoted, as saying that most of the are from Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The deportations are the first of thousands expected under the EU's plan to end the continent's refugee crisis by shifting the burden onto neighbouring Turkey.

Human rights groups have condemned the strategy as a violation of basic rights.

European officials, however, have forged ahead with a plan to send the out from the popular refugee landing ports of Lesbos and Chios. More deportations are expected to take place later in the week.
A massive leak of secret files from a Panamanian law firm that specialises in offshore tax havens has revealed the often-murky financial dealings of some of the world's most powerful political players.

The leak highlights people such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the family of Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, among dozens of others, Dawn online reported.

The data from the Panama Papers, available on the website of the Consortium of Investigative Journalists -- one of around 100 news organisations and 300 journalists that worked on mining the data simultaneously -- also reveals the offshore holdings of the members of Sharif's family.

According to the documents, Sharif's children Mariam, Hasan and Hussain "were owners or had the right to authorise transactions for several companies".

Mariam is described as "the owner of British Virgin Islands-based firms Nielsen Enterprises Limited and Nescoll Limited, incorporated in 1994 and 1993".

On one of the documents, the address listed for Nielsen Enterprises is Saroor Palace in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The document, dated June 2012, describes Mariam Safdar as the 'beneficial owner'.

"Hussain and Mariam signed a document dated June 2007 that was part of a series of transactions in which Deutsche Bank Geneva lent up to $13.8 million to Nescoll, Nielsen and another company, with their London properties as collateral," the papers revealed.

In July 2014, the two companies were transferred to another agent, it said.

Hasan Nawaz Sharif is described as "the sole director of Hangon Property Holdings Limited incorporated in the British Virgin Islands in February 2007, which acquired Liberia-based firm Cascon Holdings Establishment Limited for about $11.2 million in August 2007."

But the papers are not necessarily evidence of wrongdoing. According to The Guardian, using offshore structures is entirely legal.

"There are many legitimate reasons for doing so. Business people in countries such as Russia and Ukraine typically put their assets offshore to defend them from 'raids' by criminals, and to get around hard currency restrictions," the paper said in an explanatory note.

Leaders such as the presidents of Ukraine, Argentina, the UAE as well as relatives of British Prime Minister David Cameron, Syrian leader Bashaar al-Assad, a former Chinese prime minister, as well as the son of former UN chief Kofi Anan are also mentioned in the leaked documents.
Well before the recent government order clamping down on big discounts on online marketplaces, Amazon and Flipkart had been beating a new path to customers' doors. Far from the days of big sales and sharp deals, the two had begun reaching out to customers in small towns and semi-urban areas with a new deck of cards; trust, convenience and easy returns. The new mantra is fast replacing the tried and tested discounts pitch that these companies have always emphasised on.

Both say that they are looking at widening their base of customers. They are focused on converting the older generation into online shoppers - from a family member to a subordinate at the workplace, the ads use a young e-commerce evangelist to convey the message of change.

Interestingly these campaigns seem to be timed almost perfectly, coming as they do just as the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) has stipulated that "e-commerce entities providing marketplace will not directly or indirectly influence the sale price of goods or services and shall maintain level playing field." In short, stipulating that discounts or big sale days cannot serve as bait anymore.

Both Amazon's 'apni dukan' (your own shop) and the 'Flipkart matlab bilkul pakka' (Flipkart means quality assured) campaign, on air now, seemed to anticipate the changing order. Was it foresight or had the companies realised that this was the only way to march forward?



Both companies say they wanted to expand the customer base and the profile of the potential customers they were targeting was different and this meant changing the communication strategy. "While e-commerce adoption is growing, there is still a large section that is hesitant about making purchases online," says a spokesperson for Amazon India.

This is especially true for Tier II and III cities. With the e-commerce industry set to cross the Rs 3,800 crore mark by the end of this year, as per Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM), the online marketplaces are vying for more attention from these towns.

The e-commerce industry has, thus far, built its band of buyers using discounts and sale-days. "The predominant noise was on price, discount and offers," says Ambi Parameswaran, brand strategist, advisor FCB Ulka Advertising. The first to don a different hat was Amazon India. The idea was to build trust in online marketplaces and wean buyers away from the local neighbourhood stores. The Flipkart campaign relays similar messages and the ads for both companies seem to fall back on similar character archetypes too.

In both ads there is a role reversal of sorts; a daughter advising her mother, an employee his boss and a patient his doctor."They (e-commerce companies) have boxed themselves into the 'discount' segment. So in this light, it is good to see them trying to widen the appeal and go beyond just price and offers," says Parameswaran.

The convenience of shopping at home amid the option of accepting cash on delivery is driving the point home for most of the consumers in the bracket of 18-25 years old. However, the generation, which is slightly older, is where the opportunity lies. And they need a different story, if they are to be brought online.

The ads also seem to be talking to a distinctly non-metro audience. "While the start has been great, we feel the journey has only just begun especially when the majority of the country is yet to experience online shopping," says Shoumyan Biswas, VP, marketing, Flipkart. The aim is to break into the next phase of online penetration, not only in terms of geographical spread but also with respect to the buyers' age group. Hence discounts alone won't break the ice.

Parameswaran says that the e-commerce firms are doing what telecom firms did yesterday. The telecom brands relied on offer based advertising (similar to discounts), but on a parallel path, they began promoting the 'brand' and also the 'network'. "Time e-commerce brands started doing this in earnest," he said.

Biswas said, "Over the next few weeks you will see the campaign get amplified by a strong social, digital and outdoor plan reaching out to national metro as well as regional markets." And it all seems to have tied up well for the two companies since the new DIPP order also steers e-commerce firms away from the path of price discounts. "The Indian e-commerce space is still at a very nascent stage with significant potential for innovation and growth," said an Amazon India spokesperson. As the new campaigns indicate, nothing will be left to chance when it comes to converting this potential into reality.
have erased half of its gains and are trading flat with positive bias weighed down by index heavyweights such as ITC, Reliance Industries, and HDFC.

At 11:45 am, the S&P BSE Sensex has advanced 16 points to quote at 25,285 and the Nifty50 has gained 9 points to trade at 7,722.

Meanwhile, investors are cautious as they patiently wait for the RBI monetary policy review due tomorrow.

In the commodity space, crude prices extended losses in Asia on Monday after comments by Saudi Arabia cast doubt whether key producers meeting next month would reach an agreement to freeze output to address a global supply glut.

KEY STOCKS



ITC said that it has been compelled to shut its cigarette factories with effect from 1 April 2016 until clarity emerges in the current uncertain state of the rules on health warning. The stock has taken a hit and is trading nearly 2% down.

Owing to the slump in oil prices, ONGC, Reliance Industries, Cairn India have tanked 1-2% each.

However, on the brighter side, auto stocks are rallying on account of robust sales in March. In the auto pack, Tata Motors, Hero Motocorp, TVS Motors, Maruti Suzuki, Bajaj Auto and M&M up between 0.5%-1.5%.

HCL Technologie will acquire Mumbai- based engineering services company Geometric for Rs 1,283 crore ($188 million) in a share-swap deal. HCL Tech has gained 0.5% while Geometric has zoomed 15%.

Meanwhile, IT major Infosys co-founder NS Raghavan along with wife Jamuna Raghavan has acquired shares worth Rs 94.56 crore of the company via an open market transaction. The stock is trading 1.5% higher.

Another stock that is witnessing buying is MOIL up 7% after the company raised prices of ores and fines by 10%-50%. From the same family, JSW Steel has gained 0.4% on recording highest ever monthly crude steel production in March 2016.

SAIL and Tata Steel are up 1.5% each. Fitch Ratings downgraded SAILs major's long-term foreign currency issuer default rating (IDR) to 'BB'from 'BBB-'. Fitch Ratings on Friday downgraded Tata Steel and its long-term foreign currency issuer default rating to 'BB' from 'BB+/stable'. The downgrade was on Tata Steel and Tata Steel UK, the rating agency said in a late evening note.

Among other shares, Wabco India has lost 7% on the back on increase in royalty payment by the parent. The company entered into an agreement with M/s WABCO Europe BVBA, a related party for payment of royalty at the rate of 4% on the net sales for using the licensed intangibles and technical knowhow.

Infibeam Incorporation has listed at Rs 458, a 6% premium compared with its issue price of Rs 432 per equity share, on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE).
ROME, 4 APRIL, ARMENPRESS Italian Foreign Ministry expresses concern over continuing clashes along the Line of Contact in Nagorno Karabakh. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation expresses deep concern over continuing clashes along the Line of Contact in the Nagorno Karabakh area of conflict, as well as for the victims caused by the fighting,- Armenpress quotes The Italian Foreign Ministry website.



The Italian Foreign Ministry urges all the parties in the conflict to immediately honour the ceasefire and refrain from performing further acts of hostility. The current situation confirms that there cannot be a military solution to the conflict. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation calls on the parties to resume negotiation efforts in order to achieve a peaceful solution to the conflict, under the auspices of the Minsk Group and its three co-Chair countries,- the statement says .
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) plans to allow trading in weather derivatives, a financial instrument for managing this risk in the agricultural sector.

Sources say a Sebi panel is analysing pricing models on such derivatives and working on the infrastructure needed. Unlike other financial derivatives, those on the weather do not have a definite pricing model.

Some conclusion is likely at a meeting scheduled for this week, a Sebi source told this newspaper.

The idea was in the works for a while and gained momentum following the finance minister's Union Budget speech, where the aim was stated. This was discussed at the first meeting of the Commodity Derivatives Market Advisory Committee in the first week of March. Representatives from Sebi, commodity exchange officials and of the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority were present.

There is endless scope for the product. It would prove immensely beneficial, typically for the agriculture sector and farmers, said Ajay Kedia of Kedia Commodities. Once Sebi introduces it, it is felt, a number of trading entities would offer a customised version. And, more sectors would be covered. Hotels, insiurance, financial institutions, sports, soft drinks and confectionery, engineering and construction are among those where revenue is affected by the weather.

How weather derivatives would work could be illustrated in this example. A grower of maize is worried about the monsoon. Against normal production of 100 quintals, the farmer estimates production at only 80 qtls. If the minimum support price is Rs 1,000 a qtl, he'll lose around Rs 20,000 if there's less rain. This is where weather derivatives come in. If he accesses this tool, he could have bought or sold (on the basis of the outlook on rain), a rain day futures contract today, entering into an equal but opposite contract at a later date, making a profit on the transaction by offsetting the losses due to the low volumes produced.

The most interesting part of the product is that one cannot manipulate it by any means, as one cannot control rain patterns, said another commodity expert.

There are challenges. It is difficult to collect reliable weather data for sustainability of the product. There are also regulatory issues needing to be sorted. And, it involves a high risk cost, said an ex-Sebi official, on condition of anonymity.

Internationally, weather derivatives are structured as swaps, options and futures, based on different underlying weather indices. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange and London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange offer standardised weather contracts on their trading floors. Around 95 per cent of global weather derivatives volumes come from the US, with Europe supplying most of the rest.

KEY TAKEAWAYS
In the past, too, the Indian steel industry had faced oversupply and below-cost product prices, resulting from large new capacity coming in a bunch. But, all that had happened with steel in earlier years paling into insignificance compared with the present state of the industry burdened as it is with bank debts of around Rs 3 lakh crore and heavy losses in the third quarter of 2015-16.

Steel Authority of India (SAIL) chairman Prakash Singh says the third-quarter loss of his company was primarily because of a "24 per cent fall in net sales realisation" on a year-on-year basis. He says, what was particularly disturbing about the period was the industry's inability to recover production cost from sale of some steel products. The crisis is not, however, country-specific. The toxic cocktail of sluggish demand and chronic overcapacity is taking a toll on steelmakers across the globe. China alone has capacity surplus of 300 million tonnes (mt).

Seshagiri Rao, joint managing director of JSW Steel, says "nobody in steel is making money". He quotes the Chinese Iron & Steel Association to say the industry in China is "losing $11 billion at the operating level for the past 11 months".

Lakshmi Mittal, who believed he had achieved invincibility by acquiring the European Arcelor at a hefty premium and courting racial innuendos, had the mortification of seeing the 2015 net loss of the merged ArcelorMittal rising to a record $7.9 billion. A big net debt is also hanging around the neck of ArcelorMittal, which is sought to be lowered to less than $12 billion by way of new capital raising of $3 billion and sale of its $1-billion stake in an automotive group Gestamp. Since the 2008 high of Euro 60.55, ArcelorMittal shares have skidded to Euro 3.71 now. In the process, the Mittal family with a holding of 37.38 per cent in the company, has lost an enormous amount of paper wealth.

Mittal has said "2016 will be another difficult year" for the industry. He must be finding it upsetting that ArcelorMittal's announcement of cost-cutting and focusing on high-margin products under the 'Action 2020' plan to improve core profits by $3 billion a year has failed to convince independent observers. This is largely due to the industry losing pricing power heft in an oversupply situation. Moreover, shaving cost is a continuous programme with most makers over the world, including India. Regrettably, in the current high-import regime, producers must pass on cost savings to buyers.

The price outlook here has started improving on the back of New Delhi first introducing safeguard duty and then minimum import price (MIP) on 173 steel products. The provocation of raising the tariff barrier was to give local producers protection from foreign origin steel coming in with lower prices. Rao has said,"It is unlikely that (steel) prices will move up to the MIP level unless supply-demand dynamics change with robust demand."



New capacity is constantly getting created. Tata Steel has recently commissioned a 3-mt plant at Kalinganagar in Odisha. SAIL is ramping up saleable steel production from 13 mt to 20 mt.

The industry is pinning hope on the renewed government focus on infrastructure development and making a success of Make in India programme, says Singh. The Budget provision of nearly Rs 1 lakh crore for road construction, development of greenfield sea ports and revival of old airports lying unused, should create good demand for steel.

Whatever it is, the near- to medium-term outlook for the metal remains grim. This is a compelling consideration for banks to give stern messages to defaulting steel companies to put their house in order. Steel companies need to be pushed to sell unrelated assets built injudiciously in the past frittering away resources that should have been preserved to see them through bad times.

TROUBLED TIMES
American writer Michael Lewis begins his Flash Boys book by describing the construction of a 827-mile underground fibre optic cable between Chicago and New York.

A 2014 article published in the UKs Daily Mail on the book said, There were already cables linking the two cities but this one was different. The 1 inch-wide plastic tube containing 400 hair-thin strands of glass had to travel in a straight line, even if that meant passing it through mountains and under car parks and rivers.

Read more from our special coverage on "DARK FIBRE" NSE & BSEs dark fibre link: 5 questions answered

The projects boss hated even small deviations. He would tell engineers that even deviating by the width of a road would cost him 100 nanoseconds  or a millionth of a second  in the time it took for data to travel from one city to the other.The 180 million cable would cut the time it took to send a message between the two cities from 17 milliseconds to 13.

Thats a fraction of the time it takes to blink very quickly; yet, the miniscule time difference is enough to allow sophisticated computer programmes to exploit profitably tiny price differences between the Chicago and New York stock exchanges. These split seconds saved in the transmission of information, an expert calculated, were worth an astonishing 12 billion a year to those who knew how to exploit these. The new superfast cable would be used by around 200 trading companies, and its owners were asking each potential client to pay more than 8 million for the privilege, the article said.

Two years later, Business Standard reported an investigation by the Indian market regulator that is currently in progress, looking into a similar connection, although over a much shorter distance, between Bandra-Kurla Complex and Fort in Mumbai.

A Singapore-based whistleblower has described this as a dark fibre link between the National Stock Exchange and BSE (formerly Bombay Stock Exchange). He has alleged this link gave its users a five-times speed advantage over the market. Who has inspired whom? Are Indian traders learning their American counterparts tricks or is the whistleblower getting ideas from Lewis?



The market is abuzz with speculation. It is for investigators to arrive at a conclusion. But, such investigation cant take forever. While speculation in the market is natural and even critical for its survival, speculation about the market architecture is not at all a healthy sign. It has to be put to rest at the earliest.

The letter has sent the finance ministry, worried about systemic risks and losses to small guys, into a tizzy It has sent at least three letters over the past five months to the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), for a report on the matter.

Ever since the first whistleblower account became public about nine months earlier, there have been noises from the establishment, indicating they want to tighten regulations and even slow down algoithmic trading. By some estimates, it accounts for about 40 per cent of the trading volumes in India.

The whistleblower has written three long letters, each of which have raised a plethora of issues. While the exchanges have rubbished these to reporters and to regulators in bilateral communications, the lay investor is still in the dark. Both exchanges, also considered frontline regulators, and which often ask for clarifications from listed companies, should occasionally apply these standards on their own workings, too.

In a market where millions are made and lost in a matter of nano seconds, months have gone past without any clarity on the issues raised by the whistleblower. It is time for Sebi to put out a detailed and easy-to-understand report addressing all the issues.
The students' wing of the BJP, the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), will on Monday afternoon stage a protest against Delhi Government and Delhi University administration.

The ABVP would be protesting at the Arts Faculty of the varsity's North Campus at 1 p.m., against the AAP-led Delhi Government's order wherein it has ordered the 21 colleges of the varsity (funded by state government) to submit data and personal details of all the students.

"This demand of the Delhi Government is completely absurd, and moreover it possesses a danger of these confidential informations of students being used by 'some associations for their vested interests," said Abhishek Verma, president, ABVP-DU Unit.

Verma also criticised the recent call of the varsity for not having offline admission applications.

"This step will affect students who belong to rural and technically-poor backgrounds, and will prejudice these students. The ABVP condemns this decision of DU administration outrightly, and will fight till the DU administration rolls back its decision and provides both online and offline options for the initial admission registration forms," he added.

The ABVP would protest at the Arts Faculty of the varsity's north campus at 1 p.m.
Female cabine crew of Air France, backed by the French carrier's union, have strongly objected to a management decision to wear pants, a loose-fitting jackets and headscarves during flights to Iran.

According to reports, staff of the airline have threatened to go on strike over the issue which they see as an infringement on individual freedom.

Air France flights to Iran's capital Tehran are to begin soon.

Union groups have strongly condemned the new dress code and said cabin crew will refuse to fly when flights resume to Tehran on April 17.

French radio station RFI quoted union leader Francoise Redolfi, as saying, "We have to let the girls choose what they want to wear. Those that don't want to must be able to say they don't want to work on those flights."

Redolfi further revealed that femal cabin crew have told her that it is out of the question to wear headscarves, as they see it as an insult to their dignity.

The French minister for women's rights and families, Laurence Rossignol, has been informed of the Air France staff dress code protest.

Iranian women have been instructed to cover their heads since the Islamic revolution in 1979, while in France, headscarves have been banned in schools and state offices and full-face veils are banned in public areas.

In a statement, Air France said: "Iranian law requires the wearing of a veil covering the hair in public places for all women present on its territory. This obligation is not required during the flight and is respected by all international airlines serving the Iranian Republic."

The airline will begin three daily fights between Paris and Tehran on April 17, eight years after the flights were suspended in light of crippling international sanctions against Tehran.

Those sanctions were lifted in January after Iran agreed to shrink its nuclear program.
The Border Security Force (BSF) of Guwahati Frontier, deployed in Dhubri, in a joint operation with the Kokrajhar Police recovered three country made guns from Tipkai forest area on Monday.

On specific information of the BSF intelligence wing about cached weapons, BSF troops led by Ajay Pant, along with police launched a search operation in the area.

After a thorough search of the area, for almost three hours, the operation party recovered three country made guns, which were buried in the ground, deep inside the forest. These guns were seized and are being deposited with Bogribari police station.

The recovery of these weapons on the day of first phase of Assam Assembly Elections in Upper Assam and Barak Valley and in the run up to the second phase, in Lower Assam, on April 11 is of significance.

This successful operation has instilled a sense of security and safety in populace residing in the area.
The Congress Party would be contesting on 41 seats in coming Assembly polls in Tamil Nadu.

"Congress will be contesting on 41 seats in the upcoming Tamil Nadu Assembly polls. I am sure that under the leadership of Karunanidhi ji, we will be able to form the government in Tamil Nadu," senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad told the media here.

The decision came after senior Congress leader Azad met Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) chief M. Karunanidhi here today for seat-sharing.

The DMK had walked out of the UPA alliance in 2013, after joining hands for 2004 Lok Sabha polls.

Both the parties however, revived the alliance on February 13, with Azad, the incharge of Congress affairs in Tamil Nadu, holding the first round of seat-sharing talks with Karunanidhi on March 25, 2016 in Chennai.

Tamil Nadu will vote in a single phase on May 16 while the results will be announced on May 19.

Tamil Nadu has 234 assembly seats. In the 2011 assembly elections, AIADMK had won 150, DMDK-29, DMK-23, CPM-10, CPI-9 and others-13 seats respectively.
Two ferries carrying migrants, a majority of them from Pakistan and Bangladesh, docked at the Turkish port of Dikili after being deported from the Greek island of Lesbos on Monday morning.

The migrants have reportedly been taken to refugee camps near the port, where they will be made to undergo health checks and registration.

Dikili's Mayor Mustafa Tosun was quoted by the Xinhua news agency, as saying that the first ferry carried 72 persons, while the second had 62 people onboard.

He said the migrants would be sent to the refugee center in Kirklareli in three buses after completing their registration formalities.

A third ferry carrying 66 people is expected to reach Dikili shortly from the Greek island of Chios, Mayor Tosun revealed.

Meanwhile, hundreds of Dikili residents staged a rally on Saturday in protest against the arrival of the deported migrants, saying that they could face socio-economic insecurity, job loss and a declining economy with the presence of the newcomers.

Under a deal finalised last month with the European Union, Turkey has agreed to take back migrants who crossed illegally into Greece from March 20 and are deemed ineligible for asylum. In return, the EU will resettle the same amount of Syrian refugees being sheltered in Turkey, with the number capped at 72, 000.

The Turkish Red Crescent has agreed to provide the new arrivals with food and other humanitarian supplies.
BRUSSELS, 05 APRIL, ARMENPEESS: EPP declares deeply concerns by recent disturbing news from the Line of Contact between Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan.

It is unacceptable to reject international commitment to resolve the conflict politically, through the exclusively peaceful means, particularly, when the victims of this military adventurism are also innocent civilians, including children. We consider it necessary to take practical steps to immediately cease the military actions, to withdraw military troops to the positions they had before the 1st of April 2016. We strongly support to return to the negotiation process mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs,- the statement of the Pan European Party says.

The UN Security Council adopted four resolutions between April and November, 1993, calling for effective and permanent ceasefire, as well as immediate implementation of the reciprocal and urgent steps in that direction.

Peace talks between Armenia, Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan have been facilitated by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe since March 1992 within the frameworks of Minsk Group, co-Chaired by Russia, United States and France since mid-1990s.

Ceasefire agreement between Armenia, Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan, facilitated by Russia's representative to the CSCE/OSCE Minsk Group Vladimir Kazimirov, was signed on May 5, 1994, which had been maintained with only sporadic violations along the Line of Contact and international border till the latest Azerbaijani large scale offensive in the night of April 2, 2016.

Over the last two years Armenia, Nagorno Karabakh, the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs and over 80 U.S. Congressmen (Royce-Engel bill) proposed concrete measures to de-escalate situation and establish ceasefire monitoring equipments along the borders. Azerbaijan has been repeatedly rejecting these calls.
If you too get out of breath while trying to catch a bus, then you are not alone as a new survey has revealed that nearly half of the British women experience the same thing.

The British Heart Foundation (BHF) research found some 48 percent of women and 42 percent of men confessed to feeling so unfit they would get short of breath if they had to run to catch public transport, the Daily Mail reported.

The survey also found 47 per cent felt they could run up to just half a mile, while one in five said they could only manage 100 metres.

Even of those who believed they could run a mile, three in 10 said they had last done so more than a decade ago, the survey of 2,000 adults by One Poll showed.

Almost two-fifths (38 per cent) said they did not feel fit enough to join a gym and 28 per cent thought running was for those who are already fit and healthy.

The BHF called the figures 'worrying', warning heart and circulatory disease affects around seven million people in the UK and is responsible for around 155,000 deaths each year - an average of one person every three minutes.

Christopher Allen, senior cardiac nurse at the BHF, said that these statistics are concerning and paint a worrying picture about the nation's fitness levels.
Kesha, who is presently involved in a legal battle with her producer Dr. Luke, revealed that Sony offered to let her out of her contract, but says the price for that was way too high.

The 29-year-old songstress said that she was offered her freedom if she would lie, adding that she would have to apologise publically to Dr. Luke and say that she never got raped, reports TMZ.com.

The 'Tik Tok' hit-maker further revealed that she turned down the deal because she will not take back the truth.

Kesha is still under her Sony deal after a judge refused to let her record music independently.
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) president Mehbooba Mufti will today take oath as the first woman Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir.

Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu and Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) Jitendra Singh, among many others, will be present during the sworn-in ceremony.The Congress Party is boycotting the swearing-in ceremony.

The ceremony is scheduled to take place at 11 a.m. at the Raj Bhawan here.

Governor N.N. Vohra will administer oath to Mufti along with her council of ministers.

The Governor yesterday invited Mufti to form and lead the PDP-BJP coalition government in the state.

The PDP president had been seeking assurances from the central government on implementation of agenda of alliance and the Common Minimum Programme (CMP) framed by the two parties last year.

Jammu and Kashmir was put under Governor's Rule on January 8, a day after then chief minister Mufti Muhammad Sayeed passed away in New Delhi.

The PDP and the BJP had staked claim for government formation on March 26, two days after Mehbooba was elected as PDP's legislature party leader.

Mehbooba, had earlier met Vohra and staked claim to form the government with the support of 25 MLAs of the BJP. The PDP has 27 MLAs in the 87-member state Assembly.
Child survivors of the the April-May 2015 earthquake in Nepal are reportedly being sold to British families for a few thousand pounds to work as domestic slaves.

An investigation has revealed that boys and girls as young as 10 are being sold for just 5,250 pounds by black market gangs said to be operating from Punjab in India.

According to reports filed by the Kathamandu Post, the investigation has been done by the UK-based tabloid The Sun.

The tabloid alleges that these children belong to desperate Nepalese refugees and destitute Indian families, and are used as unpaid domestic servants.

In the wake of the report going public, UK Home Secretary Theresa May has urged the National Crime Agency to investigate.

A 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal on April 25 last year, killing almost 9,000 people and leaving millions in need of aid.

It is estimated that millions of people across the are victims of modern day slavery, trafficked across borders and forced to work in servitude.
President Pranab Mukherjee will deliver a memorial lecture in honour of former Union Minister late Arjun Singh on April 9 at Nehru Memorial Museum Auditorium, here.

The memorial lecture is being organized by The Arjun Singh Sadbhavana Foundation which was set up in February 2016, five years after passing away of Arjun Singh.

During the course of his five decades of public service, Arjun Singh championed many socio - economic causes such as women's empowerment, education of the girl child and upliftment of the weaker sections of society and tribals.

The Trust aims to work for an inclusive society and fulfill Shri Singh's dream of making the world a better place to live in. Its areas of focus include gender sensitization, women's empowerment and literacy and economic independence among the tribals, the poor and the needy.

The Trust has been established by Arjun Singh's daughter, Veena Singh. Moti Lal Vora, Mohsina Kidwai, Kamal Nath, Digvijay Singh, Jyotiraditya Scindia and spouse of Arjun Singh,. Saroj Kumari are the Trustees.
The Supreme Court on Monday granted bail to former Delhi University professor G.N. Saibaba, who was arrested in May 2014 for alleged links with a banned Maoist outfit.

The apex court also pulled up the Maharashtra Government's counsel for opposing the bail.

"You have been extremely unfair to the accused...specially considering his health. If material witnesses have been examined, then why do you want him in jail. You are unnecessarily harassing the petitioner," Justice Khehar said.

Professor Saibaba was arrested in May 2014 for alleged links with the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist).

He was initially granted bail in July 2015, but has been in prison since December last year after a single-judge bench of the Bombay High Court in Nagpur cancelled his bail.

The wheelchair-bound professor, who is paralysed from waist-downwards due to polio, is more than 90% disabled.

The professor had suffered damage to muscles in his left shoulder and the nerve system during his imprisonment due to inadequate facilities in the jail.

Speaking to ANI in July last year, Professor Saibaba had said that jail should be a correctional institution and not a torture centre, adding that the reason for his illness was the torture he went through.

"How a person feels when he or she loses his freedom and rights, I have experienced that feeling. After coming out of jail I have realised the value of freedom in a person's life. Jail should be a correctional institution and police officer should behave like a correction officer. Everyday people are tortured in the jail. People are beaten, insulted and mercilessly tortured," Saibaba he told ANI in July 2015.

Earlier, in a letter, Professor Saibaba had stated that he has been suffering from multiple ailments of severe nature, because of which he is taking regular treatment at the Indian Spinal Injuries Centre (ISIC).
Aurionpro Solutions jumped 6.62% to Rs 140.10 at 15:00 IST on BSE after the company announced the completion of sale of its IT services business in USA to Saicon Consultants Inc., a leading professional services company.

The announcement was made during market hours today, 4 April 2016.

Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 42.89 points or 0.17% at 25,312.53.

On BSE, so far 42,397 shares were traded in the counter as against average daily volume of 12,897 shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 150.80 and a low of Rs 131.90 so far during the day. The stock hit a 52-week high of Rs 271.60 on 8 April 2015. The stock hit a 52-week low of Rs 103 on 12 February 2016. The stock had underperformed the market over the past one month till 1 April 2016, rising 2.57% compared with Sensex's 6.27% rise. The scrip had also underperformed the market in past one quarter, dropping 36.78% as against Sensex's 3.41% fall.

The small-cap company has equity capital of Rs 21.95 crore. Face value per share is Rs 10.

Aurionpro Solutions said that the sale is effective immediately. The sale is in line with its strategic direction to accelerate revenue growth of its high margin core businesses and divest non-core businesses. The deal allows the company to focus and grow its three core IP centric businesses-digital innovation, enterprise security and industry solutions for banking and logistics. The sold IT services business for USA generated approximately Rs 93 crore for the first nine months of financial year ended 31 March 2016 (FY 2016). The sale is concluded by Aurionpro Solutions Inc., a wholly owned US arm of the company for price of about $10 million or Rs 66 crore. The payment include upfront payments and deferred payments. The proceeds of the sale will be used towards working capital and accelerating debt reduction.

On consolidated basis, Aurionpro Solutions' net profit rose 13.82% to Rs 14.08 crore on 5.9% rise in net sales to Rs 187.28 crore in Q3 December 2015 over Q2 September 2015.

Aurionpro Solutions is a technology solutions provider.

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Cox & Kings acquires 49% stake in Malvern

Cox & Kings has sold 100% of LateRooms UK to Malvern Enterprises UK for GBP 20 million. The Company's 65.58% owned subsidiary, Holidaybreak, has sold 100% of its Superbreak business to Malvern in a transction whereby Holidaybreak received a net cash consideration of GBP 9.25 million. The proceeds are used to pay off debt.

Cox & Kings has bought 49% stake in Malvern for GBP 6.37 million. Malvern is 51% owned by a reputed Europe-based private equity investor. The transaction in effective 31 March 2016. C&K's 49% equity stake in Malvern will be accounted for as an investment in Associate Company, with its proportionate share of profit/loss reflected in C&K's P&L from FY 2017 onwards. The goodwill writeoff on sale of Superbreak is GBP 71.4 million.

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Godrej Consumer Products rose 2.41% to Rs 1,421.95 at 11:50 IST on BSE after the company said it has entered into an agreement to acquire entire stake in Strength of Nature LLC, a leading company of hair care products for women of African descent.

The announcement was made on Saturday, 2 April 2016.

Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 17.20 points or 0.07% at 25,290.49.

On BSE, so far 4,594 shares were traded in the counter as against average daily volume of 22,044 shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 1,433 and a low of Rs 1,391 so far during the day. The stock had hit a record high of Rs 1,456.65 on 3 August 2015. The stock had hit a 52-week low of Rs 1,024 on 4 May 2015. The stock had outperformed the market over the past one month till 1 April 2016, rising 11.39% compared with Sensex's 6.27% rise. The scrip had also outperformed the market in past one quarter, gaining 3.45% as against Sensex's 3.41% fall.

The large-cap company has equity capital of Rs 34.05 crore. Face value per share is Re 1.

Godrej Consumer Products (GCPL) announced that the acquisition is a further step to accelerate GCPL's global 3 by 3 strategy-a presence in emerging markets in Asia, Africa and Latin America through 3 core categories - hair care, home care and personal care and scale up its presence in Africa by being at the forefront of serving the hair care needs of women of African descent. The acquisition is expected to be earning per share (EPS) accretive for GCPL from year one itself. The consideration is payable in cash. Strength of Nature (SON), a USA based company with a significant presence in Africa and the Caribbean, is one of the fastest growing companies in the hair care category for women of African descent. SON has a compelling portfolio of heritage, category-leading brands in wet hair care, across relaxers, maintenance, styling and shampoos. This includes iconic hair care brands with affordable and innovative products, which have been serving women of African descent across 50 countries. Among them, are African Pride, TCB, Just for Me, Motions and Profectiv MegaGrowth.

SON recorded an annualised calendar year 2015 revenues of $95 million. SON complements GCPL's portfolio in Africa, building on its leadership position in dry hair care and hair colours in the region. The acquisition also enables GCPL to turbo-charge, creating a strong platform for wet hair care products in Africa and to forge a stronger presence in the $1.8 billion global wet hair care category. The acquisition is expected to be completed by mid or end of April 2016.

Godrej Consumer Products' consolidated net profit rose 22.5% to Rs 322.95 crore on 5.7% rise in net sales to Rs 2353.54 crore in Q3 December 2015 over Q3 December 2014.

Godrej Consumer Products is the largest home-grown home and personal care company in India.

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HCL Technologies rose 1.22% at Rs 830.70 at 11:00 IST on BSE after the company announced that it has signed definitive agreement to acquire the business of Geometric.

The separate announcements were made by HCL Tech and Geometric on Saturday, 2 April 2016.

Meanwhile, the BSE Sensex was up 75.42 points, or 0.3%, to 25,345.06.

Shares of Geometric jumped 17.7% to Rs 230.70.

On BSE, so far 69.546 shares were traded in the counter of HCL Tech, compared with an average volume of 1.03 lakh shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 834.60 and a low of Rs 815.50 so far during the day. The stock hit a 52-week high of Rs 1,047.50 on 29 May 2015. The stock hit a 52-week low of Rs 785.85 on 12 February 2016. The stock had underperformed the market over the past one month till 1 April 2016, falling 1.36% compared with Sensex's 6.27% rise. The scrip had, however, outperformed the market in past one quarter, dropping 2.93% as against Sensex's 3.41% fall.

The large-cap IT services provider has an equity capital of Rs 282.08 crore. Face value per share is Rs 2.

HCL Technologies announced an agreement for the acquisition by way of demerger of the entire business of Geometric, except for the 58% stake that Geometric owns in the joint venture-3DPLM Software Solutions, with Dassault Systemes. In consideration of this acquisition, HCL will issue 10 equity shares of Rs 2 each to Geometric shareholders for every 43 equity shares of Geometric of Rs 2 each held by them. In total, HCL will issue 1.56 crore equity shares of Rs 2 each. The transaction is expected to be accretive on cash earnings per share, HCL said.

The acquisition will be undertaken by way of scheme of artrangement and amalgamation entered into between the HCL Tech, Geometric and 3DPLM Software Solutions and their respective shareholders and creditors. Under the Scheme and as part of the composite transaction, it is proposed that Geometric will transfer its entire IT enabled engineering services, PLM services and engineering design productivity software tools business to HCL Tech by way of a demerger and immediately following the demerger, Geometric comprising its shareholding in 3DPLM Software Solutions will be merged into 3DPLM Software Solutions. Geometric is one of India's leading PLM consulting, mechanical engineering and manufacturing engineering services providers. The business being demerged to HCL Tech has more than 60 customers with long term and stable relationships and counts key original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in USA and Europe in automotive, industrial and heavy engineering domain among its customers.

The transaction is expected to be closed in Q2 December 2016. The acquisition strengthens HCL's presence significantly in the PLM consulting as well as mechanical and manufacturing engineering space. It also significantly strengthens HCL's automotive and industrial practices. The acquisition would take place through a scheme of arrangement which would be subject to the approval of the High Courts at Mumbai and Delhi in addition to the approval of the regulatory authorities, HCL Tech said.

HCL Technologies' consolidated net profit rose 11.2% to Rs 1920 crore on 2.4% growth in revenue to Rs 10341 crore in Q2 December 2015 over Q1 September 2015.

HCL Technologies is a leading global IT services company working with clients in the areas that impact and redefine the core of their businesses.

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In collaboration with IIT (BHU)

Mindteck (India) announced that it is implementing a Smart Grid project for Bangalore Electricity Supply Company's (BESCOM) Chandrapur Sub-Division in synergy with IIT (BHU). The research oriented project is known as 'Design and Development of a Smart Energy Grid Architecture with Energy Storage', and is funded by the Department of Science and Technology under sanction by the Ministry of Science and Technology.

The project entails the installation of automatic metering infrastructure, single phase and three phase smart meters along with LT-CT and HT-CT operated meters, data connectors and a meter data acquisition system and meter data management for real time data acquisition and retrieval.

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Shares of four oil exploration and production (E&P) companies dropped 0.58% to 1.65% and shares of two PSU OMCs rose 0.1% to 0.47% at 12:30 IST on BSE after decline in global crude oil prices.

Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 7.19 points or 0.06% at 25,254.12.

Among shares of oil exploration and production (E&P) companies, ONGC (down 1.65%), Reliance Industries (RIL) (down 0.59%), Oil India (down 0.58%) and Cairn India (down 1.44%) edged lower. Lower crude oil prices would result in lower realization from crude sales for oil exploration firms.

Among shares of public sector oil marketing companies (PSU OMCs), BPCL (up 0.1%) and Indian Oil Corporation (up 0.47%) gained. HPCL declined 0.4%. Decline in crude oil prices could reduce under-recoveries of PSU OMCs on domestic sale of LPG and kerosene at government controlled prices. The government has already decontrolled pricing of petrol and diesel.

Crude oil prices fell in the global commodities markets after a media report suggested that Iran would continue increasing its oil production and exports until it reaches the market position it enjoyed before the imposition of sanctions. Brent for June settlement was currently down 40 cents at $38.27 a barrel. The contract had fallen $1.66 a barrel or 4.11% to settle at $38.67 a barrel during the previous trading session.

The world's major crude oil producers led by Russia and Saudi Arabia have convened a meeting on 17 April 2016 in Doha, Qatar to discuss measures to stabilise prices, including a proposal to freeze output.

The BSE Oil & Gas index had outperformed the market over the past one month till 1 April 2016, rising 7.68% compared with Sensex's 6.27% rise. The index had, however, underperformed the market in past one quarter, dropping 5.75% as against Sensex's 3.41% fall.

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Held on 02 April 2016

Gammon India announced that the Board of Directors of the Company at its meeting held on 02 April 2016, has transacted the following businesses;

1. The Board considered and accepted the proposal from GP Group, Thailand (hereinafter referred to as "Investor") to invest in the Company's Civil Engineering Procurement and Construction business ("Civil EPC") by investing in the Company's wholly owned subsidiary, Gammon Retail Infrastructure ("GRIPL") ,wherein the Civil EPC business is in the process of being transferred as part of the restructuring. GP Group is a 145 years old group in Thailand, and is headed by Kirit Shah. The group's businesses include constructions, logistics, aviation, energy supply, pharma, agro products, software, mining etc. The Board further also approved the draft of the Investment cum Shareholders Agreement ("Investment Agreement") to be entered into between the Company, the Investor and GRIPL.

The brief terms of the Investment agreement are;

a. The Agreement shall be effective from the date it is entered into and is subject to the approval of the Lenders and the shareholders.

b. The Investor shall invest a sum of Rs. 250 crore, of which Rs. 26 crore to be invested on consummation of Business Transfer Agreement ("BTA" executed on 12 February 2016 between the Company and GRIPL) and balance Rs. 224 crore to be invested on consummation of the Scheme of Arrangement (for Transfer of the EPC Business into GRIPL), for acquiring upto 75% stake in GRIPL.

c. Investor will reconstitute the Board of GRIPL to control the Board composition.

Additional information as required under Annexure I, Para A of Part A of Schedule III of the Listing Regulations

i. Date on which the agreement for sale/disposal of subsidiary has been entered into;

The Board has approved the execution of the Investment Agreement. An intimation will be given to the exchanges on the signing of the Agreement.

ii. Expected date of Completion - 12 months from the date of the Agreement.

iii. Whether the Investor belongs to the promoter group - The investor is not related to the promoter group.

iv. Whether the transaction would fall within related party transactions?. If yes whether the same is done at arms length.

The transaction is not a "Related Party Transaction".

2. The Board in its meeting also approved divestment of upto 30% of its shareholding in Gammon Infrastructure ("GIPL"), held through its wholly owned subsidiary Gammon Power Limited, such divestment to be in one or more tranches, at such times and in such manner as the Board /duly constituted Committee of Directors, may approve, on the floor of the stock exchanges, at the price prevailing on the exchanges on the date of such sale.

i. Objective of divestment; The Company currently holds approximately 56% of the equity capital of GIPL through its wholly owned subsidiary GPL. The said shares have been pledged with lenders as security for the financial facilities extended by ICICI and IDBI Bank. The Company shall use the proceeds of the sale to repay ICICI and IDBI Bank.

ii. Expected date of completion of sale/disposal; within 6 to 12 months.

iii. The sale of shares shall be to the general public through the exchanges and no shares shall be sold/disposed off to the promoter/promoter group companies.

iv. The said transaction is not a related party transaction.

The aforementioned transactions as approved by the Board are subject to the approval of the lenders, shareholders and all statutory approvals as may be necessary.

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SPV to have Authorised Capital of Rs.500 cr

Odisha capital Bhubaneswar which came at the top of the first batch of 20 smart cities selected by the Ministry of Urban Development also became the first to get its Special Purpose Vehicle take off holding the first meeting of the Board of Directors last week at which several operational decisions were taken.

At the first Board meeting held on March 29, 2016, Shri R.Balakrishnan, Development Commissioner and Additional Chief Secretary to Government of Odisha was appointed as Chairman of the SPV, Vice-Chairman of Bhubaneswar Development Authority as Managing Director and Shri R.Vineel Krishna as the CEO of 'Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited'.

A 16-member Board of Directors was set up with representatives of various departments and agencies of the Odisha Government, one representative of Government of India and 5 Independent Directors of which at least one will be woman.

Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited, the Special Purpose Vehicle will have Authorised Capital of Rs.500 cr, divided in to 5 crore shares of Rs.100 each. Of this, the Government of Odisha and Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation will have a share of Rs.112.50 cr each while Bhubaneswar Development Authority will contribute share capital of Rs.250 cr.

As required under the provisions of the Companies Act, 2013, the Board of Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited declared the date of commencement of business as April 1,2016.

The Board in its first meeting also decided on delegation of financial powers. CEO can accord administrative approval for projects up to Rs.7 cr, Managing Director -up to Rs.10 cr, Executive Committee of SPV -up to Rs.25 cr and the Board up to Rs.100 cr. projects costing over and above Rs.100 cr will be sanctioned by the state government.

Project management will be undertaken through engagement of Project Management Consultancy. CEO was authorized to finalize the terms and conditions and manner of recruitment and also engage agency for providing various services.

Shri R.Vineel Krishna, appointed as CEO was earlier Collector and District Magistrate of Malkangiri district.

Under Smart City Mission Guidelines, SPVs for each smart city are to be set up to enable faster execution of projects by delegating to them powers of various concerned departments and agencies.

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Sundaram Finance, Geometric, G M Breweries and GAIL (India) are among the other stocks to see a surge in volumes on BSE today, 4 April 2016.

Aksharchem India clocked volume of 6.65 lakh shares by 13:40 IST on BSE, a 184.34 times surge over two-week average daily volume of 4,000 shares. The stock jumped 8.51% at Rs 182.30.

Sundaram Finance notched up volume of 1.16 lakh shares, a 9.27-fold surge over two-week average daily volume of 13,000 shares. The stock declined 0.59% at Rs 1,268.50.

Geometric saw volume of 17.73 lakh shares, a 7.2-fold surge over two-week average daily volume of 2.46 lakh shares. The stock surged 18.49% at Rs 232.25 after HCL Technologies signed definitive agreement with the company to acquire Geometric's business. HCL Technologies announced an agreement for the acquisition by way of demerger of the entire business of Geometric, except for the 58% stake that Geometric owns in the joint venture-3DPLM Software Solutions, with Dassault Systemes. The separate announcements were made by HCL Tech and Geometric on Saturday, 2 April 2016.

G M Breweries clocked volume of 71,000 shares, a 4.02-fold surge over two-week average daily volume of 18,000 shares. The stock spurted 12.45% at Rs 1,092.50.

GAIL (India) saw volume of 3.92 lakh shares, a 3.41-fold rise over two-week average daily volume of 1.15 lakh shares. The stock skidded 0.33% at Rs 346.50.

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At least 20 people, including a policeman, were injured as suspected militants triggered an explosion on Monday evening in Dudhnoi in western Assam's Goalpara district, police said.

Superintendent of Police Nitul Gogoi confirmed that a policeman was injured in the blast along with civilians.

The blast site is close to the Dudhnoi police station, police said, adding that they were yet to ascertain the exact nature of the explosives.
Specialists in detecting explosives and picking up clues from places of crime, a new batch of 30 Labrador Retriever dogs were on Monday inducted in the dog squad of Delhi Police.

Of these dogs, 20 are expert in detecting explosive materials while 10 have skills in finding clues from crime spots, police said.

The Labrador Retrievers are one of the most popular breed of dogs in Britain and the US.

The dogs were inducted in the Delhi Police's dog squad in a programme attended by Lt. Governor Najeeb Jung in the presence of Delhi Police Commissioner Alok Kumar Verma and other senior officers.

A police officer said these dogs were bought on March 18 from the army's Remount & Veterinary Corps based in Meerut in Uttar Pradesh.

"With the induction of these dogs, the total number of dogs in the squad have reached 60. Of the total dogs in the squad, 45 are skilled in detecting explosives and remaining are specialised in finding clues at crime spots," said a police officer.

The Delhi Police dog squad, which started in 1960 with 10 dogs in Mandir Marg and Model Town areas in central and north Delhi, respectively, is now spread across 11 Delhi Police districts and special units under the supervision of the Crime Branch.
The AAP on Monday demanded a Supreme Court-monitored probe against companies and people named in the Panama Papers.

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) spokesperson Raghav Chadha said: "Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself has availed of the hospitality of industrialist Gautam Adani, whose brother's company is named in the Panama Papers investigation. Therefore, we don't trust the government for a fair probe into the matter."

"Therefore, a Supreme Court-monitored probe should be ordered in the Panama Papers investigations at the earliest," he said.

An investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and more than 100 other news organisations across the globe reveals offshore links of some of the world's prominent people, including over 500 from India.

In India, The Indian Express published the investigative report, alleging that, among others, Bollywood superstars Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai were directors in companies in Panama. The two did not immediately respond despite efforts to contact them. Rai's media adviser told the newspaper that the information was false.

Also named in the probe were Sameer Gehlaut of India Bulls for allegedly owning properties in the Bahamas, Jersey and Britain and K.P. Singh of realty firm DLF for having companies registered in British Virgin Islands.

Vinod Adani, elder brother of industrialist Gautam Adani, politician Shishir Bajoria from West Bengal and Anurag Kejriwal of the Loksatta Party were also accused of setting up companies in tax havens.

Meanwhile, the AAP leader said the Centre was planning to bring about "retrospective" amendments to the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act so that political parties can receive foreign fundings.

"The Delhi High Court ruled in 2014 that the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress received foreign funding. Therefore, the central government wants to bring in retrospective amendments in the Act so that they could not be charged with violation of the law in the past and continue to receive foreign fundings," Chadha said.

"If the government brings in the amendments, foreign companies will open their branches in India and fund different political parties. Hence, they will dictate policies to the government (of the day) for their own benefit," the AAP leader added.
Ahead of the Kerala assembly polls, a group of medical activists on Monday appealed to all political parties to include tobacco control as a public health measure in their election manifestos.

The activists -- who included oncologists, cardiologists and epidemiologists -- called for specific measures for tobacco control, saying tobacco was responsible for 40 percent of all cancer cases in Kerala.

During an interaction with the media, they also said that the economic burden on healthcare resources in the state due to tobacco use was Rs.1,514 crore a year, while revenue from tobacco was only Rs.315 crore.

Paul Sebastian, vice chairman of Tobacco Free Kerala, and director of the Regional Cancer Centre, said investing in tobacco control was primarily investing in public health.

"It is an assured way of preventing non-communicable diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and high blood pressure," he said.

A.S. Pradeep Kumar, an epidemiologist, said their request to all political parties was to promise in their election manifestos the strong and strict implementation of tobacco control law Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act (COTPA), 2003.

R. Jayakrishnan, associate professor at the Regional Cancer Centre, pointed out that major political parties in Assam, which is also going to the polls, have included tobacco control in their manifestos.
US software major Adobe has appointed noted computer scientist Dr Anandan Padmanabhan as vice president, Adobe Research, to head its Big Data Experience Lab (BEL) in Bengaluru, the company announced on Monday.

Padmanabhan, who was managing director of research outreach at Microsoft, has more than 20 years of research experience.

He will play a key role in spearheading the company's big data research initiatives in the region including data mining, machine learning, social network analysis, mobile experience and content intelligence technologies.

While announcing the appointment, Dr Shriram Revankar, vice president, Adobe Research Big Data Experience Lab, said the research labs in Bengaluru attract some of the best talent in the industry.

"We are delighted to strengthen our team with a computer scientist and visionary of the calibre of Dr Padmanabhan," Revankar said in a statement.

Prior to joining Microsoft in 1997, Padmanabhan was assistant professor of computer science at Yale University for four years.

He has published over 60 papers in leading journals and conferences and has over 6,000 citations by other researchers in the field of computer vision.

An electrical engineering undergraduate from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Madras, Padmanabhan is credited with pioneering work in the areas of visual motion analysis, video surveillance and 3D scene modelling from images and video.
They failed to derive a vision which would achieve the directive principles and national goals stated in the constitution.

They didnt look ahead and have plan for what kind of future the country and its people were going to build as the years passed by.

The new leadership failed to develop an effective vision to steer the country in the right direction.

SOON after Papua New Guinea gained independence from Australia on 16 September 1975, the founding fathers which took charge of the new country made a fundamental mistake that today continues to haunt and prevent Papua New Guinea from progressing.

The founding fathers thought the cponstitution was sufficient in itself to run one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse countries in the world with a population of mostly uneducated rural subsistence dwellers living in bush huts scatted across the toughest terrain.

It was a grave mistake that set a wrong course for the country from the very beginning.

The constitution was not translated into long-term development plans and strategies which should have laid the foundations on which to develop the country and distribute the countrys wealth fairly and equally to improve the living standards of all people.

Some simple development concepts the founding fathers should have adopted but did not may have included the long-term plans in relation to urbanisation, infrastructure, a diversified economy, educational institutions to produce people who would build our country, a workforce in paid employment and decent housing for the people.

In the absence of such long-term development plans and goals, all subsequent governments resorted to temporary or short-term measures, usually on an ad hoc or reactive basis, to spend the limited government resources and funds. Development funds were then just thrown away for leaders to use and spend on anything as they wished.

Politicians realised that they had easy access to huge public funds, something neither they nor their ancestors were used to. They realised that they could buy anything they liked with money; a life their subsistence farmers parents had never dreamed of.

In a country where most people were illiterate and poor, the leaders became gods and celebrity figures. Everyone looked upon them and worshipped them. It was the emergence of PNGs money and big man culture - a man with enough money is a big man and he is above the laws of this land.

The leaders slowly transited into the world of the colonial masters, placing themselves ahead of their fellow Papua New Guineans.

They developed an appetite for misusing, abusing and stealing public funds to buy the kind of life that commanded great respect from ordinary Papua New Guineans. The appetite they developed has been responsible for swallowing billions of kina in development funds.

Since then has emerged the misconception of politics as a means of wealth creation. Elections mean nothing more than a becoming an instant millionaire.

This has grown into a cultural norm, and has slowly spread across the country from the highlands to the coast.

Politicians or big men begin their political careers as ordinary people and graduate as business entrepreneurs after they leave office. The difficulties in separating business from politics has sent out further signals to political aspirants that contesting elections is a god-sent opportunity for wealth accumulation.

Ordinary people like civil servants, priests and pastors when voted into parliament disappear and re-emerge as business entrepreneurs. This also explains why elections in PNG are increasingly becoming violent with bribery and cheating. Leaders are not contesting elections to serve the people and the country but to serve their greed.

As a result, a culture of greed and corruption developed, where anyone, so long as they have connections to the political masters, could easily establish schemes which could be used to divert and siphon off public funds away from the people and development.

Slowly, a network of political cronies and masters developed. Cronies mostly from the bureaucratic mechanism and relatives and business associates of leaders. Bribery, the wantok system and nepotism became the norm. Currently, the network is multiplying with time and with every new government.

To feed their greed, politicians constantly look for easy ways to bring big money into the national coffers so enough is floating around the system for them to steal and satiate their huge appetite for wealth.

Sadly, our natural resources have been the constant subject of their quest for easy money, in the disguise of growing and sustaining the economy.

They give tax breaks to multinational corporations in the guise of attracting foreign investment while neglecting other sectors of the economy such as agriculture. Perhaps this explains why we are still poor despite our riches in natural resources, foreign aid and loans.

Over the years we have been asking why our politicians are not serious about stopping corruption. Well, the answer is obvious. Neither can they punish themselves for stealing nor can they stop themselves from stealing. They love money and all that money can buy. They have been addicted to greed and money almost from the start. There is no quick and easy way out for the country so long as they maintain control of the national piggy bank.

Sadly, while they have been enjoying a life their ancestors never had, they have been leaving behind the rest of the people of Papua New Guinea as beggars in their own rich country.

As a result, every place that was once a village remains village. Even village that hosts a multibillion dollar project remains a village. The people of Kutubu still live in shacks built from sago leafs without electricity and water supply despite oil flowing out of their land for more than 20 years generating billions of kina in revenue.

Despite all the fancy promises and new ways of distribution, development funds never get to the people who remain as villagers in villages. Before there were few bush houses in each village. Now that number has more than trebled because there are more people. More people who do not share in the distribution of the countrys enormous wealth.

The question is  can we continue down this path?

The greatest mistake we have been making continuously is electing the same leaders who have failed this country miserably from the start by failing to have a vision for our country.

If we continue down this path, this country will remain the same or more likely get worse.

Our forefather never gave us this dream but they did give us a choice of determining our own path. The dilemma facing this generation is the choice of whether to lazily stick with the present generation of politicians or choose our own destiny to change the course of history.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Monday announced financial assistance of Rs.20 lakh for the family of NIA official Tanzeel Ahmad, who was shot dead by unidentified assailants in the state's Bijnor.

Expressing sadness at the incident, the chief minister assured the family that the state government was with them in this hour of sorrow. He also directed the director general of police to extend all cooperation to the agencies probing the incident that occurred early Sunday and facilitate investigations so that the culprits behind the heinous crime are brought to justice at the earliest.

Meanwhile, police continued to probe the incident but there has been no breakthrough.
Representatives from India, Brazil, South Africa and China or Basic nations will meet in New Delhi on Wednesday and Thursday to discuss issues related to climate change, an official statement said on Monday.

The 22nd meet of BASIC ministerial group will be organised by the environment ministry to further consolidate the positions of the countries and secure the interests of developing countries, before the 196 UNFCCC member countries meet in May 2016.

The two-day meet is the first meeting of the BASIC Group, after the Paris Agreement was adopted in December 2015.

The group, which was formed in 2009, will also decided on how to carry forward the decisions adopted in the Paris agreement.

"At the end of the two-day meeting, a joint statement will be issued by the Group of Ministers, highlighting the BASIC group position on the way forward for the implementation of the Paris Agreement and its decisions," said the environment ministry statement.

During the 21st meeting of the BASIC Group held in Beijing in 2015, the ministers had highlighted the importance of cooperation among developing countries and voiced their support for further strengthening common positions of developing countries in Paris through the Group of 77 and China.

Along with India's Environment, Forest and Climate Change Minister Prakash Javadekar, China's Special Representative for Climate Change Affairs Xie Zhenhua, South Africa's Deputy Minister of Environmental Affairs Thomson Barbara and Brazil's External Relations Ministry's Under Secretary-General for Environment, Energy, Science and Technology Jose Antonio Marcondes de Carvalho will be attending the meeting, along with other officials.
West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra, who is the Trinamool Congress' candidate from Khardaha in North 24 Parganas, possesses assets in excess of Rs.7.50 crore.

Mitra, whose annual income for the year 2014-15 stood at Rs.14.82 lakh, has movable assets worth over Rs.4.97 crore and immovable assets in excess of Rs.2.76 crore, as revealed by his affidavit filed with the Election Commission.

His movable assets mostly comprise of bank and fixed deposits besides a car worth Rs.1.68 lakh and 4 kg silver valued at Rs.1.28 lakh.

A noted economist, who received his PhD from US' Duke University, Mitra's immovable properties include two plots of non-agricultural land in West Bengal and residential apartments, jointly owned with his wife, in New Delhi and Gurgaon.

His wife Meera has declared annual income of Rs.16.98 lakh in 2014-15 and possesses assets worth over Rs.4 crore including movable assets of Rs.1.34 crore.

The assets of Mitra, a former secretary-general of business chamber FICCI, have grown by over Rs.2 crore in the last five years. In the 2011 assembly polls, he had declared they were worth over Rs.4.80 crore of which Rs.1.94 crore were in movable assets.
Braving the sweltering heat and oppressive humidity, nearly 81 percent of the 40 lakh voters exercised their franchise in three Maoist-affected districts on Monday in the first phase of the West Bengal assembly polls covering 18 constituencies.

Choppers hovered above and there was heavy security presence as 13 of the constituencies that went to the hustings were in areas identified as affected by Left-Wing Extremism (LWE).

An Election Commission official said in Delhi that polling was "by and large peaceful".

"There was no incident of violence, any injury or death to any person, which is a creditable achievement," the official said.

Till 6.30 p.m., the overall polling percentage was 80.92.

While 81.66 percent voters cast their ballot in West Midnapore district, the figure was 80.59 percent in Bankura, and 80.18 in Purulia, state Chief Electoral Officer Sunil Gupta said in Kolkata.

The scheduled time of polling was reduced by two hours in six insurgency-hit constituencies of West Midnapore, four in Purulia and three in Bankura districts. The elections got over at 4 p.m. in these constituencies.

In five other constituencies of Purulia, polling ended at 6 p.m.

However, the polling figure may go up as people were in queue in many of the areas long past the closing time, said Gupta.

He said there were no arrests, or formal complaints about booth capturing.

"Polling was peaceful and fair. We did not receive any serious complaints from the candidates, voters or parties," said the CEO.

Gupta's office has recommended repoll in a booth in Ranibandh assembly constituency in Bankura district following discrepancy in recording the number of votes in an Electronic Voting Machine. The erring polling official was removed.

Gupta also said a presiding officer was removed after allegations that a polling agent was moving to the voter's compartment in a polling station of Purulia district's Balarampur constituency.

For the first phase of the elections, there were 40,09,171 registered voters eligible to record their democratic choices in 4,945 polling stations. Of these, 1,962 were classified as critical.

Gupta said there were no reports of poll boycott in any of the booths. Altogether 34 EVMs were replaced after they developed snags.

Prominent among the 133 candidates -- 11 of them women -- were Paschimanchal Development Affairs Minister Sukumar Hansda of the Trinamool Congress from Jhargram and the CPI-M's Pulin Bihari Baske from Gopiballavpur.

The Congress and the Left Front accused Trinamool activists of attempting to influence and intimidate voters in many booths across the three districts, and also complained that the central forces were not active in many of the areas.

"Our expectations were not completely fulfilled. We don't know yet the extent of terrorisation of voters in the interior areas," said state Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury.

Communist Party of India-Marxist politburo member Md. Salim said polling was "more or less peaceful", but not "entirely fair".

"The polls were fairly peaceful but I will not say it was entirely fair. In places like Salboni (West Midnapore), Bankura and Purulia, the Trinamool, even though it failed to resort to malpractices in a big way, did try to disrupt the polls by orchestrating attacks, intimidating voters and the like," he said.

Salim alleged that in some areas a few of the election Commission's lower level officials worked in the interest of the ruling party.

Rubbishing the opposition's claims, the Trinamool asserted that the large turnout was an indication of the masses' trust in the Mamata Banerjee government.

"The massive turnout displays the people's faith in the Mamata Banerjee government," state Panchayat Minister Subrata Mukherjee said.

The Trinamool, Left Front-Congress combine and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were in the fray for all the 18 constituencies.

Among the Left Front partners, the CPI-M put up candidates in 11 seats, and the Communist Party of India and the All India Forward Bloc in one seat each. The Congress was in the race in five constituencies.

Multi-layered security was put in place around the constituencies, with at least 10 personnel of a central paramilitary force deployed to secure each polling station in the LWE-affected constituencies.

Besides two helicopters carrying out sorties, an air ambulance and quick response teams were on standby.
Braving the sweltering heat and oppressive humidity, nearly 81 percent of the 40 lakh voters cast their ballot in three Maoist-affected districts of West Bengal on Monday in the first phase of the assembly polls covering 18 constituencies.

The constituencies that went to the hustings included 13 in areas identified as affected by the Left-Wing Extremism (LWE).

An Election Commission official said in Delhi that the polling was "by and large peaceful".

"There was no incident of violence, any injury or death to any person, which is a creditable achievement," the official said.

Till 6.30 p.m., the overall polling percentage was 80.92.

While 81.66 percent voters cast their ballot in West Midnapore district, the figure was 80.59 percent in Bankura, and 80.18 in Purulia, state Chief Electoral Officer Sunil Gupta said in Kolkata.

The scheduled time of polling was reduced by two hours in six insurgency-hit constituencies of West Midnapore, four in Purulia and three in Bankura districts. The elections got over at 4 p.m. in these constituencies.

In five other constituencies of Purulia, polling ended at 6 p.m.

However, the polling figure may go up as lot of people were in queue in many of the areas long past the closing time, said Gupta.

He said there were no arrests, or formal complaints about booth capturing.

"We did not receive any serious complaints from the candidates, voters or parties," said the CEO.

He said a presiding officer was removed after there were allegations that a polling agent was moving to the voter compartment in polling station No.15 of Purulia district's Balarampur constituency.

Another polling official was removed for dereliction of duty after votes were found not being recorded in the Electronic Voting Machines in booth No.30 of Ranibandh constituency in Bankura district.

For the first phase of the elections, there were 40,09,171 registered voters eligible to record their democratic choices in 4,945 polling stations. Of these, 1,962 were classified as critical where special security measures were taken.

Gupta said there were no reports of poll boycott in any of the booths.

Prominent among the 133 candidates -- 11 of them women -- were Paschimanchal Development Affairs Minister Sukumar Hansda of the Trinamool Congress from Jhargram and the CPI-M's Pulin Bihari Baske from Gopiballavpur.

The Congress and the Left Front accused Trinamool activists of attempting to influence and intimidate voters in many booths across the three districts, and also complained that the central forces were not active in many of the areas.

"Our expectations were not completely fulfilled. We don't know yet the extent of terrorisation of voters in the interior areas," said state Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury.

Communist Party of India-Marxist politburo member Md. Salim said polling was "more or less peaceful", though a section of police personnel played a "partisan role".

The Trinamool, Left Front-Congress combine and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were in the fray for all the 18 constituencies.

Among the Left Front partners, the CPI-M has put up candidates in 11 seats, and the Communist Party of India and the All India Forward Bloc in one seat each. The Congress was in the race in five constituencies.

Multi-layered security was put in place around the constituencies, with at least 10 personnel of a central paramilitary force deployed to secure each polling station in the 13 LWE-affected constituencies.

Besides two helicopters carrying out sorties, an air ambulance and quick response teams were on standby.
Democratic Party front-runner Hillary Clinton and opponent self-styled socialist Bernie Sanders have continued sparring over a plausible debate date ahead of the April 19 New York primary.

But the two sides are not in agreement yet. While the Clinton campaign is aiming for the evening of April 14, the Sanders campaign is resisting that date.

"I'm not quite sure how that works on our schedule. We may have a major rally being scheduled," Sanders told CNN on Sunday.

The latest back-and-forth over the Democratic debate schedule began last week when Sanders called for the Clinton campaign to accept a debate in Brooklyn.

In January, the Sanders and Clinton campaigns agreed to add four more debates into the schedule, after criticism from many in the Democratic Party, including Sanders, that there were too few debates.

"I'm confident that there will be a debate before the April 19 New York primary," Clinton said, adding, "I'm not the one negotiating it. That's going on between our campaigns. And I do know my campaign has really been trying to get a time that Senator Sanders' campaign would agree with."

CNN, NBC and ABC are among the networks seeking to host a debate between the two Democratic Party candidates.

The two candidates have not sparred on-stage since the Univision-Washington Post debate on March 9.

So far, Clinton is leading the Democrats race with 1,742 votes against Sanders. He has gained 1,051 votes. Clinton still needs about 600 more votes to win the party nomination.

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The opposition Congress on Monday raised in the Maharashtra assembly the issue of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis's remarks on 'Bharat mata ki jai' issue and sought an apology from him before walking out of the house.

Under opposition fire, Fadnavis defended his statement made at a public meeting in Nashik on Saturday that those who refused to chant 'Bharat mata ki jai' had no right to stay in the country.

"I don't care whether I remain the chief minister or not... I used to say 'Bharat mata ki jai', I still say it and will continue to say it," Fadnavis said after the Congress sought his apology.

Former chief minister and Congress leader Prithviraj Chavan -- who led the opposition onslaught on the government in the assembly -- sought to know if Fadnavis had made the remarks in his capacity as the chief minister or a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh member.

Fadnavis retorted that he was the chief minister of the state, but the RSS had taught him nationalism and patriotism, and what he was saying in the house was as per the constitution.

Moving an adjournment motion, leader of opposition Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil accused Fadnavis of creating apprehensions in the minds of minority community's members who, he said, were forced to prove their patriotism by such remarks.

He said the chief minister's statement that everybody chant 'Bharat mata ki jai' was not right, and he sought to divert public attention from the real problems plaguing the state.

Vikhe-Patil accused him of repeatedly politicising the issue, and demanded an apology from Fadnavis before the Congress walked out of the house amid a din.

Fadnavis defended his remarks and said there was no dispute since it is not related to any particular religion or caste. He praised 500 Muslim clerics who not only hoisted the Tricolor at the Mahim Dargah but also chanted 'Bharat mata ki jai' on March 27, the 603rd urs of Hazrat Makhdum Fateh Ali Mahimi.

He said that at the Wagah border near Amritsar in Punjab, Indian soldiers only sing the national song 'Vande Mataram' and chant 'Bharat mata ki jai', and said that chanting of pro-India slogans was being deliberately linked to a particular religion to create a rift between different communities.

After his remark kicked up a row, Fadnavis on Sunday clarified: "We have absolutely no problem if somebody says 'Jai Hind' or 'Jai Bharat' or 'Jai Hindustan', but we object when someone refused to say 'Bharati mata ki jai... the slogan has nothing to do with religion, but is about patriotism and love for the country."
The Allahabad High Court on Monday issued a contempt notice to a top Uttar Pradesh government official for not providing documents to IPS officer Amitabh Thakur with regard to a departmental inquiry against him.

The contempt notice was issued to Principal Secretary (Home) Debashish Panda by Justice D.K. Upadhyaya of the high court's bench here for not complying with its direction to provide documents to the suspended Indian Police Service (IPS) officer.

The high court on January 13 had stayed the departmental inquiry against Thakur till documents demanded by him in connection with the probe are provided to him by the state government.

It directed the government to provide the documents to him within four weeks.

But instead of providing them, the state government filed a Special Leave Petition (SLP) before the Supreme Court.

The apex court dismissed the petition on March 14.

Following that, Thakur filed the contempt petition in the high court.

Thakur had challenged the departmental inquiry started against him after his suspension last year and sought directions to provide 67 documents related to it.

The state government had suspended him on charges of misconduct, taking part in dharnas and filing PILs (public interest litigation petitions).
Against the backdrop of the Bombay High Court's ruling giving women the equal right to pray in places of worship, the Shiv Sena on Monday urged courts to keep off religious issues.

"Matters of religion should not be dragged to and decided by the courts but should be resolved amicably by mutual discussions by society peers and religious seers," an editorial in the Sena mouthpiece "Saamana" said.

It pointed out that even today there was a debate on whether the revered saint Saibaba of Shirdi in Maharashtra was a Hindu or a Muslim but the courts cannot decide this as it was a matter of faith.

Similarly, the courts cannot say with finality that Lord Ram was indeed born in Ayodhya and this should be decided by the elders in the society.

In the same vein, the Sena urged that the the issue of whether women should be permitted to go up to the deity at the Shani Shingnapur temple at Ahmednagar in Maharashtra should be left to the temple trustees, the villagers and the devotees.

Referring to the high court ruling, the Sena questioned whether this would also applicable to women fighting for similar rights in Muslim places of worship.

The Sena said the courts must speak up with conviction that equal rights must be given to all women - since that would help the cause of women's empowerment.

In this context, the Sena pointed out how Maharashtra has always been at the forefront in the campaign for women's equality and great social reformers like Mahatma Jyotirao Phule and Maharishi Dhondo Keshav Karve were even ex-communicated because of their efforts.
The CPI-M on Monday accused Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis of violating his constitutional position by saying that those unwilling to say 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' have no right to stay in the country.

"What the chief minister has said is that those who do not agree with the

Hindutva version of nationalism have no right to stay in the country," the Communist Party of India-Marxist said in a statement.

"This is the view of an RSS activist and not that of a chief minister who has sworn to uphold the constitution," it said. The CPI-M urged Fadnavis to retract his statement immediately.

"The climate of hate and intolerance being created is also illustrated by the rabidly communal stand of (yoga guru) Ramdev when he said that he would have cut off the heads of those who do not shout the slogan hailing Bharat Mata.

"This speech is an incitement to violence and communal hatred. The concerned authorities should immediately file a case under the relevant provisions of the Indian Penal Code."
My professional experience includes the provision of health care services in maximum-security prisons in Australia.

Whilst employed at the Manus Island OPC, my duties were mainly the supervision of the provision of medical care as provided by other doctors employed there, as well as the provision of medical care myself.

I am a Medical Doctor, formerly employed at an Offshore Processing Centre (the Manus Island OPC) for some months.

THE blog of Australian lawyer and human rights activist Julian Burnside has posted numerous statements providing evidence of the conditions and treatment of detainees on Manus, Nauru and Christmas Island. We reproduce three of the Manus statements here .

On the whole, the conditions of detention at the Manus Island OPC are extremely poor. When I first arrived at the Manus Island OPC I was considerably distressed at what I saw, and I recall thinking that this must be similar to a concentration camp.

The detainees at the Manus Island OPC are detained behind razor wire fences, in conditions below the standard of Australian maximum-security prison.

My professional opinion is that the minimum medical requirements of the detained population were not being met. I have no reason to believe that the conditions of detention have improved since I ceased employment at the Manus Island OPC.

The conditions of detention at the Manus Island OPC appeared to be calculated to break the spirit of those detained in the Manus Island OPC. On a number of occasions the extreme conditions of detention resulted in detainees abandoning their claims for asylum and returning to their country of origin.

At the Manus Island OPC, bathroom facilities are rarely cleaned. There was a lot of mould, poor ventilation, and the structural integrity of the facilities is concerning.

No soap is provided to detainees for personal hygiene.

When detainees need to use the bathroom, it is standard procedure that they first attend at the guards station to request toilet paper. Detainees would be required to give an indication of how many squares they will need. The maximum allowed is six squares of toilet paper, which I considered demeaning.

A large number of detainees continue to be in need of urgent medical attention.

Formal requests for medical attention are available to the detainees. The forms are only available in English. Many of the detainees do not have a workable understanding of English and the guards will not provide assistance.

The medical request forms are collected in a box throughout the week, and then on the weekend the box (together with its contents) is disposed of in a waste bin without having been reviewed. I witnessed this on a number of occasions, and understood it to be common practice.

On some occasions when I was given access to particular detainees to provide medical treatment, they told me that they had filled out and submitted more than 15 forms over many months but until now had not received treatment. The medical complaints they had were serious and in urgent need of attention.

I have personally witnessed a number of instances of trickery and deception on behalf of Manus Island OPC guards. Medical treatment is often used as bait for removing detainees from their compound where a particular detainee has complained about conditions. Once removed, and prior to the provision of any form of acceptable medical attention, the relevant detainees are transported to the local prison as a form of punishment for agitation.

I often expressed my concern about the lack of medical treatment provided to the detainees. Never were my concerns addressed.

Statement of Witness B

I am a former detainee at an Offshore Processing Centre (the Manus Island OPC). I was detained there for many months.

When I was detained at the Manus Island OPC, I was treated like an animal, and I was tortured.

I was detained at the Manus Island OPC on 16 and 17 February 2014, at the time that Reza Barati was murdered inside the detention centre.

I know that there were detainees who witnessed his murder.

Those detainees provided written statements to the police following his murder. The written statements named specific persons who they believed were responsible for his murder, as well as detailed accounts of misbehaviour by the guards.

I know that the detainees who provided those written statements were removed from their compound and taken to a different area of the Manus Island OPC, away from the other detainees.

Exhibited to this statement is a true and correct copy of the eye witness statements, marked as Exhibits to Annexure B-Redacted Affidavits.

Once removed, the detainees who had given statements were tied to chairs by Wilson Security guards, and physically assaulted.

They were then asked to retract their statements.

The detainees refused to retract their statements, and so the guards continued to beat them, more savagely.

They were then asked again to retract their statements.

The detainees still refused to retract their statements, and so the guards told them that if they still refused to retract their statements, they would allow the local men waiting outside to rape them.

I dont know for sure whether or not the detainees retracted the statements.

Statement of Witness C

I am a former employee at an Offshore Processing Centre (the Manus Island OPC). I worked there for a number of months.

I also have many years experience in the prisons system.

Whilst employed at the Manus Island OPC, I witnessed certain events that deeply disturbed me; I continue to be deeply disturbed by these events.

Detainees are not allowed communication with the outside world. They are restricted in the Internet sites that they have access to.

Asylum case managers that are granted access to the Manus Island OPC are searched on entry. The case managers may not bring paper or documents of any form into the Manus Island OPC.

When new detainees arrive at the Manus Island OPC, often, I saw one or two taken aside and offered a more favourable assessment of their asylum claim if they agree to act as an informant on the balance of their boat group.

Staff at the Manus Island OPC operate on the assumption that detainees of all ages will attempt self-harm. As such, self-harm is not addressed as a symptom of anxiety or depression, or dealt with at all.

From what I witnessed, self-harm was not a concern to guards when it was reported.

Site-staff move detainees constantly without their permission. It is impossible for detainees to form friendships or find stability whilst their asylum claims are assessed.

Read the full portfolio of statements here.
Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, will interact with educationists at the University of Delhi in the national capital for five days from April 6 to finalise a draft curriculum for secular .

The Dalai Lama will meet educational professionals and scientists to also discuss the integration of basic human values inthe the school academic system, an official from his office told IANS on Monday.

During his stay in Delhi, the Tibetan spiritual leader will visit the United States Embassy's school, Springdales School and Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi to give talks on compassion and global responsibility, peace and values in schooling and ethics and happiness.
The DMK and the Congress on Monday announced seat sharing for the Tamil Nadu assembly elections, with the Congress agreeing to contest just 41 of the 234 seats.

The Congress had demanded 63 seats, the number allotted to it in 2011. But the DMK offered only 41, which is less than the 48 where the Congress fielded candidates in 2006.

Congress leader and former union minister Ghulam Nabi Azad told the media that he was confident that DMK president M. Karunanidhi would be able to form a government in the state after the May 16 election.

DMK treasurer M.K. Stalin added that the DMK-led alliance was confident of winning the elections "as people want a change".

Now the parties in the DMK alliance have to decide the constituencies each will contest.

Earlier, the DMK allotted five seats each to the Indian Union Muslim League and the MMK, another Muslim party, and one seat to the smaller SSP.

Senior Congress leader E.V.K.S. Elangovan said the party was pleased with the 41 seats given to it. "The partymen are happy now," party spokesman Gopanna told IANS. "It is not a climbdown."

After the rout in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the 41 seats is not a small number, he said.

"Also, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi wanted a minimum of 41 seats, the number the party contested in Bihar," Gopanna said.

"In 2001, Congress contested only 14 seats. So 41 is not the lowest ever for the party," another party leader said.

The DMK is expected to contest in 180 seats.
At least eight people were killed in fire in a house in Russia's Tomsk region, investigators said on Monday.

Bodies of three women, two men and two children were found in the wooden house. Another child died in the hospital, Xinhua quoted the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation in the Tomsk region as saying.

The committee said that the fire erupted on Sunday night. Seven of the victims were related and one of the dead men was guest, it said in a statement.

The cause of the fire was being investigated, said the committee.
Ace choreographer and filmmaker Farah Khan, who is choreographing international martial arts movie star Jackie Chan dance for Indo-Chinese film "Kung Fu Yoga", is appreciative of his dancing skills and says he wants to change his name to "Jackie Jackson".

Farah, along with Geeta Kapoor, are working on the choreography for the film, which is being shot in Jodhpur, Rajasthan.

The "Main Hoon Na" director also shared an image of herself sitting next to the "Drunken Master" star. Farah is seen wearing red harem pants, a blue top and a beige hat, while Chan can be seen wearing a red silk kurta with a maroon Dhoti.

The legendary star can also be seen sporting a vermillion mark on his forehead.

"The king of action CAN dance and how! Changing his name to Jackie Jackson! Kung Fu Yoga," Farah captioned the image.

The "Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi" actress on Friday had shared a photograph in which she is seen with Geeta while they were en route Jodhpur.

Directed by Stanley Tong, "Kung Fu Yoga" is a part of the three-film agreement signed between the two countries during Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to India.

The film also stars Bollywood actors Sonu Sood and Amyra Dastur.

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Farhan Akhtar gets present from 'Rock On 2!' director

"Rock On!! 2" director Shujaat Saudagar has gifted actor Farhan Akhatr an acoustic guitar.

Farhan took to Twitter to share the image of his new present with his fans and well-wishers.

"My new Mc Pherson acoustic guitar courtesy 'Rock On 2' director Shujaat Saudagar... What a star, what a beauty," the 42-year-old shared on Twitter.

Scheduled to release on November 11, "Rock On!! 2", which is extensively shot in Shillong, is the sequel to the 2008 film.

The film also features actors Arjun Rampal, Prachi Desai and Purab Kohli reprising their roles. Actress Shraddha Kapoor is the new addition to the cast.

Shraddha will lend her voice along with Farhan, for the original soundtrack of the film.

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Rishi Kapoor keen to work with Naseeruddin Shah again

Veteran actor Rishi Kapoor, who effortlessly portrayed a nonagenarian in his latest movie "Kapoor & Sons", says he wants to work again with Naseeruddin Shah, who is one of the finest actors of Bollywood.

The "Bobby" actor, who thanked the veteran for his thoughts about Rishi's character in Shakun Batra's directorial, worked together in 1989 film "Khoj".

When Naseeruddin praised Rishi's work in "Kapoor & Sons", the 63-year-old actor tweeted: "Thank you Naseer for your kind thoughts about me in 'K&S'. We did a film called 'Khoj', we need a chance again. Love you and your family. Zindabad."

"Kapoor & Sons" also stars Naseeruddin's wife Ratna Pathak Shah in a key role.
Four groups of Indian students are part of nearly 80 teams that will participate in the US space agency's "Human Exploration Rover Challenge" to help realise its goals for future exploration to Mars and beyond.

The teams from the Mukesh Patel School of Technology Management and Engineering in Maharashtra, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee in Uttarakhand, Sathyabama University in Tamil Nadu, and Skyline Institute of Engineering and Technology in Uttar Pradesh will be taking part in the challenge, said in a statement.

The teams from the US, India, Italy, Germany, Mexico, Colombia, Russia and Puerto Rico will compete in the annual challenge, to be held at the US Space and Rocket Centre in Huntsville, Alabama, on April 8 and 9.

The rover challenge requires student teams to design, construct, test and race human-powered rovers through an obstacle course that simulates the terrain potentially found on distant planets, asteroids or moons.

Teams race to finish the three-quarter-mile-long obstacle course in the fastest time, vying for prizes in various divisions.

This year's event incorporates two new and important changes. Teams are required to design and fabricate their own wheels.

Any component contacting the course surface for traction and mobility, including, but not limited to wheels, tracks, treads or belts, cannot be purchased or considered an off-the-shelf product.

The second new feature is an optional "Sample Return challenge".

Teams competing in this separate competition will collect four samples -- liquid, small pebbles, large rocks and soil samples -- using a mechanical arm or grabber they design and build.

The event will conclude with a ceremony at the Davidson Centre for Space Exploration in Huntsville where the awards will be presented for best design, rookie team, pit crew award and other accomplishments.

Inspired by the lunar roving vehicles of the Apollo moon missions, the competition challenges students to solve engineering problems, while highlighting NASA's commitment to inspiring new generations of scientists, engineers and explorers.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday urged the new state government in Jammu and Kashmir to work for aspirations of the people of the state.

Modi also congratulated Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and her deputy Nirmal Singh on assuming the office.

"Congratulations and best wishes to Mehbooba Mufti, Nirmal Singh and all those who took oath today (Monday)," Modi wrote on Twitter.

"May the new government of Jammu and Kashmir leave no stone unturned in fulfilling dreams and aspirations of the people and take the state to new heights of progress," he added.

Mehbooba, 56, was administered the oath of office along with 21 ministers by Governor N.N. Vohra in Jammu, almost three months after the state came under Governor's Rule on January 8.

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leads the state government with junior partner Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Jawaharlal Nehru University and Hyderabad Central University, which recently faced controversies, have figured in top four rankings released by the union Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD).

The JNU has been placed at third spot with weighed score of 86.46 while Hyderabad Central University is at the fourth place with a score of 85.45 in the rankings of top universities released by the HRD.

The Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, has topped the chart with weighed score of 91.81 while the Institute of Chemical Technology has scored second position with a score of 87.58 in universities category.

"Designed with a transparent mechanism, the National Institutional Rankings will facilitate choice, enabling higher stakeholders to make informed and accurate decisions," HRD Minister Smriti Irani said releasing the India Rankings 2016.

"Each year, these rankings will serve as a performance benchmark for institutes to improve their standing in the educational arena," Irani added.

Ironically, various members of parliament from Irani's ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, in various speeches and public statements they made over last two months have described the JNU as a fortress of naxalism and anti-national activities.

However, on Monday the HRD ministry described these rankings as the country's first exercise to rank higher educational institutions based on objective, identifiable parameters.

"The rankings are arrived at after detailed analysis and validation of the data submitted by more than 3,600 higher educational institutions in the Country classified in 6 categories," the ministry said in a statement released here.

"These rankings follow an Indian approach, where academic institute will be assessed on parameters, including teaching-learning; research; collaborative practice and professional performance; graduate outcomes; placements; outreach and inclusive action and peer group perception," the ministry added.

The announcement of the rankings was made by the ministry under its National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) programme in the presence of HRD Minister Smriti Irani here on Monday.

Meanwhile, reacting to developments, the JNU has said that it will continue on its march to be the best university in the world.

"It is an exciting news to know that JNU finds place in the top echelons of Indian universities despite its broad-based nature of research and teaching. Students from diverse economic backgrounds from different parts of India should take advantage of the quality imparted by JNU and apply in large numbers," JNU public relations officer Poonam Kudasiya said.

In the university category, other top-ranked institutes were University of Delhi (6th), Banaras Hindu University at Varanasi (7th), Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology in Kerala (8th), Birla Institute of Technology and Science at Pilani (9th), Aligarh Muslim University (10th) and Visva-Bharati University in West Bengal (11th). Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi was ranked 83rd.

IIM-Bangalore and IIT-Madras have topped the charts in the category of management and engineering institutions. The NIRF evaluated 100 higher educational institutions each in engineering, management, universities and pharmacy categories.
He has twice played god on screen, and now he's taking the small screen route to explore 'the story of god' in a documentary series for which he paid a maiden visit to India last year.

One of American cinema's most recognisable figures, Morgan Freeman, says he's fascinated with the "differences" that the country has to offer and that he'd love to return to film a movie.

"I would primarily like to go to India and make a movie. I'd like to be there for a while. Some time ago I had a great idea, a great movie idea. It wasn't mine, it was someone else's. It wasn't well thought out, but it was such a great idea and I would really like to do something like that in India," Freeman told IANS in an interview during a conference call with select Indian media.

During his tryst with India for National Geographic Channel's "The Story of God", he visited Bodh Gaya and Varanasi -- cities which are of religious significance -- to bring forth the nation as a melting pot of myriad religions, faiths beliefs and traditions.

"India is an endlessly fascinating place when you go from place to place to place to place and you see the differences. For instance, all the places we were in, Bodh Gaya and Varanasi, had fascinating differences. I think you would probably find that all over India," added the 78-year-old in his distinct baritone.

Freeman, who has left a lasting impression with his persona in movies like "The Shawshank Redemption", "Seven", "Bruce Almighty" and "Million Dollar Baby", visited seven countries for the series in a quest to find out how religion has evolved through the course of civilisation, and how it has shaped the evolution of society.

He visited iconic places like Jerusalem's Wailing Wall, Mayan temples in Guatemala and the pyramids of Egypt. In India, though, Freeman said he could not put his mind "around the traffic" in Varanasi, one of the oldest cities in the country which he found "extraordinary".

"For me, I was a little surprised by India... I was trying to understand how people associate with one god to another. It was completely interesting and new."

Those sentiments also describe his journey into some of the world's key religious sites, ruins of ancient civilizations, and in cutting-edge science laboratories for the six-part series which will go on air on April 15. Freeman, Lori McCreary and James Younger are the executive producers of the series.

While religion is often seen as something that divides, the series illuminates the similarities among different faiths.

Did "The Story of God" affect Freeman's personal beliefs about the Almighty?

"I have been asked if my beliefs changed. I'd say no. But affected personally? Absolutely! Learning these different cultures around the idea of god was very fascinating," said the Academy Award winning star, who found himself in a "spiritual limbo dealing with Hinduism because for one thing, it seems to be a tough religion".

Is he a god-fearing person?

"No, no. The god I believe in doesn't scare me, so I'm not god-fearing at all," Freeman told IANS, adding that "if the job comes along, the script is right, and the money's good", he will will play god again on the big screen.

And every once in a while amid his busy schedule, Freeman finds time to do documentaries such as this as he feels there's "an obligation to make positive changes in the world".

(Radhika Bhirani can be contacted at radhika.b@ians.in)
Indian Army Chief General Dalbir Singh will be visiting the US on a "goodwill visit" from April 5 to 8 when he will also meet UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

The visit is part of the ongoing high level exchanges between India and the US.

General Dalbir Singh will meet Ban at the UN headquarters to "strengthen the Indian Army's commitment towards UN Missions", an official statement here said.

He will also visit the US Central Command (CENTCOM) that includes countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia including Afghanistan and Iraq in its Area of Responsibility.

He will also visit the United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM), the Unified Combatant Command charged with overseeing the various Special Operations Component Commands of the United States Armed Forces, headquarter 1 Corps and US Army's Manoeuvre Centre of Excellence (MCoE) where he will hold discussions with commanders of the US Army.

In Washington, General Dalbir Singh will meet US Secretary of Army, Chairman Jt. Chiefs of Staff, Chief of Staff of the US Army and Commander US Marine Corps, along with other officials.

The India-US ties have been transformed in recent years with a renewed Defence Framework Agreement, supply of defence equipment, sharing of technology and military-to-military exchanges.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday ordered a multi-agency probe team on the global expose by International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), dubbed the "Panama Papers", which found over 500 Indians also had alleged offshore links.

"A multi-agency group is being formed to monitor the black money trail," Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said here after the expose was published in The Indian Express. "Details of the assets worth Rs.6,500 crore has already been found," he added.

As per a statement issued by his ministry, the probe team will comprise officers from the Central Board of Direct Taxes' Financial Intelligence Unit, its Tax Research Unit as also officials from the Reserve Bank of India.

"The group will monitor the flow of information in each one of the case. The government will take all the necessary actions as required to get maximum information from all sources including from foreign governments to help in the investigation process," the statement added.

The journalists' consortium had said late on Sunday that its members and more than 100 other news organisations around the globe have found offshore links of some of the planet's most prominent people. The list included over 500 Indians.

The details of the Indians with such offshore funds were published in The Indian Express. But whether or not such funds exist, and also if they were illegal is what the probe team ordered by Modi is expected to look into.

"In terms of size, the Panama Papers is likely the biggest leak of inside information in history - more than 11.5 million documents - and it is equally likely to be one of the most explosive in the nature of its revelations," the consortium said of its investigation published.

In the context of the commitment of the central government to bring out undisclosed money both from abroad and from within the country, information brought out by any investigative journalism was welcome, the finance ministry said.

The ministry said in the past too, based on the investigations by ICIJ in 2013 -- that showed the links of 700 Indians with business connection with off-shore entities -- the agencies of the government were able to identify 434 persons as Indian residents.

It also said 184 persons admitted their relationship with such off-shore entities/transactions.

"Although, in the previous report of ICIJ, information relating to financial transactions/bank accounts was not available, the government authorities have detected credit in the undisclosed foreign accounts of such Indian persons in excess of Rs.2,000 crores."

As a consequence, 52 prosecution complaints have been filed against the alleged offenders so far.

"The government is committed to detecting and preventing the generation of black money. In this context the expose of Panama Papers will further help the government in meeting the objective," the finance ministry added.

The government expressed concern that tax havens were making countries like India suffer tax losses.

"The recent initiative of 'Base Erosion' and 'Profit Shifting' (BEPS) will help India and other countries in checking the practice of tax-avoidance through such tax havens. India is also fully committed to the BEPS initiative."

In India, The Indian Express ran several pages of the investigation reports alleging, among other names, Bollywood superstarts Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai, being directors in companies in Panama.

The two did not immediately respond despite efforts to contact them. Aishwarya Rai's media adviser told the newspaper that the information was false. The spokesperson for Aishwarya Rai said "no" when IANS asked her if she intended to issue a statement.

Among those named in the report were Sameer Gehlaut of India Bulls and K.P. Singh of DLF. Vinod Adani, elder brother of industrialist Gautam Adani, politician Shishir Bajoria from West Bengal and Anurag Kejriwal of Loksatta Party were also alleged to have set up companies in tax havens.

Bajoria told the paper that that "erroneous beneficial owner information" was given by mistake.

The Express said it had carried out the investigations spread over eight months with several global newspapers. Many of the other persons named in the Express reports responded, some denying while others maintaining that they had worked within the laws of the country.

Among the global leaders named were 12 current and former world leaders, including Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's family members. It also sought to reveal how associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin secretly shuffled as much as $2 billion through banks and shadow firms.

In Russia, the state-run media organisations were silent on the subject. In Pakistan, however, Sharif's son Hussain told Geo News that his family had not done anything wrong.
Arguments rage as egg standards leave the cage

New mandatory standards for free-range eggs sold in Australia were announced by Australian Federal and State consumer affairs ministers in Canberra late-last week.

Egg producers will now be allowed to promote their eggs as free range so long as they have no more than 10, 000 birds per hectare. The birds must also have meaningful access to outdoor space. Furthermore, cartons must declare the number of birds per hectare.

CHOICE left unhappy with decision

Assembling a flock of dissatisfied lobbyists on this issue, Australias leading consumer advocacy group CHOICE is telling consumers to boycott eggs advertised as being free range if they come from the higher volume 10, 000 bird per hectare farms.

According to CHOICE, eggs should be considered free range only when there is 1, 500 birds per hectare as recommended by the CSIRO Model Code. CHOICE has announced that eggs which come from 10, 000 birds per hectare situations and are currently promoted as free range include Aldis private label Lodge Farm Free Range Eggs, Coles Free Range, Ecoeggs, Farm Pride Free Range, Pace Farm Free Range and Woolworths Free Range. A full list of all free range egg brands sold in Australian supermarkets and whether they come from farms of 10, 000 birds per hectare or not, is included in a CHOICE website page.

These new rules fail the common sense test, said CHOICE spokesperson Tom Godfrey.

All you need to do is look at egg cartons labelled free-range in any major supermarket to see how these products are marketed to Australians, with pictures of chickens outside, he said.

Eggs that come from hens that dont go outside and have high stocking densities dont meet consumers expectations and dont deserve the free-range label. Because of this, we are calling on consumers to boycott bad eggs that have an outdoor stocking density of up to 10,000 hens per hectare, Godfrey said.

Shane Rattenbury was the only minister who voted for CHOICEs own recommended 1, 500 bird per hectare standard.
A group of Indian students is part of 80 teams that will participate in the US space agency's "Human Exploration Rover Challenge" to help NASA realise its goals for future exploration to Mars and beyond.

Nearly 80 teams from the US, India, Italy, Germany, Mexico, Colombia, Russia and Puerto Rico will compete in NASA's annual challenge to be held at the US Space and Rocket Centre in Huntsville, Alabama on April 8 and 9.

The rover challenge requires student teams to design, construct, test and race human-powered rovers through an obstacle course that simulates the terrain potentially found on distant planets, asteroids or moons.

Teams race to finish the three-quarter-mile-long obstacle course in the fastest time, vying for prizes in various divisions, NASA said in a statement.

This year's event incorporates two new and important changes. Teams are required to design and fabricate their own wheels.

Any component contacting the course surface for traction and mobility, including, but not limited to wheels, tracks, treads or belts cannot be purchased or considered an off-the-shelf product.

The second new feature is an optional "Sample Return challenge".

Teams competing in this separate competition will collect four samples -- liquid, small pebbles, large rocks and soil samples -- using a mechanical arm or grabber they design and build.

The event will conclude with a ceremony at the Davidson Centre for Space Exploration in Huntsville where the awards will be presented for best design, rookie team, pit crew award and other accomplishments.

Inspired by the lunar roving vehicles of the Apollo moon missions, the competition challenges students to solve engineering problems, while highlighting NASA's commitment to inspiring new generations of scientists, engineers and explorers.
Milan, April 4 (IANS/AKI) A 26-year-old woman was on Monday admitted to a hospital in a critical condition after being hit by a tram as she spoke on her mobile phone.

The woman was taken by an ambulance to Milan's Niguarda hospital with head injuries after the tram hit her from behind outside the central station.

At the time of the accident, the woman was standing on a pedestrian island with her back to the oncoming tram and had moved too close to the tram lines while busy on the phone, according to eyewitnesses.

--IANS/AKI

vd
Tamil Nadu's ruling AIADMK will field a record highest 227 candidates in the assembly elections, with Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa contesting from flood-battered Chennai. Even the allies in the remaining seven seats will seek votes on the AIADMK symbol.

Jayalalithaa, 68, announced the candidates' list, saying she will seek re-election from Radhakrishnan Nagar constituency in north Chennai, an area that was badly affected in the unprecedented December floods.

The decision is significant as opposition parties were hoping to make the government's handling of the floods in the city a major election plank.

The AIADMK general secretary also said that her party will contest all 30 seats in Puducherry and put up seven candidates in Tamil areas of Kerala.

Assembly elections in all three states are scheduled for May 16.

While a majority of the Tamil Nadu ministers have been retained as candidates, some outgoing legislators, including 10 ministers, have been dropped.

Jayalalithaa rewarded those who switched loyalties to her party from the DMDK, DMK and PMK.

The notable new entrant is Panruti S. Ramachandran, who had quit the DMDK. He was one of the leading lights of the AIADMK when its founder, the late M.G. Ramachandran or MGR, presided over the state.

Another old timer who has been fielded is C. Ponnaiyan, a former minister.

Though eight DMDK legislators turned rebel and supported the AIADMK during the most part of the outgoing assembly and later joined the ruling party, only K. Pandiarajan out of them has been given a ticket.

Jayalalithaa has also fielded M. Kalaiarasu and P.T. Elangovan, who had quit PMK, and Parithi Ilamvazhuthi, who had quit DMK and joined AIADMK.

Former DGP R. Nataraj is one of the new faces in the party list. He will contest from Mylapore in the heart of Chennai.

The AIADMK candidates' list is a mix of graduates, post-graduates and those with professional qualifications. Over 10 percent of the candidates are women.

Actors-turned-politicians R. Sarathkumar and Karunas will contest from Thiruchendur and Thiruvadanai constituencies respectively. They are among the seven candidates from smaller parties allied with the AIADMK.

AIADMK spokesperson Avadi Kumar told IANS that it was the first time that the party was contesting in more than 200 seats.

Though the allies have been given seven seats, they will contest under AIADMK's "two leaves" symbol. Thus, for the first time, the AIADMK symbol will be seen in all the 234 constituencies.

Jayalalithaa first became chief minister in June 1991 and was voted out in 1996. She again became chief minister in May 2001 but stepped down in September that year due to legal hassles.

She was allowed to return to her post in March 2002 and retained it till May 2006. After the May 2011 elections, she took charge of Tamil Nadu again till September 2014 when she resigned due to a legal row.

She returned to the chief minister's post in May 2015.

In Puducherry, the AIADMK will contest all the 30 seats. In 2011, it had tied up with All India NR Congress there. After the elections which the alliance won, the relationship between the two soured.

In neighbouring Kerala, the AIADMK has fielded seven candidates as against six in 2011. The AIADMK tasted success in six wards in last year's Kerala civic polls.

For the 2016 assembly elections, Jayalalithaa has fielded three candidates each in Palakkad and Idukki districts and one candidate in Thiruvananthapuram. All the areas have sizeable Tamil population.
In a game of one-upmanship in Kerala's Congress circles, the name of Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy's closest aide Benny Behanan was axed from the list of assembly aspirants by the party high command, a party source here said on Monday.

Behanan is sitting legislator from Trikkakara constituency in Ernakulam district.

Sources here said party vice president Rahul Gandhi dropped Behanan's name from a list sent from here for approval at New Delhi.

The development followed strong reservation by state Congress chief V.M. Sudheeran to five names suggested by Chief Minister Chandy. Gandhi, while allowing four names to remain on the list, directed that Behanan's name be knocked off, the sources said.

Later, Behanan told media persons here that he had decided to withdraw his name from the upcoming assembly polls.

The final list of Congress nominees for the 140-seat Kerala assembly was likely to be released on Tuesday.
General Secretary of Gulf Cooperation Council Abdullateef Alzayani has said that US Secretary of State John Kerry will meet Gulf foreign ministers on Thursday in Manama.

The meeting will be held in preparation for the Gulf-US summit on April 21 in Riyadh, Xinhua quoted Alzayani as saying on Sunday.

The White House announced in March that US President Barack Obama will visit Saudi Arabia in April for a meeting with Arab leaders to repair relations strained by last year's nuclear deal with Iran.

Alzayani said that the meeting will discuss the outcome of the working groups formed in cooperation with the Camp David summit which was held in May 2015 as well as efforts to develop Gulf-US ties.

He also said that the meeting will address regional conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Libya and topics of shared interest.
The Left parties on Monday staged a protest in front of Raj Bhavan here, demanding recall of University of Hyderabad Vice Chancellor P. Appa Rao.

Leaders and workers of various Communist parties marched to Raj Bhavan as part of their protest 'Chalo Raj Bhavan' to demand immediate removal of Appa Rao and condemn the police excesses on students.

Police stopped Communist Party of India (CPI) national secretary K. Narayana and others when they gathered outside Raj Bhavan. They were demanding that Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan should urge the Centre to immediately recall the vice chancellor.

The protestors were raising slogans against Appa Rao and the central government. There was an argument between police and protestors. It led to some jostling and mild tension.

Police arrested the protestors, including Narayana, and shifted them to the Goshamahal police station.

Earlier, talking to reporters, Narayana said the return of Appa Rao as vice chancellor created unrest on the campus. He held Appa Rao responsible for the police excesses on students who were protesting his resumption of office on March 22.

Narayana alleged that the central government sent back Appa Rao as it wanted Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad (ABVP)'s domination on the campus.

He said Appa Rao was sent to the campus again despite the fact that he was booked under SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act in connection with the suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula.

The CPI leader said though a week has passed since Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao's announcement that he will take up the issue of the vice chancellor's recall with the Centre, he has done nothing.

Narayana also demanded that Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu also should exert pressure on the Centre to recall the vice chancellor.
Whether it is Rahul Mishra's love for textile, ace designer Rohit Bal's fascination with lotus motifs, young designer Dhruv Vaish's eclectic mix of fabrics or brand Amrich's mixing of modern with contemporary -- the summer-resort edition of Lakme Fashion Week (LFW) 2016 witnessed some eye-catching trends, and a heavy dose of Bollywood star presence both on and off the runway.

Returning after his triumphant show at Paris Fashion Week, International Woolmark Award Winner 2014, Mishra dazzled the audience with his fresh summer 2016 collection called 'Knots of Love' at the fashion gala, which concluded on Sunday.

The basis of Mishra's collection has always been textiles and the designer did not disappoint at LFW too.

"Inspired by the patterns and designs that are seen on beautiful porcelain, I worked around them and then sprinkled the garments with 'bandhani'. I also added to these fine crafts the centuries-old technique of draping and created a fine blend of handmade knowledge and detailing for the exquisite creations," said the designer.

Another established designer, Arjun Saluja impressed fashionistas with art installations at the event, where multiple designers promoted use of Indian textile and handicrafts.

"We used different mediums and perspective to tell the story, so the approach was very different. We worked on aging techniques to give the clothes a more distressed look. There is lot of Indian influence in our work as we work on classic Indian shapes and deconstruct them to give them a new shape and form," Saluja told IANS.

Rohit Bal, who has set many a fashion trends in the industry, stole the limelight with his finale presentation. From yards of mulmul to hues of sunset golds and pristine ivories, there was a presentation of handmade cut-works and lattice, intertwined with organic fabrics and age-old techniques of Indian heritage.

Young designers proved their talent too.

Dhruv Vaish, who presented collection titled 'Cerulean', told IANS: "LFW has helped us reach out to the world, and at the same time has given us exposure to what's happening around the world. There are some great buyers encouraging the designers."

AMRICH, a brand run by duo Amit Vijaya and Richard Pandav, drew inspiration from the intersection of traditions, techniques, styles and habits for the collection at LFW.

"With the concept of moving dots creating lines and moving lines creating surfaces, we have made use of a lot of stripes and checks to create overlapping textures," Vijaya told IANS.

He added: "Lakme Fashion Week is a great platform for designers big and small and it really helps us to put our work across to a wide variety of people from around the world.

"To get that kind of exposure for any of us designers is definitely a boost for our business in terms of branding. Having established our label's presence in high end designer stores across the country in the last five years, we would like to push the brand further by reaching out to international buyers with the help and support of LFW. This season we have also launched Amrich Goods - a range of leather bags to accentuate our clothing line," he added.

While creativity was on a high at the just-concluded fashion gala, Bollywood presence too gave attendees a reason to cheer. While several faces walked the runway as a showstopper for many leading designers, there were some popular names who supported their favourite names from the front row.

Some celebrities who were a part of the fashion gala included Kareena Kapoor Khan, Sidharth Malhotra, Lisa Haydon, Aditi Rao Hydari, Huma Qureshi, veteran actress Helen, Arjun Kapoor, Sonakshi Sinha, Bhumi Pednekar, Mira Rajput, Ali Fazal, Mini Mathur, Ayan Mukherjee, Onir, Juhi Chawla and Sangeeta Bijlani.

(The writer's trip is at the invitation of Lakme Fashion Week organisers. Nivedita can be contacted at nivedita.s@ians.in)
The first ferry carrying migrants, mostly Pakistanis, deported from the Greek island of Lesbos docked here on Monday morning.

The migrants will first go through the camps set up on the dock for health check and registration, Xinhua reported.

Under a deal finalised last month with the European Union, Ankara agrees to take back those who have crossed illegally into Greece via Turkey from March 20 and are deemed ineligible for asylum.

Hundreds of migrants are expected to be sent back to Dikili town in Turkey on Monday.

Turkish Interior Minister Efkan Ala said on Sunday that the Greek authorities had submitted the names of 400 migrants to be returned on Monday.

He also said that upon the completion of the registration process in Dikili, the migrants will be relocated to temporary refugee centres established in several locations in the country.

The minister noted that the migrants will not be settled along the western coast.
A fleet of ships from the Indian Navy's First Training Squadron berthed at Phuket in Thailand on Monday.

The squadron's primary aim is to impart at-sea training to naval and Coast Guard trainees.

The fleet includes cadet training ship 'Tir', patrol vessel 'Sujata', sail training ship 'Sudarshini', and Indian Coast Guard ship 'Varuna', all indigenously built.

A statement from the navy said the deployment of the training squadron to Phuket "provides opportunities for extensive maritime engagement, contributes to the maintenance of good order at sea and further cements the close relations between the two nations and the two navies".

Training is imparted in seamanship, navigation, ship handling, boat work and technical aspects, while the trainees are exposed to the rigours of life at sea.

The Southern Naval Command is the navy's training command, which provides both basic and advanced training to naval officers and sailors.

The navy has also been providing training to personnel from friendly foreign countries for more than four decades. More than 13,000 personnel from over 40 countries have been trained so far.
In a boon for trauma and emergency transplant patients, a new revolutionary technique promises to give results of complex blood tests in just 10 minutes - helping save precious lives, and also unwanted blood transfusion.

The technique, developed by a German research firm, is currently being used in several European and Asian nations, including in neighbouring Sri Lanka.

The technique, called Rotational Thromboelastometry (ROTEM), would save a liver transplant patient in India from having to undergo unwanted blood transfusion, with just two-three units making do instead of the usual 10-15 units of blood. This would also benefit the patients economically, while hospitals could save up the blood for other needy patients.

The portable machine, developed by German firm Tem International, can be taken to where the patient is. A small sample of blood is enough for around 10-12 tests, including blood cultures, with results delivered in 10 minutes, which would take 40-50 minutes in medical laboratories.

"The ROTEM diagnostic technique helps in giving results of all the tests within 10 minutes. Bleeding and blood transfusion have been shown to be independent risk factors for increased morbidity and mortality. Introduction of ROTEM will be an important initiative for blood management in India," Klaus Goerlinger, senior consultant for Anaesthesiology, Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine at the Germany-based University Duisburg-Essen, told IANS here.

Mahila Singhe, a 40-year-old- Sri Lankan who was operated upon in a Colombo hospital following a severe accident, was able to make do with just two units of blood - thanks to the ROTEM technique.

Doctors attending on him took his fluid samples and within 10 minutes found out what type of blood products were needed to save him.

In the normal course, the profusely bleeding Singhe would have required at least 10 units of blood, in addition to the risk from delay in blood tests done in medical labs, which could have also put his life in danger.

India needs 12 million units of blood annually but collects only nine million - a 25 per cent deficit. In summer, the shortfall often hits 50 per cent due to rising demand from malaria and dengue patients.

The shortage has led to a spurt in professional donors cashing in on the needs of desperate patients, and a flourishing black market.

Goerlinger, who is director of sales and marketing of Switzerland-based Tem International, said: "ROTEM plays an integral role in blood conservation strategies by significantly reducing usage of blood products and components. This technology will allow rapid and reliable treatment decision to be made during emergencies and is a solution for detecting, managing and monitoring haemostasis during cardiac surgery, liver transplant, trauma patients and obstetrics."

Poonam Malhotra Kaapoor, assistant professor of Cardiac-Anaesthesia at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), told IANS: "Blood unit shortage is a colossal problem as many people are still scared to give blood. This technique will save a lot of money and blood of public hospitals."

Kaapoor said ROTEM will also help in reducing the costs incurred by patients in purchasing blood units.

The pricing of the device has yet been fixed for India.

In order to make ROTEM technology available in India, Tem International has collaborated with Vijyoti, one of India's leading corporate social enterprises.

Vijay Pandey, managing director of Vijyoti, told IANS: "Patient Blood Management demands a change in the mindset towards bleeding management. The technology helps minimize risks of mortality, morbidity, hospital-acquired infection - sepsis - arising from blood transfusion. It also leads to reduction in costs to patient, hospitals, and other stakeholders like medical insurance companies and blood banks."

(Rupesh Dutta can be contacted at rupesh.d@ians.in )
Cask wine may be hit by new taxes, but Australian invention creates export opportunity for casks

The Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) is calling on the Federal Government to apply heavier taxes to cheap alcohol including wine sold in casks.

Although the wine cask was invented in South Australia in the 1960s, the RACP says the current Australian taxation system is too easy on high-volume binge drinkers.

The current taxation policy, Wine Equalisation Tax (WET), applies the tax based on a rate where the more expensive a wine product is retailed for, the higher the tax.

RACP President Laureate Professor Nick Talley said it is time for a new approach to reduce alcohol-related harm.

The impact alcohol is having on both individuals and society is hugely significant, with alcohol consumption being a casual factor in more than 200 disease and injury conditions, Professor Talley said.

The annual cost of alcohol related harm is estimated to be as high as AUD$36 billion. There is currently a huge gap to what is being taxed and what the social costs actually are, he stated.

Professor Talley said that a proportion of any funds from increased taxes should be used for alcohol treatment services and harm prevention programs.

Accolade bottles its wine in UK out of big bladder export

Although the RACP is lobbying against cask wine to increase its taxation, meanwhile one South Australian company is expanding its overseas bottling facilities due to the big demand growth for its Australian-grown wines which are exported in giant bladders.

The bladders are not the usual retail-size with Fairfax reporting that each bladder has a huge 24, 000 litre capacity.

Accolade Wines announced on 22 March 2016 that it will be expanding its UK bottling facilities after discovering the cheapest way to export their wine was to first put it in cask bladders for transportation. Its Hardys, Banrock Station, Echo Falls and Kumala wines are then bottled locally in the UK.

The facility is critical to our ability to deliver quality wines and packaging innovation to the major retailers in the UK and our customers across Europe, said Chief Executive Officer of Accolade Wines Paul Schaafsma.
Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah on Monday urged the European Union (EU) to ban Israeli settlement products from entering Europe.

At a meeting here with Christian Berger, director for Middle East at the European External Action Service, Hamdallah said the Israeli settlements are illegitimate under international law, Xinhua news agency reported.

He urged EU states to upgrade Palestinian diplomatic representations and fully recognise the Palestinian state.

Secretary General of Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Saeb Erekat had earlier voiced disappointment at the EU's position at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) with regards to Israeli settlement products.

UNHRC adopted a resolution to "blacklist" companies that operate in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

The resolution was passed by 32 votes in favour, while 15 members, including the EU, abstained. None voted against.

The issue of settlements was believed to be one of the major sticking points that led to the failure in 2014 of the last round of peace talks, sponsored by the US, between Israel and the Palestinians.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday he is willing to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, responding to a television statement the latter made last week.

"A few days ago, on Israeli television, I heard President Abbas say that if I invite him to meet, he'll come," Netanyahu told the Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek in a meeting in Jerusalem.

"I'm inviting him again. I've cleared my schedule this week," Netanyahu said, according to a statement released by his office. "Any day he can come, I'll be here," he said.

Netanyahu stressed that the first item on the agenda would be the ending of the "Palestinian campaign of incitement to murder Israelis."

He was referring to a six-month-long Palestinian unrest, including frequent stabbing, shooting, and car-ramming attacks, which claimed the lives of 28 Israelis.

At the same time, at least 190 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire, mostly amidst attacks and attempted attacks, according to Israel.

Netanyahu's remarks followed an interview by the Palestinian leader in the Israeli Channel 2 TV, in which he said he was willing to meet Netanyahu to forge a peace deal.

"I still extend a hand to Mr. Netanyahu because I believe in peace. I believe that the people of Israel want peace and that the Palestinian people want peace," Abbas said.

Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast War and has been holding it ever since, in an act condemned by the international community.

Several rounds of peace talks to end the occupation have failed, with the last one reaching an impasse in April 2014 over the expansion of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the unity agreement between Fatah and Hamas.
The Kremlin on Monday dismissed reports linking friends and relatives of Russian President Vladimir Putin to offshore deals worth billions of dollars.

"There are no details, all are based on allegations and speculation," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, demanding "professional results of the work of the journalistic community".

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) on Sunday published some 11.5 million documents leaked from a Panamanian law firm. It alleged offshore links of prominent figures in many countries, including transactions by people associated with Putin, which was worth $2 billion.

Peskov claimed the main aim of the publication, though mentioning other countries and their leaders, obviously targeted Putin, "especially in the context of upcoming parliamentary election and long-term prospects of presidential election in two years."

An earlier report published on Thursday alleged that a Putin associate had benefited from state construction contracts.

Prior to the publications, Peskov had said that the Kremlin expected that an outfit of international research in the West and in Russia was planning to publish "hoax material" on Putin, his family and friends.

Founded in 1997, the ICIJ is a global network of more than 190 investigative journalists in more than 65 countries and regions working with leading news organisations worldwide and focusing on issues like cross-border crime, corruption and accountability of power, according to its website.
Multi-stakeholder partnerships was the key to improving Indian Railways at the earliest, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu said on Monday.

"We have a comprehensive plan to transform Indian Railways. Doing it at the earliest involves multi-stakeholder partnerships in its various areas," Prabhu said at the annual session of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here.

Admitting that providing a superior rail experience was a challenge, Prabhu stressed the need to increase capacity exponentially with sustained investments.

"Although the government is making efforts, partnerships will be the key in this endeavour," Prabhu asserted while addressing captains of the industry at the day-long session on "Opportunities in Indian Raiways - scope for partnerships".

Citing partnerships with Japan in modernisation and expansion, the minister said many agreements were signed to leverage opportunities for a quantum leap in technology absorption.

On financial viability of the railways, Prabhu said efforts were on to augment non-rail revenue by monetising assets and modernising stations through public-private participation, multilateral organisations, self-help groups and others.

Railway board member (traffic) Mohammad Jamshed said the performance parameters of railways had improved in fiscal 2015-16 despite headwinds.

Rajiv Lall, chairman of the CII National Committee on Infrastructure Financing and IDFC Ltd., spoke on the corporatisation of railways.
Dozens of people on Monday gathered in front of the American Embassy in Manila to rally against the largest so far bilateral military exercise held between Philippines and the US.

"US out now! Take down US," shouted some 50 protestors brandishing signs with similar slogans, before setting fire to a mock American flag scrawled with the words "US imperialism", EFE news reported.

The demonstration involved members of nationalistic Filipino political groups who fear that the 12-day "Balikatan" or shoulder-to-shoulder bilateral drills with the American military will exacerbate rising tensions with China over the South China Sea Islands.

The war games take place annually but this year's exercises come just months after China began constructing an air strip and other facilities on islands in the disputed South China Sea.

Within the upcoming weeks, the UN court in the Hague is expected to issue a verdict on the complaints filed against the Chinese manoeuvres, which the East Asian nation has claimed are purely defensive and fall within Chinese territory.
Actress Rakul Preet Singh is said to have been approached to play the leading role in filmmaker Mysskin's Tamil thriller "Thupparivaalan", which stars Vishal Krishna.

"Rakul has been approached. However, she is not yet finalised. It's going to take a few more weeks before the makers will finalise on the heroine," a source from the film's unit told IANS.

Tipped to be an investigative thriller, the film marks the first time collaboration of Mysskin and Vishal.

Rakul, whose last Tamil film was 2014 romantic-drama "Yennamo Yedho", has been extremely busy in Telugu these last couple of years.

She currently awaits the release of Telugu actioner "Sarrainodu".
New Delhi, April 4 (IA NS) The Supreme Court on Monday granted bail to Delhi University professor G.N. Saibaba, accused of being associated with a front organisation of a banned Maoist outfit.

A bench of Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar and Justice C. Nagappan granted bail to Saibaba, noting that all the material witnesses in the case have already been examined.

Not accepting the contention of the Maharashtra government that if Saibaba was released, he was "he is likely to indulge himself in the anti-national activities", it described the position taken by Maharashtra government as "extremely unfair."

"We are of the view, that the submission made by the learned counsel for the respondent (Maharashtra) is extremely unfair," the court said, noting the "undisputed position" that the professor has "never been accused of having misused the concession of bail".

"Since all the material witnesses have been examined and cross-examined, the release of the petitioner on bail ought not to have been opposed, especially keeping in mind the medical condition of the petitioner," it said, directing Saibaba's release on bail "forthwith" on conditions to the "satisfaction of the trial Court" .

It said Saibaba "shall enter appearance before the trial court, as and when the petitioner (Saibaba) is directed to appear before the trial court, failing which, it shall be open to the trial court to cancel the concession of bail granted to him".

Saibaba was arrested by Maharashtra Police in May 2015 for alleged Maoist links. He had challenged the December 23, 2015, order of the Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court rejecting his plea for regular bail.

He was released on interim bail on health grounds by Bombay High Court which had treated as a PIL an email based on a newspaper report on his failing health condition.

Saibaba suffers with 90 percent disability for post-polio paralysis.

The interim bail was extended till December 31 as court asked him to approach the Nagpur bench of the High Court for regular bail. The other accused in the case had already been granted bail.

However, when Saibaba moved for regular bail, the same was rejected on December 23 and was asked to surrender before Nagpur Central Jail within two days.
The Supreme Court on Monday imposed cost of Rs.25,000 each on 26 states and seven union territories for not responding to the central government's communication seeking information on utilisation of funds for providing better and hygienic conditions in jails so that prisoners could lead a life with dignity.

A bench of Justice Madan B. Lokur and Justice N.V.Ramana imposed the cost on these states and union territories after it was told that only three states - Maharashtra, Bihar and Jammu and Kashmir - have furnished information in response.

Displeased over the cold attitude of the state governments towards the conditions of the prisoners, Justice Lokur said: "Just because some people are criminals or under trials, it does not mean that they would be treated like dirt."

The court's observation came as Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Neeraj Kishan Kaul told the court that apart from Maharashtra, Bihar and Jammu and Kashmir, no other state has replied to the letter.

These states and the UTs have been given three weeks time to respond.

Counsel Gaurav Agrawal who is amicus curiae in the matter told the court that in some states, the overall number of prisoners lodged in the jail may be fine but within the states, there are jails where there is over-crowding.

The court by February 5 direction had had said that the "director general of police/inspector general of police in-charge of prisons should ensure that there is proper and effective utilisation of available funds so that the living conditions of the prisoners is commensurate with human dignity. This also includes the issue of their health, hygiene, food, clothing, rehabilitation etc".

The directions had come in pursuance to the hearing on the matter that the court had taken up in 2013 following receipt of a letter from former chief justice of India R.C.Lahoti pointing to inhuman conditions prevailing in 1,382 prisons in India.

Besides states not replying to the centre's communication, the court also took exception to the usage of words, "other causes of (unnatural) death" used in the response filed by the government on the causes of unnatural deaths of prisoners in the prisons.

Asking its meaning and ASG Kaul told the court that he too raised the issue with the officials.

The court also inquired about the compensation in such cases. "What about the compensation. Are you giving compensation (to prisoners who suffer unnatural deaths). Have you asked the states to pay compensation?"

In another matter relating to juvenile justice and also in this, the court chided the National Legal Service Authority for not extending the legal aid to the under trial prisoners.

"For children, you are not giving legal aid. For adults, you are not giving legal aid. What are you doing. Whom are you giving legal aid to," the court asked.

As NALSA sought more time for developing module for the training of lawyers, Justice Lokur said that they were supposed to complete it by December 31, then sought another three months, but was given time till January end and "now you are again seeking another three months".

Telling the counsel for NALSA that there were complaints against the body, the bench said: "Your position is 'You will not let anyone do it, and (you) we will not do it (yourself)'."

"If you don't do it by next date, we will ask someone else to do it," it warned.
The Kerala High Court on Monday came down heavily over wastage of its time, and dismissed a plea by prime accused Saritha Nair for a CBI probe against Chief Minister Oommen Chandy in the solar panel scam case.

While hearing the plea, Justice B. Kamal Pasha said there were a lot of other cases that merited a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation.

"The court is not interested in playing politics when the elections are round the corner," said the judge, and asked the parties not to waste the court's time.

This setback for Nair comes a day after a news channel claimed to have with it a copy of a letter from her that said Chandy sexually abused her.

Nair has also accused Chandy of taking bribes to promote her solar panel business.

Stating that he was mulling legal action over the disclosures, Chandy told reporters at his official residence here that it was "rather strange" that the solar panel scam was still surfacing even after three years.

"I am working on steps to go forward with legal measures on this. We feel this is a conspiracy and there is a mighty cash rich lobby behind these new disclosures," the chief minister said.

Nair appeared on the Asianet News channel on Sunday and said she had written the 24-page letter in 2013. While agreeing to the contents, she refused to discuss them.

Former chief minister V.S. Achuthanandan on Monday sought a fresh probe into the disclosures made in Nair's letter.

"Chandy should apologise and come clean," Achuthanandan told reporters in Kochi.

The solar panel scam case surfaced when Nair and her live-in partner Biju Radhakrishnan were arrested in 2013 on charges of cheating numerous investors who paid money for solar panels.

Over 30 cases of cheating are registered against Nair and Radhakrishnan in various courts. Police estimate that they cheated investors to the tune of over Rs.6 crore.

While Nair is out on bail, Radhakrishnan is in jail pending trial on charges of murdering his wife.
Switzerland-headquartered Coop Cooperative, an international agency that promotes organic farming across the world, has offered its support to the Kerala University of Fisheries and Ocean Studies (KUFOS) for organic shrimp farming in the state.

KUFOS is planning to promote organic shrimp farming by utilising the rich resources of the mangroves in Kerala's backwaters.

Gerhard Zurlutter, a representative of Coop Cooperative, on Monday visited the farms and ponds at KUFOS and had discussions with officials.

He said organic shrimp farming could be made successful by making use of the mangrove rich backwaters or by planting mangroves on the shores of the backwaters and the farming ponds.

KUFOS will now study the available resources, and if the conditions are favourable, it will conduct a pilot farming to develop a suitable farming model, and later introduce the model among shrimp farmers in the state.
Ministers reach agreement for Australias new Country of Origin Labels

By Joe Lederman, Managing Principal, FoodLgeal www.foodlegal.com.au

Reforms to the country of origin labelling system were agreed to at a meeting of the Australian Consumer Affairs Ministers on 31 March 2016.

The reforms are expected to be operative from 1 July 2016 with a two-year transition period for business. Current stock will be allowed to see out its use-by date.

The new labelling system required on any food product will depend on whether the product is classed as priority or non-priority.

A non-priority food requires only a text statement of origin, but can choose to display further information.

Non-priority foods include:

Seasonings

Confectionery

Biscuits and snack foods

Bottled water

Soft drinks and sports drinks

Tea and coffee

Alcoholic beverages

All other food products are to be classified as priority.

All priority foods must display the new graphics and information requirements. This includes:

A kangaroo image in a triangle logo to indicate the food is made, produced or grown in Australia

A bar chart indicating the proportion of Australian ingredients with a supporting text statement.

The government has also released further explanatory materials with details of a number of scenarios and how the new system will work:

If a food has been exported and processed overseas without substantial transformation, then reimported, the label will be required to state, in brackets, the processing that occurred overseas  for example, Australian Macadamias (shelled in Fiji).

If ingredient sources vary  the label will require an average proportion of ingredients to be specified, along with a means for consumers to get further information (such as a telephone number or website). This seems to be a solution to the issues which arose around making a definitive claim as to the percentage of ingredients which have variable or seasonal supply chains.

Origin of specific ingredients may be included on a label  for example, an apple pie product could display an Australian apples logo, including the kangaroo image and bar chart.

Wholly imported products will be required to display an origin claim in a box (with no imagery). This can include a declaration of Australian ingredients and bar chart  e.g. Made in Vietnam from at least 50% Australian ingredients.

A new information standard will be introduced into the Australian Consumer Law, replacing current requirements under the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code and current Australian Consumer Law requirements.
Internet giant Google has released a new feature, Google Search, that will enable parents to teach children about different noises that animals make.

A quick search for "animal noises" on Google returns illustrations of animals, their names and a sample of what sound do they make, Mashable tech website reported.

Alternatively, you can also search for something like, "What does the dog say", to bring up a specific animal sound result, the report added.

Google has included 19 animal sounds in its list, including zebra, ape, cat, lion, moose, owl, pig, cow, duck, elephant, horse, raccoon, bowhead whale, humpback whale, wolf, rooster, sheep, tiger and a turkey.
The US-led coalition on Monday destroyed the Turkish consulate compound in Mosul in Iraq, which was occupied by the Islamist State (IS) since June 2014, said a statement released by the Turkish Foreign Ministry.

The compound, where high-level IS terrorists had resided, was targeted and destroyed in an air raid around 3.00 a.m. (local time) on Monday, said the statement.

"Turkey's views and approval were taken at all stages concerning the preparation and execution of the said operation," said the statement.

"Our country will continue fighting against Daesh (IS) in coordination and cooperation with the international coalition in the activities in which it has participated since the beginning," the statement added.

In June 2014, IS militants seized the consulate and kidnapped 49 staff and family members, including the consul general.
At least 250 heavily armed US troops on Monday began a military drill along with Bulgarian units which will last more than 40 days, officials said.

The exercise will continue until May 16 at Novo Selo Training Area, one of the four joint US-Bulgarian military bases in the Balkan country, the Bulgarian Defence Ministry said in a statement, Xinhua reported.

Tanks M1 Abrams and infantry fighting vehicles will be used during the drill.

By conducting such pre-planned joint exercises, the Bulgarian Army aims to maintain good combat readiness and achieve greater interoperability with NATO allies, the Defence Ministry said.

In 2015, military units of the Bulgarian army participated in 82 joint trainings and drills with the US Army, the ministry said.

Bulgaria, a NATO member since 2004, signed a defence cooperation agreement with the United States in 2006.
Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, facing a disproportionate assets case, on Monday had to face the Delhi High Court's ire for seeking adjournment in the case.

"Once you enjoy protection, you don't want to proceed in the case", said Justice Pratibha Rani after Singh's counsel sought adjournment as senior advocate Kapil Sibal, who was to represent him, was engaged in another case in the Supreme Court.

Singh is already protected from arrest in the case by an October 1, 2015, order of the Himachal High Court, which has restrained the CBI in an interim order from arresting, interrogating or filing a chargesheet against him.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has sought direction of the Delhi High Court to vacate the Himachal High Court order, contending that this order was hampering the investigation.

Posting the case for hearing on Tuesday, Justice Rani said: "I am making it clear, no further adjournment will be given." The court said Singh had sought similar adjournment on last hearing in March.

The high court was hearing Singh's plea for quashing of an FIR lodged against him by the CBI.

The Supreme Court in November last year transferred the disproportionate assets (DA) case against Singh to the Delhi High Court from the Himachal High Court, saying the transfer was necessary "to protect the institution from embarrassment" and "to avoid further controversy".

The apex court, however, did not pass any order to modify the Himachal High Court order which had restrained the CBI from arresting Singh in the case.

The CBI has challenged the Himachal High Court order that restrains it from investigating the chief minister and his wife or taking them into custody in a Rs.6 crore disproportionate assets case.

Virbhadra Singh had moved the Himachal Pradesh High Court following CBI searches at his residences in Delhi and Shimla on September 26 last year, which he contended were mala fide and out of political vendetta.

The case was registered on September 23 under the Prevention of Corruption Act against the chief minister, his wife Pratibha Singh, LIC agent Anand Chauhan and an associate, Chunni Lal.

The case was the outcome of a preliminary inquiry which said that Virbhadra Singh, while serving as a union minister during 2009-2012, allegedly accumulated assets worth Rs.6.03 crore in his name and in the name of his family members, which were found to be disproportionate to his known sources of income.
The widow of a former head of the Namdhari sect was killed when unidentified assailants fired at her from close range here on Monday, police said.

Chand Kaur Namdhari, 88, was rushed in a critical condition to a private hospital in this industrial city of Punjab where she was pronounced dead, doctors said.

Police said one bullet hit her in the head and another in the stomach.

Chand Kaur was widow of late sect head Jagjit Singh and the mother of present Namdhari sect chief Uday Singh.

She had arrived at the Bhaini Sahib gurdwara here for a function when she was shot at by two motorcycle-borne assailants.

"The assailants fired five shots from a revolver from close range and fled. Two bullets hit her," a police official investigating the crime said.

Chand Kaur had appointed Uday Singh as head of the sect in 2012 after the death of her husband, ignoring opposition from her elder son Dalip Singh.

The Namdharis are a sect of the Sikh religion but follow their own tenets. Namdhari Sikhs are conspicuous by their white robes as well as white turbans tied in a distinct style.
YES Bank, India's fifth-largest private sector bank, on Monday said it will set up a centre of excellence for start-ups in financial technology space at T-Hub, a technology incubator set up by Telangana government in partnership with three premier academic institutes.

YES Bank on Monday signed an MoU with T-Hub in this regard.

This association will help create a conducive business environment and support system for a large number of FinTech startups. In addition, YES Bank will offer its various products and payment gateways and open APIs (application programme interface) to the start-up community, it said in a statement.

The bank's senior president and country head, digital banking, Ritesh Pai said they had been in the forefront of revolutionizing the Indian FinTech startup segment.

CISCO and ParadigmIT will also set up smart cities centre of excellence at T-Hub. They will set up a PoC of smart parking and smart lighting solutions. The two companies will work with companies and startups in developing innovative solutions using Internet of Things.

Yes Bank, CISCO and ParadigmIT were among different companies which signed MoUs with the Telangana government, and its arms T-Hub and Telangana Academy for Skill and Knowledge (TASK) at the launch of state's new Information and Communication Technology policy and four other subsidiary policies.

HPE will set up its innovation centre/lab infrastructure to develop, test and pilot innovative technology enabled ideas at T-Hub.

Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) also signed MoU with T-Hub to set up Mobile 10X hub, the largest capacity building and ecosystem enabling programme for mobile applications.

TalentSprint and T-Hub agreed to foster collaborative environment in bringing start-ups leverage the collective effort of both the organisations. InsideView also signed a similar MoU with T-Hub.

CISCO also signed a MoU with TASK to identify a pilot set of educational institutions, which will be provided web based curriculum and other teaching resources developed by CISCO.

Under another MoU, Microsoft India will offer Microsoft office Specialist certification programmes to educators and students at registered colleges of TASK.

ICICI Foundation and TASK also agreed to explore collaboration for increasing employment potential by enabling supply of skilled manpower in the desired sector.

University of Cambridge will collaborate with TASK for enhancing English language skills for faculty and students of engineering colleges.
In March, meetings of the G-20, the Chinese National People's Congress, and multiple think tanks all reflected a growing awareness of the risks to the global economy posed by deflation and intensifying financial instability. In mitigating these risks, the path that China takes will be particularly important. But avoiding a hard landing in China is a necessary but insufficient condition for global recovery.
The Telecom Commission earlier last week decided to allow virtual network operators, or VNOs. Now, it will be possible for a company without a telecom licence to offer fixed-line or mobile services. All it needs to do is buy airtime in bulk from incumbents, and then retail it to subscribers. After spectrum sharing and trading, this was another dose of liberalisation that needed to be carried out. The move aims to give more choices to subscribers, and is market-friendly. This is also expected to benefit those telecom companies which have idle networks. Instead of entering into negotiations with a rival, they can sell bandwidth to a virtual network operator. So it broadens the market for airwaves, which needs to be welcomed. The top three telecom companies, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular, have no excess capacity and are therefore unlikely to gain from this reform. However, state-owned MTNL and BSNL, which are mired in losses, could gain from the move because it gives them another avenue to monetise their idle bandwidth.
Last week's Brussels visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has started speculations that there will now be a renewed push for talks on the stalled EU-India broad-based trade and investment agreement (BTIA). The European Union (EU) is India's biggest trade and investment partner, so it could potentially be a good boost to the Indian economy. But the proposed agreement is one-sided, and will harm India's economic interests unless India negotiates harder. The analogy is that India is picking up the tab for the hotel room and the EU is just paying for the internet charges during the stay.

The public conversation on the EU-India BTIA is all about Indian tariff reductions on automobiles and greater ease of Indian infotech professionals to provide services to the EU. But going by the documents that can be accessed (more transparency would be nice), there are two big issues that need to be at the centre of the debate - investor rights and agricultural imports - because they will have big effects on people and future policy in India.

The proposal contains an investor-state dispute settlement agreement, which allows foreign firms to take the Indian government to an international tribunal if their ability to make profits in the country is under threat. The last time these clauses were invoked in India was after the Supreme Court cancelled 2G telecom licences bought by companies at "unbelievably low" prices, and when internationally the Canadian government dropped potential legislation on plain packaging of tobacco products due to lawsuit threats under its North American Free Trade Agreement.

Is that the price India must pay for encouraging foreign direct investment into the country? The answer is no. Australia recently negotiated a trade and investment agreement with the United States without agreeing to such investor rights, so surely Indian can do the same as it is the fastest growing economy in the world. Is the Bhopal gas tragedy so easily forgotten, and should we not learn from the lack of compensation to the victims that an unequal society calls for greater protection from the narrow legal tactics of investors?



Although the government has asked the EU for revisions to the text of the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism, the revisions don't go far enough. The main change is that firms would first need to pursue domestic legal remedies and can then access international arbitration for disputes with the government. Domestic firms do not have access to these international arbitration facilities, so this also goes against the spirit of the Make in India campaign of the Indian government.

Another worrisome proposal is the steep reduction in tariffs on agricultural imports from the EU. The continuing plight of Indian farmers is not going to be helped if they have to compete with heavily subsidised large agri-businesses based in Europe. For instance, the Danish milk producer, Arla Foods, received Rs 65 crore (8.6 million euros) when milk prices slumped in 2009/10, while the Indian government's most ambitious dairy plan is expected to have an outlay of Rs 17,300 crore per year. Spread over 750 lakh dairy farmers, this amounts to a minuscule Rs 230 (three euros) per dairy farmer. Opening to EU imports will not make the agricultural market more "competitive", it will lead to a dumping of the burden of EU agricultural subsidies on Indian farmers.

Investment and agricultural imports are not new issues. The government is retreating from the same battles it fought during the Uruguay Round of the World Trade Organisation in 1995. At that point, India was the force behind resistance to agreements on investment, government procurement, agricultural tariff reductions and intellectual property rights, which would mostly harm developing countries by limiting the policy options needed for economic growth. Yes, the world economy has changed now. But life for most people in India continues to be "nasty, brutish and short", so why is there a renewed push for an agreement that concedes to many of the same immiserating policies that India was once at the forefront of rejecting?



India must use its economic power now to get a better deal. This is possible. The EU had earlier insisted on drastic intellectual property laws in the proposed text. After much advocacy, the EU dropped this clause from the proposed text as it would have delayed the introduction of generic medicines and undermined public health (Medecins Sans Frontieres). Resistance to the clauses proposed by the EU does not derail the trade agreement - it ensures that India negotiates a deal that promotes its development goals.

The author is an assistant professor in economics at the Department of Economics and Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics and Political Science
The Congress high command in Gujarat has warned party MLAs in the state that their renomination could be in jeopardy if they failed to act as "real opposition". Apparently, the All India Congress Committee (AICC) had urged its MLAs to take up the Anar Patel issue in a big way. The issue concerned controversial land allotment to entities associated with Anar Patel, daughter of state Chief Minister Anandiben Patel.

Assembly elections in the state are scheduled next year and the main Opposition party sensed an opportunity on the back of its success in local bodies polls some months back. As it turned out, the AICC was not happy with the way party MLAs took up - or failed to take up - the issue. So it has let it be known that these MLAs would be monitored for their performance and it would have a bearing on their renomination.
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Chief Mehbooba Mufti, who has stepped into the shoes of her late father Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, was sworn-in as the first woman chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir on Monday, heading the coalition government with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) after dropping two of her party leaders.

The BJP, which got two of its leaders promoted to Cabinet rank, retained Nirmal Singh as deputy chief minister, a post he held under Sayeed who died on January 7.

Dressed in black, 56-year-old Mehbooba Mufti, who is still a member of the Lok Sabha, took the oath of office and secrecy in Urdu.

Getting down to business soon after taking over, she asked her ministerial colleagues to preform and to provide good governance and corruption-free administration, failing which the people will teach you a lesson in next elections. Mehbooba Mufti on Monday promised a transparent, accountable and responsive government which will focus on clean governance with no scope for corruption at any level.

The assumption of chief ministers office by Mehbooba Mufti, who floated PDP in 1999, assumes significance as she will be the first woman chief minister in the Muslim majority state.

She is the 13th chief minister of the state and second Muslim woman to become the chief minister of any state in India. Syeda Anwara Taimur was the first Muslim woman CM in Assam in 1980 and continued to hold the chair till June 30, 1981.

Governor N N Vohra also administered the oath to 21 other ministers. BJPs share this time increased in the Cabinet from six to eight berths and three ministers of state (MoS), while PDP has nine Cabinet ministers instead of 11 last time.

Former Chief Ministers Farooq Abdullah and his son Omar, Union Ministers Venkaiah Naidu, Jitendra Singh (both BJP) and Harsimrat Kaur (Akali Dal) were among the host of VIPs present at the function held in Raj Bhavan. The Union ministers arrived late even as the function was in progress.

Earlier in the day, the Governors rule that was imposed 86 days ago in the wake of uncertainty following Sayeeds death was lifted to enable popular government to be sworn-in.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi extended his best wishes to the new government and hoped it will fulfil the dreams and aspirations of people of the state.

Congratulations & best wishes to Mehbooba Mufti, Nirmal Singh & all those who took oath today he tweeted. May the new Government of J&K leave no stone unturned in fulfilling dreams & aspirations of the people & take J&K to new heights of progress, he said.

PDP, which has 27 MLAs, dropped Syed Altaf Bukhari and Javed Mustafa as cabinet ministers while replaced minister of state Mohammed Ashraf Mir, as he defeated former chief minister Omar Abdullah, with Farooq Andrabi and Abdul Majid Paddar with Zahoor Mir.

While there were no official word from the PDP, sources claimed that Bukhari was dropped in the wake of reports that he along with some other PDP MLAs were planning a political coup during the interregnum. Sajjad Gani Lone, son of late separatist leader Abdul Gani Lone, retained his cabinet berth in the BJP quota.

Within minutes of the swearing-in ceremony, rumblings started within the PDP with its Lok Sabha Member from Srinagar seat Tariq Hamid Karra openly criticising the composition of ministerial team.

"I have boycotted the swearing-in-ceremony. During the discussion on finalisation of council of ministers, I had certain reservations (over the induction of three PDP MLAs- Altaf Bukhari, Naeem Akhter and Haseeb Drabu) which I had put before the party chief in the first meeting in Srinagar", Karra said in Srinagar.

He claimed that the trio was responsible for Sayeed government's failures. "You are sending a message that you are rewarding the collaborators who had tried to engineer a coup against you. The message will be wrong," Karra said, adding she is keeping "snakes up her sleeves".

On its part, the 25-member BJP dropped Sukhnandan from the cabinet and replaced him with Prakash Kumar. Similarly, Minister of State Pawan Gupta, backed by BJP, was replaced with Ajay Nanda.

Gupta, an independent MLA from Udhampur, was Minister of State for Finance and Information and Technology.

"I will continue to work for development of my constituency and my support to the ruling alliance will be now issued-based," Gupta said, adding he will perform the role of a watchdog in the assembly.

A bitter Gupta said that BJP should have had the grace of "informing me in advance that my services are not required.

Anyways, in any case I think it was right time for me to move out."



Besides Kumar, the saffron party promoted Chering Dorje and Abdul Gani Kohli as the new Cabinet ministers. They were Minister of State with Independent charge in previous ministries.

Law Minister in the Sayeed's ministry, Basharat Bukhari of PDP, took oath in Kashmiri again this year.
At least 20% voters in Assam exercised their franchise during the initial hours of polling to decide the fate of 539 contestants in 65 constituencies in the first phase of Assembly election held today amid tight security.

Voters, particularly women and first timers, were seen queuing at polling booths from 5 a.m to participate in the democratic process where the ruling Congress, the BJP-AGP-BPF alliance and the AIUDF are locked in a keen battle.

Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, along with his wife Dolly Gogoi, son and MP Gaurav Gogoi and brother Deep Gogoi, cast his ballot at the polling station in Debicharan Baruah Girls High School in Jorhat.

There were reports of malfunctioning of electronic voting machines (EVMs) in some polling centres due to which voting was affected for some time but they were swifty replaced, election office said.

At least 20% voters exercised their franchise in the first two hours, it said.

Altogether 12,190 polling stations been set up in the 65 constituencies for the 95,11,732 voters, including 45,95,712 women, manned by over 48,000 polling personnel.

Security is at its highest in the state with the Indo-Bangla border along Barak Valley's Karimganj district sealed and 535 companies of security forces of central and state police deployed in the 65 constituencies spread across Upper Assam, two hill districts, northern bank and Barak Valley.

For today's first phase of polling Congress is contesting in all the 65 constituencies, BJP in 54 and its alliance partners--AGP in 11 and BPF in three, AIUDF in 27, CPI and CPM in ten each with CPI(ML)(L) in six along with 60 others of unrecognised parties and 13 Independents.

Prominent Congress contestants are Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, Assembly Speaker Pranab Gogoi, former Union Minister and prominent tea tribe leader Paban Singh Ghatowar, Assam Ministers Gautam Roy, Sarat Barkotoky, Ajanta Neog, Khorsingh Engti, Siddeque Ahmed, Bismita Gogoi, Sumitra Patir and Girindra Malik, among others.

The BJP's star candidates are Union minister and party's Chief Minister candidate Sarbananda Sonowal, Jorhat MP Kamakhya Prasad Tasa, MLAs Prashanta Phukan, Dilip Paul, Hiten Goswami, Padma Hazarika and Naba Doley, besides former ULFA militant Kushal Duwari.

AGP's prominent nominees are its working president Atul Bora and sitting MLAs Keshab Mahanta and Utpal Dutta along with former minister Pradip Hazarika.

The remaining 61 constituencies will go to polls on April 11 in the second phase.
First ministerial meeting of the BASIC countries after the Paris accord in December 2015 would be held this week to discuss climate change-related issues including implementation of decisions made as part of the agreement.

BASIC is a bloc of four large newly industrialised countries -- Brazil, South Africa, India and China.

During the two-day meeting, the ministers will deliberate on various provisions of the Paris agreement and related decisions including Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC), transparency framework for action and support, matters relating to global stocktake, progress towards achieving the Pre-2020 actions and review issues.

"On the first day of the meeting, negotiators of all the four countries will meet and prepare the groundwork for the ministerial meeting. At the end of the two-day meeting, a Joint Statement will be issued by the Group of Ministers, highlighting the BASIC group position on the way forward for the implementation of the Paris Agreement and its decisions," an official statement from the Environment Ministry said.

The meeting will be attended by Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar, Special Representative for Climate Change Affairs of China, Xie Zhenhua, Deputy Minister of the Department of Environmental Affairs of South Africa, Thomson Barbara and Ambassador Jose Antonio Marcondes de Carvalho, Under Secretary-General for the Environment, Energy, Science and Technology of the Ministry of External Relations of Brazil, along with other officials of their country.
At least three persons were killed and seven were trapped after a coal mine collapsed in west China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

A total of 19 people were working in the mine when part of the coal mine collapsed yesterday at around 2:50 PM in Shache County, the regional coal mine safety inspection authorities were quoted as saying by state-run Xinhua agency.

Eight persons managed to escape. Three persons were killed one was injured and seven more were trapped, authorities said.

Bodies of the killed have been taken out. Rescue work is underway, it added.
Four more officers of the Hyderabad-based construction company in-charge of building the Vivekanda Road flyover, a portion of which collapsed last week, were arrested on Monday.

IVRCL Director Operations Gopal Krishnamurthy, Deputy General Manager of Project Monitoring Cell (PMC) S K Ratnam and senior engineers Shyamal Manna and Bidyut Manna were arrested after a long grilling session at the Kolkata Police headquarters on Monday.

With these four, altogether eight persons of the company have been arrested in connection with Thursday's collapse which left 26 people dead and 90 injured.

A senior police officer said a police team visited the company's head office in Hyderabad after the collapse and six IVRCL officers were served notice.

Of them, Krishnamurthy, Ratnam and Assistant vice-president of PMC A N Dilip arrived in the city and were questioned.

"Bidyut Manna and Shyamal Manna are senior engineers of the company who were present at the site that day when the casting of concrete was laid. Both were involved in direct supervision of the works conducted by the labourers that day," the officer said.

Earlier, IVRCL Assistant General Manager Mallikaarjun Rao, Assistant Manager Debjyoti Manjumdar, Structure Manager Pradip Kumar Saha and Project Manager Tanmoy Sil were arrested under IPC Sections 302 (murder), 307 (attempt to murder) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) and others.

Police have registered a case against the construction firm and sealed its office in the city.

Another Assistant Vice-President of PMC Ranajit Bhattacharjee, who was injured and now hospitalised after Thursday's mishap, is also under police scanner.

"Bhattacharjee was reporting to Ratnam... So we need to look into that also. Let him get out of the hospital. We will also look into his roles," the officer said.

The police also asked three KMDA officials to meet police officers investigating the case to examine their role in the project.

Asked whether the three could be arrested, the officer said,"We cannot say anything at this moment. It depends... We are looking for answers of certain specific questions."
Academicians from Delhi University and JNU and several activists, including Arundhati Roy, today welcomed the bail granted by the SC to G N Saibaba who was arrested for alleged Maoist links.

The academicians and activists, who are also members of the Committee for the Defence and Release of Dr GN Saibaba, a DU professor, issued a statement saying "this is indeed a much needed and long awaited relief for Saibaba who has been languishing in the anda cell of the Nagpur Central Jail..."



"If the stance taken by the state in the court proceedings today is any indication, the intimidatory tactics adopted by the state machinery against those who are relentlessly engaged in the struggle for the oppressed and the downtrodden is far from over," it added.

An English professor at Ram Lal Anand College, Saibaba was suspended from DU after he was arrested by Maharashtra Police in 2014 for alleged Maoist links. He was lodged in the Nagpur Central Jail for 14 months and granted bail in July 2015 after the court noticed his deteriorating health condition.

However, the bail was cancelled and he was re-arrested in December last.

The Supreme Court today granted him bail saying Maharashtra government has been "extremely unfair" to him.

JNU students Kanhaiya Kumar and Umar Khalid who are out on bail in a sedition case over an event on campus against hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru during which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised, termed bail to Saibaba as "good news".

"GN Saibaba has been granted bail forthwith by the Supreme Court. Glad that the court has dismissed the argument that Saibaba would indulge in anti-national activities if released on bail as baseless and ordered his immediate release," said Banojyotsana Lahiri, JNU alumni and Ambedkar university professor who was also under the scanner for the February 9 event.
Following the controversy regarding allowing women into the core area of Shani temple at Shingnapur in Maharashtra, a row erupted today at another famous shrine in the state, the Goddess Mahalaxmi temple in Kolhapur, over the same issue.

The Bombay High Court had last week ruled that there can not be any discrimination against women at the temples, however, the locals at Shingnapur two days ago refused to allow women activists to go up to the platform of Shani temple.

Activists of the women's organisation 'Avani' here alleged that they too were not allowed to enter the sanctum of the Mahalaxmi temple today.

The police pushed and shoved the activists, alleged Anuradha Bhosle, who heads the organisation.

The organisation had decided to break the taboo against women's entry in the core area of sanctum in the light of the High Court judgement, but some women devotees did not allow its activists in, she said.

Inspector Anil Deshmukh of Juna Rajwada police station denied the police personnels deployed at the temple acted roughly with the activists.

The police only acted to prevent the fracas and maintain the law and order, he said.
The boyfriend of TV actress Pratyusha Banerjee, who allegedly committed suicide at her flat in suburban Goregaon last week, will be questioned again by police after his discharge from hospital.

Rahul Raj Singh was admitted to Shree Sai Hospital in suburban Kandivali yesterday after he complained of chest pain and low blood pressure.

He was today shifted to general ward of from ICU, his lawyer Neeraj Gupta said.

"Though Rahul has been shifted to general ward, his condition is still not proper as he is in trauma," he said.

Police said they will question Rahul after he is discharged.

As part of their investigation, police are currently talking to the common friends of the actress and Rahul.

The 24-year-old former "Balika Vadhu" star was found dead at her home in suburban Goregoan on April 1, in a suspected case of suicide.

Her friends Kamya Punjabi and Vikas Gupta yesterday claimed Rahul was cheating on Pratyusha and that they were in a "messy relationship".

They also alleged that Rahul used to slap her in public as well as in parties.

Police had recorded Rahul's statement at Bangurnagar police station on Saturday.

Police had said they were planning to reach out to friends (particularly males) of Pratyusha who in the past may have had tiff with the actress.

The probe so far had not found anything pointing to abetment of suicide by Rahul.
Coming out clear on its intent to go it alone in Puducherry, AIADMK today released its candidates list for all the 30 constituencies for the May 16 assembly polls in the Union Territory.

With this, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), currently in power in Tamil Nadu, becomes the first political party to come up with its list of candidates for Puducherry assembly polls.

All five sitting legislators of the party -- A Anbalagan, P Purushothaman, A Baskar, Om Sakthi Segar and L Periyasamy-- have been renominated without any change in their constituencies.

Those who recently joined AIADMK after quitting either Congress or ruling AINRC have also been fielded as nominees.

For instance, estranged Congress leader and former Health Minister of Puducherry, P Kannan who joined the AIADMK on February 14 is the party candidate from Rajbhavan constituency, situated in the heart of the town.

V M C Sivakumar, an Independent member representing Neravy T R Pattinam, who joined the AIADMK yesterday, has been fielded as party nominee in the same constituency.

Vayyapuri Manikandan, a close confidant of the Puducherry chief Minister N Rangasamy, had quit AINRC and joined AIADMK yesterday and is the party nominee in Muthialpet constituency.

Former legislators Dr M A S Subramanian (BJP) and K Natarajan (AINRC) who joined AIADMK recently are the nominees in Ariyankuppam and Mangalam constituencies, respectively.

AINRC founded by Rangasamy in February 2011,after he broke away from Congress had contested the previous assembly polls in alliance with the AIADMK.

AINRC emerged victorious in 15 out of 17 seats it contested, while AIADMK, its poll ally then, bagged five segments (all from Puducherry region) out of 10 seats.

When Rangasamy formed the ministry in May 2011, he, however, ditched AIADMK and after registering the support of the Independent member Sivakumar he formed the government.

The alliance between AINRC and AIADMK resurfaced during Rajya Sabha poll and AIADMK nominee N Gokulakrishnan was elected unopposed to the Upper House in September last year.

But this arrangement was virtually limited to Rajya Sabha poll only as there had been lack of attempts on the part of AINRC to work out alliance with AIADMK for assembly polls.

Party general secretary and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa had released the list at Chennai today. She had also released the list of 227 candidates for the Tamil Nadu assembly polls. Jayalalithaa is all set to seek re-election from her R K Nagar constituency in Chennai.
France's national air company management is meeting today with unions worried female cabin crew could be disciplined if they refuse to work the company's new route to Iran, for which they must wear a headscarf.

Air France plans to start three flights weekly between Paris and Tehran beginning April 17.

A note sent by Air France to female cabin crew employees requires them to wear a headscarf on their arrival in Tehran. They must also wear the uniform's long-sleeved jacket and trousers, rather than a knee-length dress.

Flore Arrighi, president of cabin crew union UNAC, has asked Air France's management not to sanction employees who refuse to work the route.

Unions want "a system in which those who go to Tehran will do it voluntarily", she told France 3 television.
Women employees of Air France will be allowed to opt out of working on the resumed flights to Iran so that they can avoid having to wear a headscarf, a company official said today.

The airline will appoint a "special unit" to replace those who do not want to fly to Tehran, he said.

"Any woman assigned to the Paris-Tehran flight who for reasons of personal choice would refuse to wear the headscarf upon leaving the plane will be reassigned to another destination, and thus will not be obliged to do this flight," human resources official Gilles Gateau told Europe 1 radio.

Air France is to resume on April 17 its Paris-to-Tehran service, which had been suspended since 2008 because of international sanctions against Iran over its nuclear ambitions.

Unions say company executives sent staff an internal memo regarding flights to Tehran saying that female cabin crew would be required to wear trousers on board with a loose fitting jacket and must cover their hair with a scarf when they leave the plane.

The headscarf rule is already in place when flying to certain destinations such as Saudi Arabia.

Unions, who held talks with the human resources chief today, argue that an escape clause was already in place for flights to Conakry in Guinea during the Ebola crisis last year and for services to Tokyo following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.
In this photo made from the footage taken from Russian Defense Ministry official web site, Russian Tu-22 bombers escorted by the Su-27s fighter jets drop bombs on a target in Syria. Photo: AP/PTI

A monitoring group says an airstrike on an al-Qaeda affiliated headquarters in northern Syria has killed at least 22 militants, including a senior Qaeda-linked spokesman.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says jets thought to belong to the Syrian or Russian Air Forces targeted the headquarters of Jund al-Aqsa, an extremist group that fights alongside the Nusra Front, al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, last night.

A media outlet belonging to the Lebanese militia Hezbollah says the strike killed the Nusra Front's official spokesman, Radwan Namous, also known as Abu Firas al-Souri, and his son.

Hezbollah has sent thousands of its fighters to fight alongside Syrian government forces in the country's five-year civil war.
European aerospace giant Airbus today wrote to its British workforce to warn against the nation's possible departure from the EU, less than three months before a key referendum.

Britons head to the polls on June 23 to decide whether the country remains in the European Union, with recent opinion polls edging in favour of a so-called Brexit -- or British exit from the 28-member bloc.

"We firmly believe that it makes good economic sense to stay inside the EU which has helped make the company the global success story it is today," read the letter signed by top Airbus bosses.

"Our business model is entirely based on our ability to move products, people and ideas around Europe without any restriction and we do not believe leaving will increase the competitiveness of our British based operations.

"We all need to keep in the back of our minds that future investments depend very much on the economic environment in which the company operates."



It added: "Airbus Group's success in the UK is predicated on a highly competitive, integrated European business model."



The letter was signed by bosses including Paul Kahn, the president of Airbus Group UK, and Tom Williams, the chief operating officer of Airbus.

The aircraft manufacturer employs 15,000 people in Britain at 32 locations, including sites at Filton in southwest England and Broughton in north Wales, designing and manufacturing wings. The group has a global workforce of 136,000.

Airbus added today that it was "proud" to be the largest commercial aerospace company in Britain and the Royal Air Force's biggest supplier of large aircraft, as well as a leading space and satellite firm.

"Airbus Group has come out strongly in favour of the UK staying in the EU," the letter continued.

"As a successful international company with a strong European heritage we are proud that much of the world flies on British-built wings."



Airbus had already come out in favour of Britain's continued EU membership in May, arguing it would reconsider future investment if Britain quit the bloc.
Coming out in support of Oommen Chandy, state Industries Minister P K Kunhalikutty today termed the allegations levelled by Saritha Nair, an accused in the solar scam, against the Kerala Chief Minister as "completely baseless".

Talking to reporters after inaugurating the United Democratic Front's Kozhikode south constituency election convention here, he said, "The allegations by Saritha Nair against theChief Minister are baseless."



"She says something in the morning and changes her stand in the evening. Her allegations cannot be taken on their face value," Kunhalikutty said.

"The allegations will in no way affect the image of either theChief Minister or the UDF government. On the otherhand, it willonly enhance his image among the public that show a lot ofaffection toward him," he added.

The IUML leader claimed the controversy will only affect LDF, which, he alleged, was behind the incident.

Responding to a query, Kunhalikutty denied any confusion in selection of candidates in UDF.
"Can a university itself be termed as a minority institution," the Supreme Court today asked during the hearing of a plea seeking a direction to quash the appointment of Aligarh Muslim University's vice-chancellor Lt Gen (Retd) Zameeruddin Shah.

The remark by a bench comprising Chief Justice T S Thakur and Justice U U Lalit came when senior advocate Salman Khurshid, appearing for one of the parties, submitted that it has to be seen to what extent the apex court can interefere in the matter in view of the fact that another bench was dealing with the issue whether AMU was a minority institution.

"If it is declared that it is a minority institution, then it has to be seen as to how far a direction can be given," he submitted, with Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi referring to the Centre's stand that the AMU cannot be accorded a minority status.

"The Union of India is not going to proceed with its appeal," he said and added that the appeal against Allahabad High Court judgement in the apex court would be withdrawn.

The apex court posted the matter after four weeks by impleading the Human Resource Development Ministry as party to the petition and sought the AG's assistance in the matter.

The hearing also saw senior advocate Kapil Sibal, who was present in the courtroom for another matter, to say that the present VC was appointed by him during his tenure as Union HRD Minister in the erstwhile UPA regime.

An alumni of the university has filed the appeal challenging the Allahabad High Court's October 16, 2015 order holding there was "nothing wrong with the procedure" adopted in the appointment of present VC whose tenure ends next year and a search is already on for his successor.

The appointment of Shah as VC of AMU on May 11, 2012 was



challenged on the ground that according to the regulations of University Grants Commission (UGC), the VC ought to have worked for at least 10 years as a professor in a university or on an equivalent post in a research or academic institute.

The petitioner, Syed Abrar Ahmed, had argued before the high court that the regulations - which pertained to minimum qualifications and maintenance of standards in higher education - had become binding on the AMU when it had adopted these on December 6, 2010.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for the petitioner, contended that the high court had "erroneously refused to quash the appointment of the VC, in contradiction of the mandatory provisions of the UGC Regulation, 2010".

Senior advocate Raju Ramachandran, appearing for the AMU and its VC, defended the appointment saying the UGC regulation was not necessary in the case.

Bhushan contended that the appointment of the VC of AMU is contrary to the UGC Regulations, 2010.
Andhra Pradesh deputy Chief Minister N Chinna Rajappa today said the state Government was ready to set up a special court to hear the cases related to Agri Gold Estates and Farms scam.

The state cabinet had approved the proposal, he said, speaking at a press conference.

The people, before investing money, must find out if the concerned company is registered with the RBI, he said.
Voicing confidence that the people would elect a government in Assam, Chief Minister said only his party has brought change for the better through development in the state, while Prime Minister has "failed" to fulfill his promises.

Talking to reporters after casting his vote, Gogoi said, "People want change for the better and not change for the worse".

"We are 100% confident that people will vote for us. We brought change, we proved it and people can see it. I also want change. Who wants to remain static? We (Congress) achieved change for the better, while AGP also achieved change but for the worse.

"Everyone knows what was the situation (15 years ago) when AGP was in power when they failed.... There was no development then, no employment", he said.

"People can also see how much (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi fulfilled his poll promises. He is losing his popularity in whole of India. ... Even in his Gujarat, Bihar and other states," he alleged.

"They (BJP) indulge in negative propaganda and they do not want change for the better. I am not fighting against the Centre but want to instead cooperate. My fight is only against injustice," he asserted.

Asked how many seats he expected the to win, a confident Gogoi said, "Upper Assam is our stronghold and we will do even better this time in Lower Assam".

The Chief Minister cast his vote in Jorhat today during the first phase of Assam Assembly polling to decide the fate of 539 candidates in 65 of the 126 constituencies.

Sporting a Gandhi cap, stood in the queue with other voters along with his wife Dolly Gogoi, son Gaurav Gogoi, who is an MP, and brother Deep Gogoi at the polling station in Debicharan Baruah Girls High School.

Gogoi is pitched against MP Kamakhya Prasad Tasa in Titabar seat, seeking a fourth straight term of his government.
With Assam and Meghalaya lagging behind in Aadhaar enrolment, BJP today launched a scathing attack against Congress Chief Ministers Tarun Gogoi and Mukul Sangma accusing them of denying delivery of subsidy meant for the poorest of the poor directly in their accounts.

"I was surprised to see reports stating two Congress- ruled states of the North East have the poorest Aadhaar card penetration -- Meghalaya is 3.2 per cent and Assam 2.8 per cent," BJP spokesperson Nalin Kohli told reporters here.

He said Assam has a Congress government for 15 years and Meghalaya for almost 10 years.

He also wondered as to why the Aadhaar scheme was not taken up by these two states although it was the Congress who introduced the Bill in Parliament.

Noting that Aadhaar is to deliver subsidy meant for the poorest of the poor directly in their accounts, Kohli said Aadhaar is not a citizen debit card and it has nothing to do with citizenship rights.

Accusing the two Congress chief ministers of talking about the poor but not working for them, Kohli claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has come from poor background, "talks for the poor, plans for the poor, and implements for the poor".

On the opposition from certain quarters in Aadhaar enrolment due to superstitious Christian beliefs, Kohli said, "I think we need to look at it from a merit point of view as there is no religious context to Aadhaar in any sense directly, indirectly or remotely."



He said Aadhaar is only for the benefit of the poor, it is not citizenship right or anything, it is to ensure that subsidy goes to the right person wherever that subsidy is due so that there is no corruption and no leakage.

Claiming that in those states who are adopting it, people are benefiting in a big way, Kohli said people of Meghalaya should also not lose out on those benefits because the money is rightly theirs.
Deadly clashes between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces over the Nagorny Karabakh region continued for a third day today despite international pressure to halt the worst fighting in decades over the disputed territory.

Azerbaijan said three of its troops were killed overnight when Armenian forces shelled its positions using mortars and grenade launchers, taking the overall death toll in the latest surge of violence to at least 36.

"In the event of continued Armenian provocations, we will launch a full-scale operation along the entire front line, using all kinds of weapons," Azerbaijan's defence ministry spokesman Vagif Dargahly told journalists.

The Armenia-backed separatist authorities in Karabakh -- which claims independence but is backed by Yerevan -- said that Azeri troops "intensified shelling of the Karabakh army positions on Monday morning, using 152-millimetre mortars, rocket-propelled artillery and tanks".

The fresh outbreak of fighting over the region -- which was seized by Armenian rebels from Azerbaijan in a war that ended with an inconclusive truce in 1994 -- erupted on Friday night with the two sides accusing each other of attacking with heavy weaponry.

Azerbaijan claimed to have snatched several strategic positions inside the Armenian-controlled territory -- internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan -- in what would be the first change in the front line since the ceasefire 22 years ago.

In the Armenian capital of Yerevan, defence ministry spokesman Artsrun Hovhannisyan said Monday that Karabakh forces had "seriously advanced at certain sectors of the front line and took up new positions".

The report was quickly dismissed as "untrue" by Azerbaijan.

Russia and the West have called for a ceasefire, with President Vladimir Putin, a key power broker, pushing for an immediate end to the fighting, and Moscow's diplomats and military pressuring both sides.

"We are continuing contacts with Baku and Yerevan so that they hear the signals from Moscow, Washington and Paris," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday, mentioning the three capitals that have long mediated the conflict.

At least 18 Armenian, 15 Azeri troops and three civilians were reported killed, and one of Azerbaijan's attack helicopters was shot down.
Over 81 per cent voter turnout was recorded in the first part of the first phase Assembly poll in West Bengal today, which passed off without any major incident, according to the Election Commission.

Voting took place in 18 constituencies spread over West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia which make up Jangalmahal.

Polling in 13 Left Wing Extremism-affected constituencies ended early at 4 PM while in others it went on till 6 PM.

"We were in a state of anxiety. You know the reason (fears of Maoist violence). But overall there was no major incident or complaint. There was no of any bandh or poll boycott by the Maoists," Chief Electoral Officer Sunil Gupta told reporters here.

Till the last available count, the voter turnout was over 81 per cent.

The Election Commission had received 537 complaints during the polling process, of which 531 were disposed of.

Polling will be held in another 31 seats in the second part of the first phase to be held on April 11.

People came out in large numbers since early morning to exercise their franchise.

Polling began at 7 AM amid tight security. Two choppers conducted regular sorties as part of aerial surveillance. The security ring that was thrown around the polling stations had quick response team, flying squads and sector forces.

Voting was held in 4,945 polling stations out of which 1,962 were classified as 'critical' by the EC.

Voter Verifiable Audit Trails (VVAT) system was used in 562 polling stations.

A key candidate in this phase was Tribal Affairs Minister Sukumar Hansda from Jhargram.
Maharashtra Assembly today witnessed din over Devendra Fadnavis' remark that "those unwilling to say 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' have no right to stay in the country", as the Opposition members demanded an apology from the Chief Minister for his comments.

Responding to the opposition's demand, Fadnavis said he will keep chanting 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai', whether he remains the Chief Minister or not.

"There is still a dispute over saying 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' and those refusing to say it, should not have any right to stay here. Those living here should say 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai," Fadnavis had told a public meeting in Nashik recently.

After the Question Hour ended in the Assembly, Leader of Opposition Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil moved an adjournment motion saying minorities today are being made to prove their patriotism, and that the chief minister should apologise for his statement.

"The CM's statement on everyone chanting 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' is not right. Today there are so many issues plaguing the state, but the CM is focusing on these statements and minorities are having to prove their patriotism by chanting the slogans. All this is being done to divert people's attention from real issues," Vikhe Patil said.

The opposition members then started waiving the national flag in the House and demanded an apology from CM.

Following a ruckus in the Assembly, Fadnavis responded to the opposition saying that that if they had heard his entire speech, they would not have raised the issue.

"There is no question of a dispute over the issue as it is not related to any particular religion or caste, because I salute those highly respected 500 Muslim clerics who not only hoisted the national flag at Mahim Dargah but also chanted 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' with the feeling of nationalism and patriotism on March 17, on the occasion of 603rd Urs of Hajrat Makhdum Fateh Ali Mahimi," he said.

He said that chanting of pro-India slogans is being deliberately linked to a particular caste by "people with malafide intentions" and that attempts were being made to create a divide between communities.

"At Wagah border, soldiers only sing 'Vande Mataram' and chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'. There is no religion there," the CM said.

"Whether or not I remain the chief minister, I will keep chanting 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'. The Congress is only raking up this issue to please their high command. Muslims are patriots and the opposition is questioning their patriotism by raking up such issues," Fadnavis said.
Hitting out at Devendra Fadnavis and Ramdev for their remarks on the issue of chanting 'Bharat mata ki jai' slogan, CPI(M) today asked the Maharashtra Chief Minister to retract his comment, while demanding that a case be filed against the yoga guru.

Targeting Fadnavis, the Left party said his stand is in "gross violation" of the Constitutional position he holds and reflected the "view of an RSS activist and not that of a Chief Minister".

"What the Chief Minister has said is that those who do not agree with the Hindutva version of nationalism have no right to stay in the country.

"This is the view of an RSS activist and not that of a Chief Minister who has sworn to uphold the Constitution. The politburo demands Fadnavis retracts this statement immediately," CPI(M) said in a statement.

The party claimed the "climate of hate and intolerance" being created is also illustrated by "rabidly communal" stand of Ramdev.

"This speech is an incitement to violence and communal hatred. The concerned authorities should immediately file a case under relevant provisions of IPC," the party insisted.

Fadnavis had on Saturday night said that those unwilling to say 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' have no right to stay in the country.

"There is still a dispute over saying 'Bharat Mata ki jai' and those opposing to say it, should not have any right to stay here. Those living here should say 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai," he had said at a public meeting held in Nashik.

On the other hand, Ramdev triggered controversy stating he respects the law of the land and Constitution otherwise "lakhs of heads would have been cut for opposing the chanting of Bharat Mata ki jai".
Local BJP MLA Arun Bhimavad and one other person were critically injured when their jeep rammed into a stationary truck at Bangari turn, around 15 km from here, police said today.

The incident took place last night on the Agra-Mumbai road when the MLA was on his way to Shajapur town from Maxi in the district, an official at the Maxi police station said.

Bhimavad along with one Mukesh Gupta was rushed to the district hospital from where they were referred to a private hospital in Indore, the official said.

A case has been registered and investigations are underway, he added.
BJP chief Amit Shah today asserted that the party's alliance government with PDP in Jammu and Kashmir will take the state to "newer heights".

"Congratulations to CM Mehbooba Mufti and Deputy CM Nirmal Singh. I am sure the BJP-PDP alliance will take state to newer heights," he said in a tweet soon after the PDP leader took oath as the first woman chief minister of the state.

Finance Minister and senior party leader Arun Jaitley also congratulated Mehbooba.

"Congratulations Mehbooba Mufti ji on being sworn in as the first woman Chief Minister of J&K. I wish the best to BJP-PDP govt in the state," he said.
Two militants have been killed in Bangladesh in blast while allegedly making bombs for their terror outfit.

"The incident took place last night. The doctors declared one of the two dead immediately as they were rushed to the hospital while the other succumbed to his wounds later," police official said.

They were not known to the neighbourhood at a village in northwestern Bogra and were residing in the house rented by an autorickshaw driver, who was not inside during the blast.

"We suspect they are members of any militant outfit and the blast took place as they were preparing bombs for their outfit. Investigations have been launched to track down the autorickshaw driver," official said.

According to local reports, police's bomb disposal unit this morning seized at least twenty grenades, four pistols with 20 bullets from the building at the village.
Brussels airport scheduled nearly 40 flights today, officials said, as Belgium struggles to get back to normal after two suicide bombers blew themselves up in the departure hall nearly two weeks ago.

The number was a sharp rise over the three flights at Belgium's main air hub on Sunday, but a far cry from the 600 the airport usually handles per day, officials said.

"Some 39 passenger flights, most of them arriving from or departing to European cities, are planned," Brussels Airlines spokesman Kim Daenen told AFP, adding her company was the only operator today.

Tomorrow, the airline will run 89 flights, with 48 heading to European destinations, five to Africa and one to New York. Some 40 return flights are planned.

Brussels airport spokeswoman Florence Mulls said other companies such as Dutch carrier KLM will operate from Wednesday.

The airport reopened on Sunday for the first time since two Islamic State commandos blew themselves up in the departure hall on March 22 in coordinated blasts that also struck a metro station in the Belgian capital, killing a total of 32 people.

Brussels Airlines planes flew on Sunday to the Portuguese city of Faro, then Athens and Turin before all three returned, officials said.

Two big white tents now serve as temporary check-in facilities and passengers were asked to come three hours before departure to allow time for tight new security checks.

There was also a strong security presence inside the tents where passengers walked through metal detectors and had their bags screened before checking in and being allowed to enter the main building.

Under the new system, only passengers with travel and ID documents are allowed into the makeshift departure hall, and all bags will be checked before entering. Once inside, travellers will still have to go through the usual security barriers.

The airport will initially only be accessible by car, with no access for buses and trains. Vehicles will be screened and subject to spot checks.

It will take months to repair the departure hall, according to airport chief executive Arnaud Feist.

The damage from the blasts was severe, with pictures from the scene showing the building's glass-fronted facade in shatters, collapsed ceilings and destroyed check-in desks.

Feist said he expected the airport to start running normally again from late June or early July.

Brussels airport, which claims to contribute some three billion euros (USD 3.4 billion) annually to the Belgian economy, has not released any figures on the economic impact of the shutdown, but Brussels Airlines has said it was losing five million euros daily.
Two little-known financier brothers of a UK-based investment firm are finalising a deal to revive the 'British Steel' brand name to buy out part of Tata Steel's plants in the UK, a media report said today.

Marc and Nathaniel Meyohas, the brothers behind investment firm Greybull, are putting the finishing touches to buy theScunthorpe steelworks in the east of England from the Indian conglomerate, according to The Daily Telegraph.

Greybull plans to pump in 400 million pounds into the struggling plant, saving a total of around 9,000 local jobs.

Scunthorpe, one of the country's largest facilities and one of 12 Tata steel sites across the UK, makes specialist steel products including wire rods, steel beams and track for the building and rail industries.

The came as steel unions in the country called on Prime Minister David Cameron to personally intervene in the ongoing emergency talks in London to save Britain's steel industry from collapse.

Unite union assistant general secretary Tony Burke said if the industry was "to be given a fighting chance then the government and Tata need to come clean on their intentions and prior discussions, because so far all we've had is more questions than answers".

He said, "The apparent lack of urgency from Sajid Javid and absence of a clear plan from the government is disturbing for the tens of thousands whose livelihoods hang in the balance and deeply troubling for British Steel's 140,000 pensioners."



Roy Rickhuss, leader of the Community union, said: "By now, no-one underestimates the scale of the challenge we face. We have an entire industry to save and not a lot of time to save it.

"We must also ensure that we hold Tata to a commitment to be a responsible seller and honour its moral and social duties to UK steel communities."



UK business secretary Sajiv Javid is also set to meet Tata Steel's Chief Financial Officer (CFO) in relation to the group's plans to exit the UK steel industry.

Business department minister Anna Soubry is due to visit Rotherham steelworks later today.

Meanwhile, Indian-origin tycoon Sanjeev Gupta, founder of commodities firm Liberty House, has had initial talks over a potential purchase of the Tata Group's South Wales plant.

Liberty House said the talks had been "encouraging" and "positive" and described the response of ministers as "pro-active" and "keen to find solutions."



Gupta is set to return to London from Wales this evening to continue the negotiations.

Tata Steel announced last week it was selling its loss-making UK businesses and would close its plant at Port Talbot unless a buyer is found.

The company directly employs 15,000 workers in the UK and supports thousands of others, across plants in Port Talbot, Rotherham, Corby and Shotton.

Britain's steel industry has been thrown into crisis by a combination of cheap imports from China, falling global demand, high energy prices and a tougher tax regime than many rival nations.
CPI (M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury today attacked the Centre for imposition of President's rule in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh saying since they cannot control state government through elections, they are trying to control through central rules.

"In this round of elections in Bengal, Kerala and other states, BJP is out of picture. That is what happened in Arunachal (Pradesh) and Uttarakhand and now they are targeting Himachal (Pradesh). They cannot get peoples' confidence and so they are subverting Constitution, he alleged.

He accused SAD-BJP alliance led Punjab government of ruining the state in its over nine-year stint.

"The present Akali-BJP government has ruined the prosperity of the state. Punjab is the granary of whole India. It is being ruined," Yechury told reporters here today.

"We are very clear that priority here is to restore to Punjab a normal governance and policies that will bring back its prosperity which has been eroded," he said.

On alliance with any political party in view of 2017 Assembly polls in Punjab, Yechury said "we will discuss electoral tactics in our party committee first."



Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh had already said that his party was open to forge an alliance with "like-minded secular parties" for the 2017 assembly polls.

He said he would meet the state party committee here and discuss preliminary preparations for forthcoming elections in Punjab.

Yechury said a statue of late CPI(M) leader Harkishan Singh Surjeet will be installed here.
Colombia's second-largest guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), freed an ex-governor held captive since 2013, in a new boost to peace efforts.

"Pleased by the release of (Choco department) ex governor Patrocinio Sanchez Montes de Oca. Much support to him and family. #welcometofreedom," the Choco governor's office said on Twitter yesterday.

The government launched peace negotiations on Wednesday with the ELN, setting its sights on a total end to a bloody half-century conflict.

Bogota hopes the talks with the ELN will bring it on board alongside Colombia's biggest rebel force, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), in a bid to end what is seen as the last major armed confrontation in the West.

The ELN is a leftist group like the FARC, but they have fought as rivals for territory in a many-sided conflict that started as a peasant uprising in 1964.

While the FARC has observed a ceasefire since last year as its own peace talks have advanced, the ELN has continued attacks.

Accords bringing in the government and the FARC and ELN would establish peace between the main remaining players in a conflict which over the decades has drawn in right- and left-wing guerrillas, government troops and drug trafficking gangs.

The conflict has killed more than 260,000 people, uprooted 6.6 million people and left a further 45,000 missing.

The ELN on Saturday also freed a police patrolman it kidnapped on March 20.
Commodore Sanjiv Issar took over as the Naval Officer-in-Charge of Andhra Pradesh from Commodore K A Bopanna at an impressive ceremonial parade held at the Naval Dockyard here today.

A specialist in the field of gunnery, Commodore Issar has held a number of prestigious appointments both afloat and ashore, a naval release said here today.

His afloat appointments include tenures onboard INS Tir, INS Kirpan as Commanding Officer and Western Fleet as Fleet Gunnery Officer.

Prior to the present appointment, he had been the Defence Adviser, Embassy of India, Santiago, Chile.

An alumnus of the Naval Warfare College (Karanja, Mumbai) and Defence Services Staff College (Wellington), he was commissioned in to the Navy on 1 January 1987. He has also commanded INS Dronacharya, the gunnery school of the Navy at Kochi.

The outgoing Naval Officer-in-Charge, Commodore Bopanna, after a successful tenure, proceeds to INS Circars at Visakhapatnam as Commanding Officer, the release added.
The Madras High Court today issued a set of guidelines to all Motor Accident Claims Tribunals, to be implemented from August 1, directing them to ensure that compensation amounts be credited directly to bank accounts of the claimants/victims.

"The bank account details of the claimant/victim(s) shall be stated in the award/order of the Claims Tribunal," a division bench, comprising Justices R Sudhakar and S Vaidyanathan, said.

The bench stated this while modifying an order of Motor Accidents Claims Tribunal, Subordinate Judge, Mahe, to lower the compensation amount awarded from Rs 64,86,620 to Rs 57,28,000.

It, however, confirmed the interest fixed by the Tribunal at 7.5 per cent per annum from the date of the petition till date of deposit passed.

Concurring with the judgment written by Justice S Vaidayanathan, Justice Sudhakar delivered the guidelines to be followed by all Tribunals.

He referred to difficulties faced by victims and families in case of death and said that at the time of commencement of trial and evidence on the side of claimants, Tribunals should obtain and ensure that bank account details of all claimants and prescribe the manner in which it has to be recorded.

The first page of the passbook should compulsorily have the photograph of claimant(s)/ victim(s), duly attested by the Bank concerned and be made available.

Another guideline was that Tribunals obtain and ensure marking of Pan Card of all claimants, wherever available.

If the claimant/victim do not have Pan Cards, the Tribunal shall try advising them on the importance of having one to avoid higher tax deduction at source for their own benefit before conclusion of trial. For this purpose, District Legal Services Authorities and Taluk Legal Services Authorities can facilitate and provide assistance.

The Tribunals should verify and confirm if the claimant/ victim has an Aadhaar card and if there is one, they should mark a self-attested copy of it, the bench said.

In case of minor claimants, Tribunals should verify the bank account details, obtain the same, mark them and specify the name of the guardian, the bench said.

After passing the award, the Tribunals should direct insurance firms, transport corporations or such other entities held liable to pay the compensation, to deposit the amount to accounts of the Claims Tribunal directly by NEFT or RTGS mode.

It directed the Registry to issue appropriate directions, enabling the respective Tribunals or district courts concerned to open separate accounts, bearing a suffix 'MACT', to identify it in relation to motor accident claims.

All guidelines have to be implemented from August 1 2016, the bench said.
Congress MLA Benny Behanan, a key aide of Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, today expressed willingness to withdraw his candidature, alleging that KPCC chief V M Sudheeran is against his renomination from Thrikkakkara Assembly constituency in Ernakulam.

"My candidature from Thrikkakkara constituency was endorsed by party workers and UDF leaders. But, I have come to know about the KPCC president's reservations against it. I understand that he has some other interests," Behanan told reporters here.

"In such a scenario, it is morally wrong for me to contest the elections, particularly that is against the KPCC chief's wishes. So, I have informed the Congress leadership, expressing my willingness to withdraw my candidature," Behanan said.

His decision came even as the Congress High command is yet to announce the party candidates for the May 16 state Assembly polls.

A decision on Congress candidates is delayed due to the stand-off between Chandy and Sudheeran over candidature of state Excise Minister K Babu, Culture Minister K C Joseph, Revenue Minister Adoor Prakash and Behanan.

Party sources said Sudheeran has suggested the name of Congress leader former Idukki MP P T Thomas, known for his environmental activism, for the constituency.

They said Sudheeran insisted that those facing corruption allegations and had contested more than four times should make way for fresh faces. However, this was not acceptable to Chandy, the sources said.

Chandy, Sudheeran and Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala had been in Delhi for the past one week to finalise the list of the candidates from the state and holding discussions with the party high command and returned to Kerala yesterday.
Senior Congress leader Anand Sharma on Monday said that the party had some concerns about the goods and services tax (GST) but it was not trying to block the proposed tax.

Addressing a special plenary session of Confederation of Indian Industry here, Sharma said should be there and it will happen.

"The government may say the our concerns are not correct. But I as an Indian citizen feel that the concerns we have registered with the government are correct," he said, adding that issues of surcharge, in-built dispute redressal mechanism and a realistic cap on proposed tax as the contentious areas.

He, however, assured that Opposition will have a meeting point with the government over the issue.

"We hope we will have a meeting point. We are engaged with the government and I assure our objective is definitely not to block it," he said.

Sharma also praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for acknowledging "unfair" criticism of his predecessor Manmohan Singh by BJP.

"We are very happy that the present prime minister has realised that what they said about Manmohan Singh in 2008 was unfair and what we did was to serving the supreme national interests of the country. We are grateful," he said.

Citing opening up of insurance, banking, telecom, multi-brand retail sector and FDI in civil aviation sectors by the previous government in the centre, he demanded the government to end the confusion over foreign investments in the country.

"What I would expect that confusion must end for the foreign investors. Two years down the line please tell the investors that its on," he said.

The deputy leader of Congress in the Rajya Sabha also criticised the nationalism debate and said it was not going to help India enhance its competitiveness in the global market place.

"Do I need a minister, who never went to a university, with due respect, that what should be the height at which the tricolour should be unfurled in central Universities," he said about the need for peaceful environment in the country to facilitate ease of doing business.

He also pointed to "urgent and serious" need of administrative reforms and cutting of red tape to ensure that country attains competitiveness and maintains it in future.
A court today declined to grant bail to the in-laws of Dalit youth Shankar who was brutally murdered in a suspected case of honour killing at Udumalpet last month.

After hearing the arguments by public prosecutor K M Subramaniam against the bail petitions of the parents of Kausalya, the 19-year-old widow of Shankar, Tirupur Principal District Court Judge Alamelu Natarajan rejected it.

Chinnasamy and Annalakshmi, parents of Kausalya, had filed their bail petitions in the court recently.

While Chinnasamy had surrendered on March 14, Annalakshmi turned herself in before a court in Theni a couple of days ago.

While waiting at the Udumalpet bus-stand in Tirupur district, Shankar and Kausalya were attacked by a gang with sickles in full public view on March 13, resulting in the former's death.
Twenty CPI activists, including party executive member K Narayana, were today taken into preventive custody for trying to take out a 'Chalo Raj Bhavan' march here allegedly without permission demanding resignation of HCU Vice Chancellor, police said.

The proposed 'Chalo Raj Bhavan' march did not have permission and they (activists) were taken into preventive custody at Khairatabad railway station near Raj Bhavan, Saifabad SHO K Poorna Chander said.

The (HCU) has been witnessing sporadic protests after Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula allegedly committed suicide on the campus on January 17.

In a bid to intensify their ongoing agitation demanding removal and arrest of Vice Chancellor Appa Rao Podile, who resumed office on March 22, the varsity's Joint Action Committee for Social Justice has given a call for a protest march - 'Chalo HCU' - on April 6.

On March 22, the students, upon learning that Rao was back from leave, marched to his residence and protested against his resumption of office, arguing that as VC he may tamper with evidence and influence witnesses.

The varsity's students' union has already sought President Pranab Mukherjee's immediate intervention to resolve issues related to the varsity and ensure the sacking of the VC.
Social worker Abhay Bang has appealed government to declare as the residence of late R K Patil, one of the signatories to historic Nagpur Pact which led to creation of Maharashtra state, as the 'memorial of Maharashtra'.

The pact, concluded in September 1953, was signed by Yashwantrao Chavan, then minister in Morarji Desai Ministry of the Bombay state and Ramrao Krishnarao alias R K Patil, a former ICS officer and member of the first Planning Commission.

Maharashtra state came into existence after the pact was signed at the residence of Patil, located in Civil Lines here, which is "official birth place of Maharashtra state".

"Government should develop a memorial of Maharashtra at this residence," said Bang, director of SEARCH (Society for Education, Action and Research in Community Health).

He was speaking at release of book titled "R K Patil-Prernastrot" compiled and edited by Purnima Patil.

Former High Court judge and Gandhian justice Chandrashekhar Dharmadhikari presided over the function.
In a major reshuffle today, Delhi Police Law and Order chief Deepak Mishra was transferred to the force's administration unit, even as the national capital was divided into two law-and-order zones with separate special commissioner-rank officers heading them.

This was the first such reshuffle after Alok Kumar Verma took over the reins of the 80,000 strong force.

In the order passed by Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung, Special CP Mishra has been made in-charge of Delhi Police's administration department, official sources said.

Mishra, a 1984 batch IPS officer, was one of the top contenders for the police commissioner's post to succeed B S Bassi.

The post of Special CP (administration) is considered second in command in the force, in which Mishra will succeed Vimla Mehra who retired along with Bassi.

Two posts were created for law and order -- now divided into north and south zones.

While P Kamraj, who was serving as Special CP (headquarters), has been made in-charge of Law and Order (South), the charge of law and order (north) has been given to S B K Singh, currently serving as Special CP (security), the sources said.

"This is the first time that two special commissioner-rank officers will take charge of Delhi's law and order, with specific zones assigned to them. Earlier, officers of additional commissioner rank and joint commissioner rank had jointly led law and order department in the force," a source said.

The transfer order also contain names of 15 other senior police officers.

In the transfer order, DCP (Headquarter) Ishwar Singh has been made DCP (South).

Former south district chief Prem Nath, who was handling the Sunanda Pushkar case and the JNU row in its initial stage, was transfered to Mizoram in a previous order issued in February.

Also, Additional DCP (South) Surender Kumar has been made DCP (Southwest), by moving R A Sanjeev to the estates department. Present Additional DCP (Southwest) Nupur Prasad has been shifted to Surender Kumar's place, the sources said.

DCP (East) B S Gurjar has been made the new principal of the Police Training College (PTC) at Jharodan Kalan here and DCP (Land & Building) Rishi Pal has been made the new east district chief.

Meanwhile, former PTC principal N Gnanasambandan has been moved to traffic unit. Additional DCP (East) Kimi Kaming and A K Singh, who has arrived from Mizoram will also be joining traffic unit as DCsP.

The Economic Offences Wing, which comes under the jurisdiction of Delhi Police's Crime Branch, will be joined by Arun Kampani, a 2000 batch IPS officer who was serving as an Additional DCP in Delhi Police's Legal Cell, the sources said.

While Esha Pandey and R R Singh, both having being transferred from Lakshwadeep islands, will be joining as Addtional DCP II in Central and South East districts respectivelt, present Additional DCP II (central) S S Kalsi has been transferred to Outer District.

The positions of Additional DCP II in Outer and South districts were vacant after the officers were transfered out of Delhi in pursuance of a previous order.

Also, Additional DCP (Northeast) Mohammad Ali has been transferred to Vigilance department and Ishwar Singh's former position will be taken by G S Awana, who was so far serving as DCP (Estate), the sources said.

About the two police zones for law and order, each of them will have three police ranges under their jurisdiction. While North Zone will have the North, Central and Eastern ranges, the South Zone will have Southeast, Southwest and New Delhi ranges, they said.

Also, Special CP (recruitment and training) S Shrivastava, who was transferred to CRPF as an additional DG, was relieved from his position today.

The final decision on Joint Commissioner M K Meena -- who was transferred to Andaman and Nicobar islands in a previous order but not relieved yet -- is still awaited, the sources added.

Meena, who is also the chief of Delhi's Anti Corruption Branch, was in loggerheads with the AAP government over a range of issues in the past one year.
A delegation of drivers of the city's radio taxis today met Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and discussed with him their demands including a ban on app-based taxi service.

Rajwant Singh Saini, founder president of Azad Economy Radio Taxi Welfare Organisation, said that the CM has assured them that he would accept 75 per cent of their demands.

He said that in the meeting, they demanded that government set up halt & go stands for economy radio taxis across the national capital.

"We also demanded the government take a strict action against illegal call centres of app-based private taxis.

"Besides, we also raised the issue of implementing an 8-hour duty schedule for drivers as mentioned in the Motor Vehicle Act," Saini said.

Last month, Delhi's auto and yellow-black taxi unions had also demanded a stop to all app-based taxi services, saying that they were affecting their business in the capital.
Delhi government has decided to build a permanent memorial to APJ Abdul Kalam at a famous market here where belongings of the former President including his books and musical instruments would be on display.

"I am visiting Rameswaram tomorrow to bring back APJ Kalam's belongings to Delhi. At his family home, there are several of his belongings of the former President including books, veena and spectacles," Delhi Culture Minister Kapil Mishra said today.

Kalam's possessions from his residence at 10, Rajaji Marg in the national capital, had been sent to Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu by the Centre, after his death.

"The belongings will be taken to Delhi from Rameswaram through trucks. They will be kept inside the Delhi Assembly till July 27 and thereafter, they will be permanently placed at Dilli Haat, INA where his memorial would be constructed," Mishra told reporters here.

The Delhi government will also have a permanent exhibition on Kalam at Delhi Haat where his books will be displayed and used for research and other purposes.

Mishra had criticised the Centre's move to allot Kalam's official residence at 10, Rajaji Marg to Union Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma after the former President's death.
An unruly 21-year-old passenger on a British Airways flight has been arrested after he created a ruckus on board and bit a co-passenger who tried to intervene.

The passenger, who was not named, was flying to London from Dubai on Flight BA0104 yesterday.

A Metropolitan Police spokeswoman said: "Officers attended and found a 21-year-old man who had assaulted a passenger. The man was arrested on suspicion of actual bodily harm and being drunk on board an aircraft.

"He was taken to a west London police station and has been bailed to a date in late May. The injured passenger received medical assistance for a minor injury at the scene."



Meanwhile, Christopher McNerlin, who was injured in the incident, had to go to hospital for a check-up after being bitten on the arm by the "violent passenger".

As a token of appreciation, he was allowed to sit in the cockpit by the pilot, the Sun reported today.

Chris posted pictures on social media of the bite mark, along with one of himself giving the "thumbs up" as he sat in the cockpit once the plane had landed and was safely in a hangar.

He wrote on Instagram: "That time when you help restrain and handcuff a nutter at 40,000ft. He bites you, but it's all OK because Captain Kendal lets you sit in the cockpit."



Later along with a picture of his bitten arm he tweeted: "At A&E after helping the British Airways stewardesses restrain a violent passenger on board yesterday's ."



"Incredible team on the flight, especially Hayley, who put herself in harm's way to protect passengers. Thanks to British Airways Captain Kendal for showing me the cockpit. The bite and A&E were almost worth it."



British Airways thanked Chris, saying: "We hope you are all right. I'm sure Hayley would've appreciated your assistance on board. Thanks."



The airline said the matter was now being dealt with by police.
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Want to own an entire village?



Then rush to Britain where the pictureseque North Yorkshire village has gone on the market for a guide price of 20 million pounds.

West Heslerton, near Malton, has a 21-bedroom mansion, pub, petrol station, 43 homes and 2,116 acres of land.

The village has been owned by the same family for over 150 years, but has been put up for sale after the most recent owner died.

Cundalls estate agents said it has already attracted interest "from far and wide".

Eve Dawnay owned the estate until her death five years ago, with the family now deciding to sell.

West Heslerton also has a church, primary school and a playing field with a pavilion.

Tom Watson, of Cundalls, said: "Miss Dawnay was a wonderful lady.

"She was very kind and the property rents are - and have always been - very low.

"This has helped keep a vibrant village community with a mixed group of ages and there are obviously a lot of people hoping that somebody with a similar benevolent nature will come along to take over the estate."



More than 110 acres of woodland is also being sold by the family, the BBC reported.

Watson added: "All the tenants were told it was going on the market in September, since then the rumour mill has started going about potential buyers.

"We already have had interest from far and wide."



Dawnay's sister, Verena Elliott, said: "We all loved it and it would be very hard to find a village with more loyal and lovely people living in it.

"There is a real sense of community which is hard to find these days," she added.
Equitas Holdings will hit the capital on Tuesday to raise Rs 2,200-crore through an initial public offer (IPO), making it the first issue of the current fiscal  which started this month.

The company, with a licence for small finance bank (SFB), has fixed the price band at Rs 109-110 per share. The initial share-sale programme will close on April 7.

The IPO comprises fresh issue of shares aggregating Rs 720 crore and an offer for sale of up to 132,425,884 equity shares by existing shareholders, including P N Vasudevan, MD, and private equity stake holders.

These include International Finance Corporation, Nederlandse Financierings, Aavishkaar Goodwell India Microfinance Development Company, Sequoia Capital India, Westbridge Ventures and Helion Venture Partners.

The IPO will bring down the company's foreign holding from the present 93% to 35%. According to the norms, foreign shareholding should be below 49% to operate as an SFB.

The funds generated from the fresh issue will be used to develop IT infrastructure for the new bank and for lending purposes among others.

Chennai-based Equitas Holdings in September 2015 had received in-principle approval from the Reserve Bank to set up an SFB to provide basic banking services to small farmers and micro industries.

Axis Capital, ICICI Securities, HSBC and Edelweiss Financial Services are managing the company's IPO.

The shares offered through the issue are proposed to be listed on BSE and NSE.
A controversial European Union plan to stem the flow of refugees began today with the deportation of more than 200 people from Greek islands to Turkey, despite concerns over human rights and criticism that Europe was turning its back on refugees.

As dawn broke, buses filled with migrants left under heavy security from a detention centre on the island of Lesbos headed to the port for the short boat ride to the Turkish port of Dikili.

More were ferried across from the island of Chios, where riot police clashed hours earlier with demonstrators protesting the expulsions.

In all, 202 people from 11 nations, 191 men and 11 women were sent back. They included 130 Pakistanis, 42 Afghans, 10 Iranians, five Congolese, four Sri Lankans, three Bangladeshis, three from India, and one each from Iraq, Somalia and Ivory Coast, as well as two Syrians who Greek authorities said had asked to be sent back.

Human rights groups expressed deep concern over the operation.

"The returns underway this morning in the Aegean are the symbolic start of the potential disastrous undoing of Europe's commitment to protecting refugees," said Amnesty International's deputy director for Europe, Gauri van Gulik.

"Urgent key questions are: What process is everyone going through and what will become of them after their return?" Judith Sunderland, acting deputy Europe director at Human Rights Watch, said trying to close the Aegean migration route by shipping people "back to uncertain fates in Turkey" will only make them seek potentially more dangerous and expensive ways to reach the EU.
A 32-year-old distraught farmer from Maharashtra's drought-hit Amravati district allegedly attempted suicide at Jantar Mantar here today.

The incident took place around 1 PM when the man, identified as Prashant Deshmukh, tied a rope at a tree in Jantar Mantar area and formed a loop, a senior police official said.

When the man was allegedly trying to fit his head into it, he was spotted by staff posted at the police picket near Kerala House, who rushed to his rescue, the official added.

Police officials persuaded Deshmukh not to take the step, following which he broke down. Deshmukh was then taken to a police station.

He said he had come to Delhi in a train seeking answers to many of his problems.

Deshmukh told police he owns a farm land at a drought-hit village in Amravati and claimed a water reservoir was constructed in his farm under some government scheme but he did not receive the compensation promised for the same.

"We have arranged counselling for Deshmukh and also informed his family. Officers at Maharashtra Sadan here have also been informed," DCP (New Delhi) Jatin Narwal said.
The first Syrians arrived in Germany from Istanbul today under a controversial EU-Turkey migrant pact, an official from the German federal refugee office said.

The 16 asylum seekers flew into the northern city of Hanover and were to be taken to a shelter about 140 kilometres (90 miles) away. A second group of Syrians was to arrive in Hanover in the early afternoon, the official told AFP.

The representative from the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, Corinna Wicher, asked reporters to respect the privacy of the asylum seekers, who were members of three families. An AFP reporter saw five children among them.

"This is all very new, very difficult," Wicher said. "They have been travelling for a very long time."



One protester also arrived to meet the group, holding a banner reading: "Please keep fleeing, refugees not welcome."



Wicher said the new arrivals would spend two weeks at the temporary shelter in the town of Friedland for orientation, including lessons in basic German and logistical practicalities, before being placed in housing around the state of Lower Saxony.

Under the scheme agreed with the EU last month, one Syrian refugee will be settled in Europe legally in return for every Syrian migrant taken back by Turkey from EU member Greece, which has faced the largest influx in recent months.

Early Monday, Greece sent back a first wave of migrants to Turkey under the deal that has run into strong criticism from rights groups.

Refugee advocates question whether the agreement is legal and ethical, fearing individuals will be denied the right to claim asylum.

Germany last year let in a record 1.1 million migrants and refugees but Chancellor Angela Merkel has come under intense pressure to stem the flow.

Merkel spoke by telephone with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu early Monday to discuss the start of returns and "agreed that the pact must be implemented successfully", her spokesman Steffen Seibert said.

Berlin has agreed to accept 1,600 people under the current programme and expects other EU member states to begin taking in refugees under the pact with Turkey from Monday, an interior ministry spokesman said.

Germany has already seen a sharp drop in arrivals in recent weeks after Balkan countries closed their borders to migrants and refugees.

The daily Bild reported Monday that more than half of the places available at reception centres, generally the first port of call for new asylum seekers, were now unfilled after months of overcrowding.
Four groups of Indian students are among 80 teams that will participate in NASA's Human Exploration Rover Challenge to create human-powered rovers designed to explore the surface of Mars, distant planets, asteroids or moons.

Almost 80 teams from India, US, Italy, Germany, Mexico, Colombia, Russia and Puerto Rico, will compete in the NASA's annual Rover Challenge which starts on April 8 at the US Space and Rocket Centre in Alabama.

These include teams from the Mukesh Patel School of Technology Management and Engineering in Maharashtra, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Roorkee in Uttarakhand, Sathyabama University in Tamil Nadu and Skyline Institute of Engineering and Technology in Uttar Pradesh.

The rover challenge requires student teams to design, construct, test and race human-powered rovers through an obstacle course that simulates the terrain potentially found on distant planets, asteroids or moons.

Teams race to finish the three-quarter-mile-long obstacle course in the fastest time, vying for prizes in various divisions.

The event concludes on April 9 at the Davidson Centre for Space Exploration, where awards will be presented for best design, rookie team, pit crew award and other accomplishments, NASA said.

This year's event incorporates two new and important changes. Teams now are required to design and fabricate their own wheels.

Any component contacting the course surface for traction and mobility, including, but not limited to wheels, tracks, treads or belts cannot be purchased or considered an off-the-shelf product.

The second new feature is an optional Sample Return challenge. Teams competing in this separate competition will collect four samples - liquid, small pebbles, large rocks and soil samples - using a mechanical arm or grabber they design and build.

The Human Exploration Rover Challenge highlights NASA's goals for future exploration to Mars and beyond.

Inspired by the lunar roving vehicles of the Apollo moon missions, the competition challenges students to solve engineering problems.
Central food safety regulator FSSAI has shut down its sub-regional offices at Chandigarh and Lucknow saying they were not contributing much as the licensing work is now being done online.

"These (sub-regional offices) were aberration. Most of the licensing work is done online. On careful analysis, it was found that these two sub-regional offices were not contributing much," Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) CEO Pawan Agarwal told PTI.

The orders for the closure of these two sub-regional offices have been issued. However, the five regional offices -- Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Cochin and Guwahati will continue to function, he said. The head office is in Delhi.

Criticising the decision to shut the two offices, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) said the decision is reported to be linked with several reasons such as the authority's plans of moving towards a regime of self- regulation and declaration and avoiding nuisance to businesses.

"In a country like India with 29 States and seven Union Territories, closing down two offices out of eight (in all) gives a perception that the central regulator is backing-down. This is not good for food safety regulations in the country," CSE deputy director general Chandra Bhushan said in a statement.

Meanwhile, as part of Digital India programme, FSSAI is focusing on providing quick, transparent and efficient services through online platform.

Recently, the regulator had launched a mobile app through which consumers can raise their concerns related to quality of packaged food and the food served in ready-to-eat outlets.

Since most of the times the form of food consumed is either packed or serviced, the mobile app provides food safety tips and food safety laws as prescribed by the regulator through its regulations.

FSSAI was established under Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, for laying down science based standards for articles of food. The authority was also assigned to regulate their manufacture, storage, distribution, sale and import to ensure availability of safe and wholesome food for human consumption.
Torrent Power (TPL) today said the Gujarat Electricity Regulatory Commission (GERC) has approved imposition of regulatory charge (RC) at 45 paise per unit in a bid to recover company's past dues of Rs 470.5 crore.

GERC on March 31, 2016, had issued tariff orders for Ahmedabad Generation, Ahmedabad Distribution and Surat Distribution of Torrent Power Ltd for truing-up of its financials for 2015-16 fiscal and determination of tariff for 2016-17 fiscal, it said in a regulatory filing.

The orders are effective April 1, 2016, it added.

GERC has approved "recovery of past period gaps (net of revenue surplus for 2016-17 fiscal) of Rs 470.50 crore by way of regulatory charge at 45 paise per unit", the filing said.

Recovery of Regulatory Charge has to be stopped once the said gaps are recovered in full during the year, it added.

While allowing such Regulatory Charge, GERC has endeavoured to reduce the electricity bill of consumers by 18 paise per unit at Rs 1.35 a unit compared with the present FPPPA of Rs 1.98 a unit in view of the recent trend in reduction in fuel price, it said.
The German government today said it hoped the revelations from the so-called "Panama Papers" will spur global efforts to combat tax evasion and money laundering.

"We hope the current debate will turn up the heat," finance ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger told a briefing.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has long been at the forefront of the worldwide fight against money fraud and tax havens.

"We can harness this momentum and express the hope that restrictions will be imposed," but such practices "cannot be abolished with a simple click of the fingers," Jaeger said.

The meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Washington next week will provide an opportunity to put the issue back on the agenda.

"And we will take the initiative in this direction," Jaeger pledged.

The Panama Papers are a massive leak of 11.5 million documents allegedly exposing the secret offshore dealings of aides to Russian president Vladimir Putin, world leaders and celebrities including Barcelona striker Lionel Messi.

An investigation by more than 100 media groups, described as one of the largest such probes in history, revealed the hidden offshore assets of around 140 political figures.

The vast stash of records was obtained from an anonymous source by German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and shared with media worldwide by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

The documents, from around 214,000 offshore entities covering almost 40 years, came from Mossack Fonseca, a Panama-based law firm with offices in more than 35 countries.

Schaeuble has spearheaded calls in recent years for increased international coordination to curb tax evasion and money laundering.

"We have made more progress in the past three years than in the previous three decades," his spokesman Jaeger said.

It was important to limit or close the loopholes still further and Schaeuble's aim was to pursue that with great tenacity, he said.

"It is not by chance that we're already in talks with Panama."



There were some countries in the world where "a lot of energy" was expended in enabling companies and wealthy individuals from getting round the rules.

"But at the end of the day, these countries must understand that the models they choose have no future," Jaeger said.
Foreign investors continue to remain positive on the Indian government debt as a debt auction today attracted bids of Rs 8,541 crore (USD 1.3 billion) against securities worth Rs 6,096 crore put on offer.

The auction was held on NSE's e-bid platform for allocation of Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs) investment limits in government debt securities worth Rs 6,096 crore, as per the information available with the exchange.

The auction was conducted from 3.30 PM to 5.30 PM after the close of market hours. The auction received bids for Rs 8,541 crore. At the end of two-hour auction, 41 bids were declared successful.

The debt auction quota gives overseas investors the right to invest in the debt, up to the limit purchased.

Depository data showed that total investments including limits acquired by foreign investors through auction route stood at Rs 1,30,719 crore till March 3, which was 96.54 per cent of the total permitted investment limit of Rs 1,35,400 crore in government debt securities.

In earlier auctions, government bonds have been subscribed multiple times, given the huge interest among the foreign investors.

An auction of government debt securities conducted on March 28, had attracted bids worth Rs 6,810 crore from FPIs against Rs 5,035 crore put on offer.

Besides, FPIs will be able to invest an additional Rs 14,000 crore in various government securities, including those of the states, from today onwards.

The cap has been now raised to Rs 2,00,500 crore from the current Rs 1,86,500 crore.

The limits would be enhanced further by another Rs 13,500 crore from July 5 onwards.

This follows decisions by RBI and Sebi late last month to allow greater foreign fund flows into the government securities, which are generally favoured by FPIs over the corporate bonds in India.
The Centre is making a concerted push to create awareness among farmers about the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Beema Yojan (PMFBY) at 583 Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs).

So far, such awareness programmes have been organised at 90 locations such as Lucknow with participation of MPs and central ministers, including Home Minister Rajnath Singh, said an official statement issued by the agriculture ministry.

In these programmes, the details about PMFBY are being provided to farmers, question-answer sessions held and a comprehensive CD containing a film about the scheme is being shown to farmers, it said.

That apart, farmers are also informed about other agricultural schemes. In the farmer-scientist interface, the knowledge and advisory on various crops, horticulture, livestock and poultry-related questions are also being addressed by scientists, it added.

KVKs impart vocational training to practising farmers and other individuals involved in field-level agricultural activity.

To protect farmers from vagaries of monsoon, the central government came out with the new crop insurance scheme, which has come into force from April 1 for kharif crops.

Under the scheme, farmer premium has been kept lower between 1.5-2 per cent for foodgrains and oilseeds crops and up to 5 per cent for horticultural and cotton crops.

The government is targeting increasing 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' accounts 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 losses.
Greece shipped over 200 migrants back to Turkey today, the first wave of deportations under a hugely controversial deal aimed at easing Europe's worst postwar migration crisis.

The orderly return of the 202 migrants aboard three chartered Turkish ferries stood in stark contrast to the journey many have taken over perilous seas in flimsy life jackets aboard crowded and leaky rubber dinghies.

Two boats left the Greek island of Lesbos at dawn, and another from the island of Chios, carrying mostly economic migrants from Pakistan and Afghanistan who Turkey will eventually deport to their home countries.

The first to be deported under the deal arrived at the Turkish Aegean resort of Dikili to a heavy security presence on the harbourside and media kept at a distance by metal barriers, according to AFP reporters at the scene.

"The taking of fingerprints, the landing at the port, medical checks ... The transport of the 202 people in buses to reception centres in Kirklareli (on the Bulgarian border), is all taking place successfully," said Mustafa Toprak, governor of Turkey's Izmir region.

Yorgos Kyritsis, Greece's migration spokesman, said the first wave contained citizens from Iran, Congo, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India, Ivory Coast and Somalia.

Only two were from Syria and they had requested to return for personal reasons, Kyritsis said.

The grim-faced deportees were boarded onto the boats by security guards from the EU's Frontex border agency wearing sanitary face masks.

Facing an unprecedented influx that has threatened to tear the bloc apart, the EU clinched a last-ditch deal with Turkey to take back all migrants landing in Greece after March 20.

In a heavily criticised swap deal, the EU has pledged to rehouse one Syrian in the bloc for every one deported from Greece, with numbers capped at 72,000.

And the EU kept its side of the pact with 32 asylum seekers from Syria flying into the German city of Hanover.

European leaders hope this will discourage migrants from risking the crossing that has claimed 366 lives this year alone and break up the lucrative racket that smuggled about one million migrants into Europe last year.

However, rights groups have slammed the pact as inhumane and a blow to the right to request asylum, and protesters on Lesbos brandished banners reading: "Stop the dirty deal", "stop deportations" and "wake up Europe".

Amnesty International has accused Turkey of not being a safe country for refugees by forcibly returning Syrians back home to their war-torn countries -- a charge Ankara rejects.

"The returns today are in many ways symbolic," said Gauri Vangulik, Deputy Europe director for Amnesty International.

"They are the first starting point of what is to become really one of the most disastrous episodes in European asylum policy.
The Bombay High Court today dismissed an appeal filed by alleged ISIS recruit Areeb Majeed challenging a special NIA court order that had denied him bail in May last year.

"We find no merits in the appeal and the application seeking bail. Hence both stand dismissed," a division bench of justices R V More and S C Gupte said today.

Majeed approached the high court after a special NIA court rejected his bail application. He sought bail as a matter of right under the Criminal Procedure Code, considering that he has been in custody since November 2014 and as the investigating authorities have already filed a chargesheet in the case.

In the plea filed through his counsel Mubin Solkar, Majeed argued that his custody, which was extended by an order of the sessions court on February 25 last year, was erroneous and illegal since his case is being handled by NIA, and as per law, all proceedings of the case, including orders for extension of his custody, must be passed by a special NIA court only.

The NIA opposed Majeed's bail plea as well as the appeal, saying that he should have raised questions over the sessions court's jurisdiction at the time when his custody was being extended.

The National Investigation Agency defended its decision to get Majeed's custody extended by the sessions court, saying the NIA court was unavailable on February 25, 2015 and thus, it approached the special MCOCA sessions court.

According to NIA, Majeed, a student of a college in Panvel, had decided to join extremist outfit ISIS along with three other friends in May 2014.

It is alleged that Majeed and his friends went on a pilgrimage for eight days, after which they parted ways to participate in unlawful activities in Iraq and Syria.

In November 2014, Majeed was flown from Istanbul to India under the supervision of NIA.

Majeed is currently lodged at the Arthur road prison and has been charged under various sections of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), for conspiring to commit a terrorist act and being a member of a banned foreign terror outfit. He has also been booked under IPC for waging war against the nation.
Monsanto Holdings Pvt Ltd was today asked by Delhi High Court to respond to a plea of Nuziveedu Seeds Ltd seeking vacation of its interim order asking the Competition Commission of India not to pass a final order in a matter relating to alleged abuse of dominance by Monsanto's Indian arm.

Justice Manmohan issued notice to Monsanto and sought its reply within a week on Indian seed company Nuziveedu's plea seeking vacation of the February 29 decision of the high court, which had also said that any interim order of CCI shall not be given effect to without the leave of the court.

The court had, however, allowed CCI to carry on with its probe and hearings in the matter in which the commission had on February 18 ordered a detailed probe into the alleged abuse of dominance by the firm's Indian arm, Mahyco Monsanto Biotech India Limited (MMBL).

The February 29 order was passed by the high court on Monsanto's plea challenging CCI's February 18 order.

Monsanto, a US-based genetically modified seed giant, had contended before the court that CCI does not have the jurisdiction to deal with matters pertaining to intellectual property, like patents and trade marks.

Nuziveedu today told the court that a division bench of the High Court has held that CCI does have the jurisdiction to deal with patent matters.

It also said that the interim order was appealable before the Competition Appellate Tribunal (COMPAT).

Monsanto, represented by senior advocate Pratibha M Singh, told the court that Nuziveedu has moved another application in a separate civil suit between the two for reinstatement of the licence between them.

Singh told the court that Monsanto would be making a proposal to Nuziveedu regarding the licence agreement.

Justice Manmohan, thereafter, listed the matter for further hearing on May 5.
Congress leaders today challenged in Delhi High Court the trial court's decision summoning the 2010-11 balance sheet of Indian National Congress (INC) in connection with the National Herald case, saying such an order was not "desirable" in the present matter.

"Neither notice was issued to us, nor we were summoned to contest the present application filed before the trial court judge on which an order was passed," senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for Sam Pitroda, told Justice P S Teji.

"It was an ex-parte order," Sibal said, adding that the application filed by complainant BJP leader Subramanian Swamy should not have been allowed without hearing them.

The counsel further contended that the documents have "no relevancy" to this present case and the trial court judge has failed to explain in his order the "necessity or desirability" of these materials for the purposes of any "investigation".

"He (trial court judge) has to demonstrate the relevancy or the necessity of these documents," Sibal said, adding that "this order should be set aside".

Congress's Motilal Vora, Oscar Fernandes, Suman Dubey, Sam Pitroda and Young Indian Pvt Ltd (YI) have challenged the trial court's January 11 and March 11 orders respectively in which the magistrate had allowed summoning of documents from Ministries of Finance and Corporate Affairs, Income Tax Department and other agencies in the case in which Congress President Sonia Gandhi, her son Rahul Gandhi are also accused.

The case is based on a private criminal complaint lodged by Swamy, charging them with cheating, conspiracy and criminal breach of trust.

All the accused have denied the allegations levelled against them by Swamy.

The trial court had also summoned the balance sheet of INC for 2010-2011 besides the balance sheet of 2010-2011 of Associated Journals Pvt Ltd (AJL), observing that these documents of INC and AJL could not be referred as "personal documents" of the accused.

Besides Pitroda, Vora, represented by senior advocate R S Cheema, submitted that they will suffer "prejudice" by calling of INC documents, as the party is not involved in this case.

Senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for



Fernandes, who has sought quashing of March 11 decision, said the trial court order is "gross violation of natural justice".

"Why accused be not given chance to reply to Dr Swamy's application," Singhvi said.

The arguments, however, remained inconclusive which will resume tomorrow when Dubey and YI will put their arguments before the judge.

Meanwhile, Swamy, declined to file his reply to the appeal filed by accused persons, when notice was issued to him and said they have no locus in the issue.

"This is a matter of law. The fact of matter is that there is no locus standi of petitioners. This matter is to be heard on maintainability," he told the court.

The trial court had on December 19 last year granted bail to Congress President Sonia Gandhi, her son Rahul Gandhi and three others -- Vora, Fernandes and Dubey -- who had appeared in the court pursuant to summons issued earlier. Pitroda, another accused, was granted bail later.

Sonia, Rahul, Vora, Fernandes (AICC General Secretary), Dubey and Pitroda were summoned under sections 403 (dishonest misappropriation of property), 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 420 (cheating) read with section 120B(criminal conspiracy)



The trial court had passed the two orders on Swamy's plea seeking summoning of documents.
Several Hindu Sena activists, including its chief Vishnu Gupta, were detained by police today when they were on their way to allegedly disrupt a music launch event of film 'Ghar Wapsi', starring Pakistani ghazal maestro Ghulam Ali, here.

The activists were detained at Ashoka Road around 2 PM as they were heading towards the music launch event venue in Royal Plaza Hotel in Connaught Place, a senior police officer said.

They were put in a bus and taken to a police station in New Delhi district.

Hindu Sena chief Gupta had allegedly threatened the film's director Suhaib Ilyasi, who lodged a complaint at Connaught Place police station yesterday, the officer added.

In his complaint to the police, Ilyasi said he received a "threat call" from Gupta on his cell phone. He sought police protection for himself and his family and security cover for the event scheduled.

Gupta, meanwhile, had claimed the film was "anti-Hindu" and said, "We have sought cancellation of its music launch. We have decided to protest against it."



The music release of 'Ghar Wapsi' had to be cancelled in January following Shiv Sena's opposition in Mumbai. Ali, 75, had cancelled his visit to Mumbai for the music launch following threat of disruption by Shiv Sena.

Ali, whose several concerts in India had to be cancelled last year following Shiv Sena threats, is making his acting debut with the Hindi feature film.
President Francois Hollande promised today that a massive leak of documents exposing the offshore dealings of wealthy individuals would lead to legal proceedings in France.

Hollande said: "all the information revealed will lead to investigations brought by the tax authorities and to legal proceedings" and he thanked "whistleblowers" for bringing the so-called Panama Papers to light.
Delhi High Court today observed that power given under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act to prohibit their manufacture in public interest could only be regulatory in nature and asked how could the Centre invoke this provision without cancelling the licence given to manufacturers.

"Section 26A (powers of central government to prohibit manufacture, etc., of drug and cosmetic in public interest) appears to be only a regulatory power as per the scheme of the Act. There is no other regulatory power.

"So after you have granted licence, the only power is to cancel the licence. So can you invoke the regulatory provision without cancelling the licence," Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw asked the Centre while hearing over 150 petitions by pharma companies challenging government's March 10 notification banning 344 FDCs, a decision which has been stayed by the judge in each case filed before him since March 14.

The query was posed to Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Sanjay Jain after he said the March 10 decision was taken in public interest under section 26A of the Act.

The ASG said that "irrespective of licence, if a drug or FDC has no therapeutic justification, then it has to be banned. There is no question of cancelling the licence. Administrative process of cancelling licence will go on and on and during that time the drug will continue to be sold in the market".

On the point of therapeutic justification, the ASG said often a patient may not require one of the ingredients in an FDC, yet he would have to take the medicine as it comes as a combination.

Meanwhile, pharma majors like Pfizer, Glenmark, Procter and Gamble and Cipla, told the court that several state governments have issued public notices in connection with Centre's notification and drug inspectors are enforcing them.

When this issue was put to the ASG, he said Centre would issue necessary instructions to state governments informing them of the stay order and added that the companies would also have to approach the states in their individual capacity.

He also added that the Centre cannot say what will happen in Tamil Nadu where the Madras High Court has refused to stay the notification.
Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, accused in a disproportionate assets case, today faced the wrath of Delhi High Court after his lawyer sought passover in the matter on the ground that his senior arguing counsel Kapil Sibal was busy in Supreme Court.

Justice Pratibha Rani said that Singh was "enjoying" the protection and on every date of hearing, his counsel sought a passover on similar grounds.

"Even on the last date, the arguing counsel was not here. Petitioner (Singh) is enjoying the stay and thereafter on every date adjournment and passover is being sought on the ground that arguing counsel is not available," the court said.

As soon as the hearing commenced, the lawyer representing Singh sought passover saying senior advocate Sibal, who is the arguing counsel, was busy in another matter in the apex court.

"This has also happened on the last date of hearing. ... I will hear the arguments. Once you enjoy the protection, you do not want to proceed," Justice Pratibha Rani said.

The bench, which posted the matter for hearing tomorrow, clarified to Singh's counsel that no further adjournment would be given in the matter.

However, Singh's counsel told the court that they were not seeking adjournment in the matter. "We are not saying we will not argue. Kindly fix the matter for 2.15 pm today," he said.

During the hearing, Additional Solicitor General (ASG) P S Patwalia, appearing for CBI, said this was a "serious matter" and he would argue on the agency's plea seeking vacation of Himachal Pradesh High Court's interim order of October 1 last, restraining it from arresting, interrogating or filing charge sheet against Singh in the case.

Singh's counsel informed the court that they have filed a reply to CBI's application today itself.

During the hearing on February 25 on Singh's plea seeking quashing of FIR lodged against him and others in the case, the CBI had told the bench that its investigation in the case was "held up" due to the interim order of Himachal Pradesh HC.

In his plea, Singh has claimed that CBI had overstepped



its jurisdiction in filing the case and questioned how the agency could raid his premises when the matter was already pending in Delhi High Court, the Income Tax Tribunal and other tax authorities where all documents relating to his returns had been submitted.

CBI had earlier pleaded before the high court that it has jurisdiction to register and investigate the DA case.

The agency had also sought dismissal of Singh's plea to quash the FIR against him, alleging that his prayer was "frivolous and not maintainable".

On November 5 last year, the Supreme Court had transfered Singh's plea from Himachal Pradesh High Court to Delhi High Court, saying it was not expressing any opinion on the merits of the case but "simply" transferring the petition "in the interest of justice and to save the institution (judiciary) from any embarrassment".

CBI had moved the apex court seeking transfer of the case from the Himachal Pradesh HC to Delhi High Court and setting aside of the interim order granting protection from arrest and other relief to Singh.

Singh had filed a petition in Himachal Pradesh High Court pleading that searches on his private residence and other premises were conducted with "malafide intentions and political vendetta" by the central investigating agency.

Singh had sought directions from the high court to quash CBI's FIR registered in Delhi against him and others under Sections 13 (2) and 13(1)(e) of Prevention of Corruption Act and Section 109 of IPC.
Iceland's prime minister insisted today he would not resign after documents leaked in a media investigation linked him to an offshore company that would represent a serious conflict of interest.

reports have alleged that Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson and his wife set up a company in the British Virgin Islands with the help of a Panamanian law firm at the center of a massive tax evasion leak.

The reports have prompted calls for a no-confidence vote in parliament against him.

Going on Icelandic television this afternoon, Gunnlaugsson said he would not resign and added there was nothing new in the information contained in the Panama Papers data leak.

Iceland's foreign minister also said on a trip to India that the prime minister had not done anything illegal.

"There is nothing strange there," said Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson, the minister for foreign affairs and external trade.

The revelation concerns the company Wintris Inc., which Gunnlaugsson allegedly created in 2007 along with his partner at the time, Anna Sigurlaug Palsdottir, who is now his wife.

He allegedly sold his half of the company to Palsdottir for USD 1 on December 31, 2009, the day before a new Icelandic law took effect that would have required him to declare the ownership of Wintris as a conflict of interest.

Wintris lost money as a result of the 2008 financial crash that crippled Iceland, and is claiming a total of 515 million Icelandic kronur (USD 4.2 million) from the three failed Icelandic banks: Landsbanki, Glitnir, and Kaupthing.

Gunnlaugsson has been accused of a serious conflict of interest. As prime minister, he was involved in reaching a deal for the banks' claimants.

Published reports about the prime minister's financial matters have brought quick condemnation from prominent Icelandic politicians. Former Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir called for Gunnlaugsson's resignation, as did Birgitta Jonsdottir, the popular head of the Pirate Party.

The opposition has called for a vote against the center-right government. Protests are scheduled in Reykjavik outside parliament.

"Information on the involvement of current ministers in companies in tax havens was hidden from the Icelandic people before the last elections, and it is only right that they get to appraise the situation again," Arni Pall Arnason, leader of the center-left Social Democratic Alliance, told the Morgunbladid newspaper.

Gunnlaugsson, the head of the center-right Progressive Party, began his four-year term in 2013, five years after Iceland's financial collapse.

Iceland, a volcano-dotted North Atlantic nation with a population of just 330,000, went from economic superstar to financial basket case almost overnight when its main commercial banks collapsed within a week of one another in 2008.
Should Americans be thankful for North Carolinians setting precedent in taking a stand for their state's right to manage the safety of their public facilities, where separation of the sexes remains, or should they follow Bruce Springsteen's lead and boycott the state as bigots since they will not allow grown Transgender men to use the same bathrooms /locker rooms as pre-pubescent girls? North Carolina is right to control the separation of the sexes as a matter of decorum and safety. North Carolina is a bigoted state to not require that children of opposite sexes share the same public facilities with adults of the opposite sex, although misidentified - the Transgender. I generally prefer the natural environs of the vacant, although rather public, large tree. 236 total vote(s) What's your Opinion?



By now the saga of the Charlotte bathroom ordinance is well known. In late February, the Charlotte city council passed a so-called antidiscrimination law, scheduled to go into effect on April 1, aimed at protecting what, in their view, are the rights of those in the gay, lesbian, and transgender community. This law included a provision stating that bathrooms in privately owned business establishments must allow people who are biologically male or female to use the bathroom facilities of the opposite sex if they claim that that is the sex that they identify with psychologically. According to WRAL online, [the ordinance] "would allow transgendered people to use the bathroom in which they feel most comfortable." As this article is being written, the North Carolina General Assembly is about to go into special session to possibly overturn the Charlotte ordinance.Much of the criticism of the bill has been centered around two issues: the religious freedom of business owners and the privacy rights of people, particularly women, using public bathroom facilities. Most of the most vocal opposition to the ordinance has come from religious organizations and advocacy groups that are focused on traditional values. As argued by John Rustin, President of the Family Policy Council:Similar ordinances have been used to force small business owners like florists, bakers, photographers and bed-and-breakfast owners and others either to conform to a government-dictated viewpoint in violation of those sincerely held religious beliefs or to face legal charges, fines and other penalties that have ultimately caused some to go out of business,While religious liberty is an important concern, this in fact touches upon a broader and more inclusive issue that, unlike for example the question of whether gay couples should be allowed to obtain marriage licenses, should unite both values conservatives and free market libertarians. Thinking beyond the direct assault on the religious rights of business owners, this ordinance is more broadly an assault on the rights of private property owners and economic freedom, regardless of one's religious beliefs.What is overlooked is that the the primary targets of this ordinance are privately owned businesses that offer bathrooms or other facilities -- possibly showers in the case of fitness centers -- for their customers' convenience. The decision of how to structure access to these bathrooms may, for some, be based on their religious beliefs. For many others it is a secular business decision. Their goal is customer satisfaction driven by the desire to make a profit and earn a living. The property that they use is privately owned, the investments that they make come from private funds, and those who reap the rewards or suffer the losses are private entrepreneurs. The bathrooms in their establishments are part of the product that they provide.In a free society based on property rights and free markets, as all free societies must be, a privately owned business would have the right to decide whether or not it wants separate bathrooms strictly for men and women biologically defined, bathrooms for men and women subjectively or psychologically defined, completely gender neutral bathrooms with no labels on the doors, or no bathrooms at all.Their goal is to provide the products and services that most of their customers want in an environment that those customers feel comfortable in. This environment may indeed be different for different establishments depending on the desires and cultural makeup of their clients. This ordinance essentially tells businesses that they are not allowed to adjust their decisions regarding their bathroom facilities in order to accommodate customer preferences. In this sense the ordinance is a gross violation of property rights and economic freedom.Religious freedom in large part, and particularly in a case like this, is the right to use your own property in a way that comports with your religious beliefs. This applies equally not only to the Charlotte bathroom ordinance but also to the Little Sisters of the Poor and Obama's contraceptive mandate, and most of the other religious freedom cases that are of concern to traditional values advocates. If property rights and economic freedom are upheld, then religious freedom will take care of itself.
Iceland's prime minister was under pressure to quit today after the leak of the "Panama Papers" tax documents showed he and his wife used an offshore firm to allegedly hide million-dollar investments.

A former prime minister urged Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson to resign after the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism yesterday released 11.5 million financial records detailing the holdings of a dozen current and former world leaders.

They included Gunnlaugsson of Iceland's right-wing Progressive Party and his wife Anna Sigurlaug Palsdottir, as well as criminals and celebrities.

"The prime minister should immediately resign," former Social Democratic prime minister Johanna Sigurdardottir said in a message posted on Facebook.

More than 16,000 Icelanders have also signed a petition demanding his resignation, while the opposition has said it will seek a vote of no confidence in parliament, likely to be held this week.

According to the documents, Gunnlaugsson and Palsdottir purchased the offshore company Wintris Inc. In the British Virgin Islands in December 2007. He transferred his shares to his wife in 2009 for the symbolic sum of one dollar.

Gunnlaugsson yesterday denounced the release of the documents and called it a witch hunt against him and his wife.

"She (Palsdottir) has been adamant to pay taxes on it (Wintris) to the Icelandic society rather than saving money by paying taxes abroad.

"She has neither utilised tax havens nor can you say that her company is an offshore company in the sense that it pays taxes abroad rather than in Iceland," Gunnlaugsson said on his website.

Gunnlaugsson was elected in 2013 by promising full transparency but he has been in the hot seat since his wife acknowledged the existence of the company in mid-March.

In an interview with Swedish public broadcaster SVT that aired yesterday in Iceland, Gunnlaugsson stormed out and refused to answer any questions when pushed to explain the nature of the offshore company.

"There have not been any of my assets hidden anywhere," Gunnlaugsson said.

"It's like you are accusing me of something," he said.

His spokesperson told SVT that the couple had followed all Icelandic law and had declared all income and property since 2008.

Despite media requests, his tax records had not yet been publicly released.

"People should not have a prime minister they are ashamed of... The prime minister expressed a distrust of the currency and the Icelandic economy by putting money in a tax haven," said Sigurdardottir, the former prime minister.
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, which stands third in a government ranking of technological institutes in the country, said they lost out the top position as being behind in the faculty-student ratio.

"We lost out primarily due to our faculty-student ratio where we were 8th in the list and this had high weightage. We have 11,300 plus students, by far the largest," IIT-Kgp Director Partha Pratim Chakraborty said.

"In all other areas our performance was very close to the top," he said.

"However, I think we must not only increase faculty base though we are growing at a high rate, it is not easy to get the quality faculty we need. We must make more effective use of our large student strength at all levels as an asset for growing the research quality output," he said.

Chakraborty said they had been among the top few of a variety of rankings in recent times and would try to improve further.

IIT Madras and IIT Bombay are the two top technological institutes in the country, according to the first ever domestic ranking released by the government today.

IIT Kharagpur is third followed by IIT Delhi and IIT Kanpur.
Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde has told Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras that "we are still a good distance away" in negotiations for a new deal for hard-up Athens.

Her strongly worded letter to the prime minister yesterday, made public by the IMF, comes amid tense ties between Athens and the IMF after WikiLeaks said the lender sought a crisis "event" to push the indebted nation into concluding talks over its reforms.

"My view of the ongoing negotiations is that we are still a good distance away from having a coherent program that I can present to our Executive Board," Lagarde wrote, in unusually forceful terms, after Tsipras wrote to her in the wake of the WikiLeaks allegations.

"I have on many occasions stressed that we can only support a program that is credible and based on realistic assumptions, and that delivers on its objective of setting on a path of robust growth while gradually restoring debt sustainability."



The Greek government on Saturday reacted strongly to the WikiLeaks report, saying it wanted the IMF to clarify its position.

Lagarde rebuffed any suggestions the IMF was pushing for crisis in .

"The IMF conducts its negotiations in good faith, not by way of threats, and we do not communicate through leaks," IMF managing director Lagarde said in her letter, adding that she was releasing the details of the text "to further enhance the transparency of our dialogue."



"I also look forward to any personal conversation with you on how to take the discussions forward," she added.

In July, accepted a three-year, 86-billion-euro ($94 billion) European Union bailout that saved it from crashing out of the eurozone. But the bailout came with strict conditions such as fresh tax cuts and pay cuts.

The IMF worked with the EU on two previous bailouts for Greece since 2010 but the Washington-based lender said it would not participate in the third rescue plan without credible reforms and an EU agreement to ease Greece's debt burden.

Athens is under pressure to address the large number of non-performing loans burdening Greek banks and to push forward with a pension and tax overhaul resisted by farmers and white-collar staff.

Tsipras has accused the IMF of employing "stalling tactics" and "arbitrary" estimates to delay a reforms review crucial to unlock further bailout cash.
Delhi government has raised the dearness allowance adjusting it with the increase in prices of goods and services.

The minimum wages for unskilled workers such as security guards, peons will rise to Rs 9,568 from Rs 9,178 per month, which translates to Rs 368 per day.

In case of semi-skilled workers like welders, the post-hike wage will be Rs 10,140 per month, Rs 407 a day. It was Rs 10,140 till March.

Skilled workers like masons or drivers will be now entitled to Rs 11,622 per month as opposed to Rs 11,154 earlier. Rs 447 will be the per day rate.

"These rates will be applicable in respect of unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled categories in all scheduled employments except employment in the establishments where the workers are given facilities of meals or lodging or both by the employees," the government order said.

Rates were also hiked for clerical and supervisory staffs in all scheduled employments including non-matric, matric and graduates.

Non-matric staff will now get Rs 10,582 amounting to Rs 407 a day. Matric but non-graduates stand to earn a minimum of Rs 447 per day or Rs 11,622 per month while for graduates the rate is Rs 12,662 per month, or Rs 487 a day.

"The government after adjustment of the average consumer price index of the period from July 2015 to December 2015 which is 266.83, an increase of 10.83 points, hereby declares the following DA which shall be payable for all categories from April 1," the order said.

The DA for employments, who are given lodging and meals twice a day or both, would be Rs 390, Rs 442 and Rs 468 respectively.

The government had passed the Minimum Wages (Delhi) Amendment Bill, 2015 during the winter session of the Assembly, which stipulates stringent punishment like higher fines and imprisonment for violation of labour norms.

Under the proposed amendments to the Act, companies will have to upload the data of their employees on website or web portal in the manner as may be prescribed by Delhi government.
Indian naval ships Tir and Sujata, and sail-training ship Sudarshini along with Indian Coast Guard's Varuna, reached Phuket in Thailand today as part of an overseas deployment during spring.

The First Training Squadron forms part of Southern Naval Command and will stay there till April 8.

The primary aim of the Squadron is to impart sea training to naval and Coast Guard trainees, with a 24-week ab initio sea training.

All the participants are trained in seamanship, navigation, ship handling, boat work, technical aspects among other disciplines, while being exposed to the rigours of life at sea, so as to earn their 'sea legs', a naval spokesperson said.

The Southern Naval Command (SNC) is the Training Command of the Indian Navy, which provides both basic and advanced training to its officers and sailors.

The Indian Navy has also been providing training to personnel from friendly foreign countries for over four decades, wherein more than 13,000 personnel from more than 40 countries have been trained.

India and Thailand have a close, long-standing relationship covering a wide spectrum of activities and interactions, which have strengthened over the years.

The present deployment of the Training Squadron to Phuket provides opportunities for extensive maritime engagement, maintenance of good order at sea and further cementing of the close relations between the two nations and the two navies, the Indian Navy said in a statement.
Indian-origin South African freedom fighter Shirish Nanabhai, who passed away last week, was today cremated here.

Nanabhai, 78, who passed away on Saturday due to respiratory failure, was lauded by leading political figures at a memorial service before his cremation here.

Nanabhai, who was one of the first South Africans to volunteer for the ANC armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe to fight against apartheid, was honoured with the National Order of Mendi for Bravery in 2014 by President Jacob Zuma.

Born into a family steeped in struggle politics, Nanabhai's father Jasmath fought against British rule in India before migrating to South Africa in the early 19th century.

First arrested for chalking a political symbol on a wall near his Fordsburg, Johanensburg home in 1955 aged 17, Shirish Nanabhai went on to become part of a trio of Indian activists who were jailed for sabotage activate against the apartheid government.

He served ten years on Robben Island alongside Nelson Mandela and others as well as lengthy terms of house arrest after being released.

Both the Premier of Gauteng province, in which Nanabhai's hometown of Lenasia is based, and national Minister of Finance Praveen Gordhan called for the principles espoused by Nanabhai and his erstwhile compatriots to be reintroduced to address the challenges facing South Africa today.

"The defining characteristic of (Nanabhai's) generation of activists is that they never sought glory, wealth or gains for themselves," Gordhan said.

"Shirishbhai was a fine, dignified, humble and committed servant of the ANC and of our democracy. His values must continue to serve to inspire the young and old people of South Africa," Gordhan added.

"We have to summon the courage of Comrade Shirish today as we lay him to rest to ensure that the ANC (in government) remains the voice of the people. That generation of fighters has taught us that the nation comes first," Makhura said.
Indian professionals are making a last-ditch effort to appeal to the UK government over a new 35,000 pounds salary threshold requirement which comes into effect from Wednesday.

Thousands of Indian and other nationals from outside the European Union (EU) living and working in Britain on a Tier 2 visaface having to leave or be deported if they earn less than 35,000 pounds a year once the terms of the visa expire.

Earlier, a Tier-2 visa holder could apply for indefinite leave to remain in the UK with an annual income of around 21,000 pounds. The new rule comes into effect on April 6 and is likely to affect thousands of Indian skilled professionals.

"This is the country I did my Masters in. Fell in love with the place. Got my first job. Got married and started a family here. Have a job I love. What more could I ask? If I have to leave then it will be devastating. Have to leave friends, a company I love, a place I love," said Abhijit, an advertising operations manager.

He is one of many Indians who have joined the 'Stop 35K' campaign group against what they believe are discriminatory changes to the criteria for non-EU nationals applying for "Indefinite Leave to Remain" (ILR) in the UK at the end of a five-year period of living and working in the UK.

The campaign is aimed at a reconsideration of this rule and encouraging the UK Home Office to undertake research into industry-specific thresholds.

Concerned by the move, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had raised the issue with British counterpart David Cameron during a meeting on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit in the US last week, saying skilled IT professionals from India should not find it difficult to come to work in the UK.

"Cameron promised to take a look at it. He said we do not want to disadvantage bonafide IT companies, but at the same time we would also want to ensure that the UK system is not misused," Ministry of External Affairs spokesman Vikas Swarup had said.

Kesavan, employed as an audiologist in the UK, said, "I have been working and living in the UK for the past six years. I came here on a student visa to do my Masters degree after which I started working for NHS (National Health Service) for the past four and half years on a senior position.

"I even own my flat here in London. Because of this 35k rule I might have to leave my job, flat and relocate to a different country. More importantly I have not used public funds in any form during my stay here so far.

Kesavan's views were echoed by consultant Shwetal, who



said: "If this goes ahead, I won't be able to continue working in this country, this will affect me in ways that many may take for granted. I love the freedom, independence and security this country provides me as a woman.

"The fact that I am surrounded by world class art, academia and knowledge power houses.

"The varied cultures and people from all walks of life that enrich my life and make it interesting to wake up each morning and be aware that today this country will provide me a new adventure, a new lesson, a new start."



Indian professionals have formed the largest category of individuals issued such visas over the years.

According to the UK's Office of National Statistics, of the 55,589 Tier 2 sponsored visa applications cleared in 2014-2015, nearly 78 per cent were for Indians (31,058).

The exact figure of the non-EU nationals affected by the new salary threshold requirements remains uncertain but it is estimated to be between 30,000 and 40,000 workers.

Many teachers will also be hit by the new rule at a time when Britain is struggling with teaching staff shortages.

Kevin Courtney, deputy general secretary of the National Union of Teachers (NUT), has called on the government urgently to reconsider the policy.

"It seems absurdly counterproductive to force schools to dismiss teachers they've trained and invested in, and who are still very much needed, at a time when highly skilled qualified teachers are in great demand," he said.

A UK Home Office statement said: "The UK government changed the settlement rules in 2012 to break the link between coming to work in the UK and staying here permanently. We were clear that the new rules would apply to migrants who entered Tier 2 from 6 April 2011. Those individuals were aware when they entered that new settlement rules would apply to them."



There are some exemptions under the changes, including those employed in a PhD-level occupation and workers who fall under the UK's "shortage occupation lists" such as nurses, and certain categories of health professionals and IT specialists.

A Home Office spokesperson said:"In the past it has been too easy for some businesses to bring in workers from overseas rather than to take the long-term decision to train our workforce here at home.

"We need to do more to change that, which means reducing the demand for migrant labour. That is why we commissioned the Migration Advisory Committee to provide advice on significantly reducing economic migration from outside the EU.

"These reforms will ensure that businesses are able to attract the skilled migrants they need, but we also want them to get far better at recruiting and training UK workers first.
Infosys Foundation, the philanthropic arm of IT software services firm Infosys, will provide a corpus grant of Rs 24 crore to Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Delhi for three years for research on artificial intelligence.

Infosys too, on its part, is investing aggressively in startups and companies working in new areas of technology like AI, robotics and machine learning.

The grant will be used to establish the Infosys Centre for Artificial Intelligence and will initially be headed by Srikanth Saripalli, an expert in robotics and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), Infosys said in a statement.

The centre will facilitate work on both fundamental and applied aspects of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and focus on areas like robotics, machine learning, computer vision, AI for software systems, large-scale data analytics, etc, it added.

Besides, the centre will also start a specialised MTech course.

Several faculty members of IIIT-Delhi will be associated with the centre, and research will be conducted by PhD scholars, post-docs, students, and visiting researchers.

The research will draw on real-time data to develop a deeper understanding of AI for societal benefits, and the application of AI in education and related areas.

IIIT-Delhi will publish research papers, develop tools, and conduct faculty and research development programs in AI and robotics.

"Research is the backbone of our national scientific advancements - our collective aspiration. The objective of the centre is to facilitate research in AI that will greatly benefit our society," Infosys Foundation Chairperson Sudha Murty said.

The endeavour is to facilitate the creative exchange of ideas in collaboration with IIIT-Delhi and the government, she added.

Established in 1996, the Infosys Foundation has received two per cent of Infosys' profits annually averaged over the past three years from the Bengaluru-based company.
Israel's military says it has demolished the West Bank homes of three Palestinians who killed an Israeli security officer and seriously wounded another in Jerusalem in February.

Israel completed the demolition early today. The three Palestinian men in their early 20's drew rifles and knives and attacked two female officers during a security check, killing a 19-year-old officer. They were killed by Israeli officers at the scene.

Israel says home demolitions are an effective tool to deter attacks, but critics say the tactic amounts to collective punishment. Palestinian attacks in the last six months have killed 28 Israelis and two Americans, and at least 188 Palestinians have died by Israeli fire.

Israel says most were attackers, and the rest died in clashes with Israeli security forces.
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi will travel to Iran next week for a two-day trip that will make him the first major leader to visit since the lifting of international sanctions against Tehran.

Renzi's office said in a statement Monday that the centre-left premier would be in the Islamic Republic on April 12 and 13, without giving further details of his itinerary.

Italy has led the way among Western countries in re-establishing economic ties to Iran following the lifting of international sanctions imposed over concerns the country was seeking to develop a nuclear weapons capacity.

An accord to lift the sanctions was agreed last year and came into force in January.

Renzi's trip follows Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's visit to Italy and France at the end of January -- a trip which resulted in a string of major trade and investment deals being signed between Tehran and the two European countries.

Contracts worth an estimated 17 billion euros (USD 18 billion) were signed in Rome and Rouhani said he hoped that would represent only a start, as he pitched Iran as a safe base for investors looking to get into a regional market of 300 million consumers.

Iran has said it wants European help to modernise and expand its rail, road and air networks as well as seeking investment to boost its manufacturing base, notably in the automobile sector.

Italy was Iran's largest European trade partner before the impact of sanctions caused exchanges between the two countries to collapse.

As he seeks to consolidate Italy's early lead in the race for business deals, Renzi has also unveiled plans for cultural and academic exchanges.

When Rouhani was in Rome in he talked of reconstructing a relationship between "two superpowers of beauty and culture" that dates back to the days of the ancient Roman and Persian empires.
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.
A police jawan and a civilian were today injured in a pressure bomb blast triggered by Naxals in Chhattisgarh's insurgency-hit Kanker district, police said.

The incident took place near Maoulimor village, around 7 kms away from Rawghat Police Station limits at around 9 AM, Kanker Superintendent of Police, Jitendra Singh Meena said.

On getting information that Naxalites had installed banners, posters and blocked Raoghat-Moulimor road by felling trees, a joint team of district force and Border Security Force (BSF) approached the spot.

The Naxalites had erectedbanners on trees, the SP said.

While security personnel were trying to remove a banner, apressureimprovised explosive device (IED) placed under it went off injuring the constable Preetam Singh, he said.

Besides, a civilian who was present at the spot also sustained splinter injuries in the explosion, he added.

The injured were immediately rushed to a local hospital in Antagarh while the injured police jawan is being airlifted to Raipur for further treatment, he added.

Extra forces have been rushed to the area and intense search operation has been launched to track down the ultras, he added.
AIADMK supremo and Chief Minister Jayalalithaa will kickstart her 15-day tour of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry on April 9 for the Assembly polls by addressing a rally in her R K Nagar constituency.

While the chief minister would campaign for 14 days in Tamil Nadu from April 9 to May 12, she would wind up the Puducherry leg of her tour in one day on April 25, a party release said.

"She will campaign for party candidates and nominees of the allies," it said.

Jayalalithaa would begin her campaign on April 9 in R K Nagar by addressing a rally. On April 11, she would be in Virudhachalam in flood-hit Cuddalore district.

On 13 April, she will address a public meeting in Dharmapuri and on April 15, she will be in Aruppukottai in Virudhunagar district.

On April 18, she will campaign in Kanchipuram, and on April 20 in Salem. Similarly, the chief minister would be in Tiruchirapalli (April 23), Madurai (April 27), and Coimbatore (May 1).

On May 3, she will address a rally in Villupuram, where actor turned politician Vijayakanth's constituency Rishivandiyam (he represented in 14th Assembly) falls.

On May 5, she will address a rally at Perundurai in Erode district, from where she would leave for Thanjavur on May 8 and cover Tirunelveli on May 10. Her campaign will conclude in Vellore on May 10.

Party sources indicated this was the broad itinerary and she would also address the electorate at several other places.

Though there was a brief lull recently, AIADMK has already been conducting public meetings and street-corner meetings in view of the May 16 election.
A large number of jewellery establishments in the country remained shut for the 34th day today to protest against one per cent excise duty on non-silver jewellery.

Gold traders, jewellers and artisans have been observing strike across the country since March 2, demanding rollback of the budgetary proposal that has impacted the trade.

Jewellers' associations in different parts of the country have intensified their strike by staging 'dharnas' in major as well as small towns, said Surinder Kumar Jain, Vice-President, All India Sarafa Association.

Almora in Uttarakhand observed complete 'bandh' today in support of jewellers.

Meanwhile, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal yesterday addressed a gathering of jewellers, gold traders and artisans who staged a dharna at Jantar Mantar here.

The excise duty was imposed without consulting traders. It will only lead to inspector raj and spike in corruption. The cost of collection would be much more than what the government hopes to earn, Kejriwal said.

The Centre has already constituted a panel under former chief economic advisor Ashok Lahiri to look into the demands of jewellers.

The sub-committee, which has been asked to submit its report in 60 days, will look into issues related to the compliance procedure for the excise duty, including records to be maintained, forms to be filled, operating procedures and other relevant aspects.

The government, in the Budget for 2016-17, had proposed one per cent excise duty on jewellery without input credit or 12.5 per cent with input tax credit on jewellery excluding silver other than those studded with diamonds and precious stones.
The Imam of Kaba shrine in Mecca, who is on a visit to India, has condemned acts of terrorism around the world and said that Muslims in the country are living with love and harmony with other communities.

Amid an intolerance debate, Imam Sheikh Saleh Bin Mohammad Bin Ibrahim Aal-e-Talib expressed his views while speaking at an international seminar on "Islam and World Peace" here last night.

"It is a matter of happiness that second highest population of Muslims is in India. Here Muslims are living with people of other religious communities with love and harmony," the Saudi Imam said.

Expressing concern over recent terror attacks in different parts of the world including Brussels, he said innocent people are being killed in the name of religion.

"The entire world is suffering from terrorism. In Holy Quran Allah has said if a person kills an innocent, it is like he has killed all humans," he said while condemning terrorism in the name of religion.

Presiding over the conference, President of All India Muslim Personal Law Board, Maulana Syyed Mohammad Rabe Hasani Nadwi said Islam was totally against terrorism and persons involved in such activities.

Nadwi said Saudi Arabia had good relations with India since ancient times and added that Ulama of that country have close relations with Nadwa (Islamic institution in Lucknow), while referring to former head Maulana Ali Miyan.
With 20 per cent market share for its above 501 CC motorcycles, Japanese bike maker Kawasaki is looking to expand its dealership across India in a phased manner in another two years.

The company, which has opened a new showroom here, plans to opentwo more this month, one in Guntur and another in Goa, taking the total dealerships to 14 this year, India Kawasaki Motors Managing Director Yutaka Yamashita told reporters here today.

There is a proposal to enhance the manufacturing capacity from the present 5,000 vehicles per year in Pune facility and also other parts for export purpose, he said.

The company was hopeful to maintain or increase its market share, once more dealerships and service centres were set up, he said.

Stating that the company exported spare parts from India to the tune of Rs30 crore in 2014, Yamashita said this would double to Rs 60 crore during 2016.
Kerala Governor Justice P Sathasivam paid a two-day official visit to Indian Naval Academy, Ezhimala in Kannur district.

During his maiden visit to the Academy yesterday, he addressed the cadets of INA on the 'Leadership Challenges for Young India' wherein he highlighted the preparations to be made by the young generation for overcoming future challenges, an official release said today.

The Governor also interacted with the cadets socially through a ceremonial Mess Night held in his honour, it said.

The governor was accompanied by his wife Saraswathi Sathasivam and personal staff.

Meanwhile, the governor reviewed a ceremonial 'Guard of Honour' by the cadets of INA, today.

Subsequently, he was briefed on various aspects of infrastructure development, training processes and means adopted to keep training at INA designed to meet the future Navy needs, the release said.

The Governor also visited various training facilities such assimulators, seamanship trainer, training areas, Cadets' squadrons, firing range, outdoor training facilities, library, and technical labs.
Chief of Defence Staff of Sri Lanka Air Chief Marshal Kolitha Aravinda Gunatilleke arrived here today on a four-day visit aimed at deepening bilateral ties in the sector.

Gunatilleke, who was given a guard of honour, met Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar at his South Block office.

He also met with his counterpart in IAF Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha and the Navy chief.

The top Lankan military official also paid tribute to the martyrs after laying wreath at Amar Jawan Jyoti, India Gate.

He will also meet National Security Advisor Ajit Doval. Gunatilleke will visit the Western Naval Command in Mumbai tomorrow.

The South Asian neighbours are aiming to build closer cooperation in maritime domain in the Indian Ocean region, besides increasing cooperation in other military areas like training among others.
Two bike-borne assailants opened fire at the wife of a Late Namdhari sect Chief here, leaving her injured, police said today.

The victim 'gurumata' Bibi Chand Kaur, wife of the late satguru Jagjit Singh was shot at when she was leaving the head office of the sect headquarters, DCP, Dhruman Nimbley said.

She was rushed to a Ludhiana hospital for treatment, the DCP said, adding, a case has been registered and efforts are on to nab the culprits.
A lawyer was allegedly hacked to death in Eluru One town of West Godavari district today, police said.

T D Rayalu was attacked with sharp-edged weapons by around five persons when he was sitting in a shop near Gandhi High School, according to police. He died on the spot.

Police detained one person named Praveen later, but others are still on run, said West Godavari district superintendent of police Bharat Bhushan.

He said police are investigating various angles like business rivalry or family dispute, if any, in the case.

"At present, we are suspecting five persons involved in this crime. Police suspect that Praveen's brother is the main conspirator and looking for him," he said.

Rayalu's body was sent to Eluru government hospital for postmortem.
Corn prices in the country declined during last week with the average rates ranging between Rs 13,300-15,500 per tonne as arrivals begun, according to the US Grains Council (USGC).

In India, maize arrivals have started in Maharashtra, Bihar, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telanagna and the average prices range between Rs 13,300-15,500 per tonne, USGC Representative for India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, Amit Sachdev said.

He said while in Karnataka the arrivals are progressing well in some markets, in other locations arrivals have just begun.

Spot prices in key markets have declined and in Nizamabad it was down by 0.45 per cent to Rs 14,420 per tonne, in Davangere down by 0.84 per cent to Rs 14,750 per tonne, in Karimnagar down 0.34 per cent at Rs 14,900 per tonne and in Gulabbagh down 12.17 per cent at Rs 13,912 per tonne.

However, in Sangli prices were up by 0.13 per cent at Rs 14,900 per tonne.

In the international market, even as the prices are ruling low according to the USDA planting intention report farmers are expected to plant corn in 93.6 million hectare in 2016, up 6 per cent from last year.

With prices of corn being low, the high corn planting was a surprise and from now on it will be more of a weather market and a lot will deepen on how much corn actually gets planted and if there will be any shift soybeans, Sachdev said.

On the The Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), corn prices were down by over 4 per cent as the US planting report was out.
Maldives police have released 16 journalists arrested during a protest against a perceived government crackdown on press freedom on the politically troubled holiday islands, officials said today.

The journalists, which the government said were released late yesterday, have been ordered to report to police for questioning over the demonstration held outside President Abdulla Yameen's office in the capital Male.

"We were told that we disobeyed police orders and they want to question us further," Zaheena Rasheed, an editor of the private Maldives Independent website, told AFP after she was released.

Police used pepper spray to break up yesterday's protest against the government's move to criminalise defamation, which media fear will be used to stifle freedom of speech. A draft bill proposes heavy fines and jail terms for offenders.

The government said in a statement the demonstration was broken up because journalists were gathered in "a high security zone, where protesting is prohibited", adding that the group was detained for 10 hours in total.

Political turmoil in the Maldives has dented its image as a peaceful paradise for well-heeled honeymooners. The Indian Ocean nation adopted multiparty democracy in 2008 after decades of autocratic rule, but has faced international criticism over a recent erosion of rights.

Rasheed said the released media met today with US ambassador Atul Keshap, who was visiting from Sri Lanka where he is based.

The journalists raised concerns about press freedom in the nation, gripped by turmoil since the toppling of its first democratically elected leader Mohamed Nasheed in February 2012.

"Appreciated the opportunity to meet with Maldives journalists arrested during Sunday's protest," Keshap said on Twitter, posting a photo of himself with them.

Yesterday's protesters were also attempting to pressure authorities to probe the mysterious disappearance of a reporter in 2014. The demonstrators also denounced a court decision to temporarily close the nation's oldest newspaper over an ownership dispute.

Nasheed, whose conviction and jailing last year on terror-related charges has been widely criticised by the West, is currently in Britain for medical treatment after being given prison leave.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today congratulated the new chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir Mehbooba Mufti.

"Congratulations to the new Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir, Mehbooba Mufti," Banerjee tweeted.

PDP president Mehbooba Mufti was today sworn-in as the first woman Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, also becoming the first-ever Muslim woman CM.

Mehbooba Mufti head a coalition government with BJP in the only Muslim-majority state.
India is likely to raise with China the issue of Beijing blocking its latest bid to have JeM chief Masood Azhar designated terrorist by the UN in the aftermath of terror strike at the Pathankot air force base.

India has been "disappointed" by the Chinese action at the UN and is expected to take up the issue at the "political- level" at the "first given opportunity", sources said.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj is travelling to Moscow later this week to attend RIC (Russia-India-China) ministerial meeting. On the sidelines, a bilateral meeting between Swaraj and her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi is expected during which the issue of China blocking the designation as terrorist of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief and Mumbai terror attack mastermind at the UN is likely to figure.

Last week, China stopped UN sanctions committee from designating Azhar as terrorist, maintaining that the case "did not meet the requirements" of the Security Council.

This is not the first time China has blocked India's bid to get Pakistan-based militant groups and leaders proscribed by the UN.

The UN had banned the JeM in 2001 but India's efforts for slapping sanctions on Azhar after the 2008 Mumbai terror attack also did not fructify as China, that has veto powers, did not allow it apparently at the behest of Pakistan again.

Last July, China had similarly halted India's move in the UN to take action against Pakistan for its release of Mumbai terror attack mastermind Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, saying that its stand was "based on facts and in the spirit of objectiveness and fairness" with Beijing again claiming at the time that it was in touch with New Delhi.

Expressing its strong "disappointment" over the development, India said it finds it "incomprehensible" that while the Pakistan-based JeM was listed by the UN Committee for its well known terror activities and links to the Al Qaeda, the designation of the group's "main leader, financier and motivator" has been put on a "technical hold".
Jammu and Kashmir got its first woman chief minister today in PDP President Mehbooba Mufti who was sworn-in here along with 22 ministers, with an increased strength for BJP in the Cabinet.

Dressed in black, 56-year-old Mehbooba took the oath of office and secrecy in Urdu followed by BJP's Nirmal Singh, who will again be the Deputy Chief Minister in the new PDP-BJP government formed three months after the state was put under Governor's rule following the demise of her father Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.

Governor N N Vohra also administered the oath to 21 other Ministers. BJP's share increased this time in the Cabinet from six to eight berths and three Ministers of State (MoS) while PDP has nine Cabinet Ministers instead of 11 last time.

Mehbooba's party has got three MoS berths, same as the last time.

In the last government, BJP had a total of 11 ministers -- six in Cabinet, three MoS and two with independent charge.

Sajjad Gani Lone, son of late separatist leader Abdul Gani Lone, remained in the Cabinet in the BJP quota.

PDP has dropped Altaf Bukhari and Javed Mustafa from the ministry.

Former Chief Ministers Farooq Abdullah and his son Omar, Union Ministers Venkaiah Naidu and Jitendra Singh were among the host of VIPs present at the function held at Raj Bhavan.

However, PDP MP Tariq Hamid Karra and Congress boycotted the ceremony.

BJP promoted Chering Dorje and Abdul Gani Kohli as Cabinet ministers. They were Ministers of State with independent charge in the Sayeed-led government.

The saffron party has Prakash Kumar and Shyam Lal Chowdhury among the new faces in the cabinet. BJP leader Sukhnandan was dropped from the list of Ministers besides Minister of State Pawan Gupta, an independent MLA from Udhampur, who has been replaced by Ajay Nanda.

Law Minister in the Sayeed's ministry, Basharat Bukhari of PDP, took oath in Kashmiri again this year.

Mehbooba assuming office as 13th Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir is a landmark event in the history of the state and the country. She is the first woman to head the state and the second Muslim woman to become the Chief Minister of any state in India.

Syeda Anwara Taimur was the first Muslim woman CM in Assam in 1980 and continued to hold the chair till June 30, 1981.

The new government has also retained two woman ministers



from the earlier coalition--- Priya Seth (BJP) and Asiya Nakash (PDP).

Apart from Nirmal Singh, who will lead the BJP flock in the coalition, Chandra Prakash, Bali Bhagat, Lal Singh, Dorje, Abdul Gani Kolhi, Ajay Handa, Sunil Kumar Sharma are also a part of the new government.

From the PDP's side, Ghulam Nabi Lone, Abdul Rehman Veeri Abdul Haq Khan, Syed Basharat Ahmed Bukhari, Haseeb Drabu, Syed Naeem Akhtar Andrabi and Zahoor Ahmad Mir were sworn in as ministers.

The cermony had ministers taking oath in different languages. While Mehbooba and Nirmal Singh stuck to Urdu and Hindi respectively, Bukhari took his oath in Kashmiri.

BJP's Lal Singh took oath in Punjabi while Dorje chose English.

The two parties came together last year with Mufti Mohammad Sayeed heading the government for 10 months till his death on January 7.

Mehbooba, who is presently a member of Lok Sabha, will have to resign from her parliamentary seat and will get six months to secure membership of one of the two houses of the state legislature.

The PDP-BJP coalition has 56 MLAs in the 87-member Assembly.

The PDP has 27 members while BJP has 25. Peoples' Conference has two MLAs while two other independents are supporting the coalition.

The revival of the PDP-BJP coalition government in the state -- after three months of stalemate -- became possible after several rounds of hectic negotiations between the two parties and apparent intervention by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Following Sayeed's death, Governor's Rule was imposed in the state as the PDP and the BJP did not stake fresh claim for government formation in the state.

Initially, the two parties maintained that Mehbooba was not in a position to take over the reins of the state as she was mourning her father's death.

However, after the mourning period was over, the PDP said it was looking for assurances and confidence building measures from the Centre on implementation of Agenda of Alliance -- common minimum programme of the two parties -- before forming the new government.

Hopes of ending the deadlock were raised when BJP general secretary Ram Madhav arrived in Srinagar in a chartered plane to meet Mehbooba Mufti late in the evening on February 17 but nothing came out of the hour-long meeting.

The next high level contact between the two parties came on March 19 when Mehbooba met BJP president Amit Shah.

Again the two parties failed to resolve the issues, forcing the BJP to publicly admit for the first time that no headway could be made on government formation.

In fact, several PDP leaders went to extent of saying the prospects of an alliance with the BJP were all but over.

However, to everyone's surprise, the PDP president went to meet the Prime Minister three days later and decks were cleared for the formation of the government.
The Anil Ambani group-run Mumbai Metro is yet to pay Rs 28.55 crore rent to the regional planning body MMRDA for the land at the northwestern suburb of Versova where the metro operator had put up the casting yard, reveals an RTI answer from the authority.

The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) in a response to an RTI query filed by activist Anil Galgali said, "Mumbai Metro One Pvt Ltd (MMOPL) was handed over the Home Guard land measuring 2.4 hectare at Versova for a casting yard in January 2009 for a period of 15 months."



The MMRDA said the company originally owed Rs 30.63 crore in rentals, out of which it cleared only Rs 3.97 crore to MMRDA on July 29, 2015. But with interest and delayed fees, the total outstanding is Rs 28.55 crore, shows the RTI answer.

For using the Home Guard land, MMOPL, run by Anil Ambani's Reliance Infrastructure, had agreed to pay rent to MMRDA. But it failed to do so, but continued to occupy the land for 55 months.

"Since metro construction jumped several deadlines, MMOPL sought four extensions from MMRDA to use the land. In its bid to continue to use the land, it even promised to build a training centre for the Home Guards which was never fulfilled," the MMRDA said in its RTI reply.

The RTI answer further said following a meeting with an additional chief secretary in October 2011, MMOPL was asked to start constructing the training centre for the Home Guards within two months, failing which it was asked to pay the full rent of the land right from the date of allotment with interest.

Galgali said the company did not event meet this deadline or build the training centre or pay the rentals. Finally, MMOPL handed over land to MMRDA in August 2013 after using it for over 55 months.

"After several rounds of correspondence, MMOPL made the first and only rent payment of Rs 3.97 crore to MMRDA on July 29, 2015. MMOPL is yet to pay Rs 28.55 crore to MMRDA," said RTI reply.

The MMRDA arrived at the rental outstanding at Rs 3.60/day/sqmt with an annual increment of 10 per cent.

Terming this as "unholy nexus" between MMRDA official and MMOPL executives, Galgali said he has written a letter to chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and MMRDA Commissioner UPS Madan to register an FIR against MMOPL and recover the money and then build the training centre building.
A huge cache of arms and explosives, including at least 20 grenades, were seized by Bangladeshi police today from a militant hideout where two terrorists were killed in a blast while they were making bombs.

"The incident (blast) took place last night. The doctors declared one of the two dead immediately as they were rushed to the hospital while the other succumbed to his wounds later," a police official said.

The two deceased were not known in the neighbourhood in a village in northwestern Bogra and were residing in the house rented by an autorickshaw driver, who was not inside the complex when the blast took place.

"We suspect they are members of a militant outfit and the blast took place as they were preparing bombs for their outfit. Investigations have been launched to track down the autorickshaw driver," the official said.

According to local reports, police's bomb disposal team this morning recovered at least twenty grenades, firearms and ammunition from the building.

The recovery was made after a 12-member team of the bomb disposal unit from Dhaka started their investigation at the one-storey building beside Dhaka-Bogra highway at Mohipur village.

The grenades, four foreign pistols and 20 bullets were found from different rooms of the building, Mohammad Asaduzzaman, superintendent of police in the district, was quoted as saying by the Daily Star.

Police suspect that the explosion took place when a gang was making bombs there, the SP said.

The blast area was cordoned off by policemen and members of Rapid Action Battalion.
A 25-year-old British Muslim woman wearing a long gown and face veil was racially abused and called "Batman" by a man while shopping in a grocery store here.

Ahlam Saed who had gone into a corner shop in Ealing Common on Saturday to buy some sweets was mocked by the man for her outfit in front of his two children.

"I only wanted to get a packet of Starburst. I walked in and he decided to call me Batman and started singing the theme tune," said Saed, who filmed the incident on her phone.

"I could not ignore him, that's why I decided to get my phone out... I had to stand my ground, I didn't want him to think he could continue hurling abuse," Saed was quoted as saying by the 'Evening Standard'.

The video shows the man repeatedly asking Saed "Why do you wear that?", referring to her veil.

The man also makes claims about a Muslim couple with "photos of an ISIS flag" displayed on their house.

"My kids can't even see your face, who are you? Are you a man or woman?" the man says, adding "This is a Christian country. Christian, western world."



Saed said she became "petrified" as the man grew increasingly irate after she confronted him and called him "ignorant" in response to his "Batman" remark.

Saed who moved to London when she was two, started wearing a face veil about four years ago and is the only person in her family to don it.

"My parents don't want me to wear it because they fear for my safety. But why should I take it off because of other people's opinions? It's my choice," Saed said, adding that she has faced more abuse in recent months than ever before.

"It's getting worse since the Brussels and Paris attacks," she said.
Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today defended his government's 'Badh Chala Bihar' campaign launched last year and said the 'Bihar@2025 vision document' will guide successive governments in framing policies and programmes for development of the state.

"The Badh Chala Bihar campaign has proved to be a unique experiment as we have come to know about the people's expectation from the government on development front," he said



He was intervening on the IPR&D Minister in-charge Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan Singh's reply in the state assembly to a starred question by the BJP MLA Sanjay Saragwi over the expenditure and related facts about the campaign.

The inputs collected from the people of 40,000 villages with population of 5000 or more were being compiled under the 'Bihar@2025 vision document', the Chief Minister said, adding it will prove to be a guide for the successive governments in formulating policies and programmes specific to the expectation of the masses.

The state government will release the 'Bihar@2025 vision document' and invite the opposition to the function in this regard, he said.

The Chief Minister came down hard on the BJP for making the 'Badh Chala Bihar' campaign, which was launched on June 11 last year, a "political" issue by first petitioning the Election Commission and then challenging it in the Patna High Court to get it shelved.

"As soon as we rolled out the 'Badh Chala Bihar' campaign, the BJP suffered heart-rending grief," he said castigating the opposition party for leaving no stone unturned to get the campaign shelved.

The Chief Minister said the campaign was not an agenda of



his party, JD(U), but of the state government in strict public interest.

Charging the BJP with dubbing the 'Badh Chala Bihar' campaign as wasteful expenditure and pre-electoral exercise by the ruling party, Kumar said his government was making genuine efforts to find out expection of the people for incorporation in the Bihar@2025 vision document.

As soon as he criticised the BJP for allegedly stalling the 'Badh Chala Bihar' campaign, the Leader of Opposition (LoP) Prem Kumar and his other colleagues jumped on their feet and protested against the Chief Minister's remarks.

On another allegation by BJP about expenditure of huge amount of money on advertisements, Kumar said Bihar government's budget and expenditure under this head was a fraction in comparison to the spending on publicity by the saffron party government in the states.

Earlier, replying to specific questions on expenditure incurred on the project, the IPR&D minister in-charge said Rs 9.31 crore was spent on the campaign on the basis of actuals and payment was made on different dates and at different places against proposed expenditure of Rs 14.56 crore.
Much ahead of the dengue season, mosquitoes were found breeding at over 90 prominent buildings in NDMC areas including RML Hospital and offices of environment and telecommunication ministries following which the civic body has served notices to them.

Gearing up for the summer season which is conducive to mosquito-breeding, the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) has formed a surveillance team which is inspecting all buildings falling under its area.

RML Hospital, Paryavaran Bhawan, Meghdoot Bhawan, Sanchar Bhawan, Baroda House, Kashmir House, Shivaji Stadium have been served notices by the NDMC after vector-carrying mosquitoes were found breeding in their premises.

"Our inspection team has already started field visits and surveillance work. A total of 96 notices have been issued so far in the ongoing first phase. The team is reviewing the mosquitogenic conditions and offices are being asked to take preventive measures," NDMC's Chief Medical Officer R N Singh said.

"We have also started various training programmes for spreading awareness about the disease. In the first phase, sanitation workers have been given training, while in the next phases NDMC school teachers and executive engineers will be trained," he said.

Last year, NDMC had issued over 125 notices to the President's Estate after "heavy" mosquito-breeding was found at various places on its sprawling campus. However, the officials say the situation has improved this year.

"After repeated notices were sent to Rashtrapati Bhawan, a four-member team was formed to work closely for taking precautionary and control measures, and the situation has largely improved. No breeding has been detected so far," Singh said.

Last year, with over 15,500 cases till mid-November, the dengue outbreak was reported to be worst in the city since 1996, when 10,252 cases and 423 deaths were reported.

While 38 deaths due to the deadly disease were officially reported last year, the unofficial figure stood at 43.

The council staff inspects all buildings in NDMC areas every year to check mosquito-breeding. Notices are issued in the first phase and the defaulters are asked to reply within a week's time about the measures taken by them. However, if in the second phase breeding is still found in their premises, NDMC issues challans to such violators.
Jharkhand today handed over assets of Patratu Thermal Power Station (PTPS) to a joint venture company of NTPC and the state government.

Terming it a big step in the direction of power generation in Jharkhand to attain self sufficiency, Jharkhand Bijli Vitran Nigam MD Rahul Purwar said the resources, including the PTPS plant, were handed over to the JV for setting up 8,000 MW new thermal power unit in two phases.

NTPC in October last incorporated Patratu Vidyut Utpadan Nigam in a joint venture with Jharkhand Bijli Vitran Nigam Ltd for operating the PTPS plant in the state.

NTPC holds 74 per cent stake in the JV while the rest is with the state government. The JV will renovate and modernise the performing existing units and further capacity expansion of PTPS.

Jharkhand would get 85 per cent power from the JV as per the MoU. Patratu plant at present has a power generation capacity of 800 MW.

Purwar, however, said the Patratu reservoir has not been transferred to the JV as there was another agreement with the state government for water from the reservoir.

Replying to a question, Purwar said request for laying foundation stone for the JV power plant was sent to the PMO and a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) was signed on May 3, 2015 between NTPC and Jharkhand government.

The MoA was for performance improvement and capacity expansion of 4,000 MW in Phase-I, likely to be completed in 2020 and Phase-II by 2024.

He said under Phase-1, 3x800 MW capacity plant would be constructed, while the existing PTPS plant would be revived by the JV with a target to get 300 MW from the old plant.

Purwar said the Union Minister of Coal has assured the JV to allot Barhani coal block, which would fulfil the energy requirement of the plant.
Crude prices extended losses in Asia on Monday after comments by Saudi Arabia cast doubt whether key producers meeting next month would reach an agreement to freeze output to address a global supply glut.

Hopes for a deal at the April 17 gathering in Doha led by Russia and Saudi Arabia had been a major driver of a rally in prices from near 13-year lows in February.

But the latest comments by Saudi Arabia's deputy crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, signalling a reluctance to freeze output unless others did the same knocked down already low expectations of an accord.

Read more from our special coverage on "CRUDE OIL"

"If all countries agree to freeze production, we're ready," he said in an interview with Bloomberg News.

At around 0320 GMT, US benchmark West Texas Intermediate for delivery in May slid 43 cents (1.17%) to $36.36 while Brent crude for June fell 34 cents (0.88%) to $38.33.

Both contracts plunged abut 4% Friday.

Michael McCarthy, an analyst with CMC in Sydney, told AFP the price slump came as "no surprise" as traders reacted to Salman's comments.

"Part of the recent strong rally has been related to some optimism in the agreement and that's now looking less likely following those comments from the Saudis," he said by telephone.

"The are looking for a curtailment of supply somewhere... They are looking to groups like OPEC. The potential for OPEC to reign in any production is very slight, particularly given the Iranians coming back," he added, referring to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries producers' group.

Iran has been ramping up production after nuclear-linked Western economic sanctions were lifted in January, adding to the saturated market.

"There were renewed concerns over continuing oversupply due to comments from Saudi Arabia that it will agree to freeze production only if Iran and other major producers agree to do the same," said EY oil analyst Sanjeev Gupta.

" prices also came under pressure from reports that production from Iran increased by 250,000 (barrels per day) in March since the lifting of sanctions.
World oil prices steadied today as Saudi Arabia cast doubt on whether a key producers meeting would reach an agreement to freeze output to address a global supply glut.

Around 1100 GMT, US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for delivery in May was down six cents at USD 36.73 a barrel.

Brent North Sea crude for June delivery added just four cents to USD 38.71 a barrel compared with today's close.

Hopes for a deal at the April 17 gathering in Doha led by Russia and Saudi Arabia had been a major driver of a rally in prices from near 13-year lows in February.

But the latest comments by Saudi Arabia's deputy crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, signalling a reluctance to freeze output unless others did the same knocked down already low expectations of an accord.

"If all countries agree to freeze production, we're ready," he said in an interview with Bloomberg .

Michael McCarthy, an analyst with CMC Markets in Sydney, told AFP the price slump came as "no surprise" as traders reacted to Salman's comments.

"Part of the recent strong rally has been related to some optimism in the agreement and that's now looking less likely following those comments from the Saudis," he said by telephone.

"The markets are looking for a curtailment of supply somewhere. They are looking to groups like OPEC. The potential for OPEC to reign in any production is very slight, particularly given the Iranians coming back," he added, referring to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries producers' group.

Iran has been ramping up production after nuclear-linked Western economic sanctions were lifted in January, adding to the saturated market.

"There were renewed concerns over continuing oversupply due to comments from Saudi Arabia that it will agree to freeze production only if Iran and other major producers agree to do the same," said EY oil analyst Sanjeev Gupta.

"Crude oil prices also came under pressure from reports that crude oil production from Iran increased by 250,000 (barrels per day) in March since the lifting of sanctions.
Opposition parties today hailed the voter turnout in LWE area in the first phase of state Assembly elections but also hit out at the government saying there were 'certain gaps' in the patrolling of central police forces in the areas that went to polls.

Registering a heavy turnout, an estimated 79 per cent voters today cast their ballots in 18 constituencies in the first phase in West Bengal till 5 PM, many of which are located in areas which had earlier witnessed Maoist violence.

"The election has been more or less free and fair. People have voted massively. But in certain areas the election has not been free and fair as TMC tried to use its election machinery and part of administration to deter the poll process," CPI(M) politburo member Mohammed Salim said.

Leader of opposition and CPI(M) state secretary Surya Kanta Mishra in a tweet said the people have given a clear message of ousting the TMC from power.

"The people has given a clear message today's first phase of d Polls - Ousting of d TMC from power is inevitable!!! #PeoplesPower," Mishra tweeted.

Eighteen constituencies went to the polls in the first part of the first phase election, while elections will be held in another 31 seats in second part of the first phase on April 11.

"There has been a huge turnout which is a good indication. But there has been lacunae on the part of the Central forces as there have been gaps in their patrolling. There have been incidents of state police standing inside polling booths, contradictory to what Election Commission has said that no state police will be allowed inside the booth," senior state Congress leader and MP Pradip Bahttacharya said.

The BJP leadership too expressed their satisfaction over the high percentage of polling but had complaints over certain gaps in the patrolling of the central forces.

"It is good that there has been a high percentage of polling. But there are complaints from certain parts about the role of central forces. We will inform the Election Commission about it so that those gaps can be sealed in the next phases," BJP national secretary Siddharth Nath Singh said.
More than 35% of the 95,11,732 voters, including Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, exercised their franchise amidst tight security till mid day during the first phase of voting today.

The fate of Gogoi, BJP's Chief Ministerial candidate Sarbananda Sonowal and his alliance partner AGP's Working President Atul Bora will be decided in today's polls.

Voters were seen standing in long queues at 2,190 polling stations to exercise their franchise for the 539 contestants in 65 of the 126 Assam Assembly segments going to the polls in the first phase today.

Election office sources said more than 35% polling was reported in 2,190 polling stations across constituencies till 1200 hrs.

The ruling Congress, the BJP-AGP-BPF alliance and the AIUDF, CPI, CPI(M), CPI-(M)-(L) are participating in the democratic exercise for the 95,11,732 voters, including 45,95,712 women.

The Chief Minister along with his wife Dolly Gogoi, son and MP Gaurav Gogoi and brother Deep Gogoi were among the early voters to stand in line to vote at the Debicharan Baruah Girls High School polling station.

Many of the polling booths wore a festive look as they were decorated with multi-coloured festoons and buntings, others with red, blue, white and orange balloons, while some had earthen urns painted with smiling human faces on them.

Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in some polling centres were reported to have not functioned briefly halting voting but once they were replaced voting resumed, election office said.

With over 48,000 personnel manning the polling booths, intense security measures have been put in place in the state and the Indo-Bangla border along Barak Valley's Karimganj district sealed.

CCTV cameras and web casting facilities have also been put in place by the election office for a free and fair election.

Altogether 535 companies of central security forces and state police have been deployed in the 65 constituencies spread across Upper Assam, two hill districts, northern bank of Brahmaputra Valley, besides Barak Valley.

For today's first phase of polling Congress is contesting in all the 65 constituencies, BJP in 54 and its alliance partners - AGP in 11 and BPF in three, AIUDF in 27, CPI and CPI(M) in ten each with CPI(ML)(L) in six along with 60 others of unrecognised parties and 13 Independents.

The second and final phase of polling is scheduled for April 11.
The families of some of China's top communist brass - including President Xi Jinping - used offshore tax havens to conceal their fortunes, a treasure trove of leaked documents has revealed.

At least eight current or former members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the ruling Communist Party's most powerful body, have been implicated, highlighting the hot-button issue of wealth among China's ruling elite.

The eight are among 140 political figures around the world alleged to have links to offshore accounts, after an investigation into the leak of 11.5 million documents from the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca.

One of the people named in the leaks is Xi's brother-in- law Deng Jiagui, who set up two British Virgin Islands companies in 2009 when his famous relation was a member of the Politburo Standing Committee but not yet president.

Xi has been dogged by foreign media reports of great family wealth. The claims are ignored by mainstream Chinese outlets, and their publication on the Internet in China is suppressed.

In 2012 the Bloomberg agency published investigations into the vast wealth said to have been amassed by Xi's family, revealing that Deng and his wife had accumulated several hundred million dollars in company shares and property assets.

Since becoming president that same year, Xi has staked his reputation on pushing for transparency by initiating a vast anti-graft campaign to clean the party's ranks of corruption and to reassert his authority.

The daughter of former premier Li Peng - who was in power from 1987 to 1998 - was also identified in the documents.

They revealed that Li Xiaolin, the former vice president of state-run power company China Power Investment Corporation, was the beneficiary of a Liechtenstein foundation controlling a firm registered in the British Virgin Islands during the period when her father was in office.

A granddaughter of Jia Qinglin, a former member of the Politburo Standing Committee, Li Xiaolin was also the sole shareholder in several offshore companies, through which she discretely controlled companies within China.

The so-called "Panama Papers" were obtained from an anonymous source by German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and shared with media worldwide by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

Chinese media remained silent on the revelations about the country's elite.

But while the the ICIJ's website is officially blocked in the country, users of the micro-blog Weibo who had managed to see the findings began discussing them online.
Syria's regime has been able to circumvent international sanctions and fund its war effort through shadow companies, according to leaked "Panama Papers" seen by French daily Le Monde.

The newspaper reported today that three Syrian companies, Pangates International, Maxima Middle East Trading, and Morgan Additives Manufacturing, used the services of Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca to create shadow companies in the Seychelles.

Le Monde, a partner in the year-long worldwide media investigation into a trove of 11.5 million documents leaked from Mossack Fonseca, said the shadow companies were "a way for the Syrian regime to circumvent international sanctions imposed since the start of the war".

The three firms are under US sanctions for allegedly providing petroleum supplies to President Bashar al-Assad's regime likely to be used by his military, including aviation fuel.

Since the start of Syria's war in 2011, tens of thousands of people have been killed and thousands of homes destroyed in air raids and barrel bomb strikes.

Le Monde said the leaked documents show Mossack Fonseca continued to work with at least one of the companies, Pangates, until at least nine months after the sanctions were announced.

Pangates belongs to the Damascus-based Abdulkarim group, which is close to the Syrian government, Le Monde said.

The probe, coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, has exposed a tangle of financial dealings by global elites.

Assad's billionaire cousin Rami Makhlouf, who is facing sanctions, was also shown by the leaks as long having registered companies in tax havens.

Syria's most notorious and powerful tycoon, Makhlouf founded shadow companies such as Drex Technologies SA, which was registered in the British Virgin Islands in 2000 and which it took Mossack Fonseca a decade to grow concerned about, Le Monde reported.

In 2011, the law firm cut ties with Makhlouf, just after the outbreak of the revolt calling for Assad's ouster.
The first phase of Assembly polls in West Bengal and Assam today passed off peacefully, with a high voter turnout of 80 and 70 per cent respectively in the two states.

Voting in 18 of the 294 Assembly constituencies in West Bengal and 65 of the 126 seats in Assam was "by and large peaceful" with no reports of violence-related death or injury, Deputy Election Commissioner Sandeep Saxena told reporters in Delhi.

Responding to questions, he said a total of 16 complaints related to rigging, denial of vote and late start of polling were received.

Polling in the two states was held amid tight security, including large-scale presence of central para-military forces and aerial surveillance by helicopter-borne personnel in West Bengal.

In West Bengal, where Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress is making a determined bid for a second successive term, heavy voter turnout was recorded with an estimated 80 per cent of 40.09 lakh electors casting their ballots. Most of these constituencies are in areas where Maoists held sway before TMC came to power and neutralised them.

In 13 seats of tribal Jangalmahal area earlier affected by Maoist violence, polling concluded at 4 PM as scheduled due to security considerations. In the remaining five seats of Purulia, Manbazar, Kashipur, Para and Raghunathpur it went on till 6 PM.

Banerjee's TMC, which contested the last Assembly polls in alliance with the Congress, is pitted this time against foe-turned-friends Congress-Left combine, besides the BJP, which is seeking to make inroads into the politically volatile eastern state.

In Assam, where Congress under Tarun Gogoi is seeking a fourth straight term, an estimated 70 per cent of little over 95.11 lakh voters cast their ballots. There were no reports of violence from any of the 65 of the 126 constituencies where polling was held in the first phase.

Seeking to capitalise on anti-incumbency factor and a host of contentious issues, including the divisive debate on "nationalism", BJP has tied up with former chief minister Prafulla Mahanta's AGP and Bodo People's Front in its bid to dislodge the Congress from power in the northeastern state. Illegal Bangladeshi infiltration is a major electoral and social issue in Assam and the party had sought to exploit it to the hilt during electioneering.

The fate of several prominent Congress candidates, including Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi from Titabor and Speaker of the outgoing Assembly Pranab Gogoi from Sibsagar will be decided in the first phase. Among others whose constituencies went to poll today include BJP's chief ministerial candidate Union Minister Sarbananda Sonowal from Majuli and the party's Lok Sabha member from Jorhat Kamakhya Prasad Tasa, who is crossing swords with Tarun Gogoi in Titabor.

AIDUF of Dhubri MP Badruddin Ajmal, which has emerged as a force to reckon with in the state is the last several years, with the backing of Bangladeshi migrants, has also fielded candidates in 27 of the 65 constituencies. Congress is contesting all 65 seats in the first phase, BJP 54, its alliance partners AGP 11 and BPF three. CPI and CPI-M have put up candidates in 10 seats each and CPI-ML (L) in six.
The Pentagon confirmed today that a senior Shebab leader targeted in a drone strike in Somalia last week was killed in the attack.

Hassan Ali Dhoore, who was killed Thursday, allegedly was part of the Islamist insurgent group's security and intelligence wing, and had been involved in planning attacks in Mogadishu.

"The Department of Defense has confirmed that Hassan Ali Dhoore, a senior leader of Al-Shebab, Al-Qaeda's affiliate in Somalia, was killed as a result of a US military strike in Somalia carried out on March 31," Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said.

"He has planned and overseen attacks resulting in the death of at least three US citizens," he added.

Shebab jihadists have claimed responsibility for a string of recent attacks including a twin bombing at a busy restaurant in the Somali city of Baidoa in February.

The strike against Dhoore comes less than a month after US drones and warplanes hammered a Shebab training camp in Somalia, killing more than 150 fighters the Pentagon said were prepping for a "large-scale" attack.
The Philippines today launched the first public immunization program for dengue fever, seeking to administer to a million schoolchildren the world's first licensed vaccine against a mosquito-borne disease that the World Health Organisation estimates infects 390 million people a year globally.

Hundreds of fourth-graders at a public school in metropolitan Manila's Marikina city were given the first of three shots of Dengvaxia. Some of the pupils received their vaccination shot under the glare of cameras during a festive ceremony at a gymnasium festooned with multicolored bunting and preceded by songs and dances performed by the children.

The Philippines had the highest dengue incidence in the WHO's Western Pacific region from 2013 to 2015, recording 200,415 cases last year, according to the Department of Health.

Health Secretary Janette Garin called the program's launch "a historic milestone" in public health. "We are the first country to introduce, adopt and implement the first-ever dengue vaccine through (the) public health system and under a public school setting," she said.

The government is spending 3.5 billion pesos (USD 76 million) to administer the free vaccines, which it bought at a discounted cost of 3,000 pesos (USD 65) for three doses for each child. Free vaccine programs ensure that "health should be for all, rich or poor," Garin said.

The health department says a study showed that the vaccination of 9-year-old children for five years starting in 2016 can reduce dengue cases by 24.2 per cent in the Philippines. The vaccine is given as a three-dose series, with the doses coming six months apart.

Dengvaxia, developed by the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi Pasteur, obtained its first license in Mexico in December 2015 for use in individuals aged 9 to 45. Regulatory agencies in Brazil, the Philippines and El Salvador followed.

But the vaccine is awaiting regulatory reviews in Europe and dozens of non-European countries, as well as prequalification by the WHO.

According to the New England Journal of Medicine, a study of children from 9 to 16 years old showed that the vaccine reduces the risk of contracting dengue by 65.6 per cent. It also prevents dengue hospitalisations by 80 per cent, and severe dengue cases by 93 per cent.

But the effectiveness was lower for children younger than 9, as well as against the type of dengue caused by serotype 2 one of the four strains of dengue.
Elaborate security arrangements have been made by the police ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to neighbouring Noida tomorrow to distribute e-rickshaw and inaugurate a micro credit programme, a senior police official said here today.

Apart from keeping an extra vigil in the bordering area and entry points, Ghaziabad police has enforced Operation Green under which no vehicle will be permitted to ply in the area, he said.

District borders touching Delhi and Noida will be sealed completely till the PM's programme concludes, said Superintendent of Police (City) Salman Taj Patil.

Apart from it, police personnel will be deployed on PCR vans and 'Leopard' motorcycle to keep a vigil in the area.

Four Deputy Superintendents of Police, seven inspectors, 30 sub-inspectors, 40 HCP (head constable promoted) and 300 constables have been sent to Noida from Ghaziabad for PM Visit duty, he added.

He said Uttar Pradesh Governor Ram Naik, who will also attend the function, will arrive here by helicopter which will land at CISF ground in Indira Puram.

Following which, he will travel by car to Noida, the officer added.
An Indian tycoon who could step in to buy some of Tata Steel's assets in Britain today said he hoped to avoid mass redundancies if the deal went through as the government scrambled to find a new owner.

Liberty House boss Sanjeev Gupta, who was arriving in Britain late today for talks, told the BBC that he had held "very encouraging" talks with the government.

He added that he would want to change the kind of furnaces at the main asset, the Port Talbot steel works in south Wales, and retrain some 700 workers.

"I won't undertake something which will require mass redundancies," Gupta said.

"We will look to see how we can reposition the workforce from blast furnaces to arc furnaces.

"It will require a lot of planning and execution and it cannot be done overnight but be planned over a number of years."



Prime Minister David Cameron's government has been racing to find a buyer for the Tata Steel assets and save 15,000 jobs amid growing pressure from the opposition, trade unions and the press to safeguard the iconic British steel industry which dates back to the 19th century.

The Indian group announced last week it would sell off its British assets due to a global oversupply of steel, cheap imports into Europe from countries including China, high costs and currency volatility.

Frances O'Grady, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, said: "The next few days will be crucial for UK steel. Ministers need to show British steelworkers that they are on their side."



Trade unions are set to present an emergency plan to save jobs at the Tata Steel plants to ministers on Tuesday.

Business Secretary Sajid Javid said yesterday he was working on a plan for the government to take on some pension liabilities and reduce energy costs in a bid to make a deal more attractive to a potential buyer.

Javid wrote on Twitter this evening: "Just held productive meeting with senior Tata executives to discuss UK steel sales process. Progress is being made."



Investment firm Greybull Capital is reportedly in the running to buy another of the Tata assets, the steel works at Scunthorpe in eastern England.
A group of prisoners in the district jail here allegedly set one of the barracks on fire and thrashed an inmate who reportedly had cooperated with jail officials following the clash of the prisoners with the staff, police said today.

Last night, Harendra Singhwas beaten up by a group of inmates who were furious with him for cooperating with the jail officials. The prisoners then also set one of the barracks on fire, Circle Officer (Cant) Raj Kumar Yadav said.

The fire was, however, extinguished on time, Yadav said.

Soon after the incident,a posse of police personnel was deployed in jail which brought the situation under control, he said.

Singh was reportedly close to former Jail Superintendent Ashish Tiwari, whose transfer inmates had demanded last week.

Tiwari was shifted and B D Pandey took charge as the new superintendent of the district prison yesterday.

Inmates of the district jail had gone on a rampage seizing control of a section of the prison barracks following a clash with staff and taking Tiwari hostage on Saturday.

The inmates turned violent after two of their prison mates were allegedly beaten up by guards. They were also unhappy over several issues, including the "poor quality" of food served at the prison. Tiwari was freed after seven hours in captivity following talks with the inmates.

District Magistrate Raj Mani Yadav said a magisterial inquiry has been ordered to probe the entire incident and those responsible for the violence will not be spared.
Senior IAS officer and Additional Chief Secretary to Odisha government R Balakrishnan has been appointed as Chairman of Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited (BSCL), the special purpose vehicle (SPV) set up to execute projects for making the state capital a smart city.

Bhubaneswar, which became the first city to have its SPV take off, had also topped the list of first batch of 20 smart cities selected by Urban Development Ministry in January this year.

"At the first Board meeting held on March 29, Development Commissioner and Additional Chief Secretary to Odisha government R Balakrishnan was appointed as Chairman of the SPV," an official release said.

Bhubaneswar Development Authority Vice-Chairman Krishan Kumar was appointed Managing Director and R Vineel Krishna, who was earlier Collector and District Magistrate of Orissa's Malkangiri district, was appointed the CEO of the SPV, it said.

A 16-member Board of Directors was set up with representatives of various departments and agencies of the Odisha government, one representative of central government and 5 independent directors of whom at least one will be a woman.

BSCL will have authorised a capital of Rs 500 crore, divided in to 5 crore shares of Rs 100 each.

Of this, Odisha government and Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation will have a share of Rs 112.50 crore each while Bhubaneswar Development Authority will contribute share capital of Rs 250 crore.

The Board, in its first meeting, also decided on delegation of financial powers.

Under Smart City Mission guidelines, SPVs for each smart city are to be set up to enable faster execution of projects by delegating to them powers of various concerned departments and agencies.
NCP MLA Ramesh Kadam, accused in a scam related to the Annabhau Sathe Corporation, was today remanded in police custody till April 7, while two other accused were sent in judicial custody by a court here.

State CID today produced Kadam before the judge V S Deshpande with regard to a case registered here.

District government pleader Vipul Deshpande said Rs 8 crore of Corporation's funds were misappropriated during April 1, 2014 to March 31, 2015.

Kadam was chairman of the corporation during the relevant period.
Rescuers were battling today to reach thousands of people stranded by floods and landslides in Pakistan's northwest and parts of PoK, officials said, as the death toll rose to 61.

Disaster management officials in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where 51 people have died since the downpour began Saturday night, said bad weather was hampering the rescue and relief operation.

"Death toll has been risen to 51, at least 150 houses have been destroyed," an official of the Provincial Disaster Management Authority told AFP, requesting anonymity as he was not authorised to talk to media.

Latifur Rehman, a spokesman for the Authority, told AFP that rescue workers had not been able to reach three affected districts in the far-flung mountainous north of the province.

"Bad weather is the main reason, we are yet unable to send helicopters to these areas," Rehman said.

Rehman said they had received reports that at least 180 houses had been destroyed in those areas.

"We need to get bodies and the injured out from under the rubble and provide food and tents to the survivors," Rehman said, adding that four truckloads of supplies had been sent to affected districts.

"All roads leading to villages and other areas have been blocked... There is no movement at all," Khalid Khan, a courier company owner in Shangla district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, told AFP, adding that local hospitals lack the facilities to deal with the injured.

In Pakistan occupied Kashmir's Neelum Valley, officials said thousands were stranded by landslides.

At least ten people, including five children, died there when two houses were buried in a landslide caused by the rains, Raja Moazzam, a spokesman for local disaster management authority told AFP.
With its plants in Britain facing "severe cash burn", said Monday it is working on a "priority" basis to complete review of its entire European operations, including UK's largest steel plant at Port Talbot.

Tata Steel, one of the flagships of over $100-billion Tata Group, last week said it is exploring all options for portfolio restructuring, including potential divestment of UK, in whole or in parts, amid a deteriorating financial performance of the arm in the last 12 months.

"In recent months, there has been a significant cash drain, which is why a time-bound solution is important in this whole process. Our endeavour will be preserving the asset and doing this in an orderly manner as far as possible.

"This is not a valuation exercise for . There is severe cash burn in our UK Operations. Hence, it is imperative to close review on priority," a Tata Steel spokesperson told PTI when asked about the plans of the firm to shut down its plans in the UK in about six weeks.

In the last five years, Tata Steel alone has suffered an asset impairment of about $3 billion on its UK business.

Besides, Port Talbot -- its largest plant as well as of Britain's -- is reportedly losing about $1.4 million a day.

Asked about the company's efforts in finding a buyer for its UK facilities, the company said: "The entire European portfolio is being reviewed in conjunction with stakeholders."



The options will emerge post discussions and necessary actions can be taken for Europe, especially for the UK operations, excluding the Long Steels UK subsidiary, which is already part of separate and advanced discussions for sale to an investor, it added.

"As a responsible corporation, our endeavour will be to ensure the sale process is orderly and the operating strategy will support that," said the spokesperson.

On the status of the sale of its Long Products business, the spokesperson said: "We are in advanced stage of discussion with Greybull for the sale of the Long Products UK business."



As a matter of practice, the individual boards of the will review all options for portfolio restructuring from time to time, the spokesperson added.

The move by one of the world's largest steelmakers to sell its business has threatened over 17,000 jobs in the UK amid a deepening crisis in the sector that the Indian conglomerate entered with much fanfare nearly a decade ago with $14 billion takeover of the Anglo-Dutch Corus.
The Finance Ministry and the Reserve Bank of India have been asked by a Delhi court to look into a matter in which Rs 800 crore loan was allegedly granted without proper verification to a company whose director was convicted in a corruption case.

The court's order came on a plea of an accused in a graft case in which he alleged that a co-accused, facing prosecution along with him in the matter, was a director, managing partner or managing director in many other firms despite his conviction in another corruption case.

He had alleged that after being convicted, no one can remain a Director on the board of any firm.

Special Judge Sanjeev Aggarwal asked the Secretary (Finance), Secretary (Banking), the Finance Ministry and Deputy Governor of RBI to file an action taken report in this regard by the next date of hearing on April 26.

"Since it is submitted by the counsel that despite his client earlier writing a letter to Secretary (Banking), Ministry of Finance, nothing has been done in the matter.

"In these circumstances, taking into account the seriousness of matter, as public money of honest tax payers is involved, copy of this order as well as order dated... Of this Court be sent to Secretary (Finance)...And Deputy Governor, RBI as well as to the Secretary (Banking)... For looking into the matter in all earnestness which involves question of great public inportance," the judge said.

The court was hearing a graft case of 1999 lodged by CBI in which one Rakesh Sharma and S C Hans are facing trial.

The counsel for accused Hans submitted that despite the court's February 2015 order and a letter written by his client to the Ministry of Finance's Secretary (Banking), no action has been taken in the matter.

He alleged even after Sharma's conviction in 2013 in another case, he was a director/managing director in other firms, one of which had obtained a loan of Rs 800 crore.

He further alleged that out of Rs 800 crore, Corporation Bank had declared the loan of Rs 500 crore as non-performing assests (NPA).

The counsel said "it was a very serious matter where the public money was being squandered in this manner and the loans were being extended to the person so freely without any verification, especially to a person who had already been convicted. Further as per the Companies Act, he cannot be a Director on the Board of any company".
Rusan Pharma today launched a Rs 100 crore-R&D centre and specialised manufacturing unit for transdermal patches at Kandla Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Gujarat.

Founded in 1994, the company is engaged in de-addiction and pain management products in the domestic and international markets.

"We are setting up a R&D centre 'Navin Saxena Research and Technology' (NSRT), in association with Clinical research organisation - 'Quest Care' and a specialised manufacturing unit for transdermal patches at the Kandla SEZ," Rusan Pharma Chairman Navin Saxena told PTI after inaugurating the centre here.

"We are investing around Rs 200 crore in NSRT and QuestCare in the two phase programme by 2017, of which Rs 100 crore (are) already invested in phase I. It will be funded through internal accruals and bank loans.

"Through this new facilities, India can enter the innovation drive for the niche categories targeted by NSRT as a participation of USD 375 million global licensing market," he added.

Research at NSRT will focus on pain, addiction, central nervous system and orphan diseases, drug delivery and platform technologies and it also aims to undertake contract research and joint development projects.

QuestCare is a company's ultra modern bio-equivalence clinical research organisation, which was set up as JV with Chennai based Quest Life Sciences, he said.

The company also proposes to invest in further innovation for new targeted delivery drugs for breast cancer, naltrexone implant for alcohol abuse, dengue and Zica viruses.

Rusan Group companies together have a current turnover of Rs 300 crore and intend to grow to 600 crore in 2018, Saxena said.

It has also announced the agreement with Brazil Health Ministry for their program for smoking cessation.

"With our efforts and innovation, we announce the biggest government and private Indian company deal between Brazil Health Ministry & Rusan Pharma for USD 20 million per annum. The company's '2baconil' drug will be used for the Brazilian government's program for smoking cessation," Saxena said.

"Rusan and NSRT have dedicated to develop and deliver



innovative products to the patients. And we are the largest and reputed suppliers of life saving drugs like Buprenorphine, Methadone and anti-TB drugs to Russia, CIS, South Africa, Kenya, Mauritius, Nepal and Myanmar," company's Managing Director Kunal Saxena said.

A pre-inaugural event saw the signing of a memorandum of understanding between NSRT, Moscow State University (Russia), Symbiosis College Pune, The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda and IIT Kanpur.

The MOU highlights NSRT's commitment to collaborative research. This would further flare up reverse brain drain for Indian students, he added.
King Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud apprised Prime Minister Narendra Modi about Saudi Arabia's initiative in bringing together 34 Muslim countries to form a powerful Islamic military coalition to combat the scourge of terrorism as the two leaders resolved to enhance counter- terror cooperation.

In the talks yesterday at the at the Al-Yamamah Palacehere yesterday, the King also appreciated India's interest in the Gulf as well as its keenness in supporting its stability of the countries in the region.

The King briefed the Prime Minister about Saudi Arabia's initiative to form a coalition to contain terrorism, Saudi officials said.

Oil-rich Saudi Arabia, a country known as spiritual home of Islam, has recently formed a major coalition of 34 Muslim nations to fight terror, particularly the ISIS.

The formation of the coalition comes amid criticism that Arab countries are not doing enough to contain rise of ISIS in the region.

The coalition includes nations with large and established armies such as Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt as well as war-torn countries with embattled militaries such as Libya and Yemen.

Other members are Saudi Arabia's five partners in the Gulf Cooperation Council, as well as Jordan, Nigeria, Egypt, Chad, Mali, Malaysia, Morocco, Senegal, Somalia and Tunisia.

Saudi Arabia's regional rival, Iran, is not part of the coalition. Iraq and Syria whose forces are battling the Islamic State terror group are also not in the coalition.

India and Saudi Arabia,a major ally of Pakistan, also decided to ramp up their counter-terrorism cooperation and asked all states to dismantle terror infrastructures where they exist while rejecting use of terrorism as an instrument of state policy.

The strong views by Saudi Arabia, known as spiritual home of Islam and one of the most influential country in the Gulf region, is seen asan unprecedented political endorsement of New Delhi's concerns about terrorism, extremism and radicalisation.

The two countries also signed an agreement in sharing intelligence related to money laundering and terror financing.

"We also stress the importance of continued cooperation and coordination with the government of your country in the field of counter-terrorism," the Saudi Foreign Ministry quoted the King as saying.

He further said, "We are confident that our discussions will enhance our relationship and cooperation in various fields in order to achieve the strategic partnership between our two countries to serve the common interests."



Besides extensive deliberations on combating terrorism, the talks focused on ways to expand strategic cooperation in a range of areas such as trade and investment, particularly in the oil sector.

Reflecting growing congruence in ties, the two sides also



decided to ramp up defence cooperation including in maritime sphere and agreed to expand engagement in energy and infrastructure sector.

In the talks, the two leaders alsorejected totally any attempt to link terrorism to any particular race, religion or culture as they agreed to promote cooperation in cyber security, including prevention of use of cyber space for terrorism and radicalisation.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia's media covered Modi's visit extensively.

Its national daily Arab had published a six-paged supplement on April 2, the day Modi arrived here, featuring articles relating to India-Saudi ties in diverse fields.

"King-Modi talks boost strategic partnership," said its headline on the front page about talks between the two leaders.
The Supreme Court today commenced final hearing on appeals of four condemned convicts in the December 16 gangrape and murder case against the Delhi High Court order upholding their death sentence.

A bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra started hearing appeals of the convicts, who contended that the High Court had erred in its finding and had wrongly upheld the trial court judgement awarding them death sentence.

The bench, also comprising Justice V Gopala Gowda and Kurian Joseph, asked advocate M L Sharma appearing for two convicts -- Mukesh and Pawan -- to start the argument.

Besides, Mukesh and Pawan, the other two convicts, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Kumar Singh, in the case had approached the apex court against the Delhi High Court's March 13, 2014 verdict, which had termed that their offence fell in the rarest of rare category and upheld the death sentence awarded to them by the trial court.

The 23-year-old paramedic was brutally assaulted and gangraped by six persons in a moving bus in South Delhi and thrown out of the vehicle with her male friend on the night of December 16, 2012. She died in a Singapore hospital on December 29.

The prime accused, Ram Singh, had been found dead in a cell in Tihar Jail in March 2013 and proceedings against him were abated.

On August 31, 2013, another accused, a juvenile at the time of the crime, was convicted and sentenced to three years in a reformation home. He was released from observation home in December last year.

During the arguments, Sharma questioned the testimony of the victim and said as per the charge sheet, the victim was so critically injured that she could not have recorded her statement before the magistrate, or could have been able to give a dying declaration, thus it could not be relied upon.

He also questioned the matching of DNA samples of the accused, saying the victim was so weak after the incident due to excessive blood flow from her body that blood of other person was transfused into her body, which would in all likelihood mean that she will have two DNAs.

Sharma, citing the Singapore hospital autopsy report of the victim, said there was no injury to her private parts.

"As per charge sheet, the main allegation of prosecution was that an iron rod was inserted into victim's private parts but the Singapore hospital autopsy report says there was no such injury," Sharma said.

Senior advocate Siddharth Luthra appearing for Delhi



government said immediately after the incident, the victim was admitted at Safdurjung Hospital where fair amount of treatment was given to her. Her autopsy report was released by the Singapore hospital where she died during treatment.

The bench, after perusing the Singapore hospital report, rejected the contention of Sharma and said "nothing turns on that" and private parts were indeed damaged but it will deal with the issue at the later stage of arguments.

It asked the counsel for the convicts to first shatter the testimony of eye witness, which has been given due credence by the courts below and then tell whether gestures of the victim while recording her statement before a magistrate can be recorded as words or not.

"There was an eye witness (PW1) in the case. Both trial court and High Court have given credence to the testimony of the PW1, so you have to first shatter that," the bench said.

The hearing remained inconclusive and would continue on April 8.

The Delhi High Court had on March 13, 2014 upheld their conviction and award of the death penalty by terming the offence as "extremely fiendish" and "unparalleled in the history of criminal jurisprudence", adding that the "exemplary punishment" was the need of the hour.

It had also said if this case was not "the rarest of rare cases" then "there is likely to be none".

The convicts in their appeals have sought the High Court judgement be set aside as there was no "substance or material piece of evidence" and there were contradictions in the depositions of the victim and her friend, who had accompanied her in the bus, about the offence and the offenders.

It said the testimony of the SDM cannot be relied upon as she had deposed that the victim was "comfortable, happy and willing to record her statement."



"Can a patient who is on ventilator...Be happy and comfortable," it said.

Disputing the veracity of the dying declaration of the victim, it said she was not fit enough to record her statement and hence, the statement made through gestures cannot be relied upon.
The Schedule Caste and Schedule Tribe people are fairly represented in Bihar police force, a minister informed the state legislative assembly today.

Against total number of Bihar police force at 67,848, the SC has 16.04 per cent representation at 9554 and the ST at 2.75 per cent at 1648, the Home Minister in-charge Bijendra Prasad Yadav said in reply to a starred question by the RLSP MLA Lalan Paswan.

The representation of the SC and ST people are more than their share under reservation formula at 16 per cent and one per cent respectively, he said.

However, the backlog of vacancies under the SC/ST quota was being filled for which roster clearance work was underway and the request for recruitment against those posts will be sent to the Bihar Staff Selection Commission, the Home Minister in-charge said.
Several agencies, including Delhi Police, are probing the gunning down of NIA officer Mohd Tanzil Ahmad and looking into suspected movement of two bikers, a senior police official said today.

Uttar Pradesh Inspector General of Police (Public Grievances) A Mutha Jain said all angles were being probed by several agencies, including Delhi Police.

On being asked about two bike-borne men visible in a CCTV footage, Jain said these "aspects" were being looked into.

"Monitoring of the case is being done at high-level, but we are not in a position to share any information. When we have something concrete we will share," he said.

Jain said that Ahmad's wife was admitted to Fortis hospital in Noida and was under observation.

Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav expressed profound grief over the death of Ahmad and announced an ex gratia of Rs 20 lakh to his family.

He assured Ahmad's family that adequate security would be provided to them.

Yadav has also directed the DGP to provide all necessary help to the agencies probing the crime so that strict action is taken against those behind this "gory murder".

In the wee hours yesterday, Ahmad was shot dead by two motorcycle-borne assailants in Bijnor.

Ahmad, an assistant commandant with BSF who was currently on deputation in NIA, was returning to Sahaspur from the wedding of his niece when two unidentified bike-borne assailants stopped his car and shot at him.

His wife was also injured in the incident while his two children, on the back seat of the car being driven by the deceased, were safe.
Filmmaker Shekhar Kapur today remembered Heath Ledger as "an ancient wise spirit" on the 37th birth anniversary of the Hollywood star.

Kapur, 70, directed Ledger in his 2002 movie "The Four Feathers". Ledger died on January 22, 2008, New York City, from an accidental intoxication from prescription drugs.

"He went too young. But then I always told Heath there was an ancient wise spirit in his young mind. His spirit rose," Kapur wrote on Twitter.

The "Mr India" director has also wrapped the shoot of the pilot of his TV drama "Will", which tells the wild story of young William Shakespeare's arrival onto the theatre scene in 16th century London.

"Finished the WILL shoot. It was an amazing brilliant creative adventure. Thanks everybody for your hard work and love.
Air strikes have killed several Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front members including its spokesman and regime forces have retaken a strategic town from the Islamic State group in the latest setbacks for jihadists in Syria.

Abu Firas al-Suri, whose real name was Radwan Nammous, fought against Soviet forces in Afghanistan where he met Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and the founding father of global jihad, Abdullah Azzam, before returning to Syria in 2011.

Suri was meeting with other leading Islamist fighters in an Al-Nusra stronghold in Kafar Jales in northwestern Syria when the raids struck yesterday.

He "was an old time Al-Qaeda member ... He was brought in from Yemen as an ideological counterweight" for rival jihadist group IS, said Pieter Van Ostaeyen, a historian and monitor of jihadist groups.

"His death indeed is a blow for Al-Nusra. However, that will not change a lot on the operational level," he added.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Suri, his son and at least 20 jihadists of Al-Nusra and Jund al-Aqsa and other fighters from Uzbekistan were killed in strikes on positions in Idlib province.

Seven were high-ranking jihadists, the Britain-based Observatory said, adding that the Syrian air force had likely carried out the strikes.

A temporary ceasefire between government forces and rebels has largely held since February 27, but it does not cover Al-Nusra and IS.

The break has, in fact, allowed Russia and the US-led coalition that has been bombing IS in Syria to concentrate on their fight against the jihadists.

Al-Nusra has generally kept a low profile since the truce brokered by the United States and Russia came into force.

But on Friday, the Al-Qaeda affiliate and allied rebel groups pushed regime loyalists out of Al-Eis, a strategic town in the northern province of Aleppo, killing 12 members of the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement.

"It was Al-Nusra's biggest operation since the ceasefire began," Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

Suri's killing may even be a warning by the regime to Al-Nusra against staging any more offensives in future.

Al-Nusra's rival IS has also lost a string of high-ranking members in recent weeks, mainly to strikes by the US-led coalition that launched an aerial campaign against the jihadists in Iraq and Syria in 2014.

On Wednesday, a drone strike near IS's de facto capital Raqa killed Tunisian commander Abu al-Haija, according to the Observatory.
At least six police officers have been killed in a Taliban ambush on their convoy in Afghanistan's northern Balkh province, an official said today.

Abdul Manon Raoufi, operational commander for police in the region, said insurgents attacked the convoy yesterday night in the Dawlat Abad district.

The police were on their way to neighboring Jawzjan province after conducting an anti-insurgent operation in Balkh when the ambush happened, he said.

No group has claimed responsibility. Raoufi said an insurgent leader of the Taliban was also killed in the gunfight.

Separately, in eastern Nangarhar province, two people died and six others were wounded in a bomb explosion Monday, said Hazrat Hussain Mashreqewal, spokesman for the provincial police chief.

The blast targeted police in the Khewa district, but only civilians were killed and wounded, he said.

Taliban fighters have stepped up their attacks against Afghan security forces since 2014, when the international combat mission ended and most foreign troops left the country.
Tech Mahindra has come forward to set up a Centre for Excellence (CoE) in Robotics and Analytics Department at the International Institute of Digital Technologies in the temple-town Tirupati.

Tech Mahindra CEO C P Gurnani, during his meeting with Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu here today, agreed to set up the CoE in Tirupati, an official release said.

Gurnani also agreed to facilitate employment to 1,000 persons at Tech Mahindra's facility in Visakhapatnam, it added.

The Chief Minister and Tech Mahindra CEO discussed the state government's initiatives for development of Information Technology sector.

Naidu told the CEO about the adoption of technology and innovation for better governance and welfare activities in the state. He invited the IT major to partner AP in its growth story.

Gurnani promised Chandrababu of Tech Mahindra's support for IT development in AP. He has also agreed to be a chief advisor in the Chief Minister's core team.

IT advisor J A Chowdary, Tech Mahindra's executive vice- president A S Murthy and other officials were also present.
DMK today said Tamil Nadu Brahmins Welfare Sangam has extended support to the Karunanidhi-led party for the May 16 state assembly election and announced that 3,001 functionaries from rival parties joined it.

"Tamil Nadu Brahmins Welfare Sangam functionaries and members today called on DMK treasurer MK Stalin and extended support for the Assembly election," a party release said.

The Sangam has said it would work for the victory of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam-led front, it said.

Senior DMK leaders R S Barathi and former Chennai Mayor Ma Subramanaian were present during the meeting.

Also, 3,001 functionaries from rival parties, including AIADMK, DMDK, PMK, BJP, MDMK, VCK, AISMK, TMC, and Puratchi Baratham, joined the DMK, the release said.

The party gave a detailed list of names of those who joined it today.
Imagine living near a trash dump so putrid that you would rather move to war-torn Syria.

That's what Fayyad Ayyash, his wife Riham and their four young daughters plan to do next week, leaving behind their home in Lebanon for neighbouring Syria.

Their modest two-storey house in the town of Naameh, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) south of the Lebanese capital, directly overlooks the infamous and odorous landfill by the same name.

"We're going next week. In Syria, there's a possibility I might die. Here, we'll definitely die," Fayyad tells AFP.

From his grassy backyard, dozens of large trucks carrying tonnes of waste can be seen -- and smelled -- lining up to add their load to the "trash mountain."



The July 2015 closure of the notorious landfill lies at the heart of Lebanon's trash crisis, which has seen rivers of trash spread across the Mediterranean country, triggering protests nationwide.

Then last month, the government made a controversial decision to reopen it -- and this was the last straw for residents like Fayyad.

Pulling out a bright blue inhaler, he says his family has been suffering from respiratory problems for months because of the dump.

His daughters, whose ages range from just under two to 10 years, all have trouble eating and sleeping.

"It's always worse at night than during the day. The whole area is swarming with the same smell and the same sickness," he says.

Fayyad says it's become so bad, he's decided to flee across the border to the town of Libeen in southern Syria, a country where a conflict has been raging since 2011.

The Naameh landfill opened in 1997 and was meant to be a temporary dump, but an alternative site was never opened.

For 20 years, the waste generated in Beirut and Mount Lebanon -- the country's most populous areas -- was dumped in Naameh.

The verdant valley swelled into a trash mountain of more than 15 million tonnes.

Furious residents forced the closure of the site in July 2015, saying it was leading to high cancer rates, skin diseases and breathing problems.

Uncollected rubbish began piling up around Beirut and its suburbs, emitting a horrible stench that sparked protests in downtown Beirut demanding a long-term solution.

After months of political wrangling, Lebanon's cabinet announced a four-year plan to end the waste crisis -- and its first step was reopening Naameh for two months.
Japanese giant Toshiba Corporation today said it has appointed Tomohiko Okada as the Managing Director of its India operations.

Okada will lead Toshiba India to the path of next level of growth across the group's storage, social infrastructure, and energy businesses in the country, Toshiba India said in a statement.

Okada will replace Kenji Urai, who is moving back to Japan, it added.

Toshiba India's operations include businesses like hydro- power systems, social infrastructure systems and community solution systems, semiconductors and storage solutions, multi-functional printers/devices and digital products and services.

"Tomohiko Okada brings extensive experience in the group's energy operations across market segments and geographies and has led several successful project acquisitions across global operations. I am confident that he will continue the strong growth momentum and lead Toshiba India to newer heights," Urai said.

Okada said the developments in India in the manufacturing space present the company with many opportunities.

"With my experience, I look forward to pursue the 'For the Next India' story further. We have one of the finest teams and strategic partners on-board to take Toshiba forward and support the development in the country," he said.

Okada has been with the company for over three decades and has been associated with India operations for 25 years.

He first joined Toshiba Corporation in 1983 and since then has held a number of global senior management roles. His first association with India dates back to April 1989, where he managed the group's operations in Delhi for 5 years.

Subsequently, from April 2010 to December 2013, he served as President of Toshiba Thermal and Hydro Power Systems Company (TTPS/TIPL).

Post demerger of TTPS/TIPL in Toshiba JSW Power Systems India, another 100 per cent subsidiary of Toshiba Corporation, Okada has been responsible for development of Thermal Power business in India.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan today predicted that Ankara's ally Azerbaijan would "one day" regain control of Nagorny Karabakh, as deadly clashes between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces over the region raged for a third day.

"We are today standing side-by-side with our brothers in Azerbaijan. But this persecution will not continue forever. Karabakh will one day return to its original owner. It will be Azerbaijan's," Erdogan told a conference in Ankara broadcast live on television.

Nagorny Karabakh was seized by Armenian rebels from Azerbaijan in a war that ended with an inconclusive truce in 1994.

The territory is now ruled by Armenia-backed separatist authorities who claim independence and are backed by Yerevan but are not recognised by any state.

Erdogan praised Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev, saying he was the only leader who came to Turkey to personally give condolences for the deadly attack that rocked Ankara in March.

"The leaders who ran to give condolences when there were attacks in Europe could not be bothered to come to our country," said Erdogan.

"But Aliyev said: 'You don't come here (to Azerbaijan). I am coming to you.' And he came. And we shared our pain here."



Erdogan had at the weekend vowed to back Azerbaijan "to the end" in the conflict, saying "we pray our Azerbaijani brothers will prevail in these clashes".

Turkey, which has close cultural and linguistic ties with Azerbaijan, is a key ally of Baku.

Ankara has no diplomatic relations with Armenia due to the dispute over the mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire which Yerevan regards as genocide.

Azerbaijan said three of its troops were killed overnight when Armenian forces shelled its positions using mortars and grenade launchers, taking the overall death toll in the latest surge of violence to at least 36.
Bihar government today hit out at the Centre for tweaking the sharing ratio of the states in implementing the Centrally-Sponsored Schemes (CSS) as well as horizontal division of tax revenue as per recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission which, it said, will put unnecessary burden on a resource-crunched state like Bihar.

Replying to an adjournment motion in the Assembly brought by JD(U) MLAs Vinod Prasad Yadav and Shyam Rajak, besides 11 others legislators, Water Resources Department Minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh said Bihar has been unnecessarily burdened and made to put in more funds under its sharing ration with the Centre on implementing the CSS in the state during 2015-16 and 2016-17.

Reeling out figures to buttress his claim, he said the Centre has set aside a revised budget of Rs 20,102.59 crore for implementation of various central schemes in Bihar for which the state government had provisioned Rs 6,306.59 crore, but the sharing pattern tweaked by the Union Finance Ministry's circular in November last year forces the state government to cough up an additional Rs 4,508.63 crore to raise its overall share to Rs 10,715.22 crore.

Similarly, the Centre has allocated Rs 22,467.37 crore in the current fiscal towards its share in the CSS in Bihar where the latter's share should have been Rs 7,005.57 crore under the old sharing pattern, but now it will have to bear an additional Rs 4,917.87 crore at Rs 11,927.74 crore, he said.

Charging the Narendra Modi government with squeezing Bihar's financial resources further, the WRD minister said the state's share in the divisible pool of central tax resources has been reduced to 9.66 per cent on the basis of the 14th Finance Commission Recommendations against the corresponding figure of 10.92 per cent under the 13th Finance Commission.

Though the states' collective share in the divisible pool of central tax revenue has increased from 42 per cent on the 14th Finance Commission's Recommendations against 32 per cent by the previous panel, the parameters for distribution pattern has been tweaked to "distress" backward states like Bihar, Singh alleged.
Two persons were today killed when the car they were driving fell off the incomplete end of a bridge at Ranoli village on National Highway number eight near here.

The accident occurred in the wee hours when Jignesh and Sunil were going to Gandhinagar from Surat. The bridge was under construction, police said, adding the duo died on the spot.

An investigation into the case is underway, they said.
Two woman cadres of the banned Kangleipak Communist Party (Noyon) were apprehended by a team of Manipur policeyesterday from Pungdongbam area in Imphal East district, a police officer said today.

The apprehended have been identified as Phijam Ebemcha (33) and Sagolsem Tonanbam (30) said the officer adding that the two were involved in recruiting of minor girls for their proscribed outfit and carrying out extortion activities.

Earlier, on April 2, one cadre of People's Liberation Army was nabbed by Manipur Police from Heirok Champrathong in Thoubal district. He has been identified as 40-year-old Ningthoujam Ranjit Meitei, the police officer said.
Security experts in Britain have warned travellers against Brussels-style terror attacks at the country's airports, including the busy Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted, as they called for stepping up security measures at the entry to terminals.

Over 10 people were killed and many seriously injured after suicide bombers blew themselves up at Zaventem airport in Brussels on March 22.

"The events in Brussels have served to remind us that public area is vulnerable and there is more work to maximise airport security.

"Airports internationally have that vulnerability and struggle to cope with the challenge," aviation expert Matthew Finn, managing director of consultancy firm Augmentiq, told 'Daily Star'.

More than the risk of flying, security experts now believe the real danger to travellers is before they even get to check-in.

They have warned travellers against Brussels-style terror attacks in the country, home to the busy Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted airports.

Defence and aviation consultant Paul Edwards, managing director of Strategic Effect, said: "Attacks against airports aren't new but the terrorists' MO (modus operandi) in Brussels was new to Europe. They defeated security because they didn't go through security.

"Terrorist groups have a habit of repeating successful methods. The security of check-in areas needs to be improved and needs to be extended to include entry to terminals."



Edwards called on British airports to at least check that people have a passport and plane ticket when they attempt to enter terminal buildings.

He also advocated luggage and body scans at the entrance.

Zaventem airport has introduced these measures whenit reopened yesterday.
Britain's Queen Elizabeth-II cannot be made a respondent in Pakistan's bid to bring back the famed Koh-i-Noor diamond, a provincial official told a top court here.

Lahore High Court Justice Khalid Mahmood Khan reserved the decision on a petition seeking direction for the Pakistan government to bring back Koh-i-Noor, which which India has been trying to get from the UK for years, after a law officer of the Punjab government submitted a reply.

The law officer argued that the petition is not maintainable as British Queen cannot be made respondent. He said said the petitioner had was not an aggrieved person to agitate the matter thus it should be dismissed.

Barrister Javed Iqbal Jaffry had filed a plea in the Lahore High Court naming Queen Elizabeth II and British High Commission in Pakistan respondents and seeking direction to the federal government to bring the diamond to Pakistan from the British government.

Jaffrey said the British had snatched the diamond from Daleep Singh, grandson of Maharaja Ranjeet Singh and took to the United Kingdom.

"The diamond became part of the crown of incumbent Queen Elizabeth-II at the time of her crowing in 1953. Queen Elizabeth has no right on the Koh-i-Noor diamond, which weighs 105 carats and worth billions of rupees," he said.

He said Koh-I-Noor diamond was cultural heritage of Punjab province and its citizens owned.

According to reports, in 1849, after the conquest of the Punjab by the British forces, the properties of the Sikh Empire were confiscated.

The Koh-i-noor was transferred to the treasury of the British East India Company in Lahore. The properties of the Sikh Empire were taken as war compensations.

The diamond was shipped to Britain on a ship where cholera broke out and supposedly the keeper of the diamond lost it for some days and it was returned to him by his servant. The diamond was handed to Queen Victoria in 1850.

The 105-carat Koh-i-Noor is one of the Crown Jewels and is now on display in the Tower of London.

India has made regular requests for the jewel's return, saying the diamond is an integral part of the country's history and culture.

Koh-i-Noor, which means "mountain of light", is currently on display in the Tower of London along with other precious ornaments that comprise Britain's crown jewels.
Uttar Pradesh government has prepared a plan to establish the country's biggest bus fabrication unit here with a project cost of Rs 450 crore.

Minister of State for Transport (Independent Charge), Yasar Shah said the administration has identified 30 acre land for the project.

The unit will prepare bodies for famous companies like Tata, Volvo and Ashok Leyland, he said, adding that it would provide employment to 20,000 people.

Shah said that being the neighbouring district of Nepal, the place is being seen as a transport hub.
Thousands of US and Philippine troops, along with Australian defense forces, began annual drills Monday to prepare to quickly respond to a range of potential crises, including in the disputed South China Sea.

The exercises have been opposed in recent years by China, which has territorial disputes in the South China Sea with several countries, including the Philippines, and suspects the drills are part of efforts to contain Beijing.

Washington and Manila say the drills are not directed against China, and that they also focus on responding to natural disasters and humanitarian crises.

US Defense Secretary Ash Carter will fly to the Philippines to witness some of the 11-day exercises, underscoring the importance Washington puts on the joint combat drills that have been staged 32 times, said US Marine Lt. Gen. John Toolan, who heads the 5,000 American military personnel taking part in the maneuvers.

Carter's presence will "reaffirm that the relationship that we have with the Philippines is rock solid and we're side by side," Toolan, who heads US Marine forces in the Pacific, said at a conference.

A highly mobile rocket system that has been deployed in hot spots such as Afghanistan will be used during the Balikatan, or Shoulder to Shoulder, exercises for the first time, he said.

"We are very, very expeditionary. We can move this stuff anywhere we need to," Toolan said.

Filipino military officials said a key exercise will involve US, Australian and Philippine forces retaking an oil rig seized by hostile units in a mock assault in an unused rig off the western province of Palawan, which faces the South China Sea.

The Philippines has turned to the United States, a longtime treaty ally, and others to rapidly acquire patrol ships and planes as its territorial rifts with China have escalated in the last four years. The disputes in the South China Sea also involve Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei.

"The Philippines is the least capable armed forces in the region, and the US, being a big brother, is a big help," said Philippine Vice Admiral Alexander Lopez, who heads the contingent of about 3,500 Filipino military personnel involved in the exercises.

While many Filipinos welcome American support in strengthening the Philippines' territorial defense, left-wing activists and nationalists have opposed a growing US military presence in the former American colony, along with China's increasingly assertive advances in disputed waters.

Dozens of left-wing activists protested at the US Embassy in Manila today, waving placards that read "No to China aggression" and "US troops, Philippines is not your playground.
USS Blue Ridge (LCC-19), the lead ship of the two Blue Ridge-class command ships of the United States Navy and the command ship of the United States Seventh Fleet, is on a visit to Mumbai.

The warship, whose primary role is to provide command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence support to the commander and staff of the United States Seventh Fleet, arrived here yesterday.

It is currently forward-deployed to US Navy Fleet Activities, Yokosuka, in Japan and is the third Navy ship named after the Blue Ridge Mountains in the Appalachian Mountains of the eastern USA.

Blue Ridge is the oldest deployable warship of the US Navy, an official on board the warship told a group of visiting mediapersons today.

The warship, which has been operational for the last around 40 years, is expected to remain in service for 20 more years after a major repair and overhaul, he said.

The warship has accommodation for over 250 officers, 1200 enlisted men and 100 enlisted women, he said.

With an ability to track land sea and air movements throughout the region, the warship is among the most technologically advanced ships in the world, the official said.
The US Navy says it has seized a weapons shipment in the Arabian Sea from Iran likely heading to war-torn Yemen.

The Navy said in a statement Monday that the USS Sirocco on March 28 intercepted and seized the shipment of weapons hidden aboard a small dhow, a type of ship commonly used in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean.

The Navy said the shipment included 1,500 Kalashnikov assault rifles, 200 rocket-propelled grenade launchers and 21 .50-caliber machine guns. It said those aboard the dhow were released after sailors confiscated the arms.

A Saudi-led, US-backed coalition is fighting in Yemen against Shiite rebels and their allies there. Officials have linked similar weapons seizures to Iran and the Shiite rebels, though the rebels deny receiving support from the Islamic Republic.
US and Philippine troops began major exercises today as China's state media warned "outsiders" against interfering in tense South China Sea territorial disputes.

The official Xinhua agency gave the warning as Manila and Washington launched the 11-day Balikatan (Shoulder-to-Shoulder) exercises with a low-key opening ceremony in Manila.

US Defence Secretary Ash Carter is to fly to the Philippines next week to observe live-firing of artillery and visit US Navy ships taking part.

Some 5,000 US troops are taking part along with nearly 4,000 Philippine soldiers and 80 from Australia.

"The... Exercises caps Manila's recent attempts to involve outsiders in (a) regional row," China's official agency Xinhua said in a commentary.

It cited Japan, which sent a submarine on a visit to the Philippines last weekend, and Australia.

"However, a provocation so fear-mongering and untimely as such is likely to boomerang on the initiators," Xinhua added.

"A big country with vital interests in Asia, the United States should first clarify the targets of its Pivot to Asia strategy, which so far has featured no more than unscrupulous inconsistency between fear-mongering deeds and peace-loving words."



China lays claim to almost all of the South China Sea, despite partial counter-claims by Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines.

In recent years it has built major structures including radar systems and airstrips over reclaimed reefs and outcrops, sparking international concern it could impose military controls over the entire area.

The US does not take sides in the territorial disputes but has asserted the importance of keeping sea and air routes open.

It has sent US bombers and warships on patrol close to the Chinese construction activity in recent months, infuriating Beijing.

Lieutenant-General John Toolan, commander of US Marine Corps forces in the Pacific, told reporters in Manila the exercises would help the allies improve maritime security and maintain regional stability.

"Our alliance is strong. The United States is committed to this relationship and these are not empty words.... Peace in Southeast Asia depends on our cooperation," Toolan added.

The exercises come ahead of a decision this year by a United Nations-backed tribunal on a legal challenge by Manila to China's territorial claims.

The Philippines is also preparing to host US troops at five bases under a defence pact born out of US President Barack Obama's plan to reassert American influence in the Pacific.
The Justice Department is reviewing the so-called Panama Papers and will follow up on wrongdoing or corruption linked to the US, an agency spokesman said Monday.

"We are aware of the reports and are reviewing them," Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr.

"While we cannot comment on the specifics of these alleged documents, the US Department of Justice takes very seriously all credible allegations of high level, foreign corruption that might have a link to the United States or the US financial system."



The comments came one day after the release of some 11.5 million documents by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, concerning some 214,000 offshore entities. The leaked documents came from Mossack Fonseca, a Panama-based law firm with offices in more than 35 countries.

The revelations have left powerful figures from countries including Russia, China, Argentina and Iceland scrambling to explain apparent connections to offshore financial vehicles that look to have been set up to hide assets.

France, Spain and Australia all opened legal probes Monday.

Jubilee USA Network, a faith-based anti-poverty group, called for Congress to prevent the establishment of anonymous companies in the United States.

"These companies fuel corruption, poverty, human trafficking and armed conflict," said Eric LeCompte, executive director of the Jubilee USA.

But whether or not these documents reveal substantive,



legitimate evidence of people thwarting monitors of the international financial system, the United States will continue to be a leading advocate of greater transparency in its financial system, Earnest said.

"That's something that we have long pursued, and we're going to continue to be at the forefront of making that argument because it contributes to our national security," he said.

There are officials both at Treasury Department and Department of Justice who have responsibilities here.

The effective completion, or the effective implementation of those strategies by the Department of Treasury and the Department of Justice also rely on effective coordination with our partners around the world, he added.

"So there obviously is an opportunity for the US to use some of our leverage as a leader in this field and as the world's largest economy to bring about some of the changes that we would like to see. We have been doing that for a long time. Those efforts are only going to continue," Earnest said.

"We're going to continue to be a leading advocate for that kind of transparency. There will continue to be large groups of national security professionals at the Department of Justice and at the Department of Treasury who will continue to be focused on these issues," he said.

The latest investigation from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) zeroes in on the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, and is perhaps the starkest example yet of how financial secrecy helps fuel crime, corruption, and inequality that stifle development around the globe, said Financial Transparency Coalition.

"This latest leak, potentially the biggest ever, is another nail in the coffin for anonymous companies and secrecy jurisdictions," said Porter McConnell, Director of the Financial Transparency Coalition.

"People around the globe are waking up to the damage caused by anonymous companies, complex tax structures, and the lawyers and accountants that help set them up," he said.

"From the South African mine workers' families whose death benefit was stolen to the Indonesian parent left unable to pay school fees to the Syrian people who lost their lives in bombing raids paid for via anonymous companies - crime, inequality, and violence are the inevitable result of the extreme financial secrecy available to the rich and powerful through firms like Mossack Fonseca. Ordinary people are no longer willing to pay the price," McConnell added.
A US air strike in Syria targeted Al-Qaeda members, reportedly killing its spokesman, and the Islamic State group has been forced from a key town in the latest setbacks for the jihadists.

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said the US military conducted an air raid on a meeting of officials of Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front yesterday in northeast Syria, targeting Abu Firas al-Suri and other leaders.

"We assess that Al-Qaeda senior leader Abu Firas al-Suri was in that meeting and we are working to confirm his death," Cook said today.

He said Suri was a Syrian national and a "legacy" Al-Qaeda member who fought in Afghanistan in the late 1980s and 1990s.

He "worked with Osama bin Laden and other founding Al-Qaeda members to train terrorists and conduct attacks globally," Cook said, adding that yesterday's strike killed several enemy fighters.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Suri, his son and at least 20 jihadists of Al-Nusra and Jund al-Aqsa and other fighters from Uzbekistan were killed in strikes on positions in Idlib province.

Seven were high-ranking jihadists, the Britain-based Observatory said.

Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, a research fellow at the Middle East Forum, a US think-tank, said Suri was a top jihadist official.

Suri "was a very senior member of Al-Nusra, but organisations like Al-Nusra aren't debilitated because they lose a single senior leader", he said.

"Their organisational structures are well prepared for targeted assassinations, which are usual business for them."



Suri, whose real name was Radwan Nammous, fought against Soviet forces in Afghanistan where he met Bin Laden and the founding father of global jihad, Abdullah Azzam, before returning to Syria in 2011.

A temporary ceasefire between government forces and rebels has largely held since February 27, but it does not cover Al-Nusra and IS.

The break has allowed Russia and the US-led coalition that has been bombing IS in Syria to concentrate on their fight against the jihadists.

Al-Nusra has generally kept a low profile since the truce brokered by the United States and Russia came into force.

But on Friday, the Al-Qaeda affiliate and allied rebels pushed regime loyalists out of Al-Eis, a strategic town in the northern province of Aleppo, killing 12 members of the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement.

"It was Al-Nusra's biggest operation since the ceasefire began," Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.
Even as the Hyderabad Central University has been witnessing sporadic protests over the suicide of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula, HCU Vice-Chancellor Prof Appa Rao Podile and students today cheered the institution being ranked among the best in the country.

Podile credited the HCU faculty, students and non-teaching staff for the university being ranked at number four among all institutions in the country.

"We are humbled by this achievement and the university will put in more efforts to ensure that it is recognised worldwide for its quality of teaching and research. Our alumni have played a vital role in the growth of the university and it's our responsibility to produce quality students who will be model citizens for India," Podile said.

HCU students' union president Zuhail K P said, "It's wonderful. We are happy about it."



The ranking, he said, has proved that the agitation has not "destroyed" academic atmosphere on the campus. "We are continuing our legacy (academic excellence)," Zuhail said.

The University of Hyderabad, popularly known as HCU, has been ranked among the best universities of the country in the first government-backed survey using parameters ranging from research facilities, academic excellence to the placements of graduates.

As per the rankings, released by HRD Minister Smriti Irani in Delhi, the HCU is ranked fourth among all institutions in the country.

More than 230 universities were surveyed for the rankings, while the criteria used to rank the institutions included teaching, learning and resources, research, professional practice and collaborative performance, graduation outcomes, outreach and perception.

An independent agency, the National Bureau of Accreditation, validated the data submitted by the institutes.

The new ranking framework has been drafted to provide an Indian context to educational aspirations and needs. This will help institutions that conduct research in languages other than English and are focused on inclusive education, two factors that are overlooked by international agencies.

The university has been on the boil since Vemula committed suicide on the campus on January 17, subsequent to which VC Podile went on a leave amid protest by students.

Upon his return from two-month leave on March 22, the VC was met with protests on the campus, even as classes remained suspended for a few days in the University amid a clampdown on entry of outsiders.
Veteran Indian-origin South African freedom fighter and Nelson Mandela's close aide Ahmed Kathrada has called on the country's embattled President Jacob Zuma to "submit to the will of the people" and resign in the wake of serious corruption allegations.

Kathrada in an open letter joined increasing calls for Zuma to resign after the country's highest judicial body, the Constitutional Court, last week found him to have breached his duties in terms of the Constitution.

Kathrada was involved in the movement for democracy and was jailed for 26 years alongside Mandela and others till the end of Apartheid in South Africa in 1994.

"Today I appeal to our President to submit to the will of the people and resign. I believe that is what would help the country to find its way out of a path that it never imagined it would be on, but one that it must move out of soon," Kathrada said.

But despite the call from Kathrada and others from within and outside the ruling ANC, the party's top executive has not yet taken a decision on whether to recall Zuma as president, the major reason cited by analysts being its feared impact on the party in a local government election later this year.

Tomorrow, parliament will debate a motion tabled by the opposition Democratic Alliance calling for Zuma's removal.

Zuma has been under attack recently for his close ties to the Gupta business family which hails from Saharanpur, amid claims by senior leaders of the African National Congress (ANC) that they had influenced ministerial positions in his government, something both Zuma and the Guptas have denied.

Zuma was also alleged to have carried about USD 400 million to the Guptas in Dubai on a personal visit.

With huge business interests in South Africa, the wealthy Gupta family, which reportedly enjoys close ties with 73-year-old Zuma, has been under fire for exerting undue influence on the government.

Zuma is also under pressure to step down after a damning ruling by the Constitutional Court found him in breach of the constitution for using public funds to upgrade his private home at Nkandla village.

The president who has long denied any wrongdoing for the work valued in 2014 around USD 24 million, last week apologised for the misuse of public funds.
Vietnam's coast guard has seized a Chinese oil tanker which it claims intruded into Vietnamese waters, state media said today, the latest episode in a festering territorial dispute in the South China Sea.

The Qiong Yangpu was carrying 100,000 litres of oil, the official Vietnam Agency said, adding that it was captured Thursday and impounded in the northern port of Hai Phong.

The three-man crew was handed over to police, the report said.

"It was spotted and seized by Hai Phong coast guards... 12 nautical miles from the marine delineation line in the Tonkin Gulf to the northwest of Vietnam's Bach Long Vi island," the report said.

Police, military, and coast guard officials in Hai Phong declined comment today.

According to the state-run Tuoi Tre newspaper, the tanker was selling oil to Chinese fishing boats in the area.

"The captain, however, failed to present relevant documents to prove the origin of the oil, while his two crew members have no operating licence," Tuoi Tre said.

Vietnam and neighbouring China have longstanding territorial disputes over the Spratly and Paracel Islands, and often trade diplomatic barbs over oil exploration and fishing rights in the South China Sea.

Vietnam regularly chases Chinese fishing vessels out of waters it claims, but it is rare for authorities to hold a boat and its crew.

In recent years China has begun aggressively patrolling near the contested islands and Vietnamese officials accuse it of imposing fishing bans and using patrol boats to keep foreign trawlers out.

Hanoi says hundreds of its fishing boat crews have been arrested by Chinese authorities over the last few years.

Beijing has occupied the Paracels, known as Xisha in Chinese, since a brief war with South Vietnam in 1974.

It also claims the Spratlys, as do - in whole or in part - Taiwan, Malaysia, the Philippines and Brunei as well as Vietnam.

Beijing claims as its historical territory virtually all of the South China Sea, which is believed to sit atop huge oil and gas reserves.
A woman village head was today shot at and seriously injured by unidentified assailants in Jethwara area, police said here.

Guddi Devi (50), who is head of Derwa town, was shot at by motorcycle-borne persons when she has gone out on a morning walk, they said.

She has been referred to an Allahabad hospital in a serious condition, police said.

The family members feel that the attack was an outcome of an election-related rivalry, but no complaint has been filed so far.
Despite various "ambiguities" in the MoU signed between Bhilwara Municipal Corporation and Jindal Saw company in 2011 regarding the construction of a railway over bridge in the district, the government will ensure the task is done, the Rajasthan Assembly was told today.

Urban Development and Housing minister Rajpal Singh said as per the MoU the company was to construct a railway over bridge in Bhilwara but nothing was done so far.

The MoU was not clear and there were several ambiguities, he added.

Responding to a query raised by the ruling party MLA Vitthal Shankar Avasthi during the Zero hour through call attention motion, Singh said after the MoU, the company did nothing for the development of the city.

The government will make Jindal Saw company fulfill the commitment of getting the railway over bridge constructed.
Wives of police personnel from Mumbai and Thane today called off their 20-day demonstration seeking better working conditions, including fixed duty hours, for their husbands after the state government assured them of resolving their issues.

Yashashree Patil, wife of a Mumbai Police personnel, also ended her 20-day-long hunger strike after the MoS for Home, Ram Shinde offered her juice.

The stir, held at Azad Maidan in South Mumbai, was withdrawn after Shinde assured the women that government will look into their problems once the Assembly session gets over.

"We have gone through your demands very seriously and sympathetically and believe me our government is very much committed to solve your woes. Let the ongoing session get over, we will sit immediately to chalk our the plan to meet your demands," Shinde said while addressing the agitators here.

The minister said he will apprise Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis of their demands.

"I will share your demands and feelings with Chief Minister and we will work out a plan after (holding) a detailed discussion with stake-holders, including DGP, (a) Chief Secretary-ranked officer and you all," he said.

Shinde said the government is committed to the cause of the police personnel who provide safety and security to people.

Wives of policemen have been demanding social, economical, physical and psychological welfare for their husbands and the family.

Among their demands is fixed eight-hour shift for policemen who sometimes have to clock more than twelve hours on duty during festivals and bandobast.

They also wanted better housing facilities, permanent job to sons of police personnel, implementation of Seventh Pay Commission and availability of conducive and stress-free working atmosphere for the policemen.

The issue of job stress and suicide by the police personnel cropped up many times in past.
Adding fire to the raging 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' controversy, yoga guru Ramdev has said that but for the rule of law he would have "beheaded" lakhs of people for refusing to chant the slogan, drawing sharp condemnation today from opposition parties.

Slamming the call for "violent action and public intimidation", Congress spokesman Sanjay Jha said Prime Minister Narendra Modi must take action against Ramdev while CPI-M general secretary Sitaram Yechury said it was a "deliberate diversionary tactic" to take the attention away from the problems faced by people, especially the farmers.

Ramdev's outburst came against the backdrop of AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi's recent remarks that he will not chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' even if a knife is put to his throat.

"Koi aadmi topi pehan kar ke khada ho jaata hai, bolta Bharat Mata Ki Jai nahi bolunga, chahe meri gardan kaat do. Arrey is desh mein kanoon hai, nahi toh teri ek ki kya, hum toh lakhon ki gardan kaat sakte hain (Some person wearing a cap stands up and says that he will not say Bharat Mata Ki Jai even if you decapitate him. Look, there is rule of law in this country, otherwise let alone one, we can behead lakhs," Ramdev said in a veiled attack on Owaisi but he did not name anyone.

He also said that there is a rule of law and he respects the Constitution of this country.

"Hum is desh ke kanoon aur samvidhan ka samman karte hain, nahi toh koi Bharat Mata ka apmaan kare, ek nahi, hum hazaron, lakhon ke sheesh kalam karne ka samarth rakhte hain (We respect this country's law and the Constitution, otherwise if anybody disrespects Bharat Mata, we have the capability of beheading not one but thousands and lakhs," he said.

Chanting 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' is an affirmation of citizens' faith in their country, their motherland and if a religion preached otherwise, it was against national interest, he said.

"If any religion prohibits chanting of Bharat Mata Ki Jai it is against national interest," Ramdev said addressing a 'Sadbhavna Sammelan' in Rohtak yesterday, holding that the chant is about the motherland and not any religion.

Chanting the slogan is not worship of any religion, the yoga guru said. "It is a matter of national honour, pride, prestige. We may be Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, Christians, but we are Indians first)."



"Narendra Modi needs to tell India what action will he take against both Baba Ramdev and the RSS," Jha tweeted.

"Baba Ramdev's threat to 'cut heads off'...Is a call to violent action & public intimidation. Mr Modi, await your action. Now!," he said in another tweet.

CPI-M leader Brinda Karat alleged that the Modi government has given a "virtual license" to Hindutva elements to selectively use slogans which divides the country instead of uniting it.

"Baba Ramdev seems to have alicense to say and do what he likes merely because of his proximity to BJP and RSS," said JD(U) leader Pavan Varma.
A high-level delegation of World Tipitaka Foundation (WTF) from Thailand will visit the Kongmu Kham (Golden Pagoda) of Tengapani in Arunachal Pradesh's Namsai district on April 12.

The delegates will be discussing the transcription of Tipitika Tai-Khampti Pali into Tai Khampti language.

They will also survey the proposed site for establishment of an International Tipitika Centre at Kongmu Kham in Namsai district, an official release said here today.

The WTF is famous for its innovative work of the Tipitaka in Tai Siam (Thai) script and Roman script Pali which they have been giving as Dhamma gift to many institutes and organizations such as World Court, United Nations and many universities globally for the past 16 years, the release said.
Eight current or former members of China's ruling CPC including brother-in-law of President Xi Jinping allegedly used offshore tax havens to conceal their wealth, a development that could dent his image despite overseeing the communist giant's sweeping anti-graft dragnet.

Eight of the top officials of the Communist Party of China (CPC) were among 140 political figures around the world said to have links to offshore accounts, according to the so- called Panama Papers - the leaked documents from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca.

The officials include Xi's brother-in-law Deng Jiagui, who reportedly set up two British Virgin Islands companies in 2009 when Xi was member of the powerful Standing Committee of the CPC.

In 2014, both New York Times and Bloomberg carried reports that family members of former Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Xi Jinping had large assets base.

Chinese foreign ministry at that time termed the allegations as smear campaigns.

Since he took over power, Xi launched China's biggest anti-corruption campaign in which thousands of officials including top leaders like the former czar of the national security, Zhou Yongkang, were punished with long prison terms.

Xi, 62, broke the norm as he pressed ahead with the anti- corruption campaign against "tigers and flies", meaning all ranks in order to restore the sagging credibility of the party among people.

In a separate development, former head of Chinese military Guo Boxion has been charged with taking bribes to the tune of about 80 million yuan or USD 12.3 million, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported today.

According to sources close to People's Liberation Army (PLA), the official figure is just a small fraction of how much money China's disgraced retired military chief actually received.

Guo, 74, had earlier been put under corruption investigation and was expelled from the CPC in July last year. He was a former vice-chairman of the powerful Central Military Commission, the highest military body of China currently headed by Xi.

Having been a member of the 25-man Politburo at the party's top echelon, Guo is also the highest-ranking general to fall to a graft charge since the foundation of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

Military prosecutors recently wrapped up the criminal investigation into Guo and the case had been filed to a court, the Post quoted officials as saying.

Over 40 top military officials faced prosecutions over corruption allegations in the anti-graft crackdown launched by Xi since he took over power in 2013.
Yemen's President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi has relieved prime minister and vice president Khaled Bahah of his duties due to what he called government "failures".

Bahah's surprise dismissal yesterday comes just a week ahead of a UN-brokered ceasefire planned between Yemen's warring parties, which is expected to pave the way for peace talks in Kuwait on April 18.

Hadi appointed Ahmed bin Dagher, former secretary general of the General People's Congress party to which the president once belonged, as prime minister, according to a decision published on the official sabanew.Net website.

He appointed veteran General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar as vice president, and a presidency source said that Bahah would now serve as a presidential advisor.

Hadi said the decision to replace Bahah was "due to the failures that have accompanied the performance of the government during the past period in the fields of economy, services, and security".

Bahah's government has "failed to ease the suffering of our people, resolve their problems and provide their needs," Hadi said in a statement.

Iran-backed rebels have been in control of capital Sanaa since 2014, forcing the government to declare second-city Aden as temporary capital.

But Hadi and many government officials, including Bahah, spend most of their time in Riyadh as they struggle to secure Aden and other parts of the country where Sunni jihadists have gained ground.

Adding to the unrest, the local militiamen who fought alongside the government to retake Aden from the rebels last summer have clashed with guards protecting the presidential palace to protest unpaid wages despite Hadi's orders to merge them with the security forces.

Hadi spoke Sunday of a "lack of a proper government administration of the unlimited support from our brothers in the Arab coalition, notably Saudi Arabia" which is leading an alliance against the rebels.

Government sources have in the past spoke of differences between the president and Bahah, who had served as Yemen's envoy to the United Nations before Hadi appointed him as foreign minister and then prime minister.

In December, Hadi reshuffled his cabinet, naming new foreign and interior ministers in a move that was understood to be aimed at smoothing his relations with Bahah.

Hadi has also recently been involving Ahmar more actively in decision-making, appointing him in February as armed forces deputy commander in a bid to rally support from tribes and troops in the rebel-held region around Yemen's capital.

Ahmar's troops played a prominent role in the 2011 uprising that ousted strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh, whose loyalists are now allied with the Shiite Huthi rebels in control of Sanaa.

Hadi said his decisions aim to "achieve what our people are aspiring for and to restore the state authority, security and stability".
Pakistan's JIT at Pathankot - Indian naivete or far-sightedness?

Regularising such base visits, would add concrete proof to the position that Pakistan has no legitimate security threat from India

Regularising such base visits, would add concrete proof to the position that Pakistan has no legitimate security threat from India

What most Indians can agree on is the that the recent visit of the Joint Investigative Team to Pathankot was a landmark of sorts  possibly the first time a Pakistani team has been allowed on an Indian base with prior permission. This however is where the consensus ends. Most people would see this as a sign of extraordinary naivete on part of the government, while a small minority would see it as an extremely far sighted move laying the groundwork for big things to come. If you choose to see the government as being extraordinarily gullible, youd be on solid ground ...

Abhijit Iyer-Mitra
MUMBAI (Reuters) - India's Adani Group is considering buying the local assets of solar developer SunEdison Inc, two sources aware of the matter told on Monday.

Adani, which has already held talks with bankers on the issue, did not respond to requests seeking comment.

(Reporting by Krishna N. Das)
By Jane Wardell and Rebecca Howard

SYDNEY/WELLINGTON (Reuters) - The Australian Tax Office (ATO) said on Monday it is investigating more than 800 wealthy clients of a Panama law firm for possible tax evasion.

The probe follows the reported leak of more than 11.5 million documents from the files of law firm Mossack Fonseca, based in the tax haven of Panama, revealing details of hundreds of thousands of clients.

The documents are at the center of an investigation published on Sunday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and more than 100 other organizations around the globe. ICIJ is the international arm of the Center for Public Integrity.

The leaked "Panama Papers" cover a period over almost 40 years, from 1977 until as recently as last December, and allegedly show that some companies domiciled in tax havens were being used for suspected money laundering, arms and drug deals, and tax avoidance.

"Currently we have identified over 800 individual taxpayers and we have now linked over 120 of them to an associate offshore service provider located in Hong Kong," the Australian tax office said in a statement emailed to . It did not name the Hong Kong company.

ATO Deputy Commissioner Michael Cranston said his office was working with the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Crime Commission and anti-money laundering regulator AUSTRAC to further cross-check the data from the documents.

"Some cases may be referred to the Serious Financial Crime

Taskforce," Cranston said in the statement. "The message is clear - taxpayers can't rely on these secret arrangements being kept secret and we will act on any information that is provided to us."

Treasurer Scott Morrison told ABC Radio Monday that "our record when it comes to tax avoidance and particularly multinational tax avoidance is one of legislation and action."

NZ GOVERNMENT UNDER PRESSURE

The 800 individuals under investigation include some taxpayers who had previously been investigated and others who had reported themselves to the tax office under its so-called Project DO IT - Disclose Offshore Income Today. The voluntary disclosure initiative, which closed at the end of 2014, allowed people to come forward and avoid steep penalties and criminal charges.

However, the tax office said the individuals under investigation also include "a large number of taxpayers who haven't previously come forward."

In New Zealand, the tax agency is "working closely" with its tax treaty partners to obtain full details of any New Zealand tax residents who may have been involved in arrangements facilitated by Mossack Fonseca, said John Nash, Inland Revenue's international revenue strategy manager, in comments emailed to .

According to the Australian Financial Review, New Zealand's foreign trust regime allowed Mossack Fonseca to create trusts in New Zealand to protect controversial assets.

On Monday, New Zealand Labour Party opposition leader Andrew Little called on Prime Minister John Key to come clean about what he knows about New Zealand becoming a "haven for rich foreign investors looking to hide their fortunes in secret trust accounts."

New Zealand Revenue Minister Michael Woodhouse said in a statement that "we tax people who live, work and do business here. We don't tax foreign income earned by foreigners."

According to Woodhouse, New Zealand's tax rules require foreign trusts to be registered.

"We also have a strong tax treaty network with the express purpose of discovering and preventing tax avoidance by exchanging information between tax jurisdictions," he said.

(Reporting By Jane Wardell and Rebecca Howard; Editing by Martin Howell)
By Himank Sharma and Devidutta Tripathy

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Blackstone Group is buying a majority stake in Indian IT outsourcing services provider Mphasis Ltd from Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co in an up to $1.1 billion deal, in the U.S. asset manager's single-biggest investment in India.

The all-cash deal reinforces Blackstone's bullish outlook on the outsourcing business, where western clients send IT jobs to countries such as India to cut costs. In December, Blackstone announced the purchase of a minority stake in India's IBS Software for $170 million.

Blackstone is betting that India's IT industry will continue to grow in double-digits as companies move to high-margin digital services to offset a cut-back in routine IT spending by clients, a senior executive at the firm said.

"The reason we have made a strong commitment to the Indian IT sector is because this is a sector which has delivered very strong returns to Blackstone and other PE investors in India," said Amit Dixit, Blackstone's senior managing director in India.

"This sector is also poised for good growth ... and especially digital services, an area in which Mphasis is strong in," he said on a conference call after the deal was announced.

India's IT and software services export revenue is likely to grow by 10-12 percent in the fiscal year beginning on April 1 to as much as $121 billion, according to trade body National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom).

In what is one of the biggest M&A transactions in the country's outsourcing sector, Blackstone will pay 430 rupees ($6.49) per share for at least 84 percent of HP Enterprise Co's 60.5 percent stake in Mphasis.

It also made an open offer to buy a 26 percent stake in Mphasis from public shareholders for 457.54 rupees a share to comply with Indian laws.

Depending on the response to the open offer, HPE could get as much as $825 million for its complete stake, while the final cost to Blackstone of the transaction could be as much as 70.71 billion rupees ($1.1 billion). The deal is expected to close in the coming months, Blackstone said.

Shares of Mphasis, which have gained more than 11 percent from the beginning of March till end of last week in anticipation of a deal, fell 2.9 percent on Monday to close slightly below the open offer price at 454.90 rupees on the Mumbai markets.

'LAST BIG ASSET'

"This is a consolidating industry and Mphasis was the last big asset, you could see some more PE deals for smaller software companies in the sector going forward," said Ravi Menon, an IT sector analyst at Elara Capital.

Sources had told Blackstone was the frontrunner in an auction run by HPE for its Mphasis stake. HPE had been looking to exit from the Indian venture to shore up its capital, the sources had said.

Analysts have said that Mphasis' move away from HPE, which accounts for about a quarter of the Indian company's revenue, could hurt its sales.

But Blackstone has ensured that HPE maintains its commercial partnership with Mphasis. The Indian company has signed a five-year revenue guarantee of at least $990 million through sales to HPE, the companies said.

The U.S. asset manager is not alone in initiating outsourcing sector deals in India.

In February, Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte and private equity investors Advent International and Bain Capital jointly bought a minority stake in outsourcing firm QuEST Global Services for $350 million.

($1 = 66.2200 rupees)

(Reporting by Himank Sharma and Devidutta Tripathy; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
MUMBAI (Reuters) - Blackstone Group LP is buying Indian IT outsourcing services provider MphasiS Ltd from Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co, in a deal that could cost the U.S. asset manager up to $1.1 billion and be its biggest in the country.

The deal underscores Blackstone's bullish outlook on the outsourcing business, where western clients send more IT jobs to countries such as India to cut costs. In December, Blackstone announced the purchase of a minority stake in India's IBS Software for $170 million.

In what is one of the biggest M&A transactions in the country's $150 billion outsourcing sector, Blackstone will pay 430 rupees ($6.49) per share for at least 84 percent of HP Enterprise Co's 60.5 percent stake in MphasiS, it said in a statement.

Under Indian laws, Blackstone also made an open offer to buy a 26 percent stake in MphasiS from public shareholders for 457.54 rupees a share.

Depending on the response to the open offer, the final price of the transaction will vary between 54.66 billion rupees and 70.71 billion rupees ($825 million and $1.1 billion).

Blackstone was the frontrunner in an auction run by HPE for its MphasiS stake, sources had said. HPE had been looking to exit from the Indian venture to shore up its capital, they had said.

The U.S. asset manager is not alone in initiating outsourcing sector deals.

In February, Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte and private equity investors Advent International and Bain Capital jointly bought a minority stake in outsourcing firm QuEST Global Services for $350 million.

And just last week, India's Geometric Ltd said it will sell its IT services business to HCL Technologies Ltd in an all-stock deal valued at 12.37 billion rupees.

($1 = 66.2200 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Himank Sharma and Devidutta Tripathy; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
LONDON (Reuters) - The British government asked on Monday for a copy of leaked data on the clients of a Panama-based law firm so it can examine the information and act on any possible tax evasion.

The leak, which reveals the details of hundreds of thousands of clients in multiple jurisdictions of law company Mossack Fonseca, could be embarrassing for Prime Minister David Cameron, who has spoken out against tax evasion and tax avoidance.

His late father, Ian Cameron, is mentioned in the more than 11.5 million documents from the files, alongside some members of his Conservative Party in the upper house of parliament, former

Conservative lawmakers and party donors, British media said.

Cameron's office declined to comment.

The documents emerged in an investigation published on Sunday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and more than 100 other global organisations.

Jennie Granger, director general of enforcement and compliance at HM Revenue and Customs, said the government had received "a great deal of information on offshore companies, including in Panama, from a wide range of sources, which is currently the subject of intensive investigation".

"We have asked the ICIJ to share the leaked data that they have obtained with us. We will closely examine this data and will act on it swiftly and appropriately," she said in a statement.

The government said Britain had brought in more than 2 billion pounds ($2.84 billion) from offshore tax evaders since Cameron's Conservatives took office in 2010 and that it was clear "the days of hiding money offshore are gone".

($1 = 0.7043 pounds)

(Reporting by Kylie MacLellan; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
By Lefteris Papadimas and David Lawder

ATHENS/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde denied on Sunday that IMF staff would push Greece closer to default as a negotiating tactic on a new Greek bailout deal, which she said was "still a good distance away."

Lagarde said in a letter to Greece's prime minister that the debt talks should continue despite damage from reports of a leaked transcript suggesting that IMF staff may threaten to leave the bailout to force European lenders to offer more debt relief.

"Any speculation that IMF staff would consider using a credit event as a negotiating tactic is simply nonsense," Lagarde wrote to Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.

"My view of the ongoing negotiations is that we are still a good distance away from having a coherent program that I can present to our Executive Board," Lagarde wrote, adding that such a deal must put Greece on a path of robust growth and gradually restore debt sustainability.

Tsipras' office said on Sunday that he had demanded that Lagarde clarify the IMF's stance after Internet whistleblowing site WikiLeaks published what it said was the transcript of a March 19 conference call of three senior IMF officials.

The officials were discussing tactics to apply pressure on Greece, Germany and the EU to reach a deal in April. They were quoted as discussing a threat that the fund might not participate in Greece's third bailout programme as a way to force EU creditors, especially Germany, to reach a deal on debt relief before Britain's June referendum on whether to stay in the European Union.

EU/IMF lenders are due to resume talks on Greece's fiscal and reform progress in Athens on Monday, aiming to conclude a bailout review that will unlock further loans and pave the way for negotiations on long-desired debt restructuring.

The review has been adjourned twice since January due to a rift among the lenders over the estimated size of Greece's fiscal gap by 2018, as well as disagreements with Athens on pension reforms and the management of bad loans.

The Greek government interpreted the leak as revealing an IMF effort to blackmail Athens with a possible credit event to force it to give in on pension cuts which it has rejected.

In his letter to Lagarde, Tsipras "expressed his concern about the credibility of the negotiations after the leaks," an official at his office told .

Lagarde said in her response that "the IMF conducts its negotiations in good faith, not by way of threats, and we do not communicate through leaks."

She reiterated her view that if fiscal surplus targets were lowered for Greece, then more debt relief would be needed.

German government and finance ministry representatives declined to comment on the leaked transcript.

Germany has in the past said the IMF is an important player in the Greek rescue but it does not support the debt relief demanded by the IMF. Some German officials also say that they believe there are different views on Greece within the IMF.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is due to meet Lagarde in Berlin on Tuesday.

The purported conversation on the conference call involved Poul Thomsen, head of the IMF's Europe department, Delia Velculescu, leader of the IMF team in Greece, and IMF official Iva Petrova.

They discussed whether Greece could apply more austerity as a condition for receiving more aid ahead of big debt repayments in July and voiced frustration at the European Commission's reluctance to side with IMF pressure on Athens.

If genuine, the transcripts suggest that Brussels is sticking to unrealistic assumptions about Greece's budget shortfall to minimize the need for debt relief, which is unpopular with Germany and other northern euro zone hawks.

If concluded, the review will unlock a fresh tranche of about 5 billion euros ($5.7 bln), which Greece needs to pay off state arrears and European Central Bank and IMF maturing debt. Greece has no major debt redemptions due until July.

Commenting on the leak, Tsipras told weekly newspaper Ethnos: "It seems that some people are playing games with an aim to destabilize us. We will not allow (IMF's) Thomsen to destroy Europe."

($1 = 0.8782 euros)

(Additional reporting by David Lawder in Washington, Madeline Chambers and Andreas Rinke in Berlin; Editing by Paul Taylor, Susan Fenton and Jonathan Oatis)
India is set to import at least 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Iranian in the year from April 1, with refiners looking to ramp up purchases after the sanctions targeting Tehran ended in January, industry sources familiar with the matter said.

Average annual imports at that level in the fiscal year just begun would be the highest in at least seven years, and would carry forward a bump in purchases that lifted March shipments to a five-year high for a month at 506,100 bpd.

Iran was India's second biggest supplier - a position now belonging to Iraq - before economic sanctions aimed at Iran's nuclear programme hampered its trade relations, forcing the South Asian nation to tap alternative suppliers.

The plans for higher annual imports by India are a sign that Tehran is beginning to regain market share after the lifting of sanctions. Iran has said it will continue increasing its output and exports until it reaches the market position it held in the pre-sanctions era.

India's state refiners - Indian Oil Corp, Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum - told Iran in February that together they are willing to buy about 240,000 bpd in the year begun in April, the industry sources said.

Among private refiners Essar Oil is willing to lift about 120,000 bpd, they said, and HMEL has indicated it will buy a small quantity with an option to raise volumes.

The Indian oil companies and the National Iranian Oil Co (NIOC) - which handles Tehran's oil sales - did not respond to requests for comment.

IOC aims to buy 80,000 bpd from Iran with an option for another 40,000 bpd, MRPL will buy about 90,000-100,000 bpd, while HPCL and BPCL plan to buy about 20,000 bpd each, the sources said.

In addition to these volumes and the barrels Essar is looking to buy, private refiner Reliance Industries is seeking to buy 100,000-120,000 bpd Iranian oil, mainly heavy grades, Reuters reported in February.

It is not clear, however, how much of the heavy grades Reliance will be able to purchase as many of the barrels have already been committed. Last month, Reliance made spot imports of Iranian oil, its first such purchase since 2010.

The Indian refiners are expected to finalise their annual contract deals with Iran soon, the sources said.

The Indian buyers are being drawn in part by freight discounts that increase as more barrels are purchased, although the concession is much less than the free shipping that Iran was offering under pressure from sanctions, the sources said.

Purchases from Tehran could still be impacted by the availability of insurance cover for installations processing Iranian oil and the resumption of banking channels to facilitate payments and opening of letter of credits (LCs).

Last month ship insurers stepped in to help plug a shortfall in cover for transporting Iranian oil as US reinsurers are still restrained by Washington's sanctions.

However, there is still no clarity on whether reinsurers will facilitate cover for refineries processing Iranian oil, the sources said.

Iran last month gave a list of about a dozen banks, mainly European, that have accounts with Turkey's Halkbank to clear a part of about $6 billion dues pending with Indian firms.
Indian refiners together imported 506,100 bpd oil from Iran last month, a jump of about 135 percent from February, the data showed. In March of last year, the refiners halted imports from Iran to keep shipments within the parameters of the temporary nuclear deal then in force.

The higher imports by India signals Tehran's success in beginning to regain market share after the lifting of Western sanctions targeting its nuclear programme. [nL3N173290]

Iran has said it will continue increasing its oil production and exports until it reaches the market position it held before the imposition of sanctions. [nL5N1770E8]

In the fiscal year ended on March 31, Indian refiners shipped in 14.4 percent more oil from Iran at about 251,100 bpd, the data showed. The increase was the largest annual growth since the 2007/08 fiscal year, according to data.

Essar Oil was the biggest importer of Iranian oil in March with about 207,400 bpd oil, followed by about 130,000 bpd by Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd and about 90,600 bpd by Reliance, its first shipments in about six years.

Reliance had halted Iranian oil imports in 2010 because it was worried that the threat of U.S. sanctions on companies doing business with the Islamic republic would complicate its efforts to boost market share for its fuels in the United States.

Last month Reliance imported Forozan grade and South Pars condensate from Iran, the data showed. [nL3N15W4Q2]

Indian Oil Corp , the country's biggest refiner and not a regular buyer of Iranian oil, shipped in 2 million barrels or about 67,000 bpd from Tehran last month.

(The tanker loading data was converted from tonnes to barrels using a conversion factor of 7.3 barrels per tonne.)

(Reporting by Nidhi Verma; Editing by Tom Hogue)
By David Brough

LONDON (Reuters) - Indian and Thai white sugar exports to Myanmar, a gateway for smuggling into China, are set to slow further as harvests finish early due to drought and Indian domestic prices surge, diverting sugar to the local market.

Indian mills, believed to be the main source of white sugar for Myanmar after gaining market share as Thai supplies ran out, are expected to prioritise the local market due to a jump in domestic prices, traders said.

Chinese white sugar demand has remained strong in recent weeks, underpinning a whites-over-raws refining premium of just over $100 per tonne, a comfortable margin for refining.

Flows of white sugar to Myanmar started to decline following a crackdown on smuggling into China.

Volumes of white sugar shipped to Myanmar soared last year due to a jump in smuggling to China because of high domestic prices in the world's top sugar buyer.

"After a sudden rise in prices here (in India), there is no export parity at all. It's a fact that most of our sugar exported so far in the current season has gone to Myanmar and to China via Myanmar," said Praful Vithalani, who owns Indian brokerage Jagjivan Keshavaji.

"Clearly there's more potential for exports to Myanmar and China but as prices firm up here, I do not see India exporting, at least for now. If global prices go up further, I do see India taking advantage of falling supplies from Thailand."

Drought has eroded sugar yields in India and Thailand, leading industry analysts to revise down output estimates.

A senior Thai government official said he saw limitations in India's capacity to export sugar.

"India is facing drought as well (as Thailand). India's output this year is also lower than predicted, and will mostly go to domestic consumption," said Boonthin Kotsiri, production director at Thailand's Office of Cane and Sugar Board.

One senior analyst said India exported more than 900,000 tonnes of white sugar to Myanmar from October 1 2015 to March 31 2016 (i.e. the first half of 2015/2016 (Oct-Sept)), while Thailand exported 475,000 tonnes to Myanmar in the same period.

Most of the sugar was believed to have been smuggled into China, trade sources said.

Analyst Green Pool said in its latest weekly report that only 20 Thai mills remained operational (32 had shut) as the harvest wound down, compared to 30 at this time last year.

(Additional reporting by Mayank Bhardwaj in India and Patpicha Tanakasempipat in Bangkok; Editing by David Evans)
By Barani Krishnan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices fell more than 2 percent on Monday, with Brent touching one-month lows, as investors doubted that producing countries will freeze output to rein in a worldwide glut.

U.S. crude futures got only brief support from an outage on a pipeline that helps deliver oil to the U.S. storage hub. Traders worried instead that U.S. crude stockpiles probably hit record highs for an eighth straight week. [EIA/S]

Oil prices remain up about 40 percent from around 12-year lows struck in mid-February, although the rally has fizzled on growing scepticism about a proposed output freeze by major producers.

"It appears that the speculative longs that were enticed towards the buyside of the energy complex through most of the first quarter by the upcoming production freeze meeting are now heading for the exits," said Jim Ritterbusch at Chicago-based energy markets consultancy Ritterbusch & Associates.

Brent settled down 98 cents, or 2.5 percent, at $37.69 a barrel, touching a March 4 low of $37.60. It is down 11 percent from a 2016 high of $42.54 struck on March 18.

U.S. crude finished the session down $1.09, or nearly 3 percent, at $35.70 a barrel, after briefly rebounding on of an outage on the Keystone pipeline that is among a network delivering oil to the Cushing, Oklahoma storage hub.

U.S. crude has tumbled 15 percent from a 2016 peak of $41.90 on March 22.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other major oil producers are to meet in Doha, Qatar in two weeks to discuss an output freeze plan. But prospects for a deal look dim, with the Saudis declining to participate without Iran, while Russia reports its highest production in 30 years just weeks before the meeting.

U.S. government data on Friday showed hedge funds cut their net long position in U.S. crude during the week to March 29 for the first time in six weeks. [CFTC/]

Analysts in a poll forecast that U.S. crude inventories rose 3.3 million barrels last week to an eighth straight week of record highs.

Adding to the bearish sentiment was data showing U.S gasoline demand down in January from a year earlier, snapping a 14-month streak of year-over-year increases.

Not all investors were bearish on oil.

Jonathan Goldberg, who runs the $550 million oil-focused BBL Commodities Value Fund in New York, said crude was still in the early stage of a bull run, although near-term caution may be necessary with inventories remaining high.

(Additional reporting by Amanda Cooper in LONDON; Editing by Dale Hudson, David Goodman and David Gregorio)
hovered around one-month lows on Monday as investors ditched some of their bullish bets on another price rise and the chances that top exporters will agree to rein in overproduction appeared to fade.

Iran will continue increasing production and exports until it reaches the market position it enjoyed before the imposition of sanctions, Minister Bijan Zanganeh was quoted by the semi-official Mehr news agency as saying.

Saudi Arabia, which spearheaded an initial proposal in February for producers to limit output, said last week it would not join any effort to do so unless Iran were on board, while Russia reported its highest oil production in 30 years.

This has cast doubt on the ability of the world's largest exporters to reach any such agreement when they meet this month in Doha to discuss how best to align global supply and demand.

Hedge funds last week cut their bullish holdings of crude oil futures for the first time in six weeks.

Brent crude futures were 1 cent higher on the day at $38.68 a barrel by 1030 GMT, around their lowest for a month, but still 40% above where they were in mid-February.

US crude futures were 8 cents lower at $36.71 a barrel.

"It's not very strange to see a wave of profit-taking and some unwinding of long positions, and some people even saying they could reposition for a move towards lower prices," ABN Amro chief energy economist Hans van Cleef said.

"That's part of a normal cycle that I think can continue this week, we might see $36 or $37. Prices are coming down because of speculation Saudi Arabia will not join (the freeze deal) and that's probably what we'll see over the next three weeks - more speculation and more verbal intervention," He said.

Oil prices have fallen more than 65% since mid-2014, when booming US shale oil output and supply from within and outside OPEC created one of the largest global surpluses of crude in modern times.

US production is proving more resilient to low oil prices than many expected, despite steep cuts in drilling for new reserves as well as a jump in bankruptcies.

"The current rig count implies US production would decrease by 705,000 barrels per day yoy (year-on-year) on average in 2016, and by 375,000 barrels per day yoy in 2017," Goldman Sachs said.
By Barani Krishnan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices fell on Monday, with Brent touching one-month lows as investors doubted that producers will freeze output to rein in a worldwide glut.

U.S. crude prices briefly bounced off session lows after an outage on a major pipeline raised concerns about delivery to the U.S. storage hub.

Iran will raise its crude output and exports until it reaches pre-sanction levels, the semi-official Mehr agency quoted Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh as saying. Last week, a Saudi prince reportedly dismissed a production freeze plan without Tehran's involvement.

In the United States, the Keystone crude pipeline has been shut after an incident on Saturday in South Dakota, the pipeline's operator TransCanada Corp said in a notice sent to shippers and obtained by . The pipeline is part of a network that carries oil to the U.S. crude delivery hub in Cushing, Oklahoma.

Brent crude futures were down 60 cents at $38.07 a barrel by 12:55 p.m. EDT (1655 GMT). The session low was $37.96, the lowest since March 4.

U.S. crude futures slid 50 cents to $36.29. The session low was $36.11.

Oil prices have lost upward momentum in the past week, but remain up about 40 percent from around 12-year lows struck in mid-February. U.S. government data on Friday showed that in the week to March 29, hedge funds cut their net long position in U.S. crude for the first time in six weeks.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other major oil producers are to meet in Doha, Qatar in two weeks to discuss an output freeze plan.

But analysts said prospects for a deal looked dimmer, with the Saudis declining to rein in output without Iran, and Russia reporting its highest oil production in 30 years.

"If we draw a line and add up the stance of these countries, we have to conclude that a meaningful deal is only a distant possibility," PVM Oil Associates analyst Tamas Varga said.

(Additional reporting by Amanda Cooper in LONDON; Editing by Dale Hudson, David Goodman and David Gregorio)
By Amanda Cooper

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil held around its lowest in a month on Monday as investors ditched some of their bullish bets on another price rise and the chances that top exporters will agree to rein in overproduction appeared to fade.

Iran will continue increasing oil production and exports until it reaches the market position it enjoyed before the imposition of sanctions, Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh was quoted as saying by the semi-official Mehr agency.

Saudi Arabia, which spearheaded an initial proposal in February for producers to limit output, said last week that it would not join any effort to do so unless Iran were on board, while Russia reported its highest oil production in 30 years.

This has cast doubt on the ability of the world's largest exporters to reach an when they meet in Doha this month to discuss how to align global supply and demand.

Hedge funds last week cut their bullish holdings of crude oil futures for the first time in six weeks.

Brent crude futures were 14 cents higher at $38.81 a barrel by 1232 GMT, still close to their lowest for a month but 40 percent above their in mid-February level.

U.S. crude futures were 22 cents higher at $37.01.

"It's not very strange to see a wave of profit-taking and some unwinding of long positions, and some people even saying they could reposition for a move towards lower prices," said ABN Amro's chief energy economist, Hans van Cleef.

"That's part of a normal cycle that I think can continue this week. We might see $36 or $37 ... Prices are coming down because of speculation Saudi Arabia will not join (the freeze deal) and that's probably what we'll see over the next three weeks - more speculation and more verbal intervention."

Oil prices have fallen by more than 65 percent since mid-2014, when booming U.S. shale oil output and supply from within and outside OPEC created one of the largest global surpluses of crude in modern times.

Some analysts believe that even freezing production around record highs will help to reduce the surplus, given that demand is expected to continue to grow this year.

"Most of the negative is in the price and for oil prices to weaken materially, something big would have to happen," Gain Capital analyst Fawad Razaqzada said in a note.

U.S. production is proving more resilient to low oil prices than many expected, despite reduced drilling for new reserves as well as a jump in bankruptcies.

"Given this backdrop, and the potential for an oil-freeze deal this month, the global supply-demand imbalance is likely to fade as we progress towards the latter part of this year," Razaqzada added.

(Additional reporting by Henning Gloystein in Singapore; Editing by Dale Hudson and David Goodman)
By Se Young Lee

SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Bioepis Co Ltd, which aims to become a force in the fledgling biosimilar drugs industry, has filed a lawsuit against the originator of the world's best-selling drug, to stop it blocking the launch of its own version.

The unit of South Korea's Samsung Group, along with partner and minority shareholder Biogen, filed suit in Britain on March 24 against AbbVie Inc, maker of rheumatoid arthritis drug Humira, which generated sales of $14 billion last year.

It is the company's first suit against a drug originator.

Interest in biosimilars - lower-cost copies of complex biotech drugs - has soared in recent years as copies of some of the world's best-selling prescription medicines have hit the market.

Unlike generic versions of simple chemical medicines, biotech drugs are made from living cells, so it is impossible to manufacture exact copies.

The IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics says biosimilars could save healthcare systems in the United States and Europe's top five markets as much as 98 billion euros ($111 billion) by 2020.

The South Korean conglomerate is hoping for big things from the unit - including a revenue target of 1 trillion won ($872 million) by 2020 - amid sagging profits at its electronics business, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, the world's biggest maker of smartphones and televisions.

Success in the endeavour is seen as key for de facto Samsung Group leader Jay Y. Lee, 47, to prove himself as steward of the family-run smartphones-to-insurance empire. His father, group patriarch Lee Kun-hee, has been hospitalised since a 2014 heart attack.

PUSHBACK

The composition patent for Humira loses its exclusivity in the United States in December 2016, and in Europe in October 2018, but Illinois-based AbbVie, which earned 61 percent of its 2015 net revenue from Humira, has been filing new patents in a bid to push back sales of biosimilars.

In addition to Samsung Bioepis and Biogen, more than a dozen firms have challenged AbbVie's strategy through patent authorities or the courts.

"We believe that AbbVie has been attempting to obstruct market entry of competing products by applying for a large number of overlapping patents around Humira, which could affect patient access to affordable medication," Samsung Bioepis told .

"We believe competition should take place in the market, and not through such misuse of the patent system," it added.

AbbVie told it was aware of the lawsuit filed by Samsung Bioepis and Biogen.

"As we have said, we intend to defend our intellectual property," it said.

Samsung Bioepis, which brought its first drug to market late last year, has a pipeline of 13 biosimilars, versions of existing drugs with similar efficacy at much lower prices, and is initially focusing on six of them to get out in front of the market.

The Samsung Group has a track record of moving fast. Late to enter the smartphone market, Samsung Electronics quickly rose to become the industry leader. The group is also one of the world's most active patent filers and has over the years tried to move beyond its image as a "fast follower".

"The first drug to hit the market takes the most market share, so this is the right strategy to go with," said Kang Yang-ku, analyst at HMC Investment & Securities.

There are potentially rich pickings for early movers; more than 10 blockbuster biological drugs with combined yearly sales of $60 billion are on track to see their U.S. and European patents expire over the next four years, according to Allied Market Research.

Biosimilars are a source of consternation for investors in firms such as AbbVie, however, as the cheaper copies threaten to undercut profits for the original drug makers.

In December Bioepis began selling a biosimilar of Amgen's arthritis drug Enbrel in South Korea, and the drug has since launched in some European markets including Germany and Britain early this year. The European Medicines Agency on Friday also recommended the Bioepis copy of another blockbuster drug Remicade for approval in Europe.

Samsung Bioepis is 91 percent-owned by Samsung Biologics, which manufactures biological drugs and is in turn mostly owned by Samsung C&T Corp and Samsung Electronics.

($1 = 1,144.1900 won) ($1 = 0.8839 euros)

(Editing by Tony Munroe and Will Waterman)
Nurture agriculture to make 'Make in India' a reality

Keeping the rural youth engaged in fruitful employment (through investment in agri-related activities) is the only way to keep the wheels of economic rolling and realising the goals of Make in India i

Taking cognisance of the fact that agriculture, and in general rural area, is under distress, the budget 2016-17 allocated Rs 35,984 crore, the highest amount so far, for agriculture and farmers welfare. With this, the government intends to address issues of optimal utilisation of water resources, create new infrastructure for irrigation, conserve soil fertility with balanced use of fertiliser and provide connectivity from farm to market. With an intention to revive the fortunes of farmers for better overall growth of the economy, the government aims to double the farmers income by 2022.



This is indeed a tall ask given the fact that the contribution of agriculture and allied sector to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been declining over the years. Agriculture and allied sector employs about 49 percent of the nations total workforce, however, it accounts for only 14 percent of the GDP - indicating the dependence of a large worker population on a relatively small income.



Agriculture has been neglected all these years. Investment, if any, has been targeted at low-productive instruments and mis-targeted subsidiaries. Minimum support prices (MSP) for crops given to farmers has failed to provide sufficient income at the hands of farmers to buy two-time meals, forget about the leisure of 24-hour electricity and water supply.



To improve conditions of farmers, the government will have to emphasis on irrigation, development of rainfed agriculture, promotion of integrated farming, high-value agri-produce, etc. At the same time, diversification beyond crops into horticulture, vegetables, livestock, poultry and fisheries, etc followed by the enhanced investment in seeds will also be required. Further, the research sector needs to be bolstered so that top notch irrigation procedures can be developed in the country itself. More centres for agricultural studies should also be opened and students need to be encouraged to pursue career paths of agricultural scientists. The government should also attract investments in agriculture so that scientific techniques can bolster the countrys crop production, said Rajesh Aggarwal, MD, Insecticides India Ltd.



Focus on need-based research

To bring about technical change in agriculture and raise farmers income, the government will have to hike public expenditure in agriculture - in the form of increased investments in infrastructure (in irrigation, rural roads & electrification, etc) and targeted subsidies. Farmers can be benefitted only when the new agricultural technologies are utilised by them at the field level.





Rakesh Rao

Business Standard https://bsmedia.business-standard.com/_media/bs/wap/images/bs_logo_amp.png 177 22

Aggarwal comments, Institutes need to focus on need based research, should be target oriented and on the changes that can bring prosperity to Indian farmers. Any innovation that cannot be transferred to practice for the benefit of mankind is a waste of resources. India has ample resources and the conducive environment for agriculture, using the right technology and sharing the same with all is the vital key. Though the government has kept agriculture in its priority list, the essence is to percolate the schemes to the lower levels and make them reach the desired population.About 85 percent of farmers hold land of less than 2 ha in size. These small farms, though operating only on 44 per cent of land under cultivation, are the main providers of food and nutritional security to the country. The government initiatives have to ensure access to technology, inputs, credit, capital and markets for these small and marginal farmers.To reduce loses due to agri-produce wastage and cut down on time to reach marketplace, the government will have to focus on strengthening rural storage infrastructure and increasing number of mandis (rural markets).Indias varied climatic as well as soil conditions help it grow a wide range of fruits, vegetables and other horticulture products. By framing policies for enabling small-scale food processing units - which can process these agri-produces (preferably at the farm-gate) - to mushroom in the country, the government can generate employment opportunities for rural youth in non-farm activity and boost their productivity.While the government has announced Start-Ups India initiative for entrepreneurs, it should start similar scheme for encouraging rural enterprises focusing on agri-produce. In addition to food processing industry, the government can look to promote sectors such as handicraft, agri-tourism, rubber, jute, textile, agri-waste processing, etc to further augment rural income.In one of his addresses, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated that the countrys development is not possible until our village and farmers are not developed. Almost half of the workforce in India is still dependent on agriculture and, hence, growth in agriculture and allied sector is imperative for inclusive growth.In 2014, the Government of India announced Make in India initiative to make the country a global manufacturing powerhouse and propel economic growth. The initiative is yet to show a profound effect on the ground as the global economy continues to grow in low-single digit rate, resulting in dwindling exports from India in the last few months.The only recourse to revive manufacturing sector is to boost domestic consumption. While urban areas has shown some signs of recovery (indicated by growth in auto and consumer goods sales), the rural economy has been a laggard. In order to revitalise the sluggish economy, the government will have to invest in agriculture, which has the potential to create massive gainful employment and build domestic demand.Hence, Make in India can be achieved only if agriculture sector also grows at healthy rate (since while manufacturing can drive growth in urban areas, agriculture can enhance incomes of rural dwellers, thus leading to equitable growth in the country).Agricultural produce is the biggest resource of economic activity and development in India. Along with fisheries, it has marked its presence as one of the largest contributors to the GDP. Whereas the manufacturing sector will fuel growth in the urban areas, the rural segment is completely dependent on agricultural growth. As a part of the Make in India initiative, it is important to create a big base in the country for production of high quality agricultural allied industries, opines Aggarwal.Economists suggest that the reforms should aim to move farmers out of agriculture to provide a cheaper labour force for the industry. But, will the industry (given the current economic condition) be able to generate employment to absorb this relocated workforce?Growth without employment generation can led to unrest among the youth, whose population (youth of 15-29 years) is expected to swell to 156 million by 2020. Agitations by once powerful farming communities such as Jats (in Haryana, UP, Delhi & Rajasthan), Patidars (in Gujarat), Marathas (in Maharashtra), etc for seeking job quotas indicate continued neglect of agriculture, which has turned farming into a low-income occupation.Keeping the rural youth engaged in fruitful employment (through investment in agri-related activities) is the only way to keep the wheels of economic rolling. Or else, youth unrest can reach at the doorsteps of urban dwellers.
It was announced today that HubSpot have opened a new Dublin office and have made a commitment to hire an additional 320 Dublin-based employees over the next three years.



The new Dublin office will be located just around the corner from the original HubSpot Dublin offices at North Quay Wall.



HubSpot is a Global inbound marketing and sales platform which was established in 2006. At present, over 18,000 customers in more than 90 countries use HubSpots software. They are headquartered in Cambridge, MA with offices in Singapore, Dublin, Ireland, Sydney, Australia, and Portsmouth, NH.

HubSpots new Irish office occupies the third and fourth floors at One Dockland Central and features a fitness room, library and other quiet rooms, on-site pub with draught beer and arcade games, rooftop terrace (to open later this year).

Furthermore, the new Dublin office features some key elements that are uniquely Irish and also give a nod to the many different European cultures that are represented throughout HubSpots EMEAs employee base. For example, hallways throughout the space are wallpapered with photographs of classic Dublin Doors taken by one of HubSpots long-time employees. There is a room furnished with a table made from an authentic Irish whiskey barrel, while beers on draught include Peroni, Heineken, Guinness, Bulmers cider, and rotating local craft beers.



All 270+ desks in the space are electronic and can convert from sitting to standing at the push of a button. The office is equipped with varying conference rooms, collaboration spaces and nomad desks so that employees can choose the space they work best in.



The expansion is supported by the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation through IDA Ireland.

Welcoming the announcement, Minister of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton said, "HubSpot is a highly innovative company in a fast-growing niche within this sector, and it was clear when we first met in Boston in 2012 that they had highly ambitious plans for their Dublin expansion."

He added, "I am delighted to be here to celebrate HubSpots achievements here since it established its first operation three years ago, and to welcome their announcement that it will grow its workforce by 320 people over the next three years."



Source: www.businessworld.ie

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It was announced today that Zeto, a Cork based technology firm, has received a 1.7m investment from Kernel Capital through the Bank of Ireland Kernel Capital Venture Fund.



As a result of this investment, the company have secured a major commercial contract with Lidl Ireland. Zeto's software is now deployed across Lidl's 182 Irish stores, where it monitors 8,000 pieces of equipment and provides 2.25 million real time data points for Lidl Ireland each day.



The funding round includes commitments from Business Venture Partners (BVP) and Enterprise Ireland. Zeto is run by father and son, Michael and Stephen Slattery.

CEO of Zeto, Stephen Slattery commented, "The Bank of Ireland Seed & Early Stage Equity Fund and all our investors have been hugely supportive over the last number of years. With their help, and with clients of the calibre of Lidl we remain on track to create in the region of 35 high value job in Cork over the next 3 years."



Marketing Manager at Kernel Capital, Helen Norris added, "Stephen, Michael and the team at Zeto are superb to work with and we are delighted to have made this investment. Securing the Lidl contract is a game changer for Zeto demonstrating that they are significant player in the commercial refrigeration market, providing a mission critical application to one of the world's leading retailers."



Source: www.businessworld.ie

About us
It was announced today that over 1,800 GSK employees in Ireland have selected Make-A-Wish Ireland as the GSK Charity of the Year for 2016 and 2017.



This will mean 50,000 will be donated by GSK over the next two years while employees across its four sites - Dublin, Waterford, Sligo and Cork - will also organise, fundraise and participate in a number of events to raise additional funds.



Make-A-Wish CEO, Susan O Dwyer today commented, "Our new and exciting partnership with GSK will make a real difference to our work across 2016 and 2017. Monies raised will help us in our mission to grant more magical wishes to children in Ireland and will make a lasting difference to entire families of wish-children in bringing some joy and relief in spite of the enormous challenges they face. We look forward to working with GSK and their employees over the years ahead."



Communications Director for GSK in Ireland, Claire Taaffe said, "This year, over 85% of our employees chose Make-A-Wish as our charity partner of the year, a landslide vote which showcases how inspired our team is by the work that The Make-A-Wish Foundation undertakes. This year our aim is to raise enough monies across each site in order to grant as many as 20 magical wishes and fun memories for Irish children to last them a lifetime!"



Every two years, GSKs innovative Charity Partnership programme allows employees to nominate and vote for charities closest to their heart.

In addition to the financial donations, GSK employees will also share their time and expertise with Make-A-Wish Ireland through the GSK volunteer programme and the companies main fundraising event the GSK Wheelie Good Cause.



Source: www.businessworld.ie

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It was announced today that SMEs have until this Friday, 8 April to apply to the OPTIMISE Fund 2016 for a chance to secure up to 10,000 in training and services to help them improve their website and online presence.



The fund is open all Irish SMEs with a .ie domain regardless of their business, product or service. Participants in 2015 included a Dublin-based on-demand laundry service (cleanfreaks.ie), a homeware and gifts store from West Cork (TheOldMillStores.ie), a menswear store in Cork City (Salingers.ie) and a Wicklow adventure holiday travel company (AdventureHolidays.ie).



Since it began in 2011, the OPTIMISE Fund has provided funding to 75 Irish SMEs. Over the past six years, the OPTIMISE Fund has helped SMEs provide online quotations and booking facilities, take payments, develop click and collect functionality and ensure websites are mobile responsive.



Top Irish chef and owner of the Itsa Bagel restaurants, Domini Kemp, is this years OPTIMISE Fund ambassador.



Chief Executive of IEDR, David Curtin says, "The OPTIMISE Fund is a great opportunity for SMEs who want to significantly improve their current online offering. With increasing numbers of customer sales now taking place online, Irish SMEs can no longer ignore this key sales route."

Domini Kemp added, "Every business, regardless of industry, can benefit from having a website. Your website is often the first port of call for new or potential customers. Businesses that dont have an online sales presence are at a considerable disadvantage to competitors that do. Its also a major frustration for customers, for whom buying online is now the norm."

Source: www.businessworld.ie
This Friday will mark National Workplace Wellbeing Day 2016 which is being organised by the Nutrition & Health Foundation (NHF) with support from Ibec.



Hundreds of organisations across the public and private sector are expected to participate in the campaign which aims to improve employee health by promoting better nutrition and exercise in the workplace.

Amongst the many activities planned are health checks and talks, exercise and fitness classes, nutrition talks and cookery demonstrations. As part of this years activities, employers are also being encouraged to arrange a Lunchtime Mile - a one mile cycle, jog, run, or walk for employees in the vicinity of their workplace.



According to Nutrition & Health Foundation (NHF) research about half of employers are already trying to facilitate healthier lifestyles for their employees. More employees also have access to health and wellbeing initiatives within the workplace than they did in 2014.

The three most popular initiatives mentioned by employees to promote more exercise are company organised Pilates or other exercise classes (45%), access to annual health checks or screenings (45%) and more facilities to support exercise such as showers and lockers (38%).



It was announced today that Aer Lingus, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, ESB, Intel, the Irish Prison Service and Pfizer are some of the organisations that have signed up for Friday's initiative.



Dr Muireann Cullen of the Nutrition & Health Foundation says, "We need to work together to tackle Irelands obesity challenge. We spend so much of our lives at work that the workplace is the perfect place to promote better exercise and eating habits. And with parents making up so much of the workforce, the workplace is an opportunity to influence the habits of more than one generation."



Source: www.businessworld.ie

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Irish residential property developer, Regency have today called on the Central Bank to rethink its "rigidity" and to give serious consideration to altering their rules.



This comes after the Central Bank announced that mortgage rules may tighten even further. Regency say the Central Bank should increase the loan-to-income ratio for mortgage lending from 3.5 to 3.75, pending action from the yet to be appointed Housing Minister to address the supply issues.



The property developers say that the contentious home loan caps have had the effect of pushing more and more people into the commuter belts of big cities  particularly Dublin.



Furthermore, they believe that tweaking the Loan-to-Income rule to allow people borrow up to 3.75 times their income could significantly boost the number of average income couples qualifying for a typical starter home in Dublin, enabling them to avoid long commutes.



Director at Regency, Aodan Bourke said, "The increase in rents has been the biggest contributor to the homeless crisis as people on rent support/supplement are unable to compete with the private sector for a limited number of properties. We believe that the Central Bank rules are slowing the migration of people from rental to purchase, which is having a knock on impact on everyone else in the rental sector."

He added, "We are certainly not calling for an abolishment of the rules  we support the case for precautionary behaviour and prudence that the Central Banks chief economist Gabriel Fagan has set out. But to hear him say that the rules may in face tightening is disconcerting and may well compound the anxieties of the thousands of people in Ireland facing housing issues at present."

Source: www.businessworld.ie
Photographer and professor Carsten Meier, in the Utah State University Department of Art and Design, has just released Dam, a book that showcases a large selection of dams in the United States and Europe photographed over a five-year period.

Meier appeared at the North Logan Librarys Authors and Illustrators series on Friday night. Before that he was a guest on KVNUs For the People program.

Professor Meier said the idea for the book came through photos he took of dams as part of a survey highlighting the architecture that can be representative of our relationship to water and, in particular, to nature. He cited the Glen Canyon Dam as one particular example.

Utah state, for example, we get our electricity directly from the dam. And it is, of course, an incredible piece in the landscape that sort of creates also an enormous, gigantic reservoir.

But it is also extremely controversial, especially when it was built and up to today. We have a lot of people who would rather see this dam gone, according to Professor Meier.

According to the faculty page on the USU website, the German-born photographer is known for his large-format renderings of urban and natural landscapes. His work has been exhibited in the U.S. and Europe.
Map of the Week: The Panama Papers and Europe

Published on April 4, 2016

Story by Cafebabel

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They're going to need one heck of a plumber. Around 11.5 million documents constituting the biggest leak in history have implicated 12 world leaders and numerous public officials in offshore tax schemes involving 140 different firms. The global trail stretches from Vladimir Putin to David Cameron's dad, but just how deep does the controversy go in Europe?

What's the best way to hide nearly 2 billion dollars? To start with, it helps if you're friends with a world leader. Then, you'll probably need an offshore bank account in a prominent tax haven  how about the British Virgin Islands, for example? Finally, better get yourself a good lawyer to help tackle the necessary legal loopholes to stash tons of tax-free cash.

One last piece of advice: make sure that lawyer doesn't work for Mossack Fonseca. The world's fourth largest offshore law firm, based out of Panama, has recently been subject to a data leak on an unprecedented scale. After 40 years of operations helping its clients dodge sanctions and avoid paying tax, 11.5 million of the company's confidential files were handed to German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has compiled a list of world leaders, politicians and public officials named in the so-called "Panama Papers". They form part of a paper trail moving money around numerous intermediary companies  in Europe mostly concentrated in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Jersey.

Among those implicated are several closer associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin  including the world famous cellist Sergey Roldugin. The Icelandic Prime Minister, Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson, is facing calls to resign after also being named in the scandal.

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This article is part of our Map of the Week series: charting the stats that matter to Europe, one map at a time.

Story by Cafebabel
When is hurricane season? Here's what you need to know in South Texas
SHARE Adam Garibay

By Krista M. Torralva of the Caller-Times

A family violence case against a former U.S. Border Patrol agent was dismissed Monday, according to court documents.

Prosecutors dropped the charge against Adam Garibay, 36, because his ex-wife is moving to another country "with no intention of returning" and he was convicted of murder related to the case, a court document states.

Garibay was charged with a third-degree assault family violence. He was scheduled to stand trial this week in 94th District Judge Bobby Galvan's court for accusations he beat and restrained his wife in their Calallen home Jan. 2, 2014, after learning she was having an affair. Garibay then drove 160 miles in her Volkswagen Jetta and used her cellphone to lure her 35-year-old lover, Keith Martin, out of his parents' home in Hondo.

Garibay was convicted of murder in November in Medina County and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Twitter: @CallerKMT The San Antonio Express News contributed to this report.
A male body was found Monday at the Padre Island National Seashore, officials said. The discovery comes while searchers are looking for a 16-year-old Mansfield student who went missing in the water near Bob Hall Pier.

SHARE Carlos Perez CALLER-TIMES FILE A body was found about 10:15 a.m. Monday at the Padre Island National Seashore by members of the Sea Turtle Patrol, according to a Coast Guard spokeswoman. The discovery comes while searchers are looking for a 16-year-old Mansfield student who went missing in the water near Bob Hall Pier on Friday. COURTNEY SACCO/CALLER-TIMES Authorities responded to the Padre Island National Seashore after park officials found a body there Monday morning. COURTNEY SACCO/CALLER-TIMES Authorities responded to the Padre Island National Seashore after park officials found a body there Monday morning.

By Natalia Contreras of the Caller-Times

A photo of Carlos Alejandro Perez Correa, 16, was set Sunday by his classmates at a pole near the main entrance of Lake Ridge High School.

On Monday morning, those who saw it as they walked up to the school placed flowers.

About 10:15 a.m., members of the Padre Island National Seashore Sea Turtle Patrol found Perez Correa's body on the surf about 30 miles south of Bob Hall Pier.

"During this time of the year Sea Turtle Patrol look out for nests, but over the weekend they were asked to keep an eye out to the water," Padre Island National Seashore spokesperson Patrick Gamman said.

Gamman said two members of the Sea Turtle Patrol were patrolling the area on an ATV and discovered the body on the south beach shore at mile marker 11.

The discovery came after a search began for Perez Correa, a Mansfield student who went missing in the water near Bob Hall Pier Friday.

Kenedy County Sheriff's Office Sgt. Robert Gonzalez identified Perez Correa's body Monday afternoon.

The Lake Ridge High School freshman was on a school trip for a SkillsUSA competition. He was swimming with classmates when he got separated from the group. The beach outing was a planned stop during the school trip, officials said.

The teen moved to Mansfield about three years ago from Mexico with his family and was described as smart and competitive by his friends.

Officials said Perez Correa was not an experienced swimmer and wasn't wearing a life vest.

Dickinson-based Texas EquuSearch team helped search for the teen with a sonar boat for about four hours Monday and covered about eight miles south of Bob Hall Pier, Texas EquuSearch officials said.

The Coast Guard called off its search about 5 p.m. Saturday after about 10 hours searching.

Frank Black, Texas EquuSearch director of search operations, said Mansfield ISD officials requested a search crew Sunday and Coast Guard allowed the search.

A GoFundMe account was created for Perez and his family: https://www.gofundme.com/carlosperez99

Twitter: @CallerNatalia

Live Blog Searchers find body of missing Mansfield teen
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Faye Cameron, who was girls' dorm mother, drops appeal of allegations

By Dan Parker

Faye Cameron, the wife of the Rev. Wiley Cameron Sr., was banned Thursday from working at the People's Baptist Church and Ministries children's homes after a state regulatory agency determined that she committed neglect and physical abuse.

The Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services issued the notification against Cameron, a former employee at the youth home, following an investigation that began in May.

Faye Cameron, who has not been charged with any crime, declined to comment on the notification. Her attorney, David Gibbs III, said she denies the abuse and neglect allegations and challenged the state on its findings last year. She dropped her appeal about 10 days ago, he said.

"The cost of continuing to fight the bureaucracy regarding the allegations was prohibitive, because she had retired (several months ago) from serving in the Rebekah Home for Girls," Gibbs said. "(She) decided it didn't serve any point to continue to administratively contest the allegations.

"She is a lady in her 70s who served faithfully in that ministry in excess of 30 years and feels her record speaks for itself," said Gibbs, a Florida-based attorney.

Faye Cameron was the dorm mother for the Rebekah Home for Girls.

Her lifetime ban represents the latest in a series of blows to People's Baptist Church and Ministries, which operates a number of homes for troubled children and adults on a 557-acre spread on Old Brownsville Road, just outside Corpus Christi.

This year, at least three former residents of the Lighthouse, an adult home for men at the ministries, formally filed reports alleging they were abused while at the Lighthouse.

On March 31, Justin Simons, 18, of Georgia, told Nueces County Sheriff's Department investigators that a ministry employee, Allen Smith, punished him because he thought Simons was planning to run away. Simons said Smith forced him to run through brush and thorns without shoes, hit him with a stick and ordered him to dig in a 15-foot pit.

Simons said he was not allowed to take a break from digging unless he jumped across the pit. When he tried, he said, he fell and suffered sprained ankles. Sheriff's investigators arrested Smith on April 7 on a felony charge of unlawful restraint with injury.

Misdemeanor assault charges have also been filed against three other people who helped run the Lighthouse.

Widespread support

News of the abuse allegations has prompted an outpouring of support by former residents and others associated with the ministries who say the homes have turned around the lives of many who were mired in alcoholism, drug abuse and crime.

The ministries' youth homes, also known as the Roloff homes, were founded by the late evangelist Lester Roloff.

Beginning in the early 1970s, the state insisted that the homes submit to regulation, but Roloff refused. The Texas Attorney General's Office began investigating Roloff's homes in 1973 after former residents made allegations of abuse.

People's Baptist Church took over for Roloff in 1979. Roloff died in a plane crash in 1982. The homes closed during the 1980s after a lengthy church vs. state battle that drew national attention.

The homes reopened last year after being accredited by the Texas Association of Christian Child Care Agencies Inc., a private organization created by Gov. George W. Bush in 1998.

'Ensure the health and safety'

The Department of Protective and Regulatory Services received a complaint May 28 "alleging physical abuse by Ms. Cameron," according to a copy of the letter issued to Wiley Cameron Sr.

"This investigation has been conducted with findings of physical abuse, medical neglect and neglectful supervision," the letter said.

"We are requiring your agency, the People's Baptist Church, to take action to ensure the health and safety of the children residing in your facility. Since Ms. Cameron is now a person with a background finding, she may not be present in the facility while children are in care."

The letter did not specifically describe the allegations against Faye Cameron, and state officials refused to elaborate.

A state investigator may conduct an unannounced inspection to confirm Faye Cameron is not at the facility while children are being cared for there, according to the state's letter to Wiley Cameron Sr.

Faye Cameron intends to continue living and attending church on the same acreage where the children's homes lie, but she will not work at the youth homes, said Gibbs, her attorney.

If Faye Cameron works at the Rebekah Home for Girls again, the Texas Association of Christian Child Care Agencies could revoke the youth homes' accreditation, forcing them to close, said Marla Sheely, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services.

Grant Jones, defense attorney for Smith, called the state's move against Faye Cameron absurd.

"There's no way that lady is an abusive person." Jones said. "No way. Impossible. After all the years and years of service they put out up there? No way."
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Hugh Smith

The belly of our political beast

I have seen two Super Bowls (Dallas actually won one of them), a goat roping, a mutton busting and a rattlesnake roundup but I have never seen anything like this political primary season! Could it get any crazier? In the Democratic Party we have a socialist/communist running against a candidate who may be indicted for a series of crimes that could destroy her candidacy.

As a Korean and Cold War veteran, I am astonished to see the vast crowds of people flocking to hear about all the "free stuff" they are going to receive from the socialist/communist government promised by Mr. Sanders. Mrs. Clinton is doing her best to out-promise ol' Bernie but so far his "pie in the sky" view is resonating with those who are looking for the good life! If the public is too dumb to pick the right candidate, the Democrat "Establishment" has the super delegates and will determine who the nominee is.

In the Republican Party we have the most God-awful mess I have ever witnessed! Mr. Trump was supposed to be a flash in the pan then drop out. Sen. Cruz was supposed to be deposed long before now. Then the Republican "Establishment" could appoint the anointed one and life would go on as usual. Now the Republican "Establishment" is in total panic. In short, the underbelly of the political beast in both parties has been exposed and it is not a pretty sight. Our country badly needs to reform our method of selecting political nominees for president of the United States. Will Rogers once said "I don't belong to any organized political party, I'm a Democrat." With apologies to ol' Will, I believe that could be applied to both parties at this time.
As anyone who lives in Japan knows, earthquakes can strike at any time. In an effort to encourage people to be prepared for the worst, Tanizawa worked with J. Walter Thompson to adapt its technology into household objects.

The +MET Project sees helmets serve as plant pots and lampshades.

Tanizawa asked J. Walter Thompsons Japan office to develop a strategy to make safety helmets an essential home accessory. The Japanese government encourages people to keep emergency supply kits in their homes, but few people own helmets, according to the agency.

Most importantly, Tanizawa wants people to have the helmets readily accessible, not buried at the back of a cupboard, as is often the case. J. Walter Thompsons idea aims to achieve that. The lamp model also incorporates a flashlight to help in the event of power cuts.

In a statement, ECD Go Sohara said the agency worked with a professional interior designer as opposed to a helmet designer to create the products. Our goal is to be sold not in DIY home centres, where youd normally buy equipment like this, but in home furnishing stores and variety shops, Sohara said.

According to the statement, Tanizawa plans to introduce further home and office products as part of the range.

We aim to get this concept to reach people who never had interest in a helmet and onto shelves in the near future, Miho Kawai, a representative from Tanizawas management planning department, is quoted as saying.

Campaigns view: The idea might raise a smile at first, but natural disasters are of course no joke and anything that can help save lives is to be commended. Of the two products, the plant pot is perhaps the more attractive/least obtrusive, but the flashlight in the lamp is a clever touch. The whole thing is a good example of agencies doing something that's ultimately much more useful than advertising, and a direction we encourage.

CREDITS

Client: Tanizawa Seisakusho

Agency: J. Walter Thompson Japan

Project: +MET

ECD: Go Sohara

Senior art director: Yusuke Mochizuki

Senior copywriter: Norio Okinojo

Account director: Takumi Ichihara

Product designer: Tetsuya Tsujimura (Tsujimura Design Studio)
Kudos was formed by former MediaCom exec Lee Boden in January 2013 and focuses on video, copy and graphics for brands including SAP, Google and tourism body VisitBritian. The agency also works with Sunquick and Suntop drinks brands in Saudi Arabia.

Mitchell, who left his role at Mondelez International last November, said: Kudos has grown well over the last three years and now it is time for the next step. I have known Lee for many years and now I have invested to become a full partner.

He said he firmly believed content agencies are the future as online and offline silos become shattered.

Content needs to be around exciting, real-life experiences, he added.

Kudos currently employees six people in Singapore and Mitchell said it would be adopting a different growth strategy to the traditional model.

We are not looking to build an agency with lots of people. We will have very senior leadership and then flexible senior talent and resources that we can call on for particular campaigns," he added.

We think this is more suited to how people want to work now. The title of freelance does not do them justice because they are more than that, they just dont want to be tied down to big agencies," he said.

Mitchell added that Kudos would strive to get clients far closer to the content production process to enable faster and more effective turn-arounds.

Mitchell moved to Singapore for the Mondelez role in January 2014 from Chicago, where he was managing director for Mindshare's BP global digital account. During his time with the snack-food giant, Mitchell played a role in propelling Mobile Futures, an initiative that pairs mobile startups with Mondelez' portfolio of brands.

Mondelez International announced a reorganisation of its senior management last October. Former chief growth officer Mark Clouse was promoted to the post of chief commercial officer. He was succeeded as chief growth officer by Tim Cofer, who was previously head of the company's APAC and EEMEA business. Cofer relocated from Singapore to New York for the role.
Online travel agency Agoda has launched a new video ad called Unleash Your Curiosity, featuring the work of well-known street photographer Aik Beng Chia.

Also known as ABC, when hes not snapping shots as a contributor to Everyday Asia on Instagram, hes at his day job with BBH Singapore as a member of the creative team.

Shot in multiple locations across Asia, the 60-second spot features the sights and colours of Bangkok, Tokyo, Sydney, Koh Lanta, Singapore and Krabi with the tagline: Travel further, travel deeper, travel Agoda.

The ad is running in Indonesia, with plans for rollout in select markets.

Andy Edwards, global director for brand and communications at Agoda, told one of Ad Nut's colleagues that great travel is not about staying in your comfort zone.

So that was the brief, capture the difference that confronts you on a multiple-country trip. And do it in an honest, real, perhaps occasionally raw way, he added. We love the energy and colour of this approach.

Ad Nut must admit to also loving the energy and colour of the video, with its upbeat drum line and non-stop kaleidoscopic slideshow of all the weird, interesting and kooky things Asia has to offer.

Ad Nut thinks this is a nice video ad that fits in nicely with Agodas brand personality and looks forward to more such efforts.

But for now, this video kind of makes Ad Nut want to venture forth from the comfort of woodland home to see what else is out there. Ad Nut is now curious about all the new exotic nuts one can munch on.

Does this mean Ad Nut now needs to go look for a deal on Agodas site? Wait  Do squirrels need hotel rooms?
| BY Lynchy |

 Study of 4,500 people finds that 90 per cent of women find guys most attractive when theyre comfortable being themselves  but half of Australian men still feel pressured by masculine stereotypes

 Only 11 per cent of men in Australia strongly agree they feel like an attractive male

 Iconic brand, LYNX, today launches radical new campaign, celebrating individuality and fighting the labels that prevent men from expressing themselves

Onlookers think the typical Aussie guy is a beacon of masculinity  a bronzed, buff surfer with luscious locks, tanned skin and plenty of budgie in the smugglers  but how much harm is this stereotype doing?

In reality, Aussie guys arent always the perceived manly man and are in fact among the most insecure in the world. Maybe its the typical Aussie stereotype that sees our guys feeling like theyre not up to the apparent standard.

A study released today by top male grooming brand, LYNX, is encouraging guys to be themselves and dispel stereotypes. The study finds that what girls actually dig is personality and individuality over chiselled abs and good looks. The study talked to 4500 men and women around the world, including 1000 in Australia and has revealed that while 9 out of 10 women find guys most attractive when theyre comfortable being themselves, male perceptions of what makes them attractive are shaped by labels and expectations.

The study reports almost half of Australian men (49 per cent) are afraid of looking different, for fear of being judged or labelled  the highest percentage from all 12 countries surveyed.

Strikingly, only 11 per cent of men in Australia strongly agree they feel like an attractive male, indicating many guys continue to feel a tremendous amount of pressure to fulfil an unachievable stereotype.

We know from years of research that what makes a guy attractive is  him. His strengths, his weaknesses, his individuality and most of all how he expresses it, says Jon McCarthy, LYNX Marketing Director.

But despite that, a lot of guys dont feel comfortable being themselves. Because theyre afraid of what people will say. Of being labelled. Of embarrassment. Afraid that whats unique about them isnt considered attractive or acceptable. We want to change that.

The brands new global campaign, Find Your Magic aims to create a new, progressive conversation about what really makes a guy attractive in todays world. As part of this call to arms, LYNX has launched an expansive new range of grooming products across national retailers, which give guys the tools to find the thing that makes them unique, and work on it.

TAKING ACTION

From today, LYNX will be hitting the streets of Sydney with renowned street style photographer, Giuseppe Santamaria (MITT), to photograph everyday Aussies willing to share their unique individual styles.

To culminate the bold, new direction of the brand, LYNX will be hosting a public debate  What makes a man? Attraction and masculinity in 2016 (Monday 18 April, purchase tickets here)  to unravel the behaviours and mind sets that shape societys concept of what it means to be an attractive man, and how men can celebrate their differences and originality. The panel includes iconic Aussies such as Joel Creasey, Nova 969s Tim Blackwell, The Chasers Chris Taylor, Kate Peck, Peter FitzSimons and founder of I-Manifest Jo Pretyman.
| BY Ricki Green |

News Corp Australia, Westpac and Legacy Australia have united to honour Australian military legends in a new multi-platform editorial and retail campaign to support the launch of Legacys new fundraising appeal via Archibald / Williams.

News Corp Australasia executive chairman Michael Miller, Westpac Group chief executive consumer bank George Frazis, Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith and Legacy Australia chairman Tony Ralph today hosted an event at Victoria Barracks in Sydney to mark the launch of a fundraising appeal for Legacy Australia.

Frazis announced that Westpac would kick start the appeal with a $500,000 donation, which will go towards an education fund for Australian women and families affected by the death or illness of a family member who has served in the Australian Defence Force.

Accepting the donation on behalf of Legacy and speaking of the benefits the charity provides, Ben Roberts-Smith VC MG said: On behalf of Legacy Australia, thank you to Westpac and News Corp Australia for this generous gift and for the opportunity to be part of this campaign.

This funding will directly impact women and children and help Legacy fulfil its mission of ensuring that families and dependants enjoy and experience the best upbringing, education and opportunities that Legacy can facilitate.

Frazis said Westpac was proud to play an important role in supporting the families of those who served their country.

Says Frazis: This donation is very close to the heart of Westpac as we approach our bicentenary and reflect on our history and close connection to the ANZACs.

As Australias first bank, the impact of World War I was particularly significant for us, with more than 40 per cent of our workforce at the time enlisted for service. We are very proud of our brave employees and the many thousands of Australian men and women who have represented Australia in uniform since then.

We are delighted to support Legacy for the second consecutive year, providing funds which will go directly to women impacted by war. The donation will provide access to education and training, helping them up skill and support their families.

The fundraising appeal will also coincide with News Corp Australias three-week campaign leading up to ANZAC Day, where Australians will be encouraged to Learn the Legend of the military moments over the past 100 years that helped shape our nation.

Now in its second year, the campaign also provides a platform to educate younger generations about our proud war history via a commemorative coin collection. Launching on Saturday April 9 (VIC, SA, TAS and NT), Sunday April 10 (NSW, QLD and WA) and Monday April 11 (The Australian) readers are able to collect a new coin for 14 days with the purchase of any of News Corp Australias national, metro and regional newspapers.

The limited-edition, legal tender, 14 piece coin collection this year includes four Nordic gold 25 cent pieces especially designed by the Royal Australian Mint. The first 25 cent gold coin commemorates Our Legends which, together with a Collectors Album, comes free with each purchase of the newspaper from participating newsagents across Australia. Subsequent coins will be available for $3 each over the following two weeks.

Says Miller: As a nation we are indebted to the brave men and women who have fought to protect Australia and our way of life.

Our 2016 campaign will see us share the stories of military moments from World War I to the present day that have defined our nation, and to encourage Australians to donate to Legacy. We hope to help instil pride in our brave servicemen and women, but also in remembering the sacrifices of previous generations we hope that young people will understand the value of peace.

Legacy Australia chairman Tony Ralph knows of many families who have paid the price of peace through the sacrifice of their loved ones life or health in serving their country.

Says Ralph: At Legacy we still care for 80,000 families and our work is ongoing for many years to come. At this solemn time of year when we pause to remember that sacrifice, the generosity of Westpac and News Corp is very much appreciated. Without corporate support such as this Legacy would not be able to continue their good work.

The campaign encourages all Australians to enable Legacy to keep supporting the families of our returned service men and women and will be amplified through a marketing campaign across print, TV and digital.
| BY Ricki Green |

Schweppes is encouraging people to take a moment to unwind  no matter where they are  with its Real Iced Tea range in an integrated campaign via BWM Dentsu.

The agency won the project after a competitive three-way pitch. It is BWM Dentsus first work for Schweppes since being appointed to the companys creative roster in January 2016.

The Brewed to hit the spot integrated campaign is the first major above the line campaign for Real Iced Tea, since launching in September 2013.

Troy McKinna, Schweppes general manager marketing, said the campaign captured the authentic aspect of the Real Iced Tea range simply and effectively.

Says McKinna: We wanted to convey the idea that a Real Iced Tea is brewed from natural tea leaves, delivering moments of refreshment and respite from peoples busy lives. Brewed to hit the spot best expressed this message.

We were excited to see BWM Dentsu bring this idea to life and have been very impressed by the high quality of work the team has delivered.

The film was shot in a lush, hand-built oasis on Collins Street in the centre of Melbournes CBD, created using real ferns and foliage.

BWM Dentsu wanted to highlight the natural, real flavours of the product, so worked hard to use minimal special effects when creating the spot. The one-shot camera work added to the laid-back feeling and will help the spot stand out amongst the noise of other ads.

Mark Watkin, managing director, BWM Dentsu Melbourne, said the agency was proud to work with such an exciting emerging brand.

Says Watkin: Schweppes has a long history of offering Australians high-quality products, and the Real Iced Tea range is no exception. We wanted to give people a taste for how refreshing the range is and we think the campaign delivers exactly this.

The campaign launched on Sunday, 3 April, and will run across TVC, outdoor and digital.

Client: Schweppes  Real Iced Tea Co

Troy Mckinna  General Manager Marketing & Innovation

Murray Raeburn  Group Category Manager Non Carbonated Category

Sarah Green  Category Manager  Tea

Creative Agency: BWM Dentsu

Mark Watkin  Managing Director

Belinda Murray  Client Services Director

Luisa Peters  Senior Onscreen Producer

Ed Carveth  Creative Director

Cam McMillan  Art Director

Jake McLennan  Writer

Leah Papakrivos  Senior Account Manager

Production Company: The Sweet Shop

Dylan Pharazyn  Director

Kate Menzies  Producer

Wilf Sweetland  Managing Partner

Edward Pontifex  Executive Producer

Shelley Farthing-Dawe  Director of Photography

Lance Davis  Art Director

Post Production  Palace

New Zealand Flagstaff Studios

Stevo Williams  Sound engineer

Media: CARAT
| BY Ricki Green |

STW Communications Group Limited, leading Australasian marketing content and communications group will officially merge with the Australian and New Zealand businesses of WPP plc following STW shareholder approval at an extraordinary general meeting held today.

STW shareholders voted in favour of all resolutions associated with the transaction, which will see WPP become the majority shareholder of STW, and STW become the primary vehicle for WPP in Australia and New Zealand.

The combined entity will be known as WPP AUNZ[1], and be the largest communications services parent company in the region with 90+ businesses, more than 5,500 people and combined revenues of more than A$850 million[2]. WPP will have a majority shareholding in WPP AUNZ of 61.5%.

The merger is expected to deliver substantial benefits for clients, employees and shareholders. Key features of the merger include:

 merger accelerates WPP AUNZs strategy of delivering 100% of its clients customer experience budgets

 significant increase in the scale of the combined entitys operations with WPP AUNZ generating revenues in excess of A$850 million

 a diversified and strengthened portfolio of companies through the combination of complementary businesses across all key marketing and communication services disciplines

 an improved offering to clients through local market knowledge and access to WPPs global reach, insight, tools and proprietary offerings in data and content

 strong local management oversight to drive efficiencies and collaboration

 increased career opportunities for the 5,500 people of WPP AUNZ

 a strengthened balance sheet with reduced leverage metrics

 senior management of Michael Connaghan (pictured) and Lukas Aviani will continue to lead the merged WPP AUNZ as CEO and CFO respectively

 a new board structure comprising independent directors and WPP nominees

Says Michael Connaghan, CEO, WPP AUNZ: We believe this is a great deal for all stakeholders. This merger will drive growth, extend our reach, significantly increase the scale of our operations and position WPP AUNZ as the clear market leader.

WPP AUNZ creates exciting opportunities for our clients, our shareholders and our people. It will be an organisation filled with insights, ideas, creativity and solutions provided by this countrys most outstanding talent. We will work together to meet our clients challenges, and will look to provide more opportunities for our people to learn and grow.

Teamed with the opportunity to tap into WPPs world-class tools, global resources and deep technology, WPP AUNZ will be a business unparalleled in our region.

The merger simplifies the ownership structure of companies in which WPP and STW currently have joint ownership, including Ogilvy & Mather, Ogilvy Public Relations, J. Walter Thompson, Mindshare, Maxus and Added Value, and aligns the interests of both parties.

Says Robert Mactier, chairman, WPP AUNZ: We are delighted that the merger with the WPP Australian and New Zealand businesses has received such a positive endorsement today from the STW shareholders. It indeed heralds a new and exciting era which will be very exciting for STW shareholders, WPP, our collective clients and all of the very talented people across the merged group. A lot of integration planning has been going on ahead of todays shareholder meeting and with the approval of the merger we can now get on with the job of delivering the benefits and synergies for all our stakeholders. Through this preparatory work we are now even more convinced that this is the right strategic step for STW to take.

Says Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive officer, WPP: In the new era of horizontality, STW and WPP have a unique strategic opportunity to integrate their offerings and secure greater effectiveness and efficiency to the benefit of clients, not only in Australia and New Zealand, but globally.

The separately quoted WPP AUNZ also offers a unique structure to achieve horizontality and motivate our people to do so, capitalizing on its already established leadership position.

Merger completion and business review

The merger is expected to be completed over the coming days, and the new name of the company will officially change upon expected shareholder approval in late May.

Says Connaghan: Many benefits of this merger rely on our leaders knowing whos in our new larger network of businesses, getting familiar with our different strengths and finding new ways to collaborate. As a priority, well be looking for new and innovative ways for our agencies to connect and strengthen ties, and find opportunities to work together where it can benefit clients and people.

Similarly we plan to increase our already extensive training opportunities and provide access to a range of proprietary tools to help people, and their clients. Well also be reaching out to gain important access to global insight and tools, and international partnerships with leading brands. Its an exciting future for all involved.

Structure of the board

Following completion of the merger, the WPP AUNZ board will comprise 11 directors:

 Michael Connaghan CEO and managing director WPP AUNZ

 Four independent directors:

o Chairperson Robert Mactier

o Graham Cubbin

o Kim Anderson

o Peter Cullinane

(Iain Tsicalas will retire on completion of the merger)

 Six WPP Nominees:

o Paul Richardson (WPP finance director)

o Geoff Wild AM (non-executive director, director WPP Australia Holding)

o Paul Heath (chairman, Ogilvy Asia Pacific)

o Ranjana Singh (WPP chairperson Indonesia/Vietnam)

o John Steedman (executive director)

o Jon Steel (WPP group planning director)

[1] Name subject to shareholder approval at AGM in late-May 2016
"This alarming consumption and harm data makes it abundantly clear there's still much more work to do to make the nation's capital a safer place. It's time that the ACT government took decisive, and necessary, action to stop the harm being caused by alcohol."
"An inquiry should also consider the adequacy of the police search, why there were significant time delays in looking for him, and why the ground search conducted four weeks after he went missing was restricted to only two kilometres when hospital staff estimated he could have walked up to five kilometres."
An unnamed member of the public wrote to the committee, which also includes the Opposition Leader, territories minister and government and opposition Senate leaders, in 2011, arguing for the name change to end confusion and potentially extend naming honours to Griffin's wife Marion Mahony Griffin. She collaborated on planning for Canberra, working in partnership with her husband to produce watercolours of the designs.
"They face a difficult choice: apply for a permit every time they start a new project, with all the associated delays and red tape, or hope the law wouldn't cover them despite the uncertainty, and carry on as before," he said.
"There is real risk that over time the industrial action will affect the capacity of the Australian Border Force to protect Australia's border, increasing the likelihood of drug traffickers, child sex offenders, other criminals and persons who are national security risks such as returning foreign fighters, or harmful and illicit goods in cargo, getting into the country undetected," a statement from the Immigration department said.
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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 []
Our Promise: Welcome to Care2, the world's largest community for good. Here, you'll find over 45 million like-minded people working towards progress, kindness, and lasting impact.

Care2 Stands Against: bigots, racists, bullies, science deniers, misogynists, gun lobbyists, xenophobes, the willfully ignorant, animal abusers, frackers, and other mean people. If you find yourself aligning with any of those folks, you can move along, nothing to see here.

Care2 Stands With: humanitarians, animal lovers, feminists, rabble-rousers, nature-buffs, creatives, the naturally curious, and people who really love to do the right thing.

You are our people. You Care. We Care2.
Applications are invited by Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Hyderabad for admission to Doctor in Philosophy (Ph.D). Programme in Design is offered to pursue practice based and practice led research in art, design, culture, creative practices and related areas for the session 2016-17.

Eligibility Criteria:

Candidates must have completed their M.Des/ M.Arch/ M.Tech/ M.Phil/ MFA/ M.A/ M.Sc/ Postgraduate Diploma in Design of NID, Ahmadabad and equivalent with minimum 60% marks (55% marks for SC/ST) in the final academic year of the programme.

Candidates with MA/M.Sc should have qualified CEED/GATE/NET or equivalent examinations are eligible for Teaching Assistance.

How to Apply?

Candidates should visit the official website to apply online have to register here.

The application fee paid the candidates is as follows:

300/- for General/OBC category (men only)

150/- for SC/ST/PWD category (men only)

150/- for all women applicants

For more details on how to apply, visit the official website

Selection Procedure:

Admission will be offered to candidates based on their academic performance and project proposal in the areas related to the research themes. Candidates shortlisted are expected to attend the interview.

Important Dates:



Last date to apply online: April 12, 2016

Announcement of list of candidates shortlisted for interview: April 15, 2016

Interview date: April 30, 2016

Also Read: Top 10 Fashion Technology Colleges in India - 2015
India has invited Canadian faculty members to teach in the country's institutes of higher learning at short stretches, on Friday, April 1, 2016. During a bilateral meeting with his Canadian counterpart Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on the sidelines of the Fourth Nuclear Summit, said that Canada had a surplus of human resource capital.

"He said that Canadian professors and teachers, including retired faculty members, could consider coming to India during the harsh winter months in Canada and teaching at Indian universities for periods ranging from three to six months under the GIAN (Global Initiative of Academic Networks)," external affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said at a media briefing following the meeting, according to IANS.

Why Study In Canada?

Under the aegis of the union human resources ministry, GIAN was formulated with the aim of tapping the talent pool of academia and scientists internationally to encourage their engagement with institutes of higher education in India.

According to Swarup, the PM said that it would help India receive quality education.

Trudeau agreed immediately to the proposal, saying that he had himself been a schoolteacher.

"So there is a real potential, he said, for harnessing the opportunity of helping so many young people in India get better skills and Canada would also be happy to provide help in education and infrastructure support," Swarup stated.

How To Obtain A Canadian Student Visa

This was the first meeting between the two leaders after Trudeau became Prime Minister in November last year.

In his visit to Canada last year, Modi had met Trudeau who was the leader of the opposition then.
New Delhi, April 4, 2016: Macquarie University, one of Australia's Top Ten universities, launched the Big History: Connecting Knowledge Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) available through the COURSERA platform in 2015 https://www.coursera.org/learn/big-history. This program provides students a powerful framework to address complex real-world challenges.

Launched in December 2015, Big History: Connecting Knowledge features 20 academics from across Macquarie University. A 6-week program, it is a unique and epic trans-disciplinary journey that begins 13.8 billion years ago with the Big Bang and traverses time to the present exploring how our universe and our world has evolved from incredible simplicity to ever-increasing complexity and discover the important links between past, current, and future events.

The Big History: Connecting Knowledge MOOC has won rave reviews from across the globe. In a short span of 3 months, over 11,000 learners from over 100 countries have enrolled in the course with India constituting 5.9% of the total enrolled students, surpassing the likes of United Kingdom, Spain and Germany, coming only third in line after the USA and China, who stand at 25% and 8.9%, respectively.

Macquarie University has now announced the Big History International Student Undergraduate Scholarship http://mq.edu.au/intl/bighistory/ which is available to all international students who apply for any undergraduate course at Macquarie University and have verified completion of the Big History: Connecting Knowledge MOOC available through the COURSERA platform.

The scholarships will cover all tuition fees which, depending on the program of study, will be up to $50,000 AUD per year for an undergraduate degree of 3-4 years duration. This represents a value of 2.5 million or INR 25 lakhs per year, potentially over 4 years, for a total value of 10 million rupees, or INR 1 crore.

The first ever Big History International Student Scholarship will be awarded in mid-2016. Indian students who enroll in the MOOC and finish the six week course will be eligible for selection. The deadline to apply is 30th June, 2016. After June 30, all applications would be considered for the 2017 scholarship.

Speaking about the scholarship, Mr. Andrew McKenna, Executive Director of the Big History Institute at Macquarie University said, "We are thrilled to announce the Big History International Undergraduate scholarship. Given the enthusiastic embrace of the Big History MOOC on Coursera by Indian students, I think Indian students will be very competitive. I am not surprised India is so interested in Big History - there is a lot of synergy. Big History is about humanity, our world, and our future. India is a vibrant nation that represents a large and growing proportion of humanity, and as a rising power India is tremendously important to the world. And what is absolutely certain is that the future of everyone on the planet will continue to be impacted by the innovation and talent coming out of India. It is great to have the scholarship in place, and I am sure we will see more Indian students enrolling in our groundbreaking MOOC to take full advantage of this fantastic opportunity."

About Macquarie University:

Established in Sydney in 1964, Macquarie University is consistently ranked amongst the Top 10 universities in Australia (ARWU, 2014) and Top 250 in the world (QS, 2014). True to its founders' vision, the University has challenged the conventional thinking of academia through innovations in its campus set-up, curricula, interdisciplinary research and engagement with industry and the wider community.

Eighty-five per cent of its research activity is rated through the 'Excellence in Research for Australia' initiative at world standard or higher, and it has received a rating of 5 stars across all categories measured by QS.
As part of the celebrations leading up to the 50th anniversary of the Mustang on April 17, 2014, and the launch of the all-new 2015 Mustang , Ford has released photos of some of the pony car studies that never made it to production.

Over the past five decades, Ford designers and engineers have come up with many proposals for Mustangs that, for one reason or another, never had the chance to be produced. However, some of the prototypes survive and now Ford is showcasing them to make us wonder what might have been had they made it to series production. So, without further ado, lets start the presentations.

By Dan Mihalascu

1961 Avventura, Avanti, Allegro

From late 1961 to mid-1962, Ford designers experimented with a wide range of themes for a sporty coupe based on the platform of the new Falcon compact. Each design was given an internal name, but one fastback design actually had at least three names, starting with Avventura before moving on to Avanti and finally Allegro. As the sketch shows, the fastback design was originally intended to be a hatchback with rear-facing second row seat. Although it was never produced, a variation of the fastback profile was eventually adopted as the third body-style for Mustang.

Avanti/Allegro Concept

The transition from sketch to physical design model saw the Avventura losing the hatch, which was replaced with a trunk, while the rear seat was now forward-facing. The study was originally known as Avanti, but the name was changed to Allegro because Studebaker had introduced the Avanti coupe around the same time.

1961-1962 Two-Seater Studies

Ford designers considered a number of two-seater studies, which were seen as a more affordable return to the roots of Thunderbird, which by this time had become a four-seater. Interestingly, there has never been a strictly two-seat production Mustang, with the exception of some track-oriented models that had the rear seats removed to save weight.

1962 Allegro Design Study

Another Allegro design surfaced in 1962 as the work of a design team led by Gene Bordinat. This particular study is responsible for the basic proportions that would define most Mustangs for the next five decades: the long hood, short deck and compact greenhouse became a hallmark of production Mustangs ever since.

1963 Two-Seat, Mid-Engine Mustang Concept

This hard-top variation of the Mustang 1 concept from 1962 was probably never seriously considered for production as a Mustang, but it did provide some inspiration for the GT40 Mk1 that began racing at Le Mans in 1964.

1964 Two Seater Study

This is a clay model from 1964 representing a two-seat Mustang. The model incorporates some of the design cues of the first generation Mustang, more specifically the 1965 model year, including the side scoops.

1965 Four-Door Mustang

The success of the first-generation Mustang made Ford execs think about new body-styles to gain even more customers. As the Mustang was based on the Falcon sedan, the idea to add two doors to the pony car was inevitable. Fortunately, the design didnt get approved and the Mustang legend was not diluted.

1966 Mustang Station Wagon

Another bodystyle that was seriously considered in the mid-1960s was a station wagon. At least one running prototype based on a 1966 coupe was built, while another design study included elements for refreshed models that were coming later that decade. All of the known Mustang wagons were three-doors that were closer to a European shooting brake than a traditional American family station wagon.

1967 Allegro II Concept

In 1967, Ford designers took one of the concepts from 1962 and transformed it by removing the greenhouse and replacing it with a low-cut speedster-style windshield, rollbar, flying buttresses on the rear deck and a new rear end.

1966 Mach 1 Concept

Created as a preview of the 1968 model, the Mach 1 Concept originally had a nose that drew inspiration from the 1963 Mustang II concept. Later on, the Mach 1 grew a new face that was closer to production Mustangs of the time. Although the low-cut roofline and racing-type fuel cap never made it to production, the hatchback did arrive on the 1974 Mustang II.

1967 Mach 2 Concept

The Mach 2 concept featured a 289 cubic-inch (4.73-liter) Hi-Po V8 that was shifted from the front to behind the two seats to evaluate the layout as a possible successor to the Shelby Cobra. Despite its mid-engine layout, the Mach 2 retained the long-hood, short-deck proportions of a Mustang. Unfortunately, it remained a study.

1970 Mustang Milano Concept

Revealed at the 1970 Chicago Auto Show, the Mustang Milano study previewed the nearly horizontal rear deck and sharp, extended nose that would be adopted by the production 1971 model. However, the rest of the car didnt really look like any production Mustang, but the Milano profile was adopted by the Australian-market Falcon XB coupe of the mid-1970s .

1980 Mustang RSX Concept

Penned by the Italian Ghia design studio, the RSX was meant to be a rally special based on the new Fox-body third-generation Mustang that debuted for the 1979 model year. It had a one-inch-wider track and 5.6-inch-shorter wheelbase than the road-going Mustang, plus extra ride height to help it deal with the off-tarmac stages of European rallies.

1990 Bruce Jenner, Rambo Design Studies

In 1990, Ford designers considered a number of themes for a replacement for the long-running third-generation Mustang, with the new generation to drop notchback and hatchback bodystyles for a fastback coupe format. This Bruce Jenner concept featuring elements like the galloping pony in the grille, side scoops and tri-bar taillamps, wasnt considered aggressive enough to be a Mustang. On the other hand, the Rambo proposal was deemed too extreme for production.

1992 Mach III Concept

The Mach III study offered the first public hints of the new design direction for the fourth-generation Mustang. While the 1994 Mustang featured classic elements like the grille pony badge, side scoops and tri-bar taillamps, the two-seater layout and the low-cut speedster windshield have remained showcar elements.

PHOTO GALLERY
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles issued a recall campaign for two of its SUVs after a possible malfunction with the brakes was revealed during testing.



The recall of the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango is related to the left front brake calipers of certain models, which may have been manufactured from a wrong type of iron thats not as durable as it should.

In the affected vehicles, the left front brake caliper may crack due to being made from an incorrect material. A cracked brake caliper may lengthen the distance needed to stop the vehicle and increase the risk of a crash, wrote the NHTSA in its recall summary and consequence of the problem.

The recall affects 14,768 2015 and 2016 MY units of the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango manufactured between December 9, 2015, and January 14, 2016. Dealers will inspect them and, if necessary, the brake caliper will be replaced, free of charge. Owners will be contacted by the manufacturer and an appointment will have to be made with the local Jeep/Dodge dealer.

PHOTO GALLERY
Photo: Fraser Institute

The Fraser Institute has released its anticipated and controversial report card for schools across the province, and no Okanagan school even broke the top 40.

The top school in the Okanagan was Holy Cross Elementary in Penticton, an independent school. It came in 47th on the elementary school list when rated with schools across the province.

In fact, according to the report, 80 per cent of the top 100 ranked schools are independent schools.

On average, independent schools achieved a rating of 8.2 (out of 10) while public schools averaged just 5.6.

Half a dozen schools tied at number one in the province, earning a 10 out of 10 in the last five years.

All six schools are independent or private schools in the Lower Mainland.

The Fraser Institute, a right-wing think tank, published its annual British Columbia school rankings on Sunday that claims to show how schools have performed academically, and which schools across the province have improved or fallen behind.

The report card ranks 944 public and independent elementary schools based on 10 'academic indicators' derived from the province-wide Foundation Skills Assessments results.

Our report card is the only objective, reliable tool that parents have to compare the academic performance of their childs school over time and to that of other schools in their community, says Peter Cowley, Fraser Institute director of school performance studies

According to the rankings, 50 schools across the province showed significant improvement over the past five years.

Of the 50 schools that did show significant improvement, 45 are public schools.

When parents see the report cards objective evidence that a schools results are consistently low or declining, they often become very effective advocates for improvement, says Cowley.

Every year, every school in the province must find ways to improve student results its as simple as that.

Kelownas Aberdeen Hall was the best-ranked school in the Central Okanagan coming in at 52nd, while Springvalley Elementary ranked the worst coming at 883rd out of 944.

Vernon Christian School got top nod in the Vernon school district taking 96th spot out of 944 schools, while Alexis Park Elementary received the worst ranking in the city at 747th school in the province.

As mentioned, Pentictons Holy Cross Elementary ranked well coming in at 47th in the Okanagan-Skaha district, while Carmi Elementary did the worst in the city coming in at 847th.

Despite the buzz over the rankings, the BC Teachers Federation doesnt take the rankings seriously  as per their social media response seen below that was posted today.

You can check out the full list and all the rankings here.
Photo: Thinkstock.com - Zoonar RF

The Regional District of Central Okanagan has issued a precautionary Water Quality Advisory for residents served by the Star Place Water System near Peachland.

The advisory affects eight properties connected to the community water system on Star Place off Trepanier Road near the Okanagan Connector.

Increased turbidity in the water system source from high runoff has resulted in water quality that might impact children, the elderly or those with weakened immune systems.

Roadside sign notices will be in place to advise residents of the precautionary advisory.

Interior Health has been contacted and while the health risk is modest and no bacteria have been found in any of the water from the system tested, Regional District staff recommends that as a precaution that Star Place water customers follow Interior Health guidelines, especially for those with weakened immune systems, the elderly, children and those wishing additional precautions, says RDCO communications officer Bruce Smith.

All water intended for drinking, washing fruit and vegetables, making beverages, ice or brushing teeth should be boiled for at least one minute or customers should use a safe alternative to water from the tap such as bottled or distilled water.

This precautionary water quality advisory affecting the Star Place Water System will continue until further notice.
Photo: CTV

A man is dead after a fire broke out inside a Maple Ridge apartment building Sunday morning.

CTV Vancouver reports that fire crews were called to the complex in the 1200 block of 224th Street at approximately 11 a.m.

Crews put out the fire and rescued a man inside. The man was rushed to Vancouver General Hospital by air ambulance in critical condition.

Later today, Ridge Meadows RCMP spokesperson Dan Hebranson confirmed to CTV that the man had died.

Officials said the fire did not seem to be suspicious.

--With files from CTV Vancouver
Photo: CTV Scene of another shooting, Saturday, at 122nd Street and 92nd Avenue in Surrey.

Surrey RCMP responded to yet another case of shots fired, Sunday night.

Shots rang out about 6 p.m. near 88th Avenue and 132nd Street.

Two vehicles were at the intersection on a red light, when the occupants of an SUV in the turn lane fired on a car in the lane next to it.

Multiple shots were fired into the vehicle.

The suspect SUV was last seen travelling south on 132nd, and the target vehicle fled to the north.

Police say no injuries have been identified thus far.



Serious crime investigators are continuing to obtain information from several witnesses who were at or near the intersection.

The Lower Mainland Forensic Identification Section was able to gather several pieces of evidence that could advance this investigation, Staff Sgt. D.L. Carr said in a press release.

No arrests have been made, and there are no suspects at this time. It's unknown if the incident is linked to other recent shootings that have plagued Surrey.
Photo: David Woolley

A program to get workers up and moving while on the job is rolling out in British Columbia, and it will be stretching the legs of employees across Canada by fall.

UPnGO with ParticipACTION was launched Monday by federal Health Minister Jane Philpott and her B.C. counterpart Terry Lake.

It uses a digital platform and app to set weekly challenges and personalized goals, and employees who complete the activities receive points redeemable online for healthy products.

Funding includes $2.5 million over three years from the Public Health Agency of Canada while B.C.'s Provincial Health Services Authority will allocate $3.8 million over the same period.

Studies show benefits of workplace physical activity include increased productivity, creativity and job performance.

A ParticipACTION survey finds 48 per cent of British Columbians worry they spend too much time sitting at work.
If you have just started your journey in an online casino or are looking for a new site to play,...
The start of Cemtechs 25th anniversary celebrations

ICR Research By

Published 04 April 2016

Cemtech Middle East & Africa 2016 welcomed nearly 300 delegates from 35 countries to its annual meeting in Dubai, a record attendance for this regional event and an auspicious start to Cemtechs 25th anniversary year.

This year sees Cemtech conferences celebrate 25 successful years and there could have been no better venue to commence this important year than the Grand Hyatt Dubai, the setting for the annual Middle East & Africa (MEA) event. As always, the meeting was packed full of contributions from leading industry figures, an array of technical papers, 30-stand equipment exhibition, plant tour to National Cement in Dubai and a spectacular Gala Dinner.

Welcoming delegates, conference organiser Thomas Armstrong highlighted the achievements of Cemtech over the last two-and-a-half decades, which has hosted several thousand participants across Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and the Americas since the first meeting held in Prague in 1991.

In the Middle East, Cemtech conferences have flourished as an important meeting place and source of technical and market knowledge for the regional industry, benefitting from strong support from key industry figures. Special thanks were reserved for his Excellency Sheikh Yasir Al Qassemi, general manager of Union Cement Company and chairman of the UAE Cement Producers Association, as well as for Ahmad Al Rousan, secretary general of the Arab Union for Cement and Building Materials, both consistent supporters and contributors to the success of Cemtech meetings over the years.

East v West divide

Opening the first morning of presentations, John Fraser-Andrews, who leads the Building Materials & Construction team at HSBC Bank (UK), provided an insightful overview of the current and future outlook for world cement markets over the next three years. The developed market, led by the US and to a lesser extent Europe, is enjoying a recovery in volumes, while the fall in energy prices is providing a welcome tailwind for producers, with an expected EBITDA upside of nearly 50 per cent by 2018 in the US and 35 per cent in Europe.

On the other hand, the emerging markets (EM) are experiencing a weakening in demand due to low commodity prices and a delayed reaction to the global financial crisis. Consequently, EM growth is forecast to see a sub-two per cent volume expansion over the next three years to 2018. Moreover, with high levels of capacity, utilisation rates are undermining cement prices in many countries.

Dangote: African self-sufficiency

The keynote presentation was delivered by Onne van der Weijde, CEO of Dangote Cement, Nigerias largest cement producer and an emerging major with 45Mta of capacity in sub-Saharan Africa. His presentation, entitled Building a self-sufficient cement industry in Africa, presented a bullish case for African cement demand over the medium- to long term. As Africas most dynamic cement company, Dangote is now forging ahead with a new wave of capacity expansions planned for Senegal, Kenya and Ethiopia. According to Mr Van der Weijde, Dangote is now on track to achieve 76.5Mta of cement capacity in 14 countries by 2020, representing 24 per cent of Africas cement capacity, up from 18 per cent in 2015. For ICRs in-depth interview with Mr Van der Weijde, see p34.

Markets in focus

Adib El Hachem, Cimenterie Nationale, Lebanon, provided a timely review of the cement markets of Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, all of which have seen volumes hard hit by the ongoing conflict in the region. In Lebanon demand declined by 0.5Mta in 2015 to 5Mta, with further falls expected for as long as the regional crisis continues.

In Syria demand was estimated at 1.85Mt in 2015, largely supplied by imports from Turkey due to the almost complete closure of the domestic industry. Exports from Lebanon to Syria have been banned almost continuously since 2013. As for Iraq, consumption has remained depressed due to the conflict, and is estimated at around 15-20Mta, half of which is supplied by the local production base and the balance by imports from Turkey and Iran.

The last few years have seen Irans arrival on the scene as a major cement and clinker export power (see p106 for full article). According to Hamid Reza Tajik, a consultant to Fars & Khuzestan, in 2014 total export volumes amounted to 18.9Mt. Volumes declined in 2015 as exports to Iraq fell, but the country remains a competitive exporter given its low energy prices and surplus of capacity  Iran hopes to add a further 20Mta by 2018.

Returning to Cemtech, Ifran Amanullah, Attock Cement, presented a detailed analysis of the Pakistan cement sector, where capacity has now reached 45.6Mta against domestic sales of 28.21Mta in 2015. Demand in the companys home market is growing strongly and will be boosted going forward by the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and associated investments. Pakistans producers rely on export sales which amount to around 8Mta, with product delivered primarily to Afghanistan, followed by the Indian sub-continent and throughout the east coast of sub-Saharan Africa. Pakistan is now primed to expand capacity by a further 7.5Mta over the coming three years, including a new 1.2Mta line by Attock Cement itself.

Francis Mwangi of Standard Investment Bank (Kenya) presented a review of east African cement markets, notably Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, where the CAGR of cement consumption over the last decade has been in excess of 10 per cent.

Bordering Tanzania, Rwanda is another high-growth African nation, having achieved a CAGR of 15.6 per cent over the 2002-14 period, with demand now reaching 0.85Mt. Busisiwe Legodi, CEO of Cimerwa, the Rwandan subsidiary of PPC (South Africa), described the companys wet-to-dry line conversion, which saw kiln capacity expand from 0.1Mta to 0.6Mta following the August 2015 commissioning.

Over in west Africa, Yusuf Binji, executive director of BUA Group, Nigeria, outlined capacity developments in his country, including the commissioning of BUAs 3Mta Obu Cement plant, where a second 3Mta line is planned for 2018.

Technical highlights

Thirty-five years of evolution at Yanbu Cement Company (YCC) was a technical highlight at Cemtech MEA in a presentation delivered by Dr Ahmed Zugail, CEO, and Kalyan Bose, plant manager. Established in 1977, 70km northwest of the Port of Yanbu, the company has continually modernised its operations, and now has 7.2Mta and 9Mta of clinker and cement capacity, respectively, across five KHD-supplied production lines. YCCs operations include a 165MW power plant, a desalination plant and paper sack factory. The latest investment, now in progress, is a 34.25MW waste heat recovery unit, which will be the largest example of its kind worldwide. The system will use steam Rankine cycle technology, chosen because it is a proven technology and relatively low cost at US$1.8m/MW, compared to the organic Rankine cycle alternative. In total the system will reduce YCCs annual CO2 emissions by 105,000t.

Rabi Das Gupta, ETA Star International LLC (UAE), discussed approaches to EPC plant construction and the opportunity to save up to 20 per cent of investment costs on projects. He identified the design of the project as the most crucial phase where costs should never be compromised.

Cemtech Technical Workshop A dedicated three-day Cemtech Technical Workshop was held alongside the main conference under the theme of The Progressive Levels of Optimisation.



Led by Dr Michael Clark, Whitehopleman (UK), the course addressed practical techniques for maximising plant productivity and efficiency, beginning with the raw materials and their preparation and moving on to fuels for firing a cement kiln and the ventilation of exhaust gases from the process. Participants also received a certificate of completion, as well as a complimentary copy of ICRs Cement Plant Operations Handbook.

Saumen Karkun, Holtec Consulting (India), proposed remote monitoring of limestone quarries as a new opportunity for saving resources and improving the plant process. By relaying operational data from the quarry after blasting without delay to a remote expert for analysis, new insights can be used immediately to update the plants block model, improving efficiency and ensuring over-consumption of resources is avoided.

Bringing the first day to a close, Fernando Duenas Pozo, Cemengal (Spain), reviewed recent grinding plant construction case studies, drawing on the companys innovative, small-scale Plug&Grind mills all the way up to the large-scale 1.1Mta grinding plant for Cement Australia at Port Kembla. Each project, regardless of size, was able to achieve significant erection cost savings  of up to 80 per cent  due to the prefabricated modular construction system, which can save time on transport and installation: engineering at its best.

On the second day of the conference, delegates enjoyed a broad range of technical presentations as topics continued to move through all areas of the cement manufacturing process.

Michael Suppaner, A TEC Production & Services (Austria), addressed the needs of cement producers seeking to invest in alternative fuels systems, whether just starting out or for those targeting ultra-high levels over 90 per cent. A variety of fuels from municipal solid waste and refuse-derived fuels to hazardous waste were reviewed, as were injection points for each fuel, including the riser duct and main burner, plus bypass systems for the removal of chlorides and sulphur. In the same presentation, Wolfgang Kremsl of Saubermacher (Austria) addressed the situation in the UAE, where AF rates remain below five per cent. The company has supplied AF to Austrian plants for 15 years and now offers the same in the UAE and Oman.

Bringing theory into practice, Stelios Sycopetrides and Dr Iacovos Skourides presented a case study from Vassiliko Cement (Cyprus), recounting experiences in AF utilisation at their plant, which is now targeting over 30 per cent TSR. The plant has explored various systems for preblending and dosing. One innovation was the co-grinding of petcoke with dried sewage sludge and meat and bone meal (MBM) in a mill to increase AF rates.

Michael Olsen of FLSmidth (Kenya) reviewed approaches to lowering the environmental footprint of cement plants. He highlighted the pressure on resources caused by cement production and how sustainable management of raw material consumption, energy use and emissions technologies will be critical to producers in the long term. Many of the best technologies are now in place in ACC Ramliyas plant in Egypt, where FLSmidth has built and now operates one of its key reference facilities.

Dr Suchismita Bhattacharya of Ercom Engineers Pvt (India) discussed emissions reduction through kiln optimisation and control techniques. NOx removal using staged combustion and a low NOx burner was compared with selective catalytic reduction (SCR) and selective non-catalytic reduction (SNCR).

Harpreet Singh, Hasle Refractories (Denmark), explored how precast refractories are especially suited to areas where high levels of sulphur and alkalis, resulting from alternative fuel utilisation, can result in problematic coating or blocking. Examples were given of projects at Riyadh Cement (Saudi Arabia) and Fujairah Cement (UAE).

Eduardo Matos, Magnesita (Brazil), delivered a convincing argument for adopting the companys new service model for refractories, which offers opportunities for working capital reduction, inventory planning, performance analysis and improvement in one convenient package.

Kevin Venter, Sila (Australia), presented a super-reinforced ceramic composite material, used in engineered components and consisting of up to 30 per cent steel and 70 per cent ceramic materials. Such components are ideal for replacing conventional refractories in certain applications, notably the kiln nose ring, where there is high mechanical stress or thermal shock.

Thomas Wyen, Ecospray Technologies (Italy), reviewed high-temperature filtration systems using ceramic elements as an alternative to conventional bags, illustrated by the key reference of Italcementis Rezzato plant in Italy. The system requires no water injection and offers 10 per cent reduction in investment cost and up to 30 per cent saving for power consumption.

A "Who's Who' of suppliers Delegates were able to benefit from many scheduled networking events in the adjacent technical exhibition area, which this year featured a Whos Who of cement plant equipment suppliers.

Collectively, all aspects of equipment supply were represented, from turnkey suppliers such as Fives Group (France) to crushing and grinding specialists Hazemag & EPR (Germany) and Gebr Pfeiffer (Germany) and onto alternative fuel systems by Walter Materials Handling/ATS Group (France), refractory specialists Magnesita, bulk material handling leaders such as Beumer (Germany) and Gambarotta (Italy) plus everything in-between.



Behrooz Zandi, Shargh White Cement Co, provided an overview of the companys conversion of a previous 1200tpd grey clinker line to produce 1000tpd white clinker, completed in 2014. To achieve this the kiln was reduced in length from 90m to 72m, a high-efficiency rotary cooler was installed and the existing two-chamber ball mill was upgraded with a new separator.

Thomas Fahrland, Loesche (Germany), discussed drive selection for vertical roller mills, where options for producers have multiplied in recent years. The latest offering from Loesche features the COPE drive by Renk, a new 10MW drive with active redundancy, especially suited to large Loesche VRMs.

Ramzi Akkawi introduced ABBs (Switzerland) remote diagnostic services, which allow a variety of processes to be fixed or optimised remotely. Recent success stories include emergencies such as the restoration of a plant control system server and the rectification of an ID fan drive fault, as well as ongoing kiln optimisation and tuning.

Mogens Fons, Fons Technology International (Turkey), introduced the Delta Cooler, a unique cooler concept that is as well suited to retrofits as it is to new plants. The workshop-assembled, modular construction minimises erection time while the design reduces the building height required for the cooler. In operation, the cooler offers lower energy consumption and ultra-low wear for minimum maintenance.

The retrofit of a double-strand central chain bucket elevator with a heavy-duty belt bucket elevator at Yamama Cement, Saudi Arabia, was the subject of Bilal Jabbouls presentation for the Beumer Group (Germany). The new system offers higher availability and more economical vertical clinker transport.

Thomas Bergmans, INFORM (Germany), examined solutions for managing cement truck fleet logistics, taking delegates through the savings and productivity increases that can be achieved by using advance optimisation software.

Extended technical programme

The plant tour this year visited National Cement. Established in Dubai in 1978, the 1.5Mta plant is owned by the Al Ghurair family and is equipped with a 4000tpd two-pier Rotax kiln with inline calciner and Cross-Bar clinker cooler, both by FLSmidth (Denmark). In 2016 the plant will install a 5.7MW waste heat recovery system by Sinoma Energy Conservation Ltd, plus a Geoscan online elemental analyser for the raw meal mix, ensuring the plant remains efficient and future proof.

Commencing 25th anniversary celebrations in style

Cemtech MEA in Dubai marked the first Cemtech meeting in the conference series 25th anniversary year. The occasion was celebrated in style during an exceptional Gala Dinner for over 300 guests, including dancing, music and a magic show, all set against the backdrop of the fantastic Grand Hyatt Dubai. Cemtech looks forward to returning to the MEA region in 2017.
USA: 150 years up for Essroc's Nazareth Cement plant

04 April 2016

Essroc Cement of Upper Nazareth, USA, celebrated 150 years in business last Thursday evening at the Nazareth Center for the Arts. Nazareth Bath Regional Chamber of Commerce board members and local dignitaries were present to help celebrate the milestone.

What makes us very unique as a company is our heritage of being one of the best-known companies and best-known product lines, said Craig Becker, senior vice president of human resources at Essroc.

Essrocs sesquicentennial history dates to 1866, when David O Saylor opened shop in Coplay as Coplay Cement Co. In 1872, it began producing the first Portland cement in North America.

Cement became, and is still, an important part of the economic fabric of the Lehigh Valley, said Essroc president and CEO, Alex C Car.



Essroc employs 300 people in the Valley at cement plants and quarries in Upper and Lower Nazareth townships and in Nazareth.



In 1976, Coplay was acquired by Paris-based Ciments Francais. It grew through acquisitions to also have a presence in Canada and Puerto Rico, as well as a larger presence in the US.



The name was changed to Essroc in 1990 to compete across North America under one name.

In 1992, Italcementi SpA, based in Bergamo Italy, acquired controlling interest in Ciment Francais and became the parent company for Essroc.





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A beam of X-rays scattering off a thin film of silicon form this speckle pattern that corresponds to the details of the surface. University of Vermont scientists used these kinds of images as part of a discovery that is providing a new view at the nanoscale.

X-rays have long been used to make pictures of tiny objects, even single atoms. Now a team of scientists has discovered a new use for X-rays at the atomic scale: using them like a radar gun to measure the motion and velocity of complex and messy groups of atoms.

"It's a bit like a police speed trap -- for atomic and nanoscale defects," says Randall Headrick, a professor of physics at the University of Vermont who led the research team. The new technique was reported on March 28 in the journal Nature Physics.

Tiny Pores

X-rays have great power to look within. It's not just Superman; scientists have been pushing closer to what might seem like science fiction, training X-rays onto tiny objects, including chains of DNA, viruses, and individual atoms. But as they probe the structure of ever-smaller things, the random arrangement of those objects makes it increasingly difficult to distinguish between them. A long-standing problem has been that good X-ray pictures require nearly perfect crystals--identical objects in precise order. At the scale of atoms, complex and disordered objects -- like the thin films that are used to make the screen on a cell phone or the metal layers used in electronic circuits -- give a blurry X-ray picture. "It's like blending many different faces in a composite image," Headrick says, "or trying to see what an average car looks like by watching traffic zip along a highway."

In a new approach, Headrick and the other scientists, with support from the U.S. Department of Energy, impose order on the X-rays when there isn't order in what they're looking at. They used coherent X-rays (think X-rays traveling in a marching band) to recover some of the information from their picture. Rather like radar picks out an individual's speed on the highway, they fished out the distinct speeds of small groups of atoms from the bulk X-ray signal they were shining onto a stream of atoms in motion. And in that new kind of X-ray image, they discovered voids and tiny pores that form when making two kinds of thin films with silicon and tungsten -- and how those voids and pores move.

Their discovery promises to improve industrial techniques for making smoother, more perfect thin films -- which have thousands of commercial applications from solar panels to drug delivery systems, computer chips to potato chip bags.

But far more important, Headrick notes, the research opens a new way to view many kinds of complex clumps of atoms in motion, not just tidy crystals.

"We can see these nanoscale defects form in the film while they are being made," Headrick says. The scientists were surprised that they were able to create a view not just of the surface roughness of the film, but also the interior structure. This is important since the quality of thin films can be strongly affected by the dynamic relationship between how they are growing at the surface -- often being sprayed or deposited in a vacuum -- and the structure of atoms forming beneath the surface.

"We find that there are two kinds of defects," Headrick notes, "one type that moves along with the surface and are thought to be nanocolumns that grow with the surface -- and another type that are voids that do not grow with the surface."

Like Beer

To understand these two kinds of defects, pour yourself a glass of beer and watch the bubbles. Some move in thin lines through the liquid, traveling up while the top of the beer also rises. Other bubbles, trapped in the foamy head, are stuck in place while more foam piles on top of them.

Now imagine that these bubbles are actually single atoms. The lines of bubbles that move up while the beer is being poured are like the nanocolumns of atoms Headrick and the team observed with the new X-ray technique. The voids in the film are like the bubbles trapped in the beer foam.

The lead author on the paper is Headrick's graduate student, Jeffrey Ulbrandt. Together, they collaborated with researchers from Boston University, including physicist Karl Ludwig, and scientists at the Argonne National Laboratory, to make the discovery. Using a large machine called a synchrotron at Argonne's Advanced Photon Source, they were able to direct highly organized waves of X-rays onto the films. Imaged with these coherent X-rays, disordered objects -- like the rough surface and jumbled interior of a silicon film -- can be sensed in a complex pattern of speckles that is made on the X-ray detector. "This speckle pattern contains detailed information on the shapes and spacings of the collection of objects," Headrick explains.

X-Ray Tunning

These coherent X-rays can also sense motion, tracking jiggling and swarming groups of atoms that are moving independently and erratically. The new study pushes that realization forward. The scientists took a scattered wave of X-rays bouncing off the rough surface of the thin film being deposited in a vacuum chamber -- and mixed it with a scattered wave of X-rays coming off the disordered defects -- the nanocolumns and voids -- forming at and beneath the film's surface.

These two mixed waves work a bit like a radar gun. The waves from the surface form a speed reference -- while the subsurface waves form a much smaller signal mixed into this reference wave. The scientists looked at the speckled pattern from X-rays scattering off the growing surface of the thin films, getting thicker at a known rate. Then they measured how this speckled pattern oscillated when interacting with the X-rays bouncing off the defects and interior. These oscillations ("like a vibrating tuning fork," Headrick says) are caused by atoms going different speeds -- which gave the team a sensitive measure of the relative velocities of atoms in motion. But instead of 55 mph, the thin film surface grows up at a few Angstroms per second. Some of the defects grow with it, while others get left in the nanodust.

"This is a new X-ray effect," Randy Headrick says, "that lets us sense disordered matter in motion -- at the atomic scale."
In recent years, Payton has ventured beyond trumpet to double on keyboards and to sing, modes of expression he'll be offering when he leads his trio with bassist Vicente Archer and drummer Joe Dyson this week at the Jazz Showcase. Anyone who thinks Payton is dabbling when he accompanies himself on keyboards while playing trumpet, however, should check out his most recent recording, the evocative double album "Letters" (Paytone Records): Throughout, Payton handles trumpet, piano, Fender Rhodes keyboard, organ and vocals with an aplomb that significantly extends the trio's musical reach and sonic range.
Khoury's play is best when dealing with political and social ideas, when it lands more in the docudrama format that best suits issue-driven plays of this kind. It is less convincing, and has more unnecessary air, when dealing with the personal lives of the intermingled characters, not least because the play needs them all to represent a diversity of positions when people generally are messier than that. I think "Mosque Alert" did not really need to be so heavily fictionalized and personalized. There are plenty of facts in the public record; there were plenty of people who could have been interviewed. The closer to reality, the stronger the play.
When dealing with a flirtatious co-worker, you want to focus less on the act of flirtation itself and more on the emotion you feel. (Richard Bowden / Getty Images)

Q: One of your co-workers is consistently flirtatious with you, and it's uncomfortable. How do you shut it down without making things awkward around the office?

"The best way to shut this down is to address your co-worker directly. When speaking to him or her, you want to focus less on the act of flirtation itself and more on the emotion you feel.

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First, identify what specific actions your co-worker is doing when you feel uncomfortable: talking too closely, touching your side, making comments about your appearance. Second, note how you feel during those actions: uncomfortable, uneasy, nervous. Now think about your co-worker: Is his or her intention to have you feel nervous and uncomfortable?

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Ask yourself what you need to have happen to feel better in this situation. What action do you need to ask of your co-worker to make this happen? Be specific. The more precise you are with your words, the less room there is for misunderstanding. After you've mapped out the above, put it into a sentence.

'When you (insert action co-worker does here), I feel (insert feeling here). I know your intention is not to make me feel this way. From now on, could you (insert what you need to feel better here).'"

 Cynthia Kane, meditation and mindfulness expert and author of "How to Communicate Like a Buddhist"

"If you or the other person is married, engage in a discussion about your spouse(s). For example, ask some basic questions. 'I see that you are married. For how long? How did you meet?' If you are both single, a similar conversation could ensue. 'So, do you have someone special in your life?' If you do, mention it. This should provide the person with food for thought, and he or she may dial down the flirtatiousness.

If you are both single, you could ask, 'How do you feel about co-workers dating each other?' No matter what the response is, you could clearly state that you believe under no circumstances is it a good idea, and stand firm in that regard.

Office gossip is as cruel as it was in middle school. It is especially important to ensure that others in your workplace never have a reason to doubt your dedication to the job. Do not flirt back, do not touch the person, and if he or she asks you to a one-on-one coffee or lunch, find a way to bring someone else along. It is important, especially for women, to be viewed as focused and respected in the workplace. Unfortunately, men are not viewed as negatively in these circumstances."

 Sofia Milan, relationship expert and blogger at SofiaMilanBooks.com

Social Graces is a series asking two experts for advice on awkward situations.

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Reporting from Athens  Amid protests and widespread criticism, Greece on Monday is poised to begin implementing a plan that will see thousands of migrants returned to Turkey, part of a broader deal aiming to stem the massive flow of people from Turkish shores to mainland Europe.

About 750 migrants are expected to be deported to Turkey under tight security over the coming days aboard two vessels chartered by Frontex, the European Union's border agency, the state-run Greek news agency ANA reported.

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The plan, forged between the EU and Turkey after months of tense negotiations, has drawn withering criticism from rights groups and spurred unrest in refugee camps and reception centers across Greece.

"We have seen growing tension, anxiety and even bouts of violence," said Boris Cheshirkov, a spokesman for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, on Lesbos, one of the Greek islands most acutely affected by the migration increase of the last year. "Many people fear that they will be returned to Turkey."

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Since Thursday, migrants and refugees have staged protests and intermittently clashed with local Greeks and even one another. Greek news media on Sunday broadcast images of migrants streaming toward Chios Island's main port in protest of the deal.

Riots on that island late last week "left three people with stab injuries," said Melissa Fleming, the UNHCR's chief spokeswoman. "We are very worried about the situation there."

In the last year, more than a million migrants have entered Greece from Turkey, most of them from violence-wracked countries such as Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. From Greece, they have followed a well-worn migrant path through the Balkans into Northern Europe, with most hoping to settle in Germany, Sweden or other countries that have been relatively welcoming.

In recent months, that welcome has become strained, especially after major terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels and attacks on women in Germany.

Under the deal, EU member states will resettle one Syrian refugee for every Syrian returned to Turkey. Chartered buses are scheduled to shuttle the migrants targeted for return to the ancient port city of Mytilene on Lesbos.

Reception and processing centers on that island are stretched beyond capacity. In one center, the overwhelmed Moria refugee camp, observers said it is about 1,000 people beyond its official capacity.

"We have observed quite a large number of people sleeping in the open," said Cheshirkov, reached by telephone on Lesbos. "There are additional shortages of food."

Lesbos has been at the center of the last year's migration increase, which has seen about a million people fleeing war, poverty and persecution in their homelands undertake risky smuggling trips from Turkish shores.

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From Mytilene, European police will accompany migrants on three daily sailings to the Turkish town of Dikili in Izmir province. The first boat was expected to depart at 10 a.m. Monday. Observers, however, suspect that departures may be delayed until later in the week.

Turkish authorities will then register migrants and provide medical checkups to the returnees at a processing camp before resettling them in Turkish refugee camps.

The plan has drawn widespread criticism from human rights watchdogs.

On Friday, Amnesty International alleged that Turkey had been returning Syrian refugees to their war-wracked homeland in violation of the "non-refoulement" principle of international law.

"In their desperation to seal their borders, EU leaders have willfully ignored the simplest of facts: Turkey is not a safe country for Syrian refugees and is getting less safe by the day," said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International's director for Europe and Central Asia, in a news release.

Others worry that the necessary time has not been taken to ensure that the rights of migrants and refugees  mothers, unaccompanied minors, the elderly and the infirm  will be upheld.

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"We are not opposed to the returns as long as human rights are upheld," Cheshirkov said. "However, the required safeguards, which take time to implement, do not appear to be in place."

Greek officials have defended the deportations for the coming week, saying that they are enforcing a broader EU agreement.

"These are people who have not applied for asylum or want to get asylum," said Greece's migration spokesman, Giorgos Kyritsison, in a statement broadcast on the Greek television station Alpha TV. "This is not a voluntary process, but a compulsory one."

Other migrants and refugees  having previously undertaken risky smuggling trips aboard flimsy boats from Izmir in Turkey  wait anxiously on the Greek mainland, their hopes of making it to Western Europe increasingly at peril.

"We are totally against these deportations, which violate international law," said Cem Terzi, a neurosurgeon who heads a Turkish nongovernmental organization, A Bridge Between Peoples, which has been providing free medical care to refugees and migrants in Izmir. "They have taken huge risks to start new lives. Now the EU is killing these people's dreams."

Implementation of the deal has proved fraught with logistical difficulties.

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Thousands of interpreters and asylum experts have flown to Greece to process the new arrivals and determine whether they should be sent back to Turkey.

Frontex issued an urgent call on March 23 to European states for additional police to assist the deportation process, dubbed Poseidon Rapid Intervention. By March 18, EU member states are believed to have offered only 396 police officers of the 1,500 requested by the border agency.

Special correspondents Petrakis and Johnson reported from Athens and Istanbul, respectively.
Migrants from Syria and Iraq line up for a bus carrying them to a detention center after arriving to the port of Mytilene on the first day of forced deportations to Turkey. (Jodi Hilton / For The Washington Post)

MYTILENE, Greece  The European Union began offloading its refugee crisis onto its Turkish neighbors Monday, sending back more than 200 migrants in the first stage of a plan to deport thousands that has drawn condemnation from human rights groups.

The returns - carried out at dawn and under heavy security - were intended to send a powerful message to others considering the journey from Turkey to Greece via a smuggler's rubber raft: Don't even bother.

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Authorities braced for demonstrations or other forms of resistance from those being turned away only days after crossing the Aegean Sea and arriving on European soil in search of a new life - part of a massive migrant wave that has tested Europe's resources and highlighted the desperation to the east in war zones such as Syria.

But the expulsions were carried out quietly; two ferries packed with migrants and E.U. escorts slipped away from the island of Lesbos and charted an eastbound course toward the rising sun along the blue mountains of the Turkish coast.

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A third ferry left the island of Chios, another popular landing spot, bringing the total sent back to 202 by late Monday - nearly all from Pakistan or Afghanistan.

The ferries later arrived in the Turkish town of Dikili, where the migrants were expected to be taken to temporary shelters before being transferred to other facilities elsewhere in the country. Turkish authorities said that Syrians would be given the right to register for asylum but that those from other nations would be sent home.

Under a deal struck with Turkey last month, all refugees and migrants who arrive on Greek shores aboard smugglers' rafts from March 20 onward will be sent back.

In return, the E.U. has said it will accept one Syrian refugee from Turkey for every Syrian who is returned. Germany said Monday that it had accepted its first several dozen Syrians flown from Turkey under the new program.

And in a further attempt to discourage people from crossing on their own, those who are returned will be sent to the end of the line for possible European resettlement in the future.

Europe still faces a mammoth challenge, however, in deporting the thousands of people who remain on the Greek islands. And unlike those sent back to Turkey on Monday - all of whom declined to apply for asylum, according to authorities - the vast majority of those still being held have sought legal protection in Europe.

Human rights advocates said Monday that they are deeply concerned that people will be deported without a full and fair asylum review and that Turkey will simply return them to their homelands - countries that, in many cases, are riven by war or unrest, such as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

"This is an easy way for Europe to push the problem into its back yard and let others deal with it," said Panos Navrozidis, country director in Greece for the International Rescue Committee. "It's clearly a political decision. The agreement is illegal, and it's illogical."

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The European Union has promised billions of dollars of financial assistance and has pledged to ease visa rules for Turks seeking to travel in the 28-member bloc. The E.U. has also said it will revive Turkey's long-stalled membership application.

The agreement reflects European desperation to halt the migrant flow that brought more than 1 million asylum seekers and others to the continent's shores in 2015. The number was on pace to be even higher this year until countries up and down the migrant trail sealed their borders, effectively trapping people in Greece.

The Greek police said that of the 202 people sent back to Turkey on Monday, 130 were Pakistanis, 42 were Afghans and 10 were Iranians. Among other nationalities were a handful of Indians, Iraqis, Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans, reflecting the wide array of people who have made the sea voyage to Europe.

The deportees, however, were not representative of the overall flows to the islands. About half the people arriving in Greece are Syrian, and Europe still faces the prospect of deporting Syrian families despite asylum acceptance rates that reach nearly 100 percent.

The pace of arrivals in Greece has fallen markedly since Europe announced its deportation policy. But even as Europe was sending people back to Turkey aboard ferries, migrants on rafts continued to arrive in Greece.

About 100 people made landfall on Lesbos on Monday morning.

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At dawn, a group of them stood shivering under gray woolen blankets in the port, some clutching babies.

"We were on the sea for six hours. We had so many problems," said Shahid Kamran, a 24-year-old Pakistani who said he was fleeing the Taliban.

Kamran said he had heard that Europe was sending people back but still hoped that authorities would reconsider.

"If we can stay here, then we are totally safe," he said. "But we don't know if they'll let us stay or tell us, 'Go.' "

As he spoke, buses pulled up elsewhere in the harbor, having picked up dozens of detainees from the island's main detention facility.

Each migrant was escorted to a waiting ferry by a plainclothes officer from the European border control agency, Frontex. Armed Greek police were also on board as the boats set sail.

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A smattering of protesters held aloft hand-lettered signs reading "Turkey is not a safe country for refugees" and "Respect our rights."

The migrants themselves did not appear to protest, despite demonstrations in recent days at detention facilities, including one in which hundreds of migrants broke free on Chios.

Europe's plans are premised on the idea that Turkey is a safe country for refugees and that asylum seekers can apply for protection there. Turkey has already taken in nearly 3 million refugees from the Syrian war.

But human rights advocates argue that the deportation plan is fundamentally flawed and represents an abdication of European responsibility to help those seeking haven from conflicts. Amnesty International has called it "a historic blow to human rights."

Boris Cheshirkov, spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency, said neither Greece nor Turkey has put in place adequate systems to ensure that deportees have full access to their rights. In particular, he said, authorities do not have enough personnel to process such a large volume of asylum claims.

"We are calling for a suspension of further returns until all safeguards are in place," Cheshirkov said.

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Since last year, Lesbos has been the primary gateway to Europe for those seeking an escape from war, oppression and poverty.

But now Lesbos's main detention center - set among olive groves, ringed by barbed wire and patrolled by twitchy soldiers and police officers who will not let journalists near - is becoming dangerously overcrowded. Some 3,000 people are being held in a facility that was built to accommodate 2,000.
Many in the education world talk about the power of expectations, expressing the belief that if adults in a school expect students to succeed, then students will rise to that expectation, and if adults expect failure -- well, that, too, can be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Now a new study suggests that race plays a big role in influencing how teachers see their students' potential for academic success, raising questions about whether teachers' biases could be holding back black students and contributing to the nation's yawning achievement gap.

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When a white (or other non-black) teacher and a black teacher evaluate the same black student, the study found, the white teacher is 30 percent less likely to believe that the student will graduate from a four-year college -- and 40 percent less likely to believe the student will graduate from high school.

The discrepancy was even greater for black male students.

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"What we find is that white teachers and black teachers systematically disagree about the exact same student," Nicholas Papageorge, a Johns Hopkins economist and co-author of the study, said in a statement.

"If I'm a teacher and decide that a student isn't any good, I may be communicating that to the student," Papageorge said. "A teacher telling a student they're not smart will weigh heavily on how that student feels about their future and perhaps the effort they put into doing well in school."

The study is to be published in the Economics of Education Review.

The data came from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, which was conducted by the statistics and research arm of the U.S. Education Department. The study asked math and reading teachers of high school sophomores to predict how far each of their students would go in school.

It adds to a growing body of evidence that race affects how teachers see and treat their students. Black students taught by white teachers are less likely to be identified for gifted programs than black students taught by black teachers, for example. Other research has shown biases in teachers' grading of work by students of different genders, races and ethnicities.

Such research has bolstered calls from all corners of the education world -- including the Education Department, teachers unions and Teach for America -- to boost diversity among the nation's teachers.
MILWAUKEE  Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the front-runners in their parties' presidential nominating contests, have found themselves on the defensive in Wisconsin, where Tuesday's primaries could deliver embarrassing setbacks and further unsettle both races.

A loss for Trump in particular could reset a Republican contest that has been dominated by his outsider candidacy and outsized media presence. Amid scrutiny following several high-profile stumbles, state polls show Trump in a tight race with Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, prompting speculation about whether Wisconsin could mark the beginning of the high-flying candidate's downfall.

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Those polls show Clinton in a similarly tight race with Sen. Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist from Vermont whose populist, anti-Wall Street message has transformed what was expected to be an easy nomination race for Clinton into a long and arduous slog.

Winning Wisconsin, the only state to vote this week, would give Sanders a fresh dose of momentum - and perhaps new credibility for his claim that he has a chance to catch Clinton in the delegate count and win the Democratic nomination.

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Both Trump and Clinton maintain they can still win in Wisconsin. But on the Democratic side, Sanders's unexpected staying power has unnerved some of Clinton's supporters. In a memo sent out to backers Monday evening, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook sounded aggravated.

"Hillary Clinton has built a nearly insurmountable lead among both delegates and actual voters," he wrote. "Contrary to the claims of the Sanders campaign, in measure after measure, Clinton has shown the broadest support of any candidate currently running for president. We know that the misleading spin will continue, but we wanted you to know the facts about the real state of the Democratic primary."

Mook said Sanders would have to win by overwhelming margins the four biggest delegate prizes left, including her home state of New York, to erase Clinton's big lead. He did not mention Wisconsin.

The Clinton campaign also sent out a fundraising email Monday.

"We're down in almost every poll in Wisconsin - tomorrow's primary is going to be a tough fight," the request said, noting Sanders has out-raised her for three months running.

"This nomination isn't locked up yet, and we've got to keep fighting for every vote."

Trump stumbled badly during the run-up to Wisconsin, with a gaffe over abortion in which he stated, and then retracted, that women who seek abortions should be punished, and with comments on foreign policy that led President Barack Obama to say that the businessman knows little about the world.

Partly as a result, the Wisconsin race has emerged as a key moment in the Republican nomination, exposing weaknesses for Trump in an industrial state with a large working class - demographics that have favored him in other states. A Marquette Law School poll released last week showed Cruz surging to 40 percent support among likely GOP voters, up from 19 percent in a February poll. Trump's support remained steady at 30 percent.

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Trump has refused to concede that polls showing him trailing Cruz are accurate even while acknowledging that a string of controversies may have cost him votes. And he has dismissed speculation about a possible break in his momentum by pointing to his strengths in New York - his home state, which holds its primary on April 19 - and in the string of Eastern states that vote later this month.

"I've been given the last rights how many times, like 10? Every week, it's the end of Trump," the billionaire said during a campaign rally in Superior, Wisconsin. "Then they walk in, 'Sir, I don't know what happened but your poll numbers just went through the roof.'"

Anti-Trump Republicans, who have poured millions of dollars into attack ads around the country, are hopeful that a loss in Wisconsin will signal a break in the momentum that has kept Trump steadily rising in the polls. A loss in Wisconsin, they believe, will increase the likelihood of a contested Republican convention in July - a strategy that rests on keeping him from crossing the requisite 1,237-delegate threshold he needs to clinch the nomination outright.

In a private document that was circulated over the weekend and obtained by The Washington Post, Trump campaign senior adviser Barry Bennett revealed the mounting frustrations among the billionaire's top aides as they closed what had been a tumultuous week.

Entitled "Digging through the Bull (expletive)," Bennett's memo urged Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski - who was charged with battery last week for allegedly yanking a reporter - and others to ignore critics who have questioned whether Trump's campaign for the Republican presidential nomination has waned.

"America is sick of them. Their idiotic attacks just remind voters why they hate the Washington Establishment," Bennett wrote, citing tracking poll data favorable to Trump.

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"Donald Trump 1," Bennett declared, as if he was scoring the past week. "Washington Establishment/Media 0."

Clinton campaigned fewer days and before smaller crowds in Wisconsin than Sanders, and turned much of her attention ahead to the larger stakes in New York. She did not mention the Wisconsin race during a rally Monday in Manhattan to cheer the state's approval of a $15 minimum wage.

On the eve of the primary, Sanders touted his long-standing support for labor unions and his opposition to a series of "disastrous trade deals," setting a contrast with Clinton that he's pressed in other industrial, midwestern states.

The senator from Vermont began his day in Janesville, where General Motors shuttered a manufacturing plant in 2008 and moved operations to Mexico, costing the community 2,800 jobs, Sanders said.

"I am not a candidate who goes to the unions, goes to workers, then leaves and goes to a fundraiser on Wall Street," he said, taking a jab at Clinton and her ties to the financial sector.

Clinton has also been critical of Sanders's posture on trade while campaigning in Wisconsin.

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At a Democratic dinner in Milwaukee on Saturday, she said Sanders seems to pride himself on having "opposed all trade deals, all the time."

"But I don't think that's right," because when "done right" trade arrangements can benefit American workers, Clinton said.

Recent polls have showed Sanders with a modest lead over Clinton in Wisconsin, and he told supporters Monday that he thinks he will win the state if there is a large voter turnout.

"If we win here, we're going to have a bounce going into New York state, where I think we can win," Sanders said. "If we win in New York state - between you and me, I don't want to get Hillary Clinton more nervous than she already is, so don't tell her this - but I think if we win here, we win in New York state, we're on our way to the White House."

The Clinton campaign has been telegraphing a potential loss in Wisconsin for months.

Clinton campaigned once in Madison - a liberal-rich part of the state heavy with college students that is expected to be a stronghold for Sanders. But that speech focused on the Supreme Court nomination fight and was aimed toward national media.

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She has also pushed to increase turnout among her own base of voters, African-Americans, whose support could boost her significantly in Milwaukee.

Recent contentious fights between Wisconsin's Republican governor Scott Walker and public employee unions have also served as grist for Clinton's argument that she, and not Sanders, will support state parties to fight against Republicans at the state and local levels.

Walker has also loomed large in the Republican race, because of his vehement opposition to Trump.

Trump has taken an unconventional - and somewhat mystifying - approach in Wisconsin, repeatedly attacking Walker despite the governor's 80 percent approval rating among Republicans. Trump has mocked Walker's obsession with Harley-Davidson motorcycles and has sought to undermine his record in the state, which Trump has repeatedly told Wisconsin voters is "middle of the pack" compared to its neighboring states.

Trump has also kept alive a feud with influential conservative talk-radio host Charlie Sykes, an avowed anti-Trump conservative who last Monday hammered the billionaire in a heated radio interview. Over the weekend, Trump called Sykes a "whack job" and a "low life."

The third Republican still in the race, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, is far behind his two rivals in recent Wisconsin polls. He spent Monday campaigning in New York in advance of that state's primary in two weeks.

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Trump has swept across the state in recent days, flying back and forth between western and eastern Wisconsin several times over the weekend. On Monday afternoon, Trump held campaign events in La Crosse, along the Mississippi River to the west, and Superior, in the far north. On Monday evening he was to fly back to southeastern Wisconsin to host a rally in Milwaukee.

Despite Trump's advantage among working-class voters in other states, polling shows that Cruz does better among voters without college degrees. Cruz has also surged within shooting distance of Trump in the northwestern part of the state, which earlier had been a stronghold for Trump.

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Wagner reported from Janesville and Green Bay. Gearan reported from New York.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel, left, introduces Eddie Johnson, second from left, as interim superintendent of the Chicago Police Department on March 28, 2016. Former interim superintendent John Escalante and Eugene Williams, right, a former finalist for the position, stand behind them. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

The process for naming a new police superintendent has taken an unexpected turn in the past week. In a rare but not unprecedented move, the mayor rejected all three names submitted by the Police Board and named Eddie Johnson the new interim superintendent, replacing John Escalante.

By ordinance the board must resume its "search" and submit three new names to the mayor. The mayor and the City Council apparently have recognized that carrying out this charade would be meaningless and embarrassing. The council will likely pass an ordinance asking the mayor to select the superintendent with review by the aldermen.

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This awkward state of affairs reflects the importance of the police chief appointment. The mayor simply can't afford to make the wrong call. A process designed to take some of the politics out of the process has proved unworkable at a time when the mayor must find a new police boss who is respected by officers and can hit the ground running. That would have been virtually impossible for the two outsiders on the original list. So the mayor opted to take the heat and picked a veteran of the department who by all reports has the support of the rank and file.

Johnson will be assuming command at a time when the department has suffered a number of hard hits  and officer morale is poor as a result. Arrests and investigative stops are down dramatically, a strong indication that street cops are less aggressive in their work.

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Interim Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson talks about various police and community relations topics during an interview March 31, 2016. (John J. Kim, Chicago Tribune) (Chicago Tribune)

Effective policing requires officers to be prepared to step in to arrest criminals but also to prevent potential crime. In doing so, they must have confidence that commanders have their back when they act within policy, even if the result is controversial. And there will be controversies. With thousands of officers on the streets every day interacting with citizens, including criminals, it is inevitable that some people will claim, rightly or wrongly, that they were abused by the police. The bosses have to be able to separate legitimate claims from bogus ones and defend officers who were doing their job.

Johnson and his team must at the same time demonstrate that they will not tolerate those who abuse the badge. That's easier said than done, especially in many cases of alleged excessive force. Videos of encounters may be of assistance, but videos do not always tell the full story. The use of police body cams is increasing, and Johnson will have to convince his skeptical troops that these devices are in their interest.

Improving morale goes hand in hand with reducing violent crime. Crime in Chicago is down substantially from the 1990s but has risen over the past year. The statistics for the first quarter of this year are particularly troubling. Murders and shootings are up dramatically over 2014 and 2015. Equally disturbing is that the number of murders in Chicago is substantially higher than in New York and Los Angeles, which have larger populations.

The first step in the process must be an honest assessment of the manpower needs of the department. For years, the mayor and the superintendent have said we have enough officers while the Fraternal Order of Police, and many individual cops argue that we need substantially more policemen.

Budget issues have had an impact on all city departments, including the police. And it may be true that any reduction in personnel has been offset, at least in part, by better use of those who are on the job. But it is time for the leaders of the department to examine what has to be done to bring down the gangs and their guns and drugs and clearly convey that reality to local political leadership and the public.

Whatever the optimum size of the department, it is a big operation and requires good leadership, not just at the top but in the field as well. Johnson probably knows the department's personnel as well as anyone, but that's just the start. He must be able to identify good leaders  and being a good leader isn't always the same thing as being a good patrol officer or detective.

As Johnson assembles his command team, he will be asked by political and community leaders to place their favorites in important posts. Make no mistake  the requests will come, many in a good-faith belief that the candidate is qualified for the position. Where that isn't the case, Johnson will have to say no in a way that doesn't seriously undercut the support he needs to pass his budget or develop good community relations.

An early order of business for the command team should be to evaluate the strategy, developed under the previous superintendent, of dismantling special units and assigning those officers to the districts. Some critics have argued that Chicago's street gangs are at the heart of the city's crime problem and deserve the full-time attention of specialized units.

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In addition, Johnson must take a close look at the department's training programs to be sure that officers have the necessary tools to handle all situations they may face on the street. This is not just for recruits. In fact, in-service training in de-escalation techniques and use of force for officers already on the job may be ever more important.

Finally, the new superintendent must do all of this while improving relations between the police and citizens in high-crime communities. This would be a challenge in the best of times, and these are hardly the best of times in Chicago. Johnson grew up in Cabrini-Green, so he knows firsthand the hardships faced by decent people in a high-crime neighborhood. As a district commander, Johnson had experience in working with community groups, and initial comments indicate he did a good job. Now he must take the lessons he learned in that role and motivate his commanders to implement similar programs across the city.

Johnson has an advantage that many new police bosses don't have: He didn't ask for the job. Hopefully he has been able to put conditions on his acceptance that will help him face the great challenges ahead. In times like these, he needs everything possible going for him.

Richard A. Devine, a lawyer in private practice, was Cook County state's attorney from 1996 to 2008.
Free expression is not faring well on American college campuses these days. In some places, the problem is students taking grave offense at opinions that merit only minor umbrage or none at all. In others, it's official speech codes that chill discussion. In still others, it's administrators so intent on preventing sexual harassment that they avoid open discussion of gender-related matters.

There is a lot to be said for making people aware of the ways in which their words and deeds can do harm. No one wants to go back to the days when casual expressions of racial prejudice were common, or when women were mocked for taking places that should have gone to men, or when some professors made passes at students.

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But it's important not to go so far in protecting undergraduates that they lose the spontaneous and open interactions they need to understand the world and the society in which they live. An education that spares students from unwanted challenges to their thinking is not much of an education.

Luckily, there's pushback against this trend. University of California regents issued a report deploring anti-Semitism but rejected demands to include all forms of anti-Zionism in the condemnation. When students at Emory University protested messages in support of Donald Trump chalked on campus sidewalks as an attempt to intimidate minority groups, the school president heard them out but took no action.

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A female undergraduate at Harvard wrote an article that assailed the prevailing atmosphere there, recalling a class in which one student said "she would be unable to sit across from a student who declared that he was strongly against abortion" and a discussion in which she was rebuked for citing a Bible verse because it violated a "safe space."

Last month, the American Association of University Professors released a report arguing that the federal law known as Title IX, which bans discrimination on the basis of sex, has been stretched to punish language and ideas that should be allowed.

It cited examples such as Patty Adler, a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder who had long taught a popular sociology course called "Deviance in U.S. Society." She was threatened by her dean with forced retirement after some students complained about role-playing exercises. The threat was rescinded but a disillusioned Adler chose to retire. Louisiana State University associate professor Teresa Buchanan was fired, over the objections of a faculty committee, because some students complained about her use of profanity.

Students deserve to be shielded from sexual harassment by other students or faculty members, and sexual harassment can include the creation of a climate so hostile (to women, gays and so on) that they feel threatened. But the AAUP panelists contend that the federal government defines the term so broadly, and makes it so hard to defend against such charges, that innocent people are wrongly tarred and education suffers.

"Overly broad definitions of hostile environment harassment work at cross-purposes with the academic freedom and free speech rights necessary to promote learning in an educational setting," they said. "Learning can be best advanced by more free speech that encourages discussion of controversial issues rather than by using punitive administrative and legal fiat to prevent such discussions from happening at all."

The University of Chicago has taken the lead in defending free speech on campus. Last year, a special committee issued a statement noting the importance of civility but upholding "the principle that debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the University community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed."

We hope the administrators, faculty and students of other universities are listening.

Follow the Editorial Board on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook.
Political strategist James Carville once said, "I used to think if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or a .400 baseball hitter. But now I want to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everyone."

Carville is a Democrat, but if he were pondering his next life today, he might opt instead to take the form of a Republican national convention delegate. He'd be guaranteed to evoke not only fear but attention, flattery, favors and love.

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In most presidential election cycles, convention delegates play a ceremonial role. They fill up hotels in the host city, enjoy meals and drinks with fellow party regulars, don silly hats, sit through endless speeches and cheer frequently to show their enthusiasm.

They also cast their votes, which are mostly predetermined, during the roll call of the states to formally choose a nominee. Then they go home.

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But that's in normal years, when voters decide the outcome long before the delegates step onto the convention floor. This year, at least on the Republican side, things are shaping up differently. Neither Donald Trump nor Ted Cruz nor John Kasich looks likely to amass a majority by the time the first gavel falls. The outcome may not have been decided on the campaign trail.

In that case, it will be decided in Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland. For the first time in decades, the delegates could wield real power  the power to actually choose a nominee who might occupy the White House for the next four years.

Some of these delegates are chosen in primaries, some in caucuses and others in state conventions. Some are selected by the candidates themselves, and some are taken from a list of approved aspirants. Stephen Hawking could probably make sense of it all.

But here's the crucial thing. On the first round of voting, and sometimes the second, most delegates are required to vote for a specific candidate, based on his showing back home. But should those rounds fail to produce a majority, things suddenly get interesting.

At that point, the great majority can switch to a different candidate. A Trump delegate could vote for Cruz. A Cruz delegate could vote for Kasich. Or either could vote for someone not yet in the race.

One scenario is that Cruz and Kasich will join forces to block Trump. Another is that delegates for Trump and Cruz will decide the best chance of winning the election is to nominate Kasich. Yet another is that the delegates will turn to House Speaker Paul Ryan to save the party from defeat.

Much depends on who the delegates are. Trump won Arizona, capturing all 58 slots, but Cruz is reportedly recruiting supporters to fill 55 of those, hoping to bring them over after the first round. "Cruz will get most/all Arizona delegates on second ballot," Republican strategist Sean Noble told the Washington Examiner.

In North Dakota, delegates are chosen in a convention, and they aren't required to vote for a particular candidate or to say whom they support. Cruz claimed that 18 of the 25 picked Sunday favor him. Trump's campaign says the correct number is four.

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Pennsylvania has a primary April 26, but the winner stands to pick up just 17 of the state's 71 delegates. The others who are elected will be free to decide for themselves, which puts a burden on candidates to get their supporters to run. Trump could win the overall vote in Pennsylvania and find his delegates outnumbered.

In the Louisiana primary, Trump and Cruz each won 18 delegates. But Cruz is working to win over five others won by Marco Rubio before he dropped out of the race, and five more who will be unpledged  which prompted Trump to threaten a lawsuit.

If the convention ends up being vigorously contested, it should produce a fascinating, educational and unpredictable spectacle. Meanwhile, each of the Republican delegates will have more new friends than a Powerball winner. They should enjoy it while it lasts.

Follow the Editorial Board on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook.
Santiago J. Erevia, who served in the Vietnam War with the Army's 101st Airborne Division, received the Medal of Honor, the military's highest award for valor, from President Obama on March 18, 2014. (Bill O'Leary, Washington Post)

"The real world is full of anti-Semitism, homophobia, sexism and racism. The question is: Do we prepare students to accept the world as it is, or do we prepare them to change it?"

 Williams College administrator Ferentz Lafargue, in a Washington Post op-ed, March 28, 2016

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The obvious answer to that question is: We should prepare students to make the world better, of course. But how to do that?

One way is to teach them about resolve in the face of prejudice and discriminatory treatment. We're thinking about the lives of three soldiers who died recently.

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All had been awarded the Medal of Honor, the highest tribute America bestows on soldiers or sailors. These men, however, had had to wait decades to be recognized.

Their heroics finally came to light because, more than a decade ago, Congress ordered a review of the war records of Jewish and Hispanic soldiers from World War II, Korea and Vietnam. Under earlier legislation, the Pentagon also reviewed military records of Asian-Americans who fought in World War II.

The aim: Ensure that those who deserved a Medal of Honor were not denied because of prejudice. And so the nation has honored these men, among others whose military records have been revisited:

U.S. Army Sgt. Santiago Jesus Erevia, who died March 22, was presented the Medal of Honor by President Barack Obama in 2014 for heroic action on the battlefield in 1969 during the Vietnam War. Erevia crawled from one wounded soldier to another, tending to their injuries, before charging four enemy bunkers. After Obama called him with the news of his award, Erevia told a reporter. "They say you deserve it. I'll take it in stride. And I'll jump in joy, but I'm going to jump in joy by myself in the bedroom."

Army Cpl. Tibor Rubin was awarded the medal for his Korean War service  in 2005 by President George W. Bush. Rubin, who died in December, was born in Hungary and survived a concentration camp as a teenager. He was rescued by U.S. soldiers and, to show his gratitude, he enlisted during the Korean War. In Korea,Rubin held a hill against an overwhelming assault by North Korean troops, allowing his fellow soldiers to retreat. Rubin was taken prisoner and sent to a POW camp. Because he had been born in Hungary, he was offered a chance to return to his homeland. He declined. He spent the next 30 months providing medical care  and pilfering extra food  for his fellow prisoners. Although his Medal of Honor was delayed 50 years because of anti-Semitism, he remained proud of his service and his adopted country. "It is the best country in the world and I am part of it," he said.

In this June 8, 2000 file photo, Tibor Rubin poses at the Korean Freedom Bell in San Pedro, Calif. Rubin was a Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor who joined the U.S. Army after his liberation from the Nazis. He earned the Medal of Honor for heroism in the Korean War, has died in California. He was 86. (Ana Venegas, The Orange County Register via AP)

Army Pvt. George Sakato, who died the same week as Rubin, snagged his Medal of Honor in 2000. On a rescue mission behind enemy lines in 1944, Sakato single-handedly stopped an enemy attack while under withering fire. His medal was delayed for 56 years because of his Japanese ancestry. "I am American and I wanted to show my loyalty to the country," Sakato said without a trace of rancor. As a boy, Sakato and his family moved from their California home to Arizona to avoid being placed in an internment camp following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He was classified as an "enemy alien" even though he was a native Californian. He enlisted as part of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a World War II unit of 12,000 Nisei (second-generation Japanese-American) volunteers. It became one of the most highly decorated U.S. units  and suffered some of the highest casualty rates.

George Sakato, right, takes part in a wreath ceremony for Asian American, Native American and Pacific Islander Medal of Honor recipients in 2000. With him are Army Maj. Gen. Robert R. Ivany, left, and fellow recipient Rudolph Davila. (Heesoon Yim / Associated Press)

At the end of World War II, President Harry Truman expressed his gratitude to Sakato's unit: "You fought not only the enemy, but you fought prejudice, and you've won. Keep up that fight, and we'll continue to win. And make this great republic stand for just what the Constitution says it stands for  the welfare of all the people, all the time."

Each of these soldiers fought to make the world a better place. Recognition of their bravery and exploits came late, but it did come. Terrible wrongs were corrected.

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That's how we make change  progress  happen.

Follow the Editorial Board on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook.
The Rev. Eugene Klein, center, stands with his attorney, Thomas Anthony Durkin, after pleading guilty to federal charges Feb. 11, 2015, at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago. (Anthony Souffle / Chicago Tribune)

For five years, an enduring mystery has surrounded the story of a prison chaplain who conspired with a convicted hit man for the Chicago Outfit to recover a supposedly rare 18th century Stradivarius violin said to be hidden in the mobster's vacation home.

The violin, once purportedly owned by entertainer Liberace, was likely worth millions of dollars if authentic, but it has never been found.

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The FBI came up empty-handed during at least two searches of mobster Frank Calabrese Sr.'s Wisconsin lake house after the feared killer was charged in 2005 in the landmark Operation Family Secrets investigation.

His son, Frank Calabrese Jr., told the Tribune he'd heard his dad talk of a precious violin given as collateral for a juice loan decades ago, but he had never seen it himself. The only trace of it was paperwork uncovered in a 2010 raid of Calabrese's Oak Brook home that referred to a violin with a "Stradivari" label.

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Now, in a court filing asking a federal judge to sentence the chaplain, Eugene Klein, to probation later this month, attorneys for the mild-mannered Roman Catholic priest have offered an intriguing new theory. The violin  if it existed at all  could very well have been stolen during a burglary at the Wisconsin home in 2004, they said, years before Klein plotted to find the hidden instrument for Calabrese.

To bolster the claim, Klein's attorneys made public for the first time a decade-old report by police in Williams Bay, Wis., that documents a break-in at the residence that had all the hallmarks of a mob-connected job.

Inside the basement of the tidy, three-bedroom colonial, the burglar had discovered a secret room by cutting a hole in peg board and then breaking through the cinder block wall, according to the report. Whatever might have been stashed there was gone.

Klein's attorney, Thomas Anthony Durkin, argued in the filing that federal prosecutors have overreached by putting the violin's value at $1 million, a figure that would jack up Klein's sentence.

"There is significant evidence that if the Calabrese family owned an expensive violin, it was long since gone from the Wisconsin residence before Calabrese was indicted," Durkin wrote in the filing.

Prosecutors have not yet made a public court filing saying how long a prison term Klein should be given at his April 14 sentencing in U.S. District Judge John Darrah's courtroom.

Calabrese's son, meanwhile, agreed the violin was likely not at the house by the time of his father's indictment, but not because of a burglary. In a telephone interview on Friday, the younger Calabrese said his father had grown paranoid and confused after years in prison and had likely just forgotten he'd moved the violin to another location. Calabrese was 75 when he died in prison on Christmas Day 2012.

"He had hiding spots all over the place," his son said. "It's probably still out there somewhere."

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A scribbled note

Klein, 67, entered a surprise guilty plea in February 2015 on the day his trial had been set to begin. He admitted in a plea agreement with prosecutors that he violated especially restrictive prison security measures placed on Calabrese at the federal penitentiary in Springfield, Mo., where Klein was one of the only people allowed to meet with him face-to-face.

Calabrese, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2009 for more than a dozen mob slayings, was first placed under special administrative measures after he was allegedly seen in court mouthing, "You are a f------ dead man," at a prosecutor.

Calabrese was known to have stashed assets in secret hiding places across the country. Testimony in the Family Secrets trial revealed he'd had a fleet of vintage cars parked in an airplane hangar in rural Kane County. The year before Klein met Calabrese in prison, federal agents raided his former home in Oak Brook and discovered a cache of guns, $750,000 in cash, jewelry and loose diamonds hidden in the wall behind a family portrait.

In early March 2011, Calabrese gave Klein a handwritten note hidden in religious materials that instructed Klein to contact Calabrese's friend, Daniel Casale, a longtime restaurateur from North Barrington who grew up with Calabrese in the old Italian-American neighborhood on Chicago's West Side. Calabrese told Klein to ask him about the status of the Wisconsin home, according to court records. At the time, the government had put the home up for sale, with any proceeds to be used to compensate relatives of Calabrese's murder victims.

At their next Communion visit, Calabrese passed Klein a scribbled note that included specific instructions for Klein and Casale to team up with Joseph Myles, a private investigator who had worked on Calabrese's criminal case.

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Calabrese proposed that they pose as buyers and that Myles distract the real estate agent while the other two headed to an upstairs bedroom to look for "a little pull out door about 3 1/2 feet high," court records show.

"Be sure to have a little flashlight with you so you can see," Calabrese wrote. "Make a right when you go into that little pull out door. Go all the way to the wall. That is where the violin is."

Meeting in April 2011 to discuss the plot, the three believed that the violin once belonged to Liberace and could fetch millions of dollars on the black market. Citing a program he had "seen on the Discovery Channel," Casale estimated its value at $26 million, according to the court records.

Using Myles' cellphone, Klein called the real estate agent, who told him a buyer was scheduled to purchase the home the next day. Klein returned to Missouri, where he was confronted by FBI.

Neither Casale nor Myles was charged with any wrongdoing. When contacted by a Tribune reporter in February 2015, both declined to comment on the alleged plot. Records show Casale died of a heart attack at 76 in April 2015, two months after Klein pleaded guilty.

A black hat and pry bar

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According to the Williams Bay police report, Calabrese's wife had summoned police in April 2004 to report a possible break-in, but no evidence had been found that any entry had been gained to the home.

A month later, however, she returned to the house with a key to the basement tool room. There, she discovered a large piece of fiberglass insulation had been pulled from the walls and ceiling. Along the west wall of the room, a hole had been cut in peg board, and the cinder block wall behind it had been broken out, exposing the hidden room, the police report said.

A black hat, found on top of an empty box, had sawdust on it, leading police to believe it had been worn by the burglar, according to the report. Also left behind was a 36-inch steel pry bar with the price tag still attached, the report said.

Records show that four years earlier, police had also been called to the home for a reported break-in attempt. Calabrese's wife had told police in June 2000 that she'd come up to the house to discover the telephone lines had been cut, according to a Williams Bay police report obtained by the Tribune in an open records request.

When she checked the outside of the house, the wife noticed "pry marks on the basement door," the report said. The officer, however, noted in the report that the pry marks looked old, and no evidence could be found of a break-in.

Calabrese's longtime criminal defense attorney, Joseph Lopez, told the Tribune last week that the mobster had blamed the Wisconsin break-ins as well as other thefts of his assets on his son, Frank Jr., whose decision to reach out to the FBI and cooperate against his father got the ball rolling on the Family Secrets probe.

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In fact, one of the main elements of Calabrese's defense during his trial was that the testimony of his son and his brother, Nicholas Calabrese, whose cooperation with authorities broke the case wide open, was part of a conspiracy to keep him behind bars while they stole his hard-earned money.

When Calabrese took the witness stand in August 2007, Lopez tried to question him about the purported thefts, but U.S. District Judge James Zagel cut the testimony short, records show.

"They stole $2 million from me," Calabrese testified, according to a transcript. When prosecutors loudly objected, Calabrese's voice rose to a shout. "How am I supposed to defend myself?" he said.

After the judge sent the jury out of the room, Lopez told the judge the questions went directly to his argument that Calabrese's brother and son wanted him to remain in prison so he wouldn't come after them looking to get paid back.

"And in what way would he come after them?" Zagel asked.

"Well, I guess he would try to get them to sell their property, give him quitclaim deeds to get his money back," Lopez said.

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"Right," Zagel said, skeptically.

"He wouldn't kill them, that's not what I'm saying," Lopez quickly added.

Knock-off Stradivarius violins

When the sensational charges against Klein were announced in 2011, Frank Calabrese Jr. told the Tribune the FBI had asked him if he knew of the violin's whereabouts.

"I was told if I did have it and tried to sell it, there would be a problem," Calabrese said at the time. "I told them I don't have it."

In his interview last week with the Tribune, Calabrese called the allegations that he was involved in the Wisconsin break-in lies. He said his father had several hiding spots in the house, including one in the garage, but by 2004 it was likely everything had been moved to other locations.

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"The FBI did complete sweeps of that place. There was nothing there," he said.

Wherever the violin is, Durkin, Klein's lawyer, has said there were conflicting reports over its origins and whether it was an authentic 18th century Stradivarius as claimed by Calabrese.

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The government's own records of what was seized in the Oak Brook raid indicate the instrument may have been made by Giuseppe Antonio Artalli, not Antonius Stradivarius, which would vastly decrease its worth, according to Durkin. Other Calabrese family records referred to a violin from the 1930s that was valued at about $70,000, he said.

After Klein pleaded guilty, Durkin said he received an unsolicited phone call from Jonathan Warren, chairman of the Liberace Foundation for the Creative and Performing Arts, whose collection includes several violins owned by Liberace and his brother, George, according to the defense filing.

"Each violin happened to be a 'knock off' or counterfeit Stradivarius worth only $300 or $400," the filing said.

Warren is willing to testify at Klein's sentencing hearing that Liberace never owned an authentic Stradivarius, according to the filing.

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"It's kind of like looking for unicorns," Durkin told reporters last year. "How do you value a unicorn? I'm not quite sure."

jmeisner@tribpub.com

Twitter @jmetr22b
Debbie Rogers of Aurora produced a pillow case Saturday in support of the Justice for Our Neighbors group. (David Sharos / The Beacon-News)

Members of Justice for Our Neighbors - a free immigration legal clinic for immigrants and refugees - celebrated the group's fifth anniversary not by throwing a party, but rather advocating for others.

Beginning at noon Saturday at Fourth Street United Methodist Church, 551 S. Fourth St. in Aurora, a group of people gathered in the church basement to write messages to Gov. Bruce Rauner on pillow cases urging him to give Syrian refugees a place to rest their heads.

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According to Roger Curless, clinic coordinator for Justice for Our Neighbors, the pillow case effort was being conducted to support Fellowship of Reconciliation USA, a national organization that advocates for immigrant refugees.

"The Fellowship started doing this thing with the pillow cases and we're planning to either send or deliver them by hand to the governor's office along with a letter we've written urging that this practice (of a ban on entry for Syrian refugees) be eliminated."

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A laundry line was hung in the basement where pillow cases could be put on display. Head of hospitality for the Justice for Our Neighbors group Emmy Lou John said the local chapter is one of three in the state along with those in Chicago and Rockford.

"We feel it's important we have an action activity or component as the focus of our fifth anniversary," John said. "We currently have about 70 volunteers and also work with about 10 churches."

One of those participating in the event was Debbie Rogers of Aurora, who said the effort was important in terms of protecting the lives of children and families.

"There are too many families that are separated and alone. Something has to be done," she said.

Rogers said she wasn't sure what the impact of the pillow case awareness effort would be but that there "needs to continue to be a voice."

Nina Tibbs-Moore of Aurora likewise produced a pillow case and said as an African-American, she "was worried about kids and their parents that have ties to this country."

"I understand some of the plights they have gone through as well as what happens to kids in foster care when they and their parents are separated," she said. "I feel it's our obligation to take care of people regardless of what country they are from."

Nina Tibbs-Moore of Aurora shows the pillow case she produced in support of helping refugees relocate to Illinois. (David Sharos / The Beacon-News)

Tibbs-Moore also reflected on the possible effect of the messages to Rauner and said "visual cues will resonate."

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"People need to hear and see things  both in pictures and in words," she said. "We know it's effective because it's how kids learn."

Pastor of United Methodist Church of Amor de Dios in Chicago Ramiro Rodriquez was invited to attend Saturday's event and said it was "important to keep the message positive."

"This has to be a 'faith' message that God is with us, and we are all a part of the family of God," he said. "We are helping guide God's children."

Curless said that a sheet was also going to be used to convey the message and that the materials would be delivered "within the next few weeks."

"We feel it is not appropriate to not welcome people that wish to come here, and we're not afraid," Curless insisted. "The pillow case is symbolic of letting people come here and rest their head. We feel we should do something today than just celebrate our anniversary and ourselves."

David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News
A 28-year-old man from Sandwich died Sunday afternoon after his car was hit by an Amtrak train in Somonauk.

The man drove around downed warning gates before the train hit his car, according to a preliminary investigation by the Somonauk Police Department.

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The man, whose name has not yet been released by police, was driving north on North Green Street in Somonauk when he came to an intersection with the train tracks. Gates were down to signal an oncoming train, but he drove around them and was on the tracks at 3:02 p.m. when the westbound California Zephyr train came in from the east and hit his car, pushing it about a quarter mile before coming to a stop, said Somonauk Police Officer Ryan Wallace.

No passengers were in the car, and all 273 people on the train  264 passengers and nine crew members  were uninjured, Wallace said.

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It is unclear if the train, which was scheduled to leave Union Station at 2 p.m. Sunday, slowed down or attempted to stop before crashing into the car. Track speed is 79 miles per hour and there is no indication the train was going much faster or much slower than that when it hit the car, but that is still under investigation, Wallace said.

It appears that the car was fully on the tracks and moving when the train hit it, Wallace said. The speed limit along that stretch of North Green Street is 25 mph.

The train was delayed for about five hours while Amtrak crews made repairs and officers from responding agencies conducted their investigations, said Amtrak spokesman Mark Magliari. During that time, it was unsafe for passengers to get off the train and they served dinner, he said.

The DeKalb County Sheriff's Office, DeKalb County coroner, Amtrak Police and BNSF representatives assisted or responded to the incident, which is still under investigation, Wallace said.

In accordance with company policy for such incidents, Amtrak replaced the crew members on board before the train continued on to its west coast destinations, ending at the Emeryville station in Oakland, California, Magliari said.

"These incidents are always tragic," Magliari said. "They are avoidable if drivers heed the warnings of an approaching train."

hleone@tribpub.com
Doctors recently told Giedre Pyzik that her chemotherapy wasn't working in her battle against multiple myeloma. According to family, she was scheduled to see a specialist about a possible bone marrow transplant.

On Friday, the 51-year-old Frankfort woman was in downstate Iroquois County on the back of a motorcycle driven by her boyfriend, Chris Hoerler. Pyzik's oldest daughter, Kristina Pyzik, said her mother loved to ride and that the two had joined Hoerler's motorcycle club for a bike blessing.

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"We look at it as she avoided suffering," said Kristina Pyzik, 34, of Frankfort. "And we got to remember her as being in good physical health and having fun doing something she always liked to do."

According to Illinois State Police, Giedre Pyzik died after she was thrown from the 2006 Harley-Davidson motorcycle during a collision with another motorcycle at the entrance of a downstate rest area.

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Pyzik is being remembered as a loving mother and grandmother who would do anything for her family.

"She was always there for her children and her family. She would give you the shirt off her back if she could," Kristina Pyzik said. Her children included Kristina, Laura Pyzik, Alexandria Mastalerz and stepson Daniel Mastalerz.

More than a year ago, Giedre Pyzik took in an extended family member and her children, who were going through a hard time, and let them stay in her house until they could transition into their own place, Kristina Pyzik said. It was the kind of thing her mother wouldn't hesitate to do for family, she said.

Giedre Pyzik grew up in the Lithuanian neighborhood of Marquette Park on Chicago's far South Side and attended Maria High School, her daughter said. She became pregnant with her oldest daughter when she was 17 years old and later completed her GED before getting her cosmetology license.

Pyzik loved music and was always headed to a concert, her daughter said.

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"My mother liked to have fun just as much as I did," Kristina Pyzik said. "She had friends everywhere."

The motorcycle Giedre Pyzik was riding struck another 2006 Harley from behind about 6:30 p.m. as the two bikes were entering the rest area along the southbound lanes of Interstate 57 near Loda, about 100 miles south of Chicago, according to a news release from state police.

Pyzik was pronounced dead at the scene by the Iroquois County coroner's office. Pyzik was not wearing a helmet, police said.

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Hoerler, 56, of Oak Lawn, and the other motorcycle driver, a 45-year-old Oak Lawn man, were hospitalized with injuries that were not life-threatening, police said.

The crash remains under investigation.

Pyzik's visitation is scheduled for 3 to 9 p.m. Tuesday at Palos-Gaidas Funeral Home, 11028 Southwest Highway in Palos Hills, according to her obituary. The funeral visitation is 9 a.m. Wednesday at Nativity BVM Church, 69th Street and Washtenaw Avenue in Chicago, with Mass to follow at 10 a.m. Interment is at Resurrection Cemetery in Justice.

Nick Swedberg is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
Darien Marquez-Connerly, 24, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to 35 years in prison on Monday in the 2011 shooting death of Leodis Blackburn during what prosecutors said was a botched robbery attempt. (Cook County sheriff's photo)

The sister of a cabdriver who was shot and killed in Evanston sobbed in court Monday as she faced the man who pleaded guilty to the crime.

Darien Marquez-Connerly, 24, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to 35 years in prison in the 2011 shooting death of Leodis Blackburn during what prosecutors said was a botched robbery attempt.

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"You have done something that only the sovereign God almighty has the right to do," Blackburn's sister, Brenda Taylor, told Marquez-Connerly during his sentencing hearing in Cook County's Skokie courthouse. "You have no idea of the magnitude of the thing you have done."

Prosecutors said Marquez-Connerly  whose twin brother is awaiting trial in a separate Evanston killing  was on parole for a 2009 aggravated robbery conviction when he decided to rob a taxi. They said he got into Blackburn's cab on Howard Street, took a short ride and then demanded money. When Blackburn, 50, refused to hand over any cash, Marquez-Connerly shot him once in the head and fled on foot. Blackburn died a few days later.

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Taylor tearfully described her brother as a hard worker and a man of his word who had overcome struggles in life and whose organs were donated after he was shot. She said Blackburn was unconscious as relatives sat vigil at his bedside in the hospital and "said things to him we hope he heard."

Prosecutors on Monday displayed a life-size poster of Blackburn smiling while holding his young daughter.

"I don't know if you feel like a man for doing this," Taylor said to Marquez-Connerly. "I hope you never forget how your heinous act will impact his family."

Taylor, still weeping audibly, had to be helped from the courtroom.

Marquez-Connerly, of Chicago, showed little emotion during the hearing. He apologized to a half-dozen of Blackburn's relatives who were in court. He thanked his own family members for their support and blew a kiss to his young daughter in the gallery.

His public defender, Deana Binstock, noted Marquez-Connerly was just 19 at the time of the crime and "made an impulsive decision."

Marquez-Connerly could have faced up to 60 years in prison if he had been convicted at trial of first-degree murder in the case, prosecutors said. Officials also said he will have to serve 100 percent of the 35-year sentence.

"Tragedy and violence seem to be occurring every day," Judge Lauren Edidin said. "This was a senseless, heinous, devastating act of violence."

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The defendant's brother, Dominic Connerly, of Zion, is awaiting trial on murder charges in a different shooting in Evanston, this one in 2013. Connerly is charged with killing 30-year-old Floyd Gibert.

Brian L. Cox is a freelance reporter. Tribune reporter Tony Briscoe contributed.
Photo taken on Aug. 1, 2015 shows steel tubes at a dock in Lianyungang Port, east China's Jiangsu Province. (Photo: Xinhua/Wang Chun)

Reports in the British media which pile blame on China for the difficulties of UK steel plants are misleading the public, according to analysts.

Following news that Tata, the Indian industrial giant, wants to shut its steel mills at Port Talbot and elsewhere, media reports have been finger-pointing at China, alleging it is flooding the market with steel products at artificially low prices, supported by subsidies from the Chinese government.

Steel prices have fallen in recent years due to a crash of almost two-thirds in the last five years in the price of iron ore.

According to Statista, a Hamburg-based statistics company, the average price of one metric ton of ore was 55 U.S. dollars in 2015, down from the peak of 168 U.S. dollars in 2011.

Just like the meltdown in the price of crude oil leading to cheaper gasoline, the slump in iron ore prices triggered the downfall in steel prices, said Lu Xiaoming, a steel industry analyst with the China Economic Information Service.

Although China produces nearly half of the world's steel, 88 percent of its products are consumed domestically, and its exports are not large enough to dominate international market prices, Lu said.

In 2014, even though the UK imported twice as many steel products from China as a year earlier, they stood at 687,000 metric tons, compared with the much larger quantity of 4.7 million metric tons from other European countries, the BBC reported.

The accusation against China of government subsidies is also missing the point. The Chinese government has been taking measures to shrink its own capacity in steel production in response to a sluggish world economy. Over the past three years, China has cut 90 million metric tons of steel producing capacity and will further reduce it by another 100-150 million metric tons.

"The ongoing depression in the steel industry is a global phenomenon. The UK is not the only country being affected," said Chinese Ambassador Liu Xiaoming in February.

"In China, the steel industry is having a difficult time too, and hundreds of thousands of steel workers are facing job losses," he said.

There are calls for high tariffs on steel products from China amid Port Talbot's crisis, while it is also believed that the protectionist measure could ultimately hurt the interests of British consumers.

A commentary carried by The Times on Wednesday pointed out that "the global supply glut has forced Tata to sell its UK operations."

The view held by British steel workers and producers that the European Union (EU) measures against China steel exports do not go far enough is "understandable but mistaken," the commentary said.

"There are always costs in a policy of trade protectionism, paid for by consumers with higher prices and by the wider economy," it added.

Even though Britain is importing more steel from China than it used to, it still purchases many more times the amount of steel from the EU, wrote Allister Heath, deputy editor of The Telegraph.

"There are also plenty of UK jobs created thanks to cheap Chinese steel: British companies can buy the stuff and then use it to make goods that they can export at a profit. The last thing we need is a trade war over this issue. Far more jobs would be lost than gained," Heath said.

Addressing the APPCG, a parliamentary group on China in February, Ambassador Liu said that both the Chinese and British governments have engaged in good communications regarding the steel industry.

"Neither side thinks protectionism is in their long-term interests or considers protectionism as a way out. China supports closer dialogue and joint discussion between the steel industries of both countries in order to find a feasible solution," Liu said.
The value of China's top 100 brands rose by 13 percent in 2015 to 525.6 billion U.S. dollars, new research found.

Internet giant Tencent remained China's most valuable brand, according to the ranking by British advertising giant WPP and its market research unit Millward Brown. Their annual BrandZ report showed Tencent's value grew by nearly a quarter year on year to 82.1 billion U.S. dollars, equivalent to Norway's annual GDP.

Tencent was followed by China Mobile and Alibaba. Telecoms brand Huawei and online retailer JD.com were the highest newcomers.

Huawei has a strong worldwide presence, and its smartphone business has been a powerful growth engine. JD.com, a challenger to Alibaba, has benefited from the expansion of its mobile offering, the extension of its e-commerce platform and partnerships with international brands.

For the first time, brands owned by private companies contributed more than half (51 percent) of the value of the top 100, evidence of China's continuing transition to a market economy.

The report said brands had taken advantage of the government encouraging innovation and development of new technology, and also of the growing wealth of Chinese consumers.

The figures demonstrate how resilient strong brands are in times of economic turbulence -- China's GDP growth was 6.9 percent in 2015, down from 7.3 percent the previous year.

Chinese brands are now as competitive as multinationals, according to the report. They score more highly on two of the key factors that create competitive advantage -- building brand awareness, and connecting with consumers on both a functional and emotional level -- but lag behind on differentiation.

The increasing power of home-grown brands may help stem the current outflow of capital from China that is concerning economists, it added.
90-minute discussion between leaders has diffused difficulties arising from issues related to South China Sea, foreign minister says

President Xi Jinping's meeting with US President Barack Obama has helped to alleviate tensions at a time when some countries have been playing up the South China Sea issue, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said.

The meeting, which took place on Thursday on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, was closely watched by the international community because many countries are pessimistic about the current state of Sino-US ties, he said.

"The Americans have said that they will not take sides (in the South China Sea issue), so it should not be a problem for the China-US relationship," Wang said.

The relationship should not be affected by historical problems between China and some US allies, and the positive dialogue between the two leaders has reassured the international community, he added.

During the 90-minute meeting, Xi and Obama discussed a range of issues, including economic policies, cooperation on nuclear security, maritime issues and the stability of the Korean Peninsula. The two leaders agreed to deepen cooperation and manage differences of opinion to expand common interests. It was the only bilateral meeting arranged by Obama's team during the summit.

Xi acknowledged that China and the US have disputes and differing views on some subjects, and said both sides should respect each other's concerns and seek solutions through dialogue.

Wang said: "We are confident about the steady development of the China-US relationship this year, and that will continue smoothly into the next term (when a new president is elected in the US)."

Climate change was once a stumbling block for Sino-US relations, but the two countries are now working together to bring the Paris Agreement on climate change issues into force as soon as possible. The two countries have also boosted cooperation on cybersecurity issues, he said.

On Thursday, China and the US, two of the world's leading nuclear powers, issued a joint statement about cooperation on nuclear security. The two countries jointly built the Center of Excellence on Nuclear Security in Beijing, the largest of its kind in the Asia-Pacific region, which opened in March.

Chen Kai, secretary-general of the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association, said the statement was very "inspiring" for maintaining global nuclear security, and would help the international community reach greater consensus on improving the handling of nuclear terrorism.

Foreign Minister Wang said Xi's attendance at the summit indicated that China attaches great importance to nuclear security and reflected China's willingness to promote global security governance.

During the summit, Xi spoke about ways of strengthening the international nuclear security system, including the strengthening of political commitment, national responsibility, international cooperation and the culture of nuclear security.

Ahead of the summit, Xi paid a state visit to the Czech Republic from Monday to Wednesday. The three-day trip was the first time that a Chinese president had visited the Czech Republic, or its predecessor Czechoslovakia, since the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949.

The two countries have agreed to elevate their bilateral relations to the level of a "strategic partnership", which Wang said was the most significant political achievement of Xi's visit to the country.

The historic visit will be seen as "a milestone" in Sino-Czech relations, and it will give greater impetus to China-European cooperation, he said.
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General Secretary of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Dr Abdullateef Alzayani, declared Sunday that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet with Gulf foreign ministers this week in Manama, Al Arabiya local news reported.

The meeting will be held on Thursday in preparation for the Gulf-U.S. summit on April 21 in Riyadh.

The White House announced in March that American President Barack Obama will head to Saudi Arabia in April for a meeting with Arab leaders to repair relations strained by last year's nuclear deal with Iran.

Dr. Alzayani said that the meeting will discuss the outcome of the working groups formed in cooperation with the Camp David summit which was held in May 2015 as well as efforts to develop Gulf-U.S. ties.

He also said the meeting will address regional conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Libya and topics of shared interest.
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Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir said Sunday that the Sudanese army is ready to destroy the last rebel stronghold in Darfur.

The president was referring to Jebel Marra where clashes between the army and the rebel, Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), have been taking place.

Al-Bashir addressed a mass rally on Sunday in Zalingei, the capital city of Darfur and the birth town of the SLM's rebel leader, Abdul-Wahid Mohamed Nur, who refuses to participate in talks with Khartoum.

Al-Bashir criticized Abdul-Wahid, saying he has been "living in five-star hotels for years in Paris, as the citizens of Darfur suffer from the ongoing war."

He reiterated that the war in Darfur is over, except for a few minor areas, saying "we resorted to armed conflict after the rebels, led by Abdul-Wahid, refused to sign numerous peace accords."

Al-Bashir also vowed to compensate citizens affected by the war by providing them with means of living, stating that they are free to return to their home villages or stay in other areas.

The Sudanese president stressed that Darfur's administrative status referendum, slated for April 11, is a constitutional right via which Darfur's population will decide whether they want one state or the current five.

On Friday Al-Bashir started touring Darfur's five states, just a few days ahead of the upcoming referendum.

Major Darfur rebel movements reject participating in the referendum, unless Khartoum fulfils their demands of reaching a political solution with the armed groups and financially compensating citizens affected by the conflict.

The Sudanese government stressed that the referendum must be implemented according to the Abuja peace deal which Khartoum signed with the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM)/ Minni Minnawi faction in 2006.

The Doha Document for Peace in Darfur, signed by the government and the Liberation and Justice Movement in 2011, stipulates conducting a referendum in Darfur, and that its outcome will be included in the country's permanent constitution.

According to the agreement, if Darfur citizens vote for one state, then the Transitional Darfur Regional Authority (TDRA) will form a constitutional committee to determine the authority of Darfur's regional governments.

However, if Darfur citizens vote for the current five states, then, according to the agreement, the current status of the five states will remain as they are, and the TDRA will be dissolved.
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Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday asked to form the first ever Palestinian constitutional court, said the Palestinian state-run news agency WAFA.

According to the report, the court includes nine members, president of the court Mohamed al-Haj Qassem, his deputy Asa'ad Mubarak and seven others including two from the Gaza Strip.

Hassan al-Ourri, an aid to President Abbas for legal issues, told the agency that the court's main mission is to watch the constitutional laws, the regulations and other legal systems.

He went on saying that the court will also be responsible for the interpretation and explanation of the text of the basic law and other legislations.

The court will include professors in law, academics and experts in the constitutional laws as well as former lawyers.

The Palestinian National Authority, chaired by Abbas since January 2005, was formed after Israel and the Palestinians signed Oslo peace accords in 1993.
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The situation on the contact line between Armenian and Azerbaijani armed forces remains tense but is under control of the Armenian side, the press service of the Armenian Ministry of Defense reported on Sunday.

"Armenian and Karabakh forces continue response in order to prevent further escalation of military actions," a spokesman for the republic's Defense Ministry Artsrun Hovannisian wrote on his page on Facebook.

He added that the fierce fightings still continued in some areas of the frontline, because the Azerbaijani side has grouped a large force.

The most tense situation remains in the northern and southern parts of the frontline between Karabakh and Azerbaijan armed forces.

Armenia's Defense Ministry has spread a statement on Saturday, stating that in the night of April 1-2, the Azerbaijani troops launched the offensive attacks on the southern, south-eastern and north-eastern areas of the Karabakh-Azerbaijani line of contact with artillery, armored vehicles and aircraft.

According to reports from the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh Ministry of Defense, two helicopters, 15 tanks and 3 unmanned aerial enemy unit, one rocket system "Grad", 5 units of armored vehicles, including 1 infantry fighting vehicle, 1 unit of engineering machinery of Azerbaijan were destroyed, with casualties amounting to 200 people.

While a total of 18 Armenian soldiers have been killed, 35 others wounded. Armenia also lost one tank.

The Armenian Defense Ministry also reported that in the early morning Sunday, the Azerbaijani side has resumed shelling of the Armenian-Karabakh positions in the south with the use of rocket and artillery tools and armored vehicles.

Hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan on the contact line of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region have reportedly flared up overnight Saturday with the two countries' defense ministries blaming each other for triggering the escalation.

The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said 12 Azerbaijani soldiers have been killed in the fighting while the Armenian side confirmed that 18 soldiers died in the conflict.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a bitter dispute over the mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh first broke out in 1988, when the region claimed independence from Azerbaijan to join Armenia.

Peace talks have been held since 1994 when a ceasefire was reached, but there have been occasional minor clashes in the past along the borders and across the volatile frontline of the Karabakh area. The clashes obviously escalated last month.
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China, South Korea and Japan will hold working-level talks on the trilateral free trade agreement (FTA) in Seoul this week, South Korea's trade ministry said on Monday.

The 10th round of working-level negotiations for the free trade deal among the three Asian powerhouses will be held from Tuesday to Friday in Seoul, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.

During the meeting, negotiators will focus on core issues such as modality, or basic guidelines, on how to liberalize goods trade and service industry.

Also on the agenda will be 20 issues, including country of origin, customs, trade remedy, sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures and technical barriers to trade (TBT).

Under the principle of a comprehensive, high-level, mutually beneficial FTA, the three countries have held nine rounds of negotiations since the talks began in November 2012.

During the trilateral summit in November in Seoul, leaders of the three Asian countries agreed to speed up negotiations on the three-way FTA.

Combined gross domestic product of China, Japan and South Korea accounts for about 20 percent of the world and some 70 percent of Asia's total.
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The U.S.-led coalition has destroyed the Turkish consulate compound in Mosul in northern Iraq, which has been occupied by the Islamist State (IS) since June 2014, said a statement released by the Turkish Foreign Ministry on Monday.

The compound, where high-level IS terrorists had resided, was targeted and destroyed by in an air raid at 3:00 a.m. local time on Monday, said the statement.

"Turkey's views and approval were taken at all stages concerning the preparation and execution of the said operation," said the statement.

"Our country will continue fighting against Daesh in coordination and cooperation with the international coalition in the activities in which it has participated since the beginning," the statement added, using the IS' Arabic acronym.

In June 2014, IS militants seized the consulate and kidnapped 49 staff and family members, including the consul general.
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The first ferry taking migrants deported from the Greek island of Lesbos arrived in Turkey on Monday morning.

The migrants, reported to be Pakistanis mostly, will first go through the camps set up on the dock for health check and registration.

Under a deal finalized last month with the European Union, Ankara agrees to take back those who have crossed illegally into Greece via Turkey from March 20 and are deemed ineligible for asylum.

Turkish Interior Minister Efkan Ala told reporters on Sunday that the Greek authorities had submitted the names of 400 migrants to be returned on Monday.

He also said that upon the completion of the registration process in Dikili, the migrants will be relocated to temporary refugee centers established in several locations in the country.

The minister noted that the migrants will not be settled along the western coast.
Du Hui, vice-head of the team, and her colleagues adjust the official customs entry stamps at the Qingdao Liuting International Airport on March 4. XIE HAO/China Daily

For passengers arriving on international flights in Qingdao, the coastal metropolis of East China's Shandong province, the first people they meet are a team of female police officers at the customs gates.

The all-female passenger inspection team was founded in 2002 to provide global tourists with a better first impression of the city. For 14 years, the team has always been composed of 15 women. They provide border-checking services with both strictness and warmth.

"Data shows that every passenger spends only 45 seconds going through customs," said Du Hui, vice-head of the team. "We hope to let them experience a warm China in the process."

The customs agents, with an average age of 28, are just as strict as men in the same job. Over the years, they have returned 320 criminals to their home countries for trial and prevented 37 escaped convicts from going abroad, saving the State over 9 million yuan ($1.38 million) in potential losses, officials said.

Since China's top leadership proposed the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, Qingdao has been playing an increasingly important role in China's global strategy. As business opportunities flourish for Qingdao, the customs team will continue to play a role in welcoming new arrivals.
Suning's online sales effort highlights tea's growing popularity

Farmers pick Longjing tea leaves in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. Westlake Longjing Tea, grown in Hangzhou and picked before the Tomb Sweeping Day on April 4 this year, is considered a top-end tea product, but its price still is unchanged from 2015. CHINA DAILY

The Chinese green tea market is taking on a distinctly modern feel, as e-commerce platforms team up with leading producers to meet growing consumer demand for the freshest leaves picked in early spring.

The time around Tomb Sweeping Day, on April 4, is among the tea market's busiest of the year, when tender shoots are picked to make the first batches of spring tea.

And with that selling window firmly in mind, Suning Commerce Group Co Ltd, the country's largest electronics retailer, launched a tea-selling campaign earlier this month on its group-buying site Ju.suning.com, which is already raking in orders.

The strategy is simple, said Wang Di, general manager at Ju.suning.

Partnering with 12 tea producers from eastern China, home to the country's most notable tea growing areas, he said the company has already been pre-selling the freshest spring tea to consumers, which helps reduce distribution channels and speeds up the delivery process.

"This is a typical, modern consumer-to-business model.

"We collect orders online, and the producers then make and package the tea, based on demand," he said.

The sales model not only allows consumers to quickly get what they want, but enables tea producers to gauge how much demand there will be, and make better-informed business decisions based on that, he says.

"Within three days of opening for pre-orders on March 9, we generated 86,500 orders, worth more than 11 million yuan ($1.7 million)," Wang said.
The second edition of the book detailing the life of former Hong Kong shipping magnate Yue-kong Pao was launched in Shanghai. [Photo from web]

A book detailing the life of former Hong Kong shipping magnate Yue-kong Pao has entered its second edition, aiming to give readers a better understanding of his work and achievements.

Written by his eldest daughter Anna Pao Sohmen, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference,

Pao, who died in 1991, was not only the founder of the highly successful World-Wide Shipping Group, which Sohmen now directs, he also made great contributions to China's educational development.

He established the Pao Yue-kong and Pao Siu Loong Scholarship for overseas study, the Sino-British Friendship Scholarship that supported Chinese students completing their studies in the UK and also funded the construction of the Pao Siu Loong Library at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

"Through his hard work, dedication and perseverance, Yue-kong Pao became a world renowned shipping tycoon. Despite this, he never forgot his motherland, continuing to give generously to support the development of his country over the entire course of his lifetime," said Zhang Endi, vice chairman of CPPCC Shanghai Committee.

Zhang said the new edition of the book, published in Shanghai, would enable more people to understand and reflect on the life of Pao and follow his example.

Inspired by her father, Sohmen and her son Philip Sohmen founded the YK Pao School, a nonprofit bilingual international institution in Shanghai, in 2007.

Committed to delivering quality Chinese and international education, the school's mission is to develop its students' full potential, give them a foundation in Chinese language and culture and help them become global citizens for the 21st century.

It is hoped that through this work, Pao's enthusiasm and commitment to education and social responsibility will live on.
HARBIN - A suspect who broke away from guards in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province on Saturday has been recaptured, local police said on Monday.

The suspect named Li Zhenzhong was caught in Heilongjiang's Jixian County at around 9 p.m. Sunday, according to a statement from the provincial police.

The police offered 20,000 yuan (3,100 U.S. dollars) for tips or seizure of Li who ran out of sight of guards while receiving treatment at a local hospital in the provincial capital of Harbin.

No details of his alleged crimes have been given.
A ceremony that pays respects to Huangdi, who is regarded as the initiator of Chinese civilization, is held on Qianshan Mountain, Yan'an city's Huangling county, Shaanxi province, April 4, 2016. [Photo/VCG]

More than 10,000 people gathered in front of the mausoleum of Huangdi, the Yellow Emperor, on Monday morning to pay their respects to the legendary figure regarded as the initiator of Chinese civilization.

At 9:50 am, the rituals got under way, with yellow flags and a 56-meter-long cloth-made dragon fluttering in the breeze outside the stately tomb on Qianshan Mountain, in Yan'an city's Huangling county, Shaanxi province.

Drums were pounded and bells rang out in the light morning drizzle, as the ceremony sponsored by the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, the State Council's Overseas Chinese Affairs Office and the government of Shaanxi province was broadcast live to the world.

Hu Heping, acting governor of Shaanxi province, read an elegiac address in ancient Chinese prose.

"Today, Tomb Sweeping Day, sons and daughters of the Chinese nation hold a memorial ceremony for our ancestor the Yellow Emperor, who began the Chinese civilization," he said.

"Our civilization has a long history and the nation's revival needs our hard work."

Monday's ceremony was held to coincide with Tomb Sweeping Day, also known as the Qingming Festival, when Chinese traditionally honor their ancestors by burning incense and placing flowers on tombs.

The rituals on Qianshan Mountain included 550 actors and college students performing a worship dance.

The Yellow Emperor is said to have been born in Xinzheng, central China's Henan province, about 5,000 years ago.

He has been credited with many feats, such as introducing the systems of law and government to humankind, civilizing the Earth and defeating his rival, the Yan Emperor.

Modern-day Chinese sometimes refer to themselves as the "Descendants of the Yan and Yellow Emperor".
Zhou Hailun, 17-year-old studying in California

Growing up on the Chinese mainland, Zhou Hailun always knew that she would finish her high school education in the United States, whatever the cost.

"That's what everybody does," said the 17-year-old from Sichuan province, who has spent the past two years studying in California and will graduate this spring. "My father's friends all sent their kids abroad, so that was the trend."

Zhou is among a growing number of Chinese teens who are flocking to US high schools, looking for a Western education and a competitive edge in gaining admission to US universities and then finding a job back home.

But the pursuit of the American dream can quickly turn into a nightmare, experts warn, as many of these so-called parachute kid live in the US with little parental supervision and can end up in trouble  and even in prison.

"It's a huge industry," said Joaquin Lim, who runs a company that helps place Chinese students in US schools. "The last figure I read put it at $25 billion."

Of nearly 1 million international students enrolled in public and private institutions in the United States in 2014 and 2015, about 304,000  or 31.2 percent  were from China, according to the Washington-based Institute of International Education.

About 30,000 of those students attended secondary schools, compared with fewer than 1,000 a decade ago.

The majority of these "parachute kids" ages 14 to 19 end up in Southern California. For the most part, they attend Catholic or Christian schools because of restrictions by the US government on the number of foreign-exchange students enrolled in public schools.

Chinese students Tony Lu (L), from Anhui and Henry Li (R) from Wuhan, spend their free time connected to China on their internet devices at their host family's home in Murrieta, California on March 23, 2016. Known as 'Parachute Kids', the two boys attending high school and living with Joseph and Josephine Allen in their suburban California lifestyle are part of the increasing wave of Chinese students attending US schools and colleges. [Photo/VCG]

In cities such as Murrieta, a rural community about 130 kilometers southeast of Los Angeles, the number of Chinese students has ballooned in recent years, bringing welcome cash to the school district as well as the host families who care for the teens.

"It costs about $50,000 a year for the parents, who are mostly middle class, to send their kids here, but they consider it an investment," Lim said.

"Three years ago, we had about 40 Chinese students enrolled in high schools in Murrieta and today we have more than 300, and the number keeps growing."

The town of about 105,000 residents is a far cry from China's polluted mega-cities, but most of the teens adjust well to US life, said Renate Jefferson, who oversees the exchange program for the public school district.

"What they notice first is the blue sky," she said. "They just walk around in awe at the blue sky. They think it's beautiful."

The students are also baffled by the freedom they enjoy academically  a welcome change from the rigorous, rote-learning system in China.

"You have a lot of choices and much more freedom to study what you're interested in," said Li Junheng, 19, who is graduating this year from a Catholic school in Murrieta.

But many of the "parachute kids", whose parents rely on intermediaries to help them through the bewildering application process, are in for a hard landing in the United States, ill-equipped to navigate the cultural transition and their newfound independence.

Last month, three Chinese teens enrolled at a private school in Rowland Heights, a neighborhood east of Los Angeles, were given prison sentences ranging from six to 13 years for attacking a classmate.

The incident attracted widespread attention in China and prompted soul-searching on the wisdom of sending teenagers to a foreign country with no close parental supervision.

"You don't send your child 6,000 miles before verifying the school and who they are staying with," Lim said. "Too often, these kids are thrown into a completely foreign environment and are not prepared to fend for themselves."
A plan to send back migrants from Greece to Turkey sparked demonstrations by local residents in both countries on Saturday, two days before the deal brokered by the European Union is set to be implemented.

At the same time, migrants stranded at a makeshift camp in this small town on Greece's border with Macedonia staged a protest demanding that the border be opened and that they be allowed to continue their journeys to central and northern Europe.

The migrants' continued presence led several dozen local residents to stage a protest Saturday morning. They blocked a road for about an hour to demand the evacuation of more than 11,000 stranded migrants to "transit centers" across the Greek mainland.
A ceremony is held to honor Huangdi, or the Yellow Emperor, at the Mausoleum of Huangdi in Huangling county of Northwest China's Shaanxi province, April 4, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

Chartered train service began for the first time between Xi'an, capital of West China's Shaanxi province, to the Mausoleum of Huangdi in Huangling county, to facilitate travel to honor the legendary ancestor of the Chinese people.

The twice daily shuttle service will operate between April 1 and 4 on the high-speed rail line in time for China's Qingming Festival, or Tomb-Sweeping Day, when tens of thousands of Chinese pay homage to their ancestors and the founder of Chinese civilization.

An elaborate ceremony is held every year during Qingming Festival at the mausoleum of Huangdi, or the "Yellow Emperor," who according to legend reigned nearly 5,000 years ago and is regarded as the ancestor of all Chinese people. The tradition has been observed for thousands of years.

The mausoleum boasts ancient cypress groves, with more than 30,000 trees aged 1,000 years or more.

One 5,000-old cypress tree at Xuanyuan Temple near the mausoleum is 20 meters high and is said to have been planted by the legendary ancestor.

The trip to Huangling county is a 2 hour and 20 minute ride from Xi'an, while the train trip takes only half the time.
The pagoda on Baota Mountain in Yan'an of Shaanxi province, April 3, 2016. [Photo by Li Hongrui/chinadaily.com.cn]

After climbing Baota Mountain for nearly 20 minutes, I finally saw a tall pagoda made of yellow grey bricks standing in front of my eyes.

The mountain is named after this tower, with "Baota" meaning "precious pagoda" in Chinese.

The mountain lies in the middle of Yan'an, which once served as one of the headquarters of the Communist Party of China in Shaanxi province. A panoramic view of Yan'an can be seen from the top of it.

It was originally named the "Fenglin Mountain", and had its name changed to "Jialing Mountain" in the Song Dynasty (960-1279). There is still an inscription of "Jialing Mountain" by Fan Zhongyan, a renowned military leader and writer in the Song Dynasty. The old tower was built in the Tang Dynasty (618-907), and the present nine-floor one, 44 meters high, was restored in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

But the mountain holds more significance than meets the eye.

President Xi Jinping noted that the Baotao Mountain is the symbol of the Chinese Communist revolution in February 2015. The mountain bears the spirit of Yan'an formed during the revolution.

It has also been immortalized in poetry.

"Many times, I return to Yan'an in dreams, and hold my beloved Baota Mountain in my arms," a Chinese writer He Jingzhi said in his poem.
President Xi Jinping's participation in the fourth Nuclear Security Summit in Washington has won positive reviews.

Dong Zhihua, deputy director of the arms control and disarmament department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said top Chinese leaders have paid great attention to nuclear security and demonstrated their firm support for the global fight against nuclear terrorism.

Chinese presidents have attended all four summits, including two recent ones by Xi, who attended all the formal agenda sessions of the March 31- April 1 summit.

Dong applauded China's proposals made by Xi at the summit, which she said "led the discussion to a positive outcome".

The summit, which was attended by leaders from more than 50 countries, issued a communique on April 1 pledging continued commitment to nuclear security as an enduring priority.

It also announced action plans to support a list of international organizations such as the United Nations and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Xi delivered speeches at several events, such as the welcome dinner on March 31, the plenary session and the scenario-based discussions on April 1.

In a briefing after the summit, Dong characterized the four proposals by Xi as strengthening political input, national responsibility, international cooperation and nuclear security culture.

She said Xi's remarks have drawn a positive response from other leaders and also are reflected in the outcome documents of the summit.

"The proposals are a major contribution China has made to the summit. It will point the direction for strengthening global nuclear security architecture after the last summit," she said.

Xi also put forward five initiatives in his speech. They include conducting training and technical exchange at the newly inaugurated Nuclear Security Center of Excellence (COE) in Beijing and at the China Customs Radiation Detection Training Center in Qinhuangdao, Hebei province. Both are joint programs between China and the US.

US President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz all mentioned the new state-of-the-art COE in China in their speeches during the summit as a demonstration of China-US cooperation.

Meanwhile, China is also helping Ghana to convert a highly enriched uranium (HEU)-fueled research reactor to using low enriched uranium (LEU) within the framework of the IAEA.

China pledged at the summit to strengthen the monitoring of radioactive sources in China, cooperate with other nations and organizations in civil-use nuclear material research, and help other nations elevate their management.

Dong believes the Chinese initiatives will provide public good in nuclear security to the Asia-Pacific region and the international community. China has an ambitious plan for developing renewable energy, including nuclear energy. It also has been exporting nuclear reactors to other nations.

The initiative is also expected to help the destination nations of China's nuclear energy export, countries along the One Belt and One Road project and many developing nations. The One Belt and One Road is a Chinese initiative that focuses on the connectivity and cooperation among nations, mostly in Eurasia.

Dong said China has kept its commitments made during previous summits, adding that it "demonstrates the sense of responsibility of China as a major country".

On the morning of April 1, Xi participated in the meeting Obama hosted for the P5+1 partners, which reached the nuclear agreement with Iran last summer.

Xi noted the four inspirations China has drawn from the deal. China believes that dialogue and negotiations; concerted efforts by major countries; fairness and impartiality; and political resolve are vital in tackling regional and global hotspot issues.

While Xi stayed in the US only for some 48 hours, he also took the opportunity to hold several bilaterals on the sidelines of the summit. His meeting with Obama on March 31 was the only bilateral Obama had with any of the 50-plus heads of state and government at the summit.

It happened at a time of growing concern over the tension between China and the US regarding the South China Sea.

Xi also met with Republic of Korea President Park Geun-hye, Danish Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen and Argentine President Mauricio Macri.

Chen Kai, secretary-general of China Arms Control and Disarmament Association, said on April 1 that the Nuclear Security Summit provided a good platform for nations to share experiences, expand cooperation and elevate their capabilities in nuclear security.

Xu Dazhe, chairman of the China Atomic Energy Authority, explained in length on April 1 to journalists about the new COE in Beijing. He called it an important achievement in deepening China-US cooperation in nuclear security.

On March 31, Xu walked US Energy Secretary Moniz through the China Pavilion of the Nuclear Summit Expo, where the COE was in spotlight. Moniz was in Beijing on March 18 for the official opening of the COE.

Deng Ge, director of the China National Security Technology Center, the Chinese partner for the COE, said the COE already has started cooperation with IAEA, the EU, Russia and the Republic of Korea.

He expressed that the COE will help train more people from China and Asia-Pacific nations. It will also strengthen its cooperation with COEs in ROK and Japan.

The center, which has trained 100 to 200 technical professionals, will reach its full capacity of training 2,400 in the coming two years, according to Deng.

"It will have an even stronger capacity in five years," he said.
Jay Xu, director of the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, introduces an upcoming exhibition, Emperors' Treasures, which is expected to be a major attraction of visitors from China, at a press conference on March 31 at the museum. LIA ZHU / CHINA DAILY

The Asian Art Museum in San Francisco has joined many other tourist attractions and shopping malls by launching a "China Ready" program to tap the growing Chinese tourist market.

The program includes providing Chinese language services, such as Chinese language audio tours or docent services, free visitor guides and apps in Chinese as well as Asian cuisine at the museum's restaurant.

The museum also launched its WeChat channel last month to promote the museum among Chinese.

"We are proud to be the first museum in California to launch an account on the WeChat channel," said Ami Tseng, director of marketing and brand of the Asian Art Museum, on March 31.

"Right now, we just have information about the museum on WeChat. In the future, we are hoping to incorporate additional services such as audio tours so people can use their phones to learn the key pieces of our collection," she said.

As a major gateway for Chinese visitors to the United States, San Francisco has been receiving a growing number of tourists from China. Chinese visitors to San Francisco spent $813 million in 2015, according to the San Francisco Travel Association.

Tourism marketing agencies, like Visit California and the Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board, have launched similar "China Ready" programs to help the tourism industry better serve the Chinese travelers.

At the Asian Art Museum, the Chinese visitors have overtaken French, British and Germany visitors as the largest source of international visitors in the past six months, Tseng said.

Summer is the peak season for Chinese visitors, and the museum is ready to welcome more Chinese tourists with a few rare exhibitions, including the current China at the Center, two 400-year-old maps crafted by European Jesuit missionaries and Chinese scholars in the 17th century, and the upcoming Emperors' Treasures, rare masterpieces collected or created by Chinese emperors, said Jay Xu, director of the Asian Art Museum.

The Emperors' Treasures, on display from June 17 through Sept 18, explore the identities of nine rulers  eight emperors and one empress  who reigned from the early 12th through early 20th centuries.

It's the first time that more than 100 pieces of the 181 exhibits will be presented in the US on loan from the Palace Museum of Taiwan.

Highlights include a vase from the official Ru ware of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127), one of the only two surviving blue-and-white Ming vases depicting West Asian entertainers; the "holy grail" of Chinese porcelains, a cup with a chicken design, and the White Falcon painting by Italian Jesuit Giuseppe Castiglione.

In addition, the celebrated "meat-shaped stone" will travel to the US for the first time. The jasper stone was intricately carved into a mouthwatering shape of a braised pork belly.

"The strong growth of the Chinese tourist market offers a great opportunity. The China Ready program will help inspire more Chinese tourists to visit our museum and share the masterpieces from Asian countries," Xu said.
The United Nations Security Council will address issues related to Syria, Yemen and the Middle East as China assumes the rotating presidency of the council for April, according to China's top diplomat at the UN.

The Security Council will look at the political process, chemical weapons and humanitarian access for war-torn Syria, said Liu Jieyi, China's permanent representative to the UN, on April 1 when he took over the rotating presidency from his Angolan counterpart Ismael Abraao Gaspar Martins.

The presidency of the council rotates among its 15 member states based on the English-language alphabetical order of the countries' names on a monthly basis.

On Yemen, Liu said the council's discussions would help advance talks and improve conditions for the implementation of a ceasefire that has been agreed upon, Liu said.

Three open debates on the Middle East, counterterrorism and piracy in the Gulf of Guinea are planned for April, he said.

Sponsored by China, the open debate on counterterrorism is aimed at enhancing international cooperation and coordination in the fight against increasing terrorist activities in Europe and Asia, Liu said.

The Security Council has the responsibility to maintain peace and security in the world at large under the UN Charter. China is one of its five permanent members. The council also has 10 non-permanent members that are elected in groups of five by the UN General Assembly for two-year terms.
(Photo : Getty Images) China and the United States have officially released a joint presidential statement supporting the Paris climate agreement.

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China and the United States, the top two leading carbon polluters in the world, have confirmed that they will formally participate in the Paris climate agreement in New York on April 22 this year, a move that officials hope will bring the pact closer to reality.



In a joint presidential statement, the two powerful countries agreed to sign a deal to reduce carbon emissions at a United Nations ceremony this month. They further committed to take "respective domestic steps" and encouraged other countries to sign the agreement "with a view to brining the Paris Agreement into force as early as possible."



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Leaders from about 200 countries created the agreement with the hope of transforming the world's fossil fuel-driven economy. The Paris climate agreement needs at least 55 countries to represent at least 55 percent of global emissions before it can formally enter into force. China and the US account for nearly 40 percent.



Todd Stern, the US climate envoy who brokered the deal in Paris, revealed that putting the accord into force as early as possible will benefit countries prone to climate change more.



"The best thing that can happen for them is to get this agreement going and get into force," he said.



Meanwhile Brian Deese, a special climate change adviser to President Obama, said that quick approval would ensure efforts to limit emissions are implemented on time.



"The two largest economies and two largest emitters are saying we are not going to wait, not just sign on the first day, but join much more quickly than has been historical practice," he told the press.



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Tagschina, United States, Paris Climate Agreement, Climate Change, climate change talks, Carbon emission
(Photo : Getty Image) A pilot from Air China Ltd. was suspended after posting a live video feed of himself before take-off inside the cockpit of the jet.

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A pilot from Air China Ltd. was suspended after posting a live video feed of himself before take-off inside the cockpit of the jet.



The good-looking aviator has attracted nearly 72,000 fans on his Weibo account, China's Twitter-like microblogging site, and has even received gifts from female followers.



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However, some netizens were quick to point of the pilot's misdemeanor. One user even questioned "Why are passengers told to turn off their digital devices on flights, but pilots can just ignore this rule?"



The pilot, believed to be called "Andy," has since been suspended by Air China, explaining that his actions could "impact his emotions in the air." He is also subject for disciplinary actions, with the company revealing the pilot will face "harsh punishment."



Screen shots of Andy's live clips went viral on Weibo this week. He took a video of himself wearing aviator sunglasses and a pilot's uniform, with three gold stripes on his epaulettes, indicating that he is a first officer. It also seems that he has already flown to a number of international flights as he posted a video of a jet on the runway taken from under the passenger walkway, according to The Independent.



In an issued statement, Air China revealed that Andy was a newly hired co-pilot from Liaoning. He was previously suspended for failing to focus on preparing for take-off.



Based on his Weibo account, Andy is a graduate from the China Civil Aviation University. His account is reportedly still active, although all the photos and videos have already been removed.



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TagsAir China, pilot, Live Video, misdemeanor, weibo
(Photo : Getty Image) The company has been previously dragged to the most challenging US government export restrictions for reportedly violating US sanctions against Iran in 2012. Last March, the US government said it will not ease the limitations until the end of June, and it could further loosen them if the company is cooperative in tackling the issue.

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Chinese smartphone maker ZTE Corp. is planning to unveil its new set of management team on Tuesday, a spokesman revealed.



The comany's board of directors will meet to approve the newly selected team and a stock exchange filing is scheduled in the afternoon, ZTE spokesman David Dai Shu, told Reuters on Monday.



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According to Shu, the company reshuffles its management every three years and the upcoming changes are in accordance with ZTE's regular schedule.



The company has been previously dragged to the most challenging US government export restrictions for reportedly violating US sanctions against Iran in 2012. Last March, the US government said it will not ease the limitations until the end of June, and it could further loosen them if the company is cooperative in tackling the issue.



The Wall Street Journal was first to report about ZTE's upcoming new line up. The report claimed that among those expected to step down from their positions are Chief Executive Shi Lirong and Executive Vice Presidents Tian Wenguo and Qui Weizhao. Meanwhile, Zhao Xianming, Chief Technology Officer, will allegedly take over as the company's new CEO and chairman.



The move is a part of ZTE's agreement with the US Commerce Department to temporarily remove the sanctions granting that the company's executives involved in the violation are removed from their administrative positions.



However, Shu said he do not know the list of executives to be changed and could not confirm if the move was due to the Iran sanctions allegations.



"I cannot speculate on this type of discussion," he said. "I am not in a position to comment."



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TagsZTE, china, Iran sanctions, new management
(Photo : Getty Images) Amid growing tension in South China Sea, a Japanese submarine vessel made a port call in to Philippines on Sunday.

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A Japanese submarine on Sunday made a port call to the Philippines - the first in 15 years - in a show of the growing military cooperation between the two countries. The latest development comes amid growing tension in South China Sea, triggered mainly by China's assertiveness over its claims to the disputed maritime territory.



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Japan has described Sunday's port call to the Philippines as "regular military exercise," with no intention to send any warning to any country.



"This is just an exercise and the main objective is to train the officers," Captain Hiraoki Yoshino of Japan's Maritime Self-Defence Force informed reporters. "We don't have any message to any country."



Japan is not a party to the South China Sea dispute. However, Tokyo and Beijing are at loggerheads over the East China Sea region. Japan has been increasing its presence in South China Sea. Tokyo has sent several ships and planes to countries like Vietnam and the Philippines, who have competing claims in the South China Sea.



There are unconfirmed reports that Japan is leasing three TC-90 surveillance planes to Philippines, a deal that is likely to be sealed late this month. The TC-90 surveillance planes are expected to boost the Philippines monitoring capability in the South China Sea.



Meanwhile, Philippines and the United States are all set to start a military drill on Monday near South China Sea region, a move that will certainly irk Beijing.



Soaring Tension in South China Sea



Since last year, tensions have been soaring in the South China Sea region. At the heart of this conflict is China's alleged construction activities in several artificial islands of the disputed region.



Tensions have escalated anew after reports surfaced that China deployed missiles and fighter jets to Woody Island earlier this year, with the U.S., Australia and countries cautioning China against militarizing the disputed region.



China is claiming a large part of the South China Sea region, while Brunei, Taiwan, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam have competing claims in the region.



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(Photo : Getty Images) Talks between the US-China at the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington proved fruitful with both sides agreeing on some matters such as bridging differences over some sensitive issues and seeking solutions on various issues through peaceful means.

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President Xi Jinping and US President Barack Obama met at the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington on Thursday. The meeting is believed to have somehow eased the growing tensions between the two countries over the disputed South China Sea.



Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters that the meeting was a much-needed opportunity to bridge differences between the the two sides over issues such as the Korean peninsula and the South China Sea. The meeting comes at a time when some countries have been playing up these controversial matters.



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Wang said the meeting on Thursday was much anticipated with the international community and media closely watching for any developments between the two sides.



All eyes on two leaders



Foreign Minister Wang said all eyes were on the two leaders' talks especially in the international community due to the prevailing negative view on US-Sino relations.



"The Americans have said that they will not take sides in the South China Sea issue, so it should not be a problem for the China-US relationship," Wang said.



Wang said the US-Sino relationship should not be dogged by historical problems between Beijing and the US allies, saying that the meeting between the two nations has reassured the international community on this matter.



Various topics



Xi and Obama discussed various topics and issues during their 90-minute talk including nuclear security cooperation, economic policies, the stability of the Korean Peninsula, maritime issues such as the South China Sea among others.



Wang said the two leaders have agreed to strengthen their relationship, bridge their differences over some important issues, respect each other's opinion, expand their common interests, and seek solutions to various issues through peaceful means.



"We are confident about the steady development of the China-US relationship this year, and that will continue smoothly into the next term (when a new president is elected in the US)," Wang said.



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TagsNuclear Security Summit, President Xi Jinping, US President Barack OBama, economic policies, Washington, Beijing, Nuclear security, international community
(Photo : Getty Images.) Vietnam's Media on Monday claimed that Vietnamese coast guard has seized a Chinese vessel for allegedly intruding in its maritime territory.

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Vietnamese authorities seized a Chinese vessel on Thursday for allegedly intruding its maritime territory, Vietnam state media reported on Monday.



The vessel was intercepted by Vietnamese coast guard near Bach Long Vi Island in the Gulf of Tonkin on Thursday, according to the state media.



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The vessel was disguised as a fishing boat and was carrying a captain and two sailors. All the members were reportedly Chinese citizens. They were not carrying the necessary work permits and documentations.



The captain has admitted to Vietnamese authorities that they were supplying fuel to Chinese vessels in the region.



China has not issued any official statement on the latest development.



In the past, Hanoi has frequently accused Chinese vessels as intruders to its maritime territory. Hanoi also claim that Chinese authorities regularly harass Vietnamese fishermen.



Vietnam and five other neighboring countries are locked in a maritime dispute with China over the South China Sea region. China claims most part of the South China Sea as its own, while each of other claimants stake competing claims.



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(Photo : Getty Images) More Android devices from tech giants are widely awaited and these are expected to be released in the next few months.

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2016 has just started its second quarter but we've already seen some of the best Android smartphones released in the market, including the LG G5, Xiaomi Mi 5 and Samsung Galaxy S7.



More Android devices from tech giants are widely awaited and these are expected to be released in the next few months. Below are four of the top upcoming smartphones to be out this 2016:



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Samsung is believed to release the Galaxy Note 5 successor in August, pre-installed with Google's newest Android OS. The Samsung Galaxy Note 6 is rumored to feature a 5.8-inch Slim RGB AMOLED screen with Quad HD resolution and 6 GB of RAM. It will reportedly come with pressure-sensitive display, S Pen, microSD support and 12 MP camera with Super OIS.



Meanwhile, HTC has already announed that an online launch event will reveal the much anticipated HTC One M10 or HTC 10 handset on April 12. The HTC One M9 successor is expected to have the latest Android 6.0 Marshmallow under the hood along with the Sense 8.0 UI.



It is believed to come in three models and feature a 5.1-inch or 5.1-inch Quad HD Super LCD5 screen, 12 MP UltraPixel rear camera with optical image stabilization (OIS) and LED flash and 3,000 mAh battery capacity.



Motorola, on the other hand, is also rumored to release its 2016 Moto X with improved camera and fingerprint scanner. It could come with a pre-installed Android 6.0 Marshmallow, Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 SoC and 4 GB of RAM.



Lastly, Huawei has already distributed event invitations to the media for an event on April 6 in London. It will launh the Huawei P9 with possibly a 5.2-inch Full HD 108p screen, 3 GB of RAM, Kirin 950 processor, 32 GB of storage and 3,600 mAh battery capacity. The P9 could come in four variants.



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TagsSamsung, HTC, Motorola, Huawei, Android
(Photo : Getty Images) Motorola is speculated to be currently developing the next gen Moto E model. According to reports, there will be two variants and specs of which were spotted online.

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Motorola is speculated to be currently developing the next gen Moto E model. According to reports, there will be two variants and specs spotted online. Motorola devices with model numbers XT1700 and XT1706 were seen.



Motorola devices often use XT with four digit numbers as its model numbers.



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If rumors are true, the speculated Moto E Gen 3 model no. XT1700 will come with a 5-inch display with a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels. It is expected to feature a MediaTek MT6735 SoC with 2 GB of RAM, 1 GHz quad-core CPU and Mali-T720 GPU.



It will reportedly come with 16 GB of in-built storage and no expandable memory support, 8 MP rear camera and 5 MP front camera. Meanwhile, the XT1706 Moto E Gen 3 handset features the same specs and both will run the latest Android 6.0 Marshmallow OS.



Motorola has previously released the Moto E Gen 2 in February 2015 and after over a year, the company will release a refreshed device soon. While Lenovo has not announced anything yet, Motorola president Rick Osterloh previously confirmed that the Moto G and Moto E lines will continue in the next couple of years.



Moto E Gen 2 has a 4.5-inch display with 540 x 960 pixels resolution. It comes with a Snapdragon 410 processor, 1.2 GHz quad-core CPY and Adreno 306 GPU and 1 GB of RAM. It features an 8 MP rear camera, 0.3 MP front snapper, and 2390 mAh capacity.



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Change coming? Pope's views on family will be published later this week 04 April, 2016 by Gregory Tomlin , |

ROME (Christian Examiner)  Catholics worldwide are anticipating the publication of Pope Francis's apostolic exhortation on family later this week, and there may be a few surprises inside for those who are divorced and wish to remarry.

According to the Vatican, the exhortation called Amoris Laetitia, or "Joy of Love," will be made available to the Catholic faithful April 8. Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, general secretary of the synod of bishops, and Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, archbishop of Vienna, will present the document to the church.

Traditionally, the document is based on the recommendations of the church's bishops, but if anything, Pope Francis has shown a willingness to break from tradition. He has signaled in the past that the church should begin to reconsider how the doctrine on divorce and remarriage is addressed in the modern world.

Regarding proposals to place unions of homosexual persons on the same level as marriage, 'there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family.'

In their report from the synod on the family last year, more than 270 of the church's bishops claimed "the baptized who are divorced and civilly remarried need to be more integrated into Christian communities in a variety of possible ways, while avoiding any chance of scandal."

The "scandal" referenced by the bishops would be allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to participate in the Eucharist (communion). That, they said, should still not be done.

While the church has signaled a softening of its stance on remarriage, the biggest question, which may remain unanswered, is what approach the church will take toward gays and lesbians, same-sex marriage, and the parenting of children by gay parents. It may not, however, remain unanswered.

Pope Francis has repeatedly shown a willingness to dialogue on the issue of same-sex marriage and has presented, what is for many, an equally softened stance on homosexuality.

In 2013, for instance, Pope Francis seemed to say homosexuals could be Catholic without ceasing to practice homosexuality.

"If they accept the Lord and have goodwill, who am I to judge them? They shouldn't be marginalized. The tendency [to homosexuality] is not the problem ... they're our brothers," Francis said.

After the synod on the family, the church's bishops reported that the church must extend "boundless love to every person without exception," and said the church reiterates that "every person, regardless of sexual orientation, ought to be respected in his/her dignity and received with respect."

But bishops also cited the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the theological watchdog of the church, which wrote in its work, Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions between Homosexual Persons:

"Regarding proposals to place unions of homosexual persons on the same level as marriage, 'there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family.'"

What remains to be seen is whether Pope Francis will maintain that position while still finding a way to allow churches to bless same-sex marriages. That position was advocated by a Belgian bishop in January 2015.

In April 2015, a pro-gay Catholic bishop in Malta blessed the engagement rings for a male homosexual couple.
IMB's Platt denies endorsing Greear for SBC president 04 April, 2016 by Will Hall/Baptist Message , |

ALEXANDRIA, La. (Christian Examiner)  International Mission Board President David Platt denies he knowingly endorsed J.D. Greear for president of the Southern Baptist Convention, stating he was not aware Greear's request for a video clip was for the purpose of creating a campaign ad.

The controversy emerged when Greear, pastor of the Summit Church in Durham, North Carolina, and a leading member of Acts 29, a neo-Calvinist church planting network, began circulating a promotional video March 14 featuring a number of Southern Baptist personalities, including three SBC entity heads: Platt; Russ Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission; and, Danny Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Platt responded to an IMB trustee via email March 23, explaining, "while I was overseas in the Middle East, J.D. asked me to shoot a 2-second video saying, 'It's tricky,'" a phrase repeated throughout the online commercial.

"I had no idea what it was for," Platt clarified, although he said he knew beforehand Greear "had been nominated."

Jimmy Scroggins, pastor of First Baptist Church, West Palm Beach, Florida, announced through a March 2 press release his intention to nominate Greear at the 2016 SBC Annual Meeting to be held in St. Louis, Missouri, June 14-15.

Platt said it was only when he came back into the United States that he heard about Greear's use of his image and words for the electioneering piece.

"Please be assured (and please assure anyone who asks you about it) that I am not personally (and we are certainly not organizationally) endorsing anyone for SBC president," Platt wrote, noting he would "be thrilled" to serve alongside Greear or Steve Gaines, pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee, named a candidate March 9 by Johnny Hunt, pastor of First Baptist Church, Woodstock, Georgia, or, "any other faithful Southern Baptist pastor who might be nominated to serve in this important role."

Since Platt's email, David Crosby, pastor of First Baptist Church, New Orleans, was named a candidate by Fred Luter, pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church, also in New Orleans, on March 24.

"When I heard about the video, I called Steve Gaines to assure him that I was not in any way 'endorsing' J.D., and I expressed my delight in the prospect of Steve potentially being in that role," Platt stated. "We had a great conversation about his vision for the SBC, and I am completely confident in the Lord's leadership in whoever serves in this role for the next couple of years. I hope that gives some background, and again, please feel free to pass this on to anyone who contacts you about it."

Platt also noted disappointment with how Greear's use of him in a campaign video had created an unnecessary distraction, saying, "It's definitely frustrating to come back to issues like this after a couple of weeks overseas, seeing massive needs among unreached refugees who are suffering and dying, and spending concentrated time with our front line leaders around the world discussing how we can take the gospel to them.

"May God give us grace together across the SBC to keep our focus on that which matters most, here in the U.S. and around the world."

Will Hall is the editor of the Louisiana Baptist Message, publisher of this article which is used with permission.
Unborn child does not have constitutional rights: Clinton 04 April, 2016 by Gregory Tomlin , |

WASHINGTON (Christian Examiner)  A week after Utah's governor signed landmark legislation requiring anesthesia be administered to unborn babies who are about to be aborted, Democrat presidential front runner Hillary Clinton has claimed unborn children do not have constitutional rights.

Clinton appeared on NBC's Meet the Press with Chuck Todd April 3. During the interview, she said her position was in line with the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade where women "have a constitutional right to make these moment intimate and personal and difficult decisions based on their conscience, their faith, their family, their doctor. And that it is something that really goes to the core of privacy. And I want to maintain that constitutional protection."

But the same protections do not extend to infants in the womb, she said.

"Well, under our laws currently, that is not something that exists. The unborn person doesn't have constitutional rights," Clinton said, adding that she believed the government should help women who want to carry a child to term.

"It doesn't mean that, you know, don't do everything possible to try to fulfill your obligations. But it does not include sacrificing the woman's right to make decisions. And I think that's an important distinction that under Roe v. Wade we've had refined under our Constitution," she said.

Clinton said there is room for "reasonable kinds of restrictions" after a certain point in the pregnancy, but she prefers to side with the woman's wishes. She also hinted that abortion should be an alternative "as one moves on in pregnancy." That includes the abortion of the child in the third trimester if the mother's life is considered to be in danger.

In the past Clinton has advocated a position on abortion in which she claims it should be "safe, legal and rare."

Clinton has said in the past that she regards an unborn child as a "potential life."

"For me, it is also not only about a potential life; it is about the other lives involved. And, therefore, I have concluded, after great concern and searching my own mind and heart over many years, that our task should be in this pluralistic, diverse life of ours in this nation that individuals must be entrusted to make this profound decision, because the alternative would be such an intrusion of government authority that it would be very difficult to sustain in our kind of open society. And as some of you've heard me discuss before, I think abortion should remain legal, but it needs to be safe and rare," Clinton said during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Concern over the life of the unborn child, and the child's constitutional rights, recently motivated conservatives in Utah to seek the passage of a bill requiring doctors to anesthetize a child facing abortion after 20 weeks  when many experts agree the child can experience significant pain.

Gov. Gary Herbert signed the law into effect March 28.

"The governor is adamantly pro-life. He believes in not only erring on the side of life, but also minimizing any pain that may be caused to an unborn child," a statement from the governor's office said.

Utah's law is the first to require anesthesia during abortion, Reuters reported. A nearly identical bill passed in Montana in 2015, but the state's Democrat governor vetoed the bill.
A federal judge in Mississippi struck down a law that banned adoption by same-sex couples, issuing a preliminary injunction on Thursday according to a court order.

U.S. District Court Judge Daniel P. Jordan III overturned a ban that was enacted in 2000, making Mississippi the last state to be rid of its ban on same-sex couple adoption.

The law was challenged by four same-sex couples back in 2015 who were backed by advocacy groups the Campaign for Southern Equality and the Family Equality Council.

Jordans ruling was based on the Supreme Courts decision that legalized same-sex marriage across the nation last year, entailing same-sex couples the right to marriage related benefitswhich includes the right to adopt, Jordan said in his ruling. Based on the Supreme Court ruling last year, the ban violates the equal protection clause, Jordan maintained, deeming it unconstitutional.

Other states, including Florida, Nebraska, and Michigan, have recently had similar bans overturned that barred same-sex couples from adopting.
Bangladesh's High Court rejected the petition seeking to drop Islam as the nation's official religion in favor of a formal secular status.

The petition was filed by a 15-member group, which the court said had no standing because there was no ground for complaint and neither did the petitioners elaborate how they were abused by the law they wanted to change.

The same case was filed by the group 28 years ago, but was rejected by the court. Ten of the 15 petitioners are no longer alive since they formed a "committee to oppose autocracy and religious communalism."

As the case went through the court's bureaucratic screening, it was not deemed fit for a proper hearing in the court, and was dismissed in less than two minutes by Justice Naima Haider, Justice Quazi Reza-Ul Hoque, and Justice Ashraful Kamal, according to the New York Times.

The court decision implies that Islam will continue as Bangladesh's official religion, but the constitution will guarantee equal rights for minority religions as before as per Article 2A of the constitution which, though recognizing Islam as the state religion ensures "equal status and equal right in the practice of the Hindu, Buddhist, Christian and other religions."

After gaining independence from Pakistan in 1971, Bangladesh adopted a secular status. But, in 1988, the country's military dictator H.M. Ershad declared Islam as the country's official religion to garner popular support. He had to resign in 1990 amid mass protests.

Sunni Muslim groups protested against the case, and the country's largest Islamist political party, Jamaat-e-Islami, declared a nationwide strike.

It is sad that the court binned the petition without allowing the petitioners to present their arguments, Rana Dasgupta, a general secretary of the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council, told Voice of America. This ruling will give a boost to the countrys Islamist forces and it is a sad day for all religious minorities in Bangladesh.

"We thank the court on behalf of the nation for rejecting the petition," said Fazlul Karim Kashemy, leader of Hefajat-e-Islam, a local religious group. "Muslims and non-Muslims in our society have been maintaining good relationship for long."

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had amended the constitution in 2011, seeking to reintroduce aspects of secularism in the state machinery, but Islam remained the country's national religion.

However, some activists point out that Article 2A recognizing Islam as national religion contradicts with Article 12, which mentions secularism as the principle of the state.

Bangladesh has long been called a moderate Muslim-majority nation, but fundamentalist violence has been on rise since the last several months, with terrorist organizations like Islamic State and affiliated groups making their presence known there, as they claimed responsibility for murders of minorities and foreigners.
A Malaysian man who had been trying for years to formally convert from Islam to Christianity has finally been allowed to officially be registered as a Christian.

The court asked that Sarawak Islamic Religious Department and the Sarawak Islamic Council to give the 41-year-old man a letter of official release from Islam.

The national Registry in the country has also been ordered to change his name to Roneey Anak Rebit from Azmi Mohamad Azam Shah, according to Borneo Post.

Rooney was converted to Islam by his parents, when he was 10 years old. Justice Datuk Yew Jen Kie said that Rebit did not profess Islamic faith as he was converted as a child, and it was not based on informed choice. In 1999, he was baptized as a Christian when he was 24 years old, and thus capable of making a personal decision.

Sarawak Islamic Religious Department and the Sarawak Islamic Council had already given him No Objection from leaving Islam. But the National Registration Department asked for a confirmation from Syariah Court, which was not under its jurisdiction as he had undergone the conversion as a minor.

The justice directed his decision as per Article 11 of the constitution, which cites freedom of religion as a right granted to citizens.

Malaysia is a Muslim-majority country with 61.3 percent adherents, 19.8 percent Buddhists, 9.2 percent Christians, and 6.3 percent Hindus.

The major denominations of Christianity in Malaysia are Baptists, Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterian, Roman Catholics, independent Charismatic churches, and non-denominational churches.

CEO of Open Doors USA, David Curry, told the CBN News that the new ruling may be a precedent to freer stance on conversions taken by the government from now on.

"The importance of this decision to Christians in Malaysia cannot be overstated and ACS [Association of Churches] is thankful to the High Court for coming to a fair and just decision in accordance with the law," ACS Malaysian Sarawak Secretary-general Ambrose Linang told World Watch Monitor.
A greater number of Americans now believe that religion liberty is declining, and that the religious rights of Christians are being suppressed in the United States, according to a comparative study done in 2013 and 2015 by LifeWay Research.

The results of two studies conducted two years apart on 1,000 Americans were compared, which revealed that a greater percentage of Christians now say that intolerance has increased.

While only 50 percent of the Christians in the U.S. said in 2013 that religious freedom is in danger, the percentage of those agreeing with that statement increased to 63 percent in 2015. As many as 65 percent Americans of other faiths said that religious liberty is declining.

Among Christians, 82 percent of evangelicals, 74 percent of Protestants, 56 percent of Catholics, and 55 percent of non-evangelicals said that America is witnessing increasing intolerance.

The results were different in American South and the West. The southerners (69%) more likely than the westerners (57%) to believe that religious intolerance is increasing.

However, more non-Christians are saying that believers are complaining excessively about growing intolerance in the 2015 study than in the one done in 2013. In the earlier study, only 34 percent said that Christians were overstating the decline in religious liberty, but now about 43 percent thought so.

"Most people now believe Christians are facing intolerance, however, a surprising large minority perceives Christians to be complainers. Both of those facts will matter as Christians profess and contend for their beliefs without sounding false alarms around faux controversies. It won't be easy to strike that balance," said Ed Stetzer of LifeWay Research.

The breakdown by age showed that the older generation is more likely to say that religion faces persecution. About 62 percent (6 in 10) above the age of 25 said that there is a growing intolerance for religion in the society, as compared to 42 percent of those who were in the age group of 18-24.

"Christians are particularly sensitive to what they see as intolerance towards their faith," noted Stetzer. "But they share a common concern with people of other faiths-that religious liberty in general is declining. And this perception is growing rapidly."
An Illinois Christian couple is refusing to back down from their position to not host the same-sex weddings, even after they were fined for $80,000 by the Human Rights Commission over a complaint filed against them by a gay couple in 2011.

Jim and Beth Walder cited Acts 5:29, "it is better to obey God than men," as the reason they are standing firm in their decision.

They were ordered by an administrative law judge to pay Todd and Mark Wathen $30,000 -- $15,000 each -- for emotional distress, and an additional $50,000 in attorney's fees.

After the ruling, Todd Wathen said in a statement: "We are very happy that no other couple will have to experience what we experienced by being turned away and belittled and criticized for who we are."

The Wathen couple had contacted the Timber Creek Bed & Breakfast in Paxton, Illinois, to inquire about the possibility of hosting their civil union ceremony in 2011. In response, the Walders wrote: "We will never host same-sex civil unions. We will never host same-sex weddings even if they become legal in Illinois. We believe homosexuality is wrong and unnatural based on what the Bible says about it. If this is discrimination, I guess we unfortunately discriminate," according to LifeSite News.

The Wathens filed a complaint with the Illinois Human Rights Commission after the inn owners refused to be intimidated by their threat of lawsuit, and referenced the Bible, saying that the "[Bible] trumps Illinois law, United States law and Global law should there ever be any. Please read John 3:16."

The Walders said that they only described the inn policy to the same-sex couple, and that it was not a state-owned place.

"We cannot host a same-sex wedding even though fines and penalties have been imposed by the Illinois Human Rights Commission. Our policy will not be changing," they said.

The Walder couple emailed a statement to the Ford County Record, saying that they will not host same-sex weddings despite law suits and fines.

"Evidently, religious freedom does not exist within the Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act or the Illinois Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act," the statement read. "In our opinion, neither the state of Illinois nor the U.S. Supreme Court has the authority to tamper with the definition of marriage. God alone created marriage and declared thousands of years ago that it was to be between a man and a woman. Not two men. Not two women. We may be out of step with an increasingly anti-Christian culture, but we are in compliance with God's design, and that is what ultimately matters."
A congressional committee asked President Barack Obama to confront Chinese President Xi Jinping on the worsening human rights situation, including imprisonment of Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo, during his US visit last week.

Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), and US Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ), who co-chair the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), wrote a letter to President Obama urging him to take note of "severe erosion" of human rights in China and to speak with Premier Xi about these violations. Premier Xi was in the country to attend the Nuclear Security Summit held from March 31 to April 1.

The bipartisan committee expressed concern regarding the violation of human rights in China, including the imprisonment of Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo on subversion charges, persecution of religious leaders and lawyers who protested the removal of crosses, and alleged coerced prisoner confessions.

"Over the course of the last year we have seen scores of civil society actors, including lawyers and legal advocates, arrested, detained, and disappeared. Some are facing criminal charges categorized as endangering state security, accusations the Chinese government typically uses against dissidents," the letter states.

In a press conference entitled, "Sidelining Human Rights a Strategic Mistake the US Cannot Afford to Make," Smith underscored the importance of raising human rights issues with President Xi.

"These cases should all be raised with President Xi, as should the plight of prominent political prisoners such as Uyghur scholar Professor Ilham Tohti and seven of his students from Minzu University in Beijing and Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, who continues to languish unjustly in prison while his wife, Liu Xia suffers under illegal confinement at home," Rubio and Smith said in the letter to the President.

The letter asked the Obama to have a "full and frank discussion about human rights and civil society" with President Xi.

"Nearly all of those still being held have been denied access to a lawyer. Of those who have been released, roughly 30 have been restricted from traveling abroad," the CECC letter notes.

The letter sought to draw President's attention towards what it said was an "extraordinary assault on civil society, the rule of law, and the freedoms of religion, association, and assembly."

During the last several years, state persecution of churches had been on rise with the cross-removal campaign, the closing down of several churches over regulatory issues, and detention of pastors and lawyers who defend state suppression of religion.
How can youth students wisely navigate discussions about religion, morality, and ethics when confronted by their peers or even older figures such as teachers? What are some habits that could help them to maintain their faith even when they are faced with doubts?

These are among the questions that the recent Truth Matters Conference, which took place from April 1-2 at Church Everyday, aimed to answer.

According to Michael Sherrard, the author of Relational Apologetics and director of Ratio Christi College Prep who was one of the main speakers for the conference, a significant aspect to defending the Christian faith and also sharing the faith through relationships is through respectful interactions. Christians can respect others well by living well, being prepared, using appropriate tactics, and being humble, Sherrard said, addressing an audience of some 270 youth students.

Clarifying what he means by appropriate tactics, Sherrard said that Christians must listen well, ask questions, and avoid manipulation.

As an apologist and pastor, I listen and ask more questions than I make statements, Sherrard said. Asking questions such as, How did you come to that conclusion? or How would you resolve that evil? helps to allow the other person to examine whether his or her own conclusions have good logic or evidence, he explained.

Christians must also be careful of manipulating people into agreeing with their own perspective, he added. A major way Christians may manipulate others is by conveying acceptance only on the condition of agreement.

Its saying, I will only accept you if you agree with me, Sherrard explained. This is one of the biggest reasons people leave the church. People are not allowed to ask questions, and are made to feel like bad Christians.

When faced with a question that has a difficult or unknown answer, Sherrard advised against saying something like, You shouldnt have to know the answer to that; just have faith, and instead encouraged Christians to be able to admit that they dont know the answer.

You will never know all of the answers, and you dont have to know everything to effectively share what is true, Sherrard said. People dont need experts; they need people who will respect and love them.

To that, an attendee submitted the question, What if someone were to attribute a Christians inability to answer a question to the invalidity of the Christian faith? during the Q&A portion.

Its just not possible to know all knowledge because we are finite beings, Sherrard responded. I would ask that person, Is what youre saying that someone needs to know everything about something in order to be justified in believing it?

Sherrard also gave some of his own ideas on how to maintain the faith in college and onwards, including following Gods teachings; finding a Christian community; learning the reasons Christianity is true; and living on mission.

Following Gods teachings is good for you, Sherrard said. They are for your peace and joy. Many times, he explained, people start to doubt the existence of God when they dont feel him anymore.

But if you are not following him and his teachings, you are instead walking in rebellion to him. In that state, should you expect to feel close to him? Sherrard asked. If you are not following him, you are walking in darkness; sin is blinding you and distorting you.

Being connected to a Christian community, whether its a church or a para-church ministry, ensures that when discouraging circumstances or doubts come into life, there are faithful brothers and sisters who can be an encouragement.

When doubts about faith do creep in, Sherrard encouraged the youth to seek out the answers to make their faith even stronger. He said faith is not just a blind belief; its a trust based on evidence about a certain situation or person. For example, he shared, he trusts that his wife will not betray him, and he has reasons to believe that. Having faith in God is a similar idea, he explained. But he cautioned them against getting discouraged when not being able to find all the satisfactory answers.

Just because you havent learned everything, doesnt mean you didnt learn anything, he said.

I have great hopes for this generation, Sherrard said. The Lord is going to use you to do great things  You must tell and live an alternate story. Let that story begin today.

This third Truth Matters Conference was different from the previous two in that it wasnt outright focused on apologetics themes, but was focused more on equipping youth students on living out their lives as Christians. Pastor Kevin Yi, who has been serving as the youth pastor at Church Everyday for 13 years, said one of the reasons the staff decided to shift the focus this year was that there was a shift in the kinds of questions they received from their youth students.

Whereas before, youth students asked a lot of questions about apologetics, recently, their questions have been more about morality and ethics, Yi shared. For example, they would ask questions like, My friend is gay  how do I engage with him as a Christian friend?

Looking at the conference long term as well, Yi said he hopes each conference will touch on different topics that are relevant at that time, and that it will be a space for youth to be trained and equipped to grow as a Christian.

I felt like the youth students sometimes get too dependent on the emotional highs they get from summer or winter retreats, said Yi. Thinking in the long term, I wanted them to be equipped and trained so that they can apply their faith into their daily lives as they go into college and become working adults. And my hope is that their faith would also be more consistent, rather than volatile.

The conference also featured sessions focusing on topics such as engaging with the issue of homosexuality, how a Christian worldview presents the best explanation of reality, how to be an influence to culture, and how to contend for the Christian faith. Caleb Kaltenbach, author of Messy Grace and lead pastor of Discovery Church, and Greg Koukl, adjunct professor of Christian apologetics at Biola University, also spoke at the event.
When I was teaching at Wheaton College in the early 2000s, all the smart theology students seemed to want an internship at John Pipers church. Since then, his influence has only grown. Piper has started his own in-house college and seminary, a model for how local churches can supplant universities in providing theological education. If secular media want to know the beating heart and zealous mind of the movement, they should look to Minneapolis.

So its no small matter that Piper has written a major new book on a signature subject, one he has dwelt on for more than seven decades: the glory of God as revealed in Scripture. His argument in A Peculiar Glory: How the Christian Scriptures Reveal Their Complete Truthfulness (Crossway) is straightforward: that Gods glory, attested to in Scripture, is self-authenticating. That is, it requires no external, extrabiblical validation. The Scriptures glory is that they reveal Jesus to us. And the peculiarity of that glory is a majesty revealed in meekness.

In other words, Piper is using Scripture to defend the reliability of Scripture, with supplementary glances at John Calvin and Jonathan Edwards. But as he admits, he cannot prove it conclusively. Only the Holy Spirits inner witness can show the fulsome glory of God in the Bible.

We Can Trust

Its not any one understanding of biblical truth that Piper seizes upon and defends so much as the beauty of Scripture itself. There are, however, ideas he aims to set aside as unreliable. Piper worries about views of Scripture based on Pascals wagerthe notion of believing in God because there is much to gain if the Bible is true and little to lose if it isnt. He also worries about Kierkegaards ...

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My first new members' class as the new pastor of First Baptist Church of Grand Cayman concluded with a little buzz. To my relief, people enjoyed the church-wide orientation. That morning the class covered the history of the Christian church, with a considerable section on the history of Christianity in the Caribbean. An always-cheerful Mrs. WinsomeJamaican born and raisedapproached me with her trademark wide smile. She eagerly thanked me for the class and I'll likely not forget what she said with lovely Caribbean lilt: "It's like you're teaching us to walk our own land."

That was high praise from a proud Jamaican woman who'd likely forgotten more about Caribbean life and history than I'd ever hope to learn. The comment stuck with me during my eight years as pastor in Grand Cayman. It was a good way of framing what my ministry was supposed to be therelearn to walk the land and teach others to do so as well. But later, that comment rose in my soul while sitting on a beach ...

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Deconstructing the Coliseum is Sponsoring the Second Annual Great Education Forum

Contact: Kevin R. Novak, President, Deconstructing the Coliseum, 434-845-1757, kevin@deconstructingthecoliseum.com

LYNCHBURG, Va., April 4, 2016 /Christian Newswire/ -- On Saturday, April 23rd in Lynchburg, Virginia will be the Second Annual Great Education Forum, sponsored by Deconstructing the Coliseum ("DtC"), the organization that promotes abolishing the civil government school system. The Forum will be at Forest Road United Methodist Church (2805 Old Forest Road) in Lynchburg, and will start at 1p (E). Afterwards there will be refreshments and the opportunity to interact with the Forum speakers. There is no charge to attend the Forum. Basic Forum information is here: http://deconstructingthecoliseum.com/great-education-forum/

This year's Forum speakers will be Kevin R. Novak (Deconstructing the Coliseum), Rev. E. Ray Moore (Exodus Mandate), Pastor Seth Williamson (West Lynchburg Baptist Church), H. Taz Daughtrey (Public School Teacher), and Pastor Larry White (Faith Reformed Church). The question addressed will be, Can a Christian Child Thrive in a Public School? Each speaker will address the question and then be cross-examined.

DtC is owned and operated by Virginia attorney Kevin R. Novak, whose organization established the annual Great Education Forum as a way of bypassing what he calls the Christian Establishment: Christian leaders who refuse to discuss and debate whether the Bible justifies the existence of civil government schools. "Christians do not realize that there is a Republican Establishment because there is a Christian Establishment, which refuses to speak out against the civil government using our tax dollars to disciple our children in the nurture and admonition of humanism," Mr. Novak has stated. "Just as the Republican Establishment rejects conservatism, the Christian Establishment rejects abolition." Mr. Novak plans on releasing a book this fall on how the civil government schools are responsible for the American decline. "Christian leaders could teach how the Bible does not justify the existence of civil government schools. They choose not to."

DtC promotes abolishing the civil government school system in different ways: home school events, radio broadcasts, the Great Education Forum, and blogging. A newly developed legal externship under Mr. Novak will complement DtC's abolition efforts.

Direct inquiries to Mr. Novak are at 434-845-1757 and

kevin@deconstructingthecoliseum.com.
home World Archbishop of Canterbury on evangelism, unchristian hostility towards Muslims, and salvation

Rt Hon Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has been credited by many for the renewed enthusiasm for evangelism in the Church of England.

In an interview with Christian Today editor Ruth Mawhinney, the archbishop spoke of what's behind this change or awakening, saying, "I think it's a lot of things. There are good reasons and bad reasons. I think in some ways people recognise that decline in church numbers is a serious issue. But that's the bad reason, because you don't evangelise to ensure the survival of the church."

In evangelizing or doing outreach, he said that there is no need for strategies. They focus on presenting "the reality of the goodness of Jesus Christ through our actions and our words" without any manipulation or trickery.

During the interview, he acknowledged that there is decline in trust toward organized religion because of its history of abuse and cruelty, among other things. He believes, though, that this can be countered by how the church acts today. He also said that changing the church's reputation is a slow process.

In terms of the events currently happening in the world, specifically the rising tension against and hostility toward Muslims, the 105th archbishop of Canterbury said, "Hostility to all Muslims because they're Muslims  although we disagree as Christians with their theology  is a deeply unChristian and wrong way of behaving."

He explained that mainstream Muslim leaders are also taking risks when they stand up against atrocities like the bombing in Brussels, and Christians have to "demonstrate hospitality" toward them. Moreover, he said that a narrative needs to developed -- a more attractive one than the "perverted, cruel and savage narrative" that draws the youth into extremist action -- and Christians have the responsibility to be a part of this process.

In the discussion about salvation, Welby said that the important point is that "God has taken all the steps necessary for human beings to have a relationship with God," which is what the gospel is about. He mentioned later in the interview that cruelty, violence, and domination, among other things, are part of human sinfulness and is inherent in all but by following Jesus, this is changed and transformed.

"But who is saved, and who is not saved, is in the judgment of God and it is not in my judgment," he said. "And so who God saves is God's question."
home World Total ban on abortion supported by Polish prime minister, church

In line with the view of pro-life activists and the Catholic church, Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo has expressed her support for a proposed law that would ban abortion in Poland.

"I think every [MP] will vote in line with his own conscience," she said in an interview with a Polish radio station, as quoted by Life Site News. "At this stage I can say what my decision will be, at the moment I can not talk about the bill, because this bill does not yet exist. ... As for my opinion, the opinion of Beata Szydo  yes, I support this initiative."

Pro-life activists are reportedly gathering signatures in an effort to protect the rights of the unborn child, and as soon as they reach 100,000 supporters, the proposed law would be taken to Parliament. The Catholic Church backs the initiative.

In a letter read in churches on Sunday and released Wednesday, they expressed their view that unborn children should be fully protected.

"When it comes to the protection of the life of the unborn, we can't support the current compromise set out in the 1993 law that allows abortion in three cases," it reads. Also, "The life of every person is protected by the fifth of the Ten Commandments: thou shalt not kill. Therefore the position of Catholics in this regard is clear and unchanging."

Currently, abortion is not legal in Poland except under three circumstances: that the mother's life or health is in danger; that the pregnancy was due to a criminal act like rape or incest; and when medical experts deem that the unborn child has an incurable disease or a severe, irreversible handicap. It is already considered as the most restrictive in Europe.

Pro-choice groups are against the possibility of the total ban on abortion. According to the Associated Press, thousands went to the streets in protest on Sunday.

"The current law, misleadingly called a compromise, was passed in the early nineties to gain political support from the Catholic Church. The new legislative project has full support from the Catholic Church," said pro-choice group Tak dla Kobiet, as reported by the International Business Times. "Once again, women will be denied basic rights to their bodies, pushed to seek dangerous methods to terminate unwanted pregnancies."
4-year-old girl kicked out of preschool in Denver after her parents questioned gay book read in class

A 4-year-old girl from Denver, Colorado was kicked out from a preschool last month after her parents complained about books that were read to her class, including one about same-sex couples.

The mom, R.B. Sinclair, told the Denver Post that upon learning that her four-year-old daughter was being taught about homosexuality, she told the school administration that she wanted her daughter out of the class discussions.

However, Montview Community Preschool and Kindergarten in Denver told her that it was not possible and said the materials being taught were part of its anti-bias curriculum.

Anti-bias curriculum is part of a growing trend in public and private schools.

"Biases start as kids get older and start to see differences as negative. At a young age, kids are exploring all different kinds of things. It's about just providing them with all these experiences," said Kim Bloemen, director of early childhood education for the Boulder Valley School District.

In a letter, the school urges parents to inculcate "inclusive culture at home."

"Begin to Embrace the Unknown. Look for books that are very different from your own family and personal experience, but that you know are the experiences of other families in your school or neighbourhood or other circles of connection," the letter read.

Sinclair explained that her daughter, who is part of a Muslim and Western family, is too young to know the difference between anatomy and identity.

"I think at this age they don't know what bias is. They could have kids from Mars and they would still play with each other. It's not that she isn't exposed to diversity, because it is the world we live in, but how are they having these conversations?" she said.

Sinclair said one day, her daughter came home and said that her dad might no longer like girls. She added that her daughter's education is being interrupted by the focus on diversity.

Two days after meeting with the principal, Sinclair was given a letter by the school that stated that it was the girl's last day in school and the situation was "not a good fit."

"Meanwhile, there was no consideration for the bias against my family's culture, faith and concerns," Sinclair said.

The girl is now staying at home, the mom said.
Are Chinese leaders using American tactics to subvert Christianity?

The government of China appears to be shifting its approach toward Christians, and this change could prove highly problematic in the years to come for the Chinese church.

The persecution of Christians after the formation of the People's Republic of China in 1949 was swift, brutal, and devastating for many Christians, both native Chinese and missionaries. While the missionaries were attacked and driven from the land, the remaining Christians faced rioting crowds, the seizure of their property, and hard labour. Many were forced to attend re-education programs that extolled the virtues of the Communist party in China.

As documented in the book God Is Red, the remaining Christians in China formed the back bone of an underground church that has continued to thrive despite official opposition from the Chinese government. An uneasy truce has existed to a certain degree, with some Christians worshipping in state-approved churches. However, those seeking freedom of worship in an unapproved house church could still be imprisoned, beaten, or worse. Those who oppose government policies face harsh prison sentences.

There's no denying how terrible and devastating China's treatment of Christians has been, and we should certainly pray for the perseverance of believers in the midst of danger. However, China's new policy toward Christians could prove particularly subversive and damaging to the health of the church.

Officials are encouraging Christians to keep their faith, provided that their loyalty to China comes first. As one national church pastor, Pastor Wu Weiqing from Beijing's Haidian Church, shared: "We have to remember first of all we are a citizen of this country," he says. "And we are a citizen of the Kingdom of God. That comes second."

Many Christians worshipping in underground home churches are aware of this shift in policy.

Xu Yonghai has served a number of jail terms and noted: "Official churches are in fact just political institutes... It is impossible for us to leave Jesus and follow the Party."

It is feared that with this emphasis on a particularly Chinese brand of Christianity, officials will place new pressure on Christians to go public with their faith and to pledge their primary allegiance to the government. Aside from this concern, it's also appropriate to note the possibility that the government could undermine a segment of the Christian church by more or less distracting it with misaligned priorities.

American Christians have experienced this challenge since the 1980s when a large movement of pastors formed the "moral majority" and became political surrogates for the Republican party. According to these religious leaders turned political operatives, the goal was to elect "godly" political leaders, but American nationalism quickly crept into large segments of conservative Christianity throughout the US.

With a pre-existing obsession with End Times theology among large camps of American Christians, elections began taking on apocalyptic ramifications. If a "godly" (translation: Republican) leader wasn't elected, the judgment of America would surely be imminent. At the very least, these religious leaders promised that God would judge America based on who we voted for in November.

Christians can vote for politicians who believe in large or small governments, but the primary concern in America is that putting politics before the gospel has proven a devastating distraction for the church. Many of the negative associations people have about Christians in America can, in part, be traced back to Christians waging political battles on behalf of a party rather than sharing the actual message of Jesus.

Jesus warned us that we cannot serve two masters. Whether we try to serve God and money or God and political power, our allegiance to God will wane and become ineffective when our priorities are added.

We've seen this happen over and over again in America as the witness of Christians has been diluted and diverted by putting political issues first.

I suspect that the leaders of China are well aware that the persecuted church continues to thrive even if it's not visible. Perhaps the leaders of China have learned that the way to undermine Christianity isn't necessarily to attack it, it's to combine it with another priority.

Ed Cyzewski (MDiv) is the author of A Christian Survival Guide and Coffeehouse Theology. He shares about prayer and writing at www.edcyzewski.com and at www.thecontemplativewriter.com. Find him on Twitter: @edcyzewski.
Australian bishop accused of protecting paedophile priests dies

The Australian bishop accused by Cardinal George Pell of "gross deception" for covering up for paedophile priests has died of colon cancer aged 86.

Ronald Mulkearns, Bishop of Ballarat from 1970 to 1997 during the worst of the scandals, knew that Gerald Ridsdale and others were abusing children. He moved the guilty priests from parish to parish so they could escape justice, and even destroyed documents in their files.

One abuse victim, Stephen Woods, accused Mulkearns of leaving a legacy of trauma and devastation and said the Catholic Church should on no account honour him with a high-profile funeral.

In his evidence to Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse last month, Mulkearns said: "I am terribly sorry that I didn't do things differently." He admitted there were problems both with paedophile priests and the way he dealt with them. "I certainly regret that I didn't do it differently. We had no idea, or I had no idea, of the effects of the incidents that took place." He said one reason he took early retirement was because of his failure to deal adequately with the paedophile priest problem.

His lawyer had argued unsuccessfully that he was too ill to give evidence and in the end he spoke via video from his nursing home. He had not finished his testimony when he died.

In his own evidence via video link from Rome, Australian Cardinal George Pell blamed Mulkearns for deceiving him as to why Ridsdale was moved around so often.

"It probably would be possible to imagine a greater deception, but it's a gross deception," Cardinal Pell told the Sydney inquiry.

Leonie Sheedy, of Care Leavers Australia Network, said Mulkearns was one of the worst enablers of paedophiles ever. She told Guardian Australia: "He failed to report any crimes. He failed to acknowledge that so many priests were abusing children despite the complaints made to him. He knew the reputation of a list of paedophile priests, but the reputation of the Church was foremost in his mind."

Survivor Phil Nagle regretted Mulkearns had died without revealing how much he knew. "He certainly told us enough to know he was truly an evil man in covering up what was going on in Ballarat, in particular when he was in charge," Nagle told AAP. "Even though he wasn't a perpetrator, he certainly knew and certainly covered it up. He ruined a lot of lives."
Black ministers slam Georgia governor for vetoing religious liberty bill, accuse him of turning his back on religious community

A group of black ministers has expressed indignation at Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal for vetoing a religious liberty bill, saying he has turned his back on religious organisations.

In vetoing HB 757, Deal claimed he did not actually have any objection to the Pastor Protection Act that was passed by the House of Representatives.

"The other versions of the bill, however, contained language that could give rise to state-sanctioned discrimination. I did have problems with that and made my concerns known as did many other individuals and organisations, including some within the faith-based community," he said in a statement.

HB 757 will allow ministers, clerics and religious practitioners to refuse to perform same-sex marriage and allow people to refuse to attend such ceremonies.

It will also allow faith-based organisations to refuse to rent, lease or grant permission for property to be used for an event that violates their religious beliefs.

The bill provides that faith-based organisations should not be required to provide social, educational, or charitable services if they violate their sincerely held religious beliefs.

Former Atlanta Fire Department chief Kelvin Cochran, who was fired in 2015 for his stance on same-sex marriage, joined the pastors in their protest.

Pastor Garland Hunt, senior pastor at The Father's House in Norcross, Georgia, said, "We were totally, highly offended and angered to hear that the governor turned his back on faith-based organisations, the faith-based leadership in the state," CBN News reported.

Hunt said they met with the governor several times "and he promised us that he would sign legislation that was basically similar to what was presented to him so we feel like he didn't keep his word."

The group of pastors said they held a press conference to show that there's a group of African-American pastors who are opposed to the governor's decision to veto the bill.

"We love the Lord and we're going to stand for our religious freedom and we love our religious freedom just as much as anybody else," they said.

"So for that reason we just decided that a few of us needed to talk specifically out of our African-American tradition, understanding what we've been through, through discrimination, certainly we understand that but this is not discrimination," they said.

The religious leaders are urging the legislature to override the governor's veto.
Catholic bishops express dismay at Virginia governor for vetoing religious freedom bill

Catholic bishops in Virginia are deeply disappointed with Gov. Terry McAuliffe for vetoing the religious freedom bill, saying that because of this faith-based groups that support traditional marriage will no longer have protections.

"The Virginia Catholic Conference is deeply dismayed by the governor's action," the group said. "This veto risks the destruction of Virginia's long tradition of upholding the religious freedom of faith communities which dates back to Thomas Jefferson."

Senate Bill 41 would have prevented the state from punishing religious groups that adhere to their religious belief that marriage is between a man and a woman, the Catholic News Agency reported.

Bishops said the bill would ensure "that clergy and religious organisations are not penalised by the government."

McAuliffe, a Democrat, vetoed the bill saying that the measure would be "making Virginia unwelcomed to same-sex couples, while artificially engendering a sense of fear and persecution among our religious communities."

He said corporate leaders warned that the bill is bad for business.

"They don't want headaches coming from the state," he said.

The governor said the bill will make same-sex couples unwelcome in Virginia.

But the bishops said the measure does not apply to businesses as it only "simply affirms the right of religious organisations to follow their religious beliefs."

They said that with his veto, McAuliffe "marginalises religious believers who hold to the timeless truth about marriage."

"Marriage is the first institution, written in natural law and existing before any government or religion, and is between one man and one woman," the conference said. "Recognising and honouring this institution is not discrimination, but counting people's faith against them most certainly is."

Bill sponsor Republican state Sen. Charles Carrico Sr. told the Washington Post that lawsuits can now be filed against churches in the U.S., noting that the trend now is to promote homosexual beliefs.

There are proposals to override the veto but it is very unlikely, according to the Associated Press.

In Georgia, Republican Gov. Nathan Deal also vetoed a similar religious freedom protection bill.
Christian refugees from Iraq returned home by Czech Republic after 'abuse' of hospitality

A group of Christian refugees said to have "abused the goodwill" of the Czech Republic and its people are to be deported to Iraq.

The refugees had been granted asylum in the Czech Republic but attempted to travel over the border to Germany where they were stopped by police and returned to Prague by Germany.

They've now been issued with a deportation order and are expected to leave the Czech Republic and be returned to Iraq on Thursday.

The Czech television news channel CT24 tweeted a picture of men boarding a bus with the caption: "Okrouhlik Iraqis detained by German police."

Iracany z Okrouhliku zadrzela nemecka policie. Jak s nimi urady nalozi neni jasne https://t.co/bFrLpzMVHa pic.twitter.com/fnHCKviiFv  CT24 (@CT24zive) April 3, 2016

Czech Interior Minister Milan Chovanec tweeted that the arrangements made for refugees and how their passports were managed should not be used "to violate laws or to move to another country within the Schengen area."

He said that all those "who have abused the goodwill of the Czech Republic and its citizens" are being returned to Iraq.

3/3 Pozadal jsem PCR, aby pouzila vsech zak. prostredku, aby tito lide, jez zneuzili dobrou vuli CR a jejich obcanu, byli vraceni do Iraku.  Milan Chovanec (@Milan_Chovanec) April 3, 2016

The Christian refugees arrived in the Czech Republic under the Generation 21 Endowment resettlement programme and were put up in Okrouhlik near Jihlava. Not content with what was on offer from their host country, they boarded a bus to Essen in Germany.

"By rejecting asylum and leaving the accommodation facility, we offered to them, they started acting on their own account," said a spokesman for the Generation 21 Endowment.

Generation 21 has helped 89 Christians from Iraq arrive in the Czech Republic since January.

The organisation was to help more than 150 but after 25 of the refugees asked for their passports back, Chovanec suspended the programme, Ceske Noviny reported.

He said the Czech Republic could not be used as a travel agency to bring refugees closer to their countries of choice, such as Germany.
Church attendance in Scotland at lowest level ever

Two thirds of people in Scotland with a religious background never or practically never go to services, according to new research.

ScotCen Social Research published today shows the proportion of people in Scotland who attend religious services is at the lowest level recorded since the survey began in 1999. The proportion of people who say they are religious but do not attend services has grown over 16 years from 49 per cent in 1999 to 66 per cent in 2016.

The results also show that more than half of people in Scotland are not religious. This has grown from 40 per cent in 1999 to 52 per cent today.

Most of the decline has been in the "kirk", the national Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Numbers in Catholic and other Christian and non-Christian faith groups have remained steady.

Ian Montagu of ScotCen said: "Today's findings show that Scottish commitment to religion, both in terms of our willingness to say we belong to a religion and to attend religious services, is in decline.

"However, this change doesn't appear to be affecting all religions equally. Affiliation with the Church of Scotland is in decline while levels of identification with other religions remain relatively unchanged. As fewer Scots are acknowledging even a default religious identity, it is affiliation with the national church that is the hardest hit."

Gordon MacRae of the Humanist Society Scotland said: "It's completely unjustified that church groups continue to enjoy historic privileges in the state education system. These anachronisms should be confined to the past, and should not play any part in a 21st Century education system."

Douglas McLellan, chair of the Scottish Secular Society, said: "This above all should make our society question the role of faith within the state, education and healthcare in Scotland. However, religion should not be oppressed now it is a minority view, any more than it was right to oppress non-believers when we were the minority."
Freed prison inmate who spent 30 years behind bars is made a pastor at Rick Warren's Saddleback Church

After more than three decades in prison, Danny Duchene is ready to start afresh, this time to play a role in the spiritual renewal at Rick Warren's Saddleback Church in Lake Forest California where he will lead the Mercy Ministry for those who are behind bars.

Warren, bestselling author of the "The Purpose Driven Life", was instrumental in Duchene's release and his new role as he appointed the former inmate to his new position.

According to a report by CBN News, Duchene, who was meted a double life sentence at the age of 19 and was incarcerated for killing two men, said that he first encountered the pastor through the book.

When he read the book in 2003, he said that his life changed. Warren's second book "The Purpose Driven Church" also served as the inspiration for their establishment of the "Sierra Christian Center", a small nondenominational church at the California's Sierra Prison.

"In prison, I read Pastor Rick's bestseller Purpose Driven Life, and wrote to him. The prison soon started buzzing with cell groups to study the book. Inmates were baptised inside the prison campus. Saddleback's Celebrate Recovery programme began in the prison, and gave an opportunity to prisoners to have support to now do the right thing for the first time in their lives," he said.

"At first, this Good News seemed over my head. It seemed unbelievable and too good to be true that God loved me and that He wanted to show me mercy after all I had done to hurt others. From growing up, I honestly didn't know how to trust," he confided.

With Warren's Saddleback Church supporting the Sierra Christian Center through the correctional recovery programme, the small ministry started to grow.

Sierra's example served as the inspiration for prisons across the country who followed suit and has been transforming inmates for the last 13 years.

"I trust him...and we are extremely grateful," Warren said during Duchene's commissioning ceremony. His trust and faith in Duchene was so great that he wrote a letter to the California governor and the parole board to facilitate his release so that Duchene could be hired as a pastor for the Saddleback Church.

Said Duchene: "You cannot be what God wants you to be on your own. You need support, you need a small group. I'm sure my life would have been very different if I had the support of a godly small group as a teenager."
ISIS uses Christian families, other minority religious groups as human shields in Syria

The Islamic State is reportedly trying to use 43 Christian families, stranded in Raqqa with other minority religious groups, as human shields as U.S-led coalition forces intensifies its airstrikes on the group's headquarters in the region, according to reports.

Activist-journalist group Raqqa Is Being Silently Slaughtered (RBSS) reported via social media Tuesday that ISIS officials are forcibly preventing the city's few remaining Christians and Armenians from leaving, as Syrian government forces and various other U.S.-backed militias continue to retake territory from the terrorist group.

"The suffering of Christians began with ISIS control of Raqqa," said RBSS on its website. "ISIS looks at Christians as infidels loyal to the West more than their loyalty to their homeland which they live."

According to the group, Christian families in Raqqa numbered as many as 1,500 prior to the rise of ISIS. The Syrian city has been a de facto capital for ISIS since its rise in 2014, the Daily Caller reported.

A Kurdish-Arab alliance operating along the Syria-Turkey borderline said ISIS "is about to be besieged by the U.S-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)."

On Thursday, the SDF reported advancements in the oil-rich area between Deie ez-Zor province and Raqqa, northeast Syria, subsequent to clashes with the radical group ISIS, military sources told local papers.

The Syrian army forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad were also reportedly progressing towards the Syrian desert areas subsequent to its control over the ancient city of Palmyra.

Syrian rebel groups controlled the city of Raqqa in March 2013 after battles with Syrian army forces. It was the first province controlled by rebels in the Syrian conflict since 2011. However, the city then fell to ISIS militants who expelled Syrian rebels from whole province.

Last May, ISIS extremists abducted Father Jack Murad, head of Mar Alyan monastery in al-Qaryatain near Homs, after seizing the nearby ancient city of Palmyra in central Syria. At that time, the terror group kidnapped over 220 civilians, including at least 60 Christians, after seizing al-Qaryatain, according to local activists.

The terror group has been carrying out atrocities against Christians on the grounds of apostasy, confiscating their property and enslaving their women, said the reports.
'John Wick: Chapter 2' spoilers: Official synopsis released, film set in Rome

The 2014 action movie "John Wick" proved to be one of Keanu Reeves' best films in recent years and is widely considered as a return to form for the action genre. According to a new report from Collider, the film's sequel has now been confirmed to be set in Rome, Italy and will be pitting the titular hero against an entire guild of assassins.

According to the report, the newly released synopsis states that Wick is once again pulled out of retirement when a former associate of his, likely another highly-skilled hitman, tries to take over a "shadowy international assassin's guild." Wick is bound by blood to help his former friend and travels to Rome to aid in this fight against some of the world's best hired killers.

The synopsis does not reveal who the main villain is or the actor that will portray the role and it does not reveal much in regards to the film's set pieces or what Wick may have been doing since the ending of the first film. However, as stated in a report from Screen Rant, it will further explore the world and lore that the first film only hinted at.

During the course of the first film, it was revealed that even hitmen have a system and the Continental Hotel was revealed to be a safe house for hired killers to rest, where no killings could take place. This underground society of assassins and mercenaries will be further explored in the second film.

The film will also see the return of John Leguizamo as Aurelio, the chop shop owner, and Bridget Moynahan as Wick's deceased wife. Ian McShane returns as the Continental Hotel's owner and Lance Reddick returns as the hotel's concierge.

Common has been revealed to be playing the head of security for a female crime lord and Laurence Fishburne has been cast for an unidentified role.

"John Wick: Chapter Two" will be released on Feb. 10, 2017.
Mass protests in Poland over plans for strict new abortion law

Poland has seen demonstrations by many thousands of people after the ruling Law and Justice party disclosed it is to bring abortion law into line with Catholic Church teachings.

The party is supported by Poland's Catholic bishops who in a recent pastoral letter called for the law to be tightened up. The bishops said: "Catholics' position on this is clear, and unchangeable. One needs to protect every person's life from conception to natural death."

Poland's laws on abortion are among the strictest in Europe, in common with those of Malta and Ireland. They currently allow early-stage abortions when the pregnancy threatens the health of the mother, when the baby is threatened by handicap and when the pregnancy is the result of sex crimes such as rape.

Jarosaw Kaczynski, leader of the Law and Order Party and a practising Catholic, has said he will not force a vote for an outright ban on abortion. However he believed most of his party would back the change. Among those who have already expressed support is prime minister Beata Szydo. The party also intends to end funding for IVF and ban over-the-counter sales of the morning after pill.

IB Times reported that more demonstrations are expected across Poland. One pressure group, Tak dla Kobiet, said people are "outraged" that the Catholic Church seems making a bid for influence.

In a statement the group said: "The current law, misleadingly called a compromise, was passed in the early nineties to gain political support from the Catholic Church. The new legislative project has full support from the Catholic Church, whose priests are obliged to read a special letter of support during mass tomorrow. Once again, women will be denied basic rights to their bodies, pushed to seek dangerous methods to terminate unwanted pregnancies."
Panama Papers: Leak exposes 'rotten system', says Christian Aid

The 'Panama Papers' revealing how the rich and powerful use tax havens to conceal their wealth illustrate the need for reforming the system, according to Christian Aid.

More than 11 million documents were leaked from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. The papers cover a period over almost 40 years, from 1977 until last December, and appear to implicate many of the world's richest and most powerful people.

They allegedly show that some companies domiciled in tax havens were being used for suspected money laundering, arms and drug deals and tax evasion.

"I think the leak will prove to be probably the biggest blow the offshore world has ever taken because of the extent of the documents," said Gerard Ryle, director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Among those involved are 12 current or former heads of state and 61 people linked to current or former world leaders, including close associates of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Mossack Fonseca has denied accusations of wrongdoing.

According to Christian Aid, which has campaigned for the reform of international taxation regimes because of the amount of money lost to the governments of poor countries, the revelations have "exploded any remaining excuses the UK had for allowing secrecy in its tax havens".

The British Virgin Islands are the most popular location for the companies exposed in the Panama Papers as existing to facilitate huge financial transactions.

The UK is second only to Hong Kong as the host of the banks and law firms which have facilitated the enterprise.

"This leak exposes the extent to which UK tax havens and UK-based intermediaries are at the very heart of this rotten system," said Toby Quantrill, Christian Aid's principal economic justice adviser, in statement sent to Christian Today.

"David Cameron will host a major anti-corruption summit next month and the Panama Papers have exploded any remaining excuses the UK had for tolerating secrecy in the many tax havens it controls  the British Virgin Islands, Caymans and Bermuda among them. The Prime Minister has a month to sort this out if he wishes to host this anti-corruption conference without his credibility being called into question."

Research by the Tax Justice Network indicates that the UK and its Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies are together the world's largest tax haven.

Quantrill said: "The Prime Minister has the power to clean up a major chunk of the global financial system, and in the light of the Panama Papers, he should use it. The UK must take immediate steps to reveal the real owners of business in the territories that we control so the public can know the truth."

He added that the UK "simply cannot continue to provide cover for the rich and powerful who wish to operate in the shadows".
'Sicario 2' confirmed, will bring back original cast

In an interview between The Hollywood Reporter and Black Label Media founders and producers Molly Smith, Thad Luckinbill and his brother Trent, it was revealed that "Sicario 2" was indeed in development and that the sequel will most likely see the return of Benicio del Toro, Emily Blunt and Josh Brolin.

According to Smith, the sequel's script has already been drafted by Taylor Sheridan, who also wrote the script for the first film. This script has just been turned in so it is speculated that some adjustments and editing will still be required, particularly if any of the core cast members cannot return, although Thad did point out that the main three have been locked in.

"You have such a great character with Benicio, who was as dark as he was and still so loved," added Trent. "That character resonates so well with audiences. People want to know what happened to him, so it's a perfect foray for us to explore."

Trent also pointed out that while the core cast members are returning, unless something happens that forces them to drop out of the project, director Dennis Villeneuve has not yet been officially hired to helm the film. According to the producer, negotiations are being made in order to sign Villeneuve and to work around his schedule.

[Spoiler Warning] The first "Sicario" delved into a complex drug war between U.S. enforcerers and the Mexican drug cartel, ending with the revelation that the U.S. used Blunt's character in order to not only take down the Mexican ring but to give back strength to the Medellin drug cartel represented by del Toro's Alejandro Gillick.

With the second film bringing back the core cast, it is speculated that it will take place in Colombia and reveal what happened to Gillick following the murder of Mexican drug lord Silvio (Maximiliano Hernandez).

No official release date has yet been announced for "Sicario 2."
Syrian forces liberate Christian town from Islamic State

Syrian and allied forces backed by Russian air strikes drove Islamic State militants out of the Christian town of al Qaryatain on Sunday after encircling it over the past few days, Syria's military command said.

Surrounded by hills, al-Qaryatain is 100 km (60 miles) west of the ancient city of Palmyra, which government forces recaptured from Islamic State last Sunday.

Al-Qaryatain had been held by the militant group since late August. Islamic State used bulldozers to raze the Mar Elian monastery in the town.

Around 200 Christians were captured and given the choice of conversion to Islam or paying "jizya", a tax on non-Muslims. Among them was Fr Jack Murad, who with a volunteer at the monastery, Botros Hannah, was quizzed about his Christian faith.

"They would ask about my theology  God, the Holy Trinity, Christ, and the Crucifixion," he said. However, he thought it pointless trying to answer.

"What's the point of debating with someone who's put you in prison and pointing their rifle at you?" he asked rhetorically.

"When I was forced to respond, I'd say 'I'm not prepared to change my religion'."

The two were later released.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been trying to retake al-Qaryatain and other pockets of Islamic State control to reduce the jihadist group's ability to project military power into the heavily populated western region of Syria, where Damascus and other main cities are located.

Syrian state television said the army and its allies "fully restored security and stability to al-Qaryatain after killing the last remaining groups of Daesh terrorists" in the town, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

In a statement read out on Syrian television, the military command said this was a strategic victory which secures oil and gas routes between the Damascus area and oilfields in eastern Syria. It also disrupts Islamic State supply routes within Syria.

Government forces entered the town from a number of directions, Syrian media said. A Syrian military source told SANA state news agency the army had cleared areas northwest of the town of explosives planted by Islamic State.

Islamic State militants retreating from Palmyra laid thousands of mines which the Syrian army is now clearing before civilians can return.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said government forces had taken over half the town and that fierce fighting continued between Assad's troops and Islamic State to the north and southeast of al-Qaryatain.

The Britain-based Observatory, which monitors the five-year-old Syrian conflict through a network of sources on the ground, said more than 40 air strikes by Russian and Syrian planes hit areas near the town on Sunday.

Islamic State still has complete control over Raqqa and runs most of Deir al-Zor province in eastern Syria, which borders Iraq.

A fragile "cessation of hostilities" truce has held in Syria for over a month as the various parties to the conflict try to negotiate an end to Syria's civil war.

But the truce excludes Islamic State and the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front. Air and land attacks by Syrian and allied forces continue in parts of Syria where the government says the groups are present.

Fierce fighting that broke out over the weekend continues south of Aleppo near the main highway linking that city with the capital, Damascus. It began when rebels and Nusra Front mounted an offensive against government forces.

Additional reporting by Reuters.
Top Muslim human rights lawyer receives death threats for speaking out against extremism

A leading Muslim human rights lawyer has received death threats after he called for unity among members of his own faith.

Police are now investigating after Aamer Anwar, from Glasgow, received death threats from fanatics.

The threats came after he chaired an event in which Muslims from the Ahmadi and Sunni communities and Pakistani Christians shared a platform, and at which there were calls for unity and strong condemations of extremism and violence.

Scotland has recently been shocked by the killing of Glasgow shopkeeper Asad Shah, 40, from the Ahmadi community, which is widely perceived as more liberal than traditionalist groupings. There has also been controversy over allegations of extremist links at Glasgow Central Mosque.

After the report of the death threats appeared in The Sunday Herald, Anwar said he was overwhelmed by the support he received. He tweeted:

I am deeply moved by kind words of support,means a lot & sum words hav even brought laughter! @newsundayherald pic.twitter.com/2tNPJGBPfn  Aamer Anwar (@AamerAnwar) April 3, 2016

Anwar told the Herald: "Having been a campaigner for human rights for over 25 years, I have grown used to the bile and hatred directed at me, sadly that is par for the course.

"On occasion when I have had my life seriously threatened, I have informed the police but have always chosen to keep it private.

"On this occasion I could no longer remain silent, because of a small minority who believe they can silence me by creating a climate of fear."

He said he had received abuse and hatred on social media, by text and had been trolled by midnight telephone calls. He has been accused of being a "kuffar" or non-Muslim.

"I hold these people directly responsible for creating an atmosphere which has given some the confidence to make threats to my life," he said. "It is a terrifying and deeply lonely place to be when you say goodbye to your children and wonder if it is for the last time, but the death of Asad Shah should be a wake-up call to our community that we must not be silenced."

Police have confirmed that they are investigating the threats.

Anwar, who has taken a number of high-profile cases, has also been active in the Stop the War Coalition and has campaigned for the closure of the Dungavel Immigration Removal Centre in South Lanarkshire, Scotland.
Classic Week shorts: The Duke of Orleans by Ingres

Alan Wintermute, a specialist with the Old Master Paintings department in New York, discuses a historically significant portrait that absolutely captures the look of a certain era  offered in Classic Week at Christies

With his fathers ascension to the French throne in 1830, Ferdinand-Philippe received the titles of duc dOrleans and Prince Royal, heir apparent to the throne. Throughout the 1830s, he distinguished himself in a series of military campaigns in Flanders and Algeria, and his military career increased his public popularity and prestige.

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Portrait of Ferdinand-Philippe-Louis-Charles-Henri of Bourbon Orleans, Duke of Orleans . Oil on canvas. 29 3/8 x 23 7/8 in. (74.5 x 60.5 cm.). Estimate: $400,000-600,000. This work is offered in the Revolution sale on 13 April at Christies in New York

Ferdinand-Philippe was also an enthusiastic lover of the arts and an active patron. Every year he spent up to 150,000 francs from his royal allowance on art and cultural patronage, and he filled his apartments at the Tuileries Palace with medieval and Renaissance objects, Chinese and Japanese porcelains, 18th-century French furniture and modern paintings. He was an avid collector of contemporary canvases by Delacroix, Decamps, Delaroche and Lami, as well as Barbizon landscapes by Corot, Rousseau and Paul Huet. But he was especially drawn to the art of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, who he commissioned to paint his portrait in 1841.

Ingres is perhaps the greatest French portraitist of the 19th century, says Alan Wintermute, a specialist with the Old Master Paintings department in New York. Portraits by him are extremely rare.

In the principal version of this portrait of Prince Ferdinand-Philippe, which hangs in the Louvre, the duke is presented at three-quarters length, in a civilian setting, standing in his salon at the Tuileries Palace. Despite its opulent setting and high level of finish, the portrait was completed quickly and exhibited by Ingres in his studio in the spring of 1842.

Shortly afterwards, the duke died in an accident, unleashing a wave of grief. This painting was committed by his wife, probably very shortly after he was killed, explains Wintermute. It absolutely captures the look of a certain era, this moment in mid-century France. It is a grand royal object from the very last gasp of the Bourbon monarchy.
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A letter written by late author Harper Lee, condemning Donald Trump's Taj Mahal, sold for $3,926 in Los Angeles at Nate D. Sanders auction.

Bidding began at $750 and there were a total of 11 bids.

In addition, 24 of Lee's letters to her friends sold for a total of $33,556.

The Trump letter was written by Lee, author of "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Go Set a Watchman," to her friends Doris and Bill Leapard, co-founders of the Arts Council of Tuscaloosa. Lee, known as Nelle to friends, was expressing her discontent with a visitor, writing, "...the worst punishment God can devise for this sinner is to make her spirit reside eternally at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City..."

Lee's highest selling letter on the civil rights movement sold for $4,753 and attracted 16 bids. In it, she thanked Doris Leapard for providing her with civil rights icon Vivian Malone's autograph in a 1999 letter. Malone was one of the first African-Americans to attend the University of Alabama.

Lee wrote: "Looking back, it's incredible what people had to endure just for their basic rights. Today's young haven't a clue what their parents went through; they seem bored to hear about it... Nelle.''
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Aunt Marie didn't know what hit her this time.

Rising viral star @maggieglenn (actually named Charlie) posted a homophobic texting exchange between herself and her Aunt Marie on Twitter and the Internet rose up in support.

"I got into a fight w my auntie and she said 'at least I don't have to worry about my kid being a f***** like your mum does," Charlie tweeted Saturday. In the later posted iMessage conversation, the Internet say that Aunt Maggie brought fighting words with the homophobic insults.

"You need to stop being so sensitive I did not mean f***** in a bad way I just mean you gay people have a lot of drama," Aunt Marie sent her niece via iMessage. "I tried to understand this bi s***you claim to be but you teenagers make stuff up all the time. Youre young you will find a man. You can change. You used to be so clever."

NOTHING NEW: Man allegedly pours boiling water on gay couple in Georgia

Aunt Marie then withdrew her invitation to Charlie for "Indies birthday", but Charlie then brought her own fighting words in response to her auntie.

"Hi aunt Marie Don't worry about it! I know what you're like after a few bottle of wine," Charile texted back. "I can't make Indie's birthday I'm afraid, I have a huge lesbian orgy that day and me and the other f*****s have been planning it for months. By the way How's your divorce going? I saw uncle Lee with his girlfriend, she's 20 years younger than you right? Speak soon!"

Naturally, her satirical response gained the attention of the Twitter-verse. In 24 hours, her Twitter interaction ballooned to millions of impressions.

The shutdown of Aunt Marie warranted hashtags - #TEAMCHARLIE and #auntmarie - to begin to trend. As well as a parody account for dear - and very brutal - Auntie Marie.

READ MORE: Bisexual man is convicted of hate crime for killing gay man

It also generated a response from the rest of her family - including her cousin cussing her out and her parents wondering "what she did now".

Charlie now has over 19,600 followers, after seemingly only starting off with 3,000 and many are accusing her of using her family to gain fame and attention. Charlie promptly released a comment addressing those accusations.

"The whole purpose of the thread was so I could let off some steam and actually laugh about how stupid it was," Charlie tweeted. "And it's not a set up. It's not supposed to get me attentions. Why would I use homophobic abuse against MYSELF for 10 seconds of Twitter fame?? Having a family that aren't accepting is AWFUL and I would never use that for attention."

She goes on to say that "having it blow up feels horrible" and what she said was horrible and she's "never done anything like it before [she] just snapped."
If you have a sentimental attachment to 51fifteen restaurant in Saks Fifth Avenue, plan your lunch or cocktails soon. The restaurant (and the store) will close April 20 to move to their new digs in the Galleria.



April 28 is the date set for the opening of the new 51fifteen Cocktails & Cuisine in conjunction with the store opening.

GOOD NEWS BBQ FANS: New Midtown place to open this month
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A man died early Monday morning in a traffic crash after he led police on a chase and then slammed into trees along a roadway in north Houston.

The single-vehicle wreck happened about 12:30 a.m. in the 500 block of West 20th Street in the Heights, said Lt. Larry Crowson of the Houston Police Department.

Crowson said a patrol officer spotted a deputy constable with the Harris County Constable's Office Precinct 1 trying to stop a speeding driver on 20th Street near Cavalcade. The officer followed the deputy as they pursued the driver, who continued to speed away.

Crowson said the officer and deputy lost sight of the driver during the chase and then stopped following him. Soon afterward, another motorist flagged down the officer and deputy, saying a car had crashed nearby on 20th Street.

When the officer and deputy arrived, they found the man dead. No other injuries were reported. The man, whose name has not not been released, was alone in the car.

Crowson said the man had lost control of his car when he came to an abandoned railroad crossing in the street. The car slammed into two trees and the man was thrown out. He died at the scene.

The car appeared shredded from the force of the impact. Debris from the car was scattered across the road where the crash occurred.

Police are investigating the wreck.
A suspect has been accused in the shooting death of a 39-year-old man earlier this year in northeast Houston.

Laneric Brad Holmes, 26, is charged with murder in the slaying of Misael Arrellanes about 1:50 a.m. Jan. 30 at 10300 Shady Lanes near Charles.
A murder suspect was arrested Sunday evening after a man was killed intervening in a domestic abuse incident, Houston police said.

Jetrel Rollins, 29, was arrested after the boyfriend of the mother of his child was killed earlier in the day, said Tim Fay, of the Houston Police Department. Rollins was arrested after fleeing with his toddler daughter. The child was believed to be safe Sunday evening.

On Monday, police identified the victim as 37-year-old Damyon Bonds.

The incident occurred around 4:20 p.m. at a home on Vailview Drive near Annunciation Street in northeast Houston.

"The suspect is in custody. He'd been holed up somewhere (after fleeing)," Fay said after 8 p.m. Sunday. "The victim was the current boyfriend."
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A Harris County judge on Monday signed a death warrant for 58-year-old man who fatally shot a Houston police officer in 1988.

State District Judge Denise Collins set Sept. 14 as an execution date for Robert Mitchell Jennings who was convicted of killing vice officer Elston Howard at an adult bookstore.

Howard's mother, 83-year-old Era Mae Howard, watched the proceedings with HPD interim chief Martha Montalvo and several other officers.

Before the brief hearing, the two women shared a laugh because the octogenarian use to babysit Montalvo's children, one of whom grew up to be an HPD officer.

Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson also attended the hearing to see the proceedings against Jennings, who appeared in a yellow jail uniform.

Jennings and his co-defendant David Lee Harvell, were robbing their second adult bookstore on July 19, 1988 when Jennings went in to one alone on Richmond, court records show.

Jennings saw Howard, who was wearing an HPD jacket, arresting the store clerk for municipal violations and shot him twice.

Jennings shot the officer a third time after he fell and then robbed the store.

After he fled, Jennings told Harvell he shot a "security guard" and Harvell tried to get him out of the car, court records show. When Jennings refused, Harvell shot him in the hand.

Harvell was later convicted of aggravated robbery and sentenced to 55 years in prison.
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On Sunday afternoon Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, joined other Houstonians at Down House in the Houston Heights for brunch.

General Manager Kayla Webber says that in her time at Down House, Biden is the biggest name to dine at the popular Heights restaurant.

Biden was in town to attend the NCAA Men's Final Four Semifinals at NRG Stadium, one of many notables in town over the weekend for the college classic.

From HoustonChronicle.com: Houston restaurants are embracing brunch

The VP went to Syracuse Law School and his wife, Jill, has a masters degree from Villanova, making this Final Four weekend a big one for both of them.

He was very kind to the staff and management team. He took pictures with the staff. Its the coolest thing weve had happen here, Webber said Monday, still sounding excited by the encounter. By all accounts, Bidens visit was a treat for everyone.

Members of the Secret Service arrived three hours or so before Bidens 11 a.m. brunch time to check out the location. Down House staff let them know about all the exits and back doors in case of an emergency.

Pictures from the scene show a cadre of security and Secret Service around the location.

Executive Chef E.J. Miller was first contacted by the Secret Service around 8:30 a.m. when the staff was making preparations for its busy weekend brunch service, but the protection detail wouldnt divulge exactly who would be coming to eat until later in the morning.

RELATED: Houston's best pancakes

We were informed he was coming and we cleared as much space as we could for him and his people, Webber says. The guests let him enjoy himself.

Webber says that the group ate on the side patio of Down House. Secret Service staff, around 15 strong, had a pronounced presence in and around the restaurant.

According to Webber, the Vice-President had waffles and Mrs. Biden had the establishments famous shrimp and grits dish. Like most every couple, they shared bites from each others meal.

Biden had high-praise for Down House's food, Webber said.

There was no mimosa drinking (a brunch staple) for the VP, who stuck with ice water. The Bidens and the Secret Service were gone within an hour and everything soon went back to normal around Down House.
A drug cartel lawyer-turned-informant was assassinated in North Texas in May 2013. But a theory put forth by attorneys for one suspect claim the victim was actually the de facto head of one of Mexicos most notorious drug cartels, according to the Dallas Morning News.



Juan Jesus Guerrero Chapa served as an attorney for Osiel Cardenas Guillen, the ex-head of the Gulf Cartel. Guerrero Chapa, 43, had been shopping with his wife when he was shot multiple times at close range by a masked gunman in Southlake. His wife was not harmed. The murder was the first to occur in the affluent Fort Worth suburb since 1999.



GULF CARTEL: Mexico senator received $500K payment from Gulf Cartel, informant says

Defense attorneys for Jesus Gerardo Ledezma-Cepeda say that Guerrero Chapa had not left his old ways behind. A court filing Sunday accuses the victim of running the cartel after his bosss arrest in 2003.
A 23-year-old Galveston man is among more than a dozen people accused of drug trafficking and firearms crimes connected with gang activity in the Gregg County area, federal officials announced Monday.

According to the three indictments in the case, officials said, the defendants are alleged to be involved in a conspiracy connected to members or associates of the Aryan Brotherhood, a prison gang and street gangs to violate federal firearms and narcotics laws.
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By Jordan Rudner, The Texas Tribune

A three-year legal fight over a German shepherd named Monte Carlo was resolved by the the Texas Supreme Court Friday in a case that may sound like an April Fool's joke but was anything but a laughing matter for those involved.

The court ruled unanimously that a Houston family did not forfeit their ownership claims over their dog even though he had been picked up by local animal control and transferred to a foster home. Nothing in Houston's ordinances "states or implies that a dog merely held by a private shelter, awaiting adoption, has been divested of the ownership rights of the original owner," the justices stated in an unsigned opinion.

The case began when siblings Alfonso and Lydia Lira's dog escaped from an open garage door on New Year's Day 2013. According to case documents, Lydia Lira immediately began searching lost dog websites following Monte Carlo's escape. Meanwhile, the city of Houston's animal control department picked the dog up. Though they posted his information online, they mistakenly listed him as a Belgian Malinois dog, so he did not come up in Lydia Lira's searches for missing German shepherds on the department's website.

Eight days after Monte Carlo's escape, Lydia Lira saw a message on a missing dog forum indicating her dog might be with the Houston animal control department. She visited the department that day, and identified Monte Carlo from a photograph. Animal control officers told her that Monte Carlo had already been transferred to the privately owned Greater Houston German Shepherd Dog Rescue. One of the rescue volunteers, Cindy Milstead, had agreed to foster the dog. When Lydia Lira called Milstead that afternoon to claim Monte Carlo, Milstead refused to give him back. The private rescue agency said the Lira siblings had lost their right to recover Monte Carlo because they did not come to claim him in his first three days at the pound.

The court disagreed, writing that the term "impounded" "does not suggest a transfer of ownership or the loss of the owner's right to the return of his property," the court's opinion read.

The opinion also noted that enforcement of property ownership claims was especially important in cases involving pets.

"A beloved companion dog is not a fungible, inanimate object like, say, a toaster," the opinion stated, citing a previous Texas Supreme Court case.

Zandra Anderson, the lawyer who represented the Lira siblings in court and specializes in animal law, said she was thrilled the Court had ruled in the Liras' favor. Although she has worked on hundreds of cases involving ownership of animals, including dogs, birds, horses and, once, a pair of wrongly confiscated capuchin monkeys, this was her first animal law case accepted by the Texas Supreme Court.

"You can never expect anything from the Supreme Court, or from any court," Anderson said. "You just have to do your level best to make the outcome that you want happen, and I guess do a lot of praying."

Monte Carlo had never run away before, Anderson noted.

"He was an inside dog," she said. "A revered family pet. People will go to great lengths to right that wrong."

Lawyers representing Milstead and the Greater Houston German Shepherd Dog Rescue did not immediately return a request for comment.

Anderson said animal law cases are more complicated than people might think.

"When it comes to the emotions provoked by a lost animal, or a case of 'somebody's got my dog,' it's like family law on steroids," Anderson said.

This article originally appeared on The Texas Tribune.

The Texas Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans  and engages with them  about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
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Ted Cruz claimed victory Sunday in a state primary contest that doesn't officially have a winner. Informally, it marked the kickoff of a shadowy race for friendly delegates that could decide the GOP primary as much as the overt race for votes.

This weekend saw the first state Republican parties elect delegates to the national convention in July, among them North Dakota. Unlike most states, North Dakota doesn't tell its delegates which candidates to support.

Yet Cruz announced Sunday that he had "the support of the vast majority of North Dakota delegates," because his campaign had managed to get declared supporters elected as state delegates.

Even if they're under no contractual obligation to vote for Cruz, they indicate that they will.

It's a promising indicator that ongoing efforts to get Cruz fans elected at party delegates will bear fruit, but it's a feat the campaign will have to replicate at state conventions across the country if Cruz hopes for an upset victory at a contested convention in July.

RELATED: Growing chance of contested convention puts added focus on delegates

Tennessee joined North Dakota this weekend in electing a batch of party delegates to the national conventionand both showed an inclination towards Cruz, even though he didn't win a popular vote in either state.

On March 1, Trump won Tennessee's primary vote and a majority of the 41 delegates allocated by primary voters. But when it came time for the state GOP to choose its 14 delegates on Saturday, as allowed by state rules, the Trump campaign complained that the roster had been stocked with Cruz supporters, according to a report from the Boston Herald.

North Dakota, unlike most states, doesn't hold a primary or caucuses. Instead, its state GOP elects the full slate. And of the 25 elected Sunday, CNN reported that 18 were on a circulated list of delegates preferred by the Cruz campaign.

The victory remains unofficial, because the North Dakota delegates aren't mandated to support particular candidates like the delegates from most other states.

But those mandates are seeming increasingly irrelevant as the likelihood of a contested convention grows. If no candidate arrives at the convention with at least 1,237 delegates pledge to their campaign, most of the delegates will quickly become free to vote for whichever candidate they personally support.

RELATED: Divisive GOP presidential race ventures into unknown territory

In that case, campaigning for supportive delegates could prove as important as campaigning for primary votes.

The results of this weekend's premier delegate elections lightly confirm what experts previously alleged: that the Cruz campaign, with its meticulous operations, outdoes the Trump campaign and its impulsive approach when it comes to courting delegates.

If Cruz continues winning supportive delegates, he could pave a path to claim the nomination in a second, third or fourth round of voting at the party's national convention.
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AUSTIN  Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, joining the long list of politicians who have become authors, has penned his first book, "Broken But Unbowed."

According to initial details released Monday, the book is a tell-all, of sorts, about how Abbott overcame personal tragedy years ago, when a tree fell on him and left him paralyzed, to become Texas' chief executive, and about his personal observations on constitutional issues facing the United States.

"Broken But Unbowed: The Fight to Fix a Broken America," will be available online and in bookstores on May 17. All of the net proceeds will be donated to Operation Finally Home, a Texas-based nonprofit that provides custom-built, mortgage-free homes to veterans and their families.

Publisher of the book is Threshold Editions, a conservative imprint of Simon & Schuster that has also published books by Donald Trump and Rush Limbaugh.

In the announcement, Abbott said the tome details his story of "overcoming personal adversity and casts a vision of how, as a nation, we can restore the Constitution and address many of the problems our country faces today.

"We have effectively submitted ourselves to the rule of men and abandoned the rule of law on which our nation was built," Abbott said in a statement. "America was born as a nation in search of one thing: freedom to chart our own path.

"Realizing that our lives are not defined by our challenges, but by how we respond to them," Abbott said the book will describe "first-hand what it was like to be on the battlefield of historic legal fights to uphold our Constitution, and the lessons learned that compel the current need to amend the Constitution."

As part of his campaign to limit the role of the federal government in states' business, Abbott has proposed an Article V Convention of States to restore the balance of power between the states and the federal government.

Pre-orders of "Broken But Unbowed" are being accepted at www.gregabbott.com/book. Following the release of the book, Abbott will start a book tour to promote his work "and advocate for a Convention of States."
The summers final Live on the Waterfront concert was held Wednesday evening at Prince Arthurs Landing. The popular series in Thunder Bay has completed nine weekly shows that began on July 13. Wednesdays concert was unique as it was held one hour later in the evening to mesh with the 10 p.
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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
A former executive of QBE Insurance Group was sentenced on Thursday to 1-1/2 years in prison for conspiring to embezzle $2.6 million from the insurance company, some of which he used to buy a house and luxury vehicles.

James Shea, a former executive vice president at the Australian insurers North American unit who was responsible for integrating its information technology systems, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer in Manhattan.

Engelmayer said Shea driven by greed, envy and a desire to make his family happy.

You abused the position of responsibility your company entrusted you with, Engelmayer said.

Shea, who was also ordered to forfeit $1.81 million and jointly with a co-defendant pay $2.65 million in restitution to QBE, in court said he was extremely apologetic.

There is never a good reason for what I did, he said. There just isnt.

Prosecutors said that from 2012 through 2013, Shea, 49, conspired with a consultant for QBE, Eugene Fallon, to submit invoices for consulting services purportedly done by two entities that in reality were never done.

As part of the scheme, Shea forged the signature of QBE North Americas chief financial officer on sham contracts between the insurer and the two entities and approved invoices Fallon provided for more than $2.65 million, prosecutors said.

About $1.81 million was then funneled back to Shea, who used the money to buy a house and luxury vehicles, prosecutors said.

Both Shea and Fallon were arrested in June and pleaded guilty in November to wire fraud. Fallon has yet to be sentenced.

The case is U.S. v. Shea, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 15-cr-00546.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler)
Japanese regulators on Wednesday approved the use of a giant refrigeration system to create an unprecedented underground frozen barrier around buildings at the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant in an attempt to contain leaking radioactive water.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority said the structure, which was completed last month, can now be activated.

The plants operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., said it plans to turn on the ice wall on Thursday, starting with the portion near the sea to prevent more contaminated water from escaping into the Pacific Ocean. The system will be started up in phases to allow close monitoring and adjustment.

Nearly 800,000 tons of radioactive water that is already being stored in 1,000 industrial tanks at the plant has been hampering the decontamination and decommissioning of the nuclear facility, which was damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

The success of the ice wall is believed to be key to resolving the plants water woes.

The 35 billion yen ($312 million) government-funded project, proposed by construction giant Kajima Corp., is more than a year behind schedule because of technical uncertainties. Some experts are still skeptical of the technology and question whether its worth the huge cost.

The project consists of refrigeration pipes dug 30 meters (100 feet) underground that are designed to freeze the soil around them. They are supposed to form a 1.5-kilometer (0.9-mile) wall around the reactor and turbine buildings to contain radioactive water and keep out groundwater.

At a meeting Wednesday of the nuclear agency, Chairman Shunichi Tanaka cautioned against high expectations because the success of the project depends in part on nature. It would be best to think that natural phenomena dont work the way you would expect, he later told reporters.

Similar methods have been used to block water from parts of tunnels and subways, but a structure large enough to surround four buildings and related facilities is untested. A smaller wall was used to isolate radioactive waste at an U.S. Department of Energy laboratory in Tennessee but only for six years. The decommissioning of the Fukushima plant is expected to take decades.

Three damaged reactors at the plant must be continually cooled with water to keep their melted cores from overheating. The water, which becomes radioactive, leaks out through cracks and other damaged areas into the reactor basements, where it mixes with groundwater, increasing the volume of contaminated water.

Many experts including Tanaka say a controlled release of treated water is the only solution to the water woes, but concerns about ocean health make it a contentious subject.

A test of part of the ice wall successfully froze the ground around it, and officials hope the entire wall can be formed within several months, according to Shinichi Nakakuki, a spokesman for the utility, TEPCO.

TEPCO officials say they hope the ice wall will stop most of the flow of groundwater into the area and allow the turbine basements to be dried by 2020, confining the contamination to the three melted reactors.

Asked at the meeting if the ice wall is worth the cost, TEPCO accident response official Toshihiro Imai replied, Its effect is still unknown, because the expected outcome is based on simulations.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Are insureds required to notify the insurance company of a change in business form and structure after the inception of the initial policy? This issue recently came before the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Christy v. Travelers Indemnity Co. of America, 810 F.3d 1220 (10th Cir. 2016). In this case, the insured, Corey Christy, purchased a CGL policy from Travelers in the name of his sole proprietorship, K&D Oilfield Supply (K&D). Thereafter, Christy registered his business as a corporation in New Mexico under the name K&D Oilfield Supply, Inc. (K&D, Inc.) Christy renewed his CGL policy annually for three separate years in a row but did not notify Travelers that he incorporated his business. After Christy had incorporated his business, he had an accident where a motor vehicle struck him while he was riding a bicycle. When he presented a UIM claim under the Travelers policy, Travelers argued that Christy was not a named insured and, therefore, would have UIM coverage only when occupying a covered auto. The bicycle he was riding was not a covered auto.

In the District Court, Travelers argued that Christy had a duty to notify Travelers that he had changed the form of his business from a sole proprietorship to a corporation. Additionally, Travelers argued that the change in business structure and Christys failure to update Travelers regarding the change constituted a material misrepresentation that had induced Travelers to renew the CGL policy. The trial court agreed and granted summary judgment in favor of Travelers. On appeal, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed finding that there were material issues of fact as to whether Christy had committed a material misrepresentation.

First, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals held that Christy had no duty to notify Travelers of the change in his business form and structure absent express language within the Travelers policy requiring notification. There was no express requirement in the Travelers policy. Alternatively, Travelers argued that the Court should impose a duty to inform as a matter of public policy. Specifically, Travelers argued that in the absence of a duty to notify of the change in business structure, Christy would be rewarded for making a material misrepresentation which, in turn, would incentivize others like Christy to withhold information from insurers to derive greater benefits which honest disclosure would not have permitted. Regarding the latter argument, the Court noted that it was based on the assumption that Christy had in fact made a material misrepresentation.

The record in the trial court established that in the annual discussions Christy had with his insurance agent, the focus was on the number of employees and types of vehicles used by his business. Christy had never been informed that changing his business form and structure could affect Travelers decision to renew his insurance coverage. The insurance agent testified that while he asked Christy whether there had been any changes in the businesss operations, the agent never expressly and specifically asked whether the business form and structure had changed. Against this evidence, Travelers introduced the cover letter that it sent with the annual renewal notice which stated in relevant part: Please review your policy for accuracy and advise  if any changes or additional coverage are needed. Travelers argued that the cover letter was sufficient to notify Christy that he should have informed Travelers of any changed circumstances that might warrant a corresponding revision in the policy. The Court found, however, that that type of generic inquiry was insufficient to place the burden on the insured to determine which specific changes might be material to the insurer. That would place the burden on the insured, a layperson, to divine what new circumstances might necessitate changes or additional coverages under the existing CGL policy.

Reviewing all of the facts and taking all reasonable inferences in the light most favorable to Christy, the Tenth Circuit held that there were material facts in dispute as to whether Christy knew or should have known Travelers would consider the change in his business form material to its decision to renew the CGL policy. The Court noted that while the undisputed facts showed Travelers never specifically asked Christy about changes to his business form and structure, a trier of fact could reasonably conclude that the annual cover letter, together with Christys annual discussions with his insurance agent, were sufficient to place him on notice that such information would be material to Travelers. The Court could not conclude as a matter of law that Christy knew of the material nature of the change in his business structure, however.

So, whats in a name? In the insurance context it is definitely advisable that the insured should ask his insurance agent and/or the insurance company whether the change in a business form and structure will make a difference regarding the coverages available therein.
Accordionist Ksenija Sidorova to Release 'Carmen' Redux via Deutsche Grammophon

Accordionist Ksenija Sidorova (not pictured) reimagines Bizet's classic 'Carmen' on an entirely new platform. Deutsche Grammophon's newest artist, the new album should come out in June 2016. (Photo : Ian Gavan/Getty Images for the Royal Ballet)

It's not often that a musician with a unique instrument crosses into daily popular music news. However, for accordionist Ksenija Sidorova, Deutsche Grammophon's latest signing, her musical taste may propel her to unorthodox stardom.

Her DG debut comes in the form of Bizet's Carmen, which Ms. Sidorova has reimagined as a new musical endeavor that many have more than likely never heard before. An accordion doing opera, yes, is quite a feat in and of itself.

The disc, which is to be released on June 3 this year, is a singular retelling of the opera in the form of accordion music. With the production's iconic melodies and track list, an accordion reinterpreting such a narrative could give way to an entirely new perspective on the genre.

According to a press release:

"Ksenija's Carmen gives new life to some of the most popular of all classical melodies, presented here in seductively fresh arrangements. She describes the character of Carmen as, above all, "a projection of the heart's most intimate desires". In response, her album, influenced by Latin, Asian, European and North American musical styles, offers an intoxicating mix of tone colors and pulsating rhythms."

Cited a genre-crossing player, the accordion player is certainly no street corner busker. Ms. Sidorova, who was encouraged to pick up the instrument by her grandmother, is a Riga-born native who immigrated to Britain, where she because a prize-winner as an undergrad at the Royal Academy of Music.

Her forthcoming album is a departure from a normal take on the operatic canon, utilizing a different sonic landscape on an instrument not many would associate with Bizet's classic.

Commenting on behalf of her upcoming release and performing alongside Sting and Bryn Terfel, Sidorova said:

"It was amazing to perform with Sting and Bryn Terfel. That experience strengthened my belief that it's time to take the accordion to places it has never been and to reach new audiences. Carmen, which is so important to me, has the power to do that."

Be sure to check out her album in June and in the meantime, get familiar with the accordionist in a special interview and performance below.

 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

TagsKsenija Sidorova, Accordion, Deutsche Grammophon
Akron police 3

Akron police are investigating after an off-duty Hills and Dale police officer fired shots at a suspected drunken driver, who hit his car twice and nearly ran him over trying to flee.

(File photo)

AKRON, Ohio -- An off-duty Stark County police officer fired several gunshots at a suspected drunken driver who rear-ended his car and hit him with her car as she drove off, police said.

Hills and Dales Sgt. Robert Lowe, 37, was treated and released from Akron City Hospital, according to Hills and Dales Police Chief Chad Lebold. The five-year veteran of the police department is on previously scheduled medical leave, Lebold said.

The other driver, Charleen Lemaster, 28, of Akron, is charged with drunken driving, hit-skip and other traffic offenses. Akron police are investigating to see if more charges are warranted.

Lowe about 7 p.m. Sunday was driving with his wife and two young kids westbound on Gilchrist Road near Skelton Road when Lemaster rear-ended the officer's 2003 Chevy Trailblazer twice, according to Akron Police Lt. Rick Edwards said.

Lowe and his wife got out of their car to check to see if Lemaster was injured. Lemaster started driving away in her silver 1998 Buick and hit the officer, causing him to roll up on the hood of Lemaster's car.

Lowe fired several shots. The bullets struck her car but didn't hit Lemaster. The officer's wife drove him to Akron City Hospital.

Lemaster drove on Interstate 76 westbound until she rear-ended a 2003 Astro Van near the East Market Street exit, Edwards said. She took the Market Street exit and stopped in the middle of the off-ramp. Akron police arrested her there.

Officers noted she had an open alcohol container in her puruse.

She was taken to Akron City Hospital, where she was treated and released, Edwards said.

Lemaster admitted to drinking prior to the crash, according to court records. Police noted she also had glassy and blood-shot eyes and smelled of alcohol.

It's her second drunken driving arrest since 2012. Akron police are still investigating the incident to see if charges could be filed against Lowe, Edwards said.

Lebold said his department is conducting an internal investigation to see if the shooting was justified. He said he's still waiting on more information from Akron police.

He declined to discuss if Lowe had any disciplinary history with the department. Lowe previously worked for Waynesburg police.

Edwards said the shooting is not being treated as an officer-involved shooting since Lowe was not on duty at the time of the incident.
Akron police 4

Akron police launched a human trafficking investigation after a 17-year-old North Carolina girl was found in a stolen car.

(File photo)

AKRON, Ohio -- Investigators are searching the cell phone of a North Carolina man they suspect of trafficking a 17-year-old girl for sex.

The Wendell, North Carolina man is in the Summit County Jail on an unrelated charge. He has not been charged in the human trafficking investigation.

Akron police reported finding him in a stolen car on March 19 in the driveway of a home in the 600 block of Grant Street. The 17-year-old girl was in the driver's seat, police reports say.

Police found the black 2015 Honda Civic was reported stolen from Holly Springs, North Carolina.

A relative of the girl called Akron police and reported she was in a stolen car.

The girl, who is also from North Carolina, told investigators that the man forced her into prostitution, court records say. She told police he set up meetings with paying customers on his two smart phones.

Akron police found the two phones inside the car. Those phones, and the girl's phones, are being searched for evidence of human trafficking, court records say.

The man faces potential charges including, trafficking in persons, commercial exploitation of a minor, compelling prostitution and promoting prostitution, according to court records.

The man is jailed on charges related to the stolen car.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- More than six months after a court-mandated Community Police Commission was set up for the city of Cleveland, members are reporting problems that they see as more than just growing pains.

In separate interviews and statements, commissioners reported feeling abused, overworked and having leaders that do not properly control the meetings.

Despite all that, the U.S. Justice Department, which entered into a settlement with the city over police use of force, and the court-appointed monitor said they planned for troubles at the beginning and that the work required of the commission is getting done.

The commission is a quasi-representative body for residents set up to make recommendations to the police department.

Stories of issues within the commission have circulated for several months. Some have complained of rowdy meetings, while others cite personality conflicts between members chosen to represent diverse backgrounds.

Tensions boiled over in March with the resignation of Cleveland police Sgt. Timothy Higgins, a member appointed by the Fraternal Order of Police. He was replaced by Sgt. Deirdre Jones, FOP President Brian Betley said.

Higgins is the second member to resign since the commissioners were appointed in September. In a letter sent to Mayor Frank Jackson, Higgins wrote that the commission's leaders and other members do not give proper weight to the input made by himself and the delegates from the city's two other police union. He called the commission a "failed endeavor."

He wrote, "the co-commissioners have allowed disruptions from activists to delay and interrupt meetings at times twenty minutes at length. During mandatory public meetings, both have continued to allow unsubstantiated accusations toward myself and the other law enforcement commissioners of being Neo-Nazi, racist Ku Klux Klan, and even being ISIS."

(To read the full letter, click here or scroll to the bottom of the story.)

Steve Loomis, a commission member and the president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association, made similar comments in an interview Thursday. He said other members "are getting in cahoots together" and that it is hard to have meaningful discussions and to express the view of experienced officers.

Still, commission member Anthony Body said Loomis and Higgins may have cited problems because they are resisting change mandated by the settlement.

"If you're not progressive-minded, it's totally impossible to be for change and represent your union," Body said.

Not all of the problems have been personality driven, though. Lee Fisher, a commission member and the former lieutenant governor, said in an email that the lack of resources available to help what is a volunteer commission is frustrating.

"After only 6 months, I think some members understandably feel exhausted and burnt out," Fisher wrote, adding that he believes the required resources will soon be provided.

Matthew Barge, who is heading the team monitoring the city's progress under the settlement, said the commission has met the deadlines set by the court. This has included making extensive recommendations on police use of force and bias-free policing.

Barge also said members of the monitoring team have met with the commission to try to iron out some of the issues. Some of them are just part of an organization "still finding its sea legs," he said, as bylaws must be drafted, leaders must be chosen and the members must decide the scope of their work.

"I think that those kinds of frustrations are not indicative of a commission that is abjectly failing," Barge said. "Quite to the contrary, they are producing deliverables that are extensive and thorough."

Commission co-chair Mario Clopton agreed with Barge. He said that "those who have been on the commission have made a conscious decision to continue making sure that our work is speaking for itself."

He said he would rather let the commission's reports speak to its progress than statements that Loomis makes to reporters.

U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman Mike Tobin wrote in an email that the Justice Department expected challenges, as they arise any time a new organization is formed.

"It takes a while to get up and running and to work through the challenges," Tobin's email reads. "We've seen similar experiences in other cities with similar bodies."

The commission's next meeting is scheduled for April 19. It is now accepting applications for an executive director.

Updated to clarify a statement from commission co-chair Mario Clopton and to correct the spelling of Sgt. Deirdre Jones' name.
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A federal jury in Cleveland found Allen Miles, a traveling minister from Arkansas, guilty of participating in a tax scam.

(Eric Heisig/cleveland.com)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A federal jury in Cleveland found a traveling minister from Arkansas guilty Monday of stealing people's identities and stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in false tax refunds.

Allen Miles was found guilty of 14 felony counts, including conspiracy, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. The decision came after a trial that lasted more than a week.

Miles, 57, showed little emotion as U.S. District Judge Donald Nugent read the verdict. He looked back at his wife, who started crying a few minutes later.

Nugent will sentence Miles on June 13. He was allowed to remain free on bond.

Jerry Ingram, Miles' attorney, said after the trial that he was "considering our options."

Miles filed false tax income tax returns with the names and identifying information of low-income people. He split the tax refunds between himself and those with whom he worked, according to an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service.

In all, they filed 2,750 false tax returns and received $4.8 million in refunds; Miles received $240,000.

Prosecutors said Miles and his cohorts told people that they needed their personal information to apply for what they called a government stimulus program. Miles also recruited ministers and church leaders in other states to obtain personal identification information from congregants.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Carmen Henderson said in her closing argument that the scheme was fairly simple.

"You don't have to be a CPA [certified public accountant] or even a tax preparer to decipher the defendant's crimes," Henderson said.

Most of the criminal conduct occurred in Canton, which is the reason it was charged in northern Ohio. Acting U.S. Attorney Carole Rendon said in a statement that Miles did this across the country and that "he took advantage of their religious faith and their faith in government to enrich himself."

Ve Sayavong and Zinara Highsmith, who were also charged in the conspiracy, previously pleaded guilty to federal charges. Prosecutors said for each refund, Miles took $125 and Highsmith and others who created the false income tax returns split $275.

Both testified against Miles during the trial.
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From the beautifully-framed opening shot, "Parched" rolls out a lush, lovely portrait of four women struggling with different stages and places in life. (Courtesy Cleveland International Film Festival)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- From the beautifully-framed opening shot, "Parched" rolls out a lush, lovely portrait of four women struggling to survive in a patriarchal town in India.

You see, this is no gritty affair, at least not visually. "Parched" boasts stellar cinematography courtesy of Russell Carpenter, known for big budget hits such as "Titanic," "Ant-Man" and "True Lies."

"Parched" has little to do with those films thematically, but its slick style points to a wider role for venues such as CIFF in the new age -- namely, to provide a home for international cinema that would have a hard time getting shown otherwise.

Yes, this is a big-budget melodrama, just not the kind we're accustomed to at the multi-plex. Leena Yadav weaves together a moving portrait of subjugation in a rural Indian town, where suffocating rules and customs allow men to abuse their women at every turn.

We are quickly introduced to Rani, a widow who scrapes together enough money to marry her son to a child bride, Janaki. Like most things in the dusty, poor town of Gujarat, this has all been pre-arranged, ignoring the will of the individuals. The problem is women pay the heaviest price in such arrangements because they are virtually the property of their men.

Rani's best friend, Lajjo, is beaten regularly by her husband, an alcoholic who takes their inability to have a child out on her and resents her trying to earn money. Bijli, a sultry dancer-prostitute, is the only free spirit in "Parched." She has embraced the famous line by burlesque performed Lili St. Cyr, "Sex is currency. What's the use of being beautiful if you can't profit from it?"

Of course, this is not burlesque club - and Bijli finds herself a leper in a community run by elders that condemn the hooker, but not the john. "Parched," however, chooses to portray the prostitute as beautiful, just as it does with the other women.

Drawing such a contrast is helped by having a film that looks so good and is shot so well.

REVIEW

Parched

What: Directed by Leena Yadav (2015/India/USA/UK). 118 minutes. In Hindi with subtitles.

When: 9:40 p.m. Monday April 4 and 4:45 p.m. Tuesday April 5 at Tower City Cinemas.

Grade: B+.
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Out of 15 Northeast Ohio jails surveyed by cleveland.com, Fairview Park Police Department operates the only one that does not take a photo of every person it arrests.

(Patrick Cooley, cleveland.com)

FAIRVIEW PARK, Ohio -- If you happen to get arrested for acting like a drunken fool, Fairvew Park is the place to do it, because police probably won't take your picture and make it public.

Fairview Park police recently arrested a North Olmsted man accused of driving over six tree lawns and shearing a fire hydrant at its base while he was drunk.

Police said Brad J. Flynn, 41, of North Olmsted was wearing his underwear and a child's snowsuit on one leg when officers arrested him. Flynn's blood alcohol level was .117 percent, according to police. That's more than the .08 percent legal threshold to drive in Ohio.

When cleveland.com requested Flynn's mug shot or booking photo, police said there was none.

"We do not take booking photos for non-criminal traffic offenses," Fairview Park police Chief Erich Upperman wrote in an email.

Cleveland.com surveyed 15 Northeast Ohio jails of all sizes -- jails that house inmates for months at a time and those that hold people for only a few hours, like Fairview Park. Of those surveyed, Fairview Park has the only jail that does not take a photo of every person arrested.

Cleveland City Jail, though much larger than Fairview Park's, takes photos and video of its drunken suspects.

Some jail officials chuckled at the question, and found it strange that a jail wouldn't take a person's photo.

Still, it is up to each jail to set its own policy, law enforcement officials said.

"Booking photos are taken for the benefit of the police department, especially with larger sheriff's departments that may have a thousand people in their jails," said J. Dean Carro, a lawyer and retired professor at The University of Akron School of Law. "You can't always know who's who.

"Inmates have been known to switch identities," Carro said. "As a police department, you never want to release the wrong inmate."

When a person is arrested for a misdemeanor drunken driving offense, Fairview Park officers seize their driver's license; so they do have some type of photo record, Fairview Park police Lt. Paul Shepard said. When drunken drivers injure others, they are charged with felonies and their mug shots are taken, he added.

At least one person has duped Fairview Park police. He gave officers his brother's driver's license, instead of his own. Police only found out when the brother called sometime later.

"When we found out about it, we charged that guy with a felony," Shepard said. "Are we human? Yes. We do make mistakes, but we correct it and we charge the person."

Fairview Park's system has been in place for at least 20 years, and it works for them, Shepard said.

The Fairview Park jail usually holds three prisoners, but can hold up to six at a time. The maximum stay is six hours, and drunken drivers usually are cited and released; not booked in, like Flynn. And the officer who arrests a person, is usually the same officer who releases that person, Shepard said.

Brunswick and Hudson have small temporary holding jails similar to Fairview Park. Both jails photograph all inmates.

"We also take a photo of their tattoos for identification in case they are arrested again and try to say that they are someone else," Brunswick police public information officer Nick Solar said.

Westlake police Capt. Guy Turner agrees with Solar that mug shots are the best way to identify jail inmates, and they can be used to identify a person who commits a crime again. But pictures also protect the department, he said.

"When people claim they get beat up when they are arrested, if we have a picture, we can refute that," Turner said. "When people use someone else's ID, like their brother's or their sister's, the person who is the victim of identity theft, we can show them the picture and solve that crime."

Mug shots are public records, and some small affluent suburban communities often don't take photos to protect their own citizens, Carro said.

"There are websites that will post a person's mug shot and charge them something like $200 to take it down," Carro said. "Some of these people are the local small business owner who made a mistake, and the police want to protect them. There's nothing wrong with that."

Fairview Park is home to 16,500 people with a median household income of $53,400; but Shepard said that has nothing to do with the department's policy. And Fairview Park's policy has been in place for more than two decades, longer than websites posting mug shots for cash.

Shepard said, "If we wanted to hide someone's identity, why do we release their names?"

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CLEVELAND, Ohio - Military heroism doesn't always arise on a battlefield.

On Dec. 15, it surfaced when an Army parachutist dropped from the sky, got blown off course and landed in the Pacific Ocean off the island of Oahu, Hawaii.

Tangled in his chute cords, struggling in the water, the soldier was spotted by two Marines stationed at the nearby Marine Corps Base Hawaii, including Cpl. Justin Fugate, 25, of Cleveland.

The 2009 St. Ignatius High School graduate and another Marine received the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal on March 30 for their part in a rescue that saved the paratrooper.

Rescue in rough seas

In a recent phone interview, Fugate vividly recalled the incident that started when he and another corporal, Lester Cano, were at the beach on a training exercise. They saw the parachutist struggling in the water near a reef more than 100 yards away.

Fugate and his fellow Marine improvised a rescue line from two long ropes and jumped in the water, joined by a lifeguard. Fugate's buddy established an anchoring relay point about halfway out while Fugate and the lifeguard swam to the paratrooper.

Fugate said the seas were some of the roughest he'd ever seen in that area. When they reached the paratrooper, "he was pretty much out of it," Fugate recalled. "His eyes were bloodshot and starting to roll back. He was pretty much in shock.

"Every time a wave came in, the chute would pull down and he'd go down with it," he added.

After freeing the soldier from the chute, the trio brought him back to the beach. Fugate said he took a brief break - "I swallowed quite a bit of sea water" - before assisting in first aid efforts for the victim.

The paratrooper was transported from the scene by emergency medical service personnel, and Fugate said the man seemed well on his way to recovery. "He was a pretty tough guy," he said.

Fugate and Cano were awarded Commendation Medals on March 30.

"It's a great feeling. It's an honor," Fugate said. "I know that a lot of tremendous Marines have worn the same honor."

A terrible swimmer

Fugate said there was no hesitation about going in the water. "I just did what any Marine would have done," he explained. "We thought fast, used our critical thinking skills, got a plan and made it happen."

All that, despite the fact that, as Fugate related, "Actually I'm a terrible swimmer. That's the funny part. I guess the adrenaline takes over and you learn how to swim real fast."

Fugate's less-dramatic duties as an electro-optical ordnance repairman include maintaining laser, thermal and night-vision devices on weapons, and fire-control instruments and systems.

"It's pretty cool," he said. "You get to see a lot of interesting equipment."

Slavic Village native

After graduating from St. Ignatius, Fugate, who grew up in the Slavic Village area, attended Cuyahoga Community College for two years before joining the Marines.

Fugate said his father had served in the Army and an uncle is a retired Marine lieutenant colonel.

He said he joined the service because, "I just wanted to serve my country. I love being an American. I'm a diehard patriot."

Though his parents no longer live in Cleveland, Fugate said his hometown roots remain strong. "I'm a big Indians fan. Anytime I can catch a ball game, it's a good day," he said.

When he leaves the Marines at the end of this year, he might attend Cleveland State University to finish his college studies, possibly majoring in education. "I'd like to be a teacher. Something hands on," Fugate said.

The recent rescue also provided an education of sorts for the young Marine. As Fugate noted, "I definitely learned I can swim under pressure."
Deaver Williams

Karen Deaver, left, and her daughter, Kelisha Williams, were charged with felonious assault after Cleveland police said they stabbed two women during a fight outside their home Thursday.

(Cleveland police)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Cleveland mother and daughter are accused of stabbing two women in a Thursday night fight that involved bricks, chains and kitchen knives.

Karen Deaver, 47, and Kelisha Williams, 24, are each being held on $5,000 bond on felonious assault charges in the attack outside Deaver's Wade Park Avenue home.A

The fight stemmed from an earlier confrontation between the boyfriend of Deaver's other adult daughter, according to a police report.

Here's how the report said the fight unfolded:

Police were called to the house about 8:20 p.m. for a report of a man with a gun. But when they showed up, they found a large group of women fighting in the street.

Two women were bleeding. Officers saw blood in the front and back seats of car that was parked on the tree lawn in front of the home.

A 23-year-old woman who was bleeding from cuts on both arms pointed to Deaver and told police she reached through the open driver's side window of the car and sliced her and her 28-year-old passenger.

The 23-year-old also told police that Williams cut the passenger's face.

Police interviewed at the scene several women who said that Deaver's other daughter had gotten into a fight with her boyfriend, and Deaver and Williams told him to leave the home.

The boyfriend came back with two women in the car about 10 minutes later, spurring the fight.

The victims told police that Deaver, Williams and other women came out of the house and started throwing rocks at their car's windshield, the report says. Deaver and Williams then walked up to the car, reached through open windows and attacked them with knives, the victims said.

Deaver and Williams told police that the boyfriend returned to the home with the victims, who wielded chains and bricks and threw rocks at the house.

Deaver and Williams said the victims pulled the knives on them when they went outside.

Deaver said she wrestled a knife away from the 23-year-old woman, and that's how she was cut.

Police found two kitchen knives, one with a bent blade, lying outside the home.
Alan N. Berman.jpeg

Alan N. Berman, a safety and health coordinator with the Cuyahoga County Department of Public Works, has been indicted on a charge of assault on a corrections officer. He is accused of attacking an officer in the Parma City Jail.

(Parma Police Department)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Cuyahoga County grand jury has indicted a county safety coordinator accused of pulling a gun on a man in his Parma home and attacking an officer at the Parma City Jail.

Alan N. Berman, 53, a safety and health coordinator with the Cuyahoga County Department of Public Works, is charged with assault on a corrections officer, court records say. An arraignment is scheduled for April 13 in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court.

Berman is accused of wresting officer Michael Davis to the ground inside the Parma City Jail on March 20. Berman slapped Davis' eyeglasses off his face, and ripped a radio off Davis' shirt, according to police.

Read the indictment below.

Berman was arrested after he pulled a gun on a 22-year-old man inside the Hampstead Avenue home where both men live, Parma police said.

The victim was arguing with his own girlfriend at the home when Berman walked in the room and pointed a gun at him, according to police records.

Police took a loaded .357 Smith & Wesson from the home.

Berman pleaded not guilty to charges of aggravated menacing and domestic violence in that case. He is due back in Parma Municipal Court on April 12.

He is free on bond.

Berman has worked for the county since May 2013. He is on paid administrative leave, Cuyahoga County spokeswoman Mary Louise Madigan said.

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CLEVELAND, Ohio - The director of the Northeast Ohio Regional Fusion Center, the joint task force of law enforcement agencies that share information on criminal and terrorist activity, has resigned.

Jeffrey D'Annolfo's resignation comes three months before the Republican National Convention, for which the Fusion Center is slated to oversee anti-crime and anti-terrorist activity.

Cleveland spokesman Daniel Ball confirmed Monday that D'Annolfo resigned.

D'Annolfo, who left on March 25, submitted a four-sentence one-paragraph letter of resignation on March 11.

He expressed appreciation for the opportunity to work for the city and did not indicate any reason for leaving.

Cleveland Police Sgt. Zina Martinez will handle day-to-day operations at the center, Ball said.

The fusion center -- one of 78 in the country supported by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security -- oversees Ohio Homeland Security Region 2, comprising Ashtabula, Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake and Lorain counties.

The primary focus of the center is suspicious activity reporting, critical infrastructure protection and social media research, according to D'Annolfo's LinkedIn profile.

The center to coordinates police communications throughout the counties and shares information.

A U.S. Senate subcommittee in 2012 was critical of fusion center operations, saying the centers had not yielded significant information to support federal counterterrorism intelligence efforts.

Criticisms of the northeast Ohio center included that the "center is lacking in its ability to process, collate, or disseminate information . . . Based on self-assessment, the center appears to be struggling. The center exhibits limited capability to support the intelligence cycle."

Local officials sat at that time the report was outdated and improvements had been made.

D'Annolfo, of Medina, could not be reached for comment. Here's some background on him.
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What do cities like Charlotte, Denver, San Francisco and Seattle have in common? They apparently are magnets for college graduates from all over the country. A recent study from student loan marketplace Credible found that those four cities  as well as Dallas, New York, Portland, Oakland and Washington, D.C.  had the most out-of-state graduates relative to in-state graduates among 20 large U.S. cities. The survey looked at 4,500 young Americans who have been out of school for an average of 4.5 years. Washington, D.C., and Charlotte see about 2.2 out-of state graduates for every one in-state graduate, the highest proportion in the group.

San Francisco is one city favored by college graduates. Avinash Achar | Getty Images

Many of the cities on the list were among the nation's most notoriously expensive. The median ratio of rent-to-income was about 19 percent among all cities analyzed. But those with many out-of-state graduates had even less affordable housing: Grads living in Seattle spent 22 percent of their income on rent, while those in New York City spent 21 percent, according to Credible's analysis. The trend of graduates moving to expensive cities is unsurprising, said Matthew Gardner, chief economist at Seattle-based Windermere Real Estate. "People are going to be attracted to a thriving job market, regardless of cost," he said. "The most important thing on many of their minds is to get a job." That's true for Fordham college senior Jack Murray, who accepted a job in the Bay Area earlier this year. San Francisco is home to about two out-of-state college graduates for every in-state one. "I'm worried about the cost of rent the most," said Murray, who will be working in the fashion industry. "As I've been looking for a place to live, it seems like there's both a smaller pool of options and you're getting less for your money than you would even in New York."

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College graduates may struggle to strike a balance between finding employment and keeping living costs low, said Gardner. "Higher real estate costs are likely to be in cities where job markets are very robust, and where housing costs are lower, the job markets are often not as strong," he said. Indeed, professional and personal development were the top factors Murray said he considered when choosing a job and place to live. "I know I won't be able to have as nice of an apartment as I would in a less expensive city to live in, but it is worth the trade-off to have a job I want," he said.
The financial structure of Malaysian state investment vehicle One Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) was unsustainable from the very start, according to a top government minister.

1MDB's design was an exception, not the norm, for Malaysian government-linked companies, Abdul Wahid Omar, Economic Planning Minister of Malaysia, told CNBC's "The Rundown" on Monday.

Rather than being listed like other firms, 1MBD, which was set up in 2009, was wholly owned by the Ministry of Finance, he said.

"The model that they took was low capitalization and huge borrowings, and I think as they found out, it wasn't a sustainable model. With that came debt realization, where the board has now embarked on a rationalization plan."

1MDB teetered on the verge of default in 2015 after racking up 42 billion ringgit ($11 billion) in debt in just five years. After missing various deadlines to repay loans to creditor banks, speculation was rife that the company wouldn't be able to service the rest of its obligations. Because the fund is wholly owned by the government, Prime Minister Najib Razak's administration is responsible in the case of a default. At the time, 1MDB was widely considered a serious liability risk for an economy whose finances were already under strained by the oil price crash. Crude oil-related income accounts for 30 percent of Malaysia's government revenues.

A debt rationalization program was launched in May 2015 to reduce 1MDB's burden by selling assets, and in November the beleaguered fund successfully sold its energy assets for $2.3 billion to a Chinese nuclear power supplier.

"The norm [in Malaysia] is successful transformation of the government-linked companies that we've embarked on," Abdul Wahid told CNBC.
Christine Lagarde Yuri Gripas | Reuters

Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, has hit back at Greece over claims that the IMF is seeking to push the country towards default, describing the idea as "nonsense".

In a terse letter to Alexis Tsipras, Greek prime minister, Ms Lagarde defended IMF staff who have found themselves at the centre of a furore over a leaked transcript of a teleconference where they discuss difficult bailout negotiations. Mr Tsipras has argued the leaked transcript of the mid-March call, which was published by WikiLeaks, raised the question of whether Athens can continue to deal with two officials on the call, Poul Thomsen, head of the IMF's European bureau, and Delia Valculescu, who oversees the Greek programme for the IMF. But Ms Lagarde said her team "consists of experienced staff who have my full confidence and personal backing".

Ms Lagarde falls short of accusing Athens of being responsible for spying on her officials, but she warns Mr Tsipras that "it is critical that your authorities ensure an environment that respects the privacy of their internal discussions".

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The row was prompted by comments recorded in the transcript where the IMF officials express frustration about the EU's slow progress in granting debt relief to Greece. They mention that eurozone governments have in the past left important decisions until the Greek government was on the point of bankruptcy. Greece has publicly interpreted the remarks as a plan by the IMF to prolong negotiations on whether to take part in eurozone's latest bailout of the country until July, when the Greek government is faced with its next big debt payment. The logic would be that the impending deadline would give the IMF more leverage, allowing it to extract concessions out of a reluctant Germany on the debt relief that the IMF believes is essential for Greece's long-term recovery. The episode prompted an emergency meeting of senior Greek ministers on Saturday, and led Mr Tsipras to write to Ms Lagarde the same day to express his "deep concerns". In his letter, he says that what is at stake is nothing less than "whether Greece can trust, and continue negotiating in good faith" with the IMF. Ms Lagarde, in her reply, warns that the Greek reaction to the transcript has itself damaged mutual trust. "This weekend's incident has made me concerned as to whether we can indeed achieve progress in a climate of extreme sensitivity to statements of either side," she writes. "On reflection, however, I have decided to allow our team to return to Athens to continue the discussions."
Billionaire investor William Ackman's Pershing Square fund lost 7.1 percent last month, hurt largely by Valeant Pharmaceuticals' roughly 60 percent tumble in March.

March's poor performance leaves Ackman's fund with a 25.6 percent loss for the year, a person familiar with its returns said on Friday. This marks a dramatic turnaround from Pershing Square's 40 percent gain in 2014.



Pershing Square owns a 9 percent stake in Valeant and the company's stock tumbled last month when it cut its financial forecasts and said it could face default if it fails to file its annual report by the end of April. Last week the company's chief executive officer agreed to step down and Ackman formally joined the board.
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Check out the companies making headlines after the bell Monday: Disney 's shares edged lower after an executive who was eyed as a potential CEO contender announced his departure. Thomas Staggs said he would leave his post as chief operating officer May 6, though he would remain in the company as special advisor to the CEO. Staggs was widely thought to be the successor to now-CEO Bob Iger, The New York Times reported. Iger will step down in about two years, Disney said in a statement, as the board expands its succession planning.

Tesla Motors shares dipped in extended trading Monday after the electric-car company reported fewer first-quarter deliveries than expected. The luxury car brand delivered 14,820 vehicles in the first quarter, below the 16,000 expected by Wall Street. The news came after the stock closed nearly 4 percent higher in regular trade amid blockbuster sign-ups for the newly unveiled Tesla Model 3. Shares of drugmaker Allergan tumbled after reports that new Treasury rules would affect Allergan's merger with Pfizer . The new rules would discourage U.S. companies from moving overseas for tax purposes, known as "inversions." The regulations could limit the financial benefits of the tie-up between New York-based Pfizer and Dublin-based Allergan, The Wall Street Journal reported.
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Air France will resume its direct ParisTehran flight after a gap of eight years following a thawing in relations between the West and the Islamic state. However, not everyone is pleased with the new three-times-a-week service. The announcement of the new route, which will start April 17 and was confirmed on the airline's website, was met by protests from female members of the Air France crew who are refusing to wear loose-fitting clothes and headscarves once they land in Iran, as requested by the airline in an internal memo.

Representatives of the Air France female crew say the order goes against French law and should be voluntary. Headscarves worn for religious purposes in France are banned in public places including schools and offices, and it is illegal to wear the full-face Muslim veil in public.



The secular country does not allow its citizens to wear any outwardly signs of religious symbols. This stems from a 1905 law separating church and state. The French air transport union SNPNC (National Syndicate of Air Transport Personnel) said on its website that obliging Air France female crew to wear loose-fitting clothes and a headscarf is a breach against women's rights and is asking the air carrier to make the wearing of a headscarf once crew lands in the country a voluntary measure, with no penalties to their jobs if they refuse. Air France told AFP that all air crew were "obliged like other foreign visitors to respect the laws of the countries to which they travelled". Air France crew already wear an abaya (a robe covering the body) when flying to Saudi Arabia.

A representative of the SNPNC union, Christophe Pillet, told the AFP that flight crews were prepared to wear headscarves in Iran when out of uniform, but objected to being ordered to wear them as part of their uniform. Another air transport personnel union, UNAC, wrote a letter to Laurence Rossignol, the minister of families, children and women's rights, supporting the outcry against the new regulation, which also included telling its female crew not to smoke in Iran. The order was allegedly not given to its male crew.


Amazon has stepped up its efforts in the online payments space by expanding the reach of its product as it looks to take on PayPal , the company announced at the Money 2020 fintech event in Copenhagen on Monday.

The U.S. e-commerce giant relaunched its payments business in 2013. It allows Amazon customers to pay for anything with their Amazon account on other websites. Merchants can use Amazon's solution to help their business.

Amazon is now extending the offering to merchant partners - third-party businesses hosting a shop on an e-commerce website. The idea is to help these businesses have a payment solution that can be integrated with their online store.

"The Amazon Payments Partner Program provides Partners with the tools and resources needed to extend the trust and convenience of the Amazon experience to their merchant customers," Patrick Gauthier, vice president of Amazon Payments, said in a press release on Monday.
Sean Gallup | Getty Images

The California Public Employees' Retirement System could put money back into tobacco stocks after exiting the sector more than five years ago. "CalPERS has been reviewing changes to its divestment policy as part of an ongoing investment office-wide project to revise all investment policies," spokesman Joe DeAnda said in an email to CNBC.



The nation's largest public pension fund with $290 billion in assets, CalPERS divested its tobacco holdings in 2000. In September 2015, Wilshire Associates completed a divestment analysis for CalPERS and found the value of excluding tobacco holdings through Dec. 31, 2014, was as high as $3.04 billion. It projected the annual impact of continuing to exclude tobacco holdings was $112.6 million in 1 in 5 years and $172.1 million in 1 in 20 years. "CalPERS regularly reviews its investment portfolio, and the proposed changes to the divestment policy would enable investment office staff and the board to better evaluate the impact of divested assets on the pension system," said the CalPERS spokesman. "The proposed changes speak generally to divestments and not to any particular divested category. No changes have been made to the existing divestment policy at this time and the board will continue this discussion during their April meetings."
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Any hope of a coordinated output freeze between leading oil producers and an end to the recent sharp swings in the commodity's price are likely to be dashed, one expert has told CNBC. "I think the prospect of a tangible production freeze (in April) is minimal. I think the fact that they're actually talking about one is a thing that the markets will jump on," Simon Fentham-Fletcher, CIO at Freedom Asset Management, told CNBC Monday. "Russia will not and has never held to any production freezes ever and I can't see it doing so now. The Saudis are in the same situation, they've been trying to grab market share and we have Iran coming back online, they were very unsure about the levels of the Iranian oil production," Fentham-Fletcher added. Leading OPEC and non-OPEC producers are expected to meet in Doha on April 17 to discuss a solution to oil's current supply glut. However recent comments made by leading OPEC members have suppressed many analysts' hopes of a potential cut or freeze this month.

Oil fluctuated on Monday, with prices coming under renewed pressure around 2 pm U.K. time, with Brent and US crude trading at $38.46 and $36.70 respectively. Prices have been volatile after oil minister Bijan Zanganeh, said Iran would continue increasing production and exports until it reached a favorable market position, similar to one seen before its sanctions period, according to reports. Remarks made by Saudi Arabia last week also weighed on investor sentiment, after it said it wouldn't join any efforts to fix current conditions, unless Iran was also on board, Reuters reported. Private banking group Julius Baer said on Monday that while talk about Doha grabs market attention, the prospect of orchestrated supply cuts remained "dim." "Most petro-nations are starving for cash and the incentives are set to produce more rather than less, not least as Iran returns to the market claiming its historic share of the export pie," Norbert Ruecker, head of commodity research at Julius Baer, said in a note.

For some, while Russia and Saudi Arabia remain influential, Iran's return to the international oil scene has become the key catalyst.

"(Iran) doesn't want to agree to any kind of limit (following its sanctions relief) and without that, it's hard to see others in the group feeling like a production freeze is really going to work," Richard Mallinson, geopolitical analyst at Energy Aspects, told CNBC Friday. "If they can get some kind of commitment out of Iran, or even if Iran is just not being overly unhelpful, maybe they do go ahead to try and give some positive messages to the market," Mallinson added.

Fentham-Fletcher, meanwhile, added that while sanctions were "definitely hurting" the Russian economy; the oil price remained the main influence, as many hope sanctions would ease off later this year.

"The saving grace for Russia is that in ruble terms the oil price decline isn't so extreme but we've seen oil rebound substantially since the lows of mid-February. However, oil in the mid-$30s is doing Russia no favors whatsoever. And indeed it's doing nobody any favors whatsoever." "FX reserves in the Middle East will run dry as quickly as the desert sand if it keeps on like this, so I expect in the medium term, I'd expect cost to rise back to the marginal cost, which is more in the $45 to $50 a barrel range."
While they have some power to shape economic policy, Donald Trump and other potential presidents could not prevent a U.S. recession on their own, Mohamed El-Erian said Monday.

"A president on his or her own is limited" in responding to an economic slowdown, the Allianz chief economic advisor told CNBC's "Fast Money."

At a campaign stop in Wisconsin on Monday, Trump suggested a "massive recession" would hit the U.S. if he is not elected. The business magnate and Republican presidential contender predicted an economic "mess" without his leadership.

"I'm going to straighten things out before it happens," he said.
Daley described Kaine as "somewhat moderate," but a "progressive on things" that would matter in the general election.

"I think Tim Kaine is a good prospect," Daley told " Squawk Box ," referring to the Virginia U.S. senator and former governor and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Bill Daley, commerce secretary under President Bill Clinton and ex-chief of staff to President Barack Obama, offered advice on CNBC Monday to Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton on picking a running mate.

"I know Al Franken's been mentioned" as a possible vice presidential option, Daley said. Franken, a U.S. senator from Minnesota, was a comedian who performed on and wrote for NBC's "Saturday Night Live."



"The truth is he's been a very serious senator since he's been there, in spite of the fact that when he got elected, people said, 'This is just a comedian,'" said Daley, currently head of U.S. operations at Swiss hedge fund Argentiere Capital.



But first things first. Clinton's next test in her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination comes Tuesday, when Wisconsin holds its primary. Clinton's rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, has had a recent run of strength, winning the last five contests.



"You have Sanders who's very popular amongst a large part of the Democratic base, and obviously is moving with an energy towards the end," Daley said. "This will continue into June. But I think there's no question Hillary is going to get the numbers needed to be nominated."



Daley said the voter "anger" that's given rise to Sanders and GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump is very "real."

"Whoever wins this election in the fall has got to respond ... [with] actual policies and not just rhetoric," Daley said, taking a veiled shot at Sanders and Trump who have energized the electorate with lofty policy promises that critics say would be tough to implement.
Microsoft has struck a deal with a group of leading banks to help develop blockchain-like technology, the U.S. technology giant said on Monday.

Blockchain is the technology that underlies the cryptocurrency bitcoin. It works like a huge, decentralized ledger for bitcoin which records every transaction and stores this information on a global network so it cannot be tampered with. Banks feel blockchain technology can be utilized in areas from remittances to securities exchanges.

Banks around the world are looking into the technology which could disrupt the processes carried out by lenders.


Wife Melania might be the love of Trump's life, but Sue seems to be his campaign's muse.

It seemed only appropriate that when Donald Trump came to Washington last month for a high-profile campaign strategy session, he did so in the offices of Jones Day, the mega-law firm.

"Most successful candidates usually keep their lawyers out of sight," said Randy Evans, an Atlanta attorney who chairs the Republican National Lawyers Association. "Trump is the first to move them front and center."



Evans and others note the conspicuous cable news presence of Trump's longtime corporate counsel, Michael Cohen, who has moonlighted as a regular surrogate since his boss announced his presidential bid. In an email to CNBC.com, Cohen dismissed the idea that his role was noteworthy or unusual. "To be noted, I am not part of the campaign and make that clear in every appearance," he told CNBC.com.



But political law veterans on both sides of the aisle insist Trump's bear hug of the legal profession flies in the face of the most elementary campaign wisdom. Moreover, his litigious rhetoric has confounded the traditional left-right paradigm over the issue of tort reform. After all, aren't trial lawyers supposed to be the tools?



"Trump looks more like poster child for tort reform than anything I have ever done," said Steve Mostyn, a Houston attorney and prominent Democratic mega-donor. "Anytime you have the leading candidate for a presidential nomination talking about expansion of litigation, you lose some of the demonizing [Republicans] have done.  He certainly is espousing a line that's contradictory."



This line  which includes a declaration of intent to open up the country's libel laws, if elected president  has horrified the right-leaning tort reform community. The American Tort Reform Association has called out Trump for being a "sore loser" who undermines the effort to "contain the plaintiff's bar." And legal scholars on the right insist that this, as much as anything, belies Trump's conservative identity.



"This places him in many respects with people on the left," said Roger Pilon, vice president of legal affairs at the Libertarian CATO Institute.



Trump's campaign did not respond to CNBC.com's repeated requests to clarify its position on tort reform, which has gone unmentioned in his stump speeches and is absent from his campaign website.



To be fair, Trump is not the only Republican who is flummoxing anti-litigation activists. Cruz has his own contradictory history: He has staunchly advocated for tort reform as a U.S. senator and Texas solicitor general but has also helped protect multimillion dollar plaintiff judgments while working as an appellate lawyer for a large firm in Houston. (Cruz's campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)
Wisconsin's patchwork recovery will have a major impact on the delegate math as Trump and rivals Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Gov. John Kasich vie for votes.

Unlike some states, Wisconsin's GOP primary rules apportion 24 of its 42 delegates from each of its eight congressional districts. (The winner of the statewide tally picks up the remaining 18 delegates.)

Those 42 delegates could prove crucial to Trump's success, in part, because they are more tightly committed at the national convention in Cleveland than delegates from some other states.

Going into Wisconsin, Trump has a 281 delegate lead over Cruz, 749 to 468; Kasich is trailing far behind at 143, according to NBC News. That means Trump has to win 54 percent of the remaining GOP delegates to get the 1,237 votes needed to win the nomination. (Cruz needs to win 85 percent of remaining delegates, according to NBC News.)

Much of Trump's support has come from voters responding to his appeal to bring back lost manufacturing jobs. But it remains to be seen whether that message wins him support in Wisconsin. Though manufacturing employment statewide is still below prerecession levels, the sector has steadily recovered since 2010.

With just days left before the Wisconsin vote, Trump was behind Cruz in most polls. But he predicted a win would make his campaign unstoppable.

"If we win Wisconsin, it's pretty much over," he told supporters at a rally in Janesville on Saturday.

A loss for Trump in Wisconsin, on the other hand, would give an ongoing "stop-Trump" effort by party leaders more time to gather strength before the next GOP primary, in Trump's home state of New York, on April 19.

"I think the whole country is looking to Wisconsin right now to make a choice in this race, and I think the choice Wisconsin makes is going to have repercussions for a long time to come," Cruz said Thursday in an interview with Milwaukee radio station WTMJ.

The Trump campaign has been hit with a series of setbacks that could further hurt his chances on Tuesday. Corey Lewandowski, Trump's campaign manager, was charged with battery last week for an altercation with a reporter. After proposing that women should be punished for getting abortions, Trump was forced to back track a comment that drew fire from both sides of the abortion debate.

Trump's recent interviews with several of Wisconsin's conservative talk radio hosts did not go well. On Tuesday, two-term Republican Gov. Scott Walker endorsed Cruz.

Trump's competitive campaign style may also be put to the test Tuesday.

There's a reason Wisconsin is often considered a "battleground" state. Much like its patchwork economy, the state is politically divided between conservatives and progressives.
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The massive anonymous leak of financial documents on Sunday has left political experts contemplating what it could mean for Russia ahead of elections this year.

A team of journalists from around the world published what they called the "Panama papers" on Sundaymore than 11.5 million encrypted internal documents from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm.

Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, is not named in the documents, but there are allegations of a billion-dollar money-laundering ring controlled by a Russian bank that has links to associates of the Russian leader. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), one of the teams that has been analyzing the data, told CNBC the papers show Putin's close aides were involved in a $2 billion money trail with offshore firms and banks.

'Friends earned millions'

"We've found a network of people around Vladimir Putin," ICIJ's Jake Bernstein told CNBC Monday.

"It's extraordinary, they are moving hundreds of millions of dollars at a time, they are taking money from a subsidiary, a Russian state bank, they are grabbing interests in major Russian companies and although we never see Vladimir Putin's name in the documents themselves, these are people who are very close to him," he added.

The U.K.'s Guardian newspaper - one of the publications that simultaneously published their findings on Sunday - added that Putin's "friends have earned millions from deals that seemingly could not have been secured without his patronage."

Vladimir Putin Yuri Kochetkov | Pool | Reuters

Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, did not immediately respond to CNBC when asked via email for a response. However, a response published in Russia's TASS news agency showed that he was disappointed by the lack of professionalism in the investigation. "Informational exercises against the president continue. We expected it, we announced it. These attacks continued. I admit that we expected more professional results of the work of this journalistic community," Peskov said, according to the TASS website. The Kremlin has also spoken of a smear campaign in recent months against Putin ahead of legislative elections in September and presidential elections in 2018, according to reports.

Embarrassing not damaging?

Timothy Ash, the head of emerging markets at Standard Bank, told CNBC via email that we wasn't sure the leak told us "anything we did not know already." Zach Witlin, an analyst at Eurasia Group, also doubted that it would lead to much pressure on the Russian leader as "part of Putin's power in Russia rests on his ability to always remain above the follies of any other official or associate." Chris Weafer, senior partner at Macro-Advisory, told CNBC via email that it was embarrassing for Putin rather than damaging.

"The story comes at a time when the government is tackling the worst recession in the country since Putin became president in early 2000 and he has been waging a campaign against waste and excessive spending by state officials while promoting the message that 'we are all in this together'," Weafer said. "The government has also been trying to tackle money-laundering with the so-called de-offshorization legislation which has had very little success so far."

Meanwhile, Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer warned that the revelations could threaten the stability of some regimes like Russia.

"Vladimir Putin is directly caught up in this," he told CNBC Monday, claiming that the $2 billion could be "a tiny fraction of how much the Kremlin has actually been laundering."

Russia, in particular, could respond aggressively, Bremmer added. Given that the ICIJ was partially funded by billionaire George Soros' Open Society Foundation, the Kremlin may wish to respond, he noted. "I feel fairly confident that the Kremlin will be going after the U.S., Soros, the CIA and this is going to make Russian policy towards the U.S. actually much more sharp and antagonistic," he said.

"That's the kind of thing authoritarian governments need to do to take forced transparency that makes them look bad at home, they have to gin up trouble with enemies abroad."
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The fight for market share challenges production control efforts from oil producers amid the global crude glut, according to a former BP executive. "People's objectives are very different and very difficult to reconcile," John Browne, L1 Energy executive chairman, told CNBC in a recent interview. "Production is high; people are scrambling, I think, to maintain the markets that they have and to gain markets from other people. Browne's comments come as oil producing countries are meeting later this month in efforts to curb excess production in the oil markets. He said, however, that he will be surprised if the OPEC/non-OPEC meeting mid- April proves to be pivotal for global oil production.

Meanwhile, Iran is reportedly ramping up its oil production with the goal of expanding market share that declined as a result of the previously imposed, but now-lifted sanctions. As a result, despite spearheading production freeze efforts, Saudi Arabia has dismissed pursuing its supply-control quest if Iran does not collaborate, according to Reuters. However, Iranians are skillful negotiators, Browne told "Power Lunch," so these conversations will take time, he said. "The Iranians are some of the very best negotiators that I've ever come across in my business career," he noted. Likening Iran to fellow cartel member Iraq, the expert says that Tehran will take longer to build up production than many expect. "There were plenty of aspirational discussions, and I think Iran is in the same category," he said on Monday. "Lots of aspirations; I think the reality will be lower than people expect." U.S. Oil shed nearly 3 percent on Monday, as futures settled at $35.70 a barrel. Brent crude futures were down 94 cents at $37.73 a barrel, having risen by at least 40 percent since mid-February.
Last year, as the Ebola epidemic appeared to be contained, Bill Gates warned, "There is a significant chance that an epidemic of a substantially more infectious disease will occur sometime in the next 20 years."

That same month, the spread of the Zika virus was linked to the harrowing increase in microcephaly among babies in Brazil  at a rate nearly 20 times greater than in previous years. The World Health Organization declared a public health emergency, but there were no anti-virals and no vaccines to battle the outbreak. The next epidemic was here, but we were no better prepared than we had been for Ebola.

The devastation imparted by the Zika virus, portrayed in the haunting images of babies with severe birth defects, is the latest example of the urgent need to better support medical research so we can respond effectively to new infectious diseases.
BINGHAMTON, N.Y.  A woman whose spouse grew up in Broome County will serve as the next president and CEO of the Greater Binghamton Chamber of Commerce.

Jennifer Conway, a graduate of Syracuse University, replaces Lou Santoni, who announced in December his plan to retire as chamber leader.

Conway will begin working with Santoni today until his retirement, and officially begins her duties as president and CEO on May 2, the Greater Binghamton Chamber said in a news release issued Friday.

The organization said it chose Conway following a three-month search that attracted more than 100 applicants.

The incoming CEO recently relocated to the Binghamton area with her family from Graham, Texas (about 100 miles west of the DallasFort Worth area).

Conway and her husband, Ryan Conway, relocated to Binghamton in December for his position as an attorney for the City of Binghamton. Ryan Conway was born and raised in Endicott.

Jennifer Conway was CEO of the Graham Chamber of Commerce and Convention & Visitors Bureau for the past three years.

She also worked as senior financial analyst for the nonprofit Kenneth Copeland Ministries in Fort Worth, Texas, according to her LinkedIn page.

Conway is a 2005 graduate of SUs Martin J. Whitman School of Management, earning a bachelors degree in accounting and business/management.

I am thankful to be in a position as the president and CEO of the Greater Binghamton Chamber of Commerce to work alongside the people and businesses of this community to make the Greater Binghamton area a vibrant place to live, visit and do business in New York state Conway said in the chamber news release.

Texas accomplishments

During Conways time in Texas, she increased the Graham Chambers revenue more than 50 percent and increased membership more than 20 percent, the Greater Binghamton Chamber said.

She also worked to bring the communitys chamber, convention and visitors bureau, and Main Street program under one director.

Under that partnership, Conway raised funding to build a new visitor and business center for the community.

The facility now houses the Graham Chamber of Commerce and Convention & Visitors Bureau and economic development office. The communitys city council also meets there as well, according to the news release.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com
MARCY, N.Y.  The newly approved New York state budget includes $585 million for the nanocenter site in Marcy.

The allocation further solidifies the states investment in the Mohawk Valleys future as a center of nanotechnology, New York State Senator Joseph Griffo (RRome) and State Assemblyman Anthony Brindisi (DUtica) contended in a news release issued Friday.

Its the location where Austrianbased company ams AG is investing $2 billion to develop a three-story, 360,000-square-foot chip-wafer fabrication facility near the SUNY Polytechnic Institute (SUNY Poly) campus.

The firm is bringing 1,000 new jobs to the Nano Utica site in Marcy.

The firm makes high performance sensor products and analog integrated circuits (or ICs).

General Electric (GE) Global Research will also expand its New York operations to the Mohawk Valley.

GE Global Research will be the anchor tenant of the computer-chip commercialization center (Quad-C) at SUNY Polytechnic Institutes Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) in Marcy.

New York expects SUNY Poly, GE, and affiliated corporations to create nearly 500 jobs in the Mohawk Valley in the next five years and another 350 positions in the subsequent five years as well.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Aug. 20, 2015 made both jobs announcements during a visit to the Quad-C building as part of the Capital for a Day initiative in Utica.

As both companies proceed with their construction projects this year, Senator Griffo and Assemblyman Brindisi agreed that New Yorks willingness to complement these private investments with state funding will help the ams AG project become a reality much sooner.

The funding commitment represents the reaffirmation of New Yorks commitment to the ams AG project at the Marcy Nanocenter site that was Gov. Cuomo announced last year, Steve DiMeo, president of Mohawk Valley EDGE, said in the lawmakers news release:

The earthwork that is underway will soon be transformed as construction begins on AMS high-performance, wafer-fabrication facility that will overlook the Mohawk Valley and be an important part of the regions skyline and economic landscape, and represents the beginning of our economic transformation. We look forward to having AMS and GE become a valuable part of our regions economy to create opportunities for attracting additional technology companies to our region, said DiMeo.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com
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Three takeways from Missouri's game against Vanderbilt

Missouri football took on Vanderbilt for its homecoming game on Saturday. Here's what to know from the game.
Best of Business 2022: Learn Who Won Our 15th Annual Reader Poll

Local professionals chose their favorite business and professional services, products, healthcare, dining and more. Find out who their top picks are.
April 4, 2016 - Rogelio Olvera (left) and Pedro Florzarco measure soil as infrastructure work takes place on the site of future Habitat for Humanity construction north of Chelsea on Third Street. First Tennessee has created a $50 million Community Development Fund, which will award $3 million in grants each year to organizations serving low-to-moderate-income families and neighborhoods. The Habitat site is among the first grants and has been awarded $150,000 this year. (Mike Brown/The Commercial Appeal)

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By Thomas Bailey Jr. of The Commercial Appeal

First Tennessee has created a $50 million Community Development Fund, from which the bank will award $3 million a year to organizations serving low- to moderate-income people and neighborhoods.

The Memphis-based bank this week is announcing its first grant awards from its new fund, some of which include $150,000 for a Habitat for Humanity construction project this summer in Uptown, $100,000 for the Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association (MIFA), and $100,000 for United Housing, which promotes home ownership.

But the bank will spread the annual grants among its entire region, including Chattanooga; Knoxville; Nashville; Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Charleston, South Carolina; and Richmond, Virginia.

"Our goal is to provide financial empowerment tools and support our low- and moderate-income neighbors and neighborhoods so the entire community grows stronger together," Bryan Jordan said in a written statement. He is chairman and chief executive officer of the bank's parent company, First Horizon National Corp.

"When all segments of our communities are strong, First Tennessee Bank will be more successful.''

The Community Development Fund is in addition to First Tennessee's existing First Tennessee Foundation grants totaling $5 million a year, said Dondi Black, the bank's community development manager. "The foundation's giving is slightly different,'' she said.

The foundation grants award money exclusively to nonprofit organizations, including for cultural causes like the arts. The new Community Development Fund will give money both to nonprofit as well as to for-profit organizations which are leading projects that promote efforts like financial literacy, affordable housing or down-payment help to low- and moderate-income home-buyers.

United Housing will use its $100,000 grant for its mission to provide prospective home buyers with information and financial counseling, and for its program offering home-improvement loans of up to $15,000 at a 1.5 percent interest rate, said Tim Bolding, the agency's executive director.

The First Tennessee grant, he said, "is really important to what we're trying to do.''

Many nonprofit organizations are "running real thin and looking at difficulties making ends meet'' since the Great Recession, Bolding said. "So when you come in with support like this, it's a big deal.''

First Tennessee has created an advisory board to give strategic direction to the new fund. Members are: Ruby Bright, executive director of the Woman's Foundation for a Greater Memphis; John Hope Bryant, chairman of Operation HOPE; Erik Cole, director of the Mayor's Office of Economic Opportunity and Empowerment in Nashville; Scott Pierce Ledbetter Jr., CEO for LEDIC Management Group in Memphis; and Alvin Nance, CEO of development and property management, Lawler Wood Housing Partners in Knoxville.

For more information about the grants, contact Black at (901) 681-2351 or at DYBlack@FirstTennessee.com.
By Yolanda Jones of The Commercial Appeal

A former Memphis Police officer accused of stalking his ex-girlfriend is back in jail for a third time after he was arrested on a warrant out of Southaven.

Joshua Barnes , 28, was arrested Sunday and booked in the Shelby County Jail as a fugitive from justice on a warrant from Southaven Police.

Southaven Police referred all questions about the warrant to the citys attorney.

This is the third time Barnes has been arrested in recent months. In January and February, he was charged with aggravated stalking, violating bail conditions, vandalism, violating an order of protection and contempt of court, in connection with stalking of his former girlfriend.

He is due in court on these charges April 19.

Barnes resigned from the Memphis police department on Jan. 15. He had been with MPD since January 2009.
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By Jody Callahan of The Commercial Appeal

Two men who knew each other opened fire in Byhalia, Mississippi, a few miles south of Collierville early Sunday morning. One was killed; the other was critically wounded.

The incident happened around 2:30 a.m. at the Broadmoor apartments, Byhalia Police Det. Kerry Reid said. Quintin Sanders and Cory Howard, both 23, started arguing, but it quickly escalated to gunplay, Reid said.

Sanders was taken to a hospital in Olive Branch, but later died, Reid said. Howard was flown to the Regional Medical Center in Memphis, and was recovering Sunday night after surgery. Reid said it had not been determined whether Howard would face any charges.
November 28, 2012 - A SkyCop camera similar to ones being considered in Memphis is demonstrated in Southaven. With a 20 foot mast the mobile surveillance system provides a live feed to police dispatch. (Stan Carroll/The Commercial Appeal)

By Ryan Poe of The Commercial Appeal

Facing a shortage of boots on the ground, Memphis police could get 70 additional eyes in the skies.

Memphis City Council members will discuss a resolution today that calls for police to buy 70 additional mobile camera surveillance systems, known as SkyCops, for $450,000, said council member Philip Spinosa Jr., who is sponsoring the resolution.

The SkyCops will be equally divided among the seven single-member council districts, but the citys data-driven policing program, Blue CRUSH (Crime Reduction Utilizing Statistical History), will decide which neighborhoods get the systems.

The additional surveillance systems could help reduce crime as City Council and Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland look for ways to curb the citys violent crime rate  which is higher per capita than some other large cities, including Chicago  despite a shortage of more than 400 police officers.

This will help people take their neighborhoods back, Spinosa said.

Spinosa said he began looking into the possibility of buying more SkyCops  which police have used since 2007  after the affluent Belle Meade neighborhood raised the $131,970 needed to buy and install its own police-monitored system earlier this year after a rash of break-ins.

At the time, council members said they were interested in a program that would also bring the SkyCops, which cost about $6,000 to $8,000 each, to less affluent neighborhoods.

Police will buy the SkyCops without requesting an increase in the departments current fiscal year budget, Spinosa said, though the funding source has not been finalized. He said the city may tap its red light cameras revenue fund, half of which is set aside for in-car cameras and GPS systems, and/or SkyCops. The current fiscal year budget anticipates $3.67 million in revenue from the red light cameras, or $1.76 million for police in-car cameras, GPS or SkyCops.

Spinosa said Strickland, Shelby County District Attorney Amy Weirich and Police Interim Director Mike Rallings all support the plan.

The SkyCops pole-mounted cameras capture videos from up to several thousand feet away in a 360-degree radius, and send the video to polices Real Time Crime Center  a technology hub where analysts monitor videos from across the city.

A police spokesman said the city operates 545 cameras, but it was not clear Monday how many of those were SkyCop cameras.

SkyCop was originally part of Memphis-based ESI Companies, but ESI spun off the company in 2014, according to SkyCops website.

Noah Gray, executive director of Binghampton Development Corporation, said the area including Tillman police station has nine SkyCops, and could use more. He said the systems have led to arrests and to police closing an alleged drug house on Carpenter.

The cameras on Carpenter played an integral role in (a reduction in crime), and the neighborhood feels safer as a result, he said.

Kristen Schebler, executive director of the Cooper-Young Community Association, said Cooper-Youngs neighborhood watch ruled out getting SkyCops because of the cost. Instead, the neighborhood applied for six Neighborhood Watch grants to buy cameras they could put on private property to monitor public areas.

Itll be great that the city puts SkyCops into higher-crime areas, and well be able to supplement that with our own cameras, she said.

She said the grants were supposed to be awarded recently, but the program was put on hold as Neighborhood Watch is moved under police as part of Stricklands ongoing reorganization of city government.

She said the city should continue to help residents watch over their neighborhoods.

We hear from the police all the time that cameras are one of the best ways to catch people after a crime, she said.
Charles Nicholas/The Commercial Appeal files Marine Pfc Edward X. Susalla was standing in an airline ticket office in The Peabody on April 2, 1954, when his mother and sister walked up behind him. The dark-haired marine had planned to fly home to St. Clair Shores, Michigan, for his first auto, an 18th birthday present. Mrs. M.V. Susalla and 11-year-old Theresa gave their hero a dramatic surprise by driving down in the auto. Private Susalla fell immediately in love with the birthday present. After a quick inspection, the young marine pushed a button that lowered the top. Rubbing his hands gleefully, he uttered "Boy, oh boy," before the top came back up and the happy threesome drove away.

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April 4

25 years ago: 1991

The Hackett administration is negotiating changes in a deal that would give Pace Management Co., co-owned by Sidney Shlenker, control of the Mud Island amphitheater for the next decade. Mayor Dick Hackett said Wednesday his staff was still working on some aspects of the proposed deal, which involves Shlenker as operator of the city-owned Mud Island and Pace Management Co., which is 44 percent owned by Shlenker. In exchange for the 10-year contract, Pace would provide funds to guarantee that the park complex on Mud Island will be open this season. The guarantee would help Shlenker's Memphis company, The Pyramid Companies, fulfill its city contract to operate the island.

50 years ago: 1966

The Memphis Rotary Club's program promoting a deeper respect for law and order in the community was praised last night by the governor of Rotary District 680, which yesterday opened its three-day annual meeting here. "Many persons are attacking the police, but the Memphis club is trying to show the other side. This is certainly in keeping with the ideals of Rotary," said Hugh N. Clayton of New Albany, Miss. More than 400 members from 36 Rotary clubs in Shelby County and North Mississippi are expected to attend the conference.

75 years ago: 1941

Solution of the mysterious poisoned milk murder 35 days ago of Walter Lewis Samples was claimed last night by police with the arrest and subsequent confession to the crime of L.R. House, former Memphis trucking company executive. Inspector M.A. Hinds has headed the investigation.

100 years ago: 1916

Chancellor T.H. Heiskell yesterday dismissed the state's suit to oust Sheriff J.A. Riechman from office. The chancellor held that the facts warranted removal but that the sheriff did not have the duty of enforcing the law. The state will appeal.

125 years ago: 1891

"Broad Church," the able turf writer for the Spirit of the Times, says Memphis will have the greatest race meeting this spring ever held in the South, and he ought to know.
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By Daniel Connolly of The Commercial Appeal

A former Collierville firefighter has filed a federal lawsuit against the town, alleging he lost his job for raising concerns that then-chief Jerry Crawford discriminated in favor of people with ties to Fayette County, where he has long lived.

William L. Boone filed the suit on March 25. He's seeking back pay and other money damages, but wrote in the suit that a return to his job isn't feasible. Reached Monday, Boone said he'd need to check with his attorney before commenting.

Crawford, who now works as Fayette County fire chief, denied that during his time as leader of the Collierville department he discriminated in favor of people from the nearby county. Town Administrator James Lewellen likewise said the suit is not valid. "Our version of the story is completely different from what you read in the suit," Lewellen said, adding attorneys wouldn't want him to provide more detail. The town hasn't filed a formal response to the lawsuit.

Boone's lawsuit says he worked for the town as a firefighter beginning in 1984 and that in 2014, he and other firefighters began to believe that Crawford and others were showing favoritism in personnel and employment decisions toward people who lived in Fayette County. The former chief is a longtime resident of Fayette County, which borders Shelby County to the east.

The suit says Boone brought his complaints to aldermen Tom Allen and Billy Patton.

In early 2015, firefighters' complaints were discussed in public meetings. Allen said more than a dozen firefighters had approached him about low morale in the department. Mayor Stan Joyner said he heard similar complaints. Lewellen said at the time he'd look into the issue.

The lawsuit says that in February, 2015, Boone met with Lewellen, and repeated his concerns about discrimination in favor of residents of Fayette County.

Also in February, the Board of Mayor and Aldermen voted 4-1 to support the fire chief. Patton cast the only "no" vote, Allen saying at the time he realized he would be in the minority and that a vote of support should be unanimous.

Boone's lawsuit says that in March 2015, he was given a letter stating he violated town policies, including "providing false testimony in an official investigation." He was terminated the same month.

In the lawsuit, Boone says the termination violated his First Amendment rights. "Mr. Boone's free speech right to speak out about those issues outweighed any interest of the Town of Collierville in suppressing that speech," wrote his attorney, Donald A. Donati.

Crawford retired from the fire department at the end of February and went to work as Fayette County's fire chief.

The former chief says an investigation by Collierville disproved the allegation he discriminated in favor of people from Fayette County. He said the department hired the best candidates who lived within the 30-mile radius required by the town. "I showed no favoritism to anyone, from North Mississippi, Shelby County, Tipton County. If they came in the 30-mile radius and they were chosen by the committees as the top candidates, that's the ones that we hired."

The former fire chief said he terminated Boone at the direction of the human resources director, though he didn't know the specific reason because he was not involved in the investigation.

Another firefighter terminated in March 2015, Lt. Andy Rice, said Tuesday he filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He declined comment until consulting his attorney. Details about the case weren't immediately available.

Staff reporter Jennifer Pignolet contributed to this story.
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By Ron Maxey of The Commercial Appeal

Mississippi is the signature of a seemingly sympathetic governor away from enacting one of the most sweeping "religious liberty" bills in the nation.

Another story discusses the measure, House Bill 1523, in greater detail. In this space, suffice it to say the Mississippi bill and similar proposals in other states speak to the deepest fears, both real and imagined, of those on both sides.

For supporters, it's a bulwark against the steady erosion of values they see as a threat to their personal liberties and the nation's well-being. For critics, it's little more than a remake of past discriminatory legislation designed to take  not preserve  liberties from those who aren't in the majority.

It's not my place to decide which point of view is closer to the truth, but I will offer this:

Laws that play on fear and misperception to the extent this measure does seldom seem to have long-term benefits, and usually are rife with short-term consequences.

We'll see what those consequences might be, assuming Gov. Phil Bryant decides to sign the measure into law.

A learning moment

Hernando Mayor Chip Johnson found himself at the center of an embarrassing controversy last week when a nude photo of him emerged.

Johnson, who is going through a divorce, said the selfie photo was intended as a private exchange between himself and a Little Rock, Arkansas, woman he had been seeing. The woman, who has declined to speak about her motives, decided to share the photo, which Johnson said he never intended.

The photo showed up on social media, and apparently was sent to at least some of the city's aldermen, though those who could be reached declined to comment.

"I had a private indiscretion with an adult woman who decided to make it public," Johnson said after the photo emerged, adding that he hope it doesn't reflect on the city and that it has no bearing on his abilities as mayor.

Johnson has been mayor since 2005. The mayor's salary is just under $70,000 a year, according to a Mississippi Municipal League salary survey.

Johnson said he may be talking to a lawyer about the matter. As for possible political repercussions, it remains to be seen if there will be any as the result of an incident that has been the talk of the town in Hernando and fodder for media outlets and bloggers nationwide.

Regardless, the case serves as yet another reminder of a lesson everyone should have learned by now in the modern online world: If you'd have any reservations whatsoever about the whole world seeing something, and you have a choice, don't do it.

Election law update

The state moved a step closer to election law reform last week as the Senate approved several bills sent from the House.

One bill would make numerous technical updates in Mississippi election laws, such as implementing a certified training program for poll managers and reducing the number of paper ballots that would have to be printed. Another would allow voters to change their voter registration information through a secure website, and a third bill would strengthen criminal penalties for violating election laws.

"Not in recent memory has any such massive election or voting legislation passed with unanimous support," Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann said.

One change proposed by Hosemann that was ditched was moving the state's presidential primary to the first Tuesday in March to coincide with neighboring states. It will remain a week later, on the second Tuesday.

Kindergarten registration

Parents of children entering kindergarten this year in DeSoto County public schools, or first-graders not already enrolled in the system, take note.

Registration will be from 7 a.m. until 6 p.m. today at the school the child will attend. Alternately, parents may enroll their children at the school system's central office in Hernando Tuesday through April 30. Hours for central office registration are 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. Thursday hours will be 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Required documents for registration include a certified birth certificate, a certificate of immunization, a Social Security card and two proofs of residency. Proofs can include mortgage or lease papers and a recent utility bill or auto registration.
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By Arthur Cyr

Democratic presidential contender Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont delivered a rousing campaign address at Carthage College in Kenosha last week, underscoring both his radical reform message, and the importance of the Wisconsin primary Tuesday.

He was introduced by local state Sen. Bob Wirch, a labor union veteran and Democratic Party stalwart. His policy address was frequently interrupted by powerful applause. Much of his remarks addressed economic concerns, including in particular the income divide between the very richest and the rest of the population.

Inequality was described as greater than at any time since 1928. He cited dramatic contrasts between rich and poor, including the point that the richest 20 people  people, not percent  in the U.S. have as much wealth as the entire bottom half of our nation's population.

The senator attacked a "rigged economy," where powerful financial and industrial interests dominate the system. He singled out the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, which has ended any restrictions on political campaign funding by corporations, unions and other interests.

References to Hillary Clinton were generally cast in economic policy terms. They included the point that she has received honoraria of $225,000 per speech by Wall Street groups. He urged that the transcripts of those speeches be released.

The Clinton campaign has fundraising super PACs while the Sanders campaign has none. Sanders received 6 million contributions over the past 11 months, at an average amount of $27.

Sanders touched on a range of additional reform topics. They include "Medicare for all," equality regarding gender and race, and free university tuition. He contrasted his vote against invading Iraq in 2003 with support for the war by then-Sen. Clinton.

The Wisconsin presidential primary historically has often been a good indicator of success in securing the party nomination. In 1960, Sen. John F. Kennedy emphasized the state. Wisconsin victory, followed by another big win in West Virginia, gave JFK clear frontrunner status. In 2004, Sen. John Kerry received a boost from Wisconsin and went on to secure the Democratic presidential nomination. In 2008, Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama were nominated following Wisconsin wins.

Republican presidential candidate Dwight Eisenhower achieved an enormous gain through winning the 1952 Wisconsin primary. Ike's great popularity often obscures the fact that initially he faced an uphill battle to secure the nomination from Sen. Robert Taft.

Defeat in Wisconsin, or fear of defeat there, has also significantly influenced presidential politics. Wendell Willkie, the Republican nominee who ran against President Franklin Roosevelt in 1940, had similar aspirations in 1944  until his defeat in Wisconsin. President Lyndon Johnson, following a relatively poor showing in the New Hampshire primary against insurgent Sen. Eugene McCarthy, decided to withdraw from the campaign and retire from the White House after polls indicated certain defeat in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin early in the 20th century established the first mandatory presidential primary, and one of the very first in the nation. Since then, primaries have become pervasive, yet Wisconsin continues to play often distinctive roles in the nomination process.

According to the Marquette Law School Poll, Sanders leads Clinton narrowly in Wisconsin going into Tuesday's primary.

Arthur Cyr is Clausen Distinguished Professor at Carthage College. Contact him at acyr@carthage.edu.
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By Mike Moore

Here's a life-or-death issue that has not been touched upon, much less explored, during this presidential campaign season: The president of the United States and the president of Russia have the theoretical power to destroy modern civilization, albeit by "mistake." We tend to forget that.

Hardly anyone these days talks about nuclear weapons, unless the names of China, North Korea, Iran, Israel, India or Pakistan are in the subject line. In the nuclear-weapons world, though, those nations are located deep in the minor leagues. They don't play in the big league with the U.S. and Russia.

Russia has about 7,000 nuclear weapons, "tactical" and "strategic," in various states of readiness. Does that surprise you  25 years or so after the end of the Cold War? The United States has a similar assortment of about 7,000 weapons. About 1,700 or so U.S. weapons are preprogrammed to hit Russian targets. Russia has about the same number targeted at us.

By treaty, U.S. and Russian nuclear forces are roughly balanced. Neither side wants a nuclear war. We exchange nuclear-weapon info, and we are parties to the Open Skies Treaty, which gives each of us the right to fly over the other nation's nuclear weapons sites. Observation flights and the exchange of information build confidence.

Yet, a collective arsenal of 14,000 nukes is a little worrisome, isn't it? Consider that it takes only a few hundred nuclear warheads at most to effectively destroy a nation's infrastructure and kill hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps millions. And consider that the U.S. and Russia could each fire several hundred nuclear-tipped missiles within minutes if a valid "launch" order were issued.

Presidential candidates like to say that "the first job of the American president is to keep our country safe." But no candidate has related that assertion to the hundreds of nuclear weapons on ready alert. The "keep us safe" trope focuses on preventing acts of domestic terrorism.

Don't misunderstand. It is necessary to prevent acts of terrorism. But I suggest that the ultimate act of terrorism would be mushroom clouds and firestorms springing up across our land during a few hours of nuclear madness. An improbable scenario, yes. But it could conceivably happen if things got seriously out of hand.

Dwight Eisenhower knew the horrors of war better than any modern president. He focused considerable presidential energy on trying to work with Nikita Khrushchev to ratchet down the Cold War and the possibility of instant annihilation. He did this at a time when some of our nation's top military brass argued the virtues of pre-emptive war with the Soviets.

President John Kennedy, in contrast, was something of a pugnacious Cold Warrior. His defense secretary, Robert McNamara, even endorsed the idea of putting multiple warheads on a large number of intercontinental ballistic missiles, thus making the Cold War even more dangerous.

Ronald Reagan had some outlandish ideas, particularly "Star Wars," his idea for a space-based anti-missile system. But to his credit, he (and then President George H.W. Bush) worked with Mikhail Gorbachev to bring the Cold War to an end, which greatly dialed down nuclear tensions.

In recent years, the Obama administration has embarked on a program of modernizing our nuclear weapons infrastructure, a venture that will cost hundreds of billions of dollars over the coming decade.

At a minimum, the next occupant of the White House must possess a keen, thoughtful and analytical mind. He or she must be well-versed in history and world affairs. Most important, the American president must be capable of keeping his or her head during a fast-moving East-West crisis, when others are losing theirs.

The president, as commander in chief, has the sole authority to launch nuclear weapons, if he or she thinks it urgently necessary during an intense crisis  the sort of crisis that raises our nukes to their highest alert status. After all, the "fly time" of a Russian missile over the North Pole would be about 30 minutes, which is hardly enough time to consult Congress.

Admittedly, it is very hard to imagine an East-West crisis of such magnitude. U.S.-Russian relations would have to fall to new depths for such a crisis to be conceivable. And yet, the only predictable thing about the future is that it is unpredictable.

Putin is something of a chest-thumper. The two leading GOP candidates, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, are also chest-thumpers. Given that, it is not difficult to imagine a scenario in which the world's two leading nuclear weapon states are led by presidents who lack the temperament to handle a rapidly deteriorating confrontation.

In October 1962, Kennedy rose to the challenge during the Cuban missile crisis when many of his top aides and military officers were ready to risk nuclear war with the Soviet Union. But Kennedy had days to work things out. Today, in a worst-case scenario, a president might have hours or minutes to determine the fate of the United States and Russia.

That's a reality that we need to consider when we finally enter the voting booth in November.

Mike Moore retired as editor of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 2000 and is the author of "Twilight War: The Folly of U.S. Space Dominance." He wrote this for the Chicago Tribune.
Select Commodity All Ajwan Alasande Gram Almond(Badam) Alsandikai Amaranthus Ambada Seed Amla(Nelli Kai) Amphophalus Antawala Anthorium Apple Apricot(Jardalu/Khumani) Arecanut(Betelnut/Supari) Arecanut(Betelnut/Supari) Arhar (Tur/Red Gram)(Whole) Arhar (Tur/Red Gram)(Whole) Arhar Dal(Tur Dal) Ashgourd Astera Avare Dal Bajra(Pearl Millet/Cumbu) Bajra(Pearl Millet/Cumbu) Balekai Bamboo Banana Banana - Green Barley (Jau) Bay leaf (Tejpatta) Beans Beaten Rice Beetroot Bengal Gram Dal (Chana Dal) Bengal Gram(Gram)(Whole) Ber(Zizyphus/Borehannu) Ber(Zizyphus/Borehannu) Betal Leaves Bhindi(Ladies Finger) Bitter gourd Black Gram (Urd Beans)(Whole) Black Gram Dal (Urd Dal) Black pepper BOP Bottle gourd Bran Brinjal Broken Rice Broomstick(Flower Broom) Bull Bunch Beans Cabbage Calf Capsicum Cardamoms Carnation Carrot Cashewnuts Castor Seed Cauliflower Chapparad Avare Chennangi Dal Cherry Chikoos(Sapota) Chili Red Chilly Capsicum Chow Chow Chrysanthemum Chrysanthemum(Loose) Cinamon(Dalchini) Cloves Cluster beans Cock Cocoa Coconut Coconut Oil Coconut Seed Coffee Colacasia Copra Coriander(Leaves) Corriander seed Cotton Cotton Seed Cow Cowpea (Lobia/Karamani) Cowpea (Lobia/Karamani) Cowpea(Veg) Cucumbar(Kheera) Cummin Seed(Jeera) Custard Apple (Sharifa) Dalda Dhaincha Drumstick Dry Chillies Dry Fodder Dry Grapes Duck Duster Beans Egg Elephant Yam (Suran) Field Pea Firewood Fish Foxtail Millet(Navane) French Beans (Frasbean) Galgal(Lemon) Garlic Ghee Gingelly Oil Ginger(Dry) Ginger(Green) Gladiolus Cut Flower Goat Gram Raw(Chholia) Gramflour Grapes Green Avare (W) Green Chilli Green Fodder Green Gram (Moong)(Whole) Green Gram Dal (Moong Dal) Green Peas Ground Nut Oil Ground Nut Seed Groundnut Groundnut (Split) Groundnut pods (raw) Guar Guar Seed(Cluster Beans Seed) Guava Gur(Jaggery) He Buffalo Hen Hippe Seed Honge seed Hybrid Cumbu Indian Beans (Seam) Indian Colza(Sarson) Isabgul (Psyllium) Jack Fruit Jaffri Jamun(Narale Hannu) Jarbara Jasmine Jowar(Sorghum) Jute Kabuli Chana(Chickpeas-White) Kacholam Kakada Kankambra Karamani Karbuja(Musk Melon) Kartali (Kantola) Khoya Kinnow Knool Khol Kodo Millet(Varagu) Kulthi(Horse Gram) Lak(Teora) Leafy Vegetable Lemon Lentil (Masur)(Whole) Lilly Lime Linseed Lint Litchi Little gourd (Kundru) Long Melon(Kakri) Lotus Lotus Sticks Lukad Mahedi Mahua Mahua Seed(Hippe seed) Maida Atta Maize Mango Mango (Raw-Ripe) Marasebu Marget Marigold(Calcutta) Marigold(loose) Mashrooms Masur Dal Mataki Methi Seeds Methi(Leaves) Millets Mint(Pudina) Moath Dal Mousambi(Sweet Lime) Mustard Mustard Oil Myrobolan(Harad) Neem Seed Niger Seed (Ramtil) Nutmeg Onion Onion Green Orange Orchid Ox Paddy(Dhan)(Basmati) Paddy(Dhan)(Common) Papaya Papaya (Raw) Patti Calcutta Peach Pear(Marasebu) Peas cod Peas Wet Peas(Dry) Pegeon Pea (Arhar Fali) Pepper garbled Pepper ungarbled Persimon(Japani Fal) Pigs Pineapple Plum Pointed gourd (Parval) Pomegranate Potato Pumpkin Raddish Ragi (Finger Millet) Raibel Rajgir Ram Rat Tail Radish (Mogari) Raya Resinwood Rice Ridge gourd(Tori) Ridgeguard(Tori) Rose(Local) Rose(Loose) Rose(Loose)) Round gourd Rubber Sabu Dan Sabu Dana Safflower Sajje Same/Savi Season Leaves Seemebadnekai Seetafal Seetapal Sesamum(Sesame,Gingelly,Til) Sesamum(Sesame,Gingelly,Til) She Buffalo She Goat Sheep Snake gourd Snakeguard Soanf Soapnut(Antawala/Retha) Soapnut(Antawala/Retha) Soji Soyabean Spinach Sponge gourd Squash(Chappal Kadoo) Sugar Sugarcane Sunflower Sunhemp Suram Surat Beans (Papadi) Suva (Dill Seed) Suvarna Gadde Sweet Potato Sweet Pumpkin T.V. Cumbu T.V. Cumbu Tamarind Fruit Tamarind Seed Tapioca Taramira Tender Coconut Thinai (Italian Millet) Thogrikai Thondekai Tinda Tobacco Tomato Toria Tube Rose(Double) Tube Rose(Loose) Tube Rose(Single) Turmeric Turmeric (raw) Turnip Walnut Water Melon Wheat Wheat Atta White Peas White Pumpkin Wood Yam Yam (Ratalu)

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Ruth Davidson has launched a fresh attack on Named Persons, a controversial initiative by the Scottish Government to reform how the state monitors and protects children.

The Financial Times quotes her as saying: This is a dangerous and sweeping law, which will see sensitive information being gathered in a database, and accessed without parents knowledge or consent.

Under the new law, a single figure  usually a teacher or health visitor who already has a relationship with the child, according to Barnardos  will be responsible for collating information about a specific child from across a range of public services.

Opponents claim that the appointment of this individual represents an unprecedented expansion of the states role in the lives of Scotlands children and undermines parents. Some critics also claim that it will direct resources away from the small number of cases where intervention is genuinely needed.

Despite the scale of the backlash  polling shows 48 per cent of Scots oppose Named Persons, and Scottish Labour has retreated from its previous, full-throated support  the row over Named Persons is unlikely to put much of a dent in what all evidence suggests will be an SNP landslide in next months election.

It may however help to rally more voters to the Scottish Conservatives, who have proved amongst the policys most resolute opponents.

Over the long term though, this policy fits into a broader pattern which reveals the SNP to be perhaps one of the most authoritarian, and certainly the most centralising, parties in British politics.

John Swinney, their Finance Minister, has used a years-long freeze in council tax to make local government increasingly dependent on Scottish Government funds. The Party also merged Scotlands regional polices forces into one, the new, centrally-controlled , and terribly-named Police Scotland.

Meanwhile, Nationalist plans for university reform amounted to turning them into public bodies, and at one point their charitable status might have been under threat.

Beyond policy, the SNP casts something of a shadow beyond the political sphere, with academics and businesses alike have attested to how difficult it can be to speak out against the Nationalists.

Internally, the Party actually makes all its elected representatives pledge never to criticise it in public. This lack of self-critical voices exacerbates the negatives of Scotlands current political imbalance and undermines the Scottish Parliaments committee system.

It also accounts for the phalanx-like behaviour of the SNPs 54 Westminster representatives.

All of this is perfectly understandable. Unlike Labour or the Conservatives, which are long-standing coalitions concerned with the long-term governance of the status quo, the SNP is at heart a single-issue phenomenon.

Post-2014 it is a huge but ungainly alliance of nationalist true believers, very left-wing voters, and Tartan Tories whose primary political motivation was keeping Scottish Labour out.

Much of the coalition behind the SNPs dominance is united by little but support for independence. It therefore suits the leadership to forestall, if possible, internal debate. Nobody disputes independence, and theres no great need to talk about anything else.

Likewise, power is concentrated in Holyrood to prevent alternative centres of power, perhaps controlled by other parties, building up in Scotland.

This is clearly a potent strategy, in the short term. But it needs the promise of a re-run of the referendum to maintain discipline and barring a change in circumstances, that rematch does not look imminent.

How long will the promise of it hold the SNPs legion of new, energised members in line  and how will the Partys current, very successful model fare if they lose faith?
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The Panama Papers: Amitabh Bachan, Aishwarya Rai And Over 500 Indians In The List

By Countercurrents.org

04 April, 2016

Countercurrents.org

A year-long investigative effort by around 400 journalists from more than 100 media organizations in over 80 countries have yielded the Panama Papers, an unprecedented look at how the world's rich and powerful, from political leaders to celebrities to criminals, use tax havens to hide their wealth.

The investigation went live on Sunday afternoon.

German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung wrote:

Over a year ago, an anonymous source contacted the Suddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) and submitted encrypted internal documents from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm that sells anonymous offshore companies around the world. These shell firms enable their owners to cover up their business dealings, no matter how shady. In the months that followed, the number of documents continued to grow far beyond the original leak. Ultimately, SZ acquired about 2.6 terabytes of data, making the leak the biggest that journalists had ever worked with. The source wanted neither financial compensation nor anything else in return, apart from a few security measures. The data provides rare insights into a world that can only exist in the shadows. It proves how a global industry led by major banks, legal firms, and asset management companies secretly manages the estates of the worlds rich and famous: from politicians, Fifa officials, fraudsters and drug smugglers, to celebrities and professional athletes.

Suddeutsche Zeitung collaborated with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and, in turn, with over 100 media organisations to investigate its contents. In July 2015, The Indian Express signed an agreement with ICIJ for being the Indian partner for The Panama Papers project. Since then, a team of 25 reporters, led by the newspapers investigative team, joined 375 journalists in 76 countries.

The Indian Express investigation reveals that,

over 500 Indians figure on the firms list of offshore companies, foundations and trusts. From film stars Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan to corporates including DLF owner K P Singh and nine members of his family, and the promoters of Apollo Tyres and Indiabulls to Gautam Adanis elder brother Vinod Adani. Two politicians who figure on the list are Shishir Bajoria from West Bengal and Anurag Kejriwal, the former chief of the Delhi unit of Loksatta Party. From Mumbai ganglord the late Iqbal Mirchi, the list includes scores of businessmen with addresses in nondescript neighbourhoods in Panchkula, Dehradun, Vadodara and Mandsaur. Addresses of individuals, in many cases, The Indian Express found out, led to physical locations, but with no trace of the individual. -










Dr. G.N Saibaba Granted Bail By Supreme Court of India

By Committee For The Defence And Release Of Dr. G.N Saibaba

04 April, 2016

Countercurrents.org

The Committee for the Defence and Release of Dr GN Saibaba whole-heartedly welcomes the decision of the Supreme Court of India to release Dr GN Saibaba on bail forthwith. This is indeed a much needed and long awaited relief for Dr Saibaba, who has been languishing in the anda cell of the Nagpur Central Jail since December 2015, when the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court cancelled the bail granted to him by the Division Bench of the Bombay High Court and ordered him to surrender within 24 hours. It was reported by various agencies that Saibabas health conditions have been deteriorating drastically as the jail authorities refused to offer proper medical care or continue the special facilities that the High Court had ordered considering the precarious health conditions of a wheelchair-bound person with 90% disability.

The Committee notes that the Supreme Court did not mince its words when the Honourable Judge noted that the opposition to the bail by the State was unfair as the Court had categorically announced that Saibaba would be released on bail once the condition set by the Court in its last hearing in the month of March, 2016 that all the material witnesses have to be examined on a day-to-day basis within a month was fulfilled. In todays hearing, the Counsel for the State submitted that 8 more formal witnesses have to be examined and that needed Saibabas custody till that is also over, as they have apprehensions that he would indulge in anti-national activities if he is released. Rejecting all the arguments presented by the Defence Counsel, the Judge asked them why they wanted to torture a person like this. Do you want a pound of flesh, he asked.

The Committee thanks all the lawyers, activists, individuals and organizations that have extended their support so far in the struggle and hopes that they would continue their support till Saibaba gets justice. If the stance taken by the State in the Court proceeding today is any indication, the intimidatory tactics adopted by the State machinery against those who are relentlessly engaged in the struggle for the oppressed and the downtrodden is far from over.

(Hany Babu MT)

For the Committee.








Printer Friendly Version The Most Dangerous Place on Earth: A Nuclear Armageddon in the Making in South Asia By Dilip Hiro 04 April, 2016

TomDispatch.com Undoubtedly, for nearly two decades, the most dangerous place on Earth has been the Indian-Pakistani border in Kashmir. It's possible that a small spark from artillery and rocket exchanges across that border might -- given the known military doctrines of the two nuclear-armed neighbors -- lead inexorably to an all-out nuclear conflagration. In that case the result would be catastrophic. Besides causing the deaths of millions of Indians and Pakistanis, such a war might bring on nuclear winter on a planetary scale, leading to levels of suffering and death that would be beyond our comprehension. Alarmingly, the nuclear competition between India and Pakistan has now entered a spine-chilling phase. That danger stems from Islamabad's decision to deploy low-yield tactical nuclear arms at its forward operating military bases along its entire frontier with India to deter possible aggression by tank-led invading forces. Most ominously, the decision to fire such a nuclear-armed missile with a range of 35 to 60 miles is to rest with local commanders. This is a perilous departure from the universal practice of investing such authority in the highest official of the nation. Such a situation has no parallel in the Washington-Moscow nuclear arms race of the Cold War era. When it comes to Pakistan's strategic nuclear weapons, their parts are stored in different locations to be assembled only upon an order from the country's leader. By contrast, tactical nukes are pre-assembled at a nuclear facility and shipped to a forward base for instant use. In addition to the perils inherent in this policy, such weapons would be vulnerable to misuse by a rogue base commander or theft by one of the many militant groups in the country. In the nuclear standoff between the two neighbors, the stakes are constantly rising as Aizaz Chaudhry, the highest bureaucrat in Pakistan's foreign ministry, recently made clear. The deployment of tactical nukes, he explained, was meant to act as a form of deterrence, given India's Cold Start military doctrine -- a reputed contingency plan aimed at punishing Pakistan in a major way for any unacceptable provocations like a mass-casualty terrorist strike against India. New Delhi refuses to acknowledge the existence of Cold Start. Its denials are hollow. As early as 2004, it was discussing this doctrine, which involved the formation of eight division-size Integrated Battle Groups (IBGs). These were to consist of infantry, artillery, armor, and air support, and each would be able to operate independently on the battlefield. In the case of major terrorist attacks by any Pakistan-based group, these IBGs would evidently respond by rapidly penetrating Pakistani territory at unexpected points along the border and advancing no more than 30 miles inland, disrupting military command and control networks while endeavoring to stay away from locations likely to trigger nuclear retaliation. In other words, India has long been planning to respond to major terror attacks with a swift and devastating conventional military action that would inflict only limited damage and so -- in a best-case scenario -- deny Pakistan justification for a nuclear response. Islamabad, in turn, has been planning ways to deter the Indians from implementing a Cold-Start-style blitzkrieg on their territory. After much internal debate, its top officials opted for tactical nukes. In 2011, the Pakistanis tested one successfully. Since then, according to Rajesh Rajagopalan, the New Delhi-based co-author of Nuclear South Asia: Keywords and Concepts, Pakistan seems to have been assembling four to five of these annually. All of this has been happening in the context of populations that view each other unfavorably. A typical survey in this period by the Pew Research Center found that 72% of Pakistanis had an unfavorable view of India, with 57% considering it as a serious threat, while on the other side 59% of Indians saw Pakistan in an unfavorable light. This is the background against which Indian leaders have said that a tactical nuclear attack on their forces, even on Pakistani territory, would be treated as a full-scale nuclear attack on India, and that they reserved the right to respond accordingly. Since India does not have tactical nukes, it could only retaliate with far more devastating strategic nuclear arms, possibly targeting Pakistani cities. According to a 2002 estimate by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), a worst-case scenario in an Indo-Pakistani nuclear war could result in eight to 12 million fatalities initially, followed by many millions later from radiation poisoning. More recent studies have shown that up to a billion people worldwide might be put in danger of famine and starvation by the smoke and soot thrown into the troposphere in a major nuclear exchange in South Asia. The resulting nuclear winter and ensuing crop loss would functionally add up to a slowly developing global nuclear holocaust. Last November, to reduce the chances of such a catastrophic exchange happening, senior Obama administration officials met in Washington with Pakistan's army chief, General Raheel Sharif, the final arbiter of that country's national security policies, and urged him to stop the production of tactical nuclear arms. In return, they offered a pledge to end Islamabad's pariah status in the nuclear field by supporting its entry into the 48-member Nuclear Suppliers Group to which India already belongs. Although no formal communique was issued after Sharif's trip, it became widely known that he had rejected the offer. This failure was implicit in the testimony that DIA Director Lieutenant General Vincent Stewart gave to the Armed Services Committee this February. Pakistan's nuclear weapons continue to grow, he said. We are concerned that this growth, as well as the evolving doctrine associated with tactical [nuclear] weapons, increases the risk of an incident or accident. Strategic Nuclear Warheads Since that DIA estimate of human fatalities in a South Asian nuclear war, the strategic nuclear arsenals of India and Pakistan have continued to grow. In January 2016, according to a U.S. congressional report, Pakistan's arsenal probably consisted of 110 to 130 nuclear warheads. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, India has 90 to 110 of these. (China, the other regional actor, has approximately 260 warheads.) As the 1990s ended, with both India and Pakistan testing their new weaponry, their governments made public their nuclear doctrines. The National Security Advisory Board on Indian Nuclear Doctrine, for example, stated in August 1999 that India will not be the first to initiate a nuclear strike, but will respond with punitive retaliation should deterrence fail. India's foreign minister explained at the time that the minimum credible deterrence mentioned in the doctrine was a question of adequacy, not numbers of warheads. In subsequent years, however, that yardstick of minimum credible deterrence has been regularly recalibrated as India's policymakers went on to commit themselves to upgrade the country's nuclear arms program with a new generation of more powerful hydrogen bombs designed to be city-busters. In Pakistan in February 2000, President General Pervez Musharraf, who was also the army chief, established the Strategic Plan Division in the National Command Authority, appointing Lieutenant General Khalid Kidwai as its director general. In October 2001, Kidwai offered an outline of the country's updated nuclear doctrine in relation to its far more militarily and economically powerful neighbor, saying, It is well known that Pakistan does not have a no-first-use policy.' He then laid out the thresholds for the use of nukes. The country's nuclear weapons, he pointed out, were aimed solely at India and would be available for use not just in response to a nuclear attack from that country, but should it conquer a large part of Pakistan's territory (the space threshold), or destroy a significant part of its land or air forces (the military threshold), or start to strangle Pakistan economically (the economic threshold), or politically destabilize the country through large-scale internal subversion (the domestic destabilization threshold). Of these, the space threshold was the most likely trigger. New Delhi as well as Washington speculated as to where the red line for this threshold might lie, though there was no unanimity among defense experts. Many surmised that it would be the impending loss of Lahore, the capital of Punjab, only 15 miles from the Indian border. Others put the red line at Pakistan's sprawling Indus River basin. Within seven months of this debate, Indian-Pakistani tensions escalated steeply in the wake of an attack on an Indian military base in Kashmir by Pakistani terrorists in May 2002. At that time, Musharraf reiterated that he would not renounce his country's right to use nuclear weapons first. The prospect of New Delhi being hit by an atom bomb became so plausible that U.S. Ambassador Robert Blackwill investigated building a hardened bunker in the Embassy compound to survive a nuclear strike. Only when he and his staff realized that those in the bunker would be killed by the aftereffects of the nuclear blast did they abandon the idea. Unsurprisingly, the leaders of the two countries found themselves staring into the nuclear abyss because of a violent act in Kashmir, a disputed territory which had led to three conventional wars between the South Asian neighbors since 1947, the founding year of an independent India and Pakistan. As a result of the first of these in 1947 and 1948, India acquired about half of Kashmir, with Pakistan getting a third, and the rest occupied later by China. Kashmir, the Root Cause of Enduring Enmity The Kashmir dispute dates back to the time when the British-ruled Indian subcontinent was divided into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan, and indirectly ruled princely states were given the option of joining either one. In October 1947, the Hindu maharaja of Muslim-majority Kashmir signed an instrument of accession with India after Muslim tribal raiders from Pakistan invaded his realm. The speedy arrival of Indian troops deprived the invaders of the capital city, Srinagar. Later, they battled regular Pakistani troops until a United Nations-brokered ceasefire on January 1, 1949. The accession document required that Kashmiris be given an opportunity to choose between India and Pakistan once peace was restored. This has not happened yet, and there is no credible prospect of it taking place. Fearing a defeat in such a plebiscite, given the pro-Pakistani sentiments prevalent among the territory's majority Muslims, India found several ways of blocking U.N. attempts to hold one. New Delhi then conferred a special status on the part of Kashmir it controlled and held elections for its legislature, while Pakistan watched with trepidation. In September 1965, when its verbal protests proved futile, Pakistan attempted to change the status quo through military force. It launched a war that once again ended in stalemate and another U.N.-sponsored truce, which required the warring parties to return to the 1949 ceasefire line. A third armed conflict between the two neighbors followed in December 1971, resulting in Pakistan's loss of its eastern wing, which became an independent Bangladesh. Soon after, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi tried to convince Pakistani President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to agree to transform the 460-mile-long ceasefire line in Kashmir (renamed the Line of Control) into an international border. Unwilling to give up his country's demand for a plebiscite in all of pre-1947 Kashmir, Bhutto refused. So the stalemate continued. During the military rule of General Zia al Haq (1977-1988), Pakistan initiated a policy of bleeding India with a thousand cuts by sponsoring terrorist actions both inside Indian Kashmir and elsewhere in the country. Delhi responded by bolstering its military presence in Kashmir and brutally repressing those of its inhabitants demanding a plebiscite or advocating separation from India, committing in the process large-scale human rights violations. In order to stop infiltration by militants from Pakistani Kashmir, India built a double barrier of fencing 12-feet high with the space between planted with hundreds of land mines. Later, that barrier would be equipped as well with thermal imaging devices and motion sensors to help detect infiltrators. By the late 1990s, on one side of the Line of Control were 400,000 Indian soldiers and on the other 300,000 Pakistani troops. No wonder President Bill Clinton called that border the most dangerous place in the world. Today, with the addition of tactical nuclear weapons to the mix, it is far more so. Kashmir, the Toxic Bone of Contention Even before Pakistan's introduction of tactical nukes, tensions between the two neighbors were perilously high. Then suddenly, at the end of 2015, a flicker of a chance for the normalization of relations appeared. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a cordial meeting with his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, on the latter's birthday, December 25th, in Lahore. But that hope was dashed when, in the early hours of January 2nd, four heavily armed Pakistani terrorists managed to cross the international border in Punjab, wearing Indian Army fatigues, and attacked an air force base in Pathankot. A daylong gun battle followed. By the time order was restored on January 5th, all the terrorists were dead, but so were seven Indian security personnel and one civilian. The United Jihad Council, an umbrella organization of separatist militant groups in Kashmir, claimed credit for the attack. The Indian government, however, insisted that the operation had been masterminded by Masood Azhar, leader of the Pakistan-based Jaish-e Muhammad (Army of Muhammad). As before, Kashmir was the motivating drive for the anti-India militants. Mercifully, the attack in Pathankot turned out to be a minor event, insufficient to heighten the prospect of war, though it dissipated any goodwill generated by the Modi-Sharif meeting. There is little doubt, however, that a repeat of the atrocity committed by Pakistani infiltrators in Mumbai in November 2008, leading to the death of 166 people and the burning of that city's landmark Taj Mahal Hotel, could have consequences that would be dire indeed. The Indian doctrine calling for massive retaliation in response to a successful terrorist strike on that scale could mean the almost instantaneous implementation of its Cold Start strategy. That, in turn, would likely lead to Pakistan's use of tactical nuclear weapons, thus opening up the real possibility of a full-blown nuclear holocaust with global consequences. Beyond the long-running Kashmiri conundrum lies Pakistan's primal fear of the much larger and more powerful India, and its loathing of India's ambition to become the hegemonic power in South Asia. Irrespective of party labels, governments in New Delhi have pursued a muscular path on national security aimed at bolstering the country's defense profile. Overall, Indian leaders are resolved to prove that their country is entering what they fondly call the age of aspiration. When, in July 2009, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh officially launched a domestically built nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine, the INS Arihant, it was hailed as a dramatic step in that direction. According to defense experts, that vessel was the first of its kind not to be built by one of the five recognized nuclear powers: the United States, Britain, China, France, and Russia. India's Two Secret Nuclear Sites On the nuclear front in India, there was more to come. Last December, an investigation by the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity revealed that the Indian government was investing $100 million to build a top secret nuclear city spread over 13 square miles near the village of Challakere, 160 miles north of the southern city of Mysore. When completed, possibly as early as 2017, it will be the subcontinent's largest military-run complex of nuclear centrifuges, atomic-research laboratories, and weapons- and aircraft-testing facilities. Among the project's aims is to expand the government's nuclear research, to produce fuel for the country's nuclear reactors, and to help power its expanding fleet of nuclear submarines. It will be protected by a ring of garrisons, making the site a virtual military facility. Another secret project, the Indian Rare Materials Plant, near Mysore is already in operation. It is a new nuclear enrichment complex that is feeding the country's nuclear weapons programs, while laying the foundation for an ambitious project to create an arsenal of hydrogen (thermonuclear) bombs. The overarching aim of these projects is to give India an extra stockpile of enriched uranium fuel that could be used in such future bombs. As a military site, the project at Challakere will not be open to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency or by Washington, since India's 2008 nuclear agreement with the U.S. excludes access to military-related facilities. These enterprises are directed by the office of the prime minister, who is charged with overseeing all atomic energy projects. India's Atomic Energy Act and its Official Secrets Act place everything connected to the country's nuclear program under wraps. In the past, those who tried to obtain a fuller picture of the Indian arsenal and the facilities that feed it have been bludgeoned to silence. Little wonder then that a senior White House official was recently quoted as saying, Even for us, details of the Indian program are always sketchy and hard facts thin on the ground. He added, Mysore is being constantly monitored, and we are constantly monitoring progress in Challakere. However, according to Gary Samore, a former Obama administration coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction, India intends to build thermonuclear weapons as part of its strategic deterrent against China. It is unclear, when India will realize this goal of a larger and more powerful arsenal, but they will. Once manufactured, there is nothing to stop India from deploying such weapons against Pakistan. India is now developing very big bombs, hydrogen bombs that are city-busters, said Pervez Hoodbhoy, a leading Pakistani nuclear and national security analyst. It is not interested in nuclear weapons for use on the battlefield; it is developing nuclear weapons for eliminating population centers. In other words, as the Kashmir dispute continues to fester, inducing periodic terrorist attacks on India and fueling the competition between New Delhi and Islamabad to outpace each other in the variety and size of their nuclear arsenals, the peril to South Asia in particular and the world at large only grows. Dilip Hiro, a TomDispatch regular, is the author, among many other works, of The Longest August: The Unflinching Rivalry between India and Pakistan (Nation Books). His 36th and latest book is The Age of Aspiration: Money, Power, and Conflict in Globalizing India (The New Press). Copyright 2016 Dilip Hiro







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Four-week Series of Yoga Classes: specifically targeted to those suffering from back pain will run Mondays at 5 p.m. or Tuesdays at 9 a.m. for four weeks. The Yoga for Back Pain class at Bliss Yoga Studios is $100 for the four-week course and includes an e-book and audio guide to help with at home practice of the specific exercises. Certified yoga instructor and Bliss owner Zoe Sipes will be providing needed modifications for this all-levels yoga course. For more information or to sign up, visit blissyogaevansville.com/yoga-for-back-pain or call 812-250-9642.

Alzheimer's Association Program: "The Basics: Memory Loss, Dementia and Alzheimer's disease," 10 a.m. to noon Tuesday at the Alzheimer's Association, 701 N. Weinbach Ave. ($5 donation suggested). Registration required by calling 800-272-3900.

St. Mary's Center for Children: will host the ninth annual "Crop-Paper-Scissors" scrapbooking and craft event April 30 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the St. Mary's Manor Auditorium. Early registration is $35 and ends April 15. After that, the fee is $40. Proceeds help fund autism services for children in the community. The event includes a variety of craft activities, including scrapbooking, make-and-takes, stamping cards and gift ideas. Attendees are encouraged to bring their current projects. There will also be door prizes, a silent auction, and items for sale from vendors Doodlebug and Creative Dreams. Lunch will be provided. To reserve a spot or to make a donation, contact Kelly Shaw at 812-485-4419 or Kelly.Shaw@stmarys.org.

FA (Families Anonymous): a 12-step fellowship for the family and friends of those individuals with drug, alcohol or related behavioral issues. Meetings are Saturdays at 10 a.m. at Methodist Temple, 2109 Lincoln Ave. Use the Kelsey Avenue entrance, second floor. Information: 812-550-5777.

Bereavement support group: Meeting 5:30-7 p.m. the fourth Tuesday of each month in the large group meeting room, second floor of Central Library, 200 SE MLK Blvd.

Men's bereavement support group: Meeting 9-10:30 a.m. the second Monday of each month in Room 204 at Deaconess VNA Plus, 610 E. Walnut St.

Support group for bipolar/manic-depressive disorder: Meeting 7 p.m. the first and third Wednesday of each month, Kempf Bipolar Wellness Center, third floor of St. Mary's Rehabilitation Institute, 3700 Washington Ave. Information: 812-485-4934.

Survivors of Suicide support group: Meeting 6:30 p.m. the first and third Monday of each month, Methodist Temple, 2109 Lincoln Ave. Information: Mental Health America at 812-426-2640.

Mending Hearts pregnancy loss support group: Meeting 6:30 p.m. the first Tuesday of each month, Gift Conference Room, off the lobby of St. Mary's Hospital for Women & Children, 3700 Washington Ave. Information: 812-485-4204.

Men's cancer support group: Meeting 5:30 p.m. the second Tuesday of each month, St. Mary's Epworth Crossing Community Conference Room, 100 St. Mary's Epworth Crossing, Newburgh. Information: 812-485-5725.

Stroke support group: Meeting 10 a.m. the fourth Wednesday of each month, St. Mary's Community Education Room at Washington Square Mall, 5011 Washington Ave. Information: 812-485-5607.

ALS support group: Meeting 6:30 p.m. the second Tuesday of each month, Meeting Room E, Deaconess Gateway Hospital. The support group is for patients, caregivers and survivors who have lost someone to Lou Gehrig's disease.

Women's cancer support group: Meeting 5:30 p.m. the second and fourth Monday of each month, St. Mary's Epworth Crossing Community Conference Room. Information: 812-485-5725.

Pulmonary fibrosis support group: Meeting 4 p.m. the second Tuesday of each month, Room 1420, Deaconess Hospital, 600 Mary St. Information: 812-450-6000 or deaconess.com/calendar.

COPD/asthma support group: Meeting 4 p.m. the fourth Tuesday of each month, Room 1420, Deaconess Hospital, 600 Mary St. Information: 812-450-6000 or deaconess.com/calendar.

Parkinson's support group: Meeting at 5:30 p.m. the first Tuesday of each month, Room 350, Deaconess Physician Center, 600 Mary St. Information: 812-450-6000 or deaconess.com/calendar.

Tri-State Multiple Sclerosis Association support group meetings: 10 a.m. the second Saturday of each month, Tri-State MS Association Office, 971 S. Kenmore Drive, Evansville (contact Nita Ruxer at 812-479-3544 or Sharon Omer at 270-333-4701); 10 a.m. the fourth Saturday of each month, Gibson General Hospital, fifth floor, first room on the right, 1808 Sherman Drive, Princeton, Indiana (contact Alice Burkhart at 812-782-3735); 11 a.m. the second Tuesday of each month, Twilight Towers, in the cafeteria, 1648 10th St., Tell City (contact Terri Hasty at 812-649-4013 or Gayle Taylor 812-719-2417); 10 a.m. the third Saturday of each month, Daviess Community Hospital, Washington, Indiana (contact Cindy Kalberer at 812-254-6735 or Fran Neal at 812-259-1565); 10 a.m. the first Saturday of each month, Calvary Missionary Baptist Church, 2360 Green River Road, Henderson, Kentucky, (contact Meg Burnley at 270-826-9507 or Debbie Whittington at 270-827-8298); 6 p.m. the second Monday of each month, Owensboro Health Healthpark, 1006 Ford Ave, Owensboro, Kentucky; and 11 a.m. the first Saturday of each month, Fairfield Memorial Hospital in the board room of Horizon Clinic, 303 NW 11th St., Fairfield, Illinois (contact Kathie Hill at 618-847-8452).

Compiled by Leah Ward, leah.ward@courierpress.com.
SHARE Gerrod Pointer

By Richard Gootee of the Courier and Press

The man Evansville police believe was responsible for a fatal shooting outside a strip club in February has been arrested in Kansas.

Evansville officials announced Monday that Gerrod D. Pointer, 26, was arrested in Wichita, Kansas, on Saturday. He is currently jailed in Sedgwick County, Kansas.

Evansville Police tweeted on Monday that a tipster called 911 and reported Pointer's location.

Pointer is accused of fatally shooting Maurice U. Heyward, 38, outside of the Lucky Lady Lounge the morning of Feb. 13.

Pointer was identified as the suspected shooter by a relative who saw the surveillance photos released in the case.

A warrant charging Pointer with Heyward's murder was issued on Feb. 16 .

Though Pointer is officially listed as a Tennessee resident in court documents, he has previous connections to Kansas, as well. Prison records show he was released from prison in Kansas in April 2015.

Heyward was shot once in the torso in the club's parking lot and died from his injuries at the hospital later that morning.

Police have not released a specific suspected motive in the case, but investigators have said they believe the two men were at the North Main Street club at the same time the night of the killing.

Pointer is believed to have left the club minutes after Heyward came inside the establishment, which was about an hour before the shooting.

Investigators believe Pointer returned to the club's parking lot a short time after he is shown leaving the Lucky Lady.

They suspect he hid behind a Dumpster and then confronted Heyward outside the club at about 3 a.m.

When, specifically, Pointer could be brought to Evansville is unclear. Pointer faces a misdemeanor drug charge associated with his arrest in Sedgwick County as well as a Kansas parole violation, said Sedgwick County Sheriff's Office Lt. Lin Dehning, in addition to the murder charge in Indiana.
SHARE Mathew McCallister

By Mark Wilson of the Courier and Press

BOONVILLE, Ind.  The trial of a man charged in the shooting death of Joseph Nelson in Warrick County has been delayed.

Matthew McCallister's trial was set to start Monday morning in Warrick Superior Court No. 1, but was postponed because of the unexpected death of defense attorney Brett Roy's mother. A new trial date will be set at a hearing on April 13 at 1 p.m.

Roy is one half of McCallister's defense team. Court rules in Indiana require that defendants in life without parole or death penalty cases have the benefit of two defense counsel. The Warrick County Prosecutor's Office has given notice it will seek a life-without-parole sentence for McCallister if he is convicted.

"The court has no choice in a matter such as this," said Warrick Superior Court No. 1 Judge Zach Winsett.

Defense attorney Steven Bohleber said that he would not want to proceed without Roy's involvement, anyway.

"Mr. Roy is an integral part of the defense team," he said.

Bohleber said the local knowledge of his Boonville-based co-counsel was going to be important in selecting a jury Monday.

Noting that McCallister's case is more than two years old, Winsett said he hoped to get the trial back on the calendar for as soon as possible.

"We were all primed and ready to conclude this matter," Bohleber said.

McCallister, 33, of Indianapolis, is one of four people arrested in connection to the February 2014 shooting death of Nelson. He is charged with murder, conspiracy to commit murder and being a habitual offender.

The three others charged with conspiracy in the case were Shawn Grigsby, David J. Lackey Jr., and Jade Stigall.

Grigsby pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and received a 20-year-sentence in September 2014.

Lackey and Stigall received four-year sentences after pleading guilty to charges of assisting a criminal in return for their cooperation in the investigation.

A fifth defendant, Kelli Wyrick of Indianapolis, was sentenced to four years after pleading guilty to assisting a criminal, as well as to three drug-related charges. However, she was never charged with murder or conspiracy in the case.

Investigators believe the four met Nelson at a Fairfield Inn hotel in Evansville and then drove with him to a location in northern Warrick County. There, according to probable cause affidavits, Nelson was made to kneel with his hands behind his back near a railroad track and shot once in the head. His body was then believed to have been dumped into a coal car.

His body was found Feb. 17, 2014 by employees at Alcoa's Warrick Operations after it arrived there in a coal shipment.
Claire E. Edwards (left); Quentin J. Gregory (middle); Drake A. Whitney (right)

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By Richard Gootee of the Courier and Press

Three people inside a University of Southern Indiana housing unit were arrested early Monday morning after the sheriff's office was called to take over a drug investigation.

Authorities identified the trio as Quentin J. Gregory, 18; Drake A. Whitney, 20; and Claire E. Edwards, 21.

According to Vanderburgh County Sheriff's Office arrest affidavits, investigators found sheets of suspected acid, marijuana and bongs and pipes used to smoke marijuana inside the apartment, which is in the school's Jackson building.

Gregory and Whitney, identified as Rockport, Indiana, residents in jail records, were listed in the probable cause affidavits as the residents of the student housing unit. It is not clear in the police documents if Edwards is also a student at the university.

According to investigators, USI security first received a tip about possible drug activity and then called the sheriff's office after going into the apartment. Security reported the incident just before midnight.

Gregory reportedly admitted he was selling the acid found in the residence. Authorities also seized his phone and more than $1,000 in cash he had on him at the time of his arrest, according to the affidavits. He faces preliminary charges of dealing a controlled substance, maintaining a common nuisance, possession of paraphernalia and minor consumption.

Whitney faces preliminary charges of maintaining a common nuisance, possession of both marijuana and paraphernalia, and minor consumption.

Edwards reportedly told investigators she brought some marijuana to the apartment, and a small amount of the drug was located in her purse. She was preliminarily charged with visiting a common nuisance, and possession of marijuana and paraphernalia.
DENNY SIMMONS / COURIER & PRESS Samantha Buente (left) offers passers-by voting information Sunday morning at Evansville's Riverfront. The nonpartisan event's goal was to get every eligible person registered and also motivated actually to cast a vote.

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By Sarah Loesch of the Courier and Press

Maxwell Hedon said his main goal is to get every eligible person registered to vote.

"In addition to getting them registered, getting them to exercise that right," he said. "Being registered and not voting isn't helping anything."

Hedon and Samantha Buente hosted a voter registration picnic Sunday at the Four Freedoms Monument.

The event was nonpartisan and offered information on how to vote and where to vote in Evansville, as well as Indiana in general.

Buente cumulated information into a frequently asked questions pamphlet that people could grab along with a vote button.

The deadline to register to vote in the Indiana primary election is Monday. The primary is May 3.

Buente said the idea was to have all the information in one place so people could access it easily.

She said people in the area may not realize they do not register with a specific party or that they can vote anywhere in the city.

One demographic the event wanted to reach were young voters, ages 18-26.

In some cases, younger voters feel their vote doesn't matter or that since they are young, someone else will do it for them, but Hedon said that is not the case.

"Our generation outnumbers our parents' generation," he said. "With that, with our numbers, we have the ability to send our nation in a direction that's more fitting for us, for where we are in 2016."

The possible directions of the election this year scare Hedon.

"It's either going to go drastically left or drastically right," he said. "As a transgender person. I'm scared of what could happen if it goes drastically right."

Hedon is part of Gender Warriors, an advocacy group for transgender issues, which supported the registration event.

Hedon said he wonders what would happen to his rights as a transgender man depending on how the upcoming election ends.

"Are the bathrooms going to be on lockdown everywhere?," he said. "Are they going to reverse LGBT being able to marry? What controversy is going to arise based on who wins the election?"

Hedon considered this event a service project for the Gender Warriors. He said it shows that members of the transgender community are "productive members of society."

It allows their group to be shown in a positive way to the community.

Melissa Mauser came to support the event as a strong believer in voting and as the mother to a transgender son.

"No matter what our family has always believed you have to exercise your right to vote," Mauser said. "You have to understand what the candidates stand for."

Her mission for the day was to share her family's story with everyone and encourage people to register.

"No matter how big or how small, you have to get involved," she said. "You have to talk about the issues."

Mauser said she is often asked how Evansville has been for her family and she always says the support has been wonderful.

"Seeing people come out and support events like this further backs up what I already knew," she said. "People do have a heart and they do want to make a difference."
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The answer is the closest thing that '90s movies about computer hacking have ever come to being factually accurate. Within three minutes of that initial infection, the number of computers taken over by the Slammer worm was doubling every 8.5 seconds. All over the world, ATMs crashed, flights were grounded, and 911 call centers were completely shut down. Also, the entirety of South Korea dropped off the international grid. And for good measure, the safety monitoring system for a nuclear power plant went down.

NASA

Suspiciously immune to all this: North Korea

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The worm caused about one billion dollars in damages, not counting the damage done to poor South Korea's economy, which suffered a complete collapse of Internet connectivity during its holiday shopping season. As far as who was responsible for unleashing the worm, we have no idea what hemisphere this thing came from, let alone who set it loose. The "patient zero" computer for Slammer was never found. It literally could have been anyone on the planet. Hell, it could have been you.

What do Chuck Norris, Liam Neeson in Taken, and the Dos Equis guy have in common? They're all losers compared to some of the actual badasses from history whom you know nothing about. Come out to the UCB Sunset for another LIVE podcast, April 9 at 7:00 p.m., where Jack O'Brien, Michael Swaim, and more will get together for an epic competition to find out who was the most hardcore tough guy or tough gal unfairly relegated to the footnotes of history. Get your tickets here!

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Psst ... want to give us feedback on the super-secret beta launch of the upcoming Cracked spin-off site, Braindrop? Well, simply follow us behind this curtain. Or, you know, click here: Braindrop.

For more creepy crimes that will keep you up at night, check out 23 Creepy Unsolved Mysteries Nobody Can Explain and 5 Creepy Crimes We Can Never Solve.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out Why Batman Is Secretly Terrible For Gotham, and watch other videos you won't see on the site!

Also, follow us on Facebook, because we're scared right now and need you told hold all our hands.
Andrea Iannone wiped himself and Ducati team-mate Andrea Dovizioso out of a double podium finish, just metres from the end of the Argentine MotoGP.

Iannone began the race making contact with Marc Marquez at turn one and ended it with a dubious lunge inside Dovizioso to try and snatch second at the penultimate corner.

Instead, he skittled them both into the gravel and was later handed a three-place grid penalty for next weekend's Austin round, plus a penalty point.

While Iannone was out on the spot, the pair were so near to the finish that Dovizioso pushed his machine over the line in 13th.

"I'm okay. I'm just disappointed," Iannone said. "For sure I worry for the team and my team-mate Andrea. It is a very difficult because, yes, I went down and touch Andrea. Both me and Dovizioso would have been on the podium so to finish the race in this way is unbelievable.

"I didn't brake too late. I braked in the same point, but I stayed a little bit more inside because I had Andrea on the outside... I've been in Race Direction. But for sure I will say sorry to Andrea. Fortunately, I have a good relationship with him.

"I was fast all weekend, in the dry and wet, and have a really high potential. For sure this is a disaster, but is like this."

Ducati Corse Sporting Director Paolo Ciabatti declared: "Trying the extreme pass at the last corner is good if you're going to win the last race. I don't think in the second race, when you are second or third. That's the only regret we have.

"Andrea Iannone was riding a great race after a difficult start and I know he is the first to be upset with what happened. It would be a night when we would have been out drinking beers together and I think instead we're going to go to bed very early."

The incident handed Valentino Rossi second place with Marquez's Honda team-mate Dani Pedrosa promoted to third. It also meant that, instead of being just one point behind new title leader Marquez, Dovizioso is 18-points behind.

Iannone meanwhile is yet to score, having also fallen during the opening round in Qatar, when Dovizioso finished second to Jorge Lorenzo.

The pair are under pressure to perform given the rumours that reigning world champion Jorge Lorenzo could join the team in 2017.
Nintex is set to push beyond its core market around Microsoft Sharepoint and expand its footprint in the Salesforce arena.

The expansion comes on the back of Nintex's June 2015 acquisition of Drawloop, a popular tool in Salesforce AppExchange  a buyout that brought 1,000 customers to Nintex.

Combined, Nintex and Drawloop promise to "quickly automate everyday processes from the back to the front-office", including integrating Office 365 and Salesforce content.

Brian Walshe, the newly appointed vice president of sales for Asia Pacific at Nintex, told CRN that he was in the process of engaging Salesforce partners in Australia, adding that a Drawloop team member has come over from the US to join Walshe's team and help drive the expansion.

Walshe joined Nintex in January after 13 years at Dimension Data.

While Salesforce integration will be a new opportunity for Nintex to grow, Walshe added that the company won't forget about its loyal partners, which number around 40 in Australia and include national solution provider Empired  the winner of the 2015 CRN Fast50 Leader award  and Brisbane-based Myriad Technologies.

He pointed to Oakton as an example of a recent Nintex partner that was seeing strong success by pitching the workflow software as a means for digital transformation.

Nintex automates corporate workflows, everything from annual leave requests to de-provisioning departing staff. Walshe said another fast-growing use case was to digitise security compliance workflows.

The independent software vendor has Australian roots, having been spun out of Melbourne systems integrator OBS, which itself was later acquired by Empired. Now headquartered in the US, Nintex launched its partner program at the 2015 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, under the leadership of former Microsoft senior director of cloud partner strategy Josh Waldo.

Walshe is forecasting a boom in work around Sharepoint too; he expects Microsoft to redouble its focus on the application after years of prioritising Office 365 and email migrations to the cloud.

Microsoft has been vocal about the fact Sharepoint Online offers more customer stickiness than Office 365 migrations, which tend to be one-off projects without a large opportunity for ongoing services. Microsoft has also been beefing up its Fast Track program, which provides customers with free cloud migrations.

"Exchange Online is a services depreciator," said Walshe. "Microsoft is even doing the migrations for you. The services around Exchange for a partner are very limited. When you get a customer onto Sharepoint Online, it creates opportunities."

Having worked at Dimension Data, one of the world's largest systems integrators, Walshe reckons he can bring a strong partner focus to Nintex, which does all its deployments and services through the channel.

He talked up Nintex's offered margins, especially on the subscription version of its software. Licences fees are based on number of workflows that a customer runs, rather than number of seats.

"I don't think anyone will get fat and rich off product margins but I think what we offer are some of the best in the business."

Nintex offers both perpetual and subscription licence options, though the company is focusing on the cloud option. "Partners are a lot better off under subscriptions. They get a margin throughout the life of the subscription  annuity revenue from the licence.

"I think I understand how you made money as a partner. Vendors are very focused on how they make money, not necessarily how the partners make money," Walshe added. "The vendors who were the easiest to deal with and the most responsive were the ones I did the most business with."

He tells his team at Nintex: "Be the most responsive. Be easy to deal with."

Walshe also revealed that he expected Nintex to launch a local Australian data centre in the future, following its launch of a new region in Japan last week. Like Australia, Japan is very focused on data sovereignty, he added.
Avaya offers new incremental rebate for large and small partners who exceed revenue growth targets from 1 April.

During the partner's webcast Avaya's global channel chief, Steve Biondi, said that joining Avaya's program is easy and some partners don't always do what is required required.

"We are going to make sure that who is in is going to be taken care of. If you are not going through accreditation we are going to kick you out," said Biondi.

Biondi explained that the company hopes to keep all partners but will benefit the ones who specialise.

As part of the changes, partners will be categorised as high-volume or fast-growing based on size and scope.

Avaya stated that high-volume partners will be eligible for the portfolio growth rebate when they meet revenue requirements, and to incremental portfolio growth when this is exceeded.

Asia Pacific channels director Hock Leong Choo, said: "A 3 percent back-end rebate on partner program product revenue sold in the quarter will be paid quarterly if the partner exceeds the growth target for the quarter and is a partner in good standing. For the 2016 financial year, the growth target will be set at 5 per cent and will be adjusted annually."

Fast-growing partners, who specialise in networking or midmarket and achieve an expert specialisation, can qualify for the specialised growth rebate, as long as they meet the quarterly and year on year growth requirement. A 3 percent rebate will also be paid to partners that exceed growth targets.

"For the 2016 financial year, the growth target for these partners will be set at 40 percent and will be adjusted annually," said Choo.

All changes are part of Avaya's effort to move from a hardware company into a software and services provider. Channel vice president Joe Lohmeier said that the changes being introduced are "a step into building a global class partner program".

Local boss Choo added: "Our transition to software and services made up 73 percent of our total revenue in the first fiscal quarter of the 2016 fiscal year. At the same time, our core business remains very important to maintain and leverage for incremental wallet-share."

The company wants partners around the world to specialise in networking, midmarket, contact centre, and cloud and customer base modernisation.

Changes will also be made to the co-delivery program which will be effective of the second semester of 2016. The program will focus in performance; to enhance partner requirements, execution; to unify the customer support model and competiveness; to align partners strategically.

Avaya recently launched Zang in the US, a cloud-based platform that enables users to build and deploy a communications app with the APIs provided.

The company explained Zang as "an out-of-the-box solution that provides an easy way to use drag and drop tools, pre-built applications and robust APIs to quickly build and deploy applications that enable consumer and enterprise communications applications and services".



Nathan Chapman, CTO of Generation-e, expects Zang might take years to reach Australia because of "legal and tax challenges with rolling out a platform like this".
Anti-virus software vendor Bitdefender released a free tool that can be used to protect systems infected by several growing ransomware strains.

The combination crypto-ransomware vaccine protects infections from the rising ransomware family Locky, and two older ransomware strains CTB-Locker and TeslaCrypt that recently resurfaced, the company said.

In November 2015, Bitdefender released a similar tool to unlock Cryptowall infections. That tool was created to protect against Cryptowall 4.0,' a new strain of the ransomware that encrypts file names.

The tool is in the same vein as a free decryption tool released by Cisco in April 2015 that unlocks files affected by TeslaCrypt ransomware.

Bitdefender's latest tool arrives just as the private sector has begun to work more closely with public officials and private sector allies to protect against a growing number of ransomware attacks.

Last week, the FBI sent an urgent memo to US businesses asking for assistance protecting against Samas ransomware. Healthcare organisations are increasingly targeted in ransomware attacks. This week an attack that was most likely ransomware has knocked MedStar Health systems offline for several days. Even security providers have affected by ransomware. Last week, a security certification provider in New Mexico was discovered to have spread ransomware via Angler exploit kits.

In January, Bitdefender's chief security strategist Catalin Cosoi told SCMagazineUK.com that attackers are interested in JavaScript ransomware.

A ransomware capable of running on all three major operating systems means a bigger market for cyber-criminals, who will target more victims and thus, raise more ransom money, he said.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the tool can be used to clean systems infected by ransomware. The article has been updated to clarify that the tool prevents ransomware infection.
Cloud News

Infinite Ops Releases Workspace-as-a-Service Platform

Joseph Tsidulko

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Infinite Ops, a startup based just outside Seattle, plunged into the hot Workspace-as-a-Service market Monday with the release of a platform through which partners can rapidly deploy diverse services across public cloud providers.

The Infinite Ops Console enables services providers to deliver to their clients fully hosted desktops, virtualized apps, plugins and cloud resources, all in under an hour, said Michael Fraser, the company's CEO.

With its first offering, Infinite Ops enters an increasingly crowded and competitive market for WaaS -- a solution gaining traction by expanding upon hosted desktops, or VDI, that simply deliver remote Windows environments.

[Related: WaaS Fact, WaaS Fiction: nGenx Debunks Common Myths About Cloud Workspaces]

The Infinite Ops Console acts as an interface layer for accessing cloud providers, workspace templates, an app store and other features. Partners can use the console to deploy the operating system, networks, session host, Web access and connection brokering, Fraser said.

"The whole goal is that the service provider or internal IT of that organization has to have no engineering experience whatsoever," Fraser told CRN.

The product has garnered interest from major cloud providers, Fraser told CRN. He's had discussions with Microsoft about how to empower service providers to help their customers consume more Azure resources.

"Any type of vendor that wants to can come to us and we can deploy their solution," he said. "We truly are a full cloud management platform that can manage anything and everything when it comes to cloud."

The console's functions are fully accessible by API, and partners can build out custom templates accessible only to specific users. It offers Teradici integration for delivering virtual desktops through PCoIP, Microsoft Remote Desktop Services for Windows Server, and integration with VMware, Windows 7 and Windows 10.

"We're building out a bunch of analytics as well, which for us is paramount to our long-term strategy to make sure we can have a lot of business intelligence for these partners," Fraser told CRN. That includes reporting as to which users are logging in, where they're doing it, and how long they maintain sessions.

A cost calculator is also included in the first release.

The Infinite Ops Console can deploy virtualized workspaces to Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google Compute Engine. Plans are in the works to add IBM SoftLayer and Rackspace as hosting providers.

Artisan Infrastructure, a boutique data center operator in Austin, Texas, has been using the platform in a beta trial.

Chris Wiser, Artisan's channel chief for managed service providers, told CRN thatthe console is "cutting edge and unique, providing multiple layers and the ability to deploy on multiple platforms, including Artisans infrastructure."

The Infinite Ops platform delivers a sleek look, easy-to-use interfaces, expansive control and the flexibility to deploy cloud workspaces to multiple providers.

"It gives us the ability to offer a turnkey product to our MSP clients, and we only sell to service providers. We can plug and play into our architecture without almost any effort on our side," Wiser told CRN.

And "the ability to have our partners plug and play is really powerful. It gives them something they can truly build on," he added.

Wiser sees the WaaS market expanding rapidly as cloud workspaces start integrating more diverse services.

He doesn't expect it to be long before VoIP seats will be plugged into workspace deployments, he said, allowing service providers to offer all essential business tools managed from a single console to remote employees.
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.
On Saturday, April 9, 2016, more than 65 volunteer fire departments throughout the state will celebrate the start of National Volunteer Week (April 10-16) by holding open houses at close to 90 locations from 10:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m.

Local fire departments participating in the event include:

Stamford

- Springdale Fire Company at 87 Hope Street

Darien

- Darien Fire Department at 838 Post Road

- Noroton Fire Department at 1873 Post Road

- Noroton Heights Fire Department at 209 Noroton Avenue

Easton

- Easton Volunteer Fire Company at 1 Center Road

Trumbull

- Long Hill Volunteer Fire Company Station 1 at 6315 Main Street, Station 2 at 5400 Main Street, and Station 3 at 4229 Madison Avenue

- Nichols Fire Department Station 1 at 100 Shelton Road and Station 2 at 582 Booth Hill Road

- Trumbull Volunteer Fire Company Station 1 at 860 White Plains Road and Station 2 at 100 Daniels Farm Road

Shelton

- Shelton Fire Department will be participating in this special event by opening the doors to its fire houses located at Echo Hose Hook & Ladder Company 1 at 379 Coram Avenue, Huntington Fire - - - - - Company 3 at 44 Church Street, Pine Rock Park Fire Company 4 at 722 Long Hill Avenue, and White Hills Fire Company 5 at 2 School Street

New Fairfield

- New Fairfield Volunteer Fire Department Ball Pond Volunteer Fire Company at 7 Fairfield Drive

Danbury

- Beckerle & Co. Hose Co. Engine Company 9 fire house at 69 Liberty Street

Brookfield

- Brookfield Volunteer Fire Department Candlewood Company fire house at 18 Bayview Drive

Newtown

- Hawleyville Volunteer Fire Company at 34 Hawleyville Road

Sandy Hook

- Sandy Hook Volunteer Fire & Rescue Company, Inc. at 18-20 Riverside Road

Visitors to the fire houses will be able to talk with volunteer firefighters about the work they do, explore fire apparatus and turnout gear, take tours of the fire houses, and fill out an application.

Eighty percent of all fire personnel in Connecticut are volunteers, and the majority of fire departments throughout the state are experiencing a volunteer shortage. Local fire departments need volunteers of all skill levels and abilities, people willing and able to respond to emergencies whenever called upon.

Volunteer Firefighter Day is part of Everyday Hero CT, a program dedicated to increasing the number of volunteer firefighters throughout the state. A partnership of the Connecticut Fire Chiefs Association (CFCA) and the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC), the Everyday Hero CT campaign is a two-year Volunteer Workforce Solutions (VWS) initiative designed to address the shortage of volunteer firefighters in Connecticut. It is helping achieve a viable and sustainable volunteer firefighter workforce for 15 Connecticut fire departments. Everyday Hero CT is funded by a Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grant awarded to the CFCA by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to develop a model to enhance the recruitment and retention of volunteer firefighters.

For more information, visit www.EverydayHeroCT.org.
The Amtrak derailment Sunday that killed two people and injured dozens is renewing calls to fix the nations rail infrastructure and make sure railroads operate safely.

Whether due to basic human error or insufficient safety protocols, a massive section of the Northeast Corridor is again shut down, disrupting our economy and upending lives, said U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn, in a statement released after the crash. (The) tragedy demonstrates the urgent need to rebuild our crumbling rail infrastructure and ensure safe operations nationwide. We need answers immediately.

Early Sunday, Amtrak Train 89 struck a backhoe south of Philadelphia and partially derailed, killing two people and sending at least 35 passengers to hospitals for non-life-threatening injuries. The accident suspended service in portions of the Northeast Corridor, at one point halting trains from New York City to Philadelphia.

The two people killed were not passengers and may have been part of the work crew operating the backhoe, according to various media reports.

The Amtrak crash is only the latest in a series of rail accidents in the Northeast  including more than one in Connecticut  over the last few years in which people were killed and injured. In some of those accidents, infrastructure was to blame; in others, safety procedures were not followed.

Todays train derailment is a tragedy that never should have happened, said U.S. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., in a statement issued Sunday evening. My heart goes out to the victims and their families. Our country, and the Northeast in particular, cannot allow this type of preventable tragedy to become the new normal. We need to find out how something like this could happen and take immediate steps to ensure it never happens again.

Whos in charge

State Sen. Toni Boucher, R-Wilton and a ranking member on the General Assemblys Transportation Committee, said the crash highlights the need to run trains safely and properly.

Of course, the rails need to be repaired, Boucher said. But this also calls into question the operator.

She said the crash reminded her of a May 2013 accident in which a Metro-North worker in West Haven was hit by a speeding train on a track that was supposed to be closed for repairs. An operator mistakenly allowed the train to travel on the rails.

The Amtrak train, Boucher noted, was operating on a regular daily schedule that should have been known to the construction crew and the track operator. The onus is on who is in charge of scheduling that work, she said.

The Amtrak train was traveling from New York City to Savannah, Ga., when it collided with a backhoe in Chester, Pa, about 15 miles outside Philadelphia. In all, 341 passengers and seven crew members were on board, said Kimberly Woods, an Amtrak spokeswoman. She couldnt say how many, if any, passengers were from Connecticut.

Too many crashes

Blumenthal said there have been too rail many crashes over the last few years and not enough has been done to prevent further incidents. In May 2015, an Amtrak train crashed in Philadelphia after it entered a curve traveling too fast and derailed, killing eight people and injuring 200. Although the train was accelerating as it approached the curve, the cause of the accident has not been determined.

 My thoughts go out to the victims and their families after yet another tragic Amtrak accident, this one less than a year removed from the Philadelphia disaster and just weeks after a derailment in Kansas, Blumenthal said.

Other recent tragic rail accidents include the February 2015 incident in which a Metro-North train struck a SUV parked on a rail crossing in Valhalla, N.Y., killing Ellen Brody, who was driving the vehicle, and five train passengers. The crash was blamed on Brody, who stopped on the tracks after the warning gates closed.

In May 2013, a Metro-North train derailed in Bridgeport, injuring more than 70 passengers. The cause was determined to be a section of broken track. Later that year, in December 2013, a Metro-North train derailed in the Bronx after the engineer fell asleep, killing four people and injuring 63.

After the 2013 crashes, calls dramatically increased to install positive train control on all trains, which can automatically take control for a variety of reasons, such traveling too fast for conditions. Federal regulators have set a deadline at the end of 2018 for railroads to install the system on their trains.

Boucher said the latest crash again calls attention to how important the rails are, noting thousands of people were delayed and disrupted as service was suspended.
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WESTPORT  His shoes might travel the beaten path, but Matt Bernson certainly didnt.

He started with a business degree. Then he switched to writing for a travel magazine, then doing manual labor for a construction company. And now he owns his own high-end shoe line.

I knew I wanted to do something creative, but I never wouldve thought it would be shoe specific, said Bernson at his latest shoe store opening last Thursday.

Bernson launched his eponymous store and brand in downtown Westport in conjunction with his familys move from TriBeCa in New York, where his first store remains, to Connecticut.

Wed been in the city for 15 years. We wanted fresh air and space and more activities, to be part of the community, he said.

Matt Bernson, the man and the brand, comes to a downtown Westport filled with national retailers that are unwanted by many local residents, though the chain stores still find ample customers to prosper. According to launch party attendees, his high-end independent shoe boutique at 136 Main St. stands out.

Everything is part of a big chain here. Its nice to have an independent store, said Clare Kennedy Blasius, Fairfield resident and publisher of athome magazine.

Kennedy Blasius came to Bernsons launch party last Thursday to try on some high-heeled shoes. I, of course, am trying on heels because I love them, she said, slipping on a pair of beige shoes with laces that crisscrossed up her ankle.

Benson said he describes his shoe brand style as chic and minimalist, deriving inspiration from details on a bomber jacket to vintage shoes or Scandinavian clogs.

The shoe that started it all was bought by Bernson on a trip to India.

I needed a gift for my girlfriend and found a sandal. Looking back, it was cool but it needed a lot of work, he said.

He used beads from his mothers antique jewelry shop and decorated the shoe. And he liked it enough that, while working at his job in construction, he imported a whole line.

It was myself and my dog the first year and a half, said Bernson about starting to make a business selling an India-inspired shoe line.

In 2006 he made his first break, selling a whole line, with no brand attached, to Anthropologie. But for his second line the following year, he stamped his name on it. And then he started getting a celebrity following.

Courtney Cox wore it once and she was shot in a magazine. And the phone started ringing off the hook, said Bernson. I started to realize I already had a brand.

In 2012, Bernson opened the Matt Bernson store in TriBeCa, his home neighborhood, on a street that had no other retailers and now only has one. Since then, other celebrities to wear his shoes include Gisele Bundchen, Taylor Swift, Sarah Jessica Parker and Olivia Palermo.

Having my own retail is the ideal, he said. (Now I) create the full experience to fans of the shoes.

At the launch of his store, Bernson hired Taso Megaris, a freelance fashion artist who has worked with him ever since. Its almost an embarrassing story, said Bernson. We found him on Craigslist. He was the first person we interviewed.

I dont know if I should say this but, Matt reminds me a bit of Vera Wang. She cares very deeply about all aspects of her business, and so does he, said Megaris. For me, shoes and fashion were all things Ive been interested in drawing.

At the launch party, Megaris drew minimalist paint-marker sketches of the attendees on Matt Bernson-stamped canvases.

Among shoe boxes and sandals, Kennedy Blasius gazed longingly at the beige shoes in her hands.

Theres memory foam in these shoes. Its like you could dance the night away in these, she said.

But then she switched her gaze to the black heels at her feet. They have a thick heel, which she said she likes for work. But she already has a pair of black heels at home.

I dont know what to do, she sighed. You know what? The stores not going anywhere. I can always get another pair.

sfoster-frau@scni.com; @silviaelenaff
Hamden  By the time Quinnipiac University starts its series of commencement ceremonies on May 14 it will know if it snagged that 2016 National Teacher of the Year as one of its speakers.

For now, it can say with certainty that it has one of the four finalists for the title  Connecticut Teacher of the Year Jahana Hayes.

The national honor is not announced until later this month.

Hayes will address the graduate ceremony for students receiving advanced degrees in business, communication and education at 9 a.m., May 14.

In all, Quinnipiac will hold eight commencement ceremonies over two weekends in May for 2016 graduates.

Other speakers include Steve McPherson, president and CEO of Masonicare, who will address graduate degree recipient from the Colleges of Arts and Sciences and the schools of health sciences, medicine and nursing, at 1 p.m. May 14.

On May 15, at 9 a.m., Mary Bonauto, a civil rights attorney, will address law school graduates.

Here is the line up for the following weekend when undergraduates line up for commencement:

On Saturday, May 21 at 9 a.m., Quinnipiac alumna Dr. Sharrona Williams, an orthopedic surgeon, will deliver the commencement address to undergraduates who have completed their bachelors degrees in the College of Arts and Sciences.

At 1 p.m., Peter Fasolo, vice president of global human resources at Johnson & Johnson, will address the undergraduate business and engineering graduates.

At 5 p.m., Dr. Jennifer Ashton, ABC News chief women's health correspondent, will speak to the health sciences students earning bachelors degrees.

On Sunday, May 22 at 9 a.m., Tom Foreman, a CNN correspondent, will deliver the commencement address to students in the School of Communications. Adrian Flannelly, chairman & CEO of Irish Radio Network USA, will receive an honorary degree.

At 1 p.m., Amy Berman, senior program officer at the Hartford Foundation, will address undergraduate nursing graduates.
Planning to visit Cuba? Alas, you have missed the boat.

Cuba tourism jumped the shark 10 seconds after DJ Diplo entertained 450,000 adoring fans at the Jose Marti Anti-Imperialist Platform in Havana last month.

After Diplo, Air Force One with President Obama and his army of hangers-on piled into Havana, closely followed by the assisted living residents formerly known as the Rolling Stones.

Now tourist flotsam has overrun Cuba, which has few hotels and episodic availability of electricity and running water. It is just as Yogi Berra predicted: Cuba is too crowded. No one goes there any more.

I remember when going to Cuba was cool, meaning illegal. (Come to think of it, you could say the same thing about smoking marijuana, couldnt you?) For most of the past half-century, ones visiting options were quite limited indeed. Cuba welcomed trade union delegations, or you could visit along with some right-thinking, as opposed to right-wing, journalists.

Normal people could visit too, but at some peril. You could reach Cuba via Canada or most Central American countries, but spending money there violated our 1963 Trading With the Enemy Act. To help American visitors avoid fines, which could amount to $250,000, the Cuban border types would insert a loose-leaf, disposable visa into your passport. So if a US immigration officer braced you at some remote Vermont outpost on your way back from the Montreal airport, you could say, Yeah, I just spent a week shopping in Quebec City.

Those Che Guevara T-shirts? Oh, they were on deal at the Hudsons Bay department store. You know how pink they are up there.

The Old Cuba had that vague outlaw edge that replays so effectively at dinner parties in Brookline and Marblehead. Visiting Cuba was a litmus test for the ideological purity of lounge liberals, most of whom Fidel Castro would have tossed in jail for indulging their favorite pastimes -- for example voting for a non-Communist, or reading The New York Times.

There were (and are) two currency rates, and there used to be separate, Soviet-style stores for foreigners and tourists. Havana was sort of like Prague during the Cold War, when attractive women would sidle up to you for long, intimate chats. Alas, they were only interested in black-market currency swaps, or buying your blue jeans.

The other great hallmark of the late 20th-century Cuba visit was the de rigueur, impromptu, endless sit-down with Fidel. These were the stuff of legend. Americans loved to soak up El Jefes abuse for hours on end, as he railed about U.S. imperialism and the amazing achievements of his famous revolution, Playwright Arthur Miller recalled a four-hour long seance in 2000 that lasted until 1:30 a.m. Castro, he wrote, enjoyed staying up all night because he slept during most of the day. Miller was nodding off, but Castro was filling with the energy of his special vitamin pills, perhaps (a bag of which he later gave to each of us), he recalled.

Thats all in the rearview mirror now. Here come the US cruise ships, with their pestilential cargo of norovirus and Ugly Americans. Can nice Steve Wynn, who has done so much for Everett, be far behind? I can think of a presidential candidate who will soon be exploring new opportunities, as they say in the glamorous world of business.

El Trumpo Vieja Hotelplex in Havanas center, with a statue of mob boss-Cubaphile Meyer Lansky in the courtyard? Its close to a sure bet.

Alex Beam is a Boston Globe columnist.
Policing and public safety concerns loomed large in the Bridgeport mayoral race last fall. Now that Mayor Joe Ganim has been in office for four months, were pleased to see the first significant signs that his campaign rhetoric on these issues was not just that alone.

With 29 new police recruits in training and a plan for walking beats in public housing developments, we are beginning to see important, long-overdue action to improve policing and public safety in Bridgeport. Mayor Ganim and new Police Chief A.J. Perez deserve credit for these initial steps, but much more needs to be done.

Congregations Organized for a New Connecticut (CONECT) began pressing for these changes and more over a year ago. In the spring and summer of 2014, CONECT leaders knocked on doors in Bridgeport to listen to the concerns of our neighbors, who responded with a unified voice on one top issue: a real sense of fear and insecurity with on-going crime and a lack of adequate police presence and slow police response times to address it.

As we began researching the issues, three jumped out at us:

1. Understaffing: we learned how dire the staffing situation is  though budgeted for 492 officers, currently the Bridgeport Police Department (BDP) has only about 360 officers. No amount of police overtime can solve this shortage. Bridgeport needs to hire at least 100 new officers now.

2. Response times: we also learned that slow 911 response times reflect this officer shortage and reinforce a sense of fear in the community that the police wont show up when we need them most. It took the BPD on average more than 1 hour to respond to Priority 2 calls and more than 1:15 to respond to Priority 3 calls. For Priority 1 calls, which should be the BPDs highest concern, it still took an average of over 20 minutes for an officer to arrive at the scene.

3. Training: we learned how inadequate the BPDs officer training is in a couple of key areas: racial and cultural sensitivity and de-escalation of tense situations to avoid the use of force when possible, especially deadly force. Given the debate on aggressive police tactics and unnecessary use of deadly force raging across the country and the Connecticut state standards requiring such training, we were surprised to learn that the BPD has not adequately incorporated either of these topics into their training curriculum for either new recruits or long-term officers.

Since we learned about these shortcomings, CONECT has called for serious reform at the BPD  first in a public dialogue in June 2015 with Mayor Finch and then-Chief Gaudett and then in a candidates forum in September 2015 with Mayor Ganim and three other mayoral candidates. All four candidates pledged to take specific actions on hiring, training, 911 response times, and community policing.

Most recently, we gathered 650 of our members at our Winter Assembly in Bridgeport in late January to press Mayor Ganim to make good on his pledges for real action. Both at that Assembly and in follow-up meetings with his staff, we were pleased to see that serious attention is being paid to these issues.

The new police recruits in training and walking beats in public housing are good initial steps. But much more needs to be done:

 Continuous recruitment and training of new officers is necessary to keep our city safe. CONECT has called on the mayor to hire 100 new officers by the end of 2017, including black and Latino recruits and as many city residents as possible. He has pledged to do so.

 Officers must be trained to build community relations, demonstrate racial sensitivity, and de-escalate conflicts to avoid the violent tragedies observed around the country. Bridgeport deserves to be policed by officers, both new and seasoned, who have been thoroughly trained in each of these areas. A plan has yet to be worked out in this critical area.

 The BPD must focus more resources on enabling officers to respond to 911 calls quickly and reliably. A plan for tighter police supervision is underway now to improve this area. Nevertheless, we call on the BDP to begin publishing quarterly reports detailing 911 response times, so the community can track their progress and hold them accountable.

The mayor has said he is committed to community policing, and he has promised to fully staff and train Bridgeports police. He has taken important steps toward those goals, but there is still a long road ahead.

Bennett is pastor of Mount Aery Baptist Church, Hickman-Maynard is co-pastor of Bethel AME Church, and Shaw is Executive Director of the Council of Churches of Greater Bridgeport. They are leaders in CONECT, Congregations Organized for a New Connecticut, a broad-based coalition of 25 congregations representing 15,000 people in Fairfield and New Haven counties that have joined together across lines of race, faith, geography, and income to take action on issues of common concern and for the common good.
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.
Leesburg Electric: With prices soaring, late fees are being waived

Prices are up, so Leesburg Electric has decided that, as of Oct. 1, late fees will be waived.
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David Cameron listens during a plenary session of the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit in Washington

There are two sorts of politician. Those who want to do the right thing  and those who want to be seen to be doing the right thing.

Only those in the first category deserve to be called statesmen  or stateswomen, as in the case of one now dead Tory leader.

But in the modern era, image has become more vital to politicians than anything else (it was always important, of course)  and so the second category is running the show.

The consequence of this can be seen in two apparently unrelated travesties. First, the imminent closure of most of what is left of UK steel manufacturing; and second, the revelation reported by the Mail today of how the British Government has been funnelling aid to the Palestinian Authority in the full knowledge that the organisation in turn gives stipends to the thugs who brutally stabbed a British woman they believed (wrongly, as it happens) to be Jewish.

Neither of these outcomes make us think better of our Government. Rather the reverse, in fact. But both have their origins in David Camerons career mission: to make the British public believe that the Conservatives were not the nasty party, interested only in self-enrichment, but actually caring and compassionate.

When he became leader of the party in 2005, his chief objective was  in the phrase then fashionable among his advisers  to detoxify the Conservative brand. Thats right, brand  like soap powder. Cameron would wash its image whiter than white.

Imposed

So, in 2006, he travelled  official photographer in tow  to the Arctic: his photo-op with the huskies was designed to demonstrate that the new caring Conservatives were committed to saving the planet from climate change. Simultaneously, Cameron changed the partys logo from a blue torch to a green tree.

Consistent with this, the Tory leader gave uncritical support to Ed Milibands 2008 Climate Change Act  indeed, he imposed a three-line whip on his MPs to support this measure that would make the UK a world leader in reducing CO2 emissions: the Act mandated an 80 per cent cut in our emissions, way beyond anything imposed by any other country.

The only way this could be achieved  as Cameron must have realised  was to punish industrial companies for relying on cheap fossil fuels and to make them pay for the subsidies which underpinned wind and solar power.

In 2006, he travelled  official photographer in tow  to the Arctic: His photo-op with the huskies was designed to demonstrate that the new caring Conservatives were committed to saving the planet'

So British manufacturing industry ended up paying twice as much per kilowatt/hour of electricity as its continental rivals, about four times as much as its U.S. competitors  and who knows how much more than in China, which has imposed no such constraints on its manufacturing industries.

Cheap Chinese steel is a large part of the reason Tata is preparing to shut down its blast furnace in Port Talbot  which would destroy the jobs of 5,000 Welsh steelworkers at a stroke.

But why is Tata not also threatening to close its Dutch and German steel operations, equally part of its European business? It is because those countries have not imposed a penal carbon floor price on their industries.

Their governments have genuinely put the interests of such firms  and their employees  ahead of saving the planet (or, as Cameron promised, when he became PM, to lead the greenest government ever). What makes this policy most absurd is that it doesnt actually reduce global CO2 emissions from steel manufacture  it simply moves them from Britain to China.

I doubt it is much solace to the soon-to-be unemployed British steelworkers that they have played their part (collateral damage) in sanctifying the Conservative Partys image, or even Britains as a leader in fighting climate change.

THE SECRET OF RONNIE'S SUCCESS Ronnie Corbett was a lovely man: to judge from his many obituaries, the co-star of the Two Ronnies didnt have a bad bone in his (tiny) body. I still wondered at one of his colleagues describing his death as a tragedy. Its never a tragedy when someone dies at the age of 85  unless he was about to solve the problem of how to get limitless free energy from nuclear fusion. I did enjoy, though, the page the Mail devoted to him, under the headline One-Liners That Made a Nation Chuckle. For example: There was a fire at the Inland Revenue office in London, but it was put out before any serious good was done. And: Ron Knuckles was buried today at a service attended by the criminal underworld. As a mark of respect, the ceremony ended with two minutes violence. Yet these were not Corbetts jokes. They were written for him by Ian Davidson and Peter Vincent, who worked with Corbett for decades. They deserve at least as much credit for making our lives merrier. He was not like Dave Allen, another greatly loved TV comic, who wrote much of his own material. Ronnie Corbett was a great performer who played the part of a comedian, with superb timing the secret of his success. That, and the fact that he was 5ft 1in. Advertisement

They might also wonder why it is that while Tata has had to furnish the British exchequer with exceptionally high business rates  the deficit must be tackled somehow  the Conservative Government is spending ever more billions on overseas aid.

This, too, is the cost of David Camerons mission to detoxify the Conservative brand. The PMs commitment to spending 0.7 per cent of national income on the aid budget was his attempt to gain the good opinions of people such as Bono and Bob Geldof and to seem, well, compassionate.

But switching from an aid budget based on the needs of the global poor, to one based on the needs of an inefficient government department to spend (at the last count) over 12 billion a year: well, you can guess what happens.

It begins to panic when it looks as though it hasnt spent enough to match the legally mandated minimum, and rushes around the globe trying to find takers for our taxpayers money (such as the Palestinian Authority).

A friend of mine on the board of a large international aid agency recently told me how they had to turn down some of the money offered to them by the Department for International Development, because it simply couldnt all be usefully spent on the projects it was meant to fund.

Racket

What makes this most bizarre is that this country is much more indebted than many of those to which this largesse is being extended. We are paying around 43 billion a year just to service the UK national debt of almost 1.6 trillion  and thus borrowing still more to keep in the good books of the international aid racket.

And it is a racket, allowing the national leaders of recipient nations to keep themselves in private jets and Swiss holiday homes, rather than spend more on their own people.

In fact, the absurd climate change policies which have helped to drive the UK steel industry close to extinction are also justified only by the alleged needs of sub-Saharan Africa. After all, a rise in average temperatures in this country would be beneficial to us: fewer old or poor people would suffer hypothermia in winter.

Our anti-carbon policies are based entirely on the perceived threats to the developing world from climate change. Yet heres the thing: even if the entire British economy were to disappear, this would have no measurable impact on global climate: the explosive growth of Chinese industrialisation renders completely insignificant whatever we do by de-industrialisation.

What a farce  and all because someone had to make the Conservative Party fashionable in polite society. Pity about our steelworkers, though.

The founder of British computing, Alan Turing, set out in 1950 the benchmark for artificial intelligence which holds to this day. The Turing Test proposed that if a machine could interact with us in such a way that we thought we were dealing with a human, then that machine was intelligent.

And so to April 2016, when Microsoft unveiled a so-called chatbot which autonomously communicates on Twitter under the name of Tay. After a days exposure to the Twittersphere, Tay was putting out such tweets as Hitler would have done a better job than the monkey we have got now and Feminism is cancer.
Is Project Fear  the Downing Street-inspired campaign to terrify British voters into believing that leaving the EU would be an unmitigated catastrophe  beginning to backfire?

Last week, the rhetoric of the Remain camp verged on the hysterical, with three cabinet ministers wheeled out in quick succession to deliver prophesies of doom.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Brexit would lead to the NHS being starved of cash and Energy Secretary Amber Rudd that it would cause power bills to soar  creating an electric shock to consumers and industry alike.

Last week, the rhetoric of the Remain camp verged on the hysterical, with three cabinet ministers wheeled out in quick succession to deliver prophesies of doom. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Brexit would lead to the NHS being starved of cash

Education Secretary Nicky Morgan warned the older generation that if they voted to leave, they would devastate the life chances of their children and grandchildren

Most disgracefully of all, Education Secretary Nicky Morgan warned the older generation that if they voted to leave, they would devastate the life chances of their children and grandchildren.

Yet for all this hyperbole the latest opinion polling shows the Leave campaign moving ahead. True, polls can be capricious (as the general election so starkly proved) but isnt it just possible the public is becoming heartily sick of this cynical scaremongering?

Offering a very different message in this paper today is Andrea Leadsom, a former Treasury minister and successful businesswoman in her own right. She writes that if we ignore the doom-mongers and free ourselves from the shackles of Brussels our best days lie ahead of us.

She articulates what millions already know  that unfettered migration from within the EU has put enormous strain on schools, the NHS, jobs and housing and she believes that if we leave, wages will rise and unemployment will fall without making Britain any less attractive to foreign trade and investment.

Mrs Leadsom tells us we should have confidence in this countrys great advantages and give back the gift of sovereignty to future generations.

What a refreshing change this confident, optimistic analysis makes to the relentless negativity, paranoia and dodgy statistics of Project Fear.

Is it any wonder Britain seems to be edging ever closer to the EU exit door?

Misplaced charity

Another week, another string of examples of how vast sums in foreign aid are being squandered on despots, terrorists and pointless vanity projects.

Hundreds of millions to the corrupt Tanzanian government which recently rigged an election, 18,000 a year to the families of two jailed Palestinian terrorists who tried to murder a British woman and donations to Syria routinely siphoned off by Islamic State and Al Qaeda. The list of shame is seemingly endless.

For years the Mail has led the field in exposing these flagrant abuses, yet still the Prime Minister clings to his absurd commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of GDP every year on international development.

Palestinian militant Kifah Ghanimat killed a woman he wrongly believed to be Jewish, but he gets 9,000 a year in handouts from the Palestinian Authority, which gets million from Britain

By 2020, that will amount to 14.2billion  up from 5.8billion in 2010 and 3million more than the entire budget of the Home Office, which has to oversee anti-terrorism, immigration and policing.

Its more money than DfID knows what to do with, which is why so much is wasted. And in a time of austerity, its more than Britain can afford.

A generation betrayed

By the age of 16, native English children  especially the poor  are outperformed by pupils from no fewer than TWELVE other ethnic groups, many of whom spoke no English when they started school.
Most women will agree that any birthday launching her into a new decade is likely to be traumatic. When I turned 30, I was disappointed my career wasn't following the path I had mapped out and that I still rented, rather than owned, a house.

The day I turned 40 I was panicking that I was still single, facing a life on the shelf and that my window for having children was getting ever smaller.

A couple of years after that I was in full meltdown - a state of mind that led to me making some very stupid, costly and dangerous decisions.

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Claudia always assumed that she would meet someone and that motherhood would follow, but it never happened

So, when I tell you I'm still single, and childless, you'd have thought turning 50 a few weeks ago would have pushed me over the edge. I certainly did.

But the dramatic fallout I anticipated never happened - and the penny has suddenly dropped as to why. It's because by the time you reach 50, it's game over on the baby front.

A woman in her mid to late-40s may still be pursuing children (as I was), but after we turn 50, Mother Nature intervenes. She's acted as umpire, taken the decision out of your hands and brought the shutters down. And, my word, it feels good!

Instead of the crippling depression I thought would overwhelm me as a single, childless fiftysomething, I feel calm, happy - and massively relieved.

Things could have been so very different, though. I could have been welcoming in my 50th birthday as a single mother with a five-year-old son or daughter (or even twins) by my side. Because those costly and dangerous decisions I mentioned were the three rounds of IVF I underwent in my 40s to try to have a child - the last one just shy of my 45th birthday.

In total, I spent 30,000 (raised by taking a loan against my flat) trying to conceive a child I now feel hugely glad not to have had.

In fact, when I ask myself what would I rather have woken up and stared at on my 50th birthday - a rosy-cheeked pre-schooler or an extra 30 grand in the bank - the healthy account wins hands down.

Claudia Connell, 50, was so desperate for a baby that she spent 30,000 on IVF. She was in meltdown about being childless, which led to her making some very stupid, costly and dangerous decisions

Today, one in four women is single (having never married) at my age, while one in five is also childless.

At a glacial pace, society is starting to accept that it is possible to be a happy, fulfilled woman who is neither a wife nor mother. But over the past 15 years or so I felt judged and pitied for not being settled or having reproduced.

There were times when I could have told certain friends or family members that I'd single-handedly cured cancer or solved the Middle East crisis only for them to reply: 'Yes, but have you got a boyfriend yet?'

Of course, I had always assumed I would meet someone, marry and take the more traditional route to motherhood. But once I entered my 40s, I felt I had taken waiting to meet my Mr Right to the wire and it was time for Plan B.

Perhaps that's why, aged 41, I made an appointment at a fertility clinic in London with a view to having intra-uterine insemination (IUI) with donor sperm.

20 per cent... ... Is the number of women aged 45 in the UK don't have children Advertisement

The doctor there told me that, at my age, I was wasting time and should go straight to IVF. Despite what many believe, a woman's chances of getting pregnant after 40 are slim and, although more expensive, IVF is more successful than IUI.

Strict regulations in the UK mean sperm donors are in short supply, whereas the rules abroad are more relaxed and there are plenty to choose from. So I opted for a clinic in Athens that treated a lot of single British women.

At my consultation, the doctor scanned me and spotted a uterus full of fibroids (non-cancerous growths). He advised me to have them removed to improve my chances of carrying a child to term. Unable to secure the surgery on the NHS, I had it done privately at a cost of 8,000.

I didn't tell anyone about my operation because I didn't want anyone asking questions. So I went to hospital alone and then struggled home again, in agony, with my overnight bag.

A few months later, aged 42, I underwent my first IVF cycle, costing 6,000, using my own eggs. I had done my research and discovered that my chances of success were less than three per cent. But I went ahead anyway after selecting a 28-year-old Greek doctor as my sperm donor.

She believes that in hindsight, her childlessness shouldn't have bothered her so much, as she was happy living in a beautiful flat and dating casually - which she prefers to serious commitment (stock photo)

The cycle didn't work; deep down, I knew it wouldn't.

I had joined an online forum for older women trying to conceive. Whenever one of them had a failed cycle of IVF they wrote of their despair. When my test was negative, I felt totally indifferent.

Initially, I had no plans to try again. But a year went by and I found that, at 43, instead of being asked, 'When are you going to have children?' the question was: 'So, you're not going to have children, then?'

With hindsight it shouldn't have bothered me so much. I should have told people to mind their own business because I was happy. I lived in a beautiful flat, earned a comfortable living and was travelling all over the world. I was casually dating, something I have realised I prefer to any serious commitment.

Instead, I decided to have another crack at IVF.

Many of the women on the forum I was a member of were having success using the donated eggs of much younger women, rather than their own.

Yet again I travelled to Athens to have a cycle of IVF using eggs donated by a 26-year-old Polish teacher and the sperm of a 19-year-old Danish student. The protocol for IVF with donor eggs is different. It necessitates switching off your natural cycle, stopping ovulation, and, therefore, plunging your body into menopause.

A ticking biological clock drives women to panic. I've seen friends marry just to have children, only to be lumbered with men they despise

Suddenly, a decade before I should have been experiencing such things, I ached all over. The hot flushes and night sweats were unbearable and I felt dizzy and lightheaded from all the drugs I was pumping into myself. Despite the youth of both my donors, that cycle - which had cost me around 8,000 for the drugs, blood tests and travel expenses - also didn't work.

At that point, I should have drawn a line under things and embraced a life without children. Instead, I had one more roll of the dice two years later with yet another 8,000 cycle.

I still ask myself what on earth I was thinking. My only answer is that I don't like to fail and that I had read that the majority of women conceive within three cycles of IVF.

This time, nudging 45, the clinic threw everything at it. My egg donor was a 20-year-old Russian student and my sperm donor a 26year-old Portuguese architect. We upped the drugs and threw steroids and an intravenous immune-suppressing cocktail into the mix.

I ballooned in weight and, thanks to the steroids, my face looked like a squishy cushion. Still, the consultant felt certain this cycle would work.

The best eggs had been selected and fertilised with the sperm and transferred at day six, the latest possible time you can transfer an embryo - the theory being that any embryo that has reached that stage is super-healthy and more likely to implant in the womb.

She would rather have the 30,000 she spent back in her bank account than have a child

The embryos were perfect and I would have opted to have just one transferred but, encouraged by the clinic, I went for two to increase my chances, even though it meant the terrifying prospect of twins.

Then something strange happened. During the two weeks you have to wait before finding out if you are pregnant, I gradually came to the conclusion that I did not want children after all. I loved my life without them and felt sure I would be a selfish mother. I found myself becoming increasingly irritated by other people's children and I was having horrific nightmares about giving birth to horribly deformed babies.

Women on the IVF forum who'd given birth were posting nightmare tales of sleepless nights, ruined bodies and lost careers - something I couldn't afford to risk.

Instead of doing everything I could to boost my chances of success I was doing things that could sabotage it: I drank alcohol, I had hot baths and I went for long, body-punishing runs.

When the day came to do the pregnancy test, I didn't bother. I had a feeling the cycle had worked and I wanted to delay seeing 'pregnant' on the test for as long as possible.

I didn't do it the next day either. It was only after the doctor treating me insisted that I find out the result that I tested in my bathroom at home and saw it was positive. I didn't even need to wait the three minutes, it came up instantly. Perhaps it was faulty?

I immediately did a second test only to get the same instant result.

I experienced that feeling where your stomach flips and my heart started to race out of control.

As I sat in the bathroom in shock, I even started to wonder if I should continue with the pregnancy, despite the 30,000 and years of agonising involved.

In the end, the pregnancy turned out to be a 'chemical' one - meaning that the embryo doesn't develop and is lost.

Five years on, those crazy years of trying to conceive feel like an out-of-body experience. I'm angry at myself for spending so much money and for taking such risks with my health (I never came out of menopause after my last cycle of IVF).

Just weeks into my sixth decade I feel like I've turned a corner. I'm so happy my life has worked out the way it has and I am excited, not fearful, about the future.

Dr Vivian Diller, a psychologist who specialises in women and ageing, tells me my feelings of contentment in middle age are common.

She says: 'There is a turning point for women, beyond which they actually start to feel better.

'Young women see this as putting a rose-tinted hue on a situation, but I'm finding it more and more with patients of your age: they feel comfortable in their skin and with their choices in a way they never did before.

And when I consider my friends' marriages, I don't find myself looking down from my lonely shelf and wishing for what they have

'Single, childless women are great at filling their time and making sure they're surrounded by a family of friends. But mothers in their 50s can find themselves alone, bereft and unable to cope with life.

'That's where a childless woman has the upper hand and the benefits of not having any children become clearer.'

At 50, I also think it's unlikely I will ever marry - and I'm OK about that, too.

Thankfully, all the people who used to harass me about not having a significant other are off my case. When you're single over a certain age (46 in my experience), suddenly people stop asking if you've met anyone.

And when I consider my friends' marriages, I don't find myself looking down from my lonely shelf and wishing for what they have.

Many of them are unhappy. I'd go so far as to say that some of them even loathe their spouses. One knows her husband is having an affair but she doesn't care because it keeps him out of her hair. Why would I want that for myself?

Should she be in the market for marriage, a single woman over 50 is likely to make wiser, more considered choices than she would have ten years previously.

A loudly ticking biological clock can drive women to make rushed decisions. I've witnessed two friends marry in a panic at 39 to have children, only to be lumbered now with men they don't love or respect.

At 50, you can take your time. No panic for a whirlwind romance; no pushing for that proposal or honeymoon baby and then ending up saddled to a man you barely know.

Yes, technically, someone my age could pay a small fortune to a shady IVF clinic willing to treat women in their 50s, but I won't be one of them. Right now, being single and childless at 50 is not the huge pity party I thought it would be.
Richest artist in the world Damien Hirst is proof that when it comes to love, numbers dont mean a thing.

Two years after he started dating glamorous model Katie Keight, who at 26 is half his age, I can confirm their relationship is going from strength to strength.

Not only did she recently travel to the U.S. with the British artist, who is worth 215 million, but she has also moved into his swish 2.3 million pad in South-West London.

They are very happy together, says a friend. Damiens been away for work recently, which is the only reason they havent been pictured together.

The happy couple: Richest artist in the world Damien Hirst with his model girlfriend Katie Keight

Love-split Becky takes ex to sister's wedding

Just two weeks after Olympic gold medallist Rebecca Adlington revealed her 18-month marriage to fellow swimmer Harry Needs was over, the 27-year-old smiles bravely for the camera as she plays bridesmaid at her sister Chloes wedding.

Amazingly, she is still on such good terms with her future ex-husband  and father of their ten-month-old daughter, Summer  Rebecca took him as her date to Saturdays nuptials between Chloe, a designer, and accountant Jonathan Wilson.

Smiles: Chloe and bridesmaid Rebecca (left) and with daughter Summer (right). Becky wrote: Huge congratulations to my beautiful sister and her new husband. Such an incredible day'

Sharing these snaps online, Becky, who wore a sleeveless blue gown, writes: Huge congratulations to my beautiful sister and her new husband. Such an incredible day.

Meanwhile, Harry didnt shy away from his feelings. Emotional wedding weekend, he commented.
When the image is flipped a detailed sketch of a horse is revealed

Some can see the outline of a horse while others see nothing at all

Optical illusion has many internet users guessing what is hidden inside

Is your eyesight good enough to see the picture hidden inside this red circle?

The brain teaser is said to test the internet's vision with people able to see everything from a detailed image to just an outline, while others have struggled to spot anything at all.

The sight test is currently trending online with many users baffled by what the mysterious picture actually is.

Is your eyesight good enough to see the hidden picture inside this red circle? The brain teaser has appeared online quizzing internet users about whether they can see another shape hidden inside the red blob, above

While some claim they can see the whole image in perfect detail, others are left scratching their heads in confusion.

When the dot is flipped you can clearly see a detailed sketch of a horse complete with a mane and tail, saddle and bridle and grass around its feet.

Some people can only see the outline of the image before the red spot is flipped, while others say they can see much more. Try the test below to see how you get on.

While some claim they can see the whole image perfectly, others are completely baffled by the image. When the dot is flipped, right, you can clearly see a detailed sketch of a horse complete with a mane and tail

The online teaser shows how some people only see the outline of the horse rather than the other details in the picture such as the grass, mane, tail and saddle

The test is just the latest in a string of a popular brain teasers sweeping the net.

An image of an iPhone screen became an internet sensation last week as thousands of people deliberated over the photo, which was widely shared along with the question: 'How many threes can you see in this picture?'

Social networkers came up with the most common answers of either 15, 19 or 21. But which answer is correct?

Can you count how many threes are on the iPhone screen? If you see 15, 19 or 21 number threes, you have arrived at the same conclusion as the majority of social networkers... but what's the correct answer?

There are in fact 19 number threes pictured in the image, but there could be 21 depending on how you interpret the question.

Apart from the eight threes in the phone number, there are two threes on the key pad as the number eight button has been replaced.

At 3.33pm, the time also contains three number threes and the battery power at 33 per cent contains another two.

That totals 15, the answer many social networkers have come to. On closer inspection, however, there are a further four hidden digits, totaling 19.

Three of the letters in the contact's name have been replaced with threes and the letter 'I' on the number four key has also been replaced.

But many online posts give the answer to be 21, with people seeming convinced that there are a further two threes in the image. The differing opinions come down to the interpretation of the question. Many users have included the bar signal and the wifi signal, both of which show three bars. But whether 19 or 21 is the correct answer is a matter of opinion

But many online posts give the answer to be 21, with people seeming convinced that there are a further two threes in the image.

The differing opinions come down to the interpretation of the question. The images has been widely shared on Facebook and Twitter with the message. 'How many threes do you see in this picture?'

Many users have included the network bar and WiFi signal, both of which show three bars. But whether 19 or 21 is the correct answer is a matter of opinion.

The puzzle, which has been widely shared on Facebook and Twitter after resurfacing again online, has instigated heated debate - with many left flummoxed at how others arrive at a different answer.

Twitter user Dani posted: 'This thing annoyed the hell out of me when someone said 21. I was like no there's 18 until I looked again properly haha.'

How many threes can you see? Apart from the eight threes in the phone number, there are two threes on the key pad as the number eight button has been replaced. At 3.33pm, the time also contains three number threes and the battery power at 33 per cent contains another two. Three of the letters in the contact's name have been replaced with threes and the letter 'I' on the number four key has also been replaced

Facebook Ravi Vidyadhar Pathak came to a grander total and said: '28 if it's saying to count everything that resembles to 3 including the network signal which is 3 dots the page info on left which is 3 the buttons having 3 letters ABC.'

Another philosophical Facebook user Marc Joseph posted: 'I see only 2....and technically am correct cause you never asked how many 3's are there in the pic.'

Athene Whitfield finally concluded the answer was 19 but had made so many previous guesses she posted: 'I got to that in the end but thought - I can't send an answer through again!!? Was getting embarrassed!'

One user by the name of Sarah was so involved in the problem she posted a mock-up of the screen with the potential answers highlighted in purple.

When a friend posted 'Not sure where you get 20 from' she posted: 'Now I'm not sure.'

It follows an optical illusion poster featuring tigers that resurfaced online this week, asking viewers to guess how many animals it featured.

On close inspection the picture has the big cats hiding in the bushes, bark and even the sky.

The image, which appears to have been produced as a poster, has two adults tigers and their two cubs in the foreground.

After that it becomes trickier to track down the felines in the picture but there are 12 other tiger faces hidden.

The image appears to have been used as a poster but has resurfaced on the internet

In the foliage to the right of the tigers, there's a fern in the shape of a tiger's face, with two hiding in the dirt beneath the tigers' feet.

In the top of the picture, there are five feline faces hidden within the branches of the trees.

While another two are seen in the wide trunk of the tree on the left of the picture and another tiger is face is seen on the left behind it and the last one is hidden in the soil below.

The poster, which features 16 in total, appears to be aimed at children, like many of the logic puzzles which have stormed the internet recently.

Another recent brain teaser saw a children's picture with tourists at a holiday campsite and challenged them to answer a list of nine questions.

The puzzle has the big cats hidden in foliage, trees and even the ground with all 16 very difficult to find

The image is thought to be from an old children's magazine, according to The Independent, but the tough questions are likely to also leave adults scratching their heads.

The black and white drawing showed three people at the campsite. One is standing by the cooking pot with a ladle, another is rifling through his backpack, and a third is taking photos.

A sign nailed to a tree states said: 'On duty. Colin, 7. Peter, 8. James, 9'. The final name is obscured, but the number 10 is visible.

A picnic blanket with four plates, four spoons and a watermelon is laid out on the ground and a hen is scratching in the grass nearby.

Nearby, a tent is pitched and a spider has built a cobweb between the edge of the tent and a nearby tree.

A recent challenge which baffled the internet is a logic puzzle from an old children's magazine that involves studying a picture of tourists at a holiday camp site and answering a list of nine questions

A series of clues is provided by the apparently calm scene involving boys at a campsite

The first question asks how many people are staying at the camp.

They must also figure out whether they arrived that day or a few days earlier, how they got there and how far away the closest town is.

CAN YOU SOLVE THE PUZZLE BY ANSWERING THESE QUESTIONS? 1. How many tourists are staying at this camp? 2. When did they arrive: today or a few days ago? 3. How did they get here? 4. Is there a town nearby? 5. Where does the wind blow from: north or south? 6. What time of day is it? 7. Where did Alex go? 8. Who was on duty yesterday? 9. What date is it today? *Scroll down for answers Advertisement

In addition, they are asked whether the wind is blowing from north or south and what time of day it is.

The next question is to state where someone called Alex went.

Finally, they must figure out who was on duty yesterday and what day of the week it is.

Unlike the many cartoons that have swept the web in recent months challenging users to spot figures hidden in a sea animals or Star Wars characters, this puzzle relies on deduction.

The answer to how many tourists there are is relatively easy to figure out.

As there are four spoons and plates on the blanket and four names on the duty list, the answer is quite obvious.

The cobweb gives a clue to when the group arrived as it must have been a few days earlier to give the spider time to build it.

An oar leaning up against the tree is the key to figuring out how they got there - by boat.

The hen indicates that the nearest town is not far away as it's managed to wander into the campsite.

Hungarian cartoonist Gergely Dudas, also known as Dudolf, posted his latest puzzle a few days ago to celebrate Easter, challenging fans to find an egg cleverly disguised alongside a group of bunnies

The egg is cunningly disguised between a pair of white rabbit ears in the second row on the left hand side

ANSWERS TO THE CAMP RIDDLE 1. There are four tourists four spoons on the picnic blanket and four names on the duty list. 2. They arrived a few days ago A spider's web has appeared between their tent and a tree in that time. 3. They got there by boat Note the oars by the tree. 4. No, a village is not far ..because there's a chicken wandering around. 5. The wind is blowing from the south A flag that shows the wind direction is on top of the tent. (To tell which direction is which, look at the branches - they're normally bigger on the southern side of trees - if you're in the Northern Hemisphere.) 6. Its morning Take the answer from question five to figure out east and west then work out the time based on the shadows. 7. Alex is catching butterflies His net is behind the tent. 8. Colin was on duty yesterday Colin is rummaging through his backpack (marked with a 'c'); Alex is catching butterflies; James is taking photos as his tripod can be seen sticking out of his bag. This leaves Peter - then, according to the list, that means Colin was on duty yesterday. 9. Today is August 8th... According to the list, Peter is on duty, and there is a watermelon - which ripen in August - on the ground. Advertisement

A flag on the tent, known as a windsock, shows that the wind is blowing from the south, but to figure this out you need to be aware that branches on the southern side of trees in the UK get more sun and grow more densely.

To figure out the time, you need to use the previous answer which tells you south from north to figure out where is east and west and deduce the time based on shadows.

The answer is that it's morning because the boy by the cook pot's shadow extends to the west.

Because we're asked where Alex went, we can assume he's not visible in the picture. However a butterfly net can be seen behind the tent. So the answer is that he's gone to catch butterflies.

Gergley's original spot the panda puzzle left the internet baffled at Christmas 2015

The original Where's Wally-style snowmen picture was liked by 42,000 people and shared 100,000 times within days, with many struggling to find the panda at all

Dudolf followed up the panda puzzle days later with another picture posted online, this time of a cat hidden among dozens of brightly coloured owls

He planted a few red herrings in the owl picture like a colourful bow tie and festive hats, but the owl's facial features make it particularly difficult to spot the cat

To figure out who was on duty yesterday first consider that Colin, Peter, James and Alex are staying at the camp.

We know that Alex is catching butterflies and the person taking photos must be James, as there's a tripod sticking out of the bag marked J.

The person looking through the backpack is Colin as it's marked with a C.

That means Peter must be the one standing by the cooking pot. If Peter is on duty today, then according to the list on the tree Colin was on duty yesterday.

Figuring out the day of the month isn't too tricky as according to the duty list it's the 8th of the month.

But establishing what month it is may prove rather more difficult. The solution lies in the watermelon on the picnic blanket.

The answer is August 8, but you would have to be aware that it's the month in which watermelons ripen to find the correct answer.

Its long list of questions makes the puzzle even more baffling than a challenge by Gergely Dudas who first drove the internet mad trying to find a panda among a group of snowmen, and a cat blended into rows of owls.

The Hungarian cartoonist posted his latest puzzle a few days ago to celebrate Easter, challenging fans to find an egg cleverly disguised alongside a group of bunnies.

The panda craze was followed up by Reddit contributor, with the username Oneste, who created a mind-boggling puzzle in which he hid a panda amongst rows and rows of Stormtroopers - and TIE fighter pilots
Italian fashion house Valentino has made a lucrative offer to buy its competitor Balmain, according to reports in the French media.

The label is thought to be considering three separate offers - from 'a Chinese group and an American investor' as well as Valentino, and owners have until Thursday to pick one.

Les Echos reports that Valentino, which is owned by members of the Qatari royal family, has made a bid of 569million (453million) for the French brand that was founded by designer Pierre Balmain in 1945.

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Balmain is rumoured to have received a bid from Valentino. Pictured is creative director Olivier Rousteing (centre) at the brand's Paris Fashion Week show alongside Kendall Jenner, Karlie Kloss and others

Valentino Clemente Ludovico Garavani, founder of eponymous label Valentino, is rumoured to have his sights set on French fashion house Balmain after its owners announced they were seeking a buyer in February

Balmain announced in February it had given French investment bank Bucephale Finance a mandate to sell the historic brand, which is helmed by Olivier Rousteing, for between 300 and 400million (239 to 319million).

In doing so, the heirs of Balmain's late owner Alain Hivelin - who died in 2014 - sparked a flurry of interest from French, British and Asian investors.

Before his death, Hivelin appointed creative director Olivier Rousteing and subsequent years have seen the historic fashion house rise to prominence with a rumoured annual revenue of 30 million (24 million).

This is partly down to its massive social media influence - digital-savvy Rousteing, just 24 when he took on the role, was the first designer to reach one million Instagram followers - with high-profile fans such as Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid.

Social media-savvy Rousteing, just 24 when he took on the role of creative director, was the first designer to reach one million Instagram followers - and high-profile fans such as Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid

Kendall Jenner (left) and Gigi Hadid (right) walk the runway at Balmain's Paris Fashion Week show in March. The show was a star-studded affair, with its runway models attracting as much attention as the collection itself

Its Paris Fashion Week AW16 show in March was a star-studded affair, with its runway models attracting as much attention as the collection itself.

Olivier Rousteing made his way onto the stage to loud cheers and applause from the crowd following the show, which also include Joan Smalls, Binx Walton, Sara Sampaio and Lindsey Wixson.

Rousteing's 2015 H&M collaboration - fronted by Kendall Jenner and Jourdan Dunn - also brought the brand added exposure, making it more accessible.

He has said in the past: 'I want to talk to my generation  this is my main aim as a designer.'

Balmain has been a family-run affair since Alain Hiveline left his heirs a 30 per cent stake after his death, and any new owners would have to comply with Alain Hivelin's dying wish: to ensure the continuity of the house in the luxury market.

Following his storming AW16 show at Paris Fashion Week, Olivier Rousteing made his way onto the stage to loud cheers and applause from the crowd after models Joan Smalls and Jourdann Dunn walked the runway

Friends in high places: Olivier Rousteing, second right, rubs shoulders with (left to right) Jared Leto, Lewis Hamilton, Kanye West and Kim Kardashian West at the Balmain aftershow dinner, Paris Fashion Week 2016

The original Mr Balmain: Founding designer Pierre Balmain with French racehorse owner Suzy Volterra, left, and with one of his models, right. The label is now owned by the descendants of former chairman Alain Hivelin
Kelly said in a 2012 profile; 'If you're wearing a pair of shoes that's a little flashy, then it's important not to be flashy up top and vice versa'

She paired the shoes with a simple back dress as she asked Cruz about rumors of an affair and his running mate Donald Trump

Megyn Kelly scored the cover of Vanity Fair this past January and now seems to have her sights set on Vogue.

The Fox News host arrived in Wisconsin Monday where she sat down for an exclusive talk with Republican hopeful Ted Cruz, talking about everything from recent rumors suggesting he had multiple mistresses in the past to his opponent Donald Trump during a Town Hall interview set to air Monday night.

For the occasion, Kelly picked a simple black, short-sleeved dress and some very impressive asymmetrical snakeskin sandals from Prada.

Those shoes, which Kelly wore in black and are available at Saks for $1,100, have long been a staple of the Italian design house and a favorite of celebrities including Emily Blunt.

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Famous feet: Megyn Kelly wore an $11000 pair of asymmetrical snakeskin sandals by Prada to interview Ted Cruz on Monday

Style star: Kelly said in a 2012 profile; 'If you're wearing a pair of shoes that's a little flashy, then it's important not to be flashy up top and vice versa' (her Prada sandals above)

Kelly, 45, has always said she likes to keep her style simple, with the former lawyer telling the Los Angeles Times in a 2012 profile piece; 'Before I got into TV, I wasn't fashionable at all.

'I was more about getting into my legal clothes  navy, brown or black suits; that was it. Though I did make the executive decision to not wear sneakers with those suits while on my way to and from work. I didn't think about it that much. I was overworked and overwhelmed.'

She also said in that interview that she was not a fan of 'hot pinks' or 'bright reds,' adding; 'I like black, white and navy. I think navy looks good with blond hair and dark blue eyes.'

It was her shoes however that she said were the most important in that interview, noting that even though they are not visible on camera from behind her desk they make all the difference.

Prada sandals, available for $1100

The writer of that piece noted heels from Giuseppe Zanotti, YSL, Jimmy Choo and Alexandre Birman on Kelly's shoe rack at work, and said the host wore Gucci T-strap sandals for their interview.

In that interview, Kelly also said; 'If you're wearing a pair of shoes that's a little flashy, then it's important not to be flashy up top and vice versa.'

Four years later she appears to still be following the same rule.

Kelly previously commented on how her footwear was heavily monitored back when she was a lawyer, telling GQ in 2010; 'There definitely was a different feeling when I was practicing law. I remember when I was trying this one case in Iowa, I had sling-back shoes, which are not that risque, okay.'

She added; 'It was just a little sling-back shoe, and the head counsel for the co-defendant in the case complained to my boss that I was going to alienate the Iowa female jurors.
A healthcare provider was paid 165,000 by the NHS for carrying out just one GP call-out and 18 phone consultations in a contract branded 'a disgraceful scandal'.

Primecare was awarded the contract by NHS England in July last year to provide home visits to patients in the West Midlands who are registered in practices outside of their area.

It formed part of the GP Choice scheme - where patients can access GP appointments outside traditional catchment areas in a bid to make care more accessible.

The contract was worth 165,253 upfront with an additional 80 for each GP visit and 30 for a phone consultation, GP magazine Pulse reports.

Healthcare provider Primecare carried out one GP call-out as part of its 165,000 contract for NHS England

But Primecare was only required to carry out a single home visit during that time and 18 phone consultations with patients up to November, according to NHS England.

The contract, which expired at the end of March, covered Birmingham, Black Country, Solihull, Coventry, Warwickshire and Worcestershire.

Health officials said, given the low demand, they would be looking at replacing the contract at a reduced cost.

The GP Choices scheme was introduced by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to give patients greater flexibility to get appointments.

It means people can choose to see a family doctor close to their work or at a surgery where the hours best suit their needs.

Under the scheme, patients who joined a practice a long distance away were not eligible for home visits.

But the local GP commissioning groups, and NHS England which oversees them, made provisions to ensure these patients can have visits if they become too ill to attend a surgery.

NHS England in the West Midlands said it had to look to other providers after GP practices in the region had not been interested in signing up to the scheme, which offered them 60 a home visit or 15.87 for a consultation in their practice.

The Primecare contract, which expired at the end of March, covered Birmingham, Black Country, Solihull, Coventry, Warwickshire and Worcestershire

It said its service included having 'having two GPs readily available throughout the in-hours period Monday to Friday, providing a clinically safe service that meets the needs of both the patient and the commissioners'.

Birmingham LMC medical secretary and General Practitioners Committee (GPC) member Dr Robert Morley described it as 'an inevitable consequence' of an' appalling' contract.

'This is an absolutely disgraceful scandal but comes as no surprise,' he told Pulse.

He said the GPC has consistently pointed out the problems with the out-of-area registrations scheme and described it as 'a politically-motivated gimmick'.

This is an absolutely disgraceful scandal but comes as no surprise Dr Robert Morley, General Practitioners Committee member

An NHS England spokesperson, said a new agreement had been reached which will cost 'significantly less' than the previous contract with Primecare.

'We have now reached agreements in principle with NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups and GPs to deliver a more localised service that meets the needs of patients across our area,' they said.

It blamed 'little local appetite' in providing the service which meant it had to ask other providers for costed proposals.

'Primecare offered the lowest quoted price for the service that needed to be delivered.

'If this service had not been in place, patients who needed it may have been directed to their local Accident & Emergency Unit, which may not have been the most appropriate service for them.'

A Primecare spokesperson said they were providing an important service and said it was the commissioner's decision to pay the money for the contract up front.
A newborn baby girl had to be wrapped in cling film after her vital organs were born outside her body.

Millie Bartle, was still in the womb when she was diagnosed with gastroschisis - a birth defect of the abdominal wall where the intestines develop outside the body.

Her terrified mother, Maria Dennison, 28, was told the condition was life-threatening and once born, Millie would need emergency surgery to try and correct it.

She was delivered by Caesarean section and was immediately wrapped in film to keep the bowel moist, before undergoing corrective surgery.

But her body struggled to contain the organ, causing her blood pressure to plummet.

Doctors were forced to take her bowels back out before placing them into a medical sandwich bag which hung above her incubator.

Over the following week, they were slowly lowered back into her fragile body and after 56 days in intensive care she was finally allowed home.

Millie Bartle, now 11 months, is recovering well at home with mother Maria Dennison. She was born with gastroschisis - a birth defect of the abdominal wall where the intestines develop outside the body

Millie Bartle was born with her bowel on the outside of her body. Doctors wrapped her in cling film to protect the organ and whisked her away for emergency surgery

Now approaching her first birthday Millie's organs have finally recovered and she can now eat without any digestive problems.

Miss Dennison, a receptionist, said: 'It was so weird seeing a clear sandwich bag, known as a silo bag, with her organs hanging above my little baby, it looked like something out of a gory horror movie, but it saved my daughter's life.

'I was heartbroken when her first operation failed, she could have died twice in the space of 24-hours.

'Her blood pressure was the problem, her fragile frame was struggling to cope with the extra organs all at once.

'That's why it was decided to take them back out and allow gravity to take its course and slowly pull them back into her body.'

Doctors gradually lowered more of her bowel back into her body each day. When Millie was a week old, there was still three inches of bowel outside of her body.

Miss Dennison found out Millie had gastroschisis at the 12-week ultrasound scan.

A midwife pointed to a mass outside of her body and explained that was her bowels.

She and partner Chris Bartle, 29, were offered an abortion but decided to continue with the pregnancy.

Little Millie's body struggled to cope with her bowel after it was put inside so she had it gradually lowered into her body using a silo bag, pictured

'I was extremely worried throughout the pregnancy. I knew that while she was still inside of me she would be safe, but as soon as I gave birth she would have to be wheeled off for life-saving surgery.

'When she was born she looked like a perfect newborn baby but she had all of her bowels on the outside, she was then wrapped her up in cling film three or four times round.

'I had to warn her sister that it didn't look pretty in hospital because she was paralysed by the medication, there was a tube down her throat and the bag holding her intestines, however when she saw her she told me she was beautiful which melted my heart.

'It took 56 days of hospital treatment and multiple hospital trips because of problems with her digestion.

'But finally her bowels are working properly now and she can start being a normal baby.'

Within 45 seconds of being born at Hull Royal Infirmary she was whisked away for her first emergency surgery before spending two months in hospital.

She continues to have problems digesting food and had to return to hospital on numerous occasions because she couldn't empty her bowel.

'Her body couldn't pass waste normally so she would vomit a dark green sick, it was horrific.

Millie, now 11 months, is now fully recovered and this scar is the only sign of her medical ordeal

'Thankfully at last she can eat and digest food properly now that her body has gotten used to passing food.'

Millie, now 11 months, is fully recovered and her parents have praised the medical team at the Hull Royal Infirmary for saving their daughter's life.

Miss Sanja Besarovic, 60, consultant paediatric surgery at Hull Royal Infirmary who fitted Millie's silo bag, said: 'Mille's abdomen had to be reopened by me due to deterioration and risk of losing the bowels.

'She had a silo bag inserted to release pressure on her bowels and main blood vessels in her abdomen.

'After a few days, when all bowels recovered and went back into the abdominal cavity by gravity, she was successfully re-closed and was managed at our neonatal unit for six weeks while her feeds were established.

'I am delighted to see that Millie has recovered very well and she is able to enjoy life as any other child of her age.

'None of this would be possible without great teamwork and tremendous support and understanding of her parents - I wish her all he best in the future.'
Comes two days ahead of Wednesday's planned 48-hour walk out

Served 'letter before action' to Department of Health to warn of challenge

Claims the Health Secretary has no legal power to enforce new contract

The Health Secretary is facing a second legal challenge to try to block the imposition of the 'toxic' junior doctor contract.

The NHS staff campaign group Just Health has raised 116,000 from almost 4,000 donations in just four days to bring a High Court judicial review.

Today, lawyers acting on their behalf served a 'letter before action' on the Department of Health, giving it seven days to explain how Mr Hunt's decision to impose new shift patterns from this summer was legal.

Doctors Nadia Masood, Marie McVeigh, Francesca Silman, and Ben White set up a crowdfunding page #JustHealth to create a legal challenge against the new junior doctors' contract

Lawyers acting on behalf of the group - paid for through the crowdfunding donations - claim the contract is not legally enforceable on the following grounds:

'Mr Hunt has no power to make a decision with legal effect' . They say the Health Secretary has no power to require NHS employers, only to offer to employ junior doctors upon the terms of an employment contract recommended by him.

'Failure to consult' . The lawyers claim Mr Hunt made the decision on February 11, 2016, without having undertaken necessary consultation with NHS Trusts

'Irrational and/or premature decision to impose a contract' : Lawyers claim Mr Hunt's decision to impose contracts was made less than 24 hours after Sir David Dalton wrote to him asking the government to do 'whatever it deems necessary' to bring certainty to the junior doctors' contract dispute. They claim due consideration could not have been given in that time.

A letter before action - usually the first step in taking disputes to court - was delivered to Mr Hunt this morning - two days before the fourth round of junior doctors' strike action this year.

Saimo Chahal, QC and partner at Bindmans LLP representing the group, told MailOnline: 'If the Government doesn't have good legal arguments, we will issue proceedings'.

Campaigners started legal proceedings after raising the substantial sum through a crowdfunding website to bankroll the proceedings.

The doctors smashed their original target of 100,000 after appealing for donations to launch a legal challenge against the new contract, due to be imposed by summer

Many junior doctors, seen here demonstrating at an NHS rally in London last week, claim the contract the Government plans to impose this August is 'unfair' and 'unsafe'

The group was set up by Dr Ben White, a 33 year old medical registrar, General Practice registrar Dr Francesca Silman, Dr Marie McVeigh, who specialises in obstetrics and gynaecology and Dr Nadia Masood works as an anaesthetics registrar.

On the fundraising page, they write: 'We are a group of doctors based in London who between us have almost 30 years of experience working in the NHS.

'We are committed to our patients' well-being and making the NHS the best it can be. We want it to remain safe for generations to come.'

Jeremy Hunt is under mounting pressure after campaigners launched a second legal challenge against the new junior doctors' contract

The move heaps further pressure on Mr Hunt, who is also facing a legal challenge from the British Medical Association (BMA) over the contracts.

Last week, the union launched the legal bid, arguing the Government had failed to 'pay due regard' to the equalities impact of the new contracts.

This is an assessment to ensure new rules do not unfairly discriminate or disadvantage anyone affected.

The Department of Health previously admitted it did not carry out the assessment before the contract was imposed.

However, it has now published the report, and says it made a number of changes to the new contract as a result.

The bitter dispute centres around a new contract in England which the Government says will create a truly seven-day service.

Under the new contract, normal working hours will be extended from 7pm on weekdays to 10pm and will include Saturday from 7am to 5pm for the first time.

It has seen junior doctors go out on full strike for the first time in 40 years with more than 19,000 operations postponed since the BMA began industrial action.

They are due to walk out from non-emergency care again on Wednesday for another 48-hour strike.

All-out strike action for 18 hours across two days is due to take place later this month if no deal is reached to bridge the gap between the two sides.

Just Health's Dr McVeigh, said: 'We feel this contract imposition has been rushed through without appropriate consideration and due process.

'There is no evidence that it will deliver a safer system or better quality care for our patients; it will instead exacerbate the staffing crisis we are already struggling with across the NHS.'

The Department of Health said it was waiting to look at the details of the challenge before passing comment.
often goes unnoticed by parents or doctors

If you ask someone to name famous people - fictional or non-fictional - who are known for having autism or being 'on the spectrum', Rain Man is often the top favourite, possibly followed by Sherlock Holmes, especially in his recent incarnation by Benedict Cumberbatch.

Sheldon in the Big Bang Theory is another.

Very rarely will anyone come up with a womans name.

So are there really very few women with autism, or is it just that we have too narrow a view of what autism looks like?

The term autism or autism spectrum disorders (ASD) refers to lifelong behavioural difficulties associated with a wide range of problems (hence the 'spectrum'), usually to do with social skills.

People on the spectrum can, at one extreme, have severe learning difficulties, including challenging behaviour and the absence of language.

Or, at the other extreme, have normal or even extraordinarily high levels of ability, possibly in particular areas such as music or maths.

Autism is commonly thought of as a 'male' problem - mostly affecting boys - but an expert revealed females can suffer from autism spectrum disorders as well. Pictured here, Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes, a famous character 'on the spectrum'

People on the autism spectrum - including the character Sheldon on the CBS sitcom Big Bang Theory (pictured) - can have severe learning disabilities, or even extraordinarily high abilities in maths and music

AN EXTREME MALE BRAIN?

Historically, autism has been characterised as a male disorder, four or more times more common in boys than girls, although at the more impaired end of the spectrum the quoted ratio is more like 2:1.

This is often how people think of autism, of the 'nerdy' male, quite socially impaired and with strange and quirky special skills.

This is supported in research by the existence of theories such as the 'extreme male brain', where it is suggested that ASD is an exaggerated manifestation of 'systemising', a particular male way of thinking associated with a very focused interest in, and need for, predictable rules and systems.

But there is increasing awareness that the apparent 'maleness' of the condition may be more to do with the failure to recognise autism in girls and women who, at the less impaired end of the spectrum, manage to fly under the diagnostic radar, and are spotted much later than boys.

Here Come the Girls, a film by autism researcher, Hannah Belcher, shows how different the female experience of autism is compared with the male experience.

A common thread is how much harder women find it to get their difficulties recognised ('you cant be autistic, because you make eye contact') or how much older they are before they are diagnosed.

It could be that there is a 'gendered lens' when it comes to diagnosis, a form of self-fulfilling prophecy, where thinking of autism as a male problem makes it less likely that a girl will be given a diagnosis

There are several possible explanations for this.

This difference could be biological, with a 'female protective effect' associated with having two X chromosomes that reduce the impact of genetic factors in girls.

This means there would need to be a much greater number of adverse genetic factors before the condition showed up.

This would explain why girls who do get diagnosed with ASD tend to be at the more impaired end of the spectrum.

This has been confirmed by a recent study of 10,000 fraternal twins, which showed that girls with ASD came from families with a much higher incidence of autism in other family members or who show evidence of autistic traits such as social awkwardness or obsessions.

It could be that there is a 'gendered lens' when it comes to diagnosis, a form of self-fulfilling prophecy, where thinking of autism as a male problem makes it less likely that a girl will be given a diagnosis.

Or it could be that the process of diagnosis itself is somehow geared towards spotting boys.

Despite the common belief that autism mostly affects males, there is an increasing awareness that there has been a failure to properly recognize the disorder in females, who are able to fly under the radar

For example, parents of girls on the spectrum have said that the examples given to help them answer questions about their childrens unusual interests and obsessions are much more slanted towards 'boy-type' interests.

The parent might be asked: does your child have an unusual obsession with metal objects, lights or street signs?

But their daughters obsession might be more to do with particular animals or dolls or pop stars.

HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT

Or it could be that girls have a range of 'camouflaging' behaviours.

Possibly because girls are more likely to be encouraged to be well-behaved and socially sensitive, they have a greater awareness of the importance of social rules and conformity, of being sensitive to others, or forming friendship networks.

To do this, they realise they need to learn how to imitate expected behaviour.

This is a common theme among women on the spectrum who describe the exhausting process of continuously monitoring and copying the social interactions that appear instinctive to their 'typical' peers.

This has been dubbed the problem of 'hiding in plain sight'.

There is increasing awareness that our current understanding of autism is 'missing' the girls.

Females are generally better at monitoring and copying social interactions of their 'typical' peers, which allows those with autism to 'hide in plain sight,' the expert revealed

This is an important step, as it is commonly accepted that early identification and access to the right support services are key in determining a better future.

A sure sign of greater interest is the emergence of Saga Noren, a fictional detective in The Bridge, who is commonly described as being on the spectrum.

The National Autistic Societys Autism in Pink campaign has identified key issues, and researchers are focusing on the female autism conundrum.

April 2 marks the beginning of World Autism Awareness Week.

Famous landmarks around the world will be 'lit up blue' proclaiming 'its all right to be different'.
The night before last Halloween, Malcolm Johnson settled down in front of the TV at the end of a busy working day and saw something that scared him.

'It was Friday, October 30,' he says. 'I was watching television and then suddenly the newscaster's head and the frame of the TV became distorted.'

It was no horror film - Malcolm was seeing the first signs of an eye condition that's common in the elderly, and which, if not treated quickly, can permanently destroy central vision in the affected eye.

Malcolm Johnson of Shropshire, who experienced the symptoms of age-related macular degeneration

That night Malcolm went to the out-of-hours GP service near his home outside Oswestry, Shropshire. But he says: 'The doctor there couldn't see anything physically wrong or do anything.'

However, the symptoms persisted and on the Monday, Malcolm went to his optician. 'Within ten minutes she identified a bleed in my left eye and immediately rang to book me an appointment at the urgent eye clinic at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital.'

When he saw the consultant ophthalmologist two days later, it was bad news. Malcolm had wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD). He hadn't heard of it before, but when the consultant explained how serious it could be it came as a big shock.

AMD is the leading cause of sight loss in people over 60 and occurs when the cells in the macula, a light-sensitive area at the back of the eye, are damaged. These cells allow us to see what is directly in front of us.

There are two forms, dry and wet. With dry AMD, which comes on more slowly, cells in the back of the eye are damaged by a build-up of debris. In wet AMD, blood vessels grow underneath the macula, causing swelling and bleeding, which can damage central vision irreparably. Sight can deteriorate in months.

Despite the urgency of treatment needed with a series of injections, his local hospital ophthalmology department were unable to even give him a start date, let alone one within the recommended two weeks

Though there is no cure for AMD, the wet form can be halted by injections directly into the eye of a drug, typically Lucentis, that prevents the growth of new blood vessels. This must be given rapidly, within two weeks of diagnosis, according to guidelines from the Royal College of Ophthalmologists.

But to his dismay, Malcolm discovered that the ophthalmology department at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital - which, like so many, was overworked and understaffed - would not be able to start his treatment in time. It couldn't even give a date for an appointment.

'I was frankly getting scared,' he says.

Rightly so. Last month, the president of the Royal College of Ophthalmologists warned that every month at least 20 patients in the UK with conditions such as AMD and glaucoma - where a build-up of pressure in the eye damages the optic nerve - were suffering needless sight loss because of widespread delays to follow-up appointments.

This was my eyesight and my livelihood at stake

The Macular Society, the national charity for people affected by loss of central vision, is also concerned. 'We know many patients have lost vision because not enough resources have been put into wet AMD services,' Cathy Yelf, chief executive of the society, told Good Health.

'It is a tragedy that people lose sight when there is a treatment that will help keep their vision for longer, but it is not given in time.'

Malcolm decided to go private and to pay for the 600-a-time injections. He had the first on November 26. There was, he says, 'an immediate effect. Within six hours the distortion had lessened considerably'.

He had three injections privately, each four weeks apart, before he could be seen by the NHS for the remainder of his treatment.

It's not known yet how many injections he will need, but some patients have up to a dozen.

The Macular Society, the national charity for people affected by loss of central vision, is also concerned

Malcolm, who runs his own management services company, says of the 1,800 cost of going private: 'This was my eyesight and my livelihood at stake.'

His first scheduled NHS injection was meant to be given on March 7, but he didn't get an appointment until March 16, and even then, he and his GP had to press the clinic repeatedly for a date.

Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust told Good Health the ophthalmology service at the Royal Shrewsbury had 'experienced a dramatic increase in demand over recent years, in common with hospitals around the country'.

The Royal College of Ophthalmologists says Shrewsbury's problems, and Malcolm's experience, are far from unique.

The cause, says Professor Carrie MacEwen, president of the college, is a 'perfect storm' of understaffing and overwork, compounded by NHS appointment targets that 'are distorting clinical priorities'. She points to an increasingly ageing population, combined with more treatments becoming available, increasing the demand on ophthalmology departments by 30 per cent over the past five years to ten million appointments a year: a tenth of all NHS hospital appointments.

In the end, fearing for his sight, Malcolm went private, paying 1,800 for three injections

At the same time, NHS funding restrictions mean the number of consultants has increased at only half that rate. And it doesn't help that hospitals are fined if they fail to hit targets for first-time referrals for eye and many other conditions.

Professor MacEwen says hard-pressed clinics target new patients at the expense of those who, like Malcolm, need vital follow-up appointments and treatment.

Patients who have been given follow-up appointments need to be treated equally 'because they are eight to nine times more likely to have a sight-threatening condition than new patients'.

Not all hospitals are struggling to cope, says Cathy Yelf.

'Some clinics appear to manage better than others and some hospitals have been slow to adopt new working practices, such as using nurses to give injections,' she says. But the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) charity fears the problem could get much worse.

Wet AMD affects 40,000 people in the UK a year, but nine times as many have dry AMD. This is untreatable, but research means a treatment could become available in the next five years.

While this would be 'a significant and hugely welcomed development', the breakthrough 'would place additional strain on eye clinics, with even greater numbers of patients needing regular monitoring and treatment', the RNIB said in a 2013 report.

Since the advent of the drug Lucentis, the treatment used by the NHS to treat the vast majority of cases of wet AMD, there has been almost a one third increase in workload over the past five years, says Malcolm Woodcock, clinical director of ophthalmology at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, who also treats patients privately at Spire Healthcare.

'On the NHS side we're struggling to cope with this exponential growth,' says Mr Woodcock. 'We have a big build-up of people who don't get appointments on time.

'The whole thrust of a hospital's activities is towards hitting targets, but if you have a condition that's not on that radar, such as follow-up, then you're a bit of a Cinderella and you get left behind.'

NHS England knows there is a problem because, in 2014, it asked organisations such as the Royal College of Ophthalmologists to come up with ways of improving eye care in a health service faced with 'an ageing population with complex conditions [and] a backdrop of financial constraints'.

And the college suggested removing 'arbitrary tariffs that "reward" new patients and disadvantage follow-up patients'. But nothing has changed.

Simply telling elderly patients they have to be more proactive is not good enough, says Malcolm

A spokesperson for NHS England told Good Health: 'Waiting times for NHS eye clinics and operations have fallen dramatically over the past decade and we have some of the best access in the western world.

'Following changes in legislation announced in February 2016, trained orthoptists will be able to supply and administer medicines, enhancing the multi-disciplinary approach that benefits patients.'

Orthopists are eye specialists who traditionally have dealt with focusing problems.

Professor MacEwen says the Royal College will continue to 'push for the right workforce' and press for 'equality' between new and return patients.

But for now, she says, it falls to patients to follow the example of Malcolm Johnson and fight for their own health. 'We have to make patients realise that if they get called by the hospital and have an appointment cancelled, they should be putting pressure on the system.'

But simply telling elderly patients they have to be more proactive is not good enough, says Malcolm Johnson, who is working with the Macular Society to raise awareness of the problem.
Former J&K CM Omar Abdullah took a swipe at the BJP-PDP alliance

The nationalism debate is far from over. After Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis advocated that no-one who was unwilling to chant the Bharat Mata Ki Jai slogan had a right to live in India, former J&K CM Omar Abdullah took a dig at the BJP-PDP alliance.

He expected all members of the PDP-BJP alliance to chant 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai as soon as the government takes its oath of office on Monday.

I look forward to seeing all the members of the PDP-BJP alliance say this as soon as they take oath, Omar said.

Centre focuses on weaker sections

The politics of symbols and icons is having a field day these days. As part of its ongoing efforts to appropriate Dalit icon Ambedkar, the Centre has asked states to organise social harmony programmes in village panchayats during Gramoday Se Bharat Uday Abhiyan to commence on April 14 and ensure the participation of the SC, ST and other weaker sections.

The campaign will be launched by PM Modi to coincide with Babasahebs 126th birthday.

Congress to Gujarat MLAs: Act as Opposition

The Congress is miffed with its Gujarat legislators for not opposing the BJP government as a real opposition.

Upset over feeble protests on allegations of controversial land allotment to entities associated with Anar Patel, daughter of CM Anandiben Patel, the party high command has warned its MLAs that their renomination could be in jeopardy if they fail to act as real opposition.

Saudi gets glimpse of tech-savvy PM

Prime Minister Modi once more showed his tech-savvy attitude, this time in Riyadh. Visiting the all-women TCS training centre in the Saudi Capital while on a two-day visit to Saudi Arabia, the PM asked women workers to download the Narendra Modi app to track their selfies.

if you want any information in real time about India, me and the selfies that you took along with me today, and for all information, please download the Narendra Modi app, Modi said.

Arvind Kejriwals B-Town connection

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal will attend release of first book penned by Bollywood actor Emraan Hashmi.

The book is titled The Kiss of Life - How a Superhero & My Son Defeated Cancer which will be released on April 7 in Delhi.

Tourism and culture minister Kapil Mishra will also be present in the event with the chief minister.
Coming out in support of jewellers, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said imposing excise duty on jewellery items will bring back Inspector Raj in the country.

Taking jibes at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Kejriwal also urged him to leave Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitleys side if he did not want to lose the support of traders.

Thousands of jewellers across the country have been protesting since 2 March, demanding a roll-back of the budgetary proposal that has impacted on the trade.

Jewellers have been on an indefinite strike to protest the excise duty of one per cent proposed in the Union Budget

While addressing jewellers at Jantar Mantar, Kejriwal emphasised that the excise duty will have a strangulating impact on the jewellery sector.

It flies in the face of Modis Make in India initiative. You go to America, Japan seeking investments. But you are strangulating a flourishing business in the country. I dont get the logic behind it. First, save your own countrymen, then call the foreigners, Kejriwal said.

Making a direct attack on the PM, Kejriwal said: The notion was that BJP is a party of traders. Then what has happened now? I want to tell the PM that Jaitley ji will not have to gather votes or contest elections. You need votes so please be a little careful. If jewellers are cheated, then traders will leave BJP's side.

Kejriwal claimed that BJP MPs and even Union Ministers are in favour of the jewellers demands, contrary to the PM's adamancy.

Even MPs are wondering as to what Jaitley has explained to the PM. BJP is on one side and PM on the other. But why? PM is under the total control of Jaitley. I am smaller in terms of age, experience than Modi ji but have a small suggestion for him. Please leave Jaitley jis side, he will take you down, Kejriwal said.

He also read out a series of tweets made by Modi in his capacity as Gujarat CM, where the latter had opposed a similar move by the erstwhile UPA government to impose one per cent excise duty on non-silver jewellery.

What has changed? People thought the PM is with them but you have cheated them. Congress used to impose excise duty and people brought you to power thinking you won't repeat the same, Kejriwal said.

Kejriwal said that due to the budget proposal impacting on their business severely, four to five traders have committed suicide in the last month.

The CM claimed some jeweller friends had told him that one more person committed suicide the previous evening over the policies.

The excise duty was introduced without consulting the jewellers. The government is not going to benefit with this tax. Rather it will give rise to corruption. The excise inspectors will ask for bribe from the traders, he said.

The chief minister also claimed that President Pranab Mukherjee had extended his full support to the cause of the jewellers when he had taken a delegation to the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
A day ahead of the oath ceremony which will invest People's Democratic Party (PDP) president Mehbooba Mufti as the first woman Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, the BJP praised Mehbooba and said it hoped she would carry the legacy of her father Mufti Mohammad Sayeed forward.

Mehbooba will take her oath as the Chief Minister on Monday in Jammu.

The BJP on Sunday held two meetings in Jammu, which were attended by national general secretary Ram Madhav and national vice-president Avinash Rai Khanna.

Mehbooba Mufti (right) will take her oath as chief minister of J&K on 4 April

After the meeting, BJP national vice-president & J&K affairs in-charge Avinash Rai Khanna said the BJP, while sharing power with the PDP in the state, has made every effort to fulfil its promise of providing good governance and ending corruption.

He said an era of development has started, which will further get accelerated after the new government is formed.

BJP state chief spokesperson Sunil Sethi said: it is an honour for the state to have first woman CM, which will motivate more women participation in the politics. It is again an honour for the BJP to be in the coalition government with a woman leader as the head.

Sethi hoped that the new dispensation will continue the good work initiated and done by previous dispensation of the PDP-BJP alliance under able and inspiring leadership of late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.

In short time of about 10 months, the government could bring perceptible change on ground with all round development, he said.
Day 4 of the Lakme Fashion Week spring/summer 16 in Mumbai was devoted to the girl who is a confident dresser, willing to embrace changing silhouettes, sexiness, and simplicity with style.

The energy was high at recently-married designer Masaba Guptas show, as she presented a traveller-centred collection of dresses, tops, jackets, trousers and saris with prints of chillies, chhap Tilak and sliced garlic on the separates.

Gupta took inspiration from French photographer Matthieu Venot and German artist Katrin Bremermann in the rendering of the prints, and while the two artists express their works in a more minimalist manner, Guptas garments took a brighter turn.

Lisa Haydon looked sensational in a gold gown with star-shaped cut-outs, teamed with simple make-up

Actress Shraddha Kapoor walked for the show in a black pencil-shaved frill, pre-stitched sari with a black collar around the neck.

Travel was on the minds of Delhi designers Shivan and Narresh too, as they presented luxury swimwear and destination wedding essentials - a segment they have taken the lead in.

This time around, they experimented with many textures including brocade, while retaining their signature prints in some of the resort wear.

As for luxe evening styles, Mumbai-based designer Monisha Jaising brought onto the runway the dripping-in-gold-70s-vibe that she is synonymous with.

Actress Shraddha Kapoor modelled a frilled Masaba Gupta creation (left), while Mumbai-based designer Payal Khandawala showed flowing unstitched dresses in bright handwoven fabric.

The collection moved from daywear to night, and while the first section of embroidered jeans and crisp cotton shirts made for a smart look, the gold, copper and metallic grey gowns came as a surprise.

Jaising also made use of traditional south Indian weaves in the dresses, and the white gowns with nude coloured stars looked chic on the catwalk.

It appeared that Jaising had not one but two showstoppers, as former Victorias Secret model Karolina Kurkova attended the show in the FROW looking sophisticated in a deep red blazer by the designer.

Showcasing the collection, however, was Lisa Haydon, who looked nothing less than an international supermodel herself dressed in a gold gown with star-shaped cut-outs, and a beaded tassel hanging at the slit.

Tanieya Khanuja chose a pale nude and white colour palette of Japanese-style silhouettes (left). This turquoise skirt and beachy bralet (right) formed part of Shivan and Narresh's luxury travel-inspired collection.

Going by the basics

Minimalism was well played out at Mumbai-based designer Payal Khandawalas show, with flowing unstitched dresses in bright handwoven fabric.

The asymmetry of the dresses and skirts was well-balanced, as was the colour composition of pristine white with rich pink, red, blue and green.

Meanwhile, designer Tanieya Khanuja went with a white and nude palette and created a Japanese-inspired silhouette with structured panels on shirts, criss-crossing fabric and folds. The collection was fresh and well executed.

Another Mumbai designer, Aartivijay Gupta, decided to take inspiration from bedtime stories and structured her shirts and pants similar to pyjama dressing.

Hand-painted fairytale animals were printed on breezy cotton dresses, with cute rabbits and foxes rendered in a childish style, and the separates featured inner lining and pyjama stripes.
UK-based Indian steel tycoon Sanjeev Gupta has apparently come to the rescue of the troubled Tata Steel.

Sanjeev Gupta has begun discussions with the current owners of the steel giant with a view to acquiring its plant at Port Talbot, which employs some 4,000 people.

The 44-year-old founder of steel, commodities and property Group Liberty House, who has already saved a number of UK plants from closure, said that he is ready to discuss with the British government how to rescue the plants.

Discussions between Sanjeev Gupta (pictured) and the current owners of Tata are underway

Gupta will return to London from Dubai on Monday to meet government officials and the Tata leadership to gauge their support for a proposal to keep Britains largest steel plant open.

On the question of acquiring the State Steel plants at Port Talbot, Gupta was quoted by The Sunday Telegraph saying: We would need a proper partnership with the Government.

He has submitted preliminary proposals to the Government to replace Port Talbots traditional blast furnaces with modern electric arc furnaces, used to produce raw steel by melting scrap.

According to Gupta, the problem with Port Talbot is its size and the fact that it is built around blast furnace making liquid steel from ores.

Steelworkers wait for British business secretary Sajid Javid (not pictured) to leave the Tata Steels plant in Port Talbot, south Wales

The model that Liberty is building at Newport is built around melting down scrap metal - two million tonnes a year - using modern electric arc furnaces.

Gupta, who is best known in Wales for buying the former Alpha Steel works in Newport in 2013 and reopening production there, recently bought Tatas two rolling mills at Clydebridge and Dalzell in Scotland, facilitated by a temporary nationalisation by the Scottish government.
The ED has obtained details about immovable and movable assets held abroad by Vijay Mallya

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) is preparing to send judicial requests to countries like South Africa, the UK and the US to get information on liquor baron Vijay Mallyas overseas assets in connection with the investigation related to allegations of money laundering.

A senior official confirmed that the ED has obtained details about immovable and movable assets held by the United Breweries (UB) chairman in several countries and investigators are looking at nations like South Africa, the UK, the US, Hong Kong and France as part of the investigation.

The ED plans to approach a court to obtain letters rogatory (LRs) which will be sent to its counterparts in these countries for obtaining information with regard to purchase, registration and status of movable and immovable assets.

The ED has also sought the help of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on the 2010 policy decision to widen the corporate debt restructuring scheme to include the aviation industry.

Kingfisher Airlines (KFA) had undertaken a major debt restructuring exercise after the scheme was introduced.

The agency, while probing the proceeds of crime generated in the case of an alleged loan fraud of Rs 900 crore involving IDBI bank, will also need to have details of properties purchased by the businessman, his companies and associates abroad.

The ED is probing allegations that about Rs 300 crore of this loan was diverted to foreign shores and the LRs will help obtain details about their end-use in the foreign countries.

However, a senior official said that getting an LR issued from a court is a first step. It takes time to follow it up with the foreign agencies, but as the case is being probed under the criminal provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, required cooperation is expected.

According to senior officials, with the consortium of banks already having put in their claims for Mallyas assets, there are not many properties which can be attached under anti-money laundering laws.
On Sunday afternoon, Union Public Service Commission aspirants burned an effigy of Department Of Personal Training (DoPT) Minister Jitendra Singh at Jantar Mantar and raised slogans against him.

Students allege that a day before, on Saturday, an 11-strong delegation had gone to the ministers residence in order to seek an appointment. But instead of meeting them, the minister called the police.

Students allege that they were beaten, dragged, and manhandled by the police without any provocation. They were later taken to the South Avenue Police Station where they claim they were roughed up yet again.

UPSC aspirants burn the effigy of DoPT Minister Jitendra Singh in New Delhi

To agitate against this police brutality, students gave up food and water all day. They were later released from detention at 9pm in the evening.

Students are also resentful of the fact that when the minister called the delegation to his office later, his attitude was insulting and cavalier towards their plight.

Anurag Nigam, one of the delegates, said: First the honorable minister gets us beaten up by the police and then later rubs salt to the wound by misbehaving with us. He called us 'Failures'. My question is if honorable minister thinks of all Hindi Belt Students as failures?.

Students have been pursuing the Government for the last six months over demands relating to the controversial Civil Service examination (CSAT) issue.

They point out that the CSAT was introduced in the preliminary stage of the Civil Services Exam in 2011 and lasted for five years.

DoPT Minister Jitendra Singh has provoked the ire of students after calling the police when they sought a meeting with him

During the five years that the CSAT paper was a part of the exam pattern, it unfairly and drastically eliminated aspirants from a regional language background, especially the Hindi belt and rural India.

Government statistics and the UPSC-formed Nigvekar committee corroborated this claim.

Because of the discriminatory nature of the CSAT paper, students from rural and regional India lost 5 attempts and 5 precious years in the process.

To compensate for this loss, students are demanding 3 attempts for the affected candidates to appear in the exam again.

It was in this context that students had gone to meet the DoPT minister at his residence on Saturday morning when the alleged incident happened.

One of the student agitators, Abishek, who had come all the way from Gorakhpur, said: On one hand, the PM talks about the power of youth and demographic dividend. But on the other hand, his ministers get innocent and unarmed students beaten up by the police. In this context Prime Ministers speeches seem a little shallow.
Family were returning from a wedding when the killing

Deputy superintendent Mohammad Tanzil Ahmad was shot by two unknown attackers on a motorbike

A National Investigation Agency (NIA) officer probing terror cases related to the Indian Mujahideen was shot dead on Sunday by two unidentified assailants driving a motorcycle at Bijnor in Uttar Pradesh.

Mohammad Tanzil Ahmad was a deputy superintendent of police posted in the National Investigation Agency (NIA). His wife was also wounded in the attack.

The incident occurred when they were returning home from a wedding near UP's Bijnor town.

In a planned attack, the killers pumped 24 bullets at 45-year-Ahmad and four at his wife Farzana, as their daughter (14) and son (12) watched from the back seat of the Wagon-R car they were travelling in, the police said and added that the children were not injured.

Late in the evening, NIA IG Sanjeev Kumar said Farzana was out of danger.

There is no damage to her vital organs. She is recovering. Ahmad was a brave officer who never hesitated in taking up any challenge. It is a big loss to NIA. We will rise to the occasion and both NIA as well as UP Police has taken this as a challenge to bring the culprits before the law, he said.

Ahmad was returning home in Sahaspur village of Bijnor district with his family after attending his niece's wedding in a nearby village of the same district.

Police termed Ahmad's killing a planned attack, and did not rule out the possibility of a terror angle behind the shoot-out. The officer was posted as an inspector, initially with the NIAs intelligence wing and later in its investigation department.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh told reporters in Lucknow that he had been apprised of the incident.

Whatever is necessary is being done. We are talking (to NIA officials), Singh said.

NIA officer Tanzil Ahmads mortal remains being taken to the burial ground in New Delhi

Police suspect Ahmad's movements was being tracked by the assailants, who used at least one 9mm pistol in the attack.

Confirming the incident, IG (Law and Order) of UP Police, Bhagwan Swaroop said the NIA officer was shot dead by two motorcycle-borne assailants while he was returning after a marriage ceremony.

Ahmad, who has been with the NIA ever since the organisation was formed in February 2009, had been investigating many cases related to the banned Indian Mujahideen.

His superiors termed him a thorough professional in intelligence gathering as well as investigation.

According to the police, Ahmad left his home in the evening along with his family to attend a wedding at Sohara village.

On their way back, their vehicle was stopped barely 200 metres from his home by two youths, who fired at a very close range.

Ahmad was taken to nearby Cosmos hospital where he was declared dead-on-arrival.

The Uttar Pradesh Police have sealed the borders of the district and launched a manhunt for the assailants.

Additional Director General of Police Daljit Chowdhry said nothing can be ruled out, when asked whether there was a possibility of terror angle behind the attack.

A very serious offence has taken place in the district and we have taken it very seriously. The body has been sent for postmortem and details of what actually happened will soon come out. Borders of the state have been sealed and checking is on in the nearby villages to trace those involved in killing of the officer. We are trying to find out the accused and the motive behind the murder, he said.

The police are also trying to ascertain whether the 9mm pistol used for the crime was country-made or factory-made.

UP Director General of Police Javeed Ahmad said IG Special Task Force (STF) and IG Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS) have been sent to Bijnor and the matter is being probed.

"We are also in touch with NIA officers and coordinating with them. We will go deep into it and ensure those involved are arrested," Ahmad said.

Meanwhile, NIA Officer Ahmads mortal remains were brought to his home in Delhi and his last rites were performed in Shaheen Bagh area of south Delhi.

Motorcycle hitmen fire 24 bullets in less that a minute

by Ankur Sharma

Raghib Ahmed, NIA officer Tanzil Ahmeds brother, broke down in tears as his brothers body reached their home in south-east Delhis Shaheen Bagh on Sunday.

Ye aise kyun aya, iski ummed kisi ne bhi nahi ki thi? (Why has he come like this, this was not expected by anyone), he wept.

According to Tanzils family members, the assailants took less than a minute to fire more two dozen bullets.

National Investigation Agency officer Tanzil Ahmads relatives mourn his death at his residence in the Shaheen Bagh area of New Delhi

The NIA officers brother Shahnawaz Ahmad was following Tanzils car along with other members of the family.

It seems that assailants took just one minute to shoot him as Tanzils car was being followed by his brother in another just 500 meters behind. But when he reached the spot, the shooters had fled the spot by different route. It was not expected by anyone. His wife is also critical, we are worried about his kids, Shahnawaz told Mail Today.

The family is now asking for help from the Centre for the slain NIA officers kids.

A few people also protested when the family was preparing for Tanzils burial.

His friends and loved ones were not happy that no one from the central government was present at the last rites, during which the BSF provided the guard of honour.

Tanzils kin also claim he had no known enemies.

Tanzil never told anyone that he was facing threat from anyone. He shared things with family members but he never talked of any rivalry. It seems it was a planned murder done for some other purposes. Now, we want support from the government, a relative said.

Family members say Tanzils children were eyewitnesses to the incident.

Raghib told us Tanzils kids witnessed the incident and told locals to take their mother to hospital after telling them that their father is dead, a relative said.

Around 5.30pm on Sunday, the mortal remains of NIA deputy SP Mohammad Tanzil were brought to his residence in Delhi where almost 500 relatives and friends were present along with Delhi Police personnel, and Border Security Force men.

One deputy superintendent of UP police, along with almost half a dozen policemen, also reached to Shaheen Bagh.

Delhi Police had also deployed almost half a dozen men at the residence.
Irish budget airline Ryanair posted its fourth straight set of stellar monthly passenger growth in March despite strikes by French aviation unions.

The air traffic control strikes - which took place late last month - caused 500 flights to be cancelled and were branded 'unjustified' by Ryanair's senior management.

But a boost from earlier school holidays and the airline's pledge to cut fares in the first three months this year still helped passenger numbers soar 28 per cent to 8.5 million in March, with the average plane 94 per cent full.

Soaring: Cheap flights and a change of image has turned around Ryanair's performance since 2013

The latest figures build on February's passenger numbers, which were also up 28 per cent to 7.4 million, while January and December's figures both increased by 25 per cent.

In the past 12 months the Irish airline has carried 106 million passengers, a rise of 18 per cent on the year before.

Kenny Jacobs, chief marketing officer at Ryanair, said: 'These record monthly numbers were delivered - despite three days of unjustified French air traffic control strikes in March which caused the cancellation of over 500 flights - due to our lower fares, stronger forward bookings and the continuing success of our 'AGB' [Always Getting Better] programme.'

He added: 'Our 106 million customers can look forward to further improvements in 2016 as we will shortly launch Year 3 of Always Getting Better.'

It has been two years since Ryanair undertook its transformation programme, after a string of profit warnings in 2013 and the airline's terrible customer service reputation forced it to take action.

Analysts said these latest batch of figures prove its image change has paid off.

Robin Byde, analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald, said: 'It has been generally impressive and has changed the perception of Ryanair for many customers.

'It is one method for the company to lift average yields and attract more business passengers.'

And Stephen Furlong, analyst at Davy Research, said: 'The strategy was implemented quickly and efficiently and it is clearly here to stay.'

In September last year Ryanair's chief executive Michael O'Leary, had quipped: 'If I'd known being nicer to customers was going to work so well, I'd have done it ages ago.'

Ryanair shares - quoted in Dublin and London - rose 2 per cent, or 0.3 to 14.49.

Rival discount airline easyJet has yet to publish its March figures, but in February it carried 4.9 million passengers, a rise of 9.8 per cent on the year. easyJet shares on the FTSE 100 index were 11p higher at 1,539p lifted by the Ryanair news.

British Airways and Iberian owner IAG issues its March traffic figures tomorrow, with its shares up 10p at 562p at lunchtime.

In February, Ryanair unveiled a 110 per cent leap in its third quarter profits to 103million as lower fuel costs helped offset price cuts. It also said it would cut fares by 6 per cent in the first three months of 2016.

Nevertheless the Irish airline said then that the terror attacks in Paris in November had led to 'weaker prices and bookings'.

In another attempt to distance itself from its unpoplar past, Ryanair also announced in February that it was toning down the garish yellow trim on seats in its planes.
ISIS has killed 15 of its members in the largest execution of the militant group's security services so far in Syria, it has been claimed.

The killings follow the arrest of 35 members in Raqqa at the weekend, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the five-year-old Syrian conflict through a network of sources on the ground.

The members were killed in connection with the assassination of senior Islamic State figure Abu Hija al-Tunisi, who died on Wednesday in an air strike.

ISIS has executed 15 of its own members for failing to protect a senior leader who was killed in an air strike

It comes as another monitoring group today said a leader of an al-Qaeda faction in Syria has also been killed in a U.S. air strike in Idlib.

According to the SITE Intelligence Group, Abu Firas al-Souri, a spokesman for the Nusra Front, was killed along with his son and several other people.

The Nusra Front is considered a hard-line group that has crushed moderate rebel groups in northern Syria for their links with the United States.

Meanwhile, following the recent battlefield success in Palmyra, government forces and their allies have now entered a second central town that was held by ISIS.

State TV says Syrian troops and pro-government fighters pushed into Qaryatain yesterday, after days of intense clashes with ISIS extremists outside the town.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that troops have entered the town from the south and north under the cover of Russian and Syrian airstrikes.

The advance comes a week after Syrian forces recaptured the historic central town of Palmyra from ISIS.

Qaryatain used to be home to a sizable Christian population and lies halfway between Damascus and Palmyra.

ISIS has suffered major defeats in Syria over the past months amid intense airstrikes by Russian warplanes.

The Syrian army command said in a statement that troops have 'restored security and stability to Qaryatain and farms surrounding it'.

The statement, read by an army general on state TV, said the oil and gas pipelines in the area will be secured and ISIS supply routes between eastern desert and the Qalamoun region will be cut.

He also said troops were now dismantling bombs placed by extremists and will prepare to launch fresh attacks on areas held by ISIS.

'Fighting was going from one house to another,' another army officer told Al-Mayadeen TV from inside Qaryatain.
A man has been charged after two people were seriously injured in Melbourne's south during a violent 'love triangle' stabbing.

Ben Holland, 29, was airlifted to hospital in a critical condition and his girlfriend Nikki Gaitanis, 38, had serious but non-life threatening injuries after the pair were attacked around 3am on Sunday in Dromana, near Mornington Peninsula.

The alleged attacker was Ms Gaitanis' former partner Daniel Burchell, 30, and police arrested him around 11.20am after he fled the scene and drove 37 kilometres to Frankston, Nine News reported.

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A man has been charged after Ben Holland (left) and his girlfriend Nikki Gaitanis (right) were seriously injured in Melbourne's south during a violent 'love triangle' stabbing

Mr Holland, 29, was airlifted to hospital in a critical condition and his girlfriend Ms Gaitanis, 38, had serious but non-life threatening injuries after the pair were attacked around 3am on Sunday

The injured couple managed to call emergency services for help before Mr Holland's lung collapsed.

He was airlifted to the Alfred Hospital and remains in critical condition.

Ms Gaitanis' three daughters were asleep in the home when the violent altercation broke out.

Ms Gaitanis' (pictured) three daughters were asleep in the home when the violent altercation broke out

The alleged attacker was Ms Gaitanis' former partner Daniel Burchell (pictured), 30, and police arrested him around 11.20am after he fled the scene

Neighbour Vince Ferella siad he woke up to screaming and treated the pair on the floor of their lounge room until paramedics arrived

Neighbour Vince Ferella told Nine News he woke up to screaming and found the 'hysterical' couple bleeding on his front porch.

Mr Ferella and his wife treated the pair on the floor of their lounge room until paramedics arrived.

Mr Burchell faces two charges and was remanded in custody to appear in court on Monday.

Neighbour Vince Ferella said he woke up to screaming and found the 'hysterical' couple bleeding on his front porch.

Mr Holland was airlifted to the Alfred Hospital and remains in critical condition.

The injured couple managed to call emergency services for help before Mr Holland's lung collapsed
Suspected Islamic State jihadis have been caught trying to enter Ramadi among 3,000 families returning to the Iraqi city after it was recaptured from the terror group.

Iraqi security forces detained and blindfolded the suspected ISIS fighters who were discovered among civilians returning to their homes in the city.

Since Saturday, thousands of people have gone back to the districts of the city that have been cleared of mines and explosives, city governor Hameed Dulaymi said.

Detained: Suspected Islamic State fighters wait to be taken for interrogation after being found among civilians

Blindfolded: Iraqi security forces detain suspected members of the Islamic State group for interrogation

Interrogation: The suspected ISIS fighters are loaded onto the back of a truck at a checkpoint in Ramadi, Iraq

Iraqi government forces reclaimed the Ramadi - provincial capital of Anbar, some 70miles west of Baghdad - from ISIS militants in December.

The area had been under ISIS control since May last year. At the time it was recaptured, civilians living there said they had been without food for months.

Recapturing Ramadi was one of the most significant victories for Iraq's armed forces since ISIS swept across a third of the country in 2014.

Iraqi forces backed by US-led coalition air strikes punched into the city centre in December, with the fighting over the final days of the battle concentrated around the former government complex.

Destroyed building are seen after clashes between Iraqi security forces and Islamic State group in Ramad

Iraqi security forces check identification documents at a checkpoint near the entrance to Ramadi

ISIS fighters had been defending with snipers, suicide car bomb attacks and hundreds of roadside explosives and booby traps.

The advance by the government forces had also been hampered by the possible presence of dozens of families trapped in the combat zone and used by ISIS as human shields.

Families who returned at the weekend are now relying on electricity generators as the public grid has not been repaired.

Water for domestic use is being pumped from the nearby Euphrates river, Mr Dulaymi added.

Thousands of people have gone back to the districts of the city that have been cleared of explosives
It was Top Gear meets Top Gun when a Qantas Boeing 737-800 raced the Tesla S P90D electric car at Melbourne's Avalon Airport.

The three kilometre runway at the airport south-west of Melbourne was the setting for what was billed as 'this unique test of innovation, skill and power'.

A high-speed stunt designed to flag collaboration between the Australian national carrier and the Californian car-maker - which includes installation of power walls at airports in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide.

Qantas.com.au touted it as: 'Car vs Plane  fasten your seatbelts (batteries are included) - 'a duel that pitted two examples of engineering achievement against one another.'

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Car versus plane: The Tesla electric vehicle and Qantas Boeing 737-800 went head-to-head on the closed Avalon Airport south-west of Melbourne

With a top speed of 250 km/h the car edges clear of the 787 at it begins to pick up pace under full thrust

Capable of reaching 100 kilometres per hour in three seconds the Tesla quickly sneaks ahead

Game faces on: Driver and pilot march towards their rides in the 'ultimate test of innovation, skill and power'

Their machines await: The Qantas plane and Tesla electric car which took part in the race at Avalon

With its two jet engines, the 737 generates more than 50,000 pounds of thrust and fly through the sky at a cruising speed of 850 km/h. Flat out in the air, it can approach the speed of sound.

The five-seater Tesla can go from zero to 100 kilometres an hour in three seconds, and is touted as the quickest four door car ever built.

The airport scene starts with the competing pilot and driver striding across the tarmac shoulder-to-shoulder - the driver unlocks the car with his remote and his adversary climbs the stairs.

Both spend the next few moments carrying out checks and flicking switches as the countdown of '3-2-1' chimes in.

The Tesla takes off at a cracking pace with its two electric motors whirring into action, while the two engines of the 737 roar into life.

The Tesla had the power down quickly and was off and gone, establishing an early lead. But the 737 started to narrow the gap as it barrelled down the runway.

Power down: Pilot and driver get their engines going for the race down the Avalon airport runway

And they're off: The Qantas 737-800 jet and Tesla car begin the dual

QANTAS BOEING 737-800 Capacity: 2 pilots and 168 passengers Top speed: Mach. 82 Air cruising speed: 850 km/h The 737-800 reaches 140 knots at take-off Power: 52,000 pounds of thrust Full power: (Take-Off/Go-Around)  maximum thrust available from the engines for 140 knots at take-off Advertisement

TESLA S P90D ELECTRIC CAR Capacity: 1 driver and 4 passengers Top speed: 250km/h Power: 90 kilowatt battery, Dual Motor The Tesla electric car has top speed of 250km/h Full power: 'Ludicrous Mode' speed decreases 0-100 km/h time for Model S 10% to 3 seconds with a quarter mile time of 10.9 seconds * Figures from Qantas.com.au Advertisement









The were soon neck and neck when the electric car seemed to creep away again under further acceleration.

But when the 737 reaches its take-off speed of 140 knots and the Tesla maxes out at 250 kilometres an hour the momentum is with the jet plane.

The Tesla was in the shadow of the aircraft as it pulled up at the end of the runway  the clear early winner on the ground perhaps just overtaken as the aircraft lifted off the runway and into the sky.

Neck and neck: The jet plane has caught up to the car under full thrust and takes the lead ahead of take-off

And the winner is - the Qantas Boeing 737-800 only gets the better of the Tesla S P90D as they race towards the end of the three kilometre Avalon runways and takes off under full thrust

'We raced our Boeing 737 against a Tesla Model S to celebrate innovation and sustainability,' a Qantas spokesperson said.

Regular meetings are expected between both companies to 'investigate future opportunities around sustainable transport'.

Qantas Head of Environment and Fuel, Alan Milne, said the collaboration was a meeting of minds.

'Both our companies are passionate about continuing to push the boundaries of customer service, innovation and sustainability in the transport industry,' he said.

'What better way to celebrate working together than having a unique race  car versus plane.'

So, in summary, the Tesla cleaned up in acceleration but as soon as the 737 engines fired up it hauled in the innovative vehicle and nudged ahead for a narrow win.
Richardson, 66, will be given bladder and colostomy bags after the surgery

Former senator Graham Richardson has vowed to survive a massive 18-hour operation for cancer on Wednesday in which surgeons will remove his bowel, bladder, prostate, rectum, sciatic nerve and tail bone.

The 66-year-old political commentator braved the prospect of radical surgery which will leave him with bladder and colostomy bags, telling Radio 2UE on Monday, 'There will be a different quality of life, but there will be life'.

Richardson, who with his partner Amanda has an eight-year-old son Darcy, has spoken openly about the cancer which has plagued him for 17 years.

'There will be life': Graham Richardson, pictured with his wife Amanda with whom the 66-year-old has a son Darcy, 8, said radical surgery to remove major organs and other parts would change his quality of life but he will endure

Richardson, pictured (above) at a 2015 Gold Telethon to raise money for sick kids while he was undergoing chemotherapy which left him bald and ill, said radical surgery was necessary because of an aggressive invasion of tumour spores

The former Labor minister known among political colleagues as 'Richo' who was famous for his election campaign motto 'whatever it takes' was diagnosed in 1999 with chondrosarcoma, a rare condition in which cancerous cysts proliferate.

Richardson will undergo his surgery on Wednesday after previous surgeries and a chemotherapy trial failed to stop the cancer from spreading.

The Sky news and radio personality remained upbeat about his health prospects while speaking proudly about his youngest child, who Richardson said was already showing a talent for public speaking.

Former Labor minister Graham Richardson will undergo an 18-hour surgery on Wednesday to remove his bowel, bladder, prostate, rectum, sciatic nerve and tail bone

'I am trying not to be too miserable about all of this,' he said. 'The good news is I'm keeping my colon. Originally they were going to take the colon as well.'

The extensive surgery was deemed necessary because tumour spores were already on his pelvic wall.

'There's some concern as the pelvic wall provides the blood supply to the organs and as it's riddled with these spores. Every day the wall remains, there's a chance the tumours will grow and push in on the organs,' Richardson said.

In his long fight against cancer Mr Richardson lost his appetite, his sense of taste and his hair.

But the former Labor Party numbers man battled through it, appearing mid-treatment on Channel 9's Gold Telethon in June last year to help raise money for sick children

He was forced to use a walking stick and foot splint after the removal of part of his sciatic nerve which was affected by the tumours.

Richardson plans to continue appearing on Sky News following a two-month recovery period from Wednesday's surgery.

'I'll be a bit uncomfortable this week,' he conceded, but promised to adjust to his changed quality of life.

The 66-year-old former Labor Party numbers was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer 17 years ago and has been battling the disease with a range of treatemnts and a positive mindset
See more of the latest California news at www.dailymail.co.uk/california

A small plane that made headlines when it landed safely on a Southern California freeway years ago when it was piloted by MLB player Matt Nokes crashed on the same stretch of road, slamming into a car and killing a 38-year-old female roller derby skater in the vehicle.

Five others, including the pilot and his passenger, were injured in the crash on a stretch of Interstate 15 that has been the scene of several emergency landings.

Witnesses said the single-engine plane appeared to be having problems before it banked and came down Saturday, California Highway Patrol Officer Chris Parent said. One man said he didn't hear the plane's engine as it passed overhead.

The Lancair IV landed on its belly and skidded about 250 feet before striking the rear of a black Nissan Altima that was stopped on the shoulder of the road in San Diego County near Fallbrook. The driver of the car had pulled over to synchronize the Bluetooth device on his phone, Parent said.

The impact crumpled the back of the car, fatally crushing Antoinette Isbelle, 38, of San Diego in the back seat and injuring three others in the vehicle, authorities said.

The impact crumpled the back of the car, fatally crushing Antoinette Isbelle, 38, of San Diego in the back seat and injuring three others in the vehicle, authorities said

A small plane (left) crashed into the rear of a black car (right) on a Southern California freeway, killing a woman and injuring five other people

The incident happened about 9:15 a.m. about a mile north of state Route 76. The plane, a single-engine blue and white Lancair IV, landed in the slow lane then slid to the shoulder

Witnesses said the single-engine plane appeared to be having problems before it banked and came down Saturday, California Highway Patrol Officer Chris Parent said

San Diego Roller Derby said in a statement: 'It is with great sadness and shock that we have to announce our league-mate Toni "Rockalicious" Isbelle has passed away after a plane hit the back of the car she was a passenger in'

Aaron Mccann (left) and Jason Soule (right) skate under the names 'Rowdy Rodbuster' and 'Vanilla Gorilla,' respectively, for the San Diego Aftershocks

36-year-old Emily Boesmiller-Hosch was also in the vehicle

San Diego Roller Derby said in a statement posted to Facebook Saturday: 'Thank you to all our friends and family who have been so supportive today in the aftermath of the horrific accident that involved two of our league members and two of our brothers at San Diego Aftershocks.

'It is with great sadness and shock that we have to announce our league-mate Toni "Rockalicious" Isbelle has passed away after a plane hit the back of the car she was a passenger in.

'We are still processing and grieving at this time and we thank you for your condolences.'

A GoFundMe page set up to cover Isbelle's funeral services said: 'Anyone that knew Toni knew how incredibly huge her heart was... The type of person every walk of life could relate to.

'She worked hard at everything she did, she had such determination to build a life she was proud of and one she most importantly was happy to live.

'She was an amazing friend, daughter, and sister and made sure those she loved knew it.

'She was taken from us too soon, in a way so unimaginable it almost doesn't feel real.'

Isbelle skated on the Starlettes roller derby team, the Los Angeles Times reported.

'The plane went completely into the trunk and pushed the rear bumper almost into the rear passenger seat,' said John Buchanan, spokesman for the North County Fire Protection District.

Pilot Dennis Hogge, 62, and his female passenger suffered major injuries, Parent said. The woman is in her 50s, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The driver - 42-year-old Aaron Mccann - suffered moderate injuries, and his other two passengers - 43-year-old Jason Soule and 36-year-old Emily Boesmiller-Hosch - were expected to survive their injuries.

Matt Nokes (seen left and right) said he was piloting the Lancair IV on its second flight in February 2000 when the engine quit and he safely landed on the busy freeway

Mccann and Soule skate under the names 'Rowdy Rodbuster' and 'Vanilla Gorilla,' respectively, for the San Diego Aftershocks, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Mccann said on his Facebook profile Saturday: 'I am so grateful for the derby community, and my friends that offered support.

'I truly wish today could just start over.

'It's a sad day and I'm just working on processing it all.'

The plane was once owned by major league catcher Matt Nokes, who made a noteworthy landing on busy I-15 when the engine quit on its second flight on February 18, 2000.

Nokes guided the high-performance $500,000 plane to a smooth landing and safely taxied off the road without injuries.

Nokes went on to fly the plane every day for five years without incident before selling it. He said it had been rebuilt several times since he sold it.

'It was crazy,' Nokes said Saturday. 'Everything worked out so beautifully. It was almost a humorous thing. Unfortunately, it doesn't always turn out that way.'

When Nokes heard about the crash, he unsuccessfully tried to reach Hogge. He didn't realize Hogge had been injured.

He described Hogge as a good man, an outstanding pilot and a master plane builder.

'It's just horrible to hear about,' said Nokes who spent 11 years in the majors, mostly with the Detroit Tigers and New York Yankees.

A Twitter user shared photos of the white and blue plane that skidded along the freeway lane before crashing into the rear of the car, crushing the woman in the back seat.

Unlucky: The driver was stopped on the shoulder trying to sync his Bluetooth with his vehicle when the car was struck from behind

The impact crumpled the back of the car, fatally crushing Antoinette Isbelle, 38, of San Diego in the back seat and injuring three others in the vehicle, authorities said

Firefighters were also able to contain a fuel leak before it caught fire when they arrived on the scene.

John Marshall was driving when he saw the plane go down. He pulled over, got out of his car and ran to help those injured.

Marshall said there was a pilot and female passenger inside the plane and he and a couple of other people tried to get the plane door open, but it was jammed, according to ABC 10.

He then got a hammer from his tool box in his car and 'busted out the window' to help the pilot.

The stretch of freeway is no stranger to unusual landings. CHP spokesman Parent said he's aware of three other planes that have come down on that stretch of freeway about 50 miles north of San Diego in the past decade.

Nokes said the freeway is a popular route for flying because there are fewer flight restrictions than along the Interstate 5 corridor.

The crash caused major backups throughout the day on the freeway that runs from the Mexican border through Las Vegas and Salt Lake City to Canada.

The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the crash, FAA spokesman Ian Gregor said.

Pilot Dennis Hogge, 62, and his female passenger suffered major injuries, Parent said. The woman is in her 50s

The driver - 42-year-old Aaaron McCann - suffered moderate injuries, and his other two passengers - 43-year-old Jason Soule and 36-year-old Emily Boesmiller-Hosch - were expected to survive their injuries

When Nokes heard about the crash, he unsuccessfully tried to reach Hogge. He didn't realize Hogge had been injured. He described Hogge as a good man, an outstanding pilot and a master plane builder
Women are a quarter more likely to be prescribed antibiotics, according to a major study.

A review of data from 44million people around the world found that women had a 27 per cent higher chance of being given antibiotics.

And women aged between 35 and 54 were even more likely to receive the drugs, with a 40 per cent higher chance of getting a prescription than men of the same age.

Experts last night said that the findings should inform the Governments desperate attempt to reduce antibiotic prescribing, which doctors fear is fuelling a boom in superbugs.

Women are a quarter more likely to be prescribed antibiotics, according to a major study, with women aged between 35 and 54 were even more likely to receive the drugs

Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer, has repeatedly warned that GPs are needlessly doling out antibiotics to patients who do not really need them, driving a crisis in antibiotic resistance.

She has compared the problem to terrorism and global warming, and said that simple operations such as hip replacements will no longer be possible if more bugs become untreatable.

Modern medicine as we know it, if we dont halt this rise of resistance the germs develop, will be finished, she said last year.

The new paper, led by experts at Tubingen University Hospital in Germany, compiled the results from 11 previous studies conducted in the UK, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, Italy, Israel, Denmark, and Germany.

Published in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, it found that, on average, women are 27 per cent more likely than men to be prescribed antibiotics.

This increased to 36 per cent in women aged between 16 and 34 and 40 per cent in women aged between 35 and 54.

The antibiotics with the highest gender differences were those used for respiratory tract infections.

Experts last night said that the findings should inform the Governments desperate attempt to reduce antibiotic prescribing, which doctors fear is fuelling a boom in superbugs

For quinolones, commonly used to treat urinary tract infections, no substantial difference between genders was observed.

Researcher Professor Evelina Tacconelli said: Physicians should keep in mind the risk of gender inequality of antibiotic prescription.

Our results could play an influential role in designing antibiotic stewardship programs that address reasons for gender inequality in prescription.

A spokesman for European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases said: The study provides further evidence of the complexity of antibiotic prescribing that is far from being rational and evidence based.

The results suggest that the process of prescribing could be influenced not only by the physicians knowledge and beliefs but also the attitude of the patients.

Dr Maureen Baker, chair of the Royal College of GPs, said: The findings of this study are fascinating and can perhaps be explained by the fact that men, particularly aged between 16 and 34, are less likely to seek healthcare treatment than women.

Whatever the reason, growing resistance to antibiotics is an increasing and global concern  and everybody has a responsibility to help curb this trend.

She added: GPs can come under enormous pressure from patients to prescribe antibiotics.
It comes after resignation of Iain Duncan Smith and minister arguments

He said he has 'no regrets' over the way the Stay effort is being run

David Cameron, pictured, has denied the Government is in disarray over the EU referendum

David Cameron has made an extraordinary denial that his Government is in disarray over the EU referendum  claiming a slew of bad headlines are all the medias fault.

The Prime Minister rejected suggestions he was taking the bitter campaign personally, and insisted that talk of splits at the top of the Tory party was just journalists setting each others hair on fire.

In extraordinary remarks, he said he had no regrets over the way he had conducted the bruising contest so far, and even insisted he had not made a personal attack on Brexit campaigner Boris Johnson.

Since the start of the referendum battle, Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has resigned with a furious blast at the PM and Chancellor.

And anonymous briefings have suggested fellow Out campaigner Michael Gove faces the sack when it is over.

Ministers have also clashed publicly over whether the new Living Wage is likely to drive up immigration  with Culture Secretary John Whittingdale and Commons leader Chris Grayling lining up on the opposite side of the argument to George Osborne.

Debate has also raged over whether the NHS would be safer with Britain inside or outside the EU.

But Mr Cameron still insisted there was no problem, telling reporters: We said there was going to be a clear Government line on Europe, which there is, and ministers are able to depart from it and make their arguments in their own way. The world hasnt stopped turning, the Government hasnt stopped operating.

You all go around setting each others hair on fire and getting very excited about this but its all a lot of processology.

'I cant see what the issue is. You have got a Government with a packed programme, delivering that programme  but at the same time were having a very important debate about Europe.

In the House of Commons  on the day after London Mayor Mr Johnson had declared for Brexit  Mr Cameron said he personally had no ambitions left to fulfil.

This was widely seen as a knifing of Mr Johnson, suggesting he had only joined the Out camp to bolster his hopes of becoming Tory leader.

Mr Cameron has also denied making any personal attacks on Out rival Boris Johnson, pictured

But in comments that will raise eyebrows at Westminster, the Prime Minister flatly denied this had been a thinly-veiled personal attack.

He said: When? I dont think the words Boris Johnson passed my lips.

Speaking to journalists at last weeks nuclear security summit in Washington, Mr Cameron was asked if he was taking the heated referendum campaign personally.

He replied: I dont accept that at all. Read my speeches, look at what Ive said. Ive been making a very strong and positive argument about Britain being better off, more secure, stronger in the world if we stay in a reformed European Union.
The Australian Taxation Office is investigating more than 800 Australians after a massive leak of financial data revealed how 12 current or former world leaders, a host of celebrities and the global rich are using offshore tax havens to hide their wealth.

The Australians are under investigation after political leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin were named in more than 11 million documents leaked from secretive Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca.

It prompted Treasurer Scott Morrison to insist the federal government is cracking down on multinational tax avoidance following the massive leak by reaping $400 million in revenue in recent years from acting on sources and information received by the ATO.

The Australian Taxation Office (pictured is ATO Deputy Commissioner Michael Cranston) is investigating more than 800 high net worth Australians after a leak of financial data shows how the world's rich hide their money

Treasurer Scott Morrison insists the government is cracking down on multinational tax avoidance following the massive leak by reaping $400 million in revenue in recent years from acting on sources received by the ATO

The ATO (pictured) has linked more than 120 of the 800 Australian high net worth individuals to an associate offshore service provider situated in Hong Kong

The government has agreements with more than 100 countries to swap information to crack down on tax avoidance while laws to strengthen the system passed parliament in December - despite Labor voting against them.

'Our record when it comes to tax avoidance and particularly multinational tax avoidance is one of legislation and action,' he told ABC radio on Monday.

'The Labor Party voted against laws to crack down on multinationals - explain that to me.'

The tougher laws require multinationals with a turnover of $1 billion or more to provide detailed accounts of their tax arrangements while private companies with a turnover of $200 million are required to provide detailed public accounts.

'Our record when it comes to tax avoidance and particularly multinational tax avoidance is one of legislation and action,' Mr Morrison (pictured) told ABC radio on Monday

The ATO is examining the dealings of 800 Australian high net worth individuals and has linked more than 120 of them to an associate offshore service provider situated in Hong Kong, The Australian Financial Review reports.

'Some cases may be referred to the serious financial crime taskforce,' ATO deputy commissioner Michael Cranston told the newspaper.

The leak of documents show how Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca has allegedly helped clients launder money, dodge sanctions and evade tax.

German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung obtained the files and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists but the identity of the source who leaked them and how it was done is unknown.

The so-called Panama Papers, part of a leak of 11million files, implicate those in Russian president Vladimir Putin's inner circle, along with families and associates of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad (right)

Mossack Fonseca is Panamanian but runs a worldwide operation.

Among national leaders with offshore wealth are Nawaz Sharif, Pakistans prime minister, and Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson, prime minister of Iceland  who now faces calls for a snap election.

The leaks also reveal a suspected billion-dollar money laundering ring that was run by a Russian bank and involved close associates of President Putin.

Mossack Fonseca said in a statement: Our firm has never been accused or charged in connection with criminal wrongdoing.

If we detect suspicious activity or misconduct, we are quick to report it to the authorities.

Families and associates of Egypt's former president Hosni Mubarak (pictured left), Libya's former leader Muammar Gaddafi (right) were also implicated in the data leak




A man was arrested on Friday for putting plastic bags over two red light cameras in Long Island.

Bryan Valentine, 26, of St. James, New York, has been hailed a hero among a group of protesters who share information on how to disable the cameras, which the local government uses to fine people who run red lights.

Members of the group Red Light Robin Hoods think the cameras are a 'money grab' and employ tactics like pushing the cameras upwards to face the sky, or placing stickers over the lens.

Bryan Valentine, 26, of St. James, New York, (left) was arrested and charged with criminal tampering after he placed plastic bags over two red light cameras in an act of civil disobedience. Stephen Ruth, leader of the group Red Light Robin Hoods, has posted videos of how to disable the cameras (right)

Valentine was spotted covering two red light cameras with plastic bags at the intersection of Main Street and Landing Avenue in Smithtown, New York, and a passing motorist called 911, according to police.

The 26-year-old has been released from the Suffolk County 4th Precinct station house and faces criminal tampering charges.

But supporters have commended his actions. Stephen Ruth, the leader of the group Red Light Robin Hoods, told the NY Post: 'Bryan was always willing to get arrested.

Ruth (pictured) commended Valentine and said: 'All I can do is give the guy respect'

'He was a believer that this is unconstitutional and nothing more than a systematic form of extortion.

'All I can do is give the guy respect.'

Ruth, who has been nabbed several times for tampering with cameras himself, claimed the county shortened yellow lights at intersections with red-light cameras in order to generate revenue, CBS2 reported.

But county officials said the Department of Transportation determined the length of yellow lights based on traffic data, according to to the local news station.

Suffolk County have employed the cameras as a safety feature since 2010. Fines are $50 with an additional $30 administrative fee.

The local government website states: 'Red light running killed 676 people and injured an estimated 113,000 in 2009. Nearly two-thirds of the deaths were people other than the red light running drivers.

'Studies show that red light camera programs are effective in reducing crashes at intersections, especially right-angle crashes, which cause the most personal injury, and save lives.'

Ruth encouraged others to participate in their own act of civil disobedience in August 2015 by posting a video on social media describing how to disable a red light camera .

In the video he states: 'In order to do this successfully, you only need a pair of balls and a painter's extension rod.
The state will take control of Tatas pension liabilities of up to 2 billion in a bid to save Britains beleaguered steel industry, Sajid Javid suggested yesterday.

The Business Secretary said the Government was ready to step in with financial support to persuade investors to buy the threatened steelworks at Port Talbot and other stricken plants.

He signalled that ministers were working on sweeteners such as reducing energy costs and perhaps even running Tatas pension fund, which has 134,000 members.

But John Ralfe, a pensions consultant, said last night that any plan to put the Tata pension pot into public ownership would be prohibited by the EU.

Business Secretary Sajid Javid, right, is pictured talking to Tata Steel workers in Port Talbot, Wales

He told The Times that it would certainly fall foul of the EUs state aid rules, adding: Royal Mail, from 2012, isnt a precedent. The facts were very, very different.

Labour yesterday renewed calls for Mr Javids resignation after he admitted that he had been aware that Tata Steels bosses were meeting last week to discuss the future of its UK operations but chose to go ahead with a trade trip to Australia anyway.

Over the weekend, Mr Javid sought to regain the initiative by telling the NHS, town halls and schools to buy more British steel.

But even this policy was undermined when it emerged that, over the past five years, the public sector had been using cheaper steel from abroad thanks in part to an order from David Cameron that value-for-money concerns were paramount.

Mr Javid acknowledged that the Government would have to come forward with some financial assistance if there was to be a deal.

Tata will issue an offer document very soon, he said.

The UK Government know  Ive known for a while  that were also going to have to offer support to clinch that buyer and give that steel plant a long-term, viable future.

'I do feel, though, for lots of reasons after talking to Tata and many others involved in this, that there will be enough time to find the right buyer working with the Government.

While he did not believe that nationalisation was a solution, he insisted he was ruling nothing out.

But he said the high energy costs compared with the businesss European competitors and its reported 2 billion pension liabilities  dating to the days of British Steel  would have to be addressed in any deal.

Mr Javid said: Its hugely important to retired workers, to current workers, and we recognise that  so we dont want to do anything that would jeopardise them and what they expect from it.

Steelworkers in Wales, pictured, have been calling for Mr Javid to do more to save jobs in the steel industry

It is not clear whether the pension fund option would cost taxpayers money. Experts said it could end up under the control of the state-run Pension Protection Fund, which is financed through a levy on other businesses pension funds.

London Mayor Boris Johnson last night said the Government would be able to rescue the British steel industry in the event of a Brexit.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, he said that at present we cant take emergency action against dumped Chinese steel, even with British industry on its knees.

Mr Johnsons comments came as tycoon Sanjeev Gupta, whose commodities firm Liberty House has already saved several UK steelworks, was planning talks about a rescue of Port Talbot.

As well, brothers Marc and Nathaniel Meyohas, who run investment firm Greybull, were last night said to be finalising plans to buy Tatas Scunthorpe works, the Telegraph reported. The deal could pave the way for a move for the Port Talbot plant, it was claimed.
Tory backbencher Sir Bill Cash, pictured, has called on Business Secretary Sajid Javid to block a takeover of the London Stock Exchange by Deutsche Boerse

Business Secretary Sajid Javid was last night urged to use little-known powers to block a German takeover of the London Stock Exchange.

The 21billion deal has come under increasing pressure from critics who warn it would be against the national interest and could destroy a 215-year-old British institution.

The LSE and Frankfurt-based partner Deutsche Boerse have defended the deal as a merger of equals and LSE chief executive Xavier Rolet insisted it was the best deal on the table.

The Government has so far refused to get involved in the takeover, saying it is a matter for the Stock Exchange itself.

But yesterday it emerged that Mr Javid could use rarely-exercised powers gifted to him in the 2002 Enterprise Act to block a deal if it is not in the public interest.

One specific reason he can give for refusal is the need to protect the stability of the financial system.

Tory backbencher Sir Bill Cash said it was essential Mr Javid acted without delay.

He said: This is an attempt to manoeuvre German interests to further control the financial sector across the EU. I dont see how it can be seen to be in British national interests.

The Business Secretary should look into the deal and take whatever steps are necessary in order to prevent British national interests from being subverted by German ones.

The EU has taken far too much control over our financial system anyway.

The influential Treasury Select Committee is preparing to grill Chancellor George Osborne about it when he appears for questioning on April 19.

It also has the power to hold formal hearings and order company bosses to attend so they can account for their actions.

City grandees have warned there is huge uncertainty about what would happen if the new company collapsed.

Lord Paul Myners, a former Treasury minister who has served on the board of several major companies, said he feared British taxpayers could be left to foot the bill.

I dont think regulators have fully thought through how they would handle a failing central clearing house, he said.

Central clearing houses are potentially one of the largest concentrations of risk in our financial system and they deserve more attention.

Deutsche head Carsten Kengeter would take charge of the new company, which would be headquartered in London.

The new business would report profits in Euros and the Germans would have a 54.4 per cent controlling stake.

City watchdogs have already started scrutinising the fine print of the deal. Both the Bank of England and Financial Conduct Authority will have to give their backing before it goes ahead.

And influential Conservative peer Lord Norman Tebbit said Margaret Thatcher would never have allowed the London Stock Exchange to be sold off.

Mr Javid, pictured, could use powers in the 2002 Enterprise Act to block the deal if it is 'not in the public interest'

The peer, who served during her premiership as Conservative chairman, said the move was against our national interest and designed to tie us into the European project.

Despite assurances from the London Stock Exchange and Deutsche, there are fears that business and jobs could eventually move from London to Frankfurt  particularly if the British public votes to leave the EU.

Meanwhile, LSE and Deutsche bosses themselves are busy shoring up their position so a takeover can go ahead even if Britain votes to leave the EU.

They have formed a six-person referendum committee which will meet at least once every three months to form a plan of attack.

This is chaired by Boerse chairman Joachim Faber. It has three Frankfurt and three London members.
Leaked financial data reveals how a network of secret offshore deals and huge loans worth 1.4billion created a trail beginning and ending with Vladimir Putin, it has been reported.

A massive leak of documents reveal how the Russian president's best friend Sergei Roldugin and the man who heads up Putin's 'crony bank' Yuri Kovalchuk are linked to the movement of money offshore.

Bank Rossiya, which Roldugin owns 3.2 per cent of, sent instructions to Swiss lawyers who in turn got in touch with Mossack Fonseca. The Panamanian law firm then set up offshore company Sandalwood Continental Ltd in the British Virgin Islands and other offshores linked to Roldugin.

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The so-called Panama Papers implicate those in Russian president Vladimir Putin's inner circle. This graphic shows how Putin's best friend Sergei Roldugin, who owns 3.2 per cent of Bank Rossiya, and the man who heads the bank up, Yuri Kovalchuk, are linked to a trail which has seen money moved offshore via Swiss lawyers, Mossack Fonseca, and a subsidiary of Russia's state-owned VTB bank in Cyprus to a firm set up in the British Virgin Islands called Sandalwood Continental Ltd. Money was then lent to Ozon, which owns the private Igora ski resort outside St Petersburg, the place where Putin's daughter Katya got married

But the money later found its way back to Russia via Ozon, which was lent $11.3million by Sandalwood in 2010/11. Ozon is the owner of the private Igora ski resort outside St Petersburg, where Putin's daughter Katya got married, according to The Guardian.

Putin's name is not included in the leaked documents but his friends and associates appear to have earned millions of pounds from deals that would have been difficult to secure without his patronage.

Meanwhile Roldugin, a professional musician, is said to have accumulated a fortune by being put in control of a series of assets worth at least $100million.

Last week a senior Russian official revealed how the Kremlin was braced for an expose on Mr Putin's alleged secret fortune.

Spokesman Dmitry Peskov, one of the president's closest aides, dismissed the allegations as false and politically motivated even before they were published.

He said a number of foreign secret services were behind the claims, which suggest that Mr Putin has amassed a secret personal fortune of more than 28billion ($40billion).

Putin's name is not included in the leaked documents but his friend Sergei Roldugin (right) appears to have earned millions of pounds from deals that would have been difficult to secure without his patronage

The records were obtained from an anonymous source by the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists with the Guardian and the BBC.

Though there is nothing unlawful about using offshore companies, the files raise fundamental questions about the ethics of such tax havens  and the revelations are likely to provoke urgent calls for reforms of a system that critics say is arcane and open to abuse.

Among national leaders with offshore wealth are Nawaz Sharif, Pakistans prime minister; Ayad Allawi, ex-interim prime minister and former vice-president of Iraq; Petro Poroshenko, president of Ukraine; Alaa Mubarak, son of Egypts former president; and the prime minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson.
Paramedics attended the Hillarys drowning but were unable to save him

He threw the ball back to his friends before disappearing under the surface

The boy jumped from the jetty on Hillarys Harbour to collect his rugby ball

A game between friends has ended in tragedy after a 16-year-old boy drowned trying to collect his rugby ball from a busy city harbour.

The young man and his friends had been playing with the ball at Hillarys Boat Harbour in Perth on Sunday afternoon when it landed in the water.

The teenager jumped from the harbour's jetty and threw the ball back to his friends, but drowned suddenly before he could re-join them on the jetty.

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The teenager jumped from this jetty at Hillarys Boat Harbour on Sunday to collect a ball

He had been playing with friends, left, when he entered the water to collect the ball

The boy's younger cousin Alfred Beyan watched the whole scene unfold and told The West Australian the 16-year-old was 'swimming ok' before his head disappeared from the surface.

'I thought he was was fooling around but he never came up,' Mr Beyan said.

'He had sand in his mouth when I pulled him up from the bottom . . . it was pretty awful.'

There was no splashing or panic from the water the young boy just failed to come back up for air when 30 seconds had passed his friend became worried.

It was about 3.30pm when the teenager was pulled from the bottom of the harbour and on to the jetty by his friends, and passers-by.

The boy returned the ball to the jetty before his head went underwater and failed to resurface

Emergency services (police pictured) were called to the scene but the teenager couldn't be revived

An urgent attempt was made to resuscitate him using a defibrillator before paramedics arrived but it was unsuccessful.

He was taken to Joondalup Health Campus by ambulance but died in hospital.

Shocked by-stander, Victor Black, posted on Facebook after the incident, PerthNow reports.

'I wish the family of the guy that died at Hillary's today all my condolences'.

'We tried everything we could to save your son,' the post said.

Thousands of people flocked to the popular swimming spot over the weekend as temperatures soared to 32 degrees in Perth.

The harbour is a popular swimming destination for people who live in Perth and crowded on Sunday because of the soaring temperatures




An ex-Uber driver from Boston is launching a female-friendly car-sharing app that only uses women drivers and refuses male passengers over the age of 13, but some say its women-only driver policy might hit anti-discrimination potholes.

According to the company's website, Chariot for Women was inspired by founder Michael Pelletz's eight months of experience as an Uber driver - and specifically one night when he picked up a semi-conscious man who made him feel threatened.

'What if I was a woman?' Pelletz asked. 'How would a woman handle that situation, especially when I was so nervous myself?'

Bosses: Chariot for Women was founded by Michael Pelletz (left) and its president is his wife, Kelly Pelletz. It will have only female drivers and serve only female customers, and is expected to launch April 19

The solution is a ride-sharing app exclusively for the use of female drivers and customers that is set to launch April 19, USA Today reported.

The company's website promises to 'thoroughly background check' each driver before she is allowed to pick up a customer.

USA Today adds that all of the drivers will be fingerprinted - something resisted by competitors Uber and Lyft.

And once a driver id on the system, she must answer a daily personal security question before she is allowed to drive.

Customers are sent the driver's photo, license plate and car model, to make sure that they approach the right car.

And as an extra security measure each new booking comes with a 'safe word' viewable by both driver and customer - if the driver doesn't say the right safe word when the customer approaches the car, she knows it's not her ride.

This, Pelletz believes, will be enough to separate Chariot for Women from competitors like Uber and Lyft. He says prices will be comparable and there will be no surge pricing.

Safety: The app confirms the driver's identity each day before they can pick up customers, and sends both driver and customer a 'safe word' so they can recognize each other

There may well be a market for female-focused ride-sharing.

A 2014 paper by University of California Transportation Center put the number of women using ride-sharing services at 40 percent of the total audience.

But Uber's own analysis of its drivers says that just 13.8 percent of its 'driver-partners' and 8 percent of its taxi drivers and chauffeurs are female.

The company told USA Today that 29 percent of new drivers who joined in Fall 2015 were women.

Alexandra LaManna, a spokeswoman for car-sharing app Lyft, told USA Today that about 30 percent of its drivers and 60 percent of its customers are female.

There have also been negative reports of Uber drivers in recent times. An Uber driver was arrested Tuesday after allegedly raping a woman while on duty in February.

And that same month, a Kalamazoo Uber driver allegedly went on a shooting spree that saw six people dead and a 14-year-old girl survive a shot to the head.

However, some are skeptical about Chariots for Women's hiring policies standing up to the USA's anti-discrimination laws.

Joseph L Sulman, an employment specialist, told The Boston Globe that 'To limit employees to one gender, you have to have what the law calls a bona fide occupational qualification. And thats a really strict standard.

'The laws really tough on that. For gender, its not enough to say, "We really just want to have a female here because our customers prefer that to feel safer."'

He gave guards or social workers at women's prisons as examples of such jobs - 'places where theres constant or near-constant close contact with only women. And not just contact, but intimate contact, which is a part of your job.'

There might also be issues with restricting the customer base to just women, Dahlia C. Rudavsky, a partner in the Boston firm of Messing, Rudavsky & Weliky, told the Globe.

'Theres nothing wrong with advertising particularly to a female customer base,' she said, 'but if a company goes further and refuses to pick up a man, I think theyd potentially run into legal trouble.'

However, Pelletz's lawyers say that the company will be operating legally.

'We believe that giving women and their loved ones peace of mind is not only a public policy imperative but serves an essential social interest,' Pelletz told USA Today in a statement.

'Our service is intended to protect these fundamental liberties and we look forward to ending the inequality of security that currently afflicts drivers and riders on the basis of gender.'
An Uber driver has shared some of his most memorable experiences of life on the Sydney roads - including a bride concerned about confessing her hen night exploits to her fiance two weeks before her wedding and picking up a woman after her TInder date went haywire.

Sydney man Ben Phillips accepted his first Uber ride at about 10pm on a cool April night - from a woman named Holly he described as a 'drunken Medusa'.

The experience was so memorable that the 27-year-old decided to write it down immediately - and his blog Diary of an Uber Driver was born, resulting in the release of his e-book on Friday.

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Sydney man Ben Phillips, 27, has been blogging his experiences as an Uber driver

Holly was a 'short, thin brunette' and began crying with 'full blown sobs that caused her entire body to shudder and shake', Mr Phillips said.

When he asked Holly if she was okay, she managed to get out 'while hyperventilating' that her date had 'just got up and left me at the pub' after they met on dating mobile app Tinder one-and-a-half weeks before the date.

The 14-minute journey to Newtown in Sydney's inner-west became a lot more painful when the passenger suddenly started screaming at Mr Phillips.

While berating him about how few men there were available to date, she turned her head to the side to face him so 'she looked like the girl from horror film The Ring'.

'So it doesn't matter that you're ugly and have a small d***, you'll still have women throwing themselves at you!', she shouted, according to Mr Phillips.

His first ride as an Uber driver was in April last year, when he immediately wrote down the experience. In August he published it on his blog Diary of an Uber Driver

In another blog post, the Uber driver wrote about picking up a passenger from Bondi in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs and overhearing an interesting conversation between friends.

'What do you mean you haven't told him yet, babe? You're getting married in two weeks,' the passenger said to her friend, according to Mr Phillips' blog.

'Maybe the two male strippers....will spread the word, and before you know it, Luke will be asking you the question, "Did you have a g***-b*** two weeks before our wedding?"'

Mr Phillips sad that he also had a child vomit like 'Mount Vesuvius' down his back, as well as a manic passenger who convinced him he could build a time machine.

On another occasion, a scorned man hurled a metal rake at Mr Phillips' passenger as they sped off down the street in Menai, south Sydney.

Diary of an Uber Driver was released through Harper Collins on April 1. It includes his back-story and Uber stories not featured on his blog - though Mr Phillips continues updating the blog

He picked up another customer who he said was on methamphetamine and took him to his work as a male escort in Darlinghurst.

Mr Phillips sad that he also had a child vomit like 'Mount Vesuvius' down his back

'I have been invited by passengers to house parties and warehouse raves', the 27-year-old said.

As well, invitations to get intimate are 'not the most flattering' after customers have had 20 or 30 drinks over a day or a night, he wrote.

The 27-year-old said passengers preparing for a job interview or rehearsing their wedding speeches, asking for relationship advice or venting about a colleague were common.

'I'm a bit of a counsellor to some people if they're having a rough day,' Mr Phillips told Daily Mail Australia.

'The questions they're asking are the questions they don't feel comfortable asking someone they know.'

Diary of an Uber Driver was released through Harper Collins on April 1.

It includes his back-story and Uber stories not featured on his blog - though Mr Phillips continues updating the blog.
A prominent lawyer has received death threats over his calls for unity in the Islamic community following the killing of a Muslim shopkeeper.

Aamer Anwar said he was taking the threats extremely seriously and police were investigating.

Mr Anwar chaired an event at Glasgow Central Mosque last week where he called for unity and condemned violence and extremism in the wake of the killing of shopkeeper Asad Shah, as well as terror attacks in Brussels and Lahore.

Lawyer Aamer Anwar during a press conference at Hampden Park in Glasgow where he condemned the recent terror attacks around the world and death of shopkeeper Asad Shah in Glasgow

Aamer Anwar chaired an event at Glasgow Central Mosque last week where he called for unity and condemned violence and extremism in the wake of the killing of shopkeeper Asad Shah

Mr Shah, 40, was found injured outside his convenience store in the Shawlands area of Glasgow on March 24. His funeral was on Saturday.

Tanveer Ahmed, 32, from Bradford, has appeared in court charged with murder.

Following the attack, police described the incident as religiously prejudiced and said both men were Muslims.

Mr Anwar said: Having been a campaigner for human rights for over 25 years, I have grown used to the bile and hatred directed at me, sadly that is par for the course.

On occasion when I have had my life seriously threatened, I have informed the police but have always chosen to keep it private. On this occasion I could no longer remain silent, because of a small minority who believe they can silence me by creating a climate of fear.

Aamer Anwar addressing the media at a joint press conference in Glasgow, to condemn acts of terrorism and to show unity following the death of shopkeeper Asad Shah

The lawyer said that over the past few weeks abuse and hatred had been whipped up on social media, and he had received calls in the middle of the night.

He said: I hold these people directly responsible for creating an atmosphere which has given some the confidence to make threats to my life.

With a young family I could be forgiven if I had chosen to shut up and walk away.

The pressure from the community, friends and family to protect myself from the fanatics has been enormous.

It is a terrifying and deeply lonely place to be when you say goodbye to your children and wonder if it is for the last time, but the death of Asad Shah should be a wake-up call to our community that we must not be silenced - Aamer Anwar

It is a terrifying and deeply lonely place to be when you say goodbye to your children and wonder if it is for the last time, but the death of Asad Shah should be a wake-up call to our community that we must not be silenced.

Our so-called community leaders must do much more, they have avoided tacking hatred to preserve their status and that is deeply shameful and hypocritical.

Mr Anwar has taken on a number of high-profile cases including representing the families of Sheku Bayoh, from Fife, who died in police custody, and Indian waiter Surjit Singh Chhokar.

Mr Chhokar was killed in 1998 and this year a man will stand trial accused of his murder after a legal fight that has included two judicial reviews.

He has also represented the middle-class family of Aqsa Mahmood, who ran off to become a jihadi bride at the age of 19.

They have campaigned to try to discourage other young girls from travelling to Syria.
'What would drive a person to such deplorable action?'

The rabbi said the vandals were 'lucky' he wasn't there to deal with them

Also left their mark on a bus stop out the front of the place of worship

Vandals scrawled Nazi swastikas on his synagogue in Maroubra, NSW

A furious rabbi has penned a defiant message after thugs desecrated his synagogue with swastikas - saying the vandals were 'damn lucky' he wasn't there to catch them.

Rabbi Yossi Friedman returned to his Maroubra Synagogue in Sydney's eastern suburbs this week to find the building and a nearby bus stop covered with Nazi-style graffiti.

'It has literally 'hit home' for me and I can't stop thinking about it,' the Rabbi said in a statement on Monday.

Rabbi Friedman described the graffiti as an 'assault on the Jewish People' and wrote: 'I can NOT be silent.'

'What would drive a person to such deplorable action? Why such hatred?'

'You were damn lucky that I wasn't there to catch you': Rabbi Yossi Friedman (pictured right) has penned a furious essay after thugs desecrated his synagogue and a nearby bus stop with swastikas

Defaced with Nazi symbols: Swastikas were drawn on a bus stop near the Maroubra Synagogue at the weekend

The white walls of the popular eastern suburbs synagogue were similarly desecrated with the symbols

The Rabbi said: 'Your hatred won't harm us, it will only consume YOU. So for your own sake, let it go'

The rabbi said synagogues are symbols of peace and a place for people to reflect, pray, meditate and become better people, so 'why deface them?'

In his statement, he said the Jews have suffered greatly over their three-and-a-half thousand years of history and outlived cruel, fanatical despots and regimes.

And he had some words of advice for the vandal.

'I have one message to impart to that vandal who desecrated my Synagogue and insulted my people: I pity you,' he said.

'Your hatred won't harm us, it will only consume YOU. So for your own sake, let it go.

'Oh, and one more message. You were damn lucky that I wasn't there to catch you.'

The Rabbi argued synagogues are places of peace and prayer in his message on Monday

'There is no place for such behaviour in our society,' Rabbi Friedman said in his statement

NSW Jewish Board of Deputies chief executive Vic Alhadeff slammed the perpetrators.

'Nazi swastikas are not just graffiti,' Mr Alhadeff told Daily Mail Australia.

'They are the ultimate symbol of racial hatred, and the cowards who engaged in this act of bigotry are to be thoroughly condemned.

'There is no place for such behaviour in our society.'

Daily Mail Australia has approached Rabbi Friedman and NSW Police for comment.
A judge expressed his shock upon learning a 103-year-old woman had been robbed in her Bronx apartment building.

Sharon McNeil, 53, followed Louise Signore into the elevator and knocked her down before stealing her shopping cart and purse, authorities said.

She was arrested and charged with robbery, assault and harassment around 11am on Saturday, according to PIX 11.

Judge Ralph Fabrizio called out the 'callousness' of the robbery while McNeil pleaded not guilty on Sunday, the New York Daily News reported.

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Sharon McNeil (pictured), 53, followed Louise Signore, 103, in the hallway of her Bronx apartment building then took her food and money, authorities said

Judge Ralph Fabrizio called out the 'callousness' of the robbery after learning Signore (pictured) was 103 years old. McNeil pleaded not guilty on Sunday

'Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness,' Fabrizio said after learning Signore was 103 years old.

He said McNeil was accused of targeting 'a vulnerable individual' and hadn't shown up in court for 27 previous misdemeanor convictions.

'When people prey on 103-year-old victims  this case better be ready next month. We have to try this quickly,' Fabrizio said according to the New York Daily News.

'People prey on old, fragile individuals because they think they won't come forward.'

He set McNeil's bail at $100,000 and said she should receive psychiatric and medical help.

McNeil followed Signore into her building on Bellamy Loop in Co-op City on Friday around 2.30pm, prosecutors said.

She went into the elevator with the 103-year-old woman and later knocked her to the ground, police said.

McNeil stole Signore's purse as well as her shopping cart, which contained two meals received at a local community center, and fled the scene according to authorities.

The purse contained $30 in cash, assistant District Attorney Michael Duffy said.

Signore was evaluated by EMS but refused further medical attention.

Police released surveillance video Friday night of McNeil, who can be seen walking through the doors of the apartment building.

In the footage, she appears to be wearing a striped yellow polo shirt as she pushes a cart through the entrance of the building.
But many others are turning away from the church

Rumors among the faithful say that apocalyptic miracles will free the Jeffs

On Wednesday, as Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) leader Lyle Jeffs enters court on major fraud charges and his brother, convicted pedophile Warren Jeffs, languishes in jail, an apocalyptic miracle will tear down the buildings they are in and free them.

At least, that's what their followers believe. 'I am hearing from people inside the FLDS that on April 6 there is going to be a kind of apocalypse,' ex-follower Elissa Wall told The Guardian Sunday. 'It is prophesied.'

And while Armageddon is unlikely, many - including Wall - feel that the end is nigh for the FLDS.

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Secluded: Members of the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) point at news cameras outside their Hildale, Utah headquarters. They are forbidden from accessing outside media, including the internet

'Prophet': Warren Jeffs (pictured, center, in 2006) is worshiped as the living voice of God by his followers. He was sentenced to a life sentence plus 20 years for sexually assaulting 'brides' as young as 12 in 2011

Brother: Lyle Jeffs (center), Warren's brother, acts as his representative on the outside. He is now fighting jail time alongside other FLDS leaders, accused of a major welfare scam. Without the men, the church founders

The sect splintered off in 1912 after the main LDS chuch banned polygamy, and formed its headquarters in Hildale, Utah.

But in recent years the sect has suffered a barrage of criminal and civil case, most famously in 2011 when its 'prophet,' Warren Jeffs, was convicted of sexually assaulting 'brides' as young as 12, and sentenced to life in prison plus 20 years.

Last month a civil court found that Hildale and Colorado City, Arizona, both discriminated against non-FLDS members and are pending punishments from a judge.

And in February the FBI, along with local law enforcement, raided the homes of almost a dozen senior FLDS officials, who are now accused of defrauding the government of millions of dollars in food stamps.

Those officials include Warren Jeffs' brother, Lyle. If convicted, they - and he - face fines and imprisonment.

Lyle Jeff's possible incarceration is especially unnerving to the FLDS faithful, as he has acted as his brother's representative on the outside, passing on the secret messages that their 'prophet' is able to sneak out of jail.

Without either brother on the outside, the church is directionless.

Residents: Residents of Hildale walk along a street after a flash flood in September last year that killed eight. Increasing numbers of FLDS followers are leaving the church, say those who help them escape

Warren Jeffs' followers literally believe he is a prophet who channels the word of God, so the barrage of attacks - and victories - by federal and state governments are troubling for them.

'I think its certainly the beginning of the end of the FLDS as we know it,' Wall told the Guardian.

'The feds are not going to shut down the FLDS, but its a mindset and more and more people are leaving the religion and those that are still inside the faith are bewildered and dont know what to do or what is going to happen next.'

Victory: Elissa Wall fled the church when she was made to marry her cousin at 15. She is now pursuing them for $40million in damages, one third its total wealth, and helps others who want to flee the FLDS

Wall is another who recently won a court case against the FLDS, when a Utah high court gave her permission to sue the church for up to $40million in damages - one third of its assets - after it forced her to marry her cousin at the age of 14.

She now acts as an advocate and volunteer, helping those who wish to leave the faith escape to safe houses and integrate into wider American society.

Those safe houses are needed to stop the escapees from being found by church elders, who may pressure them into returning.

The separation from the outside world is so strict that FLDS worshipers are banned from accessing outside media, including the internet and are educated at home.

They also mostly eat from the church-controlled storehouses that are at the center of the food stamp scam that Lyle Jeffs is accused of involvement in.

Still, increasing numbers of FLDS members are leaving - encouraged, in many cases, by family members who already got out, and the loss of their contact to the 'prophet' means that the religion is struggling to find a direction.

'The community is absolutely paralyzed with Lyle in jail,' said Tonia Tewell, director of Holding Out Help, an organization that aids those who want to leave the FLDS.

She estimates that she has aided the escape of 150 people in the last year.

Although cracks are emerging across the church, hardcore followers have not lost their faith.

Kat Allen, a cousin of Warren Jeffs who fled after she was married at 15 to a man in his forties or fifties, told The Guardian that many in the FLDS believe the Jeffs brothers are victims of persecution by non-believers.

'They are 100 percent loyal, no, 200 percent loyal to Warren Jeffs,' she said.
A dispute between neighbors in California climaxed this weekend when one allegedly shot the other's two-year-old pit bull to death in an incident that was caught on camera.

Christopher Samuel, 54, was arrested on Friday, on suspicion of animal cruelty and negligent discharge of a firearm following the argument in Perris.

Friday's shooting was caught on camera and posted to social media, where it quickly went viral.

It is believed that the neighbors involved in the incident have long-standing disputes with one another.

Christopher Samuel, 54, allegedly shot his neighbor's dog in a dispute that was caught on video on Friday in Perris, California

Samuel was arrested on suspicion of animal cruelty and negligent discharge of a firearm following the incident

Deputies were called to the home at about 3.30 pm after a report that shots had been fired and found a dead dog in the resident's yard

Deputies were called to the home at about 3.30 pm after a report that shots had been fired, according to Riverside County Sheriff's Deputy Armando Munoz.

When officers arrived, they found dead pit bull in a yard of a residence, according to CBS Los Angeles.

Video footage, posted by Alexis Lemmon - the daughter of the dog's owner - shows a man with a rifle gunning down the two-year-old dog. The man in the video is allegedly Samuel.

The dog's owner, Michael Lemmon, claimed that his dog was shot after it wandered into Samuel's backyard.

'He closed my dog in his yard and he's shooting at my dog,' Lemmon is heard saying in the video.

His stepmom, Debbie Meindl-Lemmon, believes Samuel should 'do some time'.

'I mean, that was obviously premeditated. He had the R-15 right there. I believe he would have shot my stepson and my husband if they had walked in,' she told CBS Los Angeles.

Samuel (left in his booking photo) allegedly shot a two-year-old pit bull belonging to Michael Lemmon (pictured right in 2013). It is believed that Samuel and Lemmon have long-standing disputes with one another

The family claims their pit bull ran into Samuel's yard while the across-the-street neighbors were arguing

The family claims that tension between the two across-the-street neighbors kicked off when Samuel started taking photos of people visiting their house.

Wayne Lemmon, Michael's father, said he asked Samuels what he was doing and the man reportedly 'cursed' at Lemmon.

They said that while they were talking to Samuel, their dog ran into his yard.

'He had his gate open, 'bout like it is now, and as soon as the dog runs in there, and the dog ran up to the fence where the other dogs were, he's in he closes the gate on the dog,' Wayne told CBS Los Angeles.

Samuel's friend who wanted to remain anonymous, however, said that the Lemmon family had been causing trouble for quite some time and had put their dog in Samuel's yard to intimidate him.

Deputies said the video makes it clear the dog was not aggressive and Samuel was not acting in self defense.

'Could he walk away, get back into his yard or his house,' said Riverside County Sheriff's Department Sgt. Chris Durham, 'and then call dispatch or Animal Control to help him with the situation and those are the things that the video helps us to know and understand.'
An Abbott government minister who backed the former Prime Minister and was dumped from cabinet by Malcolm Turnbull has said hes prepared to challenge for the leadership.

Kevin Andrews hoped to be Tony Abbott's deputy and was dumped by Malcolm Turnbull when he seized the leadership in September, and has given a lengthy interview to local newspaper Manningham Leader.

It has never been my burning ambition to be the leader of the party, but if circumstances arose ... where I thought there should be a change or a contest, I am prepared to do it, Mr Andrews said according to Herald Sun.

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Tony Abbott supporter Kevin Andrews has said he's 'prepared to challenge' Malcolm Turnbull for the leadership if the circumstance arose (L-R Abbott, Andrews)

When Malcolm Turnbull (pictured) seized the leadership in September, he dumped Mr Andrews from cabinet

Mr Turnbull won a party room vote for the leadership of the Liberal party on September 15 last year

Mr Andrews challenged Julie Bishop for the deputy leadership of the party in September, but he lost with just 30 per cent of the party room votes.

There wasn't anything particularly negative about Julie, but she had been deputy leader under Brendan [Nelson], Malcolm and Tony and I thought: Well, there hadn't really been a contest for the deputy leadership, he said.

He considered himself an intellectual leader of the conservative side of politics.

Mr Andrews said he would vote against same-sex marriage laws even if a proposed national plebiscite came down in favour of the change.

He said he was disappointed to lose the defence portfolio after being earlier shifted from the social services ministry.

I felt like I was halfway through doing something, he said.

Labor deputy leader Tanya Plibersek said Mr Andrews' comments were farcical.

Here we are weeks out from a federal budget ... [and] all we see is chaos and division instead, she told reporters in Sydney on Monday.

We see Tony Abbott haunting the government and now this new threat from Kevin Andrews.

I wish these people would focus on their day jobs.
Sajid Javid sat down with Tata's bosses in London today as the Government scrambled to head off a crisis in the steel industry.

The Business Secretary, who faced harsh criticism for travelling to Australia last week when Tata held a board meeting in Mumbai which decided to sell its British plants, was said to have placed his department on a 'crisis' footing today.

Mr Javid tonight said his meeting had been 'productive' and insisted 'progress is being made' with the Indian steel giant.

Prime Minister David Cameron will continue emergency talks tomorrow at a Downing Street summit with Welsh First Minster Carwyn Jones.

Mr Jones today blasted Westminster for a 'slow and inadequate' response to the crisis, which could threaten 40,000 jobs.

Steel workers met at the TUC headquarters in London today, pictured, to call on David Cameron to personally intervene over the steel crisis

Union official Gary Keogh, pictured centre, today said the trades union would be presenting a plan to save the steel industry to the Government tomorrow

The latest developments emerged as a possible rescue for UK steel appeared in the form of little known financiers Marc and Nathaniel Meyohas, the brothers behind the Greybull investment firm, who are said to finalising a 400million deal to buy Scunthorpe's steelworks.

EU state aid rules could block Government assistance on expensive steelworkers' pensions - potentially undermining any deal with a private buyer.

Tata's announcement last week it wanted to quit the UK steel business altogether raised fears of a quick and permanent shut down of its huge Port Talbot steelworks.

The company rejected a turnaround plan for the massive South Wales plant, which directly employs 4,000 people and indirectly supports much of the surrounding community.

Amid a global oversupply of steel - fuelled by Chinese dumping of cheap steel - the firm is said to be losing up to 1million a day in Britain.

Ahead of the today's meetings, it emerged:

Financiers Marc and Nathaniel Meyohas were reported to be finalising a 400million deal to take over the Scunthorpe steelworks as soon as Wednesday - with a possible further deal to follow for Port Talbot.

Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns travelled to Wales to continue talks with the steel taskforce and the Welsh Government in Cardiff.

Trade union leaders met in London to discuss the steel crisis and demand David Cameron personally step in to manage the crisis.

Experts warned Sajid Javid's suggestion of Government help to manage expensive pension bills in a steelworks sale could be blocked under EU state aid rules.

The Welsh Assembly was recalled to debate the steel crisis. First Minister Carwyn Jones blasted the UK government for a 'slow and inadequate' response.

Mr Cameron's official spokeswoman today insisted the Prime Minister retained confidence in his Business Secretary.

She said Mr Letwin - a senior cabinet minister without a specific portfolio - had been involved in tackling the steel issue for several weeks.

The spokeswoman said: 'At this stage our focus is on looking at how we get a genuine sales process off the ground and the work that we can do to interest potential buyers.

'There are clearly a number of issues that will need to be looked at as part of that process.'

Business Secretary Sajid Javid tonight insisted 'progress is being made' following a 'productive' meeting with senior Tata staff

Mr Javid yesterday indicated the Government would offer a buyer help with pensions, electricity bills and specialist steel products to encourage a sale for Port Talbot.

Government sources later insisted Mr Javid was in 'complete control' of the situation and had placed his Business, Innovation and Skills Department in 'full crisis mode' to tackle the situation.

The sale and eventual closure of the Redcar steelworks last year escalated fears a quick sale of Port Talbot by Tata could have seen the site shut down. Once closed, steel works go cold and are almost impossible to restart.

But any deal to nationalise the 15billion pension pot could be blocked by European Union 'state aid' rules and cause a major stumbling block.

Business Minister Anna Soubry, seen arriving at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills today, had been due to meet steelworkers in Rotherham

Reports indicate Marc and Nathaniel Meyohas, the brothers behind the Greybull investment firm, are putting the finishing touches to a buy-out of Tata's Scunthorpe steelworks (pictured)

Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones blasted the Government today for a 'slow and inadequate' response.

Speaking at a recalled Welsh Assembly, he said: 'I am also disappointed that the UK government has failed to tackle the underlying difficulties in UK steel production in a systematic way.

'We have stood alongside the steel industry for years complaining about high energy costs and steel-dumping. UK government action has been slow and inadequate.

'It is clear that they have not driven a hard enough bargain at EU level to protect our products from the effects of market-distorting steel dumping.

'Indeed, we discovered at the weekend that it's not the European Union holding the UK back, but the other way round  the UK government has been holding back the European Union.'

Mr Jones warned state aid rules would prevent the Welsh Assembly Government from unilaterally cutting the business rates bill charged to the Port Talbot steelworks.

A statement from trades union leaders said: 'This level of investment should be achievable given that any buyer would be gaining control of assets worth 4billion.

'But Government support is needed to bridge the 2-3 years it will take to get back to self-sustainability.'

Roy Rickhuss, general secretary of Community, said: 'It was clear from our meeting today that steelworkers are the guardians of their industry and they know what action is needed to secure the future of steelmaking in the UK.

'There needs to be a step-change in the level of Government involvement with Tata, its customers and the unions and this is why we have set out our demands.

'The Government needs to reassure the customer base, they need to make it clear to Tata that the integrity of the business must be maintained, and the Government must invest in our steel industry to give it a future.'

Union leaders hope to present a plan to Mr Javid tomorrow.

Business Secretary Sajid Javid outlined the support Government would offer to a buyer on the BBC yesterday, pictured, with help possible on pensions, electricity bills and machinery

Shadow business secretary Angela Eagle said: 'The future of British steel-making is hanging in the balance.

'Labour has been demanding action for months to address the growing crisis in this vital strategic industry. The Welsh Assembly has been recalled and the steel unions are working hard to find a way forward.

'Yet the crisis continues to grow and the Tory Government is still missing in action. They have refused to recall Parliament and their response has been utterly chaotic.

'They need to get a grip fast; we've had enough of warm words, now is the time for concrete action.'

The Daily Telegraph said the Scunthorpe deal with the Meyohas brothers could be announced as soon as Wednesday and a further deal could later be announced for Port Talbot.

Scunthorpe MP Nic Dakin told MailOnline: 'There has been a painstaking process over many months to progress the sale of Tata Long Products which includes the Scunthorpe Works to Greybull Capital.

'Everyone involved is making a huge commitment including the workforce and suppliers.

'It will be very welcome news that this is close to a positive conclusion and that the powerful British Steel brand is about to return.'

Mr Dakin said the successful conclusion of the deal would not mean the Government had not been 'asleep at the wheel'.

He added: 'It's still not too late for them to take the strong action necessary against Chinese dumping and to level the playing field on business rates, procurement and energy costs.'

The Government support for a Port Talbot buyer will include assistance on pensions, electricity bills and steel products - but Mr Javid has refused to go into details citing 'commercial sensitivity'.

Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones, pictured today at the Senedd in Cardiff Bay, used a statement to the Welsh Assembly to blame the UK government for a 'slow and inadequate' response to the steel crisis

John Ralfe, a pensions consultant, said last night that any plan to put the Tata pension pot into public ownership would be prohibited by the EU.

He told The Times that it 'would certainly fall foul of the EU's state aid rules', adding: 'Royal Mail, from 2012, isn't a precedent. The facts were very, very different.'

A deal on pensions could cost taxpayers as much as 2billion.

Meanwhile union leaders will meet later today to discuss the crisis gripping the steel industry as efforts continue to save thousands of jobs.

Oliver Letwin, a troubleshooter for David Cameron, is due to join Mr Javid at meetings with Tata today

Shop stewards from steelworks across the country will hold emergency talks in London and will continue pressing the Government for help.

The Business Secretary has faced calls from Labour for his resignation after he disclosed he had been aware Tata had been meeting last week in Mumbai to discuss the future of its UK operations but chose to go ahead with a trip to Australia.

Mr Javid played down suggestions that Tata could close down its UK operations, with the loss of 15,000 jobs, in as little as six weeks if a buyer was not found in time.

However, he acknowledged that the Government would have to come forward with some financial assistance if there was to be a deal.

Mr Javid told the BBC: 'Tata will issue an offer document very soon.

'Alongside that, the UK Government know - I've known for a while - that we're also going to have to offer support to clinch that buyer and give that steel plant a long-term, viable future.'

He continued: 'I do feel, though, for lots of reasons after talking to Tata and many others involved in this, that there will be enough time to find the right buyer working with the Government and being able to take this forward.'

Mr Javid said the support from the government and the Tata offer document would be the 'makings of a successful deal'.

While he did not believe that nationalisation was a solution to the problems of the business, he insisted he was ruling nothing out.

Steelworkers in Port Talbot, South Wales, pictured during a visit by the Business Secretary last week, have been calling for Mr Javid to do more to save jobs in the steel industry

Steel tycoon Sanjeev Gupta - the founder of the commodities firm Liberty House- said he had already opened discussions with owners Tata Steel and was ready to hold talks with the Government.

He will reportedly have a meeting with Mr Javid tomorrow.
Sydney siege hostage Elly Chen sent a heartbreaking text to her friend just before she made a dramatic escape from the Lindt Cafe.

'I'll see you on the other side,' her text read. It was presented at the coronial inquest into the December 2014 siege where Ms Chen described the hours she was held at gunpoint by crazed gunman Man Haron Monis.

Ms Chen hid under table 40 as she typed the text while fellow cafe worker April Bae secretly unlocked the cafe doors. The pair then defied Monis' threat to kill them and made a dash into the arms of police waiting outside in Martin Place.

Sydney siege hostage Elly Chen is seen running from the Lindt Cafe into Martin Place towards police

She said gunman Monis became increasingly desperate after three men escaped from the cafe at about 3.40pm.

He made calls to the media and threatened the remaining hostages - saying he would kill one for each person who fled.

Ms Chen said she was panicking and hyperventilating while lying on the ground.

Meanwhile, Ms Bae popped up from her hiding spot about three times to work on the latches locking the cafe's doors.

Monis had suggested to the hostages that Lindt Cafe manager Tori Johnson would be blamed if more people managed to flee the cafe, and Ms Chen said she was hesitant to leave for that reason.

'I thought he would actually do what he said,' Ms Chen told the inquest on Monday.

However, Ms Bae was keen to leave and at about 5pm, when the pair decided gunman Monis wasn't paying attention, she made a bolt for freedom with Ms Chen right behind her.

Ms Chen texted her friend saying 'I'll see you on the other side' just moments before her and fellow cafe worker April Bae escaped from the Lindt Cafe

The siege would last until officers stormed the building early the next morning, with two hostages - Mr Johnson and Katrina Dawson dead along with the gunman.

Sydney siege hostage Joel Herat thought about stabbing gunman Man Haron Monis in the neck to allow other captives to flee, but decided it was too dangerous, she told the inquest.

Mr Herat had a Stanley knife and pair of scissors stashed in his work apron and considered pushing a shotgun off Monis' lap and stabbing him in the neck, the coronial inquest also heard.

'At the time I thought maybe if I could maim or stab him that could be a chance for people to get away,' said Mr Herat, who still works at the cafe.

'It was such a high risk involved. That was why I couldn't bring myself to do it.'

The inquest continues before NSW Coroner Michael Barnes.

Gunman Man Haron Monis suggested Lindt Cafe manager Tori Johnson would be blamed if more hostaged managed to flee the cafe during the siege

The siege lasted until officers stormed the building early the next morning, with two hostages - Mr Johnson and Katrina Dawson - and the gunmen dead

Police pictured in Martin Place during the siege. Fellow hostage Joel Herat, who also gave evidence on Monday, said he thought about stabbing gunman Man Haron Monis in the neck to try and disarm him
The campus is expected to be completed at the end of this year and drone footage is uploaded every month so the public can watch the progress

When it is finished it will house 13,000 Apple techies, grow 7,000 trees, park 11,000 vehicles and its auditorium will have 1,000 seats

The drone footage shows the 2.8million square-foot structure as appearing near completion

the campus for $5billion in 2009

New aerial drone footage of the massive Apple Campus 2 shows off the developments progress.

The campus is being built on a massive 175 acre park in Cupertino, California and was commissioned by Steve Jobs, who called it 'the best office building in the world', in 2009.

When it's completed, the campus will be 2.8 million square-feet, house 13,000 Apple techies and be self-sufficient with 7,000 trees planted in the dirt removed from the park to build the compound.

The drone footage first flies over the massive circular structure, giving an overview of the campus.

The massive Apple showed off the progress of its massive Apple Campus 2, which was commissioned by Steve Jobs for $5billion in 2009, with new drone footage posted to YouTube

The campus is expected to be completed this year and is built in a circular structure. Because of its shape it will have the largest glass windows in the world

It the shows the halfway-completed research and development facility.

Then the drone hovers over what will eventually become an underground auditorium.

The auditorium will have 1,000 seats and is currently having its windows installed.

Because of its circular shape, the windows being installed in Apple Campus 2 will be the biggest in the world.

It will also have an underground auditorium that can seat 1,000 people. The campus is being built on 175 acres of land

Gargantuan: Approximately 13,000 Apple techies will be employed at the 2.8million square-foot campus

The drone then glides over the ceiling area where roofing is still being installed.

Solar panels are also being installed to add to the site's self-sufficiency.

Massive cranes have to be constantly shifted to complete the roofing of the campus.

Another spot the drone shows off is the 100,000 square-foot fitness center for Apple employees.

The campus will also have a 100,000 square-foot fitness center, 7,000 trees to feed its employees and uses solar paneling to generate its own energy

Parking space? Two parking structures are also being built and will be able to hold a combined 11,000 cars

Two parking structures able to hold 11,000 vehicles are almost complete.

Drone videos are made public every month as the Apple Campus 2 progresses.
Gold Coast luxury hair and beauty salon boss, Angela Bisson, is about to be sentenced for driving while almost ten times over the legal limit after she was found slumped in her car outside her salon.

Ms Bisson, 42, was arrested and charged after paramedics found her passed out in a vehicle parked outside her Mane Hair & Beauty Salon at Runaway Bay on the Gold Coast last October.

She has featured two pictures of inviting drinks on her Facebook profile picture - although the drinks shown on an outdoor table above a swimming pool could be non-alcoholic 'mocktails'.

The salon owner also shares posts on Facebook from 'My Therapy is Drinkin' and of a woman passed out from a drinking session.

Following her arrest, Ms Bisson's .48 reading last year shocked traffic police who declared it a Queensland record.

Gold Coast luxury hair and beauty salon boss Angela Bisson (above, left) is about to be sentenced for driving almost ten times over the limit after she was found slumped in her car outside the salon with a .48 reading

Angela Bisson featured two cocktails or mocktails on the profile picture of her Facebook page ahead of her appearance in Southport Magistrates Court on Friday when she faces a maximum nine months' prison

Angela Bisson , pictured on the Facebook page of Man Hair & Beauty Salon, has been a hairdresser for more than 15 years and offers clients 'glamour' styles in 'luxurious' surroundings

Following her charge last October for being almost ten times over the limit, Gold Coast hair salon boss Angela Bisson shared this post on Facebook about a woman who had been out drinking with the girls

The legal limit is .05. Queensland University professor Jake Najman told Daily Mail Australia that most drinker s would pass out at 0.3 and would be comatose and at risk of dying by 0.4.

After pleading guilty to high range drink driving, Ms Bisson could face up to nine months' prison when she is sentenced on Friday in Southport Magistrates Court.

Natrional Drug & Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) studies show that while young people overall are drinking less, people over 40 are drinking more and heavy drinking is becoming more prevalent among women.

Angela Bisson, pictured, opened her Mane Hair Salon at Runaway Bay on the Gold Coast six years ago after running Silver Scissors a business previously owned by her mother Marilyn

Angela Bisson, pictured with a client in her hair salon, recorded a blood alcohol level of .48 which traffic police estimated was a Queensland record, which tallies with studies that say women are drinking more heavily

Ms Bisson has posted what looks like two cocktails on her Facebook page and following her arrest in October shared the two drinking related items.

The experienced hairdresser also shared a post last November 17 with the motto 'when someone does something wrong, don't forget all the things they did right'.

Ms Bisson, who has operated Mane Hair & Beauty near the beach at Runaway Bay for six years, describes her business in yellowpages.com.au, on her website and Facebook pages as a 'luxurious' salon which offers 'glamour' hair styles.

While the salon's listing on truelocal.com.au has two complaints for late cancellation by the salon of hair appointments made by customers, positive reviews are also posted.

Angela Bisson, pictured with salon colleagues, runs a busy and popular salon at Runaway Bay on the Gold Coast where clients are offered glamour styles and 'the ultimate in hair care'

Hair salon owner Angela Bisson, pictured, right, is married with children and face a maximum of nine months' prison when she is sentenced in the Southport Magistrates Court on Friday

Ms Bisson, who is married with children, previously ran a hairdressing salon Silver Scissors, which had once been owned by her mother, Marilyn Zavattin.

In 2005, the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission ordered Ms Bisson to pay an outstanding amount of $4,023.75 to a former hairdressing assistant who claimed she had not been fully paid for work undertaken and pro rata annual leave.

Mane Health & Beauty Salon says on its sites that 'emphasis is placed on quality. Let our experienced team work their magic. We cater to all hair and beauty needs with the latest in techniques and trends.

Ms Bisson is not Australia's drunkest driver, her reading of .48 topped by a NSW woman, 52, in January this year who blew .486

'We offer clients beautiful surroundings and an ambiance of total relaxation and care, plus the expertise of highly trained hairdressers and technicians - ultimately the very best in hair care.'

Daily Mail Australia attempted to contact Ms Bisson, but her Mane Salon was closed.

Two other drink drivers have been arrested with high-range blood alcohol levels in the past year.

Last May, a 52-year-old man was booked, also in Runaway Bay, while driving on the same street where Ms Bison's salon is located.

Police said the man was 'grossly intoxicated and basically incoherent'.

In January this year, a woman scored the highest ever blood alcohol reading in New South Wales, of 0.486.

Police arrested the 52-year-old after she drove along a road near Coffs Harbour at 2.45pm on a weekday afternoon on the Mid North NSW Coast and crashed into a fence.

Professor Jake Najman of Queensland University's Alcohol and Drug Research Education Centre said although drug alcohol levels depended on body weight, it would be very difficult to drink enough and stay awake to reach a level of .48.

''One of the effects of alcohol is it is a respiratory depressant,' he said. 'So you stop breathing

'You start to lose consciousness by 0.3, by 0.4 you should be well and truly unconscious. When you're getting past 0.3 and 0.35, it's life threatening.

'After 0.4 that's unknown territory.'

A paper prepared for NDARC by researchers including Dr Michael Livingston found that while on average Australians drank ten litres of pure alcohol a year each, the top ten percent of drinkers accounted for 52 per cent of alcohol consumed.

The research paper included a separate study by Dr Catherine Chapman and Associate Professor Tim Slade which showed that globally traditional differences in male and female drinking levels had all but disappeared over the last century.
Two New Jersey volunteer firefighters have ignited a firestorm after they used their turnout coats as a part of their wedding invitations.

Garfield, NJ, volunteers Paul Mellor, 27, and Danielle Szep, 26, are facing disciplinary action that could result in them being fired for posting the wedding invite on social media.

The photo says 'you are invited to the wedding of' and bellow the words the coats read 'D. SZEP' and 'P. MELLOR'.

The lighthearted announcement was posted to social media on March 17 by Danielle.

Danielle Szep, 26, (left) and Paul Mellor, 27, (right) have been volunteer firefighters in New Jersey for seven and six years, respectively. They have been engaged for two years

They are now in hot water over this wedding invitation, which shows their turnout coats, because firefighter's aren't allowed to post pictures of firehouse property on social media

Chief Mike Colon of company one, where the couple volunteer, called Paul to tell him fire chief James Kovacs Sr. would suspend Danielle if she didn't immediately delete the post.

Protocol for firefighters is that they are not to use pictures of gear or firehouse property on social media.

'Danielle didn't know the protocol because it wasn't clearly explained to us and then she immediately took it down,' Paul told the New York Post.

However, the damages was done and friends had already begun sharing the post.

'This was a positive thing that was put on Facebook and I don't believe we should have been ridiculed.

'We put the picture up because we didn't think it would be bad to post something positive about the department,' he said.

The couple, who plan to wed this May in a 'traditional firefighter wedding' say they were never told about the policy

Paul says he'll still take photos of his 'traditional firefighter wedding'

Danielle ended up deleting any post that was remotely related to her work as a firefighter.

Danielle, who has served as a volunteer firefighter for seven years, and Paul, who has served for six years, are planning to wed this may.

They even got engaged at a department function two years ago.

The couple has received massive support on social media following the fall out from the post.

'Once again I just want to thank everyone for the support again me and Danielle are so grateful,' Paul wrote on Facebook.

One supporter wrote: 'Don't stop fighting this Paul. That shriveled up so called chief should step down. What a piece of crap. You and Danielle are amazing and I thank you for volunteering!'

Another said: 'Very proud of you BOTH for standing your ground! Wish for the best!'
An Amtrak train hit a person on Sunday night, 30 miles away from the site of a previous crash that killed two construction workers.

The train was headed towards New York City when it struck an unidentified male in Bensalem, Philadelphia, WPVI-TV reported.

The man lost a leg in the crash according to the network.

Earlier on Sunday, another Amtrak train collided with a backhoe on the tracks in Chester, Delaware County.

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An Amtrak train headed towards New York City struck an unidentified man in Bensalem, Philadelphia at Cornwells Heights station (pictured)

The second crash happened around 7:30pm on Sunday at Cornwells Heights station, WPVI-TV reported.

The man was taken to the hospital and his condition remained unclear as of Sunday night.

The train stopped for two hours while investigators worked at the scene.

Just hours before, the front carriage of a train from New York to Savannah, Georgia, derailed after crashing into a crane, killing two workers.

The Palmetto train 89 was packed with nearly 350 passengers and crew at the time of the fatal smash and up to 35 people have been injured.

Witnesses said the train driver blew the horn seconds before the crash but the construction equipment could not be moved in time.

It is not clear why the backhoe was on the tracks, but the two killed workers are thought to have been near it at the time of the crash.

The man lost a leg in the crash and his condition remained unclear as of Sunday night. The train stopped for two hours while investigators worked at the scene (pictured)

Wreckage: Two construction workers have died after an Amtrak train collided with a backhoe on the tracks near Philadelphia

Debris: The front carriage of the train from New York to Savannah, Georgia, derailed after crashing into the crane early this morning

Investigation: A federal probe is expect after the Amtrak train collided with a crane near Philadelphia

Scattered debris is shown inside an Amtrak train following the deadly crash

The Palmetto train 89 was packed with nearly 350 passengers and crew at the time of the fatal smash and around 30 people are believed to have been injured

Passengers carrying their belongings leave the Amtrak train following the accident

Witnesses said the train driver blew the horn seconds before the crash but the construction equipment could not be moved in time. Pictured, Valerie Green (right) hugs her friend after the crash

It is not known if the crane was on the tracks for regular maintenance or not.

New York Senator Chuck Schumer said the two killed were an Amtrak backhoe operator and a supervisor.

He said debris from the crash flew into the first two cars, injuring passengers who were taken to hospitals with injuries not considered life-threatening.

There were 341 passengers and seven crew members on board as the train approached Chester, Delaware County, at 7.53am.

One of those was Mariam Akhtar, from Washington, DC, who told ABC 6 of the panic on board the train in the moments after the collision.

'It felt like the train hit something and there were like three or four really big bangs and it kind of threw us off the seats we were sitting in,' she said.

'There was a lot of smoke and everybody was yelling.

'The train kind of stopped and later on, everybody was running to the front. Then the people were in the front started walking toward the back.'

National Transportation Safety Board Investigators Ryan Frigo and Jim Southworth address the media about the crash of Amtrak Palmetto Train 89

Probe: National Transportation Safety Board Investigators Ryan Frigo and Jim Southworth are investigating the crash

The Palmetto train 89 was packed with nearly 350 passengers and crew at the time of the fatal smash and around 30 people are believed to have been injured

Amtrak investigators survey the scene following this morning's crash, which killed two and left around 30 hurt

Linton Holmes, from Wilson, North Carolina, said he heard an 'explosion' as the train derailed.

'The train was rumbling. We got off track, I guess. It was just a bunch of dust. There was dust everywhere,' he said.

'Then the train conductor came up and told us there was a fatality and wanted to see if anyone else was injured.

'It was an explosion. We got off track and then there was like a big explosion. Then there was a fire and windows burst out. Some people were cut up, but it was just minor injuries.'

Another passenger, Stephanie Burroughs, told Fox News that a conductor said one of the deaths involved someone who was 'on the tracks'.

She added that passengers had 'some injuries', but the worst she had heard about was a broken arm.

Police, paramedics, fire crews and federal investigators are at the scene.

Train services between New York and Philadelphia have been suspended.

An Amtrak spokesman said: 'This morning, Amtrak Train 89, operating from New York to Savannah, Georgia, struck a backhoe that was on the tracks and derailed the lead engine south of Philadelphia.

'There were approximately 341 passengers and seven crew members on board.

'Initial reports are that some passengers are being treated for injuries. Local emergency responders are on the scene and an investigation is ongoing.'

It is not clear why the backhoe was on the tracks, but the two killed workers are thought to have been near it at the time of the crash. Pictured, emergency workers at the scene
A jailed child sex offender who was a suspect in Daniel Morcombe's abduction threatened to assault the schoolboy's killer behind bars, a court has heard.

Douglas Brian Jackway, 39, who has spent most of his adult life in prison for the serious sexual assault of two young children in 1995, appeared in Brisbane's Supreme Court on Monday for the annual review of his indefinite sentence.

During the hearing, Chief Justice Catherine Holmes summarised some of his alleged outbursts.

The evidence heard in court included Jackway trying to leave his jail unit in February with the intention of assaulting Morcombe's killer Brett Peter Cowan.

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Brett Peter Cowan, 46, was sentenced in 2014 to life behind bars for killing Queensland schoolboy Daniel Morcombe. Convicted rapist Douglas Jackway, 39, who was once a suspect in Daniel's disappearance allegedly threatened to seek out Cowan in jail and assault him

13-year-old Daniel Morcombe was abducted from a bus stop and murdered in 2003

She also heard evidence of Jackway smashing up his cell at Wolston Correctional Centre, falsely claiming to have swallowed a battery and making threats to pour boiling water over staff who tried to take him for medical treatment,

The court heard the 39-year-old had received a heightened degree of attention in jail after he was falsely implicated in the death of the Sunshine Coast schoolboy.

Reading aloud, Chief Justice Catherine Holmes also summarised a litany of alleged outbursts.

Forensic psychiatrist Donald Grant said Jackway had also injected himself with a ground-up medication just before completing a substance abuse program.

Dr Grant noted there was a risk being released could threaten Jackway's feelings of emotional safety, raising the likelihood of him using drugs and alcohol and, in turn, committing a sexual offence while intoxicated.

But lawyer John Allen QC said some of his clients aggressive behaviour could be put down to a desire to appear tough in the prison environment.

Chief Justice Catherine Holmes reserved her decision.

Daniel Morcombe was abducted in broad daylight from a bus stop and murdered by Brett Peter Cowan on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland back in 2003

The High Court last month refused a last-ditch appeal bid from the man convicted of killing Queensland schoolboy Daniel Morcombe.

This was the last legal avenue for Cowan, 46, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2014 for murdering the Sunshine Coast teen in 2003.

Daniel Morcombe was abducted in broad daylight from a bus stop and murdered on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland back in 2003.

Cowan was handed a life sentence in 2014 and cannot apply for parole until he has served 20 years.




A woman is fighting for her life after her husband allegedly beat her in the head with a hammer during a domestic dispute.

Robynne Fraley, 54, was found with massive head injuries at her home in Cecil Hills, a west Sydney suburb, at around 12.40pm on Monday after her husband Robert Frayley, 54, contacted police.

Mr Frayley fled the home but was arrested a short time later after allegedly hitting a police car and getting into a scuffle with officers who reportedly found a hammer and beer bottles in his red hatchback.

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Robynne Fraley, 54, was found with massive head injuries at her home in Cecil Hills, a west Sydney suburb, at around 12.40pm on Monday

Police and paramedics rushed to the scene after Mr Fraley contacted emergency services and fled

Ms Fraley was rushed to Liverpool Hospital where she remains in a critical and unstable condition, Nine News reported.

Doctors have put the 54-year-old mother in a medically induced coma.

Mr Fraley's injuries are reportedly self inflicted. He remains under police guard in a critical condition.

The 54-year-old is expected to be charged with attempted murder.

Forensic investigators are collecting evidence at the couple's family home in Cecil Hills, while Mr Fraley's car has been seized and also declared a crime scene.

Detective Inspector Ben Hopper confirmed the alleged attack occurred during a domestic dispute.

A 54-year-old woman (pictured) is in critical condition after allegedly being hit in the heat repeatedly with a hammer by a man during a domestic dispute on Monday afternoon in a west Sydney suburb

The woman was found at a home in Cecil Hills by emergency services around 12.40pm, police said (pictured)

The woman was rushed to Liverpool Hospital in critical condition and suffering from head injuries (pictured)
Killer Women with Piers Morgan will see the MailOnline columnist travel through the southern states of Texas and Florida to meet some of America's most notorious female murderers

Piers Morgan is to present a new TV series which will see him visit maximum security prisons and meet some of America's most notorious female killers.

Killer Women with Piers Morgan, which will air on ITV, will see the MailOnline columnist travel through the southern states of Texas and Florida to meet some of America's most notorious female murderers.

Over two hour-long episodes Piers will venture behind bars to give an in-depth look at three very different complex cases.

He will meet a teenage girl who was convicted of having her mother and brothers savagely murdered as they slept in the family home; a femme fatale who was accused of luring her millionaire boyfriend to a romantic meeting so she could shoot him and a mother who killed her own daughter in a fit of rage.

Each story hinges on a encounter with these women who now face decades  and in one case a woman who will spend her entire life  behind bars.

Each interview takes place inside the maximum security prison these killers now call home.

Alongside these encounters Piers will also dig deeper into each story, meeting people whose lives were touched or altered by the events and who can shed light on the truth behind the headlines.

He will speak to police officers, sheriffs and lawyers who worked to bring each of the killers to justice and will also meet family and friends from both sides of each case to find out how their lives have been impacted.

Jo Clinton-Davis, Controller of Factual for ITV said: 'Female killers remain a relatively rare breed and the access we have secured presents a unique opportunity for Piers to bring viewers a genuine insight into the characters and circumstances of women who have committed the ultimate crime.'

Director Stuart Cabb said: 'This is Piers as we have not seen him before, but he is so well suited to this genre.
Surfing champion Matt Wilkinson has spent thousands on booze after winning the iconic Rip Curl Pro event at Bells Beach at the weekend.

A photo of a receipt, taken by surf photographer Corey Wilson, shows how much 27-year-old Wilkinson spent on a drinking session with friends after his win,Stab Mag reported.

The receipt shows he ordered 42 Carlton Draught schooners, 37 Fat Yak schooners, 70 tequila shots, 30 Jim Beam shorts, 40 Galliano shots and 142 shots of vodka  totally almost $5,000.

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Rip Curl Pro at Bells Beach surfing champion Matt Wilkinson ordered 42 Carlton Draught schooners, 37 Fat Yak schooners, 70 tequila shots, 30 Jim Beam shorts, 40 Galliano shots and 142 shots of vodka  totally almost $5,000 - with mates to celebrate his win on Sunday (receipt pictured)

They group spent at least $4,782, with more than $1,100 spent on vodka shots alone.

Only a portion of the receipt is visible in the photo, meaning Wilkinson and his surfing buddies may well have spent even more on celebratory booze on Sunday night.

'Was wondering why my head hurt this morning,' Wilson wrote on Instagram on Monday. 'Boys are a bit hung [over] today.

'Who in the f*** bought 142 shots of vodka.'

After years of trying to win a World Surf League tour event, Wilkinson has managed to claim two victories in a month.

Wilkinson was unstoppable on Sunday, eliminating Brazilians Wiggolly Dantas and Italo Ferreira before simply outgunning Smith in the final (pictured on Sunday)

The victory means Wilkinson is the first goofy-footer to win Bells since Mark Occhilupo in 1998 and makes it a hat-trick of victories in 2016 after winning the Australian Open of Surfing before last month's tour opener at Snapper Rocks (pictured on Sunday)

The NSW surfer holds a hefty lead in the world tour rankings after he defeated South Africa's Jordy Smith to secure the Bells Beach crown for the first time in his career.

Wilkinson was unstoppable on Sunday, eliminating Brazilians Wiggolly Dantas and Italo Ferreira before simply outgunning Smith in the final.

Back-to-back waves midway through the final gave him a 9.20 and an 8.17 for a two-wave score of 17.37 out of 20.

It was a combination Smith had no response to, leaving a stunned Wilkinson to soak in the victory on the Victorian beach, 100 kilometres south-west of Melbourne.

Sharing a hug with four-time event winner Mick Fanning, who was knocked out by Smith in the semi-finals, Wilkinson's win clearly had yet to sink in for the 27-year-old.

'What's going on?' a bemused Wilkinson screamed into Fanning's ear.

Back-to-back waves midway through the final gave him a 9.20 and an 8.17 for a two-wave score of 17.37 out of 20 (pictured on Sunday)

The victory means Wilkinson is the first goofy-footer to win Bells since Mark Occhilupo in 1998 and makes it a hat-trick of victories in 2016 after winning the Australian Open of Surfing before last month's tour opener at Snapper Rocks.

'This year I just seem to keep picking up trophies,' he said.

'Which makes me feel pretty good ... I've always wanted to win it [Bells] and finally got my chance. I'm so stoked.'

The victory means Wilkinson has gone from first-time tour event winner at the Gold Coast last month to genuine title contender heading into the final leg of the Australian swing at Margaret River in Western Australia.

Not that Wilkinson is accepting his current status as the world's best surfer just yet.

'When I paddle out for a heat I'm terrified of everybody I'm up against,' Wilkinson said.

'I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing.
An internal memo sent to members of Donald Trump's presidential campaign team has revealed their anger at being constantly attacked by critics.

The email, entitled 'Digging through the bulls***' was sent by Trump senior adviser Barry Bennett at the end of a dramatic week for the Republican presidential candidate.

It came after Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was charged with battery after a reporter complained he physically grabbed her at a campaign rally in Florida.

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An internal memo sent to members of Donald Trump's presidential campaign team has revealed their anger at being constantly attacked by critics

Meanwhile Trump also came under fire himself last week after making controversial comments regarding abortion.

But in the memo, which has been obtained by the Washington Post, Bennett addresses Lewandowski personally and urges everybody to ignore those criticising the campaign.

He wrote in the email: 'The media themselves couldn't wait to label the week, THE WORST WEEK EVER'.

'Yet another pathetic display by the so called experts who line their pockets at the expense of our candidates and cause.

The email, entitled 'Digging through the bulls***' was sent by Trump senior adviser Barry Bennett, pictured, at the end of a dramatic week for the Republican presidential candidate

'America is sick of them. Their idiotic attacks just remind voters why they hate the Washington Establishment.'

He signed off the memo saying: 'Donald Trump 1, Washington Establishment/Media 0.'

Bennett later confirmed to the Washington Post, he did send the memo and added it proved people in the political establishment were 'spinning'.

He told the newspaper: 'Personally, it's been a very hard time. You've got Republicans saying they're keeping lists of people who work for Mr Trump who say you'll never work in this town again.'

However, despite the difficult week and with a crucial primary test in Wisconsin tomorrow, Reuters polling results have put Trump's national numbers more than 13 percentage points ahead of his Republican rival Senator Ted Cruz.

And speaking at an event in the state, he lashed out at Cruz as well as Democrat hopeful Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama.

Almost predicting a win in the state, he said: ''Wisconsin  it's going to be such a big surprise on Tuesday

'I'm down to two [opponents] and I'm beating the two by a lot,' he said, reflecting the poll, which found 44.6 per cent of GOP voters prefer him, compared with 31 per cent for Cruz and 17.8 per cent for Kasich.

New Reuters polling results have put Trump's national numbers more than 13 percentage points ahead of his Republican rival Senator Ted Cruz

Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski at a rally in Wisconsin yesterday. He was charged with battery after a reporter complained he physically grabbed her at a campaign rally in Florida last month

But Wisconsin is really important,' he conceded, knowing that it will either stall his momentum or leapfrog him a big step closer to the nomination.

The big delegate-rich states coming after Wisconsin are New York on April 19 and Pennsylvania on April 26.

In both those north-eastern states, Trump holds commanding lead.

In New York, his home state, Trump leads Cruz by 31 points.

In Pennsylvania, Trump receives 47 percent support to Cruz's 29 percent support.

On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders is slightly ahead of Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin  49-to-47 percent.
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This is the moment Iceland's prime minister storms out of an interview when asked about claims he used a secret offshore firm to hide millions of dollars while his country's banking system collapsed.

Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, who came to power in 2013 on a wave of anti-bank anger in the aftermath of the Icelandic financial meltdown, is facing a no-confidence vote over the revelations.

Documents claim Gunnlaugsson and his wife used offshore company, Wintris Inc., in the British Virgin Islands to hide millions in bank bonds when Iceland's banking system crashed and its lenders had to be bailed out.

He is among a number of world leaders including Vladimir Putin, celebrities, British politicians and the global rich who have been revealed in 11million documents in the biggest financial data leak in history.

Some, like Putin, Chinese president Xi Jinping and Syria's president Bashar al-Assad are said to be indirectly linked to offshore accounts through friends and associates, while the presidents of Argentina and Ukraine, plus Gunnlaugsson, are among the 12 current or former national leaders with apparent direct links.

Megastars Jackie Chan and Lionel Messi are two of the big name celebrities named in the Panama files - while David Cameron is under pressure to reveal if his family still has cash in tax havens after it emerged his late father Ian ran an investment fund that never had to pay tax in Britain.

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Icelandic prime minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson storms out of an interview when asked about claims he used a secret offshore firm to hide millions of dollars while his country's banking system collapsed

Gunnlaugsson came to power on a wave of anti-bank anger in the aftermath of the Icelandic financial meltdown. During the interview, he was visibly irritated and said: 'It's a bit like you're accusing me of something'. The journalist tells him: 'We know that Wintris held and holds claims in the collapsed banks. You sold you share of the company for $1 in 2009.' He replies: 'No, no, no. You're asking me nonsense'

Documents claim Gunnlaugsson and his wife used offshore company, Wintris Inc., to hide millions in bank bonds when Iceland's banking system crashed and its lenders had to be bailed out

Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson is under pressure to resign over claims he had money hidden offshore - and stormed out of an interview when confronted.

When asked about Wintris by a journalist from the Swedish SVT channel, he appeared flustered before appearing to point the finger at his wife.

He said: 'My wife sold a part in the family company. It was put in the care of a bank and the bank made some arrangement and this company was the result.

'I don't know how these things work. But everything is declared on the tax report from the beginning. And I mean what...'

Visibly irritated, he gets up and tries to leave the room, saying: 'I have never hidden assets. It's a bit like you're accusing me of something.'

He walks out but not before being pressed further on the claims as he tried to remove his microphone.

The journalist tells him: 'We know that Wintris held and holds claims in the collapsed banks. You sold you share of the company for $1 in 2009.'

He replies: 'No, no, no. You're asking me nonsense'.

Gunnlaugsson is among a number of world leaders, celebrities, British politicians and the global rich who have been revealed in the biggest financial data leak in history

Leaked documents show that he and his wife bought offshore company Wintris in 2007, but he did not declare an interest in the company when entering parliament two years later

Gunnlaugsson (pictured at the start of the interview) says no rules were broken and his wife did not benefit financially

Iceland Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson with his wife Anna Sigurlaug Palsdottir. Gunnlaugsson owned a 50 per cent stake in offshore firm Wintris for more than two years, then transferred it to Palsdottir, who held the other 50 per cent, for one dollar

His spokesman later insisted he and his wife have scrupulously followed the law.

Leaked documents show that he and his wife, Anna Sigurlaug Palsdottir, bought offshore company Wintris in 2007, but he did not declare an interest in the company when entering parliament two years later.

After the banking meltdown, he is said to have resisted pressure from foreign creditors - including UK customers - to repay their deposits in full because it may have affected both the Icelandic banks and the value of the bonds held by Wintris.

The couple, who were living in the UK at the time, had been advised to set up a company in order to hold and invest substantial proceeds from the sale of Palsdottir's share in her family's business back in Iceland, it was reported by The Guardian.

Gunnlaugsson owned a 50 per cent stake in Wintris for more than two years, then transferred it to Palsdottir, who held the other 50 per cent, for one dollar.

He says no rules were broken and his wife did not benefit financially.

The prime minister's office later said his shareholding was an error and it had 'always been clear to both of them that the prime minister's wife owned the assets'.

Under pressure: Vladimir Putin listens during a meeting today hours after it emerged his inner circle and a 'dirty dozen' list of world leaders are using offshore tax havens to hide their wealth

Revelation: The so-called Panama Papers, part of a leak of 11million files, also implicate associates of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad

King of Saudi Arabia, King Salman bin Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al Saud (pictured left) was also named

Argentina's president Mauricio Macri (left) and Ukraine's president Petro Poroshenko (right) were listed

UAE President Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan (pictured centre) is one of the world leaders named

Families and associates of Egypt's former president Hosni Mubarak (pictured left), Libya's former leader Muammar Gaddafi (right) were also implicated in the data leak

Former Emir of Qatar Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani (pictured) is also named in the data release relating to using offshore accounts

Former prime minister of Jordan Ali Abu al-Ragheb (left) and former president of Sudan Ahmad Ali al-Mirghani (right) were both listed in the leaked confidential documents

WHAT ARE OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS AND HOW ARE THEY USED? WHAT ARE OFFSHORE OR SHELL ACCOUNTS? Offshore bank accounts and other financial dealings in another country can be used to evade regulatory oversight or tax obligations. Often, companies or individuals use shell companies, initially incorporated without significant assets or operations, to disguise ownership or other information about the funds involved. WHERE ARE MOST OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS? Panama, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda are among more than a dozen small, low-tax locations that specialize in handling business services and investments of non-resident companies. LEGITIMATE USES FOR OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS: Companies or trusts can be set up in offshore locations for legitimate uses such as business finance, mergers and acquisitions and estate or tax planning, according to the global money laundering watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force. ILLICIT USES OF OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS: Shell companies and other entities can be misused by terrorists and others involved in international and financial crimes to conceal sources of funds and ownership. The ICIJ says the files from Mossack Fonseca include information on 214,488 offshore entities linked to 14,153 clients in 200 countries and territories. EFFORTS TO CRACK DOWN ON FINANCIAL HAVENS: Financial and legal professionals get training on how to spot potential violations, since in some cases lawyers and bankers are unaware they are handling illicit transactions. The EU has stepped up efforts to crack down on tax avoidance by multinational corporations. Advertisement

Opposition MPs met this morning and unanimously agreed upon a motion of no confidence against the government, it was reported by Iceland Monitor.

The text, which will be distributed today, demands the dissolution of the current parliament and early general elections.

In a Facebook post, Birgitta Jonsdottir claimed the Prime Minister had been exposed as 'a charlatan and a liar in an advanced state of paranoia'.

A former prime minister urged him to resign after the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism on Sunday released 11.5 million financial records detailing the holdings of a dozen current and former world leaders.

'The prime minister should immediately resign,' former Social Democratic prime minister Johanna Sigurdardottir said in a message posted on Facebook.

More than 16,000 Icelanders have also signed a petition demanding his resignation, while the opposition has said it will seek a vote of no confidence in parliament, likely to be held this week.

It comes after the biggest financial data leak in history revealed how Vladimir Putin's inner circle and a 'dirty dozen' list of world leaders are using offshore tax havens to hide their wealth.

Documents were leaked from one of the world's most secretive companies, Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, and show how the company has allegedly helped clients launder money, dodge sanctions and evade tax.

Egypt's former president Hosni Mubarak, Libya's former leader Colonel Gaddafi, Syria's president Bashar al-Assad and Chinese president Xi Jinping are among those alleged to have links to tax havens through families and associates.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and his family have links to offshore accounts, it has emerged.

One of the people named in the leaks is Xi's brother-in-law Deng Jiagui, who set up two British Virgin Islands companies in 2009 when his famous relation was a member of the Politburo Standing Committee but not yet president.

Xi has been dogged by foreign media reports of great family wealth. The claims are ignored by mainstream Chinese outlets, and their publication on the internet in China is suppressed.

In 2012 the Bloomberg news agency published investigations into the vast wealth said to have been amassed by Xi's family, revealing that Deng and his wife had accumulated several hundred million dollars in company shares and property assets.

Since becoming president that same year, Xi has staked his reputation on pushing for transparency by initiating a vast anti-graft campaign to clean the party's ranks of corruption and to reassert his authority.

The daughter of former premier Li Peng - who was in power from 1987 to 1998 - was also identified in the documents.

They revealed that Li Xiaolin, the former vice president of state-run power company China Power Investment Corporation, was the beneficiary of a Liechtenstein foundation controlling a firm registered in the British Virgin Islands during the period when her father was in office.

David Cameron will meet world leaders next month to work on new tax avoidance measures but today's massive leak of the Panama papers could overshadow the London summit.

No 10 today insisted the Prime Minister and Britain had been global leaders on cracking down on tax evasion and aggressive avoidance.

But after the leak of millions of papers - suggesting among others Mr Cameron's father and a string of Tory donors sheltered money off shore - threatens to undermine the talks.

Campaigners have demanded British legislation to end UK tax havens - including in the crown dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man.

German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung obtained the files and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists but the identity of the source who leaked them and how it was done is unknown.

The unprecedented leak of confidential documents reveal:

A network of secret offshore deals and loans worth 1.4 billion that leads to Russian President Vladimir Putin;

Twelve national leaders, including the King of Saudi Arabia, president of Ukraine and the prime minister of Iceland, are among 143 politicians revealed to have offshore accounts, including several dictators;

Six members of the House of Lords, three former Conservative MPs and dozens of donors to British political parties are among those said to have benefited from tax havens;

A member of Fifa's ethics committee, which is supposed to be reforming the organisation, worked as a lawyer for people charged with bribery and corruption.

Putin's name is not included in the records but his friends and associates appear to have earned millions of pounds from deals that would have been difficult to secure without his patronage. The BBC and The Guardian set out the details in the documents.

Among the disclosures are that six members of the House of Lords and three former Conservative MPs had offshore accounts, although the only British politicians so far named are Lord Ashcroft, Tory peer Baroness Pamela Sharples and former Conservative MP Michael Mates.

Dozens of donors to UK political parties had similar arrangements, the leak reveals.

A representative for Mr Mates said the reference to the former Tory MP in the Panama Papers related to a small shareholding the politician once held in a Bahamian company.

He insisted the company was set up legitimately to create a leisure development in Barbuda, an island that is part of the East Caribbean state of Antigua and Barbuda.

Mr Mates said he had not and would not receive any remuneration unless and until the development took place, nor were the shares of any value, as the company never had any real value. He denies he has ever sought to avoid paying taxes.

Campaigners said David Cameron now faces a 'credibility test', having promised to end tax secrecy four years ago.

Convicted former Ukraine prime minister Pavlo Lazarenko (left) and former prime minister of Georgia Bidzina Ivanishvili (right) are among those revealed to have offshore accounts

The ex-prime minister of Iraq Ayad Allawi (pictured) is also said to have benefited from using tax havens

Chinese President Xi Jinping enjoys a pint with David Cameron at a pub near Chequers, Buckinghamshire, on a state visit to Britain in October. A treasure trove of leaked documents has revealed that President Jinping's family used offshore tax havens to conceal their fortunes

TWELVE NATIONAL LEADERS WHO WERE NAMED IN THE DATA LEAK 1. President of Argentina Mauricio Macri 2. King of Saudi Arabia King Salman bin Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al Saud 3. President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko 4. Prime Minister of Iceland Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson 5. UAE President Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan 6. Former prime minister of Georgia Bidzina Ivanishvili 7. Ex-prime minister of Iraq Ayad Allawi 8. Former prime minister of Jordan Ali Abu al-Ragheb 9. Former prime minister of Qatar Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani 10. Former Emir of Qatar Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani 11. Former president of Sudan Ahmad Ali al-Mirghani 12. Convicted former Ukraine prime minister Pavlo Lazarenko Advertisement

While using offshore companies is not illegal, the practice has long been morally dubious and is under the spotlight amid a wider examination of tax avoidance by large companies such as Google.

Mr Cameron has vowed to end 'tax secrecy' in the UK. But critics say little has been done  with the Prime Minister due to hold his latest summit on the issue next month.

Mr Cameron said four years ago that some offshore schemes were 'not fair and not right'.

'Frankly some of these schemes where people are parking huge amounts of money offshore and taking loans back just to minimise their tax rates, it is not morally acceptable,' he added.

The Prime Minister will now come under intense pressure to abolish all the UK's tax havens, including the crown dependencies Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man.

In 2012, it emerged that the Prime Minister's father Ian ran a network of entirely legal offshore investment funds to grow the family fortune.

The leaked records were obtained from an anonymous source by the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung, and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists with The Guardian and the BBC.

The data covers nearly 40 years, from 1977 to the end of 2015, and lists nearly 15,600 paper companies set up for clients who wanted to keep their financial affairs secret.

Thousands were created by UBS and HSBC, the latter of which was fined by the US government for laundering money from Iran.

Mossack Fonseca is Panamanian but runs a worldwide operation.

Among national leaders with offshore wealth are Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's prime minister, and Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson, prime minister of Iceland  who now faces calls for a snap election.

The leaks also reveal a suspected billion-dollar money laundering ring that was run by a Russian bank and involved close associates of President Putin.

Mossack Fonseca said in a statement: 'Our firm has never been accused or charged in connection with criminal wrongdoing.

'If we detect suspicious activity or misconduct, we are quick to report it to the authorities.'

Gerard Ryle, director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, said the documents covered the day-to-day business at Mossack Fonseca for the past 40 years.

He said: 'I think the leak will prove to be probably the biggest blow the offshore world has ever taken because of the extent of the documents.'

THE UK CONNECTION: BRITISH-OWNED AND LONDON BASED BANKS INCLUDING HSBC, ROTHSCHILD AND COUTTS EMERGE AS SOME OF BIGGEST USERS OF MOSSACK FONSECA Stuart Gulliver, the boss of HSBC, was embarrassed last year over his links to Panama. Today it was revealed his bank asked Mossack Fonseca to set up more than 2,300 offshore companies via a Panamanian law firm British-owned or London-based banks were today revealed to be at the heart of the Panama tax scandal. Today's leaked documents show that HSBC, Rothschild, Coutts and UBS - all giants of the banking industry - are among the top 10 banks who asked Mossack Fonseca to set up 15,600 offshore companies. HSBC, Britain's biggest bank and the second largest in the world, helped set up more than 2300 offshore companies, according to leaked documents. Private bank Coutts set up almost 500 offshore companies over the past 40 years, Swiss Bank UBS, whose investment bank is based in London, asked for 1,300 offshore companies for clients. Last year HSBC had to pay a record 28million in compensation to settle a probe into allegations it helped hide money for arms dealers and blood diamond traders while helping others avoid taxes at its Swiss bank. The data covers nearly 40 years, from 1977 to the end of 2015, and lists nearly 15,600 paper companies set up for clients who wanted to keep their financial affairs secret. Thousands were created by UBS and HSBC, the latter of which was fined by the US government for laundering money from Iran. Stuart Gulliver, the boss of HSBC, was embarrassed last year over his links to Panama. It is not known if he used Mossack Fonseca for his offshore company. There were questions over his secretive tax affairs after he sheltered money in a Swiss bank account to prevent prying colleagues from finding out his bonus. Leaked documents revealed he sheltered some 5million in bonuses in an HSBC account in Switzerland under the name of a Panamanian company. This lasted from 1998 until 2011, when he became chief executive and his pay details had to be published anyway. Mr Gulliver, 56, said the computer systems on the trading floor enabled staff to find out how much their colleagues were being paid in bonuses. As he was often the best paid employee at the bank, he said he was particularly keen to stop this happening and set up a Swiss bank account to keep his pay secret. He had previously described his 'shame' at allegations that HSBC routinely helped clients including arms dealers and blood diamond smugglers evade taxes. HSBC said today: 'We work closely with the authorities to fight financial crime and implement sanctions. Our policy is clear that offshore accounts can only remain open either where clients have been thoroughly vetted, where authorities ask us to maintain an account for the purposes of monitoring activity, or where an account has been frozen based on sanctions obligations.' A spokesman for Coutts said: Coutts Trustees is committed to the highest standards of regulatory compliance, including tax laws, anti-money laundering regulations and international sanctions. We require all clients to be tax compliant as a condition of receiving our products and services and take a risk based approach to identify and prevent tax evasion that relies upon extensive anti-money laundering systems and controls, including the requirement to understand the source of clients wealth'. Advertisement

Celebrities including Hollywood star Jackie Chan and Barcelona footballer Lionel Messi have used Panama law firm to invest their millions

Megastars Jackie Chan and Lionel Messi are among the big names accused of using a controversial Panama law firm to invest their millions offshore.

At least 20 other footballers from Barcelona, Real Madrid and Manchester United are also said to have used Mossack Fonseca's services to avoid tax.

Lionel Messi, who is already facing tax fraud charges in Spain, owned a Panama company, Mega Star Enterprises Inc, with his father Jorge, leaked documents reveal.

The business, which still exists in Panama, is said to have handled millions from the Barcelona star's image rights contracts.

Martial arts actor Jackie Chan is also named in the leaked documents as having at least six offshore companies managed through the law firm.

India's biggest Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan - known as 'Big B' - was a director of at least four offshore shipping companies.

As names of clients continue to emerge, it has been revealed that many millionaire footballers have been funnelling cash to offshore havens with the help of Mossack Fonseca.

Named: The world's best footballer Lionel Messi, left, and martial arts star Jackie Chan have used Mossack Fonseca's services to set up offshore companies

Premier League star Leonardo Ullua, who was Leicester City's top scorer last year, was named in documents after an associate used the law firm in 2008 while he was playing in Argentina.

Argentine full back Gabriel Heinze set up a British Virgin Islands (BVi) company in 2005 in the same year he signed a $1million boot contract with Puma while playing for Manchester United.

Former Real Madrid and Chile star striker Ivan Zamorano, once voted in the greatest 100 players of all time, had a business in the BVI, where businesses pay no tax on profits.

Michel Platini allegedly turned to Mossack Fonseca to help him administer an offshore company created in Panama in 2007.

Platini is serving a six-year ban from all football-related activity for an ethics breach after former FIFA president Sepp Blatter approved a $2 million payment to the Frenchman in 2011 for consultancy work done without a contract a decade earlier.

David Cameron refuses to reveal whether any of his family's money is still held in a tax haven after his father was named in huge leak of Panama files

Ian Cameron (pictured with his son), a stockbroker and multi-millionaire, was a client of a controversial offshore law firm based in Panama

David Cameron today refused to reveal whether any of his family's money is still held in tax havens  despite backing new laws that will force companies to disclose their offshore investments.

The Prime Minister's late father Ian Cameron was named in a huge leak of millions of documents exposing the use of offshore tax regimes by the world's richest people.

Ian, a multi-millionaire stockbroker, was accused of using the firm, Mossack Fonseca, to shield his investment fund, Blairmore Holdings, Inc., from British taxes.

The fund avoided having to pay tax in Britain by hiring residents in the Bahamas  including a part-time bishop  to sign its paperwork.

Ian Cameron died in 2010 just month's after his son entered No 10 as Prime Minister.

But asked today if the Cameron family still held money in the controversial fund, the Prime Minister's official spokeswoman said: 'That's a private matter.'

She added: 'I am focused on what the Government is doing and it has taken a range of action to tackle tax evasion and avoidance and aggressive tax planning.'

Mr Cameron's spokeswoman said she had nothing to add to a statement issued in 2012 when details of Ian Cameron's tax affairs first emerged.

The arrangements were fully legal and a Downing Street spokesman declined to comment on the details at the time, but four years later added: 'The government's tax reforms are about making sure that some of the richest people in the country pay a decent share of income tax.'

But he was accused by opposition parties of failing to follow through with promises to force reform in UK crown dependencies and overseas territories which act as tax havens and faced calls for a full independent investigation.

While there is nothing illegal about using offshore companies, the disclosures have intensified calls for international reform of the way tax havens are able to operate and claims of large-scale money laundering.

Mr Cameron has been a vocal advocate of reform and legislation forcing British companies to disclose who owns and benefits from their activities which comes into force in June.

The Prime Minister's late father Ian Cameron (right) was named in a huge leak of millions of documents exposing the use of offshore tax regimes by the world's richest people

Lord Ashcroft (left), Baroness Pamela Sharples and former Tory MP Michael Mates (right) are among the British politicians also named in the data release

Despite several years of pressure however, few UK Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories - which are said to make up a large part of the tax havens referred to in the papers - have taken concrete action to open up the books.

A string of people connected to British politics were included among millions of files leaked to the media.

Lord Ashcroft, Baroness Pamela Sharples and former Tory MP Michael Mates are among the British politicians named in the massive data release.

It was reported that in total six members of the House of Lords, three former Conservative MPs and dozens of donors to British political parties have been shown to have had offshore assets.

Not all were named last night but revelations about the hidden wealth of politicians and their supporters will trigger nerves in Number Ten as names and details emerge from the leak this week.

If Tory donors or senior figures are implicated, it will be a huge embarrassment to the Prime Minister.

Revealed: How billionaire husbands including Scot Young use mysterious Panama law firm to hide their fortunes from the wives they divorce

Scot Young helped hide 500million from his wife 'in a game of hide and concealment' aided by a Panama-based law firm, leaked documents revealed today.

The British tycoon used Mossack Fonseca and other offshore businesses to stash some of his fortune in Russia, the British Virgin Islands and Monaco, it has emerged.

Mr Young, who died after plunging onto railings below his 3million London penthouse in December 2014, is among a number of super-rich husbands named in leaked documents today.

Revealed: Property Tycoon Scot Young, pictured shortly before his death in 2014 with girlfriend Noelle Reno, used a Panama-based law firm to hide cash and assets from ex-wife Michelle, right outside the High Court during their long divorce battle

Conduit: Mossack Fonseca's headquarters in Panama, where they helped mainly husbands hide assets from their wives, often before the divorce started

Evidence: This leaked email reveals how Mossack Fonseca staff joked about helping a Dutch client hide assets from his wife ahead of a divorce

TYCOON EARNED 2BN AND LOST IT IN MYSTERIOUS MOSCOW DEAL Scot Young, once one of Britain's wealthiest property developers, claimed he was penniless after a large Moscow real estate deal collapsed. He had mysteriously risen to huge success from an underprivileged youth on a tenement block in a run-down part of Dundee. He left school with few qualifications but rode off the back of the property boom of the late 1980s and was given a hand on the property ladder by ex-wife Michelle Young's father after they met in 1988. His wife said he was always 'secretive' about the deals he was doing and there were claims he was linked to players in the Russian underworld. Mr Young then apparently lost his immense wealth in a huge property development project in Russia called Project Moscow. Boris Berezovsky, who died in mysterious circumstances last year, was known to be an investor in the scheme. He also died penniless. In one hearing during their marathon divorce battle her legal team compared his story with the plot of the 1980s comedy movie Brewster's Millions, in which a failing baseball player is told he will inherit 300 million dollars if he can spend 30 million of it in 30 days and have nothing to show for it. Despite huge debts, his life was funded by some of his creditors, to whom he owed millions. But his wife Michelle maintains that he had money stashed away offshore - and spent huge sums herself using investigators to track his fortune down. He fell to his death in December 2014, with some blaming a break-up with his girlfriend Noelle and others his financial problems. Advertisement

Russia's 'fertilizer king' Dmitri Rybolovlev and aviation tycoon Clive Joy, 55, also allegedly used Mossack Fonseca to shield assets from their soon-to-be ex-wives.

Leaked emails also reveal how Mossack Fonseca helped predominantly male clients find the 'silver bullet' to keep their fortunes out of the hands of their partners.

Scot Young's ex-wife Michelle has spent huge sums trying to trace his money after she won 25million at the High Court but never received a penny in a six-year divorce battle.

Young was even jailed for refusing to reveal how much money he was worth and a judge refused to believe he was penniless after he went bust after a disastrous deal.

Scot Young's American girlfriend Noelle Reno, a reality star and presenter, said his loss of wealth had always 'killed him'.

However when they appeared together on the Ladies of London TV show her rented a 8,000-a-month flat with Miss Reno and had bought her a six-carat diamond engagement ring, despite claiming to be broke.

Today as his links to Mossack Fonseca were fully revealed, Ms Young, who set a support group for women like her called the 'First Wives Club', said today that Scot's tangled web of offshore businesses was 'like a baby Enron there are so many assets'.

She said that for women trying to find a husband's hidden cash is a 'blood sport', adding: 'Unless you've got the funds, you're dead and buried'.

Today it was revealed that some of the world's most high profile divorce battle have links to Mossack Fonseca.

Martin Kenney, an asset recovery specialist working in offshore havens told The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ): 'These offshore companies and foundations are instruments in a game of hide and concealment.'

Leaked emails reveal how Mossack Fonseca staff joked about helping a Dutch man hide cash from his wife before he started divorce proceedings.

The note, which contains a smiley emoji, says the client needed to 'protect' his assets 'against the unpleasant results of a divorce (on the horizon!)'

One husband in Thailand needed a 'silver bullet' to stop his wife getting to his money.

Another client in Ecuador was offered a series of shell companies 'to transfer assets before the divorce'

Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev spent eight years battling his ex-wife Elena before they settled on a deal that could have been worth up 2.9billion.

Their very public and bitter feud brought to light accusations of his infidelity on yacht parties and attempts to 'hide' assets - including Greek islands and New York properties - out of her reach.

According to the ICIJ Mossack Fonseca incorporated his company Xitrans Finance Ltd in the British Virgin Islands.

Despite only being a post box, its assets have been described as a 'mini Louvre' because it owned owned paintings by Picasso, Van Gogh and Monet as well as large amounts of Louis XVI style furniture.

Leaked emails allegedly reveal that in 2009, as their marriage disintegrated, began to move the art and furniture away from their home in Switzerland to London and Singapore to prevent Elena getting them.

Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev (left) and his ex-wife Elena (right) had divorce proceedings dubbed the costliest break-up of all time, said to be worth up to 2.9bn

Money worries: Clive Joy was once worth 69million but is now claiming to have 80,000 euros, or 65,000, left in the bank - and facing huge legal costs

An aviation tycoon embroiled with his wife in a multi-million pound divorce also used Mossack Fonseca.

Clive and Nichola Joy were even driven to fight over a 470,000 vintage Bentley Tourer during the expensive High Court battle.

Clive Joy, 55, whose fortune was once put at 69million, has been 'pleading poverty' in defending a massive financial claim by the mother of his three children.

But Mrs Joy, 47, says he is claiming to be 'penniless' as 'part of a dishonest strategy' to reduce any financial award she may receive by hiding his fortune in an offshore trust.

The couple met in April 2001 and married five years later. Mrs Joy petitioned for divorce in July 2011, the court heard. A decree nisi was pronounced in June last year, but the divorce has yet to be finalised while the couple run up enormous legal bills squabbling over the partition of their assets.

Zimbabwe-born Mr Joy attended university in England and has lived with his family for spells in the Caribbean and in France.

He made his fortune through a phenomenally successful aircraft leasing firm. Mr Pointer said that Mr Joy moved the money made from this venture into a trust in 2002.

His wife's lawyers say he transferred about 69million to the British Virgin Islands-based trust. But Mr Pointer said the family's living expenses were funded by drawing cash from a bank loan, secured against the trust.

As party of their legal wrangle her lawyers sent Mossack Fonseca a court order to freeze his wealth until the courts had agreed a settlement.

One of Mossack Fonseca's lawyers said in an email: 'The consequences for breach of a Freezing Injunction are serious, and we as Registered Agent, must act responsibly'.

The judge, Sir Peter Singer, said that Mr Joy's case was 'a rotten edifice founded on concealment and misrepresentation and therefore a sham, a charade, bogus, spurious and contrived'.

Today Mrs Joy said in an email to the ICIJ: 'The law has to change, these offshore trusts make a mockery of justice'.

Valuable: The Joys even fought over this model of Bentley - a 1928 Tourer (not actual car)

Mossack Fonseca said in a statement: 'We are not involved in managing our clients' companies.

'Excluding the professional fees we earn, we do not take possession or custody of clients' money, or have anything to do with any of the direct financial aspects related to operating their businesses'.

The firm added: 'We regret any misuse of companies that we incorporate or the services we provide and take steps wherever possible to uncover and stop such use'.

26million stolen in 1983 Brink's Mat heist may have been channelled offshore by Panama law firm

The 26 million stolen during the Brink's Mat robbery in 1983 may have been channelled into an offshore company set up by Mossack Fonseca, the leaked documents reveal.

The theft, dubbed the 'Crime of the Century', involved criminals stealing gold bullion, diamonds and cash from the Heathrow International Trading Estate in London.

The leaked files show that 16 months later, Mossack Fonseca set up a Panama shell company called Feberion Inc.

Revealed: Cash from the notorious Brink's Mat heist at Heathrow in 1983 may have been moved offshire by the Panamanian Law Firm

Documents show that the man behind Feberion Inc. was Gordon Parry, who laundered money for the Brink's-Mat plotters.

An internal memo written in 1986 by Jurgen Mossack, one the co-founders of Mossack Fonseca, showed that it knew it was 'apparently involved in the management of money from the famous theft from Brink's-Mat in London'.

The memo stated: 'The company itself has not been used illegally, but it could be that the company invested money through bank accounts and properties that was illegitimately sourced'.

Documents appear to show that Mossack Fonseca later took steps to prevent British police from gaining control of the company in an attempt to get the money back.

The robbery of gold bullion and jewels worth 26 million from the Brink's-Mat vaults at London's Heathrow Airport at 6.30am on November 26, 1983, was Britain's biggest.

Hunt for the cash: Police have for years searched for the money, pictured here in 2001, 18 years after the heist, digging up land in east London

A bribed security guard let six armed men into the warehouse and within an hour had they pulled off 'the heist of the century'.

The gang doused security guards at the warehouse in petrol and threatened them with a lit match for the combination numbers of the vault.

It is thought more than 17 million of the cash realised from the gold has been accounted for by police, with the rest believed to be invested in property in Britain and Spain or drugs.

Eleven bars of the gold were found in 1985 and melted down and a further 1 million of gold was later recovered from the Bank of England where it was being stored after re-entering the legal market.

The rest is believed to have been melted down shortly after the robbery. But police have continued to trace cash and assets linked to profits from the haul.

And Lloyd's of London, the insurance market that paid out for the stolen millions, is believed to have forced 25 people linked to the robbery to secretly pay back every penny stolen in March 1995 following investigations by private detectives.

Only two of the actual robbers have been convicted. Michael McAvoy and Brian Robinson are each serving 25 years.

Others have been convicted of handling the bullion or making profit from the robbery. They include convicted killer Kenneth Noye, jailed in 1986 for handling the bullion for 14 years, reduced to 13 on appeal.

The money trail that leads from Vladimir Putin's best friend and head of his 'crony bank' all the way back round to the Russian president

Leaked financial data reveals how a network of secret offshore deals and huge loans worth 1.4billion created a trail beginning and ending with Vladimir Putin, it has been reported.

A massive leak of documents reveal how the Russian president's best friend Sergei Roldugin and the man who heads up Putin's 'crony bank' Yuri Kovalchuk are linked to the movement of money offshore.

Bank Rossiya, which Roldugin owns 3.2 per cent of, sent instructions to Swiss lawyers who in turn got in touch with Mossack Fonseca. The Panamanian law firm then set up offshore company Sandalwood Continental Ltd in the British Virgin Islands and other offshores linked to Roldugin.

The so-called Panama Papers implicate those in Russian president Vladimir Putin's inner circle. This graphic shows how Putin's best friend Sergei Roldugin, who owns 3.2 per cent of Bank Rossiya, and the man who heads the bank up, Yuri Kovalchuk, are linked to a trail which has seen money moved offshore via Swiss lawyers, Mossack Fonseca, and a subsidiary of Russia's state-owned VTB bank in Cyprus to a firm set up in the British Virgin Islands called Sandalwood Continental Ltd. Money was then lent to Ozon, which owns the private Igora ski resort outside St Petersburg, the place where Putin's daughter Katya got married

But the money later found its way back to Russia via Ozon, which was lent $11.3million by Sandalwood in 2010/11. Ozon is the owner of the private Igora ski resort outside St Petersburg, where Putin's daughter Katya got married, according to The Guardian.

Putin's name is not included in the leaked documents but his friends and associates appear to have earned millions of pounds from deals that would have been difficult to secure without his patronage.

Meanwhile Roldugin, a professional musician, is said to have accumulated a fortune by being put in control of a series of assets worth at least $100million.

Last week a senior Russian official revealed how the Kremlin was braced for an expose on Mr Putin's alleged secret fortune.

Spokesman Dmitry Peskov, one of the president's closest aides, dismissed the allegations as false and politically motivated even before they were published.

He said a number of foreign secret services were behind the claims, which suggest that Mr Putin has amassed a secret personal fortune of more than 28billion ($40billion).

How secretive law firm Mossack Fonseca relies on a global network of bankers, lawyers, accountants and 'go betweens' to support its super-rich clients

The law firm at the centre of the biggest financial leak in history relies on an international network of lawyers, bankers and accountants to support its high net-worth clients.

The secretive Mossack Fonseca is based in Panama but has set up branches in 25 countries around the world, listing 37 different offices on its website. The global set-up has allowed the law firm to establish relationships with law firms, banks and accountants who work with the super rich.

Its success relies on these associates, among them major financial institutions including HSBC, Credit Suisse and Coutts, hiring the law firm to manage the finance of their wealthy clients.

They then work with Mossack Fonseca to create thousands of offshore accounts, which are allegedly used to help clients launder money, dodge sanctions and evade tax. The law firm has denied any wrongdoing.

International operations: Mossack Fonseca lists 37 offices in countries around the world (pictured above) but only a handful of addresses are listed, including those for their Amsterdam branch (pictured), Asian headquarters in Hong Kong, and head office in Panama

According to information on the Mossack Fonseca website, the law firm has 37 offices. China is the best represented with seven branches, while Switzerland has three. There is one branch, London, on the mainland UK, as well as outposts in Jersey and the Isle of Man.

Despite listing email contact details for each office, the law firm only provides physical addresses for four, including the head office in Panama City, Panama, and Asian headquarters in Hong Kong.

However there are a number of other office locations that have been disputed, including ones in Miami, Florida and Las Vegas, Nevada.

Court documents filed in Las Vegas, Nevada, claimed the law firm had created more than 100 companies in the state that had been used to steal millions of dollars from government contracts in Argentina, according to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

The firm tried to block a request for financial details by claiming that its Las Vegas operations, run by MF Corporate Services (Nevada) Limited, were not part of the Mossack Fonseca group. Co-founder Jurgen Mossack even testified to this fact in court.

However records obtained by the ICIJ show that the Nevada companies were owned by Mossack Fonseca, and that the firm took steps to wipe records to keep clients' details from the justice system.

Global reach: Mossack Fonseca has its headquarters in this building in Panama City, Panama, pictured

In comments to ICIJ, Mossack Fonseca 'categorically' denied hiding or destroying documents that might be used in an ongoing investigation or litigation.

The leaked records - known as the Panama Papers - were obtained by the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung, and shared by the ICIJ with The Guardian and the BBC.

The data covers nearly 40 years, from 1977 to the end of 2015, and lists nearly 15,600 paper companies set up for clients who wanted to keep their financial affairs secret.

Thousands were created by UBS and HSBC, the latter of which was fined by the US government for laundering money from Iran. ICIJ will release the full list of companies and people next month.

The banks are the 'big drivers' behind the creation of difficult-to-trace companies in Panama, Bermuda and other off-shore havens, the leaked documents show.

While using offshore companies is not illegal, the practice has long been morally dubious and is under the spotlight amid a wider examination of tax avoidance by large companies such as Google.

Much of the firm's work is perfectly legal and benign. But for the first time the leak takes us inside its inner workings, providing rare insight into an operation which offers shady operators plenty of room to manoeuvre.

The system relies on an industry of bankers, lawyers, accountants and go-betweens who work together to protect their clients.

The 26million stolen during the Brink's Mat robbery in 1983 may have been channelled into an offshore company set up by Mossack Fonseca, the leaked documents reveal.

Families and associates of Egypt's former president Hosni Mubarak, Libya's former leader Colonel Gaddafi and Syria's president Bashar al-Assad are among 12 world leaders who are said to have benefited from tax havens.

Lord Ashcroft, Baroness Pamela Sharples and former Tory MP Michael Mates are among the British politicians named in the data release.

HSBC spokesman Rob Sherman said: 'The allegations are historical, in some cases dating back 20 years, pre-dating our significant, well-publicised reforms implemented over the last few years. We work closely with the authorities to fight financial crime and implement sanctions.'

This building in Amsterdam is one of the office addresses listed on the Mossack Fonseca website

Mossack Fonseca said in a statement: 'Our firm has never been accused or charged in connection with criminal wrongdoing.

'If we detect suspicious activity or misconduct, we are quick to report it to the authorities.'

Gerard Ryle, director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, said the documents covered the day-to-day business at Mossack Fonseca for the past 40 years.
A gym billboard poster warning fat people that aliens will 'take them first' is 'offensive', according to an anti-bullying charity.

The 20-foot high advert in Sawley, Derbyshire, promotes the Fit4Less gym along Tamworth Road and shows aliens beaming up a person into their spaceship alongside the words 'they'll take the fat ones first'.

Leisure bosses said the billboard was intended to be 'light-hearted and humorous', but it has caused outrage with a local charity.

The offending alien poster which is next to a Co-op store in Tamworth Road, Sawley, in Derbyshire

Natalie Harvey, founder of an anti-bullying charity, vents her anger at the billboard advert she came across

Mike Kingscott and Mrs Harvey got into a furious row on Twitter about the billboard which he supports

Natalie Harvey, founder of Combat Bullying, based in Nottinghamshire, took to Twitter to vent her anger when she saw the advert for the first time.

The charity was set up in 2012 after Mrs Harvey, who is a parliamentary adviser on bullying, had enough of internet trolls on social media. Her cause helps dozens of children affected by bullying in supportive sessions.

She told Fit4Less, the Co-operative and Erewash Borough Council, the advert was 'beyond tasteful advertising'.

The poster is plastered on the side of a Co-op store. The firm reacted to Mrs Harvey, 39, on Twitter admitting it was a 'sensitive topic' and would ask for it to be swiftly removed.

Mrs Harvey has tweeted Prison Break star Wentworth Miller about the poster, who has talked about how he turned to food when depressed following an internet meme which made fun of his weight gain.

Mrs Harvey, a mother of two, said: 'Just this week alone I've had three cases of bullying due to weight issues and I feel campaigns like this aid bullying.

'I couldn't believe it when I saw it. It's 2016, this sort of fat-shaming humour is offensive.

'I first spotted it on Tuesday and I thought 'I can't just keep driving past', we have a responsibility to say something.

'Children are so fragile, it just doesn't sit well with me.

'If those children or the perpetrators saw this poster it would cause further harm for the children who are being bullied.

'The poster should be removed and replaced with something more tasteful to attract the gym goers.'

Critics of the billboard have called it in 'poor taste' and 'offensive'.

Lorry driver Gary Turner, 44, who lives in Sawley, added: 'I've always been a big chap and I am quite comfortable with my size.

'But when I saw that giant poster it did make me feel a bit self-conscious.

Natalie Harvey, who works as a parliamentary adviser on bullying, in front of the billboard which states the aliens are coming and they will take the fat ones first

Mrs Harvey in conversation with The Co-operative about the offending billboard poster

Mr Kingscott, who backs the advert, claimed Mrs Havery was 'bullying' the gym into removing the billboard

The Fit4Less gym based in Long Eaton, Nottingham, which is behind the alien billboard poster

'It is just embarrassing that a big company like that has to resort to the kind of childish bullying humour you would get in a playground.'

But Fit4Less has defended the billboard. Jan Spaticchia, the chief executive of the gym's parent company Energie Group, said: 'The aliens campaign is actually very successful.

'We aim to get people talking and promote the notion of a healthy lifestyle.

'We don't take ourselves too seriously. I'm a 45-year-old man who is 17.5 stone and proud of it but I'm healthy with it.

'There is such a thing as being overweight and healthy, not everyone has to be skinny.

'We certainly didn't mean to cause offence and we care about the relationships that we build with the communities that we serve.

'We also believe however that if we are going to reach more people as a sector then we need to stop taking ourselves so seriously and realise that if we want to attract normal people, then we need to be willing to poke fun at ourselves and our messaging is designed to do exactly that.'

Mr Spaticchia also refused to take the poster down but the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said anyone with any concerns should complain to them

An ASA spokesman said: 'Without launching an investigation and going through our processes, the ASA can't comment on whether this ad is ethical or breaks the rules.

'The ASA isn't a censor, so it's not for us to ban ads on the grounds of offence if we haven't received any complaints.'
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The law firm at the centre of the biggest financial leak in history relies on an international network of lawyers, bankers and accountants to support its high net-worth clients.

The secretive Mossack Fonseca is based in Panama but has set up branches in more than 25 countries around the world, listing 37 different offices on its website. The global set-up has allowed the law firm to establish relationships with law firms, banks and accountants who work with the super rich.

Its success relies on these associates, among them major financial institutions including HSBC, Credit Suisse and Coutts, hiring the law firm to manage the finance of their wealthy clients.

They then work with Mossack Fonseca to create thousands of offshore accounts, which are allegedly used to help clients launder money, dodge sanctions and evade tax. The law firm has denied any wrongdoing.

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International operations: Mossack Fonseca lists 37 offices in countries around the world (pictured above) but only a handful of addresses are listed, including those for their Amsterdam branch (pictured), Asian headquarters in Hong Kong, and head office in Panama

According to information on the Mossack Fonseca website, the law firm has 37 offices. China is the best represented with seven branches, while Switzerland has three. There is one branch, London, on the mainland UK, as well as outposts in Jersey and the Isle of Man.

Despite listing email contact details for each office, the law firm only provides physical addresses for four, including the head office in Panama City, Panama, and Asian headquarters in Hong Kong.

However there are a number of other office locations that have been disputed, including ones in Miami, Florida and Las Vegas, Nevada.

Court documents filed in Las Vegas claimed the law firm had created more than 100 companies in the state that had been used to steal millions of dollars from government contracts in Argentina, according to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

HSBC AND UBS AMONG BANKS THAT REQUESTED THE MOST OFFSHORE COMPANIES FOR THEIR CLIENTS The Panama Papers reveal major banks as the driving force behind the creation of offshore companies in tax havens. Documents list nearly 16,600 paper companies set up for clients who wanted to keep their financial affairs secret. The International Consortium for Investigative Journalists analysed the ten banks that requested the most offshore accounts for their clients: 1. Experta Corporate & Trust Services 2. Banque J. Safra Sarasin - Luxembourg S.A. 3. Credit Suisse Channel Islands Limited 4. HSBC Private Bank (Monaco) S.A. 5. HSBC Private Bank (Suisse) S.A. 6. UBS AG (Succ. Rue du Rhone) 7. Coutts & Co. Trustees (Jersey) 8. Societe Generale Bank & Trust Luxembourg 9. Landsbanki Luxembourg S.A. 10. Rothschild Trust Guernsey Limited Source: ICIJ Advertisement

The firm tried to block a request for financial details by claiming that its Las Vegas operations, run by MF Corporate Services (Nevada) Limited, were not part of the Mossack Fonseca group.

Co-founder Jurgen Mossack even testified to this fact in court.

However records obtained by the ICIJ show that the Nevada companies were owned by Mossack Fonseca, and that the firm took steps to wipe records to keep clients' details from the justice system.

In comments to ICIJ, Mossack Fonseca 'categorically' denied hiding or destroying documents that might be used in an ongoing investigation or litigation.

The leaked records - known as the Panama Papers - were obtained by the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung, and shared by the ICIJ with The Guardian and the BBC.

The data covers nearly 40 years, from 1977 to the end of 2015, and lists nearly 15,600 paper companies set up by Mossack Fonseca for clients who wanted to keep their financial affairs secret.

The banks are the driving force behind the creation of offshore companies in tax-havens including Panama, the leaked documents show.

Thousands were created by UBS and HSBC, the latter of which was fined by the US government for laundering money from Iran. ICIJ will release the full list of companies and people next month.

While using offshore companies is not illegal, the practice has long been morally dubious and is under the spotlight amid a wider examination of tax avoidance by large companies such as Google.

Much of the firm's work is perfectly legitimate and benign.

But for the first time the leak takes us inside its inner workings, providing rare insight into an operation which offers shady operators plenty of room to manoeuvre.

The system relies on an industry of bankers, lawyers, accountants and go-betweens who work together to protect their clients.

The 26million stolen during the Brinks Mat robbery in 1983 may have been channelled into an offshore company set up by Mossack Fonseca, the leaked documents reveal.

Families and associates of Egypt's former president Hosni Mubarak, Libya's former leader Colonel Gaddafi and Syria's president Bashar al-Assad are among 12 world leaders who are said to have benefited from tax havens.Baroness Pamela Sharples and former Tory MP Michael Mates are among the British politicians named in the data release.

A representative for Mr Mates said the reference to the former Tory MP in the Panama Papers related to a small shareholding the politician once held in a Bahamian company.

He insisted the company was set up legitimately to create a leisure development in Barbuda, an island that is part of the East Caribbean state of Antigua and Barbuda.

Mr Mates said he had not and would not receive any remuneration unless and until the development took place, nor were the shares of any value, as the company never had any real value. He denies he has ever sought to avoid paying taxes.

HSBC spokesman Rob Sherman said: 'The allegations are historical, in some cases dating back 20 years, pre-dating our significant, well-publicised reforms implemented over the last few years. We work closely with the authorities to fight financial crime and implement sanctions.'

Global reach: Mossack Fonseca has its headquarters in this building in Panama City, Panama, left, but has a number of international offices. The address of this building in Amsterdam, right, is one of a handful listed on the law firm's website

Mossack Fonseca said in a statement: 'Our firm has never been accused or charged in connection with criminal wrongdoing. If we detect suspicious activity or misconduct, we are quick to report it to the authorities.'

Gerard Ryle, director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, said the documents covered the day-to-day business at Mossack Fonseca for the past 40 years.

He said: 'I think the leak will prove to be probably the biggest blow the offshore world has ever taken because of the extent of the documents.'
A 24-year-old man has been arrested at Gatwick Airport on suspicion of Syria-related terrorism offences.

A 20-year-old woman was also detained in west London and two properties were raided in Birmingham as part of the same investigation.

The pair, who are both from the West Midlands, were arrested on suspicion of engaging in conduct in preparation for travelling to Syria.

A man has been arrested at Gatwick Airport on suspicion of Syria-related terror offences. File photo

Police have insisted there was no danger to other passengers at Gatwick during the investigation and arrest.

A spokesman for West Midlands Police, whose Counter Terrorism Unit carried out the arrest, said: 'Officers from West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit have today arrested a man at Gatwick airport for Syria-related terrorism offences.

'The man - aged 24 - was detained before boarding a flight. Searches are being carried out at two addresses in Birmingham.

'A 20-year-old woman has also been arrested at an address in West London; she has also been arrested for Syria-related offences.

'The two are being held at a police station in the West Midlands. There was no risk to any passengers at Gatwick Airport or to the wider public in relation to these arrests.'

Since the start of the conflict in Syria, more than 800 people from the UK who are 'of national security concern' are thought to have travelled to the region and authorities believe that around half have returned.

Figures published last month showed that there were a total of 280 terrorism-related arrests in 2015 - a drop of 3% compared with the previous year.

The data also revealed that rising numbers of female suspects were being arrested, with 45 held - an increase of 50% compared with 2014.
Sarah Wollaston, a former GP and senior Tory MP, today urged both sides in the dispute to step back and halt an all-out strike later this month

A senior Tory MP and former GP today condemned both sides in the junior doctor's dispute for risking patient lives.

Sarah Wollaston, the chairman of the Commons health committee, blasted the British Medical Association for calling an all-out strike later this month over the imposition of a new contract on thousands of junior doctors.

She said the escalation of industrial action would 'solve nothing', be 'disastrous for patients' and would risk lives as emergency care would be withdrawn.

But the MP also condemned Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt and the Government for being 'entirely unreasonable' in presenting the new deal as the solution to higher weekend death rates in hospitals.

Dr Wollaston said: 'Saving lives must take priority over saving face.'

Junior doctors are due to walk out from non-emergency care again on Wednesday for another 48 hours strike.

All-out strike action for 18 hours across two days is due to take place later this month if no deal is reached to bridge the gap between the two sides.

Mr Hunt announced in February he would impose a new contract on junior doctors later this year after talks broke down.

Doctors have already gone on strike three times and more than 19,000 operations have been cancelled by the industrial action.

Before talks were ended, the remaining issues related to pay for Saturday working and the BMA has insisted the deal is unfair to doctors and unsafe for patients.

Mr Hunt faced a second legal challenge over the row today as a staff campaign group called Just Health presented a letter before action.

Dr Wollaston urged both sides to resolve the difference before the all-out strike action begins on April 26.

In a Guardian column, she said: 'Pressing ahead with a full walkout however, will serve only to harden attitudes and solves nothing.

'Most importantly, it will be disastrous for patients.

'The BMA has no doubt calculated that people will blame the government, but a strike that leaves patients without junior cover even for emergencies puts lives at risk.

'It cannot justify such drastic action by claiming to protect patients.'

The Totnes MP continued: 'Both sides now need to put patients first and step back from this dispute.'

Dr Wollaston claimed the Government had been misleading about the causes of higher weekend death rates accused ministers of 'misquoting the evidence'.

She said: 'It was perfectly reasonable for the Government to try to tackle the higher mortality at 30 days for those admitted to hospital at weekends, but entirely unreasonable to blunder on asserting that the new contract is the answer.'

Dr Wollaston, who said she worked 'crushingly unsafe' 120 hour weeks as a junior doctor in the 1980s, said the Department of Health should have told No 10 a routine seven-day health service was 'unachievable' on current staffing levels.

Junior doctors, pictured on a picket line outside Parliament last month, are due to strike again on Wednesday morning withdrawing non-emergency care for 48 hours

Dr Francesca Silman, from Just Health, said: 'We hope this legal challenge will hold the Government to account, for imposing a contract that threatens the future stability of the NHS.'

Dr Marie-Estella McVeigh, who is also from Just Health, said: 'We feel this contract imposition has been rushed through without appropriate consideration and due process.

'There is no evidence that it will deliver a safer system or better quality care for our patients; it will instead exacerbate the staffing crisis we are already struggling with across the NHS.'

Announcing the new strikes last month, Dr Johann Malawana, BMA junior doctor committee chair, said: 'No junior doctor wants to take this action but the government has left us with no choice.

'In refusing to lift imposition and listen to junior doctors' outstanding concerns, the government will bear direct responsibility for the first full walkout of doctors in this country.'

A Department of Health spokesperson said: This escalation of industrial action by the BMA is both desperate and irresponsible  and will inevitably put patients in harm's way.

'If the BMA had agreed to negotiate on Saturday pay, as they promised to do through ACAS in November, we'd have a negotiated agreement by now  instead, we had no choice but to proceed with proposals recommended and supported by NHS leaders.'

Under the new contract, normal working hours will be extended from 7pm on weekdays to 10pm and will include Saturday from 7am to 5pm for the first time.

Last week, the BMA announced it had launched a judicial review against the Government, arguing the new contract is 'unfair' and 'unsafe'.

The BMA claims the Government failed to carry out an Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) when introducing the new contract.

This is an assessment to ensure new rules do not unfairly discriminate or disadvantage anyone affected.
Colleagues who found him have been interviewed while the ride is closed

Prosecutors say he was working on the lighting backstage when he died

The 45-year-old father died while working backstage at the Phantom Manor

A police investigation was underway at Disneyland Paris today after a member of staff was found dead in its haunted house.

The technician is thought to have been electrocuted while carrying out work in the Phantom Manor, an attraction focusing on ghosts and other sinister themes.

The body of the 45-year-old father, who had worked at the French theme park for 14 years, was found inside the house at around 10am on Saturday.

The body of the 45-year-old man, who had worked at the Paris theme park for 14 years, was found on Saturday

It led to the immediate closure of the Phantom Manor, which includes all kinds of dark images, including dancing skeletons and a ghostly dog.

A spokesman for the prosecutor in nearby Meaux said the man, who has not been identified, was working on the lighting backstage when he died.

According to an initial examination, 'accidental death by electrocution' is suspected, but an autopsy has been ordered.

'An investigation is ongoing,' said the spokesman, saying that police and electrics experts were assisting with the enquiry.

Colleagues who found the man's lifeless body were also interviewed by officers on Sunday, and all have made statements.

Patrick Maldidier, a staff union representative at Disneyland Paris, said the man was hugely popular with colleagues and was 'always smiling'.

A spokesman for the theme park meanwhile said management was 'deeply saddened' by the man's death, and sent commiserations to his 'family and relatives'.

The Phantom Manor is now closed to the public until at least Wednesday, to allow the police investigation to continue.

Disneyland Paris attracted more than 14 million visitors in 2014, and is hugely popular with British tourist.

Mishaps in recent years have included a five-year-old boy ending up in a hospital intensive care unit after falling out of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride in 2013.

Two years earlier five people were injured when part of the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad attraction fell on to a train.

And in 2010, a 53-year-old cleaner died after becoming trapped under a boat on the It's a Small World ride.
Her lawyer said it was an accident and that the toddler 'slipped her mind'

A court heard she left him for almost an hour on a 41-degree C

A mother has claimed that her sleeping three-year-old boy 'slipped her mind' when she left him locked in a car for almost an hour on a 41 degree Celsius day, a court has heard.

Trisha Joy Ownsworth, 37 pleaded not guilty to an aggravated charge of creating a risk of serious harm in the Adelaide District Court on Monday after her son was found locked inside a hot car in February 2014, the ABC reported.

The court heard that the three-year-old boy was found flushed and hysterically crying after the woman left him sitting in the hot car at Tea Tree Plaza shopping centre in Modbury, a northern suburb of Adelaide, for 51 minutes while she 'popped into Big W'.

Trisha Joy Ownsworth, 37 pleaded not guilty to an aggravated charge of creating a risk of serious harm in the Adelaide District Court on Monday after her son was found locked inside a hot car in February 2014

The court heard that the three-year-old boy was found flushed and hysterically crying after the mother-of-four left him sitting in the hot car for 51 minutes at Tea Tree Plaza shopping centre in Modbury (pictured)

The mother-of-three's lawyer Adam Gaite argued it was a case of 'forgetfulness' on her behalf and that she had genuinely made a mistake by leaving him when she entered the store with her teenage daughter.

'People can forget things for all sorts of reasons. This is a monumental case of inadvertence, but it doesn't place her, in my respectful submission, into the category of a criminal,' he said.

However, prosecutor Andrew Fowler-Walker said the woman told police in a recorded interview that she left the sleeping boy in the car intentionally as he would often be fussy and irritable when tired.

'She did not want to wake him because he gets irritable and complains and says he's too tired to walk anywhere and that's what happened in this case.'

He told the jury she spent 51 minutes away from her son before she 'stumbled across' him in the arms of an ambulance officer who was called by a concerned passer-by, the ABC reported.

The mother-of-three's lawyer Adam Gaite argued it was a case of 'forgetfulness' on her behalf and that she had genuinely made a mistake by leaving him when she entered the store with her daughter

Nathan Barker told the court he heard the boy screaming from inside the car as he walked through the car park to catch a bus and quickly alerted a man working in the car wash to call security (Stock image)

The 37-year-old pleaded not guilty to an aggravated charge of creating a risk of serious harm in the Adelaide District Court on Monday

Nathan Barker told the court he heard the boy screaming from inside the car as he walked through the car park to catch a bus and quickly alerted a man working in the car wash to call security.

'[The boy] was very red, very red  just jumping up and down and just crying,' he said.

Security guard Nicholas Holland helped convince the young boy to partially open a window so he could free the toddler.

He said the boy was 'quite hot to touch' and 'sort of red in the face' when he pulled him from the car.

The boy was not harmed during the ordeal, despite the temperature in the car reaching around 44-degrees Celsius.
One half of Mossack Fonseca - the legal firm at the centre of history's biggest data leak that has exposed the dodgy dealings of the world's elite - is an award-winning novelist whose salacious plots can only rival his reality.

Ramon Fonseca Mora, 63, a native of Panama is more used to grabbing the headlines for his prose than the secret underworld his company helps conceal.

His small law firm had just one secretary when he joined forces with Jurgen Mossack in 1986, the son of a Nazi German immigrant to Panama  who fled his past as a senior corporal of the feared SS.

Golden Pen: Ramon Fonseca Mora (pictured on TV on Monday), 63, is an award-winning novelist in addition to co-director of Mossack Fonseca - the legal firm at the heart of the Panama Papers

Ramon Fonseca Mora, 63, a native of Panama is more used to grabbing the headlines for his prose than the secret underworld his company helps conceal

On partnering Mossack, Fonseca later told a journalist, 'Together, we have created a monster,' according to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

But the storylines to his political thrillers may cut closer to home than his readers will have realised.

The book jacket of chart topper Dance of the Butterflies 'raises the close relationship between power and morality', while his latest novel Mister Politicus delves into the shady underworld of corrupt politicians and 'articulates the tangled processes that unscrupulous officials use to gain power and achieve their detestable ambitions.'

Asked if his work inspires his writing in 2007 he said: 'Of course I do, every character also meets the political world... I've dabbled a bit in the political world - not as a politician, I would say... more like trying to straighten things out.'

As a young man Fonseca reportedly wanted to be a priest, before age and materialism took over.

On abandoning his dream of becoming a man of the cloth, according to the ICIJ he revealed in a 2008 television interview that, 'I didn't save anything, I didn't make any change. I decided then, as I was a little more mature, to dedicate myself to my profession, to have a family, to get married and have a regular life  As one gets older, you turn more materialistic.'

In a Q&A section on his literary website he reveals the six things he believes 'enslave' people as laziness, sex, gambling, alcohol, television, and partying.

Ambition: As a young man Fonseca reportedly wanted to be a priest, but said he became more materialistic

Monster: Fonseca joined forces with partner Jurger Mossack in 1986, an alliance he since referred to as 'creating a monster'

German media have reported that Jurgen's father Erhard Mossack served as a Rottenfuehrer - roughly corresponding to a senior corporal - in the Waffen, or fighting arm, of the dreaded S.S.

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung in Munich, one of the publications in the global alliance of newspapers which unmasked the activities of Juergen Mossack's firm in Panama, said Erhard served in a 'Death's Head' unit of the S.S.

These were the units which ran the concentration camps. But if he was in the Waffen S.S. it probably meant he served in the Third Waffen S.S. panzer Division Totenkopf.

Most of the division's initial enlisted men were recruited from concentration camp guards and others were members of militias that had committed war crimes in Poland.

Due to its insignia, it was sometimes referred to as the 'Death's Head Division'. Members of the division committed war crimes - one of them against British soldiers.

He studied law and political science at the University of Panama and London School of Economics before embarking on a career that began at the United Nations in Switzerland, where he worked on trade development for six years.

Among people he follows on Twitter are a fair amount of 18+ accounts - the naked bottom of 'Horny Cherry' sits alongside the official account of the President of Argentina Mauricio Macri.

Fonseca is currently on a leave of absence, according to the ICIJ, who is part of 100 outlets to have worked together on the leak.

Partner: Jurger Mossack's father was a senior corporal - in the Waffen, or fighting arm, of the dreaded S.S, according to Munich's Sueddeutsche Zeitung

Allegations: Fonseca is on a leave of absence, according to the ICIJ, amid allegations their Brazilian office was involved in the bribery scandal engulfing Brazil's state-controlled oil company

Once a top adviser to Panama President Juan Carlos Varela, he has stepped down amid allegations that the Mossack Fonseca's Brazilian office was involved in a still-growing bribery and money-laundering scandal centered on Brazil's state-controlled oil company.

Of his resignation, he said it was to, 'defend my honor and my firm'.

The ICIJ also reports an interview where he dismissed any alleged wrong doing with an analogy used before by the company saying that if an offshore firm has been put 'to bad use', by comparing criminal use of offshore firms to a car factory making a car later used in a robbery.

In a 2007 interview about his writing he is coy about his full time job as a lawyer to the world's tax evaders saying: 'Yes, I have to work to survive. With six children, I have to live on something...'

In 2012 according to the files, the firm hired Mercatrade S.A., a company that provides 'online reputation management.'
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Britain is facing a triple blast of rain, hail and thunderstorms today just 24 hours after parts of the country enjoyed the hottest day of the year.

The wet weather has washed out the Saharan dust in the atmosphere that prompted a warning at the weekend to those with heart and lung problems.

Environmental groups said the situation was worsened by agricultural smog from ammonia used by European farmers blowing across the Channel.

The dust was expected to be deposited on cars and homes, particularly in southern England, but the Met Office said no incidences had been observed.

The phenomenon is often dubbed blood rain, but this reddish precipitation is only officially seen in countries with much higher red dust concentrations.

Colourful sky: This photograph captured a stunning lightning storm over Peckham Rye Common in South-East London yesterday evening

Crashing in: A view of lightning over Greenwich in South-East London last night as the pleasant weather came to an abrupt end

Met Office forecaster Grahame Madge said: The air quality that there was reported over the weekend is going to improve over the week.

It would be fair to say that there's still analysis going on in terms of trying to understand exactly the drivers of air quality.

We've looked at the role of agricultural chemicals and models are still being defined, so there's still a little bit of research involved.

Also today, forecasters warned of wet weather in the East followed by heavy showers that will push northwards along with isolated thunder.

Temperatures could still reach 17C in places over the next few days - higher than Aprils average of 12C - but conditions will be fairly unsettled.

It comes after England experienced a taste of spring yesterday as a top 2016 temperature of 17.2C was recorded in Gravesend, Kent.

Central parts of England also basked in warm weather, but it was brought to an abrupt halt as thundery showers swept in overnight.

And the warm day failed to top the highest temperature in Britain overall this year, which was 18.7C last month in Braemar, Aberdeenshire.

WHAT IS BLOOD RAIN? HOW SAHARAN DUST LEAVES THIN LAYER OF DUST ON CARS AND GARDEN FURNITURE IN UK Previous incident: Motorists could see dust on their cars tomorrow morning following rainfall overnight, like in April 2014 in London 'Blood rain' is where rain appears red as it falls from the sky and leaves a thin layer of red dust on objects such as cars and garden furniture after the water evaporates. The phenomenon occurs when dust from the ground is picked up by winds and dropped in rain. It mainly happens in countries where there is a much higher concentration of red dust from red soil, such as India. While Britain could see Saharan dust settle on vehicles overnight tonight, it is likely to be a yellow or brown colour. Forecasters said whether people see it or not by daylight tomorrow morning depends on the strength of the rain. Lighter rain brings the dust down out of the atmosphere, and then when it hits earth the water evaporates and leaves the dust behind. But if it is too heavy then the water will run off. Motorists are therefore only likely to see dust on their cars tomorrow morning if the rain falling this evening is light enough to allow it to settle. A Met Office spokesman said previously: The dust gets caught in rain droplets in clouds, falling to the ground in rain. When the water evaporates, a thin layer of dust is left on surfaces, like cars. It can also lead to vivid sunsets. The phenomenon of dust being left on objects is often dubbed blood rain, but this reddish precipitation is only officially seen in countries with much higher red dust concentrations. And the spokesman added: 'We rarely, if ever, see blood rain in the UK. This is because to get blood rain, when rain actually appears red, you need red dust or particles in high concentrations in the air. Advertisement

Warm weather: People skim stones at Barry Island in South Wales, as visitors and locals came out to see the sun yesterday at the beach

Great outdoors: People enjoyed the sun in London's Green Park yesterday as the country had a pleasant weekend with warm temperatures

Also yesterday, officials issued warnings for high air pollution in the South East as southerly winds swept dust from the Saharan region northwards.

While the dust had been expected to settle in parts, thundery sharp showers over parts of England and Wales have removed any trace.

Met Office forecaster Chris Page said: It looks for this week we've got some wet weather along eastern coast on Monday morning.

It's a bit more of a cloudy picture with some showers around. These showers will possibly be heavy across England and Wales with isolated thunder.

They push their way northwards and then through the day, it's going to be quite wet across Northern Ireland and Scotland.

The suns rays were so strong yesterday they sparked a fire in a house in Oxfordshire after sunlight reflected off a mirror and set a box of tissues alight.
Dundee-born James Alexander McLintock (pictured) has denied claims he funds extremism

The alleged 'Tartan Taliban' activist James McLintock, has 'categorically denied' claims that he funds extremism.

He rejected allegations made by the US Treasury that his Pakistani orphanage is providing money for jihadi groups.

McLintock, 52, a Muslim convert from Dundee, changed his name to Yaqoob Mansoor Al-Rashidi, and is the president of the Al Rahmah Welfare Organization (RWO).

He was brought up as a Catholic and attended the now-closed Lawside Academy, in Dundee.

The US Treasury has alleged he is providing money for al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Lashkar-eTaiba and other Afghan extremist groups under the guise of helping orphans.

Sanctions imposed by the US Treasury mean McLintock is on the department's 'specially designated global terrorist' list which freezes any property he has within US jurisdiction and bans Americans from doing business with him.

McLintock, who is also known as Yaqub McLintock, last night said: 'RWO and I categorically deny all accusations made by the US.

'We have not been involved in the funding of terrorist organisations.

'We are currently seeking legal advice and will respond in due course.'

The US Treasury said on Thursday that as early as 2010, McLintock used RWO and the cover of providing scholarships to Afghan orphans to finance the Taliban's militant activities in Kunar Province, Afghanistan.

It said he recruited Afghan insurgents to obtain photos of children, Afghan identity documents and mobile phone numbers which were used to 'create falsified dossiers' to help 'obtain donations for RWO, which were funnelled to support al Qaida'.

McLintock, from Dundee, who is on a US terrorist list, with children at the orphanage he runs in Pakistan

The US Treasury said on Thursday that as early as 2010, McLintock (pictured centre) used RWO and the cover of providing scholarships to Afghan orphans to finance the Taliban's militant activities in Kunar Province, Afghanistan

However McLintock said his organisation's help 'reaches all those in need crossing possible sectarian, racial and ideological divides'.

In a statement on the RWO website, he said: 'Our activities range from the direct support of orphan through regular financial support, the building of orphanages, the digging of wells, the building of mosques, improving education, emergency relief after the Kashmir and Ziarat earthquakes and several floods and many more humanitarian works.

'Al Rahmah has no affiliation with any political organisation and our help reaches all those in need crossing possible sectarian, racial and ideological divides, our activities are being done in all poverty stricken parts in Pakistan.

'We utilise the local population in our construction efforts thus boosting the local economy. We conduct our efforts in concert with the local authorities and local dignitaries because of their understanding of the situation and the needs of their region.

'The donors for our project are mostly native Pakistanis living in the UK who donate through our sister organisations.

'They often feel a strong attachment with the country they left behind and they want to do something for the country they or their parents were born and grew up in.

'We strongly believe that our work is in the best interest of Pakistan and her people.'

McLintock's younger days: The son of a maths teacher and a chemistry lecturer, there was nothing in his upbringing to suggest he would be a possible candidate for radicalisation

McLintock says his organisation's help 'reaches all those in need crossing possible sectarian, racial and ideological divides'

The US Treasury said McLintock received about $180,000 from donors in Britain between April 2011 and April 2012 and also received money from charities in the Persian Gulf and the UK.

He also is suspected of smuggling cash to insurgents in Afghanistan and moving parts for improvised explosive devices between Pakistan and the country.

The son of a maths teacher and a chemistry lecturer, there was nothing in James McLintock's upbringing to suggest he would be a possible candidate for radicalisation.

But it was while studying at Edinburgh University in the early 1980s that he embarked on the path that would see him fighting communists in Afghanistan and Serbs in Bosnia.

McLintock is thought to have converted to Islam in his 20s and had become a devout Muslim since then.

He settled in Bradford after fighting with the Mujahideen against the Russians in the 1980s where he lived a 'spartan, modest and simple life' with his wife and children.

McLintock was detained in 2009 by Pakistani authorities before being released after several days.

In 2001, he was arrested in the tribal belt while crossing from Afghanistan as US forces hunted Osama bin Laden.

McLintock was released when it was proved he had been working for a charity.
The half-brother of Panama lawyer Jurgen Mossack (pictured) revealed that his father was a Nazi S.S. officer during the war, before spying on Cuba for CIA

The man behind a Panama 'tax scam' that guards the clandestine wealth of the global elite is the son of a Nazi SS officer from a unit known as the 'Death's Head division'.

Jurgen Mossack is at the heart of the biggest financial data leak in history, and has allegedly been helping world leaders, politicians and celebrities launder money, dodge sanctions and evade tax from his base in Panama.

It has now been revealed that his father, Erhard Mossack, was a member of the Nazi fighting unit known as the 'Death's Head division', a dreaded force during the Second World War.

Today, his half-brother Horst, has spoken of his 'shock and bewilderment' at the news of the unmasking of his half-brother.

He described the twisted family history that led to the estrangement of the siblings, both of whom raised by a man who not only fought with the Nazis but later joined the CIA to carry out espionage on Cuba.

The 68-year-old Horst last saw his sibling Jurgen 60 years ago when he left the town of Furth in Bavaria bearing the name of his father Erhard.

Now living in the Black Forest region of Germany, Horst was born out of wedlock to a woman called Luisa Herzog.

'This was shameful in those days so I was put up for adoption,' he told MailOnline. 'My mother later went on to marry Erhard Mossack. I took that name later.

'What has come out of Panama is shocking news, astounding, bewildering even, but I can't say I feel shame because I have no connection in reality with him.

'I left all those years ago and we never had contact again. He was just a child, so how can I say what I remember of him? All I know is that I heard that he went to London and lived there for quite some time.

'He has a brother called Peter and a sister called Marion in Germany. Both my mother and their father are now dead.

'I remember that Erhard Mossack, their father, was in the S.S. I believe after the war he became a journalist.'

German media have reported that Erhard served as a Rottenfuehrer - roughly corresponding to a senior corporal - in the Waffen, or fighting arm, of the dreaded S.S.

What has come out of Panama is shocking news, astounding, bewildering even, but I can't say I feel shame because I have no connection in reality with him. Horst Mossack, half-brother of 'Panama Papers' lawyer Jurgen Mossack

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung in Munich, one of the publications in the global alliance of newspapers which unmasked the activities of Jurgen Mossack's firm in Panama, said Erhard served in a 'Death's Head' unit of the S.S.

These were the units which ran the concentration camps. But if he was in the Waffen S.S. it probably meant he served in the Third Waffen S.S. Panzer Division Totenkopf.

Most of the division's initial enlisted men were recruited from concentration camp guards and others were members of militias that had committed war crimes in Poland.

Due to its insignia, it was sometimes referred to as the 'Death's Head Division'. Members of the division committed war crimes - one of them against British soldiers.

The Le Paradis massacre was carried out by members of the 14th Company of the division.

It took place on May 27 1940, during the Battle of France, at a time when the British Expeditionary Force was attempting to retreat through the Pas-de-Calais region during the Battle of Dunkirk.

Soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, the Royal Norfolk Regiment, had become isolated from their regiment. They occupied and defended a farmhouse against an attack by Waffen S.S. forces in the village of Le Paradis. After running out of ammunition, the defenders surrendered to the German troops.

Erhard is reported to have served as a Rottenfuehrer - roughly corresponding to a senior corporal - in the Waffen, or fighting arm, of the dreaded S.S. Pictured, members of the S.S. Totenkopf Division

The Le Paradis massacre was carried out by members of the 14th Company of the division known as the 'Death's Head Division' due to its insignia. Pictured, the site of the barbaric Le Paradis massacre

British soldiers had become isolated from their regiment and occupied and defended a farmhouse (pictured) against an attack by Waffen S.S. forces in the village of Le Paradis. They eventually surrendered to the Germans, but were machine-gunned after surrendering with survivors killed with bayonets

But the Germans machine-gunned the men after surrendering, with survivors killed with bayonets. Two men survived with injuries, and were hidden by locals until they were captured by German forces several days later.

According to the Sueddeutsche, Erhard was captured by the Americans in Munich after the war with a list of Nazi 'Werewolf' members upon him.

The Werewolf units were intended to fight on as a guerrilla force after the surrender, but this never happened.

Jurgen also has a brother and sister, Peter (pictured) and Marion, who returned to German in the 70s. Peter is the Honorary Consul for Panama in Frankfurt

The newspaper said it applied to the German Federal Intelligence Service, the BND, for information about him. The BND confirmed documents existed on him but said they would not be released becauve this could endanger 'the well-being of the Federal Republic of Germany or one of its members'.

In 1948 he left Germany with his family to settle in Panama, and later returned to Munich with his wife during the 70s. He died in the 1990s, his wife followed five years ago.

According to reports, U.S. Army intelligence archives hold a file on him as he allegedly offered his services to the U.S. government as an informant, claiming 'he was about to join a clandestine organisation, either of former Nazis now turned Communist... or of unconverted Nazis cloaking themselves as Communists.'

An Army intelligence officer wrote that the offer to spy for the U.S. might simply be 'a shrewd attempt to get out of an awkward situation'.

Nevertheless, the old intelligence files indicate that Mossack's father later ended up in Panama, where he offered to spy, this time for the CIA, on Communist activity in nearby Cuba.

The children Peter and Marion returned to Germany in the 1970s; brother Peter is the Honorary Consul for Panama based in Frankfurt.

In 1952 a book by Erhard Mossack was published in Germany called The Last Days of Nuremberg, detailing the capture of the city to American forces in 1945.

Horst Mossack says he believes the father of Jurgen was the author.

He added; 'I don't expect I will ever see Jurgen again. If I did I would ask him exactly what went on.'

Meanwhile, the second man behind the Panama firm, a lawyer named Ramon Fonseca Mora, has been revealed to be an award-winning novelist famous for his salacious plots.

The second man behind the Panama firm, a lawyer named Ramon Fonseca Mora, has been revealed to be an award-winning novelist famous for his salacious plots

Fonseca is currently on a leave of absence, according to the ICIJ, which is part of 100 outlets to have worked together on the leak

But the 63-year-old Panama native's storylines may cut closer to home than his readers realise.

As a young man Fonseca reportedly wanted to be a priest, before age and materialism took over. On joining forces with partner Mossack, he told a journalist in 2012, 'Together, we have created a monster.'

In among accounts he follows on Twitter are a fair amount of 18+ accounts - at first glance the naked bottom of 'Horny Cherry' sits alongside the official account of the President of Argentina Mauricio Macri.
The Turkish government has printed a children's comic apparently encouraging boys and girls to seek Islamic martyrdom, it has been reported

A cartoon called 'may god bless our martyrs, may their graves be full with holy light' was published by Diyanet, the Turkish Presidency of Religious Affairs.

The colourful drawings show a young girl saying 'I wish I could be a martyr' to which her mother replies: 'If you desire enough, Allah will give you that opportunity', according to a Russian news outlet.

The Turkish government has printed a children's comic apparently encouraging boys and girls to seek Islamic martyrdom. One cartoon shows a father explaining to his son 'how good it is to be a martyr'

RT reports that another cartoon shows a father explaining to his son 'how good it is to be a martyr' and telling him that martyrdom gives people the chance 'to gain the right to go to heaven.'

According to RT, the drawings are accompanied by statements, one of which reads: 'Our prophet says: a martyr feels the pain of dying as much as you feel pain when being pinched.'

The cartoon, which was reportedly published by government agency Diyanet, the highest national religious body, has sparked anger in some quarters.

'They want to use the drawings to transfer the message of martyrdom to children because they think it will be more attractive,' psychologist and professor Dr. Serdar Degirmencioglu told the Evrensel newspaper, according to RT.

The colourful drawings show a young girl saying 'I wish I could be a martyr' to which her mother replies: 'If you desire enough, Allah will give you that opportunity'

He also likened the mentality in the comic to the mindset of those who carried out terror attacks in Ankara as well as in Brussels and Paris.

He told the newspaper: 'Turkey is overwhelmed with the pain of these massacres and with those pursuing the mentality of religiosity. All this has led to the death of people.
A solicitor who was punched in the face by a drunken former police sergeant turned lawyer has criticised the decision to only give her attacker a caution.

Richard Lacey, 58, swung an unprovoked full force blow at fellow solicitor Kate Welch, 45, during a Christmas night out in Liverpool, splitting her lip and leaving her covered in blood.

Mr Lacey, who received a conditional caution for common assault, may have to apologise to Ms Welch and pay her 150 compensation - but will never face a court hearing nor face a conviction.

Attack: Kate Welch (left), 45, was punched by Richard Lacey (right) during a Christmas night out in Liverpool

Mr Lacey and Ms Welch were partners at Huyton-based legal firm Parry Welch Lacey LLP, and had worked together for six years. Mr Lacey left the firm ten days after the incident last December.

Ms Welch said that the night had started out in good spirits as co-workers went for a meal in the Panoramic 34 restaurant, before heading to the Bierkeller in the Liverpool One shopping centre.

Ms Welch said: Richard declared his undying love for one of the secretaries. She took it rather well and said no, youre being stupid, you are drunk.

She said the woman told her that Mr Lacey - who is from Prenton in Merseyside - was crying outside and asked her to help him get a taxi home, so she approached him and offered to help.

Ms Welch said: He punched me straight in the face. It didnt knock me down but I stumbled back, and it split my lip open, there was blood everywhere.

The victim staggered back into the Bierkeller, where her shocked colleagues helped clean her up. The attack left Ms Welch with temporary nerve damage and pain in her teeth.

Injuries: The attack by Mr Lacey (right) left Ms Welch (left) with temporary nerve damage and pain in her teeth

She also said her dentist has been unable to rule out a hairline fracture above her teeth. Mr Lacey later attended a police station for a voluntary interview, where he admitted assault.

In emails seen by the Liverpool Echo newspaper, Ms Welch was told by officers: Richard was totally mortified, very upset and emotional stating that he was deeply ashamed for his actions, particularly as he very much cared for and respected yourself and (the secretary).

He punched me straight in the face. It didnt knock me down but I stumbled back, and it split my lip open, there was blood everywhere Kate Welch

He said that he was so drunk that evening that he could not remember assaulting you at the Bierkeller but has no reason to believe that either yourself or (the secretary) would lie about it. He is extremely sorry.

The decision not to charge the former Merseyside Police sergeant was taken by his old force and was not referred to the Crown Prosecution Service.

In reply to the emails, Ms Welch said: I find the proposal that Mr Lacey should be compelled to write to me positively offensive. His behaviour towards me placed me in pain and considerable distress.

His behaviour has had ongoing consequences for my business and my personal well-being.

Location: Ms Welch said that the night had started out in good spirits as co-workers went for a meal in the Panoramic 34 restaurant, before heading to the Bierkeller (pictured) in the Liverpool One shopping centre

But a police decision maker said: We always take into consideration the effect of an offence on the victim. Please be assured this matter has been dealt with in a fair and impartial manner.

Ms Welch described the decision not to refer the case to the CPS as disgraceful and is considering a private prosecution against Mr Lacey, who had a 25-year police career.

If you expect me to say that I have been treated leniently, you must think I am mad Richard Lacey

She will complain to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC). Merseyside Police said according to national guidelines the caution was the most appropriate sanction.

A spokesman said: This includes consideration that the offender has no previous convictions or cautions, and there are no aggravating factors present.

With common assault, police have the option of making a charging decision without consulting the CPS.

However, CPS guidelines surrounding out-of-court disposals say police should consider any views expressed by the victim and the seriousness of the offence.
An American student who vanished in Siberian eight days ago has been found dead in snow little more than a mile from the guest house where he was staying.

Colin Madsen, 25, from Jefferson City, Missouri, vanished from a tourist resort guest house in the early hours of last Sunday, prompting an intensive search by police and volunteers.

He disappeared in the mainly Buddhist Buryatia region of eastern Siberia after apparently walking out at night without a coat.

The body of Colin Madsen, pictured, has been found on a Siberian mountainside, eight days after he went missing in Russia

The 25-year-old, pictured right with his mother Dana, right, disappeared in the mainly Buddhist Buryatia region of eastern Siberia after apparently walking out at night without a coat

His body was found a mile from where he was staying in a village at the foot of the Sayan Mountains, located west of Lake Baikal, the Investigative Committee, which probes serious incidents, said.

A US embassy spokesman in Moscow said: 'We are aware of these reports and have been working closely with Russian authorities on the matter.

'I can confirm that Embassy consular officials are in the region to provide consular assistance,' the spokesman added.

Investigators did not comment on the cause of Madsen's death, saying only that his body had no visible signs of injury and his wallet and ID documents had not been stolen.

One TV report suggested there were multiple injuries on the 25-year-old's body, but later it appeared the main version examined by Russian investigators is that he died from cold during a night time walk.

His body was found close to Lake Baikal in Siberia, little more than a mile from where he had been staying

Madsen vanished two hours before he and his travelling companions were due to climb a local mountain called 7,913 ft Peak of Love, pictured

However, the official probe is listed as a murder investigation and a series of detailed forensic tests are to be conducted.

A report from local Arigus TV suggested some members of his group took drugs on the night of his death.

The group of friends -- two Americans and two Russians -- 'had used a drug' the day before Madsen disappeared, the investigators said without giving any details.

The group had not drunk alcohol together and had not quarrelled, investigators said.

Postgraduate student Madsen, who was studying at a linguistics university in Irkutsk, evidently left a guest house in the tourist village of Arshan at around 3am on 27 March.

He took neither his cellphone nor a coat despite subzero temperatures.

Madsen's mother Dana had travelled to Arshan to help with the search for her son. Before his body was found, she had offered a $1500 reward for information

He vanished two hours before he and his travelling companions were due to climb a local mountain called 7,913 ft Peak of Love.

The head of Buryatia's search and rescue service Pavel Shubin said: 'He was found by rescuers.

'Now police is working at the spot. Then the body will be brought down to the village.'

Madsen's mother Dana had travelled to Arshan to help with the search for her son. Before his body was found, she had offered a $1500 reward for information.

Madsen had been studying in the Siberian city of Irkutsk at the local branch of Moscow State Linguistic University since 2013.
The terrorists were planning mustard gas attacks on four different cities

Abdelhak Khiame also revealed the details of a plot uncovered in February

ISIS terrorists have tried to create chemical weapons abroad and are hoping to one day use them to attack Europe, it has been claimed.

Abdelhak Khiame, Morocco's head of counter terrorism, claims his unit has smashed 25 ISIS plots in his country in the past year alone - including one in February involving mustard gas.

The ISIS cell, which had smuggled in weapons from nearby Libya, was planning chemical attacks on four cities plus a suicide bomber strike.

Abdelhak Khiame (right), Morocco's head of counter terrorism team, claims to have unearthed 25 ISIS plots in Morocco in the past year alone

He told The Sun: 'It's very possible that Daesh would use this process to target Britain and other EU countries.

'It already has brigades of children and we know they train them in their camps looking to use them in terrorist attacks in Europe. As for chemical weapons, we have seen here how easy they are to prepare.

'The substances used in the plot we dismantled in February in Morocco are available in shops all over Britain, all over Europe.'

Mr Khiame's Bureau Central d'Investigations Judiciares team, believed the group - which was caught in February - was trying to create mustard gas.

He also claimed it was just one of 25 plots it had smashed within the country in the past year alone.

Last month it emerged U.S. Special Forces had captured ISIS's chemical weapons chief - and he admitted the group was planning to use mustard gas in future attacks.

The operative's capture was confirmed by an American official, who said the interrogation had yielded 'good things'.

He was captured by special forces that the Pentagon recently deployed to conduct raids against ISIS. He is current detained in Iraq, one of the officials said.

According to CNN, the US military has conducted airstrikes against 'targets it believes are crucial to ISIS's chemical weapons program'.

Al-Afari, an expert in chemical and biological weapons, had formerly worked for Saddam Hussein's regime.

Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis declined to confirm that US forces had captured an ISIS chemical weapons expert.

But he added: 'We know that ISIL has used chemical weapons on multiple occasions in Iraq and Syria.'

Authorities believe ISIS has used mustard gas during fighting in Iraq and Syria. Morocco's spy boss has now claimed to have smashed a plot to attack cities with the deadly chemical

In February, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan for the first time openly accused ISIS of using chemical weapons, including mustard gas, in Iraq and Syria.

Sources close to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons confirmed last month that mustard gas was used in fighting in August in northern Iraq, without specifically blaming ISIS for the attack.

The group also confirmed mustard gas was used on August 21 in Marea in Syria, again without naming the perpetrator of the attack.

Mustard gas - also known as 'sulfur mustard' - can cause respiratory distress, momentary blindness and painful blisters.
Tupac Shakur's stepfather who was convicted of masterminding a string of deadly armed robberies is up for parole after 30 years behind bars.

Mutulu Shakur, once on the FBI's most wanted list, was convicted in 1988 of leading a revolutionary group known as 'The Family' who were responsible for killing an armed guard and two New York police officers.

The 65-year-old is eligible for mandatory parole after serving 30 years of the 60-year sentence.

Shakur's parole hearing is to take place this week at the federal penitentiary in Victorville, California, where he is serving his sentence, according to U.S. Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr.

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Mutulu Shakur, (pictured) once on the FBI's most wanted list, was convicted of leading a revolutionary group known as 'The Family' who were responsible for killing an armed guard and two New York police officers

Tupac Shakur is pictured spitting at reporters as he leaves the state Supreme Court in New York following a pretrial hearing on charges of sodomy and sexual abuse

Mutulu Shakur was an active member of the Black Liberation Army (BLA), a nationalist group that broke away from the Black Panthers.

The BLA favoured a militant approach to achieve self-determination for Black people in the United States. Shakur worked closely with a small circle of members, known as 'The Family', who carried out robberies with the intention to fund their campaign.

Although federal parole was abolished in 1987, it is still granted for inmates convicted before then.

Under the rules in place at the time of his conviction, parole is mandatory for Shakur unless a commission finds he is likely to reoffend or has frequently violated prison rules.

The possibility that Shakur could walk free has outraged Michael Paige, whose father, a Brinks security guard, was killed in a $1.6 million holdup of an armored truck at a mall in suburban Rockland County, New York, in October 1981.

Reflecting on the news, Mr Paige described the prospect as 'incomprehensible' and 'sickening.'

'That's the going rate? Thirty years for at least three lives that were taken?' he said. 'I was 16 years when he was killed by these animals. Not a day goes by that I don't think about my father.'

Less than an hour after Peter Paige was killed during the Brinks heist, two Nyack police officers, Waverly Brown and Sgt. Edward O'Grady, were killed in an ambush after stopping a truck at a roadside checkpoint.

Shakur was added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list after the heist. He remained on the run until he was arrested in Los Angeles in 1986.

Tupac Shakur was killed in a drive-by shooting after a Mike Tyson boxing match in September 1996

Mutulu Shakur (left) was the mastermind of 'The Family'. Joanne Chesimard, (right) AKA Assata Shakur, was the first woman ever to be placed on the FBI's list of top 10 most wanted terrorists after she was convicted of shooting dead New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster

Mutulu Shakur was jailed for masteminding a series of robbies including a Brinks armored truck robbery (pictured) at the Nanuet Mall in Nanuet, N.Y., where multiple Nyack police officers and a Brinks guard were killed

Shakur was also charged with aiding fellow revolutionary Joanne Chesimard's escape from a New Jersey prison, where she was serving a sentence for killing New Jersey state trooper Werner Foerster in 1973.

An admitted accomplice testified at Shakur's trial that armed members of his revolutionary group had visited the prison, captured two guards and then drove Chesimard out in a prison van. He said Shakur was protecting the escape route.

Chesimard, who now goes by the name Assata Shakur, fled to Cuba and remains at large. She was granted asylum by Fidel Castro, but some U.S. officials have pushed for her to be extradited to the U.S. after the countries re-established diplomatic relations.

O'Grady's son, also named Edward, urged the U.S. Parole Commission to deny Shakur's bid for release and make sure he spends the rest of his life in prison 'where terrorists like him belong.'

'I offer that the crimes Mr. Shakur was convicted of are a brand of violent extremism similar in scope, if not scale, to what we are seeing from the Islamic State and Al Qaeda before them,' wrote O'Grady, a Navy commander.

Attempts to reach Brown's family were unsuccessful.

Shakur has maintained his innocence since his arrest. At his trial in the 1980s, his attorney argued there was no proof that his client participated in the robberies or aided in the prison escape.

Shakur has amassed a large group of supporters throughout his incarceration, many of whom believe he is a political prisoner. They have coordinated letter-writing campaigns and phone banks to demand his release and to solicit donations to support his legal fund.

Shakur did not respond to a letter The Associated Press sent him in prison. His attorney did not comment for this story.
The group of men fled the scene on Sunday night and are still on the run

The men kicked, punched, choked and spat at the guard and JB HI-FI staff

The brawl was sparked when the guard stopped a suspected shop lifter

Up to five men set upon a security guard at a shopping centre in

Five men believed to be protecting their shoplifting friend have launched a violent attack on a number of JB HI-FI staff and a grey-haired security guard after he tried to stop a suspected thief.

Police are searching for a group of up to five men, believed to be between the age of 18 and 25, after they became involved in a violent altercation with staff at JB HI-FI at Chadstone Shopping Centre, in a south-east suburb of Melbourne, at around 5.30pm on Sunday.

The group were captured on security footage kicking, punching and spitting at a security guard who stopped one of the men after he allegedly put something in his bag as he tried to exit the store.

The group were captured on security footage kicking, punching and spitting at a security guard who stopped one of the men after he allegedly put something in his bag as he tried to exit the store

The security guard grabbed the suspected thief when he tried to make a quick escape, prompting three of his friends to join the affray.

The grey-haired security guard managed to pull the alleged shoplifter to the ground before one of his friends, who was holding a bottle of Jim Beam whisky and wearing a dark blue jacket, started to kick him.

The man managed to get to his feet before he was punched repeatedly by the suspected thief and his friend, who then slammed him up against a wall by the throat.

Two other staff members try to intervene but are held up by the man holding the bottle of hard liquor and his companion who was wearing a stripped polo-shirt.

The security guard grabbed the suspected thief when he tried to make a quick escape, prompting three of his friends to join the affray

The grey-haired security guard managed to pull the alleged shoplifter to the ground before one of his friends, who was holding a bottle of Jim Beam whisky and wearing a dark blue jacket, started to kick him

The two staff members, recognisable by their yellow lanyards, seem to try and reason with the group as at least one of them continued to attack the security guard out of the camera's view.

The man in the stripped shirt starts to become aggressive with a staff member who was contacting police, while the man in the blue jacket gets in the other's face.

While they are distracted, another staff member attempts to help the security guard who is still struggling to detain the would-be thief.

But the man in the stripped shirt soon notices and runs to his friend's aid. He jumps on the man's back and wraps his arms around the staff member's neck.

The two staff members, recognisable by their yellow lanyards, seem to try and reason with the group as at least one of them continued to attack the security guard out of the camera's view

While they are distracted, another staff member attempts to help the security guard who is still struggling to detain the would-be thief, but the man in the stripped shirt soon notices and runs to his friend's aid

Shoppers watch on as the alleged thief is finally detained but as he struggles against the two men, his friend approaches and punches the staff member in the back of the head.

He loses his balance and is set upon again by the suspected shop lifter.

He continues to violently lash out as another security guard, in black, appears on the scene.

The gang of young men eventually fled the store.

He loses his balance and is set upon again by the suspected shop lifter

He continues to violently lash out as another security guard, in black, appears on the scene

A witness said one of the men claimed to have a gun and threatened to shoot the security guard.

'He was threatening to bring in a gun, or had a gun, threatening to kill him or come back and kill him,' a woman named Kyra told Nine News.

A spokesperson for Victoria Police told Daily Mail Australia that the security guard was treated for minor injuries.

Police have been unable to locate the group and appealed to anyone with information to contact authorities immediately.
An NYU doctor accused of sexual misconduct against one of his employees is hitting back at the claims.

Dr David Zagzag, chief of the neuropathology division at NYU Medical Center in Manhattan, New York, is currently in the middle of a lawsuit filed by one of his former employees, Dr Irina Mikolaenko.

Mikolaenko claims that she was fired in February 2015, after she refused to continue to have sexual relations with her boss.

In a new court filing, obtained by the New York Post, lawyers for Zagzag have released a cache of threatening emails Mikolaenko sent her co-workers during her time working at the NYU Medical Center, arguing that they are proof she was fired for inappropriate behavior.

Dr Irina Mikolaenko (left) is currently suing her former boss, Dr David Zagzag (right), who she claims threatened to fire her if she didn't have sex with him

Harvard-educated Mikolaenko referred to her bosses as 'Nazis', called one coworker a f****** a*****, and even wished another colleague would get cancer in just a few of her emails.

'In grade 2 in school i could take apart AK47 in much less then a minute. See you all on Wednesday,' she allegedly wrote on January 13, 2014.

In another email, she bizarrely accused one of her co-workers of going to her grandmother's house in Ukraine on behalf of Joseph Stalin and playing Russian Roulette with her mother.

After another co-worker asked her to stop contacting him, Mikolaenko sent him eight emails in just over two hours.

'(AND THE EMAILS WILL STOP!!!!!!!!! YEEEEEEEE EMAILS WILL STOP TO THOMAS!!! YEEE NO MORE DISRUPTIONS FROM IRINA WHO DOES NOT THINK PRIOR TO EMAILING HA, HA,' she allegedly wrote, before callling him 'FAH' or 'f****** a*****'

On other occasions she called co-workers 'nasty, crazy, stupid, smelly, stupid, and deceitful' and 'arrogant and very difficult and weird'.

'Again dayly prayers for cancer in your families from me,' she wrote to one colleague.

While the emails are shocking, Zagzag's lawyers say that what's not in them is equally important.

At the time when Mikolaenko claims she was being forced into a sexual relationship by her boss, she doesn't speak ill of him in her emails to her co-workers, it is claimed.

To the contrary, his lawyers claim that she defended him and even looked to him for support with 'her increasingly problematic interactions with her co-workers'

In the latest court filing, Zagzag's lawyers released a cache of threatening emails sent by Mikolaenko to her co-workers in an attempt to prove that she was fired for her bizarre behavior and not any relationship with her boss. Above, the NYU Langone Medical Center in Manhattan

They say her emails prove 'she had no hesitation or concerns raising any kind of complaints about her co-workers that she never raised any allegations or any concerns of any kind about Dr. Zagzag'.

In one email from November 2014, when she claims the sexual relationship was already going on, she even allegedly urged a colleague to 'be grateful to Dr Zagzag'.

Zagzag's lawyers filed the emails in an attempt to get the case thrown out, but Mikolaenko's attorney says that won't happen.

'Mark my words, this motion is just a smoke screen and is guaranteed to be denied by the court,' he told the Post. 'Dr Zagzag can not deny my clients claims as my client has significant proof of Zagzags actions.'

Mikolaenko, who is married with children, filed a lawsuit in January claiming that Zagzag threatened to fire her unless she had sex with him.

She claims that married Zagzag became obsessed with her after being appointed her supervisor in 2012, and that she initially submitted to his demands because of 'financial pressures at home'.

Zagzag, from Rego Park, Queens, allegedly told Mikolaenko how he became sexually aroused even by listening to her voicemails - and that he wore a lab coat to conceal his excitement.

According to the New York Post, her lawyers said: 'Defendant Zagzag made it be known to plaintiff that if she did not have sex with (him), she would receive poor reviews and be terminated.'

Court papers claim that Zagzag urged Mikolaenko to have sex with him in her office and once lured her to the hospital's lab for sex after technicians had gone home.

But by 2014 she had started pushing back, the documents claim

A year later, Zagzag is alleged to have walked into her office before blocking the door with a chair and threatening her with a poor performance review.

According to the Post, the lawsuit documents claim Zagzag told her: 'If you want to have a good evaluation, we need to have sex so that I can feel better discussing you with the chair.'

She refused and, a week later, lost her job, the court papers claim.

Mikolaenko says she suffered panic attacks, emotional distress, depression, paranoia and sleeplessness and is seeking an 'unspecified amount of money', the New York Post reports.

NYU confirmed Mikolaenko had been 'terminated' on February 8, 2015 from NYU's School of Medicine for 'misconduct and inappropriate behavior'.

In a statement given to the Post, it added: 'We have fully investigated her claims, and have found there to be absolutely no truth or merit to her outlandish allegations. NYU... will vigorously support and defend Dr Zagzag and the School of Medicine against her manufactured accusations.'
Ian Cameron (pictured with his son), a stockbroker and multi-millionaire, was a client of a controversial offshore law firm based in Panama

David Cameron today refused to reveal whether any of his family's money is still held in tax havens  despite backing new laws that will force companies to disclose their offshore investments.

The Prime Minister's late father Ian Cameron was named in a huge leak of millions of documents exposing the use of offshore tax regimes by the world's richest people.

Ian, a multi-millionaire stockbroker, was accused of using the firm, Mossack Fonseca, to shield his investment fund, Blairmore Holdings, Inc., from British taxes.

The fund avoided having to pay tax in Britain by hiring residents in the Bahamas  including a part-time bishop  to sign its paperwork.

Ian Cameron died in 2010 just months after his son entered No 10 as Prime Minister.

But asked today if the Cameron family still held money in the controversial fund, the Prime Minister's official spokeswoman said: 'That's a private matter.'

She added: 'I am focused on what the Government is doing and it has taken a range of action to tackle tax evasion and avoidance and aggressive tax planning.'

Mr Cameron's spokeswoman said she had nothing to add to a statement issued in 2012 when details of Ian Cameron's tax affairs first emerged.

The arrangements were fully legal and a Downing Street spokesman declined to comment on the details at the time, but four years later added: 'The government's tax reforms are about making sure that some of the richest people in the country pay a decent share of income tax.'

But he was accused by opposition parties of failing to follow through with promises to force reform in UK crown dependencies and overseas territories which act as tax havens and faced calls for a full independent investigation.

While there is nothing illegal about using offshore companies, the disclosures have intensified calls for international reform of the way tax havens are able to operate and claims of large-scale money laundering.

Mr Cameron has been a vocal advocate of reform and legislation forcing British companies to disclose who owns and benefits from their activities which comes into force in June.

The Prime Minister's late father Ian Cameron (right) was named in a huge leak of millions of documents exposing the use of offshore tax regimes by the world's richest people

Despite several years of pressure however, few UK Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories - which are said to make up a large part of the tax havens referred to in the papers - have taken concrete action to open up the books.

A string of people connected to British politics were included among millions of files leaked to the media.

Baroness Pamela Sharples and former Tory MP Michael Mates are among the British politicians named in the massive data release.

A representative for Mr Mates said the reference to the former Tory MP in the Panama Papers related to a small shareholding the politician once held in a Bahamian company.

He insisted the company was set up legitimately to create a leisure development in Barbuda, an island that is part of the East Caribbean state of Antigua and Barbuda.

Mr Mates said he had not and would not receive any remuneration unless and until the development took place, nor were the shares of any value, as the company never had any real value. He denies he has ever sought to avoid paying taxes.

WHAT ARE OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS AND HOW ARE THEY USED? WHAT ARE OFFSHORE OR SHELL ACCOUNTS? Offshore bank accounts and other financial dealings in another country can be used to evade regulatory oversight or tax obligations. Often, companies or individuals use shell companies, initially incorporated without significant assets or operations, to disguise ownership or other information about the funds involved. WHERE ARE MOST OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS? Panama, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda are among more than a dozen small, low-tax locations that specialize in handling business services and investments of non-resident companies. LEGITIMATE USES FOR OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS: Companies or trusts can be set up in offshore locations for legitimate uses such as business finance, mergers and acquisitions and estate or tax planning, according to the global money laundering watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force. ILLICIT USES OF OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS: Shell companies and other entities can be misused by terrorists and others involved in international and financial crimes to conceal sources of funds and ownership. The ICIJ says the files from Mossack Fonseca include information on 214,488 offshore entities linked to 14,153 clients in 200 countries and territories. EFFORTS TO CRACK DOWN ON FINANCIAL HAVENS: Financial and legal professionals get training on how to spot potential violations, since in some cases lawyers and bankers are unaware they are handling illicit transactions. The EU has stepped up efforts to crack down on tax avoidance by multinational corporations. Advertisement

It was reported that in total six members of the House of Lords, three former Conservative MPs and dozens of donors to British political parties have been shown to have had offshore assets.

Not all were named last night but revelations about the hidden wealth of politicians and their supporters will trigger nerves in Number Ten as names and details emerge from the leak this week.

If Tory donors or senior figures are implicated, it will be a huge embarrassment to the Prime Minister.

The BBC and the Guardian last night set out details from the so-called 'Panama Papers'  11.5million files leaked from the database of Mossack Fonseca, the world's fourth biggest offshore law firm.

They show that 12 national leaders are among 143 politicians, their families and close associates from around the world known to have been using offshore tax havens.

Close associates of Russia's President Putin are also implicated, although the Russian president's name is not said to appear directly on any documents.

The records were obtained from an anonymous source by the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists with the Guardian and the BBC.

Though there is nothing unlawful about using offshore companies, the files raise fundamental questions about the ethics of such tax havens  and the revelations are likely to provoke urgent calls for reforms of a system that critics say is arcane and open to abuse.

Among national leaders with offshore wealth are Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's prime minister; Ayad Allawi, ex-interim prime minister and former vice-president of Iraq; Petro Poroshenko, president of Ukraine; Alaa Mubarak, son of Egypt's former president; and the prime minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson.

The data covers nearly 40 years, from 1977 to the end of 2015, and lists nearly 15,600 paper companies set up for clients who wanted to keep their financial affairs secret.

Thousands were created by UBS and HSBC, the latter of which was fined by the US government for laundering money from Iran.

Mossack Fonseca is Panamanian but runs a worldwide operation.

The leaks also reveal a suspected billion-dollar money laundering ring that was run by a Russian bank and involved close associates of President Putin.
Authorities have not released the name of the Chinese restaurant where the altercation took place

Xiuling Xiao, 39, has been charged with assault and endangering the welfare of a child

Xiuling Xiao, 39, has been charged with assault and endangering the welfare of a child

A Long Island man is accused of pushing his wife's hands into a boiling deep fat fryer during an argument at their Chinese restaurant over the weekend.

Xiuling Xiao, 39, has been charged with assault and endangering the welfare of a child for the incident which happened Sunday night around 8:15pm.

Nassau County police say the couple's two children, ages 12 and 14, were present during the dangerous altercation.

They say the couple was arguing when the defendant grabbed his wife by the hair and pushed her toward the deep fat fryer.

Authorities say the 39-year-old victim suffered second-degree burns to her hands.

Xiao is scheduled to be arraigned on Monday.

It wasn't immediately clear if he had a lawyer who could comment on the charges.
He chased off the attackers and stopped them from stealing his motorbike

Security cameras recorded the moment he managed to dodge five bullets

The victim of gun-wielding thieves fought back using just his bike helmet

This is the incredible moment two thieves' attempt to steal a man's motorbike went horribly wrong when he fought them off with his crash helmet.

Security camera footage from the daylight assault in Brazil, shows him being ambushed while parking his bike during the middle of the day.

A dramatic confrontation then unfolds when he faces down his attackers - and manages to escape with only a bullet to the leg after being shot at at least five times.

The victim, pictured in yellow after parking his bike, was jumped from behind by the two bungling thieves

A scuffle ensued in which he managed to push to the two men - armed with handguns, away from him

He then made a brief retreat across the road while the assailant in blue withdrew his weapon

One of the gunmen, pictured in blue, appears to fire at him, though it is not clear if this is when he was struck

Bravely, of foolishly, he then charges his assailant holding his motorbike helmet in his right hand

He then launches it at the gunmen, who runs away attempting to protect his head

Filmed in the city of Sao Paulo, a city still trying to fix its remarkably high murder rate, the drama is seen unfolding from a street camera.

It shows the victim, wearing a yellow top, climbing off his bike and entering a building on the side of the road.

From around the corner, two men run up to him and ambush him from behind at the doorway.

But moments later, all three of them burst out of the building and back into the camera frame, revealing a tense scuffle has erupted.

The victim, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, begins circling one of the thieves, who armed with a handgun, fires of several shots in his direction.

Incredibly, the victim then throws his helmet at the gunmen, before charging the second thief and pulling him from his bike.

The pair then scamper off, while the victim even attempts to give chase.

The victim, who lives in the suburb of Sao Bernardo do Campo, said he was just entering the garage areas in front of his house after parking his motorbike on the pavement outside when he was attacked.

He told Brazilian TV Cidade Alert that he was so angry he reacted without thinking and was lucky to escape with my life because the criminals were such poor shooters.

According to neighbours, the assailants must have been watching and waiting for the victim to arrive home from work. Several bullet holes were left in his garage door.

The pair fled in a black car parked around the corner after failing in their attack.

The victim then knocked the second thief from his bike and the two begin making their escape
Serial shoplifter Jacobia Grimes, 34, could be jailed for life for allegedly stealing $31 in candy bars

A serial shoplifter accused of stealing $31 in candy bars could be jailed for life.

Jacobia Grimes, 34, allegedly stole the chocolate from a Dollar General store in New Orleans in December and turned his haul over to police after he was arrested.

A manager at the store saw Grimes grabbing the sweets and stuffing them in his pockets, according to a police report.

Attorneys have chosen to prosecute Grimes - who has a string of previous convictions for shoplifting - under a state habitual offender law which means he faces a sentence of between 20 years and life in prison, The Advocate reported.

The alleged theft has been upped to a felony punishable by up to two years behind bars by Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro.

Because Grimes already has five theft convictions - all for taking goods worth less than $500 - he will instead be tried under Louisiana's serial offender laws.

The statue, which is rarely used for minor offenses, allows judges to sentences criminals who have committed four or more felonies to life in jail.

Grimes appeared in court on Thursday and pleaded not guilty.

Even the judge seemed to show sympathy for the alleged thief, asking attorneys: 'Isn't this a little over the top?

'It's not even funny. Twenty years to life for a Snickers bar, or two or three or four,' he added.

Grimes allegedly stole the chocolate from a Dollar General store in New Orleans in December and turned his haul over to police after he was arrested

While the judge referred to Snickers, it is not clear what or how many candy bars Grimes is accused of stealing, however the total value was $31.

WHAT LOUISIANA'S LAW SAYS 'If the fourth or subsequent felony is such that, upon a first conviction the offender would be punishable by imprisonment for any term less than his natural life then: 'The person shall be sentenced to imprisonment for the fourth or subsequent felony for a determinate term not less than the longest prescribed for a first conviction but in no event less than twenty years and not more than his natural life.' Advertisement

'It's unconscionably excessive to threaten someone with 20 years to life for candy,' Grimes' lawyer, Michael Kennedy, said.

However, he added that the district attorney had not done 'anything improper' by applying the serial offender statute.

Grimes' other lawyer, Miles Swanson, said his client could have been charged with a misdemeanor under a different law.

'I just think it points to the absurdity of the multiple billing statute. They're spending their time to lock someone up for years over $31 worth of candy. It's ridiculous,' Swanson said.

Grimes pleaded guilty to previous thefts dating back to 2001, which saw him target Blockbuster Video, Rite-Aid, Sav-A-Center and Rouses stores.

Attorneys have chosen to prosecute Grimes - who has a string of previous convictions for shoplifting - under a state habitual offender law which means he faces a sentence of between 20 years and life in prison

In 2010, he also admitted stealing socks and trousers from another Dollar General store, leading him to be jailed for four years for offending twice.

Grimes has spent nine years in jail in Louisiana since 2001, with his longest stretch lasting slightly longer than three years.

He was also convicted of obscenity and intent to sell fake drugs while he was in jail.

Grimes left prison in 2013 and his last dealing with the justice system was when his parole ended in February 2014.

His defense team added that he has a heroin problem and a ninth-grade education.

As well as the theft charge, Grimes is charged with possessing drug paraphernalia. He is free on a $5,000 bond and is next due in court on Wednesday.
Many dogs at slaughter houses had collars - evidence that they're stolen

Authorities had promised that the practice had stopped outside festival

The annual dog meat festival in Yulin, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, sees 10,000 dogs and cats slaughtered in just a few days.

To appease animal rights groups and pet-lovers across the globe, local authorities had said the slaughter had been confined to the festival, celebrated in June each year.

However, a new report has found that the brutal trade is an all-year occurrence in Yulin, with some 300 dogs and cats butchered every day - with many bearing evidence of being stolen pets.

Daily deaths: This image, showing a woman butchering dogs at a market in Yulin, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, shows that the slaughter of dogs is not confined to the annual meat festival

Brutal fate: Dogs ready for slaughter stored in cages at a meat market in Yulin in south China

Streed food: Traders at Yulin's meat market skins cats by putting their carcasses in a chemical solution

Cut short: A cat is seen sitting in a cage at Yulin meat market, photographer by animal rights organisation Humane Society International on their visit last week

When animal rights organisation Humane Society International (HSI) travelled to Yulin ahead of the dog meat festival, it found shocking evidence of daily slaughter - all year around.

Dr Peter Li, HSI's China Policy Specialist, visited three dog and cat slaughterhouses where some 300 animals are butchered every day.

HSI witnessed animals being bludgeoned to death with metal rods in full view of their cage mates.

Many of the dogs and cats were seen wearing pet collars - evidence that these were once a loved family members, stolen by rogue meat traders.

Traumatised dogs waiting to be killed were kept in holding pens, the floor awash with blood.

Common food: Some 300 dogs and cats are butchered for meat in Yulin alone every day

The animal rights organisation found that many of the dogs and cats kept at the slaughter houses and meat markets wore pet collars - evidence that they could be stolen pets

Not just for the feast: Animal rights organisation HSI travelled to Yulin ahead of the dog meat festival, and found shocking evidence of daily slaughter - all year around

Heartbreaking: Dogs ready for slaughter are seen peeking out between the bars of their cages

Slaughter ready; Traumatised dogs waiting to be killed are kept in holding pens, the floor awash with blood

'This was one of the most harrowing visits I've ever made to Yulin,' Dr Li said.

'The dogs and cats I saw were visibly traumatised, their spirits broken from their terrifying ordeal.

'It's hard to imagine their mental suffering, watching other dogs being killed, disembowelled and dismembered in front of them. It was like a scene from a nightmare that will haunt me forever.

'It shocked me to see how close these awful scenes are to local schools, with a high risk of young children being exposed to sounds and sights of extreme animal suffering.

'And it is apparent from the volume of dogs, and animals wearing pet collars, that Yulin remains a hub for dog and cat theft.'

Lies: To appease animal rights groups and pet-lovers across the globe, local authorities had said the slaughter had been confined to the festival, celebrated in June each year

Terrible conditions: Cats are crawling on top of each other as dozens are crammed into tiny cages

HSI witnessed animals being bludgeoned to death with metal rods in full view of their cage mates

During his visit to Yulin last week, Dr Li found evidence that dog meat is widely available in restaurants throughout the city.

Dr Li and the HSI estimates that around 300 dogs are being killed in Yulin daily, with a high likelihood that dogs and cats are being stolen to order to meet demand.

One restaurant owner told HSI that whenever he needs dogs, he simply calls a trader and dogs are provided immediately.

There is a constant supply with at least one truck every day bringing live dogs from areas outside the city and other parts of the country.

An estimated 10-20 million dogs are killed for human consumption every year in China. It is a brutal trade that involves immense animal cruelty, criminal activity and serious risk to human health, with the World Health Organisation confirming that the trade is linked to cholera and rabies.
A pet owner who was forced to flee her home during a Californian wildfire has been reunited with her cat six months after she thought it had gone missing.

The woman, only known as Nancy, was evacuated from her home in Middletown, northern California in September as the blazes raged out of control.

But when leaving her home, her pet cat Muscat went missing and she was allowed to return he was nowhere to be seen.

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Nancy reunited with her pet Muscat, who had gone missing six months ago during a deadly wildfire near her home

The woman resigned herself to the fact that Muscat had probably succumbed to the large flames.

However, when Nancy was out driving her car close to her house last week, she saw a cat that looked like Muscat.

And when she got close, the pet ran to her and she realised it was her cat.

She immediately took him to the Middletown Animal Hospital, who checked him out, and gave him a clean bill of health after updating his vaccines free of charge.

During the Valley fire as many as 5,000 firefighters were tackled two mammoth blazes that tore across the state, with entire towns evacuated

Teresa Axthlem of the Middletown Animal Hospital told KCBS: 'She found her cat missing since the Valley fire and we were just so excited.

'So many people are still looking for their pets, we have a bulletin board here, you know. Missing pets, dogs and cats. To give anybody some hope, its obviously a great thing.'

During the Valley fire as many as 5,000 firefighters were tackled two mammoth blazes that tore across the state, with entire towns evacuated.

Lake and Napa counties were in a state of emergency after the fire, which erupted 100 miles north of San Francisco, destroying 400 homes and two apartment complexes, and spreading across 50,000 acres of land.
But Luther's February arrest was hidden from parents for six weeks

Parents of students from a New Hampshire high school expressed their outrage over officials withholding information regarding the arrest of former dean of students, Rekha Luther (pictured)

Parents of students from a New Hampshire high school have expressed their outrage over officials withholding information regarding the arrest of the school's dean of students.

Rekha Luther, 36, was arrested in February on charges she possessed heroin and steroids.

She served in her position at Pembroke Academy until her resignation on March 22, just weeks after her arrest, according to The Concord Monitor

But her arrest was kept quiet from parents of students at the school until Friday when The Monitor's story appeared.

Jeanne LaBarge, the mother of a 17-year-old student, noticed Luther's name in police logs.

She told The Monitor: 'Somebody just disappears from a position of authority and nobody asked questions? The kids don't say anything? It's amazing to me how they kept this so quiet.'

Tom Serafin, chairman of the Pembroke School Board told WMUR9: 'Well, I certainly can't comment on a personnel issue, but I can comment on the fact that the board, the district and everyone that's employed by the school is certainly working very hard, and committed to the health and safety of all of our students.'

And despite the school officials saying they were 'limited', some parents said the academy should have provided the information anyway.

'A lot of people are appalled that it has been kept quiet,' parent, Rachel Tether, told WMUR9.

Police were reportedly tipped off by a caller who allegedly saw a 'whole bundle' of hypodermic needles at the school, Chief Dwayne Gilman told The Concord Monitor.

Gilman said his officers were able to determine that the needles were Luther's after a few hours of investigating.

'Obviously, with the emphasis on heroin in the state right now, that's just not something we wanted to take lightly,' Gilman said. 'Everything you don't want to hear in a school happened in one day.'

Though Luther (left), who is from Manchester, New Hampshire, declined to comment on her arrest, she did post photos of her and her new boyfriend (right) on Facebook a week after she submitted her resignation

Gilman told The Monitor: 'There's two ways to get the job done: You can be a bull in a china shop or you can think methodically, still have the same outcome and not affect anyone else.'

Though Luther, who is from Manchester, New Hampshire, declined to comment on her arrest, she did post photos of her and her new boyfriend on Facebook a week after she submitted her resignation.

Luther had been handcuffed and taken out of the school through a back door during the time of the arrest.

A school district meeting with about 100 parents two weeks later never brought up Luther's arrest.

But the School district policy says communications between the school and home are supposed to be 'regular, two-way and meaningful; parents are full partners in the educational decisions that affect children and families'.

Superintendent Patty Sherman told The Monitor that if a student were found to be in possession of drugs, she would take it on a 'case-by-case basis' as to whether she would send an alert to parents.

Sherman added that if the headmaster resigned or was replaced, the district would send out a message, but for the dean of students, 'probably not'.

Luther posted $10,000 personal recognizance bail the same day she was arrested and was later arraigned in district court. She faces four charges of possession of a controlled drug.

Several advocates have called New Hampshire's drug problem an epidemic of opioid abuse in the state as more than 400 people in New Hampshire died of drug overdoses last year, including Luther's fiance, Jonathan Pesa, who died in June.
Bailey and Maysonet, 33, were arrested on Friday just north of Atlanta

Both suspects fled and police say they repeated the scam three days later

When the man arrived her accomplice Jezlias Maysonet stole his money

The 28-year-old agreed to get a hotel room in Georgia with one victim

say she preyed on married men as they'd be less likely to report it

A woman who allegedly preyed on married men by luring them to a hotel to rob them has been arrested.

Autumn Bailey, 28, would post fake dating ads on Craigslist, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest claiming she was going through a divorce and was 'seeking a long term relationship', police say.

She would then agree to meet them in a hotel where Bailey's male accomplice Jezlias Maysonet, 33, would pounce and steal their cash.

Autumn Bailey, 28, (pictured) would post fake dating ads on Craigslist, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest claiming she was going through a divorce and was 'seeking a long term relationship', police say

Investigators believe the pair were targeting married men as they may be less likely to report the theft, AJC.com reports.

U.S. marshals arrested Bailey and Maysonet, both of Cleveland, Georgia, on Friday just north of Atlanta.

Police have reports that the alleged criminals robbed at least two men in the scam but believe the real number could be much higher.

In one recent case, a man told police he had contacted Bailey after she posted a Criagslist dating ad which claimed she was seeking a 'long term relationship.'

U.S. marshals arrested Bailey, 28, and her alleged accomplice, both of Cleveland, Georgia, on Friday

Bailey would then agree to meet them in a hotel where her male accomplice Jezlias Maysonet, 33, (pictured) would pounce and steal their cash

They agreed to meet at the Courtyard Atlanta Executive Park in Brookhaven and get a hotel room.

The victim says that Bailey asked him to bring money to pay for the room in cash, as she claimed she was going through a divorce so could not have a paper trail.

But when he arrived at the hotel and laid down $140 on the seat next to him for Bailey, police say Maysonet came by and snatched the money.

The suspects fled but the victim chased after them and was able to report their license plate to the authorities, Crime Stoppers Greater Atlanta says.

Just three days later, the pair were reported to have carried out the same scam in Duluth, Georgia.

Bailey agreed to meet at the Courtyard Atlanta Executive Park in Brookhaven (pictured) and get a hotel room
Joshua Stutter has been jailed for shooting at a rival's Range Rover in Croydon, south London

A Rolex watch dealer who opened fire on a rival's Range Rover in broad daylight has been jailed for six and a half years.

Joshua Stutter confronted the man in the street in Croydon, south London, after he received messages claiming he was having an affair with another mans partner.

The 25-year-old was jailed today after a court heard that, although his unidentified target escaped without injury, children playing nearby could have been hurt.

London's Old Bailey heard witnesses in Riddlesdown Common heard the sound of screeching tyres and a shout of You f***ing c***, you are dead, you f***ing c*** shortly before the shooting.

Stutter then fired twice at the front of the Range Rover before speeding away from the scene in his own Mercedes.

He was arrested with the gun after crashing his car nearby but has since refused to identify the occupant of the Range Rover or the owner of the gun.

Judge Stephen Kramer QC accepted that it was not a gang-related incident and may be connected to what prosecutors described as a love interest.

He said: It was a summer Sunday when innocent members of the public including children were out walking.

You now accept that the gun was in your possession, it was loaded and you fired two shots at the lower part of the Range Rover.

It was by sheer good look that no injury was caused by the shots you fired.

You took the law into your own hands by arming yourself with a lethal weapon and taking it to a public place. You exposed innocent people to risk of injury.

Stutter, the co-founder of Chaps & Co, which offers a range of Rolex, Cartier and Patek Philippe timepieces, claimed he took the sawn-off shotgun from a friends gun cabinet.

He said he only wanted to frighten the occupants of the Range Rover and was in fear of the unidentified rival.

The incident happened near Riddlesdown Common, where families with children were playing

Stutters barrister, John Cammegh, said: It was with great surprise and anxiety that the defendant started to receive, over the weeks before this offence, a series of phone calls, which escalated in terms of threat and frequency, accusing him of having had an affair with another mans partner.

The defendant knew the man, but had never met him. Things got to such a point that he was in fear of his own life, having received several threats to kill, escalating in gravity and frequency.

He added: [The weapon] was obtained with the express intention of taking it to a meeting with the man who had been making these threats, not to use it on the man, but simply to use it in a display of threat in the hope that his accuser would desist from the conduct that had been escalating over the previous few weeks.

Seven spent cartridges were recovered from the scene along with the stock of the gun. The rest of the firearm was found in Stutters car upon his arrest.

The court heard he has a long-term girlfriend and a young child but the watch business they ran together has since folded.
Back in Britain: Maythem al-Ansari, who used to live in West London, is a key member of an international drug dealing and money laundering network

A drug dealing Mr Big has given himself up in London after fleeing to Syria five years ago because he would rather be in a British jail than free in the war-torn Middle East.

Maythem al-Ansari, a key member of an international drug dealing and money laundering network, is now back in jail in Britain after deciding it was preferable to life in Syria.

The Iraqi-born 47-year-old had fled to Damascus in 2011 when a blunder allowed him to obtain a replacement for a passport seized by police during a raid on his house.

Al-Ansari was on bail over an alleged multi-million-pound mortgage fraud involving property in some of the capitals most expensive districts.

Interest in his case began in February 2008 when he was arrested at his home in Hillingdon, West London, in one of the largest operations ever undertaken by the Metropolitan Police.

Officers used a digger to smash through a wall and a helicopter hovered overhead as officers burst into the 3miillion fortified house in a dawn raid filmed by a TV camera crew.

He had just been released from a three-year prison sentence for money laundering for a 33-member drug-dealing gang. He remained subject to licence conditions and an unpaid confiscation order of more than 500,000.

Al-Ansaris three children were in the house at the time of the raid - including his then 16 year-old daughter Ghassaq, who said she was kept in an upstairs bedroom as he was led away in handcuffs.

War-torn Syria: Al-Ansari had fled in 2011 to Damascus (pictured in August of last year) when a blunder allowed him to obtain a replacement for a passport seized by police during a raid on his house

But police later received a letter from al-Ansaris doctor in Syria claiming he was too ill to return.

Now, five years later - with Syria engulfed by civil war - he has flown back to London Heathrow Airport to surrender to police. He is now back in jail for breaching the terms of his release.

Police and prosecutors are also assessing whether to bring charges over the mortgage fraud investigation, which had stalled because of his departure.

A Scotland Yard statement read: A warrant was issued in January 2011 for the arrest of Maythem Al-Ansari who was subject to recall to prison for breaching the terms of his licence.

On February 1, 2016 he was arrested at Heathrow Airport by the Metropolitan Police Service having come in on a flight from Amman.

Arrival: Iraqi-born Al-Ansari has flown back to London Heathrow Airport (pictured) to surrender to police

In addition to the breaching of licence issue he was also arrested for non-payment of fines in relation to an outstanding confiscation order. He was referred to Westminster Magistrates Court.

Al-Ansari was first arrested eight years ago by detectives from Scotland Yards Operation Eaglewood, who were investigating a London gang involved with drugs and money laundering.

Around 111kg of suspected cocaine, with a street value of 5.5million, were seized by officers, along with cash and several firearms.

The drug dealing network is believed to have ties across Europe, making profits of 3million a week, police said.

The Crown Prosecution Service said it had never conducted a bigger criminal case in London and al-Ansari later pleaded guilty to money laundering.

Using a digger to get in: In February 2008, al-Ansari was arrested at his home in Hillingdon in West London in one of the largest operations ever undertaken by the Metropolitan Police

Prosecutors told Southwark Crown Court in December 2010 that al-Ansari was a criminal investor who posed as a legitimate businessman to finance drug smuggling and other illegal activities.

Another 32 gang members were convicted of other offences. They and Al-Ansari were jailed for a total of more than 200 years.

Al-Ansari, an Iraqi refugee granted British citizenship after claiming asylum, was jailed for three years but was set free immediately because of early release rules and the time he had already spent in prison awaiting trial.

He remained on police bail over the alleged mortgage fraud, however, and Met Police detectives, who still had his passport, believed he was unable to leave the UK.

This proved to be incorrect because neither police nor court officials had told the Home Offices identity and passport service that his passport had been seized.

Getting in: Officers used a digger to smash through a wall and a helicopter hovered overhead as officers burst into the 3miillion fortified house in a raid filmed by a TV camera crew

So when he applied for a new passport, claiming that his old one had been lost, he received one - allowing him to fly to Syria within days of his release.

He then posted police a letter from a Damascus doctor alleging that he was not well enough to come back.

He now faces serving the remainder of his money laundering sentence, from which he had obtained automatic early release, and also has to pay his 535,449 confiscation order, plus interest.

It is understood he is claiming to be too poor to pay. But investigators believe he has assets hidden in Dubai and Morocco and are rebuffing his attempt to have his debt written off or scaled down.
Hillary Clinton accused Bernie Sanders' this morning of being a fair-weather Democrat.

Clinton said 'there's no indication' that Sanders is working to elect anyone in the party to federal office but himself, subtly calling the independent senator's commitment to his adopted political party into question.

'There's no indication there's any interest there,' she charged in an interview this morning. 'I am committed to electing Democrats. I am committed to raising money. I'm already helping to fund Democratic campaigns.'

The Democratic candidate for president rolled out the line of attack against her opponent over the weekend in Wisconsin, which votes on Tuesday and is a critical contest for the delegate-starved Sanders campaign.

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Hillary Clinton accused Bernie Sanders' this morning of of being a fair-weather Democrat. Clinton said 'there's no indication' that Sanders is working to elect anyone in the party to office but himself

Clinton brought up her fundraising for national Democrats in the pre-recorded interview that aired today on Good Morning America and said, 'I also think it's important that we elect more Democrats'

'I'm also a Democrat, and have been a proud Democrat all my adult life,' Clinton said in Eau Claire on Saturday.

She added: 'I think it's kind of important if we're selecting somebody to be the Democratic nominee of the Democratic party.'

The next morning, on ABC News' This Week, Sanders said the assault was evidence she's 'getting very nervous' because general election polling favors him against Donald Trump, the likely GOP nominee.

'I believe I am the strongest candidate to take on the Republicans and the fact that I have been the longest serving Independent in the history of the United States makes my candidacy even strong,' he declared.

Sanders said in a general election he would likely 'get virtually all of the Democratic vote' and 'a lot of the Independent vote.'

'I think we've got a lot of young people's vote, working class people's vote. I think we're on the way to a victory if we can win the Democratic nomination,' he said, hitting Clinton with a counter-punch on her weakness with voters under the age of 45.

In her subsequent interview with ABC News, Clinton argued, 'There are a lot of polls that say the opposite, but polls this far out don't mean anything.

'I think what's important is not what somebody's theory is, but how many votes have you got,' she said.

Earlier in the interview she noted that she has 2.5 million more ballots behind her than Sanders and has a distinct lead in pledged delegates - one her campaign has said for weeks will soon prove to be 'insurmountable.'

Clinton late brought up her fundraising for national Democrats in the pre-recorded interview that aired today on Good Morning America and said, 'I also think it's important that we elect more Democrats.

'I would love to see the Senate go back to being Democratic instead of having Republicans who won't do their constitutional obligation.'

Reading between the lines host George Stephanopoulos asked if that means Sanders won't and Clinton said there's 'no indication' that he's concerned about it.

In February Clinton raised $4.4 million for Democrats in addition to the $30.1 million she raised for herself, her campaign disclosed in mid-March. It has not shared its fundraising numbers for last month yet.

A president can independently push an agenda, she said in the GMA interview.

'But I think it will be better for the country if we move away from the obstructionism, the extreme partisanship that we're seeing in the Senate today and we get back to people who want to work together and want to follow the Constitution, which right now doesn't seem to be the case.'

Clinton rolled out the line of attack against her opponent over the weekend in Wisconsin, which votes on Tuesday and is a critical contest for the delegate-starved Sanders campaign. Sanders is seen here on Sunday in Madison

COUNTER PUNCH: Sanders pointed out Sunday that Clinton is struggling to energize key Democratic voting blocs like young people

Polling shows a close race between Clinton and Sanders in Wisconsin tomorrow, but the front-runner has already moved on to New York, the state she was twice elected to represent in the U.S. Senate.

A crushing defeat of Sanders there will choke off all but one route to the nomination for the Vermont lawmaker: a giant win in California.

She'll be in Albany this evening and is expected rally her supporters in New York tomorrow as the results come in from Wisconsin.

Sanders is battling for every vote in Wisconsin and has three rallies in the midwestern state today. He'll look ahead to Wyoming tomorrow, which votes Saturday.

Clinton currently has 1243 pledged delegates to her name. Sanders has a far lower 980 delegates.

A win in Wisconsin tomorrow, where 86 delegates are at stake, will help him survive the next two rounds of voting, Wyoming, 14 delegates, and New York.

At 247 delegates, the Empire State is the single most important state on the map in terms of numbers aside from California, on June 7, with 475.

The latest polling of New York, a CBC News/YouGov survey released Sunday, has Clinton up by 10 in the state she now calls home.

Brooklyn-born Sanders has cut her lead there in half over the last month, however, and his campaign still believes that increased exposure to the candidate and his message before the April 19 primary will further whittle down Clinton's lead.

Clinton hedged this morning when asked if it's a must-win state for her but said: 'I'm absolutely confident I will be the nominee.
The warning note that sparked the countdown to the Falklands War is going on sale for 24,000, after being found in an old diary.

It captures the moment that Falkland governor Sir Rex Hunt demanded that Argentinian troops leave the remote Atlantic island of South Georgia in March 1982.

Sir Rex's message had been relayed to British scientists based on South Georgia, who marched over to the Argentinian marines with the letter, and found the orders spurned.

Words of war: This note, written by British scientist Neil Shaw, relays Falklands's governor Sir Rex Hunt's demands that Argentinian troops leave the remote Atlantic island of South Georgia

Sir Rex's warning had come in response to Argentinian troops masquerading as scientists landing on the Falkland island of South Georgia.

Roughly 50 Argentinian marines came ashore and ransacked a British Antarctic Survey (BAS) research base at former whaling station Port Leith.

Soon after they landed on South Georgia, which is 1,400 miles east of the Falklands, on March 19, 1982, they raised the Argentinian flag and were spotted by the Brits.

Sir Rex ordered the Argentinians to get back on their ship the Bahia Buen Sucesco and report to a marine base at Grytviken - which they refused to do.

His orders were relayed over radio and then scrawled on an A4 piece of paper in green pen, headed Sat March 20th 1982.

Then-governor of the Falkland Islands, Sir Rex Hunt, pictured with his wife Mavis in 2007, ordered the Argentinians to get back on their ship and report to a marine base at Grytviken - which they refused to do

Historic moment: Royal Marines on South Georgia just moments before going into action against the invading Argentinian's in 1982

The note reads: 'FROM THE GOVENOR[sic] OF THE FALKLAND ISLANDS: You Have Landed illegally at LEITH Without Obtaining Proper clearance.

'You and Your Party must go back on board the BAHIA BUEN SUCESO immediately and report to BASE COMMANDER at GRYTVIKEN for further instructions.

'You must remove the ARGENTINE flag from LEITH.

'You MUST NOT interfere with the B.A.S. depot at LEITH.

'You MUST NOT alter or deface any of the notices at LEITH./ NO military personnell are allowed to land in SOUTH GEORGIA.

'NO FIREARMS are to be taken ashore.

'GOVENOR[sic] OF THE FALKLAND ISLANDS'

Scientist Neil Shaw walked over to the invaders and read them the message - but they dismissed it and invited him on board for drinks.

The advance party eventually left but British ships had already been deployed to remove them by Westminster, with the Argentine invasion beginning in earnest on April 2. They took the BAS party captive the following day.

The war raged for ten weeks, until 14 June 1982, when the Argentinians surrendered - but diplomatic tensions have flared in recent years.

Letter of note: Just days after the message from Sir Rex Hunt, pictured with Falkland gun in 1988, the Argentinian invasion began on April 2

Mr Shaw kept the note, which was handed back to him by the Argentinians after he read it to them, and rediscovered it much later in his diary from the time.

In his diary he said: 'Made radio contact at 5.30am, message relayed to us from the Governor of the Falkland Islands, searching the building for a pen and paper and wrote his message down.

'Trevor and I took this on board the ship again. The message was read out to the ship's captain, he explained that they were working with a man called Davidoff and he had clearance to come ashore from the Argentine Government. I took the letter and we left.'

He was later reported as saying: 'They took the not and gave it back to us, dismissing it quite quickly. They said 'if you'd like to come in for a meal and drink, you're welcome, but we're not interested in this'.'

The piece is being sold by Fraser's Autographs in London. Sales manager Huw Rees said: 'This is unique, it is not a duplicate or a facsimile and is completely one of a kind.

'Pieces relating to the Falklands Conflict do not attract as much attention as the world wars, but it is still a significant part of British history and tensions are still high.

'That is why this piece is so poignant. We all know what happened in the conflict, but it is not something we really talk about.

'It is a bit like the first Gulf War in the fact that it gets overlooked, and this piece sheds real light on it.'
Claims he knew the confrontation was caught on school surveillance

Parker insists anyone in position would have also retaliated

Boy was left with a concussion and lump on his head after incident

The youngster allegedly responded by saying: 'This table is for whites only'

He reprimanded Veltman for spilling ice and throwing a napkin on the floor

A former school worker has refused to apologize for punching an 11-year-old autistic boy in the head, and would have 'beaten the snot out of him' if he had the chance.

Retired paraprofessional Milton Parker says it was a 'reflex' action when he hit Anatoly Veltman in the cafeteria of Public School 225 in Brighton Beach, New York, in August 2014.

The 59-year-old, who is a 26-year veteran of the classroom, insists he was attacked first, but is now being sued by the boy's parents.

Shocking surveillance footage shows the moment Parker strikes the youngster in the head - leaving him with a concussion, a lump and a black eye.

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Anatoly Veltman (pictured with a black eye in 2012) was punched in the head by paraprofessional Milton Parker, 59, at Public School 225 in Brighton Beach, New York

Parker told the New York Daily News: 'Who gets hit and doesnt respond? The kid punched me in the eye first and as a reflex he got hit back.'

He also believes the video proves his side of the argument. 'I knew it was on camera. If it was intentional, I would have taken him to another room and beaten the snot out of him.

Parker claims it was the first time he was ever struck by a student.

He had reprimanded Anatoly for spilling ice and throwing a napkin on the floor.

According to school records the boy told Parker, who is black: 'This table is for whites only.

Anatoly, who has the mental capacity of a 6-year-old, apologized for the racial comment, but then he is seen hitting Parker.

The public employee responded with a blow that gave Anatoly a concussion and a bump on his head.

Parker insists the boy (pictured), who had the mental age of a six-year-old at the time, provoked him, and anyone in his position would have done the same thing

In the aftermath of the incident, he showed his injuries to ABC7.

The boys father said he knew Anatoly had been hit hard because of the lump on his head, but he was still shocked by the brutality he witnessed in the video.

He said it is not unusual for an autistic child to act out, and the paraprofessionals should be trained not to respond with violence.

Anatoly Veltman Sr told the Daily News: 'I was very upset to see my son abused by someone entrusted to care for him.'

Parker said he cannot afford a lawyer. He's also not sure what the plaintiffs are looking to gain from the lawsuit as he has no assets.

But he claims his life was destroyed by what happened, as he decided to retire a short time later.

Scott Rynecki, who is representing the Veltmans, told the newspaper: 'The Department of Education has a duty and responsibility to better train their paraprofessionals so a shocking incident like this does not occur.'
A man travelling through Vienna International Airport sparked a major security scare when he told customs agents he had 'only three bombs' in his bag.

The passenger, who was at the final set of security checks before boarding his plane, then joked that he wasn't 'wearing my suicide belt today'.

However, airport officials had the last laugh when they dragged him away from other passengers and a full search was undertaken.

The 35-year-old man was passing through Vienna International Airport (pictured) when he made the bomb joke

According to The Local, the Austrian man, 35, was not found to be carrying any explosives but he missed his flight and had his luggage taken away.

Airports are currently on high alert following the bombing of Brussels Airport on the morning of March 22.

It also comes as police claim at least 50 ISIS supporters are working at the airport as baggage handlers, cleaners and catering staff.

The open letter by airport police said they were prepared to go on strike after repeatedly warning about the building's security deficiencies.

Some people suspected of having fought in Syria came to the airport as false tourists. We reported their presence but we do not know if anything was done with that information, the airport police wrote in their letter.

The officers said they had raised suspicions about certain staff members including those who apparently celebrated after the Paris attacks in November that killed 130 people.

When we checked these people, we were surprised more than once. It was men with a radical ideology and a long police history, the officers continued.

Even today, there are at least 50 supporters of the Islamic state who work at the airport. They have a security badge and have access to the cockpit of a plane.
The Australian Taxation Office is investigating more than 800 Australians after a massive leak of financial data revealed how 12 current or former world leaders, a host of celebrities and the global rich are using offshore tax havens to hide their wealth.

Australian-linked organisations and business leaders named in the huge leaks include BHP Billiton, Wilson Security, Gold Coast based company director Ian Taylor, and Hong Kongs richest man and Australian energy market owner Li Ka-Shing, ABC's Four Corners reports.

There were no suggestions Mr Taylor and his family had done anything illegal.

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The Australian Taxation Office is investigating more than 800 Australians after a massive leak of financial data

Australians named in the huge leaks include mining giant BHP Billiton and Wilson Security (stock image)

The Australians are under investigation after political leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin were named in more than 11 million documents leaked from secretive Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca.

It prompted Treasurer Scott Morrison to insist the federal government is cracking down on multinational tax avoidance following the massive leak by reaping $400 million in revenue in recent years from acting on sources and information received by the ATO.

The government has agreements with more than 100 countries to swap information to crack down on tax avoidance while laws to strengthen the system passed parliament in December - despite Labor voting against them.

'Our record when it comes to tax avoidance and particularly multinational tax avoidance is one of legislation and action,' he told ABC radio on Monday.

The Australian Taxation Office (pictured is ATO Deputy Commissioner Michael Cranston) is investigating more than 800 high net worth Australians after a leak of financial data shows how the world's rich hide their money

Treasurer Scott Morrison insists the government is cracking down on multinational tax avoidance following the massive leak by reaping $400 million in revenue in recent years from acting on sources received by the ATO

'The Labor Party voted against laws to crack down on multinationals - explain that to me.'

The tougher laws require multinationals with a turnover of $1 billion or more to provide detailed accounts of their tax arrangements while private companies with a turnover of $200 million are required to provide detailed public accounts.

The ATO is examining the dealings of 800 Australian high net worth individuals and has linked more than 120 of them to an associate offshore service provider situated in Hong Kong, The Australian Financial Review reports.

The ATO (pictured) has linked more than 120 of the 800 Australian high net worth individuals to an associate offshore service provider situated in Hong Kong

'Our record when it comes to tax avoidance and particularly multinational tax avoidance is one of legislation and action,' Mr Morrison (pictured) told ABC radio on Monday

'Some cases may be referred to the serious financial crime taskforce,' ATO deputy commissioner Michael Cranston told the newspaper.

The leak of documents show how Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca has allegedly helped clients launder money, dodge sanctions and evade tax.

German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung obtained the files and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists but the identity of the source who leaked them and how it was done is unknown.

The so-called Panama Papers, part of a leak of 11million files, implicate those in Russian president Vladimir Putin's inner circle, along with families and associates of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad (right)

Mossack Fonseca is Panamanian but runs a worldwide operation.

Among national leaders with offshore wealth are Nawaz Sharif, Pakistans prime minister, and Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson, prime minister of Iceland  who now faces calls for a snap election.

The leaks also reveal a suspected billion-dollar money laundering ring that was run by a Russian bank and involved close associates of President Putin.

Mossack Fonseca said in a statement: Our firm has never been accused or charged in connection with criminal wrongdoing.

If we detect suspicious activity or misconduct, we are quick to report it to the authorities.

Families and associates of Egypt's former president Hosni Mubarak (pictured left), Libya's former leader Muammar Gaddafi (right) were also implicated in the data leak




David Tennant has renewed plans to overhaul his London home just a few months after his proposals were thrown out.

The Doctor Who and Broadchurch star was left 'heartbroken' when he was told he couldn't put another storey on his substantial detached home in upmarket Chiswick.

Council chiefs said the extension would harm the historic and architectural character of the site, while a residents' association said it was pity his house wasn't a Tardis.

So Tennant has come back with fresh plans to overhaul the 3 million home, which he has lived in with wife Georgia since 2010.

Extension hope: David Tennant with wife Georgia earlier this year - the couple want to modify their property

Instead of adding a whole floor, he has decided to enlarge the loft and turn it into a fifth bedroom.

He also wants to build a first floor extension, stick in an upper ground floor roof terrace and extend the basement.

Zulufish, an architectural company acting for the Tennants, believe the proposed extension will be 'respectful' to the conservation area.

The firm said: 'It would neither stand out nor contradict with the existing precedent of the historic architectural language and would not cause a significant adverse effect to its neighbours and street scene, and thus complies with relevant policies and should be approved.'

Tennant, 43, will be hoping his latest plans are received with a better response from Hounslow Council than they did last year.

He gave an impassioned speech at the community meeting, saying it would be 'heartbreaking' if a rejection of his plans meant he had to leave the area.

He said: 'We love Chiswick, we don't want to live anywhere else. We cherish everything about the area - we want to grow old here.

Plans: One of the architect's drawings for the home in Chiswick, London which is going before council planners

'It would break our hearts if we had to move on and live elsewhere.'

Marie Rabouhans, chairman of the West Chiswick and Gunnersbury Society, wasn't a fan of the proposals.

She said: 'We are delighted that David Tennant loves the area, we all do, but it's a pity this house isn't like the Tardis.'
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Millions of Americans are under winter weather advisories as Winter Storm Ursula drops snow on the Northeast.

The storm has dropped more than nine inches in Michigan as the wintry blast follows another storm that dropped up to six inches of snow Sunday on parts of Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island.

The National Weather Service warned Monday that Winter Storm Ursula, which is part of a series of clipper systems, had settled over the Northeast, with winds expected to subside but cold temperatures to remain.

By Monday evening Ursula dumped more than a half foot of snow to parts of New York, Massachusetts, Vermont and Rhode Island, according to the weather service.

The snowfall has been particularly vicious in in Albany, New York, and parts of Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire.

Despite it being one of the Northeast's mildest winters on record, West Shokan, New York, received eight inches of snow, followed by seven inches in Woodford, Vermont.

The wintry weather has caused two deaths with a couple being killed Sunday morning when a tree fell on their car in Abington, Massachusetts.

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Unexpected chill: The Northeastern U.S. braced as Winter Storm Ursula dropped some early spring snow from New York to Maine

A jogger runs along a snow-covered path near the banks of the Charles River in Boston. Winter Storm Ursula is part of a series of clipper systems impacting the Midwest and Northeast, according to the National Weather Service

People make their way along a snow-covered bridge over the Charles River in Boston. The storm has continued into Monday night

A plow clears a sidewalk near the banks of the Charles River in Boston. Ursula dumped more than a half foot of snow to parts of New York, Massachusetts, Vermont and Rhode Island

A cyclist rides down a snow-covered ramp over the Charles River. Snowfall rates have been locally heavy in Massachusetts

A man walks through falling snow in front of the New York State Capitol building in Albany. The area has also been highly impacted by the snowfall

Police have identified the two people who were killed Sunday morning as 49-year-old Franklin Teixeira and his wife 51-year-old Manuela Teixeira of Whitman.

Firefighters responded to find the couple trapped inside their 2015 BMW. They were freed and rushed to South Shore Hospital where they were pronounced dead, according to CBS.

Franklin Teixeira was driving when snow and high winds appeared to knock the rotted-and-hollowed tree over onto the car, according to the Plymouth County District Attorneys Office.

Accumulating snow was expected to fall from the Great Lakes east to New England, it said, with 'several inches' of snow expected to cause tricky driving conditions for morning commuters.

'There will be some slippery spots,' Weather Channel meteorologist Kevin Roth said.

Snow is falling across upstate New York, where forecasters say up to 10 inches of snow is possible.

Millions of Americans are under winter weather advisories as they brace themselves for a second batch of spring snow. Falling snow sits on flowers in the Public Garden during a spring snow storm in Boston, Massachusetts

The early spring cold front has dropped more than 9 inches in Michigan as the wintry blast follows another storm that dropped up to 6 inches of snow Sunday on parts of Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island

The National Weather Service warned Monday that an early spring 'Arctic airmass' had settled over the Northeast, with winds expected to subside but cold temperatures to remain

Cold weather is expected to persist, with snow continuing to fall throughout Monday in some areas

Police have identified the two people who were killed Sunday morning as 49-year-old Franklin Teixeira (right) and his wife 51-year-old Manuela Teixeira (left) of Whitman. They were driving when snow and high winds appeared to knock a tree over onto their car

Freezing, 40-mile-per-hour wind gusts were no help to first responders in central New York Sunday. It's believed whiteout conditions caused a dozen vehicles to pile up on Interstate 88, according to CBS. No one was injured.

Wind gusts of up to 30mph have been reported in western New York. Downed power lines caused nearly 40,000 outages across the state.

The weather left about 370,000 utility customers from Wisconsin to Maine without power Sunday morning, officials said.

The most significant power failures were in Pennsylvania, where about 82,000 customers were in the dark.

At least nine injuries had been reported in the Midwest and the Northeast on account of the wind, although officials classified them all as non-life-threatening, according to NBC.

New York state police say a tour bus, three tractor-trailers and eight passenger vehicles were involved in the pileup in the town of Maryland, 55 miles west of Albany. Only minor injuries were reported.

Whipping winds have toppled hundreds of trees across New York City.

Current temperatures up and down the Northeast range from 58 to 13 degrees, according to The Weather Channel for Monday

Despite it being one of the mildest winters on record, the National Weather Service says several inches of snow could fall Monday from Buffalo, New York, to Boston

The city Department of Parks and Recreation on Sunday received reports of as many as 324 downed trees, according to The Wall Street Journal.

About 108 trees came down in Brooklyn, 100 in Queens, 72 on State Island and 40 in the Bronx. Manhattan had a handful of fallen trees.

The National Weather Service says 64 mph winds were recorded at JFK Airport and 45 mph in Central Park on Sunday.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority says service was temporarily suspended after a tree crashed on the elevated tracks of the northbound No. 4 early Sunday near Woodlawn station in the Bronx.

A tree also fell on the southbound track of the Q train in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn.

Wind gusts topping 60mph blew off rooftops in New Jersey and collapsed abandoned buildings in Maryland.

The sudden arrival of such cold weather after a period of warmth is due to a freeing up of the Arctic air, which had been locked up in the north through much of winter by a period of high pressure in the northern US states, AccuWeather said in a separate analysis.

That caused a west-to-east flow of air to dominate the region.

However, this first week of April is seeing that high pressure front moving westwards, at the same time as the Polar Vortex moves southwards, causing cold air to be brought down and through northernmost East Coast states.

'April sunshine, a lack of snowcover and many ice-free areas on water bodies along the way will modify that air as it moves southward,' AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Brett Anderson reported.

The sudden arrival of such cold weather after a period of warmth is due to a freeing up of the Arctic air, which had been locked up in the north through much of winter by a period of high pressure in the northern US states

This first week of April is seeing the high pressure front moving westwards, at the same time as the Polar Vortex moves southwards, causing cold air to be brought down and through northernmost East Coast states
The US Navy says it has seized a weapons shipment in the Arabian Sea from Iran likely heading to war-torn Yemen.

The USS Sirocco intercepted and seized the shipment of weapons hidden aboard a small dhow last week.A statement confirmed that the dhow's crew were released after sailors confiscated the arms.

The Navy said the shipment included 1,500 Kalashnikov assault rifles, 200 rocket-propelled grenade launchers and 21 .50-caliber machine guns.

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The Navy said the shipment included 1,500 Kalashnikov assault rifles, 200 rocket-propelled grenade launchers and 21 .50-caliber machine guns

Officials have linked similar weapons seizures to Iran and the Shiite rebels, though the rebels deny receiving support from the Islamic Republic

A Saudi-led, US-backed coalition has been fighting in Yemen against Shiite rebels and their allies there since last year.

Officials have linked similar weapons seizures to Iran and the Shiite rebels, though the rebels deny receiving support from the Islamic Republic.

The news comes after Yemen's President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi relieved prime minister and vice president Khaled Bahah of his duties yesterday due to what he called government 'failures'.

Bahah's surprise dismissal comes just a week ahead of a UN-brokered ceasefire planned between Yemen's warring parties, which is expected to pave the way for peace talks in Kuwait on April 18.

Hadi appointed Ahmed bin Dagher, former secretary general of the General People's Congress party to which the president once belonged, as prime minister, according to a decision published on the official sabanew.net website.

Dozens of rifles and bullets were uncovered aboard the small dhow in the Arabian Sea

A Saudi-led, U.S.-backed coalition has been fighting in Yemen against Shiite rebels and their allies there since last year

Adding to the unrest, the local militiamen who fought alongside the government to retake Aden from the rebels last summer have clashed with guards protecting the presidential palace to protest unpaid wages

Bahah's government has 'failed to ease the suffering of our people, resolve their problems and provide their needs,' Hadi said in a statement

He appointed veteran General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar as vice president, and a presidency source said that Bahah would now serve as a presidential advisor.

Hadi said the decision to replace Bahah was 'due to the failures that have accompanied the performance of the government during the past period in the fields of economy, services, and security'.

Bahah's government has 'failed to ease the suffering of our people, resolve their problems and provide their needs,' Hadi said in a statement.

Iran-backed rebels have been in control of capital Sanaa since 2014, forcing the government to declare second-city Aden as temporary capital.

But Hadi and many government officials, including Bahah, spend most of their time in Riyadh as they struggle to secure Aden and other parts of the country where Sunni jihadists have gained ground.

Adding to the unrest, the local militiamen who fought alongside the government to retake Aden from the rebels last summer have clashed with guards protecting the presidential palace to protest unpaid wages despite Hadi's orders to merge them with the security forces.

Hadi spoke of a 'lack of a proper government administration of the unlimited support from our brothers in the Arab coalition, notably Saudi Arabia' which is leading an alliance against the rebels.

The USS Sirocco intercepted and seized the shipment of weapons hidden aboard a small dhow last week.A statement confirmed that the dhow's crew were released after sailors confiscated the arms

The news comes after Yemen's President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi relieved prime minister and vice president Khaled Bahah of his duties yesterday due to what he called government 'failures'

Hadi spoke of a 'lack of a proper government administration of the unlimited support from our brothers in the Arab coalition, notably Saudi Arabia' which is leading an alliance against the rebels
House Speaker Paul Ryan is the dream candidate many in Washington Republican circles think will end up being the GOP nominee if there's a contested convention in Cleveland.

In this morning's Politico Playbook, Mike Allen wrote that one of the nation's 'best-wired Republicans' sees a 60 percent change of convention deadlock, followed by a 90 percent chance the convention delegates turn to Ryan, who was the vice presidential nominee the last time around.

'He's the most conservative, least establishment member of the establishment. That's what you need,' said the source, who gives Ryan a 54 percent chance of becoming the nominee, perhaps on the fourth ballot.

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House Speaker Paul Ryan says he's not interested in becoming the GOP nominee, even though one Republican insider thinks he'll be picked by convention delegates over Donald Trump in July

House Speaker Paul Ryan gave a speech to Capitol Hill interns in late March asking for heightened political discourse in what many viewed as a swipe at Donald Trump

Republicans have been pitching in financially with nearly $40,000 already raised on Crowdpac for Ryan, if he sprints away with the nomination.

Juleanna Glover, a well-known Republican lobbyist, suggested in an op-ed in the Washington Post that GOP donors 'get the real anti-Trump candidate of your dreams' by throwing donations at candidates on Crowdpac, and if said candidate becomes a reality, he or she has access to the money.

Ryan, for his part, has publicly, continually expressed disinterest.

'People put my name in this thing, I said, "Get my name out of that,"' Ryan told radio host Hugh Hewitt on Monday, being interviewed from Israel, as he makes his first tour of the country as Speaker of the House. 'This is  if you want to be president, you should go run for president. And that is the way I see it.'

As Politico noted, Ryan made similar statements to the Times of Israel. 'I decided not to run for president,' Ryan said. 'I think you should run if you're going to be president. I think you should start in Iowa and run to the tape.'

But Hewitt had heard the chatter too.

'So you're not the fresh face that Karl Rove was talking about?' Hewitt asked Ryan.

Rove had, last week, described the type of Republican, someone who has 'convictions that they can express in a compelling way,' who might excite the base of the party and not terribly disappoint those who back GOP frontrunner Donald Trump.

That Republican sounded a lot like Ryan, which he denied.

'I'm not the fresh face. I'm not that person,' he said, adding 'I'd like to think my face is somewhat fresh,' he joked.

'I'm not for this conversation. I think you need to run for president in order to be president. I am not running for president, so, period. End of story,' Ryan added.

But according to Allen's reporting, Ryan still does have that White House ambition and is playing it exactly the same way he did when he ascended to Speaker of the House, another job he first said he had no interest in.

'But of course in this environment, saying you don't want the job is the ONLY way to get it,' Allen wrote in Playbook. 'If he was seen to be angling for it, he'd be strained and disqualified by the current mess.'

Ryan has done at least one thing as of late to make himself seem more presidential.

Speaking to a crop of Capitol Hill interns last month, Ryan outlined his vision for a more 'confident' America, in which people could tussle over ideas, but not spew vitriol at one another.

'We shouldn't accept ugliness as the norm, we should demand better for ourselves,' Ryan implored.

'Instead of playing to your anxieties we can appeal to your aspirations. Instead of playing the identity politics of our base versus their base, we unite people around ideas and principles,' Ryan continued.
A mother who was paralyzed while saving her young sons from a tornado 10 years ago says she would do it all over again if her children's lives were on the line.

Amy Hawkins, 44, suffered horrific injuries after a huge tornado tore through and destroyed her home as she and sons Jair and Cole cowered in the basement.

The heroic mother's spine was severed as she was buried in a pile of bricks, but her body acted as a buffer between the weight of the falling debris and her boys, who were just six and three years old.

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Hero: Amy Hawkins (pictured in 2010 with her sons Jair and Cole) was paralyzed while saving her young sons from a tornado 10 years ago but says she would do it all over again if she had to

Sacrifice: Mrs Hawkins (pictured with her husband Jerrord and sons Jair and Cole) suffered horrific injuries after a huge tornado tore through and destroyed her home as she and her sons cowered in the basement

Brave: Mrs Hawkins' spine was severed as she was buried in a pile of bricks, but her body acted as a buffer between the weight of the falling debris and her boys, who were just six and three years old

The massive storm tore down the family's home in Hendersonville, Tennessee, on April 7, 2006.

Mrs Hawkins had just got home with her children when her firefighter husband, Jerrod, called to let her know that the fierce winds were minutes away.

The mother-of-two - who is now wheelchair-bound - rushed her children down to the basement and laid on top of them, reciting the Lord's Prayer, she told the Detroit Free Press.

She has little memory of what happened next, but has dreams about the last brick hitting her before she fell unconscious.

A neighbor later found the boys and took them to hospital, but Mrs Hawkins could not be moved because of her crumpled spine.

She has undergone a remarkable recovery since, but is paralyzed from the waist down and may never walk again.

Despite this, Mrs Hawkins says she has no regrets.

'I've always told [my sons], "I saved you once. If I've got to do it again, I'll fall out of my wheelchair and do it again",' she said.

On the mend: Mrs Hawkins (pictured arriving back home in 2006) has undergone a remarkable recovery, but is paralyzed from the waist down and may never walk again.

Family: The heroic mother says she would do it all over again to protect her sons (pictured together in 2014)

Together: Nine-and-a-half years after moving in, the Hawkins family (Pictured, Mrs Hawkins, her husband Jerrod, Jair and Cole) are finally ready for a new chapter in their lives and are preparing to move house

'I've never asked why. I'm here. I saved the boys. If it meant that I died then so be it.'

Mrs Hawkins' family has a history of parents dying while their children are young, with her own stepfather passing away when she was 11.

'For three generations in my family, a parent has died. So I asked God while I was young to never take me away from my kids. He didnt take me away, so thats why I dont ask why.'

Jair and Cole, who are now 16 and 13 years old, have their own memories of the moment their house fell in on them.

'I remember my mom opened up the door ... and seeing a cloud coming at us,' Cole said.

He woke up to 'bricks everywhere' but was taken to safety and went on to fully recover, alongside his brother.

The tornadoes in Tennessee that April killed 10 people, tore down dozens of homes and caused $650 million in damage.

Mrs Hawkins' recovery is still ongoing. Her spine and ribs were crushed, her lungs were punctured and she suffered severe head injuries as her house collapsed on top of her.

She has undergone numerous operations, including having titanium rods placed inside her back, and hopes to one day walk again.

Her heroic story of sacrifice warmed the hearts of the nation and led 2,000 volunteers to club together to build the family a new home.

Nine-and-a-half years after moving in, the Hawkins family are finally ready for a new chapter in their lives and are preparing to move out of the house and onto a farm.
Donald Trump won all of Arizona's Republican convention delegates last month, but he could lose half of them to Ted Cruz if he can't secure the presidential nomination on the first ballot in July.

The Texas senator is out-hustling the billionaire to install his loyalists among the 58 delegates in Arizona. While all of them will be 'bound' to support Trump in the first round of voting, they will be free to change allegiances after that.

The actual people who will fill those slots will be chosen in a series of local elections in the coming days, and finalized during an upcoming state convention.

Cruz's superior ground game there could pay dividends in the long run, as he works to poach as much of Trump's delegate total as he can.

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WORKING THE GROUND GAME: Ted Cruz is installing his own loyalists as Arizona's GOP convention delegates, hoping they'll bolt from Donald Trump if the billionaire fails to win the nomination on the first ballot

MAN OF THE PEOPLE, NOT OF THE DELEGATES: Trump might fall just short of a majority of delegates before July's convention and lose it all as delegates flee him after the first ballot

'Cruz, out of all the campaigns, has the most folks on the ground and has been the most organized,' Michael Noble, a Republican consultant in Arizona who is neutral, told the Washington Examiner.

'Trump has no real organization in Arizona,' added GOP strategist Sean Noble (no relation to Michael Noble). 'Cruz will get most/all Arizona delegates on second ballot.'

Trump is ahead of Cruz by a 736-463 margin in the overall delegate count with the Wisconsin primary looming on Tuesday.

If Cruz wins convincingly there, he could add as many as 42 delegates to his total, although a more likely scenario would be a 32-12 drubbing.

The senator is leading the real estate tycoon in recent polls by anywhere from six to 10 percentage points.

Trump needs to reach the magic number of 1,237 delegates  the slimmest majority possible  in order to avoid a floor fight during the July convention in Cleveland.

That's when Cruz's mission to 'flip' Trump's delegates  a group that includes his own loyal supporters  will take its turn.

WISCONSIN PUSH: Trump and Cruz are locking in a fight for the Badger State's 42 delegates in Tuesday's primary

Trump's so-called 'bound' delegates, including those Cruz partisans, have no choice in voting on the first ballot. Even if they should go rogue and vote for Cruz in the first go-round, the convention secretary will record their votes as though they had supported Trump.

But in a second ballot, all bets are off.

Cruz's grassroots organizing skill, which helped him snare a win in the Iowa caucuses two months ago, was on display over the weekend in North Dakota, where his staffing muscle persuaded state Republican leaders to award him 18 of the 25 delegates in that state.

A similar scenario may unfold in the coming days in Colorado, where the state Republican Party opted this year against holding a presidential preference vote. Instead, a series of state- and district-level conventions will choose the 37 delegates.

Cruz swept the first round on April 2, winning all six delegates in the first two congressional districts to hold their conventions.
Two men have been arrested in the strangulation death of a 16-year-old Chicago boy who lived in the troubled youth facility where they worked.

James Davis, 37, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and obstruction of justice in the death of Shaquan Allen. Justin Serak, 27, has been charged with obstruction of justice.

Allen was having a behavioral episode when Davis and Serak each grabbed hold of an arm and tried to drag him to his bedroom at the Allendale Association in Lake Villa, police said.

As the struggle continued, Serak grabbed Allen's legs while Davis 'put him in a chokehold' to take control of the teen's upper body, Lake County State's Attorney Michael Nerheim said.

James Davis, 37, (left) and Justin Serak, 27, (right) have been charged in the strangulation death of Shaquan Allen, 16, who lived in the Illinois troubled youth facility where both men worked

Allen immediately lost consciousness, but it would be 15 minutes before any of the residential facility's staff called 911, authorities said.

One of the men then tried to revive Allen by throwing water at his face. Davis and Serak initially told police that the teen slipped and fell after knocking over a cup of water to explain his injuries, Nerheim said.

Allen (pictured) was having a behavioral episode when Serak grabbed the teen's legs and Davis 'put him in a chokehold' that eventually led to his death

There were up to 16 witnesses and a staff nurse tried to resuscitate Allen before the emergency call was finally placed to Lake Villa police, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Allen was pronounced dead at the hospital on Wednesday night. The cause of death was listed as suffocation due to asphyxiation.

The teen's death has devastated his family, who revealed that Allen had been receiving treatment at the facility for three years after problems began in 2007 following his father's death.

'I want to know how could this happen to my baby,' Allen's mother Willie Mae Allen said.

'Nobody is telling me anything to let me know what's really going on. He was only 16 years old. I didn't send him there for that.'

'I sent him to get help, because I didn't want to lose him to the streets.'

Cannon Lambert Sr, the family's attorney, said they were told three different versions of Allen's death and that 'none of them coincide with each other'.

Authorities said the 16 witnesses contracted Davis' and Serak's account of what happened to Allen.

It was Serak who then told police they had made up their original story, according to the Daily Herald.

'It's really disturbing for his mother to have this happen,' Lambert told the Tribune.

'She is in a gang-riddled area and she was trying her best to keep him out of harm's way. This type of thing shouldn't be happening.'

Authorities said the investigation is ongoing and more charges could be filed. A lawsuit has not yet been filed in Allen's death.

The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, which was 53 wards of the state at Allendale, is also investigating the incident and all intakes at the facility have been put on hold.

Allendale Association is a private, nonprofit that houses more than 300 adolescents with moderate to profound emotional and behavioral disabilities.

Daily Mail Online has reached out to the Allendale Association for comment.

Allendale Association (pictured) is a private, nonprofit that houses more than 300 adolescents with moderate to profound emotional and behavioral disabilities

It describes itself as a place that helps kids be 'safe, sound and ready to learn,' on its website.

This has been the fourth incident at the facility in the last 10 years. Police previously responded to two separate incidents of misdemeanor battery, as well as an inappropriate texting incident.

Davis remained in custody this weekend on $1million bail. Serak's bail was set at $50,000 and he was released after posting bond on Saturday.

Asielene Allen, the teen's grandmother, said that the tragedy has left the family devastated and his mother unable to sleep.

'My heart is really hurting,' she said.
Colour Sergeant John Norwood is on trial for attempted murder and wounding with intent

A soldier who auditioned on the X Factor attacked a lance sergeant with a machete in his room on a British army barracks, a court heard today.

Colour Sergeant John Norwood, 38, had previously fought with his victim Lance Sergeant James Warnock, 24, in a pub near Mons Barracks in Aldershot, Hampshire.

After returning to base, Norwood searched for Warnock and slashed at him with the machete several times - cutting down to the bone on his right shoulder.

While looking for his victim, Norwood, originally from Glasgow, also swung the blade at another man, Nicholas Wood, 24, who managed to move his legs and escape injury.

Norwood is known to colleagues for his singing and once auditioned for ITV talent show The X Factor.

David Richards, prosecuting, said all three men were serving soldiers with the First Battalion Scots Guards at the time of the attack in July last year .

Opening the trial, Mr Richards said: 'For the attack on Mr Wood, the accused went to his room, he kicked the door open and swung towards Mr Wood with a machete.

'Mr Wood was able to avoid the blow by pulling his legs up. There was another swing of the machete and the force of those blows was sufficient to cut the duvet on the bed.

'It seems that Mr Norwood had the wrong room. He left and at about 5am he found his 'intended target'.'

He continued: 'He knocked on the door and when Mr Warnock answered he was attacked. The accused raised the machete above his head and swung at him.

'He landed several blows, the worst to Mr Warnock's right shoulder where he sliced through down to the bone.

'Inches higher, it wouldn't have been his shoulder. It would have been his neck.'

Only after he was struck several times, Mr Wood was able to grab Norwood in a bear hug and pleaded: 'Look at the state of us. We need to go to the guard room.'

Winchester Crown Court heard that, hours before the attack, Norwood had approached Mr Warnock at The George pub in Aldershot and slapped him in the face.

Although the dispute appeared to end with them shaking hands, Norwood 'wasn't happy' and began banging the bar with his hands and pointing at Mr Warnock.

Mr Warnock then floored Norwood with punches when he felt 'threatened' and 'cornered' by him, the court heard.

Guardsman Ben Jack, also of the Scots Guards, told the court that he had been in the pub with L/Sgt Warnock and had seen Norwood slap him. He said that he went to the defendant and told him 'that's not on'.

Ben Jack (left) witnessed the fight at the pub. Nicholas Wood (right) narrowly avoided injury, the court heard

Guardsman Jack said that Norwood then 'gave me a cuddle, a playful bite on the ear'.

He said that he saw L/Sgt Warnock then being 'cornered' by the defendant but he did not know the reason for the disagreement.

Police were called to the pub and after talking with both men, Mr Warnock was allowed to continue drinking elsewhere.

Meanwhile Norwood, who was quartermaster sergeant for the battalion and had keys to the weapons store on site, retrieved the machete used to attack from the store, the court heard.

Mr Richards said: 'Having got the machete he went to find Mr Warnock, he went to the wrong room, and that was at 3.30 in the morning - the incident with Mr Wood.

'He continued hunting for Mr Warnock and eventually when he found him, he swung at him, slashing blows with a machete as the man tried to defend himself.'

Mr Warnock said Norwood first approached him as he waited at the bar in the pub and told him: 'There's something about your face I don't like.'

Describing the struggle with the machete, he said: 'What woke me up was a knock on my door.

'I opened the door and Mr Norwood was there. There was no conversation between us and immediately I felt a strike on my upper body and I wasn't really sure what it was.'

The attack happened at Mons Barracks in Aldershot, where the men were serving in the Scots Guards

He continued: 'It was actually when he noticed the wound in his own arm that he stopped. That's when he dropped the weapon.

'After he dropped it I ran down to the guards room and I didn't appreciate what injuries I had.'

Witnesses described how there was a trail of blood from the guards room to the accommodation block.

When Norwood was arrested and interviewed by police, he handed them a prepared statement claiming he was bottled in the pub.

Norwood denies attempting to murder Mr Warnock and an alternative charge of unlawfully and maliciously wounding him with intent to do gross bodily harm.
Two British mothers drowned on holiday in Costa Brava when one tried to save the other from 15ft waves after they went for a dip on their way home from the nightclub, an inquest has heard.

Lisa Coggins, 35, and Tracey Aston, 32, were walking home with friends in the Spanish resort of Lloret de Mar just before 3am when some of the group decided to go for a swim.

But moments after Ms Aston entered the 'calm waters', a giant wave knocked her over and she was dragged out to sea.

Lisa Coggins (right), 35, and Tracey Aston (left), 32, died in October last year when Ms Coggins tried to rescue her friend, who had gone for a late-night swim

Ms Coggins, a mother-of-two who worked at Costco, then dived in to try and reach Ms Aston, but was also swept away from the shore.

Despite a local barman raising the alarm, the women, both from Castle Bromwich, Birmingham, disappeared from view. Their bodies were found six hours later.

Today, at an inquest into her death, the coroner was told how the 'awful tragedy' took place just minutes after the group of friends had been talking about 'how nice' the holiday was.

After the inquest, Ms Aston's family criticised the lack of warning signs on the stretch of beach, claiming authorities had not done enough to protect the women.

In a statement read out after the inquest, Tracey's mum Tina Tysall urged holidaymakers to be aware of the dangers of swimming off the Spanish coast, claiming her daughter's death could have been prevented if there was 'proper safety measures in place'.

She said: 'Tracey lived for her family and would never have put herself in any danger.

'There was no warning signs on that beach. There was no sign on the beach of any danger. We flew out to that beach the following week and there were still no warning signs. The following week another young woman lost her life. There were still no flags.

'I can never bring my beautiful girl back, but what I can do is tell everyone how very very dangerous that stretch of beach is. Had there been life buoys to pull Tracey and Lisa back in, they could have survived and we would have our girl here.

Ms Aston, a hairdresser, is pictured with her mother Tina (left), her father Martin and her sister Martine (right)

Ms Coggins (left) drowned as she tried to save Ms Aston (pictured right with her two children Kye and Kamron)

'There have been over 200 drownings in one year off the Spanish coast, why has this not been reported? This could have been prevented had there been proper safety measures in place.

'Please, please be aware of the dangers on that beach.'

The inquest heard the women had been on a four-day break in October last year with Joanne Worth, 33, and sisters Italia Kilmister, 30 and Grazia Sassona, 33.

In a witness statement, Miss Kilmister said the group were walking along the beach when Ms Aston and Ms Worth decided to run down to the sea.

She told the hearing: 'Both ran a few steps and then both of them fell down and couldn't regain their footing.

'A few waves threw them around. I could now see something was wrong. A large wave came and pushed Joanne towards the shore, but took Tracey backwards and out.

'I took Joanne in and calmed her down. At this point Grazia Sassano came down and ran back up to ask a barman for help.

'As she ran up, Lisa came down to see what was going on. I told her to call out to Tracey and tell her which way to swim.'

Miss Kilmister said she then heard shouting as Ms Aston entered the water.

'Tracey was trying to swim towards the shore. The barman said not to swim against the current, so she went away from the shore,' she said.

The coroner was told how the 'awful tragedy' took place just minutes after the group of friends had been talking about 'how nice' the holiday was. They were with friends in the resort of Lloret de Mar, Costa Brava

'The lifeguards came and had torches pointed out to sea. Tracey held onto a life buoy, then a large wave came and knocked her off the buoy. I saw her tread water for about 20 minutes and then she went under.'

In her statement read out to the coroner, Ms Worth said the pair were knocked over as they went into the water and 'ended up on all fours'.

'The next thing I remember sitting up and asking where Lisa was. I broke down,' she said. 'I then remember looking out to the sea hoping to see Tracey and Lisa appear, but they wouldn't.

'A helicopter then appeared and about 20 minutes after I had seen Lisa treading water.'

In her witness statement, Miss Sassano said she and Ms Aston had been speaking for a few minutes on the beach about how great the holiday had been so far.

'Tracey wanted a quick dip and Joanne was going to have a paddle. They ran down to the sea,' she said.

'Tracey removed her dress and Joanne lifted her skirt. By the time I got there there seemed to be something wrong. The next thing I knew Joanne was on the shore and unresponsive.

'I heard Tracey shouting to me and I shouted to the barman who saw we needed help. We ran back to the sea and he was on his phone. Then some men came with torches.

'They were shining them towards Tracey, but after about ten or 15 minutes I couldn't see Tracey anymore.'

A post-mortem found Tracey had 1.45g of alcohol per litre of blood and Lisa had 1.9g per litre of blood at the time of their deaths - around twice the legal drink-drive limit.

Recording a conclusion of accidental death due to asphyxia for the two women, head coroner Louise Hunt said the deaths were an 'awful tragedy'.

She added: 'This is just an absolute tragedy when a young woman went with friends into the sea and was just not able to judge how rough the sea was in such a shallow part of the bay.

'For both sets of family no-one can understand the pain and grief you are all suffering.

'I do hope you can remember the fun loving Tracy who loved her family and Tracy, how she was very loving but you knew where you stood with her. I hope you can remember these people, and not this tragedy.'

Ms Tysall described her daughter as 'outgoing' and said was a 'swimmer through and through'.

'She loved her family through and through. She loved her boys, her husband.. She was very family oriented,' she said.

'She could be a princess one second, going out in sparkles, and the next day she would be digging trenches, making a den with her boys.

'She was a swimmer through and through. Every photo we have of her as a child she was on the beach or by the sea. She loved the water.
Senegal has agreed to take in two Libyans who spent nearly 14 years in custody at the U.S. base in Cuba without charge, becoming the second country in West Africa to accept former detainees, officials said Monday.

Salem Abdu Salam Ghereby, 55, and Omar Khalif Mohammed Abu Baker Mahjour Umar, who records show is about 44, were both members of the Libya Islamic Fighting Group, an organization that sought the ouster of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and had been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. since 2004.

Mahjour Umar had been held on suspicion of helping re-establish Al-Qaeda camps following their destruction by US bombings in 1998, and was identified as an explosives and weapons trainer, according to his leaked file.

Transferred: Salem Abdu Salam Ghereby (left), 55, and Omar Khalif Mohammed Abu Baker Mahjour Umar, 44, who spent nearly 14 years in custody at Guantanamo Bay (file photo of the U.S. base is pictured above) in Cuba without charge have been transferred to Senegal

Gherebys file states he had attended multiple training camps and received explosives training from a senior Al-Qaeda explosives expert. Neither man was ever charged.

Khalif's lawyer, Ramzi Kassem, said his client is looking forward to 'receiving proper medical care' as he is missing his right leg below the knee after stepping on a land mine in Afghanistan in 1998. He is also blind in one eye, and has shrapnel in his leg and arm.

'This is a bittersweet moment. I'm unsure why a half-blind, one-legged man with only one fully-functioning arm, and whose only supposed crime was to object to the Gadhafi dictatorship in his native Libya, was not freed years ago,' said Kassem, a professor at City University of New York School of Law.

Ghereby had dropped a legal challenge to his detention after he was cleared for transfer from Guantanamo by U.S. authorities in 2010.

He is hoping that his wife and three children, including a daughter born after he was taken into custody, will be able to join him in Senegal, according to his lawyer, Richard Wilson, a retired law professor from American University in Washington.

'He was thrilled when he heard that Senegal was receptive to family reunification,' Wilson said.

Their departure comes amid an effort by President Barack Obama to release Guantanamo prisoners who are no longer deemed a threat and to eventually close the detention center, a prospect that faces strong opposition in U.S. Congress.

Close its doors: Their departure comes amid an effort by President Barack Obama to release Guantanamo (file photo pictured above) prisoners who are no longer deemed a threat and to eventually close the detention center, a prospect that faces strong opposition in U.S. Congress

With the release of the two Libyans, there are 89 men left, including 35 cleared for release who are expected to be gone within months.

The most prominent of those to be resettled over the next several weeks is Tariq Bah Odah, a 37-year-old Yemeni on a long-term hunger strike. He has been force-fed by nasal tube since he stopped eating solid food in 2007.

His weight had dropped to 74 pounds from 148 and his legal team feared he could die of starvation, according to a Reuters at the end of December.

The transfers to Senegal were the second to Africa in recent months. Two Yemeni detainees were sent to Ghana in January. Others were sent recently sent to Oman, Bosnia and Montenegro.

Neither of the two Libyans could be sent back to the homeland they fled in the 1990s because of the instability there unleashed by the violent overthrow of Gadhafi. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry expressed thanks that Senegal agreed to take the men.

'The United States appreciates the generous assistance of the government of Senegal as the United States continues its efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility,' Kerry said. 'This significant humanitarian gesture is consistent with Senegal's leadership on the global stage.'

Senegal's Foreign Affairs Ministry confirmed they would be receiving the former detainees in a statement released Monday on the country's independence day. It cited the 'Senegalese tradition of hospitality' and Islamic solidarity.

Khalif, who had been cleared by a U.S. government review board last year, was described in a profile issued by the Pentagon as having worked for a company owned by Osama bin Laden in Sudan after he fled Libya in the 1990s.

He later moved to Afghanistan, where he allegedly fought against the Northern Alliance in its war with the Taliban.

Kassem, his lawyer, said that a U.S. federal court judge found there was no evidence that he was ever involved in any attacks on the U.S. or its allies. Both men relocating to Senegal were captured in Pakistan.

More than two dozen countries have now taken nearly 100 former Guantanamo prisoners since 2009.

These are the first to go to Senegal, though the West African nation of Ghana also has accepted two former detainees.

Their arrival comes amid growing concern about Islamic extremism in Senegal.

Officials in the moderate, predominantly Muslim country on West Africa's coastline have grown increasingly concerned about the threat of jihadis in recent months.

Al-Qaida's North Africa branch has carried out a series of deadly attacks on places popular with foreigners, including hotels, a restaurant and a beach in the region.

Senegal is now widely considered a possible next target after the attacks in Mali, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast.

As a result, security has been significantly enhanced at upscale international hotels, along with French-owned grocery stores and restaurants in the normally peaceful capital.

Armed police officers in flak jackets search the contents of all vehicles entering the parking lot of Dakar's sole upscale shopping center.
Police arrested a woman, 19, on suspicion of theft and released on bail

A woman was arrested on suspicion of stealing more than 1,000 from toddler's funeral fund.

Two-year-old Issac Brocklehurst was killed by a tipper truck after he accidentally rode his toy out on to a main road in Shipley, West Yorkshire, on February 23.

His grieving family set up a fund to help mother Gemma cover the funeral costs and well-wishers offered to help raise money, including the 19-year-old woman arrested by police.

But when it came time to hand over the funds the woman, who has not been named, reportedly 'dropped off the radar' and police were notified. She was arrested and released on bail yesterday.

Two-year-old Issac Brocklehurst, right and left with his mother, died after he was struck by a tipper truck

His family set up a fund to help cover the cost of his funeral, pictured, but some of the money disappeared

Grandmother Anita Brocklehurst, 45, said her family had not known the woman before Issac's death but 'took her in' after she offered to help raise money.

'We know that [the woman] and a friend had set up a page to raise funds for Issac's funeral,' she said. 'She was the one looking after the money but her friend did the fundraising.'

Issac's funeral was held on March 10. A horse-drawn horse travel to St Paul's Church in Shipley before a private burial in nearby Bingley.

Lou Bocklehurst, Gemma's cousin, revealed how the suspected thief had been invited to ride in the family car on the way to the funeral as she had raised more than 3,000.

However once other fundraisers started to hand over their money, the woman allegedly went quiet.

Lou said: 'The family began to be fobbed off by her and then she dropped off the radar.'

Grandmother Anita Brocklehurst, 45, right, said her family had not known the suspected before Issac's death but 'took her in' after she offered to help raise money. Pictured left, 'cheeky and funny' Issac

The suspected thief had even been invited to ride in the family car on the way to the funeral, pictured, as she had raised more than 3,000 towards the costs. Grandmother Anita spoke today of her family's devastation

Grandmother Anita added: 'Gemma has been absolutely devastated by this and angry that someone could do such a thing.

'I had a very special bond with Issac and it has been so difficult for us all. This situation just adds to the grief.'

Tara Lopez Moreno, who raised money, said: 'It is unbelievable. I am absolutely stunned. Gemmas mum rang me up in absolute floods of tears. And Gemma was absolutely frantic when she rang me.

'Theres no excusing it and no condoning it.'

A West Yorkshire Police spokesman confirmed that the alleged theft had been reported to them.

They added: 'We arrested a 19-year-old female yesterday who has been interviewed at a police station and released on bail.'

Since the situation was made public, an anonymous donor has contacted family and has offered to help the family cover the costs.
They share the same interest in politics after both declaring their support for Bernie Sanders in the contest to become the Democratic presidential candidate.

And with a primary poll coming up tomorrow in Wisconsin, Hollywood actresses Shailene Woodley and Rosario Dawson donned matching jumpers when appearing at a Sanders rally in the city of Madison last night.

Both have declared their support for Sanders in the past, with Dawson even launching a scathing attack on his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton last week.

Actresses Shailene Woodley and Rosario Dawson appeared at a rally in Wisconsin for Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders

The pair, wearing similar grey jumpers have both publicly endorsed the Vermont senator for president

And the pair appeared together on stage at a Sanders rally last night, where they spoke of their support for the candidate before introducing Palestinian-American civil rights activist Linda Sarsour, who also addressed the crowd.

After they also posed for selfies with members of the audience before joining Sanders on stage for the finale of his rally, where he along with members of the bands Best Coast and Space Craft sang 'This Land Is Your Land.'

Woodley, star of Divergent, previously announced she would be actively supporting the Sanders campaign and also spoke at a rally his campaign held in Michigan.

Meanwhile Sin City star Dawson became the latest celebrity to throw her weight behind Sanders' presidential bid last week.

Woodley previously announced she would be actively supporting the Sanders campaign and also spoke at a rally his campaign held in Michigan

Sin City star Dawson became the latest celebrity to throw her weight behind Sanders' presidential bid last week, launching a scathing attack on Hillary Clinton

After the event, both actresses met with fans at the Sanders rally in Wisconsin and posed for selfies

At an event in New York on Friday, she criticized Clinton for implying that Sanders did not care about women's issues because of his response to Donald Trump's proposals that women should be punished for getting illegal abortions.

Polling shows a close race between Clinton and Sanders in Wisconsin tomorrow, but Clinton, the front-runner, has already moved on to New York, the state she was twice elected to represent in the U.S. Senate.

Sanders is battling for every vote in Wisconsin and has three rallies in the midwestern state today. He'll look ahead to Wyoming tomorrow, which voteson Saturday.

Clinton currently has 1,243 pledged delegates to her name. Sanders has a far lower 980 delegates.

Sanders is battling for every vote in Wisconsin, which holds its primary tomorrow, and has three rallies in the midwestern state today

Polling shows a close race between Clinton and Sanders in Wisconsin tomorrow for the Democratic nomination

At the end of his rally in the city of Madison last night, Sanders took to the stage with bands Best Coast and Space Craft to sing 'This Land is Your Land'

A win in Wisconsin tomorrow, where 86 delegates are at stake, will help him survive the next two rounds of voting in Wyoming and New York.

At 247 delegates, the Empire State is the single most important state on the map in terms of numbers aside from California, on June 7, with 475.

The latest polling of New York, a CBC News/YouGov survey released Sunday, has Clinton up by 10 in the state she now calls home.
A group of 28 malnourished and diseased dogs have been rescued from an abandoned trailer in Missouri.

The Humane Society of Missouri Animal Cruelty Task Force found the dogs Wednesday night on the border of Newton and Lawrence counties in Southwest Missouri.

Officials say that the dogs had suffered so much that it was not possible to tell some of their breeds.

Most of the pups had suffered severe hair loss and skin irritations, and were battling infections and internal parasites.

'It would be one of the most severe incidents that we have rolled up on': Carmen Kelly, of the Humane Society, is one of the people helping to treat the rescued dogs

Horrible conditions: Most of the pups had suffered severe hair loss and skin irritations, and were battling infections and internal parasites

The dogs appear to be small to medium size mixed-breeds.

A concerned citizen reported the incident and the owner agreed to surrender the dogs to the Humane Society of Missouri.

They will recommend to the Newton County prosecutor that the owner face animal abuse charges.

'It would be one of the most severe incidents that we have rolled up on,' Carmen Kelly of the Humane Society told Fox 4 News.

'These animals were some of the most severe that we have seen, and i have been doing this a long time

'Those dogs had been in that environment for some time. There was a deep, deep accumulation of fecal matter.

'The one thing that really struck me about this environment is that these are mostly adult dogs, mostly females with very few males.'

Members of the Humane Society of Missouri Animal Cruelty Task Force rescued the dogs from 'horrendous, filthy conditions' on a property in southwest Missouri on Wednesday night

The dogs will be transferred to the Humane Society of Missouri headquarters in St. Louis for further treatment.

They will be put up for adoption once they have fully recovered.

The Humane Society has requested donations to help them treat the dogs.

They are looking for string cheese, chicken strips and some dog toys.

Donations may be dropped off at the Humane Society of Missouri's Macklind Avenue Adoption Cente or made at www.hsmo.org.
They say history repeats itself.

I just never thought we were stupid enough to allow the same thing to happen right under our noses twice within two years.

I thought the deal was that we learned from the past and refused to make the same mistakes again in the present. In the same way I know not to marry a man twice my age or try and win a pretend job with a short man called Sugar.

But as the Austrian defence force starts sending troops to its Alpine border with Italy, I see we have learned very little from the recent migrant invasion of Europe and destruction of our culture and values.

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Sent back: Migrants are escorted off a boat by police as they arrive in Turkey from the Greek island of Lesbos

Crisis: Greece sent back the first wave of economic migrants today, pictured boarding a boat from Lesbos

Returned: A Greek ferry carrying migrants from the Greek island of Lesbos arrives in Turkey

On the same day we started sending back economic migrants to Turkey from Lesbos, Greece, Austria acknowledged that it is sending troops to the Brenner Pass where a new route has opened up  from Libya to Italy. And the numbers of migrants on their way is truly awesome in size.

If 2014 was a flood, this is the year of the Tsunami. And if you thought the last migrants were just mostly young, single men - this lot are almost exclusively so.

Austria is preparing to defend itself. Italy is about to become the new Greece.

And yet all you see on the news is a few handfuls of migrants, willingly sitting on a ferry to Turkey to start adventures new - as if the European Union has found a solution to the problem Merkel and the 'Migrants Welcome Muppets' created.

The suggestion that migrants are welcome is deeply flawed. In 2014 a record-breaking 38,000 asylum seekers were accused of committing crimes in Germany. In Hamburg alone more than 55 wallets and purses are stolen each day, 90% by males aged between 20 and 30 from North Africa and the Balkans.

Stifled by political correctness, the German authorities are playing down the lawlessness of migrants to avoid fuelling anti-migrant sentiment. The cover-up of the mass sex attacks New Years Eve in Cologne was a perfect example of the lengths the authorities would go to to protect those in the wrong.

Influx: A map showing the routes migrants take into Europe, including the one from Libya to Italy

The legal hurdles to deportation are ferociously high. To be kicked out of Germany you need to easily identifiable (despite lobbing your passport over the side of your dinghy en route to Greece) commit a crime, be sentenced to a prison term of three years or more and come from a country where they will pander to your every need on your return.

In other words, make it to Germany and you are essentially a German for life.

Last year we retched at the story of 50 men, women and children suffocated and decomposing in the back of a frozen-chicken lorry abandoned by the side of the road, dripping blood, stinking of death.

Less than two years later will we be expected to react with some kind of shock when two hundred bodies are hauled lifeless from a shipping container en route from Libya to the Italian coast?

And what will it take to turn national opinion this time? What picture will the newspapers use to melt your hearts?

Last time it took the body of Aylan Kurdi to remind us that action ought to have been taken earlier. What will it take this timea whole family? An even smaller child with an even more complicit father?

Reinforcements: Austrian police officers clashed with pro-migrant demonstrators near the Italian-Austrian border yesterday. Austrian soldiers will be deployed to the area to ensure migrants don't enter the country

Preparing to defend itself: Austrian soldiers will be sent to the border with Italy to stop migrants travelling from Libya reaching the country. Pictured, police officers clashed with protesters at the border yesterday

What will motivate the Pied Piper of displaced peoples - Merkel - to sacrifice the safety of her people in an attempt to erase the sins of Germany's past?

Like brainless lemmings, will we make the swift switch from anti-migrant sentiment to standing at train stations blowing whistles in welcome, Bob Geldof offering up spare rooms in some distorted display of snivelling self-sacrifice?

The German Development Minister, Gerd Muller, says eight to ten million migrants are on their way; currently collecting on the Libyan coast, waiting for the human traffickers to organise the containers on ships to pack them in to.

Make no mistake. Syrians are not just sitting at the border with Turkey waiting for something to happen. They are taking the long road and a different path to 'freedom'.

I was interviewed by police under caution a few months back for suggesting these people are cockroaches - able to survive the worst mankind can throw at them. But I am yet to find myself disproven.

As 260 willing souls leave Greek islands for Turkey under the eyes of the worlds press, eight to ten million more desperadoes are on their way to Germany a new route through the Med.

America may even reject visa free travel for Germans and France due to the high rates of passport forgery by migrants. Italy, Austria. How much more will it take to admit Schengen has collapsed?

Build your walls, close your borders and protect your children. North Africa is on its way.

In March 8,405 refugees arrived in Italy. Earlier this week 700 migrants were rescued from 6 boats off the coast of Libya, and four bodies were found.
Cherie Blair was surrounded by old friends today as she attended a ceremony to mark the appointment of Baroness Scotland as general secretary of the Commonwealth.

The QC and wife of former Prime Minister Tony Blair air-kissed her way through the event at the organisation's prestigious HQ in central London.

As well as guest of honour Lady Scotland, who served as Attorney General in the last Labour government, Cherie appeared pleased to see Lord Levy  who was Mr Blair's chief fundraiser as party leader.

Cherie Blair chats to Labour peer Lord Levy at the ceremony in central London today

Mrs Blair arrives at the Commonwealth HQ, and gets up close and personal with Lady Scotland

Other well-known figures at the bash included the ex-host of ITV News at Ten, Sir Trevor McDonald.

Dominican-born Lady Scotland, herself a QC, was designated as the first female Secretary-General when the Commonwealth's heads of government met last November.

The ceremony is likely to have provided some light relief for Mrs Blair after a turbulent spell.

Her law firm Omnia Strategy recently escaped disciplinary action over allegations that it received corrupt payments from an autocratic regime.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) declined to investigate after the Mail revealed how half of the 420,000 it billed the repressive Maldives government was paid by a suspected conman who is now an international fugitive.

The legal watchdog, which took action in only a quarter of the 10,000 complaints it received last year, refused to give a full explanation for its decision.

Mrs Blair and Sir Trevor McDonald applaud during the event at Marlborough House

When her appointment was announced, Lady Scotland said: 'The Commonwealth shares a great deal. It has 33 per cent of the world's population.

'It has the capacity to bring together people of all religions; concentrate on what joins us.

'It's a real opportunity to invest and work together. If you work together with people respectfully, you can bring about change. Human rights and development go hand-in-hand.'
A French cheese thief who hurled Camembert cheese at Waitrose staff before using his trolley as a battering ram is still on the run.

Bernard Conche, 67, launched the food fight at the King's Road branch in Chelsea, London, in November last year when security guards spotted him shoplifting from the cheese aisle.

He then used his trolley to attack 31-year-old duty manager Kimberly Taynor as he fled from the scene. At the time of the bizarre incident, he had already been banned from the store.

Bernard Conche, 67, hurled Camembert at staff, rammed his trolley into duty manager Kimberley Taynor (left) and kicked security guard Shah Nawaz (right) during a rampage in a Waitrose store

Today, Conche was due to be sentenced for assault but he failed to appear at Westminster Magistrates Court. A warrant has now been issued for his arrest.

Describing the incident to the court, prosecutor Ian Beeby said: The defendant was asked to leave the store by Miss Taynor and he had thrown some blocks of cheese at her which the crown say amounts to assault by beating.

One of Miss Taynors colleagues, a security guard, has intervened to assist her and he has been assaulted by beating.

Police have been called and one of the officers has been kicked in the chest as he was being placed in the police van.

The court heard Conche first attacked Miss Taynor by lifting his trolley into the air and slamming it down on her right ankle.

He then kicked security guard Shah Nawaz, 33, in the shin as he spun the trolley around in front of shocked shoppers.

Conche was due to be sentenced for the assault at the store on the King's Road, Chelsea (pictured) but he failed to appear at Westminster Magistrates Court. A warrant has now been issued for his arrest

The court was told that three members of staff eventually managed to take Conche into an office but that he kicked PC Jonathon Stanley in the chest when officers tried to put him in the police van.

Before his trial last month, Conche was seen lurking around Hammersmith Magistrates Court in a fishermans hat and Wellington boots.

But he later disappeared and failed to turn up at his trial. He was convicted in absence of two counts of assault by beating and one count of assaulting an officer in the course of his duty.
A former drug kingpin who claims to be the real-life influence for Cookie Lyon, the diva in Empire, has ramped up her bid to sue makers of the show for $300million.

Sophie Eggleston has hired a lawyer and filed new court papers alleging that producers of the Fox hit based the character, who is played by Taraji P. Henson, on her 2009 autobiography, The Hidden Hand.

She first filed a lawsuit in 2015, against the show's co-creators Lee Daniels and Danny Strong and Fox, and screenwriter Rita Miller.

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Former drug kingpin Sophia Eggleston, pictured left, who claims to be the real-life influence for Cookie Lyon, pictured right, the diva in Empire, has ramped up her bid to sue makers of the show for $300million

But now she has brought in Detroit-based lawyer Tom Heed to file new papers which back up the allegations, Page Six reported.

Eggleston, who was convicted of manslaughter for ordering a 'hit' on a man, is confident of victory.

But the defendants have refuted the claims and have asked the court to throw the lawsuit out.

Heed told Page Six: 'I certainly feel like she has a very good argument.

'What she believes is that the character of herself, especially before she went to prison, as it was expressed in the book 'The Hidden Hand,' was pretty much cribbed in total and that is now the character Cookie Lyon.'

In the show, that has a weekly audience of around 12million viewers, Henson plays a former drug boss who spends time behind bars and then orders an assassination when freed.

The lawsuit claims that 23 characteristics and plot points were taken from The Hidden Hand.

They include the fact that Eggleston has a gay son and that Lyon has a gay son.

It also includes claims that both the real and fictional ladies have taste for flashy clothes.

Eggleston, left, who has served prison time after being convicted of manslaughter, alleges that producers of the Fox hit based the character is based on her 2009 autobiography, The Hidden Hand, right

In 2011, she traveled to Los Angeles to meet with screenwriter Miller at her home and claims she gave her a copy of her book.

She says Rita spent a great amount of time taking notes and was to turn the book into a screenplay.

The suit says she got a call from Miller several months later saying she was going to pitch her story to Empire co-creator Daniels at a meeting in New Jersey.

However, months went by and Egglestone didn't understand why her book wasn't a top priority for Miller, and she stopped working with her.

But when the show aired in 2015, Eggleston says, the character Cookie - played by Taraj P. Henson - 'was similar in behavior, style of dress, and background' to her.

The suit says she was 'stunned and dismayed to see the various similarities of events and characters . . . so numerous and specific, especially . . . Cookie Lyon, that independent creation was obviously impossible.'
Guilty: Jacqueline Eide pleaded guilty to charges of trespassing on Monday for sneaking into a zoo in October and getting bitten by a tiger

A Nebraska woman who was bitten by a tiger after she sneaked into a zoo has pleaded guilty to trespassing.

Jacqueline Eide pleaded guilty Monday in Omaha and was fined $250 plus court costs. Prosecutors dropped two other misdemeanor charges in return for her plea.

33-year-old Eide was accused of sneaking into Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo following a social function there on Halloween last year.

When she reached into a cage housing an 18-year-old three-legged Malayan tiger named Mai, the big cat clamped down on her fingers with its sharp fangs, causing severe trauma.

The incident took place on Halloween night and Eide was accompanied at the zoo by a teenager, according to officials.

Eide was hospitalized for her injury and was later charged with criminal trespass, contributing to the delinquency of a child and criminal mischief.

During her initial court appearance in December, Eide's attorney, James Martin Davis, argued that his client was not trying to pet the tiger after all, according to KMTV.

The lawyer said in court that the 33-year-old animal lover told him she had her hands on the bars of the animals cage when a lion housed next door roared and possibly spooked Mai the tiger, causing her to nip her.

Ouch: Eide was bitten by this 18-year-old Malayan tiger named Mai and hospitalized for her injury

The lawyer also explained that his client had visited the big cat in the past since she had a zoo pass.

Douglas County Jail records show Ms Eide has been arrested 17 times since 2002 on a wide variety of charges, including obstruction of justice, shoplifting, graffiti and disturbing the peace.

Her vast rap sheet also includes three DUI convictions, most recently in 2011, which resulted in jail time for Eide.
Rats thrive in most environments and can spread salmonella and listeria

Bosses have launched probe into why rodent was allowed to enter branch

KFC claim restaurant was given five stars for

KFC has launched an investigation after a large rat was spotted scurrying around one of its restaurants in Belfast.

The rodent was seen by horrified diners in the Shaftesbury Square outlet of the Northern Irish capital, a branch at the heart of the city and popular with clubbers and students.

The restaurant claims it was previously rated five out of five by Belfast City Council and confirmed KFC bosses are now working hard to find out why the rat was found on the premises.

Unwelcome guest: This rat was spotted by horrified diners at the Shaftesbury Square outlet of KFC in Belfast

Scene: KFC claim that the branch, pictured, was given five stars after a hygiene inspection by the city council

The creature was captured on camera at around 8pm on Sunday, reports the Belfast Telegraph.

A spokesman for the chain, which has 800 branches across Britain, did not confirm if the restaurant had a rat problem or if it was an isolated incident.

A KFC spokesperson said: 'We take the hygiene of our restaurants extremely seriously, so we were really shocked by this and immediately closed the store. We invited the authorities to inspect the premises the very next morning, who found no trace of a pest issue, past or present, and declared the restaurant fully clear to reopen.

'Although there is a wider issue in this area of the city, the restaurant has no history of problems like this and received the highest score possible on its most recent independent hygiene inspection with 5 out of 5 stars.

'We're truly sorry this happened, but it seems it was a very unfortunate freak event.'

Rat infestations are a concern in Belfast with rodents being found in a number of cafes and homes.

According to the British Pest Control Association, rats can thrive anywhere that provides food, water and shelter.

Probe: A spokesman for KFC said bosses will now be investigating into why the rat was allowed on the site

Tough: Rats are resilient creatures and can spread diseases such as salmonella and listeria to humans

They can live in small, compact spaces such as in wall cavities, under floorboards or outside in grassy banks and under garden sheds.
Latest in a long line of threats made against US in state media

Also claimed North Korea will kill more Americans than 9/11

State media say warheads are aimed at key sites in Washington DC

North Korea threatens to launch nuclear attack on the US

North Korea has made yet another threat of nuclear attacks on the US, claiming its warheads are aimed at key sites in Washington DC and ready to 'wipe the country from history'.

State-run media claimed that North Korean strikes would kill more American citizens than 9/11, 'leaving no time [for them to] even regret or have nightmares about it'.

This follows threats of pre-emptive nuclear strikes on US soil and propaganda videos featuring a submarine-launched nuclear missile laying waste to Washington DC.

Empty threats: North Korean media published an editorial claiming planned nuclear strikes would kill more American citizens than the September 11 attacks

'If three civilian airplanes' attacks from 15 years ago resulted in 3,000 deaths and brought a nightmare to life for the US, the outbreak of our final war will wipe the country from history, leaving no time (for them to) even regret or have nightmares about it,'a bulletin published by state-run publication DPRK Today said, according to NK News.

It also claimed that North Korea's 'most powerful, miniaturized, diversified weapon systems' are currently aimed at the White House and Pentagon 'from the ground, in the air and underwater.,'

This is only the most recent threat to launch nuclear attacks on the United States which North Korea has made in recent weeks, as a response to ongoing military drills between Washington and Seoul.

Last Thursday, the totalitarian communist state claimed it is preparing to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the U.S., after claiming its warheads are capable of reaching Manhattan.

The country's Foreign Minister warned that the North Korean army has been ordered to move from preparing for potential military response to attacks on the country - to preparing to launch their own.

Propaganda machine: Another one of the images used in the article where state media claimed that North Korea has warheads aimed at Washington DC

Leader warning: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un smiles during a solid-fuel rocket engine test as the country claims planned nuclear strikes would 'wipe the U.S. from history'

A still from a propaganda video release by North Korea last month titled 'Last Chance', showing a submarine-launched nuclear missile laying waste to Washington, and concluding with the US flag in flames

Foreign Minister Lee Su-yong extended the threat to its neighbours in the south, adding that 'the Korean peninsula faces the dilemma: a thermonuclear war or peace'.

'In response to the US frenzied hysteria for unleashing a nuclear war, we have fully transferred our army from the form of military response to the form of delivering a pre-emptive strike and we state resolutely about the readiness to deliver a pre-emptive nuclear strike,' North Korea's Foreign Minister Lee Su-yong said in a statement, Yonhap News reports.

Last month, a propaganda video on titled 'Last Chance', showing a submarine-launched nuclear missile laying waste to Washington DC, and concluding with the US flag in flames.

The four-minute video speeds through the history of US-Korean relations, ending with a digitally manipulated sequence showing a nuclear missile surging through clouds, swerving back to the earth and slamming into the road in front of Washington's Lincoln Memorial.

The US Capitol building explodes in the impact and a message flashes up on the screen in Korean: 'If US imperialists budge an inch toward us, we will immediately hit them with nuclear (weapons).'

US soldiers of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit infantry take part in a live fire drill during an exercise entitled 'Ssang Yong', near South Korea's southeastern port city of Pohang this month

The 11-day exercise brings together US Marines of the 13th and 31st Marine Expeditionary Units and their South Korean counterparts, with this year's drill being the largest ever

Even before last month's exercises began, North Korea's formidable propaganda machine had been churning out articles every day condemning the US and South Korea in the strongest terms.

State newspapers and TV channels have been displaying nuclear bomb and missile mock-ups and warning it is ready at any time to launch a pre-emptive strike against the presidential residence in South Korea or even a nuclear attack on New York.

Nightly news programs have been dominated by videos of leader Kim Jong-Un watching North Korea's own drills, replete with large-scale artillery arrays firing barrages from beachfront positions into the ocean and repeated claims that the North now has an H-bomb - which it says it tested in January - and a means of taking the war to the U.S. mainland.

North Korea has fired a slew of short-range missiles and artillery shells into the sea and has threatened nuclear strikes on Washington and Seoul since the start on March 7 of the annual springtime war games between the United States and South Korea.
A gang of drug dealers have been jailed for a total of 40 years for their roles in a 250,000 network in which Class A drugs in a plant pot and baby bag.

Aaron Egan, the gang's ringleader, was jailed for 12 years for his role heading the network that stored Class A drugs in items belonging to unwitting family members.

Egan, who held influence over the rest of the gang, was caught red-handed as he dealt with Joachim Mutsago, 39, at his mother's home in Leeds, West Yorkshire.

When officers stormed the house they found 80,000 worth of cocaine hidden in a plant pot. The 1kg block of the drug was found to be of a high purity.

Aaron Egan (left), the gang's ringleader, was caught as he dealt with Joachim Mutsago (right)

Another member of the gang, Abdul Mughal, was later found with heroin and ecstasy worth a combined 47,000 in a baby bag, after he travelled to Leeds from Birmingham, West Midlands, with his partner and baby.

Mughal, 31, was stopped by police has he made his way back to the Midlands with his family.

Police then caught Sheban Ali, 39, and Newaz Rashid, 32, on the M62 heading into West Yorkshire with 35,000 in cash.

Kirstie Watson, prosecuting, told Leeds Crown Court traces of heroin were found on the notes and the money was cash they had been given from dealing drugs.

In another drugs bust, officers watched Egan and Kyle Stogden, 21, exchange drugs at a cafe in Leeds.

The drugs were then passed to Haroon Hussain, 32, and Hardeep Bhacho, 36, who were stopped by officers and found to be carrying 10,000 worth of cocaine.

Abdul Mughal (left) was found with drugs in a baby bag and Newaz Rashid (right) was found with 35,000

Leeds Crown Court heard all the incidents happened in a 25-day period in July 2014.

Egan had been on bail during the conspiracy after police found Mkat and 5,000 in cash in his house in Leeds following a raid in April 2013.

He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply class A drugs, possession of Mkat and cocaine with intent, possession of criminal property and dangerous driving.

Judge James Spencer, QC, told him: 'This was a significant and serious affair.

'It is quite clear that you cast your net out widely to put together your team. You were quite discriminate about who you involved. You saw the opportunity for significant personal gain.'

Mutsago, of Sawbridgeworth, Hertforshire, was jailed for 10 years after being found guilty of conspiracy to supply class A drugs following a trial.

Mughal, from Birmingham, was jailed for eight years for his role in the conspiracy.

Bhacho and Hussain, both of Leeds, were jailed for three years, four months, after pleading guilty to the conspiracy.

Hardeep Bhacho (left) and Haroon Hussain (right) were stopped by police with 10,000 worth of cocaine

Ali, from Leeds, was jailed for 14 months after pleading guilty to possessing criminal property, while Rashid, also from Leeds, was jailed for 18 months for the same offence.

Stogden, 21, from Leeds, pleaded guilty to the conspiracy and was given a two-year sentence, suspended for two years, and ordered carry out 200 hours unpaid work.
A heroic wife has pulled her husband to safety after a tree crashed into their house, falling on their bed as they slept.

Beth Sinclair and Mark Morgan were asleep in their home in Bethesda, Maryland, in the early hours of Sunday morning when the tree smashed through their ceiling.

Winds of up to 66mph had blown the tree through their roof, landing on the bed and knocking out Mr Mr Morgan.

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Debris: Beth Sinclair pulled her husband Mark Morgan to safety after a tree collapsed on their house, falling on their bed (pictured under rubble) as they slept

Mrs Sinclair (left) and Mark Morgan (right, in hospital) were asleep in their home in Bethesda, Maryland, in the early hours of Sunday morning when the tree came crashing through their ceiling

Winds of up to 66mph had blown the tree through their roof, landing on the bed and knocking out Mr Mr Morgan

Mrs Sinclair felt debris raining down on her but was able to scramble out of the bed and avoid the worst of the impact.

She told NBC Washington that she dragged her bloodied husband from the rubble and carried him downstairs before emergency services arrived.

Mr Morgan was taken to hospital and was kept in overnight with a gash to his head, but is expected to recover.

'It's pretty bad,' Mrs Sinclair said, pointing out the gaping hole in her bedroom wall that is now filled with a tree.

'My husband was asleep on the far side of the bed and we were both awakened when stuff started falling.

'I've got bumps on my head but my husband was unconscious,' she said.

Damage: A portion of the floor between the upstairs bedroom and the downstairs lounge has collapsed, and it is not yet known whether the house will be repairable

Mrs Sinclair felt debris raining down on her but was able to scramble out of the bed and avoid the worst of the impact. Pictured, the tree after it fell through the roof

Happy family: The couple's daughter, Emily Morgan (pictured, with her parents), said she was just glad her parents made it out alive

A portion of the floor between the upstairs bedroom and the downstairs lounge has collapsed, and it is not yet known whether the house will be repairable.

The couple's daughter, Emily Morgan, told the Washington Post that she was just glad her parents made it out alive.

She praised her mother's bravery in rescuing her father, saying: 'I'm very proud she's my mom.'

The family home, just a few miles north of Washington, DC, was not the only one to suffer damage over the blustery weekend.
Artur Niewolik, 37, allegedly groped an air hostess on a flight from Dublin to Gatwick last March

A drunken plane passenger groped an air hostess' waist and whispered nice legs in her ear on a Gatwick bound flight from Dublin, a court heard today.

Artur Niewolik, 37, allegedly crowded round a group of air hostesses as they were serving a round of drinks and snacks, and allegedly stroked ones waist as he tried to make his way to the toilet.

He then breathed nice legs into her ear, a trial at the Old Bailey in London heard.

Niewolik, who was travelling on the low-budget airline flight with two friends in March last year, started filming the hostess after being told to return to his seat.

After he was detained by police at Gatwick, he denied being drunk on the flight but admitted touching the stewardess on the waist to get her to move so he could get past.

He said he felt 'mistreated and humiliated' himself, the court heard.

The trial heard that earlier in the day, Niewolik, of Isleworth, West London, had commented 'Nice wife' to a man in the departure lounge at the airport.

Prosecutor Charles McDonald said the air hostess had first noticed Niewolik when he tried to use the toilets while the seatbelt sign was switched on.

He said: 'Things started to get difficult when the complainant and a colleague started to do a trolley round a few minutes into the flight.

As they were moving through the cabin, the defendant came and stood behind her - she said: "are you still waiting to use the loo?"

She started to feel very uncomfortable and felt his demeanour was somewhat aggressive and she told him it was dangerous to move around the cabin when the seat belt sign was illuminated.

Because of the way he was interacting with her, the complainant thought Mr Niewolik might be drunk and could smell alcohol on his breath.

Niewolik refused to step back and began touching the stewardess around her waist while whispering nice legs.

Mr McDonald continued: Sexual behaviour can have several different motives, including but not limited to sexual gratification.

But its important to remember that it can include a whole host of other things, such as mockery and showing off.

You might feel its one or other of these things that were the motivation of the defendant in this case.

He said: This case is about inappropriate behaviour on an aircraft - its the stewardess on that flight thats the victim.

Niewolik, of Isleworth, West London, is currently on trial for the assault at the Old Bailey

Giving evidence, witness Sophia Lamb told the court she saw Niewolik harassing the air hostess as she was tried to get on with her trolley round.

'I heard her say 'don't touch me' - I saw the man I had seen previously was standing behind her.

'I assumed that because she'd said 'don't touch me' he'd touched her because he was the only one standing behind her.

'He then sat down in an empty seat and waited for the trolley to pass and went to the toilet.'

Ms Lamb said she then heard Niewolik shout "Is this for the safety of the passengers? Is this for the safety of the passengers?" as he shoved his mobile phone in her face to film her.

Niewolik was arrested along with another 'drunk' passenger when the flight landed at Gatwick Airport

Mr McDonald said: Its a humiliation that no person should have to suffer and its inappropriate behaviour and its not anything that anyone should have to suffer let alone in such a hazardous environment.

Witness Sophia Lamb said she had seen Niewolik comment to a fellow passenger that he had a 'nice wife' in the departure lounge before the flight took off

He then started filming her on his mobile phone and shouting a number of remarks, including allegations that she was racist - quite sensibly she decided to take herself out of the situation and seek the help of a manager.

Sophia Lamb claims she earlier spotted Niewolik leering in the departure lounge at Dublin Airport and saying nice wife, nice wife to her husband.

She said: 'I found it offensive because if you walk past someone, a stranger, you might say nice dog or nice coat so it's like treating the wife as an object of the man.'

She explained in a police statement she found it 'deeply offensive', adding: 'He was completely in the mindset that the woman belonged to the man by congratulating him on his wife as if she were a nice pair of shoes.'

Alexander Williams, defending Niewolik, suggested the encounter had coloured Ms Lamb's perception of him for the rest of the hour-long flight.

'During the flight, as far as you were concerned, he was awkward in respect of the crew,' the barrister suggested.

She replied: 'I think he was more than awkward. He was rude, disrespectful and disruptive.'

Niewolik was arrested along with another 'drunk' passenger when the flight landed at Gatwick Airport.

Now retired police officer Jonathan Cruise said: 'They were both giggly and clearly drunk at the time.

'I believed they were travelling companions but found out subsequently they only befriended each other on the flight.'

Niewolik denies one count of sexual assault relating to stroking the victims waist, and a charge of assault by beating.

He further denies a third count of being drunk on an aircraft contrary to the Air Navigation Order 2009.
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Relaxing together in the grass, these six fully-grown male lions may seem somewhat short of female company.

But this is for a good reason, as the beasts are part of an all-boys' club that controls part of Kruger National Park in South Africa.

They have joined together in a group, known as a coalition, to fight off other males competing for the attention of lionesses within their territory.

Pictured relaxing together in the grass, these six black-maned lions are part of a coalition that rules a region in Kruger National Park in South Africa

The lions were snapped by South African photographer Ronesh Parbhoo when he was just 10m away. Male lions form groups like this one in order to fight off rivals within their territory and control access to mating females

The photographer first noticed the presence of the lions after he saw the reflection of his torch shining in their eyes

These fights can be fatal, and are one of the reasons that lionesses outnumber males by a ratio of about 3 to 1.

This coalition of black-maned lions is known as the Gomondwane Males, after the area within the 12,200-square-mile safari park that they control.

They were snapped by South African photographer Ronesh Parbhoo, who first noticed their presence by the reflection of his torch in their eyes.

At first they were sat just 10m away, but started strolling towards Mr Parbhoo until they were within touching distance of his vehicle.

He admitted that the encounter left him feeling 'slightly nervous', although it was only later that he realised the animals were part of the ruling coalition.

Mr Parbhoo was surprised to see six male lions together at one time, especially without the presence of females. He only learned afterwards that they were the coalition that ruled the region of Gomondwane

The beasts are probably related, as coalitions are usually made up of brothers, half-brothers and cousins that come together from their natal pride

Speaking to Barcroft.tv, Mr Parbhoo said: 'I became slightly nervous but tried to remain calm as they made their way towards me. I couldnt believe I was alone and in the company of six fully grown male lions'

'This was a unique sighting, not an ordinary lion sighting one would come across,' he told Barcroft.tv.

'There were six male lions sitting together, black maned lions, and its not common to find so many testosterone driven males sitting in each others company, but there I was staring at six Kings!

'I became slightly nervous but tried to remain calm as they made their way towards me. I couldnt believe I was alone and in the company of six fully grown male lions.'

It is likely that the six animals are related, as coalitions are usually made up of brothers, half-brothers and cousins who come together from their natal pride.

There are an unknown number of similar groups in Kruger National Park, which covers an area roughly the same size as Wales in the north-east of South Africa.

It is also home to 457 species of plans, 500 species of birds and 147 difference types of mammal, including leopards, rhinos, elephants and buffalo.

Coalitions such as the Gomondwane Males usually number between two to seven. They hunt together and will often travel long distances within their territory in search of females

The Gomondwane Males will continue looking for females until they settle down and sire young. When the cubs are growing up, the lions will usually stay together for protection

If the coalition is overthrown, the cubs are at risk of being killed so the surviving lionesses can dedicate themselves to mating rather than looking after their young. In this photo, the lions groom themselves in front of the camera
'Homework help was going to completely be futile if these kids couldn't be healthy, safe and happy in the place that they lived,' she said

That was the moment that shaped her views on childhood development

Chan described seeing a young boy covered in blood after being jumped and a girl with her teeth knocked out

Mark Zuckerberg's wife Priscilla Chan has revealed the heartbreaking moment which inspired her to pour millions of dollars into founding her own school for disadvantaged children.

Chan had been studying at Harvard, where she would meet the Facebook founder and her future husband, when she joined an after-school program aimed at tackling gang violence in Boston through education.

It was there she met saw one of her students, his face covered in blood, after getting jumped in his own neighborhood - a moment she has never forgotten, Mercury News reports.

On another occasion Chan tracked down a girl who had been missing from school for the last few days. When she finally found her, she saw that the girl's front teeth were missing.

The 31-year-old pediatrician says witnessing the results of such horrific violence against children has always stayed with her and molded her views on childhood development.

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Mark Zuckerberg's wife Priscilla Chan has revealed the heartbreaking moment which inspired her to found her own private school

Chan, pictured at a Primary School event with parents, community leaders, U.S. Secretary of Education John King, and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Minority Health Nadine Garcia

'I realized that my homework help was going to completely be futile if these kids couldn't be healthy, safe and happy in the place that they lived,' she said.

Today, she and her husband are creating a free private school in East Palo Alto to serve disadvantaged youths and their families.

The Primary School - a comprehensive preschool and K-8 school - will be overseen by Chan as Chief Executive Officer.

Chan and Zuckerberg have declined to say how much money they have invested in the project but it is believed to run into hundreds of millions of dollars.

'We live in Palo Alto, which has, fortunately, one of the greatest school districts in the country,' she told Today.

'But right next door, actually within walking distance of our home, is East Palo Alto that has a K-8 system that has a lot of unmet needs that the public school district is struggling to make up the difference for at this time.'

The Primary School CEO Priscilla Chan (pictured while pregnant last year with the CEO of The Primary School Meredith) was inspired after she joined an after-school program aimed at tackling gang violence in Boston through education

Chan, who gave birth to the couple's first child last year, said that since becoming a mother she was more determined than ever to effect real change in education.

'Before I had Max, I had all these experiences that gave me what I felt like was a strong empathy for how important it is for children to have all these opportunities and how much families want to invest and want the best for their kids,' Chan said. 'But after I had Max, I feel that every day.'

However, the education of underprivileged children has always been important to Chan who was born to refugee (Chinese and Vietnamese) parents and she was the first in her family to go to college.

Homework help was going to completely be futile if these kids couldn't be healthy, safe and happy.

While her mother Yvonne and father Dennis, worked long hours at a Chinese restaurant, she was raised by her grandparents for whom she would act as a translator.

Chan said her family always encouraged her to work hard and do well at school, while her teachers at Quincy High School pushed her to go to college.

'My public school teachers did a great job of saying, 'Check this out. You're qualified for this. You should explore these opportunities.' They're the ones who said, 'You know, apply to Harvard. You might be a good fit here',' Chan, who speaks English, Cantonese and Spanish fluently, said.

'And then when I got to Harvard, it was even more opportunities that I didn't know existed. So their effects have only compounded over time.'

Zuckerberg and Chan (pictured in Berlin in February) are creating a private school in East Palo Alto to serve disadvantaged youths and their families

Chan, a pediatrician, says witnessing the results of violence against children while volunteering molded her views on childhood development

Chan, who gave birth to the couple's first child last year, said that since becoming a mother she was more determined than ever to effect real change in education (Chan is pictured while pregnant last year with Zuckerberg)

Zuckerberg and Chan met at a party in Harvard in Zuckerberg's sophomore year and began dating in 2003.

They married in his backyard in 2012 when Chan also celebrated her graduation from medical school.

After graduating with a biology degree in 2007, Chan spent a school year teaching science at The Harker School, a private college preparatory school in San Jose.

Chan and Zuckerberg, have made philanthropy a central theme of their life together, joining Warren Buffet and Bill Gates's Giving Pledge to give away most of their wealth.

The couple pledged in December, following the birth of daughter Max, to donate 99 per cent of their wealth to charity.

Zuckerberg recently returned to Facebook after taking paternity leave following the birth of daughter Max, and managed to actually make money while he was back at home.

He is now the 16th richest man in the world according to Forbes thanks to his estimated $47.1billion net worth.

Two years after her graduation, Chan used her experience as a tutor for disadvantaged youth in college to her and Zuckerberg's first major education project.

The couple donated $100 million in a project to turn around New Jersey public schools.

However, Chan was forced to defend the couple's donation, with critics saying the money has so far failed to fix the city's failing school system. After four years, the money is nearly gone and a lot of people are angry.

'We've invested in Newark's children, the schools and teachers and these are long-term bets that need a number of years to really pan out,' Chan, the eldest of three siblings, told Today.

Loved up: Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan dated for nearly a decade before tying the knot in May 2012 in their backyard

The couple met at Harvard (pictured) where Chan was studying biology. While studying she joined an after-school program aimed at tackling gang violence in Boston through education

'We've seen and learned how important it is to listen to the community, and really get a sense of what they need and want. And it's a long journey.'

Before starting work on the East Palo Alto project, Chan spent two years talking to residents in the area and doing research.

'My experiences of running an after school program in a low income housing project and working as a pediatrician in a safety net hospital has shown me first hand that we need a better way of caring for and educating our children,' wrote Chan on her Facebook page about the new endeavor.

'The effects of trauma and chronic stress create an invisible burden for children that makes it very difficult for them to be healthy and live up to their academic potential. We must address these issues holistically in order to allow children to succeed.'

She then added; 'For the past year, our small team has been working with East Palo Alto and Belle Haven families, educators and leaders to develop a model to address these complex needs. The work is ongoing and we look forward to sharing as we make progress!'

The Primary School, in partnership with the Ravenswood Family Health Center, will link health care and education for around 50 families from East Palo Alto and Menlo Park's Belle Haven neighborhood when it opens this fall.

Once the school is finished it will be able to serve 700 children and their families.

The school will first open in a temporary location with two infant and toddler classes and one preschool class.

Each year an additional grade will be added with 50 children accepted into each class.
Allen was blamed for damaging the reef when his 300-foot super yacht hit the 13,800 square feet of protected coral in

Billionaire Paul Allen is working to save the endangered coral reef in the Cayman Islands that was allegedly damaged after it was hit by his super-yacht in January.

The Microsoft co-founder has partnered with the Cayman Islands Department of Environment to save the 13,800-square-feet of protected coral.

The 63-year-old's company, Vulcan, hired Polaris Applied Sciences, which has reattached 1,600 organisms, including hundreds of hard and soft corals and sponges, according to PageSix.

Billionaire Paul Allen (left) is working to save the endangered coral reef in the Cayman Islands that was allegedly destroyed after it was hit by his super-yacht MV Tatoosh (right) in January

Local officials with the islands' Department of Environment said the chain of the Microsoft co-founder's yacht destroyed 13,800-square-feet of reef in the West Bay replenishment zone - roughly 80 per cent of the coral that's vital to marine life

The project took 300 hours over the course of 24 days to complete and more than 30 tons of cement and sand were used to rebuild the structure. About 1,600 organisms that were damaged by the yacht (pictured) have been reattached

The project took 300 hours over the course of 24 days to complete and more than 30 tons of cement and sand were used to rebuild the structure.

Eight tons of rubble was also used to finish the project.

The work included stabilizing and removing rubble, re-creating structures and rescuing and reattaching as much living coral as possible.

Local officials with the islands' Department of Environment said the chain Allen's yacht, the MV Tatoosh, destroyed 13,800-square-feet of reef in the West Bay replenishment zone - roughly 80 per cent of the coral that's vital to marine life.

A spokesman for the department told the Cayman News Service that they are 'paying close attention to lessons learned so that we can more effectively prevent these accidents while still hosting visiting yachts'.

Officials said the boat was anchored close to the Doc Poulson shipwreck and The Knife dive site when it did the damage.

A coral restoration expert has been hired by the DOE to continue to oversee the project and monitor the area.

Vulcan is still questioning the cause and scope of the damage, according to PageSix.

At the time, a spokesmen for Allen pitted the blame on the Port Authority, saying the crew were simply following officials' instructions on where to place the vessel.

When the winds changed direction and pushed the yacht closer to the reserve, they say they moved it.

Technically, any vessel that damages protected reefs in the islands is subject to a fine, but the government has reportedly failed time and time again to collect on these sanctions, according to CNS.

Tim Austin, the deputy director of research and DOE said that under the Cayman Islands national conservation law, damaging coral could be prosecuted as a criminal offense.

At the time, a spokesmen for Allen pitted the blame on the Port Authority, saying the crew were simply following officials' instructions on where to place the vessel

Officials said the boat was anchored close to the Doc Poulson shipwreck and The Knife dive site when it did the damage

It was reported that officials could have confiscated Allen's $160 million super yacht after the incident and he could have also been fined up to $600,000 and jailed for up to four years, if prosecuted.

Austin said that in the area where the anchor dragged, the 'prime attraction' is the reef which is vital for aquatic life.

He said: 'The whole of the west side is a prime diving site - because of the coral it's a great dive site.'

In the past, Allen has also championed environmental causes.

He spent $2.6 million funding the University of British Columbia's Sea Around Us project to fight illegal fishing in 2014.
Mesac Demas, 39, (pictured in 2009) has been in custody since 2009 after confessing to murdering his wife and five children in their Naples, Florida home

A Florida man who admitted to killing his wife and five children more than six years ago suffered a traumatic brain injury that should keep him from the death penalty, his lawyers now argue.

Mesac Damas, 39, has been in custody since 2009 after he confessed to murdering wife Guerline, 32, and children Michzach, 9, Marven, 6, Maven, 5, Megan, 3, and 11-month-old Morgan.

The six victims were found in the family's North Naples home with stab wounds and their throats slashed on September 18. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

Damas' mental health, in addition to challenges to Florida's death penalty laws, have delayed his case going to trial for years.

His competency and mental health could be cited as 'mitigating factors' during sentencing that may be significant enough to keep the jury from sending Damas to Death Row, according to Naples Daily News.

James Ermacora, one of Damas' attorneys, would not elaborate on the traumatic brain injury but said the claim was made using information from an expert report.

The filings claim that Damas has a 'long and documented history of mental illness, beginning even in his youth in Haiti'.

It also states that both sides from Damas' family show evidence of 'alcohol abuse, spousal abuse, and serious mental illness on both genetic sides'.

The lawyers claim records from hospitals and prisons back up these claims, and Ermacora plans to travel to Haiti to obtain more evidence of Damas' history of mental illness.

Damas' lawyers are arguing that he suffered a traumatic brain injury that should keep him from facing the death penalty if convicted. Damas is pictured left with wife Guerline, right her brother holds up a photo of her

Guerline Damas, who had been married to her husband for 10 years, and her children were discovered dead after a family member asked police to conduct a welfare check.

Damas' car was found at Miami International Airport, where he had boarded a one-way flight to Haiti.

He was found hiding near a hotel in Port-au-Prince and taken into custody by the Haitian National Police, according to CNN.

Damas admitted to killing his family to a Naples News reporter, telling him 'Only God knows' when asked why he did it.

He then blamed the six murders on his mother-in-law, saying she 'pretty much made me do it - the devil, her spirit, whatever she worships'.

He told the reporter he wanted the jury to immediately send him to death before adding that his children and wife were innocent, 'everybody's innocent'.

'Then why, why would you kill them?', the reporter asked.

'The devil,' he responded. 'The devil exists...When I did it my eyes was closed, right now my eyes are open.'

Damas' mental health, in addition to challenges to Florida's death penalty laws, have delayed his case going to trial for years (Damas is pictured here in court in 2015)

Damas has admitted to killing his five children: Michzach, 9, Marven, 6, Maven, 5, Megan, 3, and 11-month-old Morgan. He later told a reporter they were 'innocent' and did nothing wrong

When the reporter asked him if he believed he would go to heaven when he died, Damas said yes.

'I was gonna kill myself, but I didn't have the courage to do it, because if you kill yourself you're not going to heaven,' he said.

'But I didn't have the courage to do it myself.'

Damas said he went to Haiti to say goodbye to his family and claimed he was going to turn himself in. He was charged with six counts of first-degree murder.

In 2014 Damas, who was arrested for battery charges against his wife five months before her death, was found incompetent to stand trail. He was determined to have a 'major mental illness' by doctors.

But in October a judge found that Damas could be 'manipulative and deceitful', engaging in 'cooperative behavior when necessary to get something he wanted'.

Collier Circuit Judge Fred Hardt temporarily put Damas' trial on hold in until the Supreme Court ruled whether the state's death penalty laws and procedures were constitutional.

The Court ruled in January that it was unconstitutional to allow judges to reach a different decision regarding death penalties than juries.

The Florida House voted last month for a death penalty bill that requires a minimum of 10 out of 12 jurors to recommend the death penalty.

His competency and mental health could be cited as 'mitigating factors' during sentencing that may be significant enough to keep the jury from sending Damas to Death Row
Donald Trump predicted victory Monday in Wisconsin, upping the ante from previous statement in which he stopped short of saying he would beat Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in Tuesday's Republican primary.

'I really believe tomorrow we're going to have a very, very big victory,' he said during an event billed as a town hall in the Mississippi River town of La Crosse.

'I've been up here a lot, and I love it. And the people I love. I have many friends from Wisconsin but they told me this was going to happen.'

'I think I'm going to have a big Democrat crossover, and I hope I do,' he said, predicting that independents will also come out in droves to support him.

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UNDERDOG? Donald Trump predicted a 'very, very big victory' in Wisconsin, defying conventional wisdom and opinion polls to forecast an upset over Ted Cruz

CONFIDENT: Polls show Cruz up between 6 and 10 percentage points but those surveys don't measure Democratic crossover voters who might flock to Trump

'I DON'T EXAGGERATE': Trump, who has embraced hyperbole more than any presidential candidate in recent memory, insisted Monday that he's 'learned' to shoot straight

Wisconsin's GOP primary is open to all Wisconsinites, not just registered Republicans.

While polls show Cruz leading, those numbers don't include Democrats who might flock to Trump's populist message.

DailyMail.com spoke to a random sample of 35 people who stood in line Monday morning in La Crosse and said they were not yet certain who they would vote for on Tuesday.

Of that group, seven said they were teetering not between Trump and Cruz, but between Trump and Bernie Sanders, the Democratic socialist who has turned the Democratic primary upside down.

Trump never took questions on Monday morning, turning the town hall into a stump speech delivered to a few thousand people who stayed on their feet for nearly an hour.

The billionaire will hold an airport-hangar rally in the northwest corner of the Badger State before ending the night in Milwaukee.

He said his wife Melania is flying in to appear with him there. She's also bringing a souvenir with her  a congratulatory plaque Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker once presented the billionaire as a token of thanks for an unspecified political gesture.

Trump joked last week that he would have to dig it out from under a pile of similar plaques. Walker is touring the state with Cruz, whom he endorsed just days ago.

'I got a plaque from Walker saying this or that,' Trump said Monday. 'We're going to have a lot of fun. I'm going to show the plaque.'

FEELING THE BERN OR THE TRUMP TRAIN? DailyMail.com spoke with 35 undecided voters in the line to see Trump, and seven (20 per cent) said they were on the fence between Trump and Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders

CHEESEHEADS FOR DONALD: Wisconsin's primary election will be held on Tuesday in the state known for its cheese and its Green Bay Packers

The real estate tycoon and reality TV star said that if he can win a surprise victory in Wisconsin's primary, 'the end will be here.' That was a reference to his plodding path toward securing 1,237 Republican National Convention delegates, the slimmest majority that might cinch the nomination.

But 'it may not happen because we have the [party] machine against us,' he conceded.

'I want to get there with Wisconsin,' he said. 'This will send such a signal that the people of our country are so sick and tired of incompetent representation.'

At that line, a woman in the back of the room  the only protester to raise a voice Monday morning  yelled, 'Like Donald Trump!'

'You talk about yourself!' she blared as she walked out without the police escort that typically ushers out dissenters.

Trump has lately shown more self-awareness than in previous months, saying over the weekend that he made a mistake in retweeting an unflattering picture of Cruz's wife.

But Monday's introspection was of a different sort.

'I don't exaggerate. I have very little exaggeration. I've learned,' he told the crowd, defending his claim that he has collected 'millions and millions more votes' than Cruz in the statewide primaries and caucuses held to date.

Moments later, in the midst of his stump material about American manufacturers that send jobs offshore, he said: 'They're firing thousands and thousands  and millions of people!'

Trump also repeated his pledge to moderate his tone if he sends Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich packing the way he has 14 other rivals.

'I can be the most presidential person you've ever seen,' he said.

'I mean, I'm a very smart person ... I'm so much smarter than the people who write the stories.'

Kasich, he said, had no business continuing his quixotic quest for the White House since he has only won his home state and his only hope is a come-from-behind shocker in a contested convention.

'He's one-and-thirty. He really should get the hell out,' Trump boomed.

He also complained about the wall-to-wall TV ads lobbing rhetorical grenades at him in Wisconsin, saying he was bombarded by them in his Wisconsin hotel room on Sunday night.

Trump didn't say where he laid his head but hinted at his lodging priorities.

'All I want is clean. It has to be clean,' the noted germophobe said.
Fiona Connolly (pictured), 43, watched her Jack Russell race towards Candice Legister and chew at her dress as she walked through Little Wormwood Scrubs Park in Chelsea, south west London

A dog-walker today convicted of her third racial hatred offence was handed what the judge himself called an 'unusually lenient' 50 fine despite calling a woman a 'black b****' the day after telling her she was being attacked by her dog because 'it doesn't like Muslims'.

Fiona Connolly, 43, watched her Jack Russell race towards Candice Legister and chew at her dress as she walked through Little Wormwood Scrubs Park in Chelsea, south west London.

As Miss Legister tried to shake the animal off her, she stated: 'My dog doesn't like Muslims.'

Miss Legister, who is a Christian, said she thought Connolly had mistaken her long Maxi dress for Islamic clothing.

Giving evidence Miss Legister said: 'I said would you please keep the dog away from me?

'She laughed and said no because my dog doesn't like Muslims.

'I said to her "how dare you" and explained to her that I was a Christian and this had nothing to do with the matter.'

The next day, July 15 last year, Miss Legister bumped into Connolly in Tesco Express in Chelsea and asked her if she was sober.

Miss Legister, who was with her two-year-old son, claimed Connolly replied: 'Yes, you stupid black b****.'

Connolly was convicted of racially aggravated harassment for the incident in Tesco despite insisting she has 'lots of mixed culture friends from different religions'.

Senior District Judge Howard Riddle said Connolly 'probably wasn't racist in the normal sense of the word', but said it was clear she makes racist comments when she has been drinking.

But he cleared her of religiously aggravated harassment in respect of the dog attack - despite being convinced that she had made the comment.

Judge Riddle said: 'In the circumstances I am satisfied that she did say that my dog doesn't like Muslims.

'The only reference to religion in the evidence that I heard is that the dog doesn't like Muslims.

'That in itself may or may not be an offensive comment but it isn't a threatening comment in its own right.'

He added: 'On that basis I'm not sure that the religious element is made out.'

Judge Riddle imposed an 'unusually lenient' fine of 50 at Westminster Magistrates' Court after hearing Connolly has been attending an alcohol treatment course twice a week.

Connolly is also seeking help as a victim domestic abuse.

The next day, July 15 last year, Miss Legister (pictured) bumped into Connolly in Tesco Express in Chelsea and asked her if she was sober. Miss Legister, who was with her two-year-old son, claimed Connolly replied: 'Yes, you stupid black b****'

'However serious her own problems, there was a young woman who was abused,' the Judge added.

'In this case, the facts of which I remember very well, I'm going to deal with it in an unusually lenient way because I'm satisfied that this woman Miss Connolly is engaging with recourse of many of her troubles, and there are many.

'There will be no order for costs because there is very little money in the Connolly household, if I can put it that way.'

He added: 'I think if you would like to send her an apology I think she would accept it and she may understand.'

The court heard Connolly was convicted of using racially threatening language in 2010 and racially aggravated criminal damage and racially aggravated common assault in 2012.

Referring to her conviction in 2010, she said: 'I was in a nightclub, I was attacked by a bouncer and the camera evidence went missing.'
Stephanie Seymour appeared in a Connecticut court Monday where she managed to avoid jail time after a judge agreed to dismiss multiple drunken-driving charges against the former supermodel.

Seymour was all smiles after Superior Court Judge Auden Grogins handed down her decision, which does require that Seymour attend Alcoholic Anonymous meetings twice a week, complete a six-week treatment program at Greenwich Hospital and take two victim impact panels.

She was arrested and charged with DUI in January after her Range Rover allegedly rolled backwards down a hill into a white Mercedes.

Police responding to the scene said she smelled of alcohol, had bloodshot eyes, and took seven tries to find her ID in her bag.

An investigation by police later determined that she also hit and knocked over a telephone pole that same night before fleeing the scene.

Big day: Stephanie Seymour appeared in a Stamford, Connecticut court on Monday to be sentenced on drunken-driving charges (left entering court, right exiting court)

Decision: A judge ruled that charges against her will be dismissed in a year if she completes a six-week treatment program and attends AA twice a week

The supermodel dress conservatively in a regal purple dress with a matching short sleeved jacket on top

Her rock: Peter Brant (above), Seymour's billionaire husband, was in court to support her and listen as she apologized to the court for her actions

She and Brant did not enter or leave together, however

She apologized to the court at the beginning of the hearing according to Page Six, saying; 'I am incredibly ashamed that I did something that couldve come out much worse.

'I would also like to apologize to my family and the lady that I backed into.'

Judge Grogins said the model seemed 'remorseful' but that her actions could have 'seriously hurt or killed' people.

She then added; 'It wasnt just one accident but two accidents here, so it is serious. Im glad that you are taking this seriously. You should take it seriously.'

Seymour now has a year to complete Judge Grogins' conditions, at which time the charges against her will be dismissed by the court.

She will also have to pay any restitution not covered by her insurance company.

Her son Peter Brant Jr. meanwhile is facing his own legal troubles after being charged with felony assault two weeks ago following an incident that occurred at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City.

Brant Jr. 'became so confrontational with airline staff due to extreme intoxication by at least alcohol, if not something more' said Assistant District Attorney Catherine Kane, who also noted he set off alarms after bursting through an emergency exit when told he could not board his Jet Blue flight.

Brant's lawyer meanwhile said of his client; 'He acted like an idiot.'

The young socialite, who claims he only had three drinks, was released on $5,000 bail.

More troubles: Her son Peter Brant Jr. meanwhile is facing his own legal troubles after being charged with felony assault two weeks ago (mugshot above)

Family: Brant Jr. allegedly assaulted a cop when he was told he could not board his flight at JFK Airport and was later treated for severe intoxication (Harry Brant, Seymour, Brant Jr. and Brant at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival)

He was waiting to board a fight to West Palm Beach when he reportedly got into an argument with an airline employee reportedly stopped him for getting on the plane.

A source said the 22-year-old socialite was acting 'drunk and belligerent' at the time.

Port Authority police then reported to the scene and asked Brant Jr. to sit down and lower his voice, at which point he allegedly assaulted one of the cops.

Brant Jr. was arrested after the alleged assault and taken to Jamaica Hospital where police said he would be treated for severe intoxication and undergo a psych evaluation.

The arrest has not slowed down his social life however, with Page Six reporting over the weekend that Brant Jr. enjoyed a meal at swanky Tribeca restaurant Nobu on Thursday with friends including Kyra Kennedy and Gaia Matisse.

That meal did not end so well for his friends though according to a witness who said that after ordering $2,000 worth of food and drinks Brant Jr. skipped out on his bill.

'Nobu staff tried to make him pay,' said a source.
Twenty years after the arrest of Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber, some Lincoln residents remember him as an odd recluse who ate rabbits and lived without electricity, while others say he had a funny, personable side.

But all recall the media invasion that followed his capture and turned their small Montana town upside-down.

Kaczynski is serving a life sentence in a federal prison in Florence, Colorado, for a series of bombings, most through the mail, that killed three people and injured 23 others over 17 years.

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In this April 4, 1996 file photo, Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber, is flanked by federal agents as he is led to a car from the federal courthouse in Helena, Montana. Kaczynski is serving a life sentence in a federal prison in Florence, Colorado, for a series of bombings, most through the mail, that killed three people and injured 23 others over 17 years

The 10 x 12 foot hand-built cabin of Unabomber suspect Ted Kaczynski stands surrounded by FBI equipment as the FBI allowed the press a look at the cabin for the first time April 6, 1996

Ted Kaczynski, right, was said to have subsisted largely off of meat from wild snowshoe rabbits, pictured left

His April 3, 1996, arrest in a primitive cabin 75 miles east of Missoula captured the world's attention and brought thousands of reporters and tourists to the sleepy mountain town.

Around Lincoln, the unkempt loner simply known as 'Ted' ate rabbits, lived without power and rode his bike to the town's library, the Missoulian reported.

The FBI moved in after Kaczynski's sister-in-law recognized his writing in a 35,000-word manifesto published in The New York Times and Washington Post.

Jerry Burns was a U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officer in the Lincoln area who was recruited by the FBI to help with the arrest. On that day, he walked up to the cabin with two FBI agents and a tactical team hiding in the woods.

'I started yelling up to Ted, 'Ted, are you home?' And we got up to the door and heard him scuffling around in there,' Burns said. 'He was pretty scruffy-looking.'

Kaczynski tried unsuccessfully to duck back inside, where he had a loaded pistol, bomb-making equipment and his journals.

'Poor Ted had been eating snowshoe rabbits and didn't weigh much, and the adrenaline was flowing in me so I had to grab at his wrist at the door, and out he came,' Burns said.

Wendy Gehring, who lived and operated a sawmill with her husband down the road from Kaczynski, said the FBI used her property as a staging area for the arrest.

This April 6, 1996 file photo shows Ted Kaczynski's cabin in the woods of Lincoln, Montana. Twenty years after the arrest of Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber, some Lincoln residents remember him as an odd recluse who ate rabbits and lived without electricity, while others say he had a funny, personable side.

File photos through the years of Theodore Kaczynski a.k.a. the Unabomber

'It took forever for the FBI to get into position. Finally, they gave the OK, they made the arrest, and our mill erupted with FBI agents,' Gehring said.

'We went from six people standing on the mill waiting to hear, and they yelled, 'We got him, he's in custody,' and it went to 300 people. There were trucks and RVs and people walking out of the woods. It was insane. People were cheering,' she said.

That scene of elation was followed by swarms of reporters descending on their isolated mountainside property. Gehring recalled she was pregnant when she went outside with a shotgun to persuade a television crew's helicopter to abandon an attempt to land in her driveway.

'I think they thought we were all kind of a dirty, punk, stupid hillbilly kind of deal,' she said.

Shown are some of the victims of the Unabomber attacks. From left, Hugh Scrutton, David Gelernter, Thomas Mosser, and Gilbert P. Murray. All but Gelernter died from injuries sustained by mail bombs sent by the Unabomber

Librarian Sherri Wood probably knew Kaczynski as well as anyone in town from his frequent visits to the library.

Wood liked Kaczynski. She said he had a great sense of humor and he befriended her son. She was shocked by his arrest and gave him the benefit of the doubt at first.

'I said, 'Well, he's not the first person to get arrested as the Unabomber, and they had to let the other ones go. So let's wait and see,'' she said.

She also remembered the media swarm was followed by tourists who wanted to sit in the chair Kaczynski had sat in and take the books he donated to the library.

Two decades later, tourists still occasionally come to touch a shelf that the Unabomber touched.
Flicking open a tap on a Spanish lorry, a French winemaker lets red wine gush onto a motorway as the trade war between producers in the two countries intensifies.

French producers are furious that their traditional rivals in Spain  and also Italy  are exporting hundreds of millions of litres of cut-price wine that threaten their livelihoods.

Dozens took to the roads yesterday, stopping Spanish tankers and then emptying their wine on to the roads.

A French winemaker lets Spanish red wine gush onto a motorway as the trade war between producers in the two countries intensifies

This photograph was taken on a motorway at Le Boulou, close to the Mediterranean town of Perpignan and less than ten miles from Spain.

Frederic Rouanet, president of the wine producers in the south-west Aude department, confirmed that four tankers were emptied, with 70,000 litres of wine wasted.

His fellow protesters scrawled graffiti on the side of the Spanish trucks, with slogans including wine not compliant  they believe the Spanish wine is sub-standard and not produced in accordance with European regulations.

Mr Rouanet said: Weve been checking the wine coming in for a month, but nobody cares. Today we got tough.

The protest comes after industry figures showed that France is now the biggest buyer of Spanish wine  purchasing 580million litres in 2014, a 40 per cent rise on 2013.

France has also lost its status as the worlds biggest wine producer. Last year Italy produced 4,900million litres compared with 4,700million litres in France.

This photograph was taken on a motorway at Le Boulou, close to the Mediterranean town of Perpignan and less than ten miles from Spain

Frederic Rouanet, president of the wine producers in the south-west Aude department, confirmed that four tankers were emptied, with 70,000 litres of wine wasted

And French wine is more expensive. France sells its wine at a minimum 3.90 a litre abroad, compared with 1.95 for Italian wine and 91p for Spanish wine.

French police said there were no immediate arrests associated with yesterdays action, but the incidents were being investigated.

But Mr Rouanet said the Spanish wine was sub-standard: If a French vineyard produced wine using the Spanish regulations, he quite simply couldnt sell it.

I want Europe to work, but with the same laws for everyone, said Mr Rouanet, adding that 28,000 trucks filled with wine had arrived in France from Spain in 2015.

The protest comes after industry figures showed that France is now the biggest buyer of Spanish wine  purchasing 580million litres in 2014, a 40 per cent rise on 2013

French police said there were no immediate arrests associated with yesterdays action, but the incidents were being investigated

Despite Spains success as an exporter, its profits are in fact falling  not just because of low prices, but because it sells in bulk, which means un-bottled.

This has led to countries like France buying wine in bulk in Spain, and then bottling and labelling it themselves as their own, with an EU denomination saying the drink is of Spanish origin.

It is often more economic for France to export wine in bulk from Spain and then label it, rather than growing the grapes and making the wine themselves.

The French got through an average of 100 litres of wine per person in 1960, but the figure was only 42 litres in 2015.

France has also lost its status as the worlds biggest wine producer. Last year Italy produced 4,900million litres compared with 4,700million litres in France

Despite Spains success as an exporter, its profits are in fact falling  not just because of low prices, but because it sells in bulk, which means un-bottled




Police say when the friend's family asked for the money, it had been taken

A New Hampshire woman created a GoFundMe account to help cover the costs of a girl's funeral, then stole the money for herself, said police on Monday.

Nashua police claimed that Krystal Gentley, 26, approached the family last year and asked if she could create the fund, which ultimately saw more than $5,000 in donations.

They said the girl's mother asked Gentley to close the fund around Thanksgiving, as the memorial service neared, and that she agreed but never arrived at the service.

Accused: Krystal Gentley (pictured left, and right with husband Ryan Gentley) has been accused of taking more than $5,000 from a GoFundMe account that she allegedly set up to raise money for a friend's funeral

When the dead girl's mom called GoFundMe, they said, she was told the account was closed and the money had been withdrawn.

But Gentley's mother is adamant that her daughter is innocent, claiming on a Facebook post at 1pm Monday that she was present on multiple occasions when Gentley dropped off money to the family, and that all of the cash had been handed over.

She said: 'The only thing my daughter is guilty of is helping a grieving family with the loss of their daughter and mind you, one of her closest friends, and this is what she gets in return? Slaughtered by media, friends, and people who don't even know who my daughter is?'

'This wasn't another GoFundMe sham,' she claimed, 'She didn't steal any of that money ... My daughter has not been convicted, therefore she is innocent until proven otherwise!'

Friends of Gentley made supportive comments on the post, to which Gentley - now using a pseudonym on Facebook - replied: 'Babe please take my name out here and just put Krystal. I'm being harassed and I had to change my name because of it. I'm a wreck.'

At the time of writing her account had been made private and that comment had either been deleted or made friends-only. Her husband, Ryan Gentley, had also changed the name of his Facebook account.

Krystal Gentley was arrested and charged with felony theft on Friday. She was released on $5,000 bail. Her arraignment is scheduled for May 17.

Police declined to give further details about the GoFundMe account or family as the case is still active.
Sir Richard Branson has complained about having to sell his US airline - even though it will make him more than $786 million (550 million).

The head of Virgin Group said that he felt sadness after Virgin America was bought by Alaska Airlines under a $2.6 billion deal (1.8 billion).

The companies put the transaction's value at about $4 billion, since Alaska will also be taking on Virgin America's debt and aircraft operating leases.

Poor Richard: Sir Richard Branson, pictured last month in London, has complained about having to sell his US airline - even though it will make him more than $786 million

Despite his massive windfall Sir Richard said that there was nothing I could do to stop it because he did not own enough shares with voting rights in Virgin America.

The $786 million payout is equivalent to one seventh of Sir Richards entire $5.1 billion (3.7 billion) fortune and will swell his coffers considerably.

His Virgin Group owns about 30 per cent of Virgin America after floating it on the stock market in 2014 with a value of nearly $1 billion (650 million.)

The takeover means that in just 18 months Sir Richards stake has more than doubled in value.

Billions: The head of Virgin Group said that he felt sadness after Virgin America was bought by Alaska Airlines under a $2.6 billion deal

Nevertheless he used a lengthy post on the Virgin website to complain that it was not what he wanted.

With a wistful tone, Sir Richard said that he started Virgin America in 2007 out of frustration because flying in the US was an awful experience.

He said that he hoped to make flying good again but now he was unable to resist mergers between smaller airlines, a trend he said that sadly cannot be stopped.

Sir Richard wrote that back in 2007, 60 per cent of the US airline industry was consolidated but now the four big American airlines control more than 80 per cent of the US market.

He wrote: I would be lying if I didnt admit sadness that our wonderful airline is merging with another. Because I'm not American, the US Department of Transportation stipulated I take some of my shares in Virgin America as non-voting shares, reducing my influence over any takeover.

No votes: Despite his massive windfall Sir Richard said that there was nothing I could do to stop it because he did not own enough shares with voting rights in Virgin America

So there was sadly nothing I could do to stop it.

Sir Richard said that Virgin America has much more to do, more places to go and that it wanted to make more converts to its brand.

Sir Richards tone may surprise some as Virgin America is far from the first business that the 65-year-old entrepreneur has started and later sold - or lost.

As a music executive in the 1970s with Virgin Records he signed the Sex Pistols and in the 1980s he bought Heaven, a gay nightclub in London.

Sir Richard launched Virgin Atlantic Airways in 1984, shortly followed by Virgin Mobile which he sold two decades later for 1 billion.

Sir Richards other ventures have included the short-lived Virgin Cola, Virgin Vodka and Virgin Comics.

His main project now is Virgin Galactic, his ambitious plan to create affordable space travel, which is draining millions of pounds before it has even started flying passengers.

The deal to buy Virgin America must be given approval by US regulators but if gets the go ahead it will give Alaska Airlines control over what is the ninth biggest airline by passenger numbers.

Virgin America controls about 1.5 per cent of domestic flight capacity compared with five per cent for Alaska.
These shocking pictures show the devastation inside the front carriage of the Amtrak train that crashed into a backhoe on Sunday morning, killing two track workers.

Debris is seen strewn across the seats as an injured passenger appears to stem the bleeding from a leg wound with a jacket.

The horrifying images show how parts of the side of the carriage completely gave way during the collision. Chairs that were occupied moments earlier by oblivious commuters are shown reduced to nothing more than twisted metal.

It has also emerged that the killed workers may have made a 'colossal' error moments before Palmetto train 89 careered into the construction equipment near Philadelphia.

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A wounded passenger lies on the floor of an Amtrack train after it crashed near Philadelphia Sunday morning, killing two people

Scattered debris is shown inside the Amtrak train following the deadly crash not far from Philadelphia

Chairs that were occupied moments earlier by oblivious commuters are shown destroyed after the crash

The photographs were taken by Dr Lalitha Trivikram, who was in the first carriage of the Savannah, Georgia-bound train when it smashed into the backhoe and partially derailed.

'You take a deep breath, you mutter a little prayer saying, "I hope to God that I can handle whatever it is that comes my way." And you dig right in,' she told ABC News.

It has been claimed that the two killed Amtrak workers may have been operating on the wrong line.

A source told CNN that the track workers may have made a 'colossal' mistake in the lead up to Sunday's horror crash.

It is not uncommon for workers to complete small construction works on live tracks, but they would never use a backhoe on active line.

'The track has to be taken out of service' for large operations, Allan Zarembski, director of the Railroad Engineering and Safety Program at the University of Delaware, said.

It has also emerged that the killed workers may have made a 'colossal' error moments before Palmetto train 89 (pictured) careered into the construction equipment near Philadelphia

Debris: The front carriage of the train from New York to Savannah, Georgia, derailed after crashing into the crane on Sunday morning

Investigation: A federal probe is expect after the Amtrak train collided with a crane near Philadelphia

The Palmetto train 89 was packed with nearly 350 passengers and crew at the time of the fatal smash and around 37 people were injured

'They should have known better than to be on that track,' he said.

'Maybe what happened was they were given permission to go on [an inactive] track, and maybe they made a mistake and went on the wrong track.'

Witnesses said the train driver blew the horn seconds before the crash but the construction equipment could not be moved in time.

It is not clear why the backhoe was on the tracks, but the two killed workers are thought to have been near it at the time of the crash.

It is not known if the crane was on the tracks for regular maintenance or not.

New York Senator Chuck Schumer said the two killed were an Amtrak backhoe operator and a supervisor.

He said debris from the crash flew into the first two cars of the train, which originated in New York, injuring 37 passengers who were taken to hospitals with injuries not considered life-threatening.

There were 341 passengers and seven crew members on board as the train approached Chester, Delaware County, at 7.53am.

Passengers carrying their belongings leave the Amtrak train (seen in the background) following the collision

Witnesses said the train driver blew the horn seconds before the crash but the construction equipment could not be moved in time. Pictured, Valerie Green (right) hugs her friend after the crash

Amtrak investigators survey the scene following Sunday morning's crash, which killed two and injured 37

One of those was Mariam Akhtar, from Washington, DC, who told ABC 6 of the panic on board the train in the moments after the collision.

'It felt like the train hit something and there were like three or four really big bangs and it kind of threw us off the seats we were sitting in,' she said.

'There was a lot of smoke and everybody was yelling.

'The train kind of stopped and later on, everybody was running to the front. Then the people were in the front started walking toward the back.'

Linton Holmes, from Wilson, North Carolina, said he heard an 'explosion' as the train derailed.

'The train was rumbling. We got off track, I guess. It was just a bunch of dust. There was dust everywhere,' he said.

'Then the train conductor came up and told us there was a fatality and wanted to see if anyone else was injured.

'It was an explosion. We got off track and then there was like a big explosion. Then there was a fire and windows burst out. Some people were cut up, but it was just minor injuries.'

Another passenger, Stephanie Burroughs, told Fox News that a conductor said one of the deaths involved someone who was 'on the tracks'.

She added that passengers had 'some injuries', but the worst she had heard about was a broken arm.
Earthworks experts who claim to be victims of fraud, the former head of sport at SBS and a convicted cocaine trafficker are among the Australians who have been named in the Panama Papers leak.

The Australian Taxation Office is investigating more than 800 citizens after the leak of financial data which revealed how world leaders, celebrities and the global rich are using offshore tax havens to hide their wealth.

The leak of documents also show how Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca has allegedly helped clients launder money, dodge sanctions and evade tax.

Among those named was Sydney builder Fouad Deiri, who believes he and his friend George Ghossayn - an earthworks expert - were victims of fraud.

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The Australian Taxation Office is investigating more than 800 Australians after a massive leak of financial data

Among those named was Sydney builder Fouad Deiri (pictured), who believes he and his friend George Ghossayn - an earthworks expert - were victims of fraud

Mr Deiri was reportedly baffled when asked by Fairfax Media about the existence of a company in the British Virgin Isles under his name, asking ' it's not in Britain, is it?'.

Mr Ghossayn told the publication: 'I don't have any money to hide, I never heard about this island'.

The pair said when they were told the leaked documents contained their passport numbers and personal addresses alongside the business name they claim isn't theirs, they believed they had been the victims of fraud.

Another Australian named in the leak was Dominic Galati, the former head of sport at public broadcaster SBS.

In 2011 six companies were created in Samoa under Galati's name by Mossack Fonseca, Faiirfax reported.

These companies were then reportedly transferred to a company in Hong Kong called 'Global Wealth Group'.

The directors of this company are named as Mr Galati, greyhound trainer John McGeary and his business partner and former boxer and convicted cocaine trafficker Roy Bijkerk.

Murray Priestley, a stock trader who was banned from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) after they found he gave clients misleading advice was also named

Former opal miner Maxwell John Reid - who has previously been jailed for tax fraud - denied having an account with Mossack Fonseca

Bijkerk was jailed in 1999 for importing cocaine, and upon his release set up a charity to provide care to traumatised children called Guardian Youth Care.

Another man named as a director, William Aloisi, denied ever being in business with the other three 'directors' of Global Wealth Group.

Former opal miner Maxwell John Reid - who has previously been jailed for tax fraud - denied having an account with Mossack Fonseca.

According to the ABC Reid wrote to Mossack Fonseca just weeks after getting out of jail to set up an escrow fund - which works as a pass-through account.

Although Reid said he did request an escrow service to transfer $100 million, he had not been in contact with Mossack Fonseca.

Murray Priestley, a stock trader who was banned from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) after they found he gave clients misleading advice was also named.

ASIC banned Mr Priestley from providing financial services for three years in June 2013. It was at this time he was director of a company registered by Mossack Fonseca.

Australians named in the huge leaks include mining giant BHP Billiton and Wilson Security (stock image)

The Australian Taxation Office (pictured is ATO Deputy Commissioner Michael Cranston) is investigating more than 800 high net worth Australians after a leak of financial data shows how the world's rich hide their money

Other Australian-linked organisations and business leaders named in the huge leaks include BHP Billiton, Wilson Security, Gold Coast based company director Ian Taylor, and Hong Kong's richest man and Australian energy market owner Li Ka-Shing, ABC's Four Corners reports.

There were no suggestions Mr Taylor and his family had done anything illegal.

The Australians are under investigation after political leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin were named in more than 11 million documents leaked from secretive Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca.

It prompted Treasurer Scott Morrison to insist the federal government is cracking down on multinational tax avoidance following the massive leak by reaping $400 million in revenue in recent years from acting on sources and information received by the ATO.

The government has agreements with more than 100 countries to swap information to crack down on tax avoidance while laws to strengthen the system passed parliament in December - despite Labor voting against them.

'Our record when it comes to tax avoidance and particularly multinational tax avoidance is one of legislation and action,' he told ABC radio on Monday.

Treasurer Scott Morrison insists the government is cracking down on multinational tax avoidance following the massive leak by reaping $400 million in revenue in recent years from acting on sources received by the ATO

The so-called Panama Papers, part of a leak of 11million files, implicate those in Russian president Vladimir Putin's inner circle, along with families and associates of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad (right)

'The Labor Party voted against laws to crack down on multinationals - explain that to me.'

The tougher laws require multinationals with a turnover of $1 billion or more to provide detailed accounts of their tax arrangements while private companies with a turnover of $200 million are required to provide detailed public accounts.

The ATO is examining the dealings of 800 Australian high net worth individuals and has linked more than 120 of them to an associate offshore service provider situated in Hong Kong, The Australian Financial Review reports.

'Some cases may be referred to the serious financial crime taskforce,' ATO deputy commissioner Michael Cranston told the newspaper.

The leak of documents show how Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca has allegedly helped clients launder money, dodge sanctions and evade tax.

The ATO (pictured) has linked more than 120 of the 800 Australian high net worth individuals to an associate offshore service provider situated in Hong Kong

Families and associates of Egypt's former president Hosni Mubarak (pictured left), Libya's former leader Muammar Gaddafi (right) were also implicated in the data leak

German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung obtained the files and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists but the identity of the source who leaked them and how it was done is unknown.

Mossack Fonseca is Panamanian but runs a worldwide operation.

Among national leaders with offshore wealth are Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's prime minister, and Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson, prime minister of Iceland  who now faces calls for a snap election.

The leaks also reveal a suspected billion-dollar money laundering ring that was run by a Russian bank and involved close associates of President Putin.

Mossack Fonseca said in a statement: 'Our firm has never been accused or charged in connection with criminal wrongdoing.
Donald Trump's assaults on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization loomed over a meeting between President Barack Obama and the organization's secretary general today.

The White House says the GOP front-runner likely did not come up during the meeting at all, however.

'They had a lot of really important things to discuss, and I'm not sure Mr.Trump's comments would fall in that category,' White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said this afternoon.

Donald Trump's assaults on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization loomed over a meeting between President Barack Obama and the organization's secretary general today. But the White House says the GOP front-runner probably didn't come up during the meeting at all

The U.S. president hosted NATO Secretary General of NATO, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the White House today, on the 67th anniversary of the North American and European alliance organization's founding

The dig at Trump was related to his claims that NATO is 'ripping off'' the United States and has become 'obsolete' in the 21st century because it was not designed to fend off terrorists.

Trump said at a Saturday rally in Wisconsin, 'We are protecting them, giving them military protection and other things, and theyre ripping off the United States. And you know what we do? Nothing.'

'Either they have to pay up for past deficiencies or they have to get out,' he said, according to the New York Times, echoing previous complaints he's lodged against the alliance. 'And if it breaks up NATO, it breaks up NATO.'

The White House said today that Obama isn't worried about that because the controversial businessman is unlikely to become president.

Asked if the president reassured the organization's head of U.S. support, Earnest told reporters, 'I'm not sure that it was necessary, quite frankly.'

Obama has spoke at length about the importance of NATO, his spokesman said.

'That is alliance is something that President Obama has long acknowledged is critical to our national security.'

He added, 'The president will certainly be int in advocating for the election of a successor who believes in the important in maintaining a strong relationship with NATO.'

The president and his spokesman have repeatedly argued that the Trump doctrine would endanger Americans.

Obama said Friday that Trump's positions indicate that 'doesn't know much' about foreign policy.

'Ive said before that people pay attention to American elections. What we do is really important to the rest of the world,' the president said. 'And even in those countries that are used to a carnival atmosphere in their own politics want sobriety and clarity when it comes to U.S. elections.'

Earnest said during his regular briefing today that it's not too late to course correct - the 'damage' the president has repeatedly talked about has not been done yet.

'The damage is in concern expressed around the world about whether or not the United States is going to continue to stand for and fight for the kinds of values that have been central to this country since our nation's founding more than 200 years ago,' he said.

That Trump and his fellow Republican presidential candidates 'want to walk away from some of those values and in some cases even talk down some of our values, isn't just disappointing,' Earner proclaimed, 'it's unsettling to our allies that continue to depend on the United states as an ardent defender of basic human rights, of smart policy, or our NATO alliance.'

'I think ultimately ensuring that we have leadership in the United States....isn't just critical to our national security,' he said, 'it's also critical to ensuring strong relations with some of our closest allies around the world.'

Blowing off the possibility that Trump will succeed in November, Earnest said, 'The president retains a lot of confidence in the commitment of the American people to those values.'

'They had a lot of really important things to discuss, and I'm not sure Mr.Trump's comments would fall in that category,' White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said this afternoon

The U.S. president hosted NATO Secretary General of NATO, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the White House today, on the 67th anniversary of the North American and European alliance organization's founding.

'NATO continues to be the lynchpin, the cornerstone of our collective defense and U.S. security policy,' the president said afterward.

He said, 'We had an excellent meeting that started with marking the tragedy that had taken place in Brussels, and reinforcing the importance of us staying focused on ISIL and countering the terrorism that has seeped up into Europe and around the world.'

Among the topics they discussed were ISIS, Russia's conflict with Ukraine and Afghanistan -'in which NATO obviously has been an extraordinary partner with the United States,'Obama said.

'I just want to state how effective I think Secretary General Stoltenberg has been in managing a whole range of challenges,' Obama told reporters.

Continuing he said, 'This is obviously a tumultuous time in the world. Europe is a focal point of a lot of these stresses and strains in the global security system. We are lucky to have a strong NATO Secretary General and a strong team that is such an excellent partner with us.

'And it is because of the strength of NATO and the Transatlantic partnership, this Transatlantic Alliance, that I'm confident that, despite these choppy waters, we will be able to continue to underscore and underwrite the peace and security and prosperity that has been the hallmark of the Transatlantic relationship for so many decades.'

After the meeting today, Obama told reporters, 'NATO continues to be the lynchpin, the cornerstone of our collective defense and U.S. security policy,' the president said afterward'

Stoltenberg likewise stated that 'NATO is as important as ever, because NATO has been able to adapt to a more dangerous world -- not least because of your personal commitment and your personal leadership, and we're really grateful for that.
Two migrants who walked through the Channel Tunnel from France to the UK have been jailed.

Payam Moradi Mirahessari, 25 and Farein Vahdani, 20, were charged with obstructing an engine or carriage using the railway, under the Malicious Damage Act 1861.

And today, the men, both from Iran, were jailed for 14 months each after pleading guilty.

But the pair will only have to serve two months in prison from today, as they have already been in custody for the past 12 months.

Payam Moradi Mirahessari, 25 and Farein Vahdani, 20, were jailed for 14 months for walking 31 miles across the Channel Tunnel. Pictured are migrants walking along the Eurotunnel lines in Calais

Sentencing them at Canterbury Crown Court (pictured) in Kent, Judge Adele Williams said: 'You breached the security of the UK and France. 'Anyone who breaches that security commits a major offence'

Sentencing them at Canterbury Crown Court in Kent, Judge Adele Williams said: 'Each of you walked through the channel tunnel, then were arrested.

'You breached the security of the UK and France.

'Anyone who breaches that security commits a major offence.

'By your actions committed, you caused a great deal of disruption, delay and inconvenience.'

The men completed the 31-mile walk and were arrested in Folkestone, Kent, on October 7.

It is believed they used a gangplank intended for engineers to avoid potentially deadly live wires during their 12 hour trek.

The men completed the 31-mile walk and were arrested in Folkestone, Kent, on October 7. It is believed they used a gangplank intended for engineers to avoid potentially deadly live wires during their 12-hour trek

They also dodged five trains, which were travelling at speeds of up to 100mph.

The men managed to sneak past security staff as hundreds of migrants made a dash for the tunnel to reach Britain.

During the break, one Eurotunnel employee and two French police officers were injured.

Once the men are released, it is not yet known if the men will stay in the UK as their asylum cases are ongoing.

Both men have family in the UK.

In August last year Sudanese man Abdul Haroun, 40, was arrested after making the same dangerous journey through the tunnel, he was granted asylum on Christmas Eve and was the first to reach Britain on foot via the tunnel.
Up to four million patients are having to queue for a same-day appointment with a GP, a damning survey reveals.

Surgeries overwhelmed by demand are routinely asking that the elderly and unwell wait outside to see a doctor the same day. Some patients have been getting up at dawn to queue.

Patients representatives condemned the situation as unacceptable and said it prolonged the suffering and discomfort of those in need of medical help.

Queues: Patients wait outside Sunbury Health centre in December 2014. A survey has found that millions are having to queue for a same day appointment with a GP

But practices say they are struggling to cope with the pressures of immigration, an ageing population and a desperate shortage of doctors, meaning there are not enough slots to go round. The survey of 9,116 patients aged over 50 commissioned by the Daily Mail also reveals:

Up to two million now wait three weeks or more for an appointment.

A third cannot see a GP the same week.

One in 20 are kept hanging on the phone for between 20 minutes and an hour when they try to book.

Patients are routinely made to wait longer than a month for appointments.

Until recently, the ordeal of having to queue to see a GP was almost unheard of but these findings reveal how it has become widespread and routine.

A total of 7 per cent of patients said their practice operated a queuing system for same-day or urgent appointments  equivalent to four million across the UK.

The problem was first highlighted in December 2014 when the Mail exposed how patients including the elderly and chronically ill were lining-up in the bitter cold and rain outside an oversubscribed surgery in Sunbury-on-Thames, Surrey.

The practices list size had expanded from 9,000 patients to 19,000 in just a few years and there were not enough appointments to go round.

Last October Kerry Bradley, who regularly woke at 5am to queue outside the Sunbury Health Centre, said: The doors dont open until seven so it does mean that Ill stand in line for a while  but I also know that once 7am comes, my waiting will be over.

Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association, said: It is simply unacceptable if long waiting times to see a GP become the norm.

Long wait? Patients are being forced to wait for up to three weeks for a pre-booked appointment at surgeries if they choose not to queue for several hours early in the morning (file picture)

Delays in seeing a doctor or nurse not only prolongs a patients suffering and discomfort, but can also cause a deterioration in their condition. We receive countless calls to our helpline from patients who are unable to obtain a GP appointment at a time when they need one.

Surgery staff say these walk and wait-type systems are the fairest way of ensuring anyone who wants an urgent appointment is seen by a doctor. Patients then face the choice of queuing up for several hours early that morning or waiting three to four weeks for the next available pre-bookable slot.

At the North Street Medical Centre in Romford, Essex, as many as 50 people queue some mornings. Receptionists admit that even when patients get into the waiting room they struggle to get a seat.

SURGERIES IN LOCUM CRISIS Nine in ten surgeries are now forced to rely on locums because they are so short of permanent GPs, according to a survey. A poll of 2,814 surgeries also found that half struggle even to hire locums as they are in so much demand. The British Medical Association survey found that recruitment problems were most severe in the South and South West of the country where six in ten surgeries regularly have trouble hiring locums. Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chairman of the BMAs GP committee, said: If a GP locum cannot be found many practices struggle to offer enough appointments to meet their patients needs. An NHS England spokesman said: There are more than 5,000 more full-time equivalent GPs than ten years ago but we recognise that general practice is under pressure. Advertisement

Queues outside Paxton Green Group practice in South-East London are often 30-strong and patients regularly wait two and a half hours.

The survey was carried out by Saga, which provides older peoples services. Researchers also found that one in ten patients had waited at least two weeks to see a doctor the last time they made a GP appointment, including 3 per cent who had waited three weeks and 1 per cent for a month.

Another 5 per cent said they were on the phone for more than 20 minutes when they tried to book a slot although in the worst cases it was longer than an hour.

Last year the Mail highlighted the escalating crisis in general practice, partly driven by an exodus of GPs retiring in their 50s or moving overseas.

But they are not being replaced by junior doctors who are instead opting for careers as surgeons or hospital specialists. Dr Maureen Baker, who chairs the Royal College of GPs, said: We know that our patients are finding it harder and harder to make a GP appointment  this is not because GPs arent offering more appointments, but it is indicative of the severe lack of resources in general practice.

Tory MP Priti Patel said: Our membership of the EU means we are unable to control our borders and that is putting an acute strain on our public services.
Stumping for Bernie Sanders today in Wisconsin, actor Tim Robbins suggested that Hillary Clinton's delegate lead was a figment of the mainstream media and the Democratic establishment's imagination.

He said that her first big primary win, in South Carolina, was overblown.

'After the Southern primaries you had called the election  and who's fooling who?' Robbins said, according to video from ABC News. 'Winning South Carolina in the Democratic primary is about as significant as winning Guam  no Democrat is going to win South Carolina in the general election.'

'Why do these victories have so much significance?' he asked.

The actor, who most recently appeared on HBO's foreign policy comedy 'The Brink,' said he had come before a Green Bay audience to 'talk to our friends in the Democratic Party that feel Bernie in their hearts, but are supporting Hillary with their pragmatic brains,' at one point hinting those supporting the frontrunner were 'sheep.'

Scroll down for video

Actor Tim Robbins (right) stumped for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (left) today at a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin

'These are not bad people,' Robbins said of those Democrats not feeling the Bern, according to video shot by the Green Bay Press-Gazette. He had to hush some low boos.

'They fear the Republicans' radical and dangerous divisiveness as much as we do,' Robbins added.

He suggested the problem was that Democrats have been fed 'a steady stream of simplistic propaganda that furthers the establishment's narrative.'

'That Hillary is the presumptive nominee,' he said was the line.

Robbins said it was the mainstream media that was peddling this fiction.

Currently Clinton is 263 delegates ahead.

'If we were sheep, if we had gotten in line, it would be no problem,' Robbins said of those Democrats supporting Sanders.

'The media and the ghosts of the DLC would have had their way and government would carry on as it has carried on for the past 30 years,' he continued, name-dropping the Democratic Leadership Council, the moderate group that formed in the 1980s and paved the way for President Bill Clinton's election.

In the past, Robbins noted how 'outsider candidates like Bernie Sanders would be marginalized and tolerated for a few primaries before falling in line with the Democratic party structure.'

Tim Robbins talks Bernie Sanders' campaign Posted by Green Bay Press-Gazette on Monday, April 4, 2016

'But the DNC and the Clintons have a big problem: Times have changed,' Robbins said.

'Bernie is not our [Howard] Dean,' he said, pointing to another Vermonter, the state's governor who ran an outsider bid in 2004.

'Bernie is not the obligatory progressive that will keep the left in line until the presumptive moderate nominee emerges,' Robbins said.

'Bernie is not the Democratic party insider that will bow down to the wishes of the elite of the party,' he continued.

'We are done with that patriarchy,' Robbins added.

The actor complimented Sanders for one of his biggest differences with Clinton  his vote on the Iraq war.

'There are moments in history where political pragmatism can lead to disaster,' he said of that particular decision, though suggested that Democrats supporting Clinton are doing it solely for pragmatism as well.

'I understand our friends' resistance to Bernie Sanders,' Robbins noted.
Students at an all-female college in California are disgusted that white feminist Madeleine Albright has been chosen to give their commencement address at graduation.

Officials at Scripps College in Claremont recently announced that Albright, who was Americas first female secretary of state, would be speaking to graduates next month.

But shortly after the announcement, some students took to social media to blast the colleges lack of diversity when it comes to choosing commencement speakers, the Claremont Independent reports.

Students at an all-female college in California are disgusted that white feminist Madeleine Albright (pictured) has been chosen to give their commencement address at graduation

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know how many [people of color] weve had as guest commencement speakers at Scripps? one student said.

Another student claimed some professors are refusing to stand on stage during Albrights address and branded her a war criminal.

Meanwhile, an article in the school paper branded the 78-year-old, who was born in Prague in then-Czechoslovakia, a repeated genocide enabler whose hands are covered in blood.

Kinzie Mabon, an Anthropology major who will graduate next month, wrote in The Student Life that she is deeply disgusted that she would have to listen to Albright tell her to go out into the world and be amazing, even though according to her, Im going to hell.

Mabon was referencing Alrights recent headline-making comments that there is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women - referring to those not voting for Hillary Clinton.

It's a phrase that Albright has used repeatedly over the years - and the quote was even printed on cups at Starbucks.

In addition to Madeleine Albright condemning me to eternal damnation for choosing to vote based on a candidates political record and proposed policies instead of my gender identity, her hands are also covered in blood.

Officials at Scripps College (above, file photo) in Claremont recently announced that Albright, who was Americas first female secretary of state, would be speaking to graduates next month

She blasts Albright for not doing more to prevent genocide in Rwanda when she was the ambassador for the UN and her support of military intervention in the Balkans as secretary of state.

Mabon also cites Albrights response in a 1996 interview after being asked if the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children due to sanctions imposed on the country were worth it.

Although acknowledging that Albrights status as the first female US secretary of state is extraordinary, she adds: Being the first woman to do something impressive does not give you a free pass on human rights.

Another student branded Albright a war criminal

But a spokesman for Scripps college told Daily Mail Online that the commencement speakers are chosen by student representatives.

In this case, the students themselves choose the commencement speaker.

The school added that commencement speakers in the past have been varied, including poet Sarah Kay, alum and politician Gabrielle Giffords and feminist and journalist Gloria Steinem.

However, some students are delighted that Albright will be speaking at the event.

Seeing negative reactions about her visit just because of her race is honestly ridiculous when considering her achievements, student Olivia Wu told the Independent.

Albright worked for the National Security Council under President Jimmy Carter and was the US ambassador to the UN before being appointed secretary of state by Bill Clinton in 1996.

The newspaper also notes that students did not protest when Angela Davis, a former radical and academic spoke on campus earlier this year. Davis was on the FBIs Most Wanted List for murder and kidnapping.




David Cameron was dragged into the row over international tax avoidance last night after fresh revelations about his late father's offshore investments.

A huge data leak shows Ian Cameron's firm used a secretive type of share certificate now banned in the UK.

The 'Panama Papers' also reveal his company Blairmore Holdings avoided UK tax by hiring Bahamas residents  including a bishop  to sign paperwork.

Experts said the way it held meetings in the Caribbean and Switzerland appeared little more than a 'conjuring trick' to make it seem the firm was based outside the UK when key decisions were actually taken in Britain.

Cameron, pictured with his parents Ian and Mary Cameron, has been dragged into the Panama Papers scandal after it emerged that his father Ian's (right) firm was based offshore and involved in tax avoidance

Prime Minister David Cameron, pictured with his late father Ian, refused to say if his family still benefits from offshore funds after the revelations yesterday

Last night the Prime Minister refused to say whether his family still benefited from offshore funds  insisting it was a 'private matter'.

But senior government officials said Mr Cameron does not personally own shares in any company and no shareholdings are registered in the list of MPs' interests.

As Prime Minister he has spearheaded efforts to make global finance more transparent.

He has spoken out repeatedly against tax avoidance and is hosting a major summit on the issue next month.

Senior government officials said David Cameron (left), who is not involved in his father's (right) business, does not personally own shares in any company and no shareholdings are registered in the list of MPs' interests

The details about his father's affairs emerged following the leak of 11.5million secret documents from the offices of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. As more world leaders, celebrities and business figures were compromised:

Three former Tory MPs, six Lords and a number of Conservative donors were linked to tax havens, including financiers who supported Mr Cameron's rise to power;

HSBC and the Queen's bank Coutts were revealed to have been among the biggest facilitators of offshore tax deals;

The files revealed that gold from the Brink's-Mat heist may have been laundered with the help of Mossack Fonseca, which denies wrongdoing;

Iceland's prime minister was left facing a no-confidence vote after it emerged he had an undeclared interest in his nation's bailed-out banks;

A suspected 1.4billion money-laundering ring was said to involve close associates of Vladimir Putin;

HMRC was branded 'hapless and pathetic' after being wrong-footed by the Panama Papers.

Ian Cameron's firm Blairmore Holdings allegedly paid people in the Bahamas to sign paperwork so they could enjoy offshore tax status

It emerged in 2012 that Ian Cameron had run a network of offshore investment funds to help build the family fortune.

But the Panama Papers included significant new details yesterday.

Though entirely legal, the funds were set up in tax havens such as Panama City and Geneva, and were said to have explicitly boasted of their ability to remain outside the UK tax jurisdiction.

Ian Cameron, who died in 2010, was said to have been instrumental in setting up Blairmore, which was run from the Bahamas but named after the family's ancestral home in Aberdeenshire.

It managed tens of millions of pounds on behalf of wealthy families.

Clients included Isidore Kerman, an adviser to Robert Maxwell, and Leopold Joseph, the private bank used by the Rolling Stones.

John Mann, a Labour member of the Treasury select committee, demanded that No 10 publish full details about the links between the Cameron family and Blairmore.

'Parliament and every taxpayer have a right to know whether any of this money is still hidden offshore,' he said.

SHARES WITH NO NAME Bearer shares are so called because no name is attached to them. Whoever has the physical share certificate is its owner  the same way that whoever has possession of a 10 note owns it and is free to spend it. Information about who actually owns the share is concealed. Certificates can be passed or sold by one person or company to another and the firm that issued it does not have to be informed. UK companies were banned from issuing them last May under the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act. By next month, British firms that previously issued bearer shares must have converted them into a normal 'registered' share. But they are still allowed in a number of countries. And they remain a means of money laundering and tax evasion as they leave no trace of who owns or controls the finances of the company that issued the shares. Advertisement

And Jeremy Corbyn demanded that the Prime Minister 'stop pussyfooting around' and take action to tackle tax dodgers.

The Labour leader will insist today there cannot be 'one set of rules for the wealthy elite and another for the rest of us'.

He will argue avoidance of tax by wealthy firms and individuals is starving public services of vital funding.

Mossack Fonseca said it had operated 'beyond reproach' for 40 years, simply set up firms and had never been charged with criminal wrongdoing.

Government sources insisted they had taken tough action on tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance, ending the situation under Labour when some City bosses were paying less tax than cleaners.

They pointed to the 2billion raised following a crackdown on offshore holdings, and billions more raised following a crackdown on aggressive tax avoidance.

But Richard Pyle of Oxfam said the UK was in a unique position 'to help clean up the murky world of tax havens' and should ensure the real beneficiaries of offshore companies were revealed.

David Cameron faces embarrassment as the leak threatens to overshadow international summit on tax avoidance next month

TIM SCULTHORPE, MAILONLINE DEPUTY POLITICAL EDITOR

David Cameron will meet world leaders next month to work on new tax avoidance measures but the massive leak of the Panama papers could overshadow the London summit.

No 10 yesterday insisted the Prime Minister and Britain had been global leaders on cracking down on tax evasion and aggressive avoidance.

But after the leak of millions of papers - suggesting, among others, Mr Cameron's father and a string of Tory donors sheltered money off shore - threatens to undermine the talks.

David Cameron, right at a summit in Washington with Barack Obama last week, struck a deal on international tax avoidance with the US President and other G8 leaders in 2013. He is hosting a follow up meeting in London next month

Campaigners have demanded British legislation to end UK tax havens - including in the crown dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man.

The Prime Minister placed tackling global tax avoidance at the heart of his G8 presidency in 2013 and is working to follow up on the agreements made.

Mr Cameron has been a vocal advocate of reform and legislation forcing British companies to disclose who owns and benefits from their activities which comes into force in June.

Despite several years of pressure however, few UK Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories - which are said to make up a large part of the tax havens referred to in the papers - have taken concrete action to open up the books.

WHAT ARE OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS AND HOW ARE THEY USED? WHAT ARE OFFSHORE OR SHELL ACCOUNTS? Offshore bank accounts and other financial dealings in another country can be used to evade regulatory oversight or tax obligations. Often, companies or individuals use shell companies, initially incorporated without significant assets or operations, to disguise ownership or other information about the funds involved. WHERE ARE MOST OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS? Panama, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda are among more than a dozen small, low-tax locations that specialize in handling business services and investments of non-resident companies. LEGITIMATE USES FOR OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS: Companies or trusts can be set up in offshore locations for legitimate uses such as business finance, mergers and acquisitions and estate or tax planning, according to the global money laundering watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force. ILLICIT USES OF OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS: Shell companies and other entities can be misused by terrorists and others involved in international and financial crimes to conceal sources of funds and ownership. The ICIJ says the files from Mossack Fonseca include information on 214,488 offshore entities linked to 14,153 clients in 200 countries and territories. EFFORTS TO CRACK DOWN ON FINANCIAL HAVENS: Financial and legal professionals get training on how to spot potential violations, since in some cases lawyers and bankers are unaware they are handling illicit transactions. The EU has stepped up efforts to crack down on tax avoidance by multinational corporations. Advertisement

He faces pressure to secure progress at an international summit on tackling corruption which he will chair in London in May and where the use of offshore tax havens to escape scrutiny will be high on the agenda.

Mr Cameron's official spokeswoman today insisted good progress had been made since 2013.

She said: 'We want to see the overseas territories and crown dependencies play their part and that is why we will continue to push them to do so and as I have said the Prime Minister has made clear that should they fail to do so, he rules absolutely nothing out.'

Asked if any cash should be repaid she added: 'That is a matter for HMRC.'

Mr Cameron's spokeswoman said Britain was 'leading the pack internationally' on the issue and said 90 countries were now signed up to policies agreed at the G8 in 2013.

Turning to next month's summit, she added: 'We will be looking at a range of areas - this was something the Prime Minister decided last summer ahead of the G7 meeting in Germany that we should try focus on this issue as a country that is meeting its commitment to 0.7 per cent aid spending.

'We want to look now at how we move forward to make sure in different walks of life money is being spent in the right way and people know where taxpayers money is being spent.

'May's summit will be an opportunity to bring together leaders, international organisations, NGOs, to look at is there more we can do in this area to do with tax and transparency or, indeed, in other areas such as sport.'

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell said not enough had been achieved.

'Cameron promised and has failed to end tax secrecy and crack down on 'morally unacceptable' offshore schemes,' he said.

'Real action is now needed.'

SNP Treasury spokesman Stewart Hosie today said the Government had to go further on British Overseas Territories.

He said: 'Currently, true ownership of companies registered in British Overseas Territories is shrouded in secrecy due to the use of nominated directors and shareholders making it impossible for tax authorities to find out who really owns and benefits from the company.

'This has to stop and the Tories are running out of excuses as to why they have not done more to stop this dubious practice.'

Ahead of the 2013 summit, Mr Cameron insisted tax havens had a right to be low tax jurisdictions but said rules had to be transparent and enforced fairly.
Britain's tax investigators were last night branded hapless and pathetic after being wrong-footed by the Panama Papers data leak.

HM Revenue & Customs was forced to write to media organisations yesterday to request access to the 11.5million documents leaked from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

Critics called for a wholesale shake-up of the agency to make it more effective.

HM Revenue & Customs was forced to write to media organisations yesterday to request access to the 11.5million documents leaked from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca

Ex-chairman of the Commons public accounts committee Margaret Hodge (left) said she did not have much confidence in HMRCs appetite for really defending the taxpayers interest. But Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said HMRC cannot operate with their hands tied' due to Osborne's staffing cuts

The ex-chairman of the Commons public accounts committee said she did not have much confidence in HMRCs appetite for really defending the taxpayers interest.

It comes only a year after HMRC came under fire for its response to tax evasion by customers of HSBCs Swiss bank  taking sanctions against just one. And earlier this year it was castigated for reaching sweetheart tax deals with global corporations such as Google.

Yesterday, in response to the leak, HMRC pledged to act on it swiftly and appropriately.

Vicky Ranson, director of its risk and intelligence service, wrote to the editor of the Guardian, which has published details of the leaks.

She said: I am very keen to obtain this data from you so we can cross-reference it with our own extensive data, to see whether there is information that we do not have and which could be useful as part of our extensive investigations into offshore tax evasion.

SHARES WITH NO NAME Bearer shares are so called because no name is attached to them. Whoever has the physical share certificate is its owner  the same way that whoever has possession of a 10 note owns it and is free to spend it. Information about who actually owns the share is concealed. Certificates can be passed or sold by one person or company to another and the firm that issued them does not have to be informed. UK firms were banned from issuing them last May under the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act. By next month British firms that previously issued bearer shares must have converted them into a normal registered share. But they are still allowed in a number of countries. And they remain a means of money laundering and tax evasion as they leave no trace of who owns or controls the finances of the company that issued the shares. Advertisement

The Guardian said it was considering whether to hand over the information.

Margaret Hodge, former chairman of the public accounts committee, said that when HSBC representatives appeared before her in 2013, she asked them about its links to Mossack Fonseca.

She said: If we touched on Mossack three years ago, why didnt HMRC?  We found links with Mugabe, with Assads bag carrier. Mossacks name was on endless documents, and anyone with a bit of nous would have seen this as a red flag  I dont have much confidence in HMRCs appetite for really defending the taxpayers interest and properly pursuing people.

John Mann, a Labour MP on the Treasury select committee, said: The Panama scandal highlights just how hapless and pathetic HMRC has become in dealing with money laundering and tax evasion. It needs new leadership.
Two quick-thinking bus drivers saved a suicidal woman from jumping off a bridge in Nanjing, China, yesterday.

One of the drivers noticed the woman sat on a guardrail of the bridge and rushed off the bus to try and persuade her to get down from the ledge, reported Huanqiu, an affiliation with the People's Daily Online.

Another driver then pulled up and managed to grab hold of the woman, bringing her to safety.

Kind hearted passersby: People try and persuade the woman from Chongqing not to jump from the bridge

Rescue mission: Another driver stops his bus and rushes over to help, grabbing hold of the woman

The images were taken by a passenger on the bus.

According to reports, the bus had come to a halt on the Nanjing Yangze River bridge when the driver saw the woman sat on the ledge of the bridge waiting to jump.

Upon seeing the woman, the driver of bus number 572 rushed out of his bus and went to talk to her.

At the same time, another bus, number D2, pulled up on the bridge. The driver cautiously, not to frighten the woman, approached her and managed to grab hold of her.

The pair were then able to pull the woman back across the bridge.

After the rescue, traffic police came to the scene.

According to police, the woman was from Chongqing and wanted to commit suicide because she was in a dispute with family. In a spur of emotion she came to the bridge.

Her family rushed to the police station and thanked those involved.

Bringing her to safety: The two drivers manage to pull the woman back across the barrier of the bridge
Shocking footage has emerged of the aftermath of a 56 car pile up on a Chinese motorway.

The incident occurred on April 2 in Changzhou, east China's Jiangsu province, the People's Daily Online reports.

Two people were killed and dozens more were injured in the accident.

Horrifying: The scene of the incident where two people died and dozens more were injured in China

Shocking: According to reports, the crash was caused by a lorry's burst tyre along with bad weather

Chaos: After the crash, people stood on top of vehicles to get a clearer picture of the sheer size of the incident

Incident on the roads: The accident site where 56 vehicles piled up on a busy motorway in China

According to a statement from the ministry of Public Security Fire Bureau, the Changzhou City Police and Fire Brigade received an emergency call from the expressway.

Nine fire engines and 44 firefighters rushed to the scene.

21 people were found trapped inside their vehicles and all were rescued by the emergency services.

They were sent to hospital for treatment.

It's been reported in The Paper.cn that the accident was caused by a lorry's burst tyre.

The aftermath of the incident was caught on camera.

In the footage, people can be seen standing on top of cars to get a better look at the sheer size of the destruction.

In video from the incident itself, the bad weather is evident with wind and rain affecting visibility.

The motorway has completely come to a standstill.

Road accidents in China are still high up on the list of causes of death in the country.

In 2015, the World Health Organisation revealed that at least 200,000 people die each year in China as a result of road accidents.

In the same year, six people died in a six car pile up in Tianjin after smog affected visibility in the area.

Two people died and dozens more were injured in the accident which took place on April 2 in China
A replica of the Great Sphinx of Giza has been demolished after protests from the Egyptian government who claimed that the copy harmed the cultural heritage of Egypt.

The model belongs to Hebei Great Wall Film Studios and is located in Shijiazhuang, north China's Hebei province, the People's Daily Online reports.

The statue was torn down on April 2.

Say farewell: People take pictures of the head which was removed from its body in Shijiazhuang, China

No copying! The Egyptian government claimed that the sculpture harmed the cultural heritage of its country

The life-size replica (pictured before the demolition) belongs to the Hebei Great Wall Film Studios in north China

The sphinx measured 65 feet high and 196 feet wide - almost the same size as the original in Egypt. It was built in 2014 by the film production company.

Chinese media reported that the copycat Sphinx statue had been built as a film set.

The company also constructed replicas of the Temple of Heaven and the Louvre Pyramid.

Upon its completion, authorities in Egypt filed a complaint to UNESCO in May 2014 saying that Egyptian authorities should have been notified of its creation was to shoot film and TV, in line with international conventions.

In a statement, Antiquities minister Ibrahim said: 'We will address UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova, to inform her that the re-production of Sphinx harms the cultural heritage of Egypt where the statue is registered on the World Heritage List'.

According to reports, Egyptian authorities were also of the opinion that the copycat differed greatly to its original and may give people a false interpretation of Egyptian antiquities. There were also concerns that it could affect the tourism, film and shooting industries in Egypt.

The designers have even copied the original's broken nose, which was mysteriously damaged hundreds of years ago.

But it unlike the original - which was carved from limestone - the Chinese version appears to have been built using reinforced concrete.

Model belongs to Hebei Great Wall Film Studios and is located in Shijiazhuang, north China's Hebei province

The designers have even copied its broken nose, which was mysteriously damaged hundreds of years ago

Real or fake? The original model is locatedon Egypt's Giza Plateau on the west bank of the river Nile

The structure is the latest in a line of Chinese recreated Western landmarks, including a miniature Mount Rushmore, an Eiffel Tower and an entire Austrian village.

The Great Sphinx of Giza replica has been popular with local residents and tourists who have been gathering to take photos of the bizarre addition to their skyline.

The original is located on Egypts Giza Plateau on the west bank of the river Nile where the Great Pyramids can also be found.

It was constructed around 2500BC during the reign of Pharaoh Khafra, and it is thought that the face of the statue was modeled on his.

Over time it gradually became buried up to its neck in sand, which helped to preserve it before it was finally excavated in 1925.
Private space firm Blue Origin successfully launched and landed for the third time an unmanned suborbital rocket capable of carrying six passengers, taking another step on its path in developing reusable boosters, the company said on Saturday.

The New Shepard rocket and capsule blasted off from a launch site in West Texas on Saturday at an undisclosed time, and landed minutes later back at a landing pad, the company, headed by Jeff Bezos, said.

The capsule, which was flying autonomously, parachuted to a nearby site and was recovered, the company said.

Private space firm Blue Origin has released drone footage of a successful launch and landing of the New Shepard rocket on Saturday

It was the third successful takeoff and landing of an unmanned suborbital rocket capable of carrying six passengers for the company, taking another step on its path in developing reusable boosters

The New Shepard rocket and capsule blasted off from a launch site in West Texas on Saturday at an undisclosed time

Minutes after takeoff (pictured) the rocket landed back at a landing pad, the company, headed by Jeff Bezos, said

The New Shepard rose through clear skies to an apogee of 339,138 feet (103,369 meters), the company said

'Flawless BE-3 restart and perfect booster landing,' Bezos wrote on Twitter. Blue Origin declined to comment on the test but said on Twitter, 'Congrats Blue team on today's (flight)!'

Saturday's flight marks the third successful launch-and-land for the rocket, with similar missions completed in January and November.

Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com Inc and owner of The Washington Post newspaper, said earlier this month that Blue Origin expects to begin crewed test flights of the New Shepard next year and begin flying paying passengers as early as 2018.

Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX are among a handful of companies working to develop rockets that can fly themselves back to Earth so they can be refurbished and flown again, potentially slashing launch costs.

For now, Blue Origin is flying suborbital rockets, which lack the speed to put spacecraft into orbit around Earth.

The BE-3 ramps for a succesful landing during the third launch and vertical landing of its reusable New Shepard

Blue Origins New Shepard booster executing a controlled vertical landing near Van Horn, Texas, on Saturday

Members of the Blue Origin team recover the crew capsule after its successful flight and soft landing in West Texas

The New Shepard rose through clear skies to an apogee of 339,138 feet (103,369 meters), the company said.

The engine that powers the pocket restarted at 3,635 feet (1,108 meters) above ground level 'and ramped fast for a successful landing,' the company said.

The New Shepard can reach an altitude of 333,000 feet, considered the boundary between Earth's atmosphere and space.

Previous test flights for the New Shepard were in January and November.

One change will in the most recent New Shephard rocket is that it engines 'fast at high thrust' just 3,600 feet from the ground, just before landing.

Bezos said if the engine doesn't restart, then the rocket will hit the ground in six seconds.

The company also trialed software that controls one of the capsule's control systems.

CEO Jeff Bezos tweeted prior to the rocket's takeoff that the company will fly the same vehicle that successfully went into space and returned on two other occasions

Blue Origin, the company created by Mr Bezos, successfully launched the New Shepard rocket for the first time in November, and repeated the take-off successfully just two months later

A video released by Blue Origin showed the launch and landing from the Texas site on January 22, with the rocket slowed to three miles per hour (five km per hour) on its descent with the assistance of parachutes

BLUE ORIGIN AIMS FOR PASSENGER FLIGHTS IN 2018 Jeff Bezos' space company Blue Origin expects to begin crewed test flights of its reusable suborbital New Shepard vehicle next year and begin flying paying passengers in 2018, Bezos told reporters on Tuesday. Bezos' remarks, made during the first ever media tour of the Blue Origin manufacturing facility, marked the first time the billionaire founder of Amazon.com had put a target date on the start of the commercial space flights Blue Origin is developing. 'We'll probably fly test pilots in 2017, and if we're successful then I'd imagine putting paying astronauts on in 2018,' Bezos said at the sprawling plant south of Seattle The company expects to build six New Shepard vehicles, which are designed to autonomously fly six passengers to more than 62 miles (100 km) above Earth, high enough to experience a few minutes of weightlessness and see the planet set against the blackness of space. Advertisement

Earlier this year, the firm revealed what it looked like from cameras on the rocket.

A video released by Blue Origin showed the launch and landing from the Texas site on January 22, with the rocket slowed to three miles per hour (five kilometres per hour) on its descent with the assistance of parachutes.

Although designed to carry six passengers, the test launches have been carried out with no one on board.

The breakthroughs by Blue Origin and parallel efforts by rival Internet mogul Elon Musk's SpaceX open up the potential for cutting costs for space travel and making rockets as reusable as airplanes.

Bezos called the accomplishment a 'game changer' in November, which opens the door to lower costs in space travel and his vision of people living and working in space.

'I'm a huge fan of rocket-powered vertical landing,' he wrote on the Blue Origin website.

'Why? Because to achieve our vision of millions of people living and working in space we will need to build very large rocket boosters. And the vertical landing architecture scales extraordinarily well.

Blue Origin - created by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (left) - has taken a giant step forward in the development of cheaper space travel. Re-usable rockets could be used like planes, and therefore dramatically slash the cost of space travel

A camera attached to the New Shepard rocket traced its journey and captured remarkable views from its altitude of 63 miles

While no men were on-board during the trial, the capsule separated and descended as planned (pictured) and the booster also flew back to the landing pad

Blue Origin was created by internet entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, who also created Amazon. Pictured, the part of Texas where Blue Origin is based (marked on the map)

'When you do a vertical landing, you're solving the classic inverted pendulum problem, and the inverted pendulum problem gets a bit easier as the pendulum gets a bit bigger.'

Bezos said on Saturday that Blue Origin has solved the problem of balancing to keep the rocket in an upright position as it lands.

Elon Musk's SpaceX in December managed a similar feat for the first time with its Falcon 9 rocket in Florida, after it blasted off on a satellite-delivery mission.

The company has also tried to land a rocket on a floating platform in the Pacific Ocean a number of times, but has yet to be successful.

Although currently only launching suborbital rockets - which are not fast enough to put into orbit around Earth - Blue Origin is developing a more powerful rocket engine.

It is expected to begin testing the more powerful engine this year.

'We're already more than three years into development of our first orbital vehicle,' said Bezos.

'Though it will be the small vehicle in our orbital family, it's still many times larger than New Shepard.'

The breakthroughs by Blue Origin and parallel efforts by rival Internet mogul Elon Musk's SpaceX open up the potential for cutting costs for space travel and making rockets as reusable as airplanes
Scattered across the foothills of central Laos, thousands of large stone jars hewn from bare rock have perplexed archaeologists for decades.

Now excavations on the mysterious Plain of Jars may finally have provided an answer to what these strange vessels, which measure between three and ten feet tall, were used for.

Archaeologists have discovered 2,500-year-old human remains buried at sites close to the clusters of stone jars.

Ancient human bones (pictured) thought to be up to 2,500-years-old have been unearthed at sites surrounding the mysterious stone jars scattered across the foothills of central Laos. They have provided new clues for what the jars were used for and suggest bodies may have been 'distilled' in the jars and the bones reburied

The pits filled with bones that had been covered with a large limestone block and in other cases bones had been placed in ceramic vessels before being buried.

Dr Dougald O'Reilly, an archaeologist at the Australian National University who led the work, said it suggests the jars were used to decompose the bodies before the bones were removed and buried.

WHAT IS THE PLAIN OF JARS? Carved from huge blocks of sandstone and limestone, the jars on the Xieng Khouang plateau date from 500BC to 500AD. They appear to have been quarried from several areas in the Xieng Kouang foothills before being spread over more than 90 sites, numbering from just a handful in some areas to hundreds in others. Each has a cylindrical shape with the bottom wider than the top and most have lip rims, raising suspicions that the jars originally had lids. However, few stone lids have ever been found at the sites. Little is known about how the jars were created but some archaeologists speculate that the people who made them used iron chisels to carve them. Just one jar has been found to have been decorated with a human 'frogman' relief carved on the exterior. Advertisement

He said: 'What is now clear is that these are mortuary and were used for the disposal of the dead.

'This will be the first major effort since the 1930s to attempt to understand the purpose of the jars and who created them.

'One theory is that they were used to decompose the bodies. Later, after the flesh was removed the remains may have been buried around the jars.'

The stone jars are spread over 90 sites on the Xieng Khouang Plateau in Laos and are thought to date to the Iron Age in southeast Asia.

In some cases the jars appear by themselves while in others they are clustered together with up to 400 stone vessels in one location.

They are undecorated, but have been hewn from sandstone rock and vary in height and diameter.

There have been various theories about what the jars were used for including a storage vessels or to hold the cremated remains of the dead.

Some cremated fragments of bones and teeth have been found in some of the jars in the past.

But much of the sites has been inaccessible to researchers due to the danger of unexploded bombs dropped on the area by the United States during the Vietnam War.

The Plain of Jars is scattered with thousands of ancient stone jars (pictured) which were first examined by French archaeologist in the 1930s, but were later rendered almost inaccessible due to the risk of unexploded bombs left across the region following the Vietnam War

The jars were hewn from sandstone and limestone. They are found at 90 sites on the Xieng Khouang Plateau (pictured), sometimes appearing alone and in other cases appearing clusters of several hundred

Recently, however, researchers have suggested the stone jars may initially have been used to distill the bodies of the dead but over time their use changed.

The human bones uncovered by Dr O'Reilly and his team, which date to between 500 or 600 BC to 550 AD, help to support this view.

The bone pits and ceramic vessels filled with bones suggest the dead had been allowed to decompose before being moved and buried in some sort of ritual.

Dr O'Reilly said: 'There are pits full of bones with a large limestone block placed over them and other burials where bones have been placed in ceramic vessels.

Carved from huge blocks of sandstone and limestone, the jars appear to have been quarried from several areas in the Xieng Kouang foothills before being spread over more than 90 sites, numbering from just a handful in some areas to hundreds in others. The location of the Plain of Jars is marked

The jars tend to be cylindrical and have a wider base than they do at the top (pictured from above). Many are feared to have been destroyed during the cluster bombing campaign of the Vietnam War, but those that remain continue to baffle archaeologists

'Our excavations have also revealed, for the first time at one of these sites, a primary burial, where a body was placed in a grave.'

He also said that determining the status of the buried individuals was difficult due to a lack of material objects buried with them.

Just a few simple objects, such as glass beads, have been found with the remains.

The discovery has helped to add to the mystery of who the people who built and used the stone jars were, but Dr O'Reilly hopes further analysis of the graves could provide some clues.

'This will open up a huge amount of information into who these people were,' he said.
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Staring too long at these images could make you feel very, very small.

New images snapped by the Hubble Space Telescope have peered deep into the heart of the Milky Way to reveal more than half a million stars lying at the centre of our spiral galaxy.

The incredible images were captured using the telescope's infrared detector to peer through the massive veil of dust and gas which cloud our view of the galaxy's nuclear star cluster - the most massive and most dense cluster of stars in the Milky Way.

Apart from a few blue stragglers, the majority of the stars in the image form part of the cluster, which surround the supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy, 27,000 light years away from Earth.

Peering into the heart of the Milky Way, images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope peer through the massive veil of dust and gas which cloud our view of the galaxy's nuclear star cluster - the most massive and most dense cluster of stars in the Milky Way, surrounding a supermassive black hole at the ventre of the galaxy

The images were released by Nasa last week and show red stars veiled in dust, with the darkest areas representing regions where the dust is so thick that the satellite's powerful infrared detectors are unable to pierce through.

Scientists believe that there may be millions more stars which are too faint to be picked up.

Infrared wavelengths of light - which lie just beyond the visible end of the spectrum  have been translated to colour, enabling us to see the stars in the far reaches of our stellar neighbourhood.

The picture spans 50 light years across and is a composite of nine images captured using Hubble's wide field camera three.

By monitoring the stars over four years, scientists have been able to glean information about their movements and mass, as well as the larger structure of the star cluster.

Zooming in: The bottom image shows the location and scale of the galactic nucleus at the centre of the Milky Way, captured by Hubble. Lying at the heart of this dense cluster of stars is Sagitarius A, a supermassive black hole thought to be four million times the mass of our sun. The top two frames show visible light spectrum, while the bottom two show the stars visible in the infrared spectrum

Astronomers believe that focusing on this densely populated stellar region could provide more insight into how our galaxy formed, and whether it grew from globular star clusters falling towards the centre or from spiralling gas which formed stars at the core.

Last month, the Atlasgal project produced a map of unknown star forming regions near the heart of the Milky Way, a region of particular interest for astronomers as it includes many areas of star formation.

The map, covers an area of sky measuring 140 degrees long and three degrees wide, and contains a staggering 167 million pixels.

It is four times the coverage of the first Atlasgal map, and includes the southern part of the Milky Way which contains the galactic centre for the first time.

The Atlasgal survey took advantage of the unique characteristics of the telescope to provide a detailed view of the distribution of cold dense gas along the galactic plane - where the majority of a galaxy's mass lies - of the Milky Way. A selection of the super high-resolution image is shown. Explore the full-size image on the European Space Observatory website

Data released from the European Space Agency's Planck observatory added an extra level of detail to high-resolution images taken with the Apex telescope located high on the Chajnantor Plateau in Chile, South America.

WHAT IS THE ATLASGAL PROJECT? Atlasgal, or Apex Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy is a radio telescope situated at 5,100 metres above sea level. It is located at the Llano de Chajnantor plateau in the Atacama desert in northern Chile. The altitude and dry atmosphere make it a prime site for astronomers. Alongside Apex on the plateau is Alma, the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimeter Array, a state-of-the-art telescope to study light from some of the coldest objects in the universe. Alma will be used for follow-up studies of targets identified by Atlasgal. Both are operated by Eso, the European Southern Observatory. Advertisement

While the Planck observatory can image the whole sky, with relatively poor spatial resolution, Atlasgal covers only the plane of the galaxy  but at high angular resolution.

Combining information from both provides what the astronomers call excellent spatial dynamic range.

Together the telescopes have created the first map of the full area of the galactic plane at submillimetre wavelengths - between infrared light and radio waves.

The three-year project covers 420 square degrees of the sky, with each image tile having a resolution of over 3.5MP.

Eso Apex programme scientist Carlos De Breuck told MailOnline the most important aspect of the project was the four-times better sky coverage and the more uniform depth of information obtained.

The result of combining the tiles is an image of 167 megapixels, tracing the cold dense gas and dust of the Milky Way.

'Atlasgal maps the dust, which traces the hydrogen, but there are many other elements out there, which is why we are following up with other observations using Apex and other telescopes,' said Carlos De Breuck.

The survey focused on radiation with a wavelength of 870 m (0.87 millimetres).

Atlasgal is the Apex Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy, but Apex is itself an abbreviation of Atacama Pathfinder Experiment.

This is a radio telescope situated at 5,100 metres above sea level, at the Llano de Chajnantor plateau in the Atacama desert in northern Chile.

This comparison shows the central regions of the Milky Way observed at different wavelengths. The top panel shows submillimetre radiation, between infrared light and radio waves. The second shows the same part of the galaxy in infrared, the third shows near-infrared and the bottom is the view in visible light

The Apex data, at a wavelength of 0.87 millimetres, shows up in red and the background blue image was imaged at shorter infrared wavelengths by the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope as part of the Glimpse survey. The fainter extended red structures come from observations made by ESA's Planck satellite. The right-hand sections reveal the location of each of the horizontal strips within the galaxy

The altitude and dry atmosphere make it a prime site for astronomers.

Alongside Apex on the plateau is Alma, the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimeter Array, a state-of-the-art telescope to study light from some of the coldest objects in the universe.

Alma will be used for follow-up studies of targets identified by Atlasgal.

Both are operated by Eso, the European Southern Observatory, a joint venture of European and South American.

As well as looking inwards, Hubble continues to look outside of the Milky Way. Esa recently released images of an irregular dwarf galaxy, named UGC 4459, captured by the space satellite.

The dwarf galaxy is located 11 million light years away in the Ursa Major constellation, and could give clues to the future fate of galaxies like our own.

Scientists believe that these irregular galaxies, which are home to billions of stars, may once have been elliptical or spiral galaxies - like the Milky Way - which have been deformed from the gravitational pull of nearby massive objects.
nuclear thermal propulsion is 'most effective' way to Mars

said they're on target to get humans to Mars in 2030s

Charles Bolden said we are 'a lot closer than ever before' in getting to Mars

Nasa has been discussing a mission to Mars ever since astronauts landed on the moon, and for many it might seem like a pipedream.

But Nasa administrator and former astronaut Charles Bolden has now said engineers are 'a lot closer than ever before' in making this dream a reality.

He recently told Congress that nuclear thermal propulsion is 'the most effective' way of sending humans to Mars and believes reaching the red planet by 2030 will ensure the survival of our species.

Nasa Administrator and former astronaut Charles Bolden has said engineers are 'a lot closer than ever before' in putting men on Mars, which he hopes will happen in the 2030s

Speaking to CNBC's 'On the Money,' Bolden said: 'We think we're on the right trajectory to get humans to Mars in the 2030s.'

The US' top space official said he is now confident Nasa's 'Journey to Mars' will be accomplished because the past 50 years of missions act as a precursor to the mission to the red planet.

He said the mission is 'critically important' in helping us understand our own planet better, because Mars has the same amount of dry land as Earth, with seasons, weather and volcanoes.

While no liquid water has been found, evidence suggests water exists in the planet's icy soil and thin clouds, raising hopes that traces of life may be found.

The US' top space official, Charles Bolden (pictured) said he is now confident Nasa's 'Journey to Mars' will be accomplished because the past 50 years of missions act as a precursor to the mission to the red planet

Bolden said: 'The SLS and Orion, that's going to be our deep space vehicle to carry our astronauts back into the area around the moon and eventually on to Mars.' The SLS rocket (illustration shown) will be the cornerstone of Nasa's future exploits into deep space

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S MARS HOPES In 2010, Barack Obama said it should be possible to send astronauts to orbit Mars by the mid 2030s. He laid out details of his then new policy at Kennedy Space Centre when he also announced the budget for the work over the next five years. He said: 'By 2025, we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crewed missions beyond the Moon into deep space. 'So we'll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history.' 'By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow. And I expect to be around to see it.' Advertisement

Bolden has previously said that landing on Mars is essential to ensure the survival of our species.

Addressing the Royal Aeronautical Society in London, in 2014, he said: 'Getting to Mars is important because it is the only planet in the solar system [other than Earth] that we believe might have born life in some form at some time.

'It may be able to sustain life right now, and it definitely can sustain human life if we put humans there.

'That's important for the preservation of the species, and I want to make sure that my grand-daughters, and great-great-granddaughters, have the opportunity to go there.'

Nasa is building a next generation rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS) to take astronauts into deep space in an Orion capsule, to one day potentially land on Mars.

Bolden said: 'The SLS and Orion, that's going to be our deep space vehicle to carry our astronauts back into the area around the moon and eventually on to Mars.'

Last month, he told Congress that nuclear thermal propulsion is the 'the most effective' way of sending humans to Mars.

'We are on a journey to Mars and most people believe that, in the end, nuclear thermal propulsion will be the most effective form of propulsion to get there,' he said.

SLS will produce 13 per cent more thrust at launch than the space shuttle when it blasts off. Other facts and the shape of the incredible machine are illustrated in this graphic by Nasa

Nuclear thermal propulsion is 'the most effective' way of sending humans to Mars. That's according to Nasa administrator and former astronaut, Charles Bolden, who made the statement when speaking to Congress. The proposed Copernicus spacecraft would use nuclear thermal propulsion to carry astronauts to Mars

HOW NUCLEAR PROPULSION WORKS Nuclear rockets are rocket engines that use a nuclear fission reactor to heat propellant. Fission entails the splitting of atoms of uranium in a nuclear reactor The idea is relatively simple; a nuclear reactor will be used, similar to the ones used for power generation today. However, rather than using the reactor to heat water into steam, it will heat propellant instead and run it out of a rocket nozzle for thrust. Advertisement

He didn't, however, expand on details on how quickly Nasa hoped the technology could get astronauts to Mars.

Nasa is betting on nuclear propulsion because it weighs almost half as much as a chemical rocket without reducing thrust.

This means larger payloads of cargo can be carried on the spacecraft and they can also be made to travel far faster.

And unlike existing technology, which uses defined trajectories, a nuclear engine also allows a spacecraft to manoeuvre throughout flight.

Nasa's announcement followed news that Russia plans to test a nuclear engine in 2018.

It said the technology could help cosmonauts reach Mars in just six weeks.

This compares to the 18 months spacecraft currently need to get to Mars and could make Russia the first nation to put humans on the red planet.

The $274 million (192 million) project, which was originally overseen by the space agency RosCosmos in 2010, has now become the responsibility of nuclear group, Rosatom.

'A nuclear power unit makes it possible to reach Mars in a matter of one to one and a half months, providing capability for manoeuvring and acceleration,' Sergey Kirienko, head of Rosatom told RT .

Russia has announced that it will test a nuclear engine in 2018 that could help cosmonauts reach Mars in just six weeks. This compares to the 18 months spacecraft currently need to get to Mars. The Soviet Union had over 30 fission powered satellites during the Cold War, such as this Rorsat

A schematic of the nuclear thermal rocket shows how liquid hydrogen propellant would heated by the reactor

CHARLES BOLDEN: A BIOGRAPHY Charles Frank Bolden Jr has been the Administrator of Nasa since 17 July 2009. Born in South Carolina on 19 August 1946, he was a graduate of the US Naval Academy in 1968 and later joined the US Marine Corps, for whom he flew combat missions in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. He was selected as an astronaut by Nasa in 1980 and flew into space for the first time on 12 January 1986 as a pilot aboard Space Shuttle Columbia. In his career as an astronaut he flew into space a further three times, each on a Space Shuttle. His final flight was on Space Shuttle Discovery, landing on 11 February 1994. Since being appointed Administrator of Nasa Mr Bolden has continually re-iterated the agency's long-term ambition to land on Mars, and is currently overseeing a major transition in their human spaceflight efforts from the days of the Space Shuttle to the commercialisation of low Earth orbit. Advertisement

'Today's engines can only reach Mars in a year and a half, without the possibility of return.'

Russia currently has used over 30 fission reactors in space, the US has flown only one - the SNAP-10A (System for Nuclear Auxiliary Power) in 1965.

Engineers at Nasa have also been drawing up plans to use nuclear thermal propulsion in a mission to Mars in 2033.

According to the space agency's design, uranium-235 nuclear reactions could be used to heat liquid hydrogen inside a reactor, turning it into ionized hydrogen gas, or plasma.

This plasma is then channeled through a rocket nozzle to generate thrust.

Dr Stanely Borowski, an engineer at Nasa's John Glenn Research Centre, last year outlined how this could then be used to propel a space with its crew through space in a official Nasa paper.

He said the spacecraft, called Copernicus, would consist of separate cargo and crewed transfer vehicles, each powered by a nuclear thermal propulsion stage.

These would be constructed from a 'core' that use three engines each capable of producing thrust of around 25,000 lbs of force.

He estimated that these vehicles could make the 40 million mile (64 million km) trip to Mars within 100 days.

It took the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft carrying Nasa's Curiosity Rover to Mars 253 days to reach the red planet.

Dr Borowski wrote in his paper: 'The analysis presented here indicates transit time reductions as much as 50 per cent are possible.'

Nasa first began researching nuclear thermal rockets as part of its Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application (NERVA) programme in 1959.

This diagram shows how the Copernicus spacecraft could be adapted to different missions and travel times

Engineers have proposed using seven launches (shown above) to carry cargo and crew to Mars in 2033

However, the project, which was a collaboration between Nasa and the US Atomic Energy Commission, was officially ended in 1973.

During that time, engineers produced several prototypes, the most advanced of which was known as a Pewee engine. None of the engines were ever used for flight.

Proposals to use nuclear powered rockets were also discussed in a presentation last year by Dr Michael Houts, nuclear research manager at Nasa's Marshall Space Flight Centre.

He described the nuclear propulsion was a 'game changing technology for space exploration'.

He said they hoped to prove the viability and affordability of the technology within the next three years.

Dr Houts said: 'Nuclear thermal propulsion is a fundamentally new capability - the energy comes from fission not chemical reactions.

'Advanced nuclear propulsion systems could have extremely high performance and unique capabilities.'
Dust devils on Mars can grow to the size of terrestrial tornadoes, with a funnel more than 330ft (100 metres) wide stretching up to 12 miles (19km) above the surface.

Scientists have known about the spiralling structures on the red planet for years, but now Nasa has captured its 'best one yet.'

The shot was caught by Nasa's Opportunity rover in the Meridiani Planum - a plain just south of the planet's equator.

Scientists have known about the spiralling structures on the red planet for years, but now Nasa has captured its 'best one yet.' The shot was caught by Nasa's Opportunity rover in the Meridiani Planum - a plain just south of the planet's equator - and the plume of dust can be seen in the distance

Dust devils are also seen on Earth, and they form when heating of the ground causes a warm layer of air rising through the more dense layers of air above.

In 2014, researchers studied what causes the dust devils on Mars.

They found that it's not just their size that sets Martian dust devils apart; they also require a stronger updraft create a similar vortex than on Earth.

The discovery could help scientists analyse how dust affects the Martian weather system - a piece of information that will impact deep space missions to the red planet.

'To start a dust devil on Mars you need convection, a strong updraft,' said Bryce Williams, an atmospheric science graduate student at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH).

'We looked at the ratio between convection and surface turbulence to find the sweet spot where there is enough updraft to overcome the low level wind and turbulence.

'And on Mars, where we think the process that creates a vortex is more easily disrupted by frictional dissipation  turbulence and wind at the surface  you need twice as much convective updraft as you do on Earth.'

Spinning a dust devil in the thin air of Mars requires a stronger updraft than is needed to create a similar vortex on Earth, researchers claim. Pictured is a dust devil reaching above the plain of Mars' Amazonis Planitia

Dust devils on Mars can grow to the size of terrestrial tornadoes, with a funnel more than 330ft (100 metres) wide stretching as much as 12 miles (19km) above the surface (left). Their smaller counterparts on Earth form when heating of the ground causes a warm layer of air rising through the more dense layers of air (right)

Dust devils and tornadoes are common on Mars. Here they have lifted the thin bright dust on the surface of the Schiaparelli Basin, exposing darker material underneath

The team looked for the dust devil sweet spot by combining data from a study of Australian dust devils with meteorological observations collected during the Viking Lander mission.

They are now looking at the effects dust devils have on lifting dust into the Martian atmosphere, and changing the planet's climate.

'The Martian air is so thin, dust has a greater effect on energy transfers in the atmosphere and on the surface than it does in Earth's thick atmosphere,' said Professor Udaysankar Nair.

Dust in the Martian air cools the surface during the day and emits long-wave radiation that warms the surface at night.

UNEXPLAINED METHANE 'BURPS' SUGGEST BACTERIA IS LIVING ON MARS Nasa scientists in California have revealed evidence that suggests there is life on Mars based on readings taken by the Curiosity rover (shown). They said methane spikes on the planet could be produced by bacteria. And at the moment there is no alternative explanation for the spikes In the past few months, conclusive evidence has been found that Mars once had water on its surface, but one greater question remains: Was there, or is there still, life on Mars as well? Scientists may be on the brink of answering that question with an equally conclusive 'yes', as convincing evidence has been detected by Nasa's Curiosity rover. An instrument on the rover identified spikes of methane that scientists believe may have come from bacteria-like organisms on the surface - and it could be the first alien life ever detected. 'This temporary increase in methane - sharply up and then back down - tells us there must be some relatively localiSed source,' said Sushil Atreya of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and Curiosity rover science team. 'There are many possible sources, biological or non-biological, such as interaction of water and rock.' Previous satellite observations have detected unusual plumes of methane on the planet. But none of these previous readings are as extraordinary as the sudden 'venting' measured at Gale Crater, where evidence suggests water once flowed billions of years ago. Advertisement

While spotting dust devil tracks is relatively common, catching these whirling dervishes on the Martian surface can be tough.

Earlier this year, observations from the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on board Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter caught three dust devils in action.

Despite their reputation, they can actually help solar panelled robots on the Martian surface.

For instance, the Mars Rover Opportunity underwent a 'cleaning event' this year, when a dust devil blew off material stuck to its surface.
Researchers believe human sacrifice (remains in Papua New Guinea shown) played a role in building stable communities with social hierarchies

Human sacrifice may seem brutal and bloody by modern social standards, but it was a common in ancient societies.

Now, researchers believe the ritualised killing of individuals to placate a god played a role in building and sustaining stable communities with social hierarchies.

In particular, a study of 93 cultures across Asia, Oceana and Africa, has found the practices helped establish authority and set up class-based systems.

Human sacrifice was once widespread throughout these Austronesian cultures, which used it as the ultimate punishment, for funerals and to consecrate new boats.

Sacrificial victims were typically of low social status, such as slaves, while instigators were of high social status, such as priests and chiefs, installing a sense of fear in the lower classes.

Since the European colonisation of Central America 500 years ago - when Conquistadors were horrified by the Aztecs' sacrificial practices - experts have claimed ritualised killings were a form of social catharsis.

They described them as a justification for political conflicts and even a source of protein when combined with cannibalism.

Researchers from the universities of Wellington and Auckland, the Max Plank Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, the Australian National University and the Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolution in New Zealand set out to test the assumption they sanctified authority.

Joseph Watts, lead author of the study, published in Nature, studied the evolutionary family trees of 93 traditional Austronesian societies.

These societies spanned a large range of environments and social structures, from egalitarian societies to complex civil governments.

'Austronesian cultures have been described as a natural laboratory for cross-cultural research due to the diversity of environments they inhabit and cultural features they have evolved,' the study explained.

Human sacrifice was once widespread in Austronesian cultures, across Asia, Oceana and Africa. It was used as the ultimate punishment, for funerals and to consecrate new boats. A study of 93 cultures suggests sacrifices legitimised class-based systems. An illustration of an 18th century sacrifice in Tahiti is shown

The correlation between human sacrifice and high social straification among traditional Austronesian cultures is shown above. Ritualistic killing of humans was practiced in 25 per cent of egalitarian societies studied, 37 per cent of moderately stratified societies and 67 per cent of highly stratified societies

HUMAN SACRIFICE IN AUSTRONESIAN CULTURES Human sacrifice was once widespread throughout traditional Austronesian cultures. 'Common occasions for human sacrifice in these societies included the breach of taboo or custom, the funeral of an important chief, and the consecration of a newly built house or boat,' the study explained. Sacrificial victims were typically of low social status, such as slaves, while instigators were of high social status, such as priests and chiefs. 'The methods of sacrifice included burning, drowning, strangulation, bludgeoning, burial, being crushed under a newly built canoe, being cut to pieces, as well as being rolled off the roof of a house and then decapitated,' the study added. Advertisement

For each culture, the researchers recorded the presence or absence of human sacrifice and coded the level of social hierarchy.

Cultures that lacked inherited differences in wealth and status were labelled as being egalitarian and those with strict hierarchies passed down generations, as having high social stratification.

Analysis revealed evidence of human sacrifice in 43 per cent of cultures sampled.

Ritualistic killing of humans was practiced in 25 per cent of egalitarian societies studied, 37 per cent of moderately stratified societies and 67 per cent of highly stratified societies.

The researchers constructed models to test the co-evolution of human sacrifice and social hierarchy and found that human sacrifice stabilises social hierarchy once the system has arisen.

They said it also promotes a shift to strictly inherited class systems, so that people of a high social class will continue to stay important over time, because of ritualistic killing.

'In Austronesian cultures human sacrifice was used to punish taboo violations, demoralise underclasses, mark class boundaries, and instill fear of social elites - proving a wide range of potential mechanisms for maintaining and building social control,' they wrote.

'In Austronesian cultures human sacrifice was used to punish taboo violations, demoralise underclasses, mark class boundaries, and instill fear of social elites proving a wide range of potential mechanisms for building social control,' the study said. A luakini heiau or human sacrifice temple in Hawaii is shown

'While there are many factors that help build and sustain social stratification, human sacrifice may be a particularly effective means of maintaining and building social control because it minimises the potential of retaliation by eliminating the victim, and shifts the agent believed to be ultimately responsible to the realm of the supernatural.'

Based on their findings, the researchers suggest religious rituals had a darker role in the evolution of modern, complex societies.

'In traditional Austronesian cultures there was substantial religious and political overlap, and ritualised human sacrifice may have been co-opted by elites as a divinely sanctioned means of social control,' the experts wrote.
He is widely considered to have been one of the greatest generals of the ancient world - outmanoeuvering the might of the Roman army and ruling much of Italy for 15 years.

But the route taken by Hannibal as he led his forces over the Alps in their famous march into Italy has been greatly debated.

Even historical sources, written close to the time of the great journey disagree about the route he took.

But in a piece for The Conversation, Chris Allen, a senior lecturer in environmental microbiology at Queen's University Belfast, reveals how new microbial evidence has potentially uncovered the dung left by his horses as they trekked across the mountains.

Hannibal is considered to be one of the greatest military commanders in history and is famous for leading his army across the Alps to face the Romans. New evidence, including a pile of ancient dung, is providing clues as to the route he took across the mountain range (artists impression of Hannibal crossing the Alps pictured)

Despite thousands of years of hard work by brilliant scholars, the great enigma of where Hannibal crossed the Alps to invade Italy remained unsolved.

HOW THEY IDENTIFIED THE ROUTE With the help of geological expeditions, the researchers were able to fit the location of Col de Traversette to descriptions of the terrain and rockfalls to historical accounts of Hannibal's journey. They then used a combination of microbial analysis, environmental chemistry and pollen analysis to identify a mass deposition of faecal material around a pond close to Col de Traversette. The dung can be dated to around 200BC using carbon isotope analysis. Analysis of the soil from the site revealed high levels of Clostridia bacteria, which are found in high concentrations in horse dung. The pond would also have provided a natural watering hole for Hannibal's animals. Experts believe he may have taken this dangerous route to avoid ambushes from the local Gaul tribes that roamed the area. Advertisement

But now it looks like we may just have cracked it - all thanks to modern science and a bit of ancient horse faeces.

Hannibal was the leader of the Carthaginian army during the Second Punic War with Rome (218-201BC).

He famously led his 30,000 assorted troops, including 37 elephants and over 15,000 horses, across the Alps to invade Italy - bringing the Roman war machine to its knees.

While the great general was ultimately defeated after 16 years of bloody conflict, this campaign is now regarded as one of the finest military endeavours of antiquity.

We can say, in retrospect, that these events ultimately shaped the later Roman Empire and therefore the European civilisation as we know it.

For more than 2,000 years historians, statesmen and academics have argued about the route he took.

Even Napoleon is known to have shown an interest, but until now, theres not been any solid archaeological evidence.

An international team, led by Bill Mahaney of York University in Toronto, has finally provided such evidence for the most likely transit route - a pass called the Col de Traversette.

The ancient horse dung was discovered around a pond close to the Col de Traversette (pictured), which would have been a natural watering hole for the large numbers of animals Hannibal had with him during the crossing

Col de Traversette (shown on the map above) is one of the most treacherous routes across the Alps into Italy

This narrow pass between a row of peaks is located on the border slightly south-east of Grenoble in France and south-west of Turin in Italy. The findings are published in Archaeometry.

The Traversette  found at about 9,842ft (3,000 metres) above sea level - is a torturous path even today.

The route was first proposed more than a century ago by the biologist and polymath Sir Gavin de Beer, but was not previously widely accepted by the academic community.

Up to this point, many scholars have instead favoured other routes across such as the Col du Clapier, about 7,874ft (2,400 metres) high and further north, which is certainly less treacherous today.

This popular choice was largely down to the writings of both modern and ancient historians such as Livy, who lived in Padua around 200 years after the historical event but never actually visited the site of the crossing in his lifetime.

The exact route Hannibal took over the Alps has been a subject of great debate between academics (one route illustrated), but it enabled him to lead campaigns in Italy and take control of a large part of the country

Hannibal is thought to have lost many elephants, horses and men during the crossing over the Alps (illustrated above), which at the time formed a formidable barrier to invading armies. If he did take the route through the Col de Traversette it would explain why it posed such a dangerous path

So it may be that many of Livys accounts are more fictional than factual.

Using a combination of microbial genetic analysis, environmental chemistry, pollen analysis and various geophysical techniques, we unveiled a mass animal deposition of faecal materials  probably from horses - at a site near the Col de Traversette.

HANNIBAL'S ROUTE OVER THE ALPS The exact route taken by Hannibal over the Alps has been greatly debated by academics. Most modern theories suggest he marched up the valley of the Drome and crossed the main range over the Col de Montgenevre. Others suggest he marched further north up the laleys of the Isere and Arc and crossed the range near the Col de Mont Cenis or the Little St Bernard Pass. Historical sources like Livy have suggested he crossed at Col du Clapier. But Livy also says Hannibal had to break thorugh a rock fall using vinegar and fire and the only evidence of a two tier rockfall in the western Alps is below the Col de la Traversette. This last one would have presented a considerable challenge - even today the path is treacherous and it is still listed among the most dangerous 'roads' in the world. Advertisement

The dung, which can be directly dated to around 200BC through carbon isotope analysis, very close to the date on historical records of 218 BC, was found at a mire or pond.

This is one of the few in the area that could have been used for watering large numbers of animals.

The site was originally discovered during geological expeditions to the area, and already fitted descriptions of the terrain  including rockfalls - that Hannibal had to work his way through.

More than 70 per cent of the microbes in horse dung are from a group known as Clostridia and we found these microbes in very high numbers in the bed of excrement.

Much lower levels of Clostridia genes were found elsewhere at the site.

We knew it was these bugs because we were able to partially sequence genes specific to these organisms.

The bacteria are very stable in soil, surviving for thousands of years.

So why did Hannibal choose the more difficult Traversette crossing? At this point we can only speculate, but he may not have had a choice at all.

Hannibal wasnt just worried about the actions of the Roman army at this time.

In these relatively ancient days there were Gaulish tribes in the region, a major military force, and Hannibal may have been forced to take this more difficult and unexpected route to avoid a devastating ambush.

The finding is exciting, however we cannot yet be absolutely certain that these bacteria do actually come from horses or humans.

Col de Traversette is still considered to be treacherous today and is listed as one of the most dangerous 'roads' in the world. It is possible Hannibal was forced to take this route to reduce the risk of ambushes

The gene analysis needs to be expanded with more genetic sequencing of other genes, if this conclusion is to be certain.

I am currently leading an extensive microbiology programme to try and assemble either complete or partial Clostridia genomes from the samples taken at the Traversette mire.

We may also be able to find parasite eggs - associated with gut tapeworms  still preserved in the site like tiny genetic time capsules.

With this information, we hope to to shed considerable light on the presence of horses, men  and even Hannibals famous elephants - at the Traversette mire over 2,000 years ago.
Ancient lead tablets discovered in a Greek cemetery reveal a sinister ritual born out of commercial rivalries more than 2,000 years ago.

Four tablets inscribed with curses call upon deities of the underworld to 'cast hate' upon the owners of four taverns, and bind them in blood and ashes with the dead.

These narratives date back to the early fourth century BCE, and researchers say they divulge a great deal about the social and ritualistic practices of the ancient society.

Ancient lead tablets discovered in a Greek cemetery reveal a sinister ritual born out of commercial rivalries more than 2,000 years ago. Four tablets inscribed with curses call upon deities of the underworld to 'cast hate' upon the owners of four taverns, and bind them in blood and ashes with the dead

THE FIVE 'CURSE' TABLETS The five lead tablets were first discovered in 2003. Four of these were inscribed with text, each targeting husband-wife tavern owners with a similar curse. The curses call upon the deities Hekate Chthonia, Artemis Chthonia, Hermes Chthonios, with 'chthonia' indicating ties to the underworld. Hermes is commonly called upon in curses, the researcher explains, and the goddess Hekate was dangerous and liminal. And, though Artemis is largely associated with the protection of women, the curses appeal to the 'destructive side' of this goddess, 'tied to the realm of the sinister and the threatening.' The tablets were each pierced with an iron nail and folded, and placed in a grave which contained the cremated remains of a young woman. One tablet was blank, but an associated curse may have been recited rather than written. Advertisement

In a recent paper published in Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik, Jessica Lamont of Johns Hopkins University describes the elaborate ritual unearthed in a classical grave northeast of Piraeus, Greece.

Of the five lead tablets first discovered in 2003, four were inscribed with text, each targeting husband-wife tavern owners with a similar curse.

The tablets were each pierced with an iron nail and folded, and placed in a grave which contained the cremated remains of a young woman.

Burial pyres contained libations and other offerings for the gods, so the cemetery was an optimal location for 'supernatural exploitation.'

In the paper, Lamont describes the narrative of one tablet, which reads:

'Hekate Chthonia, Artemis Chthonia, Hermes Chthonios cast your hate upon Phanagora and Demetrios, and their tavern and their property and their possessions.

'I will bind my enemy Demetrios, and Phanagora, in blood and in ashes, with all the dead.

'Nor will the next four-year cycle release you.

'I will bind you in such a bind, Demetrios, as strong as is possible, and I will smite down a kynotos on [your] tongue.'

Hermes is commonly called upon in curses, the researcher explains, and the goddess Hekate was dangerous and liminal.

And, though Artemis is largely associated with the protection of women, the curses appeal to the 'destructive side' of this goddess, 'tied to the realm of the sinister and the threatening.'

Kynotos means 'dog's ear,' Lamont explains, which is likely a reference to gambling, wishing upon the subjects the 'lowest possible throw of dice.'

These narratives date back to the early fourth century BCE, and researcher say they divulge a great deal about the social networks and ritualistic practices of the ancient society. Rituals of this kind were likely a familiar activity, as burial pyres contained libations and other offerings

In the three other tablets which each contained a curse as well, Lamont writes that the narratives paralleled the one revealed above, targeting the businesses, properties, and possessions of tavern owners.

This particular ritual was no simple feat, and was likely an act of desperation, the researcher explains.

The structure of the text suggests the curses were carved by an experienced scribe.

'Commissioning a curse tablet was a drastic measure; commissioning five betrays an even greater investment, and state of desperation, on the part of the curser,' the author writes.

The tablets were unearthed in a classical grave northeast of Piraeus, Greece, outside of the Athenian Long Walls

And, though one of the tablets was included without any inscribed text, the researcher says that this too likely had importance.

An associated curse may have been recited rather than written, and each tablet was a 'vehicle in a larger chain of private ritual activity.'

While it can't be said for certain that the reason behind the curse can be traced to commercial rivalry, the researcher says the narrative and assemblage indicates this is the most likely reason.
Should weigh less than a third of a pound and

The US Army is working on putting pocket-sized drones in their dismounted soldiers' hands by 2018.

Army leaders want to create mini-drones that fit in the controller's cargo pocket, weighing less than a third of a pound.

Their solution is a nano unmanned ariel system with reconnaissance capability, called Soldier Borne Sensors (SBS), which would allow squads to quickly investigate its most intimate threats.

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The US Army is working on mini-drones that can fit in soldiers' pockets by 2018. Called Soldier Borne Sensors (SBS), it would allow squads to quickly investigate its most intimate threats.

'Ensuring that Soldiers have the most advanced equipment, from protective equipment such as helmets and body armor, to weapons, power solutions and sensors and lasers, means keeping ahead of scientific and engineering innovation,' The US Army stated.

'One such effort is bringing small-Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) technology, also known to the Army as Soldier Borne Sensors (SBS), solutions to the individual Soldier on the battlefield.'

WHAT ARE THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE MINI-DRONES? The device should weigh less than a third of a pound, allowing it to fit comfortably in a cargo pocket. Using these mini-drones is key to not placing anymore burden on soldiers, so ideal the agency wants a device that is easy to transport. The drones should be able to deploy within 60 seconds and will have a wind tolerance of 10 to 15 knots. They will be programmed to fly for at least 15 minutes, as they need to stay in the air long enough to gather intelligence of what they see and return it to the operator. There will be a camera capable of detecting human-sized object within 50 to 75 feet with '90 percent probability', which is designed with night vision. This part of the system will also provide soldiers with real-time feed. And the drone should be operable from 500 to 1,200 meters. Advertisement

Earlier this month, the organization requested information about the types of technology currently available, reportsArmyTimes.

The Maneuver Center of Excellence (MCoE) at Fort Benning, Georgia has requirements and strategies to discuss with the industry on what exists or what will soon be available.

'We've had numerous studies as well as experimentation within our battle labs,' said Phil Cheatum, deputy branch chief of electronics and special developments at MCoE.

'We continue to see that soldiers are kind of lacking at the squad level for relevant information that's immediately around them.'

'We don't know what we don't know about what's out there right now.'

Larger units, such as the Gray Eagle and Shadow, have improved helped squads be more aware about their surroundings while out in the field.

But when a group is attempting to clear a city block or travel over a hill, they can miss details or not be able to see rapidly changing threats.

Mini-drones are capable of giving squads real-time ability to inspect the most intimate threats.

British and Norwegian military forces have been using PD-100 Black Hornet drones for about four years, which were a big part of Britain's strategy in Afghanistan.

Last year, the US Army was able to test the mini-drones, along with other devices at Mt Maneuver Battle Lab Army Expeditionary Warrior Experiments at Fort Benning and US special operation forces have been using the devices.

Cheatum said the Army hopes to learn lessons from those early adopters to find the best capabilities and seek a more affordable solution for a much larger population.

'The only problem we'd have with a capability like that [is] the Black Hornet is individually handmade,' Cheatum said.

4th Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment testing the drone: A micro air vehicle takes off from the hands of a Soldier as he explains the ease of using this capability to the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, Hon. Frank Kendall

'When you're talking about individually handmade, you're talking about an expensive piece of equipment.'

At AEWE last year, soldiers said the Black Hornet would have been invaluable during past deployments.

'I was in Basra [Iraq]. There's a lot of roads that you don't really know where they go,' Staff Sgt. Andrew Smith told Army Times.

'In Afghanistan, I can't tell you the number of times you just want to know what's on the other side of a hill.'

HOW IT WORKS The video feeds directly to a small, chest-mounted screen. The operator steers it forward, backward, up and down with a videogame-like one-handed controller, or sets waypoints to allow the drone to fly itself. The 18-gram craft has three cameras and even thermal cameras to fly at night. Advertisement

Maj. Alexander Gonzales, assistant product manager, MCOE, said the proposed SBS must also be capable of tactical employment out of the range of contact and under constrained rules of engagement, and be inherently safe to operate without damage to equipment or injury to personnel.

Gonzales added. 'We encourage large companies, small companies, and even startups with great ideas to join us for the industry day.'

There are a few requirements for the Soldier Borne Sensors, but the Army isn't releasing specifics.

Cheatum did however give ArmyTimes the basics.

The device should weigh less than a third of a pound, allowing it to fit comfortably in a cargo pocket.

Using these mini-drones is key to not placing anymore burden on soldiers, so ideal the agency wants a device that is easy to transport.

British and Norwegian military forces have been using PD-100 Black Hornet drones for about four years, which were a big part of Britain's strategy in Afghanistan. The Army hopes to learn lessons from those early adopters to find the best capabilities and seek a more affordable solution for a much larger population

Army leaders want to create mini-drones that fit in the controller's cargo pocket, weighing less than a third of a pound. Their solution is a nano unmanned ariel system with reconnaissance capability, called Soldier Borne Sensors (SBS), which would allow squads to quickly investigate its most intimate threats

The drones should be able to deploy within 60 seconds and will have a wind tolerance of 10 to 15 knots.

Small UAS can't fly in rough conditions, but Cheatum said the SBS should still be able to operate in light wind.

They will be programmed to fly for at least 15 minutes, as they need to stay in the air long enough to gather intelligence of what they see and return it to the operator.

Cheatum mentions a camera capable of detecting human-sized object within 50 to 75 feet with '90 percent probability', which is designed with night vision.

But when a group is attempting to clear a city block or travel over a hill, they can miss details or not be able to see rapidly changing threats. Mini-drones are capable of giving squads real-time ability to inspect the most intimate threats

This part of the system will also provide soldiers with real-time feed.

And the drone should be operable from 500 to 1,200 meters.

The Black Horney weighs 18 grams and 1.3 kg with the controller and system, according to its maker Prox Dynamics.

It can fly about a kilometer and stay aloft more than 25 minutes, and is controlled by a small flipdown screen and joystick which can be attached to the soldier's utility belt.

When needed, soldiers can simply take the drone from a small box that straps to a utility belt - which is also where the data is stored, as opposed to on the drone itself, in case it's captured.

PENTAGON ADMITS TO USING MILITARY DRONES TO SPY OVER US SOIL Pentagon chiefs have admitted using military drones to spy over the mainland United States but have refused to say exactly how many times the craft were deployed. According to a report prepared by the office of the Department of Defense Inspector General, 'fewer than 20' requests were made to use the craft for missions inside America between 2006 and 2015. However, the report does not make it clear how many of the requests were granted, or say when, where or how the devices were used, or what information was gathered. The report, which was completed in March 20, 2015, was not released until Friday last week after a Freedom of Information request, USA Today says. One example of a request given was from an unnamed mayor who asked for a drone to help fix potholes in his city. The request was denied. Included in the documents are admissions from military units that they would like to fly more missions over the mainland U.S. for training purposes. It says: 'Multiple units told us that as forces using the UAS (unmanned aerial surveillance) capabilities continue to draw down overseas, opportunities for UAS realistic training and use have decreased.' The report also quoted a military law article which stated: 'The appetite to use them (spy drones) in the domestic environment to collect airborne imagery continues to grow, as does congressional and media interest in their deployment.' Advertisement

The video feeds directly to a small, chest-mounted screen.

The operator steers it with a videogame-like one-handed controller, or sets waypoints to allow the drone to fly itself using the touchscreen controller.

At the recent National Defense Industrial Association conference, Defense One reporters saw the Hornet in flight and said its video feed was 'surprisingly clear'.

The PD-100 has been in operational use for three years, including wide use by British Brigade Reconnaissance Force in Afghanistan.

'This is what they use when they check out enemy compounds,' Arne Skjaerpe,CEO and president of Proxdynamics USA, told Defence One.

He said U.S. Army Special Forces has a handful of the devices.

Using these mini-drones is key to not placing anymore burden on soldiers, so ideal the agency wants a device that is easy to transport. The drones should be able to deploy within 60 seconds and will have a wind tolerance of 10 to 15 knots. And have a camera that can pick up objects at night

Officials from U.S. Special Operations Command confirmed that certain elite units had looked at the tiny drone.

'These informal evaluations have since completed and the systems were returned to the vendor  Various SOF Combat Development Directorates continue to conduct market research into this class of devices,' the officials said.

In March, Army infantrymen tested the device at Fort Benning's Maneuver Center of Excellence during the Army Expeditionary Warrior Experiments.
They were the mischievous creatures blamed for causing mechanical failures and faults on aircraft during World War Two and later the destructive monsters in a hit film franchise.

So Gremlins might not seem like the first choice for a fleet of robotic aircraft being developed by the US military.

But the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has given the go ahead for four firms to begin building the craft.

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Darpa said the program has been deliberately named Gremlins after the imps that British pilots during Wold War Two adopted as their good luck charms.

HOW THEY WILL WORK The program envisions launching groups of UASs from existing large aircraft such as bombers or transport aircraft - as well as from fighters and other small, fixed-wing platforms - while those planes are out of range of adversary defenses. When the gremlins complete their mission, a C-130 transport aircraft would retrieve them in the air and carry them home, where ground crews would prepare them for their next use within 24 hours. Advertisement

Composite Engineering, Dynetics, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and Lockheed Martin will develop craft

Named for the imaginary, mischievous imps that became the good luck charms of many British pilots during World War II, the program envisions launching groups of UASs from existing large aircraft such as bombers or transport aircraft - as well as from fighters and other small, fixed-wing platforms - while those planes are out of range of adversary defenses.

When the gremlins complete their mission, a C-130 transport aircraft would retrieve them in the air and carry them home, where ground crews would prepare them for their next use within 24 hours.

The gremlins' expected lifetime of about 20 uses could provide significant cost advantages over expendable systems by reducing payload and airframe costs and by having lower mission and maintenance costs than conventional platforms, which are designed to operate for decades.

'We've assembled a motivated group of researchers and developers that we believe could make significant progress toward Gremlins' vision of delivering distributed airborne capabilities in a robust, responsive and affordable manner,' said Dan Patt, DARPA program manager.

'These teams are exploring different, innovative approaches toward achieving this goal and are rolling up their sleeves for the hard work ahead.'

The idea is to replace the expensive and increasingly vulnerable multi-function combat aircraft which currently perform a range of different missions.

Instead they propose deploying from the air smaller unmanned aircraft, each with different capabilities, to perform a mission before retrieving them mid-air so they can be used again.

Not only would the concept remove the risk to pilots by keeping them out of the front line but it would also drastically reduce the cost of each aircraft.

THE GREMLINS OF WORLD WAR TWO The term originated in Royal Air Force (RAF) slang in the 1920s among the British pilots stationed in Malta, the Middle East, and India. An early reference to the gremlin is in aviator Pauline Gower's The ATA: Women with Wings (1938) where Scotland is described as 'gremlin country', a mystical and rugged territory where scissor-wielding gremlins cut the wires of biplanes when unsuspecting pilots were about. It became widely used during World War II among airmen of the UK's RAF units, in particular the men of the high-altitude Photographic Reconnaissance Units (PRU) of RAF Benson, RAF Wick and RAF St Eval. The flight crews blamed gremlins for otherwise inexplicable accidents which sometimes occurred during their flights. Legend had it they were equal opportunity tricksters, taking no sides in the conflict. Darpa said the program has been deliberately named Gremlins after the imps that British pilots during Wold War Two adopted as their good luck charms, and were inmportalised in the film of the same name. Advertisement

Darpa said the program has been deliberately named Gremlins after the imps that British pilots during Wold War Two adopted as their good luck charms.

This is because they are hoping to the 'feasibility of conducting safe, relatable operations with multiple air-launched unmanned drones'.

Dan Patt, program manager at Darpa, said: 'Our goal is to conduct a compelling proof-of-concept flight demonstration that could employ intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and other modular, non-kinetic payloads in a robust, responsive and affordable manner.'

Darpa says the Gremlin drones would have a lifetime of around 20 uses, fitting somewhere between missiles and conventional aircraft.

The Gremlins would be launched in mid-air from larger aircraft and then retrieved in the same way.

The agency is hoping to build on its automated mid-air refuelling technology alongside the sea based platforms for capturing drones as they come into land.

Mr Patt said: 'We wouldn't be discarding the entire airframe, engine, avionics and payload with every mission, as is done with missiles.

'But we also wouldn't have to carry the maintainability and operational cost burdens of today's reusable systems, which are meant to stay in service for decades.'

Darpa is now inviting military engineers and academics to suggest solutions that will allow the drones to be launched and recovered mid-flight along with navigation and flight control systems.

In its briefing, the agency said it hopes that by using cheap drone aircraft it would be possible to overwhelm the increasingly sophisticated defences of enemies.

It said: 'As part of a future concept of operations, it is envisioned that instead of using conventional, monolithic systems to conduct missions in denied environments, multiple platforms with coordinated and distributed warfighting functions can be employed to saturate adversary defenses while achieving mission objectives.

'Within this concept of operations, a Gremlins system would provide options for delivering small Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) and other nonkinetic payloads to the battlespace in a manner that is robust and responsive.

'Responsiveness is achieved through the use of conventional aircraft hosts to transport and launch a volley of gremlins from standoff ranges.
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From volcanoes in Iceland to wildfires in California, Nasa has made nearly three million images of Earth's thermal emissions available to the public for free.

The stunning images were captured by Japan's Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Readiometer (Aster) instrument onboard the Terra spacecraft.

Together, the database has been described as a 'multimodal version of Google Earth' allowing anyone to have a look at a region's environmental changes in incredible detail.

Nasa has made nearly three million images of Earth's thermal emissions available to the public for free, such as this image taken in March. It shows the eruption of Nicaraguas Momotombo volcano with its visible and thermal infrared bands. The ash plume is depicted by the visible bands in blue-gray; the thermal infrared bands show hot lava flows in yellow and the active summit crater in white. Vegetation is red

ASTER'S MISSION Aster stands for the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Readiometer. Launched 16 years ago, Aster is used to create detailed maps of land surface temperature, reflectance and elevation. It has exceeded its 5-year design life and Nasa says it will operate into the foreseeable future. The data covers 99 per cent of Earth's landmass. A single downward-looking Aster scene covers an area measuring about 37-by-37 miles (60-by-60-km). Advertisement

Launched 16 years ago, Aster is used to create detailed maps of land surface temperature, reflectance and elevation.

It takes high-resolution images of the Earth in 14 different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum

You can apply different types of filters on the image to better understand the environmental process taking place in a particular area.

For example, a March 2016 image of the eruption of Nicaragua's Momotombo volcano was captured in both visible and thermal infrared bands.

The ash plume is represented by a blue-grey colour, while the thermal infrared bands show lava flows in yellow.

The summit crater of the volcano is highlighted in white, and vegetation around the area is shown in red.

'We anticipate a dramatic increase in the number of users of our data, with new and exciting results to come,' said Michael Abrams, Aster science team leader.

Aster processes the data into images using algorithms developed at Nasa and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Japan.

In this image of the Andes along the Chile-Bolivia border, the visible and infrared data have been computer enhanced to exaggerate the differences of the different materials. On the middle left edge of the image are the Olca and Paruma stratovolcanoes (coloured in red in this composite). This image covers an area 37 miles by 37 miles (60 by 60km). It was acquired on April 7, 2000,

In 2003, Aster captured the left image of the fire burning on either side of Interstate 15 near the Cajon Pass in the San Bernardino Mountains. The smoke is shown in blue When this image was acquired, the fire had burned more than 80,000 acres, consumed 450 structures. The right image what the fire looked like at the time. At least 10 cars caught fire as the wildfire crossed the interstate

North Korea experienced one of the country's worst droughts last year (right). The left image shows the region in 2002, and it's clear to see how the drought destroyed vegetation (shown in red) in the area by comparing the two images taken by Aster

Coastal winds form the tallest sand dunes in the world in the Namib-Naukluft National Park of Namibia. The left image was taken by putting together data on elevation collected by Aster, while the right image shows a photographic aerial view of the dunes

The instrument taken images in visible and thermal infrared wavelengths, with resolutions ranging from about 50 to 300 feet (15 to 90 meters).

The data cover 99 per cent of Earth's landmass and spans from 83 degrees north latitude to 83 degrees south.

A single downward-looking Aster scene covers an area on the ground measuring about 37-by-37 miles (60-by-60-km)  a resolution comparable to Google Earth.

Aster uses its different telescopes to create stereo-pair images, merging two slightly offset two-dimensional images to create the three-dimensional effect of depth.

Each elevation measurement point in the data is 98 feet (30 meters) apart.

Until now, only the topographic maps of Earth were available to free to the public. A fee had to be paid for any other images created by the probe.

For scientists, Aster's images provide important information for surface mapping and monitoring of how the Earth is changing over time.

For instance, scientists have used the images to study how glaciers form, monitor potentially active volcanoes and identify deforestation.

But it can also prove useful to the public, allowing anyone interested to map trends areas such as pollution and the growth of cities.

The Kondyor Massif is located in Eastern Siberia, Russia, north of the city of Khabarovsk. It is a rare form of rock intrusion called alkaline-ultrabasic massif and it is full of rare minerals. Last year 4 tons of platinum were mined there. This 3D perspective was created by draping a simulated natural color Aster composite over an Aster-derived digital elevation model. The image was taken on June 10, 2006

In late July 2010, flooding caused by heavy monsoon rains began in several regions of Pakistan, including the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, Punjab and parts of Baluchistan. Aster captured this cloud-free image over the city of Sukkur, Pakistan, on August 18, 2010. Sukkur, a city of a half-million residents, is visible as the grey, urbanised area in the lower left center of the image

Northwest of Los Angeles, California, a brush fire exploded on September 28. Growing to more than 23,000 acres, the blaze (red) threatened homes, natural resources, power lines, and communications equipment in the Thousand Oaks region north of the Santa Monica Mountains. Hundreds of people were evacuated from their homes

The right image shows the southwest part of the Malaspina Glacier and Icy Bay in Alaska. The composite of infrared and visible bands results in the snow and ice appearing light blue, dense vegatation is yellow-orange and green. On the left, logging operations have left a striking checkerboard pattern in the landscape along the Idaho-Montana border

This image was acquired on June 25, 2000 and covers an area of 37 by 28 km. It shows a great sea of linear dines in part of the Rub' al Khali, or the Empty Quarter in Saudi Arabia. The dunes are yellow due to the presence of iron oxide minerals; the inter-dune area is made up of clays and silt, and appears blue due to its high reflectance in band 1 on Aster

A fire burned at industrial sulfur plant in Iraq south of Mosul in 2003. It is produced a noxious cloud of sulfur-containing gases. The presence of SO2 in purple in purple. The Aster image was acquired on July 14 2003, and covers an area of 60 x 61 km




Sex parties, drug addicts and thieves  these are just some of the nightmares that Airbnb hosts have faced after welcoming strangers into their house or apartment.

While most hosts never experience a major problem, some have had their homes turned into a brothel, a venue for an out-of-control party or a crime scene after putting their trust in guests.

From the visitors who used hosts' living rooms for orgies to the ones who trashed the place or refused to leave, these are some of the worst guests of all time.

The couple who found strangers having sex in their bed

Londoner Christina McQuillan said revellers smoked pot and left rubbish on the floor of her flat in Putney

Partygoers were accused of damaging the flooring, ripping a TV off its bracket and stealing belongings

Londoner Christina McQuillan and her partner, Henry, claimed their Putney flat was trashed and they were left with a 3,000 repair bill after it was used for a 21st birthday party.

McQuillan said drunken revellers smoked pot inside the home, stole belongings and ripped a TV off its bracket, and a couple had sex in their bedroom while another man watched.

She claimed she was punched in the stomach as the party was shut down and about 100 people were kicked out.

Airbnb said the guest was removed from the website. Police launched an investigation into McQuillan's complaint of an assault.

The woman who booked the flat, claimed she did not break any rules and there were no drugs at the party and no one had sex.

An Airbnb spokesman said very few hosts experience problems when they rent their homes or rooms to users.

The spokesman said: 'Over 80 million guests have stayed on Airbnb and problems for hosts and guests are incredibly rare.

'We have an absolute zero-tolerance policy for issues like these. When we are made aware of issues, we work fast to help take care of hosts and guests and permanently remove bad actors from our community.'

The 'drug-induced orgy' that caused 50,000 in damage

Police blamed a drug-induced orgy after a Canadian familys home was trashed by Airbnb guests

Police blamed a drug-induced orgy after a Canadian familys home was trashed by Airbnb guests who claimed they were in town for a wedding.

After receiving calls from concerned neighbours, Mark and Star King, from Calgary, cut their holiday short and returned to find destroyed furniture, smashed glasses, used condoms and underwear on the floor and barbecue sauce on the walls of the home they share with their two young children.

Professional cleaners were hired to remove bodily fluids from the homes interior, including urine, semen and vomit.

Neighbours said about 100 people attended a party that was shut down by police after three noise complaints and reports of a fight in front of the house.

The familys two-storey house suffered up to 50,000 worth of damage, said police.

Airbnb covered the cost of the home's restoration and provided accommodation for the family.

In the rare event that a property is damaged, said Airbnb, employees work with the host under the company's $1 million host guarantee, to reimburse for any damages. Every booking is protected by the guarantee at no additional cost.

The hippy crack canisters and stolen Banksy print worth 8,000

Two London flatmates found hippy crack canisters and marijuana joints strewn throughout their home

The flat was left a tip, with empty glasses and cans left all over the place and pictures knocked off the walls

The flat, where Jack Clarke has lived for six years, is above a shop on a leafy street in Islington, north London

Two flatmates rented out their 1million home in Islington, north London, to make some extra cash while they were away.

But Jack Clarke and Dominic Jones returned to find a Banksy print stolen and condoms, hippy crack canisters and marijuana joints strewn throughout the home after a raucous party was held by a user who claimed he was treating his fiancee to a nice weekend in London.

The Banksy print, entitled Leopard and Barcode, has an estimated value of 8,000.

Clarke said the flat was left a real tip, with pictures knocked off the walls, chewing gum and food trodden into the carpet and cigarettes stubbed out on furniture.

He said the user who rented the flat had no rating on the website.

Airbnb removed the user from the website and police launched an investigation into the theft.

The company said 35 million guests stayed in Airbnb properties last year and there were 540 reports of significant damage to property, a rate of 1.5 for every 50,000 guests.

The XXX Freak Fest orgy that left a man homeless

Ari Teman said he was left effectively homeless after his home was trashed during a XXX Freak Fest orgy

Teman said he returned home to find the aftermath, including condoms and liquor bottles on the floor

Teman said he later discovered a Twitter feed advertising a XXX Freak Fest at his New York apartment

Ari Teman, from New York, said he was left effectively homeless after his apartment was trashed by Airbnb guests who held a XXX Freak Fest orgy.

The guest who threw the fetish party claimed he was renting the apartment for his family while they attended a wedding.

But he returned home to find the aftermath of an orgy, including condoms and liquor bottles on the floor.

Teman said he later discovered a Twitter feed advertising a XXX Freak Fest at his apartment.

He was awarded more than $23,000 (16,000) in compensation by Airbnb. The company also sent a locksmith to change his locks.

But Teman later complained that he was placed on a blacklist and unable to get a new lease while apartment hunting, forcing him to stay between places.

The 25,000 heist that was caught on camera

Police in San Francisco launched a search for an Airbnb guest after a home office was broken into

Police in San Francisco launched a search for a woman after an Airbnb host claimed $35,000 (25,000) worth of valuables had been stolen from their home.

The homeowner said the crime was recorded by a high-quality surveillance camera.

The guest was accused of breaking into a locked closet and office, and stealing valuables within.

A woman was charged with second-degree burglary and falsely impersonating another person.

At the time, Airbnb said it was in contact with police and offering its assistance in the investigation.

The family homes used as temporary brothels by pimps

Police in Stockholm said flats rented on Airbnb or other sites are the most popular market for prostitution

Stockholm police warned Airbnb hosts about a rise in the number of pimps and prostitutes using rental properties as brothels.

There had been several cases where pimps posed as legitimate customers and rented homes from families or individuals for up to three weeks at a time.

Police told Airbnb hosts to stop being so naive, with second-hand apartments overtaking hotels as the most popular market for prostitution in Sweden's capital.

In most cases, police are tipped off by neighbours who become suspicious of the activity next door after seeing men coming and going at all hours.

Similar claims surfaced about apartments in Manhattan in New York.

Publicist Jessica Penzari said she rented her apartment to a woman who claimed she was in the Army and needed a place to stay before she was deployed overseas.

But police were called to the apartment following a violent altercation between the woman and a man who had paid for a massage.

When Penzari returned home, she found baby wipes and condoms.

Airbnb put her up in a hotel for two nights, changed her locks, cleaned her apartment and replaced her bedsheets, blankets and pillows.

The guest who refused to leave and threatened to sue

Cory Tschogl rented her Palm Springs, California, condo to a guest for nearly a month and a half, but he allegedly refused to leave when problems arose.

Shortly after he arrived, the man, who claimed to be on a business trip, complained about the property and requested a full refund.

Tschogl said she had a bad feeling about the guest and agreed a refund, but it took two days for Airbnb to respond.

The man stayed in the condo during that time and Airbnb told Tschogl it had asked him to leave and she was entitled to keep some of his money.

But the man refused to leave, Tschogl claimed to Business Insider.

She hired a lawyer after the man threatened to sue her and he was legally evicted.

She couldn't ask the police to kick him out because under California law a person is considered a tenant on a month-to-month lease if they rent a property for 30 days.
Three separate families are seeking legal help after claiming to have fallen ill following separate trips on the Thomson Dream cruise ship.

Returning from their holidays, which took place between January and March this year, the couples all reported suffering from stomach pains, dizziness and nausea - and some claimed to have more serious conditions such as bacterial pneumonia and even loss of sight.

Lesley and Paul Withington, Joseph and Linda Pennington and Paul Easton and Susan Clews all reported their symptoms to lawyers after returning from their trips.

Lesley Withington, from Castleford, West Yorkshire spent New Year's on the ship with her husband Paul and was diagnosed with suspected bacterial pneumonia when she returned to the UK

Speaking to lawyers, the Withingtons said their cabin smelled damp and they claim to have discovered the carpet in their room was wet and began to smell of sewage during the trip

Lesley Withington, from Castleford, West Yorkshire spent New Year's on the ship and was diagnosed with suspected bacterial pneumonia when she returned to the UK.

Her husband Paul was diagnosed with a chest infection and is undergoing further investigations due to the severity of his continuing symptoms.

The couple were the first of the trio to complain to lawyers, claiming that they suffered with dizziness, confusion, a cough, loss of appetite, shortness of breath and general lethargy as well as gastric symptoms while on their two-week cruise starting from Montego Bay, Jamaica.

Mrs Withington, 66, spent five days in hospital when she got home.

Her 59-year-old husband visited his local GP and was prescribed antibiotics to overcome his illness however the couple are both continuing to suffer the effects of the illness they developed during their stay, four months later.

Speaking to lawyers, the couple said their cabin smelled damp and they claim to have discovered the carpet in their room was wet and began to smell of sewage during the trip.

Withington said that despite complaining to staff on board the ship and to Thomson since their return, they are yet to receive any answers.

Joseph and Linda Pennington travelled on board the ship in January, shortly after the Withingtons' cruise came to an end

IRWIN MITCHELL COMMENT Lawyers at Irwin Mitchell have previously represented holidaymakers who suffered similar problems on the Thomson Dream in both 2010 and 2012. In 2010, more than 200 people came forward to complain of illness on board the cruise ship and had their claims successfully settled for a six-figure sum. Jayne Murphy, an expert travel illness lawyer at Irwin Mitchell, said: 'This is the third time we have been asked to investigate illness on board the Thomson Dream in recent years. 'It is extremely worrying that we have been contacted by three couples who spent time on the ship at different times in the early part of this year 'Understandably, all of them are very upset and angry that their cruises, which were supposed to be enjoyable and luxurious breaks, were ruined when they all fell ill. 'The concerns each of these people have shared with us are very worrying and it is concerning that they also saw others suffering with the same illnesses during their time on board the ship. 'Illnesses can spread very quickly on cruise ships if the correct precautions are not taken and we would like to hear from anyone else who travelled on board the Thomson Dream earlier this year how may be able to help with our enquiries.' Advertisement

She said: 'We have been left very disappointed by our cruise on the Thomson Dream and very shocked that problems like this have affected other people who travelled on the ship in previous years, and since our own holiday in January this year.

'We feel our complaints and concerns have fallen on deaf ears and we simply want to know what caused us to fall so ill.'

A second couple, from Ferryhill, County Durham, who booked a cruise on board the Thomson Dream to celebrate 25 years of being together, both claim to have fallen ill during their trip.

Joseph and Linda Pennington travelled on board the ship in January. However, just days into the luxury Caribbean trip, Joseph, 65, began to suffer with terrible gastric symptoms, including diarrhoea, vomiting and stomach cramps.

Linda later developed a chest infection and was treated by the ship's doctor. She was prescribed antibiotics and was placed on an intravenous (IV) drip on several occasions throughout the cruise.

Mr Pennington, a heavy goods vehicle driver, claimed to lawyers that 'food on the ship was often served lukewarm and that on one occasion he witnessed bread rolls that had been on one guest's table being picked up and re-used on another table for other guests.'

He and his wife also reported that a number of public toilets were out of order at various points during the cruise and that they noticed other passengers suffering from similar symptoms during their week-long trip.

He said: 'The illness I suffered on the cruise was absolutely terrible and I was confined to our cabin for a number of days. Linda's symptoms continued when we got back home and she still doesn't feel 100 per cent.

'We booked this holiday to celebrate 25 years together in style, but what should have been a memorable trip was absolutely ruined when we both fell ill.'

The third couple travelled on the same ship in February.

Paul Easton and Susan Clews, from Birmingham, set off around the Caribbean on the Thomson Dream and claim to have suffered respiratory illnesses.

Paul Easton and Susan Clews, from Birmingham, set off around the Caribbean on the Thomson Dream and claim to have suffered respiratory illnesses

Susan and I both suffered terrible chest infections and we were absolutely terrified when Susan lost her sight Paul Easton, 58

Ms Clews, 62, also developed sore eyes, migraines and had difficulty breathing while on board.

She was treated by the ship's doctor and prescribed antibiotics and eye drops and was placed on an IV drip.

Just before the end of the cruise she suffered blurred vision and as soon as she returned to the UK visited the Birmingham Eye Hospital, where she was told her loss of sight may require surgery. Clews claims that doctors later told her that her sight issues may be linked to the respiratory illness she suffered.

Mr Easton, 58, said: 'Our time on the Thomson Dream was more like a nightmare. Susan and I both suffered terrible chest infections and we were absolutely terrified when Susan lost her sight.

'Thankfully, it has started to come back, but she's been told it could be linked to the illness she suffered and we want to know what caused the illness and the long-term implications it has had for us.'
This year, they have been spent their holiday in 'bucket list destinations'

Celebrities can't resist a luxury beach holiday - the chance to get away from every day life is supplemented by the irresistible temptation to show off their green juice-honed bodies in a swimwear while the hoards of paparazzi lay in wait.

But recently, A-Listers have been swapping their seafront villas for a different kind of vacation.

The likes of Cindy Crawford and Gwyneth Paltrow have been trading in their flipflops for hiking boots and heading off on adventure holidays with their families.

They aren't alone either.

Leonardo DiCaprio, who is regularly spotted relaxing with a bevvy of beautiful women on yachts around the world recently made a trip to the Indonesian rain forests.

Read on to discover where Hollywood's elite are turning to these days for their spring break...

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Gwyneth Paltrow in Peru

Gwyneth Paltrow takes a selfie at an open air market in the Peruvian countryside

Gwyneth Paltrow flew down to South America with her children to help support ex Chris Martin during his tour.

The 43-year-old actress shared pictures from the Peruvian countryside last weekend as she toured a village and got to meet a friendly llama with her children Apple, 11, and Moses, nine,

The star also travelled to an open air market set high amidst the green mountainous countryside of Peru.

'Local market #pisac #goopgo,' the actress captioned a selfie among the rustic stands in the Valle Sagrado, which means 'sacred valley.'

Cindy Crawford in the Grand Canyon

Cindy Crawford with her husband Rande Gerber, son Presley and daughter Kaia at the Grand Canyon

Cindy Crawford shared a sweet family snap from the Grand Canyon in Arizona last week.

The 50-year-old supermodel posed with her husband Rande Gerber, son Presley and daughter Kaia.

'#notthegriswalds,' Cindy captioned the snap, a nod to the hapless National Lampoon's family lead by Chevy Chase, who know all about vacation mishaps.

Leonardo DiCaprio in Indonesia

Leonardo DiCaprio in the Indonesian jungle with local environmentalists and critically endangered Sumatran elephants

Oscar-winning actor Leonardo DiCaprio visited the Indonesian jungle last month to help protect a biodiverse area from deforestation.

Fresh from clinching his long-awaited first Oscar, DiCaprio spent the weekend in the Leuser ecosystem, on Indonesia's main western island of Sumatra.

The actor, an ardent supporter of environmental causes, was pictured accompanied by local environmentalists and flanked by two critically endangered Sumatran elephants.

But the Hollywood star may be banned from returning to Indonesia over his criticisms that palm oil plantations are destroying the country's rainforests and endangering wildlife, an immigration official said Saturday.

The Oscar-winning actor and passionate environmentalist visited various local wildlife organisations during his visit and shared a number of impassioned posts to his combined 36 million followers, claiming the palm oil industry was 'destroying' the Indonesian ecosystems.

Heru Santoso, the spokesman for the Directorate General for Immigration at the Law and Human Rights Ministry, said: 'We support his concern to save the Leuser ecosystem, but we can blacklist him from returning to Indonesia at any time if he keeps posting incitement or provocative statements in his social media.'

David Beckham in the California desert

David Beckham on one of his bikes (left) and David and Derek White (right) on a camping trip in the California desert

As a father of four, David Beckham is a dedicated family man.

But the former England captain took some time out recently for a lads holiday with fellow motorcycle enthusiast Derek White.

The two men drove out to the California desert on their motorbikes for a few nights last week.

They slept in a camper van in a retreat near Joshua Tree National Park, while David's family stayed back in LA with Victoria.

He posted a picture of himself and White on Instagram with the caption: 'Keeping warm on this cold but perfect night under the stars by the fire.'

Shay Mitchell in Montana

Shay Mitchell fly fishing (left) and dog sledding (right) in Montana

Pretty Little Liars star Shay Mitchell is a holiday junkie - her Instagram page is full of bikini pictures.

But last month, the actress went on holiday to Montana with a group of friends for an action 'staycation'.

During her stay at the Lone Mountain Ranch near Yellowstone Park, she indulged in a series of outdoor activities including fly fishing and dog sledding.

Ewan McGregor in a VW campervan

Ewan McGregor took a holiday travelling up the coast of California in a campervan with his family

Ewan McGregor has always enjoyed a holiday with a difference -his long distance motorcycle trips with friend Charley Boorman were the subject of a hit TV show and best-selling book in 2004.

And the actor still prefers a quirky vacation to a beachfront villa to this day.
A man on a British Airways flight had to go to hospital after being allegedly bitten as he stepped in to help crew members subdue a 'violent passenger'.

Christopher McNerlin was flying back to Heathrow from Dubai on Friday when he went to the aid of a stewardess dealing with an aggressive fellow traveller.

He claims he was bitten on the arm during the incident and had to go to hospital for a check-up - but was allowed to sit in the cockpit by the pilot as thanks for his efforts.

McNerlin wrote on social media: 'That time when you help restrain and handcuff a nutter at 40,000ft. He bites you, but it's all OK because Captain Kendal lets you sit in the cockpit'

Mr McNerlin posted pictures to social media of a mark beneath a tattoo of a triangle on his arm

Mr McNerlin, who works for 'trend forecasting' company WGSN, posted pictures to social media of the bite mark, along with one of himself giving the 'thumbs up' as he sat in the cockpit once the plane had landed safely and was in a hangar.

He wrote: 'That time when you help restrain and handcuff a nutter at 40,000ft. He bites you, but it's all OK because Captain Kendal lets you sit in the cockpit.'

And he added: 'At A&E after helping the British Airways stewardesses restrain a violent passenger on board yesterday's BA0104.

Christopher McNerlin was flying back to Heathrow from Dubai when he went to the aid of a stewardess dealing with an aggressive fellow traveller

'Incredible team on the flight, especially Hayley, who put herself in harm's way to protect passengers. Thanks to British Airways Captain Kendal for showing me the cockpit. The bite and A&E were almost worth it.'

British Airways thanked Mr McNerlin, from Stratford-upon-Avon, saying: 'We hope you are all right. I'm sure Hayley would've appreciated your assistance on board. Thanks.'

The airline said the matter was now being dealt with by police, who said officers were called to the airport shortly before 6pm.

A spokesperson for British Airways said: 'Our customers and crews deserve to enjoy their flights, and not to suffer any form of abuse. Appropriate action will always be taken.'

Speaking to MailOnline Travel, a Metropolitan Police spokeswoman said: 'Officers attended and found a 21-year-old man who had assaulted a passenger. The man was arrested on suspicion of actual bodily harm and being drunk on board an aircraft.
Heathrow remains the busiest airport in Europe but has dropped out of the worldwide top five for the first time in at least 15 years.

The London airport dropped three spots to sixth place in 2015 even though it had a record year for passenger traffic with a 2.2 per cent increase on 2014.

Atlantas Hartsfield-Jackson held onto its crown as the worlds busiest airport, while Beijing stayed in second place for the sixth straight year and Dubai leapfrogged Heathrow to claim third.

Despite record figures in 2015, London Heathrow Airport fell out of the top five and claimed sixth place

THE WORLD'S BUSIEST AIRPORTS (2015) Rank (2014 rank) 1 (1) 2 (2) 3 (6) 4 (7) 5 (4) 6 (3) 7 (5) 8 (10) 9 (8) 10 (9) Airport city (code) Atlanta (ATL) Beijing (PEK) Dubai (DXB) Chicago (ORD) Tokyo (HND) London (LHR) Los Angeles (LAX) Hong Kong (HKG) Paris (CDG) Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) Passengers 101.4 million 89.9 million 78 million 76.9 million 75.3 million 74.98 million 74.93 million 68.2 million 65.7 million 64 million Per cent change 5.5 4.4 10.7 9.8 3.4 2.2 6.1 8.2 3.1 0.9 Source: Airports Council International preliminary report Advertisement

The rankings revealed today by Airports Council International are based on preliminary figures from nearly 1,150 airports, including both domestic and international arrivals and departures.

For the second year in a row, Hartsfield-Jackson airport broke the 100 million passenger mark, with more than 101 million travellers passing through its terminals  up 5.5 per cent on 2014.

Beijing Capital International Airport was just shy of 90 million passengers, while third-place Dubai International saw a massive 10.7 per cent rise to 78 million.

Like Dubai, Chicago OHare jumped three spots in last years table, going from seventh to fourth with 76.9 million passengers, a 9.8 per cent increase.

With total traffic of 75 million, Tokyos Haneda Airport rounded out the top five.

Heathrows 74.9 million passenger tally put it in sixth spot, narrowly beating Los Angeles International, which welcomed 52,000 fewer travellers.

Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson, the base for Delta Air Lines, benefits from its strategic location in the US

Heathrow, currently in a battle with Gatwick over the right to build the UKs next runway, had been in ACIs top five every year since at least 2000.

A spokesman for the airport said: Heathrow had a fantastic 2015  our colleagues delivered the best service weve ever achieved to a record 75 million passengers.

But Heathrow is the only major hub airport in the world to operate at 99 per cent capacity and weve done so for over a decade.

The bottleneck in the UKs hub capacity means fewer British exports are getting to growing markets and thats impacting jobs across Britain. Without an expanded Heathrow, the UK will continue to slide down the global league tables.

Heathrow had the second-most international passengers (69 million), trailing only Dubai (77 million).

In the overall table, Hong Kong (68 million), Paris Charles de Gaulle (65 million) and Dallas/Fort Worth (64 million) placed eighth through ninth, respectively, as passenger traffic around the world increased by 6.1 per cent.

Atlanta is constantly on top of the table thanks to its strategic location as a connecting hub for flights to North America and is within a two-hour flight of 80 per cent of the US population.

It serves as the base for Delta Air Lines, one of the worlds largest carriers.

Dubai has made huge gains after boosting capacity and becoming an important hub for flights between east and west, while Chicago OHare has improved its position also after increasing capacity.
A 26-year-old mum has been awarded a share of a 100,000 settlement from Thomas Cook after her family's Egyptian holiday was ruined by an outbreak of gastric illness.

Roxanne Barraclough, from Blackpool, said she was diagnosed with E. coli after she returned to the UK from the Red Sea resort of Hurghada.

Barraclough, who stayed at the Sindbad Aqua Park Hotel with her partner and young daughter, was one of 26 British tourists who hired a law firm to seek compensation from the tour operator, which agreed a six-figure settlement.

Roxanne Barraclough, 26, her partner, Daniel, 24, and daughter, Jessica, 7, all fell ill during their holiday

A spokeswoman for Thomas Cook said the tour operator has since pulled the hotel from its programme.

Barraclough, a credit controller, said British doctors told her she was lucky to be alive after she was admitted to a local hospital with kidney pain following her return home.

Tests confirmed she had contracted E. coli, a bacterial infection that can be caught by consuming contaminated food or water.

Symptoms can include severe stomach pain, bloody diarrhoea and kidney failure.

Barraclough claimed chicken was occasionally served undercooked at the resort, so she stopped eating it.

But she and her 24-year-old partner, Daniel, and seven-year-old daughter, Jessica, fell ill just days into their July 2012 getaway.

She said: 'The hotel looked nice, but there were birds landing on food, there was chicken being left out, that was undercooked - almost raw.

'Around the grounds where they were watering the plants there was a funny smell. We asked around and were pretty much told it was taken from the drains.

Thousands of UK tourists visit Hurghada every year, although it has been affected by recent terror attacks

'We'd been there three or four days when we all had to keep going to the toilet.

'We couldn't sit out in the sun, we were sweating and hot and were just feeling generally ill.'

Barraclough's daughter continued to suffer gastric illness symptoms for five weeks after the holiday and her partner recovered two weeks after their return.

Barraclough, who was suffering from stomach and kidney pain, said she went to the hospital but her condition was misdiagnosed as a urine infection.

She said: 'I ended up going into hospital, I had very severe pain in my stomach and around where your kidneys are. They kept telling me it was a urine infection and eventually they said I should stop going in.'

Despite two previous hospital visit, her condition worsened and she was in crippling pain when she was rushed by ambulance to the local A&E department.

Barraclough said she tested positive for E. coli and was transferred to an infection control unit where she spent a week receiving treatment.

She said: 'I was in such pain they gave me gas and air, I think they even gave me morphine.

'They put me on a ward and I had a scan on my kidneys.

'All of a sudden I was quarantined, isolated away from the other patients and that's when I realised it was serious.'

Doctors later told her that her kidneys could have ruptured had she not received urgent medical care, said the law firm, Irwin Mitchell, she hired to pursue a claim for compensation.

Barraclough said: 'It was incredibly distressing, not only for my partner and I but our young daughter who endured five weeks of illness which could have proved fatal.

'Not only was our holiday ruined, but I had to spend a week away from Jessica, who was also very poorly, whilst I recovered, which was obviously very hard for both of us.

'We are grateful that we have now reached settlement and hope that we can now move on with our lives.'

A spokeswoman for Thomas Cook said: 'We know how important holidays are to our customers and how upsetting it can be when they fall unwell while overseas.

'We have been liaising closely with the appointed solicitor representing Ms Barraclough, as well as other customers who stayed at the hotel in 2012, and are pleased that we have reached an agreement to resolve this matter amicably with them.'
She has been named an Emmy contender for her upcoming film as Anita Hill in Confirmation.

And Kerry Washington sat down to discuss her role in the HBO television drama with Variety Studio on Sunday.

The 39-year-old actress showed off her hourglass physique as she cut a ladylike figure in a colourful floral frock.

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Flawless! Kerry Washington, 39, cut a ladylike figure as she attended a Variety Studio discussion in Los Angeles on Sunday

The Scandal star looked exquisite in the midi number as she attended the one-on-one session held in Los Angeles.

Kerry Washington will portray Anita Hill in the upcoming HBO movie about Clarence Thomas' US Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

Hill, 58, made sexual harassment allegations against Thomas during his October 1991 televised confirmation hearings for a seat on the US Supreme Court.

Pretty as a petal! The Scandal star donned a colourful floral frock for the one-on-one talk about her upcoming film as Anita Hill in HBO's Confirmation

Her dress was bright and perfect for the springtime season including bold hues of yellow, blue, red and green.

She styled her silky raven locks in curly tendrils and parted them to one side which featured sculpted cheekbones.

The Golden Globe nominee went with neutral make-up to highlight her natural beauty but added a bold pink lip to match her gown.

In bloom! The Golden Globe nominee donned the midi gown which was bright and perfect for the springtime season

Washington finished her ensemble with strappy white stilettos as she posed with fellow contender, Sarah Paulson.

The American Horror Story actress was polished to perfection in wide-legged black pants and a chic white blazer.

Sarah, 41, portrays prosecutor Marcia Clark in FX's American Crime Story: The People v. O. J. Simpson.

Courtroom cases: Washington and Sarah Paulson are both Emmy contenders for their powerful real-life roles

True crime: Sarah, 41, portrays prosecutor Marcia Clark in FX's American Crime Story: The People v. O. J. Simpson

Playful! Paulson posed with HBO Vinyl's Bobby Cannavale

Hit HBO series: The Emmy Award-winning actor plays Richie Finestra, a record executive trying to resurrect his label American Century

The Golden Globe nominee is winning rave reviews for her portrayal in the series that explores what went on behind-the-scenes during the 1995 prosecution of Simpson for the killings of his ex-wife Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman.

HBO Vinyl's Bobby Cannavale, 45, also attended the Variety Studio: Actors on Actors cover story and interview.

The Emmy Award-winning actor plays Richie Finestra, a record executive trying to resurrect his label American Century.

He opted for a laid back style in all black and looked devilishly handsome with his dark mane slicked back.

Emmy contender: Comedian Aziz Ansari also attended the Variety Studio: Actors on Actors event in Los Angeles

Funny man: The Parks and Recreation actor stars in the Netflix hit as the lead role of Dev, an actor who attempts to make his way through life in New York City

Parks and Recreation comedian Aziz Ansari could possibly be up for a Primetime Emmy for his role in Master of None.

Aziz stars in the Netflix hit as the lead role of Dev, a 30-year-old actor who attempts to make his way through life in New York City.

Variety Studio: Actors on Actors conversation will be printed in the June 7 issue.

And PBS SoCal will premiere the segment in two episodes, one on June 12 and the other on June 19.

Teaming up! Lady Gaga and Jamie Lee Curtis posed for a dual photoshoot
They've been married for nearly two decades now, and it's crystal clear Cindy Crawford's husband Rande Gerber knows he is one lucky guy.

The 53-year-old businessman shared a breathtaking snap of his bikini-clad wife Cindy as she flashed her figure while wading knee-deep in the water during the holiday in the Bahamas.

'Blue lagoon,' Rande captioned the gorgeous image of his wife, 50.

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Paradise! Rande Gerber shared a breathtaking snap on Sunday of his bikini-clad wife Cindy Crawford as she waded knee-deep in the water and flashed her eye-catching figure during their holiday in the Bahamas

Cindy shared the exact same image on her own account, thanking her husband for the picture perfect snap.

'Rande caught me in the blue lagoon! Thanks for the (camera emoticon)', she captioned the image.

Cindy and her loved ones have been enjoying themselves over a well-deserved holiday at the island resort of Baker's Bay in the Bahamas, and the family have been documenting their adventures on Instagram.

On Friday, proud father Rande shared a snap from his lunch with his 14-year-old daughter Kaia.

'Lunch with my little angel': Rande shared a sweet snap of his daughter Kaia Gerber during their lunch on Saturday

'Lunch with my little angel,' read the caption of the photo of his smiling daughter, who bore a striking resemblance to her famous mother.

That same day the businessman did a bit of boating and looked to be joined by his wife Cindy, who captured their excursion for Instagram as well.

'Captain @RandeGerber,' read the caption of her husband steering the boat, which contained an anchor emoticon.

Just days earlier, the family were enjoying a fun-filled getaway hundreds of miles away at the Grand Canyon.

All aboard! Gerber manned the boat in a snap shared by his photogenic wife on Saturday

'Just another day in paradise': On Friday, Cindy posed in a sheer robe upon a curved palm tree trunk

The getaway was no doubt a well-deserved one for the famous family.

Cindy and her family have had a busy first few months of 2016, working on everything from a mom-daughter Vogue cover to numerous fashion campaigns.

For the issue of Vogue Paris, which hit newsstands March 24, Cindy and Kaia were styled by none other than editor-in-chief Emmanuelle Alt herself, and were shot by famed photographer Mario Testino.

In February, high-end rocker-chic label Chrome Hearts announced that Kaia would be starring in its Spring/Summer campaign, marking the teen's first fashion campaign since signing with IMG Models last year.

Mum's the word: Cindy and Kaia were pictured leaving Nobu in Malibu after returning to California from their Bahamas beach break
While War And Peace star James Norton laps up the attention from his female fans, he might need to watch out for critics within his own industry  TV actress Anne Reid has accused todays young stars of relying too much on their looks.

Actors tend to have a burst of stardom when theyre in their 20s, and then it all fades away.

I never got the burst of stardom in my 20s, I just kept plodding on and climbing the mountain, says Anne, 80, who starred in Coronation Street for ten years in the Sixties and more recently in the series Last Tango In Halifax.

War And Peace star James Norton is currently lapping up the attention from his female fans

There are lots of young people now who, lets face it, are there more because of their looks than their talent.

Singling out Grantchester hunk Norton she tells me: He looks like a bloomin god, and hes getting every chance in the world, but if he were an ugly little man he would not have got these roles.

Being good-looking isnt a bad thing  Im saying its about the whole package.

Where these very good-looking people will be in 50 years is another thing completely.

Not a hatty person: Samantha Cameron

Why SamCam isn't 'hatty'

When Samantha Cameron refused to wear a hat to the Royal Wedding five years ago, she was criticised by fashionistas for flouting the dress code.

But society milliner Stephen Jones has at last revealed why the PMs wife is so averse to adorning her head. Ive made a few hats for Samantha, but she doesnt wear them that often.

When she does, she looks fantastic, but shes not a very hatty person, he tells me.

Stephen, whose styles have been worn by the Duchess of Cambridge, adds: Samantha doesnt like anything thats too look-at-me. A

Also, shes a very public person, so its not only whether she likes the hat, its how shes perceived in the hat.

Former newsnight host Jeremy Paxman says George Osborne could have a better shot than Boris Johnson when it comes to succeeding David Cameron.

George seems to be a genuine grown-up. I never get the sense that hes well-liked, but he was the architect of the Tories victory in 2015, and the party love him for that, says Paxman.

He has also skilfully managed MPs, seen sympathisers appointed to significant positions, and he understands the importance of capturing the centre ground vacated by Labour under Jeremy Corbyn.

'He worked the Conservative parliamentary party in a way that Boris doesnt really bother with.
It's clear that Teresa Palmer and her lookalike son Bodhi share a special bond.

The pair were seen in fits of giggles together as the actress ran errands in LA on Saturday.

Teresa, 30, was seen lifting her adorable son into the air, as he attempted to wriggle free.

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So much fun: Teresa Palmer and her son Bodhi were seen giggling in delight as the pair joked around in Los Angeles on Saturday

But as the tot tried to break from his mother's grasp the pair were seen laughing showing off big grins on their faces.

Teresa was seen tickling her son, who was seen sliding down her body so much so that she very nearly lost her hold on him.

The actress and model was dressed in a relaxed outfit for the day, in a pair of black jeans, flat cut out boots and a cream jacket.

Having a ball: The mother and son duo couldn't keep the grins from their faces

Nearly breaking free: The two-year-old was seen nearly escaping his mother's grasp

She had her blonde tresses swept back from her face into a ponytail and she went make-up free for her outing with her son.

Bodhi, two, looked adorable in a pair of light blue trousers and a navy and white hooded jumper.

While Teresa makes sure she spends plenty of time with her son, she has also been busy promoting her new romantic flick, The Choice.

Come this way: Teresa was seen coaxing her son into her arms before she began tickling him

Come here you! The two year old was seen giggling as his mother wrapped her arm around him

The South Australian native plays the lead female role of Gabby Holland in the Nicholas Sparks film alongside American actor Benjamin Walker who plays Travis Parker.

Speaking of her role at AOL Build, she said: 'I am a huge fan, and was a huge deal for me growing up.

'I just had a dream of one day playing my own version of Allie Hamilton. So when landed in my lap, I thought it was very serendipitous.'

Baby steps: The tot was seen walking along next to a railing before he was scooped up by the actress

Teresa has finished up filming in Australia for Hacksaw Ridge.

The movie is set in WWII and follows the story of Desmond Doss, the first conscientious objector to receive the Medal of Honor.

She stars alongside fellow Australian actor Sam Worthington, as well as Vince Vaughn and Andrew Garfield in the Mel Gibson directed blockbuster.

Make-up free: The 30-year-old model showed off her natural beauty
They're one of Australia's most famous sporting couples.

And on Monday Candice and David Warner celebrated their one year wedding anniversary.

Ironwoman Candice commemorated the meaningful occasion by posting a string of throwback photos from the couple's lavish ceremony to Instagram, along with a gushing message to her cricket star husband.

Flashback: Candice Warner shared some photos of her wedding to David on Monday to celebrate their one year anniversary being a married couple

'One year ago today I became Mrs Warner when I married the love of my life @davidwarner31,' the 31-year-old wrote.

She continued: 'Happy Anniversary baby. Each day we are together our love grows stronger.'

The stunner finished by writing: 'You make me the happiest girl in the world and I will love u forever.'

'One year ago today I became Mrs Warner when I married the love of my life @davidwarner3,' the beauty wrote to her social media fans

Gushing: 'Happy Anniversary baby. Each day we are together our love grows stronger,' continued the 31-year-old

Last month, the blonde athlete shared another throwback snap on her Instagram account, showing the fun she used to get up to with her big brother, Patrick Falzon.

Sitting in an orange plastic clothes basket and her brother sitting at the other end, toddler Candice gives the camera cheeky smile, while the blonde beauty's hair is its original mousey brown.

Showing that she still shares a close bond with Patrick, who is a lifeguard in Sydney's Eastern Beaches, Candice wrote, 'Growing up with this crazy cat was the best.'

Baby on board! The couple gave birth to daughter Indi Rae earlier this year

Flashback Friday: Candice shared this sweet picture on social media last month, showing herself as a toddler with her older brother Pat Falzon

The flashback snap also shows off the striking resemblance between herself and her eldest daughter to husband David.

Ivy Mae, 18 months, has inherited her mother's dark brown eyes and has almost identical features to that of Candice at a similar age.

The mother of two, who gave birth to a second daughter Indi Rae this year, posted a photo of her two girls earlier in the week.

Striking similarities: The picture of a young Candice (pictured in 2015) shows how much her eldest daughter, Ivy Mae, looks like her mother

Like mother like daughter: Candice posted a picture to Instagram earlier in the week of her two young daughters, saying the Warner women were missing their daddy

With David recently jetting off to South Africa for the T20 International Series, Candice took to social media to show off her two daughters in a loving messaging to their father.

The two girls are seen in bed with their hands in the air, with the blonde beauty captioning the image: 'Put your hands up if you're missing Daddy already. It's unanimous the girls miss you. Love you.'

Candice and David managed to find a moment for some quality time together before David left the country for the Qantas T20 Tour of South Africa 2016.

The two have been inseparable since first meeting in 2013 and wed last year in the Southern Highlands at a luxury estate.

Loved up: The pair managed to find some quality time together before David left the country to represent Australia in the T20 International Series
He passed away last month from complications following heart surgery.

But after mourning their father at a funeral two weeks ago Jon English's children, along with his family and friends, will be joined by the public to pay tribute to the actor in a memorial in Sydney on Tuesday afternoon.

Along with his children Jonathan, Josephine, Jessamine and Julian and his partner Christie Lamb, John Paul Young, Doug Parkinson, Trevor White, Tom Burlinson, Maria Venuti, Simon Gallaher and Tina Bursill are expected to attend, The Daily Telegraph reports.

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Words Are Not Enough: A memorial service will be held in April for Australian rocker Jon English who died following complications from surgery

Speaking about the event, which will be held at Sydney's Capitol Theatre from 4pm, Jonathan has opened up about his father to the paper.

He said: 'We said goodbye to the bloke and the father two weeks ago and now we are saying goodbye to the superstar.'

And speaking about the late perfomer's legacy he said: 'It was only after he died that I saw this beautiful sense of grief and passion people had for dad and his career and I didnt realise how unique it was in the Australian landscape.'

I think Dads legacy is going to be that for suburban kids musicals are a cool thing to do, dont think it is a geeky Glee thing, and that no matter who you are in life and how far up you are, being down to earth is one of the greatest assets that you can maintain.'

Long-term friend and performer Simon Gallaher(L), who starred with English(R) in Pirates of Penzance in the 1980s, said he fell over and broke his ribs but appeared 'perfectly well' when he presented at the hospital

The Capitol Theatre in Haymarket where the memorial is being held is the same venue Jon first found fame playing Judas in the original Australian production of Jesus Christ Superstar in 1972.

It will include tributes and performances in memory of the English-born, western Sydney performer.

The Australian died on March 9 from complications following surgery for an aortic aneurysm that doctors 'stumbled across' after he broke his ribs.

Jon was surrounded by his family, including his four children Jessamin, Josephine, Jonnie and Julian, and wife Carmen, during the last moments.

It came after the much-loved Logie winner pulled out of his Trilogy of Rock show in Dubbo, New South Wales, due to 'unexpected ill health' which saw him hospitalised.

Long-term friend and performer Simon Gallaher said he fell over in Adelaide and broke his ribs but appeared 'perfectly well' when he arrived at the hospital, which is when the aneurysm was found.

'They happened just to stumble across this,' Gallaher told AAP. 'He was in Adelaide and I think he just fell over and hurt himself that way.

'I was chatting to him in the hospital and he was just there under observation, he was perfectly well in himself although this problem was there,' he added.

Days before his death, a representative of the rocker sent a message to his Facebook fans as he lay in hospital, saying he was 'itching' to get back to 'rocking out on stage.'

Gallaher, who starred with English in Pirates of Penzance in the 1980s, said the pair had plans to renew their 30-year onstage partnership later this year in a production of Monty Python's Spamalot.

'He was going to be King Arthur,' Gallaher said. 'We did it last year in Brisbane and it was very successful. So we were going to go on tour with that later this year.'

Legend: Jon, pictured in 2004, was acclaimed for his starring role in the 1978 Australian TV series Against the Wind

Gallaher heard about English's death from the star's present partner Coralea Cameron.

'Jon's partner Coralea sent me a text in the middle of the night, which I ignored. So it wasn't until I woke up that suddenly the world had gone mad,' he said.

Gallaher said Cameron had been updating him on English's progress, and that all was well until just hours before his death.

A statement released by his record label Ambition Music Group, posted to his Facebook page, read: 'It is with great sadness that we commemorate the passing of Jon English.

'Jon died peacefully last night, aged 66. The cause of death was post-operative complications.

'At the time of his passing he was surrounded by his four children, Jessamin, Josephine, Jonnie and Julian, his wife Carmen, his sister Janet, his brother Jeremy, his nephews Jay and Jasper Collie, his grandson Jzawo and other close family members.'

Born in Hampstead, London, on 26 March 1949, Jon came to Australia with his parents, Syd and Sheila, and three siblings, Janet, Jeremy and Jill, at the age of 12.

He was one of the few Australian performers to combine a stellar career in music, television and stage and was known for his unquenchable drive for success.

In the early 70's, he auditioned for Harry M Miller's first production of Jesus Christ Superstar and landed the demanding lead role of Judas Iscariot, aged 22.

Talented: The London-born star is known for his stunning performance as Judas Iscariot in Jesus Christ Superstar after landed the demanding lead role when he was 22

Showstopper: Jon toured Australia and New Zealand with Jesus Christ Superstar for five years during which time he also recorded four albums, including Handbags and Gladrags, Turn the Page and Hollywood Seven

Open: Jon shared this picture of him with his Facebook fans in February after he pulled out of his Trilogy of Rock show in Dubbo due to 'unexpected ill health'

He was one of the few Australian performers to combine a career in music, television and stage. Pictured as Judas at the Encore Theatre in Sydney's Newtown in 2012

The show's phenomenal success saw him tour Australia and New Zealand for the following five years and during that time he also recorded four albums, penning hits including Handbags and Gladrags, Turn the Page (his first number one) and Hollywood Seven.

At the same time he landed guest roles on popular television drama shows including No 96, Matlock Police, and the Homicide telemovie, Stopover.

The year 1977 was a memorable one for him; he wrapped up his fifth album, celebrated his third number one hit single Words Are Not Enough and toured with Irish rock band, Thin Lizzy.

Bowing out of the music scene a year later, Jon tapped into his acting talent once again to take up the lead role in hit TV mini-series, Against the Wind.

His passion and impressive acting is what eventually saw him net a Best New Talent Logie for his performance as convict, Jonathan Garrett.

That same year he won an acting Logie and a TV Week/Countdown award (for best male vocalist).

1978: Jon tapped into his acting talent once again to take up the lead role in hit TV mini-series, Against the Wind

Happiest performing: Jon took his trusted guitar with him wherever he went. Seen here in 2006 wooing fans at the Countdown Spectacular Launch in Luna Park, Sydney, in 2006

Showman: Jon was set to tour Australia from May starting in Perth

Jon was passionate about acting and to his impressive list of television credits over the years can also be added Graham Kennedy's long-running comic game show, Blankety Blanks, as well as regular appearances as a panelist on Hey Hey It's Saturday.

He also landed cameo role son hugely popular Australian series drama Flying Doctors, Pizza and Rafferty's Rules, trivia show Spicks and Specks and SBS rock quiz show RocKwiz.

The affable star trod the boards as Pirate King in the 1984 production of The Pirates of Penzance, wooing audiences with his stage antic more than 1,000 times.

Hey Hey It's Saturday: He made regular appearances as a panelist on the variety show. Seen right in 1986

All Together Now: He played the main role of Bobby Rivers in the TV sitcom from 1990-1993

A joy: Fellow actors recalled how loved Jon was. Pictured in All Together Now as Bobby Rivers

He later starred in stage musicals, including Rasputin (1987) and Big River (1988).

During 198385, the father of four won four Mo Awards three for Entertainer of the Year and one for Male Vocal Performer.

Perhaps most surprisingly, to those who did not know him well, Jon boasted a prodigious general knowledge and won the celebrity version of Sale Of The Century quizz show, taking home a brand new BMW.

At the time of his death he was still performing and was set to tour Australia from May starting in Perth.

Following news of his death, social media flooded with loving tributes to the Australian music legend.

Packed To The Rafters star Rebecca Gibney was among the thousands that poured their tributes onto Twitter, writing: 'Just heard the news about Jon English. So incredibly sad.'

'Incredibly sad': Packed To The Rafters star Rebecca Gibney took to Twitter to express her condolences

Co-stars: Rebecca and Jon starred in the 90s sitcom All Together Now

Close to home: Jon starred in early '90s sitcom All Together Now, which told the story of a aging rocker maintaining his music career

Lighting up the stage: The die-hard rocker performs on The Rockshow

Passionate: Jon released acclaimed alum Calm Before the Storm in 1980

Going strong: At the time of his death he was still performing music gigs around the country. Seen at the celebration of Molly Meldrum's 50 years in the music industry in Melbourne in 2014
She is undoubtedly one of the world's most stunning supermodels.

And on Sunday, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley displayed her gorgeous legs in a pair of cropped shorts while on a grocery run with fiance Jason Statham.

The 28-year-old beauty was LA cool in a blue and red striped sweater.

Legs for days! On Sunday, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley displayed her gorgeous gams in a pair of cropped shorts while on a grocery run with her fiance

Rosie unintentionally made the streets her runway, hair flowing against the wind as she walked.

Her pretty face was shielded from the sun behind a pair of shades.

She added a pair of sued ankle boots and accessorized with diamond stud earrings, and her engagement sparkler, given to her by Jason in January.

He's got it: Jason Statham, 48, was ever the proper gentleman, leaving his ladylove free of bag-carrying duties

Jason, 48, was ever the proper gentleman, leaving his ladylove free of bag-carrying duties.

The Spy star displayed his toned triceps in a navy, form-fitting T-shirt.

He finished off his look with a pair of grey trousers.

Girls' day: When she's not spending time with her beau of six years, Rosie's catching up with her gal pals

When she's not spending time with her beau of six years, Rosie's catching up with her gal pals.

On Wednesday, the beautiful blonde enjoyed a girls' lunch date at Gracias Madre in West Hollywood with fellow Victoria's Secret models Lily Aldridge and Behati Prinsloo.

Strutting inside the Mexican eatery, the catwalk queen, 28, showcased her slim pins to perfection in a pair of indigo denim skintight jeans.

Pins on parade: Rosie showed off the fruits of her labour as she enjoyed a girls' lunch date at Gracias Madre in West Hollywood on Wednesday afternoon

The British beauty looked every inch the boho babe by teaming her skinnies with a chic, floaty white top, while adding height to her statuesque frame with a pair of chunky brown leather heels.

Rosie's get-up was perfectly accessorised by her huge diamond engagement ring, which she has worn proudly ever since become engaged to actor Jason Statham, 48, in January.

The Transformers star kept her golden hair neat in a high ballerina-style bun, and toted a black clutch bag under her arm.

Rosie's make-up was flawless, with glowing pink cheeks and a rosy lip, teamed with nude eyeshadow and mascara.

Health-conscious Rosie joined fellow models Behati, 28, and Lily, 30, at hip Gracias Madre, which specialises in 'plant-based Mexican food'.

And judging by their laughs and plentiful conversation, the trio certainly had a lot to catch up on.

A vegetarian feast: Rosie joined fellow models Behati Prinsloo, 26, (L) and Lily Aldridge, 30, (R) at hip Mexican restaurant Gracias Madre for an afternoon of fun and catch-ups

All three models have enjoyed lengthy stints as Victoria's Secret Angels, with Behati earning wings in 2009, while Lily and Rosie scored theirs in 2010.

Pregnant Behati showed off her bump in a chic red and blue striped dress, which she teamed with a denim cape.

Lily looked gorgeous in skin-tight black leather jeans and a casual denim jacket.

Dinner date: No doubt the trio had plenty to catch up on, including Behati's baby news. The model is expecting her first child with Maroon 5 rocker and Adam Levine in the summer

After spending a happy few hours together, no doubt catching up on Behati's baby news, the trio departed the restaurant, with Behati and Lily linking arms.

It's been a busy few weeks for Rosie, who has just launched her first make-up line with Marks and Spencer, which she has been showing off to fans on Snapchat.
They appeared to be a match made in reality TV heaven.

But it appears that former Bachelorette contestant Dave Billsborrow and ex-Bachelor star Sarah-Mae Amey have quietly called time on their romance.

A source close to the pair has told Daily Mail Australia that the pair, who confirmed their romance in November, had parted ways recently.

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All over? Dave Billsborrow and Sarah-Mae Amery have called time on their romance a source has told Daily Mail Australia

Neither Sarah-Mae nor Dave have responded to a request for comment.

Both the plumber and the florist have failed to post images of each other to their own Instagram accounts in recent weeks.

Sarah-Mae last featured on Dave's page five weeks ago as the couple posed for a picture along with friend Sasha at a charity ball.

Meanwhile the buff tradie has been absent from Sarah-Mae's account for more than 10 weeks.

First snap: The pair were pictured together at an event in November before they confirmed their romance

Last snap: The couple were last seen together at Bondi Icebergs according to Sarah-Mae's Instagram feed

Her last post showed the couple smiling at Bondi Icebergs. Along with the happy image the former reality star wrote: 'Happiest,' along with a heart emoticon.

Sarah-Mae is of course best friends with Bachelorette Sam Frost, who Dave was seen trying to woo on the show last year.

But while Sam rejected the tradesman he did find an everlasting friendship with Sasha Mielczarek, who went on to win Sam's heart.

And it was Sam who introduced her best friend to Dave back in November and the pair quickly hit it off.

Matchmaker: Sam Frost, pictured with boyfriend Sasha Mielczarek, set up Dave and her friend Sarah-Mae

Sarah-Mae confirmed her relationship with Dave on Instagram posting a picture of the former reality star as the pair babysat Sam and Sasha's pet puppy Rocky.

Along with an image of Dave and the pooch Sarah wrote: ''My boys... Puppy sitting duties.'

Dave and Sarah were first pictured getting cosy in early November when they attended a Derby Day after party in Melbourne together.

And in January Sarah-Mae branded Dave 'Boyfriend Of The Year' after he helped her to prepare for a baby shower.
She's known for her runway skills but perhaps she could also make a career in the circus.

Gorgeous model Irina Shayk was left juggling bags of takeaway curry in Los Angeles on Monday as she headed to her boyfriend Bradley Cooper's Los Angeles home.

The 30-year-old was spotted leaving an Indian restaurant with two oversize bags of food as she still wore her pink slippers from the nail salon.

Juggling act! Gorgeous model Irina Shayk was left juggling bags of takeaway curry in Los Angeles on Monday as she headed to her boyfriend Bradley Cooper's Los Angeles home

Irina certainly looked to be multi-tasking as her toes still carried the protective cotton swabs following her pedicure from a pampering session.

The star looked to be make-up free as she wore her brunette locks in a messy bun as she positioned her shades on her forehead.

Irina wore a long blue shirt over a black dress as she ran her errands in the late afternoon before picking up dinner, presumably for her and Bradley.

Unusual step: The 30-year-old was spotted leaving an Indian restaurant with two oversize bags of food as she still wore her pink slippers from the nail salon

She's got a lot to do: Irina certainly looked to be multi-tasking as her toes still carried the protective cotton swabs following her pedicure from a pampering session

Busy day: Irina wore a long blue shirt over a black dress as she ran her errands in the late afternoon before picking up dinner, presumably for her and Bradley

Meanwhile, on Thursday the Russian beauty flaunted her impressive assets and enviably slim waistline in a racy Intimissi body suit and Givenchy jeans.

Irina captioned the picture: 'When you're obsessed with your @givenchyofficial jeans & @intimissimiofficial body suit #Thursdays'.

The model's luscious brunette locks cascaded messily over her shoulders and were full of volume as she sat perched on the end of a large bed.

Busty beauty: Irina showed why she's held in such high regard, posting a stunningly busty snap on Instagram on Thursday

Model behaviour: Irina was recently pictured in the crowd at Rihanna's Barclays Centre gig in Brooklyn with Naomi Campbell

Her famously plump lips were thicker than ever as she brought them together in a subtle pout.

The natural beauty's blue peepers looked lustrous as she gazed into the camera, while her unblemished complexion emanated a healthy glow.

Irina was recently pictured in the crowd at Rihanna's Barclays Centre gig in Brooklyn, alongside the likes of John Mayer, Jaden Smith and Jonathan Cheban.

And it seemed that the model was definitely feeling the good time vibes, as she was seen moving and grooving along to the set.

The Russian-born beauty - who is currently dating Hollywood heartthrob Bradley Cooper - was at the gig with her BFF Naomi Campbell, and was clearly in the mood for a party.

Gal pals: Irina has no shortage of celeb fans, recently posting with Amy Schumer

Laughing and waving her arms around in the air, Irina certainly appeared to be having a blast as Rihanna strutted her stuff on-stage.

Earlier this month, Bradley and Irina were seen enjoying a romantic stroll around Paris, though the American Hustle actor's sights were fixated on his supermodel beau as oppose to the city's architectural beauty.
As an outspoken supporter of the Free The Nipple campaign, her Instagram account is littered with naked and semi-naked snaps.

And former Neighbours star Caitlin Stasey, 25, added to her burgeoning collection on Monday.

The actress shared a topless selfie of herself, obscuring her nipple with a strategically placed glint graphic.

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At it again: Outspoken supporter of the Free The Nipple campaign, actress Caitlin Stasey shared a topless selfie of herself to Instagram on Monday, obscuring her nipple with just a strategically placed glint graphic

Thanks to clever editing, her modesty was protected by the gleaming visual.

In the intimate image, the nude Reign star appears to be makeup free as she displays her innate beauty and smooth complexion.

Sharing the naked snap to Instagram, Cailtin captioned the shot: 'Thanks smudge on lens for that earthy glow.'

Taken in a backyard, it seems the liberated star appeared to be practicing what she preaches as she wandered about freely in the outdoor setting.

'Free The Nipple': The 25-year-old posted this self-censored photo to Instagram earlier this year - part of her ongoing protest against the website's policy which bans topless photos of women, but not men

Earlier this year, Caitlin launched a personal protest against Instagram's controversial nudity policy - which allows men to pose bare chested but not women - by self-censoring a semi-topless picture.

The actress posted an image of herself pulling away her black top to reveal her right breast - but she notably obscured her nipple with a glint graphic.

The small editing follows the pattern set by many online campaigners, who censor their own photos to draw attention to the image-sharing website's censorship.

Strong minded: Caitlin is happy to bare all but will only do so on her own terms

One of Caitlin's followers observed: 'She has to do that to abide by IG [Instagram] posting regulations. Cause guys can show their nipples but not girls' (sic).

This is the latest in a series of nude or semi-nude photos the brunette beauty has shared on Instagram in protest against the website's nudity policy - as part of the 'Free The Nipple' campaign.

'Free The Nipple' is an equality movement started by activist and filmmaker Lina Esco, which resolves to give women the right to bare their chests in areas where it is normally discouraged by police or criminalised.

The movement - which counts Girls creator Lena Dunham and supermodel Cara Delevigne among its supporters - recently began focusing its attention on Instagram, which only allows males to appear topless.

The website came under fire for deleting posts by its users - including high-profile stars like Rihanna and Miley Cyrus - featuring female nipples, which critics claim is a sexist double-standard.

Their Community Guidelines state that 'some photos of female nipples' are not allowed, with the exception of images 'of post-mastectomy scarring and women actively breastfeeding'.

Happy: Feminist Caitlin is a keen supporter of equality movements, including 'Free The Nipple', which has been critical of Instagram's double-standards when it comes to nudity

CEO Kevin Systrom last year blamed Apple for the censorship of nudity, claiming the App Store - where users can download the Instagram app - has strict policies when it comes to adult content.

Meanwhile, Melbourne-born Caitlin has remained defiant in her criticism of Instagram, posting a series of images which challenge or parody the image-sharing website's stringent guidelines.

After a magazine cancelled her photo shoot last August because she refused to pose in her underwear, Caitlin posted a topless picture to her account to show she will only appear nude on her own terms.

She added the defiant caption: 'Free the goddamn f****** nipple you puritanical fearmongers'.

Last year, she also shared a photo of herself wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the 'Free the Nipple' logo and an image of a woman's breasts with the nipples covered in black tape.
She is known for her curvaceous figure.

And Sofia Vergara showed that it takes hard work to maintain that enviable frame.

The 43-year-old actress looked in fine form as she headed to the gym in Wilmington, North Carolina on Sunday.

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Fighting fit: Sofia Vergara was spotted heading to a gym in Wlimington, North Carolina on Sunday as her husband Joe Manganiello is shooting a movie there

As the Modern Family actress resides in California, no doubt she turned several heads in the southeastern region of the US as she was out there to support husband Joe Manganiello while he films his new series.

The hunky 39-year-old actor was in New Hanover County to film his upcoming mini-series Six but was not seen on the gym outing.

Sofia showed off her toned legs in a pair of clinging patterned grey workout leggings.

The mother-of-one finished off the look with a flowy black top along with black and white Reebok trainers.

Impressive: The 43-year-old actress showed off her curvaceous figure in a pair of patterned grey leggings, flowy black top and Reebok trainers

She wore her brunette tresses down in a middle-part and let her natural beauty show with minimal make-up on her face.

Sofia clutched onto a bottle of VOSS water and her car keys as she made her way into the sweaty workout session.

The couple have been jetsetting since their wedding in Palm Beach, Florida back in November as they recently took a trip to Austin, Texas.

Bodacious: She also put her pert posterior on full display

Joe appeared at the South By Southwest festival in Texas last month to promote his latest project as Sofia was his beautiful escort at the gala event.

Joe plays himself in the eagerly awaited Pee-wee's Big Holiday, and the two made a united appearance at the film's premiere.

The couple received a ringing endorsement from Joe's co-star Paul Reubens, or as most people know him, Pee-wee Herman.

Eyes on you: Joe and Sofia have enhoyed some jetsetting as last month 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

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

The actor told USA Today Joe and Sofia had surprisingly become his new best friends - as they are secret dorks.

'[Joe] and his wife together are the dorkiest, nerdiest people,' he said.

'It's just hilarious. People don't get to see that side.'
Gemma Collins is rumoured to have rekindled her rocky romance with her ex-fiance Rami Hawash.

The TOWIE star, 35, who dated Rami on and off for three years before they split in 2014, is thought to have spent Easter with her ex, with pals even hinting that another engagement is imminent.

'Gemma bumped into Rami a few weeks back, and they still definitely have a spark,' a source told the Daily Mirror.

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Reunited? Gemma Collins, 35, is rumoured to have rekindled her rocky romance with her ex-fiance Rami Hawash after spending time together over the Easter weekend

'They spent the whole bank holiday weekend together and it was just like old times. They still really care for each other and enjoy each other's company,' the insider added to the newspaper.

'At the moment, they're both keeping their options slightly open but pals reckon another engagement could be on the cards.'

A spokesman for Gemma declined to comment to MailOnline.

The news may come as a shock to some, due to the bad blood between the ex-lovers, with both parties lashing out at one another in the months that followed their past break-up.

Old flame: The couple, who dated on and off for three years before they split in 2014, are thought to have spent Easter together, with pals even hinting that another engagement is imminent

When Gemma sensationally quit I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! after spending just 72 hours in the jungle, Rami came forward to claim the boutique owner has always had anger issues and used to get aggressive whenever she didn't get her own way.

The car mechanic told The Sun: 'She needs help for her anger issues. If things were not going well she would take it out on me. She once threw a glass and went berserk and chucked a curry at me.'

The 40-year-old, who made several appearances on TOWIE in the past, says Gemma lost her cool and threw the Indian takeaway at him when he was trying to watch her reality show.

He later discovered she hadn't wanted him to watch her being flirtatious with her ex-boyfriend James 'Arg' Argent in a swimming pool.

'If she doesn't get her own way she can go off like a firework. She would cry, moan and swear,' Rami added.

Gemma has always alleged Rami was verbally abusive and destroyed her self esteem with his cruel jibes about her weight.

She told Now magazine in 2014: 'It was a gradual thing. He made me feel bad about myself. He'd say I was a fatsie.

'If I got dressed up to go out he'd say, "Look at you" with this sneer on his face and tell me I should put on jeans and a top. I honestly think I went through a nervous breakdown.'

In March the sassy reality star told MailOnline that Rami was with her for the wrong reasons.

Bad blood: The pair famously lashed out following the break-up, with Rami claiming Gemma has anger issues and chucked food at him during a row (pictured in May 2013)

People have come into my life and Ive been swept away because theyre good looking and have got all the chat,' she said. 'But the next minute they want all your money and are trying to jump on your bandwagon.

Rami was just using me for my fame. Its just one of those things but Im definitely going to stay away from bad boys.

And while there may be rumours of another engagement to Rami, Gemma admitted there is certainly a family shaped hole in her personal life that she's desperate to fill.

She added: 'Im desperate to have a baby  Ive got all these amazing things happening to me but the one thing I want takes forever and a day.

'When I put my key in my flat at the end of the day Im just Gemma. I want someone who can give me a kiss and a cuddle and who I can chat to about my day.

'Thats a massive thing missing in my life. Id love to be in love, Id love to be married and Id love to have a baby by the end of the year but I cant see it happening.

'Im just very unfortunate in love  I never meet anyone.'

The Romford-born star experienced heartache on TOWIE when she enjoyed a romance with her co-star James 'Arg' Argent, 28, following his split from the ITVBe show's Lydia Bright.

The pair dated in 2012 for two months before calling it quits, often over rows about Gemma's weight.

Gemma also went out with convicted drug dealer Alexander Moss from June to November 2014 but split the day before she flew to Australia to star in I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!

UNLUCKY IN LOVE: GEMMA COLLINS' PAST BOYFRIENDS James 'Arg' Argent Gemma enjoyed a romance with her TOWIE co-star James, 28, following his split from his childhood sweetheart, the ITVBe show's Lydia Bright. The pair dated in 2012 for two months before calling it quits, often over rows about Gemma's weight. Alexander Moss The Romford-born star went out with convicted drug dealer Alexander Moss from June to November 2014 but split the day before she flew to Australia to star in I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! Gemma claimed she received a creepy phonecall from Alex before entering the Celebrity Big Brother house in Genma alleged Alex, a convicted drug dealer, had assaulted her, but he was never charged and vehemently denies the allegations. She admits she was horrified when Alex tried to call her before she joined the Channel 5 show. Stephen Mortimer Gemma dated convicted drug dealer Stephen for a month from January to February of this year. He was sent to prison for 28 days for breaching a licence while she was in the Celebrity Big Brother house. Stephen - who spent two years in prison for grievous bodily harm (GBH) - handed himself in to police mid-January of this year after he breached his licence terms, which stated he must reside at his sister's home, by recently moving into Gemma's lavish abode in Brentwood, Essex. They split in February amid rumours he had cheated on her. Advertisement

The former reality star, who had a stint in the Celebrity Big Brother house earlier this year claimed she received a creepy phonecall from Alex before entering the house.

Genma alleged Alex, a convicted drug dealer, had assaulted her, but he was never charged and vehemently denies the allegations.

She admits she was horrified when Alex tried to call her before she joined the Channel 5 show.

She told The Sun's Will Payne: 'He called me from a withheld number. As soon as he said "Hello" I just had to put the phone down. I know Alex and I do believe hes psychotic.'

Gemma said she knew she had to hang up because he would have tried to get 'in my head'.

She added: 'He would have tried to psych me out and bring me down.'

The reality star famously quit I'm A Celebrity after just a few days, later admitting she was suffering from post-traumatic stress following her clash with Alex.

In an interview with OK! magazine this year, Gemma alleged Alex spat food in her face during an argument.

She claimed: 'I was having a Chinese, but he picked up a chicken ball, bit it and spat it in my face.'

The blonde beauty then briefly dated Stephen Mortimer, who was sent to prison for 28 days for breaching a licence.

Stephen - who spent two years in prison for grievous bodily harm (GBH) - handed himself in to police mid-January of this year after he breached his licence terms, which stated he must reside at his sister's home, by recently moving into Gemma's lavish abode in Brentwood, Essex.
He split from his Married At First Sight 'wife' Clare Tamas in bitter circumstances more than seven months ago.

But Monday night's launch of the show's new season dredged up bad memories for Lachie McAleer, who took a stab at Clare and the black dress she wore during their TV wedding ceremony last year.

Taking to Instagram, the 37-year-old farmer fired off: 'I wonder whether any of the brides will turn up in a black dress this time???'

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Outspoken: Lachan McAleer took aim at his former Married At First Sight wife Clare Tamas in Instagram by bringing up the fact she wore black to their wedding

'I wonder whether any of the brides will turn up in a black dress this time???' He turned to Instagram to welcome the new series of the show while taking the opportunity to fire off at his ex

He also made sure to include the hashtags: '#9married #marriedatfirstsight #nerves #anticipation'.

It comes not long after Clare listed her black wedding dress up for auction on eBay.

In the listing, Clare described the reason she decided to part with the dress, citing the fact she had been berated by online trolls about her choice to wear black at her wedding.

'Wedding' dress auction: Married At First Sight's Clare Tamas recently listed the black dress worn during her TV marriage on eBay

'Choose kindness': The marketing manager wrote that she was hoping to get something positive out of the situation

Married At First Sight! She walked down the aisle to wed farmer Lachlan McAleer on the social experiment

Proceeds of the sale were donated to the Australian Cervical Cancer Foundation, according to the eBay listing.

After one online troll guessed the bride donned black because 'she must have been around the block a few times', the reality TV star explained, in detail on the auction page, the reasons behind her dress choice.

'Yes the show was called Married at First Sight, but it was a commitment ceremony to someone I had never met,' Clare revealed to fans.

'If the guy at the end was the one, then it [sic] would get engaged at some point in our future journey, and I would put on the white dress and have my dad walk me down the aisle, a beaming bride.

'She must have been around the block': After assumptions about why the TV bride wore black, she detailed the reasons for her choice on the eBay page

'Commitment ceremony': The brunette explained to fans that the ceremony on the show was not a real wedding and if the couple stayed together they would have officially gotten engaged then married

'But, if it didnt work out, then I didnt want to detract from the feeling that I had done it before when I married my future husband.

'I wanted to wear the white dress once and once only. That is how seriously I take marriage,' she added.

Glad she trusted her instincts given the way the show panned out, the jilted bride also revealed she didn't choose black but liked the structure of the Nicholas strapless number.

'I wanted to wear the white dress once': Clare told fans the real reason she didn't wear white for the ceremony

Moving on: The reality TV star may also be selling the dress to help move on from the failed relationship with Lachlan, which she opened up about in a women's magazine recently

The Embroidered Mesh Ball dress by the Australian brand features boning structures through the bodice, "eyelet embroidery accents the A-line skirt" and mini-dress length lining underneath.
Though Miranda Kerr and Anderson East made all the headlines for their affectionate display at the 2016 Academy Of Country Music Awards on Sunday, there was another couple that was even steamier.

Faith Hill and husband of 20 years Tom McGraw kissed for the cameras on social media when in Las Vegas for the big event.

And the 48-year-old Breathe hit maker shared the romance on her Instagram account not once, but twice.

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Still got it: Faith Hill shared this image on Instagram on Sunday where she is kissing husband of 20 years Tim McGraw

The king and queen on country: The Nashville based couple were on their way to the 51st Academy of Country Music Awards at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada

The blonde country queen captioned one of the kissing images: 'I am so proud of my man! #ACMs #humbleandkind.'

The two are locking lips in front of a window where the Aria tower in Las Vegas can be seen in the background. The image was taken after the event.

In the other kissing photos, the two are on their way to the awards show standing in front of a wall of gold bullets. 'Leaving for the #ACMs,' she wrote.

She got it white: Hill had on a white suit that has a double breasted jacket with long sleeves and wide-legged slacks

Hill had on a white suit that has a double breasted jacket with long sleeves and wide-legged slacks. Gold heels and matching clutch round out the look. Her hair is in a topknot.

Tim has on a black suit and matching cowboy hat.

McGraw also took to Instagram to share photos of the two.

I only have eyes for you: Tim has on a black suit and matching cowboy hat

She couldn't contain herself: Katy Perry pulled a dorky fan face when meeting the duo

She's gone to the dogs: The Roar singer held onto a puppy when posing with Tim and Faith

'So we're loaded up,' he says in a video. They were on their way to the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.

'We're headed to the ACMs with my beautiful wife. She's hot!'

While at the show, the two hung out with Katy Perry and Nick Jonas.

Tom was there to sing Humble And Kind.

More famous people: The twosome also bonded with Jason Aldean and Brittany Kerr

The stars share three daughters, Gracie, 18, Maggie, 17, and Audrey, 14. They are based in Nashville-based and celebrated their 19th wedding anniversary in October.

McGraw talked about their relationship in a Facebook video.

He discussed his proposal. 'We were in the dressing room, here, June 26, 1996. And it was raining and stuff and we'd been on tour for a while together, and I joked around with her about getting married. And so I said... I looked at her, grabbed her by the hand, and dropped forward [on my knees] onstage. She had already done her show. And I said, "I'm really serious. I want you to marry me."'

She had a funny response, according to Tim: 'She said, "We're at a country music festival in a trailer house, and you're asking me to marry you? And I said, 'Yeah.' So I went onstage."
Doris Day resurfaced to greet well wishers from the balcony of her home in Carmel-By-The-Sea during her 92nd birthday bash on Sunday.

The Oscar-nominated actress looked every bit the iconic movie star on the phone in her large diva sunglasses and white furry shawl over her signature turtleneck.

There is still a bit of a debate as to when Doris was actually born - she claimed 1924 while census records and her biographer David Kaufman insist it was 1922 - which would make her 94.

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Happy birthday! Doris Day resurfaced to greet well wishers from the balcony of her home in Carmel-By-The-Sea during her 92nd birthday bash on Sunday

Fierce: The Oscar-nominated actress looked every bit the iconic movie star on the phone in her large diva sunglasses and white furry shawl over her signature turtleneck

Day - born Kappelhoff - admitted to People on Sunday: 'I'm not really fond of birthdays anymore. Age is just a number. How you feel and live your life is more important'

'I'm not really fond of birthdays anymore,' Day - born Kappelhoff - admitted to People on Sunday.

'Age is just a number. How you feel and live your life is more important.'

Just like her beloved contemporary Betty White, 94 - the Ohio-born blonde devotes her time to animal rights and founded the Doris Day Animal Foundation in 1978.

Two years off? There is still a debate as to when Doris was actually born - she claimed 1924 while census records and her biographer David Kaufman insist it was 1922 - which would make her 94 (pictured in 1959)

Furry friends: Just like her beloved contemporary Betty White, 94 - the Ohio-born blonde devotes her time to animal rights and founded the Doris Day Animal Foundation in 1978

Her official DDAF Facebook page posted Sunday: 'Doris' biggest birthday wish is that every four-legger have a warm bed, plenty to eat, and lots of love. Hug your babies for her!'

'Doris' biggest birthday wish is that every four-legger have a warm bed, plenty to eat, and lots of love. Hug your babies for her!' her official DDAF Facebook page posted Sunday.

'The best way for you to participate in the birthday joy is to sign Doris' card and then make a donation, no matter the size, in her honor.'

The four-time Golden Globe winner recorded countless albums and appeared in 39 films, including Romance on the High Seas, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and That Touch of Mink.

With Cary Grant: The four-time Golden Globe winner recorded countless albums and appeared in 39 films, including Romance on the High Seas, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and That Touch of Mink (pictured in 1962)

Retired: Day made her final film (With Six You Get Eggroll) in 1968, and her CBS sitcom The Doris Day Show ended in 1973 (pictured)

Day made her final film (With Six You Get Eggroll) in 1968, and her CBS sitcom The Doris Day Show ended in 1973.

The Que Sera, Sera songstress was married four times - the last of which was to Maitre D' Barry Comden until his death in 2009.

Doris also outlived her only child - music producer Terry Melcher - who tragically died age 62 of melanoma in 2004.

Her last love: The Que Sera, Sera songstress was married four times - the last of which was to Maitre D' Barry Comden until his death in 2009 (pictured 1976)
She has become known for her fiery temper and blazing outbursts.

Yet Megan McKenna has vowed to expel the reputation that precedes her as she revealed exclusively to MailOnline that she is seeking help for her anger issues.

The 23-year-old TOWIE star candidly revealed that since she has become known as 'The Angry One', she is 'speaking to people' to help resolve the underlying problems.

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Furious: Megan McKenna has vowed to expel the angry reputation that precedes her as she revealed exclusively to MailOnline that she is seeking help for her anger issues

Megan, who joined the ITVBe programme last month, has starred in an array of reality TV shows, including Ex On The Beach and Celebrity Big Brother.

On Ex On The Beach, the stunning star became embroiled in a series of rows, both physical and verbal, and she was restrained by security following a heated exchange on CBB.

Yet the brunette beauty, who has been dating co-star Pete Wicks since she started on the show, has now admitted she is desperate to stop being typecast and sees TOWIE as her second chance at changing people's opinion.

She candidly reveals: 'I have been speaking to people. I only flip out at things when I feel strongly about them and I think I'm right and my points are always right. Maybe I put them across wrongly but I am dealing with that and I think that's why this is another chance for me. I have been cast as "The Angry One".'

Thinking things over: The 23-year-old TOWIE star candidly revealed that since she has become known as 'The Angry One', she is 'speaking to people' to help resolve the underlying problems

Furious: On Ex On The Beach, the stunning star became embroiled in a series of rows, both physical and verbal, and she was restrained by security following a heated exchange on CBB

Megan is adamant her outbursts were frequently down to the people surrounding her although she insists she is now ensuring she is around positive people - such as Pete.

The Essex-born beauty said: 'I think people think I'm crazy but I'm actually not and it's all down to the way I've been treated in the past, people I've surrounded myself with are not good. Whereas now I'm surrounding myself with nice people e.g. Pete.'

One of the negative energies Megan may have referred to was her former fiance and ex-boyfriend Jordan Davies, who she became engaged to on their second turn on Ex On The Beach.

After meeting in the third season, the duo returned for the fourth and Jordan, of Ibiza Weekender fame, popped the question - much to Megan's chagrin.

Lost love: One of the negative energies Megan may have referred to was her former fiance and ex-boyfriend Jordan Davies, who she became engaged to on their second turn on Ex On The Beach

Loved-up: Yet the brunette beauty, who has been dating co-star Pete Wicks (pictured) since she started on the show, has now admitted she is desperate to stop being typecast and sees TOWIE as her second chance at changing people's opinion

She said: 'I actually blocked Jordan on everything when we broke up because he wasn't a very good boy. I was angry (he proposed) on camera, I wish he didn't do it, I think it's embarrassing. He embarrassed me.

'He lied to me about the ring price for a start... He makes me out to be bad all the time but he needs to realise he's a liar. I have heard rumours (there were other girls involved). That's my thing, I never cheat. I think he's been a little s**tbag really and he tries to get back to me with other people and it doesn't work. Let him get on with it because I'm happy.'

Chatting about her romance with Pete, she said: 'Things are really good with Pete. We're seeing each other, nothing official but I'd say we're officially seeing each other. A few weeks ago it was very early stages, we'd only been on two dates but now we have seen each other a lot more, we have had lovely dates.

After Pete announced 'I want to f**k you', many fans were in uproar, yet Megan insists the sexy comment did not shock her: 'I just think any normal person who does go on a date and have a few drinks you do say sexual things like that... We didn't realise we were filming that bit.'

Showmance? During her time in CBB, Megan revealed she also shared a romance with Geordie Shore star Scott Timlin, yet she insists she was always weary of the Lothario

During her time in CBB, Megan also shared a romance with Geordie Shore star Scott Timlin, yet she insists she was always weary of the Lothario.

She said: 'With Scott I kept my guard up and I was right because he had a girlfriend all the way through it. So I knew, I had the feeling. I know he's a professional player. So as much as the s**t he was feeding me but I was enjoying it, of course I love flirting I love the attention. But I knew it would be nothing serious.

'With Pete it's so much easier. He's from Essex, he's a gentleman, I don't think he'd ever go behind my back and talk to other girls, that's what I get from Pete. It's good for me, he brings the good out in me. It's nice that people can see my normal side now. Rather than crazy Megan.'

Looking up... Chatting about her romance with Pete, she said: 'Things are really good with Pete'

Staying on the subject of Geordie Shore, Megan responded to comments made by Vicky Pattison, who starred opposite Megan in Ex On The Beach, where told MailOnline she feared TOWIE would become 'The Megan McKenna Show'.

In response to Vicky's comments, Megan said: 'It's never going to be The Megan McKenna show because there's so many strong characters on it and obviously the people on TOWIE are my friends so it's never going to be The Megan McKenna Show.

'If that's Vicky's opinion, that's her opinion. I'm supportive of what she does, I think she's doing amazing on Loose Women. I did look up to Vicky when she first came on Ex On The Beach, I loved her on Geordie Shore, she was always fiery and good. I hope people like me like that and I did look up to her.'

Unpleasant exchange? Staying on the subject of Geordie Shore, Megan responded to comments made by Vicky Pattison, who starred opposite Megan in Ex On The Beach, where told MailOnline she feared TOWIE would become 'The Megan McKenna Show'

And while Megan is trying her best to calm her rage, she could not help becoming involved in some of the TOWIE woes after co-star Kate Wright called her a dog.

Clearly trying to move on from things and proving her growth, Megan insists she has forgiven Kate for her cruel comments.

She said: 'I personally didn't think (Kate calling me a dog) was a joke. I think it was a dig but she said it was a joke and I'll take that and I've accepted her apology and we've moved on now.

'I just didn't find it funny, if it was a joke I didn't find it funny. I'm sure she wouldn't find it funny if I said it to her. But she's apologised and we're going to move on from it.'

TOWIE airs on ITVBe at 10pm on Wednesday
The last time The Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson visited Australia 13 years ago, it was in her capacity as a high-profile Weight Watchers ambassador.

But her latest trip Down Under will be a more business-focused affair, as she is scheduled to speak at the Macquarie Graduate School of Management, The Daily Telegraph has revealed.

The globetrotting ex-wife of Prince Andrew, Duke of York, 56, is set to arrive in Sydney on Tuesday - shortly after she was spotted attending a charity auction in Hollywood, California.

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A royal affair: The Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson - pictured here at a fundraiser in London in January- is set to arrive in Sydney on Tuesday before speaking at the Macquarie Graduate School of Management

After jetting into the New South Wales capital this week, 'Fergie', as she is affectionately known, will embark on a busy four-day itinerary across Sydney.

Following a day to adjust to the new time zone, the British writer will co-host a high tea with conservative radio personality Alan Jones, 74, on Wednesday.

And that evening, she will attend an exclusive cocktail party atop the 43-storey ANZ Tower in Sydney's Central Business District.

Then and now: The last time Sarah Ferguson, 56, visited Australia was 13 years ago (left) in her capacity as a Weight Watchers ambassador

The private soiree will take place at the three-storey art-deco residential penthouse owned by property developer John Boyd and wife Marley, who will also serve as hosts.

On Thursday, Sarah is scheduled to deliver a keynote speech to students and faculty at the Macquarie Graduate School of Management - one of the oldest business schools in Australia.

It would seem she was invited at the behest of her sister Jane Ferguson, who serves as director of alumni corporate relations at the prestigious institution in North Ryde.

Doing the rounds: The Duchess attends the annual ladies' lunch in support of the Silent No More Gynaecological Cancer Fund and The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity at Fortnum & Mason in London in 2015

Fergie's Australian spokesperson John Scott told The Daily Telegraph: 'She has not been here for 13 years, the last time was on behalf of Weight Watchers, and this visit is long overdue.'

She will finish the official part of trip Down Under 'with a visit to St Vincent's Hospital on Friday', the representative concluded.

This follows claims by The Daily Mirror that The Duchess - mother to Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie - is trying to reboot her image by hiring London-based PR experts Kruger Cowne.

Her most recent public engagement was in Hollywood, California this week - as Sarah was seen leaving the five-star Chateau Marmont hotel on Sunset Boulevard following a charity auction.

Keynote speaker: On Thursday, Sarah is scheduled to deliver a keynote speech to students and faculty at the Macquarie Graduate School of Management (pictured), one of the oldest business schools in Australia
Supermodel Bella Hadid picked up the coveted gong of Model of the Year at the Daily Front Row's Fashion LA Awards in the US last month.

And proving how in-demand the brunette beauty is, it has been reported by The Daily Telegraph that she is in talks to attend Australian Fashion Week's first Resort Collections event next month as a special guest.

According to the publication, the 19-year-old is believed to be in discussions with organiser IMG and clothing label Misha Collection.

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Coming Down Under? Bella Hadid is reportedly in talks to attend Australian Fashion Week's first Resort Collections event next month as a special guest (seen here at the Fashion Los Angeles awards last month)

Pay day: Bella is reportedly asking for a hefty paycheck to represent Misha Collection and it remains unclear if she will hit the runway or watch from the sidelines (seen here at the Fashion Los Angeles awards last month)

The American clotheshorse is reportedly asking for a hefty paycheck to represent Misha Collection and it remains unclear if she will hit the runway or watch from the sidelines.

Daily Mail Australia has reached out to IMG and Misha Collection for comment.

Bella is the younger sister of fellow supermodel Gigi Hadid, 20, who has previously dated Australian singer Cody Simpson, 19.

Their mother is former model and The real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Yolanda Foster and their father is real estate mogul Mohamed Hadid.

Hot property: Bella is one of the most in demand models at the moment

Family: Bella is the younger sister of fellow supermodel Gigi Hadid (L) and daughter of RHOBH star Yolanda Foster. They are seen here with Anwar hadid, Gigi and Bella's brother and Yolanda's son, at an event in the US

Bella, who first signed with modelling agency IMG in 2014, has made a name for herself in the fashion industry.

She's walked for fashion houses Chanel and Givenchy.

Last month, she was named Model of the Year at the Fashion LA Awards, beating her sister Gigi.

In-demand: Bella, who first signed with modelling agency IMG in 2014, has made a name for herself in the fashion industry. Seen here walking for Givenchy at Paris Fashion Week

The brunette is currently enjoying a tropical getaway with friends in the idyllic St. Barts, no doubt a well-deserved break.

The star - who is currently battling Lyme's disease like her mother and brother Anwar, is currently dating Canadian singer The Weeknd, 26.

His real name is Abel Makkonen Tesfaye and they began dating in April last year.

Bikini babe: The stunner is currently enjoying a tropical getaway with friends in the idyllic St. Barts
He has suffered some low times.

But Irish actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers was on fine form when he stepped out in Cannes, France, on Monday evening.

In fact, the 38 year-old was the perfect gentleman when he offered fiancee Mara Lane his jacket during a chilly photocall with co-stars Anna Paquin and Anika Noni Rose in Cannes.

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Looking good: Jonathan Rhys Meyers was on fine form when he stepped out in Cannes on Monday

Cutting a dapper figure, the good-looking dude was in casual mode as he sported a pair of skinny jeans in indigo blue, with a pastel-coloured shirt and a leather jacket.

But, as the external shoot got colder, his bride-to-be - who was wearing just a thin khaki dress - seemed to get uncomfortable.

To help, the chivalrous star removed his coat and draped it across her shoulders in a sweet display.

Sweet: He was the perfect gentleman when he offered fiancee Mara Lane his jacket during a chilly photocall

That's better! As the external shoot got colder, his bride-to-be - who was wearing just a thin khaki dress - seemed to get uncomfortable

Fortunately, he still looked great with a pair of leather shoes and some black-framed glasses - and also appeared to be happy and healthy as he posed for the media.

In May 2015, shocking images emerged of Meyers looking dishevelled as he drank vodka straight from the bottle.

Following the relapse, The Tudors star, who has battled alcohol issues for over a decade, apologised to his fans in a statement released via his fiancee's. Instagram account.

Alongside an image of the couple he wrote: 'Mara and I are thankful for your support and kindness during this time.

Chivalry: Mara looked instantly more at ease as she wrapped herself up in the stylish biker jacket

Handsome: Cutting a dapper figure, the good-looking dude was in casual mode as he sported a pair of skinny jeans in indigo blue, with a pastel-coloured shirt and a leather jacket

'I apologizes [sic] for having a minor relapse and hope that people don't think too badly of me.'

Meyers continued: 'I stopped drinking immediately and it is no reflection on Damascus Cover (a film he starred in last year) as I was not meant to attend Cannes this year and I apologize to fans and colleagues.'

'I am on the mend and thank well wishers and sorry for my disheveled appearance as I was on my way home from a friends and had not changed'.

Thrree's a crowd: Jonathan joined forces with Anna Paquin and Anika Noni Rose for a photocall to promote their new TV series, Roots, which chronicles the history of an African slave sold to Americ

Looking good: Anna dazzled in a black and white off-the-shoulder number, which boasted a classy floral print and over-the-knee hemline

Fortunately, that was all behind him as he joined forces with Anna Paquin and Anika Noni Rose for a photocall to promote their new TV series, Roots, which chronicles the history of an African slave sold to America

.Stood alongside his glamorous co-stars, they injected some colour with their choice of ensembles.

Anna dazzled in a black and white off-the-shoulder number, which boasted a classy floral print and over-the-knee hemline. Wearing her hair in a side-parted bob, she kept make-up to a minimum for a fresh-faced finish.

Meanwhile, Anika opted for a vivid yellow and blue number which certainly commanded attention.

Meanwhile, Anika opted for a vivid yellow and blue number which certainly commanded attention

On form: In May 2015, shocking images emerged of Meyers looking dishevelled as he drank vodka straight from the bottle - but there was no sign of that on Monday
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They've been rocking and rolling for five decades... so what better way to celebrate their long career than with a retrospective of their time together.

Rolling Stones bandmembers Sir Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and Charlie Watts joined forces for the launch of their brand new memorabilia exhibition in London.

The men, who have a combined age of 286, were pictured outside the Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea on Monday evening, where they were clearly enjoying each other's company.

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The boys are back in town! Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and Charlie Watts brushed-off allegations of a rift as they joined forces for the launch of their brand new memorabilia exhibition, this week

It's only rock 'n' roll, but we like it': The foursome were having a ball as they posed up for photographers

Greeted by a horde of fans, the four men were given a rapturous welcome as they emerged from their cars in West London to the private view of the exhibition, which will cost 21 per person during its five month run.

Clearly dressed to impress, each of the chart-toppers were on fine sartorial form in their array of designer suits, which ensured they looked as hip and trendy as possible - despite their advancing years.

Mick looked particularly dapper in a classic black and white ensemble, which he matched with a vivid mustard-coloured scarf.

Sharp-suited: Mick looked particularly dapper in a classic black and white ensemble, which he matched with a vivid mustard-coloured scarf

Fan-tastic: Greeted by a horde of fans, the four men were given a rapturous welcome as they emerged from their cars in West London

Taking to Twitter earlier in the day, Mick encouraged fans to attend the newly-opened show, saying: 'The exhibition opens tomorrow. If you come and see it let me know what you think. We love it, and I hope you do too!'.

Unsurprisingly, it was liked and sharing countless times by die-hard followers.

He later added two more messages, one of which asserted: 'Backstage area looking very authentic, feel like I'm ready to go on!'.

Good times with bad boys: The men were pictured outside the Saatchi Gallery in central London on Monday evening, where they were clearly enjoying each other's company

Men about town: The rock-n-roll stars were on good form as they teased the fans with their united appearance

Not that he was the only dapper dude there, of course. His fellow bandmates also commanded attention - especially Ronnie Wood, who opted for a a metallic-effect leopard-print jacket and matching sunglasses.

Meanwhile, Keith Richards was typically eccentric in a snakeskin-effect leather jacket which he teamed with skinny jeans and a bowler hat for added dramatic effect.

Charlie Watts, however, was a little more understated and stepped out in a three-piece contrast suit.

Group shot! The men cosy-up for a photo opportunity as their fans get excited from afar at the London gallery

Man hugs! Keith and Ronnie happily shared a laugh and a hug as they hit the red carpet

Sign your name! Keith instantly increases the value of a poster by signing it for a shrewd fan in the crowd

Crowd-pleasers: Mick can;t help but smile as father-to-be Ronnie Wood dashes off to meet fans in the keen crowd

Fancy bumping into you here! Ronnie Wood and his pregnant wife Sally Wood were inseparable on the red carpet

The other member! Bill Wyman - who was in the Rolling Stones from 1962 until 1993 - also attended the bash

The future's bright! The 79 year-old was joined by his very colourful family as they marked the band's first major memorabilia display in their fifty-year history

Showing out: The mother-to-be - who is expecting twins - poured her figure into a black, lace dress for the occasion

Parents-to-be: The happy couple seemed on good form - with Sally cutting a very maternal figure in her choice of attire

Family affair: Tyrone Wood (R) and a guest arrive for the private view of 'The Rolling Stones: Exhibitionism' at Saatchi Gallery

Man and wife: Jesse and his fashion-conscious wife Ferne Cotton were also VIP guests at the opening

Taking to Twitter earlier in the day, Mick encouraged fans to attend the newly-opened show, saying: 'The exhibition opens tomorrow. If you come and see it let me know what you think. We love it, and I hope you do too!'

Bra-vo! Ferne Cotton wasn't feeling shy as she showed off her cleavage in a rather sexy lace bra - which commanded attention

Daddy's girl: Georgia May-Jagger - daughter of Mick and Jerry Hall - showcased her slimline figure in a pin-striped trouser suit

Best footwear forward: Georgia May and her brother, James Jagger, upped the fashion ante with brightly-coloured shoes

Family ties: Sir Mick and his look-a-like daughter Georgia get close as they enjoy a photo opportunity inside the gallery

Art imitating life: The veteran front-man stands before a series of portraits of himself by Andy Warhol at London's Saatchi Gallery

Cool: Clearly influenced by the Rolling Stones, James Bay tuned up in very suitable attire which consisted of leather and skinny jeans

Spicing up the proceedings: Geri Horner and her handsome husband also attended the event in typical joined-at-the-hip style

Strike a pose: Trinny added some sparkle to the proceedings by sporting a glittering gold jacket

No surprise she's there! Trinny Woodall, who is very close to gallery owner Charles Saatchi, looked glam for the bash

Game on! Game of Thrones actress Natalie Dormer also attended the private view in a classy trouser suit

Former X Factor judge Nick was typically casual as he worked his way across the red carpet - including a pair of hipster ripped jeans

Sister act: Pixie Geldof embraced the rock-n-roll vibe of the night in a pair of stonewash jeans and black tee

Daddy cool: Bob Geldof and his wife, Jeanne Marine, dressed up in typical leftfield style

The Rolling Stones' first major exhibition in London is set to shine a new light on the band's remarkable 50-year-history. Some of their most iconic costumes will be on display from Wednesday.

Never-seen-before photographs, guitars, original stage designs and rare video footage will also be included in the 'Exhibitionism' retrospective, as well as personal diaries and album artwork.

The 4million exhibition will be spread over nine galleries, taking over the entire two-storey building.

The Rolling Stones' first major exhibition in London is set to shine a new light on the band's remarkable 50-year-history. Some of their most iconic costumes will be on display from Wednesday

Never-seen-before photographs, guitars, original stage designs and rare video footage will also be included in the 'Exhibitionism' retrospective, as well as personal diaries and album artwork

Back in business: Charlie Watts, Keith Richards, Mick Jagger and Ronnie Wood of The Rolling Stones pose for a photo during a preview of 'The Rolling Stones: Exhibitionism' at Saatchi Gallery

The other member! Bill Wyman - who was in the Rolling Stones from 1962 until 1993 - also attended the bash

Family affair: Bill and his loved-ones strike a pose on the red carpet as they celebrate the launch of the exhibition

Quirky dress dense! There were certainly some interesting choices of attire at the event in West London

It will feature more than 500 artefacts from the band's archive, as well as work by collaborators such as Andy Warhol, Alexander McQueen and Martin Scorsese.

The show will also include black and white photographs of the band members when they were just youngsters.

Speaking about the exhibition shortly after it was announced, Mick, 72, said: 'We've been thinking about it actually for quite a long time. Collecting things, thinking about, 'Ah this would be good', we'd better save this because we want people to see it.'

Interactive: The 4million exhibition will be spread over nine galleries, taking over the entire two-storey building in Chelsea

The exhibition will feature more than 500 artefacts from the band's archive, as well as work by collaborators such as Andy Warhol, Alexander McQueen and Martin Scorsese

Music to our ears! Taking over the entire two floors of the Saatchi Gallery with 9 thematic galleries, combines over 500 original Stones' artefacts, with striking cinematic and interactive technologies offering the most comprehensive insight into the band's fifty year history

Making music: Centre stage is the musical heritage that took them from a London blues band to inspirational cultural icons

Doing his bit: Mick with Warhol prints during an after party for 'The Rolling Stones: Exhibitionism' at Saatchi Gallery

Having a laugh! Jeanne Marine (left) and Jeff Beck (centre) looked to be having a whale of a time inside the exhibit

Taking over the entire two floors of the Saatchi Gallery with 9 thematic galleries, combines over 500 original Stones' artefacts, with striking cinematic and interactive technologies offering the most comprehensive and immersive insight into the band's fascinating fifty year history.

From never before seen dressing room and backstage paraphernalia to rare instruments; original stage designs, iconic costumes, rare audio tracks and video footage; personal diaries; poster and album cover artwork; and unique wraparound cinematic experiences that celebrate every aspect of their Careers.

Centre stage is the musical heritage that took them from a London blues band in the early 1960s to inspirational cultural icons.

Picture this: Also in the collection is Keith's 1957 Gibson guitar, which he hand-painted when he 'was bored'

Musical ramblings: Musicians will surely appreciate the notes and direction which has been scribbled down over the years, including this to fan favourite Some Girls

Hand-written notes: Fans of the band will be delighted to see authentic lyrical content and personal pieces of memorabilia

Giving it some lip! The men - who have been together for more than five decades - still reign supreme in the pop culture stakes

As they were: The exhibition features plenty of snapshots of the Stones in their younger days

After party: Following the event, the guests - including Georgia May Jagger - headed to the afterparty

Chic in black: Game Of Thrones actress Natalie Dormer and her boyfriend Anthony Byrne arrived at the afterparty arm-in-arm

Party pals! Nick Grimshaw and Pixie Geldof were seen arriving at the afterparty together

Boys out on the town: (L-R) Mick's son James Jagger, Bobby Gillespie, James Bay and Bob Geldof were all out for the launch event and afterparty
Viewers have watched their tumultuous relationship go through various highs and lows over the past five years.

And despite their on/off relationship appearing to take yet another hit last week, Charlotte Crosby and Gaz Beadle appear to back on as they were seen sharing a kiss in bed on Monday.

The Geordie Shore stars appeared to brush aside the claims that Gaz invited a beauty queen back to his hotel room last week and put on a rather united front on the reality stars Snapchat account.

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Can't get enough: Despite their on/off relationship appearing to take yet another hit last week, Charlotte Crosby and Gaz Beadle appear to back on as they were seen sharing a kiss in bed on Monday

In a series of clips, the cheeky chap could be seen on the set of a new Geordie Shore advert alongside his on/off love, before they could be seen lying in a bed together.

Charlotte then pulled her love interest close for a steamy smooch before Gaz pointed out that their co-star Sophie Kasaei was having to ignore their antics despite being in the same bed as the amorous couple.

Another snapchat video saw Charlotte and Sophie pretending to kiss Gazs neck, before Charlotte could then be heard screeching, Why are you actually kissing him?

All smiles: The Geordie Shore stars appeared to brush aside the claims that Gaz invited a beauty queen back to his hotel room last week and put on a rather united front on the reality stars Snapchat account

Looking comfortable: In a series of clips, the cheeky chap could be seen on the set of a new Geordie Shore advert alongside his on/off love, before they could be seen lying in a bed together

Hard to keep up: Viewers have watched their tumultuous relationship go through various highs and lows over the past five years

The surprising clip comes just days after Charlotte was seen putting on a steamy display with a mystery man as she was pictured leaving London's Libertine nightclub.

The Geordie Shore star was keen to take her mind off things after telling of her sadness that Gaz reportedly invited a beauty queen back to his hotel.

Even though he denies the claims, Charlotte took to Twitter to write that Gaz's intentions towards her were unclear as he had planned to go on dating show, Ex On The Beach.

Sealed with a kiss: Charlotte was seen pulling her love interest close for a steamy smooch

Gaz pointed out that their co-star Sophie Kasaei was having to ignore their antics despite being in the same bed as the amorous couple.

Cosy trio: Another snapchat video saw Charlotte and Sophie pretending to kiss Gazs neck, before Charlotte could then be heard screeching, Why are you actually kissing him?

Crosby was left in tears after her on/off boyfriend Gaz was pictured cosying up to a beauty queen amid claims he had invited her back to his hotel room.

And after the Geordie Shore lothario issued a vehement denial on Snapchat that he had tried it on with law student Vicky Marriott, his girlfriend was still having none of it.

Charlotte posted an epic rant last week accusing Beadle of being uncaring and disrespectful and revealed he hadnt contacted her privately to explain the situation in Nottingham that resulted in her questioning if he cheated on her.

Incriminating: Gaz posed for a photo with law student Vicky Marriot in Nottingham last week and was accused of inviting the beauty queen back to his hotel

The former Celebrity Big Brother winner wrote: 'I never wanted to talk about this. But would like to thank Gary for splashing it all over his Snapchat!

'Maybe he could of picked up the phone and explain it to me while I sat and cried the whole day I found out....or maybe even a text would of been nice. Considering he's meant to 'care' so much about me. But no. Yeh thanks for that. Really respectful way of treating some1.'

Charlotte then admitted she was upset to find out Gaz had signed up for the next series of MTV dating show Ex On The Beach and also claimed he had blocked her on Twitter.
Kerry Washington has revealed she is still kept in the dark by producer Shonda Rhimes when it comes to the big plot twists in her hit show Scandal.

In a new interview for the April issue of Adweek the 39-year-old star said that some of the shockers like last year's kidnapping storyline and Kerry's character Olivia getting an abortion earlier this season, took her by surprise.

The star explained: 'I had no idea that the abortion scene was coming until I turned the page at the table read and read it out loud with everybody else,

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Bold and beautiful: Kerry Washington looks amazing in a photoshoot for Adweek as she talks about the end of Scandal

'There are occasional moments when she'll give me a hint about something that's coming, but it's very, very rare.' she added.

But the mother-of-one said she is fine with letting Rhimes take the reins and has never had an interest in becoming a show producer.

'I show up and try to bring it to life,' she explained.

Back in November writer and producer Rhimes revealed she knows exactly how she wants Scandal to end and how it will play out.

'There are occasional moments when she'll give me a hint' The 39-year-old actress revealed to the publication that Scandal creator Shonda Rhimes keeps her in the dark about many of the plot-twists

The 46 year-old exec also hinted that there won't be more than eight seasons, leaving fans to believe there may only be two more years of their beloved show left.

Kerry told Adweek that while she hasn't talked to Rhimes about how the series will come to a close, she's confident that she will take the show where it needs to go.

'I trust her,' she said. 'We are where we are because of her decision making.'

Kerry looks fantastic in a series of bold and stylish looks in the April cover shoot.

Vibrant: The New York born beauty stuns in a cover shoot wearing a colourful gown amid swathes of patterned fabrics

Standing out: The actress and mother-of-one is the cover star of Adweek's April issue

In one image she wears a black and white striped dress and in another she models a colourful gown against a backdrop of vibrant patterned fabrics.

In Scandal Kerry plays crisis management expert Olivia Pope who works with politicians and power brokers in Washington DC.

She is now starring in and producing a new HBO movie titled Confirmation, about Clarence Thomas' US Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

Kerry plays Thomas' former assistant Anita Hill who made sexual harassment allegations against him during his October 1991 televised confirmation hearings for a seat on the US Supreme Court.

'This story resonated with me because I had really personal memories, not as much about the hearings themselves, because I was probably about 13 when it happened, but I had real memories about how it affected my parents, their feelings about the hearings' the actress said of the project.
After she received a barrage of criticism for ignoring a group of fans last week, Kylie Jenner made sure to make nice with her adoring followers over the weekend.

The 18-year-old star headed to The Nice Guy in West Hollywood and ran into the same trio of enthusiastic fans she was filmed scolding two nights earlier, during their first desperate attempt to get a selfie with the KUWTK star.

But instead of pushing past them this time, Kylie took some time out of her busy day to pose for a selfie with the eager tweens.

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Got their selfie! Kylie Jenner finally gave some of her tween fans what they'd been waiting for on Saturday when they waited outside The Nice Guy on Saturday night. It followed an incident on Thursday when they were scolded by the reality star

Changing her tune: The 18-year-old star appeared cheerful as she posed for the girls' snaps

The girls were pictured with their hair in braids as they rushed up to the smiling star on the sidewalk outside the celebrity hotspot.

They eagerly leaned in to the Keeping Up With The Kardashians star to get the perfect photo as a frenzy of fans and paparazzi surrounded them.

The youngest superfan was accompanied by her father and grandfather who remained close to the girl and her two pals during their stakeout of the E! star.

But in bizarre scenes caught on video obtained by TMZ, the girl's grandfather was filmed getting into a scuffle with some of the crowd.

See more of the latest on Kylie Jenner as she finally takes that selfie with 'obsessed' fan

In a hurry: Kylie wasn't in the mood for the same group of girls on Thursday. They met her outside Craig's restaurant desperately pleading for a selfie but she walked by and eventually snapped 'Don't touch me'

The man, dressed in denim overalls, a stained gray t-shirt and cowboy hat, was seen with a cigarette in his mouth as he launched an attack on photographers hovering around his granddaughter.

Explaining the incident to the website, the 11-year-old girl's mother (who opted to remain anonymous) said her father's defensive behavior was down to him being drunk and that he'd had some drinks before heading out, as well as a few at a Hollywood bar.

The woman also confirmed that the family went to the West Hollywood bar specifically to see Kylie - because her daughter and her two friends are 'obsessed'.

She told TMZ that the girls are now banned from following Kylie because she doesn't want everyone thinking they're stalkers.

Golden girl: Kylie stepped out looking glam after an earlier incident last week where she had defended her actions on Twitter saying the fan was squeezing her hard

Frenzy: Kylie was warned by her mother Kris Jenner, 60 last week that she needs to give her fans what they want

Saturday's scenes were quite the contrast to Thursday night's outing at Craig's restaurant where Kylie had ignored the same group of girls who had pleaded for a photo.

At one point the teen star had turned back to snap at the youngest girl, 'Don't touch me' which was caught on camera for the world to see.

During that same outing her sister Kendall, 20, opted for a different tack and kindly posed for a selfie with the fans, resulting in one of them bursting into tears of joy.

Defensive: In bizarre scenes outside the LA hotspot, the 11-year-old fan's grandfather hit out at photographers huddling round the girls

In a clip obtained by TMZ , the girl's grandfather is filmed getting into a scuffle with paparazzi after Kylie had posed with the fans

Hollywood nights: The girl's father was also pictured (seen in LA cap) trying to calm gramps down during the altercation

Belligerent: One of the fan's mothers told TMZ her dad was drunk after drinking before going out and then drinking more at a Hollywood bar

Shortly after that incident Kylie defended her actions by saying that the fan had been 'squeezing her so hard'

In a series of Tweets the lip kit mogul even claimed that she took photos with the young girl inside the restaurant.

Responding to one of her Twitter followers she wrote: 'She wasn't annoying. She came in the restaurant after and I had a talk with her and we took photos.

Legs for days: The 18-year-old reality star shimmered in the retro-inspired golden sheath and opulent fur coat

In the nude: Kylie let her long raven tresses cascades past her shoulders and outlined her famously full pout with a dewy pink lipstick

'She just apologized for grabbing on to me so hard... & said she was a big fan and we embraced & took pics.'

Hollywood Life reported that Kris, 60, told Kylie that she must give her fans what they want.

'Kris has told Kylie countless times she has to respect her fans,' a source told the website.

Pin-up: The LA-born sgtar opted for a flick of winged eyeliner and a dash of irridescent shimmer to outline her peepers

Model moment: Kylie's sister Kendall Jenner showed off her supermodel stems to perfection in caged thigh-high boots and a racy side-split skirt

'After all, they were the ones that put her on the map and if they ask her for a photo she should oblige.' they added.

Kylie looked glamorous for her night out with sister Kendall, wearing a ribbed gold dress with beige fur coat and suede heels.

Her model sibling sported gladiator style boots and a pastel top with black mini skirt.

Rear of the year: The social media star flaunted her perky posterior in the black skintight skirt
North Korea says under Leningrad-style siege from US

North Korea's top military body has accused US-led "hostile forces" of laying siege to the country like Leningrad in World War II and Cuba during the Cold War missile crisis.

In a statement carried Monday by the North's official KCNA news agency, a spokesman for the National Defence Commission (NDC) also said the latest UN sanctions imposed on Pyongyang over its nuclear weapons programme were "anachronistic and suicidal" and could trigger a nuclear strike on the US mainland.

The UN Security Council adopted its toughest economic sanctions to date on North Korea after Pyongyang conducted its fourth nuclear test in January and a space rocket launch a month later that was widely viewed as a disguised ballistic missile test.

The UN adopted its toughest economic sanctions to date on North Korea after Pyongyang conducted its fourth nuclear test in January and a space rocket launch a month later

The NDC spokesman said the sanctions were the work of "the US and other hostile forces" who were intent on attacking North Korea "in a flock to swallow it up."

"The Leningrad blockade which struck terror into the hearts of people ... and the Caribbean crisis in the Cold War era can hardly stand comparison with the situation," the statement said.

Far from breaking the North, such treatment would only strengthen its resolve, it said, adding that Washington was engineering a crisis that could see the North "make a retaliatory nuclear strike at the US mainland any moment".

North Korea has been making nuclear strike threats against the United States and South Korea for weeks, after the two countries launched large scale, joint military exercises that Pyongyang views as a provocative rehearsal for invasion.
Greece ships first migrants back to Turkey under EU deal

Greece sent more than 200 migrants back to Turkey on Monday, the first wave of deportations under a hugely controversial deal aimed at easing Europe's worst migration crisis since World War II.

The orderly return of the 202 migrants aboard three chartered Turkish ferries stood in stark contrast to the journey many have taken over perilous seas aboard crowded rubber dinghies.

Two boats left the Greek island of Lesbos at dawn, and another from the island of Chios, carrying mostly Afghan and Pakistani migrants who Turkey will eventually deport to their home countries.

A ferry carrying deported migrants arrives at the Turkish port of Dikili on April 4, 2016 Ozan Kose (AFP)

The grim-faced deportees were boarded onto the boats by security guards from the EU's Frontex border agency, who wore sanitary face masks.

Facing an unprecedented influx that has threatened to tear the bloc apart, the European Union clinched a last-ditch deal with Turkey to take back all irregular migrants landing in Greece after March 20.

In a heavily criticised swap deal, the EU has pledged to rehouse one Syrian in the bloc for every one deported from Greece, with numbers capped at 72,000.

Forty-three Syrian asylum seekers were flown to Europe on Monday under that part of the deal. Ten children and an adolescent in a wheelchair were among 32 Syrians who arrived in the northern German city of Hanover.

A further 11 refugees arrived in Finland, with more expected Tuesday in the Netherlands.

European leaders hope the agreement will discourage migrants from risking the Aegean crossing that has claimed 366 lives this year alone, and break up the lucrative racket that smuggled about one million migrants into Europe last year.

But rights groups have slammed the pact as inhumane and a blow to the right to request asylum, and protesters on Lesbos brandished banners reading: "Stop the dirty deal", "Stop deportations" and "Wake up Europe".

Amnesty International has accused Turkey of not being a safe country for refugees by forcibly returning Syrians back home to their war-torn countries -- a charge Ankara rejects.

"The returns today are in many ways symbolic," said Gauri Vangulik, Deputy Europe director for Amnesty International.

"They are the first starting point of what is to become really one of the most disastrous episodes in European asylum policy."

- 'Guests for a while' -

The first to be deported under the deal arrived at the Turkish resort of Dikili to a heavy security presence, with media kept at a distance by metal barriers.

"The taking of fingerprints, the landing at the port, medical checks ... the transport of the 202 people in buses to reception centres in Kirklareli (on the Bulgarian border) is all taking place successfully," said Mustafa Toprak, governor of Turkey's Izmir region.

Yorgos Kyritsis, Greece's migration spokesman, said the first wave contained citizens of Iran, Congo, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India, Ivory Coast and Somalia.

Only two were from Syria and they had requested to return for personal reasons, Kyritsis said.

Turkish EU Affairs Minister Volkan Bozkir told HaberTurk television that the non-Syrian migrants would be sent to the northern Kirklareli region for checks before being deported to their own countries.

"People who have migrated for purely economic reasons are to be sent back according to the rules," he said.

"We will apply to the countries of the illegal migrants. They can be our guests for a while and then bit by bit we will send them back."

The first group of migrants was already seen boarding buses for the long drive to Kirklareli.

- 'Disastrous episode' -

Despite the controversy surrounding the deal, it appeared to be reducing the flow.

Turkey's Interior Minister Efkan Ala said at the weekend that the numbers crossing had already fallen substantially in the last 10 days to just 300 people a day.

But some decided to chance it despite the risk of being sent back, and the Turkish coastguard on Monday blocked a boatload of about 60 mostly Afghan migrants, an AFP correspondent said.

Those in Greece are now rushing to speed up their asylum requests to avoid deportation.

"Lawyers came to talk to us through the fence and explain that it was best to do that," said Toufik, an Afghan in the Moria migrant camp on Lesbos.

Greek authorities are trying to relieve pressure on overcrowded makeshift camps on the border with Macedonia and at the port of Piraeus, where some 15,000 people are living in dire conditions following the closure of the migrant route through the Balkans to northern Europe.

Deputy defence minister Dimitris Vitsas on Monday said room for an additional 10,000 people would be available by April 10.

"Piraeus will be cleared before (May 1)," Vitsas told Mega TV.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has a particular interest in the deal, as her country accepted a record 1.1 million migrants last year after she refused to cap refugee numbers, earning her criticism at home and within the EU.

In return for its assistance in implementing the deal, Turkey will receive billions in EU aid, accelerated visa-free travel for its citizens and progress in its bid for membership of the bloc.

First wave of migrants returned to Turkey Jonathan Jacobsen (AFP)

Migrants are deported to Turkey from the Greek port of Mytilene on April 4, 2016 Aris Messinis (AFP)

Activists protest against the deportation of migrants in the Turkish coastal town of Dikili on April 4, 2016 Ozan Kose (AFP)

A Turkish Airlines plane stands on the tarmac after landing at Hanover airport, central Germany, on April 4, 2016, carrying among its passengers 16 Syrian refugees from Istanbul Tobias Schwarz (AFP)

A police officer escorts a deported migrant in the Turkish coastal town of Dikili on April 4, 2016 Ozan Kose (AFP)
US-Philippine war games begin as China warns 'outsiders'

US and Philippine troops began major exercises on Monday as China's state media warned "outsiders" against interfering in tense South China Sea territorial disputes.

The official Xinhua news agency gave the warning as Manila and Washington launched the 11-day Balikatan (Shoulder-to-Shoulder) exercises with a low-key opening ceremony in Manila.

US Defence Secretary Ash Carter is to fly to the Philippines next week to observe live-firing of artillery and visit US Navy ships taking part.

Philippine and US soldiers march with their national flags during the opening ceremony of the joint 11-day Balikatan (Shoulder-to-Shoulder) military exercise in Manila on April 4, 2016 Ted Aljibe (AFP)

Some 5,000 US troops are taking part along with nearly 4,000 Philippine soldiers and 80 from Australia.

"The... exercises caps Manila's recent attempts to involve outsiders in (a) regional row," China's official news agency Xinhua said in a commentary.

It cited Japan, which sent a submarine on a visit to the Philippines last weekend, and Australia.

"However, a provocation so fear-mongering and untimely as such is likely to boomerang on the initiators," Xinhua added.

"A big country with vital interests in Asia, the United States should first clarify the targets of its Pivot to Asia strategy, which so far has featured no more than unscrupulous inconsistency between fear-mongering deeds and peace-loving words."

China lays claim to almost all of the South China Sea, despite partial counter-claims by Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines.

In recent years it has built major structures including radar systems and airstrips over reclaimed reefs and outcrops, sparking international concern it could impose military controls over the entire area.

The US does not take sides in the territorial disputes but has asserted the importance of keeping sea and air routes open.

It has sent US bombers and warships on patrol close to the Chinese construction activity in recent months, infuriating Beijing.

Lieutenant-General John Toolan, commander of US Marine Corps forces in the Pacific, told reporters in Manila the exercises would help the allies improve maritime security and maintain regional stability.

"Our alliance is strong. The United States is committed to this relationship and these are not empty words.... peace in Southeast Asia depends on our cooperation," Toolan added.

The exercises come ahead of a decision this year by a United Nations-backed tribunal on a legal challenge by Manila to China's territorial claims.

The Philippines is also preparing to host US troops at five bases under a defence pact born out of US President Barack Obama's plan to reassert American influence in the Pacific.
Myanmar's Suu Kyi drops ministries, takes on spokeswoman role

Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi has dropped plans to run two major ministries but will act as spokeswoman for the country's new president, a ruling party official said Monday.

Banned from becoming president by a junta-era constitution, Suu Kyi has cemented control over the country's first civilian-led government in decades by taking on a string of senior roles in the new administration.

She has vowed to rule "above" the president, picking school friend and close aide Htin Kyaw for the role.

Aung San Suu Kyi's party won a huge mandate at last November's elections in Myanmar Aung Htet (AFP/File)

Lawmakers from her National League for Democracy party are also pressing for a special "state counsellor" position for the Nobel laureate, an appointment that would allow her to liaise between the presidency and parliament.

Last week the NLD said she would take on four cabinet posts -- foreign, energy, education and the ministerial position in the president's office.

But during a parliamentary session on Monday, the NLD put forward two new names for the energy and education portfolios, according to NLD spokesman Win Htein.

"Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will be the spokesperson for the president," he added, without elaborating on the rejig.

The move will free up the 70-year-old's already busy day-to-day responsibilities while reinforcing control over her proxy president Htin Kyaw.

Hopes are growing that the newly sworn-in government can accelerate the country's economic and political rejuvenation after nearly half a century of military repression.

Suu Kyi's party won a huge mandate at last November's elections.

But the constitution effectively bans her from the top post as it rules out anyone with foreign-born children or spouses from becoming president.

Suu Kyi married and had two sons with a British national.

The military also retains control of the key home, defence and border affairs ministries, while 25 percent of parliamentary seats are reserved for unelected soldiers.

The military has already balked at the NLD's plans to make Suu Kyi a "state counsellor" with army MPs in parliament last week saying the move bypasses the constitution.
Italy's Renzi to make landmark visit to Iran

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi will travel to Iran next week for a two-day trip that will make him the first major leader to visit since the lifting of international sanctions against Tehran.

Renzi's office said in a statement Monday that the centre-left premier would be in the Islamic Republic on April 12 and 13, without giving further details of his itinerary.

Italy has led the way among Western countries in re-establishing economic ties to Iran following the lifting of international sanctions imposed over concerns the country was seeking to develop a nuclear weapons capacity.

Italy's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is to travel to Iran Andreas Solaro (AFP/File)

An accord to lift the sanctions was agreed last year and came into force in January.

Renzi's trip follows Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's visit to Italy and France at the end of January -- a trip which resulted in a string of major trade and investment deals being signed between Tehran and the two European countries.

Contracts worth an estimated 17 billion euros ($18 billion) were signed in Rome and Rouhani said he hoped that would represent only a start, as he pitched Iran as a safe base for investors looking to get into a regional market of 300 million consumers.

Iran has said it wants European help to modernise and expand its rail, road and air networks as well as seeking investment to boost its manufacturing base, notably in the automobile sector.

Italy was Iran's largest European trade partner before the impact of sanctions caused exchanges between the two countries to collapse.

- Nude statues row -

As he seeks to consolidate Italy's early lead in the race for business deals, Renzi has also unveiled plans for cultural and academic exchanges.

When Rouhani was in Rome in he talked of reconstructing a relationship between "two superpowers of beauty and culture" that dates back to the days of the ancient Roman and Persian empires.

Rouhani's visit however also prompted criticism that Renzi's government was going too far in its efforts to charm Iran's theocratic regime.

It emerged just after Rouhani had left Rome that ancient nude statues in the capital's City Hall had been covered up by wooden boxes to spare the Iranian president any possible embarrassment.

The diplomatic niceties indulged in by the world's biggest wine producer also extended to ensuring that no alcohol was served at any of the official meals during Rouhani's stay -- a gesture France was not prepared to make, meaning plans for a state banquet had to be scrapped.

Renzi is not the first European leader to visit Tehran since the sanctions deal: Greek Prime Minister Tsipras went there in February.

He is the first leader of a Group of Seven country to make the trip but is unlikely to be the last this year.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced earlier this month that he plans to become the first Japanese leader to visit Iran since the 1979 revolution that created the Islamic Republic.
India's biometric database crosses billion-member mark

India's biometric database notched up one billion members on Monday, as the government sought to allay concerns about privacy breaches in the world's biggest such scheme.

The database was set up seven years ago to streamline benefit payments to millions of poor people as well as to cut fraud and wastage.

Under the scheme, called Aadhaar, almost 93 percent of India's adult population have now registered their fingerprints and iris signatures and been given a biometric ID, according to the government.

India is home to 1.2 billion people Roberto Schmidt (AFP/File)

IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad hailed it as "an instrument of good governance" at a ceremony in New Delhi marking the crossing of the one-billion member mark.

Prasad said the initiative, inherited from the previous left-leaning Congress government, had enabled millions to receive cash benefits directly rather than dealing with middlemen.

He said the government had saved 150 billion rupees ($2.27 billion) on its gas subsidy scheme alone -- by paying cash directly to biometric card holders instead of providing cylinders at subsidised rates.

He also said all adequate safeguards were in place to ensure the personal details of card holders could not be stolen or misused by authorities given access to the database.

"We have taken all measures to ensure privacy. The data will not be shared with anyone except in cases of national security," Prasad said.

His comments come after parliament passed legislation last month giving government agencies access to the database in the interests of national security.

It was passed using a loophole to circumvent the opposition in parliament, where the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lacks a majority in the upper house.

The way it was passed, as well as the legislation itself, raised concerns about government agencies accessing private citizens' details.

Internet experts have also raised fears about the safety of such a massive database, including hacking and theft of details.
End repression of activists: Myanmar student leader

A Myanmar student leader on trial over protests last year that were violently quashed by authorities called on Aung San Suu Kyi's new government Monday to abolish laws repressing political activists.

Hopes are growing that the first civilian-led government in decades can accelerate Myanmar's economic and political rejuvenation after nearly half a century of brutal military rule.

The country witnessed a historic transfer of power last week to an administration headed by Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party.

Detained Myanmar student leader Phyo Phyo Aung speaks outside the court house following her trial together with her husband Lin Htet Naing in Yangon on April 4, 2016 Romeo Gacad (AFP)

But hundreds of political activists remain in jail.

Among them are some 40 students facing a variety of charges including unlawful assembly and rioting over education reform protests. These were violently broken up by baton-wielding police in the central town of Letpadan in March 2015.

Another 30 or so students are on bail but facing similar charges.

"Now that there are many NLD MPs in the parliament... I want them to dissolve the laws that repress political activists," student leader Phyo Phyo Aung, who has been in jail for more than a year, told AFP after a day of court hearings in Mayagone township, Yangon.

She and her fellow student protesters could face up to ten years in jail if convicted.

Some 120 former political prisoners now have seats in parliament. Most are NLD activists who, like Suu Kyi, spent decades campaigning against junta rule.

Phyo Phyo Aung said she hoped they would now push through reforms to a series of laws on assembly and national security long used to target activists.

"They have more experience than us. They should abolish the laws under which they were sentenced by discussing with legal advocates. Then our country's future will be better," she said.

According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, 90 political prisoners were in jail and more than 400 activists were facing trial as of February.

The vast majority were arrested before last November's landmark polls under the government of army-backed president Thein Sein, who oversaw remarkable reforms but still cracked down on critics.

Suu Kyi and her party have yet to make any public policy statements on either the student trials or whether they plan to abolish the laws that once targeted so many of their own.

An NLD spokesman declined to comment Monday.

The president has the right to pardon prisoners. But doing so might stoke the anger of the still powerful military, who retain control of the key home, border and defence ministries.
Netanyahu says he is waiting for a visit from Palestinian leader

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said he was waiting for a visit from Mahmud Abbas, after the Palestinian president said he had already proposed such a meeting.

"A few days ago, on Israeli television, I heard president Abbas say that if I invite him to meet, he'll come," Netanyahu told reporters at a meeting with visiting Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek.

"I'm inviting him again," he said in English. "I've cleared my schedule this week. Any day he can come, I'll be here."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairs the weekly cabinet meeting at his Jerusalem office on April 3, 2016 Ronen Zvulun (POOL/AFP/File)

In an interview with commercial TV station Channel 2 on Thursday, Abbas said that he was ready to meet Netanyahu "any time."

"And I suggested, by the way, for him to meet," he said in English.

Asked what was Netanyahu's response to the offer he refused to answer.

"He will tell you," the Palestinian leader said.

After Netanyahu's remarks, Palestinian presidency spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said Abbas wanted a just peace based on "international legitimacy and agreements that have already been signed".

"Our position is that Israel must recognise the two-state solution and stop settlement building," he told AFP.

US-backed peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel collapsed in April 2014 after nine months amid bitter recriminations and mutual blame.

Abbas and Netanyahu shook hands at a climate summit in Paris in November, but held no significant talks.

The last substantial public meeting between them is thought to date back to 2010, though there have been unconfirmed reports of secret meetings since then.

Netanyahu on Monday said that if the two met he would discuss a wave of violence which has left 200 Palestinians and 28 Israelis dead since October.

"We have a lot of things to discuss, but the first item is ending the Palestinian campaign of incitement to murder Israelis," he said.

Most of the Palestinians killed were carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks, according to Israeli authorities.

But Israeli forces have been also accused of using excessive force in some cases, charges which they have firmly denied.

Palestinians and many analysts say frustration with Israel's occupation and settlement building along with the lack of any progress on peace efforts have fed the unrest.

"Lack of hope. Lack of trust," Abbas, who has called for peaceful resistance, said in last week's interview as reasons for why the knife attacks have continued.

He said that if Netanyahu were to engage in serious peace talks Palestinian attacks would cease.

"If he tells me that he believes in the two-state solution and we sit around the table to talk about a two-state solution, this will give my people hope," he said.

"And nobody will dare to go and stab or shoot or do anything here or there."
Syria monastery ravaged by IS was symbol of coexistence

On the wall of a monastery in Syria's desert, jihadists from the Islamic State group left a grim warning: "The lions of the caliphate are here to devour you."

The Syrian army on Sunday drove out the jihadists, but the damage they have caused in a place that was once a symbol of religious tolerance seems almost irreparable.

The monastery's old dry stone and mud brick church of Mar Elian has been reduced to a heap of rubble, according to a team of AFP journalists at the scene on Monday.

Graffiti reading in Arabic, "we came to you with hungry lions, to your flesh", at the devastated monastery of Syriac Catholic Saint Elian, in the town of al-Qaryatain, one of the last Islamic State (IS) group strongholds in central Syria Joseph Eid (AFP)

IS razed the fifth-century church in August 2015 using explosives and bulldozers, as they have done with shrines and other religious buildings elsewhere, "under the pretext that people worshipped a deity other than God", according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Under the broken stone cover of a sarcophagus lay the skull and bones of Mar or Saint Elian -- a Christian from Homs province who was slain by the Romans for refusing to renounce his faith.

"These are indeed his sarcophagus and his remains," Father Jacques Mourad, head of the Syriac Catholic monastery, told AFP by phone from Italy, after he saw photos sent via the WhatsApp phone application.

The priest himself narrowly escaped IS's grip in October 2015 after spending 84 days in the town, facing the imminent threat of death if he refused to convert to Islam.

"I am filled with grief, and I choose to remain silent, because in the face of everything that is happening, silence is the most fitting answer," he told AFP.

The walls of the entrance and the interior of a new church, inaugurated on September 9, 2006 by Christian and Muslim religious officials, are completely charred after IS set fire to it.

Joists hang from the ceiling and the stone altar is broken.

Part of the 16-room monastery was destroyed by shelling, while the pots and plates used by jihadists to cook in the kitchen have been left behind.

In a little room, bags of bone remains can be seen.

They were found by archaeologists in two Mamluk and Ottoman cemeteries next to the monastery, said May Mamarbachi, who helped restore the site 10 years ago.

According to Father Mourad, two other churches in the centre of Al-Qaryatain were set on fire in the first week of the jihadists' occupation of the town.

- Crossroads -

Al-Qaryatain was one of IS's last bastions in Homs province, Syria's largest.

The town was home to some 30,000 people before war broke out in 2011, 900 of them Christians.

It is significant victory for the army because the town is a located on a crossroads between Damascus and Homs provinces, as well as the Qalamun mountains on the Lebanese border.

"By capturing this town, the army has cut off all the roads that Daesh was using to move," a general in the town said, using an Arabic name for IS.

The jihadists withdrew eastwards after losing the fight against the army, he added.

"The battle became easier after the capture last week of Palmyra," the general said.

Like the ancient city of Palmyra after its return to army control, Al-Qaryatain is now completely deserted.

Shop windows have been smashed in and buildings have either collapsed or left riddled with bullet holes.

"The Islamic State will remain and it will spread," reads the extremist group's slogan painted on a wall.

On the ground lay the tatters of burned IS flags.

Of the town's Christian residents, 277 stayed behind when IS took over. One was executed, 10 were killed in bombing, while five are still prisoners of IS.

The rest escaped at the end of 2015, Father Mourad said.

Al-Qaryatain, whose name means "the two villages" in Arabic, was once a symbol of coexistence between Christians and Muslims.

Legend has it that when the Arabs arrived in the sixth century, one of the town's main families converted to Islam, while the other remained Christian.

That way, they could protect each other.

A partially burnt church at the monastery of Syriac Catholic Saint Elian, who lived in the fifth century AD, in the town of al-Qaryatain, one of the last Islamic State (IS) group strongholds in central Syria, on April 4, 2016 Joseph Eid (AFP)
US leads Mideast anti-mines maritime exercise

The US Navy said the world's largest maritime exercise kicked off Monday bringing participants from 30 nations for training across the Middle East.

The International Mine Countermeasures Exercise (IMCMEX) is organised and led by Bahrain-based US Naval Forces Central Command, which is responsible for more than 2.5 million square miles of ocean.

"These participating nations are united by a common thread  the need to protect the free flow of commerce from a range of maritime threats including piracy, terrorism and mines," said Vice Adm. Kevin Donegan, commander, US Naval Forces Central Command in a statement.

The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Sterett (DDG 104)(C) participates in International Mine-countermeasure Exercise, IMCMEX, involving British and US mine-countermeasure vessels October 31, 2014 MC3 Eric Coffer (US NAVY/AFP/File)

"This region provides a strong training opportunity for nations worldwide as three of the six major maritime chokepoints in the world are here: the Suez Canal, the Strait of Bab Al Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz," he said.

The exercise will include mine countermeasures, diving operations, small-boat exercises, maritime security operations coordinated with industrial and commercial shipping, unmanned underwater vehicle operations, and port clearance operations, according to the statement.
Tunisia says Libya embassy to reopen to back unity govt

Tunisia on Monday announced the reopening of its embassy and consulate in the Libyan capital following the arrival there of a UN-backed unity government.

Tunisia closed its diplomatic missions in neighbouring Libya in 2014 when a militia alliance seized Tripoli and set up a government and parliament opposed to the internationally recognised administration.

Prime minister-designate Fayez al-Sarraj arrived Wednesday in the Libyan capital drawing the fury of the Tripoli government, but also praise and pledges of allegiance from several fronts.

The Tunisian embassy in the Libyan capital Tripoli on April 17, 2014 Mahmud Turkia (AFP/File)

Tunisia's foreign ministry said as a result it was reopening the Tunisian embassy and consulate in Tripoli in a bid "to support the political process in Libya".

It was not immediately clear if the mission had in fact reopened or if it was about to resume work.

Last year Tunisia reopened its consulate in Tripoli but closed it again following the abduction of 10 staff members.

Tunisia has been wary of the chaos that spread across Libya in the aftermath of the 2011 uprising that ousted and killed longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

Both neighbours have seen an emergence of militant Islam.

The jihadist Islamic State group has set up a stronghold in Kadhafi's hometown of Sirte and claimed attacks in both Libya and Tunisia.
The Latest: Tony-winning composer: NC law is 'reprehensible'

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP)  The Latest on the response to a North Carolina law that limits anti-discrimination regulations by local governments (all times local):

7 p.m.

Tony award-winning composer Stephen Schwartz says he is advising his licensing organizations and touring producers to deny any North Carolina theatre or organization the right to produce any of its shows in response to passage of a law that prevents specific anti-discrimination rules for LGBT people for public accommodations and restroom use.

Schwartz has written such hit musicals as "Godspell," ''Pippin" and "Wicked."

"Wicked" had a three-week run in Charlotte in January.

In a statement posted on www.broadwayworld.com, Schwartz called the law "reprehensible and discriminatory." He said it was important that any state that passes such a law suffer economic and cultural consequences, and he called on others to follow his lead until the law is repealed.

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4 p.m.

The CEO of PepsiCo, Inc., a company with roots in North Carolina, has written Gov. Pat McCrory, asking him to repeal the new law preventing specific anti-discrimination rules for LGBT people for public accommodations and restroom use.

In a letter hand delivered to McCrory on Friday, PepsiCo head Indra Nooyi called the law inconsistent with how her company treats its employees. Nooyi also said the law is undermining efforts to advance North Carolina's interests, and she said she hoped McCrory would consider repealing the law when the state legislature reconvenes later this month.
Fire engulfs Russian defense ministry's building in Moscow

MOSCOW (AP)  A massive fire raged at a former headquarters of the Russian Defense Ministry in Moscow on Sunday before it was brought under control several hours later.

Hundreds of firefighters and several cranes were seen battling the blaze Sunday afternoon after the fire broke out hours earlier.

Igor Denisov of the Emergency Situations Ministry in Moscow told Russian news agencies that firefighters "localized" the blaze, which had spread over 3,500 square meters (37,670 square feet) by the late afternoon. At least one firefighter was hospitalized.

Firefighters work to put out a blaze at a building of Russian Defense Ministry in Moscow, Russia, Sunday, April 3, 2016. A building of the Russian Defense ministry is on fire in central Moscow with the fire brigade is on its way, the citys law enforcement bodies told Russian news agency TASS on Sunday. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)

The Defense Ministry moved to a new headquarters on the Moskva River in 2014 but still kept the old building near the Kremlin.

The ministry said the fire will not affect its core operations since the military departments have long moved to the new headquarters. It said the old building on Znamenka Street houses the departments in charge of procurement and services.

There were no immediate reports about the cause of the fire.

Firefighters work to put out a blaze at a building of Russian Defense Ministry in Moscow, Russia, Sunday, April 3, 2016. A building of the Russian Defense ministry is on fire in central Moscow with the fire brigade is on its way, the citys law enforcement bodies told Russian news agency TASS on Sunday. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)

Firefighters work to put out a blaze at a building of Russian Defense Ministry in Moscow, Russia, Sunday, April 3, 2016. A building of the Russian Defense ministry is on fire in central Moscow, the citys law enforcement bodies told Russian news agency TASS on Sunday. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)

Firefighters climb to put out a blaze at a building of Russian Defense Ministry in Moscow, Russia, Sunday, April 3, 2016. A building of the Russian Defense ministry is on fire in central Moscow, the citys law enforcement bodies told Russian news agency TASS on Sunday. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)
Trump calls on Kasich to quit race: 'He's taking my votes'

MILWAUKEE (AP)  Donald Trump on Sunday called for John Kasich to drop out of the Republican presidential race, arguing that the Ohio governor shouldn't be allowed to continue accumulating delegates if he has no chance of becoming the nominee.

Working to recover his edge after a difficult week, Trump said it wasn't fair for Kasich, who has won only his home state, to continue his campaign. He suggested instead that Kasich, who has pledged to make it to the summer convention, follow the example of Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush  candidates who quit after lagging behind.

"He doesn't have to run and take my votes," he said.

Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, looks down the line of supporters as he works the crowd after a rally at Nathan Hale High School, Sunday, April 3, 2016, in West Allis, Wis. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Trump said Kasich could ask to be considered at the GOP convention in Cleveland in July even without competing in the remaining nominating contests. He added that he had relayed his concerns to Republican National Committee officials at a meeting in Washington this past week.

"I said, 'Why is a guy allowed to run?' All he's doing is just he goes from place to place and loses," Trump told reporters at Miss Katie's Diner in Milwaukee, where he stopped for breakfast. The state holds its presidential primaries Tuesday.

"If I didn't have Kasich," he added at an evening rally, "I automatically win."

Kasich's campaign tried to flip the script, contending that neither Trump nor Texas Sen. Ted Cruz would have enough delegates to win the nomination outright going into the Cleveland.

"Since he thinks it's such a good idea, we look forward to Trump dropping out before the convention," said Kasich spokesman Chris Schrimpf.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton told NBC's "Meet the Press" that she had yet to receive a request from the FBI for an interview regarding the private email system she used as secretary of state. And during a series of stops at Brooklyn church services, she got in a dig at her Democratic opponent, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has identified as an independent for most of his career.

"I know we have to have a Democrat succeed Barack Obama," Clinton said.

Clinton and Sanders announced they'd agreed to a debate in New York before the consequential April 19 primary, though the timing remained unclear. Sanders fired up a crowd in Wausau, Wisconsin, hoping to continue his string of recent campaign victories even as Clinton maintains a sizable delegate lead.

Trump's call for Kasich to bow out came as Republican concerns grew about the prospect of convention chaos if Trump fails to lock up his party's nomination  or even if he does.

Behind Cruz in the polls in Wisconsin, Trump faces the prospect that a loss Tuesday will raise further doubts that he can net the needed delegates, making it far easier for his party to oust him in a floor fight at the convention.

Cruz, Trump's closest challenger, has only a small chance to overtake him in the delegate hunt before the convention. He spent his afternoon rallying supporters in Wisconsin in an event heavy with references to the state's beloved Green Bay Packers.

Kasich has acknowledged he cannot catch up in the delegate race, leaving a contested convention his only path to victory. He has faced calls in the past to step aside, but those nudges became less frequent following his decisive victory last month in his home state.

Still, Kasich suggested that a contested convention would not involve the chaos that party leaders fear.

"Kids will spend less time focusing on Bieber and Kardashian and more time focusing on how we elect presidents," Kasich told ABC. "It will be so cool."

Republicans fear an unseemly internal fight would damage the party in November's general election, and Trump isn't ruling out the possibility of running as an independent if he's not the nominee, making it that much harder for the GOP to retake the White House.

Such talk has "consequences," said GOP Chairman Reince Priebus, though he tried to quell the prospect of a convention fight. He told ABC that the process will be clear and open, with cameras there "at every step of the way."

Frustration with the GOP field has stoked calls in some Republican corners for the party to use a contested convention to pick someone not even on the ballot. Priebus acknowledged that was a remote possibility, but said he believed his party's candidate would be "someone who's running."

Working to right his campaign after a rough patch, Trump has found himself on the defensive, struggling to explain away controversies over abortion, nuclear weapons and his campaign manager.

"Was this my best week? I guess not," Trump said on "Fox News Sunday."

Yet as he campaigned in Milwaukee, Trump returned to the confident bravado his supporters have come to expect. He said the state of play in Wisconsin "reminds me so much of New Hampshire, where we had this massive victory and it wasn't really anticipated." In reality, Trump had led polls for months in New Hampshire and was widely expected to win.

"I think this has the feel of a victory," he told reporters, as a plate of untouched fried eggs and bacon grew cold.

He continued to tout his chances at a rally in West Allis. "Wisconsin is going to be such big surprise on Tuesday," he said, adding that if he wins the state, "we're going to blow 'em out the rest of the way."

In Egypt, former Trump rival and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham tried to reassure an Arab world wary of Trump, who has called for banning Muslim immigration to the United States.

"The Congress is going to be around no matter who is president," Graham said after meeting with Egypt's leader.

On the delegate front, North Dakota Republicans at their state convention selected 25 of their 28 national delegates on Sunday. North Dakota isn't holding a primary or caucus in the 2016 race. Nevada Democrats held county conventions on Saturday, leading up to a final determination of delegates at a statewide convention in May. Clinton turned backed a challenge from Sanders in the state's caucuses in February.

___

Lederman reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Lisa Lerer in New York, Scott Bauer in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Todd Richmond in Wausau, Wisconsin, and Jonathan Lemire in West Allis, Wisconsin contributed to this report.

Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, reads The Snake poem during a rally at Nathan Hale High School, Sunday, April 3, 2016, in West Allis, Wis. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton addresses members of the Mount Pisgah Baptist Church in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Sunday, April 3, 2016. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, speaks during a campaign event, Sunday, April 3, 2016, in Green Bay, Wisc. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Republican presidential candidate, Ohio Gov. John Kasich leaves after his campaign stop at the Armory, Saturday, April 2, 2016, in Janesville, Wis. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

Natalie Cardemas smiles as she waits for Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders's campaign stop at the Grand Theatre on Sunday, April 3, 2016, in Wausau, Wis. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
Australian writer Bob Ellis dies in Sydney of cancer aged 73

CANBERRA, Australia (AP)  Australian author, journalist and speech writer for the center-left Labor Party Bob Ellis died at his Sydney home of liver cancer on Sunday, his son said. He was 73 years old.

"He died, as was his wish, at home. His family were by his bedside," Ellis's son Jack wrote on his father's blog "Table Talk."

"The camaraderie of his regular readers has been a source of tremendous joy to him these past few years. Thank you all," he said.

In this photo from Sept. 29, 2002, Bob Ellis attends the launch his new book "Goodbye Babylon" in Sydney, Australia. Ellis, an Australian author, journalist and speech writer for the center-left Labor Party died at his Sydney home of liver cancer on Sunday, April 3, 2016, his son said. He was 73 years old. (Mick Tsikas/AAP Image via AP) NO ARCHIVING, AUSTRALIA OUT, NEW ZEALAND OUT, PAPUA NEW GUINEA OUT, SOUTH PACIFIC OUT

Ellis's accomplishments include the screenplay for the acclaimed 1978 Australian movie "Newsfront" and the autobiographical 1992 movie "The Nostradamus Kid."

He wrote 19 books including best-selling "Goodbye Jerusalem" that was pulped in 1998 after then conservative government ministers Tony Abbott  who later became prime minister  and Peter Costello sued for defamation.

Born a Seventh Day Adventist in the New South Wales state country town of Lismore on May 10, 1942, Ellis became a political writer through his opposition to Australia's military involvement in the Vietnam War.

He was always outspoken about his left-wing views.

"Anyone in journalism who has experience or travelled winds up on the left. The right is a product of ignorance or a sealed-off, world ignorance," Australian Broadcasting Corp. quoted him as saying.

Labor leader Bill Shorten said he called the Ellis family to share "the deep sense of loss the Labor family feels."

"Bob's writing moved people to tears and drove others to litigation. At every turn he confounded and delighted, he shocked and awed," Shorten wrote.

"There was truly no such thing as a dispassionate Ellis piece. With Bob, it was always personal, it was always emotional, it was never dull," Shorten said.
Jimenez shoots 64 to win Mississippi Gulf Resort Classic

SAUCIER, Mississippi (AP)  Miguel Angel Jimenez shot an 8-under 64 to win the Mississippi Gulf Resort Classic by two strokes on Sunday.

Jimenez started the day in third place, three shots behind the leader Scott Dunlap. But the 52-year-old from Spain took control on the tournament's final day thanks to a bogey-free round that included four straight birdies from No. 10 to No. 13.

It is Jimenez's third victory on the PGA Tour Champions in just 10 starts dating back to 2014. He was 14 under for the tournament at Fallen Oak.
Japan-based Lani arrives to prepare for Kentucky Derby

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP)  The winner of the UAE Derby in Dubai has arrived at Churchill Downs to prepare for the Kentucky Derby next month.

Lani was flown from Dubai to Arlington Park in Illinois on Friday, spent the weekend clearing quarantine and on Sunday was vanned 5 1/2 hours to Churchill Downs.

Bred in Kentucky, Lani is based in Japan. With a Derby run, the 3-year-old colt would become the second Japan-based horse to Run for the Roses. The first was Ski Captain, who finished 14th in 1995. Lani's jockey, Yutaka Take, also was aboard Ski Captain.

A veterinarian who accompanied Lani said there were no problems with the trip. "He was very quiet, It was very smooth," Takanao Cho said through an interpreter.

Lani has won three of six career starts for owner Koji Maeda. Trainer Mikio Matsunaga was expected to arrive at the track on Monday.
EU begins shipping migrants in Greece back to Turkey

ATHENS, Greece (AP)  A controversial European Union plan to stem the flow of refugees began Monday with the deportation of more than 200 people from Greek islands to Turkey, despite concerns over human rights and criticism that Europe was turning its back on refugees.

As dawn broke, buses filled with migrants left under heavy security from a detention center on the island of Lesbos headed to the port for the short boat ride to the Turkish port of Dikili. More were ferried across from the island of Chios, where riot police clashed hours earlier with demonstrators protesting the expulsions.

In all, 202 people from 11 nations  191 men and 11 women  were sent back. They included 130 Pakistanis, 42 Afghans, 10 Iranians, five Congolese, four Sri Lankans, three Bangladeshis, three from India, and one each from Iraq, Somalia and Ivory Coast, as well as two Syrians who Greek authorities said had asked to be sent back.

A Turkish police officer escorts a migrant after a vessel transporting migrants from Greek island of Lesbos docked in Dikili port, Turkey, Monday, April 4, 2016. Under heavy security, a first group of 202 migrants were ferried from the Greek islands to Turkey Monday as part of a controversial European Union plan to curb migration to Europe. (AP Photo/Emre Tazegul)

Human rights groups expressed deep concern over the operation.

"The returns underway this morning in the Aegean are the symbolic start of the potential disastrous undoing of Europe's commitment to protecting refugees," said Amnesty International's deputy director for Europe, Gauri van Gulik. "Urgent key questions are: What process is everyone going through and what will become of them after their return?"

Judith Sunderland, acting deputy Europe director at Human Rights Watch, said trying to close the Aegean migration route by shipping people "back to uncertain fates in Turkey" will only make them seek potentially more dangerous and expensive ways to reach the EU.

"This whole deal involves throwing human beings down legal loopholes," she said. "Turkey is not a safe country, and rights on paper are not the same as rights in practice."

"It is completely disingenuous to say that the EU-Turkey deal is about saving lives," Sunderland added. "Conducting serious search-and-rescue operations at sea, doing large-scale, unconditional resettlement, creating legal migration pathways  these policies would save lives."

European officials insist the EU-Turkey agreement is the only way to deter people from heading to Greece from the nearby Turkish coast  a brief but perilous trip that has cost many lives  and to stop what was an almost uncontrolled flow of hundreds of thousands of people heading into Europe's prosperous heartland.

Under the deal, those who arrived on or after March 20 will be sent back to Turkey unless they qualify for asylum. For every Syrian returned, Europe will take a Syrian to be resettled in an EU country.

Despite the deal, hundreds have persisted in making the Aegean crossing, although the numbers are far lower than the thousands who had earlier arrived daily. On Monday, Greek authorities said they had registered 339 new arrivals over the past 24 hours.

Even Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country signed up to the deal in return for an EU pledge of 3 billion euros to handle the refugee crisis, lashed out at Europe for turning its back refugees and restricting the numbers they will accept.

"Did we turn Syrians back? No, we didn't, but they did," he said of EU countries. "By way of placing razor wire, they didn't let these people into their countries. We see who's dying on the Aegean Sea. But the number of those rescued by us on the Aegean Sea is 100,000."

Turkey is home to 2.7 million Syrian refugees, but has come under criticism for not cracking down on the smugglers who have ferried hundreds of thousands across to Greek islands, often with deadly results. Under the deal, Turkey will also see visa liberalization talks and EU membership negotiations speeded up.

The first vessel from Lesbos was escorted into the Turkish port of Dikili by the Turkish coast guard as a helicopter hovered overhead. The migrants were taken to red-and-white tents for registration and health checks.

About a dozen people stood at the port holding a banner that read "Welcome refugees. Turkey is your home." That sentiment was in sharp contrast to protests over the weekend by residents who feared that Dikili would turn into a warehouse for refugees.

Those who arrived from Lesbos were sent to a "reception and removal center" in the northwestern Kirklareli province on the Black Sea, according to Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency. It said the Syrians would be placed in refugee camps and other migrants would be deported.

As part of the other half of the plan, 32 Syrian refugees from Turkey were flying into Germany to be resettled, while another 11 arrived in Finland.

Balkan and European countries began restricting the flows of refugees and migrants through their borders earlier this year, and shut them completely in early March. More than 52,000 are now stranded in Greece.

___

Soguel reported from Istanbul. Associated Press writers Derek Gatopoulos in Athens, Mehmet Guzel in Dikili and Ayse Wieting in Istanbul contributed to this report.

Protesters hold placards as a vessel transporting migrants from Greek island Chios docks in Dikili port, Turkey, Monday, April 4, 2016. A first group of migrants were ferried from the Greek islands to Turkey Monday as part of a controversial European Union plan to curb migration to Europe. Under heavy security, authorities on the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios put 202 people on boats bound for Turkey  the first to be sent back as part of the plan, which has drawn strong criticism from human rights advocates. (AP Photo/Emre Tazegul)

A Turkish police officer escorts migrants after a vessel transporting migrants from Greek island Chios docked in Dikili port, Turkey, Monday, April 4, 2016. A first group of migrants were ferried from the Greek islands to Turkey Monday as part of a controversial European Union plan to curb migration to Europe. Under heavy security, authorities on the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios put 202 people on boats bound for Turkey  the first to be sent back as part of the plan, which has drawn strong criticism from human rights advocates. (AP Photo/Emre Tazegul)

Migrants get on a ferry at the port of Mytilini in the Greek island of Lesbos, Monday, April 3, 2016, during the first day of the implementation of the deal between EU and Turkey. Under the deal, migrants arriving illegally in Greece will be returned to Turkey if they do not apply for asylum or if they make an asylum claim that is rejected.(AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

Turkish police officers and officials guide migrants as they alight from a vessel transporting migrants from Greek island of Lesbos docked in Dikili port, Turkey, Monday, April 4, 2016. Under heavy security, a first group of 202 migrants were ferried from the Greek islands to Turkey Monday as part of a controversial European Union plan to curb migration to Europe. (AP Photo/Emre Tazegul)

Turkish police officers and officials provide security as migrants alight from a vessel transporting migrants from Greek island of Lesbos docked in Dikili port, Turkey, Monday, April 4, 2016. Under heavy security, a first group of 202 migrants were ferried from the Greek islands to Turkey Monday as part of a controversial European Union plan to curb migration to Europe. (AP Photo/Emre Tazegul)

Turkish police officers and officials guide migrants as they alight from a vessel transporting migrants from Greek island of Lesbos docked in Dikili port, Turkey, Monday, April 4, 2016. Under heavy security, a first group of 202 migrants were ferried from the Greek islands to Turkey Monday as part of a controversial European Union plan to curb migration to Europe. (AP Photo/Emre Tazegul)

A Turkish police officer provides security as migrants alight from a vessel transporting migrants from Greek island of Lesbos docked in Dikili port, Turkey, Monday, April 4, 2016. Under heavy security, a first group of 202 migrants were ferried from the Greek islands to Turkey Monday as part of a controversial European Union plan to curb migration to Europe. (AP Photo/Emre Tazegul)

Turkish officials check a migrant's documents as migrants alight from a vessel transporting migrants from Greek island of Lesbos docked in Dikili port, Turkey, Monday, April 4, 2016. Under heavy security, a first group of 202 migrants were ferried from the Greek islands to Turkey Monday as part of a controversial European Union plan to curb migration to Europe. (AP Photo/Emre Tazegul)

Turkish police officers provide security as migrants alight from a vessel transporting migrants from Greek island of Lesbos docked in Dikili port, Turkey, Monday, April 4, 2016. Under heavy security, a first group of 202 migrants were ferried from the Greek islands to Turkey Monday as part of a controversial European Union plan to curb migration to Europe. (AP Photo/Emre Tazegul)

Turkish police officers provide security as migrants alight from a vessel transporting migrants from Greek island of Lesbos docked in Dikili port, Turkey, Monday, April 4, 2016. Under heavy security, a first group of 202 migrants were ferried from the Greek islands to Turkey Monday as part of a controversial European Union plan to curb migration to Europe. (AP Photo/Emre Tazegul)

A Turkish police officer escorts a migrant after a vessel transporting migrants from Greek island of Lesbos docked in Dikili port, Turkey, Monday, April 4, 2016. Under heavy security, a first group of 202 migrants were ferried from the Greek islands to Turkey Monday as part of a controversial European Union plan to curb migration to Europe. (AP Photo/Emre Tazegul)

A Turkish police officer escorts a migrant after a vessel transporting migrants from Greek island of Lesbos docked in Dikili port, Turkey, Monday, April 4, 2016. Under heavy security, a first group of 202 migrants were ferried from the Greek islands to Turkey Monday as part of a controversial European Union plan to curb migration to Europe. (AP Photo/Emre Tazegul)

A Turkish police officer escorts a migrant after a vessel transporting migrants from Greek island Chios docked in Dikili port, Turkey, Monday, April 4, 2016. A first group of migrants were ferried from the Greek islands to Turkey Monday as part of a controversial European Union plan to curb migration to Europe. Under heavy security, authorities on the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios put 202 people on boats bound for Turkey  the first to be sent back as part of the plan, which has drawn strong criticism from human rights advocates. (AP Photo/Emre Tazegul)

People watch as a vessel transporting migrants from Greek island Chios is docked in Dikili port, Turkey, Monday, April 4, 2016. A first group of migrants were ferried from the Greek islands to Turkey Monday as part of a controversial European Union plan to curb migration to Europe. Under heavy security, authorities on the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios put 202 people on boats bound for Turkey  the first to be sent back as part of the plan, which has drawn strong criticism from human rights advocates. (AP Photo/Emre Tazegul)
Woodrow Wilson's name will remain on Princeton University's public policy school, despite calls to remove it because the former U.S. president was a segregationist, the Ivy League university announced Monday.

Princeton was challenged to take a deeper look into Wilson's life in the fall, when a group of students raised questions about his racist views and their impact on his policy.

The Black Justice League held a 32-hour sit-in inside the Princeton president's office, demanding Wilson's name be removed from programs and buildings, including the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy and International Affairs, and for other changes to be made on campus to make the university more diverse and inclusive.

The school has borne Wilson's name for more than eight decades.

It will remain, but Princeton pledged to adopt other changes, including establishing a pipeline program to encourage more minority students to pursue doctoral degrees and diversifying campus symbols and art.

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History: Wilson was president of Princeton from 1902 to 1910, and the country's 28th president from 1913 until 1921. But he also supported segregation  including in the federal government  rolling back progress for the emerging black middle class in the nation's capital

As Princeton University officials weigh whether to remove alumnus and former President Woodrow Wilson's name from its public policy school, the college is launching an exhibit meant to more fully air his legacy

WOODROW WILSON: THE PRESIDENT WHO FORMED TEMPORARY PEACE IN EUROPE, GAVE ALL WOMEN THE VOTE... BUT ASKED HIS CABINET MEMBERS AND THE CIVIL SERVICE TO RE-SEGREGATE Woodrow Wilson (pictured in April 1915) was criticized for his thoughts on slavery and was condemned for attending a screening of a racist film at the White House. He also helped set up the League of Nations and pushed for all women to get the vote Woodrow Wilson was president of Princeton from 1902 to 1910. He then served as New Jersey's governor from 1911 to 1913, when he entered the White House. The Democrat was a leading progressive but supported segregation. His second term as Commander-in-chief was dominated by America's entrance into World War One and his Fourteen Points - a document outlining the principles of piece that led to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles and the formation of the League of Nations. His 'Wilsonian' doctrine aimed at promoting democracy around the world. In 1920, he ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, giving every woman the right to vote. In the federal Civil Service, Wilson endorsed racial segregation, granting department heads greater autonomy in their management. The cabinet in the White House under Wilson was forced re-segregate restrooms and cafeterias in their buildings. A picture of a placard designed by the BJL claim that Wilson was a 'proud Klansman' and attended a special screening of Birth of the Nation - a film praising the Ku Klux Klan and portraying black as uncivilized - at the White House. He did watch the film, but later is believed to have said that the movie was 'an unfortunate production'. 'I agree with you that Woodrow Wilson was a racist. I think we need to acknowledge that as a community and be honest about that,' Eisgruber told the students, according to a video posted to YouTube. According to historian Arthur Link, during his tenure he discouraged blacks from applying for admission, preferring to keep the peace among white students and alumni. He suffered a backlash after abolishing the upper-class elitist lunch clubs that were popular on campus. In his book: History of the American people, Wilson wrote that the Ku Klux Klan during the late 1860s was a 'lawless reaction to a lawless period. He said that the Klan 'began to attempt by intimidation what they were not allowed to attempt by the ballot or by any ordered course of public action'. Critics and historians have also criticized his view on slavery. Some say Wilson believed that slavery was wrong on economic labor grounds, rather than for moral reasons. They also argue that he idealized the slavery system in the South, viewing masters as patient with 'indolent', or lazy, slaves. Advertisement

Wilson was president of Princeton from 1902 to 1910, and the country's 28th president from 1913 until 1921.

Wilson won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919 for being the architect of the League of Nations.

But he also supported segregation  including in the federal government  rolling back progress for the emerging black middle class in the nation's capital.

The debate over Wilson's name was part of a wave of racially motivated activism on college campuses across the country this school year that began with protests at the University of Missouri. There, black students  including members of the school's football team  successfully protested for the ouster of Missouri's president.

In recent months, college leaders have moved to change mascots, building names, mottos and other symbols some have deemed offensive or outdated. Most recently, Harvard University has taken steps to remove university references tied to slavery.

Answering questions: The Nobel Peace Prize winner heralded as a progressive hero has also faced criticism as a racist who encouraged segregation in his administration. Pictured here is Cecilia Rouse, Dean of the of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and international affairs on Sunday

Princeton created a website that included input from nine Wilson scholars and biographers, and received more than 600 submissions from Princeton alumni, faculty and the public. The program changes were recommended by a 10-member committee that met about a dozen times between December and March.

The board of trustees' decision comes on the same day that the school launches an interactive exhibit putting Wilson in context for his era while emphasizing that he was a man apart from it  for better and worse. 'In the Nation's Service? Wilson Revisited" will run through Oct. 28. An interactive version is also available online, inviting viewers to tweet their reactions.

'What we were trying to do here is take the line that separates 'Wilson good' and 'Wilson bad' and expand it,' said Daniel Linke, archivist at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library at Princeton and curator of the exhibit. 'There's a nuanced debate to be had. He's still affecting us today.'

Kristen Coke and Jameil Brown enrolled at the Wilson school not knowing much about the school's namesake aside from his oft-touted positive accomplishments, from his record during his two terms as a U.S. president to the changes he made as the university's president to elevate the school's stature.

Princeton University seniors Kristen Coke, left, of Miami, Fla, and Jameil Brown, of Leander, Texas, sit near an exhibit titled talk about Woodrow Wilsin

It wasn't until their junior year that they began to learn more about his views toward African-Americans and women.

Now seniors, both students were among the first to see a new exhibit Princeton launched Monday that will more fully explore who Wilson was  openly and publicly acknowledging his bigotry alongside the progressivism for which he is so revered.

'When we were freshmen here, there definitely was not really any conversation about what Woodrow Wilson's legacy was as a whole,' said Coke, 21, who is black.

'There's lots of things that we do here on campus to exalt his name. ... When I started critically looking at his legacy, it made me start to think, "Who are we celebrating?"'

Cecilia Rouse, dean of the Wilson School, said the students have opened a helpful dialogue that is part of a national conversation.

'It's important for students to understand great people are complicated,' said Rouse.

'Rarely is someone black or white. We have to learn to live with that complexity. It's what we're grappling with on campuses across the country. We can sandblast a name from the building, but to actually change how we operate, and what our community is like is much harder.'

Wilson is credited with creating the Federal Reserve system, led the U.S. into World War I and tried to preserve a lasting peace.

But his faults are laid bare from the beginning of the exhibit. One states plainly: 'Among Wilson's most serious failings was his racism and the damage it did to individual lives at home and abroad.' Another quotes him in his own words: 'Segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen.'

Particularly illuminating is a panel of quotes from his contemporaries, who single him out for his prejudices during his lifetime.
Amtrak train struck backhoe at 106 mph; 2 killed on track

CHESTER, Pa. (AP)  An Amtrak passenger train was going 106 miles per hour in a 110 mph zone when it struck a backhoe sitting on the same track, killing the backhoe operator and a track supervisor, federal and local officials said Monday.

The engineer applied the emergency brakes five seconds before impact, the National Transportation Safety Board said late Monday. No one on board was killed, although more than 30 passengers were injured.

Videos showed construction equipment on the track and a contractor's equipment on an adjacent track before the crash Sunday morning, NTSB investigator Ryan Frigo said. He could not comment on who was authorized to be there, but said work crews were scheduled to be interviewed on Tuesday

Emergency personnel stand by debris from a deadly train crash in Chester, Pa., Sunday, April 3 2016. The Amtrak train struck a piece of construction equipment just south of Philadelphia causing a derailment. (Michael Bryant/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP) PHIX OUT; TV OUT; MAGS OUT; NEWARK OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT

"There is a large amount of data to be looked at," Frigo added.

Amtrak issued a statement Monday night saying it was "deeply saddened" by the deaths of the two workers and the injuries suffered by passengers. It said it was working with the NTSB to "identify the issues that led to this incident."

Amtrak trains on the Northeast Corridor resumed regular service on Monday.

The train was heading from New York to Savannah, Georgia, at about 8 a.m. Sunday when it hit a piece of equipment in Chester, about 15 miles outside of Philadelphia. The impact derailed the lead engine of the train, which was carrying more than 300 passengers and seven crew members. The injuries were not considered life-threatening.

The Delaware County Medical Examiner's Office identified the victims as backhoe operator Joseph Carter Jr., 61, of Wilmington, Delaware, and Peter Adamovich, 59, of Lincoln University, Pennsylvania. They died of blunt force trauma.

The union representing Carter said a total of three workers have now been killed on the job on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor since March 1. And that raises questions about worker safety, the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees said.

Amtrak introduced a set of new safety protocols effective March 15. It says violations are handled with zero tolerance, and some cases lead to immediate dismissal.

Rail safety workers said track workers are supposed to double-check their assignments with dispatchers to be sure they are not working on or around an active track.

"Typically, the dispatcher has to give very specific permission for maintenance ... equipment, like a backhoe, to be on the track. They have to take the track out of service for a defined distance and a defined time period," said professor Allan Zarembski, who teaches railroad engineering at the University of Delaware. "And then, they have to confirm that they understand it, repeat back the instructions, and only then can they get on the tracks."

A Minnesota company called Loram Maintenance of Way had several employees working in the area. Loram official Tom DeJoseph said the company was doing maintenance on the ballast between the railway ties. He estimated the company had three or four people working there at a time and more at shift changes. He declined to say if any of them witnessed the crash.

The event data recorder and forward-facing and inward-facing video from the locomotive were recovered, officials said.

The derailment comes almost a year after a speeding Amtrak train from Washington, D.C., to New York City went off the tracks in Philadelphia. Eight people were killed and more than 200 were injured. The exact cause of that derailment is still under investigation, but authorities have said the train had been traveling twice the speed limit.

Nearly three decades ago, an Amtrak train struck maintenance equipment on tracks in Chester, near the site of Sunday's derailment. More than 20 people were injured in that January 1988 crash. The NTSB determined that an Amtrak tower operator had failed to switch the train to an unoccupied track.

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Associated Press writer Maryclaire Dale in Philadelphia contributed to this report.

People leave an Amtrak train following a deadly crash Sunday, April 3, 2016 in Chester, Pa. The Amtrak train struck a piece of construction equipment just south of Philadelphia causing a derailment. (Maggie Holtgreive via AP)

National Transportation Safety Board staffers inspect the engine of Amtrak Train 89 which hit a construction vehicle on the tracks and derailed in Chester, Pa., Sunday, April 3, 2016. The train was heading from New York to Savannah, Ga. (Clem Murray/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP)

Police and investigators cover the body of one of the individuals killed in an Amtrak train crash in Chester, Pa., Sunday, April 3, 2016. The Amtrak train struck a piece of construction equipment just south of Philadelphia causing a derailment. (Michael Bryant/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP) PHIX OUT; TV OUT; MAGS OUT; NEWARK OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT

National Transportation Safety Board crash investigator Ryan Frigo speaks to reporters in Chester, Pa., Sunday, April 3, 2016, after Amtrak Train 89 hit a construction vehicle on the tracks and derailed. The train was heading from New York to Savannah, Ga. (Clem Murray/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP)

Scattered debris is shown inside an Amtrak train following a deadly crash Sunday, April 3, 2016 in Chester, Pa. The Amtrak train struck a piece of construction equipment just south of Philadelphia causing a derailment. (Maggie Holtgreive via AP)

Amtrak train passengers Christian Nwachukwu, from left, Allison Aborio and Ilan Davidson leave an Amtrak train crash in Chester, Pa., Sunday, April 3, 2016. The Amtrak train struck a piece of construction equipment just south of Philadelphia causing a derailment. (Clem Murray/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP) PHIX OUT; TV OUT; MAGS OUT; NEWARK OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT

Amtrak train passenger Sadarein Walker is escorted to a waiting ambulance after an Amtrak train crash in Chester, Pa., Sunday, April 3, 2016. The Amtrak train struck a piece of construction equipment just south of Philadelphia causing a derailment. (Clem Murray/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP) PHIX OUT; TV OUT; MAGS OUT; NEWARK OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT

Amtrak investigators survey the scene after a deadly train crash in Chester, Pa., Sunday, April 3 2016. The Amtrak train struck a piece of construction equipment just south of Philadelphia causing a derailment. (Michael Bryant/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP) PHIX OUT; TV OUT; MAGS OUT; NEWARK OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT

Amtrak investigators inspect the deadly train crash in Chester, Pa., Sunday, April 3 2016. The Amtrak train struck a piece of construction equipment just south of Philadelphia causing a derailment. (Michael Bryant/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP) PHIX OUT; TV OUT; MAGS OUT; NEWARK OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT

Amtrak investigators inspect the deadly train crash in Chester, Pa., Sunday, April 3 2016. The Amtrak train struck a piece of construction equipment just south of Philadelphia causing a derailment. (Michael Bryant/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP) PHIX OUT; TV OUT; MAGS OUT; NEWARK OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT

This photo shows an Amtrak train following a crash Sunday, April 3, 2016, in Chester, Pa. Amtrak said the train was heading from New York to Savannah, Ga., when it struck a backhoe outside of Philadelphia. (Glenn R. Hills Jr via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT
They flee North Korea, only to be adrift in the South

SEOUL, South Korea (AP)  A middle-aged man is walking through a quiet Seoul neighborhood when he suddenly stops. He lights a cigarette, cupping his hands to shield the flame from the winter wind, and takes a deep draw, remembering how things used to be. He's a former policeman, a broad-shouldered man with a growling voice and a crushing handshake.

Back where he came from, he says, he was someone who mattered.

"In North Korea, people were afraid of me," he says. He says it wistfully, almost sadly, like a boy talking about a dog he once had. "They knew I could just drag them away."

In this March 25, 2016 photo, exiled North Korean Gae-yoon Lee poses for a photo at her home in Seoul, South Korea. Lee, who was raised on a collective farm, left North Korea in 2010 with only a high school diploma. Six years later, shes a published poet who often writes about her childhood and the famine, and is midway through a degree in Korean literature at one of Seouls top universities. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

That fear meant respect, and bribes, in the North Korean town where he lived, a place where the electricity rarely worked and the Internet was only a rumor. It meant he could buy a TV, and that he had food even as those around him went hungry. It meant that when he grew exhausted by the relentless poverty and oppression around him, and when relatives abroad offered to advance him the money to escape, he had connections to a good smuggler.

Just over a year ago, that smuggler showed him where to slip across a river and into China, on his way to South Korea. His new home is one of the wealthiest and most technologically advanced nations in the world. It has a thriving democracy and a per-capita income at least 12 times larger than the North's. Seoul is a city of infinite shopping choices, glass-fronted office towers and armies of exquisitely dressed businesspeople. He used to dream of the easy life he'd have here.

And what does he think now?

"Sometimes, when my work is too hard, I think about my job as a policeman," says the man, who spoke on condition his name not be used, fearing for the safety of relatives who still live in the North. "I didn't have problems with money back then. I ate what I wanted to eat." He pauses, thinking about his decision to leave: "There are times when I regret it a lot."

Every year, thousands of North Koreans risk imprisonment, or worse, to leave their homeland, many hoping to eventually reach the South. Instead, they often find themselves lost in a nation where they thought they'd feel at home, struggling with depression, discrimination, joblessness and their own lingering pride in the repressive nation they left behind. Surveys have shown that up to one-third would return home if they could.

Take the former policeman, an increasingly bitter day laborer who now supports his family hauling bags of cement through the sprawling apartment blocks constantly under construction around Seoul. His hands are rougher than sandpaper now. His fingernails are warped. He sleeps most nights in a dormitory near his latest construction site, just outside the city, only occasionally visiting his wife and the rest of his family, who live in a middle-class Seoul neighborhood.

"I knew that South Korea was a capitalist country, that it was very rich. I thought that if I can just get there, I can work less but earn a lot of money," he says.

He grimaces when he thinks of his naivete.

More than 27,000 North Koreans exiles live in the South, most arriving since a brutal famine tore at the country in the mid-1990s. Government control foundered amid widespread starvation, and security loosened along the border with China. While security has again tightened, nearly 1,300 refugees reached South Korea last year, according to statistics compiled by the Seoul government. For most, the journey required bribing border guards, life underground in China for months or years, and weeks of travel through still more countries.

They left behind one of the most isolated nations in the world, where the ruling family has been worshipped now for three generations, and only a minuscule elite are allowed to make international phone calls. It has no free press or political opposition. While the famine is over, the country remains very poor, with hunger and malnutrition serious problems.

It's a country where jobs are assigned by the government, but where most families now survive by selling everything from rice to car parts in an ever-growing network of markets. Most North Korean refugees come from collective farms or hardscrabble towns near the Chinese border. Few have more than a high school education.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans are believed to live underground in China. Some stay permanently, while others slip back into the North after earning extra money. For many, though, the lure of a wealthy, Korean-speaking nation is strong, even if refugees' expectations of the South are often shaped less by reality and more by the bootlegged southern soap operas that are wildly popular in the North.

Those who go find themselves living in one of the most brutally competitive countries in the world, where education is worshipped, toddlers are offered exam-prep classes and a drive for perfection has produced one of the world's highest rates of plastic surgery.

"Life in South Korea is competitive," Hong Yong-pyo, South Korea's minister of unification, said in a recent speech to a group of defectors. "For you to succeed in this competition, you need to push yourself on your own."

But that can be very difficult. Despite government programs that include an immersive three-month program, along with assistance in getting apartments and jobs, the exiles are immediately marked by their accents and their confusion over everything from checking accounts to job applications. Many are noticeably shorter than southerners because of malnutrition, a serious issue in a country that sees height as a measure of attractiveness and success. When it comes to finding work, they have none of the school or hometown connections that are often key here to getting hired, and many South Koreans dismiss them as lazy and difficult.

When they do get jobs, seemingly simple things - such as knowing they need to arrive at work on time - can leave them flummoxed, their pride badly battered.

"It has happened so many times: They show up for work for one or two days, then get into a fight with their colleagues and quit," says Ahn Kyung-su, a Seoul-based researcher who has spent years working with exiles.

As a result, they remain far less educated than most South Koreans and have far higher rates of unemployment. Their most common profession is unskilled laborer.

Even success doesn't make life easy.

Gae-yoon Lee, who was raised on a collective farm, left North Korea in 2010 with only a high school diploma. Six years later, she's a published poet who often writes about her childhood and the famine, and is midway through a degree in Korean literature at one of Seoul's top universities.

A quiet woman with a stylish purse and braces on her teeth, she finds herself intimidated by southerners' intense focus on success.

"Even between friends, people are always competing here," says Lee, 30. "It can be really stressful to live here."

With an accent that still gives her away as an outsider, she sometimes resorts to pretending she doesn't belong at all.

"There are times when I'm too afraid to be tagged as a North Korean," she says. "So when I'm talking to South Koreans, sometimes I'll use a few English words that I remember so that people think that I'm a foreigner just learning to speak Korean. At that moment, I really want to be a foreigner."

During the first few months after he got to the South, the former policeman thought he might become a cop again, or maybe join the army. But he's too old to be a police recruit, and he says the army turned him down.

Since then, he's tumbled from one job to the next: He trained to be a welder but quit because he wasn't earning enough. He worked in a food-processing factory for a time but says his bosses refused to give him a raise.

"It was because I'm from North Korea," he grumbles.

Since then, there have been stints with at least two construction companies. The pay is bearable, about $100 a day, more than he made in the North, but his expenses are dramatically higher. Rent, food, subways, clothing - all are far more expensive here. Plus, he's not just supporting his immediate family anymore. He's also channeling cash through underground brokers to relatives still across the border.

"Money," he says at one point. "Money is the problem."

He's hardened since he first reached Seoul. He looks at people suspiciously, goes silent around strangers and often wonders if he's being discriminated against.

He insists, though, that pity is the last thing he wants.

"Whatever you do, don't pray for me," he says.

___

Follow Tim Sullivan on Twitter at twitter.com/ByTimSullivan
The Latest: Erdogan criticizes Europe for returning migrants

ATHENS, Greece (AP)  The Latest on the flow of migrants into Europe (all times local):

6:15 p.m.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashed out at Europe for turning back refugees on the first day that migrants were returned from Greece to Turkey.

A Turkish police officer escorts migrants after a vessel transporting migrants from Greek island Chios docked in Dikili port, Turkey, Monday, April 4, 2016. A first group of migrants were ferried from the Greek islands to Turkey Monday as part of a controversial European Union plan to curb migration to Europe. Under heavy security, authorities on the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios put 202 people on boats bound for Turkey  the first to be sent back as part of the plan, which has drawn strong criticism from human rights advocates. (AP Photo/Emre Tazegul)

Speaking in Ankara, the president reproached Europe for not letting "these people into their countries" by raising razor wire fences.

He asked: "Did we turn Syrians back? No, we didn't, but they did."

Erdogan said Turkey had rescued 100,000 migrants from the Aegean Sea and spent $10 billion on Syrian refuges.

Greece on Monday began sending back migrants to Turkey in line with an EU deal to combat illegal migration.

Turkey, home to 2.7 million Syrian refugees, is a major departure point for Europe-bound migrants.

The country has committed to crack down on smuggling in exchange for financial and political concessions from the EU.

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4:50 p.m.

Finland's immigration officials say that 11 Syrian refugees have arrived as part of a European Union deal with Turkey to curb illegal migration.

Hanna Kautto from Finland's Immigration Service says the 11 refugees, who arrived by plane from Turkey, are from three families. Officials said they were being housed at a refugee reception center before accommodation is found elsewhere in the country.

The arrivals on Monday were part of Finland's quota of 750 refugees it has agreed with the EU to accept this year. In December, the government decided to focus on helping Syrian refugees but Interior Ministry officials said it was not clear how many of the annual quota would be made up of Syrian refugees.

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3:55 p.m.

Refugees and migrants protesting Europe's closed borders have closed a second section of Greece's highway heading to the official border crossing with Macedonia, blocking all road traffic in both directions.

Greek authorities said about 100 people blocked the highway near the Evzones border crossing. The blockade was being done near the Greek village of Idomeni, where a sprawling refugee camp of thousands developed in recent months. The area had been a pedestrian crossing for migrants and refugees until Macedonian authorities restricted the flow, and then closed it completely last month.

Meanwhile, hundreds of refugees and migrants were continuing to block trucks from using another section of the highway further south near the town of Polykastro, where another impromptu refugee camp has sprung up at a highway gas station.

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2:55 p.m.

Greek authorities say the 202 migrants and refugees who had not applied for asylum in Greece and were returned to Turkey Monday from Greek islands included people from several countries including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Congo.

The Greek civil protection ministry said 136 people  135 men and one woman  were returned from the island of Lesbos. They included 124 people from Pakistan, three from Bangladesh, one from Iraq, two from India, four from Sri Lanka and two Syrians. The Syrians had asked to be sent back themselves, the ministry said.

Another 66  56 men and 10 women  were returned from the nearby island of Chios, including 42 Afghans, 10 Iranians, six Pakistanis, five people from Congo and one person each from India, Somalia and Ivory Coast.

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2:50 p.m.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu called on police officers to show compassion as his country received the first Syrians turned back from Greece.

Speaking at the 171st anniversary ceremony of the founding of the Turkish police force, Davutoglu urged police officers not to "distinguish them from our own citizens."

A first group of 202 migrants were ferried from the Greek islands to Turkey on Monday as part of a controversial European Union plan to curb migration to Europe.

Davutoglu "will send some of the Syrian refugees from the camps (in Turkey) to Europe" as the first Syrians were brought across the Aegean to Turkey.

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2:25 p.m.

Three vessels have reached the Turkish port town of Dikili bringing 202 migrants from Greek islands of Chios and Lesbos as part of a plan to curb migration to Europe.

The Turkish coast guard escorted the first vessel, the Nazli Jale, to the port of Dikili. The Lesvos and Erturk reached shortly after.

A Turkish government official said there were "very few Syrians" among the passengers. He spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak on the issue.

The migrants were loaded onto buses but there was no immediate word from authorities as to where they would be taken.

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1:50 p.m.

The U.N. refugee agency says returns of people to Turkey under a deal with the EU to manage the flow of refugees and migrants are so far "normal policy," but that the agency will be watching its implementation.

Spokeswoman Melissa Fleming says UNHCR staffers had previously spoken with those deported and they "did not express their intention to seek asylum."

She says Greek authorities have been overwhelmed in handling asylum requests and need help. Fleming said the EU-Turkey deal is expected to screen people who fear for their lives or "have a well-founded fear of persecution" if they are sent home or to another country.

Police on the Greek island of Lesbos on Monday began deporting people under the plan, which UNHCR and rights groups have previously criticized.

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1:45 p.m.

The Czech government is reconsidering a program to give asylum to 153 Iraqi Christians who were threatened by extremists.

This comes after 25 of those who came two months ago asked to cancel asylum procedures and illegally went to neighboring Germany over the weekend. They had seven days to leave the country and return home. They were not allowed to travel across Europe and were arrested by German authorities.

Police spokeswoman Katerina Rendlova says the group was arrested in Germany and the Czech side was informed Monday that they all applied for asylum in Germany, citing family ties.

Interior Minister Milan Chovanec said the migrants abused the goodwill of the Czech Republic and has stopped the program until further notice.

A similar problem occurred previously in Poland and it shows a problem Europe is facing to keep the migrants in a particular country. The refugees mostly want to settle in richer western countries, such as Germany and Sweden.

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12:25 a.m.

The first Syrians sent from Turkey as part of a deal with the European Union meant to curb illegal migration have landed in Germany.

The 16 Syrian refugees landed in the central German city of Hannover Monday morning aboard a scheduled flight from Turkey and were being taken to accommodation in the region, news agency dpa reported. Another 16 Syrians were expected in Hannover later in the day.

Last month's EU-Turkey deal aims to control the mass influx of people into Europe, many of whom have crossed the Aegean Sea with the help of smugglers. Returns to Turkey of migrants arriving illegally in Greece who didn't apply for asylum or had their claims rejected started Monday; in return, EU countries are to take in Syrians with legitimate asylum claims.

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12:20 p.m.

The Hungarian army says it is reinforcing parts the fence built on the southern border with Serbia meant to stop migrants from entering.

The army says it is complying with a request by the interior ministry due to the increased number of migrants being caught near the border.

Hungary built fences protected by razor wire along its borders with Serbia and Croatia last year, drastically reducing migrant arrivals from up to several thousand a day to a few dozen or less but more and more have come since January.

Police data showed that 553 migrants were detained in January, the figure rose to 2,398 in February and 3,401 in March. Last year, over 390,000 migrants entered the country, nearly all passing through on their way to Germany and other richer destinations in Western Europe.

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9:50 a.m.

The first vessel transporting migrants from Greece has docked in Turkey, putting into practice a European Union plan to stem migration to Europe.

At dawn on the Greek island of Lesbos, an initial group of migrants were escorted onto two small ferries by officers from the EU border protection agency, Frontex.

The first vessel, the Nazli Jale, reached the port of Dikili accompanied by the Turkish coast guard.

Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency put the number of migrants at 131 and said they were mostly Pakistani nationals. A Turkish government official told the AP authorities were expecting 202 people. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue.

A total of 50,000 migrants and refugees are stranded in Greece following EU and Balkan border closures, but only those who arrived after March 20 will be detained for deportation.

By Dominique Soguel

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Police on the Greek island of Lesbos have begun placing migrants and refugees on boats bound to Turkey, the first to be deported under a European Union plan to limit the amount of migration to Europe.

Under heavy security, the first 135 migrants were being escorted onto the boats as dawn broke Monday by officers from the EU border protection agency, Frontex, to nearby ports on the Turkish coast, under the plan which has been strongly criticized by human rights groups.

About 4,000 migrants and refugees have been detained on Greek islands since the agreement came into effect March 20.

On the nearby island of Chios, riot police clashed with local residents hours earlier during a protest against deportations planned there.

A masked Turkish police officer escorts a migrant after the first vessel transporting the migrants from Greek island of Lesbos was docked in Dikili port, Turkey, Monday, April 4, 2016, putting into practice a European Union plan to stem migration to Europe. At dawn in Lesbos, an initial group of migrants were escorted onto two small ferries by officers from the EU border protection agency, Frontex. The first vessel reached the port of Dikili accompanied by the Turkish coast guard. (AP Photo/Emre Tazegul)

A migrant holds a baby at Athens port of Piraeus, Monday April 4, 2016, during the first day of the implementation of the deal between EU and Turkey. Under the deal, migrants arriving illegally in Greece will be returned to Turkey if they do not apply for asylum or if they make an asylum claim that is rejected. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

A group of migrants are detained by Turkish security, as vessels transporting migrants from Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios docked in Dikili port, Turkey, Monday, April 4, 2016. A first group of migrants were ferried from the Greek islands to Turkey Monday as part of a controversial European Union plan to curb migration to Europe. Under heavy security, authorities on the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios put 202 people on boats bound for Turkey  the first to be sent back as part of the plan, which has drawn strong criticism from human rights advocates. (AP Photo/Emre Tazegul)

Turkish police officers and officials provide security as migrants alight from a vessel transporting migrants from Greek island of Lesbos docked in Dikili port, Turkey, Monday, April 4, 2016. Under heavy security, a first group of 202 migrants were ferried from the Greek islands to Turkey Monday as part of a controversial European Union plan to curb migration to Europe. (AP Photo/Emre Tazegul)

Turkish police officers and officials guide migrants as they alight from a vessel transporting migrants from Greek island of Lesbos docked in Dikili port, Turkey, Monday, April 4, 2016. Under heavy security, a first group of 202 migrants were ferried from the Greek islands to Turkey Monday as part of a controversial European Union plan to curb migration to Europe. (AP Photo/Emre Tazegul)

Turkish police officers and officials guide migrants as they alight from a vessel transporting migrants from Greek island of Lesbos docked in Dikili port, Turkey, Monday, April 4, 2016. Under heavy security, a first group of 202 migrants were ferried from the Greek islands to Turkey Monday as part of a controversial European Union plan to curb migration to Europe. (AP Photo/Emre Tazegul)

Turkish police officers provide security as migrants alight from a vessel transporting migrants from Greek island of Lesbos docked in Dikili port, Turkey, Monday, April 4, 2016. Under heavy security, a first group of 202 migrants were ferried from the Greek islands to Turkey Monday as part of a controversial European Union plan to curb migration to Europe. (AP Photo/Emre Tazegul)

Turkish officials check a migrant's documents as migrants alight from a vessel transporting migrants from Greek island of Lesbos docked in Dikili port, Turkey, Monday, April 4, 2016. Under heavy security, a first group of 202 migrants were ferried from the Greek islands to Turkey Monday as part of a controversial European Union plan to curb migration to Europe. (AP Photo/Emre Tazegul)

A Turkish police officer provides security as migrants alight from a vessel transporting migrants from Greek island of Lesbos docked in Dikili port, Turkey, Monday, April 4, 2016. Under heavy security, a first group of 202 migrants were ferried from the Greek islands to Turkey Monday as part of a controversial European Union plan to curb migration to Europe. (AP Photo/Emre Tazegul)

A Turkish police officer escorts a migrant after a vessel transporting migrants from Greek island of Lesbos docked in Dikili port, Turkey, Monday, April 4, 2016. Under heavy security, a first group of 202 migrants were ferried from the Greek islands to Turkey Monday as part of a controversial European Union plan to curb migration to Europe. (AP Photo/Emre Tazegul)

A Turkish police officer escorts a migrant after a vessel transporting migrants from Greek island of Lesbos docked in Dikili port, Turkey, Monday, April 4, 2016. Under heavy security, a first group of 202 migrants were ferried from the Greek islands to Turkey Monday as part of a controversial European Union plan to curb migration to Europe. (AP Photo/Emre Tazegul)
Clinton's frustration grows, as primary race continues

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP)  Hillary Clinton snapped at a Greenpeace protester. She linked Bernie Sanders and tea party Republicans. And she bristled with anger when nearly two dozen Sanders supporters marched out of an event near her home outside New York City, shouting "if she wins, we lose."

"They don't want to listen to anyone else," she shot back. "We actually have to do something. Not just complain about what is happening."

After a year of campaigning, months of debates and 35 primary elections in the Democratic presidential race, Sanders is finally getting under Clinton's skin.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks during a rally in Syracuse, N.Y., Friday, April 1, 2016. After months of campaigning, Bernie Sanders is finally getting under Hillary Clinton's skin. While her attacks on her primary rival once seems carefully calculated, the Democratic front-runner is now showing flashes of real angry with Sanders _ irritation that could undermine her efforts to unite the party to take on Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Mike Groll)

Clinton has spent weeks largely ignoring Sanders and trying to focus on Republican front-runner Donald Trump. Now, after several primary losses and with a tough fight in New York on the horizon, Clinton is showing flashes of frustration with the Vermont senator  irritation that could undermine her efforts to unite the party around her candidacy.

According to Democrats close to Hillary and former President Bill Clinton, both are frustrated by Sanders' ability to cast himself as above politics-as-usual even while firing off what they consider to be misleading attacks. The Clintons are even more annoyed that Sanders' approach seems to be rallying  and keeping  young voters by his side.

While Hillary Clinton's team contends her lock on the nomination is "nearly insurmountable," the campaign frequently grumbles that Sanders hasn't faced the same level of scrutiny as the former secretary of state, New York senator and first lady. Her aides complain about Sanders' rhetoric, claiming he's broken his pledge to avoid character attacks by going after her paid speeches and ties to Wall Street. They also point to scenes of Sanders supporters booing Clinton's name at his rallies.

Actress Rosario Dawson's 15-minute speech at a New York City rally on Thursday, in which she rallied the crowd by crying "shame on you, Hillary" and noted that Clinton could soon face an FBI interview over the email controversy while at the State Department, underscored the growing tensions between the campaigns.

Over the weekend, the bickering was about a possible debate before the New York primary April 19. Clinton's campaign accused Sanders' of playing "political games" by rejecting three specific dates; Sanders' team volunteered dates the Clinton campaign says are unworkable.

Clinton hopes big victories in New York and five Northeastern states a week later will allow her to wrap up the nomination by the end of the month.

But aides acknowledge that Sanders, who's raised $109 million this year and has pledged to take his campaign to the party convention in July, is unlikely to feel significant political or financial pressure to drop out of the race, even if it becomes clear he cannot win the nomination.

Clinton stayed in the 2008 contest against Barack Obama until the bitter end, though her initial advantage with superdelegates, who later flipped to the Illinois senator, gave her a stronger case for the nomination.

Unlike eight years ago, when California Sen. Dianne Feinstein brought Clinton and Obama together for a meeting, few Democrats are in position to broker peace between Clinton and Sanders. For most of his political career, Sanders identified as an independent  not a Democrat  leaving him with far weaker ties to party powerbrokers.

According to an Associated Press analysis, Sanders must win 67 percent of the remaining delegates and uncommitted superdelegates  party leaders and officials who can support any candidate  through June to be able to clinch the Democratic nomination. So far he's only winning 37 percent.

Joel Benenson, Clinton's chief strategist, said: "We're going to get to a point at the end of April where there just isn't enough real estate for him to overcome the lead that we've built."

Still, any kind of truce is probably weeks, if not months, away.

For now, Sanders is costing Clinton significant time, money and political capital. His victories in recent Western caucuses underscored her weaknesses among younger and white working-class voters, important elements of the Democratic coalition. He's favored in the Wisconsin primary Tuesday.

Sanders is drawing sizable crowds in New York, attracting 18,500 to a rally in the South Bronx on Thursday. A victory in that state, which Clinton represented for two terms in the Senate, would deal a significant psychological blow to her campaign, rattling Democrats already worried about her high national disapproval ratings.

Clinton is more reliant on traditional fundraising than Sanders, who's raised the bulk of his money online. Even as she prepares for New York's primary, she has scheduled fundraisers before then in Denver, Virginia, Miami and Los Angeles  at the home of actor George Clooney.

She needs to continue raising primary dollars because June contests in California and New Jersey will be expensive. Sanders faces fewer financial anxieties.

Sanders adviser Tad Devine said the senator was not encouraging his supporters to disrupt Clinton's events and was focused on his own message. But he also said the campaign would respond when Clinton mischaracterizes Sanders' records and positions.

Her attacks, he said, only help Sanders.

"When your attacks against your opponent feed the biggest weakness that you have, you are undermining yourself," said Devine.

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Thomas reported from New York.
Azerbaijan says 3 killed in fighting with separatist region

YEREVAN, Armenia (AP)  Fighting raged Monday around Nagorno-Karabakh, with Azerbaijan saying it lost three of its troops in the separatist region while inflicting heavy casualties on Armenian forces and the Armenian president warning that the hostilities could slide into a full-scale war.

The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said Armenian forces continued shelling Azerbaijani military positions and front-line villages despite a cease-fire that Azerbaijan unilaterally declared Sunday.

The ministry said that up to 170 Armenian troops were "neutralized" and 12 Armenian armored vehicles have been destroyed Monday. Armenian Defense Ministry spokesman Artsrun Ovannisian dismissed the claim as a product of the Azerbaijani military's "wild imagination."

A relative mourns during a farewell ceremony for Pvt. Sasun Mkrtchyan, Armenian serviceman who was killed during fighting in the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh, in Yerevan, Armenia, Monday, April 4, 2016. Fighting raged Monday around the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh, with Azerbaijan saying three of its troops have been killed in the past 24 hours and the Armenian president warning that the hostilities could slide into a full-scale war. (Varo Rafayelyan/ PAN Photo via AP)

The Nagorno-Karabakh military in turn claimed that more than 300 Azerbaijani soldiers had been killed since the conflict flared up on Saturday.

The outbreak of hostilities is the worst since a war that ended in 1994, leaving Nagorno-Karabakh under the control of local ethnic Armenian forces and the Armenian military. Armenian forces also occupy several areas outside Karabakh proper.

International efforts to settle the conflict, fueled by long-simmering tensions between Christian Armenians and mostly Muslim Azeris, have brought no results.

Anxiety over the new outburst of fighting was high in diplomatic circles. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke on the phone Monday and called for both sides to stop fighting, a Russian foreign ministry statement said.

They also condemned "outside players" for trying to heat up the conflict, the statement said without specifying.

The Karabakh military said Monday 20 of its servicemen have been killed since Saturday, another 72 have been wounded and seven of its tanks have been destroyed. The Armenian defense ministry later reported that five "volunteers" had been killed by an Azerbaijani drone strike on a bus.

None of the claims could be independently verified.

Ovannisian, the Armenian Defense Ministry spokesman, said Monday that Karabakh militia advanced overnight, "liberating new positions." He also claimed that Armenian artillery hit Azerbaijani units as they were moving to the front line.

Self-proclaimed officials in Karabakh said fighting intensified in the morning in the southeast and northeast with the Azerbaijani troops using Grad multiple rocket launchers.

Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry blamed Armenian forces for shelling residential areas despite a unilateral cease-fire announced by Baku, warning that "Armenia will bear the blame for possible counterattacks and retaliatory measures by Azerbaijan's armed forces."

Azerbaijan's defense minister warned that his forces will open up an artillery barrage on Stepanakert, the main city in Karabakh, if the Armenian forces don't stop shelling populated areas.

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan warned Monday that his country could formalize its ties with Karabakh by officially recognizing its independence if the fighting escalates.

He warned that the escalation of hostilities could lead to a "large-scale war." ''It will affect security and stability not only in South Caucasus, but Europe as well," Sargsyan said.

In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the Kremlin was "seriously worried" about the continuing fighting in the region and added that Russia will continue its efforts to ensure a cease-fire.

Armenia is a member of Moscow-dominated economic and security alliances, including several ex-Soviet nations, and it also hosts a Russian military base.

At the same time, Russia has sought to maintain friendly ties with energy-rich Azerbaijan, which serves as a key conduit for Caspian oil and gas resources flowing to the West. Despite its close ties with Armenia, Russia also has sold weapons to Azerbaijan.

Sargsyan said that among the weapons used by Azerbaijan in the latest fighting was the TOS-1 heavy flamethrower system. Azerbaijan obtained the powerful weapon that fires thermobaric rockets from Russia in a deal that angered many in Armenia.

___

Aida Sultanova in Baku, Azerbaijan, and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow, contributed to this report.

In this image made from video on Sunday, April 3, 2016, a Grad missile is fired by Azerbaijani forces in the village of Gapanli, Azerbaijan. Officials in Azerbaijan and the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh say fighting is persisting a day after the worst outburst of hostilities in nearly 20 years killed 30 soldiers. Nagorno-Karabakh, part of Azerbaijan, has been under the control of local ethnic Armenian forces and the Armenian military since a war ended in 1994 with no resolution of the region's status. (AP video via AP)

Armenia's President Serge Sarkissian visits injured soldiers who have been taken to Armenian Defense Ministrys Central Military Hospital from the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh, in Yerevan, Armenia, Monday, April 4, 2016. Fighting raged Monday around the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh, with Azerbaijan saying three of its troops have been killed in the past 24 hours and the Armenian president warning that the hostilities could slide into a full-scale war. (Hrant Khachatryan/ PAN Photo via AP)

In this grab taken from Associated Press Television footage made available on Monday, April 4, 2016, Armenian soldiers pass a Grad missile launcher on Sunday, April 3, 2016, in the village of Mardakert, in the separatist region forces of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan's defense ministry says three of its troops have been killed in the past 24 hours in fighting with the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The defense ministry in a statement early on Monday accused Armenia of shelling its position and front-line villages despite the cease-fire his government unilaterally announced. (Associated Press Television via AP)

In this photo taken Saturday, April 2, 2016, an Armenian volunteer is in a state of readiness in the town of Askeran in the separatist Nagorno-Karabakh region. Officials in Azerbaijan and the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh say fighting is persisting a day after the worst outburst of hostilities in nearly 20 years killed 30 soldiers. Nagorno-Karabakh, part of Azerbaijan, has been under the control of local ethnic Armenian forces and the Armenian military since a war ended in 1994 with no resolution of the region's status. (Hrayr Badalyan/PAN Photo via AP)

People react during a funeral for 12-year-old Vagharshak Grigoryan in a village of Martuni region of the separatist Nagorno-Karabakh region, Azerbaijan, on Monday, April 4, 2016. Grigoryan was one the first victims of the clashes that erupted between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces on April 2, 2016 as part of a territorial conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan's defense ministry says three of its troops have been killed in the past 24 hours in fighting with the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The defense ministry in a statement early on Monday accused Armenia of shelling its position and front-line villages despite the cease-fire his government unilaterally announced. (Vahram Baghdasaryan/ PHOTOLURE photo via AP)

An Armenian covers his ears while a howitzer fires at an artillery position of the self-defense army of Nagorno-Karabakh near Martakert, Azerbaijan, Sunday, April 3, 2016. Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry announced a unilateral cease-fire Sunday against the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh, but rebel forces in the area said that they continued to come under fire from Azerbaijani forces. (Vahram Baghdasaryan, PHOTOLURE via AP)

In this photo taken Saturday, April 2, 2016, Armenian volunteers are in a state of readiness in the town of Askeran in the separatist Nagorno-Karabakh region. Officials in Azerbaijan and the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh say fighting is persisting a day after the worst outburst of hostilities in nearly 20 years killed 30 soldiers. Nagorno-Karabakh, part of Azerbaijan, has been under the control of local ethnic Armenian forces and the Armenian military since a war ended in 1994 with no resolution of the region's status. (Hrayr Badalyan/PAN Photo via AP)

In this grab taken from Associated Press Television footage made available on Monday, April 4, 2016, Armenian soldiers aim a howitzer on Sunday, April 3, 2016, in the village of Mardakert, in the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan's defense ministry says three of its troops have been killed in the past 24 hours in fighting with the separatist region forces of Nagorno-Karabakh. The defense ministry in a statement early on Monday accused Armenia of shelling its position and front-line villages despite the cease-fire his government unilaterally announced. (Associated Press Television via AP)

In this grab taken from Associated Press Television footage made available on Monday, April 4, 2016, a house ruined by shelling on Sunday, April 3, 2016, in the village of Mardakert, in the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan's defense ministry says three of its troops have been killed in the past 24 hours in fighting with the separatist region forces of Nagorno-Karabakh. The defense ministry in a statement early on Monday accused Armenia of shelling its position and front-line villages despite the cease-fire his government unilaterally announced. (Associated Press Television via AP)

Armenia's President Serge Sarkissian visits injured soldiers who have been taken to Armenian Defense Ministrys Central Military Hospital from the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh, in Yerevan, Armenia, Monday, April 4, 2016. Fighting raged Monday around the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh, with Azerbaijan saying three of its troops have been killed in the past 24 hours and the Armenian president warning that the hostilities could slide into a full-scale war. (Hrant Khachatryan/ PAN Photo via AP)

In this grab taken from Associated Press Television footage made available on Monday, April 4, 2016, Armenian soldiers use a Grad missile launcher on Sunday, April 3, 2016, in the village of Mardakert, in the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan's defense ministry says three of its troops have been killed in the past 24 hours in fighting with the separatist region forces of Nagorno-Karabakh. The defense ministry in a statement early on Monday accused Armenia of shelling its position and front-line villages despite the cease-fire his government unilaterally announced. (Associated Press Television via AP)
Philippines launches world's first mass dengue vaccination

MANILA, Philippines (AP)  The Philippines on Monday launched the first public immunization program for dengue fever, seeking to administer to a million schoolchildren the world's first licensed vaccine against a mosquito-borne disease that the World Health Organization estimates infects 390 million people a year globally.

Hundreds of fourth-graders at a public school in metropolitan Manila's Marikina city were given the first of three shots of Dengvaxia. Some of the pupils received their vaccination shot under the glare of cameras during a festive ceremony at a gymnasium festooned with multicolored bunting and preceded by songs and dances performed by the children.

The Philippines had the highest dengue incidence in the WHO's Western Pacific region from 2013 to 2015, recording 200,415 cases last year, according to the Department of Health.

Health Secretary Janette Garin called the program's launch "a historic milestone" in public health. "We are the first country to introduce, adopt and implement the first-ever dengue vaccine through (the) public health system and under a public school setting," she said.

The government is spending 3.5 billion pesos ($76 million) to administer the free vaccines, which it bought at a discounted cost of 3,000 pesos ($65) for three doses for each child. Free vaccine programs ensure that "health should be for all, rich or poor," Garin said.

The health department says a study showed that the vaccination of 9-year-old children for five years starting in 2016 can reduce dengue cases by 24.2 percent in the Philippines. The vaccine is given as a three-dose series, with the doses coming six months apart.

Dengvaxia, developed by the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi Pasteur, obtained its first license in Mexico in December 2015 for use in individuals aged 9 to 45. Regulatory agencies in Brazil, the Philippines and El Salvador followed. But the vaccine is awaiting regulatory reviews in Europe and dozens of non-European countries, as well as prequalification by the WHO.

According to the New England Journal of Medicine, a study of children from 9 to 16 years old showed that the vaccine reduces the risk of contracting dengue by 65.6 percent. It also prevents dengue hospitalizations by 80 percent, and severe dengue cases by 93 percent. But the effectiveness was lower for children younger than 9, as well as against the type of dengue caused by serotype 2  one of the four strains of dengue.

"A vaccine able to reduce six out of 10 cases, or more importantly to reduce by 80 percent the risk of hospitalization or 93 percent of the risk of dengue hemorrhagic fever, is a major breakthrough," Guillaume Leroy, Sanofi Pasteur's vice president for dengue vaccine, told The Associated Press, adding that the vaccine would be especially important in Asia and Latin America, where dengue incidents are high.

Leroy said that while there are differences in the level of effectiveness against the different dengue strains, the vaccine "has shown efficacy against all the four serotypes, all the serotypes circulating in the world."
US, Australian and Philippine forces start combat drills

MANILA, Philippines (AP)  Thousands of U.S. and Philippine troops, along with Australian defense forces, began annual drills Monday to prepare to quickly respond to a range of potential crises, including in the disputed South China Sea.

The exercises have been opposed in recent years by China, which has territorial disputes in the South China Sea with several countries, including the Philippines, and suspects the drills are part of efforts to contain Beijing. Washington and Manila say the drills are not directed against China, and that they also focus on responding to natural disasters and humanitarian crises.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter will fly to the Philippines to witness some of the 11-day exercises, underscoring the importance Washington puts on the joint combat drills that have been staged 32 times, said U.S. Marine Lt. Gen. John Toolan, who heads the 5,000 American military personnel taking part in the maneuvers.

U.S. and Philippine military officers stand at attention during the entrance of the colors at the opening ceremony of the annual joint U.S.-Philippines military exercise dubbed Balikatan 2016 (Shoulder-to-Shoulder) Monday, April 4, 2016 at Camp Aguinaldo, in suburban Quezon city, northeast of Manila, Philippines. The annual military drill, involving 5,000 U.S. personnel and 3,500 counterpart from the Philippines, is being conducted amidst tension in the South China Sea.(AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)

Carter's presence will "reaffirm that the relationship that we have with the Philippines is rock solid and we're side by side," Toolan, who heads U.S. Marine forces in the Pacific, said at a news conference.

A highly mobile rocket system that has been deployed in hot spots such as Afghanistan will be used during the Balikatan, or Shoulder to Shoulder, exercises for the first time, he said.

"We are very, very expeditionary. We can move this stuff anywhere we need to," Toolan said.

Filipino military officials said a key exercise will involve U.S., Australian and Philippine forces retaking an oil rig seized by hostile units in a mock assault in an unused rig off the western province of Palawan, which faces the South China Sea.

The Philippines has turned to the United States, a longtime treaty ally, and others to rapidly acquire patrol ships and planes as its territorial rifts with China have escalated in the last four years. The disputes in the South China Sea also involve Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei.

"The Philippines is the least capable armed forces in the region, and the U.S., being a big brother, is a big help," said Philippine Vice Admiral Alexander Lopez, who heads the contingent of about 3,500 Filipino military personnel involved in the exercises.

While many Filipinos welcome American support in strengthening the Philippines' territorial defense, left-wing activists and nationalists have opposed a growing U.S. military presence in the former American colony, along with China's increasingly assertive advances in disputed waters.

Dozens of left-wing activists protested at the U.S. Embassy in Manila on Monday, waving placards that read "No to China aggression" and "U.S. troops, Philippines is not your playground."

Protesters shout slogans as they burn a mock U.S. flag during a rally at the U.S. Embassy in Manila to coincide with the start of the annual joint U.S.-Philippines military exercise, dubbed Balikatan 2016 (Shoulder-to-Shoulder), Monday, April 4, 2016 in Quezon, Philippines. The annual military drill, involving 5,000 U.S. personnel and 3,500 counterpart from the Philippines, is being conducted amidst tension in the South China Sea. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)

Protesters shout slogans as they burn a mock U.S. flag during a rally at the U.S. Embassy to coincide with the start of the annual joint U.S.-Philippines military exercise, dubbed Balikatan 2016 (Shoulder-to-Shoulder), Monday, April 4, 2016 in Quezon, Philippines. The annual military drill, involving 5,000 U.S. personnel and 3,500 counterpart from the Philippines, is being conducted amidst tension in the South China Sea. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)

Protesters display placards against China and U.S. during a rally near the U.S. Embassy to coincide with the start of the annual joint U.S.-Philippines military exercise dubbed Balikatan 2016 (Shoulder-to-Shoulder) Monday, April 4, 2016 in Quezon, Philippines. The annual military drill, involving 5,000 U.S. personnel and 3,500 counterpart from the Philippines, is being conducted amidst tension in the South China Sea. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)
The Latest: Iraqi troops capture key village outside Mosul

BEIRUT (AP)  The Latest on the interconnected conflicts in Iraq and Syria (all times local):

3.00 p.m.

Iraqi officials say troops have recaptured a key village outside the Islamic State-held city of Mosul after days of heavy fighting.

This image posted on the Twitter page of Syria's al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front on Friday, April 1, 2016, shows a Nusra Front tank firing at Syrian troops and pro-government gunmen in the northern village of al-Ais in Aleppo province, Syria. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says 12 Hezbollah fighters were killed and dozens were wounded in Saturday's attack by militants led by al-Qaida's Syria branch  known as the Nusra Front  on the northern village of al-Ais. The title in Arabic that reads "introduction attacks with heavy weapons on al-Ais." (Al-Nusra Front via AP)

Lt. Col. Mohammed al-Wagaa of the Iraqi army said troops retook the village of al-Nasr, near the Tigris river, on Monday, after destroying six suicide car bombers that had tried to attack them.

He says a Sunni tribal leader, Sheikh Faris al-Sabawi, was killed by an IS sniper who stayed behind in the village.

Mukhlis al-Habi, a Sunni militia commander, confirms the killing of al-Sabawi, who commanded hundreds of Sunni fighters and received aid from the Baghdad government.

The Iraqi army, along with pro-government militias, launched an offensive last month aimed at retaking Mosul, the country's second largest city, which was captured by IS in the summer of 2014.

Their progress in villages outside the city has been slowed by roadside bombs and other booby traps.

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1:15 p.m.

Iraqi officials say a suicide attack south of Baghdad has killed at least 14 people.

A police officer says the suicide bomber blew himself up on Monday inside a restaurant in Dhi Qar province that is frequented by Shiite paramilitary militia fighters.

He added that at least 27 others were wounded in the attack that targeted a famous restaurant on the main highway that links Baghdad with the southern provinces.

Dhi Qar is located about 200 miles (320 kilometers) southeast.

A medical official confirmed the causality figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release information.

The attack came hours after two separate suicide bombings outside Baghdad killed at least 10 troops.

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1 p.m.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry says its consulate in the Iraqi city of Mosul was destroyed by U.S.-led coalition jets because it was occupied by fighters from the Islamic State group.

In a statement issued Monday morning, the ministry said "Turkey's views and approval were taken at all stages concerning the preparation and execution" of this operation.

The Turkish consulate compound in Mosul had been occupied by IS fighters since June 2014 and "high-level" militants were residing there, according to the Foreign Ministry.

The statement said coalition war planes carried out the strikes at 3 a.m. Monday. It did not specify the countries involved.

IS seized 49 Turkish hostages, including Consul General Ozturk Yilmaz and other diplomats, when it overrun Mosul in spring 2014.

The hostages were later released, freeing up Turkey to take a more active role in the war against IS.

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12:30 p.m.

Officials say separate suicide attacks outside the Iraqi capital have killed at least 10 troops.

Police say the deadliest of Monday's attacks took place in Baghdad's northeastern suburb of Sadr al-Qanat when a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into a security checkpoint, killing six troops and wounding 13 others.

They added that another suicide car bomber hit a headquarters of paramilitary troops in the town of Mishahda, 20 miles (30 kilometers) north of Baghdad, killing three troops and wounding 10 others.

Medical officials confirmed the causality figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release information.

The attacks come as the Islamic State group has lost ground on a number of fronts in Syria and Iraq, where it governs a self-styled Islamic caliphate.

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10:30 a.m.

A senior Al-Qaida official was killed in air strikes Sunday night that killed at least 21 other militants in Idlib province, a jihadist stronghold in northern Syria, according to monitoring groups.

The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadi websites, said Abu Firas al-Souri died in U.S. strikes. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the jets were thought to belong to the Syrian or Russian Air Forces. It said they targeted the headquarters of Jund al-Aqsa, an extremist group that fights alongside al-Qaida's Syrian affiliate, the Nusra Front.

Abu Firas al-Souri was the former official spokesman for the Nusra Front, the group reported on social media Monday.

A 2014 biographical video about al-Souri, obtained by SITE, says he used to represent Osama bin Laden in Pakistan after he met the al-Qaida founder in Afghanistan during the jihad against the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

Al-Souri, born outside Damascus in 1949, followed the path of many Syrian jihadists. A graduate of the country's military college, he trained jihadist cells in the country between 1977 and 1980, heading several operations against the authorities for the latter part of that period. He was expelled from the Syrian military in part because of his Islamist ties in 1979.

He fled to Jordan in 1980 then to Afghanistan in 1981 where he trained jihadists coming to the war-torn country from across Asia and the Arab world. He became an associate of bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a senior al-Qaida commander who led the organization's affiliate in Iraq following the 2003 U.S. invasion.

Al-Souri participated in a number of major military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan before transferring to Yemen in 2003. In 2013, the al-Qaida leadership transferred him to Syria to mend the growing rift between the group and the Islamic State.

A media outlet belonging to the Lebanese militia Hezbollah said al-Souri's son was also killed in the air strikes.

Hezbollah has sent thousands of its fighters to fight alongside Syrian government forces in the country's five-year civil war. The group was reported to have lost a dozen soldiers in fierce fighting in northern Syria last weekend as jihadist groups alongside rebel militias mounted an offensive against several government positions.

Iraq's elite counter terrorism forces advance through soft desert terrain outside the western Islamic State held town of Hit, 85 miles (140 kilometers) west of Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, April 3, 2016. Iraqi forces said Sunday that they have taken the northern edge of the Islamic State group held town of Hit, after hundreds of roadside bombs littering the surrounding area slowed progress for days. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

Iraq's elite counter terrorism forces advance through soft desert terrain outside the western Islamic State held town of Hit, 85 miles (140 kilometers) west of Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, April 3, 2016. Iraqi forces said Sunday that they have taken the northern edge of the Islamic State group held town of Hit, after hundreds of roadside bombs littering the surrounding area slowed progress for days. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

Iraqi security forces detain suspected members of the Islamic State group for interrogation after the men were found among civilians returning to Ramadi for the first time since the city was taken back by Iraqi government forces earlier this year, at a checkpoint in Ramadi, Iraq, Sunday, April 3, 2016. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

In this image posted on the Twitter page of Syria's al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front on Friday, April 1, 2016, shows fighters from al-Qaida's branch in Syria, the Nusra Front, marching toward the northern village of al-Ais in Aleppo province, Syria. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says 12 Hezbollah fighters were killed and dozens were wounded in Saturday's attack by militants led by al-Qaida's Syria branch  known as the Nusra Front  on the northern village of al-Ais. The title in Arabic that reads "holy warriors getting ready to attack the enemies of God in al-Ais." (Al-Nusra Front via AP)
Croatian police probe massive theft from its headquarters

ZAGREB, Croatia (AP)  Croatian police are investigating the reported theft of 280,000 euros ($320,000) and two kilograms (4.4 pounds) of gold  all snatched from the headquarters of the Croatian police.

Helena Biocic of the police media office confirmed Monday that the theft had taken place, but refused to reveal any details.

The Jutarnji List newspaper, which reported what was taken, says the heist occurred late Sunday. The report says the thieves got in by the fire stairs and broke into the office of the organized crime department chief, Zeljko Dolacki.
All-star benefit planned for funk pioneer Bernie Worrell

NEW YORK (AP)  Bernie Worrell, funk's "Wizard of Woo," is amazed at the lineup of friends and admirers expected to turn out for his benefit concert: George Clinton and Nona Hendryx, Jonathan Demme and Bootsy Collins, Paul Shaffer and Living Colour.

Even Meryl Streep and Rick Springfield, with whom Worrell worked on last year's movie "Ricki and the Flash," are scheduled to appear Monday night at Webster Hall for "All the Woo in the World," a "funkraiser" to help pay for Worrell's cancer treatment.

"I think it's an outpouring of love," the 71-year-old Worrell told The Associated Press during a recent telephone interview. "I'm a humble type of person who just tries to make people happy. I didn't know this event would be so big."

FILE - In this March 18, 2002, file photo, Bernie Worrell speaks at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in New York. An all-star benefit is planned for funk pioneer Worrell on Monday, April 4, 2016, in New York to raise money for his cancer treatment. The keyboardist for George Clintons Parliament-Funkadelic was diagnosed with Stage Four lung cancer. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens, File)

Diagnosed a few months ago with stage-four lung cancer, the keyboardist for Clinton's Parliament-Funkadelic empire of the 1970s has never been as famous as some of the performers at the Webster Hall show. But he is revered by fellow musicians and others who know him and his trademark riffs, screeches and squiggles, essential to such hits as "Flashlight," ''Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker)" and "One Nation Under a Groove."

"Bernie was the key," Clinton says. "He knew so many different kinds of music and knew all the mechanics."

"He gives you the theology of funk," David Byrne said of Worrell, who has played on such Talking Heads albums as "Speaking in Tongues," and on "Stop Making Sense," Demme's 1984 concert documentary. "Bernie can take the music to a very cosmic place."

Hendryx, who has known Worrell for decades, organized the event and says that more than 70 people have agreed to come. She hopes the show will raise around $75,000 and is counting on an online auction (www.sweetrelief.org) to bring in more, with items including a signed poster from the Rolling Stones and a guitar autographed by Carlos Santana.

She and Clinton lamented that Worrell earned relatively little money from his P-Funk recordings  royalties for the group have been the subject of numerous legal actions over the years  and Hendryx was determined that he not "work himself to death" to raise the money himself.

"He's an amazing musician and a lovely person to spend time with, and he's so under-recognized," Hendryx says. "We have lost so many people from our generation lately and we've been doing a lot of memorials. I thought it would be great for Bernie to have this celebration and be able to hear how people appreciate his musicianship and love him as a person."

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Online:

http://sweetrelief.org/
AP Interview: Turkish Cypriot head: Gas may fund peace deal

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP)  Cyprus' potential wealth from newly-found offshore gas reserves could be used to partly fund a costly deal reunifying the ethnically-divided island, the leader of the breakaway Turkish Cypriots said Monday.

Mustafa Akinci said natural gas could boost energy cooperation between Israel, Cyprus and Turkey and foster peace in a tumultuous region, but warned unilateral drilling by Greek Cypriots could re-ignite tensions.

"Definitely (gas is) going to be an asset, if wisely prepared and conducted in a way not to trigger yet (more) tension in the area," Akinci told The Associated Press in an interview.

Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci smiles is seen at his office during an interview for the Associated Press in the Turkish breakaway north part of the divided capital Nicosia in this ethnically Mediterranean island of Cyprus, Monday, April 4, 2016. The leader of the breakaway Turkish Cypriots says the ethnically divided islands potential wealth from newly found offshore gas deposits could partly pay for a costly reunification deal. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)

Akinci criticized the island's Greek Cypriot-run, internationally-recognized government for launching last month a third round for offshore gas drilling licenses despite an "understanding" by both sides that there's "no urgency on drilling."

He said exploratory drilling in waters off Cyprus' southern coastline in 2014 led to peace talks breaking off amid a running dispute over rights to the divided island's offshore mineral wealth.

Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades halted peace talks with Akinci's predecessor in July 2014 in response to a Turkish oil and gas search in waters where the Cypriot government had already licensed companies to drill. Talks recommenced in May last year.

Turkey doesn't recognize Cyprus as a state and insists a unilateral Greek Cypriot oil and gas search flouts the rights of Turkish Cypriots to the island's potential hydrocarbon riches. The Cypriot government insists it's within its sovereign rights to carry out an oil and gas search and that any future mineral bounty will be shared with all the citizens of a reunified island.

Cyprus was split in 1974 when Turkey invaded after a coup aiming at union with Greece. Only Turkey recognizes a Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence and it maintains more than 35,000 troops in the breakaway north.

"My understanding was that when we started the negotiation this was not going to create trouble for our process," Akinci said. "Now I see the potential danger."

U.S. company Noble Energy discovered a field around 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Cyprus that's estimated to contain more than 4 trillion cubic feet of gas. France's Total and Eni along with its South Korean partner KOGAS are also licensed to drill off Cyprus.

Akinci said with the "likely" improvement in relations between Turkey and Israel, Cypriot and Israeli gas could flow to Turkish and European markets through a pipeline linking a reunified island with Turkey about 70 kilometers (45 miles) away. A planned Turkey-Cyprus electricity cable link would further boost energy ties.

"This will not only be an energy corridor, but a corridor for peace also," Akinci said. "If you have this in the context of a peace agreement, this can also become a tool of cooperation."

The Turkish Cypriot leader said although European Union and U.S. officials have pledged financial support for a peace deal, the cost of reunification will be high  higher than any initial estimates.

Akinci said "we are closer than ever before" to a peace deal after strong progress he and Anastasiades have made in 10 months of talks. But differences remain and the pace of negotiations has slowed down because of parliamentary elections in the internationally-recognized Greek Cypriot south next month.

He said Turkish Cypriots should remain a majority in the north which they will administer within an envisioned two-zone federation, even though most homes and property there belong to Greek Cypriots.

Akinci said several "remedies" like property swaps will ensure that property rights are respected. But he suggested monetary compensation will likely be the preferred option to ensure Turkish Cypriots retain most of the property in the north and remain the numerical majority there.

"I don't foresee a situation where the Turkish Cypriots are not going to become a majority in their own area that they will be governing," Akinci said.

Akinci said Turkish Cypriots insist on alternating the presidency of a federal Cyprus between the two communities as well as having Turkey involved in any arrangement guaranteeing the security of a peace accord despite Greek Cypriot opposition on both points.

Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci is seen at his office during an interview for the Associated Press in the Turkish breakaway north part of the divided capital Nicosia in this ethnically Mediterranean island of Cyprus, Monday, April 4, 2016. The leader of the breakaway Turkish Cypriots says the ethnically divided islands potential wealth from newly found offshore gas deposits could partly pay for a costly reunification deal. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)

Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci is seen at his office in front of the portrait of the Turkish Republic founder Kemal Ataturk, during an interview for the Associated Press in the Turkish breakaway north part of the divided capital Nicosia in this ethnically Mediterranean island of Cyprus, Monday, April 4, 2016. The leader of the breakaway Turkish Cypriots says the ethnically divided islands potential wealth from newly found offshore gas deposits could partly pay for a costly reunification deal. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)
Trump wants Kasich out of race as Wisconsin vote looms

MILWAUKEE (AP)  Americans return to the polls for yet another presidential primary election in what has proven the most chaotic Republican contest in recent memory, with front-runner Donald Trump now pushing rival John Kasich to leave the White House race saying the nomination is beyond his grasp.

Trump, who is badly trailing Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in the polls ahead of Tuesday's primary in the Midwestern state of Wisconsin, argues that Kasich is unfairly siphoning off delegates who will select the party's candidate for the November general election. Trump holds a significant lead over Cruz in primaries and caucuses so far, but looks as though he will be unable to gain the 1,237 delegates needed to lock up the nomination ahead of this summer's national convention in Cleveland.

Trying hard to right himself after a difficult week, Trump said it was unfair for Kasich, who has won only one primary in his home state of Ohio, to continue campaigning. He suggested that Kasich, who has pledged to make it to the convention, follow the lead of former candidates Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush  and quit.

"If I didn't have Kasich, I automatically win," Trump said Sunday evening in Wisconsin.

Trump said Kasich could ask to be considered at the Republican convention even if he stopped competing in the remaining nominating contests. He said earlier Sunday that he had shared his concerns with Republican National Committee officials at a meeting in Washington last week.

Kasich's campaign countered that neither Trump nor Cruz would have enough delegates to win the nomination outright. Trump faces major opposition in the mainstream of the party where he is seen as running an outlandish campaign that will make him unelectable in November.

"Since he thinks it's such a good idea, we look forward to Trump dropping out before the convention," said Kasich spokesman Chris Schrimpf.

Across the political aisle, Democrat Hillary Clinton told NBC's "Meet the Press" that the FBI had yet to request an interview regarding the private email server she used as secretary of state.

Clinton and her Democratic opponent, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, announced they'd agreed to debate in New York before the important April 19 primary, though their campaigns continued debating over when to schedule the face-off. Sanders, meanwhile, fired up a crowd in Wausau, Wisconsin, hoping to continue a string of recent campaign victories even as Clinton maintains a sizable delegate lead.

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Israeli electric company cuts Palestinian supply due to debt

JERUSALEM (AP)  Israel's state electric company on Monday reduced power to a major West Bank city, saying it would take similar steps in other Palestinian areas over the next two weeks because of unpaid debt.

The Israel Electric Corp. said it had reduced its supply to Bethlehem by 50 percent, days after doing so in the city of Jericho. The company said the internationally-backed Palestinian Authority owes it nearly $460 million.

"The company's management stressed that it intends to take all available means to collect the debt and prevent it from growing further," it said in a statement.

Palestinian fishermen display fish for sale after a night long fishing trip, in Gaza seaport , Monday, April 4, 2016. Fishermen in Gaza can now sail farther from the coastal territory after Israel expanded the fishing zone off parts of Gaza by three more nautical miles to nine on Sunday. (AP Photo/ Khalil Hamra)

Israel provides electricity to the West Bank through several Palestinian distribution companies. Last year, it briefly cut off power to parts of the West Bank several times because of the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority's heavy debts. It has also deducted money from regular tax transfers to the Palestinians to help cover the debts.

Hisham Omari, director of one of the distributors, the Jerusalem District Electricity Co., said that Bethlehem lost power for four hours on Monday, and nearby villages were expected to be affected in the next two days.

"We tried as much as possible not to reach this situation, but clearly this is a political decision," he said. "Today everybody in Bethlehem suffered," including hotels and the main hospital, he said.

In Gaza, meanwhile, local fishermen returned from their first expedition in an expanded fishing zone with a paltry catch.

The head of the Gaza fishermen's union, Zakareya Bakr, said the some 280 boats snatched up an average of just eight kilograms (17 Ibs.) of fish. He said the catch included red mullet, sea bream, grouper and some small rays.

Israel set a three-mile limit in 2007 after the Hamas militant group seized control of Gaza from forces loyal to Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. It expanded it to six miles after an eight-day war with Hamas in 2012. The new maritime perimeter expands the fishing zone an additional three miles off parts of Gaza.

"Fishing in six miles is like fishing in a swimming pool," said fisherman Shaker Salah. "Expanding it provides an open space, which is better."

Palestinian fishermen display fish for sale after a night long fishing trip, in Gaza seaport , Monday, April 4, 2016. Fishermen in Gaza can now sail farther from the coastal territory after Israel expanded the fishing zone off parts of Gaza by three more nautical miles to nine on Sunday. (AP Photo/ Khalil Hamra)

Palestinian fishermen prepare fish for sale after a night long fishing trip, in Gaza seaport , Monday, April 4, 2016. Fishermen in Gaza can now sail farther from the coastal territory after Israel expanded the fishing zone off parts of Gaza by three more nautical miles to nine on Sunday. (AP Photo/ Khalil Hamra)

Palestinian fishermen prepare fish on their boat for sale after a night long fishing trip, in Gaza seaport , Monday, April 4,2016. Fishermen in Gaza can now sail farther from the coastal territory after Israel expanded the fishing zone off parts of Gaza by three more nautical miles to nine on Sunday. (AP Photo/ Khalil Hamra)

Palestinian fishermen prepare fish on their boat for sale after a night long fishing trip, in Gaza seaport , Monday, April 4, 2016. Fishermen in Gaza can now sail farther from the coastal territory after Israel expanded the fishing zone off parts of Gaza by three more nautical miles to nine on Sunday. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)
French mayor convicted over deadly sea wall breach

PARIS (AP)  A French appeals court has sentenced a former mayor to a suspended two-year prison term for ignoring flood risks and encouraging development in his Atlantic Coast town before aging sea walls collapsed in a 2010 storm that killed 29 people.

The storm, called Xynthia, smashed through thousands of homes, destroyed oyster farms, flooded ports and provoked heavy criticism of weak sea walls along the coast.
Reported abuses by Venezuelan police during crime crackdown

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP)  A leading human rights group says Venezuelan police committed widespread abuses during a nationwide crime crackdown last year in which 245 people dead.

Human Rights Watch published a report Monday in conjunction with the Venezuelan group PROVEA documenting what they call a pattern of illegal killings, arbitrary detentions, and wrongful evictions during 2015's "Operation to Liberate and Protect the People."

The group detailed 20 cases in which witnesses say police killed civilians who were unarmed or in the process of surrendering.

The Venezuelan government acknowledges that 245 people were killed during the campaign, but has not said under what circumstances. The public prosecutor's office announced this year that it was investigating the killings.

The Human Rights Watch report describes cases of police robbing people's homes, forcing people not charged with any crime to kneel in the sun or lie on the ground for hours, and beating people for no apparent reason.

"It also shows that the unchecked exercise of power by the executive in Venezuela has left people of all political stripes  including government supporters in low-income communities  defenseless in the face of abusive government policies and practices," Human Rights Watch America's director Jose Miguel Vivanco said.

The government says the anti-crime campaign launched in July 2015 allowed it to wrest back control from gangs nationwide.

Residents of communities targeted by the operation complained of police abuse last year, but many crime-weary Venezuelans supported the initiative despite indications that innocent people were being swept up along with criminals.

Venezuela has one of the world's highest murder rates, and people here broadly support iron-fist policing. And it's the poor, those more likely to be caught in the crossfire, who most want to see greater use of force, according to national polls.

While police generally acknowledge when they kill someone, it is not always clear that the slaying was committed in self-defense.

Police detained more than 14,000 people during last year's campaign, but only charged 100 of those with crimes. Human Rights Watch said the discrepancy between those numbers suggests police were indiscriminately arresting thousands of people.
Ukrainian president under fire over Panama Papers

KIEV, Ukraine (AP)  Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko found himself in a political storm Monday after leaked documents from a Panamanian firm pointed to his offshore assets, with some adversaries calling for his removal from office.

Poroshenko, a candy magnate who won election in 2014, insisted Monday he has done nothing wrong and hasn't managed his assets since being elected.

But Oleh Lyashko, leader of the Radical Party, said Monday the trove of data on offshore financial dealings revealed by an international media consortium has implicated Poroshenko in alleged abuse of office and tax evasion.

FILE - In this Monday, July 13, 2015 file photo, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko during an interview in Kiev, Ukraine. Ukraines President Petro Poroshenko has found himself amid a perfect political storm over the leaked documents from a Panamanian firm pointing at his offshore assets, with some of his political adversaries calling for his removal from office. Poroshenko insisted Monday, April 4, 2016 that he has done nothing wrong and hasnt managed his assets since being elected. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, file)

Poroshenko promised voters he would sell his candy business, Roshen, when he ran for office. But documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca indicated that instead he set up an offshore holding company to move his business to the British Virgin Islands, possibly saving millions of dollars in Ukrainian taxes.

Lyashko urged lawmakers to initiate impeachment proceedings against the president. Poroshenko, whose faction has 136 seats in the 450-seat parliament, appears protected from the motion, which requires a three-quarter majority to pass, but the scandal stands to hurt him politically.

In a Facebook posting, Poroshenko insisted that he hasn't managed his assets since taking the office.

"I believe I might be the first top office official in Ukraine who treats declaring of assets, paying taxes and conflict of interest issues profoundly and seriously, in full compliance with the Ukrainian and international private law," he said. "Having become a President, I am not participating in management of my assets, having delegated this responsibility to the respective consulting and law firms. I expect that they will provide all necessary details to the Ukrainian and international media."

Poroshenko's advisers have insisted the offshore business was part of corporate restructuring intended to facilitate the eventual sale of Roshen assets.

But Poroshenko's critics scoffed at the argument, saying the revelations meant the president was withholding his taxes from the state coffers at a time when the Ukrainian economy is in tailspin and the nation is in a tug-of-war with Russia.

The news about Poroshenko's alleged offshore business came even as his government has campaigned against the use of offshores.

"They should stop imitating the fight against corruption. Poroshenko must step down," said Lyashko, whose faction has 21 seats in the Verkhovna Rada, the country's national parliament.

The scandal has flared up amid bitter political infighting between Poroshenko's bloc and the party of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, which has raged for months and involved mutual accusations of corruption. The spats have strained public patience and eroded the confidence of the West.

Some of Poroshenko's allies backed calls for setting up a parliamentary commission to investigate the allegations.

Mustafa Nayyem, a prominent journalist who is a member of Poroshenko's bloc in parliament, said while the Panama papers don't give any grounds for impeaching the president it was necessary to launch a parliamentary inquiry.

"It's impossible to extinguish that fire by silence or vague excuses," he said.

FILE - In this Monday, July 13, 2015 file photo, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko speaks during an interview in Kiev, Ukraine. Ukraines President Petro Poroshenko has found himself amid a perfect political storm over the leaked documents from a Panamanian firm pointing at his offshore assets, with some of his political adversaries calling for his removal from office. Poroshenko insisted Monday, April 4, 2016 that he has done nothing wrong and hasnt managed his assets since being elected. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, file)

FILE - In this Monday, July 13, 2015 file photo, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko speaks during an interview in Kiev, Ukraine. kraines President Petro Poroshenko has found himself amid a perfect political storm over the leaked documents from a Panamanian firm pointing at his offshore assets, with some of his political adversaries calling for his removal from office. Poroshenko insisted Monday, April 4, 2016 that he has done nothing wrong and hasnt managed his assets since being elected. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, file)
More two-man patrols after solo officer killed Alabama man

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP)  More two-officer police teams are patrolling the streets of Montgomery, Alabama, after a white officer on a solo patrol shot and killed a black man in February.

Police Chief Ernest Finley said last week that two-officer patrol units have been assigned to six "high-crime" districts in a pilot program that will likely be expanded.

The new approach comes after 24-year-old Officer Aaron Smith shot 58-year-old Greg Gunn during an early morning patrol on Feb. 25. Smith said he stopped Gunn for a field interview and chased the man when he fled.

Smith, a four-year veteran of the force, has been charged with murder.

Smith's attorneys have stressed that he was a young officer working a solo graveyard shift and said he drew reasonable conclusions about a man walking alone in a "high-crime" area at 3 a.m.

Police and city officials won't directly comment on Smith's case, but Finley said the policy changes were made after the shooting "for the safety of the community and the officers."

In addition to increased two-officer patrols, the department has identified veteran officers with experience in those neighborhoods to train young officers in the field. The districts were identified based on citizen complaints and crime data, Finley said, prioritizing violent crimes but taking property crimes into account as well.

Police departments nationwide began shifting from two-officer to one-officer patrols in the 1990s and early 2000s due to budget cuts, said Gary A. Rini, a police procedures expert and retired Ohio police commander. Many departments enacted new policies like requiring solo officers to wait for backup in non-urgent situations.

"If there's not a crime in progress, is it so important to stop a person, by yourself, without backup?" Rini said. "Or is it something that could be passed over? That's a tough decision, but it is part of the equation."

The National Association of Police Organizations advocates for increased use of two-officer police patrols. Executive director Bill Johnson said they are "safer" across the board for officers but also enable officers to interact more comfortably with the community. Johnson said he's not familiar with the specifics of the Smith case but believes two-officer patrols are less likely to "worry about being alone in a potentially volatile situation."

"It's not because you've got another person watching what you're doing, but officers feel more comfortable," Johnson said. "They don't have to worry as much about their surroundings. They don't have to be as cautious or suspicious. ... (They) don't immediately have to escalate to the next level because they're by themselves."

In Montgomery, an external investigation into Gunn's death is ongoing, but testimony from a probable cause hearing last week revealed Smith violated the department's body camera policy and told investigators two conflicting accounts of the incident. Smith's case will now go before a grand jury.

The department is also "in the process" of upgrading its body cameras, Finley said. Officers currently have the discretion to turn their cameras on and off due to battery and storage issues.

Officials said Smith didn't switch on his body camera or his dash camera before approaching Gunn, a violation of department policy. Patrol car cameras automatically switch on when an officer activates his or her blue lights, but Smith didn't activate his. The first officer arriving on the scene didn't turn his camera on either.

Finley said the department does discipline officers who fail to use their cameras in the field.

"We have some success stories that really show the true essence of what happened, and we have some incidents where the officer didn't use it or used it ineffectively," Finley said. "It's a very effective tool, and we will continue to use and get better at it."

Gunn family attorney Tyrone Means said the policy changes are a "start," but he said there is a longstanding lack of trust in the city's police department because of violent incidents over the past 50 years. Means said police don't interact with community members and aren't familiar with the neighborhoods they are policing.
Kathleen Battle to return to the Metropolitan Opera

NEW YORK (AP)  Kathleen Battle is returning to the Metropolitan Opera, 22 years after the company fired her and publicly accused her of "unprofessional actions."

Battle, who will be 68 in August, is scheduled to sing a recital on Nov. 13 titled, "Underground Railroad-A Spiritual Journey," the company said Monday. The soprano will be accompanied by pianist Joel Martin and by a choir under the direction of James Davis Jr., director of music ministries and fine arts at New York's Abyssinian Baptist Church.

Battle made her Met debut in 1977 and was a favorite of music director James Levine. She walked off the stage during rehearsals in 1993 after battling with conductor Christian Thielemann over tempo and canceled five scheduled performances as Sophie in Richard Strauss' "Der Rosenkavalier."

FILE - In this Nov. 19, 2005 file photo, opera star Kathleen Battle performs during the grand opening gala celebration for the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Ky. Battle is returning to the Metropolitan Opera, 22 years after the company fired her citing "unprofessional actions." Battle, who turns 68 in August, will sing a recital on Nov. 13, 2016, titled "Underground Railroad _ A Spiritual Journey," the company said Monday, April 4, 2016. (AP Photo/Ed Reinke, File)

Joseph Volpe, then the Met's general manager, publicly announced in February 1994 that the company had terminated her contract for Donizetti's "La Fille du Regiment (The Daughter of the Regiment)," saying her actions "were profoundly detrimental to the artistic collaboration among all the cast members."

"I don't believe there's any ill will towards her at all, but I wasn't here 20 years ago," Peter Gelb, who took over from Volpe in 2006, said in a telephone interview. "I think everyone at the Met likes to hear great artists."

Gelb said he spoke with Battle about 10 years ago and was unsuccessful in an attempt to have her return to the Met for a revival of Mozart's "Die Zauberfloete (The Magic Flute)." He said they started discussing the spiritual concert several years ago, and Battle tested her voice on the Met stage in December.

Tim Fox, Battle's agent, didn't respond to an email seeking comment. In the past, she has deflected questions about her Met departure.

"Spirituals have the power to uplift and to heal, and we certainly need that in today's world," Battle said in a statement released by the Met. "This is a program which brings together my musical background and my cultural heritage, in the acoustical splendor of the Met."

Battle has sung 224 performances of 14 roles with the Met, last appearing with the company in 1993.

During a November 1985 performance of Mozart's "Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro)" at the Met, she was said to have thrown the clothes of soprano Carol Vaness into a hallway because she wanted Vaness' larger Met dressing room. Also during the 1993-94 season, reports said workers at the San Francisco Opera had T-shirts created that read: "I Survived the Battle."

The Met has had famous feuds in the past. Soprano Maria Callas was fired by general manager Rudolf Bing in 1956 after she tried to back out of two performances of Verdi's "La Traviata," then returned in 1965 for two performances of Puccini's "Tosca."

Volpe didn't want to get into a rehash of the past.
Obama says NATO alliance remains key to collective security

WASHINGTON (AP)  President Barack Obama on Monday called NATO "the linchpin" of U.S. security policy and a critical ally in the fight against terrorism, indirectly countering Republican Donald Trump's recent claims that the 67-year-old alliance is obsolete.

Speaking after an Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Obama praised the alliance's contributions to the fight against the Islamic State group, its partnership in Afghanistan and assistance in the refugee crisis in southern Europe.

"NATO continues to be the linchpin, the cornerstone of our collective defense and U.S. security policy," Obama said.

President Barack Obama shakes hands with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg during their meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Monday, April 4, 2016. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Obama did not name Trump and ignored a reporter's question about the GOP presidential candidate's recent statements. Still, his comments struck a strong contrast to Trump's assertion that NATO is irrelevant and ill-suited to fight terrorism. As president, Trump has said he would force member nations to increase their contributions, even if that risked breaking up the alliance.

Both the president and the secretary general aimed to dispute that characterization. In remarks after the meeting, Obama described Europe as especially burdened by instability and reliant on Trans-Atlantic alliance.

"This is obviously a tumultuous time in the world. Europe is a focal point of a lot of these stresses and strains in the global security system," he said. "It is because of the strength of NATO ... that I'm confident that despite these choppy waters we will be able to continue to underscore and underwrite the peace and security and prosperity that has been a hallmark of the trans-Atlantic relationship."

Stoltenberg described the alliance "as important as ever."

"NATO has been able to adapt to a more dangerous world," he said, noting the NATO had begun training Iraqi soldiers last week.

Obama said he and Stoltenberg discussed NATO's potential role in Libya, as well as its plans to assist the European Union with the migrant crisis stemming from Syria's civil war. He says the migrants are taking very dangerous trips and that the response must be "humane and thoughtful."

Obama noted he has proposed quadrupling Pentagon spending on troops and training in Europe, as part of the U.S. military's accelerating effort to deter Russia.

President Barack Obama listens as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Monday, April 4, 2016. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks during his meeting with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Monday, April 4, 2016. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Once wedded to oil, Houston economy carries on despite bust

HOUSTON (AP)  Amanda Salazar watched for a year as colleagues at the Houston-based oil rig manufacturer where she worked lost jobs, victims of the latest oil bust. She realized it was time for a change before she too got a pink slip.

So Salazar left her job as a software trainer with National Oilwell Varco for a similar position at a hospital. Even if the oil market turned around immediately, she reasoned, it might take 18 months before the industry picked up again.

"And that's a long time to be sitting at work wondering if you're going to get laid off," she said.

In this Feb. 26, 2016, photo, standing in a supply closet, Shawn Baker talks about her new career in Houston. After Baker was laid off from a job building power units for offshore oil rigs she went into business for herself with an offbeat idea called Tantrums, a paid service that lets customers take out their frustrations by smashing plates, televisions and other objects in various rooms with sledgehammers, bats and pipes. (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan)

For generations, anyone who lived in Houston long enough was sure to feel the pain of an oil bust. But 21st century Houston isn't like its oil-dependent predecessor. The city now has a more diversified economy, plus help from a wave of construction at its petrochemical plants. Even as the price of oil has plummeted, Houston has carried on, maintaining a jobless rate of 4.7 percent in February, slightly better than the national average.

"Houston in the broadest sense is going to do fine. It's the individual stories and the individual companies that are going to hurt and suffer," said Patrick Jankowski, regional economist for the Greater Houston Partnership, a local business group.

For the 38-year-old Salazar, her move proved prescient. Her old department was eliminated on March 11, the same day she started at Memorial Hermann Sugar Land Hospital. The downturn resulted in about 50,000 layoffs last year of Houston-area oil and gas workers.

Oil is still vitally important here. The most recent boom helped create 100,000 jobs annually for several years. Many of the largest energy companies, including ConocoPhillips and Shell Oil Co., are headquartered in Houston and have gleaming buildings in the Energy Corridor, a 10-mile stretch along Interstate 10 that's home to oil companies as well as energy-related engineering and industrial firms.

But the corridor is now dotted with "for lease" signs. Energy companies are dumping empty office space into the sublease market, which has grown to more than 8 million square feet. Another 8 million square feet of new office space that developers have under construction is set to be built this year. These were projects that were already in the pipeline before oil prices started to tumble.

The oil downturn has hit many Houston-based oil companies hard, including: ConocoPhillips, which reported in February that it lost $3.45 billion for the fourth quarter of 2015, and Marathon Oil Corp., which reported a loss of $2.2 billion for 2015

At Carmelo's Italian Restaurant in the corridor, owner Carmelo Mauro has been forced to cut staff hours and make sure meal portions are exact because of falling revenue.

"People are not going out or they are watching what they are spending or some don't have a job," he said.

The layoffs aren't over. Another 21,000 job losses in the oil and gas sectors are projected for this year, according to the Greater Houston Partnership.

Other problems loom, including a projected city budget shortfall of at least $140 million and a slumping commercial real estate market.

Still, the area's petrochemical plants are in the midst of a $50 billion construction boom fueled by low natural gas prices. Cheap natural gas has made it much less expensive to make products such as plastics at those facilities.

At the same time, Houston has expanded well beyond oil. In the 1980s, the city's economy was 84 percent dependent on oil and energy for its gross domestic product. That figure has dropped to about 44 percent.

Health care, construction and education added more than 65,000 jobs in 2015. February home sales were up 2.2 percent compared with the same month last year. And a recent survey by the Houston West Chamber of Commerce  which includes the Energy Corridor  found most non-energy businesses were optimistic about the economy.

The Memorial Hermann Health System currently has about 3,000 openings, many created by an expansion of facilities fueled by the city's population growth. According to recent census figures, the Houston metro area had the nation's biggest population gain between 2014 and 2015.

Hundreds of applicants to Memorial Hermann have come from oil and gas workers, said Tanya Cook, the health system's vice president of talent acquisition.

"What a lot of people don't realize is we have many of the same positions that you would find in any other industry, for instance in oil and gas," she said. "We've got HR positions and we've got finance positions and we've got IT positions."

One of Memorial Hermann's new hires is Billy Enochs, who spent about 10 years in the oil industry, most recently as a consultant for ConocoPhillips, before getting laid off in October.

Enochs, 43, who had prior experience in health care, said the latest downturn caught some people off guard, but "it's a cyclical thing."

"Anybody who's been in Houston any length of time understands that," he said.

Shawn Baker, 45, was laid off last year from a job building power units for offshore oil rigs. She had trouble finding a new job so she went into business for herself with an offbeat idea called "Tantrums," a paid service that lets customers take out their frustrations by smashing plates, televisions and other objects in various rooms with sledgehammers, bats and pipes.

Her new business started off slow but recently picked up, and Baker said she's happy she took the plunge.

Despite the economic diversification, the oil downturn could still threaten the city's future, Bill Gilmer, director of the Institute for Regional Forecasting at the University of Houston, told a February luncheon for the Houston West Chamber of Commerce.

If oil prices don't rebound by the end of 2017, when the construction boom is expected to wind down, it will be "bad news for Houston," Gilmer said.

Mauro believes his restaurant, which has endured numerous oil downturns since opening in 1981, will rebound, along with the city.

"The question is," he said, "what are we going to do to survive until it turns around once more?"

___

Follow Juan A. Lozano on Twitter at www.twitter.com/juanlozano70
Iraqi forces enter IS-held Hit, thousands flee fighting

HIT, Iraq (AP)  Iraqi forces have entered the town of Hit, a week after launching an operation to retake the western town from Islamic State group fighters, commanders at the scene said Monday.

Iraq's elite counterterrorism forces, who are leading the offensive, said they are clearing IS fighters from Hit's northern neighborhoods as they push in toward the town center.

Iraqi and coalition officials say Hit  which lies along the Euphrates river valley in Iraq's vast Anbar province  is strategically important as it sits along an IS supply line that links the extremist militants in Iraq to those in Syria.

Smoke rises as people flee their homes during clashes between Iraqi security forces and Islamic State group in Hit, 85 miles (140 kilometers) west of Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, April 4, 2016. Families, many with small children and elderly relatives say they walked for hours Monday through desert littered with roadside bombs to escape airstrikes and clashes. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

Thousands of civilians fled Hit as Iraqi troops advanced under cover of heavy airstrikes and artillery fire. Families, many with small children and elderly relatives, said they had walked for hours through desert littered with roadside bombs to escape the violence.

Iraqi forces began escorting families out of Hit in the early morning Monday. Azha Hadel and her three young children walked for five hours from her neighborhood in northern Hit to the city's outskirts, where they were loaded into open trucks by Iraqi security forces.

"Honestly we have no idea where we are going," Hadel said, her and her children's faces sunburned from the long day outdoors. "We want to go anywhere, anywhere that's safe." Iraqi counterterrorism forces at the scene said the families were being brought to a nearby camp.

Behind Hadel, black smoke rose from Hit as buildings and vehicles hit by airstrikes burned. Saha, Hadel's 12-year-old daughter, put her hands over her ears and smiled meekly as an explosion rang out in the distance.

Hundreds more civilians were slowly walking out of the town by the evening. Iraqi troops, who had spent hours clearing the territory before their assault, instructed families not to stray from the tire marks to avoid explosives. Piles of rocks and scrap metal marked unexploded bombs along the path.

At one turn, the shell of a burned Humvee was left by the roadside. The vehicle had been hit with an IS rocket the night before. The attack killed two Iraqi soldiers and wounded four others Sunday night, according to Gen. Abdul Ghani al-Asadi, the head of Iraq's counterterrorism forces.

A few meters up the road, two bodies of IS fighters lay unburied. They had been shot Sunday attempting to carry out a suicide attack on the advancing Iraqi convoy, according to Iraqi commanders at the scene.

Iraq's counterterrorism forces estimate more than 20,000 civilians remain trapped inside Hit. The large number of people in such a small area is making it difficult to quickly clear territory with airstrikes, according to al-Asadi.

On Sunday, the U.S.-led coalition launched three airstrikes that targeted IS fighters, a car bomb and a heavy machine gun, the Pentagon said in a statement.

The Hit offensive comes after a string of territorial victories for Iraqi forces over the past six months. Most recently Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, was declared fully "liberated" by Iraqi and coalition officials in February. Coalition officials estimate IS has lost more than 40 percent of the territory it held in Iraq after the summer of 2014.

"Daesh fighters now are stuck," said captain Aysar Hassan, who is with a counterterrorism battalion leading the fight, explaining he expected heavier resistance as his men approached the city center. "In Ramadi they all had places to run away to, now they don't have a way to escape," he said.

___

Associated Press writer Khalid Mohammed in Hit, Iraq contributed to this report.

People flee their homes during clashes between Iraqi security forces and Islamic State group in Hit, 85 miles (140 kilometers) west of Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, April 4, 2016. Families, many with small children and elderly relatives say they walked for hours Monday through desert littered with roadside bombs to escape airstrikes and clashes. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

Iraqi women flee their homes during clashes between Iraqi security forces and Islamic State group in Hit, 85 miles (140 kilometers) west of Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, April 4, 2016. Families, many with small children and elderly relatives say they walked for hours Monday through desert littered with roadside bombs to escape airstrikes and clashes. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

Elite counter terrorism forces escort people fleeing their homes during clashes between Iraqi security forces and Islamic State group fighters in Hit, 85 miles (140 kilometers) west of Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, April 4, 2016. Families, many with small children and elderly relatives say they walked for hours Monday through desert littered with roadside bombs to escape airstrikes and clashes. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

People flee their homes during clashes between Iraqi security forces and Islamic State group militants in Hit, 85 miles (140 kilometers) west of Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, April 4, 2016. Families, many with small children and elderly relatives say they walked for hours Monday through desert littered with roadside bombs to escape airstrikes and clashes. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

Elite counter terrorism forces escort people fleeing their homes during clashes between Iraqi security forces and the Islamic State group in Hit, 85 miles (140 kilometers) west of Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, April 4, 2016. Families, many with small children and elderly relatives say they walked for hours Monday through desert littered with roadside bombs to escape airstrikes and clashes. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)
Sheriff: 4 men assaulted 9-year-old while mother smoked meth

SALT LAKE CITY (AP)  Four men have been arrested for sexually assaulting a 9-year-old girl in a Utah home while her mother was in the garage smoking meth, authorities said Monday.

The girl's mother left her sleeping on a couch March 27 inside a home in rural Uintah County, which borders Colorado, the Uintah County Sheriff's Office said in court documents.

The four men were staying at the home and took the child into another room, where they assaulted her, investigators said. When her mother returned, the child said she wanted to leave.

This photo released by the Uintah County Sheriff's Office shows Larson RonDeau. Authorities allege four men sexually assaulted a 9-year-old girl at a Utah home while her mother was in the garage smoking meth. Sheriff's officials say in court documents the assault occurred March 27 at a home in rural Uintah County, which borders Colorado. The Uintah County Sheriff's Office says the men have been arrested. It identified them as Larson RonDeau, Josiah RonDeau, Jerry Flatlip and Randall Flatlip. (Uintah County Sheriff's Office via AP)

Two days later, the girl told her mother about the assault, deputies said. The woman then reported it to police.

The sheriff's office identified the men as 36-year-old Larson RonDeau, 20-year-old Josiah RonDeau, 29-year-old Jerry Flatlip and 26-year-old Randall Flatlip.

The men did not have listed phone numbers, and it didn't appear any of them had a lawyer who could comment on their behalf.

Larson RonDeau, the first to be arrested, was charged Friday with rape and sodomy of a child. His initial court appearance is scheduled for Tuesday in the town of Vernal.

The other three men were arrested several days later. Uintah County Attorney G. Mark Thomas said Monday he expects similar charges to be filed against them in the next few days.

State child welfare officials have taken custody of the girl. Uintah County officials said they had no information on the child's father.

Thomas said the child's mother has not been arrested, and any possible charges against her would come after officials finish reviewing the cases against the four men.

Investigators said in court documents the men might be related, but Cpl. Brian Fletcher, a sheriff's spokesman, said he had no details about that Monday.

He said the men are not from the area and investigators don't believe they've been there long.

The mother told deputies she was friends with a woman who might have been related to some of the men. The mother met the woman during a past stay in jail, deputies said.

Fletcher said he couldn't comment on the mother's criminal history or explain why she hasn't been arrested, noting officials are still investigating.

He said he could not offer further details Monday.

This photo released by the Uintah County Sheriff's Office shows Josiah RonDeau. Authorities allege four men sexually assaulted a 9-year-old girl at a Utah home while her mother was in the garage smoking meth. Sheriff's officials say in court documents the assault occurred March 27 at a home in rural Uintah County, which borders Colorado. The Uintah County Sheriff's Office says the men have been arrested. It identified them as Larson RonDeau, Josiah RonDeau, Jerry Flatlip and Randall Flatlip. (Uintah County Sheriff's Office via AP)

This photo released by the Uintah County Sheriff's Office shows Jerry Flatlip. Authorities allege four men sexually assaulted a 9-year-old girl at a Utah home while her mother was in the garage smoking meth. Sheriff's officials say in court documents the assault occurred March 27 at a home in rural Uintah County, which borders Colorado. The Uintah County Sheriff's Office says the men have been arrested. It identified them as Larson RonDeau, Josiah RonDeau, Jerry Flatlip and Randall Flatlip. (Uintah County Sheriff's Office via AP)
Texas governor's book on struggle after paralyzing accident

AUSTIN, Texas (AP)  Gov. Greg Abbott has written a book detailing how he overcame a freak accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down and outlining his plan to "restore the Constitution."

"Broken But Unbowed" will be released May 17.

In 1984 at age 26, Abbott was jogging when a falling tree crushed his spine and left him using a wheelchair. He received millions in a lawsuit settlement, but now opposes large jury awards in civil cases.

File - In this Feb. 25, 2016, file photo, Texas Governor Greg Abbott arrives in the Spin Room before the Republican presidential primary debate at The University of Houston, in Houston. Abbott has written a book detailing how he overcame a freak accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down and outlining his plan to "restore the Constitution." (AP Photo/David J. Phillip, File)

Abbott was Texas attorney general before becoming governor and sued the Obama administration repeatedly over policies including environmental regulations and the nation's health care law.
Senate GOP strategy for dealing with Trump: Keep it local

WASHINGTON (AP)  For months Donald Trump has dominated the political scene like no other. But listen to endangered Senate Republicans as they campaign for re-election and you might not even know he exists.

In Pennsylvania, Pat Toomey chaired a hearing in Scranton on opioid abuse, a major issue in his state and others. In Ohio, Rob Portman delivered remarks to the City Club of Cleveland about criminal justice reform. In Wisconsin, Ron Johnson boasted of his fight against a federal clean water rule opposed by local farmers. In each case the presidential race was an afterthought if that.

These efforts and others during the Senate's just-completed spring recess illustrate a strategy born of necessity as Republicans work feverishly to hang onto their narrow Senate majority in November. From Nevada to New Hampshire, GOP candidates and imperiled incumbents are blowing off questions about Trump, the presidential race and the Supreme Court as they try to box out a national political atmosphere increasingly unfavorable to their candidacies, focusing relentlessly instead on local issues in their states.

FILE - In this Nov. 14, 2013 file photo, Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa. speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington. For months Donald Trump has dominated the political scene like no other. But listen to endangered Senate Republicans as they campaign for re-election and you might not even know he exists. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

GOP senators should campaign "like they're running for sheriff," said Ward Baker, executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign arm of the Senate GOP. That means that when asked about the latest eyebrow-raising pronouncement from Trump, candidates will voice their disagreement, then immediately move on. They will note that they are running for Senate, not president, and start talking about, say, water quality in Lake Erie (a perennial focus for Portman).

"The key part is going to be making sure your identity is separate from the top of the ticket, and that people know you for you, and know your record, and that's separate from whatever else is going on," said Brian Walsh, a veteran GOP strategist and former Senate communications director.

Democrats scoff at the suggestion the GOP strategy can succeed in a political environment focused overwhelmingly on national issues and dominated by Trump, whose disparaging comments about women, minorities and others have him struggling in the polls with key voter blocs. Even if the unpredictable businessman doesn't end up as the Republicans' presidential nominee, Democrats insist that the other leading option, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, will leave Republicans arguably worse off because Cruz's unyielding brand of conservatism could alienate independents who might be open to Trump.

"It shows you the trouble Republicans are in that they are running away from their national candidates and party platform. But it won't work," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who is in line to become majority leader if the Democrats succeed in retaking Senate control. "If there was ever an election where national issues are going to dominate, it's this one."

Indeed the strategy of trying to keep individual races local in the face of a hostile national environment is nothing new, and officials on both sides acknowledge it has its limits. Just two years ago Democrats were taking much the same approach as they contended with President Barack Obama's low approval ratings amid a host of unfavorable national and international developments, from the Ebola epidemic to Islamic State attacks overseas. It didn't work, and their Senate majority got washed away in a devastating nine-seat loss, giving Republicans a 54-46 edge.

This time the imperative for Senate Republicans to keep it local is even more urgent, given the potential for a GOP wipeout on the presidential level. Even many Republicans, talking privately, predict that a Trump or Cruz candidacy will spell certain defeat for their party. And if that does loom, a Republican Senate would stand as the last line of defense against a Democratic president and his or her Supreme Court nominees  an argument that strategists on both sides anticipate could lead GOP donors to shift their spending from the presidential race to Senate campaigns in months to come.

Republican Senate campaign officials insist that they can beat the national political tide, arguing they've been preparing to do so since the day after the 2014 elections. The GOP was always going to be at a disadvantage in this year's Senate races, since the party is defending more than twice as many seats as Democrats, including seven in states Obama won in 2012. Led by Baker, a former Marine, party officials are working methodically from their military-themed headquarters near the Capitol, where staffers start arriving before 4 a.m. to execute a game plan that includes making individual, direct contact with as many voters as possible, even in states traditionally considered safe for the GOP like Alabama.

They have contacted 1.5 million voters in Ohio so far, and almost a million in Alabama ahead of the March 1 primary, officials said.

Yet Democrats argue the GOP efforts are being drowned out by the national focus on Trump, Cruz and the presidential race, and no amount of effort by Republican senators can change the subject.

Since most Republicans have pledged to support the eventual GOP nominee, Democrats say there's no way Republicans can escape Trump or Cruz, and Democratic candidates won't let them if they try. In Illinois, where GOP Sen. Mark Kirk faces an uphill fight for his seat, Democrat Tammy Duckworth released a video featuring ominous music, Trump making a series of provocative statements and Kirk saying repeatedly of Trump: "If he was the nominee I certainly would" support him.

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Associated Press writer Sara Burnett contributed from Chicago.

FILE - In this Jan. 27, 2016 file photo, Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio testifies on Capitol Hill. For months Donald Trump has dominated the political scene like no other. But listen to endangered Senate Republicans as they campaign for re-election and you might not even know he exists. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

FILE - In this Feb. 4, 2016 file photo, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis. speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington. For months Donald Trump has dominated the political scene like no other. But listen to endangered Senate Republicans as they campaign for re-election and you might not even know he exists. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event, Monday, April 4, 2016, in La Crosse, Wis. For months Trump has dominated the political scene like no other. But listen to endangered Senate Republicans as they campaign for re-election and you might not even know he exists. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
Clinton hails higher minimum wage in New York, California

NEW YORK (AP)  Hillary Clinton linked herself to a successful effort to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour Monday, part of an effort to woo working class voters ahead of competitive Democratic primary contests in Wisconsin and New York.

The Democratic primary candidate joined New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo at a raucous midtown Manhattan rally celebrating the state's newly-approved higher minimum wage.

"We need to build on what was done here in New York and go all the way to Washington and raise the minimum wage for everybody," Clinton told several hundred union workers.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo clasp hands during a rally at the Javits Convention Center, Monday, April 4, 2016 in New York. Cuomo signed a law that will gradually raise New York's minimum wage to $15. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

But Clinton hasn't embraced that standard in her own campaign platform  a detail avoided mentioning to the boisterous crowd at the Jacob Javits Center. Instead, she backs Senate legislation that would enact a federal minimum wage of $12 an hour, with the ability of individual cities and states to set a higher threshold.

Clinton argues that a $15 threshold may be too high for some rural areas and smaller cities with lower costs of living.

That position puts her at odds with a vocal coalition of fast-food workers and union members who've made the "fight for $15" a rallying call in their push for higher wages and better benefits.

Democratic primary candidate Bernie Sanders has linked himself with that movement, turning the $15 wage into a central issue in his candidacy.

"Not too long ago, the establishment told us that a $15 minimum wage was unrealistic," said Sanders, in a statement released before Clinton took the stage. "But a grassroots movement led by millions of working people refused to take 'no' for an answer."

New York and California are the first states to approve a $15 an hour minimum wage, passing laws that will phase in the new standard over several years. Los Angeles, Seattle and other cities have recently approved $15 minimum wages, while Oregon officials plan to increase the minimum to $14.75 an hour in cities and $12.50 in rural areas by 2022.

Sanders was campaigning in Wisconsin on Monday, hoping to boost what's expected to be a strong showing in the state's primary on Tuesday.

"Everything seems impossible. Everything seems radical, until we make it happen. Then people say, what's the big deal?" he told a crowd of auto workers gathered at a union hall in Janesville.

Clinton has poured time and resources into New York in recent days, eager to avoid the political blow that would result from losing the state she representing for eight years in the Senate.

While she never mentioned him by name, Clinton took a subtle swipe at Sanders on Monday, stressing the legislative maneuvering necessary to turn the push for a higher wage into actual law.

"This movement built a strong foundation but you and I know that a movement alone, just said talk alone, even marching alone, may not get it done," she said.

In recent weeks, Clinton has cast Sanders' call for a "political revolution" as naive and argued that his plans for free public college and universal health care are all-but-financially impossible.

The Democratic contest has taken a more contentious turn in recent weeks, as the candidates turn their focus to what's expected to be a drag-out fight ahead of the New York primary later this month. Both are trying to increase their support among union and working-class voters, who will be a crucial swing vote in the contest.

Earl Phillips, secretary treasurer of Transit Workers' Union Local 100, said that Clinton's lack of support on the minimum wage issue gave him and his members pause.

"She needs to get behind this if she wants to show that she's standing behind blue collar issues," he said. "Don't just give us political rhetoric."

Maintenance worker Andre Kemper, who attended the rally and is deciding between the two Democrats, was also skeptical of Clinton's commitment.

"I heard her say that she would bring it Washington," he said. "I didn't hear her say she believed in it too."

___

Associated Press writer Todd Richmond contributed to this report from Janesville, Wisconsin.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks, Monday, April 4, 2016, at the United Automobile Workers building in Janesville, Wis. (Angela Major/The Janesville Gazette via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT
Crow war chief who walked 'in 2 worlds' dies at 102

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP)  Joseph Medicine Crow walked in "two worlds"  white and Native American  and made his mark on each.

Medicine Crow, who died Sunday in a Billings hospice at the age of 102, grew up in a log home on Montana's Crow Indian Reservation, hearing stories during his childhood from direct participants in the Battle of Little Bighorn.

Decades later, he returned from World War II a hero in his own right for performing a series of daring deeds that made him his tribe's last surviving war chief.

FILE - In this Aug. 12, 2009, file photo, President Barack Obama presents the 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom to Joseph Medicine Crow during ceremonies at the White House in Washington. Acclaimed Native American historian Medicine Crow died Sunday, April 3, 2016, in a hospice at 102 years old. He grew up hearing stories from direct participants in the Battle of Little Bighorn. He later became his tribe's last surviving war chief. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

Medicine Crow went on to become a Native American historian who gained recognition in scholarly circles, even as he sought to live according to Crow tradition.

"I always told people, when you meet Joe Medicine Crow, you're shaking hands with the 19th Century," said Herman Viola, curator emeritus at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American Indians. "He really wanted to walk in both worlds, the white world and the Indian world, and he knew education was a key to success."

Services are planned for Wednesday in Crow Agency, a town on the Crow Reservation. Medicine Crow will be buried at the Apsaalooke Veterans Cemetery, according to Bullis Mortuary funeral home.

President Barack Obama, who awarded Medicine Crow the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009, released a statement Monday praising the World War II veteran as a "bacheitche," which translates to "a good man" in Crow.

"Dr. Medicine Crow dedicated much of his life to sharing the stories of his culture and his people," Obama said. "And in doing so, he helped shape a fuller history of America for us all."

A member of the Crow Tribe's Whistling Water clan, Medicine Crow was raised by his grandparents near Lodge Grass, Montana, where Medicine Crow continued to live in the years leading to his death.

His Crow name was "High Bird." He recalled listening as a child to stories about the Battle of Little Bighorn from those who were there, including his grandmother's brother, White Man Runs Him, a scout for Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer.

His grandfather, Yellowtail, raised Medicine Crow to be a warrior. The training began when Medicine Crow was just 6 or 7, with a grueling physical regimen that included running barefoot in the snow to toughen the boy's feet and spirit.

"Warfare was our highest art, but Plains Indian warfare was not about killing. It was about intelligence, leadership, and honor," Medicine Crow wrote in his 2006 book "Counting Coup."

During World War II, Medicine Crow completed the deeds necessary to earn the title of war chief, including stealing horses from an enemy encampment and engaging in hand-to-hand combat with a German soldier whose life Medicine Crow ultimately spared.

Prior to leaving for the European front, Medicine Crow in 1939 became the first of his tribe to receive a master's degree, in anthropology. Upon his return from the war, Medicine Crow was designated tribal historian by the Crow Tribal Council, a position he filled for decades  all the while cataloging his people's nomadic history by collecting firsthand accounts of pre-reservation life from fellow tribal members.

With his prodigious memory, Medicine Crow could accurately recall decades later the names, dates and exploits from the oral history he was exposed to as a child, Viola said. Those included tales told by four of the six Crow scouts who were at Custer's side at Little Bighorn and who Medicine Crow knew personally.

Yet Medicine Crow also embraced the changes that came with the settling of the West, and he worked to bridge his people's cultural traditions with the opportunities of modern society, said Viola, who first met Medicine Crow in 1972 and collaborated with him on several books.

Even after his hearing and eyesight faded, Medicine Crow continued to lecture into his 90s on the Battle of Little Bighorn and other major events in Crow history.

His voice became familiar to many outside the region as the narrator for American Indian exhibits in major museums across the country.

He was nominated for the Congressional Gold Medal and was awarded honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Southern California and Montana's Rocky Mountain College.

___

Associated Press writer Steven K. Paulson contributed to this report.

__

Follow Matthew Brown on Twitter at https://twitter.com/matthewbrownap.

FILE - In this Aug. 12, 2009 file photo, President Barack Obama reaches around the head dress of Chief Joseph Medicine Crow to place a 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom around his neck during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington. Acclaimed Native American historian Joseph Medicine Crow died Sunday, April 3, 2016, in a hospice at 102 years old. He grew up hearing stories from direct participants in the Battle of Little Bighorn. He later became his tribei's last surviving war chief. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

FILE - In this Aug. 27, 2008 file photo, Native American Crow historian Joe Medicine Crow tells then-presidential-candidate Barack Obama to "take veterans to the top when you move into the White House," during a visit to Billings, Mont. Medicine Crow, the last surviving war chief for Montana's Crow Tribe, died Sunday, April 3, 2016 in a Billings hospice at age 102. Medicine Crow earned the title of war chief and a Bronze Star after stealing enemy horses and other exploits as a U.S. soldier in World War II. He grew up hearing stories from direct participants in the Battle of Little Bighorn. (James Woodcock/Billings Gazette via AP, File)

FILE - In this June 24, 2001, file photo, Crow tribal historian Joseph Medicine Crow speaks of unity at a dedication of a "Peace Memorial," near where the bloody Battle of the Little Bighorn began 125 years ago, in Garryowen, Mont. Acclaimed Native American historian Medicine Crow died Sunday, April 3, 2016, in a hospice at 102 years old. He grew up hearing stories from direct participants in the Battle of Little Bighorn. He later became his tribe's last surviving war chief. (AP Photo/Beck Bohrer, File)
Keel laying held in Rhode Island for stealthy Navy submarine

NORTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. (AP)  Officials representing the Navy and shipbuilders gathered with politicians Monday to praise a $2.5 billion submarine that they say will be the stealthiest vessel patrolling the oceans for the U.S. military  the South Dakota.

It will have quieter machinery, a coating on its hull to further eliminate noise and sonar panels to better detect and track other submarines, Rear Adm. Michael Jabaley said during the ceremony in Rhode Island, where the submarine is being built. Those new modifications represent about $115 million of the cost, the Navy says.

"With the undersea environment constantly changing and becoming more crowded with capable threats, the Navy has decided to use South Dakota as a prototype ship that will include significant investments in stealth beyond anything seen to date," Jabaley said.

Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimond gives the thumbs up to the workers at Electric Boat while attending the keel laying for the Virginia-class submarine South Dakota, Monday, April 4, 2016, in North Kingstown, R.I. (Steve Szydlowski/The Providence Journal via AP) NO SALES

The ceremony, which formally marked construction of the nation's 17th Virginia-class attack submarine, was held at a manufacturing plant operated by Electric Boat, a subsidiary of General Dynamics.

Groton, Connecticut-based Electric Boat and Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia are building the South Dakota. They have an agreement to build two Virginia-class attack submarines annually.

Construction on the South Dakota began in March 2013, and the submarine is 65 percent complete. Its contracted delivery date is August 2018.

In keeping with Navy tradition, the ship's sponsor, Deanie Dempsey, wrote her initials on a metal plate that will be mounted on the submarine. A welder traced over her initials to make them permanent.

Dempsey, the wife of former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman and retired U.S. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, is an advocate for military families and volunteers with military support organizations.

"I am beyond honored and thrilled to be here and to start this relationship with all of you," she said at the ceremony.

Martin Dempsey, who was in the audience, said he loved the tradition of the keel-laying ceremony and the "heartfelt passion" for building submarines that it showcased.

"The merging of men and machines is really remarkable," he said.

Members of Congress from Rhode Island, Connecticut and South Dakota spoke about the nation's need for submarines. They, along with Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, a Democrat, thanked the shipbuilders and service members in attendance.

U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds, a South Dakota Republican, said "a new symbolic link" is now formed between South Dakota and the Navy.

Domenico Castaldi, a welder at Electric Boat Quonset, welds the initials of Deanie Dempsey, the sponsor of the submarine South Dakota and wife of now-retired U.S. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, along with Jeffrey Geiger, President General Dynamics Electric Boat, as they watch, Monday, April 4, 2016 in Providence, R.I. The plate will be permanently installed in the Virginia-class submarine South Dakota. The keel laying ceremony was held at Quonset on Monday. (Steve Szydlowski/The Providence Journal via AP) NO SALES
David Cameron has come under intense pressure to crack down on offshore tax havens after a massive data leak exposed the scale of efforts by the rich and powerful to hide assets.

The Prime Minister's late father was reported to be among figures - including six peers, three ex-Tory MPs and political party donors - named in relation to investments set up by Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

Downing Street said it was a "private matter" whether the Cameron family still had funds in offshore investments and insisted the PM was in the vanguard of efforts to increase the transparency of tax arrangements.

The Mossack Fonseca law firm in Panama City, which said to have had more than 11 million documents leaked on the financial dealings of the rich and famous (AP)

More than 11 million documents were passed to German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) to 107 media organisations including The Guardian and BBC's Panorama.

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell said the revelations were "repulsive" and demanded an investigation by HM Revenue and Customs.

The ICIJ raised Baroness Sharples' involvement with the Bahamas-based company Nunswell Investments Limited to make investments, although noted she did not deal with Mossack Fonseca directly when managing her company.

A law firm handling the affairs of Baroness Sharples told the ICIJ the company was registered in the UK in 2000 and now pays taxes to the British Government.

It added that the House of Lords "has been notified of Baroness Sharples' oversight in registering her interest as a director of Nunswell Investments Limited" and that she receives "no remuneration ... nor any income or capital from that company".

Mr Mates is said to have been linked with offshore companies used for real estate development in the Bahamas.

The former minister told the ICIJ he was asked by a friend to become chairman of Haylandale Limited, with his advice sought on issues including how to deal with the government of Antigua.

According to the ICIJ, Mr Mates said he had not and would not receive any remuneration "unless and until the development took place, nor were the shares of any value", as the company "never had any real value".

There is nothing illegal about using offshore companies but the disclosures have intensified calls for international reform of the way tax havens are able to operate and claims of large-scale money laundering.

Mr Cameron, who will chair an international anti-corruption summit in May, has been a vocal advocate of reform and legislation forcing British companies to disclose who owns and benefits from their activities comes into force in June.

Despite several years of pressure however, few UK Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories - said to make up a large part of the tax havens referred to in the papers - have taken concrete action to open up the books.

Asked if Mr Cameron was prepared to legislate if there was continued inaction, the PM's official spokeswoman said: "He rules nothing out. The work with them continues."

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has approached the ICIJ for access to the data and said it would "act on it swiftly and appropriately" if there was any wrongdoing.

But the shadow chancellor said not enough had been achieved and claimed HMRC was being forced to "operate with their hands tied behind their backs" because of staffing cuts.

"The revelations in the Panama Papers are extremely serious and frankly repulsive. HMRC should treat this with the utmost priority and urgently launch an investigation," Mr McDonnell said.

Among the disclosures are:

:: A suspected two billion dollar (1.4 billion) money laundering ring run by a Russian bank and said to involve close associates of President Vladimir Putin. T he Kremlin denied the president was connected to any wrongdoing and claimed he was the target of a smear operation

:: Mossack Fonseca set up a company suspected of being used to launder money from the 1983 Brink's-Mat bullion heist. A spokesman for the law firm told the ICIJ any allegations the firm helped shield the proceeds of the Brink's-Mat robbery "are entirely false"

:: Icelandic prime minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson reportedly had an undeclared interest in his country's bailed-out banks and is now facing calls for his resignation

:: In China the families of at least eight current and former members of the supreme ruling politburo had been found to have hidden wealth offshore, according to The Guardian

:: Some 23 individuals who had had sanctions imposed on them for supporting the regimes in North Korea, Zimbabwe, Russia, Iran and Syria were said to have been revealed to have been clients of Mossack Fonseca

Ian Cameron's use of the firm to help shield investments from UK tax as he built up a significant legacy, part of which was inherited by the Prime Minister, had been previously disclosed but further adds to the pressure on the PM.

There is no suggestion that this avoidance arrangement or others exposed by the leak were anything but entirely legal or that Mr Cameron's family did not pay the UK tax due on any repatriated assets.

Mossack Fonseca said it had operated "beyond reproach" for 40 years and had never been charged with criminal wrong-doing.

Further details about links between the Panama Papers and Westminster figures were reported by the Guardian.

A firm founded by Tory donor Tony Buckingham "urgently" moved its corporate registration from one tax haven to another, according to the leaked documents.

Mossack Fonseca was ordered to transfer the company registration from the Bahamas to Mauritius after Heritage was faced with a large tax bill in Uganda over the sale of an oil field, the Guardian reported.

A spokesman for Heritage Oil told the newspaper it was not able to respond in detail because it touches on issues still before the courts.

"Although only a subsidiary issue in Heritage Oil's ongoing litigation with the Ugandan government, it is a fact that the process of re-domiciling one of Heritage Oil's subsidiaries from the from Bahamas to Mauritius had begun long before the completion of the transaction that ultimately gave rise to the tax dispute with the Ugandan government. The process of re-domiciling was commenced for a variety of reasons."

The company said all the oil and gas licences owned by Heritage were held outside the UK and all its operations were carried out overseas. The firm also pays national insurance and other taxes.

JCB chairman and Conservative donor Lord Bamford closed down a company registered in the British Virgin Islands just months before he joined the House of Lords, according to the documents.

The Mossack Fonseca papers seen by the Guardian reveal that Lord Bamford had been the sole shareholder in a British Virgin Islands company called Casper Ltd since 1994. The company was dissolved in 2012 and the industrialist was granted a peerage in 2013.

A spokesman for Bamford said: "Casper Limited was dissolved in 2012 having been an inactive company for its entire existence. It never owned any assets, held a bank account, formed part of any corporate structure or ever engaged in any activity whatsoever."

Tory peer Lord Flight's asset management business Guinness Flight included a trust in Guernsey which used Mossack Fonseca companies to manage investments, the paper reported.

Lord Flight said: "I ceased to be a director of the Guernsey Trust Company in 1998 upon its acquisition by the Investec Group. Also, I have had no involvement with the Guernsey Trust Company for 18 years and know nothing of its business during this period.

"Guinness Flight Trustees was not involved in advising either individuals or companies on reducing their UK tax liabilities and, to the best of my belief, had no involvement in harbouring the proceeds of crime, facilitating tax evasion, sanctions evasion, money laundering or bribery and corruption.

"Disciplines were in place to check against such involvements."

Flight said he had continued as a director of Investec Asset Management, but was not involved in the trust company.

Former Banbury MP Sir Tony Baldry, who stood down in 2015, chaired a British Virgin Islands company called Westminster Oil, which appears in the Mossack Fonseca papers and had a subsidiary called Westminster Caspian.

"The BVI jurisdiction was chosen because the shareholders and directors came from a number of different countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States and Kazakhstan," Sir Tony told the Guardian.

"Given that the project was based in Kazakhstan, and given that the directors and shareholders came from the United States, the United Kingdom and Kazakhstan, whatever jurisdiction was chosen to register the company would inevitably have been 'offshore' to a number of the shareholders and directors."

Cobra beer founder and crossbench peer Lord Bilimoria appears as one of more than 100 shareholders in a Virgin Islands company called Mulberry Holdings Asset Limited.

He said that Mulberry was a dormant company formed "for my ex-shareholders in Cobra, many of whom are not resident in the UK".

Lord Bilimoria told the newspaper: "I am taxed in the UK on all my global income and all of my interests are declared to the relevant authorities."
'Rathkeale Rovers' gang members jailed over 57m rhino horn conspiracy

Members of an organised criminal gang at the heart of a 57 million conspiracy to "plunder" British museums of rhino horn and other priceless Chinese artefacts have been jailed for up to six years and eight months.

The group, dubbed the Rathkeale Rovers because of their links to the Irish town, targeted high-value objects in a string of break-ins, including Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum and Durham's Oriental Museum in 2012.

Judge Murray Creed heard that although the items stolen in Durham and Cambridge were valued up to 18 million, detectives believe they might have fetched more than three times that figure on the booming Chinese auction market.

The scene of the robbery at Durham University's Oriental Museum, where two items where stolen (Durham Police)

Members of the same gang also masterminded a bungled attempted theft at Gorringes Auction House in Lewes, East Sussex, and organised the disposal of stolen artefacts in what the judge said was "an extremely sophisticated conspiracy".

Sentencing seven of the 14-strong gang, Judge Creed said: "It is a conspiracy both sophisticated, skilled and persistent, and involved significant cultural loss to the UK of museum quality artefacts and items from international collections."

In all, 13 men are being sentenced over two days, after three trials which concluded with the gang and its associates convicted of wide-ranging criminal conspiracy to steal, with connections to Ireland, Europe and China.

The judge began by jailing Richard "Kerry" O'Brien Jr, 31, of Cambridgeshire - also of Rathkeale in the Irish Republic, for five-and-a-half years.

His uncle, John "Cash" O'Brien, aged 68, of Fifth Avenue in Wolverhampton in the West Midlands was jailed for five years and three months.

Also in the dock was Daniel "Turkey" O'Brien, 45, and Daniel Flynn, also 45, both of Orchard Drive, Smithy Fen, Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, who were jailed for six years and eight months and four years, respectively.

The judge said he had found Flynn to have played "a leading role", but reduced the man's sentence based on "the fragility of his mental health".

Alongside the men in the dock was 56-year-old Donald Wong, of Clapham Common South Side in Lambeth, London, described by the judge as "a buyer, seller and valuer". He was jailed for five-and-a-half years.

Paul Pammen, aged 49, of Alton Gardens in Southend-on-Sea and 37-year-old Alan Clarke, of Melbourne Road in Newham, London, who was said to have headed the gang's "disposal team", were also both jailed for five-and-a- half years each.

Six other men convicted over the conspiracy will be sentenced on Tuesday, including 47-year-old Richard Sheridan, of Water Lane, Cottenham.

Sheridan is a former spokesman for the Dale Farm travellers site in Essex and was seen in Wong's company, shortly before 50,000 in cash was found in the Chinese businessman's car.

The judge said the operation to "plunder" rhino horn, carved horn and jade items started off "small-scale" in January 2012, but that after initial failures and botched thefts - in one case the burglars forgot where they had hidden their haul - "planning paid off".

"It was serious organised crime," he added.

In their most successful theft 18 pieces of Chinese jade were stolen from the Fitzwilliam Museum and although experts provided various valuations up to almost 18 million the judge described them as "priceless".

He added: "They were part of a national collection split between the museum in Cambridge and the British Museum in London."

Afterwards, that haul was stored in a safe house before being taken by taxi to Purfleet in Essex where the goods were spirited away.

The judge continued: "The conspiracy spanned England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, references were made to France - the Cherbourg visit, Hong Kong and also the United States and Germany, also featured in the evidence the court heard over the three trials."

He said the gang had either stolen or tried to steal "highly prized museum-quality" items, often with historic Imperial Chinese dynastic connections, with the exception of an attempted theft on an auction house in March 2012 in which the bungling thieves took the wrong item.

On two occasions the Oriental Museum in Durham was targeted, but also the Castle Museum in Norwich, Gorringes Auction House in Lewes, East Sussex, and the Fitzwilliam Museum.

The men carried out reconnaissance of these and other sites, including three museums in Glasgow, and another auction house in Yorkshire.

Mr Creed said there had been "no expression of regret or remorse" from the men, and there was "no prospect of recovery" for the stolen items.

Due to be sentenced on Tuesday are; Patrick Clarke, aged 34, of Melbourne Road, Newham, London, 35-year-old Ashley Dad, of Crowther Road, in Wolverhampton, and Terrence McNamara, aged 46, of Marquis Street in Belfast.

Michael Hegarty, aged 43, and 26-year-old John "Kerry" O'Brien Jr, both of Orchard Drive, Smithy Fen, Cottenham - but also of Rathkeale, will also be sentenced.

The judge said the conspiracy had been centred on the family seat in Rathkeale, telling the defendants: "At the heart of this enterprise was a family - a number of you are members of the O'Brien family."

He added: "Of 14 original conspirators, seven were connected with that home, seven were associates, like Terence McNamara, while others were recruited in to find thieves prepared to carry out burglaries, particularly in carrying out the second attack on Durham museum.

"No doubt others were involved too."
White British pupils 'lag behind because of lack of parental support'

White British pupils are falling behind students from other ethnic backgrounds by the time they reach their GCSEs because of a lack of support from their parents, according to a report.

The research, by the CentreForum think tank, suggests white British children are among the top three highest achievers at the age of five.

But by the age of 16, the group's performance slips to 13th in a table behind those of Chinese, Indian, Asian and black African heritage.

White British pupils are being overtaken at school because of a lack of parental support

Researchers said parents' aspirations played a smaller role than their support for the pupil, with those from ethnic backgrounds being more supportive of their children than white parents.

Jo Hutchinson, the think tank's associate director for education, told the i: "What is bigger than aspiration is parental engagement. We are talking about things such as parents attending parents' evenings at school, talking to their children about subject options, supervising homework, ensuring that the family eats together and has regular bedtimes.

"Those sorts of things appear to be more associated with this effect than pure aspirations. It's not just aspirations but behaviours that support the aspirations.

"Most parents actually want their children to continue in education and be successful in education. What sometimes differs is the extent to which they have the knowledge and the tools and resources to help them to make that aspiration real."

A Department for Education spokeswoman said: "We welcome this report which shows the stark choice we face in education today - either we prepare today's young people to compete with the best in the world, or we don't.

"That's why we've taken the decision to set the new GCSE 'good pass' in line with the average performance in high-performing countries such as Finland, Canada, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

"Every time we have raised the bar for schools and colleges they have risen to meet the challenge, and we are confident that this is no exception.
Louis van Gaal pleased to keep pressure on in top-four race

Louis van Gaal was pleased to keep up the pressure in the top-four race after Manchester United claimed a slender victory over Everton.

Anthony Martial scored the only goal - from one of just two United shots on target - as Van Gaal's side edged the Toffees 1-0 in a tame Barclays Premier League contest at Old Trafford on Sunday.

Van Gaal accepted United were below par but the result lifted them back within a point of fourth-placed Manchester City in the battle for Champions League places.

Anthony Martial scored the only goal as Manchester United beat Everton

"I said in the dressing room that it was very important to win, otherwise the victory against City was worthless," Van Gaal said.

"We keep in touch with City, one point behind. We keep in touch with Arsenal, five points behind. We now have to play Tottenham - not an easy match - but normally we are playing very well against the top teams. If we continue like that I shall be very happy."

United had the best chance of a goalless first half when a Martial shot was deflected narrowly wide. The breakthrough came after 53 minutes when substitute full-back Tim Fosu-Mensah, on for the off-the-pace Marcos Rojo, took advantage of slack defending to tee up Martial.

Everton, who held their own in an evenly-fought contest, almost responded immediately as Phil Jagielka headed against the bar and the same player was later denied by David de Gea but United held on.

The visitors also had some bright moments in the first half as Gerard Deulofeu tormented Rojo and Van Gaal put the Argentinian defender's poor display down to the after-effects of international duty.

Van Gaal said: "I think Rojo had a problem with his jet lag, otherwise I cannot imagine (why he struggled). So, I changed him."

Defeat left Everton 12th in the table and the frustration of their fans at their perceived under-achievement was evident at the final whistle as they booed their own team.

Manager Roberto Martinez recognised this and claimed the players were just as disappointed.

The Spaniard said: "We all are (booing). I think you could hear our boos in the dressing room. It is exactly the same."

But Martinez remained upbeat about his side's prospects, particularly as they have an FA Cup semi-final to look forward to - against either United or West Ham - later this month.

He said: "The frustration we all have is we can see the quality we have in our squad and we can't really gain some sort of momentum.
Man held at Gatwick Airport in Syria terror probe

Counter-terrorism officers have arrested a man at Gatwick Airport on suspicion of Syria-related offences.

The 24-year-old was detained before boarding a flight, West Midlands Police said.

A woman aged 20 has also been arrested at an address in west London.

The man was about to board a flight, West Midlands Police said

The pair are being held at a police station in the West Midlands, while searches are being carried out at two addresses in Birmingham.

A police statement said: " There was no risk to any passengers at Gatwick Airport or to the wider public in relation to these arrests."

Figures published last month showed that there were a total of 280 terrorism-related arrests in 2015 - a drop of 3% compared with the previous year.

The data also revealed that rising numbers of female suspects were being arrested, with 45 held - an increase of 50% compared with 2014.
Australian tax office probes hundreds for possible tax evasion after Panama Papers leak

SYDNEY, April 4 (Reuters) - The Australian Tax Office (ATO) said on Monday it is investigating more than 800 wealthy clients of a Panama law firm for possible tax evasion.

The probe follows the reported leak of more than 11.5 million documents from the files of law firm Mossack Fonseca, based in the tax haven of Panama, revealing details of hundreds of thousands of clients.

The documents are at the center of an investigation published on Sunday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and more than 100 other news organizations around the globe. ICIJ is the international arm of the Center for Public Integrity.

The leaked "Panama Papers" cover a period over almost 40 years, from 1977 until as recently as last December, and allegedly show that some companies domiciled in tax havens were being used for suspected money laundering, arms and drug deals, and tax avoidance.

"Currently we have identified over 800 individual taxpayers and we have now linked over 120 of them to an associate offshore service provider located in Hong Kong," the Australian tax office said in a statement emailed to Reuters. It did not name the Hong Kong company.

ATO Deputy Commissioner Michael Cranston said his office was working with the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Crime Commission and anti-money laundering regulator AUSTRAC to further cross-check the data.

"Some cases may be referred to the Serious Financial Crime Taskforce," Cranston said in the statement. "The message is clear - taxpayers can't rely on these secret arrangements being kept secret and we will act on any information that is provided to us."

The 800 individuals under investigation include some taxpayers who had previously been investigated and others who had reported themselves to the tax office under its so-called Project DO IT - Disclose Offshore Income Today. The voluntary disclosure initiative, which closed at the end of 2014, allowed people to come forward and avoid steep penalties and criminal charges.

However, the tax office said the individuals under investigation also include "a large number of taxpayers who haven't previously come forward."
Romania - Factors to watch on April 4

BUCHAREST, April 4 (Reuters) - Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Romanian financial markets on Monday.

PPI DATA

Romania's statistics board to release producer prices data for February at 0600 GMT.

DEBT TENDER

Romanian debt managers tender 1 billion lei ($254.93 million) worth of one-year treasury bills.

FX DATA

The Romanian central bank's foreign exchange reserves, excluding 103.7 tonnes of gold, rose by 457 million euros on the month to 31.3 billion euros ($35.69 billion) at the end of March, it said on Friday.

UNEMPLOYMENT

Romania's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate stood at 6.5 percent in February, flat on the month but lower than in the same month of 2015, the National Statistics Board said on Friday.

HIDROELECTRICA

Romanian state-owned power producer Hidroelectrica expects to finally exit its insolvency process by next month, and aims to sell a minority stake in an initial public offering by November, its manager told Reuters on Sunday.

UNICREDIT

Fitch Ratings has revised Romania-based UniCredit Bank S.A.'s outlook to Negative from Stable, while affirming the Long-term Issuer Default Rating at 'BBB', following a similar action taken on its mother bank.

CEE MARKETS

Central European currencies gained on Friday after a report showed Polish manufacturing activity picked up in March.

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Poland - Factors to Watch Apr 4

Following are news stories, press reports and events to watch that may affect Poland's financial markets on Monday. ALL TIMES GMT (Poland: GMT + 2 hours):

PZU, ALIOR, BPH

Insurer PZU's capital injection into lender Alior, linked to Alior's takeover of BPH, will have no impact on PZU's dividend policy, the insurer's chief executive Michal Krupinski told daily Parkiet on Saturday.

Krupinski added that Alior is not in any talks now regarding further takeovers on the Polish financial market.

RAIFFEISEN

Raiffeisen is likely to present the Polish financial watchdog in the coming days with its plan of dividing Polish unit Polbank into the Swiss-franc and non-Swiss franc parts, Puls Biznesu daily said quoting unnamed sources.

But the bank has not taken a final decision yet whether to divide the Polish unit or not, the daily also said.

FX LOANS

If the impact on banks of the proposed bill that would allow for conversion of mortgages denominated in Swiss franc into zlotys is as big as the central bank or financial watchdog suggest, one should look for a compromise or spread the costs over time, Dziennik Gazeta Prawna quoted Polish minister Henryk Kowalczyk as saying.

Kowalczyk also said that the government has no plans to take over assets owned by the private pension funds as part of potential changes to the pension system.

LOTOS

Supervisory board at the state-run refiner Lotos will consider changes in the management board during its next meeting on April 13, Puls Biznesu daily said. The current chief executive Pawel Olechnowicz has been in his office since 2002.

PANDA BONDS

Poland plans a 3-year yuan bond issue in the coming months worth $0.3-0.5 billion, deputy finance minister told Puls biznesu daily.

****Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.****
U.S., Philippines begin military exercises as maritime tension simmers

MANILA, April 4 (Reuters) - About 8,000 U.S. and Filipino troops began annual military exercises on Monday against a backdrop of tension over China's greater assertiveness in the South China Sea though a Philippine commander played that down as the reason for the drills.

Over the next two weeks, the allies will test their command-and-control, communications, logistics and mobility procedures to address humanitarian and maritime security, Philippine defence officials said.

Their troops will also simulate retaking an oil-and-gas platform and practice an amphibious landing on a Philippine beach.

"The Balikatan exercise is designed not to address a particular concern but the whole lump in the spectrum of warfare," Vice Admiral Alexander Lopez, the Philippine military's exercise director, told a news conference.

"China is not part of the idea."

Ash Carter, will be the first U.S. defense secretary to observe the exercises when he arrives next week, underscoring the significance of the war games for both countries.

China's more assertive pursuit of its claims in the South China Sea over the past year or so has included land reclamation and the construction of air and port facilities on some isles and reefs.

The United States has conducted what it calls "freedom of navigation" patrols in the area, sailing near disputed islands controlled by China to underscore its right to navigate the seas.

The patrols have drawn sharp rebukes from China but despite that, U.S. officials have made clear the United States would continue to challenge what it considers China's unfounded maritime claims.

China claims almost the entire South China Sea, believed to have huge deposits of oil and gas. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims to parts of the waters, through which about $5 trillion in trade is shipped every year.

The Philippines has sought international arbitration on the dispute and a decision is expected late this month or in early May. China has declined to take part in the case.

Lieutenant-General John Toolan, commander of U.S. Marine forces in the Pacific, told the news conference it was prudent to plan for any situation that could occur and to practice how the two allies would likely respond.

Asked if that included a security crisis in the South China Sea, Toolan said: "It does, absolutely."

Toolan said U.S. forces would for the first time in the Philippine exercises fire a long-range truck-mounted multiple-rocket launcher known as the high mobility artillery rocket system (HIMARS).
Ties between Germany and Russia enter new chill

By Paul Carrel and Andreas Rinke

BERLIN, April 4 (Reuters) - At an hour-long meeting in Moscow on March 23, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov irritated his German counterpart by raising the case of a German-Russian girl who said she was raped by migrants in Berlin earlier this year.

After the girl's claims were reported by Russian media in January, Lavrov accused Germany of "sweeping problems under the rug." The Berlin public prosecutor's office, though, said a medical examination had found the girl had not been raped.

That was why Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was so upset when Lavrov raised the issue again. "I can only hope that such incidents and difficulties, as we had in that case, aren't repeated," he told reporters afterwards.

The rape case is indicative of the mutual suspicion that officials from both countries say extends to the highest levels of government. At the root of those tensions lie opposing visions for Europe and the Middle East. Those rival visions have led to clashes at diplomatic negotiating tables, in cyberspace and in the media.

German and other European security officials accuse Russian media of launching what they call an "information war" against Germany. By twisting the truth in reports on Germany's migrant crisis, the officials say, Russia hopes to fuel popular angst, weaken voters' trust in Chancellor Angela Merkel, and feed divisions in the European Union so that it drops sanctions against Moscow.

"Russian propaganda is a danger to the cohesion of our society," Ole Schroeder, German deputy interior minister and a member of Merkel's conservatives, told Reuters.

Russian officials deny their country is mounting a campaign against Germany. "These accusations are atrocious," said one Russian official, who said Moscow is the victim of an "indiscriminate information war" being waged from Germany.

In February, Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, denied the Kremlin had exploited the rape case to stir up tensions around immigration in Germany.

"We cannot agree with such accusations," Peskov said. "On the contrary, we were keen that our position be understood, we were talking about a citizen of the Russian Federation. Any country expresses its concerns (in such cases). It would be wrong to look for any hidden agenda."

But officials in Berlin say Russia's aim is to muddy what is true and what is not and shake Germans' trust in Merkel. "The idea today is to get disinformation, which means you don't believe anything," Hans-Peter Hinrichsen, a Foreign Ministry official, told a recent meeting on Russia's role in Europe at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP).

German and European officials say Russia's aim is two-fold: To exaggerate the problems the migrant crisis is causing Germany and to push Germany to relax its backing for European sanctions on Russia over Moscow's interference in Ukraine. While EU governments last month extended asset freezes and travel bans on Russians and Russian companies, there is less consensus on whether to prolong more far-reaching sanctions on Russia's banking, defence and energy sectors from July.

Both sides agree on one point: relations between the two countries are at their lowest point since the early days of the Cold War.

BIKINI TROLLS?

Beginning in the late 1960s, the then West Germany pursued a policy of 'Ostpolitik', which encouraged warmer ties with Russia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the two countries grew even closer thanks to trade and cultural ties. But those ties began unravelling when Vladimir Putin returned as Russian president in 2012, and worsened further after the Ukraine crisis began in late 2013.

"All the networks, all the personal ties - they just don't work anymore," said Stefan Meister, at the DGAP.

The accusations of disinformation have spawned a whole new vocabulary. Officials at NATO now talk about the 'weaponisation of information' by Russia. Colonel Aivar Jaeski, deputy director at the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, says Russia's campaign against Europe uses "angry trolls" who produce online hate speech, and "bikini trolls" to lure followers and then sow discord and doubt about news events.

Jaeski pointed to a NATO StratCom report on trolling, which says the Guardian newspaper's online edition was targeted "in a troll attack that is considered to have been ordered by the Kremlin" over its reporting on the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine.

The Kremlin has repeatedly denied funding or backing online trolls, and has specifically denied any connection with a company based in St Petersburg whose ex-employees have said they were paid to spread disinformation, praise Putin and criticise the West.

A GERMAN CAMPAIGN?

In the rape case, Russian media reported the German-Russian girl - under German law she can only be identified as Lisa F. - had been abducted by 'Arab-looking men' and raped repeatedly over a 30-hour period. Janis Sarts, director of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, said Russian media continued to report that even after the Berlin authorities said the girl had not been raped.

Europe's East StratCom Task Force has collected dozens of examples of Russian reporting on the migrant crisis that it says are clear cases of deliberate disinformation.

German daily Bild reported in March that Germany's foreign and domestic intelligence agencies were warning of increasing Russian interference in German politics.

Moscow rejects the idea of any coordinated campaign. One Russian official said there was a German media campaign to paint Russia in a bad light and "demonise" it. The official said that Russian media had formerly been too positive about Germany and were now more objective. "This ends the discrepancy that saw the German media be very critical of Russia and the Russian media paint a very favourable picture of Germany," he said.

BLACK BOX

At the March 23 meeting, the two countries reached an "academic cooperation accord." Both sides also continue to emphasise cultural ties.

But repairing political ties may be harder. Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD) - junior members in Merkel's ruling coalition and the party behind "Ostpolitik" all those decades ago - seems increasingly ready to compromise with Moscow. Sigmar Gabriel, an SDP member and Germany's Economy Minister, said recently that the EU should try to lift sanctions on Russia by this summer.

Merkel, though, has refused to ease the sanctions, insisting that Russia first needs to comply with an agreement to enforce a ceasefire, pull back heavy weapons, exchange prisoners, and hold internationally monitored local elections in eastern Ukraine.

German officials say Merkel speaks to Putin more than any other Western leader and recognises better than most that the Russian leader respects firmness.

But the governments still struggle to understand each other.
PRESS DIGEST - RUSSIA - Apr 4

The following are some of the leading stories in Russia's newspapers on Monday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

VEDOMOSTI

www.vedomosti.ru

- Russia's leadership is now prepared for the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, the paper writes citing experts.

- Internet company Yandex sold advertising space worth some 58.2 billion roubles ($846.29 million) in 2015, becoming a leader on Russia's media market, the paper writes.

KOMMERSANT

www.kommersant.ru

- President Vladimir Putin on April 1 signed a decree on fighting corruption. Anti-corruption work will focus on a conflict of interests of state officials, the paper reports.

- Delegation of U.S. congressmen has arrived in Moscow for the first time since the beginning of the Ukraine conflict to take part in a meeting of the Valdai international discussion club, the paper writes.

RBK

www.rbcdaily.ru

- Trade turnover between Russia and the EU in 2015 dropped to 209.6 billion euros, shrinking by 26 percent compared to 2014, the paper reports citing recent Eurostat data.

- Long-distance trunk drivers on Sunday held a rally in Moscow against the heavy trucks tolling system, Platon, and demanded the dismissal of the government and the president. Communists and backers of opposition politician Alexey Navalny supported them, the paper says.

- Russia will not close unsafe coal mines after the accident at the Severnaya mine. The government suggested that coal producers should improve work safety, the paper writes.

NEZAVISIMAYA GAZETA

www.ng.ru
Conservatives in Spain seen inching ahead in new election - poll

MADRID, April 4 (Reuters) - Spain's conservative People's Party (PP) and newcomers Ciudadanos could claim a small majority in parliament if a new election is called after months of failed coalition talks, according to a poll published on Monday.

The poll, by Sigma Dos for conservative newspaper El Mundo, was the first to show a possible alliance between the PP - which runs the caretaker government in the political deadlock following December's general election - and the market-friendly Ciudadanos (Citizens) party.

A Metroscopia poll for the left-leaning daily El Pais on Sunday also showed the PP and Ciudadanos gaining ground, but found no possible two-way majority except for a grand coalition of the PP and the Socialists, an option that has been widely rejected.

Spain's main parties on the right and left have been struggling to assemble a group large enough to form a government, but wide ideological differences and months of failed talks mean a deal is looking increasingly unlikely.

If there is no agreement by May 2, new elections will be held, probably at the end of June.

The El Mundo survey said the PP would take 128 seats and Ciudadanos, which has shown willingness to form a coalition with acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's party, would take 52 seats.

That would be enough to top the 176 seats needed to take an absolute majority in parliament and form the next government.

The poll surveyed 800 people at the end of March. But with a margin of error of +/-3.5 percent, the poll suggests Spain may still end up with the four-way impasse echoed in other polls.

A coalition plan by Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez failed on March 2 as rivals on the left and right voted against it in parliament. Rajoy has refused to attempt to form a coalition, claiming he lacks the necessary support.

The El Mundo poll showed support rising support for both Ciudadanos, up 12 seats from December, and the PP, with five more seats than in the elections, at the expense of other newcomer, anti-austerity party Podemos (We Can).
KPMG South Africa cuts links with firm owned by Zuma friends

JOHANNESBURG, April 4 (Reuters) - Global accountancy firm KPMG's South African arm has severed its ties with a company owned by the Guptas, a family of Indian-born businessmen, due to a scandal over their relationship with President Jacob Zuma, according to an internal circular.

In the email sent to KPMG staff and seen by Reuters, local Chief Executive Trevor Hoole said he had decided to stop auditing Oakbay Resources and Energy, a Gupta mining holding company, after consulting regulators, clients and KPMG's internal risk departments.

"I can assure you that this decision was not taken lightly but in our view the association risk is too great for us to continue," Hoole said in the email.

"There will clearly be financial and potentially other consequences to this, but we view them as justifiable."

Oakbay did not respond to an email request for comment. A KPMG spokesman declined to comment.

The three Gupta brothers moved to South Africa from India at the end of apartheid in the early 1990s and went on to build a business empire that stretches from technology to the media to mining.

They have also forged a close personal relationship with Zuma, whose motorcade has been spotted several times pulling into their lavish mansion in suburban Johannesburg.

Zuma's son, Duduzane, sits on the board of at least six Gupta-owned companies, according to company registration papers.

Allegations of Gupta meddling in politics burst into the open last month when Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas said they offered him the top job at the Treasury before Zuma inexplicably fired Jonas' boss, Nhlanhla Nene, in December.

Zuma insists his relationship with the family is above board, while the Guptas have said they are pawns in a politically motivated campaign to remove Zuma from office.
South African ruling party in crisis talks over Zuma scandal

By Stella Mapenzauswa

JOHANNESBURG, April 4 (Reuters) - South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) party held crisis talks on Monday to discuss the fallout from a court ruling last week that President Jacob Zuma flouted the Constitution, triggering calls for him to resign.

The ANC backed Zuma, 73, after the Constitutional Court rebuked him for ignoring Public Protector Thuli Madonsela's order that he pay back some of the $16 million spent on upgrading his private Nkandla home.

But the scandal, one of several which have dogged Zuma over the past decade, could strain relations between the ANC and its allies the South African Communist Party (SACP) and labour federation COSATU, which have helped it to retain power since the fall of apartheid in 1994.

ANC officials declined to give details of Monday's meeting by the party's national working committee, which follows that of the ANC's top six leaders on Friday. The ANC could issue a statement later on Monday, a spokeswoman said.

Analysts say the Constitutional Court ruling is a blow to Zuma's credibility and could harm the ANC ahead of municipal elections due between May and August.

National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete, who is also the ruling party's chairperson, said on Sunday parliament would on Tuesday debate a motion by the opposition to impeach Zuma.

The motion is, however, likely to fail in the house where the ANC, in power since Nelson Mandela became the first black president at the end of white minority rule, still enjoys a comfortable majority, with 62 percent of the 400-seat assembly.

"Zuma remains in control of his party (even if slightly weakened) and with a significant degree of electoral popularity, especially in rural areas and KwaZulu-Natal," BNP Paribus Securities South Africa political analyst Nic Borain said.

In a televised address to the nation on Friday evening, Zuma apologised and said he would pay back some of the money spent on the updgrades at Nkandla, but denied acting dishonestly.

On Sunday, a jocular Zuma told a cheering crowd in his home province of KwaZulu-Natal that he was still youthful and remained South Africa's leader, making no specific mention of the Nkandla issue. Support for Zuma from ANC allies has been somewhat restrained.

In a statement, the SACP applauded Zuma for publicly apologising on Friday for the debacle. But it warned that the Constitutional Court ruling was a signal to the alliance that "decisive action is now imperative, otherwise the continuing loss of moral authority, political paralysis and fragmentation of our movement will continue".
Corporate South Africa turns its back on Zuma friends

By Ed Cropley and Tiisetso Motsoeneng

JOHANNESBURG, April 4 (Reuters) - Three South African companies, including KPMG and Barclays Africa, have severed ties with a firm owned by the Guptas, a family of Indian-born businessmen, due to concerns over their relationship with President Jacob Zuma.

The third was investment bank Sasfin, which said it had decided to cut links with Gupta mining firm Oakbay Resources and Energy in March, two days after a newspaper suggested they may have had a hand in Zuma's sacking of finance minister Nhlanhla Nene in December.

Sasfin's relationship with Oakbay will formally end on June 1, a Sasfin spokeswoman said. The decision had not previously been made public.

Zuma has denied numerous allegations of the Guptas wielding undue influence. The Guptas have also routinely dismissed reports of their influence, saying they are pawns in a political plot to get Zuma out of office.

After the newspaper report last month, Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas said the Guptas had offered him the top job at the Treasury before Zuma fired Nene. The Guptas also denied that allegation.

In an email to KPMG staff seen by Reuters, local chief executive Trevor Hoole said he had decided to stop auditing Oakbay after consulting regulators, clients and KPMG's internal risk departments.

"I can assure you that this decision was not taken lightly but in our view the association risk is too great for us to continue," Hoole said in the email.

"There will clearly be financial and potentially other consequences to this, but we view them as justifiable."

Oakbay confirmed the end of the 15-year relationship and said it understood it had been a "very reluctant decision" for KPMG. A KPMG spokesman declined to comment.

Barclays Africa, which runs South Africa's biggest retail bank, Absa, also confirmed it no longer had a relationship with Oakbay, which is valued at 16 billion rand ($1.09 billion) on the Johannesburg stock market.

In an annual report from last August Oakbay listed Absa as its bank. An Absa spokesman declined to comment any further.

The three Gupta brothers moved to South Africa from India at the end of apartheid in the early 1990s and went on to build a business empire that stretches from technology to the media to mining.

They have also forged a close personal relationship with Zuma, whose son, Duduzane, sits on the board of at least six Gupta-owned companies, according to company registration papers.

Parliament will on Tuesday debate a motion to impeach Zuma after a top court ruled the president had violated the constitution by ignoring orders from the public protector that he repay some of the $16 million in state funds spent to renovate his private residence at Nkandla.

Zuma says he never knowingly or deliberately set out to violate the constitution.
Swedish FSA investigates Nordea after Panama Papers leak

STOCKHOLM, April 4 (Reuters) - Sweden's Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) has contacted authorities in Luxembourg for information related to allegations that Nordea , the Nordic region's biggest bank, helped some clients set up accounts in offshore tax havens.

The allegations against Nordea appeared in a leak of more than 11.5 million documents from the files of law firm Mossack Fonseca, based in Panama.

While setting up offshore accounts is not necessarily illegal it could be in breach of Swedish money laundering rules. Nordea was found to have breached such rules last year and was fined the maximum 50 million crowns ($6.1 mln) and handed a severe warning by the FSA.

"We take this extremely seriously," said Christer Furustedt, head of the FSA department that oversees major Swedish banks.

"If the media reports are correct and they set up complicated structures to hide the actual beneficial owner then that is hardly in line with the rules," he said.

Nordea said in a statement it would review all activities relating to offshore accounts in Luxembourg.

The bank said it strongly denounced tax evasion and had taken proactive measures since 2009 to ensure all customers' holdings and income on their accounts were reported to the tax authorities.

"However, we regret that we didn't have these procedures already earlier," Nordea CEO Casper von Koskull said.

The FSA fined Nordea in May 2015 and said the bank had severe shortcomings in its approach to combatting money laundering and that a case could even be made for revoking Nordea's banking licence.

For other stories on the Panama Papers leak, click on ($1 = 8.1424 Swedish crowns)
Brazil attorney general urges Congress to end impeachment case

By Maria Carolina Marcello

BRASILIA, April 4 (Reuters) - Brazil's attorney general urged a congressional committee on Monday to dismiss impeachment charges against President Dilma Rousseff, saying there is no legal basis for the proceedings.

Jose Eduardo Cardozo, the government's main legal advisor, told members of Congress that the decision by lower house speaker Eduardo Cunha to accept the impeachment request was motivated by Cunha's desire for political revenge against Rousseff, his bitter political rival.

"The impeachment process was compromised from the start and as such it is invalid," Cardozo said, telling lawmakers that to conclude the impeachment would be to "rip up the constitution."

The hearing came just weeks ahead of a vote that could suspend Rousseff from office in the middle of an economic crisis and a bribery scandal at state-run oil company Petrobras that has shaken Brazil's political establishment. Markets favor Rousseff's ouster on hopes it could usher in business-friendly policies under her substitute, Vice President Michel Temer.

The opposition's impeachment request, which is not formally tied to the graft probe threatening her inner circle, alleges that Rousseff deliberately manipulated budgetary accounts to boost her re-election campaign in 2014.

Cardozo, Rousseff's former justice minister, denied allegations that lending from state banks to the federal government was used to fund social programs. The testimony by the attorney general, appointed in March, is the latest step in a process that started with Cunha's acceptance of impeachment charges in December.

The committee will recommend to the lower house whether there are grounds to impeach Rousseff. The full house would then vote on the committee's decision, which could happen as soon as mid-April.

If the impeachment passes the lower house, Rousseff would be suspended for up to six months while facing trial in the Senate, making Temer acting president. Temer and Cunha's PMDB party, the largest in Congress, formally broke with the government last week.

Rousseff's opponents need the votes of two-thirds of 513 deputies to take the impeachment case to the Senate. Rousseff has to get 171 votes or abstentions to block the process. Political consultancies, such as the Eurasia Group, see a 60-70 percent chance she will lose the vote.

In an effort to rally her leftist base and consolidate support to defeat impeachment, Rousseff last month appointed her predecessor and political mentor, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, as cabinet chief.

The move set off a wave of legal challenges from critics accusing her of shielding Lula from the snowballing corruption investigation that started at state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, known as Petrobras.

Prosecutors have charged Lula with concealing a luxury beachfront apartment provided by Petrobras contractors snared in the multi-billion-dollar graft probe.

If Lula takes office as Rousseff's minister, proceedings against him will remain under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.

A dozen other impeachment requests are also waiting for consideration by Cunha, a fierce critic of Rousseff who himself is facing corruption charges for allegedly receiving millions in the Petrobras scheme through undeclared Swiss bank accounts.

Cunha can accept a second bid to impeach the president in tandem with the current process but he is expected to do so only if the first case against Rousseff is defeated.
France opens probe after Panama leaks

PARIS, April 4 (Reuters) - The French government on Monday launched a preliminary investigation into tax fraud after a huge leak of documents from a Panamanian law firm that specialised in setting up offshore companies.

Financial prosecutors said they were opening the probe to see if the leak linked any French taxpayers to aggravated tax fraud.

President Francois Hollande said tax evaders would be punished and pledged investigations into any leads turned up by the "Panama Papers".

The leak from law firm Mossack Fonseca could be a boon for France's Socialist government, which netted more than 12 billion euros ($13.67 billion) last year from a crackdown on tax dodging.

"I can assure you that as information emerges, investigations will be carried out, cases will be opened and trials will be held," Hollande said during a visit to a company in the suburbs of Paris.

"These revelations are good news because they will increase tax revenues from those who commit fraud."

The Finance Ministry said it would seek to gain access to the leaked files. Of 7,800 tax regularisation cases French authorities dealt with last year, 515 involved a shell company registered in Panama, the ministry said.

French bank Societe Generale issued a statement after journalists handling the leaked files said the bank was among the biggest users of the law firm's services.
U.S. air strike in Somalia killed senior al Shabaab leader -Pentagon

WASHINGTON, April 4 (Reuters) - A U.S. air strike last week killed a senior leader of the al Qaeda-linked militant group al Shabaab in Somalia, the Pentagon said on Monday.

Hassan Ali Dhoore was killed in a U.S. air strike targeting him on March 31, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said. Dhoore was a member of al Shabaab's security and intelligence wing, and was involved in the planning of high-profile attacks, Cook said.

Dhoore planned and oversaw attacks resulting in the deaths of at least three Americans, Cook said.

The Pentagon disclosed the air strike last week but was still assessing then whether Dhoore had been killed.

The strike came weeks after the United States targeted an al Shabaab training camp in Somalia in an air strike that the Pentagon says killed more than 150 fighters.

Al Shabaab was pushed out of Mogadishu by African Union peacekeeping forces in 2011 but has remained a potent antagonist in Somalia, launching frequent attacks in its bid to overthrow the Western-backed government.

The group, whose name means "The Youth," seeks to impose its strict version of sharia law in Somalia, where it frequently unleashes attacks targeting security and government targets, as well as hotels and restaurants in the capital.
Virginia governor vetoes bill to label books 'sexually explicit' in schools

By Gary Robertson

RICHMOND, Va., April 4 (Reuters) - Virginia's governor vetoed a bill on Monday that would have made the state the first in the country to require that parents be notified if students were assigned readings labeled "sexually explicit."

A mother's objection to Toni Morrison's novel "Beloved" being taught in her son's classroom helped spur the legislation that would have given parents more control over classroom materials.

"This requirement lacks flexibility and would require the label of 'sexually explicit' to apply to an artistic work based on a single scene, without further context," Governor Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, said in a statement.

The bill passed the Republican-controlled legislature by votes of 77-21 in the House of Delegates and 22-17 in the Senate. That would not be enough to override McAuliffe's veto, which would require a two-thirds vote in each chamber.

The measure would have made Virginia the first U.S. state to mandate that schools notify parents if teachers planned to use the labeled materials, according to the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom.

McAuliffe said the Virginia Board of Education was studying the issue, focusing on existing local policies and potential state policies.

The measure had been opposed by a number of free speech groups, including the American Library Association and the National Coalition Against Censorship.

The novel by Morrison, a Nobel laureate, is the story of a runaway slave who kills her 2-year-old daughter to save her from a life in slavery.

"Beloved" won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1988. The American Library Association has it on a list of banned or challenged classics.

Virginia House Speaker William Howell, a Republican who was among the bill's sponsors, said he was unaware of McAuliffe's veto and had no reaction.

"I have to see what his veto message said," he said.
U.S. Navy says it seized weapons from Iran likely bound for Houthis in Yemen

WASHINGTON, April 4 (Reuters) - U.S. Navy ships in the Arabian Sea intercepted and seized an arms shipment from Iran likely bound for Houthi fighters in Yemen, the military said in a statement on Monday.

The weapons seized last week by the warships Sirocco and Gravely were hidden on a small dhow and included 1,500 AK-47 rifles, 200 rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launchers, and 21 .50-caliber machine guns, according to the Navy statement.

The weapons were seized on March 28 and are now in U.S. custody. The boat, which the Navy described as stateless, and its crew were allowed to leave once the weapons were taken.

"This seizure is the latest in a string of illicit weapons shipments assessed by the U.S. to have originated in Iran that were seized in the region by naval forces," the military said in the statement.

It cited a Feb. 27 incident in which the Australian Navy intercepted a dhow in late February and confiscated nearly 2,000 AK-47s, 100 RPG launchers, and other weapons. On March 20, a French destroyer seized almost 2,000 AK-47s, dozens of Dragunov sniper rifles, nine antitank missiles, and other equipment.

Houthi forces seized Yemen's capital Sanaa in 2014, stoking concern in Saudi Arabia that Iran was exploiting turmoil in the region and extending its influence to the Saudi border. The Houthis, whose home territory is in northern Yemen, practice Shi'ite Islam, the majority faith in Iran.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Monday that Iran's support for the Houthis is an example of its "destabilizing activities" in the region, and that the weapons shipment could be raised at the United Nations Security Council.

"We obviously are concerned about this development, because offering up support to the rebels in Yemen is something that is not at all consistent with U.N. Security Council resolutions," Earnest said.

U.S. officials have said in the past that Iran's direct involvement with the Houthis is limited, but that Iranian military personnel were training and equipping Houthi units.

A Saudi-led Arab coalition has been fighting to restore Yemen's President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power since last year, including via air strikes on Sanaa.

U.N.-sponsored peace talks are scheduled to start in Kuwait on April 18.
Former New Zealand PM Helen Clark wants to be next U.N. chief

By Michelle Nichols and Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS, April 4 (Reuters) - Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said on Monday she would campaign to be the next U.N. secretary-general, pledging to improve transparency and touting her leadership experience in a bid to become the first woman to head the world body.

New Zealand submitted a letter on Monday to the president of the 193-member General Assembly formally nominating Clark, who heads the U.N. Development Programme, as a candidate to succeed Ban Ki-moon as secretary-general.

Ban, a former South Korean foreign minister, will step down at the end of 2016 after two five-year terms. The top job at the United Nations has always been held by a man, since the body's inception 70 years ago, and there is a strong push for a woman to be elected.

"I'm seeking election on the basis of the skills that I have, and I would expect in the 21st century to be given equal consideration to any male applicant," Clark, New Zealand prime minister from 1999 to 2008, told Reuters in an interview.

At least 53 countries, led by Colombia, want a female secretary-general. Several civil society groups are also lobbying for a woman to lead the organization.

New Zealand's prime minister, John Key, said Clark has the right mix of skills and experience for the job.

"There are major global challenges facing the world today and the United Nations needs a proven leader who can be pragmatic and effective," he said. "Helen Clark has a vast amount of experience in international affairs which will be hard for other candidates to match."

Clark is currently up against seven candidates, including three other women: U.N. cultural organization (UNESCO) Director-General Irina Bokova of Bulgaria; Croatia's former foreign minister, Vesna Pusic; and Moldova's former foreign minister, Natalia Gherman.

The other four candidates are former Macedonian Foreign Minister Srgjan Kerim, Montenegro Foreign Minister Igor Luksic, former Slovenian President Danilo Turk and former U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres, who is also a former Portuguese prime minister.

Clark's candidacy will come as a major blow to ambitions of former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who has been reported to be eyeing the top U.N. job.

The 15-member U.N. Security Council, including veto powers China, Russia, the United States, Britain and France, will recommend a candidate for election by the General Assembly later this year to succeed Ban.

"The biggest challenges (facing the United Nations) are the changing nature of the peace and security issues - they are not what the U.N. was founded to deal with," Clark said. "It requires a new set of tools."

The General Assembly will hold a series of informal public meetings with each candidate next week.

"Coming from New Zealand, we live in a very diverse region, we have a very diverse country, so trying to reconcile differences, bridge gaps, has been in my DNA," Clark said. "Those are very valuable skills here at the U.N."
The success story of the Tata-Mercedes-Benz almost never happened, and in case you wonder why the fact is that if Hindustan Motors and/or some of its people at the helm then had fulfilled their promises made to Daimler-Benz AG in early 1950, it would have been Hindustan-Mercedes-Benz in trucks, and also in cars!

However let's start at the beginning of this saga, and it has all to do within just days of the adoption of the Constitution. A young production engineer working with Hindustan Motor Company Ltd paid a visit to the export division of Dailmer-Benz AG in Stuttgart. His visit was to primarily sound out the German firm whether they would be interested in a proposal his company wanted to explore.

For a company emerging out of the rubble and ruin of World War II, any business coming its way had to be explored and committed to. So while the discussions were on, the HM representative then put forth the sweetener that got Daimler-Benz hooked. He told them that his company had made contact with Hans Hugo Keil who had been the works director at the Unterturkheim plant at the end of the 1930s, and that he had agreed to come and help HM set up an automobile plant in India.

Mercedes-Benz Winning! DJ Media; Rs 4,500.

This was terrific news in more ways than one because Keil and Wilhelm Haspel, the CEO of Dailmer-Benz AG, had been childhood friends and it was most comforting for Haspel to know this. Also, the manner in which India had gained Independence from the British wasn't lost on the Germans, especially the role played by Mahatma Gandhi.

Another fact of life shining through was that GD Birla, chairman of Hindustan Motors was a trusted friend of Gandhi and this couldn't be a bad thing as well.

The word from the Birlas was that the Indian Army were interested to procure trucks given the fact that the defence forces had next to no transport corps with the capability for rapid movement, should another so-called state-sponsored tribal excursion happen in Kashmir.

An initial order was placed with Daimler-Benz AG and a first consignment of diesel trucks was sent in the knocked down form to India and assembled. Also with the set of trucks were four demonstration cars with four-wheel drive that were also sent, but no one seemed to know or care what happened to them.

In late December 1951 came the stunning bolt from the blue: it became known that the Indian Army didn't want a diesel engine truck at all!
Tension in the South China Sea region reached an all time high soon after the meeting between US President Barack Obama with leaders of Southeast Asian nations in California in February. China deployed two batteries of eight missile launchers and a radar system on Woody, also known as Yongxing Island in the Paracel Islands.

While Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi attempted to justify the move, saying the deployment of the missiles had been done in self-defence, other littoral countries staking their claims in the South China Sea, along with external powers like the US and Japan, accused China of threatening peace, stability, security, safety and freedom of navigation and flight in the region.

In fact, sections of analysts have begun to argue that the South China Sea might emerge as a theatre of war in the 21st century, if collective efforts were not taken to address the issue.

South China Sea has huge oil and gas reservoirs.

Historically, the South China Sea has been a cause for dispute between China and eight other countries of this region, including Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, and Brunei. However, the situation in the South China Sea has never been so alarming as it has become in recent times.

There are many reasons for this change. First, ever since China emerged as a major Asian economic and military power, it has focused on strengthening its military capabilities in this region with the aim of asserting its sovereignty over the waters of the South China Sea.

Second, Beijing has purposefully followed the policy of not allowing other regional littoral countries to have free movement in the South China Sea. In turn, clashes between China and other countries of this region have significantly increased.

Third, as the South China Sea has huge oil and gas reservoirs and also serves as the most critical shipping route between Pacific and Indian Ocean, China desires to establish itself as the undisputable power in this region.

This is precisely the reason that Beijing also frequently questions the presence of external powers like the US and others in this region, stating that the South China Sea is its "core interest". On the other hand, mindful of ill-desire of Beijing in the South China Sea, the US has taken calibrated efforts to protect this region from being dominated by China.

Despite China's claims in the South China Sea, its rise is not going to be peaceful.

In fact, one of the motives behind Obama's policy of pivot to Asia is to ensure freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. This further became more apparent when in the two-day summit between US and Southeast Asian leaders in California in February, the US president reaffirmed that Washington would help its allies strengthen their maritime capabilities in the region to counter China's expanding claims.

At the same time, Washington is also seeking help from Asian military powers like Japan and India in maintaining peace and security in the South China Sea.

Certainly, the recent unrest in the South China Sea has not gone unnoticed in India for various reasons. First, as about 50 per cent of Indian trade transits through the South China Sea, it is very important for India to ensure that there is an absolute freedom of navigation.

Secondly, while India's relations with ASEAN have improved significantly since 1990s, it has assumed added significance under the Modi government's "Act East" policy in view of the fact that India views ASEAN countries, some of them are engrailed in the South China dispute, as playing a crucial role in India's economic development.

Thirdly, India has become one of the few external forces which have been involved in oil and gas exploration in the region. Indian companies have invested in oil and gas, steel, spices, pharmaceuticals, edible oil, steel furniture and other sectors.

Thus, New Delhi wishes to see prevalence of peace and security in this region so that it can meet its energy needs with South China Sea oil and gas considerably.

Fourthly, India, in the past, chose to remain inactive on the South China issue. However, China's aggressive posturing against the activities of the Indian state-owned oil company ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL) in the South China Sea, calling theses activities illegal has forced New Delhi to rethink its stand on this issue.

Also, as China is trying to encircle India by deepening its foothold in South Asia and in the Indian Ocean, the unrest in the South China Sea has provided India an opportunity to enlarge its presence in this region as well.

It is in light of these above-mentioned factors that in the ASEAN Regional Forum Summit in Phnom Penh in 2012, India emphasised its strong support for freedom of navigation and access to resources such as fisheries and gas in accordance with principles of international law.

India's 2015 Maritime Security Strategy document has also declared the South China Sea as a "secondary zone of interest" for the Indian Navy.

US President Barack Obama with PM Narendra Modi.

India has also joined hands with the US on this issue.

During Barack Obama's visit in 2015, he and Prime Minister Modi affirmed the importance of freedom of navigation. India and the US unveiled a "joint strategic vision for the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean region" in January 2015 to ensure "freedom of navigation and over flight throughout the region, especially in the South China Sea."

India has also launched a trilateral dialogue with Japan, Australia and the US. News reports have also suggested that India and the US are seriously mulling over the possibility of jointly conducting patrols in the South China Sea.

The joint statement issued on Japan's prime minister Shinzo Abe's visit last December also stated that the two prime ministers called upon all states to avoid unilateral actions that could lead to tensions in the South China Sea.

Indeed, simmering standoff in the South China Sea has made one thing clear, despite China's claim, its rise is not going to be peaceful. It is therefore necessary for regional and external powers to build balance of power to contain Beijing making the regional as its exclusive area of dominance.
Pakistan bit off more than it could chew in the alleged Indian spy, Kulbhushan Jadhav case. In a hurry to drag India and Iran in one scandal with a larger aim, the Pakistani army ended up with egg on its face.

By some strange coincidence, Pakistan announced the arrest of Jadhav allegedly working for the RAW in Balochistan around the time the Iranian president Hassan Rouhani was visiting Islamabad.

Having already lodged a protest with India accusing it of fomenting subversive activities in Balochistan, Pakistan made a blunder in dragging Iran in the controversy and landed itself in a hot soup.

Before we set the chronology in order, here is how Pakistan is trying to get out of the soup.

On Sunday, Pakistans interior minister Nisar Ali Khan issued an appeal to the press to avoid linking Jadhavs arrest to Iran. "Iran has nothing to do with the activities of Indian intelligence network," he said.

But the lesson that Iran was not linked with the activities of "Indian intelligence network" was learnt the hard way by Pakistan: Only after Iran warned Pakistan.

Nawaz Sharif with Iranian president Hassan Rouhani in Islamabad, Pakistan.

The Iranian embassy in Islamabad issued a terse warning. It said, "During past days some section of Pakistani media has spread contents regarding detention of an Indian agent and the matter related to it, which could have negatives implications on the fraternal and friendly atmosphere of Iran and Pakistan."

Pakistani hurriedly backed off and began paying homilies to its relations with Iran.

Now the chronology: On March 24, Pakistan announced it had arrested an Indian "spy" working for the RAW in Balochistan.

On March 26, Pakistans Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Raheel Sharif met Rouhani. According to Pakistani press, militarys media wing claimed that the army chief had raised the issue of RAW's involvement in Pakistans internal affairs, especially Balochistan, with Rouhani.

A statement issued by the Pakistans director general of Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Lt Gen Asim Bajwa said, "There is one concern that RAW is involved in Pakistan, especially in Balochistan, and sometimes it also uses the soil of our brother country Iran."

Part Text COAS's conversation with Iran's President in today's mtng;"There is one concern that RAW is involved in Pak,spec Bln&sometimes-1  Gen Asim Bajwa (@AsimBajwaISPR) March 26, 2016

Bajwa further said in a tweet that General Raheel Sharif had asked Rouhani to convey to "them [RAW] that they should stop these activities and allow Pakistan to achieve stability."

also use the soil of our brother country,Iran.I request,they should be told to stop these activities &allow Pakistan to achieve stability"-2  Gen Asim Bajwa (@AsimBajwaISPR) March 26, 2016

On March 27, the very next day, the Iranian president denied having discussed the matter with Gen Sharif. He told a press conference in Islamabad, "There was no discussion about Indian spy during my meeting with General Raheel."

Bizarre and careless as the Pakistani armys decision to drag Iran may sound, it was a well-planned move.

Pakistans chief of army staff Raheel Sharif.

Firstly, the alleged RAW spy had been arrested weeks before Pakistan decided to make it public and inform India. The reason was the Pakistani army planned to break the news close to the arrival date of the Iranian president in Islamabad.

Secondly, the whole spy scandal is part of a much larger game being played in Balochistan. The region is at the centre of strategic interests of Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, India and China.

There is Pakistans naval base at Gwadar port built by China, which is the proposed gateway for $46 billion China-Pakistan economic corridor.

Close to Gwadar is Irans Chabahar port, which is being developed with assistance of India.

Chabahar, which is outside the choked Strait of Hormuz and lies in the Gulf of Oman with direct access to the Indian Ocean, is in a way Indias answer to Chinas Gwadar.

Once operational, it will open a sea-land route for India to Afghanistan bypassing Pakistan. The redevelopment of Chabahar Port will facilitate supply of energy and gas from Iran to India and beyond.

The Balochistan, in Pakistan as well as in Iran (Sistan and Baluchestan Province) , is restive.

Pakistan is fighting an insurgency on its side whereas Iran too has been facing extremist violence within its border. Irans Sistan-Baluchestan province bordering Pakistan is Sunni dominated, which works as a pressure point for Pakistan against Iran.

Gwadar port in Balochistan province of Pakistan.

Iran has been facing Sunni extremism with support from Pakistans Balochistan. Iran and Pakistan have often exchanged fire on the border, which is a cause of perennial tension between the two countries.

Its safe to assume that the Pakistani army chief felt emboldened to take up the issue directly with Rouhani in Islamabad to convey a message that Irans close links with India in the region will provoke a response from Pakistan that will destabilise the government in Tehran.

Having said that Pakistan too realises that it is home to a large Shia population over which Iran commands considerable sway.

Pakistans own internal political dynamics, too, is a factor responsible for the blunt manner in which Gen Raheel Sharif conducted himself in dealing with the Iranian president. The Pakistani army handled the whole issue concerning Iran with little no role for the civilian government of prime minister Nawaz Sharif to play.
April 1, 2016 was not a good day. The morning, newspapers reported the collapse of the Vivekananda flyover at Rabindra Sarani, near Burrabazar in north Kolkata. 21 killed, 88 injured and 78 rescued. The rescue operations continue. In 2003, the Ultadanga flyover in east Kolkata had collapsed, injuring three.

The construction of the 2.2km-long Vivekananda flyover began in 2007 and the extended deadline was August 2016. The contractor is the IVRCL group in Hyderabad against whom an FIR has been filed. The rescue operation included the National Disaster Force and using heavy equipment, the police ambulance, fire brigade and volunteers.

Disaster

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee blamed the Left regime in whose term the flyover was conceived and commenced. But she had to deal with the aftermath of the disaster.

This was no "act of God".

The immediate routine response is compensation: Rs 5 lakh for the dead, Rs 3 lakh for seriously injured and Rs 1 lakh for others with minor injuries. Paltry sums which seem to conclude rather than initiate the remedial aftermath. While PM Modi offered condolences, Amit Shah has begun his electioneering two days later. Politics subsumes all. The contractor defends its construction suggesting the calamity was an "act of God" attributable to nature. The costs of rescue and if properly calculated are massive.

About Rs 500 crores, it's said, is financed by the government. Re-examining the entire flyover and restoring the collapsed area will result in further thousands of crores.

How do we proceed legally? The Uphaar tragedy took place on June 13, 1997 in Delhi. The Supreme Court disposed off the criminal case unsatisfactorily on September 22, 2015. The civil proceedings, accelerated by the high court resulted in ridiculous damages by the Supreme Court as if it was a motor vehicle accident.

Bhopal has its own history. Disasters are common in India, reparations elusive. We are not sensitive to death other than of our own. The question is finding how to take reparation and restitution further.

The law of torts by civil suit will take years. An English text says: "The vast majority of tort actions are settled (or withdrawn) before the court pronounces judgment and the machinery of civil justice could not operate if this were not so."

The Bhopal Valentine Day's settlement of 1989 was at a preliminary stage and revised slightly upward a few years later amidst continuing controversy. How do we accelerate this process? The first solution is the "Nariman" solution in the Jamshedpur case.

On behalf of Tata, Fali Nariman submitted to the Supreme Court that the matter be referred to former chief justice Chandrachud whose report was accepted. Justice Variava's Delhi HC solution was not to send victims to a civil suit (with legal aid as suggested by justice Bhagwati in the Sriram Chemical's case (1987)) but to ask a writ court to deal with it. This solution worked as far as the HC bench (Mahajan and Mudgal JJ) was concerned, but it ended up in the Supreme Court which reduced damages.

Solution

The "Nariman" solution is the answer. Let the matter be filed in the High or Supreme Court. Ask for the appointment of a former chief justice (say justice Lodha) to examine the facts and estimate damages for acceptance by the court subject to scrutiny.

My preference would be the Supreme Court. The beauty of this solution is that court time is not wasted. Of course, one feature of the Nariman solution was to admit liability, leaving damages to be determined by former chief justice Chandrachud.

In the Kolkata case, the collapse speaks for itself. Lawyers call this res ipsa loquitur (the thing speaks for itself). The Nariman solution is at one with the Vairava solution in that instead of a suit, disaster cases can go the higher judiciary. The difference in that in the Nariman solution, an ex-chief justice reports on the solution for acceptance. In the Variava solution, the case was heard for days instead of appointing a committee to deal with it.

Damages

The next issue relates to quantum of damages. The SC in Uphaar case reduced the damages to unacceptable levels. One reason for this is the common law system of damages which gives little for pain and suffering, loss of life and earnings.

We have to break out of this, and also extend exemplary (make an example) damages of at least Rs 1,000 crores in this case. The court could also deal with breach of contract. But there is an aspect that has constantly baffled me.

Who pays for the rescue operations? This includes personnel, ambulances, earth diggers, cranes, equipment, and hospital treatment. True, this is the state's function, but why should the transgressor not pay for it. Rescue is by no means a "remoteness of damage".

The further issue relates to criminal investigation. The answer has to be a crack team of the CBI (with forensic experts), a dedicated team of lawyers and a special court for accelerated disposition of the case. Unless this is done, the trial will be delayed and full of holes.

Finally, construction contracts and those responsible for them need proper vetting instead of falling into the quagmire of corruption, profit and bribery. My suggestions are limited to Kolkata and other disasters.

The Nariman solution is to be recommended. I know Nariman was involved in the Union Carbide case. In his autobiography he regrets his involvement. For me, he is unblemished.
RICHMOND  DNA implicates a career criminal in the rape of a Newport News woman and the murder of her husband more than three decades ago and conclusively proves the innocence of his former Navy shipmate wrongly convicted of the crimes, according to the imprisoned mans lawyers.

Keith Allen Harward, 59, has served more than 33 years of a life sentence for the murder of Jesse Perron, who was beaten to death early on the morning of Sept. 14, 1982, with a crowbar by a killer who repeatedly sexually assaulted the dying mans wife as their children slept in a nearby bedroom.

Key evidence against Harward was testimony from expert witnesses who said bite marks on the rape victim matched his teeth.

The Innocence Project filed an actual innocence petition last month after initial DNA testing failed to identify Harwards genetic profile in sperm left by the assailant. Since then, the Virginia Department of Forensic Science reported that the profile found in the sperm and run through the national DNA database produced a cold hit on Jerry L. Crotty.

Crotty, who died in an Ohio prison 10 years ago, also was a sailor stationed on the USS Carl Vinson at the time of the rape and murder, Harwards lawyers said. The aircraft carrier was undergoing work at Newport News Shipyard, located near the victims home, according to trial testimony.

Mr. Harward has spent over 33 years in prison for a crime that he did not commit, and indeed came perilously close to receiving the death penalty, his lawyers wrote to the Virginia Supreme Court in a supplemental brief filed last week.

The stark evidence of his innocence not only meets the rigorous standard of proof for a writ of actual innocence, but indeed far surpasses it, they added.

Michael Kelly, a spokesman for the Virginia Attorney Generals Office, said Friday: We are aware of this latest development and are working with Mr. Harwards attorneys to get the situation resolved as quickly as possible.

***

A spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction said Crotty died in prison on June 6, 2006, but no cause or manner of death was available Friday.

He was serving seven to 25 years for crimes that included abduction, burglary, theft and firearms violations.

It was his third time in the Ohio prison system. His first was in 1988, or 5 years after the rape and murder in Newport News.

Olga Akselrod, one of Harwards lawyers with the Innocence Project, said Harward has been informed that testing implicates Crotty. She said that although the two were stationed on the same ship, Harward did not know Crotty.

He is certainly confident that, at this point, given how powerful the DNA results are ... that he will be released as soon as possible, Akselrod said.

He also is represented by the Washington law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP.

Harward, an inmate at the Nottoway Correctional Center in Burkeville, declined to comment last month and referred questions to his lawyers.

Akselrod said Harward first contacted the Innocence Project seeking DNA testing in 2007, but there was a long line ahead of him. He was moved up, however, because he was convicted largely on bite mark evidence, a now controversial forensic technique.

***

The rape victim, who was attacked while no lights were on in the house, was unable to identify Harward.

In what became known in the Tidewater area as the bite-mark case, Harward was convicted largely on the testimony of experts who said bite marks the rapist left on the womans leg were made by Harwards teeth to within reasonable medical certainty and reasonable scientific certainty.

A security guard at the shipyard also identified Harward as the clean-shaven sailor he saw enter the shipyard with blood spatter on his uniform that morning.

Harwards lawyers said studies since have discredited the scientific basis for bite mark comparison and that the security guard identified Harward from a spread of mug shots long after that night and after he had been hypnotized by investigators.

Also, while the victim and the guard said the assailant was clean-shaven, trial testimony and old photographs strongly suggested Harward had a mustache at the time.

One of the bite-mark experts who testified against Harward told the Richmond Times-Dispatch last month that he was confident in his conclusion but that he respects DNA and said it was possible the wrong man had been convicted.

Trial testimony and Harwards innocence petition show that swabs were used to collect biological evidence from the victims body and crime scene items soon after the attack.

Initial DNA testing was completed earlier this year and failed to find Harwards profile. The Innocence Project filed an initial innocence petition on March 4 but told the court the state forensics lab was continuing testing and that further results would be forthcoming.

Papers filed at the Virginia Supreme Court last week by Harwards lawyers say the same DNA profile  not Harwards or the victims husbands  was identified in sperm that was recovered and could have been left only by the assailant.

The Virginia Department of Forensic Science matched that male genetic profile to Crotty. Harwards DNA profile was not found in anything that was tested.

***

The victim described her attacker as a white male, 19 or 20 years old, clean-shaven and wearing a sailors uniform.

Police believed the attacker was stationed on the USS Carl Vinson, which was docked nearby. Crotty was 19 at the time of the attack.

Crotty precisely matches the victims description of the perpetrator, Harwards lawyers contend. Harward was 26 and had a mustache at the time, they said.

Harwards innocence petition says more than 1,000 sailors on the aircraft carrier underwent dental screenings to see if their tooth alignment matched the bite marks on the rape victims legs. A mold of Harwards teeth was made, and he was excluded as a suspect.

In March 1983, Harward went to court in Newport News over an altercation with his girlfriend, whom he admitted defensively biting on her hand and shoulder. The rape victim could not identify Harward then or later.

News accounts said Harward was discharged from the Navy in March 1983 and was arrested at his parents home in Floyd County. The innocence petition said Harward cooperated with investigators and allowed a second mold to be made of his teeth.

Harward was convicted of capital murder, robbery, sodomy and rape in 1983 but escaped a death sentence from the jury.

Then in 1985, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that, under state law, he could not be tried for capital murder in the commission of a rape because the murder victim was not the rape victim. He was tried again in 1986, convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced again to life.

Harwards lawyers wrote last week, DNA has left no doubt that Mr. Harward was not the man who raped [the victim] and murdered [her husband], just as it has left no doubt about the identity of the actual rapist and murderer.

They added, Given the irrefutable proof of Mr. Harwards innocence, Mr. Harward respectfully requests that the court expedite its review of the case so that he can be exonerated as quickly as is feasible and finally be released from his three-decades-long nightmare.

Frank Green reports for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
CHARLOTTESVILLE - Piedmont Virginia Community College recently added an advanced manufacturing career certificate to its curriculum.

Administrators have talked about providing such a certificate for years. But its not clear what it means for job seekers  although there are a few plants in Central Virginia, the area is not well-known for manufacturing.

PVCC is starting small and counting on growth.

About 5,000 people in PVCCs service area work in manufacturing, according to the Virginia Employment Commission. A total of 19 companies each have 50 or more employees working in the field, said Adam Hastings, the colleges dean of business, mathematics and technology.

While these numbers are smaller than other regional industries, the need for this [training] is present and growing, he said.

The question is whether the college can find the right niche  one that will serve employers and give students a decent shot at finding a job.

The term advanced manufacturing refers to a broad range of skills needed in todays high-tech industries. Machines do most of the physical work, but companies still need employees who can program and maintain them.

Administrators in the community college and trade school sectors see this field as a potential goldmine because there is a shortage of skilled workers.

According to the Manufacturing Institute, which conducts research on the industry, an estimated 2 million jobs could go unfilled as the sector grows in size and aging workers retire.

Because most of these jobs require some postsecondary education  but not a bachelors degree  its seen as a niche opportunity for community colleges and trade schools. Institutions around the country are scrambling to meet the need.

PVCC is no different.

For now, the colleges offerings will be modest. The new program will be a subset of Piedmonts associates degree in electronics and computer technology. Students can choose to leave with a career certificate after one year or spend another year in school and graduate with an associates degree.

Hastings said the one-year certificate provides enough general training for a career as a manufacturing technician.

Students will leave the program with the knowledge necessary to find their niche in todays advanced manufacturing industry and will have the ability to hone their skills to their respective industry, he said.

But the most successful advanced manufacturing programs are tailored to their communities, said Craig Herndon, vice chancellor for workforce development at the Virginia Community College System.

Hampton Roads has a strong shipbuilding industry, while Roanoke and other parts of Southwest Virginia have electronics manufacturers. Colleges in those areas have tailored their programs to those needs.

What you might find at most colleges is a specialization, Herndon said. Every community college has a program in advanced manufacturing thats specific to the community.

Central Virginias niche is less clear. The area is home to plenty of high-tech startups, Herndon said, especially in the health care industry. But these businesses are mostly in the early stages.

The business community [in Charlottesville] is under development, he said. The college is appropriately right there with their training and development of skilled workers.

Many of the areas manufacturers specialize in medical equipment, Hastings said. The college will tune its training to the needs of companies such as Klockner Pentaplast and MicroAire, which both have local plants.

Winemaking is another market Piedmont could serve, Hastings said. Many of those processes are automated now, and PVCC already is equipped to train workers in the field.

Combining the manufacturing coursework with the brewing, viticulture and oenology coursework offered through PVCCs Workforce Services division is an exciting area for potential growth, Hastings said.

Sometimes, a good local training program can help attract a company to a particular town.

Eldor Corp., an Italian automotive parts manufacturer, recently settled on a 53-acre site just outside Roanoke that could bring as many as 600 jobs to the area.

The mechatronics training provided at nearby Virginia Western Community College was key to convincing Eldor executives to choose Roanoke, Herndon said.

Local officials are hoping to do something similar in Central Virginia. The Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce has been working with PVCC and companies in the area to help tailor local training to their needs.

Its a little bit of chicken-and-egg, said Timothy Hulbert, the chambers president. Its embryonic and ahead of the curve. But its OK to be ahead of the curve.

Derek Quizon can be reached at dquizon@dailyprogress.com or (434) 978-7254.
The guy who everyone knows is running for Richmond mayor apparently has learned a thing or two about politics from the guy who used to be Richmond mayor.

Levar Stoney, Gov. Terry McAuliffes patronage-dispensing secretary of the commonwealth, has yet to announce for the mayoralty and may not for another month.

Because, at best, hes an unofficial candidate, Stoney is taking a pass on the cattle call Wednesday night at Virginia Union University for mayoral prospects organized and moderated by Doug Wilder.

Stoney knows that Wilder is the most dangerous bull in the herd. From 2004 until 2008, Wilder was Richmonds first popularly elected mayor in more than a half-century. And while he didnt seek a second term, largely because his popularity went into the toilet, Wilder remains first among unequals in publicly urging a new direction for Richmond and goading the one official who might lead it there: a mayor elected citywide.

That means that even with 11 prospects on the stage, the star of the forum is expected to be Wilder, feeding speculation that at 85, the self-professed exhausted rooster is angling to run again for mayor, reprising his own brand of stern paternalism.

Allies say thats not happening but that Wilder, in the seven months until the election, will actively  and avidly  critique the candidates and their proposals, shaping the arc of the campaign.

No wonder Stoney isnt attending the Wilder show. Having already been gored by Wilder, who used a newspaper commentary last year to suggest that its unethical for a state official to be handing out political goodies while wading into city affairs, Stoney is doing as Wilder himself does artfully: controlling his exposure.

The less time that Stoney is an official candidate  the exigencies of fundraising demand he become one sooner rather than later, quitting his $156,000-a-year state job  the fewer opportunities that his adversaries will have to cut him down to size.

And theres a corollary: By refusing to engage Wilder directly, at least now, Stoney denies Wilder oxygen. Confrontation for Wilder is akin to breathing. He requires it to survive.

Stoney has spent months, dashing from meeting to meeting with local power brokers  black and white, Democratic and Republican  soliciting their wisdom and support. That he enters the campaign as McAuliffes mentee feeds curiosity about Stoney and invites comparisons with his mentor, not all of them flattering.

Though Stoney, raised in York County, has been based in Richmond off and on for a decade as a professional operative for Democratic candidates and the state Democratic Party, the perception is that he is parachuting into the mayoral contest, not unlike McAuliffe did in 2009 in his first, unsuccessful stand for the gubernatorial nomination.

McAuliffe, a wealthy national Democratic apparatchik with time on his hands, never had held elective office. He believed he could break in at the highest levels, having managed successful campaigns and counseled winning candidates, including Bill and Hillary Clinton.

That steeled McAuliffes confidence  perhaps, his overconfidence  in money and technology; that enough of both could make victory a mere formality.

Lost in this: McAuliffe had to do more than show up. He had to drill down into the electorate, familiarizing himself with the people who make it up and the issues on which they make up their minds.

Four years later, it came together for McAuliffe. He not only improved as a candidate, he had the good fortune of running against someone who terrified Virginians: Ken Cuccinelli.

Stoney, too, never has run for and won anything. As McAuliffe did, Stoney advised candidates, one of whom was McAuliffe, during the interregnum between his losing and winning bids for governor.

McAuliffe is returning the favor, supplying Stoney as well with fundraising contacts  among them Mike Doerr, director of the governors political treasury  who could underwrite a mayoral campaign budget possibly approaching $1 million. Thats more than twice what Wilder raised in 2004 and successor Dwight Jones, whom Wilder berates as a lost opportunist, collected in 2008 and 2012.

Big money would allow the 35-year-old Stoney  aspiring to reflect a younger, hipper city  to make a big splash with flashy broadcast and online advertising that would run concurrently with that of Hillary Clinton, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee. And though the mayoral election is nonpartisan, Stoney could make it partisan, wiring up the endorsement of the Richmond Democratic Committee.

This, perhaps paired with the support of Clinton or her husband, the former president, could create coattails that pull Stoney into office.

If running for mayor were that easy.

Richmond remains a city where retail politics endure, where council members and mayors have deep roots in their communities.

Wilder, his Doug-centricity style notwithstanding, is the apotheosis of local talent. A Richmond native, his interest in politics took him from the barbershop where he heard it discussed as a boy, to the courthouse where he grasped it as a young lawyer, and to the statehouse, where he elevated it to an art as a legislator, lieutenant governor and governor.

In Richmond, candidates are expected at churches, neighborhood association meetings and street fairs. Theyre important venues not only for reaching millennials  the 20-to-34 crowd makes up one-third of Richmonds population  but traditional elements of the electorate, such as pockets of older African-American voters in majority-black wards.

These are areas of the city where turnouts are skimpy, not just because interest in municipal affairs is but because felony rates mean many have lost their voting rights.

Stoney will have something to say about that. As secretary of the commonwealth, he is McAuliffes point man in restoring the voting rights of Virginians whove been convicted of nonviolent felonies and completed their penalties.

Building a winning, generations spanning, multihued coalition for mayor was always going to be complicated, more so this year because of the possibility of a crowded field that includes many emblems of the citys dysfunction: City Council members Chris Hilbert, Jon Baliles and Michelle Mosby, plus former Del. Joe Morrissey.

To ensure that Richmonds at-large mayor reflects the city as a whole  or an approximation of it  the victor must carry five of nine wards. That might be doable if a candidate gets 25 percent of the vote, lending new meaning to the term minority mayor.

If there isnt a winner in November, there will be runoff six weeks later between the top two vote-getters. That would be Dec. 20  five days before Christmas, when turnout is certain to plunge from a presidential-year high.

And perhaps make for a shocking result.
Canadas Minister of Science, The Honourable Kirsty Duncan, visited Dalhousie Friday morning, spending close to two hours touring the universitys ocean sciences facilities.



During her tour, Duncan got an up-close look at some of the state-of-the-art facilities housed in the Steele Ocean Sciences Building and spoke with Dal faculty and graduate students about some of the major projects currently underway.



"I came here because I wanted to see the research that's going on here," the minister said following the event. "And to see what's possible for monitoring the ocean."

Discussing research



Duncan's visit came just over a week after Treasury Board President Scott Brison visited Dal to discuss the federal Liberal governments first budget, which includes significant new investments and commitments for science and innovation at universities. Duncan further emphasized her government's commitment on this front during her visit, calling the budget a "very exciting budget for science."



She drew attention to the budgets $2-billion investment in research and innovation infrastructure and to the biggest top up to the Tri-Council granting agencies in more than a decade.



Doug Wallace, the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Ocean Science and Technology at Dal, kicked the mornings event off by escorting Duncan on a tour of his CERC.Ocean lab on the lower level of the Steele Building and of the large container bay next door.



Duncan got to view one of two newly acquired mobile lab units housed in ocean-going-grade shipping containers that allow researchers to set up sensitive equipment before being loaded onto a ship, alleviating the need to do so while at sea in remote areas of the North Atlantic and Arctic. Inside, as well as looking through a microscope at plankton samples, the researchers discussed more modern, genomic approaches to characterizing marine microbes with Duncan.

Making connections



Upstairs, Duncan met researchers from the Marine Environmental Observation Prediction and Response Network (MEOPAR) and the Ocean Tracking Network (OTN)  two major international ocean-science networks hosted by Dal. Dr. Wallace, who is also MEOPARs scientific director, explained how the group's research across Canada enables more informed decision-making by industry, government and communities in the face of marine risk.



Diego Ibarra, a research associate in Dr. Wallace's lab, showcased for Duncan a wave forecast for offshore Nova Scotia made accessible using using OceanViewer.org. The public web-based tool was created by MEOPAR to help democratize ocean data  from temperatures to surface chlorophyll levels  helping close the gap between ocean scientists and others who can make use of the information, such as fishermen, surfers and aquaculture farmers among others.



Next, Sara Iverson, scientific director of OTN, walked Duncan through the importance of tracking marine animals movements, habitat use, and survival  especially in relation to climate change. She emphasized how providing fisheries managers and others such data can help prevent things like the collapse of fish stocks as well as enhance their capacity to benefit sustainably from fisheries.



Aquatic animals provide global food security and they generate billions of dollars annually . . . through benefits from fishing, tourism and other services said Dr. Iverson, and theyre also culturally significant to many communities, First Nations and the public.





The minister learned about some of the aquatic animal-tracking technology used by OTN and its partners, including implantable acoustic tags capable of tracking movements and other metrics in everything from a juvenile salmon all the way up to Blue whales for up to 20 years. Dr. Iverson said in Canada such technology has helped to revolutionize such things as the management of Pacific salmon populations and to understand the emerging fisheries in the Arctic.



Another type of tag called a biologger which Oceanography post-doc Franziska Broell described as Fitbit for animals  was designed with the help of student researchers in Dals Faculty of Engineering. Attached to both small and large animals, it can measure speed, prey capture events and other behaviours. Research Associate Damian Lidgard showcased the Vemco Mobile Transciever, which can be mounted to large animals such as seals and their prey. Researchers are currently using them to try to look at the impact of seals on Atlantic cod stocks.



What that offers in terms of observation is huge, said Duncan.

Pilot control



Duncan was also given the chance to pilot a Slocum Glider  a $250,000 bullet-shaped underwater autonomous vehicle  located off the coast of Vancouver Island, B.C. in real time. This is the most stressful thing Ive done, the minister laughed as she typed out an extended series of numbers, letters and symbols on a keyboard with the help of a technician before successfully reprogramming the rig.





To finish off the tour, the minister was treated to a rare audio recording of a blue whale captured by a glider in the North Pacific the previous summer. The experience of hearing the low rumble  similar to the sound of an engine  impressed Duncan. Such information provided in real time will be used in a joint MEOPAR-OTN supported project involving gliders to prevent whale-ship collisions in the future.

Im blown away by what youre doing, she told Dr. Wallace, Dr. Iverson and others as the tour came to an end. The science is fascinating.
IT minister K.T. Rama Rao (right) is congralutated by Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan (left) as Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao and Infosys Chairman Emeritus N.R. Narayana Murthy watch at the unveiling of the Telangana ICT Policy in Hyderabad on Monday. (Photo: Deccan Chronicle)

Hyderabad: The Telangana government signed agreements with various IT companies, mobile phone and electronic manufacturers on the sidelines of the launch of the states new IT policy on Monday.

As many as 28 MoUs were signed between the government and company representatives in the presence of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, IT minister K.T. Rama Rao and other ministers as well as captains of IT industry and top government officials.

Value Labs, a Hyderabad-headquartered IT services company, will set up a state-of-the-art campus in Hyderabad with an investment of Rs 1,362 crore that will come up on 10 lakh square feet and will employ 10,000 professionals.

Karvy will establish a facility that will house about 5,000 employees. It will be its IT backbone for enabling its financial services.

Max-Touch proposes to build an assembly unit of cell phones, LED lights, induction lamps and LED television sets. It plans to commence monthly commercial production of 30,000 LED TVs, 1 lakh mobile phone units and 3 lakh LED lights.

LED manufacturers SPV will establish facilities in the LED cluster. An investment of Rs 500 crore will be made to create an employment potential of 5,000.

Kwality Photonics Pvt. Ltd. will set up Indias first global scale LED semiconductor plant in Telangana with an investment of Rs 200 crore over the next three years.

Axiom has agreed to establish its manufacturing facility for mobile phone chargers. The proposed plant will have the capacity to manufacture 6 million chargers per month and will provide employment to 2000 people directly and another 1000 indirectly.

The Development Bank of Singapore, the largest multinational bank in Southeast Asia, will establish its first global technology development centre here to develop its internal IT capabilities.

An MoU was signed on Monday between the Development Bank of Singapore and the Telangana government for the centre, which will eventually house about 1,500 employees supporting the banks global IT operations.

The T-Hub entered into agreements with YES Bank, Hewlett Packard, CISCO, Talent Sprint etc. Likewise, the Telangana Academy of Skill and Knowledge (TASK) signed MoUs with Microsoft India, ICICI foundation, SAP education etc.
The complainant is the sister of Assistant SI B. Mohan Reddy who is allegedly involved in economic offences which Mr Dayakar is probing. (Representational image)

Karimnagar: An inspector of the CID, Hyderabad, was booked on Saturday for allegedly harassing a woman employee of the agriculture department by sending abusive messages and obscene photos over WhatsApp and making objectionable calls.

Karimnagar II Town police said the accused, inspector K. Dayakar Reddy, 55, was the officer investigating the illegal financial business of Asst SI B. Mohan Reddy. The complaint, 41, is a sister-in-law of Mohan Reddy, and had lost her husband.

A case was registered against him under Sections 354 A and D and 506 of the IPC. According to her, the inspector was harassing her after she mentioned her phone number as part of the investigations into the Mohan Reddy scam, three months ago. She alleged that he had been sending objectionable messages from his two phone numbers to her mobile phone.

Inspector harassed woman

The complainant is the sister of Assistant SI B. Mohan Reddy who is allegedly involved in economic offences which Mr Dayakar is probing.

The complainant also alleged that he professed his love for her, and also said, I have a property in Hyderabad and you get transferred here so that we can live together (sic).

She alleged that he had asked her to prepare something special for him when he arrives in Karimnagar to investigate case.

She stated that he had threatened her with dire consequence if she dared to reveal his messages to the police, when she told him that she would lodge a complaint. The CID is probing the illegal financing business of Mohan Reddy, an ASI of Choppandi, and his atrocities on his borrowers. He is accused of accumulating property worth several hundreds of crores by lending money to employees, merchants and farmers at exorbitant rates of interest.

The scam came to light with the suicide of a school manager in Karimnagar on October 29 last.
Lucknow/New Delhi: A senior officer posted with the NIA was shot dead and his wife was seriously injured when two unidentified motorcycle-borne assailants sprayed bullets on the couple in the early hours of Sunday in Bijnore district of Uttar Pradesh.

The killers pumped bullets into Mohammed Tanzil Ahmad, the NIA officer, and his wife Farzana, as their 14-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son watched the gruesome incident from the back seat of the Wagon-R car they were travelling in, the police said. The children were not injured. Ahmad was returning home to Sahaspur village of Bijnor district with his family after attending his niece's wedding in a nearby village in the same district, which is about 150 km from New Delhi.

Union home minister Rajnath Singh said that he had been apprised about the incident. The UP police has sealed the borders of the district and launched a manhunt. We are also in touch with NIA officers and coordinating with them. We will go deep into it and ensure that those involved are arrested, UP DGP Javed Ahmad told reporters in Lucknow.

Talking to the media in Lucknow, IGP (Law and Order) Bhagwan Swaroop said Tanzil Ahmad was shot dead by two motorcycle-borne persons while he was returning after attending a marriage ceremony with his wife Farzana. Police sources said automatic weapons and 9 mm pistols were used in the incident. Reports claimed that Ahmad was part of the team investigating the Pathankot airbase attack. However, NIA sources refused to comment on that. The state police termed Ahmads killing as a planned attack and did not rule out the possibility of a terror angle behind the shooting.
Chennai: A demonstrably calibrated step-up in the political attacks on the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu by its long-perceived natural ally, the BJP, in the run-up to the May 16 Assembly polls, has not come a day too soon. From suave articulation of the Narendra Modi governments position at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris in December 2015  strangely coinciding with the worst floods Chennai had seen in decades- to his latest tryst with words in Madurai, the home of the Fish-eyed Goddess Meenakshi, Union minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Mr Prakash Javadekars journey, is a politically ringing one.

Even when the Paris climate summit was on, there was a flip-flop on the BJPs part, over whether larger climate change led to Chennais worst floods in living memory, or it was a plain natural disaster of great intensity. While public memory is generous to such verbal contradictions, Mr Javadekar, as BJPs election-in-charge for Tamil Nadu, picked up the gauntlet more recently when the saffron party tried to woo back the DMDK founder-leader Vijayakanth into the BJP-fold as part of the latters efforts to rebuild the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the State.

Mr Javadekars first swipe against the AIADMK was that the Jayalalithaa government was taking credit for the flood relief in Chennai and a few other northern districts, when it is the Narendra Modi government which is helping Tamil Nadu in every way. The Prime Minister had immediately sanctioned Rs 2,000 crore after an aerial survey of flood-hit Chennai, the BJP leader recalled after meeting Vijayakanth in the city recently.

This may have been brushed off as political assertion by big brother New Delhi. But it soon developed into a calibrated anti-AIADMK discourse, even as BJP failed to rope in Captain, or play ball with its other erstwhile ally, the PMK, which was ready for an embrace with the saffron party if only it accepted Dr Anbumani Ramadoss as the Chief Ministerial candidate, as projected months ahead of the polls by the PMK.

The BJPs antipathy towards the AIADMK became more strident when, first the Union Power minister Piyush Goyal openly spoke about Chief Minister Ms Jayalalithaa not being accessible when Central ministers contacted her office.

Javadekar not only quickly endorsed it, but also rubbed in with another comment on the Tamil Nadu governments non-cooperative attitude in not responding to the Dr Kasturirangan report on development of Western Ghats, despite his Ministry following this for last one year. As Vijayakanths subsequent decision to team up with the MDMK leader Vaiko-coordinated Peoples Welfare Alliance (PWA) came as a big blow to the BJP, which is now more or less going it alone in the polls save a few smaller parties, Javadekars critique of both the major Dravidian parties, particularly the AIADMK, hit a high shrill note in Madurai on Friday.

He roundly condemned the AIADMK regime for slapping sedition charges against anti-liquor activists who were only exercising their democratic rights in broad-basing their prohibition campaign  such rules do not apply to Central Universities.

But Javadekar also dwelt the blow much harder, alleging that the sand mining mafia and liquor lobby are fund providers for the Dravidian majors. Though other parties including the MDMK, Left and PMK have been lambasting the AIADMK on the corruption and prohibition issues, it is BJPs Tamil Nadu generalissimo Javadekars stinging salvos that appears to have caught the public fancy more in the past few days. And the Environment Ministrys policy intervention in areas like sand mining has given his critique a sharper edge.

When guns boom from a Central Minister, naturally it carries more weight, says a political analyst, who sees the increasing shrillness in the BJPs attacks on the AIADMK as being directly proportional to the saffron partys inability to sew up the NDA again. With neither the BJPs 2014 Lok Sabha polls strategy of a rainbow alliance replicable now, nor the moves by the BJP to get major OBC and Dalit groups to align on religiously singular lines,  even a rally addressed by Mr Amit Shah was held in Madurai some time back to bring all the Dalit sub-sects together-, taking off, the BJP top brass have launched a no-holds-barred tirade against the Dravidian majors, critical glare more on AIADMK.

Analysts say this strategy may help the BJP to regain some of its relevance in Tamil Nadu as a political alternative amid the DMDK-PWA alliance still in its infancy; it is also a bid to appropriate theirs and the PMKs discourse that rubbishes the legacy of both DMK and AIADMK.

In a socio-political milieu where poll battles could be shaped with words, Javadekar, by targeting the mining and the liquor lobbies  a strategy that late Congress leader Rajiv Gandhi had tried in 1989 in Tamil Nadu, seems fine-tuning the Dravidian parties own rich legacy of political rhetoric. This seems all the more so after having failed to convince the Supreme Court to revive the traditional Tamil sport of Jallikattu. Yet, more than Javadekars, the more remembered quote here is AIADMK leader Ms Jayalalithaas one-liner during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls: This lady is better than Modi.
Hyderabad: Two to three major IT companies are likely to foray into Telangana with big investment plans. The announcement of their entry is expected at the launch of the states first IT policy here on Monday. The Telangana state government is expected to enter into pact with a few IT companies to mark the occasion.

Infosys founder N.R. Narayana Murthy will be the chief guest for the event, which will be attended by Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan and Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao.

This is the first IT policy by the TS government after the formation of the state in 2014. It comprises different policies for IT enabled services, electronics, gaming and animation sectors apart from innovation and rural technologies. The aim of the policy is to Telangana state to the number one position the country as far as the IT sector is concerned, sources said.
The 800 individuals under investigation include some taxpayers who had previously been investigated and others who had reported themselves to the tax office under its so-called Project DO IT - Disclose Offshore Income Today. (Photo: AFP)

Sydney: The Australian Tax Office (ATO) said on Monday it is investigating more than 800 wealthy clients of a Panama law firm for possible tax evasion.

The probe follows the reported leak of more than 11.5 million documents from the files of law firm Mossack Fonseca, based in the tax haven of Panama, revealing details of hundreds of thousands of clients.

The documents are at the centre of an investigation published on Sunday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and more than 100 other news organizations around the globe. ICIJ is the international arm of the Center for Public Integrity.

The leaked "Panama Papers" cover a period over almost 40 years, from 1977 until as recently as last December, and allegedly show that some companies domiciled in tax havens were being used for suspected money laundering, arms and drug deals, and tax avoidance.

"Currently we have identified over 800 individual taxpayers and we have now linked over 120 of them to an associate offshore service provider located in Hong Kong," the Australian tax office said in a statement emailed to Reuters. It did not name the Hong Kong company.

ATO Deputy Commissioner Michael Cranston said his office was working with the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Crime Commission and anti-money laundering regulator AUSTRAC to further cross-check the data from the documents.

"Some cases may be referred to the Serious Financial Crime Taskforce," Cranston said in the statement. "The message is clear - taxpayers can't rely on these secret arrangements being kept secret and we will act on any information that is provided to us."

Treasurer Scott Morrison told ABC Radio Monday that "our record when it comes to tax avoidance and particularly multinational tax avoidance is one of legislation and action."

The 800 individuals under investigation include some taxpayers who had previously been investigated and others who had reported themselves to the tax office under its so-called Project DO IT - Disclose Offshore Income Today. The voluntary disclosure initiative, which closed at the end of 2014, allowed people to come forward and avoid steep penalties and criminal charges.

However, the tax office said the individuals under investigation also include "a large number of taxpayers who haven't previously come forward."

In New Zealand, the tax agency is "working closely" with its tax treaty partners to obtain full details of any New Zealand tax residents who may have been involved in arrangements facilitated by Mossack Fonseca, said John Nash, Inland Revenues international revenue strategy manager, in comments emailed to Reuters.

Nash said there is an "active compliance program focused on those who engage in abusive offshore arrangements and dont meet their tax obligations."

He urged any New Zealand tax residents who may have been involved in offshore arrangements that do not comply with tax laws to come forward voluntarily "rather than face more severe action later should we identify participation in tax evasion or avoidance.
The police have tightened security in Bengaluru in the wake of reports that a few ultras have entered the city to carry out terror attacks. It is said that 3 terrorists reached the city a few days ago and the central intelligence agencies have alerted the city police about it.





The police claimed that there have been no specific alerts about terror attacks and ultras entering the city. However, they have beefed up the security in sensitive and hyper-sensitive areas, added the police.



The top brass of the police did not confirm reports that a team from the National Investigating Agency (NIA) has come to the city in search of ultras. There are no threats and Bengalureans need not panic during the time of the festival this weekend. The police have made elaborate security arrangements. Steps would be taken to thwart any attempts by anybody to spread violence, said the police.



The police have requested the citizens to alert them about any suspicious objects or movement.
Jammu and Kashmir got its first woman chief minister today in PDP President Mehbooba Mufti who was sworn-in here along with 22 ministers, with an increased strength for BJP in the Cabinet.





Dressed in black, 56-year-old Mehbooba took the oath of office and secrecy in Urdu followed by BJP's Nirmal Singh, who will again be the Deputy Chief Minister in the new PDP-BJP government formed three months after the state was put under Governor's rule following the demise of her father Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.



Governor N N Vohra also administered the oath to 21 other Ministers. BJP's share increased this time in the Cabinet from six to eight berths and three Ministers of State (MoS) while PDP has nine Cabinet Ministers instead of 11 last time.



Mehbooba's party has got three MoS berths, same as the last time.

In the last government, BJP had a total of 11 ministers -- six in Cabinet, three MoS and two with independent charge.



Sajjad Gani Lone, son of late separatist leader Abdul Gani Lone, remained in the Cabinet in the BJP quota.



PDP has dropped Altaf Bukhari and Javed Mustafa from the ministry.



Former Chief Ministers Farooq Abdullah and his son Omar, Union Ministers Venkaiah Naidu and Jitendra Singh were among the host of VIPs present at the function held at Raj Bhavan.



However, PDP MP Tariq Hamid Karra and Congress boycotted the ceremony.

BJP promoted Chering Dorje and Abdul Gani Kohli as Cabinet ministers. They were Ministers of State with independent charge in the Sayeed-led government.



The saffron party has Prakash Kumar and Shyam Lal Chowdhury among the new faces in the cabinet. BJP leader Sukhnandan was dropped from the list of Ministers besides Minister of State Pawan Gupta, an independent MLA from Udhampur, who has been replaced by Ajay Nanda.



Law Minister in the Sayeed's ministry, Basharat Bukhari of PDP, took oath in Kashmiri again this year.



Mehbooba assuming office as 13th Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir is a landmark event in the history of the state and the country. She is the first woman to head the state and the second Muslim woman to become the Chief Minister of any state in India.

Syeda Anwara Taimur was the first Muslim woman CM in Assam in 1980 and continued to hold the chair till June 30, 1981.



The new government has also retained two woman ministers from the earlier coalition--- Priya Seth (BJP) and Asiya Nakash (PDP).



Apart from Nirmal Singh, who will lead the BJP flock in the coalition, Chandra Prakash, Bali Bhagat, Lal Singh, Dorje, Abdul Gani Kolhi, Ajay Handa, Sunil Kumar Sharma are also a part of the new government.



From the PDP's side, Ghulam Nabi Lone, Abdul Rehman Veeri Abdul Haq Khan, Syed Basharat Ahmed Bukhari, Haseeb Drabu, Syed Naeem Akhtar Andrabi and Zahoor Ahmad Mir were sworn in as ministers.



The cermony had ministers taking oath in different languages. While Mehbooba and Nirmal Singh stuck to Urdu and Hindi respectively, Bukhari took his oath in Kashmiri.

BJP's Lal Singh took oath in Punjabi while Dorje chose English.



The two parties came together last year with Mufti Mohammad Sayeed heading the government for 10 months till his death on January 7. Mehbooba, who is presently a member of Lok Sabha, will have to resign from her parliamentary seat and will get six months to secure membership of one of the two houses of the state legislature.

The PDP-BJP coalition has 56 MLAs in the 87-member Assembly.



The PDP has 27 members while BJP has 25. Peoples' Conference has two MLAs while two other independents are supporting the coalition.



The revival of the PDP-BJP coalition government in the state -- after three months of stalemate -- became possible after several rounds of hectic negotiations between the two parties and apparent intervention by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.



Following Sayeed's death, Governor's Rule was imposed in the state as the PDP and the BJP did not stake fresh claim for government formation in the state.



Initially, the two parties maintained that Mehbooba was not in a position to take over the reins of the state as she was mourning her father's death.



However, after the mourning period was over, the PDP said it was looking for assurances and confidence building measures from the Centre on implementation of Agenda of Alliance -- common minimum programme of the two parties -- before forming the new government.



Hopes of ending the deadlock were raised when BJP general secretary Ram Madhav arrived in Srinagar in a chartered plane to meet Mehbooba Mufti late in the evening on February 17 but nothing came out of the hour-long meeting.



The next high level contact between the two parties came on March 19 when Mehbooba met BJP president Amit Shah.



Again the two parties failed to resolve the issues, forcing the BJP to publicly admit for the first time that no headway could be made on government formation.

In fact, several PDP leaders went to extent of saying the prospects of an alliance with the BJP were all but over.



However, to everyone's surprise, the PDP president went to meet the Prime Minister three days later and decks were cleared for the formation of the government.


The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to review a case in which a Colorado juror allegedly expressed racial bias against a Latino defendant during deliberations.

The high court granted certiorari in the appeal of Miguel Angel Pena Rodriguez, who was convicted of sexual assault and harassment charges involving teenage sisters at a Denver-area horse race track in May 2007.

According to Rodriguezs appeal, a juror made derogatory remarks about Mexican men during jury deliberations.

The case revolves around the issue of whether statements during deliberations can be so offensive that they could taint the jurys decision.

Most states and the federal government have a no-impeachment rule of evidence generally prohibiting the introduction of juror testimony regarding statements made during deliberations when offered to challenge the jurys verdict.

Were really pleased to get our full day in court for Mr. Pena, said Penas attorney, Jeffrey L. Fisher, a law professor at Stanford Law School.

Colorado Attorney General Cynthia H. Coffman said her office will fight to uphold Penas conviction.

This case raises challenging questions and could have a significant impact on the jury system and how jurors deliberate, Coffman said in a statement. We will put our best legal minds on this case, and the attorneys in my office will do their duty to support the convictions obtained by Colorado district attorneys.

In May 2007, a man entered a womans bathroom at a horse-racing track and offered beer to two teen sisters. He then turned the lights off and allegedly fondled the girls as they tried to leave. Pena, who worked in a nearby barn, was arrested after the girls, who were inside a police cruiser, said a man standing 15 feet away from the car was their attacker.

During jury deliberations, it was a close decision vulnerable to bias, according to a brief by Fisher and Denver attorney Jonathan Rosen. The jury was initially deadlocked on all four charges and reached a guilty verdict only on a misdemeanor sexual assault charge and two misdemeanor harassment charges after a judge admonished jurors to keep deliberating, the brief says.

Pena was sentenced to two years of probation in 2010 and has since completed his term.

Pena appealed after two jurors came forward, accusing a third juror of saying: I think he did it because hes Mexican and Mexican men take whatever they want. The juror also allegedly questioned the credibility of a witness on the basis that he was an illegal.

Colorado already has exceptions to jury deliberation no-impeachment rules, but not one that specifically addresses racial bias. About 20 states already have a racial bias exception.

The question presented to the U.S. Supreme Court is whether a no-impeachment rule constitutionally may bar evidence of racial bias offered to prove a violation of the Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury, according to Supreme Court documents.

The juror, identified only by his initials H.C., didnt just voice an off-handed comment related to race, but his comments were directly tied to the determination of the defendants guilt, the appeal brief to the Supreme Court says.

When a verdict might be based on racial or ethnic bias, rather than on facts, the right to a fair trial has been compromised, said Reeves Anderson, a Denver attorney who filed an amicus brief, or friend of the court brief, in the case on behalf of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Racial and ethnic bias has no place in a system of justice intended to be impartial, Anderson said.

If the high court overturns a decision by the Colorado Supreme Court and other courts denying Penas prior appeals, all states will be required to have a racial bias exception to its no jury impeachment rules, Fisher said. That could lead to a new trial for Pena.

Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206, kmitchell@denverpost.com or @kirkmitchell or denverpost.com/coldcases
By Nathaniel Rich

31 March 2016 (The New York Times Magazine)  It just seems like a beautiful day in Southern California, Bryan Caforio said. It was late January in Porter Ranch, an affluent neighborhood on the northern fringe of Los Angeles. Caforio and I sat at a Starbucks overlooking an oceanic parking lot crowded with shoppers. The air was still, dry, 70 degrees. Caforio, a young trial lawyer running for Congress in the states 25th District, gestured at the pink and orange striations of sky above Aliso Canyon, its foothills bronze in the falling daylight. It seems like a beautiful sunset in a wonderful community, Caforio said, and were sitting outside, enjoying a wonderful coffee. But there were scattered clues that suggested that everything was not so wonderful. Near a trio of news vans parked in front of the Starbucks, antenna masts projecting from their roofs, a cameraman stared quizzically up at the canyon. Next to the SuperCuts, security guards stood outside two nondescript storefronts; stenciled on the windows were the words Community Resource Center and, in smaller letters, SoCalGas. The guards asked for identification and dismissed anyone who tried to take a photograph. At the entrance to Bath & Body Works, a device that resembled an electronic parking meter was balanced on a tripod; the digital display read BENZENE, followed by a series of indecipherable ideograms. The parking lot held a preponderance of silver Honda Civics bearing the decal of the South Coast Air Quality Management District. Inside the cars, men sat in silence, waiting. Beyond the Ralphs grocery store and the Walmart rose a neighborhood of jumbo beige homes with orange clay-tiled roofs and three-car garages. The lawns were tidily landscaped with hedges of lavender, succulents, cactuses and kumquat trees. The neighborhood was a model of early-1980s California suburban design; until October, it was best known for being the location where Steven Spielberg shot E.T. But now the meandering streets were desolate, apart from the occasional unmarked white van. As you ascended the canyon, reaching gated communities with names like Renaissance, Promenade and Highlands, the police presence increased. On Sesnon Boulevard, the neighborhoods northern boundary, an electric billboard propped in the middle lane blinked messages: REPORT CRIME ACTIVITY; L.A.P.D. IN THE AREA; CALL 911. Holleigh Bernson Memorial Park was empty aside from three cop cars, patrol lights flashing. But the most significant clues were the spindly metal structures spaced along the ridge of the canyon. They resembled antennas or construction sites or alien glyphs. Until recently, most residents of Porter Ranch did not pay them much attention. You look at the hills, you see a few towers, Caforio said. But do you really know what they are? He shook his head. You try to say, Hey, were having an environmental disaster right now! But it just looks like a beautiful sunset. The first sign of trouble came on Oct. 25, when the Southern California Gas Company filed a terse report with the California Public Utilities Commission noting that a leak had been detected on Oct. 23 at a well in its Aliso Canyon storage facility. Under Summary, the report read: No ignition, no injury. No media. The local news media began to take notice, however, when Porter Ranch residents complained of suffocating gas fumes. In response, SoCalGas released a statement on Oct. 28 pointing out that the well was outdoors at an isolated area of our mountain facility over a mile away from and more than 1,200 feet higher than homes or public areas. It assured the public that the leak did not present a threat. [] Were all kind of feeding on it in a weird way, said Henry Stern, a Democrat who is running for State Senate in the local district. He previously served as senior counsel on energy and environmental policy for the districts current senator, Fran Pavley, a Democrat who cannot run again because of term limits. How often are there climate disasters in suburbia? Stern has been struck at community meetings by the comments of local residents, many of them self-identifying conservatives, who have begun to question the wisdom of relying on fossil fuels. Climate change is not a real thing for most of these people, Stern said. But you change your mind quick when your kids are puking. [more]
Fujitsu/Panasonic SoC co.: fabless, feckless or both?

Junko Yoshida, EETimes

4/4/2016 08:13 AM EDT

YOKOHAMA, Japan  Managing a 13-month old pre-IPO fabless company  saddled with 2,700 employees and seven disparate business units  isnt a challenge for the faint of heart. The task gets almost impossible when the company is under government pressure to keep all its employees on the job.

The SoC chip vendor in question is Socionext in Japan.

Socionext, born in March, 2015, is the merger of two troubled LSI design teams  from Fujitsu and Panasonic. The company is 40-percent owned by Fujitsu, 20 percent by Panasonic and 20 percent by the Development Bank of Japan (DBJ).

Click here to read more ...








It seems the Asus Zenfone 3 may flaunt a curved glass back and an aluminum frame, likely to have a fingerprint sensor.

After the runaway success of the Asus Zenfone 2, the Taiwanese company seems to be gearing up for the next variant. New images, which surfaced on the Internet earlier today, give us the first glimpse of the upcoming smartphone. The image was seen on the Red Dot 21 website, where the phones were rumoured to be entered by Asus itself. Red Dot 21 is a product design showcase website. According to the images and the description on the website, the Asus Zenfone 3 Deluxe seems to share its design attributes with the newly launched Samsung Galaxy S7.

According to Red Dot 21, the Asus Zenfone 3 will have 2.5D glass, on both the front and back. The back will also have the signature Asus spinning design. The description on the website suggests that the phone will have a laser assisted autofocus system, USB Type-C for "speedy charging", a front-facing flash as well as a fingerprint scanner, which can double up as a camera shutter as well. However, the website does not share any details about the specifications of the upcoming smartphone.

According to a previous report, specifications of two Zenfones were leaked on GFXBench. One Asus Z010DD is apparently running on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 chipset. It might come with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. Reports suggest that the phone may have a 13MP rear camera, 5MP selfie snapper and two display options  5.5-inch and 5.9-inch, both with 720p resolution. It is more than likely that the phone will be launched with Android 6.0 Marshmallow.
Oil futures endured another volatile trading session on Monday, as the negative impact of the ongoing war of words between Iran and Saudi Arabia spilled over into the new trading week.

Iranian oil minister Bijan Zanganeh told the Mehr News agency over the weekend that Tehran would continue increasing its oil production and exports. His remarks came ahead of an oil producers conference in Doha on 17 April that Iran has decided not to attend.

On Friday, Saudi Arabias Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told Bloomberg: If all countries agree to freeze production, we will be among them.

But added that Iran needed to be among those countries without a doubt, raising fears of oversupply and an escalation of the tussle for oil market share between the Saudis and Iranians.

Meanwhile, a Reuters survey published last week indicated that OPECs oil production rose in March, having stabilised in February, following higher production from Iran and near-record exports from southern Iraq. Iraq alone produced over 4m barrels per day, second only to Saudi Arabia among all of OPEC's 13 member nations.

At 1707 BST, the Brent front month futures contract was 0.88% or 34 cents lower at a three-week low of $38.33 per barrel, having registered marginal gains earlier in the Asian session. Concurrently, WTI futures, fell 0.46% or 17 cents to $36.62 per barrel.

Tom Pugh, economist at Capital Economics, said, In our view, some sort of compromise agreement is still likely in Doha, even without Irans full participation. At face value Saudi comments seem to rule out a deal, given Irans determination to raise production following the easing of Western sanctions.

"However, three points support our view that a compromise could still be reached. First, the Deputy Crown Princes comments were off-the-cuff and should not be interpreted as the last word. Second, it is worth remembering that Saudi Arabia, along with Russia, Qatar and Venezuela, was one of the architects of the initial proposals to freeze output back in February. It would therefore seem a bit odd to insist on a condition that they know would never be met, given Irans evident determination to raise output.

Third, a deal should still benefit Saudi Arabia, as well as Iran. Indeed, even if Prince Mohammeds comments are taken at face value, a deal could be done on the basis that Iran would agree to increase output by no more than a certain amount.

Capital Economics is sticking to its end-2017 forecast of $60 per barrel for both WTI and Brent, but expects oil prices to end this year at $45 per barrel, only marginally higher than their current levels.

Away from oil markets, precious metals also headed lower despite the dollar weakening considerably against the yen. The COMEX gold June futures contract fell 0.23% or $2.80 to $1220.70 an ounce, while spot gold was down 0.48% or $5.85 to $1,216.75 an ounce.

COMEX silver fell 0.24% or four cents to $15.01 an ounce, while spot platinum also slid 1.56% or $14.95 to $942.10 an ounce; retreating further from the psychological $1,000 an ounce level.

Headline base metal futures saw lacklustre trading across the London Metal Exchange board, marked by low volumes with China and Hong Kong closed for business. At 1635 BST, the primary aluminium (+0.7%) three-month futures contract appeared to be among the few in positive territory.

Liz Grant, senior account executive at Sucden Financial, said, "Impact of the holiday in China and Hong Kong was reflected in the low turnover of business on the LME. Price activity was mixed, trading either side of Friday's close, drifting, with no fresh features to report.

Finally, agricultural commodity futures were firmly in negative territory. CBOT corn (-0.07%), wheat (-1.00%), ICE cocoa (-0.73%) and cotton (-0.25%) futures slipped in early trading calls stateside.
Moss Bros Group reports its 2015 preliminary results on Tuesday with analysts expecting an increase in earnings compared to the previous year.

The City has pencilled in full year pre-tax profits of 5.8m, up from 4.8m in 2014. Revenue is forecast to rise to 123.1m from 114.7 the prior year, driven by online sales.

In a trading update in January, the company said e-commerce sales had risen 32.7% year-on-year in the 49 weeks to 9 January.

We continue to see good growth and e-commerce sales now comprise 10% of group revenue, the company said.

Analysts will be looking to see how the company tackles the trend towards online retail, away from high street sales. They will also be closely scrutinising the groups formal suit hire business following two tumultuous years.

In February, the company announced the appointment of Tony Bennett as new finance director and Paula Minowa as chief operating officer to help leverage the Moss Bros brand further in new channels and new territories. Bennett is not due to join until August but Minowa started early last month.

Tuesday 05 April



INTERIM DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE

Carclo, Digital Globe Services Ltd (DI), Hays, Numis Corporation, Thorpe (F.W.)



QUARTERLY PAYMENT DATE

Barclays



QUARTERLY EX-DIVIDEND DATE

JP Morgan Chase & Co



INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

Balance of Trade (US) (13:30)

Factory Orders (GER) (07:00)

ISM Non-Manufacturing (US) (15:00)

PMI Composite (EU) (09:00)

PMI Composite (US) (14:45)

PMI Services (EU) (09:00)

PMI Services (GER) (08:55)

PMI Services (US) (14:45)

Retail Sales (EU) (10:00)



FINALS

AA , Card Factory, Hostelworld Group , Instem, Instem, Keywords Studios, Martinco , Moss Bros Group, Silence Therapeutics, Thalassa Holdings Ltd. (DI), Union Jack Oil



ANNUAL REPORT

Menzies(John)



SPECIAL DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE

Thorpe (F.W.)



AGMS

PJSC LSR Group GDR (REG S), Primary Health Properties



TRADING ANNOUNCEMENTS

Electrocomponents, International Consolidated Airlines Group SA (CDI)



UK ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

BRC Sales Monitor (00:01)

PMI Services (08:30)



FINAL DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE

Apax Global Alpha Limited , Computacenter, LondonMetric Property, Maintel Holdings, Rights & Issues Inv Trust Capital Shares, Rights & Issues Inv Trust Income Shares, Scottish American Inv Company
Trading is expected to get off to a quiet start this week, with investors looking out to the release of a widely-followed service sector survey Stateside later in the afternoon and the minutes of the Feds last rate-setting meeting, on Wednesday, for guidance.

Against that backdrop, the Footsie was expected to start the day nine points higher from last Fridays closing level of 6,146.05.

Asian stockmarkets were little changed overnight, with investors generally satisfied with last Fridays monthly jobs data in the US and the relatively dovish stance adopted by the US central bank of late.

The Shanghai Stock Exchanges Composite Index finished the session up by 0.19% at 3,009.53.

"Clearly the more dovish tone from the last Fed meeting combined with Janet Yellens comments last week is of more importance to investors, especially at a time when theyre absolutely convinced that monetary tightening is going to occur at a snails pace, at best. Perhaps the minutes from last months meeting on Wednesday will shed further light on when we can expected the tightening cycle to continue," said Craig Erlam, Senior Market Analyst at Oanda.

Front month Brent crude futures were continuing to slip lower, retreating by 1.124% to $38.24 per barrel as of 07:51GMT on the ICE.

On 1 April, Saudi deputy crown prince Mohammed bin Salman told Bloomberg his country would only freeze its output of crude oil if other major producers, specifically including Iran, did the same.

The Institute for Supply Managements US service sector purchasing managers index was set for release at 15:00GMT.

Mondi named in Russian anti-monopoly investigation

Paper maker Mondi said it had been named in a Russian anti-monopoly investigation, although it had not been officially notified by authorities. The company said in a statement that Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) announced last week it had started an investigation into Mondi's Syktyvkar for violations of antimonopoly law over offset paper.

FTSE 250 energy services firm Wood Group was celebrating a contract win on Monday morning, announcing it had been awarded a two-year extension to its service provision for the Abu Dhabi National Energy Company (TAQA) in the North Sea. Under the contract, which also includes options for three one-year extensions, Wood Group will continue to deliver engineering, construction and maintenance services to five offshore assets - Cormorant Alpha, North Cormorant, Eider, Tern and Harding. The contract was effective immediately, and extended an agreement in place between Wood Group and TAQA since 2008.

Polymetal International said it has agreed to buy the Komarovskoye gold deposit in Kazakhstan from Glencore for $100m in cash and royalties. The deal should be completed this year, Polymetal said. Polymetal's Net debt/ Adjusted EBITDA will not materially change after the Acquisition compared to 2015 year end (1.97x as at 31/12/2015).
Tax authorities down under began their week by investigating local clients of a Panamanian law firm, implicated at the centre of a large tax evasion scheme uncovered by a data leak on Sunday.

The leak of the Panama Papers consisted of almost 12m documents from law firm Mossack Fonseca - based in Panama City - purportedly showing the details of hundreds of thousands of clients in a number of countries.

German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung first received the documents and shared them with other news outlets, before the investigation was published at the weekend by the outlets and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

It is understood the documents showed a number of companies registered in tax havens were being used to launder money, complete drug deals and trade arms, as well as evade tax obligations. They covered a period from 1977 to last year.

The Australian Tax Office confirmed it had begun investigating more than 800 clients of Mossack Fonseca on Monday, saying in a statement that it had now linked over 120 of them to an associate offshore service provider located in Hong Kong.

In New Zealand, the Inland Revenue Department said it was working closely with its tax treaty partners - which include the Australian Tax Office - to secure the details of any tax residents of New Zealand involved with Mossack Fonseca.

After the leak on Sunday, Mossack Fonsecas director Ramon Fonseca condemned the hacking and subsequent leak as an attack on privacy.

He denied wrongdoing, and told news agencies that most of the 240,000 offshore companies his firm had helped set up were used for legitimate purposes.

Fonseca was a senior official within the Panamanian government until last month.
Paper maker Mondi said it had been named in a Russian anti-monopoly investigation, although it had not been officially notified by authorities.

The company said in a statement that Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) said last week it had started an investigation into Mondi's Syktyvkar for violations of antimonopoly law over offset paper.

Mondi has not yet received any FAS notification to this effect and has no further details of the investigation at this stage, the company said.

Mondi is committed to complying with all applicable antimonopoly laws and believes it has not violated any such laws.
Greece and the International Monetary Fund were at loggerheads on Monday over a leaked document that suggested the financial body was trying to push the embattled nation towards default.

In a letter to Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, IMF chief Christine Lagarde said any accusation that her staff would consider using a credit event as a negotiating tactic is simply nonsense.

The IMF conducts its negotiations in good faith, not by way of threats, and we do not communicate through leaks, she said.

Greece on Sunday demanded an explanation for the allegations made in the document, released by WikiLeaks, claiming the IMF appeared to be stalling on bailout talks until the country had no funds. A multi-billion dollar EU/IMF rescue package was agreed last year to avoid bankruptcy.

Talks between Greece, the EU and the IMF on a review of that deal, and Greek progress towards implementing fiscal reforms are to resume this week.

According to the document, the conversation on 19 March is between Poul Thomsen, head of the IMF's Europe department, Delia Velculescu, leader of the IMF team in Greece and Iva Petrova of the IMF.

Thomsen is quoted as complaining about the pace of talks on reforms Greece has agreed to carry out in exchange for the bailout.

Lagarde told Tsipras that she felt that we are still a good distance away from having a coherent program that I can present to our executive board.

I have on many occasions stressed that we can only support a program that is credible and based on realistic assumptions, and that delivers on its objective of setting Greece on a path of robust growth while gradually restoring debt sustainability. 

As you and I have discussed several times, including recently on the telephone, I have been consistent in pointing out that, if it were necessary to lower the fiscal targets to have a realistic chance of them being fully met, there would be an attendant need for more debt relief.

In the interest of the Greek people, we need to bring these negotiations to a speedy conclusion."
Investment by large British companies has slowed dramatically because of rising fears among finance directors about the potential turmoil caused by a vote for Brexit in June. The possibility of Britain leaving the European Union is now regarded as the biggest threat to business by finance directors, eclipsing long-standing concerns such as weak demand in the euro area. - The Times

An EU deal to return tens of thousands of migrants from Greece to Turkey is in chaos amid protests in refugee detention centres and shortages of officials to carry out the deportations. EU sources admitted that the number of migrants, including Syrian refugees, returned from the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios today would be nothing like the planned figure of 500. - The Times

Britain's exit from the European Union would lead to the implosion of the continental bloc and force the United States to intervene to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, the boss of the London Stock Exchange has claimed. Xavier Rolet added that the UK leaving the European Union is the end of the European Union. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Mr Rolet, one of 200 business leaders to sign a high-profile letter in February supporting the campaign for the UK to remain in Europe, said such a prospect would be devastating. - The Daily Telegraph

Britains steel industry is set to be saved from collapse by two little-known financiers who hope to revive the "British Steel" name, The Telegraph can disclose. Marc and Nathaniel Meyohas, two brothers behind investment firm Greybull, are putting the finishing touches to buy the Scunthorpe steelworks from Tata, pumping 400m into the struggling plant and saving a total of around 9,000 local jobs. - The Daily Tepegraph

Beijings growing confidence in its plans to help build new reactors at Hinkley in Somerset and Bradwell in Essex has been underlined by the recent incorporation of seven new Chinese nuclear-related firms in London. It appears, however, that an agreement between China and its partner EDF of France to develop the first new reactors in Britain for 20 years has still not been signed. - The Guardian

Christine Lagarde insists it is "simply nonsense" that the International Monetary Fund is pushing for a credit crisis to force economic reforms in Greece, responding to a leaked conversation that has sparked fury among the country's politicians.

On Saturday, WikiLeaks made public a transcript of IMF decision-makers stating that an "event" could prompt Greece to implement financial reforms. - The Daily Telegraph
OSU defense dominates, offense revs up late in 54-10 rout of Iowa

Overcoming a sluggish start by its offense, Ohio State pulled away for a 54-10 victory over Iowa.
Expert says we need new approach to designing, building infrastructure

Hillary Brown says new systems should be designed and old ones adapted using an ecological model.



Hillary Brown, a professor of architecture at City College of New York, will give a talk here Tuesday on what she calls next generation infrastructure.

The event is sponsored by Urban Land Institute Northwest, and starts at 3:30 p.m. on the 51st floor conference center of Two Union Square at 601 Union St. There will also be a panel discussion with Rhys Roth of The Evergreen State College, Jennifer Bagby of Seattle Public Utilities, Jamae Hoffman of VIA Architecture and Peg Staeheli of MIG|SvR.

Brown

Brown wrote a book called Next Generation Infrastructure: Principles for Post-Industrial Public Works in which she examines how to do a better job of revamping old infrastructure. She gives global examples of infrastructure that is low-carbon, resilient, and coordinated with natural and social systems.

Brown is founding principal of New Civic Works, a consulting firm whose clients have included New York Power Authority and State University of New York at Buffalo. She is a former design director and assistant commissioner at New York City's Department of Design and Construction, and founded that city's Office of Sustainable Design.

Brown shared some of her ideas with the DJC.

Q. What do you think needs to change about infrastructure?

A. Our mandate should be to upgrade and/or replace vital transportation, energy, sanitation, waste and waste-handling services  the critical urban services that are near or at the end of their useful life. We need to embrace new, more sustainable models still capable of supporting economic growth. We need to ask the question: How can we capitalize on the connectedness of our critical systems  to nature  and to each other?



Get tickets The cost for Hillary Brown's lecture and panel discussion is $20 for ULI members and $30 for non-members. Register at http://tiny.cc/1dzbay/.





What if, for example, the services provided by power plants, sewage treatment plants and waste handling centers were based upon an ecological model of interdependency instead of an industrial model of segregation? Interconnected and networked systems can share resources, exchange wastes, thereby creating synergies. This idea of circular flows is based on a simple insight: that these critical systems are analogous to the ecological systems organized by nature.

Q. Who can do this work?

A. Planners, designers and operators of these alternative systems must be drawn from the current ranks of infrastructure professionals! The only re-training required is to be grounded in thinking holistically and cooperatively about the projects they are working on  to become more fluent in systems thinking, i.e. understanding the interdependencies and potential synergies across our dynamic urban systems.

Collectively, you have landscape designers attuned to issues of place and natural systems; architects to patterns and relationships, while engineers tend to focus more deeply on specific technical concerns.

The overarching message should be to collaborate  observe, listen and envision anew as interdisciplinary teams. Their assignment should always be to optimize urban services and solve multiple problems with fewer solutions.

Q. Give us some examples.

A. One example of infrastructure systems that share resources and minimize waste is in the town of Hammarby Sjostad, Sweden, where integrated infrastructure provides for a nearly self-contained system of energy recovery: for example, biogas (is) extracted from sewage to fuel vehicles and domestic stoves, or heat (is) extracted from wastewater used for district home heating.

Next generation infrastructure includes multiple examples of soft-path (green) vs. hard-path (gray) infrastructure solutions. (They) integrate engineered water treatment systems with natural ecological functions, enhancing landscapes and water features for recreational, scenic and education uses.

Examples include NYC's Croton Water Filtration Plant and Sherbourne Common in Toronto, which co-locates a stormwater treatment center within an urban park, incorporating cascading water features that oxygenate (clean) the water while creating a visually compelling amenity.

Infrastructure can enhance local civic life: waste-to-energy plants or waste-transfer stations that have incorporated recreational, educational functions into their campuses.

Q. Can we adapt existing infrastructure?

A. Many case studies focus on adapting existing systems. One compelling example is the conversion of a coal-fired power plant to run on biomass  capitalizing on local agricultural, forestry and municipal solid waste, significantly lowering carbon emission.

In Korea, a tidal barrier built to protect a bay from storm surge was upgraded with tidal turbines to produce renewable energy. In Saudi Arabia, a polluted urban stream was converted into a major public asset using only amplified natural systems for wastewater treatment. The recovered wastewater is now usable for downstream irrigation.

In the town of Lille, France, an entire bus fleet was adapted to run on bio-methane produced at a new organic municipal waste handling facility. In Iceland, a geothermal power plant that produced electricity and heat for district heating, added a new function: some of its condensate is used for microalgae production to make biofuel.

Q. Given limited funding, can we do this incrementally?

A. We are bullish on local leadership and have recommendations for state and local officials eager to undertake bold initiatives. The assumption is that these are the players most likely to offer more agile leadership by partnering with progressive utilities, negotiating with regulatory agencies and seeking out new investment entities.




Our course helps you learn quickly and easily, using state-specific questions and easy-to-understand answers.

Built Just for You

What is a Delaware Defensive Driving Course? If you want to earn a car insurance discount or a points credit for your Delaware DMV driving record, a defensive driving course may be your solution. Defense driving programs, or traffic schools, are approved by the Delaware Department of Insurance (DOI) and are available for you to take voluntarily. If you've been convicted of multiple traffic violations and determined to be an aggressive driver, you may be required to complete a behavioral modification/attitudinal-driving course or driver improvement course. The Delaware Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) must approve the course.

Defensive driving, or traffic school, is designed to instill safe driving habits, which may serve to prevent future traffic violations and accidents.

On this page you'll find information about required and voluntary defensive driving courses and your options for completing a program.

Delaware DMV-Approved Defensive Driving Courses

Defensive driving courses and traffic school can be taken in Delaware to:

Receive a points credit on your DE DMV driving record.

your DE DMV driving record. Earn a car insurance discount .

. Avoid a driver's license suspension and additional DMV fees.

You'll have the option of completing defensive driving online or in a classroom.

Generally, your eligibility for a points credit or to earn a discount will depend upon your specific circumstances and your driving history.

NOTE : Some Delaware traffic courts may allow you to complete traffic school to dismiss a citation. Your eligibility to dismiss a ticket will be determined by the court on a case-by-case basis. Contact the Delaware court handling your ticket for more information.

Aggressive Driver Improvement Course

If you're convicted of aggressive driving, the Delaware DMV requires you to complete a driver improvement traffic school course.

You may be convicted of aggressive driving if you commit 3 violations or more, including those such as:

Failing to yield .

. Running traffic lights and signs.

Following too closely .

. Passing on the shoulder.

Speeding.

You'll need to complete a behavioral modification/attitudinal-driving course within 90 days of being convicted of aggressive driving.

You have the option of completing your driver improvement program online or in the classroom. Regardless of how you take the course, it will last at least 8 hours and cost $100.

Visit the Delaware DMV website for a complete list of approved driver improvement traffic school providers.

NOTE: If you fail to complete a driver improvement program within 90 days, your driver's license can be suspended. If your driver's license is suspended, you'll need to complete a driver improvement course before you can reinstate your driving privileges.

For more information, please visit our Suspended License in Delaware page.
Pathankot attack a drama staged by India, says Pak JIT

The Pakistani Joint Investigation Team (JIT) probing the Pathankot terrorist attack has finalised its report and will submit it to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ''in the next few days'', Pakistan Today reports.

A source privy to the details of the report said the JIT report has concluded that the Indian authorities had prior information about the attackers. He said that India used the attack as a tool to expand its ''vicious propaganda'' against Pakistan ''without having any solid evidence to back the claim''.

Meanwhile, the Pathankot attack probe took an ugly turn on Saturday when an Indian Muslim police officer investigating the matter was killed in a terrorist attack in front of his wife and kids.

''The brutal murder of a Muslim investigator is evidence that Indian establishment wants to keep the matter under wraps,'' a member of the JIT told Pakistan Today.

According to the source, the JIT's report says that the Indian government did not cooperate with the JIT and instead made efforts to hinder the probe by the Pakistani team.

''The report also raises serious questions over the veracity of Indian claims regarding the Pathankot attack. The JIT has concluded that contrary to the claims of the Indian government about the duration of the encounter, the standoff between the Indian Army and alleged terrorists ended within hours of the attack,'' the source said quoting the report, adding that this finding has made it clear that the attack was a drama staged to malign Pakistan and persuade the world community that Pakistan is involved in terrorism.

''Indian authorities also failed to establish that the attackers entered from Pakistan,'' the report says adding that within hours of the assault, all the attackers were shot dead by the Indian security forces. ''However, the Indian authorities made it a three-day drama to get maximum attention from the world community in order to malign Pakistan,'' the report added.

The Pakistani team was allowed entry into the Pathankot base from a narrow passage out of a breach specially developed into the airbase instead of the main entry gate.

The source added the total duration of the JIT's visit to the base was about 55 minutes. He said the team was denied the opportunity to collect evidence from the site of the attack.

The source said no major damage was done to the base and that the Indian authorities showed the JIT the place from where the assailants had entered the base. He said the investigators were informed that perimeter lights were also not functional on the day of the attack.

This raises serious questions on the attack as India had prior information about the attackers and the entire area had been sealed three days ahead of the attack, the source quoted the report.

The source added that no evidence was shared with the JIT about Indian claims that terrorists had entered from the Pakistani side of the border.

The source said that the Indian claims about the entry from the Pakistani side were unsupported as they failed to answer why the electric fence on the border failed to hinder the entry.

''The Indian response was ridiculous. They claimed that the breach was possible as power was not running through the electric fence due to some electricity problem that night,'' the source added.

The report also indicates another flaw in the Indian investigation, as the attackers could not have scaled the airbase walls with a single rope without a hook.

''Another flaw in Indian claim is that the airbase perimeter lamps were turned off despite a 28-hour early warning of an attack,'' the source added.

The source said that the report concludes that the Indian allegations about the involvement of Pakistan's non-state actors in the Pathankot Airbase attack have not been established and ''what appears from the Indian side is a case of a badly knitted stage drama''.

''The report concludes that the Pathankot attack looked like another false flag operation fully facilitated by the Indian army just to put the blame on Pakistan,'' the source added.

Reports in media earlier have talked about the reluctance of the Indian officials to cooperate with the JIT.

Reports said the Indian authorities did not provide the JIT with any evidence when it asked for the recordings of the telephone calls of SP Salwinder Singh, his wife and other related persons and the IME numbers and copies of the three FIRs that had been filed after the attack.
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A woman who is about to become one of ten newly qualified breastfeeding counsellors in Donegal is encouraging pregnant woman to seek support on breastfeeding before they give birth.

Helen Hancock from Derry moved to Donegal nine years ago and gave birth to her first child here in 2009.

As a new mother, Helen had a difficult time breastfeeding her daughter until help arrived from a lactation nurse in Altnagelvin Hospital in Derry.

She spent 10 minutes with me and then my daughter and I got on the right track and that was the beginning of a beautiful journey of feeding and learning together. That day when the lactation nurse arrived, she offered me something nobody else was able to for three days. She offered me support in an informed and knowledgeable way, she said.

That experience has inspired Helen to try to help other women here who might have similar experiences. Ireland is statistically one of the lowest countries in the world for breastfeeding. Donegal is the lowest in the country.

In 2012 she saw an opportunity to become a breastfeeding peer support in Donegal and jumped at the chance to learn more. It was amazing. I loved the information I was getting. I started seeing how support could make such a massive difference to how a mother goes into parenthood. Not just through breastfeeding, but also through just being listened to. Having someone there who gets her.

She started Cuidiu breastfeeding counselling training in February 2014 and will be qualified next month. I cant wait to wear my badge with pride, she said.

Helen describes her learning as life changing. It has made such a positive impact on my life. I never really knew what my calling was until now. I love working with babies and supporting families. It is about families too. Not just about mum.

She also trained to become a Certified Infant Massage Instructor in July 2014. Helen has just started her own business called Cothu, meaning nurture in Irish, which is offering baby massage classes and toddler yoga classes throughout the county.

I plan to teach in Donegal town to Limavady and everywhere in between, she said. Helen offers breastfeeding support in Donegal Womens Centre in Letterkenny on Wednesday mornings from 10am  12 noon. This is non profit. We volunteer our time. Some people might think we get paid to offer breastfeeding support. But we dont. We do this because we want to help and make your journey as easy as possible.

Helen has a Facebook page called Cothu, offering information and support for families.
Theres a great concert at An Grianan Theatre in Letterkenny tomorrow, 5th April.

Named after one of the medieval quays along the River Liffey in Dublin, Ushers Island is a brand-new supergroup uniting two generations of trailblazing Irish musicians.

The revered figures of Donal Lunny, Andy Irvine and Paddy Glackin link the bands heritage to the glory days of Planxty, the Bothy Band, Moving Hearts, Mozaik and other seminal boundary-crossers, while two of todays leading heirs to these pioneering artists, Mike McGoldrick and John Doyle, contribute their vast experience of contemporary Celtic and other international roots styles.

To book call 074 91 20777 or go online at angrianan.com. Tickets will also be available on the door on the night.

The Cripple of Inishmaan

My favourite of Martin McDonaghs plays, The Cripple of Inishmaan, is on at An Grianan Theatre this coming Saturday 9th April. Its set on the remote island of Inishmaan off the west coast of Ireland. Word arrives that a Hollywood film is being made on the neighbouring island of Inishmore. The one person who wants to be in the film more than anybody is young Cripple Billy, if only to break away from the bitter tedium of his daily life.

The Cripple Of Inishmaan examines an ordinary coming of age in extraordinary circumstances and shows once more that McDonagh is master of the deepest, darkest and most powerful humour.

Since its premier at the National Theatre in 1996 McDonaghs work has gone on to achieve its rightful place in the great pantheon of Irish drama. Well worth seeing! You can book on 074 91 20777 and angrianan.com

O Pheann an Phiarsaigh (From Pearses Pen)

Theres a play as Gaeilge in the RCC in Letterkenny tonight, Monday 4th April. In this personal and stirring representation of the life and works of one of Irelands most famous and revered sons, written by Noel O Gallchoir, the best of Padraig Mac Piarais (1879-1916) creative writings are brought to life and illustrated masterfully.

In this personal and honest depiction of Mac Piarais, the deepest recesses of his personality are explored and he is celebrated and remembered as a prolific poet, an inventive writer, a powerful dramatist, an astute and innovative educator, a dedicated revolutionary and a compassionate man who worked tirelessly in promoting the language and the culture of his country, and who gave his life in the cause of his nation. Tickets are only 10.

Oliver The Musical

Balor DCA brings the much loved musical adaptation of Charles Dickens Oliver! to the stage in Ballybofey from the 14th April to the 24th.

Join young orphaned Oliver (Tiernan Doherty) on a wild adventure through Victorian England as he navigates Londons underworld of theft and violence searching for a home, a family and  most importantly  love. With spirited, timeless musical favourites such as Where Is Love, As Long As He Needs Me, and Food Glorious Food, Oliver! Is a musical classic.

With a great local cast including Jack Quinn as Fagan and Cian Gallagher as The Artful Dodger, its directed by Kieran Quinn with musical direction by Denise Roper, the same creative partnership that made The Sound Of Music such a success last year. Book on 074 91 31840 or at balorartscentre.com.

Paddy McMenamin Album Launch

Glenfin fiddler Paddy McMenamin launches his debut album, Paddy McMenamin and Friends this Thursday, April 7th, in the Villa Rose Hotel in Ballybofey. Included on the album are Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh, Dermot Byrne, Martin Tourish and Matt McGranaghan, so well worth picking up a copy.
A December 2014 report from the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University measured the breadth and depth of corruption, legal and illegal, in the governments of U.S. states. Both Alabama and Florida ranked embarrassingly high.

To their credit, Florida lawmakers passed legislation this year that may help the state drop in future rankings. Sen. Don Gaetz of Niceville played an important role in shepherding the legislation, which revamped legal requirements to prove bribery and other misconduct, such as bid-rigging.

The change is largely due to growing public concern over whats been called a corruption tax  the cost of waste and fraud shouldered by taxpayers.

The new Florida ethics law is neither perfect nor as far-reaching as many would like. And its certainly no panacea; one need only look toward Montgomery to understand that.

In 2010, Alabama passed its own revamped ethics law, heralded as a major step forward for Alabama by architect Rep. Mike Hubbard, who became the first Republican House Speaker since Reconstruction when the GOP gained a House majority in November 2010.

In 2014, Hubbard was indicted on 23 corruption charges, yet he was re-elected to the House by constituents in November 2014 and re-seated as Speaker by the House majority. He awaits trial. One lawmaker ensnared in the Hubbard investigation resigned his seat and took a plea bargain; another was exonerated. Hubbard, in the run-up to trial, argued that the 2010 law he shepherded through the legislature is unconstitutionally vague, and should not apply to him.

In another unfolding government scandal, two ethics complaints have been filed against Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley, who called a press conference last month to apologize for making inappropriate remarks to a female policy advisor, who later resigned. Allegations of a physical relationship between the two have launched multiple investigations to determine whether any illegal activity or misuse of government resources occurred.

Theres no question that tougher ethics laws are good. However, until those bound by such laws respect both the spirit and letter of the mandates, the best approach is tough enforcement.
dpa ElectionsData

With dpa ElectionsData you get access to a unique collection of data. Via a programming interface (Rest-API), your developers can access detailed information, candidate profiles and live results for all national elections in the European Union and important international elections, like the US Midterm elections etc.

The data pool also includes all heads of state and government as well as about 20,000 elected members of parliament throughout the EU. In addition to their data (name, party, constituency or list position), we collect social media profiles and official websites of individuals and parties.
Next Game: Rider 4/5/2016 | 3:00 Next Game Full Schedule Apr. 05 (Tue) / 3:00 Rider

The Drexel softball team fell to Delaware by a 13-10 deficit on Sunday in the final game of this weekend's conference series.went 4-for-4 with three RBI andscored four runs for the Dragons in the losing effort.got the Dragons on the board in the first inning as she doubled to left center to drive Lightfoot in from second. Drexel's 1-0 lead would not last long, however, as Delaware came back with five runs in the bottom of the inning.The Dragons cut the Blue Hens' advantage to 5-4 with a three-run top of the second.led off with a single to second base and thenfollowed with single up the middle.drew a walk to load the bases and thenhit a sacrifice fly to bring Chan across the plate. Ueno came up next and sent a triple into right field that cleared the bases and made it a 5-4 game.Delaware added another run in the bottom of the second as Hannah George scored on a wild pitch to go ahead, 6-4. The Blue Hens held this lead until the top of the fourth, when the Dragons tied it up at 6-6. However, Delaware went ahead again in the bottom of the inning, 7-6 as a run scored from third as George grounded out to shortstop.The Dragons took the lead in the fifth inning as Lightfoot reached on a throwing error that scored Reed and Ladrido. Lightfoot then went on to score as Ueno doubled to left center to give Drexel a 9-7 advantage.Drexel would hold this lead into the sixth inning, but then Delaware came out strong and scored six runs in the bottom of the sixth to go ahead, 13-9. The Dragons would get one back in the top of the seventh, but it would not be enough to overcome the Blue Hens.With the loss, the Dragons move to 15-18 overall and 0-6 in CAA action. Drexel returns to action on Tuesday when it is set to host Rider in a single game at 3 p.m.
Entrepreneurs, along with their start-ups and innovative ideas have certainly been discovered as the new best friend of the Australian economy  or at least, they have only recently been recognised as such at a governmental level.

Welcome to the ideas boom.

In December 2015, the National Innovation and Science Agenda (NISA) announced a suite of initiatives aimed at nurturing innovation and our start-up landscape; the drivers of tomorrows economy. And its starting to become reality. On the 16th of March, three months after the announcement, the Tax Laws Amendment (Tax Incentives for Innovation) Bill was introduced to Parliament. If successful, a number of changes will be made to the tax system that have been specifically designed to incentivise investment into innovative, high-growth potential startups.

4,500 Australian start-ups said to be missing out on equity finance each year

The proposed changes are expected to give concessional tax treatment to investors including a 20 per cent non-refundable tax offset on investment capped at $200,000 per investor, per year; and a 10-year capital gains tax exemption for investments held for 12 months or more.

With 4,500 Australian start-ups said to be missing out on equity finance each year according to NISA, the proposed scheme is surely a highly commendable, progressive step in the right direction. But its not ground-breaking. To understand where we really are in the grand scheme of things and where were headed, sometimes it pays to hear an outsiders perspective. An outsider entrenched in a more mature policy environment when it comes to the role of tax efficient investment schemes.

The UKs experience with tax efficient investment schemes dates back to 1994

Dynamic Business spoke to Luke Davis, Founder and CEO of IW Capital  a London-based private equity house that has facilitated over 60 million worth of investment opportunities into the UKs start-up landscape since the business was founded in 2011.

The UKs experience with tax efficient investment schemes dates back to 1994. Designed to encourage investment in early stage companies, a series of tax reliefs were introduced under the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS).

Luke said: The EIS has been absolutely vital in supporting early stage companies here in the UK. The government-backed scheme offers investors tax reliefs in return for them investing in the nations SMEs.

Since it was launched in 1994, more than 22,900 companies have raised over 12.3 billion worth of funds through the EIS.

In operation for 22 years, yet its popularity remains vigorous as ever; because  as Luke sees it  investors regard the EIS as an attractive way to manage both their investment opportunities and their tax bill. A survey conducted by IW Capital found that 54 per cent of investors with with more than 40,000 worth of investments were considering investment through EIS for the coming 2016/17 tax year. According to UK government data, 2,795 companies raised 1.56 billion under the EIS in 2013/14, compared to 1.03 billion by 2,470 companies in the previous 12 months.

Promoting easy access to capital has been vital in increasing the number of start-up birth rates in the UK

And thats from the perspective of investors, but what about the investees  the SME sector; the economic powerhouse?

Funding is absolutely essential for young businesses looking to upscale. The EIS has been really important in facilitating much needed investment into early stage businesses, and its great to see that the scheme is still growing, said Luke.

Each businesses that has received funding through the scheme will stand a better chance of evolving beyond their current small business status into established mid-size companies, and hopefully, beyond, he continued.

Commenting on Australias recent strides towards a similar investment landscape, Luke compares the proposed Australian scheme with the UKs Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme, introduced in 2012. This delivered a further series of tax reliefs targeted at the start-up sector.

Luke says that promoting easy access to capital has been vital in increasing the number of start-up birth rates in the UK. But he asserts that knowledge, education and a collaborative approach to innovation has been a huge part of the UKs success in developing a robust start-up ecosystem.

Australias innovation policy is a step in the right direction, and encouraging investors to consider tax efficient investments will be a key to its success, he said.

There is enormous potential for Australia to become the leading beacon of financial innovation

The question remains: what are these innovative, high-growth potential start-ups that stand to benefit from the tax amendments anticipated to come into effect in July this year?

With much of IW Capitals portfolio heavily focussed on on disruptive technologies, Luke says fintech has stood out as a bright spark in a booming digital and tech landscape. According to Luke, fintech is finding increased relevance as consumers and businesses see an opportunity to break away from the status quo.

It provides companies with easier, faster and cheaper financial systems, he said.

Last year, 53% of all European investments into fintech was directed into London alone. Nationwide, a staggering 647.5 million was invested in UK fintech in 2015.

I believe Australias close proximity to Asia opens up some exciting opportunities for the future. Over the long-term, there is enormous potential for Australia to become the leading beacon of financial innovation in the Asia-Pacific region.

So Australia is headed in the right direction, with a distinct opportunity up for grabs to become a major global player when it comes to ecosystems of innovation and growth  to its own economic benefit. But to make this happen, theres clearly room for much more from our policy makers.

Luke said I believe theres much to learn from the UK, and indeed other more established fintech markets to ensure the optimal development of the fintech industry.

Im very excited to see how Australias innovation policy will push the industry forward.
Travel The Unknown ventures into Bhutan

Travel The Unknown has launched a dedicated Asia brochure that features trips to India, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Philippines and, new for 2016, Bhutan.

The small group trips range from five to 21 days in length. Private tailor-made options are available for all destinations for those who prefer to design their own itineraries. Bhutan is great as a stand-alone destination, but can also be added as a natural extension to any of Travel The Unknowns North East India or West Bengal (Kolkata and Darjeeling) tours.

Rahul Aggarwal, founding director of Travel The Unknown comments: Our programme to Asia has grown to such a degree that we thought it deserved a separate brochure.

Our whole raison detre is to show our customers a side of a country that they will not find in other tour operators brochures, but without compromising on all the classic sites.

For example, our new Bhutan programme includes the 14-day Best of Bhutan tour that gives one the chance to traverse the country from east to west, combining culture with country walks and wildlife spotting, under the dramatic backdrop of the Himalayas. And we will definitely be visiting a festival, if any one of Bhutans myriad of colourful festivals are taking place whilst we are there.

Here is a brief synopsis of the three new tours:

Western Bhutan Explorer: 11 days from 2,295 pp (departing 6 November)

Discover the west of Bhutan, a country considered to be the happiest in Asia. Highlights include learning about Bhutanese art and culture in the museums of Thimphu (and seeing the largest published book in the world), enjoying rural walks in remote valleys and mountain passes, visiting remote dzongs and Buddhist gompas, and walking with pilgrims to the iconic Tigers Nest monastery.

Bhutans Hidden East: 13 days from 2,595 pp (departing 31 October)

Highlights include discovering the flora and fauna of Bomdeling National Park, meeting the textile weavers of Khoma, exploring Bumthang's valleys by foot, hiking up to the iconic Tigers Nest Monastery and visiting the sacred sites of the Paro Valley.

Best of Bhutan: 15 days from 2,695 (departing 3 November)

A comprehensive journey across Bhutan that combines the highlights of the East and West and coincides with the colourful Mongar and Black Neck Crane Festivals.

All three Bhutan trips include the visa, all meals, ground transportation, accommodation, activities as per individual itineraries, entrance fees and an English-speaking escorted guide. Flights are extra, bookable through Travel The Unknown (fully bonded for financial protection).

For more information, visit traveltheunknown.com.
Floor Re brings prospect of cheaper home insurance to beleaguered households

Homeowners living on flood plains typically pay 24 per cent more for their home insurance, according to fresh insight from MoneySuperMarket. The news coincides with todays launch of Flood Re, a government-backed scheme designed to make home insurance available and affordable for those who live in flood risk properties.

MoneySuperMarket analysed home insurance premiums for those living in flood risk areas, and found these homeowners typically pay 33 (or 24 per cent) more than the national average for annual contents and buildings insurance. Those who have made a claim for damages caused by flooding in the past typically see premiums rise by 213 per cent  adding 372 to the cost of cover each year.

The analysis also reveals the average claim during seven recent flood events was 22,3392. This amount varies significantly, depending on the event - those affected by the 2014 floods in the Thames Valley region claimed an average 28,051, whereas homeowners in Cumbria, Lancashire and Yorkshire in December 2015 claimed 36,483 on average.

Commenting on the launch of Flood Re, Dan Plant, editor-in-chief at MoneySuperMarket, said: Households who have been priced out of buying insurance completely, or who have been saddled with the prospect of enormous four-figure excesses if they make a claim, should now be able to secure cover at more affordable rates.

Anyone living in a high-risk flood area who has recently bought home insurance should take a few minutes to run an online quotation to see what prices they would be charged now that Flood Re is in operation. If there are substantial savings to be had on their existing premium, it could be worth cancelling the current policy and taking out a new one.

Policyholders should bear in mind that they will have to pay a cancellation fee. And if theyve made a claim on the old policy, no premiums will be returned. But if the saving on the new policy is big enough, it could still be well worthwhile making the change.

Home insurance trends

The long-term trend for home insurance costs across the UK is downward, but insurance companies still reserve their best prices for new customers, so someone who stays with the same insurer each year may not see the benefit of competitive pricing.

This is confirmed by MoneySuperMarket analysis, which shows that the average price for buildings and contents insurance for someone switching insurer via the site was 121 in winter 2015/16. The comparable figure from the Association of British Insurers (ABI), which shows the overall average premium for all policies, including switchers and those who stay with the same insurer, is 316  a difference of almost 200.

Launch of Flood Re

Flood Re has been set up by the government and the ABI, so that even the highest risk homes can insure against the damage caused by flooding (providing they were built after 2009).

It will enable insurers to pass the flood insurance part of a policy for high-risk properties to Flood Re in exchange for a relatively modest premium linked to the propertys council tax band. Insurers can then draw on Flood Re to pay any claims that arise from flooding at the properties concerned. The policy excess (the amount paid towards the claim by the policyholder) will be limited to 250, much lower than previously for such risks.

One of the stipulations for Flood Re eligibility is that the homeowner must live at the property, so landlords living elsewhere will not qualify. With tenanted property, the responsibility for buildings insurance remains with the landlord. But tenants can search for and buy contents cover in the knowledge that they qualify for the scheme.
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The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear an appeal from Samsung regarding its patent dispute with Apple.

The case stems from a 2011 lawsuit by Apple that alleged Samsung copied certain design elements and features from the iPhone and iPad and used them in Samsung Galaxy phones and tablet computers.

A jury in 2012 awarded US$1 billion to Apple, finding that Samsung had used some of Apples tap-to-zoom technology. The award was later reduced.

The companies reached a partial agreement in December under whichSamsung agreed to pay Apple $548 million. Samsung insisted at the time that it reserved the right to seek a partial refund, called the award to Apple excessive, and denied that it actually infringed the patents.

Arguments Limited to Scope

The high court will listen only to arguments over the scope of the award, not to arguments Samsung made about some of the larger questions concerning patent law.

We welcome the courts decision to hear our case. We thank the many large technology companies, 37 intellectual property professors and several groups representing small businesses, which have supported our position, said Samsung spokesperson Danielle Meister Cohen.

The courts review of this case can lead to a fair interpretation of patent law that will support creativity and reward innovation, she told E-Commerce Times.

Stifling Innovation

We hope the Supreme Courts agreement to hear this important case will result in design patent law finally getting some much needed oversight and an infusion of common sense, said Ed Black, CEO of theComputer & Communications Industry Association, which in January filed an amicus brief urging the high court to take up the issue.

These laws were written to protect the central design of products like carpets  not the outer case of tech gadgets. Misinterpretation and overreach in patent law could have a chilling effect on innovation  the opposite intention of the patent system when it was created, he said.

The lower court misinterpreted a statute by expanding a patent on ornamental features of a smartphone to include all the innovations that make up a complicated device like a smartphone, according to the amicus brief. For example, Apple has 199 active patent designs called electronic device, and if Samsung were held liable for all of those, it could face the loss of billions of dollars.

The potential cost of infringing a single patent design in a case like this would make other smartphone manufacturers decide to stay out of the market to avoid liability, according to the filing.

Important Ruling

The ruling in this case, while limited to the question of damages, is critically important to the future of design patents in general, said Alexander Poltorak, CEO ofGeneral Patent.

The last design patent case that the Supreme Court took up was in 1877, Poltorak told the E-Commerce Times. The Supreme Court has been very interested and active in looking at utility patent cases.

The scope of design patent damages law has been criticized as too broad, according to Christopher Rourk, a partner atJackson Walker.

Theyve indicated theyre going to give us some guidance on that. Presumably that would be a relief granted on the relief granted to Apple. But in any event, its anyones guess how they will actually rule, he told the E-Commerce Times.

Generally the U.S. Supreme Court does not understand patent technology, so rulings are not very predictable, said Peter S. Vogel, a partner atGardere.

Most complex technology disputes are confusing to the Supreme Court, and this will be no exception, he told the E-Commerce Times. The main reason is that justices on the Supreme Court are not trained in computer and patent technology, and freely admit they dont understanding texting and emails, so can one expect any more?

Virtually every award is being reduced on appeal, General Patents Poltorak said. The case that may provide guidance on the outcome of this is Georgia Pacific v. United States Plywood, which set the modern standard over patent disputes.
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(Photo: REUTERS / Defensoria del Pueblo / Handout via Reuters)Colombian soldier Carlos Fabian Huertas (2nd R) stands near representatives from the Commission of the Ombudsman, the ICRC and the Catholic Church in Arauca July 4, 2013, in this picture provided by the Defensoria del Pueblo. Huertas was kidnapped in Chitaga, Norte de Santander, on May 23 during an attack on a patrol by the ELN guerrillas which killed 10 soldiers.

A paramilitary group in Colombia has made serious death threats to human rights defenders, many of them church leaders, says the World Council of Churches which is urging the government to protect them.

The WCC said in a statement the call to the Colombian government to protect their lives was also made by other international organizations.

On January 14, the WCC's Commission on International Affairs office received a message from the church leaders in Colombia regarding death threats hurled at them by a paramilitary group.

The message stated that on 11 January, 39 human rights activists, renowned for their long time commitment and work on rights, land restitution and promotion of the peace process, were named in a list issued by the Aguilas Negras, a paramilitary organization.

The message was posted online and later reported by the Columbian newspaper El Heraldo.

The paramilitary group explicitly stated that those individuals are considered military targets, stating their intention to eliminate them.

Among the human rights activists mentioned, are also a number of prominent Colombian church leaders, such as Agustin Jimenez from the Mennonite Church Teusaquillo; Father Fernando Sanchez from the Anglican Church in the Caribbean Coast; Jairo Barriga, German Zarate, Rev. Milton Mejia of the Presbyterian Church of Colombia and Father Fernando Gary Martinez from the Roman Catholic Church.

"The Church representatives appearing in this list are highly respected members of the international ecumenical movement with whom WCC member churches have worked over the years," said WCC's acting general secretary Georges Lemopoulos.

In a letter addressed to the Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos Calderon, issued on 29 January, Lemopoulos said, "They are known for their outstanding Christian commitment and courageous witness in the struggle for life, peace, justice and human dignity in Colombia."

He described it as "very disturbing" that church leaders and activists engaged in the promotion of human rights and peace had themselves become targets of violence.

The WCW leader also raised concern that such threats would impede the work of human rights defenders by creating "a widespread climate of fear."

The WCC said that in solidarity with the churches and civil society in Colombia, it has called on the Colombian government "to take all necessary measures to effectively protect the life and physical integrity of the church leaders.

It has also urged the same for all other human rights defenders under threat; to carry out an independent and impartial investigation into the authors of these threats with due trial and appropriate penalties.

It said the government should be mindful of its obligations regarding the security and protection of those working for the defence of human rights.

In the light of this it should, "take the immediate and effective measures necessary to ensure that these church leaders and human rights advocates can continue their work of defending human rights and human dignity, without danger and stigmatization."

The WCC which aims to promote Church unity and has some 500 million Christians belonging to it has been supported churches and people in Colombia in their struggle to end the country's armed conflict.

It has organized solidarity visits in the country, and its governing bodies have issued public statements denouncing the human rights violations, calling for an end to the armed conflict and applauding steps toward peace talks.
(Photo: REUTERS / Defensoria del Pueblo / Handout via Reuters)Colombian soldier Carlos Fabian Huertas (2nd R) stands near representatives from the Commission of the Ombudsman, the ICRC and the Catholic Church in Arauca July 4, 2013, in this picture provided by the Defensoria del Pueblo. Huertas was kidnapped in Chitaga, Norte de Santander, on May 23 during an attack on a patrol by the ELN guerrillas which killed 10 soldiers.

Local and international Christian leaders have in a letter demanded a bilateral ceasefire between the Colombian government and the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), urging that peace talks resume.

The 52 years of armed conflict in Colombia have cost many of lives, as well as causing displacements among local communities, they noted in a letter issued from Bogota, Colombia, the World Council of Churches said July 14.

The letter was issued July 6 by the Inter-Ecclesial Dialogue for Peace in Colombia (DIPaz).

It is addressed to the Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, the government's head negotiator in Havana, Humberto de la Calle, FARC commander Timoleon Jimenez and to the FARC head negotiator, Luciano Marin.

The letter follows recent mutual attacks by both FARC and the government which have brought the peace talks in Havana to a critical stage.

The signatories include leaders of global ecumenical organizations including the World Council of Churches, ACT Alliance, the World Communion of Reformed Churches and the Lutheran World Federation, as well as representatives of 40 local churches, ecumenical organizations and over a hundred international partners.

"We cannot help but express our sorrow, as Christians and as human beings, in response to the deaths that continue taking place in Colombia, which could have been avoided with an agreement for a bilateral ceasefire," reads the letter.

"The government should change their position from refusing an agreement for a bilateral ceasefire to a position in favour of life and the greater legitimacy of the continued dialogues. The FARC should return to their willingness and decision to maintain a ceasefire," the letter continues.

Georges Lemopoulos, the WCC's acting general secretary, comments: "We want to express solidarity with the Colombian people and accompany them in their search for justice and peace."

"The peace talks between the government and the FARC must bring forth lasting peace with social justice for the Colombian people, something they immensely deserve," he added.

The letter's signatories have also expressed "joy and hope for the advances reached in the dialogues underway in Havana, Cuba, on the topics of comprehensive agricultural development, political participation, and the solution to the drug problem."

It acknowledges the progress made towards de-escalation of the conflict, such as an agreement about removal of land mines and other explosives.

It also recognized agreement on the formation of a Truth Commission; and a report published by the Historic Commission on the Armed Conflict.

"We join in the call made weeks ago by the governments of Cuba and Norway, in their role as guarantors of the conversations, that an agreement be reached for a bilateral ceasefire and end of hostilities, that the accords already reached be preserved, and that dialogue advance on the topics still pending on the agenda," reads the letter.

The churches and organizations involved in DIPaz include the Presbyterian Church of Colombia, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Colombia, the Mennonite Church of Colombia, Justapaz (a Mennonite organization focused on justice, reconciliation and nonviolent action), Mencoldes (a Mennonite foundation focused on development), the Inter-Ecclesial Commission for Justice and Peace, the Baptist University, World Service department of the Lutheran World Federation, and the program of Faith, Economy, Ecology, and Society of the Latin American Council of Churches.

DIPaz engages churches and faith based organizations working for the last two years to contribute effectively towards the peace process of Colombia.

The main areas of work of the DIPaz are reconciliation, non-violent action, truth and justice.

The group works for advocacy inside the churches, with the government, in social sectors and also directly with the peace process between the government and the FARC in Havana, Cuba.
(Photo: LWF Colombia)Lutheran World Federation World Service team visiting remote rural communities affected by the conflict in Colombia in 2015.

Warring parties in Colombia should seize an opportunity to build a new society in which conflicts will be solved by dialogue at peace talks in the South American country, says the Lutheran World Federation

The LWF expressed appreciation and support on April 4 for the start of peace talks between the Colombian government and the National Liberation Army (ELN), one of the main parties in the ongoing Colombia conflict.

"The parties should take advantage of this favorable opportunity to build a new society in which conflicts will be solved by dialogue and not by arms and in which democratic participation by all sectors of society is encouraged," said LWF general secretary, Rev. Martin Junge.

The conflict in Colombia has waged for more than 50 years.

It has claimed the lives of more than 200,000 people have died, mostly civilians and more than 15,000 people are missing.

The ongoing guerilla warfare has displaced millions of people. Frequently rebel sabotage activities have left hundreds of thousands without clean water and electricity.

Junge said the launching of a process of dialogue and negotiation with the ELN constitutes a crucial opportunity for discussing outstanding issues in the national debate.

These include environmental conflicts, the management of natural and mining energy resources, the exploitation of hydrocarbons and the need of a model of development which is environmentally sustainable.

This should respect the rights and safeguards the livelihood of the rural and indigenous population and that of people of African descent.

In July 2015, the LWF together with more than 130 ecumenical and faith-based organizations signed an appeal to the main negotiators of the peace talks in Havana, calling for a bilateral ceasefire between the government forces and the FARC guerilla movement.

"We urge the parties to adopt measures to scale down the conflict and demilitarize the regions," said Junge.

The LWF said it would offer its internartional services, knowledge and experience accumulated in the country as a humanitarian and development organization.

"As a communion of churches and a faith based organization, we appeal to the Christian values of striving for equality, dignity, justice and peace, paying special attention to the sectors and persons who are most marginalized and oppressed," said Junge.
WASHINGTON  Fiat-Chrysler is recalling 14,768 2015-'16 Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango SUVs for a potential brake caliper problem, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

"The left front brake caliper may crack due to being made from an incorrect material," said NHTSA in its recall summary. "A cracked brake caliper may lengthen the distance needed to stop the vehicle and increase the risk of a crash."

There are no complaints, accidents or injuries linked to the recall, Fiat-Chrysler spokesman Eric Mayne told Edmunds on Sunday.

The affected Grand Cherokee and Durango SUVs were built from December 9, 2015 to January 14, 2016.

Vehicles with high-performance disc brakes are not involved in the recall, the automaker told federal safety regulators.

Jeep dealers and Dodge dealers will inspect the front left brake caliper and, depending on its casting date, will replace it. A date has not been set for the recall. Owners can contact Fiat-Chrysler customer service at 1-800-853-1403.

Edmunds says: Owners with an immediate concern should contact their dealer now. Others can wait for their official recall notice and then schedule a service appointment.
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
Emirates destinations

Flights to China

Travelling in China is a thrilling ride. Its so big that each region has its own cuisine, and its developing so fast you can almost see it changing in front of your eyes. The cultural and administrative centres of Shanghai and Beijing are home to some of the worlds most amazing historic sights. While the smaller cities (with populations larger than that of many European countries) are what push forward Chinas steamroller economy. Youll find people eager to meet you, food that will blow your mind, and a mix of the ancient and the modern thats incredibly compelling.



A visit to Beijing means diving straight into Chinas history. Beijing is a bureaucrats town that also happens to be packed with beautiful, powerful sights like the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. The food in Beijing is particularly good  head to Ghost Street (Guijie) to sample treats from a huge range of stalls. From Beijing, a visit to the Great Wall of China is easy. Standing atop it and watching it stretch into the distance is a thrill unequal to any other.



Shanghai is Beijings noisier, cooler little sister, a city with a more cosmopolitan feel and a diverse range of nightlife venues and restaurants that go from cheap and cheerful street food to some of the worlds most expensive cocktails. Walk down The Bund and check out the juxtaposition of architecturally daring modern skyscrapers and colonial-era buildings.



Guangzhou, close to Hong Kong, is an up-and-coming Chinese destination, with its own handful of incredibly ancient relics, a booming design hotel scene, and a sub-tropical climate that in the winter makes a welcome change from the frigid north.



Because of Chinas size, distances are enormous; make sure to take that into account when planning your trip. High-speed train connections exist between some cities, but in other parts of the country you may find yourself on long, leisurely bus rides instead.
Emirates destinations

Flights to Dusseldorf

Dusseldorf is a business and finance powerhouse, attracting as many blue-chip companies as it does trade fairs. But if that makes the city sound staid and boring and puts you off booking flights to Dusseldorf, think again.



Its certainly an affluent city, exemplified by the boutiques and high-end hotels that line Konigsallee. Yet such economic prowess has resulted in a city that bankrolls its culture  there are more than 100 art galleries and 26 museums, plus landscaped parks, concert halls and an opera house.



Perhaps thats why pioneering musical acts such as Kraftwerk are synonymous with Dusseldorf  there is certainly a feeling on those Old Town/harbour streets that creativity is to be celebrated and nurtured rather than stifled.



Many cultural attractions can be found in the Old Town, or Altstadt, an area best explored on foot. In fact, you could easily spend a few hours either wandering around this fascinating neighbourhood or strolling along the Rheinuferpromenade, a walkway that connects it with the MedienHafen harbour area, creating a literal and figurative pathway between the old and new.



All of which makes Dusseldorf something of a pleasant surprise for those who come for a trade fair and find themselves with a few hours to spare. With its Michelin-starred restaurants, fashionable cafes and lounges, quality hotels and impeccable transport links, most people who come to the city for business end up returning for fun.
Emirates destinations

Flights to New York

The Big Apple has it all. Once your flight to New York lands, stroll around Downtown, the centre of world finance on Wall Street and Ground Zero, or venture amidst the commerce and chaos of Times Square in Midtown.



Around you, theres the green spaces of Central Park and the posh homes of the Upper West Side further up the island of Manhattan. And dont forget Brooklyn, the spot in New York where culture culminates; in which youll find everything from the best new bands to the coolest new restaurants.



It's no wonder legendary directors such as Nora Ephron and Woody Allen found inspiration here. From the yellow cabs hustling from street to street, to the Manhattan skyline dominated by the Empire State Building, New York feels familiar even if youre coming here for the first time.



People from all cultures walk the streets, or ride the subway system, chatting in different languages; some on holiday, some on business trips, some travelling to and from home. It's a diverse and welcoming place.



Because of the citys cosmopolitan nature, you'll find a huge variety of cuisines here. You can get pretty much anything that takes your fancy, from delectable French food to cheap and cheerful dim sum. And of course, there are plenty of opportunities to grab a slice of pizza. Just ask the locals  theyll have strong opinions about where to get the best pie.



Its that incredible pride in their home that really gives the city an edge. New Yorkers are opinionated, sure, but also knowledgeable and proud to tell you their story. Be sure to rub shoulders with as many locals as you can. The range of accommodation from which to base your own fairy tale of New York is extreme; quirky hostels in Brooklyn to lavish Central Park-facing brand hotels. So what are you waiting for?
Emirates destinations

Flights to Perth

There's a bit of a Wild West feel to Perth, Australia, a city of nearly two million that's about as far away from the rest of the world as you can get. It might be on its own but that doesn't mean there's nothing to do or a lack of culture.



Dating back to the 1820s, Perth has smart cafes, beautiful beachside restaurants, a vibrant ocean scene, and many other amenities that you'd expect from a metropolis of its size.



One of the best things about dining in Perth is the view from your seat. Many establishments offer stunning vistas of the Swan River, the city centre, or the Indian Ocean. The best restaurants include the modern Australian dining at Print Hall and traditional Chinese cuisine at Good Fortune Roast Duck House.



A thriving arts scene has resulted in many galleries including Art Gallery of Western Australia, Western Australian Museum, and smaller ones owned by individuals, as well as the Scitech Discovery Centre and the Army Museum of Western Australia. Kings Park is one of the largest inner-city parks in the world, boasting sculptures such as DNA Tower and the Jacob's Ladder staircase.



Although there's endless sunshine in Perth, at some point you're going to need a bed to rest your weary head. Many of the city's best hotels have an eco-friendly angle, something that will make you feel good about staying there as you enjoy the comfort of your stylish room and the elegant ambiance.



Perth's hoteliers know that coming to their city can sometimes feel like travelling to the end of the earth  in a good way  and they seek to provide guests with an experience that makes them feel as welcome as possible. Perth is a long way from home, but you won't notice.



Like Melbourne and Sydney, Perth is consistently ranked as one of the world's most liveable cities, and it's a pleasure to visit as well. There is more than enough to keep you busy for the duration of your stay  you could be happy hitting up the many and varied beaches for an entire month or more.
Checks on the cross-border movement of liquid funds

To combat money laundering and terrorist financing, we can carry out checks. If you are carrying CHF 10,000 or more, we will question you. In doing so, you will have to answer questions concerning you and the origin and intended purpose of the money, and provide information on the beneficial owner.



Consequences of the checks

In the case of liquid funds of CHF 10,000 or more, an entry will be made in the information system of the Customs Administration. If there is a suspicion of money laundering or terrorist financing, the funds may be temporarily confiscated or handed over to the police. The right is reserved to take other measures linked to combating crime.
Are America's best days ahead?

By Mark Alexander



At the 1992 GOP convention, even though it was becoming apparent that a draft-dodging serial adulterer named Bill Clinton might bookend the optimism and character of the Reagan/Bush era, former President Ronald Reagan had this to say about our nation's future: "America's best days are yet to come. Our proudest moments are yet to be. Our most glorious achievements are just ahead. America remains what Emerson called her 150 years ago, 'the country of tomorrow.'"

I have to ask: Do you believe Reagan's pronouncement of nearly a quarter-century ago to be true today? If you answered "no," I certainly understand why. But I believe President Reagan's words are as true today as in 1992. Allow me to tell you why.

A flood of pessimism continues to swamp our nation, and in the process it has swept away the hopes and dreams of a hundred million Americans, leaving most justifiably angry, if not merely depressed. After more than seven years of abject domestic and foreign policy failures under the Obama regime and its cadres of Socialist Democrats, too many Americans, including more than a few of my fellow Patriots, have lost sight of all that is good and right with America.

Make no mistake: I'm a realist, and I have no illusions about the detrimental impact the last seven years have had on every quarter of our nation. But I do not get caught up in the 24-hour news spin cycle, be it CNN or Fox, and the "chicken little" syndrome they propagate.

I have history's assurance that Reagan was right. It is the spirit of his words that are most relevant and they reach back to the dawn of our Republic.

In 1777, ahead of the devastating winter at Valley Forge  during the darkest days of the American Revolution, when it seemed all was lost  George Washington remained resolute: "We should never despair, our situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth new Exertions and proportion our Efforts to the exigency of the times."

Those inspirational words are timeless, and they reflect the extraordinary character of our nation's greatest leaders, from Washington to Reagan, and the generations of Patriot citizens and soldiers between. That character is manifest in the determination that, no matter how dire our current circumstances may be, our devotion to Liberty will ensure a brighter future.

Our circumstances may grow worse  much worse indeed  before growing better. But being rightly and firmly convicted as I am that Liberty is irrevocably "endowed by our Creator"  the foundational premise of our Declaration of Independence  I must ask my doubting brethren: What is the basis for such pessimism?

We don't have to venture back to Valley Forge for evidence that America, under the banner of Liberty, can endure incredible hardship. Let's look back just 100 years.

In 1916, our nation was on the verge of entering World War I, a horrific conflict in which allied nations lost 5.5 million of their best and brightest young people. A decade after the conclusion of "The War to End All Wars," which most certainly didn't, our nation was at the precipice of the Great Depression in 1929  and the extended recession that lasted until 1937. Four years later, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, thrusting the U.S. into World War II, and the bloody theaters of both Europe and the Pacific.

While I have read extensively the scholarly opinion on these three cataclysmic events, I learned most about them in personal relationships with those who lived through them  including my grandfather and particularly my father. Those events shaped my dad's optimism and his devotion to our country and our countrymen. I share that devotion.

The American economy enjoyed stable growth between 1945 and 1975, but the harmony of national prosperity was punctuated by the Korean War, the Cold War, social and civil unrest in the 1960s and the slog of Vietnam. In the mid-1970s the U.S. economy hit a wall, and American prestige and morale hit rock bottom during the malaise, "stagflation" and geopolitical impotence of the Jimmy Carter years. So much so that a Misery Index was created.

Enter Ronald Reagan.

In the decade that followed the 1980 election of President Reagan, his domestic policies halted the economic decline and led to one of the longest and strongest periods of economic growth in our nation's history  in stark contrast to the fun-with-numbers economy of Barack Obama. Reagan's humor and optimism buoyed the nation.

And notably, Reagan's ardently anti-communist foreign policy resulted in the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union's "Evil Empire."

A decade later, we suffered the devastating 9/11 attack on our nation  the direct result of Bill Clinton's failure to confront the emerging Islamic terrorist threat, and his unwillingness to eliminate Osama bin Laden when we had him, literally, in our sights. The economy was already in a slide with the bursting of the dot-com bubble during Clinton's last year in office, and the 2001 jihadist attack merely sealed our economic fate.

Under the leadership of George W. Bush, our nation engaged the Islamic threat on two deadly and protracted warfronts: Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. As Bush's second term concluded, the nation suffered its most significant economic threat since 1929  the cascading collapse of financial institutions sparked by the bursting of the Democrat-policy induced U.S. housing market bubble.

A smooth-talking domestic and foreign policy neophyte, Barack Hussein Obama, glided into the presidency on those financial woes. Since then, Obama's failed economic policies have resulted in a sustained recession. His foreign policy failures in the Middle East, under the supervision of his former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have been no less spectacular. In fact, they've resulted in the deadly rise of the Islamic State and an epic humanitarian crisis.

All that being said, as visceral and dangerous as the current economic and foreign policy threats are, our nation has suffered and survived much worse. Tomorrow's challenges might rival those of the last hundred years, but that would not change my devotion to Liberty at all costs, and the understanding that this is an eternal mission. I do not belittle the concerns and consequences of the Obama era. On the contrary, I note that these are perilous times for Liberty. But as General Washington said, "We should never despair."

As I look back over the challenges of the last hundred years, and in fact all the years since the first shots of the American Revolution in 1775, the common distinguishing characteristic of all great Patriots is that they devoted their lives to something much bigger than their own self interest.

That is the underlying message from Washington and Reagan.

In his 1989 farewell speech to the nation, President Reagan responded to being labeled "The Great Communicator." He said, "I wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great things, and they didn't spring full bloom from my brow, they came from the heart of a great nation  from our experience, our wisdom, and our belief in the principles that have guided us for two centuries."

Those "great things" have not changed, nor has our mission to advance them.

For the pessimists among our ranks, I offer a final word. In 1650, English theologian Thomas Fuller wrote, "It is always darkest just before the Day dawneth." The darkest hour of this era may be yet to come, but dawn will surely follow. I am certain that at the end of the current darkness, there will be a bright new dawn for Liberty, just as the sun has dependably risen after the darkest of times throughout our history.

In the meantime, fellow Patriots, as President Reagan's friend Barry Goldwater declared in mock Latin, "illegitimi non carborundum" (don't let the bastards get you down)!

Mark Alexander is the executive editor of the Patriot Post.
U.S. lifted the crude oil export ban, and exports wentdown By Charles Kennedy





Just over three months after the authorities lifted the four-decade ban on crude oil exports, the U.S. has actually exported less this year than it did over the same period the year before, when the ban was still in place.



According to Clipper Data market intelligence cited by the Financial Times, we've seen a 5 percent decline in U.S. crude oil export volumes since the beginning of this year. The data suggests that on average we are exporting (waterborne) 325,000 barrels per day now, compared to 342,000 barrels per day during the first months of 2015.



And there's no official data yetnot since the beginning of this year, when the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) noted that during the week ending 22 January, the U.S. had exported just shy of 400,000 barrels of oil, which again was 25 percent less than what was exported for the same week in 2014.



An oil tanker that reached a French port in January was the first post-ban delivery of U.S. crude oil, but things haven't really picked up pace since then.



January's cargoes, totaling about 11.3 million barrels, marked a 7 percent decline from U.S. crude exports in December, according to data by the U.S. Census Bureau. Shipments during January went to Curacao and France, in addition to Canada, the primary destination. The total number of tankers that have set sail with U.S. crude oil will not be known until comprehensive data on February's shipments is released by the U.S. Census Bureau.



The immediate beneficiaries of the ban suspension are gas and oil companies such as Chevron and Exxon Mobilamong the most tireless lobbyers against the banand oil trading giants such as Vitol Group BV and Trafigura Ltd Pet.



Europe and Asia are flooded with oil from Russia and the Middle East, though the first two shipments to leave the U.S. post-export ban went to Europe: one to Germany and the other to France, to be used in a refinery in Switzerland. Dutch media outlets reported in January that a tanker from Houston had reached Rotterdam port, but this remains just a drop in the global export bucket.



In Asia, even China's state-run Sinopecthe world's second-largest refinerhas imported a consignment of U.S. oil, according to a Reuters source. Japan's Cosmo Oil was the first Asian buyer of U.S. oil, purchasing some 300,000 barrels of U.S. crude in mid-January, which will be delivered to its refineries in mid-April.



The very first South American country that will import U.S. crude oil is Venezuela. In early February, Venezuela's state-run oil company PDVSA imported a 550,000-barrel cargo of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) through its U.S.-based Citgo Petroleum affiliate. Venezuela started importing foreign crudes in 2014 amid a fall in its own production - buying mostly Angolan and Nigerian light grades.



WTI is also expected to be exported to Israel, where Swiss commodities house Trafigura will ship some 700,000 barrels. Atlantic Trading & Marketing, the U.S. trading unit of French Total SA, has been planning an export cargo of U.S. crude from Cushing.



Also, earlier last month, Exxon became the first U.S. oil company to export U.S. crude, sending a tanker from Texas to a refinery it owns in Italy.



However, storage is now at the highest level in at least a decade. U.S., crude storage levels hit 487 million barrels in early November, closing in on the 80-year high of 518 million barrels in the last week of February. According to the EIA, about 60 percent of the U.S. working storage capacity is filled.



Globally, the picture isn't much better, with the International Energy Agency (IEA) saying that 1 billion barrels were added to storage in 2015 alone. OPEC has reported that crude oil stockpiles in OECD countries currently exceed the running five-year average by 210 million barrels.



Charles Kennedy is a writer for Oilprice.com where this originally appeared. Home
Prosecuting climate chaos skeptics with RICO By Paul Driessen

It's been a rough stretch for Climate Armageddon religionists and totalitarians. Real World science, climate and weather events just don't support their manmade cataclysm narrative. The horrid consequences of anti-fossil fuel energy policies are increasingly in the news. And despite campaigns by the $1.5-trillion-per-year government-industry-activist-scientific Climate Crisis Consortium, Americans consistently rank global warming at the very bottom of their serious concerns. But instead of debating their critics, or marshaling a more persuasive, evidence-based case that we really do face a manmade climate catastrophe, alarmists have ramped up their shrill rhetoric, imposed more anti-hydrocarbon edicts by executive fiat and unratified treaty  and launched RICO attacks on their critics. Spurred on by Senator Sheldon "Torquemada" Whitehouse (D-RI), Jagadish Shukla and his RICO-20 agitators, and their comrades, 16 of the nation's 18 Democratic attorneys general (the other 32 are Republican) announced on March 29 that they are going after those who commit the unpardonable offense of questioning "consensus" climate science. If companies are "committing fraud," by "knowingly deceiving" the public about the threat of man-made carbon dioxide emissions and climate change, New York AG Eric Schneiderman intoned, "we want to expose it and pursue them to the fullest extent of the law," under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. "The First Amendment does not give you the right to commit fraud." Their initial target is ExxonMobil, but other companies, think tanks like CFACT and the Heartland Institute (with which I am affiliated), and even independent researchers and analysts (like myself) will be in their crosshairs  using a law intended for the Mafia. Incredibly, even United States Attorney General Loretta Lynch says her office has "discussed" similar actions and has "referred [the matter] to the FBI." These RICO investigations and prosecutions are chilling, unprecedented and blatantly un-American. They abuse our legal and judicial processes and obliterate the First Amendment freedom of speech rights of anyone who questions the catechism of climate cataclysm. The AGs' actions are intended to browbeat skeptics into silence, and bankrupt them with monumental legal fees, fines and treble damages. It is the campus "crime" of "unwelcome ideas" and "micro-aggression" on steroids. It is the inevitable result of President Obama's determination to "fundamentally transform" the United States, ensure that electricity rates "necessarily skyrocket," and carve his energy and climate policy legacy in granite. Mr. O and his allies are on a mission: to rid the world of fossil fuels, replace them with "clean" biofuels (that are also carbon-based and also emit carbon dioxide when burned, but would require billions of acres of crop and habitat land) and "eco-friendly" bird-killing wind turbines and solar installations (that will require millions more acres)  and implement the goals of a dictatorial United Nations. Former executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Christiana Figueres put it in the bluntest terms: "We are setting ourselves the task of intentionally to change [sic] the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years"  the free enterprise capitalist system. "The next world climate summit is actually an economic summit, during which the distribution of the world's resources will be negotiated," her UN climate crisis cohort Otmar Edendorfer added. "We will redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy." Thus, under the 2015 Paris climate treaty, developing nations will be under no obligation to reduce their fossil fuel use or greenhouse gas emissions. They will simply take voluntary steps, when doing so will not impair their efforts to drive economic growth and improve their people's living standards. Meanwhile, they will be entitled to share $3 billion to $300 billion per year in "climate change adaptation, mitigation and reparation" money. In fact, Mr. Obama has already transferred $500 million in taxpayer money (illegally) from a State Department emergency fund to the UN's Green Climate Fund. No wonder developing nations were thrilled to sign the 2015 Paris not-a-treaty treaty. Recent headlines portend what's in store. EU electricity prices rise 63% over past decade. Rising energy costs, green policies threaten to kill steel industry and 4,000 to 40,000 jobs, as Tata Steel quits Britain. Thousands of Europeans lose jobs, as manufacturing moves to countries with lower energy prices. Unable to afford proper heat, 40,000 Europeans die of hypothermia during 2014 winter. In Africa and other energy-deprived regions: Millions die in 2015 from lung and intestinal diseases  due to open cooking and heating fires, spoiled food and unsafe water, and absence of electricity. Meanwhile, despite mandates, loan guarantees, feed-in tariffs, endangered species exemptions and other subsidies, renewable industries are barely surviving: SunEnergy, world's largest green energy company, faces bankruptcy, as share prices fall 95% in one year. Solar company Abengoa US files for Chapter 15 bankruptcy. China stops building wind turbines, as grid is damaged and most electricity is wasted. But Climate Crisis ruling elites pay little attention to this. They will be insulated, enriched, and protected from their decisions and deceptions  as they decide what energy, jobs, living standards and freedoms the poor, minority, blue-collar and middle classes will be permitted to have. Equally disturbing, their drive for total control is based on a chaotic world that is totally at odds with what the rest of us see outside our windows. Even after "homogenizing" and massaging the raw data, climate alarmists can only show that global temperatures may have risen a few tenths of a degree (barely the margin of error) during the 2015 El Nino year, after 19 years of no temperature increase, following two decades of slight warming, following three decades of slight cooling and warming. On the "extreme weather" front, tornadoes, snows, floods and droughts are no more frequent or intense than over the past century. No Category 3-5 hurricane has made US landfall in a record 125 months. Polar ice remains well within historic fluctuations, and sea levels are rising at barely seven inches per century. Alarmists thus rely on computer models that predict even "worse catastrophes," if global temperatures rise even 0.5 degrees C (0.8 F) more than they already have since the Little Ice Age ended and Industrial Era began. However, the models are hopelessly deficient, and totally unable to predict the climate. They overstate the climate's sensitivity to carbon dioxide and methane, atmospheric gases chosen because they result from fossil fuel use (and from many natural sources). They assume these two gases have become the primary forces in climate change  and ignore or downplay changing solar energy, cosmic ray and geomagnetic output; major periodic fluctuations in Pacific and North Atlantic Ocean circulation; volcanic activity; regional and planetary temperature cycles that recur over multiple decades, centuries or millennia; and other natural forces that have always driven planetary warming, cooling and weather. The models and modelers do this because these factors and their roles in climate change are not well understood, are difficult to measure, and do not fit the "humans are at fault" meme. They compound these errors by assuming that any warming will be dangerous, rather than beneficial for people and agriculture. These oversights can be characterized as careless, recklessly negligent, or even "knowingly deceitful" and fraudulent. So can "nine inconvenient untruths" that a United Kingdom judge highlighted in Al Gore's infamous fake-documentary movie  and Mr. Gore's recent claim that atmospheric CO2 is fueling Zika outbreaks. Likewise for James Hansen's repeated assertion that sea levels could rise "several meters" (117 inches) over the next century, and the bogus studies behind the phony "97% consensus" claims. Can you picture the cabal of AGs filing RICO actions in these cases? If you want the facts, and a few chuckles about climate alarmism, see the Climate Hustle movie, coming May 2 to a theater near you. Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death. Home
The Big Green job-killing machine By Ron Arnold

The abuse of environmentalist power to hurt people never stops. "Another one gone," began the Lost Coast Outpost's report in late January. A.A. "Red" Emmerson, chairman of Sierra Pacific Industries, announced the permanent closure of its sawmill on Samoa Peninsula in Arcata, California  with the loss of 123 crew member jobs (and over 100 secondary jobs that depended on sawmill employment). Regulatory burdens and reduced allowable harvests from federal forests are the primary reasons for the closure, Emmerson said. The shutdown of the last mill on once-bustling Humboldt Bay this year was just the latest loss in the timber industry's long and steady decline under relentless environmentalist pressure and U.S. Forest Service complicity. A year earlier the North Coast Journal had sadly bid "Goodnight, Korbel" when Arcata's neighbor lost its 131-year-old sawmill, its 106 direct jobs and numerous local indirect positions. The Pulp & Paperworkers' Resource Council had previously released its 119-page "Mill Curtailments & Closures From 1990," counting more than 1,700 nationwide timber-related casualties from 1990 through 2012. All this damage was launched by the ionic 1991 Spotted Owl court ruling won by a local bird group, Seattle Audubon Society  initially with separate plaintiff Portland (Oregon) Audubon Society  against logging in Washington, Oregon and California. The owl ruling has been so devastating because Judge William L. Dwyer, of Washington State's federal district court, granted and stretched Seattle Audubon's demands to the impossible. Using the "regional biogeography" principle from a federal "Spotted Owl Task Force" decision, Dywer ruled, "The duty to maintain viable populations of existing vertebrate species requires planning for the entire biological community  not for one species alone. It is distinct from the duty, under the Endangered Species Act, to save a listed species from extinction." But even wildlife specialists did not know and could not explain what the "entire biological community" of the three-state area was. Industry analyst Paul Ehinger & Associates of Eugene, Oregon found that, after just five years, Dwyer's Seattle Audubon ruling had shut down 187 mills and wiped out 22,654 jobs throughout the three states. The toll expanded like the Big Bang, and running totals are no longer tracked. A few well-off Seattle industry-haters and a liberal judge who paid little attention to the human toll set in motion a curse without end, the "progressive" destruction of the jobs, incomes, hopes and dreams of thousands. The Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson, Arizona is a legal action environmental group that sues to block human action and doesn't care who gets hurt. The leader of its three co-founders, Kieran Suckling, had been an activist in the 1980s' vandalism and sabotage group, Earth First! (The exclamation point was a mandatory identifier.) Hatred of industry  and the people who ran it  prompted the founders to seek ways to permanently stop natural resource use and led them to form the CBD in 1994. With the help of environmental attorneys, CBD "weaponized" the Endangered Species Act against ranchers, loggers, miners, and human activity in general. That law now trumps virtually everything else. In fact, about the only time the act doesn't seem to apply is when gigantic wind turbines slaughter hundreds of thousands of eagles, hawks, falcons, other birds and bats, year after year, nearly eradicating them and "entire biological communities" across vast areas in California, Oregon and elsewhere. The organization's self-description says, "As the country's leading endangered species advocates, the Center for Biological Diversity works through science, law and creative media to secure a future for all species, great or small, hovering on the brink of extinction." Extremism is a mild term to describe CBD's blanket enmity to human action. It has even crossed the traditional environmentalist line that protected and revered Native Americans as "people of nature." The group joined a federal lawsuit last year to block essential expansion of The Navajo Mine, south of Farmington, New Mexico. The mine sits on a Navajo reservation and is owned by the Navajo Transitional Energy Company (NTEC), a wholly owned subsidiary of the Navajo Nation's sprawling tribal government. The mine was established for the sole purpose of delivering all its coal to the nearby Four Corners Power Plants: five coal-fired power plants, majority-owned and operated by the Arizona Public Service Company, to provide electricity to California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. In the process, it generated 800 mine and power plant jobs, many of them Navajos, and $40 million in annual revenue to the Navajo Nation. NTEC was granted a federal permit to expand the mine. However, the CBD was determined to stop the expansion and shut down the mine via a huge lawsuit. It helped organize a coalition of co-plaintiffs including little local groups such as Amigos Bravos, San Juan Citizens Alliance, and Dine [Navajo] Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment, as well as the $100-million-a-year Sierra Club and the powerful Western Environmental Law Center. The attack by CBD et al. won a Colorado federal judge's order nullifying the expansion permit. The order was confirmed by the Tenth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals when NTEC lost an appeal for a stay on the lower court's ruling. Even with that victory, the CBD gang insisted that ongoing mining must also halt, pending a new environmental review of alleged public health and environmental risks from the mine expansion: from pollutants that are actually a minor problem at these technologically advanced and well-run Navajo facilities. Only the Navajo Nation's sovereignty, an environmental review and agreements with the EPA to fight regional haze by closing three of the plant's five units and installing emission controls on the remaining two plants saved some of the jobs and revenue  for now. Of course, all that could change as the CBD gang fights on, threatening to sue the federal permitting agency. Lost jobs of course mean seriously impaired living standards, health and welfare for unemployed workers and their families. But for the CBD and judges, those concerns are irrelevant. In January, the Farmington Daily Times reported that the town's San Juan College received a $1.4 million federal grant to help retrain displaced coal miners and workers in other industries, including oil and gas. But oil and gas operations are also under assault by the CBD gang and various federal agencies, which are using climate change, the EPA's Clean Power Plan and other regulations to restrict or eliminate leasing, drilling and other resource extraction on western lands. Clearly, even the sovereignty that comes with being a federally recognized Indian tribe on an established reservation provides no protection against a weaponized Endangered Species Act. Other communities, industries, workers and families are even more powerless. Once again, poor, minority and working class families are at the mercy of wealthy ruling elites, for whom exaggerated and even fabricated environmental concerns are paramount. It's wrong, and it has to end. Ron Arnold is executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, a policy advisor to The Heartland Institute, author of ten books on environmentalist excesses, and editor of the Undue Influence website, which exposes leftist funding and practices. Home
How Obama created Black Lives Matter By Rachel Alexander

As the first black president, Obama had a great opportunity to prove that racial divisions in the country have greatly receded. It is no longer the 1960s and the era of Jim Crow, instead we have the opposite situation; minorities are now given affirmative action to make sure they end up in equal positions in education and jobs as whites  oftentimes regardless of their academic qualifications This may be unfair to whites, especially whites who never had ancestors in the South who were slave owners, and worked their way up from poverty to get where they're at today. In fact, it could be argued that race relations have changed to where things are reversely discriminating against whites. But instead of acknowledging this progress, Obama has done the exact opposite, hyping up incidents where blacks encounter law enforcement in negative situations and claiming there was racism involved. As a result, anytime a black man dies due to an encounter with law enforcement anymore, there is now a large segment within the black population  as well as sympathetic left-wing activists  who get vocally upset and claim it must be due to racism. He has blown up these encounters to the point where black activists are now rioting and looting. The first major incident during Obama's tenure as president involved the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates at his home in 2009. He couldn't get his house door open and tried to force it open, and a neighbor called the police. The police thought he was a burglar and arrested him. Even though there was no evidence of racism, Obama said afterward, I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home, and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there's a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. Next, there was the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012 by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, an Hispanic who got into a scuffle with him late at night. There had been a string of burglaries in the neighborhood and Zimmerman suspected Martin was behind them. Although it turned out Martin had a history of burglaries, Obama chose to blow up the incident and portray him as someone innocent who was targeted because of his race. He gave a speech where he went on and on about how blacks are targeted and followed around by the police. He also held Martin up as someone wonderful, saying if he had a son he would look like Martin. In 2014, white police officer Darren Wilson fatally shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Wilson attempted to arrest Brown after he robbed a convenience store, and when Brown resisted arrest and fled, he shot him. By now, Obama had successfully radicalized many blacks, who clamored for the prosecution of Wilson and began rioting in the streets of Ferguson, looting and vandalizing businesses. Obama said during a speech shortly after the shooting that the racial divide in the American justice system "stains the heart of black children." He went on, "Too many young men of color feel targeted by law enforcement  guilty of walking while black or driving while black, judged by stereotypes that fuel fear and resentment and hopelessness." Clearly pressured, prosecutors attempted to bring charges against Wilson, but a grand jury refused to indict him. Obama gave another divisive speech after the decision was announced, as usual implying there was racism involved, "The fact is, in too many parts of this country, a deep distrust exists between law enforcement and communities of color. Some of this is the result of the legacy of racial discrimination in this country." Finally, last year Freddie Gray was arrested in Baltimore, and died from injuries to his neck and spine while being transported in a police van. While it is not clear whether or not the police improperly transported him, causing the injuries, there is no evidence it was due to racism. Six officers are being criminally prosecuted  and three of them are black. The driver of the van, who would have been the one responsible for allegedly driving roughly, was black. Their trials have been set for later this year. After Gray's death, there was massive rioting in the streets of Baltimore. Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Black encouraged the destructive rioting, saying, "we also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well." Obama responded by not only claiming it was racism by law enforcement, but implying that it is a chronic, huge problem. This has been going on for a long time. This is not new, and we shouldn't pretend that it's new. The good news is that perhaps there's some newfound awareness, because of social media and video cameras and so forth, that there are problems and challenges when it comes to how policing and our laws are applied in certain communities and we have to pay attention to it. Obama could have healed race relations by stating after each of these incidents that he did not believe racism played a role. But he is devious and he has a twofold agenda: 1) Keep blacks and sympathetic left-wing activists voting Democrat by asserting that racism still exists and the Democrat Party is the one that will help them with its politically correct diversity policies, and 2) turn people against law enforcement. Obama's legacy as president is that anytime a black person suffers injuries at the hands of the police, there will be rioting and the police will be vigorously prosecuted in highly publicized, devastating trials. The only way they will be able to avoid it will be to stop arresting blacks, creating a two-tier justice system. America is one of the most colorblind nations in the world; it is sad to see how Obama has falsely labeled these incidents as racist and hyped them up, needlessly causing racial conflict as well as destroying the lives of the officers involved. Rachel Alexander and her brother Andrew are co-Editors of Intellectual Conservative. She has been published in the American Spectator, Townhall.com, Fox News, NewsMax, Accuracy in Media, The Americano, ParcBench, and other publications. Home
Theoretical rights, multiculturalism, and marginality -- the Polish-Canadian case (Part One) By Mark Wegierski

Beginning in the late-1960s, Canada has enacted an extensive policy of multiculturalism, which became especially entrenched since the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982. Governments in Canada (federal, provincial, and municipal) have been committed to supporting (at least to some extent) the cultural and organizational activities of multifarious "ethno-cultural" groups. It might appear that the Polish-Canadian community (estimated in the 2011 Canada Census at over one million persons of Polish descent) would be playing a large role today. But, that does not seem to be happening. Despite the fact that multiculturalism is juridically recognized and societally encouraged, the Polish-Canadian community does not seem to have much political, social, and cultural influence. Today, there are simply so many interest groups that are clamouring for public money, for example, "visible minorities" (a term officially used in Canada). Since the 1970s, more than three-quarters of immigrants have been visible minorities, thus creating an ever greater impetus in their favour. Interestingly enough, in the Canadian experience, multiculturalism in earlier years (mostly the 1970s) included a major focus on what were sometimes called "white ethnics" (i.e., Eastern and Southern Europeans)  which in the U.S. has usually not been considered as a definition of multiculturalism. In the 1970s, multiculturalism in Canada was enthusiastically received by the white ethnic groups in the belief that they were finally going to get some major recognition and financial resources. However, with the ever increasing visible minority immigration, and the increasing prominence given to visible minorities within the definition of multiculturalism, most of the various white ethnic groups were eclipsed. It should also be noted that when, in the 1980s, so-called employment equity policies (the equivalent of affirmative action policies in the U.S.) were being enacted in Canada, visible minority became one of the employment equity categories (along with women, aboriginals, persons with disabilities). There was never any discussion about including Eastern and Southern Europeans as a category, although they had certainly been "historically disadvantaged" in Canada (the term used in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to justify employment equity-type policies). The fact is that the Polish-Canadian community in particular has existed on an unfortunate cusp of history. When the post-World War II immigration first arrived in large numbers, they were not especially welcomed. For example, the Polish soldiers who were accepted into Canada in the immediate post-war years, were required to work for two years on remote farms. For the Polish soldiers who had fought against Hitler since 1939, this was quite humiliating. Conditions on the farms were sometimes none too pleasant. One anecdotally remembers such occurrences as when the German P.O.W.s were sent home from a Canadian beet plantation, to be replaced by the incoming Polish soldiers! So the Poles in Canada set about trying to reconstruct some kind of community life in comparatively difficult circumstances. In such a situation, the children born of Polish immigrant parents were highly likely to thoroughly assimilate. It was seen at the time as a precondition for economic and social advancement. Indeed, at this time, Poles in Canada were seen as "too ethnic". In the late 1960s, Canada underwent a sea-change, and multiculturalism suddenly came into vogue. But by that time, many young people of Polish descent had been irretrievably assimilated. Also, with the coming of the 1960s and the so-called "revolt against the elders", anything so seemingly "stodgy" and "old-fashioned" as Polish identity, wasn't going to be attractive to young people. In the 1980s and later, the focus in multiculturalism definitely shifted in the direction of visible minorities. Thus, by this time, Polish-Canadians could be seen as "not ethnic enough". As will be noted below, the assimilative pressures exercised, for example, by the mass media, meant that there was no rallying of resistance to assimilation in the 1960s and later. It can be seen that, as the "core audience" of Polish-Canadians melted away, the community was going to be seen as less and less important. Partially based on a draft of an English-language presentation read at the 6th Congress of Polish Canadianists (Polish Association for Canadian Studies) (Poznan, Poland: Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan), April 5-7, 2013. To be continued. Mark Wegierski is a Toronto-based writer and historical researcher. Home
President Don "Corleone" Trump By Mark Alexander

My article for last week's Enter Stage Right basically told you that the nightmare of the Obama Nation, the ability for such a Muslim Marxist to win the White House not just once but twice?!?! It all has to do with George H. W. Bush's commitment to creating A NEW WORLD ORDER RUN BY THE UNITED NATIONS!!! That is pure treason announced publically over 25 years ago by the first disastrous President in the Bush Presidential Dynasty. Since that announcement? America, with the invaluable help of Bill Clinton's eight years as a POTUS, is now in the hands of a President who openly lied to all of America from the very beginning. He said he wanted to "transform" the United States of America. Barack Hussein Obama

has no other objective

in the deepest corner of his villainous soul

but to destroy America

and everything America has stood for. America's problem right now? There are only two alternatives for patriotic Americans to vote for: Ted Cruz or Donald Trump. Cruz speaks eloquently about his faith and commitment to the American Constitution and Bill of Rights. However, the inconsistency of both his voting record and the radical views of his wife, Heidi Cruz, both throw massive suspicion upon what this couple in the White House could do to America. After what Obama has done for almost eight years, perhaps the equally radical pronouncements of Donald Trump, despite the crude and insulting style of his campaign perhaps we have really no choice but to take Donald Trump at his word. Vote for the man who promises to "make America great again!" After thirty years of subversive and lying power games by three families  the Bushes, the Clintons and what I call The Entire Obama Nation  and the horrible mess that the Free World's former leader, the United States of America, now finds itself trapped in?! Perhaps the only answer to that plight is the cunning and "negotiating" machinations of not a God-fearing and law-biding American President but the "negotiating skills" of an unquestionably powerful and rich businessman/Godfather named Donald Trump. Unfortunately, Trump hasn't expressed any real loyalties to either the Judeo-Christian Bible or the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution or even the Bill of Rights. He simply promises us that he will "make America great again!" How will he do that?! The tactics he might use?! Well, his contempt for NATO, his contented willingness to live in an increasingly nuclearized world, his painfully flawed reading of The Holy Bible and his increasingly obvious respect for no one but himself, for his own opinions and for no one but for those in the world who totally agree with him?! What do we really have?! A Godfather with undeniably international connections. A Mafioso-style leader of a newly transformed, Cosa Nostra America! His contempt for the Geneva Conference, albeit reported in a questionable source with a misleading title but also Trump's utter disregard for the laws of how prisoners of war must be treated? Not at all the opinions of a would-be leader of Democracy. A dictatorship? Most possibly. So! Would Trump then just be another version of Barack Hussein Obama?! The President who uses the Constitution and Bill of Rights for toilet paper?! Trump's only difference from Obama? He would be just Pro-American as versus Pro-Islamic or Pro-Communist?! An American-style, Mafioso Bully?! "Trust me," he'll say. Then, as President, he only makes "offers" that "no one else can refuse". Trump's certainty about Mexico paying for a wall that Mexico says it doesn't need?!?! Trump's certain tone of voice

is comforting

for an American population

that knows,

under Obama,

something truly terrible has happened

to the United States of America

and must be corrected. Donald Trump, and apparently one of the few men in life he admires, President Vladimir Putin, a Neo-Soviet Bully?! Together, these two "Strong Men" will rule the human race and the human race will be consistently offered "deals" that "smaller and less important human souls" cannot possibly", for whatever reasons, "refuse"! America and Americans are desperate for such certainty and, possibly under such dictatorial leadership having survived under the dictator Barack Obama America and Americans can regain the very greatness that Trump has promised them if and when he becomes President of the United States. Once in power, however, I doubt if a President Trump will change any of his rules of management and, as far as any of us know, his rules of management are "Do as I tell you to do or you are FIRED!" "If I want advice, I WILL ASK FOR IT!!!" "IF YOU TRY AND GIVE ME ANY ADVICE THAT I DON'T WANT TO HEAR?! YOU'LL BE LUCKY IF ALL I DO IS FIRE YOU!!!!" In short, President Donald "Corleone" Trump. These two, Trump and Putin, would rule the world together as bullies and together bully even the Red Chinese Committee or Politburo into following their mutually agreed upon and "negotiated" policies. "Peace!" "Peace under not-so-democratic a contract, drawn up by two Godfathers'". Which do we want? Ted Cruz who, indeed, is guilty of Trump's accusation: "Lying Ted!" The Ted Cruz,

possibly false loyalty

to America's founding documents?! Or Donald Corleone Trump's

sincere assurance

that he will, indeed,

"make America great again". What is most troubling, of course, is that Donald Trump's mirror image, President Barack Obama, has this cinematic self-image for President, the lessons that form the Hollywood film Godfather?! They are already recorded here in Obama's imitation of Marlon Brando. "You disrespected me." Prophetically, Donald Trump has lived his entire life more like a Godfather than Obama whose Godfather act didn't really begin until his second term. Which would I prefer as President? A lying yet flagrantly denying member of the now, fully corrupted American, Republican Establishment?! Or an honestly bullying American Godfather?! After America has endured Obama, do you really think that Trump has any notion of behaving by the rules?! Trump is certain that if America didn't fire Obama by impeaching him?!?! America certainly won't fire or impeach a President Trump!! No matter what he does. I'd rather take a Godfather as President over a liar any day. Certainly over a bottomlessly ambitious lawyer! No wonder Cruz knows his Constitution so well. The document is only there for a skilled lawyer to split hairs over And then split them again And then again And then again Until he finds out how much he can get away with. That's how another lawyer named Barack Hussein Obama has done it. Has singlehandedly destroyed any Truth in American politics. The lawyer's "hidden agenda". Trump's only, not-so-hidden agenda is SUCCESS!! America's "greatness"!!! Trump became the very financial success he had always wanted to be. He, however, became a multi-billionaire without jail time. His life is proof that DONALD CORLEONE TRUMP is not only a rich Godfather but a profoundly successful one. THAT tune of Donald Trump's many melodies is not going to change. So?! Let's make America great again!! We've certainly had enough of Barack Obama's "Fundamental"

And LAWLESS

Transformation

of The United States

of America". Neither Trump

nor Cruz

are ideal candidates. Of the two,

however,

Trump

is far more comfortingly

predictable. Then again,

What defines the meaning of "A Great America"

For Donald Trump

And what defines such an America

For Michael Moriarty

Could very well be

Two entirely different things. Both Mr. Trump and I

Have experienced a "Great America"

Under several,

Exceptional

Presidents of the United States. God willing,

All differences between us

About that America,

Which we both long for again,

Will prove to be

"Negotiable". Michael Moriarty is a Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actor who starred in the landmark television series Law and Order from 1990 to 1994. His recent film and TV credits include The Yellow Wallpaper, 12 Hours to Live, Santa Baby and Deadly Skies. Contact Michael at rainbowfamily2008@yahoo.com. He can be found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/@MGMoriarty. Home
Editor's Note: A previous version of this press release incorrectly reported the rate of recurrence or subsequent treatment for atrial fibrillation for the two devices in this study at 64.1 percent and 65.4 percent. The actual rates were 35.9 percent and 34.6 percent. This version replaces the eighth paragraph to correct the data.

CHICAGO (April 4, 2016) -- Two established techniques for correcting the root cause of the heart rhythm disorder atrial fibrillation show similar effects and safety outcomes, according to research presented at the American College of Cardiology's 65th Annual Scientific Session.

The study, called FIRE AND ICE, is the largest randomized trial to compare radiofrequency and cryoballoon ablation, two techniques designed to treat atrial fibrillation by disabling small portions of the heart that generate out-of-sync electrical signals. Radiofrequency ablation uses heat energy to disable the targeted heart tissue, while the cryoballoon, a newer technique, uses extreme cold to achieve the same effect. The trial revealed no differences between the two techniques for the study's primary outcomes--the recurrence of an irregular heart rhythm or the need for medication or subsequent procedures to address atrial fibrillation. It was funded in part by Medtronic, which makes the cryoballoon device.

"The FIRE AND ICE trial demonstrated that the cryoballoon, a newer, easier-to-use ablation catheter, worked as well as the established technology, which ultimately means that more patients can be treated for atrial fibrillation without having [to go to a] specialized cardiac center," said Karl-Heinz Kuck, M.D., Ph.D., head of cardiology at St. Georg Hospital in Hamburg, Germany, and the study's lead author. "In addition, there was, in general, a low risk of procedural complications in both groups, demonstrating that catheter ablation has become much safer over the years."

Atrial fibrillation, estimated to affect more than 33 million people worldwide, is an irregular heart rhythm that can cause fatigue, lightheadedness, shortness of breath, chest pain and an increased risk for stroke. Although medications and lifestyle changes can help manage the condition's risk factors and symptoms, about 30 percent of patients do not benefit from available medications or cannot take them due to side effects or other reasons. Ablation is one option for treating these patients. During ablation, a physician threads a small medical device through a vein in the groin to kill a small number of cells around the heart's pulmonary veins, preventing them from issuing electrical signals that are out of sync with the rest of the heart.

The trial, conducted in eight European countries, enrolled 769 patients needing ablation for intermittent atrial fibrillation. Patients were randomly assigned to receive either the radiofrequency or cryoballoon technique; both patients and physicians were aware of which technique was being used. The two groups were similar in terms of demographic factors, such as age and gender, as well as health status, based on parameters such as body mass index, blood pressure and various measures of heart function.

In addition to using different methods for disabling the target heart tissue, the two techniques involved different procedures to help the physician locate the target tissue. For radiofrequency procedures, physicians were guided by 3-D electroanatomical mapping to create tissue lesions in a point-by-point ablation approach. For cryoballoon procedures, physicians used a type of X-ray imaging known as fluoroscopy to create tissue lesions in a single-step ablation approach.

Outcomes were assessed through in-person patient visits conducted three months after the procedure, six months after the procedure and every six months thereafter. Each visit included an electrocardiogram test to assess heart rhythm and function, as well as the use of a Holter monitor, in which the patient wears a monitor for 24 hours to check for any abnormal heart rhythm. Patients were tracked for just over 18 months, on average.

The results revealed no significant difference in the rates of recurrence of an irregular heart rhythm or the need for medication or subsequent procedures to address atrial fibrillation, outcomes that collectively occurred in 35.9 percent of patients receiving radiofrequency ablation and 34.6 percent of cryoballoon patients within 12 months after the procedure.

There were also no significant differences in the overall safety profile of the two techniques. Safety was assessed with a composite endpoint of death, stroke and procedure-related serious adverse events; 87.2 percent of patients receiving radiofrequency ablation and 89.8 percent of cryoballoon patients had not experienced any of these safety endpoints by 12 months after the procedure.

In both groups, there was generally a low rate of procedure-related complications such as infection, dangerous heart rhythms or accumulation of fluid in the heart. However, patients receiving cryoballoon ablation were significantly more likely to experience injury to the phrenic nerve, which can affect the functioning of the diaphragm and require patients to use an artificial ventilator. Such injuries occurred in 2.7 percent of cryoballoon patients and zero patients receiving radiofrequency ablation. In all but one of these cases, functioning was restored by 12 months post-operation.

The study revealed some significant procedural differences between the two techniques. Because it involved 3-D anatomical mapping, radiofrequency ablation required about five minutes less fluoroscopy time and, thus, exposed patients and physicians to radiation for a shorter period of time, though Kuck said that the overall usage of fluoroscopy was relatively limited in both groups, at 21.7 minutes and 16.6 minutes total on average for the cryoballoon and radiofrequency procedures, respectively. Cryoablation was associated with a shorter overall procedure time by 18 minutes per procedure, on average, and a similarly reduced amount of time in which the catheter was present inside the heart's left atrium while the ablation was carried out.

"The procedure time was interesting because there are more cost pressures on the healthcare system for more efficient tools that keep procedures short and predictable," Kuck said.

Kuck said the findings could help inform future medical guidelines on the use of different catheter ablation techniques for treating atrial fibrillation. One limitation of the study is that it did not investigate ablation for treating patients with more advanced stages of atrial fibrillation. A separate trial would be needed to assess the ablation techniques' effectiveness and safety for that patient population, he said.

###

In addition to serving on the speaker's bureau for Medtronic, Kuck has consulted for Biosense Webster, Edwards LifeSciences and St. Jude Medical.

This study was simultaneously published online in The New England Journal of Medicine at the time of presentation.

The ACC's Annual Scientific Session, which in 2016 will be April 2-4 in Chicago, brings together cardiologists and cardiovascular specialists from around the world to share the newest discoveries in treatment and prevention. Follow @ACCMediaCenter and #ACC16 for the latest news from the meeting.

The American College of Cardiology is a 52,000-member medical society that is the professional home for the entire cardiovascular care team. The mission of the College is to transform cardiovascular care and to improve heart health. The ACC leads in the formation of health policy, standards and guidelines. The College operates national registries to measure and improve care, offers cardiovascular accreditation to hospitals and institutions, provides professional medical education, disseminates cardiovascular research and bestows credentials upon cardiovascular specialists who meet stringent qualifications.
Some 2 billion X-rays are performed around the world every year. But the average radiology clinic is understaffed. Radiologists are burdened with a growing workload, allowing little time to comprehensively evaluate images -- leading to misdiagnoses and more serious consequences.

Now a Tel Aviv University lab is engineering practical solutions to meet the demands of radiologists. Prof. Hayit Greenspan's Medical Image Processing Lab in the Department of Biomedical Engineering in the TAU Faculty of Engineering has developed a wide variety of tools to facilitate computer-assisted diagnosis of X-rays, CTs and MRIs, freeing radiologists to attend to complex cases that require their full attention and skills.

"There is a shortage of radiologists, and their workload continues to grow. This means that some X-rays are never read or are only read following a long, life-endangering delay," said Prof. Greenspan. "Our goal is to use computer-assisted 'Deep Learning' technologies to differentiate between healthy and non-healthy patients, and to categorize all pathologies present in a single image through an efficient and robust framework that can be adapted to a real clinical setting."

"Deep learning" for accurate diagnosis

Prof. Greenspan discussed her lab's plan to implement "Deep Learning," a new area of Machine Learning research that harnesses artificial intelligence for various scientific fields, at the Israeli Symposium on Computational Radiology held at TAU last December. Her goal is to use Deep Learning to develop diagnostic tools for the automated detection and labelling of pathologies in radiographic images.

Prof. Greenspan's lab is one of only a few labs in the world dedicated to the application of Deep Learning in medicine. She and her team have already developed the technology to support automated chest X-ray pathology identification using Deep Learning, liver lesion detection, MRI lesion analysis and other tasks.

"We have developed tools to support decision-making in radiology with computer vision and machine learning algorithms. This will help radiologists make more accurate, more quantitative and more objective decisions," said Prof. Greenspan. "This is especially crucial when it comes to initial screenings. Such systems can improve accuracy and efficiency in both basic and more advanced radiology departments around the world."

Prof. Greenspan is also exploring the use of "transfer learning" in her research on the medical applications of Deep Learning. "Crowdsourcing was essential for the application of Deep Learning on general image searches such as Google search," said Prof. Greenspan. "But when it comes to medical imaging, there are privacy issues and there's very little comprehensive data available at this point.

"In 'transfer learning,' we use networks originally trained on regular images to categorize medical images. The features and parameters that represent millions of general images provide a good signature for the analysis of medical images as well."

Prof. Greenspan's work is supported by the INTEL Collaborative Research Institute for Computational Intelligence (ICRI-CI) and the Israeli Finance Ministry, in collaboration with Sheba Medical Center. She is also head co-editor of a special issue on "Deep Learning in Medical Imaging," which will be published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging in May.

###

Tel Aviv University (TAU) is inherently linked to the cultural, scientific and entrepreneurial mecca it represents. It is one of the world's most dynamic research centers and Israel's most distinguished learning environment. Its unique-in-Israel multidisciplinary environment is highly coveted by young researchers and scholars returning to Israel from post-docs and junior faculty positions in the US.

American Friends of Tel Aviv University (AFTAU) enthusiastically and industriously pursues the advancement of TAU in the US, raising money, awareness and influence through international alliances that are vital to the future of this already impressive institution.
X-ray free-electron lasers, first realized a decade ago, produce the brightest X-rays on the planet, and scientists tap into these unique X-rays to explore matter at the atomic scale and observe processes that occur in just quadrillionths of a second.

As the name suggests, an X-ray free-electron laser requires electrons--lots of them, and in very compact bunches. Those electron bunches are actually initiated by rapid-fire laser pulses produced by an electron "gun." And to get those electrons to give up energy in the form of ultrabright X-ray light, they are wiggled in powerful, alternating magnetic fields in a device called an "undulator."

Now, as part of a unique new X-ray laser project, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) are managing the development of a new breed of electron gun that provides a near-continuous stream of electron bunches, and new, highly tunable undulators.

This LCLS-II project, under construction at the DOE's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, Calif., will add a second X-ray laser and a superconducting linear accelerator to the existing light source that will enable more experiments and brighter X-rays.

In addition to overseeing the design, development, testing and delivery of the LCLS-II undulators and electron gun, researchers at Berkeley Lab also have lead roles in control systems for parts of the superconducting accelerator and in modeling LCLS-II's electron beam and X-ray production.

The making of an undulator

The new undulator segments for LCLS-II will come in two different forms: A chain of 21 lower-energy, or "soft" X-ray undulator segments, and a chain of 32 higher-energy or "hard" X-ray undulator segments.

Each undulator segment measures about 11 feet in length and weighs about 6.5 tons, with strong steel frames that are built to withstand incredible magnetic forces produced by hundreds of individually tested and adjusted magnets in opposing rows along their lengths. Each soft X-ray undulator segment will have 346 magnets and each hard X-ray segment will have 518 magnets.

"The magnetic forces are so strong--the system has to withstand about 7 tons of force," said Matthaeus Leitner, a Berkeley Lab engineer who is managing the development effort for the LCLS-II undulators.

The rows of magnets in each segment can be moved closer together or farther apart to millionths-of-an-inch precision to fine-tune the energy of the X-ray pulses that form in their alternating magnetic fields. This adjustability, known as "variable gap," is a new feature for LCLS-II.

"The undulator segments need to be designed for several hundred-thousand cycles of opening and closing," Leitner said. "There are incredibly sturdy motors that overcome the magnetic forces."

Berkeley Lab engineer Allan DeMello and three designers from the Lab's mechanical engineering department have developed a series of prototypes for the variable-gap undulator segments.

A small-scale prototype completed in 2013 was followed by a full-size undulator segment that was successfully tested in the lab's Undulator Measurement Facility, which precisely measures and tunes the magnetic specs. A pre-production soft X-ray undulator segment prototype is now in the works, and a new hard X-ray design--developed by Berkeley Lab based on an alternative approach originally devised at Argonne National Laboratory--will be tested later this year.

As the project moves forward, much of the production and assembly of the segments will be carried out by offsite vendors, said Dawn Munson, a Berkeley Lab mechanical engineer and technical representative for the LCLS-II project.

"This is a very exciting time--everything is going to happen really fast," said Munson, who has been working on the LCLS-II project since 2010. "We've put in place a lot of specifications with the vendors and we have really good communications."

The Berkeley Lab Undulator Measurement Facility will handle the tests on about one-third of the LCLS-II undulator segments, and SLAC will test the rest.

Erik Wallen, an engineer responsible for the magnetic measurements, said the facility is built like a "building within a building," with specially designed lighting and power cabling to limit sources of electromagnetic noise and preserve the accuracy of its measurements. The measurements must account even for the effects of Earth's magnetic field, he said.

Berkeley Lab researchers developed an innovative tuning mechanism for individual undulator magnets that uses stacks of tiny, hearing-aid-battery-sized magnets to compensate for very slight magnetic field defects. There are several other mechanisms, too, to individually hand-tune the fields of undulator magnets.

Diego Arbelaez, a Berkeley Lab mechanical engineer, developed a computer algorithm to optimize the performance of the undulator segments based on the tested properties of individual magnets.

"Magnets aren't perfectly magnetized--they have some random errors. We started by simulating their behavior and developed methods for sorting and tuning," Arbelaez said. The algorithms provide guidance for the position of individual magnets in each undulator segment. "We tried to handle the magnet-sorting as precisely as possible so when we install them we have as little tuning to do as possible," he added.

A new type of electron gun

The electron gun system for the LCLS-II superconducting linac, which springs from an R&D program begun at Berkeley Lab in 2009, should be ready for delivery to SLAC by the summer 2017, said Steve Virostek, a Berkeley Lab engineer responsible for its final design, fabrication and delivery.

Fernando Sannibale, a senior scientist who oversaw the development of a test electron gun and injector system known as APEX (Advanced Photoinjector Experiment) and is also working on the LCLS-II system, said, "The new LCLS-II gun will be a slightly modified version of APEX--90 percent of the design will be the same." The prototype LCLS-II injector's cooling system has been redesigned to allow for a lower temperature when operating at ultrafast pulse rates, among other modifications.

The gun works by firing ultraviolet or visible-light laser pulses at a semiconductor surface known as a cathode. The laser light creates free bursts of electrons as it strikes the cathode. The injector will be remotely tunable to adjust the rate and other properties of LCLS-II pulses on demand.

The LCLS-II injector system, built of copper and stainless steel, will weigh about 1,500 pounds, and it must be assembled in a cleanroom to ensure that no contaminants can pass into the superconducting accelerator.

"The quality of the beam of the linear accelerator is really defined by the injector," Sannibale said.

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Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world's most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab's scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. For more, visit http://www.lbl.gov .

DOE's Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit http://www.science.energy.gov.
Challenging the America

Scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have taken a big step toward the practical application of "valleytronics," which is a new type of electronics that could lead to faster and more efficient computer logic systems and data storage chips in next-generation devices.

As reported online April 4 in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, the scientists experimentally demonstrated, for the first time, the ability to electrically generate and control valley electrons in a two-dimensional semiconductor.

Valley electrons are so named because they carry a valley "degree of freedom." This is a new way to harness electrons for information processing that's in addition to utilizing an electron's other degrees of freedom, which are quantum spin in spintronic devices and charge in conventional electronics.

More specifically, electronic valleys refer to the energy peaks and valleys in electronic bands. A two-dimensional semiconductor called transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) has two distinguishable valleys of opposite spin and momentum. Because of this, the material is suitable for valleytronic devices, in which information processing and storage could be carried out by selectively populating one valley or another.

However, developing valleytronic devices requires the electrical control over the population of valley electrons, a step that has proven very challenging to achieve so far.

Now, Berkeley Lab scientists have experimentally demonstrated the ability to electrically generate and control valley electrons in TMDCs. This is an especially important advance because TMDCs are considered to be more "device ready" than other semiconductors that exhibit valleytronic properties.

"This is the first demonstration of electrical excitation and control of valley electrons, which will accelerate the next generation of electronics and information technology," says Xiang Zhang, who led this study and who is the director of Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division.

Zhang also holds the Ernest S. Kuh Endowed Chair at the University of California (UC) Berkeley and is a member of the Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute at Berkeley. Several other scientists contributed to this work, including Yu Ye, Jun Xiao, Hailong Wang, Ziliang Ye, Hanyu Zhu, Mervin Zhao, Yuan Wang, Jianhua Zhao and Xiaobo Yin.

Their research could lead to a new type of electronics that utilizes all three degrees of freedom--charge, spin, and valley, which together could encode an electron with eight values of information instead of two in today's electronics. This means future computer chips could process more information with less power, enabling faster and more energy efficient computing technologies.

"Valleytronic devices have the potential to transform high-speed data communications and low-power devices," says Ye, a postdoctoral researcher in Zhang's group and the lead author of the paper.

The scientists demonstrated their approach by coupling a host ferromagnetic semiconductor with a monolayer of TMDC. Electrical spin injection from the ferromagnetic semiconductor localized the charge carriers to one momentum valley in the TMDC monolayer.

Importantly, the scientists were able to electrically excite and confine the charge carriers in only one of two sets of valleys. This was achieved by manipulating the injected carrier's spin polarizations, in which the spin and valley are locked together in the TMDC monolayer.

The two sets of valleys emit different circularly polarized light. The scientists observed this circularly polarized light, which confirmed they had successfully electrically induced and controlled valley electrons in TMDC.

"Our research solved two main challenges in valleytronic devices. The first is electrically restricting electrons to one momentum valley. The second is detecting the resulting valley-polarized current by circular polarized electroluminescence," says Ye. "Our direct electrical generation and control of valley charge carriers, in TMDC, opens up new dimensions in utilizing both the spin and valley degrees of freedom for next-generation electronics and computing."

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The research was supported by the Office of Naval Research Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative program, the National Science Foundation, China's Ministry of Science and Technology, and the National Science Foundation of China.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world's most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab's scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. For more, visit http://www.lbl.gov.

DOE's Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov.

Additional information:

The paper, "Electrical generation and control of the valley carriers in a monolayer transition metal dichalcogenide" is scheduled for Advance Online Publication on Nature Nanotechnology's website at 11 am ET on April 4

Go here to learn more about Xiang Zhang's research: http://xlab.me.berkeley.edu/

s: The English Raise the Ante
London, April 4, 2016 - Papers published in the latest issue of the International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics (IJGO) identify factors associated with violence against women. The papers specifically focus on intimate partner violence (IPV) in regional, national, and international settings, and provide valuable information for the healthcare community and policymakers worldwide. The research contributes to efforts to establish ways in which individuals at risk of IPV can be identified and to the development of successful interventions.

Clinical articles within the issue establish that IPV is linked with unintended pregnancy and pregnancy loss in Pakistan, and the use of female-controlled methods of contraception (e.g. pills, implants, and intrauterine devices) in a rural area of India. Two other papers identify infertility/subfertility as a risk factor for IPV in low- and middle-income countries.

A special editorial by Prof. Rachel Jewkes highlights the role that health professionals - particularly obstetricians and gynecologists - can and should have in the response to violence against women. She calls for improved education on the issues surrounding violence against women during medical training, including discussion of how to respond to patients disclosing violence.

Prevention is crucial but challenging. Some interventions have been developed and have had some success in some settings, but there are still many barriers preventing real progress in the prevention of IPV. A brief report in the themed issue draws attention to the biggest challenges of addressing IPV in the Dominican Republic, most of which resulted from cultural viewpoints and poor awareness of the issue.

Prof Richard Adanu, Dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Ghana and IJGO Editor, states: "IJGO joins all women's health advocates in condemning all forms of violence against women. We hope that our Special Editorial and selected papers will increase the knowledge of our readers about this problem and serve as an encouragement to all those working to eliminate it."

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Note to editors

The April 2016 issue of IJGO (volume 133, issue 1), published by Elsevier, is now available on ScienceDirect. Copies of the papers included are available to credentialed journalists upon request; please contact Elsevier's Newsroom at newsroom@elsevier.com or +31 20 485 2492.

About the International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics

The International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics (IJGO) is the official publication of the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO). IJGO publishes articles on all aspects of basic and clinical research in the fields of obstetrics and gynecology and related subjects, with emphasis on matters of worldwide interest.

Since its inception, IJGO has had two primary purposes:

(1) To serve an international audience by publishing original scientific articles and communications originating in low-income countries which emphasize important obstetric and gynecologic problems, issues, and perspectives, such as maternal mortality and family planning; as well as publishing original articles and communications from the scientific community of high-income countries, with particular emphasis on sharing advances in the specialty of obstetrics and gynecology; and

(2) To further the organizational purposes of FIGO by providing a means of bringing to the readership decisions of the officers and executive board, reports of the standing committees of FIGO, and information from the FIGO Secretariat in the intervals between meetings of the executive board and the international congresses; and by providing information from the World Health Organization and those other important international organizations that deal with women's health and the specialty of obstetrics and gynecology.

About Elsevier

Elsevier is a world-leading provider of information solutions that enhance the performance of science, health, and technology professionals, empowering them to make better decisions, deliver better care, and sometimes make groundbreaking discoveries that advance the boundaries of knowledge and human progress. Elsevier provides web-based, digital solutions -- among them ScienceDirect, Scopus, Elsevier Research Intelligence and ClinicalKey -- and publishes over 2,500 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and more than 33,000 book titles, including a number of iconic reference works. Elsevier is part of RELX Group, a world-leading provider of information and analytics for professional and business customers across industries. http://www.elsevier.com
Artisanal cheeses are a link to the history and culture of their place of origin, but some may vanish without further study, say experts in the Journal of Dairy Science

Philadelphia, PA, April 1, 2016 - Artisanal cheesemaking is an important industry in Mexico, but many varieties of artisanal Mexican cheeses are in danger of disappearing because they have not been adequately documented. A team of dairy science experts is working to prevent that loss by collecting the information needed to standardize, protect, and preserve traditional artisanal production processes and to seek protected designation of origin (PDO) status for those that qualify. Their review is published in Articles in Press and will appear in the May 2016 issue of the Journal of Dairy Science.

"Currently, cheesemaking is one of the most important industries in Mexico," explained lead investigators Aaron F. Gonzalez-Cordova and Belinda Vallejo-Cordoba, of the Laboratorio de Quimica y Biotecnologia de Productos Lacteos, Coordinacion de Tecnologia de Alimentos de Origen Animal, at the Centro de Investigacion en Alimentacion y Desarrollo, A.C., in Hermosillo, Mexico. "The importance of artisanal cheesemaking is reflected in the estimation that around 70% of all Mexican cheese comes from small-scale productions."

Gonzalez-Cordova, Vallejo-Cordoba and colleagues examined the challenges facing artisanal cheesemaking in Mexico. Among those challenges are:

Compliance with food safety regulations, because most Mexican artisanal cheeses are made using raw milk.

Large-scale industrial production of cheeses that were once only produced using artisanal methods.

Difficulty in categorizing local and regional cheeses--in some cases, the same name is used for different cheeses, whereas in others the same cheese may be known by different names in different areas.

The perception that artisanal cheeses may be unsafe.

Scarcity of systematic characterization of artisanal Mexican cheeses, including the roles of different groups of microbiota that affect food safety, sensory characteristics, and shelf life.

Lack of specific defined standards that would allow the cheeses to be included in a PDO system.

In their review, the authors describe the production methods and characteristics of eight important artisanal cheese varieties produced in Mexico and discuss efforts that have been made to preserve these cheeses.

"Certain varieties of artisanal Mexican cheese, such as Bola de Ocosingo, Poro de Balancan, Crema de Chiapas, and regional Cotija cheeses, possess unique characteristics that make them potentially eligible to be protected as PDO products. This distinction could help to expand their frontiers and allow them to become better known and appreciated in other parts of the world," added Gonzalez-Cordova and Vallejo-Cordoba. "With sufficient information, official Mexican regulations could be established that would encompass and regulate the manufacture of Mexican artisanal cheeses."

"There is a rich cultural heritage in the dairy foods that we eat. Artisanal Mexican cheeses are part of that heritage. Unfortunately, a lack of scientific information on manufacturing endangers the future of these unique foods. Preservation of these cheeses will depend, therefore, on dairy foods research," said Matt Lucy, PhD, Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Dairy Science, and Professor of Animal Science, University of Missouri, USA.

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Boston, MA - The parasite responsible for a form of malaria now spreading from macaques to humans in South Asia could evolve to infect humans more efficiently, a step towards enhanced transmission between humans, according to a new study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The researchers say that defining the means by which the Plasmodium knowlesi parasite invades red blood cells could lead to interventions to prevent the emergence of the zoonosis into the human population.

The researchers identified a sugar variant on the surface of human red blood cells that currently limits the ability of P. knowlesi to invade, and demonstrated that the monkey malaria parasite has the ability to evolve to get around this barrier and pass into the human population in a more virulent form.

The study will appear online April 4, 2016 in Nature Communications.

"With increasing concern about the spread of P. knowlesi into human populations, it is great to be able to gain insight into what the molecular stumbling blocks are for P. knowlesi infection of humans, and how the parasite can potentially overcome them," said first author Selasi Dankwa, who carried out the work while a doctoral student in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard Chan School.

The macaque malaria parasite P. knowlesi has emerged as a major source of human infections in Southeast Asia, as the monkey's habitats are encroached upon through logging and farming. While most human infections are mild, increasing numbers of severe infections are being reported, leading to concerns that the parasite is adapting to infect humans more efficiently.

The researchers used a unique stem cell-based genetic approach for interrogating the host red blood cell to explore the parasite's ability to invade and adapt. They did an experiment that introduced the macaque sugar variant onto the human red blood cell surface and demonstrated that the parasite normally dependent on the macaque variant for invasion was unable to use the human version, limiting its virulence. However, worryingly, following prolonged adaptation to growth on human red blood cells, parasites were able to overcome their dependency on the sugar pathway and find another way into the human cell.

The researchers call for continued monitoring of the parasite to ensure that it has not switched to using a sugar-independent pathway to invade red blood cells--a likely prerequisite for human-to-human transmission.

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Manoj Duraisingh, John LaPorte Given Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, was the study's senior author. Other Harvard Chan School authors include Caeul Lim, Amy Bei, Rays Jiang, Saurabh Patel, Jonathan Goldberg, Yovany Moreno, and Maya Kono.

The study was supported by a National Institutes of Health grant AI091787 to M.T.D., a Center for Disease Control grant (R36-CK000119-01) and an Epidemiology of Infectious Disease and Biodefense Training Grant (2-T32-AI007535-12) to A.K.B., a National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) Biotechnology Training Grant 5-T32-GM08334 to J.R.A. and National Institutes of Health Director's New Innovator Award 1DP2OD007124, NIGMS Center for Integrative Synthetic Biology Grant P50-GM098792, Ferry Award and Massachusetts Institute of Technology Startup funds to J.C.N. S.D.P. was supported by a National Institutes of Health Pediatric Scientist Development Program grant 5-K12-HD000850. Y.M. is a recipient of the Louis-Berlinguet Program Postdoctoral Research Scholarship in Genomics-Fonds de recherche du Quebec, Nature et technologies.

"Ancient human sialic acid variant restricts an emerging zoonotic malaria parasite," Selasi Dankwa, Caeul Lim, Amy K. Bei, Rays H.Y. Jiang, James R. Abshire, Saurabh D. Patel, Jonathan M. Goldberg, Yovany Moreno, Maya Kono, Jacquin C. Niles, and Manoj T. Duraisingh, Nature Communications, online April 4, 2016, doi: 10.1038/ncomms11187

Visit the Harvard Chan website for the latest news, press releases, and multimedia offerings.

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health brings together dedicated experts from many disciplines to educate new generations of global health leaders and produce powerful ideas that improve the lives and health of people everywhere. As a community of leading scientists, educators, and students, we work together to take innovative ideas from the laboratory to people's lives--not only making scientific breakthroughs, but also working to change individual behaviors, public policies, and health care practices. Each year, more than 400 faculty members at Harvard Chan School teach 1,000-plus full-time students from around the world and train thousands more through online and executive education courses. Founded in 1913 as the Harvard-MIT School of Health Officers, the School is recognized as America's oldest professional training program in public health.
A research team led by Jackson Laboratory (JAX) President and CEO Edison Liu, M.D., have found a molecular fingerprint of some of the most deadly cancers of women: a genomic configuration described as a tandem duplicator phenotype (TDP) that is significantly enriched in triple-negative breast cancer, serous ovarian cancer and endometrial carcinomas, and that responds to a specific chemotherapy.

In a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers showed that the TDP's characteristics include genome-wide disruption of cancer genes, loss of cell cycle control and DNA damage repair, and increased sensitivity to cisplatin, a platinum-based chemotherapy.

"Advanced triple-negative breast, ovarian, and endometrial cancers are difficult to treat, with poor prognoses," Liu says. "Our findings provide the possibility for characterizing approximately 40% of these tumors by a genome-based tandem duplicator score and treating them with the best drug possible, providing more precision and effectiveness than previously."

The structural mutations known as tandem duplications in certain triple-negative breast, ovarian, and endometrial cancers occur when DNA replication during cell division malfunctions, and duplications of short stretches of copied DNA are inserted in the genome next to the segments from which they were copied. These tandem duplication sequences disrupt genes at and near their insertion points and double the production of genes that happen to be copied, uninterrupted, in the middle.

Looking at more than 3,000 cancer genomes, the researchers found a characteristic "tandem duplicator phenotype" in cells with a large number of tandem duplications distributed throughout the genome. They then developed a formula to score cancer types and identify cancers with this trait.

Some of the most important cancer genes played a role in generating this genomic configuration--for example, the tandem duplicator cancers often have dysfunctional TP53 and reduced BRCA1 expression, both important tumor suppressors--but other genes were also involved by overexpression, including those that play roles in cell replication. These findings indicate that in cancers of this kind, multiple components work together to develop the tandem duplicator phenotype, which in turn cause downstream genetic changes that drive cancer proliferation and growth.

Triple negative breast, ovarian, and endometrial cancers identified with the TDP displayed a high sensitivity to cisplatin. The researchers observed strong responses in both cell culture and in patient-derived tumors implanted in mice, with some of the tandem duplicator tumors displaying complete response (more than 80% tumor shrinkage). None of the tumors without the trait showed any response to cisplatin.

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This work is among the first to show that a specific genome-wide configuration may direct specific cancer therapy.

The Jackson Laboratory is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institution with more than 1,700 employees. Headquartered in Bar Harbor, Maine, it has a National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center, a facility in Sacramento, Calif., and a genomic medicine institute in Farmington, Conn. Its mission is to discover precise genomic solutions for disease and empower the global biomedical community in the shared quest to improve human health.
Program works towards goal of matching the right treatment to the right patient at the right time, every time

The health care system has come a long way from the "doctor knows best" approach of decades ago, and the importance of involving patients in decisions about their medical care - particularly in situations when there is more than one treatment option - is broadly acknowledged. At Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), a formal Shared Decision Making Program was instituted in 2005 to provide decision aids - booklets, videos and online resources - to patients to help them learn about their options and participate in decisions about their care.

From a pilot program in a single primary care practice, the program now includes all of the hospital's adult primary care practices and has been extended to specialty practices in orthopedics, cardiology and obstetrics/gynecology. In the April issue of the journal Health Affairs, a team from MGH and Partners HealthCare reviews the program's first decade and describes specific initiatives designed to increase the use of patient decision aids.

"Physicians often tell us that there is not enough time to do shared decision making or that their patients would rather the doctor make the decision," says Leigh Simmons, MD, medical director of the MGH Health Decision Sciences Center and a co-author of the Health Affairs report. "However, after incorporating decision aids into their practice, physicians tell us that the conversations they have with patients are at a more advanced level, and they are able to focus on the things that matter most to their patients. Often they are surprised at how engaged patients are after using a decision aid."

During the first years of the program, physicians were responsible for placing orders for decision aids through the electronic medical record. Simmons and Karen Sepucha, PhD, director of the MGH Health Decision Sciences Center and corresponding author of the current report, worked with practices to increase the integration of decision aids into routine care. Efforts included developing automatic prompts to physicians when they referred patients to specialists for low back pain and osteoarthritis and encouraging practices to use their disease registries to provide decision aids to patients newly diagnosed with diabetes.

Sepucha and Simmons soon recognized the need to develop a wider awareness of shared decision making and delivered training sessions to over 160 primary care clinicians at 15 of the hospital's 18 primary care practices. The sessions led to more than doubling the use of decision aids, and clinicians surveyed several months later reported the aids had improved the quality of patient care and changed their discussions with patients.

The clinicians also expressed interest in exploring different ways to get the decision aids to patients. This finding led to the development of a second initiative that engaged clinic staff in helping patients order the aids themselves. This new program was piloted at the hospital's community health center in Revere, Mass., which serves a working class population including many immigrants, and at an adult primary care practice based at the hospital.

Both practices found a significant increase in the numbers of orders placed when patients were given the opportunity to select topics. The orders placed by patients also gave clinicians new insight into areas of patient interest. While the decision aids most commonly ordered by physicians were for prostate cancer screening, colon cancer screening, advanced directives and insomnia; those most frequently ordered by patients covered low back pain, diabetes and anxiety, along with advanced directives and insomnia.

"The initiatives allowed patients to access the decision aids more directly, rather than relying on physicians to remember to use them," says Simmons. "There now is a big push toward more team-based care in medicine; and once we started to engage the entire team - including front desk staff, medical assistants and most crucially, the patients - we saw the use of decision aids take off."

Over the past two years, the team has worked to expand shared decision making across Partners HealthCare-affiliated hospitals and practices. The Population Health Management program at Partners aims to provide clinical programs to improve the quality of care and patients' experience, while reducing total health care spending. Adam Licurse, MD, a co-author of the Health Affairs report and associate medical director for Partners Population Health Management, explains, "The shared decision making program is a critical piece that helps ensure Partners patients receive the right care at the right time, based on their unique preferences and values."

A next step will be evaluating how successful the program has been in improving patient care. Sepucha says, "We have several research projects under way trying to find the best tools to engage patients in significant medical decisions and the best ways to train clinicians to have shared decision making conversations. We survey patients to determine whether they are well informed about their treatment options, involved in conversations and receive treatments that match their goals. Ultimately, that will help us ensure that patients receive the care that is right for them." Both Sepucha and Simmons are assistant professors of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

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Additional co-authors of the Health Affairs report are Michael Barry, MD, director of the Stoeckle Center for Primary Care Innovation at MGH; Susan Edgman-Levitan, executive director of the Stoeckle Center; and Sreekanth Chaguturu, MD, vice president for Population Health Management at Partners. Support for the shared decision making program has been provided by the Informed Medical Decisions Foundation, now part of Healthwise, Massachusetts General Physicians Organization and Partners HealthCare. Sepucha also has research support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute.

Massachusetts General Hospital, founded in 1811, is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. The MGH conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the United States, with an annual research budget of more than $800 million and major research centers in AIDS, cardiovascular research, cancer, computational and integrative biology, cutaneous biology, human genetics, medical imaging, neurodegenerative disorders, regenerative medicine, reproductive biology, systems biology, transplantation biology and photomedicine. In July 2015, MGH returned into the number one spot on the 2015-16 U.S. News & World Report list of "America's Best Hospitals."
A 20-member scientific panel warns that increases in global carbon dioxide emissions are acidifying waters of the North American West Coast at an accelerating rate; severe ecological consequences are anticipated

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Global carbon dioxide emissions are triggering permanent and alarming changes to ocean chemistry along the North American West Coast that require immediate, decisive action to combat, including development of a coordinated regional management strategy, a panel of scientific experts has unanimously concluded.

A failure to adequately respond to this fundamental change in seawater chemistry, known as ocean acidification, is anticipated to have devastating ecological consequences for the West Coast in the decades to come, the 20-member West Coast Ocean Acidification and Hypoxia Science Panel warned in a comprehensive report unveiled Monday, April 4.

"Increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions from human activities are not just responsible for global climate change; these emissions also are being absorbed by the world's oceans," said Dr. Alexandria Boehm, co-chair of the Panel and a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. "Our work is a catalyst for management actions that can address the impacts of ocean acidification we're seeing today and to get ahead of what's predicted as ocean chemistry continues to change."

Because of the way the Pacific Ocean circulates, the North American West Coast is exposed to disproportionately high volumes of seawater at elevated acidity levels. Already, West Coast marine shelled organisms are having difficulty forming their protective outer shells, and the West Coast shellfish industry is seeing high mortality rates during early life stages when shell formation is critical. The acidity of the world's oceans is anticipated to continue to accelerate in lockstep with rising atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions.

The Panel was convened in 2013 to explore how West Coast government agencies could work together with scientists to combat the effects of ocean acidification and a related phenomenon known as hypoxia, or low dissolved oxygen levels.

The Panel's final report, titled "Major Findings, Recommendations and Actions," summarizes the state of the science around this pressing environmental issue and outlines a series of potential management actions that the governments of the states of California, Oregon, and Washington, and the province of British Columbia, can immediately begin implementing to offset and mitigate the economic and ecological impacts of ocean acidification.

The Panel is urging ocean management and natural resource agencies to develop highly coordinated, comprehensive multi-agency solutions, including:

- Exploring approaches that involve the use of seagrass to remove carbon dioxide from seawater. - Supporting wholesale revisions to water-quality criteria that are used as benchmarks for improving water quality, as existing water-quality criteria were not written to protect marine organisms from the damaging effects of ocean acidification. - Identifying strategies for reducing the amounts of land-based pollution entering coastal waters, as this pollution can exacerbate the intensity of acidification in some locations. - Enhancing a West Coast-wide monitoring network that provides information toward development of coastal ecosystem management plans. - Supporting approaches that enhance the adaptive capacity of marine organisms to cope with ocean acidification.

Although ocean acidification is a global problem that will require global solutions, the Panel deliberately focused its recommendations around what West Coast ocean management and natural resource agencies can do collectively to combat the challenge at the regional level.

"One of the most exciting aspects of the Panel's work is that it scales a challenging, global problem down to a local and regional level, providing a roadmap to guide measurable and meaningful progress immediately," said Deborah Halberstadt, Executive Director of the California Ocean Protection Council, a government agency that served as the impetus for the Panel's formation.

West Coast policymakers will use the Panel's recommendations to continue to advance management actions aimed at combatting ocean acidification and hypoxia. This work will be coordinated through the Pacific Coast Collaborative, a coalition of policy leads from the offices of the governors of California, Oregon, Washington, and the premier of British Columbia, which have been working together on West Coast ocean acidification since 2013. The Pacific Coast Collaborative has been engaging state and federal agencies across multiple jurisdictions to elevate the need for action along the West Coast.

The Panel, which was convened for a three-year period that ended in February 2016, also has recommended the formation of a West Coast Science Task Force to continue to advance the scientific foundation for comprehensive, managerially relevant solutions to West Coast ocean acidification.

"Communities around the country are increasingly vulnerable to ocean acidification and long-term environmental changes," said Dr. Richard Spinrad, Chief Scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "It is crucial that we comprehend how ocean chemistry is changing in different places, so we applaud the steps the West Coast Ocean Acidification and Hypoxia Science Panel has put forward in understanding and addressing this issue. We continue to look to the West Coast as a leader on understanding ocean acidification."

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History of the Panel

In September 2012, the California Ocean Protection Council (OPC), a state agency charged with protecting California's ocean and coastal ecosystems, requested that the nonprofit California Ocean Science Trust (OST) convene a science advisory panel to recommend a long-term management strategy for combatting the effects of ocean acidification and hypoxia. The State of California then joined forces with the States of Oregon and Washington and the Province of British Columbia to broaden the Panel's focus to include the entire North American West Coast, a region that is particularly vulnerable to ocean acidification. As a result, Panel membership was expanded to reflect the depth of expertise from across the region, and surveys were conducted at the state, regional, and federal levels to understand decision-makers' science needs. These surveys, and the work of the Washington State Blue Ribbon Panel on Ocean Acidification, formed the foundation for the work of what then became the West Coast Ocean Acidification and Hypoxia Science Panel. Over a three-year period, the 20-member Panel examined the full range of impacts related to changing ocean conditions, going beyond ocean acidification and hypoxia to include related stressors and impacts. The Panel's final report, "Major Findings, Recommendations, and Actions," is supported by a series of lengthier Panel technical guidance documents aimed at providing more detailed information for water-quality and natural resource managers and their scientific staffs. Although the Panel's term ended in February 2016, the OPC is taking the lead in advancing the Panel's findings on behalf of partners in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. For more information about the Panel, go to http://westcoastoah.org.

About the California Ocean Protection Council

The Ocean Protection Council is a state agency whose mission is to ensure that California maintains healthy, resilient, and productive ocean and coastal ecosystems for the benefit of current and future generations. The Council was created pursuant to the California Ocean Protection Act, which was signed into law in 2004 by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. For more information, visit http://www.opc.ca.gov.

About the California Ocean Science Trust

The California Ocean Science Trust is a nonprofit organization established by the State of California to build trust and understanding in ocean and coastal science. Serving as a liaison between governments, scientists, and citizens, the Ocean Science Trust supports decision-makers with sound, independent science. For more information, go to http://www.oceansciencetrust.org.

LIST OF ALL PANEL PUBLICATIONS

Final Panel report and supporting Panel technical guidance documents (embargoed until April 4 - available upon request)

Chan, F., Boehm, A.B., Barth, J.A., Chornesky, E.A., Dickson, A.G., Feely, R.A., Hales, B., Hill, T.M., Hofmann, G., Ianson, D., Klinger, T., Largier, J., Newton, J., Pedersen, T.F., Somero, G.N., Sutula, M., Wakefield, W.W., Waldbusser, G.G., Weisberg, S.B., and Whiteman, E.A. The West Coast Ocean Acidification and Hypoxia Science Panel: Major Findings, Recommendations, and Actions. California Ocean Science Trust, Oakland, California, USA. April 2016.

Newton, J., Hill, T.M., Barth, J.A., Boehm, A.B., Chan, F., Chornesky, E.A., Dickson, A.G., Feely, R.A., Hales, B., Hofmann, G., Ianson, D., Klinger, T., Largier, J., Pedersen, T.F., Somero, G.N., Sutula, M., Wakefield, W.W., Waldbusser, G.G., Weisberg, S.B., and Whiteman, E.A. Ocean Acidification and Hypoxia Monitoring Network: Tracking the Impacts of Changing Ocean Chemistry to Inform Decisions. California Ocean Science Trust, Oakland, California, USA. April 2016.

Klinger, T., Weisberg, S.B., Barth, J.A., Boehm, A.B., Chan, F., Chornesky, E.A., Dickson, A.G., Feely, R.A., Hales, B., Hill, T.M., Hofmann, G., Ianson, D., Largier, J., Newton, J., Pedersen, T.F., Somero, G.N., Sutula, M., Wakefield, W.W., Waldbusser, G.G., and Whiteman, E.A. Research Priorities to Inform Decisions and Develop Solutions. California Ocean Science Trust, Oakland, California, USA. April 2016.

Sutula, M., Barth, J.A., Largier, J., Boehm, A.B., Chan, F., Chornesky, E.A., Dickson, A.G., Feely, R.A., Hales, B., Hill, T.M., Hofmann, G., Ianson, D., Klinger, T., Newton, J., Pedersen, T.F., Somero, G.N., Wakefield, W.W., Waldbusser, G.G., Weisberg, S.B., and Whiteman, E.A. Modeling Tools: Summary of Needs to Enhance Understanding of Ocean Acidification and Hypoxia in Coastal Oceans. California Ocean Science Trust, Oakland, California, USA. April 2016.

Chan, F., Chornesky, L., Klinger, T., Largier, J., Wakefield, W., and Whiteman, L. Supporting Ecosystem Resilience to Address Ocean Acidification and Hypoxia. California Ocean Science Trust, Oakland, California, USA. April 2016.

Hales, B., Barth, J.A., Boehm, A.B., Chan, F., Chornesky, E.A., Dickson, A.G., Feely, R.A., Hill, T.M., Hofmann, G., Ianson, D., Klinger, T., Largier, J., Newton, J., Pedersen, T.F., Somero, G.N., Wakefield, W.W., Waldbusser, G.G., Weisberg, S.B., and Whiteman, E.A. Multiple Stressor Considerations: Ocean Acidification in a Deoxygenating Ocean and Warming Climate. California Ocean Science Trust, Oakland, California, USA. July 2015.

Supporting scientific journal articles produced by the Panel

Somero, G.M., Beers, J.M., Chan, F., Hill, T.M., Klinger, T., and Litvin, S.Y. 2016. What Changes in the Carbonate System, Oxygen, and Temperature Portend for the Northeastern Pacific Ocean: A Physiological Perspective. BioScience 66:14-26.

Boehm, A.B., Jacobson, M.Z., O'Donnell, M.J., Sutula, M., Wakefield, W.W., Weisberg, S.B., Whiteman, E. 2015. Ocean acidification science needs for natural resource managers of the North American west coast. Oceanography 28: 64-74.

Weisberg, S.B., Bednarsek, N., Feely, R.A., Chan, F., Boehm, A.B., Sutula, M., Ruesink, J.L., Hales, B., Largier, J.L, and Newton, J.A. 2016. Water Quality Criteria for an Acidifying Ocean: Challenges and Opportunities. Ocean and Coastal Management (in press).

Panel Product Inquiries:

Laurel Kellner

California Ocean Science Trust

(510) 350-1892, laurel.kellner@calost.org

@LaurelKell

This is the fourth year of California's drought. To learn about the actions the state has taken to manage our water systems and cope with the drought's impacts, visit Drought.CA.Gov. Every Californian should take steps to conserve water. Find out how at SaveOurWater.com.
Prof. Wan Kyun Chung with PhD student Young Jin Heo, MS student Junsu Kang, and postdoctoral researcher Min Jun Kim in the Robotics Laboratory at POSTECH, Korea, have developed a novel control algorithm to resolve critical problems induced from a Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller by automatizing the technical tuning process. Their research was published in Scientific Reports.

Lab-on-a-chip designates devices that integrate various biochemical functions on a fingernail-sized chip to enable quick and compact biological analysis or medical diagnosis by processing a small volume of biological samples, such as a drop of blood. To operate various functions on a lab-on-a-chip device, the key technology is the precise and rapid manipulation of fluid on a micro-scale.

In microfluidic devices, very small and trivial variables can frequently cause a large amount of errors. Up until now, Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller has normally been used for the manipulation of fluids in microfluidic chips. To apply the PID controller, a tedious gain-tuning process is required but the gain-tuning is a difficult process for people who are unfamiliar with control theory. Especially, in the case of controlling multiple flows, the process is extremely convoluted and frustrating.

The developed control algorithm can improve accuracy and stability of flow regulation in a microfluidic network without requiring any tuning process. With this algorithm, microfluidic flows in multiple channels can be controlled in simultaneous and independent way. The team expects that this algorithm has the potential for many applications of lab-on-a-chip devices. For example, cell culture or biological analysis, which are conducted in biology laboratories, can be performed on a microfluidic chip. Physical and chemical responses can be analyzed in the subdivided levels.

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This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korean government (MSIP).
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (April 4, 2016) -- An innovative interventional radiology treatment for men with enlarged prostates decreases the number of times they wake to urinate in the night, according to research presented at the Society of Interventional Radiology's 2016 Annual Scientific Meeting. Researchers said the majority of men with enlarged prostates and lower urinary tract symptoms reported better sleep that resulted in an improved quality of life after they underwent a treatment called prostatic artery embolization (PAE).

"Waking in the night with an urgent need to urinate, or nocturia, significantly disrupts the lives of men by preventing them from having a full night's sleep," said Sandeep Bagla, M.D., the study's lead researcher and an interventional radiologist at the Vascular Institute of Virginia. "For many men, the cause of their discomfort is an enlarged prostate and these results show men can live a more normal life once they've undergone PAE to address this condition. For these individuals, PAE has the added benefit of being less invasive compared to other treatments and is performed on an outpatient basis, allowing many men to go home the same day."

Bagla and his team conducted a retrospective analysis of 68 men who had an enlarged prostate (benign prostatic hyperplasia or BPH) and lower urinary tract symptoms and underwent PAE at two centers: the Vascular Institute of Virginia and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The team examined patient-reported quality of life scores, ranging from 0 (delighted with their current status) to 6 (current condition is unbearable). Patients also used a seven-question symptom index from the American Urological Association (AUA) to report the negative effects of urinary symptoms, with scores ranging from 0 (not bothered by urinary symptoms) to 35 (very bothered by urinary symptoms). This analysis examined both scores before and after treatment, at one month and at three months.

Before treatment, patients reported having an average AUA score of 23.9 and average quality of life score of 4.8. They also indicated a nocturnal frequency of urination at 3.3 episodes.

Follow-up with 46 of the original 68 patients was conducted one month after treatment. Improvements in nocturnal urination frequency, with an average absolute reduction of 0.85 episodes per night were reported by 25 of these 46 patients (54.4 percent). All 46 patients also reported an average 10-point reduction in AUA scores and an average quality of life score improvement of 2.1, indicating that their urinary symptoms bothered them less and their quality of life showed improvement.

At the three-month mark, 28 of the 38 patients (73.7 percent) who followed up reported an average reduction of 1.4 episodes a night. They also indicated a 13.4-point reduction in AUA scores and a 2.8-point improvement in their quality-of-life scores.

In prostatic artery embolization, a catheter is inserted into the femoral artery and guided to the prostate artery on both sides of the enlarged prostate gland. Once positioned next to the prostate, the catheter is used to deliver microscopic spheres to block blood flow, causing the prostate to shrink.

Bagla noted that interventional radiologists are the specialists best suited for the performance of PAE because of their knowledge of arterial anatomy, experience with microcatheter techniques and expertise in other embolization procedures.

"Many of my patients who have undergone PAE have told me that reducing the need to go to the bathroom at night has improved their daily lives by reducing sleep deprivation, which takes a toll," added Bagla. "They're able to enjoy their daytime activities--including quality time spent with their family and friends and hobbies. They have even noticed increased work productivity. Anecdotally, patients who show signs of a better quality of life three months after the treatment appear to continue their progress two or three years after undergoing PAE."

While this research demonstrated that PAE resulted in the reduction of nocturia for men with lower urinary tract symptoms and BPH, Bagla noted that the treatment may not completely eliminate nocturia. Men should speak with their interventional radiologist and other members of their health care team if additional treatment options are needed.

Bagla's study is the latest in a series of rigorous scientific studies that found PAE a novel and promising therapy for the treatment of enlarged prostate and shows benefits toward quality of life improvement. The performance of this and other high-quality clinical research to expand the numbers of patients studied and to extend the duration of follow-up is vital to developing a definitive comparison of PAE with existing surgical therapies.

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Abstract 111: "Prostatic Artery Embolization and Its Efficacy in the Reduction of Nocturia," A. J. Isaacson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC; V. Vadlamudi, Inova Alexandria Hospital, Alexandria, VA; S. Bagla, Vascular Institute of Virginia, Woodbridge, Va. SIR Annual Scientific Meeting, April 2-7, 2016. This abstract can be found at sirmeeting.org.

About the Society of Interventional Radiology

The Society of Interventional Radiology is a nonprofit, professional medical society representing more than 6,100 practicing interventional radiology physicians, scientists and clinical associates, dedicated to improving patient care through the limitless potential of image-guided therapies. SIR's members work in a variety of settings and at different professional levels--from medical students and residents to university faculty and private practice physicians. Visit sirweb.org.

The Society of Interventional Radiology is holding its Annual Scientific Meeting April 2-7 at the Vancouver Convention Centre, British Columbia, Canada. Visit sirmeeting.org.

Interviews and medical illustrations are available by contacting SIR's communications department staff: Elise Castelli, SIR senior manager PR and communication, ecastelli@sirweb.org, (703) 460-5572, or Ellen Acconcia, SIR senior manager, web and content strategy, eacconcia@sirweb.org, (703) 460-5582. From April 2-6, they can be reached in the Vancouver Newsroom, (778) 331-7650 or (778) 331-7651.
If a volcano explodes in the remote reaches of Alaska, will anyone hear it? Seismologists working in the state say yes--after using a refined set of methods that allows them to detect and locate the airwaves generated by a volcanic explosion on distant seismic networks.

In a study published online in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, David Fee of the Alaska Volcanic Observatory and Wilson Alaska Technical Center and his colleagues used these techniques to examine the ground-coupled airwaves produced by recent eruptions at Cleveland, Veniaminof and Pavlof volcanoes in Alaska.

"This study shows how we can expand the use of seismic data by looking at the acoustic waves from volcanic explosions that are recorded on seismometers," explained Fee. "The techniques we used provide an automated way to detect, locate, characterize, and monitor volcanic eruptions, particularly in remote, difficult-to-monitor regions like Alaska."

"We now use these techniques operationally at the Alaska Volcano Observatory and plan to integrate them more in the future," Fee added.

Ground-coupled airwaves or GCAs occur when an acoustic wave in the atmosphere impacts the earth's surface, producing a ground wave that can be detected by seismometers. Volcanic explosions can produce these low-frequency acoustic waves, as well as events such as meteors entering the Earth's atmosphere, and even chemical or nuclear explosions.

"Volcanic explosions can sometimes be difficult to detect seismically, but the GCA can provide unambiguous evidence that a volcano is erupting," said Fee. "We can also use GCA to locate eruptive vents and identify changes in eruption style."

Fee and his colleagues analyzed seismic data from networks installed and operated by the Alaska Volcanic Observatory in remote parts of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, near volcanoes that had explosive activity between 2007 and 2015.

The researchers examined GCA signals from a May 2013 eruption on the Aleutian Arc's Cleveland volcano, one of the most active but also one of the most remote volcanoes monitored by the observatory. Typically, eruptions from the volcano are detected by satellite fly-overs. But Fee and colleagues show that the May 2013 eruption sequence could be detected--and distinguished from a non-volcanic acoustic signal--by remote seismic networks.

GCA signals were detected from seismic networks around the Veniaminof and Pavlof volcanoes on the Alaskan Peninsula for eruptions taking place in 2007 and 2013. Using the signals, the researchers were able to confirm the location of active vents on Veniaminof and Pavlof. They were also able to distinguish between seismic and acoustic events on the networks, which can be helpful in determining whether the detected signals represent subsurface movement at a volcano or surface explosions that create acoustic waves. For Pavlof in particular, the scientists say in their paper, this distinction could help monitor the hazards produced during explosive degassing by the volcano.

Fee said both GCA signals and regular seismic signals are important for getting a complete picture of how a volcano is behaving. "Infrasound and GCA signals are most effective at telling you what is going on at the volcano at that moment, whether it is erupting or not, and what kind and how much material is coming out of the vent," he said. "Seismic waves from volcanoes provide complementary information on what is going on in the subsurface and are often more effective at forecasting eruptions."

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The population of the world's largest primate, Grauer's gorilla, found only in the conflict-plagued Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), declined calamitously in 20 years according to a report co-authored by a Smithsonian scientist and published by the Wildlife Conservation Society, Flora and Fauna International and the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature. From a 1998 estimate of 17,000 individuals, the population has dropped by 77 percent. Fewer than 3,800 individuals remain. The team implicates warfare, illegal hunting and mining as key drivers of the Grauer's gorilla's demise.

"The crash in the gorilla population is a consequence of the human tragedy that has played out in eastern DRC," said Jefferson Hall, staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. "Armed factions terrorize innocent people and divide up the spoils of war with absolutely no concern for the victims or the environment."

Grauer's gorilla, Gorilla beringei graueri, is found only in forests of the eastern DRC. It is closely related to the mountain gorilla, G. beringei beringei, of montane forests in the Albertine Rift. Males can weigh more than 400 pounds, making this the largest gorilla subspecies and hence the largest primate in the world. Another species of gorilla, the Western Gorilla, G. gorilla, is found in central Africa west of the Congo River.

The collapse of the Grauer's gorilla is rooted in the Rwandan genocide of 1994, which drove hundreds of thousands of refugees into the eastern DRC. Waves of fleeing refugees triggered a civil war beginning in 1996. It is estimated that more than 5 million people died before it ended in 2003.

The DRC is rich in many minerals, notably coltan, which is in demand for electronics. Disruptions in civil society resulted in the expansion of artisanal mining, often in remote forests including protected areas. Far from towns and villages, miners frequently resort to hunting to provide themselves with food. Even though they are legally protected, gorillas are a prized target because of their large size and because they roam in easily tracked family groups.

Hall spent three years in the DRC from 1994 to 1996 leading the first range-wide surveys of Grauer's gorilla. His team found more animals--about 17,000--than previously estimated. These historical data provided the baseline for the new estimates. Because of the danger from continuing instability and the presence of militias, Andrew Plumptre and Stuart Nixon, conservationists with the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Chester Zoo, respectively, and the other authors of the new report used a novel method to incorporate data collected by local communities and forest rangers.

The new surveys revealed that numbers of Grauer's gorillas have plummeted to just 3,800. The authors recommend raising the level of threat to Grauer's gorillas on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species from "endangered" to "critically endangered," which indicates an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild.

Reversing the gorilla's perilous situation will take a great deal of effort and more funds than are available, the authors say. It will require disarming the militias in the eastern DRC and controlling illegal artisanal mining and the poaching that accompanies it. Other recommendations include new protected areas and enhanced support for existing ones, along with community management of reserves and programs to raise awareness of the crisis gorillas and other wildlife face in the region.

"Human dignity and welfare are inextricably linked to the dignity and survival of wild animals like Grauer's gorilla and the ecosystems that sustain them," said lead author of the report, Plumptre. "The outcomes of regional armed conflict have global impact on our survival. The activity of armed militias controlling mining camps in the Grauer's gorilla heartland is likely to eliminate the Grauer's gorilla entirely. Conservationists are pushing for the establishment of the Reserve des Gorilles de Punia and the Itombwe Reserve, which has strong community support, along with the reinforcement of the Kahuzi-Biega National Park, arguing that this would make a huge difference for the gorillas."

"The bright spot in all this is that we have seen, over and over again, dedicated Congolese conservationists risk their lives to make a difference," Hall said. "Thanks to these individuals, there is still hope and the opportunity to save these animals and the ecosystems they represent."

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The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, headquartered in Panama City, Panama, is a part of the Smithsonian Institution. The Institute furthers the understanding of tropical nature and its importance to human welfare, trains students to conduct research in the tropics and promotes conservation by increasing public awareness of the beauty and importance of tropical ecosystems. Website. Promo video.

Report Citation: Plumptre, A.J., Nixon, S., Critchlow, R., Vieilledent, G., Nishuli, R., Kirkby, A., Williamson, E.A., Hall, J.S., Kujirakwinja, D. 2016. Status of Grauer's Gorilla and Chimpanzees in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo: Historical and Current Distrobution and Abundance. Wildlife Conservation Society, Fauna & Flora International, Institut Congolais pour la Conservacion de la Nature ISBN 10: 0-9792418-5-5. 47 pp.
The first largescale study of ancient DNA from early American people has confirmed the devastating impact of European colonisation on the Indigenous American populations of the time.

Led by the University of Adelaide's Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD), the researchers have reconstructed a genetic history of Indigenous American populations by looking directly into the DNA of 92 pre-Columbian mummies and skeletons, between 500 and 8600 years old.

Published today in Science Advances, the study reveals a striking absence of the pre-Columbian genetic lineages in modern Indigenous Americans; showing extinction of these lineages with the arrival of the Spaniards.

"Surprisingly, none of the genetic lineages we found in almost 100 ancient humans were present, or showed evidence of descendants, in today's Indigenous populations," says joint lead author Dr Bastien Llamas, Senior Research Associate with ACAD. "This separation appears to have been established as early as 9000 years ago and was completely unexpected, so we examined many demographic scenarios to try and explain the pattern."

"The only scenario that fit our observations was that shortly after the initial colonisation, populations were established that subsequently stayed geographically isolated from one another, and that a major portion of these populations later became extinct following European contact. This closely matches the historical reports of a major demographic collapse immediately after the Spaniards arrived in the late 1400s."

The research team, which also includes members from the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) and Harvard Medical School, studied maternal genetic lineages by sequencing whole mitochondrial genomes extracted from bone and teeth samples from 92 pre-Columbian--mainly South American--human mummies and skeletons.

The ancient genetic signals also provide a more precise timing of the first people entering the Americas--via the Beringian land bridge that connected Asia and the north-western tip of North America during the last Ice Age.

"Our genetic reconstruction confirms that the first Americans entered around 16,000 years ago via the Pacific coast, skirting around the massive ice sheets that blocked an inland corridor route which only opened much later," says Professor Alan Cooper, Director of ACAD. "They spread southward remarkably swiftly, reaching southern Chile by 14,600 years ago."

"Genetic diversity in these early people from Asia was limited by the small founding populations which were isolated on the Beringian land bridge for around 2400 to 9000 years," says joint lead author Dr Lars Fehren-Schmitz, from UCSC. "It was at the peak of the last Ice Age, when cold deserts and ice sheets blocked human movement, and limited resources would have constrained population size. This long isolation of a small group of people brewed the unique genetic diversity observed in the early Americans."

Dr Wolfgang Haak, formerly at ACAD and now at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, says: "Our study is the first real time genetic record of these key questions regarding the timing and process of the peopling of the Americas. To get an even fuller picture, however, we will need a concerted effort to build a comprehensive dataset from the DNA of people alive today and their pre-Columbian ancestors, to further compare ancient and modern diversity."

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Media Contact:

Dr Bastien Llamas

ARC Senior Research Associate

Australian Centre for Ancient DNA

School of Biological Sciences

The University of Adelaide

Mobile: +61 411 539 426

bastien.llamas@adelaide.edu.au

Professor Alan Cooper

Director, Australian Centre for Ancient DNA

School of Biological Sciences

The University of Adelaide

Phone: +61 8 8313 5950

Mobile: +61 (0)406 383 884

alan.cooper@adelaide.edu.au

Robyn Mills

Media Officer

The University of Adelaide

Phone: +61 8 8313 6341

Mobile: +61 (0)410 689 084

robyn.mills@adelaide.edu.au
Hospital based nurses have high levels of contact with pharmaceutical and medical device industry sales personnel but have little corporate or professional guidance about managing purchasing decisions in the context of these interactions, a new study in Annals of Internal Medicine reveals.

The study of 56 nurses from four US-based acute care hospitals reported the following findings from a study done from 2012-2014:

All nurses reported interactions with industry representatives and had an average of 13 interactions in that period

One-on-one meetings with sales representatives were the most common form of interaction

Nurses reported attending sponsored lunches, dinners, or events (70 per cent), receiving offers of gifts (71 per cent) or product samples (61 per cent)

27 per cent of nurses reported receipt of paid travel or payments for participating in market research, speakers' bureaus, or consulting activities

Nurses reported interacting largely with the medical device industry (84 per cent), but also with the pharmaceutical (55 per cent), health technology (21 per cent), and infant formula industries (4 per cent).

"Most nurses (59 per cent) acknowledged there were benefits in working with industry representatives and more than a quarter (29 per cent) noted that it would be impossible to do their jobs without industry resources," said the paper's lead author, Dr Quinn Grundy of the University of Sydney's Charles Perkins Centre and Faculty of Pharmacy.

"For example, nurse educators coordinated in-service education with sales representatives on every newly purchased product, nurse managers relied heavily on sales representatives when selecting products for purchase, and staff nurses worked alongside sales representatives on a daily basis during surgery," she said.

However, most nurses (70 per cent) reported challenges with these relationships. Examples of the challenges with industry interactions included struggling to ensure sales representatives adhered to hospital policy, biased information sources, the introduction of unapproved devices, lack of accountability for product failure, and threats to patient safety and privacy.

Why market to nurses?

"Most study participants - 64 per cent - cited examples where nurses had influenced treatment and purchasing decisions," Dr Grundy said.

About one third of interviewed nurses (36 per cent) were standing members of institutional purchasing committees. Furthermore, interviewed industry professionals viewed nurses as a key audience because they had direct contact with industry's ultimate marketing targets - patients, prescribers and purchasers.

"The scope of practice of nurses in Australia is similar to nurses in the United States," Dr Grundy added. "They have similar decision-making and influential roles within healthcare so they are desirable marketing targets."

Medicines Australia, the pharmaceutical industry's peak body, requires member companies to publicly disclose all payments for 'educational' events - a major marketing strategy for the pharmaceutical industry.

In 2009 Medicines Australia reported that nurses were present at 26 per cent of 14,649 pharmaceutical-sponsored educational events hosted in the first 6 months of that year.

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(Salt Lake City) - End-stage heart failure patients treated with stem cells harvested from their own bone marrow experienced 37 percent fewer cardiac events - including deaths and hospital admissions related to heart failure - than a placebo-controlled group, reports a new study. Results from ixCELL-DCM, the largest cell therapy trial for treating heart failure to date, will be presented at the 2016 American College of Cardiology annual meeting and published online in The Lancet on April 4.

For the last 15 years everyone has been talking about cell therapy and what it can do. These results suggest that it really works, says lead author and cardiac surgeon Amit N. Patel, M.D., M.S., director of Cardiovascular Regenerative Medicine at the University of Utah School of Medicine. He chaired the trial steering committee and led investigations at University of Utah Health Care, a leading enroller in the 31-site, phase 2b clinical trial. The study lays the groundwork for testing in larger trials.

IxCELL-DCM randomly assigned cell therapy or placebo to 126 patients with end-stage ischemic heart failure. A small amount of bone marrow was drawn from each patient and two types of stem cells, mesenchymal stem cells and M2 macrophages, were selected and expanded in the laboratory. The cell types were chosen because preclinical studies suggested they have the ability to remodel the heart, increase heart tissue, and impact inflammation. The multicellular therapy, called ixmyelocel-T, was then injected into the heart using a minimally invasive procedure. A 3-dimensional electrochemical technique mapped damaged areas in the heart, and cells were delivered directly to them via catheter. On average, the procedure took less than two hours, and if there were no complications, patients were typically discharged the next day.

Assessments at 1, 3, 6, and 12 months after treatment showed that cell therapy patients had fewer side effects and complications than the placebo group. At one year, all cardiac events were catalogued, including deaths, and heart-related hospitalizations and unplanned clinic visits.

The double-blind trial found that the group treated with cell therapy had fewer deaths compared to the placebo group (8 vs. 4) and fewer heart failure related hospitalizations (42 of 51 vs. 30 of 58, or 82.4 percent vs. 51.7 percent with a p-value of 0.01), contributing to a 37 percent overall reduction in cardiac events. Any effects beyond one year remain unknown. The study also reported that there were no, or only very small, statistically significant differences in measures of heart function including performance in an exercise tolerance test, left ventricular ejection fraction, left ventricular end diastolic volume, and left ventricular end systolic volume. A larger sample size may discern other differences between patients who receive treatment and those who do not.

This is the first trial of cell therapy showing that it can have a meaningful impact on the lives of patients with heart failure, says Patel. Other cell therapy trials tested single stem cell populations and did not report impacts on the end results of death or other heart related clinical outcomes.

A phase 3 clinical trial will be needed to determine whether ixmyelocel-T can one day be offered as an alternative to current treatments for end-stage heart failure, including heart transplantation and left ventricular assist device therapy.

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Publication: Ixmyelocel-T for the Treatment of Patients with Ischemic Heart Failure: A Prospective Randomized Double Blind Trial will be presented at the 2016 American College of Cardiology annual meeting and published in The Lancet on April 4.

Authors: Amit N. Patel, University of Utah Health Care (co-corresponding author); Timothy Henry, Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute (co-corresponding author); Arshed Quyyumi, Emory University Hospital; Gary Schaer, Rush University Medical Center, R. David Anderson, University of Florida; Catalin Toma, University of Pittsburgh; Cara East, Baylor University Medical Center; Anne E. Remmers, James Goodrich, Vericel Corporation; Akshay Desai, Brigham & Womens Hospital; Anthony DeMaria, University of California, San Diego

Funding: Vericel Corp
Research has documented that black Americans are systematically undertreated for pain relative to white Americans, likely due to both the over-prescription and over-use of pain medications among white patients and the under-prescription of pain medications for black patients. Indeed, research has shown that black patients are undertreated for pain not only relative to white patients, but relative to World Health Organization guidelines.

New research from the University of Virginia suggests that disparities in pain management may be attributable in part to bias. In a study of medical students and residents, researchers find that a substantial number of white medical students and residents hold false beliefs about biological differences between black and white people (e.g., black people's skin is thicker; black people's blood coagulates more quickly) that could affect how they assess and treat the pain experienced by black patients.

The findings are detailed online in the April 4 edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Many previous studies have shown that black Americans are undertreated for pain compared to white Americans, because physicians might assume black patients might abuse the medications or because they might not recognize the pain of their black patients in the first place." said Kelly Hoffman, a UVA psychology Ph.D. candidate who led the study. "Our findings show that beliefs about black-white differences in biology may contribute to this disparity."

Hoffman and her team asked white medical students and residents, 222 participants in total, to rate on a scale of zero to 10 the pain levels they would associate with two mock medical cases, a kidney stone and a leg fracture, for both a white and a black patient, and to recommend pain treatments based on the level of pain they thought the patients might be experiencing. They were also asked the extent to which various beliefs about biological differences between blacks and whites are true or untrue; for example: that blacks age more slowly than whites; their nerve endings are less sensitive than whites'; their blood coagulates more quickly than whites'; their skin is thicker than whites' (all false); and several other items, some of them true, such as: Whites are less susceptible to heart disease; whites are less likely to have a stroke than blacks.

The researchers found that half of the sample endorsed at least one of the false beliefs, and those who endorsed these beliefs were more likely to report lower pain ratings for the black vs. white patient, and were less accurate in their treatment recommendations for the black vs. white patient.

To determine treatment accuracy, the researchers provided 10 experienced physicians with the same medical cases. The majority of these physicians recommended a narcotic (e.g., opiate, oxycodone) for both cases, which also aligns with the pain treatment recommendations of the World Health Organization.

Importantly, white medical students and residents who did not endorse these false beliefs did not show the same bias.

"We've known for a long time that there are huge disparities in how blacks and whites are assessed and treated by the medical community," Hoffman said. "Our study provides some insight to what might contribute to this - false beliefs about biological differences between blacks and whites. These beliefs have been around for a long time in our history. They were once used to justify slavery and the inhumane treatment of black people in medicine.

"What's so striking is that, today, these beliefs are not necessarily related to individual prejudice. Many people who reject stereotyping and prejudice nonetheless believe in these biological differences. And these beliefs could be really harmful; this study suggests that they could be contributing to racial disparities.

"The good news is that individuals who do not endorse these false beliefs do not show any evidence of racial bias in treatment recommendations. Future work will need to test whether challenging these beliefs could lead to better treatment and outcomes for black patients."

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Atrial fibrillation increases the risk of stroke. Treatment with oral anticoagulation reduces this risk but instead increases the risk of bleeding. Today, a new blood test based tool enabling better and more individualized stroke prevention treatment is presented at a congress in Chicago, and simultaneously published in the top-ranked medical journal The Lancet.

'We present results where we developed and thoroughly evaluated a new and simple concept for evaluation of risk and guidance of treatment decisions in patients with atrial fibrillation. The biomarker-based tool will allow personalized treatment to prevent strokes with the least risk of bleeding complications,' says Doctor Ziad Hijazi, cardiologist and investigator, who presents the results in collaboration with his colleagues Jonas Oldgren and Lars Wallentin, from the Uppsala Clinical Research Center at Uppsala University in Uppsala, Sweden.

Atrial fibrillation is a common arrhythmia affecting approximately 3% of the adult population. The occurrence increases by age. In an aging population, the condition is an important public health issue and socioeconomic burden on society. Atrial fibrillation is also a major risk factor for stroke but the risk is variable between different patients and also in the same patient over time. Stroke prevention treatment with oral anticoagulation decreases the risk of stroke but confers an increased risk of bleeding.

Currently, the evaluation of the risk of stroke and bleeding is based solely on clinical characteristics, which may be associated with a considerable uncertainty. In addition, it is difficult to separate the patients' risks for stroke and bleeding during anticoagulant treatment. In recent years, the Uppsala group has demonstrated that blood biomarkers contain more prognostic information than the currently used clinical characteristics concerning both bleeding and stroke during anticoagulation treatment in patients with atrial fibrillation. The results presented today show that the combination of the information from several biomarkers and a small amount of clinical data substantially improves the prognostication of the risk of stroke and bleeding in the individual patients. The use of biomarkers also makes the new risk scores dynamic with an opportunity to reflect both improvement and deterioration in the patient's cardiovascular condition over time, which changes the risk of complications.

All these new findings are presented in the new article in The Lancet and in a recent manuscript in the European Heart Journal. They are also presented today at the American College of Cardiology Congress in Chicago. These reports document the development, internal and external validation and calibration of the biomarker-based tools 'ABC risk score' (Age, Biomarkers, Clinical history of stroke/bleeding) for prognostication of stroke and bleeding which is now also available as a web-based instrument. The results are based on the development of the instruments in one large study of 14 537 patients with atrial fibrillation randomized to two different anticoagulant medication in the ARISTOTLE-trial and their verification in another similar material of 8152 patients with atrial fibrillation randomized to three different treatment alternatives in the RE-LY trial. In both studies, blood plasma was obtained from the majority of patients at the start of the study. The levels of the biomarkers were later measured at Uppsala Clinical Research Center. The biomarkers included in the ABC-risk scores are; haemoglobin, NT-proBNP, troponin and GDF-15 or cystatin C, all of which already are or shortly will be (GDF-15) available for routine use.

'The option to calculate the ABC-risk scores is already available today as an internet based tool and will shortly also be available as an app to facilitate its implementation in routine health care,' says Jonas Oldgren, head of the Uppsala Clinical Research Center.

'We think that biomarker-based risk evaluation in the near future will be the preferred tool for decision support at the selection of the optimal stroke prevention treatment for the individual patient with atrial fibrillation,' says Professor Lars Wallentin, who has led the research and development project for many years.

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Hydrogels are made from a three-dimensional network of cross-linked hydrophilic polymers or colloidal particles that contain a large fraction of water. In recent years, hydrogels have attracted significant attention for a variety of applications in biology and medicine. This has resulted in significant advances in the design and engineering of hydrogels to meet the needs of these applications. This handbook explores significant development of hydrogels from characterization and applications.

A three-volume set edited by Utkan Demirci (Stanford) & Ali Khademhosseini (Harvard), Gels Handbook: Fundamentals, Properties and Applications is a must-have reference resource for pharmaceutical researchers and bioengineers, material scientists, biologists, physicians and students with an interest in the field of tissue engineering.

Volume 1, Fundamentals of Hydrogels, covers state-of-art knowledge and techniques of fundamental aspects of hydrogel physics and chemistry with an eye on bioengineering applications. Edited by Qi Wen (Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA) and Yi Dong (OPKO Diagnostics, LLC, OPKO Health, Inc., USA), its topics include the types and chemistry of natural and synthetic hydrogels, hydrogel formation via photo-crosslink and self-assembly, the methods of tuning hydrogel mechanical properties and architecture, the techniques of tailoring hydrogel adhesiveness and biodegradability, and the development of environmental responsive hydrogels.

Volume 2, Applications of Hydrogels in Regenerative Medicine, is edited by Mohammad Reza Abidian (Pennsylvania State University (University of Houston, USA (as of Sep 2015), Umut Atakan Gurkan (Case Western Reserve University, USA) and Faramarz Edalat (Emory University, USA). The work explores the use of hydrogels in the interdisciplinary field of tissue engineering, presenting the design and application of various types of hydrogels in engineering of tissues and organs, including the skin, eye, bone and cartilage, heart, blood vessels, lung, liver, pancreas and urological organs. The role of hydrogels in stem cell differentiation and creation of biological niches mimicking native tissues is also discussed.

Volume 3, Application of Hydrogels in Drug Delivery and Biosensing, edited by Lifeng Kang (National University of Singapore) and Sheereen Majd (University of Houston, USA - formerly Pennsylvania State University, USA), focuses on two important aspects of hydrogels, that is, drug delivery and biosensing. For drug delivery, the authors present their work on synthetic, natural and supramolecular hydrogels. Injectable hydrogels and environment-responsive hydrogels are discussed in separate chapters because of their unique properties. For biosensing, topics including protein and cell laden hydrogels are discussed. Also included are biomolecular arrays patterning and cancer testing. In addition, as a special topic, the application of hydrogels in conjunction with microfluidic devices is discussed.

###

The Gels Handbook: Fundamentals, Properties and Applications will be available at all major booksellers and distributors. The set comprising of 3 volumes is priced at US$1100 / 726. Both Sets are currently being sold at an introductory offer of US$890 / 587 valid till 31 May 2016.

About the Editors

Dr. Utkan Demirci is an Associate Professor with tenure at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, CA. He is affiliated with Radiology Department and Electrical Engineering Department by courtesy. In his laboratory, he leads a productive group of ~30 researchers focusing on micro/nanoscale technologies to understand, diagnose, monitor, and treat disease conditions. His microfluidic sperm selection technology has been translated through two start-up companies that Dr. Demirci has co-founded, namely DxNow Inc., and Koek Biotechnology, and these devices are being used in multiple countries at hundreds of fertility clinics and doctor's offices as a part of assisted reproductive technologies leading to successful births of thousands of newborns. Dr. Demirci has published over 110 peer-reviewed journal publications. Before Stanford, he served as an Associate Professor of Medicine and Health Sciences and Technology at the Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Health Sciences and Technology (HST) division. He received his bachelor's degree (summa cum laude) from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and both his master's degrees in Electrical Engineering in 2001 and in Management Science and Engineering in 2005, and his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 2005 from Stanford University. Dr. Demirci's work has been recognized by various awards including the IEEE EMBS Early Career Award; IEEE EMBS Translational Science Award; NSF CAREER Award; Coulter Foundation Early Career Award; HMS-Young Investigator Award; Chinese National Science Foundation International Young Scientist Award; TR-35 Award as one of the world's top 35 young innovators under the age of 35 by the MIT Technology Review.

Dr Ali Khademhosseini is a Full Professor at Harvard-MIT's Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST), Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) and Harvard Medical School (HMS) as well as an Associate Faculty at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. He is also a Junior Principal Investigator at Japan's World Premier International - Advanced Institute for Materials Research (WPI-AIMR) at Tohoku University where he directs a satellite laboratory. He received his Ph.D. in bioengineering from MIT (2005), and MASc (2001) and BASc (1999) degrees from University of Toronto both in chemical engineering. Dr. Khademhosseini's interdisciplinary research has been recognized by over 30 major national and international awards. He is the recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor given by the US government for early career investigators. In 2011, he received the Pioneers of Miniaturization Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry for his contribution to microscale tissue engineering and microfluidics. In addition, he has received the young investigator awards of the Society for Biomaterials (SFB), the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society-Americas and the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE).

About World Scientific Publishing Co.

World Scientific Publishing is a leading independent publisher of books and journals for the scholarly, research, professional and educational communities. The company publishes about 600 books annually and about 130 journals in various fields. World Scientific collaborates with prestigious organisations like the Nobel Foundation, US National Academies Press, as well as its subsidiary, the Imperial College Press, amongst others, to bring high quality academic and professional content to researchers and academics worldwide. To find out more about World Scientific, please visit http://www.worldscientific.com.


Would be expats often fall in love with a country or location when they go on holiday and it seems that New York and Paris are the top favourites for visitors from the UK.Travellers from the UK were most likely to jet off to New York, followed by Paris, with Amsterdam, Dublin, Rome, Barcelona, Dubai, Berlin, Las Vegas and Bangkok making up the top 10, new research shows.But when it comes to people visiting the UK London remains top, followed by Edinburgh, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow. The rest of the top 10 is made up of Birmingham, Belfast, Brighton, Aberdeen and Oxford.The research from hotel.com also shows that the Spanish island of Mallorca grew in popularity throughout 2015, moving from nineteenth to eleventh place on the list of top destinations."It has been a jet-setting year for British travellers with destinations in Europe, the USA, Asia and the Middle East all in the Top 20. New York was favourite once again, but a number of European destinations proved popular with European capitals continuing to attract travellers," said spokeswoman Lizann Peppard.The firm's research also shows that global hotel prices paid by travellers worldwide rose by just 1% in 2015 and British travellers enjoyed lower prices in over half of the 64 destinations covered by the hotel price index due to the increased strength of the Pound.Many European hotspots from Russia and Estonia in the North, to Mediterranean favourites such as France, Italy and Spain in the South saw a modest decrease in average prices paid.Due to the falling Rouble, Moscow in particular saw a significant decrease, which dropped 27% from the previous year. In total, Britons paid less in 42 of the 57 most popular European destinations compared to the previous year.However, the continued strength of the US Dollar saw price rises in all but one of the popular destinations in the US, while Asia proved to be the continent with the best value for money.Only New York out of the 13 most popular US destinations saw a marginal decrease in average prices paid, down 2%, while Lake Buena Vista near Orlando, Florida, saw the most significant rise of 21%.The best value destinations for British travellers were names as Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan and Singapore. It was predominantly popular destinations throughout Thailand that saw a decrease in rates, including areas such as Pattaya down 15%, Chiang Mai down 6%, Phuket down 16%, Krabi down 5% and Koh Samui down 3%.The Pound also meant popular Australian destinations became cheaper for British travellers as room rates paid dropped 7% in Sydney and 6% in Melbourne.
Legal ruling set to have implications for farm inheritance rows
Trip was part of a Canadian Foodgrains Bank initiative

By Diego Flammini

Assistant Editor, North American Content

Farms.com

A farm couple from Killarney, Manitoba recently returned from a trip to Ethiopia where they experienced local agriculture and the struggles farmers are faced with.

Betty and Dennis Turner joined 10 others from Jan. 28 to Feb. 12 as part of a Canadian Foodgrains Bank initiative to help farmers in Ethiopia manage drought.

Betty Turner told CBC News Manitoba that Ethiopian farms range in size from one-half to one hectare in size and are located in rocky, dry hillsides. Despite the differences in land makeup, Turner said theres at least one thing that all farmers are faced with.

Like us here in Manitoba, they need rain to make crops grow, she told CBC News. So we could feel their pain in wanting crops to grow or food to grow to feed their families.

During the trip, local farmers showed their Canadian visitors water conservation methods including using banana leaves, maize leaves and manure to create a moisture-restoring mulch.

The resourcefulness of the farmers was one thing, but Turner said the sheer work ethic of some of the women really stood out for her.

"The women carried 20 litres of water on their back from the river up their terrace to fill empty pop bottles that were made into a drip system," she said.

According to Turner, the women would perform the three kilometre trek nearly 10 times per day and when asked about the physical toll, would respond that they were happy to have a job.

After experiencing Ethiopian agriculture, Turner said shes blessed to live in Canada.
Fayetteville-area high school football top performers for Week 10

Here are the Fayetteville area's top performers from Week 10 of the 2022 high school football season.
Documents leaked Sunday from a Panama law firm showed alleged use of anonymous shell companies by world leaders, politicians and others to shield billions of dollars from public view.

The Washington, DC-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published more than 10 million records from the Mossack Fonseca law firm.

Among the banks and countries mentioned in the documents were UBS, HSBC, Societe Generale, Cyprus, Switzerland, and the British Virgin Islands.

The documents apparently show the creation of more than 200,000 offshore shell companies.

The companies were linked to a dozen current and former world leaders and more than 140 other politicians from 50 countries, according to the ICIJ.

The group said $2 billion in transactions involved people and companies with ties to Russia leader Vladimir Putin. Four shell companies in one chain were linked to St. Petersburg-based Bank Rossiya.

Andrey Kostin, CEO of Russian finance firm VTB Group and a Putin crony, said allegations about Putin were untrue. In a Bloomberg interview, he called the reports bulls**t.

Four of the FIFA officials indicted in the United States used offshore companies created by Mossack Fonseca, the ICIJ said.

Shruti Shah, a contributing editor of the FCPA Blog and the vice president for programs and operations at Transparency International-USA, said Monday, The Panama Papers leak highlight the ease with which the global financial system can be accessed by kleptocrats and other criminals using anonymous companies.

In addition to Putin in Russia, leaders and politicians from Iceland, Argentina, Georgia, Iraq, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, and Ukraine were implicated as holding secret investment accounts or undeclared interests in offshore companies.

Shah said anonymous companies are often used to hide the true bidders in public procurements.

The shell companies allow government officials to conceal their interests and those of their family and friends in the legal entities that may bid on procurements under their jurisdiction, she said.

Using anonymous offshore companies isnt always illegal. But the companies are often used to conceal beneficial ownership of assets in other countries or evade taxes.

Liz Confalone of Global Financial Integrity said Sunday, Banks and law firms routinely conspire to hide their clients money and fail to follow through on required customer due diligence checks.

The United States has been criticized for allowing anonymous companies.

The U.S. is no exception as it is possible to form companies in every state in the U.S. without disclosing the true beneficial owner, Shah said Monday.

TI-USA has been pushing for better disclosure.

Shah said the U.S Congress should pass legislation on incorporation transparency. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Rep. Carolyn Maloney introduced a bill earlier this year that would address the loophole.

The Panama Papers published Sunday dated from 1977 to 2015.

Mossack Fonseca has offices in nearly forty locations, including Hong Kong, Miami, and Zurich. It has about 500 staff, according to its website.

It offers incorporation and other services for Belize, The Netherlands, Costa Rica, United Kingdom, Malta, Hong Kong, Cyprus, British Virgin Islands, Bahamas, Panama, British Anguilla, Seychelles, Samoa, and in the United States for Nevada and Wyoming.

The firm told the ICIJ that it does not foster or promote illegal acts.

It said allegations that it provides shareholders with structures supposedly designed to hide the identity of the real owners are completely unsupported and false.

_____

Richard L. Cassin is the publisher and editor of the FCPA Blog. He can be contacted here.
Relationships are always the most complicated areas to try and resolve in life, more so when it can feel like you are constantly trying to suss someone out or understand them all the time and end up with no conclusion at all.

Relationships on Female First

Studying relationships was always a challenge and everyone is so different when it comes to what they want out of life. People wont necessary tell you directly what they want, or if they do, we choose to ignore what they are saying, in the hope that they will change.

We dismiss something so big, when really the problem lies underneath. This problem will only escalate emotionally when times goes on, if we don't address this situation there and then.

So let's take a lovely lady called Charlotte as an example. Charlotte is twenty seven, lives at home with her parents, works for her father and has a good lifestyle alongside a great set of friends. Looking at Charlotte, she pretty much has her life in order. Charlotte will also be buying her own house in a few months time, which she saved up for herself in the hope of finally moving out and being more independent.

Charlotte loves her life, she says her friends support her in everyday life and she is very happy with where she is, all she asks for is a nice man to accompany her.

So along comes Brian, Brian is thirty five, has his own place, one child from a previous marriage and still lives in his marital home, until he gets his marriage sorted out for a divorce, then he will move out. (or so he says).

Brian meets Charlotte at work, he is in fact one of her father's contacts, whom they do business together on many occasions. On this one occasion, Charlotte decides to take over in her father's footsteps and manage new areas, this involves more travel, meeting new business contacts and Brian happens to be one of them.

When Brian meets Charlotte, you can feel the tension straight away, he is not mucking about, he is asking her about her life, her father, how long she has worked there and on it goes, until they decide to go out for lunch the following week. He wants to pursue her and wont give up until she says yes.

Now Charlotte wouldnt say he was her type, she isn't sure herself what her type is, but Brian had this charm about him that just captivates her towards him. She couldn't stop smiling around him, she felt somewhat more alive and happier.

Three weeks later, the pair are dating. On their first month together, Charlotte noticed at times, that Brian wasn't able to see her on certain days, or more like the nights she would have liked, it was pretty much on his terms. Which were a Monday night, Thursday night and sometimes a Friday, but never weekends.

The following month, it may be just a Monday night, or two weeks later it may be nothing until the following week. It was never predictable, nor were his texts, but he was intense at the start, bombarding her with texts to date him.

When asking Charlotte, "what did he mention to you at the start about his living arrangements with his wife?"

Charlotte's comment was, that they are still living in the same house together, apparently getting divorced and they have one child together. At weekends, he says he sometimes has to see his family and do family things together, to which she felt was ok.

I then asked her, did she ever go to his house at all? she said no. Charlotte, had a rough idea where he lived, but never went to his house or was introduced to any of his friends and family, one year down the line.

This was still the same, two years later.

When this scenario was played over and over in her mind, she asked me, "Have I been played?"

Pretty much yes, he has you, where he wants you. His charm lures her in, his lies you forget because he will make up for it with his charm and his words just entice you back in? then he may buy you something to make you feel better, so would you say he is pretty addictive and you like the drama perhaps?

Charlotte mentioned she didnt like the drama or thought it was drama, but it did create alot of emotional pain, worry and anxiety on an everyday basis.

I asked Charlotte, do you not feel you deserve better than being his part time lover?

Charlotte, didnt see herself as his part time lover, she was adamant he was getting divorced and his wife was not around too. I said, do you have proof of this? Her answer was no, as Brian never really mentioned his wife, nor their circumstances or if he was going to change anything. His contact, his presents and his dinner dates are all what kept Charlotte going, but what she didnt see was his lack of commitment to her, he never followed through with commitments, he never really made an effort to divorce, or move in with Charlotte, he never went away on holiday with Charlotte either. In the end Charlotte realised after four years, nothing had changed and her situation was just the same as when she first met him.

Charlotte watched her friends move on in their lives and saw how they were being treated with their partners, she wished this is what she had, but realised it was also her own fault for accepting the way this relationship was which was blocking her, so who's fault was it;

Charlotte's for not getting out sooner?. or Brian for being selfish and controlling?. or was it, Charlotte, for allowing him to be like this?

Charlotte is still seeing Brian five years on and her life is still the same, it feels safe to her, were her words.However is she happy?

My question when I asked her, wasn't a yes unfortunately.

So, have you been through a similar situation or are you currently seeing someone else going through this?

I want to say to you, everyone deserves a commitment, meeting someone in your life is about what they want with you, not just for themselves?

Believe you are worth more, dont let the past ex or last person pull you into thinking otherwise.

Joanna Scott

Ask The Psychic

www.askthepsychic.co.uk

www.facebook.com/askthepsychic

Live on - Sky TV Channel 886

Author of "The Love Key"

Tel: 0792 000 4357

by Joanna Scott for relationships.femalefirst.co.uk


Britain's Prince Harry surprised shoppers at his local supermarket over the weekend.

Prince Harry

The royal - who has just returned from an official engagement in Nepal - was spotted buying eggs in Waitrose in Kensington, near his apartment at Kensington Palace.

A fellow shopper told The Sun: "You don't expect to see a Prince doing his shop at nine in the morning.

"He had a couple of bags of shopping... I have seen a few celebs about but never royalty."

Another fan shared a picture of the Prince paying for his items and wrote: "God love Prince Harry at the self-service till in Waitrose."

Last month Harry extended his trip to Nepal by an extra six days in order to work on a charity project, which aims to rebuild a school destroyed by last year's earthquake in the Himalayas.

He said of his decision to stay longer: "The people I have met and the beauty of this country make it very hard to leave. Thankfully however, I'm not leaving just yet.

"I'm so grateful to have this opportunity at the end of my official tour to do my small bit to help."

The flame-haired hunk camped with a group of volunteers in a remote village in central Nepal as he worked alongside Rubicon UK - a disaster response charity which uses the skills and experience of military veterans to deploy emergency response teams.

The disaster last April claimed 9,000 lives, largely in rural areas, and left many people without homes and belongings.
Katherine Kelly is starring in 'Doctor Who' spin-off series 'Class'.

Katherine Kelly with Class cast

The former 'Coronation Street' actress has been announced as one of the main stars of the show along with exciting young new talents Greg Austin, Fady Elsayed, Sophie Hopkins and Vivian Oparah.

The new BBC Three drama is set in Coal Hill school which has a long history with the sci-fi series and was most recently featured in several episodes as the school at which the Doctor's companion Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman) taught at in Shoreditch, east London.

The programme - which is aimed at young adults - has been penned by 'A Monster Calls' author Patrick Ness and will consist of eight episodes, each lasting 45 minutes.

Katherine - who was most recently seen in 'The Night Manager' and 'Happy Valley' - will play a new teacher at Coal Hill School who becomes a powerful presence and Ness admits he was thrilled to get her for the part.

The writer said: "We searched far and wide for this amazing cast, fantastic actors who understand what we're aiming for with this show. And how lucky we are to get Katherine Kelly! She's been stunning in 'Happy Valley', 'The Night Manager' and 'Mr Selfridge', just wait until you see her here."

Greg, Fady, Sophie and Vivian will all play sixth form students with each of them having hidden secrets and desires and they must all deal with their own worst fears, navigating a life of friends, parents, school work, sex, sorrow - and possibly the end of existence.

It is also believed that Twelfth Doctor Peter Capaldi will making an appearance in the series.

The plot of the drama focuses on the frequent visits by the Doctor to Coal Hill School which have made the walls of space and time become thin and now something from another world to bring war and fear to Earth.

The school was the setting of 'An Unearthly Child', the very first episode of 'Doctor Who' which was first broadcast in November 1963.

In that episode, science teacher Ian Chesterton and history teacher Barbara Wright discover that one of their students, Susan Foreman, is a time traveller who has been attending the school as her grandfather, the First Doctor (William Hartnell), makes repairs on their TARDIS time machine.

Current 'Doctor Who' showrunner Steven Moffat is acting as executive producer on 'Class' and has compared it to 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'.

He said: "Coal Hill School has been part of 'Doctor Who' since the very first shoot in 1963, but this new show is anything but history. "'Class' is dark and sexy and right now. I've always wondered if there could be a British Buffy - it's taken the brilliant Patrick Ness to figure out how to make it happen."

'Class' will premiere on BBC Three later this year.
Robson Green has claimed he was attacked by a crocodile.

Robson Green

The 51-year-old actor was rushed to hospital after the killer aquatic reptile snapped at him - behind bars - while he was shooting his new show 'Robson Green's Australian Adventure'.

He explained: "When I was checked over in the local hospital, they asked what had happened and I said, 'Crocodile attack!'."

However, he wasn't mauled by the crocodile, the creature simply frightened him and he accidentally fell back into a metal pole.

He added: "It was actually in a cage and I was out of harm's way so it wasn't really dangerous at all.

"But stupidly it gave me such a fright that I jumped out of the way and banged my head on the pole. I can say legitimately that I got a cut on my head from a crocodile attack."

However, despite the painful bump he sustained, the 'Grantchester' star was more worried about the damage to his face.

Speaking to The Sun Online, he said: "It was quite embarrassing actually because I was genuinely upset that I'd hurt myself and got a cut on my head. I screamed, I hurt my head, there was blood.

"For an instant I thought, 'What the hell am I going to do?' because I can't do anything else. All I do as an actor is tell stories and my face is my fortune. It's all I've got."
Columbia Pacific Advisors has completed the sale of three active outdoor apparel brands, Pow Gloves, Holden Outerwear and Spacecraft Collective all operating under the Pow Holdings, LLC umbrella.Pow Gloves was sold to Rojo Australia, a snow apparel company based in Torquay, Australia, with strong international links in the snow market globally.

Columbia Pacific Advisors has completed the sale of three active outdoor apparel brands, Pow Gloves, Holden Outerwear and Spacecraft Collective all op#

Rojo has retained the executive team and is working on a business-as-usual approach for all markets, a Columbia Pacific Advisors informed.While, Holden Outerwear founded by professional snowboarder Mikey LeBlanc and designer Scott Zergebel, was sold to private investors and both LeBlanc and Zergebel will continue to work with the brand.Spacecraft Collective which makes headwear, apparel and accessories was sold to Omen Longboards, a skateboard company based in Lynnwood, Wash, Columbia added in the press release.Columbia Pacific Advisors further added that D.A. Davidson & Co., a nationwide investment bank, served as the exclusive financial advisor to Pow Holdings.We are pleased to have completed the sale along with finding appropriate buyers for each of these brands, said Kevin Barber, managing director at Columbia Pacific.Mike Smith, managing director at D.A. Davidson & Co also said, It was a pleasure to work with Columbia Pacific and guide them toward a satisfactory outcome.Since the start of 2014, D.A. Davidson's dedicated active lifestyle consumer investment banking team has advised on eleven completed M&A transactions and five capital raises in the active lifestyle sector.Columbia Pacific Advisors manages more than $1.1 billion across a variety of alternative investment strategies including private real estate, real estate lending, growth capital, private equity and distressed debt.The firm utilises deep fundamental research and seeks to generate compelling, consistent risk-adjusted returns and was founded in 2006 by Alex Washburn, Stan Baty and Dan Baty. (AR)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
The Tirupur Exporters Association (TEA) has sought immediate withdrawal of a recent notification to the Employees Provident Fund Scheme, 1952 that allows employees to withdraw their own contribution and interest earned there on from the PF account but restricts withdrawal of employers contribution before the age of 58 years.

Appealing for immediate withdrawal of the February 10, 2016 notification, TEA President Dr.A.Sakthivel said the order had created unrest among workers from outside states, especially North India, who resorted to strike in three units.

In a letter to the Union Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Bandaru Dattatreya, Dr Shaktivel said the notification has led to complaints from workers, most of whom are migrants from neighbouring states and North India.

The Tirupur Exporters Association (TEA) has requested the Government to withdraw the amendment made on withdrawal of employees' contribution to#

The North Indian workers generally work for about four to five years. They are now insisting upon the managements to settle their accounts including the employers deposits in their accounts.

The managements are finding it increasingly difficult to convince the workers about the governments notification, Dr Shaktivel said in his letter.

He has asked the government to allow workers to withdraw employers contributions also on leaving the job and not wait till they attain 58 years of age.

The strikes in a few units are already beginning to hit the industry, the TEA president said expressing the fear of a labour exodus from the area.

Due to this, the production got affected and the units could also face the difficulty in meeting out the export delivery schedule. These units may not only incur financial losses but also future orders, Dr Shaktivel said in the letter.

With the shortage of labour, no export unit will take big orders since the execution of it in time is doubtful, he added.

A labour exodus would seriously hit the export industry which currently generates a revenue of Rs.23,500 crores, the TEA President said.

The TEA President said he has also sought the help of Union Minster for Parliamentary Affairs, Urban Development, Housing and Poverty Alleviation, Venkaiah Naidu in this regard.

In a meeting with Naidu in Coimbatore, Dr Shaktivel urged the Union Minister for construction of labour quarters and women hostels in Tirupur. (SH)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
The first Vietnam-Asia silk culture festival at Hoi An silk village, has opened up chances for silk centres in Asia, according to Vietnamese media reports. Craftsmen, designers, traders and experts of silk from Cambodia, China, France, India, Japan, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and seven traditional silk villages in Vietnam joined the largest meeting of the Asian silk trade

According to the chairman of the Asia Silk Alliance, Dilip Barooah, the Vietnam-Asia silk culture festival has provided a great opportunity for silk producers, designers, exporters and importers, intermediaries, and government agencies related to silk promotion to share experiences for the future development of the silk trade.

The festival also opens up chances for silk centres in Asia and the world by building up connections in production and export, he said. He added that the Vietnam-Asia silk festival was held with an aim of promoting the silk trades of Cambodia, China, Japan, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.

The first Vietnam-Asia silk culture festival at Hoi An silk village, has opened up chances for silk centres in Asia, according to Vietnamese media #

Chairman of Kyoto Silk Association Takao Watanabe said he hoped the silk trade would develop quickly in the coming years to become the prosperous industry that was seen over 500 years ago.

The two-day festival witnessed a fashion show, a seminar on silk history and development with presentations and discussions on improving silk yield, silk branding and marketing, silk export development, and silk standards, certification and regulations.

The festival also includes displays from elegant French fashion designers, Myanmar silk with special patterns, Cashmere silk from India, Nanchong Yinhai silk and Hangzhou Jiahe silk textiles from China, and silks from Nishijin, Japan. (NA)

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India
A Fijian delegation led by Fijis Ambassador-at-Large Amena Yauvoli is in New York attending the first meeting on the development of an internationally legally binding instrument under the United Nations Conventions on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

Fiji is committed to development an agreement that deals with conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction.Ambassador Yauvoli, when delivering Fiji's statement, commended the international community for their commitment towards developing this legal binding agreement. He stressed the need for the implementing agreement to ensure that it complimented the work carried out under UNCLOS. He said that it must also recognise that the scope and the general applicability of the proposed agreement should include all living resources in the areas beyond national jurisdiction- from water columns to those on the seabed. Ambassador Yauvoli said that current and emerging issues such as climate change and ocean acidification needed to be considered and reflected in the agreement.He said that Fiji, like other small island developing states recognised the need for capacity building. He added that the method in the proposed agreement should derive a formula that is responsive to the current capacity needs of the developing countries.At the outset Fiji aligned herself with the statements of the Group of 77+ China and the Pacific Small Islands Developing States. The high seas make up 45 per cent of the surface of our planet and together with the seabed area on the sea floor, it is home to incredibly diverse and mostly unknown biodiversity and unique ecosystems.Ambassador Yauvoli said those areas were subjected to threats like overfishing, destructive fishing practices, pollution, habitat destruction, degradation and the impacts of climate change and ocean acidification.
Panama Paper Leaks have revealed shocking relevations about huge amounts of money being stashed in offshore companies and is also described as "the world's biggest leak". What is further shocking is that, Bollywood biggies such as Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarta Rai's names have popped up in the Panama leaked reports.

Apart from Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai, it is reported that many other Bollywood celebrities are included in the list. However, Aishwarya Rai's team says Panama Paper Leak Reports are "Totally untrue and false".

It is reported that around 500 Indians are included in the Panama Paper Leak Reports, and includes film stars, well known industrialists, politicians and many more.

Class Apart! Deepika Padukone Looks Like A Beauty Contest Winner In These Pictures

German based daily 'Sueddeutsche Zeitung' was the first to break out the news on the Panama Paper Leaks and shared it with the world media by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). How did the German daily get its hands on the leaked reports is not known.

Now are Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai's names in the paper leak true or false is not confirmed yet. The Government of India has ordered a through investigation into the matter. Only time will tell if Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai are in danger or not!

Unseen & Too Hot! Alia Bhatt From Behind The Scenes For Vogue Magazine Photoshoot
Alia Bhatt, is all set to romance four men in her upcoming movie starring Shahrukh Khan, and the names of the actors have been revealed, finally! Yes, Gauri Shinde, had kept all details about the movie under wraps and Mumbai Mirror, has revealed the names of the four actors whom Alia Bhatt would romance.

The four actors in Gauri Shinde's next are Ali Zafar, Kunal Kapoor, Aditya Roy Kapur and Angad Bedi. All these four handsome men would be seen romancing Alia Bhatt in the movie, and would Shahrukh Khan also romance the bubbly young actress is not known yet!

In February, Alia Bhatt and Shahrukh Khan were in Goa for the shoot of the movie and completed the Goa shoot in a span of three days. It is reported that the next schedule of shoot will be in Mumbai and other parts.

So Funny! 15 Pics Of Aishwarya Rai Clicked When She Was Not Ready

Gauri Shinde's next, is rumoured to be named as 'Walk And Talk'. However no official confirmation has been given out by the film-makers regarding the name of the movie.

Not much is known about Shahrukh Khan's role in the movie as well. Considering the age gap between the two, we can only assume that SRK might be a mentor, friend, brother, teacher or a secret affair between the two, we're not really sure.

Rare Pics Of Bollywood Stars Wearing Heavy Metal T-shirts!

However Gauri Shinde, says that the story is completely different and is "not about a romantic relationship". Gauri Shinde was quoted as saying,

"All I can say is that the film isn't a typical love story. It's not about a romantic relationship in the usual manner that a man and a woman share. I am happy to have cast her. I am rather very pleased with the casting. It's a different story for sure so you all will get to see it soon."

10 Pictures Of Salman Khan With His Recently Found Love (Horses)!
Huma Qureshi, has finally spoken out against allegations on being linked up with actor Sohail Khan, and the actress, has lashed out against the accusations and says there is no truth behind it, and calls it baseless and false rumours.

Sohail Khan and his wife Seema, are having a troubled marriage and it was reported that Sohail's closeness to Huma, is the main cause for their marriage landing in troubled waters. However, Huma has rubbished the allegations.

Huma Qureshi, during an interview with Hindustan Times lashed out on the allegations as,

"What really hurts is that without knowing the truth about my life, they (media) go ahead and put these stories. And I'll tell you why they do it; they do it because they want to take away all the attention from my hard work. They want to show that whatever I have achieved in my life is because of my closeness to a particular man, who may be coming from an influential family or is influential himself. That is disrespectful... It's easy for people to say that she is doing well because she is close to someone. That is demeaning. I don't see that happening to any of the industry kids, to be very honest."

So Funny! 15 Pics Of Aishwarya Rai Clicked When She Was Not Ready

A few months back, Huma Qureshi had also cleared the air on Twitter by tweeting that, Sohail Khan is like a brother and friend to her. "Kuch bhi likhte ho #MumbaiMirror aap.. Sohail Khan is like my elder brother .. Kuch toh facts check karo!"

Sohail Khan's wife Seema, had also reported saying that Huma Qureshi is a good friend of Salman Khan and Arpita, and that's the reason she used to visit the Khans quite often, and not because of Sohail Khan.

Rare Pics Of Bollywood Stars Wearing Heavy Metal T-shirts!
Priyanka Chopra, is on the seventh heaven in 2016 as her list of achievements keep increasing by the day. From her television series Quantico to her Hollywood debut Baywatch, the actress has come a long way and inspires tons of people across the country.

It is now reported that Priyanka Chopra, has received an invitation from the White House for their annual dinner event. The event is an annual 'White House Correspondents' dinner, and will be held by the end of April, 2016.

The White House Correspondents dinner, was also extended to Hollywood biggies such as Bradley Cooper, Lucy Liu, Jane Fonda and Gladys Knight.

So Funny! 15 Pics Of Aishwarya Rai Clicked When She Was Not Ready

However, a leading daily has reported that Priyanka Chopra, has not yet to confirmed if she would be attending the White House dinner event at the end of April or not. If PeeCee would agree for the dinner event, she might get a lifetime opportunity to meet the President of the United States, Barack Obama.

Priyanka Chopra, is being recognised across America and is slowly becoming a household name. The actress, first entered the US through her television series Quantico. PeeCee, then was seen in several late night talk shows and floored the audiences with her witty and funny replies. PeeCee, also got the opportunity of a lifetime to host the Oscars 2016, and she did it with grand style and glamour.

Rare Pics Of Bollywood Stars Wearing Heavy Metal T-shirts!

PeeCee's Hollywood debut, Baywatch, would see the actress play the role of a baddie, and would star alongside The Rock aka Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron.

We really hope Priyanka Chopra accepts the White House dinner event, and make India proud by her presence, at the annual White House Correspondents dinner.

In 2011, Mallika Sherawat attended a tea party and also took a selfie with President Barack Obama!

This Is What Sunny Leone Has To Say About Shahrukh Khan!
Pratyusha Banerjee's suicide came as a shock for all of us. Even her boyfriend, Rahul Raj Singh had said the same while he was questioned by the police (who was said to be absconding after admitting her to the hospital, and was seen unaffected about her death news, initially)! After being questioned by the police, he was later out of detention.

Now that Pratyusha's close friends are blaming him for her death and saying that he was abusive, he gets admitted to the hospital saying he is depressed! Anyway, let us not assume things. Here is what the report says... The actor-producer apparently is admitted in Shree Sai Hospital, Kandivili East.

Click On View Photos To Check Out Pictures Of Rahul Snapped With Pratyusha



Apparently, Rahul was seen shouting and yelling after Pratyusha's tragic death!

Rahul's lawyer Niraj Gupta was quoted by Tellychakkar as saying, "He has been very restless and depressed. He was brought in this morning and his condition is yet to be stable. Stress and depression main reason. He is under observation."

With so many speculations doing the rounds against Pratyusha Banerjee's boyfriend (regarding her suicide and about his another girlfriend Saloni Sharma), it is obvious that he will fall sick!
Chinas companies are expanding overseas. And theyre increasingly doing so through mergers and acquisitions.

But the nations companies have not had the best track record in M&A. State-owned enterprises, notably, have been big offshore buyers of resources assets, and they have often spent heavily and then struggled to make the deals work.

So how can Chinese companies improve their chances of success? FinanceAsia garnered the views of three serial overseas acquirers and advisers on how best to do that. In Part One, we looked at the importance of planning and of starting small.

3) Beware the watchdogs

Acquisition-minded Chinese companies also need to consider the impact of governments and regulators. The larger the deal, the more likely they will take an interest.

The US has a mixed reputation among Chinese buyers. US law firm OMelveny conducted a survey of Chinese investors about overseas markets. While 38% of respondents perceived the USs regulatory regime to be an attractive attribute, 48% said it was the greatest barrier to investment.

Chinas outbound acquisitions into the US have long been controversial. Energy major Cnoocs $18.5 billion bid for Unocal in 2005 was scuppered by US congressional opposition. These days the big bogeyman for Chinese acquirers is the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, which is tasked with ensuring foreign investments dont raise national security issues. It has tended to take a hard line on potential Chinese acquisitions.

The committee has stymied many deals. In January it blocked Chinese investor-led GO Scale Capitals $2.8 billion bid for 80% of Philipss LumiLEDs unit, a deal that seemed to offer little security risk to the US.

The difficulty of US approval has led Chinese companies to focus more on Europe, which has been fairly welcoming of companies seeking acquisitions. Chinese companies like German and Swiss companies in particular, seeing them as having good corporate governance and having experienced managers, Samson Lo, head of Asia M&A at UBS, said.

Chinese companies are also adapting to CFIUS demands. In January Haier and GE Appliances made a voluntary application to the committee.

Haier seems to be saying We have nothing to hide, said Tom Deegan, a partner in Sidley Austins corporate practice unit in Asia. It speaks to their credibility and is an example of how to improve your chances of getting things done.

He added that the best Chinese companies are becoming well-versed in local issues of the markets in which theyre trying to expand.

One energy company has a library with leather-bound country files, and information about the petroleum law of each, plus risk issues and the government and political risk, he told FinanceAsia.

4) Consider cultural sensitivities Chinese and international firms also need to navigate cultural differences. Language is the most obvious roadblock. Mandarin is not widely spoken in Europe or the US, and many SOE executives and private entrepreneurs speak limited English. However, English is quickly gaining popularity in China and consultants say many Chinese companies have a sprinkling of German, French, Spanish or Italian speakers too. Fosun following its acquisitions, for example, now employs 100,000 people, about one fifth of whom are non-Chinese. Yuan Yafei, chairman of Sanpower, said 70% of his companys senior managers had an overseas background. He himself started learning English five years ago. I began with learning one word by one in the English-language section of the local newspaper Nanjing Daily, he said. In addition to improved communications, Chinese companies need to address the chief fears of their targets. The first is the need to demonstrate their seriousness. Firms are taking steps to address this. There will always be some concern among Western investors over the certainty of Chinese companies being able to close a deal, finance it, and get regulator approval, said Lo. But there are many examples of Chinese companies being open to providing assurances, such as deal protections. Bidders in several recent China outbound acquisitions are believed to have agreed to sizeable break fees, including ChemChina and Haier. Such fees help demonstrate financial commitment although they arent a guarantee of success. Fairchild Semiconductor of the US was in merger talks with local peer ON Semiconductor last year, only for China Resources Holding and Hua Capital Management to make an unsolicited $2.46 billion bid in December. The Chinese consortium promised to cover Fairchilds $79 million breakup fee for ending discussions with ON, but it rejected the offer on February 16 over fears of CFIUS rejection. Another concern is the place of existing managers and workers, post-acquisition. In fact, experienced offshore acquirers say the cooperation of these people is essential. Sending a team of Chinese to manage the newly acquired company is destined to fail, said the spokesman of Wanda. BCGs Willers notes that some companies even give the target management control of the post-M&A integration process. ChemChina is a big proponent of keeping local staff intact. It acquired German plastics machinery maker KraussMaffei with investors Guoxin and AGIC Capital in January for $1 billion after promising to add rather than cut jobs. And in 2015 ChemChina placed the management of Italian tyremaker Pirelli in charge of post-merger integration, after acquiring it for $7.7 billion. Click for full view 5) Clear post-M&A plans The ultimate test of an M&A occurs after the deal is completed. Yuan said synergies, or finding and making cost savings and eliminating resource overlaps, are particularly important at this time. Many people might think the first thing to do after acquiring a company is integration, he said. But in the internet age, speed decides the fate of a company. Integration takes a large amount of time. The best way to complement different sides advantages is synergy. Guo Guangchang, chairman of Fosun International, agrees that the success of acquisitions depends heavily on post-deal planning. We firmly believe a good investment demonstrates its true value after the completion of the deal, he said. A successful investment needs more successful management afterwards [to achieve the investment value]. Fosun does this by preparing a post-agreement plan when making a bid. Based on Fosuns experience and resources, we will design [a] detailed 100-day plan with companies in which we invest a bid to quickly establish the cooperation ties with each other, Guo said. Its a point Aga Guzewska-Radzka, head of M&A for Asia at Accenture Strategy, underlines. The 100-day plan is essential, and it needs to be ready to go from day one, she told FinanceAsia. Otherwise the target company risks being in limbo and its most talented staff and clients are in danger of being poached.
Shandong Ruyi Technology Group has agreed to buy a majority stake in French fashion group SMCP in a deal that points the way for other struggling Chinese textile producers by securing sales streams for its core business and improving its access to China's growing affluent.

Ruyi and SMCP have not disclosed how large a stake the former is acquiring in the latter, or exactly how much for. However, it is believed the company may be spending around $1.3 billion on the stake. Bankers familiar with the deal would not confirm or deny this reported figure.

Most of the shares in the acquisition will come from Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the US private equity company that bought a 70% stake in SMCP in 2013 for just under 700 million ($795.46 million). Company founders Evelyn Chetrite, Ilan Chetrite, and Judith Milgrom own the remaining 30%, and they are reinvesting alongside Ruyi.

SMCP consists of a set of so-called accessible luxury fashion companies designed to appeal to middle-class buyers. The Paris-headquartered company, which reported 33% net sales growth in 2015, has been seeking to expand internationally for a few years.

Ruyi beat out an array of rival financial and corporate bidders to gain control of SMCP via a two-round auction process that began in late 2015. The French company had also filed paperwork for a listing on the Paris Stock Exchange, as KKR put pressure on potential bidders by keeping its exit options open.

A banker close to the deal said Ruyi succeeded in large part because it offers SMCP access to China's ballooning middle class. Meanwhile, SMCP and its accessible luxury brands Sandro, Maje, and Claudie Pierot provide Ruyi with a downstream outlet that it can use to appeal to this fast-growing bourgeoisie. The companies mostly focus on female fashion, often selling items at around the HK$3,000 ($386.83) mark.

KKR is exiting most of its stake in SMCP but will keep a minority stake. The banker said this was a sign of its confidence that the tie-up with Ruyi offered promising growth opportunities for the French company.

Paddling downstream

Ruyi is believed to have been looking for offshore clothes companies to acquire or merge with for years to help it expand beyond its traditional textile-making business.

Ruyi realised a few years ago that converting cotton to yarn to make raw materials to sell to branded companies was very low margin and capital intensive and that it was going nowhere, particularly with the price of cotton deteriorating, the banker said.

China's once dominant textile-making position has slipped due to intense pressure from regional rivals such as Vietnam, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka. That has left local jobs under increased pressure.

So to help secure its own future, Ruyi in 2010 bought a 41.18% stake in Japanese clothing company Japanese Renown for 5 billion (then about $44 million). It initially looked for a US acquisition too but this failed to materialise. However, when SMCP's potential sale emerged, Ruyi was quick to get involved.

Owning the end sales outlet offers certain inventory advantages for Ruyi. For a start, it can better control how much it produces and it has a captive seller in the form of its own new subsidiary.

The arrangement has the potential to work well for SMCP too.

The company has around 400 stores in France but there's no reason it couldn't open up thousands in China, with the backing of Ruyi, the banker said. For SMCP it's a good deal too; the founders realised [that] going after Chinese women made sense, whether they were travelling or at home. And to capture the wallets of what could eventually be 500 million annual tourists requires a core brand in China itself.

Perhaps the crux of the deal for SMCP's founders, however, was the promise by Ruyi to keep all the current management in place and basically leave the company to its own devices, except when it came to expanding in China.

The endorsement of the management was key to the success of this deal, the banker familiar with the deal said. "Without that they couldn't get the deal moving forward. Ruyi was keen to emphasise that they don't want to touch the company today, instead they have gone in to learn and observe, before they empower and grow the business.

Ruyi's strategy of acquiring its way out of an industrial dead-end could well be replicated by other companies, either in the fashion space or through consolidation with higher end technology companies in the textiles space. That would be welcome news for the Chinese government, which is loathe to see the thousands of Chinese still employed in textiles losing their jobs.

Financing appeal

Ruyi's financial adviser JP Morgan is understood to have fully underwritten the acquisition financing package for Ruyi, which has to take into account and refinance an outstanding bond issue of SMCP.

In addition, Ruyi chairman Yafu Qiu had his company secure capital from Chinese funds to help ensure his company's offer stood above the competition's. Part of the reason he is believed to have won is because he felt he could offer more money and then make it back by helping SMCP to quickly expand sales in China.

Chinese companies are aggressively supportive of these M&As and are entirely willing to lend to the major shareholder [in order for them to then buy shares in the target], which is an advantage because it is considered equity instead of debt financing [at the target level], the banker familiar with the deal said. And the owner can afford to pay a premium to the asset's value and recover it [by increasing the target's] selling into the Chinese market.

Several other Chinese companies conducting offshore M&As have borrowed at the owner level in addition to leveraging up their targets with debt. Examples include WH Group, which acquired US pork foods manufacturer Smithfield for $7.1 billion in 2013, and Bright Food's acquisition of 60% Weetabix in 2012, which was followed by Baring Private Equity taking the remaining 40% of the business in 2015.

Ruyi was advised by JP Morgan on the acquisition, while Bank of America Merrill Lynch and UBS were financial advisers to SMCP and KKR.

Story updated to reflect the fact that Shandong Ruyi gained additional money from Chinese funds to support the purchase, not from Chinese banks.
Many advisors tout the tax efficiency of exchange-traded funds to their clients.

The tax efficiency of ETFs comes from the way capital gains are handled within the fund, said Claudia E. Mott, a CFP and principal at Epona Financial Solutions in Basking Ridge, N.J.

Although mutual fund managers create capital gains that are passed on to investors when they sell securities to meet redemptions or rebalance the funds holdings, because an ETF is like a stock, no redemptions occur if a large number of investors sell their holdings. However, if a security in an ETF needs to be liquidated in an in-kind exchange, that can be used to minimize the capital gains.

But advisors should also let clients know that when they sell a mutual fund or ETF they may incur another form of capital gain, either short- or long-term, if their security has appreciated from the time it was purchased, Mott said.

The calculation of this gain is no different between the two investments.

ETFs are more tax-efficient than open-end mutual funds, because they typically do not generate capital gains distributions from trading activity inside the fund, said James J. Bruyette, managing director at Sullivan Bruyette Speros & Blayney in McLean, Va.

They also easily lend themselves to tax-loss swaps, which involve selling one fund with an unrealized loss and immediately purchasing a second fund that pursues a reasonably similar but not identical strategy, he said. These swaps allow the client to recognize a tax loss without materially changing their investment strategy.

Wade Balliet, senior vice president and head of investment advisory and management at Bank of the Wests Wealth Management Group in Denver, said that his team uses ETFs as a supplement to the firms active managers for asset classes for clients who dont want exposure to year-end capital gains distributions that come with an active mutual fund.

Additionally, we can use a number of approved ETFs for tax-loss harvesting -- selling stocks that have negative returns for the year -- selling the stocks to realize the loss and buying an ETF to maintain exposure in the portfolio until the 31 days have passed, he said.

Michael T. McKevitt, a CFP and planner at Guillaume & Freckman in Palatine, Ill., said that his firm uses ETFs proactively throughout the year for clients who are above the 15% tax bracket where the gains actually matter, and especially for those whose joint income is above $250,000

that triggers the [Affordable Care Act] surtax.

This year worked out even better than usual, as we took losses in individual energy companies and bought the energy ETF, he said. In many cases, we were buying the stock back much cheaper than when we had sold [it], while the ETF didn't perform as poorly during that time period.

Katie Kuehner-Hebert is a freelance writer in Running Springs, Calif. She has contributed to American Banker, Risk & Insurance and Human Resource Executive.

This story is part of a 30-30 series on smart ETF strategies.

Read more:
An arbitration panel ordered a barred broker to pay UBS $900,000 for allegedly breaching promissory notes he signed with the firm.

The panel, which issued its ruling last week, also rejected the ex-advisor's counterclaims for damages related to allegations that UBS had changed some of the conditions in his employment contract without his knowledge, according to a copy of the award.

UBS initiated the arbitration proceedings in December 2014, two months after David Lavine left the firm.

Lavine, who was based in Houston, resigned from the wirehouse "while under review for soliciting prospective and current UBS clients to invest in private investments outside the firm," according to a note on his FINRA BrokerCheck record.

In January 2015, FINRA barred Lavine for failing to cooperate with a FINRA investigation into allegations that Lavine "exceeded the scope of an approved outside business activity and/or engaged in an unapproved private securities transaction."

He consented to the regulator's findings without admitting or denying any wrongdoing, according to FINRA disciplinary records.

Lavine, who was in the industry for nine years, had joined UBS from Morgan Stanley in 2011, BrokerCheck records show.

He could not be reached for comment. His attorney, Andrew Harvin, declined to comment.

In arbitration, UBS claimed that Lavine had breached six promissory notes. Lavine rejected the charges. He alleged that his employment contract "contained express conditions concerning his clients in the event of his separation from UBS," according to a copy of the award.

Lavine said that "these conditions were omitted from a subsequent version of the employment contract without his knowledge or consent."

At the end of hearings, he asked the arbitration panel to grant him nearly $1.2 million for misconduct including fraud, negligence and breach of contract.

The panel of three arbitrators rejected his claims and awarded UBS almost $900,000 in damages, but no attorney's fees. As is customary, the arbitrators provided no explanation with their ruling.

"UBS is pleased with the arbitrators decision in this matter," a spokesman said.

Read more:
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.
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Alaska Air Group Inc. (ALK ) is expected to announce on Monday that it won the auction for Virgin America Inc. (VA), besting rival JetBlue Airways Corp. (JBLU) in a bidding process that culminated in a cash price of about $2.5 billion, the Wall street journal reported citing people familiar with the matter. The report indicated that The deal signed Friday night was more than $1 billion over Virgin America's market capitalization on Friday, which had started to rise last month on takeover speculation. San Francisco-based Virgin America, which began flying in 2007, is 54%-owned by Richard Branson's Virgin Group Ltd. and New York-based Cyrus Capital Partners LP. The company went public in November 2014. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The Australian dollar weakened against the other major currencies in the Asian session on Monday. The Australian dollar fell to an 8-day low of 85.02 against the yen, from last week's closing value of 85.69. The aussie dropped to 1.4936 against the euro, from Friday's closing value of 1.4824. Against the U.S., the New Zealand and the Canadian dollars, the aussie edged down to 0.7636, 1.1074 and 0.9957 from last week's closing quotes of 0.7673, 1.1105 and 0.9984, respectively. If the aussie extends its downtrend, it is likely to find support around 82.00 against the yen, 1.53 against the euro, 0.74 against the greenback, 1.08 against the kiwi and 0.98 against the loonie. 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 CITY (dpa-AFX) - Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) said that it agreed to sell its equity stake in Mphasis Limited, an IT services provider in Bangalore, to private equity funds managed by The Blackstone Group (BX).



As per the terms of the deal, Blackstone has agreed to purchase at least 84% of HPE's stake in Mphasis for INR 430 per share. Blackstone will purchase the maximum amount of the remaining 16% stake that is permitted by Indian securities laws and subject to the outcome of a mandatory tender offer between signing and closing. At the proposed price, HPE's stake is valued at approximately $825 million.



While HPE's decision to exit its equity position in Mphasis aligns with its current capital allocation priorities, the agreement is not expected to have any adverse impact on HPE's ongoing commercial relationship with the company.



In fact, HPE plans to renew the current master services agreement with Mphasis for another five years in connection with this transaction.



The transaction is expected to close in the second half of fiscal 2016, subject to agreed closing conditions.



HPE recognized approximately $650 million of revenue and $110 million of operating profit from Mphasis, on a fully consolidated basis, in fiscal year 2015. HPE recognized approximately $75 million of pre-tax earnings, representing its 60.48% ownership of Mphasis, in fiscal year 2015.



The sale of the equity position in Mphasis is not expected to impact HPE Enterprise Services' ability to achieve its previously provided fiscal year 2016 operating margin outlook of 6-7% or longer-term 7-9% operating profit margin target.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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PEACHTREE CITY, Georgia, April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --Wencor Group announced today the signing of a 5-year distribution agreement with Sofrance, a subsidiary of the Safran Group. This agreement gives Wencor semi-exclusive territory rights to sell commercial filter products in Europe, the Americas and Asia.

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"We are thrilled to strengthen our partnership with Sofrance. Delivering high performing filtration products through the Wencor channel gives global customers what they need, when and where they need it," said Jason Caldwell, President of Wencor Distribution.

Wencor's success in the filters category is largely due to its focus on developing strong strategic partnerships with well-known industry leaders like Sofrance. As partners, Wencor and Sofrance are committed to providing customers with innovative products and excellent customer service. Wencor continues to expand its filter product offering to become one of the largest aftermarket filter distributors in the world.

Alain Akoum, Head of Aftermarket and Customer Service for Sofrance, stated "The selection of Wencor as our global distribution partner is based on their industry expertise, strong customer relationships and their extensive footprint of distribution facilities around the world. Customers will benefit from enhanced customer service and Sofrance will further grow its critical role in aerospace filtration."

About Wencor Group

Wencor Group provides innovative quality solutions to the aerospace industry. Services include OEM and aftermarket parts distribution, PMA design and MRO repair. Corporate affiliates include: Wencor, Aerospace Coatings International, Soundair Aviation Services, PHS/MWA Aviation Services, Flight Line Products, Xtra Aerospace, and Kitco Defense. Wencor Group is headquartered in the Atlanta metro area with additional offices in Utah, Amsterdam, Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai, Istanbul, Miami, Seattle, Alabama, and Southern California. For more information, please visit www.wencorgroup.com.

About Sofrance

Sofrance develops optimum solutions that purify fluids and protect systems. Sofrance's founding began in the early 1940's with a focus in filtration solutions for automotive and industrial applications. By the late 1950's, Sofrance expanded into the aerospace industry focusing on key programs like the A320 aircraft and the CFM56 engines. Today, Sofrance is part of the Safran Group and has become a leading aerospace and industrial player for on-board fluid filtration systems (fuel, oil, water, air). Investment in research and new technologies are important to Sofrance's strategy, which is why 15% of annual revenue is re-invested back into R&D. To learn more, please visit www.sofrance.com.

For more information, please contact Jason Caldwell at +1-678-490-0140.
Rathbone Brothers Plc ('Rathbones') Change of Company Secretary Rathbones announces that Ali Johnson has joined the group today and will succeed Richard Loader as Company Secretary when he steps down on 30 April 2016. The board would like to thank Richard for his much valued contribution to the success of the group over the years. Ali joins from Signet Jewellers where he was Director of Company Secretarial Services for over 8 years. Prior to this, Ali held Group Company Secretary and Assistant Company Secretary roles at Time Warner Group, Affinity Homes Group and Vanco Plc. The board is delighted to welcome him to the role. ENDS 04 April 2016 For further information contact: Rathbone Brothers Plc Camarco Tel: 020 7399 0000 Tel: 020 3757 4984 email: shelly.chadda@rathbones.com email: ed.gascoigne-pees@camarco.co.uk Philip Howell, Chief Executive Ed Gascoigne-Pees Paul Stockton, Finance Director Shelly Chadda, Investor Relations Manager Rathbone Brothers Plc Rathbone Brothers Plc ('Rathbones'), through its subsidiaries, is a leading provider of high-quality, personalised investment and wealth management services for private clients, charities and trustees. This includes discretionary investment management, unit trusts, tax planning, trust and company management, pension advice and banking services. Rathbones has over 1,000 staff in 15 UK locations and Jersey, and currently has its headquarters in Curzon Street, London. rathbones.com This announcement is distributed by GlobeNewswire on behalf of GlobeNewswire clients. The owner of this announcement warrants that: (i) the releases contained herein are protected by copyright and other applicable laws; and (ii) they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein. Source: Rathbone Brothers Plc via GlobeNewswire [HUG#2000055] 0214834R22 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--(Newsfile Corp. - May 24, 2016) - Royal Road Minerals Limited (TSXV: RYR) (the "Company"), a gold focused mineral exploration and development company, is pleased to announce that pursuant to the approved work program ("PTO", approved by Colombia's Agencia Nacional de Mineria) and environmental license (see Press Release April 27) for the La Golondrina gold mine, exploration drilling is now permitted at the project.

An initial scout diamond drilling program of between 1000 and 1500 meters is planned at La Golondrina. This will be the first drilling program to be conducted at the project with drilling expected to commence by August of this year. Holes will target known vein and vein-zone occurrences close to the intrusive contact with adjacent metasomatic hornfels, along strike extensions of this contact as indicated by ground magnetic data and other high-grade gold mineralized vein occurrences corresponding to often coincident magnetic and IP chargeability anomalies.

"In preparation for drilling we have commissioned a significant reprocessing and overhaul of geophysical and other available data at the La Golondrina project" said Dr Tim Coughlin, President and CEO of Royal Road Minerals "The geophysics is currently being reprocessed using mapped geological constraints and measured rock properties such as magnetic susceptibility, estimated resistivity and IP-chargeability. Early indications are encouraging, showing convincing sub-horizontal combined magnetic and IP anomalies some of which appear to be spatially related to known high-grade gold veins and underground mine development. We have received quotations and expressions of interest from five drilling contractors and depending on rig availability, we hope to commence drilling sometime before the end of August."

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.

The information in this news release was compiled, reviewed and verified by Dr. Tim Coughlin, BSc (Geology), MSc (Exploration and Mining), PhD (Structural Geology), FAusIMM, President and CEO of Royal Road Minerals Ltd and a qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101. Royal Road Minerals' employees are instructed to follow standard operating and quality assurance procedures intended to ensure that all exploration work including sampling techniques and sample results meet international reporting standards. More information can be found on Royal Road Minerals web site at www.royalroadminerals.com

Cautionary statement:

This news release may contain certain information that constitutes forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are frequently characterized by words such as "plan," "expect," "project," "intend," "believe," "anticipate" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur and include statements regarding the Offering and the use of proceeds therefrom. Forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management at the date the statements are made, and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. These factors include the inherent risks involved in the hiring and retention of directors and officers, exploration and development of mineral properties, mine site planning and development, the uncertainties involved in interpreting drilling results and other geological data, fluctuating metal prices, permitting and licensing and other factors described above and in the Company's most recent annual information form under the heading "Risk Factors", which has been filed electronically by means of the Canadian Securities Administrators' website located at www.sedar.com. The Company disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements if circumstances or management's estimates or opinions should change. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

For further information please contact:

Dr. Tim Coughlin

President and Chief Executive Officer

USA-Canada toll free 1800 6389205

+44 (0)1534 887166

+44 (0)7797 742800

info@royalroadminerals.com
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Curis, Inc. (CRIS) Monday announced the publication of results from the dose escalation part of the Phase 1 clinical trial of CUDC-907 in the journal Lancet Oncology. According to the company CUDC-907 demonstrated objective responses, including complete responses, in patients with relapsed/refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. The publication is also accompanied by an independent commentary in the journal titled 'Dual inhibition of oncogenic targets for B-cell malignancies.' Anas Younes, chief of the Lymphoma Service of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and the Principal Investigator of the Phase 1 trial said, 'The data from the Phase 1 monotherapy trial for CUDC-907, especially in heavily pretreated patients with relapsed/ refractory DLBCL are very encouraging and we look forward to data emerging from the current Phase 2 trial in patients with MYC-altered DLBCL.' Curis has started Phase 2 trial to evaluate CUDC-907 in patients with MYC-altered RR-DLBCL. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
DUBLIN, April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Although the U.S. automotive industry is committed to fitting most light vehicles with lifesaving automatic braking systems by 2022, it will be a number of years before commercial vehicles and large trucks receive the same technology. Automatic emergency braking (AEB) could decrease truck fatalities by between 44-47%, research from the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute has found, leading four key groups within the trucking industry to call for industry-wide AEB implementation. The global collision avoidance system market is expected to reach a value of USD 50.38 billion by 2020 , according to a report available from Research and Markets, but this forecast could be higher if AEB becomes a trucking industry standard.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160330/349511LOGO )



The Truck Safety Coalition, Center for Auto Safety, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, and Road Safe America filed a petition last month requesting that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration make AEB mandatory for all new trucks. Developing reliable automated safety systems for commercial vehicles and trucks is a greater challenge due to the vehicles larger size and heavier weight. It's necessary to ensure that an AEB system would not cause the vehicle to flip or lose control in the event of rapid braking. The NHTSA is expecting it will take some time to develop the required technology, and while they have granted the aforementioned petition, no defined timeline has been set in place for when the change will be implemented.

The global heavy trucks on-board diagnostics system market is set to grow at a CAGR of 3.27% by 2019, as forecast in a recent report. However, this growth could be higher than predicted if automakers are able to quickly develop AEB technology for trucks, as such technology will require on-board diagnostics.

The global automotive sensors market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.72% by 2020, as predicted in a recent report, but this growth will likely be far greater if the NHTSA incentivizes the development of automotive sensors technology for AEB systems in the U.S. truck industry.

For further information on this topic, and a full list of all related documentation, please visit the Automotive Safety section at http://www.researchandmarkets.com/rm/NLOS.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/trucksdotcom/2016/04/04/automatic-braking/2/#662408f074d8

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It was hard to keep track of the details of all of the deals struck during the frenzy of Mexico's first electricity auction following the nation's energy reform. We knew that Canadian Solar was one of four solar power companies that won PV projects in the country, and the Chinese company has now released further details about the plant it will build. The 63MW solar PV plant will be developed and built by Canadian Solar, in Aguascalientes, which is a north-central state in Mexico. It is expecting to take a little over two years to get the site operational, with a September 2018 date given for the plant to be connected to the grid. "We are delighted to ...

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/04/16 -- Port Metro Vancouver's 2016 cruise season officially kicks off today with the arrival of the Star Princess at Canada Place. Vancouver expects to welcome approximately 830,000 passengers on 228 calls, reflecting a forecasted three per cent increase in passenger volume over 2015.

"2016 marks the 30th anniversary of Canada Place," said Robin Silvester, President and Chief Executive Officer at Port Metro Vancouver. "Our award-winning cruise facilities at Canada Place welcome thousands of visitors to beautiful Vancouver every year."

The results of a joint passenger survey by Port Metro Vancouver, Tourism Vancouver, Destination B.C., and Vancouver International Airport in 2015 indicated an increased percentage of international cruise passengers coming to Vancouver, boosting economic impact in the region.

The Vancouver cruise industry stimulates more than $2 million in economic activity for each ship that calls at Canada Place.

Port Metro Vancouver was recently awarded the Best Destination Experience by Cruise Insight Magazine at the 2016 Seatrade Cruise Global Conference, the cruise industry's premier global event, held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

"This award is a testament to the collective work of all the tourism partners who consistently deliver a dynamic pre-and post-cruise experience for the many cruise passengers visiting Vancouver each year," said Ty Speer, President and Chief Executive Officer of Tourism Vancouver.

Port Metro Vancouver is proud of the positive relationships built over many years with its cruise line customers.

"Holland America was the first cruise line to call the new Canada Place cruise terminal on April 28, 1986," continued Robin Silvester. "We value our partnership with Holland America Line very highly, and look forward to continuing to build on this great relationship for many years to come."

"Holland America Line has been sailing to Alaska from Port Metro Vancouver for more than 40 years, and our historic connection is deepened by the fact that one of our ships was the first cruise ship to berth at Canada Place back in 1986," said Orlando Ashford, President, Holland America Line. "Our guests rank Vancouver among their favorite cities, and the ease and convenience of the port make it all the more popular. Congratulations to Canada Place on celebrating its 30th anniversary, and we look forward to an extremely robust and successful Alaska season sailing from Vancouver."

Environmental stewardship is a priority for Port Metro Vancouver. In collaboration with the cruise industry and BC Hydro, the port authority continues to work toward increasing the use of shore power by cruise ships calling Vancouver. Shore power reduces marine diesel air emissions by allowing ships to shut down their engines and connect to BC Hydro's electrical grid while at dock. Since inception in 2009, the shore power installations at Canada Place have reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 14,000 tonnes.

About Port Metro Vancouver:

Port Metro Vancouver is Canada's largest port and the third largest tonnage port in North America, responsible for Canada's trade with more than 170 world economies. Located in a naturally beautiful setting on Canada's west coast, Port Metro Vancouver is responsible for the efficient and reliable movement of goods and passengers, and integrates environmental, social and economic sustainability initiatives into all areas of port operations. Port Metro Vancouver is committed to meaningful engagement with the communities in which it operates and the shared obligation to improve the quality of life for Canadians. Enabling the trade of approximately $200 billion in goods in 2015, the port generates an estimated 100,000 jobs, $6.1 billion in wages, and $9.7 billion in GDP across Canada. As a non-shareholder, financially self-sufficient corporation established by the Government of Canada, Port Metro Vancouver operates pursuant to the Canada Marine Act and is accountable to the elected federal Minister of Transport.

For more information

Highlights in 2016:

-- We look forward to the return of the Disney Wonder, and all our returning homeported vessels from Princess Cruises, Norwegian Cruise Line, Celebrity Cruises and Royal Caribbean International. -- Crystal Cruises returns to homeport in Vancouver this year, with eight sailings on the Serenity, bringing more than 13,000 passengers, making it the first time Crystal Cruises has homeported in Vancouver since 2005. -- Holland America Line's Nieuw Amsterdam will make her inaugural call to Vancouver on April 30. The Nieuw Amsterdam will call Vancouver her homeport, offering 24 roundtrip sailings, bringing more than 100,000 passengers. -- Compagnie Du Ponant's Le Soleal, sister ship of Le Boreal and L'Austral, will make her inaugural call on June 18. -- March 2016, during Seatrade Cruise Global Conference, Cruise Insight Magazine presented Port Metro Vancouver with the award for "Best Destination Experience".

Audio quote: Robin Silvester, President and Chief Executive Officer, Port Metro Vancouver (MP3)

2016 cruise schedule

Contacts:

Julia Ren

Media & Government Affairs Advisor

julia.ren@portmetrovancouver.com

604-665-9267




On The Road to Hannover Messe highlights importance of America's role as partner country at world's largest and most important trade show for industrial technology

Remarks from German Ambassador to the United States Peter Wittig, Deputy Commerce Secretary Bruce Andrews, and Siemens AG Managing Board Member and CTO Siegfried Russwurm

Expert panel features participants from National Association of Manufacturers, Google, Local Motors, and Infineon Technologies North America

With the United States serving as the partner country for Hannover Messe 2016, the German Embassy, in cooperation with Siemens, hosted a special event today focused on the fair's importance as the U.S. and Germany deepen and broaden cooperation in shaping the new age of industry combining Germany's engineering prowess with America's leadership in software.

This month, President Barack Obama will join German Chancellor Angela Merkel to open Hannover Messe 2016 (April 25 29), marking the first time a sitting U.S. president has participated in the fair. Led by the Commerce Department, approximately 300 companies from the world's largest economy will present their solutions for networked industry at the Hannover Exhibition Center and meet potential business partners from all over the world.

"We are delighted that President Obama has decided to join Chancellor Merkel for the opening ceremony of the Hannover Messe. We look forward to hosting the strongest delegation of American manufacturers and industrial technology innovators in the history of the Hannover Messe," said Peter Wittig, German Ambassador to the United States. "In today's world of manufacturing, both our countries have a lot to bring to the table. Traditionally, Germany's strengths lie in the field of engineering and, here in the U.S., companies produce cutting-edge software. When these two forces are combined, they pave the way for what is called the 'factory of the future.'"

"The United States and Germany are critical partners in virtually every major global challenge we face today, from geopolitical and security issues to our robust, economic, commercial and investment relationship," said U.S. Deputy Secretary of Commerce Bruce Andrews. "The 2016 Hannover Messe will only strengthen the relationship between our two countries. Partner Country Status provides U.S. companies a unique opportunity to showcase American innovation to a global audience, and forge business relationships with German companies that will support more Trans-Atlantic trade.

"German industry is looking forward to having the United States as our Hanover Fair partner this year. In particular, it will be a great honor and privilege to have President Obama join Chancellor Merkel to officially open the event," said Professor Russwurm, Member of the Managing Board and Chief Technology Officer, Siemens AG. "As in past years, the Hanover Fair will offer an ideal opportunity to showcase a fascinating spectrum of industrial developments. And at the same time, give the world a glimpse of the progress being made in shaping an entirely new industrial world."

Today's event included a panel discussion focused on the integration of cutting-edge software and tried and tested engineering. Expert panelists included Jay Timmons, President and CEO, National Association of Manufacturers (NAM); Ross LaJeunesse, Global Head of International Relations, Google; Justin Fishkin, Chief Strategy Officer, Local Motors; and Joerg Borchert, VP Chip Card Security ICs, Infineon Technologies North America Corp.

"Manufacturing in the United States is leading an innovation revolution-a revolution that will win us jobs and raise standards of living," said Jay Timmons, President and CEO of NAM. "That revolution will be on display at the Hannover Messe, where the world will see exactly how manufacturers in the U.S. are harnessing the power of digital technology to transform both the products we make and how we make them."

"As we continue to shape the future of manufacturing, the U.S. and Germany have much to learn from each other. America's participation as partner country at Hannover Messe in Germany presents an outstanding opportunity for leaders in industry and software to advance efforts to share capabilities, boost trade and create jobs in the future," said Eric Spiegel, President and CEO, Siemens USA

For further information on U.S. manufacturing and Hannover Messe 2016, visit: http://siemensusa.synapticdigital.com/HannoverMesse2016

Follow us on Twitter at: www.twitter.com/siemensusa

To receive expert insights, sign up for Siemens' U.S. Executive Pulse leadership blog

Siemens Corporation is a U.S. subsidiary of Siemens AG, a global powerhouse focusing on the areas of electrification, automation and digitalization. One of the world's largest producers of energy-efficient, resource-saving technologies, Siemens is a leading supplier of systems for power generation and transmission as well as medical diagnosis. With approximately 348,000 employees in more than 190 countries, Siemens reported worldwide revenue of $86.2 billion in fiscal 2015. Siemens in the USA reported revenue of $22.4 billion, including $5.5 billion in exports, and employs approximately 50,000 people throughout all 50 states and Puerto Rico.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160404006488/en/

Contacts:

Siemens Corporation

Brie Sachse, 202 730 1013

brie.sachse@siemens.com
GLASGOW, SCOTLAND -- (Marketwired) -- 04/04/16 -- HCi Viocare (OTCQB: VICA) ("HCi Viocare", the "Company") today announced its board of directors has agreed to source up to EUR 30 million in funding. Proceeds from the financing will be used for marketing its patent pending 'smart insole', the development of its other Smart Medical solutions, for general operating capital, as well as the expansion of its proposed chain of independent prosthetics and orthotics (P&O) and diabetic foot clinics.

"The financing will be instrumental in moving the Company forward in the Smart Medical field as well as expanding our base of prosthetic, orthotic and diabetic foot clinics," stated Sotiris Leontaritis, CEO and President of HCi Viocare.

The securities referred to herein will not be or have not been registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from registration, under the Act.

Company website: www.hciviocare.com

Glasgow clinic website: www.hci-viocare.co.uk

Twitter: @HCiViocare

Glasgow location:

HCi Viocare, Kintyre House, 209 Govan Road, Glasgow G51 1HJ

Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions and are identified by words such as "expects': "intends", "estimates': "projects", "anticipates': "believes': "could': and other similar words. All statements addressing product performance, events, or developments that the Company expects or anticipates will occur in the future are forward-looking statements. Because the statements are forward-looking, they should be evaluated in light of important risk factors and uncertainties, some of which are described in the Company's Quarterly, Annual and Current Reports filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC'). Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should any of the Company's underlying assumptions prove correct, actual results may vary materially from those currently anticipated. In addition, undue reliance should not be placed on Company's forward-looking statements. In particular, the Company has only recently acquired its first operational Prosthetics & Orthotics (P&O) clinic and is continuing development efforts for its other biomedical technologies, including a its force sensing technology with several potential applications. There is no assurance that the Company will be successful in its ongoing expansion and development efforts, or that it will find suitable commercialization partners for its technologies. Except as required by law, HCi Viocare disclaims any obligation to update or publicly announce any revisions to any of the forward-looking statements contained in this press release. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. No stock exchange, securities commission or other regulatory body has reviewed nor accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Investors are advised to carefully review the reports and documents that HCi Viocare files from time to time with the SEC, including its Annual, Quarterly and Current Reports.

Mikulas Dylowicz

Investor Relations

T: +30 2110123053

mikulas.dylowicz@hciviocare.com




Pacific Drilling S.A. (NYSE: PACD) announced today that its Notice of Extraordinary General Meeting of Shareholders is available on its website at www.pacificdrilling.com in the "Events Presentations" subsection of the "Investor Relations" section. In addition, the Notice is being distributed to Pacific Drilling common shareholders of record as of March 18, 2016 in advance of the Extraordinary General Meeting, which will be held on May 2, 2016, at 11:30 a.m. (Central European Time) at the company's registered office, located at 8-10 Avenue de la Gare, L-1610 Luxembourg.

The Company's financial statements for the year ended Dec. 31, 2015, filed on Form 20-F with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on March 1, 2016, are also available on the Company's website in the "SEC Filings" subsection of the "Investor Relations" section. Shareholders may also request a free hard copy of the filing, which includes the company's complete 2015 audited financial statements, by emailing investor@pacificdrilling.com or by dialing +1 832-255-0600.

About Pacific Drilling

With its best-in-class drillships and highly experienced team, Pacific Drilling is committed to becoming the industry's preferred ultra-deepwater drilling contractor. Pacific Drilling's fleet of seven drillships represents one of the youngest and most technologically advanced fleets in the world. For more information about Pacific Drilling, including its current Fleet Status, please visit www.pacificdrilling.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160404006549/en/

Contacts:

Pacific Drilling

John Boots, +352 26 84 57 81

Investor@pacificdrilling.com
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/04/16 -- In the news release, "SpeeDx Announces Distribution Agreement for PlexPCR and ResistancePlus Molecular Diagnostics Products With Goffin Molecular Technologies," issued earlier today by SpeeDx Pty, Ltd., we are advised by the company that the second sentence of the third paragraph should read "Mycoplasma genitalium" rather than "Mycobacterium genitalium" as originally issued. Complete corrected text follows

SpeeDx Announces Distribution Agreement for PlexPCR and ResistancePlus Molecular Diagnostics Products With Goffin Molecular Technologies

Goffin's Distribution Channels Will Allow Broader Availability and Accessibility of SpeeDx Diagnostics in the Benelux Markets

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA -- Apr 4, 2016 -- SpeeDx Pty, Ltd. today announced a distribution agreement with Goffin Molecular Technologies B.V., a molecular diagnostic company based in the Netherlands. The agreement will open new channels for SpeeDx' PlexPCR and unique ResistancePlus multiplex real time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) product lines to the Benelux market (Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg).

"The timing of this agreement aligns well with our near-term European launch plans to offer our PlexPCR infectious disease and ResistancePlus antibiotic resistance multiplex qPCR tests in the Benelux market," said Colin Denver, Vice President of Sales & Marketing, SpeeDx. "Based on Goffin's track record, we're confident that this collaboration will rapidly increase our European presence in targeted molecular diagnostic markets."

SpeeDx is committed to pioneering multiplex molecular diagnostic solutions for the global antibiotic resistance problem by offering tests that not only identify infectious disease pathogens, but provide actionable information on the antimicrobial resistance status of the pathogen. SpeeDx is initially focusing its ResistancePlus pipeline on sexually transmitted infections (STIs) such as Mycoplasma genitalium (MG) and Neisseria gonorrhoeae (NG) since both organisms have large and rapidly growing antibiotic resistance challenges.

Goffin Molecular Technologies offers a comprehensive line of molecular diagnostic products in the areas of infectious diseases, genetics, automation, consumables, reagents, instruments and pre-analytical treatments. Goffin's qPCR kit for the determination of Chlamydia trachomatis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae (CT/NG) is the company's most successful assay in Europe. "We see our relationship with SpeeDx strengthening our core strategy as we continue to focus on new market needs," said Eric van Vught, Director of Sales, Goffin Molecular Technologies.

About SpeeDx

Based in Sydney, Australia and founded in 2009, SpeeDx is a privately owned company that specializes in providing innovative multiplex real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) and isothermal amplification solutions for clinical diagnostics. SpeeDx's portfolio of market leading detection and priming technologies enable new healthcare paradigms that lead to improved delivery and reduced costs. SpeeDx has a proven track record of continued scientific discovery and strives to provide ever improving tools to the Clinical Diagnostic market. For more information on SpeeDx please see: http://www.speedx.com.au/

About PlexPCR and ResistancePlus

PlexPCR and ResistancePlus constitute multiplex qPCR kits for detection of infectious disease pathogens and antimicrobial resistance markers, respectively. Powered by the company's proprietary PlexZyme and PlexPrime technologies, both product lines offer high multiplexing capability for better infectious disease management. All PlexPCR tests detect more pathogens and the ResistancePlus tests detect multiple genetic markers for antimicrobial resistance to provide more actionable information per test.

About Goffin Molecular Technologies

Based in the Netherlands, Goffin Molecular Technologies specializes in the distribution of molecular diagnostic equipment and products in the Benelux for a number of healthcare companies and in Europe for their own line of molecular diagnostic products. Goffin has developed intensive collaborations with customers, research centres, hospitals, manufacturers, suppliers and distributors that have enabled the company to quickly respond to the rapidly evolving needs of the molecular diagnostic market. After the development of several unique and reliable assays for sexually transmitted diseases, Goffin continues to focus on new market needs. For more information please see: http://www.goffinmoleculartechnologies.com/.

Contacts



Rick Roose

CoActive Public Relations

+1 415 202 4445

rick@coactivepr.com




Symply Inc. came out of stealth mode today with an exciting focus on making high-performance, complex "rich media" storage better for everyone, from a single editor to an entire facility.

The new company, Symply Inc., assembles an all-star team of industry talent, with proven track records and decades of product design, solution engineering and media storage expertise. Symply creates exceptional new storage products that are "made for media," offering the highest levels of performance and functionality in new, approachable configurations. An employee-owned storage design company with locations in Los Angeles, New York and London, Symply designs, engineers and supports storage solutions, working closely on development and production with technology partner, Promise Technology.

"Symply is a different kind of startup. We started with a well-defined goal and product direction, and then brought together a team of proven experts to deliver real storage solutions to the most pressing problems that creative teams face today; and we do it in a new, innovative way," explained Alex Grossman, CEO of Symply Inc.

"This partnership is the dream team of talent for creating rich media storage," said James Lee, CEO of Promise Technology Inc. "The executives at Symply aren't just experienced in the category; they helped create it. They have great vision about what the rich media market needs and the future technical direction. We're absolutely thrilled to team up. The ultimate winner is anyone working with video."

Symply will unveil its new products at NAB 2016 in Las Vegas, in booth SL9321.

In addition to Symply products, Symply assumes all sales and field engineering responsibilities for Promise Technology's current rich media product line throughout the Americas, the U.K., France and Germany. Promise Technology will cover sales and support for rich media product lines in all other world regions.

About Symply Inc.

Symply Inc. creates high-performance digital storage for media creators and content owners, from the single editor to an entire facility. As a privately-held, employee-owned company with locations in Los Angeles, New York, and London, Symply blends intuitive, user-friendly software with rock-solid engineering to move storage from a need, to a want. For more information, visit http://www.gosymply.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160404006639/en/

Contacts:

for Symply Inc.

Naomi Pearce, +1-510-528-0824

pr@gosymply.com
LONDON, April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

One of the most anticipated events by UAE students looking to study abroad is fast approaching. The 10th Fujairah International Career and Education Fair this year will have the welcome participation of several Turkish universities.

One of the institutions to look for is Koc University, located in Istanbul, ranked #8 in the world's best small universities 2016 ranking by Times Higher Education and offering all undergraduate and graduate programs in English.

Koc University offers a liberal arts based curriculum in English at undergraduate level with a strong alumni employment track record for its Medical and Engineering colleges and at a fraction of the tuition costs of equivalently ranked universities in the US or the UK.

It also gives talented and research driven bachelor students the opportunity to earn aMasteror PhD degreein Sciences, Engineering, Social Sciences or Business disciplines withscholarships.



Three reasons to consider Istanbul and Koc University:

A beautiful campus in the historic and cosmopolitan city of Istanbul

State of the art research laboratories and facilities

Academic and industryemployability of our alumni

To see our undergraduate and graduate programs click here and you can email your questions anytime to study@ku.edu.tr

10th Fujairah International Career and Education Fair

On the directives of President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan declaring 2016 a (Year of Reading) in the United Arab Emirates, and under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Mohammad Al Sharqi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Fujairah, and with the presence of H.E. the Secretary General of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Dr. Abdul Latif Al Zayani, and based on the partnership with the London based Gulf Conferences LTD, the "10th Fujairah International Career and Education Fair 2016", under the theme: "We read, we move forward" will be held from 26-28 April 2016 at the Fujairah Exhibitions Centre in Fujairah U.A.E.

Point of Contact:

Wahdat Wassel

Event Business Developer, Gulf Conferences Ltd

14 Alexandria Road, London, W13 0NR, Tel: +44(0)203-597-7034 Fax: +44(0)203-322-5234

Email:ww@gulfconferences.co.uk Website: http://www.fujfair.com
ArcelorMittal S.A. / ArcelorMittal announces the successful completion of its c.US$3bn rights issue . Processed and transmitted by NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY IN OR INTO CANADA, AUSTRALIA, JAPAN OR ANY OTHER JURISDICTION IN WHICH TO DO SO WOULD BE PROHIBITED BY APPLICABLE LAW

Luxembourg, 4 April 2016

ArcelorMittal announces the successful completion of its c.US$3bn[1] (#_ftn1) rights issue

Strong investor support for ArcelorMittal's rights issue; total subscription rate of 126.9%

1,229,905,208 new shares subscribed for through the exercise of primary subscription rights under the rights, representing a subscription rate of 97.4%

Oversubscription demand for 372,398,986 shares

1,602,304,194 total new shares subscribed for including oversubscription shares, representing a total subscription rate of 126.9%

1,229,905,208 new shares were subscribed for through the exercise of primary subscription rights under the rights, representing 97.4% of new shares to be issued. Oversubscription demand amounted to 372,398,986 new shares, representing 11.5 times the number of surplus shares available after satisfaction of the primary subscription rights, and will, as a result, be satisfied only in part, i.e. for 32,446,323 new shares.

Surplus shares will be allocated to holders that submitted oversubscription requests on a pro-rata basis, in proportion to the number of rights exercised by each Holder (excluding the oversubscription), in each case in an amount that does not exceed the maximum number of additional New Shares requested.

Post capital increase, ArcelorMittal's issued share capital will consist of 3,065,710,869 shares without nominal value.

As announced on 5 February 2016, ArcelorMittal intends to use the net proceeds of the rights issue to reduce its indebtedness and to strengthen its balance sheet.

Settlement and delivery of new shares pursuant to rights held through the European clearing systems or directly in the European rights register is expected to take place on 8 April 2016. Delivery of new shares to holders of rights through DTC or the New York rights register is expected to take place on 11 April 2016. The new shares are expected to be admitted to trading on the European stock exchanges[2] (#_ftn2) on 8 April 2016 and on the New York Stock Exchange on 11 April 2016.

Ends

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release may contain forward-looking information and statements about ArcelorMittal and its subsidiaries. These statements include financial projections and estimates and their underlying assumptions, statements regarding plans, objectives and expectations with respect to future operations, products and services, and statements regarding future performance. Forward-looking statements may be identified by the words "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "target" or similar expressions. Although ArcelorMittal's management believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, investors and holders of ArcelorMittal's securities are cautioned that forward-looking information and statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, many of which are difficult to predict and generally beyond the control of ArcelorMittal, that could cause actual results and developments to differ materially and adversely from those expressed in, or implied or projected by, the forward-looking information and statements. These risks and uncertainties include those discussed or identified in the filings with the Luxembourg supervisory authority for the financial sector (Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier - CSSF) and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") made or to be made by ArcelorMittal, including ArcelorMittal's latest Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC, ArcelorMittal undertakes no obligation to publicly update its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.



For readers in the European Economic Area

This press release does not constitute an offer to sell, or the solicitation of an offer to buy or subscribe for, any securities of ArcelorMittal within the meaning of Luxembourg law and/or the laws of any other member state of the European Economic Area. This document does not constitute a prospectus within the meaning of EC Directive 2003/71/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council dated 4 November 2003, as amended (the "Prospectus Directive"), which expression includes any relevant implementing measure in the member state concerned, and should not be the basis for any agreement or decision to invest. Any offering of securities or new admission will be based exclusively on a prospectus prepared for that purpose. Further, ArcelorMittal has not authorized any offer to the public of securities in any member state of the European Economic Area that has implemented the Prospectus Directive, other than Luxembourg, the Netherlands, France and Spain, (each such state other than Luxembourg, the Netherlands, France and Spain, a "Relevant Member State"). With respect to each Relevant Member State, no action has been undertaken or will be undertaken to make an offer to the public of securities requiring publication of a prospectus in any Relevant Member State. For the offering of subscription rights in Luxembourg, the Netherlands, France and Spain, a European securities prospectus has been approved by the Luxembourg supervisory authority for the financial sector (Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier - CSSF) and passported into the Netherlands, France and Spain subsequent to notification having been given to the competent regulatory authorities in those jurisdictions. The European securities prospectus is available for download on the internet site of ArcelorMittal (www.arcelormittal.com). Copies of the prospectus are also available upon request and free of charge at 24-26, boulevard d'Avranches, L-1160 Luxembourg, Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg.





In each Relevant Member State this communication is only addressed to, and directed at, qualified investors in that Relevant Member State within the meaning of the Prospectus Directive.





This press release contains regulated information within the meaning of the Transparency Directive 2004/109/EC and implementing laws and regulations, which must be made publicly available pursuant to Luxembourg law.





This press release contains advertising materials in connection with the Offer as referred to in the Market Abuse Directive 2003/6/EC and implementing laws and regulations.



For readers in the United Kingdom

This communication is only being distributed to, and is only directed at, (i) persons who are outside the United Kingdom or (ii) investment professionals falling within Article 19(5) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005 (the "Order") or (iii) high net worth companies, and other persons to whom it may lawfully be communicated, falling within Article 49(2)(a) to (d) of the Order (all such persons together being referred to as "relevant persons"). The subscription rights and new shares are only available to, and any invitation, offer or agreement to subscribe for, purchase or otherwise acquire such subscription rights or new shares will be engaged in only with, relevant persons. Any person who is not a relevant person should not act or rely on this document or any of its contents.



For readers in the United States

ArcelorMittal has filed a registration statement (including a prospectus) with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") for the offering to which this communication relates. Before you invest, you should read the prospectus in that registration statement, the supplement to that prospectus ArcelorMittal and other documents ArcelorMittal has filed with the SEC for more complete information about ArcelorMittal and this offering. You may get these documents free of charge by visiting EDGAR on the SEC Web site at www.sec.gov. Alternatively, ArcelorMittal, any underwriter or any dealer participating in the offering will arrange to send you the prospectus after filing if you request it by writing or telephoning ArcelorMittal at ArcelorMittal USA LLC, 1 South Dearborn Street, 19th Floor, Chicago, IL 60603, Attention: Ms. Lisa M. Fortuna, Manager, Investor Relations, telephone number: (312) 899-3985.

The Banks, each of which are authorised in the United Kingdom by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated in the United Kingdom by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority, are each acting exclusively for the Company and for no-one else in connection with any transaction mentioned in this announcement and will not regard any other person (whether or not a recipient of this announcement) as a client in relation to any such transaction and will not be responsible to any other person for providing the protections afforded to their respective clients, or for advising any such person on the contents of this announcement or in connection with any transaction referred to in this announcement.

About ArcelorMittal

ArcelorMittal is the world's leading steel and mining company, with a presence in 60 countries and an industrial footprint in 19 countries. Guided by a philosophy to produce safe, sustainable steel, we are the leading supplier of quality steel in the major global steel markets including automotive, construction, household appliances and packaging, with world-class research and development and outstanding distribution networks.

Through our core values of sustainability, quality and leadership, we operate responsibly with respect to the health, safety and wellbeing of our employees, contractors and the communities in which we operate.

For us, steel is the fabric of life, as it is at the heart of the modern world from railways to cars and washing machines. We are actively researching and producing steel-based technologies and solutions that make many of the products and components people use in their everyday lives more energy efficient.

We are one of the world's five largest producers of iron ore and metallurgical coal and our mining business is an essential part of our growth strategy. With a geographically diversified portfolio of iron ore and coal assets, we are strategically positioned to serve our network of steel plants and the external global market. While our steel operations are important customers, our supply to the external market is increasing as we grow.

In 2015, ArcelorMittal had revenues of $63.6 billion and crude steel production of 92.5 million tonnes, while own iron ore production reached 62.8 million tonnes.

ArcelorMittal is listed on the stock exchanges of New York (MT), Amsterdam (MT), Paris (MT), Luxembourg (MT) and on the Spanish stock exchanges of Barcelona, Bilbao, Madrid and Valencia (MTS).



For more information about ArcelorMittal please visit: http://corporate.arcelormittal.com/ (http://corporate.arcelormittal.com/)



Contact information ArcelorMittal investor relations Europe +35247923198 Americas +13128993985 Retail +35247923198 SRI +442075431123 Bonds/credit







+33171921026 ArcelorMittal corporate communications Sophie Evans

Paul Weigh +442032142882

+442032142419



E-mail:



press@arcelormittal.com (mailto:press@arcelormittal.com) France Image 7 Sylvie Dumaine / Anne-Charlotte Creach +33153707470





[1] (#_ftnref1) Based on the 10 March 2016 published European Central Bank euro/USD exchange rate used to set the subscription price in euros. The subscription price in euros was set to generate gross proceeds in EUR equivalent to approximately USD 3bn based on that rate i.e. EUR 2.78 bn [2] (#_ftnref2) The Luxembourg Stock Exchange, Euronext Amsterdam, Euronext Paris and the Bolsas de

Valores of Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao and Valencia

ArcelorMittal announces successful completion of rights issue (http://hugin.info/154658/R/2000441/737995.pdf)


TOKYO, April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --Monex, Inc., one of Japan's largest online trading brokers, has chosen Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE: BR) to support its Japanese equity and investment trust processing business. Through Broadridge's JASDEC (Japan Securities Depository Center, Inc.) Processing Solution, Monex will strengthen its retail trading and client services in support of its future growth strategy.

"We are pleased to partner with Broadridge, who has extensive experience with securities firms and a significant track record in post-trade processing in Japan as well as other Asian markets," said Oki Matsumoto, Chief Executive Officer at Monex, Inc. "Broadridge's JASDEC Processing Solution will enable us to further improve our retail trading service and to provide us with a real-time processing capability for upcoming market changes focused on shortening settlement cycles."

Broadridge provides a complete solutions suite for Japanese securities as well as investment trusts that clear and settle through JASDEC, including both JASDEC's Pre-Settlement Matching System and JASDEC's Book Entry Transfer Systems. The solution offers brokers in Japan, such as Monex, state-of-the-art functionality and enhanced scalability to grow into other business lines and product segments. Broadridge supports multiple brokers in Japan, including many of the country's top-tier institutional brokers.

"Demand for processing standardization is on the rise with Japanese brokers consistently investing in technology in preparation for significant market changes, such as Japanese Government Bond (JGB) T+1 and Japanese equity T+2," said Yoshiyuki Hoshino, COO, Japan, Broadridge. "We are thrilled to welcome Monex to our continually growing Japan client base enabling its business expansion and ensuring a solid footing for their technology reengineering programme through high levels of straight-through processing, continuing investment in technology and commitment to delivering operational efficiency through a world-class standard of service."

Broadridge enables clients' post-trade processing in over 70 markets and has demonstrated a long-standing commitment to firms in Asia Pacific keeping ahead of rapid market reforms, most recently including connectivity to Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect, support for ISO20022 messaging for Japan, and investments to support forthcoming settlement infrastructure changes in Singapore also based on ISO20022.

About Broadridge

Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE: BR) is the leading provider of investor communications and technology-driven solutions for broker-dealers, banks, mutual funds and corporate issuers globally. Broadridge's investor communications, securities processing and managed services solutions help clients reduce their capital investments in operations infrastructure, allowing them to increase their focus on core business activities. With over 50 years of experience, Broadridge's infrastructure underpins proxy voting services for over 90% of public companies and mutual funds inNorth America, and processes on average$5 trillionin equity and fixed income trades per day. Broadridge employs approximately 7,400 full-time associates in 14 countries. For more information about Broadridge, please visitwww.broadridge.com.

Media Contacts

Peggy Wu Kate McGann Ryan Communication Broadridge Financial Solutions Peggy@ryancommunication.com Katherine.mcgann@broadridge.com +65 6876 5785 +1 212 981 1395

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110920/MM71626LOGO

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/leading-japanese-online-broker-monex-inc-adopts-broadridge-processing-solution-300245500.html
CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/04/16 -- AltaGas Ltd. ("AltaGas") (TSX: ALA) today announced that it has agreed to issue $350 million senior unsecured medium-term notes (the "Offering"). The notes carry a coupon rate of 4.12% and mature on April 7, 2026.

The Offering is expected to close on or about April 7, 2016. The net proceeds resulting from the Offering will be used to pay down existing indebtedness and for general corporate purposes.

The Offering is being made through a syndicate of investment dealers co-led by CIBC Capital Markets and RBC Capital Markets under AltaGas' Short Form Base Shelf Prospectus dated August 10, 2015 and Prospectus Supplement dated August 11, 2015.

AltaGas is an energy infrastructure business with a focus on natural gas, power and regulated utilities. AltaGas creates value by acquiring, growing and optimizing its energy infrastructure, including a focus on clean energy sources. For more information visit: www.altagas.ca

This news release contains forward-looking statements. When used in this news release, the words "may", "would", "could", "will", "intend", "plan", "anticipate", "believe", "seek", "propose", "estimate", "expect", and similar expressions, as they relate to AltaGas or an affiliate of AltaGas, are intended to identify forward-looking statements. In particular, this news release contains forward-looking statements with respect to, among other things, the closing date of the Offering, the use of proceeds of the Offering and business objectives. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements. Such statements reflect AltaGas' current views with respect to future events based on certain material factors and assumptions and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, including without limitation, changes in market, competition, governmental or regulatory developments, general economic conditions and other factors set out in AltaGas' public disclosure documents. Many factors could cause AltaGas' actual results, performance or achievements to vary from those described in this news release, including without limitation those listed above. These factors should not be construed as exhaustive. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should assumptions underlying forward-looking statements prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in this news release as intended, planned, anticipated, believed, sought, proposed, estimated or expected, and such forward-looking statements included in, or incorporated by reference in this news release, should not be unduly relied upon. Such statements speak only as of the date of this news release. AltaGas does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update these forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement.

Contacts:

Investment Community

1-877-691-7199

investor.relations@altagas.ca



Media

(403) 691-7197

media.relations@altagas.ca




Metabomed Ltd, a Yavne, Israel-based cancer metabolism company, completed an extension of its Series A round bringing the total of its raise to $18m.

Backers included existing investors MS Ventures, Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund (BIVF), Pontifax Fund, and the Technion Research and Development Foundation and new investors Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) and Arkin Holdings.

Co-founded by MS Ventures and three researchers in the field of cancer metabolism and computational biology  Prof. Eyal Gottlieb from the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Glasgow, UK, Prof. Eytan Ruppin from Tel Aviv University and the University of Maryland, and Prof. Tomer Shlomi from the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Metabomed is focusing on the discovery and development of potential small molecule drugs directed against novel targets in the field of cancer metabolism.

Based on proprietary interdisciplinary target identification platform, the company identifies new targets that form a synthetic lethal gene pair with metabolic genes inactivated in cancer cells. By inhibiting these targets, it intends to develop more selective anti-cancer drugs that may potentially be highly targeted, and therefore sparing of normal cells.

Following the completion of this round, Simone Botti, current Head of the MS Ventures Israel BioIncubator, will leave his position in order to join Metabomed as its full-time CEO.

FinSMEs

04/04/2016
Strainz, Inc., a Las Vegas-based national cannabis brand management company, raised a total of $8m, including a $6m round of Series A financing.

The company intends to use the funds to accelerate growth of its portfolio of brands in Colorado, Nevada and Washington, expand its brands into other legal states and hire additional senior management and staff.

Led by Hugh Hempel, CEO, Strainz partners with multiple state licensed cultivation and production facilities to deliver a portfolio of premium grade cannabis products that are rigorously tested and certified.

The company partners with Denver-based Bronnor Corporation, one of the largest MIPs manufacturing facilities in Colorado and among the largest in the nation, with a fully operational production facility in Nevada to begin shipping premium medical cannabis products to dispensaries in May, and Db3, a Washington premier edibles company and maker of the Zoots branded products.

FinSMEs

04/04/2016
The Mumbai police have summoned three-time National award winning actress Kangana Ranaut and her sister to record their statement, following a complaint lodged by actor Hrithik Roshan against unknown persons for alleged impersonation.

After Hrithik approached the suburban Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) police, an FIR was registered against unknown persons for allegedly creating a fake email-ID in the actor's name and using it to chat with his fans.

Recently, when Hrithik and Kangana had sent legal notices to each other, the Queen star revealed that she was corresponding with Hrithik through mails. Hrithik had, however, refuted this and said the email ID was not created by him.

Kangana's advocate Rizwan Siddiqui, in a statement released in Mumbai on Thursday, said the cyber crime cell of BKC police issued summons to the actress and her sister Rangoli to appear before it within a week so as to record their statements. In reply to the summons, Siddiqui also said that no police officer can summon his client Kangana and her sister to any police station to record their statement, as a witness under section 160 of CrPC.

"The witness summons sent to my client and her sister by the police officer are patently illegal, as no woman can be called to the police station to record her statements as per the provisions of law," he said in the statement.

According to the lawyer, Kangana had willingly expressed her desire to co-operate with police officers, in accordance with the provisions of law. Earlier, Hrithik had refrained from naming Kangana in his complaint and had told the police that he learnt about the imposter and fake email-ID from a fan.

However, the actor later re-approached police urging them to probe the case fast, and revealed that Kangana had told him about this email-ID.

Hrithik, in his legal notice to Kangana, claimed to have received about 1,439 emails from the Tanu Weds Manu Returns actress on his correct email-ID, and also the forwarded emails she had sent to the fake ID and the replies received therein.

The Bang Bang star claimed he learnt about the alleged imposter in May 2014, following which he filed a complaint with the cyber crime cell in December the same year.

"He (Hrithik) did not wish to take any action against the so-called imposter for seven months. Also he did not bother to take the required details of the imposter from my client (Kangana) during those seven months," Siddiqui said in the statement.

"In December 2014, Hrithik filed an informal complaint with the cyber cell with full knowledge that no investigation shall be carried out by the police on an informal complaint," he said.

He further claimed that Hrithik was required to act or reply on the notice sent by Kangana within seven days.

"However, thereafter, on receiving my notice on the 1st of March, he (Hrithik) cleverly chose to maintain a 'dignified silence' as there could not have been any good reply to my notice where his statements were proved to be blatant lies," he said in the statement.

In February this year, Hrithik had sent a notice to Kangana demanding an "unconditional apology" for a "defaming" remark in an interview where she allegedly referred to him as "silly ex". In an apparent rebuttal, the 42-year-old actor had then tweeted, "There are more chances of me having had an affair with the Pope than any of the (I'm sure wonderful) women the media has been naming..."

Kangana, in her reply notice to Hrithik sent on March 1, refuted all the allegations levelled against her. The 29-year-old actress refused to apologise and demanded that Hrithik take back his notice or face further action.

In her 21-page notice on March 1, the actress had stated that, "She (Kangana) is not some dim-witted teenager who has been smitten and that whatever happened between the two of them was with full consent of both parties."

In his notice, Hrithik had contended that he and Kangana acted only in two films and besides professional relationship, there wasn't any social, personal, platonic and/or intimate relation between them. Kangana had in her notice claimed that she was not a stranger to Hrithik or his family members.
As many as 500 Indians have been named in a massive leak of 11.5 million tax documents revealing offshore assets, through an investigation helmed in collaboration with India by Indian Express.

Among other Indians, Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai have found place in the list that was gathered from the secret files of Mossack Fonseca, a law firm based in tax haven Panama.

And while a spokesperson for Aishwarya Rai has denied this claim, calling it 'totally untrue and false', there has been radio silence on Amitabh Bachchan's side.

What's the big deal, you ask? Well, we did the tedious task of finding out the last time Amitabh Bachchan's social media had no post in 24 hours, and as it turns out, there isn't a single day when he hasn't been active on social media. Infact, he updates his social media every couple of hours, regardless of what time zone he is in. Despite going all the way back to November 2014, we couldn't find a single instance where Bachchan had stayed silent on social media for a day-long duration.

Bachchan either updates a status, or a facebook post (usually with pictures) or updates his blog, or at the very least, re-tweets a couple of tweets on his timeline. However, a quick glance through his social media and there has been no update in the last 18 hours.

This was his last tweet:

T 2195 -       ... !! True CHAMPIONS the West Indies !! 3 in a row .. under 19, Womens and now Mens .. UNBELIEVABLE !  Amitabh Bachchan (@SrBachchan) April 3, 2016

Why the silence, Mr. Bachchan?
Adani Enterprises Ltd was granted approval by Australia's Queensland state government on Sunday to proceed with its proposed $7.7 billion Carmichael coal project in the Galilee Basin.

Queensland Premier Annastascia Palaszczuk said the approvals gave Adani permission to mine coal reserves estimated at 11 billion tonnes and to build roads, workshops, power lines and pipelines associated with the mine.

"Some approvals are still required before construction can start, and ultimately committing to the project will be a decision for Adani," Palaszczuk said in a statement.

Adani said in a statement it would continue to finalise second tier approvals "with the clear aim of commencing construction in calendar year 2017".

Progess would depend on resolving legal challenges from environmentalists, a company spokesman told Reuters.

The company has battled opposition from green groups since starting work on the project five years ago. Environmentalists continue to fight Adani's project on numerous fronts and are lobbying banks not to provide loans.

They cite potential damage from port dredging, shipping and climate change stoked by coal from the mine. Two legal challenges to the project are currently before courts.

The Australian Conservation Foundation said in a statement the mine was "inconsistent with Australia's international obligations" to protect the Great Barrier Reef as coal from the mine would stoke global warming and drive coral bleaching.

Several international banks have said they will not provide financing for coal mining in the Galilee Basin, while Standard Chartered and Commonwealth Bank of Australia pulled out of the project in August.

Analysts say Adani will also find it tough to raise financing for the project due to a prolonged downturn in the global coal market.

Adani's spokesman said that tough market should not put pressure on the project because most of its coal is already earmarked for Adani-owned power plants in India, rather than for sale on the open market.
How the Panama based law firm Mossack Fonseca leaks on Indians having offshore accounts pans out would be keenly looked forward to in India.

The Liberalized Remittance Scheme (LRS) launched by the Reserve Bank of India under the mellowed down version of foreign exchange law called Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999 (FEMA), an entirely well intentioned move, alas, it turns out had sown the seeds of doubts in the minds of wannabe investors from India.

As it happens, doubts or grey areas are fertile grounds for crooks. The LRS permitted resident Indians to invest $25,000 in 2004 which limit leapfrogged to $200,000 in 2007 on the back of improved forex position but was brought back sharply to $75,000 in 2013 as BOP position deteriorated before now settling down at US$ 250,000.

The RBI should have clearly specified the avenues in which such investments can be made like shares of listed companies in the specified stock exchanges etc. Absence of such a specific and unambiguous diktat has allowed crooks to take liberties in buying offshore shell companies in dubious places like Panama, Seychelles, and British Channel Islands etc.

The RBI also compounded its mistake by mixing up the corporate investments with LRS meant for individuals. Indian companies were for the first time allowed to invest up to 100% of their net worth for their overseas investments, including acquisitions which soon leapfrogged to 400%.

Therefore, it is surprising that the RBI allowed the LRS route to be used for investments in joint ventures abroad and in foreign subsidiaries of Indian parent companies. Be that as it may.

But in any case, the limited capital account convertibility permitted by the RBI through its LRS initiative by no stretch of imagination could be construed to be permitting remittance through illegal, subterranean or hawala route.

In other words, whoever is found to be having money or investments abroad could and should have done so only through the Indian banking channels and not by bypassing it.

Against this backdrop, the Indian government should gird its loins to throw the law book at the persons named. A show cause notice can definitely be issued which by no means can be construed as a roving fishing enquiry.

The Modi government can pat itself in the back for putting in place a disclosure regime whose pincer would now be found useful to nail the crooks.

The Income tax law now mandates every resident Indian to declare his foreign assets in his/her income tax return at the risk of adverse presumption should the authorities stumble upon any information to the contrary or in addition to what is thus disclosed.

And the black money law 2015 says with effect from 1 April 2016, the government can slap a tax of 30% plus a penalty of 90% i.e. a total bill of 120% on assets and income abroad not disclosed.

The earlier German and the present Panama disclosures are godsends for the Modi government which is being repeatedly taunted by the opposition, commentariat and hostile section of the media for not delivering on its promise of bring back black money salted away abroad by Indians.

Jaitley who takes pardonable pride in assessment through software should ask the tax sleuths to arrange for software to unravel the seemingly confusing maze of information emanating from these sources. Times are propitious. The world order is changing, with the OECD cracking down on base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) game-plans of the MNCs.

Jaitley is crowing about the international order cracking down on crooks stashing away their illegal wealth in clandestine foreign bank accounts. But he would do well to use our own laws first before wistfully looking to results on the black money front through fortuitous international efforts.

Of course, international or OECD support must be taken not as a mendicant but proactively on the back thorough homework already done.

The German and Panama leaks are grim pointers -- the secretive foreign bank accounts or no longer secretive in this day and age of hacking, ethical or cynical.
An investigation by an international media consortium, including the Indian Express, has unearthed several names of wealthy individuals across the world, who have hidden their money in holding companies set up in tax havens.

The Indians named in the list include actors Amitabh Bachhan, Aishwarya Rai Bachhan, DLF promoter KP Singh, Indiabulls owner Sameer Gehlaut, Gautam Adanis elder brother Vinod Adani and politicians and former chief of the Delhi unit of Loksatta Party, Anurag Kejriwal. These individuals, and in some cases their family members, have formed offshore entities in tax havens by paying to a Panama-based law firm, Mossack Fonseca. This is the case in a nutshell.

Now, the obvious question is this. Is it illegal to invest in offshore companies if the earnings are legitimate? No. It is not. But, the problem arises if the money is earned in a jurisdiction, where they are liable to pay taxes, and the money is transferred across the border without doing so. In this case, this becomes unaccounted wealth or what is informally known as black money.

In other words, if the individuals mentioned in the Panama list are able to prove that the money invested in these offshore entities is legitimate and already taxed, there are no issues. Else, they can be in serious trouble.

The Narendra Modi-government is under tremendous pressure to win back black money from abroad to fulfill its poll promises in the run up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. A 90-days black money window it announced last year yielded undisclosed foreign assets of only about Rs 3,770 crore from 638 declarations, a mere fraction of the total stock of blackmoney believed to be stashed abroad. In other words, the scheme was largely a flop show. Under the window, those with unaccounted foreign black money had to pay a tax of 30 percent and a penalty of another 30 percent to come clean.

It is important to note that the Panama list also shows the apparent failure of the the 90-days black money window offered last year to draw foreign blackmoney holders. The fate of the 90-day black money scheme was not too hard to anticipate since no one with ill-gotten wealth or unaccounted wealth would want to sacrifice 60 percent of their money to comply with the government regulations. They would find a way out by the time the arms of the law reach their bank lockers in tax havens.

When the window closed, finance minister, Arun Jaitley had warned in tough words that it will not leave any stone unturned to take action against the guilty. Those who chose to declare between this period would not be prosecuted under the new black money law These declarants can now sleep well. Jaitley said, adding, those with illegal assets abroad, who have failed to make declaration, would now stand the risk of information relating to them eventually reaching the Indian taxation authorities.

It is not known whether any individuals whose names are included in the Panama list are among the declarants of the 90-days black money window that expired on 30 September, 2015. If they arent and if investigations find that they are indeed tax-evaders, its time for Jaitley to do what he said he would do. This isnt the first time the list of black money holders surfaces in the media. In a similar investigation, a list of 1100 Indians with Swiss bank deposits was unearthed setting stage for larger debate on the black money issue.

The Modi-government has not made any significant progress on the black money hunt as it promised in the beginning, in terms of recovering money. But, it has indeed initiated efforts to do so. Not just foreign black money, the government is facing equal challenges to deal with the domestic black money holders as well.

This is also a time when Jaitley, in the Union Budget 2016, announced that a four month (June 1 to September 30, 2016) amnesty-like scheme will be given to domestic black money holders in India to disclose their illegal, unaccounted wealth by paying a total of 45 percent tax. Jaitley hasnt called it an amnesty, but in principle, it is nothing but an amnesty offered to the tax-evaders. In 1997 when P Chidambaram was Finance Minister, a similar exercise had garnered Rs 10,000 crore revenue to the exchequer.

Besides that, after the Narendra Modi-government came to power, it announced a 90-days amnesty-like window for foreign blackmoney holders charging them 60 percent tax. A total of Rs 4,147 crore of undeclared wealth was declared and the government garnered Rs 2,500 crore from the whole exercise, again a paltry sum considering the kind of blackmoney stashed abroad.

In India, political promise of action against black money is not a convincing one since many of the political parties themselves thrive on funding from the same black money holders. The lack of transparency and the give-and-take relationship between politicians and corporations/wealthy individuals makes it even more difficult to cleanse the system and undertake action against the offenders.

The important question that the Panama list brings to the table is this: Can the Modi-government initiate meaningful action against the offenders by investigating their foreign holdings and, thus, show its seriousness on the black money hunt?
The life of a rubber farmer depends on tyres. Thats because tyres consume about 60 percent of the worlds natural rubber. But with the downturn in economy, especially in China  the worlds biggest rubber consumer  the demand for tyres has reduced, price of rubber has crashed and so has the life of a rubber farmer across the world.

India is the worlds sixth largest rubber producer, with Kerala accounting for 80 percent of the countrys rubber production. About 1.2 million poor farmers are fighting to make ends meet. While the states Congress-led UDF government has come up with a half-hearted subsidy scheme, the Modi government is guilty of having left key posts in the Rubber Board vacant.

As part of the a two-part series on the Great Rubber Slump, Firstpost talked to farmers and officials to gauge the crisis and offers solutions.

Visions of rubber farmers guzzling single malt whisky or romping around in Mercedes fade away as you drive through their plantations in central Kerala. The big farmer, who hit the jackpot during the rubber boom till 2011, is counting his money and is careful with his spending. The small farmer has no money to count. There is only one problem: Most rubber farmers are small.

After six bad years till 2004, rubber farmers had a good run for the next six years. From 2005, the rubber price was as elastic as rubber itself: It stretched and shrank many times, but went up from Rs 66/kg in 2005, crossed Rs 100 in 2008 and reached an all-time high of Rs 243 on 5 April, 2011.

During the boom, small farmers made money, though not too much. But the big ones made big money and splurged it on swank cars, luxury flats and consumer durables. They made rubber synonymous with lazy life and easy wealth. Then from 2011, the rubber price followed the principle of what goes up must come down. It steadily fell to an eight-year low of Rs 94 on 30 January, 2016, hitting the small farmers most.

According to the Rubber Board, 12.2 lakh farmers have holdings of no more than 10 hectares and they account for about 90 percent of the 7.35 lakh hectares under rubber cultivation. The average size of a small holding is as small as 0.55 hectare (1.4 acres).

The farmers, big and small, now think rubber is too unprofitable to harvest. The plantations now look as forlorn as their owners on either side of the narrow, serpentine roads in the districts of Kottayam, Pathanamthitta and Idukki  Keralas rubber belt. Gone are the quaint little containers, strapped to the trunks of the rubber trees to collect their latex, the white gold. Between the trees, which grow as tall as a five-story building, are wild plants, and on the ground beneath is a rotten mess of weeds and dry leaves that make walking difficult.

Our plantations look like mini-forests now, remarks Justin Jose, a 45-year-old farmer at Payappar in Kottayam district.

Joses two-and-a-half acre plantation lies idle. He sees no point in hiring labour to produce rubber at a cost of about Rs 100/kg, if he can get only the same amount or even less for it in the market. I have survived so far with a bank loan, he says, but if the rubber price shows no sign of going up, I have no clue how I will manage. And the price shows no sign of going up.

The predicament of James Francis, 45, is worse. Besides wife and three children, he has sick and aged parents to look after. Whenever he can, he taps his 350 trees himself without employing tappers and also sells milk from two cows. But all thats barely enough to run his home, pay for his childrens fees and his parents medical expenses. The future is bleak, he says.

What makes the farmers problem particularly painful is that rubbers journey from the tree to the tyre is a long one. Its not a crop that you plant this year and take out the next year.

Latex, a milky-white liquid from which natural rubber is made, is collected from a tree called Hevea brasiliensis only five to seven years after it is planted. The process, called tapping, involves making a cut in the bark in a particular angle, so that the sap drips into a container. This is filtered, treated with formic acid, pressed into sheets, dried and sold. The yield rises till the tree is about 15 years old and remains at that level for 10 more years before tapering off. Thats when the trees are uprooted and re-plantation is done.

Hevea brasiliensis is originally a native to Amazon and Orinoco river basins in Brazil and Bolivia in South America. But since it tends to be attacked by a fungal disease in South America, rubber is not produced in significant amounts there. About 90 percent of the worlds rubber is produced in south and southeast Asia, where its commercial cultivation began a century ago. The Periyar Syndicate, a European venture, began the first rubber plantation near Aluva in Kerala in 1902 with seeds brought from Brazil. India is the sixth largest producer after Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, China and Malaysia. In India, Kerala alone accounts for 80 percent of the countrys rubber, followed by Tripura and other states.

Many farmers who went in for rubber cultivation during the boom by clearing out other crops now wish the tree was never discovered in South America.

The rubber price plummeted as the demand went down and the demand decreased because the market for tyres crashed. Tyres consume about 60 percent of natural rubber the world over  footwear, belts, clothing, hoses and sundry other things use up the rest. The slump began in early 2011, when economic slowdown hit countries, including China and India, which together consume half of the worlds natural rubber. This led to a reduction in the demand for automobiles and therefore, tyres.

This economic slowdown and other reasons led to the fall in the demand for  and the price of  oil from $115 a barrel in 2014 to around $30 now. This, in turn, led to a plunge in the price of synthetic rubber, made from naphtha, a petroleum by-product. Along with natural rubber, synthetic rubber is used in making tyres in varying proportions. The drop in synthetic rubbers price depressed the demand for and the price of natural rubber further.

Globalisation has helped us, but it also hit us badly, says KA Mathew, who has two acres of rubber trees, which he stopped tapping last year. All I can get now from tapping the trees is just enough to pay off tappers. Its a hopeless situation. A tapper is paid Rs 2 to Rs 3 a tree.

In India, about 45 percent of the growers were laid off from harvesting during the first half of 2015, Jom Jacob, Deputy Director of Rubber Board, told Firstpost. But after the Kerala government introduced a subsidy scheme to guarantee a minimum price or Rs 150/kg for rubber, many might have resumed tapping, Jacob said. Under the scheme, the government pays poor farmers the difference between the market price for Rs 150/kg.

But the subsidy covers only two acres for each farmer and the price of Rs 150 is not attractive enough, points out Thomas Ouseph, noted rubber consultant and former Secretary of Rubber Board. Adds N Dharmaraj, President of the United Planters Association of Southern India (Upasi) and Chief Executive of Harrison Malayalam, Indias largest rubber plantation company: Besides, the bureaucratic process involved in getting the subsidy is too cumbersome for the small farmer.

Desperate options

Experts predict the world economy will recoup by 2020, perk up the auto industry, especially in China and Europe, and give rubber its bounce again. But poor farmers in India and other rubber-producing countries cant wait and are looking for desperate options.

In Malaysia and Indonesia, rubber farmers find oil palm cultivation a good alternative. But in Kerala, there is no alternative as lucrative as rubber, and plantations run the risk of being grabbed by real estate sharks. Some have started dairy farming, while some have switched to  or are thinking of  banana, coconut, pineapple, cocoa, nutmeg or pepper in the middle of the rubber trees or by uprooting them.

But crop-switching isnt easy for all. Says Thomas Kallacheril, 63, who has four-and-a-half acres of rubber outside Pala: I thought of cocoa, but I have a water problem. My soil is good for rubber and nothing else.

Antony Sebastian of Kadalikkath has divided part of his rubber plantation into plots of 14 cents to build houses and sell. He has no hope that rubber will rise again.

Keralas ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) and the Opposition Left Democratic Front (LDF), led by the Congress and the CPM respectively, meanwhile, blame each other for the farmers plight. And together they accuse the Modi government for doing nothing to help the farmers.

Rubber prices will no doubt be an issue in parts of Kerala during the next months Assembly elections. But Ousephachen Vellimoozhayal, President of Andhyalam Model Rubber Producers Society refuses to blame any single political party for the mess. For all of them, he explains, farmers are just vote banks and politicians clearly support business barons who feed them funds.

Vellimoozhayal calls them business barons. He, in fact, means the tyre mafia.
New Delhi: Congress leaders on Monday challenged in Delhi High Court the trial court's decision summoning the 2010-11 balance sheet of Indian National Congress (INC) in connection with the National Herald case, saying such an order was not "desirable" in the present matter.

"Neither notice was issued to us, nor we were summoned to contest the present application filed before the trial court judge on which an order was passed," senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for Sam Pitroda, told Justice P S Teji.

"It was an ex-parte order," Sibal said, adding that the application filed by complainant BJP leader Subramanian Swamy should not have been allowed without hearing them.

The counsel further contended that the documents have "no relevancy" to this present case and the trial court judge has failed to explain in his order the "necessity or desirability" of these materials for the purposes of any "investigation".

"He (trial court judge) has to demonstrate the relevancy or the necessity of these documents," Sibal said, adding that "this order should be set aside".

Congress's Motilal Vora, Oscar Fernandes, Suman Dubey, Sam Pitroda and Young Indian Pvt Ltd (YI) have challenged the trial court's January 11 and March 11 orders respectively in

which the magistrate had allowed summoning of documents from Ministries of Finance and Corporate Affairs, Income Tax Department and other agencies in the case in which Congress President Sonia Gandhi, her son Rahul Gandhi are also accused.

The case is based on a private criminal complaint lodged by Swamy, charging them with cheating, conspiracy and criminal breach of trust.

All the accused have denied the allegations levelled against them by Swamy.

The trial court had also summoned the balance sheet of INC for 2010-2011 besides the balance sheet of 2010-2011 of Associated Journals Pvt Ltd (AJL), observing that these documents of INC and AJL could not be referred as "personal documents" of the accused.

Besides Pitroda, Vora, represented by senior advocate R S Cheema, submitted that they will suffer "prejudice" by calling of INC documents, as the party is not involved in this case.

Senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for Fernandes, who has sought quashing of March 11 decision, said the trial court order is "gross violation of natural justice".

"Why accused be not given chance to reply to Dr Swamy's application," Singhvi said.

The arguments, however, remained inconclusive which will resume tomorrow when Dubey and YI will put their arguments before the judge.

Meanwhile, Swamy, declined to file his reply to the appeal filed by accused persons, when notice was issued to him and said they have no locus in the issue.

"This is a matter of law. The fact of matter is that there is no locus standi of petitioners. This matter is to be heard on maintainability," he told the court.

The trial court had on December 19 last year granted bail to Congress President Sonia Gandhi, her son Rahul Gandhi and three others -- Vora, Fernandes and Dubey -- who had appeared in the court pursuant to summons issued earlier. Pitroda, another accused, was granted bail later.

Sonia, Rahul, Vora, Fernandes (AICC General Secretary), Dubey and Pitroda were summoned under sections 403 (dishonest misappropriation of property), 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 420 (cheating) read with section 120B(criminal conspiracy) The trial court had passed the two orders on Swamy's plea seeking summoning of documents.
New Delhi: The possibilities of the involvement of a terror outfit in the gruesome killing of National Investigation Agency (NIA) officer Mohammad Tanzil Ahmed are fading with each passing day since he was gunned down in the Bijnor district of Uttar Pradesh on Saturday. And that is a serious cause for concern.

Two assailants pumped nearly 24 bullets into Ahmed with ruthless efficacy, highlighting the professional manner in which they carried out their entire operation, reminiscent of the Sicilian Mafiosi. They used 9mm pistols, a weapon bore restricted in India, which gives another indication of the sophisticated arsenal acquired by the underworld in UP. Ahmeds wife got injured while his children were left unscathed.

The killers came with the sole objective of eliminating Ahmed and not the others. In western UP, there have been many reports of hired assassins having acquired the training of precision killers. Apparently, Ahmeds involvement with the investigation of cases linked to terrorism gave rise to the speculation that his killing could have been the handiwork of Pakistans ISI. In the given circumstances, such a hypothesis does not find any credence.

All this is troubling news for those living in Akhilesh Yadavs Uttar Pradesh. In fact, a strike by a terrorist organisation would have easily given a fig leaf to the government to conceal its hideous collusion with criminals in the countrys most populous state. And there is every reason to blame it on the doorsteps of Akhilesh Yadav and his father Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Take the example of the gruesome killing of Deputy Superintendent of Police Zia Ul Haque in Kunda block of Pratapgarh district two years ago. The Deputy SP was chased and gunned down by those close to Raghuraj Pratap Singh aka Raja Bhaiyya, who is a minister in the UP cabinet. The case is at best being hushed up even by the CBI, which is entrusted to investigate it. Meanwhile, Raja Bhaiyya is back in the cabinet.

Mulayam Singh Yadav has always been known for patronising criminals. In his long political career, Yadav had always shown a peculiar penchant to create 'Robin Hoods' out of criminals across the state. He created and unleashed people like DP Yadav, Mukhtar Ansari and Atique Ahmed, whose formidable crime-records stood them in good stead in the states politics.

In 2012, when Akhilesh Yadav was elected as the Chief Minister, he was not seen as a chip off the old block. Far from it, he came across as a scion of a political family who would stay away from criminalisation of the polity.

Initially, Akhilesh Yadav gave such indications when he resisted attempts to induct DP Yadav into the Samajwadi Party (SP)on the eve of elections. But, once elected as Chief Minister, he proved to be far worse than his father in tackling crime in the state. In nearly four years of his regime, he has come across as a dabbler while dealing with statecraft.

There are enough reasons to cite why the law and order situation deteriorates every time the Samajwadi Party (SP) comes to power. The institution of the police, which is entrusted with the task of enforcing order, is gradually turned into a tool to realise political objectives.

Instead of controlling crime, the prime task of a large section of officials in the state administration is to play second fiddle to their political masters. This is an ideal situation for criminals to thrive and UP has become a safe haven for the underworld, one where the police is literally on the run.

It would be wrong to assume that the UP police, which produces one of the finest officers in the country, is to be blamed for the malaise. For instance, the incumbent Director General of Police, Javeed Ahmed, is highly acclaimed.

But it would require superhuman qualities, even for a honest and efficient DGP, to turn around and resurrect the instruments of policing that are perverted beyond recognition.

Tanzil Ahmeds killing would not have caused so much concern if a terrorist organisation had claimed responsibility for the killing. That the underworld in UP has acquired sophistication and courage to gun down an NIA official and get away with it is more sinister than any terrorist act. These are all signs of UP falling into a crevice of crime, which is far more ominous than terrorism.
Lucknow: Several agencies, including Delhi Police, are probing the gunning down of NIA officer Mohd Tanzil Ahmad and looking into suspected movement of two bikers, a senior police official said on Monday.

Uttar Pradesh Inspector General of Police (Public Grievances) A Mutha Jain said all angles were being probed by several agencies, including Delhi Police.

On being asked about two bike-borne men visible in a CCTV footage, Jain said these "aspects" were being looked into.

"Monitoring of the case is being done at high-level, but we are not in a position to share any information. When we have something concrete we will share," he said.

Jain said that Ahmad's wife was admitted to Fortis hospital in Noida and was under observation.

Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav expressed profound grief over the death of Ahmad and announced an ex gratia of Rs 20 lakh to his family.

He assured Ahmad's family that adequate security would be provided to them.

Yadav has also directed the DGP to provide all necessary help to the agencies probing the crime so that strict action is taken against those behind this "gory murder".

In the wee hours of Sunday, Ahmad was shot dead by two motorcycle-borne assailants in Bijnor.

Ahmad, an assistant commandant with BSF who was currently on deputation in NIA, was returning to Sahaspur from the wedding of his niece when two unidentified bike-borne assailants stopped his car and shot at him.

His wife was also injured in the incident while his two children, on the back seat of the car being driven by the deceased, were safe.
I hate press conferences. I always manage to talk myself into controversy. The problem is that I am always trying to think of better ways to do something. In my current job, it is ways to get rid of malnutrition by feeding our children better, or how to stop putting medical professionals into jail while stopping girl children from being killed in the womb. Its difficult to survive a new idea. There are so many entrenched experts who will trash any new thought. It took me 9 years to stop dissection in schools  simply because biology teachers felt that their students needed to kill rats and frogs in order to become doctors. Now no one remembers the millions of animals that were killed.

Most politicians prefer to take a current system and then tweak it gradually. Unfortunately I dont believe that a patient can have less or more of a medicine that doesnt work, for it to work.

To come back to press conferences: after the questions of my ministry are over, and attempts have been made to make me say something political, there will be two inevitable questions  one from Kerala and one from Himachal Pradesh.

The Kerala reporter will ask about the menace of stray dogs and the Himachal reporter about the menace of stray monkeys.

This article is an attempt to set both issues at rest.

Let me start with the obvious: I did not give birth to either species! I did not multiply them or make them a problem! In fact I am part of the scientific solution. The fact is that neither of these states believe that they have a problem.

People dont care about the number of dogs. They simply want dogs that will stay out of the way, not spread diseases including rabies and will not bite. The solution of sterilization is a tested method for all these problems. Make a sterilization centre in every district  as mandated many times over by the High Courts and the Supreme Court sign an MOU with an NGO, which has been trained and recognized by the Animal Welfare Board, and pay them to sterilize the dogs over 5 years. When the male / female dogs are picked for sterilization they are also given anti-rabies injection that lasts for three years (the average life of a street dog is never more than 4 years) and if they have any other disease, like mange, they are kept by the NGO till they are disease free and then returned to the same area where they live out their lives harmlessly and happily. No sterilized dog ever bites. The only time a dog bites is when the female is on heat and the male is driven insensate with lust. He will fight with other males, cross boundaries into other territories and in the process some human will get bitten.

The second reason is when the female has had babies and she is so frightened that they will be killed (as 90% are in the first two weeks, by cars, vicious humans who think nothing of stoning little puppies, starvation and cold) that she guards them strenuously and bites anyone who comes near them.

The third reason is something that is easily preventable by adjusting human behaviour. If you constantly abuse / hit a dog, he will lose his innate trust in human goodness and then he will bite someone whom he thinks is going to be mean to him  because meanness is all that he has ever seen. Once a dog is sterilized and returned to his / her own place he will NOT bite as he has no sexual desire left, she will not bite because she will have no children  and if you are nice to them or ignore them, they will not bite the residents of the area as they know their habits intimately. Kerala kills all its dogs all the time. Happy healthy creatures who would make excellent pets and guard dogs, are made into menaces by politicians and newspapers for no reason.

The panchayats lap up this regular hate mongering because, according to the law, they get Rs.75 for each dog they kill, so any panchayat leader who is dipping his hands into the till kills fifty dogs, and then claims he has killed 500. The Chief Minister, who is a good human being, has repeatedly given money to start sterilization centres. At the moment three Kerala districts are running them well  and you never hear of dog menace in them. The entire state of Kerala has fewer dogs than Delhi  and yet the hype by the papers carries on. If they would just relax for two years and let the experts do their work, everyone would breathe easier. By the way, government spends 700 crores per month to remove polio. The Environment Ministry spends less than 50 lakhs a year on removing rabies. If the programme could be taken up by the Health Ministry  which Haryana has taken up on an experimental basis - and 100 crores spent yearly, we would have a good healthy small, population of dogs within 10 years. It has taken 20 years for polio  I guarantee half that time.

Now for the monkeys and Himachal Pradesh. Veterinary doctors who should have their licences taken away combined their brains with those of forest officers and decided that the only way to get rid of the monkey menace in Himachal was to sterilize the monkeys as well.

Unfortunately, this is the worst possible decision. Dogs are more or less solitary. Monkeys live, like humans, in large extended families. If you trap a single monkey, then two things happen: the family rushes away from their own territory/area. They get very angry with humans. So they enter areas that they are unfamiliar with, because now they are too scared to go back to an area where their relative was trapped. Now they enter peoples homes and fields in search of new larders and in the process hurt humans and themselves and destroy crops. The single monkey that has been captured usually breaks a limb during this hideous capturing process (Himachal pays Rs.500 to anyone who captures a monkey) and is sterilized while in terrible pain. He / she usually dies (the mortality of Himachals monkeys by the so called vets is unbelievably high). If he/she survives, it is left at the place where it was picked up. But by then the family has disappeared and the troupe replacing them will not accept this poor animal. So, to survive, he enters human homes and becomes predatory. Sterilization in monkeys has resulted in the opposite of what happens in dogs. It has no impact at all on the population of monkeys: that is in any case reducing drastically because of poisoning, shooting and other illegal ways: from 85 lakhs in the 80s they are now a mere 5 lakhs in the whole of India. The difference is that they are sharing space with humans.

Why do we have this problem in Himachal and Uttarakhand? Because the Government of India pays money every year to the state forest departments to set fire to the edges of forests. The logic is that if trenches are dug and the leaves in them set on fire then the forest will not catch fire during the dry season. But the forest ranger sees this as bonus money. He doesnt dig trenches, he doesnt map vulnerable forest ranges. He simply cuts a large number of trees illegally and then sets fire to the forest to hide his criminal activity. The fire eats the underbrush, the new trees, berries, vines, soft grasses, new shoots which are the food of wild boar, monkeys, deer, nilgai and other grass eaters every January/February  and so the hungry animals come out. I have urged time and again that if this nonsense is stopped the monkeys will retreat from human habitations almost immediately.

Secondly, we must start planting Indian fruit and berry trees in the middle of forests so that animals remain there. But the forest department refuses to stop the firelines as it will stop the large amount of pocket money that the centre gives to each forest ranger. If Himachal and Kerala would only listen, we could create a more real set of menaces that could occupy press conferences  paedophiles, children molesters, kidnappers, wife beaters etc!
Satna: Top ministers on Sunday inaugurated what has been billed as the world's first 'White Tiger Safari' in this district of Madhya Pradesh.

White tigers are reported in the wild from time to time in India. The animal is a pigmentation variant of the Bengal tiger and is believed to have originated in the former Rewa state, now part of Madhya Pradesh.

Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar and union Steel Minister Narendra Singh Tomar attended a function here to mark the opening of the while tiger safari in about 1,000 hectare forest area in Mukundpur in Satna district.

The forest area has three white tigers, two Bengal tigers of more usual fur colour and some bears, said a forest official.
Kaziranga: A villager buying a bottle of mineral water near Kaziranga is a sign poachers are planning to strike the home of the Indian rhino in Assam.

Can politicians read this signal?

When the sun sets on Kaziranga, several gangs of poachers start roaming the villages with plans of poaching a rhinoceros. They come armed with rifles, pistols, tranquilizers and even AK-47s.

Can politicians take on poachers?

No. But, on the election trail in Assam, political parties are shedding tears for the rhino, promising they will stop their poaching in Kaziranga if voted to power.

The rhinoceros is to Assam what the Taj Mahal is to India. For the native Assamese people, it is their pride and identity, something they can showcase to the world.

The animal is under constant threat since the Maoists became powerful in Assam.

A rhino horn is worth almost Rs one crore on the international market. Till a few years ago, the Chitwan reserve in Nepal was the top target of smugglers. But since Maoists took over reins of governance in Nepal, strict anti-poaching measures have forced smugglers to focus their attention on the only other home of the one horn rhino: Kaziranga.

Since 2008, incidents of poaching have gone up dramatically. From just three that year, the number rose to 28 last year. Around 200 rhinos have been killed in the past 15 years.

A few days ago, while addressing an election rally at Bokakhat, 20 kilometres from Kaziranga, Prime Minister Narendra Modi slammed the Congress for ignoring the threat to rhinos. Since then, the rhino has become an election issue in Assam.

Just as you cross Nagaon, around 120 km from Guwahati, and hit the road to Kaziranga, the rhino pops out of a huge banner put up by the BJP. The text with a caricature of Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi reads: "When we remind him of the poaching of rhinos, the CM shrugs his shoulders, waves his hand and replies, 'oh, leave it'."

The Congress, meanwhile, claims credit for the growth in the number of rhinos. It says the number of rhinos has increased every year since it came to power. Their current population is 2,401 after a decade's growth of almost 30 percent.

Assam's fauna is unique.

Cows in the state are marginally taller than goats, who, in turn, are shorter than street dogs in most parts of India. Canines look like felines, who, it can be safely presumed, must be the size of the XXL mosquitoes that buzz around in large numbers.

It is a big surprise then, considering that most other animals look like miniatures of themselves, that Assam is the land of rhino, a three-tonne beast that you can spot grazing in the meadows near Kaziranga, like cows on Indian streets.

Since it roams freely, the rhino is always in danger of being killed for its horn. The horn is made primarily of keratin, the main component of hair, nails and hoofs. But people in many countries, especially in the East, believe the horn can cure various ailments  including cancer  and that it works as an aphrodisiac.

Rationalists argue those who believe a horn can cure an ailment may just as well mix their own hair or nails in medicines. But the myth appears incurable.

As a result, it is in high demand, fetching a fortune for smugglers.

"It is in demand also because it is used as a currency by militant groups in the Northeast. When they buy weapons, instead of money, the suppliers seek animal parts. The horn is a favourite, says Uttam Saikia, an honorary wildlife warden at Kaziranga. Saikia advises several agencies for the conservation of the Indian rhino.

Saikia says since terrorists have started taking interest in rhino poaching, Dimapur in Nagaland has become the hub of poachers. "Terror outfits like the NSCN run a parallel government in Dimapur. They protect and facilitate rhino poachers and smugglers."

Politicians, obviously, are not aware of all this. For them, rhinos are an election issue that could get them a few extra seats.

Activists like Saikia believe poaching is rampant because of the support smugglers get from people in the villages that ring Kaziranga. There are 128 villages in and around Kaziranga. "Poachers pay more than Rs 50,000 to villagers to lure them into guiding them in the forests. They use them to buy food and bottled water during the operation, he says.

The other problem is that there are just around 150 guards watching the rhinos. They are armed with primitive weapons, work long hours and get a pittance, sometimes as low as Rs 3,000 per month. The guards need SLRs and automatic rifles to take on the heavily-armed poachers.

A lot needs to done to protect Assam's Taj Mahal.

Politicians telling voters that the rhino can be saved just by the simple expedient of an electoral victory is similar to what hippos do with their open mouths.
15:05 (ist)

Congress committed to 'Make in Assam': Rahul

Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi said his party is committed to 'Make in Assam' initiative to provide employment to more than 10 lakh youths.

"Our party is committed to the welfare and development of the poor and the Congress government led by Tarun Gogoi was committed to 'Make in Assam' to provide employment to the youth of the state," Gandhi said at an election rally in Goalpara.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks of 'Make in India' but for us the development of Assam and its youth are priority and we have been doing it for the last 15 years.

"If you recall the situation in 2001 before the Congress came to power, there was violence and killings all over the state. The Congress with its policy of love and compassion brought about a change to ensure development of the local people," he added.

It was the Congress that brought peace and started the development process in the state leading to a rise in the per capita income, constructing more than 24,000 kms of roads, setting up three new medical colleges and providing scholarships to more than seven lakh students in the state, he said.

"We don't make false promises like Modi did before the last Lok Sabha elections but we toil hard by giving our blood and sweat to improve the condition of the poor in the country," Gandhi said.

Gandhi said that if the Congress returns to power, it will continue with this development process and ensure more jobs to the youth of Assam, employment to two lakh teachers, scholarships to children of poor families for preparing for civil services, and address the problems faced by farmers by ensuring that they get proper price and market for their products.

"I have also asked Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi to provide free medical help in state-of-the-art government hospitals to those having annual income below Rs 2.5 lakh," he said.

He said the Congress cares for the security of the poor and is "not like BJP which is only interested in creating division in the society, guided as they are by RSS ideology from Nagpur".

He also alleged that the BJP government at the Centre was serving the rich and was only committed to further the interests of a few industrialists.

"Vijay Mallya looted thousands of crores and the BJP government allowed him to leave the country. The Prime Minister says something and does something else," he said.

Modi had promised before the Lok Sabha polls that he would "ensure return of black money and deposit Rs 15 lakh in the bank account of all citizens but now he is trying to turn black money into white by his 'Fair and Lovely' scheme", Gandhi said, referring to an amnesty scheme announced in this year's Union Budget. - PTI
Hanover (Germany): The first Syrians arrived in Germany from Istanbul Monday under a controversial EU-Turkey migrants pact, an official from the German federal refugee office told AFP.

The 16 asylum seekers flew into the northern city of Hanover and were to be taken to a refugee shelter about 140 kilometres (90 miles) away. A second group of Syrians was to arrive in Hanover around midday, the official added.

The representative from the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, who did not give her name, asked reporters to respect the privacy of the asylum seekers, who were members of three families. An AFP reporter saw five children among them.

"This is all very new, very difficult," she said. "They have been travelling for a very long time."

One protester also arrived to meet the group, holding a banner reading: "Please keep fleeing, refugees not welcome."

Under the scheme agreed with the EU last month, one Syrian refugee will be settled in Europe legally in return for every migrant taken back by Turkey from EU member Greece, which has faced the biggest influx in recent months.

All irregular migrants who have landed on the Greek islands since March 20 face being sent back to Turkey  although the deal calls for each case to be examined individually.

Early Monday, Greece sent back a first wave of migrants to Turkey under the deal that has run into strong criticism from rights groups.

Refugee advocates question whether the agreement is legal and ethical, fearing individuals will be denied the right to claim asylum.

Germany last year let in a record 1.1 migrants and refugees but Chancellor Angela Merkel has come under intense pressure to stem the flow.

German officials have said they expect other EU member states to begin taking in refugees under the pact with Turkey from Monday.
Mehbooba Mufti has written a fresh chapter in the history of Jammu & Kashmir, and the rest of India. She finally took oath as chief minister of the state on Monday, and in doing so became the first woman to hold the position in the trouble-torn Muslim-dominated border state.

She joins a list of powerful women chief ministers in India - Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal, J Jayalalitha in Tamil Nadu, Vasundhara Raje in Rajasthan, and Anandiben Patel in Gujarat. Incidentally, all of them are from non-Congress parties.

Her appointment also marked a generational shift in the state. Leaders of both the frontline regional parties  Omar Abdullah (46) of National Conference and Mehbooba Mufti (56) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) represent what in politics is termed as the 'younger' generation.

The fact that an elected government has finally assumed office, after a two-month-long political hiatus and a brief spell of Governor's Rule following the death of Mufti Mohammad Syed, is a welcome development.

The formation of an elected government also offers relief from sustained central rule in the state or the prospect of fresh elections, both of which would have been difficult to afford for the nation just over a year after the last assembly elections.

But the challenges Mehbooba faces are daunting. The kind of brinkmanship that she engaged with her ally in the government, the BJP, after the death of her father, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, has not made her task any easier.

More so, as she couldn't really gain much beyond just a reassurance that whatever was inked as agenda for the "governance alliance" between her father and the BJP leadership on 1 March, 2015 , would stand firm for the times to come.

She did have a "satisfactory" meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi recently, something that propelled her to convene a meeting of her PDP legislature party to endorse the formation of government and approve the continuance of the power sharing agreement with the BJP.

Unlike Mufti Mohammad Sayeed's swearing-in ceremony held on 1 March, 2015, which was attended by PM Modi, BJP President Amit Shah and other high and mighty of the party including LK Advani and MM Joshi, Mehbooba's swearing-in ceremony was a relatively low key affair.

The BJP or the Centre was represented by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Venkaiah Naidu and Minister of State in the PMO Jitendra Singh. The protocol was obviously downgraded. But then, the two ceremonies were held in very different situations.

Over the years, Mufti had acquired the status of an iconic figure in J&K politics. He was also a practitioner of pragmatic politics. It was for the first time that the BJP was coming to power in the state, albeit after deviating a bit from its stated policies on J&K.

Back then, both the BJP and PDP had made several compromises to join hands to come to power. From the BJP's perspective, the presence of Modi and other BJP heavyweights at the Mufti government's swearing-in ceremony was to convince its own cadre of the merits of the alliance as much as it was for the people of J&K, to reflect the seriousness of the new ideologically contradictory alliance.

This time around, however, Mehbooba's swearing-in comes following the untimely death of her father and thus, the mood was of sobriety rather than of enthusiasm.

A year ago, it was a big bold experiment. This time around, it was a cautiously optimistic moment. The BJP had made its exasperation known to Mehbooba when she actually began engaging with them to resolve issues relating to government formation. The presence of Naidu and Singh was meant to convey that she will get all the required assistance from the Centre provided that due protocol is followed.

Her immediate political challenge will be two fold  first, give a sense to her social constituency that she could provide the much discussed "healing touch" yet maintain the balance with the ally in government, the BJP. Second, ensure her party wins the Anantnag parliamentary constituency, which she will have to vacate now as she will become the chief minister.

Her younger brother, Tassaduq Hussain Mufti, a new entrant to politics may fight from that seat. On the other hand, she will have to contest an assembly election, to win the seat vacated due to the death of her father. Elections to these two seats would be her first big test of popularity.

So far she was the power behind the throne, now she occupies it. The dynamics have changed.
A huge statue of warrior Lachit Borphukan greets you on the banks of the Brahmaputra in Guwahati.

Sometime in March 1671, when Mughal armies attacked Assam, advancing right up to Saraighat near Guwahati, Borphukan, the commander-in-chief of the Ahoms, was lying in bed, ill after a long and grueling battle.

But, when his army began to disperse, Borphukan ordered war boats and headed into the naval battle. His entry changed the course of the battle, driving away the Mughal army, ending their dream of extending the empire in the Northeast.

Nearly 450 years later, politicians are vying for the legacy of the Ahom warrior, calling the election the last Battle of Saraighat.

When the people of Assam vote today in the first phase of Assembly polls, they would decide the fate of the BJPs war cry of the election being the final opportunity to drive out outsiders, a word it uses loosely to describe the Muslims from the state. The BJP claims most of the nearly 34 percent Muslims in Assam are outsiderseither from East Bengal, East Pakistan or Bangladesh.

The BJP has promised to save Assam's mati (land) and jati (nation) by throwing out migrants and sealing the border, a promise it had made during the Lok Sabha campaign too.

The first phase of the elections is important because it is being fought in 65 constituencies of Upper Assam and Barak Valley. These are the traditional strongholds of the Congress. Heavy defeat in this round will end 15 years of Congress rule in the state.

Ironically, the man leading the Congress party in this election is Tarun Gogoi, a Ahom. Though not on his sickbed, Gogoi, 79, is on the wrong side of the age barrier and a butt of BJP jokes. Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi could not resist the temptation to throw a barb at Gogoi: I could not pay my respects to the 90-year-old leader, he said during one of his four election rallies in Assam.

The Congress too is talking about the Battle of Saraighat. But only to label the BJP as the outsider intent on extending Delhis sultanate to the state. Its leaders claim the local Ahom leader will repulse this attack and embarrass the BJP.

A defeat for the Congress could be a serious blow to its dreams of a revival. In the current round of elections, Assam is the only state where the Congress has a realistic chance of forming the government. If it fails, in spite of a whirlwind campaign by Rahul and Sonia Gandhi, Congress will have to start from the scratch, pinning its hopes on Punjab, where elections are due next year.

At stake also is the reputation and future of perfume baron Badruddin Ajmal, leader of the All India United Democratic Front. Ajmal is a tantalising mix of myth, mystique, merchant and politician. It is rumoured that his followers treat him like a talismanic spiritual guru, sipping water he touches, treating it like medicine for serious illness.

Ajmal spends a huge amount of money on charity, running hospitals, doling out scholarship, giving donations. But he is considered to be communal because he champions the rights of the Muslims in the state.

For the indigenous Assamese population, the Bengalis, Nepalese and Marwari voters, the fear of Ajmal is a decisive poll factor. These communities employ a large number of workers from the migrant population. Yet, somehow the BJP rhetoric of throwing out people from outside is resonating among them.

The communal overtone of the election has forced several well-known people and intellectuals to come out in the open and declare their preferences.

On Sunday, a number of intellectuals issued a public statement asking voters to reject the fascist and communal BJP. More than three dozen of them held a public meeting in Guwahati and warned against giving the BJP a chance in the state.

Hiren Gohain, a former university teacher who was part of this meeting, said the BJP is a threat to Assamese culture. The BJP believes in a brand of Hinduism that is completely different from the values and ethos of Assam, Gohain said.

Dinesh Baishya, a well-known writer, said the BJP was misusing the states history to polarise the election. The Battle of Saraighat was fought between Ahoms and Mughals. It was not a fight between Hindus and Muslims, he said.

Incidentally, the Mughals were led by Raja Ram Singh of Jaipur in the battle. The Ahoms had Bagh Hajorika, an Assamese Muslim, as one of their major commanders.

It seems, the election has turned into a battle over the legacy of the Battle of Saraighat.
Chandigarh: Amid the raging row over chanting of 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai', CPI (M) on Monday said slogans like 'Jai Hind', 'Hindustan Zindabad' and 'Inquilab Zindabad' are equally patriotic and accused the BJP of diverting attention of people from "real problems" by raking up such issues.

CPI (M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury charged BJP with attempting to "convert" secular, democratic republic of India into an "RSS version" of a 'Hindu Rashtra'.

"I will say 'Jai Hind', I will say 'Hindustan Zindabad' and I will say martyr Bhagat Singh's slogan of 'Inquilab Zindabad' and I think all are equally patriotic if not more. So, is patriotism connected with only one slogan?" Yechury told reporters.

Referring to 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' slogan, Yechury said, "This is a deliberate diversionary tactic to take attention of people from their actual day-to-day troubles and the (BJP) government wants to escape its responsibility."

"This is a deliberate move to whip up nationalism in accordance with their (BJP) ideological construct of converting our secular, democratic republic of India into their RSS version of Hindu Rashtra," he alleged.

"Bharat Mata Ki Jai  their concept of nationalism and all this fits into that ideological project and that is what is the cause for spread of intolerance and this communalisation what we have seen," he said.

"Does this issue of 'Bharat mata Ki Jai' matter today?" he said.

"Farmers are dying and they are committing suicides. There is 26 per cent rise in suicide rate of farmers and in many parts of the country there is drought. In many parts, there is no water. There is a scramble for water even before the summer has set in fully..now these are the problems the government should address. Instead of addressing peoples' issues, and troubles the people are facing, they (BJP) want to divert attention to these sorts of issues, he said.

On the secret list of prominent Indians who have allegedly stashed money in offshore entities in tax haven Panama, Yechury described the revelations as a "very serious" issue and asked the government to probe it thoroughly.

"CPM considers it as very serious revelations but the authenticity of that will have to be established by the government. But this gives an indication that the promise made by the PM during election campaign that all the black money will be unearthed, and all money will come, and all of us were promised that Rs 15 lakh will come into our accounts.

"But for 2 years nothing has happened...I think it is the tip of the iceberg, this must be authenticated and proper and fast inquiry will have to be conducted. If there is anything illegal about this, then money should be brought back to country and put to use for peoples' welfare," he said.
When Premalatha Vijaykanth took the stage at a rally in Tirupur last week, the audience was expectant.

No social issues would be discussed, they knew.

No lofty promises about creating jobs or bettering the stumbling Tamil Nadu economy either.

Premalatha, a fiery politician in the making, wife of Captain Vijaykanth of the Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK), the third largest party in the state by vote-share, was expected to attack her political opponents hard. She did not disappoint. As she skewered Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa and rival Dravidian party chief M Karunanidhi of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), Premalatha went on to unleash more vitriol.

Captain is Mahatma Gandhi when required but can also turn into Godse if needed, she thundered.

Premalathas fury is not restricted to invoking the Mahatma or Godse alone. She has lashed out at Ministers of the ruling All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), ridiculing them for being hunchbacks in front of their leader Jayalalithaa.

At another recent rally, Premalatha took on former Chief Minister MG Ramachandran too. Nobody could understand what MGR said when he spoke, she stated. Why do you all point fingers at Captain? This comment struck a peculiar note, coming from the wife of a politician who was fond of referring to himself as Karuppu MGR meaning black or dark-skinned MGR.

The DMDK is now the lead ally in the Third Front, with the Peoples Welfare Front (PWF) which comprises Vaiko-led MDMK (Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam), the two Left parties and Dalit leader Thol Thirumavalavans Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK). The other two Dravidian parties, the DMK and the AIADMK, are yet to begin campaigns in earnest, but the Third Front is already in the thick of poll action.

Ally Vaiko, a fiery speaker himself, has been at the receiving end of ire from the Dravidian parties of late, for his uncontrolled verbiage.

DMK offered Rs 500 crore and 80 seats to Vijaykanth to bring him into their alliance, alleged Vaiko to reporters at Madurai on March 25. The DMK promptly sent him a legal notice and is preparing to sue the MDMK chief for defamation over what they call his baseless remarks.

Vaiko then went public with another allegation against Jayalalithaa  that container trucks filled with cash were lined up outside her Siruthavoor bungalow, awaiting cash distribution to voters during elections. While the Election Commission is quietly looking into these allegations, not much is expected to come of it.

If sensation is the goal, the Third Front is certainly on the right track. But political experts feel that apart from the high decibel sloganeering, nothing much of substance is available in the speeches of these leaders.

The DMDK has never spoken about what they would do as an alternative to the two Dravidian parties, said Aazhi Senthilnathan, political critic. Vaiko and Premalatha have never spoken about anything other than personally attacking rival leaders. Even when the DMDK party was launched in 2005, Premalatha was only talking about how Vijaykanths marriage hall was demolished. There is nothing substantial in her speeches, he said.

Vaiko, who was once respected for firm ideological stands, he says, has slipped politically. What we are now seeing is the degradation of Vaiko, added Senthilnathan.

Experts also lament the lack of focus on social issues and themes ahead of the elections. The prevalence of cult politics in the state, where leaders are seen as more crucial than their ideology or policies, is pointed out as one reason for such attacks.

Cult personalities are a major issue, explained C Lakshmanan, associate professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) and a political commentator. People in Tamil Nadu are not politicised. Their political IQs are deliberately kept at a low level. So politicians get away with not addressing substantial issues, he said.

Lakshmanan points to the manner of campaigning and speeches by key political leaders as intricately joined with their past professions  cinema. Jayalalithaa and Vijaykanth are both former cine stars. Karunanidhi too was a script writer for Tamil films and has recently penned the script for a teleserial.

Look at the way they address people at rallies, argued Lakshmanan. There is nothing natural about it. It is all about melodrama. People of this state have been habituated to emotional hyperbolic rhetoric, he said.

As poll fever grips Tamil Nadu, the DMK and the AIADMK are all set to get the campaign wheels in motion. In the next couple of months, Tamil Nadu is likely to witness a blistering scathing series of personal attacks as the stakes are high for every leader. Especially in an election that appears to be one that will be won on razor thin margins.

The author tweets @sandhyaravishan
Chennai: Ending intense negotiations spread over weeks, DMK on Monday allotted its key ally Congress 41 seats for the 16 May Assembly polls.

The bilateral discussions to identify the constituencies each of them would contest will begin later on Monday.

"We have signed (an agreement) that allots 41 seats to Congress," senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad told reporters in Chennai after inking the deal with DMK chief M Karunanidhi.

Jointly addressing reporters in Chennai along with his colleague Mukul Wasnkik, TNCC chief EVKS Elangoan and DMK leaders led by party treasurer MK Stalin, Azad said they would work to emerge victorious.

The agreement comes against the background of intense bilateral discussions between the DMK and Congress. Also, TNCC held a series of discussions with its state and central leadership. Recently, Elangovan held talks with party Vice President Rahul Gandhi as well over the issue.

It was decided by Tamil Nadu Congress to push for at least 45 seats and in a worst case scenario climb down a few seats and conclude the deal and it has worked out as was expected.

Azad said the rest of the seats would be shared among the DMK and other allies. "Of course, the major share, the number (of seats) will go to DMK but there are other allies also and DMK has already tied up with other political parties," he added.

"This time it is the turn of the DMK-led government and I am sure under the leadership of Karunidhiji, the party will be able to form the government in Tamil Nadu," he said, adding,all partners would work sincerely to ensure victory.

Pointing to DMK leader Stalin, he said "here is the young leadership, and we have signed 41 seats."

Stalin referred to discussions held earlier and said, "it has been decided today that Congress will contest 41 seats as part of the DMK front and an agreement has been signed."

He said they are confident of "driving out" AIADMK from the seat of power.

"We are confident we will achieve it," he said.

Talks will commence this evening to identify the constituencies that would be fought by Congress and DMK, he said.

Karunanidhi and Ghulam Nabi Azad signed the pact in the presence of top leaders of both parties including Wasnik, former ministers of DMK Duraimurugan, EV Velu and party MP Kanimozhi.

With the present allotment to Congress, DMK has so far allotted 54 seats to its allies.
Chennai: Tamil Nadu's ruling AIADMK will field a record highest 227 candidates in the assembly elections, with Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa contesting from flood-battered Chennai. Even the allies in the remaining seven seats will seek votes on the AIADMK symbol.

Jayalalithaa, 68, announced the candidates' list, saying she will seek re-election from Radhakrishnan Nagar constituency in north Chennai, an area that was badly affected in the unprecedented December floods.

The decision is significant as opposition parties were hoping to make the government's handling of the floods in the city a major election plank.

The AIADMK general secretary also said that her party will contest all 30 seats in Puducherry and put up seven candidates in Tamil areas of Kerala.

Assembly elections in all three states are scheduled for 16 May.

While a majority of the Tamil Nadu ministers have been retained as candidates, some outgoing legislators, including 10 ministers, have been dropped.

Jayalalithaa rewarded those who switched loyalties to her party from the DMDK, DMK and PMK.

The notable new entrant is Panruti S. Ramachandran, who had quit the DMDK. He was one of the leading lights of the AIADMK when its founder, the late M.G. Ramachandran or MGR, presided over the state.

Another old timer who has been fielded is C. Ponnaiyan, a former minister.

Though eight DMDK legislators turned rebel and supported the AIADMK during the most part of the outgoing assembly and later joined the ruling party, only K. Pandiarajan out of them has been given a ticket.

Jayalalithaa has also fielded M. Kalaiarasu and P.T. Elangovan, who had quit PMK, and Parithi Ilamvazhuthi, who had quit DMK and joined AIADMK.

Former DGP R. Nataraj is one of the new faces in the party list. He will contest from Mylapore in the heart of Chennai.

The AIADMK candidates' list is a mix of graduates, post-graduates and those with professional qualifications. Over 10 percent of the candidates are women.

Actors-turned-politicians R. Sarathkumar and Karunas will contest from Thiruchendur and Thiruvadanai constituencies respectively. They are among the seven candidates from smaller parties allied with the AIADMK.

AIADMK spokesperson Avadi Kumar said that it was the first time that the party was contesting in more than 200 seats.

Though the allies have been given seven seats, they will contest under AIADMK's "two leaves" symbol. Thus, for the first time, the AIADMK symbol will be seen in all the 234 constituencies.

Jayalalithaa first became chief minister in June 1991 and was voted out in 1996. She again became chief minister in May 2001 but stepped down in September that year due to legal hassles.

She was allowed to return to her post in March 2002 and retained it till May 2006. After the May 2011 elections, she took charge of Tamil Nadu again till September 2014 when she resigned due to a legal row.

She returned to the chief minister's post in May 2015.

In Puducherry, the AIADMK will contest all the 30 seats. In 2011, it had tied up with All India NR Congress there. After the elections which the alliance won, the relationship between the two soured.

In neighbouring Kerala, the AIADMK has fielded seven candidates as against six in 2011. The AIADMK tasted success in six wards in last year's Kerala civic polls.

For the 2016 assembly elections, Jayalalithaa has fielded three candidates each in Palakkad and Idukki districts and one candidate in Thiruvananthapuram. All the areas have sizeable Tamil population.
The now-legendary fall of the CPI(M)-led Left Front government in West Bengal was read by many as the final nail in the demise of left-wing ideologies in West Bengal. For many, it was the moment when a certain unthinkable happened  and this feeling was not limited to the supporters of the Left Front. However, for many years before its fall, far-away from the distant and hence reality-divorced political chatter of Delhi, the Left Front had been facing a different kind of criticism inside West Bengal. That the CPI(M) was moving away from its leftist credentials. While hot-talk about imperialism and stances of communalism kept certain Delhi lobbies assured about the CPM's leftist pedigree, the realities unfolding in Bengal were very different. This is why the victory of the Trinamool Congress in 2011, if read as a defeat of leftist politics in Bengal, is a misjudgement.

Leftist politics can only be judged by actual practice and not by theory. In actual practice in the subcontinent, this translates into policies that put people's rights before corporate interest, protection of public sector services and production, expansion in social sector spending along with an anti-communal and anti-imperialist, pacifist outlook.

If anything, in 2009 parliamentary elections and 2011 assembly elections, the Trinamool challenged the CPI(M) from a more 'leftist' stance. Mamata Banerjee was quite consciously of the electorate she was dealing with and the fact that communism isn't a dirty word to many in Bengal. She famously said that she makes a difference between CPM and communists. While communists may not need a certificate of authenticity from Mamata Banerjee, it shows that it's a real constituency. In fact, during her rapid rise in the wake of the Singur Nandigramk agitation, it was the ideological heft provided by a section of the left intellectuals who were critical of the CPM that gave her broader legitimacy among the urban middle-classes. Leftism or speaking in a 'leftist' voice mattered and still matters in Bengal.

In fact, it is the CPM which has abandoned the Marxist slogans that were so evident on the walls of West Bengal through most of their rule. Marxbad shorbosoktiman karon iha sotyo (Marxism is all-powerful because it is true) is not something that even the CPM places high on its slogan-writing agenda. This shift had started during the last CPM regime under Buddhadeb Bhattacharya when it had pursued the 'capitalist' road. This shift started long before, after the fall of the USSR, when the pull of socialism or communism as a world-scale alternative for the entire human race got a severe jolt  something from which it is yet to recover. The smaller left-wing parties (parties like the SUCI(C) or the many Naxalite splinters including some relatively large ones like CPI(ML)-Liberation) have not grown but have not seen a steep decline either. Add to this the periodic spurts in Maoist politics in the western districts of West Bengal and the state of leftism in West Bengal appears more complicated. While in parts of Latin America and Europe, left-wing politics have experienced a marked revival and upswing in popularity in the last 20 years, that phenomenon has passed by the leftist political groups of Bengal who have not been able to reinvent themselves with the changing times so as to attract the young to their core ideological commitments about people's welfare and emancipation. While the post-Manmohan urban middle-classes are the most vocal and generally it is their view that is represented as the view of West Bengal, their whole-hearted welcome of private investment and privatization at any cost as the favoured antidote to the state's employment crisis, evokes, at best, mixed feelings.

When it comes to differences between Trinamool and the CPI(M) on a leftist stance on policy issues, we find a mixed bag. Trinamool has been long opposed to Special Economic Zones (if only against the actual term SEZ) while CPI(M) promoted SEZs in West Bengal while rhetorically opposing it in theory. Trinamool is among the few state governments which has been against GM seeds and the Monsantos of the world have limited power over the present West Bengal government. On the question of nuclear power plants, CPM has never been opposed to it as a matter of policy in West Bengal while Trinamool opposes setting up of a nuclear power plant in Haripur of West Bengal. However, in the Rajya Sabha, Trinamool has sided with the BJP (where the government is in a minority) on the Coal Bill that opens up this important public resource for commercial profiterring by private entities.

In West Bengal, the Trinamool has not followed up on its commitment of releasing all political prisoners and has in fact abolished the category of political prisoners from the jail code  something that is as far away from leftist ideology as can be. Trinamool's increased social sector spending based on much -increased revenue has been severely criticized as being 'handout' politics. But such 'handouts' are among the very few things that the poorest among the public ever get from the public exchequer. These attract much more criticism than handouts to corporate entities or thousands of crores in corporate tax breaks ever do. While in this election season, the Trinamool is under severe fire for corruption, few among her opponents are criticizing her schemes to providing huge number of scholarships to girls, religious minorities and talented artists and artisans practising their traditional craft, 40 lakh bicycles to school students, setting up of several fair-price medicine shops, and a huge expansion in the proportion of population that gets rice at Rs.2 per kilo. Whichever is the new government, these schemes are set to continue. These are the policies through which the leftist commitment to people's welfare is visible in public politics and on that question, the CPM and the Trinamool, are not appreciably different and stand miles apart from the Congress and the BJP.

The authors tweets @GargaC
In the first phase of the West Bengal Assembly elections, there are over 40 lakh voters (40,09,171 to be precise). Out of these, a little over a half of the voters are men and only 16 belong to the third gender.

A News Nation report has said that out of the 4,945 voting booths, there have been no reports of violence even in Maoist-hit regions ( 1,962 polling stations have been categorised as critical ones)

The first two hours of polling saw 23.4 percent voter turnout in the three districts.

In 2011, the TMC had partnered with the Congress in the Assembly polls. This time around however, Mamata has taken a dig at the CPM-Congress alliance describing it as unholy, unprincipled", in the TMC's party Manifesto.

Every party has lashed out against the others in their manifestos. Here's a quick look:

BJP - The BJP, on Saturday, released its manifesto for the six phase West Bengal elections. In its manifesto, the most prominent issue is to drive out cross border infiltrators, according to an NDTV report.

Rahul Sinha, former state president for BJP, asserted that nearly 2.5 crore immigrants came from Bangladesh and Pakistan and that they would be identified and driven out of the country.

Their Manifesto also states that state government employees in West Bengal will on par with their Central government counterparts with regard to Dearness Allowance (DA) if they are voted to power. They simultaneously blamed the TMC for committing fraud on the issue.

Left Front - The 16 page manifesto of the Left Front promises to make the police and administrative work to be in sync with the traditional concept of a multi-party democracy, reported Live Mint. The manifesto also states that freedom of opinion will be restored to the people. It accuses the TMC of failing to attract investments into the state and the BJP of designing policies that favour corporates and the rich, ignoring the poor in the processes.

The Congress, which in alliance with the CPI(M) has released its own manifesto, wherein the utmost priority is the ouster of the TMC, said a report in News Nation. They have promised to investigate in the Saradha scam and other chit fund scam as well as the TET recruitment scam of 2011.

The report further states that apart from emphasising on a need for development in the industries and health sector, the Congress believes that there is no atmosphere for education in the state and it hopes to establish education as an important aspect.

TMC- A report in the Indian Express lists down Didis promises: Mamata Banerjee has promised a New Bengal in its manifesto. One of the things that Banerjee harped about in the manifesto was to restore land to the farmers in Singur, a case still pending in the Supreme Court. The manifesto also promises to finish all the projects that are underway and introduce new projects, if voted to power. They also promised infrastructure development, improved health care, zero-tolerance towards crime, priority care towards farmers and the agricultural sector, industrialisation and also focus on developing West Bengal as a tourist destination.
Peace is an ambiguous description in Singur. Instead of an auto manufacturing hub and the Nano factory, there is Only peace, and the abandoned 997 acres in Singur.

It symbolises the Trinamool Congresss incredible triumph in 2011, when Pariborton or political transformation swept through West Bengal and decisively ousted the Communist Party of India Marxist led Left Front government from power after 34 uninterrupted years in power.

In 2016, it is no longer the emotionally charged battle ground it was in 2008, when Tata Motors shutdown and left. After five years of peace, there is an anti-incumbency sentiment. It is silent. This could be ominous for the Trinamool Congress and it could be disappointing for the new and unthinkable alliance.

The Trinamool Congress exercises an invisible control in the constituency. Even curiosity is muted by the constraints of the remaining politically correct. The woman who declared that peace prevails in Singur and was cautious in her questions about the flyover collapse in Kolkata. She asked: Why did it happen? How did it happen? instead of directly wanting to know who was responsible for what had happened.

Living on the far side of the factory evacuated by Tata Motors when it shifted Nano production lines to Sanand in Gujarat, the lady refused to give her name; asked why she was candid: who knows how they will react if they get to know.

In 10 years, Singur has been turned upside down, twice over, which means that it is almost back to being the way it was in 2006. Once a small town, it is still a small town in Hooghly, surrounded by fields growing vegetables, rice, oil seeds, potatoes and jute.

Briefly, between 2006 and 2008, it faced the prospect of leading a metamorphosis, epitomising CPMs ambitions for West Bengals re-industrialisation.It then faced Mamata Banerjees offensive, from the 25-day-long fast unto death in Kolkata, to the dramatic blockade of the National Highway, and the mysterious death of Tapasi Malik, a girl who was raped and burnt for joining the resistance.

From 2008 to 2011, it became the symbol of Mamata Banerjees idyllic Sonar Bangla, that is, Golden Bengal, where Ma, Mati, Manush lived in placid co-existence. After 2011, it has sunk back into obscurity.

In 2016, Singur does not seem like a place where any definitive judgments on incumbency will be delivered. It is not going to be a test of either the Trinamool Congresss vision of transformation (Paribortan) or the Congress-Lefts novel alliance that promises restoration of the Rule of Law and democracy as well as a future in which economic revival figures as a priority.

Expectations have died. Instead of zooming towards a metamorphosis, the constituency and the pocket of militant resistance in Joymollah, Khasherbheri, Beraberi, Bajemelia are locked down in a trough of low potential. These villages and panchayats are stuck in the past, with one section living off 16 kilos of rice per week and a handout of Rs 2000 per family for their heroism in rejecting the Left Front governments plans for industrial rejuvenation, while other families have quietly joined the rest of Singur and moved on.

Connected by the suburban railway system to Kolkata, Singurs families have cut their losses. The arrival of Tata Motors and its departure was a moment of enlightenment for Singur. It realised its locational advantage; on the National Highway, connected by the suburban railway network, it is ideally situated to feed the gig economy in Kolkata and elsewhere. Almost every household has sent off its young people to work outside the area and outside West Bengal even, with some travelling overseas.

Remittances have boosted consumption and construction of new houses or make overs of old semi-pukka village homes. The landless peasant's situation is as bad as it was, but families with even small parcels of land are doing well, having switched to growing vegetables for the metropolitan markets.

The Trinamool Congress is complacent that it will win Singur, where out of the 16 gram panchayats it controls 15. Having imposed peace after 2011, the Trinamool Congress has been careful about allowing no party other than itself to cause any disturbance. The ruling partys control over the constituency has been such that the CPM has not been able to take advantage of the faction fights within the Trinamool Congress to revive its own organisation.

The party as the Trinamool Congress is called is therefore sanguine that the retiring former school teacher and currently a minister, Rabindranath Bhattacharjee will win.

Singur ought to have been a test of the entirely new politics of alliance in West Bengal between the CPM and the Congress, because in this part of Hooghly, the Congress has always had a vote bank among the land owning, affluent and educated rural middle class.

The promise of restoration of law and order, the end of rent collection by the Trinamool Congresss musclemen, the prospect of new investments should have jerked the voters out of their peace in Singur. Instead, the Congress-CPM Left Front alliance candidate Rabin Deb, best known for his energetic role as mediator of the seat adjustment, is trying hard but has not succeeded as yet in injecting momentum into the campaign.

The problem for the opposition is that the CPMs once famous and formidable organisation is weak and powerless and the Congress has no organisation at all. The alliance is not strong enough, as yet, to reassure the disgruntled that it represents a likely alternative.

The locals who have invested in building their relationships with the Trinamool Congress to live in peace need more than an idea or a possibility to make new investments in what could be a risky venture.
In the first week of November 2005, a joint team of Bihar and Delhi Police arrested four-time RJD MP from Siwan  Mohammed Shahabuddin  at an official bungalow on Bishambar Das Marg in Delhi. Bihar was then under President's Rule and an assembly election (the second in the same year) had been in progress for over a month. The Election Commission had taken a very serious note on poll-related violence in the state.

Shahabuddin's arrest that afternoon from his New Delhi residence had sent a message across his home state, Bihar, that the proverbial long arms could even reach people who were considered to be a law unto themselves. The context of that arrest was interesting  rejection of the anticipatory bail plea and issuance of a non-bailable warrant for giving a false affidavit mentioning only around one-and-half dozen cases as opposed to around three dozen registered cases against him, half of which pertained to heinous crimes such as, murder, kidnapping, gun running etc. A false affidavit was perhaps the least serious crime that he had committed in his criminal-political career. But it meant that a regime change  ouster of Lalu-Rabri regime  could spell trouble for him.

In that Assembly election, RJD was routed. Bihar had come out of the 15 years of misrule of Lalu-Rabri. Nitish Kumar's JD(U) and BJP emerged triumphant. That spelled doom for Shahabuddin, called 'Saheb' by his believers and 'Sahabu' by the residents of the region. Since the time Lalu Prasad Yadav's RJD came to power in Bihar in 1990, Shahabuddin spelled terror in hearts and minds of people in the area. What Gabbar Singh said in Sholay, "Yahan se pachas pachas kos dur gaon mein..." was true for people of Siwan for their two-time MLA and four-time MP.

No one would dare talk about him. If anyone had to say anything negative, he would first ensure that no one was around, at least within audible distance and the conversation would take place in extreme confidentiality. The account of crimes committed by him was chilling. The list of his crimes and the way he eliminated his detractors and challengers was enough to instill fear in hearts and minds of many.

He would not even care for the then superintendent of police of the district  SK Singhal who realised this the hard way. Shahabuddin and his men fired bullets at the SP, a crime for which he could be convicted 11 years later when the Nitish government set up a fast track court to expedite trials against him. This writer had a firsthand experience of the kind of fear Shahabuddin and his goons had over ordinary people in the area. For his believers, he was a demigod.

Thanks to an IAS officer, CK Anil, who was posted as district magistrate of Siwan in 2005 during President's Rule, the cases against Shahabuddin were pursued vigorously. Initially no one believed that Sahabu could be brought to book.

Take for instance the case of a double murder case in 2004 for which he, along with three of his associates, were convicted by a special court in December 2015: this case was known as the acid murder case. In August 2004, three brothers  Girish, Satish and Rajiv Roshan  were abducted after a prolonged tiff between these men's father Chandrakeshwar Prasad alias Chanda Babu and Shahabuddin's men over possession of his shops in the main Siwan market. Girish and Satish were killed by dipping them in acid. Rajiv managed to flee but he was later killed by unidentified assailants a few days before he was to depose against Shahabuddin as a prime witness.

The list of victims is long. There are multiple cases in which Shahabuddin has been convicted by a special court of law. They have been challenged in higher courts, but that's due process.

Lalu Yadav had never been apologetic about Shahabuddin. For his current ally and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, the arrest and a speedy trial against the former Siwan MP meant rule of law was in force in Bihar. Nitish followers and even ordinary citizens of Bihar would single out his case to point out that Nitish meant business. A series of convictions against Shahabuddin and others like him, sent out a message that criminals wouldn't be spared in his regime. He had won the perception battle.

Lalu has now turned the tables on him. Last month, State Minority Welfare Minister Abdul Ghafoor from the RJD and RJD's Raghunathpur MLA Harishankar Yadav made a courtesy call to Shahabuddin in Siwan jail. The meeting took place over tea and snacks in the jailer's official chamber. After a video of this meet went viral, the jailer was suspended. But the minister remained defiant and his political boss Lalu dismissed the incident as a 'routine' matter.

A month later, Lalu has honourably rehabilitated Shahabuddin in politics, as a national executive member of RJD. Shahabuddin and his followers had backed Lalu in the 2015 Bihar Assembly elections, so now it was time for the RJD chief to reward them. This only adds to Lalu's image that he never discards his loyalists. Second, now that he is back in power, he has started rewarding his men, even if they are convicted for heinous crimes. Third, it further cements the Muslim-Yadav socio-political coalition.

What does it mean for Nitish? The JD(U) officially maintains that this is an internal matter of the RJD and has nothing to do with the Nitish government or the JD(U). So what if it impacts popular perception about Nitish Kumar? Look at the numbers RJD-JD(U) has. People knew that such things might happen and yet they decisively voted for this combination.

Remember, Nitish was a bitter critic of Lalu till a year ago. They are now friends and allies. He may never be friends with Shahabuddin but may just turn a blind eye to the former MP's activities. Yes, this move hurts Nitish's image and public perception. But one cannot prejudge anything in politics.
Lucknow: The Imam of Kaba shrine in Mecca, who is on a visit to India, has condemned acts of terrorism around the world and said that Muslims in the country are living with love and harmony with other communities.

Amid an intolerance debate, Imam Sheikh Saleh Bin Mohammad Bin Ibrahim Aal-e-Talib expressed his views while speaking at an international seminar on "Islam and World Peace" here last night. "It is a matter of happiness that second highest population of Muslims is in India. Here Muslims are living with people of other religious communities with love and harmony," the Saudi Imam said.

Expressing concern over recent terror attacks in different parts of the world including Brussels, he said innocent people are being killed in the name of religion.

"The entire world is suffering from terrorism. In Holy Quran Allah has said if a person kills an innocent, it is like he has killed all humans," he said while condemning terrorism in the name of religion.

Presiding over the conference, President of All India Muslim Personal Law Board, Maulana Syyed Mohammad Rabe Hasani Nadwi said Islam was totally against terrorism and persons involved in such activities.

Nadwi said Saudi Arabia had good relations with India since ancient times and added that Ulama of that country have close relations with Nadwa (Islamic institution in Lucknow), while referring to former head Maulana Ali Miyan.
Berlin: The spokesman of Russian President Vladimir Putin says he is the "main target" of the media investigation into offshore accounts, but that he was not implicated in any wrongdoing.

The documents published by more than 100 media outlets alleged that Putin's friends, including a leading cellist, were engaged in an offshore scheme.

Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov says "it's obvious that the main target of such attacks is our president," and claimed that the publication was aimed at influencing Russia's stability and parliamentary elections scheduled for September.

Peskov said international media had wrongly focused on Putin instead of other world politicians, even though he was not implicated in any wrongdoing, and suggested the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a key player in the publication, had ties to the US government
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi returned home on Sunday night after wrapping up his final-leg of five-day three-nation tour of Belgium, the US and Saudi Arabia.

The Prime Minister had arrived in Riyadh on Saturday from Washington and on Sunday, he held wide-ranging talks with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud during which they agreed to strengthen cooperation in combating terrorism.

"Thank you Saudi Arabia. Joined several programmes during my visit, which will deepen economic & people-to-people ties between our nations," Modi tweeted both in Arabic and English before departing for New Delhi.

Thank you Saudi Arabia. Joined several programmes during my visit, which will deepen economic & people-to-people ties between our nations.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) April 3, 2016

The Prime Minister's first stop was Brussels where he attended the long-delayed India-EU summit and held talks with Belgium counterpart Charles Michel on 30 March.

From Brussels Modi went to Washington where he attended the Nuclear Security Summit on 31 March and 1 April.
What more proof of Pakistans doublespeak on terrorism does India need than Islamabad's collusion with Beijing to block a proposed ban on Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar at the UN?

On the day Pakistan was working in cahoots with China to block the blacklisting of Azhar, the Pakistan Joint Intelligence Team (JIT)  uponing return to Islamabad  was gloating that India had failed to provide evidence of the involvement of terrorists in the Pathankot attack. On the other hand, the NIA claims that India had provided all the evidence required. It included call records, names and addresses of suspects  including those of Masood Azhar and his brother Abdul Rauf  and ballistic and forensic reports.

The JIT team's plea, as quoted by the Pakistan media, is specious to the say the least.

Nobody is surprised by the Pakistani teams excuses.

Nobody should be.

The reason for Pakistans chicanery is simple and straightforward. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is not in charge of Pakistans foreign and security affairs. The other Sharif is  Pakistans chief of army staff Raheel Sharif has wrested control of foreign affairs and defence from the prime minister.

Its no secret in Islamabad. The division of labour between two Sharifs was effected at the end of 2014. Raheel had rescued the beleaguered prime minister from the joint agitation launched by Imran Khans Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and Tahirul Qadris Pakistani Awami Tehreek (PAT) calling for Nawaz's dismissal. The army chief mediated between the government and the protesters to end the crisis and extracted his pound of flesh.

The armys condition for mediation was that Raheel would be de facto in-charge of Pakistans foreign policy  including all security and defence policy including nuclear policy. Raheel also directly deals with the ongoing Afghan peace process. In October 2015, after Nawaz's meeting with the President Barack Obama in Washington, Pakistans Dawn newspaper said in an editorial, Worryingly, for the civilian dispensation and the democratic project, (Sharif) has appeared an increasingly peripheral figure in shaping key national security and foreign policy issues.

Raheel has raised his profile as, perhaps, no other army chief, during the reign of an elected dispensation in Pakistan. The main reason for his rising profile is the relative success the army has achieved against terrorists during its Zarb-e-Azb campaign in North Waziristan and its success in restoring some semblance of order to Karachi. The chief of army staff is believed to have said at a meeting of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI)  a London-based think tank  that Pakistans lack of governance required him to play the role of a soldier statesman.

The army chief accompanies Sharif on all his foreign visits. He travelled to Saudi Arabia and Iran with Sharif. Its important to recall that he, and not Nawaz, offered to mediate between Saudi Arabia and Iran amid escalating disputes. He makes it a point to follow up the prime ministers visits with his own trips to foreign nations. Thats because he is in charge of Pakistans foreign affairs; Nawaz is just a mask. He also followed up Nawaz's meeting with Obama with his own trip.

The US State department and the Pentagon are reported to have held discussions with the army chief bypassing Nawaz. And it was much the same with China.

It may also be recalled that Raheel had conveyed his unhappiness to Nawaz after the latter hosted Prime Minister Narendra Modi at his Lahore home on 25 December last year without taking the army chief into confidence. The result was the Pathankot airbase attack on 2 January.

Thats why the Pathankot probe by the JIT Pakistan team is a charade. Who is Pakistan probing? Its own Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)?

The Pathankot attack wouldnt have taken place without ISI and Pakistans military knowledge and complicity. Under these circumstances, one wonders whether the Modi government has taken a conscious decision to deal with the Pakistani army as an interlocutor and stakeholder. Or is Nawaz taking the Modi government for a ride? The Government of India should tell the Indian people the truth regarding whether it has indeed has chosen to make the Pakistani army the chief interlocutor in discussions about issues relating to cross-border terrorism and the involvement of Pakistan-based terror outfits in India.

By letting the JIT team visit India to collect evidence of the JeMs involvement in the Pathankot attack, Modi can let his gamble play out. Let the NIA team pay a return visit to Pakistan. But rest assured, all this cat-and-mouse play will lead to nothing. The Modi government has a lot to answer for in light of the criticism that by allowing the JIT  with an ISI officer as its member  into India, the government has erred in making a distinction between the Pakistani state and non-state actors.

The government has fallen into the Pakistani armys trap.

Pakistans ISI and the army are responsible for cross-border terrorism. Why this charade of collecting evidence?
Yangon (Myanmar): Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi has dropped plans to run two major ministries but will act as spokeswoman for the country's new president, a ruling party official said Monday.

Banned from becoming president by a junta-era constitution, Suu Kyi has cemented control over the country's first civilian-led government in decades by taking on a string of senior roles in the new administration.

She has vowed to rule "above" the president, picking school friend and close aide Htin Kyaw for the role.

Lawmakers from her National League for Democracy party are also pressing for a special "state counsellor" position for the Nobel laureate, an appointment that would allow her to liaise between the presidency and parliament.

Last week the NLD said she would take on four cabinet posts -- foreign, energy, education and the ministerial position in the president's office.

But during a parliamentary session on Monday, the NLD put forward two new names for the energy and education portfolios, according to NLD spokesman Win Htein.

"Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will be the spokesperson for the president," he added, without elaborating on the rejig.

The move will free up the 70-year-old's already busy day-to-day responsibilities while reinforcing control over her proxy president Htin Kyaw.

Hopes are growing that the newly sworn-in government can accelerate the country's economic and political rejuvenation after nearly half a century of military repression.

Suu Kyi's party won a huge mandate at last November's elections.

But the constitution effectively bans her from the top post as it rules out anyone with foreign-born children or spouses from becoming president.

Suu Kyi married and had two sons with a British national.

The military also retains control of the key home, defence and border affairs ministries, while 25 percent of parliamentary seats are reserved for unelected soldiers.

The military has already balked at the NLD's plans to make Suu Kyi a "state counsellor" with army MPs in parliament last week saying the move bypasses the constitution.

The proposal is likely to sail through the NLD-dominated legislature.
WASHINGTON The United States has carried out an air strike in Syria that killed a prominent leader of al Qaeda offshoot Nusra Front, Abu Firas al-Suri, U.S. officials told Reuters on Monday.

Islamist rebel sources said Abu Firas, who was a former Syrian army officer discharged in the late 1970s because of his Islamist leanings, was a founding member of the militant group and had fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

He was a senior member of Nusra Front's policy-making Shura Council.

The United States has targeted Nusra Front in the past, although the bulk of the U.S. military's firepower in Syria has been directed at Islamic State, which occupies parts of Syria and Iraq.

Abu Firas was a fervent opponent of Islamic State's style and was ideologically at odds with the militant group.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks violence in the country, had said he was killed in a suspected Syrian or Russian air raid on a village northwest of the city of Idlib in northwestern Syria on Sunday.

But rebel sources said the attack appeared to have the hallmarks of a U.S. drone strike.

The U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, declined to offer details on the strike itself, including whether it was carried out by manned or unmanned aircraft.

They also did not say whether the Nusra Front leader was specifically targeted.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

From Madaya, near Damascus, Abu Firas worked with al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in galvanizing support among Pakistani supporters of the fundamentalist Taliban movement in Afghanistan several decades ago, the rebel sources said.

"May God accept him as a martyr, he was a commanding figure. This was engineered by the Crusader axis," said one of the sources.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart Additional reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Beirut and Mark Hosenball in Washington; Editing by Franklin Paul and James Dalgleish)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Last week, Tesla CEO and Co-founder, Elon Musk announced the Model 3 electric sedan and said that it is coming to India and other markets. Now, a new report is stating that LG Displays will provide displays for Teslas Model 3 car.

A report from Reuters citing sources said that LG Display will be the sole supplier of information displays for the Model 3 electric sedan. The company will provide 15-plus inch center display for Model 3 which features a large information screen similar to a huge tablet. The information screen is present on the center console.

As per the report, Tesla currently gets display for its Model S and Model X from a different company which is speculated to be TPK holdings. LG Display currently offers displays for TV and mobiles so expanding its offering with Tesla gives the company a new market of automative display.

The Model 3 electric sedan from Tesla will go into production in late 2017 and is expected to cost around $35,000 ( Rs. 23,24,450 approx.) before tax breaks. Elon Musk revealed that more than 1,30,000 people have already booked the car which will have at least 215 miles of range, 0-60 in under six seconds, and every single one will have Supercharging as a standard feature.

source
BSNL is the latest telecom company that is foraying into 4G and is looking forward to launch services in 14 telecom circles, according to a latest report from PTI. The state owned telecom operator has 20 MHz liberalized BWA spectrum in 2500 MHz band in these 14 circles.

The move comes from the telecom company following a soft launch for 4G in Chandigarh where it explored revenue sharing model and capex model. During the soft launch, BSNL demonstrated speed of 35 Mbps in Chandigarh.

BSNL will be installing 4G base tower stations (BTS) in the existing GSM sites, which means there will be no additional expenditure on towers. The company had paid Rs 8,313.80 crore for 2,500 MHz spectrum in all its service areas but later returned airwaves in 6 of them which include Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kolkata.

BSNL may be extending passive infrastructure and its BWA spectrum, while telecom network infrastructure like BTS will be arranged by the network vendor or franchisee. The company however did not reveal the timeline for the commercial 4G rollout. Reliance Jio is also gearing up to launch 4G service by the end of this year and is planning a soft launch this month.

Meanwhile, in related news BSNL and Aircel have signed 2G ICR agreement on PAN India basis. This is a first agreement between a state owned operator and a private telecom player. With this strategic tie up, both organizations will be able to enhance customer experience besides utilizing each others assets and network strength.
Check out the new FoneArena Daily video that gives you a quick roundup of todays technology news.



httpv://youtu.be/l1OxjLowEE8

A new report from South Korea is suggesting that the long rumored foldable smartphone is coming in 2017 and not 2016 as per earlier reports.

LG Display will be the sole supplier of information displays for the Model 3 electric sedan, according to a new report. The company will provide 15-plus inch center display for Model 3 which features a large information screen similar to a huge tablet. The information screen is present on the center console.

Asus Zenfone 3 and Zenfone 3 Deluxe smartphones have surfaced in renders on design site Red Dot 21.

BSNL is foraying into 4G and is looking to launch services in 14 telecom circles. The state owned telecom operator has 20 MHz liberalized BWA spectrum in 2500 MHz band in these 14 circles.
Everyone may be wondering if new food safety measures or even the potential push into gourmet burgers as a fourth concept holds the key to a revival for Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG 0.89%), but the real spike could be brewing in a massive upgrade to its beverage offerings. Chipotle is testing several new drink options at one of its locations on its home turf of Colorado, according to Nation's Restaurant News.

It's working with Coca-Cola (KO 1.60%) to switch out the more conventional offerings that came under fire because the fountain drinks still contain GMOs, something that seems to go against its "food with integrity" mantra in the eyes of some. It is going with Coke Life, a lo-cal version of Coca-Cola's signature soft drink that is sweetened with stevia and cane sugar. It's also going with Blue Sky sodas, a line of all-natural carbonated beverages that is distributed by Coca-Cola. It's the first time that Coke Life or Blue Sky are being dispensed as fountain beverages anywhere.

It's not just about mixing things up in terms of pop. Diners at the Denver-based Chipotle testing out the upgraded offerings can also wash down their burritos and bowls with a watermelon agua fresca beverage, a hibiscus tea enhanced by rooibos and lemongrass, or a new In Pursuit of Tea-branded iced tea formulation.

The new drinks are the result of Chipotle partnering with master sommelier Richard Betts, a move that is also naturally leading to some notable tweaks to its more potent libations. Chipotle's offered beer for ages, and three years ago it added premium margaritas to roughly half of its locations. However, with alcohol sales accounting for just 2% of Chipotle's sales, there's naturally room for improvement.

Betts developed a new margarita with Sombra mezcal, Astral tequila, agave syrup, and fresh lemon and lime juices. There's also an organic sangria. A Westword interview with Betts also details the shift in beers, entailing the addition of Oskar Blues Beerito as a lager on draft and Mexico's Modelo Especial in cans.

These moves obviously won't change Chipotle's fortunes overnight. It just wrapped up its fifth month in a row of double-digit percentage declines in comps. Alcohol sales may never be a big driver given Chipotle's popularity as a weekday lunch stop for folks at work. However, offering more than the cookie-cutter beverages that can be had anywhere else can only help. It also can't hurt if the new drink options are more in sync with Chipotle's "food with integrity" battle cry.

Chipotle has a long way to go before turning things around, and we have no idea if or when the former market darling will go national with these new beverages. It makes sense. It should happen, and it may as well happen sooner rather than later as consumers are reshaping their expectations of the Chipotle experience. Investors should raise a glass because Chipotle's working on a new way to drum up its moribund comps.
What: Shares of Brazilian oil giant Perobras (PBR 3.95%) jumped 63% last month. While there was plenty of news fodder around the soap opera that is the Brazilian government corruption probe, the company's stock rose the most on news that it was planning to sell part of its business in Argentina and announcements of layoffs and cost savings plans.

So What: As a company that straddles the fence between a publicly traded company and a state run enterprise, Petrobras' fate is going to be tied immensely to what happens in the next few months as Brazilian prosecutors dig deeper into the corruption probe that is boiling all the way to the current president, Dilma Rouseff, and her predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The whole probe started when investigators found that Petrobras executives were taking kickbacks for construction contracts at a time when Rouseff was chair of the board at Petrobras. For anyone that has a stake in Petrobras, there is some hope that it will be able to become less beholden to the government and operate more as a public company.

A few signs that this is happening took place in March, which helped to give investors some confidence. The first was that the company was in talks to sell its Argentinian assets for about $1.2 billion to Argentina based Pampa Energia SA. The sale could help Petrobras fill its funding gap for the year and ease its massive debt profile.

Another promising sign was that the company announced plans to cut costs and save some money. On March 17, the company announced that it was laying off 12,000 employees, about 15% of its workforce. Also, the company is looking to implement a reorganization plan that will save it $500 million annually.

Now What: These are the moves that Petrobras will need to make if it has any chance of getting out from under its $130 billion debt load, but they are only the first steps. The workforce cuts and savings plans will help on the operational side of things, but the company will need to reign in capital spending as well. These are the things that it can control, and an increase in oil prices could go a long way towards helping boost its prospects over the next few years.

As an investor, though, it's probably best to keep away for a while longer. While the cost savings plans sound ambitious so far, there is still a lot of things that need to fall in Petrobras' favor before it becomes a stable, profitable business worthy of investment.
It's fair to say that two of America's leading financial entities can trace their roots to the Panic of 1907. The first is the Federal Reserve, which came about after bankers and citizens tired of the recurrent panics and financial crises of the Gilded Age, during which the United States suffered crises an average of once every six years. The second is Bank of America (BAC 3.71%), which was founded in 1904 but really gained prominence following the San Francisco earthquake and fire in 1906  which, coincidentally, served as the spark for the Panic of 1907.

The Motley Fool's Gaby Lapera and John Maxfield discuss this in the video below, explaining how this unfolded to produce the Federal Reserve as well as Bank of America, which is today the nation's biggest bank in the United States.

A transcript follows the video.

This podcast was recorded on March 28, 2016.

Gaby Lapera: These guys are chugging along, just fine. Then there's a major catalyst. In 1906, there was an earthquake that devastated San Francisco. The problem is, a lot of San Francisco, the people that insured them, they were in New York. Suddenly, they get this rush of insurance claims and all this money is going out of New York and people are starting to get worried like, hey, am I going to be able to keep my money in the bank? This is kind of the catalyst that ended up creating the Federal Reserve.

John Maxfield: That is exactly right. 1906 you had this horrible earthquake. Even worse than the earthquake was the fire that started afterwards. I don't know who collects these statistics and I don't know how it's possible to be accurate, but I have read that the fire that followed the San Francisco earthquake in 1906 destroyed two-thirds of that city. All those buildings, they had insurance on them. That caused this huge outflow of money from the system which then triggered another banking panic. J.P. Morgan gets together again, James Stillman, who gets together with George Baker and these guys do their normal thing. They come together, they pool all this money. They are able to stop the panic this time. The American people after ... This was now 40 years where you basically have either a financial crisis ...

Lapera: It was a roller coaster.

Maxfield: I'm sorry what was that?

Lapera: It was a roller coaster, economically speaking, for the United States.

Maxfield: Yes. Total nightmare right?

Lapera: Just constant. Imagine being on a roller coaster for 40 years with your money and that's what was happening in the United States.

Maxfield: Yeah. Once every six years a depression or financial crisis. What a total nightmare. Anyways, it was at that point that the bankers with some senators got together and said, look we have got to do something about this. That is really where the origins of the Federal Reserve come from. Just kind of a side not on this, on the San Francisco earthquake ... Bank of America. When you look at the origins of Bank of America, it traces its roots back to 1904 when a guy by the name of A.P. Giannini founded the bank. But he didn't found it as the Bank of America, no. He founded it as the Bank of Italy. The reason the Bank of Italy was able to get so much traction so quickly, besides the fact that Giannini was a respected guy in the San Francisco business community, was the fact that after that great fire, he opened up shop. He went to his vault, took all the money out, and literally set up a table outside and started his bank, giving loans and taking deposits once again. He was really the first bank in that area to get up and going again.
Investigators are looking into the cause of the derailment of an Amtrak train traveling from New York to Savannah, Georgia that killed two people.

Forbes Media Chairman Steve Forbes was traveling on that train and recounted his experiences.

Our prayers go out to the families of those two workers who were killed and to those who were injured. Forbes told the FOX Business Networks Maria Bartiromo.

Forbes described what he felt when the derailment occurred.

Fortunately I was in the last car of the train and we were between Philadelphia and Wilmington, going into Wilmington, and then suddenly you felt a sudden halt. It was like somebody in a car hitting the breaks, easing up and then hitting the breaks, but in a matter of seconds. And so you knew this was not a normal slowdown. So it came to a screeching halt, if you had coffee, the coffee was in the air, cups were flying but other than that we werent impacted. said Forbes.

He continued, There was initially the smell of rubber like the brakes were burning but that went away so we knew there was not a fire, so we just decided to sit there until we were told what to do. We werent going to get off at the potential live track next to us. First responders came in about a half an hour and said is anyone injured? They were obviously working on the first two cars where you did have those injuries.

More on this... U.S. Rail System Has A Dirty Little Secret

When Maria asked whether he knew the train had derailed, Forbes responded, In our car, no, we were on the track, you felt a little tilt, but nothing would suggest you were about to fall over or anything.

Forbes weighed in on reports Amtrak had installed early warning systems to prevent potential crashes.

They apparently had done so, so you dont get trains crashing into each other head on, but there was apparently no system for the construction workers to talk to somebody who could say a train is coming in X minutes, get off the track. Forbes said.

Amtrak has been under scrutiny for safety measures following the crash last year of a Northeast Regional train that killed six people and injured over 100 passengers.

As for the first responders on the scene, Forbes had high praise.

Other than the lack of information the first responders were terrific. When they came on after about a half hour and asked who was hurt. Then about twenty minutes later they took us off the train and there were plenty of them there helping you get down, you know we werent Olympic athletes and we didnt have the normal platform there. Forbes continued, So, the first responders were excellent.
This is what happens when you work to change things. First they think youre crazy. Then they fight you. And then all of a sudden you change the world.  Theranos founder and CEO Theranos Elizabeth Holmes

The wheels are coming off the cart at Theranos, the $9 billion startup founded by Stanford dropout Elizabeth Holmes when she was 19. Its proprietary blood testing technology is the subject of a scathing report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), but thats just the latest in a growing list of woes for the troubled unicorn.

First, the FDA declared the companys nanotube container for collecting blood from a finger prick to be an unapproved medical device. Then, CMS found serious deficiencies that forced a shutdown of Theranos Northern California lab. And while the companys deal with Safeway never got off the ground, Walgreens is reportedly looking for a way to get out of its agreement.

But the one thing that the secretive Silicon Valley startup has managed to avoid is peer-reviewed, independent testing that compares the results of its proprietary diagnostic testing to that of other labs like Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp. Last week, that changed, and the results were devastating.

Mount Sinai researchers showed that cholesterol results were an average of 9.3% lower than those conducted by reference labs  a bias that could yield a false diagnosis. And the 121-page CMS report revealed that the companys proprietary Edison device yields unacceptably inaccurate and highly erratic results for a significant number of critical blood tests.

Why, at this point, should any of us be surprised? With all the hype over Theranos supposedly breakthrough technology, none of it appears to be working.

Not to be morbid, but I can see why the companys chief scientist, Ian Gibbons, repeatedly told his wife Rochelle that nothing was working before taking his own life in 2013, according to the Wall Street Journal. Apparently, Gibbons bore witness to what the rest of us are only beginning to see now.

That was the year that Holmes made one of the biggest public splashes in startup history, garnering gushing front-page profiles across the media landscape, claiming that her companys breakthrough technology could run hundreds of lab tests, virtually in real-time and at a fraction of the cost of traditional labs, from just a few drops of blood.

That was also the year that Theranos began using its technology on real patients. The question is, how exactly did that happen? How could a startup with devices that had never been vetted by the scientific and medical communities run millions of potentially inaccurate blood tests on blood drawn from countless people? And can it happen again?

Actually, lets not put the cart ahead of the horse. Theranos is still in operation. CMS is considering sanctions that could include revoking the labs certification, but that may not stop Theranos from continuing to operate online or out of Walgreens locations in Arizona.

You see, Theranos coauthored controversial legislation allowing patients to order their own blood tests without a doctor. The idea was that folks could just stop by a local pharmacy, get a finger prick, and find out how theyre doing in a matter of hours instead of days. That bill became Arizona law in July of last year.

Meanwhile, the nations largest diagnostic company, LabCorp, recently joined several Internet-based services in offering certain blood tests direct to consumers, although theyve had to wiggle their way through a myriad of state laws and federal regulations to do it. As long as its tests arent covered by healthcare providers or Medicare, I believe Theranos can do the same thing.

Not everyone in the biomedical world thinks thats such a good idea. In February of 2015, Stanford University School of Medicine professor John Ionnidis wrote a scalding op-ed in the Journal of American Medical Association singling out Theranos for using stealth research, aggressive corporate announcements, and mass media hype to skirt the peer-review process the biomedical industry uses to assess the validity of claims.

Talk about prescience; the good doctor nailed it. Nevertheless, here we are. As for how we actually arrived here, that appears to be a combination of entrepreneurial spirit and empowerment, Silicon Valleys continuous quest for the next big thing, massive media hype, complete lack of board oversight, and plenty of charisma and connections.

I remember reading a Glamour interview where Holmes said, I was very blessed to grow up in an environment in which I was encouraged to believe that there was nothing I couldn't do. Sure enough, her best friends father was none other than legendary venture capitalist Tim Draper, who was apparently struck by her similarities to Steve Jobs  presumably the iconic CEOs famed reality distortion field.

According a Bloomberg interview with Steve Jurvetson, Drapers partner at Silicon Valley venture capital firm DFJ, I remember meeting her when she was still a Stanford student, he said. It was fascinating -- she had that mesmerizing zeal to revolutionize. We wrote a $500,000 check before anyone else, but shes been somewhat independent and has been going at it all on her own 

Indeed, DFJ does not have a seat on the companys closely held board. Neither do any of the other investors that have since ponied up more than $750 million, most recently at a $9 billion valuation that made Holmes a paper billionaire, four times over. Indeed, Holmes connections and charisma have played a significant role in this debacle. So have lack of transparency and corporate governance.

At this point, one thing seems almost certain. The more we learn about Theranos, the more concerning the story becomes  not just because the company is still drawing and testing patients blood, but because theres absolutely nothing to stop the same sort of thing from happening again  and again.

Theranos response to the CMS report and others can be found on its website, here.
As it nears its 40th anniversary, is there a more perfectly American company than Apple ?

Though endlessly debatable, Apple is arguably the seminal American company, embodying the best and, at times, worst traits of our modern business culture.

Rising from the stereotypical humble beginnings, Apple's meteoric rise, fall from grace, and subsequent resurrection act are the stuff of business legend. Today, the company, its brand, and its products arguably loom larger than any other company in the world. And as the company noted with the following video at its recent product event, Apple has accomplished all this in a mere 40 years.

Source: Apple via YouTube.

So as Apple officially reaches middle age on April 1, let's take a brief moment to review where the company has come from, and, far more importantly, what Apple will need to do to continue its winning ways over its next 40 years.

Here's to the crazy ones By now, the history of Apple is the stuff of lore; well-known but still deserving of review. Founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak on April 1, 1976, the firm's inception perfectly coincided with the coming explosion of the personal computer industry. By 1980, Apple had grown to $117 million in revenue and filed for an initial public offering (IPO).

The 1980s began with Apple notching several of its most memorable accomplishments, yet also sowed the seeds for the company's subsequent, near-fatal decline. The introduction of the Macintosh computer pushed the entire PC industry into a new era of accessibility, while Apple's famously Orwellian 1984 advertisement has been heralded by many as one of, if not, the single greatest advertisement ever.

Internal strife, specifically the well-documented power struggle between co-founder Steve Jobs and then-CEO John Sculley, led to a series of failed product offerings from Apple that weighed on the firm's finances and public standing. Weak leadership and faulty product strategies through the mid-'90s left Apple on the verge of bankruptcy, the precise point at which co-founder Steve Jobs returned in early 1997. The ensuing white knight performance from Jobs returned the company to profitability and created the foundation for Apple's unprecedented string of hit products that define the firm's modern era -- iMac, iTunes, iPod, iPhone, iPad, and most recently the Apple Watch.

For all its successes though, Apple has also courted its fair share of controversy over the years, perhaps most notably in regard to what many view as Apple's complicity with the appalling labor conditions at its Chinese product assembly partner Foxconn. The company has also stoked public and regulatory ire for, among many items, fixing the price of ebooks and avoiding paying billions in corporate taxes. Like its successes, the list of Apple's transgressions, both the definite and the subjective, stand as too long for a single article.

Despite its myriad flaws, Apple's successes have catapulted the firm to its current rank as the most valuable company in the world. It has sold nearly 1.6 billion total devices, and its installed base stands at over 1 billion active computers, smartphones, tablets, MP3 players, and smartwatches. One share of Apple stock purchased at its IPO price of $22 would have since increased in value by a seemingly preposterous 21,240% before dividends.

A harder road ahead Looking to the future, only a fool, with a lower case f, would expect similarly spectacular results from Apple. At the same time though, Apple still enjoys several legitimate opportunities to continue to impact the wider world while also producing compelling returns for its investors. However, success is by no means a given.

Source: Apple

Aside from the nascent smartwatch market, the rest of Apple's core markets are either deep in the throes of, or gradually gliding toward, maturity. This by no means implies Apple cannot continue to find novel ways to increase its presence in the smartphone, tablet, and PC markets, while enjoying a moderate potential lift from Apple Watch adoption. If anything, Apple's recent addition of the iPhone SE or last year's debut of the larger-screened iPad Pro demonstrate a commitment on the firm's part to continue to adapt its current products to each possible pocket within their respective spaces. However, barring margin-crimping price decreases, Apple will need to introduce completely new products into sizable markets in order to further expand its sales and user bases.

Thankfully, Apple appears to be diligently laboring toward this end. Citing sources within the company, a number of respected media outlets have reported that Apple's electric vehicle project, code named Project Titan, remains quietly in development. Though far from certain, a number of publications cite its target launch date as 2019. Additional opportunities for Apple's continued product expansion lie in the smart home, an area I'm particularly bullish on, as well as augmented reality and much more.

As it settles into middle age, Apple is a different, more mature company. Like many graying 40-somethings, it may well never recapture the sublime magic of its youth, especially given the added constraint that comes with its massive scale today. Continuing to grow will require Apple to stay mindful of the traits that propelled it to the dizzying heights where it finds itself today. That won't be easy. Few companies have been able to perpetually stave off the deadly stasis that often accompanies such size. Though if Apple can do so, the rest should in theory take care of itself. Here's to another 40.

The article As Apple Turns 40, Do Its Best Days Lie Ahead? originally appeared on Fool.com.

Andrew Tonner owns shares of Apple. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple. 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.
Many employers try to help their employees save for retirement by setting up special retirement plans for them. These plans can include employer profit sharing and matching contributions, but the costs of setting up a 401(k) or other employer-sponsored retirement plan can be prohibitive. One attractive alternative is for the employer to contribute to an employee Roth IRA, but setting that up is more complicated than just writing a check. Below, we'll go through some of the steps necessary to have money go from your employer into your Roth IRA.

Payroll deduction and Roth IRAsHistorically, there was little opportunity for employers to get involved in their employees' IRAs. Employer-sponsored plans still are the primary vehicle for companies to help their workers save for retirement, and decisions regarding IRAs still belong exclusively to each individual worker.

However, as electronic payments have evolved, laws have changed to make it easier for individuals to save in IRAs. One such provision allows participating employers to allow their employees to arrange for payroll deductions to go directly to an IRA. Whether that IRA is a traditional or Roth IRA depends entirely on the worker, but the payroll deduction makes sure that whatever amount the employee states gets contributed into the retirement account.

Limits on Roth IRAsWhen you consider employer contributions to Roth IRAs, the main obstacle is that under payroll deduction, it's always up to the employee to decide where paycheck funds go. The employer can increase an employee's wages, but it can't force the employee to set that money aside in a Roth IRA or any other retirement account.

Moreover, the employer also needs to understand that even with the payroll deduction method, any limitations on the employee's ability to contribute to a Roth IRA are still in place. Therefore, the maximum limit of $5,500 annually for those under 50 or $6,500 for those 50 or older applies. Moreover, if the employee's income exceeds certain limits, then Roth IRA contribution might not be possible at all.

An alternativeIf the employer wants to provide a Roth-style alternative to a Roth IRA, then one option is to offer a Roth account within its 401(k) plan. These accounts use after-tax dollars in the same way a Roth IRA does, and withdrawals from the account are tax-free.

For those employers who don't offer 401(k)s, however, looking at the payroll deduction option is worth considering. It requires good faith between employers and employees, but done correctly, it can save a bundle in administrative fees while still achieving similar results as a standard employer plan.

This article is part of The Motley Fool's Knowledge Center, which was created based on the collected wisdom of a fantastic community of investors. We'd love to hear your questions, thoughts, and opinions on the Knowledge Center in general or this page in particular. Your input will help us help the world invest, better! Email us atknowledgecenter@fool.com. Thanks -- and Fool on!

The article Can an Employer Contribute to an Employee's Roth IRA? originally appeared on Fool.com.

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: BP.

What: Shares of BP Prudhoe Bay Royalty Trust , a royalty interest trust in the Prudhoe Bay oil field located on the North Slope of Alaska, collapsed in March, with its share price plunging 44% according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. There appear to be three primary culprits for the tumble.

So what: First, BP Prudhoe Bay Royalty Trust is dependent on rising crude oil prices to pay out its handsome and highly coveted cash distribution. But as we all know, crude prices have sunk by roughly two-thirds in less than two years, crushing the average per-barrel royalty that BP Prudhoe Bay Royalty Trust would net by 63% between Q3 2011 and Q3 2015. All the while, its contractual costs are rising.

Image source: Pictures of Money via Flickr.

Second, in March BP announced that it would be cutting production in the Prudhoe Bay region of Alaska to just two rigs from the current five, largely on account of persistently low crude oil prices. BP Prudhoe Bay's royalty interest allows the company to receive a royalty on up to 90,000 barrels a day, but it appears as if production in the region is about to be slashed, hurting its royalty-earning capacity. That's also bad news for investors who count on the cash distribution.

The final nail in the coffin came from the company's 10-K, which suggested that the Trust is on pace to fund cash distributions through 2020, but did not expect to pay out any distributions thereafter. Here's the pertinent information from BP Prudhoe Bay Royalty Trust's 10-K:

Now what: With an end to cash distributions in sight, we're simply witnessing investors not overpaying for future distributions, which is a smart move.

Royalty trusts can offer substantial yields that can lure in inexperienced investors who are chasing yield, but their distributions are based solely on their ability to control their costs and maintain production, all while their primary product, oil in this case, rises in price. Right now, we're seeing BP Prudhoe Bay's costs rise each and every year, as expected. Meanwhile, production is falling, crude prices remain weak, and an end may be in sight for the Trust. Keep in mind that when it discontinues paying cash distributions, its share price would be expected to head to $0.

What could BP Prudhoe Bay Royalty Trust pay in cash distributions over the next five years? That depends on a number of factors, but the general consensus (that I happen to agree with) is that BP Prudhoe Bay is a huge gamble even after a nearly 50% haircut in a month. I'd suggest you avoid this mess altogether.

The article BP Prudhoe Bay Royalty Trust Was Obliterated in March -- and It May Get Worse originally appeared on Fool.com.

Sean Williamshas no material interest in any companies mentioned in this article. You can follow him on CAPS under the screen nameTMFUltraLong, track every pick he makes under the screen name TrackUltraLong, and check him out on Twitter, where he goes by the handle@TMFUltraLong.The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. 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.
The past year has proven decidedly more down than up for digital radio innovator Pandora Media .

P data by YCharts

After the firm's bruising post-earnings sell-off in late October,Pandora's stock has trended steadily down. These clear and continued struggles led to rumors earlier this year that Pandora might be looking to sell itself. And even more recently, the firm once-again reshuffled its leadership, which will unfortunately do little to reverse the course of a company dealing with more fundamental problems than its C-suite.

Back to its rootsThe most important news in this week's press release about Pandora's management team reshuffle was that it brought back founder and former CEO Tim Westergren to re-assume the CEO position. In the characteristically optimistic, "ra ra" nature of such announcements, Westergren is quoted as saying:

CFO Mike Herring also added the role of president to his responsibilities, which includes revenue, music licensing, finance, legal, and IT functions. Chief Strategy Officer Sara Clemens will now assume the role of chief operating officer, with an emphasis on implementation and scaling Pandora's current and future business initiatives. Lastly, Chris Phillips will serve as chief product officer. Former CEO Brian McAndrews has left Pandora.

All of this sounds great on paper. However, Pandora's new executive team has its work cut out for it to reverse the firm's money-losing ways.

A more fundamental flawPandora's problem isn't a leadership issue. The company's core ad-based online radio product simply doesn't scale.Not only has the company never turned a profit in its 16 cumulative years of existence, but it has failed to do so even as sales have skyrocketed.

P Revenue (TTM) data by YCharts

Worse yet, the firm's average per-song royalty rateswill increase in 2016 from $0.00153 to $0.00176, creating an additional headwind for a company working diligently to optimize its average revenue per user.

Source: Pandora

Worse yet, Pandora's efforts to launch an on-demand product this year could prove too little too late. Apple Music continues to steam ahead with its exclusive content strategy. SoundCloud has launched its own subscription service. And perhaps most importantly, Spotify recently raised $1 billion in new financing to invest in growth and conversion initiatives, which lays the groundwork for a Spotify IPO in the not-too-distant future. Presumably, when Pandora launches its new on-demand service, it will be doing so into an increasingly crowded space.

There's also the potential acquisition angle to consider. As mentioned earlier in this article, The New York Timesreported in February that Pandora has retained Morgan Stanley to explore a possible sale of the company. However, given the rapid evolution of the digital music space and Pandora's profitless history, I find myself questioning what value a strategic buyer might gain by spending more than $2 billion on Pandora. The numbers simply don't add up.

To be fair, Westergren is something of a visionary in the music industry. He founded Pandora and its Music Genome Project in 2000, at a time when the Internet remained largely a novelty to many investors and music fans. Westergren could conceivably have concocted an equally prescient rescue plan to help steer his company toward calmer, more profitable waters. However, as far as bankable scenarios go, this one doesn't seem to have much in the way of evidence to support it. As such, I'm skeptical that new management alone can right Pandora's ship.

The article Bringing Back Its Founders Won't Solve Pandora's Woes originally appeared on Fool.com.

Andrew Tonner owns shares of Apple. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple and Pandora Media. 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.
Everyone may be wondering if new food safety measures or even the potential push into gourmet burgers as a fourth concept holds the key to a revival forChipotle Mexican Grill, but the real spike could be brewing in a massive upgrade to its beverage offerings. Chipotle is testing several new drink options at one of its locations on its home turf of Colorado, according to Nation's Restaurant News.

It's working with Coca-Cola to switch out the more conventional offerings that came under fire because the fountain drinks still contain GMOs, something that seems to go against its "food with integrity" mantra in the eyes of some. It is going with Coke Life, a lo-cal version of Coca-Cola's signature soft drink that is sweetened with stevia and cane sugar. It's also going with Blue Sky sodas, a line of all-natural carbonated beverages that is distributed by Coca-Cola. It's the first time that Coke Life or Blue Sky are being dispensed as fountain beverages anywhere.

It's not just about mixing things up in terms of pop. Diners at the Denver-based Chipotle testing out the upgraded offerings can also wash down their burritos and bowls with a watermelon agua fresca beverage, a hibiscus tea enhanced by rooibos and lemongrass,or a new In Pursuit of Tea-branded iced tea formulation.

The new drinks are the result of Chipotle partnering with master sommelier Richard Betts, a move that is also naturally leading to some notable tweaks to its more potent libations. Chipotle's offered beer for ages, and three years ago it added premium margaritas to roughly half of its locations. However, with alcohol sales accounting for just 2% of Chipotle's sales, there's naturally room for improvement.

Betts developed a new margarita with Sombra mezcal, Astral tequila, agave syrup, and fresh lemon and lime juices. There's also an organic sangria. A Westword interview with Betts also details the shift in beers, entailing the addition of Oskar Blues Beerito as a lager on draft and Mexico's Modelo Especial in cans.

These moves obviously won't change Chipotle's fortunes overnight. It just wrapped up its fifth month in a row ofdouble-digit percentage declines in comps. Alcohol sales may never be a big driver given Chipotle's popularity as a weekday lunch stop for folks at work. However, offering more than the cookie-cutter beverages that can be had anywhere else can only help. It also can't hurt if the new drink options are more in sync with Chipotle's "food with integrity" battle cry.

Chipotle has a long way to go before turning things around, and we have no idea if or when the former market darling will go national with these new beverages. It makes sense. It should happen, and it may as well happen sooner rather than later as consumers are reshaping their expectations of the Chipotle experience. Investors should raise a glass because Chipotle's working on a new way to drum up its moribund comps.

The article Can Chipotle Drink Its Way to a Turnaround? originally appeared on Fool.com.

Rick Munarriz has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Chipotle Mexican Grill. The Motley Fool recommends Coca-Cola. 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.
Lawsuits on behalf of those owning Puerto Rican debt, and those who own money that support the debt, have been filed according to a document obtained by the FOX Business Network from Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP.

Substantial holders of outstanding bonds of the Government Development Bank for Puerto Rico (GDB) announced today that they have filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico seeking to enjoin certain transfers of assets by GDB that are prohibited under Puerto Rico Law, the document stated.

Sources tell FOX Business anchor Liz Claman that the suit will prevent any bondholder of Puerto Rican debt from withdrawing their money.

It is imperative that GDBs [government bondholders] assets be preserved and that the preferential payments in violation of Puerto Rico law cease in order to permit restructuring discussions to unfold, it said.

As previously reported by the FOX Business Networks Charlie Gasparino and Adam Shapiro, nearly 70 percent of U.S.-based municipal bond funds own Puerto Rican bonds or have some type of exposure.
Updates With Hawaiian Airlines comment.

JetBlue Airways (NASDAQ:JBLU) ditched paying $2.7 billion, or a 47% premium, for Virgin America (NASDAQ:VA) because the price tag outweighed the benefits of a deal. A JetBlue spokesperson tells FOXBusiness.com;

In context of our current strategic plan, we performed a disciplined evaluation of an acquisition's actual value to JetBlue. The price reached a level that made clear our plan for organic growth offered a better path to create value for JetBlue, our shareholders and our crewmembers.

But does that mean the airline is out of the takeover game? Maybe not. Stifel Nicholas analyst Joseph DeNardi told clients on Monday that the carrier could pursue a deal with Hawaiian Airlines (NASDAQ:HA), if management views an acquisition as necessary to remain competitive.

Hawaiian Airlines, similar to Virgin America, has a strong West Coast presence offering non-stop service to Hawaii from more than 11 U.S. cities, along with several global hubs including China, Japan and Australia. Hawaiian Airlines shares rose more than 3% in late trading on Monday.

Despite the speculation, JetBlues spokesperson also stated the airline remains committed to growing on its own; We plan to bring more competition to the west coast, grow transcontinental Mint service, add aircraft to our fleet and invest in our culture and customer experience, the statement added.

Alaska Air (NYSE:ALK) and JetBlue were one-upping each other in a bidding war for Richard Bransons Virgin America as FOX Business Networks Charlie Gasparino reported late Friday. Alaska Air ultimately emerged as the victor; Analysts including DeNardi say it may have overpaid. Virgin shares jumped over 40% on Monday, while shares of Alaska Air and JetBlue declined in trading.

Ticker Security Last Change Change % VA n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. ALK ALASKA AIR GROUP INC. 41.02 +1.15 +2.88% JBLU JETBLUE AIRWAYS CORP. 7.16 +0.15 +2.14%

Virgin America CEO David Cush told a rival news organization on Monday, price was the primary thing; Ultimately it came down to price. As for Alaska Air, management got what they wanted; a bigger footprint in California.

Combining Alaska Airlines' well-established core markets in the Pacific Northwest and the state of Alaska with Virgin America's strong foundation in California will make Alaska Airlines the go-to airline for the more than 175,000 daily fliers in and out of Golden State airports, including San Francisco and Los Angeles, according to a company statement.

In response to an inquiry from FOXBusiness.com, Hawaiian Air parent, Hawaiian Holdings, declined to comment on merger speculation.
A convoy of three digitally connected Mercedes-Benz trucks began a demonstrationjourney from Stuttgart to Rotterdam on Monday. Note the position of the lead driver's arms: The trucks are self-driving. Image source: Daimler.

German auto- and truck-maker Daimler said on Monday that three digitally connected and self-driving Mercedes-Benz trucks had begun a convoy drive from the German city of Stuttgart to Rotterdam, in the Netherlands.

The demonstration is part of a European challenge to foster development of "platooning," the partial automation of convoys of tractor-trailers to save fuel, reduce emissions, and increase highway safety.

But it also shows, in vivid detail, just how advanced Mercedes' self-driving technology is right now.

An interconnected convoy of self-driving tractor-trailers In addition to its well-known Mercedes-Benz cars, Daimler also has a significant truck and bus business. It builds and sells heavy-duty trucks (think tractor-trailers) under the Mercedes-Benz, Western Star, and Freightliner brands; medium-duty Fuso trucks, and Setra and Thomas Built buses.

Mercedes-Benz has already positioned itself as a leader in the race to self-driving cars. Monday's demonstration showed that it's determined to be a leader in self-driving trucks, too.

The company began demonstrating a partial self-driving system for its big tractor-trailers, called Highway Pilot, in 2014. While it requires the presence of a driver, who has to take the wheel in some circumstances (think inclement weather, or tight maneuvers on side roads), the Highway Pilot system automates the truck's acceleration and much of its cruising, increasing safety and reducing diesel-fuel consumption (and thus emissions).

Daimler has years of testing ahead before it brings the the Highway Pilot system to the global market, but it's already approved for use on highways throughout Germany. Now, Daimler is taking its system another step further with what it calls Highway Pilot Connect, which allows two or more Mercedes-Benz tractor-trailers to hook up in an automated convoy via automated vehicle-to-vehicle, or V2V, communication.

This graphic shows how Daimler's Highway Pilot Connect system works. Image source: Daimler.

In an automated truck convoy, or platoon, the lead truck does the driving while the others automatically follow at a precise distance (15 meters), braking or accelerating in tandem with the lead truck. That gives the trucks as a group an aerodynamic advantage, whichhelps save fuel -- as does the automated acceleration.Daimler says that putting trucks in an automated platoon can reduce fuel consumption (and emissions) by up to 7%, while taking up just half of the highway space that the trucks would take up on their own.

Mercedes may be leading the self-driving truck raceDaimler wasn't the only company showing off its platooning technology on Monday. Volkswagen's two heavy truck units, MAN Group and Scania, are also running convoys of V2V-connected trucks to Rotterdam as part of the challenge. But the Mercedes-Benz entry is significant simply because the lead truck in its platoon will largely be driving itself (and its two platoon-mates).

Daimler's Highway Pilot Connect still needs hundreds of thousands of miles of testing and probablyseveral years of refinement before it's ready for the global market. But for investors looking for ways to invest in our self-driving future, it's worth nothing that Mercedes-Benz cars aren't the only Daimler products in the forefront of the self-driving race.

The article Mercedes-Benz Is Leading Another Self-Driving Revolution: Big Trucks originally appeared on Fool.com.

John Rosevear has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. 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: Petroleo Brasiliero corporate website

What: Shares of Brazilian oil giant Perobras jumped 63% last month. While there was plenty of news fodder around the soap opera that is the Brazilian government corruption probe, the company's stock rose the most on news that it was planning to sell part of its business in Argentina and announcements of layoffs and cost savings plans.

So What: As a company that straddles the fence between a publicly traded company and a state run enterprise, Petrobras' fate is going to be tied immensely to what happens in the next few months as Brazilian prosecutors dig deeper into the corruption probe that is boiling all the way to the current president, Dilma Rouseff, and her predecessor, Luiz Incio Lula da Silva. The whole probe started when investigators found that Petrobras executives were taking kickbacks for construction contracts at a time when Rouseff was chair of the board at Petrobras. For anyone that has a stake in Petrobras, there is some hope that it will be able to become less beholden to the government and operate more as a public company.

A few signs that this is happening took place in March, which helped to give investors some confidence. The first was that the company was in talks to sell its Argentinian assets for about $1.2 billion toArgentina basedPampa Energia SA. The sale could help Petrobras fill its funding gap for the year and ease its massive debt profile.

Another promising sign was that the company announced plans to cut costs and save some money. On March 17, the company announced that it was laying off 12,000 employees, about 15% of its workforce. Also, the company is looking to implement a reorganization plan that will save it $500 million annually.

Now What: These are the moves that Petrobras will need to make if it has any chance of getting out from under its $130 billion debt load, but they are only the first steps. The workforce cuts and savings plans will help on the operational side of things, but the company will need to reign in capital spending as well. These are the things that it can control, and an increase in oil prices could go a long way towards helping boost its prospects over the next few years.

As an investor, though, it's probably best to keep away for a while longer. While the cost savings plans sound ambitious so far, there is still a lot of things that need to fall in Petrobras' favor before it becomes a stable, profitable business worthy of investment.

The article Shares of Petrobras Surged a Whopping 63% in March, Here's Why originally appeared on Fool.com.

Tyler Crowe has no position in any stocks mentioned.You can follow him at Fool.comor on Twitter@TylerCroweFool. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. 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: Sierra Wireless.

Investors have not been kind to Sierra Wireless and InvenSense over the past 12 months. Sierra is down 56% and InvenSense has dropped 47%, and both have a long road ahead of them before they recover. But one of these stocks seems to have a much better chance of seeing that happen.

First, let's talk about why these stocks have fallen so hard over the past year.

Sierra Wireless' problemsSome of Sierra's more recent problems stem from two quarters of bad -- though not terrible -- news.

In Q3 2015, earnings failed to meet management's guidance, which was the first time that had happened in years. Then enterprise notebook makers didn't order as many 4G connections Sierra had anticipated, which pushed down the company's OEM solutions revenue.

Things got worse from there, as the company's automotive clients pushed back orders that were supposed to come in in Q3 2015 to later in the year and into 2016.

That may have attributed to Sierra Wireless missing guidance once again in the following quarter, leaving two consecutive quarters of missed guidance.

InvenSense's problems As bad as Sierra Wireless has been, InvenSense appears a bit worse. The company's stock has suffered in part because of InvenSense's over-exposure to Apple .

The iMaker uses InvenSense's sensors in its iPhones, but notably left the company's sensors out of the Apple Watch last year. It was a big miss for InvenSense, not only because of its relationship with Apple but also because InvenSense was one of the leading suppliers of motion sensors to smartwatch makers at the time.

Additionally, news of an iPhone sales slowdown has scared InvenSense investors. They see the company's fate being closely tied to iPhone sales, and if those aren't moving in the right direction, then neither is InvenSense.

And then there's Samsung. The South Korea-based conglomerate chose not to use Invense's motion sensor for its new Galaxy S7 devices. Samsung used to compose about 18%of InvenSense's total revenue, but the company's management said that that percentage will likely fall to single digits because of Samsung's recent decision.

Which stock could bounce back Neither company is in a great position right now, honestly. But Sierra Wireless does appear to have better prospects than InvenSense.

Sierra has made some major OEM wins recently, and the company could start to see this pay off soon. Sierra Wireless is also focusing new attention on its cloud services and broke out the segment recently in its quarterly filings. The cloud business offers Sierra an opportunity to diversify some of its revenue streams, though it might take time before that happens.

Admittedly, it won't be an easy road to recovery for Sierra Wireless. But I think the company has a better chance of turning things around than InvenSense does. Invnensense will probably continue to suffer from its over-exposure to Apple and Samsung. And a slowing smartphone market will only make matters worse.

Sierra Wireless investors may have to stomach some more turbulence, but it'll likely be a smoother ride than InvenSense will have.

The article Sierra Wireless vs. InvenSense: Which Beaten-Down Stock Has a Better Chance of Bouncing Back? originally appeared on Fool.com.

Chris Neiger has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple, InvenSense, and Sierra Wireless. 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.
After a man severed his hand with a production machine, surgeons saved the limb by temporarily attaching it to his belly.

Carlos Mariotti, of Orleans, Brazil, lost his left hand while working with a production machine, Metro.co.uk reported. Surgeons placed his hand, which had two fingers missing, in his abdomen by securing it with a piece of skin.

Surgeon Boris Brandao said surgeons left the hand inside Mariottis abdomen for six weeks. Mariotti is healing at Santa Otilia Hospital, Metro.co.uk reported.

This was a very large and delicate injury, and the only place we could fit the whole hand was in the abdomen, Brandao told the news website. Without this procedure, there would be a high risk of infection, and the tissue and tendons would rot away.

Mariotti said he didnt know what to expect from the procedure.

When I woke up from the operation, I didnt know whether it was still there, Mariotti told the news website. I couldnt believe it when they said they had tucked my hand inside me.


When families reject their lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) children, it dramatically increases the youths' risk for suicide. Experts hope a new film aimed at families - religious families in particular - will help ease the tensions that drive those youngsters to kill themselves.

The 20-minute film, called "Families are Forever," follows the journey of a devout Mormon family whose 13-year-old son comes out as gay. The family discusses its reactions, decisions and how they reconciled their beliefs with their son's announcement.

The film and supporting materials, part of a growing series, quickly get to the heart of the matter, said Caitlin Ryan, director of the Family Acceptance Project at San Francisco State University, which produced the film.

"We have to give people a way to understand how . . . they can support a LGBT child even if it's not in sync with their religious beliefs or cultural values" Ryan told Reuters Health.

The Family Acceptance Project had previously found that LGBT youth who report high levels of family rejection are more than eight times more likely to report attempting suicide, compared to similar kids whose families don't reject them.

Family acceptance of LGBT children is tied to better physical and mental health, however.

The multimedia package, available in English and Spanish, is meant to help families identify and change behaviors that make their LGBT child feel rejected and to increase supportive behaviors, Ryan said.

Even though parents may be engaging in rejecting behaviors out of care or concern, they are nevertheless "contributing to health risks, conflict and estrangement in the family," said Ryan.

The film and its accompanying discussion guide and family education workbook were added in March to the Suicide Prevention Resource Center Best Practice Registry. Ann Hass, a senior consultant to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, told Reuters Health that the registry is a collection of research-based and peer-reviewed suicide prevention programs, selected in "a pretty rigorous process."

"The addition of Caitlin Ryan's work to the registry is such a step forward in terms of the ability people in communities to do some LGBT-related suicide prevention," said Hass.

So far, this is the only LGBT-related program in the registry to incorporate faith-based themes.

Rather than writing off religious families as culturally or socially conservative, Ryan said, "We have to understand that all of these families share some common fear and concerns and challenges."
LONDONA potential cure for children born with a form of an extremely rare immune-system condition often referred to as bubble-boy disease has moved a step closer to approval after receiving the support of a European Union regulatory panel.

The treatment, which involves inserting a new gene into the patients stem cells, received a positive opinion from the European Medicines Agencys advisory committee on Friday, paving the way for final approval in coming months.

It is aimed at children with a disease known as ADA-SCID, a rare condition in which a single genetic defect prevents sufferers from developing a robust immune system, leaving them very susceptible to infections. Without treatment, they rarely live for more than two years.

Currently, the best available option is a bone-marrow transplant, but success heavily depends on how well matched the donor is. For the one in four babies who have a well matched family member, a transplant can be an effective cure. But for the rest, success rates can be as low as 50%, according to Bobby Gaspar, professor of pediatrics and immunology at Londons Great Ormond Street Hospital.

The new therapy, called Strimvelis, was developed by a group of scientists and doctors based in Milan who have used it to treat 22 children over the past 14 years. All are still alive, most without needing any further treatment. In 2010, GlaxoSmithKline PLC struck a licensing deal for the rights to market the therapy.

If approved, it would be only the second gene therapy to be sold in Europe, after UniQure NVs Glybera for a rare genetic condition in which the body cant break down fat molecules. No gene therapies are approved for sale in the U.S.

Click for more from the Wall Street Journal.
Will better oral health protect an aging brain? The answer isn't clear.

Over the past two decades, an increasing number of studies have been looking for relationships between oral health and cognitive problems in older adults.

A study earlier this year, for example, linked gum disease with faster cognitive decline in people with Alzheimer's disease.

The authors of a more recent review of the evidence say any such link would be important, because many older adults keep their natural teeth and over one third of people over age are cognitively impaired.

"We thought it would be interesting to look at the current state of the findings," lead author Bei Wu, of Duke University's School of Nursing in Durham, North Carolina, told Reuters Health.

As reported in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, Wu's team analyzed 16 studies that had tracked participants over time, plus another 40 studies that only looked at people at one point in time.

Some studies found that markers of oral health, like number of teeth and presence of gum disease, were tied to rate of cognitive decline or dementia risk. But the links weren't stable in every study.

Other studies found no link between oral and brain health.

Also, the idea that both conditions are linked by underlying inflammation was only examined by one study that the researchers found "to be only marginally relevant."

"This field is promising, but we really need to have a more rigorous studies to look into the relationship," said Wu.

Wu said the idea that oral health could affect cognition is appealing, because it's something that people can modify on their own.

"Having this kind of systematic review is extremely helpful for us to know what are the strengths and weaknesses of this area of research and what direction we should go in," she said.
An 8-year-old Georgia boy is getting the chance to attend senior prom a decade early after his neighbor, who considers him her superhero, asked him to the big dance. Alex Richards, who is battling cancer for the third time, will escort Shelby Butler to prom on Saturday after accepting her flashcard promposal, MyFoxAtlanta.com reported.

Alex, of Barrow County, was initially diagnosed with cancer when he was 4 and received a bone marrow transplant from his sister, but the cancer cells recently returned.

I see what he goes through. He never stops fighting, he has always been kind of a hero to me, a role model to never stop giving up, Butler told MyFoxAtlanta.com. I want him to be able to get out and have fun, and not be stuck somewhere in one place.

She came up with the idea to ask Alex, whom she considers a brother, with flashcards that compared him to Batman and Superman.

Her flashcards read: Superman is cool because he has X-ray vision. Superman is cool because he scales tall buildings. Batman is cool because he drives the fanciest car on the planet. Alex is cool because he never stops fighting. I would like my superhero Alex to be my date to the prom."

Alex checked off the yes box and was presented with a suit to match Butlers dress.

I think it will mean more to him when he gets older and looks back on it, Sheri Richards, Alexs mom, told MyFoxAtlanta.com. Right now it is going to be a fun thing, but when he gets older and looks back on it, it is going to have a bigger impact on him.


U.S. states and cities need to adopt a different mosquito-fighting strategy to battle the species carrying the Zika virus as an outbreak that started in Brazil heads north with warmer weather in the coming weeks, health officials said on Friday.

The World Health Organization declared a global health emergency in February as the virus spread rapidly in the Americas, citing Zika's link to the birth defect microcephaly and Guillain-Barre syndrome, an autoimmune disorder in adults that can cause paralysis.

The mosquito species responsible for spreading the virus by biting people lives in and around homes, making traditional evening insecticide fogging campaigns from sprayers mounted on trucks an ineffective option, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials said.

CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden said health departments need to take a "four corners approach," targeting the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes indoors and outdoors as well as focusing on killing both larvae and adult insects.

"We think we can at least have significant knockdown and potentially significant disease control," Frieden told state and local health officials and others taking part in a "Zika Action Plan Summit" at the agency's Atlanta headquarters.

Most mosquito abatement efforts in U.S. states target nuisance mosquitoes, those that bite at dusk and ruin picnics and barbecues but pose little public health threat. But Aedes aegypti is a daytime biter that dines exclusively on humans, biting several people in a single blood meal.

Aedes aegypti has been dubbed "the cockroach of mosquitoes" because it is so hard to kill, Frieden said.

"Unfortunately, in some parts of the U.S., it has widespread resistance to some insecticides. But that doesn't mean it's impossible," Frieden said.

Zika has been linked to thousands of suspected microcephaly cases in Brazil. The virus is spreading rapidly in Puerto Rico, a tropical island territory of the United States that is expected to be hardest hit by the current outbreak.

Zika is expected to reach southern U.S. states soon as temperatures rise in spring and summer months. As in Puerto Rico, the main focus of the U.S. plan is to protect pregnant women from exposure to Zika-carrying mosquitoes.

'PATCHWORK' MOSQUITO CONTROL

Dr. Lyle Petersen, director of the CDC's Division of Vector-Borne Disease, said U.S. mosquito abatement is handled by a "patchwork" of mosquito-control districts that are coordinated and funded locally. Some may not be linked to local health departments.

Most of these programs, Petersen said, are "primarily funded to control nuisance mosquitoes rather than to control disease-spreading mosquitoes."

Surveillance systems in most states and municipalities are geared toward night-biting mosquitoes that breed in larger bodies of water, and are not likely to detect Aedes aegypti, which breeds in flower pots, tires, trash and small pools of water.

Unlike many other types of mosquitoes, Aedes aegypti's eggs can dry out and cling to container surfaces, waiting for the next rain to revive them.

At the meeting, Petersen showed a map of mosquito abatement districts in U.S. states. One attendee said "abatement" in his area consisted of a man with a pickup truck who plowed snow in the winter and did some mosquito spraying during warmer months.

Many officials expressed concerns about the cost of efforts to deal with Zika. Daniel Kass, New York City's deputy commissioner for environmental health, estimated the city, which has high volumes of travelers and prior outbreaks of Yellow fever and a recent case of dengue, will spend $5 million to $6 million on Zika preparedness. Aedes aegypti is not common in New York City, but it is home to Aedes albopictus, another mosquito thought capable of carrying Zika.

Umair Shah, executive director of the health department in Harris County, Texas, where Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are common, said he plans to spend about half that much. The county includes the city of Houston.

The Obama administration has asked Congress for about $1.9 billion in emergency funds to combat Zika but has encountered opposition from Republicans who contend health agencies should have enough money from prior funding for Ebola virus preparations.

Amy Pope, the White House deputy homeland security advisor, said the federal government has already diverted some of the funds from global Ebola efforts for Zika efforts in Puerto Rico. Pope said inaction by Congress is forcing health officials to make difficult choices.

Dr. Edward McCabe, the March of Dimes Foundation's medical director, said most birth defects cannot be prevented because their cause is not known. With Zika, the government could save "dozens or even hundreds" of newborns from devastating birth defects, McCabe said.
Two polls out of Wisconsin this week show a big change for the GOP.

Cruz out in front by 10 points over Trump in the Marquette poll and now in the Fox News poll too. One other important number. In the Marquette poll, 8 percent still don't know who theyll choose.



That 8 percent could end up deciding who wins on Tuesday. Wisconsin is also an open primary meaning democrats and independents may vote republican.

Also, in the Marquette poll, 5 percent of Democrats say they'll cross over to the GOP, and independents say theyll choose the Republican primary over the Democratic one 60 to 40 percent.

Conventional wisdom says Trump benefits from those cross-over votes, but then theres Governor Scott Walkers endorsement. Walker remains very popular in his state at 80 percent approval among Republicans  and hes endorsed Ted Cruz.


More gaffes from Donald Trump have depressed his popularity and made his path to 1,237 delegates more difficult than it appeared just a week ago. His limited policy knowledge and tendency to wing it during interviews has made even his staunchest advocates scratch their heads. Advocating punishment for women who have had abortions and belittling the wife of Senator Ted Cruz has caused his numbers with women to fall to alarming levels.

The result has been a further deterioration of his public standing. According to the latest surveys as compiled by the Huffington Post, Trump has a 31-63 percent unfavorable ratio and now trails Hillary Clinton, a weak candidate herself, by double digit margins.

If Trump is to be defeated, it will be at the first contested Republican convention in 40 years in voting that goes beyond the first ballot for the first time since 1948. Here is how his nomination can be sidetracked:

He loses upcoming primaries. Trump is now an underdog in Wisconsin. Large upcoming states where he could be vulnerable include Indiana, Pennsylvania, California and New Jersey. Ted Cruz is not the ideal alternative candidate in these states, and John Kasich lacks the money and infrastructure. But Trumps increasing unpopularity could result in split decisions where he wins fewer delegates and slows his momentum heading into Cleveland. Late losses will also make it harder to attract uncommitted delegates to give him a convention majority.

Anti-Trump activists win delegate slots at state and local conventions. Many states elect delegates separate and apart from the presidential candidate that wins the primary contest. Delegates so elected are bound to the primary winner for one or more ballots, but are not bound to vote in any particular way on procedural issues at the convention.

In the past, the convention delegates have included larger shares of ideological conservative and libertarian activists who have had the time and patience to run for these positions. This has always been part of the system and is not some trick devised by elites to deny Trump the nomination. As a result, Trump could have considerably less support on convention organizational matters than he will during the presidential balloting.

He loses procedural fights at the convention. Trump will be vulnerable to preliminary votes on rules, credentials and platform. Anti-Trump forces will force votes to highlight these weaknesses and to destroy the argument that his nomination is inevitable. Delegates want to support a winner. If they feel that the momentum of the convention is heading elsewhere, thats where theyll head. Thats how conventions were stampeded in olden Times when dark horses were nominated.

In 1952, for instance, Dwight Eisenhower won a series of credentials challenges and ultimately prevailed over pre- convention front runner and establishment favorite Senator Robert Taft.

In 1976, the convention turned on a rules fight forced by Ronald Reagan that would have required all candidates nominated for president to name their vice president prior to the presidential vote. The Reagan forces felt they might sway uncommitted delegates and others otherwise committed to vote for President Ford. Ford won the vote, barely, and won re-nomination the next night. Had Reagan prevailed, he might have been nominated in 1976 rather than four years later.

This year the Trump forces would be especially vulnerable in a platform fight. Their candidate holds far different views from most Republicans on issues such as his admiration for Vladimir Putin, U.S. engagement in the Middle East, private eminent domain, universal health care and the federal role in education. Trump might very well be goaded into a platform fight which he would lose and which might prove fatal to his candidacy.

Republicans warm to Cruz. Ted Cruz will have the second largest number of delegates. Adding the conservative activists who might be pledged to other candidates, he would be the logical alternative if Trump were to falter.

John Kasich has strong general election credentials but has won only one primary.

It would be hard to see the Cleveland delegates turning to a consensus figure like Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan.

The most likely alternative to Trump is Cruz. Many question Cruzs commitment to the GOP and have concerns about some of the shadowy figures in his campaign, but he runs stronger against Hillary Clinton and would be far less risky to down ballot Republicans.

Trump is still the favorite to win the nomination, but his path is narrowing. Who would have thought that a political convention in the Year of Our Lord 2016 would become "Must See TV"?
During this presidential primary season, many candidates have proclaimed their intent to fix our ailing Department of Veterans Affairs. A good place to start is allowing it to honor and remember our nations Prisoners of War/Missing in Action (POW/MIA).

Since the Vietnam War, the military has maintained the sacred tradition of setting a separate table in its dining facilities to honor POW/MIAs. The table is decorated with several items, each carrying symbolic meaning used to help remember those who were captured or declared missing. Traditionally, one of those items is a Bible, which according the National League of POW/MIA Families represents the strength gained through faith to sustain those lost from our country, founded as one nation under God. But now the POW/MIA remembrance table is a target of heartless anti-religion hysteria.

Michael Mikey Weinstein, founder and president of the deceptively-named Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), demanded an Akron, Ohio VA clinic remove the Bible from its POW/MIA remembrance table. This isnt the first time the MRFF has targeted a symbol of faith for our nations POWs and MIAs. In 2014, it attacked remembrance tables in the Air Force and Navy.

Weinsteins declares that the Bibles inclusion on the remembrance table is a loathsome message and a disgustingly bigoted statement that is an absolute disgrace and unbridled slap-in-the-face to all of the men and women in uniform. He claims that the symbol of faith will eviscerate good order, morale, unit cohesion and discipline in our military.

Only someone with a burning animus toward this traditional symbol of comfort and faith could make such wild, hurtful, and unfounded claims.

It would be laughableexcept that the U.S. military has too often capitulated to bullies like Weinstein. He successfully harassed Patrick Air Force Base into suspending use of the traditional remembrance table decoration, just as he attempted to intimidate the Pentagon to curtail certain National Day of Prayer activities.

But consider, if what Weinstein says is true, then wouldnt a diverse chorus of American POWs join his cacophony? Instead, we find just the opposite. American POWs frequently cited faith in God as a source of comfort and strength during their captivity:

? U.S. Air Force Captain Lance Sijan, who received the Medal of Honor for his selflessness and courage while in enemy captivity, helped devise the famed tap code by which American POWs were able to encourage each other. Each night, they tapped GNGBU, which meant Good Night, God Bless You.

? U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Jeremiah Denton, who later became a U.S. Senator, was a POW who famously blinked the word T-O-R-T-U-R-E in Morse code during a forced television interview with his North Vietnamese captors. Admiral Denton recounted, A man does a lot of praying in an enemy prison. Prayer, even more than sheer thought, is the firmest anchor.

? U.S. Air Force Brigadier General James Robbie Risner, who became an Ace fighter pilot during the Korean War, was the highest-ranking officer in the famous Hanoi Hilton POW camp. During captivity, General Risner would brief newly-arrived POWs on how to survive, exhorting them: Pray; if you havent been, start. General Risner also organized rudimentary church services and required POWs to attend. Years later, General Risner revealed during an interview that his survival was due to his faith in God and love of country.

So much for Weinsteins accusation that the Bible hurts morale and discipline! The ones hurting morale are the anti-religion cynics. Weinsteins remarks are the real unbridled slap-in-the-face to men like Captain Sijan, Admiral Denton, and General Risner.

In fact, under Weinsteins grand vision, General Risner would not have a statue on the hallowed grounds of the Air Force Academy, but rather a court-martial conviction for requiring troops to attend church: Weinstein has stated that he wants 400 trials by general court martial of Christian officers who express their faith to others.

The remembrance table and similar religious expressions are permitted by the law, military code, and court precedent. Allowing todays service members to continue this tradition serves to honor the memory Americas POW/MIAs. More importantly, it enables them to freely and openly exercise their religious beliefs as an essential component of our militarys ability to fight, survive, and win. Simply put, religious freedom in the military is vital to our national security.

And for those whose loved ones are missingreligious freedom gives comfort, compassion, and hope. Woe to anyone who would try to remove these, or tarnish the memory of those who served.
There are a lot of gun-toting, Bible-clinging patriots in my home state of Tennessee.

So it was not all that surprising when lawmakers recently named the Barrett M82 as the official state firearm. Nor was it all that surprising when they launched an effort to make the Holy Bible the official state book.

Click here to listen to Todds American Dispatch Podcast.

The proposed language is pretty straightforward: The Holy Bible is hereby designated as the official state book.

State Sen. Kerry Roberts told The Tennessean that the legislation is meant to commemorate the historical nature of the Good Book  referencing George Washingtons inauguration.

He used the Bible for his swearing in, Roberts told the newspaper. The attitude of these people was not to keep religion out of government. It was to keep government out of religion.

Try telling that to the editorial board of The Tennessean.

The newspaper issued a blistering rebuke of lawmakers who support the so-called Bible Bill  calling them theocrats and comparing them to Muslim Ayatollahs.

This is Tennessee, not Tehran, they sneered. We are governed by the people, not the religious authorities.

OK, folks. Lets take a deep breath here.

I would suggest the newspapers editorial board would have a valid point  if in fact the lawmakers were beheading people and throwing citizens off buildings and torturing ministers. But they are not.

Click here to join Todds American Dispatch: a must-read for Conservatives!

The move to make the Bible the official state book is akin to a state having an official vegetable or an official snack.

In other words, the Bible bill would have no discernable impact on peoples daily lives. There will be no forced conversions or baptisms in the Volunteer State.

The newspaper went on to suggest that the bill is clearly an attack on religious minorities, and secular, agnostic or atheistic people, who are also protected by the state and federal constitutions.

It is also an attack on religious people who have a strong interest in ensuring that government does not endorse one way to worship God over another, the editorial stated.

Its not just journalists and Democrats who have a problem with honoring Gods Word.

Republican Gov. Bill Haslam has expressed some concerns about the pending legislation. Its unclear whether he will sign the bill into law. He opposed a similar measure last year.

Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, also a Republican, told The Tennessean he has some reservations about the bill.

Lawmakers should be commended for their efforts to honor the Holy Bible. We are, after all, one nation under God. So why not recognize His book?

But imagine what kind of a nation we would be if folks went one step further  and decided to live by the teachings of the Good Book.

By the way -- Tennessee's official state beverage is milk -- I wonder if The Tennessean is going to accuse lawmakers of attacking lactose intolerant people?
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump doubled-down Sunday night on his comments that the U.S. should do a better deal with Japan, South Korea and other allies, saying they should pay more for Americas protection while taking a greater role in their defense  including building their own nuclear weapons.

Responding to questions at a Fox News Channel On the Record town hall two days before the Wisconsin primary  where polls show he trails Ted Cruz  Trump also said that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour wasnt good for business or jobs creation.

"If you start raising that minimum wage, you're going to make a lot of our companies even more non-competitive," he said.

Trump also delved into his plans to change the nation's tax code by "simplifying" it.

"The very rich are probably going to end up paying more, but there's an incentive for them to invest and create jobs in the country," he said.

He also renewed his promise to repeal ObamaCare  though he again wouldnt offer specifics about what would replace it.

Trumps comments capped a full day of defending his controversial statements on abortion, comments about rival Ted Cruzs wife and Americans continued participation in NATO.

Trump pointed to the deals to defend countries such as Japan, Germany, and South Korea as an example of how the U.S. is a "policemen to the world."

"We defend all these countries, we're not properly reimbursed for the kind of money that we're spending," he said.

"We cannot spend billions and billions and billions of dollars on defending all of these countries," he added.

In recent days, the first-time candidate retweeted an unflattering picture of primary rival Texas Sen. Ted Cruzs wife and suggested NATO is obsolete and some form of punishment is needed for women who have abortions if the procedure were illegal.

I could have done without the tweet, Trump said earlier in the day on Fox News Sunday.

Trump wouldnt agree that he made a mistake on the abortion question, but said, As a hypothetical question, I would have rather answered it in a different manner.

He eventually issued two statements to clarify his comments.

Trump held firm on his position that NATO has become obsolete.

He said the international peacekeeping force doesnt focus enough on stopping terrorism and that the United States pays too much for what it gets in return.

It's obsolete, Trump said. We're not getting the benefits that we should be getting for the money. We're carrying a lot of countries.  What I said was exactly right.  I think NATO has to be readjusted.

Trump also stuck by his suggestion that its perhaps time for the U.S. to stop paying most of the bill to defend Japan and South Korea against nuclear-armed North Korea, even if that means touching off a nuclear arms race in the Korean peninsula.

You have Pakistan and you have North Korea. And you have China. And you have Russia. And you have India. And you have the United States and many other countries have nukes, Trump said. You already have a nuclear arms race.

Trump has run his campaign since June in an unabashed style in which he has risen in the polls in part with unapologetic remarks about deporting roughly 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States and a call for a temporary ban on Muslim immigrants.

On Sunday, the New York real estate magnate still expressed confidence about doing well in Wisconsin and winning the party nomination. He acknowledged, however, being a politician for just eight months and having a learning curve.
Two of Al Qaeda's former explosives experts were just transferred out of Guantanamo Bay and sent to Senegal, the Defense Department confirmed Monday, marking the latest detainees to be shipped out of the prison camp despite the risk they could return to the battlefield.

The two Libyan former detainees were separately listed as threats to U.S. interests in Department of Defense documents obtained by Wikileaks and The New York Times.

Salem Abdu Salam Ghereby is believed to have fought coalition forces at Usama bin Ladens Tora Bora complex in Afghanistan and was associated with senior members of Al Qaeda. Omar Khalif Mohammed Abu Baker Mahjour Umar was assessed to be likely to immediately seek out prior associates and reengage in hostilities and extremist support activities upon his release, according to a 2008 government document.

The news comes as senators prepare to introduce legislation to permanently block transfers of Guantanamo detainees to terror hot spots and state sponsors of terrorism including Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Iran and Sudan. Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., was expected to introduce a bill as early as Monday, Fox News has learned.

The transfer of Ghereby and Umar reduces the Guantanamo detainee population to 89, according to the Department of Defense. They are part of the Obama administration's long-running and controversial effort to reduce the prison population and ultimately close the camp.

By law, the Pentagon must notify Congress 30 days in advance of any detainee transfer. The first notification for the individuals now identified as Ghereby and Umar was in early March. Others are expected in the next few weeks.

We are taking all possible steps to reduce the detainee population at Guantanamo and to close the detention facility in a responsible manner that protects our national security, Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement on Monday.

The two detainees sent to Senegal had long records of supporting Al Qaeda and close ties to the terror organizations top leaders.

Umar, 44, had threatened to kill U.S. personnel on several occasions while at Guantanamo, according to the Department of Defense reports revealed by the Times and Wikileaks.

Detainee has been cooperative, but continues to withhold information of intelligence value, and also shares his extensive explosives knowledge with other detainees, the report said.

Umar has been engaged in extremism since at least 1998 and flew on a bin Laden-chartered plane from Sudan to Afghanistan.

Detainee is a long-time associate of UBL and has affiliations to other senior Al Qaeda leaders and operatives including Ayman al-Zawahiri, the report said.

Ghereby, 55, has been involved in extremist activities since at least the mid-1990s and was captured with a senior Al Qaeda leader after fleeing to Pakistan, according to the DOD report.

Detainee is assessed to be a HIGH risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the U.S., its interests and allies, the report said.

Fox News Lucas Tomlinson and Catherine Herridge contributed to this report.
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EXPECTATIONS GAME: WISCONSIN EDITION

Wisconsin Republicans have picked their partys eventual presidential nominee in every primary since 1968.

That no doubt pleases Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who is riding a lead of almost 7 points in the Real Clear Politics average of polls for Tuesdays Badger State contest. But as South Carolina Republicans proved in 2012 when they broke for Newt Gingrich, such streaks arent usually causal.

Every GOP nominee of the past 52 years has won Wisconsin (and the streak might go back 64 years if it hadnt been for favorite son Rep. John Byrnes in 1964) because they looked inevitable when they got to Wisconsin, not because Wisconsin made them that way. There is no magic wheel of cheese in Wauwatosa that holds the Republican Excalibur.

In fact, late primary states usually fall to the eventual nominee because the contests are usually substantially over.

Party unity is particularly valuable in Wisconsin where the GOP was founded and where party loyalty and order are prized, but there is a premium on unity in every late-voting state. Even if the frontrunner isnt your brand of brew, his argument that its time to close ranks and focus on the general election makes for a powerful message.

And by April, when most of the delegates have already been awarded, it gets harder for trailing candidates to get their voters to the polls. Rick Santorum grabbed a third of the vote in Wisconsin four years ago, but came up short and officially ended his campaign one week later. Santorums bid had been broken by his defeat in Illinois two weeks prior, and everybody knew it. As John Kerry might have said, How do you ask a Republican to be the last one to vote for a lost cause?

Those two forces  the high premium on unity and the demoralization of other candidates supporters  usually create powerful electoral currents. A candidate wins because he is inevitable; a candidate is inevitable because he wins. But this year, neither of those forces is intact as the race rolls into Wisconsin.

The frontrunner, Donald Trump, looks like a losing bet for the general election. He certainly can argue, as he did to the WaPo, that he will change the course of the contest before November, but right now the electoral roadmap looks like 31 weeks of bad road. Even Trumps designated surrogates acknowledge some, er, deficiencies.

And neither can Trump rely on the despair of his rivals supporters. As Cruz demonstrated in Sundays Republican convention in North Dakota, his strength with party stalwarts gives him a stronger-than-usual claim to viability. And in states like Louisiana, Tennessee and now Arizona, the Texans superior organization continues to deprive Trump of much-needed delegates.

No one is more likely to be the Republican nominee than Trump, but his chances look worse, not better, than a month ago.

Money, the other major factor that usually shuts down contests at this point, isnt a factor either. Trump doesnt spend much and Cruz has more than enough to take this sucker all the way to Cleveland.

Denied of the chance to play their usual ratifying role, how will Wisconsin Republicans respond? And if they, in fact, choose Cruz what would it mean?

Despite the kvetching of many, the (reputable) polling this cycle has been pretty spot on. Theres no reason to believe that Cruz isnt really ahead in Wisconsin. Whats in doubt is whether he can win by a large enough margin to turn a primary hat trick: get the momentum from a first-place finish, win an outright majority to get his sixth of eight majority wins needed to have his name entered into nomination and to win in all eight congressional districts to make the state truly winner-take-all.

For Cruz, if the polling proves correct, he would come up short of an outright majority and also probably lose at least a few delegates on the district level to Wisconsin spoiler, Ohio Gov. John Kasich. None of that particularly helps Trump since he is playing a zero sum-game: every delegate that either Cruz or Kasich wins increases Trumps deficit.

What seems to be at stake is whether the nominating process just turns against Trump or really shifts towards Cruz. Polls suggest the national frontrunner will fall short Tuesday, and that will reinforce Trumps mounting troubles, whatever the margins. But if Cruz wins with an overhead smash, the race will be reset if not in his favor, at least in a way that reinforces his status as the man to beat Trump.

[GOP delegate count: Trump 736; Cruz 463; Kasich 143 (1,237 needed to win)]

WITH YOUR SECOND CUP OF COFFEE

As candidates on both sides gear up for a contentious primary in Wisconsin on Tuesday, many in the Badger State are also gearing upfor the return of fishing season and the traditional Friday Night Fish Fry. Travel Wisconsin has the story: When Catholic immigrants such as the many Irish, Polish, and Germans, settled in Wisconsin, this practice came with them. During Prohibition, taverns  which could no longer sell the products that kept them in business, turned to serving food to keep the doors open (and perhaps sneak a few pints under the table). Fish was abundant and cheap, and frying didnt exactly require cooking school.

Got a TIP from the RIGHT or the LEFT? Email FoxNewsFirst@FOXNEWS.COM

POLL CHECK

Real Clear Politics Averages

National GOP nomination: Trump 40.4 percent; Cruz 32.8 percent; Kasich 20.6 percent

National Dem nomination: Clinton 50.2 percent; Sanders 42.8 percent

General Election: Clinton vs. Trump: Clinton +10.8 points

Generic Congressional Vote: Republicans +0.5

DEMS HAVE THEIR CLAWS OUT IN THE BADGER STATE

Who would have thought the Democratic primary would still be simmering? Certainly not presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton, who is facing a possible loss in Tuesdays Wisconsin primary.

Clinton had a strong lead in the state until recently when she fell 2 points behind Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Real Clear Politics average for Wisconsin. As evidenced in other contests, Sanders does well in young college towns, and the scent of patchouli hangs heavy in many precincts of Madison, but that doesnt mean hes got it in the bag.

With Sanders growing margin in the polls, Clinton might be having flashbacks to 2008 when she actually did lose the Badger State to then-Sen. Barack Obama by 18 points. So far though, this cycles primary doesnt seem like a landslide for her opponent at all. Indeed, it will actually be more like a nail biter.

In 2008, Wisconsin voted in February when Clinton was mounting a comeback after early losses and dealt her campaign a stinging rebuke. In April 2016, however, Sanders severe delegate deficit might motive those Democrats on the fence towards a safe bet with Clinton.

If Clinton can deliver a comeback this cycle, it will be a sturdy nail in Sanders coffin. But if Sanders can pull out the win like the one he nabbed in neighboring Michigan, the Democratic contest will roll on and on and on

[RCP breaks down how delegate math and momentum might decide voters preference in Wisconsin.]

Hillary says unborn person doesnt have rights - Weekly Standard: On Sunday, Hillary Clinton told Chuck Todd that no unborn child has constitutional rights. The unborn person doesnt have constitutional rights, under our current laws, said Clinton. She also said that the womans right to make decisions is most important when it comes to abortion. Most notable perhaps is Clintons use of person. Oftentimes, when talking about a womans right to choose, pro-choicers will use terminology that suggests the unborn is not a person or human, but a fetus.

Hillary, Bernie cant agree on NY debate - WSJ: Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders sounded hopeful that they could break an impasse and hold a debate before the New York primary on April 19, though their campaigns made clear Sunday that sticking points remain unresolved. I want it. Look, Im confident that there will be a debate, Mrs. Clinton said on NBC. But as the day wore on, a standoff continued. The Sanders campaign said Sunday afternoon that it had accepted an invitation to take part in a prime-time debate next Sunday on NBC. However, the Clinton campaign hasnt agreed to show up.

POWER PLAY: HOW TO DEFEAT THE REPUBLICANS

With a Donald Trump nomination the opposition research pretty much writes itself, but the Democrats are still getting their information together to defeat the Republicans this fall. President of the Democratic PAC American Bridge, Jessica Mackler, joins Chris Stirewalt to discuss the different tactics her group might use against a Trump verses another Republican nominee. WATCH HERE.

[Dem delegate count: Clinton 1712; Sanders 1011 (2,383 needed to win)]

HES HER KING CRAB AND SHES HIS QUEEN

NBC Connecticut: Police in Connecticut arrested two people after an argument at Royal Buffet got out of hand Saturday night. Manchester police say they were called to 410 West Middle Turnpike for a dispute that started verbally over crab legs at the buffet table and escalated into a physical confrontation. During the scuffle, a 21-year-old man was punched in the face and lost a tooth. That mans mother jumped in and deployed pepper spray at her sons attackers. Her actions were in self-defense and she is not facing any charges, according to police. Police arrested two people, identified as Clifford Knight, 45, and Latoya Knight, 38, both of WindsorPolice say the suspects are husband and wife.

Chris Stirewalt is digital politics editor for Fox News. Want FOX News First in your inbox every day? Sign up here.
By this time of the presidential primary season, President Obama had expected to step forward to unify the Democratic Party behind Hillary Clinton and against her Republican adversary.

At least, that was the plan.

But Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' surge in primary wins and fund raising has instead pushed the president to the sidelines -- and the self-described socialist senator couldn't be happier.

Despite pressure to call it quits, Sanders continues to be an undisputed fundraising machine. In February, he raised $43.5 million, according to filings to the Federal Election Commission  more than any other candidate in either party.

And as the money continues to flow, Sanders is showing no signs of slowing down, pledging instead to stay in the race through the July Democratic convention.

If Sanders wins Wisconsins primary on Tuesday  as polls seem to indicate  the White House will once again have to recalibrate its strategy, delaying key unity rallies the Democratic Party had banked on to bring together its base.

While Sanders remains a force in the Democratic primary, a win in Wisconsin would do little to significantly cut into Clinton's lead in delegates that will decide the party's nomination.

The stakes are higher on the Republican side.

Most polls show Texas Sen. Ted Cruz leading front-runner Donald Trump in the Badger State. Wisconsin is a crucial state in his effort to push the party toward a convention fight.

"We are seeing victory after victory after victory in the grassroots," Cruz said during a campaign stop Monday. "What we are seeing in Wisconsin is the unity of the Republican Party manifesting."

Losses for Trump and Clinton in Wisconsin could be problematic with the next big contest on the primary calendar, in delegate-rich New York, not until April 19. Trump still has a comfortable lead in the Empire State, but Sanders has threatened to close the gap against Clinton on the Democratic side.

For Trump, the long lead-up to Wisconsin's contest has included one of the worst stretches of his candidacy. He was embroiled in a spat involving Cruz's wife, which he now says he regrets, was sidetracked by his campaign manager's legal problems after an altercation with a female reporter, and stumbled awkwardly in comments about abortion.

While Trump is the only Republican with a realistic path to clinching the nomination ahead of the Republican convention, a big loss in Wisconsin would greatly reduce his chances of reaching the 1,237 delegates needed to do so before the GOP gathers in Cleveland.

Cruz headed into Tuesday's contest with the backing of much of the state's Republican leaders, including Gov. Scott Walker, but Trump made a spirited final push in the state and predicted a "really, really big victory."

"If we do well here, it's over," he said. "If we don't win here, it's not over."

Complicating the primary landscape for both Cruz and Trump is the continuing candidacy of John Kasich. The Ohio governor's only victory has come in his home state, but he's still picking up delegates that would otherwise help Trump inch closer to the nomination or help Cruz catch up.

Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with the governor and has joined Cruz in calling for Kasich to end his campaign. Kasich cast Trump's focus on him as a sign that he's best positioned to win over the businessman's supporters.

"They're not really his people," Kasich said. "They're Americans who are worried about, they're really most worried about their kids, are their kids going to have a good life?"

If Cruz wins all of Wisconsin's 42 delegates, Trump would need to win 57 percent of those remaining to clinch the GOP nomination before the convention. So far, Trump has won 48 percent of the delegates awarded.

To win a prolonged convention fight, a candidate would need support from the individuals selected as delegates. The prolonged process of selecting those delegates would test the mettle of Trump's slim campaign operation.

Cruz prevailed in an early organizational test in North Dakota, scooping up endorsements from delegates who were selected at the party's state convention over the weekend. While all 28 of the state's delegates go to the national convention as free agents, 10 said in interviews that they were committed to Cruz. None has so far endorsed Trump.

Among Democrats, Clinton has 1,243 delegates to Sanders' 980 based on primaries and caucuses. When including superdelegates, or party officials who can back any candidate, Clinton holds an even wider lead -- 1,712 to Sanders' 1,011. It takes 2,383 delegates to win the Democratic nomination.

Sanders would need to win 67 percent of the remaining delegates and uncommitted superdelegates to catch up to Clinton. So far, he's only winning 37 percent.

Even if Sanders wins in Wisconsin, he's unlikely to gain much ground. Because Democrats award delegates proportionally, a narrow victory by either candidate on Tuesday would mean that both Sanders and Clinton would get a similar number of delegates.



The Associated Press contributed to this report.
While North Dakota is a most unlikely place for the Republican presidential campaign to take a critical turn, it nonetheless delivered an apparent setback over the weekend to front-runner Donald Trump in the behind-the-scenes battle for delegates, as Ted Cruz declared victory at the northern border state's GOP convention.

Like most states where Cruz has claimed victory, North Dakota is relatively light on delegates. Trumps wins in delegate-rich primary states have kept the billionaire businessman well ahead, and the events in Fargo wont change that.

But the North Dakota showdown speaks to the organizational headwinds Trump is facing  something hes also dealing with in Wisconsin, which holds its primary Tuesday and where Cruz is polling in front. And if nothing else, the North Dakota convention results could put Cruz in a better position at the partys July convention if the nomination is still open going into Cleveland.

"I'm thrilled to have the vote of confidence of Republican voters in North Dakota who delivered such a resounding victory today, Cruz said in a statement. Whether we defeat Donald Trump before the convention or at it, I'm energized to have the support of the vast majority of North Dakota delegates."

The vote in North Dakota was not a traditional primary or caucus, but a convention. Delegates chosen over the weekend through an internal party process will not be bound to any candidate. For that reason, there technically was no winner from the weekends gathering.

Yet the presidential candidates still scrambled to try and get their own supporters elected as delegates, banking on their loyalty at the July convention.

In the end, the Cruz campaign claimed that 18 of the 25 delegates selected Sunday are supporters of the Texas senator.

The Trump campaign, though, disputed this, claiming some of those listed as Cruz supporters were actually undecided. One Trump source went so far as to call Cruzs claims bull, saying the senator only has four dedicated supporters of the 18.

The campaign further claimed Sunday that they came into Fargo with zero expectations but were encouraged by the results in the end.

Nearly one-third of Sen. Cruz's list was not elected, and many of those elected from his list are firmly undecided or support other candidates, the Trump campaign said in a statement, while also touting an endorsement from Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D.

The campaign said supporter and former GOP primary candidate Ben Carson privately met with many of the undecided delegates, and we're confident that we will receive strong support from the delegation in Cleveland.

And John Weaver, strategist for Ohio Gov. John Kasich, took to Twitter to claim Cruzs strong-arm tactics failed in North Dakota, saying he helped elect delegates who will vote for Kasich in Cleveland.

For whom the 25 delegates in Cleveland will vote remains an open question, as they are not bound to anybody. Some listed as Cruz supporters were actually leaning toward him, and not necessarily committed.



But the anti-Trump organizing in Fargo was nevertheless robust.

One anti-Trump group, Our Principles PAC, was heavily involved on the ground in Fargo, deploying a field team to speak to convention attendees and distribute hundreds of voter guides to make the case against Trump.

"This campaign is coming down to a ground game battle for delegates, PAC senior adviser Brian Baker said in a statement. We will fight for every last delegate vote all the way to Cleveland. We are committed to making sure Donald Trump is not the Republican nominee and that the GOP wins the White House this fall with a principled conservative. Republicans at the North Dakota Convention rejected Trump, just like the entire Republican base will do this summer in Cleveland."

Its these forces that Trump also is facing down in Wisconsin, which holds its primary on Tuesday. Cruz has led in most recent Wisconsin polls.

Trump is fighting to clinch the nomination before July with the requisite 1,237 delegates, while his remaining rivals try to hold him under that threshold.

Yet the front-runner has faced other setbacks in the grueling battle for each and every delegate. Recently in Louisiana, Trump has vowed to both file a lawsuit and an internal challenge within the Republican National Committee over reports that Cruz, despite losing the Louisiana primary to Trump in early March, could draw the support of enough unbound delegates and from Rubio supporters to actually overtake Trump in the state by as many as 10 delegates.

And The Tennessean reports that the Trump campaign is now accusing the Tennessee GOP of trying to stop pro-Trump delegates from being part of the states convention delegation.

Trump won the states primary, but a state party arm is responsible for appointing 14 of the 58-person delegation. The Trump camp reportedly alleges anti-Trump people have made their way onto the delegate list.

"They're picking establishment picks who don't support Donald Trump, and it's just the same effort that they're conducting all over the country to steal a vote here, steal a delegate there, to affect the outcome of the convention in July and take the nomination away from Donald Trump, Darren Morris, Trumps Tennessee state director, told the newspaper.

FoxNews.coms Judson Berger and Fox News Dan Gallo, John Roberts and James Rosen contributed to this report.
A simple laser beam could disrupt aliens' observations of Earth, making it look like there's nobody home on the third rock from the sun, a new study suggests.

David Kipping, an astronomer at Columbia University in New York, said he first considered this idea when he heard about the strangely dimming star that was detected recently by NASA's Kepler space telescope. Researchers speculated the signal could have come from an "alien megastructure" orbiting the star.

That's a remote possibility, many scientists stressed; the star's strange signal likely has a natural cause. But the Kepler observations got Kipping thinking about ways humanity could alter the signals it sends into space  or hide them altogether from life-hunting aliens, who may have malicious intentions. [13 Ways to Hunt Intelligent Aliens]

He and Columbia graduate student Alex Teachey concluded that it would be surprisingly easy to wipe out Earth's signal, distort it to look strange or even edit out the fingerprint of life  provided researchers knew the location of the snooping aliens.

"We essentially played the thought experiment that if we really had xenophobic tendencies and wanted to avoid the Earth being discovered (as Stephen Hawking and others have been warning about), could we hide the Earth from alien planet-hunters?" Kipping said in an email.

&nbsp;

How to build a cloaking device

The key to Kipping and Teachey's thinking lies in the way humans have identified most planets around other stars, a process called the transit method. This strategy, which has most famously been employed by the Kepler spacecraft, detects tiny dips in the brightness of stars, which can indicate an orbiting planet.

The transit method could theoretically be used by alien civilizations to detect Earth, too. But there's a way to trip up such extraterrestrial searches, Kipping and Teachey said.

"To make it look like the planet is not there at all, you've got to get rid of that dip. You've got to fill in the missing starlight," Teachey said in an explanatory video.

Engineers could shine a very bright laser or collection of lasers toward a star suspected of hosting intelligent aliens during the time Earth was passing in front of the sun from the other planet's perspective. Then, aliens making measurements wouldn't see any change in solar brightness.

"I started to think about lasers," Kipping told Space.com. "Most people might have stopped there, because the sun emits so much light  how could you possibly produce a laser beam which could ever compete with the sun? But it turns out, when you actually run through the equations, it's really not that bad." [How to Discover an Alien Planet (Video)]

"We could build this next week if we wanted to," Teachey added.

To alter Earth's signature as seen by an alien version of Kepler, a laser system would have to emit 30 megawatts of power for about 10 hours per year, coinciding with Earth's passing in front of the sun, the duo calculated.

That equates to significantly less than the energy the International Space Station gathers in a year with its solar panels, Kipping said, or the energy used by about 70 homes over the course of a year. Such a laser system, either on Earth or in orbit, could charge its solar-powered batteries for most of the year and then release the high-powered blasts at just the right time, brightening when the sun's light would normally dim.

While a laser of that intensity hasn't been built before, the researchers said, such a cloaking system could also use multiple smaller lasers, all shining in the same direction. The alien star would be so distant that such a difference would be indistinguishable. Laser beams are tightly focused, but at greater distances, the beams will have grown large enough to require less precise aim.

By varying the wavelength and strength of the beams, humans could conceal Earth from more complicated detectors. Such a "cloak" that concealed all wavelengths would take about 250 megawatts of power, with lasers blasting at different wavelengths, the researchers said. The laser strategy could also alter Earth's signature to look like almost anything, even something that appears distinctive and artificial, the scientists said, like the New York skyline or a featureless box.

But perhaps the most interesting use, the researchers said, would be as a "bio-cloak," which would actually use less power than would be required to totally conceal the planet. When a planet crosses its star's face, a little bit of light passes through the planet's atmosphere, and researchers can determine the atmosphere's makeup based on the wavelengths of that light. By sending laser beams that are the inverse of certain wavelengths, humanity could conceivably edit out the life-generated "biosignatures" in Earth's atmosphere, Kipping said.

"We can actually cancel those features out, such as oxygen," he said. "The alien civilization is going to detect your planetary transit. They're going to detect your planetary radial velocity, but then when they 'smell' the atmosphere, it would not look like a tasty planet. It would just look like a dead world."

While a planet that was fully cloaked could still be detected by other means, such as by the gravitational pull it exerts on its star, this kind of cloak would arouse less suspicion, because the planet would be there as expected, just without signs of life.

"We feel like this is the most deceptive cybercloaking you could possibly do, because then everything adds up  there's no missing piece to the puzzle," Kipping said. "And that would be a very difficult cloak to see." [10 Exoplanets That Could Host Alien Life]

Kipping and Teachey laid out their thinking in a study published Thursday in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Many possibilities

Concealing Earth's existence from extraterrestrials, or announcing its presence with an artificial light curve, would work only if humanity knew or suspected where those aliens were living. But the concept is still intriguing as scientists look out to read other stars' light signatures and speculate about alien astronomers reading signals from Earth.

Kipping and Teachey suggested that alien civilizations could communicate with each other during transits by varying their light signatures, because individuals investigating a planet are likely to watch it as it passes in front of its star. Alien lasers could even encode information to transmit, the researchers said.

One possible next step, they added, would be to look more carefully through archival Kepler data to search for artificial signatures.

Jason Wright, an astronomer from Pennsylvania State University, recently published a paper about how scientists could identify advanced civilizations around other stars. "Alien megastructures" would dim stars more than expected, whereas lasers would tend to brighten them, but "we should look for both," Wright told Space.com.

"The fact that Kepler looked at 100,000 stars and didn't see much of anything along those lines suggests that that is pretty rare in the galaxy," Wright added. "And we should look more closely to see if there are things that aren't totally obvious."

In terms of this particular technology on Earth, "The only time it'd be useful for us is if we had some knowledge of alien civilizations along the thin strip of the sky that would see Earth transit the sun," he said.

Avi Loeb, who chairs the astronomy department at Harvard University in Massachusetts, told Space.com that the laser-cloaking method assumes researchers know where to look, that aliens aren't observing from moving spaceships and that putative extraterrestrial observers are mainly investigating planets by looking for transits across stars.

Energy demands would quickly grow as a civilization tried to hide from, or signal to, an increasing number of star systems, Loeb added. But the laser cloak is still an interesting new idea to add to the arsenal in the search for extraterrestrial life, he said.

"If there is a literature of ideas like this one, ideas that people proposed for potential signals that are artificial  the richer the literature is, the better it is," Loeb said. "The moment we find something artificial, it will change everything. It's good to have the imagination at work prior to seeing something unusual, so we are aware that there are possibilities beyond what we expect."

"I don't think anyone's thought of this particular application before," Wright said. "I think it just emphasizes how little energy is actually required to get someone's attention across the galaxy."

Editor's Recommendations
Whenever the military sets up operations in isolated and hostile locations like Iraq or Afghanistan, one of the biggest challenges is ensuring troops get reliable power.

Until now, that often has meant trucking in vast amounts of diesel to power generators, a strategy that isnt all that environmentally friendly and is vulnerable to attack or other problems like a driver strike or mechanical breakdown.

But what if military bases could produce their own power?

That is a strategy being trialed in California at the Marine Corps Air Station, which is the first military base to operate its own microgrid. The project, funded U.S. Department of Energys National Renewable Energy Laboratory, relies on a 250-kW, 1-MWh battery system produced by Primus Power and Raytheon's Intelligent Power and Energy Management Microgrid Controller to keep electricity flowing.

For the military base, a microgrid is a really important concept, Ellen Williams, the director of the Advanced Research Projects AgencyEnergy (ARPA-E), which provided Primus Power with $2 million in funding that was critical to developing its battery technology.

Related: This double barreled handgun folds up to look like a smartphone

You can certainly see it in forward operations where they are moving their troops out into a place where they dont have ready access to an electric power system, she said. As a military base, they need emergency preparedness so that if there is a hurricane or if there is a terrorist event anything that might disrupt the external electric power grid, they need to be able to keep their operations going. For them to have a microgrid with their own storage and their own battery system is really important.

The project is one of 475 that have been funded by ARPA-E, a little-known agency within the Department of Energy that was set up in 2009 by President Obama amid concerns that the country was losing its edge when it came to industrial research and development.

We were asked to go out and look for areas of cutting edge science, emerging science and technology topics and new innovations that are out there in the energy sector, Williams said in a phone interview with FoxNews.com.

They are too early stage, they have too much technical uncertainty or risks for the private sector to invest in immediately, she continued. Our job is to assess and make sure there is some potential there and then invest in teams to help them develop their technology up to the prototype scale where its possible to evaluate their potential value in practical applications and then help them move their technology towards readiness for the private sector to pick up and develop.

So far, the model appears to be working better than anyone could have predicted.

Through 2015, the agency has provided over $1.3 billion in funding for energy projects that have resulted in the development of a 1 megawatt silicon carbide transistor the size of a fingernail, liquid transportation fuel from microbes that uses hydrogen and carbon dioxide, as well as a futuristic wind turbine that literally floats in the air.

Basically, its an unmanned aerodynamical vehicle on a tether, Williams said of the energy kites being developed by Makani, which was recently acquired by Google.

Related: The Airlander 10 is the world's biggest aircraft, and it can stay aloft for 3 weeks straight

It flies up to elevations where the wind is very strong and then it flies on [a] particular flight path. Then the propellers on the vehicle become the wind collectors and generate electricity, which is sent down the tether, she said. It was so exciting that a big company has picked them up and has been developing their technology ever since and we believe they are now demonstrating a 600 kilowatt version that may go commercial in the next couple of years.

Another firm funded by ARPA-E and poised to break out is 1366 technologies, a Bedford, Mass. company that has come up with a cheaper way to manufacture silicon wafers that are critical to the semiconductor and solar industry.

Right now, the way you make a silicon wafer on which you build all your technology is you grow a big single crystal of silicon and then you slice it, Williams said. Their (1366 technologies) idea was that, instead of growing this crystal and slicing it, which causes you to lose a lot of silicon, they believed they could grow individual wafers of silicon one at a time and get rid of all that extra processing and the slicing and polishing.

The company has shown the process works and is now in the building a factory in New York the wafer manufacturing into the United States, according to Williams. They did it and really showed they could create this process and do it in a way that the manufacturing cost would be economically viable, she said.

Related: Futuristic military railgun 'bullets' could travel at Mach 6

While 1366 technologies and Makani might grab the headlines, Williams said some of their most transformative projects lie in the increasingly competitive area of electricity generation and storage. Its an area that has caught the eye of the tech world, including Tesla and the Breakthrough Energy Coalition that includes Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.

But all the attention doesnt seem to bother Williams, who in the past was a chief scientist at the oil giant BP and worked as a physics professor at the University of Maryland. For her, its about the long term  not a quick fix that a company might roll out to satisfy investors.

Our goal is to move these technologies beyond what exist today and push the ones that will be transformative, she said. We believe some of these batteries that we are supporting now are really on the pathway to make transformative changes. We are really excited.

Related: MIT scientists tout new, greener battery technology

Its an area that is ideal for by ARPA-E, given that new battery technology has proven so difficult to get off the ground  with Williams saying it takes 30 years to develop a new battery. Several of their projects have to do with large-scale energy storage, an area that often has received much less attention than what has gone into batteries for electronics or electric cars  and where success could ensure an even more reliable grid and one that could better support renewables like solar and wind.

For grid storage, usually it doesnt matter if the battery is small or big but it has to be really reliable and really low cost, Williams said. The constraints are different so this became a perfect problem for ARPA-E E to support. We really could then take a look at where there are new innovations and cutting edge opportunities and say 'could these be applied to this problem of grid-scale storage?'
A 42-year-old man in Hong Kong spent $50,000 to realize a childhood dream: making a robot modeled on a Hollywood star, Reuters reports. Ricky Ma wouldn't say which Hollywood star his fembot was modeled on, butas Engadget puts it"that's obviously Scarlett Johansson." Jezebel concurs, writing, "It does look just enough like Johansson for her to maybe want to consider taking out a restraining order." Stillafter a year and a half of work, including teaching himself programming and electromechanicsMa isn't letting anyone bring him down.

"If I realize my dream, I will have no regrets in life," he tells Reuters, which has photos and video of his creation. Ma built the Mark 1 on the balcony of his apartment.

It was a largely lonely experience. "During this process, a lot of people would say things like, 'Are you stupid?'" Ma tells Reuters. Well, he doesn't have to be lonely anymore.

His personal robot can change its facial expressions, move its limbs, and bow. It even responds to verbal commands. For example, if you tell it it's beautiful, it will smile and respond with, "Hehe, thank you." And while that might be a little creepy, Engadget notes it's also "really impressive considering that Ma is completely self-taught." Ma hopes some company will buy his robo-Johansson, allowing him to make more.

(This robot farm will churn out 30,000 heads of lettuce a day.)

This article originally appeared on Newser: Man's Homemade Robot Looks Suspiciously Like Scarlett Johansson

More From Newser
On Monday, Air France announced that female flight attendants may refuse to work the company's new route to Iran, for which they must wear a headscarf.

The decision comes after some stewardesses expressed concern and anger over new uniform rules that will require them to wear headscarves on flights from Paris to Tehran.

A note sent to female cabin crew employees requires them to wear a headscarf on their arrival in Tehran. They must also wear the uniform's long-sleeved jacket and trousers, rather than a knee-length dress.

The French national carrier's management met with unions worried that female cabin crew could be disciplined if they declined to work the route.

The company will introduce an exception so that employees who don't want to work on the Paris-Tehran route will be reassigned on other destinations with no sanctions.

Air France plans to start three flights weekly between Paris and Tehran beginning April 17.The airline suspended flights to Iran in 2008 but is resuming the service after international sanctions imposed over Tehrans nuclear program were recently lifted. Air France already imposes a headscarf rule for female flight attendants flying to destinations such as Saudi Arabia.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson International has defended its long-standing title as the worlds busiest airport according to preliminary traffic data released by Airports Council International (ACI) on Monday.

The Delta hub saw more than 100 million passengers pass through its terminals last year, an increase of 5.5 percent from 2014 figures.

Beijing Capital International Airport which nabbed the second spot saw 89 million passengers last year. The report notes that the Chinese airport was poised to unseat the reigning 18-year champion but fell short in 2015.

"While Beijing was poised to close the gap on Atlanta by 2015, it no longer benefits from the double-digit growth it enjoyed in previous years, and as such remains in second position," says the report.

"The combination of a Chinese slowdown and capacity constraints has meant lower growth levels at the airport. Beijing grew by 4.4% in total passenger traffic."

Atlantas strategic location as both a major connecting hub and port of entry into North America helped keep it on top. The report notes that the airport is within a two-hour flight of 80 percent of the U.S. population.

Internationally, Dubai saw the biggest growth jumping from the sixth busiest

airport in 2014 to taking the third spot last year. Dubai International Airport is now the world's busiest in terms of international passengers, ahead of London Heathrow.

The second busiest U.S. airport on the list is Chicago O'Hare, which moved from the seventh to the fourth spot with 9.8 percent growth.

Overall, air travel continued to rise with international passenger traffic growing over 6 percent while cargo -- including mail -- rose 2.4 percent. ACI tracks 592 member airport authorities, which operate 1,853 airports in 173 countries. A final version of the report will be released later this year.

The world's busiest airports 2015

1. HartsfieldJackson Atlanta International Airport

2. Beijing Capital International Airport

3. Dubai International Airport

4. O'Hare International Airport

5. Tokyo Haneda Airport

6. London Heathrow Airport

7. Los Angeles International Airport

8. Hong Kong International Airport

9. Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport

10. Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport
Four Utah men are accused of raping a 9-year-old girl on Easter Sunday while her mom allegedly smoked methamphetamine with a fellow ex-con nearby, FOX13 reported.

Larson James RonDeau, 36, Josiah RonDeau, 20, Jerry Flatlip, 29, and Randall Flatlip, 26, have been booked on one count each of rape of a child and sodomy of a child. Its unclear if any of the men are related.

I want hard-core punishment for what they have done to this child, because that shouldnt happen to anybody, the girls grandmother told FOX13.

The alleged incident occurred while the girls mother was hanging out with a friend she met while incarcerated. At one point the two went to a garage, allegedly to smoke methamphetamine, while the girl slept on a couch. It was at that point the four men allegedly brought the girl to a bedroom in the house and took turns raping and sodomizing her.

While one of the men was raping her, the girl later told police, he told her he would kill her if she reported the incident.

When the mother returned from the garage, she reportedly found her daughter upset and with her clothes disheveled. Later she told her mom about the alleged rape.

The girl identified one of the men from a photo, FOX13 reported, and, after executing a search warrant, authorities found bloodstained bedding and other evidence that corroborated the girls account.

The girl has been taken into state custody to make sure she is taken care of, Uintah County Sheriffs Office Corporal Brian Fletcher told FOX13.

My granddaughter doesnt deserve to go through this, the girls grandmother said. Im very, very disgusted with people like that.
Investigators were headed Tuesday to the scene of a sightseeing helicopter crash that killed five people near the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in eastern Tennessee.

The Bell 206 helicopter crashed about 3:30 p.m. Monday near Sevierville, Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said in an email. Officials said the tourist helicopter was destroyed by fire after the crash.

"There's not much left of the helicopter," Pigeon Forge Police Chief Jack Baldwin said. "It's pretty much gone from the fire."

National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Chris O'Neil says two investigators from the agency were headed to the scene of the crash. The agency will hold a briefing at the crash site after the investigators arrive.

Representatives from Bell Helicopter, Textron, Rolls Royce and the FAA also were going to the scene. Bell is a division of Textron, and Rolls Royce makes the engine on the Bell 206, according to Bell's website.

On Monday, Baldwin said the helicopter appeared to come down the side of a mountain and crash at the foot of it.

"There's a little bit of the tail fin of the helicopter, and that's about all that's left, that and the console, that's about it," he said.

About four hours after the crash, more than a dozen emergency vehicles were at the site, which is less than a mile from a large outlet mall in Sevierville and adjacent to a neighborhood off the main tourist drag. The site is about 3 miles from Dolly Parton's Dollywood theme park.

Smoke billowed over the wooded area. The Pigeon Forge Fire Department said it had units at the scene.

Shawn Matern said he was inside his parents' house when he heard a loud boom. "That's when we came out and saw the second explosion right before our eyes," he said.

He said he saw the pilot roll out of the burning helicopter on the ground and a neighbor went to try to help.

Matern said the tour helicopters fly over at least three or four times a day in that area.

Tennessee Emergency Management Association spokesman Dean Flener confirmed late Monday afternoon that five people had died. Flener said no homes were damaged and no one on the ground was injured when the helicopter went down.

Gary C. Robb, a Kansas City attorney who wrote a book on helicopter crash litigation, said it was far too early to determine the cause of the Sevierville crash, but some helicopter tour operators have been known to be reckless to "thrill the tourists" by flying too close to trees or waterfalls or by dangerous maneuvers.
An Austin police officer fatally shot a car burglary suspect on Sunday who had shot him in the stomach, authorities said. The officer was in stable condition and was alert and in "good spirits," Police Chief Art Acevedo said.

Acevedo said a security guard at a downtown condominium complex saw the suspect breaking into cars. The security guard then began chasing the suspect and the officer, who was in a patrol car, saw the pursuit and called for backup.



When the suspect and the security guard reached the parking lot of a pizza restaurant, the security guard tackled the man to the ground, Acevedo said. The suspect got up and the security guard tackled the man again, Acevedo said.



The police officer then pulled up in his patrol car and got out to help. Acevedo said the officer and the security guard tried to restrain the man, but he was combative. The officer repeatedly yelled for the man to show his hands, but the suspect would not, Acevedo said. The officer radioed for more help.



Acevedo says the suspect then pulled out his pistol and shot the officer in the lower abdomen, below his vest. The officer shot back, and the suspect was declared dead at the scene.



The name of the officer has not yet been released. Acevedo says the suspect hasn't yet been identified.



The officer, an almost 10-year veteran of the police force, will remain in the hospital Sunday night and is on administrative leave with pay per department policy.
A man whose body was found inside a burning apartment in Salisbury over the weekend was the victim of a homicide, police said.



Salisbury police said in a statement that fire crews found the body of 37-year-old Joseph David Walker on Sunday morning. Police have not said what caused them to deem Walker's death a homicide later that afternoon.



Investigators with the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation have been called in to assist in with Walker's killing. No suspects have been named.



Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call the Salisbury Police Department at 704-638-5333 or Crime Stoppers at 1-866-639-5245.
She is a liberal icon and was America's first female secretary of state, but not everyone at a California college is thrilled that white feminist and repeated genocide enabler Madeleine Albright has been lined up to give next months commencement address.

Soon after officials at all-female Scripps College, in Claremont, Calif., announced Albright would speak to graduates, an article in the school paper derided the Czech-born diplomat for her skin color and previous policy positions, and other students posted their concerns on social media, according to The Claremont Independent.

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know how many [people of color] weve had as guest commencement speakers at Scripps? asked one student.

" ... does anyone know how many [people of color] weve had as guest commencement speakers at Scripps?  Scripps College student

The 78-year-old Albright, who worked for the National Security Council during the administration of President Jimmy Carter and later taught international affairs at Georgetown University, was U.S. ambassador to the UN before being named secretary of state by then-President Bill Clinton in 1996.

We proudly welcome Dr. Albright to Scripps College and eagerly anticipate a glimpse of the person behind the position in her history-making role as Americas first female Secretary of State, read the announcement from the school presidents office that touched off the controversy.

The article in The Student Life described Albright as a white feminist and repeated genocide enabler because she supported military intervention in the Balkans as secretary of state and did not do more to stop genocide in Rwanda during her time at the UN.

With Madeline [sic] Albright being our commencement speaker (and a war criminal and a white feminist) I know some of our professors are refusing to be on stage, one student wrote. I was wondering if any of the students were planning a protest or perhaps some sort of show of disagreement with Albright and what she stands for?

At least one student said she supported the choice of Albright for the May 14 event.

Having the opportunity to listen to Madeleine Albright speak during commencement is something graduating students, and Scripps students in general, should be appreciative of, Olivia Wu, a member of the class of 2019, told The Claremont Independent. Seeing negative reactions about her visit just because of her race is honestly ridiculous when considering her achievements.

The newspaper noted that Scripps students did not object when Angela Davis, a radical-turned-academic who was on the FBIs Top Ten Most Wanted list for murder and kidnappingspoke on campus earlier this year.

Albright made news recently when she campaigned with Hillary Clinton and told an audience "there's a special place in hell" for women who don't support each other.


A man convicted for his role in a gunfight that killed one bystander and left nine people injured on New Orleans' famous Bourbon Street was sentenced Monday to 60 years in prison, the maximum penalty.

Twenty-two-year-old Trung Le was convicted of manslaughter Jan. 15 in the death of Brittany Thomas of Hammond. He was convicted of attempted manslaughter for firing at the other gunman -- who has never been captured or identified.

The gunfight broke out early on June 29, 2014, as tourists walked the famous street of nightspots in the historic French Quarter.

Prosecutors said Le, from the New Orleans-area city of Belle Chasse, was the aggressor, firing at someone believed to have earlier stolen marijuana from Le's friends. The defense maintained that Le fired in self-defense.

Le faced a possible 20 to 40 years in prison for the manslaughter conviction; the attempted manslaughter conviction carried a possible 20-year sentence. The judge sentenced him to the maximum penalty for both, to be served consecutively.

Thomas, a nursing student, is believed to have been killed by a bullet fired by the still-unknown second gunman. Others hit by the gunfire included visitors from Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida and Australia, some of whom testified about their injuries at Le's January trial.

The outbreak of violence stunned the tourism-dependent city, renewed attention to manpower shortages at the city police department and led state police to help beef up the city's patrols along Bourbon Street and the rest of the French Quarter.
Most of us were raised in the absence of baby monitors, formal playdates, and cell phone trackers  and we turned out just fine.

But as photos of missing children began staring at parents from the back of endless milk cartons in the 1980s, such laissez-faire parenting experienced a shift. The trend of hyper-vigilance built momentum  and by 1990, the term helicopter parent was coined.

Now, however, this interminable swoosh-swoosh-swoosh over virtually every move our kids make extends beyond their safety. Its become a dangerous epidemic.

Helicopter parents are helping their children escape from the slightest discomfort, preventing them from developing any psychological immunity.

Well-intentioned parents [are] metabolizing their [childrens] anxiety for them, said Dr. Wendy Mogel, a clinical psychologist and New York Times best-selling author, in The Atlantic.

This type of parenting limits young peoples experimentation in the real world as parents dictate their childs life direction. While a helicopter parent may claim this is all about protecting the child, the investigative book NutureShock revealed its usually about protecting the parent from the harrowing business of letting go. And when parents do not let their child fend for himself or herself  the child becomes ill-equipped to persevere in the real world.

Parents who are overly involved in their childrens lives end up getting what they feared most  helpless, entitled, unmotivated young people. Parents inappropriate meddling gives the child the message that nothing is good enough, so many frustrated children quit trying, said researcher Miguela Rivera in The Hispanic Outlook for Higher Education.

These children often have low self-esteem and minimal confidence in their abilities. They are frequently unable to handle criticism and have trouble dealing with disappointment, mainly because they have not faced it before. Researchers have found that helicopter parenting compromises childrens autonomy, mastery, and personal growth. Young people with over-involved parents also report higher levels of depression and a decreased satisfaction with their lives.

Researchers who have studied adolescents with helicopter parents have found these young people to be more anxious and less socially skilled, and to have poorer coping skills and higher rates of depression. In a recent survey carried out by the American College Health Association, 84 percent of college students felt overwhelmed by responsibilities. Thirteen percent of freshmen reported their parents frequently intervened on their behalf to help them solve problems they were having at the college, Margaret K. Nelson noted in her book Parenting Out of Control: Anxious Parents in Uncertain Times.

Another recent survey of college freshmen nationwide done by Dr. Neil Montgomery, a psychology professor at Keene State College in Keene, New Hampshire, found that students with helicopter parents were "less open to new ideas and actions and more vulnerable, anxious, and self-conscious." These students were also more likely to be medicated for anxiety or depression.

Once a child graduates from college, many helicopter parents do not relinquish their grasp. They sometimes accompany their child on job interviews  and some even try to negotiate salary and benefits. Helicopter parents have been known to call their childs human resources managers and bosses to advocate for their childs advancement and complain if their child is not promoted.

If this sounds like an overstatement, consider this: In a national survey of employers seeking to hire recent college graduates, approximately 25 percent of employers reported hearing from parents that they hire their child.

Researchers agree about the developmental necessity of conflict and failure for children. A childs critical thinking and problem-solving skills grow more from active and engaged conflict resolution than from observing his parent do so. While helicopter parenting frequently comes with extrinsic rewards  extrinsic motivation provides the child with direction but no internal drive. Parents need to let their child develop intrinsic motivation  an intense, personal desire to work toward a goal of self-fulfillment.

The reality is that the main determinant of a childs success is grit. According to Dr. Angela Lee Duckworth, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, the most significant predictor of success in kids isnt social intelligence or IQ. Rather, "its about having stamina, sticking with your future." Young people tend to do well when they have such passion and perseverance in pursuit of long-term goals. Researchers have shown that grit, in fact, is more predictive of a childs success than intelligence.

Parents need to nurture grit by teaching their children that disappointment is acceptable and a good way to strengthen their problem-solving skills.

The good news is that hypervigilant parenting is beginning to evolve. As parents focus on raising a child who is capable of living on his own, they are becoming "free rangers"  parents who do not constantly monitor their children. As author Lenore Skenazy notes in her book, "Free Range Kids," these parents are committed to providing their children "independence training" that will help them learn to fend for themselves, trust their own instincts, and face challenges with confidence rather than fear.

These moms and dads are realizing their most important job is to raise an independent and self-reliant child.

Daniel Riseman, founder of Riseman Educational Consulting in Irvington, New York, has been counseling students and working with families for 16 years on every aspect of the college admissions process, including tutoring students for SAT and ACT tests and selecting schools and majors.

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A second frigid blast of snow and powerful winds socked the Northeast Monday, as forecasters warned it could dump up to half a foot of snow one day after the weather was blamed for the death of a Massachusetts couple.

Authorities said 49-year-old Franklin and 51-year-old Manuela Teixeira were killed when a tree fell on their BMW sedan as they were driving down a street in Abington, Mass. Sunday morning.

"It's just an unfortunate circumstance," Abington police chief David Majenski told WFXT. Witness Brian Easton called the tragedy "a freak accident."

The snow that started Monday morning is expected to last into the evening. The National Weather Service says Cape Cod and the South Shore should expect only an inch or 2, with the Boston area getting 3 to 4 inches, while some areas to the north of Boston and into central and western Massachusetts could get up to 6 inches. Most of Rhode island and Connecticut are expected to get in the 3 to 4 inch range, with less in coastal areas.

Some spots could get record-low temperatures. Officials pushed back the New York Yankees' home opener against the Houston Astros to Tuesday. Many Massachusetts school districts canceled classes Monday.

Sunday's storm dropped up to 6 inches of snow on parts of Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Winds exceeding 50 mph left more than 80,000 electricity customers without power across the Northeast, with more than 29,000 still in the dark into the night.

New York state police say a tour bus, three tractor-trailers and eight passenger vehicles got caught in pileup in the town of Maryland, 55 miles west of Albany. Only minor injuries were reported.



The Wall Street Journal reports New York's Department of Parks and Recreation on Sunday received reports of as many as 324 downed trees. About 100 trees came down in Brooklyn and Queens, 70 on Staten Island and 40 in the Bronx. Manhattan had a handful of fallen trees.

The National Weather Service says 64 mph winds were recorded at JFK Airport and 45 mph in Central Park on Sunday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A Long Island man pushed his wife's hands into a boiling deep fat fryer during an argument at a Chinese restaurant, police said.

Nassau County police said the couple's two children, ages 12 and 14, were present during the incident Sunday night in Oceanside.

Authorities said the couple was arguing when the defendant grabbed his wife by the hair and pushed her toward the deep fat fryer.

Authorities said the 39-year-old victim suffered second-degree burns to her hands.

Police arrested the 39-year-old defendant on charges of assault and endangering the welfare of a child. He's scheduled to be arraigned on Monday.

It wasn't immediately clear if he had a lawyer who could comment on the charges.

Police didn't release the name of the restaurant.
A decorated Army veteran who battled the VA over treatment for cancer he claimed to have gotten from working over burn pits in Iraq has died, his family said Monday.

Former Army Sgt. John Marshall, who went to his grave believing his cancer was caused by standing over burn pits where the military disposed of everything from disabled IEDs to lithium batteries, died at his home in Surprise, Ariz., March 29. He was 31, and left behind a wife and two young children.

"John was the type of guy who touched people even if he didn't know them that long," said Marshall's wife and fellow veteran, Ashley. "The amount of people that have come from all over to offer condolences has been amazing and overwhelming. I knew John was a great person, but it shouldn't have amazed me as it did that so many other people thought so, too."

"John was the type of guy who touched people even he didn't know them that long."  Ashley Marshall

In February, FoxNews.com wrote about Marshall's struggle after being diagnosed with soft tissue sarcoma two years ago. He claimed the VA ruled his illness was not related to his service, and Marshall said he was unable to appeal the ruling with evidence because he was laid up in a hospital bed in January 2015 with pneumonia.



Its all just a big slap in the face, Marshall told FoxNews.com. I tried to be the perfect soldier. I did everything I was told, and now they just forced my claim through and denied coverage and my benefits.

VA officials told FoxNews.com at the time that they would re-examine his case, but by then, Marshall's cancer had reached the terminal phase, according to his wife.

The family raised money for his private medical treatment through a GoFundMe.com page, where friends and strangers continued to offer support on Monday.

"As retired Army, we are saddened that the VA did not come through for you," wrote Bob and Edna Woods in a post that accompanied a donation. "You and your family are in our prayers. God bless!"

"The support for my husband is so heartwarming and beyond what I ever thought would happen when this journey started," Ashley Marshall wrote on the site.

Marshall told FoxNews.com he had no doubt that the soft tissue sarcoma he was diagnosed with 14 months ago is a result of his work on Improvised Explosive Device Disposal (IEDD) units.

During my second tour, we were providing security for the EOD [Explosive Ordnance Disposal] guys, he said. We didnt know what we were blowing up, so its possible that there we were exposed to something toxic. We stood over open burn pits.

An October 2013 report from the United States Government Accountability Office identified open burn pits as the likely cause of long-term health issues for many veterans returning from service in the Middle East.

The U.S. military returning from Iraq and Afghanistan may be suffering chronic, long-term health issues as a result of exposure to toxic fumes from open burn pits, reads the report. Defense contractors have used burn pits at the majority of U.S. military bases in the Middle East as a method of military waste disposal. All kinds of toxic waste have been incinerated in these open burn pits, including human waste, plastics, hazardous medical waste, lithium batteries, tires, hydraulic fluids and vehicles -- often using jet fuel as an accelerant.
As many high school seniors have been discovering, getting accepted by a top-tier U.S. college is no easy task. Young applicants have to crush their SATs or ACTs, write stellar essays, show impressive grades in challenging courses, have a full slate of extra-curricular activities, ace the interview  and hope that something in their application packet helps them stand out from everyone else. (Whew.)

Harvard just announced its most competitive admissions year ever. The Ivy League school granted acceptance to a mere 2,037 students out of an applicant pool of 39,041  for a 5.2 percent acceptance rate.

Columbia had a 6 percent acceptance rate this year  Yale, a 6.3 acceptance rate.

Now, American students with their eyes on the Ivys have yet another obstacle to face. Chinese students outside this country clamoring to get into a U.S. institution are hiring scammers, known as gunmen, to take tests such as the SAT, the GRE (the graduate school admissions test), and the English proficiency exam.

Gunmen pose as Chinese students who are either not proficient in the English language, not smart enough to score well on collegiate-level qualifying exams, or both  and help earn their clients those all-important acceptance letters.

Jasmine Huang (not her real name) was asked by someone she knew in China to be a gunman. She is currently studying at Harvard University on an F1 visa.

I was very disappointed in this person when they asked me, Huang told LifeZette. He called and approached me, asking if I would take a test for a kid to allow him to get into college. I think he [the broker] has done this a few times. I didnt do it, of course. Recently I talked to him, and hes not doing as much  he said its getting harder.

She suspects that those who monitor the test locations are also in on the scam.

If I had participated, I would have taken the ID I was given, and gone to the test, said Huang. And although the person checking IDs would probably know it wasnt actually me, he had probably talked to the broker, and together they arranged for me to take the test.

Such ill-gotten gains cost a pretty penny.

"It can cost as much as $10,000 to hire someone to fraudulently take a test for an applicant," said Huang. "And if the score the person wants does not happen, they dont pay."

Just as a whole industry has sprouted overseas to abuse the applications process here in the U.S.  another industry has begun to stop it. Companies such as InitialView and Vericant help colleges such as Stanford, Georgia Tech, N.Y.U., Duke, and Columbia vet overseas applicants and verify their identities.

"Hiring test-taking proxies has been a widespread practice in China for a long time," Terry Crawford, who runs InitialView, told The Hechinger Report. "With so many Chinese students wanting to study in the U.S., its natural that these fraudulent practices are spreading here, where security is comparatively low."

Last year, 15 former and current U.S. college students originally from China were arrested in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and pled guilty to attempting to scam the applications system. They arranged test-takers for friends or took the tests for others. Most of them will be deported.

"During our investigation it became clear the scope of the scam is very broad," David Hickton, U.S. attorney for western Pennsylvania, told The Hechinger Report. "The networks we uncovered are obviously meant to serve a much larger group than these 15 students."

American colleges and universities were home to over 300,000 Chinese students last year, according to the Institute of International Education  an almost 11 percent increase from the year before. Those are spots that could have gone to our own students, of course.

Education equals prestige in many Chinese families.

"It is very important to Chinese parents to have their kids go to a top-ranking college," said Jasmine Huang. "And they are more than willing to pay these high fees, and hope their child can come out four years later with a big degree."

Chinese students often come from wealthy families. For over 10 years U.S. colleges have welcomed applications from overseas because these students are willing to pay additional fees on top of full tuition  and rarely ask for financial aid.

"Ultimately, the buck stops with U.S. institutions," Eddie West, director of international initiatives for the National Association for College Admission Counseling, told the Boston Globe. "Theres a reason you see the success of these verification agencies. Thats a manifestation of the problem."

Chinese websites advertising the services of test-taking proxies in the U.S. are growing rapidly.

"These services are not exactly underground," New York defense lawyer Anna Demidchik told The Hechinger Report. Demidcheks law firm represented Quifan Chen, a wealthy University of Connecticut student, who recently pleaded guilty to having a gunman take his GREs for him in December 2014.

"Some brokers will only take clients if they are referred by another student. Others will take customers after a brief electronic negotiation," says Demidchek.

In the past year alone, the College Board, the non-profit organization that develops and administers standardized tests in the U.S., delayed many scores from four of the seven times the test was administered in Asia while it investigated cheating suspicions. The board takes various measures to curb fraud, as does the company that administers the English proficiency test.

But illegal test-taking still looms.

"This is unfair to students who study hard, follow the rules, and hope to go to a good school," said Jasmine Huang. "Its just not right."

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A United Airlines flight attendant has been removed from her duties after she pulled the emergency slide on a plane that landed in Houston on Monday.

The plane, Flight 1246 from Sacramento, Calif., landed just before noon local time and had arrived at the gate when the flight attendant activated the emergency slide, KTRK-TV reported.

Airline officials told the television station they believe the attendant did it intentionally.

"We hold all of our employees to the highest standard. The unsafe behavior is unacceptable and does not represent the more than 20,000 flight attendants who ensure the safety of our customers, United Airlines said in a statement. United is reviewing the matter and they have removed the employee from her flying duties."

The plane was taken out of service in order to be inspected to meet safety standards before returning to service, officials told KTRK.
An American student who disappeared in below-freezing conditions in Siberia more than a week ago was found dead, Russian authorities said Monday.

Investigators said the body of 25-year-old Colin Madsen was found by rescuers about a mile from the village where he vanished in the Buryatia region, the Siberian Times reported.

The cause of death is under investigation, according to a local branch of Russias Investigative Committee, considered the equivalent of the FBI.

Authorities said there were no obvious signs of injury to Madsen's body or any indication the young Missouri man had been robbed.

Local television reports, citing comments from police, suggested his death may have been related to drugs.

Russian authorities had launched a murder investigation in the search for Madsen, who witnesses said disappeared in below-freezing conditions after venturing out before dawn from a guest house in a mountainous region of Siberia on March 27, according to the Siberian Times.

Madsen, of Jefferson City, Mo., arrived with another American student on March 26 as part of a group from Irkutsk, where he was a university student.

According to regional media outlets, Madsen vanished from the resort village of Arshan. The tiny town is known for its mineral springs and mountainous vistas.

The Investigative Committee said in a statement last week that Madsen and his group planned to hike the mountains Sunday, but Madsen under unclear circumstance vanished without a trace as others in the guest house slept.

Madsen left all of his belongings, including a cellphone, inside the house.

Annie Madsen of Markle, Ind., said last week that her nephew, who she said is fluent in Russian and has taught English in Russia, apparently left the house without a coat to take a walk.

"He has a lot of friends concerned about him," Annie Madsen told The Associated Press about the nephew she called "a responsible young man."

"I can't see him just getting up in the middle of the night and going for a walk in freezing conditions without a coat," she said. "I don't know what was going on."

Madsen had been enrolled as a university student in Russia since the fall. The village from which he disappeared is located about 130 miles from Irkutsk.
Security services in Europe reportedly are searching for at least 22 homegrown jihadists with ties to the ISIS cell that carried out last month's terror attacks in Brussels, as well as last November's coordinated assaults in Paris.

The Wall Street Journal, citing court documents, as well as interviews with security officials and acquaintances of the wanted men, say that the ISIS operatives became radicalized in Molenbeek, the now-notorious Muslim-majority section of Brussels known as a breeding ground for extremism.

"We see many plots and several cells that we now know are part of the same network," Jean-Charles Brisard of the Center for the Analysis of Terrorism told the Journal. "Theyre already here. The problem is how to find them."

According to the Journal, the key figure in recruiting the fugitives to ISIS was Khalid Zerkani, a preacher who was sentenced to 12 years in jail for recruiting young men to fight in Syria.

The testimony of one of the wanted men's mothers reveals the extent to which her son fell under the spell of radical Islam. The jihadist, Yoni Mayne, began wearing traditional Muslim dress and growing a beard after spending time with Zerkani, she said.

"One day he threatened to kill me, because I was the devil," the woman said of her son, now 25 years old. Radical groups that Mayne fought with in Syria claimed he was killed in 2014, but European authorities question whether that is really the case.

Another wanted man, 32-year-old Sami Zarrouk, raised an alarm when he told his in-laws he wanted to move to Afghanistan with his wife and train her to become a suicide bomber. Zarrouk went to Syria in July 2013 and later sent a text to his father-in-law saying that he was divorcing his wife.

The day after the March 22 attacks in Brussels, which killed 32 people at the city's airport and a subway station, the Associated Press reported, citing European and Iraqi officials, that ISIS had trained at least 400 fighters to target the continent, with standing orders to choose the time and place with an eye toward maximum bloodshed and chaos.

The Brussels attacks and their links to the Nov. 13 terror that killed 130 people in Paris has raised new questions about the ability of Europe's security apparatus to identify and neutralize homegrown terror threats.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Click for more from the Wall Street Journal.
Video captured the moment a driver reportedly ran over a Muslim woman during an anti-immigration protest Saturday in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek, a region that terror experts have called a hub for extremist activity.

Warning: Video may be considered graphic.

The driver of the Audi A1 sped right past a checkpoint, initially knocking the woman onto the hood of the car, local media report. The video shows her sliding to the ground before the Audi runs over her to the sound of terrified screams.

Investigators said the woman survived but suffered broken bones and head injuries. Two 20-year-old men eventually turned themselves in, according to Belgian news agency La Libre, which added that the men smelled of alcohol.

A far-right France-based group had announced plans to demonstrate in Molenbeek Saturday, drawing more than 400 people. At least one person was detained, and witnesses saw several minor fights between police and young people.

Molenbeek was home to some of the men who linked to the March 22 bombings in Belgium that killed 32 people, as well as the Nov. 13 massacre in Paris that killed 130. The Islamic State terror group claimed responsibility for the attacks.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Even after his death, the former head of Israel's secretive Mossad spy agency is continuing his attack on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Yediot Ahronot daily published excerpts Monday from a series of interviews Meir Dagan gave before his death last month. In them, Dagan called Netanyahu "the worst manager I know." He lambasted the premier for prioritizing his personal interests over the national one.

Dagan, a retired general who headed Mossad from 2002-2011, fiercely opposed Netanyahu regarding a potential pre-emptive military strike against Iran's nuclear sites and is often credited with preventing it from happening.

He openly criticized Netanyahu's opposition to the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers. Days before Israel's elections last March, Dagan headlined a Tel Aviv rally and tearfully implored Israelis to vote out Netanyahu.
A first group of migrants were ferried from the Greek islands to Turkey Monday as part of a controversial European Union plan to curb migration to Europe.

Under heavy security, authorities on the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios put 202 people on boats bound for Turkey  the first to be sent back as part of the plan, which has drawn strong criticism from human rights advocates.

The first vessel arrived later in the Turkish port of Dikili where migrants were taken to red-and-white tents for registration and health checks. About a dozen people stood at the port holding a banner that read "Welcome refugees. Turkey is your home."

A second vessel was expected soon after. Authorities said most of the people in the first batch are Pakistani nationals.

Turkey and the European Union reached a deal last month which stipulates that migrants who reach Greece illegally from Turkey after March 20 will be returned to Turkey unless they qualify for asylum. For every Syrian turned back, a Syrian refugee is to be resettled from Turkey to the EU.

Monday was the designated start date for transfers and marks a symbolic, successful benchmark in the agreement, which has been plagued by concerns over human rights and the adequacy of preparations taken in Greece and Turkey, the primary players in its implementation. The numbers transferred, however, were smaller than initially forecast.

"All of the migrants returned are from Pakistan except two migrants from Syria who returned voluntarily," Giorgos Kyritsis, a spokesman for a government refugee crisis committee, told state TV.

"There is no timetable for returns. Examining (asylum) applications will take some time."

About 4,000 migrants and refugees are being detained on Greek islands since the agreement came into effect March 20.

Kyritsis said 136 migrants were deported from Lesbos and 66 from the nearby island of Chios, where riot police clashed with local residents hours earlier during a protest against expulsions.

"This is the first day of a very difficult time for refugee rights. Despite the serious legal gaps and lack of adequate protection in Turkey, the EU is forging ahead with a dangerous deal," Giorgos Kosmopoulos, head of Amnesty International in Greece, told the Associated Press from Lesbos.

"Turkey is not a safe third country for refugees. The EU and Greek authorities know this and have no excuse."

The operation was supervised by a lieutenant general of the Greek police and occurred peacefully, as ships departed from Lesbos to the Turkish port of Dikili. The deportations started with migrants who did not apply for asylum or had their applications declared inadmissible.

"Even if this first group is not refugees, what we are seeing here is symbolic kick-off of what might be a very dangerous practice of returns to Turkey," Kosmopoulos said.

The first vessel, the Nazli Jale, docked in Dikili accompanied by the Turkish coast guard as a helicopter flew overhead. A second ship, the Lesvos, was due later in the morning.

A total of 50,000 migrants and refugees are stranded in Greece following EU and Balkan border closures, but only those who arrived after March 20 will be detained for deportation.


A Catholic priest widely reported to have been crucified on Good Friday by Islamist terrorists in Yemen is alive, and efforts to negotiate his release are underway, an Indian government official said Sunday.

Father Tom Uzhunnalil, who was abducted by terrorists who slaughtered four nuns and 12 others at a retirement home in Aden March 4, was feared dead after an Austrian archbishop told congregants he had been executed on Good Friday. Although that priest, Archbishop of Vienna Christoph Cardinal Schonborn, later backtracked, much of the world feared for Uzhunnalil.

"Father Tom is safe and efforts are on for his release as early as possible."  Indian government official

On Sunday, Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj told a delegation of Catholic Bishops' Conference of India that not only is Uzhunnalil alive, but that his release could be imminent, according to Press Trust of India.

"Father Tom is safe and efforts are on for his release as early as possible," said Father Gyanprakash Topno, who was present at the briefing.

Swaraj told the bishops the Indian "government will facilitate the priest's safe return to India," but did not divulge any other details.

He said the minister told the delegation that more details cannot be divulged at this stage.

Uzhunnalil, who is from Indias southern state of Kerala, is believed to have been abducted by ISIS and is being held at an unknown location. But Al Qaeda, as well as other terrorist groups, is active in Yemen, and it has not been confirmed who was behind the shocking attack.

The victims worked at a home run by Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity.

After Cardinal Schonborn said the priest had been killed, other Church officials, including Bishop Paul Hinder of Southern Arabia, said the information was believed to be erroneous.

"Cardinal Schonborn has already corrected his statement, he said last week. I cannot say more for the reason I gave previously, [the safety of Father Tom].

Pope Francis was shocked by the attack on the retirement home in Yemen, according to the Christian Post.

"His Holiness Pope Francis was shocked and profoundly saddened to learn of the killing of four Missionaries of Charity and 12 others at a home for the elderly in Aden," Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin said at the time. "He sends the assurance of his prayers for the dead and his spiritual closeness to their families and to all affected from this act of senseless and diabolical violence."
The son of former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan surfaced in the global document dump that has some of the worlds most powerful players quaking, and it is the second time the diplomatic scions name has come up in an international finance scandal.

Kojo Annans is just one of several familiar names trickling out of the trove of 11.5 million documents leaked from Mossack Fonseca, the Panamanian law firm that helped some of the worlds richest people set up offshore bank accounts. Documents, leaked first to a German newspaper and then shared with a handful of international media outlets, reportedly show that Annan used a Mossack Foseca-arranged offshore account to buy a London apartment for more than $500,000 in 2003.

The exact price of the apartment was not immediately known, but its address is listed as Argyll Mansions in correspondence with Mossack Fonseca that continued into last year.

Annans business interests "operate in accordance with the laws and regulations of the relevant jurisdictions and, insofar tax liabilities arise, they pay taxes in the jurisdictions in which taxes are due to be paid, a lawyer for Annan told Modern Ghana, the country where his father grew up and which has served as a base for the family. The younger Annan was born in Geneva.

Kojo Annan, 42, was accused of wrongdoing nearly 20 years ago in the United Nations oil-for-food program. Although he was never prosecuted, he was accused of helping his Swiss-based employer, Cotecna, land a $10 million-per-year contract through the UN program while his father ran the world body. The $64 billion oil for food program allowed Saddam Husseins Iraq to sell its oil through brokers in exchange for food and medical aid under a plan aimed at allowing the nation to feed its people without investing in armaments. Cotecnas contract was for verifying humanitarian goods exchanged for Iraqi oil.

Annan quit working at Cotecna in 1998 and a UN-appointed panel that investigated the program issued a report in 2005 saying it found no evidence that he used family connections to help his employer. Still, curious billings to Cotecna seemed to indicate he was being paid for meeting with his father, even as the UN oil-for-food contracts were being awarded.

Annan also made news in 1998 when he bought a green Mercedes SUV in Europe and had it shipped to Ghana by invoking his fathers name and influence, saving an estimated $20,000 in customs duties. Critics of the oil-for-food program, which ran from 1996 to 2003, suspected it was an international boondoggle and that Annans wheels  and now perhaps his apartment  were bought with kickbacks, though no wrongdoing was ever proven.

More names are expected to come out of the massive trove of documents. British Prime Minister David Camerons late father, the president of Ukraine, and several close confidantes of Russian President Vladimir Putin have been named in the documents. Although offshore bank accounts are in many cases legal, the documents could show how some of the worlds wealthiest and most powerful people move their money and dodge taxes.

"There are lots of reasons for "offshore" bank accounts, some legitimate, some not, said Fox News contributor and former U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton. "In the case of Putin and the Russian oligarchs, there is little doubt that they are simply stashing their ill-gotten gains in a safe place in case they have to flee.

"As for Kojo, nothing he does surprises me," Bolton added. "He was living off his father's name, and his father gave him cover. Good riddance to both of them."

German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung obtained the documents from a confidential source and then shared the files with other media organizations including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.


Kosovo's Constitutional Court has turned down an opposition request to void the election of Hashim Thaci as the new president because of irregularities. The court said it had found no evidence of irregularities.

On Feb. 26, the Parliament elected Thaci, former foreign minister and ex-leader of the governing Democratic Party of Kosovo, as president in the absence of nearly all opposition lawmakers who earlier tried to disrupt the voting with tear gas.

The opposition has been disrupting the chamber since last September to protest a deal between Kosovo and Serbia that gives more powers to ethnic Serbs in Kosovo and one on a border demarcation pact with Montenegro.

Thaci assumes the post later this week.
A world-renown Muslim human rights lawyer says he's been the target of a slew of death threats after he dared last week to call for Muslims to unite against Islamic extremism.

Scottish police said they were investigating the threats against attorney Aamer Anwar, who claims "fanatics" are targeting him, The Telegraph reports. Anwar reportedly urged Scotland to keep hate speech from entering his country "from the cesspit of extremism in Pakistan."

Anwar had called for religious unity after police said a 32-year-old Muslim man in Glasgow stabbed a Muslim shopkeeper in late-March, killing him. The shopkeeper, 40-year-old Asad Shah, had apparently posted messages on Facebook calling for religious harmony: "Good Friday and very happy Easter, especially to my beloved Christian nation x!"

After the killing, Anwar invited speakers from different Muslim sects to condemn the violence, The Telegraph adds. He said that he felt alone in the fight against Islamic extremism, but he refused to stay quiet.

It is a terrifying and deeply lonely place to be when you say goodbye to your children and wonder if it is for the last time, but the death of Asad Shah should be a wake up call to our community that we must not be silenced," Anwar said.
The Spanish prime minister reportedly has proposed axing the countrys three-hour midday lunch and nap breaks to bring Spain into the 21st century.

Mariano Rajoys announcement comes in response to concerns about Spains slow economy and citizens quality of life.

Instead of a nine-to-five work day, Spaniards typically arrive at their jobs at 10am, leave around 2pm to eat lunch and take a siesta, or a post-lunch nap, and then resume working until around 8pm. While such a schedule has long been the envy of workers worldwide, these siestas mean Spaniards actually work more total hours than similar workers in other countries -- but are less productive.

Rajoy said at a press conference he would be working with Spains various political parties, unions and business to cut out siestas and end the work day at 6pm, The Australian reports.

Siestas became popular back when Spains economy was primarily agricultural, and midday summer temperatures would become unbearable for outdoor workers, sometimes climbing to 104 degrees Fahrenheit. But today, Spains economy is primarily service-based, making the long breaks unnecessary.

Rajoy is also pushing legislation that would turn the clocks back by one hour to bring the country into Greenwich Mean Time.

Spain changed its clocks in 1942 to align with Eastern European time, a shift made by the dictator Francisco Franco to show allegiance to Nazi Germany.

This isnt the first time Spain has tried to streamline the nations work schedule. In 2013, a parliamentary commission called for major labor reforms, including more flexible working hours, to cut our lunch breaks, to streamline business meetings by setting time limits for them and to practice and demand punctuality, the commissions report said, according to The Australian.

It was believed altering the work day would make Spain more competitive in the international economy, raise the countrys birth rates and reduce divorce rates.

Rajoy did not institute the commissions recommendations at the time, despite the proposals nationwide popularity, and some claim he is only now doing so to win votes ahead of a second general election in June.

The countrys other political parties have made similar recommendations.
Despite pushback from teachers, officials at a Swiss school district said Monday they would not back away from a new policy that emerged after Muslim students refused to shake the hands of teachers who were women.

The two students in Therwil reportedly said the mandatory handshakes violated their religious beliefs. As a result, school officials said those students would not have to shake the hands of any teacher, man or woman, Swiss Info reported.

"For us, that addresses the question of discrimination, Jurg Lauener told Swiss TV, calling it a compromise. The students' specific ages were unclear.

Still, the country's teachers' union argued that everybody should follow the same rules. Handshakes at the start and end of classes are customary across Switzerland.

The practice "belongs to our culture," Swiss Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga added.

Therwil is approximately 50 miles west of Zurich.
Syrian troops and allied militiamen pressed on with an offensive against Islamic State militants in central Syria on Monday, clashing with the extremists around the town of Qaryatain a day after it was captured by pro-government forces.

The push into Qaryatain took place under the cover of Russian airstrikes and dealt another setback to ISIS in Syria a week after the army retook the historic town of Palmyra from the group. Syria's state news agency, SANA, said the army was fighting ISIS militants in areas around Qaryatain Monday, as well as in farms east and north of Palmyra.

The capture of Qaryatain deprives ISIS of a main base in central Syria and could be used by government forces in the future to launch attacks on ISIS-held areas near the Iraqi border.

Qaryatain used to be home to a sizable Christian population and lies midway between Palmyra and the capital, Damascus. Activists said last summer that Qaryatain had a mixed population of around 40,000 Sunni Muslims and Christians, as well as thousands of internally displaced people who had fled from the nearby city of Homs. Many of the Christians fled the town after it came under attack by ISIS.

Dozens of Qaryatain's Christians and other residents have been abducted by ISIS. While the town was under Islamic State control, some were released while others were made to sign pledges to pay a tax imposed on non-Muslims.

Also on Monday, a senior U.S. official said it was a U.S. airstrike that killed a senior Al Qaeda official Sunday night. The strike killed at least 21 other militants in Idlib province, a jihadist stronghold in northern Syria.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the operation.

The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadi websites, said Abu Firas al-Souri died in U.S. strikes while the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the jets were thought to belong to the Syrian or Russian Air Forces. It said they targeted the headquarters of Jund al-Aqsa, an extremist group that fights alongside All Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, the Nusra Front.

Al-Souri was the former official spokesman for the Nusra Front, the group reported on social media Monday.

A 2014 biographical video about al-Souri, obtained by SITE, says he used to represent Osama bin Laden in Pakistan after he met the Al Qaeda founder in Afghanistan during the jihad against the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

Al-Souri, born outside Damascus in 1949, followed the path of many Syrian jihadists. A graduate of the country's military college, he trained jihadist cells in the country between 1977 and 1980, heading several operations against the authorities for the latter part of that period. He was expelled from the Syrian military, in part because of his Islamist ties, in 1979.

He fled to Jordan in 1980 then to Afghanistan in 1981 where he trained jihadists coming to the war-torn country from across Asia and the Arab world. He became an associate of bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a senior Al Qaeda commander who led the organization's affiliate in Iraq following the 2003 U.S. invasion.

Al-Souri participated in a number of major military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan before transferring to Yemen in 2003. In 2013, the Al Qaeda leadership transferred him to Syria to mend the growing rift between the group and the Islamic State.

A media outlet belonging to the Lebanese militia Hezbollah said al-Souri's son was also killed in the air strikes.

Hezbollah has sent thousands of its fighters to fight alongside Syrian government forces in the country's five-year civil war. The group was reported to have lost a dozen soldiers in fierce fighting in northern Syria last weekend as jihadist groups alongside rebel militias mounted an offensive against several government positions.
The crew of a U.S. Navy ship stopped a massive Iranian arms shipment dead in its tracks, seizing thousands of weapons, AK-47 rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers that likely were headed to Yemen, the Pentagon announced Monday.

The seizure, which unfolded in the Arabian Sea on March 28, was the third of its kind in recent weeks, military officials say. Iran has been supporting Houthi rebels in Yemen in their proxy war against a Saudi-led coalition backed by the United States. Like Iran, the Houthis are a Shia-led group.

The arms shipment appears to mark the latest provocative action from the defiant Islamic republic, which reported last month that it tested missiles marked with the phrase "Israel must be wiped out." And on Monday, the Iranian government warned the U.S. to butt out of trying to control its missile program. "The White House should know that defense capacities and missile power, specially at the present juncture where plots and threats are galore, is among the Iranian nation's red lines... and we dont allow anyone to violate it," Deputy Chief of Staff Brig-Gen Maassoud Jazzayeri told state media.

On Friday, President Obama said Iran was obeying the "letter" of its landmark nuclear agreement with the West, but not the "spirit" of it.

The Navy said the shipment included 1,500 AK-47s, 200 rocket-propelled grenade launchers and 21 .50-caliber machine guns.

After the U.S. seized the weapons stash from the dhow, a traditional sailing vessel, the Navy let the crew go. A U.S. official told Fox News current rules do not allow western naval forces to seize the crew in addition to illicit cargo. "You have to find a country willing to prosecute," the official said.

A defense official reached by Fox News would not reveal the nationality of the dhow's crew.

Last month, Iran announced that it tested missiles marked with the phrase "Israel must be wiped out," in violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution tied to the recent nuclear deal. The resolution forbids Iran from working on its ballistic missile program for eight years and bans sales of its conventional weapons.

In January, Iran captured 10 U.S. Navy sailors in the Persian Gulf, on the same day President Obama delivered his State of the Union address. Iran released the sailors one day later.

Last year, naval forces from Iran's Revolutionary Guard seized a Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship and held it for weeks to settle a business dispute. Iranian vessels later surrounded a U.S.-flagged vessel but did not detain it.

Soon afterwards, U.S. warships escorted all U.S. and British flagged cargo ships and tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz, a key Mideast oil passage.

In late December, Iran's military fired rockets near the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier, a move the U.S. called "unnecessarily provocative and unsafe."

Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Blimpie Celebrates its 52nd Birthday on April 4th with 52 Cent Subs

Americas Sub Shop Offering 52 cent BLIMPIE Best Subs to First 100 Customers at Each Location

March 31, 2016 // Franchising.com // Scottsdale, Ariz.  Happy Birthday, Blimpie! To celebrate Blimpies (www.Blimpie.com) 52nd birthday, stores nationwide will serve up big flavor at 1960s prices on Monday, April 4th. The first 100 customers who head to any Blimpie location on April 4th will be able to order a fan-favorite, a regular-sized BLIMPIE Best for just 52 cents; a price point symbolizing 52 years of proudly serving loyal customers as Americas Sub Shop.

Steve Evans, Vice President of Marketing for Blimpie, says this 52 cent birthday offer is just one way the famous sub brand will honor its fans in 2016. We look forward to rewarding thousands of our loyal customers around the country with 52 cent BLIMPIE Best subs in honor of the brands 52nd birthday, said Evans. This birthday promotion represents one of many ways well be showing appreciation for all of our fans, both young and old, in 2016. We encourage all of our customers to stay connected with us this spring as we roll out a series of limited time offers and fun, interactive customer campaigns to celebrate the fans who make us great!

April 4th will also be the launch of the Combo Craze promotion, an online match-and-win game that will give players a chance to win a grand prize trip to for two to New York City and over $9,000 in cash and instant win prizes.

Its a time of great excitement at Blimpie as the national sub chain, who prides itself on making bigger and better subs, gears up for another fun-filled birthday. April 2nd will kick off a string of fan-focused promotions, starting with 52 cent BLIMPIE Best subs  the brands signature and best-selling sub made of slow-cured ham, prosciuttini, cappacola, salami and provolone and dressed The Blimpie Way with tomatoes, lettuce, onion, oil, vinegar, and oregano, all on a sub roll.

Special note  the 52 cent Blimpie Best promotion is limited to one per customer.

About Blimpie

52 years ago this week, three high school friends in Hoboken, N.J. set out to create an exceptional sub sandwich. Wanting to differentiate themselves from competitors, they called their new sub sandwich a Blimpie as they thought the delicious creation, a large sandwich filled with deli meat and a salad on top, resembled a blimp. More than a half century later, that sub sandwich has become a fan favorite for millions of customers as the Blimpie brand has expanded to hundreds of locations around the world.

Headquartered in Scottsdale, Ariz., Blimpie serves sub sandwiches prepared with quality ingredients along with delicious soups and salads. Founded in 1964, Blimpiehas grown to approximately 400 franchised restaurants across the U.S. and abroad. In 2006, Blimpiebecame part of Kahala Brands, one of the fastest growing franchising companies in the world with a portfolio of 15 quick-service restaurant brands.

For more information about Blimpie visit www.blimpie.com.

For more information about Kahala Brands, visit www.kahalamgmt.com.

SOURCE Blimpie

Media Contact:

Graham Chapman

919-459-8157

gchapman@919marketing.com

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College Hunks Hauling Junk and Moving Expands Into Colorado Springs

Retiring Army Veteran Opening Fast-Growing Moving and Junk Removal Franchise

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO - (Marketwired - April 04, 2016) - College Hunks Hauling Junk and Moving , which has been featured on "Blue Collar Millionaire," "Shark Tank," and other primetime shows, is coming to Colorado Springs. The moving and junk removal franchise is headed up by Keven Elwood, an Army Master Sergeant who spent most of his 20-year military career keeping Chinook, Apache and Blackhawk helicopters in shape. After 17 deployments to places like Afghanistan, Iraq and the Philippines, he is ready to settle down in a position that will still allow him to lead and train a team of energetic young adults.

"The culture is impossible to beat. They really focus on their employees," he said. "The 'Building Leaders' concept (one of College Hunks' Core Values) is extraordinary. I've spent my entire adult life building young people into great Americans in the military, and I believe that College Hunks can also build great leaders. And that's what really drove me to make sure I was going to buy a College Hunks franchise."

Elwood says College Hunks Hauling Junk and Moving sets itself apart by offering friendly, courteous and thoughtful service to customers, and by maintaining professionalism , traits that people don't tend to associate with junk-haulers or movers.

"Nobody wants a guy in a tank top and smelling like three day-old garbage showing up at their house and moving their belongings," Elwood said. "They want somebody professional. I think the industry has to come around to the College Hunks way of life."

College Hunks Hauling Junk and Moving is the fastest-growing junk removal franchise and moving franchise in America. The company has made "Entrepreneur" magazine's list of top franchise opportunities for six years in a row and continues its nationwide expansion by bringing professionalism and sophisticated marketing to an industry that is in constant demand.

"We're thrilled to help Keven get his new business started," College Hunks Hauling Junk and Moving co-founder and CEO Omar Soliman said. "He's demonstrated outstanding leadership skills and commitment serving our country, and mastering our business is a whole lot easier than the work he's used to. There are a lot of franchise companies that would love to have a guy like Keven open their business, and we're proud that he chose us."

Elwood said he's eager to work with other soldiers who are looking for their next step. College Hunks looks for high-energy team players to be part of the business, and "the candidates I'm looking for are coming to me in the form of soldiers getting out of the military, transitioning into college in the fall," Elwood said. "My main customers are primarily working individuals, professionals. They want clean-cut, organized employees showing up to their house. They don't want to be concerned about who is in their house."

To contact and hire Elwood's business, visithttp://locations.collegehunkshaulingjunk.com/co/colorado-springs.html.

About College Hunks Hauling Junk

To learn about owning a College Hunks Hauling Junk and Moving franchise, visitwww.collegehunksfranchise.com.

SOURCE College Hunks Hauling Junk

Contacts:

College Hunks Hauling Junk

866-766-0540

Danielle Wright Kimble

Danielle.wright@chhj.com

Frank Morrison

frank.morrison@chhj.com

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Dog Haus Brings the Absolute WURST to Corona On April 8th

Acclaimed gourmet hot dog, sausage and burger concept to welcome locals to the Haus with a free hot dog on opening day with weekend sales benefiting Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Inland Empire.

CORONA, CALIF. (PRWEB) April 04, 2016 - Dog Haus, the celebrated Los Angeles-based concept known for its gourmet hot dogs, sausages, burgers and one-of-a-kind creations, will open its first Inland Empire location on Friday, April 8th in Corona offering free Haus dogs all day. Additionally, weekend proceeds will benefit Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Inland Empire, with five percent of all sales on Saturday and Sunday (April 9 and 10) going to the organization.

Located at 350 N. McKinley Ave., the new restaurant will be franchisee Lisa Chau and her brother Michaels first location with the emerging restaurant brand, which was originally founded in 2010 by Partners Hagop Giragossian, Andre Vener, and Quasim Riaz, to recapture the nostalgic childhood experience of eating a hot dog.

We are so excited to bring the Inland Empires very first Dog Haus right here in Corona, said franchisee Lisa Chau, who is opening the restaurant with her brother, Michael. Both Michael and I are very committed to making this restaurant an important part of the community and we are happy to be teaming up with Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Inland Empire during our inaugural weekend in what we hope will be the first of many opportunities to help local organizations.

As part of Dog Haus' introduction to the area and its surroundings, guests can stop by from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Friday, April 8 to enjoy a free Haus Dog from a selection of Dog Haus seven hot dog creations featuring signature all beef skinless dogs served on grilled Hawaiian rolls. Options will include fan favorites like Sooo Cali, with wild arugula, tomato, crispy onions, spicy basil aioli and avocado; Downtown Dog, featuring a smoked bacon wrapped dog topped with caramelized onions, roasted bell peppers, mayo, mustard, and ketchup; or The Cowboy, with white American cheese, smoked bacon, BBQ sauce, and crispy onions.

Dog Haus' full menu includes gourmet dogs, sausages, burgers, corn dogs, sides, shakes, and beer. Other Haus items include The Fonz, which partners a spicy Italian sausage with pastrami and melted mozzarella; while Das Brat features a bratwurst with caramelized onions, sauerkraut, white American cheese, and whole grain mustard aioli. Haus Burgers run the gamut from the trademarked The Freiburger, with white American cheese, a fried egg, Haus slaw, fries and mayo; to Holy Aioli, with white American cheese, caramelized onions, smoked bacon, and garlic aioli.

Lighter eaters and kids can indulge in smaller-sized portions  the dog slider is made with a signature all beef skinless mini dog, Haus made cheese sauce, and bacon; the burger slider has just the right amount of caramelized onions, white American cheese, and mayo; while the corn dog slider features a signature all beef skinless mini dog dipped in Haus made root beer batter. Equal attention is paid to the quality-driven sides, like chili cheese tots or fries with Haus made cheese sauce, cheddar cheese, Haus chili, and green onions; beer-battered onion rings; and sweet potato fries. Save room for dessert and finish off the meal with a Fosselmans premium ice cream soft serve.

Diners can complement their meals with a can of red or white wine, or imbibe from a selection of draught and canned craft beer options. Each canned brew will be served in a Dog Haus koozie, a nod to backyard BBQs; alternatively, all those with a classic PBR craving can get their lager fix with a brown paper bag-wrapped can.

The fast-casual concept, designed to elevate the nostalgic experience of eating that quintessential hot dog or burger, combines this nostalgia with the contemporary aesthetic of its modern industrial space. After ordering at the counter, diners can grab a barstool at the communal tables with exposed I-beams or claim a seat at one of the reclaimed wood and steel tables with benches that boast playful phrases, such as Nice Buns, throughout the restaurant. The restaurant is the perfect setting to watch your favorite team play on any of the flat screen TVs or step outside and enjoy your dog on the patio tables.

Lisa and Michael have been an incredible team to work with for this store opening and truly understand this brand and what we stand for, said Riaz. We cant wait to bring The Absolute Wurst to the Corona community and help support an essential charity throughout opening weekend!

The new restaurant, located at 350 N. McKinley Ave., #102, will be open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays, and from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. For more information, call 951-279-HAUS or visit DogHaus.com, and follow Dog Haus Corona on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/doghauscorona/ to stay up to date on all location specific happenings.

About Dog Haus

Dog Haus is a craft casual hot dog concept known for its gourmet takes on hot dogs, sausages and burgers; premium shakes and soft-serve ice cream; and beer program that spotlights local brews. Founded by partners Hagop Giragossian, Quasim Riaz and Andre Vener, three friends who share a passion for creativity, quality and commitment to community, the first Dog Haus opened in Pasadena, California in 2010. The fast casual concept has since garnered critical acclaim and national attention for its signature all beef skinless Haus Dogs, Haus Sausages and premium Haus Burgers made with a proprietary grind of chuck and brisket, all served on grilled Hawaiian rolls. Open for lunch and dinner daily, guests can choose from signature, one-of-kind Haus creations or customize their own from a selection of more than 30+ quality toppings. Dog Haus currently has plans for more than 125 franchise locations in Arizona, California, Colorado, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Texas, Utah, and Washington D.C. For more information visit dogHaus.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram at DogHausDogs.

SOURCE Dog Haus

Contact:

Deniene Rivenburg

Dog Haus

+1 714-423-9753

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MaidPro One of Boston's Healthiest Employers

Boston Business Journal ranks MaidPro's health and wellness program as one of the best.

April 04, 2016 // Franchising.com // BOSTON, MA - The Boston Business Journal has released their 2016 list of Bostons Healthiest Employers. MaidPro ranked second in the small business category, and was one of only 26 companies acknowledged for their dedication to health and wellness. The Boston Business Journal went on to state, MaidPro has placed health and wellness at the center of its mission  literally: it built an employee gym right in the middle of the company. MaidPro offers its staff fitness classes and medication seminars and even weekend trips to the companys lake house in Maine. With a focus on creativity and passion, MaidPro has exemplified how small companies can provide large sized benefits. Kay Lynch, VP of Human Resources, says, We want to keep people happy, healthy and engaged  that is our main goal. As MaidPro continues to grow, they are always looking for new ways to improve and expand their wellness program. This is the second year MaidPro was named one of Bostons Healthiest Employers.

To get a free estimate for housecleaning services from MaidPro please visithttp://www.maidpro.com.

About MaidPro

MaidPro is a Boston-based franchisor of house cleaning services with over 170 offices in 33 states, the District of Columbia and Canada. The company, which began franchising in 1997, takes pride in its strong owner community, cutting-edge technology and creative marketing. It has been honored with the Franchise Business Reviews Four-Star Rating and Franchise 50 awards every year from 2006 to 2014 for owner satisfaction. MaidPro was named one of the Top 50 Franchises for Minorities by USA Todays Franchising Today. MaidPro is also a proud member of the International Franchise Association and the New England Franchise Association. The company can be found online at http://www.maidprofranchise.com.

SOURCE MaidPro

Contact:

Madeleine Park

(617) 778-0374 x7040

mpark@maidpro.com

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Record Growth in Asian Markets Predicted for Helen Doron Educational Group

LONDON - April 4, 2016 // PRNewswire // - Demand for highest quality English programmes for children sparks growth for the Helen Doron Educational Group in Asia.

Helen Doron English, the company's flagship franchise, has experienced tremendous growth during 2015. With exceptional expansion of nearly 100% in certain areas of the company's Asian sector, the company welcomed new Master Franchisors Mrs. Yan Lu (Vivian) in Suzhou,China, and this month welcomes Mr. Ying Derek Liao, in Chongqing, China to meet the escalating need.

Nadav Weissler, Helen Doron Ltd. Business Development Manager for Asia reports that demand for high quality English courses for children to supplement existing school English programmes, as well as preschoolers looking to become bilingual, fuel Helen Doron English'simpressive growth. "The number of Learning Centres in China has grown by 30%, student numbers have increased by 25% and we are beginning to see tremendous growth for 2016, bringing in additional provinces with the potential to reach countless new customers."

Entrepreneurs report that the Helen Doron Franchise model is profitable and innovative.

Ray (Wang Pengcheng), Ningbo area manager remarks, "I started working in the children's education industry in 2006 and joined the Helen Doron Company in 2012. I realized that this was the most well-developed educational system I had ever seen. Helen Doron English offers very detailed and systematic teaching materials and teacher guides, so all lessons can be taught in a comparatively consistent way, no matter who teaches the course. Such stability and standardization is key to educational franchising."

New Master Franchisor, Derek Ying Liao explains, "Franchising with Helen Doron provides a unique Master Franchisor business model that offers me exclusive rights to my area and the flexibility to offer the best product." New Learning Centre Franchisee, Janney Wang, Hangzhouarea concurs, "Helen Doron English is an international brand and has rising potential in China."

Anne Gordon, Vice President Customer Business Development concurs, "Our expansion potential throughout Asia is significant. We understand market demand, have added a branch Head Office in Asia, refined the business model and made pedagogic adjustments so our programmes meet the specific needs of this market. This, along with our many years of pedagogic innovation and franchise knowledge has fuelled our expansion efforts. "

"Growth in South Korea has been significant," reports Benaya Doron, CEO, Helen Doron, South Korea. "We have two new Helen Doron Kindergarten Learning Centres in Ilsan and Dongtan to meet our growing needs and we are looking to franchise these Learning Centres. In addition, we teach a specially tailored English course in 40 Homeplus megamall locations around the country. Cooperation with Homeplus has enabled us to extend our reach across South Koreaand substantially grow our brand recognition."

Founder and CEO, Helen Doron, believes that there is strong potential for growth throughoutAsia. She adds, "We are looking to expand and strengthen our presence in China, Thailand andSouth Korea, while penetrating additional Asian countries such as Japan and Vietnam."

Helen Doron Educational Group was founded by scientific linguist Helen Doron in 1985, when she set about creating her own teaching materials and music to help children understand and speak English. Doron commented, "Over the past 30 years my team and I have gleaned much about how children learn. We are able to apply this understanding to our unique approach - learning through positive reinforcement, repetition, learning made fun, using a lot of music- which is a basis for all our programmes. Each programme has its own unique principles that bring the Helen Doron methodology to life. These programmes resonate with children worldwide and our franchise models have proven successful across cultures and nations."

About the Helen Doron Educational Group

The Helen Doron Educational Group stands at the forefront of innovative educational systems, providing exclusive learning programmes and quality educational materials for babies, children and adolescents the world over since 1985. The company's flagship franchise, Helen Doron English, along with Helen Doron Kindergarten, MathRiders, Ready Steady Move! franchises today encompass almost 900 learning centres in over 35 countries in Europe, Asia and South America. Today, more than two million children have learnt with the unique Helen Doron methodology.

The Helen Doron Educational Group invites entrepreneurs to join a successful business operation that benefits children around the world. Visit us athttp://www.helendorongroup.com.

SOURCE Helen Doron Educational Group

Contact:

Marilyn Glazier

Social Media Manager

+972-523858518

Marilyn@helendorongroup.com

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Zippy Shell Opens New Location in Portland, Oregon

April 04, 2016 // Franchising.com // Washington, D.C. - Zippy Shell Incorporated, the Washington, D.C. based self-storage and moving company, has officially announced the opening of their new franchise location in Portland, Oregon.

Brian Poggi, a longtime Portland resident, is the owner of Zippy Shell Portland which officially opened for business on April 1, 2016. Brian's trusted presence within the community will allow Zippy Shell to increase its overall customer service coverage and establish a strong reputation as a national storage and moving provider.

"The opening of a new location is always exciting for us as it strengthens our brand identity," noted Rick Del Sontro, CEO of Zippy Shell. "We believe that Brian's past experience of growing businesses makes him absolutely the right person for the market. Portland has a constant flow of people moving in and out of the city with an increased need for the storage and moving services we provide. This constant fluctuation is perfect for a new Zippy Shell location."

"Zippy Shell Portland is perfectly positioned to meet the containerized moving and storage demands of the Oregon market," said Brian Poggi, owner of Zippy Shell Portland. "We have a variety of innovative moving and storage service offerings that really do make life simple for our customers. We are ready to begin providing quality moving and storage services for our consumers in Oregon, as well as creating strong relationships with realtors in the Portland area."

About Zippy Shell

Zippy Shell Incorporated is a national provider of portable storage and moving services.Through a network of franchise locations and licensed partners, Zippy Shell provides nationwide moving and storage services. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., Zippy Shell has over 50 independently and corporately operated facilities in approximately 120 markets. Zippy Shell is an exclusively licensed trademark of Zippy Shell Incorporated.

To learn more about Zippy Shell visit us online at www.zippyshell.com, on our Press Page or by following us on Facebook.

SOURCE Zippy Shell

Contact:

Zippy Shell

202.999.4740

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RALEIGH, N.C.The CEO of PepsiCo, Inc., has joined the growing list of company heads and municipal officials voicing opposing to North Carolinas new law that prevents specific anti-discrimination rules for LGBT people for public accommodations and restroom use.

The Human Rights Campaign and Equality North Carolina released Friday the names of another 10 company executives that have signed on to a letter criticizing the law and seeking its repeal, bringing the number of names to more than 120. New executives include those from Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Qualcomm and EMC Corp.

The law, approved by the Republican legislature and GOP Gov. Pat McCrory, responded to a Charlotte City Council ordinance approved in February that would have extended protections to gays and lesbians as well as bisexual and transgender people while at hotels, restaurants and stores. Charlotte also would have allowed transgender people to use the restroom aligned with their gender identity.

Also on Friday, Pepsico CEO Indra Nooyi sent a letter to McCrory calling on him to consider repealing the measure when the General Assembly convenes in Raleigh later this month.

Nooyi said she was taken aback by the law as well as McCrorys decision to sign it so quickly. She said the measure is completely inconsistent with the way her company treats its workers, and that it undermines efforts to advance North Carolinas long-term interests.

Pepsi-Cola traces its roots to North Carolina, where it was created in the late 1890s by New Bern pharmacist Caleb Bradham. PepsiCos annual shareholder meetings have been held in New Bern in the past several years.

Separately Friday, the venture capital arm of Googles parent corporation confirmed it wont invest in North Carolina startup businesses while the law is in place. GV spokeswoman Jodi Olson cited written comments by CEO Bill Maris in which he asked his firms partners to flag possible North Carolina investments because hes not comfortable deploying dollars into startups there until the voters there fix this. The move was first reported by Re/code, a tech-focused news site.

The new law blocked Charlottes rules and prevented other local governments from approving similar ordinances. And government agencies of all kinds must now require people who use multi-stall public restrooms to use the one that corresponds with their biological sex.

District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser and Bostons city council also this week banned government-connected travel to North Carolina as a sign of opposition to the law. Similar travel bans have been issued by the governors of Washington, New York and Connecticut and by other cities.

Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton sent a letter on Saturday banning state employees from nonessential travel to North Carolina because of the law.

NCAA President Mark Emmert says he has spoken to North Carolinas governor about the states new law excluding LGBT people from antidiscrimination protections, making clear if it remains in place it will affect the states chances to host major college athletic events

Supporters of the law say hundreds of businesses support the law and have signed on to their own letter praising McCrory and the legislature.
Hurricane Wind Power Reviews 2016 Best of Roanoke Award

Hurricane Wind Power Reviews 2016 Best of Roanoke Award.

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Hurricane Wind Power Reviews 2016 Best of Roanoke Award

Roanoke Award Program Honors the Achievement ROANOKE March 23, 2016 -- Hurricane Wind Power has been selected for the 2016 Best of Roanoke Award in the Wind Generators category by the Roanoke Award Program. Each year, the Roanoke Award Program identifies companies that we believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and our community. These exceptional companies help make the Roanoke area a great place to live, work and play. Various sources of information were gathered and analyzed to choose the winners in each category. The 2016 Roanoke Award Program focuses on quality, not quantity. Winners are determined based on the information gathered both internally by the Roanoke Award Program and data provided by third parties.

About Roanoke Award Program The Roanoke Award Program is an annual awards program honoring the achievements and accomplishments of local businesses throughout the Roanoke area. Recognition is given to those companies that have shown the ability to use their best practices and implemented programs to generate competitive advantages and long-term value. The Roanoke Award Program was established to recognize the best of local businesses in our community. Our organization works exclusively with local business owners, trade groups, professional associations and other business advertising and marketing groups. Our mission is to recognize the small business community's contributions to the U.S. economy.

Anthony Jones owner and CEO of Hurricane Wind gave a brief statement. "Hurricane am humbled by the graciousness of the organization for recognizing the company for the ongoing efforts for what makes four years in a row, this was really were not expecting this but room will be made in the trophy case and it is always an honor to be recognized for hard work by peers". Many thanks for those who make it possible and are a blessing to my company. I am fortunate to have many good relationships and partnerships with vendors who Hurricane works with on a daily basis who make this all possible to bring customers a good product at a value." SOURCE Roanoke Award Program CONTACT Roanoke Award Program

Anthony Jones Hurricane wind power

email Tony@hurricanewindpower.com

For more information about us, please visit http://hurricanewindpower.com

Contact Info:

Name: Anthony Jones

Organization: Hurricane Wind Power

Phone: 1540-761-7799

Release ID: 109255

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Summit Security Introduces Their Summit Cloud View Remote Monitoring Solution

This exclusive new technology allows home and business owners to more effectively manage their properties with remote video security, reports http://www.summitsecuritync.com.

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Summit Security, a premier provider of high-quality security systems raleigh nc, has announced the introduction of their Summit Cloud View remote monitoring security solution. This exclusive technology gives people the ability to manage their properties more easily and effectively by tapping into the power of remote video security. Those who would like to learn more about Summit Security and their cloud technology solutions should visit http://www.summitsecuritync.com.

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Summit Cloud View goes far beyond what the traditional raleigh home security system entails and provides. There is no need for property owners to own equipment. Instead, they can simply lease it from Summit Security, allowing them to enjoy lower up-front costs and the benefits of full maintenance. In addition, property owners will have the advantages that come with remote monitoring from any location and a discreet system that can be installed just about anywhere there is cellular reception.

As Harrelson goes on to say, "We want property owners who are currently looking to install alarm systems raleigh nc to know that we can offer them the best services in the area. We live in the cloud computing era. Shouldn't your security video solutions? The team here at Summit Security is here to provide solutions that make it easy to keep any property and the people and possessions inside of it safe and sound."

About Summit Security:

Summit Security focuses primarily on residential and small commercial security systems using cloud based services, video verification and other Honeywell technologies. The company's goal is to guide customers through the process and help them make the best decisions possible to secure their homes and small businesses. The Summit Security staff will draw on Sonitrol of the Triangle's 16 years of experience and success to raise the bar even higher.

For more information about us, please visit http://www.summitsecuritync.com

Contact Info:

Name: Chuck Harrelson

Organization: Summit Security

Phone: (919) 861-1440

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/summit-security-introduces-their-summit-cloud-view-remote-monitoring-solution/109321

Release ID: 109321

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BBR Law Launch New Logo Complimented By Complete Website Redesign

BBR Law has created a new brand identity, including a new logo and new website redesign, in order to help present their services in the best light.

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Divorce and family law is a deeply complex and emotionally charged area of legal practice, meaning those who attempt to navigate the system successfully on behalf of their clients must work closely with clients to understand their needs and aims, while being both passionate and diligent in pursuing the course of action that will get the best results. San Antonio divorce lawyers BBR Law exemplify best practice in this kind, and have just undertaken a rebrand which includes a new logo and website, to better present the values of the brand through its aesthetic.

The new website has been created to help people enjoy a more seamless experience, with a fully responsive design that enables the website to load beautifully on any device or screen size. The website also includes a full suite of information on their practice areas, attorneys and more.

The new logo has been created to help better represent the company for the 21st century, including the names of the partners, clean lettering and tasteful design elements. The blue and gold color scheme reflects the calm and compassionate atmosphere of their approach together with the standards of excellence at which they operate.

A spokesperson for the BBR Law Office explained, "We have worked tirelessly for years to offer an unbeatably high standard of legal representation in matters of family law. Now in 2016 it is time for our brand to reflect the impeccable standards of practice we have achieved, and promote us as the well-established law firm we have become. The future is bright and clear for our firm, and we believe we are the best chance many families have at successfully resolving their legal disputes to ensure a bright and clear future for themselves and their loved ones as well. We look forward to seeing how the new website attracts new clients."

About BBR Law: Bandoske, Butler, Reuter, PLLC is a full service Family Law firm. Family law consists of divorce, custody litigation, child support, possession and access to a child, paternity, and marital agreements. At Bandoske, Butler, Reuter, PLLC., their attorneys can assist in both complex litigation cases and agreed settlements. They assist clients in navigating through their emotional and difficult family law litigation experience with attention to detail and compassion.

For more information about us, please visit http://www.sadivorceattorney.com/

Contact Info:

Name: Stephanie Bandoske

Email: stephanie@bbrjlaw.com

Organization: BBR Law



Source: http://marketersmedia.com/bbr-law-launch-new-logo-complimented-by-complete-website-redesign/109335

Release ID: 109335

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Things To Do In Santa Cruz Launch New Website With Tourist Information On The Californian City

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Joe Webster from Things To Do In Santa Cruz explained, "It's an exciting time for our team, having spent months researching and capturing all there is to do in Santa Cruz. The website is now one of the most comprehensive and in depth resources available online for information about the city. All this information has been drawn from locals who know the city intimately, meaning individuals using the site get the benefit of amazing insight for their first trip. The wonderful thing about the website is that we have only just launched. This is just the beginning, and we are excited to see where we can take it next."

About Things To Do In Santa Cruz: Things To Do In Santa Cruz is an online resource center created to help individuals find all the information they need on the city of Santa Cruz and its surrounding areas. The website is regularly updated with the latest news, events and attractions. It aims to provide invaluable information to help people get the best from their stay.

For more information about us, please visit http://www.thingstodoinsantacruz.com/

Contact Info:

Name: Joe Webster

Email: joe@tolm.co

Organization: Things To Do In Santa Cruz

Address: 9032 Soquel Drive, Aptos, CA 95003



Source: http://marketersmedia.com/things-to-do-in-santa-cruz-launch-new-website-with-tourist-information-on-the-californian-city/109329

Release ID: 109329

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Learn-To-Trade.com Inc. Announces Dates for Complimentary 2-Hour Stock Market Trading Workshops

Learn-To-Trade.com Inc. announces April 12 and 14 as the next dates for its complimentary 2-hour stock market trading workshops.

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Learn-To-Trade.com Inc. (www.Learn-To-Trade.com), Toronto's leading provider of professional stock market trading courses designed to create successful traders on the financial market, is weighing in on the stock market and announcing Tuesday, April 12 and Thursday, April 14 as the next dates for its free two-hour stock market trading workshops.

The first free two-hour stock market trading workshop presented by Learn-To-Trade.com Inc. will occur on Tuesday, April 12, from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at the Learn to Trade.com Inc. head office at 885 Don Mills Road, Suite 200 in Toronto. The second complimentary two-hour stock market trading workshop takes place on Thursday, April 14 from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. at Humber College's North Campus, located at the corners of Finch Avenue West and Highway 27.

"North American stocks have rebounded since the middle of February and are in positive territory for the first time this year," says George Karpouzis, co-founder and director of education at Learn-To-Trade.com Inc. "Investor fears about the U.S. slipping into a recession are fading. South of the border, consumers are now feeling more confident about the future of the economy, while here in Canada, consumer confidence reached a 2016 high after the newly elected government delivered its first budget."

Karpouzis explains that while North American equities have rebounded and consumer confidence levels are up, the stock market remains volatile. That said, there are investing strategies investors can use that will help them make money regardless of whether the stock market is bullish, bearish, going sideways, or jumping up and down.

Those who attend either of the free two-hour stock market trading workshops will learn how to rent stocks to others to create monthly cash flow and speculate on stocks using options, as well as about trading currencies (forex), risk management, and capital preservation. Attendees will also hear about the Learn-To-Trade.com Inc. Lifetime Membership, which lets Members re-attend any part of the program as often as they like.

"Led by a team of licensed professionals, Learn-To-Trade.com Inc. is Canada's oldest private financial educator," Karpouzis concludes. "At Learn-To-Trade.com Inc., we provide our Members with the knowledge, tools, and support needed to create a disciplinary approach to trading or investing in the financial markets; one that gives our members the confidence to make their own independent investment decisions."

Anyone interested in attending the free two-hour Learn-To-Trade.com Inc. stock market trading workshop on Tuesday, April 12 or Thursday, April 14 can register online at www.Learn-To-Trade.com, by e-mail at info@learn-to-trade.com, by calling 416-510-5560, or by visiting the Learn-To-Trade.com Inc. offices at 885 Don Mills Road, Suite 200, Toronto.

Learn-To-Trade.com Inc. is the leading provider of stock market training courses in the Greater Toronto Area. Led by licensed, industry professionals, its extensive courses provide its Members with the necessary tools to trade financial products in today's complex and fast-paced markets. Stock trading training courses with Learn-To-Trade.com, Inc. teach investors both basic and advanced stock market investing principles, including: how to read and understand stock prices and quotes, fundamental analysis and technical analysis, and various trading strategies. Through its Lifetime Membership, Learn-To-Trade.com Inc. also provides extensive training and knowledge in stock option trading, stock index trading, futures trading, futures option trading, forex trading, risk management, and capital preservation. Members utilize real-time, simulated trading platforms to paper trade until they gain the confidence to make independent market decisions and produce consistently profitable results. As the leading and oldest financial educator in Canada, Learn-To-Trade.com Inc.'s instructors are also educators for the Toronto-Montreal Exchange, through which its instructors host educational sessions for the major banks across Canada.

For more information about us, please visit http://www.learn-to-trade.com/

Contact Info:

Name: George Karpouzis

Organization: Learn-to-Trade.com

Address: 885 Don Mills Road, Suite 200, Toronto, Ontario M3C IV9 Canada

Phone: 4165105560

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/learn-to-trade-com-inc-announces-dates-for-complimentary-2-hour-stock-market-trading-workshops/109314

Release ID: 109314

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Jobismo Launches to Help in Fight Against Rapidly Rising Nigerian Unemployment

Kaganate founder Victor Iweanya's new service is already proving valuable to Nigerians seeking secure, rewarding futures, Jobismo reports

--

As the country's nearly two hundred million residents grapple with challenging economic times, Kaganate co-founder Victor Iweanya announces the launch of Jobismo, a new Nigeria-focused job site. Between the plummeting price of oil, the recent withdrawal of a number of major employers, and a currency that many consider overvalued, Nigeria's economy has been slumping.

With President Muhammadu Buhari having just met with American Secretary of State John Kerry to talk about possible solutions, the launch of Jobismo represents real progress of an important kind. Jobismo Companies are ready to hire Nigerians now, and the brand-new site offers a wealth of valuable resources that will help job-seekers tailor their goals and develop their skills in rewarding ways.

"It has become clear that Nigeria faces some real economic challenges going forward," Iweanya observed, "While there is plenty of progress to be made at the highest levels, we believe that any durable recovery will involve working closely with individual Nigerian job-seekers to help them find their own places in this rapidly evolving economy. Our new service brings together employers and those looking for work in a way that accounts specifically for Nigeria's unique history, situation, and challenges. We're proud to be able to do our own part in the fight to secure prosperity and growth for a wonderful country and her people."

Possessor of the largest economy in Africa, and one that ranks around twentieth in the world overall, Nigeria has for many years been a major player on the world's economic stage. While the petroleum pricing boom of recent years buoyed the economy, the sharp price drops that have followed since have caused quite a bit in the way of pain.

With a number of multinational employers of formerly central significance having pulled out of the country over the last several years, Nigeria's unemployment rate has skyrocketed to well over ten percent. Experts are virtually unanimous in advising that the country must diversify its economy and assuage international concerns about corruption and an inflexible exchange rate if progress is to be made, but these high-level developments will take some time.

Jobismo was created to equip Nigeria and her ambitious, hard-working people with a much-needed tool of a more personal and accessible kind. Founder Iweanya rose to prominence through the creation of the Kaganate online community, a still-growing service that has been widely hailed as an especially impressive success story among Nigerian entrepreneurs working abroad.

Available now at Jobismo.com, Iweanya's new project launches as the most comprehensive and advanced employment platform for Nigerians today. With dozens of major Nigerian employers already detailing openings at the new site, visitors can sort through the listings by role, industry, salary range, required qualifications, and other characteristics. In addition, Jobismo hosts a range of career development advice and other useful resources, making it a must-visit destination for anyone in Nigeria today.

About Jobismo:

Helping the members of Africa's largest, most vibrant economy further their career and educational goals, Jobismo is the top online job site for people and employers all over Nigeria.

For more information about us, please visit http://jobismo.com/

Contact Info:

Name: Victor Iweanya

Organization: Jobismo

Phone: 801-927-1085

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/jobismo-launches-to-help-in-fight-against-rapidly-rising-nigerian-unemployment/109339

Release ID: 109339

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New London Artist Corall Hooch Releases Debut Single "Na Na Na"

( April 01, 2016 ) London W3 -- Corall Hooch, the sizzling new London-based urban artist will release her first single ahead of her debut album later in the year. The track, simply titled "Na Na Na" has met with the widespread support from radio, online and in clubs.

This first single, released on Mi7 Records was written by Hooch, and produced by ZDOT (Stormzy, Lady Leshurr, Wiley) and Krunchie (as production duo Perplexus). The track showcases the two west London beat makers fighting it out with their powerful electronic beats.

It has received airplay with support from Charlie Tee of Kiss FM, Monki of BBC Radio 1, and the Aston Shuffle of Triple J (Australia).

Other supporters include APEXAPE, Hybrid Theory, Satin Jackets and Hyphen. Other fans include DJ House, Zeds Dead (Mad Decent /Ultra), Bordertown (Love & Other), Thefft, TheG, and North Base (DJ Silver & Prophecy).

House music fans will also dig the Mak and Pasteman remix, which, with its unrelenting beat and dazzling hypnotic rhythms, has gathered also huge support at both radio and club level.

Tom Finn; hot off the back of his remix of the Marshall Jefferson track "Mushrooms" also remixed the single and contributed an original song to the package which he co-wrote with Corall.

Praise for Na Na Na:

"Catchy fab" DJ Sev, Horse Meat Disco

"Vibesy", Rudimental

"I dig!", Dj Jaguar Skills

Mi7 Records is the label arm of Mi7 Music, the London based music incubator formed in 2003 as a hub for music producers and artists to connect, develop and release music.

About Mi7 Records:

Recent output on the label includes Bluey Robinson, Dbanj, King Charles, We Were Evergreen and Trampolene.

For more information visit r



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The Halo Group LLC Announces the Launch of Credit Repair Service

( March 31, 2016 ) New York, NY -- Halo Capital Group, an established leader in small business loans, today announced the launch of business lending and credit repair, a service created to help companies across the country improve their cash flow and credit score.

According to Halo Capital Group Director of Operations Barbara Johnson, the business lending and credit repair service will be available for purchase on February 9, 2016 and will be available online at halocapitalgroup.com. "We are very excited to now offer business credit repair services to our business clients. Our customers have been asking for this and we are excited to deliver a quality service," said Johnson of The Halo Capital Group. "I am confident that we have the best commercial lending service available for small businesses nationwide. You simply will not find a better deal for the money anywhere in the area."

According to Johnson, The Halo Group has been brainstorming ideas for expanding their services over the last several months with the goal of assisting businesses who have credit issues, which currently makes up over 50% of their customer base. "It is those scenarios where businesses need help the most, and we just had to find a way to help them as much as we could," said Johnson. To learn more, visit www.halocapitalgroup.com.

Founded in 2013, The Halo Group has helped many businesses and consumers with small business loan options. The company's mission statement is "to help businesses get access to business loans with the best rates and terms possible". To learn more about The Halo Group, you should call 888-892-7939 or visit them online at https://halocapitalgroup.com.

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The Halo Group LLC Announces New and Improved Commercial Lending Website

( March 31, 2016 ) New York, NY -- The Halo Group LLC, an established leader in small business loan options, today announced the redesign of its website to provide customers with even more relevant and easy-to-find information on commercial lending and business credit programs. The new and improved website can be viewed at halocapitalgroup.com.

Nate Feldman, Co-Founder of The Halo Group, said he expects the website to be well received by customers and business partners. Some changes that were made include a more user friendly application, more image rich pages, a new color scheme and better ease of use.

"The improved web site is yet another way that we are making it easier for our customers to find the information they need on commercial lending and credit programs," said Feldman of Halo Capital. "We spent many hours with focus groups and industry experts to ensure this new site is easy-to-use and provides the information our customers need."

The revamped HALO Capital website now features an updated look with enhanced features perfect for the industry, including an all-new appearance and layout with eye-catching graphics and user-friendly navigation bars. Feldman said one feature he expects website users to like is the addition of social networking buttons which makes it easier to connect to the company's Facebook and Twitter pages.

To view the newly upgraded Halo Capital website, visit www.halocapitalgroup.com today.

Founded in 2013, The Halo Group LLC has helped many businesses and consumers with small business loan options. The company's mission statement is "to help businesses get access to business loans with the best rates and terms possible". To learn more about The Halo Group, you should call 888-892-7939 or visit them online at https://halocapitalgroup.com.

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Assisted Living Franklin TN Facility For The Elderly Starts 6th April 2016

Assisted Living Franklin TN announced the availability of their new Assisted Living Franklin TN Facility Service beginning 6th April 2016. More information can be found at http://www.assistedlivingfranklintn.com/.

--

Customers looking for the latest Assisted Living Franklin TN Facility Service will soon be able to get involved with Assisted Living Franklin Tennessee. Today Chris Rowe, Owner at Assisted Living Franklin TN releases details of the new Senior Living Franklin TN Facility Service's development.

The Assisted Living Franklin TN Facility Service is designed to appeal specifically to the elderly and includes:

24-hour staff - This feature was included because it will mean that the staff get to know the residents on an individual basis. This is great news for the residents as it is providing a friendly and helpful service.

Recreational and social activities - This was made part of the service since it helps the residents to make new friends and acquaintances. The residents who invest in the service should enjoy this feature because it will make the residents feel at home.

Routines and daily schedules - Assisted Living Franklin TN made sure to make this part of the Assisted Living Franklin TN Facility Service's development as it will help the residents to maintain some sort of independence, and they can decide in which activities they wish to participate. Occupants of the Assisted Living Franklin TN Facility Service will likely appreciate this because residents can choose their own schedule and level of participation in activities.

Chris Rowe, when asked about the Assisted Living Franklin TN Facility Service said:

"I am excited to be able to offer a personal care report, by offering assistance to suit the personal needs of the residents"

This is the latest offering from Assisted Living Franklin TN and Chris Rowe is particularly excited about this launch because this is something that the Franklin area of Tennessee needs.

Those interested in learning more about Assisted Living Franklin TN and their Assisted Living Franklin TN Senior Service can do so on the website at http://www.assistedlivingfranklintn.com/

For more information about us, please visit http://www.assistedlivingfranklintn.com

Contact Info:

Name: Chris Rowe

Organization: Assisted Living Franklin TN



Release ID: 109282

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Lawns Will Never Be The Same After New Compost Topdressing Service Debutes

Georgia Lawn Inc announced the availability of their new Compost Topdressing Service beginning April 8, 2016. More information can be found at http://georgialawninc.com/top-dressing.

--

Customers looking for the latest improvement in their lawns health will be happy to see, Georgia Lawn Inc is debuting a new Compost Topdressing Service on April 8th and will soon be able to see how drastic the improvement is on their lawns. Today Jason Holbrook, Field Manager at Georgia Lawn Inc releases details of the new service.

Georgia Lawn is releasing its new Compost Topdressing Service to appeal specifically to Home and Lawn enthusiasts who want to improve their lawns and includes:

Proper Soil Testing - This feature was included as part of the service because without knowing what there is to start with, it's impossible to fix the problem. This is great news for customers because this will be building a strong foundation for lawns to grow on. Knowing where to start and having the ability to incorporate this into the final product is a real game changer.

Adding Back Whats Missing - This was made part of the service, since lawns today are lacking the organic matter needed to grow properly. Customers who invest in the service should enjoy this feature because it saves them money by less watering, better lawn health and longer lasting results. Not only will the water bill be much less but the diseases and environmental issues that normally plague lawns will be cut in half.

Deep Core Aeration - Georgia Lawn Inc made sure to make this part of the Compost Topdressing Service because the compost needs to be locked into the different parts of the soil to get maximum results. Customers of the new Compost Topdressing Service will appreciate this because with proper mixing of compost and existing soil all levels of the lawn will benefit. Not only will the roots grow strong but they will continue to thrive because of all the extra space and nutrients available.

Jason Holbrook, when asked about the Compost Topdressing Service said:

"Compost topdressing is the best investment I've seen to improve a lawn by far. The amount of value compost adds to the soil makes everything else coincide with each other that much better. Fertilizers and nutrients are much more effective and insect and fungus damage is far less."

This is the latest offering from Georgia Lawn Inc and Jason Holbrook is particularly excited about this launch because "We are exited about this service because we can finally provide the lasting results that our customers deserve."

Those interested in learning more about Georgia Lawn Inc and their new Compost Topdressing Service scan do so on the website at http://georgialawninc.com/top-dressing.

For more information about us, please visit http://georgialawninc.com

Contact Info:

Name: Jason Holbrook

Organization: Georgia Lawn Inc

Address: P.O. Box 1853, Cumming GA 300028

Phone: 770 561 5296

Release ID: 109285

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Phoenix Life is waiving ongoing charges for around 50,000 pension customers after its Independent Governance Committee raised concerns over the value for money it was offering.

However the closed-book life companys IGC held off tackling exit penalties this year, citing the Financial Conduct Authoritys ongoing consultation on the issue and noting only 15 per cent of customers have policies containing such charges.

Meanwhile, it found 21 of Phoenixs 44 different scheme designs have members likely to pay over 1.5 per cent in ongoing charges.

Those with small pots  under 5,000 or up to 10,000  and where no new contributions are being made, are at higher risk of poor value for money, according to the IGCs maiden report.

The firm therefore stated it will not collect ongoing charges for the next 12 months for customers aged under 54 and with this profile. There are around 46,000 customers under 55 with pots worth less than 10,000.

In terms of costs and charges, the report gave Phoenix a red rating in order to highlight the importance of resolving the situation for the smaller pot customers, while on value for money the firm got an amber rating because not all funds are performing in line with the targets.

The IGC did give Phoenix a green rating on retirement options, customer service and communications.

IGC chairman David Hare says: We are pleased that Phoenix has responded to our concerns and is temporarily stopping those charges that caused us most concern. We look forward to seeing what longer-term options they are able to offer.

Andy Moss, chief executive at Phoenix Life, responded that the IGC has provided a useful review of its workplace pension schemes.

We are pleased that our commitment to customer care has been recognised and that most of our workplace pension schemes are working well for their members. We look forward to continuing our work with the IGC on developing longer-term solutions to improve value for money.

The last couple of weeks have seen several of the large life and pension providers publish initial reports from their IGCs, set up last year at the behest of the government and regulators.

Zurich promised to cap pension charges following its inaugural IGC report last month, with a 3 per cent cap to be applied over the course of 2015 as a holding position, according to their IGC chairman Laurie Edmans.

Standard Life is working with the Financial Conduct Authority and the Department for Work and Pensions over concerns its default funds remain targeted at annuity purchase; something revealed in its IGC report earlier this week.

Finally, Scottish Widows IGC report called for industry-wide benchmarking of pension providers by their customers.

peter.walker@ft.com
JRP Group, the new company born of a merger between annuity providers Just Retirement and Partnership, saw its share price take a tumble on the first day of trading.

Shares in the company had a rocky first day, falling from an opening price of 1.53 to 1.48 over the course of trading, a drop of 3.3 per cent.

JRP began trading on the London Stock Exchange with a market cap of 1.4bn and assets under management of more than 15bn, the company said.

Despite the share price fall Barrie Cornes, an insurance analyst with Panmure Gordon, said has a buy recommendation for the new company.

He said: The merger has been a long-time coming. I think the outlook for the new company is positive. We think the shares are under valued and both companies were trading at a discount.

Both companies are performing well in the bulk annuity space and the individual annuity space is not dead, despite what many people think.

Aprils pension reforms have had a significant effect on the sale of annuities, with sales falling by 42 per cent from 11.9bn in 2013 to 6.9bn by the end of June 2014, according to data from the ABI.

When the merger was announced in August the two companies said it would allow them to tackle the challenges posed by the recent reforms.

Both companies are floated on the Aim and following the 2014 Budget Partnerships share price plummetted 60 per cent, falling from 3.19 to around 1.22 by the end of that week.

Just Retirements shares took a similar nose-dive, falling 48 per cent from 2.67 to 1.40.

Rodney Cook, chief executive of JRP Group, said: As we launch, we are optimistic that our new company will use the outstanding intellectual property we have developed, together with our multi-channel distribution assets and market leading service to positively disrupt markets to deliver improved value to our customers.
Advisers are bracing themselves for a backlash from HM Revenue & Customs after a year-long international investigation on the use of tax havens unveiled damning evidence of tax abuse.

Jennie Granger, director general of enforcement and compliance at HMRC, has already asked the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which carried out the comprehensive investigation, to share its details.

She said: HMRC is committed to exposing and acting on financial wrongdoing and we relentlessly pursue tax evaders to ensure they pay every penny of taxes and fines they owe.

HMRC has already received a great deal of information on offshore companies, including in Panama, from a wide range of sources, which is currently the subject of intensive investigation.

We will closely examine this data and will act on it swiftly and appropriately.

Her comments came after the ICIJ, together with media partners around the world, published a string of stories on the back of leaked documents called the Panama Papers.

These cover nearly 40 years, from 1977 through the end of 2015, and were allegedly leaked from Panama-based global law firm Mossack Fonseca.

The 11.5m papers indicate banks, law firms, offshore players and even politicians have often failed to follow legal requirements, while major banks are big drivers behind the creation of hard-to-trace companies in the British Virgin Islands, Panama and other offshore havens.

There are nearly 15,600 such companies listed, including thousands created by large global banks such as UBS and HSBC.

A spokesman for HSBC said: We work closely with the authorities to fight financial crime and implement sanctions.

Our policy is clear offshore accounts can only remain open either where clients have been thoroughly vetted, where authorities ask us to maintain an account for the purposes of monitoring activity, or where an account has been frozen based on sanctions obligations.

HSBC would not comment on whether this was limited to the offshore subsidiaries or whether this included the UK operations.

The Panama Papers also suggested many of the offshore facilitators were UK tax advisers, making HMRCs warning notes pertinent for tax planners in the UK.

Since 2010, the UK government has bolstered the HMRC to reduce tax evasion and aggressive avoidance, cracking down on both individuals and the advisers who have helped them.

According to data from HMRC and private client law firm Collyer Bristow, it has already brought 2bn in from offshore evasion since 2010.

It has also garnered 154m through investigations into unpaid capital gains tax over the last tax year - 39m of which was obtained by HMRCs newly created Counter Avoidance Directorate, which focuses on marketed tax avoidance schemes.

Ms Granger warned there are no safe havens for tax evaders. The dishonest minority, who can most afford it, must pay their legal share of tax, like the honest majority already does.

Jessica Parker, partner at regulatory law firm Corker Binning, said: It appears HMRC has no qualms about the manner in which the Panama Papers have come to light and plan on making full use of any intelligence it contains.
JO Hambro Capital Management (JOHCM) has confirmed the soft closure of its 1.9bn Global Select and 1.8bn European Select Values funds following a review of capacity conducted last year.

A 5 per cent front-end fee will be charged to new investors in order to discourage further flows into the two Dublin-domiciled funds.

Terms for existing investors, including third-party platforms and direct clients, will remain the same.

Gavin Rochussen, chief executive of JOHCM, said: Both funds have generated excellent long-term performance and therefore attracted a strong investor following.

Mr Rochussen recommended the firms European Concentrated Value and Global Opportunities funds as alternatives for investors looking for pan-European equity and global equities exposure respectively.

However, the third fund which JOHCM said it was reviewing last year, the 1.6bn Continental European offering, will remain open to new investors.

A representative from JOHCM said: There are no capacity concerns over the JOHCM Continental European fund. The fund remains open to new and existing investors.

According to FE Analytics, the Global Select fund, managed by Christopher Lees and Nudgem Richyal, has delivered 29.4 per cent over three years, compared with 19.3 per cent from the Investment Association (IA) Global sector.

Over the same period the European Select Values portfolio, managed by Robrecht Wouters, has returned 26 per cent, compared with 20.8 per cent from the IA Europe including UK group.
The Property Franchise Group - behind the likes of Parkers, Martin & Co and Whitegates - has launched a financial advisory arm in partnership with Legal & General and London & Country.

Already the UKs largest property franchisor, with 287 offices nationwide, the group will now use London & Country to provide fee-free mortgage advice to their estate agent customers.

The move was made to make The Property Franchise Group a one-stop-shop when buying, selling or mortgaging a property.

It will now offer mortgages across the whole of market, whereas other high street estate agents only offer from a limited panel, according to a statement.

Ian Wilson, chief executive of The Property Franchise Group, explained that they also chose telephone and web fulfilment because people are busy and do not find it convenient to attend long meetings with mortgage advisers.

He added that a customer can then track the progress of their case online.

A spokeswoman for L&G confirmed the arrangement between Martin and Co and L&C, adding: It is positive for L&G as they are distributing our financial protection products, but the relationship is with them.

Bob Riach, managing director of Scunthorpe-based Riach IFA, said the public prefer face-to-face advice when arranging a mortgage.

Mr Riach said: I can remember when Moneysupermarket entered the mortgage market offering telephone-based advice. It wasnt successful as people wanted face-to-face advice. Based on this, Moneysupermarket started to sell the mortgage leads to a panel of mortgage brokers.

I was on the Moneysupermarket panel and paid a fee for every lead introduced. When speaking to the clients they said that they wanted to discuss their mortgage face-to-face.

Buying a property is the biggest financial purchase that most clients will do in their lifetime, they should take professional advice and I would recommend that this advice is given face to face, he added.

peter.walker@ft.com
Research published by Which has revealed many of those approaching retirement are confused about aspects of the new state pension.

From this Wednesday (6 April), a new state pension system will take effect, aiming to simplify how much people will receive when they are eligible to claim the state pension.

Last month , FTAdviser reported that government communication of changes to the state pension had been so bad neither the winners nor losers yet know who they are, according to the Work and Pensions Select Committee, in what Saga at the time branded a shambles.

Whichs poll of 1,000 adults in February showed two thirds of those approaching the state pension age (50-64 year olds) were aware that changes were coming in, rising to 80 per cent of those aged between 60 and 64.

However, the consumer organisation said it found there is still confusion about how the new system impacts consumers, with only one in five knowing the state pension age will be 65 for both men and women in November 2018.

Additionally, only one in five knew that the new rules do not affect those that have reached state pension age before April 2016.

A total of 55 per cent did not know if those who have reached retirement age can top up their state pension or not, while a further 44 per cent of people admitted they do not know what the full rate of the new state pension will be from 6 April.

Alongside this, only 18 per cent of people Which asked knew if they had ever been contracted out of the state pension.

Which executive director Richard Lloyd, said that more needs to be done to make sure people understand what the changes are and what they mean for them.

Pensions minister Baroness Ros Altmann, stated it is vital that people check what their state pension is likely to be, especially when planning their future later life income. 

The government is introducing a new state pension system which will be easier to understand and a new digital online individual state pension forecast will be available to make things much easier.

This is in public testing now and in the meantime anyone over age 50 can get a written statement showing their estimated state pension.

Martin Palmer, head of the corporate funds proposition at Zurich, commented that while it is good the government has taken steps to simplify the state pension, it is still far too complicated.

To help people plan properly for retirement, the government needs to ensure that the planned pension dashboard includes a forecast of the state pension, as well as allowing savers to see all their other pots in one place.

Its hardly surprising that so few people know the state pension age. The reality for people in their early 50s is that, while current provisions assume they will retire at 67, this is likely to have risen further by the time they get to retirement.
Campaigners for a financial advice long-stop have said the Financial Conduct Authority's plans to look at the professional indemnity insurance market could solve longstanding liability issues.

Following a meeting with the Association of Professional Financial Advisers last week, Zurich, which has been campaigning for a long-stop along with the trade body, said proposals in last months Financial Advice Market Review could tackle the issue.

The FAMR report promised to look at issues such as the way the market for professional indemnity insurance works, and we think these initiatives could contain opportunities to address some of the weaknesses with the current system, Matt Connell, head of regulatory developments at Zurich UK Life, said.

In the final report of the FAMR, the FCA and HM Treasury said a long-stop should not be introduced because of the low number of complaints which would be affected and because the advice market needs consumer confidence to flourish, with ensuring appropriate access to redress being a significant part of that.

But the review did conclude that there may be merit in considering the operation of the PI market more closely to ensure it is functioning well.

Mr Connell pointed to the providers Fair Liability campaign with APFA, which has called for calling for an amendment to the current rules governing complaints and challenged whether they meet statutory objectives.

The report highlighted the recurrent issue that open-ended liability is preventing investment in firms and hindering the development of the advice profession.

Mr Connell confirmed his firm remained willing to work with Apfa to further the cause of fair liability for advisers.

However, we only want to campaign for solutions that command the support of advisers, so we will take our lead from Apfa and its members about which solutions are acceptable to the adviser community, he said.

Chris Hannant, director general of Apfa, said he agreed with Zurichs position.

Last year Apfa raised the possibility of a centralised insurance fund as an alternative to the long-stop.
EU farm commissioner Phil Hogan has acknowledged that Europes food chain is broken  with more work needed to secure better prices for producers.

This is a difficult time for many farmers, in particular those specialised in dairy or pigmeat production, Mr Hogan told a political forum in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Prices are currently very low and it is difficult to produce under these circumstances.

See also: UK receives 36m farm aid from Brussels

The EU food chain faced many opportunities  but it also faced challenges, said Mr Hogan in a speech about rethinking the food-supply chain on 31 March.

He warned: We also have to be honest enough to acknowledge that many links in our food chain are currently broken.

Globalisation brought trade benefits but could also have the negative effect of concentrating bargaining power in the hands of the food-processing and retail sectors.

We need to work together to improve the functioning of the food chain. This is a responsibility we must take seriously Phil Hogan, EU farm commissioner

We need to work together to improve the functioning of the food chain. This is a responsibility we must take seriously.

A growing and increasingly affluent world population gave farmers the chance to get a bigger slice of a bigger pie from added-value in the food chain. But Mr Hogan said it had also exposed the food chain to greater market instability and volatility.

Due to report this autumn, an Agricultural Markets Task Force comprising 12 senior food chain experts would recommend changes in legislation to improve balance in the supply chain.

Farmers must not continue to be the weakest link in the chain, said Mr Hogan.

The task force was examining issues and topics such as transparency, collective self-help tools, access to financing and futures, contracts and contractual relations.

But Mr Hogan said it was also important to look at the price paid by producers for farm inputs.

Its overarching mandate is to strengthen the farmers position in the food chain, said Mr Hogan.

[But] when analysing how to boost the competitiveness of our farmers we cannot limit the discussion to how farmers should be better paid for their products.

Fertiliser prices, for example, were linked to energy prices.

Natural gas represented a substantial part of the cost of production of nitrogen fertiliser.

But the price of nitrogen fertiliser had fallen in the last year by less than the price of natural gas.

I can assure you that the commission will continue to closely monitor the fertiliser markets and will not hesitate to take further measures if deemed necessary.

If the price of energy drops, this must be reflected throughout the whole chain all the way to its end point.
A fair deal and supply chain transparency are among the top demands made by NFU Scotland, which has published its manifesto ahead of next months Scottish parliament elections.

All 129 seats at Holyrood are up for grabs in the election on Thursday 5 May. Highlighting the importance of farming and crofting to the economy, NFU Scotlands manifesto warns that agriculture must not be sidelined as politicians seek to woo voters.

See also: 200m BPS panic button pressed in Scotland

Crippling and ongoing issues in the dairy sector have rightly received much attention from MSPs in the last 12 months, says the document. However, throughout 2015 and into this election year there are still market pressures prevailing across the agricultural commodities.

The volatile market cannot be managed but a fairer margin share can be addressed. Now is the time for politicians to garner a fuller understanding of the complexities of agricultural markets to allow them to be reactive in times of future price downturns.

Urging union members to build on the momentum of a recent rally which saw 250 farmers and crofters descend on the Scottish Parliament, NFU Scotland president Allan Bowie said he wanted all politicians to engage with agriculture.

Regardless of their politics, we will engage with anyone and everyone to ensure that a better future is delivered for the next generation, said Mr Bowie. Prospective MSPs should recognise the potential for farmers to deliver that future  and strengthen Scotlands economy, he added.

For the first time in the 17 years since devolution saw responsibility for agricultural policy transferred from London to Edinburgh, a national rural hustings event for prospective MSPs will take place at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston on Thursday (7 April).

The manifesto maps out more than 40 bullet points that NFU Scotland wants incoming MSPs to address to drive forward the industry and the rural economy. Scottish agriculture produces 3bn of food and drink annually, and the sector is currently valued at 14bn, it says.

Demands include: improvements to the delivery of farm support; land reform; a stronger, fairer food and drink supply chain; appropriate environmental and land management systems; a crofting system fit for the 21st century; less red tape and improved connectivity, including broadband.

Mr Bowie said: In the next parliamentary term, we need the Scottish government to look at how we can deliver fairer supply chains, help farmers better manage price volatility, and encourage new tendering for local produce here at home.

It was important to tap into the massive potential for inward investment to add value and, along with others, drive forward exports of Scottish produce. Success in these areas is key to growing our agricultural output, said Mr Bowie.
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Story Highlights Large percentages on NATO's eastern borders see Russia as top threat

Most Russians (64%) see U.S. as posing biggest threat

Islamic State group earns some mentions

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Amid continued talk of a "new Cold War," residents of Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) see Russia -- or the U.S. -- as the one country that poses the biggest threat to them. But their answers largely depend on where Gallup asks the question. Russia poses the biggest threat in European Union member states in Eastern Europe, while in non-member states residents are more likely to perceive the U.S. as the biggest threat. In CIS countries, attitudes are mixed overall, but Russia and the U.S. are at the top of the list.

What one country in the world would you say poses the greatest threat to your country? Open-ended EU members in Eastern Europe % Non-EU members in Eastern Europe % CIS countries (not including Russia) % Russia 40 3 22 United States 4 13 16 2015 Gallup World Poll

These results are based on Gallup surveys in summer 2015 as tensions escalated between the U.S. and its NATO allies and Russia over the situation in Ukraine and with Russia's involvement in Syria. On Wednesday, the Pentagon announced it had drawn up plans to position U.S. troops, tanks and other armored vehicles along NATO's eastern borders to "deter Russian aggression." In Eastern Europe, the unease over the situation is particularly evident in several NATO countries that were within the Soviet sphere of control during the Cold War. When asked to name the one country that poses the biggest threat to them, large percentages in Poland (69%), Estonia (58%), Romania (57%), Lithuania (46%) and Latvia (42%) spontaneously name Russia.

Biggest Threat Among EU Members in Eastern Europe Open-ended Biggest threat Percentage mentioning % Poland Russia 69 Estonia Russia 58 Romania Russia 57 Lithuania Russia 46 Latvia Russia 42 Greece Germany 39 Slovakia Russia 17 Czech Republic Russia 15 Bulgaria United States 14 Hungary Russia 14 Croatia Serbia 11 2015 Gallup World Poll

Greece stands out among its EU counterparts in the region, with residents identifying neither the U.S. nor Russia as the biggest threat -- and instead naming another EU member. Greeks see Germany (39%) as the biggest threat to their country. This likely reflects Greeks' anger toward Germany in relation to the austerity measures it required to help rescue Greece's ailing economy.

U.S. Bigger Threat in Non-EU Member Countries

In non-EU member countries in Eastern Europe, residents are more likely to perceive the U.S. as a threat than Russia, but they are also likely to identify some of their neighbors or threats from outside the region. Residents in Albania and Kosovo, for example, are most likely to name Serbia -- with whom hostilities date back to before the Kosovo War. Serbians, on the other hand, see the biggest threat from the U.S., likely stemming from U.S. support of Kosovo.

Biggest Threat Among Non-EU Members in Eastern Europe Open-ended Biggest threat Percentage mentioning % Azerbaijan Armenia 64 Kosovo Serbia 64 Armenia Azerbaijan 60 Albania Serbia 26 Serbia United States 24 Montenegro Albania 15 Macedonia Greece 14 Bosnia and Herzegovina United States/Serbia 10 2015 Gallup World Poll

Residents in CIS countries (plus Georgia) are more mixed on who is the biggest threat, but overall are slightly more likely to name Russia as the biggest threat than the U.S. Still, this varies from country to country within the region. Residents of Ukraine (52%) and Georgia (48%) -- both of which have a history of territorial conflicts with Russia -- are most likely to name Russia as the biggest threat. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Belarus follow Russia's lead and are most likely to name the U.S. as the biggest threat.

Biggest Threat Among CIS Countries Open-ended Biggest threat Percentage mentioning % Russia United States 64 Ukraine Russia 52 Turkmenistan Afghanistan 51 Georgia Russia 48 Belarus United States 44 Kazakhstan United States 36 Kyrgyzstan United States 33 Tajikistan Syria 31 Moldova Russia 16 Uzbekistan Afghanistan 16 2015 Gallup World Poll

The majority of Russians (64%) name the U.S. as the single greatest threat to their country -- this is the highest percentage to name the U.S. among all the countries where the question was asked. Notably, while 52% of Ukrainians perceive Russia as the biggest threat to them, just 5% of Russians see Ukraine as a threat. Interestingly, when Gallup asked Americans a similar question in February 2015 -- which one country is the greatest enemy of the U.S. today -- Russia (18%) edged out mentions of North Korea (15%). The country made the top of the list again in 2016 with 15% of Americans mentioning Russia.

"ISIS" Earns Mentions in Some Countries

Although not a country, sizable percentages of residents in several countries mentioned the Islamic State group or "ISIS" as a top threat. As many as 15% in Tajikistan and Albania mentioned the group, and 5% or more mentioned it in Kazakhstan (9%), Czech Republic (8%), Bulgaria (6%) and Moldova (5%). In the U.S. in February 2015, 4% of Americans named countries where the Islamic State operates as the greatest enemy.

Bottom Line

More than two decades after the end of the Cold War, the region is divided again along eerily familiar lines, with countries aligning with the U.S. and the West on one side and Russia on the other. At the same time, Russia has fewer countries within its sphere of influence than it did then. However, residents living in countries that were once within that sphere are clearly concerned about the potential threat that Russia poses now.

Survey Methods

Results are based on face-to-face interviews with 1,000 adults in each country (2,000 in Russia), aged 15 and older, conducted in June to September 2015. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error ranged from 2.8 percentage points to 3.4 percentage points. The margin of error reflects the influence of data weighting. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
Story Highlights 73% of students, 56% of adults say free speech is secure in U.S. today

Students more positive than adults about all five First Amendment freedoms

Students believe free speech rights stronger than in past; adults disagree

PRINCETON, N.J. -- Social media, student activism and school policies are testing the limits of First Amendment rights on campuses around the country. But a new study, sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation in partnership with the Newseum Institute and Gallup, finds U.S. college students feeling more confident than the public as a whole about the security of these rights in the country today. Most notably, three-quarters of college students (73%) believe free speech rights are secure, compared with 56% of U.S. adults overall.

Do you think each of the following rights is very secure, secure, threatened or very threatened in the country today? % Very secure/Secure College students % U.S. adults % Difference (pct. pts.) Freedom to petition the government 76 58 18 Freedom of the press 81 64 17 Freedom of speech 73 56 17 Freedom of religion 68 60 8 Freedom to assemble peacefully 66 60 6 February-March 2016 Knight Foundation "Free Expression on Campus" study

The Free Expression on Campus study finds a similar gap in college students' and U.S. adults' views that freedom to petition the government is secure in the U.S. today (76% vs. 58%, respectively). Additionally, 81% of students versus 64% of all U.S. adults say freedom of the press is secure.

The two groups share similar views about freedom of assembly and freedom of religion, although college students are slightly more confident about the security of those rights as well.

These findings come from two nationally representative surveys -- a March 5-8 telephone survey of 2,031 U.S. adults and a separate Feb. 29-March 15 telephone survey of 3,072 U.S. college students currently enrolled in four-year higher education institutions. Additionally, the study includes a nationally representative telephone survey of 250 U.S. Muslims, interviewed March 4-10.

Racial Gulf in College Students' Perceptions of Freedom of Assembly

Non-Hispanic black college students are less confident than non-Hispanic white college students about the security of all five First Amendment freedoms, but they are especially doubtful about freedom of assembly. Just 39% of black students, compared with seven in 10 white students, say this freedom is secure. In addition to recent student protests over campus race relations -- most notably, at the University of Missouri -- nationwide protests in the past year over police treatment of young black males may be influencing how black students perceive this right.

U.S. College Students' Perceptions of First Amendment Rights -- by Race % Very secure/Secure Whites % Blacks % Difference (pct. pts.) Freedom to assemble peacefully 70 39 31 Freedom of speech 74 61 13 Freedom of religion 69 57 12 Freedom of the press 82 73 9 Freedom to petition the government 78 69 9 February-March 2016 Knight Foundation "Free Expression on Campus" study

A similar pattern is seen among U.S. adults overall, with 62% of whites versus 45% of blacks saying freedom of assembly is secure. Blacks are also less confident than whites about press freedom (58% vs. 66%, respectively). However, blacks' views regarding the security of freedom of religion, freedom to petition the government and freedom of speech are similar to those of whites.

U.S. Adults' Perceptions of First Amendment Rights -- by Race and Party ID % Very secure/Secure Whites % Blacks % Dems % Independents % Reps % Freedom of the press 66 58 76 61 59 Freedom to assemble peacefully 62 45 67 60 55 Freedom to petition the government 59 58 73 56 49 Freedom of religion 58 63 75 63 43 Freedom of speech 57 53 73 53 45 February-March 2016 Knight Foundation "Free Expression on Campus" study

The study finds sharp differences in perceptions of the status of First Amendment rights by party identification among U.S. adults, with Republicans far less confident than Democrats about the security of all five rights. This is, perhaps, a result of ideological differences in the way the two groups view these rights, but it likely also reflects greater Democratic confidence and Republican cynicism about First Amendment protections under a Democratic president.

The largest difference by party involves freedom of religion: 75% of Democrats versus 43% of Republicans consider this right secure, a 32-percentage-point difference. Large partisan gaps are also seen for freedom of speech and freedom to petition the government. Smaller gaps are seen for freedom of the press and freedom of assembly -- the only two freedoms that the majority of Republicans think are secure today.

In contrast to the pattern among U.S. adults, college students show little partisan differences in their perceptions that First Amendment rights are secure. The one exception, that Republican students (76%) are more likely than Democratic students (60%) to say freedom of assembly is secure, likely reflects the substantial racial gap on this item.

U.S. Muslims' views about the security of First Amendment rights are mostly similar to those of college students; however, Muslims are a bit less confident than students about freedom of the press and freedom of religion. The 60% of Muslims believing freedom of religion is secure is on par with U.S. adults.

U.S. Adults See Greater Deterioration of Free Speech

The study also measured U.S. adults' and college students' perceptions of how free speech rights have changed in the past 20 years. Students are more positive than adults overall regarding the trend in freedom of speech: 40% of U.S. adults, compared with 22% of college students, believe Americans' ability to exercise these rights is weaker today. Conversely, half of college students versus a third of U.S. adults believe it is stronger.

From what you have heard or read, do you think Americans' ability to exercise their free speech rights is stronger, about the same or weaker than it was 20 years ago? College students % U.S. adults % Stronger 50 31 About the same 27 27 Weaker 22 40 No opinion 1 2 February-March 2016 Knight Foundation "Free Expression on Campus" study

These results are mirrored in generational differences among the U.S. adult population. The percentage saying free speech is weaker today is only 29% among all 18- to 29-year-olds, but rises to 39% among those aged 30 to 49 and to 46% among those aged 50 and older.

Bottom Line

U.S. colleges have long been places where open expression and debate are encouraged to further their goals of educating students and teaching them skills to help them be productive and responsible citizens. As such, colleges have a history of being places for activism -- for raising awareness of issues affecting not only students but also the country and world more generally. At the same time, increasing diversity on campuses and in the U.S. can sometimes put free expression rights to the test when that expression is insensitive or hurtful toward members of certain subgroups.

Despite their exposure to these issues at college, most students believe the five rights guaranteed to Americans by the First Amendment are secure in this country today. Further, students are more likely than U.S. adults overall to believe in the security of these rights.

Digging deeper, the study finds that U.S. adults' views are far more influenced by political considerations than are college students', perhaps reflecting Republican adults' greater sensitivity to having a Democratic president in office. But politics alone is not a complete explanation of the difference between college students and adults. In many instances, college students are just as optimistic as Democratic adults, if not more so, about the security of rights such as freedom of the press and freedom of speech. Whatever the reason, college students hold a more optimistic and idealistic view of First Amendment freedoms than U.S. adults do.

Survey Methods

Results for U.S. adults are based on telephone interviews conducted March 5-8, 2016, on the Gallup U.S. Daily tracking survey, with a random sample of 2,031 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of U.S. adults, the margin of sampling error is 3 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.

Results for college students are based on telephone interviews conducted Feb. 29-March 15, 2016, with a random sample of 3,072 U.S. college students, aged 18 to 24, who are currently enrolled full time at four-year institutions. The college sample consists of a random subset of full-time students at 32 randomly selected U.S. four-year colleges that were stratified based on region, enrollment size and private versus public control. For results based on the total sample of college students, the margin of sampling error is 3 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.

Results for Muslims are based on telephone interviews conducted March 4-10, 2016, with a sample of 250 U.S. adults who were previously interviewed for the Gallup U.S. Daily tracking survey, who identified their religion as Muslim and who agreed to be re-contacted by Gallup for future interviews. For results based on the total sample of Muslims, the margin of sampling error is 8 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.

Learn more about how the Gallup U.S. Daily works.
Knife attack : Man killed at Muffendorf refugee center

Bad Godesberg A man was killed in a stabbing at the Muffendorf refugee center; two suspects are in police custody.

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A 32-year-old man was fatally stabbed at a refugee center in Muffendorf on Sunday night. Two suspects were taken into custody in connection with the attack. At around 6:50 p.m. on Sunday evening, police were informed of a seriously injured man in front of the refugee center. Emergency medical personnel were called to the scene but were not able to save him; he died an hour after the attack.

Police said on Monday said that three men had been involved in a confrontation and it escalated in front of the refugee center building. A 26-year-old and 30-year-old man attacked the 32-year-old with a knife and he collapsed. The two alleged perpetrators were taken into police custody. Criminal forensics police cordoned off a wide area for their investigations. It has not yet been determined whether one or both men were armed, and there is no information yet about the cause of the conflict or if the men have any relationship to one another. The prosecuting attorneys office and a homicide commission have been appointed to take over the investigation.
'Feels Like Home Season 2' offers something real and tangible to think about; takes home a pertinent point - if your intentions are good, there is nothing in life that isn't achievable.
Pentagon Spends $86 Million on Spy Plane That Never Got Off the Ground

Sputnik News

20:48 02.04.2016(updated 21:50 02.04.2016)

The latest embarrassing episode for the US Department of Defense involves the agency failing to upgrade an ATR 42-500 plane that the US Drug Enforcement Administration planned to use in surveillance and anti-drug missions in Afghanistan under a seven-year-long program that has already cost four times more than intended.

The Global Discovery program, launched in 2008, was supposed to be completed in 2012 with a total cost of $22 million. The latest estimates show that the funding has exceeded $86 million, while the aircraft remains inoperable and has never actually flown in Afghanistan, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) in the US Department of Justice (DOJ) said in its audit of the Global Discovery initiative.

"We believe that the more than $86 million spent on the purchase and modification of the DEA's ATR 500 aircraft with advanced surveillance capabilities to support the DEA's counternarcotics mission in Afghanistan has been an ineffective and wasteful use of government resources," the OIG reported.

The agency also found that the Drug Enforcement Administration "did not fully comply" with federal acquisition regulations when choosing a plane. In addition, the DEA transferred the aircraft to the Pentagon's contractors without a written agreement that would outline the details of and the timeframe for the upgrade process.

The OIG added that the US Defense Department contemplated pulling the plug on the program in late 2014. The agency spent nearly $66 million on the ATR 42-500 modifications but needed additional $6 million to "repair damages observed during attempts to modify the aircraft." Incidentally, a new ATR 42-500 could have been purchased for $6 million at the time.

The OIG launched an investigation in response to a complaint from a whistleblower.

As of March 2016, the Pentagon's efforts to modify the plane were still ongoing. The ATR 42-500 is scheduled to become operable in June 2016. One could only assume when or if the plane will be ever delivered taking into account the fact that the agency has missed all of the deadlines under the Global Discovery program before.

Even if the required upgrades are made, the plane will most likely not be deployed to Afghanistan since the DEA has ceased its operations there.

 Sputnik

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US Condemns Nagorno-Karabakh Violence, Urges Parties to Respect Ceasefire

Sputnik News

23:44 02.04.2016(updated 00:20 03.04.2016)

The United States strongly condemns the violation of the ceasefire in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region and calls on the conflicting sides to show restraint since the military approach is not an option to settle the issue, US State Secretary John Kerry said Saturday.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  Tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Armenian-held area flared overnight after heavy fighting was reported on the line of contact.

"The United States condemns in the strongest terms the large-scale ceasefire violations along the Nagorno-Karabakh Line of Contact, which have resulted in a number of reported casualties, including civilians," Kerry said in a statement.

He also extended condolences to all affected families.

"We urge the sides to show restraint, avoid further escalation, and strictly adhere to the ceasefire. The unstable situation on the ground demonstrates why the sides must enter into an immediate negotiation under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs on a comprehensive settlement of the conflict. We reiterate that there is no military solution to the conflict. As a co-chair country, the United States is firmly committed to working with the sides to reach a lasting and negotiated peace."

The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh began in 1988, when the Armenian-dominated autonomous region sought to secede from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, before proclaiming independence after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. The conflict escalated further In September 2015, with the sides blaming one another for violating the truce.

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OSCE, UN Urges Nagorno-Karabakh Fighting Parties to Stop Conflict

Sputnik News

23:15 02.04.2016

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)'s chairman and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier urged all parties to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict to stop fighting immediately.

VIENNA (Sputnik)  Tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Armenian-held area flared overnight after heavy fighting erupted on the line of contact. Both nations reported casualties and traded blame for starting the fighting in violation of the 1994 ceasefire.

"Steinmeier is calling on the sides to cease hostilities immediately," a statement on the OSCE website reads.

The top German diplomat is actively involved in the efforts to deescalate the conflict and address ceasefire violations that, according to his office, have reached "a new quality" compared to previous years.

Steinmeier held a telephone conversation with Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian and also plans to speak to Azerbaijan's foreign policy chief Elmar Mammadyarov.

UN Chief Disturbed by Upsurge in Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Saturday said he was deeply disturbed by the upsurge in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and called on all parties to put an immediate end to the fighting.

"The Secretary-General is deeply disturbed by the recent reports of large-scale ceasefire violations along the Line of Contact in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone," the UN said in a statement.

Ban was particularly concerned by the reported use of heavy weapons and by the large numbers of casualties, including among the civilian population. He urged all sides to the conflict to take steps to deescalate the situation.

Ban also reiterated his full support for the efforts of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)'s Minsk Group and all parties working to resolve the crisis.

The OSCE Group on conflict settlement in Nagorno-Karabakh is set to meet next Tuesday to discuss a new spate of violence in the mountainous region in Azerbaijan, which is under Armenian control.

The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh began in 1988, when the Armenian-dominated autonomous region sought to secede from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. It proclaimed independence after the Soviet collapse in 1991. In September 2015, the conflict escalated, with the sides blaming each other for violating the truce.

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US Challenges China, Tests Sovereignty in South China Sea

Sputnik News

22:15 02.04.2016(updated 22:20 02.04.2016)

The United States is planning to show its might in disputed areas of the South China Sea in what China is calling a violation of its sovereignty.

US Naval forces are, for a third time, entering a disputed region in the South China Sea using a carrier group to test the waters while claiming they are merely exercising "freedom of navigation," according to China Cheat Sheets. However, China has rebuked the effort as a violation of their state sovereignty and a direct challenge to their national interests.

According to maritime law, a given state rules the ocean up to 12 nautical miles away from their shore creating an extended border from the shore. Such a rule also applies to islands including those claimed by China in the South China Sea which are also claimed by other countries.

The carrier group that the US is sending into the region will travel within that boundary meaning, from China's view, into area to which they have territorial rights. The US has no claim to any of the islands but some US allies in the region do, though many believe that the US role is merely to challenge China in their own region. Additionally, more than $5 trillion worth of shipping related to international trade passes through the region each year.

Chinese naval patrol boats have already followed several US ships navigating the area. The confrontations have also been further souring US-Chinese relations.

News of American plans to infiltrate the South China Seas were revealed only shortly after US President Obama met with Chinese President Xi Jinping at last week's nuclear security summit in Washington. The US has argued that they have every right to engage in such "freedom of navigation" activities but Chinese President Xi Jinping responded telling Xinhua that they would not tolerate violations of their sovereignty under such a pretext.

"China respects and protects the freedom of air and maritime navigation of all countries, based on international law. At the same time, Beijing will not accept any action that damages China's state sovereignty and national interests under the pretext of freedom of navigation," Xi said.

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Armenian Ministry Denies Reports About Seizure of Karabakh Villages

Sputnik News

19:41 02.04.2016(updated 21:44 02.04.2016)

Armenia's Ministry of Defense officially refuted reports about the capture of a number of settlements in Nagorno-Karabakh by Azerbaijani Armed Forces.

The officials labelled the data spread by Azerbaijani media about the seizure of some settlements in Nagorno-Karabakh and large losses by the Armenian side as misinformation.

"The information disseminated by different Azerbaijani media saying that the Azerbaijani armed forces captured some regions of Nagorno-Karabakh and that the Armenian side lost its weapons, dozens items of military equipment and registered hundreds of human victims is false and does not correspond to reality," a statement released by the Press Secretary of Armenian Defense Ministry Artsrun Ovhannisyan said.

The Defense Ministry also advised citizens to follow the official information by the Armenian side.

On April 2, the frozen conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia escalated, with armed clashes resuming and both sides accusing each other of violating the ceasefire that has been in place since 1994.

Nagorno-Karabakh is a disputed region in the South Caucasus, which is formally part of Azerbaijan, but largely populated by Armenians. The territory acts as a self-administrating province, but is not recognized as a country by the international community.

Nagorno-Karabakh is located on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border and has been a subject to several violent clashes between both countries.

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UK Defense Ministry Denies Leaving Falkland Islands Unprotected

Sputnik News

17:39 02.04.2016(updated 17:40 02.04.2016)

The UK Ministry of Defense spokesperson refuted reports about London allegedly leaving the disputed Falkland Islands unprotected.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The UK Ministry of Defense has dismissed accusations of leaving the disputed Falkland Islands unprotected by having no permanent warship stationed in waters claimed by Argentina, local media said on Saturday.

"The Falklands remain well protected via the patrol warship HMS Clyde, a Royal Fleet Auxiliary support ship and around 1,200 UK personnel operating RAF Typhoons and ground defences," a ministry spokesperson said, as quoted by The Guardian newspaper.

On Friday, UK media reported that personnel shortages, technical issues and the need to monitor Russian Navy ship movements in the northern hemisphere have caused the Falklands to be left unprotected since November, 2015. UK Prime Minister David Cameron's government has also reportedly been criticized by opposition over defense budget cuts leaving the islands without protection.

The Defense Ministry stated that the HMS Dauntless Type 45 Daring-class air-defense destroyer had not been scrapped and remained part of the fleet, despite earlier reports of the vessel being designated as a training ship to be confined to a port.

On Monday, Argentinian Foreign Relations Minister Susana Malcorra said the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) had ruled in favor of Argentina expanding the country's maritime territories to include the waters encompassing the Falklands.

On Tuesday, a CLCS member told Sputnik that the CLCS ruling on Argentina's expansion of its maritime territories would be published in a few weeks.

Argentina claims that it has inherited the Falkland Islands, located about 300 miles off the country's east coast, after the country and the outlying territories had gained independence from Spain. London considers the Falklands to be its territory.

 Sputnik

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Officials Provide Details of Latest Counter-ISIL Strikes in Syria, Iraq

From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release

SOUTHWEST ASIA, April 3, 2016  U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Syria and Iraq yesterday, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

Officials reported details of yesterday's strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.

Strikes in Syria

Attack, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted four strikes in Syria:

-- Near Manbij, two strikes destroyed an ISIL rocket rail system and two ISIL fighting positions.

-- Near Mara, two strikes struck a large ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL vehicle bomb.

Strikes in Iraq

Rocket artillery and attack, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 22 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of the Iraqi government:

-- Near Fallujah, a strike struck a large ISIL tactical unit.

-- Near Haditha, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL heavy machine gun.

-- Near Hit, two strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit, destroying a bridge ISIL had used, an ISIL vehicle bomb factory, 22 ISIL boats and an ISIL beddown location and denying ISIL access to terrain.

-- Near Kirkuk, two strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed two ISIL assembly areas, an ISIL mortar system, an ISIL vehicle bomb and an ISIL vehicle.

-- Near Mosul, six strikes struck six separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed two ISIL assembly areas, an ISIL machine gun and two ISIL vehicles.

-- Near Qayyarah, six strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and an ISIL weapons storage facility and destroyed four ISIL mortar firing positions, an ISIL supply cache, an ISIL vehicle bomb production facility and 13 ISIL staging areas.

-- Near Rawah, a strike destroyed an ISIL tactical vehicle.

-- Near Sultan Abdallah, two strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed four ISIL assembly areas and an ISIL vehicle.

-- Near Tal Afar, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL mortar system.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target.

Part of Operation Inherent Resolve

The strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to eliminate the ISIL terrorist group and the threat they pose to Iraq, Syria, the region, and the wider international community. The destruction of ISIL targets in Syria and Iraq further limits the terrorist group's ability to project terror and conduct operations, officials said.

Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Iraq include the United States, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Syria include the United States, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, France, Jordan, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom.

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Yemeni forces capture 42 Saudi troops in Bayda, Jawf provinces

Iran Press TV

Sun Apr 3, 2016 10:34PM

Yemeni forces have managed to capture 42 Saudi soldiers in Bayda and Jawf provinces, and killed several others in Ma'rib.

The Yemeni army, backed by Popular Committees loyal to the Houthi Ansarullah movement, caught 31 Saudi soldiers in Rada district in the southern province of Bayda and captured 11 others in al-Matma district in the northwestern province of Jawf, Yemen's official Saba Net news agency reported on Sunday.

The report added that the captured soldiers were being transported to the west-central Ma'rib province to boost Saudi presence there when Yemeni forces caught them.

In another operation, Yemeni forces attacked Saudi troops with Katyusha rockets in Ma'rib city, and killed six of them and wounded 17 others.

Yemenis carry out these attacks in retaliation for Saudi strikes, launched with the aim of undermining the Houthi Ansarullah movement and bringing back to power the country's fugitive former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.

Saudi Arabia launched the deadly attacks on Yemen over a year ago in an attempt to bring Hadi back to power. Nearly 9,400 Yemenis, including 4,000 women and children, have lost their lives since late March last year.

The UN attempts to settle the crisis in Yemen through political approaches have so far failed. In December 2015, Houthi Ansarullah movement and members of the former Yemeni regime held inconclusive talks in Switzerland, which was coincided with the implementation of a UN-brokered truce that was mainly violated by Saudi Arabia.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said in a report on Tuesday that a year of Saudi war on Yemen has left 934 Yemeni kids dead and 1,356 injured, with an average of six children suffering casualties every day.

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Ceasefire fails to end Karabakh hostilities

Iran Press TV

Sun Apr 3, 2016 9:44PM

Armenia and Azerbaijan have both reported bouts of fighting despite the announcement of a unilateral ceasefire by Baku in the disputed border region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Armenia's Defense Ministry released a statement on Sunday which said heavy fighting continues on both sides of the front line where Azerbaijan has "concentrated sizable forces."

It also said that Armenian forces had launched a counter attack on a strategic area located close to the village of Talish in the Martakert region.

Regional authorities in Martakert also announced that Azerbaijani shelling has been going on continuously for the past 24 hours.

Based on social media reports, residents have been forced to abandon the city, which lies some three kilometers from the front line.

Azerbaijan has also accused Armenia of violating the ceasefire and continuing its shelling along the contact line which separates the two sides.

Earlier, the Azeri government announced the implementation of a unilateral ceasefire, although it warned of retaliation in case of an attack.

Azerbaijan announced Saturday that 12 of its troops had been killed and Armenia said 18 had lost their lives in the violence which started overnight Friday.

The Armenian Defense Ministry said that Azeri forces initiated an overnight offensive, using tanks, artillery and military aircraft in a bid to make inroads into Nagorno-Karabkh.

Stoking war flames

Meanwhile, Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharyan blamed Turkey for supporting the continuation of clashes in the disputed region, saying, "It's a pity that for Turkey the importance of human lives is determined by the nationality. With such racist statements, Turkey encourages the continuation of the aggressor's action against the self-proclaimed Nagorno- Karabakh Republic."

"Turkey's racist stance only adds fire to the violence," said Kocharyan.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said earlier he would support Azerbaijan "to the end" and that "we pray our Azerbaijani brothers will prevail in these clashes."

This is while the United Nations as well as world powers and regional countries, including the United States, Russia, and Iran, have called for an immediate end to the clashes, which have sporadically continued since a bloody war that ended in 1994.

Following the recent escalation in the disputed region, Azerbaijan's ambassador to Russia said the country was frustrated with the decades-long process of negotiations under the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and was ready to resort to "military means."

"The attempts of a peaceful solution to this conflict have been underway for 22 years. How much more will it take? We are ready for a peaceful solution to the issue. But if it's not solved peacefully then we will solve it by military means," said Polad Bulbuloglu.

'Interest' in war resumption

The ethnic clashes that began in the late 1980s and left tens of thousands dead by May 1994 have ever since been continuing in the landlocked South Caucasus region, claimed by Azerbaijan and governed by the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (pictured above) said earlier he would support Azerbaijan "to the end" and that "we pray our Azerbaijani brothers will prevail in these clashes."

This is while the United Nations as well as world powers and regional countries, including the United States, Russia, and Iran, have called for an immediate end to the clashes, which have sporadically continued since a bloody war that ended in 1994.

Following the recent escalation in the disputed region, Azerbaijan's ambassador to Russia said the country was frustrated with the decades-long process of negotiations under the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and was ready to resort to "military means."

"The attempts of a peaceful solution to this conflict have been underway for 22 years. How much more will it take? We are ready for a peaceful solution to the issue. But if it's not solved peacefully then we will solve it by military means," said Polad Bulbuloglu.

'Interest' in war resumption

The ethnic clashes that began in the late 1980s and left tens of thousands dead by May 1994 have ever since been continuing in the landlocked South Caucasus region, claimed by Azerbaijan and governed by the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.

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Azerbaijan declares unilateral truce in Karabakh

Iran Press TV

Sun Apr 3, 2016 10:2AM

Azerbaijan has announced 'unilateral' ceasefire as a gesture of goodwill in Nagorno-Karabakh after major clashes between the Azeri military forces and Armenian troops along the disputed border region.

"Azerbaijan, showing good will, has decided to unilaterally cease hostilities", Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said in a statement, warning, however, to strike back if its forces came under attack.

The statement added that Baku will "liberate all occupied territories" in case the Armenian forces "do not stop provocations."

The Azerbaijan Republic's Defense Ministry had announced in a Saturday statement that Armenian troops opened fire 127 times along the border over a 24-hour period using mortars and heavy artillery shells that struck civilian regions.

Earlier, Azerbaijan had announced that 12 of its troops had been killed with Armenia saying that 18 soldiers lost their lives in the violence which started overnight Friday.

The Armenian Defense Ministry meanwhile alleged that Azeri forces initiated an offensive overnight, using tanks, artillery and military aircraft in a bid to make inroads into Nagorno-Karabkh.

Karabakh region, which is located in Azerbaijan Republic but populated by Armenians, has been under the control of local ethnic Armenian militia and the Armenian military troops since a war over the region ended between the two republics in 1994 through Russian mediation.

Years of negotiations under the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have led to little progress in the resolution of the dispute.

The two sides are separated by a demilitarized buffer zone, but both blame each other for frequent violations.

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Battles Rage For Second Day In Disputed Nagorno-Karabakh

April 03, 2016

by RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service and RFE/RL's Armenian Service

Separatist forces in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh launched a counteroffensive and said they regained strategic high ground, as heavy fighting raged for a second day between Azerbaijani and ethnic Armenian forces.

Azerbaijan, meanwhile, announced a unilateral cease-fire on April 3, a day after the fighting erupted in the South Caucasus mountain enclave, located within Azerbaijan itself. It was the worst outbreak of violence in the two decades since a bloody ethnic conflict erupted into full-scale war and ended with ethnic Armenian separatists taking control of the territory in 1994.

At least 18 Armenian soldiers were reported killed a day earlier when Azerbaijani troops advanced with tanks and heavy artillery, officials said. The Azerbaijani side has announced 12 combat deaths.

Fighting on April 3 was described as fierce in the region's northeast and along the southernmost section of the "Line of Contact," which effectively serves as a front line separating the opposing sides.

Officials with Nagorno-Karabakh separatist fighters said its soldiers pushed Azerbaijani forces back from "tactically important" positions near the northern village of Talish. The separatists also claimed they destroyed three Azerbaijani tanks and an armored personnel carrier in the south.

Azerbaijan's military, however, rejected that claim, saying Armenia failed "to regain positions lost by it" on April 2. Officials also claimed as many as 10 Armenian tanks were destroyed in the April 3 fighting -- a report rejected by a spokesman for the ethnic Armenian fighters.

Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said later on April 3 that it was calling a unilateral cease-fire in response to calls from international organizations.

Yerevan, however, dismissed the announcement as an "information trick." David Babayan, a spokesman for Nagorno-Karabakh's ethnic leader, also dismissed the announcement, saying Azerbaijani operations were continuing.

Nagorno-Karabakh military officials later said they were ready to discuss the terms of a cease-fire but only in the context of "restoring former positions."

RFE/RL correspondents in Nagorno-Karabakh said that ethnic Armenian forces have been reinforcing their frontline positions by calling up hundreds of reservists and deploying heavy artillery.

Hundreds of other Armenians, most of them veterans of the 1991-94 conflict, reportedly were heading to the front lines from Armenia, which is connected to Nagorno-Karabakh by a narrow strip of territory that crosses high mountain passes and deep river valleys.

A legacy of the Soviet breakup known as a "frozen conflict," the dispute has seen sporadic, low-level fighting between the two sides ever since the 1994 cease-fire, but nothing of the scale that erupted on April 2.

The dispute has bedeviled regional and international leaders for years, with the United States, Russia, and France taking the lead in trying to reach a permanent settlement, and tamp down tensions.

Diplomats from the three nations, grouped together in what's called the Minsk Group, said they would convene a full-meeting April 5 in Vienna to discuss the breakdown of the 21-year-old cease-fire.

Along with Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan sit astride a key transit corridor in the South Caucasus, where oil, gas, and other goods move from South and Central Asia toward Europe.

Russia maintains strong economic ties with all three nations, particularly with Armenia, though Moscow's war in Georgia in 2008 and its recent actions in Ukraine have worried leaders in all three countries.

In another potentially worrisome sign, the president of Turkey, which shares deep cultural, religious, and linguistic ties with Azerbaijan, has vowed to "support Azerbaijan to the end."

Turkey has enforced a border blockade against Armenia proper since the war in the early 1990s, and Turkish and Armenian nationalists have repeatedly torpedoed efforts by Yerevan and Ankara to restore trade ties.

Fueled by windfall revenues from its Caspian Sea oil and gas reserves, Azerbaijan has gone on a military spending spree in the past decades, buying new weaponry and equipment from Russia and elsewhere.

That's worried analysts, who fear Baku might try to preemptively take back Nagorno-Karabakh, whose loss remains an unhealed 21-year-old wound for many Azerbaijanis.

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, TASS, and Interfax

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/azerbaijan-armenia- nagorno-karabakh-violence-erupts/27651414.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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Turkey 'Spreads Instability' by Backing Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh

Sputnik News

20:41 03.04.2016(updated 20:43 03.04.2016)

Syria isn't the only place where the Turkish government keeps putting spokes into others' wheels. This time Ankara is working to destabilize relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan by supporting Baku's aggressive policies in Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharyan said.

According to Kocharyan, Turkey supports Azerbaijan and wants a military conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia

The Turkish government supports Azerbaijan and is interested in maintaining the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, seeking to destabilize the nearby countries.

"It's too bad that for Turkey human lives are determined by their ethnic identity. Such racist actions from Turkey encourage the continuation of the aggressive action against the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic," Kocharyan said, according to RIA Novosti.

The deputy foreign minister of Armenia said the actions of Turkey fit into the policies of its current President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who seeks to "spread the waves of instability, terrorism and bloodshed" both in Turkey and in neighboring countries.

In the past, government sources in Azerbaijan revealed joint defense initiatives were signed between Ankara and Baku, such the TurAz Qartali program, aimed at establishing military partnerships in the event of aggression from a third party. As for Azerbaijan, a third party aggressor could only mean Armenia, Italy's Il Giornale reported.

Furthermore, one should keep in mind the close ethno-cultural ties which exist between Turkey and Azerbaijan.

At the same time, Ankara's relations with Yerevan have always been strained as a result of Turkey's refusal to recognize the Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Empire. Back in 1993, Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 over its support for Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Meanwhile Armenia has been getting closer with Russia over the recent years. In late February, Moscow gave Yerevan a preferential loan for the purchase of Russian military equipment worth $200 million. That really made Azerbaijan concerned and it even sent an official protest to Moscow over its actions.

Moreover, at the end of 2015, Russia signed an agreement with Armenia to create a joint missile air defense system in the South Caucasus. The US global intelligence company Stratfor said that the Russo-Armenian military agreement would upset Turkey's ambitions in the region.

On Saturday, Armenia and Azerbaijan had a sharp escalation of the situation in the mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh area, with both sides accusing each other of violating the ceasefire that has been in place since 1994.

The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh began in 1988, when the Armenian-dominated autonomous region sought to secede from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, before proclaiming independence after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. In September 2015, the conflict escalated, with the sides blaming each other for violating the truce.

 Sputnik

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Nagorno-Karabakh Republic Ready to Discuss Ceasefire With Azerbaijan

Sputnik News

16:31 03.04.2016(updated 16:40 03.04.2016)

The Nagorno-Karabakh Republic is ready to discuss a ceasefire with Baku provided the opposing sides would withdraw their forces to the positions they had held before the conflict escalated.

YEREVAN (Sputnik)  The Nagorno-Karabakh Republic's (NKR) armed forces are ready to discuss a ceasefire with Azerbaijan, the NKR Ministry of Defense said on Sunday.

"The Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army is ready to meet to discuss the proposal to enact a ceasefire within the context of restoring the original positions of the sides," the ministry said in a statement.

Earlier on Sunday, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said that the country had unilaterally halted all military operations in the breakaway region. This was later contradicted by reports of ongoing artillery fire exchanges between the sides.

On April 2, Azerbaijan and Armenia reported intensified fighting in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. The sides accused each other of violating the ceasefire agreement which had been in place since 1994.

The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh began in 1988, when the Armenian-dominated autonomous region sought to secede from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, before proclaiming independence after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. In September 2015, the conflict escalated, with the sides blaming each other for breaching the truce.

 Sputnik

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Armenian Defense Ministry Doubts Azerbaijan's Claims on Truce in Karabakh

Sputnik News

13:35 03.04.2016(updated 15:11 03.04.2016)

Azerbaijan's statement regarding the unilateral ceasefire in the Nagorno-Karabakh region is not consistent with reality, Armenian Defense Ministry spokesman Artsrun Hovhannisyan said Sunday.

YEREVAN (Sputnik)  Earlier in the day, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry press service said that Baku has made a unilateral decision to halt all military operations in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

"Azerbaijan's statement is an information trap which does not mean unilateral ceasefire," Hovhannisyan posted on his Facebook page.

On Saturday, Armenia and Azerbaijan noted a sharp escalation of the situation in the mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh area, with both sides accusing each other of violating the ceasefire that has been in place since 1994.

Earlier on Sunday, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry announced the shelling from the Armenian side across the line of contact during the night.

Meanwhile, the Defense Ministry of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic claimed on Sunday morning that the shelling from the Azerbaijani side has resumed.

The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh began in 1988, when the Armenian-dominated autonomous region sought to secede from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, before proclaiming independence after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. In September 2015, the conflict escalated, with the sides blaming each other for violating the truce.

 Sputnik

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Azerbaijan Destroys 10 Armenian Tanks in Nagorno-Karabakh - Ministry

Sputnik News

13:00 03.04.2016(updated 13:36 03.04.2016)

Armenia has lost 10 battle tanks during the intensified Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with Azerbaijan, according to the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry.

BAKU (Sputnik)  Azerbaijan's military has destroyed 10 Armenian tanks in the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh during nighttime clashes early on Sunday, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said Sunday.

"The Armenian side lost 10 tanks and personnel while trying to recapture territories previously liberated by Azerbaijani Armed Forces," Defense Ministry spokesman Vagif Dargahli said.

On Saturday, Armenia and Azerbaijan noted a sharp escalation of the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh, with both sides accusing each other of violating the ceasefire that had been in place since 1994.

The Armenian side is escalating the situation despite the Russian-led initiative to resume the ceasefire from 15:00 p.m. Baku time (11:00 GMT), the spokesman added.

Earlier on Sunday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov held talks with his Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts, discussing Russia's steps toward settlement and urging to put an end to the violence.

The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh began in 1988, when the Armenian-dominated autonomous region sought to secede from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, before proclaiming independence after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. In September 2015, the conflict escalated, with the sides blaming each other for violating the truce.

 Sputnik

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CSTO Head Discusses Karabakh With Armenian Defense, Foreign Ministers

Sputnik News

12:54 03.04.2016(updated 12:58 03.04.2016)

Secretary General of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Nikolay Bordyuzha, discussed the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenian Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandyan and Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan in a telephone call on Sunday, according to the organization's press secretary Vladimir Zaynetdinov.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  A new wave of violence occurred on Sunday in the disputed region between Armenia and Azerbaijan, with both sides accusing each other of violating the ceasefire that has been in place since 1994.

"Today, during the new telephone conversation between the CSTO Secretary General and the heads of Armenian Foreign and Defense ministries, the dynamics of the situation in the zone of an armed conflict was discussed," Zaynetdinov told RIA Novosti.

The CSTO is an intergovernmental military alliance formed in 1992 with six members at present: Russia, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and Belarus, as well as two observer states  Afghanistan and Serbia.

The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh began in 1988, when the Armenian-dominated autonomous region sought to secede from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, before proclaiming independence after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. In September 2015, the conflict escalated, with the sides blaming each other for violating the truce.

 Sputnik

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Azerbaijan Decides to Unilaterally Halt Military Operations in Karabakh

Sputnik News

12:17 03.04.2016(updated 12:20 03.04.2016)

Azerbaijan has made a unilateral decision to halt all military operations in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, the head of the country's Defense Ministry's press service said Sunday.

BAKU (Sputnik)  On Saturday, Armenia and Azerbaijan noted a sharp escalation of the situation in the mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh area, with both sides accusing each other of violating the ceasefire that has been in place since 1994.

"Striving for peace and taking into account the calls of international organizations, Azerbaijan has made a decision to unilaterally stop retaliatory military operations and will seek to strengthen the recently liberated territories," Vagif Dyargahly told RIA Novosti.

Earlier on Sunday, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry announced the shelling from the Armenian side across the line of contact during the night.

Meanwhile, the Defense Ministry of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic claimed on Sunday morning that the shelling from the Azerbaijani side has resumed.

The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh began in 1988, when the Armenian-dominated autonomous region sought to secede from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, before proclaiming independence after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. In September 2015, the conflict escalated, with the sides blaming each other for violating the truce.

 Sputnik

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Azerbaijan Defense Ministry Refutes Fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh Region

Sputnik News

02:29 03.04.2016(updated 02:42 03.04.2016)

Azerbaijani Defense Ministry refuted the statement of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic that active military operations continue at the north and south-east of the region. The corresponding statement was made by head of Azerbaijani Ministry press-service Vagif Dyargahly.

Earlier the representative of the administration of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic told Sputnik Armenia that active operations take place in the south-east and north-Karabakh, despite the earlier statement made by the Ministry of Defence of Azerbaijan on the termination of a shootout in the conflict zone.

"The situation is stable and under control of the Azerbaijani armed forces. There is no fighting at the moment," Dyargahly stated.

A new spate of violence broke out in the disputed region on Saturday as the sides traded accusations over violations of the ceasefire that has been in place since May 1994. Both Azerbaijan and Armenia reported casualties in the flare-up.

Nagorno-Karabakh is a disputed region in the South Caucasus, which is formally part of Azerbaijan, but largely populated by Armenians. The territory acts as a self-administrating province, but is not recognized as a country by the international community.

The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh began in 1988, when the Armenian-dominated autonomous region sought to secede from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, before proclaiming independence after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. The conflict escalated further in September 2015, with the sides blaming one another for violating the truce.

 Sputnik

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Intense Fighting Continues in Nagorno-Karabakh South-East, North

Sputnik News

01:45 03.04.2016(updated 02:23 03.04.2016)

Nagorno-Karabakh Republic prepares the lists of reservists to be sent to military units requiring reinforcement.

The authorities of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh republic claim that fierce fighting continues in the region's south-east and north despite the statement made by Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry on the termination of exchange of fire in the conflict zone.

A new spate of violence broke out in the disputed region on Saturday as the sides traded accusations over violations of the ceasefire that has been in place since May 1994. Both Azerbaijan and Armenia reported casualties in the flare-up.

"Intense fighting continues in the south-east and north of Nagorno-Karabakh. The republic's administration continues its work around the clock," the local administration's representative told Sputnik Armenia.

Nagorno-Karabakh is a disputed region in the South Caucasus, which is formally part of Azerbaijan, but largely populated by Armenians. The territory acts as a self-administrating province, but is not recognized as a country by the international community.

The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh began in 1988, when the Armenian-dominated autonomous region sought to secede from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, before proclaiming independence after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. The conflict escalated further in September 2015, with the sides blaming one another for violating the truce.

 Sputnik

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UN Worried Over Expected Rise in Afghan Violence

by Ayaz Gul April 03, 2016

The United Nations said it expects more violence with the onset of spring in Afghanistan and called for increased regional cooperation and coordination to help the war-hit nation counter the terrorism threat.

Traditionally, fighting subsides in Afghanistan during winter because heavy snow blocks the movement of insurgents through mountain passes. But Afghan officials and military commanders say because of a mild winter there was no let up in fighting in 2015.

The U.N. reports there were more than 11,000 deaths and injuries to Afhgan civilians.

"Afghanistan continues to face a difficult security environment with the presence of both indigenous and foreign terrorist groups, which we can expect to become more active with the onset of the spring fighting season," warned U.N. representative to the country Nicholas Haysom while speaking at a regional counterterrorism meeting Sunday in Kabul.

Terror groups

Without naming any country, Haysom said some terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan have their origin and destination outside the country and threaten the entire region.

He acknowledged efforts the Afghan government is making by encouraging insurgents to join a peace process and by exercising military power against those refusing to quit terrorist attacks.

"Apart from the fact that this problem cannot be resolved by one country by acting on its own it surely cannot be expected of Afghanistan to shoulder alone what is a regional phenomenon," Haysom noted.

Neighboring sanctuaries

Afghan officials have long maintained that leaders of the Taliban and other insurgent commanders are using sanctuaries in neighboring Pakistan for directing violence across the border.

The Afghan intelligence chief told the national parliament last week that Pakistani spy agency is fully supporting the Taliban campaign, charges Islamabad denied as baseless and unfortunate.

The Taliban has refused to engage in peace talks with Kabul and there are fears that an increase in insurgent violence in Afghanistan will fuel bilateral tensions with Pakistan.

But Haysom emphasized the need for "effective joint action strategies" to deal with the threat of terrorism, saying the solution lies in developing regional consensus, cooperation and coordination by all countries in the region.

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Azerbaijan Announces Cease-fire in Fight With Armenia

by VOA News April 03, 2016

Azerbaijan announced a unilateral cease-fire Sunday in the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh after clashes with Armenian forces left 30 soldiers dead Saturday and both sides reported more fighting overnight.

The outbreak of violence is the worst in Nagorno-Karabakh since 1994 when Armenia and Azerbaijan ended a war over the territory that is part of Azerbaijan but has been under the control of Armenian forces.

The two sides are separated by a demilitarized buffer zone, but each side accuses the other of numerous violations.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's office quoted him Sunday saying he will support ally Azerbaijan "to the end" in its dispute with Armenia. He made the comments to an Azerbaijani reporter during his visit to the United States.

Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993.

The two countries have their own ongoing rift over the World War One killings of Armenians that Armenia said included 1.5 million dead in a genocide, while Turkey says the figure is inflated and was not genocide.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Russian President Vladimir Putin, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier all called for restraint in Nagorno-Karabakh.

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South African Parliament to Debate Impeaching President Zuma

by VOA News April 03, 2016

South Africa's parliament will open debate Tuesday on an opposition motion to impeach President Jacob Zuma for violating the constitution.

The Constitutional Court ruled last week that Zuma "failed to uphold, defend, and respect the constitution" by failing to pay back some of the public funds he used to make improvements on his private home.

More than $20 million in remodeling included adding a swimming poll, an amphitheater and a fenced-in area for cattle.

The federal anti-corruption office ordered Zuma to repay the money spent on renovations unrelated to security.

Zuma said in a televised address to the nation last week that he "never knowingly or deliberately set out to violate the constitution, which is the supreme law of the republic."

He made no mention of the scandal during a rally Sunday to announce aid for drought-stricken areas.

Zuma's ruling African National Congress dominates parliament and any effort to impeach him will likely fail.

Previous efforts to impeach Zuma or force him from office were also voted down.

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Cameroon Opposition Defies Police, Protests Biya's Hold on Power

by Moki Edwin Kindzeka April 03, 2016

The opposition in Cameroon has defied police and continued protests against efforts by the ruling party to organize early elections, with several protesters having been wounded or arrested since last Tuesday.

The opposition, which encouraged protesters to dress in black on Sunday, said Cameroon President Paul Biya, 84, is angling to be "president for life" after 34 years already in office.

Kah Wallah, opposition leader of the Cameroon People's Party (CPP), said they are dressed in black as a symbol of sadness over Biya's long stay in power and persistent brutality against voices opposing his attempt to be "president for life."

Wallah said dozens of protesters have been arrested or wounded by heavily armed police in several towns, including Cameroon's capital, Yaounde, and the economic capital Douala during the protests.

"The police as you see have blocked us, they have shot us, they would not allow us to talk, they would not allow us to do our job as the political leaders of this country. They have stepped on the rights of citizens," she said.

Vows to continue protests

Wallah, who is a member of a coalition of four opposition political parties, said demonstrators will continue to protest until Biya says "no" to calls by his ruling party for him to change the constitution and organize early elections.

Cameroon government spokesperson Issa Tchiroma Bakary said the protests are illegal and will not be allowed to take place.

"The fact that you are a politician does not allow you to take the laws into your own hands. When you violate the law in such circumstances, the consequences are very well known. What they wanted to have, they had it," Bakary said.

Biya revised the constitution in 2008 to remove presidential term limits. His current mandate ends in 2018.

The opposition parties are afraid Biya wants to surprise them by changing the constitution yet again.

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Military Strikes Continue Against ISIL Terrorists in Syria, Iraq

From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release

SOUTHWEST ASIA, April 4, 2016  U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Syria and Iraq yesterday, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

Officials reported details of yesterday's strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.

Strikes in Syria

Attack, fighter, and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 14 strikes in Syria:

-- Near Hasakah, a strike destroyed an ISIL vehicle-borne bomb.

-- Near Hawl, six strikes struck five separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed an ISIL anti-air artillery piece, three ISIL vehicles, and two ISIL tactical vehicles, and four ISIL fighting positions.

-- Near Raqqah, three strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and an ISIL headquarters and destroyed an ISIL vehicle, an ISIL workover rig, an ISIL front-end loader, and four ISIL pump jacks.

-- Near Dayr Az Zawr, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed three ISIL fighting positions and two ISIL vehicle-borne bombs.

-- Near Idlib, a strike struck a large ISIL tactical unit and destroyed two ISIL buildings.

-- Near Manbij, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit.

-- Near Mar'a, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit.

Strikes in Iraq

Fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 10 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq's government:

-- Near Baghdadi, a strike destroyed an ISIL vehicle.

-- Near Hit, three strikes struck a large ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL vehicle-borne bomb, an ISIL heavy machine gun, an ISIL recoilless rifle, and an ISIL staging area and denied ISIL access to terrain.

-- Near Kirkuk, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed two ISIL assembly areas and an ISIL heavy machine gun.

-- Near Kisik, a strike suppressed an ISIL tactical unit.

-- Near Mosul, two strikes destroyed an ISIL supply cache, an ISIL command and control node, and an ISIL tactical vehicle and suppressed an ISIL tactical unit.

-- Near Qayyarah, a strike destroyed an ISIL weapons storage facility and an ISIL staging facility.

-- Near Sultan Abdallah, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL supply cache.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target.

Part of Operation Inherent Resolve

The strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to eliminate the ISIL terrorist group and the threat they pose to Iraq, Syria, and the wider international community. The destruction of ISIL targets in Syria and Iraq further limits the group's ability to project terror and conduct operations.

Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Iraq include the United States, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Syria include the United States, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, France, Jordan, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom.

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World's Largest Maritime Exercise Underway in Middle East

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS160404-18

Release Date: 4/4/2016 11:39:00 AM

From U.S. Naval Forces Central Command Public Affairs

MANAMA, Bahrain (NNS) -- The International Mine Countermeasures Exercise, the largest maritime exercise in the world, kicked off April 4, with international naval and civilian maritime forces from more than 30 nations spanning six continents training together across the Middle East.

The exercise is organized and led by U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, which leads U.S. Navy and afloat Marine Corps forces across the more than 2.5 million square miles of ocean in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility.

"These participating nations are united by a common thread -- the need to protect the free flow of commerce from a range of maritime threats including piracy, terrorism and mines," said Vice Adm. Kevin Donegan, commander, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command. "This region provides a strong training opportunity for nations worldwide as three of the six major maritime chokepoints in the world are here: the Suez Canal, the Strait of Bab Al Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz.

Nearly 20 percent of the world's oil transits through the Strait of Hormuz every day. Imagine the impact on the global economy if suddenly that oil stops flowing because of restricted sea lanes. This region is clearly important to the whole world."

Through the course of this exercise, participants will train to execute a wide spectrum of defensive operations designed to protect international commerce and trade consisting of mine countermeasures, maritime security operations, and maritime infrastructure protection.

"This exercise is also a great opportunity for us to build proficiency and test the latest technology available for ensuring the global maritime commons stay open and secure," said Donegan. "It also allows us to work with our partners to reinforce adherence to the international rules and accepted behavioral norms expected of professional mariners. If all nations followed these established practices the result would be a safe and stable maritime global commons with commerce flowing freely for the benefit of the global economy."

IMCMEX is focused on maritime security from the port of origin to the port of arrival and will include scenarios that range from mine countermeasures, infrastructure protection and maritime security operations in support of civilian shipping.

IMCMEX begins with a symposium in Bahrain on Maritime Infrastructure Protection bringing together governments, militaries and industry to discuss how to best provide the necessary foundation of security that supports unrestricted access to the vital maritime infrastructure that is critical to regional and global economies.

IMCMEX will also demonstrate new technologies, such as unmanned underwater vehicles and exercise the sealift capabilities of expeditionary fast transport ship USNS Choctaw County and afloat forward staging base USS Ponce, equipped with the U.S. Navy's only operational laser weapon system. Exercise operations will include mine countermeasures, diving operations, small-boat exercises, maritime security operations coordinated with industrial and commercial shipping, unmanned underwater vehicle operations, and port clearance operations.

"IMCMEX demonstrates the capability and co-operation of the international community and is not about any one nation or group," said Commodore William Warrender, Royal Navy, Combined Maritime Forces deputy commander and leader of the exercise. "Our aim in IMCMEX 16 is to conduct exercises with our partner nations that allow us to continue to develop our interoperability and capability to ensure that we are ready to meet potential challenges now and in the future."

The exercise runs through April 26.

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Armenia Warns Of 'Full-Scale War' Amid Fresh Casualties In Karabakh Fighting

April 04, 2016

by RFE/RL

Armenia has warned that renewed hostilities over Azerbaijan's breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh could lead to "full-scale war" and the recognition of the territory as an independent state, while Baku has announced new fatalities among soldiers fighting separatist forces and threatened to expand its operations along the front line.

Azerbaijan's disclosure of three deaths brings to 15 the number of its soldiers reported killed amid renewed fighting in the South Caucasus mountain enclave, while 18 combat deaths have been reported by the Armenian-backed separatists. The destruction of heavy military equipment has been claimed by both sides.

Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in a conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh for years. Nagorno-Karabakh, populated mainly by ethnic Armenians, declared independence from Azerbaijan amid a 1988-94 war that claimed an estimated 30,000 lives and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

Diplomatic efforts to settle the conflict have brought little progress, and there have been sporadic flare-ups of fighting.

A day after the worst outbreak of violence in nearly two decades broke out early on April 2, Azerbaijan announced a unilateral cease-fire.

Karabakh military officials said the territory was ready to discuss the terms of a truce, but only in the context of "restoring former positions." The West, Russia, and Iran have appealed to all sides to exhibit restraint.

Speaking at an April 4 meeting with the ambassadors of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Sarkisian said international appeals would fall on deaf ears unless world powers forced the Azerbaijani leadership to abide by the 1994 truce that stopped the war.

Sarkisian said the OSCE must also bolster the cease-fire by increasing the number of his field observers deployed in the conflict zone and "urgently" introducing a mechanism for investigations of cease-fire violations.

He warned that a further escalation of the fighting would be fraught with "unpredictable and irreversible consequences, including a full-scale war."

"I must point out here that I have repeatedly stated that if hostilities continue and become large-scale, the Republic of Armenia will recognize Karabakh's independence," the Armenian president added.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in a televised meeting of top advisers on April 2 that troops had achieved a "great victory," while vowing to "observe the cease-fire and after that we will try to solve the conflict peacefully."

Each side has accused the other of targeting civilians.

On April 4, Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry warned that "Armenia will bear the blame for possible counterattacks and retaliatory measures by Azerbaijan's armed forces."

"In the event of continued Armenian provocations, we will launch a full-scale operation along the entire front line, using all kinds of weapons," Azerbaijani Defense Ministry spokesman Vagif Dargahly told journalists.



Separatist forces said Azerbaijani troops had "intensified shelling" of their positions in the region's northeast and southeast sections of the "line of contact" -- which effectively serves as a front line separating the opposing sides -- using mortars, rocket-propelled artillery, and tanks.

Armenian Defense Ministry spokesman Artsrun Hovhannisyan said the separatists "seriously advanced at certain sectors of the front line and took up new positions."

Azerbaijan dismissed the report. Its Defense Ministry said it was in control of several strategic heights in Karabakh that were captured by Azeri troops backed by tanks and heavy artillery on April 2.

The ministry said Azerbaijani forces responded to the Armenian fire by using the Russian-made TOS-1 heavy flamethrower system.

It also released a video purportedly showing the destruction of an Armenian command post in which it said an Armenian general and other high-ranking officers were killed.

The military of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh republic denied the allegations, but said it had destroyed an entire Azerbaijani Army unit.

A legacy of the Soviet breakup known as a "frozen conflict," the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute has bedeviled regional and international leaders for years, with the United States, Russia, and France taking the lead in trying to reach a permanent settlement, and tamp down tensions.

Diplomats from the three states, grouped together in what's called the Minsk Group, said they would convene a full-meeting on April 5 in Vienna to discuss the breakdown of the 21-year-old cease-fire.

Meanwhile, Russia's Foreign Ministry said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had a phone conversation on April 4 and expressed "serious concern" over an escalation in the standoff.

The ministry added in a statement that both sides had called for a swift cessation in fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Armenian and Azerbaijani services, AFP, TASS, and Interfax

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/nagorno-karabakh-fighting- fresh-casualties-aremenia-azerbaijan/27653202.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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US to Hold Observation Flight Over Russia Under Open Skies Treaty

Sputnik News

01:31 04.04.2016

US military experts will fly over the territory of Russia under the Treaty on Open Skies on April 4-9, head of Russia's National Nuclear Risk Reduction Center Sergei Ryzhkov said Sunday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  In the course of the observation mission, Russian specialists on board the aircraft will monitor compliance with the agreed parameters of the flight and the use of observation equipment, according to the statement.

"From April 4 to April 9, in the implementation of the Open Skies Treaty, a US mission will perform an observation flight over the Russian territory on an US OS-135B observation aircraft," Ryzhkov stated in a statement.

The Open Skies Treaty was signed in March 1992 and became one of the major confidence-building measures in Europe after the Cold War. It entered into force on January 1, 2002, and currently has 34 States Parties, including Russia and the majority of the NATO countries.

Moscow ratified the Treaty on Open Skies on May 26, 2001.

The treaty allows its participants to openly gather information on each other's military forces and activities.

The OS-135B aircraft flies unarmed observation flights over participating parties of the treaty.

 Sputnik

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Update: air strikes against Daesh

4 April 2016

British forces have continued to conduct air operations in the fight against Daesh

Latest update

- Wednesday 30 March  Typhoons destroyed Daesh-held buildings and a rocket stockpile in northern and western Iraq.

- Thursday 31 March  Tornados struck a terrorist observation post in western Iraq with a Brimstone missile.

- Friday 1 April  Typhoons bombed a Daesh vehicles and a bunker in western Iraq, while Tornados destroyed three terrorist positions in the north of the country.

- Saturday 2 April  Tornados conducted a major attack on a large weapons storage and manufacturing facility in northern Iraq, while a Reaper eliminated a mobile mortar team.

Detail

On Wednesday 30 March, Royal Air Force Typhoon FGR4s, flying from Akrotiri, used Paveway IV guided bombs to strike a Daesh-held building and a stockpile of concealed rockets near Fallujah. In northern Iraq, near Mosul, a second Typhoon flight destroyed two more buildings used as bases by the terrorists.

On Thursday 31 March, RAF Tornado GR4s - supported by a Voyager air refuelling tanker like the Typhoons  provided close air support to Iraqi security forces as they advanced near the city of Hit. A terrorist observation post was identified and the Tornado flight scored a direct hit with a Brimstone missile.

Typhoons were also active over western Iraq on Friday 1 April. A Daesh truck armed with an anti-aircraft gun was successfully bombed north-east of Ramadi and Paveways were used to destroy a fuel tanker converted into a truck bomb near Hit and a bunker west of Fallujah where terrorists had been spotted. In northern Iraq, a Tornado patrol employed Paveway IVs to destroy three Daesh buildings in the Mosul and Sinjar areas.

Coalition surveillance operations had identified Daesh extremists using a former Iraqi military ammunition depot near Qayyarah in northern Iraq. This intelligence indicated that the terrorists were manufacturing improvised explosive devices and other weaponry on the site. As part of a large coalition air strike on terrorist facilities in the area, four RAF Tornado GR4s were tasked with attacking 16 of these storage bunkers on Saturday 2 April. Each aircraft dropped a salvo of four Paveways, and initial indications are that the strike was highly accurate and effective. An RAF Reaper was also active in the Qayyarah area, hunting a Daesh mortar team. The aircraft's crew were able successfully to locate the team, operating a truck-mounted mortar, concealed under trees on the western bank of the Tigris, and secured a direct hit with a Hellfire missile.

Previous air strikes

1 March: Whilst RAF Tornado GR4s conducted extensive reconnaissance missions against suspected terrorist locations, RAF Typhoon FGR4s patrolled over western Iraq to support Iraqi army operations south-east of Haditha. One of the few large artillery pieces operated by Daesh  a D-30 122mm howitzer  was located close to the Euphrates, and was successfully destroyed by a Paveway IV precision guided bomb.

2 March: Typhoons were active over a wide swathe of northern Iraq, providing close air support to the Kurdish security forces. East of Mosul, Paveways were used to destroy two groups of terrorists with vehicles, the aircraft then flew west to the area north-east of Tall Afar where they conducted a series of four Paveway attacks on a number of rocket-launchers and a stockpile of rockets. A second Typhoon mission bombed a Daesh mortar team south of Sinjar, while a pair of Tornado GR4s used a Paveway to demolish a building north of Mosul where a large group of terrorists had been observed. In eastern Syria, an RAF Reaper worked closely with other coalition aircraft to support Syrian Democratic Forces south-west of As Shadadi, as they followed up on their recent successes against Daesh in the region. A coalition surveillance aircraft identified a terrorist truck, armed with an anti-aircraft gun, concealed in an orchard, and passed the target to the Reaper for prosecution. A Hellfire missile scored a direct hit on the vehicle.

3 March: Typhoons were in action again near Mosul, they used Paveways to destroy two buildings where Daesh terrorists were possibly planning an attack. Later that night, Typhoons also bombed two heavy machine-gun positions south-west of Sinjar.

4 March: Typhoons continued to provide close air support to the Iraqi and Kurdish forces in northern Iraq, delivering three attacks with Paveway IVs against Daesh positions near Tall Afar, Kisik and Sinjar.

5 March: Four Typhoons joined other coalition aircraft in a large coordinated operation against terrorist locations in western Iraq. The RAF aircraft targeted a large Daesh weapons factory in the countryside near Qubaysah, some miles west of Ramadi. The Typhoons released a total of 16 Paveways, which completely demolished workshops and storage sheds.

6 March: A Typhoon mission returned to northern Iraq and assisted Kurdish forces south-west of Sinjar, who had come under fire from a terrorist heavy machine-gun team. A Paveway IV destroyed the target.

7 March: Reaper remotely piloted aircraft have also been extremely active over the period, primarily flying surveillance missions. An attack was conducted by a Reaper in the morning, when a Hellfire missile was used to destroy a Daesh-held building in western Iraq, close to the Syrian border. In the evening a Typhoon patrol assisted Kurdish peshmerga fighting a group of terrorists near Kisik by attacking the Daesh position with a Paveway IV precision guided bomb.

8 March: Patrols over northern Iraq continued, near Kisik, Tornados used a Paveway against a terrorist position, while a Typhoon flight silenced a heavy machine-gun position with a direct hit from a Paveway. The Typhoons were then tasked to use their remaining Paveway bombs to strike seven strongpoints in a village south of Sinjar, where Daesh had driven out the civilian population and were using it as a defensive base against the Kurdish advance. All seven Paveways struck their targets accurately.

9 March: Typhoons patrolled south of Sinjar. A vehicle used by Daesh to construct defensive positions, was destroyed by a Paveway. A second deserted village taken over by the terrorists as a fortified haven, near Ranbusi, was then attacked with six targets successfully struck by Paveways. Further south, Tornado GR4s were providing close air support to Iraqi forces in the Euphrates river valley. A Paveway was used against a group of terrorists in the open, whilst a further pair of Paveways accounted for two heavy machine-gun positions.

10 March: Both Tornados and Typhoons were active over the Euphrates valley, assisting Iraqi forces as they cleared Daesh positions to the west of Ramadi. A Tornado mission targeted a terrorist weapons cache concealed under the ramp of a destroyed bridge over the Euphrates, using two Paveways. At the same time a Typhoon mission conducted successful strikes on a heavy machine-gun team and a group of extremists engaged in close combat with Iraqi troops. In the north of the country, a Typhoon flight attacked a rocket launch point near Tall Afar, then dropped Paveways on six Daesh positions in the Kisik area where Kurdish forces had spotted terrorists preparing for a possible attack.

11 March: A Reaper worked with coalition jets to attack terrorists to the west of Sinjar. The Reaper provided targeting assistance for three successful coalition air attacks on groups of Daesh fighters, it then conducted two attacks of its own using Hellfire missiles.

12 March: Another Reaper was active in the same area and conducted an attack on terrorists who were launching rockets. The terrorists immediately left the area in a truck which the Reaper's crew tracked and successfully attacked with a Hellfire. The Reaper then directed coalition aircraft in an attack on an array of rocket launchers nearby.

13 March: Typhoon FGR4s, based at RAF Akrotiri and supported by a Voyager air refuelling tanker, provided support to Iraqi troops operating to the west of Ramadi. The Typhoons used a pair of Paveway IV guided bombs to demolish the entrance to a tunnel system which was reported to be surrounded by IEDs.

14 March: Typhoons and Tornado GR4s also provided support to ground forces in northern Iraq. Near Qayyarah, Typhoons used Paveways against two Daesh mortars and a group of terrorists engaged in a firefight with the security forces, whilst near Kisik, Tornados destroyed two Daesh positions, again with Paveway IVs.

15 March: Typhoon FGR4s provided close air support to Kurdish peshmerga pushing south from Sinjar and eliminated a heavy machine-gun position firing on Kurdish troops, scoring a direct hit on the terrorists with a Paveway IV precision guided bomb.

16 March: The Kurdish forces received further air support from the RAF the following day, when Tornado GR4s, destroyed another heavy machine-gun which had opened fire on the peshmerga some miles to the west of Kirkuk. Further south, in Anbar province, a Reaper remotely piloted aircraft patrolled over Anbar province and identified and attacked a terrorist check-point near Ar Rutbah being used to intimidate and control the local population using a Hellfire missile.

17 March: Tornados and Typhoons operated over both northern and western Iraq. Typhoons used a Paveway bomb to demolish a building from which a terrorist sniper had opened fire on Iraqi forces near Tall Afar, while a Tornado mission over Anbar worked in cooperation with a coalition remotely piloted aircraft to assist Iraqi troops engaged in combat with Daesh extremists to the north-west of Ramadi. Despite heavy cloud obscuring the target, the RAF and coalition aircraft used their highly sophisticated surveillance and targeting equipment to allow the Tornados to deliver two precision attacks with Brimstone missiles on the terrorists, then, once they attempted to retreat, to strike the remainder of the Daesh group with a Paveway.

Meanwhile, another Tornado flight Near Kisik used a Paveway to destroy a Daesh command and control position, where a number of terrorists had gathered. The Tornados then interrupted Daesh's efforts to reopen supply routes near Qayyarah, destroying targets with two direct hits from Paveways and then another Paveway and Brimstone missiles were used to destroy three engineering vehicles.

18 March: Paveway-armed Typhoons struck a group of extremists mustering east of Mosul, while Tornados similarly hit two Daesh groups gathered for possible attacks near Kisik.

20 March: Tornado GR4s were in action again over northern Iraq, when they used Paveways to destroy three weapons caches and supply points several miles south-west of Sinjar.

21 March: Two flights of Typhoons provided close air support to the Kurdish forces; one flight destroyed a Daesh group that was firing rockets at the Kurds, whilst the other flight successfully attacked three terrorist teams which were planting improvised explosive devices in the Kisik area. Across the border in Syria, careful reconnaissance work had identified a major Daesh weapons storage facility at a site near Ukayrishah, south-east of Raqqa. This intelligence success allowed Tornado GR4s to conduct a very successful strike on Monday night, delivering eight Paveway IVs which destroyed the main warehouse and three support buildings. On the ground, British training teams continue to play an important role in the large coalition programme to help the Iraqi security forces become ever more effective in their successful efforts to drive the terrorists from their country. The British instructors have focused on training infantry and combat medical skills, as well as leading the coalition's assistance in how to deal safely with the thousands of improvised explosive devices and booby-traps left behind by Daesh in an attempt to prevent the civilian population from resuming their lives in liberated territory.

22 March: Royal Air Force Tornado GR4s conducted strike operations over both western and northern Iraq. In Anbar province, a Tornado flight was able to destroy with Paveway IV guided bombs a staging post used by Daesh extremists. Further north, near Qayyarah, coalition surveillance aircraft identified renewed attempts by Daesh to build an improvised ramp up to a damaged bridge at a key crossing over the Tigris, just south of Qayyarah; RAF aircraft had destroyed the heavy engineering vehicles and a previous attempt at a ramp on 17 March. Two Tornados therefore returned to the bridge and again destroyed the ramp with Paveways, preventing the terrorists from reopening their supply route across the river. In eastern Syria, a Reaper used a Hellfire missile to demolish a Daesh storage building near Ukayrishah; the attack was very carefully planned in both timing and weapon choice to avoid causing any damage to a nearby school.

23 March: Typhoon FGR4s patrolled over northern Iraq. They used Paveways to destroy a Daesh position south of Sinjar, and a tunnel entrance, two terrorist-held buildings and a mortar team all located near Kisik. The following day, Tornados were again active over Qayyarah; working in close cooperation with a coalition surveillance aircraft, they were able to successfully engage with a Paveway a Daesh mortar team that had opened fire on Kurdish forces. Across the border in eastern Syria, a Reaper used a Hellfire missile in a successful attack on a Daesh vehicle.

25 March: Typhoons caught extremists mustering near Mosul and struck five positions with Paveway IVs.

27 March: RAF aircraft continued to provide close air support to the Kurdish forces. Paveways from a Typhoon flight silenced both a sniper and a heavy machine-gun team who were engaged in combat with Kurdish troops near Qayyarah, and a further Paveway accounted for a second heavy machine-gun team that opened fire on the peshmerga south of Sinjar.

28 March: The Typhoons were again in action south of Sinjar when they bombed two terrorist-held buildings, before flying to the area around Tall Afar where they struck a third Daesh position.

29 March: Operations over both northern and western Iraq continued. One Typhoon flight struck a reported Daesh storage building north-east of Mosul, while a second flight assisted Kurdish forces by bombing a mortar position near Quyyarah, then conducted attacks on terrorist installations nearby; one Typhoon was able to strike simultaneously four tunnel entrances, each with a Paveway, the second aircraft striking three truck-bomb facilities, again each with a Paveway. In Anbar province, two further truck-bomb workshops near Hit were successfully attacked by Tornados the same day.

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Philippine-US Military Exercises Begin With Greater Regional Presence

by Simone Orendain April 04, 2016

This year's joint military exercises between the Philippines and the United States are underway with Japan's Self-Defense forces observing for the first time and scores of Australian troops taking part in some special operations activities.

While the Philippines' regional partners, which have been vocal about China's activities in the South China Sea, are playing a more noticeable role, officials have emphasized the exercises are not aimed at any one country.

Not aimed at China

Philippine exercise director, Vice Admiral Alexander Lopez, reiterated that message to reporters after the opening ceremony.

"But this is not. This is not. Please believe us. This is actually our purpose in coming up with this capability. The Philippines is the least capable armed forces in the region and the U.S. being a big brother is a big help here," he said.

Lopez said Manila welcomed training with the Americans' advanced technology.

US wants stability

U.S. Marine Lieutenant General John Toolan, who is heading U.S. forces for the drills, said Washington wants to see stability in the region, including averting a crisis in the South China Sea. He said understanding what's going on in the sea is a critical aspect of the drills.

"We don't have as good a picture of what's going on on the seas, 24-7," he said. "So we've made some investments in some equipment, some radars etc., but we've gotta have the capability to make sure that we've got good coverage."

Officials from both countries said they also want to strengthen humanitarian and disaster response.

Thousands of troops

The Philippine military said about 8,500 U.S. and Philippine troops are taking part in the exercises called Balikatan, or "shoulder to shoulder." Officials added that between 80-95 Australian troops would also participate in a special operations exercise for the first time, with eight Japanese self-defense officers observing.

Philippine assistant exercise director Major General Rodolfo Santiago said the special operations drills with Australia joining in would involve safeguarding an oil rig.He did not specify in which waters, but he confirmed they would not be in the country's only natural gas operation in waters off the South China Sea.

The Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam have overlapping claims in the resource-rich, heavily traversed sea. China has said it has "indisputable sovereignty" over practically the entire sea. Over the past two years, it has built-out formations on artificial islands capable of docking large vessels and landing military craft.

In 2013, the Philippines filed a case with an international tribunal questioning the legality of what it calls China's "excessive claims" in the sea. China rejects arbitration and is not participating in the case. A decision is expected in the next few months.

Japan does not have any claims in the South China Sea, but it has its own dispute with China over a chain of islands in the East China Sea and it continues to fly in airspace China has deemed an Air Defense Identification Zone.

Freedom of navigation

In recent months, Australia has been vocal about supporting the arbitration case as well as freedom of navigation excursions into disputed areas, with defense officials saying there has been an uptick in radioed warnings from China to its military craft flying over disputed formations.

Geopolitical analyst Richard Heydarian of De LaSalle University in Manila said the more visible involvement of other major powers is in anticipation of the arbitral tribunal's decision.

Analysts anticipate a partial ruling in favor of the Philippines, and Heydarian said enforcement of the binding decision would fall on those who could best monitor the disputed sea.

"The signal to China is very clear that the rest of the region, U.S. and its allies are preparing for any contingency.And that the Philippines, the country that has the most toxic relationship with China in the region, is also getting maximum possible help and assistance from the U.S. and major allies like Australia and Japan."

Officials said a high-mobility artillery rocket capable of firing surface to air or surface to surface munitions would be tested during the drills, with U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter expected to watch during a visit to the Philippines next week.

The joint exercises will end on April 15.

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Congo: Gunmen Attack Military Base, Police Stations

by Dan Joseph April 04, 2016

The Republic of Congo says gunmen attacked police, military and government targets in the capital Monday, in the first major violence since the re-election of President Denis Sassou Nguesso.

A statement from the government says former "Ninja" militimen, once loyal to the father of a losing candidate in last month's election, attacked and set fire to the Mayanga military base, four police stations and the mayor's office in southern Brazzaville.

Witnesses said the shooting erupted around 3:00 a.m. local time in the Bacongo and Makeleke neighborhoods and continued until late morning, when troops fanned across the city. There has been no word on any casualties from the fighting.

The government said it does not have proof that opposition candidates were connected to the violence but added that investigations continue.

Sassou Nguesso was re-elected after getting voter approval to remove age and term limits in the constitution that would have barred from the March 20 vote.

Official results showed the president winning 60 percent of the vote.

An army general who finished third in the voting, Jean-Marie Michel Mokoko, accused the government of election fraud and called for a campaign of "civil disobedience" after the results were announced.

The 72-year-old Nguesso first served as Congo's president between 1979 and 1992, and after losing an election returned to power in 1997. He won disputed elections in 2002 and 2009.

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One killed in Saudi police car bomb explosion

Iran Press TV

Sun Apr 3, 2016 3:48PM

A Saudi national has been killed after a booby-trapped police vehicle exploded in the kingdom's central city of al-Dalam, local media report.

The Saudi Press Agency quoted a Ministry of Interior spokesman as saying on Sunday that the police car was detonated late Saturday in al-Dalam when it was parked near a police station.

A Saudi national was killed in the incident and two other vehicles were damaged due to the explosion.

The Ministry of Interior reportedly launched an investigation into the incident.

Al-Dalam is located some 100km southeast of the Saudi capital, Riyadh.

The Takfiri Daesh group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted on social media websites. The group said that one of its militants detonated two booby traps at a police station and burnt three police cars.

Saudi Arabia is widely accused of aiding, abetting and arming Takfiri militant groups operating across Iraq, Syria and several other countries.

Riyadh had repeatedly been warned that its support for Takfiri groups would backfire.

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US Sends 2 Guantanamo Prisoners to Senegal

by Ken Bredemeier April 04, 2016

The U.S. released two inmates from its Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba on Monday, sending them to the west African nation of Senegal.

"The United States is grateful to the government of Senegal for its humanitarian gesture and willingness to support ongoing U.S. efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility," a Pentagon statement said.

The two men, identified as Libyans Omar Khalif Mohammed Abu Baker and Salem Abdu Salam Ghereby, had been held at the prison for 14 years without charges.

Both Khalif, who lost a leg from a 1998 landmine explosion, and Ghereby were opponents of the deposed Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi. Khalif was apprehended in Karachi in early 2002, while Ghereby was detained in late 2001 along the Afghan-Pakistani border. Six U.S. agencies reviewed their cases before deciding to release them to Senegal, the 26th country to agree to accept the U.S. detainees.

Their release cuts the Guantanamo prison population to 89 as U.S. President Barack Obama continues his efforts to close Guantanamo before he leaves office next January, an effort opposed by Republican lawmakers in Congress.

In all, 779 prisoners have been held at the facility, established to hold suspected terrorists as the U.S. launched military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

As Monday's prisoner release was announced, the U.S. State Department reiterated Obama's contention that "the continued operation of the detention facility weakens our national security by draining resources, damaging our relationships with key allies and partners, and serving as a propaganda tool for violent extremists."

U.S. news agencies reported last week that U.S. defense officials intend to soon release another 10 or so Guantanamo prisoners.

Human Rights Watch said Monday's release "shows meaningful progress" in closing the prison.

VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb contributed to this report.

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All-win nuclear security architecture needed

People's Daily Online

(Xinhua) 13:43, April 03, 2016

BEIJING, April 3 -- At the fourth and final nuclear security summit in Washington, world leaders have reached consensus on pushing ahead with a more robust global nuclear security architecture, vowing to make continued endeavors to tackle the threat of nuclear terrorism.

Chinese President Xi Jinping said Friday that new threats and challenges keep emerging in the security field, that the root causes of terrorism are far from being removed, and that nuclear terrorism remains a grave threat to international security.

He said that a more robust global nuclear security architecture featuring fairness and win-win cooperation is the prerequisite for the sound development of nuclear energy.

Experts believed that the world has long recognized the need to stem nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism through international coordination, especially cooperation between nuclear powers.

NUCLEAR TERRORISM THREAT

Global nuclear security has become more challenging than ever as brutal attacks by the Islamic State and other organizations are on the rise, raising the specter of catastrophic nuclear terrorism if violent extremists get control of dangerous nuclear or radiological materials, said Sam Nunn, CEO of Nuclear Threat Initiative, an anti-proliferation watchdog.

Belgian police found a surveillance recording of a researcher at a Belgian nuclear center, when they searched the home of a suspected IS member after the Paris terror attacks in November. It was thought to be part of a plot to capture nuclear materials from the center.

"The threat of nuclear and radiological terrorism remains one of the greatest challenges to international security, and the threat is constantly evolving," reads a communique released at the end of the summit.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 442 incidents involving unauthorized acquisition of nuclear materials and related illegal acts and 714 cases of loss or theft of fissile materials have been reported to the UN nuclear watchdog by the end of 2014.

Moreover, the IAEA said recently that nearly 2,800 incidents involving radioactive materials out of regulatory control have been reported to the IAEA by member states since 1995.

ALL-WIN NUCLEAR SECURITY ARCHITECTURE

The summit communique pointed out that countering nuclear and radiological terrorism demands international cooperation and that international cooperation can contribute to a more inclusive, coordinated, sustainable, and robust global nuclear security architecture for the common benefit and security of all.

To promote international cooperation in nuclear security, Xi put forward a five-point proposal at the summit, including the building of a network for capacity building on nuclear security and supporting all countries in minimizing the use of highly enriched uranium according to their needs.

Jin Canrong, vice president of the School of International Studies at China's Renmin University, said international cooperation is needed to address nuclear security issues, and the key lies in cooperation between major countries.

He commended China-U.S. cooperation as a good example, referring to the Center of Excellence on Nuclear Security in Beijing, the largest of its kind in the Asia-Pacific region, which will provide a forum for bilateral and regional best-practice exchanges, and serve as a venue for demonstrating advanced technologies related to nuclear security.

Ruan Zongze, vice president of the China Institute of International Studies, holds similar views, saying the most important thing is international cooperation and coordination, as one country alone could not block theft and trafficking of nuclear materials.

Back in 2014, Xi pointed out that "the amount of water a bucket can hold is determined by its shortest plank. The loss of nuclear material in one country can be a threat to the whole world." Therefore, he said that increased cooperation is beneficial to all nations.

Jin warned that double standards should be avoided in the cooperation of peaceful use of nuclear energy between developed and developing countries, adding that political fairness is important.

Participants from 52 countries and four international organizations support the essential responsibility and the central role of the IAEA in strengthening the global nuclear security architecture and in developing international guidance.

The leaders also promised to implement the five action plans attached to the communique in support of the IAEA, the United Nations and other three international organizations and initiatives that reflect the political will of participating states.

The consensus among world leaders on the role of the IAEA and other international organizations will help build an enhanced global nuclear security architecture, Ruan said.

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IRGC busts terrorist group in southeast Iran

Iran Press TV

Sun Apr 3, 2016 8:38AM

Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has busted a terrorist group in the southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan, a senior commander says.

"In a coordinated operation conducted by the IRGC forces and the Shia and Sunni people of Sistan and Baluchestan, a terrorist group affiliated with Mojahedeen-e Khalq Organization (MKO) has been demolished south of Sistan and Baluchestan," Tasnim news agency quoted Commander of the IRGC Ground Forces' Quds Base Brigadier General Mohammad Marani as saying on Sunday.

He added that the terrorist group's leader, Ahmad Sahouei, along with four other members of the cell, were killed during an operation by the IRGC forces.

The commander noted that provincial security forces were monitoring the criminal group, which has been conducting acts of murder and armed robbery, saying that weapons and ammunition were seized from the armed group.

The MKO has carried out numerous terrorist attacks against Iranian civilians and government officials over the past three decades. Out of the nearly 17,000 Iranians killed in terrorist attacks since the victory of Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, about 12,000 have fallen victim to the acts of terror carried out by the MKO.

The group was viewed by the EU as terrorist until January 2009, when the EU Council lifted the designation under immense pressure from political lobbies. The decision was followed by the United States in September 2012.

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Iran missiles not open to talks, compromise: Araqchi

Iran Press TV

Sun Apr 3, 2016 4:55AM

An Iranian deputy foreign minister says the Islamic Republic's missile capability is a matter of defense and national security, which is not open to any negotiations or compromise.

"During the [nuclear] negotiations [with the P5+1 group of countries], we never allowed them to raise the issue of our country's missile [program], because no wise individual will negotiate over his country's security," Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Abbas Araqchi said in a televised interview Saturday night.

Referring to recent claims by the US and some European countries about Iran's latest ballistic missile tests, the official said those countries have already brought up this issue at the UN Security Council twice, but have failed to make the body issue even a statement against Iran.

Araqchi stated that the US and the West frequently resort to the Security Council Resolution 2231 to call for a stop on Iran's ballistic missile tests, adding, "The resolution calls upon Iran not to test or produce missiles which are capable of carrying nuclear warheads, but Iran has never developed missiles for this purpose."

The Iranian deputy foreign minister reiterated that there is no evidence to show that Iran's missiles are meant to carry nuclear warheads and therefore do not violate the Security Council Resolution 2231.

The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) successfully test-fired two ballistic missiles on March 9 as part of military drills to assess the IRGC's capabilities. The missiles dubbed Qadr-H and Qadr-F were fired during large-scale drills, code-named Eqtedar-e-Velayat.

On March 8, Iran fired another ballistic missile called Qiam from silo-based launchers in different locations across the country.

On March 24, the US Treasury Department blacklisted two Iranian companies claiming that the firms backed Iran's ballistic missile program. Washington also claimed that the companies are working for an industrial group, which the US alleges is in charge of Iran's ballistic missile program.

Washington claims that Iran's missile tests violate the UN Security Council Resolution 2231 that endorsed a nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), reached between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries  the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany  on July 14, 2015.

Iran, however, has repeatedly announced that the missile launches were not against the Security Council resolution.

Resolution 2231 (2015) provides for the termination of the provisions of previous Security Council resolutions on the Iranian nuclear program, and calls on Iran not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology.

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NATO training for Iraqi officers starts in Jordan

NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

02 Apr. 2016

The first group of officers from Iraq's national security forces started their NATO training course at the King Abdullah Special Operations Training Centre in Amman, Jordan, on 2 April 2016. Their training is part of NATO's effort to help Iraq build up its defence capacities, reform its security sector and increase its ability to contribute to regional stability. In the next six months, 350 Iraqi officers will be trained in the NATO course. Training will begin with a focus on military medicine, civil military planning and on countering improvised explosive devices.

The initiative is part of NATO's Defence Capacity Building programme for Iraq, launched in response to a request by the Iraqi government. The programme is tailored to Iraq's needs and will provide specialised assistance in the areas where NATO can add the most value. It will include advice on security sector reform, military training, explosive ordnance disposal, de-mining, cyber defence, civil emergency planning, civil-military planning, countering improvised explosive devices, military medicine and medical assistance.

Building the capacities of inclusive Iraqi defense and security forces is one of the ways in which NATO can help project stability to partner countries. The programme has been designed to complement efforts by individual NATO Allies, by the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, by the European Union and by the United Nations.

NATO defence capacity building cooperation is also ongoing with Jordan and Tunisia, and the Alliance is ready to step up this work with other interested partners as well.

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3,000 Iraqi families return to Ramadi

Iran Press TV

Sun Apr 3, 2016 1:19PM

Some 3,000 families from the western Iraqi city of Ramadi have begun returning home after the city was retaken from Takfiri Daesh militants.

Ramadi governor Hameed Dulaymi said on Sunday that the displaced families moved backed to areas that have been cleared of explosives.

They will use electricity generators as the public grid was not repaired and water from Euphrates river will be pumped to their houses, he said.

Ramadi, the provincial capital of Anbar, was liberated in December, almost one year after it fell into the hands of Daesh.

Also on Sunday, an Iraqi military official said that some 29 senior Daesh members had been killed in two airstrikes in Anbar province, al-Forat news agency reported.

Iraqi warplanes targeted two separate Daesh gatherings in al-Ghaem and Raweh towns. A number of Daesh militants were also injured in the attacks.

The liberation of Ramadi marked one of the most significant victories for Iraq's armed forces since Daesh Takfiris seized swathes of the Iraqi land in June 2014.

Majority of Ramadi residents fled the fighting and took shelter in camps west of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

The militants have been committing crimes against all ethnic and religious communities in Iraq, including Shias, Sunnis, Kurds and Christians.

The Iraqi army and volunteer fighters have been engaged in operations to liberate militant-held regions.

The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) said on Friday that armed clashes and violence killed 1,119 people and injured 1,561 others in Iraq in March, up from 670 deaths and 1,290 injuries in February.

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60 Daesh militants killed in northern Iraq: Reports

Iran Press TV

Sun Apr 3, 2016 8:50AM

A total of 60 Takfiri Daesh terrorists have been killed during military operations across Iraq's northern provinces of Nineveh and Kirkuk, security sources say.

Iraqi security forces affiliated with the Nineveh liberation operation killed 17 militants, including 5 bombers, who were trying to advance into the frontline of the battle in southern Mosul, Iraq's al-Sumaria News reported on Sunday.

The army soldiers also destroyed a machine gun belonging to Daesh, killing four militants in a village in Nineveh.

Reports said 30 militants also died in airstrikes near the Nineveh's Qayyarah oil field.

According to an unnamed Iraqi security source, similar air raids also killed nine Daesh Takfiris in the Hawijah district of Kirkuk Province.

The airborne assaults also destroyed several explosive-laden vehicles and a facility producing improvised explosive devices.

On Saturday, the Iraqi troops liberated two districts in the city of Hit in the western province of Anbar from the grip of terrorists.

Overall, more than 150 Daesh militants lost their lives in different areas across Iraq on Saturday.

Gruesome violence has plagued the northern and western parts of Iraq ever since Daesh launched an offensive in June 2014, and took control of swathes of the Iraqi territory.

The terror group has suffered major blows from the Iraqi forces and fighters from Popular Mobilization units over the past months and is increasingly losing areas under its control.

The Takfiris have been carrying out horrific acts of violence, such as public decapitations and crucifixions, against all communities, including Shias, Sunnis, Kurds and Christians in areas they have overrun.

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Japanese submarine, destroyers arrive in Philippines near disputed waters

Iran Press TV

Sun Apr 3, 2016 7:49AM

A Japanese submarine, along with two guided-missile destroyers, has docked at a Philippine port near the South China Sea, where there is a territorial dispute with China.

Japanese submarine Oyashio and destroyers JS Ariake and JS Setogiri arrived on Sunday at the Subic Bay, a former US military base 130 kilometers (80 miles) north of the Philippines' capital, Manila.

"The visit is a manifestation of a sustained promotion of regional peace and stability and enhancement of maritime cooperation between neighboring navies," Philippine Navy spokesman, Lued Lincuna, said, referring to the navies of Japan and the Philippines.

The visit at the port of call came on the eve of 12-day military drills between the United States and the Philippines, which will begin on Monday.

While China has warned other countries against any action that could harm China's "sovereignty" over the South China Sea, the US and the Philippines insist that the war games are not explicitly aimed at China.

The Philippines is preparing to host US troops in at least five military bases, including one facing disputed islands in the South China Sea, under an agreement with Washington.

Manila is also seeking to strengthen ties with Tokyo as tensions mount over the disputed sea.

In February, Tokyo agreed to provide the Philippines with military hardware, including anti-submarine reconnaissance aircraft and radar technology.

China claims sovereignty over almost the whole of the South China Sea, which is also claimed in part by Taiwan, Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines. The waters are believed to sit atop vast reserves of oil and gas.

The dispute has at times drawn in extra-territorial countries  particularly the US  which have more often than not sided with China's rivals.

Recently, the US has increased its presence in the Asia-Pacific region through its so-called pivot strategy, which critics denounce as a provocative policy.

Beijing accuses Washington of meddling in regional issues and deliberately stirring up tensions in the South China Sea.

The US, in turn, accuses China of carrying out what it calls a land reclamation program in the South China Sea by building artificial islands in the disputed areas.

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South China Sea: Japanese Warships Dock in Philippines Near Disputed Waters

Sputnik News

00:39 04.04.2016(updated 00:41 04.04.2016)

A Japanese submarine and two destroyers have arrived to the major Philippine port of Subic located in the vicinity of the disputed South China Sea water routes, to uphold "peace and stability" in the region, the Philippine Navy have said.

Japanese submarine Oyashio along with the JS Ariake and JS Setogiri docked in the port 200 kilometers away from the waters in the South China Sea which are controlled by China, AFP reported. An anti-submarine helicopter is on board of the JS Ariake, the pictures taken by media outlets show.

"The visit is a manifestation of a sustained promotion of regional peace and stability and enhancement of maritime cooperation between neighboring navies," Philippine Navy spokesman Cmdr. Lued Lincuna said.

The port of call took place right before US-Philippine 12-day joint drills begin on April 4, which are observed by many as a demonstration of the coalition's military might. At the same time, China has expressed concern over any action taken against its water rights in the South China Sea.

Moreover, the Philippines aims to lease aircraft from Japan to patrol its claimed territories in the disputed waters in the South China Sea.

China claims the lion's share of the South China Sea's water area, colliding with such powers as Brunei, Malaysia, Philippines and Vietnam. Beijing has repeatedly said that the Philippines and Vietnam have been using US support to escalate tensions in the region.

In 2013, the Philippines challenged Chinese claims on a row of territories in the sea at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, as Beijing refuted the possibility of resolving such trials in the international courts.

 Sputnik

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Pakistan in Final Phase to 'Clear' Border Tribal Regions

by Ayaz Gul April 03, 2016

Pakistan's military said it killed more than 250 militants and lost eight soldiers in counterinsurgency operations near the Afghan border in the past two months.

Army officials said fighting in the remote Shawal valley of North Waziristan is the final phase of a major ground and air offensive launched in June 2014 to clear the semiautonomous tribal region of local and foreign militants.

"The battle to clear the last pocket close to the Pak-Afghan border continues  in extremely hostile terrain and harsh weather conditions," the military said Sunday in a statement, which contained the latest details of the so-called Zarb-e-Azb (ZeA) operation.

The army said all areas above 2,700 meters and covered with snow have been cleared, terrorist hubs have been destroyed, and large amounts of arms and ammunition recovered.

Fighting wounded more than 160 militants and 39 soldiers, it added.

Since the beginning of the nearly two-year-long offensive, the army said more than 4,000 fighters linked to local and foreign extremist groups have been killed in the Waziristan region as well as in related "intelligence-based" raids elsewhere in Pakistan.

Nearly 500 soldiers have also lost their lives, it said.

Sunday's statement said that 36 percent of the tens of thousands of families uprooted by the army action in North Waziristan have also returned to their homes in areas cleared of of militants.

"Since start of operation ZeA in June 2014, security forces have cleared 4,304 square kilometers of area in North Waziristan Agency and restored the writ of the government," it said.

While it is not possible to independently verify official fighting details because of lack of access for aid workers and reporters, army officials cite significant reduction in terrorist attacks around Pakistan as a proof the "terrorist infrastructure and communication network" in the tribal area have been uprooted.

In a statement released Sunday, a leading rights group again voiced concerns and skepticism about the military activity in the tribal region bordering Afghanistan, and called for investigations and strict oversight to prevent excesses and ensure accountability.

"The security forces are reported to have taken over private property of the locals with impunity. Reports of the use of excessive force in some villages are harrowing, where no house has been left standing and the population has had to escape the onslaught," the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) said.

There was no immediate official reaction to the allegations by the group, which also acknowledged in an annual report released last week that Pakistan saw a 40 percent drop in violence in 2015.

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Nawaz Sharif: Pakistan's Unlikely Reformer

April 04, 2016

by Frud Bezhan

He is a veteran conservative politician known for attempting to introduce strict Shari'a law in Pakistan in the late 1990s before a military coup temporarily sent him into exile. But since his return as prime minister, Nawaz Sharif has emerged as an unlikely torch-bearer for reform.

Sharif and his Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) party, which has strong support among conservatives, have surprised many observers by confronting the powerful religious establishment and calling for a more tolerant Pakistan.

Since the turn of the year, the 66-year-old has enacted a landmark domestic violence bill, promised a tougher stance on so-called honor killings, officially recognized holidays celebrated by Pakistan's religious minorities, and overseen the execution of a man revered by hard-line clerics.

Observers suggest the change of course is down to the prime minister's ambitious plans to overhaul the economy, the considerable influence of his daughter Maryam Nawaz Sharif, and his easing relationship with the country's powerful army, which has an oversized role in domestic and foreign affairs.



"He's a politician and a businessman," Mohammad Taqi, a U.S.-based Pakistan political analyst, said of Sharif, who oversees a vast business empire.

"Jihadist anarchy doesn't suit politics or business. Also, unlike the military, the politicians evolve and learn," Taqi said. "The military sees archrival India and neighboring Afghanistan as zero-sum games; politicians don't. Therefore the utility of jihadism is limited for politicians."

Confronting A Community

After making a triumphant return to Pakistan in 2007, Sharif went on to regain his former post as prime minister in 2013. His ascension to an unprecedented third term came after strong support among rural voters and the religious community spurred his party to a decisive parliamentary election victory.

Sharif has long been closely tied with Pakistan's conservative establishment, an identity forged during his two terms as prime minister in the 1990s. But, in recent months, he has shaken that very establishment and challenged his traditional support base.

In January, the government ended a three-year ban on YouTube that had been supported by clerics to block access to videos defaming Islam.

The same month, in a bid to curtail child marriages, Sharif's party introduced a bill calling for the age limit for brides to be raised from 16 to 18. The Council of Islamic Ideology, the country's top Islamic guidance body, declared the bill un-Islamic. But while the proposed legislation was withdrawn, Sharif made clear that his government was intent on making changes.

In the province of Punjab, where Sharif's brother, Shahbaz, serves as chief minister, lawmakers approved new legal protections for abused women. More than 30 religious groups have threatened to launch protests if the bill is not withdrawn.

Earlier this month, Sharif officially recognized holidays celebrated by Pakistan's religious minorities, including Easter and the Hindu festival of Holi.

Perhaps the clearest indication that Sharif had changed tack was an execution that took place under his government's watch. Mumtaz Qadri was executed in February at the order of the Islamabad High Court five years after he assassinated a liberal Punjab governor over his calls to reform the country's blasphemy laws.

Thousands of hard-line Islamists rallied in the heart of the Pakistani capital for four days to denounce Qadri's execution and to call for the introduction of strict Shari'a law in Pakistan.

The sit-in protest ended on March 31 after protest leaders said they were given assurances that controversial blasphemy laws would not be amended and more than 1,000 Islamists detained by police during the protest would be released. The government, however, denied it had acceded to any of the protesters' demands.

"A few years ago a death penalty like this for a religious fanatic would not have been possible," analyst Taqi said. "So credit to the prime minister because he's the one who has to deal with the political backlash."

Going Too Far

Some warn, however, that Sharif risks taking things too far.

Observers have linked pro-Qadri protests with a recent militant attack in the southern city of Lahore that killed 70 people and injured some 300 others. Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a breakaway Pakistani Taliban faction that supports the Islamic State (IS) group, claimed responsibility and said it specifically targeted Christians.

"If Sharif pushes too far, then both the terrorists and the more moderate religious forces will be galvanized and could respond in terrifying and traumatic ways," said Michael Kugelman, South Asia associate at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.

Kugelman said both the Lahore attack and the pro-Qadri protests in Islamabad "underscore, in a big way, how religious forces can make the Pakistani government vulnerable."

True Reform?

Even as Sharif's government has managed to push through some reforms, however, it has come under strong international criticism.

The United Nations, the European Union, and human rights groups have deplored the government's heavy-handed measures taken following the Pakistani Taliban's gruesome ambush of a military-run school in the northwestern city of Peshawar in December 2014 that left 147 people dead, the deadliest ever attack in Pakistan.

Pakistan has hanged more than 300 people since lifting a moratorium on the death penalty in December 2014. Many were convicted in closed military courts, which critics say fail to meet fair trial standards.

And, in the broader scope of things, analysts say, Sharif has not managed to bring about true reform.

"I would characterize Sharif's moves so far as isolated and even token gestures that haven't occurred in a sufficiently sustained fashion to constitute a formal reform plan," said Kugelman. "There is only so far that he can go, given the constraints posed by powerful conservative vested interests such as mullahs and the military."

Emboldened Position

But observers have said there could be several reasons why Sharif might have changed course in his third term.

"I suspect that some of it may have to do with the thought of leaving a legacy after his third term," Taqi said. "His daughter may be an influence on him too on women's issues."

Sharif's influential 42-year-old daughter, Maryam, has been a voice of moderation on women's issues and the protection of minors.

But perhaps the key to emboldening Sharif to change direction has been his improved ties with the army.

Sharif spent most of 2014 locked in disputes with the powerful military, with tens of thousands of protesters camped near the prime minister's residence demanding that he resign. During those protests, speculation was mounting that the military was considering a coup to oust Sharif. In order to keep his job, Sharif reportedly conceded foreign-policy decisions to the military.

"His relations with the military are perhaps a bit better now than they were months ago," said Kugelman. "So maybe there is a bit more space for him to operate independently."

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/pakistan-nawaz-sharif-unlikely-reformer/27653471.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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Sharif Family Defends Offshore Assets, Denies Wrongdoing

by Ayaz Gul April 04, 2016

Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's family has defended ownership of their offshore companies and property, denying any wrongdoing in their development.

The defense came after the leak of a vast trove of documents and other data from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca revealed, among others, the names of Sharif's two sons and a daughter, with the records showing they owned London real state through offshore companies.

"Those apartments are ours and those offshore companies are also ours, and all of them registered under our names," the prime minister's son, Hussain Nawaz Sharif, said in interviews to Pakistani television stations.

"There is nothing wrong with it and I have never concealed them, nor do I need to do that." he added, saying he left Pakistan in 1992 and is therefore not a resident, not required to declare assets under the Pakistani tax laws.

He was speaking on behalf of his brother Hasan Nawaz and sister Maryam Safadar.

The Sharif family owns a network of businesses, including steel, sugar, paper mills and at home and extensive property abroad. But it has long been accused of tax evasion and secreting away money to offshore accounts.

Though Sharif's sons moved to London many years ago, they have been running family businesses from abroad.

Maryam is in Pakistan and many believe she is being groomed to take over leadership of her father's political party.

Corruption and misrule allegations engulfed the two previous elected governments Sharif headed in the 1990s, ultimately leading to his ouster.

He lived in exile in Saudi Arabia after dismissal of his last government in 1999 and returned seven years later to rejoin politics.Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N party won 2013 national elections, allowing him to become the prime minister of Pakistan for a third time.But allegations of corruption and misrule engulf the current Sharif administration.

Wealth stashed abroad

Opposition Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) party leader Imran Khan called for the country's anti-corruption body and tax authorities to investigate the matter.

"Our stance vindicated again as Sharif's wealth stashed abroad exposed," Khan said, demanding the national election commission to take action against the prime minister for concealing property.

"All their assets are legal and established through white money," federal information minister Pervez Rashid told reporters while responding to Khan's assertions.

The "Panama Papers" leak contained names of 20 other Pakistani businessmen and politicians, including slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and her party's senior member, former interior minister Rehman Malik.

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International Journalists Say Putin Associates Ran $2 Billion Through Offshore Accounts

by Ken Bredemeier April 03, 2016

A team of international journalists, working with leaked documents from a Panamanian law firm, has concluded that associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin moved as much as $2 billion through offshore bank accounts over a nearly 40-year period.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, allied with the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung and more than 100 other news organizations, said in a report Sunday that the 11.5 million documents from Panama's Mossack Fonseca law firm show dozens of transactions "involving people or companies linked to Putin" from 1977 through the end of 2015.

Parking money in offshore accounts is not necessarily illegal, and can be used to establish legal tax shelters or ease international business deals. But the report said "the documents show that banks, law firms and other offshore players have often failed to follow legal requirements that they make sure their clients are not involved in criminal enterprises, tax dodging or political corruption."

The Kremlin last week did not answer questions posed by the journalists about the transactions, and it publicly accused the group of preparing a misleading "information attack" on the Russian leader and people close to him.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is a nonprofit organization based in Washington, DC.



Sueddeutsche Zeitung, based in Munich, said Sunday it received the data from an anonymous source more than a year ago. It says the amount of data it obtained is several times larger than the U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks in 2010, and the secret intelligence documents given to journalists by Edward Snowden in 2013.

Along from the links to Putin, ICIJ says these documents:

- Reveal the offshore holdings of 140 politicians and public officials around the world, including 12 current and former world leaders. Among them are the prime ministers of Iceland and Pakistan, the presidents of Ukraine and Argentina, and the king of Saudi Arabia.

- Include the names of at least 33 people and companies blacklisted by the U.S. government because of evidence that they'd been involved in wrongdoing, such as doing business with Mexican drug lords, terrorist organizations like Hezbollah or rogue nations like North Korea and Iran.

- Show how major banks have driven the creation of hard-to-trace companies in offshore havens. More than 500 banks, their subsidiaries and their branches have created more than 15,000 offshore companies for their customers through Mossack Fonseca.

The Panamanian firm told The Washington Post it follows "both the letter and spirit" of financial laws, which vary throughout the world. It said that in nearly 40 years of operation it has never been charged with criminal wrongdoing.

In an interview with VOA's Michael Lipin Sunday, Michael Hudson, a senior editor at ICIJ, said, "This is really the shadow side of our global economy - the money that flows around mostly unchecked, undetected. "You can't say in every single case that someone is doing something wrong, or that they're hiding improper practices. But it certainly raises lots of questions about transparency when you have politicians, and especially top leaders of countries, moving their holdings offshore and using offshore entities to obscure what they're doing."

The report lists the British Virgin Islands as the most popular offshore tax haven, with one out of every two companies in Mossack Fonseca's files being incorporated there. Panama, the Bahamas and the Seychelles are next on the list.

ICIJ's report also sheds new light on a 1983 British gold heist that has been called the "Crime of the Century."

Robbers stole nearly 7,000 gold bars from the Brink's-Mat warehouse at London's Heathrow Airport, along with cash and diamonds. But the gold was smelted and sold, and much of the money was never recovered.

The report said a Mossack Fonseca document shows that an official at a company the law firm created 16 months after the robbery was "apparently involved in the management of the money from the famous theft from Brink's-Mat in London. The company itself has not been used illegally, but it could be that the company invested money through the bank accounts and properties that was illegitimately sourced."

The law firm denied it helped conceal the proceeds of the London theft.

VOA's Michael Lipin contributed to this story

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Kremlin Slams 'Putinophobia' of Panama Papers

by Daniel Schearf April 04, 2016

Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman on Monday dismissed a report that alleges close friends of the president hid some $2 billion dollars in offshore accounts.

The report, dubbed the "Panama Papers," links hundreds of political leaders and celebrities to offshore companies set up through a Panama-based law firm called Mossack Fonseca.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists that the report does not have any relation to Putin. He said Putin appeared to be targeted because of Russia's coming elections and what he deemed 'Putinophobia.'

Peskov denied also that his own wife, former figure skating champion Tatiana Navka, had ever owned an offshore company as alleged in the report. He went on to allege that former employees of the U.S. State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, and other special services were behind the report and want to destabilize Russia.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, or ICIJ, the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung, and hundreds of other news organizations scoured through countless leaked documents to produce the report.

It also names Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, among other current leaders, as having set up or been connected to offshore accounts through Mossack Fonseca. The ICIJ says the apparent aim was to hide wealth and avoid paying taxes. The law firm denies wrongdoing.

A week ago, Peskov said the Kremlin was preparing for what he called an 'information attack' that would target Putin and people close to him.

Andrei Kolesnikov, an expert on Russian domestic politics at the Carnegie Moscow Center, says the statement in advance shows the Kremlin is nervous. "But, on the other hand," he says, "I don't think this will have a very strong impact on public opinion or the collective consciousness of Russians."

"There is a common view of Russian people, the majority of Russian people, that everybody is a thief at the top of this political system," says Kolesnikov. "And paradoxically, it means nobody is a thief; nobody is responsible for this corruption."

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No More Spending? Saudi Arabia Feels Dire Consequences of Oil Price Decline

Sputnik News

13:35 03.04.2016(updated 16:00 03.04.2016)

Saudi Arabia is currently experiencing the consequences of falling oil prices. The foreign exchange reserves of the Central Bank have further decreased, while the Saudi population has started to spend less money, German newspaper Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten (DWN) reported.

The consequences of the drop in oil prices are having an increasingly negative impact on the domestic economy of Saudi Arabia.

The amount of physical currency in circulation has thus significantly decreased for the first time since 2000, Bloomberg reported. Analysts interpret this as a sign that the pressure on the state budget and the country's economy arising from falling oil prices has gradually become noticeable among the country's residents.

Cash withdrawals fell in February by around eight percent, while money transactions also significantly slowed down in February, DWN reported.

An economic expert told Bloomberg that the data reflects weakened consumer confidence among Saudis. Despite a recovery in February and March, oil prices remain low and current incomes are under pressure this year, he argued, adding that a consumption recovery in 2016 is unlikely.

The foreign exchange reserves of the Saudi Arabian central bank also declined in February by around nine billion euros, with huge outflows bringing the state budget under pressure.

Last year, the country had achieved a budget deficit of around 15 percent of its gross domestic product

 Sputnik

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Syrian forces recapture Daesh-held town of al-Qaryatain west of Palmyra

Iran Press TV

Sun Apr 3, 2016 11:40AM

Syria's government forces have retaken control of the central town of al-Qaryatain, which is under the control of Daesh group, as part of Damascus's fight against Takfiri militants.

Syrian troops, backed by Russian airstrikes, forced their way into al-Qaryatain on Sunday from a number of directions.

Syrian state television said the army and its allies "fully restored security and stability to the town after killing the last remaining groups of Daesh terrorists" in the town.

According to SANA news agency, Syrian forces are clearing the area from Daesh-planted explosives.

Local sources said that Daesh militants fled from the town to nearby Khaneezir and Hafir regions.

Al-Qaryatain was the last major stronghold of Daesh in the east of Homs province. Syrian troops will reportedly continue their mop-up operations against Takfiri militants towards the city of Deir Ezzor, also located in eastern Homs, and Raqqa province, northeast of Homs.

Al-Qaryatain is located 100 km west of the ancient city of Palmyra that was recently liberated from Daesh control by government forces. Al-Qaryatain had been under the Takfiri group's control since last August.

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) also reported the entrance of Syrian forces into the town and said that fighting continued between both sides.

"Practically speaking, the town can be said to have fallen militarily, because the regime controls the surrounding hills," said Rami Abdurrahman, the group's director.

The group also noted that Russian and Syrian planes carried out 40 airstrikes near al-Qaryatain.

The Syrian soldiers have now been clearing bombs and landmines planted in Palmyra by Daesh. They have so far detonated 500 mines in Palmyra's urban areas while the number of those undiscovered remains unknown.

Syria has been gripped by militancy since 2011. SOHR says at least 270,000 people have since been killed in the war-ravaged country; however, some reports put the death toll at over 470,000.

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Syrian Army Kills 12 Al-Nusra Front Terrorists Near Aleppo - Russian MoD

Sputnik News

20:03 03.04.2016

The Syrian army has killed 12 militants from al-Nusra Front terrorist group during clashes in the Aleppo province, the Russian reconciliation center at the Hmeymim airbase said on Sunday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  On Saturday, the center stated that al-Nusra Front has gained control over groups opposing the Syrian government in several districts of the Aleppo province.

"After mortar shelling of government troops, terrorists from al-Nusra Front attempted to carry on yesterday's advance and capture the Mreqes settlement in the Aleppo province. Facing persistent resistance, the militants lost 12 people and retreated to previously held positions," the center said in a statement published on the Russian Defense Ministry's website.

Al-Nusra Front has been designated as a terrorist organization by many countries and the United Nations. It has not been included in the ceasefire deal between the Syrian government and opposition groups.

On February 22, Russia and the United States reached an agreement on a ceasefire in Syria, which took effect on February 27.

 Sputnik

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Syrian Army Takes Control Over Christian Town Al-Qaryatayn in Homs

Sputnik News

14:08 03.04.2016(updated 14:35 03.04.2016)

Syrian government forces have gained control over a Christian town in the province of Homs, Al-Qaryatayn. Meanwhile, the fighting is ongoing in the western suburbs of the town, a RIA Novosti correspondent reported Sunday.

A bomb squad has begun to work in the town, according to RIA Novosti. Militants have tried to mine roads and buildings in Al-Qaryatayn.

According to Syrian military, 80 percent of the town is controlled by government forces. Militants continue to retreat in off-road vehicles to the north side of the mountains. Syrian army is deploying military hardware to the town.

Earlier in the day, the Syrian army supported by popular defense groups started an offensive on the main stronghold of Daesh in the town of Al-Qaryatayn in Syria's Homs province.

Some of the terrorist armed groups tried to flee from the town to the nearby mountains.

The operation to liberate the Christian town of Al-Qaryatayn from Daesh militants began on Saturday morning. Covered by artillery fire, vanguard units of the army and its allies began an assault from the south, southeastern and northwestern directions, a RIA Novosti correspondent reported.

The Christian town was seized by Daesh terrorists in August 2015. Terrorists turned it into their main stronghold in southern Homs. From Al-Qaryatayn, militants moved reinforcements and ammunition to Palmyra to fight against government forces.

 Sputnik

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Western States 'Dishonest', Cannot Be Counted On - Assad

Sputnik News

12:32 03.04.2016(updated 12:33 03.04.2016)

Syrian President Bashar Assad thinks that the situation in Syria proved that the West was dishonest.

DAMASCUS (Sputnik)  Syrian President Bashar Assad told Sputnik that Syria's most important lesson the country learned was that the West was not honest.

"The most important lesson we have learned, but I suppose we knew it all along, is that the West is not honest. Western countries are dishonest. They are pursuing a policy far removed from the principles of international law and the United Nations. It is impossible to rely upon the West to solve any issue. The better friends you have, the quicker and with minimal losses a decision is reached. Therefore, every statesman should be able to choose friendly states that will stand by him during crises," Assad said.

The president said he did not wish any other country to experience what Syria had to go through and stressed that any manifestation of fanaticism should be avoided.

"We had to endure inhumane suffering. However, we live in a world where there is no international law or morality in politics at present. Anything can happen anywhere on our planet. But what I want to say, based on our experience in Syria, is that, first of all, any manifestation of fanaticism, either religious, political, or obsession with any idea  is destructive for society. It is necessary to avoid fanaticism when building societies. It is the duty of the state, as well as the responsibility of all the existing elements of society and every citizen's duty," Assad said.

He added that in a critical situation, any country should rely on the people living in it and any course of action to resolve a crisis should take into account people's customs and traditions.

"Another thing is, if this or any other crisis should happen in any country, the first thing any statesman should know is that the people are the country's defenders. And when choosing a plan of action to resolve the crisis it is necessary that it meets the customs and traditions of the nation, its history and its essential aspirations. The solution cannot come from overseas. Friends can come to you from abroad to help, as it has happened today: from Russia and Iran. However, if there is no internal will and good relations between the people and the state, it is impossible to find a solution," Assad said.

Syria has been torn by a civil war since 2011, as government forces have been fighting opposition groups and extremists operating in the country. The West has been vocal about wanting Assad to step down as the Syrian leader, a view not shared by Moscow.

As a result of the war, 13.5 million Syrians have been left in need of humanitarian assistance, according to UN figures. Over 6.5 million are internally displaced, while 4.8 million have fled the country among hostilities.

 Sputnik

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Syrian Forces Seize Town of Qaryatain From Islamic State

by VOA News April 03, 2016

Syria said Sunday its forces seized another town from Islamic State militants, Qaryatain, in the central part of the country, a week after retaking the historic city of Palmyra.

State media said the seizure of Qaryatain, with support of Russian airstrikes, gives the government a strategic victory, securing oil and gas routes between the Damascus area and oilfields in eastern Syria.

But the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors fighting in Syria from accounts inside the country, said the government claim was premature, even as it said Islamic State fighters "are on the verge of collapse."

The monitoring group said the jihadists still controlled the eastern and southeastern parts of Qaryatain, but that some of its fighters had started retreating to the nearby mountainous region.

Qaryatain was once the home to a sizable population of Christians, dozens of whom have been abducted by the extremists. Some were released, but others were forced to sign a pledge to pay a tax imposed on non-Muslims.

The advance on Qaryatain, held by the militants since late August, comes a week after Syria seized the ancient city of Palmyra, where Islamic State fighters destroyed centuries-old historic relics.

In Qaryatain, Islamic State fighters bulldozed the Saint Eliane Monastery.

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Syria's Al-Qaeda spokesman, 20 other terrorists killed in Idlib

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, April 4, IRNA -- The spokesman for Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, Al-Nusra Front, his son and 20 other terrorists were killed in air strikes Sunday in the northeast of the country.

'Abu Firas al-Suri, his son and at least 20 terrorists of Al-Nusra and Jund al-Aqsa and from Uzbekistan were killed in strikes on their positions in Idlib province,' Syrian Observatory for Human Rights chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

It was not immediately clear if the raids were carried out by Syrian government's warplanes or their Russian allies.

Abdel Rahman said Suri was meeting with other leading militants in Kafar Jales when the raids struck and that two other Al-Nusra and Jund al-Aqsa targets were also attacked.

A temporary ceasefire between government forces and rebels has largely held since February 27, but it does not cover Al-Nusra Front and the Daesh.

2050**2050

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US Considers Enhancing Deployment of Special Forces in Syria  Reports

Sputnik News

01:49 04.04.2016(updated 01:50 04.04.2016)

The White House is considering a plan that involves a significant increase in the number of US Special Operations forces deployed in Syria.

The proposal is part of the military options prepared for US President Barack Obama, Reuters reported, citing several officials of direct relevance to the initiative.

The officials refused to reveal concrete numbers on approval but claimed that the special operations contingent will be many times larger by contrast with the current level of 50 soldiers in Syria. A White House spokesperson declined to comment on the reports.

Officials noted that America is working on reinforcement now that Daesh terrorist group has suffered several major losses in Syria, including a retreat from the city of Palmyra and elimination of several of the group's top leaders that were killed in airstrikes.

In December 2015, the US declared that it was deploying special operations forces to Syria and Iraq to fight against Daesh after it claimed that only several dozen ground troops would be dispatched there.

On February 22, Russia and the United States reached an agreement on a ceasefire in Syria. The UNSC unanimously adopted Resolution 2268, endorsing the Russia-US agreement on the cessation of hostilities in Syria on February 26, shortly before the ceasefire came into force. The ceasefire took effect on February 27.

The cessation of hostilities does not apply to designated terrorist organizations operating in Syria, including Daesh and al-Nusra Front, a group affiliated with al-Qaeda.

Russia began its aerial anti-terror campaign in Syria on September 30, 2015, at the request of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

On March 14, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to start the withdrawal of the Russian contingent from Syria, as its assigned tasks had been completed.

 Sputnik

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Erdogan says offended by Obama's remarks on press freedom

Iran Press TV

Sun Apr 3, 2016 12:35PM

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says it is saddening that US President Barack Obama made comments in his "absence" about freedom of press in Turkey.

"I am saddened that these kinds of comments have been made in my absence," the Turkish president said in a press briefing in Istanbul on Sunday as he rounded off a trip to the United States.

"These issues did not come onto the agenda in our talks with Mr Obama," Erdogan said. "He did not talk to me about this kind of thing. In our previous telephone conversations we talked about other more useful things than press freedom."

There is enough press freedom in Turkey, Erdogan stated, arguing that even the publications which insult him or call him things like "thief" and "killer" are not shut down. "Those publications that make these insults still exist."

"If it was true that Turkey was a dictatorship, then how could such publications come out?" Erdogan asked.

"Such insults and threats are not permitted in the West," the Turkish president said. "Had Obama put these issues (about press freedom) on the agenda in the talks, then I would have told him that."

Obama said during a news conference at the end of a nuclear security summit in Washington on April 1 that the approach Turkish authorities have been taking toward the press could lead the country down a troubling path.

"There is no doubt that President Erdogan has been repeatedly elected through a democratic process, but I think the approach that they've been taking towards the press is one that could lead Turkey down a path that would be very troubling."

Obama also said he had openly spoken with Erdogan about "very troubling" developments in Turkey, especially in regard to freedom of the press, religion and democracy. "I have expressed this to him directly so it's no secret, that there are some trends within Turkey that I have been troubled with."

Still, Obama said that Turkey is a NATO ally and an important partner in fighting terrorism.

Many rights groups from across the globe have been calling on Western countries to press Turkey on the issue of human rights.

There have been reports of many people prosecuted in Turkey for insulting top authorities.

Activists say Erdogan has filed hundreds of court cases against critics, including many journalists, for insulting him since he took office in August 2014.

Two senior journalists from the Turkish opposition Cumhuriyet daily face trial for revealing Ankara's military support for the Takfiri militants in Syria.

Can Dundar, the editor-in-chief at Cumhuriyet newspaper, and the paper's Ankara representative, Erdem Gul, face charges of espionage, treason and revealing state secrets for publishing video footage purportedly showing trucks belonging to Turkey's National Intelligence Organization (MIT) ferrying weapons in January 2014 to Takfiri terror groups operating in Syria.

In an open letter to Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on March 24, dozens of prominent writers including Nobel laureates called on the administration to drop charges against the Cumhuriyet journalists. The PEN International letter expressed concern over the "increasing climate of fear and censorship and the stifling of critical voices in Turkey."

'Alliance of militant groups' blamed for anti-Erdogan protest

Elsewhere in his remarks, President Erdogan blamed a number of groups banned by Turkey for a series of recent protests in the United States which led to scuffles with his security guards.

Erdogan's security staff clashed with angry protesters on March 31 ahead of his speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

The Turkish president said he saw at the protest "representatives" of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) and the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA).

Ankara accuses Syrian Kurdish group Democratic Union Party, also known as the PYD, and its military wing the YPG of having links to the PKK militant group that has been fighting for an autonomous Kurdish region inside Turkey since the 1980s.

Turkey also blames ASALA of carrying out a string of deadly attacks in the 1970s and 1980s purportedly aimed at avenging the mass killing of Armenians during the Ottoman Empire.

Erdogan said the militant groups were all working in cahoots in the protests with allies of his arch enemy, the US-based exiled Turkish preacher Fethullah Gulen, who is believed to be wielding significant influence in the police and judiciary, as well as media and business circles.

Ankara accuses Gulen of running what it calls the Fethullahist Terror Organisation/Parallel State Structure (FeTO/PDY) and seeking to overthrow the legitimate Turkish authorities.

"The situation that took place ahead of the conference was really, really significant," Erdogan said. "I saw myself representatives from the Parallel State Structure who have fled our country side-by-side and right next to those from" the PKK, YPG and ASALA, he added. "This is the proof, this is the evidence."

Turkey has asked the US to extradite Gulen but Washington has shown little interest in doing so.

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UK jets and warship to bolster Baltic security

3 April 2016

RAF Typhoon and the Royal Navy warship HMS Iron Duke will deploy to the Baltic this month.

Royal Air Force Typhoon jets and the Royal Navy warship HMS Iron Duke will deploy to the Baltic this month as part of the UK's commitment to eastern European allies.

Four Typhoons will take the lead role of the Baltic Air Policing mission which aims to safeguard the safety of NATO partners and wider Europe.

Based at Amari air base in Estonia, the crews will operate in a Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) role.

As part of standing arrangements within NATO, members of the alliance without their own air policing assets are assisted by others which contribute on a four-month cycle.

The UK deployed Typhoon aircraft to Lithuania in spring 2014 and to Estonia between May and August 2015. They will operate alongside the Portuguese air force around the airspace of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

At sea, HMS Iron Duke is due to return to the Baltic region after participating in the bi-annual, multinational Exercise Joint Warrior off the coast of Scotland. The Type 23 frigate is half way through a six-month deployment to northern Europe as part of a multinational NATO task group where she has taken part in exercises and operations. She is available to NATO for a range of tasks including diplomatic visits to countries in the region.

Later this year Iron Duke is due to operate in the Baltic region with up to four other Royal Navy ships, including HMS Ocean and HMS Pembroke, in the maritime exercise Baltops 16.

Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said:

"British planes protecting Baltic skies alongside our warship patrols and troops exercising, show how serious we are about the security of our eastern European partners."

"With a defence budget that is increasing for the first time in six years, we can use our forces to keep Britain and our allies safe."

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Danish English

COMPANY ANNOUNCEMENT

No. 17/2016

Copenhagen, 4 April 2016

NOTICE CONVENING ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

OF SCANDINAVIAN TOBACCO GROUP A/S

In accordance with Article 7 of the Articles of Association, notice is hereby given of the annual general meeting of Scandinavian Tobacco Group A/S (the "Company") to be held on

Tuesday, 26 April 2016 at 4.30 p.m.

at Axelborg, Vesterbrogade 4A, DK-1620 Copenhagen V

Agenda

In accordance with Article 8.2 of the Articles of Association, the agenda of the meeting is as follows:

Report of the board of directors on the Company's activities during the past financial year



Adoption of the audited annual report



The audited annual report is available on www.st-group.com. A copy may also be requested by contacting the Company at investor@st-group or telephone +45 3955 6200.



Adoption of the remuneration of the board of directors and any board committees



The board of directors proposes to the general meeting that compensation for the board of directors for the financial year 2016 be adopted based on a base annual fee of DKK 400,000 to each member. Furthermore, under this proposal, the chairman will receive three times the base annual fee and the vice-chairman will receive 1.75 times the base annual fee. The chairman of the Audit Committee will receive (in addition to the base annual fee as board member) a fee corresponding to 75 percent of the base annual fee for members of the board of directors. Other members of the Audit Committee will receive (in addition to the base annual fee as board members) a fee corresponding to 37.5 percent of the base annual fee for members of the board of directors. The members of each of the Remuneration Committee and Nomination Committee will receive (in addition to the base annual fee as board members), a fee corresponding to 12.5 percent of the base annual fee for members of the board of directors. The chairman of each of the Remuneration Committee and Nomination Committee will receive (in addition to the base annual fee as board members) a fee corresponding to 25 percent of the base annual fee for members of the board of directors.



Appropriation of profit or loss as recorded in the adopted annual report



The board of directors proposes to the general meeting that for the financial year 2015 the Company pays a dividend of DKK 5.00 per share of DKK 1.





Election of members to the board of directors



In accordance with Article 11.1 of the Articles of Association, all members of the board of directors elected by the general meeting are up for election. The board of directors has received notice that Tommy Pedersen wishes to resign from the board of directors. The board of directors proposes that Nigel Northridge be elected as new member of the board of directors and that Jrgen Tandrup (chairman), Conny Karlsson (vice-chairman), Sren Bjerre-Nielsen, Dianne Neal Blixt, Marlene Forsell, Luc Missorten and Henning Kruse Petersen be re-elected as members of the board of directors. Information about the nominated candidates is enclosed to this notice and is also available at the Company's website (www.st-group.com). Election of auditor(s)



The board of directors proposes that PricewaterhouseCoopers Statsautoriseret Revisionspartnerskab be re-elected as auditor of the Company.



Any proposals by the board of directors and/or shareholders



The board of directors has not received any proposals from the shareholders.

VOTING REQUIREMENTS

Adoption by the general meeting of proposals set out in items 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 on the agenda requires a simple majority at the general meeting, see Article 10.2 of the Articles of Association.

REGISTRATION, ADMISSION AND PROXY

Registration date

In accordance with Article 9.4 of the Articles of Association, a shareholder's right to participate in the general meeting and the number of votes which the shareholder is entitled to cast is determined in accordance with the number of shares held by such shareholder on 19 April 2016 (the registration date). The shares held by each shareholder are determined at the registration date on the basis of the shareholdings registered in the share register and in accordance with any notices on shareholding received, but not yet registered, by the Company in the share register as of the registration date.

Deadline for notice of attendance

A shareholder or its proxy wishing to attend the general meeting must give notice thereof and order admission cards via the Company's website, www.st-group.com or via Computershare A/S, Kongevejen 418, DK-2840 Holte, telefax +45 4546 0998, e-mail gf@computershare.dk no later than 21 April 2016 at 11.59 pm.

Proxy and postal votes

If you are prevented from attending the general meeting, you may appoint a proxy to cast the votes carried by your shares. The proxy can be submitted directly via the Company's website, www.st-group.com or may be downloaded from the website and sent, duly signed and dated, to Computershare A/S, Kongevejen 418, DK-2840 Holte, telefax +45 4546 0998, e-mail gf@computershare.dk so that it is received no later than 21 April 2016 at 11.59 pm.

Shareholders may also vote by post. A form for voting by post can be printed from the Company's website (www.st-group.com) or be requested from Computershare A/S, Kongevejen 418, DK-2840 Holte, telefax +45 4546 0998, e-mail gf@computershare.dk. Signed and dated vote by post must be received by Computershare A/S Kongevejen 418, DK-2840 Holte, telefax +45 4546 0998, e-mail gf@computershare.dk no later than 25 April 2016 at 11.59 pm. Once a vote by post has been received by Computershare A/S, the vote cannot be revoked by the shareholder.

LANGUAGE

In accordance with Article 9.7 of the Articles of Association, the general meeting will be conducted in English. Shareholders may choose to speak in Danish or English.

SHARE CAPITAL AND VOTING RIGHTS

The Company's share capital is DKK 100,000,000, divided into 100,000,000 shares of DKK 1 each. Article 9.1 of the Articles of Association stipulates that each share of nominally DKK 1 shall carry one vote at the general meeting.

AGENDA ETC.

The complete, unabridged text of the documents to be submitted to the general meeting, including the audited annual report, as well as the agenda with the full text of all proposals to be submitted to the general meeting, the total number of shares and voting rights as at the date of the notice and the forms to be used for voting by proxy and by post are available at the Company's website, www.st-group.com.

RIGHT TO INQUIRE

Article 9.6 of the Articles of Association affords to the shareholders the right to ask questions in writing to the Company's management about matters of significance to the assessment of the annual report and the general position of the Company or the assessment of any matter to be resolved at the general meeting. At the general meeting, the management will, subject to applicable law and regulation, answer such questions provided they are received prior to 21 April 2016 at 11.59 pm.

Scandinavian Tobacco Group A/S



The Board of Directors

For further information, please contact:

For media inquiries:

Kaspar Bach Habersaat, Director of Group Communications, phone: +45 7220 7152

or kaspar.bach@st-group.com.

For investor inquiries:

Torben Sand, Head of Investor Relations, phone: +45 7220 7126 or torben.sand@st-group.com.

CANDIDATES FOR THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Jrgen Tandrup (chairman)*

Born 1947, Danish nationality. Chairman and a member of the Board of Directors since 2010. Chairman of the Nomination Committee and of the Remuneration Committee since these committees were established in January 2016. Held various management positions in Skandinavisk Tobakskompagni A/S 1975-1992, 1992-2006 Chief Executive Officer of Skandinavisk Tobakskompagni A/S and 2006-2010 chairman of Skandinavisk Tobakskompagni A/S. Currently chairman of the board of directors of Caf Invest A/S, Kurhotel Skodsborg A/S, Skodsborg Sundhedscenter A/S, Chr. Augustinus Fabrikker Aktieselskab, Jeudan A/S, Fritz Hansen A/S, Skandinavisk Holding A/S, Skandinavisk Holding II A/S and Tivoli A/S. Serves as a member of the board of directors of Skodsborg Sundpark A/S, Rungsted Sundpark A/S and The Augustinus Foundation and is executive officer of GFKJUS ApS. Mr Tandrup holds a Master of Science degree from Copenhagen Business School. Jrgen Tandrup has extensive general management experience and specific expertise in sale and marketing, fast-moving consumer goods businesses and the tobacco industry.



*Based on the Recommendations on Corporate Governance of the Danish Committee on Corporate Governance last issued on 6 May 2013 and amended in November 2014, Jrgen Tandrup is not independent due to his long affiliation with the Company as an executive.



Conny Karlsson (vice-chairman)



Born 1955, Swedish nationality. Vice-chairman and a member of the Board of Directors since October 2010. Member of the Nomination Committee and the Remuneration Committee since these committees were established in January 2016. Held various management positions 1978-1990 in Procter & Gamble and was Chief Executive Officer of Duni AB 1990-2000. Conny Karlsson is chairman of the board of directors of Swedish Match AB, Zeres Capital AB and The North Alliance AS. Serves as a member of the board of directors of YA Holding AB and Malte Manson Holding AB and is an operating partner in Capman Buyout. Conny Karlsson holds a Bachelor's degree in Business from Stockholm School of Economics. Conny Karlsson has extensive experience in the management of international businesses as well as solid experience in sales and marketing and fast-moving consumer goods businesses.



Sren Bjerre-Nielsen



Born 1952, Danish nationality. Joined the Board of Directors in February 2016, chairman of the Audit Committee. Mr Bjerre-Nielsen also currently serves as chairman of the board of directors of Danmarks Nationalbank, MT Hjgaard A/S, Hjgaard Holding A/S, Hjgaard Industri A/S, VKR Holding A/S, and Velux A/S. Mr Bjerre-Nielsen 1995-2011 served as an Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer of Danisco A/S (now Dupont Nutrition Biosciences ApS). Sren Bjerre-Nielsen was partner at Deloitte State Authorised Public Accountants from 1981 until 1995 and also Managing Director at Deloitte 1986-1995. Mr Bjerre-Nielsen is a State-Authorised Public Accountant and holds a Master's degree in Economics and Business Administration from Copenhagen Business School. Mr Bjerre-Nielsens holds significant experience in general and international management, economic and financial management, risk management, strategic business development and listed companies.

Dianne Neal Blixt

Born 1959, United States nationality. Joined the Board of Directors in February 2016 and is a member of the Audit Committee. Held various positions from 1988 until 2007 in Reynolds American and its subsidiaries. From 2003 to 2004, Dianne Blixt served as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings, Inc. From 2004 until her retirement in 2007, Dianne Blixt was Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Reynolds American, Inc. Ms Blixt currently serves as a member of the board of directors of Ameriprise Financial Services, Inc. and as the chairperson for the board of trustees of Reynolda House Museum of American Art and also currently serves as a member of the board of managers of NatureWorks Organics LLC. Ms Blixt has served as a member of the board of directors of Lorillard, Inc. in which company she also served as a member of the audit committee and as chairperson of the compensation committee. Dianne Blixt holds a Master's degree in Business Administration and Finance from University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Ms Blixt has significant experience in business analysis and financial management and reporting and holds considerable insight into the US tobacco industry.



Marlene Forsell

Born 1976, Swedish nationality. Has been a member of the Board of Directors and the Audit Committee since June 2014. Joined Swedish Match AB in 2004 from Ernst & Young and has since 2013 served as Chief Financial Officer of Swedish Match. Marlene Forsell is currently a member of the board of directors of Arnold Andre GmbH & Co. KG and various companies within the Swedish Match AB group of companies. Marlene Forsell holds a Master of Science degree in Business and Economics from Stockholm School of Economics and has extensive experience in and insight into financial issues and reporting processes in listed companies.

Luc Missorten



Born 1955, Belgian nationality. Joined the Board of Directors in February 2016. Luc Missorten currently serves as chairman of the board of directors of Ontex Group NV and as a member of the board of directors of Barco NV, Recitel NV/SA, GIMV NV and Corelio NV. Mr Missorten served from 2007 until 2014 as Chief Executive Officer of Corelio NV. Before joining Corelio NV, he was Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer from 1995 until 2003 at Inbev S.A. and was Group Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President for Finance at UCB S.A. 2004-2007. Mr Missorten holds a law degree from the Catholic University of Leuven, a Master of Laws from the University of California, Berkeley and a Certificate of Advanced European Studies from the College of Europe, Bruges. Luc Missorten has through his various positions gained substantial experience in particular in the financial management of international corporations.

Nigel Northridge

Born 1956, Irish nationality. Was appointed chairman of Hogg Robinson Group PLC on 1 April 2016, and is also Senior Independent Director of Inchcape PLC. Following six years as chairman of Debenhams PLC, Nigel Northridge will step down from that board on 7 April 2016. Previously, Nigel Northridge has acted as chairman of Paddy Power PLC and has been a non-executive director of Aer Lingus PLC, Aggreko PLC and Thomas Cooke Group PLC. His executive career was with Gallaher Tobacco Ltd. (subsequently Gallaher Group PLC) where he was employed for over 30 years. He held a number of sales, marketing and then general management positions both in the UK and overseas, before being appointed to the board of directors in 1993 and as Group Chief Executive Officer in 2000. When Gallaher was sold to Japan Tobacco Inc. in 2007 Nigel Northridge progressed his non-executive career. Nigel Northridge has extensive experience as an executive director in the international tobacco industry, as a Chief Executive Officer of a publicly listed company and more recently as a non-executive director in various publicly listed companies.

Henning Kruse Petersen



Born 1947, Danish nationality. Has been a member of the Board of Directors since October 2010. Member of the Nomination Committee and the Remuneration Committee since January 2016. Henning Kruse Petersen currently also serves as chairman of the board of directors of Erhvervsinvest Management A/S, Den Danske Forskningsfond, Scandinavian Private Equity A/S, Midgard Denmark K/S, C.W. Obel A/S and Santa Fe Group A/S. Until 26 April 2016 Mr Kruse Petersen further serves as chairman of the board of directors of Sund og Blt Holding A/S, A/S Storebltsforbindelsen, A/S Femern Landanlg, Femern Blt A/S, A/S resundsforbindelsen and resundsbro Konsortiet I/S. Henning Kruse Petersen is currently the deputy chairman of the board of directors of Fritz Hansen A/S, Skandinavisk Holding A/S and Skandinavisk Holding II A/S. Furthermore, Mr Kruse Petersen currently serves as a member of the board of directors of Proactive A/S, Midgard Group Inc., Asgard Ltd., Dekka Holdings Ltd. and Det stasiatiske Kompagnis Almennyttige Fond. Mr Kruse Petersen currently also serves as Chief Executive Officer of 2KJ A/S. He has previously served in executive officer positions in Unibank (now Nordea), resundskorsortiet and A/S resundsforbindelsen, and from 1995 until 2007 Henning Kruse Petersen was Group Managing Director of Nykredit responsible for corporate lending, international activities and chairman of the Group Credit Committee. He holds a Master's degree in Law from Aarhus University. Henning Kruse Petersen has extensive management experience as CEO and board member of large private, public and state-owned entities and has considerable experience in economics and financing matters.
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TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - April 4, 2016) - Denison Mines Corp. ("Denison" or the "Company") (TSX:DML)(NYSE MKT:DNN) is pleased to announce the results of the Preliminary Economic Assessment ("PEA") on its 60% owned Wheeler River Project, including a base case pre-tax Internal Rate of Return ("IRR") of 20.4% at current uranium prices, based on today's long term contract price for uranium, and Denison's share of estimated initial capital expenditures ("CAPEX") of CAD$336M (CAD$560M on 100% ownership basis).

The PEA considers the potential economic merit of co-developing the high-grade Gryphon and Phoenix deposits as a single underground mining operation, and assumes processing at Denison's 22.5% owned McClean Lake mill, located in the infrastructure rich eastern portion of the Athabasca Basin.

Highlights of the PEA:

Current uranium price: Base case scenario uses today's long term contract price for uranium of US$44 per pound of U 3 O 8 , leading to a pre-tax IRR of 20.4% and a pre-tax Net Present Value ("NPV") of CAD$513M (Denison's share CAD$308M);

O , leading to a pre-tax IRR of 20.4% and a pre-tax Net Present Value ("NPV") of CAD$513M (Denison's share CAD$308M); Exposure to rising uranium price: Strong profitability at today's price offers lower risk exposure to rising prices, as evidenced by a US$62.60 per pound U 3 O 8 production case scenario resulting in a pre-tax IRR of 34.1% and pre-tax NPV of CAD$1,420M (Denison's share CAD$852M);

O production case scenario resulting in a pre-tax IRR of 34.1% and pre-tax NPV of CAD$1,420M (Denison's share CAD$852M); Strategic development plan: Designed to minimize risk, generate higher up-front margins, and reduce initial capital funding requirements - by development of the conventionally mined basement hosted Gryphon deposit first, followed by the unconformity hosted Phoenix deposit;

Existing infrastructure & reduced risk: Decreased project risk, capex, and schedule by utilizing existing infrastructure in the eastern Athabasca Basin (including excess milling capacity, provincial highways, and the provincial power grid), justifying an 8% discount rate, and leading to an initial project CAPEX of CAD$560M (Denison's share CAD$336M);

Cash operating costs: The Gryphon deposit is expected to produce 40.7 million pounds U 3 O 8 , over a seven year mine life, at a cash operating cost of USD$14.28 per pound U 3 O 8 . The Phoenix deposit is expected to produce 64.0 million pounds U 3 O 8 , over a nine year mine life, at a cash operating cost of USD$22.15 per pound U 3 O 8 ;

O , over a seven year mine life, at a cash operating cost of USD$14.28 per pound U O . The Phoenix deposit is expected to produce 64.0 million pounds U O , over a nine year mine life, at a cash operating cost of USD$22.15 per pound U O ; Resource upside: Ability to incorporate potential resource growth at the Gryphon deposit, as demonstrated by the high-grade intersections previously reported from the winter 2016 exploration program (not included in the PEA), including drill holes WR-641, with 3.9% eU 3 O 8 , over 9.2 metres, and WR-633D1, with 1.7% eU 3 O 8 over 7.6 metres including 6.3% eU 3 O 8 over 1.7 metres (see Denison news release dated March 10, 2016).

David Cates, President and CEO of Denison commented "We are very pleased with the positive results of the PEA - particularly being able to illustrate that the project has potential to generate robust economics based on today's uranium price and with our current resource base. Thanks to the existing infrastructure in the eastern Athabasca Basin, our ownership interest in the McClean Lake mill, and a project designed to minimize risk and upfront capex, the Wheeler River project has the potential to emerge as one of the next producing assets in the region."

Speaking to the next steps on the project, Mr. Cates continued, "With the opportunity for resource growth at Gryphon and higher uranium prices on the horizon, the PEA provides Denison with a solid foundation to work from and supports our decision to continue to explore on the property and advance the project immediately into a Pre-Feasibility Study."

Wheeler River PEA Summary

The Wheeler River project, host to both the Phoenix and Gryphon deposits, is a joint venture between Denison (60%), Cameco Corp. (30%), and JCU (Canada) Exploration Company Limited (10%). In September 2015, Denison commissioned SRK Consulting (Canada) Inc. and Amec Foster Wheeler Americas Limited to prepare a PEA for the project.

The PEA is based on the exploration drilling completed on the property through to the end of the summer 2015 exploration program and the mineral resources estimated for the Wheeler River project prepared by Roscoe Postle Associates Inc. ("RPA"), with an effective date of September 25, 2015, as disclosed in the report titled "Technical Report on a Mineral Resource Estimate for the Wheeler River Property, Eastern Athabasca Basin, Northern Saskatchewan, Canada", dated November 25, 2015, which is available on Denison's website (www.denisonmines.com), and under Denison's profile on SEDAR (www.sedar.com) or EDGAR (www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml).

The PEA contemplates the underground development of the Gryphon deposit, followed by the Phoenix deposit, over a 16 year mine life, producing a total of 104.8 million pounds U 3 O 8 and processing of the mine production at the Company's 22.5% owned McClean Lake mill (Areva Resources Canada Inc. 70%, OURD (Canada) Co. Ltd. 7.5%). Pre-production activities are estimated to begin in 2021 with first production from the Gryphon deposit in 2025. The PEA considers two distinct pricing scenarios as a result of the long lead time to production and the current uranium market: (1) a Base Case scenario using the long term contract price as quoted by the Ux Consulting Company, LLC ("UxC") as of March 28, 2016, and (2) a Production Case scenario using the mid-case projected long-term price for the year 2026 per UxC's Uranium Market Outlook for Q1'2016. Key assumptions and financial results of the PEA are summarized in Table 1.

Table 1: Summary of PEA Assumptions & Financial Highlights

Assumption / Financial Results Base

Case Production

Case Uranium Price per lb U 3 O 8 US$44.00 US$62.60 Exchange Rate (CAD:USD) 1.35 1.35 Net Sask. Royalties(1) 7.25% 7.25% Discount Rate 8.00% 8.00% Initial Capital Costs CAD$560M Sustaining Capital Costs CAD$543M Average Operating Cost per lb U 3 O 8 - CAD CAD$25.67 Average Operating Cost per lb U 3 O 8 - USD USD$19.01 Pre-Tax IRR(2) 20.4% 34.1% Pre-Tax NPV(2) @ 100% CAD$513M CAD$1,420M Payback Period(3) ~3 years ~18 months

(1) Net Sask. royalties are included in the Pre-Tax NPV and consist of the following: (a) resource surcharge (3%), (b) basic uranium royalty (5%) and offset by (c) resource credit of (0.75%). The profit from operations is subject to an additional uranium profit royalty, which is treated as an income tax. (2) NPV and IRR are calculated to the start of pre-production activities in 2021. (3) Payback period is stated as number of years to pay-back from the start of commercial production.

The PEA is preliminary in nature and includes inferred mineral resources that are considered too speculative geologically to have the economic considerations applied to them to be categorized as mineral reserves, and there is no certainty that the preliminary economic assessment will be realized. Mineral resources are not mineral reserves and do not have demonstrated economic viability. Additional definition drilling is required to improve the confidence in the existing mineral resources estimated for the Gryphon deposit, and is expected to be completed as the Company advances the project towards the completion of a Pre-Feasibility study ("PFS").

Geology, Mineral Resources and Mining Methods

The Gryphon deposit consists of a set of parallel, stacked, elongate lenses that are broadly conformable with the basement geology, and associated with a significant fault zone that separates a thin unit of quartzite (quartz-pegmatite) from an overlying graphitic pelite (upper graphite). The lenses dip moderately to the southeast and plunge moderately to the northeast. The deposit is approximately 450 metres long in the plunge direction and 80 metres wide across the plunge. The deposit is centered at 720 metres below surface and approximately 220 metres below the sub-Athabasca unconformity. A total of 55 drill holes have delineated the Gryphon deposit, which is estimated to contain inferred mineral resources of 834,000 tonnes at a grade of 2.31% U 3 O 8 for a total of 43.0 million pounds U 3 O 8 .

The more moderate grades and style of mineralization at the Gryphon deposit are expected to allow for conventional underground mining methods. For the PEA, a longitudinal longhole mining method has been assumed. Based on an assessment of available geotechnical data and in comparison to other mining operations, this method is expected to be suitable for the safe and cost efficient extraction of uranium mineralization from the Gryphon deposit.

Approximately three kilometres to the southeast of Gryphon is the Phoenix deposit, one of the highest grade undeveloped deposits in the world. Phoenix is located at the unconformity between the Athabasca Basin sandstone and basement rocks, approximately 400 metres below surface. Mineralization has been defined over a strike length of approximately one kilometer and is coincident with a significant steeply dipping fault zone. A total of 196 drill holes have delineated two distinct zones (A and B) of high grade uranium mineralization lying horizontally at the unconformity. The Phoenix deposit is estimated to contain indicated mineral resources of 166,400 tonnes, at a grade of 19.14% U 3 O 8 for a total of 70.2 million pounds U 3 O 8 and inferred mineral resources of 8,600 tonnes at a grade of 5.80% U 3 O 8 for a total of 1.1 million pounds U 3 O 8 .

The higher grade Phoenix deposit is expected to require the use of remote mining methods to safely extract the uranium mineralization. In addition, the proximity to the sub-Athabasca unconformity and the associated complexities with the water saturated Athabasca sandstone above the deposit, is expected to require ground freezing to prevent uncontrolled water inflows. The jet boring mining method, used at Cameco's Cigar Lake mine, has been successful in extracting uranium ore hosted in these conditions and depths. As a result, the jet boring mining method has been assumed as the preferred mining method for the Phoenix deposit. The jet boring method produces a uranium bearing slurry as mine production, which is transported from underground to surface by pumping.

Strategic Development Plan

Although the Phoenix deposit is much higher grade, the Gryphon deposit is expected to be the more profitable deposit due to lower capital and operating costs. Located well below the unconformity and in stronger ground conditions allows for conventional development and mining practices. Conversely, at Phoenix the unconformity style mineralization requires more sophisticated lateral development and ground freezing, as well as remote extraction methods necessitated by the high uranium grades and associated radiation levels. The mining of Phoenix also carries increased technical risk associated with mining at the unconformity, which may lead to delays in production. Sequencing Phoenix production after Gryphon also carries additional advantages, including:

Allows time to develop a three kilometer underground connection drift, rather than a second production shaft and headframe, further reducing and deferring capital costs;

Allows time to complete freezing from underground at Phoenix rather than from surface, leading to a significant reduction in the schedule and capital costs associated with freezing; and

Permits additional time for engineering on the Phoenix mining method to minimize schedule risk.

As a result of the strategic approach, the main facilities for the project will be located in proximity to the Gryphon deposit, eliminating the need for secondary facilities at the Phoenix site. The planned underground layout of the Wheeler River mine is illustrated in Figure 1. The planned surface infrastructure is illustrated in Figure 2.

Mineral Processing & Production Plan

The preliminary metallurgical test results from both Gryphon and Phoenix composite samples indicated the mineralization is amenable to processing at any of the existing uranium mills in the eastern Athabasca Basin. Overall, uranium process recovery has been estimated at 97.0% for Gryphon, and 98.1% for Phoenix. Due to the excess processing capacity expected at Denison's 22.5% owned McClean Lake mill, by the end of 2016, the PEA assumes mineral processing will be completed at McClean Lake.

The production plan for the Gryphon and Phoenix deposits aligns well with the current production plan for the McClean Lake mill. The mill is currently in the final stages of an upgrade that is expected to increase the facility's annual production capacity to up to 24 million pounds U 3 O 8 , which will enable processing of up to 18 million pounds U 3 O 8 per year from the Cigar Lake mine, under a toll milling agreement, and up to 6 million pounds U 3 O 8 from other mine feeds. Based on the current schedule, Cigar Lake Phase 1 ore feed is expected to peak at 18 million pounds U 3 O 8 and decreases towards the end of Phase 1 in the late 2020s. Co-milling of Wheeler River and Cigar Lake ore feeds are expected to utilize the full capacity of the mill and improve processing economics for both feed sources. As such the PEA has aligned mine production with predicted mill capacity at the following rates:

Gryphon deposit - 7 year mine life, at 6.0 Mlbs U 3 O 8 per year (399 t/d)

O per year (399 t/d) Phoenix deposit - 9 year mine life, at 7.0 Mlbs U 3 O 8 per year (73 t/d)

In order to co-mill the full tonnage of the Gryphon deposit feed with the Cigar Lake Phase 1 feed, the PEA has incorporated the costs of an expansion to the #1 leaching circuit at the McClean Lake mill, as well as increasing the capacities of the solid/liquid separation circuits and installation of piping to transfer slurry to the #1 leach circuit from the slurry load-out facilities. Overall the expected modifications to the mill are minor in nature and in areas that are not used for Cigar Lake processing.

Reduced Risk Profile

The eastern Athabasca basin is host to several existing and historic uranium mining operations. As a result, the area has amassed considerable regional infrastructure, which plays a key role in the development of new projects. The importance of this infrastructure cannot be understated - particularly from a risk standpoint, when considering capital costs and project scheduling. Key regional infrastructure includes the following:

Existing milling facility with excess capacity: Denison's 22.5% owned McClean Lake Mill, which is located approximately 160 kilometres to the northeast of the Wheeler River property is currently in operation and processing 100% of the ore produced by the Cigar Lake mine under a toll milling agreement. The McClean Lake mill was built in 1997 and is in the process of being upgraded, at the expense of the Cigar Lake joint venture, to an annual capacity of up to 24 million pounds U 3 O 8 . With Cigar Lake expected to produce 18 million pounds U 3 O 8 per year, starting in 2017, the mill is expected to have excess capacity of up to 6 million pounds U 3 O 8 per year. In addition, the McClean Lake operation also includes a CNSC approved and permitted tailings facility.

O . With Cigar Lake expected to produce 18 million pounds U O per year, starting in 2017, the mill is expected to have excess capacity of up to 6 million pounds U O per year. In addition, the McClean Lake operation also includes a CNSC approved and permitted tailings facility. Existing provincial highways and provincial power grid: Existing mining and milling facilities are currently accessed by all-weather provincial highways and source their power from the provincial power grid. This existing infrastructure is located on the eastern edge of the Wheeler River property within six kilometres of the proposed Gryphon mine facilities.

Established mining jurisdiction and social infrastructure: Saskatchewan was ranked as the second most attractive jurisdiction for mining investment globally in 2015 by the Fraser Institute's Annual Survey of Mining Companies, and current operations in the eastern Athabasca Basin have supported the development of community infrastructure, including airports, vendors for equipment and supplies, as well as skilled labour and contractors with expertise in the uranium mining sector.

Taken together with the Company's strategic development plan designed to reduce project risk, the Wheeler River project is supported by several elements that present a reduced risk profile. This has allowed for the use of an 8% discount rate in the Company's base case and production case NPV estimates. Figure 3 illustrates the key existing infrastructure in the eastern Athabasca Basin and its location in proximity to the Wheeler River property.

Capital and Operating Costs

Capital costs include all costs associated with surface construction and underground development up to the point of contact with mineralization of the Wheeler River site as well as the required modifications to the McClean Lake mill. Capital costs include initial and sustaining costs and are expressed in 2015 Canadian dollars to a bottom line accuracy of +/- 40%. Initial capital costs are based on the five-year period from January 1, 2021 through to December 31, 2025, and sustaining capital costs are for the period from January 1, 2026 through to decommissioning in 2045. Total capital costs are estimated at CAD$1,103 million, which includes a contingency of 26% as shown in Table 2.

Table 2: Wheeler River Project Capital Cost Estimate

Capital Costs (CAD$ millions) Initial Sustaining Total Surface Infrastructure $166 $7 $174 Mine $220 $334 $554 Mineral Processing $19 $60 $79 Owners Costs $25 $0 $25 Decommissioning $0 $40 $40 Subtotal $429 $442 $871 Contingency $131 $101 $232 Total Capital $560 $543 $1,103

Operating costs have been estimated separately for each deposit, based on the differences in geology and mining methods selected. For the Gryphon and Phoenix deposits, operating costs are estimated at CAD$19.28 per pound U 3 O 8 and CAD$29.90 per pound U 3 O 8 , respectively. The combined average operating cost of both deposits is estimated to be CAD$25.67 or US $19.01 per pound U 3 O 8 . Table 3 shows the projected operating cost estimates for each deposit.

Table 3: Wheeler River Project Operating Cost Estimate

Operating Costs (CAD$/lb U 3 O 8 ) Gryphon Phoenix Mining $3.45 $17.45 Surface Transportation $1.63 $0.85 Mineral Processing (including toll mill fees) $10.03 $8.03 General & Administration $4.17 $3.57 Total (CAD $/lb U 3 O 8 ) $19.28 $29.90 Total (USD $/lb U 3 O 8 ) $14.28 $22.15

Future Outlook

Denison intends to proceed with the commencement of a PFS for the Wheeler River project and associated Environmental Assessment studies, as part of the budget approved by the Wheeler River Joint Venture and consistent with the Company's financial plan for 2016. Denison expects the PFS will take 12-18 months and will address the following key items:

The potential growth in mineral resources at or in proximity to the Gryphon deposit and an increase in the level of confidence associated with the mineral resources estimated for the Gryphon deposit;

The potential to optimize the project for increased rates of production based on a combination of resource growth and increased milling capacity through capital investment or other opportunities;

The result of a formal review and evaluation of toll milling and other processing options with applicable joint venture partners;

The detailed evaluation of key engineering designs including shaft development, material movement, and mining methods; and

The inclusion of environmental baseline information and radiological assessments to ensure safe and environmentally responsible development plans.

Indicative Post-Tax Results for Denison

The PEA is prepared on a pre-tax basis, as each of the partners to the Wheeler River Joint Venture have different circumstances from a taxation standpoint. Denison has completed an indicative post-tax assessment based on its 60% ownership stake in the Wheeler River project, and the recovered toll mill fees from its 22.5% interest in the McClean Lake Joint Venture. Based on the Company's current and expected tax balances, as well as the prevailing federal and provincial taxation regulations, the results are summarized in Table 4.

Table 4: Summary of Denison's Post-Tax Results (60% ownership basis)

Assumptions/ Financial Results Base

Case Production

Case Uranium Price per lb U 3 O 8 US$44.00 US$62.60 Exchange Rate (CAD:USD) 1.35 1.35 Discount Rate 8% 8% Initial Capital Costs CAD$336M Sustaining Capital Costs CAD$325M Denison Post-Tax IRR(1) 17.8% 29.2% Denison Post-Tax NPV(1) CAD$206M CAD$548M Payback Period(2) ~3 years ~18 months

(1) NPV and IRR are calculated to the start of pre-production activities in 2021. (2) Payback period is stated as number of years to pay-back from the start of commercial production.

The PEA is preliminary in nature and includes inferred mineral resources that are considered too speculative geologically to have the economic considerations applied to them to be categorized as mineral reserves, and there is no certainty that the preliminary economic assessment will be realized. Mineral resources are not mineral reserves and do not have demonstrated economic viability.

Qualified Person

The disclosure regarding the metallurgical test results contained in this news release was prepared and approved by Peter Longo, P. Eng, MBA, PMP, Denison's Vice-President, Project Development, who is a Qualified Person in accordance with the requirements of NI 43-101.

The disclosure of a scientific or technical nature regarding the Phoenix and Gryphon deposits contained in this news release was prepared by Dale Verran, MSc, Pr.Sci.Nat., Denison's Vice President, Exploration, who is a Qualified Person in accordance with the requirements of NI 43-101. For a description of the data verification, assay procedures and the quality assurance program and quality control measures applied by Denison, please see Denison's Annual Information Form dated March 24, 2016 filed under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

About Denison

Denison is a uranium exploration and development company with interests focused in the Athabasca Basin region of northern Saskatchewan. Including its 60% owned Wheeler River project, which hosts the high grade Phoenix and Gryphon uranium deposits, Denison's exploration portfolio consists of numerous projects covering over 390,000 hectares in the eastern Athabasca Basin. Denison's interests in Saskatchewan also include a 22.5% ownership interest in the McClean Lake joint venture, which includes several uranium deposits and the McClean Lake uranium mill, which is currently processing ore from the Cigar Lake mine under a toll milling agreement, plus a 25.17% interest in the Midwest deposit and a 61.55% interest in the J Zone deposit on the Waterbury Lake property. Both the Midwest and J Zone deposits are located within 20 kilometres of the McClean Lake mill. Internationally, Denison owns 100% of the Mutanga project in Zambia, 100% of the uranium/copper/silver Falea project in Mali, and a 90% interest in the Dome project in Namibia. Denison has recently entered into an agreement with GoviEx Uranium Inc. (GXU: CSE) to sell its African interests, with an expected closing date in May, 2016.

Denison is also engaged in mine decommissioning and environmental services through its Denison Environmental Services division and is the manager of Uranium Participation Corp., a publicly traded company which invests in uranium oxide and uranium hexafluoride.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Certain information contained in this press release constitutes "forward-looking information", within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and similar Canadian legislation concerning the business, operations and financial performance and condition of Denison.

Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", or "believes", or the negatives and / or variations of such words and phrases, or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur", "be achieved" or "has the potential to". In particular, this press release contains forward-looking information pertaining to the following: the results of, and estimates, assumptions and projections provided in, the PEA, including future market prices, costs and capital expenditures, the processing ability and potential for future excess capacity at the McLean Lake mill, and available infrastructure; the estimates of Denison's mineral resources; exploration, development and expansion plans and objectives and anticipated results of current activities; the commencement and completion of a PFS; and expectations regarding ongoing joint ventures and Denison's share of the same. Statements relating to "mineral resources" are deemed to be forward-looking information, as they involve the implied assessment, based on certain estimates and assumptions that the mineral resources described can be profitably produced in the future.

Forward looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management as of the date such statements are made, and they are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of Denison to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Denison believes that the expectations reflected in this forward-looking information are reasonable but there can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and may differ materially from those anticipated in this forward looking information. For a discussion in respect of risks and other factors that could influence forward-looking events, please refer to the "Risk Factors" in Denison's Annual Information Form dated March 24, 2016 available under its profile at www.sedar.com and its Form 40-F available at www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml. These factors are not, and should not be construed as being exhaustive.

Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The forward-looking information contained in this press release is expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. Any forward-looking information and the assumptions made with respect thereto speaks only as of the date of this press release. Denison does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking information after the date of this press release to conform such information to actual results or to changes in its expectations except as otherwise required by applicable legislation.

Cautionary Note to United States Investors Concerning Estimates of Measured, Indicated and Inferred Mineral Resources: This press release may use the terms "measured", "indicated" and "inferred" mineral resources. United States investors are advised that while such terms are recognized and required by Canadian regulations, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission does not recognize them. "Inferred mineral resources" have a great amount of uncertainty as to their existence, and as to their economic and legal feasibility. It cannot be assumed that all or any part of an inferred mineral resource will ever be upgraded to a higher category. Under Canadian rules, estimates of inferred mineral resources may not form the basis of feasibility or other economic studies. United States investors are cautioned not to assume that all or any part of measured or indicated mineral resources will ever be converted into mineral reserves. United States investors are also cautioned not to assume that all or any part of an inferred mineral resource exists, or is economically or legally mineable.

Figures 1 to 3 are available at the following address: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/1049304_Figures.pdf
VANCOUVER, April 4, 2016 /CNW/ - NexGen Energy Ltd. ("NexGen" or the "Company") (TSXV:NXE, OTCQX:NXGEF) is pleased to announce that drilling in 2016 will continue uninterrupted from the end of the winter through to the commencement of summer. Additionally, the Company has been approved and issued a permit to construct an all-season access road to our project located on our 100% owned Rook I Property, Athabasca Basin, Saskatchewan.

As a result of the winter 2016 program success, the Company has decided to continue its drill program uninterrupted through the shoulder season of mid-April to early-June before the summer 2016 program is scheduled to begin. This shoulder season program will comprise 7,500 m drilled with three diamond drill rigs, that will all be utilizing TECH directional drilling. This program will focus on the 180 m southwest extension of Arrow (see News Releases dated March 15 and 30, 2016) and the infilling the A2 High Grade Domain (which includes the higher grade A2 sub-zone). The budget for this program is $3 million.

Additionally, NexGen is pleased to announce it has been approved and issued a permit by the Saskatchewan Ministry of Environment to construct an all-season access road from Provincial Highway 955 to the Rook I Project, which will span approximately 13 km that will primarily utilize existing trails. This road will support the rapidly developing Arrow Deposit and further optimize exploration and development at the Rook I property, in a highly capital efficient manner. Construction of this access road will commence shortly and scheduled to take approximately two months to complete with a budget of $1.25 million.

NexGen has $34 million cash on hand and is well funded for all planned drilling and development programs well into 2017.

Garrett Ainsworth, Vice-President, Exploration and Development, commented: "The winter 2016 drill program has been exceptionally successful. We are very pleased to continue drilling in between the winter and summer 2016 programs. The ability to drill through Spring break-up at the Arrow Deposit is attributed to its land based location with overburden that has good drainage."

Leigh Curyer, Chief Executive Officer commented: "The decision to continue drilling uninterrupted is in direct response to the high level of success we have had this winter program with the infill of the A2 High Grade Domain and the newly discovered southwest extension at Arrow. The decision to construct the all weather road to the Project reflects our commitment to exceptionally high standards of operations incorporating safety as our priority. We would like to thank the Saskatchewan Ministry of Environment for their diligent work in processing our permit application for our camp access road as we progress Arrow along its development path."

The technical information in this news release has been approved by Garrett Ainsworth, P.Geo., Vice President  Exploration & Development, a qualified person for the purposes of National Instrument 43- 101  Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects. Mr. Ainsworth reviewed the data disclosed in this news release, including the sampling, analytical and test data underlying the information contained in this news release.

The mineral resource at the Arrow Deposit was completed by RPA Inc. and has an effective date of January 14, 2016. The mineral resource is reported at a cut-off grade of 0.25% U3O8. The cut-off is based on a long-term uranium price of USD$65/lb U3O8. The mineral resource is classified into the inferred category based on the CIM Definition Standards. For details regarding the geology and mineralization of the Arrow Deposit, the drilling, sampling and analytical procedures followed and the estimation methodology used in the preparation of the mineral resources, please refer to the Company's Amended and Restated News Release dated March 3, 2016, which is available under the Company's profile on the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com.

About NexGen

NexGen is a British Columbia corporation with a focus on the acquisition, exploration and development of Canadian uranium projects. NexGen has a highly experienced team of uranium industry professionals with a successful track record in the discovery of uranium deposits and in developing projects through discovery to production.

NexGen owns a portfolio of highly prospective uranium exploration assets in the Athabasca Basin, Saskatchewan, Canada, including a 100% interest in Rook I, location of the Arrow Discovery in February 2014. The Arrow Deposit's maiden Inferred mineral resource estimate is 201.9 M lbs U 3 O 8 contained in 3.48 M tonnes grading 2.63% U 3 O 8 . Rook I also hosts the Bow Discovery which is 3.7 km along trend and northeast of Arrow and was made in March 2015.

The TSXV has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release. Neither the TSXV nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSXV) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. "Forward-looking information" includes, but is not limited to, statements with respect to the activities, events or developments that the Company expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future, including, without limitation, the proposed use of proceeds and planned exploration activities. Generally, but not always, forward-looking information and statements can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", or "believes" or the negative connotation thereof or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved" or the negative connation thereof.

Such forward-looking information and statements are based on numerous assumptions, including among others, that the results of planned exploration activities are as anticipated, the price of uranium, the anticipated cost of planned exploration activities, that general business and economic conditions will not change in a material adverse manner, that financing will be available if and when needed and on reasonable terms, and that third party contractors, equipment and supplies and governmental and other approvals required to conduct the Company's planned exploration activities will be available on reasonable terms and in a timely manner. Although the assumptions made by the Company in providing forward-looking information or making forward-looking statements are considered reasonable by management at the time, there can be no assurance that such assumptions will prove to be accurate.

Forward-looking information and statements also involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties and other factors, which may cause actual events or results in future periods to differ materially from any projections of future events or results expressed or implied by such forward-looking information or statements, including, among others: negative operating cash flow and dependence on third party financing, uncertainty of additional financing, no known mineral reserves or resources, pending assay results may not be consistent with preliminary results, discretion in the use of proceeds, alternative sources of energy, aboriginal title and consultation issues, reliance on key management and other personnel, potential downturns in economic conditions, actual results of exploration activities being different than anticipated, changes in exploration programs based upon results, availability of third party contractors, availability of equipment and supplies, failure of equipment to operate as anticipated; accidents, effects of weather and other natural phenomena and other risks associated with the mineral exploration industry, environmental risks, changes in laws and regulations, community relations and delays in obtaining governmental or other approvals.

Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking information or implied by forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that forward-looking information and statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated, estimated or intended. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements or information. The Company undertakes no obligation to update or reissue forward-looking information as a result of new information or events except as required by applicable securities laws.

SOURCE NexGen Energy Ltd.
QUEBEC CITY, April 4, 2016 - Nemaska Lithium Inc. (Nemaska or the Corporation) (TSX VENTURE:NMX) (OTCQX:NMKEF) announces the results of an update to its May 2014 Feasibility Study (2016 updated Feasibility Study) on the Whabouchi Mine and Concentrator to be located in the Eeyou Istchee James Bay territory in Quebec and the Hydromet Plant to be located in Shawinigan, Quebec. A conference call on the 2016 updated Feasibility Study will be held on Monday, April 4th, 2016 at 2pm Eastern Time. Conference call details are found at the end of this press release.

"It was necessary to update our Feasibility Study to reflect the change of location of the hydromet plant from Salaberry-de-Valleyfield to Shawinigan, both in the Province of Quebec; and to reflect the optimization of our processes. These improvements will enable Nemaska Lithium to be a low costs producer of lithium hydroxide with a cost per tonne of CDN$2,693 (US$2,154/t); while lithium carbonate will have a cost per tonne of CDN$3,441/t (US$2,753/t). Our new costs of production for lithium hydroxide and lithium carbonate are respectively 22% and 18% lower than our production cost in the 2014 Feasibility Study. We also took into consideration the current trends in the US to Canadian dollar exchange rate, as well as the forecasted prices of lithium compounds to reflect the reality of price increases in the lithium compounds market. The end result is a 106% improvement in the pre-tax NPV (8% discount) base case, going from $924 M in 2014 to $1.9 B and a 49% improvement in the pre-tax IRR increasing to 37.7% from 25.2% in 2014," commented Guy Bourassa, President and CEO of Nemaska Lithium.

The 2016 updated Feasibility Study encompasses a combined open pit and underground mine plan and was prepared by Met-Chem, a division of DRA Americas Inc. (Met-Chem) and Seneca Inc. with contribution from Michel L. Bilodeau, Eng., M. Sc. (App.), Ph.D. for the cash flow model. The previous Mineral Reserve declared as part of the 2014 Feasibility Study with an effective date of May 13th, 2014 has not changed.

The 2016 updated Feasibility Study positively compares to the 2014 Feasibility Study filed on Sedar on June 27, 2014 on a number of fronts:

2016 Updated Feasibility Study Highlights

(All calculations assume a 6% Li 2 O spodumene concentrate)

(All figures are quoted in Canadian Dollars (C$), unless otherwise specified) 2016 Updated

Feasibility Study 2014 Feasibility Study % Difference (Based on $CDN Figures) Expected Mine Life 26 years 26 years NA Life of Mine Revenue $9.2 Billion (US$7.4 B)

(average of $354 M/yr $6.9 Billion (US$6.2 B)

(average of $267 M/yr 33% increase Pre-Tax Net Undiscounted Cash Flow $6.2 Billion (US$4.9 B)

(average of $260 M/yr before initial CAPEX) $3.4 Billion (US$3.1 B)

(average of $151 M/yr before initial CAPEX) 82% increase After-Tax Undiscounted Cash Flow $3.9 Billion (US$3.1 B) $2.3 Billion (US$2.1 B) 70% increase Pre-Tax NPV 8% Discount (base case) $1.9 Billion (US$1.5 B) $924 Million (US$831 M) 106% increase After-Tax NPV 8%Discount (base case) $1.16 Billion (US$928 M) $581 Million ($523 M) 100% increase Pre-Tax Internal Rate of Return (IRR) 37.7% 25.2% 49% increase After-Tax InternalRate of Return (IRR) 30.3% 21% 44% increase Total Initial Capital Costs $549 Million (US$439M) in CAPEX including contingency $500 Million (US$450M) in CAPEX including contingency 10% increase Pay Back of Capital Costs 2.4 years 3.7 years 35% decrease Selling Price Lithium Hydroxide US $9,500/t FOB Shawinigan US $8,000/t FOB Valleyfield 19% increase Selling Price Lithium Carbonate US $7,000/t FOB Shawinigan US $5,000/t FOB Valleyfield 40% increase Average Cost Per Tonne Spodumene Concentrate $181/t (US$145/t) FOB Whabouchi Mine $189/t (US$170/t) FOB Whabouchi Mine 4% decrease Average Cost Per Tonne Lithium Hydroxide $2,693/t (US$2,154/t)

FOB Shawinigan $3,450/t (US$3,105/t)

FOB Valleyfield 22% decrease Average Cost Per Tonne Lithium Carbonate $3,441/t (US$2,753/t)

FOB Shawinigan $4,190/t (US$3,771/t)

FOB Valleyfield 18% decrease Life of Mine Production 5.5 million tonnes spodumene concentrate converted into approx. 714,000 tonnes battery grade lithium hydroxide and approx. 84,000 tonnes of battery grade lithium carbonate.

(average per year of approx. 213,000 tonnes of concentrate to produce approx. 27,500 tonnes of lithium hydroxide and approx. 3,245 tonnes of lithium carbonate) 5.5 million tonnes spodumene concentrate converted into approx. 728,000 tonnes battery grade lithium hydroxide and approx. 85,000 tonnes of battery grade lithium carbonate.

(average per year of approx. 213,000 tonnes of concentrate to produce approx. 28,000 tonnes of lithium hydroxide and approx. 3,250 tonnes of lithium carbonate) NA Exchange Rate $C to $US 1 : 0.8 1 : 0.9 NA

Mine and Hydromet Plant Plan

The Feasibility Study outlines a combined open pit and underground mine. The open pit mine Proven and Probable Reserves are 20 million tonnes at 1.53% Li 2 O. The underground mine Proven and Probable Reserves are 7.3 million tonnes at 1.28% Li 2 O.

During the first 20 years, production will be derived from an open-pit developed to a maximum depth of 190 meters and with an average strip ratio of 2.2 to 1. The open pit will be mined using a standard fleet of off-road mining trucks and hydraulic excavators at a rate of 2,740 tonnes of ore per day.

During the last 6 years, production will be derived from an underground operation at 3,342 tonnes per day and accessed via a ramp within the open pit. The underground development will reach an average depth of 90 metres below the pit bottom. The selected underground mining method is longhole stoping with the crown pillar below the pit recovered at the end of the mine life.

Nemaska Lithium has received the General Certificate of Authorization (CA) for the Whabouchi mine Project from the Quebec Ministry of Sustainable Development, Environment and The Fight Against Climate Change on September 8, 2015 and was granted a positive federal decision on July 29, 2015 and therefore has now obtained all basic environmental authorizations enabling it to move forward with its Whabouchi Mine Project. The project development schedule assumes that the Shawinigan buildings necessary to install the hydromet plant will be made available to Nemaska Lithium during the first quarter of 2017 and that detailed engineering work for the mine project will have started by the end of 2nd quarter 2016. On site, power requirements at the mine are expected to average 6.5 MW during operations and will be provided by a 69 kV power line connecting Whabouchi to the nearby Nemiscau hydro-electric power station.

The hydromet plant will be located in Shawinigan, QC. This site has been selected for its excellent existing infrastructure and availability of existing buildings. The site is serviced by the CN railway system and a pool of skilled workers and contractors from Shawinigan and the Mauricie area. The hydromet plant will be state of the art and will use Nemaska Lithium's patented process to convert the spodumene concentrate into the purest lithium hydroxide on the market. Proximity to the Hydro-Quebec network, as the plant will use close to 50 MW once in full operation, and access to the natural gas network were also deciding factors.

Whabouchi Feasibility Study Results and Key Assumptions Mining Parameters Tonnes Processed (Mt) 27.3 Waste Rock &Overburden (Mt) 44.3 InSitu Grade (% Li 2 O) 1.51 Diluted Grade (%) 1.46 Mine Life (LOM) (years) 26 Mining Cost Parameters Pre-Production CAPEX ($M) $4.2 Hydroelectricity Price ($/kW) $0.048 -

(H-Q, Tariff L) LOM OPEX ($/t concentrate) $70.14 Concentrator Cost Parameters CAPEX ($M) $235.0 OPEX ($/t concentrate) $75.25 G&A OPEX ($/t concentrate) $35.91 Transport Cost ($/t concentrate) $50.00

Hydromet Plant Cost parameters CAPEX ($M) $310.2 OPEX ($/t concentrate) $168.19 Overall Sustaining Capital LOM CAPEX ($M) $230.1 Revenue Parameters (real terms) Gross Revenue ($M over LOM) Lithium Hydroxide (LiOH-H 2 O) $8,476.3 Lithium Carbonate (Li 2 CO 3 ) $ 738.1 Cash Operating Margin $6,968.6 Lithium compounds Parameters Product (US $ Sale price / t) Lithium Hydroxide (LiOH-H 2 O) US $9,500 Lithium Carbonate (Li 2 CO 3 ) US $7,000 Exchange rate 1 C$=0.8 US$ Schedule Parameters Effective Date for NPV Calculation April 4, 2016 Construction Mobilization Q3, 2016 (est.) Plant Commissioning Starts Q2, 2018 (est.) Commercial Production Declared Q3, 2018 (est.) Valuation Parameters Pre-Tax NPV 8% ($B) $1.88 Pre-Tax IRR 37.7 % After-Tax NPV 8% ($B) $1.16 After-Tax IRR 30.3 %

"Our lithium hydroxide cost is competitive with any supplier of lithium hydroxide today and in the foreseeable future," Mr. Bourassa stated. "Our new flow sheet has been designed to optimize the production of lithium hydroxide, while also producing a high purity lithium carbonate (99.99%), as a by-product. Nemaska Lithium's market penetration and growth strategy is to become an important supplier of lithium hydroxide by offering the highest quality product at competitive prices, while maintaining healthy margins. In tandem, Nemaska plans to grow its target market through converting lithium carbonate users to lithium hydroxide by offering a superior product (lithium hydroxide)."

Market Analysis

To complete the update of the Feasibility Study, Nemaska Lithium commissioned Roskill Consulting Group to complete an independent market analysis report. The report entitled "Lithium Market Overview and Outlook February 2016", predicts that lithium compounds could be in short supply by as early as 2018. The report stated "With lithium consumption forecast to increase consistently in the years to 2025, the outlook for lithium production and producers is positive from a volume perspective. Mine production capacity in 2015 totaled 262,500 tpy LCE and refined capacity just over 251,000 tpy LCE, meaning output is capable of meeting consumption only until 2018 based on a maximum utilization rate of 80%. Additional capacity will therefore be required, and is expected to come from both expansion of existing operations and start-up at new lithium projects."

The same report evaluated the growth in demand by lithium product. The report showed growth in demand for battery grade lithium hydroxide is forecasted to outpace all other lithium compounds over the next 10 years showing a 15.5% CARG (compound annual rate of growth) from 2015 to 2025. This increase in demand is expected to be reflected in the term contract selling price of battery grade lithium hydroxide which, according to Roskill, is expected to increase from (US$/t CIF) $8,640 in 2015 to $13,210 in 2025 representing a 52% increase in term sales price.

"Lithium hydroxide is emerging as a new chemistry of choice for battery cathode manufacturers because it creates a battery with better power density, longer lifecycle and enhanced safety features," said Guy Bourassa, President and CEO of Nemaska Lithium. "Our decision to directly produce lithium hydroxide, rather than take the traditional route of producing lithium carbonate and then transforming it into hydroxide gives us a leading cost advantage in the fastest growing segment of all the lithium compounds."

Conference Call

Nemaska will host a conference call on the Feasibility Study on Monday, April 4, 2016 at 2 pm Eastern Time. To participate in the call, dial 1-877-223-4471 or +1-647-788-4922 local or internationally. A playback will be made available two hours after completion of the call until May 15, 2016. To access this playback dial 1-800-585-8367 or +1 416-621-4642 with the conference ID code 82875820.

Qualified Persons

The complete NI 43-101 Technical Report ("Report") being prepared by Met-Chem, a division of DRA Americas Inc. and Seneca Inc. and signed by each Qualified Person will be posted on www.sedar.com within 45 days. It will also be made available on Nemaska Lithium's website at http://nemaskalithium.com. The technical information in this press release has been reviewed by Mr. Andre Boilard, Eng. of Met-Chem, Qualified Person as defined under in National Instrument 43-101.

The Report will include mineral reserve estimates which were prepared respectively for the underground and the open pit by Mr. Daniel Gagnon, Eng. and Mr. Jeffrey Cassoff, Eng. Both Mr. Gagnon and Mr. Cassoff are independent Qualified Persons as defined by NI 43 101. The Report will consist of summary results from the updated Feasibility Study. The Report is being prepared under the direction of Mr. Andre Boilard, Eng. of Met-Chem and will be reviewed and certified by individuals responsible for their respective portions of the Report. Mr. Boilard and all other individuals providing certifications are Independent Qualified Persons as defined by NI 43 101. Among them are, Mr. Jean-Philippe Paiement, M.Sc. P.Geo., of SGS Geostat, Mr. Raymond Simoneau, Eng. and Mr. Denis Carrignan, Eng. from Seneca Inc., Mr. Michel L. Bilodeau, Eng., M. Sc. (App.), Ph.D, Mr. Tony Boyd of Noram Engineering & Construction Ltd. and Mr. Gary Pearse, M.Sc., P. Eng. of Equapolar Research.

About Met-Chem

Met-Chem, a division of DRA Americas Inc., is an internationally renowned consulting engineering firm established in 1969 to provide all phases of geology, mining, mineral processing and engineering services throughout the world. From its regional headquarters in Montreal, Met-Chem offers the mining industry professional expertise that covers scoping, pre-feasibility and feasibility studies, basic and detailed engineering, procurement and construction management, training, start-up, commissioning and operations assistance.





About Nemaska



Nemaska intends to become a lithium hydroxide and lithium carbonate supplier to the emerging lithium battery market. The Corporation is developing in Quebec one of the most important spodumene lithium hard rock deposit in the world, both in volume and grade. The spodumene concentrate produced at Nemaska 's Whabouchi mine will be shipped to the Corporation's lithium compounds processing plant to be built in Shawinigan, Quebec. This plant will transform spodumene concentrate into high purity lithium hydroxide and carbonate using the proprietary methods developed by the Corporation, and for which patent applications have been filed.





Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.



The statements contain herein that are not historical facts are forwardlooking statements. These statements address future events and conditions and so involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ from those currently projected. The Corporation does not assume the obligation to update any forward-looking statement.







Contact



Nemaska Lithium Inc.

Mr. Guy Bourassa, President and Chief Executive Officer

418 704-6038

info@nemaskalithium.com



Mr. Victor Cantore, Investor Relations

514 831-3809

victor.cantore@nemaskalithium.com



Ms. Wanda Cutler, Investor Relations

416 303-6460

wanda.cutler@nemaskalithium.com

www.nemaskalithium.com


VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - April 4, 2016) -

NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION IN THE UNITED STATES OR TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES

PNG Gold Corp. ("PNG Gold") (TSX VENTURE:PGK) announces it has entered into a forbearance agreement (the "Forbearance Agreement") with VeroLube Inc.("VeroLube"). VeroLube is a private Alberta corporation and the owner of a technology for the re-refining of used oil known as ReGen. Gregory Clarkes, the CEO of PNG Gold, is a director and approximately 5% shareholder of VeroLube. On February 16, 2016, PNG Gold announced it would not be proceeding with its previously announced reverse takeover of VeroLube, although it remains very interested in the potential of the ReGen technology and is therefore continuing to pursue alternative transactions involving the ReGen technology and potentially VeroLube.

As of February 29, 2016, pursuant to previously announced loans, VeroLube is indebted to PNG Gold in the approximate amount of $771,565, of which $612,613 is principal and $158,952 is interest. The loans bear interest at the rate of 20% per annum, and are past due. The loans are secured by a charge against all present and after-acquired assets of VeroLube, including the patents related to the ReGen technology (the "Patents"). Under the Forbearance Agreement, PNG Gold has agreed to forbear from exercising its rights and remedies under the loan documents, conditionally upon VeroLube assigning the Patents to PNG Gold and issuing 305,875 common shares of VeroLube to PNG Gold on or before May 31, 2016. If VeroLube does not fulfill those conditions, PNG Gold will be free to exercise its rights and remedies under the loan documents as it sees fit. The Forbearance Agreement provides that if VeroLube does fulfill those conditions, it shall repay the loans on or before December 31, 2016. If VeroLube repays the loans by such date, then PNG Gold will reassign the Patents to VeroLube, and VeroLube will grant PNG Gold a non-exclusive, perpetual license to use the ReGen technology worldwide. If VeroLube does not repay the loans by such date, PNG Gold will retain ownership of the patents and shall be able to exercise any and all remedies and recourses which are available to it against VeroLube. While it is the assignee of the Patents, PNG Gold will be responsible for paying all reasonable expenses associated with the maintenance of the Patents, and for retaining a lawyer to review the Patents for matters such as validity and jurisdiction, and such expenses shall be added to the amount of the indebtedness.

Certain information set forth in this news release may contain forward-looking statements that involve substantial known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Examples of such statements are statements relating to VeroLube's performance of the terms and conditions of the Forbearance Agreement and repayment of the loans. These forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond the control of PNG Gold, including, but not limited to, VeroLube's ability to obtain financing and the impact of general economic conditions and industry conditions. Readers are cautioned that the assumptions used in the preparation of such information, although considered reasonable at the time of preparation, may prove to be imprecise and, as such, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements. VeroLube may not obtain financing, and if so it is very unlikely the loans will be repaid.

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.
Shortstop's red velvet doughnut. Photo: Supplied

Melbourne's home of the earl grey and rose doughnut is bringing its sweet wares north with Shortstop Coffee & Donuts opening on Wednesday at Barangaroo.

Shortstop's owners traversed the United States in search of doughnut perfection before launching in Melbourne in 2014, bringing a local flavour to their creations with ingredients such as Australian honey and sea salt.

Traditional yeast-raised rings aren't the only way to doughnut heaven, so Shortstop covers the bases with enough cake-based doughnuts to rock a police convention.

The idea for the local opening was driven by Sydneysiders pit-stopping at the Melbourne store to buy in bulk. Getting their hands on a burnt caramel and fennel doughnut is about to get a whole lot easier.

Open Mon-Fri 7.30am-4.30pm; Sat-Sun 9.30am-3.30pm.

Shop 3, 23 Barangaroo Avenue, Barangaroo, short-stop.com.au
SHARE

After eight years in downtown San Angelo, Tarpley Music is moving 2 miles southwest to The Village Shopping Center.

Tarpley Music has occupied the same space on 13 E. Twohig Ave. in historic downtown since 2007, said Wes Sutton, the company's regional manager. The Twohig building has housed a music store since 1927, he said.

Tarpley plans to move into its new building, previously occupied by Random Acts, this summer, once renovations to the building are complete, Sutton said.

"We've got a contractor coming in putting in (American with Disabilities Act)-compliant bathrooms," he said. "It'll be a new space. We'll have new carpet, new walls. They just got through doing the asbestos abatement."

The Twohig building comprises 18,000 square feet of space, Sutton said, but not all of it was usable. The Beauregard building is 11,000 square feet that's all usable, he said.

"We're gaining about 4,000 square feet," he said. "The good thing about us moving to this location is we're going to have a better show floor, more modern for our type of business, a lot more floor space. The company's changing their profile a little bit, and this building is more in the profile that we're going to. There's more parking in the front, and (there will be) better customer service from this location."

In addition to selling band and orchestra instruments and offering repair work, Tarpley offers guitar lessons and referrals for other lessons conducted outside the building. The company also has a Lubbock team that addresses sound, lighting and media installation for gymnasiums and churches, as well as traveling educational representatives.

"We have educational representatives driving trucks all the way out west to McCamey, Del Rio south, Llano east and Seymour north," Sutton said. "We do anything revolving around educational music ... from clinics to instrument repairs to consulting with parents to get their kids the proper instruments."

Sutton added that the new space will allow the company to offer more lessons in-house.

Tarpley operates four locations, with another in the works in Lubbock, Sutton said.

According to the company's website, Tarpley has been family-owned since 1927. Music Trades Magazine ranked it among the country's top 200 music stores.

Vino Dipinte opens second location

Vino Dipinte on Friday celebrated its grand opening at its new second location, 113 E. Concho Ave., next to Concho Valley Winery.

The business  which allows participants to enjoy wine while replicating a painting under the guidance of local mural artist Crystal Goodman  will hold its Paint & Sip activities in its new space and relegate its art shows, artist workshops and private parties to its first location, at 602 Orient St.

Alejandro Castanon opened Vino Dipinte in October 2007 and, until now, held Paint & Sip and art shows in the same location.

"Since 2011, it just hasn't stopped; it keeps growing and growing and growing," Castanon said. "Now with this opportunity, we want to refocus on the gallery without having to conflict with the Paint & Sip classes. It really was (becoming a problem) because a couple years ago we were on the Art Walk, and now we're on the Art Crawl. Art Crawl happens on Saturday, and that's the most productive day in terms of Paint & Sip. It was either have the Paint & Sip or cancel it to have the Art Crawl. Now we'll be able to do both at the same time, and that's a big solution for us operationally."

Castanon said he had been considering a second location, but the opportunity didn't arise until February, when the Concho Avenue building "fell in our lap."

A downtown location "made sense because the high traffic in the area, especially on the weekend," he said. "It made sense to move our main product downtown and keep everybody happy. SoCo Taphouse allows beer to come out of their business ... and the same thing with Concho Valley Winery, so I think our customers would enjoy that option. Customers are going to be happy downtown, and we're going to be happy having more customers. So it just works."

Vino Dipinte also recently launched a new website to better keep up with competition and trends, Castanon said.

"The booking process for most franchises was ... light years ahead of us, and we actually had to go back and find a company that would help us catch up," he said. "We launched our new features and the difference is night and day, so now we're on par with the booking process that's the industry norm as far as people viewing our calendar and checking out without problems."
Photos by Michelle Gaitan/Standard-Times Rick Elmore, of Killeen, stands next to his Honda trike as he and other motorcyclists participating in the third annual Ironbutt Memorial Run get their motorcycles checked in Saturday.

SHARE Motorcyclists gather for registration at Jaime Padron Memorial Park in San Angelo before participating in the third annual Ironbutt Memorial Run Saturday to honor of fallen Blue Knights member and Austin Police Officer Jaime Padron.

By Michelle Gaitan of the San Angelo Standard-Times

Riders from the surrounding area, and as far as Fort Hood, participated in the third annual Ironbutt Run in honor of fallen Austin Officer Jaime Padron, who was killed in the line of duty in April 2012.

Hosted by the Blue Knights of Texas Chapter 35, a law enforcement motorcycle club, about 25 motorcyclists hit the road at sunrise Saturday morning to participate in a 24-hour endurance ride that stretches 1,050 miles from San Angelo and through parts of the hill country.

A replica of Padron's badge was carried by rider Johnny Rodriquez.

"Officer Padron was not only my partner when he was here in San Angelo, but he was also a member of the Blue Knights Chapter," said Brian Bylsma, president of the local chapter.

The annual run helps support the Jaime Padron Memorial Scholarship Fund, which awards money to college bound kids whose parents are retired or active law enforcement in Tom Green County, he said.

The first Padron Scholarship, for $1,000, was awarded in 2015 and the San Angelo Area Foundation (SAAF), which oversees the scholarship, is in the process of selecting a student for this year.

The annual run has raised about $20,000 since it started in 2014, Bylsma said.

Family members of Padron attended the morning send off, providing breakfast, snacks and drinks for the riders.

"It's just very emotional. I have to hold back my tears," said Gloria Padron, Jaime Padron's sister-in-law, about the support of the Blue Knights. "It's so amazing how they still do all this on behalf of his memory.

"There are no words," she said. "It's just very touching."

Donations can be made to the Padron Scholarship Fund by visiting the SAAF website, www.saafound.org
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The following editorial appeared in the March 22 Longview News-Journal:

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, responding to criticism from President Barack Obama about strict voting laws in Texas, contended such restrictions were necessary to combat fraud.

"The fact is that voter fraud is rampant," Abbott said. "In Texas, unlike some other states and unlike some other leaders, we are committed to cracking down on voter fraud."

Voter fraud is "rampant" in Texas? Really?

Well, no. In fact, almost the reverse is true. In the past five years, four cases of in-person voter fraud have been prosecuted. That number comes from an in-depth study conducted by Rutgers University professor Lorraine Minnite.

Fact-checking website Politifact, which called Abbott's claim "ridiculous," found that as of last year there had been 85 election fraud cases resolved in Texas since 2002, with 51 pleas and nine convictions. Twenty-five people were exonerated.

The fact is there have not been enough fraudulent votes in any one election to make a bit of difference. We don't like the fact even one has occurred and certainly want the state to be diligent, but no one is in office, or has been denied office, because of voter fraud.

No matter how you parse those figures, they do not equal "rampant" fraud and Abbott knows that full well. This is just another example  and there have been too many  of how Abbott is willing to say just about anything to pander to the Republican base.

This has been our greatest disappointment with this governor. We thought Abbott would have more political courage than this. As it turns out, he does not.

Abbott's statement about "rampant" voter fraud came in response to a charge from the president that Texas leaders are not interested in increasing our state's low voter turnout. Obama suggested online registration as a possible tool.

Abbott rejected that notion, then offered no ideas about how to increase the number of eligible voters at Texas polls.

State officials should be embarrassed by this but apparently are not.

Leaders in a democratic society should hope for the most participation possible. But instead of searching for ways to increase turnout, our governor and other state leaders pop off inaccurate statements to make it appear more crackdowns are needed, that we're surrounded by people itching to perpetrate fraud at the polls.

That's nonsense.

If Abbott can't stick to the whole truth he ought not say anything at all. It would be better to be remembered as Texas' most boring governor than the one willing to say anything just to get re-elected.
Last week, lawyers for the state of Texas got the latest in a string of bad legal news.A lawsuit challenging the states foster care system as inhumane appeared to gain steam when an appeals court rejected the states request to stop the appointment of two special masters to recommend reforms.The overhauls that have been discussed so far would be pricey to implement  as much as $100 million per year, according to rough estimates from the state comptrollers office. But they actually are on the lower end of all the extraordinary legal expenses the state is facing at a time when stubbornly low oil prices are simultaneously threatening to blunt its coffers.Three other lawsuits against the state  two of them pending before the Texas Supreme Court, with rulings expected soon  could cost the state billions if it ends up on the losing side. Experts say the state may have the cash to cover one of them in a single budget cycle, but probably not any more than that  especially if low oil prices persist, dampening the state's stream of tax revenue. That could mean budget cuts when lawmakers meet for the 2017 session, at least if the Republican-dominated Legislature remains steadfast in its refusal to tap the states nearly $10 billion Rainy Day Fund.Two of those three lawsuits, both tax cases, could cost the state a combined $10.4 billion in tax refunds and up to $2 billion in collections per year beyond that, according to the comptrollers office, which is closely monitoring them.Potential cost estimates do not exist for the last case  a high-profile challenge to the states public education funding system  but past school finance rulings have cost the state billions.Such sums would handily eclipse the states $4.2 billion projected surplus, which could itself dwindle if oil prices remain low and further blunt tax collections. (Comptroller Glenn Hegar has already lowered projections once.)Any of those by themselves are a huge hit, said Dale Craymer, president of the business-backed Texas Taxpayers and Research Association. But if you start losing two or three of those issues then, yeah, its much more questionable that the states general revenue reserves are sufficient to cover that.Craymer, a former state revenue estimator, said the outlook would be much worse if lawmakers hadnt intentionally left several billion dollars on the table last year following a spectacular plunge in oil prices  a choice Republicans trumpeted as principled and Democrats bemoaned in the face of several unmet needs.That decision is one reason were not in fiscal calamity, Craymer said. Today, a prolonged drop in oil prices may only threaten the size of our surplus.While low oil prices may not harm state coffers as much as feared, Hegar and other state officials are warning lawmakers that adverse rulings in any of the ongoing lawsuits could quickly change the states financial outlook.Major tax casesThe ruling they have expressed the most concern about would come from a 2009 case pending before the state Supreme Court in which Midland-based Southwest Royalties  a subsidiary of Clayton Williams Energy  is arguing that metal pipes and other equipment used in oil and gas extraction should be exempt from sales tax.A ruling in favor of the company could spur up to $4.4 billion in refund filings for 2017 alone, and $500 million per year after that, according to the comptrollers office  projections Hegar stands by as good numbers.This ones as big as they come, he said shortly before the state Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case this month.A ruling against the state in the case could very much change the landscape for the state budget, Legislative Budget Board Director Ursula Park warned the House Committee on Business and Industry last week, calling the cost projections quite a significant amount of money.Committee Chairman Rene Oliveira, a Democrat from Brownsville, said he asked Parks to testify because he thought it was important for members to know about the looming uncertainties so they could tell local officials back home that it may be pretty tight on getting projects accomplished.The state isnt going to have much to give next year, he said. Thats when lawmakers will convene for their next regular session.The other pending tax lawsuit  between the state and the parent company of AMC movie theaters  is farther behind in the courts, meaning it may not be decided in time to impact the two-year budget lawmakers will write next year. However, the comptrollers office estimates it would have an even bigger cost to the state if it eventually loses  $6 billion in initial refunds and $1.5 billion per year after that in lost collections.In that case, AMC has argued that more of its expenses should fall under the franchise tax's definition of "tangible personal property," a move that would lower the theater chain's tax burden. Last April, Texas' 3rd Court of Appeals sided with AMC.If the state ultimately loses the AMC cases, Craymer said it would be certainly reasonable to tap the Rainy Day Fund to cover the cost of refunds since they are a one-time expense, although he acknowledged that as politically difficult. In 2011, the Republican-dominated Legislature opted to balance a post-recession budget shortfall without tapping the emergency savings account even though it meant a $5.4 billion cut to public schools.Foster care and school finance suitsTiming also is a big unknown in the foster care lawsuit, where two appointed special masters could take a year to recommend reforms, which the state would then likely challenge.The exact cost of those reforms is unclear, but any ruling would undoubtedly call for more caseworkers and improved outreach services for former foster youth. The comptrollers office estimates it would cost about $30 million to hire a sufficient number of caseworkers, although that assumes current salary levels. A spokeswoman said the courts could very well order the state to pay caseworkers higher salaries to combat high turnover.The office also is contemplating $42 million in spending to cover a 10-percent increase to foster care payments as a possible way to boost oversight of the system, which was one of the overarching recommendations the judge made. And as much as $1 million more might go to pay the special masters.It could easily rack up to $100 million a year for each year of the biennium, said Hegar in an interview this week where he discussed the long list of budgetary concerns while contending it was too soon for undue concern, mainly because no court rulings have come down.The state Supreme Court is expected to rule any day on the school finance case, although Hegar said the potential price of that is almost really kind of impossible to figure out.Thats because not all the legal questions in the case necessarily carry a price tag, he said.For example, one of the claims by the more than 600 plaintiff school districts is that the states school finance system perpetuates inequities among school districts. If the court agrees, Hegar said it wouldnt necessarily involve injecting more money into the system overall.On the other hand, the court may find that the total amount of funding the state is investing in public education is inadequate and that it will be up to the Legislature to figure out how much more to put in.It is the seventh time since 1984 that a case challenging the states school finance system has reached the states high court. The state has never won.Eva DeLuna Castro, a budget analyst at the left-leaning Center for Public Policy Priorities, said if the ruling does come with a cost, lawmakers may be able to delay paying up as they did a decade ago when the last school finance ruling came down.On the bright side: There should be $10+ billion in the Rainy Day Fund by the end of fiscal 2017! she wrote in an email. The Legislature just needs to remember what its for.
In a unanimous ruling on Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the way Texas -- and every other state -- draws its legislative districts.Following the principle of "one person, one vote," states draw legislative and congressional districts that are equal in population. The case, Evenwel vs. Abbott, addressed the question of whether states should use only the voter-eligible population or the total population.The court ruled that states can continue to use the total population. Six of the eight justices suggested that the question remains open as to whether states should be required to use total population. In concurring opinions, justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Allito agreed that Texas couldn't be forced to use eligible voters as the basis of its count but said any state could do so.The ruling maintains the power of places -- most of which are Democratic -- that have large numbers of residents who can't or don't register to vote. That includes immigrants who aren't citizens, children and prisoners.Had the court ruled the other way, the decision would have been a boon for Republicans because rural areas, which are typically more conservative, would have gained strength at the expense of urban areas. Such a ruling would also have created an administrative nightmare for states, which rely on Census data in calculating total population. It wasn't clear how states would have determined the population of eligible voters.The plaintiffs in this case were Sue Evenwel and Edward Pfenninger, voters who live in a pair of Texas state Senate districts with high percentages of eligible and registered voters. They argued that redistricting based on total population diluted the value of their votes, relative to those cast in other districts.The 14th Amendment, which contains the Equal Protection clause that is the basis of redistricting law, refers to the rights of "persons," not "citizens.""'One person, one vote' is a convenient shorthand but a misleading one," said Michael McDonald, a voting expert at the University of Florida. "There is no state that has chosen an alternative" to total population, although a few make adjustments to Census data.Evenwel and Pfenninger were represented by the Project on Fair Representation, a conservative group."We are disappointed that the justices were unwilling to re-establish the original principle of one person, one vote for the citizens of Texas and elsewhere," said Edward Blum, the group's president. "The issue of voter equality in the United States is not going to go away."
A Manhattan federal judge signed off on a class-action settlement Thursday expected to drastically reduce the use of solitary confinement in New York state prisons and improve conditions in "the hole" for prisoners who undergo it.U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin said 3,700 prisoners in New York and about 80,000 nationally are held in solitary confinement, and those in solitary are seven times more likely to harm themselves than inmates in general population."Solitary confinement is a drastic and punitive designation, one that should be used only as a last resort," she wrote in a 30-page opinion. "It is well known that such confinement causes deterioration of the mental and physical condition of inmates."The settlement, first announced in December, puts limits on the situations in which solitary can be used and the length of confinement. For example, the judge noted, one plaintiff given three years for improperly keeping legal papers in his cell would be confined for a maximum of 30 days in his own cell, not a solitary housing unit.It also bans solitary for pregnant prisoners, provides treatment alternatives, and mandates better food and library privileges, phone calls, access to mental health services and reductions for good behavior for those put in solitary.The New York Civil Liberties Union, which brought the suit, said the new rules would eliminate solitary for 1,100 people, and cut in half the 87 rule violations that could be the basis for solitary even for a first-time offender.The judge also approved awards ranging from $9,900 to $80,000 to the three plaintiffs who brought the suit. She said the settlement had been distributed to prisoners throughout the New York prison system, and responses were generally positive, although critics called for broader reforms and damages to the rest of the class.Scheindlin, who has announced that she is leaving the bench, said she hoped the agreement would reverse a trend that saw the number of prisoners held in solitary rise by 42 percent nationally from 1995 to 2005."While there is undoubtedly more work to be done," she said, " . . . it is also my hope that the contours of this settlement agreement . . . will serve as a model for other states that are addressing issues of prison reform."
Faulty Approach, Clashing Cultures

Finding a New Approach

Agile Stats Though using one methodology over another is no more a guarantee of success than employing right-handed workers over left-handed ones, there ultimately is a reason that private-sector companies large and small use iterative development methodologies. In 2012, an agile development survey of more than 4,000 people involved in software development found that 84 percent of companies practiced agile development. Many companies still use a linear development process, but they still keep agile in their toolkit.



And even though the NASCIO 2015 State CIO Survey found that the public sector is catching up in agile, governments reputation for slow adoption of new technologies leaves open many questions about the future. Only 21 percent of respondents reported widespread use of iterative development, and one of the biggest reasons government isnt adopting is because most procurement policies dont fully support those frameworks. About 70 percent of survey respondents said they expect agile adoption to soon increase, but its unclear if those are realistic expectations. Only 23 percent of states report policies that fully support iterative development, and more than 40 percent of states report no plans to change their procurement processes.





New Agile Workflow

Keystone of OH STARS Success

When the overhaul of Ohios tax system stalled in 2012, it showed all the signs of another large-scale government failure. The project began in June 2008, when the state awarded a fixed-price $52 million contract to Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to integrate 27 legacy tax systems into a single platform called the Ohio State Taxation Accounting and Revenue System (OH STARS). After four years of miscommunication, missed deadlines and finger pointing, many were ready to admit defeat. But with a little bit of persuasion, stakeholders gave the nod to try again  and today, the state looks back to tell a different story.Today, 14 of 23 tax types have been integrated, and six more are scheduled for completion by October. With its self-confidence redoubled, the state even expanded the project to include a $13 million front-end system that will allow citizens to file taxes electronically. The projects reversal caught the attention of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO), which presented a 2014 State Technology Innovator Award to Mark Walker, who was appointed the projects director upon the 2012 reset.I think it was perseverance, said Doug Robinson, NASCIOs executive director. They were able to rescue a project that was close to life support. The major thing was that it was [Walkers] project leadership and going to agile delivery.  Tax and revenue are always complex systems. They always touch and interfaces are complex so they touch many other systems, so it was his leadership and understanding of the business processes.Walker has been with the Ohio Department of Taxation for more than 35 years, and today he serves as its CIO. When he evaluated the project in 2012 to determine if it could be salvaged, he recalled a culture of miscommunication and misunderstanding.For four years, the project followed the same pattern. Using a linear development approach, the states businesses held meetings with the HPE development team to establish how an off-the-shelf Oracle system could replace the states many tax systems spread across various department mainframes and Microsoft Access databases.Detailed discussions between the state and vendor outlined the project until both sides believed they understood each other, and then they would part ways  sometimes for as long as six months at a time  and when the developers returned to the businesses with finished work, it typically wasnt what the state wanted.Thats when the finger pointing began.When the project started in 08, we expected the vendor to come in here and basically do the project for us, Walker recalled. Thats really faulted. Yes, were paying them to manage the project, but  they dont understand my business and I dont understand the product, so we really have to be engaged in basically a partnership so that we both play very critical roles in making sure that first of all the vendor understands my business needs and that they understand the product theyre using well enough to give the most efficient way of administering whatever I need to do. And we were not doing that pre-reset.David Montgomery, an HPE executive who took over the project after the reset, recalled cliques of bickering workers when they evaluated the projects future in 2012.We had a lot of different cultures clashing, Montgomery said. We had government versus contracting  we had all these different camps.While workers were busy splitting off into factions, the original purpose was gathering dust, and everyone was losing sight of the goal.As one of the projects co-sponsors, Walker wanted to find a new approach, a way to make the partnership with HPE work. Two weeks of analysis showed that it might be possible to salvage the project, but many were calling to cut their losses before the state wasted any more time and money. After four years of churning, just $10 million of work had been completed.It took me a while to convince my tax commissioner that we should continue, Walker said, and we had to go through an awful lot of discussion with the governors office as well before we finally said, OK, were going to do this. I think we took a significant chance, but I also think it was something that proved that government agencies can really be agile and can do things that are nontraditional and be successful.Now committed to another attempt, both the state and the vendor made drastic changes. Walker was made director on the government side. On the vendor side, Montgomery took over as director and started by slashing his team of 200 developers down to 10, adding more as needed until the team was built back up to 70 workers. Most importantly, the traditional linear development cycle was abandoned for the faster-iterating agile development process, which forced state and vendor workers to work together daily.We knocked down those cultural barriers," Montgomery said, "and its just amazing to see something that people thought couldnt happen."Walker noted that he's had many visitors come in to see what the environment looks like. "And I challenge anybody to try to point out who is tax and who is vendor, he said. You dont know, and its just one big wide open room with tables set up, and PCs and monitors. Weve got whiteboards all over the room. It covers virtually every square inch of the walls, so the transparency and the communication is so much better now than it was pre-reset.The new team spent the first 10 months creating a new framework for the project. With 27 tax systems and 23 tax types, the original team made the mistake of treating each tax as a unique entity, Walker said, but the new team soon realized that most of the taxes were similar if not the same in many ways, which allowed for greater consistency and ultimately simplified development. And agiles shorter development cycle naturally brought the states businesses and the vendor closer together, which reduced the opportunity for misunderstanding and created a more resilient work culture.The way things are chunked out into smaller pieces, we started seeing progress almost immediately, Walker said.In this case, agile did more than just work  it acted as a salve to one of the states prickliest concerns. It was relatively easy for the vendor to swap its developers for new ones and start fresh, but Ohio continued to use the people who been slogging it out the last four years, some of them resistant to the notion of continuing onward. It turned out that agile served as the vehicle for the thing state workers had wanted all along.That agile process helps because my folks, all they were really asking for, even pre-reset, was a voice. Let me help you understand what we mean.The biggest lesson to come out of the OH STARS reset was the necessity of executive support, Walker said, because finishing a project like this means borrowing the most forward-thinking people from each business. Without support from the top, he said, it would be hard to get those businesses to give up their best employees for such long stretches of time.Its a little unusual, and I know contractually Dave [Montgomery] is still my vendor, is still responsible, but we really do have a partnership, Walker said. There is not much that happens on this project, from strategic or tactical to planning, that we dont jointly do.Montgomery agreed that working closely using an agile methodology was the keystone of their success.We found a little more complexity because it takes a lot of agencies to work hand-to-hand to deliver this, Montgomery said. Its very rare from an agile perspective  commercial or government  of this large of an agile delivery success. A lot of people still dont believe you can do agile on this big of a project with this many people, and theyre wrong.
(TNS) -- Not all deaf people can read well.That might sound counter-intuitive to anyone familiar with closed-captioning on television screens. But many people who were born deaf see the printed word as a foreign language.That's why a New York software company developed iSigner a sign language translation tool that can be plugged into any website. Fort Lauderdale recently became the first city to incorporate the software into its website, and while the tool is being met with both praise and criticism within South Florida's deaf community, its developer says it's the most advanced automated sign language translator possible right now.The city decided to beta test the iSigner software at the request of one of its owners, Fort Lauderdale City Manager Lee Feldman said last week.The city is testing the software for free but expects to pay a license fee if it wants to continue offering it after the test period concludes, Feldman said. "I think the intent is to get this out there and find out what features others may want."iSigner is simple to use on a desktop or laptop computer. Web visitors can go to the city's website, fortlauderdale.gov and click on the far-right circular icon at the top of the home page. That brings up a square video window.As the user moves the mouse over sections of printed text, the cursor changes into a teardrop-shaped icon. Clicking the mouse starts the translation. A sign language interpreter appears in the video window, signing the words in the text.Steve Bruner, iSigner vice president, said the software has been in development for several years as engineers perfected the streaming technology and ease of installation. "The streaming technology was very difficult to get just right," Bruner said. "We're proud of it."Now, getting it to work on a website "is as simple as installing Google Analytics tracking code," Bruner said. "(Insert) one piece of JavaScript. It just works. Installation takes minutes."The software evolved from a standalone desktop application called iCommunicator that turned spoken words into text and sign language for deaf people. It was featured a decade ago on an episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition that showed a blind father and his deaf son conversing without an interpreter, the New York Daily News reported in 2007.As the company readied the software for deployment, one if its owners, Leonard Feldman, a Fort Lauderdale resident, met city officials at a function and told them about the product, city manager Lee Feldman (no relation) said.The company's owners had noticed the city's website was already accessible to blind users. So "we reached out to them and they were receptive," Bruner said."We're hoping this becomes a role model for other cities and companies," said iSigner spokeswoman Elyse Blazey Gentile.But the company faces a hurdle: Some deaf people who have tried the software don't like how it translates words not stored in its library.In 2014, the software was demonstrated for about 10 staff members of the Center for Hearing and Communication, a non-profit health care center in Fort Lauderdale, according to Margaret (Peggy) Brown, the center's regional executive director."None of the staff thought it was a good idea," Brown said. That's because the translation video jumps back and forth between images of a human translator, seen from the waist up, signing complete words and a hand against a black background spelling out words one letter at a time, she said. For example, the word Lauderdale is translated by the hand spelling out L-A-U-D-E-R-D-A-L-E.Such "finger spelling" is considered "insulting to the deaf community," Brown said. "When you are interpreting, you don't just use your hands but your whole body."Added Tracy Perez, the center's director of social services: "We told them, 'You might be inviting criticism.' When you are finger spelling, your hand is not viewed by itself, but often close to (the signer's) mouth so you can mouth the words."The iSigner software delivers a verbatim English translation, while American Sign Language  just as in everyday life  incorporates regional idioms, context-sensitive expressions, even slang, Brown and Perez said.Bruner said he's heard similar criticism and understands the software isn't going to be accepted by all deaf people or for all situations.Since the first iCommunicator program was developed 16 or 17 years ago, the company has solicited user feedback and developed improvements whenever it could, he said. "We've always had people who said, 'This is the greatest thing I've ever used.' Others said, 'This is not for me.' And another said, 'I'll use it when I need it.'"Bruner said his company knows of no way to deliver an automated version of true American Sign Language. "We know we're translating it in English Word Order. This is the only way we can do it."A big reason Fort Lauderdale was excited to install the software, Bruner said, is its ability to translate information during emergencies as quickly as that information can be posted on the city's website. "Getting information out to the community in a timely manner is incredibly important to them."Victor Solano, who describes himself as "profoundly deaf," tried the software at the Sun Sentinel's request and wrote in an email, "It definitely has its pros and cons.""If anyone has difficulty reading the words on the site they would still have difficulty understanding all the finger spelling," Solano wrote. "I tried following along with the signing and reading the text, with my eyes going back and forth. The signer was too fast for me to do that easily."Bruner said he recently heard a similar comment from the owner of a deaf services website interested in adopting the tool. The company is looking into ways to slow down the videos, he said.Salono said the software serves a need for deaf people who read English as a second language."If I had to understand what was being signed to me with the amount of finger spelling sign uses, I don't think I'd be able to continue using it with ease and comfort," he said. "However, that said, I'd probably still use it as a backup as I read the text on the page. Being able to go back and play it again also is good if I can't catch the vocabulary the first or even second time."Solano said he'd like to install the software on the website of his non-profit organization, South Florida Deaf Recreation Association Solano's attitude is what the company likes to hear, Bruner said. "He will use it when he needs it. If he doesn't need it, great. But it's there."
(TNS) -- San Franciscos progressive culture. Chicagos blue-collar history. Boulder, Colo.s green values.Mayor Ed Murrays nominee for head planner says hell be a quick study of Seattle because it has much in common with the cities where hes spent his career so far.Sam Assefa will become director of Seattles new Office of Planning and Community Development (OPCD) if hes confirmed by the City Council this spring. Boulders senior urban designer since 2010, hes worked as a planner for more than 20 years.Ive always thought of Seattle as a mix  a little like San Francisco, a little like Chicago, with some warehouse architecture, and a little like Boulder, with the values citizens have about the environment, he said in a phone interview.Assefa, nominated earlier this month, speaks in measured tones and answers questions calmly, which could serve him well if hes confirmed; OPCD is the lead agency for implementing Murrays important and controversial Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA).The agenda, based on 65 strategies recommended last year by the mayors blue-ribbon panel on housing, includes what Murray calls his grand bargain .That plan, scheduled to make its way through the council over the next few years, would reduce zoning restrictions across much of the city with the aim of increasing the housing supply while requiring developers to build, or pay to build, low-income units.The agenda also included a plan to allow slightly denser residential structures in neighborhoods zoned for single-family homes. Proponents said adding duplexes and the like would bring down home prices, making the neighborhoods more diverse.But Murray scrapped the strategy soon after proposing it, citing backlash from homeowners worried the change would ruin the bucolic character of their blocks.The month before unveiling his housing agenda, the mayor said hed terminate the Seattle Department of Planning and Development (DPD) and split its responsibilities between a pair of new agencies  OPCD and, for nuts-and-bolts permitting and code enforcement, the Department of Construction and Inspections.The new agencies launched Jan. 1, with retiring DPD director Diane Sugimura serving as interim director of OPCD. Besides implementing the HALA strategies, Murray will expect Sugimuras replacement to manage Seattles population and construction booms and improve coordination among departments. Seattle ranks among the countrys fastest-growing cities, with 70,000 residents added in five years.Sam Assefa brings leadership and a holistic approach to urban planning that integrates land-use, transportation, design and sustainability, Murray said in a statement about his nominee. Throughout his career, Sam has shown a passion for place-making and a commitment to working with all communities to solve the challenges of growth. His experience will be invaluable to implementing our shared vision for building neighborhoods that are affordable, livable and equitable.Boulder is home to fewer people (about 100,000) than Seattle is expected to add by 2035. But Assefa says the small city has been a laboratory of sorts for planning ideas.Boulders goal has been to get people who work in the city to live there, as well  and the solution has been to encourage denser development by upzoning certain areas, he says, mentioning Boulder Junction , a 160-acre former industrial site being remade into a pedestrian- and transit-oriented neighborhood with housing, shopping and more.The plan has been to allow change, to build density and address housing issues on the back of transit, Assefa said. To transform this part of the city from an auto-dominated sea of asphalt into an area where more young people are beginning to live.The nominee said he would need to learn more before weighing in on Seattles single-family zones. But Assefa said Boulder officials are convinced of one thing: We know we cant solve our problems building single-family homes.Assefa says planners everywhere are trying to get ahead of the same trend.Cities are growing toward the center, whereas before they were spreading out, he said. From a planning perspective, thats good. But it also comes with challenges.Those include preserving neighborhood character and protecting people with lower incomes, including people of color, from being pushed aside by development.Planners are struggling with how best to address that, Assefa said. Theres no silver bullet. But in my experience, you need to get those communities to be empowered, to be at the table when critical planning decisions are being made.He pointed to his work with the New Communities Program in Chicago, which involved residents of 16 South Side neighborhoods taking part in planning activities, and with the redevelopment of San Franciscos once-toxic Hunters Point Shipyard In a 2006 news article , Assefa praised Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daleys pragmatic urbanism, comparing it to San Franciscos more idealistic approach.He lobbied in Chicago for tall, thin towers like those sprouting in Vancouver, B.C., according to another article the same year In Seattle, Assefas personal background may help him make inroads with some communities being harmed by gentrification. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate was born in Ethiopia and escaped to Kenya after his father, a general under Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, was executed during a coup.Seattle is home to more than 10,000 East African immigrants, including people from Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Eritrea, according to 2014 U.S. Census data.I do believe (his background) will give me an advantage, having lived there and being from there, Assefa said. But beyond that, just having experience living in different countries, I can relate to immigrant communities. That global perspective is the way I think about conversations with decision makers.
A World Class Expert

A Pathway of Possibilities

(TNS) -- Despite political obstacles, problems with land acquisitions, logistical issues and Bakersfield City Council members recently calling California's $64 billion bullet train a sham, Cal State Bakersfield is posturing itself as a national training center bent on preparing a workforce for high-speed rail projects.The university has been hosting a year of seminars on how union workers might help build the statewide transportation system, hired a world-renowned expert who is developing engineering courses that emphasize high-speed rail, and even has a simulator being shipped overseas from China to train conductors.It expects the program to have value even if Californias troubled high-speed rail project is delayed or never materializes at all.We'll have the only high-speed rail training system in the United States, and as other states like Maryland and Texas look at high-speed rail, we'll become the training center for the whole country, Mark Novak, dean of CSUB's extended university division, said.The university is also partnering with the Kern High School District and Bakersfield College to create jobs in the high-speed rail sector. Top administrators from the three campuses sent a letter in late January to Jeff Morales, CEO of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, committing to serve the industry's job needs.We look forward to working with your agency to create the stellar workforce that would make any high-speed rail facility in Kern County a world-class example of California's pioneering spirit, the letter signed by CSUB President Horace Mitchell, BC President Sonya Christian and KHSD Superintendent Bryon Schaefer says.Wei Li is a world-renowned expert in high-speed rail. He has published extensively on vision navigation for autonomous vehicles and robotics. He attended Beijing Jiaotong University, which grew out of the China Railway Management Institute.Now Li is a professor of computer and electrical engineering and computer science at CSUB, where hes been since 2001. In the last two years, Li has hosted two engineering classes on high-speed rail that have been supported by CSR, which gave scholarships to all 50 students who enrolled.Li calls on his connections overseas to help with the class, he said.Most of my friends right now are working in high-speed rail in China, and I got a textbook from my friend who wrote it in English, Li said.Then theres the HSR simulator, which can create scenarios such as rain, sleet, snow and hail for students to navigate through, Novak said. CSUB will need to hire someone to train students in conducting, something Li is not qualified to do, Novak said.It could recruit engineers from other countries where high-speed rail already exists, or contract with the company that wins the bid to build the train.And if high-speed rail never materializes, CSUB will still have a training center, Novak said.It would be a little odd to have a training center with no high-speed rail here. It would be a missed opportunity, Novak said. But there would be other people to be trained and maybe if we become a good training center, people would send others from other parts of the world to be trained here.At least one student said he had no qualms about taking a course from Li, and would consider majoring in a high-speed rail concentration if it were offered, even with the possibility the project may never happen.It is a risky career, but at the same time it's one that has great benefits because this is the beginning of that era, said Raul Caballero, a junior computer engineering major at CSUB. Every major developed country has a high-speed rail system and we're just lagging behind. It's not like the job won't happen, it's just a matter of when.Meanwhile, the Kern High School District and Bakersfield College are expanding programs likely to help create a high-speed rail workforce, even though they werent specifically designed for that.The high school district rolled out an introduction to skilled trades course last year that would get students hands-on experience in different industrial fields and are emphasizing welding and metal fabrication labs. Students can earn college credit in some of those courses.As far as us having a program where a kid graduates and goes straight to work on the high-speed rail  that's not our goal, Dean McGee, assistant superintendent of educational services and innovative programs, said. It's to go create some awareness and experience in industries that support high-speed rail.And Bakersfield College is part of a pilot program allowing it to offer a bachelors degree in industrial automation. It has applications that could clinch jobs for graduates in the high-speed rail field, said Liz Rozell, dean of instruction for engineering and industrial technology, and the industrial automation program.Beginning this fall, the program will produce a stream of graduates who could go to work as mid-level management, bridging the gap between engineers with advanced degrees and technicians working on the ground, Rozell said.Even if high-speed rail doesn't come through, industrial automation is still huge in our area and will meet the needs, Rozell said. I don't think there are any qualms there and construction is going up regardless of high-speed rail.At the same time, the program could produce graduates who go to work in mid-level management at places such as the heavy maintenance facility Kern County hopes to land, Rozell added. The California High-Speed Rail Authority predicts it will employ 1,500 systems and electrical engineers, technicians and mechanics with four-year technical degrees.Those skills align with the industrial automation program, Rozell said.My prediction would be if the high-speed rail actually comes through Bakersfield and materializes, that will impact our program  it will bring a lot of jobs and change things drastically, but it wasn't the predictor for doing this industrial automation program, Rozell said.In fact, Bakersfield College didn't even mention the potential of creating jobs for high-speed rail when pitching the program to state officials.High-speed rail is very political, Rozell said. That might not have sat very well in Sacramento. It didn't even play into the planning processes, but when we hear about high-speed rail now, we're like 'yeah we'll be providing jobs for that, obviously.'
Government interest

Levels of autonomy

Level one, the most basic level, encompasses features already available.

Level two would be an adopted cruise-control system with which a driver could take his or her hands off the steering wheel at interstate speeds.

Level three would be a little more like youarent driving, but a person would still have to be readily available to take over control of steering, braking and other functions.

Level four might mean a seat that rumbles when the driver has to regain control due to, for instance, dicey weather conditions.

Level five  full autonomy  is you are in the back seat.

(TNS) -- Look ma, no hands! could soon take on new meaning.Those who thought it was cool to pedal a bicycle without their hands on the handlebars have nothing on driving a car without ... well, driving a car.Doing so might not be as far in the future as some think.North Dakota native Marlo Anderson and the Central North Trade Corridor Association are working on a plan that would create a highway for driverless vehicles. Anderson, known by some as the Guru of Geek, is the host of the talk show The Tech Ranch. He has a love of technology thats tied to the prospect of driverless vehicles.Anderson and a small team of others have been working since 2014 on a project they call the Autonomous Friendly Corridor. And actually, it already exists.Kind of, anyhow.The corridor would be the 1,885-mile-long U.S. Highway 83, which Anderson calls underused. The road runs through North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. It crosses the northern border into Manitoba and touches the southern tip of the country, ending at Mexico.In northern South Dakota, U.S. Highway 83 runs along the Missouri River through Campbell, Walworth and Potter counties.Under the current plan, the autonomous highway would be the first in the U.S. to allow driverless vehicles to transport cargo and humans.Our areas are all kind of landlocked. Our country was founded east to west so, generally speaking, trying to go north-south is really, really difficult, Anderson said.While a vehicle driving itself isnt unheard of  Google, for example, has been using autonomous cars since 2009  a specific highway for the technology to share the road withhuman-operated vehicles is.The association, a volunteer organization, is not alone in its thinking.In January, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx announced that President Barack Obama proposed $3.9 billion over the next 10 years to develop innovations for self-driving vehicles. The proposal has not yet gone through Congress.U.S. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, spoke last month at a committee hearing about the potential benefits of driverless vehicles.Full, self-driving cars will be here sooner than we think, Thune said in his opening remarks. We are facing an opportunity to expand (vehicle technology) while also making it smarter and safer.The safety factor is key for Anderson and the association.In 2014, 32,675 Americans were killed in automobile accidents, Thune said. More than 90 percent of those accidents linked to human error, including driver intoxication, distraction and choice.Autonomous vehicles would be equipped with technology that can prevent such accidents, Anderson said.Some vehicles already have some built-in autonomy, which started with cruise control and has since advanced to include features like parking assistance, front emergency braking, birds-eye view camera systems and radar cruise control.Manufacturers are increasingly improving how smart vehicles are, with most using cameras and sensors that allow them to detect, for example, when something is behind it while backing up or to brake when it gets too close to another vehicle.For now, most of the technology can be found in higher-end vehicles, Rhonda Masters, sales consultant at Harr Motors, said. But she believes that just as backup cameras have become more of a standard in recent years, so will the emerging technology.The idea of sitting in the back seat is concerning for Masters, because even todays more basic systems can default.Right now, all these things are a way for the driver to have good information, but that driver is in control, she said.But it doesnt change its possibility.The cars coming up are definitely going to have some advanced technology in them, she said. Going forward, thats the way of the future.Are we flying cars yet? No. But the Jetsons era is coming, she said.There are five levels of autonomy, Anderson said:But up until that point, there is someone behind the wheel, he said.He believes the self-driving vehicle industry will take baby steps to get to level five, just as the association might do with its corridor.Andersons ideal test run would be driving  or rather not driving  from Bismarck, N.D., to Pierre on U.S. Highway 83. Hes hopeful for a test run in 2017.Thats what were going for, but theres a lot that has to be ironed out between now and then, he said. But its possible. The technology is there.Currently, only seven states have legislation regarding autonomous vehicles. North Dakota approved a measure last year allowing a study about what, if any, laws need to be changed to accommodate automated vehicles and to research how they could reduce traffic accidents and congestion and improve fuel economy.Autonomous vehicles would obey the laws of driving, Anderson said.So it stops at stop signs, goes the speed limit, he said.While that might mean safer roads, it also means, Americans need to be comfortable being passengers in their own vehicles, as Thune put it.Anderson has been a passenger in 20 or so autonomous vehicles.Its like getting in the car with a new driver. Its a little uncomfortable at first, but when you see how good they drive, you relax, he said.Thune was also a passenger in a driverless vehicle prior to the committee hearing. According to a news release, he has made it a priority for the committee he heads to examine ways for the U.S. to remain at the forefront of transportation technology.I welcome the efforts of groups and leaders that envision a role for states like South Dakota in developing autonomous vehicles, and I look forward to continuing to examine how this technology can help increase safety on our roadways. Strong state and local support for this new technology will not only help bring it to the market faster, but will likely determine where innovators and entrepreneurs test and develop their products, Thune said in a statement to the American News.He is continuing to review the proposed autonomous highway, according to his communications director, Ryan Wrasse.Meanwhile, Anderson and the corridor association are working toward creating a coalition between the six states and Canada.Its pretty strong now between Canada and North Dakota, Anderson said. This will set a footprint for the rest of the country to follow.
(TNS) -- One could say that the Justice Departments finding a way to unlock an iPhone without help from Apple is unfortunate.To some, it could further delay serious discussion about privacy rights in this age of fast-evolving technology.Congress needs to face up to its obligation to have this debate and to come to some reasonable conclusion. It needs to balance privacy rights with the increasingly challenging task of keeping the country safe from those who would commit mass murder.This is a long-standing and continually developing issue, and one that Congress has largely ignored, as technology changes and becomes a tool of terrorists. Fundamentally, the law has not kept pace with science. But the need for a response is plain, even if the answers are difficult.More and more Americans keep personal information, sometimes sensitive information, on their smartphones. Constitutionally, they have a right to privacy.Yet the ability to monitor terrorists, who value body counts above all else, is also tied to technology, as is the investigation of crimes such as the San Bernardino, Calif., massacre that prompted this confrontation.Both sides have compelling cases, which is a prescription for court action. It would be better for Congress to debate and resolve these questions.Privacy advocates say they will keep the issue at the forefront, but the Justice Department has withdrawn its legal effort to compel Apple to unlock an iPhone and, in so doing, assist in an investigation of a mass shooting.The phone belonging to one of the San Bernardino killers, Syed Rizwan Farook, may contain information about where he and his wife, an accomplice in that horrific attack in which 14 people died, may have traveled, who they contacted or any further plots.The government wanted to get access to the phones information. A federal magistrate ordered Apple to help the FBI hack into the phone, but CEO Tim Cook balked. In a public letter he outlined his deep displeasure, saying that compromising the security of our personal information can ultimately put our personal safety at risk.And so it went, back and forth among the company, privacy advocates and the government. For Apple, it was a matter of reputation and company security; for the government, a matter of national security and pursuing an important criminal investigation.The standoff ended when the government finally gained access. Officials arent talking about how they got into the smartphone, but the New York Times quoted a law enforcement official who said, on condition of anonymity, that a company outside the government provided the FBI with the means to get into the phone, an iPhone 5C running Apples iOS 9 mobile operating system.Apple wants to know exactly how it was done. The government may classify the method.This fight over an iPhones information begs the question as to whether the government will again employ its newfound workaround. Last month, a federal magistrate judge refused to grant an order that would have required Apple to extract data from an iPhone used by a drug dealer in Brooklyn. The Justice Department is appealing.Congress needs to clarify these issues involving critical questions of privacy and national security.
There was a Frenchman, an Englishman, a German and an Italian... It sounds like the beginning of a joke but there was nothing comical about the Rio Hondo race... The four frontrunners in this second round of the Moto2 season battled hard with each other, pushing like crazy from start to finish and putting on a real show for the spectators. Leading the pack was Johann Zarco, thanks to the speed and experience typical of a world champion. Second place for the very strong Sam Lowes and third for Folger. A pity for Franco Morbidelli who crashed out after running a great race from the first to the penultimate lap.

THE RACE--An aggressive start with pushing and shoving on a slightly damp track that offered only one dry line. German Jonas Folger took the lead, closely followed by Englishman Sam Lowes and current champ Zarco.

On lap three a mistake by Folger facilitated a pass by Lowes and an impressive Franco Morbidelli set the provisional best lap as he fought to move into fourth.

Dominique Aegerter set a best time on lap five, battling with Morbidelli and Zarco. The first four riders stuck close to one another for several laps, slipping and sliding their way around every turn.

On lap seven both Zarco and Morbidelli got past Folger while Lowes tried to make a break for it, with an open track in front of him and his choice of lines.

After ten laps, Morbidelli made a small mistake, allowing Folger to move third, a position that he was only able to hold onto for a matter of seconds before Franco passed him on the inside.

With five laps to go, the real spectacle got underway: Morbidelli tried in vain to get away from Zarco while Sam Lowes had some trouble and risked losing the front on more than one occasion. Spaniard Alex Rins made a great recovery but was unable to catch the first four up ahead.

Tyres were all but finished by lap twenty, with riders using all means, elbows included, to stay upright. Sam Lowes made his move, passing Morbidelli to take second.

Morbidelli, unfortunately, lost the front at turn 1 when his tyre hit a damp patch causing him to crash out.

it was the French world champion who crossed the line first, ahead of Lowes and Folger. He thus clocked up his ninth win in Moto2 as well as the fastest lap of the race.
Stoffel Vandoorne has left Bahrain a happy F1 debutant, even though he will probably have to hand back the keys to Fernando Alonso in China.

The highly-rated Belgian, the reigning GP2 champion, made his F1 race debut in Bahrain after the McLaren-Honda regular was sidelined with chest injuries.

Vandoorne, 24, more than impressed, outqualifying the vastly more experienced Jenson Button and scoring the team's first point of 2016.

"I am of course very happy with the weekend," he told La Derniere Heure, a Belgian daily, as he departed Bahrain.

"I could prove that I was more than capable of driving an F1 car. Everything went the want I wanted," said Vandoorne.

"I showed my speed, my fighting spirit but also my reliability even though I only discovered the car on Friday morning."

He also revealed that his debut did not go unnoticed by the F1 community at large.

"I have received many messages of congratulations," said Vandoorne. "But what is most important is that I have made a good impression to the team. They know they can count on me."

That is despite the fact that, impressive though Bahrain may have been, he will probably not re-appear in the dark grey car in China.

"I know," said Vandoorne. "It's part of my job as reserve driver and I knew that before I started.

"I don't know if I will get another chance but I hope that my work throughout the weekend will encourage the team to use my services again in the future."

Another impressive youngster in Bahrain was the Mercedes-backed Pascal Wehrlein, who aced qualifying in his Manor and featured on the TV images throughout Sunday's race.

"I will definitely have to watch the replay as I've heard that I was quite often on the screen," the German grinned.

"The fact that we were able to overtake Force India and Sauber was amazing and so much fun," Wehrlein told the German broadcaster Sky.

(GMM)
In the early rounds of the 2016 season, Sauber is clinging to mere survival.

The Swiss team cleared a high hurdle recently after falling behind in February wage payments to its 300 staff, but more problems are now obviously on display.

Felipe Nasr, the Brazilian driver whose sponsor Banco do Brasil is Sauber's main backer, complained vociferously throughout the Bahrain weekend about his car.

"This car is terrible to drive!" he exclaimed on team radio. Nasr also told Brazil's Globo Esporte in Bahrain: "Clearly we have some problems with my car.

"Now we need to really analyse everything before China," he added.

But there are worrying rumours that Sauber might reach the end of the road in the next couple of weeks, before making the trip to the Shanghai metropolis.

Team co-owner and boss Monisha Kaltenborn was not even in Bahrain, amid speculation she stayed behind in Hinwil to address Sauber's urgent financial problems.

"It is no secret that the fourth-oldest F1 team is in trouble," read a report in Speed Week.

Kaltenborn is a fierce critic of the sport's current revenue-distribution model which vastly favours the biggest and most successful teams.

And that is amid a backdrop of steadily declining sponsorship within the struggling sport, according to James Allen of the Financial Times.

F1 sponsorship guru Zak Brown agrees: "The costs are, to me, the single largest issue and the one that then drives many of the others.

"We have an industry that is exploding in cost, and collectively they are not able to gather and get those costs under control," he added.

(GMM)
D. phaphyphila Alg1 can simultaneously utilize mannitol, glucose, and alginate to produce ethanol. In an open access paper on their work published in the journal Biotechnology for Biofuels , they report high ethanol yields of 0.47 g/g-mannitol, 0.44 g/g-glucose, and 0.3 g/g-alginate.

Researchers from the Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Synthetic Biology, Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences have identified and characterized the first thermophilic bacterium capable ( Defluviitalea phaphyphila ) of direct conversion of brown algae to ethanol.

Brown algae are a large group of marine seaweeds including almost 1800 species of macroalgae with a characteristic olive-green to dark brown color derived from fucoxanthin.  The technology for the mass production of macroalgae has been developed significantly in China and Asia over the last 50 years. Notably, China contributes 72% of global aquaculture-based macroalgae production, including the genera of Laminaria (reclassified as Saccharina for some species, brown algae), Undaria (green algae), Porphyra, and Gracilaria (red algae). Brown algae have complex sugar composition, mainly including alginate, mannitol, and laminarin. Alginate is the unique structural polysaccharides in brown algae The content of alginate varied from 20 to 40% of dry weight among different species. Mannitol and laminarin are considered as reserve carbohydrates in many brown algae species, which are mostly accumulated in summer. Mannitol is a sugar alcohol form of mannose, while laminarin is a linear polysaccharide The content of mannitol and laminarin in some species can reach as high as 25 and 30 %, respectively, at the beginning of autumn.

 The direct bioconversion of brown algae to produce bioethanol cannot be easily achieved because of their diverse carbohydrate components. It is difficult for one microorganism to ferment all saccharides for biofuel production. Ji et al.

In earlier work, the identified a strain of Defluviitalea phaphyphila from coastal sediments. Analysis of the genome indicated that the strain has an integrated brown algae-degrading system.

They evaluated the growth and ethanol fermentation properties of D. phaphyphila by employing alginate, mannitol, or glucose (laminarin monomer) as substrates.

When glucose (1 %, w/v) was used as sole carbon substrate, all glucose was exhausted in less than 48 h. After 108 h cultivation, 3.8 g/L ethanol and 0.4 g/L acetic acid were produced, with an ethanol-to-acetate ratio of 9.5:1. The ethanol yield was 0.38 g/g-glucose which accounted for 74% of the maximal yield of 0.51 g/g-glucose.

In the case of mannitol (1 %, w/v) as substrate, the concentrations of ethanol and acetic acid could be as high as 4.3 and 0.3 g/L, respectively, with an ethanol-to-acetate ratio around 14:1. The ethanol yield from mannitol was about 0.44 g/g-mannitol, which accounted for 86% of the theoretical maximal yield of 0.51 g/g-mannitol. Mannitol was exhausted until 108 h indicating a slower substrate assimilation rate than glucose.

Alginate could not be fully dissolved in the medium; total protein concentration of cells was used to monitor the growth of D. phaphyphila in the case of alginate fermentation. A total of 7.6 g/L alginate was consumed after 108 h. Totally, 2.7 g/L ethanol and 3 g/L acetic acid were produced, with an ethanol-to-acetate ratio of 0.9:1. It can be concluded that D. phaphyphila Alg1 could successfully convert alginate into ethanol and acetate, and its products contained more acetic acid than those from glucose and mannitol.

They also used an artificial mixed sugar simulating the main components of brown algae with a ratio of alginate:mannitol:glucose = 5:8:1 (3% total sugar).

A total of 7.8 g/L ethanol and 1.2 g/L acetic acid were produced with a consumption of 24.2 g/L total sugars. The ethanol-to-acetate ratio and ethanol yield were calculated to be 6.5:1 and 0.32 g/g-total sugar, respectively.

It can be concluded that D. phaphyphila Alg1 could simultaneously saccharify and ferment the three main components of brown algae, and although these components have different oxidoreduction potentials, reducing equivalents are well balanced and metabolic flux is directed into ethanol production in this strain. Ji et al.

They also obtained an ethanol yield of 0.25 g/g-biomass in fermenting unpretreated kelp.

This novel bacterium provides a potential gene-manipulable platform for high-value chemical production from brown algae at elevated temperature.Ji et al.

Resources
The company intends to leverage the power of data science through Microsofts Azure cloud technology to develop predictive, contextual, and intuitive services that help to humanize the driving experience while pushing the technology into the background.

Toyota is launching a new companyToyota Connected, Inc.to significantly expand the companys capabilities in the fields of data management and data services development. The new company will serve as a data science hub for Toyotas global operations and will support a broad range of consumer-, business- and government- facing initiatives.

Toyota Connected will help free our customers from the tyranny of technology. It will make lives easier and help us to return to our humanity. From telematics services that learn from your habits and preferences, to use-based insurance pricing models that respond to actual driving patterns, to connected vehicle networks that can share road condition and traffic information, our goal is to deliver services that make lives easier. Zack Hicks, CEO of Toyota Connected and Chief Information Officer at Toyota Motor North America

Based in Plano, TX, Toyota Connected will launch with two mandates: delivering seamless and contextual services; and using cutting-edge data analytics to support product development for customers, dealers, distributors, and partners. In support of these goals, the new company will consolidate Toyota initiatives in data center management, data analytics, and data-driven services development.

In addition, the new company builds on Toyotas existing partnership with Microsoft to accelerate R&D efforts and to deliver new connected car solutions and elevated customer experiences. Microsoft engineers will work with Toyota Connected in their new facility, providing continuous support across technology areas and leveraging a broad range of data analytics and mobile programs. Toyota Connected will adopt Microsofts Azure cloud computing platform, employing a hybrid solution globally.

Toyota Connecteds structure builds on Toyota Motor Corporations global re-organization into product-based companies, and will focus on expanding Toyotas work in connected and data science technologies. (Earlier post.) Toyota Motor Corporation Senior Managing Officer Shigeki Tomoyama will be Chairman, with Toyota Motor North America Chief Information Officer Zack Hicks serving as Chief Executive Officer.

The structure will allow Toyota Connected to centralize company initiatives across a broad range of emerging technology fields, ensuring that the common focus of all of them is the customer. Program areas will include in-car services and telematics; home/IoT connectivity; personalization; safety; smart city integration; and a broad range data services for Toyota affiliates, its dealers; fleet services and more.

At launch, Toyota Connected is already providing a range of data and computer science services across Toyotas operations, including support for ongoing research into artificial intelligence and robotics and the Toyota Research Institute.
GREENSBORO  A court-appointed receiver can sell off millions in Rembrandts, Picassos, Andrew Wyeths and other art to settle Southeastern Eye Centers legal disputes, a judge ruled last week.

In an order issued Thursday, N.C. Business Court Judge Louis Bledsoe III said the receiver can start to liquidate the art, once owned by Dr. Richard Epes, Southeasterns founder, and his wife, Bessie Epes.

The money will help settle nearly 100 claims, some for $1 million or more, filed against that former surgical eye center and its related businesses.

The ability to access these sales for some of the more important pieces of artwork in the Epes collection seems prudent, beneficial and desirable for all creditors  especially as to the (Andrew) Wyeth collection, Bledsoe wrote.

The receiver, Gerald Jeutter Jr., has the discretion to set reserve prices with dealers, adjust those reserves or sell items without reserves at all, Bledsoe said.

Wyeth, who died in 2009, was a prolific realist painter of rural East Coast landscapes, and the people who lived there. His watercolors have sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars at art auctions  including one that fetched $425,000 in 2014.

The Epes owned as many as 15 Wyeth paintings, but its unclear how many are part of their current collection. Bonhams, a New York auction house, will handle the sale of the Wyeths.

The Epes also owned a collection of 18 etchings by Rembrandt, Picasso and Dali. A New Orleans-based art dealer said in 2007 that the Epes spent nearly $1 million on the collection, according to court documents.

The dealer said the couple spent another $670,000 on dozens of chess sets  including one $60,000 set made out of hand-carved ivory  and other antiques and collectibles.

The receiver will work with up to 12 auction houses and dealers to liquidate those pieces, Bledsoe said.

Southeastern was once one of the largest surgical eye centers in the southeast. Epes pioneered no-stitch cataract surgery and performed one of the earliest Lasik procedures in the state.

The center hit rock-bottom financially in 2012 and since has become party to a dozen or more liens and judgments. Creditors have accused Epes and former associates of destroying documents and transferring assets to hide them, charges Epes and others have denied.

Last summer, Bledsoe approved the sale of Southeastern to Carolina Eye Associates of Pinehurst, which now owns the sprawling eye center at the intersection of Battleground Avenue and Old Battleground Road.
My parents, in their 80s, finally made the move from Julian to Greensboro into a house on Cornwallis Drive. Little did we know an old friend lived across the street. Georgia and her husband, Robert, came over to welcome my parents, and from then on mom and Georgia were able to rekindle their friendship. To no ones surprise, this old friend became my mothers guardian angel.

After moving to Greensboro both parents were plagued with health problems, so much that my dad had to move into assisted living, leaving mom at the house with the two dogs.

Both Robert and Georgia assisted mom with many of her needs. He took her garbage out to the road and back. Georgia supported mom in her time of loneliness. She also took her on errands and to visit my dad. She even brought her grandchildren over to see mom, which mom loved. Georgia was even comforting mom in the hospital when she died. I dont think they realized what a blessing they were to our family.

The house just sold, and I know the young man who bought it will get to know Georgia and Robert for the wonderful neighbors that they are when they welcome him to the neighborhood.

Roslyn Peterson,

Greensboro

A few weeks ago on a very cold Saturday morning, I was raking some gravel away from the end of my driveway and fell. I am 87 years old and could not get up. My guardian angel was driving up U.S. 29 N and saw me fall. He somehow turned around to see if I was hurt, helped me get up and walked me to my home. Although he told me his name, I have forgotten, but I would like to thank him for such a wonderful gesture. It was such a kind and wonderful deed, and I can never thank him enough. I am sure he was my guardian angel and I know the Lord saw him too!

Eleanor Lineberry,

Greensboro

On Feb. 14 as I approached the dining room, a young man popped around the corner and handed me a red rose. The accompanying note read, Roses are Red, Violets are Blue, You might be a stranger, but I care about you  as does Jesus! Love, Luke

I am a special-needs kid that wanted to remind you that no matter what your situation is in life, God remembers you! Happy Valentine Day!

What a beautiful gesture! It made my day most memorable. Again, thank you, Luke.

Irene H. Waters,

Greensboro
One of the objectionable parts of House Bill 2 has gone largely unnoticed. That is, this bill changes the law in North Carolina so that employees can no longer go to our state courts for protection if theyve been terminated for reasons of race, religion, color, national origin, age, sex or handicap. Our Equal Employment Practices Act states a policy against discrimination in employment. For decades, North Carolinians who were terminated for discriminatory reasons could go to their county courthouse to file a lawsuit. But with HB 2, the legislature has stripped citizens of that remedy.

What is the point in having protected classes if there is no redress for violation of the states public policy? As a practical matter, North Carolinas stated policy now provides no protection. A wronged employees only recourse is to assert a federal claim in federal court, where the procedures and costs are more onerous for employees and businesses alike. It is the labor commissioners job to stand up for fair treatment of all employees and for clear standards for employers. The commissioner also should encourage an environment where employers, both large and small, want to create jobs in North Carolina. HB 2 does neither.
GREENWICH  Another busy week awaits in the Greenwich school district. Here is a look at some of the key events.

WEDNESDAY:

8 a.m.  New Lebanon building committee meets at the school districts headquarters at 290 Greenwich Ave. The committee has secured BET approval for a construction budget and their plans are now facing a Planning and Zoning Commission review.

9:30 a.m.  The districts school start-time committee meets at the school districts headquarters. The committee is studying seven alternatives to the districts current schedules. Transportation costs related to the various options is a key issue for the committee.

7 p.m.  A public forum on the school start-time options will be held at Central Middle School.

THURSDAY:

9 a.m.  A public forum on the school start-time options will be held in the auditorium at Greenwich Library.

2:30 p.m.  The Greenwich High School stress committee meets in the media center at the high school. A recent survey showed homework, tests and college admissions as the greatest sources of stress for Greenwich High students.

7 p.m.  The Board of Education will meet at the school districts headquarters. Their agenda will include a review of the start-time options and a review of a new report on the middle schools.

FRIDAY:

9 a.m.  The PTA Council meets at Town Hall.
Are todays students tweeting their way to better grades? More than nine out of 10 teenagers hold at least one social media account; Instagram, Snapchat, Tumblr, Vine, Twitter and Facebook rule the lives of most middle and high school students. And while much attention has been paid to the negative effects of social media, including cyber bullying, there could be a positive upside, too.

Related: What You Can Learn From 8 Kids Already Making a Million Dollars

From elementary school to college, social media is empowering students, parents and teachers to share information in new ways and build a new sense of community. And students are using social media to do more than just share tips to ace the next exam: Theyre turning to Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat to share success stories for student-loan payoffs, find summer internships and collaborate on projects with students across the country.

Are classrooms next?

Given the above statistics, schools dont need to convince students of the value of social media; they've already been won over. Todays teens are already collaborating and connecting with other teens outside school via social media; and now, some educators are pushing to make this collaboration happen inside school walls, too.

On the most practical level, integrating social media into day-to-day learning makes sense. Why not talk to teens in the online world where they already spend most of their time inhabiting?

Walk down the hall of any school, and todays teens are fully absorbed in their smartphones, checking their Instagram feeds, sharing photos and sending Snapchat messages. How can teachers reach this world?

Learning management systems like Blackboard and Moodle have been involved in online learning for more than a decade. Now, public and private schools alike are taking the first steps to embrace social media in the classroom.

As Katie Benmar, then a high school freshman, wrote last April in an Education Week op-ed, The best teachers I've ever had have used technology to enhance learning, including using Facebook pages for upcoming projects or planned online chats about books we read in class.

Benmar made a fair point: A book report follows a standard format; so, an online discussion about books is an opportunity to break this format by setting up students to listen and respond to other peoples opinions, with textual evidence.

Related: Bro Code: Teenage 'Treps Amer And Mohamed Yaghi

Teachers are listening. An AP biology teacher at New Milford High School in Bergen County, NJ, recently challenged his students to discuss the stages of meiosis on Twitter, using a shared hashtag; the creative challenge for students was to be succinct enough to describe each stage in 140 characters or less, writes T.H.E. Journal.

As a digital marketing professor at the Catholic University of Cordoba, Carla Dawson finds it a requirement nowadays to use social media tools to connect with her students and get them motivated to do the tasks at hand. We live in a digital ecosystem, and it is vital that educational institutions adapt, says Dawson, who as an international speaker runs her own agency.

Building a stronger school community

Social media integration doesnt have to stop with teens and teachers; increasingly, administrators are finding new, creative ways to integrate social media into their schools. Todays parents of younger students are often social media natives; some even had Facebook in college when it first debuted. They use LinkedIn to find jobs. And they may even have a parody account on Twitter about parenting. Its only natural that principals and school administrators are using social media to share school news and building community.

Consider the experience of Robyn Jones, recently promoted to principal at Rock Prairie Elementary School in College Station, Tex.

As principal of an elementary school, I don't think there is anything more important about school/home relationships than communication and information dissemination, says Jones. Families are busy, but that doesn't mean they don't want and need information from the school. Just as we are looking for ways to incorporate technology into our classrooms, in order to engage students, our communication with families deserves to be engaging and easy to use, as well.

That's why Jones regularly uses the schools Facebook page, Twitter and Instagram to share information with parents on everything from weekly homework assignments to class lunch times. Jones says that social media also allows more personal relationships with her students families.

With over 700 children in our school, it is nearly impossible to know all of the families, she says. When a family tags the school in a post, retweets a message or responds to the principal or teacher through email, we are getting the opportunity to engage with that family in a way that would not be possible with a paper newsletter.

"I continue to encourage our staff to utilize technology for parent communication, to help families quickly receive much-needed information. Everyone wins when the school and the families are connected.

Related: This Is How Small Businesses Are Using Social Media

Bottom line

From stronger parent-teacher relationships to creative assignment challenges, social media is poised to power a new education revolution. Businesses should take note.

Related:

How Social Media is Reshaping Today's Education System

College is Good for Getting a Job but Not Necessarily for Getting Rich

Experiential Learning Era in Indian Education



Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
No complaints here.

More good news for New York cream lovers and High Line walking tourists. This May, Ample Hills Creamery, one of New Yorks most celebrated ice cream makers, will open its second Manhattan outpost, this one in the Meatpacking District.

Located at 73 Gansevoort Street in a space attached to Bubbys Highline, the new shop is near the Whitney and, naturally, the High Line, so you can be sure that as the weather warms, the lines will swell, too. At the 400 square-foot space, which will have its own entrance, the team will have booth seating for eight to 10 people, pie shakes, frozen drinks, pints to go, and a location-specific exclusive flavor, per Ample Hills rules.

The mini-store will be the growing chainlets sixth location: owner Brian Smith already operates two in Brooklyn as well as stalls in Brooklyn Bridge Park, Gotham West Market, and Jacob Riis Park. Its not unreasonable to expect more and bigger things out of Ample Hills, either, as the company recently raised $4 million in additional funding and will use the money to open a modern, 15,000-square-foot creamery version of the Willy Wonka factory.
Beetroot and elderflower charcuterie from the Hong Kong pop-up. This time, it will be tomato charcuterie. Photo: Michael Marsden Kieran

Dinner at a strangers house never sounds this good. Chef James Sharman and four of his fine-dining friends  former Typing Room sous-chef Bart Szymcazk and exToms Kitchen sous-chef Kevin McCrae, manager Trisha McCrae, and cook William Wade  are using Airbnb to throw pop-up dinners around the world. Their roving pop-up, One Star House Party, started after Sharman ended his gig as chef de partie at Noma, when the restaurant temporarily relocated to Australia. After a stint at an abandoned printing house in Hong Kong, theyve arrived in Chelsea, at 436 West 20th Street.

This wont just be a fancier version of that Columbia students dorm dinners run by real chefs. As documented on Instagram, Sharman and his crew are going so far as to actually build chairs and tableware from scratch for their temporary restaurant. And while most nights are sold out, there are still tickets available for Wednesday and Sunday.

Whats it entail? For $125 a head, gratuity included, youll get a seven-course tasting menu that sounds pretty compelling. Think courses like tomato charcuterie with housemade ricotta and olive juice (a twist on pizza), chicken confit in hay with egg fudge and chervil, miso-smoked pumpkin with beef short rib and pine nuts, and a pair of desserts including a smoked chocolate brownie with raw marshmallow. Plus, its BYOB, so you can break out a couple of fancy bottles or maybe bring a few bottled Manhattans for good measure.

When the pop-up ends after Sunday, One Star will head west to San Francisco for another six-night run. Dont expect the menu to be identical, though, as Sharman tells Grub they want to learn what makes the food in each city unique and then let that inspire our menu. After that? The crew will cross the Pacific to Taipei, then hit Tokyo, and finally land in Seoul for what is currently the last stop on their Asia tour. While there are no plans beyond Korea, it doesnt sound like it will be the end of One Star. Look alive, South America, as Sharman says theyre thinking about parachuting into Rio de Janeiro just before the Olympics start on August 5.
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Haiti - Politic : Towards a resumption of the Joint Bilateral Commission





Friday at the Jaragua Hotel in the Dominican capital, the new Chancellor Pierrot Delienne at the head of a Haitian delegation participated in the 10th bi-annual meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the Community of Latin American States and the Caribbean (CELAC) https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-17042-haiti-politic-the-new-chancellor-of-haiti-in-dominican-republic.html under the Presidency pro tempore, currently held by the Dominican Republic whose term expires in January 2017.



The meeting which was attended by representatives of 33 member states, was an opportunity to assess the mandates resulting from political statements and actions adopted by the Heads of State and Government, to rule on the implementation of the CELAC Action Plan for the year 2016, to prepare the meeting of Foreign Ministers CELAC-EU planned in the Dominican Republic in October 2016 in the context of monitoring of the second Summit of Heads of State and Government of CELAC-EU and the progress made by the CELAC-China cooperation Forum.



The new Foreign Minister of Haiti, Pierrot Delienne, was well received by his peers for his first participation in a meeting of CELAC. He has not failed to reiterated the commitment of Haiti to the objectives of CELAC and supported the idea of developing a regional strategy paper, in line with the post-2015 development agenda of UN.



On the sidelines of the meeting, the Chancellor Delienne met with his Dominican counterpart, Andres Navarro, in order to continue the dialogue on relations between the two countries, the two men agreed to revive the activities of the Joint Bilateral Commission (CMB), in the best delay.



Learn more about the CELAC :

CELAC created February 23, 2010 at the Rio Group summit in Cancun, Mexico. It brings together 33 member countries of the Western Hemisphere, with the exception of Canada and the United States. It is a multilateral political forum, which allow member countries to consult to harmonize on the long term, their public policies, an indispensable requirement for integration movement. CELAC aim to strengthen the historical ties between peoples and arrive to an articulation at sectors such as education, health, environment, economy, culture, immigration and justice.



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Training : 30 young graduates for call centers





Saturday at the Marriott Hotel, as part of a pilot program in collaboration with Digicel, the Investment Facilitation Centre (IFC) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Avasant Foundation proceeded to the delivery of diploma to about thirty youth aged 18 to 26, who have successfully completed training of four weeks, enabling them to get a job in the industry of Call Centers in Haiti.



This pilot program was aimed at promoting the development of skills and facilitate employment opportunities via outsourcing service providers of business processes. The design and results of the pilot program had the objectives to provide practical training for skills development and knowledge base for the sector of information technology and communication and the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-16192-haiti-economy-the-bpo-sector-a-promising-market-of-13-000-jobs.html



Learn more about the Foundation Avasant :

The Avasant Foundation, Californian organization non-profit (501 (C) 3) aims to create programs and partnerships that provide opportunities for young people with undeveloped potential and living in emerging economies, focusing on job creation and community empowerment through skills development services and technology.



The Avasant Foundation actively participates in the Impact Sourcing which is defined as employing socio-economically disadvantaged people as the main workers in subcontracting centers to provide high quality services based on the information for national and international clients.



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Politic : Reminder, Assets declaration is required





The law of 18 February 2008 on the declaration of assets (Moniteur No. 17 of 20 February 2008) requires certain political actors, government officials, parliamentarians, civil servants and public officials to report their assets within 30 days after they took office and 30 days after the end of their mandate The law therefore applies without distinction to the person concerned of the outgoing Government Martelly / Paul and those of Provisional Government Privert / Jean-Charles.



The Haitian branch of Transparency International: the "Heritage Foundation for Haiti (FHH) encourages members of the outgoing government and the recently installed parliamentarians to deposit their declaration of assets within the time prescribed by law.



Moreover, the FHH calls the Unit for Combating Corruption (ULCC) to ensure strict compliance with the law and to take if necessary, all appropriate measures in case of default of declaration of assets, as provided Articles 16 to 19 of the law on declaration of assets.



TB/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - News : Zapping politics...





Toward an investigation of the PetroCaribe funds

Sen. Youri Latortue, announced the imminent opening of an investigation on the management of funds from the PetroCaribe program, noting that this investigation will also extend to the predecessor of President Martelly that many sectors accuse of mishandling funds of this program. The investigation will cover the period from 2008, under the administration of President Rene Preval, to 2016 under Michel Martelly.



The MOPOD warns

In a note the platform of the radical opposition, MOPOD, drew attention "to the fact that any new electoral contest organized by calculation or naivety, without previous sheds light on the failed elections of October 25, 2015, will lead the country into a growing political instability. It asks to build up quickly and seamlessly the Commission of Inquiry and electoral verification responsible to restore the integrity of the election before restarting the election process." Note that the voice of MOPOD is unlikely to be heard, remember that his presidential candidate, Samuel Madistin, had only obtained 13.656 votes at the national level (0.88%)



Courtesy visit of PM

On Sunday, President a.i. Jocelerme Privert, visited Radio TV Ginen on the occasion of the commemoration of 22 years of radio and 12 of the TV. He took the opportunity to present its sympathies to the family and relatives of Jean Leopold Dominique, murdered on 3 April 2000, but also to reaffirm that "there will be no interference from the Executive on the actions of the Provisional Electoral Council."



The PHTK promotes respect for the agreement

Guichard Dore, strategic advisor to the PHTK, reacting to the ratification of the Prime Minister Enex Jean-Charles, has stressed the need for the new Government and the CEP to work together in the implementation of the political agreement of February 6 and respect of its schedule, which provides that a newly elected President will be invested on May 14



Minister of Justice wants to know how things work

Friday, Me. Camille Junior Edouard, the new Minister of Justice and Public Security installed on March 28 https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-17009-haiti-politic-the-new-minister-of-justice-former-student-of-pm.html held a working session with the Directors General of the Central Unit of Financial Information (UCREF), the National Office of Identification (ONI) and the School of Magistrates (EMA). Through this meeting, the Minister intended to learn about the functioning of these organizations under the Ministry.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Harlow is a former New Town in Essex with a population of 86,000. Located in the upper Stort Valley, it was built in the decades after the Second World War to ease overcrowding and London and provide homes for people bombed out during the Blitz. It includes Britain's first pedestrian precinct and first modern residential tower block, The Lawn. Old Harlow, the historic part of the town, was mentioned in the Domesday Book. David and Victoria Beckham's former home, Rowneybury House, nicknamed 'Beckingham Palace', is nearby.

09:00, 23 OCT 2022
Employers should offer staff extra superannuation or an annual take home payment in lieu of the current long service leave arrangements, the Australian Human Resources Institute says.



Australian workers could make better use of the money their employers reserve for long service leave if this was re-directed into increased take home pay, creational leave credit and superannuation  or a combination of all three.



This was AHRIs stance in a recent submission to the Victorian government's review of long service leave arrangements.



AHRI national president Peter Wilson said this type of scheme could replace traditional long service leave by directing it to "where it's most needed by workers today  their take home pay to meet current cost of living, or into their superannuation funds to better provide for their retirement".



In a recent survey of more than 1700 members, AHRI found 62 per cent of survey respondents reported the average length of employment in their organisation was less than eight years.



Only 21 per cent reported an average tenure of 10 years or more, the AFR reported.



While those in the public sector were more likely to stay longer in their current job, with 42 percent having an average tenure of 10 years, compared to only 15 percent of private sector workers and less among not-for-profit workers.



Wilson says current Victorian long service leave of 8.6 weeks on full pay, which employees can access after working with the same employer for 10 years.



He suggests a system which vests the equivalent annual value of the current long service leave benefit in each and every year of employment during the first ten years, and subsequently.



"An actuary could calculate more exactly what this translates to as a percentage of a person's basic pay in any year, Wilson says.



For sake of argument let us assume it's a 1.7 per cent premium to the basic annual rate of pay in each and every year of employment, he says.



Once this sum is known, Victorian workers could, for example, elect annually whether to take this value in their take home pay, or to direct it into their superannuation, or some combination of those two elements."



Victorian Industrial Relations Minister Natalie Hutchins announced the review into long service leave in February 2016.




By Paul T. Choate

Oct. 11, 2012. The old Charles A. Cannon, Jr. Memorial Hospital, located just outside downtown Banner Elk, has been sitting vacant since 1999 when Cannon merged with Crossnore Memorial Hospital and moved to the new facility in Linville. Now, having been abandoned for over a decade, the building has badly deteriorated and has been subject to frequent vandalism.

In 1962, the Charles A. Cannon, Jr. Memorial Hospital replaced Grace Hospital III, which was opened in 1932. For almost 40 years the facility provided medical care for Banner Elk and the surrounding communities.

In a North Carolina general warranty deed dated Sept. 10, 2001, a 52.84-acre tract of land that included the hospital was sold to Shaunco, Inc., a corporation based in Hazlehurst, Ga. run by Olin Wooten, for $1.1 million. According to Banner Elk Town Manager Rick Owen, since that time, Wooten sold off most of the parcels of land around the hospital but still owns the 9.21-acre tract of land where the buildings are located at 805 Shawneehaw Ave.

According to Owen, there have been numerous attempts to find a buyer on the property, but to no avail. Owen said that to his knowledge, Wooten is actively trying to move the property.

In my opinion, he has had some on-again off-again interest in it, Owen said.  The county was working with he and a potential purchaser maybe six months ago and we all hoped something would come out of that and it didnt play out.

Owen said at one point an offer was put forth to nearby Lees-McRae College to purchase the property, but they did not feel that the repairs on the building would be financially feasible and said they were not interested.

The closest Wooten came to getting the property off his hands and out of the Town of Banner Elks hair came back in 2007 when the Suchman Retail Group of Miami showed interest in purchasing and developing the property. They even went as far as to have design development drawings made to reflect plans for their development and went to the town to have the property rezoned to MU-Mixed Use (grocery store, retail, ski lodge, restaurants, office complex, multi-family or retirement facility). The plans, designed by Brockhouse Associates of Coral Gables, Fla., and dated Jan. 15, 2007, included three two-story retail stores, four two-story townhouses and a hotel with four-story and five-story towers and an indoor spa.

Ultimately, the plans fell through. Owen said he was not sure why things did not work out, given the lengths to which the retail group had gone to plan everything out, but speculated that perhaps it might have been a money issue.

Most recently, Wooten held an online auction for the property over the summer. Owen said there were several people bidding on the property but no one was aware that Wooten had a reserve price set on the auction. Ultimately, according to Owen, the highest bid never even got about $300,000 and Wootens reserve price was over $900,000.

On Wootens property listings website, he is currently asking $2.2 million for the property. Above that asking price are struck values of $2.3 million, $2.4 million and $2.6 million. The property has a current tax value of $1,009,300.

The buildings current condition may make the property a hard sell.

There are some obvious issues with the age of the building and the deterioration of the building from it sitting empty for so long  due to vandalism  so there is some question as to if the structure is even usable as is, Owen said.

There is nothing that the town would like more than to have that eyesore cleaned up and utilized. Its unfortunate that it sat there empty for as long as it has, but it is even more unfortunate the vandalism that has taken place. There needs to be some higher use of that property than a vacant building.

To view the property listing on Wootens website, click here.

To view the property record, visit webtax.averycountync.gov/RealEstate.aspx and search Shaunco where it says Owner Last Name.

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The approach to stimulus policy, be it national or co-ordinated within the eurozone, is schizophrenic in Finland. The necessity of stimulus is effectively acknowledged as Finland has given its backing to the fiscal stimulus pursued by the [European Central Bank], he writes on the Academic Blog on Economics .

Pertti Haaparanta, a professor of economics at Aalto University, has questioned the reluctance of Finland to resort to fiscal stimulus to claw its way out of the economic slowdown.

Fiscal stimulus has its opponents although both empirical and theoretical studies corroborate the conclusion that a policy of fiscal stimulus is more effective than monetary stimulus under the current circumstances.

Haaparanta argues that the same conflict is evident in the efforts to place greater emphasis on national competitiveness.

It has been justified as a means to boost external demand, but in reality it is a question of steering external demand towards Finnish goods. How is that in conflict with a simultaneous policy of fiscal stimulus? asks Haaparanta.

He also reminds that the effects of any improvement in competitiveness will be visible belatedly. The European Commission, he points out, estimated in its review of the economic conditions in Finland in 2014 that, unlike changes in external demand, changes in competitiveness have no short-term impact on exports.

Fiscal stimulus is a solid means to spur economic growth also according to a study by Henri Keranen and Tero Kuusi from the Research Institute of the Finnish Economy (ETLA), adds Haaparanta.

It is obvious that a policy of fiscal stimulus adopted today would pay for itself in the long term. This is worth keeping in mind also for those who claim that debt exposure automatically translates to taking away from future generations. The earnings of future generations will be 1.5 per cent lower due to the current fiscal policy, he comments.

Matti Tuomala, a professor of economics at the University of Tampere, agrees with Haaparanta.

Debt exposure is seen solely as an income transfer from future to current generations. This is an inaccurate generalisation from a number of standpoints. Many generations are living parallel to each other at all times. Most of those who will run up debt today will also participate in re-paying the debt in the future. How exactly does one promote the cause of young and future generations by letting youth unemployment become such a problem? he writes on his personal blog.

Aleksi Teivainen  HT

Photo: Antti Aimo-Koivisto  Lehtikuva

Source: Uusi Suomi
NHHS senior named state Youth of the Year

Sarah Parker

Related Stories

Sarah Parker, an A-student at North Henderson High School and a member of the Boys & Girls Club of Henderson County for the past three years, has been named the North Carolina Youth of the Year by Boys & Girls Clubs of America. The Youth of the Year title is a prestigious honor bestowed upon an exemplary young person in recognition of leadership, service, academic excellence and dedication to live a healthy lifestyle.

As the North Carolina Youth of the Year, Parker will serve as an ambassador for all teens in the state and will receive college scholarships totaling $10,000 from BGCA and North Carolina Area Council of Boys & Girls Clubs. This summer, Parker competes against other finalists within the Southeast Region. If named regional winner, she will be awarded an additional $10,000 college scholarship, renewable for four years up to $40,000. A teenager from the Hendersonville club has won the top youth leadership award for North Carolina in eight of the past 12 years.

Ultimately, six youth, including five regional winners and a military youth winner, will advance to Washington, D.C., in September 2016, to compete for the title of BGCAs National Youth of the Year. The National Youth of the Year will receive an additional scholarship of $25,000, renewable for four years up to $100,000 and will have the opportunity to meet with the president at the White House.

Parker is an active part of the Keystone Club, a teen leadership and community service group. She was also chosen as the Clubs SMART Girls ambassador in 2015 and earned a position as part of the organization's Junior Staff as well, assisting during programs with the Clubs youngest members. She plans to pursue degrees in Spanish and Art at Berea College, where she recently received the Pinnacle Scholar Award of Excellence in the area of service.

I strive for excellence in all that I do, and I want to make a difference in the world. I want to impact those around me, Parker said. The Boys and Girls Club is one of the greatest places I know. I am proud to be part of it and also blessed for all it has done in my life, she added.

Hunter Subaru, the Local Youth of the Year Sponsor, awarded Parker a $1,000 scholarship in January after she won the Henderson County Youth of the Year title. Were thrilled for Sarah. Shes a great example of what can happen with hard work and dedication, said Randy Hunter, Owner of Hunter Subaru. As we celebrate more than 75 years in business, we couldnt be prouder to support the Boys & Girls Club of Henderson County. We care about our community, and the Club has a huge, positive impact on the lives and education of so many families in our region.




The next Luas strike, on the weekend of April 24, will coincide with the actual calendar centenary of the 1916 Rising Photo: Niall Carson/PA Wire

Another weekend of traffic disruption is on the cards as further strikes by Luas drivers are looming in April.

Commuters were left to vent their fury as there appears to be no solution in sight.

The service interruption last Easter Saturday and Sunday was the latest downing of tools in a long-running dispute between drivers and management.

Drivers took to tram lines to picket over the weekend, in what has become an increasingly fraught conflict.

The next strike, on the weekend of April 24, will coincide with the actual calendar centenary of the 1916 Rising.

Last weekend's 48-hour stoppage came as talks ended in deadlock with no clear indication if the continuing industrial action will end soon.

Meanwhile, head of the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) Kieran Mulvey rejected a claim that he was biased against Siptu

The union's President, Jack O'Connor, had called for Mr Mulvey's resignation.

Over the weekend, Fianna Fail's transport spokesperson Timmy Dooley called for a special independent taskforce to help resolve the Luas dispute.

"A similar task force was put in place to help resolve the Dublin Bus dispute in 2013," he said.

"At that time the group played a key role in bridging the divide between management and unions."

"No one wants this conflict to rumble on for weeks on end," he added. "Action is needed to break the impasse between management and unions."

Mr Dooley said he had also written to Transport Minister Paschal Donohoe, asking him to establish such a taskforce "without further delay".

Last week, Luas workers overwhelmingly rejected a deal brokered by the WRC, which proposed a pay rise of up to 18pc over three years.

However, Eoin Ready of Siptu said he remained hopeful that a solution could be reached with further negotiation.

Opportunity

"I hope there's a bit of space and opportunity where ourselves and Transdev can re- engage," he told 98FM.

"If there's to be an agreement that both sides can ultimately live with, it can only happen through dialogue and discussion, and that's something we need to occur," he added.

Spokespeople from both Siptu and Transdev said no further negotiation had taken place over the weekend.

Two more days of strikes have been confirmed on the weekend of April 23 and 24.
Gardai arrested a teenager after a clash between officers and protesters disturbed the unveiling of a 1916 monument at Glasnevin Cemetery.

There was a strong garda presence at the unveiling of a Remembrance Wall for all those who died in the Rising 100 years ago.

The necrology wall lists the names of 485 people who died in the Rising - including 262 civilians, 107 British soldiers, 58 rebels and 13 policemen.

A small group of people opposed to the monument - because it includes the names of English soldiers - rallied outside the cemetery holding republican flags.

Fireworks were also thrown at gardai, while individuals also attempted to burn the Union flag in a brief clash with authorities. However, because of the damp conditions the flag failed to light.

The garda riot squad appeared after the fireworks were thrown at uniformed gardai.

A garda spokesman confirmed to the Herald that a 15-year-old was arrested and later released. He will be dealt with under the juvenile justice system.

Meanwhile, chiefs at Glasnevin Cemetery were left red-faced after a spelling mistake was spotted on the monument.

The monument bears the words "Eiri Amach Na Casca 1916", but eagle-eyed Irish speakers highlighted an error.

A spokesperson confirmed there was a misplaced fada - "Eiri" should have been spelled "Eiri". Eiri Amach Na Casca is the Irish for the Easter Rising.

"The mistake will be corrected immediately," he added.

Fianna Fail TD Eamon O Cuiv described the mistake as "crazy". "These things should be proofed and checked," he said.

Local children from nearby schools unveiled the wall, while Acting Taoiseach Enda Kenny laid a wreath during the event, which was part of the official State commemorations.

Emergency

However, the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Criona Ni Dhalaigh, was absent from the ceremony due to a family emergency.

Ms Ni Dhalaigh, Dublin's first Sinn Fein mayor, was forced to pull out of the event on Friday.

Independent councillor Ruairi McGinley stood in for the mayor and said her absence was not down to any "political agenda".

Some of Ms Ni Dhalaigh's party colleagues have been critical of the Necrology Wall. TD Aengus O Snodaigh described it as "totally inappropriate".

Other notable figures at the ceremony included former taoisigh Bertie Ahern and John Bruton, RTE star Joe Duffy and Transport Minister Pascal Donohoe.
Pint-sized criminal John Gilligan had a secret meeting with his former associate Troy Jordan soon after coming back to Ireland.

The veteran gangster also made contact with the Kinahan cartel to ask permission to return to Dublin.

Gilligan had been forced to flee the UK in fear of his life.

The sixty-four-old had become involved in a feud with a dangerous Birmingham-based Traveller family after "running his mouth off".

Just two days after returning to the capital, the convicted drug-trafficker travelled to Dundalk for a meeting with his once close friend Jordan (46) and three criminals from Northern Ireland.

The five men were closely watched by gardai at a service station cafe in the border county, with Gilligan and Jordan speaking with each other at length.

The three men accompanying Jordan are believed to have been criminals from Belfast and Newry.

Jordan left in the same vehicle as Gilligan, with the pair being briefly stopped by gardai.

Members of the Special Detective Unit (SDU) have been keeping a close eye on Gilligan since his return to Ireland.

Despite having a strong criminal pedigree, Troy Jordan has managed to avoid incurring any major convictions to date.

His business connections over the years have included Martin 'The Viper' Foley and Geraldine Gilligan, John's wife.

Botched

Along with Foley, Jordan helped to set up Viper Debt Recovery and Repossession Services in 2005. He resigned as a director in June 2010.

During her legal battle with CAB over the Jessbrook Equestrian Centre in Kildare, Geraldine Gilligan told the High Court in 2008 that her only income was 5,000 a year she received from Jordan "for grass".

Meanwhile, it is believed that Gilligan contacted crime boss Daniel Kinahan through a third-party before he decided to travel back to Ireland.

A hitman gardai believe has been used by the Kinahan Cartel is also the chief suspect in the botched assassination attempt on Gilligan in west Dublin over two years ago.

The gunman fired six shots into the gangland target at his brother's house in Clondalkin, in March 2013.

It is believed the same individual previously tried to target Gilligan at the Halfway House pub in Ashtown, Co Dublin.

He is also suspected of being one of the four men who gunned down Eddie Hutch (59) in February as part of an ongoing feud.

It has been reported that Gilligan "begged" for permission from the Kinahan cartel to return to Ireland.

"He contacted Daniel Kinahan through an intermediary and asked for permission to come back," a source told the Sunday World.
Family members try to shield the drug smuggler from cameras

RTE has insisted that Michaella McCollum was not paid for her sit-down interview in Peru  but would not comment as to whether her family obtained any benefit.

The soft-focus interview with the convicted drug smuggler was widely panned by members of the public.

The interview, an RTE production, was carried out by journalist Trevor Birney from Fine Point Films working in Northern Ireland.

Sources told the Herald that RTE, Fine Point Films and Michaella all signed a number of confidentiality agreements prior to its production.

RTE, funded by taxpayers money, later moved to clarify that it did not pay the ex-lag for the interview.

However, when asked, a spokesman wouldnt confirm or deny whether any expenses were paid to friends or family.

I cant disclose or discuss any of the production costs around the documentary apart from the fact that Michaella McCollum wasnt paid, a spokesman told the Herald.

Sensitive

Michaella McCollum did not get paid for the interview and any other production and staffing costs are commercially sensitive and wont be disclosed.

The interview centered on questions about her hairstyle and her future plans rather than probing her on the drug gangs she worked with.

In the interview Michaella said she wanted to demonstrate that she is a good person after serving time for trying to smuggle drugs out of Peru.

Michaella (23) was arrested in 2013 for possession of almost 2m worth of smuggled cocaine. She and Scottish woman Melissa Reid were apprehended at Lima airport with the cocaine hidden in their luggage.

Michaella was holidaying in Ibiza when she disappeared before turning up a week-and-a-half later in Lima.

She added that she was strip-searched and handcuffed to a chair after being stopped by airport security.

It didnt feel real. I didnt feel like that was really happening. I was scared. I wanted to curl up in a ball and die.

I wanted to run away, but there was no running away.

She went on to say that the experience in the securitys main office at the airport was the first of many breakdowns she would have over her two years in jail.

The Tyrone woman told RTE that her release last Friday feels like its not real, and said she didnt know how to say no to somebody when she was young.

During last nights interview, Ms McCollum said she now regretted the crime.

I made a decision in a moment of madness Im not a bad person, she said. I want to demonstrate that Im a good person.

If the drugs had of got back [to Europe] what could have happened, I probably would have had a lot of blood on my hands.

She has been in jail for over two years after she was found guilty of attempting to bring more than 5kg of cocaine to Spain.

Last weekend was the Dungannon womans first taste of freedom since 2013, but she is set to remain in Peru for the foreseeable future.

It feels like a dream, she said. It feels like Im going to wake up at any moment and be back in a nightmare.

In her first interview since her conviction, she said she had been very naive.

I was so young, very insecure. A lot of times I didnt know how to say no to somebody. I kind of just followed along with it.

Ive forgotten the things that everybody takes for granted. Seeing the sun, seeing the darkness, seeing the moon and the stars.
The waterpark section of the Funtasia leisure complex in Drogheda is expected to remain closed until the company has consulted with health authorities.

At least a dozen customers, including children, sought medical advice in hospital after apparently suffering from the effects of chlorine last Friday.

Customers said that they suffered from coughing, sneezing and watering eyes. Two children were admitted to Temple Street Children's Hospital but have since been discharged.

One of them was the eight-year-old son of Louise Dunne from Skerries, Co Dublin. He was discharged in the early hours of Saturday, and yesterday she confirmed her nephew, his 11-year-old cousin, was discharged yesterday morning.

Ms Dunne told the Herald that she had spoken with the manager of Funtasia and as a result, said they are "feeling very reassured".

Concerned

"We also appreciate how concerned he has been about the children. We do want to know the findings of the investigation, but we aren't taking the matter any further."

Gary Lodge from Navan, Co Meath, who went to the waterpark with his wife Maeve and children Aaron (2) and Lauren (11) said he had "never experienced anything like it".

"My wife and the children were coughing. I was very headachy and my nose was burning," he said.

In a statement, Funtasia said that there was a very strong smell of chlorine in the swimming pool.

"System checks showed that the level of chlorine in the pool was within acceptable levels.

"The pool area was cleared of customers as soon as possible and subsequently closed. A full recalibration of the pool system is now underway.

"We have requested that the Health and Safety Authority and the Environmental Section of Louth County Council look into the matter and the pool area will only re-open after consultation with these bodies."
His 15-year-old grandson had been killed in a shooting over the Easter weekend, and Victor Leonard was in the District of Columbia Superior Court on Tuesday as the suspect in the death made an initial court appearance. "Hes just a kid himself" was his shell-shocked observation as a slight 17-year-old, dressed in jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt, stood in shackles to face a second-degree murder charge. Maurice Bellamy is accused of pulling out a gun and  for no reason whatsoever  shooting Davonte Washington as he waited with his mother and sisters for a Metro train at the Deanwood station in Northeast last Saturday.

How could someone so young be capable of such mindless violence? How did he get a gun? Were there things that could have been done to prevent the tragedy? And are there steps that need to be taken to prevent other young lives from being lost and ruined? Those are the questions that need to be answered as Washington  like other urban areas  struggles with a wave of gun violence that disproportionately affects young black men.

According to authorities, the two youths did not know each other. Charging papers by prosecutors detail a split-second chain of events in which Maurice confronts Davonte. "What the f--- you keep looking at me for?" the older teen said, according to the documents, before pulling out a gun and shooting the younger boy twice in the torso. "Absolutely no reason for it," said Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier. Davonte, a student at Largo High School who was leaning toward a career in the military, was described as a "great athlete" who was "liked by everybody."

Not a lot is known about his accused killer. Charging documents cite the use of a juvenile offender database in helping identify him as a suspect, and documents obtained by Post reporters show he was arrested in 2014 for making threats against an employee at Ballou High School. He was placed on probation and spent time in a shelter home in Northwest Washington. But his probation had ended at the time of the killing. Court officials routinely review cases in which defendants re-offend so officials who came into contact with this young man will try to determine if there were signs that were missed.

And because this tragedy is a textbook case of how easily petty matters  like a wrong look  can turn deadly when guns are easily available, we hope officials find out all they can about the gun used to snuff out the life of a boy on his way to get a haircut in time for Easter.
Nothing goes right for Edgewood in long trip to East Central
The Congress crying hoarse over the imposition of Presidents Rule in Uttarakhand is like the proverbial devil quoting the scriptures.

How else can one describe the response of a party, which was instrumental in dismissing 91 non-Congress governments when it was in power (or the parties supported by it held the reins at the Centre) during the past six decades. And yet, the Congress political amnesia, true to its character and moral fibre, is such that it needs to be reminded of its own intolerant past.

In 1951, from the time that the government in Punjab was dismissed during Jawaharlal Nehrus premiership, Presidents Rule was imposed on 111 occasions in different states. Also during Nehrus tenure, the first Communist government in Kerala, formed by EMS Namboodiripad, was shown the door in 1959. Of course, former prime minister Indira Gandhi takes the cake for invoking Article 356 the maximum number of times (45), and in most cases for political reasons to prevent the growth of regional leaders or parties. If any prime minister can be credited with pulling the plug on state governments out of sheer political spite and unconcealed intolerance, it was Indira Gandhi.

Read | An avoidable political-judicial tussle in Uttarakhand

Let us get the facts and figures in perspective. While Presidents Rule was imposed seven times during the 16-year tenure of Nehru, it was clamped on 45 occasions when Indira Gandhi was prime minister for almost a similar period. Also, twice when Lal Bahadur Shastri was the PM, six times during Rajiv Gandhis premiership, 11 times under PV Narasimha Raos tenure and on 10 occasions under former PM Manmohan Singh.

Article 356 was invoked four times each by the Samajwadi Janata Party (Rashtriya) founded by Chandra Shekhar and the Janata Party (Secular) led by Charan Singh. The United Front government headed by HD Deve Gowda used it on two occasions. All these governments were supported by the Congress in resorting to the use of Article 356.

Read | Uttarakhand crisis: HC defers rebel MLAs plea hearing to April 11

During the six-year tenure of the NDA regime, led by prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Presidents Rule was imposed on four occasions and had to be clamped twice under the present government. In the two latest instances, internal squabbles within the Congress led to a constitutional breakdown in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, forcing the Centre to act.

It is apparent that the Congress used Article 356 as an arm-twisting tool against the Opposition and invoked it for settling political scores on many occasions; mostly the situation never warranted it. Although the critics of the BJP allege that it was murdering democracy and that the NDA was providing the Congress a dose of its own medicine, this is evidently not the case.

Read | Congress has lost its way as Indian politics prime player

In Uttarakhand, for instance, a failed finance Bill was shown as passed when nine legislators voted against it and the government was reduced to a minority. There was a breakdown of the Constitution and the Uttarakhand chief minister was caught indulging in horse-trading on camera by offering inducements to MLAs. The forensic laboratory confirmed that the video (of the sting operation) was authentic. Even as this crisis paralysed the administration in the hill state, the assembly Speaker disqualified nine rebel MLAs a day before the floor test.

These unsavoury incidents led the governor to recommend Presidents Rule while keeping the assembly in suspended animation.

It would be apt to recall an important recommendation of the Sarkaria Commission, which went into the whole gamut of Centre-state relations. While recommending that Article 356 should be used very sparingly, in extreme cases as a measure of last resort, when all available alternatives fail to rectify a breakdown of constitutional machinery in a state, it observed that these alternatives may be dispensed with only in cases of extreme urgency where failure on the part of the Union to take immediate action under Article 356 will lead to disastrous consequences.

The commission, in its report, mentioned that Article 356 was used sparingly in the initial years and was invoked 12 times up to 1967. It was resorted to on 62 occasions between 1967 and 1985. The very first occasion of its use (Punjab in 1951) for resolving an internal crisis in the ruling party, contained the seeds for future misapplication. It rose to a crescendo in 1977 (and in 1980) when Presidents Rule was imposed in nine states at the same time, noted the report.

While pointing out that the Constitution makers were alive to the fact that several regions of the country had no past experience or tradition of the parliamentary form of government, and a failure or break-down of the constitutional machinery in a state could not be ruled out as an impossibility, the Sarkaria Commission report observed that a further duty was, therefore, laid on the Union to ensure that the government of every state is carried on in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution.

The BJP has never been a believer in political skullduggery and has never indulged in overthrowing or dismissing elected governments like the Congress, which has no moral right to even pretend to be the saviour of democracy.

The tragedy of the Congress is that after sinking deeper into the quicksand of political irrelevance over the last six decades and dragging parties supportive of its actions into an inextricable morass, it feels frustrated that it cannot take the high moral ground on any issue. Having been in power for long and wedded to an ideology of opportunism, the Congress with its desire for power has still not been able to come to terms with the BJP-led NDA governments electoral success and its unwavering focus on development. This seething political frustration that the Congress suffers from is reflected in its puerile criticism of the NDA government on all matters, including the imposition of Presidents Rule in Uttarakhand.

M Venkaiah Naidu is minister of urban development, housing and urban poverty alleviation and parliamentary affairs. The views expressed are personal.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks to transform India from being merely an influential entity into one whose weight and preferences are defining for international politics.

Less than a year after he took office in May 2014, he challenged his senior diplomats to help India position itself in a leading role, rather than [as] just a balancing force, globally. In other words, to have India become a great power.

This is a laudable vision  and quite overdue. For far too long, leaders in New Delhi have conceived of India as a celebrated civilisation or as a grand experiment, but rarely as a great power.

There is much that India still has to do to ascend to this pinnacle. True great powers are not distinguished in the first instance by the strength of example or even by superior military capabilities, important though those may be. They are marked instead by the possession of exceptional material capabilities, which arise invariably from the presence of effective governments presiding over energetic societies. It is this interaction between State and society that enables them to generate resources faster and more effectively than their rivals and by so doing become genuinely great powers.

Although Indian leaders did occasionally voice a desire for great power status, they did not exhibit any great appetite for it; they certainly did not make the investments necessary to build a strong State; and while they obviously sought a productive economy, they pursued counterproductive strategies toward that end. As a result, they forfeited the high growth that would have enabled India to rapidly defeat pervasive poverty, amass significant national wealth, and ultimately procure those military capabilities necessary to protect its interests beyond its borders.

To be sure, India did many things right. It preserved its territorial integrity despite multiple threats; it forged a unified nation despite bewildering diversity; and it created pockets of technological excellence despite weak economic performance. But it lost the opportunity to build efficient markets that would have encouraged innovation, competitiveness, and growth, even as decay in the political system over time slowly corroded the rule of law, weakened property rights, engendered stifling corruption, and impeded the speedy administration of justice  all of which combined to deny India the material success that would have produced great power status rapidly.

These failures left India with debilitating development problems and oriented its foreign policy toward preventing the international system from undermining its security rather than moulding the wider world to advance Indias interests.

Although Indias economic performance has improved dramatically in recent years, it is still unclear whether this impressive record is sustainable over the long term. The capital, labour, productivity and technological constraints on Indian growth are still considerable, and its institutional weaknesses  including its inability to set and achieve strategic goals  are quite profound.

All this creates a risk that India could become a consequential player internationally over time, but not necessarily a great power: Meaning a State that determines not simply important outcomes in, but the very configuration of, the global system.

If Modis vision of India as a leading power is therefore to be realised, he must strengthen what India has most successfully achieved thus far  liberal democracy and civic nationalism  while eliminating the hindrances within its economy and strengthening the capacity of the Indian state.

Modis remarkable accomplishments in foreign policy offer hope that similar achievements can be produced at home. In fact, domestic success is imperative because without a large reservoir of material resources, India is unlikely to prove sufficiently persuasive abroad.

Nor will it possess the wherewithal that enables it to provide global public goods  an important means of earning international loyalty  or project military power beyond its immediate neighbourhood.

Modi understands these realities all too well. It is not surprising, therefore, that he has sought to embark on difficult reforms, even if some have thus far been stillborn. He must nevertheless stay focused on completing Indias economic renewal, which requires repositioning the Indian State within the national economy while simultaneously strengthening it. The current strategy of persistent, encompassing, and creative incrementalism is not at all inappropriate, provided it remains relentless, comprehensive and ingenious in its pursuit of liberalisation. In particular, Modi needs to articulate the importance of this objective in ways that are comprehensible to the polity at large because there are few leaders in India today who have the capacity to do so persuasively.

Modis invocation that India become a leading power, consequently, represents the beginning of a long quest. His call offers transformative possibilities if it drives the speedy acquisition of great power capabilities and makes their procurement the considered object of Indian national policy. If this vision takes root, the foundations would be laid for making difficult decisions about economic reform domestically; containing those elements on both the right and the left that would disfigure Indias democracy and retard its development, respectively; and articulating a clear perspective of Indias role in Asia and the world without either defensiveness or hubris.

The stage would also be set for cementing the strategic partnerships that India has sought to build in furtherance of its own interests, taking the initiative in developing cooperative solutions that address the most pressing regional and global challenges, and building the military capabilities necessary to protect India and to provide the public goods needed to strengthen peace and security throughout the Indo-Pacific. Pursuing these objectives purposefully would provide the clearest indication that India is indeed serious about becoming a real great power.

Ashley J Tellis is senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. This article is published as part of an association between Hindustan Times and Carnegie India. The views expressed are personal.
Millions of people spread across Assam and West Bengal queued outside poll booths on Monday, kicking off the first phase of a month-long poll process where the BJP is looking to expand its footprint into regions it has been traditionally weak.

Polling in 65 constituencies of upper Assam (tea belt in the eastern part) and Barak Valley (southern part bordering Bangladesh) will determine if the BJP can snatch the state away from the three-time Congress chief minister Tarun Gogoi.

Assam represents the best chance the BJP has to win a state. The party did extremely well in these two regions in the last Lok Sabha elections. The momentum that the party gains in these regions could carry it through April 11 elections for 61 seats in Muslim-dominated Lower and central Assam.

The BJPs electoral appeal in the absence of any perceptible Modi wave and the Congress partys tenacity against a spirited attack on one of its last fortresses will be under test.

Out of the four states and one Union Territory -- Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal, Assam and Puduchhery -- going to polls in the next six weeks, the BJP has its eyes set on the north eastern state where it fancies a chance to create history by forming the government.

Read | Why the polls in four states are worth watching

Polling in 18 constituencies in Maoist-infested districts of West Midnapore, Purulia and Bankura in West Bengal may serve as a barometer for chief minister Mamata Banerjee to assess whether the tragic Vivekananda flyover collapse in Kolkata has any adverse resonance outside the city.

It will also test her claims about restoring peace and development in this region where, she said, 400-500 people used to be killed every year before she came to power.

These are the first elections since the BJP stormed to power at the Centre in May 2014 in which the party is not seeking votes directly in the name of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Prime Minister has campaigned for his party but the focus has been on local issues -- illegal Bangladeshi immigrants (read Muslims) and corruption in Assam, lack of development and Narada news expose of corruption in the ruling Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, et al.

On May 19, when results of the current round of elections are out, it will be clear how much the BJP depends on personality cult for electoral success.

The results will also set the stage for presidential elections in 2017. As the President is elected by an electoral college comprising members of parliaments and members of legislative assemblies (MLAs) of states, party position in every assembly matters to the NDA to get the President of its choice.

Read | State polls survey: Mamata to retain Bengal, hung assembly in Assam

The RSS, the BJPs ideological patron, is said to be keenly watching the numbers in different assemblies. As it is, the BJP along with its allies rules 12 states (excluding Jammu and Kashmir where PDP-BJP government will be formed on Monday) but may not have the requisite numbers to force its candidate.

During the NDA government in 2002, TDPs Chandrababu Naidu had scuttled the BJPs initial choice of PC Alexander as the NDA nominee, forcing it to go for APJ Abdul Kalam.

It was also Mulayam Singhs support for Kalam, which had compelled the opposition parties to go along. In 2017 again, the NDA will have to get regional parties on board to have its candidate elected to the Rashtrapati Bhawan.

The assembly election results will have a bearing on governance at the Centre. The BJPs poor show may embolden the opposition parties to further harden their stance against contentious reforms legislation.

According to projections, the NDAs tally, with support of the AIADMK (with present strength) and 7 nominated members, will be 86 in the Rajya Sabha by August as against the combined strength of 87 of the Congress-led grouping including the Left, the RJD-JD(U) and the DMK.

The NDA will need smaller parties to get to the majority figure of 123 in the 245-member upper house.

The AIADMK has been a reliable supporter of the NDA in Parliament, except on the Constitution (Amendment) Bill enabling the rollout of the goods and services tax.

There are 6 seats, including 3 held by the AIADMK, falling vacant in Tamil Nadu in June. The BJP may be attacking the AIADMK government during the poll campaign but its strategists are secretly wishing a thumping victory for J Jayalalithaa.

Watch | First phase of polling in West Bengal

<span itemprop="name" content="Watch | First phase of polling in West Bengal"></span><span itemprop="description" content="The first phase of assembly polls for 18 constituencies in West Bengal started today. People were seen waiting in long queues outside the polling booths in Purulia and West Midnapore. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state president Dilip Ghosh also cast his vote at a polling booth in West Midnapore. This is the first phase in a larger election season in which five states will go to the polls."></span><span itemprop="duration" content="28"></span><span itemprop="thumbnail" content="http://cfvod.kaltura.com/p/1679921/sp/167992100/thumbnail/entry_id/0_62vthrzx/version/100012/acv/162"></span><span itemprop="width" content="640"></span><span itemprop="height" content="362"></span>

Read | East set for high-voltage fight as assembly elections get underway
Millions of people braved the sweltering heat to vote in massive numbers in the first phase of assembly elections in Assam and West Bengal on Monday with experts saying the high turnout indicated the electorate was mobilised and motivated.

Over 82% voters turned out in 18 West Bengal constituencies  nine in Purulia district, three in Bankura and six in West Midnapore.

Thirteen assembly segments were Left Wing Extremists (LWE) dominated seats where polling ended by 4pm. The Election Commision found 15 cases of paid news.

In Assam, the turnout figure for the 65 seats in 14 districts of Upper Assam (tea belt in the eastern part) and Barak Valley (southern part bordering Bangladesh) was above 80%.

At least 93 electronic voting machines malfunctioned and were replaced.

Read | What makes incumbent CM Tarun Gogoi still tick in Assam?

The voting percentage for the corresponding constituencies for Assam during 2011 was 75% and for West Bengal it was 83.72%.

Manoranjan Mohanty, a political scientist with the Institute of Chinese Studies said the large turnout was because all sections of the electorate were mobilised.

In Assam, groups opposed to the AGP-BJP tie up want to ensure a high voting turnout to defeat the coalition, the Congress wants to prove it has not suffered by losing Himanata Biswa Sharma so its cadres have been activated, he said.

Mondays voting is part of a six-week-long poll process in four states  Kerala, West Bengal, Assam and Tamil Nadu  and a union territory  Puducherry.

I have seen tremendous enthusiasm among voters. People want change of political guard to guide development. We are sure of win in over 40 seats in the first phase, said BJP Assam chief ministerial candidate Sarbananda Sonowal.

Read | State polls survey: Mamata to retain Bengal, hung assembly in Assam

This phase was crucial for the BJP in Assam as the party did extremely well in this region in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

The next phase of polling is on April 11 in 61 seats of the Muslim-dominated lower and central Assam, where the Congress and AIUDF are expected to do well.

But experts said high turnout wasnt always indicative of anti-incumbency, citing examples of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi.

Sanjay Kumar of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) attributed Assams high voting percentage to a wind of change.

In West Bengal, Kumar said the Congress-Left combine wont be able to stop the Trinamool Congress.

In Bengal, polling will be held in another 31 seats in the second part of the first phase on April 11.

Opposition parties in West Bengal alleged there were certain gaps in the patrolling of central police forces.

In 2011, the Trinamool Congress won 10 of Bengals 18 constituencies while the CPI-M and Congress won in six and two seats respectively.

In Assam, the Congress won 54 seats the last time, the Asom Gana Parishad  a BJP ally  won 4 while the BJP won 3.

Read | Will poll schedule work to BJPs advantage in Parliament?
The first phase of assembly elections in Assam and West Bengal passed of peacefully on Monday. Around 80% voters turned out in the 18 West Bengal constituencies. In Assam, the turnout figure for the 65 seats in 14 districts of Upper Assam and Barak Valley stood at 80%.

You can read a story wrapping the elections here and catch our live coverage below..

As it happened:

8.30pm: Voting in both states by and large peaceful with no reports of violence-related death or injury, announces the Election Commission.

3.30pm: 72% voting in Assam, BJP elated over heavy polling.

3.25pm: BJPs chief ministerial candidate Sarbananda Sonowal casts his vote in Dibrugarh, Assam.

People in Assam want development. I am sure results will be good as the BJP believes in development, says Sonowal.

3.00pm: 75.24% voter turnout in West Bengal.

3.10pm: More than 300 villagers boycott assembly elections protesting against unavailability of electricity and water in village Purulia, West Bengal. We will not vote. Despite promises being made, our village has not received electricity and water. When nobody thinks about us, why should we cast our votes? asks a villager.

2.00pm: 51% voter turnout in Assam.

1.00pm: Voter turnout in West Bengal:

Bankura: 62.15%

West Midnapore: 65.45%

Purulia: 61.95%

Average turnout: 63.3%

12.30pm: 45% voter turnout in Assam.

12.40am: Reports of malfunctioning electronic voting machines (EVMs) in some polling centres, voting affected for some time but EVMs swiftly replaced, according to election officials.

12.30pm: Watch people cast their votes in the first phase of West Bengal elections

<span itemprop="name" content="Watch | First phase of polling in West Bengal"></span><span itemprop="description" content="The first phase of assembly polls for 18 constituencies in West Bengal started today. People were seen waiting in long queues outside the polling booths in Purulia and West Midnapore. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state president Dilip Ghosh also cast his vote at a polling booth in West Midnapore. This is the first phase in a larger election season in which five states will go to the polls."></span><span itemprop="duration" content="28"></span><span itemprop="thumbnail" content="http://cfvod.kaltura.com/p/1679921/sp/167992100/thumbnail/entry_id/0_62vthrzx/version/100012/acv/162"></span><span itemprop="width" content="640"></span><span itemprop="height" content="362"></span>

12.15pm: Voting underway for the first phase of Assam polls in Bokakhat (Golaghat).

Polling in 65 constituencies of upper Assam and Barak Valley (southern part bordering Bangladesh) will determine if the BJP can snatch the state away from the three-time Congress chief minister Tarun Gogoi.

Voicing confidence that the people would elect a Congress government in Assam, CM Gogoi said his party has brought change for the better by developing the state, while PM Modi has failed to fulfill his promises.

11.00am: Voter turnout 45.32% in West Bengal, 22.77% in Assam. More than 190 complaints poll-rule violation recorded in West Bengal.

The voting percentage in the three districts of West Bengal was recorded at:

West Midnapore: 47.53%

Bankura: 45.02%

Purulia: 43.43%

Average percentage: 45.32%

Polling in 18 constituencies in Maoist-affected districts of West Midnapore, Purulia and Bankura in West Bengal may serve as a barometer for CM Mamata Banerjee to assess whether the tragic Vivekananda flyover collapse in Kolkata has any adverse resonance outside the city.

10.50am: 20 % voting in the first three hours in Assam, huge turnout likely. A total number of 535 companies of security forces have been deployed in the 65 constituencies in the state where the polls are being held.

9.50am: I am sure that we will be able to form government in Tamil Nadu under the leadership of Karunanidhi, says Congress Ghulam Nabi Azad.

9:28am: Bengal elections will be carried out on seven days. The first phase has two days, the first one today (Monday) and the second one April 11.

West Midnapore: BJP state president Dilip Ghosh casts his vote #WestBengal pic.twitter.com/K8ciUMX1Xc  ANI (@ANI_news) 4 April 2016

9:24am: Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad arrives at DMK chief Karunanidhis residence in Chennai to talk about seat-sharing. They finalise seat sharing ahead of Tamil Nadu Assembly polls (May 16), Congress to get 41 seats.

9.20am: We will have to take all possible measures to develop Majuli, Assam and make it visible on the global map, says Sarbananda Sonowal, the Union Minister for Sports & Youth Affairs and BJPs chief ministerial candidate in the Assam polls.

9.09am: A differently-abled person casts his vote at a polling booth in Karbi Anglong.

9.00am: Voter turnout recorded at 18% till 9.00 am for the first phase of West Bengal polls and 12% for Assam.

8.30 am: Assam CM Tarun Gogoi says, I dont think its a tough battle. I will be the chief minister of Assam.

Jorhat: Tarun Gogoi casts his vote, says 'I will be the Chief Minister' #Assampolls pic.twitter.com/ZIsUI4jPsE  ANI (@ANI_news) 4 April 2016

7.40am: Tarun Gogoi, chief minister of Assam, arrives at a polling booth in Jorhat to cast his vote.

7.20am: These are the first elections since the BJP stormed to power at the Centre in May 2014 in which the party is not seeking votes directly in the name of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

7.00am: On May 19, when results of the current round of elections are out, it will be clear how much the BJP depends on personality cult for electoral success.

Voting begins in Assam and for the first phase in West Bengal #AssemblyPolls pic.twitter.com/RWJdMFeKjQ  Hindustan Times (@htTweets) April 4, 2016

6.52am: Voting to begin shortly for first phase of Assam polls. People wait in long queues outside a polling booth in Diphu . Assam represents the best chance the BJP has to win a state. The party did extremely well in these two regions in the last Lok Sabha elections. The momentum that the party gains in these regions could carry it through April 11 elections for 61 seats in Muslim-dominated Lower and central Assam.

6.49am: People queue up outside a polling booth in Diphu

6.23am: Preparations underway for the first phase of polling in Diphu, Assam. Polling booths set with security arrangements.

Follow the Assam assembly polls full coverage here

Follow the West Bengal assembly polls full coverage here

With Agency inputs

(All pictures from ANI)
For a quarter century Shahjahan Kazi, 55, has been doing election duty, screening hundreds of voters on polling days. But once again Kazi will not get to vote in the assembly elections in Assam on April 11 because he is a D-voter. D-voters (D for doubtful) are people who cant prove Indian citizenship and are barred from voting.

Every election, I check and verify voters identity, when my own identity is being questioned by the government, says Kazi, who teaches social science at a government school in Barpeta.

During their poll campaigns here, senior BJP leaders including PM Narendra Modi raised the issue of illegal immigration from Bangladesh to target the ruling Congress government. D-voters are assumed to be Bangladeshis.

Though estimates vary, D-voters are concentrated in Sonitpur, Barpeta, Nagaon and Dhubri districts. The Election Commission identified 3.7 lakh D-voters in 1997 electoral roll revision, but only 1.99 lakh were referred to the Foreigners Tribunals to decide their fate. The state puts the current figure of D-voters at 1,36,448.

There are 100 tribunals across the state. After being declared a foreigner, the guilty are sent to detention centres or camps in district jails, located in Goalpara, Kokrajhar and Silchar.

Anna Rani Ghosh of Krishnai town near Goalpara fears being sent to a detention camp. Her husband, Shyamal Ghosh, was declared a foreigner and sent to the Goalpara camp three months ago.

I dont go out much fearing arrest. Theyve (police) already taken away my husband; if they arrest me too, then how will my children survive, she pleads.

Goalpara district jail authorities told HT that the prison houses 526 inmates although capacity is 200. Of these, 197 are foreigners sent by the tribunals. Another 200-odd are lodged in Kokrajhar and Silchar detention camps.

An office of the Foreign Tribunals in Goalpara, Assam. It is one of 100 tribunals located across the state that determine the fate of a D-voters citizenship claim. (Subhendu Ghosh / Hindustan Times)

Its the Assam polices border branch that picks suspects and refers them to the tribunals. But the verification process is often complicated and can lead to wrong verdicts.

If you get a notice and stop appearing after one or two hearings, the judge declares you a foreigner. You are also marked if you fail to receive the notice several times in a row or if you fail to turn up during evidence determination. Of course, if you cant produce valid documents, you are doomed, says a Goalpara tribunal official, not wanting to be named.

Given the long-winding process, locals allege harassment. Take Moinal Mollah, whose case has reached the Supreme Court. A resident of Barpeta district, Mollahs tin-roofed tenement near the Brahmaputra is occupied by his aging parents, his wife and three children. His father, Ashan, and mother, Manowara Khatoon  once D-voters  were declared Indian citizens by a tribunal, but the same tribunal, and later the Gauhati High Court, refused to clear Moinals status.

The tribunal declared Mollah a foreigner because he didnt appear in court on the wrong advice of his lawyers, says Aman Wadud, a lawyer with MY-FACTS, an organisation that took Mollahs case to the apex court.

Grieving parents of Moinal Mollah, who has been in the Goalpara detention camp since 2013. Moinal's father, Ashan, and mother, Manowara Khatoon  once D-voters  were declared Indian citizens by a tribunal but he was declared a foreigner. (Subhendu Ghosh / Hindustan Times)

Corruption creeps into the process also, and often D-voters pay a price to clear their names. Lawyers charge between Rs 200 and Rs 600 per hearing. Ive spent nearly Rs 80,000 trying to get my name out of the D-voter list, says Anna Ghosh. Similarly, Mutallib Ali, 55, of the Hapachara camp, claims spending Rs 30,000 over two years.

Politics over identity has plagued Assam for over three-decades and is exploited every election. The Asom Gana Parishad seized power in 1985 with its anti-foreigner agitation. The Congress government set up tribunals and the National Register of Citizens to verify identity. And perfume baron Badruddin Ajmals All India United Democratic Front promises to safeguard the rights of outsiders.

The BJP, this time, assures relief to jailed Hindu Bengalis. They came here because of religious persecution, says Rupam Goswami, state BJP spokesperson.

What about the Bengali-speaking Muslims? Muslims didnt come here because of religious persecution, they came here for a political vote bank, he says.

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The Congress will contest from 41 seats in the upcoming Tamil Nadu polls, as part of a seat-sharing agreement hammered out with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK).

The deal was struck after a meeting between DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi and senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad at the formers Gopalapuram residence on Monday morning. The constituencies, however, will be finalised after further negotiations between the leaders of the two parties.

The Congress had earlier threatened to go it alone in the polls if the DMK did not budge from its stand of granting it just 30 seats, as opposed to the 63 seats it got in the 2011 general elections. However, Karunanidhi relented during the talks and raised the number to 41.

Read: Seat-sharing impasse clouds Congress-DMK alliance in Tamil Nadu

After the agreement was inked, the two alliance partners jointly announced the development outside Karunanidhis residence.

Under the leadership of Karunanidhiji, we had two meetings. We have signed a deal, granting 41 seats to the Congress. I am sure, that under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi at the national level, and Karunanidhiji at the state level, we will be able to form the government. The AIADMK has not been in power for two consecutive terms in the last 20 years. This time, its the DMKs turn to form the government under Karunanidhijis leadership, Azad said.

DMK treasurer and former deputy chief minister MK Stalin expressed confidence that the alliance will defeat the J Jayalalithaa-led AIADMK under this arrangement. Today, we decided that the Congress will contest from 41 seats. We have signed an agreement for this. The alliance will win as the people are vexed, and want a change, he said.

Stalin, however, clarified that there would be no sharing of power if the alliance were to emerge victorious.

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This year has been eventful for Priyanka Chopra and Deepika Padukone. Both the Bollywood divas have signed Hollywood films -- Baywatch and XXX: The Return Of Xander Cage respectively. However, there are many other Indian actors, too, who have signed American projects. While Irrfan Khan will be seen in the Tom Hanks-starrer Inferno, Freida Pinto is part of an international puppet film, Yamasong: March Of The Hollows. Also, Nawazuddin Siddiqui will have a special appearance in the Nicole Kidman- and Rooney Mara-starrer Lion. Actor Dhanush will also be seen alongside Kill Bill star Uma Thurman in Marjane Satrapis next.The Jungle Book, which releases next week, also has a strong Indian connect, as several Bollywood actors have done voice-overs for the movie.

Read: Priyanka is amazing, but Hollywood is not for me: Kareena Kapoor

The presence of an Indian star in a Hollywood film helps in creating awareness about the project. It might even compel people to watch the film in the theatre, but ultimately, content is the king. So, it all depends on the quality of the film and storyline. However, The Jungle Book is an exception, since its connected to our nostalgia, says trade expert Taran Adarsh.

Apart from Hollywood, Indian celebs are also working in other international films. Popular actor and film-maker Jackie Chan is currently shooting for his next project, Kung Fu Yoga, which features several Indian stars like Sonu Sood, Amyra Dastur and Disha Patani. Also, The Lunchbox (2013) director, Ritesh Batra, is making The Sense Of An Ending, a British film that stars Emily Mortimer and Michelle Dockery. Also, Radhika Apte has signed a spiritual fantasy thriller, The Ashram, which also stars Kal Penn, Melissa Leo and Sam Keeley.

Read: Not like I havent tried my luck in Hollywood, says Sonam Kapoor

Its great that so many Indian actors are getting good work in international projects. But, I also want our directors to work in the west on Indian stories. That way, our country will get better recognition, and so will our directors. I think that our film industry has many good film-makers, who deserve to be appreciated globally, says Irrfan.

While working in international projects earns Indian actors global recognition, does it also help business-wise? Indians have such a peculiar way of life that most of the people dont connect with other culture easily. So, the presence of Indian faces in international films immediately helps us connect with the project, says exhibitor-distributor Akshaye Rathi.

Follow @htshowbiz for more.

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Some fans have unique ways of expressing their love for their idols. Pulkit Samrat experienced something similar recently when one of his fans got his name inked on her arm.

A source close to the actor says, A few days ago, one of Pulkits fans, Simran Kaur, landed up at his Delhi house. She had travelled from Jalandhar (Punjab) to see him. She insisted on meeting him because she had got his name tattooed on her forearm.

Read: We chose the wrong soul mates: Pulkit Samrat on his estranged wife

Pulkit, who currently lives in Mumbai, was not at his Delhi residence at that time. But, instead of turning away the fan, the actors family spent some time with her, and made sure that she ate lunch with them.

Read: Pulkit Samrat to lose 10 kilos for Fukrey sequel

As soon as the actor got to know about Simrans visit, he spoke to her over the phone. Love comes in many forms, but this one is a level above. Unfortunately, I was in Mumbai while she was there, so I could not meet her in person. I hope to meet Simran soon, and wish her luck and love in life, says Pulkit.

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Celebrities are known to be diplomatic during their interviews. Huma Qureshi on the other hand is like a breath of fresh air. She is upfront about her opinions and beliefs.

Last year, Huma took to Twitter to lash out at a publication that had printed information regarding her alleged relationship with actor-producer Sohail Khan. I have always said that Twitter is my forum to talk to people about whats happening in my life, she says.

Bollywood actor Huma Qureshi says she finds it disrespectful when the media prints news about her alleged relationship with Sohail Khan without knowing facts. (Tumblr)

She goes on to address the rumors saying, What really hurts is that without knowing the truth about my life, they (media) go ahead and put these stories. And Ill tell you why they do it; they do it because they want to take away all the attention from my hard work. They want to show that whatever I have achieved in my life is because of my closeness to a particular man, who may be coming from an influential family or is influential himself. That is disrespectful.

Read: I thought everyone had lost it: Huma Qureshi

However, the actor reveals that she is trying to make a conscious effort to be diplomatic. Ive become far more diplomatic, says Huma, adding, I was quite moofat (outspoken) when I first made an appearance in the industry. Over the years, I have learnt that as a Bollywood actor, you cant be like that.

The actor became popular with movies like Badlapur (2015) and Dedh Ishqiya (2014), and is one of the few actors in the industry who hasnt made her way into the industry through contacts. Ask her about nepotism in the industry, and she says, One would be lying if they say nepotism doesnt exist, says the actor adding, I wouldnt say that I havent got my fair share of good roles. This industry has been very kind to me.

Read: I worry that I might die too soon and miss out on cool roles: Huma Qureshi

She is quick to add that it is easy for people to dismiss a womans hard work and talent, especially if she hails from a non-film background. Its easy for people to say that she is doing well because she is close to someone. That is demeaning. I dont see that happening to any of the industry kids, to be very honest.

Now, Huma is all set to appear in Gurinder Chadhas upcoming British-Indian film. The actor has already shot for a few portions of the movie. Talking about her experience, Huma says, It was lovely working with Gurinder. She is a critically-acclaimed as well as a commercially successful director. I have had a blast working on that film, and she really loved me.
Actor Amyra Dastur, who is currently shooting in Jodhpur for her upcoming film Kung Fu Yoga alongside Chinese action star Jackie Chan, says that she was very keen on bringing the actor to Delhi. I love Delhi. I was trying to convince them to shoot there. I was like, But we should shoot in Delhi. They have so many monuments there. But they kept saying no, she says.

The King of action CAN dance n how!! Changing his name 2 Jackie Jackson!! #kungfu yoga pic.twitter.com/2rcQXvtKeg  Farah Khan (@TheFarahKhan) April 4, 2016

Amyra shares that Jackie, who has also shot in Jaipur, loves India. He is fond of the country. Of course, he is boiling in the heat here. Its challenging to shoot in Iceland and then land in India, in this weather. We shot in City Palace, I showed him around the place. He cant step out too much because he is such a big star and there are security issues too, she says.

Read: Farah Khan to choreograph song in Jackie Chans Kung Fu Yoga

The actor, who made her debut with the Issaq (2013) alongside actor Prateik Babbar, says that she is having a blast shooting for the film. It is crazy. I am learning so many things here. Action has become so easy for me now. Also, shooting for the film is a great workout and I have become an expert in hand-to-hand combat. Its all because of my director Stanley Tong, she says.

Amyra says that performing action scenes initially was challenging. I was nervous at first. In one of my scenes, I had cables, but they were not there to lift me and I had to do most of the work. I got a few bumps and bruises, which I continue to get even now, but I look at them as victory marks, she says.
Will it be third time lucky for Anushka Sharma and Shah Rukh Khans jodi? After delivering hits like Rab Ne Bana De Jodi and Jab Tak Hai Jaan, the two stars have come together for filmmaker Imtiaz Alis next. It was already known that the Tamasha director had roped in Shah Rukh Khan for his film, and now reports suggest that Anushka Sharma will be starring opposite him.

Read: I was a bundle of nerves in front of Shah Rukh Khan, says Sunny Leone

The Fan actor will be playing a Sikh tourist in the yet-to-be-titled comedy. His interactions with the locals and his adventurous return to his home country forms the crux of this laugh riot. Reportedly, the shooting will be carried out in London and Punjab.

This is the third time the 27-year-old actress and the 50-year-old actor will star together after Rab Ne Bana De Jodi and Jab Tak Hai Jaan. King Khan is now busy shooting for Gauri Shindes next and Anushka is completing the last leg of Ae Dil Hai Mushkil and YRFs Sultan.
Having helmed films on college politics, athlete and gangsters, director Tigmanshu Dhulia is now all set to start his next movie on Subhash Chandra Boses Indian National Army. Dhulia said that his story will also be adapted into a TV series after the film releases. I am working on a project right now, it will be on Subhash Chandra Boses Indian National Army and the trial they had at the Red Fort. First a feature film will come out, followed by a six-part TV series on Rajya Sabha channel, said Tigmanshu.

The director will start the movie after the release of his upcoming venture Yaara. I have finished Yaara. It is now in post production stage. I am going to start the other movie in July, it should release next year. I am yet to lock a cast, but I will need really good actors for the film, he said.

It is a very different film, so I am even considering actors from theatre and others who can pull this off, he said.

Read: I wont return my National Award, says Tigmanshu Dhulia

Read: I dont want to be just a film-maker, says Tigmanshu Dhulia

Tigmanshu, whose last directorial venture was Saif Ali Khan-starrer Bullet Raja, will also revive his pending project , Milan Talkies. Earlier Balaji was supposed to produce the movie, but we were not able to set it up and things didnt fall into place. Now I am going to produce the film myself. I am ready with the script, in fact, we wouldve shot it right now, but since the film is based in North and it is really hot at this point of time, we will wait, he said.

He said Milan Talkies will star newcomers and go on floors after he finishes the film on Boses INA. Presently, Tigmanshu has made a short film for the Zeal for Unity initiative. Titled Baarish aur Chowmein, the film stars Amit Sadh and Taapsee Pannu. It is a contemporary sweet love story between a Muslim boy and a Hindu girl set in Mumbai. It is a 50-minute film and I took nine days to make it, he said.

Read: Irrfan Khan has great sex appeal, says Tigmanshu Dhulia

Read: 5 Indian films that redefined the process of casting

The initiative features short films by 12 filmmakers, six Indian and as many Pakistani, to make 12 different movies, as an effort to ease the tension between India and Pakistan. It is a great initiative. While the gap between the nations is something created by politics, things like these can certainly help people of the two countries come closer, because the people of Pakistan are exactly like us, we are all same. So, this cultural exchange should be encouraged and is a good way forward, Tigmanshu added.

Follow @htshowbiz for more.
In July, last year Neeraj Roy, CEO and managing director of Hungama Digital Media met Hugo Barra, head of international business at Xiaomi, the Chinese phone maker. That was the only good thing about the rather boring conference, remembers Roy. Hungama aggregates content in videos, music, games and other value-added-services and offers it to telecom firms.

Its catalogue of 2.5 million got Barra curious. Xiaomi was looking for content partners in India to offer services over its mobiles  similar to what it has done in China. We have launched a lot of different internet services on our platform We have 160 million people in China on our platform We have 100 million installations, and 30 million daily active users, Barra said.

Roy had a many hooks for Barra, last year. Of the 800 million internet visitors, 300 million have been serviced by Hungama. India was the largest producer of cinema  five movies a day, versus one per day in Hollywood. Hungama were friends with 400 content creators of international, Bollywood and regional content. Barra was sold out. Xiaomi gets 8,000 films across 17 languages, also from international studios like Disney, Warner Bros and Sony.

Roy was looking for investments. For, Barra just a partner wasnt enough. Barra decided that they would invest in Hungama. Roy was looking to raise funds, too. With Hungamas existing investors, Xiaomi became the lead investor to invest $25 million.

The investment comes at time when other larger players like Reliance Jio wants to create an eco-system of rich content (Jio has its own smartphone brand LYF). Phone makers like Micromax has spent Rs 200 crore in picking up stakes in small companies to provide a host of services over its mobile phones.

Xiaomi, too, isnt new at picking up stakes in small companies  it has done that in China. We put our money where our mouth is. We are doing our first strategic announcement, said Barra.

In days to come Hungama will have exclusive content on Xiaomi. Barra claims that having an app (Hungama Play) is just one thing, but since Xiaomi owns and controls the operating system, it can provide a much better overall experience.

Xiaomi made its presence felt in India through flash sales  where phones were sold online, and the limited inventory would vanish in just a couple of minutes, sometimes even seconds. In India, it has already sold about six million phones.

Barra wants Xiaomi to evolve in India. Thats a combination of device, community and services. Community? Barra invited 10 tech bloggers opened up the Mi5 (thats Xiaomis newest phone) to pieces, showed whats inside the phone and assembled it back. Did it work? Of course, I know what I am doing. No one has ever done this before, and no one can, Barra said.

There is more to come  maybe investments in areas of healthcare, education, and even in services that make life easy. There are many mobile companies which are doing interesting things, but they are confined to apps Why only look at a partnership, we also look at investing in them, Barra said.

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In a trend that could spell relief for home-buyers stonewalled by projects stuck for want of funds, small developers are appealing to industry biggies to take over their projects.

The situation typically comes up with builders who execute small projects one at a time. In the boom period, many of them got ambitious, made big investments in land and started high-yield luxury projects. With the subsequent slowdown and scrutiny on bank lending, unable to raise sufficient funds to execute these projects, several builders have been left high and dry.

Now, however, things are moving -- though on a tangent. The owners of such projects, which have all clearances in place, have started to

Recent examples of such tie-ups include the embattled Unitech approaching Godrej properties to offload a project in Gurgaon. Similarly, Godrej Properties has signed an agreement with NCR-based builder Lotus Greens to build a housing project in Noida. In Gurgaon, builder Ramprastha too has signed a joint development agreement with Godrej Properties.

The trend is not limited to Delhi-NCR. Even cities such as Mumbai, Bengaluru and Pune are seeing such tie-ups. Pune-based ABIL Group, along with service and solutions provider group Radius, are aligning all projects of DB Realty. L and T has taken over a project of Omkar realtors in Mumbai. Essar developers project Equinox is being now handled by SNN Raj Serenity group in Bangalore.

Other big banner builders such as DLF, Tata Housing, IREO and Mahindras are contemplating similar deals, industry sources say.

Analysts say the sluggish market has led to such opportunities for larger developers, who are bailing out developers stuck with projects.

Stuck projects and delayed possessions have been giving a tough time both to developers and the end consumer. Since the real estate sector has hitherto not been under regulatory purview, there are no statistics on projects that have not been delivered to the end-buyer. Industry analysts and experts only track whether projects have found buyers, not about completion of construction.

The recently-passed Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Bill, 2015 is expected to address this loophole, which would bring relief for property buyers.

There are way too many developers in the country, and that will change now, said CBRE South Asia chairman Anshuman Magazine. This is a clear sign of consolidation in the sector, where weaker developers, who cant sell their own projects any more or dont have the financial strength, are selling off projects or tying up with better, larger developers. Such a trend is popular abroad, but is now picking up pace in India (only now) -- which is a big positive for home buyers struggling to get early possession.

Developers feel this opens a host of untapped opportunities. Brotin Banerjee, managing director and CEO, Tata Housing Development Company, says: This is an apt solution for some mid- and large-sized players with over stretched balance sheets. We believe it is a win-win proposition for both the developer and the consumers. With an arrangement like this, players who already have land parcels and project approvals will gain from the execution bandwidth and brand credibility to sell in a weak market by associating with the larger and well-established developers.

The upside for consumers will be greater brand value for the property, guaranteed construction quality, greater transparency and higher standards of property maintenance. We are already speaking to multiple developers in Noida for a partnership and are evaluating deals in other parts of the NCR and in Bengaluru as well, Banerjee said.

Realty giant DLFs CEO Rajeev Talwar said: The emergence of this trend means that projects will be fast-tracked, the uncertainty hanging over incomplete projects will go away and with a reputed developer coming on board, these projects will get additional credibility. The land owner gets funds to complete existing projects. This will also augment the availability of quality projects in the market.

Whether this trend will help bring down property prices will depend on how many such projects are outsourced to reputed developers.

If several such projects are fast-tracked, the supply of quality housing and assured delivery will go up and help bring down prices, benefiting the end-consumer, said Ashutosh Limaye, head of research at property research and service company JLL India.

According to industry estimates quoted by the government, 10 lakh consumers buy houses every year with an investment of about 3.50 lakh crores in residential segment. About 3,200 to 4,000 new projects are launched every year. At present about 17,000 real estate projects are in progress in 26 major urban agglomerations in the country.
E-commerce firm Infibeam made a stellar debut on the stock exchanges on Monday, with the shares listing at Rs 458 a share, up 6% over the issue price of Rs 432.

At 10:45hrs, the shares were trading at Rs 452, still up 4.6% over the issue price on the Bombay Stock Exchange. The broader markets were trading flattish, with the BSE Sensex up 0.1% or 35 points at 25,304.33.

Infibeam is the first of the new generation e-commerce companies to raise funds via capital markets in India. The Ahmedabad-based company raised Rs 450 crore via its IPO. The issue was stretched to the last day and got subscribed 1.1 times in the price band of Rs 360-432 a share.

The company is founded by former Amazon executive Vishal Mehta and runs e-commerce website infibeam.com, apart from online marketplace BuildaBazaar.

Analysts say the successful listing of Infibeam will attract other e-commerce and startup companies keen to raise funds to look at capital markets as another fund raising avenue.

Market regulator Sebi has been keen on the new generation startup companies get listed on the stock markets in India, instead of them going abroad. The market regulator even came out with easier listing norms for such companies last year.
Private lender Yes Bank will borrow $50 million (about Rs 330 crore) from International Finance Corporation (IFC) through long-term bonds for gender financing that will support women borrowers.

IFC, a World Bank subsidiary, will invest the proceeds of the bonds to lend to women borrowers and will get financing from the CSR (corporate social responsibility) arm of Goldman Sachs, an official aware of the development told HT.

This will address the financing needs of women entrepreneurs and other women borrowers who face difficulty in raising money. It has been supported by Goldman Sachs. It will be raised at a rate of Libor (London Interbank Offered Rate) plus about 1.50 percentage points, the official added.

Last year, IFC had raised Rs 315 crore (about $49.2 million) to invest in green bonds issued by Yes Bank.

On Monday, Yes Bank also raised Rs 545 crore through 10-year bonds on a private placement basis to meet its Basel III capital requirements.

Informing the stock exchanges, Yes Bank said it has successfully raised Rs 545 crore of Basel III compliant Tier II bonds on private placement basis. The issue was closed on March 31, 2016.

The bonds were raised at about 9%, about 0.30 - 0.40 percentage points higher than some public sector banks.

The issue was rated ICRA AA+ hyb by ICRA and CARE AA+ by CARE and the Bonds will be listed on the BSE Limited, Yes Bank said.

Basel III is a global regulatory framework that underlines minimum capital requirement by banks by March 2018 intended to strengthen bank capital requirements and stress tests by increasing bank liquidity and decreasing bank leverage. It is much more stringent than existing liquidity requirements.

On Monday, shares of Yes Bank ended 1.4% higher at Rs 867.85 per share on the Bombay Stock Exchange.

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The Delhi government wants the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and Delhi, Andaman and Nicobar Islands Civil Service (Danics) officials, posted outside Delhi, to vacate the houses allotted to them.

Citing shortage of houses for officials stationed in the city, the Delhi government in a letter asked the Centre to either provide an equal number of similar houses or ask the IAS and Danics officials to vacate.

The cabinet noted with concern that while the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD) has limited stock of housing for its officers and employees, many officers posted outside the GNCTD are retaining government houses in Delhi, the letter reads.

The Delhi government allots houses to bureaucrats posted in Delhi. Once shifted, the officials are required to vacate the houses within two months or pay rent.

The decision, according to sources, was taken at the Cabinet meeting held on March 22. Delhi has asked the Centre to settle the matter before June 30.

Since the GNCTD is facing an acute shortage of houses and the Central Government cadre is the controlling authority of the IAS and Danics, it was decided that the matter be taken up with the Centre to provide equivalent number of houses of the same category latest by June 30, reads the letter.
The heat is on. Delhi on Sunday got a taste of the harsh summer to come with the Palam weather station recording a maximum temperature of 43 degree Celsius  highest in the first fortnight of April in 47 years.

Two other places  Ayanagar in southeast and Jafarpur in southwest Delhi  also breached the 40-degree mark, recording 40.6C and 40.1C, respectively.

It is very unusual for this time of the year. Even between April 16 and April 20, there have been only two instances in 47 years 1984 and 2010  when the maximum at Palam touched 43 degrees, said RK Jenamani, director in-charge of the weather office at IGI airport.

The Safdarjung station, which records the official readings for Delhi and is usually cooler than Palam, reported a maximum temperature of 39.4 degrees and minimum of 24.8 degrees, both six notches above normal.

According to the Met department, Monday might provide some respite from the heat with light thundershowers in the morning. The temperature is expected to be between 23 and 38C.
The national capital has more green cover than any capital in India, and is second only to Chandigarh in terms of open space. Why do the children here have few spaces where they can play safely?

We keep blaming children and parents for not going out and playing but when we do not have enough play spaces for them how will they play? said Sunanda Srivastava, member of RWA in Vasant Vihar.

She said children played on the streets because colony parks were not maintained well. This is never an agenda for political parties, Srivastava said.

At 29 lakhs, children aged 0-14 years constitute 45% of Delhis population  the highest compared to any city in India, according to NGO Butterflies.

The 2011 census says there are 20 lakh children in the age group of 0-6 years in Delhi. This accounts for 12% of Delhis population.

But most play areas built for children are now garbage dumps, havens for drug addicts or simply lay abandoned, say experts.The sad part is that since children are not vote banks no one wants to focus on providing proper play facilities. This is not the state in just a few areas, but across the city the condition of parks and play spaces is deplorable, said Rita Panicker, director of NGO Butterflies that works to reclaim childrens right to play.

She said they had been trying to get government agencies to concentrate on providing a healthy childhood to lakhs of children in the city. We are not fighting against lack of resources but lack of will by authorities, she said.

Experts said playgrounds maintained by schools are in a poor condition as well. Government and court orders reiterated that schools, especially at primary levels, should have a playground and a period for physical education.

A survey by Butterflies in 2010 showed there were more than 5,043 schools in Delhi, out of which over 400 were given land at concessional or cheaper rates. But as many as 400 schools did not have playgrounds fit for children to play.

According to an analysis by Delhi Development Authority (DDA) in 2013, Delhi has over 20% green cover  more than any other capital city. World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines said every city ideally should have nine square metres (sqm) of space per city dweller.

Delhi has over 12.14 sqm of open space per person. This is 1,000 times that of Mumbais 0.012 sqm and Chennais 0.010 sqm, according to a DDA survey in 2013.

Delhi has over 15,000 parks and open spaces. The municipal corporations maintain 14,000, while the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) takes care of 1,100. The DDA has four regional parks, 111 district parks, 255 neighbourhood parks, 25 city forests, 26 playgrounds and two bio-diversity parks.

Despite facing flak from the Delhi High Court in 2014 for poor upkeep of playfields, civic agencies such as the three municipal corporations, NDMC, DDA, Delhi Cantonment and public works department havent done much to mend the flaws.

Some facilities in these parks are like death traps. Almost all the swings and slides are in a pathetic condition. There are nails sticking out, there is no grass, and some parks have become the hub of anti-social elements, said a report presented before the high court by the amicus curiae, Nidesh Gupta.

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The process of making the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) area a smart city has cost hundreds of street vendors their livelihoods. It has even cost a life.

A 60-year-old vendor at south Delhis Sarojini Nagar market, Vinay Kumar Pandey, had a heart attack this February after some municipal officials raided his stall. They seized his documents and his stall was allegedly ransacked. That day itself Pandey succumbed to a heart attack.

NDMC was selected among the list of 20 smart cities in the country in January this year. The area is home to some of the most rich and influential in the city. Khan Market, Lutyens Zone and Gol Market come under the civic bodys jurisdiction.

In a bid to remove encroachments under the Smart City project,the civic body had launched a massive drive in November last year. The drive was primarily aimed at reorganizing vendors at all public spaces, including markets like Connaught Place, Sarojini Nagar and Khan Market.

At least 200 vendors had later moved the Delhi High Court challenging the drive. The hearing is going on for two months now.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Delhi too had notified the national policy for Street Vendors Act three months ago, which has not yet been implemented by authorities.

Areas around Rajiv Chowk come under restricted vending area. The Scheme for Street Vendors in the NDMC area mentions that no vendor can squat in a public space or obstruct footpaths and walkways meant for public. These vendors also create a major security threat for people, a senior NDMC official said.

The council has already cleared vendors at the Pallika flea market  outside gate number 6 of Rajiv Chowk Metro station  after a team of security officials from NDMC took more than a week to match licences with the list of authorized vendors. Licences of people, who had rented out their spaces, were cancelled.

Officials also measured the space allotted to each vendor and painted boxes within which they will need to operate.

Sections 330 and 225 of the NDMC Act, 1994, states that licences are to be given through the tehbazari system to vendors who apply for it along with a payment of Rs 1,000. Such licences have to be renewed every five years.

Activists and vendors stated that such mindless eviction was a violation of Section 3.3 of the Street Vendors Act. The section says that no vendor can be evicted till a proper survey of market spaces is conducted and a plan is formulated for their rehabilitation.

Arbind Singh, national coordinator, National Association of Street Vendors of India, said that Town Vending Committees need to be created with immediate effect.

Unless an alternative is provided to these poor vendors, NDMC cannot remove them. They talk about vendors not having licences. A vendor can obtain a licence only when the council gives it to them. There are vendors who have submitted applications for licences more than a decade ago and have still not got an approval, Singh said.

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The condition of the NIA officer's wife, who was wounded when her husband was shot dead by two unidentified assailants on Sunday, is critical and undergoing treatment in a Noida hospital.

Farzana,40,wife of Mohd Tanzeel Ahmed, was brought to Fortis Hospital in Sector-62, Noida, with four bullet injuries on Sunday. She received bullet injuries in her abdomen and leg, say hospital sources.



One of the bullets has pierced through her intestine, and despite a life-saving surgery, her condition remains critical in the intensive care unit (ICU).

"Patient has been brought in a critical condition. Our doctors are providing the best possible medical treatment to treat the patient. As a matter of patient confidentiality, we cannot comment any further," read a statement from the hospital.

NIA officer Ahmed died on Sunday after unknown assailants pumped 21 bullets into him while he was returning from a wedding in Uttar Pradeshs Bijnor district after midnight on Saturday.

Ahmad, 48, known for undercover operations, joined the NIA in 2010.

The officer was laid to rest with full state honours in Shaheen Bagh area of south Delhi.

Before joining the NIA, Ahmad was part of the in-house team of BSF, providing vigilance cover. He also held tenures as instructor at BSF Academy at Tekanpur, near Gwalior, and training centre at Hazaribagh.

(with IANS inputs)

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Thousands of passengers were stuck on Monday morning peak hours due to technical glitch at Delhi metros Dwarka-Vaishali/Noida and ITO-Faridabad line.

Passengers said that a 25-minute journey took over an hour with train running at extremely slow speed, stopping several times before reaching the station.

At some stations, passengers claimed there was delay in opening of train doors and announcements were made about it. I boarded the train at 9 am from Vaishali but reached Barakhamba at 10:45 am. Usually it takes a little more than 30 minutes. The train operators did not inform about the reason behind delay and at every station passengers were getting impatient. Trains were jam packed, said Shruti Sinha, a commuter.

Passengers were affected at Dwarka-Vaishali/Noida line as this is the biggest line of Delhi metro. Trains were running at a restricted speed due to Track Circuit failure on Dwarka-Vaishali line. Metro services are now becoming normal as the bunching is cleared, says a Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) official.

Sources said that the circuit failure took place around 8 am and normalcy was restored around 11 am. Metro said that glitch at Delhi metros Faridabad line was also reported because of train motoring issue which lead to bunching.
Size does matter. The urban development ministry could reclassify official ministerial houses in the national capital after at least three Union ministers, apparently unhappy with their smaller bungalows, requested a relook.

Ministers Piyush Goyal, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore and Sanwar Lal Jat were allotted the highest category Type VIII houses in the Lutyenss Bungalow Zone. Each home has a built-up area of over 4,000 square feet and sits on more than two acres of prime real estate in the countrys power district.

But the trios bungalows apparently match the size of a Type VII house, usually allotted to parliamentarians and top bureaucrats.

Junior information and broadcasting minister Rathores 12 Sunehri Bagh Road bungalow has a built-up area of 4,736 square feet but the plot size has shrunk over the years compared to the original more than two acres.

About 20-25% of the original area of the bungalow was encroached upon a long time ago and a slum cluster came up there. Also, two more bungalows were carved out of the original plot. The ministers simple request to the ministry was to do a fresh assessment of the plot size and recategorise the bungalow, a source close to the minister said.

The Type VIII bungalows with a distinct colonial architecture and huge, lush green, manicured lawns are coveted addresses in the tree-lined, wide-boulevard area designed by British architect Edwin Lutyens in the early 20th century. These are allotted to Union ministers and senior Supreme Court judges.

A rung below them are the Type VII houses with a plot size of more than one acre and built-up area of over 3,000 square feet.

Type I brings up the rear with a built-up area of 430 square feet.

The complaints prompted the urban development ministry to take a relook at all bungalows above Type VI. The Central Public Works Department, responsible for their upkeep, has started the exercise for the first time.

The houses will be reclassified on the basis of their size after the survey. If some Type VIII bungalows have smaller plot size they would be downgraded, a senior CPWD official said.

That can work both ways for the ministers.

If their bungalow gets downgraded to Type VII, they can seek reallotment to a higher-category house. If they want to they can retain the downgraded bungalow, where they can stay even when they are not ministers, an official said.

Rathore and Jats houses will indeed fall in the puny bracket if put next to, say, railway minister Suresh Prabhus 12 Akbar Road home  a 6,899 square feet bungalow. Defence minister Manohar Parrikars address is a 5,823 square feet house: 10 Akbar Road.

Compare these with junior water resources minister Jats 2,701 square feet 1Teen Murti Lane bungalow. This is the size of a Type VI house, allotted to bureaucrats in the ranks of director and joint secretary.

I have written to Venkaiah Naiduji about this. If the size is smaller than Type VIII then the bungalow category should be downgraded, he said. Sources said power minister Piyush Goyal wrote to Naidu, his colleague in the urban development ministry, a couple of months ago.

Over the years, his 8 Teen Murti Marg bungalows plot size has shrunk from the original two acres, though the built-up area stands at 4,574 square feet.

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The Abdullahs and the Muftis, the most prominent political families in Jammu and Kashmir, have famously been at loggerheads for decades. It was hence particularly striking to see National Conference (NC) leader Omar Abdullah tweet over the weekend [that it was] very gracious of Mehbooba Mufti Sahiba to phone & invite me to her oath taking ceremony. I look forward to being there on the 4th.

Make no mistake, Ms Mufti, who was sworn in as J&Ks first woman chief minister on Monday, will soon experience the full weight of Opposition scrutiny  but it is likely that, given the PDPs differences with coalition partner BJP, she will find herself privately more in agreement with the NC than those she will govern the state with.

Read | Mehbooba Muftis test: how to get Delhi, Kashmir on the same page

That is the nub of the problem for Ms Mufti as she continues on the path set by her late father Mufti Mohammad Sayeed who approved the alliance with the BJP, terming it as the coming together of the North Pole and South Pole.

Usually ruling coalitions agreeably mark out governmental terrain to cultivate their support base and try to temper ideological instincts in order to not rouse the constituency of the coalition partner.

But the two sides have failed to see eye-to-eye on political approaches and it is not clear how Ms Mufti and the coalition will respond to future stresses. The alliance got off to a rocky start last year after the late Mufti Sayeed decided to release separatist Masarat Alam from prison ostensibly to create the atmosphere for a dialogue with the separatists. The BJP rejected that move  and the PDP has since seen its support base be infuriated by Right-wing targeting of Muslims, campaigns over beef eating (that saw one Kashmiri youth set ablaze at Udhampur in October)  and lately the unrest at JNU that began with a crackdown on students for commemorating the anniversary of the execution of Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri convicted in the Parliament attack case.

Read | What Kashmiri women think of Mehbooba becoming the first woman CM of J-K

Ms Mufti takes over with very little political capital. The PDP has been unable to convince the Centre to partially withdraw the application of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act in the state and there is widespread dissatisfaction with the flood relief despite the announcement of an economic package for J&K last year.

It is clear from events in January that the BJP is interested in continuing the alliance. And so for the sake of stability, the Centre must demonstrably be invested in Ms Muftis success. Tangible concessions in a range of areas, including transferring of two NHPC-run power projects for improving state government finances would help. Firm strictures on unhelpful, divisive rhetoric by party leaders is a must.
The two institutions that have been at the centre of a nationalism debate in recent months -- Delhis Jawaharlal Nehru University and the University of Hyderabad- - are among the best universities in India, according to a survey of educational institutions commissioned by the government for the first time.

While some scientific institutes have been ranked better, these two have been ranked the best in the university category; they figure among the top five. The other categories include engineering, management, and pharmacy.

Union human resource development minister Smriti Irani released the India Rankings 2016 on Monday. Among the universities ranked, Delhi University figures in top 10 but is behind JNU and Hyderabad university. Jamia Millia Islamia university ranks further down the order.

The criteria for ranking included teaching/learning resources, research, graduation outcomes, outreach/inclusivity and perception. The data for the first four parameters, which account for 90% of the weightage, was submitted by the institutions and verified by National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), a body constituted by the HRD ministry last year to conduct annual surveys.

For the perception criterion, various stakeholders including parents, teachers, and alumni were engaged to give their feedback. More than 3,500 top higher educational institutions are under consideration for the ranking.

Heres the category-wise complete India Rankings 2016





This is the first time that such a comprehensive ranking exercise was undertaken by the government. An independent agency, the National Bureau of Accreditation, working with the government was responsible for validating the voluminous data submitted by the Institutions. The framework for ranking was launched last September. No ranking is being given in the Colleges category since the response has been poor.

The University of Hyderabad has been on the boil since January following suicide by Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula. Incidentally, it was the HRD ministry that was under fire of the opposition parties, which accused it of interfering in the functioning of the university leading to Vemulas suicide. Labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya had written to Irani complaining that the university campus had become a den of casteist, extremist and anti-national politics. The JNU hit the headlines following the arrest of its students union president Kanhaiya Kumar under sedition charges.

The 2015 Times Higher Education rankings had 17 Indian institutions in the top 800; two Indian institutes made it to the top 200 on the QS Global rankings for the first time. Officials say Indias own ranking system will help institutes establish themselves globally.

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It would appear that Leonardo DiCaprio is no longer welcome in Indonesia.

Last month, the 41-year-old Oscar winning actor and environmental activists visited the Indonesian island of Sumatra when he posted a picture on Instagram about how indigenous species are under threat. Wildlife in the Leuser Ecosystem like Sumatran elephants, tigers and orangutans were all in danger because of the local palm oil industry, he said.

Read: Leonardo DiCaprio is fighting for endangered Indonesian elephants

The expansion of palm oil plantations is fragmenting the forest and cutting off key elephant migration corridors, making it more difficult for elephant families to find adequate sources of food and water, DiCaprio wrote. A world-class biodiversity hotspot ... But Palm Oil expansion is destroying this unique place. Now is the time to save the Leuser Ecosystem, read his Instagram post.

Heru Santoso, a spokesperson for the Indonesian government, responded to the post by threatening to prevent the Wolf of Wall Street actor from visiting the Southeast Asian country again.

We support his concern to save the Leuser ecosystem. But we can blacklist him from returning to Indonesia at any time if he keeps posting incitement or provocative statements in his social media, he said.

Leonardo DiCaprio has always been active about spreading awareness about the harm being done to the environment. He even spoke about it in his Oscars acceptance speech.

Read: Wolf of Wall Street was financed with shady Malaysian cash

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Some of the money to make the hit movie The Wolf of Wall Street was allegedly laundered from a scandal-hit Malaysian firm founded by the countrys leader, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Embattled Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has been under fire over allegations that hundreds of millions of dollars were stolen from state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), and his acceptance of a $681 million overseas payment.

Both Najib and the now debt-stricken company strongly deny any wrongdoing.

Watch Leonardo DiCaprio deliver an amazing speech from the movie here

According to the WSJ, it took six years to produce the movie, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio and is directed by Martin Scorsese, because Hollywood studios were reluctant to invest in an R-rated movie about financial corruption.

The curse of Leonardo DiCaprio: 5 times he shouldve won an Oscar

A small production company called Red Granite Pictures, which had made only one movie, came up with the more than $100 million needed to turn the film into reality, the newspaper said in its report Friday.

Global investigators believe much of that money was diverted from 1MDB, an investment vehicle founded in 2009 by Najib with the stated goal of stimulating local economic growth, according to the story.

The Red Granite Pictures website names Riza Aziz -- which the Journal identifies as Najibs stepson -- as the company co-founder and co-chairman.

Investigators in two countries believe that some $155 million that originated with 1MDB moved into Red Granite in 2012 through an intricate route involving offshore shell companies, the newspaper said, citing unnamed people familiar with the probes.

Read: 12 roles that made Leonardo DiCaprio a moviestar

FBI agents have issued subpoenas to several current and former Red Granite employees and to a bank and an accounting firm the company used, the Journal added.

The Wolf of Wall Street is based on the life of Jordan Belfort, who in the 1990s become a wealthy stock broker living a life filled with sex and drugs by swindling investors in a securities scam. Belfort went to prison after pleading guilty to fraud and stock market manipulation.

Watch DiCaprios performance here

On the 1MDB allegations, Najib claims he is a victim of political conspiracy.

He initially denied reports he received the overseas payments, but his government later acknowledged Najib was the recipient of $681 million, saying it was a gift from the Saudi royal family -- most of which was given back -- to promote moderate Islam.

That explanation is yet to be confirmed by Saudi Arabia and is widely dismissed in Malaysia as a cover story.

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After slaying Oscars, Priyanka Chopra has now been invited to White House to attend the annual correspondents dinner later this month. It will be the last White House Correspondents Dinner to be hosted by US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.

Read: What should Priyanka Chopra wear at Obamas White House dinner?

Priyanka shares the honour with Hollywood stars like Bradley Cooper, Lucy Liu, Jane Fonda and Gladys Knight.

Read: I am not expendable just because I am a woman: Priyanka Chopra

However, the Baywatch star is yet to confirm her presence at the event. According to a source, Priyanka has her hands full as she is involved with the new season of Quantico and the schedule of her maiden Hollywood film Baywatch is also coming up. Whether she will make it to the White House dinner or not will be clear only next week.

Obama cracks a joke at last years White House Correspondents Dinner.

Yes, she has been invited but she has not yet decided if she will go for it or not. She will decide by the weekend. She has been keeping very busy. There is Quantico (TV show) and some other work commitments also, said the source

While the White House Correspondents dinner is traditionally for mediapersons, TV networks who share corporate parentage with entertainment divisions wind up with talent at the table, according to Washington Post.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
A CBI court sentenced 47 policemen on Monday to life imprisonment for killing 11 Sikh pilgrims in a staged encounter in 1991 in Uttar Pradeshs Pilibhit district, bringing the decades- long trial to a close.

The Central Bureau of Investigation court announced a compensation of Rs 14 lakh to the families of the 11 victims. The order triggered protests by relatives of the convicts.

The 47 policemen were convicted last Friday for pulling the 11 pilgrims out of a bus in July 1991, shooting them in three separate staged encounters and later branding them militants to cover up the incident.

Fifty seven policemen were named in a charge sheet four years later but 10 died during the course of the trial.

The motive for the encounter was said to be the bounty tied to killing militants at a time when insurgency in Punjab hadnt died down.

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Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) is not a minority institution, the NDA government told the Supreme Court on Monday in a move that could trigger a political slugfest ahead of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections next year as it marked a reversal of the stance taken by the UPA dispensation.

The Centre made this submission before two different benches, including the Chief Justice of Indias which is not seized of the government appeal against an Allahabad high court verdict holding the varsity a non-minority institution -- an appeal the goverment has now said it will withdraw.

If declared a minority institution, AMU need not reserve seats for scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and other backward classes.

We have taken a conscious decision to withdraw the appeal but AMU is entitled to carry on with its appeal, attorney general Mukul Rohatgi told the CJIs court.

CJI TS Thakur wondered whether a central university could be a minority institution. We can understand a college or school being a minority institution, justice Thakur said. The CJIs bench was hearing a petition related to the AMU VCs appointment.

In 2006, the erstwhile UPA government and AMU appealed against the high court verdict that struck down a 1981 parliamentary amendment to grant the university minority status and circumvent a 1967 Supreme Court verdict that said the government, and not Muslims, had established the institution.

I (Centre) changed my mind two months ago, Rohatgi told a three-judge bench headed by justice JS Khehar hearing the government appeal. He said the 1967 judgement was the law and subsequent amendment was contrary to it. The court gave Rohatgi eight weeks to file a formal withdrawal application.

The Congress reacted strongly to the NDA governments latest stand on the issue, saying it betrayed the latters majoritarian mindset.

The fundamental narrative of India has been anchored in plurality. For the past 22 months, the BJP-RSS has been trying to shift the narrative from pluralism to theocracy. The stand taken by the government in the Supreme Court is a part of the same game plan, Congress spokesman Manish Tewari said.

Read | President snubs HRD ministry on AMU executive council picks

The Centres stand is set to reverberate beyond the courtroom, with the Congress, the SP and the BSP likely to make a political issue out of it in the run-up to the UP elections. According to the BJPs assessment, any attempt to make it a political issue could backfire on these parties as it might lead to polarisation along communal lines -- a scenario the ruling combine at the Centre would not mind in UP.

Once the government takes back its appeal, the top court will be left with AMUs petition to decide. The bench allowed the varsity to respond to the government stand and permitted fresh interventions in the case. When the case comes up for hearing in July, the three-judge bench is likely to refer the matter to a larger bench comprising five judges.

Rohatgi had on January 11 told the court that the government could not be seen as setting up a minority institution in a secular state.

During a hearing before CJI Thakur, Rohatgi said the 1981 amendment move was wrong. The bench was hearing a case on whether University Grant Commission regulations applied to the appointment of the AMU vice-chancellor (VC). The AG intervened when the VCs counsel, Salman Khurshid, said things would be different if the court declared the varsity a minority institution.

Rohatgi said the amendment was not appropriate. The SC constitution bench was right in its verdict. You cannot override it, he said.

The AMU Act was enacted in 1920 converting Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College into a university. The AMU (Amendment) Act in 1951 was passed by Parliament to do away with compulsory instruction in Islamic theology. The amendment opened AMU to non-Muslims on the administrative side.

Changes were introduced by the 1965 amendment to the AMU Act, which allowed government control on the varsity. This was challenged by S Azeez Basha through a petition in the top court, which was dismissed in 1967.

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Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) president Mehbooba Mufti became Jammu and Kashmirs first woman chief minister on Monday, a tag she is uncomfortable with, as she took oath to head a 22-member coalition ministry with the BJP.

Her swearing-in marked the end of political uncertainty in the sensitive frontier state that has been under governors rule since the death of her father, the late chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, on January 7.

The new government has eight cabinet and three junior ministers from the PDP while ally BJP managed to get an equal share in the state ministerial council that has a constitutional ceiling of 25 members. BJP leader Nirmal Singh from the Jammu region remains the deputy chief minister.

This rang in the second innings of the two ideologically-divergent parties, which came together after a fractured verdict in the end-2014 assembly polls to form an uneasy alliance under Sayeed and ruled the state for 10 months until his death from an illness.

In the Sayeed government, the BJP had eight cabinet berths, two less than the PDP.

The 56-year-old Mehbooba, a single mother of two daughters, came to her oath in a green salwar kameez  the colour of her party flag  and covered her eyes with dark, thick-rimmed goggles that she briefly removed to read the pledge in Urdu.

Governor NN Vohra administered the oath at the Raj Bhawan in winter capital Jammu.

Mehbooba is a Lok Sabha MP for Anantnag and not a member of either Houses of the Jammu and Kashmir assembly. She has to get elected to one of the houses within six months.

She became the second Muslim woman to head a state  the first was Syeda Anwara Taimur of the Congress who became chief minister of Assam in 1980.

Its wrong to categorise a CM as man or woman. What is there in a man that a woman cant do, she said on March 25 after staking claim to power that she was initially reluctant to do and triggered three months of hardnosed negotiations between the two coalition partners.

Read | Mehbooba is J-Ks first woman CM and Indias 16th

She retained only two women, both junior ministers, who were part of her fathers government.

Mehbooba gets crown, BJP more berths

Union ministers M Venkaiah Naidu and Jitendra Singh attended the swearing-in along with BJP general secretary Ram Madhav, who negotiated the alliance, National Conference leaders Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah. The Congress boycotted the ceremony to protest the Uttrakhand crisis.

The BJPs success in getting equal representation in the cabinet with both parties getting eight cabinet berths and three junior ministers each was viewed as the outcome of a successful restitching of the alliance.

The BJP, with 25 MLAs from the Hindu-dominated Jammu region and two lawmakers from former separatist leader Sajjad Lones Peoples Conference, equals the PDP in numbers. Mehboobas party has 27 legislators, mostly from Muslim-majority Kashmir, after the death of Sayeed.

The allies hit several lows and it appeared that both would snap ties. Mehbooba called new confidence-building-measures and the BJP insisted no new conditions will be accepted. But everything fell in line after the PDP chief met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in March.

Both parties did minor reshuffles but the most noticeable exclusion was of former cabinet minister Altaf Bukhari, a powerful Sayeed loyalist.

Mehbooba gets crown, BJP more berths

Read | Mehbooba Muftis test: How to get Delhi, Kashmir on the same page
Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi, 80, considers the three-party alliance led by BJP as an axis of evil. The hands of its leaders, he says, are smeared with the blood of social workers and innocent people and their alliance  with tacit support from perfume baron Badruddin Ajmals All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF)  is helping voters gravitate towards the Congress. Confident of forming the government for the fourth straight term, he spoke to HT.

Q: Has the BJP-Asom Gana Parishad-Bodoland Peoples Front alliance posed the first major challenge for the Congress in 15 years?

A: Alliance shows lack of confidence in going it alone like us. We are confident of forming the government again, because the people know we have provided the kind of development Assam was not used to. They also know the leaders of this alliance have blood on their hands and hatred in their hearts.

Q: How do you explain that?

A: Sarbananda (Sonowal, state BJP chief) was accused of involvement in murder of a student leader, as was Himanta (Biswa Sarma, former Congress minister turned BJP poll manager), and Prafulla Mahanta was the mastermind of secret killings (extra-judicial killing of ULFA kin when he headed AGP government from 1996-2001). They were all in All Assam Students Union, which was known to breed hatred against Bengalis (Hindus and Muslims who comprise 45% of the voters).

Q: Has the BJP stolen a march by proposing citizenship to Hindu Bengali refugees?

A: BJP leaders in Assam protested when I was the first to propose this in 2014. BJP has merely issued a statement to hoodwink people. How can Bengalis forget Sarbananda had the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act of 1983 scrapped and Mahanta had led an anti-Bengali agitation? The Assamese too cannot forgive Mahanta for the secret killings. The BJP-AGP alliance has, in fact, made Bengalis tilt toward Congress.

Q: BJP says the Congress has a poll deal with AIUDF, evident from the Rajya Sabha elections.

A: It is the other way round. BJP plays Hindutva politics, AIUDF plays minority politics. They are two sides of the same coin. The Rajya Sabha election (in which all AIUDF legislators voted for two Congress candidates) was a BJP conspiracy to harm the Congress prospects but this will not work.

Q: Who is your main rival  Sonowal, Himanta, Mahanta or Ajmal?

A: None of them. My fight is with (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi. All I can say to the others is best of luck.
Activist Medha Patkar on Sunday alleged that the BJP government is using caste and communal factors to create division within universities by sending pariwarik organisations like ABVP.

Voicing concern over the ongoing unrest in universities, she termed it a serious situation for the country. ABVP always had some space but they cannot dare try and occupy whole of the students movement space which is not going to happen because there are radically-thinking and ideologically-committed students who want true freedom, true development and a truly equitable and sustainable society in this country, she told reporters.

The activist was denied entry into University of Hyderabad where she wanted to address agitating students to express her solidarity. She termed as childish the ban on entry of activists, media and others in the university, lathi charge on students, closure of canteen and other measures taken by the university administration.

Demanding immediate removal of P Appa Rao, she said bringing him back as the vice-chancellor was the worst move by the government.
A special court on Monday sentenced Jharkhand Ispat Pvt Ltd (JPIL) directors RS Rungta and RC Rungta to four years imprisonment in connection with the coal block allocation scam in the states North Dhadu block.

The Rungtas, who were convicted for cheating and criminal conspiracy, were also fined Rs 5 lakh each, and the company was penalised Rs 25 lakh.

It is on account of such kind of unscrupulous businessmen and industrialists that despite 69 years of independence, our country is still lagging behind than most of the countries in the world in industrial/infrastructural development, said Judge Bharat Parashar.

This is the first case to receive judgement after the coal block allocation scam rocked the UPA-II dispensation. Nineteen other cases investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) are pending before the special court, set up to exclusively deal with the matter. Two other cases probed by the Enforcement Directorate are also pending.

Though, the industrialists counsel argued that JIPL suffered a loss because no coal was mined from the blocks, the court noted that this in itself showed the damage the directors and the firm caused the exchequer.

Non-availability of sufficient raw materials such as coal has, in fact, resulted in the lack of infrastructural/industrial development of the country, said the court. Had coal been allocated to a deserving applicant company (which) would have proceeded ahead to extract coal and to also establish its end use project, achieving the ultimate capacity, then it would have certainly added to the infrastructural/industrial development of the country.

The court added that the loss caused to the exchequer was incalculable in terms of money as the exercise of allocating the resource to a deserving party had been thwarted altogether. Non-extraction of coal and non-completion of the end use project...has caused huge loss to the nation, said the court.

In the charge sheet filed by the CBI, it was alleged that JIPL grossly misrepresented a number of aspects before the Ministry of Steel and the Ministry of Coal, which prompted the screening committee to allocate the coal block to them. The accused pleaded not guilty and appealed for a trial last March.

The CBI also charged the governments screening committee with making no attempt to verify the claims made by the firms and said the steel ministry hadnt developed any method to assess the competency of the companies. The coal ministrys records related to the case were stated to be missing.

On March 21 last year, the court framed charges of conspiracy, forgery and cheating against the accused. All the accused pleaded not guilty and denied the allegations.

Last December, the court dismissed RS Rungtas plea to summon former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and ex-minister of state for coal Dasari Narayan Rao as defence witnesses.

The special court on March 28 found JIPL and its directors guilty of cheating the government to illegally bag a mining block in the state. Arguments on their sentencing took place on March 31.

Arguing before the court, Rungtas counsel pleaded that his clients deserved leniency because the criminal charges against them were economic in nature and not a heinous offence.

We have already got the punishment, the counsel said, adding that the company suffered a loss of over Rs 200 crore.

However, special judge Bharat Parashar said, The intention to defraud on the part of accused persons is writ large on the face of record... It is also thus crystal clear that all the acts committed by the accused persons have been fraudulently done with a dishonest intention.

The maximum punishment for cheating in India is up to seven years of imprisonment.

The scam came to light after audit watchdog CAG (Comptroller and Auditor General) flagged irregularities in allocation of coal blocks from 2004, under the Manmohan Singh government. The estimated loss to the exchequer initially pegged at Rs 10 lakh crore was later whittled down to Rs 1.86 lakh crore.

The Rungtas were convicted in the case pertaining to the allocation of Jharkhands North Dhadu coal block to JIPL and other companies.

It is crystal clear that the actions of the accused persons in making all such false claims knowing them to be false were actuated with an intention to deceive MOC (ministry of coal) and thereby the government of India, the court said in its 132-page judgement.

The court added that the Rungtas had taken contradictory defences not just to each other and their company, but at times also against their own admitted evidence in an effort to wriggle out of the charges against them.

However, no charges of forgery were made out against the Rungtas, it said. Calling the coal block allocation letter received by JIPL from the government a valuable security, the court said charges of cheating were made out as the convicts had committed a false act with the knowledge that it would result in the delivery of a valuable security.

Regarding the ministry, the court observed that the accused persons defence that MOC officers ought to have taken all necessary precautions as could have been taken by them so that the important nationalised natural resources of the country, such as coal, are not usurped by any unscrupulous person was not completely without force.

Nonetheless, it said this did not absolve the company and its directors of cheating and conspiracy.

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The Supreme Court on Monday granted bail to GN Saibaba, a Delhi University professor arrested for alleged Maoist links, on medical grounds.

You have been extremely unfair to the accused, specially given his medical conditions. Why do you want him in jail if key witnesses have been examined? You are unnecessarily harassing the petitioner, the bench headed by justice JS Kehar--which allowed Saibabas bail plea--told the Maharashtra government counsel when he opposed the release petition.

The lawyer said eight witnesses were left to be examined who, he assured, would be examined in two days.

Arrested in May 2014 from the Delhi University campus, the wheelchair-bound teacher has been in Nagpur jail. He had moved the SC complaining that he was made to travel 170 km every time to attend his case.

On the last date of hearing, the Maharashtra government had opposed moving Saibaba out of Nagpur jail to Gadchiroli district where the case against him is being heard. The state government said the area was infested with Maoists who may try to rescue him.

The SC had on February 23 questioned Saibabas solitary confinement and asked the state government to make alternate arrangement to house him at Gadchiroli.

We want you (state) to make him comfortable. Tell us how you will make him comfortable. You cannot have him in solitary confinement, the SC had told state counsel Nishant Katneshwarkar, directing the state to provide sufficient medical facilities to Saibaba.

In response, Maharashtra said it received intelligence inputs that Maoists have launched a campaign to free the professor.

There were instances wherein the Naxal leaders were rescued by the Naxalites in Jahanabad (Jharkhand), Dantewada (Chhattisgarh) and Belampalli (Andhra Pradesh), the government affidavit read.

It referred to a press note published on a website, calling upon the cadres to launch a nationwide public agitation for Saibabas release. The note, it said, called upon the cadres to use all means to get him out of custody.

The government was willing to have video recording facility to avoid him undertake long distance road journey.

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India considered reviewing clearance for Chinese investment in a tit-for-tat response on Monday after Beijing snubbed New Delhi by blocking a move to have Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed militant group chief Masood Azhar on the UN sanctions list.

Official sources said the move to review security clearance for Chinese firms investing in India is meant to send a message to Beijing for its action in the UN four days ago. India has reasons to be upset because Azhar is the lynchpin in the audacious Pathankot airbase attack in January.

Pakistan has an important place in Chinese diplomacy  Chinas intervention in that case must be seen in this context. China will stop supporting Pakistan when it starts being affected by terrorism, junior foreign minister and former army chief VK Singh said in Gorakhpur.

Read | Masood Azhar cant be considered a terrorist, says China after veto

India and China share an uneasy relationship since the 1962 war between the two Asian giants over longstanding territorial disputes in Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmirs Ladakh region that the Chinese claim to be theirs. The Chinese intimacy with Pakistan, supplying Indias bitter rival with arms and tipping the regional balance, has been a diplomatic thorny point too.

But the two neighbours tried to mend fences since Narendra Modi rode to power in 2014 and visited China the next year, prompting a flurry of open-door policies, including a liberalised security clearance regime for Chinese investors that began last June.

This boosted Chinese investment as the Union home ministry removed China as a country of concern under the new policy, leaving only Pakistan on the list. The policy was not particularly aimed at China but it eased restrictions on Chinese companies willing to do business in India.

Read | India disappointed with Chinas UN move on JeM chief Azhar

Earlier, the majority of investment proposals from China used to be denied clearance.

The home ministry was now having a rethink about its national security clearance policy, ostensibly to snub its northern neighbour, though the official reason given was that foreign direct investment proposals from China have not delivered desired results.

They said the government might change the policy with retrospective effect, cancelling all proposals cleared in the past nine months.

Read | China defends move to block UN ban on JeM chief Masood Azhar
The government will investigate allegations that over 500 Indians used a law firm in Panama to set up offshore entities in tax havens across the world, said finance minister Arun Jaitley on Monday.

On the prime ministers advice, a multi-agency group including CBDT (Central Board of Direct Taxes) and RBI will be set up to monitor disclosures and act upon them. All unlawful financial holdings abroad will face action, said Jaitley about a newspaper report that Indians allegedly used a Panama law firm called Mossack Fonseca to possibly violate tax rules or masked ownership of firms they set up abroad.

I welcome such investigations and exposes, he said.

Also Read | 500 Indians in Panama papers leak: SIT on black money asks for report

Separately, the Special Investigation Team (SIT) set up by the Supreme Court to trace black money stashed abroad said it will thoroughly investigate the allegations.

Investigations are being carried out. We are going to investigate it (the list) thoroughly, SIT chairman Justice (retd) M B Shah told PTI.

An international coalition of over 100 media groups on Sunday published what was reportedly an extensive probe into dubious offshore financial deals of prominent people across the globe who used tax havens to hide their wealth.

Also Read | Indians in Panama leaks: Govt warns of action against tax adventurism

The people it allegedly exposed ranged from political leaders like Russian President Vladmir Putin and Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, President of Argentina, Icelands Prime Minister and the King of Saudi Arabia as well as 500 Indians including Bollywood actors Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.
In the besieged University of Hyderabad campus, jesters and storytellers are in great demand, especially at the shopping complex (Shop-Com) of the North block, the centre of the protests that erupted after the suicide of Dalit PhD student Rohith Vemula.

There is the Malayali Dalit boy whose attempts at finding an upper-caste girlfriend always end in a hilarious disaster. He calls the comic retelling of his heartbreaking stories Dalit love.

There is the Telugu boy who finds something funny to say about everything, including the March 22 police lathicharge on campus that he says badly injured him.

He points to a body part and says, Ek mar, char tukda (One shot, four pieces).

Theres a Manipuri boy who specialises in telling extremely detailed stories about nothing. If you are smart, it will take you an hour to realise that its a prank and his stories are designed never to end. Their stories and jokes help fill the stony silence after each round of slogan shouting and every protest. They are the jesters of a war against caste-based discrimination on campuses that claimed Vemulas life and sparked a nationwide debate, students say.

One of the favourites is a Telugu Dalit boy who deliberately wears a clownish expression all day long. He is short, bald and overweight; he is also the saddest of the clowns. You can call me King Lear in your story, he says.

He looks older than 35 but is only 22. A few days before his 18th birthday, he was arrested following a complaint that his Facebook post hurt religious sentiments. By the time, he was released a month and half later, there was nothing boyish left in his appearance.

On the day protesting students and teachers were allegedly beaten by police and arrested, he was acquitted of all charges by a lower court.

In the four years that the case ran, his appetite became unpredictable, his body weight fluctuated wildly and his sleep pattern went haywire.

King Lear has recently been prescribed sleeping pills. The acquittal has come as a great relief. And I am more calm now. I still need the pills, he says in a rare moment of seriousness.

As he is speaking, a student leader cries out at the Shop Com, Tum kitne Rohith maroge? (How many Rohiths will you kill?) He joins the chorus, Har ghar se Rohith niklega (A Rohith will take birth in every house).

There are dozens of others who have been with the demonstrations for months and are beginning to show signs of mental illness. Most of them have been part of the struggle from January 17 when Vemula died. Some have been there longer.

Most refuse to seek help or accept that they have a problem. One Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) leader is down to 47 kilos and is around 20 kilos underweight. He sleeps barely for three hours every day and eats only one good meal on most.

Others look like they will burst into tears if asked too many questions. An Other Backward Classes woman, who has been with the protests since Vemulas death, is one of the few who accept their mind is playing tricks.

When I go back to my room, I can still hear the slogans in my head. I cant sleep. Are you sure you have time because I can go on talking till morning? Many of the leaders here are wary of accepting that the agitating students may be suffering from depression and extreme anxiety.

It is because we are afraid that some journalist will pass off our entire existence as mental problem. We are getting more and more isolated. If another one of us dies, we dont want you to come and say that it was because of depression, says a leader. There is lot for the Joint Action Committee (JAC) to be unhappy about.

Vice-chancellor Appa Rao, accused of abetting Vemulas suicide, is back. The campus is surrounded by private security guards and plainclothes policemen. The administration is considering calling in paramilitary forces.

Reinforcements from the nearby Osmania University cant enter, neither can the media. Even MPs are not allowed inside.

Exams start in three weeks and then the summer vacation. Except PhD students, everybody will be sent back home.

Only the first year Masters students will return next academic year. There is no saying which side the new batch of students will take.

The leaders of the movement here dont speak Hindi. Their speeches are not going viral on YouTube.

They are still gathering by the hundreds inside the campus, shouting slogans, holding talks and picketing the shopping complex at the North block of the campus. But what good is a demonstration without an audience?

In three weeks or perhaps sooner, the JAC will have to find a way to clinch their main demand: the sacking of Appa Rao. There is talk of seeking help from like minded organizations in breaking the siege. But right now, the students are fenced in and on their own.
India on Monday objected to US President Barack Obama clubbing the country with Pakistan as a challenge for global nuclear security, saying his remarks stemmed from a lack of understanding of New Delhis defence posture.

Yes, we have seen those remarks. There seems to be a lack of understanding of Indias defence posture, MEA spokesperson Vikas Swarup said. He explained India, which has a no-first use nuclear weapons policy, has never initiated military action against any neighbour.

Read | Modi announces steps on nuclear security at global summit in US

India believes its nuclear arsenals pose no danger to the world because of its no-first use policy and its track record of no-proliferation.

Since the context was the Nuclear Security Summit, the Presidents own remark that expanding nuclear arsenals in some countries, with more small tactical nuclear weapons which could be at greater risk of theft sums up the focus of global concern, Swarup said.

Swarup was responding to a question on Obamas remarks last week at a news conference following the end of the Nuclear Security Summit. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among more than 50 world leaders who attended the summit.

While responding to a question on the US and Russia cutting their nuclear arsenals, Obama had said: One of the challenges that were going to have here is that it is very difficult to see huge reductions in our nuclear arsenal unless the US and Russia, as the two largest possessors of nuclear weapons, are prepared to lead the way.

He added, The other area where I think we need to see progress is Pakistan and India, that subcontinent, making sure that as they develop military doctrines, that they are not continually moving in the wrong direction.

Read | Obama has misled Modi on Pakistan and made him a paper tiger
Uttar Pradesh police launched a hunt for two suspects who attended the wedding of National Investigation Agency (NIA) officer Mohammad Tanzil Ahmeds niece on Saturday, hours before assailants shot him dead and gravely wounded his wife.

Unidentified gunmen on a motorcycle fired more than 20 bullets at Ahmeds WagonR car when he was returning home from the wedding at Seohara in Bijnor district on Sunday with his 40-year-old wife Farzana, teen daughter Jumnish, and son Sahbagh.

Police narrowed down the search on Monday after family members could identify all guests except two from the video footage of the function, additional director general of police (law and order) Daljit Singh Chawdhary said.

Ahmeds wife, with bullets in her stomach and legs, is undergoing treatment at a Noida hospital.

The assailants were tracking the NIA inspector, a native of Bijnors Sahaspur, after he arrived in Seohara on Friday and fatally attacked him around 1am on Sunday when he slowed the car near a damaged culvert on the way home. They trailed him on a motorcycle after he left the wedding for his village 8km away.

Read | UP: NIA officer shot dead by gunmen at Bijnor in planned attack

Investigators were looking for the motive behind the murder as it was the first attack on a member of the countrys elite anti-terror agency, formed after the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist carnage in 2008.

UP police chief Javeed Ahmad said the NIA officers frequent visits to his hometown and his activities there might hold clues. Why he used to go there often or who he used to meet and how other people viewed his behaviourthese are aspects we are investigating. He was shot more than 20 times, which reveals an intense desire to kill him.

Ahmed, who was with NIA for the past six years on deputation from the Border Security Force, had been involved in probes into the Burdwan blasts in West Bengal, busting of Indian Mujahideen and Islamic State terrorist modules, and catching fake money smugglers. He was unarmed. The assailants pistol jammed after four rounds and he his aides firearm to shoot. They escaped soon after. The children escaped unharmed as they hid behind the seats, Chawdhary said.

Union home ministry sources suspect personal enmity behind the murder. Chawdhary said: Teams were formed to probe all aspects. District police found there was a dispute over property between his family and some villagers.

Read | Slain NIA officers wife critical, undergoing treatment
A multi-agency group will monitor information flow on wealth hoarded by Indians in tax havens, the government announced on Monday and vowed to punish violators after an expose named politicians, businessmen and filmstars with allegedly dubious offshore financial dealings.

An international coalition of media houses that included The Indian Express published what it said was an extensive investigation into offshore financial dealings of the rich and famous, based on 11.5 million documents provided by an anonymous source.

Dubbed the Panama Papers and sourced from a Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, the list has at least 500 Indians including Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan and his daughter-in-law Aishwarya Rai who allegedly used the law firm to set up offshore entities in tax havens across the world.

Union finance minister Arun Jaitley said the group has been set up on the advice of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and includes officials from Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) and Foreign Tax and Tax Research (FT&TR).

Read | Govt welcomes Panama leaks, says agencies will probe Indians in the list

The multi-agency group will continuously monitor these (accounts) and whichever accounts are found to be unlawful, strict action as per existing laws will be taken, Jaitley said.

The BJP had stormed to power at the Centre in 2014 on a poll plank of bringing back black money parked abroad and punishing the guilty but the opposition accuses the Modi government of failing to keep its promise.

Finance minister Arun Jaitley said violators will find such adventurism extremely costly. (PTI Photo)

Indian laws mandate individuals who own assets or companies outside the country to inform the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Income Tax department.

The finance ministry, which issued a detailed statement on the issue, said steps would be taken to get maximum information from all sources including from foreign governments to help in the investigation process.

It added that progress has been made in investigations into accounts of 628 Indians in HSBC, Switzerland, based on information received in 2011 from the French government. 569 persons have been traced, the statement added.

Read | Icelands PM Gunnlaugsson urged to resign after Panama Papers leak

At the annual summit of business body CII, Jaitley came down on those who did not avail a 90-day compliance window offered by the government to declare their unaccounted wealth stashed abroad, saying that they will find such adventurism extremely costly.

The Congress rejected the governments move to form a multi-agency team to probe the Indians in the list, saying Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government should not shy away from referring this matter to the existing Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) on black money.

The PMs credibility is at stake with the latest expose. It includes the names of his brand ambassador, his travel companions and industrialist friends, party chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said. We have no axe to grind against any individual. We never said that all the names in the list should be declared guilty. The law must have its own course, he said.

Surjewala insisted that the Congress only wanted a time-bound inquiry by the Supreme Court-appointed SIT into the matter.

Read | All you need to know about the Panama papers leaks

In the latest expose, the ICIJ also named business tycoons KP Singh of DLF, Sameer Gehlaut of Indiabulls and Vinod Adani of Adani group. Two politicians on the list are Shishir Bajoria from West Bengal and Anurag Kejriwal, the former chief of the Delhi unit of Loksatta Party.

Referring to earlier exposes on illegal financial dealings, the minister said detailed assessment orders have led to the discovery of illegal assets worth around Rs 6,500 crore.

The Supreme Court-appointed SIT engaged in tracing hundreds of crores of black money  funds used in a manner to evade taxes  also promised a probe into the fresh revelations.

SIT chairman MB Shah, a retired Supreme Court justice, too, said the team will thoroughly investigate the allegations.

The expose also named 12 heads of countries with direct interest in shell companies set up by Mossack Fonseca. The prominent names include Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Russian President Vladimir Putin among others.

Read | Panama Papers ruffle world: Russia to Pak, leaders face the heat

(With inputs from agencies)
Scores of women who were barred entry to a temple in western Maharashtra state despite a court order in their favour vowed to carry on the fight for equal access to places of worship, with the government also backing the courts stand.

A Mumbai court last week said it is the fundamental right of a woman to enter any place of worship that allows men access and that the state should protect this right.

Yet villagers prevented the women from entering the temple, with police dragging away and detaining the activists briefly.

Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, over the weekend, reiterated his support for the court order.

There is no place for discrimination in Hindu culture, he said at a public rally. We will implement the honourable high courts decision in true spirit.

The Shiv Sena, an ally of the Fadnavis-led BJP government in Maharashtra, however said on Monday that the issue concerning the entry of women should have been sorted out among stakeholders, instead of being dragged into the court.

The Sena sought to know if a similar decision will be taken to uphold the religious rights of Muslim women.

The law and order problem that has arisen due to the court order is disturbing. Will the decision to allow women inside all temples be applicable to Muslims as well?, an editorial in Sena mouthpiece Saamana said.

The Shani Shingnapur temple in Ahmednagar in western India has barred women for centuries from the inner sanctum that is dedicated to Shani, or Saturn. It is one of a handful of Hindu temples in the country that does not allow women entry.

The fight for equal access for women has sparked similar campaigns in other places of worship and triggered a wider debate on womens rights, with the hashtag #RightoPray trending on Twitter.

The popular Sabarimala Ayyappa temple in southern Kerala state, which denies entry to women of reproductive age, is the subject of a petition in the Supreme Court.

A separate group of women is demanding access to a landmark mosque in Mumbai.

Trupti Desai, leader of a group that has led the protest for entry in the Shani Shingnapur temple, said they would file a contempt petition against the state if it failed to do so.

Authorities at the Trimbakeshwar temple in Maharashtra, which is also the subject of protests by women for denying them access, on the weekend said it would not allow men or women to enter the inner sanctum henceforth.

(With inputs from PTI)
The Supreme Court on Monday started hearing the appeals filed by the four convicts in the December 16 gang rape and murder case against the Delhi high court order sentencing them to death.

A bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra began hearing the appeals of the convicts who said the high court erred in holding them guilty. The HC had upheld a trial court order.

The HC confirmed the sentence of Mukesh Singh, 27, Akshay Thakur, 29, Pawan Gupta, 20, and Vinay Sharma, 21, saying their crime was in the rarest-of-the rare category warranting death penalty.

Six persons, including a juvenile, had raped a 23-year-old paramedic in a moving bus in South Delhi on December 16, 2012. The accused later threw out the victim and her male friend at an isolated spot.

The woman died in a Singapore hospital on December 29.

The counsel for Mukesh and Pawan defended his clients. He questioned the victims testimony and said she could not have recorded her statement before the magistrate if she was critically injured. The advocate cited the Singapore hospital autopsy report to argue the victims private parts were never injured.

According to the prosecution, an iron rod was inserted into the victims private parts.

Appearing for the Delhi government, senior advocate Siddharth Luthra countered the statement. The bench, after perusing the Singapore hospital report, rejected the defence counsels contention. It told him to first prove the witnesses in the case wrong.

There was an eye witness (PW1) in the case. Both the trial court and the high court have given credence to the testimony of PW1, so you have to first shatter that, the bench said.

The hearing remained inconclusive and will continue on April 8.

The prime accused, Ram Singh, 35, was found dead in Tihar jail in March 2014. Another accused, a juvenile, was sentenced to a maximum of three years in a reformation home.

Within a month of the brutal incident, a fast-track court began the trial proceedings on January 17, 2013. It took just eight months to deliver death sentences to all the accused.

The Delhi high court fast-tracked the convicts appeal and within six months, it confirmed capital punishment to the convicts. But the case has been hanging fire since then.

The SC began hearing the appeals 21 months after they were filed. The death sentence was put on hold the day the SC heard the appeals.
It is not just warplanes, submarines or artillery guns that the Indian military is short of. It even lacks basics such as ammunition, bulletproof jackets and vehicles.

These concerns were red-flagged at a parliamentary panel meeting on Monday that saw lawmakers attacking the defence ministry for its failure to meet the armed forces requirements, sources said.

One lawmaker didnt even spare the DRDO, the countrys top military researcher. It has not been able to make a pistol properly but takes away thousands of crore every year in budget, a source quoted the MP as saying.

The criticism came after senior army, air force and naval officials told the Parliaments standing committee on defence they were lagging far behind the neighbours in terms of capabilities.

The army pointed out it didnt have enough ammunition to fire. Vehicles, too, were in short supply, putting into doubt the militarys capability to tackle external threats. Defence secretary and two other senior ministry officials were also at the meeting.

Read | Indian Air Force admits cant fight China, Pak at the same time

India desperately needs to modernise its aging Russian-era equipment as China and Pakistan upgrade their arsenal with latest technology and purchases. India has fought four wars with Pakistan and one with China.

The country was short of fighter planes, an Indian Air Force officer told the panel that periodically reviews the functioning of the defence ministry. As against the desirable strength of 42 squadrons needed to fight off a combined threat from Pakistan and China, the force was down to just 33 squadrons. An air force squadron has 18 fighter jets.

Barely three weeks ago, IAF vice-chief Air Marshal BS Dhanoa admitted India did not have enough warplanes to fight China and Pakistan simultaneously.

Read | Union Budget 2016: Marginal hike of 9.7% in Indias defence budget

During the panel meeting, MPs told ministry officials it were the soldiers who face the music on the frontlines as bureaucrats in Delhi, dilly-dallying decisions, were out of sync with the needs of the forces, sources said.

Chairman BC Khanduri of the BJP, his party colleague Tarun Vijay and Jithender Reddy of the TRS were particularly vocal. Khanduri is a retired major general.

Lack of funds to raise a new mountain strike corps to counter China threat in the Northeast was also taken up during the meeting.

Indias defence spending is under pressure. The government wants to spend Rs 2.58 lakh crore this financial year, a hike of 9.7% over last years revised estimates.

Experts, however, say this may not be enough to boost modernisation agenda that revolves around buying new fighter planes, building next-generation submarines, helicopters, missiles and artillery guns. The government is trying to involve private sector through its ambitious Make in India campaign to give the forces the much-needed hardware.

Read | Indias defence budget compared to other countries
The Kolkata Police arrested four more officers of the IVRCL on Monday in connection with the Vivekananda Road flyover collapse incident that left more than two dozen people dead.

Companys director (operations) Gopal Krishna Murti, DGM (project) SK Ratnam, engineers Shyamal Manna and Bidyut Manna were detained for interrogation and were later arrested after the police found anomalies in their statements.

With these four, altogether eight officials of the company have been arrested in connection with the tragedy.

Earlier, IVRCL AGM Mallikaarjun Rao, assistant manager Debjyoti Manjumdar, structure manager Pradip Kumar Saha and project manager Tanmoy Sil were also arrested under IPC Sections 302 (murder), 307 (attempt to murder) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) and others.

Meanwhile, police sources claimed the contractor company did not implement a proper quality assurance plan (QAP) while constructing the flyover.

The labourers too, who were on spot at the time of accident, claimed that despite raising an alarm, the engineers did not paid any heed to their advice on safety measures.

As per company records we managed to retrieve, IVRCL did adhere to the rules of transport ministry and even formulated a QAP at the initial stages. But over the years, as the company hit various stumbling blocks, endlessly pushing back the deadline, it forgot about the QAP. It should be considered as a major negligence, said a police officer.

QAP is very important for any project as it sets quality of the construction procedure and it also helps to monitor and control the level of quality of materials used. QAP also ensures extensive mandatory laboratory tests so that no substandard material is used.

It means that QAP ensures safe infrastructure but IVRCL never considered it necessary to monitor and test the materials supplied by the sub-contractor Sandhyamoni Projects Limited. The sub-constructor constructed the slab only once before it collapsed, an investigating officer added.

The flyover project was awarded to the company in February 2009 and its troubles began when Burrabazar residents moved court for a stay order against the proximity of the structure to their homes. The long delays started leading to construction flaws and the company suddenly stopped concentrating on the QAP, said a police officer.

(With inputs from PTI)
The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Sunday accused the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) of deceiving Punjabis by organising fund-raising dinners. The Akalis also alleged that AAP leaders were embarking on foreign trips to fill party coffers.

Kejriwal and his team had earlier virtually forced the party cadre and prospective candidates to shell out Rs 5,000 per plate for food in a state which takes pride in running community kitchens. And now the same tactics is being played abroad with all senior leaders, including AAP state convener Succha Singh Chhotepur holding such programmes in Europe, SAD secretary Mahesh Inder Singh Grewal said in a statement here.

Grewal said eyeing rich collection from gullible Punjabis, AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal is likely to visit the United Kingdom soon.

Grewal urged the Punjabis to unmask AAP representatives during their trips abroad. They need to ask AAP representatives how they plan to use the money. Till now, Kejriwal has used money, including that of the tax-payer, only for his self-glorification and done nothing for the people of Delhi, what to speak about Punjab, he alleged.
Close on the heels of amendments to the Sikh Gurdwaras Act 1925, debarring Sehajdhari Sikhs from voting in Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) elections, Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal on Monday challenged state Congress president Captain Amarinder Singh and other Congress leaders to contest SGPC elections.

Badal said nobody had debarred the Congress from contesting SGPC elections. India is a democratic nation and everyone is free to test waters in any election. Moreover, the Congress has been defeated badly whenever it tried its luck in the SGPC polls, he said.

Meanwhile, speaking in SBS Nagar (Nawanshahr) as per a PTI report, Amarinder criticised the Akali Dal over the disfranchising of Sehajdharis from voting in gurudwara polls and said he would assist those who would move the Supreme Court on the issue. Everyone born to Sikh parents has a right to vote in the gurdwara polls, he maintained. At Kapurtthala, he categorically stated: Congress, being a secular party, will not contest SGPC elections... But as a true Sikh I will participate in the SGPC elections and ensure that the Badals are thrown out of this institution.

BLAME ON WATER RIGHTS

Badal, at Muktsar, also said that Congress-led governments at the Centre and in Punjab denied the state the right to water of its rivers and worked against farmers interest. Successive Congress governments at the Centre and in the state completely ignored the universally accepted riparian principle while signing water-sharing agreements and Punjab was denied its right to waters of its rivers, Badal told a gathering at a sangat darshan programme in the Lambi assembly segment.

Had Punjab not been sharing the water of its rivers with Rajasthan, Haryana and other states, there would have been hardly any problem of depleting ground water in our state, Badal said.

SUPPORTS JEWELLERS

Meanwhile, supporting jewellers ongoing protest against levying of 1% excise duty on non-silver jewellery items, the CM said the Union government must give relaxation to the jewellers who were agitating ever since the imposition of excise duty. The jewellers are under tremendous pressure and their demand needs to be considered sympathetically. I have already written a letter to the government of India for reconsidering this issue, he said.
Punjab Congress chief Captain Amarinder Singh on Monday claimed that there was a subtle understanding between the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and ruling Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD).

He said this was the reason why the BSP was not aligning with the Congress as it wanted to help Sukhbir Badal-led SAD by fielding candidates in all 117 assembly segments across Punjab, which goes to polls early next year.

Also read II Dalit card: SAD goes all out to woo Ravidasias, memorial work begins

Talking to reporters along the sidelines of a function to mark the 125th birth anniversary of BR Ambedkar in Kapurthala, the former Punjab chief minister said, Despite the sincere efforts of me and my party, the BSP did not reciprocate for the reasons best known to it.

However, he added, Some of the BSP leaders, who have recently joined the Congress, told me that there was clear understanding between the senior state and central BSP leadership and the Akalis and Sukhbir.

The PCC president recalled the contribution of Dr Ambedkar in drafting the Constitution, saying it is one of the best in the world.

The Amritsar MP welcomed the pruning of a blacklist maintained by the Centre imposing visa restrictions on Sikhs settled abroad. Replying to a question on dropping several names from the blacklist, he said, it was a welcome move and he had always advocated it.

He said the central government must consider scrapping the list unless someone is involved in some serious crime.

On the issue of SGPC election, he said, Congress being a secular party will not contest these elections. But as a true Sikh I will participate in the SGPC elections and ensure that the Badals are thrown out of this institution, he said.
Congress workers here on Sunday raised the issue of groupism in the party during a district-level meeting that was attended by Punjab Pardesh Congress Committee (PPCC) president Captain Amarinder Singh.

Congress workers were of the opinion that factionalism was behind partys defeat in 2012 assembly elections in Tarn Taran and Patti segments and similar thing should not happen again.

Captain took responsibility for the defeat in 2012 and said anybody going against the party decisions would face expulsion. Workers said the party should finalise candidates early, to which Captain agreed, saying,

The tickets for next assembly elections will be allotted six months in advance.

The party workers alleged the ruling party had been harassing them all this while, but nobody from the party ever cared to come to their rescue.

It is for the first time in nine years that PPCC chief visited us to redress our grievances. Congress workers have been facing false cases, but no one from party helped, said Babbu Sharma from Bhikhiwind.

Lashing out at chief minister Parkash Singh Badal, Captain reiterated that he (Badal) deliberately gave time to Haryana government to move the Supreme Court to stay the decision of Punjab assembly to de-notify the land acquired for SYL canal, while the Punjab Termination of Water Agreement Act was passed in a single day.

On Aam Aadmi Party, Captain said, Reins of Punjab unit of AAP have been given to non-PunjabisKejriwal from Haryana, Sanjay Singh from Uttar Pradesh. Do Punjabis like that? The youth should weigh these aspects?

Prominent among those present were former MLA Ramanjit Singh Sikki, PPCC general secretary Harminder Singh Gill, former cabinet minister Gurchet Singh Bhullar and district president Sukhpal Singh Bhullar.
Former Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF) militant Devinderpal Singh Bhullar was on Monday acquitted in a 1992 Terrorists and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) case registered against him at the Batala Sadar police station.

Charges under section 307 (attempt to murder) of the Indian Penal Code, Arms Act and the Explosives Act were also slapped on Bhullar in the case that pertains to an encounter after a police party was ambushed by a group of militants.

Two militants were claimed to have been killed in the encounter and a policeman was injured .

The designated TADA court of Surinder Singh which heard the case, dismissed the chargesheet filed by the Batala police and discharged Bhullar for want of evidence. The court accepted the plea of Bhullars counsel that there was no direct evidence to suggest his clients involvement and neither were there any witnesses in the case. The chargesheet was filed by police in February and the former militant was granted bail by the TADA court in March in the case.

The verdict by the designated TADA court will pave the way for Bhullar to apply for parole that was denied to him as he had not been acquitted in the Batala case.

Bhullar can now move an application before the government seeking parole. He has remained behind bars since his deportation to India in 1995 followed by his arrest in a blast case.

Despite his acquittal in the TADA case, Bhullar will continue to remain under detention for his involvement in the September 1993 blast outside the headquarters of the All India Youth Congress (AIYC) in New Delhi, resulting in death of eight persons. He was sentenced to death by a Delhi court in the case. His plea for parole will be considered after he moves an application seeking the same.

Though the Supreme Court had upheld his death penalty but later it was commuted to life term on medical grounds. Bhullar is currently undergoing treatment at the Guru Nanak Dev Hospital here. He was not present in the TADA court that heard his bail application.

He was admitted to the psychiatry ward of the hospital on June 12 last year after he was transferred on medical grounds from a hospital in New Delhi. He had complained of depression and other psychological problems. He was under detention at the Tihar Jail and was subsequently shifted to a hospital on the directions of the Supreme Court which took note of his mental condition.

Bhullar fled to Germany after the bomb blast and was deported to India in 1995 to stand trial in the case.

Dal Khalsa hails verdict

Radical Sikh group Dal Khalsa has hailed the verdict of the TADA court acquitting Bhullar. We now hope that the government will consider Bhullars plea for parole and will order his release, so that he can spend time with his family, Dal Khalsa spokesman Kanwar Pal Singh stated.

The case files

Dec 1992: Bhullar booked under TADA by Batala police after an encounter

Sept 1993: Blast outside AIYC headquarters in New Delhi kills nine. Bhullar, one of main accused, fleas to Germany

1995: Bhullar deported to India and arrested

Aug 2001: Trial court hands out death penalty to Bhullar, who is lodged in Tihar Jail. Subsequently appeals challenging death penalty in various courts dismissed.

2012: Bhullars treatment for depression begins, shifted to a hospital in Delhi

June 2015: Bhullar shifted to Amritsar hospital after SC accepts familys plea

Feb 2016: Batala police file challan in 92 TADA case

March 4: Bhullar gets bail in TADA case

April 4: Bhullar acquitted in TADA case
Already facing trial for kidnapping a 16-year-old girl on the pretext of marriage and raping her, a married man abducted the same girl from her house at Shimlapuri on Sunday.

The girls kin stated that when the accused struck at their home, they called up the police, but police did not take any action.

Following this, the family contacted deputy commissioner of police (DCP) Dhruman Nimbale, who has marked an investigation into the case to Shimlapuri station house officer (SHO) Balwinder Singh.

The accused, Sanju, a resident of Shimlapuri, is married and has children.

He was booked by Shimlapuri police for abducting the 16-year-old girl on March 16. Police had recovered the victim one week after the incident and handed her over to parents, but the accused had managed to flee.

After recording victims statement, police have added sections of rape in the first information report (FIR).

Kin of the victim stated that after this, the accused threatened them to withdraw complaint filed against him.

Father of the victim said, On Friday, the accused struck at their home and tried to kidnap their daughter, but locals huddled there and repulsed the accused from there. On Sunday, the accused again turned up at our home and kidnapped my daughter after thrashing me. We had informed the police, but no one turned up there to save my daughter.

Victims father alleged that the accused is police informer and that was the reason why police were reluctant in arresting him.

Sanju is facing trial in several criminal cases, including attempt to murder. He was arrested in an attempt to murder case last year, but was bailed out later.

Meanwhile, refuting all allegations, Shimlapuri SHO Balwinder Singh said, The spot from where the accused has abducted the girl falls under jurisdiction of Daba police. I have asked the family to contact police there. Shimlapuri police have launched a manhunt for his arrest in abduction and rape case that was registered against him on March 16.
Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) chief Avtar Singh Makkar has objected to the A certification given to Punjabi historical film Saka Nankana Sahib by the Central Board of Film Certification before its release.

In a statement issued here on behalf of Makkar, SGPC additional secretary Daljit Singh Bedi said an A certificate to a film depicting historical events was surprising. The film is based on protests that Sikhs launched against the British government for seeking control of its historical shrines such as Nankana Sahib by ousting those who were loyal to the government of the times, the statement said.

It seems that the censor board has two sets of rules----one for Hindi movies and the other for regional language films, particularly Punjabi movies. In the recent past, a couple of Punjabi films based on realistic events have had problems before their release. This approach should be done away with, the statement added.

The statement further said that if Saka Nankana Sahib contained violence, the makers of the film cannot be blamed as they have depicted events as these occurred. A large number of Sikhs were martyred by the British in this struggle and Indian leaders of the times had recognised the sacrifices made while confronting the British, the statement pointed out.

The statement said there was no senseless depiction of violence in the Punjabi movie. On the contrary a number of Hindi films containing unnecessary violence are often given the go-ahead by censor board, the statement claimed. It appealed to the censor board to show flexibility in its approach and withdraw the A certificate awarded to the Punjabi movie.
Panic prevailed at Satguru Partap Singh (SPS) Hospital on GT Road on Monday, when hundreds of Namdhari sect followers as well as heavy police force accompanied injured Chand Kaur (90), wife of late Namdhari sect head Satguru Jagjit Singh, to the hospital around 10am on Monday.

The hospital resembled a cantonment with a huge posse of police pressed in for security.

Earlier in the morning, Chand Kaur was attacked by two unidentified motorcyclists with a revolver from a point blank range at Namdhari centre, Bhaini Sahib. She breathed her last at hospital in the afternoon.

Lakhveer Singh Baddowal, press secretary of Namdhari centre at Bhaini Sahib, said, Followers in huge numbers accompanied Chand Kaur to the hospital and there was a sense of resentment and grief among them.

She was brought here in a critical state, as two bullets had hit her in abdomen and below temple. When the news of her death was announced around 2pm, eyes of the followers present at the hospital drenched with tears. Following this, the body was sent to civil hospital for post-mortem, while followers soaked in despair returned to their houses.

Read: Chand Kaur, wife of former Namdhari sect head, shot dead

Amarveer Singh, one of the followers at the SPS hospital, said, It is certainly a great loss to our community and everyone is aggrieved. It is an inhuman act and police department as well as government must ensure that a thorough probe is marked into the case and strict punitive action is taken against the culprits.

Later, Chand Kaurs body was shifted to Namdhari centre at Bhaini Sahib after post-mortem. Her last rites will be performed on Tuesday.

Ludhiana deputy commissioner Ravi Bhagat and commissioner of police Jatinder Singh Aulakh were also present at the centre. They took stock of the situation and assured that the culprits behind the murder would soon be brought to justice.

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The Narendra Modi-led central government has drawn the Congress partys ire after reports that India had allegedly failed to prove Pakistan-based militants carried out the Pathankot airbase attack in January.

Senior Congress leader and former Leader of Opposition in Punjab assembly, Sunil Jakhar, said on Sunday the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government had let down the countrys own investigative agencies.

He slammed the government for allowing the Pakistani investigative team comprising, besides others, an official of Pakistans spy agency ISI, to visit the strategic facility to probe the attack. He said by doing that India had downsized the capabilities of its own agencies.

After returning home, the Pakistani joint investigation team (JIT) probing the Pathankot attack had claimed the Indian authorities allowed them only to take a mere walk inside the sprawling airbase in Pathankot, Geo News reported.

Jakhar said he had raised doubts about the Pakistani team even before its visit, adding it had been predicted that Pakistan will not accept their sin or any kind of direct or indirect involvement in the terror attack.

Jakhar also criticised the central government for allowing the Pakistani team to question Punjab superintendent of police (SP) Salwinder Singh, whose role in the attack was being probed by the national investigative agency.

Harsimrat condemns Pak JIT statement

Bathinda: Meanwhile, Union minister for food processing Harsimrat Kaur Badal condemned the statements of Pakistans joint investigation team .

It is unfortunate and wrong on the part of joint investigation team to give such statements after probing the issue in India, said Harsimrat, on the sidelines of sangat darshan programme in Bathinda villages on Sunday.
The Indian Rail Catering Tourism and Corporation (IRCTC) will offer a 13-day pilgrim package from June 27 to those who wish to travel to eight destinations by paying Rs 10,790 per head.

The tour package Dakshin Bharat Darshan with Shirdi Ex Chandigarh (NZBD173) offers 12 nights/13 days tour.

The train will depart from the Chandigarh railway station at 6am on June 27.

The destinations to be covered during the 13-day tour include Shirdi Sai Baba Temple, Tirumala Hills (by government buses), Tirupati, Kanchi Kamkshi Temple, Ramanath Swami Temple, Meenakshi Temple, and Kanyakumari (full day sightseeing), Mysore and Bangalore.

The IRCTC will bear cost of three-time meals, transportation fee, sightseeing and stay for 13 days.

However, the package excludes laundry service, medicines and entrance fee for monuments/ temples, etc.

An IRCTC official said, The Bharat Darshan package has been especially designed for the senior citizens. Since the tour will start during the summer vacation, many families would like to opt for it.

He added, Book your tickets by visiting IRCTCs official website irctctourism.com, or contact our zonal office in Sector 34 by calling on 0172-6572156.

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Catchy taglines spice up Punjab poll curry

Punjab assembly polls are still several months away, but creative taglines usually used in campaign have started making news. Taking a cue from chai pe charcha, Punjab Congress has come up with a campaign called Coffee with Captain. The events have Punjab Congress president Captain Amarinder Singh meeting youngsters over coffee. Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) chief Sukhbir Badal, who is also deputy chief minister, immediately countered it by taking a dig at the former chief minister. When it comes to Amarinder, it should be whisky with Amarinder, and not Coffee with Captain, he said. What should one expect in the days to come? In soup with Sukhbir or Bhangra with Bhagwant (Mann), someone suggested.

AAP slams brakes on poaching, for now

After welcoming some party-hoppers, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has given verbal instructions to its leaders in Punjab not to talk to netas wanting to join the party, indicating that poaching from other parties has been put on hold for now. A number of leaders from established parties have been looking at AAP, which has emerged as a strong contender, to secure their political future, but they are now feeling frustrated. Their talks with AAP leaders are not progressing. These leaders are chasing party leaders Sucha Singh Chhotepur and Sanjay Singh, but without success. Why the sudden change in tactic? The feedback, according to AAP leaders, from party supporters is the reason. People have been telling us that they want to get rid of such leaders. By making them switch sides, AAP is imposing the same lot they want to get rid of, they added.

Omar on Mehboobas guest list

Jammu and Kashmir chief minister-designate Mehbooba Mufti has tried to break the ice with her supposed bete noire Omar Abdullah by personally inviting him to her oath ceremony on Monday. Omar termed her invite as a gracious gesture and promised to attend the ceremony. A good beginning considering that the two leaders have been critical of each other. In the last 2-3 months, Omar had posted stinging tweets not only about the PDP-BJP alliance, but also the delay in government formation. The move by Mehbooba Mufti is being seen as an attempt to bridge the divide with Omar, at least in her initial phase. Mehbooba has never held any ministerial berth. Being someone who would be holding an official position for the first time, and that too, when the two regions are politically and ideologically at odds with each other, she wont want the rivals go after her from the word go.

Being wooed, claims Kant

Retired IPS officer Shashi Kant recently announced on WhatsApp that he had got an invite to join a political party to which he was close ideologically. They wanted me to join for Punjab 2017 (polls), provided I refrain from taking up any issue on my own, he posted, adding that he just laughed off the proposal. Though he did not name the party in his WhatsApp message, the former Punjab officer was quick to verbally share that he was referring to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Shashi Kant seems to keen to play an active role in the coming polls, but on his own terms.

AAPs love for journos

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is trying its best to woo journalists and make them a part of their cause. Some journalists were taken to a well-known mall in Chandigarh and shown Punjabi film Ardaas the other day. AAP MP from Sangrur Bhagwant Maan and actor-comedian Gurpreet Ghuggi, who joined the party two months ago, accompanied the journalists. All was well till the film got over and Bhagwant Maan thought it was the right opportunity to give the scribes a lecture on Punjab and its sad state due to SADs rule. The tearjerker movie followed by the Bhagwant Mann speech had some journalists who were a part of the film-picnic wishing why they did not come to watch the film on their own.

JPs Haryanvi style floors all

Jai Prakash (popularly called JP), Independent MLA from Kalayat, has a typical Haryanvi rustic manner of speaking. The former minister had the MLAs in splits during the recently-concluded budget session of the state assembly. JP started narrating the difficulties being faced by drivers and other staff members of the legislators attending the session while sitting in their vehicles for the entire day throughout the session. There are no facilities for them. There is no drinking water or sheds so that they sit in shade or even urinals, the Independent MLA said in chaste Haryanvi.

Witty Virbhadra takes on BJP legislators

Himachal Pradesh chief minister Virbhadra Singh may be under intense attack within and outside the state assembly, but his sense of humour is intact. When BJP legislators led by leader of opposition Prem Kumar Dhumal trooped into the well of the House, they were shouting slogans such as Chakkar hai bhai chakkar hai, CBI ka chakkar hai alluding to raids carried out bby the agency at the chief ministers residences. Amid pandemonium, Virbhadra, who has been the target of BJPs allegations, got up. CBI ka nahin, yeh Enforcement Directorate (ED) ka chakkar hai (Its not about CBI, but ED), he said, correcting the slogan-shouting MLAs.

Power meeting turns out to be routine affair

When Congress central leaders called the party leaders from Himachal Pradesh to Delhi for a meeting last week, it fuelled speculations about a leadership change in the state, particularly in wake of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) proceedings against chief minister Virbhadra Singh. Virbhadra and public health minister Vidya Stokes left for Delhi in the state helicopter on Friday immediately after the assembly proceedings got over. Transport minister GS Bali, health minister Kaul Singh Thakur, state party chief Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu and some others preferred to travel in their own private vehicles, showing that all is not well in the government. The party leadership, however, only took stock of the political situation in the state, dashing hopes of those looking for straws in the wind that a change was likely.

(Contributed by Chitleen K Sethi, Gurpreet Singh Nibber, Prabhjit Singh, Rajesh Moudgil, Gaurav Bisht and Tarun Upadhyay)
Parent associations from various districts have come forward to file a writ petition in the Punjab and Haryana high court over the issue of alleged inflated fee structure at private schools, terming these institutions as mafia.

Parents from Jalandhar (city), Nakodar, Patiala, Gurdaspur and Bathinda, along with the members of the city-based NGO, Human Rights Press Club, on Sunday held a protest in front of the district administrative complex.

The associations have pledged support to the Human Rights Press Club, which has been protesting against the private schools since March 30 over the issue. The associations said it was a case of clear case of contempt of court as the schools were not following the orders passed by the Punjab and Haryana high court on fee regulation and hence they have now decided to file a writ petition.

Members of the parent associations also constituted a state-level body Punjab Parents Association.

The NGO said they will continue their protest till April 6. The agitation against the private schools has escalated across the state, with some parents from Bathinda sitting on an indefinite hunger strike.

In a meeting, the representatives of these parent associations also decided that a state-level joint action committee will be formed to organise protests across Punjab. Human Rights Press Club president Kamaldeep Singh said since the administration is not paying any heed to the parents problem, they were left with no option but to move the high court. The association said the schools were not following the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) norms.

As per the high court orders, the schools will have to justify their fee structure by producing necessary documents before the action committee of unaided private schools. The committee is authorised to look into as to how much fee hike was required by individual schools.

They claimed that the schools were not taking permission from the committee when it comes to fee structure or any hike in it.

They said since the private schools called themselves not-for profit organisations they were o exempted from income tax and value-added tax (VAT).

The schools are charging huge fee to make profits and everyone has turned a blind eye to it, Kamaldeep Singh said.

Sandeep Bandhu, a member of the Parents Association, Patiala, said, I came to Jalandhar to join the protest because it is a state-wide problem. Our children are suffering. We need to fight unitedly and then we can expect some solution to this.

Sunandan Sharma, a parent who had come from Gurdaspur, said, The school mafia is violating our childrens right to education. All they know is how to make the middle-class suffer.
The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) has objected to a Punjabi film trailer depicting violence inside the Golden Temple, holiest of Sikh shrines.

The Sikhs who downloaded the trailer of Once Upon A Time In Amritsar on their mobile phones rang up the SGPC about the part in which a couple of Sikh youth characters standing over the shrines parikrama (circumambulation path) brandish guns. Shooting feature films inside the shrine is prohibited, said SGPC president Avtar Singh Makkar, and the producer could not have the permission to shoot this kind of scene.

Filmmakers claim that the Golden Temple in the backdrop of the controversial scene is just a large projected image, while to Makkar it seems to be the actual shrine. Its clear violation of the Golden Temple maryada (dignity). Sikhs from all over the world have expressed to me their displeasure over the scene, Makkar added.

SGPC additional secretary Daljit Singh Bedi lodged an objection with the movies director, Harjit Singh, over telephone and, later, claimed that the director had agreed drop the scene from the trailer. The Central Board for Film Certification has cleared the movies but its release date is yet to be decided.
Punjab on Monday appeared to be isolated over the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) Canal water-sharing issue, with all other stakeholders coming out in Haryanas support in the Supreme Court which asked the Centre to take a stand in the matter.

In the hearing that saw Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jammu and Kashmir and Delhi supporting the stand of Haryana on the Presidential Reference over the SYL Canal, a five-judge Constitution Bench headed by justice AR Dave said the attorney general or solicitor general should make the Centres stand clear on the reference pertaining to the Punjab Termination of Agreements Act, 2004.

We expect somebody to be present on behalf of the Union of India. You should understand the importance of the Presidential Reference. You doubted the Act (Punjab law) and you made the Presidential Reference. You attack it or you support it. Union of India has to take some stand.

What is the stand of the Union of India. It is not a fight between XYZ. It is a Presidential Reference. You have to answer. You have options -- attack, defend or be neutral, the bench, also comprising justice PC Ghose, Shiva Kirti Singh, AK Goel and Amitava Roy, observed.

The Centres counsel, Wasim Qadri, tried to explain the absence of top law officers and said the Union of India will make submissions after the states. We are not against any state. Let the states explain their stand and then we will say, he said.

Centre of playing politics

The remarks of the bench came after senior advocate Rajeev Dhawan, appearing for Punjab, accused the Centre of playing politics and hide-and-seek on its stand on the reference in view of the election in the state where its coalition partner, the Shiromani Akali Dal, is running the government.

The Centre should come out with a certain stand. Because the election is around, it is playing hide and seek. The election is around, we all know. The reference is embroidered by politics, he submitted and added that the Centre should not treat the reference as a dispute between Haryana and Punjab.

Treat it as a matter of legislative competence, he said and elaborated that the question was whether Punjab has the legislative competence to come out with the Act to terminate the water-sharing agreements with other states.

While Dhawan repeated that the Centre should spell out its stand and even if it was neutral, the reasons for it, the bench said it was because the Centre has no answers, it made a reference through the President to the apex court.

The bench said it has to hear the matter as a question of law was involved and reiterated that the Centere has to come forward with some stand.

Hearing resumes on Friday

Senior advocate Ram Jethmalani, also appearing for Punjab, said he will be ready with the arguments when the court resumed hearing on Friday.

Himachal Pradesh said it was in support of Haryana that Punjab has no legislative competence to come out with the law to terminate the water-sharing agreement.

Rajasthan, Jammu and Kashmir and Delhi also said they are siding with Haryana as the agreement was not terminated validly.

During the last hearing on April 1, the Punjab government had asked the Centre to come out with details of the Presidential Reference on the SYL Canal issue, including why it was made.

The Centre had said it was maintaining a neutral stand in the tussle between Punjab and Haryana over sharing of water through the SYL Canal. On March 14, it had said that it will not take any side. On the same day, the Punjab assembly had passed the bill against construction of the contentious SYLCanal providing for transfer of proprietary rights back to the land owners free of cost.

Three days later, the apex court had directed maintenance of status quo on land meant for the canal, after Haryana alleged that attempts have been made to alter its use by levelling it.

The apex court in its interim order had also appointed Union home secretary and Punjabs chief secretary and director general of police as the joint receiver of the land and other property meant for the SYL Canal till further orders.

The legislation, Punjab Sutlej-Yamuna Link Canal (Rehabilitation and Re-vesting of Proprietary Rights) Bill, paves the way for denotifying 5,300 acres acquired in the Punjab side for 122 km SYL canal, of which 92 km falls in Haryana.
Chanchal Jain, 25, is an NGO worker from Jabalpur. Born a woman, Jain is in the process of getting sex reassignment surgery to become a man. When Jain worked up the courage to broach the subject with his small-town parents, he was in for a larger surprise than they were: his father, quickly recovering, only said, Well, do you want to get the surgery done?

Kicking off with Chanchals story last week, a new seven-part web series, Coming Out, features inspiring tales of members of the LGBTQ community coming out to their families, across India and across sections of economic classes.

Watch: Chanchal Jains coming out story

For instance, Gautam, 25, an activist from New Delhi, is the son of an autorickshaw driver, gay, and HIV+. Gautam told his parents about being gay at the age of 17; once they came to terms with the idea, they offered their full support, and continued to after he was diagnosed.

Gautam, an activist in Delhi told his parent about being gay at 17; they offered him their full support, and continued to even after he was diagnosed as HIV+.

Justine Mellocastro, 25, a hairstylist and fashion entrepreneur in Mumbai, is bisexual. In the episode, her mother is shown saying, First, I went into turmoil, frankly. There were so many things flying through my head. You worry about society, thats the only thing that comes to mind. And then I said, finally, I love my kid.

Watch: Hairstylist Justine Mellocastros story of how she came out to herself, her friends and loved ones

Produced by youth content company 101India, these stories are told in a matter-of-fact, conversational style, and are not overly emotional or depressing. Four episodes are out online.

Usually, all you hear are negative stories, says Mellocastro. My story is only positive  my family was ultra-supportive, and Ive been in long-term relationships with women too  including a live-in relationship. Weve got so many nice comments on the video, most of them congratulating my mum for her attitude. I think its mainly the government that has a problem with homosexuality.

This series isnt about the Bollywood-isation of the issue, says Cyrus Oshidhar, founder of 101India. We dont want to overlay the videos with any message, but show snapshots of real stories. The clear subtext is about parents and acceptance, and that it is possible to have a normal, loving family unit.

Software engineer Pawan Thakur, 27, was blown away by Chanchals story. I grew up in Jabalpur, so I know it is a huge deal for Chanchals family to accept him. Its a very small, conventional community, the kind where many girls arent allowed to work. When Chanchals father made the decision to accept and support him, he must have been fully aware of the kind of attention it would garner. Such families deserve all our respect, and Im sure the show will fill many LGBTQ people with hope and courage.

What: Coming Out, a seven-part web series showing stories of members of the LGBTQ community coming out to their families
Former Daily Show host Jon Stewart seems to have found a gentle and good way to spend his time after quitting the show. Him and his wife Tracey rescued a hurt runaway bull in New York City on Friday, April 1.

Farm Sanctuary posted on Facebook , a video of Jon feeding the bull, who ditched out of a truck from a slaughterhouse in Jamaica, New York to the campus of York College, reported Ace Showbiz.

Everyone likes hay, Jon said in the video.

Farm Sanctuary wrote, Breaking News: We are happy to report that the bull who was on the run earlier today in Queens is safe and on his way to Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen, NY.

Jon feeding hay to the bull to calm it down. (Facebook)

Jon and Tracey Stewart picked up the individual whom we are calling Frank this afternoon from Animal Care Centers of NYC (ACC). Special thanks to our colleague Mike Stura of Skylands Animal Sanctuary And Rescue who drove out to assist with the transport. More info to come.

The runaway bull was transported to the Animal Care Center in Brooklyn before Jon brought it to his animal sanctuary.

Read: King of sarcasm Jon Stewart bids adieu to The Daily Show

Sylvia Moskovitz with the Watkins Glen shelter in New York told the site that members of Farm Sanctuary negotiated with the organization a voluntary release for the bull.

After spending the weekend at the Stewart family farm, the bull will be transported to Cornell University Hospital for Animals and becomes a steer.

Watch the video here.
Two unidentified men died after being injured in an explosion in a house in northern Bangladesh that police suspect was being used by the banned Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), officials said on Monday.

Bomb experts found 20 grenades, four pistols, 20 bullets and bomb-making materials in the house at Mohipur village of Bogra district where the explosion occurred on Sunday.

Bogras superintendent of police Mohammed Asaduzzaman said villagers alerted police about the explosion on Sunday evening. The villagers took the two injured men to a nearby hospital, where they died within hours.

Asaduzzaman said police suspected the house was being used by the JMB.

The dead men could not be identified and local residents told police they were not from the area. Officials said they had not made any arrests in connection with the blast.

Police said a man posing as a driver had rented the one-storey concrete building five months ago but he left the house a few days ago. The man could not be traced after the blast.
More than 70 people have died in landslides and flash floods triggered by heavy rains that pounded the northern areas of Pakistan over the weekend, officials said on Monday.

Dozens of houses collapsed and power lines went down in many areas, making it more difficult for rescue teams to reach victims. Weather experts described the rains as part of unusual weather patterns in the country.

State-run Radio Pakistan put the death toll in rain-related incidents at 71. Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province alone recorded 47 deaths, it reported. Scores were injured across northern Pakistan.

Pakistani residents cross a flooded street following heavy rains on the outskirts of Peshawar on Monday. (AFP)

By Monday afternoon, it was feared that the rising waters would reach the plains of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, causing more damage to houses and livestock.

Forecasters predicted the unstable weather would continue till Tuesday. People in Malakand and Hazara should remain alert as widespread rain is expected there, said Mushtaq Shah, director of the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) in Peshawar.

In Islamabad, PMD adviser Qamaruz Zaman Chaudhry said such heavy rains at this time of the year were unusual. These erratic weather conditions can easily be attributed to climate change, he told the media.

Pakistani villagers watch flash flooding on the outskirts of Peshawar on Sunday. (AP)

Chaudhry said the government should implement a climate change policy and take other precautionary measures, including putting in place early warning systems and timely evacuation of people from low-lying areas, to avert losses.

The authorities should be prepared for erratic weather patterns in the future too, he added.

Most of the casualties were reported in the northern part of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, which has been hit by downpours since Friday.

A total of 141 houses were destroyed and the torrential rain caused serious losses to orchards and standing crops. Footage on television showed flood waters washing away several bridges.

There were reports of landslides in Neelam Valley of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Eight members of a family were killed at Samgam Sharda village when their house collapsed.
At least six police officers were killed in a Taliban ambush on their convoy in Afghanistans northern Balkh province, an official said on Monday.

Abdul Manon Raoufi, operational commander for police in the region, said insurgents attacked the convoy Sunday night in the Dawlat Abad district.

The police were on their way to neighbouring Jawzjan province after conducting an anti-insurgent operation in Balkh when the ambush happened, he said.

No group has claimed responsibility. Raoufi said an insurgent leader of the Taliban was also killed in the gunfight.

Separately, in eastern Nangarhar province, two people died and six others were wounded in a bomb explosion on Monday, said Hazrat Hussain Mashreqewal, spokesperson for the provincial police chief.

The blast targeted police in the Khewa district but only civilians were killed and wounded, he said.

Taliban fighters have stepped up their attacks against Afghan security forces since 2014, when the international combat mission ended and most foreign troops left the country.
London mayor Boris Johnson has picked on the David Cameron governments allegedly inconsistent handling of Tata Steels decision to sell its UK assets as part of the Brexit camps wider argument against Britains membership of the European Union.

A leading member of the Brexit camp ahead of the June 23 referendum, Johnson used his Monday column in The Daily Telegraph to score points over business secretary Sajid Javid, who is at the centre of government efforts to deal with the steel industrys dire situation.

Johnson wrote: Take the glut of Chinese steel. It seems that the EU Commission has been considering a broad range of anti-dumping measures for some time. It is also clear that before Tata took the decision to close Port Talbot, the UK was one of the countries to be lobbying against such tariffs.

Some have suggested that this was out of a general desire to suck up to the Chinese; others that it was a principled aversion to tariffs, and recognition that such import duties would hit domestic consumers of steel.

Since the Port Talbot crisis blew up, the story seems to have changed. We are now told that the UK does indeed favour anti-dumping measures, though not of the kind that the EU Commission has been proposing.

Johnson added: The result? Probably nothing. Nothing will happen in the near future, if ever, because there is no agreement round the table in Brussels. Even when we want to change tack on tariffs, we cant  because we have given up control.

There were calls for Javid to resign after his admission on television on Sunday that the scale of Tata Steels decision came as a surprise to him while he was holidaying with his teenage daughter in Australia. He rushed back to London after the sell-off plans were announced.

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Greece shipped more than 200 migrants back to Turkey on Monday, the first wave of deportations under a hugely controversial deal aimed at easing Europes worst migration crisis since World War II.

The orderly return of the 202 migrants aboard three chartered Turkish ferries stood in stark contrast to the journey many have taken over perilous seas aboard crowded rubber dinghies.

Two boats left the Greek island of Lesbos at dawn and another from the island of Chios, carrying mostly Afghan and Pakistani migrants who Turkey will eventually deport to their home countries.

The grim-faced deportees were boarded onto the boats by security guards from the EUs Frontex border agency, who were wearing sanitary face masks.

Facing an unprecedented influx that has threatened to tear the bloc apart, the European Union clinched a last-ditch deal with Turkey to take back all migrants landing in Greece after March 20.

In a heavily criticised swap deal, the EU has pledged to rehouse one Syrian in the bloc for every one deported from Greece, with numbers capped at 72,000.

A first batch of 32 Syrian asylum seekers were flown into the German city of Hanover on Monday under that part of the deal.

European leaders hope the agreement will discourage migrants from risking the Aegean crossing that has claimed 366 lives this year alone and break up the lucrative racket that smuggled about one million migrants into Europe last year.

But rights groups have slammed the pact as inhumane and a blow to the right to request asylum, and protesters on Lesbos brandished banners reading: Stop the dirty deal, stop deportations and wake up Europe.

Amnesty International has accused Turkey of not being a safe country for refugees by forcibly returning Syrians back home to their war-torn countries -- a charge Ankara rejects.

The returns today are in many ways symbolic, said Gauri Vangulik, deputy Europe director for Amnesty International.

Protesters hold a banner as they demonstrate against deportations planned at the port of Mytilini, Lesbos island, Greece. (AP Photo)

They are the first starting point of what is to become really one of the most disastrous episodes in European asylum policy.

Guests for a while

The first to be deported under the deal arrived at the Turkish resort of Dikili to a heavy security presence on the harbourside, with media kept at a distance by metal barriers.

The taking of fingerprints, the landing at the port, medical checks... the transport of the 202 people in buses to reception centres in Kirklareli (on the Bulgarian border) is all taking place successfully, said Mustafa Toprak, governor of Turkeys Izmir region.

Yorgos Kyritsis, Greeces migration spokesperson, said the first wave contained citizens from Iran, Congo, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India, Ivory Coast and Somalia.

Only two were from Syria and they had requested to return for personal reasons, Kyritsis said.

Turkish EU affairs minister Volkan Bozkir told HaberTurk television that the non-Syrian migrants would be sent to Kirklareli for checks ahead of deportation to their own countries.

People who have migrated for purely economic reasons are to be sent back according to the rules, he said.

We will apply to the countries of the illegal migrants. They can be our guests for a while and then bit by bit we will send them back.

The first group of migrants was already seen boarding buses for the long drive to Kirklareli.

Disastrous episode

Despite the controversy surrounding the deal, it appeared to be reducing the flow.

Turkeys interior minister Efkan Ala said at the weekend that the numbers crossing had already fallen substantially in the last 10 days to just 300 people a day.

But some decided to chance it despite the risk of being sent back, and the Turkish coastguard on Monday blocked a boatload of about 60 mostly Afghan migrants, an AFP correspondent said.

Those in Greece are now rushing to speed up their asylum requests to avoid deportation.

Lawyers came to talk to us through the fence and explain that it was best to do that, said Toufik, an Afghan in the Moria migrant camp on Lesbos.

A migrant woman waits in a line to get food at the makeshift camp in the northern Greek border point of Idomeni, Greece. (AP Photo)

Authorities in Greece are trying to relieve pressure on overcrowded makeshift camps on the border and the port of Piraeus, where there are over 15,000 people staying in unhygienic conditions.

Deputy defence minister Dimitris Vitsas on Monday said room for an additional 10,000 people would be available by April 10 and that refugees and migrants would be urged to move to organised facilities.

Piraeus will be cleared before (May 1), Vitsas told Mega TV.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has a particular interest in the deal, as her country accepted a record 1.1 million migrants last year after she refused to cap refugee numbers, earning her criticism at home and within the EU.

In return for its assistance in implementing the deal, Turkey will receive billions in EU aid, accelerated visa-free travel for its citizens and progress in its bid for membership of the bloc.
Icelands Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson on Monday insisted he would not resign after documents leaked in a media investigation linked him to an offshore company that would represent a serious conflict of interest.

Reports have alleged that Gunnlaugsson and his wife set up a company in the British Virgin Islands with the help of a law firm at the centre of a massive tax evasion leak. The reports have prompted calls for a no-confidence vote in parliament against him.

Going on Icelandic television on Monday afternoon, Gunnlaugsson said he would not resign and added there was nothing new in the information contained in the Panama Papers data leak.

The revelation concerns the company Wintris Inc, which Gunnlaugsson allegedly created in 2007 along with then partner-now wife, Anna Sigurlaug Palsdottir.

He allegedly sold his half of the company to Palsdottir for $1 on December 31, 2009, the day before a new Icelandic law took effect that would have required him to declare the ownership of Wintris as a conflict of interest.

Wintris lost money as a result of the 2008 financial crash that crippled Iceland, and is claiming a total of 515 million Icelandic kronur ($4.2 million) from the three failed Icelandic banks: Landsbanki, Glitnir, and Kaupthing.
The offshore accounts of Indian citizens are expected to be substantially curtailed from 2017 since India has committed itself to common reporting standards on the automatic exchange of tax information with Britain and several countries.

Indias participation in global efforts to clamp down on tax evasion was reiterated during the eighth UK-India Economic and Financial Dialogue here in January between finance minister Arun Jaitley and chancellor George Osborne.

A joint statement after the dialogue said: The UK and India share a common commitment to address cross-border tax evasion and avoidanceBoth sides have committed to the Common Reporting Standards (CRS) on Automatic Exchange of Tax Information (AEoI) and will begin exchange in 2017.

India joined the global efforts during a meeting of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Developments (OECD) Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes in Berlin in October 2014.

Under the agreement, unprecedented levels of information, including account balances, interest payments and beneficial ownership, will be shared with Britain by countries around the world as part of an international clampdown on tax evasion.

The global standard of automatic information exchange was developed by the OECD and agreed in July 2014.

A total of 57 countries and jurisdictions  known as the Early Adopters Group  have committed to a common implementation timetable which will see the first exchange of information in 2017 in respect of accounts open at the end of 2015 and new accounts from 2016.

A further 34 countries have committed to implement the new global standard by 2018.

The Berlin declaration on transparency and fairness in tax matters said: Under the new global standard a wide range of information will be exchanged on offshore accounts, including account balances and beneficial ownership. This will make it possible to stamp out tax evasion and tackle tax fraud. This action by the dishonest few reduces public revenues, undermines confidence in the fairness of our tax systems and increases the burden on honest taxpayers.

It added: We call on the few countries which have not yet done so to match this commitment. The ability of tax evaders to hide is vanishing quickly. Tax evaders have two choices  come forward or be caught.

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The Kremlin on Monday alleged that the investigative journalists who worked on the leaked Panama Papers are former US officials and secret service operatives.

We know this so-called journalist community, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told journalists in a briefing, apparently referring to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism.

There are a lot of journalists whose main profession is unlikely to be journalism -- a lot of former officials from the (US) Department of State, the CIA and other special services.

Media reports alleging links between Russian President Vladimir Putin and offshore transactions worth billions of dollars aim to discredit the Kremlin leader ahead of Russias upcoming elections, the spokesperson said.

The main target of this disinformation is our President, especially in the context of the upcoming parliamentary elections and in the context of a longer-term perspective - I mean presidential elections in two years, Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with journalists.

This Putinophobia abroad has reached such a point that it is in fact taboo to say something good about Russia, or about any actions by Russia or any Russian achievements. But its a must to say bad things, a lot of bad things, and when theres nothing to say, it must be concocted. This is evident to us.

Peskov said the publications contained nothing concrete and nothing new about Putin.
One big name in the middle of the vast expose of tax havens published on Sunday is Mossack Fonseca.

The leaked documents, which reveal the assets of around 140 political figures -- including 12 current of former heads of states -- came from Mossack Fonseca, a law firm with offices in more than 35 countries.

Heres all you need to know about the Panama-based law firm

What is Mossack Fonseca?

It is a Panama-based law firm whose services include incorporating companies in offshore jurisdictions such as the British Virgin Islands. It administers offshore firms for a yearly fee. Other services include wealth management.

Where is it based?

The firm is Panamanian but runs a worldwide operation. Its website boasts of a global network with 600 people working in 42 countries. It has franchises around the world, where separately owned affiliates sign up new customers and have exclusive rights to use its brand. Mossack Fonseca operates in tax havens including Switzerland, Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands, and in the British crown dependencies Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man.

How big is it?

Mossack Fonseca is the worlds fourth biggest provider of offshore services. It has acted for more than 300,000 companies. There is a strong UK connection. More than half of the companies are registered in British-administered tax havens, as well as in the UK itself.

Related

500 Indians in global list of secret firms in tax havens

Tax authorities in Aus, NZ begin probe





How much data has been leaked?

A lot. The leak is one of the biggest ever  larger than the US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks in 2010, and the secret intelligence documents given to journalists by Edward Snowden in 2013. There are 11.5m documents and 2.6 terabytes of information drawn from Mossack Fonsecas internal database.

Are all people who use offshore structures crooks?

No. Using offshore structures is entirely legal. There are many legitimate reasons for doing so. Business people in countries such as Russia and Ukraine typically put their assets offshore to defend them from raids by criminals, and to get around hard currency restrictions. Others use offshore for reasons of inheritance and estate planning.

Are some people who use offshore structures crooks?

Yes. In a speech last year in Singapore, David Cameron said the corrupt, criminals and money launderers take advantage of anonymous company structures. The government is trying to do something about this. It wants to set up a central register that will reveal the beneficial owners of offshore companies. From June, UK companies will have to reveal their significant owners for the first time.

What does Mossack Fonseca say about the leak?

The firm wont discuss specific cases of alleged wrongdoing, citing client confidentiality. But it robustly defends its conduct. Mossack Fonseca says it complies with anti-money-laundering laws and carries out thorough due diligence on all its clients. It says it regrets any misuse of its services and tries actively to prevent it. The firm says it cannot be blamed for failings by intermediaries, who include banks, law firms and accountants.

Related

Panama papers name Fifa officials, Platini, Messi in offshore dealings

40 years of financial records, 11 main allegations
Indians are painting British towns red and the authorities are not amused.

Paan-spitting among Indian-origin people and non-resident Indians in the UK has prompted city councils to slap fines, issue protection orders against offenders and even use anti-graffiti sprays to clean the stains.

Red spit marks on walls and pavements are hard to ignore in towns and London areas with a large Asian population, forcing civic bodies to crack down on the unhygienic habit.

Police in the London borough of Brent have imposed a fine of 80 pounds (around Rs 7,650) for each such offence, particularly along middle-class neighbourhoods of Wembley High Road and Ealing Road.

Paan is widely available at shops and restaurants to cater to the Asian, especially the sub-continental, habit of chewing the betel leaf, which is believed to aid digestion.

In the east Midlands city of Leicester, the city council recently carried out a public consultation on spitting, and the opinion was overwhelmingly in favour of penalising offenders.

We are aware of this problem, which is unhygienic and leaves unsightly stains on pavements. We are looking at including paan-spitting in a future city-wide public spaces protection order, which would give us more powers to tackle it, the city council spokesman said.

Leicester has a large number of Indian-origin people living around Belgrave Road and Melton Road.

Cleaning teams went out last year at the request of ward councillors and used anti-graffiti spray equipment to remove paan stains from walls and dustbins. But, its not an easy task, the spokesperson said.

Many Indian-origin residents are equally disgusted. Jit Dhanji, the service delivery manager at the Belgrave Neighbourhood Centre, told the local daily Leicester Mercury, It is a cultural thing. People have done it for generations upon generations in India and it is fine there. But it is not appropriate in an urban environment like Belgrave.

Dhanji, however, doesnt believe its borne out of malice. These people just need to be educated about where to spit, he said.

A Brent council spokesman told HT police were acting against paan-spitting but the area was too large to be watched all the time and perpetrators were reluctant to spit in front of uniformed officers.

In 2013, public health functions were brought under council control. As a result, there are plans to re-launch the campaign with a greater focus on raising awareness on the health risks of chewing tobacco paan and offering practical support to help chewers quit, he said.

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A massive leak of 11.5 million documents from a Panama-based law firm offers a glimpse into the shadowy world in which the rich and powerful stash their wealth  and raises sharp questions about the use of shell companies that hide the identity of their true owners.

Leaders of the Group of 20  representing some 80% of the global economy  have vowed to crack down on the practice, which is blamed for aiding money laundering, corruption and tax evasion. Countries have tightened rules on using them  but not enough to satisfy anti-corruption activists.

News organisations around the world are working with the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists to process the massive leak of legal records from the Panama-based Mossack Fonseca law firm that was first given to the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper in Munich, Germany.

The document dump first reported on Sunday shows the hidden offshore assets of politicians, businesses and celebrities around the world, including 12 current or former heads of state.

Among the countries with past or present political figures named in the reports are Iceland, Ukraine, Argentina, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Russia  and the news was causing political storms for the leaders of those first three nations.

The law firm said in a statement that it observed all laws and international standards covering corporate registrations.

Key facts on the journalists' investigation into tax evasion. (AFP)

One of the most prominent subjects of the consortiums report is Russian President Vladimir Putin. The consortium says on its website that the documents show how complex offshore financial deals channelled as much as $2 billion to a network of people linked to Putin.

Read | Journalists working on Panama papers ex-CIA operative: Kremlin

One focus was Sergei Roldugin, a childhood friend of Putin. Roldugin, a professional cellist, was listed as the owner of companies that obtained payments from other companies worth tens of millions of dollars, and the owner of a stake in Bank Rossiya, described by the US Treasury as designated for providing material support to government officials.

The evidence in the files suggests Roldugin is acting as a front man for a network of Putin loyalists - and perhaps for Putin himself, the consortium says.

Roldugin was unavailable for comment on Monday. A receptionist at the St Petersburg House of Music, where he is artistic director, said he was not in.

Putin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov claimed the Russian president was the main target of the investigation, which he suggested was the result of Putinophobia and aimed at smearing the country in a parliamentary election year.

He suggested that ICIJ has links to the US government.

The ICIJ is not funded by the government and is part of the non-profit, non-partisan Center for Public Integrity.

Read | All you need to know about the Panama papers leaks

I dont consider it possible to go into the details of allegations that Putins friends ran an offshore scheme, Peskov told reporters, mainly because there is nothing concrete and nothing new about Putin, and a lack of details.

Yet it was not clear how much the revelations would hurt Putin.

In Russia, where the investigation was published by independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, the scandal initially faced an effective coverage ban. Following hours of silence, state-owned Channel One reported the story, leading with Peskovs denial and mentioning dealings involving Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

The TV report said the document leak may have been a US-orchestrated attempt to remove Panama as a tax haven since it is competing for tax revenue.

(AFP)

Meanwhile, the Indian government said it will investigate allegations that over 500 Indians used the law firm in Panama to set up offshore entities across the world, finance minister Arun Jaitley said on Monday.

The names of actors Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, real estate tycoon KP Singh and late gangster Iqbal Mirchi figured in a list of over 500 Indians who allegedly employed the law firm to set up offshore entities, a newspaper reported.

Read | Govt welcomes Panama leaks, says agencies will probe Indians in the list

In Australia, the tax agency said on Monday it was investigating more than 800 wealthy people for possible tax evasion linked to their alleged dealings with Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm with international offices that provide offshore financial services.

The Australian Tax Office said it had linked more than 120 of those people to an offshore services provider in Hong Kong but did not name the company.

Ramon Fonseca, a co-founder of Mossack Fonseca  one of the worlds largest creators of shell companies  confirmed to Panamas Channel 2 television network that documents investigated by the ICIJ were authentic and had been obtained illegally by hackers. But he said most people named were not his firms direct clients but were accounts set up by intermediaries.

Anti-corruption advocates say legal standards on so-called shell companies have improved in some countries but are not tough enough. The G20 leaders adopted 14 principles at a 2014 summit. The essence was that companies should be able to identify to authorities who their real owners are, otherwise, that opens the way for money laundering and tax evasion.

Yet in a follow-up report in September, the anti-corruption group, Transparency International, said the actual implementation of the recommendations into national law had lagged. Most member countries had at least adopted a clear definition of what real ownership means but lagged on requiring law firms and banks servicing the rich to require  and independently confirm  who the real owner is.

Development advocates say shell companies help crooked officials drain tax and natural-resources revenue from poor countries that desperately need the money.

Mossack Fonseca law firm sign is pictured in Panama City. (Reuters Photo)

Pakistan denied any wrongdoing by the family of Prime Minister Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif after his daughter and son were linked to offshore companies.

Among those named in the papers are three of Sharifs four children -- Maryam, who has been tipped to be his political successor; Hasan and Hussain, with the records showing they owned London real estate through offshore companies administered by the firm.

The British government, meanwhile, asked for a copy of leaked data so it could examine the information and act on any possible tax evasion. Britain Prime Minister David Camerons late father, Ian Cameron, is mentioned in the more than 11.5 million documents from the files, alongside some members of his Conservative Party. Camerons office declined to comment.

The repercussions of the leak were felt in Paris, too. President Francois Hollande promised that the massive leak of documents would lead to legal proceedings in France. All the information revealed will lead to investigations brought by the tax authorities and to legal proceedings, Hollande said.

The ICIJ said the documents involve 214,488 companies and 14,153 clients of Mossack Fonseca. The non-profit group said it would release the full list of companies and people linked to them early next month.

Sueddeutsche Zeitung said it was offered the data more than a year ago through an encrypted channel by an anonymous source. The source sought unspecified security measures but no compensation, said Bastian Obermayer, a reporter for the paper.

The data dated from 1977 through the end of 2015, the paper said. The newspaper and its partners verified the authenticity of the data by comparing it to public registers, witness testimony and court rulings, Obermayer added.

It allows a never-before-seen view inside the offshore world  providing a day-to-day, decade-by-decade look at how dark money flows through the global financial system, breeding crime and stripping national treasuries of tax revenues, the ICIJ said.

Panama is the last major holdout that continues to allow funds to be hidden offshore from tax and law enforcement authorities, said Angel Gurria, secretary-general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The OECB is an international organisation representing mostly rich countries and has been working with the G-20 to restrict the use of shell companies.

Read | Putin, Nawaz Sharif among world leaders exposed in tax haven dump

Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela issued a statement saying his government had zero tolerance for illicit financial activities and would cooperate vigorously with any investigation.

Reports based on the leak said Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson set up a company called Wintris Inc., in the British Virgin Islands in 2007 with his partner at the time, Anna Sigurlaug Palsdottir, who is now his wife.

He reportedly sold his half of the company to Palsdottir for $1 on December 31, 2009, the day before a new Icelandic law took effect that would have required him to declare the ownership of Wintris as a conflict of interest.

Wintris lost money as a result of the 2008 financial crash that crippled Iceland, and is claiming a total of 515 million Icelandic kronur ($4.2 million) from the three failed Icelandic banks: Landsbanki, Glitnir, and Kaupthing.

Gunnlaugsson now stands accused by opposition leaders of a serious conflict of interest because as prime minister he was involved in reaching a deal for the banks claimants.

People protest against Icelands Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson outside parliament in Reykjavik, Iceland. (AFP Photo)

The office of Argentine President Mauricio Macri, meanwhile, confirmed a report by La Nacion newspaper that a business group owned by Macris family had set up Fleg Trading Ltd. in the Bahamas. But it said Macri himself had no shares in Fleg and never received income from it.

More revelations are on the way.

Sueddeutsche Zeitung said its Tuesday edition would report that 28 German banks had used Mossack Fonsecas services to set up 1,200 shell companies for their clients.

(With inputs from agencies)

Read | Panama Papers ruffle world: Russia to Pak, leaders face the heat
The Panama papers exposed on Monday had irate governments all over the world reacting cautiously, having been thrown into the spotlight suddenly and unpleasantly.

More than 11 million documents leaked from the secret files of Mossack Fonseca, a law firm headquartered in tax haven Panama, revealed a list of wealthy and powerful individuals who paid the firm and bought the benefits of the secretive, lax regulatory system in which it operates  to set up offshore entities in tax havens around the world.

The Indian government said it will investigate allegations that over 500 Indians used the law firm in Panama to set up offshore entities across the world, finance minister Arun Jaitley said on Monday.

The Special Investigation Team (SIT) set up by the Supreme Court to trace black money stashed abroad also said it will thoroughly investigate the allegations.

The names of actors Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, real estate tycoon KP Singh and late gangster Iqbal Mirchi figured in a list of over 500 Indians who allegedly employed the law firm to set up offshore entities, a newspaper reported.

Icelands Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson refused to resign on Monday, despite calls to do so after the leaked tax documents showed that he and his wife used an offshore firm to allegedly hide million-dollar investments. I have not considered quitting because of this matter nor am I going to quit because of this matter, Gunnlaugsson said.

Read | All you need to know about the Panama papers leaks

Media reports alleging links between Russian President Vladimir Putin and offshore transactions worth billions of dollars aimed to discredit the Kremlin leader ahead of Russias upcoming elections, his spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov said.

The main target of this disinformation is our President, especially in the context of the upcoming parliamentary elections and in the context of a longer-term perspective  I mean presidential elections in two years, he added.

Kremlin also alleged that the investigative journalists who worked on the leaked Panama Papers are former US officials and secret service operatives. We know this so-called journalist community, Peskov said, referring to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism. There are a lot of journalists whose main profession is unlikely to be journalism -- a lot of former officials from the (US) Department of State, the CIA and other special services, he added.

Pakistan denied any wrongdoing by the family of Prime Minister Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif after his daughter and son were linked to offshore companies.

Among those named in the papers are three of Sharifs four children -- Maryam, who has been tipped to be his political successor; Hasan and Hussain, with the records showing they owned London real estate through offshore companies administered by the firm.

Read | Stars in Panama Papers leak: Big B, Jackie Chan, Aishwarya Rai

The British government, meanwhile, asked for a copy of leaked data so it could examine the information and act on any possible tax evasion. The document leak could be embarrassing for Britain Prime Minister David Cameron, who has spoken out against a crackdown on tax evasion and tax avoidance. His late father, Ian Cameron, is mentioned in the more than 11.5 million documents from the files, alongside some members of his Conservative Party in the upper house of parliament, former Conservative lawmakers and party donors, British media said. Camerons office declined to comment.

Dutch authorities said they would investigate allegations related to the Netherlands. The finance ministry said in a statement that the tax office would actively look at whether there was data related to levying of tax. Mossack Fonseca had an office in the Netherlands that closed last month after five years.

The repercussions of the leak were felt in Paris, too. President Francois Hollande promised that the massive leak of documents would lead to legal proceedings in France. All the information revealed will lead to investigations brought by the tax authorities and to legal proceedings, Hollande said. He thanked the whistleblowers for bringing the so-called Panama Papers to light.

Austrian regulators are investigating whether two banks named in the leak followed procedures to prevent money laundering, one of the firms having attracted attention for its lending to a confectionery company owned by Ukraines president. Two Austrian media groups that were among the more than 100 news organisations that jointly investigated the documents contents identified Raiffeisen Bank International and Hypo Landesbank Vorarlberg as companies named in the trove.

Read | Pakistan PMs family hit back after Panama Papers leak
In a rare occurrence in the cut-and-thrust world of business, a British firm has hit the headlines after reporting itself to authorities when an internal probe found it had bribed to get business, and agreeing to pay 2.2 million as a fine.

Britain has a stringent anti-bribery policy since the passage of the Bribery Act 2010, which makes it illegal for British companies to use bribes to obtain business anywhere in the world.

Glasgow-based Braid Logistics (UK), which specialises in freight and logistics, said the case involved a small number of former employees and an employee of a client company.

In a civil settlement with the Crown Office, the company agreed to pay 2.2 million after accepting it had obtained business through unlawful conduct. The settlement came after the company discovered potentially dishonest activities in relation to two freight forwarding contracts in 2012.

Reports from Scotland said when this was brought to the attention of the companys board, it began an internal investigation which revealed breaches of the Bribery Act.

Its reaction and cooperation with the Crown Office meant the case was referred to the Civil Recovery Unit, where it was dealt with on a civil rather than criminal basis. The settlement was based on the gross profit in relation to the contracts.

Alasdair Davidson, the companys group financial director, said: The activities uncovered in this case were the unauthorised actions of a small number of individuals who are no longer employed by the company.

The payment of this fine now draws a line under the civil caseAs we have demonstrated from our own investigations and in self-reporting these activities to the Crown Prosecution Service, we have a zero tolerance policy towards breach of anti-bribery legislation and any other company laws across the entire Braid Group.

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Bollywoods Amitabh Bachchan and martial arts movie star Jackie Chan are among celebrities who feature Monday in a massive leak of documents, some of which reveal hidden offshore assets.

Bollywood legend Bachchan, simply known as the Big B in India, was appointed director of at least four shipping companies registered in offshore tax havens and set up 23 years ago.

The authorised capital of these companies ranged from just $5,000 to $50,000 but they traded in ships worth millions of dollars, according to the Indian Express newspaper.

40 years of financial records, 11 main allegations

The Express is among more than 100 media groups which have investigated a massive leak of 11.5 million documents from Mossack Fonseca, a Panama-based law firm with offices in 35 countries.

Bachchan, who has long since resigned from the companies and has not commented on the documents, is not the only member of his famous family named in the leaks.

His daughter-in-law, actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, was also director and shareholder of an offshore company, along with members of her family, before it was thought to have been wound up in 2008, according to the newspaper.

The media adviser of the former Miss World winner has rejected the documents as totally untrue and false.

Indians in Panama leaks: Govt warns of action against tax adventurism

As with many of Fonsecas clients, there is no evidence that the Bollywood A-listers used their companies for improper purposes and having an offshore entity is not illegal.

But the documents, naming more than 500 Indians including real estate tycoons in Fonsecas list of offshore companies, foundations and trusts, come at a sensitive time in India.

Prime Minister Narendra Modis government has vowed to crack down on the menace of so-called black money -- vast sums stashed abroad to keep them secret from Indian tax authorities.

Indian agencies to wait and watch

Hong Kong film star Jackie Chan has also been revealed to have at least six companies represented by Fonsecas firm, though he too may have used the companies legitimately for business purposes rather than for tax avoidance.

Bachchan and Chan did not respond to the news reports until this article was published.

The stash of records was obtained from an anonymous source by German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and shared with media worldwide. The documents, from around 214,000 offshore entities, cover almost 40 years.
A senior al Qaeda official was killed in air strikes on Sunday night that killed at least 21 other militants in Idlib province, monitoring groups said.

The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadi websites, said Abu Firas al Souri died in US strikes. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the jets were thought to belong to the Syrian or Russian air forces.

It said they targeted the headquarters of Jund al Aqsa, an extremist group that fights alongside al Qaedas Syrian affiliate, the Nusra Front.

Abu Firas al-Souri was the former official spokesperson for the Nusra Front, the group reported on social media on Monday.

A 2014 biographical video about al Souri, obtained by SITE, says he used to represent Osama bin Laden in Pakistan after he met the al Qaeda founder in Afghanistan during the jihad against the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

Al Souri, born outside Damascus in 1949, followed the path of many Syrian jihadists. A graduate of the countrys military college, he trained jihadist cells in the country between 1977 and 1980, heading several operations against authorities for the latter part of that period. He was expelled from the Syrian military in part because of his Islamist ties in 1979.

He fled to Jordan in 1980 then to Afghanistan in 1981, where he trained jihadists coming to the war-torn country from across Asia and the Arab world. He became an associate of bin Laden and Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a senior al-Qaeda commander who led the organisations affiliate in Iraq following the 2003 US invasion.

Al Souri participated in a number of major military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan before transferring to Yemen in 2003. In 2013, the al Qaeda leadership transferred him to Syria to mend the growing rift between the group and the Islamic State.

A media outlet belonging to the Lebanese militia Hezbollah said al Souris son was also killed in the air strikes.

Hezbollah has sent thousands of its fighters to fight alongside Syrian government forces in the countrys five-year civil war. The group was reported to have lost a dozen soldiers in fierce fighting in northern Syria last weekend as jihadist groups alongside rebel militias mounted an offensive against several government positions.
There may be a new cause for Greenland ice sheet melt. After studying two exceptional melt episodes in 2012, scientists have found a bit more about this ice sheet.

In this latest study, the researchers looked at the causes of ice sheet melt during the two melt episodes in 2012. These occurred from July 8 to 11 and from July 27 to 28. At that time, unusually warm and moist air impacted the ice sheet.

So how did they figure out what caused the melting other than the warm air? The researchers used PROMICE automatic weather station data and ranked the energy sources that contributed to surface melt during these time periods. More specifically, they looked at 12 sites around the ice sheet periphery.

So what did they find? Usually, ice melt is dominated by the radiant energy associated with sunlight. In this case, though, the researchers found that the energy associated with air temperature and moisture was the major driver of the exceptional melt episodes.

"Glaciological instrumentation capable of automatically recording the daily rate of melting in exceptional melt circumstances, where the ice surface lowers by close to 10 m in a few months, has only emerged in the last decade or so, thanks to PROMICE," said William Colgan of the Lassonde School of Engineering at York University. "The detail of PROMICE observations is permitting new insights on brief, but consequential, exceptional melt events."

The new findings have implications for how scientists project future ice sheet melt with the help of climate models. While the models used today can accurately simulate ice sheet melt due to radiant energy, they're ill-equipped to estimate the melt due to non-radiant energy processes. More specifically, the models underestimate these particular factors.

"Exceptional melt episodes dominated by non-radiant energy are expected to occur more frequently in the future due to climate change," said Robert Fausto of the Geological Survey of Denmark. "This makes it critical to better understand the influence of these episodes on ice sheet health."

The new findings help researchers take a step toward that goal. With that said, scientists still need to factor this into current models.

The findings are published in the March 2016 journal Geophysical Research Letters.

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Tesla Motors' unveiling of the Model 3 sedan was an immense success on Thursday night. With an attractive starting price of $35,000 and features that would not look out of place in its larger, more expensive siblings, the compact sedan generated so much interest, Tesla ended up underestimating the demand for the vehicle.

Despite the vehicle's production date almost 18 months from now, an immense amount of customers nonetheless opted to pre-order the vehicle. In fact, within the first 36 hours since the EV was introduced, the carmaker received 253,000 orders for the upcoming car.

With the car expected to average around $42,000 per unit including the price of options and additional features, the overall number of pre-orders would reach a staggering estimated retail value of about $10.6 billion.

In a lot of ways, the massive public interest and support for Tesla's newest vehicle were far beyond the expected numbers of the company. According to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the company expected just about 25 to 50 percent of the number of pre-orders prior to the event.

@34thrain Maybe 1/4 to 1/2 of what happened. No one at Tesla thought it would be this high before part 2 of the unveil.  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) Abril 2, 2016



In fact, Musk was so surprised at the impressive support from the public that he also announced special gifts for those who waited in line to pre-order the car even before it was unveiled.

Token of appreciation for those who lined up coming via mail. Thought maybe 20-30 people per store would line up, not 800. Gifts on order.  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) Abril 2, 2016

Indeed, it does seem like Tesla is on a roll without even being fully aware of how much momentum the company actually has. Of course, with such demand also comes greater pressure for the carmaker to deliver the vehicles on time.

With the expected delivery date of the car set for late 2017, Musk has about 20 months to ensure that the company's current facilities can handle the mass production of the Model 3. The creation of the company's giga-factory in Nevada, which is set to manufacture the batteries for the Model 3, is set to become a vital part of Tesla's strategy.

Apart from the giga-factory, Tesla has also undertaken an expansion of its Fremont, Calif., plant, which is expected to manufacture up to 500,000 vehicles per year by 2020.

The reception of the Model 3, together with the mass pre-orders that were registered even before the car was unveiled, seemed to have impressed investors. On Friday, the company's stock soared 3.4 percent, closing at $237.59.

The Model 3 sedan is Tesla's vehicle for the masses, capable of seating five adults and going 215 miles minimum on a single charge. Performance-wise, the car is quite impressive as well, being able to go from zero to 60 mph in less than six seconds.

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Seafood is quite the delicacy in some parts of the U.S., and some love it so much that they're willing to fight and get arrested in order to secure a piece. This is exactly what played out on Saturday after a Connecticut couple got arrested after getting into a fight with another customer over some crab legs, according to police.

The couple, 45-year-old Clifford Knight and 38-year-old Latoya Knight, were arrested Saturday for starting the brawl. Police charged Clifford with third-degree assault and disorderly conduct, while Latoya was charged with disorderly conduct and threatening.

The incident played out at Royal Buffet in Manchester, Conn., after the Knight pair got selfish about their shellfish, according to police who responded to the scene. The couple had gotten into an argument with a 21-year-old male at the scene, but the situation quickly devolved and turned into a physical confrontation when the male was punched in the face and lost a tooth.

The victim's mother became involved in the incident and used pepper spray on her son's assailants. However, since police determined that her actions were in self-defense, she won't be facing any charges.

Clifford and Latoya weren't so lucky, however, and taken away from the scene by responding police.

The incident left the restaurant in a bit of disarray afterward. The building had to be closed momentarily while the Manchester Fire Department vented out the area, and then health officials later had to assess the building's air quality. Things went smoothly for the most part, though, and Royal Buffet reopened for business at the usual time the following day.

This isn't the first time someone turned unreasonably violent over some food. In September, a 24-year-old male was charged with elder abuse after he punched a 78-year-old man over some Nutella samples at a California Costco. Apparently, the elderly man had been in line to get a sample when the attacker cut in line and took all of what remained. The victim had complained about all the samples being taken, and the attacker responded by punching him in the face.

Clifford and Latoya were released on $5,000 and $2,500 non-surety bonds, respectively. It's unclear if either have attorneys, but both are expected to appear in court on April 14.

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The origin of our ABCs may have cultural roots dating back thousands of years. New research from the University of Cambridge is set to shed light on the social context of ancient shared writing systems.

The project, called Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS), explores how writing developed during the second and first millennia BCE in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. The history of writing is believed to have surprising links to our modern day written culture.

"Alphabetical order," for example, was not invented by school teachers looking for an easy way to memorize their classroom seating chart. Used to organize everything from dictionaries to telephone books, alphabetical order first appeared more than 3,000 years ago in the ancient city of Ugaritic, written in a cuneiform script made of wedge-shaped signs impressed on clay tablets.

Evidence of the Ugaritic alphabet has been unearthed from Ras Shamra in modern Syria. Known as "abecedarian," surviving tablets depict letters of the alphabet arranged in order, perhaps representing teaching or training materials for new scribes.

However, the alphabetical order did not end with the destruction of Ugarit in 1200 BCE. The Phoenicians, living in what is now modern Syria and Lebanon, arranged their alphabet in the same way - but instead of cuneiform wedge shapes, the Phoenicians used linear letters.

What's more is that these linear letters - Alep, Bet, Gimel and Dalet - are remarkably similar to the A, B, C and D used in the English language today.

"The links from the ancient past to our alphabet today are no coincidence. The Greeks borrowed the Phoenician writing system and they still kept the same order of signs: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta," explained Philippa Steele, lead author from the University of Cambridge's Faculty of Classics. "They transported the alphabet to Italy, where it was passed on to the Etruscans, and also to the Romans, who still kept the same order: A, B, C, D, which is why our modern alphabet is the way it is today."

How such a seemingly simple idea has remained surprisingly stable and powerful over the course of thousands of years of cultural change and movement has remained somewhat of a historical mystery.

"The answer cannot be purely linguistic," Steele added. "There must have been considerable social importance attached to the idea of the alphabet having a particular order. It matters who was doing the writing and what they were using writing for."

Researchers also plan to explore the social and political context of writing, and drivers of language change, literacy and communication. Current theories suggest that the high level of interconnectedness facilitated the spread of ideas among Mediterranean and Near East cultures, as people moved around, traded and interacted with one another.

"Globalization is not a purely modern phenomenon," Steele said. "We might have better technology to pursue it now, but essentially we are engaging in the same activities as our ancestors."

Previously, Steele specialized in the languages of ancient Cyprus, which was largely influenced by Greek colonization in the 12th century BCE.

"Cyprus lies right in the middle of an area where ancient people were moving about by land and sea and swapping technologies and ideas," she explained. "That was one of the inspirations of the CREWS project. By studying how and what ancient people were writing, we will be able to gain more insight into their interactions with each other in ways that have never been fully understood before."

Research for the CREWS project is expected to run from April through 2021.

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A nursing aide is facing criminal charges after she was found to be stealing pain medication from a 96-year-old resident who has been living at the Brookdale Eddy Pond East Senior Living Facility in Auburn, Mass.

The aide, 46-year-old Amanda Peloquin of Oxford, was arrested on Friday for stealing the medication. She was charged with two counts of larceny of drugs and larceny from a building.

Friday's arrest came as the result of an investigation which was launched last month after the patient's son reported that his mother's pain medicine had gone missing and was replaced with aspirin. Police followed up on that report, and after an investigation, they issued a warrant for Peloquin's arrest.

Speaking to the media, Auburn Police Detective Sgt. R. Scott Mills noted that Peloquin had been working at the elderly home for more than six years and may have very wll been stealing the medication since early 2014. He went on to note that this case is just a highlight of America's growing opioid abuse problem.

"This case highlights the pervasiveness of the continuing opioid abuse problem currently facing our society," Mills said, "and the importance of remaining constantly watchful and involved over the care of our elder family members."

His statement made no mention of what Peloquin could have been doing with the stolen medication. If she hadn't been using it herself, then it's more than likely she had been selling them for a profit.

Brookdale Senior Living also issued a statement following the arrest, saying: "The safety and well-being of our residents are our highest priorities and we do not tolerate any improper conduct by our associates. We have been working closely with the local authorities and the appropriate state agencies on an investigation of possible medication theft. We are disappointed to learn it appears that an associate at our community may have been involved in the theft. Appropriate corrective action has been taken. We will continue to assist the authorities in this matter until the investigation is concluded."

Opioid abuse has been a growing problem in the U.S. as of late, so much so that the Obama administration asked for $1.1 billion in funding to deal with the matter before it gets worse. This isn't the first time Massachusets has made headlines due to the opioid epidemic either. Two weeks ago, one man admitted himself to a Salem hospital complaining of food poisoning. However, medical staff determined that his symptoms were consistent with opioid intoxication and gave him medication which he responded well to. He soon admitted that he had ingested several bags of heroin, and the resulting operation revealed that he had 27 bags of the opioid in his system, prompting police to slap him with drug trafficking charges.

In the meantime, it isn't clear if Peloquin has a lawyer, but she will be arraigned on Wednesday, April 6.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A cold case team from the U.S. National Archives discovered the missing patent file for the Wright brothers' "flying machine," which has been missing since 1980. However, record keepers of its Washington, D.C., vault only realized it was missing in 2000, afterwards determining that it had been misplaced as far back as 1980. After ramping up its efforts to find the missing paperwork, the team came across the patent in a limestone cave.

The patent file was discovered by Bob Beebe, a volunteer archivist that found it hidden within a 15-foot-high stack of documents located in a special records storage cave in Kansas. After being ready to resign to failure, Beebe looked in one more box and found it - patent No. 821,393.

The file was known to be stored in the National Archives building at one point in time and was then transferred to a federal records center in 1969. In 1979, some parts of the file were lent to the Smithsonian for an exhibit and then returned back to the federal records center.

"We had a pull slip from our files saying that the document was returned to the National Archives in 1980," said archivist Chris Abraham. "But... that's where the trail goes cold."

Abraham believed that the Wrights' patents were in the Lenexa cave, where he asked Beebe to search in an attempt to locate the missing "flying machine" file.

The paper contains the names of Orville and Wilbur Wright, along with the words "flying machine" to describe the world's first successful plane.

The Wright brothers made history with their first controlled, powered human flight back on Dec. 17, 1903. The patent was filed approximately nine months before the device's first flight and was granted in 1906.

"Be it known that we Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright, both citizens of the United States, residing in the city of Dayton and state of Ohio, have jointly invented a new and useful machine for navigating the air," it reads.

Although the successful flight of the airplane lasted just 12 seconds and covered 37 meters, it was considered a huge step forward for the human race.

"If somebody puts something back in the wrong place, it's essentially lost," said William J. Bosanko, the National Archives' boss. "In this case, we didn't know. We had to ask ourselves: 'Is it something that could have been stolen?'"

The rediscovered Wright brothers "flying machine" patent file will be put on display at the National Archives Museum later this month. Among the items still missing from the archives are Eli Whitney's cotton gin patent and letters written by Abraham Lincoln.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The Cornell Hospitality Thought Leadership Series, established in 2016, is a platform for industry executives and academics to engage in discussion and share expertise on the most important topics facing hospitality and travel today. The Cornell School of Hotel Administration (SHA) will host two panels annually in cities across the nation, addressing a different trending issue at each event. The panels will be moderated by an SHA faculty expert, and include respected leaders in the hospitality and travel industries.

For more information please contact Jennifer Mayo

607.255.3101
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DoubleTree by Hilton Boston-Rockland Opens

DoubleTree by Hilton has broadened its presence in New England with the opening of DoubleTree by Hilton Boston-Rockland in the popular South Shore area of Massachusetts. The new, 127-room property opened following a multi-million dollar renovation, and is located in the busy suburban region between bustling Boston and historic Plymouth. Formerly a Holiday Inn, the hotel is owned and managed by Linchris Hotel Corporation.

Nestled in the peaceful community of Rockland just 21 miles south of Boston Logan International Airport near Interstate 93, DoubleTree by Hilton Boston-Rockland offers convenient access to many greater Boston destinations. Surrounded by trees and just minutes from picturesque Nantasket Beach, as well as a number of universities and company headquarters, the hotel provides an idyllic getaway for vacation and business travelers alike. Extensive renovations to the five-story hotel have transformed the lobby and fully-updated guest rooms with a sleek, modern design complemented by all-new furnishings.

The South Shore is a hub of leisure and business activity, making it a great location for this new addition to our DoubleTree by Hilton portfolio of hotels, said Dianna Vaughan, senior vice president and global head, DoubleTree by Hilton. We are excited to bring our culture of care to life at the beautifully-renovated DoubleTree by Hilton Boston-Rockland, and to deliver experiences that will truly allow our guests to relax and unwind during their stay with us.

Each stay at DoubleTree by Hilton Boston-Rockland begins with a warm DoubleTree chocolate chip cookie greeting, which signifies the brands industry-recognized service culture built around the idea of CARE, which stands for Create a Rewarding Experience for guests, Team Members and the community.

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The hotels spacious guest rooms feature the DoubleTree Sweet Dreams Sleep Experience with either a king-sized bed or two queen beds, plus such amenities as a 47-inch HDTV, coffeemaker and safe. Complimentary Wi-Fi is provided in each guest room and suite, as well as in public areas.

Guests can enjoy a number of dining options including 24-hour room service or can sit down for a relaxing meal at Conrads Bar & Grill, which features American cuisine for breakfast, and dinner. The adjoining bar offers cocktails and light fare until midnight.

Additionally, the hotel provides a 24-hour fitness center featuring new Precor equipment and a 24-hour business center. Guests at DoubleTree by Hilton Boston-Rockland will also find the only outdoor heated pool in Rockland, as well as complimentary parking that surrounds the building.

DoubleTree by Hilton Boston-Rockland boasts nearly 4,000 square feet of meeting space, and its Regency Grand Ballroom  featuring vaulted ceilings with large chandeliers, and a calming blue and neutral tone color palette  is ideal for weddings, conferences and other events accommodating up to 225 guests. For smaller groups, the hotel offers the Meetings Simplified by DoubleTree by Hilton package for $55 per person, which includes a meeting room; basic meeting Wi-Fi; meeting room supplies including a flipchart, markers, extension and power cord; and all day non-alcoholic beverage service. Catering services and a dedicated events staff are available to enhance any event.

In addition to the iconic warm chocolate chip cookie welcome, the hotel provides guests with a full complement of services and DoubleTree by Hilton brand amenities, including the Wake Up DoubleTree Breakfast, an assortment of gourmet in-room tea and coffee offerings by The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, and a refreshing array of the Aroma Actives Essentials natural skin and body care line.

Our newly refurbished hotel and highly-trained staff offer a winning combination for guests sampling the many business, cultural and leisure pursuits along the South Shore, said Jenna Bergamino, general manager, DoubleTree by Hilton Boston-Rockland. We are delighted to provide the exemplary service that is engrained in the world-renowned DoubleTree by Hilton culture.

DoubleTree by Hilton Boston-Rockland participates in the Hilton HHonors loyalty program, which is open to all guests and free to join; visit here for enrollment information. HHonors members always get our lowest price with our Best Price Guarantee, along with HHonors Points, free standard Wi-Fi, access to digital check-in and Digital Key, and no hidden fees, only when they book directly through Hilton. To mark the hotel's opening, Hilton HHonors members will earn double bonus points from April 1, 2016 through September 30, 2016 when booking the best available rate. Based on availability, Gold and Diamond members will also enjoy free premium Wi-Fi and upgrades to the hotel's exclusive Hilton HHonors floor and complimentary Wake Up DoubleTree Breakfast.

DoubleTree by Hilton Boston-Rockland is located at 929 Hingham Street, Rockland, Massachusetts 02370.
DHISCO Inc., the worlds leading hospitality distribution company, today announced that Kuwaiti travel wholesaler Easy Travel System has selected DHISCO to connect its partners with real-time rates and bookings at hotels around the world.

Easy Travel System, owned by Albanian Airways Holidays and part of Al AbdulJalil Travel Group, offers a platform that enables travel agents and tour operators to book significantly discounted rates at more than 95,000 hotels in 190 countries.

DHISCO will ensure that Easy Travel System's customers have access to the most competitive rates.

We chose DHISCO because of its ability to offer our customers direct connections with hotel chains around the world, said Ali Shabbir, operations and contracting manager for Easy Travel System. DHISCO's technology allows us to stay ahead of our competitors by offering the most up-to-date information on pricing and availability.

DHISCO CEO Toni Portmann said the company is pleased to be working with one of the leading travel companies in the Middle East.

Our exclusive, advanced technology is the perfect solution for Easy Travel System, Portmann said. Through DHISCO, Easy Travel System can now guarantee its customers access to truly reliabe, current rates with one simple connection.

About DHISCO Inc.

DHISCO Inc. is the worlds original and leading hospitality distribution company, providing the most reliable and advanced technology to connect hotels around the world with online travel agencies, global distribution systems, metasearch engines and other travel partners. Since 1989, DHISCO has built its reputation on providing the most efficient and affordable means to market, capture and book hotel reservations. Today, it moves more than 9 billion transactions a month for more than 100,000 hotels in over 200 countries.

About Easy Travel System

Easy Travel System, owned by Albanian Airways Holiday, is a fully interactive, leading-edge, online hotel wholesaler that offers travel agencies instant confirmation of discounted hotel rates at independent, boutique and branded hotels, from budget to luxury, around the world.

CONTACT

Jeri Clausing

Vice President

RDR PR LLC

Jeri@rdrpr.com

505-221-3108
The Marquee will be getting punk & disorderly on June 7

Dropkick Murphys and the band who were a pivotal influence on them, Stiff Little Fingers, join forces on June 7 for a night of unbridled mayhem in Cork. Tickets are 40.

The Live At The Marquee date is an Irish exclusive, so a road trip may be in order.

Spearheaders of the 70s Belfast punk scene, SLF proved that theres still plenty of gas in the tank with 2014s No Going Back album while the Dropkicks have become bona fide American chart superstars courtesy of their last Signed And Sealed In Blood collection.

Their finest 2mins 33secs, though, was undoubtedly their reading of Woody Guthries Im Shipping Up To Boston, which was part of the 2006 OST for The Departed.
Mike Rutherford's gang are heading for the Olympia

Genesis founder member Mike Rutherford brings a reconfigured version of The Mechanics to the Dublin Olympia on February 12, 2017, which gives you plenty of time to arrange a babysitter. Tickets priced 40.05 go on sale on Friday April 8.

His new recruits include Andrew Roachford of Cuddly Toy and Family Man fame and Tim Howar whose Vantramp outfit have toured with the likes of Rod Stewart and Paulo Nutini.

Expect to hear The Living Years, Over My Shoulder, Another Cup Of Coffee and the rest of Mike + The Mechanics arsenal of hits.
The Nottingham duo are over in October

Those grittiest of social commentators Sleaford Mods have confirmed October visits to Vicar St., Dublin (20) and Mandela Hall, Belfast (21). Tickets go on sale on Friday April 8.

Newly signed to Rough Trade, Messrs. Williamson and Fearn infiltrated the UK top last year with Key Markets, a record that confirmed them as the spiritual heirs to Johnny Cooper Clarke with an extra soupcon of Mark E. Smith.

Its angry, in yer face and lots of fun live.
As World War II drew to a close in Europe, newlyweds George and Eva Ivany fled their native Hungary before a rapidly-advancing Soviet army. In 1947, their son, Robert, was born in a hospital outside of a displaced persons camp in Austria. Little did they know that he would have a distinguished military and academic career in America. Robert Ivany grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and later graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He spent more than 30 years in the Army and retired as a 2-star major general. Along the way, he was wounded in Vietnam and served as President Ronald Reagan's military aide. For the past 12 years Robert Ivany, who has a doctorate in history from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, has served as president of Houston's University of St. Thomas. He recently spoke with staff writer Mike Glenn about his parents' harrowing escape and his own life as an immigrant, but he stayed away from the current controversies surrounding immigrants from Syria and Mexico. As a note, about 25 years ago then-Col. Ivany was Glenn's commanding officer. The following are edited excerpts from the interview:

Q: You have suggested that there is a need for a rational immigration system, but what is your view of the current situation?

A: It's a cliche, but it's true - America was built by immigrants. Immigrants are our life blood. They bring us their talents, their hopes and their dreams and we have to treat them as human beings. We have a two-fold responsibility: to protect our borders, because every nation has that obligation. At the same time, we have to have a rational and fair immigration policy so that individuals can look to America and say, 'Yes, if I do A, B and C, I can come to America.' We're a strong, smart nation. There's got to be a way to figure that out.

Q: Where did your parents come from in Hungary?

A: My father was from a small town called Gyor. My mother actually grew up in Budapest.

Q: As the war ended, what was their plan once they fled from the Russians?

A: The goal was to get where they would run into American soldiers. Then you would have a good chance to be in the American zone of occupation. They ran into this American unit in Gmunden outside Salzburg and there they stopped.

Q: What was the unit?

A: The 3rd Cavalry, and 45 years later, I took command of the same regiment. They were the vanguard of Patton's 3rd Army. (The coincidence) was pretty amazing.

Q: Do you remember much about the camp in Austria where you lived?

A: Very little. I was only 2 years old. But there were refugees everywhere, and not just Hungarians.

Q: Your father, who was later an engineer and inventor, worked for the American soldiers while you were living in the camp. How did he support the family?

A: He was working there as a KP (kitchen police) - washing pots and pans. The good thing about KP was, at the end of the day if there was food left over he (the mess sergeant) would give it to them. The mess sergeant once took out these two chickens from the freezer and gave them to the company mascot, which was a big ugly dog. The Hungarians who were doing the KP were horrified. Who ever thought about giving a chicken to a dog? Even before the war, a chicken was a big deal.

Q: What was your father's reaction?

A: He said, 'You know, any country that can afford to give chickens to a dog must be a good place to raise a family - let's go to America.'

Q: How did your family get to the U.S.?

A: My father found a relative - an aunt - who had immigrated to the United States. She lived in Cleveland with her husband and they agreed to sponsor my parents and me. We took a troop ship. I got the measles, so my mother and I had to be quarantined. The whole time, the ship was rocking and we were sick. It wasn't much of a cruise.

Q: What did your parents think about their new country?

A: Very grateful. We didn't speak any English and we didn't have any money, but America took us in. We spoke Hungarian at home. They taught me to respect my heritage, and I'm glad they did.

Q: What made you decide to apply to West Point?

A: There was that basic gratitude - we're here because America accepted us. We should give back and we should be good citizens. I felt like I wanted to serve. West Point appealed to me. I thought it was a noble calling.

Q: You visited Hungary after the Soviet Union collapsed. What was that like?

A: I got an unusual set of orders from the Joint Chiefs of Staff saying to report to Hungary in four months to "help them democratize their Army." I reported (there) by myself and spent about four weeks basically looking at everything they wanted me to look at. I went to their military academies and I visited field units. I was constantly asked, 'How would you do this in the Western model?' It was a fantastic opportunity. It had been under communism for 45 years and now it was trying to emerge as a Western armed force.

Q: Did you find any family members?

A: Yes. I still had some relatives who had not left. How different my life would have been if my parents had not fled or decided to go back to Hungary after they were in Austria. Luckily, they made the decision to come to America.
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A drug cartel lawyer-turned-informant was assassinated in North Texas in May 2013. But a theory put forth by attorneys for one suspect claim the victim was actually the de facto head of one of Mexicos most notorious drug cartels, according to the Dallas Morning News.



Juan Jesus Guerrero Chapa served as an attorney for Osiel Cardenas Guillen, the ex-head of the Gulf Cartel. Guerrero Chapa, 43, had been shopping with his wife when he was shot multiple times at close range by a masked gunman in Southlake. His wife was not harmed. The murder was the first to occur in the affluent Fort Worth suburb since 1999.



GULF CARTEL: Mexico senator received $500K payment from Gulf Cartel, informant says

Defense attorneys for Jesus Gerardo Ledezma-Cepeda say that Guerrero Chapa had not left his old ways behind. A court filing Sunday accuses the victim of running the cartel after his bosss arrest in 2003.
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KANTOLA TRAINING POSTS CALIFORNIA NEW HARASSMENT REGULATIONS ALERT

Posted by Press Releases on Monday, 04-04-2016 8:11 am

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Mill Valley, CA  Effective April 1, 2016, new regulations issued by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) apply to employers subject to the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA). To aid California-based employers, and entities that have a legal footprint in California, Kantola Training Solutions has posted What You Need to Know About Californias New DFEH Regulations, as well some of the required resources. While these new regulations do not alter existing law, they were created to clarify already existing obligations of employers to take reasonable steps to prevent and promptly correct harassment or discrimination in the workplace, said Kantolas CEO Allen Noren. To help accelerate California entities in complying, we have made resources available, such as a downloadable brochure-equivalent they can distribute to managers, supervisors, and employees. Kantola has also posted 2016 DFEH C...

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Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-04-04 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/> CONTENTS [01] Head of Greek intelligence service says agency operates in line with Greek law [02] Athens Science Festival opens its doors in Gazi's Technopolis Centre on Tuesday [03] Refugees at Idomeni showing greater interest in relocation programmes, UNHCR staff report [01] Head of Greek intelligence service says agency operates in line with Greek law The mission of the Greek intelligence service is to protect national security and sovereignty and always operates in line with the country's laws, the head of the service, Yiannis Roubatis, said on Monday, responding to allegations in the media that the secret service was involved in the wiretapping of a conversation between senior IMF officials, leaked by Wikileaks on Saturday. "The mission of the National Intelligence Service is to protect national security and national sovereignty," Roubatis said in a press release. "NIS operates in line with Greek laws which always require an order by the prosecutor to tackle criminal activity or other threats," it added. [02] Athens Science Festival opens its doors in Gazi's Technopolis Centre on Tuesday The Athens Science Festival (ASF) that will take place at the City of Athens Technopolis Centre in Gazi on April 5-10 opens its doors to the public on Tuesday afternoon, for the third consecutive year. The five-day festival will feature talks, contests, performances, science theatre, exhibitions and documentaries, as well as giving visitors an opportunity to take part in workshops, labs, educational activities and educational games. Among the topics to be explored in the 2016 ASF are life and matter, the making of 'smart' machines, the human brain, fighting disease, new materials with 'magical' properties, climate change and many others. Svante Paabo, Director of Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany will give the opening talk on Tuesday evening on the topic "Your Internal Neanderthal", followed by the MIT's Michalis Bletsas speaking about "Internet Connectivity." Visitors will also have the opportunity to meet 'Troopy' - a humanoid robot built by high school student Dimitris Hatzis from Kavala in northern Greece - and a chance to learn more about 3D printing and its uses, such as for building a robot arm. Entrance to the ASF is free of charge but talks by some of the speakers may need tickets. The full programme is available at the website http://www.athens-science-festival.gr. The ASF is organised by the educational organisation SciCo, the British Council, the Onassis Foundation Scholars Association, the General Secretariat for Research and Technology and the Technopolis Centre, while it is supported by Operational Programme Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship & Innovation  EPAnEK and the EU's 2014-2020 National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF) and a host of research and academic institutions. [03] Refugees at Idomeni showing greater interest in relocation programmes, UNHCR staff report UNHCR staff at the refugee camp in Idomeni, near the border crossing between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), on Monday reported that the refugees were showing a greater interest in the EU relocation programmes than they had in previous days. According to UNHCR representative Liene Veide, this was because they were better informed and "have started to understand how things are." "I would say that before there was a sense that the borders will open and they did not show a great interest in obtaining information. Now that it is becoming clear that this prospect does not exist and that the borders will not open, they are starting to consider 'Plan B'," she added. In addition to those interested in the relocation programme, there were those considering applying for asylum in Greece and those seeking to be reunited with their families. In all three cases, she added, the refugees had to understand that things would not happen overnight. This was hard for them to accept, Veide noted, since they had already been in Greece for a long time and that made the UNHCR's role in explaining the situation even harder. Commenting on a break-in at the UNHCR storage facility in Idomeni, containing dry food and other items, Veide said that the police had been informed and that the UNHCR had asked for increased security. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article
Born in a remote village in China to parents who never got the chance to learn to read, Meihua Huang walked an hour to school every day. The most she could hope for was to become a farmer.

Everything changed on May 12, 2008. When Huang was 11-years-old, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake hit her home province of Sichuan in southwest China.

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Her school collapsed, trapping her for hours. After rescuers finally pulled her out, Huang's legs had to be amputated above the knee.

Meihua Huang hopes to study at the University of British Columbia this fall. (Photo: Supplied)

More than 87,000 people died or went missing in the devastating quake, and another 4.8 million lost their homes, according to BBC News.

The doctors who treated Huang after the earthquake changed her life.

Because of the nurses and doctors, I am who I am now, Huang, now 19, said in an interview with The Huffington Post Canada. They treated me equally and with honour so I felt 'OK, I am normal.'"

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Inspired by them, she now wants to study at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver to become a doctor.

She hopes to crowdfund the costly tuition, since her familys income in China amounts to about C$300 a month.

A worker gathers debris from a collapsed building in June 2008 at Juyuan Middle School where about 280 children died in the Sichuan earthquake. (Photo: David Gray/Reuters)

Huangs parents lost their home in the earthquake.

They are pretty tough and pretty brave, said Annie Zhang, who became Huang's godmother after meeting her in the hospital. Zhang was working for the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai when she became close with the girl.

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It was her idea for Huang set her sights on applying to school in Canada and the U.S.

Huang called UBC her dream school because "it has the best programs" and "Canadian people are so good."

Meihua Huang in Vancouver with her flight instructor, Cristian Sepulveda, left, and the president of Imperial Canadian Flying School, right. (Photo: Supplied)

Attending expensive post-secondary schooling in North America may be a pipe dream for a rural girl from China. But Huang has already beaten many odds. She was voted class president in high school and graduated among the top students.

She created anti-bullying initiatives, worked with rural students as a volunteer English teacher, and even gave a speech with Canadian activist Craig Kielburger at a WE Day event in Beijing.

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Oh, and she's learned to co-pilot a plane. Just another impressive goal checked off her list.

Meihua Huang learned to fly at a school outside of Vancouver this spring. (Photo: Supplied)

The Imperial Canadian Flying School in Pitt Meadows, B.C. helped Huang with her dream. It was the first time she'd ever left China.

After three weeks of lessons in March, Huang got to fly a seaplane (guided by an instructor).

Now, Huang is firmly set on some other goals: to be fully independent and to become a physician.

Looking for independence

In China, she must rely on others because there is little infrastructure for people in wheelchairs, Huang said. But arrangements in Canada are geared much more towards independent living.

UBC has already accepted Huang, and now the cost of tuition is the major obstruction to embarking on her medical studies.

It may seem daunting, but challenges dont seem to faze Huang.

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One night, three award shows and a whole lot of incredible fashion. That's what went down in the world of style on Sunday night.

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Down in Los Angeles, the third annual iHeartRadio Awards went down with Taylor Swift dominating the night. And in Viva Las Vegas, southern charm was in full-force as country stars gathered for the 2016 Academy of Country Music Award which definitely brought the heat.

Here are the 10 standout looks from Sunday's jam-packed award show night:

The international model headed back to her hometown of Calgary where she dazzled in a Prabal Gurung silk and chiffon camisole dress with sequinned details and a zipper accent on the Junos red carpet.

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It was another red carpet win for Carrie Underwood who stunned in a sheer gold Elie Madi gown. The intricate beaded detailing on the frock was accompanied by a smoky eye, nude lip and Underwood's signature blond hair.

Zendaya brought a whole lot of sexy to the iHeartRadio music awards with her red velvet suit. The 19-year-old triple threat opted to keep her jacket open to expose a fierce leather bralette. As for her beauty game, Zendaya kept things casual and cool with a wispy fringe and bold brow.

Rocking nude from head-to-toe, Lights pulled off this daring ensemble in the chicest way possible. And the designer behind the frock? None other than her "multitalented" mother. In an Instagram post, the Timmins, Ont.-native said she and her mother modelled the dress after "Final Fantasy" and Rey from "Star Wars."

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"Thanks mommy for enabling me to walk like a super hero today," the 28-year-old wrote.

Supporting husband Keith Urban on the ACM red carpet in Las Vegas, Kidman was a vision in a sheer Alexander McQueen gown with floral and butterfly embroidery. The floor-length, long-sleeved frock included a high-neckline with starry details. The Australian beauty opted to keep her silky hair straight and her beauty game simple with soft pink lips and a lined eye.

You can never go wrong with an all-black look, and Taylor Swift proved that last night in Los Angeles at the iHeartRadio awards. Donning a body-hugging sequined Saint Laurent jumpsuit, the "Bad Blood" songstress shone for her "last award show for a while," as she said in her Album of the Year acceptance speech.

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She may be a pop star, but Katy Perry is a total country girl at heart. The 31-year-old, alongside Jeremy Scott, arrived on the red carpet wearing a metallic baby blue biker jacket and matching fringe skirt with a cotton candy pink undershirt and cowboy boots. Perry topped off the look with a fuchsia pink lip, beehive hair, and of course, fishnet stockings.

Suited up! Shawn Hook won best suit of the night for this black-and-white suede ensemble that looked on-point with his perfectly-styled hair.

Selena Gomez stunned in orange for the iHeartRadio awards in a Mugler jumpsuit with frontal cut-outs. With lightened locks, Gomez kept her makeup simple, donnning a nude lip and simple brow.

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Dolly Parton confirmed her status as country queen on Sunday night at the Academy of Country Music Awards in a rhinestone-encrusted dress with sheer, lace and beaded detailing. Like always, Parton flaunted her platinum blond locks and incredibly long eyelashes. And that shimmery pink eye shadow? The best.

For more moments from the 2016 Junos, check out the slideshow below!

2016 Junos Red Carpet See Gallery
On Monday, April 4, Saint Laurent's parent company Kering announced that Belgian fashion designer, Anthony Vaccarello, will succeed photographer and fashion designer, Hedi Slimane, as creative director of the fashion house founded by couturier Yves Saint Laurent.

Speculation first mounted that Vaccarello would take over Saint Laurent Paris after he quit Versace on Monday.

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Creative director Anthony Vaccarello and Donatella Versace appear at on the runway at the Versus show during London Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2016 on Sept. 19, 2015 in London.

The rumour mill has been working overtime since Hedi Slimane left YSL last Friday, with many fashion insiders convinced that Vaccarello would succeed him.

The 33-year-old, who has won many fans with his sexy, leggy look, first came to fame with a collection inspired by the Hungarian-Italian porn actress turned politician la Cicciolina.

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Donatella Versace seemed to hint that Vaccarello  who comes from an Italian family  was going onto greater things when she said that he was standing down as creative director of her Versus label.

A model walks the runway of the Versus show during London Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2016/17 on Sept. 19, 2015 in London.

"In the past several years, I have worked with three great young talents on Versus Versace, Christopher Kane, JW Anderson and Anthony Vaccarello," she said in a statement. "While Im sad to see him leave the Versace family, I wish Anthony Vaccarello tremendous success with his next chapter."

Vaccarello posted a photo on social networks of himself posing alongside Donatella Versace with a heart symbol as the message  a way of turning the page on this chapter of his career and thanking the designer for trusting and supporting him over the last few years.

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 @donatella_versace @versus_versace A photo posted by Anthony Vaccarello (@anthonyvaccarello) on Apr 3, 2016 at 11:03pm PDT

Scottish-born Kane's own brand has since been bought by fashion giant Kering, while Irishman Anderson now heads the Spanish luxury label Loewe.

Vaccarello's typically monochrome dresses, often with plunging necklines, have an almost wild edge to them, and have won him major fashion prizes, including the top prize at the Hyeres festival.

Although his designs may be sexy and confident, he has a reputation for shyness.

He also worked for Karl Lagerfeld at Fendi before setting up his own brand in 2009 and becoming a regular fixture of Paris fashion weeks.

With files from Madelyn Chung.

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Saint Laurent Spring/Summer 2016 See Gallery
BSIP via Getty Images Dog, Belgian Malinois Young Female Belgian Malinois Of 6 Months. Belgian Malinois 6 Months Female (Photo by BSIP/UIG via Getty Images)

A Calgary family is calling for a police dog to be euthanized after the off-duty animal escaped a yard and attacked a child.

Twelve-year-old Ali Hassan was playing in the street in front of his family's southwest Calgary home on Wednesday when a large dog charged towards him.

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It was my instinct to run away because when he came up and I got very scared so I just started running and when I looked behind me and he started sprinting towards me," Hassan told Metro News.

He made it inside, but the dog followed and bit into his thigh. Hassan's grandparents and mother tried to pull the canine off, but he wouldn't let go.

"It was my instinct to run away."

Ali's father Mustafa Hassan heard the commotion from upstairs. He rushed to the kitchen and punched the dog several times in the side until his son was finally released.

It wasn't until after the dog's handler arrival that the family realized the canine was an off-duty police dog. Ali was later taken to the Alberta Children's Hospital by paramedics.

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Hassan required stitches for the deep puncture wounds in his legs, and is now relying on crutches to get around.

Victim of #CPS K9 dog attack questioned by Police + Bylaw -12 yr old Ali Hassan now resting at home @GlobalCalgarypic.twitter.com/AiETOLFu2F  Gary Bobrovitz (@garybtvnews) April 1, 2016

"The incident broke the safety of the neighbourhood and that is what we don't like," said Mustafa told The Canadian Press.

Dog's fate depends on investigation

The dog, Marco, is being held in a kennel until the police can investigate the situation. Police are waiting for the dog to calm down after the high-stress incident before launching an investigation.

A review of the canine unit's policies is also being conducted.

Calgary police Chief Roger Chaffin said in a press conference that it's unlikely the young dog will be euthanized.

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"This is a rare occurence," Chaffin said. "All of our handlers have families and these dogs co-exist with children."

"I don't know what's behind this."

Police said the dog's name is Marco. This is a photo of Marco in the 2016 police calendar #yycpic.twitter.com/4Ol6UqxGdA  Helen Pike (@Metropike) March 31, 2016

Marco, a Belgian Malinois, had been with the police service and his handler for about a year. The dog participated in tactical work around the city, according to Chaffin.

The dog could be returned to his handler, moved to another jurisdiction, or possibly put down, depending on the investigation's results.

Police dogs are trained to take down criminals by biting. It's a possibility the dog may have considered Hassan a target once he started running.

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"Thats the only way a police dog can arrest somebody. They dont have hands to put handcuffs on them, so they use their mouths to bite, said Sgt. Jason Gunderson, president of the Canadian Police Canine Association, in an interview with The Calgary Herald.

A police dog undergoes training. (Photo: Canadian Police Canine Association)

Hassan's family says the 12-year-old is experiencing nightmares and they're considering taking legal action.

They have also asked the police service to euthanize the dog, according to CTV News.

"I need to make everybody aware that this has happened and it could happen to somebody else with much, much worse results," Mustafa told CBC News.

With files from The Canadian Press

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Who better to have present a country music award than two die-hard fans? Nah, scratch that, two guys who know nothing about country should do just fine.

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YouTube star Jus Reign and rapper Kardinal Offishall played up their, er, beginner's knowledge, to hilarious effect when they presented the award for Country Album of the Year at the 2016 Juno Awards Sunday night.

"You can tell, obviously, by looking at us that country music has been a huge part of our lives," Kardinal announced to the crowd at the Calgary Saddledome.

Kardi is a Toronto native and hip-hop staple with Jamaican roots, and his co-presenter Jus Reign's YouTube description reads: "I'm brown. I wear a turban. Old white ladies are scared of me."

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Jus Reign jumped in to back up his co-presenter: "He's right, one of my biggest influences was the legendary ..." but wound up finishing the statement with incoherent mumbles and then throwing in a "pick-up truck" reference for good measure.

"Who can deny the cultural impact of 'Straight Outta Camrost'?" Kardinal riffed.

Despite the jokes, the comedian gave country music due credit, citing the impact the genre has had worldwide before announcing Dean Brody as the Juno winner for his album "Gypsy Road."

Viewers loved the chemistry between the two presenters, and one user tweeted they should host the 2017 show:

.@KardinalO & @JusReign presented Country Album of the Year at the #JUNOS. One more reason why Canada is amazing. pic.twitter.com/zFyZhgep8J  Avish Sood (@AvishSood) April 3, 2016

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Breaking: @JusReign is going to release a country album named White Farms and Picket Fence. #whitefarms  p 1 (@sum_ballER) April 4, 2016

Junos organizers, take note!

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Most people would jump at the opportunity to attend a party with the Duke and the Duchess of Cambridge, but it seems Bollywood star Kareena Kapoor is not one of them.

On their first night in India, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are set to meet some of Bollywood's A-listers, including former Miss World winner Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and actor Shah Rukh Khan.

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Kapoor and her husband Saif Ali Khan were also invited to the event, however Khan cannot attend due to a busy work schedule.

The Hindustan Times reports while Kapoor does not have other obligations, she has declined the invite because she "does not want to go alone."

The royal tour is set to start on April 10.

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The family of former Toronto mayor Rob Ford said that when they initially offered to pay for his funeral, they were told the cost would be minimal.

But when the Ford family got the final bill from the city on Monday, the total was reportedly close to $19,000.

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The politician died last month after a long battle with cancer.

Doug Ford speaks at former Toronto mayor Rob Ford's funeral in Toronto on Wednesday. (Photo: Nathan Denette/Canadian Press)

Dan Jacobs, Rob Ford's former chief of staff, said the family has requested line-by-line accounting of how the money was spent, according to CBC News.

Jacobs tweeted a Ford family statement on the matter Monday that said the family has always fully intended to reimburse the City of Toronto, but were told this amount would be less than $1,000, "which is well under what we are now told the final tally is."

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"We still fully intend to reimburse the City, and are now simply waiting to be given a strict accounting of all the costs incurred," the statement reads.

Ford family statement re: funeral costs pic.twitter.com/tBP2f4JR5R  Dan Jacobs (@danjacobs_) April 4, 2016

But Jackie DeSouza, a spokesperson for the city, told the Toronto Star on Monday that there was no prior discussion with Ford's family about memorial costs.

Costs for overtime, security

She also told CP24 the costs included $11,539 for security, $4,441 in overtime for staff from the city clerks office and facilities management, $1,226 for refreshments, and $1,500 for an honour guard.

City Hall is normally closed on Easter Monday, and was opened specifically for Ford's public visitation March 28.

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"The citys intention was to host a dignified and professional visitation for Councillor Ford in keeping with the familys expectations as well as to absorb any associated costs within existing budgets."

Doug Ford tweeted a statement expressing "everlasting thanks" for his brother's funeral and memorial.

"Our family cannot even begin to imagine all the hard work and extra effort that went into putting together an event of this magnitude on such short notice, befitting a former Mayor of Toronto," the statement said.

"Our family has always intended to pay the full cost of the funeral and memorial, and we know it's what Rob would have wanted as well."

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A five-year-old boy named Sir from Hapeville, Georgia, might just be the next iconic fashion designer of our time, according to his mother Tangela Washington.

Since the age of two and a half, Sir has been quite particular about his clothes  right down to the fit. And by four, he began asking his family to teach him to sew. Now, at the age of five, he is designing and sewing his own creations by hand!

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Washington also told HuffPost Canada by email that her son designs clothing for other people as well.

To top it all off, it seems like Sir could have a modelling career ahead of him as well, because the kid's definitely got his angles down.

Check out some of his designs (and poses) below!

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I wish I had known the importance of branding early on  Basma Hameed, Basma Hameed Clinic

Tony Law

Basma Hameed turned tragedy into triumph. Badly burned in a kitchen accident at age two, she endured countless surgeries, only to be told by doctors that she would have to live with permanent discolouration on her face. Her refusal to accept that led her to research techniques to repair blemishes, and invent a new technique  Para-Medical Micro-Pigmentation  largely by testing it on herself. Today, the Basma Hameed Clinic is world-renowned and Hameed herself has been interviewed by CNN, CBC, and Vogue. I wish I had known the importance of branding early on, she says. When I first started out, I wanted to use catchy phrases and names...later on I understood the power of branding [and that] I had to build my own. She adds that the idea behind her brand is as simple as her story: relating to the clients she treats.
Steve Russell via Getty Images TORONTO, ON - NOVEMBER 14: Transportation minister Bob Chiarelli and Bruce McCuaig from Metrolinx announce that GO Transit will refund fares on trains that are 15 minutes late. The announcement was made at the Don Yards in Toronto. (Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

The 2015 Ontario auditor general's annual report raises concerns about the fact that the Wynne government doesn't have a long-term infrastructure plan that includes an accurate description of the current condition of the province's assets, including roads and buildings.

That is to say that there is no reliable estimate of Ontario's infrastructure deficit -- a crucial factor in making evidence-based, properly planned investment decisions, both for new capital and refurbishment of existing infrastructure.

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Contributing to government's inability to create an accurate estimate of its infrastructure deficit is the lack of consistency among municipal asset management plans that communities must produce in order to qualify for infrastructure funding.

Municipal asset management plans help communities track and categorize not just what sort of infrastructure they have, but also its precise condition, including location, age and remaining life expectancy -- all essential variables to consider when prioritizing crucial infrastructure investments.

These plans are essential for the province and municipalities to prioritize where to invest valuable dollars, ensuring they're being directed to infrastructure priorities accordingly.

However, despite their needs, fewer than 40 per cent of Ontario's municipalities have a long-term asset management plan in place according to the research undertaken in 2012 by Ontario's Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

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As Ontario plans to invest more than $120 billion on infrastructure in the coming decade, this is a problem that must be solved.

The problem is rooted in the absence of a standardized framework for assessment in the Building Together: Guide for Municipal Asset Management Plans, a provincial publication published in 2012 by the Ministry of Economic Development, Employment and Infrastructure -- then the Ontario Ministry of Infrastructure.

Current MAMPs should be modified to provide municipalities with a framework for standardized classification, assessment or measurement of assets.

For example, despite the fact that municipalities are asked to include a detailed analysis of the characteristics and conditions of the asset classes in their plans, the guidelines don't identify a measurable minimum threshold as to how to assess the current asset conditions.

They instead recommend applying standard engineering practices to categorize asset status into general ratings of "good," "fair" and "poor."

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Likewise, municipalities have to apply their own set of performance measures to evaluate the current and desired levels of performance of their asset classes. This prevents municipal plans from providing an accurate, objective assessment of current conditions and performance levels of infrastructure across municipalities.

These inconsistencies hinder the province's decision making process for prioritizing infrastructure projects and ability to track and measure their success.

As Ontario plans to invest more than $120 billion on infrastructure in the coming decade, this is a problem that must be solved. It begins with the province embarking on an overhaul of the current guidelines to incorporate a standardized framework.

Considering the complexity of such a task, it makes sense for government to work with experts of different engineering disciplines to build new guidelines that allow municipalities to conduct effective asset management planning, even with their limited staff and resources.

Only when communities clearly communicate their needs can the province make informed infrastructure investment decisions.

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This is Lawrence. He lives in a house I had believed to be abandoned.

The driveway is overgrown, the roof is caving in and the interior would lead anyone to believe this land had been deserted. I found him in the living room.

He has a hard time getting around so he spends most of his time in there. Alone. He is missing his right eye and has cataracts infecting the left. Even after noticing a stranger essentially helping themselves to his life, he was nothing but sweet and kind to me. He was even nice enough to let me take his picture which I will always treasure.

He is a beautiful soul and I plan on visiting him a lot. I'm posting this picture in hopes that it will inspire at least one person to reach out to someone they may have lost contact with or perhaps just forgot about.

These old souls are still full of life and I feel blessed to have met this one.

I'm making him some meals to take over this week. I don't think he's eating very well.. If at all. Some veggie soup and mashed potatoes will hopefully help fill him up a bit. Easy to chew but good for the soul. He overwhelmed me with how kind he was.. I can only hope to return the favour a bit.
Chris Wattie / Reuters Canada's Finance Minister Bill Morneau speaks during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada, February 22, 2016. REUTERS/Chris Wattie

The Canadian Forces will once again have to wait to receive new much-needed equipment. Whether it is new fighter aircraft, ships or vehicles, the federal budget has postponed more than $3.7 billion in military spending until 2020 -- or later.

As a matter of fact, the latest federal budget is another slap to the Canadian Forces' face. Bill Morneau, Canada's finance minister, said the Liberals are postponing defence spending to figure out defence priorities.

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"In order to make sure we have the funds available at the time when they need those funds, we've reprofiled some in the fiscal framework," he told a news conference prior to tabling the budget in the House of Commons.

I believe it could be a good occasion for Canada to start looking abroad to provide quality equipment without long delays to the Canadian Forces.

"So, when we need the money, the money will be in the fiscal framework. So, we believe that is the appropriate action to take to ensure our military has the appropriate equipment, the planes and the ships they need."

However, it is pretty clear what kind of spending Canada has to do to bolster its defence. It is not the priorities that needs to be overseen, it is the kind of ships, aircraft and vehicles that Canada will choose to replace the ageing equipment.

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The Liberals could postpone for a year and go forward with resuming defence spending. Delaying until 2020 means the Canadian Forces will have to wait another four years before getting modern equipment; a long time if Canada deploys more soldiers abroad.

Fighter aircraft replacement

First, the Liberals needs to quickly figure out what fighter aircraft will replace our ageing CF-188 Hornets.

A CF-18 Hornet escorts a CC-150 Polaris after being refueled during Operation IMPACT on February 4, 2015. Photo: Canadian Forces Combat Camera, DND

The F-35 fiasco is draining our funds and we're still contributing to the program, even if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged to step away from it during the election campaign. As a matter of fact, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said in a statement that the bidding process for the replacement of the CF-188 Hornets would be "open" thus keeping the F-35 in process.

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There are many options available on the market to replace Canada's fighter aircraft. For example, the combat-prove Dassault Rafale would be a great replacement aircraft. Dassault even announced back in 2014 that it would allow Canada to build part of the aircraft at home. That said, other options are available, but I won't go into more details.

A French Air Force Rafale B during Operation Serval in Mali, 2013. Capt. Jason Smith

"Should the Canadian industry wish to assemble or produce part of the Rafale in Canada, we are fully open to it," Dassault's vice-president Yves Robins told CBC News in Montreal.

That is a prime example of finding an alternative that would cost less and create jobs in Canada. There would be no production delays due to performance issues, as the Rafale is already in production and could quickly start after the contract is signed.

To be honest, I think the Liberals are being hypocrites when it comes to the F-35. I believe Lockheed Martin lobbyists are putting a lot of pressure on the newly elected government to keep the F-35 on track, and it's working.

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The Liberals will not publicly say it, but I believe the F-35 will be Canada's choice regardless of their promises due to the lobbying efforts.

Without external pressure, I am positive a better alternative would've been found already.

National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy

Secondly, the National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy (NSPS). When announced, the program was estimated at more than $38 billion. The plan was to design and build the warships here in Canada. Last November, the estimated costs of an offshore fisheries science vessels were up 181 per cent, a clear indication of the bad estimation.

That said, it was the Conservative that announced the NSPS and the Liberals now has the opportunity to review it. However, the Liberals are not known for their defence spending strategy.

The whole procurement strategy is so complicated that even the government has to fully review it. I have tried to closely follow the NSPS, but it is almost impossible to keep track.

It is pretty clear that the Royal Canadian Navy is desperately in need of new warships. The Halifax-class frigates have been modernized, but other programs such as the Harry DeWolf-class Offshore Patrol Ships (AOPS) and the Queenston-class Joint Support Ships (JSS) have been terribly delayed.

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HMCS Halifax en route to Haiti in January 2010 as part of Operation Hestia, MC2 Kristopher Wilson, USN

Even for the Halifax-class frigate, the Canadian Surface Combatant (CSC) ships are estimated at more than $1.73 billion per ship -- an outrageous amount considering a French FREMM frigate, one of the world's best, is worth approximately $990 million CAD. The CSC was estimated at $26 billion last year, but its cost have exploded.

Adding to that, Irving Shipbuilding has been chosen to build the CSC. The same shipyard that built Hero-class ships for the Canadian Coast Guard -- ships that have been deemed unsafe.

Do we really want to spend $26 billion to build warships that might prove to be unsafe instead of buying ships abroad?

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While the Liberals are delaying some defence spending, we can only hope the NSPS will be "fixed" and the Royal Canadian Navy will receive decent ships.

Although I don't agree with postponing much-needed defence spending, I believe it could be a good occasion for Canada to review its procurement strategy and start looking abroad to provide quality equipment without long delays to the Canadian Forces.

Buying abroad doesn't mean cutting jobs in Canada, there is always maintenance and modernization contracts that could be awarded to the Canadian defence industry.

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ASSOCIATED PRESS Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks at a briefing at the Nuclear Security Summit at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, Friday, April 1, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attended the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, a conference dedicated to preventing possible terrorist attacks using nuclear technology.

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau takes part in the opening plenary session during the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C., on Friday, April 1, 2016. (Photo: Sean Kilpatrick/CP)

More than fifty country leaders joined to discuss the growing terrorist menace -- Islamic State in particular -- and possible nuclear smuggling. Intelligence-sharing was discussed as to improve cooperation against future terrorist attacks.

Initiated by U.S. President Barrack Obama, the Nuclear Security Summit was particularly interesting this year as the latest attacks in Brussels involved spying on nuclear officials by an Islamic State collaborator.

According to CBC News, Carl Robichaud, an expert in strengthening nuclear security with the Carnegie Corporation of New York, said that: "an ISIS associate had this footage seized from a videotape showing the comings and goings of a nuclear scientist and his family. That suggests that there was an interest in nuclear and radiological material."

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Islamic State (IS) has searched for radioactive material to build "dirty bombs." As a matter of fact, iridium capsules were stolen from storage facility last February in Basra, Iraq.

Security analysts also believes Al-Qaeda and Japan's Aum Shinrikyo have been actively seeking radioactive materials for years.

Canada's effort for nuclear non-proliferation

Canada has announced its intentions to push for the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty. The Treaty would "effectively and verifiably ban the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons and other nuclear explosive devices," according to the Global Affairs Canada website.

"We must take the necessary steps to enhance our collective security so that Canadians and others around the world can feel safe and free in their communities," Trudeau said in a statement before Thursday's summit.

Canada ranks third out of twenty-four, with a note of 87%, on the Nuclear Threat Initiative's Nuclear Security Index for the security measures taken to protect nuclear materials that could be used to build "dirty bombs."

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That said, I believe Canada's focus on the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty is non-essential; at least not at this time. Trudeau has the ability to forge solid relationship on the fight--because he won't use war--against terrorism and should concentrate on that specific issue.

Canada is not in a position to try and hammer down a Treaty when it pulled its aircraft from the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State. The Summit and the coalition might be two different things, but many allies to taking part in both. Because of that, Trudeau's plan is doomed to fail as we took a big hit on credibility when we pulled our aircraft.

Our Canadian Prime Minister should've focused on listening and learning during this Summit instead of trying and push his own agenda. By doing so, Trudeau might've learned valuable experience when it comes to fight terrorism -- even if it's a delicate subject for him.

Although we stand third out of twenty-four on the Security Index, I do believe security should be enhanced, especially with the recent Brussels attacks. Ontario has many nuclear power plants and could become a potential target for future terrorist attacks.

Canada to contribute $42M

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged more than $42 million for global efforts to protect against the use of fissile materials. What amazes me is that Canada's 2016 budget postponed more than $3.7 billion in military spending.

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Out of $42M, we are allowing more than $26.5M to fund training and equipment in Mexico, Colombia, Jordan and Peru while our Canadian soldiers are desperately in need of equipment. As a veteran, I know how difficult it is to go and exchange uniforms because there is always a shortage, and this is only one example. Meanwhile, we're sending millions of dollars abroad for equipment.

How can we pledge money to fight against nuclear terrorism when the Liberals postponed part of the Canadian Forces modernization budget? Our soldiers are greatly in need of new equipment; equipment that could be one day use against nuclear terrorism.

Don't get me wrong, I am grateful Canada is fighting nuclear terrorism but every penny spent on security should be redirected to the Canadian Forces.

International community fears possible attacks

The international community has expressed fears on many occasions against possible use of nuclear weapons by terrorist organizations. That said, it remains ambiguous how the threat of nuclear terrorism is. With IS stealing iridium capsule in Iraq, the threat of nuclear terrorism is definitely there. There is a possibility we could see "dirty bombs" with radioactive materials in the next few years in the Middle East. In my opinion, Europe and the rest of the world could also be targeted within the next decade or so.

The international community also believes it is high enough to justify the Nuclear Security Summit.

I have seen many different type of "dirty bombs" or improvised explosive devices (IED) when I deployed in Kandahar, Afghanistan back in 2009.

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Some were so sophisticated that they were almost impossible to defuse and would be blown in place (BIP). Many of these IEDs were almost invisible and looked like normal trash. Adding radioactive materials and targeting high-density populated areas would be catastrophic, especially due to the fact that it is practically impossible to find them.

So the Summit is, in my opinion, a very important event that could bolster the participant countries' security and prevention against future small-scale nuclear attacks by terrorist organizations.

"A terrorist attack with an improvised nuclear device would create political, economic, social, psychological and environmental havoc," said Laura Holgate, a Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Weapons of Mass Destruction Terrorism and Threat Reduction on the National Security Council.

According to CBC News, "since 2009, countries participating in the summit have eliminated enough nuclear material for 1,500 nuclear weapons."

Russian President Vladimir Putin did not attend the summit but sent observers. Putin believes the issue should be addressed by the five international organizations working on it including the United Nations, Interpol and the Atomic Energy Agency.

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While I agree with Mr. Putin, I believe more talks on the issue are welcomed. Quite frankly, even in his absence, Russia will benefit from this Summit since their observers will bring back valuable information.

The Pakistani Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, had to cancel his presence due to the Eastern Sunday suicide bombings in Lahore. The attack killed seventy and was claimed by the Pakistan Taiban's Jamaat-ur-Ahrar faction, who swore allegiance to Islamic State. The bombings targeted Christians.

Nine countries are believed to have nuclear weapons: the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, Pakistan, India, North Korea and Israel.
Alamy

Recently, news surfaced that Saudi Arabia was mulling over executing LGBT persons who come out online. This should not be surprising given the fate of prisoners of conscience like Hamza Kashgari, Raif Badawi and Waleed Abulkhair.

It would also not be surprising if predominant Muslim organizations in North America and Europe sidelined this concern. Indeed, given pressing concerns on anti-Muslim bigotry and maintaining internal community order, the concerns of LGBT Muslim youth are swiftly addressed by the one-size-fits-all cliche, "test and trial."

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However, as draconian as these punishments may seem, many LGBT Muslims have the privilege to conceal their identity, a saving tactic not often available to religious minorities like Shia Muslims in Saudi Arabia and Ahmadi Muslims in Pakistan.

The greatest challenge to LGBT Muslims does not often stem from the corrupt state or the regressive clergy but rather from their own families and more so from their own selves. After all, statements by power-hungry clerics of a particular sect do not necessarily prevent other Muslims from being true to their beliefs and practices.

Likewise, many LGBT Muslims do not necessarily care for the opinions of contemporary exclusivists, who view constitutional orientation as superfluous desire and explain the existence of gay Muslims through the outdated model of ubna (passive homosexuality due anal itch).

However, Muslims from minority denominations that include Shias, Ismailis and Ahmadis often receive family support through thick and thin. Unfortunately, the same does not necessarily hold true for LGBT Muslims. This entails the importance of LGBT-affirming Islamic hermeneutics that would allow parents to unconditionally accept their LGBT offspring.

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Such hermeneutics is also essential for change in the Muslim world, as it would help address any faith based reservations of otherwise well meaning Muslim psychologists and counselors.

An LGBT-affirming hermeneutic may be essential for LGBT Muslims experiencing strong cognitive dissonance between faith and sexuality. Yet, many do not necessarily fall back to jurisprudential laws when it comes to their societal conduct and sexual mores.

Indeed, the greatest challenge to LGBT Muslims comes from within rather than outside sources. No amount of jurisprudential affirmation can help if LGBT Muslims choose not to accept themselves due to severely low self-esteem caused by subcultural expectations relating to body image, skin colour and mannerisms.

Where New York-based Omar Sarwar has adequately captured the concerns of internalized racism, Lahore-based Hadi Hussain has effectively highlighted the concerns of body image. As such, while LGBT Muslims vehemently reject societal expectations, they end up conforming to hollow subcultural expectations.

The proliferation of self-images in various shades of nudity and self-importance and the over-emphasis on the exterior flesh over important values may all be masks for an extremely low self-esteem.

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More significantly, although some LGBT Muslims overtly display piety, they often don't realize that they are stringing along those with vulnerable hearts -- a sign of self-importance and a morality gone awry.

The Qur'an teaches that Allah does not change the condition of a people if they do not work towards change.

It should therefore not be surprising when many educated and good-looking LGBT Muslims claim that true love is difficult to find. How can they find it when a vast majority is obsessed with the self and has not learned to genuinely care for the other?

All of this does not mean that the alternatives of sham marriages or permanent celibacy are panaceas to the situation at hand. Although it is also true that many LGBT Muslims do end up in marriages of convenience or, despite their best intentions, end up being alone due to subcultural expectations that harshly judge the physically average as "inferior."

The Qur'an teaches that Allah does not change the condition of a people if they do not work towards change. This entails replacing corrosive subcultural expectations with the beautiful values of dard mandi (empathy) and bey laus mohabbat (unconditional love) that sees beyond physical form, colour and attribute.

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This will not be an easy task. It may be even more difficult than going against the contemporary Muslim position on homosexuality. However, if anything, the Prophet (upon whom be peace) inspired hope when he taught Muslims to plant a tree even if the world came to an end.
David Rossiter/CP

If you read something in the newspaper, it must be true -- right? No, this is how moral panics get started: by writers who don't get their facts straight but nevertheless publish shocking stories that get further disseminated by outraged readers.

Exhibit A: Alheli Picazo's National Post article published March 24, 2016 as "Alberta Shares the Blame," with the online headline of "When naturopathy kills."

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The article deals with a criminal prosecution currently before a jury in Lethbridge, Alberta. David and Collet Stephan have been charged with failing to provide the necessaries of life to their son Ezekiel, who died in 2012 of meningitis.

So far, only the prosecution has called witnesses. The case stands adjourned until April 11, when the defence will begin.

But Picazo has already rushed to judgment. She calls Ezekiel's death "preventable" and labels him a "casualty of pseudoscience." Here are the "facts" as Picazo placed them before readers:

"After weeks of trying 'natural' extracts and homemade remedies like smoothies cut with ginger root and horseradish to cure a suspected case of meningitis, 19-month-old Ezekiel Stephan's tiny body had so deteriorated that he was too stiff to bend. Unable to sit in his car seat, Ezekiel's parents, David and Collet, loaded a mattress into the back of their vehicle to take him to a health practitioner -- not a doctor."

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Those parents must be monsters, right? Actually, no. What's monstrous is the number of factual distortions that Picazo packed into a single paragraph, with not even an "alleged" kicking around to hint that there might be another side to the story.

None of the prosecution's doctors has claimed that they could have definitively diagnosed meningitis from the symptoms Ezekiel exhibited at the time.

Ezekiel's "suspected meningitis" did not go on for weeks. He had started exhibiting symptoms of a cold, or at worst croup, around Feb. 27, 2012.

Over the next two weeks, his symptoms disappeared and returned twice, sometimes appearing like flu, but never including seizures or rash.

It was not until March 12 that a family friend -- a nurse who coincidentally knew that there had been a recent case of meningitis in her hospital -- mentioned the possibility of viral meningitis.

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But based on Ezekiel's mostly asymptomatic condition that day, she said, he'd probably be turned away from a hospital emergency room.

Picazo makes it sound as though Ezekiel was getting progressively stiffer over a period of weeks until he was loaded rigor mortis-like into the car to visit a naturopath. In fact, on the morning of March 13, he had been in his car seat, perfectly able to bend.

But he was cranky and uncomfortable, so rather than aggravate his distress, they removed him from the car seat and let him lie on his foam crib mattress on the back seat.

When a crisis arose that evening -- Ezekiel temporarily stopped breathing -- his parents called 911 and set out for the hospital. Picazo says, "Only after their son stopped breathing did the Stephans think it wise to call 911."

But wait -- 911 is for emergencies. People who call 911 because their kid has a cold can be fined up to $10,000 in Alberta under the Emergency 911 Act.

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The unfortunate truth that Picazo omits is that meningitis is an illness that can strike suddenly and kill within a day or two. Usually, meningitis symptoms progress very quickly from bad to worse.

Ezekiel's waxing and waning cold symptoms are not typical, and might indeed have indicated nothing other than a cold at that time.

The Meningitis Research Foundation of Canada's website contains dozens of stories of meningitis cases that killed or seriously disabled their victims within days.

In numerous cases, doctors had examined the victims not long before and sent them home with diagnoses of cold, flu, food poisoning, ear infection, gastroenteritis, pneumonia, etc.

The only definitive way of diagnosing bacterial meningitis is a spinal tap in which fluid is drawn from the spinal cord and tested. This excruciatingly painful procedure exposes patients to additional risks. Doctors do not ordinarily inflict it upon patients who appear to have merely colds or flu.

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So far at the trial, none of the prosecution's doctors has claimed that they could have definitively diagnosed meningitis from the symptoms Ezekiel exhibited at the time. None has claimed that Ezekiel could definitely have been saved, even if he had received aggressive treatment.

Picazo says the Alberta government shares the blame for Ezekiel's death because it licences naturopathy.

However, she fails to mention that the ambulance that met the Stephans on their drive to hospital had been stripped of some equipment by that same Alberta government approximately a year before.

Consequently, it had no air mask small enough to treat Ezekiel en route to hospital. He spent eight and a half minutes in the ambulance without air. A later CT scan showed brain injury consistent with lack of oxygen.

A week after Ezekiel's death, infant air masks re-appeared in ambulances. I can't help wondering whether the Alberta government is prosecuting these parents to divert attention from its own possible liability.

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Georgie Hunter via Getty Images NEW YORK, NY - MARCH 26: Emily Mercer wearing Rag & Bone navy sweater, Alison Lou choker necklace with heart eyes emoji pendant and PaPer minT black leather bag on March 26, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Georgie Hunter/Getty Images)

It's no secret that capturing the attention of online readers is becoming increasingly difficult. This shift is especially prevalent in fashion as editors, bloggers, and brand writers compete for the attention of readers; traditional fashion magazines no longer own style advice.

Emily Ramshaw, Senior Editor of the popular online lifestyle site The Coveteur has been at the forefront of this shift. Ramshaw was a news editor at Flare Magazine before she joined the Coveteur two years ago.

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Ramshaw tells me that today's editors have to constantly have a pulse on what their readers want.

Photo credit: Kavi Guppta

Tell me about writing about people's closets.

Once you've seen inside someone's home and looked (and played! -- which is essentially what styling these stories entails) at their favourite things, you come back with a very intimate perspective regarding who that person is.

The role of the fashion editor is to deliver content that readers want. How do you listen to your readers? Give a recent example.

To me the most important job of a journalist, writer and editor is constantly to be thinking about the readers: what do they want? What are they interested in? Will they get something out of this? Why is this story valuable to them in their day-to-day life -- even if the value is just to make them laugh or think, and not to actually get something concrete out of it.

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We get a lot of feedback from readers via social media on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. But the most meaningful feedback is in person, which I get a lot of, often about obsessions over recent closets, or people they'd love to see on the site -- I get a LOT of that. Elton John was a recent suggestion...

Describe the evolution of influence in fashion. Have we lost individual style preference?

People often ask me what's "in" this season, and I'm usually at a loss. In that sense, I think style is more individual; we are generally more inspired by other people's style than by trends on the runway. Street style during fashion week is probably more telling of the state of fashion and what's "trendy" than what's being presented at the actual shows, for better or for worse.

I think that with Instagram and blogs, we've developed something of a "global taste" - -I never thought I would want to wear Sam Smith Adidas or chokers again, and here I am. But I also think traditional trends -- like only skinny fitted pants are in style this season -- have disappeared.

Follow Emily on Twitter, and check out her interviews on The Coveteur.

I'm fascinated by creative women -- their passions, challenges, and contributions to society. If you know a creative woman to feature, please tweet @kmarano.

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Jonathan Ernst / Reuters Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (L) speaks with U.S. President Barack Obama after the start of the second and final plenary session of the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington April 1, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

It is inarguable that people are talking about Canada since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau assumed office just a few months ago. In just over four months, the media-friendly, question-taking and selfies-giving Trudeau has managed to seemingly make Canada cool on the world stage, using the increased spotlight to highlight the merits of diplomacy and engagement, including on issues such as climate change, respect for diversity and human rights and international peace.

This outlook is now known as Canada's foreign policy principle of "responsible conviction" and has the potential to usher in a new era in Canadian foreign policy, one in which Ottawa is ready to lead by example. Indeed, on his first day as the new prime minister, Mr. Trudeau explicitly stated "we're back", a message intended to signal his desire to reverse what progressives viewed as Canada's international decline. To be sure, Trudeau has made a noticeable splash overseas by embracing the politics of hope, dialogue and multilateralism.

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By leveraging the politics of hope, dispelling myths surrounding Syrian refugees and encouraging private citizens to partake in the process, the Trudeau government has been a global leader in welcoming asylum seekers from war torn Syria. In contrary to the politics of fear present in some parts of Europe, the United States and elsewhere, upon assuming office in November, the Trudeau government spared little time to begin fulfilling its campaign promise of welcoming 25,000 Syrian refugees within a few months and has gone further by committing to resettling 50,000 refugees by the end of 2016.

By contrast, the U.S., which has a population 10 times larger than Canada, has pledged to welcome 10,000 refugees within a year. Indeed, Canada has been widely hailed as an inspiration to others just as the United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR, hosted a conference recently to rally international support to resettle Syrian refugees.

My thanks to @barackobama for hosting a friendly, focused and productive #NSS2016 summit! Merci @barackobama pour le Sommet sur la securite nucleaire 2016, qui fut convivial, cible et productif! A photo posted by Justin Trudeau (@justinpjtrudeau) on Apr 1, 2016 at 3:55pm PDT

In this vein, Trudeau's politics of hope during Canada's federal election resonated with a like-minded world leader, U.S. President Barack Obama. In recognizing the shared values between the two leaders, Canada is reinvigorating its relationship with its most important bilateral partner, the United States, which has led to the first official state visit by a Canadian prime minister at the White House in nearly 20 years. The "bromance" between the two leaders will be short-lived given Obama's departure from the Oval Office next January, but much can be done between now and then.

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Trudeau and Obama have already pledged to working jointly on priority files such as confronting climate change and protecting the Arctic, promoting innovation and alternative energy solutions, and harmonizing border regulations to reduce barriers to the movement of people and goods.

What is more, Canada's renewed image in Washington has the potential to advance Canadian interests by paving inroads in the capital of the world's sole superpower, which will be of particular importance as a new administration takes office next year. This reinvigorated relationship also has the potential to have a multiplying effect in other capitals as the world bears witness to the attention Trudeau has received on his multiple trips to the United States since becoming prime minister.

There has clearly been a change in Canada's foreign policy, one that the world is noticing.

The benefits of dialogue are also apparent to the Trudeau government as it looks to re-engage Iran, which Canada severed diplomatic ties with in 2012, and with Russia, which Canada engaged with on a very limited basis under the previous government. As Canadian Foreign Minister Stephane Dion signaled this past week, Canada's disengagement with Iran and Russia did not have a positive impact for anyone nor for global security.

While Canada has a laundry list of disagreements with Iran and Russia, it is undeniable that these two actors are key and influential on the world stage. Canada's closest partners are engaging Tehran and Moscow on various issues, not the least the Syrian civil war. Canada is also home to large Iranian Canadian and Russian Canadian communities who maintain links to their motherland. In Russia's case, it is also a fellow Arctic state. It is high time that Canada finally reengages these two. After all, diplomacy is most useful when used to talk to those you disagree with than with your friends.

Commitment to multilateralism

In keeping with Canada's new foreign policy, Ottawa is also re-energizing its presence in multilateral fora as evidenced through its enthusiastic participation in reaching the Paris Agreement on climate change and most recently at the Nuclear Security Summit to combat the prospects of nuclear terrorism.

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In reaffirming its commitment to multilateralism, Canada recently announced its candidacy for a non-permanent seat at the UN Security Council in the coming years. In echoing his remarks on disengaging Iran and Russia, Dion highlighted that "The minor role that Canada has played at the UN in recent years had no positive consequences for anyone... In the wake of our [Canada] sizeable contribution to the UNHCR, the Trudeau government will ensure that Canada resumes its position in the UN, from the Commission on the Status of Women to the Security Council."

There has clearly been a change in Canada's foreign policy, one that the world is noticing. What is certain is that the Trudeau government must leverage all facets of the soft power it is accumulating when pursuing its national interest and as it contributes to climate action, international peace and prosperity.

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When I speak to mothers with postpartum depression (PPD) across Canada about their experience navigating the medical system for help, one overwhelming theme is common amid all the stories I hear which can be summed up in one word: Hopelessness.

That's because when they turn to the medical system for help for one of the most common postpartum complications, the onus is thrown back on them to figure their way out of postpartum depression while they're in the middle of a crisis dealing with postpartum depression.

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There is a national crisis when it comes to the proper prevention, diagnosis and treatment of postpartum depression and Canada needs a prenatal and postpartum depression strategy now before more mothers (and their families) are left to suffer unnecessarily.

"As far as I am aware, there is no postpartum depression treatment guideline for all of Canada, nor by province," says Dr. Simone Vigod. "I agree with you that there is some inconsistency in what services are available depending on the province in which a woman lives, and/or the area in which she lives within a province."

Dr. Vigod leads the Reproductive Life Stages Program at Women's College Hospital in Toronto, Ontario. Dr. Vigod thinks the difference in services across the country might have to do with the absence of expertise in a given jurisdiction or a lack of publicly funded resources.

"There is also the issue of other barriers to care, including shame and stigma," says Dr. Vigod. "As well as practical barriers like finding transportation to get to appointments, finding childcare for older children while attending therapy, and cost."

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Dr. Vigod thinks Canada should adopt the U.K's National Institutes of Clinical Excellence (NICE) framework on antenatal and postnatal mental health which covers every stage of a woman's experience of childbirth from pre-conception to postpartum.

"This way, each jurisdiction would have a better map of the evidenced-based services that should be provided and might be provided by different arms of the health and social service system (e.g. public health nursing, midwifery/obstetrical care, pediatric care, primary care, and mental health care)," says Dr. Vigod.

Just this morning, I met with a mother with another hopeless tale of how she went to her family doctor for help one month after labour, only to be told her constant crying and anxiety was normal and didn't require follow-up. At her six-week follow-up appointment with her obstetrician, she once again brought up her postpartum depression symptoms and was told to go back to her family doctor. Reluctantly, she did, at which point she says her doctor reluctantly wrote up a script for Zoloft and Googled whether it was safe for breastfeeding.

It's time for PPD treatment to be streamlined across Canada to ensure that all mothers with PPD, regardless of where they live, have access to the best treatment.

Is this really how we treat women with postpartum depression in Canada?

I hear time and again how rare it is for women to be told about the risks for PPD during pregnancy or postpartum, how some are put through the Edinburgh Scale by their doctor for a PPD diagnosis while others have never even heard of it.

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Many are prescribed medication and told little about the side effects, how long they should be on it and how to wean. If they're lucky, some women are put on long wait lists for therapists in their community who provide cognitive behavioural therapy and interpersonal therapy. Support groups are few and far in between and so-called programs provided by the local district health unit are nothing more than lip service.

It's time for PPD treatment to be streamlined across Canada to ensure that all mothers with PPD, regardless of where they live, have access to the best treatment.

"I agree," says Sheila Duffy, Director of the non profit Pacific Post Partum Support Society in Burnaby, British Columbia. "We are working in that direction, however, there is still a long way to go as far as awareness, education and resources."

Sheila has been involved in the Perinatal Provincial Strategy in B.C. over the past eight years discussing recommendations for B.C. in regards to screening and treatment.

"Part of the B.C. provincial strategy is to administer the EPDS through public health immunization visits as well as doctors and it is available online as well and people can self-administer, the idea being that if doctors aren't doing the EPDS screening tool then there are other points of contact to make sure it happens," says Sheila. "However, this will still only catch some women, and it is also inconsistent as far as regions."

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Spokesperson, Rebecca Gilman of The Public Health Agency of Canada tells me that they provide a toolkit for "front line staff" called the Mother's Mental Health Toolkit but it is "not intended as a replacement for specific mental intervention, assessment and treatment." They also fund the Canada Prenatal Nutrition Program and Community Action Program for Children which she says acts as "entry points" into the system.

In Ontario, "the issue of perinatal mental health is a very significant one," says Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care spokesperson, David Jensen, "and would require a specific undertaking to establish a provincial approach."

Jensen says that currently individual hospitals in Ontario follow their own protocol for referral and treatment.

In Simcoe County, Ontario, where I live, the Orillia Soldiers' Memorial Hospital and North Simcoe Muskoka Local Health Integration Unit (LHIN) are currently conducting a review of perinatal and postpartum depression resources, which will hopefully result in an overhaul of services being provided because right now as it stands, there's not much.

I hope we get something like Dr. Vigod's program.

"Our hope is that the above interventions can be broadly disseminated and serve to help increase capacity to provide treatment for women with perinatal mental health issues across Canada by combating some of the health system barriers and the practical barriers for individual women to receive care," says Dr. Vigod.

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Me too.

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Chris Wattie / Reuters Canada's Health Minister Jane Philpott speaks during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada, January 28, 2016. REUTERS/Chris Wattie

Extra-billing in Ontario, private MRIs in Saskatchewan and user fees in Quebec: violations of the Canada Health Act are on the rise across the country. Canadian doctors are concerned about the impact of this trend not only on their patients, but on our public health care system as well.

Health Canada is required to publish a report every year in order to detail how provincial and territorial health care insurance plans have (or have not) satisfied the conditions for payment under the Canada Health Act. Provinces that are not in compliance are to be penalized with a reduced Canada Health Transfer (CHT) payment.

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This year's report showed that in 2014-15, the only province that received such a penalty was British Columbia. Their CHT payment was docked $241,637, about half of the amount in extra billing a 2012 audit found to have been committed by Dr. Brian Day's Cambie clinic in just one month. It's notable that B.C., the only province docked funds, is also the only province currently seeking to enforce the act by cracking down on Cambie's activities.

Physicians and clinics have quietly been charging extra fees for health services for many years, yet calls for the federal government to enforce the Act have been ignored. Coming down hard on extra-billing may not sound as exciting as announcing new funding for specialized medical services, but it is the job of the provincial and federal health ministers to protect the Canada Health Act and guarantee equitable access to Canadian health care.

In Ontario alone, the frequency of such charges has grown at an alarming rate and escaped the notice of provincial and federal auditors and health ministers. The Ontario Health Coalition published a report in 2014 listing dozens of instances where independent health facilities (e.g. eye surgery, colonoscopy, diagnostic and executive health clinics) charged extra fees for medical consultations, examinations, diagnostic testing and other manners of "upgraded services." These fees are for services that are covered by the health system. This is otherwise known as extra-billing, a practice that is against federal and provincial law.

Despite these contraventions, previous Canada Health Act reports show that Ontario has never been penalized.

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This year's report has the potential to be more than a quiet committee discussion with no subsequent action. It can be the springboard for Health Minister Jane Philpott to assert her government's commitment to defending medicare, Canada's most treasured social program.

Where better to start than reminding Saskatchewan and Quebec's premiers that their recent actions violate the Canada Health Act?

In November 2015, the Saskatchewan government voted to introduce pay-per-use MRI services, allowing those who are able to pay to jump the queue and receive priority treatment. Premier Brad Wall argued that implementing a parallel diagnostic system would alleviate wait times, ignoring the evidence to the contrary from Alberta's foray into private MRIs a decade ago. As Wall himself noted in 2009, these clinics violate the principle of accessibility in the Act. By speaking out, Minister Philpott can help to stem the tide of privatization in Saskatchewan's health-care system.

The Trudeau government promised real change.

That same month, the Quebec National Assembly approvedBill 20. This omnibus bill enables physicians to charge extra fees to their patients for services already insured under public medicare, with no clearly established limits. The fact is many physicians in the province had been charging extra fees to patients for a long time. The government included provisions for extra billing as an amendment in response to pressure from the Quebec College of Physicians. Instead of coming down against extra-billing as was hoped, Minister Barrette worked to normalize the practice instead.

Breaches of the Act have never been addressed in Quebec, despite the admission of physicians instituting user fees and extra billing and calls to stop this practice from Quebec organizations such as Medecins Quebecois pour le Regime Public and Federation des Medecins Omnipraticiens du Quebec.

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User fees, access charges, extra billing all come down to the same thing -- inequitable access to Canadian health care.

Charging patients at the point of care for medically necessary services strikes at the heart of the principle that access to health care should be based on need rather than ability to pay. It undermines equity, increases system costs and reduces public commitment to universal coverage.

The Trudeau government promised real change. As an acclaimed physician and Canada's Minister of Health, Minister Philpott has an opportunity to take a new approach to defending Canadian health care by sending a strong statement to the provinces that they must adhere to the Canada Health Act.

It is time for Minister Philpott to show there is a doctor in the House and take action to ensure medicare will be there for all Canadians in their time of need.

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Every protest needs a soundtrack. The American civil rights movement was accompanied by Bob Dylan's Blowin' In The Wind - in Britain Thatcher's decimation of the industrial North was epitomised by The Special's Ghost Town. In the eyes of many, protest music in Britain hasn't had a platform for years - but in a political landscape defined by further government cuts to public services, the refugee crisis and the upcoming EU referendum, music is once again finding its voice.

Confined to the underground until recently, punk, UK rap and grime are producing a number of new political champions who express the views of young people through their art. Radio 1 have been quietly A-listing punk bands like Slaves and Sleaford Mods, whilst urban web-based broadcasters like SBTV and Link Up regularly bring through politically conscious rappers and MCs from the UK scene. Freestyles from inner-city rappers like Logic and Akala regularly go viral and dominate young people's Twitter and Facebook feeds, whilst mainstream radio frequently spins punk songs critical of government policy.

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Sure, there hasn't been an era-defining moment just yet to rival God Save The Queen's ascent to number one during the Queen's silver jubilee in 1977, but artists across a number of different genres are readily providing hard-hitting political anthems to accompany seismic events. Grime MC Ghetts name-checks David Cameron in Rebel, his response to the 2011 London riots, which served as the lead single to his high-charting debut album. Enter Shikari's Anaesthetist, which delivers a lyrical assault on the current Conservative government's treatment of the NHS, hit the top ten of the UK rock charts and won a Kerrang! award for best single.

These songs haven't ingrained themselves into the public consciousness but they hardly exist solely in the sub-culture - it's only a matter of time until a mainstream song truly defines the views of young people who have become disillusioned by politics.

After all, Britain has recent history when it comes to voicing its views through the democratic tool that is the UK top 40. Following her death, people protested what they deemed to be unbalanced media coverage of Margaret Thatcher by campaigning to get Ding, Dong! The Witch Is Dead from The Wizard of Oz to the top to the charts. This led to widespread debate about whether this was anarchic, righteous or just outright offensive. Decades earlier people were having the same debate about The Sex Pistols - just like God Save The Queen, the BBC refused to play the song on its chart show.

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The narrative from mainstream media is that protest music hasn't had an impact on popular culture since the eighties - something the Guardian's Jonathan Luxmoore blames on "the decline of radical politics in the 1990's alongside the rise of New Labour". It's a claim that's not without foundation - the last two decades have seen the ascendency of British indie, hip-hop and dance, but none of these movements have produced music with true political bite.
Despite complaints of debilitating muscle pain a General Practitioner friend of mine told a patient to continue taking his cholesterol lowering statin pill, worried that stopping it might result in him suffering a fatal heart attack. She was shocked when I told her that even in those at high risk who have suffered a heart attack the risk of death from stopping the pill for a couple of weeks to see if the side effects disappear was at worst one in 10,000.

Two weeks ago I spoke at a conference organised by one of the UK's most read health publications, Pulse. I told the packed audience of almost 500 GPs that biased funding of research (research that is funded because it's likely to be profitable, not beneficial for patients), biased reporting in medical journals, commercial conflicts of interest and medical curricula that fail to teach doctors how to understand and communicate health statistics was contributing to an epidemic of misinformed doctors and misinformed patients. Following eloquent speeches from two eminent family practitioners and a lively debate, the proposal put forward by the Pulse editor of whether clinical guidelines were putting doctors and patients at risk received overwhelming majority support.

What most people don't realise is that pharmaceutical companies have a fiduciary obligation to provide profit for their shareholders but not give you the best treatment. But the "real scandals" as pointed out by Cardiologist Peter Wilmshurst at a talk given at the centre of evidence medicine are that regulators fail to prevent misconduct by industry and that doctors, institutions and journals whose primary responsibility should be to patients and scientific integrity "collude with industry for financial gain."

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Medical journals and the media can also perhaps be unwittingly manipulated to serve as marketing vehicles for the industry.

In June last year the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA) published a paper claiming that an ABC TV programme questioning the benefits of prescribing cholesterol lowering drug statins to those at low risk of heart disease which aired in 2013 may have resulted in up to 2,900 people suffering a heart attack or death from stopping their medication.

In my view the paper was grossly misleading. Not only did it make extrapolations from industry sponsored data it provided no evidence whatsoever of increasing hospital admissions or recorded deaths to back up such claims.

The subsequent media headlines generated by the MJA article in Australia may have only served to bully, harass and silence those such as Dr Maryanne Demasi, the journalist behind the 'Heart of the Matter' investigation that highlighted the systemic lack of transparency of the clinical trial data regarding efficacy and side effects of statins for people without cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or LDL levels above 190 mg/dL and unwillingness of the drug companies to release the data for independent scrutiny. In fact the emerging evidence suggests at best the benefits of statins have been grossly exaggerated and side effects underplayed. Well before any media hype community based studies reveal ~ 75% of new users will stop taking their statin within a year of prescription with 62% citing side effects as a reason.

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Earlier this year two separate groups of researchers in Japan and France have independently questioned the reliability of many of the earlier industry sponsored studies that show the benefit of statins. Japanese researcher even suggests that statins may be a cause of the increasing population burden of heart failure and reputed French Cardiologist Dr Michel De Lorgeril own analysis reveals that all studies published after 2006 reveal "no benefit" of statins for cardiovascular prevention in all groups of patients.

As a cardiologist who has treated thousands of patients with heart disease and judiciously prescribes statins to high risk patients, I fully support Dr De Lorgeril's calls for a full reassessment of all the statin studies. He states "physicians should be aware that the present claims about the efficacy and safety of statins is not evidence based."

Furthermore we must demand that the Clinical Trials Service Unit (CTSU) at Oxford University, which have allegedly received over 20million in research funding from pharmaceutical companies that manufacture the drug, call for release of the raw data on statins for independent scrutiny. It is these industry sponsored studies that have resulted in the prescription of statins to tens of millions of healthy people worldwide driving a multi-billion dollar industry. The lead researcher on statins, Professor Rory Collins who heads the CTSU has also admitted that his group, who hold on to the individual patient data on statins did not fully assess for all possible side effects including muscle pain and memory disturbance.

What is most extraordinary, however is that he has referred the editor of the BMJ, Fiona Godlee to the committee on publication ethics for the journal's handling of an article by Harvard Medical School Lecturer John Abramson that questioned the benefits of statins in a low risk population and suggested that up to 20% of patients suffer side effects. An independent panel had already unanimously ruled that the paper didn't require his previous calls for retraction. If found guilty this could result in her being fired.

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When Professor Collins initially called for the paper to be retracted in March 2014, he said "there are only one or two well-documented (problematic) side effects." Myopathy, or muscle weakness occurred in one in 10,000 people and there was a small increase in diabetes he told the Guardian newspaper.

It's instructive to note that the drug company, Pfizer's (the manufacturer of atorvastatin) own patient leaflet states "common side-effects that may affect up to one in 10 patients include sore throat, nausea, digestive problems, muscle and joint pain."

At the European Society of Cardiology congress meeting held in London last year the promotional doctor pamphlet for a new class of cholesterol lowering drugs stated "recent trials have reported the incidence of muscle symptoms to be as high as 16% in the statin treatment group". An earier publicly funded double blind randomised controlled trial carried out in women revealed up to 40% reported increased fatigue within a few months of commencing moderate dose pravastatin or simvastatin.

Lack of energy is clearly not life threatening but isn't the patient best placed to decide whether a side effect is interfering with the quality of life?

And we must acknowledge that it's taken almost 30 years since statins were marketed for us to learn that the drug causes the development of type 2 diabetes within a few years in one in 100 people.

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But the final nail in the coffin for those who suggest side effects of statins have been exaggerated was hammered in by a new study published in JAMA yesterday which concluded 'Nearly 43% of people taking atorvastatin over 10 weeks suffered side-effects compared to 26 per cent of those on dummy pills, a 61% increased risk'

And what about the benefits? Even when one analyses the selected industry sponsored data the median increase in life expectancy in those at high risk who have suffered a heart attack if they take this pill on a daily basis for five years is a mere four days.

But how many patients are explicitly given this information?

The misinformation on statins represents only the tip of the iceberg of a broken system of healthcare. In recent weeks in response to the exposure of a series of scandals including UK universities failing to deal with research misconduct the former editor of the BMJ, Richard Smith has called for statutory regulation stating "something is rotten British Medicine and has been for a long time."

Effectively standing up to vested interests that threaten scientific integrity remains a significant challenge in Australia too. Last May all but one of the MJA's editorial team resigned following the sacking of its respected editor Professor Stephen Leeder.

He had raised concerns over commercial influence on the journal whose publisher made a decision to outsource it's production to global publishing giant Elsevier. Elsevier had previously published "fake" medical journals in Australia that were funded by pharmaceutical companies.

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And as for the banned Catalyst 'Heart of the Matter' statin programme? The immediate past president of the Royal College of Physicians and former Queen's doctor for 21 years, Sir Richard Thompson supports it's reinstatement. "Maryanne Demasi rightly questioned the lack of transparency of patient based data in commercial trials, and the impartiality of medical experts funded by the pharmaceutical industry. My conclusion is that a truly independent review of the scientific basis for the use of statins is now needed" he told me.
'Fashion comes from Eastern Europe' - the newest trend that has been picked up by major fashion publications and editors lately. 'Eastern Bloc', 'New Eastern Europe', 'post-Soviet' - these references have been spreading around fashion (and beyond) titles from Vogue to WGSN, to The Guardian, to fashion bloggers like a virus of a cool factor.

At the front of this trend - Russian menswear designer Gosha Rubchinskiy. He is a pioneer of a new generation's street fashion originating from Russia. His name and post-Soviet style inspirations have become a subject of every fashion editor's small talk or even big talk. The number of fashion reviews being tied to 'Eastern European' aesthetics is seemingly growing every day, usually related to Gosha Rubchinskiy's international success and Balenciaga's newly appointed creative director Demna Gvasalia's Georgian roots. This is great news to the European fashion community based outside London, Paris and Milan. But do the comparisons and largely vague reviews truly represent the other part of Europe? What do fashion editors mean exactly by 'Eastern Bloc Aesthetics'? Unfortunately, fashion writers are very often unfamiliar with that part of the Europe they're writing about; and a title such as 'Top 3 Eastern European designers' may be short-sighted and sometimes even misleading. Fashion editors might be misrepresenting the Eastern European fashion scene.

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With a new fashion hype about the mysterious Eastern Bloc it is time to learn some facts (and make use of them accordingly).

Geopolitics. Historically, a term 'Eastern Bloc' refers to the Eastern and Central European countries that were directly or remotely occupied and controlled by Russia after the WWII. The term itself is very often considered to have negative connotations related to occupation. It is however widely used to collectively refer to Eastern and Central European countries.

Countries. It is useful to know the range of countries that fall under that term: Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Georgia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine. These countries are spread across Europe from Estonia in the North to Albania in the South and more often than not have very different cultures and aesthetics.

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Fashion from Eastern and Central Europe. The number of designers that are growing successfully and pioneering their own fashion capitals is definitely infinite. With the access to international markets, media and traveling without borders (hence, most of these countries had completely closed borders until early nineties) the talent is now traveling beyond Eastern and Central Europe. Designers, like all human beings, have very different backgrounds, aesthetics, creative minds and business visions. It is so important to understand that what Gosha Rubchinskiy has successfully translated from Soviet era to the catwalk has nothing to do with modern aesthetics of the region in mind. Gosha plays a card of nostalgia, we all adore it and let's keep it that way.

Fashion Designers. Countries like Ukraine, Georgia, Hungary, Estonia, Poland, Serbia, et al, have a high potential of producing creatively interesting fashion brands. They are relatively young countries that are keen to express a fresh approach and different point of view. A number of young and established designers have been successfully marching their way. Brands like Slovakian Nehera or Serbian Roksanda Ilincic have been around for decades with fully established international profiles. Meanwhile, younger designers and brands from new Europe are definitely making a history at the given moment; a 20-year-old Anna K from Ukraine have been followed by fashionistas around the globe, Hungarian Zsigmond Dora has been changing traditional menswear perceptions since her first collection, while Georgian Anouki are internationally famous for their statement shoes adored by hundreds (including Vogue fashion editors). These are just a few examples of a variety of fashion names coming from astern and Central Europe. Stereotypically, you should look for the names that are difficult to spell or/and pronounce.

Fashion definitely lives and thrives beyond London, Paris and Milan in Europe, with all the different colours and shapes. It is fascinating to watch the changing borders and shifting fashion capitals. Perhaps Kiev may be the next one?

Fashionbloc.co.uk is a London based editorial and shopping destination for curated fashion from new Europe. We represent pioneering fashion designers and promote Made in Europe concept.

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A couple of things have come up for me this week as the Scottish election campaign heads towards another seemingly inevitable SNP triumph.

Firstly, a friend, a committed 'Yes' voter and an SNP member said he was going to have to stay home on polling day. He could not bring himself to vote SNP this time, he said, because of the SNP's inaction over MSP Sandra White's behaviour.

The SNP MSP apologised for re-tweeting a grossly offensive anti-semitic cartoon posted by a Neo-Nazi she follows online and whose tweets she has reposted before. She said she posted it "in error" and no disciplinary action was taken. The implication for my friend was that a degree of anti-semitism is tolerable within the Scottish National Party.

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The second was the case of Scotland' s only Chinese councillor, Yen Hongmei Jin, who resigned from the party when no action was taken over racist criticism from a fellow party member who questioned her right as a non-Scot to organise a Burns Night. Her complaints about this treatment were not acted upon and she was left feeling "isolated."

Taken together these two things have added to an already uneasy feeling that the SNP's roots might be showing.

I wondered too last year when I saw the phalanx of SNP MPS at Westminster decked out for the Queen's Speech in white roses in reference to a poem by Hugh MacDiarmid. The poet, despite his undoubted literary brilliance, was a political idiot who flirted with fascism and communism. He wrote admiringly of Hitler's notion of "blutsegefuhl" or blood feeling. He also wrote of his belief that Scots were racially superior to other peoples.

Do the MPs who wear the white rose do it in ignorance of McDiarmid's other writings or do they feel they are unimportant? I have no idea, as as they were unchallenged on this by the Scottish press. It's as if the Conservative Party were to wear ribbons celebrating Ezra Pound and no one were to mention his dubious politics.

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As well as penning the famous lines "The rose of all the world is not for me/ I want for my part only the little white rose of Scotland that smells sharp and sweet and breaks the heart", there was more.

He also wrote in a poem entitled :"On the Imminent Destruction of London, June 1940"

"Now when London is threatened

With devastation from the air

I realise, horror atrophying me,

That I hardly care. (...)

For London is the centre of all reaction

To progress and prosperity in human existence

Set against all that is good in the spirit of man,

As Earth's greatest stumbling block and rock of offence."

He wrote too in another wartime poem "the German Bombers" (quoted in Fascist Scotland by St Andrews University Professor Gavin Bowd):

"The leprous swine in London town

And their Anglo-Scots accomplices

Are, as they have always been

Scotland's only enemies."

Many prominent Scottish Nationalists through the 30s and even during the Second World War did sympathise with the German Reich.

Here, from George Campbell Hay just before the outbreak of war:

"The war will come in Spring, they say;

And if it comes I bet, my friend,

They'll find some 'Belgium' to defend."

Did anyone think of this as the entire contingent of Scottish SNP MPs walked through the lobbies opposing airstrikes on IS positions in Syria?

Bowd quotes a ludicrous letter dated 1939 from the 'Scots Order" to Rolf Hoffmann the Nazi propaganda chief, which to my ears has echoes of today's Cybernats' denunciations of the BBC or any other news outlet which dares to carry any criticism of the SNP.

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"Your 'news from Germany' is dispelling the lies against Germany propagated by the English press in Scotland (which is controlled by Jewish freemasonry)...

"We fly a string of Welsh, Irish and Scottish flags and would a like small Swastika flag to fly alongside to show our good feeling. Wishing you every success for German Liberty and World Peace..."

The modern party has managed to dissociate itself from its checkered past to create instead an democratic ideal of civic nationalism based on creating a brighter future for all. I don't doubt that this is the sincere goal of most SNP voters.

However within the huge influx of members into the party there may come echoes of nationalism's uglier face, puffed up with notions of the innate superiority of the Scots to other races. Hence the kind of racial abuse that Yen Hongmei Jin experienced. Is the Party's Chief Executive Peter Murrell on top of his brief on this?

The SNP party machine also chose to believe White's assertion that she retweeted the offensive image by mistake. Is that really credible?

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I love my job, but there's no denying that carting around two phones, being constantly plugged in and available on every social media forum can leave us frazzled and in need of a break from reality. With recent research showing that we're checking our smartphones a staggering 221 times a day - sometimes more - I'd count myself within the bracket of being constantly 'on' and well and truly in need of a disconnection. Luckily for me, I found it in Sri Lanka.

I've always been fascinated with the country, and on my recent grown up backpacking trip, I discovered a true oasis of tranquility and calm that appears to be Sri Lanka's best kept secret.

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Madulkelle Tea and Eco lodge sits high in the Knuckles mountain range. I came across the resort on a travel blog when researching my trip, and immediately knew I had to write this into my itinerary. To say this place is heaven on earth would be an understatement - I only wish I'd stayed longer.

What's it about?

Madulkelle is a collection of eighteen luxury tents perched on the side of a mountain about one hour from Kandy city.

The resort was built in 2008, and sits within acres of rolling tea fields. The tents have all the modern conveniences you could possibly wish for, except one crucial element - wifi.

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With all having views across the valley and of the Knuckles mountain range, the element of complete serenity is key. And if you're really worried about updating your Insta, internet is available in the main house.

How to get there

The resort is around a one hour drive from Kandy, which is an unmissable two and a half hour train ride from the capital city of Colombo. The track to the hotel is undeniably bumpy, but the scenery as you wind your way up the mountain will allay all trepidation. Transport can be arranged through the hotel in the form of a minibus, or if you fancy something a little bit more fun, a tuk tuk can be hailed at the station to cart you up the mountain. We took this option on the way back and it was brilliant, if a little hair raising.

What to do

Basically, as little or as much as you like. The resort is designed to allow you to completely switch off, meaning you could spend days just reading and admiring the view, or enjoying a cocktail or two in between dips in the infinity pool.

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The resort also offers guided hikes, which was a true highlight of my trip. We trekked through acres of tea plantation and forest, climbing high into the mountains where we met countless tea pickers and passed through lovely little villages.

There's also a spa with surely one of the best views in the world

Where to eat

Madulkelle has it's own restaurant, with the menu changing daily to incorporate the freshest ingredients available that day. With a large proportion of the ingredients used being grown organically on site, the fare is healthy and really, really fresh.

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Rice and curry - a staple in Sri Lanka - is the order of the day, with a selection of small and spicy dishes being served up accompanied by crispy poppadum. The mutton coconut curry was a real highlight, served alongside delicious chickpea dahl.

The resort also offers cooking classes, where groups can work with Madulkelle's expert chefs and learn the ways of Sri Lankan cooking.

When to go
The Rincon Mountains of Tucson, Arizona

The Wild West.

In the old days, synonymous with outlaws and shoot outs; raids and squabbles over cattle, land, gold and the other resources of this vast region. Now the resource being battled over is -- water -- with this precious commodity becoming scarcer every year.

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Chapel at San Xavier Mission

Saguaro Cactus in Catalina Mountains behind Loews Ventana Canyon Resort

The UNESCO designation as a creative city for gastronomy was awarded to Tucson, Arizona in December, 2015 and it is the only city in the U.S. to receive this accolade for cuisine and one of only six to be nominated a creative city. For a drought riddled town in the middle of the Sonoran Desert with intensely hot summers, it may seem an unlikely place to be acknowledged in the category of food.

Organic Tomatoes at the Rillito Farmer's Market

But on a recent trip I discovered any pre-conceived views I have of the region are incorrect. Monsoons sweep through this area every July and August and its higher elevation means evenings are quite cool.

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The Chile Relleno re-imagined at La Cocina

Tucson's Native Americans have cultivated beans, squash and corn here for thousands of years alongside foraging for fruit from the indigenous saguaro cactus. Following on from these early crops, Spanish missionaries brought winter wheat and gourds; then each new wave of immigrant brought their own foods which were grown and integrated into local menus.

Corn grown on the San Xavier Co-op Farm

Like their ancestors, the Tohono O'odham People are still cultivating traditional foods on their reservation. I visited the San Xavier Co-Op Farm which grows alfalfa as a cash crop alongside tepary beans, corn and traditional yellow watermelons. Water from the Colorado River ensures irrigation is on-going.

I was able to visit Native Seed Search, set up by the University of Arizona, and saw heirloom seeds stored in large cooled vaults. On a tour of their small holding, I tried a berry from the chitlepino bush an ancient precursor of chili. I was certainly astonished at its punch.

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Meow! I organise the barrels of Mesquite Scotch at the Hamilton Distilleries!

So the cultivation and foraging taking place also influenced the UNESCO committee on their choice of Tucson. And the use of Mesquite pods for making flour is an ancient tradition here, too. Now Mesquite bark is used in the making of Scotch (instead of peat) and was an additional consideration in the bid for UNESCO status. Hamilton Brewers create Del Bac and struggle to keep it on the shelves.

Saguaro Cactus at the Sonoran Desert Museum

Speaking of foraging, even animals, like the Javelina enjoy Prickly Pear Cactus. The wild pigs eat both pads and the fruit of this plant. But for us humans, it is the slow release sugar in this fruit that makes it a healthy option. I had a yummy margarita at the Doghouse Saloon on the Tanque Verde Ranch made from its juice. Not healthy but very good.

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Tanque Verde Ranch Doghouse Saloon's Prickly Pear Cactus

Tucson's Mexican food certainly helped in securing the UNESCO status and is some of the tastiest you will find anywhere. I went on the celebrated 'Best of the Barrio Tour' to find out more. Led by Tom Morgan and Chris DeSimone of Grayline Tours, our first visit was La Estrella. This popular, traditional panaderia has churned out pan dulce and tortillas - still made by hand - for 40 years. El Merendero, on the south side, is famous for its shrimp chicharrones, toritos (little bulls) and succulent carib chiles wrapped in bacon.

Banderas Cookies - La Estrella Panaderia

A Cheese Crisp with Camarones at El Merendero

Anna our server - El Merendero

Nearby, El Guero Canelo it is all about Daniel Contreras' creation - the Sonoran Hot Dog. The dog is nestled in a brioche type bun made at the local panaderia and topped with fresh Pico de Gallo.

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Sonoran Hot Dog

Erica Bostick of Augustin Kitchen

The Taste of Tucson Downtown culinary tour allowed me to try out nouveau cuisine using foraged foods at the town's trendy restaurants. Led by Elysa Crum, culinary fans start their tour at the Augustin Kitchen and then visit Nook, Proper, Hotel Congress and, finally, Maynard's Market and Kitchen at the train depot.

Proper chefs - Kris and Justin

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Cholla Buds are now used in Cholla Bud Escabeche and Tepary Bean Salad

Organic food with a clear provenance is available at the ever increasing number of farmer's markets springing up everywhere and an important part of the UNESCO gastronomy bid. I visited the Rillito Market and found gorgeous citrus and tomatoes alongside heirloom cauliflower.

Rillito Market produce

I topped off my culinary experiences with a stay at the Tanque Verde Ranch. Janys at the Nature Centre also takes guests on edible wild plant walks. We discover that the beautiful fruit of the Barrel Cactus has seeds full of protein and that mesquite leaves and bark make an excellent tea for diarrhoea while the pod is excellent for flour. In late September pick the orange Hackberry. When dried, it's just like raisins!

Horses at the Tanque Verde Ranch  Tanque Verde Ranch

Images by Lynn Houghton

The Loews Ventana Canyon Resort has standard guest rooms starting at $199 year round and $129 during the summer months.

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I'm in Bramble and Hare in Boulder, Colorado, talking spirits with 'Bar Tzar' Griffin Farro.

'We use some spirits from Leopold Brothers out of Denver,' he tells me, 'they're very good. They have everything - good vodkas, their gin won Top New American Gin, and we're working with them to develop a house gin for us. And we use their American Orange Liqueur.'

Next day at The Bitter Bar, still in Boulder, owner James Lee also sings the praises of Leopold Brothers spirits: 'I like their rye,' he says, 'and their Alpine liqueur. The guys grew up here then moved to Michigan and came back to Denver.'

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As I'm headed for Denver there's clearly only one thing to do - take a tour and find out more about these Leopold Brothers.

The Leopold Brothers Distillery is about 15 miles south west of Denver International Airport, and a 20-minute drive from the center of downtown Denver. It's in the rather mundane setting of an industrial estate, which makes it all the more delightful and surprising to see the bright white buildings and architecture of a distillery that would be right at home in the Highlands of Scotland. It turns out some of the buildings are modelled after Scottish originals.

There's a large, light and airy welcome area cum tasting room, with cabinets filled with bowls of botanicals - anise, wormwood, juniper - interspersed with various medals. They've won so many awards they could probably melt down the medals and build a new still with them.

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Here I'm greeted by Alec Ropes, who does the distillery's Cocktail Workshops and who tells me that the impressive floor was built out of four box cars by the Leopold Brothers' dad, the brothers themselves being Todd and Scott.

'They'd been the Leopold Brothers of Ann Arbor in Michigan since 1999,' Alec tells me. 'There they were making beer as a brew-pub. They left in 2005-6 when the rent went up phenomenally. Littleton, Colorado, is where the family is from, which is just south of Denver, so they came back here and started distilling.'

Soon the affable, bearded figure of Todd Leopold arrives to give me a distillery tour. Todd looks just like a distiller should, and is clearly a man who loves his work. He's attended brewing schools in Chicago and Munich, and has diplomas in both brewing and malting. He takes me first to see their malting floor, which he's especially proud of as it is one of only a handful in the USA.

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'Not many distilleries can do their own malting,' he explains. 'Everyone buys their malts from places like Canada or Germany. But we start here with 8000 lbs of Colorado barley in each of two tanks. We seep it and then spread it on the floor, where it stays for 5-8 days. So we end up with Colorado malt which we use in our whiskey, bourbon, gin, and vodka.'

I ask Todd how important it is to them to use local produce.

'Well,' he says, 'we like the best produce, no matter where it's from. We use Colorado barley, peaches, lavender, and other botanicals. But we prefer Michigan cherries. We get our botanicals from wherever we can get the best. Egyptian coriander is a little nuttier than Bulgarian coriander, for example, so it depends what results you want at the end of the day.'

We take a look at the kiln and then go into the Whiskey Room, where the barrels are kept.

'We have earthen floors in here to keep the humidity up, and that keeps the angels' share down. We keep most of our barrels on the floor. Some we stack 2-3 high but mostly it's single barrels. There's no power at all in this building, it's all natural.'

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Todd credits Mad Men for the boom in interest in spirits.

'Here in the USA, Mad Men did it,' he says emphatically. 'Cocktail bars started popping up, brown spirits were suddenly interesting. At that time I was four blocks from here with two stills and I thought that was it - we'd grown big but that was as far as it was going to go. Now we have seven stills, including the two original ones, and have over 20 products. And we don't advertise. We haven't had a sales person for three years. It's word of mouth. If you've got bartenders saying "you have to try this" then you're onto a good thing.'

As I'd already found out, bartenders were among Leopold Brothers' biggest fans, Finally I ask Todd why he thinks they've done so well in the craft spirits and cocktail boom of the last few years.

'We've been doing what we've been doing for 15 years,' he says, 'and then the market changed. We were already here. It was pure luck. People ask what our secret is. There's no secret. Dumb luck.'

More Information

5285 Joliet St, Denver, CO 80239

Check the website for details of their Connoisseur Tours, which must be booked in advance. Leopold Brothers also offers monthly Cocktail Workshops, each focussing on a different cocktail such as the Old-Fashioned, or Gin Fizzes.

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Getting There

Photos

All Photos (c) Donna Dailey.
What makes a suicide bombing in, say, Western Europe, more worthy of media coverage than a similar attack in Nigeria, Turkey or Pakistan? Is there any answer to that question that editors can give without admitting that they consider white Western lives to be more valuable than brown foreign ones?

Will Gore, deputy managing editor of the Independent, had a pretty good stab at it this week in the wake of the bombings in Brussels, that occupied front pages for days, and the far deadlier one in Lahore that, while widely reported on, received comparatively less attention in the international press.

Mr. Gore suggests the reason Brussels received greater attention in the press is not because editors, and the readers whose interests they ultimately respond to, are racially or religiously biased in favour of people who look and pray like them. Rather the overriding factor is fear.

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"People in this country [the UK] are appalled by terror attacks in Turkey (or Pakistan or Mali or Burkina Faso); but are much more likely to be scared by what they see in a familiar-feeling Western capital - if it can happen there, it can happen here," Mr. Gore writes. "The solidarity shown in the aftermath of massacres in France and Belgium is as much a coping mechanism to deal with this fear as it is a simple expression of sympathy for the loss of strangers' lives. But if this is so, shouldn't the media challenge such psychological stasis? Up to a point perhaps... [but] isn't a triple suicide-bombing in the capital of Belgium more surprising than a terrorist attack in Turkey? Not more appalling, not more deadly, not more grotesque; but more unexpected and unpredictable? Surely it is... Therefore, if last week's attacks in Brussels received more coverage across the British-based media than acts of terrorism elsewhere it is for rational reasons."

Mr. Gore makes some compelling points. Having witnessed the aftermath of the London bombings firsthand outside a stricken King's Cross station on July 7, 2005, I certainly understand that fear. But in suggesting attacks in countries frequently plagued by terrorism are less newsworthy because they are more routine and have fewer lessons to teach us about our own safety, Mr. Gore does not account for the widespread coverage given to school shootings in America. Such tragedies are all too routine, and, mercifully, have little to teach a British readership that has not known a school shooting since handguns were banned in the wake of 1996's Dunblane massacre. Yet we are more likely to read about a man wandering into an American school with a gun than the frequent Taliban-linked attacks in Pakistan. Do such incidents get more coverage because Western European audiences are more interested in tragedies that happen in the culturally similar US, than in equally distant but far more foreign Pakistan? I suspect they probably do.

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But while terrorist attacks are an almost weekly occurrence in Pakistan, Easter Sunday's atrocities, in which 72 people were killed and at least 280 injured, many of them children enjoying a funfair, are so shocking in their scale and brutality that they deserve to be front page news. And just as we covered November's Paris attacks and October's Ankara bombings on our front page at The World Weekly, so too did we feature Easter's atrocities in Lahore on our cover.
Anna Soubry, minister for industry and enterprise, has just made her second visit to Rotherham to discuss our steel mills. As she was taken around the site, you could see the realisation that rather than being the dying industry the media and 'experts' try to portray, our specialist steel is actually a very viable, flourishing business with a global order book. To give you some context; every plane that flies has steel from Rotherham or neighbouring Stocksbridge in it and we are the world leader in steel alloy manufacture.

The first time Soubry was here was six months ago for the Steel Summit to meet with MPs, Unions, TATA Steel and UK Steel to find a way to safeguard the industry. At the end of the summit we had four key things the government needed to address: cost of business rates, commitment regarding steel procurement for UK infrastructure projects, addressing high energy prices for industry and the use of tariffs. Had these recommendations been acted upon, she wouldn't have been back today, discussing ways to prevent the steel industry closing.

On Sunday, the secretary of state for business, Sajid Javid, said the decision by TATA's board in Mumbai to sell TATA UK was "unexpected". I find this comment offensive. How can it possibly be unexpected when for years Labour MPs have been holding debates in parliament to show just these consequences if the government didn't support this key industry. Let's be honest about this, Javid's position has always been an ideological one - leave everything to the market. But what he fails to understand, is that for years, he has been forcing the UK steel industry to compete with both hands tied behind its back.

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China's steel is state run and massively subsidised, most European companies have heavily reduced energy costs for industry and the US has substantial tariff rates on imported steel, including steel from the UK. All we have ever asked the Government to do is level the playing field, then we will be able to compete effectively in the market.

Whilst I'm pleased the minister for industry now understands what we actually manufacture (an unkind soul would say she should have known this already) what concerns me is what will happen next. TATA needs to give clarity if the awful fate hanging over Port Talbot applies to all its UK concerns. If so, what will the government do to support the industry in the short term while a responsible buyer is found? Soubry talked the talk, she even mentioned the 'N' word (nationalisation!) but will she act?
Fairfax Media via Getty Images (AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND OUT) A human shadow is visible under the Australian Taxation Department logo, 18 May 2004. AFR Picture by TAMARA VONINSKI (Photo by Fairfax Media via Getty Images)

BHP Billiton, Wilson Security and a major electricity company in Australia are now targets of the Australian Tax Office, after leaked documents linked all three companies to a law firm in Panama and the British Virgin Islands.

A Four Corners investigation revealed on Monday night that the law firm Mossack Fonseca assists the financial manoeuvres of big businesses and individuals in the grey area of international financial secrecy, which was best described by Former US Senate Investigator, Jack Blum, on the program.

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"Financial secrecy is the centre piece of business, and the skills of the Panamanian law firms are to figure out how to set up a trust here, that owns a corporation there, that owns another corporation somewhere else and create a series of layers that make it very difficult, if not impossible for an investigator to figure out who really owns what and where the money is."

Not only is Wilson Security itself -- which earned more than $400 million in government contracts -- embroiled in the controversial Panama Papers; the papers have also linked the security company back to the Kwok brothers, who have covertly been acting as directors of the company.

The Kwok brothers were charged in one of the biggest bribery cases in Hong Kong's history in 2014. Both brothers resigned from Wilson Security's holding company held in the British Virgin Islands at the time.

But leaked documents reveal that the companies who direct Wilson Security have both brothers listed as directors on their own books.

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BHP Billiton and Li Ka-shing, who owns CKI Holdings, which owns a huge part of the electricity market in Victoria and South Australia, have also been linked to the Panama law firm.

"The great irony here is that here is a company that effectively provides light for every South Australian household but is not prepared to have the light shone on its tax affairs," Senator Nick Xenophon said on the program.

The ATO has previously taken CKI Holdings to court over unpaid back-taxes and penalties, which were eventually settled for less than one tenth of the amount originally owed, reported Four Corners.

Xenophon is one of many senators urging the government to crackdown on tax evasion, calling for greater transparency and accountability when it comes to tax affairs. But experts and politicians agreed on the program, there will only be success when laws are changed globally to hold big businesses to account.

"The justification that's provided by a lot of these companies is that, well, we're technically operating we believe within the law so that makes it okay -- I think we have to call that for what it is, and that's bulls***," NSW Labor Senator Sam Dastyari said on the program.

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"The reality is that they are operating in a very, very grey area of the law. This isn't a victimless act. Every dollar that's minimised is a dollar that's not going to a school.. and yet these companies are getting away with it, and we're letting them get away with it."
ullstein bild via Getty Images (GERMANY OUT) Juvenile Clown Anemonefish in bleached Sea Anemone, Amphiprion ocellaris, Heteractis magnifica, Cenderawasih Bay, West Papua, Indonesia (Photo by Reinhard Dirscherl/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

Fish are protecting coral on the Great Barrier Reef from bleaching events, storms and predators, but researchers aren't exactly sure how these finned friends are doing it.

While a novice may think fishing is banned on the Great Barrier Reef, this great natural wonder is divided into no-take zones and places where fishing is allowed.

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Over the last 20 years, researchers at the Australian Institute of Marine Science have studied 20 reefs inside no-take zones and 26 reefs that are open to fishing and have found the no-take zones with more fish bounce back faster from disaster.

A free diver examines the extensive damage caused by Cyclone Hamish on the Great Barrier Reef in 2009.

Study lead author Camille Mellin said there was a clear difference between reefs with and without fishing.

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We found that reef communities, such as fish and corals, in no-take zones were less impacted by disturbance and recovered faster than outside no-take zones, Mellin said.

For example, after a crown-of-thorns starfish outbreak it took nearly nine years for the coral community on reefs outside no-take zones to recover, but just over six years inside no-take zones.

Rapid recovery times are critically important, especially when the reef is faced with so many different threats, but equally important is our finding that reefs inside no-take zones actually fared better during the disturbances, on average the magnitude of impacts was 30 per cent lower.
Today is National Hug A Newsperson Day, though doing so does technically violate the terms of Corey Lewandowski's release. Paul Ryan is absolutely not running for president, but on a totally unrelated note, he loves Israel, thinks our politics should be more conciliatory, and hopes your state committee chairman enjoyed that Edible Arrangement. And hundreds of journalists worked tirelessly to detail financial malfeasance by the global elite. For only $1 a week, you, too can subscribe to the Wall Street Journal. This is HUFFPOST HILL for Monday, April 4th, 2016:

CHARLES KOCH PULLING FOR RYAN - Ryan Grim and Sam Stein: "Charles Koch is confident House Speaker Paul Ryan could emerge from the Republican National Convention as the partys nominee if Donald Trump comes up at least 100 delegates shy, he has told friends privately. Koch believes Ryan would be a 'shoo-in' at a contested convention, should the campaign get to that point... As a source close to the brothers told the Huffington Post, they appreciate the agenda he has pursued as speaker, including opposition to tax extenders and heightened warnings against corporate welfare  positions that contrast with the admittedly vague portfolio pushed by Donald Trump. One source close to Ryan said he would only be interested in it if the party could unite behind him, a scenario he cant envision. 'I dont know what to tell you. He doesnt want the nomination. And can you imagine the backlash from the Trump forces if someone who didnt run for president wins the nomination? It would be complete chaos,' he said." [HuffPost]

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Our half-hearted attempt to Vine this situation.

TED CRUZ FEELING A LITTLE THREATENED BY PAUL RYAN - Rosie Gray: "Ted Cruz warned establishment Republicans on Monday of a possible 'revolt' if they try to nominate a compromise candidate at the convention this summer. 'Washington doesnt control what happens,' Cruz told reporters ahead of a taping of Megyn Kellys show here. 'The delegates control what happens.' 'This fevered pipe dream of Washington, that at the convention they will parachute in some white knight who will save the Washington establishment, it is nothing less than a pipe dream,' Cruz said. 'It aint gonna happen. If it did, the people would quite rightly revolt.' 'If over 80 percent of the delegates are Cruz delegates and Trump delegates, under what universe do 1000 Trump delegates or 1000 Cruz delegates go vote for some uber-Washington lobbyist who hasnt been on the ballot?' Cruz said. Cruz didnt name anyone in particular. But this morning, Politicos Playbook reported that establishment Republicans were seriously considering Speaker of the House Paul Ryan as someone who could be nominated at the convention this summer, if none of the current candidates reach 1237 delegates in the primary and the convention is contested." [BuzzFeed]

"He's the most conservative, least establishment member of the establishment," a Republican source told Politico Playbook, referring to the man currently second in the line to the presidency.

Haircuts: Mike McAuliff (h/t Christina Wilkie), Igor Bobic (h/t Igor Bobic).

DELANEY DOWNER - World Socialist Web Site really brings it: "Tens of thousands of impoverished, unemployed adults were cut off food stamps Friday, the first wave of a social catastrophe that could affect more than one million people this year.. It is particularly noticeable that none of the presidential candidates of either capitalist party, including the self-proclaimed 'democratic socialist' Bernie Sanders, has made an issue of the food stamp cutoff that is plunging hundreds of thousands overnight into hunger and destitution." [WSWS.org]

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Behold the most pointless campaign plant in history

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/04/04/internal-memo-reveals-trump-campaigns-mounting-fury-with-its-critics/?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_pptrumpmemo-113am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

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RACISTS DOING WHAT THEY CAN FOR TRUMP - Dana Liebelson: "The presidential candidate for the white nationalist American Freedom Party has resigned from the ticket, complaining that the party is committed to electing Donald Trump and toning down its 'white genocide' message to attract Trump supporters. Internal emails show hes right. 'Ive never had this happen,' said presidential contender and lifelong segregationist Bob Whitaker, in a statement emailed by his senior staffer to The Huffington Post on Friday. 'Ive been in campaigns for fifty years, and Ive never seen anything as screwed up as this.' His campaign added that the partys 'continued focus on Trumps campaign is impossible for Whitaker to work with.' AFP is a minor political party established by racist Southern California skinheads, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. In his presidential campaign, Whitaker has been open about his view that racial diversity is a code word for genocide against white people. But recently, his party has neglected him in order to back Trump, whose rise party leaders see as an opportunity to bring AFP into the mainstream." [HuffPost]

SUPREME COURT TELLS CONSERVATIVE LEGAL ACTIVISTS TO JUST CHILL THE F OUT - Samantha Lachman: "Democrats and voting rights advocates won a huge victory at the Supreme Court on Monday with a unanimous decision preserving the way state legislative districts are currently drawn. In the case Evenwel v. Abbott, conservatives in Texas argued that the votes of eligible voters -- like themselves -- are unconstitutionally diluted because their state counts nonvoters when drawing its legislative districts. Specifically, Texas uses total population data, which includes children, inmates, disenfranchised ex-felons, noncitizen immigrants and others who are unable to vote. The appellants, backed by the activist nonprofit Project on Fair Representation, argued the state should be prohibited from drawing districts in the manner that it currently does. They proposed that the state should instead be required to draw districts by considering the total number of eligible voters or registered voters in a given area. A three-judge panel of a district court in Texas ruled against them in 2014, so they took their case to the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in December." [HuffPost]

REMEMBER: THE GOP HAS TO CHOOSE A VP, TOO - LOL, what if they just give it to Paul Ryan. Igor Bobic: "Presumably, if the convention settled on a candidate squarely on the first or second ballot, the delegates would defer to their candidates decision for a running mate. But if multiple ballots take place with no clear resolution, the backlash could spill over into the vote for the vice presidential nominee. One could for instance foresee a scenario in which Trump wins the n omination, but establishment forces push for a more palatable choice as their vice presidential nominee as a check against Trumps candidacy in the general election." [HuffPost]





In case you missed the Libertarian Party debate, Playboy has a recap.

REPUBLICANS NOT DOWN WITH GAYS, PT. 205,678,910 - But Paul Ryan is sorry for "makers and takers," so it's a kinder party! Alex Isenstadt: "Republicans, already girding for their most tumultuous convention in decades, now have another fight brewing: a divisive battle over gay marriage on the partys official national platformSome of the partys biggest financiers, attempting to transform the GOPs approach, have been helping to bankroll the American Unity Fund, a group that has launched a well-organized, behind-the-scenes effort to lobby convention delegates who will draw up the platform. It is asking them to adopt language that would accommodate same sex marriage...Social conservatives, alarmed at what they view as an effort to topple a central tenet of their movement, are also gearing up. Last week, Tony Perkins, the Family Research Council president and a vocal opponent of same sex marriage, secured one of Louisianas two slots on the platform committee. Perkins, who also served on the committee in 2012, is expected to take the lead in litigating any efforts to change the partys position." [Politico]

BECAUSE YOU'VE READ THIS FAR - Here's a dancing dog .

DONALD TRUMP HAS POOP ON FOX NEWS - Gabriel Sherman: "An odd bit of coincidence had given him a card to play against Fox founder Roger Ailes. In 2014, I published a biography of Ailes, which upset the famously paranoid executive. Several months before it landed in stores, Ailes fired his longtime PR adviser Brian Lewis, accusing him of being a source. During Lewiss severance negotiations, Lewis hired Judd Burstein, a powerhouse litigator, and claimed he had bombs that would destroy Ailes and Fox News. Thats when Trump got involved. 'When Roger was having problems, he didnt call 97 people, he called me,' Trump said. Burstein, it turned out, had worked for Trump briefly in the 90s, and Ailes asked Trump to mediate. Trump ran the negotiations out of his office at Trump Tower. 'Roger had lawyers, very expensive lawyers, and they couldnt do anything. I solved the problem.' Fox paid Lewis millions to go away quietly, and Trump, Im told, learned everything Lewis had planned to leak. If Ailes ever truly went to war against Trump, Trump would have the arsenal to launch a retaliatory strike." [NYmag.com]

COMFORT FOOD

- Physicists have discovered a new state of matter.

- Artist uses bacteria as paint.

- Puppy befriends reflection.

TWITTERAMA

@xeni: I believe Trump is sick and suffering. I can feel compassion for him. But I'd no sooner elect him than hand my car keys to a toddler on meth

@mcckaycoppins: Day Five of the twitter fight between Trump fan and Cruz fan in my @ mentions is shaping up to be the most spirited day yet!

Hillary: "Donald Trump has said that the minimum wage is too high...

Audience member: Hes fired!"

Hillary: Hes fired. Thats funny.

Got something to add? Send tips/quotes/stories/photos/events/fundraisers/job movement/juicy miscellanea to Eliot Nelson (eliot@huffingtonpost.com) or Arthur Delaney (arthur@huffingtonpost.com). Follow us on Twitter @HuffPostHill (twitter.com/HuffPostHill).
In December 2015 I published a Huffington Post piece, "Instead of Honoring Slaveholders, Slave Traders, and Racists," about campaigns to change the names of programs and public facilities named after slaveholders and racists. Since writing that post, I discovered a new one that has special meaning to me; it is the name of a park located in the Highbridge section of the Bronx where I grew up.

As boys growing up in the1950s and 1960s, my friends and I used to play softball and football in John Mullaly Park. It was the largest green space in the neighborhood, stretching from McClellan Street south to E. 164th Street, between River and Jerome Avenues. We also used to cut through the park on our way to Yankee games or to the Macombs track.

According to the New York City Parks Department website, the park honors "John Mullaly (1835-1911), a newspaperman and civic official who was a tireless proponent of green space and the father of the Bronx parks system." Mullaly was born in Belfast, Ireland and came to the United States as a young man where he became a reporter for the New York Herald and editor of the Metropolitan Record, the official publication of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese in New York City. Later in his career Mullaly held municipal jobs as Commissioner of Health and a member of the board of tax assessors and he helped found the New York Park Association.

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I uncovered a dark side of Mullaly's past while studying about how New Yorkers reacted the American Civil War. Mullay was an anti-war "Copperhead" Democrat. At a Union Square rally on May 19, 1863, Mullaly declared "the war to be wicked, cruel and unnecessary, and carried on solely to benefit the negroes, and advised resistance to conscription if ever the attempt should be made to enforce the law." As editor of he Metropolitan Record, Mullaly's call for armed resistance to the military draft led to his arrest following the July 1863 New York City Draft Riots. Over one hundred people died and at least nineteen Black men were beaten to death or lynched by rioters in the worst urban unrest in the United States during the 19th century. Although a racist, Mullaly did not support the murder of Blacks during the rioting. In one Metropolitan Record editorial he advised members of the "superior" race not to turn their anger against an "inferior" one.

Editorials in the Metropolitan Record written by Mullaly leading up to the Draft Riots accused the Lincoln Administration of perverting the war from an attempt to restore the Union into an "emancipation crusade." He charged the "vile and infamous" Emancipation Proclamation would bring "massacre and rapine and outrage into the homes on Southern plantations, sprinkling their hearths with the blood of gentle women, helpless age, and innocent childhood." According to Mullaly's rampage, "Never was a blacker crime sought to be committed against nature, against humanity, against the holy precepts of Christianity."

In the indictment, Mullaly was also charged with counseling Governor Seymour to "forcibly to resist an enrollment ordered by competent authority in pursuance of said act of Congress." After a hearing, however, the case against Mullaly was discharged.

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His biographer reports that after the Civil War Mullaly left the newspaper business and entered city government through connections with the corrupt Tweed Ring and Tammany Hall. This led to his involvement with the annexation of property in the Bronx and the eventual creation of public parks.
Waving flag of Cyprus on the blue sky background, Agia Napa

The Eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus leapt into the headlines with the landing of a hijacked EgyptAir plane. It will soon make headlines again as the US and the UN move to end the 42-year division of that country, through its capital city of Nicosia, by 40,000 Turkish troops. These negotiations will have significant ramifications for the region and the U.S.

Cyprus is a strong U.S. ally and the only western democracy, other than Israel, virtually within sight of Middle Eastern shores. Ending the occupation and division of Cyprus will be crucial to America's security interests.

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If Cyprus' division is ended properly, it can produce untold benefits, including a strengthening of the new geopolitical triangle of America's western democratic allies in the Eastern Mediterranean -- Israel, Greece and Cyprus. This triangle is important for many reasons including their shared natural gas findings. However, if this effort to end Cyprus' division is mishandled, dangerous, unstable elements within the "Turkish occupied" third of Cyprus could gain a constitutionally approved foothold in the country. Some of these elements are responsible for the Cyprus-licensed pickup trucks seen carrying ISIS jihadists in Syria into battle.

Like Berlin during the Cold War, Nicosia stands as the dividing line between freedom and authoritarianism. And, just as President John Kennedy began the world's victory for democracy at that line in 1963 with his famous "ich bin ein Berliner "or "I am a Berliner", we, today, must begin the victory for freedom and humanity by saying, "E-meh Key-pre-os" or "I am a Cypriot". Just as Berlin became the "tipping point" for the demise of a philosophy built on authoritarian rule and atrocities, so too can Nicosia with the coming Cyprus negotiations.

The Cyprus issue has always been worthy of America's undivided attention. For years U.S. Senators, Members of Congress and 1.2 million Greek-Americans have periodically said, "I am a Cypriot". Egregious injustices against Cyprus perpetuated by Turkey, and sometimes even by our own government, led the Cyprus issue to be the only major foreign policy matter in modern history where the US Congress overrode the Executive Branch. Congress enforced the law by imposing a Turkish Arms Embargo following Turkey's 1974 illegal invasion of Cyprus.

The issue of the "Cyprus Missing" epitomizes this ongoing Turkish and periodic U.S. injustice toward Cyprus. Ten years after invading Cyprus, Turkey refused, with the acquiescence of our government, to account for the five Americans and over 1,600 Greek-Cypriot men, women and children they captured alive. Again, the Congress had to pass a law to force our Executive Branch to act and, in doing so, revealed the gruesome truth. A 17-year-old American boy visiting Cyprus from Detroit, Michigan, the other Americans and over 1,500 civilians were executed by the Turkish military and their bodies were unceremoniously dumped in mass graves.

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Large demonstrations of Turkish-Cypriots oppose Turkey's illegal infusion of hundreds of thousands of Turkish citizens onto Cyprus. This infusion is smothering and extinguishing the sophisticated and distinctly different centuries-old Turkish-Cypriot culture, which has been part of a western democracy.

The enormity of the stakes in the Cyprus solution has moved its handling to the attention of our very best. Today's incarnation of President Lyndon Johnson -- perhaps the most persuasive U.S. official in modern history -- is now in charge: Vice President Joe Biden. It is not unusual to see Biden, like Johnson, with his face inches away, clutching the lapels of the person to whom he is explaining that his proposition is in their best interest. Nor is it unusual for Biden, like Johnson, to establish close personal relationships and trust with the decision-makers of an impasse, as he has with the Cyprus issue.

Even Donald Trump, who sees nearly all government officials as "stupid" would admire the no-nonsense steel and velvet effectiveness of Biden. How else could Biden, virtually single-handedly, with Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, put an end to the months-long debt limit log-jam that brought America to within two days of default and economic chaos? Biden has 42 years of intimate knowledge of the Cyprus issue; President Barack Obama's complete trust; and an excellent relationship with Secretary of State John Kerry, who, in the event of his own presidency, would have selected Biden as his Secretary of State. Further powering Biden is an opportunity to spend all of his White House's "chits", as they expire when the Administration ends in 290 days.
Damascus, Rif Dimashq, Syria, Middle East

In 2014, Assad did not win an election.

If political opponents of Assad would be sent to jail for saying the sieges or barrel bombs are a war crime, then the electoral process was rigged to shut out Assad's real opponents.

Supporters of Assad, whether they are powerful nations such as Russia and Iran, or individuals, invariably rely on the 2014 Presidential "elections" in Syria as the cornerstone of the regime's legitimacy. Assad himself often points to these "elections" to buttress his claim as the country's rightful, legitimate leader.

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But the truth is that, like all previous elections under the Assad family's control, the 2014 "elections" and Assad's "victory" were rigged and illegitimate.

The way the regime rigs elections is not in the ultimate count. It is the process -- from eligibility to campaign restrictions -- that is rigged. The process is intentionally designed to be Byzantine in its complexity so that questioning the process is exhausting and arid. But unfortunately it is difficult to understand the extent to which the process in 2014 was a farce without delving into details. These details will probably bore most readers. Indeed, journalists that have interviewed Assad seem to not even know about them. And that is precisely what the regime desires: to deflect all attention from the totally undemocratic nature of the whole election by layering it with Byzantine complexity. This permits the regime to focus only on the (pre-determined) outcome of Assad's victory.

The commencement of this maze is the Syrian Constitution, which requires that a proposed candidate for the Syrian Presidency must secure the support of 15% of the members of Parliament: Syrian Constitution, article 85(3).

It may sound relatively easy.

However, the Syrian Parliament is stacked by the President himself through a maze of constitutional and legislative barriers, appointments and prohibitions.

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To start with, the Syrian Constitution reserves more than 50% of Parliamentary seats for persons who are deemed independent of party affiliation and are "of labor and farmers": Constitution, article 60(2) and the Elections Law, article 19.

Who determines whether a person is of "labor" or "farmer"? Assad appointees. It is done through committees appointed by a Commission. The Commission's members are appointed for the task by the President or the Provincial Governor, an appointee of the President: Elections Law, article 13. If a Committee rules that a potential candidate is not of "labor" or "farmer" then the only avenue to appeal leads to another committee appointed by Assad (and which can be dismissed by Assad).

Of course, there is no independent judiciary in Syria; Assad is the head of the Supreme Judicial Committee, which oversees functioning of the judiciary: Constitution, articles 132, 133. Even the judges of the Supreme Constitutional Court, Syria's highest court, do not have tenure: Constitution, article 143.

The result is that Assad will always have, and has always had, a majority of the seats in Parliament.

Another advantage of having more than 50% of members of Parliament allocated to representatives "labor" or "farmers" is that such members are not members of a political party. They must therefore withstand the pressures of the executive branch, the Ba'ath Party and Assad's ruthless and brutal security services as lone individuals.

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The "non-reserved" seats in Parliament can be contested by individuals and political parties. But a raft of laws makes it impossible for any real democratic will to be expressed.

For political parties to even remain legally registered, the party must abide by Syrian laws: Parties Law, article 31. That's not unreasonable in a democratic environment. But in Syria, the purpose of this law is to crush criticism. It works like this: in Syria it is a criminal offense to make statements that "weaken national sentiment": Syrian Penal Code, section 307. This is one of the "catch-all crimes" that stifle any criticism of Assad. Thus, it would be an offense in Syria if an Assad rival, or any Syrian, says that the siege of Madaya was a war crime. It would be political suicide, and likely actual suicide, to say that Assad, as Commander-in-Chief ordering the siege, was committing war crimes. Similarly, to say that Assad has destroyed the country would be an offense. Such statements would also result in de-registration of the candidate or the political party (and it would also land a candidate person in the torture chambers of Assad's notorious secret services).

The consequence of all the above is that, throughout the 2012 Parliamentary election, not a single candidate or political party criticized Assad's policies or destruction of the country. As if not a single Syrian thinks the tragedy of Syria is Assad's fault. Not one. Needless to say, there are more than 4 million Syrian refugees that would think so. But nevertheless, not one candidate uttered that Syria had become a hereditary dictatorship instead of a republic, though so many Syrians hold this view.

After the 2012 Parliamentary elections no member of the Parliament has ever criticized Assad's policies or destruction of the country or his sieges and starvation of Syrian civilians. A handful of Parliamentarians elected in 2012, such as Ikhlas al-Badawi, fled Syria because they felt Assad had destroyed the country. But not one criticized Assad from within Parliament or even from within Syria.

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Another way in which all political debate is controlled is the Media Law, which prohibits media organizations raising issues that concern the Presidency (i.e., Assad): Media Law, article 26. And it is noteworthy that, since the outbreak of the crisis in March 2011, there has not been one analyst or one news article on Syrian television critical of Assad's. Not one.

There are many similar provisions. The Media Law does not permit a media outlet to use information on military operations, which is inconsistent with the information from the Ministry of Defence: Media Law, article 26. Since Assad denies even using barrel bombs, Syrian media outlets would be committing criminal offenses if they ran stories in which opposition political parties criticized civilian casualties from Assad's barrel-bomb attacks.

Another constraint on possible rivals to Assad is that a candidate must have resided in Syria for the preceding 10 years: Constitution, article 84(5). Just another law to ensure that well respected opposition figures such as Moaz Khatib had no possibility of being nominated. Ironically, had that law been passed at any time prior to 2010, Bashar Assad would not have been entitled to be Syrian President, since Bashar had lived in London until his older brother and the heir apparent to the Assad throne was killed in a car crash. But I overlook that the Syrian Constitution was amended overnight to reduce the Constitutional minimum age from 40 years to 34 years so that Bashar could assume the throne.

So that is the background and nature of the Parliament, which in 2014 had the sacred honor and duty of nominating candidates for President. The overwhelming majority of members of Parliament nominated Assad. For the sake of appearances, two other candidates were also nominated. One of those nominees had been appointed by Assad as a Minister. Neither candidate had ever publicly criticized Assad prior to, or after, their nomination. These were to be Assad's rivals.

During the "Presidential campaign," there were no televised debates. There was no criticism by Assad's "opponents" of the unbelievable destruction wrought on Syria by Assad. Assad's rivals did not criticize sieges and starvation of Syrian civilians by the army. Indeed, Assad's opponents affirmed that Assad's conduct of the war was the correct policy. At times Assad's "opponents" even spoke of his wise handling of the crisis.

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When it came time for voting, the regime's "democracy number crunchers" realized that the voting intentions of the 3.5+ million Syrian refugees could not be controlled. If the refugees could afford to put aside their daily trials, they could turn up to Syrian embassies in Lebanon and Jordan and lodge a protest vote of some sort. That would not look good. So another law was passed. This law provided that refugees who had departed Syria at checkpoints not controlled by the regime were not eligible to vote. Most refugees who escape Syria other than through official crossings are fleeing Assad and are vehemently anti-Assad. So that took care of that segment of the population.

And if all of the above is not enough, there is always the secret service (the mukhabarat) that will torture to death any Syrian that criticizes Assad.
Here's what happens on Wednesday after Wisconsin.

Trump will underperform in Wisconsin tomorrow.

What happens next is predictable, almost ritualistic, as I've written before.

Thus, the shake-up in Trump's campaign on Wednesday is preordained, for several reasons. First, the Wisconsin defeat will provide the alibi, for something already in motion, not considered earlier or even postponed, because Trump doubled down to support his campaign manager, under siege, as further evidence, not of Trump's loyalty, but of the candidate's detachment from reality. Second, the timing is supposed to avoid more searching questions; it won't. Third, Trump wants to saves face, as if the problem doesn't involve him; it does. Fourth, Trump's campaign manager has been managing Trump's rallies, not the campaign, but that's because Trump, favoring a circus barker, played it this way. Fifth, Trump's campaign manager has been a yes man to the candidate, but that's because Trump valued sycophancy over candor.

Some on the Trump campaign team were drawn to Trump for apparent reasons, just like a varied plurality of Republican voters. Trump staff groupies also saw him as a champion of the disaffected, abandoned by a Republican party controlled by the Washington Beltway, the lobbyists, and the Consultant Class. But they, at least some on the team who have campaign experience, despaired of Trump's repeated self-inflicted wounds that defined the Midnight Tweeter not merely as a politically incorrect rebel, but as a discourteous, if not even obnoxious, juvenile, by wide consensus, un-presidential. And the campaign manager was consumed as much with his access to the candidate and consequent self-promotion, as with results, and the Trump plurality has been checked, rather than expansive. Background: the best campaign manager goes about his business quietly, not in the limelight. Hence the campaign mutiny, now unleashed, has been in the making, abbreviated by prior electoral success.

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The timing of the staff shake-up (it will be called a reorganization or enhancement or organic growth) in the wake of Wisconsin is supposed to pretend Tuesday's election results are the reason for the campaign overhaul, as well as the Trump campaign's need to remedy its amateurish disinterest in a convention strategy and its failure to address the concomitant nuts and bolts, to deal with the permutations in convention rules, and to create previously ignored contingencies to regroup if a delegate majority eludes Mr. Trump on the first ballot. But media attention will still return to Trump's most recent awful week, which does explain much of the Wisconsin disintegration.

It appeals to Trump to say that he is new to politics, and that his team has miscalculated, or requires beefing-up for the climax, a realignment of responsibilities, it will be said. But the truth is when he was doing well, Trump imprudently raised the profile of his campaign manager, though Mr. Lewandowski already was a source of deserved controversy. Even if Mr. Lewandowski has erred, and he has, egregiously so, it is unfair to make him the whipping boy, the scapegoat, as the buck stops with Trump. Trump's face saving, if it occurs, is not healthy, because a contrite and (at long last) remorseful Trump, who would (out of character) take responsibility for Wisconsin, would help himself immensely, a necessary preamble if Trump is to salvage his downward momentum, if salvation is still possible.

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The Trump campaign has been one big telegenic rally after another, combined with tweets and daily interviews, often in-person, at least by telephone. Trump's campaign manager directed the circus, but the act failed to change, and he was hardly a fiduciary to the impulsive candidate. Trump wanted it this way, and it seemed to work, or did it?

The campaign manager has been a yes man. Why? Trump does not surround himself with compliant underlings in business. But in politics he saw any skeptic on his team as a naysayer, rather than a useful devil's advocate. The result is that a candidate who should have been briefed regularly on issues, momentous and topical, and grown in substance and insight, that candidate instead has deservedly (for now) unraveled, whether in going after families of terrorists, promoting more nukes on different continents, or punishing women for abortions (even if hypothetically), all this stuff avoidable.

So Trump has found an adult, Paul Manafort, to lead his overdue foray into convention politics. Better late than never, though Mr. Manafort is playing catch-up to the mature Cruz operation; ironically, Paul is the quintessential embodiment of the Beltway Consultant Class, about whom Mr. Trump despairs, and that which he supposedly would overthrow. The candidate will want Manafort to assume an even greater role (gravitas) in the campaign, but Paul has his hands full with a Trump first ballot victory up in the air. Can Paul walk (the delegates) and chew gum (the overall campaign) at the same time, while holding the (up until now) self-destructive candidate in line?

And Manafort knows that the delegate strategy and delegate tactics are both inextricably linked to the candidate and the campaign. For example, he cannot plot to keep or sway delegates if the candidate continues to alienate many voters who actually were open to him.
Colette Pichon Battle gave up a great job working as a corporate immigration lawyer in Washington DC to live in a tent in front of her flooded family home 50 miles from downtown New Orleans. She is now a much honored director of a small but powerful non-profit climate justice human rights firm advocating all along the Gulf Coast. Why the big change in her life? Katrina, climate justice and fish dinners.

Pichon Battle's extensive South Louisiana French Creole Catholic family live in Slidell along Bayou Vincent, which connects directly to Lake Ponchartrain. Free people of color, on her mother's side, who have lived there since the 1700s can trace their roots back to France. Family roots also include people from the Chocktaw Nation and the Caddo Tribe.

Mom was her biggest inspiration. Mom attended segregated public schools before graduating from Southern University at New Orleans. Mom, now a French teacher, was one of the first African Americans in the Peace Corps where she spent years teaching in Morocco. Dad played football at Southern and for the NFL Saints and Browns.

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After high school, Pichon Battle wanted to leave the race problems of the South so she applied all over, even Alaska, and won a great scholarship to attend Kenyon College in Ohio. Her extended family stepped up and put on fish dinners to pay for her airfare to and from Ohio.

Pichon Battle's international studies at Kenyon allowed her to study abroad in Morocco. "Walking in the streets every day surrounded by brown people was terrific! For the first time in my life I was surrounded by people who looked like me," she said. "For the first time I blended in the majority culture. For the first time in my life I did not always have to represent all black people!" Later, she was awarded a post-graduate Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to spend another year in Africa. So she returned to live and study in Mauritania, Morocco and Senegal studying religious culture and practices in North and West Africa.

Pichon Battle returned to the US and attended Southern University Law Center because it was a historically black institution and they gave her a most generous scholarship offer. She found it a vivid contrast to the private white well-resourced Kenyon College but she again did well. When it was time for the Louisiana bar, her family put on more fish dinners to pay the fees and costs.

Pichon Battle always wanted to live in Washington DC. She got her chance in 2004 when she joined a Northern Virginia law firm that did business immigration work for high profile internet and tech companies. She enjoyed living and working there and was learning a lot.

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Then in August of 2005, Katrina hit the Gulf Coast.

In DC, she watched with horror as her home town was hit with storm surges of twenty feet totally flooding the town.

She started hearing from family members. "I got text messages about people being cut out of their roofs and others spending eight hours in water. Some held onto trees until the water receded. Some could not hold on," she recalled.

"When I came back people said "Oh great Coco is home, maybe she can help us with all these papers." I did not know disasters generated so much paper. People were being asked, in the middle of trauma, to sign away rights and legal documents on property and your land that are going to have ramifications for generations. They needed help reading and understanding the papers. When I helped people, they began to thank me and cry.

"It was then I knew that the community that had bought fish dinners to send me to college and law school now needed me to bring back the things I had learned. They invested in me and in my education and my ability to connect to the rest of the world. I felt a loving obligation to come home and help."

So in 2006, Pichon Battle moved back home to help out for a while. For the first two months, she lived in a tent on the front lawn of her family home. Then she moved into her family's 240 square foot FEMA trailer in Slidell. She started a non-profit law firm, Moving Forward Gulf Coast, dedicated to informing people about their rights and helping them protect them. That trailer was her home for the next 24 months.

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Pichon Battle was still living in that trailer when she was recognized by the American Bar Association in 2006 as one of the "Lawyers Who Made a Difference." Her work took her across Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama as Program Director of the Gulf Coast Fellowship for Community Transformation which trained community members and groups across the Gulf in organizing, advocacy, and leadership. She worked with many groups including Oxfam, the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, and other organizations. For Oxfam, she did policy lobbying in Louisiana and Mississippi and helped communities develop multi-racial, cross regional campaigns for low-wage workers and immigrants.

"Five years after Katrina, I was ready to move back to DC. But then in 2010 the BP disaster happened.

"I knew BP was going to be a legal fight. I knew this meant triple the amount of paperwork to the same communities that were just recovering from Katrina. That was the moment I decided to stay.

Now Director of Gulf Coast Center for Law and Policy (GCCLP), a nonprofit public interest law firm and justice center, Pichon Battle is still living in her community. The focus is climate justice for the most overlooked coastal communities across the Gulf: rural communities; African American communities; Native American communities; Latino and Vietnamese communities; women and young adults.

Pichon Battle also serves a lead coordinator for Gulf South Rising, a regional initiative around climate justice in the South. They organized a 33 person delegation to go to Paris to participate in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in late 2015. Delegation participants came from the Gulf States of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. "Our hope is that leaders of Gulf South recognize they have not only remedies within the U.S. legal system and justice system, but ... internationally. We're part of a global South dealing with impacts of extraction. We need to broaden our viewpoint."

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Her organization provides community legal clinics which share legal assistance in areas such as immigration, business development, expungements, FEMA, BP damages issues, and DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). She puts on trainings in racial justice and human rights for local elected black officials and school boards. She recently partnered with the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice to put on a DACA clinic in rural Alabama that attracted over 250 agricultural workers. She does combination expungement and DACA clinics with the Vietnamese community partners like VAYLA.

Her theory of change is that "justice seekers must first be of service to the most rejected of our society. Then we can help develop leaders. Then we can help them develop strategies. Then support their actions to bring about better policies and laws. We need to help people take their power back. Helping them do that is not charity."

Her advice to law students and other advocates? "One, it is never too late to start the work of justice. Two, everything you have been through is helpful to where you are going. Three, have courage. Four, understand that winning cases is not the same as getting justice for people. Five, start in your own community. I always thought I would end up going to Africa to help people, but Katrina showed me I have to focus on my own community. Six, watch out for privilege in the social justice community. If there is no accountability to the communities we serve, it builds resentment instead of alliance. Seven, love the legal system, it is fantastic. For all its flaws it is a good profession. But, make sure to love it enough to change it to make it fair!"
Street view of Trafalgar Square at night in London

Pleas by US government officials regarding the prospects of Britain leaving the EU (known as "Brexit") have become more frequent, and more irritating. And some no longer appear to be pleas, so as much as explicit warnings against a UK departure.

Furthermore, many of the major newspapers throughout the US have editorialized that they also back Britain staying in the EU, yet most of the rationales have been from an economic/trade perspective. This is undoubtedly one of the major issues regarding a Brexit, but is certainly not the whole picture, or even the most important aspect of the referendum for many Brits.

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While the economic implications of a Brexit hold significant implications, a little-discussed issue (within the US, at least) revolves around the political sovereignty of the UK as a member of the EU. When commenting on and discussing a potential Brexit, Americans must also understand this essential aspect of the debate. Although the European Union began as an economic partnership -- it was originally called the European Economic Community (EEC) -- it has subsequently grown into a massive supra-national governmental force. It consists of seven main institutions: the European Parliament, the European Council, the Council of the European Union, the European Commission, the Court of Justice of the European Union, the European Court of Auditors and the European Central Bank. These institutions form a system of government, not merely an economic alliance.

The Union imposes regulations and restrictions on its members, in addition to having a court -- the CJEU -- that can second-guess any EU member Supreme or Constitutional Court regarding the interpretation of European law. And speaking of the economic implications, which should at least be briefly addressed, the UK pays roughly $80 million to Brussels per day. However through various programs the UK receives much of that money back, so the net payment to Brussels per day is actually closer to around $50 million; which works out to roughly $18.4 billion per year (a few billion more than it costs to run the Home Office). Unlike the American constitutional structure, which operates predominantly on judicial supremacy -- regardless of whether it was originally intended to do so -- the British constitutional structure operates on the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. This means that Parliament is recognized as the highest legal authority in Britain, and that the judiciary cannot strike down Acts of Parliament. The doctrine is also coupled with the belief that those with political accountability should be making the most important legal, political and economic decisions throughout the UK. The EU greatly threatens the operation of parliamentary sovereignty, which is the primary argument of many in the Leave Campaign. When the sovereignty implications come into consideration, requests from American government officials and news organizations for Britain to stay in the Union can appear particularly hypocritical. In terms of membership in regional and international agreements/organizations, it is the US -- not Britain -- that often lacks a clear commitment to such issues. Regarding the US, this has been seen time and again: from the lack of ratification of the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations after WWI, to more contemporary examples such as the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto Protocol (both have been viewed as threats to American sovereignty in one way or another, and remain unratified).

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"I see the range of professions, both in the United States and abroad, as under severe strain, because of both internal and external forces." -- Howard Gardner

In the profit-above-all-world of digitization and automation, ethics and the nature of professionalism seem to be in question and under attack from all sides. Will the new robots on the block provide the same expertise and multiple intelligences we expect from human experts? What can be done to preserve and strengthen the quality of our professions?

Today we begin a three-part blog mini-series on this topic with one of The Global Search for Education's most popular contributors, Professor Howard Gardner. In the course of our series, Howard will discuss how all the professions and, in particular education, are affected by our rapidly changing world. He will also share his recommended steps on becoming a professional ethicist.

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Howard Gardner has received numerous honors throughout his lifetime, including a MacArthur prize fellowship. He has honorary degrees from universities around the globe, and has been named one of the 100 most influential intellectuals by Foreign Policy and Prospects magazine for his work in the study and exploration of the theory of multiple intelligences. He directs The GoodWork Project, a large scale effort to identify individuals and institutions that exemplify good work.

In Part 1 of our three-part mini blog series, Howard will discuss why he decided to start a blog about ethics in the professional world and how he thinks ethics is being undermined today.



"For individuals who cannot afford to consult a professional, or for whom no professional is available, an artificial system will typically be much better than the recommendations of a friend or than common sense -- which is all too often common non-sense." -- Howard Gardner

Howard, why a blog called "The Professional Ethicist"?

To begin with, Cathy, the title harbors a triple pun. Firstly, I don't believe that there are such things as professional ethicists, except perhaps for the occasional philosopher. But I, along with many others, have been writing about the ethics entailed in various professions, from engineering to education. While it has improved recently, I have long been disappointed with the quality of the weekly New York Times column called "The Ethicist". One day last year I experienced one of those A-ha moments: "I can do it better!

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Cathy, to turn serious, I believe that the range of professions - from architecture to veterinary medicine, from education to the ministry, are vital and precious human inventions. At the core of each of these professions is a set of values that encompass integrity, service, and dis-interestedness, striving to do what is right independent of personal gain or loss. Sometimes the value is distinctly personal, for example, teachers have obligations to each of their students. At other times, the value veers toward the universal, for example, journalists have an obligation to pursue the truth, fairly and fearlessly.

Alas, I see the range of professions, here in the United States and abroad, as under severe strain, because of both internal and external forces. In launching my blog, I hope to explore the reasons for these pressures and the optimal means of dealing with them, thereby strengthening both the range and the quality of professions.

Do you think that robots with artificial intelligence could ultimately provide the expertise and multiple intelligences that we need from human experts?

It's already clear that artificial intelligence can provide information that we used to secure from experts or that we had to look up ourselves. Just think about Siri, Encore, and the power of many other search engines. There is every reason to believe that these systems will continue to get 'more intelligent'. As I am writing, the best "go" player in the world is struggling to compete successfully with a newly developed computational system.

I think we need to separate three issues. Firstly does the system reach its 'answers' in the same way that human beings do? This is the difference between 'artificial intelligence' and 'human simulation. Secondly does the system manifest its intelligence? For many of us, there's a big difference between typing a question on our pad, as opposed to conversing with a robot or avatar. The more that the robot resembles a human being, the more satisfying it will be to many individuals, although not to me! Thirdly can the computational system provide a recommended course of action that is as solid, or even more solid, than a well-trained professional? In a way that the client finds satisfying? For the foreseeable future (say a decade or two), I think that the answer is no. But I would add that for individuals who cannot afford to consult a professional, or for whom no professional is available, an artificial system will typically be much better than the recommendations of a friend or than common sense - which is all too often common non-sense.

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"We could find ourselves without an investigative press; without fair-minded judges; without physicians who prescribe what is appropriate to each patient. These outcomes would be disastrous." -- Howard Gardner

Very interesting and so back to your blog. I believe you launched it last September?

Yes, I began my blog in a very quiet way. After writing half a dozen blogs, I wrote a major essay on the future of the professions (about 5000 words), posted it in early December, and sent it to two dozen colleagues. I was surprised and elated by the range and depth of the responses - both the 40 or so that have been posted and several that were sent privately. Contributors educated me about the similarities and differences between medieval guilds and modern professions; the undue power and secrecy of certain professional organizations; the different statuses and profiles of professions across Europe and Asia.

Initially, I had planned to write a single blog in response. But so many vital issues were brought up that I am posting ten separate blogs in the coming months.

Why do you think the ethical foundations of all professions are being undermined?

The full range of professions are vulnerable because of three major factors. Firstly, a smugness that the value of professions is self-evident and can therefore be taken for granted. Secondly, the power of the marketplace which has induced many professionals across the professional landscape to chase the highest income rather than preserving the core of expert service; and finally, the digital media, which holds the promise - or the threat - of replacing many, if not most tasks formerly carried out by professionals.

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Taken together, these three forces would suffice to destroy the professions. Further, it isn't clear what entities/institutions/vocations could or would take their place. We could find ourselves without an investigative press; without fair-minded judges; without physicians who prescribe what is appropriate to each patient. These outcomes would be disastrous.

Join us next week for Part 2 of In Search of Professional Ethicists, in which Howard Gardner will focus on Ethics in Education.



C. M. Rubin and Howard Gardner

(All photos are courtesy of Shutterstock and CMRubinWorld)

Join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (U.S.), Dr. Leon Botstein (U.S.), Professor Clay Christensen (U.S.), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (U.S.), Dr. MadhavChavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (U.S.), Professor Andy Hargreaves (U.S.), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (U.S.), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Honourable Jeff Johnson (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Dr. EijaKauppinen (Finland), State Secretary TapioKosunen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Lord Ken Macdonald (UK), Professor Geoff Masters (Australia), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Pak Tee Ng (Singapore), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (U.S.), Richard Wilson Riley (U.S.), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Professor Manabu Sato (Japan), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (U.S.), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (U.S.), Yves Theze (LyceeFrancais U.S.), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (U.S.), Sir David Watson (UK), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.

The Global Search for Education Community Page
"Don't you feel alone traveling solo?"



I've lost count of how many times I've been asked this question. By now, my response rolls off the tongue, ready to slip from my lips the second I detect someone's inevitable surprise when mentioning I'm headed to a foreign city solo:

"I'm never alone."

When traveling, I explain, I frequently meet friends, family or even strangers that live at the destination or are tagging along. Yet... sometimes the answer to this perpetual question feels too packaged, as if I'm trying to convince myself more than the asker.

The truth is, I've often straddled the line between solitude and loneliness; the better part of my recent visit to Austin was spent contemplating why.

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I was not supposed to go to Austin alone. I originally planned the trip with a partner and instead found myself arriving with a freshly broken heart. Despite feeling vulnerable, sad, and alone, my stubborn ego pushed me to haul myself across the country because - as I proudly told this person when he questioned whether I was still going - "it's what I do." I didn't recognize then that the word "it" was substituting for an answer that had not yet been found.

Though I was staying with friends of friends, much of my time was spent wandering on my own, deeply entrenched in my thoughts. Seeing Austin through a lens of loneliness pushed me to confront why "I'm never alone" didn't feel completely honest - and how true solitude can rise from loneliness' shadow.



There is a vast difference between solitude and loneliness.

Unlike New York, Austin's hot spots are spread out in pockets throughout the city. This was particularly tedious considering the atrocious public transportation system. I was reminded of how pedestrian unfriendly the city was whenever I couldn't walk more than ten minutes without hitting highways or eerily isolated street intersections. Even so, I strolled through the city as much as I could, observing the loneliness that crept in after prolonged stretches of time.



Loneliness is an intimate companion whom I've struggled with time and again, especially during my bouts of depression years ago. There is a sort of quiet despair in feeling lonely. It is wading into a crowd and being seen by no one; helplessly watching life flow by from inside a glasshouse; meekly resigning oneself to drowning alone in a tempestuous sea of fears. Ironically, loneliness' cocoon of misery has the power to envelop one so comfortably as to make this state of being a sought-out habit. Like all habits, the tendency to slip back into its familiarity will never fully vanish - but it can be surpassed.

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To be alone and have conviction that we are not forgotten is an enormous challenge.

I stumbled upon solitude through travel. I remember discovering it when I was seventeen, silently sitting cross-legged on a mountain peak 3,000 feet in the air. In that suspended moment when all that existed was Montana's majestic landscape and my thoughtless awe, I acknowledged my existence as more than just a warm body cyclically inhabiting this earth.

When alone in a foreign place, stripped of familiarity and routine, there is little choice but to inhabit our self - as the saying goes, wherever we go, there we are. Solitude, I've found, is mindfully choosing to be present. This means feeling unencumbered by the weight of our own company, asking questions about our life's purpose, and more importantly, listening to the answers. The point of solitude, as a dear friend of mine eloquently stated, is "learning how to live with ourselves and our decisions."

This type of thinking can be uncomfortable because it will inevitably resurface our demons. Therein lies the essential difference... loneliness is succumbing to these demons, while solitude is accepting them.

Solitude asks us to adopt a kinder, gentler approach to self-observation: one that refutes judging, bashing, and expectations. It is being aware of the insecurities that haunt us without fighting them. Only when we can look at ourselves and stop fearing what we see, will these insecurities begin to dissipate.

Unfortunately, a common knee-jerk reaction to the prospect of accepting insecurities is running away from them. Which brings me to my next point...

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Too often, solitude is misinterpreted as an escape rather than a method of self-discovery.

While Austin's rapid influx of tech companies, low cost of living, and artsy, non-Midwestern feel has made it one of the fastest growing cities in America, it more so felt like a giant Texan suburb woke up after years of slumber and hastily decided to become a trendy East Coast city. I saw Austin as a place that was rushed to develop faster than it was ready to in order to accommodate external circumstances rather than its own needs.



I could strangely relate.

Living in a big city, external circumstances - in my case, work and social life - come first. At times, I am the last person I prioritize, only opting to be alone when utterly exhausted and worn down by a busy schedule. This time warps into outwardly focusing my attention to mind-numbing activities such as zoning out on social media. More often than I'd wish, spending time with myself is treated as a fallback rather than a default.

We have an entire lifetime to get to know our self. So why does it seem like so many of us don't properly make the time?

Solely approaching solitude as "alone time" is dangerous. It gives us permission to passively live day in and day out through the same routines as long as we have those brief moments of alone time to disrupt them. When every day becomes a collection of habits rather than mindful, fully lived decisions, we cease being active participants in our personal growth.

Traveling solo is innately intimidating because it forces me to look inward and stay. Physically wandering alone is easy; the challenge is falling into the habit of being alone without being present.

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I became hyper-aware of this while exploring Austin. Phone deliberately tucked away in my pocket, I strolled down the notoriously grungy Dirty 6 neighborhood. I took myself out to a nice dinner downtown and was pleasantly surprised to see how quickly the initial self-consciousness of eating alone evaporated. I craned my neck at the foot of the Texas Capitol and admired how tiny the massive, overly ornate structure made me feel. With a mix of unease and enjoyment brought on by my company, I recognized how rarely I spend time with myself like this when I'm stuck in the entrails of my daily routine.

In the midst of this solitude, I still couldn't help but be plagued by a tinge of loneliness. As much as I wanted to resent the emotion, I'm just realizing how perfectly acceptable and necessary it is. When pursued in excess, solitude isolates us - but it is loneliness that motivates us to seek connection.

Solitude needs loneliness to appreciate the beauty of companionship.



We risk becoming hopelessly sad when we spend too much time by ourselves. Sometimes, these pangs of loneliness can be exactly what we need to understand that both solitude and loneliness are necessary to a meaningful existence.

As I moved through this dynamic city, I was continuously reminded of people I love. Browsing through Uncommon Objects, a store famous for upholding the "Keep Austin Weird" reputation with its eclectic selection of antiques, I kept spotting delightful little objects that echoed inside jokes with loved ones. Sitting at the top of Mount Bonnell, a hilltop park at the highest point in the city, I felt an ache to share the sunset view of Lake Austin and its surrounding Texan hills. Walking through Barton Springs, a beautiful park with natural water springs, I caught myself wishing I, too, was basking in the sunshine with friends.

People enrich our lives in ways we cannot even imagine - loneliness redeems us by reminding us of that. It incites us to seek out human connection where we wouldn't have otherwise, connections that inevitably help us evolve by leading to insightful observations about others and ourselves.

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While solitude creates a world of self-awareness, loneliness keeps us from egotistically spiraling off into it. There is a balance that must be maintained between the two: if we sacrifice solitude and allow ourselves to become consumed by loneliness, we will never know who we really are. But only pursuing solitude and rejecting all feelings of loneliness boxes us into our selfishness, where we risk retreating so deeply as to shut out the beauty of companionship.

I treasure my ability to travel alone, to be unafraid to get up and go without relying on others. Even so, it's a bittersweet independence: in my strive for freedom, I risk convincing myself that I don't need people - when I really do. As much as I love traveling solo, many of my best memories are precious precisely because they are shared. Every person I've met in my journey has served a purpose. Without them, my travels would be reduced to a sterile collection of sightseeing tickets and beautiful photos.

Don't I feel alone traveling solo? Sometimes.
Flowers lie on the plaque that lays at Lorraine Motel, now part of the National Civil Rights Museum, where Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968 in Memphis, April 4, 2008. April 4th marks the 40th anniversary of the assassination of the civil rights leader who was shot as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. REUTERS/Mike Segar (UNITED STATES)

48 years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. His death was and is an incalculable loss to his family and our nation.

I have spoken and written many times about Dr. King. I have described him as "the 20th century's pre-eminent American Apostle of non-violence and an exemplar commitment to the pursuit of personal excellence."

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At the University of San Francisco, I teach a 15-week course, "FROM SLAVERY TO OBAMA-Renewing The Promise of Reconstruction." In the weekly assignments during this historical journey, when the subject matter of the emergence of the "Civil Rights Movement" and role and leadership of Dr. King occurs, I tell my students the following:

"In 12 years and 4 months, from 1956 to April 4th, 1968, the date of his assassination, with the exception of The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and the Presidency of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr. may have done more to achieve racial, social, political justice and equality than any other person or event in the previous 400+ history of The United States."

Some of what is written or referenced here today in remembrance of Dr. King may have previously been written in this space. If so, the magnitude of our nation's indebtedness to him more than off-sets the risks of earlier repetition.

No one single speech, sermon, book, or article can fully reflect the magnitude of who he was or the impact he has had on our nation since his murder. However, there is one writing or document that comes most close to accurately reflecting the essence of this extraordinary man. This is his 1963 "Letter From A Birmingham Jail."

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Dr. was jailed in Birmingham on more than one occasion. One of the first was Good Friday, April 12th, 1963. Only his local Birmingham lawyer Arthur Shores and me, as his then personal lawyer from New York were permitted to visit him.

During my initial visit I took from him notes he had written on blank spaces of old newspapers and paper towels in response to the text of a full page ad in the Birmingham Herald newspaper. The ad was signed by local white clergyman. On my consecutive subsequent visits, I would bring to him blank sheets of paper for him to continue his response to those who had signed the ad.

In their ad the clergymen described Dr. King as "an outside agitator". His "Letter From A Birmingham Jail" was his response to the clergyman. In my opinion, his answer to the ad was THE "20th Century Manifesto For Political, Racial and Social Justice in America". Among other things he wrote:

...When you are harried by day and haunted by night by nagging signs reading 'white" men and "colored"; when your first name become "nigger" and your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name become 'John', and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at a tip-toe stance never quite knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments, when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of 'nobodiness'--There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to plunged into and abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair.

Four months later, at the March on Washington For Jobs and Freedom Dr. King, in his "I Have A Dream" speech, publicly challenged the conscience of America to end racial segregation. A few days after his speech, Assistant Director of the FBI, Sullivan, wrote a Memo to J. Edgar Hoover, the Director, in which King was described as the "most dangerous Negro in America". He wrote: "Personally, I believe in the light of King's powerful, demagogic speech" that "he stands head and shoulders over all other Negro leaders put together when it comes to influencing great masses," "We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro and national security."

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In spite of the efforts to destroy Dr. King clandestinely and openly he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize the following year.In presenting the prize to him, Gunnar Jahn, Chairman of the Nobel Committee, among other things, said on December 10th, 1964 :

"Martin Luther King's belief is rooted first and foremost in the teaching of Christ, but no one can really understand him unless aware that he has been influenced also by the great thinkers of the past and the present. He has been inspired above all by Mahatma Gandhi6, whose example convinced him that it is possible to achieve victory in an unarmed struggle"

Today we pay tribute to Martin Luther King, the man who has never abandoned his faith in the unarmed struggle he is waging, who has suffered for his faith, who has been imprisoned on many occasions, whose home has been subject to bomb attacks, whose life and the lives of his family have been threatened, and who nevertheless has never faltered".

Twelve years later, in the April, 1976: Church Committee Reports on Domestic Surveillance and Other illegal activities by U.S. Intelligence Agencies the Committee revealed that the FBI had still been engaged in efforts to discredit Dr. King. In describing some of the Bureau's illegal activities, the Committee wrote:

In early 1968, Bureau headquarters explained to the field that Dr. King must be destroyed because he was seen as a potential "messiah" who could "unify and electrify" the "black nationalist movement". Indeed, to the FBI he was a potential threat because he might "abandon his supposed 'obedience' to white liberal doctrines (non-violence)." In short, a non-violent man was to be secretly attacked and destroyed as insurance against his abandoning non-violence.

Persons today who seek to address the needs of the homeless and poverty, stopping 24/7 wanton gun violence, fighting against anti-Semitism, Islamaphobia, sexism, ending the squandering of our national treasury on "Regime Changes", and The Black Lives Matters Movement, as long as it remains non-violent and inclusive, are the most authentic current reflections of Dr. King's legacy.

Although I was very critical of the leadership of Robert Kennedy as Attorney General during the Civil Rights Movement, I came to respect him during the last years of his life. One such defining moment occurred in Gary Indiana, when he was campaigning in the Democratic primaries for president of the United States in April 1968. He received the news of Dr. King's assassination before an almost all black audience in Gary, Indiana knew that he had been killed in Memphis TN.

Standing on top of a flatbed truck he told those assembled about the news of Dr. King's assassination. He said:

I have some very sad news for all of you, and, I think, sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world; and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee. Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black -- considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible -- you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization -- black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand, and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion, and love. For those of you who are black and are tempted to fill with -- be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States. What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black
Everyone is all aflutter about the coming changes for Cuba now that US President Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro have attended a baseball game together in Havana and generally made nice to each other.

It doesn't look like anything resembling electoral, multi-party democracy is on the way. Before, during and after Obama's visit, Raul's secret police busily rounded up dissidents and demonstrators, and his brother Fidel--now the skeletal voice of a faded revolution--was quick to let Obama know that the island would take no lessons about democracy.

Okay, so what about the economy, the long-crippled example of failed Communist planning, arbitrary control of pricing and confiscatory depression of workers' wages?

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There, changes are afoot. During Obama's visit, foreign reporters marveled at the blossoming of little private hotels and restaurants, by the ubiquitous hustling of contraband cigars, the endless moonlighting of workers looking to increase their meager income, the farmers selling pork, and the rampant prostitution. But the bigger change was ignored: Raul Castro's creation of a state-sponsored oligarchy of which the Castro family and its cronies are in charge.

It's a process of dynastic consolidation familiar to any post-Communist to state-capitalist experience, be it China, Vietnam or contemporary Russia as rejiggered by Vladimir Putin to reestablish Kremlin dominance of the economy.

In Cuba, the Castros have been especially brazen in transferring important pieces of the economy to themselves and associates.

The clearest exhibit is a government organization called Grupo de Administracion Empresarial SA, the "Business Administration Group," which operates state-owned companies that account for at least half the business revenue produced in Cuba, including 40 per cent of foreign currency earnings from tourism and imports. GAESA owns the best hotels on the island, most retail store chains, rent-a-car companies and import agencies. It is set to build a new tourist complex along Havana's old port and run a new port and free-trade zone being constructed west of the city. These are big-ticket items of Cuba's economy.

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GAESA is a family firm. It is headed by Luis Alberto Rodriguez, Raul's son-in-law. He's also an army general and Raul, of course, is the comandante en jefe. If you want to make money in Cuba, Rodriguez holds the keys to the vault.

This all represents Cuba's emerging profile as a family-military dictatorship. Raul was Defense Minister when his brother Fidel ruled Cuba. Over the years, he has sprinkled military officers throughout key positions in the economy.

In the 1990s, when the Soviet Union broke up and Moscow left Cuba to its own devices, Cuba collapsed into a decade of deprivation known euphemistically as the "Special Period." Raul, looking for ways to replace the old Soviet barter arrangements that had buttressed the country's economy, dispatched military officers to negotiate investment deals with foreigners. Among them were mobile phone ventures and rents of free-trade zones plunked into former Soviet-built military bases. He sent elite Soviet trained officers to hotel and accounting schools abroad and encouraged them to read motivational business management books.

The 90s was also a Special Period for GAESA, which originated as an arm of the military industries department. It began to absorb more and more economic resources: Raul added CIMEX, then Cuba's largest commercial consortium, to GAESA's portfolio, along with Habanaguanex, which owned real estate, hotels and restaurants in the decrepit, but potentially lucrative, gem of Old Havana.

GAESA grew to run a domestic air service (using old Soviet transport planes!), tourist attractions (swim with dolphins!) and of course the important sugar, cigars and tourist industries.In short, Raul created an olive green state-within-a-state. And at GAESA, he put his favorite son-in-law in charge of much of it.

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Does this mean that the Castro family is enriching itself and friends through nepotism and cronyism? A hint of the new oligrachy's personal advantages was published last year in El Heraldo de la Habana, the "Havana Herald." El Heraldo, an official Communist Party newspaper, printed a story about Fidel's youngest son frolicking aboard a yacht in the Mediterranean.

"Thanks to his father, Gulliver, Jr. travels quite frequently," the paper wrote in a satirical mode. "He appears as a giant enjoying himself." By the way, Antonio is a physician but also holds the post of "Global Ambassador of the World Baseball Softball Confederation." I wonder how he has time to treat patients.

It's not as if Cubans don't know what's going on. Dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez commented, "Calling for austerity while living in opulence has been common practice for Cuban leaders for more than half a century."

A few years ago, a Cuban author in the official National Artists and Writers Union of Cuba wrote: "It has become evident that there are people in government and state positions who are preparing a financial assault for when the revolution falls. Others likely have everything ready to produce the transfer of state property into private hands, like what happened in the former Soviet Union." (The critic was quickly kicked out of the Communist Party.)

This economic-political stranglehold appears headed toward creation of a North Korea-style dynasty. On that score, Raul's son, Alejandro Castro Espin, is in the spotlight.

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Castro Espin is a colonel in the Interior Ministry, which runs Cuba's General Intelligence Directorate, as well as the General Directorate of Counter-Intelligence and the General Directorate of Internal Order, both internal spy agencies. Last year, when Raul Castro met with Obama at regional summit in Panama, Castro Espin was part of the small group that sat in the room. He also accompanied Raul on his visit to the Vatican last year. Raul's chief bodyguard is Castro Espin's nephew.
Why deal with one dysfunctional family when you can handle two? A. Rey Pamatmat apparently considered the question and decided there was no reason to stick to a limit. Hence House Rules, empathetically directed by Ralph B. Pena at HERE, in which Vera (Mia Katigbak) and feuding daughters Momo (Tiffany Villarin) and Twee (Tina Chilip) and Ernie (Jojo Gonzalez) and sons Rod (James Yaegashi), and JJ (Jeffrey Omura) not only cross paths because they live in the same apartment complex but because Momo and Rod are physicians on staff at the same hospital where Ernie is slowly recovering from a stroke.

Lots of coincidences then keep the Filipino-American families quarreling with each other while also frequently catering to each other's needs. Shuffled into the mix is Henry (Conrad Schott), Rod's boyfriend and yet another physician. When he dumps Rod for obscure reasons and when the unsettled Twee begins a romance with cartoonist JJ, things heat up much further.

Pamatmat clearly believes the family that fights intramurally together eventually comes right together and demonstrates the conviction sharply. The playwright presents the characters in crisp three dimensions so that the audience understands and pulls for them no matter how unpleasantly they behave among themselves before breaking through. The message not necessarily hew but carefully served here is that familial love isn't easy, and neither is romantic love.

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Every one of the players does commendably by the taut script and on Reid Thompson's attractive set that includes parts of two living rooms, a hospital bed with shielding curtain and a hospital corridor. Well done by all.

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Songwriter Peter Mills has long deserved to be far better known than he is. Perhaps he isn't as a result of committing himself to the Prospect Theater Company, which he founded with director Cara Reichel. Together, they've presented any number of strong musical pieces over the past couple of decades that also should be better known.

Here's the latest, and it couldn't be in bigger contrast with The Honeymooners, the tuner featuring Mills's lyrics and supposedly bringing him to Broadway next season. He and Reichel call the current production Death for Five Voices, and for it Mills has added words to the music of aristocratic 15th-16th-century composer Carlo Gesualdo, who may be best known for murdering his wife and her lover and getting away with it under the old crime passionel justification. That Carlo was acquainted with bishops, cardinals and popes didn't hurt his dicey situation.

It's Mills's and Reichel's notion to tell the sordid tale and many incidents leading up to it by way of Gesualdo's music. Incidentally, the man was partial to madrigals. Much of the Mills-Reichel contrivances are quite beautiful, especially as sung by Nathan Gardner as the committed (in more ways than one?) composer, Manna Nichols as loving yet philandering wife Maria D'Avalos, Nicholas Rodriguez as family friend and Maria's lover Fabrizio Carafa, Meghan McGeary as waspish mother Gesualdo, L. R Davidson as lady-in-waiting Sylvia Albano, Jeff Williams as rising clergyman Alfonzo Gesualdo and Ryan Bauer-Walsh as manservant Pietro Marziale.

One of the mesmerizing Death for Five Voices features is the frequent quintet-plus harmonizing. Max Mamon conducts the four-piece band. The elegant set, on which many shelves holding thick white candles are prominent, is by Ann Bartek, and Sidney Shannon took care of the beautiful period costumes.

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Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey has sued troubled for-profit college giant ITT Tech for alleged deceptive practices and abuses of students in the state. Healey filed the suit last Thursday in Norfolk, Mass., Superior Court, and her office disclosed the action in a press release today, which says that ITT, from 2010 to 2013, was at its Norwood and Wilmington, Mass., locations "engaging in unfair and harassing sales tactics and misleading students about the quality of its Computer Network Systems program, and the success of the program's graduates in finding jobs."

The complaint asserts that a graduate of the Computer Network Systems program has said of ITT, "[T]hey get so much of your money invested they make it impossible to withdraw without a huge financial loss. They treat students as purely a source of income."

The release quotes Healey as saying, "These students were exploited and pressured to enroll with the promise of great careers and high salaries, but were instead left unable to repay their loans and support their families."

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According to the complaint, ITT's admissions representatives told prospective students that 80 to 100 percent of graduates obtained jobs in or related to their field of study, when in fact actual placement rates were 50 percent or less, and those rates included graduates with jobs outside their field of study, internships, short-term jobs, selling computers at a big-box store -- in fact any job that required the use of a computer.

In explaining to Healey's office why ITT counted as placed "a facilities manager whose routine tasks included unclogging drains and ordering janitorial supplies," ITT's Vice President of Career Services said, "I see bullets [on the job description] that support the fact that there would be IT systems within the facility" and that "somebody is doing IT work to ensure that those systems are up, operational...."

Healey alleges that ITT admissions representatives were expected to call up to 100 prospective students per day "and were publicly shamed or fired if they failed to meet their quotas." In addition, "Admissions representatives pressured prospective students to enroll regardless of whether they were likely to succeed in the program."

Moreover, according to the press release, "ITT also advertised and promoted hands-on training and personalized attention through its program, but students said their experience involved the use of outdated technology, absent teachers, or being told to 'Google' the answers to questions."

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Healey also alleges that ITT "steered" students to high-interest student loans that they could not afford to repay.

Healey is seeking to recover from ITT civil penalties of $5000 per violation, injunctive relief, and restitution, including the return of tuition and fees to students.

Last year ITT received $664 million in taxpayer money from federal student grants and loans nationwide, down from a peak of $1.1 billion a few years ago. ITT has some 130 campuses, with some 50,000 students, in 38 states.

But ITT has a troubling record.

Last May 12, the Securities and Exchange Commission sued ITT, its CEO Kevin Modany, and ITT's former CFO, charging that the company "made various false and misleading statements and omissions to defraud ITT's investors by concealing the extraordinary failure" of its student loan programs. The SEC charged that ITT management "engineered a campaign of deception and half-truths that left ITT's auditors and investors in the dark concerning the company's mushrooming obligations" regarding its private student loan program.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau also has sued ITT, charging in a 2014 complaint that "ITT subjected consumers to undue influence or coerced them into taking out ITT Private Loans through a variety of unfair acts and practices designed to interfere with the consumers' ability to make informed, uncoerced choices."

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The attorney general of New Mexico has sued ITT for alleged "unfair, deceptive, and unconscionable acts and practices ... in connection with the advertising, marketing, and selling of educational services" to prospective students. At least twelve more state attorneys general -- from Arkansas, Arizona, Connecticut, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington -- have been probing ITT.

A federal whistleblower lawsuit unsealed in January added more allegations of awful abuses, such as ITT admitting a blind student to a computer networking program that was unsuited to assisting the student, who dropped out within weeks and got stuck with the bill.

ITT denies it has done anything wrong and is contesting the pending charges.

In February ITT settled a series of lawsuits brought by shareholders that charged ITT with various securities law violations. Under the agreement, approved preliminarily by Manhattan federal judge J. Paul Oetken on Jan. 29 but still subject to objections by investors, ITT will pay lawyers for the plaintiffs $1.1 million and commit to a series of "corporate governance reforms.

The company is in precarious financial condition. ITT stock trades today at about $2.94 a share, down from $92.30 in July 2011. In October the U.S. Department of Education put delays and new restrictions on the delivery of student aid to ITT, after the Department concluded that ITT had failed to properly account for federal aid money since at least 2009 and failed to comply with prior Department orders to strengthen financial controls. The Department had already, in 2014, placed ITT on a probationary "heightened cash monitoring" status and required the company to post an $80 million letter of credit.

But every single day more students across the country enroll at ITT Tech, lured by the taxpayer-financed grants and loans that the U.S. Department of Education continues to provide.

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UPDATE 04-04-16 1:24 pm: ITT Tech released a statement reading in part:

ITT Educational Services, Inc. (ITT/ESI) is disappointed that the Office of the Massachusetts Attorney General recently filed suit. The litigation follows the Office's wide-ranging fishing expedition that lasted for more than three years. Although ITT/ESI cooperated fully in the investigation, and presented evidence that its conduct was lawful, the Attorney General's Office has suddenly elected litigation over working with ITT/ESI to address any legitimate concerns it might have about ITT/ESI's practices. ITT/ESI also regrets that the Attorney General's Office, despite its lengthy investigation, provided no notice to ITT/ESI of many of its accusations until days before filing suit. Even then, the Attorney General's Office withheld all but the vaguest description of its claims and denied ITT/ESI any meaningful opportunity to provide further information that could have addressed those issues. Moreover, some of the claims rest on a biased and selective portrayal of the facts. For example, the complaint purports to identify "actual" placement rates for graduates of the ITT Technical Institutes but omits any explanation for how the Office calculated those rates. It appears that the Attorney General's Office generated its own unreliable placement rates based on incomplete information it collected by surveying a small subset of individuals many years after they graduated. ITT/ESI has contemporaneous documentation of the placement rates and has painstakingly explained to the Attorney General's Office how that documentation was derived and collected. The complaint also quotes testimony out of context and disregards key facts demonstrating the institution's genuine commitment to securing outstanding job opportunities for its graduates and to producing reliable and well-documented placement statistics. ITT/ESI is confident that the facts will demonstrate that its policies and practices were sound, and that its representations were both fair and truthful. The Attorney General's action is all the more disappointing because it extends Massachusetts' woeful record of hostility toward career colleges that train non-traditional and underserved students. At a time when Massachusetts is experiencing a severe shortage of technically-trained professionals, this action will have a negative effect on the education and employment climate in Massachusetts. ITT/ESI will dedicate the necessary resources to defend ourselves against these claims; and the ongoing focus of our more than 10,000 employees across the nation remains on assisting our students' efforts to complete their programs of study successfully and obtain employment in their chosen fields. We are proud of our work over the last 47 years, and we intend to continue our mission of helping people improve their lives through the pursuit of high-quality, career-based education.
Indian Border Security Force (BSF) soldiers patrol over a footbridge near the Line of Control (LoC), a ceasefire line dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan, at Sabjiyan sector of Poonch district, in this August 8, 2013 file picture. On the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, there are still barriers separating communities around the world, from the barbed wire fence dividing the two Koreas, the fence around the Spanish enclave of Melilla, to the sectarian Peace Wall in Belfast, the Israel-Gaza barrier and the border separating Mexico from the United States. Picture taken August 8, 2013. REUTERS/Mukesh Gupta/Files (INDIAN-ADMINISTERED KASHMIR - Tags: ANNIVERSARY CIVIL UNREST MILITARY POLITICS SOCIETY) ATTENTION EDITORS: PICTURE 11 OF 28 FOR WIDER IMAGE PACKAGE 'THE WALLS THAT DIVIDE'TO FIND ALL IMAGES SEARCH 'WALLS DIVIDE'

A Nuclear Armageddon in the Making in South Asia

Undoubtedly, for nearly two decades, the most dangerous place on Earth has been the Indian-Pakistani border in Kashmir. Its possible that a small spark from artillery and rocket exchanges across that border might -- given the known military doctrines of the two nuclear-armed neighbors -- lead inexorably to an all-out nuclear conflagration. In that case the result would be catastrophic. Besides causing the deaths of millions of Indians and Pakistanis, such a war might bring on nuclear winter on a planetary scale, leading to levels of suffering and death that would be beyond our comprehension.

Alarmingly, the nuclear competition between India and Pakistan has now entered a spine-chilling phase. That danger stems from Islamabads decision to deploy low-yield tactical nuclear arms at its forward operating military bases along its entire frontier with India to deter possible aggression by tank-led invading forces. Most ominously, the decision to fire such a nuclear-armed missile with a range of 35 to 60 miles is to rest with local commanders. This is a perilous departure from the universal practice of investing such authority in the highest official of the nation. Such a situation has no parallel in the Washington-Moscow nuclear arms race of the Cold War era.

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When it comes to Pakistans strategic nuclear weapons, their parts are stored in different locations to be assembled only upon an order from the countrys leader. By contrast, tactical nukes are pre-assembled at a nuclear facility and shipped to a forward base for instant use. In addition to the perils inherent in this policy, such weapons would be vulnerable to misuse by a rogue base commander or theft by one of the many militant groups in the country.

In the nuclear standoff between the two neighbors, the stakes are constantly rising as Aizaz Chaudhry, the highest bureaucrat in Pakistans foreign ministry, recently made clear. The deployment of tactical nukes, he explained, was meant to act as a form of deterrence, given Indias Cold Start military doctrine -- a reputed contingency plan aimed at punishing Pakistan in a major way for any unacceptable provocations like a mass-casualty terrorist strike against India.

New Delhi refuses to acknowledge the existence of Cold Start. Its denials are hollow. As early as 2004, it was discussing this doctrine, which involved the formation of eight division-size Integrated Battle Groups (IBGs). These were to consist of infantry, artillery, armor, and air support, and each would be able to operate independently on the battlefield. In the case of major terrorist attacks by any Pakistan-based group, these IBGs would evidently respond by rapidly penetrating Pakistani territory at unexpected points along the border and advancing no more than 30 miles inland, disrupting military command and control networks while endeavoring to stay away from locations likely to trigger nuclear retaliation. In other words, India has long been planning to respond to major terror attacks with a swift and devastating conventional military action that would inflict only limited damage and so -- in a best-case scenario -- deny Pakistan justification for a nuclear response.

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Islamabad, in turn, has been planning ways to deter the Indians from implementing a Cold-Start-style blitzkrieg on their territory. After much internal debate, its top officials opted for tactical nukes. In 2011, the Pakistanis tested one successfully. Since then, according to Rajesh Rajagopalan, the New Delhi-based co-author of Nuclear South Asia: Keywords and Concepts, Pakistan seems to have been assembling four to five of these annually.

All of this has been happening in the context of populations that view each other unfavorably. A typical survey in this period by the Pew Research Center found that 72% of Pakistanis had an unfavorable view of India, with 57% considering it as a serious threat, while on the other side 59% of Indians saw Pakistan in an unfavorable light.

This is the background against which Indian leaders have said that a tactical nuclear attack on their forces, even on Pakistani territory, would be treated as a full-scale nuclear attack on India, and that they reserved the right to respond accordingly. Since India does not have tactical nukes, it could only retaliate with far more devastating strategic nuclear arms, possibly targeting Pakistani cities.

According to a 2002 estimate by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), a worst-case scenario in an Indo-Pakistani nuclear war could result in eight to 12 million fatalities initially, followed by many millions later from radiation poisoning. More recent studies have shown that up to a billion people worldwide might be put in danger of famine and starvation by the smoke and soot thrown into the troposphere in a major nuclear exchange in South Asia. The resulting nuclear winter and ensuing crop loss would functionally add up to a slowly developing global nuclear holocaust.

Last November, to reduce the chances of such a catastrophic exchange happening, senior Obama administration officials met in Washington with Pakistans army chief, General Raheel Sharif, the final arbiter of that countrys national security policies, and urged him to stop the production of tactical nuclear arms. In return, they offered a pledge to end Islamabads pariah status in the nuclear field by supporting its entry into the 48-member Nuclear Suppliers Group to which India already belongs. Although no formal communique was issued after Sharifs trip, it became widely known that he had rejected the offer.

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This failure was implicit in the testimony that DIA Director Lieutenant General Vincent Stewart gave to the Armed Services Committee this February. Pakistans nuclear weapons continue to grow, he said. We are concerned that this growth, as well as the evolving doctrine associated with tactical [nuclear] weapons, increases the risk of an incident or accident.

Strategic Nuclear Warheads

Since that DIA estimate of human fatalities in a South Asian nuclear war, the strategic nuclear arsenals of India and Pakistan have continued to grow. In January 2016, according to a U.S. congressional report, Pakistans arsenal probably consisted of 110 to 130 nuclear warheads. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, India has 90 to 110 of these. (China, the other regional actor, has approximately 260 warheads.)

As the 1990s ended, with both India and Pakistan testing their new weaponry, their governments made public their nuclear doctrines. The National Security Advisory Board on Indian Nuclear Doctrine, for example, stated in August 1999 that India will not be the first to initiate a nuclear strike, but will respond with punitive retaliation should deterrence fail. Indias foreign minister explained at the time that the minimum credible deterrence mentioned in the doctrine was a question of adequacy, not numbers of warheads. In subsequent years, however, that yardstick of minimum credible deterrence has been regularly recalibrated as Indias policymakers went on to commit themselves to upgrade the countrys nuclear arms program with a new generation of more powerful hydrogen bombs designed to be city-busters.

In Pakistan in February 2000, President General Pervez Musharraf, who was also the army chief, established the Strategic Plan Division in the National Command Authority, appointing Lieutenant General Khalid Kidwai as its director general. In October 2001, Kidwai offered an outline of the countrys updated nuclear doctrine in relation to its far more militarily and economically powerful neighbor, saying, It is well known that Pakistan does not have a no-first-use policy. He then laid out the thresholds for the use of nukes. The countrys nuclear weapons, he pointed out, were aimed solely at India and would be available for use not just in response to a nuclear attack from that country, but should it conquer a large part of Pakistans territory (the space threshold), or destroy a significant part of its land or air forces (the military threshold), or start to strangle Pakistan economically (the economic threshold), or politically destabilize the country through large-scale internal subversion (the domestic destabilization threshold).

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Of these, the space threshold was the most likely trigger. New Delhi as well as Washington speculated as to where the red line for this threshold might lie, though there was no unanimity among defense experts. Many surmised that it would be the impending loss of Lahore, the capital of Punjab, only 15 miles from the Indian border. Others put the red line at Pakistans sprawling Indus River basin.

Within seven months of this debate, Indian-Pakistani tensions escalated steeply in the wake of an attack on an Indian military base in Kashmir by Pakistani terrorists in May 2002. At that time, Musharraf reiterated that he would not renounce his countrys right to use nuclear weapons first. The prospect of New Delhi being hit by an atom bomb became so plausible that U.S. Ambassador Robert Blackwill investigated building a hardened bunker in the Embassy compound to survive a nuclear strike. Only when he and his staff realized that those in the bunker would be killed by the aftereffects of the nuclear blast did they abandon the idea.

Unsurprisingly, the leaders of the two countries found themselves staring into the nuclear abyss because of a violent act in Kashmir, a disputed territory which had led to three conventional wars between the South Asian neighbors since 1947, the founding year of an independent India and Pakistan. As a result of the first of these in 1947 and 1948, India acquired about half of Kashmir, with Pakistan getting a third, and the rest occupied later by China.

Kashmir, the Root Cause of Enduring Enmity

The Kashmir dispute dates back to the time when the British-ruled Indian subcontinent was divided into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan, and indirectly ruled princely states were given the option of joining either one. In October 1947, the Hindu maharaja of Muslim-majority Kashmir signed an instrument of accession with India after Muslim tribal raiders from Pakistan invaded his realm. The speedy arrival of Indian troops deprived the invaders of the capital city, Srinagar. Later, they battled regular Pakistani troops until a United Nations-brokered ceasefire on January 1, 1949. The accession document required that Kashmiris be given an opportunity to choose between India and Pakistan once peace was restored. This has not happened yet, and there is no credible prospect of it taking place.

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Fearing a defeat in such a plebiscite, given the pro-Pakistani sentiments prevalent among the territorys majority Muslims, India found several ways of blocking U.N. attempts to hold one. New Delhi then conferred a special status on the part of Kashmir it controlled and held elections for its legislature, while Pakistan watched with trepidation.

In September 1965, when its verbal protests proved futile, Pakistan attempted to change the status quo through military force. It launched a war that once again ended in stalemate and another U.N.-sponsored truce, which required the warring parties to return to the 1949 ceasefire line.

A third armed conflict between the two neighbors followed in December 1971, resulting in Pakistans loss of its eastern wing, which became an independent Bangladesh. Soon after, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi tried to convince Pakistani President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to agree to transform the 460-mile-long ceasefire line in Kashmir (renamed the Line of Control) into an international border. Unwilling to give up his countrys demand for a plebiscite in all of pre-1947 Kashmir, Bhutto refused. So the stalemate continued.

During the military rule of General Zia al Haq (1977-1988), Pakistan initiated a policy of bleeding India with a thousand cuts by sponsoring terrorist actions both inside Indian Kashmir and elsewhere in the country. Delhi responded by bolstering its military presence in Kashmir and brutally repressing those of its inhabitants demanding a plebiscite or advocating separation from India, committing in the process large-scale human rights violations.

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In order to stop infiltration by militants from Pakistani Kashmir, India built a double barrier of fencing 12-feet high with the space between planted with hundreds of land mines. Later, that barrier would be equipped as well with thermal imaging devices and motion sensors to help detect infiltrators. By the late 1990s, on one side of the Line of Control were 400,000 Indian soldiers and on the other 300,000 Pakistani troops. No wonder President Bill Clinton called that border the most dangerous place in the world. Today, with the addition of tactical nuclear weapons to the mix, it is far more so.

Kashmir, the Toxic Bone of Contention

Even before Pakistans introduction of tactical nukes, tensions between the two neighbors were perilously high. Then suddenly, at the end of 2015, a flicker of a chance for the normalization of relations appeared. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a cordial meeting with his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, on the latters birthday, December 25th, in Lahore. But that hope was dashed when, in the early hours of January 2nd, four heavily armed Pakistani terrorists managed to cross the international border in Punjab, wearing Indian Army fatigues, and attacked an air force base in Pathankot. A daylong gun battle followed. By the time order was restored on January 5th, all the terrorists were dead, but so were seven Indian security personnel and one civilian. The United Jihad Council, an umbrella organization of separatist militant groups in Kashmir, claimed credit for the attack. The Indian government, however, insisted that the operation had been masterminded by Masood Azhar, leader of the Pakistan-based Jaish-e Muhammad (Army of Muhammad).

As before, Kashmir was the motivating drive for the anti-India militants. Mercifully, the attack in Pathankot turned out to be a minor event, insufficient to heighten the prospect of war, though it dissipated any goodwill generated by the Modi-Sharif meeting.

There is little doubt, however, that a repeat of the atrocity committed by Pakistani infiltrators in Mumbai in November 2008, leading to the death of 166 people and the burning of that citys landmark Taj Mahal Hotel, could have consequences that would be dire indeed. The Indian doctrine calling for massive retaliation in response to a successful terrorist strike on that scale could mean the almost instantaneous implementation of its Cold Start strategy. That, in turn, would likely lead to Pakistans use of tactical nuclear weapons, thus opening up the real possibility of a full-blown nuclear holocaust with global consequences.

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Beyond the long-running Kashmiri conundrum lies Pakistans primal fear of the much larger and more powerful India, and its loathing of Indias ambition to become the hegemonic power in South Asia. Irrespective of party labels, governments in New Delhi have pursued a muscular path on national security aimed at bolstering the countrys defense profile.

Overall, Indian leaders are resolved to prove that their country is entering what they fondly call the age of aspiration. When, in July 2009, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh officially launched a domestically built nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine, the INS Arihant, it was hailed as a dramatic step in that direction. According to defense experts, that vessel was the first of its kind not to be built by one of the five recognized nuclear powers: the United States, Britain, China, France, and Russia.

Indias Two Secret Nuclear Sites

On the nuclear front in India, there was more to come. Last December, an investigation by the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity revealed that the Indian government was investing $100 million to build a top secret nuclear city spread over 13 square miles near the village of Challakere, 160 miles north of the southern city of Mysore. When completed, possibly as early as 2017, it will be the subcontinents largest military-run complex of nuclear centrifuges, atomic-research laboratories, and weapons- and aircraft-testing facilities. Among the projects aims is to expand the governments nuclear research, to produce fuel for the countrys nuclear reactors, and to help power its expanding fleet of nuclear submarines. It will be protected by a ring of garrisons, making the site a virtual military facility.

Another secret project, the Indian Rare Materials Plant, near Mysore is already in operation. It is a new nuclear enrichment complex that is feeding the countrys nuclear weapons programs, while laying the foundation for an ambitious project to create an arsenal of hydrogen (thermonuclear) bombs.

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The overarching aim of these projects is to give India an extra stockpile of enriched uranium fuel that could be used in such future bombs. As a military site, the project at Challakere will not be open to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency or by Washington, since Indias 2008 nuclear agreement with the U.S. excludes access to military-related facilities. These enterprises are directed by the office of the prime minister, who is charged with overseeing all atomic energy projects. Indias Atomic Energy Act and its Official Secrets Act place everything connected to the countrys nuclear program under wraps. In the past, those who tried to obtain a fuller picture of the Indian arsenal and the facilities that feed it have been bludgeoned to silence.

Little wonder then that a senior White House official was recently quoted as saying, Even for us, details of the Indian program are always sketchy and hard facts thin on the ground. He added, Mysore is being constantly monitored, and we are constantly monitoring progress in Challakere. However, according to Gary Samore, a former Obama administration coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction, India intends to build thermonuclear weapons as part of its strategic deterrent against China. It is unclear, when India will realize this goal of a larger and more powerful arsenal, but they will.

Once manufactured, there is nothing to stop India from deploying such weapons against Pakistan. India is now developing very big bombs, hydrogen bombs that are city-busters, said Pervez Hoodbhoy, a leading Pakistani nuclear and national security analyst. It is not interested in nuclear weapons for use on the battlefield; it is developing nuclear weapons for eliminating population centers.

In other words, as the Kashmir dispute continues to fester, inducing periodic terrorist attacks on India and fueling the competition between New Delhi and Islamabad to outpace each other in the variety and size of their nuclear arsenals, the peril to South Asia in particular and the world at large only grows.
Most of us grew up hearing the mantra "Don't be a quitter," and we've internalized it to the point where we feel guilty even if we don't finish a book that's boring us to death. Our parents weren't entirely wrong in saying that persistence is necessary for success, but sometimes quitting is the most effective course of action. Whether it's a failed project, a thankless job, or a doomed relationship, quitting can be a virtue.

"Quitting is leading too." - Nelson Mandela

As it turns out, some of us are really good at knowing when to quit, while others have a hard time getting "unstuck." Research from the University of Rochester found that people are motivated by either "approach goals" or "avoidance goals."

Those who fall into the approach camp are motivated by challenges and don't waste time trying to solve problems that simply don't have a feasible solution. In other words, they know when to quit.

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People motivated by avoidance goals, however, worry a lot more about failing. They want to avoid failure at all costs, so they keep plugging away at things, long after logic suggests it's time to move on. This is typically a much less productive way to work.

Knowing when to quit is a skill that can be learned. If you tend to get stuck on things long after it's obvious that what you're doing isn't working, you can train yourself to do better. You just need to practice quitting. Thankfully, life provides plenty of opportunities to do this. Here are some things we should all quit doing.

Quit doubting yourself. Confidence plays a huge role in success. Hewlett-Packard conducted an interesting study whereby they analyzed the process through which people applied for promotions at the company. Women, it turned out, only applied when they met 100% of the criteria for the job they wanted, while men applied when they met 60% of the criteria. The researchers postulated that one of the (many) reasons men dominated the upper echelons of the company is that they were willing to try for more positions than females. Sometimes confidence is all it takes to reach that next level. The trick is, you have to believe it. If you doubt yourself, it won't work. Faking confidence just doesn't produce the same results.

Quit putting things off. Change is hard. Self-improvement is hard. Scrounging up the guts to go for what you want is hard, and so is the work to make it happen. When things are hard, it's always easier to decide to tackle them tomorrow. The problem is that tomorrow never comes. Saying you'll do it tomorrow is just an excuse, and it means that either you don't really want to do it or that you want the results without the hard work that comes along with it.

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Quit thinking you have no choice. There's always a choice. Sure, sometimes it's a choice between two things that seem equally bad, but there's still a choice. Pretending that there isn't one makes you a victim who is voluntarily taking on a mantle of helplessness. To play the victim, you have to give up your power, and you can't put a price on that. To succeed at the highest level, you have to quit giving your power away.

Quit doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Albert Einstein said that insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Despite his popularity and cutting insight, there are a lot of people who seem determined that two plus two will eventually equal five. The fact is simple: if you keep the same approach, you'll keep getting the same results, no matter how much you hope for the opposite. If you want different results, you need to change your approach, even when it's painful to do so.

Quit thinking everything is going to work out on its own. It's tempting to think that it's all going to work out in the end, but the truth is that you have to make it work. This has many implications. Don't expect your boss to notice when you're ready for a promotion, don't expect your colleague to stop sloughing work off on you if you're always willing to do it, and don't think that anyone is going to stop walking all over you as long as you allow it. Everything is not going to magically work out on its own; you have to be proactive and take responsibility for yourself.

Quit saying "yes." Every "yes" you utter is a tradeoff. By saying "yes" to one thing, you're saying "no" to something else. Saying "yes" to staying late at work, for example, might mean saying "no" to the gym or to time spent with your family. Research conducted at the University of California, San Francisco, showed that the more difficulty you have saying "no," the more likely you are to experience stress, burnout, and even depression. Saying "no" is indeed a major challenge for many people. No is a powerful word that you should not be afraid to wield. When it's time to say "no," avoid phrases such as I don't think I can or I'm not certain. Saying "no" to a new commitment honors your existing commitments and gives you the opportunity to successfully fulfill them. When you learn to say "no," you free yourself from unnecessary constraints and free up your time and energy for the important things in life.

Bringing It All Together

There are dozens of ways we get in the way of achieving our full potential. We doubt ourselves, we decide that something is just too hard, or we tell ourselves that we'll worry about it tomorrow. If you really want to succeed--and I mean really succeed--stop focusing so much on what you should be doing and, instead, take a really good look at the things you should quit doing.


A still from "Live, Love, Refugee" a photography exhibit by Omar Imam

I'll admit I'm treading a narrow path between love and hate for the Middle East, at this very moment.

My reasons? Well I've noticed a shift in the way women are treated as well as behave in certain beloved Arab worlds that shall remain nameless. Also, I can't help but feeling offended every time the word "infidel" is used these days. Because it is done in a serious tone -- not jokingly as this wonderfully named film did years ago -- and with the implication that my life and safety are worth less than the life and safety of someone who prays to a different god.

But just when I find myself venturing down a road of no return, fueled on by the panic-loving news media and the terrorist actions of a few dangerously misguided criminals who watched way too many video games as teenagers, in comes a festival of cinema, food, art, photography and dance -- to show me the right way once again.

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The Middle East Now festival in Florence, Italy is a celebration of life, and love. In fact, this year their theme is "Live & Love Middle East", and it couldn't come at a better time, with a better motive. The Middle East Now is the only festival of its kind to include the entire Middle East in its line-up... Yes Israel has and always will be part of the region, and the folks who program the festival don't allow political or religious agendas to cloud their own "cinema with a conscience" mission.

Every year, I find more to discover through this boutique festival, perfectly placed in the enchanting Renaissance city of Florence, where the world first came out of the Middle Ages and discovered how to be civilized again, through art. Inshallah, may this happen again...

This year, I crave the cultural elegance instituted by the festival founders Lisa Chiari and Roberto Ruta, a duo who truly understand the need for conversation, information and communication to reach a global understanding. It is within the welcoming arms of this year's Middle East Now that I plan to reconnect with a region that will eventually come out from under the shadows of extremism, violence, displacement and confusion, to become once again the epicenter of the civilized world.

Here are a few highlights, which are bound to find many more cultural companions to crowd my heart, once the festival kicks off on April 5th.

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Discovering a favorite anti-hero in Eyes of a Thief

I've long been a fan of imperfect heroes, and I find cinema is always better when an underdog is involved. In Najwa Najjar's Eyes of a Thief, which was Palestine's entry to the Foreign Language Oscar race last year, I found both those prerequisites within the character of Tareq, an antihero played with wondrous nuances by Egyptian superstar Khaled Abol Naga. Apart from Naga being the best actor to come out of the Arab world in a long, long while (dare I say, since Omar Sharif? Yeah, I do!) Najjar possesses a great talent for keeping her audience intrigued, without using commonplace cinematic tactics. I went into Eyes of a Thief after having read some of the reviews and I said it then and I'll repeat it now, that's a mistake. The film builds beautifully if approached as the mystery that it's meant to be, so do yourself a favor and skip reading about it. Just watch it!

The film will be the closing night selection of this year's edition of the festival, featuring a special musical performance by Algerian singer/songwriter Souad Massi, who co-stars along Naga. And, fingers crossed, a personal appearance by both the actor and filmmaker Najjar.

Kamal Mouzawak -- Make falafel, not war

I think culture is best transmitted through food. If we all brought to a proverbial common table our favorite dish and sat down to share it with strangers, we would discover that what we have in common is much more plentiful than what makes us different.

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Farmer, food artisan and culinary activist Kamal Mouzawak hails from Lebanon, but to hear him speak in this TEDx video above, one would think he's Italian, or Spanish or originating from anywhere else that celebrates bread, love and life. Make that human, I mean. Mouzawak is the founder of both Souk el Tayeb, an organic market that features products from local Lebanese farms and Tawlek, a cooperative restaurant in the Mar Mikhael neighborhood of Beirut, where every week he invites a different local cook to prepare typical Lebanese dishes from different parts of the country. His presence in Florence will encourage a discussion of similarities while also celebrating our differences, which to me represents the perfect balance of life. He'll host a special dinner on the 7th of April at the famed Teatro del Sale, as well as teach a cooking class on April 9th at the Scuola d'Arte Culinaria Cordon Bleu.

Connect with the real Syria, through "Our Limbo" and "Live, Love, Refugee"



An image by Natalie Naccache from her exhibit titled "Our Limbo"

Multi-cultural master photographer Elliott Erwitt once said, wisely, "photography is an art of observation... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them." How many of us have stood in front of an image at an art show, or glanced at a photograph held just a moment longer on our televisions and found ourselves heartbroken? I know I have and I can still tell you today what those images were and why they touched me so deeply. Both photography exhibits at this year's Middle East Now deal with Syria, a country we've all pretty much thrown to the dogs. And yet there are still people like professor Thomas Webber, an American who has called Damascus home for the past four decades, finding poetry within its walls, as I read recently in this AP article.

In this same vein, Lebanese photographer Natalie Naccache has immortalized a group of young Syrian women who continue to live their daily lives as citizens of their majestic country, and yet watch its story from afar... From the far corners of Qatar, Dubai, London and NYC, the women of "Our Limbo" are featured in a photo diary of life put on hold, away from the place they long to call home once again.

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In "Live, Love, Refugee" Beirut-based, Syrian born photographer Omar Imam shows the human faces of the daily migrant crisis Europe is experiencing, often lost behind the headlines. A bit reminiscent of the series Humans of New York, with stories to go along with the photos, the exhibit is bound to tug at the heartstrings. I'm bringing a box of tissues along, just in case. Both shows open on April 9th and run through the month of April at Aria Art Gallery.

Degrade, and the wondrous twin brothers duo from Gaza

When you first meet Palestinian filmmakers and artist duo Tarzan and Arab Nasser, who in cinematic circles are just known as Tarzan and Arab, no last name needed, you may wonder, as I did, if they are as wild as they appear and if their incredibly colorful persona will translate to the big screen.

They have a wonderfully poetic story accompanying them, they watched their first film in a movie theater in the US, thanks to a benefactor who heard that Tarzan and Arab had never had a chance to watch cinema in a cinema in Gaza, where they grew up. The twin brothers, apart from being striking in every way, are also incredibly kind, funny and don't take themselves too seriously, which to me is always a sign of greatness. So, that's how I feel about them. But what about their first feature, Degrade, which premiered last year in Cannes and stars Palestinian superstar Hiam Abbass? Did it make the grade? The short answer is yes, even if some of the critics don't agree. Of course, what do critics know anyway?!

That said though, I would also like to see more from the brothers, and their producer Rashid Abdelhamid, something where they step off the beaten path and make a film that explores all the wondrously poetic, artistic spirit they possess, both inside and out.

Made in Palestine Project -- fashion as resistance

While we are still on the subject of Palestine and Abdelhamid, the enterprising producer behind Tarzan and Arab has come up with a fashion line of traditional Palestinian keffiyeh redefined in a non-traditional way. He'll be bringing his latest collection to Florence, to my favorite shop Gerard to be exact, on opening night to kick off the festival in style.

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To someone who loves clothes and food as much as films, this makes an already mind-blowing festival seem like a dream come true, adding just the right amount of fashionista to the mix. Plus the scarves are all one-of-a-kind sustainable creations made in Palestine and perhaps it's time we adopt the slogan "Make Fashion, Not War!" Oh, and don't even get me started on men who have the courage to wear pink!

For all info about the seventh edition of Middle East Now, which runs from April 5th through the 10th, check out their website.
By Scott Dewey

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the "Iron Lady" of the UK's local version of the global neoliberal conservative reaction of the late 1970s against the various more liberal social and fiscal policies of the earlier postwar decades, reportedly carried in her purse a copy of Adam Smith's famous book, The Wealth of Nations.

The Wealth of Nations is a behemoth; my pocket paperback copy runs to more than 1,200 densely printed pages and is two inches thick. So the Iron Lady was enduring significant opportunity costs by carrying that book around with her, instead of all the other potentially useful or enjoyable items that might have fit within the same space and weight within the limited extent of a handbag.

Thatcher, who was unquestionably a highly intelligent woman, as well as clearly obsessive and ideologically rigid, may actually have read Smith's book in its entirety, perhaps even more than once, and certain favorite passages multiple times. She was a busy woman, though, and cannot have had that much time for pleasure reading. So it seems likeliest that she carried the book around primarily for the comfort and confidence of always having close to her what was, for her, the holy book of her neoliberal, free-market secular religion--much as some other people, depending on their beliefs, might carry around the Christian Bible, the Muslim Q'uran, or a pocket copy of the U.S. Constitution (or in some cases just the Bill of Rights, or only the Second Amendment).

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It is also fair to say that most people--even those who, like Thatcher, wave around The Wealth of Nations like a holy book and hold up Smith as a prophet of the secular religion of free enterprise--have not read the book. Nor even half of it (600 pages) or a quarter (still a dense, time-consuming 300 pages). Particularly not the extensive passages of the book that address various issues of concern to early economic theoreticians in the 1700s that are largely irrelevant and ignored today (sort of like certain books and chapters of the Old Testament that are mostly bypassed because they describe such a different world, with such different concerns, that we have trouble understanding them today).

No, Adam Smith's important and deservedly famous early exploration of the operation of capital at the micro- and macroeconomic levels (primarily the latter, regarding matters such as monetary policy and free trade between nations) is a work that is revered based upon passages taken out of context, and like many other famous books (Karl Marx' Das Kapital, Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species, and Rachel Carson's Silent Spring spring to mind), Smith's book is adored (or perhaps in some cases reviled) by people who already know (or think they know) what is in the book without ever having read any of it, or not more than a few brief excerpts. Such books and their authors, used in that manner, become simplified symbols and mere placeholders for ongoing, often simplistic political, philosophical, and rhetorical debates in the present that are largely oblivious to whatever is actually in the book and to the wider intellectual context of the book and its times.

In short, for devoted free-market groupies, The Wealth of Nations symbolizes Capitalism as we know it today, worshipped like a religion in all its supposed glory and perfection, and for such people, like some religious fundamentalists regarding their holy book of choice, there is not much need to look at any other book (unless, perhaps, it's by Hayek). They already know that their holy book says whatever they want it to say--whatever it actually says.

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So Adam Smith and his book have been transformed into mere two-dimensional figureheads for political and ideological purposes, sort of like the oversized posters and banners emblazoned with the likeness of Chairman Mao or various Middle Eastern dictators for state-sponsored political rallies.

Adam Smith deserves better than that.

Which is why I want to pull Smith back out of that reduced, simplified, distilled symbolic status and discuss his life and work, and the context of his life and work, in a less cartoonish fashion.

For there is more to Smith than just Capitalism or The Wealth of Nations.

Just to provide some context on the taking of Smith out of context, consider what may be the one thing he is generally most remembered for today: the "invisible hand" of self-interest that guides the market and the economy. From all the attention devoted to that invisible hand, one might well tend to think that much of The Wealth of Nations, or at least a chapter or two, would be focused specifically on that point. Not so. Smith mentioned the now-famous invisible hand briefly, in passing, one time, effectively as a footnote to other discussion. He emphatically did not contend that self-interest, pure and simple and all by itself, offers the solution to all human problems; he made the more mundane, restrained, and reasonable observation that the butcher and the baker do not provide the rest of us with food out of the goodness of their hearts, or following some prearranged master plan, but rather apply their particular skills and industry to benefit themselves, which in turn winds up benefiting the rest of us who need to be fed, and who usually are, thanks to the butcher and the baker working in their own self-interest to help provide our needs.

Thus, Smith identified the invisible hand of self-interest as one significant factor (potentially and implicitly among various others) that goes into the overall functioning of a normal human economy. He did not say it was the only factor, or the only one that matters, even for an economy, let alone for a wider society including other activities and institutions beyond the strictly economic. Had Smith wished to indicate that the invisible hand of self-interest is in fact the only principle in human affairs that really matters, he certainly could have done so easily enough. He did not; instead, he mentioned the invisible hand briefly and in passing. It is only certain later writers and theoreticians, ironically claiming to be acting in the name of their patron saint Adam Smith, who have transformed the invisible hand of self-interest into the single master mainspring of all human policy and affairs, the be-all and end-all, the only principle that really matters or is even worth thinking about.

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For the sake of analogy, this bizarre cult of the invisible hand, taking a relatively minor footnote out of context and magnifying it into a master plan for all humanity throughout all eternity, would be comparable to going to the Christian Bible, fixating upon the brief statement in the Book of Exodus, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," ignoring the whole rest of both the Old and New Testaments, and creating a cult of obsessive, single-minded witch-hunting in the name of the Bible. Yes, that's an extreme example; but it also actually does provide a fitting analogy, for the taking of the "invisible hand" out of context has also been extreme and has led to rather extreme results.

Leaving aside the specific issue of the invisible hand, it also crucial to be aware that although Adam Smith was obviously a hugely important and influential early explorer of principles of economic organization, he emphatically never said, or indicated in any way, that economics is the only thing that really matters in human affairs, or even that economic considerations are the primary considerations, compared to which all other aspects of human existence are merely secondary and peripheral at best--in effect, religious worship of the economy for the economy's own sake. Again, such assumptions are more the products of later writers and institutions claiming to be disciples of Adam Smith, speaking and acting in his name, than of Smith himself.

Here it's worth pointing out that although Wikipedia states outright that The Wealth of Nations was Smith's "magnum opus," and most of us living today would agree, because that book is what we remember Smith for, and most of us are unaware that he ever wrote anything else--Smith himself did not necessarily see things the same way. For Smith had written an earlier book--The Theory of Moral Sentiments (published in 1759, hence predating Wealth of Nations by seventeen years)--and from that he was known as a distinguished moral philosopher long before he ever gained fame as an economic theoretician. Although Smith lived a relatively shy, quiet, private life and ordered that all his papers be burned after his death, so that not that much is known of the details of his personal life and views beyond whatever appears in his published works, it is thought that the earlier book was actually his favorite intellectual child, the one that he saw as his magnum opus. [Among other sources, Professor Alan B. Krueger of Princeton makes that point in the introduction to my copy of The Wealth of Nations: "In all likelihood, [Smith] died firmly believing that The Theory of Moral Sentiments was his most important and influential work."] There is no question that Smith continued to tweak and adjust The Theory of Moral Sentiments to the end of his life--apparently more so than with The Wealth of Nations--clearly indicating that he continued to care about it and view it as significant, rather than as merely an old relic left behind after The Wealth of Nations. Moreover, although later economics groupies might tend to assume that the earlier book was just a sideshow, a sort of warm-up opening act for the main event, it is likely that Smith saw things exactly opposite: the book on morality came first because it had priority in his own mind. Granting that Smith also valued and took great pains over the monumental and lengthy work on economics that consumed so many years of his life, it is simply important to remember that, unlike us in the economics-fixated modern world of today who only care about the later book, Smith himself clearly saw them both as important, with his relative ranking of the two quite possibly differing from ours.

[And he took about eighteen years working on the first book, also.]

Indeed, comparing Theory of Moral Sentiments with Wealth of Nations tends to demonstrate how, throughout his life, Smith, like his friend and fellow philosopher David Hume and other thinkers of those times, was concerned with trying to discover the best way to balance the observed and undeniable reality of the principle of self-interest with other, higher, restraining moral factors. He was NOT proposing that self-interest is all that matters and all that is necessary to form and regulate human individuals and societies.

Unlike the "invisible hand," buried in its marginal place in the later book, Smith placed principles other than self-interest front and center in his earlier book:

"How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner. That we often derive sorrow from the sorrows of others, is a matter of fact too obvious to require any instances to prove it; for this sentiment, like all the other original passions of human nature, is by no means confined to the virtuous or the humane, though they perhaps may feel it with the most exquisite sensibility. The greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without it."

[Smith, notably, was writing before the first early diagnoses, in the early nineteenth century, of the condition we now call psychopathy, which was called "moral insanity," and refers to people who generally lack any vestige of the moral sentiments Smith described and assumed. Psychopaths may be the only people who truly exist in a mental world of pure, unadultered self-interest (and vice versa?).]

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In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith acknowledged that the moral capacity of individual humans is, however, limited by the "weakness of [their] powers" and the "narrowness of [their] comprehension," such that "The administration of the great system of the universe . . . the care of the universal happiness of all rational and sensible beings, is the business of God and not of man." Nor did Smith offer any simple, pat, "feel-good" conventional answers about the fundamental nature of morality; he was well aware of many of the problematic aspects that plague any theory of morality, including its relationship with self-interest and the difficulty of finding a truly objective grounding for morality--the problem famously explored by Smith's friend Hume and referred to by philosophers as "Hume's Guillotine." The "invisible hand" also made a brief earlier appearance in the earlier book in a passage reflecting Smith's characteristically Enlightenment-era faith in social systems such as societies and economies ultimately acting in a self-balancing, self-correcting fashion.

Adam Smith was part of, and a believer in, the great eighteenth-century European intellectual ferment that we call, generally, the Enlightenment; in particular, he, along with Hume, was a key figure in the Scottish Enlightenment, an intellectual flowering that did great credit to a traditionally relatively small, poor, marginalized nation. As many readers will remember from high school or college Western Civilization courses, the earlier Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment that followed were profoundly shaped and influenced by the rediscovery of ancient texts from classical Greece and Rome (along with advanced mathematical and other works from the medieval Arabic world, technologies from China and the Middle East, and so on). One of the defining general characteristics of the ancient texts was a belief in a basic order, balance, and harmony in the world and the universe, and a tendency to assume that after any disturbance, such balance would soon be restored. In other words, the ancient writers and philosophers saw the world as a self-balancing system, a place more of stasis than of change, in which things would always tend to go along as they always had done.

As various scholars have pointed out, Adam Smith drank deep at this particular well, and (like the most notable founders of the new American republic and most other Enlightenment-era intellectuals) shared this Greco-Roman faith in the restoration of traditional balance, even without, or in spite of, human efforts. This characteristic Enlightenment belief in self-balancing, homeostatic systems suffuses both The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations and profoundly shaped Smith's overall view of human society and institutions, including the economy.

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Here it's important to emphasize: although latter-day Smith- and-free-market groupies sometimes like to present Smith as a visionary prophet who foresaw the industrial age, in reality, he was nothing of the sort. Smith himself basically entirely missed the industrial era; he lived from 1723 to 1790, mostly a relatively cloistered, Ivory Tower existence either in Scotland or, for a time, in France, and far from Manchester, England, where the Industrial Revolution was just starting to take root by the later years of Smith's life. There were even fewer inklings of the industrial future to be seen before The Wealth of Nations' publication in 1776. [And all the ostentatiously tough, hard-headed, endlessly practical, business-minded people who claim to be disciples of Smith should also be reminded: he was, by all accounts, the very epitome of a nerdy, egg-headed, otherworldly, absent-minded professor who spent most of his time lost in his thoughts and oblivious to the outside world.] As distinguished Cambridge University demographic and economic historian Anthony Wrigley--one person who really has read Adam Smith--has explained, far from offering any vision of an industrial future, Smith, in his most famous book, was instead offering a thorough description of the late pre-industrial economy of the world and times in which he lived--a relatively settled, stable economic system that could actually fit fairly harmoniously with the homeostatic mindset of Smith and his classical intellectual forebears. To say that is not to diminish Smith's monumental achievements or to fault him for not foreseeing the industrial economic tsunami that was only gradually starting to build up a head of steam at the time of Smith's death; precisely NOBODY saw that coming, or could have.

And, contrary to the expectations of Smith, his fellow Enlightenment philosophers, and their Greco-Roman forebears with their faith in homeostasis--the entire history of the world since the dawn of the industrial age has been ongoing, relentless, explosively rapid change, and destabilization rather than stability.

This raises the question: how would Smith have responded to a world of rapid and relentless change showing none of the characteristics of a stable, self-balancing system? Would he, ostrich-like, have continued to insist upon the miracle of self-correction in the face of all evidence to the contrary? I think not.

In terms of other dramatic changes as the world moved from the early modern to the truly modern (industrial) period, Smith missed most of those, too. He was there for the American Revolution, which was somewhat dramatic but also mostly a sideshow from Europe's perspective, and he generally sympathized with the American revolutionaries and their arguments. Smith survived to see only the very first year of the French Revolution, while it remained relatively tame and middle-class, and he might have sympathized to some extent with that as well. Smith was not around to see the lid blow off the French Revolution into what could appropriately be called the first actual world war, just as he never saw the incredible, destabilizing explosion of the Industrial Revolution. It would be interesting to know what his thoughts would have been, and how they might have changed; of course, we will never know.

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But it is interesting, and more than a little ironic, to note that free-market groupies of the industrial age, when they wave Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations around like oversized posters of Chairman Mao or various Middle Eastern dictators, are holding out a detailed description of preindustrial stasis as the operation manual for a rapidly and relentlessly changing industrial or post-industrial economy.

To do that, it seems to me, is inherently inconsistent--pretending, even demanding, that a settled stability and order must be present where it plainly isn't. It requires a bit of madness--or religious faith. Sort of like assuming that the Bible, or the Q'uran, can tell you how to operate an automobile or a jet plane. [With all due respect to those holy books--they can't. That is not their purpose.]

And, of course, Adam Smith-inspired neoclassical economics has never yet been adequately able to explain the instability of markets, which created recurring crises, bubbles, and subsequent panics throughout the nineteenth century and have been doing so again recently. Economic theory still tends to insist that the economic system is and must be rational and self-balancing; it just somehow doesn't act that way.

At any rate, the events of the industrial age that Smith did not live to see (and cannot be blamed for not foreseeing)--including the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the Revolution of 1848 and other lesser revolutions of the nineteenth century, the frantic European imperialism of the end of that century, the savage bloodbath of the American Civil War (sometimes called the first modern, industrial total war), the much greater bloodbaths of World Wars I and II, etc.--all tend to emphasize that we in fact live in a world that is not self-balancing or self-correcting, except in extreme, hideous, explosive ways. Other cultural changes, from the Romantic era through the post-Second World War sexual revolution, youth rebellion, and crime wave, all serve to further emphasize that we live in a world of ongoing, sweeping change far from Smith's world and the Smithian and Greco-Roman vision of stasis. As much as anything, the demographic revolution challenges any notion of stasis: there were an estimated roughly one billion people in the world at the end of Smith's life; now there are more than seven billion, and that number is still rising rapidly, while the land area of the globe is not. [Hard to maintain stasis under such conditions.]

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Although free-market-adoring Americans tend to attribute all good things to their beloved capitalism, including democracy, freedom, motherhood and apple pie, that market and economy have shown themselves to be NOT self-balancing, not self-correcting, and ultimately not tending in some of the virtuous directions hoped for. Rather, as both the late nineteenth century and the late twentieth century have demonstrated, the logic of the market, left to its own devices, tends inexorably toward inequality and the greater and greater concentration of wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands, not toward equality. It tends toward oligarchy and plutocracy, not toward democracy. Although the market clearly favors libertinism, self-indulgence, and the selling of innumerable products and services to temporarily satisfy that insatiable market, the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few inevitably and necessarily reduces the actual freedom of the less privileged and tends to reduce them to the position of lackeys of the wealthy. Aside from broad generalizations like these, it is possible to see these processes in operation historically. Tax policies and other economic policies in the United States grossly favored the rich during both the late nineteenth and late twentieth centuries, and during both periods, economic inequality and polarization increased rapidly while chronic social problems and infrastructural insufficiencies were ignored. Through the middle of the twentieth century, in the wake of the shocking wake-up calls of the Great Depression and Second World War that helped to revive some sense of national brotherhood, citizenship, community, and duty beyond just a money-grabbing free-for-all, taxes on the rich and on corporations were raised (in opposition to neoclassical economic theory), social programs and services and access to education were expanded, and there was a hopeful time of movement toward greater equality and opportunity for the less privileged. To do that, however, required defying the logic of the unfettered free market, and since the end of such efforts and reversion toward the logic of the market from the 1980 election of President Ronald Reagan (and the earlier rise of "Iron Lady" Thatcher) onward, society and the economy have again moved in the same old direction toward extreme inequality, concentration of wealth and power, and disinvestment in infrastructure, public goods, and social programs and services.

Adam Smith was not there to see all this. Pope Francis has been. And Pope Francis' eloquent recent Encyclical Letter regarding the global environmental crisis, along with the crisis of inequality and other interrelated human crises, is, among other things, pointing out in no uncertain terms that we are in fact living in an economic system that is not self-balancing and not self-correcting, that we must confront this reality and not hide from it through quasi-religious worship of unsound economic theories derived from selective readings of preindustrial Enlightenment-era philosophers who could not have dreamed of the sorts of rapid changes the world has experienced since their time, and who offered a Greco-Roman-inspired vision of overall stasis that bears no visible relationship to our modern reality.

This is not to criticize Adam Smith, but only to point out that the Pope has correctly identified that the events of the past two centuries since Smith's day should have, by now, exploded the hopeful myth of a self-balancing, self-correcting economy in the minds of all but the most die-hard and quasi-religious free market groupies. The market is NOT self-correcting. Even the legendary conservative intellectual and prophet of law and economics Judge Richard Posner acknowledged that in the wake of the disastrous mortgage bubble bust of 2008. [Posner, A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent in Depression, 2011.] Judge Posner knows it. Pope Francis knows it. It's time everybody else knew it, too. [And again, Adam Smith can't be blamed for not knowing it.]

But if Smith and the Pope might differ regarding the essentially self-correcting nature of economic systems, on a more fundamental issue, they agree. Adam Smith, moral philosopher, recognized that there is a moral realm in human affairs, and that there is more to human life, government, and policy than just economics or pure self-interest. Pope Francis of course knows that as well, and in his Encyclical Letter has recognized, and eloquently explained, that moral controls must be (re)introduced to restrain the otherwise relentless, amoral logic of the market in marching toward both human and environmental destruction--that the environmental crisis and the inequality/poverty crises are both fundamentally moral crises, not mere economic aberrations within a conveniently self-correcting system. Both Smith and the Pope thus were/are far ahead of the general, largely unquestioned assumption, held by so many Americans and far too many of their leaders, that the only thing that matters and needs to be worried about is the economy.

Again, to twist around the words of 1992 presidential candidate Bill Clinton and his interlocutors on the campaign trail: Pope Francis has pointed out, "It's the morality, stupid!" And to think that economics and self-interest are all that matters, and that morality does not matter or is merely optional, is the very height of stupidity (or pseudo-religious zeal).

In sum, the logic of the market, and of self-interest, are fundamental forces that exist and must be reckoned with--Adam Smith recognized that, as does Pope Francis. But the raw power of the market and self-interest must be harnessed, steered, and disciplined by higher principles--by morality--to prevent them from careening down the path to self-destruction. And as Pope Francis rightly and eloquently points out, that is an understanding that the dominant secular quasi-religion of free-market economics has denied or ignored for much too long.

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Further commentary on the fundamentally non-self-correcting, or only harshly and painfully self-correcting, nature of the economy comes from Yale economics professor and Nobel prize-winner Robert J. Shiller, who has explored in detail how Adam Smith's invisible hand does not only and always lead in benign, happy directions. For, as Shiller and coauthor George Akerlof discuss in their book, Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception, the invisible hand can also tickle us, tempt us, manipulate and deceive us into buying, or buying into, "things that are good neither for us nor for society"--which in turn makes fraud and deception unfortunate but integral components of capitalist economies, because they are integral components of human individual and group psychology. In this and other works, including his recently revised bestseller, Irrational Exuberance, Shiller confronts the undeniable reality of irrational human psychology and resulting economic euphoria as reflected in recurring asset bubbles--something Smith, writing half a century after England's South Sea Bubble of 1720, almost a century and a half after the Dutch Tulip Bulb Mania of 1634-37, and before the industrial era, could perhaps forget or ignore as mere anomalies. Yet bubbles, panics, and stock market crashes have not been anomalies, but defining characteristics of the industrial economy from the beginning of the 19th century onward, with the Panics of 1819, 1837, 1873, 1884, 1893, 1907, the Great Crash of 1929, the Tech Bubble Bust of 2000-2001, and the Mortgage Bubble Bust of 2007-2008 just among the especially salient examples of an even wider and more frequently recurring phenomenon. The bottom line is: if individual humans were indeed economically rational and self-correcting, and if the economy--the group expression of their various individual economic behavior--were rational and self-correcting, there never would have been a Tech Bubble, let alone the Great Depression. But both happened, along with many others. One could say that financial catastrophes do indeed represent a type of self-correction, just like a population crash in wildlife biology/ecology that wipes out more than 90% of the overpopulated species in question--but if so, they are a type of self-correction too hideous to contemplate, and far outside the framework of Smith's harmonious, self-balancing vision of the world. As Shiller points out, we have no choice but to try to do better than, for example, a repeat of the horrors of the Great Depression and Second World War.

Scott Dewey is a research specialist and assistant director at the UCLA Law Library. Previously, he was a judicial attorney for the California Court of Appeal, Second District.



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TOPSHOT - Fighters loyal to Libya's internationally recognised government celebrate as they come close to seizing the centre of the eastern coastal city on February 23, 2016, after a string of gains against Islamist militias including the Islamic State group.'We entered most of the sectors controlled by terrorist groups in Lithi' in central Benghazi, a source close to the pro-government troops told AFP. / AFP / ABDULLAH DOMA (Photo credit should read ABDULLAH DOMA/AFP/Getty Images)

Unbelievably, after causing the chaos in Libya by overthrowing Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, the United States is about to lead another Western military intervention designed to unify the country to fight ISIS's strongest cell outside Iraq and Syria, which has arisen from the post-Gaddafi anarchy. Repeating the same mistake will only make a bad situation worse.

In my book "The Failure of Counterinsurgency," I note that insurgencies usually love to drape themselves in the "liberator from foreign oppression" cloak, and further U.S. intervention will allow ISIS to do just that. Of course, because of the American public's understandable exhaustion with foreign brushfire wars, the United States will be reluctant to put significant forces on the ground, other than maybe a few furtive Special Operations types, and will instead wail away from the air by bombing targets from above. The United States has already done some of this in the country on a selected basis.

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Another caution the book has for counterinsurgency campaigns is that foreigners never get the benefit of the doubt, as we have already seen in the U.S. drone campaigns in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Even if the great powers using air power attempt not to hit civilians (the Russians didn't even try in Syria), they inevitably will kill some inadvertently. Because they are foreigners killing indigenous people, the locals usually frown upon this big time. The hawks will say that "collateral damage" occurs in any war, but when battling an insurgency, support of the people is much more vital than in conventional war. Because most of Libya's militias, including ISIS, are not easily identified by uniforms, they can hide among the population and gain support and recruits from that universe. Thus, bombing groups from the air, without friendly local troops on the ground to direct and benefit from the air strikes, only needlessly angers the population and thus creates more insurgents.

As in Iraq and Syria, a big problem for the West is getting friendly local ground forces to fight ISIS. The West's answer in Libya is a so-called "unity government," which is designed to disguise the reality of two competing rival governments in the eastern and western regions of the country, which in turn are coalitions of rival militias.

An even bigger problem is that Libya, like many of the states of the Middle East and Africa, is not a real country. These countries' borders were drawn up by Western colonial powers and do not correspond with tribal or ethnic or sectarian boundaries. In Libya, an artificial European construct only a few decades old, the eastern half of the country (in the old days, called Cyrenaica), centered on Benghazi, has always looked east toward Egypt and Saudi Arabia and the western half (in the ancient times called Tripolitania), centered on modern day Tripoli, has looked to Tunisia and southern Europe. The southwestern part of Libya, Fezzan, was filled with nomads not associated with the two coastal regions. Thus, the concept of Libya could only be enforced by a strongman like Gaddafi and predictably fell apart when the West deposed him.

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Yet the pre-condition for a likely second Western military intervention was the recreation of the facade of a unity government headed by Fayez Serraj, a Libyan technocrat selected by outside powers in the United Nations peace process, who arrived by boat and has little local political legitimacy or military support in the country. The United States and the West have the fantasy that he will be able to unify the many militias in a government-directed national army or network of forces to fight ISIS. Good luck, I wouldn't want to be him.
As Donald Trump's pursuit of the presidency moves toward the Republican convention and then, as seems likely, towards the general election, it is increasingly clear that his base of support won't wither any time soon. His brand of nativism and misogyny resonates with a vocal and powerful minority of Republicans who have given him impressive victories in most of the Republican primaries to date.

His candidacy will stall, however, if his support can be capped at current levels. Fortunately for his opponents, Republican and Democrat alike, cognitive science and network theory tell us something about how to blunt his candidacy.

In formulating effective strategies, it helps to think of Trump as a virus and Trumpism as the infectious disease that causes people's passions to overtake reason.

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Charles Cooke of the National Review first identified the symptoms of Trump-infection in August 2015, but he didn't explore the epidemiology of the virus.

It's obviously a virus that harms hearing and biases cognition, thus rendering the sufferer immune to contrary information. Trump himself was Patient Zero. His method of speaking to the gut, not to the intellect, was the initial mode of transmission. His language, nurtured on reality television, is fine-tuned to keep the viewer watching and engaged; provoked and outraged.

This resistance to new information is well studied. The balanced presentation of honest information may not be sufficient to change a Trump supporter's mind. It may even backfire, as seen when the "Stop Trump" movement was launched featuring accurate criticisms of Donald Trump's business practices and political acumen by Republican elders like Mitt Romney. Trump supporters were outraged by the interference, and many became even more committed to their candidate.

One person infected with Trumpism, Lola Butler, a backer from Mandeville, La. told The New York Times, "There's nothing short of Trump shooting my daughter in the street and my grandchildren -- there is nothing and nobody that's going to dissuade me from voting for Trump."

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Trump backers -- for the most part -- are older white males without a college education. These men fear economic uncertainty, and the decline in the amount of opportunity previously afforded them by dint of gender or race. This diminution of stature is painful and real. It makes them particularly susceptible to the virus, and inclined to reject contradictory data.

In a study in the journal Pediatrics, political scientist Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth College and three colleagues explored what messages most effectively change the minds of people who felt that vaccines were dangerous. They tried different options, including a factual refutation of the linkage between vaccines and autism, a discussion of the diseases one could contract if unvaccinated, and even a story about a young child who contracted measles in a pediatrician's waiting room. None of these messages worked. Those who believed vaccines were dangerous, continued to do so. Moreover, some respondents became even less likely to give their kids vaccines.

These results were in line with similar studies done by Nyhan to investigate the persistence of the "Obama is a Muslim" myth, or the mistaken belief that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In an interview with The Boston Globe, Nyhan said, "It's absolutely threatening to admit you're wrong." There's a relevant term in cognitive science called "motivated reasoning", where the person unconsciously seeks to retain a certain belief even when presented with evidence to the contrary.

There is some small chance that a slow, steady drumbeat of information regarding Trump'sallegedly sleazy business practices, blatant misogyny and shocking lack of preparation for the presidency will weaken the virus enough to change the mind of some of his followers. David Redlawsk, a professor of political science at Rutgers, found that when presented with enough information -- that is a "tipping point" -- some people will alter their opinions. He wrote in The New York Times, however, that such change "appears to require both a lot of data that challenges our beliefs and the motivation to want to change."

Unfortunately, that change is accompanied by anxiety. So, while it may be possible to slowly erode a Trump supporter's enthusiasm for his candidate, science tells us it's a long shot.

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Our minds come preprogrammed to discredit evidence selectively. That's why we should assume Trumpism is a very hardy virus, and that those infected are unlikely to be cured.

Those seeking to contain Trumpism would benefit from exploring an emerging field of study that shows how best to stop the spread of bad information. Those not yet infected must be convinced that the nonsense that gushes from the Trump campaign is especially virulent. Online, those who might be susceptible to the disease must be inoculated with information to counter the babble and the smears the candidate and his followers propagate. Most at risk is an entire swath of the electorate, the "low information voter", who has invested little thought into the primaries and who remains unaware of the specifics of the various candidates. They are the most in need of good information.

Network theory provides some insights. Ceren Budak and two of her colleagues at University of California, Santa Barbara have explored the problem of how to contain the spread of misinformation in social networks. This exploration is particularly relevant because much of Trump's virus is spread via Twitter and Facebook. One of Budak's findings applies: identify those influencers who haven't yet been infected, and then employ them as bulwarks against the mean memes. The Trump followers can talk amongst themselves, as they do, tweeting and retweeting whatever captures the imagination of @realDonaldTrump. If those messages bounce primarily between his most fervent supporters, the rest of us are insulated from the circus.

There is some emerging evidence that Trumpism has been quarantined. He lost primaries in Utah and Texas. Then there is Wisconsin, where right wing radio has been both critical and mocking of Trump (Charlie Sykes, a popular radio host in Milwaukee calls Trump supporters "Trumpkins") and conservative heroes like Governor Scott Walker have endorsed Ted Cruz.

Trump's favorability ratings have declined further. In the most recent polls, 63 percent of respondents view him unfavorably, while only 31 percent view him favorably. A large gap that appears to be widening.

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Another group that has shown resistance to Trumpism is women. The misogyny inherent in Trump's comments about prominent women, like Megyn Kelly and Carly Fiorina, has only bolstered female immunity.

This bodes poorly for Trump's general election prospects, but it might not matter with regard to the primaries, where a relatively small number of eligible voters go to the polls.
We're doing Cleopatra's whole story in 90 minutes! I evoke a lot of different actresses in this performance. I was concerned that it woulds just come off as an impressionist act and not a character. Somehow I seem to be able to take these fragments of other actresses' personas, and by the time it's over, the audience seems to be able to accept me as a complete character and not just an impressionist act. I worry that maybe it will come off as an impersonation, but I guess somehow I've infused it all with my own personality and my own concentration. Cleopatra is a powerful character, a woman of many colors. I use the 1934 Claudette Colbert movie as a template for the play, because I wanted it to be a 90-minute play. DeMille sort of did my work for me. That film is about 90 minutes, so it was easier to use that as the structure, as opposed to the four hour Taylor version! But the Claudette Colbert version is very much done in an Art Deco style, and Colbert's performance has a delicious element of her screwball performances; the same year, she did It Happened One Night. I took it a bit further: The first half of the story, where Cleopatra is young, I evoke a 1930's heroine: not just Claudette Colbert, but a little early Barbara Stanwyck, and Jean Harlow, and Mae West, with flourishes of Vivienne Leigh -- her form of kittenish royalty. As she gets older, I threw in more mature women like Susan Hayward, who never played Cleopatra (although she could have!), and Elizabeth Taylor. Throughout the whole thing, I am also throwing in some of those stage actresses -- with their intensity, their stylized performances, and their rich vocal tone. That is the glue that holds it together.


It's easier to start from scratch than it is to get out of a creative rut. That's because we know a lot more about what sparks creativity than we do about what blocks it. The Greeks believed that inspiration came to us through muses who literally visited us. Freud insisted that creativity was a kind of sublimation, a way of dealing with repressed inclinations. Jung theorized a collective unconscious, structures of mind that all people have in common. Today, psychologists like Kay Redfield Jamison describe creativity as a mood disorder, a mild form of madness.

We have countless answers to the question of what drives people to be creative, but the better, tougher--more elusive--question is its opposite: what stops people from being innovative? Why do so many of us have trouble overcoming creative dry spells? There are, of course, tons of studies attempting to address just that, yet many of them are biased by fundamental attribution errors. That is, these theories attempt to impose orderly patterns on complex, ineffable cognitive phenomena. For example, recent reports reverse-engineer the lives of geniuses like Einstein and Edison and identify the qualities that made them creative as symptoms of disorders like dyslexia. To attribute these late visionaries' talents to psychological conditions is to suggest something improvable and to falsely assume causality. Further, it is to give a tidy explanation for what are, in actuality, the messy realities of the human mind.

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Rather than symptomizing creative blocks, I offer here three different factors that impede innovation -- the inner saboteurs of creativity. We can't destroy them completely, but we can manage them. Understanding how these saboteurs work will help us get out of that rut and avoid getting into new ones in the future.

Motivation. One of the major reasons people can't be creative is that they're not motivated to be creative -- or their motivation is misguided. There are two types of motivation: positive and negative. Positive motivation comes from the desire to achieve tangible rewards, to impress others, or to make ourselves happy. Negative motivation comes from the wish to avoid bad consequences, to eliminate failure, or prevent self-hate or disappointment.

While positive motivation appears more encouraging than negative motivation, the truth is that negative incentives can actually be even more powerful. Creativity is, after all, often born out of constraints -- not freedom. And necessity is the strongest motivating force of all: discomfort, alarm, and dissatisfaction are the starting points of many great innovations.

Figure out which motivators move you most. Pay attention to what gives you energy and what takes your energy. If you're more creative when given soak time, allow yourself more space and time to generate ideas. If you're more creative when given deadlines, impose a stricter timeline on yourself. Take a look at Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's influential book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, for further tools on discovering what motivates you to create.

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Confidence. Self-doubt is a form of paralysis: lack of confidence shuts down our creative forces. When we're unsure of ourselves, we can't perform to our fullest abilities. Self-confidence is highly subjective and situational. For example, a neurosurgeon might have nerves of steel when operating on a patient's brain, but may quake when giving a public speech. This debilitating anxiety is an evolutionary feature, a primal fear mechanism focused on what we won't want to happen. It's a neurobiological impulse to avoid what makes us uncomfortable. When that neurosurgeon's hands sweat and shake at the lectern, it's as if he's running away from a predator. Here, our self-doubt becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because we look for confirming feedback to validate our instincts. We're setting ourselves up for failure. We're our own saboteur.

No one wants to be afraid, but fright can be empowering: it heightens our senses and keeps our expectations realistic. It stops us from becoming overly enthusiastic or, to use Alan Greenspan's phrase "irrationally exuberant." Hoping for the best and preparing for the worst is a sensible approach to innovation. Lack of confidence isn't always a terrible thing -- we just need to stop it from taking over us.

The best way to beat self-doubt is to create a sense of destiny. This is essentially faking it until you make it, or temporarily embracing delusions of grandeur. Think of it like a balancing act. If you're being held back by anxieties about your abilities, you can make up for it by welcoming the extreme opposite: thoughts of great confidence. For example, there is some evidence that Olympic pole-vaulters who give themselves affirmations go on to clear heights that they've never before achieved. This is one of the things they learn to do at the Olympic camps in Colorado Springs. If building up yourself doesn't work, simply consider the worst that can happen if you fail and put it in context. Chances are unless you're a combat pilot or a neurosurgeon, it's not the end of the world. Tom Kelley's book, Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All, is a great resource for people who want to develop their innovative courage.

Isolation. The lone genius is a myth perpetuated by romanticized accounts of creation. Solitude is simply not conducive to innovation. Creativity is highly interactive. At our core, we are social beings--even the most introverted of people. In his path-breaking Knowledge Trilogy -- The Discovers, The Creators, The Seekers -- Daniel Boorstin chronicles the great creative ensembles throughout human development. He shows us how history has brief periods of ballistic creativity in relatively small regions, like the Song Dynasty in 11-century China and the Renaissance in 15-century Florence. The 20- and 21-century equivalents are creativity clusters like Silicon Valley, the Research Triangle of North Carolina, and Tel Aviv's Startup City.

Great ideas travel from one domain to another and spill into other ideas. This is the concept of cognitive mobility -- and this is why these very concentrated areas of high creativity produce so much of the world's intellectual property. When people with all different kinds of expertise are in close proximity of each other, they reach unexpected, cross-boundary solutions. Often the most effective solutions are intersectional and come from adjacent fields. For example, the person who came up with a way to price options was actually someone who studied the trajectory of rockets. Even though rockets and options appear to be two wildly dissimilar objects, they are both highly dynamic things that change rapidly over time, so being able to understand the movement of a rocket from one nano moment to another proved to be indispensible in understanding options.

Start making alliances with people who are unlike you but who have comparable aims. Your ideal creative ally is someone who has different capabilities and proficiencies than you but is trying to accomplish the same fundamental thing whether it's making art, designing software, or discovering a molecule. Once you've built your team, it's time to run experiments, build prototypes, and construct proofs of concept.

Understand that constructive conflict is an essential part of the creative process. The tensions you experience with and against your allies will generate the hybrid ideas you wouldn't have reached otherwise. Pay attention to the acknowledged and hidden masters around you. Keep a journal of key new insights, so you are aware of what you're learning as you go along and can apply these lessons at any moment. Eric Weiner's new book, The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley, is a wonderful guide to finding your creative place and to thinking about what kind of people you need to be around to achieve your innovative potential.

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I am preparing for a series of speaking engagements at the University of Utah and began to wonder about she-roes from the Beehive State. As with women from every other state, women with ties to Utah have made significant contributions to U.S. history and culture. Match the woman with her accomplishment:

____ 1. The first woman elected to a judicial office in the country and the first woman elected to a state supreme court.

____ 2. Started in 1977 with one store selling cookies, today the company she founded is a $450 million company with 1,000 stores employing 5,000 people.

____ 3. As head of the Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor, she established the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women that led to the Equal Pay Act of 1963.

____ 4. An actress whose portrayal of Peter Pan on Broadway led to the co-design of what is today called the Peter Pan collar.

A. Esther Peterson

B. Florence Allen

C. Maude Adams

D. Debbi Fields

Born in Provo, Utah, Esther Peterson attended Brigham Young University and observed her first strike in 1918 when she was 12 years old. She moved to the East Coast after college and, in 1932, began volunteering at the YWCA. Encountering racial prejudice for the first time, her eyes were further opened when most of her students did not come to work because they were on strike. Her visit to a home (where the women were paid for piecework and a 3-year old was involved in the piecework), convinced her to join the strike and walk the picket line. She became a union organizer in addition to raising four children. In 1944, she became a lobbyist for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union and was assigned to John F. Kennedy (as at the time it was believed that he would not be a major figure in politics). After spending time in Europe due to her husband's career, the family returned to the U.S. where Kennedy was now a senator and Peterson agreed to work for his presidential campaign in Utah. Kennedy's election led to Peterson's appointment as the head of the Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor. Here, she was instrumental in the establishment of the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women that resulted in the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and many other steps toward gender equality. A voice for the consumers and a labor advocate for the rest of her life, Peterson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and has been inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

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Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, Florence Allen achieved many firsts in the field of law. Allen was the first woman to serve as assistant country prosecutor. She was the first woman elected to a judicial office in Ohio. Allen was the first woman in the U.S. elected to a court of last resort - the Supreme Court in Ohio. In addition, she was the first woman appointed to a federal appeals court judgeship. Receiving her education in Ohio (at what is now called Case Western Reserve University), Allen went to law school at the University of Chicago since Case Western did not then admit women to their law school. Although she completed her education second in her class at New York University Law School in 1913, no one would hire her because she was a woman. Allen returned to Ohio and was admitted to the bar. Her climb through the legal ranks began in earnest after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment enfranchising women. At the urging of her friends, Allen ran for a judgeship and was elected in November 1920. Her many trailblazing accomplishments were recognized when she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, Maude Adams was an actress whose breakout role was as Peter Pan on Broadway in 1905. Adams began her acting career at the age of nine months, when she appeared onstage in her mother's arms. By the age of five, she appeared in San Francisco, and she made her New York stage debut at the age of ten. Adams returned to Salt Lake City for schooling where she lived with her grandmother until her return to Broadway at age 16. In 1905, when she was cast to play Peter Pan, she also set a fashion trend - the costume for Peter Pan, which she co-designed, had a collar that today is known as the Peter Pan collar. Adams retired from the stage in 1918 and then worked with General Electric to develop improved stage lighting and with the Eastman Company on color photography. In addition to a return to acting in the 1930s, she led a drama department and was known for her inspiring teaching of acting at Stephens College in Missouri.

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The founder of Mrs. Fields Cookies (which for some years was based in Salt Lake City, Utah), Debbi Fields decided at age 20 that she wanted to start a bakery. In spite of resistance from bankers and initial skepticism from her husband, she launched what is today a $450 million company that employs 5,000 people and has 1,000 stores. From her first store in 1977, her company has grown because of her philosophy of using quality ingredients and treating people with care and respect.

Learn about more she-roes and celebrate amazing women. These women associated with the Beehive State are among the more than 850 women profiled in the book Her Story: A Timeline of the Women Who Changed America. We celebrate their accomplishments and are proud to stand on their shoulders.
According to the calendar, it's spring, even if the weather is not cooperating. We're two weeks into the season and I'm sure you've probably seen cherry blossoms, cleaned out the attic, and went to your first kickball practice. Now it's time to plan your spring travel.

From tried-and-true spring traditions to newer and expanded festivals across the country, try one of these events to enjoy the season:



2015 White Party photo by Marques Daniels

White Party

Palm Springs, CA

April 8 - 11, 2016

It's ok to break out the white before Memorial Day for Jeffrey Sanker's White Party. Palm Springs largest gay party electrifies the desert with a spicy array of men, music, DJs and superstar talent. You can continue to ogle the photos, or you can finally see for yourself but act quickly because it's going down this weekend. And yes, there are tickets available. If this is your first time, remember to pack sunscreen and hydrate!

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Knitting Peace photo by Mats Backer

Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts

Philadelphia, PA

April 8 - 23, 2016

This nearly month-long celebration weaves together a variety of art forms and genres by local and international artists in this art extravaganza. Throughout 15 days, Philly will host more than 60 performances, like a large-scale fire-and-sand performance, a circus built on a foundation of yarn, a traveling symphony performed in water fountains and a massive free day-long street fair.



photo courtesy of MiFo LGBT Film Festival

MiFo LGBT Film Festival

Miami Beach, FL

April 22 - May 1, 2016

Never heard of MiFo before? That's ok, they changed the name last year. The moniker joins together the Miami and Fort Lauderdale LGBT film festivals under one umbrella and one brand. This year's festival hopes to inspire, entertain and celebrate gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender experiences through more than 80 films. All the screening this spring will be in South Beach. So, win-win!



New Hope Celebrates Pride photo by A. Sinagoga for Visit Philadelphia

New Hope Celebrates

New Hope, PA

May 15 - 22, 2016

Next month, New Hope, the artist-filled town along the picturesque banks of the Delaware River, about an hour and a half from New York City celebrates its LGBT community with a week-long Pride festival. The biggest event of the week is the annual pride parade, which takes place on May 21. The colorful celebration kicks off with the unfurling of a section of the iconic four-mile Rainbow Flag on loan from Key West, Florida. While you're in town pop in and out of the funky shops, galleries, bars and cafes along the town's lively Main Street.
For several years now, international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have had a laser focus on the issue of wildlife trafficking with the help of the U.S. government, other national governments around the world, and multilateral institutions such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). This week, at the White House and at the National Geographic Society, I believe we took another step forward in that fight thanks to the private sector.

Between 2000 and 2013, more than 27,000 seizures of tiger derivatives were reported to CITES, mainly originating in China and Vietnam. Photo credit: WCS Russia.



Targeting wildlife trafficking is essential if we want future generations to live in a world that is still home to our most iconic animals. The demand for ivory, rhino horn, tiger skins, and other products is causing those endangered species and many others to rapidly diminish.

With a particular focus on elephant ivory, coalitions such as 96 Elephants have engaged the public to urge governments to take further action to restrict the trade in illegal wildlife products. We are now very close to seeing the Obama Administration release new regulations that would severely restrict ivory trade in the United States, following actions by some of the states with the largest markets in nation such as New York, New Jersey, California, and Washington.

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WCS president and CEO Cristian Samper with WCS/Niassa Reserve field op team investigating carcass left by poachers. Photo by Alastair Nelson  WCS



With better laws and regulations nearly in place, we must work towards the next step: educating the public and making sure the rules are making a difference. Unfortunately, the U.S. continues to be one of the world's leading markets for illegal wildlife products including jewelry, skins and trinkets.



That is why WCS is proud to be a founding member of the U.S. Wildlife Trafficking Alliance (USWTA), a public-private partnership that has brought together the conservation community, the private sector and government to seek solutions to this crisis. The Alliance is committed to working together so that illegal wildlife products are not sold in the U.S. and to educating consumers that their actions will ensure a future for wildlife.



Some of the $2 million in illegal elephant ivory seized in 2012 by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, in conjunction with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. Photo credit: Manhattan District Attorney's Office.



Corporate leaders understand that they can play a constructive role implementing policy goals when they are engaged from the beginning of the process. For this reason, the companies joining USWTA are taking proactive steps to ensure that illegal wildlife products remain out of their supply chains.



Online retailers Etsy, Google, and Ebay are pledging to make sure these products are not sold on their sites. Fine jewelers such as Tiffany & Co. are ensuring that none of their articles include things like ivory, coral, or exotic skins. Companies in the travel sector, including JetBlue and Royal Caribbean, are taking steps to ensure they are not transporting illegal wildlife products and advising their customers that these products should not be taken home.

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If ever there was reason to end judicial selection by election, one need look no further than Kansas. The G.O.P. is seeking to replace four supreme court justices because it is unhappy with their rulings. Let us be clear: it matters not that the decisions are based upon fact and law and consistent with the state constitution. The result is wrong and so the offending justices must be thrown out or even impeached! The outrage apparently arises from the reversal of death penalty verdicts, blocked anti-abortion laws and hampering the governor's efforts to reduce spending.

This effort to remove and replace judges for unpopular decisions is occurring all over the country. The claim here and elsewhere is that the judges are not "accountable" to the public. Everyone should hope that they are not. Take a poll on whether or not a death penalty verdict should be reversed, and I expect that nary a single person would vote in favor. This idea that judges' decisions should be popular is ludicrous. It would be nice if they were, but it is totally irrelevant. Decisions requiring integrated schools, barring prayer in schools, allowing same-sex marriages, etc. most likely would not have received a majority of votes at the time rendered. Isn't it remarkable that the outcry over judicial decisions arises mostly when they favor the accused, the poor, minorities and the LGBT community? The failure to allow discrimination in its various forms is what gets the G.O.P riled up. Have they ever sought to oust a judge who ruled in favor of an oil company, a fracking company, a coal company or any profit-making corporation for that matter?

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And then there is the process. Voters have no idea whether or not a person is qualified to be a judge or doing a good job as one. So now comes in all of this money---much of it from outside---to buy a more favorable judge--or apparently one who will not be hampered by the law, the facts and the constitution, but will decide as the G.O.P (or its backers) want. Lawyers and litigants who do or will appear before the judge or justice may contribute to the judge. I have asked in an earlier post: Can you imagine a lawyer or litigant in the midst of a trial walking up to the judge and handing him a campaign contribution? Sounds outrageous right? But is it any different if done a day, a week or a month before?
As part of its laudable goal to end family, youth, and child homelessness by 2020, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has issued national instructions in its funding announcements, prioritizing investments in rapid re-housing, putting homeless people in apartments first, and then working to address their need for social services. There is evidence the model works well for adults, who, for the most part, have had at least some experience living independently, working, paying bills, budgeting and developing a social network. Thanks to the President's leadership and Congress' support, HUD has sparked once-unthinkable progress in the virtual elimination of veterans' homelessness over the past six years in many cities, and seen dramatic downturns in the number of chronically homeless people across the country. Rapid re-housing has been a significant component of this progress, and the model should also work well for unaccompanied, homeless, young people who have developed such skills. But the majority of homeless young people we work with at Covenant House in the United States have not come from supportive homes where they learned how to be safe, sheltered and independent. Each year we meet thousands of homeless youth who still need to develop life skills; many need intensive support to prepare them for living on their own. Currently they can get that kind of care in Covenant House's Rights of Passage transitional living program, in 15 U.S. cities. Some of these youth could surely flourish on their own if an affordable housing option emerged, but the vast majority of homeless youth need much more than a roof over their heads in order to survive and thrive in the world. We don't know how well rapid re-housing will work for young people, and there is ample evidence it has been ineffective for many youth in Canada, which is why I lament the rush across the United States right now to de-fund transitional living programs for homeless youth. I cannot understand how anyone working with this population of unaccompanied, homeless youth could climb aboard the rapid re-housing bandwagon as a panacea to youth homelessness before we have evidence to support this seismic shift in housing policy.

Over several decades, Covenant House has learned that what works for homeless adults, like veterans or single moms who have lost jobs and income, will not always work for homeless youth who have been bounced around the foster care system or kicked out of a dysfunctional home. Many of our youth need the support of on-site staff members who will breathe new life into them. These young hearts need old hearts to encourage and guide them, wake them up in the morning and make sure they get out of bed and off to school or work. Due to trauma and instability, many unaccompanied, homeless youth have not had a chance to develop positive conflict resolution skills. Fights with roommates (and roommates would be essential in a rapid re-housing model in expensive cities) frequently need to be immediately negotiated with the help of an on-site staff member who can model positive negotiation skills and diffuse disagreements. None of these things could happen if program staff, like case managers, are far away at stressful moments.



We are talking about vulnerable young people who have been failed by every institution they've been through -- family, school, foster care, juvenile justice, you name it. Why are we adding another potential failing institution to the list? We don't know how well rapid re-housing will work for young people.



In fact, Rapid-Re Housing: Creating Programs that Work by the National Alliance to End Homelessness, states that "Rapid Re-housing is targeted to people who are homeless but who have lived independently in permanent housing at some point in time, for some period of time."



To the best of our knowledge, rapid re-housing for young people has not been tested scientifically against other models on a large scale. HUD is using research based on adults, and many proponents of rapid re-housing are assuming it will work with youth. While HUD mentions some promising youth programs, and a controlled study of rapid re-housing for youth is in the works in Minneapolis, HUD should make clear to state and city leaders that it has not changed its national policy, and local leaders should not eliminate transitional housing for youth, without strong research into what strategies work best for young people.



In response to the confusion across the country about HUD's preferences on transitional housing for youth, there will be many fewer transitional living programs for unaccompanied homeless youth over the next several years. We will see fewer models like our transitional living program, Rights of Passage, which featured prominently in my book about kids who escaped the streets, Almost Home: Helping Kids Move from Homelessness to Hope. In that book, Benjamin, an 18-year-old who had spent half his life in almost 30 different child welfare placements, was able to get a job, obtain his high school equivalency diploma, apply to college, and form a positive relationship with his mentor, the first person Benjamin felt valued his potential. None of these crucial opportunities would be as accessible through a rapid re-housing program that did not require strong, 24/7 case management from a devoted, focused and well-trained staff on site.



Rapid re-housing will likely work for some young people, but not others. We need the flexibility to find the right model for the right youth. We need studies comparing the two models, before we disregard and discard decades of work improving the efficacy of the transitional living program model.



HUD has an important opportunity to emphasize to its state and city partners that they are allowed and encouraged to continue funding for transitional living programs for unaccompanied, homeless youth under age 24. That message has been lost in many big cities. Giving 18-year-olds scant rules, limited structure, and the expectation that they will be able to pay their own rent in a year and a half, without required and intensive case management makes no sense, given the trauma and lack of positive role models and opportunities so many of them have experienced.



It would be far wiser to launch a national pilot program to see which kind of rapid re-housing works for which kind of young people, and compare results to those of transitional living programs. How many young people remain in stable housing, employed, healthy, and thriving after two years of each method? How much does each method cost? There are, alas, more than enough homeless young people around to fill such studies to overflowing.
leadership flow chart written...

Every year, many businesses are forced to spend billions of dollars on costs associated with workplace injuries and illnesses. These costs are directly deducted from the company's profits, often putting them at a loss. It is no secret that companies, who promote and encourage a culture of safety within their work environment, reduce the costs associated with workplace injuries and illnesses by up to 40 percent. Unfortunately, establishing a healthy and safe work environment is not as simple as solely implementing standards and rules. Company managers, as well as those in high tiers of the organization, must display effective leadership. If there is one thing I have learned from my experience in the field, it is that, leadership by example influences employees' perception of the way health and safety in the workplace is managed; those perceptions then go on to influence employees' on-the-job behaviors and decisions.

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So why does safety leadership matter anyway? Well, leadership drives company culture, and company culture drives health and safety performance. Therefore, there is an inextricable link between organizational leadership and health and safety performance. Simply put, the way an individual leads their team on health and safety significantly influences how safe the workplace is. This is because a leader's (for example a manager) attitudes and beliefs about health and safety drives his/her behaviors, which in turn sends a powerful message to workers about how seriously they should take workplace health and safety issues.

One of the proven tools and the most overlooked and underutilized as it relates to preventing workplace injuries and incidents, is effective safety leadership. This safety management tool can be the major differentiator between average and industry leading safety performance. However, according to experts Paul J. Colangelo and Steve Bowers, for a company to effectively utilize this tool, five critical components must be present.

Your company must first establish a field presence. The best way to measure your company's safety culture and its effectiveness is for managers to obtain feedback from their workforce. This not only shows your workers that you care about their well-being, but also establishes the importance of demonstrating safety leadership.

Effective safety leadership requires effective communication skills. Failure of management to effectively communicate with workers after an incident, allows false and misleading information to spread--which can be detrimental to your organization's safety culture. The most opportune way to effectively communicate safety expectations and gain the trust and respect of your workforce is to utilize newsletters, as well as toolbox meetings to get the word out.

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Establishing a feedback mechanism opens up a direct avenue of communication between your workforce and management. Creating a safety committee that includes representatives from the workforce can contribute to a better understanding of your organization's safety culture. Additionally, routinely scheduling field walks is a good way to solicit direct feedback on workplace health and safety perceptions and issues.

A lack of accountability for the organization's safety program can result in silent rebellion, especially if it is a phenomenon of "does as I say and not as I do". Therefore, all members of your organization, regardless of job title and role should follow safety rules at all times. Everyone must be held accountable for his or her actions, starting with Management.

Finally, benchmarking with your competitors or joining industry groups that openly share the best-known methods, is one of the best ways to assess the contents of your organization's safety program, as well as its overall performance. Thus, continuous improvement is the key to a successful organizational culture of safety.

Every company desires safe operations, but the challenge lies in translating these desires into action. Hence, industry-leading companies do not accept compliance to government regulations as the only indicator that measures their success. They continuously seek out new and proven safety management methodologies, such as effective safety leadership. Therefore, companies must develop a culture, in which the value of safety is embedded in every level of the workforce. While commitment to safety and operational integrity begins with management, management alone cannot drive the entire culture.
Donald Trump, president and chief executive of Trump Organization Inc. and 2016 Republican presidential candidate, listens to a question during a town hall event at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Florida, U.S., on Monday, March 14, 2016. As protesters shadow campaign appearances by Trump, the billionaire has shifted a planned Monday-night rally in south Florida to Ohio, where polls show Governor John Kasich may be pulling ahead days before the states primary election. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

For years, Republicans have kept a gambit going where they gin up hate for political gain.

They condemn marriage equality. They throw a hissy fit about what bathroom transgender people use. They try every dirty trick in the book to prevent black people from voting. They blame undocumented immigrants for crime and unemployment. They actually suggest armed patrols of American Muslim communities.

And then something unexpected happened. Corporations started getting squeamish about all that hate. Big, burly, traditionally GOP-donating corporations! Corporations warned some governors that theyd withdraw investment if the states didnt reverse gay-bashing legislation. And now corporations are telling Republicans theyre not so sure theyll pony up for the 2016 GOP convention because they dont want to be associated with the Republican candidates hate mongering. Hate may have brought the GOP a load of publicity but it lost the party a bushel of bucks.

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Image by DonkeyHotey on Flickr.

Republican front-runner Donald Trump is the all-star for hate spewing. He launched his campaign by slandering Hispanic people, saying of immigrants, Theyre sending people that have lots of problems, and theyre bringing those problems. Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.

Both Trump and rival Ted Cruz promised bigoted followers they would round up 11 million undocumented immigrants and deport them, forcibly separating American-born children from their Mexican national parents, who frequently labor long hours at below-minimum-wage jobs, pay taxes and scrupulously steer clear of any kind of trouble for fear of being deported.

Trump scored a hateful twofer when he insulted a rival who was the only woman in the GOP field, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. Heres what he said: Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?

And then, if that wasnt offensive enough to women, he got himself into a long-running feud with Fox News host Megyn Kelly after she asked him about his descriptions of women as pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals. Trump ultimately responded by accusing Kelly of having blood coming out of her eyes  blood coming out of her wherever, as if she were hormonal, not asking him legitimate questions based on concern about his temperament to be president.

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Trump and Cruz are neck-and-neck for fostering unfounded suspicion of American Muslims. After the bombings in Paris, Trump said hed ban all Muslims from entering the United States, and earlier hed called for surveillance of mosques and establishing a database of all Muslims in the United States. In the wake of the Brussels attack, Cruz called for armed patrols of American Muslim communities.

Even supposedly mild-mannered John Kasich is not immune, recently criticizing the black community for failing to solve its own infant mortality problem like, he claimed, white people did. Heres what he said: And the [black] community itself is going to have to have a better partnership with all of us to begin to solve that problem of infant mortality in the minority community, because were making gains in the majority community.

But, of course, nobody beats Trump for offending African Americans. This is the guy who declined three opportunities in a row to renounce an endorsement by white nationalist and former KKK leader David Duke.

Now, however, the consequences of such hate are visible in greenbacks. A study by Visit Indy, Indianapolis convention and tourism organization, found that Indiana lost at least $60 million after lawmakers passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act last year giving businesses the right to discriminate against LGBT people on religious grounds. That research showing the hateful law cost the state real money may have helped dissuade lawmakers from passing a more stringent version of the legislation this year.

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Georgia just got the same financial punch in the gut for an attempt at legalizing LGBT discrimination. The legislature passed a law allowing faith-based groups to deny services to gay people, the way many southern states adopted laws a century ago permitting businesses to turn away black people.

Corporations gave Georgias discriminatory law the same reception they did Indianas. Salesforce, Disney, Unilever, Intel and Georgia Prospers, representing 480 companies, including Coca-Cola, Delta, Home Depot, UPS, and Marriott all denounced the legislation. Some threatened to reduce investment in the state, and media companies threatened to stop filming there.

Finally, Republican Gov. Nathan Deal calculated exactly how much hate meant to Georgias pocketbook and vetoed the legislation last week.

Now, some corporations arent so sure they want to be associated with Trump-Cruz-Kasich hate-show at the Republican National Convention.

Apple, Google and Walmart are among the firms assessing their plans for sponsorship at the $64 million convention. Trump has said there will be riots if he is not chosen as the partys nominee, and Cleveland has sought bids for 2,000 sets of riot gear. The Walmart smiley face filmed as a backdrop for riot police wielding batons to bloodied protesters heads probably would not work well with the live better part of Walmarts new business slogan.

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Coca-Cola, one of the companies that gave Georgia a hard time for attempting to legalize discrimination against LGBT people, slashed the amount it donated to the GOP convention this year. It was $660,000 last time. This year its $75,000.

Coke has declined to explain the cut. But theres no doubt that an organization called Color of Change made an impact. Color of Change sponsored a petition drive demanding that Coke and other companies renounce the GOP event because sponsoring it would be endorsing Trumps hateful and racist rhetoric.
SHEBOYGAN, WI - APRIL 1: People cheer as democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders and his wife Jane O'Meara Sanders, wave to supporters during a campaign event at the Sheboygan South High School Acuity field house in Sheboygan, WI on Friday April 01, 2016. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Dear Bernie Sanders supporters:

I agree with nearly everything Senator Sanders says about what is wrong with our economy and political system. Both the Senator and I (and Hillary Clinton as well) have lived through the same critical events in our lifetime: the election of our first Catholic President, the Civil Rights movement, the assassination of our leaders, the Vietnam war and its consequences, recessions, attempts by outsiders to change things by running for the Presidency (e.g. Nader and Perot to name two) the resignation of a corrupt President, Iraq and Aghanistan, Occupy Wall Street, the election of our first African-American President. We have both seen popular movements rise, gain strength and peter out. So what is different this time?

Senator Sanders has served inside government at the local, state and national levels. He knows as well as I do that the way to change American politics is to elect people who will be committed to that change. So it is perplexing to me that as he excites people across the political spectrum, he is not focusing more on what it will really take to make change -- taking back the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. And not just taking it back for Democrats, but taking it back with new progressive voices who will change campaign financing and really go after Wall Street. If Senator Sanders were to get the Democratic nomination and win the Presidency, given the existing state of representation in Congress, many of his promises could not be fulfilled. There would be no single payer health care. There would be no free college tuition. There would be no Wall Street reform. Hope and change require a different kind of revolution.

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What are Sanders' supporters doing about winning back the House and Senate? I don't hear a lot about that. Perhaps younger people don't realize the damage that a conservative state legislature can do to all of the proposals Sanders so strongly supports. You name the issue -- voting rights, reproductive rights, a fair and equitable wage, the right to organize -- all those issues are being systematically threatened at the state level. Taking back the House and taking back state legislatures in states like Wisconsin, Illinois, Nevada, Texas, Alabama, Florida, Ohio -- are all key to any significant change. And if you look at this map, you can see the challenge ahead.

Progressives don't have to win back all those red state legislatures, but we have to make quite an effort to change the majority in Congress, and that starts at the state level. That is how our politics works, and that's why it's so important that Bernie supporters "feel the Bern" to take this challenge on. If Senator Sanders does not win the Democratic nomination, what will be his response and the response of his supporters? Will they pout or refuse to vote for Hillary or will they roll up their sleeves and transfer their considerable energy to making change happen from the ground up? I hope it will be the latter. There is so much we need to fix. But the only way that will happen is if anger and enthusiasm get combined in an effort to do the real dirty work of politics -- organizing to get rid of our corrupt campaign financing approach so we can elect people of courage who can act on that courage.

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This is not meant to discourage Sanders supporters in any way. It is also not meant to suggest that electing a Democrat to the White House is meaningless. President Obama has shown that he can accomplish a lot despite the opposition he faces daily from Congress. A President Clinton or Sanders could also make change. Just think about the ability of a President to make nominations to the Supreme Court or wage war. But just electing a Democrat as President is not nearly enough. Change will not come from a rally. It will come from a generation of hard work. I won't be around to see it all, but I hope you all will.

Sincerely,
Can we see data as essential, even vital, to human rights protections? How informed is data and how informed can data-informed policing truly be? Can we embrace the possibilities of algorithmic tools? These were some of the questions raised during the New York University's Bernstein Institute panel discussion entitled 'Human Rights Challenges in Predictive Analytics', which kicked off its annual conference. The topic of this year's conference was 'Tyranny of the Algorithm? Predictive Analytics & Human Rights' and included discussion of challenges that arise in data-driven risk assessment as well as the social, political, economic and cultural contexts in which they are designed and implemented.

Moderator Margaret Satterthwaite, Faculty Director of the Institute and Professor of Clinical Law, began by placing data risk assessment in its greater context-- defined and redefined based on who is using the data, be it scholars, politicians, or the media. Data risk assessment in the human rights field therefore can always be considered problematic, whether because it is incomplete and therefore cannot not tell the whole story, biased and therefore harmful to human rights, incapable to get at the source of human rights by attempting to quantify human suffering, or if, quite frankly, it is a lie. However, it also has the possibility to amplify the messaging behind human rights obligations and become a powerful tool to speak truth to power, if it can, indeed, capture a truth.

Latanya Sweeney, a computer scientist at Harvard University, began the discussion by first apologizing for the adverse effects of algorithms. Algorithms have contributed to human rights violations, to the policing of black and brown bodies, and to broad and unwarranted surveillance. Sweeney presented an image of a Google search of her name and the displayed ads that first accompanied it: ads for for arrest records, though there were none to be found for Sweeney. When she had first searched it, her male colleague from Italian origin suggested the reason was Sweeney had 'a Black sounding' name. Sweeney conducted an experiment and concluded the observation was true: 'White sounding' names yielded neutral search results in advertising and the disparity was an 80% to 20% difference, which Sweeney highlighted fulfilled the litmus test set by the Department of Justice for instances of discrimination.

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Instead of discussing whether we live in an algorithmic tyranny, Sweeney proposed instead that we live in a technocracy, where "every value is up for grabs". As an example, Sweeney presented domains such as footlocker.com and worldstarhiphop.com targeting the Black American population. Notably, Sweeney found that more domains are exclusive to Blacks and Asians than any other groups. Sweeney concluded that "design of algorithms dictates how we live our lives" and we need to reconceptualize algorithms to think of them as being akin to stereotyping--assessments based on who we are based on the sites we visit and who is in our social networks.

Jeff Brantingham presented an alternate narrative. As Chief of Research and Development at PredPol and a Professor of Anthropology at UCLA, he delineated rather that data can be used in three areas of police work: in response to crimes, apprehension, and prevention, but where it is actually being employed is preventive analytics--the focus placed on the when and where crime is most likely to occur based on information of past crimes and a system which is ever-changing. Data examining gun violence in Chicago, dubbed 'Chiraq' specifically because of the systematic nature of the violence, cannot be static, as hot spots of gun violence pop up one day only to disappear the next, and reappear somewhere else shortly thereafter.

The data, according to Brantingham, is used to assess how much time and resources should be spent at any specific location by law enforcement engaging the public there, with the end goal of minimizing the uncertainty of risk, not eliminating it. Brantingham also concluded that neither the who nor the why is examined in data pertaining to crimes, only the type of crime, it's time, and location, hoping rather to target those likely to become victims of opportunity crimes with the end goal of assisting them.

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Jennifer Lynch, Senior Staff Attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization defending human rights in the digital age with focus on freedom of expression and user privacy, provided a civil liberties counterargument to data driven 'predictive policing'--that in preventing victimization through crime, the police are victimizing whole communities. This encompasses limits on freedom of movement, suspicion of police, fear of authorities, and inability to feel safe in a targeted policing environment. To that effect, Lynch spoke of the GIGO ('garbage in, garbage out) phenomenon where data entered is faulty and data analyzed is faulty. With only 50% of crimes reported, and more complex ones, such as rape, never reported, we cannot place our decision-making and ethical choices behind data reasoning, Lynch reasoned. Moreover, the biases behind these algorithms could not be ignored when the average American commits three felonies a day, with only some of those felonies policed. Adding to that, historically the NYPD, LAPD, and CPD have accumulated racially charged information, all of which has informed crime data which is fed into the system. Unaware how data is gathered due to both traditional police secrecy and private sector secrecy, limiting the rights of a defendant to be able to question the technology used to accuse him or her of a crime is another civil liberties question.

Another question that arises is while police are targeting specific communities, could their time be taken away from other crimes they could have been identifying instead? The data justifies their presence in a neighborhood, suspicion of criminal activity, questioning of individuals, belief that individuals may be violent, and subsequent escalation in response. Moreover, this raises further questions. Is such a process precarious to free will? As a society, can we be comfortable with the idea that an algorithm will predict what we will do before we have even decided we will do it?

Rachel Levinson, Senior Counsel for the Liberty and National Security Program in the Brennan Center for Justice highlighted another question: how is data collection and sharing impacting human rights? With data gathered on vulnerable people, those at risk of persecution, this information could fall into the wrong hands when shared, as for example when Europol and EU law enforcement agencies attempted to access information collected by EURODAC, a transnational database established by the European Council where sensitive information was collected for asylum seekers fleeing repressive regimes. Moreover, the sharing of data is often well within the rights of several organizations which can transfer data to third parties. This, in course, may have a sort of chilling effect on asylum-seekers and migrants, causing them not to seek out services because of fear of data collection and sharing. It may also create further divisions and stratas in society of those who are not tracked, and those who are, be it nationally individuals who are incarcerated or internationally, those seeking refugee status. Data analytics can pose even greater adverse effects on migrants and refugees as companies like IBM propose software tools to weed out refugees from imposters and possible terrorists. This raises the question whether companies can argue such tools are just engineering when credit fraud and terrorism operate so differently.

However, what all panel members seemed to agree upon was the potential of data to offer services, tracking recidivism likelihoods for those who have already been incarcerated and providing accompanying services as one example. The risk of offering misplaced services may be less dire. There is also a difference in community efforts and police presence: one creating more support and the other creating more stigma. As Sweeney also pointed out, many crimes are those of opportunity and just because they do not occur in one place, one time, to one individual does not mean they do not occur in another place, at another time, to another individual. Services may work towards eliminating the roots of crimes rather than displacing them.
LISTEN HERE:

By Mark Green

Lowry & Lamarche discuss if this time Trump's been finally & fatally stabbed like the victim of Murder on the Orient Express. Which civil war will GOP choose: w/ Trump, w/ Cruz, w/ 'new face'? Nader says new-face while Lowry thinks that'd destroy party (that a bad thing?).

Trump Descending Staircase. Multiple controversies and mistakes - Heidi, Corey, abortion - may have finally hit critical mass or, in Gara Lamarche's phrase, " a tipping point." It appears that it's now first-ballot-or-bust for the front-runner since it's hard to see how he can gain delegates in latter ballots. Rich sees his bad week as more "a topping out, now consistently at 35-40% of the primary vote. At this point in 2012, Romney was moving toward 50-to-70% of the vote, which won't happen with Trump because resistance to him has stiffened not softened. And his poll numbers among women are toxic."

Any way he could win a general election? Not really, they agree but, notes Lowry, "he started out with bad numbers in the primaries and reversed them, though that'd be far harder in a General Election. And he'll hit Hillary Clinton far harder than anything she has ever..." - Host interrupts: "hasn't she been hit hard for decades?" Rich: "Trump is not Dan Burton or Jason Chafetz. It'd be brutal. But it's now far more likely he'd lose in a landslide than that he'd win."

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Gara notes the GOP dilemma that the alternative now is the Republican the party most loathes, Ted Cruz. Is he really any stronger than Trump this Fall? Yes thinks Lowry - he's more a disciplined conservative and elected official, "but still the nomination at this point seems like a poisoned chalice...since if it's Cruz, Trump will likely behave as a sore loser" and beat him up with his 17 million social media followers.

As for Karl Rove's speculation that the Convention could legally go for a 'new face' to beat Clinton, Ralph Nader in a recent column agrees...but each man is using logic not emotion when the base of the party seems pretty unhinged. Rich disagrees: "It's hard enough for the Convention to skip #1 in delegates and choose the #2 or #3 person as the nominee but to instead select someone who's gotten zero votes would...lead to something like the fist fights on the floor of the South Korean parliament."

Clinton-Sanders Schism? All agree, in Rich's words, that "Republicans know splits and Democrats are not suffering splits. They're having a fairly normal nomination contest which is likely to last until the Convention. That's nothing like on the GOP side, where families are split, magazines are split, the party is split."

Should the delegate leader Clinton prevail, Gara is asked, would 95% of the party unite behind her with a small number either going for Green Party candidate Jill Stein or sitting it out? "Yes, there'll be eventual unity." Consensus: Trump and Cruz won't likely hold their arms up in unison, as Carter-Kennedy did not...while Hillary-Bernie likely would, as Ford-Reagan did.

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The New York Host: if Cruz and Sanders narrowly win their respective Wisconsin primaries in two weeks - as polls currently indicate -- New York becomes fairly decisive. As of now, Trump and Clinton lead.

The cliche that two weeks or days is a lifetime in politics is true - e.g., in the NY Democratic presidential primary in 1980, Carter led Kennedy by 20 with two weeks to go yet lost by 20 (because of a perceived anti-Israel UN vote). Still, bet on Trump heavily in New York because, whatever his sins, he certainly has a "New Yawk" personality and Cowboy Cruz in cowboys boots mocking "New York values" is as bad a political fit in the Empire State as there probably ever has been. Then all eyes turn to California and Pennsylvania a week later to see if he can get back on track toward a first round win with 1237 delegates.

As for the Democrats, usually the most liberal candidate statewide wins a primary, which would be Sanders. But though the less liberal, Hillary would likely over-perform in that role in upstate and the suburbs since she represented those areas...and would over-perform also among minorities in NYC. So it's very very unlikely she'd lose the state.

So we may witness an eerie replay of 1992 when frontrunner Bill unexpectedly lost Connecticut and came wounded into New York having to win there to main lock up the nomination. 42 did. 45 will also.

Social Issues, Again. The combination of the North Carolina law on transgenders in bathrooms - plus Chris Matthews's abortion Q to Trump, the FDA's easing of access to the non-surgical RU-486 abortifacient, Indiana's new law tightening access and forthcoming Supreme Court decision on Texas abortion - show that the culture wars are still politically salient. How do they cut? Will abortion fade as issue IF a Democrat wins and replaces the 5-4 Roe v. Wade majority with a 7-2 one?

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Lamarche sees a difference between the abortion and sexual orientation issues. "More of those in the latter camp are realizing that they're simply on the wrong side of history here" while the former sincerely believe that abortion is the taking of a life. (In one sense that's understandable since it's largely impossible to show any harm when it comes to same sex marriage or transgenders in the bathrooms of their sexual identity.) And he laughs at the blatant hypocrisy of NC conservatives who talk incessantly about local control yet now insist that state law should overrule local ordinances, like the liberal one in Charlotte

Lowry agrees that "many pro-choice people just hoped that he abortion question would just go away after 1973 but quite to the contrary, here it still is." Q: while Trump got blasted for unthoughtfully saying that women should be punished if abortion were banned and they had one, wasn't he simply being logical since the crime of "murdering babies" - which 1 in 3 women will do in their lifetime - should then lead to criminal punishment? Rich concludes that, "while it is a profound moral wrong, the emotionally distressed woman shouldn't suffer further punishment but providers should."

This is of course a difficult issue but why would conservatives make a gallant allowance for women, who may or may not be emotionally upset, but not some robber pushed to the brink by, say, alcoholism, abuse or poverty? They appear to be logically trapped by their invocation of murder and then immediate political acquittal.
It only took about two decades, but this genie's wish has finally been granted: genealogy is now officially its own TV genre. With current offerings including Who Do You Think You Are?, Finding Your Roots, Relative Race, Genealogy Roadshow, Long Lost Family, and Follow Your Past, it's clear this is no passing phase. Family history on TV is here to stay.

Some of us can remember back to the late 1990s when PBS took the lead by introducing Ancestors which ran for two seasons, and way back in the dark ages of 2007, I had a deal with TLC for a genealogy program which unfortunately crumbled when the executive producer insisted on "no history" (no kidding). But look how far we've come since then!

Oh, we've flirted with it in the past. African American Lives, Ancestors, Ancestors in the Attic, Faces of America, Find My Past, The Generations Project, and Searching For all come to mind as series that entertained us for a season or two. Family history has been served up in barely disguised versions such as History Detectives and If Walls Could Talk, and discreetly tucked into non-genealogical shows such as Top Chef.

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But Who Do You Think You Are? is now in its eighth season and has run for 12 in the United Kingdom where it originated, and both Finding Your Roots and Genealogy Roadshow are three seasons in. Relative Race pushes the genre in a new direction by turning it into a game, and there are enticing, overseas formats such as Sweden's Allt for Sverige and the U.K.'s The Secret History of My Family just begging to be imported. Yes, we've reached the "me, too" stage where network and cable outlets that don't yet have a genealogical show should be shopping for one.

We've seen this happen before with cooking, design, and home-buying genres to name but a few, and it's finally our turn, but at the risk of sounding greedy, this genie has one more wish.

When you watch cooking shows, you see chefs - or at least wannabe chefs. When you watch design shows, you see interior or fashion designers, and when you watch home-buying shows, you see realtors. Why then is there such a scarcity of genealogists on genealogy shows?

Genealogy Roadshow is the exception that proves the rule since it features three genealogists. Who Do You Think You Are? tends to include a cameo by a genealogist every other episode or so (though there are many experts in the show, most are professors rather than those who did the sleuthing) and Finding Your Roots typically incorporates one appearance per season where a genealogist speaks. And that's it.

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US President Barack Obama speaks during a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg(not seen) in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, April 4, 2016. / AFP / SAUL LOEB (Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

President Obama denounced Iran's leaders for what he claimed was behavior that did not conform to the spirit of last year's nuclear accord. He offered that judgment as justification for Washington's continued effort to restrict the restoration of the IRI's normal commercial relations with other countries as foreseen by the agreement. The United States' readiness to punish any financial institution (American or foreign) facilitating business transactions with Iran gives it considerable leverage to influence the terms of Iran's return to the global economy.

There is a certain odd logic in President Obama's condemnation of Iran's conduct. For he made it unmistakably clear that as far as the United States was concerned, any move toward normalization of relations turned on Tehran's acceptance of its long-standing bill of indictment of the IRI that extends far beyond the nuclear issue.

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Let us bear in mind Obama's repeated statements in the immediate wake of the accord that the nuclear deal in itself changed nothing in the American judgment that Iran was a hostile state -- a sponsor of terrorism, a multi-pronged fomenter of disruption in the region, and a party with whom the US could not deal. Washington has followed through on that in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, etc. Since that depiction of Iran flows from the way we characterize the regime, it properly can be said that the United States still seeks either Iran's full conformity to the American conception of how political influence should be distributed in the region or regime change in Tehran.

Hence, Obama's denunciation of Iran for such sins as continuing to back Hezbollah and the Assad regime in Syria represents continuity. American demands are rooted in the American hubris that its exceptional virtue grants it the prerogative to interpret and judge the behavior of everyone else. The resulting mindset underlays a philosophy whereby no one else is permitted to have legitimate interests without their being certified by Washington -- be it Iran, Russia, or whomever. That certification is based not on principle, but rather whatever expedient appraisals Washington makes of what best serves its own interests and purposes

At present, a peculiarly warped logic has produced the conclusion that those interests include acting as an accessory to Saudi Arabia's assault on Yemen even if that means a sharp increase in the strength of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular (AQAP), labeling al-Nusra/al-Qaeda as part of the "moderate" opposition to Assad, and pulling its punches in regard to the multiple links between ISIL and Erdogan's Turkey. Relations with Iran will remain antagonistic so long as Obama's team views the Middle East through these distorted lenses.

For years now, President Obama and his senior security officials have told us that the gravest terrorist danger came from the AQ subsidiary al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular (AQAP) based in Yemen. We have attacked it with drones, conventional air strikes, Special Forces and assorted clandestine operations. This was done first in collaboration with the government of long-time former dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh. Once he was forced from office in the wake of the Arab Spring (literally fire-bombed out of it), we connived with the Saudis to replace him with his Vice-President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi. A weak, unpopular figure, Hadi nonetheless was our man who let us bomb to our heart's content.

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His unseating by the Houthis has been interpreted by Washington, as well as the KSA, as part of an Iranian sponsored push in the region. Hence, our full and unqualified backing for the Saudi bombing campaign despite the incontestable fact that the Houthis are bitter enemies of AQAP who have fought them effectively. While traditionally expressing animosity toward the United States, the Houthi leadership had given indications of a willingness to consider forms of tacit cooperation against AQAP.

AQAP had been flexing their muscles amidst the political disorder in Sana'a and exploiting the weaknesses of Hadi's regime. So why declare all-out war on their enemies? That's the big question. The distressing answer is that the Obama administration decided that in fact containing/crushing it was not the primary American interest. It pivoted toward Riyadh -- accepting the Saudi view of the region which placed highest priority on thwarting Iranian/Shi'ite designs (real or imagined) by suppressing the Houthis than the "war on terrorism."

Two questions stand out: Do the Obama people actually believe this fictional account or are they just going along with it? Either way, why are they ready to pay such a steep price in facilitating the growth of AQAP (as has occurred during the month-long bombing campaign)?

The American campaign against AQAP is stymied. The base from which drone strikes were launched, and Special Operations Forces operated, was evacuated just before it was overrun by AQAP irregulars. The base commander -- a Hadi loyalist -- fled to Saudi Arabia before the assault, appealing to his troops to stand down. Elsewhere, the elite Yemeni units trained by Central Command to fight AQAP were bombed by the Saudis, thereby degraded and leaderless.

In summary: The United States government knowingly follows a course that leads to a strengthening of a terrorist group which the President has declared the gravest threat to the United States. But don't worry good citizens, just make sure to take off your shoes at airports and sleep soundly knowing that the NSA will continue to monitor your electronic communications without warrant. The attempt to keep Iran isolated reflects this

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Strange worldview.
Family members comfort a woman mourns the death of a relative, who was killed in a blast outside a public park on Sunday, during funeral in Lahore, Pakistan, March 28, 2016. REUTERS/Mohsin Raza

Lahore -- the nerve center of Pakistan's Punjabi heartland -- got soaked in blood on Easter Sunday. A suicide bomber struck the bustling Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park in the provincial capital when it was packed with families -- scores of them Christian -- enjoying perhaps the last weekend of the city's evanescent spring before the weather warms up. At least 72 people have perished, most of them children and women. The jihadist group Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, which is a virulent offshoot of the vicious Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, claimed responsibility. That Pakistan's fight against jihadist terrorism will be drawn out was known, but after the Mardan, Charsadda and Peshawar attacks, the Lahore carnage reaffirms that it will be an extremely deadly one, too.

The Pakistani state had tried to negotiate with the TTP off and on despite criticism from the country's thinning liberal quarters that the exercise would not only be futile but also give lead time to the TTP and other assorted jihadists to prepare for an eventual crackdown against them. First the military signed agreements with one after another jihadist group and then civilian governments did or tried to do the same. Upon assuming power in 2013, Nawaz Sharif's government made it a cornerstone of its policy to arrive at a negotiated settlement with the TTP, before finally giving up the thought in favor of military action in 2014. The TTP jihadists rained death on most of Pakistan but largely spared Sharif's power base of Punjab, except for sporadically attacking the minority Christians in mass attacks and systematic targeted killings of the Shia and Ahmadi Muslims. The prime minister's younger brother Shahbaz Sharif, who has headed the government in the Punjab province since 2008, is said to have actively courted the TTP to spare Punjab.

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That Pakistan's fight against jihadist terrorism will be drawn out was known, but after the Mardan, Charsadda and Peshawar attacks, the Lahore carnage reaffirms that it will be an extremely deadly one, too.

The documents introduced last year in the United States v. Abid Naseer trial in New York included materials captured from Osama bin Laden's hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan and indicated that Shahbaz Sharif offered the TTP a quid pro quo for not attacking targets in Punjab. In the papers is included a 2010 letter from the al Qaeda operative Atiyah Abd al-Rahman to his boss bin Laden, which states:

Regarding Tahreek-i-Taliban: we have informed Hakimallah and his companion Qari Husayn, that the Punjab government (Shah Baz Sharif) sent them a message indicating they wanted to negotiate with them, and that they were ready to reestablish normal relations as long as they do not conduct operations in Punj ab (in their governmental jurisdiction, which does not include Islamabad or Bandy). The government said they were ready to pay any price ... and so on. They told us the negotiations were under way.

Hakimullah Mehsud was the TTP's ringleader and Qari Husayn Mehsud was the notorious "Ustad-e-Fedayeen" or teacher of suicide bombers. They were later killed in drone strikes

The government, however, did not budge much when 15 people were killed and more than 70 were injured in the March 15, 2015 attacks on two churches in Lahore. The JuA, which by some accounts has rejoined the TTP, had claimed that attack, too. The political links that Sharif's party, the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz, has maintained with assorted extremist groups within the Punjab province are perhaps even more important than its tacit overtures to the TTP. For example, Malik Ishaq who led the rabidly anti-Shia terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, reportedly received a stipend from the Punjab government. Ishaq was later killed in a police encounter after he was rumored to have pledged allegiance to the self-proclaimed Islamic State. In 2010, the law minister of Punjab province, Rana Sanaullah, who still holds the same office, participated in the election campaign of the LeJ's political front Ahle-Sunnat-wal-Jamat (previously Sipah-e-Sahaba). The Lashkar-e-Taiba, which perpetrated the 2008 Mumbai attacks, is yet another jihadist group that has received kid-glove treatment from the Punjab government. Report after report shows that the Mumbai attack mastermind Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi is living large in the Adiala high-security prison in Punjab.

People shout slogans to protest terrorism as they attend a vigil for the victims of the suicide attacks on churches in Lahore on March 16, 2015. (Metin Aktas/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

While Nawaz Sharif has always pandered to his religiously conservative voter base in the Punjab province, he does not necessarily condone the extremists at all times. For example, during his second prime ministerial stint, Sharif went after the LeJ's founder Riaz Basra and earned the latter's wrath. Basra responded by trying to bomb the prime minister's motorcade outside Lahore but thankfully missed. On the run, Basra and many of his cohorts took off for Afghanistan, which was under Taliban rule then, and the Taliban, in turn, were backed by Pakistan's army, as the former army chief General Pervez Musharraf has conceded recently. And therein lies the rub. Whenever the civilian leadership has tried to act against domestic jihadists, the powerful military has stonewalled them. Over the years, Pakistani politicians seemed to have concluded that waging proxy wars through jihadist insurgencies forms a cornerstone of the military's approach to foreign policy, and, therefore, the extremists are here to stay. So civilian leaders of all varieties chose to enter into political alliances with them. Even an otherwise liberal politician like Benazir Bhutto looked the other way when in 1995 her party's Punjab wing inducted as provincial ministers two leaders of the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan. The SSP was a forerunner of the LeJ and ASWJ.

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The fact is that the use of irregular lashkars -- hordes -- flying the standard of Islam, dates back to the country's first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, presiding over the use of a tribal cohort to launch a "jihad" in Kashmir in 1947 while the country's founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah was still alive. Brigadier Akbar Khan, an officer with a knack for intrigue, conceived the plan and Liaquat Ali Khan signed off on it, as the respected military historian Shuja Nawaz has chronicled. The cycle has been repeated over and over again with the military going ahead with its jihadist misadventures in Afghanistan and Kashmir and the civilian prime ministers like Benazir Bhutto -- whose interior minister bragged about siring the Afghan Taliban -- and Nawaz Sharif plodding along. The military's premise has been that it can use the jihadists as force multipliers in Afghanistan, where it seeks to neutralize a perceived Indian influence, and directly against India in Kashmir, while containing the jihadist fallout. The problem with this approach is twofold: firstly, to maintain a jihadist proxy force, a complete extremist nursery was created inside Pakistan, leading to rampant radicalization of the society at large. Secondly, the jihadists have their own ideological agenda. While the Pakistan army may want the jihadists to impose the sharia on Kabul, the latter want to do that in Islamabad, too. The net result is a massive jihadist ecosystem came into existence, which the Pakistani state now finds hard to fully confront let alone dismantle.

Unless the Pakistani state abandons the use of jihadism as a tool of implementing foreign policy objectives, jihadist terrorism will remain its festering sore.

When faced with the massive blowback of its jihad project gone awry, the Pakistan military had come up with the arbitrary distinction of the "good Taliban" -- the ones who attack only the neighboring countries -- versus the "bad Taliban" -- the ones who attack inside Pakistan also. The problem is that the "good" and the "bad" Taliban have remained joined at the hip ideologically and logistically. They have shared training facilities first in Afghanistan under the Taliban rule and when that was busted by the U.S. in 2001, in Pakistan's tribal areas. The Pakistan army's Operation Zarb-e-Azb, which was launched in summer 2014, has arguably been successful in liquidating the terrorist infrastructure in the tribal regions. There has been a noticeable decline in the regular terrorist attacks inside Pakistan, the carnage in Lahore and a string of bombings in the Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa province notwithstanding. The Lahore attack indicates, however, that the jihadists retain the capability of striking hard at the soft targets. Chances are that the bomber who blew over 70 innocents to smithereens had logistic support from one of the dozens of Punjab-based jihadist groups. After the Easter Sunday attack, Pakistan's chief of army staff, General Raheel Sharif and Nawaz Sharif have separately pledged to wipe out terrorism from the heartland.

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While some action is expected, whether that pledge would transform into a military operation of the scale seen in the tribal areas remains to be seen. What is even more critical is if there will eventually be a reversal of the decades-long policy of using jihadists as force extenders in Afghanistan and Kashmir, which has brought common Pakistanis nothing but grief. Politicization of religion has converted it from the opium of the masses to the poison of the mankind. The then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had presciently pointed out to her Pakistani hosts in 2011, "You can't keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbors. Eventually, those snakes are going to turn on whoever has them in their backyard." Unfortunately, while the world laments that fighting terror at home and stoking it in Afghanistan is an untenable position for Pakistan, Sartaj Aziz, a senior a advisor to the Prime Minister Sharif, casually admitted that Pakistan still harbors and facilitates the Afghan Taliban leadership. Aziz merely confirmed what the international media has been reporting: the so-called "good Taliban" are still operating out of Pakistan and Mullah Omar's successor was likely chosen on the Pakistani soil. Similarly, the India-oriented jihadists have been carrying on with business as usual.

Pakistani police officers stand guard at the site of a bomb blast in a park in Lahore, Pakistan, Sunday, March, 27, 2016.

In the wake of the Lahore bloodbath, the hope was that Pakistani civil and military leadership will think long and hard and come up with a formidable action plan. Instead, the Pakistani national discourse seems preoccupied with an alleged Indian intelligence agent whom the Pakistanis claim to have captured in the restive Balochistan province. The charge against the apprehended man is that he was fomenting insurgency in Balochistan. Whatever the veracity of the Pakistani claim may be, it seems to have completely drowned out the massacre at Lahore by homegrown jihadists. On the eve of the Lahore carnage, some Pakistanis were complaining that the world media was not paying attention to the plight of Pakistan at the hands of the terrorists, as it did to the Brussels attack. Sadly, within 48 hours of the Lahore bombing the more than 70 brutally slaughtered individuals seem to have been forgotten. The Lahore bombing was not even a trending topic on Pakistani Twitter. Just when the narrative needed to be focused, it became totally nebulous.

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Chasing a red herring at time when clarity of thought and action is needed does not bode well. It certainly makes it easy for the state authorities to deflect hard questions over both their past policy disasters and more immediate intelligence failures that allowed this attack to go undetected. Pakistani civil and military leaders, as well as the society, must realize what is bad for Kabul and Delhi is bad for Lahore, too. The state tolerating the so-called "good" jihadists within Pakistan in the hopes that they would only attack its neighbors has cost Pakistan's people dearly. Unless the Pakistani state abandons the use of jihadism as a tool of implementing foreign policy objectives, jihadist terrorism will remain its festering sore.

Earlier on WorldPost:
$150 billion. According to the International Labour Organization, that's the revenue generated by each year by forced labor for those who place more value on profit than people. From sex traffickers making a business out of prostitution, to international corporations relying on forced labor to keep costs down, every day an estimated 21 million men, women and children around the world are exploited in silence. That's the equivalent of the amount of people living in New York, London and Paris together.

Of the many kinds of forced labor, sex trafficking grabs the most headlines. Yet, labor trafficking on both a local and international scale remains hidden in the shadows. The Polaris Project, which operates the National Human Trafficking Resource Center hotline, has received more than 4,000 reports of labor trafficking in the United States since 2007.

Labor trafficking is more challenging to investigate and prosecute than sex trafficking. The sale of sexual services is illegal in the United States, therefore police and prosecutors have much stronger authority to investigate whether a sex worker has been trafficked. If so they have the power to go after and prosecute those responsible for the crime. But forced labor is much harder to detect, and as a result, law enforcement must often rely on referrals from third parties, such as non-governmental organizations or foreign consulates - rather than build cases from the ground up.

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Thankfully, there are many non-profit organizations dedicated to identifying and helping victims of labor trafficking. What we need now is for private businesses to join in.

Multi-national companies can play an essential role in the fight against forced labor: they have the power to trigger immediate change for workers by simply switching suppliers, by enforcing better auditing, and by increasing accountability.

Many corporations are already assisting in the fight. In 2014, our working group provided the financial services industry with guidance on identifying and reporting transactions that might be linked to human trafficking. Some of the world's leading financial institutions adopted the group's recommendations, including American Express, Bank of America, Citigroup, and JP Morgan Chase. These companies have expressed a willingness to be proactive, to identify red flags, and to help prosecutors build cases.

Financial intelligence is only the first step. Now, we have to tackle forced labor within corporations themselves.

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No industry is untouched. Global outsourcing makes it easier for employers to take advantage of vulnerable workers, and harder for corporations to monitor and regulate the working conditions of those at the bottom of their supply chain. As a result, some goods made by forced labor can land undetected onto America's shelves, making consumers unwilling accomplices.

Some progress is being made. High-profile multinational corporations have conducted bold internal audits in their supply chains. Many are now working transparently to get things right.

Recent legislative victories are also encouraging. President Obama's administration recently closed an 85-year-old loophole in the 1930 Tariff Act by banning the importation of 136 goods produced by forced labor from 74 different countries. And a promising bipartisan bill, the Business Supply Chain Transparency on Trafficking and Slavery Act, would require companies that gross more than $100 million each year to disclose the steps they've taken to address trafficking in their supply chains.

But more must be done. Imagine the impact on a global scale if the world's biggest corporations formally committed to eradicating forced labor in their supply chains.

That's why, together with world-renowned artist Sir Anish Kapoor, the Thomson Reuters Foundation created the Stop Slavery Award: to honor businesses going above and beyond to ensure that their suppliers are not exploiting their workers or profiting off of forced labor.

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The idea behind the Award is simple: to spark a virtuous cycle that will trigger more corporations to take action to investigate, improve, and eradicate unfair and illegal labor practices in their supply chains. The Award will also encourage consumers to make informed and responsible decisions on what goods they decide to buy.

Profits should never come at the expense of human rights. It's time for companies to step up and protect the people who enhance their bottom line. Together we can put the business of human trafficking out of business.

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The Stop Slavery Award is an initiative of the Thomson Reuters Foundation with pro bono support from law firm Baker & McKenzie. The first Stop Slavery Award winners will be honored at this year's Trust Women Conference, to be held on November 30th in London. For more information visit www.stopslaveryaward.com.
Perhaps the most exciting outcome of my op-ed in USA Today are the responses and open discussion of the Quran's teachings in popular news sources, including TIME Magazine, the Huffington Post, and a Patheos blog. Such public dialogue and discussion is the key to moving forward and addressing the roots of jihad.

In my article I propose that, "when everyday Muslims investigate the Quran and hadith (or sayings of the Muhammad) for themselves, bypassing centuries of tradition and their imams' interpretations, they are confronted with the reality of violent jihad in the very foundations of their faith." Nonetheless, I suggest that the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful and innocent and should be received with friendship and love.

That is a very short digest of my recent book, Answering Jihad: A Better Way Forward. In the opening chapter of that book, I describe why it took me years to come to this conclusion: I had always been taught Islam was a religion of peace and that Muhammad was a kind, peaceful man, in fact the most perfect who ever lived. It took years of studying the sources to move away from the interpretations that the imams in my denomination had taught me. Incidentally, those are the same imams who taught all three of the respondents above, as I grew up in the same sect of Islam that they are a part of. How is it that people can come to such differing conclusions about the person of Muhammad?

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The answer has to do with the incredible number of traditions of Muhammad's life. Although the Quran only mentions Muhammad by name four times, the body of literature known as hadith contain hundreds of thousands of accounts and anecdotes. These are not full narratives of Muhammad's life, but discrete stories of specific events or sayings. Islamic tradition does also record narrative biographies of the life of Muhammad, and those are called sirah, but they hold a lesser place in the eyes of most Muslims.

Here is my point: when a Muslim gets his information about Muhammad directly from these sources, rather than from imams or traditions that selectively filter them, they have no alternative but to conclude that the life of Muhammad, and therefore the context of the Quran, culminates in violence.

Consider two well-known hadiths from the anthologies of Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, considered to be the two most authentic collections of hadith. In one, Muhammad says , "I will expel all the Jews and Christians from the Arabian peninsula and not leave any but Muslim." In another, he says, "I have been ordered to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah's Messenger... then they save their lives and property from me." These authentic hadiths are illuminating when trying to understand the Quran's commands to kill polytheists (9.5) and fight Jews and Christians (9.29-30). Muhammad was fighting people for their beliefs, not for their actions, with the intent to expel or convert. Only by going against the grain of Islamic tradition, deeming these traditions to be unreliable, can an investigator avoid the violence inherent in the origins of Islam.

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When I was a Muslim, I tried my best to do exactly that, individually dismissing account after account of Muhammad's violence. But after at least a hundred such accounts, I realized they were ubiquitous. Considering just one aspect of his life in tradition, his conduct with enemies, we find that Muhammad would invoke curses upon them, encourage his men to compose insults and abusive poetry, on one occasion asking Allah to fill peoples' homes with flames simply because they delayed the Muslims in their daily prayers.

He led battles against unarmed cities. He allowed even women and children to be exposed to danger during nighttime raids. On more than one occasion Muhammad decimated tribes by killing all their men and teenage boys while distributing their women and children as slaves. This is the man that the Quran tells all Muslims to emulate (33.21).

When I asked various imams to explain these traditions, they could do so only by ignoring or dismissing all these traditions that record the historical context of the Quran, even though they come from the most authentic collection in Islamic tradition, Sahih Bukhari.

Similarly, while still a Muslim, I asked my peace-loving imams to explain the ancient biographies of Muhammad. In the earliest such biography, Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah we find that chapter 9 of the Quran is the last major chapter of the Quran to be composed, and its most expansively violent chapter. The biography gives the context of the Quranic verse that says "Slay the infidels wherever you find them" on pages 617-619. There it makes clear that not just the one tribe of polytheists who broke a treaty, but all polytheists would have to leave Arabia or be slaughtered. Those who had broken the treaty and shown hostility with Muslims "should be killed for it," those who had a general truce with Muslims would be given four months, and those who had a treaty with Muslims for a set term would be allowed to complete their term, but after that they were at risk of being slain by the command of the Quran. This is not a bizarre or idiosyncratic interpretation, but the standard interpretation of classical Islam and many Muslim scholars today. It is the interpretation provided by a popular Pakistani commentator today, Taqi Usmani, which can be downloaded for free on the QuranExplorer app.

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A few pages later, this earliest biography of Muhammad's life explains why Muslims are told to "Fight the People of the Scripture (Jews and Christians)... until they pay the ransom tax and feel subdued." The answer is given in the previous verse: the polytheists, now being expelled or slaughtered, would no longer be able to bring their trade to Mecca, and the Muslims were afraid of losing this income. The biography says that Jews and Christians would be made to pay the Muslims money, "as a compensation for what you (the Muslims) fear to lose by the closing of the markets." (620) The justification for fighting the Jews and Christians is given in the next verse, 9.30: "The Jews say Ezra is the Son of God and the Christians say the Messiah is the Son of God... May Allah destroy them!" Once again, this is the clear reading of the words in the Quran, the biography supports it, classical Muslim scholars advocated it, and respected Muslim scholars today agree.

In fact, this interpretation is the only one that explains why Muslims had the impetus to fight one third of the known world immediately after Muhammad died. His final teachings, recorded in the Quran and hadith, led them to conquest from the shores of the Atlantic to the valleys of India, at times slaughtering even undefended cities, such as in the conquest of Nikiu, which occurred during the reign of Umar ibn al-Khattab, a man most Muslims think was divinely guided.

Once again, my imams dismissed the historical records and traditions, advising me to ignore them. Since these are the very sources that tell us about Muhammad, I cannot selectively ignore the portions I find problematic. When others do, though, my argument in the USA today article still stands: people have to filter the traditions to produce a peaceful Islam. When everyday Muslims investigate the Quran and hadith for themselves, without their imams filtering the traditions, they are confronted with the reality of violent jihad in the very foundations of their faith.

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Netherlands, Maastricht, man walking on rainbow flag painted on the street

For the past 20 years I've seen "biphobia," or prejudice and hatred against bisexuals, go unchecked by gays and lesbians in spaces where bisexuals should be welcomed as fellow queers. Instead, we are commonly greeted with stereotypes -- told we're "selfish," "greedy," "cheaters," that we're 'in denial,' and really straight or gay, that we "need both to be happy." As a result, when the bisexual/pansexual/queer youth of today bravely venture into their first gay bar, the same thing happens to them that happened to me in 1999 -- they are told they don't exist. They quickly learn, like I did, that many gays and lesbians don't really want to date bisexuals let alone support them.

A December 2015 study in the Journal of Bisexuality found that gays and lesbians had nearly identical prejudice against bisexuals as heterosexuals. But most bisexuals don't need a study to affirm that fact, and failure to acknowledge biphobia from within and outside LGBT communities is extremely harmful.

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Failure to acknowledge and address biphobia has had a powerful impact on bisexual health, forcing our risk factors to skyrocket past those of gay and lesbian people.

Nearly half of bisexual women have considered or attempted suicide. They have higher rates of mood disorders, such as depression and anxiety, compared to lesbians or heterosexual women. One in two bisexual women has experienced severe violence by an intimate partner as opposed to one in three lesbians and one in four heterosexual women. Bisexual women are more than twice as likely to live in poverty as lesbians, are less likely to be out to their doctors, and are more likely to smoke and have substance abuse issues.

The stats for bisexual men aren't much better. One in three bisexual men has considered or attempted suicide. They are 50 percent more likely to live in poverty than gay men. Nearly half of all bisexual men suffer from mood disorders, while one in three has experienced rape, violence, or stalking by an intimate partner as opposed to one in four gay men. According to the CDC, half of black bisexual men and a quarter of bisexual Hispanic men will be diagnosed with HIV in their lifetimes -- the same as gay men.

In light of these abysmal statistics, the Bisexual Resource Center created Bisexual Health Awareness Month (BHAM) in 2014 to raise awareness about the bisexual community's social, economic and health disparities and to advocate for actions that can prevent or decrease these disparities. This year, the focus of BHAM is on bi youth, a group that, like its elders, shares worse health statistics than their gay and lesbian peers.

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Bi youths have a higher incidence of suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts than gay and lesbian youths as well as a higher risk of truancy and bullying . While many bisexual male youths are called "fags" just like their gay counterparts, bisexual female youths experience sexual harassment at a younger age than their heterosexual peers.

In a 2012 Human Rights Campaign survey of more than 10,000 LGBT teens, bisexual females stated that boys had touched them inappropriately, called them "whores" or "sluts," and asked them to make out with other girls so they could watch.

And when it comes to high school graduation rates, bisexual youths have it worse off as well -- with a whopping 17 to 18 percent failing to graduate from high school as opposed to 4 to 9 percent of gay teens, according to the April 2015 study "Understanding the educational attainment of sexual minority women and men" by Stefanie Mollborna of the University of Colorado and Bethany Everett of the University of Illinois.

Before I was even aware of the abysmal health and economic stats for our community, I had gotten pretty fed up with the lack of progress I had witnessed. So in January 2015, I created the #StillBisexual campaign to try to dispel the one stereotype that erases us the most -- that we don't stay bisexual. I shot confessional-style videos of bisexuals of all ages, races and marital statuses, flipping handwritten cards that told their personal stories of biphobia and how they came to realize their orientation was lifelong and not the fad everyone promised it would be. Suddenly, bisexuals from around the country were sending in their own homemade videos, and others were offering to host their own #StillBisexual video shoots in their cities.

Our campaign now has more than 50 videos and more than 3,500 Twitter followers. We've been featured in publications like Cosmopolitan, HuffPo Live, Bustle, Pride and Towleroad, and garnered support from the Trevor Project, Human Rights Campaign, Evan Rachel Wood, Sara Ramirez and the Los Angeles LGBT Center. But what makes me the proudest is that a resource now exists online for bisexuals who cannot find acceptance at their local gay bar or college LGBT group. They can watch other bisexuals who are experiencing biphobia talk about their struggles and how they overcame them to reach self-acceptance and find love -- and that's something that would have really helped my own mental health as a bi youth.

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On April 16, the #StillBisexual campaign will join the Los Angeles LGBT Center's 360, the health and wellness fair for LBTQ women, to help educate attendees about the unique health needs of our community. I hope that through raising awareness about the campaign and the abysmal bisexual health statistics, our community as a whole will finally get funding and policies in place to address our health disparities. But that will only come through raising awareness and empathy about the bisexual experience -- and gaining allies to help us put an end to the prejudice against us.

A community is only as strong as its weakest members. And though it may be hard for gays and lesbians to relate to what it's like to be attracted to more than one gender, it is crucial that they try to accept and support the needs of all LGBT members. For the past 40 years, bisexual people have tried to address the needs of our community on our own. We failed. Why? Because every community needs allies. Without straight allies, the larger LGBT community never would have achieved the right to same-sex marriage and the resources to combat the AIDS crisis. Without LGT allies, the bisexual community will never have the opportunity to face a future without stigma, poverty and illness. And given that bisexuals comprise the largest population within the LGBT community, that right is long overdue.
On February 12, 1968, Martin Luther King and his staff completed the master plan for what they dubbed the "Poor People's Campaign." The purpose of the campaign was to mobilize masses of impoverished Americans of all races and regions to descend upon the nation's capital to "place the problems of the poor at the seat of government" and remain until the government announced substantive measures to address their plight. King was uniquely positioned to lead so bold a challenge to the forces of America's economic and political status quo, but doing so would certainly attract to him enemies more powerful than he'd faced before.

On April 4, 1968 -- just days before the Poor People's Campaign was to begin -- Martin Luther King was murdered. Was this mere coincidence? Or was there something more at work? A largely forgotten event in American history might reveal an answer.

The World War Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924 granted America's World War I veterans "bonus" pension certificates. However, the certificates could not be redeemed until 1945. As the Great Depression deepened, desperate veterans pleaded for early redemption of their certificates, to no avail. In May of 1932, 300 frustrated, desperate veterans journeyed to the nation's capital to demand immediate cash payment of their bonuses. In the next few months thousands of equally desperate veterans and their families joined them.

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By July 1932, some 43,000 "Bonus Marchers," as they came to be called, had descended on the capital and built more than two dozen camps -- the largest with 15,000 people -- that they ran with organizational discipline like a bona fide city, digging in for an extended occupation if it came to be necessary.

On July 17, the Bonus Marchers amassed on Capital Hill to await the vote on a hastily crafted congressional bill that would allow early redemption. The legislation was decisively defeated. Congress immediately demanded that the campsites be dismantled, but the bulk of the protestors refused to leave. Tempers flared.

On July 28, two veterans were killed during an armed police eviction gone awry. Concerned that there would be more violence, President Herbert Hoover called out the U.S. Army to destroy the camps and forcibly remove the Bonus Marchers from Washington. What followed was a full-fledged military action against the veterans replete with infantry and calvary regiments, tanks, fixed bayonets and tear gas. By nightfall, hundreds had been injured. A baby and a 12-year-old boy later died of their injuries.

Americans throughout the nation were outraged by Hoover's use of the United States military against its own citizens. That it was wartime veterans that were attacked heightened their anger. Public outrage that the government had turned away the desperate veterans empty-handed forced the federal government, for the first time in U.S. history, to acknowledge that it had a responsibility to care for the welfare of its impoverished veterans, and thus by extension, all the nation's poor and vulnerable citizens.

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With memories of the Bonus Marchers fresh, in March, 1933 -- only three weeks after taking the presidential oath of office -- Hoover's successor, Franklin Roosevelt, created the Civilian Conservation Corps to provide employment for up to 500,000 workers. This signaled a fundamental shift in government policy from the laissez faire, hands-off economic policies that had ruled the day, to policies that were forged with social needs in mind. These policies set the stage for the sweeping social reforms that became known as the New Deal. Creation of the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, universally known as "the G.I. Bill," was also a result of the Bonus March, albeit a later one.

Thus, in the long run, the Bonus March resulted in wide-ranging social welfare policies that libertarian politicos and corporate capitalists still rail against eight decades later. A non-exhaustive list of those policies includes greater worker rights and protections, enhanced regulatory market protections, Social Security benefits, extension of unemployment insurance and establishment of the minimum wage, to all of which an overwhelming number of corporate elites and conservative politicians remain staunchly opposed.

The bold actions of the Bonus Marchers resulted in momentous changes in the American political economy and an unprecedented redistribution of wealth in America, despite the fact that what they sought only directly affected a small percentage of the American populace -- less than two percent. In contrast, regarding the Poor People's Campaign, King had exhorted his staff to "... nd something that is so possible, so achievable, so pure, so simple that even the backlash can't do much to deny it." Thus the Poor People's Campaign had a far broader agenda that was consciously fashioned to appeal to the interests of a much larger constituency: the 28 million or so Americans then living below the poverty line. Its demands included a job for every able-bodied worker; unemployment insurance for all workers in every occupation, including domestics and farmworkers; a fair minimum wage; guaranteed annual income for all Americans; and educational curricula for impoverished adults and children designed to strengthen their self-image and sense of self-worth.

He saw the campaign "uniting all races under the commonality of hardship" to forge a new, interracial, class-based movement of poor people. "I'm not only concerned about the black poor," he said. "I'm concerned about the white poor. I'm concerned about the Puerto Rican poor, the Indian poor. I'm concerned about the Mexican-American poor. We are going to grapple with the problem of poor people." And like the Bonus Marchers, the Poor People's Campaign also planned to descend on the nation's capital and occupy a makeshift "city" until its demands were met.

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As far-reaching as the changes were that the Bonus March inspired, it was focused on the interests of a relatively limited constituency. Because those the Poor People's Campaign sought to attract were to come from every race, region and ethnicity, it possessed the possibility of much greater, perhaps even massive participation. For that reason, it was fully conceivable that the Poor People's Campaign would force far greater changes than the Bonus March had. Without a doubt this would have been a matter of very deep concern for America's political and economic elites.

With King's name recognition -- diminished at that point, but still substantial -- and the Campaign's shared focus on the interests of the tens of millions of struggling Americans, it had the potential to be the most momentous political gathering in American history. If it was able to catch the imaginations of Americans as the March on Washington had -- fully plausible, given that the morality of its quest was no less compelling -- the influence that its moral authority and sheer numbers could exert on America's political economy could cause radical changes in government, and immense expense and opportunity costs for industry. Indeed, a successful campaign could actually empower the un-empowered masses in ways that would cause capitalists nightmares.



The indictments King offered of capitalism and the class inequality that bedeviled American society during his travels were considered extremely inflammatory by members of the power elite. To one audience he said, "We're dealing in a sense with class issues, we're dealing with the problem between the haves and the have-nots." He told a New York Times reporter, "In a sense, you could say that we're involved in a class struggle." Elsewhere he declared, "we can't solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power." Clearly, King was now no longer talking about civil rights; he was talking systemic change, even structural revolution: "I think we must see the great distinction here between a reform movement and a revolutionary movement." He made it clear that what he advocated was a revolutionary movement that would "raise certain basic questions about the whole society.... [T]his means a revolution of values" that for him went beyond issues of race. To King that meant, as he said more than once, that "the whole structure of American life must be changed."

To this end, King told his staff that it was time to "forge new tactics which do not depend on government good will, but instead serve to compel unwilling authorities to yield to the mandates of justice." What he was talking about was "aggressive nonviolence." He said, "We aren't going to Washington to beg, we are going to Washington to demand what is ours." He indicated that he was even willing to engage in "nonviolent sabotage" to shut down the nation's capital so the needs of the poor would get the full attention of those who held the purse strings and the reins of power. "[O]ur struggle is for genuine equality, which means economic equality," he proclaimed. The class nature of the campaign's aspirations was potentially the greatest internal threat to America's capitalist order the nation had ever seen.

The actions of the Bonus Marchers ultimately caused major changes that significantly altered America's social landscape by redistributing wealth through New Deal policies. Although discomforting, those changes did not threaten capitalism per se. But King's advocacy of forced structural change, economic democracy and the democratization of capital, if you will, portended a significant limitation of capitalist profits and perquisites and posed a threat of such magnitude that it had to be stopped, for America's capitalists had no idea how far the Poor People's Campaign could go and what it might accomplish.

Moreover, King's call for the striking Memphis sanitation workers to engage in a general city-wide strike two weeks before his death surely compounded the anxiety of politicians and CEO's that under the banner of the Poor People's Campaign King might call for a national general strike. The prospect of this was extremely daunting to both government and industry because the few non-union general strikes that had occurred in the history of the United States had literally shut down entire cities, costing business millions of dollars in lost revenue.

Compounding the fear of the Poor People's Campaign was "A Time to Break the Silence," King's controversial public declaration of his unequivocal opposition to the Vietnam War. In that speech he declared that the war and the widespread poverty in America were both the tragic consequence of capitalist greed and exploitation. He decried "individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America" who "take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries." King's powerful critique went straight to the heart of capitalist society. He proclaimed, "[A]n edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring." Thus a successful Poor People's Campaign with King at the head greatly threatened both the capitalist economic status quo and their profiteering on the war.

As with the Halliburton Corporation in the Iraq War, much of corporate America was raking in billions of revenue dollars from the Vietnam War. The war was draining the U.S. Treasury to the tune of $20-25 billion per year by 1968, yet the largest corporations were extremely profitable. For instance, in 1966 three of the four largest U.S. firms operating in Vietnam ranked in the top ten most profitable of the 400 American firms doing business abroad. The year before that the Caterpillar Corporation announced record profits that its annual report actually attributed to its business connected to the war in Vietnam.

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There is little question that corporate capitalists and elite bankers and their lawyers understood the war in terms of the economic interests and the substantial new product markets that Vietnam represented. This is can be seen in the list of President Lyndon Johnson's major foreign policy advisors. The roster included several of the most powerful attorneys and corporate heads in America, including the lead counsel for both General Motors and the wealthy, politically powerful du Pont family; several senior partners of prestigious "white shoe" Wall Street corporate law firms; and perhaps the most powerful of all Wall Street lawyers, the legendary John J. McCloy. Johnson's appointees to a "propaganda" committee that was charged with garnering public support for the war included presidents and directors of the largest American multinational banks and the largest American corporations. Johnson's most influential advisor was a corporate lawyer who was so intimately involved in the workings of Lehman Brothers, then one of the nation's most powerful investment banking firms, that he was considered an "honorary partner."

Thus the political platform and exposure that the Poor People's Campaign could offer King's opposition to the Vietnam War and his anti-capitalist declaration of class warfare gave those invested in maintaining the economic and political status quo more than enough reason to want to neutralize the threat that King presented, for no one else involved in the planning or leadership of the Campaign was as politically effective or as radical as he. Indeed, several of King's top lieutenants voiced strong reservations about mounting the campaign, at least in the near term. With King gone, the Poor People's Campaign would surely be a an ineffective protest, if not a complete failure. Is this why Martin Luther King was killed as the campaign was gearing to start?

There remain numerous questions to be answered about the circumstances of King's death. Still, many observers summarily reject the notion that his death was the result of a conspiracy of subjects known or unknown. Yet in December, 1999, after hearing the testimony of over 70 witnesses, including the owner of a restaurant close to the murder scene who admitted his complicity in the plot to kill King, an interracial jury in Shelby, Tennessee unanimously concluded that King's murder was the result of a conspiracy of unnamed "governmental agencies."

A June 2000 report of the United States Department of Justice disputed the verdict as flawed and based on numerous factual inaccuracies. It recommended that there be no further investigation unless new corroborated evidence is presented. However, the family of Martin Luther King remains convinced that he was the victim of a conspiracy of persons unknown, as do his closest aides. And, again, many questions remain unanswered.

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The public will probably never conclusively know whether King's assassination was indeed the work of conspirators and if it was related to fear of an effective Poor People's Campaign. Yet we do know that the specter of the economic radical that Martin Luther King had become, standing at the head of a successful Poor People's Campaign of many hundreds of thousands, demanding sweeping restructuring of the political economy, posed a threat to the federal government and the capitalist class of potentially enormous magnitude.
In many West African societies, the crossroads is place of danger. It is where the social and spirit worlds intersect. Among the Songhay people of the Republic of Niger, the crossroads is a fork in the road, which, in Songhay incantations, is called a point of misfortune. When you reach the fork in the road, you have to decide which way to move forward. If you make a bad choice, the Songhay sages suggest, you will have to live with the consequences--betrayal, illness, or even death. For most Songhay people, a person must be well prepared to negotiate the crossroads.

Is your travel well planned?

Are you protected from potentially harmful threats?

Can you imagine unforeseen consequences along the path?

When members of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) vote later this month on a proposed boycott of Israeli academic institutions, they, too, will be standing on a crossroads--a point of potential disciplinary misfortune. One thing is certain: no matter the outcome, no one will know for sure how the approval or rejection of the proposed academic boycott will impact an academic discipline let alone the political dynamics in Palestine/Israel.

It is incontestable, though, that the AAA BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) debate has generated more heat than light especially on social media on which incendiary pro and con comments are par for the course. The existential fork in the road, however, is no place for shallow "on-the-bus/off-the-bus" thinking; rather, it is place for deep reflection--cruel reflection, borrowing from Antonin Artaud, in which you dare to think without illusion. Who are we? What is our purpose in the world? What are our fundamental obligations as scholars? What are the social, political and intellectual consequences of our decisions? What are the ramifications of taking the path that leads to the left as opposed to the one that leads to the right? Will our friends and family respect our decision, or should we simply go with the flow to avoid hateful responses that bring with them stress and potential disenchantment about the quality of our social and professional relationships?

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The members of AAA now find themselves at such a crossroads. Which path should we take? How should we vote? Should we limit our potential boycott to Israeli academic institutions or should we also introduce resolutions to boycott the academic institutions of other nation states that violate human rights? For many anthropologists these are difficult choices to make.

For me, the actions and policies of the Israeli (Netanyahu) government are shameful. The ongoing occupation of Palestinian lands and the expansion of Jewish settlements are indefensible--actions that fan the fires of a mutual ethnic rage that fuels war rather than peace, a rage, I'm afraid, that seems to strengthen "one-state" extremists in Israel/Palestine as well as in the US. In an emotionally charged atmosphere in which fear of reprisal has silenced many scholarly voices, here are some "cruel" points to consider before ballots are cast.

Political Realities: As long as the US continues to give Israel substantial economic, military and political support, there is little likelihood for change in Palestine/Israel. Put another way, the State of Israel, which for many citizens of the world has become an international pariah, is not going to disappear. Indeed, ongoing direct and indirect US support of Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, which is not likely to change no matter who is elected President this year, reinforces the Israeli right wing, which means more expansion of the settlements, more discrimination, and more violence. Given this context, how can positive social and political change, which benefits everyone, come about?

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Effectiveness. Can a boycott of Israeli academic institutions promote social justice in Israel/Palestine? Noam Chomsky, for one, has for several years put forward a sobering critique of these proposed academic boycotts. He says that an academic boycott, such as the one that AAA members will begin to vote on this month, will increase support for current US policy, which bolsters Prime Minister Netanyahu's regime, which, in turn, promotes more social and political deterioration. Speaking at a linguistics conference in Gaza in October 2012 Professor Chomsky said:

If you call for an academic boycott of say Tel Aviv University you have to ask yourself, what the consequences are of that call for the Palestinians and there's an indirect answer. When you carry out an act in the United States, you are trying to reach the American population and you're trying to bring the American population to be more supportive of Palestinian rights and opposed to Israeli and US policies. So you therefore ask yourself, will an academic boycott of Tel Aviv University have - you ask yourself what the effect would be on the American audience in the United States that you are trying to reach. Now, that depends on the amount of organization and education that has taken place in the United States. Today, if you look at the people's understandings and beliefs, a call for an academic boycott on Tel Aviv University will strengthen support for Israel and US policy because it's not understood. There is no point of talking to people in Swahili if they don't understand what you are saying. There could be circumstances in which a boycott of Tel Aviv would be helpful, but first you have to do the educational and organizational work.

In a February 01, 2106 interview with Al Jazeera's Mehdi Hassan, Professor Chomsky reaffirmed his critique of academic boycotts of Israeli academic institutions."If you're an activist it's second nature to ask what are the consequences of my choices, not I'll do it because it makes me feels good... I do not suggest boycotting Harvard University and my own university, even though the United States is involved in horrific acts."

Beyond the issue of academic complicity in reprehensible governmental acts, which, taken to its logical end, would suggest that all academics--and academic institutions-- have blood on their hands, would Prime Minister Netanyahu worry about the political ramifications of a scholarly association's "yes" vote on a boycott of Israeli academic institutions? Following Professor Chomsky's logic, Mr. Netanyahu would see the expected reaction to such a vote as bolstering his support--especially crucial support in the arena of US presidential politics. Even if a large number of academic organizations voted for these boycotts, which, to date, has not been the case, would Prime Minister Netanyahu be moved to change his policies?

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Probably not.

As one of my mentors once told me: "you have to be smart, persistent and patient to bring about meaningful change." Remember also what a wise Persian woman once said about the privations of almost 40 years of the Iranian Revolution: "For a long time the wind may bend the grass in one direction. Eventually, though, it blows the other way."

The Crossroads. Songhay sages pick their battles carefully. It is unwise to waste precious power on a battle that is of marginal consequence. It is also unwise--at least for me--to vote "yes" on a resolution that confronts us with an action that is likely to produce a bevy of negative consequences for our colleagues and our discipline. Sadly, an AAA "yes" vote for the academic boycott resolution is not likely to change the bloody politics of Israel/Palestine.

And so I hope that when we stand at the anthropological crossroads we recognize that a fork in the road is a serious space for "cruel" existential reflection.

This vote is more than a referendum on a contentious political issue. It is a vote that defines our scholarship.

Who are we?

What is our purpose in the world?
The Internet has gone through a major demographic transition: in the year 2015, the number of devices connected by the Internet surpassed the number of people connected by the Internet. Public policy makers need to move past the idea that the Internet is something that we experience through a browser, using our mobile phones and personal computers. The Internet of Things (IoT) is here.

Vast amounts of bandwidth are now used by devices communicating about their status and our behavior. Experts estimate that there will be over 60 billion devices in the IoT by 2020. That means almost a million new devices are being connected to the Internet each hour--and that the time to craft public policy is now.

These device networks will have an impact on our lives both as citizens and consumers. Recently, the global car manufacture Volkswagen was caught designing software for cheating on Federal pollution tests. In this case, the cars were programmed to deceive the emission testing equipment, a large dynamometer or "rolling road" that measures pollutants as the car drives on a large treadmill-type platform. The scandal has caused immense damage to VW's global brand. This is not simply about misleading consumers, but about undermining civic virtue as well. There are good reasons for pollution regulation--we need government to help us achieve a civic goal of polluting less. People who bought VW cars were misled as consumers, but drivers of those cars are implicated as bad citizens--and VW as a bad corporate citizen--for contributing to more photochemical smog in our cities.

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The Internet of things has already become a network that we as individuals have little awareness of or control over. The basis of a democracy is voluntary civic engagement: participation in setting government policy is intentional and a matter of personal choice. In democracies, citizens express their preference through activism and voting. Historically, governments and politicians eager to do a good job interpreting citizen intent also relied on opinion polls, conversations with civic groups, social science research, and huge record-keeping projects like the census. Politicians have long tried to interpret citizen intent and manipulate it through rhetoric and campaigning.

Public policy makers need to work to keep the Internet of things open and inter-operable, and to make it a public information infrastructure. As individuals, we need to keep track of where our data ends up. Even at this early stage, it would be difficult to make a list of all the third-party vendors, market analysts and government agencies that have data we have generated. Down the road, we may have little choice on where our data ends up. Standards to determine access to data are now being set behind closed doors, defined by industry engineers arguing for secrecy and proprietary systems. If these arguments succeed, the next Internet will be even more personally intrusive, publicly unaccountable and susceptible to manipulation than the current one.

To prevent that, a basic step would be to require that any connected device be able to divulge a list of the "ultimate beneficiaries" who benefit from its sensor data. Terms of service always get modified, ownership structures change over time and the number of third parties paying for access to our data only gets longer over time. But if the smart light bulb you buy is able to relay some data up the network to other organizations, it should be able to pull down a list of the corporate, government and civic entities using your data.

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The next step would be to require that whenever we expect a manufacturer to comply with public policy, the software code runs the device being inspected is open and public so that government agencies and public interest groups can help ensure public safety.

After that, we need to make sure the Internet of Things is built for civic engagement, not simply government policy making and industry marketing. These days, it's normal for civil-society groups to have an Internet strategy or a social-media strategy. It's not too soon for them to consider their IoT strategy. The next Internet is still far enough away that citizens can have a voice in how it is constructed and operated. To shape the next Internet responsibly and wisely, citizens will have to understand what the IoT truly will be--an information infrastructure for public life and civic virtue. And there are several things we can do now to build political participation into IoT.

With billions of sensors to learn from, there's no reason governments shouldn't use them to make better public policy. And firms should be allowed to do in-depth market research on the behavior of their customers and use smart devices to run their business efficiently. It's very likely that citizens and consumers will benefit from IoT innovations, but policy makers have to let go of the idea that the Internet is made up of cellphones and laptops. First and foremost, they must provide ways to ensure that people are presented with choices about who gets to use their individual data for politics. And they have to treat device networks as common carriers for the public good.
Within the last two years, sexual assault on college campuses has made the national spotlight. Currently, the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Education is investigating 208 cases of civil rights violations from the handling of sexual assault reports at 167 colleges. That number is likely to rise, as college students and parents become more knowledgeable of their rights and begin to unearth the troubling ways in which college administrators deal with reports of sexual assault. Already, our nation has experienced a rising wave of activism to combat sexual assault on college campuses--we have seen initiatives from the White House, student movements, and a number of documentaries. These campaigns have uncovered realities too-long hidden from public knowledge and caused universities to examine their prevention and intervention policies surrounding dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking.

Missing from the national discourse, nonetheless, is a more nuanced and culturally--as well as population--specific understanding of how these crimes impact diverse students and communities. As a result, there exists a critical gap in the way that policies, practices and strategies are developed and implemented to prevent and address dating violence, sexual assault and stalking on campus. Yet, the groundswell of interest in campus violence prevention and accountability for both offenders and institutions provides an exciting opportunity to engage in broader, more informed discourse.

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The 2016 Bureau of Justice Statistics' Campus Climate Survey revealed critical information about the state of domestic and sexual violence and stalking on campus. While this study showed the importance of engaging campuses and students early on, it was unable to reflect the realities of students from diverse backgrounds (race, ethnicity, gender identity, etc.). The information in the study is incredibly valuable in revealing some of the landscape of campus crimes of violence, but the limitations of this research demonstrate a need to continue to document and explore the realities of students from culturally specific backgrounds. To provide a deeper understanding of the complexities of this issue in diverse communities, the following offers a brief examination of the realities and concerns of traditionally overlooked diverse student populations:

Undocumented students are often more vulnerable to intimate partner violence, stalking, and sexual assault because perpetrators use the lack of legal status as a tool to exert power and control over their victims. Undocumented students often fear retaliation that could implicate their families as well as themselves. In some cases, college administrators might even warn undocumented students against reporting crimes. These complex realities shed light on the need for college administrators and first responders to better understand the needs of undocumented students and provide proper support systems, including information around U-visas and other legal relief available for undocumented victims of sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking.

Students of color--Many students of color--as well as international students--receive financial aid in the form of fellowships, scholarships, and loans from universities. Often, these students are afraid to pursue prosecution of their assailants because they fear the universities will take away their scholarships. Especially in contexts of over-policing or hyper vigilance of communities of color, the consequences of reporting are too far reaching, and there is a need for universities to understand and respond to the realities and fears of students of color.

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Language access is an important component of providing accessible services to students who have experienced stalking, sexual assault, or intimate partner violence. Not all students--domestic and international--have full English proficiency, and research indicates that victims of trauma need to process and understand what happened to them in their own language. For many victims, receiving services in their own language is critical to dealing with the aftermath of trauma. When colleges and universities that receive federal funding do not provide meaningful access to services in a survivor's language, they can be in violation of federal laws and further alienate students most at risk.

LGBTQ students--The 2016 BJS Campus Climate Survey also indicated that the LGBTQ population experiences intimate partner violence at similar, yet slightly higher rates as the general population. It must also be highlighted that LGBTQ students face a number of institutional and societal barriers when dealing with intimate partner violence and sexual assault. Often, university police officers and staff are not sufficiently trained on the dynamics of dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking among LGBTQ students. Also, depending on the context (geography, religious background of college, etc), LGBTQ students can feel excluded from the community and even ostracized by peers. This speaks volumes to how social context impacts reporting and help-seeking behaviors. Providing meaningful access and opportunity for reporting go hand-in-hand with creating safety on campus.

Community colleges serve vastly diverse populations, arguably more so than many four-year colleges. Of the total undergraduate population in the United States, 45% are enrolled in community colleges and the majority of undergraduates of color are enrolled in community colleges (57% Hispanic, 52% Black, 62% Native American, 43% Asian-Pacific Islanders enrolled in undergraduate institutions). The need for community colleges to build capacity around culturally specific responses to intimate partner violence, stalking, and sexual violence is of paramount urgency. Additionally, many--if not most--undocumented students enrolled in college attend community college, which highlights the immediate need to provide capacity building to community colleges in working with undocumented students.

Additionally, most community colleges do not have a residential campus and most students (62%) are part-time students who otherwise hold other responsibilities including maintaining a job and balancing school with family needs. For students experiencing workplace violence or domestic violence while attending school, community colleges ought to integrate intervention practices that provide help and support because violence that takes place outside of school premises directly impacts student performance and well-being.

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Campuses in rural areas benefit from fewer community resources--culturally specific or otherwise--and often times do not have the resources to properly respond to the many needs of survivors. Moreover, students of color often feel alienation in rural communities that might be predominantly homogeneous, and given the small social circles in rural colleges, LGBTQ students and students of color might not feel comfortable to report crimes to college administration or local law enforcement.

Graduate students (master's or doctorate degrees, specifically) often work with a select number of faculty members (sometimes even just one or two) who exert tremendous power over students' course of study, graduation, and professional careers. For example, when graduate students' careers depend on a letter of recommendation from their graduate school advisor or whose continuous funding hinges on faculty review and support, we face a power imbalance that results in increased vulnerability, particularly if the student's presence in the country also depends on their studies.

In addition to the breadth of issues and experiences that college administrators must address when dealing with sexual assault, intimate partner violence, and stalking in college campuses, we must also remain vigilant to policies that that undermine victim safety. A practice that has been hotly debated recently, for instance, is legislation that would result in the conflation of law enforcement and school responsibilities in the investigation and adjudication of crimes involving dating violence, sexual assault and stalking on campus. Schools have the responsibility to ensure its constituents' civil rights and ensure that violations to their code of conduct or ethics are investigated. Law enforcement also has a responsibility to investigate cases of intimate partner violence, sexual assault, and stalking, but the scope of what it can investigate might not necessarily overlap with what a school's policies direct the school to do. This is why victims might seek redress from a school's administration that they could not get through law enforcement. Any legislation that would mandate the involvement of law enforcement in the process of reporting these on campus has the potential of keeping immigrant, LGBTQ and students of color silent, especially in the context of historically poor investigative practices, lack of accountability and enforcement of punishment for offenders, potential immigration consequences for international students and their families and policing practices that disproportionately impact for communities of color.

The advocacy community recognizes that requiring victims to report violence to law enforcement can compromise victim safety and recovery, and as such, many experts warn against this kind of practice. Recent legislative efforts to conflate the responsibilities of college campuses and the duties of law enforcement highlight a lack of awareness of how certain practices can impart unintended consequences for specific communities. However, underserved and marginalized communities continue to be excluded from meaningful planning and implementation of projects in such a way that would bring these realities to light.

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Unisex restroom sign

The North Carolina Republican Senatorial Committee launched a new fundraiser late last week. The fundraising site features an image of a man entering a woman's bathroom and encourages donations to "thank NC Governor Pat McCrory and Legislative Leaders for fighting to keep our children safe and passing a common-sense law to stop grown men from sharing locker rooms and bathrooms with young girls."

I'll pass, thanks. Painting pure bigotry as an attempt to "protect" women from the dangers of bathrooms is an old American story, and one we have a duty to reject.

A refresher: Last week, North Carolina passed a law, known as H.B. 2, which the state claims will protect cis (or non-transgender) women like us. The bill came in backlash to a local Charlotte ordinance that extended non-discrimination protections in public accommodations to LGBT people and would have prohibited discrimination against transgender persons when accessing restrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity. State Senator Phil Berger, of North Carolina described H.B. 2 as an attempt to reverse Charlotte's ordinance, which, he wrongly claimed, created "a loophole that any man with nefarious motives could use to prey on women and young children."

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A remarkable number of 'bathroom bills' have cropped up in state legislatures in 2016: so far 44 anti-trans bills have been introduced in 16 states. In all of these contexts, strategists rely on a bigoted myth that sexual predators pretend to be trans women to gain access to women's bathrooms to invade, harass and rape them. This myth is based on bigots' party line, which we unequivocally reject: that trans women are not "real" women but instead dangerous men.

These untruths endure in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. There are no documented cases like that Senator Berger describes. Instead, trans women are the ones at tremendous risk for sexual victimization. Just this weekend, in the wake of H.B.2.'s passage, a trans woman was raped in the bathroom at New York's Stonewall Inn. Trans women forced by laws like North Carolina's to use men's bathrooms are often met with violence and harassment.

While "bathroom bills" put more women at risk, their proponents' pretend they advocate for them to protect us. Now, more than ever, women need to make sure state legislatures hear loud and clear that we refuse to be used as props to support transphobic and bigoted bills that hurt our trans sisters and deflect energy from real work to end gender violence. This is a feminist issue that requires our anger and our advocacy.

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Women -- by which conservatives always mean white, cis, heterosexual women -- have been pawns in the war on equality before. And bathrooms have often been the set on which conservative anxieties have played out under the guise of our "protection." Historically, segregationists argued that white women would get venereal diseases from contact with black women in the bathrooms. Conflicts over the desegregation of Little Rock's Central High centered on bathrooms. One white student reported at the time, ""Many of the girls won't use the rest rooms at Central, simply because the 'N*****' girls use them."

Feminists lost a major battle, the campaign for an Equal Rights Amendment, in large part because of the salience of the bathroom myth. Phyllis Schafly and other opponents of the Equal Rights Amendment speciously but effectively argued that an ERA would usher in an era of gender neutral bathrooms where rapists could attack women. Racism always lurked behind these arguments: anti-ERA opponents asked, "Do you want the sexes fully integrated like the races?" North Carolina seems to have a particularly troubled history with the bathrooms. In the book Sex, Gender, and the Politics of the ERA, Donald Mathews and Jane Hart describe a woman legislature overhearing a male colleague state, ""I ain't going to have my wife be in the bathroom with some big, black, buck!"

We may have lost the battle for the ERA for now, but existing anti-discrimination law is enough to strike down H.B.2 and other proposed laws like it. Civil rights attorneys currently challenging the law in federal district court make clear that H.B.2. violates Title IX, which prohibits schools from discriminating against students based on sex, which includes gender identity and transgender status, as well as the Constitution. Even the Attorney General of North Carolina believes the statute is unconstitutional and has refused to defend the law against suit.

"Bathroom bill" proponents might pretend they care about some kinds of "good" women, but their broader agenda seeks to entrench male supremacy. The strategists behind the most recent bathroom wars on trans individuals are national organizations such as Family Research Council, which has been deemed a hate group, and the Alliance Defending Freedom, whose mission is in part to "recover the robust Christendomic theology of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries." H.B.2. proponents are up in arms about the non-existent risks of men pretending to be trans women to prey on girls in school bathrooms, but these same legislators have otherwise been noticeably absent from genuine efforts to address the very real problem of gender violence in education. These are also the same lawmakers we see stripping away the rights of women (and though usually not mentioned, transgender men and gender non-conforming people as well) to access reproductive health care.
It is hard to believe that on this very day 48 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on a balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. I was just 13 years old at the time, and became youth director of the New York chapter of his organization. I committed myself at an early age to the principles and dream he had articulated throughout his life. As an extensive piece in Vanity Fair this week highlighted, I am beginning to see in the present political climate and imminent departure of President Obama that much of what I and many others fought for in the post-King years is at stake. But as I thought about it more deeply, the actual dream of King itself is at risk. A dream of equality, a dream of economic fairness, of ending militarism and all forms of bias, a dream of workers earning fair wages (which is why King was in Memphis when he was killed) and much more. This very dream hangs in the balance as not only the Presidential race is upon us, but also Senate, Congressional and local races will have a significant impact on which direction this nation heads and whether or not we will keep making King's dream come to fruition or turn our backs on the greatest civil rights leader of our time.



The Supreme Court unanimously ruled today that states may count all residents in drawing election districts, regardless of whether or not they are eligible to vote. This is a key victory for all those who believe in the notion that everyone counts when it comes to our political process. It is decisions such as this that reinforce the notion of why the next Supreme Court Justice is so important for the nation. Decisions deciding the fate of Affirmative Action, women's rights, voting rights and more all hang in the balance. We must be on high alert that while we make sanctimonious statements about the fact that they killed the dreamer, there are those in the Court, as well as in the corridors of Congress and aspiring to be in the White House that would easily kill the dream.



In Sunday's New York Times, Nicholas Kristof wrote a powerful piece titled, "When Whites Just Don't Get It (Part 6)." In the op-ed, he highlighted the variety of ways that Blacks are still routinely discriminated against in everything from job opportunities to housing to fair education and more. "A Black (job) applicant with a clean criminal record did no better than a White applicant who was said to have just been released from 18 months in prison," read one glaring fact in his piece. As Kristof stated, it may not necessarily be overt racism, but rather, unconscious bias among Whites that causes even the ones who believe in equality to act in ways that perpetuate inequality.



Next week, my organization, National Action Network (NAN), will hold its annual convention at the Sheraton New York where both Democratic Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, and many others from the civil rights community and clergy will gather as we talk action and concrete plans. It's easy to lay in relative calm and poetically speak of King's dream, but it is much more difficult to get in the trenches and make that dream a reality. It is easier to simply complain about circumstances, but real change requires real strategy and organization. And it's easy to become apathetic and uninvolved, but if we did that, well then nothing would ever change or move forward.



Dr. King once stated: "Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable .. every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals."



It may be nearly 50 years since this great civil rights advocate was taken from us in such a vicious way, but we cannot and must not forget his vision for justice for all of mankind. At a time when so much of his work and the advancements we have made are being challenged once again, we must remain steadfast in our resolve to keep fighting for fairness and equality.



We meet every April purposely because we want to send a signal that this may be the month that you killed the dreamer, but the children of the dream move on and carry his legacy. Don't just memorialize King; make the dream a reality.



Join us next week at NAN's convention. Please visit http://nationalactionnetwork.net for more information.
This is an interview with Samara Andrade, who recently returned to the U.S. from Afghanistan, where she was working for the United Nations and teaching yoga classes in the compound where she lived for UN staff, military reservists/military contractors, private sector aid contractors, and European Union civilian and police staff. She found yoga was a useful tool to support and help the community cope with crises. Samara has been working in international development, crisis and post-conflict contexts for nearly 10 years. She has worked in Zambia, the Sudan, Libya, Nepal, and Afghanistan, among other countries. She told me "yoga speaks across cultures and continents, and it never fails that there is a yoga community in every country where I have worked."

Rob: What originally motivated you to do this work, and what continues to motivate you? How, if at all, has that motivation changed over time?

I started teaching in Sudan, where I was working with communities recovering from conflict, doing so mainly because I wanted to give back to my yoga community, filling in for my teacher who was away on leave. Our class was held on a rooftop enclosed by a bamboo fence and felt like an oasis in the desert. As we lay in Shivasana (corpse pose) at dusk, the birds started chirping as the call to prayer faintly started, often creating an rare and inspiring moment of contentment and connection.

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My commitment to teaching yoga while working in conflict and post-conflict zones has only grown since Sudan. I recognize the amazing gift yoga has given me, a way to ground and center myself in the midst of extreme circumstances. Sometimes these conditions are incredibly rewarding and other times they are disenchanting and heartbreaking. Yoga gives me a way to reconnect with myself on the mat, be part of a mindful community, work through what I feel in constructive ways, and challenge myself to grow.

Another reason is that for many years I struggled with the duality of two lives: of working in extreme situations which change you as a human being, and being the person everyone at home expects to see when you got off the plane. Sometimes that was easy and sometimes it was challenging, particularly figuring out how best to communicate my experience to those at home. Remembering who you are in the middle of this can be hard, particularly when you move from one duty station to another. I found yoga was a bridge that helped me deal with that, bring all the pieces of myself back together, and re-center. Experiencing the benefits that yoga has brought to me in learning how to cope and manage these changes in a better way has motivated me to support a yoga community wherever I live. Yoga is a container for others to learn, explore and grow, and above all to connect with themselves.

What are two distinct ways that your teaching style differs from the way you might teach in a studio, and what are the reasons for these differences?

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I started teaching yoga abroad in post-conflict, conflict, and crisis countries, so I developed as a teacher in that environment. However, I focus on the same things I would in a US studio setting: finding that inner calm, practicing yoga with integrity, honoring where you are that day, cultivating mindfulness, mind-body-breath connection. They're universal because they are life skills that can help you navigate the inevitable peaks and valleys in life anywhere.

A lot of people are working far away from family and friends, so I make a specific effort to cultivate that feeling of community in the way we start and end class. This feeling is then there to tap into when and if someone wants to.



What has been the greatest challenge in your teaching experience, and what tools have you developed for addressing that challenge?



One of the biggest challenges for me is finding the balance between being available to support students and the yoga community, and also holding healthy boundaries and remembering to take time for myself. I balance working full-time in a demanding job with teaching yoga, and sometimes I forget that I need down time to re-charge so that I can show up to class and be the best teacher possible.

What advice would you give to anyone who is going to teach in the population you work with?



I think it's important to approach working with people who have been exposed to conflict with an understanding that everything is not black and white; they may have mixed feelings regarding what they experienced, and about what they were able to achieve (or not) in their job. Try not to make assumptions about people based on your own perceptions of what they may have experienced. It's also important to keep in mind that people have different experiences dealing with the transition to life at home; for some it's easier and for others it's more challenging.

If you are teaching in conflict or crisis zones, be mindful of your own exposure to trauma and how you deal with it. Knowing when to take time and work through your own feelings and emotions before stepping into a class to teach is as important as your commitment to supporting service yoga.

What are some of your ideas about or hopes for the future of "service yoga" in America in the next decade?



I believe that yoga is a beneficial and effective, yet extremely under-used tool for healing. There are some exciting programs out there using yoga as a complementary therapy, both in the US and in countries affected by conflict and disaster. I hope that yoga becomes an integral part of recovery programs for communities in conflict, as well as for active duty staff in the military and in aid organizations. I would like to see more systematic investment in providing access to yoga and mindfulness programs for those who work in such contexts.

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How has this work changed your definition of service? Your definition of yoga? Your practice?

As a yoga teacher, I've become more committed to supporting service-oriented yoga, in addition to regular classes for the public. After returning to the US, I took a training course in Mindful Yoga Therapy with Suzanne Manafort and Give Back Yoga Foundation, and now teach a female veterans' class through Connected Warriors in New York, where I now live, as well as continue supporting access to mindful yoga classes for UN staff, as well as the general public.

I have gained new appreciation for the military community and for the importance of supporting veterans, as well as other humanitarian and aid workers. The latter often have no centralized support like the VA.

This country has one of the largest veteran populations in history, and we all have a responsibility, as a nation and as a community, to support veterans' and their families' transition back to life at home. Equally we have a responsibility to the international aid community to support those who work abroad and don't have access to the same type of support when they come home. #BeWellServeWell

Editor: Alice Trembour

Image: Courtesy of Erin Elizabeth Photography

Stay connected with Give Back Yoga Foundation as we share the gift of yoga with the world, one person at a time, by following us on Facebook and Twitter, and by subscribing to our newsletter.
I've never imagined in my life that one day I would get to visit Norway, let alone explore the country while cruising along the charming Norwegian coastal towns.



The beautiful coastal town of Svolvr in Lofoten, Norway

My interest in exploring the Arctic and polar regions started after my visit to Iceland. I heard many positive things about Norway, I was so thrilled to join the launching of the newly refurbished ship of Hurtigruten, MS Kong Harald.

A post shared by Ryazan Tristram (@everythingzany) on Feb 27, 2016 at 10:59am PST

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Hurtigruten has been sailing the coast of Norway for more than 100 years now. They are the institution of exploration and considered the "fastest route" to Trondheim from Hammerfest and then they extended their services from Bergen to Kirkenes. Hurtigruten played a significant role in logistics and transportation of the Norwegians due to their unpredictable weather and perilous terrain, travelling by sea especially during the winter months is the most sensible and safest. Up to this date, Hurtigruten is still offering their services as a means of transport for the locals which for travellers like me, it is an excellent opportunity to immerse myself in understanding and appreciating Norwegian culture. Hurtigruten voyages are a cruise with character!

Cruising somehow has been stereotyped by many that it is only for the older generation, I'm here to tell you that there is more to it than that! Whether you are a young professional, family, single, couple or a group of friends you can enjoy this way of exploring different places around the globe or in my case Norway. I made this awesome travel video about our cruise in Norway with Hurtigruten.



This is my first ever cruise, Yes, I'm a cruise virgin! This experience converted me to the idea of cruising. I am sure we have all heard the different cliche lines about cruising before, like "waking up with various beautiful sceneries on your window every day" and much more. Well, I must say it's all true.

This journey started in Oslo where I had to catch a morning flight to Kirkenes. I had arrived the evening before my flight and Oslo was covered in snow, dark, windy and cold. I knew it would only get colder as I carried on my journey to Kirkenes, in the Northern part of Norway. My cruise itinerary started in Kirkenes to Trondheim, filled with loads of activities to see the beauty of the Norwegian coastal town.



On my arrival in Kirkenes together with the other guests, we were welcomed by the owner and staff of Snowhotel Kirkenes where we spent our night. Yes, a hotel made of snow and ice. I told you it would only get colder!

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A post shared by Ryazan Tristram (@everythingzany) on Feb 23, 2016 at 4:16am PST



At the Ice bar of the Snow Hotel Kirkenes

After the welcome briefing in the Snowhotel Kirkenes' reception, the staff of the hotel took care of our luggage while we were having lunch in the restaurant. After our quick lunch, we started to get ready for our first excursion of the day, Snowmobiling on the frozen fjords. It has been few years since I drove a motorbike and I found this experience a challenge. After the safety briefing, we rode the snowmobile in pairs. The speed limit in driving a snowmobile is 60kph, imagine that in icy conditions, that is pretty fast! Another popular activity here in Snow Hotel Kirkenes is their Husky Sledge Adventure!

A post shared by Ryazan Tristram (@everythingzany) on Feb 24, 2016 at 1:42am PST



While we were riding around the fjords, Ronnie, our guide, and co-owner of Snowhotel showed and told us about the King Crab Safari. This excursion is a big hit among the passengers on the Hurtigruten cruise. Part of the excursion is to harvest the King crabs from a hole on the frozen fjords and serve it in the nearby old cabin restaurant that is also part of the Snow Hotel. It was an incredible experience, especially when I held the King Crab that was almost half of my size!

These gigantic crabs were originally from Russia and migrated to Norway a few decades ago. Norwegians consider the King Crabs as a pest in Norway as it destroys everything that gets in its way. So, when you visit Norway, don't forget to eat one to help out in controlling its population!

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A post shared by Ryazan Tristram (@everythingzany) on Feb 23, 2016 at 8:53am PST



After our exciting activity in the fjords, we headed towards the Gabba restaurant in the main part of the hotel, where we had a little introduction talk while having reindeer sausage and an arctic beer before we headed towards the Ice bar and to see their unique snow suites. The snow suites of the Snow Hotel are made up of ice with creative hand-made ice carvings and sculptures. The Snow Hotel also has cozy Gamme Cabins as an alternative lodging.



The Gamme Cabins

We had our welcome drink in the Ice Bar and a quick visit to all the suites before collecting our sleeping bags and having our dinner back in the restaurant. After the dinner, the staff briefed us on how to survive the night in the famous snow suites. They showed us the detailed instructions on how-to's and the do's and don'ts to have a the most comfortable sleep in my life ever! I surely did!

Just in case you are wondering how cold it was inside the snow suite, it's only minus 6-degree centigrade. It's warmer inside the snow suite compared to the outdoor temperature of minus 15 to minus 20-degree centigrade. It was one cold evening to remember and ticked-off in my travel bucket list.

A post shared by Ryazan Tristram (@everythingzany) on Feb 23, 2016 at 11:32pm PST

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Due to some last minute changes in our itinerary, we needed to catch our ship from Troms. From Kirkenes, we flew to Troms via Oslo. Troms is one of my dream cities to visit. I was so excited to see the Northern Lights City (also known as the gateway to the Arctic region).

A post shared by Ryazan Tristram (@everythingzany) on Feb 24, 2016 at 10:56am PST

We roamed around Troms and had a few pints and dinner in Mathallen. For an excellent finish to our evening, we watched the solemn and heart-warming concert in the Arctic Cathedral.

A post shared by Ryazan Tristram (@everythingzany) on Feb 24, 2016 at 4:26pm PST

After the midnight concert, we went on board the MS Trollfjord to sail down to Lofoten the following day. MS Trollfjord is one of the Millennium ships of Hurtigruten that can accommodate 822 passengers. The interior of the vessel has classy design and ambiance.

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The majestic views of Norwegian mountains and coastal villages are truly a beautiful sight that left me awestruck. During our breakfast, they made an announcement onboard that there was a whale nearby. I quickly ran to the nearest window to see it.

A post shared by Ryazan Tristram (@everythingzany) on Feb 25, 2016 at 6:25am PST

As we cruised down to the narrow passages of the fjords, I truly appreciated the picturesque landscape of the mountain range with little red cabins along the coastal shores. I don't think I can truly describe its beauty; it was as if you are in a winter wonderland dream. This voyage is indeed the most beautiful voyage and the gem of Norway.

A post shared by Ryazan Tristram (@everythingzany) on Feb 25, 2016 at 8:40am PST



Anywhere I looked was just picture perfect! Watching the sunset from the outside viewing deck of the ship was so special and breathtaking (even if I was so cold!).

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We disembarked in Svolvr, part of the Lofoten archipelago and spent a night in the Thon Hotel Lofoten. We were truly pampered and spoilt by our hosts during our stay in Thon Hotel. We had a superb dinner in the Paleo Arctic restaurant of the hotel on our first night.

The following morning, we did the Fishing excursion and the Sea Eagle safari around Lofoten. It was my first time to go fishing, so I was not expecting to catch anything. After a few instructions on how to sort out the fishing rod and the line, I had my first catch. I was so delighted; that was my lunch sorted! After we caught enough fish for our lunch, we head to find the Sea Eagles around Lofoten. It didn't take us that long to spot one!

A post shared by Ryazan Tristram (@everythingzany) on Feb 26, 2016 at 4:08am PST

After our excursions of the day, the fish that we caught was cooked in the show kitchen, and we discussed with the chef the Norwegian Coastal Kitchen theme where the restaurant, as well the fleet of Hurtigruten are using a locally produced and fresh food. You can guarantee you will have the freshest food on your plate every time.



Paleo Arctic: The King Crab meat

The lunch was superb! We had a few hours spare to roam around Svolvr, so most of our group decided to visit the fish racks of the traditional delicacy in Norway, the stockfish. As it says in the name, the stockfish were to be dried for a few months on the fish racks near the coast. You will need to soak the fish in water for few days before serving, a perfect accompaniment with the Arctic beer.

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A post shared by Ryazan Tristram (@everythingzany) on Feb 28, 2016 at 3:31am PST

On our way to see the fish racks, we also saw some beautiful fishermen's cabin. I love the contrast of the cabins from the snowy white cliffs in the picture below.

A post shared by Ryazan Tristram (@everythingzany) on Feb 28, 2016 at 11:01am PST

A post shared by Ryazan Tristram (@everythingzany) on Mar 7, 2016 at 10:24pm PST



After watching the stunning sunset in Svolvr, we embarked on the MS Kong Harald to sail further south to Trondheim. She is the newly refurbished ship of Hurtigruten; the new interior is all Scandinavian inspired design. The concept is all about open space, an uplifting and calming surrounding with a beautiful accent of wood. Here are some snaps of the interior of the ship.

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My cabin with double bed





the gym





The top deck cafe





The main restaurant





at the ship's bistro



The compass





the shop at the compass





the sitting /film screening area at the compass



As we carried on sailing down south, we had time to catch our breath and just relax on the viewing deck with the comfy recliners while watching the beautiful scenery. Oh, did I mention that there is complimentary onboard wi-fi in the ship, with a very impressive signal and loads of wall sockets scattered around in the public area so you won't be running around looking for one.

It's our last day on the ship before we disembarked in Trondheim, this day was a special one because it's the day that we will leave the Arctic region. There is a little celebration on the top deck to mark this special event. As a traditional Norwegian rite, we had a spoon of cod liver oil and a glass of bubbly! I'm not a big fan of cod liver oil but, when in Norway, do what the Norwegians do.

A post shared by Ryazan Tristram (@everythingzany) on Mar 5, 2016 at 12:39am PST



We finished our voyage in Trondheim, and I caught my flight back to the UK. I'm forever grateful for his wonderful experience exploring the Arctic region and the beautiful coasts and fjords of Norway with Hurtigruten. This Arctic awakening cruise should be on your travel goals or bucket list!

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This article was originally published in Two Monkeys Travel Group website.
A Prada company logo is displayed outside its shop at the financial Central district of Hong Kong, China November 10, 2015. REUTERS/Bobby Yip

PRAGUE -- So we are on a date. On a grassy hilltop behind Prague's historic castle. And this little girl comes frolicking in our direction, sees me, stops dead and starts running back screaming for her parents who are somewhere in the distance. Only she doesn't quite make it back unscathed: she trips, falls down flat, gets up and limps back to shelter. We snigger. And then my Czech date mimes, "Mama, I saw a terrorist." He obviously feels he's crossed a line, so he hastily adds, "but like a sexy one." The conversation veers to fashion altogether: his hair, my beard; my Calvin Klein jeans, his Zara shoes; my Prada shades, his Sony watch. We're both eager to ignore the T-bomb that he accidentally dropped. Mostly because I've given up trying to educate people on political correctness altogether. I'm actually an Indian Hindu. But I have an anchor beard. It makes me look, according to most of my dates, "Middle Eastern" or -- as one specific Tinder user too tortured by hormones to have any time for political correctness put it -- "u luk so sexily terroristic." Fantasies aside though, Indians with a beard do indeed look like Indians. But in this part of Europe they don't get many of us. Hence beardless Raj Koothrappalis from the "The Big Bang Theory" exemplify the typical Indian instead. And bearded Raj Koothrappalis are, well, equal to "Middle Easterners." Case in point: I was dancing in a club in central Prague once, and this random woman comes up to me, fondles my beard and giggles "Allahu Akbar" in my ear.

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This little girl comes frolicking in our direction, sees me, stops dead and starts running back screaming for her parents. And then my Czech date mimes, 'Mama, I saw a terrorist.'

"You can't altogether be sorry about it," the hormonal Tinder user continues when I recount this episode to her, "because like all things considered, the Middle Eastern terrorist -- the villain -- is bound to be sexier in people's imagination than the Indian IT guy -- the supporting actor." She then goes on about how all the villains in Hollywood films are the new sexy: the Joker, Lucifer, Harley Quinn, the guy in "Deadpool" etc. before launching into a theory about how easy it is to be infatuated with someone who can hurt you. "Like a terrorist," I fill in. There is a noticeable pause before she answers. "Yeah, but like a fashionable one."

Saksham's Apple Watch and pink tie. (Saksham Sharda)

I was actually in Paris when the November 2015 attacks occurred. Like literally in the 10th arrondissement. For a conference dinner by the third course of which the death toll had crossed 40 and everyone had lost their appetite. Back home in India my parents weren't actually worried about the negligible probability of me getting killed in the attacks but rather of the enormous probability of me being hurt after the attacks thanks to my "new fashion statement" (the beard is something I got recently, to the bombastic disapproval of my mother). By the next morning though the death toll had crossed 100, France had sealed its borders, and even I began to be a little concerned about wandering out alone in the city. And, of course, that's exactly the situation I was put in on the same evening when I had to stay back at the conference venue for a meeting while the rest of my cohort went to a bar in the Marais district in Paris. This isn't London. That was the first thought that crossed my mind as the sunlight began to recede through the windows of the conference hall (I go to London every now and then for research trips). I didn't know how multicultural Paris really was. All I knew was that it felt nothing like London. There I could have risked tiptoeing to the grocery store even after a genocide. Honest. It is a 15 minute walk, said Google Maps. The probabilities are low, said I. So beers before bruises, I intoned, because it was my last night in Paris and well yolo etc. As I exited the conference hall though I remembered what my Czech date had said: a fashionable terrorist. So yeah, and I'm not quite sure whether I should be ashamed of this or not, I took off my overcoat and decided to carry it in my hand and bear the cold. Why? So that any passerby with -- well -- cruel intentions got a full view of the impenetrable shields of Western capitalism that simultaneously decorated and branded me as "undangerous" from head to heel: Prada, Zara, Gucci and even a Samsung watch which all my friends always thought was an Apple Watch (even better).

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And so I walk towards Marais, one of the most heavily patrolled districts of Paris after the attacks, get a fair share of stares from passersby (I look at my Samsungian Apple Watch, pretending to be in a hurry), and have groups of chattering people turn dead silent when they pass me on the street. Yep, this is not London. The armed policemen are nice though, they mostly pretend not to be looking at me. Or maybe they actually aren't, idk. I avoid a rather dark and dingy street and take a five-minute detour through a better lit street. And finally reach the bar where my white friends, my ultimate human shields, are. Before I make it to their table though, I get stopped for the first time. The owner, or whatever he was, blocks my way and asks me what I want. Because obviously I couldn't be here for a drink, right? So I point at my friends and they are actually a group of 15 Europeans. They wave at us and he decides to disappear for the best. Poof.

I took off my overcoat and decided to carry it in my hand and bear the cold. Why? So that any passerby with -- well -- cruel intentions got a full view of the impenetrable shields of Western capitalism that simultaneously decorated and branded me as 'undangerous' from head to heel.

In fact the strategy was altogether so successful that the next day I decided to wear, in addition to my shields of brands, a hot pink tie. I don't know whether it was the tie that did it (I'd like to think that it did) but I passed through the strictest security Charles De Gaulle airport has had in a generation without a single passport check. And that's including the fact that France had apparently sealed off its borders. Diplomatic passports, ladies and gentlemen, ain't got nothing on my tie.

A month later we were in Berghain -- the swankiest, sleekest and most gloriously depraved club in Berlin -- talking about the Paris attacks. So here we are in Berghain, that is to say, after having stood for three quarters of an hour in the legendary queue that trails up to the venue. We go dancing for a considerable time and somewhere in the drunken night I find myself chatting with a German girl and an Italian guy at the bar. About the Paris attacks. "I could be bothered about getting bombed at the Stade de France," chuckles the Italian, stirring his cocktail, "but not in Berghain. No way. Nobody here cares whether they live or die." The German nods, takes a sip of her drink, and humorously adds, "Plus the terrorists won't make it past the bouncers anyway, not with their sense of fashion."

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Earlier on WorldPost:
To say that it has been a tumultuous year for Washington State's public charter schools - and for their students and families - would be an understatement. This past September, just as the school year was getting underway, the Washington State Supreme Court threw the bright educational futures of these charter students and the lives of their families into total chaos by invalidating the state's voter-approved public charter school law.

But now, after many ups and downs over the past seven months, I am proud to say that Washington's students have finally won - and won big. Thanks to an incredible effort by students, families, educators, advocates, and legislators alike, Senate Bill 6194 will become law, ensuring that Washington's public charters will remain open, and also paving the way for the continued growth of these innovative schools.

For the more than 1,100 students enrolled in one of Washington's eight public charters, the passage of this landmark legislation puts their educational futures back on solid ground and signals a much-needed end to months of uncertainty and confusion for them and their families. But the implications of this moment stretch well beyond eight schools - as this law is truly a victory for every student and every family in Washington.

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By expanding the range of available high-quality public educational options, families are now empowered with more choices and are free to make the educational decisions that best suit their student's unique needs. Every child deserves a world-class public education that enables them to reach their fullest potential, and this law helps bring Washington State one step closer to making that promise a reality.

To be clear, this new law doesn't just reinstate the public charter sector - it effectively creates one of strongest and most robust charter school laws that our country has ever seen.

Beyond remedying the Supreme Court's objections to the technicalities of how charters are financed, SB 6194 goes further by also creating strong accountability standards for these schools. These standards preserve the core idea behind charter schools, which receive enhanced autonomy and flexibility to innovate in exchange for heightened accountability to bring about excellent outcomes for children. Our children and their success should be at the center of everything we do, and this law helps ensure that we are placing students in classrooms where they are learning, growing, and actually receiving the education they deserve.

Ultimately, the lasting legacy and greatest achievement of SB 6194 is that it opens wide, once and for all, the doors of educational opportunity to every student in the state - and especially to those students from low-income communities and communities of color, which have been overlooked and underserved for generations. Access to a high-quality public education is one of the greatest civil rights issues of our time, and this law has the potential to address many of the systemic inequities that have long plagued our education system and our society writ large.

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Not only are Washington's public charters serving predominantly minority and low-income students, but early results also indicate that these schools are helping to narrow the stubborn opportunity and achievement gaps that hold too many children back from realizing their fullest potential. A quality education has the power to be transformative in the life of a child, and it's clear that these schools are already making an enormous difference for those who need them the most.

I am heartened to see that the core Democratic values of equity and opportunity are alive and well in Washington State, and I am thankful for the incredible champions who got us to this point. From the bold bipartisan leadership of our state legislators to the dedicated education advocates and supporters on the ground - it truly took a village to achieve such meaningful change for our kids.

It is unfortunate and, frankly, disappointing that rather than lead this progressive charge alongside his courageous Democratic colleagues in the legislature, Governor Inslee chose to let the bill become law without his signature. Regardless, SB 6194 will still become law, and DFER joins families and education champions across the state and country in celebrating this monumental victory for students.

At the end of the day, all of the credit belongs to the local students, families, and community members who understood what was at stake - and stood up on behalf of Washington's students. Their tireless work over the past few months has been both humbling and inspiring, and we all must take their lead and continue fighting for the high-quality education that every child deserves, no matter their background or their zip code.
As one of the only Jewish kids growing up in suburban New York in the 1980s whose family didn't belong to a synagogue, who didn't have a bar mitzvah as a teenager, and who knew embarrassingly little about Jewish religion, pretty much all that I possessed was the "cultural" aspect of Judaism.

My link to Jewish tradition came through my maternal grandparents in Queens, Jean and Lou Kaplan, who also weren't particularly pious, but who seemed Jewish to their pores. It was their ethnicity that rubbed off on me -- their outer borough Jewish accents, their penchant for salty, fatty Eastern European Jewish foods like sardines, pot roast and tongue, their vacations in the Catskills and Miami Beach, and their predilection for Jewish entertainers like the genial Danish musician and comedian Victor Borge who couldn't play a piece without falling off the piano bench.

Even today, there is no better way to get a group of Jews smiling than to mention challah, corned beef, gefilte fish, falafel, hummus, Manischewitz wine, and hamantashen. Or Adam Sandler's "Hanukkah Song." Or Jill Soloway's cable TV series, Transparent. Or to slyly refer to oneself as a "bad Jew" -- one who disdains Jewish religious observance and maintains a fondness only for Jewish culture. (Interestingly, there is no connotation of immorality; "bad Jews" are inadequate only in their rejection of Jewish law.)

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What exactly is Jewish culture? We too often view it as a remnant from Jewish religion, as what is left over when the laws (keeping kosher, keeping the Sabbath and holidays, and so on) are no longer observed -- a residual fondness for Jewish food, music, and old Jewish jokes. But Jewish culture is not a Johnny-come-lately stepchild of Jewish religion. Religion, as much contemporary scholarship suggests, is a subset of human culture; it is just one form of human expression. Jews developed distinctive cultural practices but their beliefs and customs could not be walled off from the everyday life of working, eating, making music and art, having sex and raising children.

While it is commonly remarked that all of these daily activities were governed by religious law, they were also always in tension with those rules and regulations -- a fruitful tension that, in and of itself, can be seen as the essence of Judaism. So while Roberta Rosenthal Kwall's new book, The Myth of the Cultural Jew, suggests -- incorrectly, in my view -- that Jewish culture has always depended on Jewish religion for its definition, the concept of the "religious Jew" is equally mythic! Jewish culture has always been an overarching category that embraces and subsumes religion, making the idea of "religious Judaism" apart from Jewish culture a fiction. Isn't even the Torah, the central element in Judaism, just as much a cultural and literary artifact as a religious one?

As David Biale, the editor of the magisterial three-volume Cultures of the Jews, puts it, Jewish law was "only one aspect of a wider culture that as much shaped the law after its own values as it was shaped by it." So even Jews who define themselves as "Jews by religion" are also cultural Jews, because they participate in a form of Jewish culture that they call "religion."

"Tuchas afn tish," as my grandparents would say in Yiddish (meaning, literally, putting your ass on the table, metaphorically meaning laying your cards down). Cultural Jews can and should feel just as proud of their Jewish identity as ultra-Orthodox Jews do of theirs. Neither is better, truer, or more authentic than the other. Indeed, there is nothing that Jews do that they call "religion" (including worship, faith and ritual) that is not, at the same time, also just as much an expression of culture, which can be broadly defined as the means by which human beings create and share meaning in the world.

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This is not a new idea. But for reasons that mystify me, scholars have largely kept it to themselves. Despite the spate of best-selling books (such as Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion and Armin Navabi's Why There is No God) over the last decade that have challenged the validity of religion in general, the primacy of religion in Judaism remains for the most part taken for granted, even, ironically, at a time when the percentage of self-defined cultural Jews is rising faster than ever before.

Rather than interpreting "cultural Judaism" as a twentieth century development, as Jews sloughed off Jewish ritual observance and developed more secular ways of connecting to their roots, it is actually "religion" that is a comparatively recent invention. Only in the post-Medieval period, with the rise of Protestantism, came the idea that one could identify oneself by reference to a particular means of worship and set of beliefs, apart from all the other markers of group identity. In the Jewish context, the rise of "religion" sowed the seeds for the sharp divisions that we see today among Jews of different levels of religious observance; it created an artificial hierarchy that had never existed before and that lamentably caused the Jewish community to splinter.

Some Jews obviously are more "religious" than others -- they attend synagogue with greater regularity, keep kosher, observe the Sabbath and holidays, and so on. Nevertheless, the vast majority do so without these activities being directed to making a deeper connection with God, or with however they define the divine.

In fact, even this minority of Jews who still attend synagogue on a regular basis and/or perform Jewish rituals have, for the most part, a stronger secular or ethnic Jewish identity than a religious one. More than half of the "Jews by religion" surveyed by the Pew Research Center in 2013 claimed that their Jewish identification was mostly a cultural or ancestral one; two-thirds said that it is not necessary to believe in God in order to be Jewish. Perhaps because Jews were commanded not to make a graven image of the deity, or even to utter the ineffable name of God, (which, since it cannot be written, is also unpronounceable), they developed a conception of God which was so abstract as to border on non-existence.

So why do secular Jews so often refer to themselves as "bad Jews"? (Bad Jews is, of course, also the title of Joshua Harmon's 2012 off-Broadway play that has run in regional theater productions all over the country, sparking debate about the meaning, or lack thereof, of Jewish religion in a secular age.) There remains something sneaky and subversive about the term -- somewhere on the spectrum between self-mocking and self-hating. It is used, oddly, as an ironic badge of pride.

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by Nidhi Singh

The United Nations released the final text of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) last year in 2015. The post 2015 outcome recognizes that 'Children and young men and women are critical agents of change'. This was the result of the Rio+20 Summit in 2012, which mandated the creation of an open working group to come up with a draft agenda. The transition from Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to SDGs offers the youth both a bigger opportunity and challenge to bring about a change in the world we live in. In my view, the starting point for any youth should be to think himself or herself as a global citizen.

SDGs and Youth

As a youth, I am particularly passionate about SDG#1 and SDG#4 i.e. Ending poverty in all its forms everywhere and ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong and learning opportunities for all.

I believe education is an effective instrument in eradicating poverty and youth and civil societies have a huge role to play in achieving this goal. For example: I have had the opportunity to contribute towards the training of young diplomats of India. This section of youth goes on to implement some of the major key governmental schemes and policies and they have a pertinent role to play in the implementation of SDGs. Young people are leaders of today and play an important role in decision making process at all levels of society. This demographic dividend can be a huge asset if they are involved and engaged more with the government. One form of youth participation at the United Nations can be through youth delegations sent officially by respective member countries. Many countries still do not have a Youth delegate programme at the national level. If the youth is involved at this stage, it will be interesting to witness the skills that they bring along and provide key inputs towards negotiations. If their voice is made to count in intergovernmental meetings at the United Nations, they are bound to provide a creative perspective to the challenges and solutions in the implementation of the SDGs.

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SDGs, Government and Civil Societies

The National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog recently called for consultation on the implementation of 17 Sustainable Development Goals wherein the members raised Health and Education as big concerns for India's development, and called for a focused action on Education. Apart from the government, civil societies and NGOs play an instrumental role in addressing the cause of education, health and poverty.

For example: An NGO named Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) in Odisha educates 25,000 tribal/indigenous children free of cost from primary to the secondary level. While this NGO was granted a special consultative status by UN last year, it is has tried to address the issues relating to poverty, hunger, sanitation, gender equality, education, employment, vocational training and providing other basic amenities of life completely free of cost. This model of education is quite unique in itself as it addresses the various social issues that plague our society through the powerful tool of education.

Interestingly, this model has also helped in fighting Naxalism in the state of Odisha in India wherein young children who are supposed to hold pens and books in their hands become a victim of Naxal training. This NGO has been able to tap into the deepest forests of Odisha and bring the indigenous children to their institute and provide free education. This has also helped in fighting Naxalism which is the greatest threat to the advancement of tribal community in the State. Therefore, if the government, civil societies, NGOs, youth and civil servants come together, achievement of SDGs is not a distant dream.

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SDGs and their implementation

The real success of a goal lies in its implementation. SDGs cover a wide range of issues and youth monitoring of these goals is a critical part of ensuring their success. The need of the hour is to train the youth with information, tools and methodologies to monitor progress in achieving the SDG on Education and Poverty eradication.

Youth organisations and councils play a major role in developing a sense of belongingness and responsibility towards the challenges that we are facing today. It is not necessary to be a part of United Nations to bring a change. Many youth start-ups today are exhibiting creative entrepreneurial skills in addressing various issues enlisted under the SDGs. As they form a huge part of the population, they can leverage collective action and thus enhance the effectiveness of any programs or policies being implemented.

In my opinion, youth are critical thinkers. They bring fresh perspective to any problem and creative solutions based on their vivid experiences. They ask questions which is one of the qualities of a leader and thus also enhances their ability to identify challenges and barriers to change. Given the high level of competition today, youth bring along with them the ability to solve complex problems in a time bound manner and under extreme circumstances which makes them highly mental resilient and pupil with high emotional quotient. All these qualities go on to make them an effective leader and developing strong managerial qualities, which I believe, are key components in channelizing the energy of youth as a resource in the attainment of the SDGs. Sometimes it may require greater efforts to have youth delegates become part of the government policy-making process, but their role is definitely important in the implementation of SDGs.

Nidhi Singh is a law graduate. She is currently reading for MSc in Law and Finance at University of Oxford, Faculty of Law and Said Business School as a Weidenfeld Scholar.

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Once upon a time, if a war was going to destroy your world, it had to take place in your world. The soldiers had to land, the planes had to fly overhead, the ships had to be off the coast. No longer. Nuclear war changed that equation forever and not just because nuclear weapons could be delivered from a great distance by missile. To use a term that has become commonplace in our world when discussing commerce, the prospect of nuclear conflict has globalized war and it's a nightmare of the first order.

In the post-Cold War world, Exhibit A in that process would certainly be the unnerving potential for a nuclear war to break out between India and Pakistan. As Dilip Hiro, author most recently of The Age of Aspiration: Money, Power, and Conflict in Globalizing India, makes clear today, there is no place on the planet where a nuclear war is more imaginable. After all, those two South Asian countries have been to war with each other or on the verge of it again and again since they were split apart in 1947.

Of course, a major nuclear war between them would result in an unimaginable catastrophe in South Asia itself, with casualties estimated at up to 20 million dead from bomb blasts, fire, and the effects of radiation on the human body. And that, unfortunately, would only be the beginning. As Alan Robock and Owen Brian Toon wrote in Scientific American back in 2009, when the Indian and Pakistani arsenals were significantly smaller than they are today, any major nuclear conflagration in the region could hardly be confined to South Asia. The smoke and particulates thrown into the atmosphere from those weapons would undoubtedly bring on some version of a global "nuclear winter," whose effects could last for at least 10 years, causing crop shortfalls and failures across the planet. The cooling and diminished sunlight (along with a loss of rainfall) would shorten growing seasons in planetary breadbaskets and produce "killing frosts in summer," triggering declines in crop yields across the planet. Robock and Toon estimate that "around one billion people worldwide who now live on marginal food supplies would be directly threatened with starvation by a nuclear war between India and Pakistan."

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Those of us who live and love outside the stifling mantle of oppressive and dictatorial governments should realise the importance of the essential freedoms that being in the European Union bloc of member countries represents. What is at stake with "Brexit" is more than the fate of a country's future economic wellbeing. Britain's economy was stagnant when it joined the then European Economic Community in 1973, needing membership of the club that helped it to thrive. Now Britain's economy is outperforming most of its members, and abandoning them to their fate could hinder its future prospects. But that is not the point.

The danger lies in weakening the integration of a continent that through its size and determination upholds the core values that much of the rest of the world is missing. To share with 500 million others a fundamental commitment to equal justice, the rule of law and political accountability, is to no longer be forced to shout in the dark, but to feel a kinship of strength and empowerment on a scale that deserves nurturing. We have struggled for rights over the last 150 years as women, children, employers and employees, conscientious objectors, the religious, the handicapped and the persecuted, gays and the ethnically diverse - with unstinting bravery and perseverance among much personal sacrifice and suffering. And this much longed-for charter for humanity depends for its continued implementation on an articulate critical mass that is the EU.

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Vacuums of good governance create favourable conditions for militancy of political thought and violent action; Belgium is a clear example, but also a reminder that the EU needs to be sustained more than ever. Risk is the price we pay to live in an open society, and pulling up the drawbridge on those who fight for the same value system would further expose the frailty that Islamist fanatics and a recovering Cold War despot are targeting. An uncertain future for the EU is an uncertain future for Britain.

"We have different histories," commented Brexiteer MP David Davies on those countries wishing to remain in the EU, "If France and Germany want to do that, good luck to them. But that wasn't our history." Our histories may indeed have been different, but our position today, between a Middle East in flames and rising authoritarianism, means new histories are in the making, and EU members are interconnected in ways that are often poorly understood. EU leaders will continue to make mistakes; "Mutti" Merkel's "Wir schaffen das" unpreparedness is sharpening immigration phobia in Germany as it did in Britain when it opened its labour market after the EU expansion into Eastern Europe in 2004. Resolving ensuing spill-over within the solidarity of the EU is preferable to relying on China for one's future - #Port Talbot #British steel industry #Chinese 40% import tariffs.

Britain cannot prevail behind its English moat, having stirred up the competing wish lists of Europe's political leaders and amplifying every other country's vulnerabilities. We need an EU that is complicit in its freedom in equal measure to those hell-bent on destroying it. Jacob Rees-Mogg, Brexiteer MP, asserts; "it's also a long time since we have, off our own bat, wanted to fight anyone in Europe". To dismiss the escalation of the seething undercurrent of anger in the average citizen, fuelling European extremism and Trump cretinism in America, is to misunderstand the fragility with which we make decisions today. War has been a chronic dirty game since 2003, morphing into hybrid varieties, drone-fought on foreign soil with foreign casualties and weaponised into migrant crises feeding domestic outrage. Weighing anchor on troubled democracies in reaction is what philosopher Jean Baudrillard calls, "the logic of seduction," by which we sail into the jaws of what we are trying to escape.

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Strikingly, the Governor uses the video to advance his own political points while shaming politicians all over the country who have stood up against the Bill, which is being characterized by its Republican backers as protecting children. In fact, the Bill took protections for LGBT people that were provided by local governments and invalidated them. In doing so in such a swift manner, the General Assembly placed North Carolina at the top of a heap of states that are legislating hate. It mandates, among other things, that transgender people must use the restroom of the gender on their birth certificates.



HB 2 invalidated local ordinances throughout the State that mandated inclusiveness for LGBT individuals, after Charlotte's city council passed an ordinance that protected those in the transgender community who used bathroom facilities.



Many state and local governments, and U.S. and international companies are calling for an outright ban on commerce with North Carolina. The Bill itself is designed to further advance rhetoric that harms the transgender community, bastardizing their needs, and feeding into fears that are unwarranted. It is transgender people who are at risk of violence if they don't use the correct restroom, not children.



Watching the video of Gov. McCrory peeing on the public's doorstep and telling them it is raining adds insult to injury. Instead of shaming Attorney General Cooper's principled stance against prosecuting a law that is clearly discriminatory, perhaps the Governor should focus on the harm he and his Republican led General Assembly are doing to the most marginalized in their community.
HuffPost India

NEW DELHI -- Mehbooba Mufti took oath as the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir at a modest ceremony in Srinagar on Monday morning, ending the political crisis which had eclipsed the state for almost three months.

Mufti, 56, is the first woman Chief Minister of the beautiful yet blood-soaked state in northern India.

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Not only is she taking over a state plagued by a low intensity conflict, unemployment and poor development, with a large segment of its Muslim population hostile to India, Mufti is also inheriting a difficult alliance between her Peoples Democratic Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party, which have antithetical ideologies.

The significance of the first woman chief minister in a conflict-ridden state like Jammu and Kashmir is a matter of perspective.

For some, especially in the Muslim-dominated Kashmir Valley, mistrust of the government runs so deep that it doesn't really matter who is in power. Others are too afflicted by the conflict and their own circumstances to care that a Kashmiri woman is now the most powerful person in the state.

But there are those who feel that it is the adverse conditions in Kashmir which make the ascent of a woman to the top of mainstream politics even more significant.

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Gul Mohammad Wani, a political science professor at the University of Kashmir, said that it is important to look at Mufti's position in the backdrop of growing radicalisation in the Valley, muscular Hindu nationalism on issues relating to Kashmir, and increasing religiosity in the Indian subcontinent and beyond.

"A woman rising to power at this time is very significant," he said.

On the other hand, Sheikh Showkat Hussain, a political analyst and human rights professor at the University of Kashmir, said that Kashmiris are indifferent to Mufti's rise because the electoral process in Jammu & Kashmir seldom reflects the will of the people.

"It isn't significant for the Kashmiri people," he said. We don't have Chief Ministers of the state. We have Chief Ministers of Delhi in the state."

A woman rising to power at this time is very significant.

North Pole & South Pole

"North Pole and South Pole," is how her father, Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, had described the PDP and the BJP before he took oath as Chief Minister in Jammu on 1 March, 2015, along with lawmakers from both parties. "We have to merge North Pole and South Pole," he said.

But the 79-year-old founder of the PDP died of multiple organ failure on 7 January, leaving his daughter to reconcile the polar opposite ideologies.

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And this political experiment hinges on a document, Agenda for Alliance, which offers some insight into how the two parties plan to tackle tough issues such as the rehabilitation of Kashmiri pandits, and reigning in AFSPA, which makes it incredibly tough to prosecute military personnel for human rights violations. But the documents lacks any clear direction on resolving these issues.

And if the tense moments which peppered Sayeed's ten months-rule are any indicator, Mufti is going to have her hands full.

Just two weeks after taking oath, Sayeed sparked a massive row by calling for dialogue with Pakistan and thanking militants for allowing a smooth election in Jammu and Kashmir. Then, the matter of flying a state flag on vehicles and buildings became a bone of contention. BJP continued to call for the abrogatio of Article 370, which gives special status to Jammu and Kashmir.

In September, BJP lawmakers moved a resolution advocating capital punishment for those who slaughter cows in the state. In October, they beat up an Independent lawmaker, Sheikh Abdul Rashid, for hosting a beef party. That same month, a Kashmiri trucker was burnt alive over rumours of cow slaughter.

Observers have pointed out that Mufti was far less keen on partnering up with BJP than her father. After his death, she had the option of breaking up with the BJP, and cobbling together another alliance with the Congress Party and other Independents. She could also have dissolved the Assembly and hoped to get a majority in a fresh election by riding the sympathy wave.

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Instead of dishonouring her father's wishes entirely, however, Mufti tried to give teeth to the PDP-BJP alliance. She pushed for a timeframe to resolve contentious issues in the Agenda for Alliance, more flood relief, and other measures which would reassure people that the Centre was serious about addressing their concerns.

But after three months of wrangling, Mufti didn't get any concessions from the BJP leadership. On the contrary, BJP General Secretary Ram Madhav ruled out accepting any demands over and above what was agreed to with her father. With the political crisis worsening, Mufti relented after meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, last week. She told the media that he had reassured her of taking care of the interests of the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

Given her tough working conditions, analysts say that Mufti's only has a slim chance of good governance and effecting change on the ground.

With BJP cadres pushing the Hindu identity, the beef ban, and Bharat Mata Ki Jai, Hussain from Kashmir University said that Kashmiris felt even more alienated from politics in the state.

"She (Mufti) is stigmatized by the association," he said. "BJP is unable to to shuts its parochial mindset. Except for Modi, who uses a softer language, they do not let minorities feel as if they are part of the mainstream."

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She is stigmatized by the association.

Father's Daughter

When Mufti shut herself up at her family house in Srinagar and refused to take oath for several days after her father passed away, matters of the state were put on hold. Local newspapers reported on the bereaved daughter spending time with her mother, sobbing at her father's grave, and her eyes welling up with tears when anyone spoke of him.

But then a few days mourning grew into weeks of indecision, and Mufti's refusal to form the government triggered a political crisis and Governor's Rule in the state. People were concerned how Mufti, often described as "aggressive," and regarded as less prone to compromise than her father, would cope without his counsel.

Javed Iqbal Shah, Mufti's estranged husband, recalled that if "Mufti sahib had a political guest, he would expect her to be on his side." "I found the Muftis' political practices perverted entirely to suit their personal interests," he told The Telegraph.

For the past two decades, Mufti has been an integral part of her father's political journey, who groomed her as his heir. She had witnessed just how dangerous the Kashmir Valley could be when her sister Rubaiya Sayeed was kidnapped by militants in December 1989, shortly after their father became Home Minister under the V.P. Singh government.

Sayeed's response of releasing militants in exchange for his daughter was widely regarded as a pitiful surrender, which bolstered the militancy that would embroil the Valley for a decade.

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But this chilling episode didn't deter Mufti, a mother of two girls, from entering politics. The law graduate won her first Assembly election for the Congress Party from her her hometown of Bijbehara, where the militancy was still raging in 1996. She continued her winning streak from south Kashmir in state and parliamentary elections for the next 18 years. .

Mufti played a big role in resuscitating her father's political career after he lost credibility amidst accusations of rigging elections and being the Centre's stooge in Kashmir. After he left the Congress Party, she pioneered his comeback with the PDP and helped articulate its self-rule framework" for greater autonomy.

Observers recall that Mufti won back favour by interacting with people in the hinterlands, speaking with the families of dead militants and even advocating dialogue with militants.

"Mehbooba Mufti marked a departure from her father. She was able to come out and change people's perspective," said Wani. "She used to be seen as very arrogant and very aggressive, but she has also evolved and gained experience. People see that."

On the contrary, Shah, Mufti's estranged husband, believes that PDP is now far removed from its agenda to empower people. "From seeking to empower people, the PDP ended up with one family centralising power. Every second relation is legislator, contesting candidate or office bearer," he told The Telegraph.

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I found the Muftis' political practices perverted entirely to suit their personal interests.

Kashmir, Not Mufti, At Stake

Some observers believe that Mufti finally gave in because she feared that BJP would be able orchestrate a split within the PDP. Political analysts are of the opinion that the PDP leader is extremely wary of the BJP and the Centre, and she will keep looking over her shoulder during her time in power.

Political fortunes change overnight in Kashmir, Hussain said, as he recalled how Sheikh Abdullah had all 75 seats of the Assembly in 1953 before he was dismissed by Karan Singh, the constitutional head of state (now called governor), and replaced by Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed as Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir (now called chief minister).

In a coup orchestrated by the Centre, the veteran later was detained for espousing independence. A few years later, Abdullah was charged for conspiring with Pakistan to make Kashmir independent, and he spent the next decade in prison before the case was closed.

"If this could be fate of Sheikh Abdullah then what would be the fate of Mehbooba Mufti if she confronted the Centre," said Hussain.

But such sinister machinations on part of the BJP at a time when the Valley is experiencing a steady spate of militant attacks, and growing radicalisation among the Kashmiri youth, would have "absolutely sent a wrong message," according to Wani.

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Modi, the political science professor said, had to be more serious more about Jammu and Kashmir, especially if he cared about his standing in the world, and the very serious threat to international peace and security posed by terrorism.

"It is not Mehbooba Mufti's political future at stake. A lot of serious things in Kashmir are at stake," he said.

It is not Mehbooba Mufti's political future at stake. A lot of serious things in Kashmir are at stake.

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Press Trust of India

Actress Pratyusha Banerjee, who allegedly committed suicide by hanging herself from a ceiling fan at her apartment in Mumbai on Friday, was best known for her role as Anandi in the popular TV drama Balika Vadhu.

According to reports, Banerjee was going through troubled times because of the alleged strain on her relationship with producer Rahul Raj Singh.

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A photo posted by Pratyusha Banerjee (@iamprats) on May 9, 2015 at 11:13pm PDT

According to PTI, it was Singh who rushed Banerjee to the hospital.

An earlier HuffPost India report stated had revealed that people close to the couple described Banerjee's relationship with Singh as "deeply troubled". A friend of the duo, had also revealed that the duo had major fights over money. In a joint press conference, her friends Kamya Punjabi and Vikas Gupta claimed Rahul was cheating on her and that they were in a "messy relationship", reported PTI.

Haaan hasi ban gaye!!!!!... @rahul.r.singh.378 A photo posted by Pratyusha Banerjee (@iamprats) on Aug 31, 2015 at 10:26pm PDT

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My sweethearttttttt... I love youuuu... @rahul.r.singh.378 A photo posted by Pratyusha Banerjee (@iamprats) on Jul 22, 2015 at 11:37am PDT

However, actress Sahila Chadha, who is a part of the Dispute Settlement Committee of Cine and Television Artistes Association, told HuffPost India, We recently celebrated Holi with the couple and Rahul was beaming. He told us to keep ourselves free as he was getting married in the next few months...

The best surprise... Thankyouuu.. @rahul.r.singh.378 A photo posted by Pratyusha Banerjee (@iamprats) on Aug 10, 2015 at 10:10pm PDT

Former Delhi Commission for Women chief Barkha Shukla Singh said Banerjee's suicide should be investigated as the act is not easy and added that there must be 'something behind it'. "Society and those who pressurise women are behind such suicide cases," she told ANI.

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(Banerjee's mother at the hospital)

Banerjee, who was also a contestant on Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa 5, Power Couple and was one of the housemates on Bigg Boss 7, was rushed to Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital in Andheri around 6 pm on Friday.

She had worked in the television series Pyaar Tune Kya Kiya in 2014 and was last seen in Hum Hain Na as the main female lead.

I think n think n think n keep thinking till the time my brain isnt tired of the topic... Sometimes the result is nice n sometimes its bad... N when i know i hv nothing in my hands i just leave everything to the almighty n i know wateva ll happen is gonna be good.. N later wen the good happens i again start thinking that why the hell do I think so much... So with this amazing thought n thinking process I say a gnite n its my bday week thought so friends pls donn get annoyed reading this...  A photo posted by Pratyusha Banerjee (@iamprats) on Aug 4, 2015 at 1:28pm PDT

Its a beautiful day!!!! A photo posted by Pratyusha Banerjee (@iamprats) on Jul 25, 2015 at 2:45am PDT

Mohini.... A photo posted by Pratyusha Banerjee (@iamprats) on Aug 12, 2015 at 11:03am PDT

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Memories.. Sagarika n Rani.. Hum hain na days!! A photo posted by Pratyusha Banerjee (@iamprats) on Oct 3, 2015 at 10:22am PDT

Partyyy nightttttt... With the dudes!!! @rahul.r.singh.378 @alimercchant A photo posted by Pratyusha Banerjee (@iamprats) on Sep 19, 2015 at 3:38pm PDT

What matters is the matter ... @rahul.r.singh.378 A photo posted by Pratyusha Banerjee (@iamprats) on Sep 10, 2015 at 12:37pm PDT

Saturday Saturday.... A photo posted by Pratyusha Banerjee (@iamprats) on Oct 3, 2015 at 2:20am PDT

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ImageDB via Getty Images India on globe viewed through a magnifying glass

NEW DELHI -- An educational trust in Gujarat - Shree Patel Vidhyarthi Ashram Trust - has said that students will have to write 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' on their application forms if they want to get admission in its primary school, two high schools and a college in Amreli.

Ahmedabad Mirror reported today that this decision was taken on Sunday by the Trust, headed by Bharatiya Janata Party leader Dilip Sanghani, which currently provides education to 4,500 students.

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While the BJP leadership in the state disassociated itself with the decision, Sanghani told Ahmedabad Mirror that the Trust's decision was an attempt to inspire nationalism in its students.

"In the time when anti-national sloganeering is gaining momentum on educational campuses, we want our students to respect their country. So, we have decided to give admission only to those students who write Bharat Mata ki Jai. Our trust was founded by Mohan Veerji Patel, a freedom fighter," Sanghani told Ahmedabad Mirror.

"We strongly feel that a trust with such legacy of nationalism has a responsibility to invoke in its students the feeling of nationalism. The new rule will be implemented from upcoming term. Students who don't write Bharat Mata ki Jai on the admission forms will not get admission," he said.

State Education Minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama said that no one should be forced to chant Bharat Mata Ki Jai.

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"This is an independent decision by a particular organization and has nothing to do with BJP. While it is good to say Bharat Mata ki Jai, it cannot be made compulsory," he said.

Chudasama said that he had not received any complaints over the Trust's decision.

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As many as 500 Indians allegedly figure in an unprecedented leak of more than 11.5 million documents from the files of law firm Mossack Fonseca, based in the tax haven of Panama. Investigations have revealed how the worlds fourth biggest offshore law firm helped hundreds of thousands of offshore clients, foundations and trusts launder money and dodge tax.

The documents were obtained by the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and were shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

The Indian Express, which is among 107 media organisations in 78 countries that has access to the documents, has revealed that as many as 500 Indian names figure on Fonseca's list of offshore clients, including those of politicians, businessmen and movie stars.

The list allegedly includes the names of film stars Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, along with her family members, according to the front page report in Express today. An eight-months-long investigation has revealed that corporates, including DLF owner KP Singh and nine members of his family and Gautam Adanis elder brother Vinod Adani, are also part of the list. Shishir Bajoria and Anurag Kejriwal are the politicians whose names allegedly come up in the list.

ICIJ is the international arm of the Center for Public Integrity, an American nonprofit investigative journalism organisation.

The leaked "Panama Papers" cover a period of almost 40 years, from 1977 until as recently as last December, and allegedly show that some companies domiciled in tax havens were being used for suspected money laundering, arms and drug deals, and tax avoidance, the Reuters reported.

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The company has so far said its offshore companies are used for legitimate purposes and said it conducts thorough due diligence and regrets any misuse of its services, reported BBC.

Our firm, like many firms, provides worldwide registered agent services for our professional clients (e.g., lawyers, banks, and trusts) who are intermediaries. As a registered agent we merely help incorporate companies, and before we agree to work with a client in any way, we conduct a thorough due-diligence process, one that in every case meets and quite often exceeds all relevant local rules, regulations and standards to which we and others are bound, the company said in a statement.

Express claimed it checked the authenticity of over 300 addresses of Indians on the list. Other names include that of Mumbai ganglord, the late Iqbal Mirchi, and businessmen with addresses in nondescript neighbourhoods in Panchkula, Dehradun, Vadodara and Mandsaur, the report said.

The firm works with some of the worlds other biggest financial institutions, such as HSBC, Societe Generale, Credit Suisse, UBS, and Commerzbank, in some cases to help the banks clients set up complex structures that make it hard for tax collectors and investigators to track the flow of money from one place to another, the investigations revealed.

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The Reserve Bank Of India has strict guidelines for overseas direct investments.

While it has given permission to buy and sell shares under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme, it clarified through an FAQ updated in October, 2015, "a resident Indian can remit, up to the limit prescribed by the Reserve Bank from time to time, per financial year under the LRS, for permitted current and capital account transactions including purchase of securities and also setting up/acquisition of JV/WOS overseas with effect from August 5, 2013 (vide Notification No. 263)."

But in most cases, Express revealed, companies were set up long before the rules were changed.

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Bloomberg via Getty Images Hindu pilgrims enter a temple in Trimbakeshwar, Maharashtra, India, on Friday, Sept. 11, 2015. Millions of pilgrims in a landscape awash in saffron make their way to the waters of the holy Godavari River for the Kumbh Mela, the festival of the pitcher. It is one of the largest religious festivals on the face of the planet. Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg via Getty Images

NASHIK -- The Trimbakeshwar Temple authorities yesterday imposed a restriction on men's entry too into the sanctum sanctorum of the Lord Shiva shrine with an aim to provide "equal treatment" to both the genders, a trustee said.

The decision, which takes effect from today, comes in the wake of the Bombay High Court verdict giving women equal right to men with regard to entry into temples.

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It was decided this morning after a board meeting of the Trimbakeshwar Devasthan Trust under Chairperson and District Judge Urmila Phalke Joshi, Lalita Shinde, one of the trustees told .

The meeting was attended by Secretary N M Nagare as well as Trust members Kailas Ghule, Yadavrao Tungar, Shrikant Gaidhani, and Sachindra Pachorkar.

"The decision was taken to ensure equal treatment to both men and women," Shinde said.

The development comes a day after Bhumata Ranragini Brigade Trupti Desai and 25 other women activists were taken into preventive custody to stop them from entering into the inner sanctum of the famous Shani temple in Ahmednagar's Shingnapur village. They were later released.

The ancient temple, located 30 kms from Nashik, is a major Lord Shiva shrine of the country, which has one of the 12 'jyotirlingas', drawing devotees from far and wide.

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According to Ghule, a member of the Trimbakeshwar Temple Trust, the ban on entry of women into the 'garbhagriha' is an age-old tradition and not something enforced in recent times. The ban goes back to the Peshwa period.

As per tradition, only men were allowed entry daily between 6-7 AM into the area where the main 'linga' is placed, that too by putting on a specific gear called the sovala (silk clothing).

Women, can, however have 'darshan' from outside the core area.

Some priests in the temple town said most of the women devotees might not want to defy the tradition.

Seeking to give a scientific dimension to the practice, they said there are certain rays that concentrate in the core area which could probably be harmful to the health of women.

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Catholic Online/Twitter

NEW DELHI -- Father Tom Uzhunnalil, who was abducted by a terror group in Yemen, is "safe" and efforts are underway for his early release, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj told a delegation of Catholic Bishops' Conference of India (CBCI), the organisation's spokesman said today.

Father Gyanprakash Topno, spokesman of CBCI, told that a five-member delegation had yesterday met Swaraj who strongly refuted reports that the priest was not alive.

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"Father Tom is safe and efforts are on for his release as early as possible."

Topono was quoting the minister who also told the delegation that "government will facilitate the priest's safe return to India".

He said the minister told the delegation that more details cannot be divulged at this stage.

Father Tom Uzhunnalil, who hails from Kerala, was abducted last month by a terror group in Yemen, a conflict zone. He had gone missing in Yemen after the Islamic State militant group attacked a care home run by Mother Teresas Missionaries of Charity.

Fr Tom Uzhunnallil - an Indian national from Kerala was abducted by a terror group in Yemen. We r making all efforts to secure his release.  Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) March 26, 2016

Gunmen had stormed the refuge for the elderly earlier this month and killed a Yemeni guard before tying up and shooting 15 other employees.

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Four foreign nuns, including an Indian, working as nurses were among those killed. Father Tom was captured from the southern Yemeni city of Aden by gunmen who killed at least 15 people at an old people's home in an attack that was condemned by Pope Francis.

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Kansas football heads toward a bye week it needs

A number of Kansas football players were either out Saturday due to injury or at least limited. The bye week should help them.
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Music Has A Metadata Problem And Next Months Music Biz Summit Hopes To Solve It

Music has a metadata problem. If you can't find it you can't track it; and if you can't track it you can't get paid. That's the problem and the promise behind Music Biz's annual Music Metadata Summit.

_______________________________________

The Music Business Association (Music Biz) will bring its Metadata Summit back to Nashville this year on Monday, May 16, during the Music Biz 2016 convention.

The fourth annual Summit will feature a keynote presentation from SOCANs Michael McCarty, Chief Membership & Business Development Officer, and Jeff King, Chief Operating Officer, who will discuss global revenue, discovery, and attribution, as well as sessions on international infrastructure, new business models tied to metadata, and global publishing data. Featured will be top executives from 7digital, AFEM, Beggars Group, BMI, Consolidated Independent, County Analytics, Dart Music, DDEX, Digimarc, Loudr, MovieLabs, Music Week, PledgeMusic, PRS for Music, Rough Trade Music Publishing, SOCAN, Syntax Creative, and TGiT.

Ever since we launched the Metadata Summit four years ago, we have been impressed by the number of people who have come out to learn more about and contribute their expertise, said Bill Wilson, Vice President of Digital Strategy and Business Development for Music Biz. Metadata is the bedrock on which the digital music business is built, and many of the issues facing the business around payment, discovery, and attribution all rely on metadata."

First held at Music Biz 2013 in Los Angeles, the event has drawn record crowds in previous years, leading to the creation of the Music Metadata Style Guide, currently in its third update, which provides a set of common naming conventions and data entry standards for companies to use when listing, ingesting, and managing digital music.

Admission to the Metadata Summit is included with the price of a full Music Biz 2016 registration. Music Biz members may also pay $99 and non-members $129 for access to the Metadata Summit and all other Music Biz 2016 events on May 16 only. These one-day passes can be purchased now via Eventbrite. For updated information on Metadata Summit speakers and sessions, click here.

The full currently confirmed agenda is below.

9  9:15 AM

Metadata Summit Introduction

Bill Wilson, Music Biz

9:15  9:45 AM

Metadata Summit Keynote

All around the world, the current digital music royalty payment system is in chaos. The race is on to bring order to the confusion. Those who made the music must be paid fairly and fast. Music rights owners, administrators, and licensors all want to see royalties get to those who earned them. The heart of the music/tech discussion has suddenly evolved from How much should the artists be paid? to How effective are the pipes through which the money and data flow? The system, after all, was built for another era. Today, we are witnessing a profound change in the copyright world. Transparency without accountability is meaningless. This keynote will focus on how to fix the system on a global scale, examining royalty flow, the role of metadata, and the need for modernization.

Jeff King, SOCAN

Michael McCarty, SOCAN

9:50  10:40 AM

Acronym Salad: Digital Standards & Identifiers Status Report

DDEX Update

Mark Isherwood, DDEX

ISRC Update

Paul Jessop, County Analytics

EIDR Update

Kip Welch, MovieLabs

10:45  11:45 AM

Delivering Globally: International Infrastructure Opportunities & Challenges

With US & European markets maturing, how does one capture the exponential growth coming from the BRICS? Are you globally focused with a supply chain integrated across Asia, Africa, and South America? What are the economic, technological, and cultural challenges to growing your digital business (and properly delivering your assets) to partners with burgeoning digital opportunities? This panel will explore the best path to global market reach and consider the infrastructure and demands that go hand-in-hand with expansion.

Moderator: Rob Weitzner, Consolidated Independent

Paul Langworthy, 7digital

Timothy Trudeau, Syntax Creative

Simon Wheeler, Beggars Group

11:45 AM  12 PM

Metadata Summit Morning Wrap-Up

Bill Wilson, Music Biz

1  1:45 PM

Back to the Drawing Board: New Business Models in Global Metadata

Data, like water, is going to be the most valued commodity in the 21st Century. But what kind of data are we talking about? And can data ensure that all rights holders will be fairly remunerated? Hear from some of the worlds most forward-thinking data miners about new initiatives and business models shaped around data.

Moderator: Emmanuel Legrand, Music Week

Jean-Robert Bisaillon, Iconoclaste  TGiT

Chris McMurtry, Dart Music

Benji Rogers, PledgeMusic

1:50  2:50 PM

Composition of a Composition: Data Challenges, Strategies and Best Practices in the Global Publishing Environment

Publishers and digital music companies alike can generally agree on the importance of music metadata, but the transfer, management, and use of that data is often the topic of spirited debate. In the extremely fragmented world of digital music rights, the exchange of information needed to license, track, and account for music usage is critical for music startup operations  and sensitive or highly confidential for rights holders. This panel opens a conversation about issues related to sharing, organizing, and leveraging information about songwriters, song owners, and song ownership shares. In addition, this panel highlights the surprising challenges faced by both music publishers and digital music companies in the metadata-driven business of modern rights management.

Moderator: Annie Lin, Loudr

John Coletta, BMI

Paul Dilorito, PRS for Music

Larry Logan, Digimarc

Michael McCarty, SOCAN

Gandhar Savur, Rough Trade Music Publishing

2:55  3 PM

#GetPlayedGetPaid

In November of last year, a global partnership was announced between Music Biz and AFEM (Association for Electronic Music). As part of their joint work streams, the groups are planning a launch of the #GetPlayedGetPaid brand at Music Biz 2016 during the Metadata Summit. #GetPlayedGetPaid is set to serve as a promotional vehicle to help educate DJs, producers, artists, songwriters, and more to make sure they are getting paid for their creative works, as well as discuss the transformative challenges necessary to make these processes better on a global scale. Details and next steps for the brand will be discussed during this session.

Mark Lawrence, AFEM

Robby Towns, Music Biz

Music Biz 2016, which will return to Nashville from May 16-18, is the music industrys premier event, giving the commerce and content sectors a place to meet with trading partners, network with new companies, and learn about new trends and products impacting the music business. Registration is open now. For more information or to sign up for the conference, visit www.musicbiz2016.com.

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Experts attributed the weak e-government to a slew of difficulties in applying information technology to carry out the e-government project in Vietnam. It is because of underdeveloped IT infrastructure for the service and there remain problems with the deployment of public services on the Internet.

Meanwhile, developed countries have made full use of e-government to provide public services and strengthen links between government agencies and enterprises and residents. In these countries, people and businesses can complete administrative procedures online.

Vietnam ranked 102nd out of 167 countries in terms of e-government development last year, down eight notches from 2014, according to a survey of the International Telecommunication Union.

However, experts are pinning high hopes that e-government could perform better in the coming years as the Government issued Resolution 36a/NQ-CP in October 2015 speeding up the deployment of e-government to ensure the effective operations of state agencies, better serve people and businesses, and improve the nations competitiveness.

The resolution identifies 2015-2017 as a crucial period for e-government development, with priorities given to supporting development of online public services, IT infrastructure and human resources.

The focus in the period is to boost administrative reform and application of IT to online management and provision of public services in order to save time and cost.

Le Manh Ha, vice chairman of the Government Office, described Resolution 36a as a foundation for e-government to develop in Vietnam. But he said it is urgent to establish a thorough connection among agencies of all levels to enable people and enterprises to access public services via a national portal.

Thieu Phuong Nam, director of Qualcomm Indochina, said around 40% of Vietnamese use mobile devices to surf the Internet and the proportion is projected to go up in the coming time. Therefore, many residents and businesses will approach public services through their mobile devices and this should be taken into account for e-government development.

Nam called for agencies to attend to security when providing public services via mobile devices.

Source: http://english.vietnamnet.vn/fms/government/154379/experts-say-e-government-in-vietnam-still-weak.html
David Lockton explains how not just focusing on the bottom line propelled Lockton Companies to the top of the insurance world



In August, David Lockton will celebrate 40 years in the insurance industry.



Since 2003, he has been the chairman of Lockton Companies, where he previously served as president and CEO. With Lockton at the helm, the firm has established an astonishing track record of four decades of continuous organic growth; in the 2015 fiscal year, its total revenue exceeded $1.24 billion. Today, Lockton Companies is the largest privately held independent broker in the world.



Needless to say, Lockton and his team have scaled remarkable heights as a business. But for Lockton, the companys crowning achievement is its culture. When we were 50 people, we knew we had a different kind of experience for our customers, he says. The difference was that when customers walked in the door, they sensed they were the center of the universe, and we felt they were the center of the universe.



We didnt think wed be able to be big and maintain that same kind of culture, he continues. Today, we have 6,000 people, and we have the same culture. In fact, I think its stronger today than it was when we had 50 people.



The cornerstone of that culture, according to Lockton, is that unlike competitors who focus only on profits, Lockton Companies puts the onus on customer satisfaction.



A good portion of our people join us from our competitors, where theyve been in an environment that is very focused on short-term profits, Lockton says. When they come to Lockton, they find out that they get rewarded for practicing the profession theyve learned, and that theyre judged based on merit  and for us, merit is how you go about creating value for our customers.



I think that just feels right to our people. I think the way that we care for our fellow associates feels right to our people. People get a certain energy out of it, and its contagious. And that is amazing to me.



Maintaining that culture is a responsibility that Lockton takes to heart.



As chairman, all I have to do is come in and foster that caring culture, and concern myself with how working at Lockton can be a fun, exciting and rewarding venture. And then I just get out of peoples way and let them do what theyre good at.



Back to the start

Lockton grew up in Kansas City. After graduating from high school, he set his sights on a career as a trial attorney. His brother, Jack, the firms founder, tried to persuade Lockton to consider the insurance path, but Lockton wasnt interested.



Things soon changed, though. One day I came home, and [Jack] had bought the first new car in our family, Lockton remembers. It was a convertible Mustang. I think thats when he got my attention. I changed my major from English to business finance, anticipating joining him.



But before he would allow his brother to come on board, Jack wanted Lockton to get some real-world experience elsewhere. So Lockton began working at a bank, but quickly became restless, and his resolve to pursue an insurance career intensified.



My wife and I invited my brother and his wife over for dinner on the patio one night, and I made my pitch that I was going to get into this insurance brokerage business, Lockton says. I wanted to do it with him, but I was going to do it whether he hired me or not.



We had a pretty long evening  but by the end of the night, he had agreed that I could come to work for him.



Serving communities

While the firm continues to sustain impressive levels of growth, Lockton Companies also places significant emphasis on giving back. We make it our business to make our communities better  our community outside of our company and our community inside of our company, Lockton says.



Last year, staff in the UK branches participated in Lockton Gets in Gear. Cyclists from all 11 UK Lockton offices took part in a mission to cycle between all of those offices, including those in Scotland and Ireland. The ride raised nearly $100,000, which went toward construction of the Lockton Suite at Londons Great Ormond Street Hospital, a facility where parents of sick children can stay at the hospital.



Another endeavor targeted at Locktons internal community aims to provide support for employees in times of significant need. We set up a not-for-profit within our company called Associates Caring for Each Other [ACE], Lockton says. Its always been amazing to me how associates band together to help people who are in trouble, whether they have a jobless spouse or a serious illness. I felt like it was a great thing we were doing, and we didnt want to have people fall through the cracks, so we formalized it. I think we do a really good job of making sure that [when] our associates  have those kinds of critical needs  the opportunity is extended to associates to help them. And they come through every time.



Looking to the future, what does Locktons chairman hope to accomplish?



Were very successful for a number of reasons, but two very important ones are that were privately owned  and so were able to stay focused on the customer and not get overly concerned about next quarters profits  and the other is that weve been able to attract a really great leadership team. Before I leave this place, I want to make sure that we have a model that will allow family ownership to be sustained through the future generations. I want to have the governance structure around that, and I want to make sure that we have all the right leaders in the right leadership positions to carry forward our success.







David Lockton is the Chairman of Lockton Companies and has been in the industry for 40 years. Lockton Companies contributes more than $3 million annually to various nonprofit organizations across the US




In the wake of MetLife s victory in shedding its too big to fail designation, chief executives with other large insurance firms are feeling optimistic about their companies chances of doing the same.Peter Hancock, CEO of American International Group, told CNBC Thursday that the federal court decision for MetLife certainly opens that opportunity for AIG . He added, however, that AIG would reserve judgment and watch how financial regulators respond to the decision before acting.Prudential Financial, which has also received the systemically important financial institutions or SIFI designation, told USA Today that it continuously review[s] developments that impact our company, and we are evaluating what is in the best interests of the company and our stakeholders.The designations, including the one given to MetLife that was defeated last week, were imposed by the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a 10-member regulatory board created under the Dodd-Frank Act. The council designates SIFIs in the hope of imposing stricter standards to safeguard the US economy and financial system following the 2008 financial crisis.MetLife, AIG, Prudential and GE Capital are the only non-bank firms the council designated as SIFIs. Other SIFIs are major banks with $50 billion in assets or more  hence the too big to fail designation.If the remaining firms do not successfully challenge their labels, they may be subject to stricter regulatory oversight as well as requirements to hold high capital reserves against losses.The insurance industry has argued against the use of banking standards in the evaluation of large insurers since the inception of Dodd-Frank.MetLife actively fought the label, and last weeks ruling came after a 2015 federal court challenge by the insurer. District of Columbia Judge Rosemary Collyer Wednesday ordered the councils designation rescinded, though her full opinion was sealed.An April 6 hearing will determine whether any portions of the opinion should remain secret, after which AIG and Prudential may find basis for similar appeals.AIG, at least, has faced pressure from investors to fight the label by breaking into three separate entities. Hancock has called the SIFI issue a red herring.
Insurance companies can help keep law enforcement personnel in linethat was the idea posited in a recent report on National Public Radio.With issues of police brutality and abuse sprouting across America, the reformation of the countrys police forces has been seriously considered. The government, however, is limited to what it can do to change the agencies for the better.The article cities research from University of Chicago assistant law professor John Rappaport, who found that insurers were actively trying to limit the liability of the police departments they cover."One of the first things I found was this pamphlet from Travelers Insurance about how to do a strip search, and I just thought people in my world have no idea that this stuff is out there and it's really fascinating," said Rappaport.By coming across similar material on the Internet, Rappaport realized that police departments typically do not feel the financial pain of a lawsuit. When a lawsuit is filed against an officer for his or her actions, neither the officers nor his or her departments money is at stake.On the hand, if the city has liability insurance, the insurer instead will be on the receiving end of the burden and would do something to lessen the risk."They look for ways to push police departments in a direction of reduced risk," Rappaport reasoned.It has been observed that non-profit insurance poolsparticularly those in the Western stateshave been the most hands-on when it came to providing police departments with support and educational information, such as the latest court precedents on the use of force and the like. Some of these insurers have even gone out their way to pay for the police departments special training.Another law professor featured in the article, Joanna Schwartz of UCLA, agrees with Rappaport that insurers can play the role of an honest broker to force a city to learn from its police department's mistakes."They are highly motivated to reform because it affects their bottom line, and they're not constrained by any of the political counterforces that could prevent the city council or mayor from pushing hard on a law enforcement agency to reform," Schwartz remarked.
'Put That Topic to Rest': Hardik Pandya to Presenter on Question About His Fitness

IND vs PAK: 'Get it Boys' - Shreyas Iyer, Ravindra Jadeja and Others Wish Team India Good Luck Ahead of Pakistan Clash
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
Imperial Valley News Center

Water problems in Asias future?

Cambridge, Massachusetts - Economic and population growth on top of climate change could lead to serious water shortages across a broad swath of Asia by the year 2050, a newly published study by MIT scientists has found.

The study deploys detailed modeling to produce what the researchers believe is a full range of scenarios involving water availability and use in the future. In the paper, the scientists conclude there is a high risk of severe water stress in much of an area that is home to roughly half the worlds population.

Having run a large number of simulations of future scenarios, the researchers find that the median amounts of projected growth and climate change in the next 35 years in Asia would lead to about 1 billion more people becoming water-stressed compared to today.

And while climate change is expected to have serious effects on the water supply in many parts of the world, the study underscores the extent to which industrial expansion and population growth may by themselves exacerbate water-access problems.

Its not just a climate change issue, says Adam Schlosser, a senior research scientist and deputy director at MITs Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and a co-author of the study. We simply cannot ignore that economic and population growth in society can have a very strong influence on our demand for resources and how we manage them. And climate, on top of that, can lead to substantial magnifications to those stresses.

The paper, Projections of Water Stress Based on an Ensemble of Socioeconomic Growth and Climate Change Scenarios: A Case Study in Asia, is being published today in the journal PLOS One. The lead author is Charles Fant, a researcher at the Joint Program. The other co-authors are Schlosser; Xiang Gao and Kenneth Strzepek, who are also researchers at the Joint Program; and John Reilly, a co-director of the Joint Program who is a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Teasing out human and environmental factors

To conduct the study, the scientists built upon an existing model developed previously at MIT, the Integrated Global Systems Model (IGSM), which contains probabilistic projections of population growth, economic expansion, climate, and carbon emissions from human activity. They then linked the IGSM model to detailed models of water use for a large portion of Asia encompassing China, India, and many smaller nations.

The scientists then ran an extensive series of repeated projections using varying conditions. In what they call the Just Growth scenario, they held climate conditions constant and evaluated the effects of economic and population growth on the water supply. In an alternate Just Climate scenario, the scientists held growth constant and evaluated climate-change effects alone. And in a Climate and Growth scenario, they studied the impact of rising economic activity, growing populations, and climate change.

Approaching it this way gave the researchers a unique ability to tease out the human [economic] and environmental factors leading to water shortages and to assess their relative significance, Schlosser says.

This kind of modeling also allowed the group to assess some of the particular factors that affect the different countries in the region to varying extents.

For China, it looks like industrial growth [has the greatest impact] as people get wealthier, says Fant. In India, population growth has a huge effect. It varies by region.

The researchers also emphasize that evaluating the future of any areas water supply is not as simple as adding the effects of economic growth and climate change, and it depends on the networked water supply into and out of that area. The model uses a network of water basins, and as Schlosser notes, What happens upstream affects downstream basins. If climate change lowers the amount of rainfall near upstream basins while the population grows everywhere, then basins farther away from the initial water shortage would be affected more acutely.

Future research directions

Other scholars who have examined the work say it makes a valuable contribution to the field.

Theyre looking at a really important issue for the world, says Channing Arndt, an agricultural economist at the United Nations World Institute for Development Economics Research, who thinks that the basic finding of the study makes sense.

Arndt also believes that the ambitious scope of the study, and the way it evaluates the effects of climate change as well as economic and population growth, is a worthwhile approach. Doing it in this integrated way is the right way to go about it, he adds.

The research team is continuing to work on related projects, including one on the effects of mitigation on water shortages. While those studies are not finished, the researchers say that changing water-use practices can have significant effects.

We are assessing the extent to which climate mitigation and adaptation practices  such as more efficient irrigation technologies  can reduce the future risk of nations under high water stress, Schlosser says. Our preliminary findings indicate strong cases for effective actions and measures to reduce risk.

The researchers say they will continue to look at ways of fine-tuning their modeling in order to refine their likelihood estimates of significant water shortages in the future.

The emphasis in this work was to consider the whole range of plausible outcomes, Schlosser says. We consider this an important step in our ability to identify the sources of changing risk and large-scale solutions to risk reduction.
Secretary Karen Ross discusses trade and climate change in Vietnam

Sacramento, California - CDFA Secretary Karen Ross is in Vietnam this week as part of a delegation of the Western United States Agricultural Trade Association (WUSATA), a non-profit formed in 1980 by the 13 western state departments of agriculture as well as the territorial departments in Guam and Samoa. For more than three decades, WUSATA has offered programs and services to assist exporters of high-value food and agricultural products.

There are three short videos chronicling the trip, so far. The first is Secretary Ross visiting a wet market, which remains a primary food source for Vietnamese consumers. Her tour guide is Michael Ward of the USDA.
Arctic sea ice at lowest maximum for the second straight year

Boulder, Colorado - Arctic sea ice was at a record low maximum extent for the second straight year, according to scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado Boulder and NASA.

"I've never see such a warm, crazy winter in the Arctic, said NSIDC director Mark Serreze. The heat was relentless." Air temperatures over the Arctic Ocean for the months of December, January, and February were 2 to 6 degrees Celsius (4 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit) above average in nearly every region.

Sea ice extent over the Arctic Ocean averaged 14.52 million square kilometers (5.607 million square miles) on March 24, beating last years record low of 14.54 million square kilometers (5.612 million square miles) on February 25. Unlike last year, the peak was later than average in the 37-year satellite record, setting up a shorter-than-average ice melt season for the coming spring and summer.

According to NSIDC, sea ice extent was below average throughout the Arctic, except in the Labrador Sea, Baffin Bay, and Hudson Bay. It was especially low in the Barents Sea as noted by Ingrid Onarheim at the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research in Bergen, Norway. "A decrease in Barents Sea ice extent for this winter was predicted from the influence of warm Atlantic waters from the Norwegian Sea," she said.

Scientists are watching extent in this area because it will help them understand how a slower Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) may affect Arctic sea ice. Some studies suggest that decreased heat flux of warm Atlantic waters could lead to a recovery of all Arctic sea ice in the near future, said NSIDC senior research scientist Julienne Stroeve. I think it will have more of a winter impact and could lead to a temporary recovery of winter ice extent in the Barents and Kara seas.

This years maximum extent is 1.12 million square kilometers (431,000 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 average of 15.64 million square kilometers (6.04 million square miles) and 13,000 square kilometers (5,000 square miles) below the previous lowest maximum that occurred last year.



This late winter, ice extent growth in the Arctic has been sluggish. Other than a brief spurt in late February, extent growth has been slow for the past six weeks, said Walt Meier, a research scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Meier is an affiliate scientist at NSIDC and is part of NSIDCs Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis team.



Ice extent increases through autumn and winter, and the maximum typically occurs in mid March. Sea ice then retreats through spring and summer and shrinks to its smallest or minimum extent typically by mid September.



The September Arctic minimum began drawing attention in 2005 when it first shrank to a record low extent over the period of satellite observations. It broke the record again in 2007, and then again in 2012. The March Arctic maximum has typically received less attention. That changed last year when the maximum extent was the lowest in the satellite record.



The Arctic is in crisis. Year by year, its slipping into a new state, and its hard to see how that wont have an effect on weather throughout the Northern Hemisphere, said Ted Scambos, NSIDC lead scientist.



NSIDC will release a full analysis of the winter season in early April, once monthly data are available for March. NSIDC scientists provide Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis with partial support from NASA.

CIRES is a partnership of NOAA and CU-Boulder.
First temperature map of a super-Earth reveals lava world

Cambridge, Massachusetts - Astronomers from MIT, Cambridge University, and elsewhere have generated the first temperature map of a super-Earth exoplanet, revealing an inhospitable world covered in rivers and lakes of boiling hot magma.

Temperatures on the planet are so high that any atmosphere is likely to have been burned off or vaporized into space. The results are published today in the journal Nature.

The planet, named 55 Cancri e, resides in the constellation Cancer, at a relatively close 40 light years from Earth. Its thought to have a rocky, rather than gaseous, composition, and at roughly twice the size of our planet, it is considered a super-Earth. But that is where all Earthly similarities end, as 55 Cancri e is essentially a heat-seeking fireball, orbiting extremely close to its star. It circles in just 18 hours, compared with Earths leisurely 365-day journey around the sun.

Because of its scorching orbit, scientists have thought 55 Cancri e must be incredibly hot. But the new temperature map shows that even the planets extreme proximity to its star cant explain its blistering heat; in fact, the planet may be boiling from the inside out.

Based on their calculations, the scientists estimate that the planets day side  the side permanently facing its star  reaches an unbearable 3,000 kelvins, or 4,940 degrees Fahrenheit, while its night side  the side that never sees the star  is a more moderate 1,400 K, or 2,000 F.

This huge temperature difference suggests that the planet has little to no atmosphere, because having one would generate winds to distribute heat more evenly. The night side may consist of lava thats cooled and hardened, much like the lava flows found in Hawaii. The day side, in contrast, is a constantly boiling cauldron of magma-filled rivers and lakes.

The planets day side gets to ridiculously high temperatures, which is completely unexpected, says co-author Julien de Wit, a postdoc in MITs Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. It is so hot that we need an unknown, additional source to make it that hot.

One possible source, de Wit says, may be a process called tidal dissipation: Since the planet is so close to its star, the stars gravitational pull may be strong enough to put a constant squeeze on the planet, causing 55 Cancri e to inwardly roast.

It would basically boil the planet from the inside out, de Wit says.

A big bowl of magma

The scientists, led by former MIT postdoc Brice-Olivier Demory, now a postdoc at Cambridge University, generated the temperature map from observations of the planet made by NASAs Spitzer Space Telescope. Over 80 hours, Spitzer recorded the planets light as it circled its star several times. During this period, the researchers obtained measurements of light from various faces of the planet as it circled its star. From this, the team reconstructed a brightness map of the entire planet.

The researchers then used known size measurements of the planet and star, as well as the stars temperature, to convert the planets brightness measurements to temperature.

This is the first temperature map of a rocky planet, de Wit notes. Weve been able to map really big planets, because they have more of a signal. But because this one is relatively close to us, and really warm, were able to do this for the first time for such a small planet. And we find that this is basically a big bowl of magma  essentially, a lava world.

The temperature map suggests that 55 Cancri e lacks an atmosphere and that it may be heating up by some mechanism other than its stars radiation. The map also shows a hotspot on the planet  an area of intense heat  that is not directly underneath the blazing star but curiously off-center, shifted about 42 degrees to the east.

Either by chance or because of some weird physical processes, there is a really large pull of magma to the east, de Wit says. Such large-scale lava flow is unusual, but its possible.

Its nothing short of remarkable that we have actual direct evidence of possible surface features on an extrasolar planet, says Gregory Laughlin, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California at Santa Cruz. 55 Cancri e is an incredibly alien world, and so its fascinating to speculate what these first tantalizing hints are telling us about what this planet looks like up close.

Laughlin, who did not contribute to the study, adds that 55 Cancri e represents a class of super-Earths that are relatively common in the galaxy, though compared to our Solar Systems roster of planets, its utterly bizarre.

Nailing down science

Going forward, the team hopes to identify the source of the planets extreme heat, using more observations from Spitzer as well as from NASAs James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in 2018. The observations that were used to generate 55 Cancri es temperature map were made possible thanks to enhancements that increased Spitzers sensitivity over the last few years.

We were finding a signal that is so tiny compared to all the previous signals were used to observing from Spitzer, de Wit says. We were really pushing the boundaries and were able to nail down a very precise piece of science.

In the end, de Wit says that extreme exoplanets like 55 Cancri e make our own planetary system seem increasingly unusual by comparison.

Our solar system seems to be quite unique, when you look at all the crazy stuff thats been discovered over the last 20 years, de Wit says. Its fascinating, the more you think about it; it is a pretty rare, comfortable place here.

This work is based on observations made with the Spitzer Space Telescope, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Caltech, under contract to NASA. Support for this work was provided by JPL/Caltech.
FTC Welcomes Revised OECD Guidelines for E-commerce

Washington, DC - The Federal Trade Commission welcomed the issuance by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) of new, revised guidelines for protecting consumers in e-commerce (link is external). The guidelines are designed to strengthen consumers trust in the expanding electronic marketplace.

The original 1999 e-commerce guidelines established a set of principles developed in cooperation with all the OECD countries. The revised guidelines announced today are designed to address the newest developments in e-commerce, such as services that are exchanged for consumer data, mobile transactions and payments, and new platforms that enable consumer-to-consumer transactions. They form part of the OECDs trust agenda, to be addressed at the upcoming June OECD Ministerial on the Digital Economy.

The United States is a founding member of the OECD, an international forum established more than 50 years ago, in which market economies committed to democracy promote policies to improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world. The FTC serves as the lead U.S. agency for the OECDs Committee on Consumer Policy, which led the e-commerce guidelines revision process.
Third Illicit Arms Shipment in Recent Weeks Seized in Arabian Sea

Manama, Bahrain - For the third time in recent weeks, international naval forces operating in the waters of the Arabian Sea seized a shipment of illicit arms March 28, which the United States assessed originated in Iran and was likely bound for Houthi insurgents in Yemen.

The U.S. Navy Coastal Patrol ship USS Sirocco, operating as part of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, intercepted and seized the shipment of weapons hidden aboard a small, stateless dhow. The illicit cargo included 1,500 AK-47s, 200 RPG launchers and 21 .50 caliber machine guns.



The seizure was supported by USS Gravely (DDG 107), which was directed to the scene by United States Naval Forces Central Command following the discovery of the weapons by Sirocco's boarding team.



The weapons are now in U.S. custody awaiting final disposition. The dhow and its crew were allowed to depart once the illicit weapons were seized.



This seizure is the latest in a string of illicit weapons shipments assessed by the U.S. to have originated in Iran that were seized in the region by naval forces.



The Royal Australian Navy's HMAS Darwin intercepted a dhow Feb. 27, confiscating nearly 2,000 AK-47 assault rifles, 100 rocket-propelled grenade launchers, 49 PKM general purpose machine guns, 39 PKM spare barrels and 20 60mm mortar tubes.



A March 20 seizure by the French Navy destroyer FS Provence yielded almost 2,000 AK-47 assault rifles, 64 Dragunov sniper rifles, nine anti-tank missiles and other associated equipment.



NAVCENT is responsible for approximately 2.5 million square miles of area including the Arabian Gulf, Red Sea, Gulf of Oman, parts of the Indian Ocean and 20 countries.
Danielle Barron attended a recent public lecture in the RCSI, where progress in islet cell transplantation for patients with type 1 diabetes was discussed by a leading paediatric surgeon from the University of Oxford.

The rise and rise of diabetes in Ireland was the focus of a free RCSI MyHealth public health lecture in the RCSI earlier this month (March 3). Medical and research experts convened to discuss the rapid growth of diabetes in a bid to help a packed audience of patients make informed health decisions about living with the condition.

As part of the lecture, Prof Paul Johnson, a Paediatric Surgeon at the University of Oxford, presented on the topic of Type 1 Diabetes  One Step Closer to a Cure.

The professor began by telling the audience that the past decade had seen many exciting advances in this area and the next decade promised even more, as efforts to provide a cure for type 1 diabetes would begin to bear fruit.

Prof Johnson provided context by explaining that prior to the 1920s, type 1 diabetes was a fatal disease. The discovery of insulin and the ultimate availability of insulin injections revolutionised the acute treatment of the disease.

Despite this, long-term complications due to diabetes present further problems in terms of treatment. The longer you have type 1 diabetes the more likely you are to develop this. We are now desperately trying to reverse type 1 diabetes at an early stage of the disease in order to prevent these developing.

These complications did not simply develop as a result of disease longevity; however, as a general rule, the tighter the control of the diabetes the less likely retinopathy, renal failure and atherosclerosis etc, were likely to develop, the professor explained.

The Diabetes Control and Complications Trial Research Group illustrated this back in the early 1990s, when they showed that intensive therapy effectively delayed the onset and slowed the progression of diabetic retinopathy, nephropathy, and neuropathy in patients with insulin-dependent diabetes.

What we saw was a significant reduction in retinopathy of 76 per cent, as well as a reduction in early renal failure by over 50 per cent and neuropathy was reduced by 60 per cent.

Intensive insulin regimes can result in hypoglycaemia and intolerance, however, so this trial was halted early on  while the hypothesis that tighter glucose control reduced the complications of diabetes, it also caused its own problems.



Normoglycaemia

There are three main ways to achieve normoglycaemia, the first of which is intensive insulin regimes; these have become far more refined in recent years, the professor advised. The mode of insulin pumps refined this even more, he said, adding that these were also becoming more erudite and sophisticated and were used widely and successfully, but also had inherent problems with their use.

This is still a mechanical device, so it doesnt really get back to what the pancreas was doing before it was damaged, and we are still relying on exogenous insulin.

The third category of treatment is the one Prof Johnson believes holds most promise, that of transplanting insulin-producing tissue  either the pancreas or islet cells.

We can take the whole pancreas and transplant it like any other organ. This is a good treatment, but only 2 per cent of the pancreas is made up of the cells that you actually need to treat the cause of diabetes, he explained, adding that it had success of 85 per cent after one year, but also carried a high mortality rate and added risk of major complications.

This is a major procedure and not where we want to be in 10 to 15 years time, and certainly not when it comes to children who havent got any other complications.

Transplantation

Islet cell transplantation is minimally invasive with minimal morbidity or mortality, and has the potential to restore normal glucose homeostasis with coordinated secretion of all islet hormones. There was also the potential to immunomodulate the islet graft or promote strategies for immune tolerance, so that immunosuppressive drugs did not have to be given, Prof Johnson explained.

All of these factors make this procedure highly attractive for using in children.

There had been mixed success with this approach in the past 20 years, the professor continued; piecemeal improvements have been made, with the development of increasingly refined protocols.

Edmonton protocol

The Edmonton protocol was the most significant of these, he explained. The team at Edmonton managed to get seven consecutive patients off insulin  which was unheard of at that time in the 1990s. Essentially they changed the anti-rejection drugs being used, which we knew were harming the islets.

They also gave two pancreas worth of islets  they did the first transplant of islets and then a few months later they did a second one. They also transplanted patients with hypoglycaemia unawareness and this was highly successful for reversing that in the majority of patients.

Things have moved on even more significantly since the introduction of the Edmonton protocol, with recent data showing that 58 per cent of patients remained off insulin some seven years after receiving their islet cell transplant.

Prof Johnson explained that in the UK, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) had asked that insulin independence not be the only parameter of success measured, but rather the resolution of hypoglycaemia unawareness and the stabilisation of glycaemic control; however, insulin independence does occur in up to 60 per cent of patients, despite it not being the main goal.

Indeed, the UK data shows that HbA1c control dramatically improves in patients receiving islet cells compared to those on intensive insulin regimes. This has led to the UK having the service fully funded by the NHS. We have an arrangement whereby two designated centres extract the islets and then they are sent to whichever centre [where] the patient is at the top of the waiting list.

Prof Johnson explained that a similar arrangement has been postulated for Dublin for a number of years, but has encountered delays due to various other issues. His visit to Dublin was also due to incorporate a meeting with the pancreatic transplantation team at St Vincents University Hospital.

Tip of the iceberg

All this represented the tip of the iceberg, according to the professor, who said he saw a further revolution happening over the next 25 years. The next step was to use islet transplantation in children, where it could have enormous benefits.

In order for this to happen, islet isolation needs to be optimised, with a shift from pancreas procurement to targeted donor-specific pancreas digestion.

Our islet extraction methods are very primitive and suboptimal; we can only get islets out of every two or three pancreases at the moment, and we have to get to a point where we can get them out of every pancreas. Ideally, we would also get more than one patients worth out of any one pancreas.

Graft survival

Improving islet graft survival is another goal, and Prof Johnson outlined various novel strategies involving pre-transplant islet conditioning or islet modification.

You can coat the islets in various compounds, you can put them in heparin, which makes them graft better, you can put artificial scaffolds around them, like what the DRIVE consortium here in the RCSI are looking at. This is a really exciting area and this will mean that the islet survival is better and the results are better.

The current reliance on extraction of human islets must also be addressed by looking at renewable islet sources; Prof Johnson explained that even if perfect islet isolation was achieved, the number of patients requiring this compared to the number of donors was a real mismatch.

We need alternative sources of islets, such as xenogeneic or islet stem cells  these dont have to be embryonic stem cells; there are all sorts of perfectly acceptable models we can work with.

Immunosuppression

The development of immunosuppressive-free immune strategies, such as immunoalteration or immunoisolation, was also needed and Prof Johnson said this was where he saw the biggest leap taking place in islet cell transplantation.

The biggest problem for these patients is the anti-rejection drugs; if youve got a five-year-old, who is otherwise very healthy, on drugs that could potentially damage their immune system and cause various problems down the line, we have to be cautious, and thats why we are not jumping into it with children at the moment.

These new strategies are currently being explored in a bid to overcome this, and one such method is by using delivery devices for the islets, such as macrocapsules. These were showing encouraging results with Prof Johnsons group in Oxford, and he said clinical trials were planned for the end of 2016.

The professor concluded by stating that islet cell transplantation worked very well, albeit in selected patients, and there were a number of ongoing challenges to overcome before it could be applied more widely, for example, in children.

Recent advances in bioengineering, cell biology, and nanotechnology look encouraging for the development of immune tolerance and encapsulation protocols required for successful implementation of this treatment in children.
The Government should be lobbied to take out the taxpayers chequebook in order to fund the registration and regulation of medical practitioners in Ireland, the IMO is set to be asked.

The State and indeed wider society should take over the costs of the statutory registration of doctors with the end of self-regulation by the profession, a consultant psychiatrist has proposed.

Dr Kevin Kilbride proposed a motion for debate at this weekends AGM lobbying his representative body to call on the Government to end the anomaly whereby the Irish Medical Council (IMC) is funded by registration fees of doctors while no longer being a self-regulatory body, and instead provide funding for the IMC from general taxation.

It is seconded by fellow consultant psychiatrist and former IMO President Dr Matthew Sadlier.

Dr Kilbride told IMT: I havent yet quite marshalled my argument, but its actually quite a straightforward idea.

Traditionally, for professions that were self-regulating, that was always viewed as a privilege enjoyed by the profession, but there was a quid pro quo  one of the advantages for society with self-regulation was that the profession would fund its own registration body.

In fact, I remember as a medical student being taught that once we qualified we would have to fund the statutory registration body because we were a self-regulating profession.

It was not just his professor who was of that view, he said, with a lot of literature on that feature of self-regulation in existence. Yet the introduction of the Medical Practitioners Act of 2007 meant the profession was no longer self-regulating.

Arguments would have been at the time, especially from [former Health] Minister [Mary] Harney, that Ireland was a mature democratic society where many people are educated such that this kind of [self-regulation profession] model was inappropriate, and that society and the State needed to play a greater role, he said.

I would contend that at that point the funding of statutory registration should have transferred to the State and indeed to society because the medical professions fully discharged its responsibility when it was a self-regulating profession; and in my contention, the State and wider society should now take up and discharge fully their responsibilities, in that regard.

He rejected the idea that doctors maintained representation and a majority on the Council. When there was self-regulation there were lay members on the Council, but that didnt affect the funding requirements by the profession. There was no pro rata reduction of funding because there were some lay members on the Council. That is actually not relevant here.

lloyd.mudiwa@imt.ie
Internet's Most Adorable Pet Duo Has Left the Netizens in Complete Awe
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Upon its initial screening at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, Swiss Army Man caused quite a stir. Headlines screamed Daniel Radcliffes farting corpse movie and the entire world was confused about what was going on.

With the film hitting cinemas later this year, a trailer has finally hit the internet, doing absolutely nothing to explain what on earth is going on.

War & Peaces Paul Dano is there, looking bearded and slightly bonkers. Radcliffe plays a corpse who farts, breathes fire and is a jet ski. I dont know either.

The films to watch out for from Sundance 2016 Show all 8 1 /8 The films to watch out for from Sundance 2016 The films to watch out for from Sundance 2016 The films to watch out for from Sundance 2016 The Birth of a Nation The topical #OscarsSoWhite fiasco could be a thing of the past come next years ceremony if Nate Parker excels as writer, director and star of his film about Nat Turner, who led the biggest slave rebellion in US history. The films to watch out for from Sundance 2016 The films to watch out for from Sundance 2016 Magnolia Pictures The films to watch out for from Sundance 2016 The films to watch out for from Sundance 2016 The films to watch out for from Sundance 2016 The films to watch out for from Sundance 2016

At the time of its release, Radcliffe said of the film: It's exciting using farts to make people super uncomfortable I loved seeing how painful I could make things look.

According to reports, many critics walked out of the cinema when shown at the film festival. From the trailer, it is not exactly hard to imagine why. However, in her review for The Independent, Emma Jones gave kudos to Radcliffe for making his flatulent corpse so watchable.

You can watch for yourself when the film hits cinemas 17 June.
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Zayn Malik is never looking back to his former boy band days; it's certain now, as he becomes the first ever UK male artist to debut at the top of both the UK and US album charts.

His debut solo album Mind of Mine, released exactly one year after his departure from One Direction, secured the top spot in both territories in its first week; making him the only UK male solo artist to have achieved such a feat. This follows a largely positive reaction to the album; though critics have pointed out his reliance on pop structures, he's certainly been labelled as one to watch in the future.

The last UK act to do the same was Malik's former boy band One Direction with their 2012 album, Up All Night. The record follows the tremendous success of his debut single "Pillow Talk"; which hit number one in 60 countries. It also debuted at number one in the US, surpassing One Direction's highest debut entry at number two.

Malik performed his third released single from Mind of Mine, entitled "Like I Would", at the iHeartRadio awards in Los Angeles on 3 April.
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A 'warrant canary' in the annual transparency report of the social news site Reddit has been removed, sparking fears it has received a secret government order to hand over user data.

A warrant canary is a system used by websites to indirectly inform its users that it has been issued with a secret order for information.

Since these orders cannot legally be spoken about by the recipients, a 'warrant canary' can be used to specify one has not been received. If the canary disappears, it suggests one has been.

Recommended Read more This is what Reddit will look like in the year 3016

Reddit, a site where users can post, vote and comment on new stories, videos and pictures, publishes a report every year which lists all the government requests for user information made in the previous 12 months.

A canary was present in 2014's report, in a paragraph which specified the site had "never received a National Security Letter, an order under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or any other classified request for user information."

There is no similar paragraph in the most recent report, suggesting Reddit could have received a secret order to hand over user data at some point in 2015.

Obviously, Reddit was not able to confirm nor deny whether it had received such an order.

Governmental surveillance Show all 8 1 /8 Governmental surveillance Governmental surveillance Governmental surveillance Detachment 3, Air Force Flight Test Center #2, Groom Lake, Nevada Trevor Paglen Governmental surveillance Governmental surveillance Black Site, Kabul, Afghanistan Trevor Paglen Governmental surveillance Governmental surveillance A drone hovering in the skies over Dande Darpa Khel, North Waziristan Trevor Paglen/Noor Behram Governmental surveillance Governmental surveillance Hide and seek: the tiny dots visible in this image is a Reaper drone Trevor Paglen Governmental surveillance Governmental surveillance National Reconnaissance Office Ground Station, New Mexico Trevor Paglen Governmental surveillance Governmental surveillance N5177C at Gold Coast Terminal, Las Vegas. The plane is one of those used to shuttle people to work at classified military installations in the Nevada desert Trevor Paglen Governmental surveillance Governmental surveillance The Salt Pit, previously secret CIA prison, north-east of Kabul, Afghanistan Trevor Paglen Governmental surveillance Governmental surveillance Remote: Paglen took this photograph of Open Hangar in Nevada using a high powered telescope Trevor Paglen

Steve Huffman, co-founder and CEO of the website, said: "I've been advised not to say anything one way or the other," when asked about the canary's absence, a statement which some users saw as a veiled admission that an order had been made.

The FBI can use national security letters to force internet and telecoms companies to hand over user data, including web browsing history and records of online purchases.

Users can create a Reddit account without handing over any personal information, meaning the government would gain little if they did issue a secret order to the company.

However, users' IP addresses, the numbers which correspond to specific computers, could theoretically be used to identify them, as could the details of their private messages.

According to the report, Reddit received 98 requests for user data in 2015. It handed over in 60 per cent of cases, affecting 142 users in total.

53 requests for the removal or blocking of content were made in the same year, 21 per cent of which were agreed to.

Neither Reddit nor the FBI responded to Reuters requests for comment.
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Thousands of buy-to-let investors could be left stranded under new proposals announced by the Bank of England this week. Under the changes, lenders will have to consider landlords wider finances and not just their rental income.

Banks and building societies will have to reassess whether rent charged is high enough to provide a large enough margin over mortgage interest. They will also have to take account of fees and management costs and also the impact of future higher taxes on borrowers cash flow.

Mortgage broker Simon Tyler said he has already received calls from worried clients uncertain they will be able to re-mortgage when their current deal expires. It is a worrying situation with echoes of 2014 when the Mortgage Market Review set down new affordability requirements, he said.

Back then, lenders interpreted the regulations in an overly cautious way, leading to some quite absurd decisions and refusals for borrowers who were plainly able to afford their mortgages. My concern is that this will happen again under the new proposals on buy-to-let.

The proposals are being consulted on and, if adopted, could cut new approvals for buy-to-let mortgages by up to a fifth. Landlords with fixed-rate loans will need to review their mortgage or restructure their portfolio of properties, warned Kay Ingram, director of savings and investments at LEBC.

Stricter lending criteria may mean that getting new finance may not be as easy as it was when the original loan was taken out, she said.

Landlords have already been hit by yesterdays stamp duty hike, which left people buying second homes, including buy-to-let investors, being forced to pay three percentage points above previous rates. The new rates apply to all purchases of additional residential properties in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

A hike in the tax also came into force in Scotland on the purchase of additional homes. The move was made to help avoid any potential distortions that could have come from the stamp duty hike for investors in the rest of the UK.

Yesterday marked the beginning of a raft of changes already introduced by the Government and has the potential to cause confusion even among the most savvy of landlords, pointed out Steve Griffiths, head of sales and distribution at Kensington.

Andrew Gardiner of crowdfunding site Property Moose, predicted that the increase could encourage investors to turn to caravans and houseboats, which are exempt from stamp duty.

The increase in stamp duty and, just as importantly, the changes to buy-to-let mortgage tax relief from 2020, have not only changed the profitability of the asset class, but has also transformed the risk profile of property investment, he said. Even fully tenanted properties could end up costing landlords thousands of pounds each year.
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Support for Britain to remain in the EU is rising in the financial community, according to a survey, which revealed large companies are putting deals on hold before the June referendum.

Three-quarters of the finance chiefs who took part in the influential Deloitte survey said they would prefer the UK to stay in Europe, up from 62 per cent three months ago.

The survey quizzed 120 chief financial officers, including a fifth of finance bosses from FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 companies. The remaining 45 were from major private companies, Deloitte said.

It is the first time the quarterly survey has been conducted since Prime Minister David Cameron set 23 June as the date for the referendum. The increase in support comes a day after polls showed the Leave campaign had a four-point lead in a blow to the pro-EU camp.

The Deloitte survey also revealed that the referendum is considered the biggest risk facing businesses  more than deflation and economic weakness in the eurozone.

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.

Crucially, the business environment is seen to be more challenging, with finance chiefs more concerned about uncertainty in the run-up to the referendum, which is having a knock-on effect on attitudes to risk.

Deloitte said corporate risk-appetite has dropped to a three-year low, which comes despite a rally from UK stocks in the past couple of months. Only a quarter of CFOs said now was a good time to take greater risk on their balance sheets, down from 51 per cent a year ago.

Deloittes UK chief executive David Sproul said results showed that business was already suffering from the referendum.

Our survey shows declining risk appetite among CFOs, with the referendum rated as the top risk their business faces. And we have seen a marked slowdown in M&A activity as businesses put plans on hold for now, Mr Sproul said.

While voices on both sides of the debate argue about the potential economic impact of a Leave vote, the referendum appears to already be contributing to a slowdown.

Ian Stewart, Deloittes chief economist, said: A fog of uncertainty has descended on the corporate sector. Perceptions of financial and economic uncertainty are back to levels last seen in early 2013 as the euro crisis abated.

Rising uncertainty has eroded corporate risk appetite.

CFOs see significant benefits in UK membership, particularly in terms of helping exports, attracting investment and strengthening influence and connections, according to Deloitte.
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The Panama papers expose the gulf between the Conservative governments hard-line anti-tax avoidance rhetoric and the much laxer reality, according to a host of pressure groups, campaigning charities and tax experts.

David Cameron and George Osborne have talked up their efforts to clamp down on tax avoidance in recent years and the Chancellor unveiled a series of measures in his Budget last month designed to raise 12 billion for the exchequer over the course of this Parliament.

But critics say the government still soft-pedals reform of an international system in which wealth can be relatively easily shielded from tax and they point out that major centres of evasion such as the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda (many of which feature prominently in the cache of 11 million documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Foneseca) are British protectorates.

 What are The Panama Papers?

This leak highlights the key role that UK-linked tax havens play in allowing a privileged elite to dodge paying their fair share of tax said Richard Pyle of Oxfam. The UK simply cannot continue to provide cover for the rich and powerful who wish to operate in the shadows said Toby Quantrill of Christian Aid.

Jolyon Maugham QC, a barrister who specializes in tax, said the Government was forced by public opinion to talk tough on tax havens but that ministers were also concerned to protect the economies of its overseas territories and the City of London, which makes a good deal of revenue from facilitating offshore avoidance. They want to appease the angry mob without actually doing much he said.

The Tax Justice Network has said that the UK and its various overseas territories  largely made up of former colonies of the British empire  together constitute the worlds largest tax haven.

Last December the UK government struck a deal with its overseas territories to share information on the beneficial owners of companies registered in their jurisdiction, either in centralised registries or similarly effective systems. It is due to come into force in June.

But the governments original request for publicly accessible registers of these companies was rejected. And demands for the UK and other domestic law enforcement and tax authorities to be given unrestricted access to this information were also denied.

At that time the junior foreign James Duddridge argued that exerting any more pressure on the UKs Overseas Territories would be counter-productive. We dont want to move corrupt money and corrupt practices, we dont want to move tax evasion and avoidance, we want to eliminate it and we want to do that everywhere he said.

Mr Pyle of Oxfam argues the December agreement should be re-opened before the international summit in London on tackling corruption that will be chaired by David Cameron next month. The UK is in a unique position to help clean up the murky world of tax havens - starting by ensuring that the real beneficiaries of shell companies registered in the UKs Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories, such as the British Virgin Islands, are revealed ahead of Mays Anti-Corruption Summit he said.

Robert Palmer, campaign leader at the Global Witness pressure group, said Mr Cameron now faces a credibility test. He added: Unless the government uses the upcoming summit to force the UKs tax havens to end anonymous company ownership, our other efforts wont be effective in fighting poverty and instability. We have to clean up our own back yard first.

The Liberal Democrats called for an independent investigation into exactly what the Government knows about the avoidance-facilitating behaviour of its overseas territories. The partys leader, Tim Farron, also claimed ministers have not used their existing legislative powers to impose transparency rules in these territories.

Cameron promised and has failed to end tax secrecy and crack down on morally unacceptable offshore schemes said Labours shadow chancellor John McDonnell. Real action is now needed.

Last September David Cameron told the Jamaican parliament that overseas territories needed to open up over tax. I say to them all today, including those in this region, if we want to break the business model of stealing money and hiding it in places where it cant be seen: transparency is the answer.

What can the UK government do about tax evasion?

Britains government could take a much tougher stance on its overseas territories and dependencies and force them to be transparent, according to campaigners and experts. One of the central demands from pressure groups are for tax havens to be forced to set up a public register of the ultimate beneficial ownership of companies, trusts and foundations established in their jurisdictions. Another key demand is for the automatic exchange of tax information between tax haven jurisdictions and the authorities in the UK and elsewhere. The deal signed between Britain and its overseas territories in December falls short on both of these fronts. And Alex Cobham of the Tax Justice Network argues that the leaked files show how law firms in places like Panama actively seek to disguise ultimate ownership. At the moment if countries refuse to sign up to demands for transparency nothing happens. Campaigners such as the Tax Justice Network say countermeasures should be imposed. That could mean a bar on any entity registered in a non-compliant regime from bidding for public contracts in the UK. This could even be extended to a ban on them doing any kind of business here, providing a powerful incentive for the regimes to comply. Alternatively, Jolyon Maugham QC, a tax expert, argues the UK Parliament could, in extremis, simply change the law and mandate full transparency in dependent territories such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands because they are not sovereign territories. I dont think theres any doubt that we have the power to directly legislate he said.


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White British children are being overtaken by pupils from other ethnic backgrounds because their parents are not doing enough to support them, researchers say.

Stronger attitudes among Chinese, Asian and black African communities to key aspects of family life  including mealtimes, strict bedtimes, parental supervision of homework and discussion of subject choices  are all reasons why children from other ethnic backgrounds do better than white British pupils, the academics said.

In the early years of education, white British children are among the highest-achieving ethnic groups. But by the time they sit their GCSEs, they have fallen 10 places in the rankings to just below average, according to a new and wide-ranging report into the state of English education by the CentreForum think-tank.

Pupils for whom English is an additional language (EAL) make enormous progress during their school careers. By the time they sit their GCSEs, EAL pupils outperform non-EAL pupils with 40.2 per cent of EAL pupils achieve a challenging GCSE target set by CentreForum - to achieve 50 points or higher in eight subjects called Attainment 8 - compared with 37.6 per cent of non-EAL pupils.

Chinese pupils were way ahead of other groups with 73 per cent achieving this standard.

Jo Hutchinson, the think-tanks associate director for education, said previous research suggested that high parental aspirations only played a small part in the achievement gap between different ethnic groups. She said: What is bigger than aspiration is parental engagement. We are talking about things such as parents attending parents evenings at school, talking to their children about subject options, supervising homework, ensuring that the family eats together and has regular bedtimes.

Those sorts of things appear to be more associated with this effect than pure aspirations. Its not just aspirations but behaviours that support the aspirations.

Most parents actually want their children to continue in education and be successful in education. What sometimes differs is the extent to which they have the knowledge and the tools and resources to actually help them make that aspiration real.

David Laws, the former Liberal Democrat MP and schools minister under the Coalition who is now CentreForums executive chairman described the gap as a very striking outcome of the research and the performance of white pupils as very bad. He said: I dont think we know all the answers to this. We know that weve got this very bad performance of white pupils versus other ethnic groups. We know from this analysis that its not embedded in the beginning of education because actually they appear to be doing relatively well at the beginning of their journey. So something is clearly happening about their ability to take advantage of the opportunities that other ethnic groups do manage. 

The CentreForum analysis found that although attainment was improving, over 60 per cent of secondary and over 40 per cent of primary pupils were still failing to achieve a world-class standard.

Researchers warned that England would plummet down international league tables in 2017 when new, more challenging, GCSE exams would see the proportion of pupils achieving a good pass in English and Maths drop very significantly.

If the 2015 cohort had been assessed against these new standards, the percentage of pupils who would have achieved a pass in English and Maths would have dropped by around 23 percentage points from 58 per cent to 35 per cent.

Researchers also found a clear North/South divide in secondary schools GCSE results , with 44 per cent of pupils reaching a world class benchmark in London, compared to only a third in the East Midlands and Yorkshire and the Humber.

The worst performing areas in the country in both attainment and progress at secondary school, were Knowsley, Blackpool, Stoke on Trent, Nottingham City, Barnsley and Doncaster.

The gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers remained significant, with four out of five disadvantaged pupils failing to achieve a world-class standard at secondary and more than half at primary.
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llegal Jewish faith schools may have operated with the tacit approval of the authorities because there was no space for their pupils in local state secondaries, the President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews has claimed.

Jonathan Arkush stressed he did not condone illegal schools, but said there was no serious evidence of mistreatment of children despite claims of physical abuse, substandard education and school days of up to 14 hours.

He compared those who have complained to Prince Charles, who famously did not enjoy his time at Scottish boarding school Gordonstoun.

The Independent has revealed that officials from the Governments Department for Education (DfE) and Hackney Learning Trust in London discussed the problem of children being taught in unregistered schools run by ultra-Orthodox Charedi Jews in the borough as long ago as 2010.

However, documents showing evidence of Jewish boys disappearing from state school rolls from the age of about 13  suggesting they were going to faith schools -- were destroyed.

Mr Arkush said that this decision may have been influenced by practical considerations.

What I would suggest is if it is the case that officials knew about it, it may well be the case that local government officials knew perfectly well that they did not have room in Hackney schools for any more children, he said.

They would have obviously been concerned those children were being safeguarded. My assumption is although these schools were operating without registration, they were at least not causing harm to children. Health and safety is absolutely imperative.

I would not condone for a single moment any school of any description that posed a health and safety danger. If a local authority looked away from that, then obviously they should not have done.

He said if the illegal Charedi schools were centres of mistreatment then there would have been hundreds of complaints.

You will be very hard-pressed to find any serious evidence of mistreatment of children, Mr Arkush said. Of course you will find some people who will say I feel these schools are wrong for me. If you asked His Royal Highness Prince Charles, I think he would say something pretty similar about his experiences at Gordonstoun, which he hated.

One has to be really careful about suggestions, which are completely unsubstantiated, of abuse.

A former pupil of illegal schools in the Stamford Hill area of Hackney previously told The Independent that he was physically beaten by teachers, left school with no qualification and unable to speak English.

He accused the Government of being discriminatory against Jewish children and anti-Semitic by not intervening. A former teacher at one of the schools told how she hated her job partly because of the fear in which the children lived.

A source at Hackney Council said one of the problems was that if an illegal school was shut down, it would soon re-open.

They get this closure order, then they open as a community centre a few weeks later, offering home schooling, the insider said, adding that the parents dont want to send their kids to mainstream schools.

Under the Education and Skills Act 2008, it is an offence to operate an unregistered school.

An Ofsted spokesperson said: Since November 2015, HM Chief Inspector has commissioned the inspection of eight unregistered schools. Seven have since closed.

In January 2016 Ofsted established a new taskforce to identify, inspect and investigate unregistered schools, and prepare prosecutions against those found to be running them. We are currently investigating a number of unregistered schools.
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An Indonesian government minister has denied reports Leonardo DiCaprio could be blacklisted from visiting the country.

The Oscar-winning actor and environmental activist made critical remarks about the countrys palm oil industry last week, sharing photos of endangered animals on his Instagram page.

Following on from this, the Indonesian immigration director-general Ronny Sompie reportedly threatened to deport the 41-year-old American actor while another minister threatened to "blacklist him from returning to Indonesia".

But in a different vein, another Indonesian government minister has now applauded DiCaprios recent visit and endeavours to help endangered Sumatran elephants, rhinos, tigers and orangutans. She also clarified that he would not be deported if he came to Indonesia again.

My view is that DiCaprios concerns are both sincere and substantial, and he has certainly acted in good faith, Siti Nurbaya, Indonesias minister of the environment and forestry, told foresthints.news. In fact, we largely share his concerns on this matter.

Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Show all 26 1 /26 Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort, at one of many outrageous parties in Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street AP Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Margot Robbie and Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill in a scene from The Wolf of Wall Street Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo-DiCaprio Leonardo DiCaprio and Matthew McConaughey in The Wolf of Wall Street Rex Features Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in the famous scene from Titanic Reuters Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures 'I'll never let go, Jack': Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslett in Titanic Rex Features Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio's hand in his Titanic sex scene with Kate Winslet is iconic in itself Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio and Clare Danes in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet 20th Century Fox Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Another scene from Romeo and Juliet 20th Century Fox Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio star and Matt Damon star as an undercover cop and police force mole in crime thriller The Departed IMDB Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio stars as director and aviator Howard Hughes in Scorsese drama The Aviator IMDB Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Miramax Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Martin Scorsese directs Leonardo DiCaprio and Jim Broadbent in 'Gangs of New York' Rex Features Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Glitter bugs: Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, Tobey Maguire and Joel Edgerton in 'The Great Gatsby' Bazmark Film III Pty Limited Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo Di Caprio playing Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio in Baz Luhrmann's 'Great Gatsby' Warner Bros Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio starred as con artist Frank Abagnale in the film Catch Me If You Can Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Virginie Ledoyen and Leonardo DiCaprio starring in 'The Beach' AP Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio in the puny sci-fi thriller Inception Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures ANDREW COOPER Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Sir Ben stars alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in Shutter Island Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio in the Revolutionary Road Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures FRANCOIS DUHAMEL Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Winslet and DiCaprio in the Revolutionary Road AP Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCaprio's career in pictures Leonardo DiCarprio in the documentary 11th Hour (2007)

In light of this and to reciprocate his sincerity and good intentions, I am open to working together with DiCaprio in a joint effort whereby both of us can have our concerns addressed, including those that pertain to the Leuser Ecosystem.

Its really not relevant to link the concerns conveyed by DiCaprio with immigration matters, she added.
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Jeremy Corbyn has accepted an invitation to make an appearance at Glastonbury.

A spokesperson for the Labour leader confirmed the news to The Independent, saying, "He was invited by the organisers and has agreed to attend".

If all goes to plan, the Labour opposition leader will become the first British party leader to grace the stages of Glastonbury Festival in history.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament said they invited Corbyn to perform at the festival a couple of weeks ago.

We decided to invite Jeremy Corbyn because hes a strong supporter of CND, the charity's general secretary, Kate Hudson, told The Independent.

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.

Trident is a very topical issue, theres going to be a vote in parliament on whether or not to replace trident this year and Labour is in the middle of an open debate and policy review process.

Hes also very popular, particularly with young people, so we thought hed be a fantastic option.

Veteran folk musician and activist, Billy Bragg, who curates the Left Field stage where Corbyn will be appearing, confirmed the news on his Twitter account today.

Bragg also applauded the Labour leader in a statement released on Glastonburys website.

The election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader has galvanised a new generation of activists, and this year at Left Field we aim to give them a platform to discuss issues around social justice, the economy, gender and the possibilities for genuine change under a Corbyn government.

Appearing alongside the likes of Adele, Muse, Stormzy and Coldplay, Corbyns appearance at Glastonbury is more proof that the Labour leader is committed to doing things differently to his political predecessors.
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A new test has being developed to diagnose autism early in children by tracking their movement of their eyes during conversations.

After carrying out a study on the technique , scientists believe they can help quickly identify the disorder over the internet by using a webcam and software that shows where people are looking.

Until now, autism had been mainly diagnosed by speaking to parents about their child's behaviour, clinical observations and interviews with the subjects. However, it can take time to pick up on the condition  the average age of diagnosis is about four.

Scientists from the University of Vermont found that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) tend to focus on the speaker's mouth when emotional subjects are being discussed, making them miss "important social cues".

Tiffany Hutchins, lead author of a paper about the technique in the journal, Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, said: "What you talk about really matters for children with ASD.

"You just change a few words by talking about what people do versus how they feel and you can have a profound impact on where eyes go for information."

The study found that the propensity for the subject's gaze to move from the speaker's eyes towards the mouth was associated with more severe autism and poorer verbal and intellectual ability.

"If Im asking you to talk about emotions and that makes you even less likely to look in my eyes  when you really need to go there because Im more likely to be showing other evidence of an emotion like anger with my eyebrows  you are missing even more. Its not that theres no emotional information in the mouth, but during dynamic conversational exchanges they are missing a number of cues that a typically developing child would not," Dr Hutchins said.

The Cleveland Clinic in Ohio has also used eye-tracing technology to see how long autistic children spend looking at the social and non-social features in a series of images and videos.

Dr Thomas Frazier, a team leader at the clinic, said: "The lack of objective methods for identifying children with autism can be a major impediment to early diagnosis.

"Remote eye tracking is easy to use with young children and our study shows that it has excellent potential to enhance identification and, because it is objective, may increase parents' acceptance of the diagnosis, allowing their children to get treatment faster."

There are over 700,000 people living with autism in the UK.
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A 46 per cent fall in the number of arrests for cannabis possession in England and Wales shows the Government must start "developing rational, evidence based policies as alternatives to criminalising cannabis consumers," advocates of cannabis legalisation say.

Data released after a freedom of information request by the BBC shows arrests fell between 2010 and 2015 from 35,367 to 19,115.

In the same five year period, cautions for possession fell 48 per cent and the number of people charged fell by 33 per cent.

The number of arrests for possession with intent to supply remained roughly the same.

Where cannabis is and isn't legal Show all 10 1 /10 Where cannabis is and isn't legal Where cannabis is and isn't legal UK Having been reclassified in 2009 from a Class C to a Class B drug, cannabis is now the most used illegal drug within the United Kingdom. The UK is also, however, the only country where Sativex  a prescribed drug that helps to combat muscle spasms in multiple sclerosis and contains some ingredients that are also found in cannabis - is licensed as a treatment Getty Where cannabis is and isn't legal North Korea Although many people believe the consumption of cannabis in North Korea to be legal, the official law regarding the drug has never been made entirely clear whilst under Kim Jong Uns regime. However, it is said that the North Korean leader himself has openly said that he does not consider cannabis to be a drug and his regime doesnt take any issue with the consumption or sale of the drug MARCEL VAN HOORN/AFP/Getty Images Where cannabis is and isn't legal Netherlands In the Netherlands smoking cannabis is legal, given that it is smoked within the designated smoking areas and you dont possess more than 5 grams for personal use. It is also legal to sell the substance, but only in specified coffee shops Getty Where cannabis is and isn't legal USA Although in some states of America cannabis has now been legalised, prior to the legalisation, police in the U.S. could make a marijuana-related arrest every 42 seconds, according to US News and World Report. The country also used to spend around $3.6 billion a year enforcing marijuana law, the American Civil Liberties Union notes AP Photo/Ted S. Warren Where cannabis is and isn't legal Spain Despite cannabis being officially illegal in Spain, the European hotspot has recently started to be branded, the new Amsterdam. This is because across Spain there are over 700 Cannabis Clubs  these are considered legal venues to consume cannabis in because the consumption of the drug is in private, and not in public. These figures have risen dramatically in the last three years  in 2010 there were just 40 Cannabis Clubs in the whole of Spain. Recent figures also show that in Catalonia alone there are 165,000 registered members of cannabis clubs  this amounts to over 5 million euros (4 million) in revenue each month Getty Where cannabis is and isn't legal Uruguay In December 2013, the House of Representatives and Senate passed a bill legalizing and regulating the production and sale of the drug. But the president has since postponed the legalization of cannabis until to 2015 and when it is made legal, it will be the authorities who will grow the cannabis that can be sold legally. Buyers must be 18 or older, residents of Uruguay, and must register with the authorities Getty Where cannabis is and isn't legal Pakistan Despite the fact that laws prohibiting the sale and misuse of cannabis exist and is considered a habit only entertained by lower-income groups, it is very rarely enforced. The occasional use of cannabis in community gatherings is broadly tolerated as a centuries old custom. The open use of cannabis by Sufis and Hindus as a means to induce euphoria has never been challenged by the state. Further, large tracts of cannabis grow unchecked in the wild Getty Where cannabis is and isn't legal Portugal In 2001, Portugal became the first country in the world to decriminalize the use of all drugs, and started treating drug users as sick people, instead of criminals. However, you can still be arrested or assigned mandatory rehab if you are caught several times in possession of drugs Getty Where cannabis is and isn't legal Puerto Rico Although the use of cannabis is currently illegal, it is said that Puerto Rico are in the process of decriminalising it RAUL ARBOLEDA/AFP/Getty Images Where cannabis is and isn't legal China Cannabis is grown in the wild and has been used to treat conditions such as gout and malaria. But, officially the substance is illegal to consume, possess and sell Getty

Lee Harris, London Mayoral candidate for the Cannabis Is Safer Than Alcohol (CISTA) party told The Independent: "The falling numbers of arrests for offences related to cannabis is part of a bigger trend around the world as governments at national and regional levels are developing rational, evidence based policies as alternatives to criminalising cannabis consumers.

"Not only does this help to protect consumers, it puts valuable tax receipts back into supporting public services. Here in the UK and in London decriminalisation is occurring by stealth.

"This still leaves the black market and organised crime as the sole provider. This is unacceptable given the potential health risks and the impact on communities. Surely now we must accept the need to regulate and tax cannabis consumption in the public interest."

 Jon Snow takes cannabis

Despite the fall in arrests and cautions, crime survey data suggests cannabis use remained roughly the same from 2010-15.

"In direct contrast to the Government's tough on drugs rhetoric, it's clear that levels of use have little or nothing to do with policing tactics, so why do we continue to waste police time and still criminalise tens of thousands of young people?" Steve Rolles, senior policy analyst for drug reform group Transform, said.

"It's time to deal with cannabis as a public health issue to be responsibly managed, not a crime to be punished."

Other campaigners praised the police for shifting their focus from cannabis possession to other crimes.

"This is excellent news as it means that police are concentrating on real crimes that cause harm to people," Peter Reynolds, the president of CLEAR, the UK's largest cannabis policy group, told The Independent.

"Unlike other nations which are introducing evidence-based reform, the UK is paralysed about its cannabis policy because it's based not on reducing harm but on appeasing readers of tabloid newspapers.

"UK drugs policy actually causes far more harm than cannabis does. Thank heavens the police are taking an intelligent approach, something that our government seems incapable of."
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Falls in crime have been dramatically overstated by successive governments because antiquated recording methods have given murders equal weight to shoplifting, according to a new study published today.

The way that crime is calculated across the UK should be overhauled to address the harm caused to society rather than bald statistical totals which fail to address the impact of different crimes, the paper concluded.

A team of researchers from Cambridge University has recalculated the true level of crime based upon the severity of each offence. It found that while traditional crime statistics showed a 37 per cent fall in offences across Britain in the decade from 2002, the true decline was closer to 21 per cent.

The academics said that the current state of crime recording was a paper-and-pencil legacy of the 19th century, which led to forces focusing on so-called volume crimes like theft and burglary rather than tackling the most serious offences, according to the study published today in the academic journal Policing.

Changes in recording crimes would probably prompt police forces to focus on high-harm offences, said the Cambridge Institute of Criminology director, Professor Lawrence Sherman, who led the study.

Counting them as if they are [equal] fosters distortion of risk and accountability, Professor Sherman said. If shoplifting drops while murder triples, crime is reported as down  yet any common-sense view of public safety cries out for some adjustment for seriousness.

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Measuring instead by the number of days in prison each crime could attract ensures that police, policy makers and the public are better informed on rates and trends of crime, the risks posed and resources required. The legitimacy of crime recording has been undermined by a series of scandals that has seen police chiefs accused of chasing targets rather than tackle crime.

A report by MPs in 2014 found that a culture of fiddling figures was ingrained in the upper echelons of the police service. One Scotland Yard police officer, James Patrick, quit in 2014 after telling MPs that figures were being fiddled and sexual crimes were being under-reported.

Crime figures doubled last year when cyber crimes and online fraud were included in official statistics for the first time in recognition of the shift from traditional to hi-tech crimes.
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The ancient Egyptian statue that was the jewel in the crown of Northampton Museums collection, before being sold off by the council, is to leave the UK after campaigners failed to raise the funds to prevent its departure.

Northampton Borough Councils decision to put the 4,500-year-old statue up for auction caused outrage two years ago and subsequently saw the museum stripped of its Arts Council England accreditation.

It was sold at Christies in July 2014 to an anonymous buyer for 15.8m and the Government put a temporary export ban on it in the hope a domestic buyer would match the sum to keep the treasured object in the UK.

Recommended Read more British museums warned not to sell the family silver

A spokeswoman for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport said this week: "After a year under export deferral, no buyer has come forward to purchase the Sekhemka statue. As such, an export licence will now be issued to the owner."

Campaigners from the Save Sekhemka Action Group said the work will almost certainly disappear from public view, possibly forever.

Nasser Kamel, the Egyptian ambassador in London, had proposed a plan to find a buyer in Egypt and then to display the artefact for half the year there and for the other half in Britain.

The council put the statue up for sale to fund an extension to the museum, and the proceeds were also split with Lord Northampton.

The statue, taken from the tomb of Sekhemka, the pharaohs inspector of scribes in Saqqara, had been donated to the museum in 1880 by the son of the second Marquis of Northampton who had brought it from Egypt.

As well as campaigners, the Museums Association and the International Council of Museums Committee for Egyptology called on the council to halt the sale in 2014. After the auction, the Arts Council withdrew its accreditation until 2019, which means it is not eligible for a string of public grants.

Bestselling graphic novelist Alan Moore, who wrote Watchmen and lives in Northampton, said the sale was catastrophic and had bought shame on the town.
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David Camerons father was allegedly involved in hiring what has been called a small army of Bahamas residents  including a part-time bishop  to sign paperwork for an offshore fund in what may have been an effort to avoid paying UK tax.

Read more of The Independent's Panama Papers coverage

Papers leaked from the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca are said to suggest Ian Cameron was part of the scheme as a director of Blairmore Holdings Inc.

The investment fund was reportedly run from the Caribbean but named after Cameron familys ancestral home in Aberdeenshire.

The fund, created in the early 1980s with the help of the prime ministers late father, is believed to still exist today.

The Guardian, one of the 109 international media organisations given access to the massive tranche of data from Mossack Fonseca, has claimed that in 30 years Blairmore has never paid a penny of tax in the UK on its profits.

 What are The Panama Papers?

Blairmores 2006 investment prospectus also stated: "The directors intend that the affairs of the fund should be managed and conducted so that it does not become resident in the UK for UK taxation purposes. Accordingly... the fund will not be subject to UK corporation tax or income tax on its profits."

Asked to confirm whether David Camerons family still had any money invested in Blairmore Holdings Inc, the Prime Ministers spokesperson said today it was a private matter.

HMRC has told The Independent it could not confirm whether or not the affairs of Blairmore Holdings would be investigated.

However, Jennie Granger HMRCs director-general of enforcement and compliance has said that tax inspectors have asked the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists to share the leaked data with HMRC, and pledged to closely examine this data.

This means there is a possibility that Blairmore Holdings tax affairs could come under scrutiny.

World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Show all 15 1 /15 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Petro Poroshenko President of Ukraine World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Ayad Allawi Allawi Iraqs Vice-President between 2014 and 2015, and the countrys interim prime minister from 2004 to 2005 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Salman bin Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al Saud King of Saudi Arabia World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan President of the United Arab Emirates, Emir of Abu Dhabi World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson Prime Minister of Iceland World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sergey Roldugin Close friend of Vladimir Putin World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Emir of Qatar 1995-2013 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Li Xiaolin Daughter of Li Peng, the former Premier of China (The current vice-president of state-owned power company China Datang Gorporation and former CEO of China Power International Development, she has been nicknamed Chinas Power Queen World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Rami Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hafez Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Clive Khulubuse Zuma Nephew of Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Maryam Nawaz Sharif Safdar Daughter of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hasan Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hussain Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Alaa Mubarak The eldest son of ousted former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Read more here

Blairmore, incorporated in Panama but based in the Bahamas, appears to have been a longstanding customer of Mossack Fonseca, the law firm from whom 11.5 million documents have been leaked, referring to work stretching back nearly 40 years.

The leaked documents suggest Blairmore used up to 50 Bahamas residents a year.

They were allegedly used to sign paperwork and fill roles such as treasurer and secretary. Among them, according to the leaked documents, was the late Solomon Humes, a lay bishop with the non-denominational Church of God of Prophecy, who acted in various roles including vice-president over a number of years from the mid-1990s.

There is no suggestion that retaining Bahamas residents in this way was illegal. Other offshore funds also made similar arrangements. Clients of Blairmore may also have been using the fund simply to preserve their privacy.

Ian Cameron was one of five UK-based directors of Blairmore until shortly before his death in 2010. Six other directors from Switzerland and the Bahamas was recruited, meaning a majority of the board was foreign-based and the fund therefore had offshore status.

Board meetings were often held in the five-star Hotel Beau-Rivage in Geneva.

The Panama Papers suggest Blairmores European-based directors regularly flew to the Caribbean. There is said to be little reference to their Bahamas-based counterparts flying to meetings in Europe, which may raise questions about how involved in the funds decision making the Caribbean board members really were.

The leaked documents also suggest that until 2006 Blairmore was run using a financial instrument known as bearer shares. This was once a common arrangement in offshore funds. Like banknotes, bearer shares do not carry the name of the owner and are deemed to belong to whoever is holding (bearing) the certificate.

Bearer shares are entirely legal and there is no suggestion Blairmore ever used them for anything illegal. Bearer shares have, however, been abolished in some countries because they have allegedly been used by organised criminal gangs.

The Guardian reported that Blairmores bearer shares were kept securely locked and, according to the leaked documents, Ian Cameron had to count piles of the certificates to check none had been lost or stolen.

Minutes from 2001 also show Blairmores directors discussing the importance of monitoring news about Panama to ensure that the jurisdiction is in keeping with the companys pristine reputation.

In 2006 Blairmore switched to using traditional shares, where owners are named in a register.

In 2015 David Camerons government banned bearer shares in the UK.

The Prime Minister has also called for an international crackdown on aggressive tax avoidance and evasion.

After viewing the leaked documents, Richard Brooks, a Private Eye journalist and former HMRC tax inspector, told the Guardian: If HMRC had seen the papers they would have had some very serious questions. The clear intention for Blairmore was to avoid becoming UK tax resident and the test for this, even in 2006, is the location of the central management and control.

This means where the key business decisions are taken. The evidence here suggests in this period they werent taken outside the UK, in which case it is hard to see how the company was not managed and controlled, and therefore tax resident, in the UK at the time.

Clients of Blaimore are thought to have included Isidore Kerman, an adviser to Robert Maxwell who once owned the West End restaurants Scotts and J Sheekey, and Leopold Joseph, a private bank used by the Rolling Stones. There is no suggestion that these clients signed up to the fund to avoid tax in any way.

The Prime Ministers spokesperson said today he had responded to the allegations about his fathers tax affairs in the past. In 2012 Downing Street responded to revelations about Blairmore Holdings by declining to comment on a private matter.
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The British monarchy could be on its "last legs" by 2030, a historian has suggested.

Dr Anna Whitelock, a reader in early modern history at Royal Holloway in London, said support for the monarchy was linked to the Queen and not the institution itself.

Important questions about the relevance of the monarchy in modern society have been constrained out of respect for Elizabeth II's long reign, she said.

"All of those questions about 'What the hell do we want this kind of unelected family (for)? What does that represent in Britain today?', all these profound questions have been held in check because of the Queen," she said.

The author, who is also the director of The London Centre for Public History, suggested that once the Queen is likely no longer on the throne in the next two decades, the British monarchy could be challenged in a way that it never has been before.

Her comments come as Britain's monarch prepares to mark her 90th birthday.

Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Show all 62 1 /62 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II on a walk-about in Portsmouth during her Silver Jubilee tour of Great Britain, 1977 PA Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II The future Britain's Queen Elizabeth II (R) pictured with her younger sister Princess Margaret (L) in 1933 AFP/Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II The 9-year-old Elizabeth attends an aristocratic wedding with her mother and younger sister. Later in that year with the death of her Grandfather and the Abdication of her Uncle Edward VIII she became first in line to the throne, 1936 Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II The coronation of King George VI in 1937, Elizabeth aged 10 became the heir apparent to the throne Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Elizabeth and her sister arrive at Waterloo station to say goodbye to their parents as they leave to tour Canada. Elizabeth was thought too young to escort her parents on the tour and was described as "tearful" as they departed. She and her parents made the first ever transatlantic telephone call during their time away, 1939 Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II The 13-year-old Elizabeth and her sister Margret address children who have been evacuated from the cities on BBC's 'The Chilrens Hour' She said "We are trying to do all we can to help our gallant sailors, soldiers and airmen, and we are trying, too, to bear our share of the danger and sadness of war. We know, every one of us, that in the end all will be well", 1940 Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Just before the end of the war Elizabeth took part in training to become an ATS officer. She is pictured learning to change a tire, 1945 AFP/Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II The official announcement of Princess Elizabeth and Phillip Mountbatten's engagement. The pairing was incredibly controversial as Prince Phillip had no financial standing and he was foreign born, the prince of Denmark and Greece (though he served Britain in the war and was given British Citizenship), 1947 Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II (in coach) and her husband Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh are cheered by the crowd after their wedding ceremony, on 20 November 1947, on their road to Buckingham Palace, London Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Elizabeth smiles at her first child, a month old Prince Charles. Charles was born on 14 November 1948 Corbis Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II The couples second child Princess Anne was born in 1950 Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Arriving back in England upon hearing the death of her father King George VI. The Kings health had been in decline for a number of years and Elizabeth had been filling in for him on an official visit to Australia by way of Kenya. As his heir Elizabeth became Queen aged 26 Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth's coronation took place on 2 June 1953. It was the first ever coronation to be aired live on television, being one of the most watched events in history with millions gathering around their TV sets to see the new monarch Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II standing next to her daughter Princess Anne, 1960 Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II President Eisenhower (centre) with the British Royal family (L-R) Prince Philip, Princess Anne, HM Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles and Captain John Eisenhower, at Balmoral Castle, Scotland, 1959 Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II as she turns to smile and talk to an unidentified officer, during the Trooping of the Colour by the First Battalion of the Jamaica Regiment at Up-Park Camp, Kingston, Jamaica, 1966 Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II walking cross country at the North of Scotland Gun Dog Association Open Stake Retreiver Trials in the grounds of Balmoral Castle in 1967 Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II during her visit to the Chelsea Flower Show in London, a regular fixture in the royal calendar, 1971 PA Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh during their traditional summer break at Balmoral Castle. The highland retreat is one of the Queen's favourite places, each year, she heads off to Scotland for the summer. "It is rather nice to hibernate for a bit when one leads such a moveable life," she once said, 1976 Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II during a walkabout in Muscat while visiting Oman, 1979 PA Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II with some of her corgis walking the Cross Country course during the second day of the Windsor Horse Trials. The monarch is responsible for introducing a new breed of dog known as the "dorgi" when her corgi Tiny was mated with a dachshund "sausage dog" called Pipkin which belonged to Princess Margaret, 1980 PA Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II (L-R) the Queen Mother, Queen Elizabeth II, Prince William, Prince Harry and the Prince and Princess of Wales after the christening ceremony of Prince Harry, 1984 PA Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II taking the salute of the Household Guards regiments during the Trooping of the Colour ceremony in London, 1985 PA Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Diana, Princess of Wales and Queen Elizabeth II as they smile to well-wishers outside Clarence House in London, 1987 AP Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II, with Chief Instructor, Small Arms Corp LT Col George Harvey, firing the last shot on a standard SA 80 rifle when she attended the centenary of the Army Rifle Association at Bisley, 1993 PA Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II South Africa's President Nelson Mandela greets Queen Elizabeth II as she steps from the royal yacht Britannia in Cape Town at the 1995's official start of the her first visit to the country since 1947 PA Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II smiles as she visits Bowring Park in St. John's, Newfoundland, on the third day of a 10-day official visit to Canada, 1997 Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh make their way into St. George's Chapel at Windsor for the annual Garter ceremony, 1999 AFP/Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II and Pope John Paul II as they meet at the Vatican, 2000 AP Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II and the Queen Mother leaving church by horse drawn carriage on the Sandringham Estate, Norfolk, 2000 PA Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth rides her horse in the grounds of Windsor Castle, 2002 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth arrives for the world premiere of James Bond movie "Casino Royale" at the Odeon cinema in Leicester Square in London, 2006 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth boards a scheduled train at Kings Cross station in London, 2009 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II planting a tree at Newmarket Animal Health Trust, during a royal visit which marked her 50th year as the charity's patron, 2009 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II talking with Pope Benedict XVI during an audience in the Morning Drawing Room at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh during a four day visit by the Pope to the UK, 2010 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II visiting the Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, 2010 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II receives flowers from the crowd during her visit to Federation Square in downtown Melbourne, 2011 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth watches a preview of her Christmas message wearing a pair of 3D glasses, studded with Swarovski crystals in the form of a "Q", at Buckingham Palace in central London, 2012 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Members of Britain's royal family (front L to R) Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles cheer as competitors participate in a sack race at the Braemar Gathering in Braemar, Scotland, 2012 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Britain's Prince Charles kisses the hand of his mother Queen Elizabeth at the end of her Diamond Jubilee concert in front of Buckingham Palace in London, 2012 Reuters Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge laughs as Queen Elizabeth gestures during a visit to Vernon Park in Nottingham, 2012 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip attend a service for the Order of the British Empire at St Paul's Cathedral in London, 2012 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II meets young people during an official visit to The Shard building in central London, 2013 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Actress Angelina Jolie is presented with the Insignia of an Honorary Dame Grand Cross of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George by Queen Elizabeth II in the 1844 Room at Buckingham Palace, London, 2014 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh visit the Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red evolving art installation at the Tower of London, 2014 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh at the State Opening of Parliament, 2015 AFP/Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II (L-R) Britain's Princess Anne, Princess Royal, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge holding his son Prince George of Cambridge, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Harry (back), Prince Andrew, Duke of York (back), James, Viscount Severn (front), Princess Beatrice of York (back), Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and Princess Eugenie of York (back) stand on the balcony of Buckingham Palace waiting to view the fly-past during the Queen's Birthday Parade, 'Trooping the Colour,' in London, 2015 Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II The Trooping of the Colour is an annual celebration marking the Queen's birthday, 2015 Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Britain's Queen Elizabeth II stands with Kate the Duchess of Cambridge whilst pushing Princess Charlotte in a pram as they leave after attending the Christening of Britain's Princess Charlotte at St. Mary Magdalene Church in Sandringham, 2015 AP Photo/Matt Dunham, Pool Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II arrives at the Broadway Theatre in Barking, 2015 Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II greets wellwishers during a 'walkabout' on her 90th birthday in Windsor in 2016 AFP via Getty Images Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Members of the Royal Family during trooping of the colour in 2017 AFP via Getty Images Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II The Queen waves at Prince Harry and Meghan after their wedding in 2018 POOL/AFP via Getty Images Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex gesture during their visit to the Storyhouse in Chester, Cheshire in 2018 AFP via Getty Images Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Prince Charles reacts as he sits with his mother Britain's Queen Elizabeth II during an event to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings, in Portsmouth in 2019 AFP via Getty Images Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are joined by her mother, Doria Ragland, as they show their new son, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, to the Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh at Windsor Castle Chris Allerton/Sussex Royal/PA Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II reacts as she visits the Haig Housing Trust in Morden in 2019 POOL/AFP via Getty Images Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II takes her seat on the The Sovereign's Throne in the House of Lords next to Prince Charles, before reading the Queen's Speech during the State Opening of Parliament in 2019 POOL/AFP via Getty Images Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II looks at the coffin of Britain's Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh during his funeral service at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle POOL/AFP via Getty Images Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II and Britain's Prince Charles, Prince of Wales pose alongside the tree which they planted to mark the start of the official planting season for the Queen's Green Canopy (QGC) at the Balmoral Cricket Pavilion, Balmoral Estate in Scotland POOL/AFP via Getty Images Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Britain's Queen Elizabeth II cuts a cake to celebrate the start of the Platinum Jubilee during a reception in the Ballroom of Sandringham House, the Queen's Norfolk residence on February 5, 2022. - Queen Elizabeth II on Sunday will became the first British monarch to reign for seven decades, in a bittersweet landmark as she also marked the 70th anniversary of her father's death AFP/Getty Queen Elizabeth II: Life in pictures Queen Elizabeth II Queen Elizabeth II arrives in Westminster Abbey accompanied by Prince Andrew, Duke of York for the Service Of Thanksgiving For The Duke Of Edinburgh on March 29, 2022 in London Getty

"I think there'll be a discussion and a debate in a way that there hasn't before," she said.

"As the older generation who are generally more wedded to the monarchy die out, the question of the future of the monarchy will become even more pressing, and then potentially more critical voices will come to the fore," said Dr Whitelock.

"I would say by 2030 there will be definite louder clamours for the eradication of the monarchy. I can't say that there won't be a monarchy. I would definitely say that the monarchy - its purpose, what it's about, will be questioned and challenged in a way that it hasn't been before.

 Queen Elizabeth II: Britains longest-reigning monarch

"I don't think it's out of the question that the monarchy would be potentially be on its last legs."

Support for the monarchy during the last quarter of a century of the Queen's reign peaked during the Diamond Jubilee year of 2012 with 80 per cent being in favour of Britain remaining a monarchy.

It dipped to 65 per cent at the time of the Prince of Wales's wedding to the Duchess of Cornwall in 2005 and to 69 per cent in 1993 - the year after the Queen's "annus horribilis".

Queen's properties from throughout her reign Show all 7 1 /7 Queen's properties from throughout her reign Queen's properties from throughout her reign 1. Buckingham Palace Getty Queen's properties from throughout her reign 2. Windsor Castle Getty Queen's properties from throughout her reign 3. Sandringham Palace Corbis Queen's properties from throughout her reign 4. Balmoral Castle Rex Queen's properties from throughout her reign 5. Palace of Holyroodhouse Getty Queen's properties from throughout her reign 6. Hillsborough Castle Rex Queen's properties from throughout her reign 7. Delnadamph Lodge Creative Commons

But throughout the remaining years support averaged at 73 per cent, an analysis of Ipsos MORI research showed.

In 2012, 90 per cent of the British public were also said to be satisfied with the way the Queen was doing her job as monarch, while in the wake of Diana, Princess of Wales's death, this fell to 66 per cent.

Dr Whitelock said the Queen had commanded respect for the duty she has shown during her reign so far.

"Whether you are a monarchist or not, and even fervent republicans, I think, no one is saying whilst the Queen is alive the monarchy should be abolished," the historian said.

"Everybody, given her constancy and given her selflessness, thinks she's a pretty amazing woman, regardless of where you stand on the monarchy debate.

"After that, I think it's going to be a free-for-all."

Dr Whitelock admitted the future prospects of "The Firm" were difficult to predict, saying: "At the moment there is pretty great support for the Queen and the monarchy, but the problem is that is about the Queen and not about the monarchy."

Buckingham Palace declined to comment.

Press Association
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Britain could bask in the hottest day of the year as temperatures soar to up to 19C.

Forecasters have predicted that parts of the UK could be hotter than Barcelona and Ibiza on Sunday as warm air and sunshine sweep north from the continent.

It marks a welcome turnaround from the turbulent weather Storm Katie brought over Easter weekend.

Temperatures peaked at 15.8C (60.4F) in Holbeach, Lincolnshire, on Saturday, and are expected to rise to between 18C (64.4F) or 19C (66.2F) in the South East.

Recommended Read more Britain to be hotter than Spain as temperatures hit 18 degrees

But those hoping to dust off the barbecues could end up with soggy sausages, as forecasters predicted showers, particularly in northern and eastern England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Sophie Yeomans, from the Met Office, said average temperatures for early April were normally around 11C (51.8F) or 12C (53.6F), while this year's highest recorded temperature was 18.7C (65.6F) in Braemar, Aberdeenshire, in March.

"If we reach 19C that would make it the hottest day of the year," she said.

"But it's a bit of a mixed bag - in Scotland and Northern Ireland and further north, there is some rain around for most of the day. In Scotland and in the North, it will be fairly chilly and highs will only reach 11C.

"Further south, in England and Wales, it's mainly going to be sunny spells and patchy cloud. Western areas might just see some showers in the evening that will be quite heavy.

"The best of the weather is going to be in the South East."

The warmer climate is due to tropical continental air being brought into the UK through a change in wind direction.

But it will not last, with the Met Office warning that early next week will become "fairly unsettled" with heavy showers. Temperatures could still reach 17C (62.6F) in places.

Bookmakers were predicting the hottest day of the year this weekend, but seem sceptical that this April will be the hottest on record, only offering odds of 100/1.

PA
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David Camerons father, senior Tory peers and former Conservative MPs are among the hundreds of individuals named in an unprecedented leak of confidential documents showing how the worlds richest people shield their wealth offshore.

Though he is not named in the reports himself, the British Prime Minister is linked to the so-called Panama Papers by his late father Ian Cameron, who died in 2010.

According to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which coordinated the research into the 11 million secret files handed over by an anonymous source, Mr Cameron used Mossack Fonsecas services to shield his investment fund, Blairmore Holdings Inc.

A 2006 prospectus for Blairmore Holdings Inc described Mr Cameron, a stockbroker and multi-millionaire, as instrumental in [its] formation.

It said the fund should be managed and conducted so that it does not become resident in the United Kingdom for UK taxation purposes.

The ICIJ said there was no suggestion that the individuals named in the Panama Papers had done anything illegal. David Cameron did not respond to a request for comment when approached by the Guardian.

 What are The Panama Papers?

The long-serving former MP Michael Mates, who was Northern Ireland minister under John Major in 1992/3, was also named as a client. The ICIJ said a company Mr Mates chaired, Haylandale Limited, was created in the Bahamas and registered with Mossack Fonseca.

And the Baroness and life peer Pamela Sharples was named as a shareholder and one-time director of Nunswell Investments Limited, a Bahamas-based company she used to make investments.

In response, the law firm which handled Sharples affairs, reportedly in conjunction with Mossack Fonseca, said she became a director of Nunswell in 2000 and that the company was registered in the UK at that point.

World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Show all 15 1 /15 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Petro Poroshenko President of Ukraine World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Ayad Allawi Allawi Iraqs Vice-President between 2014 and 2015, and the countrys interim prime minister from 2004 to 2005 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Salman bin Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al Saud King of Saudi Arabia World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan President of the United Arab Emirates, Emir of Abu Dhabi World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson Prime Minister of Iceland World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sergey Roldugin Close friend of Vladimir Putin World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Emir of Qatar 1995-2013 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Li Xiaolin Daughter of Li Peng, the former Premier of China (The current vice-president of state-owned power company China Datang Gorporation and former CEO of China Power International Development, she has been nicknamed Chinas Power Queen World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Rami Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hafez Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Clive Khulubuse Zuma Nephew of Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Maryam Nawaz Sharif Safdar Daughter of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hasan Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hussain Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Alaa Mubarak The eldest son of ousted former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Read more here

Mr Mates said he was asked to chair Haylandale Limited by a friend and that his shares were not of any real value.

David Cameron is due to host a major summit to discuss the issue of offshore tax havens in May. More than half of the 300,000 firms listed as Mossack Fonseca clients were registered in British-administered tax havens.

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell told the Mirror: The Panama papers revelations are extremely serious. Cameron promised and has failed to end tax secrecy and crack down on morally unacceptable offshore schemes, real action is now needed.
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David Cameron is facing calls for urgent action against tax havens in UK overseas territories and Crown Dependencies, as Britain was revealed to be at the heart of a shadowy global network of companies used by the super-rich to hide their wealth.

Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn will accuse the Prime Minister of only paying lip service to the issue of offshore tax havens in a speech later on Tuesday.

As tax authorities around the world were spurred to action by the release of 11.5m documents leaked from the secretive Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca, revealing how it helped clients dodge taxes and international sanctions, UK campaigners for tax justice reacted with dismay as it emerged that half of the companies exposed were incorporated in the British Virgin Islands.

The UK was also second only to Hong Kong in a list of international jurisdictions where the banks, law firms and other middlemen associated with the Panama Papers operate.

Mr Cameron, who has frequently called for greater transparency to expose offshore tax avoidance and will host an international anti-corruption summit in London next month, faced personal embarrassment as the leaks revealed details of how his late father Ian ran an offshore fund that avoided all tax in the UK.

And Mr Corbyn will say today: "The publication of the Panama Papers this week drives home what more and more people feel - that there is one rule for the rich, and another for everyone else.

"It is time to get tough on tax havens. Britain has a huge responsibility. Many of those tax havens are British Overseas Territories or Crown Dependencies.

As the leaked documents show, tax havens have become honey pots of international corruption, tax avoidance and evasion. They are sucking tax revenues out of our own country and many others fuelling inequality and short-changing our public services and our people."

 What are The Panama Papers?

Six Conservative peers, three ex-MPs and several Tory donors also had links to tax haven networks, the papers show.

In other global repercussions from the expose, which names 12 current or former heads of state and at least 60 individuals linked to current or former world leaders:

Tax authorities in countries around the world, including France, Australia, Holland and Austria and the UK, launched investigations into hundreds of individuals and banks implicated in the documents.

Icelands Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson rejected calls to resign after being accused of hiding millions of dollars in an offshore company in which he did not declare an interest upon entering Parliament.

The Kremlin dismissed claims that a secret network of loans and offshore deals worth $2bn (1.4bn) had enriched members of President Vladimir Putins inner circle as politically-motivated Putinophobia.

In London, the Prime Ministers spokesperson declined to comment on whether Mr Camerons family still had money invested in Blairmore Holdings Inc, the investment fund run by his late father Ian in the Bahamas, calling it a private matter.

Tax officials at the Her Majestys Revenue and Customs said they were waiting to obtain the documentation before making any decision on whether to pursue individuals or other entities named in the leaks from Mossack Fonseca, which has strongly denied any involvement in or knowledge of tax evasion.

World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Show all 15 1 /15 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Petro Poroshenko President of Ukraine World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Ayad Allawi Allawi Iraqs Vice-President between 2014 and 2015, and the countrys interim prime minister from 2004 to 2005 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Salman bin Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al Saud King of Saudi Arabia World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan President of the United Arab Emirates, Emir of Abu Dhabi World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson Prime Minister of Iceland World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sergey Roldugin Close friend of Vladimir Putin World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Emir of Qatar 1995-2013 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Li Xiaolin Daughter of Li Peng, the former Premier of China (The current vice-president of state-owned power company China Datang Gorporation and former CEO of China Power International Development, she has been nicknamed Chinas Power Queen World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Rami Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hafez Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Clive Khulubuse Zuma Nephew of Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Maryam Nawaz Sharif Safdar Daughter of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hasan Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hussain Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Alaa Mubarak The eldest son of ousted former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Read more here

Jennie Granger, an HMRC director-general, said that the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) had been asked to share the data, which was disseminated among 107 media organisations in 78 countries, and has pledged to examine it swiftly and appropriately.

But in further evidence of the UKs centrality to the global networks uncovered in the papers, three British and Channel Island banks  HSBC, Coutts and Rothschild  were named among the 10 banks that most frequently request offshore companies for their clients.

Toby Quantrill, an expert in international tax avoidance at the Christian Aid charity said the leaks exposed to the extent to which UK-based middlemen and UK-administered tax havens are at the very heart of this rotten system.

Oxfam said the UK was in a unique position among the countries of the world to clean up the murky world of tax havens.

Mr Cameron has faced criticism for failing to secure reforms in all but two of the UKs overseas territories and Crown Dependencies, which see would see major beneficiaries of offshore companies named in public registers.

Recommended Read more Panama Papers expose Government hypocrisy on UK tax havens

The Prime Minister wrote to leaders of countries that operate as tax havens as far back as 2014 urging action. He is now facing pressure to take a harder line, and legislate for greater tax transparency in UK territories and dependencies.

Mr Quantrill said Mr Cameron had one month to take action ahead of Mays anti-corruption conference in London.

The Prime Minister has the power to clean up a major chunk of the global financial system and in the light of the Panama papers, he should use it, he said. The UK must take immediate steps to reveal the real owners of business in the territories that we control so the public can know the truth.

Meg Hillier, Labour MP and chair of the influential Public Accounts Committee said that while she would welcome action on UK-administered tax havens, international action was needed.

People wring their hands and say its all too difficult to deal with, but we have an opportunity with the Prime Ministers conference in May, for the UK government to take a lead on tackling all tax havens, she told The Independent. If you just do it for UK territories alone, people will just move to Panama or elsewhere. It wont stop people who want to wilfully hide their money.

Labour MP John Mann, a member of the House of Commons Treasury Committee said that the British Virgin Islands and other jurisdictions should be thrown out of [the] UK if they refused to end what he called tax evasion systems.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation (OECD) condemned Panamas failure to meet international tax transparency standards and said the London anti-corruption could be a critical moment in the fight against tax avoidance.

The Prime Ministers spokesperson said yesterday that the Government was working with UK overseas territories and Crown Dependencies on implementation of public registers of companies beneficiaries.

The government has taken a range of action to tackle tax evasion, avoidance and aggressive tax planningThrough the HMRC we have already been carrying out an intensive investigation of off-shore companies including in Panama. Clearly this data may be able to assist with that. Thats why HMRC asked the ICIJ for the information and they will act on it swiftly.

We have been taking action to crack down on offshore evasion. It was the PM that put this front and centre of our G8 presidency and led global efforts to improve action on tax and transparency," they said.
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David Camerons spokesperson has said his fathers alleged links with offshore accounts revealed in a huge leak are a private matter.

The late Ian Cameron, who died in 2010, was among hundreds of individuals named in the cache of documents dubbed the Panama Papers.

According to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which co-ordinated the research into the 11 million files, he used a Panama-based legal firm to shield an investment fund called Blairmore Holdings Inc.

 What are The Panama Papers?

Asked whether the Prime Ministers family was still holding money in offshore arrangements on Monday, his spokesperson replied: That is a private matter, I am focused on what the Government is doing.

She noted that the elder Mr Camerons investment funds were previously revealed in British media reports in 2012.

Critics reacted angrily to the response on Twitter, arguing that the Prime Ministers position demands transparency on the issue.

It is NOT a private matter for the flipping Prime Minister, one person wrote.

Another accused Downing Street of showing complete contempt for the British public.

World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Show all 15 1 /15 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Petro Poroshenko President of Ukraine World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Ayad Allawi Allawi Iraqs Vice-President between 2014 and 2015, and the countrys interim prime minister from 2004 to 2005 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Salman bin Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al Saud King of Saudi Arabia World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan President of the United Arab Emirates, Emir of Abu Dhabi World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson Prime Minister of Iceland World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sergey Roldugin Close friend of Vladimir Putin World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Emir of Qatar 1995-2013 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Li Xiaolin Daughter of Li Peng, the former Premier of China (The current vice-president of state-owned power company China Datang Gorporation and former CEO of China Power International Development, she has been nicknamed Chinas Power Queen World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Rami Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hafez Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Clive Khulubuse Zuma Nephew of Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Maryam Nawaz Sharif Safdar Daughter of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hasan Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hussain Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Alaa Mubarak The eldest son of ousted former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Read more here

So can we say it's a private matter if HMRC came knocking on our door, wanting to do an audit? a man wondered.

A 2006 prospectus for Blairmore Holdings Inc described Mr Camerons father, a stockbroker and multi-millionaire, as instrumental in [its] formation.

It said the fund should be managed and conducted so that it does not become resident in the United Kingdom for UK taxation purposes.

The ICIJ said there was no suggestion that the individuals named in the Panama Papers had done anything illegal but the leak has triggered investigations around the world.

Additional reporting by Reuters
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Every adult in Britain faces a debt of 4,119 to pay for schools, hospitals, and other infrastructure paid for by controversial financing deals, according to an analysis of the Treasurys latest estimates on future repayments.

Private businesses are owed over 209 billion in the next 35 years  the result of more than 700 private finance initiatives (PFIs) signed by government  in what experts have slammed as a scandal.

PFIs are agreements in which companies fund the construction of buildings and creation of infrastructure, such as roads and IT systems, which are then effectively leased to the public sector in contracts which can run for decades.

The private sector makes a profit out of unitary charges  a combination of loan repayments and fees for services, such as property maintenance.

The past year has seen a record 10.5bn, a sum which equates to 0.5 per cent of Britains Gross Domestic Product, spent on the annual charges.

PFIs were developed by the Conservative Party in the early 1990s but since both Labour and Conservative governments have signed up to the deals.

0.5% of Britains GDP was spent on the annual PFI charges in the past year

To date more than 97bn has already been paid in unitary charges on contracts going back to 1992.

By the time the PFI contracts have all been paid off  in 2049/50  they will have cost 307bn in total, according to new figures released by the Treasury last month. This is more than five times the 57bn the assets are actually worth.

One in five PFI assets will remain in private, rather than public, ownership even after the contracts have ended, according to a Government source.

In a statement, a Treasury spokesperson said: The majority of assets that are PFI-funded will return to the public sector at the end of each contract. Any debt associated with these partnerships during their lifetime is held by the private sector.

4,119 The average debt every adult in Britain faces due to expensive PFI deals

But Conservative MP Chris Philp, a member of the Treasury Select Committee, commented: The PFI debt burden is unacceptably high. I would like these PFI deals unwound as quickly as possible.

And Dr Anne Stafford, senior lecturer in accounting and finance, Alliance Manchester Business School, said: These figures highlight the crippling ongoing annual costs of PFI projects. These will continue to have a devastating impact on our public services, which are already subject to extensive cuts, for many years to come.

While Allyson Pollock, professor of public health research and policy, Queen Mary University London, said: This is a scandal of extraordinary proportions  the public is being fleeced and it is one of the reasons why NHS trusts are almost 2.5bn in deficit.

Yet despite the growing concerns over the burden of keeping up with the annual charges, the past year has seen PFI deals finalised, or nearing completion, for assets worth more than 1.5bn. This means the future debt is set to increase by millions over the coming years.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn cited the legacy of PFI debt when criticising his predecessors Tony Blair and Gordon Brown for their unsustainable handling of the economy, in a speech to the British Chambers of Commerce annual conference last month.

It recently emerged that a school built in 2004, which closed a decade later is costing Liverpool council 12,000 a day due to the terms of a 25-year PFI contract.

And Barts Health NHS Trust in London, which has to pay back more than 7bn in a PFI contract lasting more than 40 years, is expected to be 134.9m in deficit this year.

Frances OGrady, General Secretary of the TUC, said: PFIs are a massive rip off. Schools, hospitals and many other public bodies have been left with crippling debts theyll still be paying back decades from now. At a time when frontline services are buckling under the strain of government cuts, PFIs are siphoning off precious resources.

She added: With the cost of government borrowing at an all-time low, it makes no sense to continue with these disastrous contracts. PFIs are quite simply the worst mortgages in the world.
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Business Secretary Sajid Javid will fly to Mumbai to meet Tata chairman Cyrus Mistry over the sale of most of the UKs steel operations.

Around 15,000 jobs across the country are at risk, with the union responsible for the workers, Community, holding a meeting in London on Monday for staff representing all the affected plants across the UK.

But amid criticism of Mr Javid's response to the crisis, he revealed he would be travelling to India on Tuesday, writing on Twitter: "I will travel to Mumbai later tomorrow to discuss details of the UK #steel sales process with Tata Chairman Cyrus Mistry."

Recommended Read more Sajid Javid urged to reconsider his position after going on holiday

He and Chancellor George Osborne were also due to hold a meeting with Welsh First Minister Carwen Jones in Downing Street on Tuesday morning.

Mr Javid has come under intense scrutiny after he went on a trade mission to Australia on the day the Indian conglomerate announced plans to sell its UK steel plants.

He admitted he had been warned about a possible sale "a few weeks ago" but said on the Andrew Marr show he did not "anticipate they would go that far".

Union leaders have called for his dismissal, claiming he had taken his eye off the ball.

After a visit to the Port Talbot plant on Friday - following a hurried early flight home from Australia - he wrote a letter to MPs blaming the crisis on a perfect storm of market conditions within the steel industry.

He said it was an international problem that required an international response but nationalisation was unlikely to be a viable solution.

It comes after Jeremy Corbyn launched a petition calling on Prime Minister David Cameron to act to protect our steel industry.

The petition has now attracted nearly 150,000 signatures.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 18 September 2022 A man stands among campers on The Mall ahead of the Queens funeral Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2022 Wolverhampton Wanderers Nathan Collins fouls Manchester Citys Jack Grealish leading to a red card. 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The Government has been critcised for failing to stop the increase in the number of cheap Chinese steel imports which have flooded the market in recent years.

Downing Street said Mr Cameron had "raised concerns" about the steel crisis with Chinese Premier Xi Jinping and said the two countries need to work together to tackle the "over-capacity" of steel in the international market.

It comes asfter China announced it planned to impose more tariffs on steel imports from the EU, ranging from 14.5 per cent to 46.3 per cent.

Additional reporting by PA
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A Conservative MP has criticised Jeremy Hunt for misquoting evidence while arguing for the imposition of a new junior doctors contract.

Dr Sarah Wollaston, the chair of the Commons' Health Select Committee, said the health secretary used an "entirely unreasonable" strategy to garner support for an unachievable seven-day NHS.

Writing in the Guardian, Ms Wollaston said, Ministers are undermining their case and inflaming tensions by misquoting evidence, adding Mr Hunt risks an exodus of young medics from the NHS.

Her claim follows repeated accusations that Mr Hunt misrepresented research into death rates among patients admitted over the weekend.

Dr Sarah Wollaston, Conservative Member of Parliament for the constituency of Totnes and chairs the Commons Health Committee (Facebook)

The author of a study into patient deaths cited by the health secretary, and used as part of his justification for imposing the new contract on junior doctors, said his use of figures was inaccurate, after Mr Hunt claimed in July around 6,000 patients a year died because of the level of NHS staffing at weekends.

At PMQs in February, Jeremy Corbyn asked David Cameron whether he agreed Mr Hunt had been misleading when he cited the figure.

Ms Wollaston, who was a GP for 25 years before becoming an MP in 2010, also debunked Mr Hunts claim that more doctors were needed at weekends to improve death rates among patients.

Instead, she claims, the Government should focus on ensuring more senior directors and nurses are available at weekends and better access to diagnostic services is provided.

It is perfectly reasonable for the government to try and tackle the higher mortality at 30 days [after admission] for those admitted to hospital at weekends but entirely unreasonable to blunder on asserting that the new contract is the answer, she said.

In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK 20,000 Junior Doctors marched through central London in protest at the new contract changes the government is trying to impose which they say will be unfair and unsafe In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Junior doctors protest in London In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK 4 year old Cassius takes part in a demonstration in Westminster, in support of junior doctors over changes to NHS contracts, London In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Protest over proposed changes to junior doctors' contracts, Leeds In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Junior doctors and NHS staff protesting against the health service cuts and the proposed contract changes offered by the government outside Parliament In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Junior doctors and NHS staff protesting against the health service cuts and the proposed contract changes offered by the government outside Parliament In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Over 5000 junior doctors rallied in Waterloo place, before marching through Whitehall and onto Parliament Square, in opposition to Jeremy Hunt's new working conditions for doctors In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Demonstrators listen to speeches in Waterloo Place during the 'Let's Save the NHS' rally and protest march by junior doctors In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Junior doctors marched in London to highlight their plight In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK A protester at a demonstration in support of junior doctors in London

In her addition to her attacks on Mr Hunt, Ms Wollaston, whose daughter is a junior doctor, also criticised the British Medical Association for not accepting the governments final offer in February to resolve the dispute.

She also described junior doctors plans for a full strike on 26 and 27 April, during which doctors will not provide emergency surgery for the first time, as disastrous.

The BMA, told the Guardian, Ms Wollaston's claims "show a complete disregard for the views of junior doctors".

The government announced plans to unilaterally impose the new contract on all junior doctors in England in February, after talks with the doctors' union, the British Medical Association, broke down.

The main sticking point of the new contract is changes to pay for working Saturdays and unsociable hours.

Recent criticisms of Mr Hunts imposed contract focus upon an equality analysis which appears to condone the new contract having an indirect adverse impact on women.
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A British policeman serving in South Sudan with the United Nations has saved a woman from an angry mob of 60 people smashing up her car.

Inspector Kelvin Shipp, 55, intervened after the gang started agitating around a female colleague's car when it collided with a motorcycle.

At the time of the incident, Insp Shipp had been serving a year-long deployment with the UN.

He had been driving to to UN House on the outskirts of Juba, the capital of South Sudan when he witnessed the collision and the ensuing anger.

The father-of-three, from Waterlooville in Hampshire, told The News in Portsmouth: I thought I cant leave her here, if they get her out of the car shell get probably quite a beating.

My guess was that theyd rape her and there was a pretty high probability theyd kill her - and it was all over a minor accident.They were banging their fists on the windows, they were on the bonnet."

Thousands on brink of starvation in South Sudan Show all 8 1 /8 Thousands on brink of starvation in South Sudan Thousands on brink of starvation in South Sudan Analysis by the UN estimates that 2.8 million people are currently facing acute food and nutrition insecurity in South Sudans Greater Upper Nile states, including Unity Ashley Hamer Thousands on brink of starvation in South Sudan This young Rooney fan is one of 40,000 people facing a catastrophic famine that the United Nations believe is already happening Ashley Hamer Thousands on brink of starvation in South Sudan Hunger is driving a range of behaviors. Families are running out of options, therefore the skin of cattle is being eaten; undigested food in slaughtered cattles stomachs is being removed and squeezed to create beef-smelling stock; the killing and eating of birds and animals, not usually hunted, is increasing Ashley Hamer Thousands on brink of starvation in South Sudan People living on the so-called highlands of the Sudd swamp travel on thin canoes for days to register for food Ashley Hamer Thousands on brink of starvation in South Sudan The WFP have evidence that children under 10, travelling on their own, walked over 120 miles over days to leave government-control locations for the thin security of Nuer-controlled Nyal Ashley Hamer Thousands on brink of starvation in South Sudan People endure three, four hour waits at five locations where the WFP counted, registered, and then finally distributed life-saving rations Ashley Hamer Thousands on brink of starvation in South Sudan A two-year bloody conflict between mainly Dinka and Nuer groups, allied to warring government and opposition forces, and now spreading into other inter-ethnic struggles, is destroying the countrys once potentially oil-rich future Ashley Hamer Thousands on brink of starvation in South Sudan One UN report says there is overwhelming evidence of a humanitarian emergency in four Unity counties where communities are already using severe coping strategies not been seen since the conflict began Ashley Hamer

A Dutch officer joined him and the pair started to push through the baying crowd before Insp Shipp's Dutch colleague was targeted by six people and forced to run away.

The mob continued to batter the car and smashed the windscreen while the Hampshire policeman dragged and pushed people away.

Insp Shipp said he counted himself lucky to not be targeted throughout the violent confrontation.

He has been awarded a Chief Constable's commendation from Hampshire Police for his actions.

South Sudan is the world's youngest nation, gaining its independence in 2011. It has been devastated by civil war since 2013 with mass hunger and poverty rampant.
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For months, they were kept in tiny thatched huts in the middle of the forest, waiting with dread each evening for their rapists to return. During the almost intolerable violence, the young womens minds drifted to escape or death. The victims were as young as 8.

At the heart of Boko Harams self-proclaimed caliphate in northeastern Nigeria was a savage campaign of rape and sexual slavery that has only recently been uncovered. Thousands of girls and women were held against their will, subject to forced marriages and relentless indoctrination. Those who resisted were often shot.

Now, many of the women are suddenly free  rescued in a series of Nigerian military operations over the past year that dislodged the extremist Islamist group from most of the territory it controlled. But there have been few joyous family reunions for the victims.

Most of the surviving women no longer have homes. Their cities were burned to the ground. The military has quietly deposited them in displacement camps or abandoned buildings, where they are monitored by armed men suspicious of their loyalties. They are still labeled Boko Haram wives.

Few could have imagined such an outcome two years ago, when 276 schoolgirls were kidnapped by Boko Haram and the world responded with the Bring Back Our Girls campaign. While most of those schoolgirls from Chibok are still missing, many people assumed the other kidnapped women would be warmly welcomed back.

The Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, northeast Nigeria, where Boko Haram kidnapped 276 teenagers in the dead of night nearly two years ago (Getty)

Instead, they are shunned.

For seven months, Hamsatu, now 25, and Halima, 15, were among Boko Harams sex slaves, raped almost every day by the same unit of fighters in the remote Sambisa Forest. Now, they live in a narrow, white tent in a displacement camp, with empty cement bags sewn together to create a curtain. The women spoke on the condition that their full names were not used in order to freely describe their experiences.

When Halima leaves the tent to get food for the two of them, the other people living in the camp scowl at her or cautiously move away.

Youre the one who was married to Boko Haram, one older woman spat at her recently.

The rise of Boko Haram Show all 20 1 /20 The rise of Boko Haram The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram The leader of the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram Abubakar Shekau delivers a message. Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for the mass killings in the north-east Nigerian town of Baga in a video where he warned the massacre was just the tip of the iceberg. As many as 2,000 civilians were killed and 3,700 homes and business were destroyed in the 3 January 2015 attack on the town near Nigeria's border with Cameroon AFP The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram People displaced as a result of Boko Haram attacks in the northeast region of Nigeria, are seen near their tents at a faith-based camp for internally displaced people (IDP) in Yola, Adamawa State. Boko Haram says it is building an Islamic state that will revive the glory days of northern Nigeria's medieval Muslim empires, but for those in its territory life is a litany of killings, kidnappings, hunger and economic collapse The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram Nitsch Eberhard Robert, a German citizen abducted and held hostage by suspected Boko Haram militants, is seen as he arrives at the Yaounde Nsimalen International airport after his release in Yaounde, Cameroon on 21 January 2015 The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram Officials of the Nigerian National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) visit victims of a bomb blast in Gombe at the Specialist Hospital in Gombe. According to local reports at least six people were killed and 11 wounded after a bomb blast in a marketplace in Nigeria's northeastern state of Gombe on 16 January 2015. Islamist militant group Boko Haram has been blamed for a string of recent attacks in the North East of Nigeria The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram People gather at the site of a bomb explosion in a area know to be targeted by the militant group Boko Haram in Kano on 28 November 2014 The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram People gather to look at a burnt vehicle following a bomb explosion that rocked the busiest roundabout near the crowded Market in Maiduguri, Borno State on 1 July 2014. A truck exploded in a huge fireball killing at least 15 people in the northeast Nigerian city of Maiduguri, the city repeatedly hit by Boko Haram Islamists The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram President Goodluck Jonathan visits Nigerian Army soldiers fighting Boko Haram Getty Images The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram Displaced people from Baga listen to Goodluck Jonathan after the Boko Haram killings AFP/Getty The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan speaking to troops during a visit to Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State; most of the region has been overrun by Boko Haram AFP/Getty The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram Members of the Nigerian military patrolling in Maiduguri, North East Nigeria, close to the scene of attacks by Boko Haram EPA The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram Boko Harams leader, Abubakar Shekau, appears in a video in which he warns Cameroon it faces the same fate as Nigeria AFP The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram Nana Shettima, the wife of Borno Governor, Kashim Shettima (C) weeps as she speaks with school girls from the government secondary school Chibok that were kidnapped by the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram, and later escaped in Chibok The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram South Africans protest in solidarity against the abduction of hundreds of schoolgirls in Nigeria by the Muslim extremist group Boko Haram and what protesters said was the failure of the Nigerian government and international community to rescue them, during a march to the Nigerian Consulate in Johannesburg The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram Boko Haram militants have seized the town in north-eastern Nigeria that nearly 300 schoolgirls were kidnapped from in April 2014 AFP The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram A soldier stands guard in front of burnt buses after an attack in Abuja. Twin blasts at a bus station packed with morning commuters on the outskirts of Nigeria's capital killed dozens of people, in what appeared to be the latest attack by Boko Haram Islamists, April 2014 The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram The aftermath of the attack, when Boko Haram fighters in trucks painted in military colours killed 51 people in Konduga in February 2014 AFP/Getty Images The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram The leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau (with papers) in a video grab taken in July 2014 AFP/Getty The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram Ruins of burnt out houses in the north-eastern settlement of Baga, pictured after Boko Haram attacks in 2013 AP The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram A Boko Haram attack in Nigeria, 2013 AFP/Getty Images The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram Abubakar Shekau, Boko Harams leader AP

We cant trust any of them, said one guard.

Authorities say there are good reasons for their wariness. Last year, 39 of 89 Boko Haram suicide bombings were carried out by women, according to UNICEF. Twenty-one of those female attackers were under the age of 18, many of them girls apparently abducted from villages and cities and converted into assassins. Since January, female attackers have killed hundreds of people across northeastern Nigeria, in mosques, markets and even displacement camps.

No one knows exactly why some women who were captured and abused became killers. Maybe it was the indoctrination. Maybe it was the militants threats.

Either way, the job of reintegrating the displaced has become vastly more complicated for Nigerian authorities.

And for survivors trying to move on from a horrific chapter of their lives, there is now a new agony.

There is no trust here, said Hamsatu, crouching in her tent and wearing the same pink, flowery dress she had on when she was kidnapped 18 months ago. In her arms, she held the baby of her captor.

I dont know if hes alive

It was September 2014 when Boko Haram fighters took over Hamsatus and Halimas home city of Bama, near the Cameroonian border. Many of the 350,000 residents managed to flee. But the fighters immediately started killing the male civilians who couldnt escape. Some were shot in their homes. Others were beheaded and thrown in mass graves.

With a group of about 25 other women, Hamsatu and Halima say, they were moved by the militants from home to home and then forced to travel on foot and on the backs of motorcycles to the Sambisa Forest, where Boko Haram had set up camps for its sex slaves.

The women were each assigned to a sliver of a hut, barely big enough to lie down. Hamsatu said that days later, one fighter, whose name she never learned, entered the hut and said a prayer in what sounded to her like Arabic.

Now they were married, he told her. She thought of her real husband, who had been missing since the day Boko Haram stormed Bama.

I dont know if hes alive, she said.

From then on, the days were uniformly violent. Different men would come into her hut each evening, in addition to the one who called himself her husband, Hamsatu said. Sometimes they screamed at her for not praying enough. Even the Chibok girls are better Muslims than you, a man yelled at her once.

Sometimes the men said nothing at all, tearing off her headscarf and raping her on the floor of the hut, she recalled. After about two months, she became pregnant.

Publicly, Boko Haram members decry the tyranny of Nigerias federal government, which is mostly Christian in a nation where Muslims, nearly half of the population, have long complained about being marginalized. The militants rail against secular education and demand strict Islamic observance. The group has declared allegiance to the Islamic State.

But to their prisoners, the fighters campaign didnt seem driven by ideology so much as a wild appetite for sex and violence. It would take the rest of the world some time to learn about Boko Harams institutionalized sexual abuse. Rape wasnt just a byproduct of the chaos of war in Nigeria, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon would say in 2015. It was a calculated tactic of terror.

These people have a certain spiritual conviction that any child they father will grow to inherit their ideology, Kashim Shettima, the governor of Borno state  where Bama is located  told reporters last year.

At night, Hamsatu heard helicopters and gunshots. Several times, she attempted to escape, but she was caught and returned by guards. After a while, the pregnancy slowed her and she stopped trying.

When the Nigerian military came, it hardly felt to the women like a rescue operation. Soldiers burned the huts while women were still inside and shot wildly at everyone, they said. Several women were killed or disappeared during the operation, according to accounts from several former captives. Halima is now raising a 3-year-old orphan whose mother vanished during the rescue operation.

The women were loaded in pickup trucks and dumped on a desert road about 50 miles away, they said. Military interrogators arrived.

The women were searched for weapons. After months of being held by one of the worlds deadliest terror groups, the women realized: They were now suspects.

Fearing the liberated

Sambisa woman  thats what they called Hamsatu and Halima when the women arrived at the Dalori displacement camp on the outskirts of the city of Maiduguri in April of last year. It was the name of the forest where they had been enslaved.

Hamsatu and Halima were taken to a tent they shared with two other women and the 3-year-old orphan  all of whom had been liberated from Boko Haram, as the military said. The women who had been forcibly married to fighters were kept apart from other people displaced by the war.

Unlike most of the worlds refugee or displacement camps, which are run by the United Nations and international aid groups, the camps where Boko Harams victims live are administered by the Nigerian military. Outside Dalori, an army captain stands by the front gate. Visitors are patted down. A poster of high-level Boko Haram suspects hangs on the perimeter wall of the camp. Aid workers need military permission to enter the camps.

Some women who lived under Boko Haram are occasionally hauled off to a military base for questioning, and then returned.

The fear is that theyve been converted to Boko Harams ideology, said Mohammed Ali Guja, the chairman of the city of Bama. They are now a different person.

The countrys displaced population has ballooned. As of March, there were 2.6 million internally displaced people, or IDPs, in northeastern Nigeria, according to the International Organization for Migration. Even local relief workers worry that the women they have been sent to help might be concealing loyalties to their Boko Haram abductors.

The simple truth is they pose a serious threat to the general public, said Ann Darman, of the Gender Equality, Peace and Development Center, a Nigerian aid group that often works with the United Nations.

Last year, just as the liberated women were pouring into displacement camps and local communities, there was a surge in female suicide bombers. In June, one killed 20 people at a bus station in Maiduguri. A day later, two bombers killed 30 at a market in the city. In July, two more killed 13 people near a military checkpoint. In October, four girls and a boy targeted a mosque, killing 15. Witnesses said some of the attackers appeared to be no older than 9.

We think they have more or less brainwashed these children, said Maj. Gen. Lucky Irabor, the top Nigerian military official in the northeast. They have become useful tools for Boko Haram.

Amid the attacks, Hamsatu gave birth last June to the child of her rapist in the camps rundown clinic.

Her daughter made her an even greater target of scorn. In many Nigerian communities, people believe that the fathers blood courses through the veins of his child, so that at some point in the future they will be likely to turn against their own community, said Rachel Harvey, UNICEFs head of child protection in Nigeria.

A subtle shunning

One morning in mid-March, the women in the narrow white tent woke up on thin mats, each with one pair of clothes to wear. At 10, Halima walked across the scorching-hot sand to get breakfast: rice and beans donated by Nigerias government aid agency.

At the food-collection point, sometimes people inch away from her, she said, as if it would be dangerous to get too close.

It didnt seem to matter that she had been vetted by the Nigerian military. Or that she actually never wanted children and was now struggling to raise a 3-year-old and blamed Boko Haram each time the girl cried or soiled herself or asked where her real mom was.

Just a few weeks before, three female suicide bombers had blown themselves up in the nearby village of Dalori, part of an attack that killed 86 people, including children. The suspicion of Boko Harams victims only grew. In late March, a Nigerian girl was apprehended with explosives strapped to her body in Cameroon, near the Nigerian border. She set off a brief scandal when she said she was one of the Chibok girls, but Nigerian officials denied her claim.

Some worry that in a part of Nigeria that was once torn apart by a homegrown insurgency, another cleavage is forming, this one in the wake of war.

Subjecting [the victims] to further discrimination and ill treatment due to their status as victims of Boko Haram violence is certain to undermine the entire response to the situation in the northeast, said Martin Ejidike, a prominent human rights adviser to the United Nations in Nigeria.

There are few signs the situation will improve. Many international aid organizations wont work in the north because of the continued insecurity.

The government had opened a deradicalization center to help re-integrate the former victims, but it closed late last year, after admitting only 311 people. Officials at the national security advisers office did not return phone calls seeking an explanation for the closure.

In the camps, some of the women victimized by Boko Haram down bottles of homemade cough syrup to get deliriously high alone.

Once a week, Halima and Hamsatu attend group therapy sessions in a tent that says Safe Place for Women and Girls.

There they are known as the sisters because of how close theyve become. They gather in a circle on the floor with about a dozen other women. The counselor repeats a few lines during each meeting. Hamsatu and Halima wait quietly for them, wishing they were true.

What has gone has gone.

You are safe now.

You are secure now.

Copyright: The Washington Post
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A Brazilian man has been filmed by a security camera fearlessly dodging five bullets as he beat off a pair of would-be robbers.

The Sao Paulo man, who asked not to be identified for fear of a reprisal attack, survived the horrifying ordeal only because the assailant with the gun was a poor marksman and then ran out of ammunition. The victim was shot in the leg and is recovering from his injury.

Film of the daylight raid in the Sao Bernardo do Campo neighbourhood shows the victim parking his motorbike and preparing to enter his house as two men run up to launch their surprise assault. Despite being shot at near point blank range, the man fends off the gun-wielding criminal by throwing his crash helmet at him. Then as the accomplice botches the job of driving his motorbike away by manoeuvring it into the wall, the irate owner leaps on top of him and wrestles his property away.

Later he told a television station: I was so angry I reacted without thinking and was lucky to escape with my life because the criminals were such poor shooters.

Residents inspecting the scene later found that bullets had dented nearby garage doors. They said the robbers must have been watching and waiting for the victim to return from work.

The criminals fled in a silver car parked around the corner after their attack spectacularly failed.
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The message was very clear: not all Mexicans are criminals and Donald Trump needs to acknowledge that.

Construction worker Diego Reyna, a Mexican-Canadian, made a personal appeal to the New York tycoon when he ascended the soon-to-be completed Trump Tower in Vancouver and hung a Mexican flag. He posed for a photograph in front of the banner and posted it on Facebook.

WHY DID I PUT A MEXICAN FLAG ON THE ROOF TOP OF TRUMP TOWER VANCOUVER, he wrote.

Because from the concrete pouring, finishing, drywall, taping, wood forming and general labour, Mexicans were there, building it, doing good work. The comments Trump has made about us did not stop us from doing the high quality work we have always done, in our home country or when we migrate to the US or Canada.

The Vancouver Sun said that Mr Reyna, a steel framer who lives in Port Moody, climbed to the top of the project after first taking the lift to the 20th floor of the building, which is still under construction.

Wearing a hard hat and steel-toed boots, he climbed the stairs the rest of the way to the top of the 63-storey project.

I was a bit hesitant, he told the newspaper.

But then I figured, Oh well, I am willing to face the consequences if I can send a message. My intention was to show Donald Trump that [Mexican workers] work for him, but he also benefits from us.

The flag was subsequently removed, but the photograph Mr Reyna snapped a photo of himself in front of it for Facebook, where it has been shared hundreds of times.

Mr Reyna was born in Chiapas, Mexico, and last year became a Canadian citizen. He does not work on the site of the Trump Tower but said he had several Mexican and Muslim friends who did, and that they had been offended by many of the tycoons comments.

I did this to counter attack all his statements about Mexicans and Muslims. The last straw was when he spoke against women. He cannot be insulting people he is benefitting from, he said.

Since the announced last summer that he was running for the White House, Mr Trump has been outspoken in his condemnation of migrants and suggested that whose crossing the border from Mexico were rapists and murderers. He has said that if he is elected president he will construct a wall along the US-Mexico border and force the Mexican authorities to pay for it.

Holborn Group, the owner of Vancouver Trump building, has said it will not comment on matters related to US politics or about Mr Reynas stunt.
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Millions of confidential documents have been leaked from one of the worlds most secretive law firms, exposing how the rich and powerful have hidden their money.

Dictators and other heads of state have been accused of laundering money, avoiding sanctions and evading tax, according to the unprecedented cache of papers that show the inner workings of the law firm Mossack Fonseca, which is based in Panama.

The documents, dubbed "The Panama Papers", reveal links to 72 current or former heads of state and accuse some of them of having vested interests in their own banks and looting their own countries.

The data shows links to families and associates of some of the most powerful people in the world, including the former president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, the former Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi and the current president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad.

In the UK, several elected officials are involved with the law firm, including Baroness Pamela Sharples and the MP Michael Mates. They provided responses to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and have either denied any financial benefit to the offshore companies or have completely denied the allegations of working with the law firm.

 What are The Panama Papers?

Two close allies of the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, are linked to an alleged money-laundering ring thought to be worth $1billion, run by a bank based in St Petersburg, Bank Rossiya. One of those is the concert cellist Sergei Roldugin, who has known Mr Putin for many years, is godfather to Mr Putins daughter Maria, and introduced him to his now ex-wife Lyudmila. The bank in question has already faced sanctions from the European Union and the US after Russia's invasion of Crimea in 2014.

Whistleblowing controversies of the last decade Show all 12 1 /12 Whistleblowing controversies of the last decade Whistleblowing controversies of the last decade Edward Snowden NSA leak Articles in The Guardian revealed that the US and the UK spied on foreign leaders and diplomats at the 2009 G20 summit. Reuters Whistleblowing controversies of the last decade WikiLeaks' US diplomatic cables leak In 2009, former US soldier Chelsea Manning, downloaded hundreds of thousands of classified US Government documents, and passed them on to Jullian Assange's whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. Among the documents were 250,000 State Department diplomatic cables. One disclosed the close relationship between Russian President Vladimir Putin and then-Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the Guardian reported. Allegations included "lavish gifts", lucrative energy contracts and the use by Berlusconi of a "shadowy" Russian-speaking Italiango-between. Getty Images Whistleblowing controversies of the last decade WikiLeaks' US diplomatic cables leak WikiLeaks' US diplomatic cables leak: In a revelation which bruised the UK's 'special relationship' with the US, WikiLeaks published conversations by US commanders criticising Britain's military operations in Afghanistan. Getty Images Whistleblowing controversies of the last decade WikiLeaks' US diplomatic cables leak WikiLeaks' US diplomatic cables leak: One document disclosed startling levels of corruption in Afghanistan, including an incident involving the then vice-president, Ahmad Zia Massoud, who was reportedly stopped and questioned in Dubai when he flew into the emirate with $52m in cash. Getty Images Whistleblowing controversies of the last decade WikiLeaks' US diplomatic cables leak Another cable documented fears in Washington over Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme, in a volatile country with a strategic position in the Middle East. PA Whistleblowing controversies of the last decade WikiLeaks' US diplomatic cables leak Day four of the gradual drip of leaks exposed allegations that Russia and its intelligence agencies are using mafia bosses to carry out criminal operations, with one cable reporting that the relationship is so close that the country has become a "virtual mafia state". Getty Images Whistleblowing controversies of the last decade Edward Snowden NSA leak In 2013, The Guardian published classified US National Security Agency (NSA) documents, from a then anonymous whistleblower. Four days later he was exposed as former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. A month after the initial leak, the New York Times allegeded that the NSA received emails, video clips, photos, voice and video calls, social networking details, logins and other data held by a range of US internet firms. Whistleblowing controversies of the last decade Edward Snowden NSA leak Since Snowden revealed that the US had eavesdropped on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone, German-US relations have been strained. In May 2014, Mrs Merkel said still had significant differences with the United States over surveillance practices and that it was too soon to return to business as usual," according to the New York Times. Getty Images Whistleblowing controversies of the last decade Edward Snowden NSA leak On 7 June, The Guardian published the Presidential Policy Directive 20, whcih included a list of potential targets for cyber-attacks by the US Government. Rex Features Whistleblowing controversies of the last decade Samy Kamkar iPhone and Android expose In April 2014, hacker and researcher Samy Kamkar revealed that Android phones collect user location data every few seconds. Files are then transited to Google several times an hour. Getty Images Whistleblowing controversies of the last decade Samy Kamkar iPhone and Android expose It is believed Apple and Google are using the data to better target adverts to smartphone users, according to The Guardian. Getty Images Whistleblowing controversies of the last decade Samy Kamkar iPhone and Android expose The two companies have since justified the collection of data. In a letter to the US congress Apple confirmed it collected the data and said that, in order to be useful, "the databases [of tower and network locations] must be updated continuously". A Google spokesman told the Guardian Android phones explicitly asked to collect anonymous location data when users turned them on. Getty Images

The papers were initially leaked via the German newspaperSuddeutsche Zeitung to the ICIJ. Gerard Ryle, director of the ICIJ, who has been analysing the documents along with 107 media outlets across more than 70 countries, told the BBC: I think the leak will prove to be probably the biggest blow the offshore world has ever taken because of the extent of the documents. The leak will be the subject of a Panoramadocumentary tonight. The source of the leak remains unidentified.

Another accusation in the files is that the prime minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, had an undeclared interest in the bailed-out banks in the country, hiding millions of dollars in Icelands banks via an opaque offshore company.

Iceland was one of the few countries following the 2008 financial crisis to jail several of its bankers, who were accused of taking excessive risk which led to the collapse of their economy.

Yet Mr Gunnlaugsson and his wife bought Wintris, an offshore company, in 2007 but did not declare an interest in the company when they entered parliament. The company was used to invest millions of inherited money. He then sold his 50 per cent stake in Wintris to his wife for 70 pence ($1) eight months later.

Mr Gunnlaugsson has faced calls for his resignation but has reportedly said he has done nothing illegal and his wife has not benefitted financially from the arrangement.

Offshore companies are often located in countries such as Panama and are subject to their own tax rules, often functioning as tax loopholes or requiring much lower taxes than in an investors home country.

The law firm documents additionally show how individuals could take out large amounts of cash without revealing who they are to the public. In one case, the firm acted on behalf of a man who pretended to be the owner of $1.8m so that the real owner could take out the money without revealing their identity.

The ICIJ has listed 140 politicians from more than 50 countries who are linked to offshore companies in 21 tax havens, including countries such as Argentina, Georgia, Iraq, Jordan, Qatar and Ukraine.

Mossack Fonseca said it has operated beyond reproach for 40 years and has never been acused or charged with criminal wrong-doing.

If we detect suspicious activity or misconduct, we are quick to report it to the authorities, it said in a statement. Similarly, when authorities approach us with evidence of possible misconduct, we always cooperate fully with them.
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It was not much - a mobile home in a Mississippi trailer park with a monthly rent of $275.

Erica Dunahoo and her husband, National Guardsman Stanley Hoskins, believed they could turn it into a home for them and their two children.

But the couple had reckoned without the attitude of trailer park owner Gene Baker, and apparently that of his neighbours. The husband-and-wife were not welcome, they were reportedly told, because they were an interracial couple.

Me and my husband, not ever in 10 years have we experienced any problem, Ms Dunahoo, who is Hispanic and Native American, told the Clarion-Ledger newspaper. Her husband is African American.

Nobodys given us dirty looks. This is our first time.

Ms Dunahoo, 40, and her 37-year-old husband, Mr Hoskins, got in contact with Mr Baker in February.

We were trying to save money to get our life on track, she said. He was real nice, she said. He invited me to church and gave me a hug. I bragged on him to my family.

She said the next day, the owner telephoned her and said told her: Hey, you didnt tell me you was married to no black man. She said he claimed the couple were shacking.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was supposed to end discrimination on the basis of race. In Mississippi, marriages between white and black Mississippians remained illegal until 1967 when the US Supreme Court overturned the ban.

Mr Baker could not be contacted on Monday. However, the newspaper said that trailer park owner had confirmed that he asked the couple to leave and returned their money. He reportedly said he had acted as he had because the neighbours were giving me such a problem.

Ms Dunahoo, who uses her own name despite being married, complained to the state offices of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP). The organisation has launched an inquiry.

Racial discrimination should be a thing of the past in Mississippi, considering our long history, said Derrick Johnson, president of the Mississippi chapter.

Mr Hoskins has been a member of the National Guard for 13 years and served in Afghanistan.

My husband aint no thug. Hes a good man, said Ms Dunahoo. My husband has served his country for 13 years.
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John le Carres 1996 novel, The Tailor of Panama, tells the story of Harry Pendel, a British tailor who serves the great and good but whose refusal to come clean about his past almost leads to his downfall. In Panama, he believes, discretion is the only way.

For more than four decades, the law firm Mossack Fonseca - whose twisting saga may even have been beyond the imagination of le Carre - has adopted a similar strategy of discretion and survival.

If the documents obtained and analysed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) are to be believed, the firm that has its headquarters not far from those of the fictional Harry Pendel, has had financial dealing with a total of 128 politicians and public officials around the world. The company has denied any wrongdoing.

Jurgen Mossack created Mossack Fonseca in 1977 (Mossack Fonseca)

The ICIJ says the documents provide an insight into the financial affairs of 12 current and former world leaders. (By contrast, Harry Pendel made suits for just three presidents.)

The company was formed in 1977 by Jurgen Mossack and Ramon Fonseca, and specialises in commercial law, trust services, investor advisory and international structures. Its website says it can help reduce costs, incorporate and manage Private Interest Foundations, conduct business in any country and carry out transactions in any chosen currency.

In a boast that may seem ironic given the massive leak of documents, its website says offices are supported by secure, state-of-the-art technology that is upgraded continually.

The ICIJ says that Mr Mossack is a German immigrant whose father sought a new life in Panama for his family after serving in Hitlers Waffen-SS during World War II. The elder Mossack also offered to spy for the US government on former Nazis turned Communist or unconverted Nazis cloaking themselves as Communists, after the war, according to US intelligence files obtained by the ICIJ..

Jurgen Mossack studied at the Santa Maria La Antigua University School of Law in Panama.

Mr Fonseca is an award-winning novelist who has worked in recent years as an adviser to Panamas president, it said.

The consortium said from its base in Panama City, the company has created and established anonymous companies in Panama, the British Virgin Islands and other financial havens.

The law firm has worked closely with big banks and big law firms in places like The Netherlands, Mexico, the United States and Switzerland, helping clients move money or slash their tax bills, the secret records show, the ICIJ said.

An ICIJ analysis of the leaked files found that more than 500 banks, their subsidiaries and branches have worked with Mossack Fonseca since the 1970s to help clients manage offshore companies.
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The massive data leak of millions of documents from a secretive Panama law firm  which exposed the financial dealings of numerous world leaders, celebrities, and criminals  reinforced the Latin American countrys reputation as a money-laundering paradise.

The so-called Panama Papers show how the law firm, Mossack Fonseca, handled the assets of many heads of state who are accused of laundering money, evading tax, and avoiding sanctions, according the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, who obtained the 11m documents.

Mossack Fonseca denied any criminal wrong-doing, saying it has operated beyond reproach for 40 years and always cooperate fully with investigations of criminal activity.

The unprecedented release of these documents will do little to help Panama with its decades-long trouble with money laundering, which dates back to the late 1980s, during dictator Manuel Noriega's reign. Before his ouster in 1989, Mr Noriega was reportedly on the payroll of notorious Medellin cartel lead, Pablo Escobar. The drug trade and money laundering were so rampant in the country that then-Senator John Kerry described Panama as a narco-kleptocracy.

Since the days of Mr Noriegas dictatorship, Panama has worked to enact legislation against money-laundering, but have done little to enforce it. According to a 2014 report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), authorities [had] not conducted any study or assessment of the risks of money laundering or terrorist financing associated with drug trafficking and other related crimes.

Panama has faced scrutiny from the United States and other countries in recent years, since its addition to the Financial Action Task Forces grey list of nations who have done little to stop money laundering.

Panamas lack of regulation when it comes to bearer shares  an equity security that gives ownership to whomever holds the certificate. Bearer shares do not require the disclosure of the owner, helping facilitate lack of transparency that makes laundering attractive to offshore holders.

According to the report from the ICIJ, Mossack Fonseca moved business to Panama following a crackdown on bearer shares by the British Virgin Islands in 2005.
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Ted Cruz is seeking to rally women voters against Donald Trump as the two men prepare for what could be a crucial electoral battle in Wisconsin.

Mr Cruz turned to his wife and mother over the weekend to help push his message that women voters do not like Mr Trump, especially after his recent controversial comments about abortion.

An average of polls collated by Real Clear Politics suggests Mr Cruz has a lead of around seven points ahead of the New York tycoon. It puts Mr Cruz on 40 points, Mr Trump on 33, and Ohio Governor John Kasich on 18.

Trump: I will be so presidential that you wont even recognise me (Getty)

The Texas senator, speaking to supporters on Sunday in Green Bay, Wisconsin, was eager to take a swipe at Mr Trump.

According to Reuters, he said that more and more Republicans were recognising, that nominating Donald Trump would be a train wreck - and thats not fair to train wrecks. And that nominating Donald Trump elects Hillary Clinton. Hillary wins and she wins by double digits.

Mr Trump, who finds himself in the unusual position of having to try and come from behind, claimed that he would surprise those who believe he is set to lose.

Were having unbelievable response in Wisconsin, Mr Trump said, during a visit to a Milwaukee diner.

And it feels very much like New Hampshire to me, where we started off where, you know, Trump wasnt going to win New Hampshire, and then all of a sudden, we win in a landslide.

Wisconsin has become an unexpected battleground for Mr Trump and the coalition of forces desperately aligning against him, with Tuesdays primary emerging as a key moment that could reshape the Republican nominating contest both mathematically and psychologically. For the Republicans, a total of 42 delegates are up for grabs.

On the Democratic side, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is trying to hold on to a slender lead over front-runner Hillary Clinton in the opinion polls in Wisconsin and eke out another victory over the former secretary of state.

An average of polls collated by Real Clear Politics puts Mr Sanders on 47, and Ms Clinton on 45.
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The transmission of the Zika virus, which hit several Latin American nations, appears to have peaked as the number of infections has declined in recent weeks, according to governments in the region and the latest World Health Organisation data.

The slowdown has prompted some countries, including Colombia and El Salvador, significantly to scale back their projections of the impact of the virus. Epidemiologists warn the downward trend appears to be limited to certain countries and should not be interpreted as a sign the epidemic has started to ebb everywhere in the Americas. It still appears to be expanding in Brazil, the epicentre of the virus, they say. Its possible there will be a second wave of infection, said Sylvain Aldighieri, head of epidemiological response at the Pan American Health Organisation. But Zika has not reached its peak yet in Central America and the Caribbean.

Still, the latest figures raise hopes that the virus, which scientists believe is linked to birth defects and the potentially deadly neurological disorder known as Guillain-Barre syndrome, may not produce as many infections as initially feared.

On Friday, US health experts met in Atlanta for a summit convened by the White House to help state and local governments formulate Zika response plans ahead of the summer, the most active season for the insect, which carries the virus.

Aedes aegypti, the mosquito which carries the virus, is found in southern US states along the Gulf Coast.

The Washington Post
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Cash from the infamous 1983 Brinks Mat robbery may allegedly have been laundered through a company set up by the Panamanian law firm at the centre of the Panama Papers leak, it has been claimed.

Documents leaked from Mossack Fonseca reportedly suggest the law firm set up a shell company in Panama in 1985, 16 months after robbers escaped from a Heathrow warehouse with 26 million in gold, diamond, and cash in what was called the crime of the century.

The BBC, which is due to reveal further details of the Panama Papers on Panorama on Monday night, says the shell company, Feberion Inc, was linked to Gordon Parry, a property dealer who in 1992 was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his involvement in laundering Brinks' Mat money.

The BBC claims that an internal Mossack Fonseca memo, written in 1986, shows that the law firm had been warned that Parry might be laundering Brinks Mat money.

The memo was reported to have been written by Jurgen Mossack, one of Mossack Fonsecas founders, following a meeting with someone helping to run Feberion.

Mr Mossack is said to have written: He informed me that the owner of this company apparently is involved in the management of money which represents proceeds from the famous theft from Brinks Mat in London.

"The company itself has not been used illegally, but it could be that the company invested money through bank accounts and properties that was illegitimately sourced.

"They want to resign as directors and suggest that we do the same."

The BBC claims Mr Mossack didnt immediately resign from Feberion.

Ownership of Feberion was through two bearer shares  certificates that do not carry the name of the owner and are deemed to belong to whoever is holding them.

British Police reportedly seized the two Feberion bearer shares, preventing Parry from transferring any funds from the company.

According to the BBC, however, Feberion issued 98 new shares in 1987, allowing Parry to regain control of the company. Parry, one of two 'Midas Men' associated with laundering Brink's Mat proceeds initially escaped arrest in south London by driving off with a detective clinging to his car until thrown off.

He went on the run, but was later captured in Spain. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, (ICIJ), which has analysed the leaked Panama Papers, claims that Mossack Fonseca only ended its business relationship with Feberion in 1995, three years after Parry was jailed.

A Mossack Fonseca spokesman said any allegations the firm helped shield the proceeds of the Brinks-Mat robbery are entirely false. The spokesman said Jurgen Mossack never had any dealings with Parry and was never contacted by police about the case.

Mossack Fonseca told the BBC it has never been charged with criminal wrong-doing.
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Air France has bowed to pressure and will now allow female cabin crew and pilots to opt out of flights to the Iranian capital once the service resumes.

The move comes after several stewardesses said they would defy instructions by company chiefs to wear headscarves once they disembarked in Tehran.

Air France, who defended the obligation over the weekend, insisted the rules were not new and already applied to cabin crew during stop-overs in Saudi Arabia.

The company is set to resume flights three times a week, between Tehran and Paris, following a thaw in relations between the governments of the two countries. The service, which began in 1946, was originally suspended in 2008 after Iran was hit with international sanctions over nuclear ambitions.

Recommended Read more Air France stewardesses defy order to wear headscarves in Iran

Under the new negotiated terms, after talks between airline chiefs and unions, the company will introduce an exception so that employees who dont want to work on the route will be reassigned on other destinations with no penalties.

In a statement released today an Air France spokesperson said: In Iran, the law stipulates that all women present in the country have to wear a headscarf covering their hair in public places. This obligation does not apply during the flight and is respected by all international airlines serving the Republic of Iran.

Tolerance and respect for the cultures and customs in the countries served by the airline are part of the fundamental values of Air France and its staff.

They added: Therefore, to ensure this fundamental principle governing the profession of crew member guarantees the respect of the personal values of each Air France female crew member, when a stewardess or female pilot is assigned to a flight to Tehran, Air France will offer them the possibility to choose not to fly to Tehran and work on a different flight. They will have to inform of their decision to refuse to wear the headscarf in line with a specific procedure beforehand.

Iranian women have been forced by law to cover their hair since the 1979 Islamic revolution. But, in France, the debate on wearing headscarves and other religious symbols in public is a particularly heated, which attaches importance to the separation of state and religious institutions.

Christophe Pillet of the SNPC union, told AFP new agency yesterday: "Every day we have calls from worried female cabin crew who tell us that they do not want to wear the headscarf.

He added that Air France chiefs had sent a memo to staff informing them that female employees would be required to wear trousers during the flight with a loose fitting jacket and a scarf covering their hair on leave the plane.

According to Reuters, a spokeswoman for British Airways, part of International Consolidated Airlines Group, which is planning to restart flights to Iran from Heathrow on July 14, said it would make recommendations to its crew nearer the time.
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More than three-quarters of refugees living in the Calais Jungle say they have experienced police violence, according to a report seen by The Independent.

The findings, collated by the Refugee Rights Data Project (RRDP), provide a damning insight into the continuing humanitarian crisis at the refugee camp in northern France.

Police violence was allegedly experienced by 75.9 per cent of the 870 individuals surveyed, which includes physical violence, verbal abuse, tear gas and sexual violence; 54.1 per cent said they never feel safe; 67.6 per cent said they resort to using blankets or burning rubbish to keep warm; and 76.7 per cent reported suffering from various health issues  largely attributed to the camps unhealthy environment.

Recommended Read more 129 unaccompanied children missing since Calais Jungle demolition

Marta Welander, founder of the RRDP, said in a statement: "Our first-hand data collection study is the first of its kind to reveal a significant selection of facts and figures about one of the biggest refugee camps in Europe.

We hope that this data can help inform the public debate, and guide policy-makers closer to achieving a sustainable, efficient resolution to the current humanitarian crisis unfolding in Calais."

Yvette Cooper, chair of Labour's refugee taskforce, described the revelations as appalling news. Ms Cooper told The Independent: No one should be living in the sorts of conditions Ive seen in the Calais jungle, and it is particularly shameful that over 650 children have been living in the jungle in these conditions, many for months on end.

It is appalling that the French have still not put in place proper child protection measures in place. But British Ministers should be urging action from the French Government, as well as sorting out the broken family reunification system for those with relatives here.

The report, titled "The Long Wait: Filling the data gaps relating to refugees and displaced people in the Calais camp", was conducted by 20 academic researchers in February. Since then, the southern part of the camp has been demolished and 129 unaccompanied children have gone missing.

Police evicted parts of the Calais camp using tear gas

 Calais Jungle evicted by police with tear gas

French police forcibly evicted refugees from the Jungle camp using tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannon at the end of February. A census by Help Refugees UK last week found that since the demolition took place in March, 4,946 refugees are still living there, including 1,400 in the shipping containers set up by the French government.

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) collects statistics about refugee camps around the world, but because the Calais Jungle is considered unofficial, data about it is not collected. The report states the lack of information means people in the camp are incredibly vulnerable  a significant proportion of whom unaccompanied children.

How Calais refugees would describe police treatment of them (Refugee Rights Data Project)

Lliana Bird, co-founder of Help Refugees UK, told The Independent: "It is shocking that vulnerable people escaping terror, conflict and persecution arrive in the safety of Europe only to face further human right's abuses. We are grateful to the Refugee Rights Data Project for shining a much needed light on this issue.

"We remain deeply concerned for the physical and mental wellbeing of the 4946 refugees in Calais, in particular the 294 unaccompanied children, and believe that the French and British governments continued failure to provide residents with clear information regarding their rights only serves to add to their trauma.

Of the surveyed population, 72.6 per cent said the treatment they receive from police was "bad" or worse. Ages spanned from 12 to 65 years old, with the average age of all respondents was 25.5 years, and 14.4 per cent under the age 18. A third of men, women and children had been in the camp for more than six months.
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The Irish Mail on Sunday has apologised for publishing the private comments of a woman who lost five family members in the Buncrana tragedy.

In March, Louise Jamess relatives drowned when their car slid off Buncrana pier and entered Lough Swilly in County Donegal, the Republic of Ireland.

Last weekend the newspaper published an article quoting Ms James. However when she had given the comments to the reporter, she had not given permission for them to be published. And she did not consent to being interviewed.

On Sunday, the newspaper issued a statement in its Corrections & Clarifications section and apologised for the upset caused.

Last Sunday, we published an article quoting from Louise James, who had lost her partner, mother, sister and two sons in the Buncrana tragedy.

We wish to make it clear that Louise understood that she was speaking to our reporter in a purely private capacity and had not consented to being interviewed.

She did not wish to give interviews to any media outlets.

The newspaper added: We are happy to make this clear and apologise to Louise and her family for the upset caused.

 Eyewitness of Buncrana pier deaths

Ms Jamess partner Sean McGrotty and their two sons, 12-year-old Mark and eight-year-old Evan, died in the accident. Her mother Ruth Daniels, 57 and sister Jodie Lee Daniels, 14, also lost their lives.

The four-month-old baby girl of Ms James and Mr McGrotty, Rionaghac-Ann, was saved by a passer-by.

Sergeant Jim Molloy, of Ireland's National Police Service, said: "The incident remains under investigation."
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A member of the hugely popular and self-styled Robin Hood party of Icelandic politics has said she is ready to form a government in the event of a snap election, amid calls for the beleaguered Prime Minister to resign over the leaked Panama Papers.

The Pirate Party, which has gained significant leads in recent polls, appears to be garnering momentum as Icelanders faith in the established parties wears thin.

A recent poll said the political group, which has advocated the loosening of drug regulations and forced through a law legalising blasphemy, is now the islands most popular with over 36 per cent of voters backing it.

Leaked files from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca  that helps clients shield details of their wealth in offshore tax havens  has put immense pressure on Mr Gunnlaugsson and his wife to answer questions about their financial affairs.

In the biggest data leak so far, 11 million documents were passed to the German newspaper Seddeutsche Zeitung, which shared them with 107 media organisations around the world. The leak shows Mr Gunnlaugsson co-owned Wintris Inc. with his wife Anna Sigurlaug Palsdottir.

Court records seen by the BBC show Wintras had investments in the bonds of three major Icelandic banks which collapsed during the 2008 financial crisis. The company is listed as a creditor with millions of dollars in claims in the banks' bankruptcies.

Following the claims, the Prime Minister has faced calls in the Alingi to stand aside. A vote of no confidence, however, is unlikely to pass the house considering the high number of coalition representatives.

Speaking about her partys prospects to The Independent Birgitta Jonsdottir, one of the Pirates three MPs and the current spokesperson, said: In these strange times anything is possible.

She added: Its a really liquid situation. But, of course, if it happens we are ready. We have been asked time and time again since we scored so high in the polls. We are ready.

Ms Jonsdottir said that news of the Prime Ministers financial affairs really felt like the day after the financial collapse in 2008 that decimated Iceland.

She added: Its this same complete lack of trust, the collapse of ethics. I felt sick. Honestly I felt shocked. Then anger.

The protest Pirate Party was founded by a group of activists, poets and hackers in 2012 as an extension of the international movement of the same name. It managed to win three of the 63 seats in Alingi, at the last election in April 2013.

Asta Helgadottir, 25, is the party's youngest MP (Pirate Party Iceland)

Ms Jonsdottir added:I know in my heart this Prime Minister is not going to step down. So the only choice the general public in Iceland have is to stand outside the Parliament house and scream at it  and hope that the people inside will listen.

What would the Pirate Party do differently? First of all I think it is very important before an election it is clear what this government is going to do because you always have to do coalition governments in Iceland. So you have to be clear what the parties working together are going to be doing  that is not negotiated after election. It is a tradition. It has to be clear we cant do everything, well take things one step at a time."

 Iceland's prime minister walks out of interview over tax questions

The Pirate's three MPs are Helgi Hrafn Gunnarsson, Jon or Olafsson and Ms Jonsdottir  though, in keeping with their radical ideals the party, nominally, has no leader. The Pirates website adds: Pirates in parliament divide positions of responsibility among themselves. Therefore the role of party group chairperson will rotate on an annual basis. Birgitta is currently chairperson.

Writing for The Independent in January this year, Ms Jonsdottir outlined her intentions if the party ever took over the reins of power in the Icelandic parliament.

People in Iceland are sick of corruption and nepotism, she wrote. The Icelandic Pirate Party will not be able to solve all of the ingrown problems in Iceland but it will certainly be able to offer new hardware, complete with a new set of rules based on how we operate as a collective community.

We want to be the Robin Hood of governments, transferring the power from those at the top to the general public of Iceland
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While fighting raged between government forces and pro-Moscow rebels in 2014, representatives of Petro Poroshenko were preoccupied hunting around for a utility bill, it has emerged.

The representatives of the Ukrainian president were trying to find the bill to allow Mr Poroshenko to create a holding company, Prime Asset Partners Limited, in the British Virgin Islands.

The revelation is one of many remarkable details to emerge from the Panama Papers, more than 11 million documents reportedly showing how Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca helped a number of current and former world leaders to use offshore tax havens.

The information was sent by an anonymous source to German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung and then, in coordination with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), given to over 100 media organisations.

Although there is no indication that named individuals in the papers have done anything illegal, the head of Ukraines populist Radical party said an impeachment investigation needed to be launched into allegations that the President used an offshore account to avoid tax.

Referring to the company being set up at the peak of violence in Ukraine in 2014, Oleh Lyashko said: It is the height of cynicism to open offshore companies at a time when hundreds of our soldiers are dying.

In a statement, Mr Poroshenko denied any wrongdoing.

The company, Prime Asset Partners, is believed to have been registered on 21 August 2014, according to a share register published by the ICIJ.

At the time, Mr Poroshenkos troops were being killed in the battle against insurgents. Both sides were trying to claim control of Ilovaisk, a small town in the Donetsk region of Donbass.

 What are The Panama Papers?

According to the ICIJ, a Cyprus law firm representing Prime Asset Partners said it was set up as a holding company for the Cyprus and Ukrainian companies of his confectionery manufacturer Roshen.

But when he ran for President earlier in 2014, Mr Poroshenko pledged to his voters that he would sell the business.

The law firm said the company had nothing to do with the political activities of the person who set it up, the ICIJ reported. A memorandum of the sole director shows Mr Poroshenko is the only shareholder.

In a response given to the ICIJ, a spokesperson for Mr Poroshenko said the creation of the company had nothing to do with any political and military events in Ukraine. And financial advisors to the President said Prime Asset Partners had been set up to help him sell Roshen.

Following the information leaked in the Panama Papers, a senior official in the General Prosecutor's office said the documents did not show that Mr Poroshenko had committed a crime.

In a statement published on Facebook, the President said: "I believe I might be the first top office official in Ukraine who treats declaring of assets, paying taxes and conflict of interest issues profoundly and seriously, in full compliance with the Ukrainian and international private law."

"Having become a President, I am not participating in management of my assets, having delegated this responsibility to the respective consulting and law firms. I expect that they will provide all necessary details to the Ukrainian and international media."

World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Show all 15 1 /15 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Petro Poroshenko President of Ukraine World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Ayad Allawi Allawi Iraqs Vice-President between 2014 and 2015, and the countrys interim prime minister from 2004 to 2005 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Salman bin Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al Saud King of Saudi Arabia World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan President of the United Arab Emirates, Emir of Abu Dhabi World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson Prime Minister of Iceland World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sergey Roldugin Close friend of Vladimir Putin World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Emir of Qatar 1995-2013 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Li Xiaolin Daughter of Li Peng, the former Premier of China (The current vice-president of state-owned power company China Datang Gorporation and former CEO of China Power International Development, she has been nicknamed Chinas Power Queen World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Rami Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hafez Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Clive Khulubuse Zuma Nephew of Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Maryam Nawaz Sharif Safdar Daughter of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hasan Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hussain Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Alaa Mubarak The eldest son of ousted former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Read more here

On Monday, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine said it had no power to investigate the President.

In a statement posted on Facebook, according to the Interfax news agency, the bureau said: In accordance with the Ukrainian law on the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Code of Criminal Procedure, Bureau jurisdiction applies to top officials [authorised] to [fulfil] the functions of the state or local self-government, in particular, the president of Ukraine whose powers have ended.
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The Kremlin has blamed Putinophobia for claims that some of the Russian President's closest allies are involved in offshore financial schemes revealed by a huge leak.

Vladimir Putin was not named in the files dubbed the Panama Papers, which contain information on 215,000 offshore entities connected to individuals in more than 200 countries and territories.

According to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which co-ordinated research into the 11 million documents, they reveal covert manoeuvres by banks, companies and associates close to the Russian President as they transferred huge sums of money.

 What are The Panama Papers?

Ahead of the reports publication on Sunday, the Kremlin announced an upcoming information attack and accused journalists of attempting to discredit Mr Putin.

Dmitry Peskov, the Russian Presidents official spokesperson, said he was obviously the main target of the reports, which he claimed aimed to destabilise the country and influence parliamentary elections scheduled for September.

This Putinophobia abroad has reached such a point that it is in fact taboo to say something good about Russia, or about any actions by Russia or any Russian achievements, he added in comments translated by the BBC.

But it's a must to say bad things, a lot of bad things, and when there's nothing to say, it must be concocted. This is evident to us.

Mr Peskov said international media had wrongly focused on Mr Putin instead of other world politicians, even though he was not implicated in any wrongdoing, and suggested the ICIJ had ties to the US government.

Leaked documents show that close allies of Russian President Putin, center, used offshore accounts based in Panama City to hide their money (Alamy)

We expected better quality summaries in the work from the journalistic community, he added. The traditions of quality journalistic research have declined.

Russia's opposition newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, carried a seven-page report on details of Mr Putin's associates named in the leaks but the story was notably absent from state-controlled television.

The documents contain alleged evidence that some of the Russian Presidents closest friends, including cellist Sergei Rodulgin, ran a clandestine network that moved millions of dollars through offshore companies in a series of covert deals.

"I don't consider it possible to go into the details, mainly because there is nothing concrete and nothing new about Putin, and a lack of details, Mr Peskov told reporters.

He confirmed that Mr Rodulgin is a friend of Mr Putin's but said the President has very many friends.

World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Show all 15 1 /15 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Petro Poroshenko President of Ukraine World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Ayad Allawi Allawi Iraqs Vice-President between 2014 and 2015, and the countrys interim prime minister from 2004 to 2005 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Salman bin Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al Saud King of Saudi Arabia World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan President of the United Arab Emirates, Emir of Abu Dhabi World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson Prime Minister of Iceland World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sergey Roldugin Close friend of Vladimir Putin World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Emir of Qatar 1995-2013 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Li Xiaolin Daughter of Li Peng, the former Premier of China (The current vice-president of state-owned power company China Datang Gorporation and former CEO of China Power International Development, she has been nicknamed Chinas Power Queen World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Rami Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hafez Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Clive Khulubuse Zuma Nephew of Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Maryam Nawaz Sharif Safdar Daughter of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hasan Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hussain Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Alaa Mubarak The eldest son of ousted former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Read more here

The Russians were among hundreds of individuals named in more than 11 million files leaked from Mossack Fonseca, a Panama-based law firm.

There is no suggestion that the firm, or any of the banks and clients linked to it, committed or assisted others in any wrongdoing.

But the documents have triggered investigations by tax authorities around the world, as well as controversy for politicians including the Prime Minister of Iceland, who was revealed as the buyer of an offshore company.

HM Revenue and customs said it had asked to view the Panama Papers and would act on any information swiftly and appropriately as the Government continues to crack down on tax evasion.

Additional reporting by agencies
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Poland is considering legislation that would completely ban abortion in the EU member state country.

The proposals  criticised as medieval- would mean abortion would be illegal even in cases of rape or if the foetus has a severe health issue.

Poland currently has some of the strictest abortion laws in Europe but allows terminations where rape or incest is involved or if the child would be born severely ill.

The ban has been promoted by bishops of the Catholic Church and politicians at the highest level have voiced their support for the proposals.

The ruling conservative Law and Justice Party, which has only been in power since October, has close links with the Church.

Recommended Read more Polish constitutional crisis grows as rights watchdog attacks reforms

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Chairman of Law and Justice and seen as its most powerful figure, said he was subject to the teachings of bishops on abortion.

A conservative legal group known as Ordo Iuris - who also want to ban same-sex marriage - drafted the legislation and it was endorsed by the Conference of Polish Episcopacy.

Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, seen by some as a puppet for Mr Kaczynski, also came out in support of completely banning abortion and said many of her partys politicians will too.

A demonstrator holds hangers, symbolizing illegal abortion, as she protests with other demonstrators against a possible tightening of the Poland's abortion law. (JANEK SKARZYNSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

The Law and Justice party controls both sections of the Polish parliament.

Many see the proposals as a returning of favours by the Law and Justice party to the Catholic Church, which has strong influence in Poland, for mobilising support during elections.

However, despite the weighty amount of official support for the proposals, there is strong opposition among many Polish women.

Within days of the announcement, Facebook groups of citizens troubled by the proposals sprung up, one of which now numbers 67,000 members. Many members marched across Poland in protest on Sunday.

I feel shocked and terrified by this, Marta, a 33-year-old woman from Krakow, told The Independent.

I didnt feel that our country could become medieval in the 21st century, but it seems to be happening and that really scares me.

I have close friends who wanted to have a child and were planning to get pregnant but now they decided they wont do it.

Marta believed that the ban would affect the poorest most harshly, as wealthier women could travel to get a safe abortion in other European countries.

She believed that underground abortions would become common.

If youre an uneducated 15-year-old whose mother is a hardcore Catholic what are you going to do? You cant admit it to her, shes not going to help you."

Referencing incidents of abandoned babies, Marta said, If you have no knowledge or resources, what are you going to do? Youre going to do something stupid.

Coat hangers were used during protests to symbolize underground abortions (AP Photo/Alik Keplicz)

There is already a market in Poland, strongly Catholic country, for medication which causes terminations, according to Marta and another woman who wished to remain anonymous. Some is sold as liver medication but taken in large enough doses can terminate a foetus. There are also reportedly blogs dedicated to the subject.

Its going to get much worse than it already is, said Marta.

Marta said she believed that preventing women from getting an abortion, particularly those who have been raped or know their child will be born severely ill or deformed, is especially cruel.

I think its unusual punishment, its basically torturing women, Marta said.

Another woman, who wished to remain anonymous but is aged 31 and lives in Warsaw, also thought the move would be like returning to the Middle Ages.

Poland will be a country whose representatives will be able to sit down and have a cup of tea with the government of El Salvador, she told The Independent.

We will share the same rights on abortion.

She was dismayed at the Catholic Churchs influence over the government.

Abortion is a strictly secular topic and I have no idea why any church should be involved into political discussion on how to change this law."

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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. 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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

Furthermore, she says conservative doctors may not always have the best interests of the pregnant woman at heart.

Conservative doctors tend to hide the truth. If the baby is sick they won't tell women, said the woman.

This sentiment is given credence by the landmark P. and S. vs Poland case, which heard that a 14-year-old girl was refused an abortion by several doctors, despite being legally entitled to one because of her age.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2012 the Polish states treatment of the girl violated the European Convention on Human Rights.

The Law and Justice party came to power in October 2015, and their rule has already proved controversial.

In addition to the abortion plans, they have been accused of causing a constitutional crisis and tightening control over the civil service and media.
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Refugees "will start killing themselves" if faced with the prospect of being forced to return to Turkey, a charity has warned.

The stark words comes as Greece tries to deport hundreds of refugees and migrants after the EU as part of a controversial deal with the Erdogan government last month.

The EU hopes several hundred would be returned on the first day of the new deal.

Sacha Myers, Save the Children's Communications Manager, said: "We are concerned the deal began overnight without any consideration for the proper resourcing of these facilities that are meant to house large groups of people for potentially long periods of time. There are reports of protests and people have told us they will commit suicide if they are sent back to Turkey,

"People are absolutely desperate, she added, speaking from the Greek island of Lesbos.

Save the Children has also expressed concern over the conditions for children locked inside Moria detention centre in Lesbos, where thousands of refugees will wait while their asylum claims are registered under the new deal.

The camp, which was initially designed to host a few hundred people transiting through within a day, now hosts 3,300 people, many of whom have been trapped there for longer than a week.

We have spoken to women and children who are sleeping outside on the cold ground on thin blankets because there is no for them to sleep in the overcrowded accommodation facilities, added Ms Myers.

"There are approximately 150 children travelling alone who are currently locked inside Moria detention centre."

The EU deal was aimed at curbing the uncontrolled mass movement of people into Europe while protecting the vulnerable, but research carried out by Amnesty International suggests Turkish authorities have been rounding up and expelling groups of around 100 men, women and children to war-ravaged Syria on a near-daily basis since mid-January.

Other humanitarian organisations have also called the deportation plans illegal and inhumane while the UN has also expressed concerns over the EU-Turkey deal.

This remains a major concern as it is unclear who in the detention centres will conduct the admissibility interviews, and whether they have the expertise to decide a childs or familys fate," Ms Myers added.

The Greek authorities are overwhelmed and do not have the resources to provide the right protection and services these children desperately need. The existing facilities for children travelling alone are full and the Greek authorities are scrabbling to find alternative accommodation.
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The Spanish Prime Minister has announced moves to cut the working day by two hours and bring an end to the traditional siesta, in an attempt to bring the country into line with its European counterparts.

Mariano Rajoy, the head of the centre-right coalition government, wants to scrap the traditional extended midday break.

Mr Rajoy said: "I will find a consensus to make sure the working day ends at 6pm."

While the siesta is no longer universally observed - its impact on the length of an average working day can still be felt.

The siesta was founded historically on the basis of allowing the country's largely agricultural workers to avoid the searing midday heat, the Times reports.

Despite working longer hours than their German counterparts, statistics from the OECD show Spanish workers' productivity is much lower.

The 10 most prosperous countries in the world Show all 10 1 /10 The 10 most prosperous countries in the world The 10 most prosperous countries in the world 10. Ireland The 10 most prosperous countries in the world 9. Finland The 10 most prosperous countries in the world 8. Netherlands The 10 most prosperous countries in the world 7. Australia The 10 most prosperous countries in the world 6. Canada The 10 most prosperous countries in the world 5. Sweden The 10 most prosperous countries in the world 4. New Zealand The 10 most prosperous countries in the world 3. Denmark The 10 most prosperous countries in the world 2. Switzerland The 10 most prosperous countries in the world 1. Norway 2008 Getty Images

A 2013 Spanish parliamentary commission said: "We need more flexible working hours, to cut our lunch breaks, to streamline business meetings by setting time limits for them, and to practise and demand punctuality."

The report explained cutting the siesta would raise the quality of life, raise the low birth rates and reduce marriage breakdowns.

It is thought Mr Rajoy is backing this popular decision in an attempt to win votes in the upcoming general election in June.

 Sweden's 6 hour work day explained

He is also looking to return Spain back to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) as it is currently one hour ahead of London, the same as eastern European countries such as the Czech Republic.

This odd time arrangement dates back to 1942 when former dictator General Franco showed his support for Hitler's Nazi regime by adopting German Time.
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Abu Firas al-Suri, killed in a drone strike in Syria, was an unusual members of al-Qaedas hierachy. He claimed to have drawn on Marxist dialectics in relation to revolution: a video he helped produce quoted from Arnold Toynbee; he was vocally critical of some aspects of jihad.

But it was his stance taken towards Isis which marked the importance Abu Firas, a senior leader of Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaedas affiliate in Syria. He had remained implacably opposed to the group even as other senior rebel commanders joined in the mission to create the Caliphate.

Some of what is left of the moderate rebels held that Abu Firas was someone they could work with in opposing both the Damascus regime and Isis. If initial reports that he died in a US drone strike prove to be true, it will reinforce conspiracy theories among them that the Americans and the Russians are secretly working in cahoots to keep Bashar al-Assad in power.

A current ceasefire between regime and opposition forces do not apply to Isis and al-Nusra, and the US had targeted al-Nusra and an allied organisation, Khorasan, from the very first days of the air campaign against Isis. There were differing accounts about who killed Abu Firas in Kafr Jalis, in Idlib province. Many claimed it was the Americans; others, however, maintained it was the Russians.

Faisal Abdurrahman Ibrahimi, a fighter with Ahrar al Sham, a rebel group which had received support from Turkey and Saudi Arabia, commented: The Americans are fighting Daesh (Isis). But Abu Firas made al-Nusra fight Isis. So, why kill him? He was also fighting Bashar [al-Assad] of course. Is that the real reason? We also know, of course, that the Russians and Bashars forces are sparing Daesh and killing real revolutionaries. It is part of a pattern.


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Isis has killed at least 10 people in just two days in Syria and displayed their bodies in gory mock crucifixions.

One mans body was hung from a post on a busy roundabout in its de-facto capital of Raqqa, dressed in one of the orange jumpsuits that have become synonymous with the groups execution videos.

Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), an activist group documenting atrocities in the city, said the man was murdered on Saturday on charges of being a spy.

Isis released the names and photos of eight other men who were killed in the town of al-Mansoura, in Raqqa province, saying it had killed them and crucified their bodies on charges of robbery and corruption.

RBSS counted 10 people executed over the weekend, including another man named as, Amen Souror, but other sources put the total as high as 15.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights documented one execution at the Tal Abyad roundabout in Raqqa, which it said was watched by dozens of civilians including children.

The group said there was conflicting information over whether the man, charged with espionage, had been a member of Isis or was arrested separately.

It confirmed news of the al-Mansoura executions, listing accusations of corrupting on earth, and looting of Muslims money and forming a gang that impersonate al-Hisba members, Isis feared religious police force.

Timeline: The emergence of Isis Show all 40 1 /40 Timeline: The emergence of Isis Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2000 Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (pictured here) forms an al-Qaeda splinter group in Iraq, al-Qaeda in Iraq. Its brutality from the beginning alienates Iraqis and many al-Qaeda leaders. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2006 Al-Zarqawi is killed in a U.S. strike. Al-Zarqawis successor, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, announces the creation of the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI). Reuters Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2009 Still al-Qaeda-linked ISI claims responsibility for suicide bombings that killed 155 in Baghdad, as well as attacks in August and October killing 240, as President Obama announces troop withdrawal from Iraq in March. Getty Images Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2010 Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi becomes head of ISI, at lowest ebb of Islamist militancy in Iraq, which sees last U.S. combat brigade depart. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2012 In Syria, protests (pictured here starting in Daree) have morphed into what president Assad labelled a real war with emergence of a coalition of forces opposed to Assads regime. Syria group Jabhat al-Nusra are among rebel groups who refuse to join, denouncing it as a conspiracy. Bombings targeting Shia areas, killing more than 500 people, spark fears of new sectarian conflict. Sunni Muslims stage protests across country against what they see as increasingly marginalisation by Shia-led government. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2013 Al-Baghdadi renames ISI as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or Isis, as the group absorbs Syrian al-Nusra, gaining a foothold in Syria. In response, al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri (Bin Ladens successor) concerned about Isis expansion orders that Isis be dissolved and ISI operations should be confined to Iraq. This order is rejected by al-Baghdadi. AFP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - January Isis fighters capture the Iraqi cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, giving them base to launch slew of attacks further south. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - June Isis declares itself the Caliphate, calling itself Islamic State (IS). The group captures Mosul, Iraqs second largest city; Tal Afar, just 93 miles from Syrian border; and the central Iraqi city of Tikrit. These advances sent shockwaves around the world. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - June Around the same time Isis releases a video calling for western Muslims to join the Caliphate and fight, prompting new evaluations of extremists groups social media understanding. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - June Isis take Baiji oil fields in Iraq - giving them access to huge amounts of possible revenue. EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - August James Foley is executed by the group as concerns grow for second American prisoner, fellow reporter Steven Sotloff. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - August Obama authorises U.S. airstrikes in Iraq, helping to stall Isis along with action by Kurdish forces following the deaths of hundreds of Yazidi people on Mount Sinjar. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Isis release video showing Steven Sotloffs murder prompting Western speculation his executioner is same man who killed Mr Foley. EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Obama tells us that America will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Isis release a video appearing to show David Haines, who was captured by militants in Syria in 2013, wearing an orange jumpsuit and kneeling in the desert while he reads a pre-prepared script. It later shows what appears to be the aid worker's body. Rex Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Peshmerga fighters scrabble to hold positions in the Diyala province (a gateway to Baghdad) as Isis fighters continue to advance on Iraqi capital. AFP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - October Aid worker Alan Henning is killed. Self-imposed media blackout refuses to show images of him in final moments, instead focuses upon humanitarian care. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - October Isis raise their flag in Kobani, which had been strongly defended by Kurdish troops. The victory goes against hopeful western analysis Isis had overextended itself, while alienating much of the Muslim population through the murder of Henning. Victory causes fresh waves of Kurdish refugees arriving in Turkey. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - November American hostage, who embarced values of Islam, Peter Kassig and 14 Syrian soldiers are shown meeting the same fate as other captives. But intelligence agencies will be poring over the apparently significant discrepancies between this and previous films. Seramedig.org.uk Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February Isis has released a video revealing the murder by burning to death of a Jordanian pilot held by the group since the end of December 2014. Reuters Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February Isis militants have released videos which appear to show the beheading of Japanese hostages Haruna Yukawa and Kenji Goto. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February American aid worker, Kayla Mueller was the last American hostage known to be held by Isis. She died, according to her captors, in an airstrike by the Jordanian air force on the city of Raqqa in Syria, though US authorities disputed this. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February Isis militants have posted a gruesome video online in which they force 21 Egyptian Coptic Christian hostages to kneel on a beach in Libya before beheading them. Egypt vowed to avenge the beheading and launched air strikes on Isis positions. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February The British Isis militant suspected of appearing in videos showing the beheading of Western hostages has been named in reports as Mohammed Emwazi from London. Rex Features Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - March Isis triple suicide attack has killed more than 100 worshippers and hundreds of others were injured after the group members targeted two mosques in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - April Iraqi forces have claimed victory over Isis in battle for Tikrit and raised the flag in the city. EPA/STR Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - April Isis has claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan that killed at least 35 people queuing to collect their wages and injured 100 more. EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - April Isis media arm released a 29-minute video purporting to show militants executing Ethiopian Christians captives. The footage bore the extremist groups al-Furqan media logo and showed the destruction of churches and desecration of religious symbols. A masked fighter made a statement threatening Christians who did not convert to Islam or pay a special tax. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Isis has been "incapacitated" by a spinal injuries sustained in a US air strike in Iraq. He is being treated in a hideout by two doctors from Isis stronghold of Mosul who are said to be "strong ideological supporters of the group". Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis has also claimed responsibility for killing 300 of Yazidi captives, including women, children and elderly people in Iraq AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis attack on Prophet Mohamed cartoon contest in Texas was its first action on US soil. Two gunmen were shot and killed after launching the attack at the exhibition. Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi have been named as the attackers at the Curtis Culwell Centre arena in Garland. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isiss deputy leader, Abu Alaa Afri, a former physics teacher who was thought to have taken charge of the deadly terrorist group, has been killed in a US-led coalition airstrike. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May US special forces have killed a senior Isis leader named as Abu Sayyaf in an operation aiming to capture him and his wife in Syria. Getty Images Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Iran-backed militias are sent to Ramadi by the Iraqi government to fight Isis militants who completed their capture of the city. Government soldiers and civilians were reportedly massacred by extremists as they took control and the army fled. Charred bodies were left littering the city streets as troops clung on to trucks speeding away from the city. Ramadi is the latest government stronghold to fall to the so-called Islamic State, despite air strikes by a US-led international coalition aiming to stop its advance in Iraq and Syria. AFP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis rounded up civilians trapped in Palmyra and forced them to watch 20 people being executed in the historic citys ancient amphitheatre. The Unesco World Heritage site was overrun by militants, threatening the future of 2,000 year-old monuments and ruins. Thousands of Palmyras residents fled but many are still living within the city walls, while the UN human rights office in Geneva said it had received reports of Syrian government forces preventing people from leaving until they retreated from the city. Getty Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May A group of Isis-affiliated fighters have captured a key airport in central Libya. The militants took control of the al-Qardabiya airbase in Sirte after a local militia tasked with defending the facility withdrew from their positions. Affiliates of Isis, already control large parts of Sirte, the birthplace of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and a former stronghold of his supporters. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June The US Air Force has destroyed an Isis stronghold after an extremist let slip their location on social media. According the Air Force Times, General Herbert "Hawk" Carlisle, commander of Air Combat Command, said that Airmen at Hulburt Field, Florida, used images shared by jihadists to track the location of their headquarters before destroying it in an airstrike. Reuters Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June Kurdish forces captured a key military base in a significant victory in Raqqa as well as town of Tell Abyad. YPG fighters, backed by US-led airstrikes and other rebels, consolidated their gains, when they seized the key town on the Syria-Turkey border. They are now just 30 miles to the north of Raqqa and have cut off a major supply route deep inside Isis-held territory. Ahmet Silk/Getty Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June Isis has released gruesome footage claiming to show the murder of more than a dozen men by drowning, decapitation and using a rocket-propelled grenade as it seeks to boost morale among its fanatical supporters. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June Isis has begun carrying out its threat to destroy structures in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, blowing up at least two monuments at the Unesco-protected site as Syrian government troops made advances on the Islamists positions. AFP

The killings followed the arrest of 35 members of the so-called Islamic State, which were thought to be in connection with the assassination of senior figure Abu Hija al-Tunisi, who died in an air strike on Wednesday.

This reported crackdown came amid a series of new restrictions by Isis, which appears to be suffering the consequences of efforts by the US-led coalition to choke its revenue streams and infrastructure.

It has also been shaken by one of its biggest military defeats in Palmyra, which has been seized by regime forces, and death of one of its top commanders.

Militants are also reportedly forcing more people to undergo courses in its ideology and jihad, while rationing electricity and temporarily cutting off water supplies as the humanitarian situation in the city deteriorates further.

 Palmyra after Isis

Fighters' salaries were cut according to a decree issued earlier this year and the group is said to have become increasingly reliant on the US dollar after a failed attempt to start its own currency.

Pressure was continuing to mount on the group on Sunday as Isis militants were driven out of the town of al-Qaryatayn by Syrian forces backed by Russian air strikes.

Troops loyal to Bashar al-Assad have been advancing from Palmyra, which they recaptured last Sunday, and are expected to push towards other strongholds including Deir Ezzor and Raqqa.

A fragile cessation of hostilities has held in Syria for over a month but Isis, Jabhat al-Nusra and other designated terrorist groups are not party to the truce.

Additional reporting by Reuters
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A prominent member of the al-Nusra Front, linked to the Syrian Al Qaeda, has been killed in an air strike alongside at least 20 other militants, according to a monitoring group.

Abu Firas al-Suri was allegedly killed in a suspected Syrian or Russian air raid on a village in the rebel held north western province of Idlib, The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The militant died alongside his son and other foreign jihadists in a strike also targeting the militant Jund al Aqasa group in the village of Kafr Jales, according to the monitoring group.

Abu Firas had many followers within the group and was known for giving commentaries on a variety of issues, which were then released by al-Nusra Front.

An Islamist source said Abu Firas was a founding member of al-Nusra Front who fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s and was a senior member of its Shura Council. He is also understood to have worked with Osama bin Laden.

Syrian Observatory for Human Rights chief, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP news agency, Abu Firas was meeting other jihadists at the time of the strike.

A cessation of hostilities has held in Syria for over a month, but excludes Isis and al-Nusra Front.

Attacks by Syrian and allied forces have continued in parts of the country where the groups are said to be present.

Additional reporting by Reuters
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Some of the staunchest allies of the West are among political leaders, past and present, who have been exposed in the leaked documents for being involved in secret offshore business dealings.

Ukraines President Petro Poroshenko, backed by Nato in his countrys conflict against Russian backed separatists; Ayad Allawi, who became the Prime Minister of Iraq after Saddam Hussein was overthrown by American and British forces; former Jordanian Prime Minister Ali Abu al-Ragheb, whose country hosts a large number of Syrian refugees and is a major recipient of international aid; Hosni Mubarak of Egypt; King Salman of Saudi Arabia; the former Prime Minister of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Jaber al-Thani; and the President of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan all appear in the Panama Papers.

Opponents of the West, such as Vladimir Putin, the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and the former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, have also been linked to the network of companies mostly registered in the tax haven of the British Virgin Islands, as are 33 other people and companies blacklisted by the US, such as various Iranian concerns and the Lebanese Shia militia, Hezbollah.

The list of 140 political figures, 12 of them current or former heads of state, in the 11.5 million tax documents, also includes Prime Minister Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson of Iceland, a country only just recovering from economic collapse and the family of Prime Minister Xi Jinping, who has led a highly publicised anti-corruption campaign in China.

President Poroshenko has been promoted by the European Union and the US as an anti-corruption champion in Ukraine, a state notorious for malpractice among politicians and public officials. Western aid,along with weapons, have poured into the country as the government in Kiev presses for fast-tracked entry to the EU and Nato. Two months ago the International Monetary Fund threatened to halt its $ 40bn ( 28bn) bailout programme because the Ukrainian government had failed to tackle widespread corruption.

Mr Poroshenko, while running for the presidency, promised that he would sell his business interests including his multinational confectionery empire, the Roshen Corporation, which had led to his nickname of the Chocolate King. But this is yet to take place two years on.

Oleksandr Klymenko, Ukraines former tax minister claimed, in an interview with The Independent, that Mr Porosehenko, before his election, had attempted to get Mr Klymenko to rescind penalties imposed on Roshen by the tax inspectors. Mr Klymenko is now in exile facing criminal charges brought by the Poroshenko government, he claims, as part of a vendetta. This is denied by the authorities in Kiev.

World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Show all 15 1 /15 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Petro Poroshenko President of Ukraine World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Ayad Allawi Allawi Iraqs Vice-President between 2014 and 2015, and the countrys interim prime minister from 2004 to 2005 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Salman bin Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al Saud King of Saudi Arabia World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan President of the United Arab Emirates, Emir of Abu Dhabi World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson Prime Minister of Iceland World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sergey Roldugin Close friend of Vladimir Putin World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Emir of Qatar 1995-2013 World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Li Xiaolin Daughter of Li Peng, the former Premier of China (The current vice-president of state-owned power company China Datang Gorporation and former CEO of China Power International Development, she has been nicknamed Chinas Power Queen World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Rami Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hafez Makhlouf Cousin of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Clive Khulubuse Zuma Nephew of Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Maryam Nawaz Sharif Safdar Daughter of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hasan Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Hussain Nawaz Sharif Son of Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan World leaders linked to 'Panama Papers' Alaa Mubarak The eldest son of ousted former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Read more here

The documents from the law firm Mossack Fonseca reveal that President Poroshenko set up a hidden offshore company in the British Virgin Islands while Ukrainian forces were engaged in some of the fiercest fighting with separatists in the east of the country. The company, Prime Asset Partners Ltd, was registered on 20 August 2014, the very day more than a thousand Ukrainian soldiers were killed in one of the bloodiest battles of the war, at the city of Ilovaisk. The defence minister, Valeriy Heletey, was forced to resign in the outcry which followed the debacle.

It is the height of cynicism to open offshore companies at a time when hundreds of our soldiers were dying, said Oleh Lyashko, the leader of the Radicals, an opposition party, while a member of the Presidents own coalition, Serhiy Leschenko, added: I think it will have an impact in terms of further erosion of confidence in Poroshenko.

President Poroshenko, however, stated that he had handed over the management of his assets to financial consultants and lawyers. His spokesman said a trust was managed by advisers without any relation to any political and military events in Ukraine.

Ayad Allawi, who became Iraqs Prime Minister in 2004 following the US-led invasion, was the sole shareholder of IMF Holdings, a company registered in Panama where he also had a second company, Moonlight Holdings, registered. Mr Allawis spokesman said any income generated in the United Kingdom from properties owned by the companies have been properly accounted for, and taxes have been paid promptly and in time.

King Salman of Saudi Arabia had an unspecified role in Verse Development Corporation and Inrow Corporation, both set up in the British Virgin Islands. The two companies had taken mortgages worth more than $34m, which was used to buy property in London. The King was also the principal user of a yacht, named after the royal palace in Riyadh and registered in London by the British Virgin Islands company, Crassus Limited.

Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who became UAE President 16 years ago, used the services of Mossack Fonseca to set up 30 companies in the British Virgin Islands that owned and operated commercial and residential properties worth $1.7bn in the UK. Shares were held through a trust, but the beneficiaries were the sheikh and his family.

Former Jordanian Prime Minister, Ali Abu al-Ragheb, owned several companies registered in the British Virgin Islands and Seychelles, which he co-directed with his wife, Yusra.
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The title of the Italian province of Le Marche literally means the borderlands, a neutral region neighbouring more important places. This makes a lot of sense when you consider that Tuscany lies to the north and Umbria to the south. Next to these titans of the tourist trade so beloved of the inglese, and hemmed in by the mountains and the sea on either side, you might call Le Marche something of a poor relation, rarely visited.

There is not much tourism, its more like Italy in the raw. Take the hilltop village of Mogliano: gorgeous views for miles and miles, the slopes around covered in sunflowers; narrow cobbled lanes in the old quarter, tiny piazzas and a street market with traditional specialities such as thick slabs of porchetta, a rolled and spitted roast pork, and ascolana, fried olives stuffed with various meats; and an outstanding vineyard at the bottom of the hill. Poor may be too strong a word, but it beggars belief that more people dont come here.

Yet 30 years ago there wasnt even a restaurant worthy of a name. Everyone thought the best food was what mamma was making at home. There are trattorie these days, of course, but they are still fairly old-school. The workers congregate with their luncheon vouchers and dine in a style quite unfathomable to those who resignedly open Tupperware at their desks.

Urbisaglia, Le Marche (MARKA / Alamy Stock Photo)

But Le Marche and its sleepy citadels are waking up now and realising what delights they have been storing away in their cupboards and larders. Its time to share the sheer variety of experiences, the authenticity, the spirit of adventure in the shadow of the Appenine range and the bargains.

If you base yourself in Mogliano, a quarter of an hour away you will find the hilltop villages of Loro Piceno, renowned for its sausages cooked in vino cotto, a hot wine  you can buy them from Heston Blumenthals crazy master sausage-maker Peppe Cotto, who will serenade you with his trumpet made of pork crackling  and Urbisaglia with its splendid medieval ramparts and the exquisite Locanda le Logge, where they create wonders such as steamed pork carpaccio with soy sauce and ravioli with courgette, pine nuts and saffron  along with a wine list to die for, though not in a paupers grave.

On the way to Urbisaglia is the Abbey of Fiastra, which dates from 1142 and provides a haven of Cistercian tranquillity. There is a park with a nature reserve where you can hire bicycles, while the neighbouring Osteria La Selva hits the mark with the rustic simplicity of its dishes, such as mushrooms with pasta paccheri and chunks of barbecued beef. It has a farriers and a packed farmyard at the back to keep children amused, too.

The caves of Frasassi are absorbing for all the family and well worth a couple of hours driving through the mountains and a succession of small, elegant towns such as San Severino and Matelica. You can cut back by a quicker route, across to Ancona and then down the autostrada which follows the coastline.

Then there is Lake Fiastra, an opal blue stretch of water high in the mountains among the winter ski resorts, with two different, breathtaking hairpin drives there and back. You can picnic on the banks of the lake at San Lorenzo al Lago, or if you want another sumptuous feast  and why not, when in Italy?  keep going up to the agriturismo Le Cassette for its cappellacci with mushrooms, spinach and cream, and salmi di cinghiale or rich wild boar stewed in wine and butter. After the ascent, you feel like youve arrived in heaven.

For a bit more bustle, the A14 motorway provides access to a succession of seaside resorts with white sands, swimmable water and a profusion of restaurants laying on the latest catches. The beaches are not the cleanest  theres not much unspoilt about them  but if you want to be in the thick of it, Le Marche can provide that, too.

La Caserma Carina

Back in Mogliano, La Caserma Carina is a top pick for accommodation. The four self-catering apartments are run by an English couple, Dean and Lesley McMorran, who are very personable hosts, hands-on and happy to chat and provide information. The views of sunflowers all around and distant hills are inspiring as you relax by the pool  there is a fine supply of very reasonably priced wines and beers available at all hours on an honesty basis. Meanwhile, fresh mountain water pours straight from the tap. From La Caserma, it is a five-minute drive to the village centre, where pizza is served in the park next to a good playground and Zanzibar dishes out terrific ice cream. Dean also offers a chauffeur service to La Murola vineyard down the road, and the convenience of having transport laid on becomes obvious as you taste your way through its range of whites and reds, from the local classic Verdicchio to the velvety Montepulciano dAbruzzo. Some parts of the winery are positively space age, and its well worth a good nosey around.

Le Marche is a destination off the beaten track, where you can sample all the delights of la dolce vita  often at bargain prices  without rubbing shoulders with too many other holidaymakers. You can almost taste the pioneering spirit among the mountains. You may feel you have crossed a new frontier.

Travel Essentials

Getting there

The region can be accessed from Ancona or Perugia, both served by Ryanair (0871 246 0000; ryanair.com) from Stansted; alternatively from Rome or Florence, served

by a range of airlines from around the UK.

Staying there

Caserma Carina, Mogliano (00 39 0733 557990; caserma-carina. co.uk). Rental starts at 475 per week for a one-bedroom apartment.

More information

en.visit.marche.it
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Charlie Hebdos latest editorial has given rise to a new wave of public outrage, with esteemed writer Teju Cole comparing the magazines satire to Trumps rhetoric and Nazi logic. Whether one agrees with the latest editorial or not, drawing this historical parallel is far-fetched. The difference is threefold: first, Charlie Hebdos mockery is targeting abstract concepts, ideologies and powerful elites rather than vulnerable individuals. Second, the goal of the journalists is to incite laughter, not hatred or fear. Third  and most importantly  the satirists are not abusing freedom of expression for the sake of politics; they are abusing politics for the sake of free expression.

It is worthwhile to die for things without which its not worthwhile to live, the Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano said once. Charlie Hebdo cartoonists died in defence of secularism and the freedom to draw and to laugh. Since Charlie Hebdo was awarded the PEN Freedom of Expression Courage Award last year, the satirical magazine has bashed by critics who have cherry-picked and misinterpreted cartoons and editorials for the sake of their argument.

Some of its most vocal critics have labelled the satirical magazine as racist, Islamophobic and blasphemic, ignoring the fact that Marine Le Pen and Donald Trump are at least as often featured in Charlie Hebdos cartoons as Jesus, the Pope and the Prophet Mohammed.

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Terrorists have succeeded in creating an atmosphere of fear across continental Europe. Both far right movements and Islamist extremist recruiters thrive in this environment, the new norm, where anxiety reigns over peoples political decisions and everyday choices. What Charlie Hebdo  in, I admit, a clumsy way  was saying in its editorial this week is that we must foster an environment of open discussion, courage and free expression to overcome these fears and taboos, which are easily exploited by extremists.

Charlie Hebdos latest editorial does therefore not depict Muslims as enemies, but as necessary partners; it does not view them as the problem, but as the solution.

In contrast to political figures like Marine Le Pen, Donald Trump and Anne Marie Waters, Charlie Hebdo does not use freedom of expression as a means but as an end. The cartoonists aim is to peacefully keep drawing and asking questions. Even within Charlie Hebdo there is a range of political views and ideological convictions  they only agree on one thing, and that is that no idea should be beyond scrutiny.

They want more debate, rather than less, and more tolerance, rather than less  by using pens instead of guns and laughter instead of tears.

So no, I do not see the parallel to Hitler, Trump or Marine Le Pen, who all tried to monopolise or shut down the debate, and exploit or create divisions and tensions.

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Charlie Hebdos mission statement reads more like a 21st century version of Voltaire than an Islamophobic version of Mein Kampf. In the long French tradition of absurdist satire, they can achieve what conventional journalists cannot: expose the grotesque absurdity of ideas that shape our society.

This being said, Charlie Hebdo cartoons have become cruder, more vulgar and less trenchant in the last year, probably owing to the fact that most of its leading cartoonists were shot dead.

According to a ComRes poll, 27 per cent of 1,000 Muslims polled admitted that they had sympathy with the Charlie Hebdo attacks. While we can disagree with their drawings and words, it is their right to ask the question: How did we end up here? And demanding their silence is far more dangerous than pondering that question.
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The leak of the Panama papers is in itself one of the most effective anti-tax-avoidance measures ever devised. Thanks to the public-spirited action of one individual, who apparently sought no financial reward, rich people around the world will now be a little less likely to try to hide their financial affairs in tax havens.

Apart from soliciting further such leaks from other improbably named law firms in low-tax territories, though, what should governments do to reduce tax avoidance, tax evasion and money laundering?

We should acknowledge that, despite the Prime Ministers embarrassment about his late fathers name appearing in the leaked documents, the Government he leads has worked fairly hard on this subject. By fairly hard we mean that it has kept running to stand still  that it has as good a record as past British governments, and as most governments of other rich democracies, in the constant struggle to deal with a complex, changing and ultimately intractable problem.

David Cameron did at least put tax transparency on the agenda for the G8 summit in Northern Ireland in 2013, and will host a follow-up conference in London next month. We need to shine a spotlight on who owns what and where money is really flowing, he said at the time. It is ironic that this spotlight should have turned to shine on his own familys finances, although his fathers use of Panama-registered businesses for investment funds was legitimate and had already been well reported.

What is more, Mr Cameron is entitled to point out that a lot of international work has been done in recent years to reduce secrecy. Swiss bank account, for example, is no longer a synonym for uncountable, unaccountable and morally questionable money.

Closer to home, progress has been made in regularising the status of the Crown dependencies, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. The days of Amazon deliveries from an address in Jersey are a thing of the past. It is worth asking again why, apart from a sentimental historicism, these territories should be entitled to special tax status. But recent changes have been in the right direction.

There is always more that could be done. Some radical policies might be worth considering, but have negative effects on privacy. In Norway, all citizens tax records are made public. Presumably this inhibits illegal and unethical behaviour, but it does not make for a happier, more united society. If privacy for individuals of modest means is to mean anything, it should extend to their finances, and therefore to the finances of the better-off, too.

Generally, however, there is no alternative to the unglamorous and technical work of securing international agreements to reduce the scope for offshore financial engineering. Most tax havens are either territories belonging to rich countries such as the UK, the US or the Netherlands, or they are poor countries such as Panama that have stumbled on low taxes and lax laws on disclosure as a way of making money from brass plates. Making one location less attractive to global capital merely pushes money to others. Solutions need to be co-ordinated and are likely to move at the pace of the slowest ship in the international convoy.

If the publication of the Panama papers speeds up the slowest ship by increasing the pressure of public opinion on governments, the leaker will have done the world another service.
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Last week on Twitter, a representative for the Green Party gave a shout-out for the Young Greens Women Twitter account, directing non-male members to give them a follow.

I  along with many others  objected to this phrasing, on the grounds that women exist in their own right, not in relation to men. Referring to women as non-male, positions men as the defining group, and women as other. Its like saying that men are Coca Cola and women are the supermarket budget brand - or men are filet steak and women are a bargain bag of offal.

When I flagged the phrasing, I received some well-meaning responses, telling me what it probably meant.

Maybe they were trying to be non-binary, suggested one. Another proposed that: Maybe they were trying to take gender fluidity into account  non-males might be a wider group than just women.

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Without meaning to, their explanations simply reiterated the binary I was objecting to in the first place: male juxtaposed with non-male; male presented as the polished paradigm of the human species, and everyone else lumped together as other. Its like saying men are a box of Duchy Originals, and everyone else is a mixed bag of broken biscuits.

But this wasnt the only aspect of the responses that bothered me. It was the implication that there are women and there are non-binary people (who can be chucked together with women, in the broken biscuits bag). There seems to be a lot of confusion at the moment surrounding words like sex, gender, and non-binary  so, armed with a handy MSc in Gender, let me see if I can help clear this up.

Sex is whether youre male or female. You know when a babys born, and the midwife tells you whats popped out, based on the babys bits? Thats biology, and the only exception to this biological binary is intersex people, who account for approximately 0.1 to 0.2 per cent of the population.

Gender is an idea of how men and women should behave. Its a stereotype thats dictated by society, and it bears no innate relation to sex (biology). In other words, its a cultural construction.

If someone identifies as non-binary, it generally means they reject the gender stereotype thats associated with their sex. But actually, by this definition, were all prone to being non-binary, because none of us rigidly adheres to the stereotypes associated with our sex.

Me? I swear like a navvy whos tarmacked his testicles, and when I blow my nose, it sounds like an elephants calling for back-up. I wear a dress maybe 10 per cent of the time, and I have never cleaned my oven. I handed back the only engagement ring anyone gave me, and Ive never bought Cosmo. Do I identify as non-binary? No, Im a woman  and like most women (and men) I simply dont conform to all the stereotypes associated with my sex.

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Were all gender non-conforming, otherwise wed be one-dimensional caricatures. Men would all swagger like Desperate Dan, demonstrating superior strength by lifting lorries with their little fingers. Theyd brandish beards like Brian Blessed and instigate armed combat in Aldi. City boys wouldnt wear pink shirts because  eurgh  pinks for girls, and Agony Uncles would only ever write: Man up! to their male readers because men mustnt show weakness.

Women would be ever sweet-tempered and demure, floating about in Cath Kidston florals; epilating every hair, not forgetting their forearms. Theyd feel faint if they heard uncouth language, and theyd never sweat  theyd glow! Theyd be as perpetually poised as Grace Kelly, and nuke Nigella at gingerbread.

The suggestion that there are women and non-binaries implies that while non-binary people reject these gender stereotypes, women (and men) happily accept and adhere to them.

Its important to remember that when women were denied the vote, they were denied it because they were biologically women  regardless of their gender identity or whether they were gender-conforming.

So political parties, please: if you want women to support you, dont refer to us as non-male.

Women fought for the vote  weve had it less than a hundred years, and it wasnt easily won. The women in the suffrage movement didnt go on hunger strike for todays political parties to sweep us aside as non-male. They fought for Votes for Women.
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The last time the financial affairs of the ultra-rich and powerful got splashed across the worlds media was just over a year ago, when the journalists behind the Panama Papers exposed the people hiding billions in HSBC Swiss bank accounts.

Attention understandably focused on the shiny famous and infamous people who were being shamed, just as is happening again with the Panama Papers.

There is, however, another, far larger but almost invisible group of people involved in the Panama Papers story - and all other tales of corruption, tax evasion, tax avoidance and money laundering.

They are the millions of mums, brothers, daughters, teachers, nurses, postmen  the ordinary people  whose lives are more difficult, and often more dangerous, because money is being siphoned away from the services they rely on, to line the pockets of some of the worlds wealthiest people.

If corruption seems a rather abstract problem, not something that damages and destroys real human lives, then take a look at the Philippines brilliant new exhibition of jewels owned by Imelda Marcos, a former first lady.

Each exquisite item is accompanied by a description of its value and of what that money could pay for in public services. One particularly lovely ruby, diamond and pearl number is said to be worth the same as the cost of four years of university tuition for 2,000 students. Another glittering piece is said to be equivalent in value to tuberculosis treatment for 12,052 people.

In short, when a powerful person steals public money, there is a direct and potentially deadly impact on a vastly greater number of powerless people, who are too easily forgotten amid the spectacle of the latest leak.

Unlike Imelda Marcos and her ilk, hundreds of millions of people living in poverty struggle simply to survive or get their children through primary school. They are too powerless, financially and politically, effectively to challenge those that steal from them.

Most headlines about so-called PanamaLeaks will feature on money lost to the US, UK and other rich countries. However, when Christian Aid and the Financial Transparency Coalition investigated just how much money from poor countries may have been hidden in HSBCs Swiss branch, we found that some poor countries were more exposed than rich ones, relative to the size of their economies.

Once analysed, it would be surprising if a similar pattern were not found in the data emerging from the Panama Papers.

Of course, simply having secret activity in tax havens does not make ones actions automatically illegal. But, as tax barrister Jolyon Maugham has pointed out, it doesnt look good and it does raise legitimate questions as to what exactly you are up to.

Christian Aid, Global Witness and many others have called on the UK government to make sure that UK tax havens finally reveal who really sits behind the companies they host. Indeed, David Cameron has himself called on the Overseas Territories to follow the UKs lead and set up public registers of real owners of companies, but so far with little effect.

With the UK hosting a global anti-corruption summit in May, the Prime Minister needs to act fast if he is going to be able to stand in front of the worlds media with any credibility.

Toby Quantrill is the Principal Adviser on Economic Justice at Christian Aid
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Two weeks after the EU signed its boldest, and most reckless, attempt to solve the refugee crisis, Greece has begun to return people to Turkey. Today around 135 men, mainly of Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Moroccan origins, have boarded boats from the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios, heading for the Turkish coastal town of Dikili. Each of these men was accompanied by a policeman, according to Frontex, the EUs border agency.

Deciding how and whether to return migrants to their country of origin or transit is one of the most difficult issues in migration policy. But fair and effective return policies do deter smugglers. By the end of 2015, it had become clear that the EU had lost control of its borders, and that smugglers were benefiting from it. In a desperate attempt to break down the smuggling business, EU leaders resorted to the most unpleasant measure of them all: sending people back.

Because most asylum seekers cross from Turkey to the Aegean islands, Brussels signed a deal with Ankara whereby Greece would return all irregular migrants making their way from Turkey. In exchange for each migrant that Turkey takes back from Greece, the EU will resettle one Syrian refugee already in Turkey into Europe. It is known as a 'one in, one out' policy. Officials in Brussels hope the deal, as unpalatable as it might seem, will help decrease the numbers of people arriving in Europe and ease the current state of panic, granting the space to allow member states to agree on longer lasting measures to deal with refugees.

But to achieve that the EU has twisted the law by deeming Turkey a safe country to return people to. Brussels has angered NGOs and international organisations, and risks rebellions and violent breakouts by desperate refugees stranded in Greeces ill-equipped detention centres. This is a dangerous time for Europe and its migrants. Meanwhile, the EU has given Turkey all sorts of inducements to help. But Ankara has not managed to shut down migration flows in the past, and nothing prevents Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan from asking for more.

It is, of course, far too soon to say whether the deal has had any effect. The number of irregular migrants arriving in Greece did fall for a week after the deal came into force, but it is now rising again. The initial drop was most likely due to poor weather conditions, rather than to the deterrent effect of a deal many asylum seekers do not even know about.

 Greece begins deporting refugees to Turkey under EU plan

According to first reports, the vast majority of those deported today had not tried to apply for asylum in Greece, so would have been returned anyway. Only two of them were Syrians (the only nationality to which the 'one in, one out policy applies) and they allegedly asked to be returned voluntarily. The only way to assess whether the EU-Turkey refugee deal will help ending the crisis is when massive numbers of Syrians are sent back to Turkey and EU member-states start taking in Syrian refugees directly from Turkey. And, so far, efforts to distribute asylum seekers across Europe have not been very successful: less than 1,000 people have been relocated to Europe since September 2015, when the EU agreed to take in 160,000 refugees.

The EU has a lot to lose in this gamble, so it all needs to be worth it. Otherwise, it will be back to square one, and this time, the European project may be in real danger.

Camino Mortera-Martinez is a research fellow at the Centre for European Reform
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Today, in the United Kingdom, a woman has been found guilty of having an abortion. Its a horrifying idea  one which should have been long relegated to the annals of history, but which is sadly still the reality for a woman living in Northern Ireland in 2016.

The 21-year-old woman was found guilty at Belfast High Court today and given a three month sentence, suspended for two years. She was convicted under ancient laws which were passed under Queen Victoria and have sat untouched on Northern Irelands statute books for over 150 years.

The abortion ban makes it a criminal offence, carrying a sentence of anything up to life in prison, even if you have been raped or if the foetus is so severely disabled that it has no chance of surviving outside the womb.

The details which the court heard about this womans crime reveal a heart-breaking nightmare. She was 19 when she experienced an unwanted pregnancy. She desperately tried to save up enough money to travel to England to have an abortion, but wasnt able to. Left with no other choice and trapped in Northern Ireland, she bought abortion pills online and performed a DIY abortion on herself at home. Her housemates found blood-stained items and foetal remains in a bin and reported her to the police.

This teenagers story is nothing short of heart breaking and no right minded person could feel anything but sympathy for this tragic case. But under the ban, she has been arrested, charged, placed in the dock and then criminalised.

Just last week when Donald Trump suggested that women should be punished for breaking abortion laws, he caused outrage around the world. In the UK, his comments were roundly condemned by politicians and commentators. How easily the British forget that this happens within the UK, out of sight and out of mind in Northern Ireland.

 Anti-women laws that still exist in 2016

The especially shocking element of Northern Irelands abortion ban is how Westminster supports it through its silence. Regardless of Northern Irelands contested constitutional status, when it comes to human rights law we are just as much British citizens as women living in Blackpool or Birmingham. Westminster could easily overturn the abortion ban by passing legislation in the House of Commons. There is a particularly clear case for doing this as a High Court found in November that Northern Irelands abortion ban breaches international human rights law.

British politicians total disinterest in Northern Irelands abortion ban stems partly from indifference and political expedience. Simply put, there are no votes to be won in English MPs getting involved in Northern Irish affairs, meaning they turn a blind eye to many issues there. This enables Stormont to get away with things which they would never been allowed to do to other British citizens.

There is also a continuing attitude among British politicians that because of the Troubles, Northern Irish politics is a messy and complex topic, and they worry about upsetting the status quo of peace-time politics.

Doctors and protesters join growing clamour for a change in the abortion law Show all 2 1 /2 Doctors and protesters join growing clamour for a change in the abortion law Doctors and protesters join growing clamour for a change in the abortion law savita1-getty.jpg Getty Images Doctors and protesters join growing clamour for a change in the abortion law savita-2-getty#.jpg Getty Images

There is also a common complacency that women in Northern Ireland arent really being discriminated against because we can simply go on a plane or boat to England to access a termination there. However, as todays trial shows, this is a choice only for socially and financially privileged women. Teenagers who do not have thousands of pounds at their disposal face no real chance of getting out of Northern Ireland in time.

In reality, Westminsters reasoning for ignoring the issue amounts to nothing more than flimsy excuses which are of no use to Northern Irish women forced to live in fear and terror under the abortion ban.

The horrific ordeal that this young woman has been subjected to today and throughout the trial is utterly indefensible and should not be allowed to continue. Quite simply, British politicians are complicit in torturing and criminalising Northern Irish women through their silence.
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Once again, a newspapers integrity has been found wanting as the press regulator, IPSO, judged the Daily Star Sundays headline, UK mosques fundraising for terror, to be significantly misleading following a complaint lodged by myself. The paper clarified its error on page 2, noting that UK mosques were actually not involved in any way. This came just a week after The Sun was forced to acknowledge that its headline 1 in 5 Brit Muslims sympathy for jihadis was similarly misleading.

Such inaccuracies are not restricted to the tabloid press. The Times, for example, claimed Muslims were silent on terror. This allegation has since been unequivocally rebuffed not only by Home Secretary Theresa May but also by senior counter-terror officers such as Neil Basu and Scotland Yards former anti-terror chief Richard Walton.

Its not just misleading stories which are the problem - we also consistently see articles conflating the faith of Islam with criminality, such as the headlines Muslim sex grooming or Imam beaten to death in sex grooming town - the latter of which resulted in the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police being appalled and writing an open letter criticising the paper.

Sensationalism and scaremongering about the apparent threat posed by Muslims is also widespread. Just look at headlines such as: BBC puts Muslims before you (Daily Star); Halal secret of Pizza Express (The Sun); Muslim vote could decide 25 per cent of seats (Daily Mail).

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So what, you might say? We rightly live in a country that cherishes the freedom of the press, and its not unreasonable for newspapers to use sensational headlines to sell papers. We know that there is an undeniable and serious threat from many groups identifying as Muslim that strike terror into the hearts of millions. But the inaccurate stories, as well as those that are re-framed to align with the far-right othering of Muslims, have real-world consequences.

Recent research by the University of Cambridge has shown that mainstream media reporting about Muslim communities is contributing to an atmosphere of rising hostility toward Muslims in Britain, corroborating the findings of an Islamophobia Roundtable in Stockholm two years ago. Claiming that the media has played no role in the growth in Islamophobia is no longer a tenable position.

More than half of Britons see Islam (the mainstream religion, not Islamist fundamentalist groups) as a threat to Western liberal democracy. Over 30 per cent of young children believe Muslims are taking over England and hate crime against Muslims continues to rise, up by 70 per cent in the last year, according to the Metropolitan police.

Of course, the government needs to take the problem of Islamophobia seriously and we all need to hold the media to account better, reporting mistakes and inaccuracies. However, editors of newspapers also need to own up to this problem within the media and take meaningful steps to resolve it.

According to research presented at the Muslim News Conference on reporting Islam last year, there have been improvements in the language that is being used, but religious illiteracy remains rife within parts of our newspaper elite. Special training for journalists working in areas touching on Islamic faith and culture, and guidelines for sensitive topics, are now a must-have for any serious paper.

Research from City University in London shows a huge under-representation of Muslims in the media: less than 0.5 per cent of UK journalists are Muslim, compared to almost 5 per cent of the national population. This lack of diversity is likely to be further magnified at more senior positions. A more diverse workforce, however, is likely to improve coverage and reduce the likelihood of misreporting. I am aware of specific instances where the mere presence of Muslim journalists in editorial meetings made a real difference in ensuring more balanced reporting.

To improve diversity, there needs to be greater outreach on the part of media organisations to bring in talent from all backgrounds, through diversity programmes, paid internships and fast-track schemes to proactively close this gap.

Recommended Read more Isis battle is only propaganda while PM befriends Saudi extremists

Finally, given the apparent inability of the press to self-regulate, there needs to be more effective regulation. Stronger deterrents would prevent stories that are just plain wrong from making into print or online. Papers should not be able to get away with clarifications that do not admit wrongdoing without due prominence. A significantly misleading front page headline needs to be corrected by an equally sized front page apology as well as a financial penalty.

I expect that the independent review of IPSO currently underway would cover these ideas and hope that all those interested, feed into that review. And, among many potential improvements to the Editors Code of Practice, incorporating Recommendation 38 from Lord Levesons report is a key way to help tackle the abuse of minority groups by some sections of the media: The power to intervene in cases of allegedly discriminatory reporting, and in so doing reflect the spirit of equalities legislation.

Avoiding regular smears about Islam or Muslims and the conflation of the faith of Islam with criminality is a simple request of fairness, not asking for favours. It is not too much to ask of the nations editors.
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The opinions of unnamed officials are always worth paying attention to, and a few pertinent examples can be found in the current wrangling over the EU-Turkey refugee deal. Politicians have praised the deal: EU chief Donald Tusk promised it would put a stop to all irregular migration into Europe, while Germanys interior minister said it heralded the passing of the peak of the crisis. David Cameron and Angela Merkel  the deals chief architect  have also given their seal of approval.

What, exactly, are they so confident about? First, that Greece will be able to seal its borders. Second, that it will be able to manage humane detention centres. Third, that it will deport all migrants who try to steal across. And fourth, that Turkey will support the Syrians whom Greece does eventually deposit in ports such as Dikili.

It requires some chutzpah to envision a world in which all those ducks line up. Supporters will note that the first 200 deportations took place peaceably yesterday (there are 8,000 people slated for return to Turkey from islands in Greece). Sceptics  and I include myself here  will note that these refugees were mainly Pakistani, and as such were already being deported by Greece before the EU deal was signed. Things will likely take a turn for the worse when authorities begin to actually round up Syrians who arrived in Greece after the cut-off date of 20 March. I will throw myself and my family into the sea, one told the AFP news agency.

In order to convince themselves that Greece and Turkey are capable of handling the bulk of the European refugee crisis, Tusk, Merkel and co have adopted a cheerful, suck-it-and-see approach. But anybody who has been watching Greece, or Turkey, closely in the past few years will have a fairly clear idea of how ugly this deal will be.

Refugees settle in Germany Show all 12 1 /12 Refugees settle in Germany Refugees settle in Germany Germany Mohamed Zayat, a refugee from Syria, plays with his daughter Ranim, who is nearly 3, in the one room they and Mohamed's wife Laloosh call home at an asylum-seekers' shelter in Vossberg village on October 9, 2015 in Letschin, Germany. The Zayats arrived approximately two months ago after trekking through Turkey, Greece and the Balkans and are now waiting for local authorities to process their asylum application, after which they will be allowed to live independently and settle elsewhere in Germany. Approximately 60 asylum-seekers, mostly from Syria, Chechnya and Somalia, live at the Vossberg shelter, which is run by the Arbeiter-Samariter Bund (ASB) charity 2015 Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany A refugee child Amnat Musayeva points to a star with her photo and name that decorates the door to her classroom as teacher Martina Fischer looks on at the local kindergarten Amnat and her siblings attend on October 9, 2015 in Letschin, Germany. The children live with their family at an asylum-seekers' shelter in nearby Vossberg village and are waiting for local authorities to process their asylum applications. Approximately 60 asylum-seekers, mostly from Syria, Chechnya and Somalia, live at the Vossberg shelter, which is run by the Arbeiter-Samariter Bund (ASB) charity Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Kurdish Syrian asylum-applicant Mohamed Ali Hussein (R), 19, and fellow applicant Autur, from Latvia, load benches onto a truckbed while performing community service, for which they receive a small allowance, in Wilhelmsaue village on October 9, 2015 near Letschin, Germany. Mohamed and Autur live at an asylum-applicants' shelter in nearby Vossberg village. Approximately 60 asylum-seekers, mostly from Syria, Chechnya and Somalia, live at the Vossberg shelter, which is run by the Arbeiter-Samariter Bund (ASB) charity Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Mohamed Ali Hussein ((L), 19, and his cousin Sinjar Hussein, 34, sweep leaves at a cemetery in Gieshof village, for which they receive a small allowance, near Letschin Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Mohamed Zayat, a refugee from Syria, looks among donated clothing in the basement of the asylum-seekers' shelter that is home to Mohamed, his wife Laloosh and their daughter Ranim as residents' laundry dries behind in Vossberg village on October 9, 2015 in Letschin, Germany. The Zayats arrived approximately two months ago after trekking through Turkey, Greece and the Balkans and are now waiting for local authorities to process their asylum application, after which they will be allowed to live independently and settle elsewhere in Germany Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Asya Sugaipova (L), Mohza Mukayeva and Khadra Zhukova prepare food in the communal kitchen at the asylum-seekers' shelter that is their home in Vossberg village in Letschin Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Efrah Abdullahi Ahmed looks down from the communal kitchen window at her daughter Sumaya, 10, who had just returned from school, at the asylum-seekers' shelter that is their home in Vossberg Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Asylum-applicants, including Syrians Mohamed Ali Hussein (C-R, in black jacket) and Fadi Almasalmeh (C), return from grocery shopping with other refugees to the asylum-applicants' shelter that is their home in Vossberg village in Letschin Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Mohamed Zayat (2nd from L), a refugee from Syria, smokes a cigarette after shopping for groceries with his daughter Ranim, who is nearly 3, and fellow-Syrian refugees Mohamed Ali Hussein (C) and Fadi Almasalmeh (L) at a local supermarket on October 9, 2015 in Letschin, Germany. All of them live at an asylum-seekers' shelter in nearby Vossberg village and are waiting for local authorities to process their asylum applications, after which they will be allowed to live independently and settle elsewhere in Germany 2015 Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Kurdish Syrian refugees Leila, 9, carries her sister Avin, 1, in the backyard at the asylum-seekers' shelter that is home to them and their family in Vossberg village in Letschin Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Somali refugees and husband and wife Said Ahmed Gure (R) and Ayaan Gure pose with their infant son Muzammili, who was born in Germany, in the room they share at an asylum-seekers' shelter in Vossberg village on October 9, 2015 in Letschin, Germany. Approximately 60 asylum-seekers, mostly from Syria, Chechnya and Somalia, live at the Vossberg shelter, which is run by the Arbeiter-Samariter Bund (ASB) charity, and are waiting for authorities to process their application for asylum 2015 Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany German Chancellor Angela Merkel pauses for a selfie with a refugee after she visited the AWO Refugium Askanierring shelter for refugees in Berlin Getty Images

And so to the unnamed officials. Will Greece be able to manage an increased role in refugee management? The EU now answers yes, despite a series of withering assessments in the past. But one senior insider involved with preparing Greece to meet the deadline for the Turkey deal (only 17 days passed between it being signed and the departure of the first boats) gave a more frank assessment: We have a week to build a Greek state.

Needless to say, that bar has not been cleared. What camps there are remain over-run. Nor has the promised influx of EU interpreters and border guards arrived. Were far from having the people, let alone trained people, another unnamed source complained. In short, Europe has dumped the problem on one of its weakest states, and failed to fulfil its side of the bargain.

Turkey, for its part, has allegedly been shooting civilians on the border with Syria. Amnesty International reports that it has broken international law and deported Syrians back across the border and into a warzone. Will penning Syrians within Turkey put an end to the crisis, in any case? Probably not. More will return to Europe, only this time via Libya.

The EU has an incentive to brush over these inconvenient truths. We have a duty to listen to the officials  named or not  who give the other side of the story.
Bald or defective tyres were partly to blame for road accidents in which 71 people died over five years, research has revealed.

Analysis of forensic crash reports from 2008 to 2012 showed vehicle defaults such as poor brakes, steering, suspension or tyres played some role in one in every eight collisions.

The Road Safety Authority (RSA) said 111 people were killed and another 30 were seriously injured in these accidents.

New laws are being drafted to hit motorists with penalty points if their vehicle is being driven on bald or defective tyres, acting Transport Minister Paschal Donohoe said.

"None of us can predict what will happen when we use the roads - we may encounter other drivers behaving poorly, or weather conditions could be particularly bad," he said.

"But we can take personal responsibility for ensuring our vehicle is properly maintained so that we can rely on our tyres responding to the conditions as they should or our brakes working when they need to."

The research for the RSA examined forensic details of 867 fatal collisions over the five year period to identify the cause of the collision.

Vehicle factors, such as defective tyres, brakes, steering or suspension, were found to have contributed to 101 of these fatal collisions, along with other behaviours such as speeding, alcohol or drug use.

It found the condition of tyres accounted for almost two thirds of collisions and almost three quarters of single vehicle accidents.

More than half (51.5%) of the tyres on the 66 vehicles with defective tyres were excessively or dangerously worn and 10.6% were under-inflated, some dangerously low.

Some 6% showed a combination of excessively worn, being under-inflated, the wrong size or fitted wrongly.

The RSA analysis found 18 people were killed and six were seriously injured in a crash where a vehicle had defective brakes.

Elsewhere, young drivers aged 17-24 were involved in almost half the fatal collisions which involving vehicles with defective, worn or over or under-inflated tyres.

The RSA said Donegal had the biggest issue with tyre defects with 18% of motorists involved in accidents driving vehicles with defective tyres followed by Cork, Kerry and Wexford on 9% each.

The report on the causes of crashes also noted that losing control on a bend on a regional road and on a road surface that was dry at the time were typical scenarios.

The RSA urged drivers to have their tyres checked in a garage about once a month.

Moyagh Murdock, the agency's chief executive, said: "This report shows that tyres are the parts of your car that are most likely to put you at risk of a fatal collision if they're not roadworthy.

"Don't assume you can tell if there's a problem just by looking at them - you can't."

Garda Chief Superintendent Aidan Reid said: "Tyres are the only part of your vehicle that keep you in contact with the road so it is critical that they are in roadworthy condition at all times.

"Your safety, along with the safety of your passengers and other road users, could depend directly on the condition of your vehicle's tyres. If your tyres are worn, under or over-inflated, the wrong size, or damaged in any way, they won't respond properly in an emergency, or poor weather conditions."

The data was released to coincide with a new ad campaign on the dangers of driving with defective tyres which will run on television, radio, cinema and online.
The Central Bank is to release silver and gold proof coins to mark the centenary of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic on April 24.

The coins, which were designed by Michael Guilfoyle, depict the statue of the Hibernia in front of words and phrases from the proclamation.

Central Bank currencies director Paul Molumby said the coins are being released to commemorate an important event in Irish history.

"The design of the coins reflects back to the GPO and its association with the Easter Rising and the reading of the Proclamation, which was read by Patrick Pearse outside the GPO in 1916.

Amongst the products that can be bought from 9.30am this morning are a silver proof coin and a quarter ounce gold coin.
Four out of 10 employees say their job is so sedentary that they are "totally or extremely inactive during the working day".

The news comes as research shows the workplace is turning more of us into couch potatoes, with fewer reaching the recommended weekly target of 150 minutes or more of moderate exercise.

The Nutrition and Health Foundation (NHF) found that only 26pc of the workforce is managing to meet this level of activity, down from 32pc only 15 months ago.

Forty per cent of people admitted they were sedentary and either "totally or extremely inactive" in their place of work.

The findings were released ahead of next Friday's National Workplace Wellbeing Day, when public and private organisations and businesses will be urged to take up the challenge to promote better employee wellbeing.

One of the highlights will be the "lunchtime mile", where workers will abandon their computer screens and office chairs to take part in some collective activity including a walk, cycle, run or jog.

"We spend so much of our lives at work that the workplace is the perfect place to promote better exercise and eating habits," said Dr Muireann Cullen of the NHF.

"Four out of five employees say they believe there is a posi- tive link between their health and wellbeing and their com- pany's productivity. Seven out of 10 also say they are more likely to stay longer with employers who show an interest in their health."

Half of all employers say they are already trying to help workers get healthier on the job.

The most popular types of support offered are Pilates or other exercise classes, annual health checks or screenings.

A third of employers provide showers and lockers for staff who combine exercise and work.
Jobs Minister Richard Bruton has pressed judges to tackle the problem of hugely inflated insurance premiums by sticking to new guidelines on compensation claims.

Mr Bruton held a meeting with the President of the High Court, Mr Justice Peter Kelly, in a bid to get judicial support for guidelines due to be published this summer.

The meeting came after senior executives at Axa Insurance complained to Mr Bruton about cases where courts awarded significantly more damages than the insurance companies involved had expected.

In one case at the High Court in Limerick, an award of 508,000 and legal costs of 220,000 was made following a "relatively straightforward" road traffic accident.

The plaintiff's solicitor had been seeking only 150,000 and legal costs had initially been expected to be 71,000.

Large awards are one of the factors being blamed for a 30pc hike in motor insurance premiums over the past year. The Irish Independent has learned that Mr Bruton was lobbied on the issue by Axa last October and subsequently met Mr Justice Kelly.

Officials confirmed the meeting with the High Court President took place on January 29.

They said no specific cases were discussed, but the minister had sought judicial "buy-in" for new compensation guidelines being prepared by the Personal Injuries Assessment Board (PIAB). The guidelines, known as the "book of quantum", are expected by the summer.

The current book of quantum, used as a reference guide by the judiciary, lawyers and insurance firms, is 12 years old and considered out of date.

While judges are legislatively required to have regard to the book of quantum, they can exercise their discretion.

Officials said Mr Bruton's hope is that if judges abide by the new compensation guidelines, claimants will be discouraged from going to court and seeking higher awards than those available through PIAB.

The majority of PIAB awards in motor liability claims are under 20,000.

An official close to the minister insisted the meeting with Mr Justice Kelly was not triggered by Axa's lobbying and had long been on Mr Bruton's agenda.

The official said Mr Bruton had been in contact with the Chief Justice Susan Denham to arrange such a meeting as far back as last July.

"The objective is to get the new book of quantum signed up to by all the stakeholders so that when it gets published everybody knows this is the rulebook and the guidelines to work off," the official said.

"If everyone can keep in line, then we can keep as many cases out of the courts as possible."

Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act show Mr Bruton met outgoing Axa chief executive John O'Neill and his successor Phil Bradley last October 8.

According to a note of the meeting, the Axa representatives suggested that a revised book of quantum was urgently needed and would help in alleviating some issues driving up the cost of insurance.

Mr Bruton and department officials were provided with details of four High Court cases.

In addition to the Limerick case, awards at High Courts sitting in Sligo, Dublin and Galway were cited.

In Sligo, the court awarded 278,000 and legal costs of 122,000 where the plaintiff had been seeking 100,000.

In the Dublin case, insurers had expected 175,000 and 50,000 in legal fees, but the award made was 377,000 with 110,000 in legal costs.

In the Galway case, a plaintiff had sought 100,000 before the case began, but the judge awarded 175,000.
Nokia is expected to return to the smartphone market later this year with the release of a device believed to be called the A1.

Nokia is expected to make a return to the smartphone market later this year.

A leak indicates that the Nokia A1 will be ready for release in the middle of the year. Android Authoritys sources indicate that Nokias upcoming device wont look anything like previous handsets.

Its believed that the Nokia A1 will feature a 5.5-inch 1080p display, be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 processor, and will likely run Nokia Z Launcher on top of Android 6.0 Marshmallow. That means were most likely looking at a mid-range handset.

The question is whether or not Nokia will release this globally or if it will be kept to a particular region. Of course, theres nothing official until Nokia makes a statement.
Traders talk in front of the German share price index DAX board at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany

European shares were likely to open slightly lower on Monday after slipping to a one-month low in the previous session, with weaker metals and crude oil prices seen putting pressure on resource-related stocks.

Telecom stocks are also likely to fall sharply after talks between Orange and Bouygues on a deal to create a dominant French telecoms operator collapsed on Friday, ending an attempt to ease a price war that has ravaged operators' margins.

Futures for the Euro STOXX 50, Germany's DAX , France's CAC and Britain's FTSE fell 0.1 to 0.4pc.

Commodities stocks will be in focus after copper prices slid for a seventh straight session to its lowest in a month on lingering concerns about demand in top consumer China.

Oil prices also fell as the chances of Middle East producers agreeing to curb overproduction appeared to fade, while stubbornly high US output and worries about Asia's economic outlook also dragged on prices.

On the macroeconomic front, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde denied on Sunday that IMF staff would push Greece closer to default as a negotiating tactic on a new Greek bailout deal, which she said was "still a good distance away."

The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index fell 1.5pc to a one-month low in the previous session.

However, a Reuters poll predicted on Friday that European shares will rise 8 percent from present levels to the end of 2016, with the European Central Bank's supportive monetary policy and the region's improving economic outlook seen helping riskier assets.
Vladimir Putin speaks during his end-of-year news conference, with a Turkish flag seen in the foreground, last December. Photo: Reuters

Four months after President Vladimir Putin accused Ankara of a "stab in the back", Turkish business executives in Russia are getting used to saying hasty goodbyes.

"Every week another friend calls to say he's leaving," said one Turkish businessman based in Moscow. "It's become very difficult for Turks to do business here."

The row erupted in November when Turkish military jets shot down a Russian war plane near the Syrian border, and is still weighing on what had been close economic ties.

Putin has imposed sanctions on Turkey and trade between the two countries - which support opposing sides in the five-year Syrian conflict - has taken a dive because of the combined effects of the measures and the collapse in global oil prices.

Expatriate members of the Turkish business community accuse Russian authorities of creating obstacles for their firms that go beyond the measures set out in the official sanctions.

Before the plane was brought down, about 1,500 Turkish firms operated in Russia in businesses ranging from construction and tourism to imports of Turkish fruit, vegetables and textiles.

While no numbers are available, one of the expatriates estimated that around 200 Turkish firms have since left.

Many Turkish executives say they have had difficulties in getting visas, and some have had to rearrange their affairs.

Of four businessmen interviewed in Moscow, two said they had registered their companies in the names of Russian relatives or trusted Russian friends to try to avoid additional checks from police. All said it was difficult to stay as their country was demonised in Russian media. The Komsomolskaya Pravda mass-market tabloid ran a report this month headlined "Turkey never was and never will be a friend of Russia".

Russia's Interior Ministry did not respond to a request for comment. The Economy Ministry said the problems outlined did not fall within its remit.

Ikbal Durre, a Moscow-based commentator on Russian-Turkish affairs, hoped the row would eventually blow over.

"The situation is moving towards stabilisation, just not particularly quickly. The first shockwave has passed," he said.

But the cost has been high. Turkish exports to Russia fell to around $108m (94.7m) in January, according to the Turkish statistics service, down two-thirds on the previous year. Russian exports to Turkey, mainly of energy, were 30pc lower at $1.3bn (1.14bn), reflecting weak oil prices.

The sanctions include a ban on Russian firms importing many Turkish foodstuffs as well as cancelling a visa-free regime and restricting Turkish firms from working in certain Russian sectors, including tourism.

Dagir Khasavov, managing partner of Moscow-based legal firm Drakonta, which has Turkish clients, described the current attitude of Russian law enforcement agencies towards Turkish citizens as "hostile".

A Russian employee at a Russian-Turkish business group in Moscow said all joint investment projects had been frozen.

"For the moment there is a lockdown," he said. "Informal contacts continue, but it looks like projects will be frozen for this year at least."
Oldies who read this column will remember the British retailer of the middle years of the last century, Great Universal Stores (GUS).

The company had retail outlets, manufacturing and furniture stores under the Cavendish brand; several in Ireland. For five decades it was driven by a retail genius named Isaac Wolfson.

Fast forward, and today we find a new UK giant of retailing with a structure not unlike that of GUS with retail outlets, mail order (and internet) and a manufacturing operation for some of its products.

The company is NEXT, and its CEO happens to be Simon Wolfson, grandnephew of Isaac. When his father, the then chairman, appointed him CEO 15 years ago at the age of 33, the decision was greeted by mutterings of nepotism.

However, the retail game is not a place for looking back. Its landscape is undergoing extraordinary change. There, like everywhere else, the internet is moving mountains and apparel retailers are at the centre of the revolution.

Customers can now browse the internet with its video modelling, detailed size charts, price and free delivery (for the time being) and buy from the comfort of the sofa or even the office at lunchtime. Old Isaac Wolfson would have seen this as pure science fiction.

NEXT is a UK-based retailer of clothing, accessories and furnishings with a market value of 8bn (10bn). The group has an extensive retail chain, internet and catalogue shopping with the name of NEXT Directory and an international franchise operation.

Eight years ago it bought the Lipsy brand for younger women which it sells not only in its own stores but to franchise partners.

The retail chain has 700 stores and its online and catalogue shopping is available in more than 70 countries. Unlike some of its major rivals, the company designs its clothes in-house and makes up to 40pc of its requirements in its own factories. It also sells third party branded fashion items online under the Label brand.

NEXT was set up in 1982 as part of Hepworth Ltd, at the time a retailer of ready-to-wear men's suits. By 1986 the parent company was renamed NEXT plc. While the 1980s was a development period for NEXT, it was also a troubling one. By the late 1980s the company hit a rocky patch that saw its share plummet to 7p, it is now 54.50 (68).

The company today has 500 outlets in the UK and Ireland and 200 in Europe, Asia and the Middle East with group sales of 4bn (5bn).

The company strategy remains focused on profitability and returning cash to its shareholders by way of dividends and share buybacks. Its success in the past 10 years has been outstanding. Earnings per share moved from 1.27p (1.59) to 4.20p (5.24); ordinary dividends jumped from 44p (55c) to 1.50 (1.87) per share; while group profits before tax almost doubled to 780m (974m).

Its internet strategy is also paying off and now accounts for almost half of group profits, but its rivals are making headway. The share price of 54.50 is down from a yearly high of 81 (101). Surplus cash last year was given to investors by way of a special dividend in lieu of share buybacks. The number of shares in circulation is 16 million fewer than in 2010.

The company has expressed concern about the UK government's proposal for a living wage. It has said the increase this year is "manageable", but the 2020 estimated cost of 9.35 (11.67) an hour is "not immaterial" and could cost 27m (33.7m) a year.

To accommodate the wage increase, prices will have to rise by 6pc over the next four years. In addition, increased competition from the likes of Zara and River Island is not helping.

The CEO recently issued a downbeat outlook, saying this year will be "challenging". The share dropped 12pc, but some analysts believe the sell-off was an over-reaction.

Some also believe the CEO has previous form in over- hyping the downside. The company's price earnings multiple is a modest 12, but low multiples are usually low for a reason.

Nothing in this section should be taken as a recommendation, either explicit or implicit, to buy any of the shares mentioned.
Business owners and managers are being warned to brace for further volatility in the pound, starting with a raft of economic data due this week. Photo: PA

Business owners and managers are being warned to brace for further volatility in the pound, starting with a raft of economic data due this week.

Reports on activity levels in the UK services sector as well as industrial and manufacturing production will give traders further insight into the extent to which the UK economy is faltering ahead of June's vote on European Union membership.

"Sterling is certainly going to be volatile," said Thu Lan Nguyen of Commerzbank in Frankfurt.

"Sentiment towards the pound is very, very shaky, with the Brexit vote coming closer," she said, referring to a possible British exit from the EU after the June vote.

"I cannot exclude that if the data this week disappoints we will rise even further in euro- sterling."

Sterling fell 1pc to 80.09 pence per euro on Friday after reaching 80.20 pence - the weakest since November 2014 - earlier in the day.

Irish industry is a so-called price-taker when sterling weakens. That means exporters from here, many in traditional sectors such as food and agriculture, have to cut prices or margins when the euro strengthens against the pound.

Sterling has declined about 3.6pc this year, accelerating its drop after the referendum on Britain's membership of the EU was set for June 23, and prominent Conservative party politician Boris Johnson announced his support for the campaign to leave. A gauge of implied volatility in the pound-dollar exchange rate in three months' time, based on options, was near the highest level since 2010.

Sterling has weakened at least 2.7pc against all 16 of its major peers this year amid concern that Britain will vote to leave the world's biggest single market.

Data showed this week that the UK's current-account deficit widened to the biggest percentage of gross-domestic product on record, highlighting the need for investment inflows from overseas.

There is concern from traders that the economic and political uncertainty could deter such investments.

Robust

So far, all of the evidence from here suggests that Irish industry is riding out the current volatility.

Growth in the economy is widely forecast to remain robust this year, despite the Brexit risks.

However, employers group Isme said there is growing evidence that the business environment is becoming less benign, with Brexit fears and currency movements only one factor.

The current political impasse and rising wage demands are also having a major negative effect on business confidence and expectations.

Nine out of 12 indicators that Isme tracks to monitor the sentiment turned negative last month, the group's Mark Fielding said. Economic uncertainty is again the biggest concern for SME owners, he added.
It was one of the most controversial events of the Troubles, but now the 1983 Maze escape is being made into a movie.

The break-out remains the biggest in UK prison history and the story of how 38 Republican inmates escaped from the former high security jail near Lisburn is to hit the big screen.

During the escape, prison officer James Ferris (43) from Donaghadee, Co Down, suffered a heart attack after being stabbed with a chisel and died.

Filming begins this week at the recently decommissioned Cork Prison and Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, who played gang leader Nidge in RTE's 'Love/Hate', will star.

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North Belfast Sinn Fein MLA Gerry Kelly took part in the prison bust and in 2013 he brought out a book called 'The Escape'. It remains to be seen if he features in the film and if so who will play his part.

'Maze' is written and directed by Stephen Burke. It is partly funded by the Irish Film Board and is due for release next spring.

It has a 1.6m budget and will be filmed in the Cork Prison for four weeks before moving to Sweden where, over a week, the H-block cells will be recreated, reported the 'Sunday Times'.

Vaughan-Lawlor will play IRA man Larry Marley, who was one of the chief organisers of the escape but did not actually participate as he was due for release a short time later.

'Maze' is produced by Jane Doolan and Brendan J Byrne who made a documentary in 2008 about the escape. Ms Doolan said the surviving escapees and their families were aware the film was being made and no objections were received.
A David Bowie tribute concert will be streamed live worldwide in exchange for donations to charity, organisers have said.

Promoters of The Music Of David Bowie concert at Radio City Music Hall, in New York, have teamed up with Skype due to "unprecedented interest" to offer fans across the globe the chance to view the evening of tributes.

In exchange for a small donation, fans will be sent a link to watch the event live on the evening of April 1.

They are asked to donate a minimum of 15 (20 US dollars) via the fundraising platform ammado, which will be given to a range of arts, music and education charities.

The British band Mumford & Sons, Blondie and The Pixies are some of the acts billed to perform at the show.

The 18 artists are expected to perform a range of Bowie classics in tribute to the late musician, who died in January.

Tony Visconti, Bowie's producer, is also expected to take to the stage.

A similar show is to be held at Carnegie Hall in New York the day before on March 31.

A previous tribute concert - Starman: A celebration Of David Bowie - lasted for four and a half hours at the Union Chapel in Islington, north London, and was streamed live on YouTube.

Established artists such as David McAlmont, The Feeling frontman Dan Gillespie Sells, and The Magic Numbers were among the line-up for the January performance.
The directors of hit Netflix documentary series Making a Murderer have said they "don't know what to make of" the news that the defence lawyers featured in the series are doing public appearances.

Jerry Buting and Dean Strang have seen their profiles go stellar since they appeared in the documentary defending Steven Avery during his trial for the murder of photographer Teresa Halbach.

While the trial took place in Wisconsin, the series has garnered fans all over the world, and both Strang and Buting visited Ireland recently to appear on the Ray D'Arcy Show and Newstalk respectively.

The duo will return in September for appearances at Vicar Street on September 23 and 24 (which has already sold out).

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The documentary makers Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi were asked by Ryan Tubridy on RTE Radio 1 this morning what they thought about the appearances.

"We don't know what to make of it," said Moira. "It's fascinating that they have become these huge figures. We were just documenting defense attorneys doing their job... and they stood out in contrast to Len [Kratz, prosecutor] who wasn't doing his job.

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"But I think the most they can add in the series is to add dignity to this important job of defense attorneys. Often people don't respect them."

Tubridy asked them if they were "a little uncomfortable with" the appearances and Laura replied, "No, I think it's an opportunity to continue to shine a light on the failings of they American criminal justice system but also hopefully to focus on the potential for improvement and how that can come about.

Expand Close Trial: Lawyer Jerome Buting and murder accused Avery, right, listen to closing arguments in court in 2007 / Facebook

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"The primary question we get from viewers is 'how could this happen?' and now that people know that these sorts of things can happen I think it's important for people to try to engage and want to plug in and do what they can to help change those things."

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Even though the series has become a global phenomenon, Steven Avery, who is currently serving a life sentence, has not yet seen it.

"Prison is full of rules," says Moira, "They said no to his request to watch the series. [They don't have access to] the internet. Their answer was, 'if we said yes to you we'd have to say yes to everyone'."

The series has been criticised for focusing mainly on Steven Avery and his defence and less so on Teresa Halbach and the prosecution.

Expand Close Making a Murderer: Teresa Halbach photographed beside her car. / Facebook

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However, Moira asserts that they approached all parties with the same requests regarding the documentary.

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"We sought universal access," reveals Laura. "We sent the same sort of letter to the Halbach family. We had coffee with Mike Halbach to discuss why we had chosen this case.

"Ultimately they decided that they did not want to participate in the film and we respected that. It's hard to even imagine what they were going through so we absolutely respected their wishes.

"We reached out several times to the prosecuting attorneys, investigators to invite them to participate. They actually didn't even respond to those letters."

Although it took them a decade to make Making a Murderer, both Moira and Laura are open to filming more episodes.

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"It's certainly a possibility that there could be additional episodes," says Moira, "It's real life so we don't know what will happen and there will have to be significant developments in the story to warrant it, but we're open to it.

Moira and Laura are in Dublin to address students at an event in UCD on Tuesday April 5.

The filmmakers will receive the James Joyce Award from UCD Literary and Historical Society for outstanding success in their field, following in the footsteps of previous award recipients Archbishop Desmond Tutu, JK Rowling, and speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow.
The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Wallis and Edward, outside Government House in Nassau, the Bahamas, circa 1942. The Duke of Windsor served as Governor of the Bahamas from 1940 to 1945. Photo: Ivan Dmitri.

The Queen turns 90 this month - a pensioner yes, but a global icon by now in her tweed suits and sensible shoes.

In her 10th decade, she is a doughty survivor who still rides her horses regularly, despite her grand age. When her birthday arrives, there will be a programme of pageants and bunting on the street to celebrate her.

But this year marks another anniversary for Elizabeth - one that will not be part of the official Royal calendar or the subject of cosy documentaries and interviews with Kate and Wills.

This autumn it is 80 years since the abdication crisis. When the future queen was just 10, her uncle, King Edward, scandalised the world by giving up his throne to marry his mistress, the twice-divorced Wallis Simpson, sending a shockwave through the Royal family. One journalist dubbed it "the greatest story since the resurrection". It was an event on which Elizabeth's destiny would hinge. Without it, she would never have become Queen.

As a child, Elizabeth had not been raised to reign. Her father, George, (known as Bertie) the shy, stammering youngest son of King George V, was forced to take over the throne when his brother chose his lover over his country. Edward would be forever known to history as the black sheep, and Bertie as the stalwart who stepped in and stepped up when the moment called.

It is this spirit, of forbearance and duty over personal whims and desires, that has defined both Elizabeth's character and the nature of her reign.

There are an almost infinite number of versions of the story which played no small part in forming the future Queen; to some it is one of history's great romances; a clash between fusty Royal values and the emerging Hollywood-espoused principle of following one's heart at all costs.

In this romantic version, Edward is the handsome playboy King, Wallis his glamorous soul-mate, their love powerful enough to compromise the monarchy. "I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do," he said in his dashing abdication speech "without the help and support of the woman I love."

At the time however, amongst the people of Britain, it was seen as a travesty - the theft of their leader at a crucial moment in history, as Britain faced into a second world war, by a scheming American woman who would stop at nothing to become Queen.

Though it was the royal men, Edward and his brother George, who may have been the decision-makers and power-brokers at the time of the abdication crisis, the stars of this drama were the women. Elizabeth, the Duchess of York, later known as the Queen Mother, became a reluctant Queen consort, and her resentment endured for the rest of her life. She had always resisted the stifling responsibilities of Royal life and was furious at how her brother-in-law's behaviour was to turn her peaceful domestic life upside down. "I am terrified for him" she said upon learning the news that her shy husband, who was afflicted with a crippling stammer, would be obliged to accede to the throne. Over 50 years later, she still spoke of the event as a "terrible surpriseterrible tragedy  The most ghastly shock".

Queen Mary, mother of Edward and Bertie, was no softer. Often described as a paragon of duty and responsibility, Mary's influence was to profoundly shape the character of her granddaughter, Elizabeth II. Mary was a staunchly traditional monarch who was defined by her fortitude and sense of allegiance. During the lean times as a result of World War One, she introduced rations of food and clothes at Buckingham Palace, out of solidarity with the British people.

Wallis would go down in history as the woman who nearly brought down the monarchy but Elizabeth, it looks likely, will go down as the woman who overcame adversity and restored stability. She has weathered no shortage of controversies, challenges and scandals herself, but under her leadership, despite many setbacks, the Royal family has regrouped and reformed as a slick, successful PR machine.

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Just 25 when she solemnly undertook her vows to serve her country, she was still a girl - though a beautiful one with the figure of a 1950's pin-up. She had weekly meetings with Winston Churchill where she revealed she was eager to learn.

At her side was Prince Philip - the handsome naval cadet she had married several years earlier. She had met Philip when she was just 13, and was so taken with the 18 year old at the time that she reportedly told her friends he "looked like a Viking god".

Her father, King George, encouraged their early friendship which soon blossomed into love, on the grounds that he believed in marriage "of the heart" according to a member of his staff. Philip was then considered something of a ladies' man and rumour has followed him throughout the many decades of their union. Even before they married, he had a reputation, and the King's private secretary made his disapproval known, saying that Philip was "rough, ill-mannered, uneducated and would probably not be faithful".

He, however, was outspoken in his devotion, telling Elizabeth's mother in a letter that he had fallen in love completely and unreservedly with her daughter. In the correspondence, quoted in a profile of the Prince by journalists Richard Kay and Geoffrey Levy for the Daily Mail, he wrote: "The only thing in this world which is absolutely real to me, and my ambition, is to weld the two of us into a new combined existence that will not only be able to withstand the shocks directed at us but will also have a positive existence for the good."

Certainly, he has remained steadfast in his devotion. Despite a maelstrom of tabloid speculation which has surrounded the marriage over the years, whispers and reports of his flings and even illegitimate children have never been substantiated.

However they, like any couple, have no doubt had their difficulties. There was a challenging adjustment period after she acceded to the throne and he, as her husband, was obliged to sacrifice his naval job which gave him so much satisfaction. Initially, his role in the Royal family grated, according to a senior cleric, interviewed by Kay and Levy, who knows the Royal family well, who says Philip became "an increasingly irritable presence in the palace as he sought to find his feet in a court that accorded him no status and attempted to bypass him at every stage".

But the Queen had learned the lesson of endurance under duress well from her father, who despite the frailties of his character, stood firm as the storm surrounding the abdication crisis raged. It has been her habit, whenever she has faced difficulties in her personal life, her public life and the press, to hold firm and to respond with reason and calm rather than high emotion.

Sometimes, this has been to her detriment. When Princess Diana was killed at the age of 36 in a road accident in Paris, the nation went into mourning. As the British public turned up in their droves at Buckingham Palace, the Queen herself remained in Balmoral with her grandsons William and Harry, eschewing the opportunity to share in the tidal wave of grief which poured onto the palace steps. Then, when she decided not to fly the flag at half mast, the public became furious at what they saw as her cold and remote demeanour. She was attacked by the press. One editorial in The Sun fumed that "There has been no expression of sorrow from the Queen on behalf of the nation. Not one word has come from a Royal lip, not one tear has been shed in public from a Royal eye."

By the time she died, Diana had become a tricky problem for the Royal family. The Queen's reserve in the aftermath of the accident provided space for hysterical speculation and conspiracy theories to flourish. Most of these have been widely rubbished, but some of the mud stuck. In her book about Elizabeth, Royal biographer Ingrid Seward claimed that her response at hearing of the accident was slightly off colour. "At first it was thought that, though the car crash in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel was serious, Diana had not been killed," Seward writes. " According to one witness present when Elizabeth heard the initial news, she mused out loud: 'Someone must have greased the brakes."

Yet, according to Seward, despite the turmoil they ultimately caused each other, there had been deep and sincere affection between HRH and Lady Di at an earlier stage. "She is one of us," the Queen once wrote to a friend before Diana and Charles were married. "I am very fond of all three of the Spencer girls."

As Diana's profile grew, Seward claims that the Queen, recognising the princess's emotional fragility, made attempts to protect her from press interference.

But as Diana's relationship with Charles turned increasingly sour, so did her relationship with Elizabeth. By the 1990s it had become increasingly clear that the 'fairy tale' marriage of Prince Charles and Diana was falling apart. A volley of acrimony and resentment was reported in the press - relayed to the media by various 'friends' on both sides.

Things came to a head in 1992 - the year which would go down in history as the Queen's annus horribilis. In May, Andrew Morton published Diana, Her True Story, an account which blew open the private goings-on behind palace doors in eye-watering detail. With Diana's permission, the book exposed Charles's long-standing relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles, the Princess's bulimia and her attempts at suicide. Then, in August, came 'Squidgygate' the publication in The Sun of intimate phone-calls between Diana and her lover James Gilbey. The Queen, who was reportedly furious about the debacle, and its impact on the public image of the Royal family, ordered an inquiry.

But worse was in store. In November of that year, it was Charles's turn. The Daily Mirror had taken possession of illegally recorded conversations between the prince and his long-standing lover, Camilla Parker Bowles. The details were mortifying, as a besotted prince told Camilla that he'd like to be her "tampon', and she replied, "You are a complete idiot. [laughs] Oh, what a wonderful idea."

It was, according to Morton, an exposure which "persuaded most of the nation that the heir to the throne, the would-be Defender of the Faith, was a lavatory-minded adulterer".

For the Queen, for whom preserving the dignity and decorum of her office has always been paramount, this was a terrible blow.

It must, no doubt, have called back to mind the shame her family felt in 1931 when her uncle was the one to blot his copy book, demeaning his office for the sake of obsessive love of a woman.

The so-called 'War of the Wales's was at its height and it played out in messy, visceral detail in the world's press. From every side, the institution she desired to protect was getting a drubbing in the papers. And the bonds of marriage within her family were falling apart. It wasn't just Charles and Diana.

Princess Anne's marriage to Mark Phillips officially ended in April 1992, and the Queen's other son, Prince Andrew, was having a hard time of his own. In August of the same year, it was Sarah Ferguson who was in trouble. Pictures were published of Andrew's estranged wife on holidays in the south of France in a compromising position with her so-called "financial advisor", a Texan by the name of John Bryan, in which he was seen to be sucking her toes.

Of her four children, it is Prince Edward, often described as her favourite, who has gone on to have an ostensibly happy (first) marriage.

No wonder then that when the Queen came to give her traditional speech that year, she spoke plainly. "1992 is not a year I shall look back on with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an 'annus horribilis," she told her public.

But the storm was far from over. The War of the Wales's raged on and in 1995, Diana went further still, giving the infamous interview with Martin Bashir in which she declared: "Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded."

Later that year, in an attempt to resolve the mess, the Queen took an unprecedented step, and wrote to both Charles and Diana, urging them to "seek an early divorce".

Diana's death brought this long and troubled period of royal history to a close. But it was clear, even to the a traditionalist like Elizabeth, that the institution had been damaged. It needed to modernise and change.

In a gesture that recalled her grandmother Mary, she and Charles both stripped down their civil lists and announced that they would pay taxes - recognition of the fact that the survival of the Firm depended on public goodwill more than anything else.

Though initially circumspect about Charles's ongoing relationships with Camilla, Elizabeth eventually had a change of heart which demonstrated her flexibility of mind, and endeared her to the public further.

When Camilla and Charles married, she gave a warm and eloquent speech at their reception. Using a racing analogy, she spoke of the "terrible obstacles" they had overcome. "They have come through and I am very proud and wish them well. My son is home and dry with the woman he loves. Welcome to the winners' enclosure," she said.

But it was the wedding of her grandson William to Kate Middleton that seemed to confirm that a new era and a new image had been achieved.

One courtier recalled the event by saying: "The Queen was so happy on the wedding day, she was practically skipping. Seeing her family full of joy but also seeing the public support and excitement touched her greatly.

"She was very supportive of William and Kate leading up to the wedding and nothing could have reaffirmed more that they have the potential to achieve great things for the monarchy."

So, plenty for Her Maj to celebrate when she blows out 90 candles on April 21, then.
Big Week on the Farm kicked off this evening on RTE One, with the first of five shows, which air every night until Friday.

The main part is based in Westmeath, hosted by Ella McSweeney and Aine Lawlor; tonight they also had outside broadcasts in Kerry, with Darragh McCullough, and Donegal and Helen Carroll (the latter two will be visiting a further eight locations throughout the week).

And it was allwell. Kind of hard to know what to make of it, really.

On the one hand, Big Week on the Farm was a bit of crack, it was quite informative, the hour flew by nicely, and all involved  presenters and contributors both  were very likeable.

On the other hand, the question nibbled away at the back of your mind throughout the 55 or so minutes running time: what exactly is the point of doing this?

Oh, I know thats a hideous cliche of reviewing anything. The pompous critic in his ivory tower, superciliously declaiming, What is the point of this, minions? Explain yourselves, before I have you thrashed.

The question still bopped around in my head, though. Its not even one that necessarily needs an answer; I mean, lots of television is totally pointless, but it can still be fun. But bop around, it did.

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So while were on the subject: what exactly was the point of Big Week on the Farm?

The show is being produced in conjunction with Science Foundation Ireland, therefore I presume that a large part of its remit is to educate people, as spring kicks into gear: about farming methods and food production, about flora and fauna and the land and the natural world.

All very laudable, and many people are woefully ignorant, in the literal sense, of where exactly their food originates. So tonight we learned about pig insemination, salmon farming, robot milking of cows (not as cool and futuristic as that sounds  they werent humanoid cyber-beings with chrome exoskeletons and Terminator-style red eyes, sadly), lambing, seaweed harvesting and more.

I chuckled guiltily when Aine Lawlor remarked, Seaweed is good for pigs  good for their meat and good for their health. Two contradictory assertions there, methinks

We learned that badgers avoid cows, for some reason, and mate twice a year; we saw some of that through night-vision footage. We also saw a catheter being inserted into a female pigs vagina  no, you didnt hallucinate that, it really happened.

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We had self-professed city girl Mairead Ronan milking a cow by hand, and a young Donegal guy called Ivan Scott break the Guinness speed record for sheep-shearing.

It was all grand, really. Is that a proper critical judgment  grand? Id be lying if I said I hated it, or even disliked it; but itd be wrong to say I was bowled over by it either. As George Orwell once remarked of the majority of books he was given to review, it inspired no strong feelings in me either way.

Possibly this is because I live in a village, which is surrounded by farms and even contains two or three; I see farm animals, farmers, fields, crops, nature in all its bucolic glory and all the rest of it, literally every day. So, while some of this stuff was new to me and perfectly interesting, as a whole the concept isnt hugely novel.

However, if youre one of those urbanites who have never been down the country  especially one who believes that food comes from the shop, arriving there from heaven or Mars or somewhere by a strange and mysterious process which is really none of your business  you should probably tune in for the rest of the week.

At worst, youll get four hours of undemanding telly. At best, youll learn something.
"In China, everybody works hard. It's in the DNA. If you're not working, you have nothing," says pianist Yundi Li. Photo: Wing Shya

'My parents' generation were only allowed to have one child," says Yundi Li, "so everybody was an only child."

The 33-year-old Chinese pianist utters this is in a very matter-of-fact fashion; such was his norm. From a Western perspective it's easy to forget these strictures, which began in 1979 and only ended last year. You wonder how much his being an only child played a part in him becoming the classical superstar he is today. His parents spotted that their son had a talent. And so, they did everything within their means - and way beyond them - to help him achieve his potential. All the while, they didn't want to put undue pressure on him. It was a tricky balancing act.

"My parents just wanted me to be happy," he says.

And it sounds like they still do. He tells me that they remind him not to tire himself out too much and to mind his health. He probably needs this advice more than ever now that he is on a Chopin world tour, which includes Germany, Russia and the US. He will play in the National Concert Hall, Dublin, on April 21.

"They are always behind me," he says.

Yundi, as he is now known, is a global phenomenon. His last Chinese tour of 35 cities sold out in 12 minutes. He has over 18 million followers on Weibo (China's equivalent of Twitter.) Such is his popularity that piano fever has swept China. Now there is an estimated 50 million young Chinese people learning the piano. (He and fellow Chinese pianist Lang Lang are credited for this surge.) In China, he did a TV ad for a car company with US pop star Taylor Swift. Out of the two, he is the better known there. It's all very razzmatazz and such a long way from his austere beginning.

He first came to the attention of the classical music world in 2000, when he won the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw, Poland. At 18, he was the youngest winner and the first Chinese musician to win it. He was also awarded the Gold Medal there. For 15 years no competitor had been deemed worthy of that prize, until Yundi that is; he was different. This scraggy-haired, intense-looking young man whose performance dazzled the judges. His playing has been described as poetic. He is so immersed in the music that it looks like he is at one with the piano.

Winning in Warsaw was the beginning of his career. It has soared ever since.

This is a story of love, sacrifice and dedication. It's also about how the strict Chinese system of education produced a prodigy. The family lived in Chongqing, south west China. As a boy, Yundi started to play the accordion at the age of three.

"My teacher, Mrs Tan, emphasised sincerity and honesty and a feeling for the music. I think she is responsible for awakening this in me," he says.

After two years of lessons he had advanced so quickly that she advised his parents to switch to the piano.

"She thought that the piano had more future," he tells me. "I'm very appreciative of that because without her I would not be here today. Of course, the accordion is a wonderful instrument but not for a major career."

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It all sounds so serious for one so young. But then he tells me that in hot weather, the accordion was uncomfortable. Physically, the piano felt easier and he preferred the sound of it. "It had much more colour," he says.

By the time he was seven, his talent was so evident that it was decided that Yundi's teacher would sell them a second-hand piano. Raising the money to buy it was an enormous struggle. Yundi tells me that they weren't poor but nor were they rich. His steelworker father took all his savings and borrowed from grandparents too. The piano cost 40 times his monthly salary.

When he was little, Yundi practised the piano for five hours a day. "I studied piano music because I wanted to," he tells me. "And then in my teens, I wanted to perform for people, to show them what I had learnt. Of course, being an only child I was given a lot of attention but if during that time I didn't want to play, they didn't force me.

"Studying the piano was about following my heart," he says. "I liked to practise and I didn't want to get up from the piano. It was my passion. The lessons with my teacher were exciting. I progressed very fast - triple the speed of the other students."

The Eastern methods of education were very different. He says that his mother was not one of those so-called tiger moms, referring to Amy Chua's theory that Chinese mothers tend to raise more successful children because of strict cultural tendencies. (The author preached the merits of hard work and of how teaching your children to focus can pay off.) Maybe it's from a Western perspective, but Yundi's musical upbringing sounds pretty full-on to me.

From the beginning, his mother nurtured her son's talent. She made little cardboard music notes and on the bus on the way to nursery, she would tap out their rhythm. She had already seen his hunger for music. As a one-year-old, he sat in front of a tape-recorder for two hours, listening to a popular song at the time. Two days later, he could sing it in full.

The documentary on his life, The Young Romantic - A Portrait of Yundi, is very revealing. It was made in 2008 as he was about to make his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and before his star ascended to the stratosphere. In it, he talks of his first piano teacher, Mr Wu, and laughs as he remembers his teaching style.

"In the West, the methods he used would have been considered illegal," he says. "He would yell at you. In class, he held a bamboo stick and if your fingers did not meet his demands, he would hit you. All of the students were afraid of him. I don't think he was a bad person, just very strict. It was a militant sort of training but I benefited from it a lot."

At home, his mother would supervise his piano practice.

"His teacher made very strict demands," she explained in the documentary.

"I used to sit beside Yundi with a large knitting needle. I would hold the needle and hit him with it. This would hurt him but it wouldn't harm his bones or tendons. Often I would pry open his fingers a bit. I never hit him hard and it was just a knitting needle. I only tried to scare him with it," she said.

By the time he was 11, it was decided that he would go to the music conservatory and then he won a scholarship. Along the way, the family even moved city so that he could further his studies.

After he won the Chopin Competition, he eased his way into the performing world. Rather wisely, he wanted to build up a slow and steady base. He moved to Germany to do more studies and performed occasionally.

"The simple thing was to focus," he said. "I concentrated on the music, with no other disturbances."

The documentary shows a young man hungry to learn from the famous conductor Seiji Ozawa. As they rehearse Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No 2 with the orchestra, a piece so difficult that it is rarely performed, he asked Ozawa if he could play it a bit faster.

"He wants to play it faster," the conductor tells the orchestra with a weary smile. "He's young."

He knows that Yundi has the impatience of youth but he can also see that this young man is fiercely talented and extremely driven. It is an interesting portrait of a pupil and a mentor. Ozawa knows that Yundi is on the cusp of greatness. He says that the young man has his own dream, his own fantasy of making music and it will be interesting to see how he grows up in the next decade.

Now, at 33, his life is very different. He performs a world tour almost every year. There are also lucrative endorsements. He lives alone in Beijing and it sounds like his schedule is hectic. When I ask him what he does for laughs, he tells me that he goes to the gym. This is not about creating muscle but simply to be healthy and strong for when he sits down at the piano.

"I want to keep fresh,"he tells me. "Playing the piano is hard work. If I get fat, I will be more exhausted and I won't be able to handle it. When you play you need to have energy. If I'm not healthy, I cannot make music. You need to work hard and concentrate in your profession. This is the world of progress. It's not like before."

In 2015, he was asked to be one of the judges on the Chopin Competition which he had once won. I wonder if he felt strange returning.

"I'm still the same person," he says. "More colourful I think, but I still have the same heart for Chopin."

He certainly doesn't look anything like the scraggy-haired young prize-winner in Poland.

On the day I meet him in London, he is immaculately groomed. Everything about him is lean - from his muscular fingers to his tight torso. He has beautiful luminous skin and I can't help noticing that he is wearing the thinnest layer of foundation which accentuates his glow. (He has missed a bit and I am tempted to reach over and blend it in but I restrain myself.) His dark eyes are framed with a thin line of eye-liner. He has a full day of interviews ahead of him, and so perhaps the make-up is for photos. When I ask him if he is wearing foundation, he says no, very abruptly, so we move on.

Instead, I ask him to describe his life now. He talks about the endless hours at the piano.

"There are so many repertoires that you need to study and you need to progress all the time," he says. "For example, you can spend two hours trying to find the right tempo or the right colour or the touch and the time passes so fast. You probably only work on two bars of music. I go into the practice room at 10 in the morning and when you get out it's completely dark. But I enjoy doing it and finding the right colour.

"Sometimes you fight with yourself because you're not in a good mood and you cannot make it. Then you feel sad. But after a nice sleep, the next day you think, I'm going to try again. You're always checking your progress. Sometimes I'm exhausted with all the travel but never with music. I'm always excited about that.

"Practice is like a meditation for me. You focus on one thing every day, so it's like the Buddha. Many times you sit there, just thinking. If you don't practise you can't be close to the music. And as we say, if you're not close to the music, then music will not be close to you."

I ask him to explain the theory that the Chinese want to be the best at everything.

"In China, there is a huge number of people and everybody works hard," he says.

"That's kind of the natural atmosphere and the DNA. Of course, every place has lazy people but they are the exception. In China, if you're not working, you have nothing. It's not that every Chinese person wants success but they want to work hard and to be valued in their life.

"In the past, in my father's generation, they couldn't do what they liked. But for my generation and young people now, it's very different. It's like a bomb and it's very fast. People can do what they like and they have a passion and a drive. Before people were restricted but now with this opening up and this freedom, everybody has a dream. It's like the Americans say - if you have a dream, just do it. You do have a chance, no matter if you succeed or not.

"I'm enjoying this moment in my life," he says. "I'm inspiring a new generation who are hungry to learn music. I think that's my responsibility and it's my dream."

So says the man who made his dream a reality, thanks to his dedication and his parents' devotion.

Yundi plays at the NCH on April 21; nch.ie; Ph 01-417000; Tickets from 22.50
Enda Kenny with Thomas Murphy from Fairview, now living in Trim, Co Meath whose great uncle Thomas Meleady died during the 1916 Rising. Photo: Colm Mahady

Taoiseach Enda Kenny lays a wreath as troops stand in honour of those whose names are listed on the memorial. Photo: Colin O'Riordan

They came to Dublin's city of the dead to honour all those who lost their lives during the Easter Rising.

A memorial wall was unveiled at Glasnevin Cemetery, with hundreds gathering for the unveiling of the monument and an interfaith service.

However, scuffles marred the beginning of the ceremony, with a few protesters rallying outside the cemetery.

A small group of people opposed to the monument -because it includes deceased British military - rallied outside the cemetery, holding republican flags.

The remembrance wall is a tribute to all those - Irish and British military and civilians - who lost their lives 100 years ago in the Rising.

Without distinction between the two nationalities, the wall lists the names of everyone who died during the 1916 conflict, in chronological and alphabetical order.

The necrology wall lists the names of 485 people identified as having died in the Rising, including 262 civilians, 107 British soldiers, 58 rebels and 13 policemen.

Local children from nearby schools unveiled the wall, while acting Taoiseach Enda Kenny laid a wreath during the event, which was part of the official State commemorations.

Representatives from the Jewish, Islamic and various Christian faiths - including Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin - were also invited to lead an act of commemoration.

Other notable figures at the ceremony included former Taoisigh Bertie Ahern and John Bruton, RTE star Joe Duffy and acting Transport Minister Pascal Donohoe.

Thomas Murphy (85), whose great-uncle Thomas Meleady died during the Rising, described the service as "emotional".

"Meleady was in the wrong place at the wrong time," Mr Murphy said, adding: "It is an honour and an absolutely privilege to commemorate my relative."

Glasnevin Trust chief executive George McCullough said it was important to "reconcile and reflect".

"A lot of those people (who died) wouldn't have had a funeral, particularly those buried in the mass graves. They never had a funeral, but they had a funeral today," he added.

All of the main faiths in Ireland came together to pray for all of the people who died in the conflict and prayed for them equally.

He added: "Hopefully people will come, look at it and take from it exactly what is it."

Despite the peaceful service, gardai arrested a 15-year-old following a clash between officers and protesters outside the cemetery.

Fireworks were also set alight and thrown at gardai, while individuals also attempted to burn the Union Jack flag in a brief clash with authorities.

One protester also played rebel songs into a megaphone in a bid to disturb the service being held inside the cemetery.

Republican Sinn Fein, which was one of the groups present, refused to condemn the protest.

The group's president, Des Dalton, said that a "mix of groups" was involved.

Meanwhile, Glasnevin has confirmed that a spelling mistake on the monument will be "corrected immediately".

It was unveiled as "Eiri Amach Na Casca 1916".

But eagle-eyed Irish speakers said the word 'Eiri' had been spelt incorrectly with the misplacing of a fada. It should actually be spelt 'Eiri'.
Members of the Save Moore Street 2016 campaign group form a human chain around the street yesterday. Photo: PA

Relatives of those who fought during the Easter Rising said they hoped to bring younger generations to the Moore Street site in the future.

Campaigners who have objected to the development of the Moore Street buildings for the past 16 years gathered to celebrate a High Court injunction preventing buildings at the battleground site from being demolished.

A symbolic plaque was placed outside the building yesterday by the Save Moore Street 2016 group, as campaigners linked arms along the street.

"We are trying to create a visual representation of the people trying to protect Moore Street," said their spokeswoman Niamh McDonald.

"There was a campaign to save Kilmainham Gaol years ago and now it is a massive tourist attraction. We think Moore Street can be just as big an attraction.

"We know this battle is not over yet.

"This is the first part of it, but what is Moore Street going to become? What type of battlefield monument will it be? Who will be in control of it? We want to keep it in public control, in the control of the citizens," she added.

Brona Ui Loing's grandfather Gerry Boland, a former justice minister, fought in the Rising with his brothers Ned and Harry and his sister Kathleen.

"Moore Street is very close to my heart because it is the only place in its original state, so people can see what it looked like in 1916," she said.

"I would love to be able to bring my two grandchildren to see it and show them where their relatives ran through the building.

"I want to show them that those men ran through the rooms here to come out the other side and face a barrage of fire."

John Gavan, from Navan, Co Meath, said the site should be preserved as a museum.

"My own grandfather, John James Gavan, was here. People put their lives on the line here and this should be a place where we can come to pay respect."
Michaella McCollum and Scotswoman Melissa Reid stand as they are questioned by police in Lima airport in 2013

Michaella McCollum Connolly walking in Lima after her release from prison in Peru. Pic:Mark Condren

Michaella McCollum Connolly hiding in a back of taxi with her family after running down side streets from photographers. Pic:Mark Condren

(Back seat on left) An exclusive picture of Michaella McCollum Connolly hiding in a back of taxi with her family after running down side streets from photographers. Pic:Mark Condren

RTE will not say how much licence fee payers' money benefited drug trafficker Michaella McCollum or her family for her first interview since her release from prison.

The State broadcaster has insisted it did not pay the convicted criminal, but refused to comment on whether the McCollum family received a fee or expenses or if money was paid to the Michaella McCollum fund.

RTE was forced to defend last night's soft-soap interview and tweeted that it had not paid McCollum after a backlash from the public.

Members of the public reacted angrily to an interview that focused more on her new blonde look than on the drug gangs she worked for.

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Viewers took to Twitter to question why the broadcaster was giving a convicted criminal prime air time.

Tweeters hit out at the 23-year-old Co Tyrone woman, saying they did not believe a word she said and had zero sympathy for her.

Responding on Twitter, RTE said it had not paid McCollum for the interview and reiterated this stance to repeated media queries.

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"It's an RTE production and Michaela McCollum was not paid," it said.

"It's an RTE production - the guy doing the interview, Trevor Birney, is from Fine Point Films. He's working for us.

"Nobody paid for the interview. Categorically nobody paid for the interview. Trevor Birney is just a producer/director from that part of the world and has done a lot of that kind of work."

RTE further refused to say if it had paid money or provided benefit to McCollum's family, who are in Lima with her.

When asked if her family had benefited, an RTE spokesman replied: "I won't be adding to what I said earlier.

"Michaella McCollum did not get paid for the interview and any other production and staffing costs are commercially sensitive and won't be disclosed. We won't be disclosing any production costs around the documentary."

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Pressed on whether the McCollum family received funds, expenses or if money was paid to the Michaella McCollum fund, the spokesman replied: "I can't disclose or discuss any of the production costs around the documentary apart from the fact that Michaella McCollum wasn't paid."

Sources told the Irish Independent that RTE, interviewer Trevor Birney and McCollum signed a number of confidentiality agreements prior to the interview being filmed.

RTE also refused to divulge what other costs were involved in the interview.

"Any other staffing/production costs would be commercially sensitive and not for disclosure," it said.

McCollum sat down with Mr Birney, from Northern Ireland-based Fine Point Films. In her first broadcast interview since her conviction, she said she had been "very naive".

"I was so young, very insecure," she said.

"A lot of times I didn't know how to say no to somebody. I kind of just followed along with it."

She said she now regretted her crime. "I made a decision in a moment of madness. I'm not a bad person," she said.

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"I want to demonstrate that I'm a good person."

McCollum has been in jail for more than two years after she was found guilty of attempting to smuggle more than 5kg of cocaine to Spain.

Now aged 23, she was arrested two-and-a-half years ago for possession of almost 2m worth of the drug.

She and young Scottish woman Melissa Reid, from near Glasgow, who she met on the party island of Ibiza, were stopped in Lima airport with the cocaine hidden in their luggage.

Reid remains in prison in Peru and is seeking to serve the rest of her sentence in Scotland.
THE Court of Appeal has been urged to quash a High Court judges refusal to withdraw from hearing contempt proceedings brought against The Phoenix magazine by the Garda Commissioner and State.

The contempt proceedings arise from two articles related to the failed civil action by Ian Bailey over the conduct of the garda investigation into the late 1996 murder in west Cork of French film maker Sophie Toscan du Plantier.

Mr Baileys action opened before a High Court jury in November 2014.

The first Phoenix article was published some six weeks earlier on September 26, 2014. The second was published in May 2015, some two months after the jury rejected Mr Baileys claim certain gardai conspired to frame him for the murder.

In alleging contempt, the State complained the first article disclosed the existence of settlement discussions between the sides and criticised the States handling of the Bailey case.

The second article, it alleged, potentially prejudiced the separate civil action of Mr Baileys partner, Jules Thomas.

After Mr Justice John Hedigan refused to recuse himself from hearing he contempt proceedings, Penfield Enterprises, publishers of Phoenix, appealed to the three-judge Court of Appeal which has reserved judgment.

Martin Hayden SC, for Phoenix, argued comments by Judge Hedigan, including his description of the September 2014 article as reckless and irresponsible, illustrated objective bias and prejudgement concerning the contempt claims.

When considering whether to recuse, a judge must decide if the comments complained of could be regarded by a person reasonably well informed of the matters at issue as amounting to objective bias, counsel said.

His case was Judge Hedigan applied the incorrect legal test because he subjectively decided his previous remarks did not demonstrate objective bias.

Although Judge Hedigan was not required to decide if there was contempt because, when the State initially complained about the first article, it was only seeking to guard against further publication, the judge expressed a view the article was reckless and irresponsible, counsel said.

His comments represented a concluded view other media had been good but this article was not.

Separate proceedings had been brought against Independent Newspapers over alleged contempt in another article on the Bailey case, counsel said. Those proceedings later settled on undisclosed terms.

Opposing the appeal, Paul OHiggins SC, for the State parties, said, before the Bailey action, Judge Hedigan issued a general warning to the media not to publish material that might prejudice a fair hearing of the case. This arose where there had been many media articles.

Judge Hedigan's comments about the first Phoenix article were motivated by a desire to protect the integrity of the trial which involved issues of which the judge was well aware, having case managed the action for some time, counsel said.

The contempt application was not brought until May 2015, after publication of the second article which later caused potential difficulties for the Jules Thomas hearing.

Judges have to maintain standards of fairness concerning trials and may sometimes have to discharge a jury due to media reports and then effectively require a contempt application be brought to protect the rule of law, counsel argued.

The issue in these contempt proceedings was whether it was permissible to discuss offers of settlement weeks before a case started, counsel added.
FORMER Anglo Irish Bank chairman Sean FitzPatrick has launched a High Court challenge aimed at preventing Judge Patrick McCartan from presiding over his trial on charges of breaching the Companies Act.

Mr FitzPatrick (66) of Whitshed Road, Greystones, Co Wicklow is due to go on trial before Dublin Circuit Criminal Court at the end of May.

He has pleaded not guilty to 27 offences under the 1990 Companies Act.

These include 21 charges of making a misleading, false or deceptive statement to auditors and six charges of furnishing false information in the years 2002 to 2007.

In judicial review proceedings against the DPP, Mr FitzPatrick seeks various orders and declarations including one prohibiting Judge

McCartan, who presided over another trial involving alleged wrongdoings committed by others at Anglo Irish Bank, from presiding over the forthcoming trial.

Bernard Condon SC, for the retired banker, said Judge McCartan had declined to recuse himself from presiding over the criminal trial.

There was no need for Judge McCartan to hear the case, counsel said, adding the application was being brought to ensure his client receives a fair trial.

Lawyers for the DPP said they were taking a neutral position in regards to Mr FitzPatrick's application for leave.

The trial is expected to last up to three months before a jury at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.

The matter came before Mr Justice Richard Humphreys today who granted Mr FitzPatrick's lawyers permission to bring the application. The matter was made returnable to next week.

The Judge also suggested to the parties they return before Judge McCartan and mention the issue. He said this would allow Judge McCartan to discuss the issue with the Circuit Court President.

Mr FitzPatrick was not present in court for the application.
THE IRISH Times and Littlewoods Ireland have been given chances to avoid criminal convictions for breaking e-privacy regulations by sending customers unsolicited emails.

Following separate investigations by the office of the Data Protection Commissioner, they pleaded guilty to the offences at Dublin District Court today.

Judge John O'Neill said the cases would be struck out if The Irish Times Ltd gave 3,000 to suicide prevention charity Pieta House while Littlewoods must donate 5,000 to the same cause.

Tony Delaney, Assistant Data Protection Commissioner, told Judge O'Neill the important message for companies involved in electronic marketing is that there has to be robust testing of technology behind their databases.

The offence, which is under the European Communities (Electronic Communications Networks and Services) (Privacy and Electronic Communications) Regulations 2011, can result in a criminal conviction and a fine of up to 5,000 per incident.

Mr Delaney told the court that a woman, who had an account with online retailer Littlewoods, had opted out of receiving their marketing emails. However she continued to get more of them and in 2014 the data protection watchdog gave them a warning, after which they agreed to donate 2,500.

However, Mr Delaney said the emails resumed last year when two more were received by the woman. One of them was a marketing email headed show how super your mother is offering a Mother's Day bargain.

Following the previous complaint, the company did a review of her customer account she was inadvertently opted back in to receive marketing messages. As a consequence of this the lady received more emails after she thought the problem had been resolved. It also caused a credibility issue for the office of the Data Protection Commissioner, Mr Delaney said.

Prosecution solicitor Clare McQuillan told the court the company had no prior convictions.

Mr Delaney agree with Shelley Horan BL, for Littlewoods, that the error was an inadvertent accident and the company had co-operated with the investigation and also entered a guilty plea at the first opportunity. He also agreed that Littlewoods had addressed the issue and had agreed to pay 1,078 prosecution costs.

Ms Horan told the court that there had been a human error and the offence was committed unwittingly. The customer has kept her account with the retailer which has spent significant time and effort to address the issue, counsel said.

In relation to The Irish Times Ltd, the Assistant Data Protection Commissioner told Judge O'Neill that a man had subscribed to their Get Swimming weekly newsletter but after three or four issues he opted out last year and received a confirmation email. But he received the next issue and then made several further attempts to unsubscribe.

After a number of weeks still receiving the newsletter he contacted their customer care team. Later he received an email with a promotional offer and another newsletter..

Mr Delaney said the man found it distressing that it was so difficult to find a solution and had concerns over the protection of his data. Mr Delaney said that 64 other users were also affected but the fault had been corrected, after two horses have bolted.

Defence counsel Eoghan Cole said The Irish Times was disappointed to find itself before the court and accepted that it had fallen short of the required standard. He also asked the judge to note that costs would be paid and had they had co-operated fully. Steps have been taken to remedy the problem which was caused by human error, counsel said adding, If it had amounted to an overt retail offer and continued to bombard him it would be a different character of act, counsel said.

Judge O'Neill adjourned the cases until May 23 to confirm that the donations have been made which would result in them being struck out. He said the money would be better spent by going to Pieta House instead of the court recording a conviction.

After the case, The Irish Times released a statement: "The Irish Times today confirmed a breach in Data Protection resulting from the sending of an unsolicited email. The breach related to an automated email being sent to one of its customers despite the customer having unsubscribed from a service. This happened due to human error in the set-up of the service. The Irish Times has resolved the issue to the customers satisfaction after being made aware of the error by the Data Protection Commissioner."

Commenting on the matter the Managing Director of the Irish Times, Liam Kavanagh, said : Email is an increasing method of communicating with our customers and we are committed to the highest standards regarding procedures in this area. We have taken the necessary steps to ensure this error does not recur.
A trial date has yet to be set for Anti Austerity Alliance TD Paul Murphy on charges of falsely imprisoning acting Tanaiste Joan Burton during a water charges protest in Jobstown almost 18 months ago.

Mr Murphy (32) with an address at The Copse, Woodpark, Ballinteer appeared at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court along with 18 others, some facing charges of false imprisonment and violent disorder.

His defence team requested the case be adjourned for mention to allow recent correspondence from the State to be considered. They said they had replied to the Director of Public Prosecutions on Friday and were awaiting a response.

The case of most accused people was adjourned to May 3, next, while a warrant was issued for Dylan Collins (20) of Bawnlea Green, Tallaght when he failed to come to court to answer his bail.

Among the group of accused are Dublin Councillor Kieran Mahon (38) of Bolbrook Grove, Tallaght and Anti Austerity Alliance Councillor Michael Murphy (50) of Whitechurch Way, Ballyboden.

Another accused, Thomas Kelly (33) of Cushlawn Dale, Tallaght, was remanded in his absence after he didn't come to court because he has started a new job as a commis chef.

His counsel asked Judge Melanie Greally for leniency as she said her client had attended court on all occasions and the court heard the gardai were not seeking a warrant on the condition that Mr Kelly's defence team ensure he is notified of the adjourned date.

Judge Greally said Mr Kelly had seriously underestimated his need to attend court but said given the generous attitude of the prosecution she would remand him in his absence to the same date as his co-accused.

Antoinette Kane (23) of Cloonmore Park, Jobstown, Tallaght, who is due a baby in two weeks was not present in court and Colman Fitzgerald SC, defending, said he had been unable to take instruction from her.

Counsel said his client had been excused at the previous court hearing if she was considered unfit to attend court. She was remanded on continuing bail until May 3, next.

Ms Burton and her entourage had left a graduation event at An Cosan Education Centre at Jobstown, Tallaght when a demonstration was held which delayed her for about two hours on November 15th, 2014.

She and her team had been attempting to travel by car to St Thomas Church for the rest of the ceremony when it is alleged violence broke out.

The three public representatives are charged with false imprisonment of Ms Burton and of Karen O'Connell at Fortunestown Road, Jobstown. Fourteen others are charged with false imprisonment while nine people are charged with violent disorder.

Two men are charged with criminal damage of two garda vehicles.

Judge Greally adjourned the case to May 3, next for mention after she was advised by Tony McGillicuddy BL, prosecuting that the State only sent through written instruction last Wednesday in relation to its reason for requesting separate trials.

Padraig Dwyer SC, defending Keith Preston (36) of Sundale Lawns, Tallaght, told the judge at a hearing last month that there is an argument for a joint trial rather than splitting the case into separate hearings. He had asked for the State to set out its terms in writing and Mr McGillicuddy had indicated he would do so by March 18 last.

Mr McGillicuddy told Judge Greally todaythat the State had to give further consideration to the case and a letter outlining its position, together with the indictment setting out the charges against each accused, was sent out later than had been anticipated.

He said he understood the various defence teams were seeking further time and he said he had no objection to that.
A man who claims he got into a drug debt by self medicating his ADHD with cannabis has been sentenced to four years for possession of over 36,000 ecstasy tablets.

When gardai raided the house of Karl Brown (26) they found him in the kitchen counting out pills into bags. Two women who were also present became very agitated but Brown assured them that the gardai were there for him only.

A search of the house uncovered two stashes totalling 36,633 ecstasy tablets along with small amounts of cocaine and amphetamine. Gardai also found weighing scales and a customer list.

Prosecuting barrister Fiona McGowan BL told Dublin Circuit Criminal Court the tablets were worth 366,330 if sold at street level at 10 each. Brown was bagging them into 500 tablet batches when gardai arrived.

Brown of Oakrise, Clondalkin, Dublin pleaded guilty to possession of drugs for sale or supply at his home on March 3, 2015.

He told gardai he was holding the tablets to pay off a 3,000 drug debt he had run up by smoking cannabis. He said he suffered from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and used cannabis to treat it. Brown refused to say who gave him the drugs because he said he feared for his family's safety.

Defence counsel Dominic McGinn SC said his client had co-operated in interview and made admissions. He said Brown was holding onto the drugs for someone else to repay the debt.

Judge Melanie Greally said offenders like Brown had an important role as they keep the drug wheel turning. She imposed a four year sentence with the last 18 months suspended.
Dublin assassins murdered a man living alone in a country lane because he found a 30,000 stash of drugs belonging to a criminal gang, a prosecution barrister said at the Central Criminal Court today.

Patrick Marrinan SC was opening the trial of two men accused of murder for their alleged part in the killing of 47-year-old Christy Daly at Bog Lane, Kilbride, Clara, Co Offaly on a date between December 29, 2013 and January 7, 2014.

Matthew Gralton (22), with an address at Mt Prospect in Co Roscommon, and Ross Allen (25), with addresses in Carrickmines, Co Dublin and Clara in Offaly, have pleaded not guilty to the murder.

Mr Marrinan told the jury of six men and six women that the prosecution's case is that both men admitted to being involved in the killing during interviews with gardai in February 2014.

He said that the jury would hear that neither admitted to being the actual gunman, but that "Ross Allen and Matthew Gralton had a role to play" in the killing.

He said the prosecution would show that Mr Allen hid drugs worth 30,000 on the laneway where Mr Daly lived, but when he returned to pick them up on December 29, 2013 they were missing.

He said this was reported to a Mr X, who owned the drugs, who sent for two members of a criminal gang in Dublin.

He described the men as "assassins" who carried out the killing of Mr Daly.

Mr Marrinan said that the jury would hear from state pathologist Marie Cassidy that Mr Daly suffered multiple gunshot wounds and blunt force trauma "that would indicate a beating".

He said eight 9mm luger bullets were discovered near where Mr Daly lived. Two similar bullets were found in a Volvo car that was parked by the quarry where Mr Daly's body was found.

He said Mr Daly was estranged from his wife and was released from prison in 2013. After his release he went to live in a caravan at Bog Lane, an isolated country lane, where he dealt in motor cars.

Early on December 29, he said Mr Daly was with another man and that they both noticed two people on the laneway. Mr Marrinan said one of those men was Mr Allen.

Mr Daly then left with his son to go socialising in Navan, Co Meath with his brother. His son left him home again at 8pm that evening.

"That was the last that was heard of Christy Daly," said Mr Marrinan. His body was discovered by gardai in a drain on January 7, 2014.

The trial continues tomorrow in front of Justice Patrick McCarthy and the jury of six men and six women.
A reformed drug addict who took part in a 50,000 armed robbery at a Dublin hotel with a former Love/Hate actor as his accomplice has been jailed for four years.

Hugh McWeeney (43) had beaten his addiction by going cold turkey several years ago but was drawn back into offending due to debts built up during his drug use.

During the robbery his co-accused Stephen Clinch, who played Noely in the hit RTE series, held a semi-automatic pistol to the head of a security worker collecting overnight cash from a bar.

Clinch (49) of Millbrook Grove, Kilbarrack, Dublin received a four and a half year sentence last month for his role.

At Clinch's sentence hearing the court heard he told gardai he had been clean of heroin for nine years and did it because he owed money as a result of the discovery by gardai of a consignment of drugs he had being given to hide.

McWeeney, of Main Street, Belmayne, Malahide Road, Dublin pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to robbery of 50,730 and possession of a firearm with intent to commit robbery at The Gate Hotel, Parnell Street on May 11, 2015.

Judge Melanie Greally said that in McWeeney's 31 previous convictions, which date back to the 1990s and early 2000s, there was a link between his offending behaviour and drug abuse. She noted that the cycle of addiction had been broken but not the cycle of offending.

She said that the offence had clearly been a planned armed robbery of a substantial amount of cash being conveyed to a security company. She imposed a five year sentence but suspended the final year.

Garda Denise Bowes told Tom Neville BL, prosecuting, that a staff member, Diraj Boodho, and a security worker, Michel Cieslik, were in the process of delivering two bags of cash containing a total of 50,730 for lodgement when two men came from behind them and demanded the money.

Clinch and McWeeney were dressed like builders, wearing high-viz jackets and white dust masks. Clinch put the gun to the head of Mr Cieslik before grabbing the money and the raiders ran off down a set stairs.

A maintenance man, Barry Smith, saw the pair downstairs running away and following significant tussles the two robbers were restrained by a group of civilians until gardai arrived.

All the money was recovered at the scene. The semi automatic pistol held by Clinch during the robbery was found to contain ammunition which was not suitable for use in that weapon. McWeeney was not armed.

Colm O'Briain SC, defending, said McWeeney began abusing solvents at a young age and progressed onto injecting heroin and using cocaine and crack cocaine. He stopped all drugs at the age of 39 and went cold turkey.

Mr O'Briain said McWeeney had not only rehabilitated himself in terms of drug use but had also been of assistance to others in similar situations. He handed a number of reports and references into court.

He said McWeeney had been drawn back into activity which lead to this offence as a result of debt built up during his time using drugs.
SERIOUS misconduct by a UK supplier of nutritional supplement products has been uncovered by an Irish rival which is being sued for alleged trade mark infringement, the Commercial Court heard.

London-based Aymes International's principal Richard Wertheim Aymes instructed one of his senior employees to impersonate a UK National Health Service (NHS) representative to obtain information over the phone from Limerick-based rival Nualtra Ltd and which was later used in an attempt to undermine Nualtra's business, it is claimed.

As a result of the information Aymes obtained, a number of NHS employees were sent a forged email letter in November 2014 purporting

to be on behalf of the NHS, Nualtra says.

The letter, described by Nualtra's counsel Bernard Dunleavy as a "poison pen letter", made serious allegations about Nualtra which the

Irish firm says were unfounded.

Nualtra obtained a court order in the UK in which it discovered the forged letter was sent by the senior Aymes director who had been

instructed by Mr Aymes to make the original phone call in which that employee posed as a person called "Chris Baker" in order to obtain the information. It later transpired there was no such person in the relevant NHS division, Nualtra says.

A second anonymous letter, also authored by Aymes, was sent to 848 GP practices in July 2015 again making what Nualtra says were damaging and unfounded allegations.

Arising from this second letter, Nualtra sued Aymes International and Richard Wertheim Aymes for defamation and the case was settled in the English High Court last November with an apology from the defendants, along with damages.

In the meantime, a case brought by a Dutch nutritional supplment product supplier, Nutrimedical BV, against Nualtra, for alleged

infringement of the "Nutriplen" trade mark, had come before the big business division of our High Court, the Commercial Court. Aymes

International was later joined as a co-plaintiff with Nutrimedical.

Nualtra, which had fully denied any trade mark infringement, then counter-claimed saying Aymes was involved in a concerted efforts over

a prolonged period of time to undermine its business since the time Nualtra refused to licence its products bearing the "Nutriplen" name

to Aymes.

The case has been before the Commercial Court over discovery of documents in advance of the full hearing.

When the matter was mentioned before Mr Justice Brian McGovern today, Paul Coughlan BL said issues relating to discovery have now changed and the Nualtra side were also seeking what is known as a "wasted costs order" requiring Aymes to pay Nualtra's legal costs so far.

Bernard Dunleavy SC, for Nualtra, said while the solicitors for Aymes could have no blame attached to them for their client's instructions,

what had happened in this case had to be regarded as being "on the outer spectrum of serious misconduct".

The application for a wasted costs order would have to be considered in the context of the gravity of this misconduct and his side believed

it would take half a day to hear, he said.

Mr Justice McGovern adjourned the matter to next month.
Lawyers for notorious criminal Wayne Dundon have told the Court of Appeal that he is entitled to justice just as anybody would be, in their efforts to expand the grounds on which he is appealing his conviction for making threats to kill.

Wayne Dundon (37) of Lenihan Avenue, Ballinacurra Weston, was found guilty by the Special Criminal Court in 2012 of threatening Alice Collins that he would kill or cause serious harm to her sons Gareth Collins and Jimmy Collins at Hyde Avenue, Limerick on September 30 2010.

The non-jury court also found him guilty of the intimidation of potential prosecution witnesses Alice and April Collins with the intention of obstructing the course of justice on the same occasion.

Wayne's younger brother John (33), with an address at Hyde Road, Limerick had also been found guilty of threatening to kill April Collins at Hyde Road on the weekend of April 3rd and 4th 2011.

Following their convictions, the three-judge Special Criminal Court sentenced Wayne to six years imprisonment and younger brother John to five-and-a-half years imprisonment on April 18, 2012.

The brothers are due to open appeals against their convictions today in the Court of Appeal.

However, counsel for Wayne Dundon, Michael Bowman SC, attempted to add additional grounds of appeal this afternoon before the full hearing.

The additonal grounds relate to telephone conversations of persons recorded while in prison which emerged in the subsequent trial of Wayne Dundon and Nathan Killeen for murder.

Mr Bowman opened his application by submitting a family tree to the court to show the complex connections between the immediate Dundon and Collins families.

He claimed Wayne Dundon at all times maintained that this was a familial breakdown. By complaining that the brothers had threatened them, the Collins' saw an opportunity to get the Dundon boys offside, Mr Bowman alleged despite the Special Criminal Court's finding to the contrary.

The Special Criminal Court made a ruling in the subsequent murder trial, Mr Bowman said, that the evidence of Gareth Collins could not be relied upon at all because his allegation that Wayne Dundon admitted to murdering Brian Fitzgerald in 2002 could not have happened because Wayne Dundon was in custody at the time.

Mr Bowman said there was a capacity among the (Collins) family to generate a false statement and he referenced a recorded call between Alice Collins and her husband, which emerged in the subsequent trial, that must hang a very significant question mark over her evidence, he claimed.

Mr Bowman said Wayne Dundon was entitled to justice just as much as anybody would be in these courts and a number of other matters, including bare assertions that certain CCTV cameras weren't working at particular times, were of grave concern.

Counsel for the Director of Public Prosecutions, Shane Costelloe SC, objected to Mr Bowman's application to add additional grounds of appeal.

Having considered the submissions, Mr Justice George Birmingham, who sat with Mr Justice Alan Mahon and Mr Justice John Edwards, said the application to add additional ground could not be dealt with on an informal basis.

The application must be done by way of a motion, the judge said.

He asked counsel for both sides if they would be in a position to prepare a formal motion to be opened in court before the full hearing today.

Mr Costelloe said he would do his utmost to be in a position to reply to the motion tomorrow. He added that the case had dragged on for 30 odd months and he did not want to delay matters further.
SHANE ROSS said the Independent Alliance would not negotiate with Fine Gael under threat of another General Election.

The Dublin Rathdown TD criticised Health Minister Leo Varadkar after he posted a picture of his Election posters and wrote they were ready to be deployed again on Twitter.

Mr Ross said his group of Independents would certainly not take that threat" of a second vote "seriously ahead of talks with Fine Gael.

We're not going to negotiate under threat. We're not going to take that sort of nonsense from Varadkar or anybody else...that there's a General Election threatened to us, he said.

We won't regard that as something we'll respond to positively. We're certainly not going to take that threat seriously.

Mr Ross denied that it was inevitable there would be another election as TDs prepare to vote for a Taoiseach again on Wednesday, when a clear result is not expected.

He and other Independent TDs said they shared the public's frustration as government-forming negotiations continue more than a month after polling day.

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You'd need the patience of Saint Job to put up with what's going on (with Fine Gael and Fianna Fail) and their refusal to meet until next Wednesday, he added.

Waterford TD John Halligan said the Independent Alliance would not shy away from another General Election this year if it came about.

We're not afraid of another election, he said.

The people have already spoken. It is unfair to go back to the people and say, 'we don't like how you voted' but if we have to face the electorate, we're prepared to face them.
The length of time patients are waiting in emergency departments is being "fudged" and the real delays are much longer than official figures suggest, a leading hospital emergency consultant has said.

Dr Peadar Gilligan, emergency consultant in Beaumont Hospital, Dublin, said the clock should start ticking from the time a patient is registered until the stage when they get a bed or are discharged.

The waiting time is currently calculated from the point when a doctor decides to admit the patient, Dr Gilligan told the annual meeting of the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) in Sligo.

A patient could have been waiting for five hours before that, yet this time is not counted in figures from the HSE.

"The challenge in the hospital I work in is that it is often about 16 hours after we request a bed before a bed is made available to the patient," said Dr Gilligan.

"So, in other words, a patient requiring emergency admission that day waits until tomorrow until a bed becomes available to actually get into a ward.

"It compromises their care delivery, but also the delivery of care to the person who needed the clinical space that they had in the emergency department.

"What we do in emergency departments is very important. We save lives and make serious clinical decisions, and we need not to make the environment more risk-prone than it is.

"Many of the patients are experiencing the worst day of their lives and we don't want to make it any worse for them by having to provide that care in a hugely overcrowded department."
John Gilligan was in contact with a former associate and the Kinahan gang before his return to Dublin

Pint-sized criminal John Gilligan had a secret meeting with his former associate Troy Jordan soon after coming back to Ireland.

The veteran gangster also made contact with the Kinahan cartel to ask permission to return to Dublin.

Gilligan had been forced to flee the UK in fear of his life.

The sixty-four-year-old had become involved in a feud with a dangerous Birmingham-based Traveller family after "running his mouth off".

Just two days after returning to the capital, the convicted drug-trafficker travelled to Dundalk for a meeting with his once close friend Jordan (46) and three criminals from Northern Ireland.

The five men were closely watched by gardai at a service station cafe in the border county, with Gilligan and Jordan speaking with each other at length.

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The three men accompanying Jordan are believed to have been criminals from Belfast and Newry.

Jordan left in the same vehicle as Gilligan, with the pair being briefly stopped by gardai.

Members of the Special Detective Unit (SDU) have been keeping a close eye on Gilligan since his return to Ireland.

Despite having a strong criminal pedigree, Troy Jordan has managed to avoid incurring any major convictions to date.

His business connections over the years have included Martin 'The Viper' Foley and Geraldine Gilligan, John's wife.

Botched

Along with Foley, Jordan helped to set up Viper Debt Recovery and Repossession Services in 2005. He resigned as a director in June 2010.

During her legal battle with CAB over the Jessbrook Equestrian Centre in Kildare, Geraldine Gilligan told the High Court in 2008 that her only income was 5,000 a year she received from Jordan "for grass".

Meanwhile, it is believed that Gilligan contacted crime boss Daniel Kinahan through a third-party before he decided to travel back to Ireland.

A hitman gardai believe has been used by the Kinahan Cartel is also the chief suspect in the botched assassination attempt on Gilligan in west Dublin over two years ago.

The gunman fired six shots into the gangland target at his brother's house in Clondalkin, in March 2013.

It is believed the same individual previously tried to target Gilligan at the Halfway House pub in Ashtown, Co Dublin.

He is also suspected of being one of the four men who gunned down Eddie Hutch (59) in February as part of an ongoing feud.

It has been reported that Gilligan "begged" for permission from the Kinahan cartel to return to Ireland.

"He contacted Daniel Kinahan through an intermediary and asked for permission to come back," a source told the Sunday World.
A non-descript house in Dublin's Drumcondra is a surprising link in a global chain of businesses linked to the Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca, at the centre of the leaked so-called 'Panama papers'. Photo: AP Photo/Arnulfo Franco

A non-descript house in Dublin's Drumcondra is a surprising link in a global chain of businesses linked to the Panamanian law firm at the centre of the leaked so-called 'Panama papers'.

The house is home to Pegasus Trust, an Irish firm that provides accountancy, international trust and corporate services. That largely involves helping owners set up and register companies, including drawing up incorporation documents and trust deeds.

Its services include tax registrations, setting up bank accounts and document notarisation.

Since 2013, the company also offers insolvency services.

According to the leaked Panama papers, which feature details of offshore companies used by individuals and companies to avoid taxes, almost one in three of the 360 Irish linked companies that feature in the leaks were represented by Pegasus Trust.

There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing by Pegasus Trust or its clients.

Pegasus, in a statement, said the companies featured in the Panama reports were historic clients and that no new clients had been taken on for more than a decade.

Read More

The Pegasus Trust itself is run by accountants Robert Becker, its managing director, and Hugh McGowan, who is also operations director. In addition, Paul McKenna is listed on the website as business and marking manager .

Pegasus Trust's website features a picture of Dublin's financial services hub in the docklands, but it address is listed as 30 Botanic Avenue, Dublin 9, an ordinary-looking house in the Dublin suburb of Drumcondra.

The company has been around since 1992. It was initially part of a global group, but became an independent operation following a management buyout in 2003, according to its website.

Despite the location, the business offers services across far-flung jurisdictions - from the Bahamas and Virgin Islands to China and the Seychelles, according to its own website.

"We specialise in providing a full management service for Irish resident companies seeking to establish Irish trading status for corporation tax purposes and/or access to Ireland's double-taxation treaty network.

"We are flexible in our approach and work with our clients in creating intelligent solutions together," the website says.

Read More

"The key to the success of any structure is managing the structure so that it complies with the requirements of the jurisdictions involved.

"This requires in most cases that there is a proper management structure in place to run the company.

"In some cases, this will involve the provision of Irish directors; in other cases, it may also be necessary to provide employees. Pegasus has managed several significant trading entities and has the expertise and personnel to fulfil the necessary requirements," it says.

According to the Companies Office, 124 companies have their addresses at the Botanic Avenue property, ranging from international holding companies to local roofers and medical businesses.

Q & A

Whats this about?

Probably the biggest leak of data ever. Its a huge leak of confidential documents revealing how the rich and powerful use tax havens to hide their wealth.

How much data are we talking about?

No less than 11.5 million documents from 2.6 terabytes of data.

Where did it come from?

The internal database of the worlds most secretive companies, Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, the worlds fourth biggest provider of offshore services.

What does that mean?

The company helps clients protect their wealth in secretive offshore tax regimes.

Panama: they make hats and canals there, dont they?

Also, a well-known haven for offshore accounts.

Whats in the files?

The details of 214,000 companies incorporated by the firms.

Whats the time period?

The more than 11 million documents date from 1977 to December 2015.

Whats in the documents?

Cash transfers, incorporation dates, links between companies and individual.

And this shows what?

Basically a firm enabling people to play by different rules.

What do the documents illustrate?

How to help clients launder money, dodge sanctions and evade tax.

Is it hooky to use offshore accounts?

No, its perfectly legal and there are valid reasons for doing so.

And the law firm says?

It says it has operated beyond reproach for 40 years and has never been charged with criminal wrongdoing.

What is the cast of stars involved?

The leaked documents show links to 72 current or former heads of state, including dictators accused of looting their own countries.

Who are we talking about?

The families and associates of Egypts former president Hosni Mubarak, Libyas former leader Muammar Gaddafi and Syrias president Bashar al-Assad.

Whats the Russian connection?

Theres a suspected billion-dollar money laundering ring run by a Russian bank and involved close associates of President Vladimir Putin. This operation was run by Bank Rossiya, which is subject to US and EU sanctions following Russias annexation of Crimea.

How did it work?

Money was channelled through offshore companies, officially owned by one of the Russian presidents closest friends.

Putin has friends?

Sergei Roldugin, hes a concert cellist who has known Putin since they were teenagers. He introduced him to his future wife, Lyudmila. Hes even the godfather to Putins daughter Maria.

How much are we talking about here?

On paper, Roldugin has personally made hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from suspicious deals.

And this is all going to him?

Documents from Roldugins companies state that: The company is a corporate screen established principally to protect the identity and confidentiality of the ultimate beneficial owner of the company.

Wheres Putins name then?

His name doesnt appear but his close circle friends have earned millions from deals that couldnt really have done without his backing.

How deep is Putin into it?

Theres a web of secret offshore deals and massive loans worth $2bn leading back to the door of his dacha.

Where does it go?

The trail starts in Panama, around Russia, Switzerland and Cyprus.

Anything else juicy?

In the mix is an investment is a private ski resort in Igora where Putins younger daughter, Katerina, got married in 2013.

Putin is quite a manly chap, does weights, rides bare chested, fights bears and so on. Does he ski too?

Hes a keen skier and hes a big fan of this resort. When he attended its launch 10 years ago, he was filmed scooting along the snow. He came back five years later and left his bodyguards trailing in his wake as he slalomed down the mountains.

And there was a wedding?

Three years ago, he was back for the wedding of his daughter Katya. The groom was Kirill, the son of another old friend of Putin.

Did we see the photos in Hello! magazine?

Allegedly, the couple rode in old-fashioned sleigh drawn by three white horses. But there were no photographs as there was tight security and the 100 VIP guests sworn to secrecy with mobile phones banned.

Whats the Irish link?

Theres an Irish company in Drumcondra, on the northside of Dublin, which pops up as a client of Mossack Fonseca.

Is it well known?

Intertrade Projects Consultants Ltd, which is about as vague and boring a company name as you could expect.

But its probably got a salubrious headquarters in a multi-storey office block?

Not quite. Its address is in a residential area on Botanic Avenue.

Anything to see here?

It worked as a sales agent and conducted what are known as sub-agency agreements with offshore companies and it then shared commission on sales.

These structures have been controversial in the arms industry because of links to the possibility of being used for bribery.

Who did it work for?

Clients included an Italian firm, which is one of the worlds biggest aerospace and defence conglomerates, with deals involving military aircraft, torpedoes and electronic warfare equipment.

And theres another Irish firm?

Again, based on Botanic Avenue, the Pegasus Trust, which offers offshore location services in places like the Bahamas, the British Virgin Islands and the Seychelles.

How much business?

Busy little bunnies out in Botanic Avenue. There are 360 different companies with links to Ireland in the leaked documents and a third of these are represented by Pegasus Trust. Pegasus told The Irish Times these were historical clients and that no new clients had been taken on for more than a decade.

Sounds like a James Bond movie?

Except that Bond has never been seen on Botanic Avenue. Yet.
Ian McCrea standing next to a memorial to the victims of an IRA bomb in County Tyrone after it was vandalised Credit: DUP/PA Wire

A memorial to the victims of an IRA bomb has been attacked.

Paint was thrown at the stone marking eight deaths at Teebane crossroads between Cookstown and Omagh in January 1992.

The attack happened some time between Sunday night and Monday morning, the PSNI said. It was the second time in recent weeks the memorial has been attacked.

Eight Protestant workmen died and six more were injured when their van was targeted for the massive blast.

In February, floral wreaths laid there were damaged.

The men who died worked for Karl Construction. They had been returning from work at the Lisanelly Army Barracks.

The Historical Enquiries Team conducted an investigation into the attack.

DUP assembly candidate Ian McCrea hit out at those responsible.

"This latest attack follows the damage to the floral tributes left by family members only a few weeks ago and it beggars belief that there are those who will stoop so low as to attack a memorial to eight innocent men murdered by the IRA on 17 January 1992."

Drew Nelson, grand secretary of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland, said it was deplorable.

"Such memorial tributes should be sacrosanct and those responsible ought to be utterly ashamed of their actions.

"Their wickedness goes beyond the pale and is deeply hurtful and upsetting to the relatives of the deceased, who have no doubt been re-traumatised by such vile and reprehensible criminality.

The senior Orangeman also condemned a suspected arson attack at a GAA club in Moy.

"An arson attack on any property is wrong," he said.

"However, attacks on buildings closely identified with one or other side of the community have the potential to escalate both community apprehensions and tensions."

Mr Nelson added: "The Orange Institution wants to see a Northern Ireland where no-one feels a need to engage in such despicable activity."
The family of murdered IRA spy Denis Donaldson have used the 10th anniversary of his death to appeal to Irish police to "fully co-operate" with an investigation into his outing as an agent.

Mr Donaldson, 55, a senior Sinn Fein official and close colleague of party president Gerry Adams, was shot dead at an isolated cottage near Glenties in Co Donegal in April 2006.

The Belfast man had been living there since his exposure as an MI5 agent the previous year.

Dissident republican group the Real IRA claimed responsibility for the murder three years later, but the circumstances surrounding Mr Donaldson's outing and subsequent assassination have been shrouded in mystery.

The spy's family have lodged a complaint with the police complaints watchdog in Northern Ireland, the Police Ombudsman, in regard to how his cover was blown.

They believe a journal he was writing in the months before his murder could hold vital information that could assist. Gardai in the Irish Republic are in possession of the diary and the family have accused them of refusing to grant the ombudsman access to it.

An inquest into the killing has yet to be heard, having been adjourned almost 20 times to facilitate gardai requests for further time to pursue their criminal investigation into the shooting.

Read More

On the anniversary of the killing, the Donaldson family issued a statement through their lawyer Ciaran Shiels.

"Today marks 10 years since Denis was murdered," it stated.

"No-one has yet been held to account for either his exposure as an agent or his subsequent murder. An inquest has still not even been held, yet it has been adjourned on 18 occasions by the Coroner upon the application of An Garda Siochana.

"For the final time, the Donaldson family are calling upon An Garda Siochana to fully cooperate with the ongoing Police Ombudsman's investigation of Denis's exposure in the north by giving the investigators unfettered access to his private journal which was being written by him at the time of his murder.

"The Office of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland is a fellow law enforcement agency and is following a definite line of inquiry in relation to the family's complaint.

"Despite repeated requests, they have been refused access to this document.

"The Donaldson family are appealing to all relevant state agencies, north and south, to finally remove any further obstructions to the truth and sincerely acknowledge the terrible damage they caused, or continue to cause, to the family by their actions and omissions. The onus is with them to remedy these wrongs."

The family is currently pursuing legal action against the Garda for alleged contravention of the Irish state's obligation to conduct a proper and timely investigation under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

A Garda spokesman said: "An Garda Siochana are pursuing a live active criminal investigation into the unlawful killing of Denis Donaldson at Clogheror, Doochary, Co Donegal on the 3rd /4th April 2006.

"A number of individuals have been arrested and questioned in relation to this investigation, as this is a live murder investigation, it is not appropriate to provide further details."
The waterpark section of the Funtasia leisure complex in Drogheda, Co Louth, is expected to remain closed until the company has consulted with both the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) and with the environment section of Louth County Council.

It is taking the steps after at least a dozen customers, including children, sought medical advice in hospital after apparently suffering from the effects of chlorine last Friday.

Customers, some of them parents, used social media to outline their symptoms of coughing, sneezing and watering eyes.

Two children were admitted to Temple Street Children's Hospital but have since been discharged.

One of them was the eight-year-old son of Louise Dunne from Skerries, Co Dublin, who was hospitalised along with his cousin.

Louise said her son was discharged in the early hours of Saturday while his 11-year-old cousin was discharged yesterday morning.

She said she had spoken with the manager of Funtasia and as a result was "feeling very reassured that he has done a lot over the past 48 hours to address Friday's issue".

"We also appreciate how concerned he has been about the children, particularly the two that were admitted to hospital. We do want to know the findings of the investigation and have requested them from him but we aren't taking the matter any further."

A family from Navan, Co Meath, also spoke about their experience.

Gary Lodge, who went to the waterpark with his wife Maeve and children Aaron (2) and Lauren (11), said: "I have never experienced anything like it in my life."

He said he began sneezing after about 15 minutes and put it down to the humidity in the waterpark.

He said the rest of the family began coughing and he saw many people coughing and sneezing: "My wife and the children are coughing. I am very headachey and my nose is burning," he said. All the family are recovering and their symptoms are easing.

In a statement, Funtasia said that "there was a very strong smell of chlorine in the swimming pool of the complex on Friday April 1. System checks showed that the level of chlorine in the pool was within acceptable levels; however some of those present experienced symptoms such as nausea, coughing, watering eyes and running noses.

"The pool area was cleared of customers as soon as possible and subsequently closed. A full recalibration of the pool system is now under way and the pool will remain closed until this is complete.

"We have requested that the Health and Safety Authority and the environmental section of Louth County Council look into the matter and the pool area will only reopen after consultation with these bodies.

"If anyone who visited the venue experienced any of the above symptoms, it is advised they seek medical advice," the statement added.
A non-descript house in Dublin's Drumcondra is a surprising link in a global chain of businesses linked to the Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca, at the centre of the leaked so-called 'Panama papers'. Photo: AP Photo/Arnulfo Franco

Here is all you need to know about today's news on the Panama Papers:

1. Whats this about?

Probably the biggest leak of data ever. Its a huge leak of confidential documents revealing how the rich and powerful use tax havens to hide their wealth.

2. How much data are we talking about?

No less than 11.5 million documents from 2.6 terabytes of data.

3. Where did it come from?

The internal database of the worlds most secretive companies, Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, the worlds fourth biggest provider of offshore services.

4. What does that mean?

The company helps clients protect their wealth in secretive offshore tax regimes.

Panama: they make hats and canals there, dont they?

Also, a well-known haven for offshore accounts.

Read More

5. Whats in the files?

The details of 214,000 companies incorporated by the firms.

6. Whats the time period?

The more than 11 million documents date from 1977 to December 2015.

7. Whats in the documents?

Cash transfers, incorporation dates, links between companies and individual.

8. And this shows what?

Basically a firm enabling people to play by different rules.

9. What do the documents illustrate?

How to help clients launder money, dodge sanctions and evade tax.

10. Is it hooky to use offshore accounts?

No, its perfectly legal and there are valid reasons for doing so.

11. And the law firm says?

It says it has operated beyond reproach for 40 years and has never been charged with criminal wrongdoing.

Read More

12. What is the cast of stars involved?

The leaked documents show links to 72 current or former heads of state, including dictators accused of looting their own countries.

13. Who are we talking about?

The families and associates of Egypts former president Hosni Mubarak, Libyas former leader Muammar Gaddafi and Syrias president Bashar al-Assad.

14. Whats the Russian connection?

Theres a suspected billion-dollar money laundering ring run by a Russian bank and involved close associates of President Vladimir Putin. This operation was run by Bank Rossiya, which is subject to US and EU sanctions following Russias annexation of Crimea.

15. How did it work?

Money was channelled through offshore companies, officially owned by one of the Russian presidents closest friends.

16. Putin has friends?

Sergei Roldugin, hes a concert cellist who has known Putin since they were teenagers. He introduced him to his future wife, Lyudmila. Hes even the godfather to Putins daughter Maria.

17. How much are we talking about here?

On paper, Roldugin has personally made hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from suspicious deals.

18. And this is all going to him?

Documents from Roldugins companies state that: The company is a corporate screen established principally to protect the identity and confidentiality of the ultimate beneficial owner of the company.

Read More

19. Wheres Putins name then?

His name doesnt appear but his close circle friends have earned millions from deals that couldnt really have done without his backing.

20. How deep is Putin into it?

Theres a web of secret offshore deals and massive loans worth $2bn leading back to the door of his dacha.

21. Where does it go?

The trail starts in Panama, around Russia, Switzerland and Cyprus.

22. Anything else juicy?

In the mix is an investment is a private ski resort in Igora where Putins younger daughter, Katerina, got married in 2013.

Putin is quite a manly chap, does weights, rides bare chested, fights bears and so on. Does he ski too?

Hes a keen skier and hes a big fan of this resort. When he attended its launch 10 years ago, he was filmed scooting along the snow. He came back five years later and left his bodyguards trailing in his wake as he slalomed down the mountains.

23. And there was a wedding?

Three years ago, he was back for the wedding of his daughter Katya. The groom was Kirill, the son of another old friend of Putin.

24. Did we see the photos in Hello! magazine?

Allegedly, the couple rode in old-fashioned sleigh drawn by three white horses. But there were no photographs as there was tight security and the 100 VIP guests sworn to secrecy with mobile phones banned.

25. Whats the Irish link?

Theres an Irish company in Drumcondra, on the northside of Dublin, which pops up as a client of Mossack Fonseca.

26. Is it well known?

Intertrade Projects Consultants Ltd, which is about as vague and boring a company name as you could expect.

But its probably got a salubrious headquarters in a multi-storey office block?

Not quite. Its address is in a residential area on Botanic Avenue.

27. Anything to see here?

It worked as a sales agent and conducted what are known as sub-agency agreements with offshore companies and it then shared commission on sales.

These structures have been controversial in the arms industry because of links to the possibility of being used for bribery.

28. Who did it work for?

Clients included an Italian firm, which is one of the worlds biggest aerospace and defence conglomerates, with deals involving military aircraft, torpedoes and electronic warfare equipment.

29. And theres another Irish firm?

Again, based on Botanic Avenue, the Pegasus Trust, which offers offshore location services in places like the Bahamas, the British Virgin Islands and the Seychelles.

30. How much business?

Busy little bunnies out in Botanic Avenue. There are 360 different companies with links to Ireland in the leaked documents and a third of these are represented by Pegasus Trust. Pegasus told The Irish Times these were historical clients and that no new clients had been taken on for more than a decade.

31. Sounds like a James Bond movie?

Except that Bond has never been seen on Botanic Avenue. Yet.
Labour Party chairman Willie Penrose has intervened in the row over the party leadership, insisting that Joan Burton's successor should be appointed without the need for an internal election.

LABOUR Party chairman Willie Penrose has intervened in the row over the party leadership, insisting that Joan Burton's successor should be appointed without the need for an internal election.

Mr Penrose last night said a leadership contest could cause unnecessary damage to the party, as he called on all Labour TDs to unite behind one candidate.

Both Brendan Howlin and Alan Kelly are interested in replacing Ms Burton as leader and have already begun seeking the support of colleagues.

Ms Burton is expected to announce her intention to step down - possibly as early as this week, despite a 'Sunday Independent' opinion poll yesterday showing the majority of Labour supporters believe she should stay on as leader.

With Cork East TD Sean Sherlock backing Mr Howlin's bid, Mr Kelly is the only other likely contender for the leadership. The Tipperary TD will require the support of at least one other Labour TD in order to trigger a contest.

But speaking to the Irish Independent last night, Mr Penrose said the party must focus on becoming a "constructive force" in opposition, adding that a leadership contest would prove to be a distraction.

"The focus needs to be on rebuilding the party following the election. I believe the leadership contest should therefore be uncontested," the Longford-Westmeath TD said.

Mr Penrose's intervention will be seen as a blow to Mr Kelly and comes after several former TDs also called for Mr Howlin to take charge of the party uncontested in the interim.

The issue of the leadership is expected to be discussed at Labour's parliamentary party meeting on Wednesday.

There are deep tensions within the party following a meeting in City West last Wednesday, during which Ms Burton's leadership came under attack. Afterwards, Ms Burton is believed to have told colleagues she felt "set up" by Mr Howlin.

The Wexford TD sat back for most of the meeting as members queued up to criticise the party leadership.
A mysterious figure who uses a pseudonym has been one of the Sinn Fein leaders closest confidants for decades.

The nearest Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein have to an eminence grise is the bearded and white-haired 69-year-old Ted Howell from west Belfast.

Howell is said to be the figure whose advice Adams most closely follows. He was a constant background presence in the Sinn Fein delegation during the 1998 Belfast Agreement talks and was pictured on one occasion by photographer Alan Lewis as he and Adams conferred inside one of the Stormont complex offices.

Aside from that, there are only a few images of Howell, who disappeared from public view almost entirely in the 1970s and is believed by security sources to have spent a good deal of time abroad, meeting supporters or potential supporters of the Republican movement.

Howell is "#Ted", the "teddy bear" that Adams began tweeting about two years ago, causing considerable media speculation.

Adams, apparently, was highly amused at the media response to the teddy bear reference to his right-hand man.

It is understood that Howell attended St Mary's Grammar School in west Belfast, a year or two ahead of Adams, and they appear to have been close ever since.

Republican insiders say it was on Howell's advice that Adams decided to publicly deny he was ever a member of the IRA.

The reasons for this, outside Adams's and Howell's inner circle, are unknown. But the denial has caused Adams an amount of discomfort ever since.

Howell's other known faux pas is bringing British Intelligence Service (MI5) agent Denis Donaldson into Adams's inner circle or think-tank.

Donaldson was one of the best-placed agents the British had. He was exposed in 2005 and murdered in a Co Donegal cottage. No one has been charged.

Journalist and author Ed Moloney had this to say about Howell: "The most import- ant figure in the 'Think Tank', aside from Adams him- self, was a man who was virtually unknown outside the closed world of republicanism.

"Ted Howell was a highly secretive figure who for many years used a pseudonym in public, the legacy, it was said, of years spent on the European continent liaising with foreign groups on behalf of the Republican movement, during which he had to avoid the attentions of various intelligence agencies, not least of them the British Secret Service, MI6."

Moloney said Howell used the pseudonym Eamon McCrory while living incognito for years out of the sight of British intelligence.

The author says that Adams made reference to Howell in the acknowledgements to his book, A Pathway to Peace, in 1988, in which he wrote: "This essay could not have been written without the co-operation and encouragement of the 'Kitchen Cabinet'," he wrote. "I thank them. Thanks also to . . . Eamon 'Ted' McCrory for access to (his) material."

Moloney also cites one Sinn Fein source as depicting Howell's role at the time of the Good Friday talks.

"During the 1998 talks, Adams came into the room," recalled one source, "and somebody asked him, 'What's going on?' His reply was, 'I don't know, but Ted Howell does, and he's the only one who does'."

It was, Moloney says, Howell who was also the emissary that Adams sent to the US to gather support prior to the 1998 agreement and the earlier ceasefires.

Given the potential magnitude of Gerry Adams's public backing of Thomas 'Slab' Murphy and his attack on the non-jury Special Criminal Court, it is believed in republican and security circles that Adams would not have made his statement last Saturday without consulting Howell and possibly one or two others in his kitchen cabinet.

Informed sources say that the import of Adams's statement may have been lost on many people as it is tantamount to a threat to both the Republic and to the 'cessation' of terrorist violence in Northern Ireland.

It was described by one politically tuned-in source in the North as "sabre-rattling".

However, a return to the IRA's 'war' is highly unlikely, as garda sources say the IRA no longer has the capacity to re-start its terrorism campaign.
When asked what message she would convey to the family who donated the organ that saved her life, Saoirse Perry (23) says, "I would tell them that I consider them to be modern- day superheroes".

Thanks to her transplant, this funky, upbeat and charismatic young woman can now look forward to a happy and productive future. And if she hadn't got that transplant? Well, she doesn't want to go down that dismal road.

Saoirse, who comes from Cabra in Dublin, explains that soon after her birth, she was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis (CF). Luckily, this disease of the lungs and the digestive system hardly affected her at all when she was a child. Nonetheless, parents Cieran Perry and Maria Ball (sister of The Commitments star, Angeline Ball) made absolutely sure that Saoirse led a healthy life. "I swam, went horse riding, did ballet and played the violin," she says.

When she left school, Saoirse began an arts degree at Maynooth University, with geography and ancient classics as her majors. She steamed along until her final year, when she became extremely ill. The first indication was considerable weight loss in the latter part of 2013. Serious chest infections soon followed, which were compounded by other problems, so Saoirse ended up in St Vincent's University Hospital. There, they discovered that her liver was not functioning properly and recommended the insertion of stents into her bile ducts to help them drain. Once that had been done, Saoirse went on holiday to Croatia. But, within days, she was home again and being whisked to hospital by her frantic parents. "Basically, my whole body had stopped working," she explains. And even though she remained in hospital being fed through a nasal gastric tube, Saoirse continued to deteriorate.

Nonetheless, on New Year's Eve, her family, with the consent of doctors, took her out for dinner. However, by the time they got her back to the hospital, Saoirse was in a coma and remained so, for two days. "The build-up of toxins caused by liver failure had affected my brain," she says, while adding that she and her boyfriend, Cillian Byrne, still managed to fulfil a vow to spend New Year's Eve together. "Even though I was in a coma, he stayed by my side, so we were together," she laughs.

It was now abundantly clear Saoirse was in the final stages of liver disease. So a specialist team at St Vincent's did an assessment and found her to be a suitable candidate for a transplant. "I was absolutely terrified when they told me," she remembers. "But then I thought about all the awful things I had gone through the previous year, and realised that this was the only way out of all that."

By now, Saoirse weighed just six stone, and was constantly ill with chest infections. She was advised to put on weight and to get as healthy as possible, in readiness for a transplant. So she went home and began in earnest to do all that she could to make herself fit for the complicated and demanding procedure. She consumed as many calories as possible; she took supplements, exercised as much as she could, given her low energy levels, and tried to stay positive. Over the next few months, Saoirse managed to put on a stone and a half in weight.

Then, one Saturday morning, four months later, she got that crucial call. "It was 9am and I was lying in bed when they phoned," she recalls. "I don't remember this, but my mother says I ran into the bathroom and slammed the door. I guess it was a shock to realise the transplant was finally becoming a reality. We all went to St Vincent's, where I was seen by the transplant team and given tests to make sure I was a good match for the organ. It took about three hours to get the go-ahead."

Having been given the all-clear, Saoirse was prepped for surgery and accompanied to the theatre by her family and Cillian. "I gave everyone a hug," she volunteers, "because you never know what is going to happen once you head through those doors."

Maria, Saoirse's mother, says they were advised to go home and wait for updates about their daughter. They got two calls; one to say the damaged liver had been removed, and a second one to say the donor organ had been successfully implanted. Finally, they could breathe again. By mid-morning the next day, Saoirse was already awake. "All I can remember is having a huge tube in my neck," she says. And though she recovered quickly from the surgery, the next few months became a veritable roller coaster. "I had many complications," she explains. "I was taken back to ICU several times."

Saoirse says she became so immersed in, and concerned about, her erratic recovery, that she was constantly asking medical staff about her status. "I knew all my blood levels," she volunteers. She says Kaiser, her husky dog, was crucial in helping her stay calm and in getting well. "My mum brought him to the hospital after my transplant, and when I saw him, I just bawled," she says. "When you go through an experience as difficult as this, you need something like a dog to help you cope."

And even though her health was up and down, a day did come, three months after the transplant, when Saoirse was allowed to go home. Her dedicated and fashionable mum then came up with the idea of starting a pop-up vintage shop online, and at local markets. Her aim was to take her daughter's mind off the trauma she had been through. It worked brilliantly; Saoirse was soon busy sourcing and selling the clothes.

Just eight months after the transplant, Saoirse was able to return to college. Currently, she is hard at work completing her degree and is also raising awareness about organ donation.

"This transplant saved my life. But it doesn't just affect me - it affects my whole family and all my friends," she says with deep conviction.

When asked what she might say to the family who donated their loved one's organs, including the liver she received, Saoirse puts it this way: "I would say I love you and I feel absolutely connected to you. I believe you, and anyone else who carries an organ donor card, are the superheroes of this world. If someone loses a life, it's a very, very dark place. But organ donation paints that dark place with a very bright light."

Organ Donor Awareness Week, organised by the Irish Kidney Association (IKA), is taking place until April 9. For organ donor cards, freetext DONOR to 50050, lo-call (1890) 543-639, or see ika.ie
New laws came into force on Thursday compelling dog owners to microchip their pets. Pound owners, mutt lovers and animal wardens all emitted a happy bark of relief. Vets, too, are content with the extra work.

But I have a nagging doubt that this animal-loving legislation didn't go far enough. Regardless of age, breed or coat, couldn't we also have microchipped the 157 newly elected beasts of the 32nd Dail? Reports have been circulating that many of them simply went missing during the vital trick of forming a new government. They are, in the main, quite docile creatures who perform well in the ring for their masters. Neutering is not a humane option for those who misbehave, but the microchip might save the State a small fortune in everyday expenses. Signing in has long been a pre-requisite for the paying of politician's expenses. But this has led to the common practice of signing in, followed by a quick walkies. Political pups and bruisers often attend for a quick sniff or to cock a leg, before marching out on the grass for another hair-raising mileage claim. Back in my health-board days, we became well-accustomed to meetings that began to empty out after five minutes. And I know to my own cost that the poodle who pointed out this feral behaviour was never the most popular pooch in show.

I mentioned hospital parking last week and the 4 charge that one regional institution was extracting from visitors after just 20 minutes munching grapes. To be fair, the first 20 minutes were free, but all hospital departments and wards are architecturally designed to be at least a 20-minute maze of corridors away from the pay station. This free-period policy is interesting because it does allow the theoretical possibility of avoiding the charge completely. First, the patient being visited needs to be wheeled down to the main concourse. One visitor sits with them while the other conducts clinical U-turns every 19 minutes in the car park. In this fashion, you can visit completely free of charge as often and for as long as matron allows. I was also surprised that all the wheelchair car spots were subject to the usual car-park fee. My understanding of disabled parking badges was that on-street public parking facilities were free to those who had them. Have we become too mean to extend this courtesy to public and private hospitals too?

One difficulty with hospital parking is that no attempt has been ever made to provide a clear or transparent service. There are huge variations in prices, policing and dispensations. Hospitals tend to contract-out these responsibilities to private companies and these contracts rarely make it into public view. I recall from my health-board days that one major hospital had an excellent arrangement with a local shopping centre, which allowed staff to park there in the morning. A mini-bus was provided to bring them over to work, and doubtless the nurses and doctors did a bit of shopping there after their shift. But the hospital car-park company didn't like the arrangement and felt it was doing them out of money, so they insisted that the service was brought to an end. Rightly or wrongly, the first and last impressions most patients and their families have of hospitals are made in their car parks. These experiences should be fair and transparent, and ignored at a hospital's peril.

This month's Irish Medical Journal has some new, excellent research from the headache clinic at Cork University Hospital.

Over 1,000 visitors to Munster chemists who had gone in looking for something for a headache were questioned about their symptoms and preferred treatment. Two results caught my eye. One was how few patients with frequent headaches had ever sought a medical diagnosis; the second was how commonly products containing codeine were sought. Doctors are increasingly identifying medication-overuse for headache where codeine-based products can actually cause the development of chronic daily headache, not to mention dependence. The study also showed that simple aspirin is very much under-appreciated, considering it is among the first-line treatments of tension headaches and migraine.

My own lifelong research into the human condition continues, and I am always happy to receive pithy observations at mgueret@imd.ie or post to PO Box 5049, Dublin 6W. What stops me sleeping is a new personal project between me and my little black Moleskine. I have been documenting things that keep me from a good night's sleep. There are eight entries to date. In no particular order, they are wines from Chile, Chinese food, a glass of milk before retiring, a closed bedroom window, dog in the bed, warm nights, the Garda helicopter and having to write Rude Health the next morning. Please do let me know anonymously of your own personal causes of insomnia and we'll see if there are any interesting matches. What stops me snoring is a separate lifelong struggle being worked on by other members of the family.

My quest for the most exciting nursing home in Ireland, one with the greatest potential for extracurricular activities continues. A Galway reader tells me of a care centre in Connemara that is right beside the church, the pub and the beach. Sounds very promising indeed. Throw in a 1980s-theme disco, high-speed internet and a rowing boat, and we could set that date for 2043.

Dr Maurice Gueret is editor of the 'Irish Medical Directory'

drmauricegueret.com
MOTORISTS are facing penalty points and fixed charges for faulty tyres later this year.

That is the pledge from Transport Minister Paschal Donohoe after he said he was shocked at new findings which found faulty tyres are contributing to far more accidents than was previously realised.

The results of new analysis of Garda forensic evidence investigations into fatalities have shocked those involved in road safety - with tyres a factor in 14 deaths a year.

The figures show that vehicle factors - especially tyres - contribute far more to deaths and injuries on our roads than was believed to be the case.

Now the Road Safety Authority (RSA) is embarking on a campaign to highlight the dangers posed by tyres that are worn, damaged or under-inflated.

They were a significant vehicle factor in 66 vehicles between 2008 and 2012.

The results are based on a five-year analysis of Garda Forensic Collisions Investigations rather than the on-scene preliminary reports.

The research was unveiled today by Mr Donohoe. He promised there would be a penalty points and fixed-charge notice system for defective tyres at a point later on in the year.

But he hasnt decided yet on how many points will be levied on offenders.

Penalty points for defective tyres are listed on original legislation but have not yet been enacted.

Mr Donohoe said he was struck by just how big a factor tyres have been in accidents.

He urged motorists to regularly check their vehicles to make sure they are roadworthy. This report highlights just how important it is that every aspect of a vehicle is in proper roadworthy condition.

Based on the study into 858 collisions the blunt verdict is that no other component in your car is as likely to contribute to a crash as your tyres.

RSA chief executive Moyagh Murdock said today: This report shows that tyres are the parts of your car that are most likely to put you at risk of a fatal collision if theyre not roadworthy.
Someone told me that my subject is food. It is apparently the only thing I write about with absolute authority and accuracy. And she didn't mean recipes or reviewing restaurants or anything intelligent like that. She meant writing about eating, in its most basic sense.

She meant, though she didn't say it, writing about addiction to food. I know this because I have come to realise that she, although she is very slim and generally engaged in some form of weird denial of food, is addicted too. What she connects when I write about food, are things that only another addict could empathise with. She gets it. The obsession. She gets that food is the focal point of everything, the geography of the day. Food is my north, my south. The rest of the day is only filler between eating. Sometimes I get so engrossed in things or so busy that I might forget about food for a while, which is a kind of a sweet release. But it comes back then, harder than ever, this obsession. And it punishes me for forgetting about it by doubling its hold over me for the next while.

I am not very discriminating when it comes to food. I am increasingly intolerant of tricksy food, of fetishism, of the elevation of food to art, of food as a pastime. I am intolerant of foodies and their prattle about foraged this and pureed that. I look on them as a hardcore alcoholic looks on lightweight weekend drinkers. They are merely dabbling. They are not truly committed as I am. It is not the centre of their lives. It does not define their every waking hour.

Unlike these connoisseurs I do not crave fancier and fancier food. As I go on, I crave more and more simplicity. If I keep going back to the heart of things, if I keep stripping back in favour of more and more elemental food, soon I will be grazing in a field. I want basic and gutsy and simple. I want the fewest ingredients possible. I want the least amount of preparation. The meals I remember are the simplest ones. Potatoes from the ground with butter on the west coast. Pasta with oil and chilli in Italy. Tiny shrimp, fiery sauce and freshly made soft tortillas on an island off Mexico. Fresh burrata with oil and some bread. These are the meals that remain with me.

But then there is the junk too. Sometimes I need an oven-chip-and-fried-egg-sandwich on processed bread. Or the most unnatural tasting, highly seasoned crisps I can find. Toffee Crisps, Ben and Jerry's Caramel Chew Chew ice cream, Tesco's own-brand jelly beans, one of the best jelly beans on the market. I am indiscriminate. I see the beauty in all shapes and all sizes and all flavours of food, from the divinely natural to the disgustingly unnatural. Sometimes I crave flavours and colours that don't exist in nature.

I love it all.

I largely manage to keep it under control. Because I know there is a hole in me, a huge hole of boredom and restlessness that craves action and satisfaction, no matter how short-term. It demands to be filled but it can never be filled. Even when I binge, and eat so much that I feel sick and feel like bursting, that hole can never be filled. As I put down ice cream after crisps and chocolate, moving through different flavours, textures and sensations just so I can stuff more into me, even as I am shovelling it in, I know it is not doing the trick. I am chasing the dragon. When I get into the business of comfort eating, I know it will never work. It will never give me what I need. It will never scratch that itch. And it becomes almost like abusing myself.

So largely I manage not to go to that place. Largely I manage to eat for pleasure, to not go hardcore, to understand that there is no point in going beyond enough, that I will never get the oblivion that I crave, the food morpheus will not come. Food is not a painkiller. Food is not a lover. Food is not a mother. Food cannot fill the hole. Food cannot make you whole. Food cannot answer those questions for you, or give you a hug, or offer you comfort.

So largely I manage to keep it in check. I try and enjoy food without needing to keep going. I try to dip in and out. I rely on the working day, on the distractions of life to keep me from eating all the time until I explode. Because I am capable of that too. I am an addict, a functioning one right now, for today at least. And if you understand this piece then you probably are too.
You might hate Monday, but you'll love our hand-picked selection of special offers... fresh every week.

171pp: Loved up in Liverpool

SuperBreak is a new short break specialist in the Irish market. One of its introductory packages bundles flights from Dublin, two nights at the 3-star Chalon Court Hotel and two tickets to The Beatles Story in Liverpool from 171pp, departing April 23. 01 695-0000; SuperBreak.ie.

299pp: Low prices in Lanzarote

The Canary Islands have shot up in price this year as holidaymakers seek alternatives to North Africa, but Sunway has seven-night, 2-star packages in May from 299pp. Trips depart May 7, 14 or 21. 01 231-1800; sunway.ie.

385pp: Dubai with British Airways

Trailfinders has a British Airways sale this week, including return flights to Dubai (via London) from 385pp. Flights to Malaysia are available from 465pp, while return fares to South Africa start from 489pp. 01 677-7888; trailfinders.ie.

399pp: Seven nights in Sicily

Cassidy Travel has a May sale with up to 50pc off package holidays. Offers include flights and transfers plus seven nights in Sicily from 399pp, based on a May 14 departure. 4-star packages start from 499pp. 0818 332 500; cassidytravel.ie.

999pp: Take a trip to Thailand

Travelmood has a weeklong package to Thailand, including flights, transfers and accommodation at the 4-star Centara Resort in Phuket from 999pp. The trip is based on travel in September. 01 960-9458; travelmood.ie.

For the best hotel deals in our #MagicMonday destinations, and holiday hotspots all over the world, see hotels.independent.ie.

NB: All travel deals subject to availability/change.
As those who know her waited anxiously to see what toll a hell-hole South American jail would have on a young woman from Co Tyrone, few would have predicted the results.

After two-and-a-half years beneath the sweltering Peruvian sun, convicted drug smuggler Michaella McCollum emerged from the Ancon Dos desert prison on Friday.

Yesterday, while out on parole for trying to smuggle 2m worth of cocaine to Europe, one half of the Peru Two sauntered around Lima's trendiest and most affluent district.

The 23-year-old, from Dungannon, wandered along streets lined with designer label boutiques and trendy cafe bars with apparently not a care in the world and looking more like she had just stepped out of the spa rather than a prison.

Accompanied by her mother Nora, brother Keith and other family and friends, the aspiring model and her entourage fled when approached by the Irish Independent.

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Dressed in a black top and ripped black jeans, a newly blonde McCollum and her companions ran to a nearby taxi, snaking through side streets to escape being pictured.

Desperately trying to prevent the young drug mule from being photographed, they piled into the car. The group shouted at the taxi operator to "drive" several times.

McCollum, who appeared on RTE television last night with glistening white teeth, minimal make-up and a manicured appearance, looked like she was in full holiday mode.

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McCollum (23) had been partying in Ibiza in 2013 when she and her Scottish friend Melissa Reid disappeared. Their worried families had notified Spanish police before the pair turned up a week-and-a-half later in Lima airport where they were arrested with 11kg of the killer drug hidden in mayonnaise packets.

McCollum is now living in the same well-to-do neighbourhood where she picked up her consignment of cocaine in 2013.

Nestled metres from the beach and one of the country's best shopping districts, it is understood this is where McCollum may spend up to four years in the Peruvian capital before she can return home to Ireland.

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She was freed under new legislation on early prison release, but must pay the equivalent of 3,500 to the Peruvian government to cover the cost of her incarceration.
Anyone who has had to renew their motor insurance lately will tell you it has become a shocking experience.

Premiums have jumped by an eye-watering 30pc on average over the past year.

The industry has blamed many factors for the sudden, and in many cases unaffordable, hike.

These include high legal costs, fraudulent claims, levies flowing from the collapse of Quinn Insurance, and, most recently, the Court of Appeal decision that other insurers must take on liabilities stemming from the collapse of Setanta Insurance.

Another issue of serious concern is the size of awards being made in the courts.

Senior figures at Axa Insurance were so exercised by some awards they brought them to the attention of Jobs Minister Richard Bruton.

Obviously, insurers have their own agenda and want to keep their costs down.

But there was a yawning chasm between what insurers expected to pay out and what was ultimately awarded in the cases cited by Axa.

Mr Bruton was lobbied on the issue as the Personal Injuries Assessment Board (PIAB) falls under his remit.

An independent body that makes personal injury compensation awards for motor, workplace and public liability accidents, it was set up in 2004 as a more cost-effective alternative to the litigation system.

It has had a positive impact - and an estimated 1bn has been saved since its establishment.

In the decade after it was set up, 70pc of personal injury claims avoided ending up in the courts.

But despite such positive figures, it is clear PIAB is not working as well as it could be.

Significant numbers of people are still suing in the courts. Over 1,500 awards were made by the courts in 2014.

A key issue is the 'book of quantum', a compensation guide produced by the PIAB for the guidance of judges, lawyers and insurers.

The current book is well out of date and it is unclear how much it guides decisions made by the judiciary.

Judges are obligated to have regard to it, but are not restricted to awards within its guidelines. A new book of quantum is being published later this year.

Hard-pressed customers have been screaming out for any measures that will help make insurance more affordable.

So there will be relief in many quarters that Mr Bruton has grasped the nettle and raised the book of quantum issue with the judiciary.

He hasn't gone in with six guns blazing or criticised the judiciary for the manner in which certain cases have been handled.

And he hasn't sought to undermine their independence.

But he has met with the President of the High Court, Mr Justice Peter Kelly, in a bid to get judges to "buy in" to the new book of quantum.

This is crucial if people are to be dissuaded from using the courts.

If the PIAB and senior judges end up singing from the same hymn sheet on the size of awards, it will inevitably lead to more PIAB awards being accepted and less people opting for expensive court cases, where costs inevitably end up being absorbed into customer premiums.

It is just one of several areas that need to be targeted to get insurance premiums back under control.
Liam Payne and Cheryl Fernandez-Versini are like "two little chipmunks madly in love".

The One Direction star and former Girls Aloud beauty Cheryl hit headlines when they started dating earlier this year, mainly due to the 10-year age gap between them. Despite their relationship having its doubters, music mogul Simon Cowell has revealed seeing the pair together has dismissed any concerns he had about the romance.

"I saw them together and we had a really nice dinner," Simon told Britain's The Sun newspaper. "They were on good form. They're like two little chipmunks madly in love. Literally they were so cute."

The new couple are believed to have stayed with Simon during a recent trip to Los Angeles. And The X Factor boss says he is thrilled that Cheryl appears to have found love again following the breakdown of her marriage to Jean-Bernard Fernandez-Versini.

Expand Close Cheryl Fernandez-Versini and Liam Payne at Salmontini restarant on March 9, 2016 in London, England. (Photo by Mark Milan/GC Images) / Facebook

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"But importantly they both seemed very happy over here and very relaxed," he added. "I'm happy for them."

Expand Close Cheryl and Simon Cowell on The X Factor / Facebook

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It was recently reported that Liam, 22, and 32-year-old Cheryl were feeling "under pressure" to make their relationship work. When the news went public the pair faced criticism from many, including One Direction fans, and the attention on their romance is said to have caused some concerns on Cheryl's side.

It was so perfect between them before everyone found out, a source told Britains heat magazine. There was no pressure before  no judgements. They were able to go on their holiday to the Maldives together without anyone knowing or commenting. Now, their every move is under scrutiny and Cheryls scared that the pressure could prove too much and end up splitting them up.

While Cheryl is deeply committed to Liam, she is finding herself in a new position this time round.The insider claims this is the first time Cheryls been the adult in the relationship and is used to dating men who take care of her. It could be good for Cheryl as shes a great listener, the source explained.
Tess Daly and Vernon Kay attend the National Television Awards at 02 Arena on January 22, 2014 in London, England. (Photo by Ian Gavan/Getty Images)

Vernon Kay and Tess Daly attend the British Takeaway Awards at The Savoy Hotel on November 9, 2015 in London, England. (Photo by Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images)

TROUBLE: The TV presenter Vernon Kay has denied acting inappropriately by contacting glamour model Rhian Sugden, pictured, who he sexted six years ago

It looks like Rhian Sugden, the woman at the centre of the Vernon Kay sexting scandal, has unwavering support in her fiance.

The 29-year-old glamour model hit headlines last week when it emerged that she had been texting the tv presenter - six years after he was originally involved in a sexting scandal with her and four other women.

Rhian is engaged to former Coronation Street actor Oliver Mellor and hit out at reports he had dumped her this morning. It as reported that the the soap star "didn't speak for the majority of last week" and called quits on their relationship. But Mellor hit back at the claims this morning posting a defiant selfie of them in bed together.

"If your 'story' is true then who the f##k is this in my bed," he wrote.

Expand Close TROUBLE: The TV presenter Vernon Kay has denied acting inappropriately by contacting glamour model Rhian Sugden, pictured, who he sexted six years ago / Facebook

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Whatsapp TROUBLE: The TV presenter Vernon Kay has denied acting inappropriately by contacting glamour model Rhian Sugden, pictured, who he sexted six years ago

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Kay, who is married to presenter Tess Daly, said his wife knew about the texts to the glamour model, which he described in 2010 as "foolish and stupid."

Posting on his public Facebook page, the 41-year-old said: "Regarding today's story: I was contacted by Rhian out of the blue back in December regarding the story in 2010 claiming she had information she wanted to pass on.

"I recognise how it may look when messages are pulled out of context but there was never any inappropriate intent to our communication, I was merely trying to find answers to questions that I've had since 2010.

Expand Close Tess Daly and Vernon Kay attend the National Television Awards at 02 Arena on January 22, 2014 in London, England. (Photo by Ian Gavan/Getty Images) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Tess Daly and Vernon Kay attend the National Television Awards at 02 Arena on January 22, 2014 in London, England. (Photo by Ian Gavan/Getty Images)

"Tess is aware of everything that has been discussed with Rhian," he added.
File photo 20/3/2016: Children at a municipal camp for displaced families in Bhaktapur, where families still suffering from the aftermath of the 2015 earthquake are living in tented accommodation. Photo: Ben Birchall/PA Wire

Child survivors of the Nepal earthquake are being sold to British families for a few thousand pounds to work as domestic slaves, according to an investigation.

Boys and girls as young as 10 are being sold for just 5,250 by black market gangs operating in the Punjab in India, an investigation by The Sun has claimed.

They are preying on the children of Nepalese refugees and destitute Indian families, according to the newspaper.

Home Secretary Theresa May said child trafficking is a "truly abhorrent crime" and urged the National Crime Agency to investigate the newspaper's findings.

She told the newspaper: "No child, anywhere in the world, should be taken away from their home and forced to work in slavery.

"That is why we introduced the landmark Modern Slavery Act last year, which included enhanced protections for potential child victims of slavery and sentences up to life imprisonment for those found guilty.

"We encourage The Sun to share its disturbing findings with the Police and National Crime Agency so that appropriate action can be taken against the vile criminals who profit from this trade."

The Sun reported that the desperate children are being sold to wealthy British families to be used as unpaid domestic servants.

According to the newspaper, a trader named Makkhan Singh lined up youngsters for an undercover reporter to pick from and said: "We have supplied lads who have gone on to the UK.

"Most of the ones who are taken to England are Nepalese.

"For the supply of a boy, minimum 500,000 rupees (around 5,250). Then you will have other costs associated with taking him to the UK, but that's your responsibility extra to what you pay us.

"Take a Nepalese to England. They are good people. They are good at doing all the housework and they're very good cooks. No-one is going to come after you."

A 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal on April 25 last year, killing almost 9,000 people and leaving millions in need of aid.

It is estimated that millions of people across the world are victims of modern day slavery, trafficked across borders and forced to work in servitude.

In October 2015 the Modern Slavery Act was brought in to crack down on modern day slavery and protect victims of trafficking.
Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have made spirited final pitches to Wisconsin voters, who will cast ballots in a Republican primary that both consider a key step in the race for president.

After Tuesday, there is a two-week lull before the next important voting, in New York.

Mr Trump is facing pressure on multiple fronts following a difficult week marked by his controversial comments, reversals and rare moments of contrition.

While his past remarks on topics like Mexican immigrants have drawn a backlash, even he appeared to recognise the damage caused by a series of missteps in the lead-up to Wisconsin.

Those included re-tweeting an unflattering photo of Mr Cruz's wife and a series of contradictory comments on abortion that managed to draw condemnation from both abortion rights activists and opponents.

While Mr Trump is the only Republican with a realistic path to clinching the nomination ahead of the Republican convention, a big loss in Wisconsin would greatly reduce his chances of reaching the needed 1,237 delegates before then. A big win for Mr Trump would give him more room for error.

In US primaries voters in each state select delegates pledged to candidates who then vote at the parties' national conventions over the summer.

Mr Trump is facing pressure on two fronts.

In Wisconsin, he has been battered by negative ads. The state's top Republican advertiser has been Our Principles PAC, which pumped almost 1.3 million US dollars into anti-Trump ads. The Club for Growth, which has endorsed Mr Cruz, is spending 800,000 dollars on ads that promote voting for Mr Cruz - not John Kasich - as the best way to ensure a defeat for Mr Trump.

Also, the state's Republican establishment, including governor Scott Walker and some of its most influential conservative talk radio hosts, have lined up to support Mr Cruz.

At the same time, Mr Trump's campaign has been outmanoeuvred by Mr Cruz in some early states where the campaigns are working to ensure that the delegates who attend the convention this summer are loyal to them.

Mr Trump acknowledged his frustrations on US broadcaster CBS in discussing a meeting with members of the Republican National Committee.

"And I did look at my people. I said, 'Well, wait a minute, folks. You know, we should've maybe done better,'" he said. "Except I also said, 'I won the state.' And I think there's a real legal consequence to winning a state and not getting as many delegates."

Meanwhile, Mr Cruz predicted a "terrific victory" during the taping of a town hall interview in Madison that was to be broadcast on Fox News. Mr Cruz also discounted any possibility of someone other than Mr Trump or himself winning the nomination.

"This fevered pipe dream of Washington that at the convention they will parachute in some white knight who will save the Washington establishment, it is nothing less than a pipe dream," he told reporters. "It ain't going to happen. If it did, the people would quite rightly revolt."

On Monday, the Democratic rivals appealed to union members and showed their next-primary hopes by their locations: Bernie Sanders in Wisconsin, where polls show him ahead, and Hillary Clinton in New York, which votes in two weeks and is a must-win state for her.
Migrants get on a ferry at the port of Mytilini on the Greek island of Lesbos to be returned to Turkey (AP)

A migrant child looks out behind a wire fence of a refugee camp in the western Athens' suburb of Schisto (AP)

A masked Turkish police officer escorts a migrant after the first vessel from Greek island Lesbos was docked in Dikili port, Turkey (AP)

A controversial European Union plan to curb migration and smash smuggling rings in Turkey began as 202 migrants from two Greek islands were piled onto boats heading back to Turkey.

Under heavy security, authorities on the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios began the deportations - the first in a plan that has drawn strong criticism from human rights advocates but is seen by some European nations as the only way to resolve the continent's migration crisis.

The first vessel from Lesbos was escorted into the Turkish port of Dikili by the Turkish coast guard as a Turkish helicopter hovered overhead. The migrants were taken to red-and-white tents for registration and health checks.

About a dozen people stood at the port holding a banner that read "Welcome refugees. Turkey is your home". That came in sharp contrast to protests by locals over the weekend who feared that Dikili would turn into a warehouse for refugees.

A second vessel motored in from Lesbos and a third from Chios. Authorities said most of the people in the first batch were Pakistanis. They were loaded onto buses.

Those who arrived from Lesbos were sent to "reception and removal centre" in the north-western Kirklareli province on the Black Sea, according to Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency. It said Syrians would be placed in refugee camps and other migrants would be deported.

In an address to police officers in Ankara, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu urged them to show "compassion'" to the returning migrants and said Syrian refugees from camps in Turkey would be sent to Europe now as part of the plan.

Defying the new plan, more than 330 people still crossed over to Greece from Turkey in smuggling boats on Monday morning, according to Greek authorities.

Turkey and the European Union reached a deal last month that says migrants who reach Greece illegally from Turkey after March 20 will be returned to Turkey unless they qualify for asylum. For every Syrian turned back, a Syrian refugee is to be resettled from Turkey to the EU.

In Germany, 16 Syrian refugees from Turkey landed in the central city of Hannover on Monday to be resettled and 16 more were expected on a flight later in the day.

Monday was the designated start date for transfers, a symbolic benchmark in the agreement that has been plagued by concerns over human rights and the adequacy of preparations made in Greece and Turkey. The numbers transferred, however, were smaller than initially forecast.

A total of 50,000 migrants and refugees are stranded in Greece following the border closures of European nations further north, but only those who arrived after March 20 - about 4,000 of them - are being detained for deportation.

Giorgos Kyritsis, a spokesman for a Greek government refugee committee, said 136 migrants were deported from Lesbos and 66 from the nearby island of Chios, where riot police clashed with residents hours earlier during a protest against the expulsions.

Greek officials say those returned came from 11 nations, including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Congo.

"This is the first day of a very difficult time for refugee rights. Despite the serious legal gaps and lack of adequate protection in Turkey, the EU is forging ahead with a dangerous deal," Giorgos Kosmopoulos, head of Amnesty International in Greece, said.

"Turkey is not a safe third country for refugees. The EU and Greek authorities know this and have no excuse," he said.

The operation was supervised by a lieutenant general of the Greek police and occurred peacefully. The deportations started with migrants who did not apply for asylum or had their applications declared inadmissible.

"Even if this first group is not refugees, what we are seeing here is symbolic kick-off of what might be a very dangerous practice of returns to Turkey," Mr Kosmopoulos said.
The first vessel transporting migrants from Greece has docked in Turkey, putting into practice a European Union plan to stem migration to Europe.

At dawn on the Greek island of Lesbos, an initial group of migrants were escorted on to two small ferries by officers from the EU border protection agency, Frontex.

The first vessel, the Nazli Jale, reached the port of Dikili accompanied by the Turkish coast guard.

Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency put the number of migrants at 131 and said they were mostly Pakistani nationals.

A Turkish government official told the Association Press that authorities were expecting 202 people.

A total of 50,000 migrants and refugees are stranded in Greece following EU and Balkan border closures, but only those who arrived after March 20 will be detained for deportation.

Meanwhile, the first Syrians sent from Turkey as part of the deal with the EU have landed in Germany.

The 16 Syrian refugees landed in the central German city of Hannover aboard a scheduled flight from Turkey and were being taken to accommodation in the region, news agency dpa reported.

Another 16 Syrians were expected in Hannover later in the day.

Last month's EU-Turkey deal aims to control the mass influx of people into Europe, many of whom have crossed the Aegean Sea with the help of smugglers.

Returns to Turkey of migrants arriving illegally in Greece who did not apply for asylum or had their claims rejected started Monday; in return, EU countries are to take in Syrians with legitimate asylum claims.
A university student was threatened with being thrown out of a meeting after being accused of violating safe space rules - by raising her hand.

Imogen Wilson, the vice-president for academic affairs at Edinburgh University Students Association (EUSA), spoke out against safe space rules becoming a tool for the hard left to use when they disagree with people, following the incident last week.

Ms Wilson, 22, was subject to a safe space complaint over her supposedly inappropriate hand gestures during a student council meeting.

According to the associations rules, student council meetings should be held in a safe space environment, defined as a space which is welcoming and safe and includes the prohibition of discriminatory language and actions.

This includes refraining from hand gestures which denote disagreement, or in any other way indicating disagreement with a point or points being made.

Disagreements should only be evident through the normal course of debate, it says.

Ms Wilson said she raised her arms in disagreement after being accused by another speaker of failing to respond to an open letter, despite in fact having made efforts to contact the letters authors.

A complaint was made against Ms Wilson, who was then subjected to a vote on whether she should be removed from the room.

Although the vote went in her favour, with 18 people voting to remove her and 33 voting for her to be allowed to remain, she was later threatened with another complaint after shaking her head while someone was speaking.

Ms Wilson said she believed that safe space rules banning gestures of disagreement, which were drawn up under the tenure of previous sabbatical officers, were a little extreme and had been used as a political tool against her after she spoke out against anti-Semitism.

I totally do believe in safe space and the principles behind it, she told the Telegraph. Its supposed to enhance free speech and not shut it down, and give everyone a chance to feel like they can contribute.

Safe space is essential for us to have a debate where everyone can speak, but it cant become a tool for the hard left to use when they disagree with people.

She said: At that meeting we were discussing BDS, the movement to boycott Israel. I made a long and passionate speech against us subscribing to this, on the basis it encourages anti-Semitism on campus. It was only after I made that speech that someone made a safe space complaint. I cant help but think it was a political move against me.

Later on in the meeting, someone threatened me with a second complaint because I was shaking my head  but when I was addressing the room about my worries about Jewish students, there were plenty of people shaking their heads and nothing happened.

According to EUSA safe space rules, only gestures that indicate agreement are permissible, and then only as long as these gestures are generally understood and not used in an intimidating manner.

One Edinburgh university student, Charlie Peters, complained it was pathetic that hand gestures were censored and has started a petition calling on the student union to reinstate and defend free speech.

The petition, which has garnered more than 1,000 signatures, says: We are adults, we do not need condescension or safeguarding.

Last year, a group of leading academics wrote to the Telegraph warning that British universities were becoming too politically correct and stifling free speech by banning anything that causes offence to others.

They criticised the small but vocal minority of student activists arguing for universities to be turned into safe spaces, describing it as an attempt to immunise academic life from the intellectual challenge of debating conflicting views.

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
Iceland's opposition filed a motion of no confidence in the prime minister and protesters gathered outside parliament on Monday after the Panama Papers showed his wife owned an offshore company with big claims on the country's collapsed banks.

The allegations in the leaks released globally over the weekend first surfaced in Iceland last month. But the renewed spotlight has racked up pressure on Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson.

"I certainly won't (resign) because what we've seen is the fact that, well, my wife has always paid her taxes. We've also seen that she has avoided any conflict of interest by investing in Icelandic companies at the same time that I'm in politics," he told Reuters TV.

"And finally, we've seen that I've been willing to put the interests of the people of Iceland first even when it's at a disadvantage to my own family."

Opponents allege a conflict of interest and say he should have been open about the overseas assets and the company.

His centre-right government coalition, in power since 2013, is involved in striking deals with claimants on the bankrupt banks.

A spokesman in the prime minister's office has said the claims of the firm owned by the prime minister's wife totalled more than 500 million Icelandic crowns ($4.1 million).

Crowds outside parliament demanded his and his government's resignation, beating drums and sounding horns. Organisers said more than 10,000 had gathered.

"What would be the most natural and the right thing to do is that (he) resign as prime minister," Birgitta Jonsdottir, the head of the Pirate Party, one of Iceland's biggest opposition parties, told Reuters.

"There is a great and strong demand for that in society and he has totally lost all his trust and believability."

The coalition holds 38 of 63 seats in parliament. It is unclear how the scandal might impact his coalition majority in a vote of no-confidence against him and his government that could take place later this week.

"We've seen unprecedented improvements in the Icelandic economy and the living standards of people in Iceland in recent years since this government took office, so we'd certainly like to continue with that work," Gunnlaugsson added.

Many Icelanders blame politicians for failing to control bankers and for years of austerity after Iceland's big banks failed in 2008, sending the economy into a nosedive.

An online petition for the prime minister's resignation had roughly 27,000 signatures late on Monday. Iceland has a population of around 330,000.

"It is only logical new elections take place," Arni Pall Arnason, head of the opposition Social Democratic Alliance, told Reuters on Friday.

The details about Iceland make up just part of a huge data leak about possible tax evasion around the globe, much of it released on Sunday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and news organisations.
In this image posted on the Twitter page of Syria's al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front on Friday, April 1, 2016, shows smoke billowing as Nusra Front fighters attack the northern village of al-Ais in Aleppo province

At least 22 militants have been killed in an air strike on an al Qaida-affiliated headquarters in northern Syria, a monitoring group has said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said jets thought to belong to the Syrian or Russian air forces targeted the headquarters of Jund al-Aqsa, an extremist group that fights alongside the Nusra Front, al Qaida's affiliate in Syria, on Sunday night.

A media outlet belonging to the Lebanese militia Hezbollah said the strike killed the Nusra Front's official spokesman, Radwan Namous, also known as Abu Firas al-Souri, and his son.

Hezbollah has sent thousands of its fighters to fight alongside Syrian government forces in the country's five-year civil war.
Refugees protest after hundreds broke out of the migrant camp on the Greek island of Chios. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

A Syrian refugee holds her child after hundreds broke out of the migrant camp on the Greek island of Chios. Photo: AFP/Photo

Syrian refugees take part in a protest after hundreds of them broke out of the migrant camp on the Greek island of Chios to camp out at the nearby port. Photo: Getty

Confusion reigned in Greece yesterday as the EU plan to ship hundreds of refugees and migrants back to Turkey was due to begin today.

There was uncertainty on both sides of the Aegean Sea as to how the expulsions would work and how strong resistance would be among asylum seekers.

In the first phase of a grand EU plan that is meant to staunch the unprecedented influx of asylum seekers into Europe, Turkey said it was prepared to accept up to 500 refugees from the Greek island of Lesbos, where hundreds of thousands have landed in the past 12 months.

The refugees and migrants were due to be taken on two ferries from Lesbos's main port, Mytilini, to the Turkish resort town of Dikili, just across the strait that divides the two countries.

Each ferry will reportedly carry 50 migrants and 50 policemen and will make several trips.

"We have prepared for 500 people to come on Monday. We are making our plans and putting in place our capacities," said Efkan Ala, the Turkish interior minister.

"We have been in touch with the Greek authorities and said we could take 500 people and they have given us 400 names. Tomorrow it's possible that this figure could change."

Under the plan, announced last month by Brussels, Turkey will send one Syrian refugee to Europe in exchange for each one it takes back from Greece.

But there was no sign of either of the ships in Mytilini's port yesterday evening, and humanitarian groups said they had been given very little information about how many migrants would be deported and what nationality they would be.

"Refugees are coming up to us asking, 'What shall I do, what is going to happen?'" said Jonas Hagensen of Medecins Sans Frontieres. "The camps are very overstretched."

In the main migrant holding centre on Lesbos, near the village of Moria, there were 2,800 people crammed into a facility that has a capacity of 2,000.

Around 100 people had gone on hunger strike, Mr Hagensen said, placing their food rations by the perimeter fence in protest at being forcibly detained.

British charity Save the Children said conditions inside the camp were "deplorable", with many families sleeping in the open due to a lack of tents.

"People have told us they will commit suicide if they are sent back to Turkey. Some said they will jump off the boats," said the charity's Simona Mortolini.

Humanitarian organisations have called the deportation plan illegal and inhumane.

In Dikili, the Turkish port where the refugees will be sent, the authorities were putting up reception facilities for the deportees. But work seemed to have barely started.

Two tents had been set up in the harbour as a reception centre and two portable toilets were installed nearby. Meanwhile, cows grazed on the empty field set aside for the construction of a refugee camp.

Further south, four small blue tents were set up in the town of Cesme for those sent back from the Greek island of Chios. ( Daily Telegraph, London)

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
Militants have unleashed a wave of suicide attacks across Iraq - killing at least 29 people and wounding dozens, officials said.

The deadliest attack took place in the southern province of Dhi Qar (also known as Nasiriyah) when a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a restaurant that is frequented by Shiite paramilitary militia fighters, killing at least 14 people.

Another 27 people were wounded in the attack on the well-known restaurant, which is located on the main highway that links the capital, Baghdad, with the southern provinces, a police officer said.

Dhi Qar is located about 200 miles south east of Baghdad

At around the same time, a suicide car bomber set off his explosives-laden vehicle in a commercial area in the oil-rich city of Basra, killing at least five people and wounding 10 others, another police officer said.

Earlier in the day, a suicide bomber rammed his car into a security checkpoint in the capital's north-eastern suburb of Sadr al-Qanat, killing six troops and wounding 13 others.

Another suicide car bomber hit a headquarters of paramilitary troops in the town of Mishahda, 20 miles north of Baghdad - killing four troops and wounding 10 others.

The Islamic State group seized much of northern and western in Iraq in the summer of 2014 and established a self-styled Islamic caliphate in the areas of Iraq and Syria under its control, imposing a violent version of Islamic law.

The Iraqi army, along with pro-government militias, launched an offensive last month aimed at retaking Mosul, the country's second largest city, which is under IS control.

Their progress in villages outside the city has been slowed by roadside bombs and other booby traps.

Iraqi officials said troops on Monday recaptured a key village outside Mosul after days of heavy fighting.

Iraqi forces retook the village of al-Nasr, near the Tigris river, after destroying six suicide car bombers that had tried to attack them, Lt. Col. Mohammed al-Wagaa of the Iraqi army said.

As Iraqi forces backed by a US-led coalition have advanced against IS on a number of fronts in recent months, extremists have retaliated with a number of large scale bombings targeting civilians.

According to the United Nations figures, at least 1,119 Iraqis were killed and 1,561 were wounded in March, a sharp increase from the previous month, when 670 people were killed and 1,290 wounded.

The figures include 575 civilians killed and another 1,196 wounded. The other casualties were Iraqi security forces, including Kurdish forces known as the peshmerga and government-allied militiamen.
CHARMAINE SMITH-MILES/INDEPENDENT MAIL Ovalyn Williams has held on to many of the opinion letters she has written and received over the years. To Ms. Ovalyn, writing letters has been one way she has stayed active in politics and tried to make a difference in the world.

SHARE CHARMAINE SMITH-MILES/INDEPENDENT MAIL Some of the letters Williams has written to local newspaper editors over the years CHARMAINE SMITH-MILES/INDEPENDENT MAIL Williams so familiar with the late U.S. Rep. Butler Derrick through her letter writing that he sent her this gift on her 50th wedding anniversary. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Williams photographed as a young woman CHARMAINE SMITH-MILES/INDEPENDENT MAIL Ovalyn Williams shows off an apron she received from the people she worked with at the J.P. Stevens Mill in Pendleton. She worked in the mill for nearly 60 years. Much of her time there was spent working in the mill's canteen.

By Charmaine Smith-Miles of the Independent Mail

PENDLETON  Ovalyn Williams spent nearly 60 years working at the J.P. Stevens mill in Pendleton, but she has spent a lifetime following politics and writing letters to editors and politicians.

With pride, she flips through a thick green photo album full of letters she's written and ones she's received. Yellowed slips of paper, treasured like gold, hold names of governors, congressmen and others  including the late Ted Kennedy, Strom Thurmond and Butler Derrick.

She's written about Social Security benefits. She's written against the unions coming into textile mills, the Confederate flag, the educational system and boycotts. In 1992, she wrote about budget cuts to the department that handled programs for those with special needs. In 2004, she wrote a letter putting her support behind David Crenshaw as he campaigned to become Anderson County sheriff.

She brags a little about the letters she would write to those who controlled the textile mill she worked in.

Some of her letters, which date back to the 1960s, made it to politicians' offices, and a lot of them made it to newspaper editors' mailboxes.

"I'm very concerned for our world. I've always been concerned, because our time here is short," Ms. Ovalyn said. "Sometimes people would say, 'Let someone else worry about that.' But you have to take the time to say something. These issues, whether they are here, in Washington, they concern us."

She wrote so many letters to the late U.S. Rep. Butler Derrick of South Carolina that he gave her and her husband a silver plate on their 50th wedding anniversary bearing the message "Best wishes."

All of it, she said, stemmed from conversations she heard as a girl.

Ms. Ovalyn grew up near Westminster, on a 150 acre farm.

Her daddy, Oscar Land, tended that farm and he built their cotton gin. He was a trustee of one of the local one-room schoolhouses and was "as smart as he could be," she said.

She learned about politics from him and about writing from her mother, Grace Weldon Land.

Land was a columnist for the Chauga News in Oconee County for 40 years, and she also wrote for two other county weekly papers, according to a news clipping that Ms. Ovalyn has kept all these years.

"When I was a little girl, I remember daddy talking about Hewey Long," Ms. Ovalyn said. "Politics came in to my mind then. And we always had a newspaper around, so I have always followed the news."

She moved off that family farm when she married her "country boy," Percy Williams. She met him at a fundraiser at a local schoolhouse.

"He bought the box lunch I made for the fundraiser and ate it with me," Ms. Ovalyn said. "We met in the spring of 1935 and married later that year. And oh, it broke my daddy's heart when I got married."

She was 15, and Percy was 20, she said. They moved several times before they settled in Pendleton. They had five children, and both worked in the textile mills.

They were married for 74 years, until he died in 2010.

Throughout their life together, Ms. Ovalyn never wavered in her letter writing. In one instance, she received a letter from a politician, thanking her for her "willingness to develop the in-depth knowledge of public affairs."

At age 96, she is still an "opinionated ol' cuss," she said, laughing a little while wearing a peach outfit and her white hair styled in tiny curls. She still receives a newspaper every day, but she also gets news alerts on her smartphone.

Several times while she was speaking about her life, her phone dinged, and she read the latest national headlines and state news from the screen.

"I'm very concerned for our world," Ms. Ovalyn said. "I've always been concerned, because our time here is short. You've got to speak up. That's how you get things done. If we could get everybody involved, the politicians here might be more careful."

Follow Charmaine Smith-Miles on Twitter @Charmaine_AIM
BMW announces $1.7 billion investment to build all-electric vehicles

The $1.7 billion investment includes $700 million to build a high-voltage battery assembly plant with 300 new jobs in Woodruff.
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By Abe Hardesty of the Independent Mail

A warm, relatively dry winter has been the perfect tonic for Upstate farm fields that were water-soaked just four months ago.

"Things are the best I've ever seen for this time of year," said Clemson University extension agent Andy Rollins, now in his 10th season as an Upstate fruit inspector.

Rollins said the fields have drained well since the area received more than 17 inches of rain  more than twice the norm  in a two-month period last fall. So well, Rollins said, that the strawberry fields are ripening well ahead of schedule.

Some growers were picking a few ripe strawberries last week, and Rollins expects most Upstate growers to be finding some ripe berries late this week.

Early-harvest fruits, Rollins said, have benefitted from the mildest winter in at last five years.

Anderson's average temperature (45.5 degrees) was slightly below normal in February. But the March average (58.1 degrees) was 5.5 degrees above normal, and the temperature was never lower than 34 degrees. The area hasn't endured a freezing temperatures since late February, well before the fruit was in a vulnerable stage.

"Right now, we're pretty advanced compared to recent years," Rollins said. "It looks like everything is coming in a little early."

Upstate strawberries normally begin to ripen around April 20, but Berry Acres owner Brett Edelen picked about three gallon of ripe berries last week  not enough to sell, but enough to raise his hopes of an early opening at the pick-your-own farm in Anderson County.

"That's definitely real early, for that part," said Edelen, who hopes to have enough berries for public sale by April 15.

"Last year, we opened on the 23rd. We're definitely about 10 days ahead of schedule," he said. "The warm spring accelerated everything. We only had to cover (the plants) twice for frost protection. That's extremely unusual, from everything I've been told."

Clemson University extension agent Chris Talley, who keeps an eye on row crops throughout the Upstate, said "everything is on schedule" despite the persistent rain that virtually destroyed soybean crops last fall and left some experts concerned about a long-term problem.

The rainfall also delayed planting of wheat, the primary winter crop for most Anderson-area growers. But Talley said the fields have drained well in the last four months.

"The wheat crops were looking weak early on. But as of now, they look good," Talley said. "None are standing in water, which is the problem in the Lowcountry.

"It helps that our fields are more hilly in the Upstate. And we didn't get as much rain as they (the Lowcountry growers) did."

He expects local growers to plant corn in the next week.

"It still hasn't been warm enough to plant corn; most farmers will probably get it in the ground in the first two weeks of April," he said.

One side effect of the heavy rains of 2015, Talley said, is a need for more fertilizer this spring.

"All that rain could have led to more nutrient loss than normal, which makes it critical to get more fertilizer in the soil," he said.

That and saturated fields made extension agents in the state's Midlands and Lowcountry pessimistic last week.

Nearly 235,000 acres of cotton, soybeans and peanuts  about one-third of the state's crop  were left to rot last year because farm equipment couldn't access the muddy fields, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

It was the worst planted-to-harvested ratio in state history, the USDA reported.

Corn planting began last week in the Lowcountry, where the farms are normally a month ahead of the Upstate schedule. Planting for cotton, peanuts and soybeans will follow in April and May.

The weather forecast is promising. Mark Malsick of the South Carolina State Climatology Office said growers can expect above-average temperatures and below-normal rainfall in South Carolina this spring.

Follow Abe Hardesty on Twitter @abe_hardesty
Elvira Boger took the first step toward securing a job in manufacturing when she signed up for the free Certified Production Technician program with Rowan-Cabarrus Community College. She had been working at a desk job for six years and was ready to find a rewarding full-time position.

I was stuck in an office sitting at a computer for six years. I was looking for a full-time job and couldnt find one, Boger said. I looked into the program at the college and here I am eight months later.

When she says here she means Perdue Farms in Concord working as a process technician. Boger secured her position at Perdue after graduating from the colleges first Certified Production Technician class that began in 2015.

It is interesting and challenging. There is a lot to learn every day, Boger said. Im not stuck behind a desk. Im in motion most of the time. I feel good and I sleep better. There is a sense of accomplishment and I love it.

Certified Production Technician Program

The colleges eight-week program is part of the North Carolina Manufacturing Institute initiative and allows graduates with little-to-no manufacturing experience to secure employment.

Even accounting for the recent layoffs at Freightliner, no industry in this area is creating jobs in larger numbers and growing faster than manufacturing. Local manufacturers like Perdue Farms, S&D Coffee and Agility Fuel Systems have partnered with the Rowan and Cabarrus chambers of commerce, economic development leaders and Rowan-Cabarrus Community College to build a training program designed to prepare applicants for jobs in the high-tech and growing field of manufacturing.

This program is for anyone who wants a quality job. It doesnt matter what your background is, it matters what your future is, said Craig Lamb, vice president of corporate and continuing education at Rowan-Cabarrus. Our scholarship fund, financed by local employers, ensures that we can offer this training at no cost to the individual. They also plan to hire many of the graduates.

Hiring managers from the North Carolina Manufacturing Institute partner companies are given the graduates resumes and are invited to the college campus to meet the graduates for a preliminary interview to kick-off their search for employment.

The instructor of the class is Stan Honeycutt, who worked at Norandal USA for 20 years. He said the class has four modules; safety, quality assurance, manufacturing practices and maintenance awareness.

We are trying to give them fundamental skills so they can go to work in manufacturing, Honeycutt said. We want them to be an attractive candidate and go to work and not be surprised about the career.

Students who want to participate in the program have to apply and go through the process to receive a career readiness certification along with drug-testing, because that is what an employer would require.

I also try to replicate attendance demands they would have as manufacturing employees. They are required to be on time and learning how to follow instructions, Honeycutt said.

Honeycutt said there is competition world-wide for products these days and there are plenty of stable and high-paying jobs available for the taking.

I like to see anybody have a job. People need to work, Honeycutt said. Hopefully what we are producing are employees that can work safely and efficiently without direct supervision.

Testimonies from students and employers

Wendy Kasper worked in retail for many years and was ready for something new. One of her family members saw an advertisement for the class in a newspaper and she decided to sign up.

Retail is not what it used to be. Theres not much stability and not much of a chance for a career versus a job, Kasper said. Even if you have no experience with manufacturing whatsoever, you can come take this program and be prepared.

Keith Nicholson, who also has a background in retail, said the whole process of the institute is brilliant and he joined the class because the growth in manufacturing is outstanding. He said he always liked putting things together and thought he could excel in a manufacturing career.

Our economy needs a manufacturing workforce. The fact that programs like this exist, I think its amazing, Nicholson said. We are learning about quality processes and safety procedures and so many things I realize are important for day-to-day operations.

He said being in the class helped him examine himself and find skills that are marketable.

Mr. Honeycutt is really helpful. He talks about philosophy and the practicality of work, maximizing our pay check and continuous improvement in the company and yourself. Its about trying to better yourself, Nicholson said, Its really intriguing and helps you examine who you are.

He is already trying to recruit others to participate in the program.

I didnt know it was going to be so great, Nicholson said. The more I can do to get people involved in this, the better.

And students arent the only ones who are benefitting from the program. Since partnering companies have their first pick of graduates, its a win-win for everyone.

They produce great, qualified candidates with the ability to focus on details. They also have better technology skills than others, Craig Pyle, director of Operations at Perdue Farms, Inc., said. It definitely helps prepare people for jobs in manufacturing. They learn about safety, technical skills and continuous improvement. We want people with the vision and willingness to change our processes for the better.

As of January, 22 of the programs 27 graduates had secured full-time employment.

We have many open positions now and we will continue the relationship with RCCC and interview graduates, Pyle said.

Putting a stop to misconceptions

Employees like Boger are working to change misconceptions on manufacturing.

People dont understand what manufacturing is today. Its modernized, Boger said. You need a brain to work in manufacturing. Its not just muscle anymore.

Bogers mother worked in manufacturing when she was a child which led to some of her preconceptions.

Manufacturing is not what I imagined it to be eight months ago. My mother worked in manufacturing for 30 years and I remember her coming home with burns, Boger said. In todays manufacturing safety comes first. It is very automated and its like learning anything else, like a new smart-phone or coffee machine.

Women like Boger and Kasper are also putting a stop to the idea that manufacturing is a mans world.

A lot of times women are the ones that are leading in the class. Back in the 1940s during the war, woman did the manufacturing and then we all went home. Today with what it costs to have a child, you have to have both parents working, Kasper said.

And Boger said she learns a new skill each day in her position that show her the jobs can be done by men and women.

Im sure I have the skills for it. Its not just mens jobs, Boger said. With the facilities and equipment there is, why would a woman stand back and not try to do something like this?

Anyone interested in taking the class can find more information and register at www.ncmanufacturinginstitute.com. For more information on Rowan-Cabarrus visit https://www.rccc.edu.
the creators of Indias first luxury wildlife travel circuit in Madhya Pradesh, announced the opening of its first lodge outside India: Meghauli Serai at UNESCO World Heritage listed Chitwan National Park, Nepal.In a land of snow peaks and sherpas, yaks and yetis, monasteries and mantras, where ancient temples, shrines, palaces and monuments offer a glimpse into the past, Chitwan National Park is a real jewel. Its dramatic landscapes of dense Sal groves, thick grasslands and meandering water bodies, coupled with the breathtaking wildlife, make it one of the most sought after destinations in Nepal. From its prime position nestled on the banks of the Rapti river, Meghauli Serai offers spectacular views of the park across the river from its 30 rooms and suites.is home to an astounding 550 native bird species, including the Great Hornbill, Ruddy Shelduck and Pied Kingfisher, and approximately 68 species of mammals. The majestic Royal Bengal tiger, leopards, wild dogs and sloth bears are in abundance in this natural paradise, but the parks main attraction is the Greater One-horned Rhinoceros. With its armour-like body plates and a solitary horn, the rhino is the Parks local celebrity.We are delighted to extend the legendary Taj hospitality to guests in Nepal. The Taj group has a pioneering reputation for creating destinations and we are very proud to present the latest Taj Safaris Meghauli Serai Jungle Lodge at Chitwan National Park. We are committed to adding value to the community and the region.From its 13 well-appointed rooms that offer elevated views over the jungle-scape to the 16 independent villas each with their own private plunge pools and the plush Rapti Mahal presidential suite, the lodge takes local traditions to a luxurious setting. Meghauli Serai has incorporated local hues into its design and operations for truly sustainable touches. From its Newari and Tharu-inspired front doors and the use of natural earthy tones that reflect the landscape, to the locally-sourced ingredients that foreground Tharu tastes in inventive cuisine, the lodge offers a relaxing setting for discovery.Interpretive wildlife experiences allow guests to discover and enjoy the stunning natural beauty of Nepal. Safaris on elephant-back, by jeep and jungle walks give a whole new perspective on jungle life. Walks through the local Tharu village showcase traditional village life, where guests can learn the tricks of moonshining for traditional brews or get a taste of fresh homemade Nepalese pickle. Canoeing on the Rapti river or trekking through the awe-inspiring Himalayan foothills will satisfy the adventure-seekers. When its time to relax, nowhere is more suitable than with the signature spa treatments or by the cool water of the infinity pool, overlooking the tranquil flow of the Rapti river.Taj Safaris believes that the best wildlife experience is interpretive and rooted in the local wildlife and community through a proven sustainable ecotourism model. Our four luxury jungle safari lodges in Madhya Pradeshs tiger country created Indias first luxury wildlife travel circuit. With this exciting opening in Nepal, we are looking forward to welcoming guests for immersive wildlife experiences in the heart of the jungle at our newest destination, Meghauli Serai.Getting thereMeghauli is easily accessible from Kathmandu by road or by flight. It takes a short 20 minute flight from Kathmandu to Bharatpur airport, followed by a 45 minute or 30 kms drive to Meghauli Serai Jungle Lodge in Chitwan National Park.An alternative is to take a private charter from Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, to the Meghauli Airstrip in Chitwan. Helicopter charters are also available from Kathmandu to Meghauli Serai Jungle Lodge.
British steelmaker, Corus group Plc might have stayed on the radar of Tata Steel for a multitude of years, before its acquisition in 2007. However, the profitability of the acquisition deal has certainly come into question.Retrieving to 2007 when Tata Steel had made its conquest over Corus Group, the former had outbid Companhia Siderurgica Nacional's (CSN), by mere five pence. The robust acquisition, now grim, has turned out to be exorbitant for Tata Steel. Coruss acquisition was aggressively vied for by the Indian private steelmaker and its Brazilian counterpart, in an attempt to become worlds largest steelmaker following Mittal Steels footsteps. While Mittal Steel, post acquiring Arserol, duly occupied the throne of being the worlds biggest steel manufacturer, Tata Steel failed to come abreast with its rival.With Tata Steel Europe, the UK arm of the Indian steelmaker deteriorating notably, Tata Steel, quite predictably is considering a sell-off. The inability of Tatas UK business to mint adequate financial profit has left its acquirer with no other choice but to sell off the entire business set up in Britain.Due to issues thwarting Tata Steel from expanding operations in India about a decade ago, the steelmaker had decided to spread wings in Britain.In its statement, the steelmaker has attributed the sale of its UK arm to the trading conditions in UK and Europe losing track recently. Factors like volatile currency, global steel glut, rising third country exports into Europe, weak domestic market demand persisting and manufacturing costs hitting the roof, have led to poor trading conditions. Hence, post an unsuccessful business stint in the UK, the firm is now attempting to compensate the massive losses weighing down on the company, by the sell-off.However, considering Tata Steel Europes dismal financial health since the last twelve months, any possibilities for recovery of losses, look bleak. Soaring manufacturing costs, dipping demand and raised imports impede the steelmaker as it grapples for a rebound. Despite restructuring, job cuts, asset sales and modernization, the companys UK arm has failed to mint profit since Tatas' takeover of Corus in 2007 for $8.1 billion. Even chopping off as much as 3,000 jobs did not help in mending the broken business in the UK.Moreover, the last 5 years also witnessed the company taking an impairment charge of 2 billion pounds. Getting marred by the incessant imports of pocket-friendlier Chinese steel into India and Europe, a loss of Rs 2,127.23 crore was reported by the firm on consolidated basis in Q3, which got wrapped up on Dec 31, 2015. Already, the companys UK arm was operating amid cut-throat competition from labour unions on cut in pension as also employment along with asset sales plans.Despite the GDP of UK growing to 62 per cent as of 2014, contraction of about 24 per cent has been observed in the steel industry of the nation. The recent years have witnessed a decline in the economic activity of Britains steel industry. From contributing around 0.5 per cent in UKs GDP in the 1990s, the steel industrys current contribution stands at a frugal 0.1 per cent, as per published data.The merger with Corus, renamed Tata Steel Europe in 2010, was meant to revitalize the British steel industry which appeared morbid with looming losses. At a time when stock investors were warranting caution for Tatas against its keen interest and aggressive bidding for Corus , shunning the latters stock intensely, Ratan Tata had come out in defense of his companys move.A corporations life stretches beyond a year. Therefore labeling the company as fruitful or barren on the basis of either exemplary profit or loss in a single year, is a harsh and short term view of the market, he had justified as per reports.With its annual capacity augmenting from 5 million tonnes from 8.7 million tonnes, the company ingressed into the European markets and treaded through the same for nearly ten years. Buying over the Anglo-Dutch steelmaker after steering clear of an unprecedented strife with CSN, was a gigantic overseas purchase for an Indian company. A whopping amount of the cost was financed via debt.Standing amid the first Fortune 500 multinationals from India with Coruss acquisition in 2007, had made the company the fifth largest steelmaker. However, the financial tempests in the midst of which Tata Steel Europe only tried to survive, shoved the parent company down by six positions. Certain industry experts are also unanimous to Tata Steels decision to divest its UK business.Besides blaming Chinese dumping for jeopardizing the business, it would only be fair to take the steelmakers inefficient functioning into account.According to media reports, divestment of Tata Steel Europe had long been in the industrys foresight. Poor communication between departments, ineffectual leadership, faulty organization as also unproductivity had been pointing towards a doom since long. Moreover, operations on the Dutch side witnessed bountiful investments flowing in, quite in contrast to that of British Steel. Consequently, British Steel failed to boom while Dutch operations became a world-class unit.Recently, Ratan Tata tried to skirt the impact of the debacle. He justified his companys sour takeover experience by crediting investors for raising prices. Overbidding or refraining from the same while taking a judgement call is subjective, he had said. However, the companys approach of putting blinders on regarding the rationality of its seemingly unwise acquisition, appears delusional not to mention counterproductive.The exact reason for the acquisition striking loss might still need to be firmed up. That said, evident factors like over-pouring of financial resources in the face of inadequate technical resources, have certainly not underplayed their roles in the current fiasco.Perhaps, incidentally or circumstantially, Tata Steel has sketched a splendid example of an ill-fated acquisition and its ramifications for the industry.
With its ranking going up by three places, India has now been ranked sixth among the world's 10 largest manufacturing countries, a UNIDO report has said. The country previously held the 9th rank. The Yearbook, published by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), finds that in India, the Manufacturing Value Added (MVA) grew by 7.6 per cent in 2015 compared to the previous year. (PTI)The menace of toxic emissions at petrol pumps in the national capital has come under the lens of the National Green Tribunal which has asked the Centre to respond to a plea alleging lack of air quality norms at fuel stations. (ET)Orders for the much-hyped Tesla Model 3, a cheaper version of its electric car aimed at the mass market, have surged to 276,000 in just three days, company founder Elon Musk said Sunday. Orders are piling up fast and exceeding the expectations of the company for its Model 3 -- which will have a base price of $35,000 -- even though it won't be available until late next year. (AFP)Delhi-based two-wheeler electric bike-taxi service company Promto has launched the city's first ever eco-friendly two-wheeler taxi service to address the gap of last mile connectivity for local commuters. (ANI)Maruti Suzuki dispatched 5,563 units of its new compact SUV Vitara Brezza in March, according to media reports. The bookings for SUV commenced on 8th March but the deliveries started only on 25th March. (Indiainfoline)Bajaj Auto March total sales stood at 3.05 Lk units. The exports were at 1.01 lakh units in March. Motorcycle sales were at 2.64 Lk units. (Indiainfoline)
ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank have offered to provide loans to yoga guru Baba Ramdev's rapidly expanding Patanjali Ayurved, reports a business daily. Patanjali Ayurved is looking to raise ~INR 1,000 crore in FY17, it adds.The two private sector banks recently approached the Haridwar-based consumer goods maker to offer corporate loans, Patanjali Ayurved's MD Acharya Balkrishna told the paper.State Bank of India (SBI) and Punjab National Bank (PNB) have so far extended credit facility to the company so far, he told the daily."While big industrialists fail to repay loans, we pay off our dues right on time. This is made possible due to our escalating product sales," Balkrishna has been quoted as saying.Patanjali Ayurved plans to raise funds through bank term loans or corporate bonds as it aims to double its production capacity to 2,000 tonnes per day by the end of FY17.It is now planning to set up manufacturing units in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Jharkhand and West Bengal.
Infosys breached the 52-week high circuit trading on a new high of Rs. 1236 on Monday. As per reports, Infosys co-founder NS Raghavan along with wife Jamuna Raghavan acquired shares worth Rs. 94.56 crore of the company through an open market transaction.Infosys is currently trading at Rs. 1232.7, up by Rs. 26.8 or 2.22% from its previous closing of Rs. 1205.9 on the BSE.The scrip opened at Rs. 1212 and has touched a high and low of Rs. 1236 and Rs. 1212 respectively. So far 1441068(NSE+BSE) shares were traded on the counter. The current market cap of the company is Rs. 276988.56 crore.The BSE group 'A' stock of face value Rs. 5 has touched a 52 week high of Rs. 1234.65 on 28-Mar-2016 and a 52 week low of Rs. 932.55 on 10-Jul-2015. Last one week high and low of the scrip stood at Rs. 1234.65 and Rs. 1191.6 respectively.The promoters holding in the company stood at 13.07 % while Institutions and Non-Institutions held 57.18 % and 12.48 % respectively.The stock is currently trading above its 50 DMA.
Closing bell:The BSE Sensex ended with a gain of 130 points at 25,400. The BSE Sensex opened at 25,334 touched an intra-day high of 24,419 and low of 25,223.The NSE Nifty closed with a gain of 46 points at 7,759. The NSE Nifty opened at 7,733 hitting a high of 7,764 and low of 7,704.In broader market with the benchmark indices with the BSE midcap and smallcap indices closed higher by 0.24% and 0.52% respectively.The India VIX (Volatility) index was up 0.99% to 17.4500.The Indian Rupee was trading up by 7 paise at 66.18 per US dollar.On the global front, China's Shanghai Composite index closed up by 0.17% and Hang Seng closed down 1.36%.In Europe, the FTSE 100 up 0.60%. On the other hand, DAX gained 0.96% and the CAC 40 trading higher by 1%.Live market:At 3:12 PM, the S&P BSE Sensex is trading at 25,395 up 126 points, while NSE Nifty is trading at 7,759 up 46 points.The BSE Mid-cap Index is trading up 0.24% at 10,668, whereas BSE Small-cap Index is tradingdown 0.55% at 10,698.Bharti Airtel, M&M, Infosys, Dr.Reddy's, Tata Motors, Bajaj-Auto, Wipro and Tata Steel are among the gainers, whereas ITC, ONGC, Lupin, Axis Bank, Maruti Suzuki, HDFC, Coal India and SBI are losing sheen on BSE.Some buying activity is seen in IT, telecom, consumer durables, auto, utilities and power sectors, while FMCG, banking, capital goods, oil and gas and realty are showing weakness on BSE.The INDIA VIX is up 2.41% at 17.6950. Out of 1,813 stocks traded on the NSE, 596 declined, 924 advanced and 293 remained unchanged today.A total of 33 stocks registered a fresh 52-week high in trades today, while 20 stocks touched a new 52-week low on the NSE.The Indian rupee depreciated by 10 paise to 66.36 against the US currency in early trade on Monday at the Interbank Foreign Exchange due to increased demand for the dollar from importersRegistering above the crucial 50.0 threshold for the third consecutive month in March, the seasonally adjusted Nikkei India Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index (PMI)  a composite singlefigure indicator of manufacturing performance  was indicative of another improvement in businessconditions across the sector. Moreover, the headline index was up from 51.1 in February to an eight-month high of 52.4.Relaxo Footwears galloped 20% to Rs.442.10 on BSE. Around 1.5% equity trade in block deal. Around 3.2 lakh shares were traded in a single block at Rs.425 on the NSE.Gammon India Ltd gained 2.6% to Rs.13.40 on BSE. The company has sold its civil engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) business to Thailand's GP Group in a deal pegged at Rs. 250 crore. GP will also reconstitute the board of GRIPL. The deal is expected to be completed in 12 months after signing the agreement.Adlabs Entertainment zoomed 3% to Rs.89.70 on BSE. Adlabs Entertainment Ltd (Adlabs) refreshed its brand promise with a one brand one destination approach. The Theme park, Water park and the soon to be launched Snow park all have a new identity now under the brand name IMAGICA. Adlabs Entertainment Limited  which has its flagship brand IMAGICA, unveiled its new branding at Khopoli, highlighting the promise of being a very interesting destination. The new logo represents Imagica as a one stop holiday destination, bringing all its brands under a single Brand name, Imagica, with the tag lineBadi Interesting jagah hai The refreshed brand communication positions IMAGICA as an interesting place and the tag line elucidates the underlying message.Havells India gained 1.2% to Rs.317.15 on BSE. Around 14.4 lakh shares were traded in a single block at Rs. 318.75 on the BSE.SSWL achieved total wheel rim sales of 12.25 Lacs Vs 11.16 Lacs in March 2015 representing a 10% YoY growth. The stock is currently trading 1.7% higher at Rs.356 on BSE.MBL Infrastructures Ltd jumped 4.2% to Rs.160.40 on BSE. The company has bagged two NHAI orders worth Rs.2.126 crore.DLF Ltd stock was lower by 2% at Rs. 118. Kushal Pal Singh, promoter of the company acquired a company in British Virgin Islands, a tax haven, in which his wife Indira KP Singh is a co-shareholder, according to Panamanian law firm that helps set up offshore entities, says report.Shares of the Ahmedabad-based e-commerce firm Infibeam Incorporation Ltd today opened 6% higher at Rs. 458 against its IPO price of Rs. 432 a share. Currently, Infibeam is trading at Rs. 452 on BSE. The company has raised Rs. 450 crore via an initial public offering.Geometric galloped 17.3% to Rs.230 after the board of directors in a meeting held on April 1, 2016 has considered and approved the scheme of arrangement and amalgamation amongst Geometric, HCL Technologies, 3DPLM Software Solutions and their respective shareholders and creditors.Adani Enterprises Ltd stock was higher by 7% at Rs.81.Australias Queensland state government has granted approval to Adani Enterprises to proceed with its proposed 10 billion Australian dollars (US$7.7 billion) Carmichael coal project in the Galilee Basin amid protests from the environmental lobby, reports a business daily.Torrent Power surged 2.2% to Rs.234.10 on BSE. Gujarat Electricity Regulatory Commission (GERC) approved recovery of past period gaps (net of revenue surplus of FY17) of Rs. 470.50 crore by way of regulatory charge at 45 paise per unit, said the company.GERC, on March 31, issued tariff orders for Ahmedabad Generation, Ahmedabad Distribution and Surat Distribution businesses of Torrent Power for truing-up of its financials for FY2014-15 and determination of tariff for FY2016-17. These orders are effect from April 1, 2016.MOIL jumped 7% to Rs.233.05 on BSE. The company has hiked prices of various grades of manganese ore by up to 50 per cent for April-June quarter. The prices of all grades of fines are increased by 10 per cent. The company revises prices of manganese ore on a quarterly basis. Prices of chemical grades ore have been increased by 35%. There is no change in the existing price of Electrolytic Manganese Dioxide (EMD).Godrej Consumer Products Ltd stock was up by 2% at Rs. 1421. The company announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Strength of Nature LLC (SON), a leading company of hair care products for women of African descent. This acquisition is a further step to accelerate GCPLs global 3 by 3 strategy and scale up its presence in Africa by being at the forefront of serving the hair care needs of women of African descent. The acquisition is expected to be EPS accretive for GCPL from year one itself.Jaiprakash Associates Ltd stock was lower by 3% at Rs.8.28. The Board of Directors of the Company at its meeting held on March 31, 2016, has approved the Definitive Agreement with Ultratech Cement Ltd for Sale of Part of its Cement Business.WABCO India Ltd stock was lower by 7% at Rs. 5770. The Company has entered into an agreement which is on arms-length basis with M/s WABCO Europe BVBA, a related party for payment of royalty at the rate of 4% on the net sales for using the licensed intangibles and technical knowhow.Read More:
Airports have always proven beneficial to cities in terms of their potential to boost real estate development and overall economic activity. In the first place, they enhance business activity, and this brings with it a greater demand for commercial real estate. The housing market of any city has close correlation with its commercial activity business spawns employment, and employment spawns purchasing power and therefore appetite for home ownership. It also boosts the requirement for rental housing from transient workforces.The effect of Pune's proposed new international airport will be two-fold. In the first place, it will increase Pune's viability as a business destination, and thereby boost interest by more and more domestic and international companies to open up shop here, or to expand their existing operations. This will have a multiplier effect on the demand for residential real estate, as well. Secondly, the city's overall demand profile for real estate will change, as demand will be driven towards areas surrounding the new airport site. Airports are massive infrastructure undertakings that generate residential demand from people employed there, as well as the various adjunct services associated with them.which is the proposed location for the new international airport, lies approximately 40 kilometres to the North of Pune City. This location already enjoys multiple economic drivers since it is close to the established industrial hubs of Talegaon, Chakan and PCMC. The arrival of the new international airport will push both economic and real estate growth towards these areas, which have had some profiling disadvantages so far. The fact that they have carried the 'industrial area' image in the past has resulted in them developing primarily as budget housing destinations for blue-collar residents.With the new international airport at Rajgurunagar, this is set to change. We will see higher demand for larger, better-positioned residential complexes. Moreover, the airport will also bring with it an increased requirement for a more comprehensive network of connecting roads, which will definitely boost the overall viability of real estate in all adjoining areas.Areas which enjoy favourable positioning from both Pune City and PCMC are going to be among the biggest gainers from the new international airport. There will be tremendous demand for quality housing in locations which provide good connectivity and ready access to both Pune and Rajgurunagar. Among these, Charoli has already established itself as Pune's new township district with the arrival of an ultra-modern 400-plus acre integrated township. More importantly, Charoli and adjoining areas like Dhanori provide ready access to both the existing airport as well as the new international airport.
National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA), the drug pricing regulator, has capped the price of blockbuster Hepatitis C drug 'Sofosbuvir' at Rs. 619.31 per tablet. The said drug cannot be sold for more than the newly capped price from April 1, 2016, according to a gazette notification dated March 29.Sofosbuvirs strip containing 28 tablets currently costs Rs. 19,800 to Rs. 25,000 (Rs. 705 to Rs. 900 for a tablet), depending on the brand name it is sold under.Sofosbuvir brands like Gilead's Sovaldi are mostly prescribed along with drugs like Ribavarin and Daclatasavir to treat Hepatitis C genotypes 2 and 3, with type 3 being the most common genotype in patients in India.Under the Drugs (Price Control) Amendment Order, 2016, the drug pricing watchdog has revised the ceiling price of as many as 102 other Schedule-I formulations including Sofosbuvir.Hepatitis C kills half a million people annually and infects close to 150 million globally, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
An application for security for costs is a popular and effective tool employed by English lawyers, in English proceedings, to protect a Defendant against the risk that the Claimant will not comply with an English Court Costs Order.One of the grounds on which the Defendant can request the Court to make an Order for security for costs is on the basis that the Claimant is resident outside the Jurisdiction of the Courts of England and Wales.An application for security for costs can therefore be made against a Claimant from India. However before an order for security for costs is made, the Defendant is required to satisfy the Court of two legal requirements:First, there will be obstacles to or a burden of enforcement of a subsequent order for costs in the context of theparticular foreign Claimant or Country concerned; andSecond, having regard to all the circumstances in the case, it will be just to make an Order for Security for Costs.The first requirement is commonly known as the Nasser test. It is usually difficult for a Defendant to persuade the Court to make an Order for security for costs in cases where the United Kingdom has reciprocal arrangements for recognition and enforcement of judgments with the foreign country concerned, or where the foreign country has procedures in place for recognising English Court Judgments. The United Kingdom has such treaties in place with various Commonwealth and Common law Countries.A few years ago my firm was involved in the case of Sadruddin Hashwani -v- NurdinJivraj [2010] EWCA Civ 83, in which Lord Justice Mummery of the Court of Appeal dismissed an application for security for costs and held that it would be unjust to make such an Order against a Claimant resident in Pakistan. He concluded this on the basis that the United Kingdom andPakistan had a reciprocal arrangement for the enforcement of English Court Judgments. The applicant, Mr. Jivraj, argued that the political circumstances prevailing in Pakistan, including the suspension of senior members of the Judiciary by the Government, constituted an obstacle under the Nasser test. This argument was rejected by the Court and no Order for security for costs was made.In so far the second requirement is concerned, the English Court takes into consideration various factors to decidewhether it would be just to make an Order for security for costs. The English Court usually does not make an order for security for costs: Where the Claimant can prove that such an Order could stifle its claim. This is because Article 6 (1) of the European Convention on Human Right (ECHR) confirms that everyone has a right to a fair trial. If, at the time of the application, the claim appears highly likely to succeed. However, the Court does not encouragepartiesto engage in detailed arguments over the merits of the case. In cases where the Defendant has made a Counterclaim and the same issues, as in the Claim, also arise on the Counterclaim.The author is Solicitor at Zaiwalla& Co LLP.
zoomed 3% to Rs.89.70 on BSE. Adlabs Entertainment Ltd (Adlabs) refreshed its brand promise with a one brand one destination approach. The Theme park, Water park and the soon to be launched Snow park all have a new identity now under the brand name IMAGICA. Adlabs Entertainment Limited  which has its flagship brand IMAGICA, unveiled its new branding at Khopoli, highlighting the promise of being a very interesting destination. The new logo represents Imagica as a one stop holiday destination, bringing all its brands under a single Brand name, Imagica, with the tag lineBadi Interesting jagah hai The refreshed brand communication positions IMAGICA as an interesting place and the tag line elucidates the underlying message.galloped 20% to Rs.442.10 on BSE. Around 1.5% equity trade in block deal. Around 3.2 lakh shares were traded in a single block at Rs.425 on the NSE.gained 2.6% to Rs.13.40 on BSE. The company has sold its civil engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) business to Thailand's GP Group in a deal pegged at Rs. 250 crore. GP will also reconstitute the board of GRIPL. The deal is expected to be completed in 12 months after signing the agreement.achieved total wheel rim sales of 12.25 Lacs Vs 11.16 Lacs in March 2015 representing a 10% YoY growth. The stock is currently trading 1.7% higher at Rs.356 on BSE.gained 1.2% to Rs.317.15 on BSE. Around 14.4 lakh shares were traded in a single block at Rs. 318.75 on the BSE.jumped 4.2% to Rs.160.40 on BSE. The company has bagged two NHAI orders worth Rs.2.126 crore.jumped 4.2% to Rs.160.40 on BSE. The company has bagged two NHAI orders worth Rs.2.126 crore.Ltd stock was lower by 2% at Rs. 118., promoter of the company acquired a company in British Virgin Islands, a tax haven, in which his wife Indira KP Singh is a co-shareholder, according to Panamanian law firm that helps set up offshore entities, says report.Shares of the Ahmedabad-based e-commerce firmtoday opened 6% higher at Rs. 458 against its IPO price of Rs. 432 a share. Currently, Infibeam is trading at Rs. 452 on BSE. The company has raised Rs. 450 crore via an initial public offering.galloped 17.3% to Rs.230 after the board of directors in a meeting held on April 1, 2016 has considered and approved the scheme of arrangement and amalgamation amongst Geometric, HCL Technologies, 3DPLM Software Solutions and their respective shareholders and creditors.stock was lower by 7% at Rs. 5770. The Company has entered into an agreement which is on arms-length basis with M/s WABCO Europe BVBA, a related party for payment of royalty at the rate of 4% on the net sales for using the licensed intangibles and technical knowhow.stock was down by 2% at Rs. 329. The company has been compelled to shut its cigarette factories with effect from April 01, 2016 until clarity emerges in the current uncertain state of the rules on health warning.stock was higher by 7% at Rs.81. Australias Queensland state government has granted approval to Adani Enterprises to proceed with its proposed 10 billion Australian dollars (US$7.7 billion) Carmichael coal project in the Galilee Basin amid protests from the environmental lobby, reports a business daily.surged 2.2% to Rs.234.10 on BSE. Gujarat Electricity Regulatory Commission (GERC) approved recovery of past period gaps (net of revenue surplus of FY17) of Rs. 470.50 crore by way of regulatory charge at 45 paise per unit, said the company. GERC, on March 31, issued tariff orders for Ahmedabad Generation, Ahmedabad Distribution and Surat Distribution businesses of Torrent Power for truing-up of its financials for FY2014-15 and determination of tariff for FY2016-17. These orders are effect from April 1, 2016.jumped 7% to Rs.233.05. The company has hiked prices of various grades of manganese ore by up to 50 per cent for April-June quarter. The prices of all grades of fines are increased by 10 per cent. The company revises prices of manganese ore on a quarterly basis. Prices of chemical grades ore have been increased by 35%. There is no change in the existing price of Electrolytic Manganese Dioxide (EMD).stock was up by 2% at Rs. 1421. The company announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Strength of Nature LLC (SON), a leading company of hair care products for women of African descent. This acquisition is a further step to accelerate GCPLs global 3 by 3 strategy and scale up its presence in Africa by being at the forefront of serving the hair care needs of women of African descent. The acquisition is expected to be EPS accretive for GCPL from year one itself.stock was lower by 3% at Rs.8.28. The Board of Directors of the Company at its meeting held on March 31, 2016, has approved the Definitive Agreement with Ultratech Cement Ltd for Sale of Part of its Cement Business.Read More:
It looks like Priyanka Chopra will take some more time to return to India. And we are not just talking about her international projects. There is more that's keeping this sultry siren busy. The Bollywood actress, for whom everything seems to be rolling out perfectly, will soon be dining with American President Barack Obama too! Yes, you heard that right.

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Our desi girl has been invited for the annual White House Correspondents dinner later this month to be attended by President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama. Other big names like Bradley Cooper, Lucy Liu, Jane Fonda, and Gladys Knight have also been invited to the special event, that will be hosted at the White House. It might be hosted by The Nightly Shows Larry Wilmore. However, sources said that Priyanka is yet to confirm her attendance.

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"Priyanka is shooting for the new season of Quantico and also has a schedule of her maiden Hollywood film Baywatch lined up. Whether she will make it to the White House dinner or not will be clear only next week." - A source.

The event will be the final WHC dinner by the Obamas. The non-profit WHC Association, whose members include the reporters, producers, camera operators and other journalists regularly covering The White House, traditionally hosts this annual dinner to raise money for journalism scholarships. And Priyanka rubbing shoulders with some of the biggest names in the industry only makes us much more proud of her. Go PeeCee!
Leonardo DiCaprio has landed himself in a controversy, as now Indonesia has threatened to ban the Hollywood actor after a photo he posted on Instagram.

Leo recently visited the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme in Indonesia and posted the following photograph, that shows him fist-bumping an orangutan:

And the caption he wrote didn't go down too well with the authorities:

"As the forest of the #Indonesian #LeuserEcosystem continues to be cleared to meet demand for Palm Oil, the critically endangered Sumatran #orangutan is being pushed to the brink of extinction. Here, at the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programmes Orangutan Quarantine Center, rescued orangutans are rehabilitated so they can be released back into the wild. If we don't stop this rampant destruction, the Leuser Ecosystem and the Sumatran orangutans that call it home could be lost forever. Click the link in the bio to support this important work. #Indonesia"

The Oscar-winning actor expressed his concerns over the endangered primates, whose natural habitat was being destroyed due to the country's ambitious plan to set Palm Oil plantations.

Heru Santoso of the Directorate General for Immigration at the Law and Human Rights Ministry said, "We can blacklist him from returning to Indonesia at any time if he keeps posting incitement or provocative statements in his social media."

Instagram/leonardodicaprio

Nearly a week ago, Leo had posted the above photo on Instagram, captioned: "The lowland #rainforest of the Leuser Ecosystem are considered the worlds best remaining habitat for the critically endangered Sumatran #elephant. In these forests, ancient elephant migratory paths are still used by some of the last #wild herds of Sumatran elephants. But the expansion of Palm Oil plantations is fragmenting the #forest and cutting off key elephant migratory corridors, making it more difficult for elephant families to find adequate sources of food and water. The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation is supporting local partners to establish a mega-fauna sanctuary in the Leuser Ecosystem, last place on Earth where Sumatran orangutans, tigers, rhinos and elephants coexist in the wild."
Juravinski Hospital in Ontario, Canada has figured out the best way to help their critically ill patients feel better! The hospital allows the patients pets to come visit once a week, as a part of a program called Zacharys Paws for Healing.

The program was launched in memory of Zachary Noble, who begged to have his dog visit him in the hospital.

boredpanda.com

Zacharys Paws for Healing was launched by Donna Jenkins, whose 25-year-old nephew loved having his dog visit him when he was hospitalised for Hodgkins lymphoma.

While Zachary was in the hospital for many weeks and very sick after having a stem cell transplant, he begged to see his dog, Chase, Jenkins told Bored Panda. We sneaked Chase into ICU to see him and the effect it had on Zachary was remarkable. When Zachary realised he was not going to survive his cancer, he made me promise to start the organisation. We had our official first patient visit September 15, 2015.

We know that when patients get to see their pet, it can improve vital signs, improve depression and the feeling of isolation, it opens communication back up and it is a reminder for a reason for the patient to get well and return home.

Its good medicine for people, to have animals come and visit them, said one patient.

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This is a pet that comes and loves them unconditionally, no matter whether theyve lost their hair or have tubes sticking out everywhere, said Donna Jenkins.

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The hospital administrators agreed to the scheme knowing that people have tried to sneak in pets in the past.

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If this is something thats really important to patients, then how can we make it happen safely? said the hospitals Oncology Unit Director.

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The pets are cleaned before they are allowed to enter the hospital, and they are kept away from other patients.

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There have been 25 visits so far, to people in intensive care units.

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A few patients got to have their pets with them in their last hours of life.

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Watch the video here.
A CBI Court has sentenced 47 policemen, to life imprisonment for their involvement in a fake encounter, which resulted in the death of 11 Sikhs in 1991.

Following a probe, in 1995 the CBI court had filed FIRs against 57 policemen, 10 of them died during the trial.

PTI

The remaining 47 were found guilty on Friday and the court had reserved the verdict for Monday.

Even though all 47 has been convicted, only 20 of them have been arrested. The remaining 27 have been missing since years. According to reports most of them disappeared after taking long leaves. The court had issued non-bailable warrants against these 27 cops.

The incident took place on July 12, 1991. A group of Sikh pilgrims was returning by bus after visiting Nanakmatha, Patna Sahib, Huzur Sahib and other holy places. The police intercepted the bus near a bridge at Kachhalaghat in Pilibhit at around 11 am. Eleven Sikhs were forced to step down the bus.

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Later, they were killed in encounter shown in different police stations. It was said that they were terrorists and had fired on cops. Recovery of illegal arms was also shown from the deceased. In regard to the incident, FIRs were registered at Vilsanda, Puranpur and Nauria police stations.
Three years ago, Swati Bhondia was on her way to a Bangalore college to seek admission to BBM course. A ragamuffin girl accosted the teenager and asked for alms.

livemint

"I did not wish to give her alms; I wanted to help her. I took her along with me. This 10-year-old inspired me into thinking and doing something for similar children on the streets. I realized that social venture could be the only way out," says Swati.

Now 21, Swati has unlocked the potential of enterprise to help those on the margins of the society to partake in profits. The founder and chief decorating officer of Bangalore-based social venture Om Shanti Traders has been selected for the Base of the Pyramid market-entry challenge at Colombia.

Om Shanti Traders is a social, sustainable venture supporting at least 1,000 individuals from the poor and underprivileged sections to improve their lifestyle and, thus, reduce the economic gap between the various layers of the society.

Swati identifies individuals on the streets, trains them in arts and crafts, employs them and helps them to create a livelihood for themselves by selling their creations to corporate and individual households.

The profit is shared with the employee families and a portion will go to the employee welfare corpus. Swati and her team ensure the children of the employee family compulsorily go to school.

thelogicalindian

Swati says the ultimate objective of the venture is to collapse the gap between the various layers of the society. She has started the training division of Om Shanti Traders called 'Focus' which concentrates on developing entrepreneurs and creating self-help groups. Under this, she and other expert trainers visit schools and colleges, provide training on entrepreneurship and support them with initial microfunding.

Rural Indian women are trained to become microentrepreneurs or to start SHGs where they will get a continuous mentoring.Daughter of an industrialist from Jharsuguda in Odisha, Swati is today a big name in social enterprise. Now pursuing her MBA course, she gives lectures at IIM-B on social ventures.

She is the only Indian businesswoman to have made it to the BoP, which is being organized by the University of Colombia in association with United Nation's Principles for Responsible Management Education Secretariat. She will be seeking to reinforce the performance of small companies that provide products and services to the base of the pyramid markets as a free-of-cost service meant to create social impact in Colombian city of Bogota from July 13 to 19.

'She trained us, we feel so proud now'

Rani (name changed), who spurred Swati Bondia's social venture and was the first beneficiary, is now attending a government school in Banashankari. Her father Deepu, 38, a migrant from Rajasthan, had pushed his daughter into begging when she ran into Swati Bondia three years ago

"Swati madam has done an angelic turn for us. We are a family of five and all of us now eke out our livelihood by selling art and handicrafts we make. She trained us. We feel so proud now that we need not stretch our palms before anyone for begging," said Deepu, who nows lives in a rented house and dreams of providing good education to his two children.
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, which has been at the centre of a major row over a controversial event and the arrest of its student union President Kanhaiya Kumar, is ahead of all other central universities while Central University of Hyderabad, which has been rocked by protests after the suicide of Rohith Vemula, is placed fourth in the first ever domestic ranking released by Government..

IIT-Madras and IIM-Bangalore lead among technological and management institutions,

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In the technological institutions category, IIT Mumbai is placed second, followed by IIT Kharagpur, IIT Delhi and IIT Kanpur. Manipal College of Pharmacy is ahead of others in the category of Pharmacy education. The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) covering 3,500 different institutes in four different categories was released by HRD minister Smriti Irani.

In the universities category, the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (which is a deemed University) is rated as the top-ranked institute followed by Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT), Mumbai.

dnaindia

Perception among students, alumni, parents, employees and public was one of the key parameters on which these institutes were ranked by a committee of experts. Teaching and learning resources, graduation outcomes, research etc being other factors.

Among the management institutes, IIM Bangalore leads the pack followed by IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Kolkata and IIM Lucknow. Later speaking to reporters, Irani said the effort is to make this ranking system an annual affair and more categories will be added so that students can know about an institute before taking admission.

careerindia

In the Universities category, Tezpur University, which recently won President's award is placed fifth, University of Delhi is sixth, BHU, Varanasi is seventh. In the engineering institutes category, all the ten places are occupied by IITs with IIT, Roorkee placed sixth, Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad seventh, Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, eighth. IIT Ropar-Rupnagar is ninth and IIT Patna is placed tenth.

In management category, predictably IIMs hog top six slots with IIM Bangalore, followed by IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Calcutta, IIM Lucknow, IIM Udaipur and IIM Kozhikode. IMI, New Delhi, is the highest ranked among other institution at 7 place with Indian Institute of Forest Management ranked 8, Department of Mangement Studies, IIT Kanpur (rank 9) and IIM Indore (rank 10).

HRD Min @smritiirani at the release of #IndiaRankings2016 Report, in New Delhi pic.twitter.com/zWQoJeSwcI  PIB India (@PIB_India) April 4, 2016

In the pharmaceutical institutes category, University institute of pharmaceutical sciences, Chandigarh is placed second, Jamia Hamdard, third, Poona College of Pharmacy, Erandwane, fourth, Institute of Pharmacy, Nirma University fifth while Bombay College of Pharmacy, Mumbai is sixth.

Birla Institute of technology, Ranchi is placed 7th in this category while Amrita School of Pharmacy, Kochi is 8th and JSS college of Pharmacy, Ootacamund is ninth while JSS college of Pharmacy, Mysuru is placed 10th.
Update: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that a multi-agency committee has been setup to look into the Panama papers leak. It will involve officials from RBI and CBDT. He also said that those who did not take advantage of the compliance window last year to declare illegal assets abroad will find such adventurism extremely costly.

Dubbed as the largest data leak in history, Panama Papers, a massive online document leak has thrown open a Pandora's box, with some of the biggest international celebrities and influencers being accused of tax evasion.

USA Today

According to Indian Express there are as many as 500 Indians in the list. Here are some of the top figures.

Aishwarya Rai

She and her family members were registered in 2005 as directors of Amic Partners Limited.

BCCL

Her status was later changed to share holder before the company was dissolved in 2008

Amitabh Bachchan

He was appointed director in at least four offshore shipping companies set up in 1993 in British Virgin Islands (BVI), Bahamas.

BCCL

KP Singh

DLF promoters KP Singh acquired a company registered in BVI in 2010. His family's three offshore entities hold almost $10 million.

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Sameer Gehlaut

Indiabulls owner holds UK realty via Bahamas, Jersey. He acquired at least top London properties through family entities.

BCCL

Shishir K Bajoria

He belongs to one of the oldest business families in Kolkata trading in jute and tea. He is the promoter of SK Bajoria Group.

Onkar Kanwar

His offshore entity was J&S Systems Corporation at BVI.

Harish Salve

His offshore entities were Crestbright Ltd, Pyebush Group Ltd, Edenval Ltd at BVI.

Madhyamam

Jehangir Sorabjee

His offshore entity was Moonglow Investments Global Ltd at BVI.

Vinod Adani

Vinod Adani, is the brother of busyness tycoon Gautam Adani.

Iqbal Mirchi

Fugitive underworld don Muhammed Iqbal Memon,aka Iqbal Mirchi is also among those featured in the list of Indians.

Deccan Chronicle

Politicians who figure on the list are Shishir Bajoria from West Bengal and Anurag Kejriwal, the former chief of the Delhi unit of Loksatta Party.

What are they accused of?

As per Reserve Bank of India (RBI) guidelines, Indian citizen were not allowed to start an overseas entity before 2003.

However, in 2004, for the first time RBI has allowed individuals to remit funds up to $25,000 a year under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS). But it never allowed Indian citizen to set up companies abroad.

In most of the cases in mentioned in the leak, companies were set up long before the rules were changed and the purpose was to park foreign exchange in a tax havens.
Panama Papers, as they are being called now, have shown how the rich and influential across the world have been using foreign tax havens to evade billions in tax payments.

The investigation details how shell companies were floated by politicians and celebrities to avoid paying taxes.

ICIJ

Some 140 offshore companies named in the documents are connected to politicians or public officials and their families.

Some of the prominent names featured in the list include aides to Russian president Vladimir Putin, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Argentine President Mauricio Macri, Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson, and Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko.

75 World Leaders Were Named In The List By ICIJ

Non-politcal tax-evaders include Barcelona forward Lionel Messi and Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan and his daughter-in-law Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.

Here is all you need to know

Where did the documents leak from?

The leaked data was from Mossack Fonseca, a law firm headquartered in tax haven Panama, known for its factory-like production of offshore companies for its worldwide clients.

AFP

Mossack Fonseca is the worlds fourth biggest provider of offshore services. It has acted for more than 300,000 companies.

How big is the leak?

According to reports, as much as 11.5m documents and 2.6 terabytes of information has been drawn from Mossack Fonsecas database.

evolllution

It is way higher than the previous information leaks like WikiLeaks and the Edward Snowden. While WikiLeaks data was estimated to be around 1.7 GB the 2015 HSBC files had 3.3 GB and the 2014 Luxembourg tax files contained documents to the size of 4.4 GB.

Who are behind the leak?

'The Panama Papers' were obtained from an anonymous source by German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

ICIJ

More than 100 media groups were involved in the investigation and it is described as one of the largest such probes in history.

Some of the media groups involved in the investigation include The Indian Express (India), The Guardian and BBC (UK), Columbia University and Miami Herald (USA), Vedemosti (Russia), Le Monde (France), El Confidencial (Spain), ABC Four Corners (Australia), CBC/Radio (Canada), Daily Monitor (Uganda) and La Nacion (Argentina).

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This Video Documentary Shows The Shocking Truth Behind How Black Money Is Being Used To Fund Terror and Crimes Worldwide
While it's true that the tech industry is known for showering its employees with high pay and perks, that doesn't mean that tech employees are automatically happy with their jobs.

Some tech companies do a better job in the employee satisfaction department than others.

For those who are thinking of brushing off their resumes to try something new in 2016, job-hunting site Glassdoor has the inside skinny on which tech companies are making their employees happiest.

And the results are surprising. Whereas Google and Facebook have won these sort of best-places to work roundups for eons, for 2016 there's a new champ in town.

Airbnb

TOI

About the company: Airbnb is the travel company phenom that helped invent a new market, matching those with spare rooms/condos/homes to rent with travelers wanting to rent them.

Employee speak: The people that work here are some of the best I've met in my professional career. The culture is good. The founders are great people and I believe they have the best intentions for the company, the employees, and our community. There is a lot of opportunity to learn from different teams and possibly switch roles as departments grow and new team form.  Airbnb employee (location n/a)

Guidewire

TOI

About the company: Guidewire makes software for the insurance industry.

Employee speak: Guidewire hits the sweet spot between startup culture and big corporate culture. There is the small company vibe, wherein you can talk to everyone and get things done. And there is enough room for flexibility in processes for individuals and teams to choose what works best for them, while having the support of the larger organization. Guidewire employee (Foster City, CA)

Hubspot

TOI

About the company: Hubspot makes sales and marketing software.

Employee speak: Leadership places a heavy emphasis on employee growth across all divisions, from tuition reimbursement to offering opportunities to take on challenges outside your core responsibilities. Transparent culture from top to bottom. Management actually listens to employees, and makes quick changes to structure if/when needed.  Hubspot employee (Boston, MA)

Facebook

TOI

About the company: Facebook is the world's largest social network.

Employee speak: The culture is really amazing and in my opinion even better than the media portrays it. The perks are wonderful, but the professional experience is even better! I feel the energy everyday working here.  Facebook product specialist (Menlo Park, CA)

LinkedIn

TOI

About the company: LinkedIn is a job-hunting site and social network for business professionals.

Employee speak: Our culture is about transformation, integrity, collaboration, humor, and of course results. This culture drives everything we do and is supported by the company's core values that every employee knows and lives each day. Our values are grounded in our members who come first always.  LinkedIn senior manager (San Francisco, CA)

Google

TOI

About the company: Zillow is an online real estate site.

Employee speak: The views are amazing, the free food/snacks/drinks are great, and the benefits are great. I'm surrounded by smart people, and am constantly learning. Little red-tape and no business politics allow for us to immediately benefit the company and have a huge impact.  Zillow data scientist (Seattle, WA)

Zillow

TOI

About the company: Zillow is an online real estate site.

Employee speak: The views are amazing, the free food/snacks/drinks are great, and the benefits are great. I'm surrounded by smart people, and am constantly learning. Little red-tape and no business politics allow for us to immediately benefit the company and have a huge impact.  Zillow data scientist (Seattle, WA)

World Wide Technology

TOI

About the company: World Wide Technology is a technology consulting company.

Employee speak: Flexible Hours along with Telecommute Days. Family Environment, Fun and never bored, always work to be done! Benefits are excellent!  World Wide Technology employee (Saint Louis, MO)

Mindbody

TOI

About the company: Mindbody is a software firm for class- and appointment-based businesses.

Employee speak: It's a culture of happiness! I've never been in such a positive environment. Management encourages you not only professionally, but in personal aspects of life too.  Mindbody technical support employee (Pismo Beach, CA)

Expedia

TOI

About the company: Expedia is an online travel site.

Employee speak: The atmosphere is positive, energetic and entrepreneurial. The combination of travel and technology creates a fast-paced and exciting place to be. Join us!  Expedia director (Bellevue, WA)

Riot Games

TOI

About the company: Riot Games is a video game publisher that makes the popular "League of Legends" game.

Employee speak: "Riot treats all of its employees incredibly well, from top tier benefits across the board, to the state of the art campus, free gourmet lunch and dinner. I really can't imagine a better place to work in games (or in tech around the greater LA area).  Riot Games senior staff (Los Angeles, CA).

Adobe

TOI

About the company: Adobe is a software maker best known for its design and photo-editing software.

Employee speak: Outstanding company benefits -- the Employee Stock Purchase Plan is second to none. Extremely progressive company that values employees. I truly feel needed and wanted with freedom to make decisions and have support at all levels.  Adobe employee(Lehi, UT)

Apple

TOI

About the company: Apple is the company that makes iPhones, iPads, and Macintosh computers, in addition to selling music and movies (iTunes) and offering other devices and software.

Employee speak: Benefits, team is amazing, management is wonderful, constantly learning on a daily basis. You work with people who are as passionate about what they do as you are -- who are determined and destined for great things. Vacation, stocks, health benefits, etc. are wonderful!  Apple operations employee (Cupertino, CA)

Twitter

TOI

About the company: Twitter is a social media company where people tweet their thoughts to the world in 140 characters or less.

Employee speak: The people that work here are amazing! Our environment thrives on reciprocation of employees teaching and learning from each other. I am empowered to make the decisions needed to help make an impact on the company.  Twitter recruiter (San Francisco, CA)

Paycom

TOI

About the company: Paycom is an online payroll and human resource software provider.

Employee speak: Leaders are always encouraging us to provide constructive feedback. Catered lunches and on-site gym. Being surrounded by some of the most amazing professionals that inspire me daily.  Paycom talent acquisition specialist (Oklahoma City, OK)

Akamai

TOI

Akamai offers a "content content delivery network" that helps large websites and media sites run faster.

Employee speak: This is the best place I've ever worked, bar none. People are dauntingly smart, friendly, and helpful, the work is challenging but interesting, the benefits are very good, and the pace  while certainly subject to the occasional flurry of long hours  is remarkably life- and family-friendly.  Akamai senior user experience designer (Cambridge, MA)

Salesforce

TOI

About the company: Salesforce offers a business software as a cloud service that helps companies manage their sales, marketing, and application programming projects.

Employee speak: Amazing corporate culture: Work hard but have fun doing it. Unbelievable benefits that are constantly increasing. A meritocracy where employees are handsomely rewarded for hard work. Youll never get bored!  Salesforce commercial account executive (San Francisco, CA)

F5 Networks

TOI

About the company: F5 Networks manufacturers equipment for building and securing computer networks.

Employee speak: Great company culture, people who care about each other and get great stuff done for customers. Great benefits and rewards. Company that cares about the local community.  F5 Networks project manager (Seattle, WA

Workday

TOI

About the company: Workday offers human resources software to businesses via the cloud.

Employee speak: Great management which has a vision and direction for the company. Work/Life balance is excellent; the company is very family focused. If you're a high contributor, near unlimited potential for opportunities and promotions.  Workday technology management employee (Pleasanton, CA)

Red Hat

TOI

About the company: Red Hat is a software maker best known for its commercial version of the Linux operating system and for offering "open source" software that can be modified and shared to anyone by anyone.

Employee speak: Some of the smartest people in the biz. Folks have the highest respect for technical and field resources. A family-like culture.  Red Hat Sales Representative (location n/a)

Concur

TOI

About the company: Concur offers business travel and expense management cloud software. It is now a part of huge German software company, SAP, since SAP bought it a year ago for $8.3 billion.

Employee speak: The people and culture at Concur are phenomenal. They hire great people and it shows. They are great at rewarding the Sales Team and they always are providing fun incentives.  Concur regional sales executive (Eden Prairie, MN)




After spending 20 years with NASA and an eventful year in space, astronaut Scott Kelly has finally retired from service.

Kelly bid his farewell on Twitter, thanking NASA for an amazing time in space:

Kelly is famous for four major missions that he undertook at NASA in 1999, 2007, 2010 and 2015. He is now known to be the only American astronaut to have spent a maximum number of 520 days in space.

On his last day, Kelly posted a photograph on Twitter, where he was showing his daughter around at the Johnson Space Center:

Last day @NASA_Johnson. Showing my daughter Charlotte around where people on the ground make it all happen #ThankYou pic.twitter.com/YnWaWADzUh  Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) March 31, 2016

Kelly had recently returned from his space excursion on March 1. The astronaut had spent a year at the International Space Station, his humble abode from where he regularly shared beautiful photos of the universe for everyone looking up from the Earth.
Sam Huang had never imagined his flier miles would literally land him in the most luxurious situation ever. Using all his airline reward points helped Sam fly a $23,000 first class lounge for just $108! Yes, that happened.

To fly from Sydney to Abu Dhabi, Sam - owner of TopMiles - redeemed 60,000 AAdvantage miles plus paid $108 to reserve a spot on Etihad's "Apartment" on Airbus A380 - the word's largest passenger plane.

However, with a wish to tour Etihad's premier luxury "Residence", Sam emailed the airline asking for permission to get a glimpse of the most high-end suite there was. And while an "Apartment" ticket costs $6500, the "Residence" ticket is priced at $23,000.

Since asking for permission was the only way to tour the Residence, Sam got much more than just a glimpse. He got to spend half-an-hour of his life aboard the plushest suite ever.

Here, take a look at what awaited Sam on Etihad's first class. This was the in-suite bathroom - nothing like the coop found on regular planes.

TopMiles

Oh, and it came with a private butler. And it kept getting better and better.

TopMiles

The sumptuous meals that would have most likely ruined regular travels for Sam.

TopMiles

Soon after Sam checked-in, the butler knocked on his door to take him on the tour of the Residence Sam had requested. And what awaited him was even better than the first-class Apartment.

This first-class bedroom was everything. "Instead of having a sofa that converts into a bed, The Residence is furnished with an actual full double sized bed," said Huang.

TopMiles

And this was the first class living room in the Residence. With a 27-inch TV.

TopMiles

Sam's thirty minutes in the Residence got over too soon before he was escorted back to the Apartment, where he enjoyed a glass of champagne, tucked in for a good night's sleep, took a hot shower, ate breakfast, and watched TV.

And then the dream ended - Sam landed in Abu Dhabi.
When al-Shabaab militants attacked a bus in December 2015 in Nigeria to gun down non-Muslims, Salah Farah decided to defend them.

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Farah was among the Muslims on board who refused to be segregated by the terrorists, instead telling the gunmen to kill everyone or leave. The Al-Qaeda linked terrorists, known for this technique of selective massacre from previous attacks, killed only 2.

I posthumously award Mwalimu Salah Farah the Order Of The Grand Warrior, for his act of courage #SOTN2016  President of Kenya (@PresidentKE) March 31, 2016

"They told us if you are a Muslim, you are safe, Mr Salah told the BBC after the incident.

However, Mr Salah refused to be moved. We asked them to kill all of us or leave us alone, he said. However, Farah was injured by them, and rushed to the hospital to treat bullet wounds, soon dying of complication due to the injuries.

Salah Farah the brave teacher who was injured shielding Christians during the Mandera bus attack died at KNH. pic.twitter.com/KiiM5VsYqb  Kenyan Facts (@KResearcher) January 19, 2016

"In recognition of his remarkable act of valour", President Uhuru Kenyatta awarded Salah Farah the Order of the Grand Warrior of Kenya for defending his fellow citizens, the Independent reported.

President Kenyatta praised Farah actions in a State of Nation address.

I salute His Excellency the President for the award and recognition of #HeroSalah. Many thanks Mr President pic.twitter.com/LmLsXmWQZA  Abdimajid Mohamed (@Majid_Official) April 1, 2016

"He died defending people who he did not know. This is because he believed in their right to freedom of worship and he knew that every single life - irrespective of faith - is sacred. He is a powerful symbol of our country's ambition to attain the full expression of secure and cohesive nationhood, and he is a costly reminder that we all have a role to play in protecting our freedoms.

voanews

However, this formal recognition wasnt easy - social media campaign #HeroSalah was created asking for official recognition of Mr Salahs actions, using the award proceeds to raise money for his family. His surviving relatives will soon live in a house sponsored by nearly 600,000 Kenyan shillings (around 4,150) in donations.
A 17-year-old bride was allegedly strangled to death by her husband on the night of their wedding in a suspected case of honour killing, Jacobabad police said on Saturday. Alleged pictures of the deceased bride is making rounds on social media and suggested that the young girl was killed by her husband for not being a virgin.

Khanzadi, daughter of Lal Mohammad Lashari, married her cousin Qalandar Bux Khokhar the night before her lifeless body was found in her bedroom in ADC Colony. The suspect, her husband, remains on the run. Khanzadis mother notified the police when she failed to receive any response from their house the morning after the wedding.

Policemen, with the help of the victims brother Ali Sher Lashari, forced entry into the house, only to discover Khanzadis lifeless body on the bed. Her husband was missing. Ali Sher lodged an FIR against Qalandar Bux and his four brothers, accusing them of strangulating his sister to death. The victims mother told reporters that Qalandar Bux and Khanzadi were cousins and the marriage took place with their consent.

Meanwhile, sources in the area speculated that Qalandar Bux killed the bride because she was not a virgin, while others claim that a heated argument erupted between the newly-wed couple regarding a delay in the wedding ceremony due to certain customs. Area police have since carried out several raids but have failed to make any arrests.

Scoop.
A group representing 2,000 recruits into the Nigeria Immigration Service, NIS, who underwent three months induction training exercise but were suspended, have cried out to the Minister of Interior, Abdulrahman Dambazau, to reinstate them.

The group, which organized a peaceful protest at the ministrys headquarters in Abuja on Monday, said they had not received any official communication from the government since they were asked to go home last August.

The spokesperson for the protesters, Solomon Ojigbe, who spoke with journalists, expressed dismay over the governments indifference to their plight.

According to him, all the applicants passed through the rigorous but transparent process of recruitment and were selected based on merit, but, lamented that they were suspended because they were regarded as ordinary Nigerians without any one to fight on their behalf.

It would be recalled that following the ill-fated recruitment exercise conducted in 2014, in which over a dozen applicants lose their lives, then President Goodluck Jonathan constituted a committee to carry out a fresh recruitment process.

Out of the 48, 747 candidates shortlisted, 2,000 (400 Assistant Superintendent of Immigration ASI, 700 Assistant Inspector of Immigration and 900 Immigration Assistants) were selected after a computer-based test and 1600 of them got their appointment letters before training.

The 400 ASI were awaiting the arrival of theirs when the directive to terminate the process was issued.

Ojigbe said: These young recruits, parents, families and sympathizers have waited aimlessly for over eight months without any form of pronouncement from the Nigeria Immigration Service, Ministry of Interior, CDFIPB and other government sources.

While we waited patiently for an official memo in view of our plight, the CDFIPB, Ministry of Interior and the Nigeria Immigration Services went ahead to recruit over 2000 personnel secretly who are presently in the various training institutions without considering us.

This, we see as a move akin to replacing us. We are, therefore, at the Ministry to demand our immediate resumption.

Another protester, who gave her name as Memunat Mustapha, said she had to resign her appointment as a teacher to take up the Immigration appointment, stressing that the school refused to take her back when the NIS recruitment process was terminated.

She said she resorted to borrowing from friends to take care of her needs during the training period as they were not paid any allowance while in training camp.

Another member of the group, Maureen Twar, who was employed as an Assistant Superintendent of Immigration, said they were made to buy the complete gear of the Service during the training period.

Among other requests, the group asked to be recalled to duty, directed the issuance of appointment letter to the 400 Assistant Superintendent of Immigration and payment of the salary arrears of all the dispersed recruits.

In his response, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Interior, Mr Bassey Akpanyung, who spoke through his Special Assistant Felix Okonkwo, promised to look into the case and address it accordingly.

All issues relating to your grievances will be sorted out and everybody will be happy, he promised them.
The Nigerian military has confirmed that more terrorists have been arrested while other Boko Haram members have also surrendered to the security agencies.

Prominent among those presently in custody is leader of al-Qaeda-linked Islamist group, Ansaru, Khalid al-Barnawi, who was captured on Friday in Lokoja, the Kogi State capital.

Ansaru is a splinter group of Boko Haram, known for kidnapping foreigners. Its ideology is aligned to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and notorious for killing a number of Westerners.

To underscore the value of al-Barnawi, the US had placed a $5m (3.5m) bounty on his head after branding him one of three Nigerian specially designated global terrorists in 2012.

The Director of Defence Information, Rabe Abubakar, in a statement by PRNigeria, disclosed that: With ongoing aggressive military operations in the North-East, some Boko Haram terrorists have surrendered to the Nigerian troops just as some top commanders were arrested while fleeing from the theatre of war.

Mr. Rabe, a Brigadier General, attributed the laudable achievements of the Nigerian military in the ongoing war against insurgency to improved synergy and inter-agency collaborations, which he noted, have enhanced the various operations towards the massive arrest of members of the terrorists groups.

He continued: We are conducting series of investigation including background checks on some of those arrested and those that surrendered to the security agencies for proper identifications. So far most of the operations are going on smoothly.

Our concern is for Nigerians to support the military and other security agencies with useful information especially now that most of the Boko Haram camps have been destroyed; while the stubborn members may be fleeing to new locations.

We urge Nigerians to report any strange movement and people, including suspicious objects in their localities to ensure that suspects do not have new haven to hide where they may later disrupt such communities.
The Lagos State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has called on the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) to immediately arrest and prosecute a former governor of the state and national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

The call came on the heels of the acknowledgment by the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), that it discharged Mr. Tinubu in error during his trial five years ago, over allegedly operating foreign accounts while serving as governor.

The tribunal made the disclosure in response to the request by the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, through his lead counsel, Kanu Agabi (SAN) that he should be discharged on same grounds that the former Lagos governor was freed.

Mr. Saraki is presently standing trial before the CCT on a 13-count charge bordering on alleged false assets declaration.

The prosecution counsel, Rotimi Jacobs (SAN), however, stated that Tinubu was wrongly discharged and that the tribunal was misled in freeing the ex-governor.

The Lagos PDP, which made the call in a statement by its publicity secretary, Taofik Gani, said, We demand the immediate invitation, arrest and prosecution of Tinubu for violating the laws of the land and breaching public trust by operating several foreign accounts during his tenure as Lagos State governor between 1999 and 2007.
The Borno State Government says it will construct mega primary schools in the three Senatorial Districts of the state to boost education.

Gov. Kashim Shettima disclosed this in Maiduguri on Monday shortly after inspecting ongoing projects in the state.

We are going to construct a mega primary school in each of the three senatorial zones of the state, Shettima said, pointing out that each of the schools would have a minimum of 20 classrooms, in addition to other facilities.

The schools will have a minimum of 20 classrooms, as well as world class facilities like toilets, common room, kitchen, among others, he said.

Shettima said that the aim was to address the dwindling fortunes of education in the state by boosting enrolment in schools. He said that the contract for the building of the schools would be awarded in no distant time.

The money for the project is already on ground, we are in the process of awarding the contract, Shettima said.

So far, so good, the state university project is on course, we believe that the contractors handling the construction will hand over the site to us in a short while.

Most of the projects are 70 to 85 per cent completion, the governor said.

He said that the construction work at the proposed State Industrial Layout at Jimtilo had also reached advanced stage while the tomato plant, the chips manufacturing plant and the water bottling plant were all on ground.

The only item that is not on ground is the Borno Plastic Manufacturing Company, Shettima said.

He explained that the Industrial Layout will have five companies  tomato processing plant, water bottling plant, Solar manufacturing plant, Corn Chips Manufacturing plant and a plastic manufacturing plant.

Shettima said that the companies were expected to take off as soon as work was completed on the layout.
Under tight security, police on the Greek island of Lesbos have put people on boats bound for Turkey, the first to be deported under a European Union plan to stem the flow of refugees to Europe. Witnesses reported seeing two boats set sail after police boarded people who had arrived on buses.

All of the migrants returned are from Pakistan, except for two migrants from Syria who returned voluntarily, Giorgos Kyritsis, a spokesman for a government refugee crisis committee, told state TV. Kyritsis said 136 people were deported from Lesbos and 66 from the nearby island of Chios, where riot police clashed with local residents hours earlier during a protest against the expulsions.

The deal to send people back across the Aegean Sea has been fiercely criticised by rights groups on ethical grounds. The AFP news agency on Monday said two Turkish ferries on Lesbos, and another one on Chios, were to pick up the refugees and that they would be escorted by police from the EU border agency Frontex. Turkish Interior Minister Efkan Ala has said his country is ready to receive 500 refugees on Monday and Greek authorities have provided 400 names, although these numbers could change.

The European Union signed the deal with Turkey in March as it wrestled with the continents worst refugee crisis since World War II, with more than one million people arriving last year. Under the agreement, designed to halt new arrivals along the most popular route through Turkey, all irregular migrants arriving since March 20 face being sent back. Each case is meant to be examined individually.
The Cross River South Progressive Forum (CRISPROF) has pleaded with Nigerians not to lose faith yet in the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, assuring that he would fix the problems confronting the nation.

Chairman of the group, Mr Eyo Nsa Ekpo, who made the plea in Calabar, the Cross River State capital yesterday, said what the president needed was time.

Ekpo also faulted critics, who are of the opinion that President Buhari lacks the capacity to perform.

He said, Nigerians must not lose confidence in the ability of the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.

He is well prepared to tackle the problems of the country and also provide a workable solution to these problems that are troubling the people.

There is enough capacity on the side of the president and for the fact that he is so disciplined and focused and always thinking about the growth of the nation, we are very convinced that hes going to fix the nation`s problems.

Buhari had opportunity to loot the countrys wealth, but he didnt do so. This is the first time we are having a president whose integrity does not only surrounds him but precedes him. I am very certain that Buhari will not fail Nigerians, Ekpo concluded.
A second case of Ebola has been confirmed in Liberia just months after the country had been declared free of the disease, according to health officials. The five-year-old son of a 30-year-old woman who died on Thursday has now been taken to a treatment center in Monrovia, Tolbert Nyenswah, the countrys deputy health minister, said on Sunday.

We are investigating in both Guinea and Liberia how she entered, he said. But knowing the porous border we are not surprised. She entered Liberia before getting sick or manifesting signs and symptoms. Authorities are now checking everyone the woman was in contact with and 10 health care workers from the hospital where the woman was treated are also under observation.

The woman, who died on arrival at the hospital on Thursday, had travelled with three of her children. The new cases are a setback for Liberia, which had been declared free from transmissions for a third time on January 14. The country was first declared free of the disease in May, but new cases have emerged twice, forcing officials to reset the clock in a nation where more than 4,800 people have died.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has said Ebola is no longer an international health emergency, but flare-ups, at a decreasing frequency, are expected. Flare-ups have also broken out in Sierra Leone and in Guinea.

Aljazeera.
The trial of a former governor of Plateau State, Joshua Dariye, will resume tomorrow before Justice Adebukola Banjoko of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) High Court, Abuja.

Dariye, who is presently the senator representing Plateau Central, is being prosecuted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, on a 23-count charge bordering on money laundering and diversion of funds.

The senator is accused of diverting about N1.2 billion from the states Ecological Fund when he was governor of Plateau between 1999 and 2007, to private companies and individuals.

He pleaded not guilty to the charges preferred against him.

The trial, which commenced on July 13, 2007, suffered various setbacks as Mr. Dariye through his legal team, filed several motions to delay the trial.

However, the legal obstacles created by the former governor were cleared in February 2015 when the Supreme Court, in its judgment delivered on an appeal filed by Mr. Dariye, dismissed it for lack of merit and ordered the FCT High Court to commence expeditious trial of the accused.

Already, a number of prosecution witnesses have testified against him before Justice Adebukola Banjoko.

They include Musa Sunday, a detective with the EFCC, who said Dariye jumped the administrative bail granted him by the UK Metropolitan Police after his arrest and detention in 2004.

Mr. Sunday informed the court that the case was still pending in the UK.

It was learnt that investigating police officer (IPO), Detective Constable Peter Clark of the UK Metropolitan Police, will also be in Nigeria to testify against Dariye.
A former Governor of Ogun State, Aremo Olusegun Osoba, yesterday in a move that further strengthens the progressive bloc in the Southwest, returned to the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Mr. Osoba, a founding father of the APC, defected to the Social Democratic Party, SDP, led by Chief Olu Falae shortly before last years general elections following differences with Governor Ibikunle Amosun.

The former governors key supporters, including Senator Gbenga Kaka, also left the party for the SDP.

However, all the political disagreements that led to their defection seems to have been ironed out as all the leaders that attended the closed door meeting at the residence of Mr. Osoba in Ikoyi, Lagos, which lasted for four hours, emerged with smiles written over their faces.

Mr. Osoba sang a song in Yoruba, which he said was a favourite of late Premier of the Western Region, Chief Obafemi Awolowo: The quarrel is over, Christ has earned a victory, we shall be singing the song of victory, halleluyah, halleluyah!

Our correspondent reports that the meeting was attended by former APC Interim National Chairman, Chief Bisi Akande; APC national leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu; Oyo State Governor, Senator Abiola Ajimobi; his Osun State counterpart, Mr. Rauf Aregbesola; APC National Vice Chairman (Southwest) Chief Pius Akinyelure; Lagos State Deputy Governor Oluranti Adebule, who represented Governor Akinwumi Ambode, and former Ekiti State Governor, Otunba Adeniyi Adebayo.

Others include former Ogun State Deputy Governor, Segun Adesegun, Senator Gbenga Obadara and Alhaji Bimbo Awofeso.

Governor Amosun did not attend the meeting, neither did he send a representative.

Governor Aregbesola, who announced the return while briefing journalists after the closed door meeting, said: A time was when Osoba switched to another party, he was a foundation member of the APC and he was in the APC throughout my election.

Yes, he was for a time with the SDP, but with what we have just done today, Akinrogun Osoba, the Aremo himself is back with the progressive leadership of the Yoruba race, Mr. Aregbesola said of the former Ogun State Governor.

He said that the leadership of progressive politics in the Western part of Nigeria on the platform of the APC had resolved all their differences.

As such we are happy to tell the world that the leadership of progressive politics in the Western part of Nigeria is united.

We are ready to jointly prosecute the agenda for growth, purposeful leadership, development, good governance in the Western part of Nigeria.

The progressive leadership of the Yoruba race is now fully united and are ready and charged to lead our efforts to reposition our land and integrate with others nationwide to put Nigeria in its proper footing, he said.

Also speaking, Tinubu said it was very crucial for the party to strengthen its front.

I am an unapologetic progressive and I will remain one and that is the only principle I abide with.

Wherever the progressives are, they must be united with their vision. Nobody is left out, it is all progressives and no one is left out, no matter your insinuation, Mr. Tinubu said.
The Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, yesterday highlighted the woes workers are passing through as a result of the lingering fuel scarcity being experienced across the country.

The NLC President, Comrade Ayuba Wabba said the crisis has affected workers productivity adversely nationwide.

He said: If you look at the scenario it is a reoccurring decimal, people are facing serious fuel challenges from one day to the other.

This is affecting productivity, it also put workers on unnecessary and undue pressure because you know that the salary is fixed.

Anytime there is an increase in any commodity either power or petroleum product certainly it deplete that available income at the disposal of the worker.

So, it is workers that are at the receiving end and in that way you can see that the workers will begin to come late and the management will say you are coming late without making a redress on the alarm factor.

Those are the clear issues and I think that government must look at the policies and tackle the situation head long, he said.

He said government must fashion out medium and long term measures that would fixed the problem holistically.

He noted that the issue of fuel scarcity had been on since 1999 and there was need for drastic action to be taken.

It means that the prescription for solving the fuel situation cannot take us to the promise land.

Then if it cannot take us to the promise land, why should we continue to do just a quick fix on this very major issue?

Wabba, who spoke to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), said the refineries should be made functional to remove untold hardship the people are going through and to boost the economy.

He said that the NLC had done an extensive research on the four refineries and findings revealed that the refineries could still be classified as new ones.

According to him, some of the refineries around the world are built in 1981, saying there is an Indian refinery that has stayed for over 100 years.

The argument that the four refineries in the country cannot meet our domestic needs is false.

We have seen refineries that have lower capacity but through the process of upgrading and upgrading the capacity of refining were able to meet locally and international needs.

So, if Kaduna refinery can be upgraded, Port Harcourt refinery, among others, their capacity of refining can also be upgraded and with adequate maintenance these refineries can work for over a 100 years.

It is just that we are not doing what is right. That is why they are referring to our refineries as scrap.

They want to buy and upgrade them in that way monopolising them.

So, the argument is flat that is why we have remained consistent on our position that once we get the policies right, then it will be okay for us to move forward, he said.

Wabba gave an instance of Chevron multinational oil company that had been in Nigeria for many years but did not have a refinery in the country.

He noted that Chevron had refineries in Singapore even when that country did not have oil.

He explained that what Chevron does is to transfer our oil from Nigeria to Singapore and refine it there and bring it back as a refine product for us to buy. So, we are then paying the transportation back and front and the cost of refining the product, this is the scenario.

So, why is so difficult for them to build those refineries in Nigeria where they are doing production for over 30 and 40 years.

This is because of corruption. The Federal Government must wake up, he said.
The ICPC and the Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution (IPCR) are to partner against corruption and violent conflicts in Nigeria.

A statement issued on Monday in Abuja signed by Mr Mike Abu, Media Assistant to the Director-General of IPCR, Prof. Oshita Oshita said the two organisations will sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the coalition.

The statement said the ICPC Chairman, Mr Ekpo Nta, emphasised the need for coalition between the two agencies when Oshita paid a courtesy visit on Nta. Nta explained that corruption and violent conflicts were interwoven and intertwined.

The ICPC boss said that the reduction of corruption in the polity would guarantee relative peaceful atmosphere.

He, therefore, advocated for research to enhance effective decisions by the government and urged the Federal Government to give adequate attention to research institutes.

He said that government was all along addressing the symptoms of our problems and appealed for a more preventive approach rather than the reactionary method in the Nigerian system.

The ICPC boss commended IPCR for developing Early Warning Centres across the country, saying ICPC would be beneficial to the government and the public.

According to him, ICPC will emulate IPCR to ensure the production of a journal on anti-corruption for the benefit of Nigerians.
Featuring 5-5 inch HD Screen, Powerful Quad core processor, 8MP + 2mp, 3000mh battery & other features

Lagos, April 4th 2016  Today, Infinix Mobility unveils its latest smartphone Infinix HOT 3 with the aim to give Nigerians the best mobile experience.

Infinix mobility is Africas most preferred smartphone brand with over 5 smartphone series successfully launched in different markets in Africa. As technology continues to evolve, INFINIX is one of the brands making history with mobile technology change in this part of the world. The brand continues to ensure customers have access to top-notch specifications at affordable prices.

Infinix HOT 3 is the most anticipated smartphone yet to be released first quarter in Nigeria. HOT 3 launches with the latest technology in a sleek & light sized smartphone.

According to Bruno Li Country manager Infinix Mobility, We are excited to be part of the brands changing the face of mobile usage in Nigeria with our smartphone collections. With Infinix HOT 3, we want consumers to see their phones as more than just a gadget but as an essential part of their everyday life with features that represent this. Our aim is to upgrade our consumers lifestyle with technology in the process of making Infinix a household name in Nigeria and other parts of Africa.

The new smartphone is prepacked with hottest technology including Infinix User interface XUI that enhances customers user experience. Some other features include selfie camera with Soft flash, powerful quad core processor, 3000mah battery with OTG reverse charge, 8 MP Back camera, 5.5 inch HD Full lamination screen, 16 + 1/2 GB ROM, Dual micro sim & much more.

The smartphone is now available on all online retail platforms and offline stores in Nigeria.
Oyo State was one of the three States carved out of the former Western State of Nigeria in 1976. It bears home to many prominent Nigerians such as Professor Dibu Ojerinde, the (registrar of the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board) and many more. INFORMATION NIGERIA in this piece brings to you 6 amazing personalities from Oyo state.

Chief Harry Akande, Businessman

Akande was born to Pa Joseph Afolabi and Chief Mrs. Regina Akande. As a child, he commenced his education at Sacred Heart Nursery School, Idikan, and then St James Primary School, Oke Bola and Abadina School, University of Ibadan. Subsequently, he got into the prestigious Baptist Boys High School, in 1957, which was later changed in 1959 to Olivet Baptist High School, in Olivet Heights, Oyo. Currently, he is one of the richest Nigerian businessmen and devoted philanthropist.

Chief Kola Daisi, Businessman

O. B. A. Kola-Daisi serves as Deputy Managing Director and Chief Relationship Officer of Fountain Trust Bank Plc. Dr. Kola-Daisi had a career path change immediately after National Youth Service Corps when in October 1991 he joined the First City Merchant Bank, now First City Monument Bank, as a management trainee. He spent three months in every major department of the bank over a period of fifteen months, before sitting for the Nigeria Stock Exchange Stockbroking Examinations, thus becoming the first Nigerian Medical Doctor/Stockbroker. He excelled in this field and was later presented with the Nigerian Stock Exchange Presidents Tie Award, the first and only recipient ever, for his contributions to the development of the stock market, in general, and stockbroking in particular, in Nigeria.

Mr. Niyi Otunla, Former Accountant General of the Federation

The former Accountant-General of the federation, Jonah Otunla has also been named amongst many top individuals who benefited hugely from the funds that is currently causing ripples believed to have been given him by the embattled former security adviser, Sambo Dasuki.

Professor Dibu Ojerinde, the Registrar Joint Matriculation Board of Nigeria

He was born in Igboho, Oyo State, Nigeria. He attended Wesley College, Ibadan where he received the Teacher Grade II Certificate Examinations (TC II) in 1964. He later attended Adeyemi College of Education where he obtained the Nigeria Certificate in Education (N.C. E) in 1968. He proceeded to the prestigious Obafemi Awolowo University for a Bachelor of science (B.sc) degree in education in 1973 and a Master of education (M. Ed) in 1975. He later proceeded to Cornell University, Ithaca, New York where he received a Ph. D degree in Educational measurement in 1978. He became a Professor of Tests and Measurement in October 1986. He began his career as a secondary school teacher in 1965 at Laogun Methodist Grammar School. He left to Ibada Iseyin District Grammar School, Iseyin in 1970 and later College of Advanced Studies, Kano in 1975. He joined the services of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife in 1973 and was appointed a Director of Institute of Education in the same university in 1984, a tenure that ended in 1990. He is the first Nigerian Professor of Tests and Measurement. In 1990, he was appointed as the Director of Monitoring and Evaluation, National Primary Education Commission (NPEC), a tenure that elapsed in 1991. In 1991 he was appointed as the Director and Consultant at Centre for Educational Measurement (CEM), Federal Ministry of Education. After his tenure in 1992, he was appointed as the Registrar of the National Board for Educational Measurement, NBEM. He held this position for 7 years (1992  1999). Shortly after his tenure as of the National Board for Educational Measurement (NBEM) in 1999, he was appointed as the Registrar of National Examination Council, NECO. He held this position for 8 years (1999  2007). After his tenure in 2007, he was appointed as Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, a position he held for 5 years (2007-2012) and was reappointed on 10 April 2012

Chief Mustafa Adebayo Oyero, Seasoned Public Administrator

Tafa Balogun was born on 8 August 1947 at Ila Orogun, now in Osun State. He attended the University of Lagos, graduating in 1972 with a B.A. in Political Science. He joined the Nigerian Police Force in May 1973. While a police officer, he gained a law degree from the University of Ibadan. After working in various positions around the country, he became Principal Staff Officer to former Inspector-General of Police, Muhammadu Gambo, then Deputy Commissioner of Police in Edo State, and then Commissioner of Police first in Delta State and then in Rivers State and Abia State. He was appointed Assistant Inspector General of Police in A.I.G Zone One Kano, the position he held when promoted to Inspector General of Police on 6 March 2002.

In November 2001, as A.I.G., Tafa Balogun reassured reporters that there were provisions to ensure the safety of businessmen in Nigeria through the called Diplomatic Corp and Foreign National Protection Unit.

Revd. (DR.) Ademola Ishola, Former President, The Nigerian Baptist Convention

Rev. Dr. Ademola Ishola is an expert in leadership development, public speaking, fundraising, volunteer management, and biblical scholar in missiology.
Punch

The Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, has issued a 21-day ultimatum to Turkish Airlines to comply with the order of the Consumer Protection Council or face prosecution.

Describing himself as the most senior governor in Nigeria, Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State yesterday said his attacks on President Muhammadu Buhari flowed from his sense of responsibility and not related to any 2019 presidential aspiration as alleged by critics.

Thisday

The Nigerian military has confirmed the arrest of the leader of the Ansaru Islamic sect, Khalid Albarnawi, who was once described as the second-in-command to Abubakar Shekau, leader of the Boko Haram terror group.

The Sun

AHEAD of the 2019 governorship election in Abia state, the All Progressives Congress (APC) has already started beating warning drums, urging the incumbent governor, Dr Okezie Ikpeazu, to brace up for its imminent takeover of the Government House.

Daily Times

A member of Sokoto State House of Assembly, Alhaji Ibrahim Kabiru (APC), has advised President Muhammadu Buhari not to relent in his fight against corruption.

Guardian

Alhaji Usman Abdullahi, a first class traditional ruler in Nasarawa state, on Monday tasked policy makers to develop modern framework to boost girl child education in rural areas.

Daily Trust

The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Navy, Senator Isa Hamma Misau (APC, Bauchi Central), said yesterday that Senate President, Bukola Saraki, is looking beyond his case at the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), and working towards 2019

National Mirror

A fatal auto crash along the Mile 2-Badagry expressway yesterday claimed five lives, including a nursing mother and left seven others with varying degree of injuries. The auto crash, which occurred at Abule Osun bus stop in Ojo Local Government Area of the state, involved a commercial Volkswagen bus with registration number FST 652 XF and a Max truck with number plate AA188 SR.

Tribune News

SPECIAL Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari on media and publicity, Femi Adesina, has said the president sold his property to access foreign exchange (forex) for his childs education.

The Nation

A commercial driver who gave his name as Clement Ogunsola has said that he opted to rob his passengers in order to discharge his sick child from the hospital.
The Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) on Monday threatened mass action if the persistent fuel scarcity is not urgently addressed.

Electricity has become an essential commodity, public utilities have since gone to the dogs, petroleum products have grown wings and vanished, compounding an already bad transport system, reducing Nigerians in all parts of the nation to compulsory trekkers, the Congress said.

Having observed the increasing alarm and seeming confusion within the corridors of power on possible solutions to the socio-economic quagmire, we make haste to say that Nigeria is indeed at crossroads today and the extent of suffering is such that this nation has not witnessed throughout its history.

We, therefore, want the government at the centre to quickly talk to Nigerian workers and the masses on why we should continue having trust and patience with them.

We urge them to tell us why we should not be in the streets calling for mass resignations of officers of this government, and to also tell us why we should not be worried when all the macro-economic indices are moving downwards, NLC said.

NLC, at a briefing in Lagos by its factional president, Comrade Joe Ajaero, along with his deputy, Achese Igwe, who doubles as the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) president, urged the government to focus on getting the refineries working.

We urge the government to come clean as promised and account for what it has actually recovered from the treasury looters, giving Nigerians details of the culprits and how much each stole.

We also urge the president and his cabinet to set up appropriate machinery to deploy the recovered funds to fill the resource gaps complained about because of the dip in global oil prices, the NLC said.

He added, however, that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) was yet to reach out to NUPENG leadership on how the union can help end the fuel crisis.

NNPC is yet to partner with NUPENG. They are yet to sit down with NUPENG on how to get this problem solved. But we are willing to partner with NNPC to end this fuel crisis, Igwe said.

On the leadership crisis in NLC, Ajaero said his faction was still open to reconciliation, adding a seven-man committee that was set up to reconcile the factions at the state chapter level was frustrated.

We are waiting for reconciliation. For now we have two NLCs, one for the government and one for the people. We are for the people, Ajaero said.
The Senator representing Bauchi Central District on the platform of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Isa Hamma Misau, said yesterday that Senate President Bukola Saraki is looking beyond his case at the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), and working towards 2019.

Reacting to a report in which it was stated that the Senate Majority leader, Ali Ndume; ex-Governor of Nasarawa State, Senator Abdullahi Adamu and Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu. Were all eyeing Sarakis seat, Misau said the CCT case was dead, and that the Senate president was in firm control of the upper legislative chamber, to the extent that he could not be edged out.

Sarakis camp is very powerful and even if he is going, he will be the one to determine who succeeds him. We, in his camp, are not thinking of Saraki going, we are thinking of 2019 when he will emerge for the second time and consolidate on the legislative works he is doing. Our thinking is beyond this tenure because of his performance.

His case at the CCT is political because even those who are with serious cases are moving freely around the country.

Sarakis case is not embezzlement or misappropriation of funds. His is a case of under or over declaration of assets.

As you know, it is an old case brought forward to pull him down. At what time did they realise that he committed this offence? He was at the Senate in 2011, without immunity, and they didnt come up with it. Why now when he is the Senate president? But whatever it may be, it is a dead issue, Misau, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Navy, said in a phone interview with Daily Trust.

Our correspondent reports that Sarakis case at the CCT, where he is standing trial on a 13-count charge of false assets declaration while he was governor of Kwara State, is coming up tomorrow.
Roderick Hill of Linden and Mobile is wanted for Attempting to Elude, cosidered armed. Anyone caught helping him will be charged with Hindering Prosecution.

Wtf?? man yall doing too much, Hill posted. Its murderers out here and yall worried bout lil ol me? wowsad. Commentators applauded Hills seemingly self-destructive bravery. And Hill even took time to respond to his fans, too.

Hill is wanted for attempting to elude officers in Marengo County, Alabama. He has a rap sheet in nearby Mobile county, comprised of mostly of non-violent offenses, according to AL.com. One commenter summed up every readers reaction.

Mashable.
Syrian forces, backed by Russian air strikes, fought the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group out of the town of al-Qaryatain after gradually surrounding it over the past few days, state media said. Surrounded by hills, al-Qaryatain is 100km west of the ancient city of Palmyra, which government forcesrecaptured from ISIL last Sunday.

Al-Qaryatain had been held by ISIL since late August. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been trying to retake al-Qaryatain and other pockets of ISIL control to reduce the groups ability to project military power into the heavily populated western region of Syria, where Damascus and other main cities are located.

State news agency SANA said the army and its allies fully restored security and stability to al-Qaryatain after killing the last remaining groups of Daesh terrorists in the town, using the acronym of ISILs Arabic name. Government forces entered the town from a number of directions, SANA reported. A Syrian military source told SANA that the army had cleared areas northwest of the town of explosives planted by ISIL.

ISIL fighters retreating from Palmyra laid thousands of mines which the Syrian army is now clearing before civilians can return. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said government forces had taken over half the town and that fierce fighting continued between Assads army and ISIL to the north and southeast of al-Qaryatain.

The observatory, which monitors the five-year-old Syrian conflict through a network of activists on the ground, said more than 40 air strikes by Russian and Syrian planes hit areas near the town on Sunday. ISIL still has complete control over the city of Raqqa, its de facto capital, and it controls most of Deir Ezzor province in eastern Syria, which borders Iraq.
It was all wailing and tears today around Sango axis of Ogun state, after two men between the ages of 40 and 50 years old were caught at the Ayokunu Oil, an abandoned filling station before Iyana-Ilogbo bus stop with dried human parts.

The suspects who were accosted by residents around the area were given the beaten of their lives before operatives of the Police Force; Sango-Otta Division came to the scene and took the suspects away to the Sango-Otta division, even before the arrival of NND reporter.

Efforts to interrogate the suspects at the police station were rendered abortive by members of the police force so as to give room for proper investigations.

The suspects reportedly met their waterloo after some residents of Iyana-Ilogbo who has been monitoring the suspicious activities of culprits acted as police officers to approach them. At the crime scene, many items were discovered, which include school uniforms, sandals, police uniform, wigs, cutlasses and school bags. Dungeons which used to be septic tanks were also discovered with different human parts.

When Nigerian NewsDirect contacted Ogun state Police Public Relations Officer, Muyiwa Adejobi at press time, he said he is not aware, as the incident has not yet reached his table.

See images below..

Source: Nigerian News Direct
A former governor of Ebonyi State, Senator Sam Egwu, yesterday urged Nigerians to support President Muhammadu Buhari to succeed, saying if he fails, everyone will suffer, irrespective of political affiliation.

Egwu, who is representing Ebonyi North Senatorial District on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, said Nigerians must key into the programmes of the present administration for the success of the country.

My concern now is how the president will succeed because if he doesnt succeed all of us will suffer. We want a positive change and we will support it. Buhari must succeed, he emphasized.

While stressing the need for the revival of the countrys ailing industries, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Industry, said his committee would provide the necessary legislation and oversight to put the country on the track of industrialisation.

Even though we are of the PDP, we will support him to succeed in the interest of the country, he said.

Egwu, however, said the PDP would continue to provide constructive criticism and robust opposition to the All Progressives Congress, APC, to enhance governance in the country.
Cattle bulls are back in force Sidwell Strategies - Sat Oct 22, 7:12PM CDT Cattle-on-Feed; Rebound in Equities & Energy

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%)
In early 2015, the San Diego arts community starting getting nervous.

The San Diego Foundation restructured its grantmaking model and in the process, it eliminated 13 positions and created 15 new ones. This shift led to the departure of Felicia Shaw, the foundation's longtime Director of Arts and Creative Economy. What's more, under the new governing model, arts and culture became subsumed under an initiative called WELL (Work Enjoy Learn Live), which, according to the San Diego City Beat, "allows potential donors to easily understand the various categories to which they can contribute." Arts and culture, specifically, falls under "Enjoy," alongside recreation and physical activity.

The arts lost a seat at the table, and that alarmed the city's arts proponents.

Fortunately, for them, Dr. Andrew Viterbi enjoys the theater.

Dr. Viterbi, the Italian-born co-founder of Qualcomm and philanthropist announced a $5 million gift that will create the Erna Finci Viterbi Artistic Director Fund. The fund, which supports the theatres artistic and arts engagement programs, will name the Globes artistic leadership position and confer on Barry Edelstein the honor of a new title: the Erna Finci Viterbi Artistic Director of The Old Globe.

The gift markers an impressive foray into the arts for Dr. Viterbi, who also supports education, health and social services, and biomedical research causes.

In addition to setting the Globe on a path towards long-term financial sustainability, Dr. Viterbi hopes the gift will, according to the Globe's press release, "encourage other philanthropists to chip in to support the theater."

History points to an encouraging precedent.

Back in March of 2004, the University of Southern California School of Engineering was renamed the Viterbi School of Engineering in his honor, following his $52 million donation to the school. Eight months later, Silicon Valley venture capitalist Mark Stevens gave $22 million to the newly-renamed USC Viterbi School of Engineering to create an institute that commercializes technological innovations of faculty and teaches students the fundamentals of the commercialization process.

As we noted at the time, past giving leads to more giving, and it's a lesson that clearly isn't lost on Dr. Viterbi.

And so the next year or so should prove telling. Will other San Diego donors pick up Viterbi's mantle and support the Globe? We're sure they'd appreciate it. We took a look at the San Diego Foundation's web site, and while the WELL framework is prominent on its home page, fears about the arts getting lost in the shuffle weren't completely illogical. Hover over the Programs page and you'll see Arts, Culture, and Humanity existing among 10 other "Social Impact Areas" and along side 13 "Programs and Funds."

That's a lot of areas, programs, and funds.
In California, El Nino has partially relieved the states four-year drought. But in Eastern and Southern Africa, the weather anomaly has led to the worst drought seen in nearly a century, causing massive crop failures, livestock deaths, and misery. Up to 20 million people are desperate for food.

Lubbock, Texas-based Breedlove Foods is in the midst of a fundraising campaign to target this devastation. Since the anti-hunger nonprofit was founded in 1994, it has distributed 1.5 billion servings of food in over 65 countries including the United States.

Breedlove Foods is an interesting operation. It describes itself as a "commercial-sized, nonprofit food processor," and it has own food plant, creating foods that are "nutritionally complete" and can be scaled for different needs. "We can package food for the needs of the individual, to shipping millions of servings in multiple ocean containers."

The goal of its latest campaign, called Breedlove for Africa: Spreading Hope One Meal at a Time, is relatively modestgetting three shipping containers of 3 million highly fortified, nutritious, dehydrated lentil and vegetable meals to the most vulnerable populations at a cost of $150,000. Breedlove board members have generously offered to match the first $75,000 raised.

The food processor has asked its development and humanitarian relief assistance specialist Mark Wentling to run the effort. Wentling has an impressive background, working for decades in Africa for the U.S. Agency for International Development and NGOs including CARE. He has visited or worked in all 54 African countries. In addition to English, he speaks French, Portuguese, Spanish, Ewe, Hausa and Kiswahili. He has written three books about Africa with a fourth on the way. He moved his family to Texas to work for Breedlove last June and has recently started teaching a course in international development at Texas Tech University.

The main way that Breedlove Foods has funded its efforts is when there is a humanitarian crisis or disaster in the world, it has a partnering organization that raises the funds to get the food to where people need it, Wentling told Inside Philanthropy. For the past two or three years, Breedlove has partnered with USAID, which has paid for the food and shipped it to countries and partners that it has selected. Breedlove has recently partnered with World Vision to ship one of those free containers to Zimbabwe, one of the countries hardest hit by the drought.

Although in the past, Breedlove has benefited from grants from such funders as CH Foundation, Talkington Foundation, and Forrest Foundation, grants have been more scarce lately. With so many of the biggest global development and health funders focused on creating long-term change, it can be tough to find support for the short-term work of actually responding to emergencies. (We've vented on this issue repeatedly at IP, especially in the context of refugee crises.)

Breedlove has tried innovative ways to get the word out about the African relief effort. One of them is AfriCook, a culinary competition held at Breedlove Foods in November 2015. Seven African students from Texas Tech University cooked and served meals from their native countries. The competition garnered a lot of attention as it kicked off the fundraising campaign. It is still about $18,000 short of meeting its goal. And that is a just a drop in the bucket compared to the need, said Wentling. He blames a shortfall on donor fatigue, yet he is grateful for the support Breedlove has received. Most of the donations we received have been small amounts $50, $100 from lots of people in the area. We have been on most of the local radio stations and TV stations. We havent ceased in our efforts to get the word out.

Small donors have used the donation button at Breedlove.org because its the easiest way to give, although the company will also take credit card donations over the phone or accept checks at its mailing address in Lubbock. Breedlove did get one anonymous, $10,000 donation postmarked from California. But the search continues for other donors.

Because of my years of working in humanitarian assistance Ive been able to work my own personal network," Wentling said. "Thats how we got the World Vision grant. I have also been in contact with people from CARE, Catholic Relief Services, International Medical Corps, and Save the Children. Sometimes, they are very interested. For others, just taking one container is a bureaucratic burden for them, and it doesnt fit well with their programs.

The costs involved in providing relief include not just the food and shippin, but distributing it when was it arrives in Africa. Its easier to get NGOs to participate in the effort if the food reaches the destinations without any costs on their part.

My aim of coming here to Breedlove after almost 45 years of working in Africa is to help feed more hungry people," Wentling said. "We just want to increase our capacity to do more good. There is certainly a lot of potential, and theres certainly a lot of need out there in the world."

You can donate here.
When the MacArthur Foundation was devising what would become the next chapter in its philanthropic story, President Julia Stasch and company busted out a metaphorical red pen and marked a number of programs for deletion.

The goal was to turn MacArthur into a more streamlined and agile organization, oneas Stasch put itthat is making big bets and tackling some of the worlds most profound issues as they rapidly evolve.

Nuclear security may not appear to be one of those rapidly evolving issues. Not at first glance anyway. But if you scratch the surface just a little bit here, youll see just how much the nuclear landscape has changed over the past few decades. And in many respects, its even scarier now than it was 30 years ago when MacArthur was one of the early leaders paying attention to nuclear threats.

Related: Nuclear Security: Funders are Still on the Case, But Reinforcements Are Needed

Although the foundation plans to wind down its Peace and International Security program over the next couple of years, that funding sunset doesnt apply to nuclear threats. In fact, when the foundation announced it was shutting down Peace and International Security funding, it also declared that it would be exploring the elements and feasibility of a big bet based on a new approach to reducing the threat posed by nuclear weapons.

Well, it looks like that the exploratory phase is over, given that MacArthur recently announced its latest "big bet"the Nuclear Challenges program.

MacArthurs commitment to nuclear security may not be new, but its Nuclear Challenges strategy is. The foundation is zeroing in ever more sharply on decreasing the availability of, and reliance on, weapons-usable nuclear material. The challenge, according to the foundation, is to ensure nuclear technology and materials will continue to be used for peaceful purposes while at the same time, decreasing the threats this stuff pose to security.

This is urgent work in an era when nonstate actors have become better organized and financed than ever before, and in a world where the "key ingredients for nuclear weaponshighly enriched uranium and plutoniumare in plentiful supply," as MacArthur points out. Meanwhile, nuclear weapons are in the hands of several countries that don't have anything near the sophisticated command and control systems of top powers like the U.S. and Russia. Pakistan, which has 120 warheads, comes quickly to mind.

Even as everyone fixates on climate change (another focal point for MacArthur) as the great doomsday threat of our time, nuclear weapons pose a more immediate risk of catastrophe. Just imagine even the most primitive nuclear weapon going off in New York City, or a bungled crisis in South Asia resulting in a mega city like Mumbai or Karachi getting nuked.

Still, now is not the moment to be gunning to extinguish nuclear technology altogether, since it offers a carbon-free way to generate energy in a world that desperately needs to wean itself from fossil fuels. MacArthur is keen to find a way to navigate this tension, and we can't help noticing the connection between two of it big bets.

MacArthur isnt going it alone in its nuclear work, and recently joined forces with another stalwart funder in the fieldthe Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Carnegie and MacArthur have partnered up to make an up to $25 million commitment on a Civil Society Gift Basket. The so-called gift basket money will be used to over the course of one year (2016 to 2017) to secure nuclear materials and reduce the threat they pose.

MacArthur has long been funding programs working to keep fissile materials like enriched uranium and plutonium out of the wrong hands. As well, the foundation has invested a good deal of money in beefing up the number of authorities in the nuclear security field on all fronts including experts in policy, academia, research, and science. Its Nuclear Challenges commitment sounds a bit like its more of the same work, just packaged differently.

In many respects thats true. The main difference now is that the foundation is going in deeper and sharpening its focus on the greatest areas of risk. Who cares whether this is a new bet. What matters is that it's an important one.

Related: MacArthur Backs a Push at Stanford to Train Next Gen Nuclear Security Experts
As a registered investment adviser, no matter how carefully you screen your clients before accepting them, there can still be relationships that just dont work out. Perhaps a client has unrealistic expectations for investment performance or demands a high level of service for a low fee. In such a case, you might have to fire the client.

Initial conversations with a customer are much like a first date, says Karim Ahamed, a partner at the Chicago office of HPM Partners, a $4 billion registered investment adviser in Chicago. Both sides are on their best behavior. Things may be left unsaid which have a critical bearing on how the relationship progresses. But the best performance in the world doesnt help much if chemistry with the client is bad, he adds.

Relationship problems are not the only cause of trouble. So how to decide when to part ways with a client? Lane Jones, chief investment officer at Evensky & Katz/Foldes Financial Wealth Management in Coral Gables, Florida, says his firm drops a client about every two years, for one of three reasons: First is mistreatment of a staff member by the client. Second is a misalignment of philosophy between the firm and the client. Third is an unprofitable client.

If a client is belligerent or demeaning or unprofessional with our staff, we dont accept that, Jones says. Employee morale is important. You have to have a thick skin in this business, he continues, but were very quick to let everyone from our receptionist up to the top know that they have a right to be treated with respect. If a customer violates that, employees are encouraged to alert management.

When it comes to philosophical misalignment, sometimes in an effort to grow the business, you will take a chance on a customer whos not a perfect fit, Jones says. The risk often doesnt work. A client might become overly fixated on short-term market moves, for example, saying, I pay you. How did you not see that decline coming? he relates.

In fact, that was the exact scenario that happened with a client of HPMs Ahamed. HPM put the customer in an alternative, illiquid investment, in which it was clear the payoff might take a while. The customer was preoccupied with short-term performance, however. He came from the corporate world and was used to quarterly reports, Ahamed says. The firm tried hard to get the client to adopt a long-term view, Ahamed continues, though over time, it became clear that he didnt have such a horizon in mind, leading the firm reluctantly to part ways with him. In another instance, the market moved against a particularly wealthy client who had placed an options order with the firm. Instead of copping to an unwise move, he tried to pin his losses on a member of Ahameds team. Compliance officers were brought in and determined that the team member wasnt at fault. Says Ahamed: If you cant trust a client to tell the truth, there will be problems down the line.

Should an advisory firm decide that the client would be better served elsewhere, a good way to avoid bad blood is to do a Its not you; its me and place the onus on the adviser. And at that point, the customer makes the decision. If he or she decides to bolt, the firm will try to help the customer find a new adviser.

That assistance is crucial, even though its not always easy, as some rejected clients feel quite insulted, says Michael Dixon, chief operating officer at Carl Domino, an RIA in West Palm Beach, Florida. Its very important to terminate clients delicately to avoid potential bad-mouthing or, worse, legal action. Over the past five years, Dixons firm has let go four customers. Each time, the gentle approach worked, he says.

Finally, an RIA firm should calculate the profitability of each client, Jones says. The firm should let customers know they will have to pay more for a higher level of service, so that the firm can make a profit. To be sure, in the first five years of an RIA firms existence, terminating a client is rarely brought up, because it erases revenue. But in the long run  as some RIA advisers have apparently failed to see  sometimes youre better off doing so.

Get more on registered investment advisers.
Where others before him have failed, U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon is championing a new savings vehicle to boost retirement security for the American workforce. He joins a coterie of policymakers and think tank denizens who are concerned about the 68 million full- and part-time workers without access to an employer-sponsored pension.

Proposed in late January, Merkleys American Savings Account Act would create a universal retirement plan for the private sector. The American Savings Account (ASA) mirrors some of the best features of the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), considered one of the best-designed and lowest-cost defined contribution plans, which was created for federal employees, including members of Congress.

Lets make it simple and easy for ordinary people to take advantage of tax-preferred plans, not something that is mostly available to people in well-established businesses and well advanced in their careers, says Merkley, the two-term Democrat from Myrtle Creek, who raised his two children in the same blue-collar neighborhood where he grew up.

ASAs would include automatic enrollment and regular contributions from employers and employees through payroll deductions. They would offer lifetime portability, require little effort from employers  other than a 3 percent annual contribution  and give participants fund rollover flexibility. In a reversal of the typical individual retirement account rollover, from a workplace plan to an IRA, ASAs would accept IRAs. Whats more, if an ASA participant took a job with a 401 (k), she could roll the ASA plan into the workplace pension, keeping the assets in one central location. As for fees, ASAs would likely follow the lead of the TSP, which includes a handful of index mutual funds charging 0.029 percent.

We hope to build support over time that auto enrollment makes sense, Merkley says, stressing the importance of doing something that is very simple and not a big headache for small employers  just another check mark in enrolling people in payroll service.

Over the past several decades, attempts to create national or state-wide retirement plans have run aground. Take the Automatic IRA, which was officially announced in 2006 at conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation by its authors, David John and J. Mark Iwry, then senior fellows at Heritage and the centrist Brookings Institution, respectively. Both John McCain and Barack Obama promoted the proposed savings plan in their 2008 presidential campaigns. Since then, though, the Auto IRA has been submitted in every federal budget without success.

In a March paper entitled Structuring State Retirement Saving Plans: A Guide to Policy Design and Management Issues, John, now deputy director of Washington-based Brookingss Retirement Security Project, and project director William Gale defended the Auto IRA  and the need for new retirement plans. (John is also senior strategic adviser specializing in pensions and retirement savings at the AARP Public Policy Institute.) Although workers without an employer-based plan can contribute to Individual Retirement Accounts, very few do, they wrote.

Among workers who earn between $30,000 and $50,000, only about one out of 20 contributes regularly to an IRA, according to a 2006 study by the Washington-based Employee Benefit Research Institute.

Bids to create new retirement savings vehicles for the private sector have met with fierce resistance from the financial services industry. If a fund design moves out of committee and is put before Congress for a vote, lobbying efforts to kill the bill begin in force. A notable survivor is myRA, an entry-level plan created by the U.S. Department of the Treasury that consists solely of T-bills; this offering has been available since late 2015 to any American worker with an account under $15,000.

We have long supported the goal of increasing American workers opportunities to save for retirement, the Washington-based Investment Company Institute (ICI), the mutual fund industrys lobbying group, said in a statement on ASAs. Unfortunately, we believe that Senator Merkleys legislation, while well intended, is premised on unrealistic assumptions about the ability to extend the inherent cost efficiencies of the Federal Thrift Savings Plan to private sector employees. The ICIs suggested alternative: a so-called starter 401 (k) like myRA, or other mutual fundbased plans for small investors.

The ASA bill has fans among advocates of low-cost retirement plans. David Madland, senior adviser to the American Worker Project at the Center for American Progress, a centrist think tank based in Washington, has been calling for a savings vehicle along the lines of the federal TSP. Merkley, who drew from Madlands writings for inspiration, invited him to join the official ASA announcement. We very much like the concept, Madland says. Its clearly the right direction we need to go.

The ASA proposal, which would amend the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, now sits with the Senate Finance Committee for review. I think this bill has as good or better chance as any legislation, Madland contends. But thanks to congressional deadlock, even common-sense bills like this face an uphill battle, he notes.

Merkley acknowledges the headwinds that come with pushing for a retirement plan that precludes established mutual fund products. The industry that provides high-fee plans is not excited about providing low-fee options, he says.

Visit Frances Denmarks blog and follow her on Twitter at @francesdenmark.
Cyclists given access to insurance products and services and other benefits
Program specialist K2 Insurance Services (K2) has acquired a New Jersey managing general agency specializing in workers compensation alternatives and also launched a nationwide workers compensation program with another Kentucky program manager and QBE North America.

K2, which was formed in 2011 to acquire managing general agencies (MGAs) and specialty program administrators, has acquired New Jersey-based managing general agency High Point Underwriters. High Point Underwriters specializes in occupational accident and workers compensation products for independent contractors.

Occupational accident insurance policies are an alternative to traditional workers compensation policies. They are used by employers who opt out of the workers compensation system in states such as Texas to provide benefits to workers injured or killed on the job. They are also used by some transportation companies to fund benefits for owner-operators who are independent contractors. The policies permit an employer to choose benefit amounts, liability limits, deductibles and other terms, often at lower cost than if they provided the benefits set by state workers compensation laws.

David King, High Points CEO and lead underwriter, will remain with the firm along with Roman Atkielski, senior vice president, who has worked with King in underwriting this business for the last 15 years.

Concurrently with the acquisition, High Point is partnering with Midwestern Insurance Alliance and QBE North America to administer a combined national workers compensation and occupational accident insurance program. Louisville, Kentucky-based Midwestern Insurance Alliance, led by Marc Risen, is a national workers compensation program administrator focused on the transportation industry.

The coverage will be provided through QBE North America companies on both an admitted and non-admitted basis.

High Point will also continue to write occupational accident insurance on behalf of Lloyds of London.

San Diego, Calif.-based K2 was formed in 2011 by Bob Kimmel, chairman, and Pat Kilkenny, CEO, with investment firm Endeavour Capital. Kilkenny formerly ran and owned Arrowhead General Insurance, a general agency with more than $1 billion in written premiums. Kimmel served as executive vice president and MGA practice leader at Guy Carpenter, the insurance intermediary that is a division of Marsh & McLennan.

K2 acquired a majority stake in Midwestern Insurance Alliance in March, 2012. It as K2s first investment.

Later that same year, K2 invested in a new Texas MGA, Mission Select Insurance Services, which focuses on residential property.

Kimmel said K2 will continue to seek other acquisitions around the country.

In 2013, K2 acquired Harrisburg, Pennsylvania-based Aegis Security Insurance Co. , which specializes in insurance for manufactured homes, other low-value dwellings and motorcycles. The company also underwrites surety bonds and accident and health. K2 utilizes several MGAs to distribute products on behalf of Aegis Security and other carrier partners including Aegis General Insurance Agency, Allied Public Risk, Midwestern Insurance Alliance, Mission Select Insurance Services and Vikco Insurance Services.

Source: K2 Insurance

Related:

Topics Mergers & Acquisitions Workers' Compensation Insurance Wholesale New Markets Human Resources
Watford Re Ltd. has formed a new excess and surplus lines insurer called Watford Specialty Insurance Co. (WSIC), based in Morristown, N.J.

WSICs lines of business will be similar to what weve been targeting on the reinsurance side, i.e., casualty and non-catastrophe exposed property, said John F. Rathgeber, CEO of Bermuda-based Watford Re.

The business will be primarily written through managing general agents on a program basis, he affirmed.

Alex Scherer, former AXA Insurance Co. president and CEO, has been named as WSICs president and CEO.

WSIC will operate on a similar basis as Watford Re, with Arch Capital Ltd. overseeing the underwriting, insurance accounting and claims handling, while Highbridge Principal Strategies will serve as the investment manager of the high yield bond and leveraged loan portfolio, Rathgeber added. (Arch Capital owns about 11 percent of Watford Re.)

In addition, Arch Investment Managers will manage an investment grade fixed income account for WSIC, he said, noting the company invests a relatively high percentage of its assets in non-investment grade corporate credit.

WSIC received a financial strength rating of A- (Excellent) and an issuer credit rating of a- from A.M. Best, with a stable outlook assigned to both ratings.

As a wholly owned subsidiary of Watford Re, A.M. Best said the ratings are based on:

WSICs strong risk-adjusted capitalization

Experienced underwriting partner in Arch Underwriters Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Arch Capital Group Ltd.

Leading investment acumen of Highbridge Principal Strategies LLC and

WSICs strategic component of Watford Re Ltd.s broad-based business plan.

Partially offsetting these positive rating factors are the inherent risks associated with a start-up company and the risks associated with a subsidiary with a limited geographic footprint, A.M. Best said.

When A.M. Best mentioned the companys limited geographic footprint, Rathgeber explained the ratings agency was referring to the fact that WSIC is focused on the U.S. E&S market as opposed to writing an international account through multiple branch offices.

In addition, A.M. Best said, the competitive market conditions in the insurance and reinsurance sectors in the United States may challenge the execution of the business plan.

Responding to these concerns, Rathgeber said: Its a legitimate caveat but one that applies to all insurers and reinsurers.

No company is guaranteed success in the current environment, he added. However, we believe the combination of Archs underwriting expertise with Highbridges investment acumen gives us a competitive edge and a good chance to succeed.

A.M. Best went on to say that the underwriting risk and WSICs alternative investment strategy creates an elevated-risk profile that could expose WSIC on the asset and liability sides of the balance sheet. However, the ratings agency suggested that the skilled underwriting of Arch Capital, coupled with the experienced investment acumen of [Highbridge Principal Strategies] will help manage these risks.

Rathgeber noted the company is domiciled in New Jersey because Arch already has an operation in the state with an established rapport with the regulators.

Topics Mergers & Acquisitions Carriers Excess Surplus Underwriting AM Best
BB&T Corp. said it has completed its acquisition of wholesale insurance and reinsurance broker CGSC North America (Swett & Crawford) from Cooper Gay Swett & Crawford.

North Carolina-based BB&T said it acquired the U.K.-based Swett & Crawford for $500 million in cash and that it expects the deal to add more than $200 million, or 15 percent, in annual revenue to its BB&T Insurance division.

Swett & Crawford will operate as part of BB&Ts wholesale property/casualty broker and managing general agent, CRC Insurance Services.

CGSC North America consists of the wholesale broker Swett & Crawford, which had merged with Cooper Gay to become Cooper Gay Swett & Crawford in 2010; specialty managing general agencies including J.H. Blades & Co and Creechurch International Underwriters; and a U.S. reinsurance broker. The specialty managing general agent Creechurch, which operates in Canada, is not included in the sale.

This transaction excludes all Swett & Crawfords non-U.S. business, which accounts for less than five percent of its total revenue.

BB&T said it expects to record approximately $500 million of goodwill and intangibles as a result of this acquisition.

CGSC announced last November that it was looking to sell its North American business unit.

John Howard, chairman and chief executive officer of BB&T Insurance, said last month when the deal was announced that it represented a compelling opportunity to further build BB&T Insurance and add a team of industry specialists.

According to Standard & Poors, CGSC has indicated that it will likely use the proceeds from the sale to lower its corporate debt.

The North American division, Swett & Crawford, was doing pretty well. It was pretty much the international group that had troubles, said Julie Herman, associate director, Financial Services Ratings at S&P, in November when CSGC revealed its divestiture plan. And because of that, the companys capital structure became completely unsustainable. Their leverage was 11 times as of the 12 months ended Sept. 30, 2015. So we knew the management was going to take action.

For the first nine months of 2015, the North American division comprised 60 percent of CGSC Group revenues and 78 percent of group profits, according to S&P. Thus the sale of this division and use of proceeds is expected to have a material impact on the CGSC groups credit profile, S&P said.

Herman called the sale a drastic move but one that will allow the management team to focus attention on international operations.

Since purchasing Swett & Crawford in 2010, while the North American business unit has performed rather well, the international division has declined, according to S&P.

Steve Hearn, CGSC Group CEO, said last month that the proceeds of the sale will provide CGSC with the resources it needs to build for the future with a fresh outlook.

Raleigh, N.C.-based BB&T Insurance operates more than 200 insurance agencies through subsidiaries BB&T Insurance Services, BB&T Insurance Services of California, McGriff, Seibels & Williams, CRC Insurance Services, Crump Life Insurance Services and AmRisc.

Topics Mergers & Acquisitions Agencies Insurance Wholesale Human Resources
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected Wal-Mart Stores Inc.s bid to throw out a more than $150 million class action judgment over the retailers treatment of workers in Pennsylvania.

The justices declined to hear a Wal-Mart appeal, leaving intact a 2014 ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that largely upheld a lower court judgment awarding $187 million to the plaintiffs.

The case affects about 187,000 Wal-Mart employees who worked in Pennsylvania between 1998 and 2006.

The Pennsylvania court mostly upheld a 2007 lower court ruling in favor of the employees, who said the company failed to pay them for all hours worked and prevented them from taking full meal and rest breaks. The appeals court threw out a $37 million attorneys fee award and ordered the trial court to recalculate that portion of the judgment.

The case had been on hold at the high court while the justices weighed an appeal brought by Tyson Foods Inc. in a separate class action case.

On March 22, the court ruled 6-2 in the Tyson Foods case in favor of workers at a pork facility in Iowa who said they were entitled to overtime pay and damages because they were not paid for the time spent putting on and taking off protective equipment and walking to work stations.

The Supreme Court on Monday also rejected another class action appeal that had been on hold for the Tyson decision.

The justices left in place a 2014 ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholding a $203 million judgment against Wells Fargo & Co. over allegations the bank imposed excessive overdraft fees.

The two related Wal-Mart cases are Wal-Mart v. Braun, U.S. Supreme Court, Nos 14-1123 and 14-1124. The other case was Wells Fargo v. Gutierrez, U.S. Supreme Court, No.14-1230.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

Related:

Topics Lawsuits USA Pennsylvania
Underwriting manager Victor O. Schinnerer & Company has launched a new Dealer Open Lot Insurance program. The program is available to automotive dealership clients and provides coverage for owned auto inventory held for sale.

The program, offered on non-admitted paper, is provided by a panel of Lloyds Syndicates backed by the security of Lloyds. Coverage highlights include:

Broad coverage including earthquake

Aggregate wind/hail deductibles; terms will vary by state

Flood coverage options available for most dealerships with flood exposures

Competitive premiums

Streamlined application process

The Dealer Open Lot Insurance program is currently available in all states except Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas (western portion), Louisiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and South Dakota. The program is available on an open brokerage basis to all licensed brokers and agents.

Topics Auto New Markets
The U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration has upheld its $2.6 million fine against Exxon Mobile Pipeline Co. over an oil spill in central Arkansas.

The agency has notified Exxon Mobil of its decision. The notification comes just days after the third anniversary of the March 29, 2013, oil spill.

Exxon Mobil spokeswoman Ashley Smith Alemayehu told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that the company is evaluating it options, including a possible court appeal.

Tens of thousands of gallons of heavy crude oil spilled into a neighborhood in Mayflower, drainage ditches and a Lake Conway cove when the Pegasus Pipeline cracked.

The federal agency levied the fine after finding Exxon Mobil had committed nine violations of federal safety regulations in connection with the spill.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Energy Oil Gas Arkansas
The Crichton Group, an independent insurance agency in Tennessee, has promoted veteran team member Cooper Jones to president.

Jones succeeds Bob Jackson in the role, who will now act as a co-chair of the company and maintain deep involvement in leading the agency as a whole.

As president, Jones will oversee the companys insurance offerings, marketing of new services and product development. Jones will continue to lead the agencys nonprofit and social services division.

Jimmy Ward, CEO and co-chair of The Crichton Group, commented on the hiring saying Jones has been integral in expanding offerings and opportunities for our clients. During this time of rapidly evolving and complex change within our industry, we look forward to broadening our service platforms further under Coopers leadership.

Jones joined The Crichton Group in 2002, and has experience in the commercial insurance, risk management and nonprofits and social services industries. In addition, he is a preferred partner of The Center of Nonprofit Management, member of the United Heartland Agency Council and a member of the Hartford Insurance Company Agency Council.

Jones earned his bachelors degree in business administration from the University of Mississippi.

Topics Tennessee
The district attorney in Wake County, North Carolina, has dismissed 104 DWI cases and another 71 traffic-related offenses after a sheriffs deputy was found to have lied on the stand.

Local media outlets said District Attorney Lorrin Freeman took the action after District Court Judge Jacqueline Brewer disqualified Deputy Robert Davis, a member of the sheriffs DWI Task Force, as a witness. Brewer found that Davis had lied in at least three cases.

In one instance, a woman whom Davis arrested in August 2014 made the case that the deputy had not allowed her to make her phone call or to take a breathalyzer test. At a hearing on that case, Davis denied her claims.

Sheriff Donnie Harrison said Davis, who was an 18-year-veteran of the sheriffs office, was fired.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics North Carolina
On Easter, I read The Gazette article discussing the generosity of the Gianforte Family Foundation started by Greg and Susan Gianforte. They are pouring resources into the next and future generations here in Montana and elsewhere. For instance, the Rafiki Foundation.

The Gazette article states the Gianfortes donated $2.8 million to the Rafiki Foundation and I have friends who sponsor orphans through this organization. After reading the article, I looked up the Rafiki website. From rafikifoundation.com: Rafiki means friend in Swahili and depicts the purpose of the Foundation  to befriend orphans and widows in their distress (James 1:27). The mission of The Rafiki Foundation is to help Africans know God and raise their standard of living with excellence and integrity. To accomplish this mission, Rafiki established 10 Training Villages within the African countries of Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Zambia, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and Ethiopia. These villages provide living, educational, and medical facilities through programs including child care, education and Bible study.
Alliant Insurance Services Inc. has acquired Spokane, Wash.-based Andre-Romberg Insurance Agency.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Andre-Romberg will operate as part of Alliant Americas. Kurtz, along with Andre-Rombergs entire management team and staff, will join Alliant and continue to service clients from its Spokane offices.

Andre-Romberg provides commercial risk management and personal insurance solutions.

Newport Beach, Calif.-based Alliant provides property/casualty, workers compensation, employee benefits, surety, and financial products.

Topics Mergers & Acquisitions Washington Alliant
The documents, released and analysed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ)  the same organisation responsible for the LuxLeaks of 2014-2015  refer to, among many others, heads of state including King Salman of Saudi Arabia and Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, who held undisclosed offshore accounts and shareholdings.

I think the leak will prove to be probably the biggest blow the offshore world has ever taken because of the extent of the documents, said Gerard Ryle, director of the ICIJ.

Friends, family members or associates of other heads of state, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, UK Prime Minister David Cameron and Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad have been shown to have taken advice  not necessarily leading to illegal activities  from Mossack Fonesca.

Former heads of state including Chinas Li Peng, Egypts Hosni Mubarak and Libyas Muammar Qaddafi have also been implicated by the leaked documents.

Once again the banking world has been rocked by leaks, said Andrew Haslip, Verdict Financials head of content in Asia-Pacific for private wealth management. The Panama Papers leak is, by all accounts, the largest to date and appears to have snagged a number of high-profile clients. No doubt another round of investigations by tax authorities will be forthcoming, followed by hefty fines and, in a few rare instances, criminal charges.

However, the leak is not likely to significantly impact the offshore wealth management sector. Offshore wealth managers have been dealing with the decline in client anonymity for quite some time, and the Panama Papers are simply the biggest leak to date, Haslip continued. Ever since automatic disclosure became the standard in the wake of the financial crisis, the industry has been transitioning away from client anonymity as an impetus for investing offshore.

If anything, the leaks could lead high net worth individuals (HNWIs) to move more money to jurisdictions such as Singapore, Hong Kong, the UK, Switzerland and the US.

One aspect of the leak which could be particularly damaging in the context of the continuing debate about countries publicly moving against evasion and avoidance while also engaging in aggressive tax competition on the policy front, is the extent to which the use of the UKs offshore network has been exposed.

Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Opposition, said that the fact the UK allows its territory in the southern hemisphere to be used for tax purposes is a national disgrace.

The tabloid press have been desperately screaming look over there, acting as if rich foreign crooks are the only big story here, he said. They arent.

What most of those exposed have in common  home and abroad  is that they used British tax havens like the British Virgin Islands.

After the LuxLeaks scandal, which exposed the use of tax rulings agreed between the Grand Duchy and companies represented by PwC Luxembourg to help multinationals lower their tax bills, state aid investigations into tax rulings were ramped up and became a key part of the European Commissions agenda.

With the ruling UK Conservative party being heavily affected by the Panama Papers  several peers and former members of parliament, as well as the Prime Ministers own father are among those named in the 11 million documents leaked by the ICIJ  there will be significant pressure to tighten up the UKs offshore network, which includes major offshore centres such as Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, the Channel Islands, Gibraltar, Guernsey, the Isle of Man and Jersey.

Cameron has so far only responded through a press statement from Number 10  the prime ministers residence.

Downing Street said laid last night the issue was a private matter for the Cameron family. A spokesman said: The Governments tax reforms are about making sure that some of the richest people in the country pay a decent share of income tax.

Opposition politician, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, called on Cameron to take real action.

The Panama Papers revelations are extremely serious. HMRC [the UK revenue authority] should treat this with utmost priority and urgently launch investigation, he tweeted. [David] Cameron promised and has failed to end tax secrecy and crack down on morally unacceptable offshore schemes, real action is now needed.

Drives from other countries are also likely. While there have been few high-profile figures from the US implicated by the papers, Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a US-based research and advisory organisation, has called on major financial centres to take action.

Doing legitimate business in secrecy jurisdictions is not illegal, but the Panama Papers investigation is yet another example of how individuals and businesses are systematically abusing the secrecy they provide, said Liz Confalone, GFI policy counsel. Banks and law firms routinely conspire to hide their clients money and fail to follow through on required customer due diligence checks.

The governments of the US and other major financial centres particularly need to make corporate ownership information public through corporate registries. The Panama Papers investigation must be the nail in the coffin of anonymous companies.

Mossack Fonseca said in a statement: "It is legal and common for companies to establish commercial entities in different jurisdictions for a variety of legitimate reasons, including conducting cross-border mergers and acquisitions, bankruptcies, estate planning, personal safety, restructuring and pooling of investment capital from different jurisdictions in neutral legal and tax regimes that does not benefit or disadvantage any one investor."
LIstat ha rivisto al rialzo la crescita del primo trimestre del 2017, con il Pil che balza allo 0,4% sui precedenti tre mesi e all1,2% su base annua. Le prime indicazioni dellIstituto, diffuse a meta maggio, davano il Prodotto interno lordo a +0,2% a livello congiunturale e a +0,8% in termini tendenziali. La revisione, a sorpresa, e dovuta, spiegano dallIstat, allintegrazione nei dati della buona performance dei servizi.

LIstat rileva che il primo trimestre del 2017 ha avuto due giornate lavorative in piu sia rispetto al trimestre precedente, sia rispetto al primo trimestre del 2016. La variazione acquisita per il 2017 e pari a 0,9%.

Rispetto al trimestre precedente, i principali aggregati della domanda nazionale hanno registrato una crescita dello 0,5% dei consumi finali nazionali e un calo dello 0,8% gli investimenti fissi lordi. Le importazioni sono aumentate dell1,6% e le esportazioni dello 0,7%. La domanda nazionale al netto delle scorte ha contribuito per 0,3 punti percentuali alla crescita del pil (0,3 i consumi delle famiglie e delle Istituzioni Sociali Private (Isp), 0,1 la spesa della pubblica amministrazione (Pa) e -0,1 gli investimenti fissi lordi).

Anche la variazione delle scorte ha contribuito positivamente alla variazione del Pil (0,4 punti percentuali), mentre lapporto della domanda estera netta e stato negativo per 0,2 punti percentuali. Si registrano andamenti congiunturali positivi per il valore aggiunto di agricoltura (+4,2%) e servizi (+0,6%), mentre quello dellindustria risulta negativo (-0,3%).

#Istat Riviste al rialzo le stime per il 2017. LItalia cresce piu del previsto e limpegno continua ha commentato su Twitter il premier Paolo Gentiloni.

Per Matteo Renzi i dati di ieri e di oggi dellIstat dimostrano che con la flessibilita ottenuta nei Mille Giorni e con le riforme fatte, leconomia riprende fiato. Sulla sua pagina Fb il segretario del Pd parla di risultati figli degli anni di lavoro serio e rigoroso che abbiamo alle spalle.

Con la revisione delle stime sul Pil lItalia recupera anche a livello europeo. Il +0,4% congiunturale e il +1,2% tendenziale non vedono piu lItalia isolata, fanalino di coda. LIstat infatti, diffondendo i conti trimestrali, riporta anche i dati relativi agli altri Paesi. Svetta la Germania (+0,6% e +2,9% su anno), ma la Francia fa come noi a livello congiunturale (+0,4%) e peggio su base annua (+1,0%). Restiamo pero sotto la media dellEurozona (+0,5% e +1,7% annuo).
What Is the AUD (Australian Dollar)?

AUD (Australian Dollar, or "Aussie") is the currency abbreviation for the Australian dollar (AUD), the offocial currency for the Commonwealth of Australia. The Australian dollar is made up of 100 cents and is often presented with the symbol $, A$, or AU$. The AUD replaced the Australian pound, which was a holdover from its days as a British colony, in 1966.

The Australian dollar is also the currency for Pacific Island states of Nauru, Tuvalu, and Kiribati.

Key Takeaways The AUD, or Australian Dollar, is the official currency of Australia and is also used by several Pacific island nations.

The AUD was introduced in 1966, replacing the Australian Pound, where it was initially pegged to the US dollar. It switched to a free float in 1983 and has remained that way since.  

 The AUD is a popular currency for forex trading pairs, and is consistently among the top 5 most traded currencies.  

Understanding the AUD (Australian Dollar)

The Australian dollar was first introduced on February 14, 1966, when it replaced the Australian pound. At this time, it was pegged to the Great Britain pound sterling at 2 dollars to one pound. In 1967, Australia abandoned the sterling peg and pegged to the U.S. dollar at 0.8929 Australian dollars to one U.S. dollar. In 1976, it became a moving peg to a trade-weighted index. The AUD became a free-floating currency in 1983.

The AUD is managed by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) is the central bank of Australia, which sets the country's monetary policy and issues and manages the Australian money supply. The bank, entirely owned by the Australian government, was established in 1960.

Since Australia is one of the world's largest coal and iron ore exporters, the value of its currency is heavily dependent on commodity prices. During the commodity slump of 2015, oil prices hit decade lows and both iron ore and coal prices dropped to recent lows. As a result, the Australian dollar weakened sharply, falling more than 15 percent against the U.S. dollar reaching parity against the New Zealand dollar (NZD) - levels not seen since the 1970s.

AUD and Forex Markets

AUD's popularity among forex traders relates to its three Gs: geology, geography and government policy. Australia is among the richest countries in the world in terms of natural resources, including metals, coal, diamonds, meat and wool. Australia also is a regional power.

The AUD/USD currency pair tends to be negatively correlated with USD/CAD, as well as the USD/JPY pair, largely because the dollar is the quote currency in these cases. In particular, the AUD/USD pair often runs counter to USD/CAD, as both AUD and CAD are commodity block curre. Trading the AUD/USD currency pair is also known as trading the "Aussie." On the other hand, the AUD and NZD tend to be positively correlated.

As of 2019, the Australian dollar ranked as the fifth most traded currency in the world, according to worldwide foreign exchange transactions, accounting for approximately 7% of trade. The high trading volume is due in part to Australia's political and economic stability and to the government's limited intervention in the foreign exchange market.
Investors have different methods of deciding when to enter and exit a trade. Those who prefer technical analysis over fundamentals use a variety of technical charts, looking for patterns such as ascending triangles, head and shoulders and double bottoms. This type of methodology has rapidly grown in popularity among individual investors, but the biggest challenge when using these patterns is deciding when to exit an existing position.

Key Takeaways Traders tend to have an exit strategy in mind for when a trade backfires, but less have a plan for when to exit winning trades.

For traders trying to determine when it's time to cash out, constructing and assessing technical charts is an important strategy.

Most technical chart patterns are based on the concept of establishing support and resistance for the stock or other security in question and using this information to determine when to enter and exit a position.

Popular patterns that traders might track include ascending triangles, head and shoulders and double bottoms.

When to Exit a Trade

Most traders understand the need for an exit strategy when a trade goes against them, but fewer have a plan for winning trades. That's because, on an emotional level, it's easier to see the need to get out when you're at a loss, whereas it's harder to exit a winning position. However, experienced traders are in the habit of developing a profit exit, the price point at which they close their position and pocket their gains. The key to succeeding at this is to choose the correct approach to setting a closing price and stick to it.

Many different targets can be used when using technical chart patterns, but most are based on the concept of support and resistance. While there's no sure way to predict future resistance, chart patterns give you a good starting point for establishing a price target. One of the most popular methods involves measuring the height of the pattern and then either adding it to or subtracting it from the breakout price.

Exit Strategy Example

Let's look at this chart as an example: a trader who is able to identify this ascending triangle will set his or her target near $25. This target price of $25 is calculated by taking the height of the pattern of $2.60 ($22.40 - $19.80) and adding it to the entry price of $22.40.

Image by Sabrina Jiang  Investopedia 2021

You can also use the height of the pattern to calculate the target on patterns that predict a downward trend, such as a head and shoulders pattern. The only difference is that the height is subtracted from the entry price rather than added to it.

Many conservative investors use the height of the pattern to calculate their maximum target but often choose to close out their position earlier, ensuring that they lock in their profits.

Risk management is an essential skill for any trader and setting a stop-loss target is one of the first disciplines experienced traders learn to master. But consistently setting a profit exit is just as important, and chart patterns are useful tools to help you develop a successful trading strategy.
As president of the United States, Donald Trump was likely the wealthiest individual to inhabit the White House and his net worth remains a topic for debate.

In 2015, Donald Trump claimed in a press release that he was worth more than $10 billion, however, his net worth as of 2022 is estimated at $3 billion.

Key Takeaways Donald Trump is the founder of The Trump Organization, a private entity.

He is required to submit a financial disclosure document each year, although numbers are self-reported and dont provide an accurate estimate of his net worth.

Forbes estimates Donald Trump's net worth at $3 billion although Trump has claimed the value at $10 billion.

The Trump Organization

Since 1976, Donald Trump grew his wealth through global commercial, resort, and residential real estate development under the umbrella of The Trump Organization. As a private entity, The Trump Organization is not required to publish financial statements in the same manner as a publicly-traded company.

Donald Trump famously refused to publish his tax returns, which would show his annual income and taxes paid or owed. Although The New York Times published abbreviated information from Trump's tax returns on Sept. 27, 2020, the disclosure failed to provide details about his actual net worth.

As a former president, Trump completes a required annual financial disclosure to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. Government financial disclosures may list assets and investments but in estimates and broad value ranges. In 2021, many of Trump's properties were valued at "over $50 million," however, these estimates are self-reported, unaudited, and also differ from numbers The Trump Organization has reported to state and local tax officials.

71 The number of properties in the portfolio owned and operated by The Trump Organization. This total includes commercial and residential real estate, golf courses, hotels, and personal estates.

Assets

In May 2022, Forbes estimated Trumps net worth at $3 billion, falling short of the $10 billion estimates that Trump suggested while running for office in 2015.

Forbes' numbers marry with the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which placed the former presidents net worth at $2.97 billion in August 2020.Forbes has attempted to break down Trump's net worth by assets.

Net Worth The value of all assets minus liabilities.

Much of Trumps wealth is tied to multi-use buildings in Manhattan, including retail real estate in the busy Midtown district. His highest value asset is a 30% stake in the office and retail space at 1290 Avenue of the Americas, valued at $2.2 billion, with a debt value of $950 million on the property.



The Trump Organization owns several exclusive golf properties estimated at $730 million, including clubs in Scotland and Dubai. Trump's private golf club in Palm Beach, Fla, Mar-a-Lago, is valued at $350 million.

Trump holds approximately $275 million in cash and liquid assets. Other personal assets include three Florida homes and his 11,000-square-foot residence in New York City, the Trump Tower penthouse. Residential units throughout the United States and around the globe have an estimated value of $340 million. This includes hotels and residential locations in Chicago, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Europe, Asia, and South America.



Donald Trump announced in October 2021 that he was creating his own social media platform. Truth Social, held through Trump Media, garnered Donald Trump $430 million from investors. The Donald Trump brand, including his licensing and management business, is valued at just over $50 million.

Trump holds roughly $275 million in cash and liquid assets. Other personal assets include three Florida homes and his 11,000-square-foot residence in New York Citythe Trump Tower penthouse.



Trumps vast real estate empire includes approximately residential units throughout the United States. This includes hotels and retail locations in Chicago, Las Vegas, and San Francisco.

What Are Donald Trump's Estimated Liablities? Trump has a lengthy financial record which includes corporate bankruptcies and lawsuits. In 2021, Trump Organization owed $590 million in debts due within four years by 2025.



What Prominent Real Estate Locations in New York City Has Donald Trump Owned? Donald Trump has owned and sold many buildings in New York including the Plaza Hotel, the St. Moritz Hotel, now the Ritz Carlton on Central Park South, and the land under the Empire State Building.

What Is Considered One of Trump's Bad Investment Decisions? In 2014, Donald Trump partnered with an Azerbaijani family that U.S. officials called notoriously unethical. The building, a five-star hotel, and residence called the Trump International Hotel & Tower Baku in Azerbaijan has never opened.

The Bottom Line

Donald Trump's net worth has ranged in estimates from $3 billion to $10 billion. With his private firm, The Trump Organization, and its limited public disclosures, it has been difficult to capture the true net worth of his global commercial, resort, and residential real estate as well as his licensing and social media ventures.
Environmentalists are challenging U.S. Forest Service approval of a $500 million copper and silver mine in northwest Montana, citing concerns from state officials that it could drain surrounding waterways and potentially harm a species of trout protected under federal law.

The lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Missoula challenges the Montanore Mine south of Libby near the Idaho line. Sponsor Mines Management Inc. of Spokane, Washington, has been seeking a mining permit for the project since 2004.

But three groups said in Friday's lawsuit that the government's authorization for Montanore ignored studies of the mine's environmental effects. Those government-sponsored studies concluded the mine potentially could drain groundwater supplies that feed into creeks and a river in the pristine area, an effect that could linger for centuries.

Earthworks, the Clark Fork Coalition and Save Our Cabinets said the water depletions would cause severe damage to the habitat of federally-protected bull trout.

"It's simply not smart to treat wilderness waterways this way," said Karen Knudsen with the Clark Fork Coalition. "There are laws in place that require the Forest Service to make sure any action complies with state water laws. The Montana Department of Environmental Quality thinks the project that's proposed doesn't."

Kootenai National Forest Supervisor Chris Savage said Monday that he has not yet had a chance to review the lawsuit.

But Savage said the agency will not finalize an operations plan for Montanore until Mines Management obtains permits needed from state regulators and other federal agencies, which includes approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

So far, Montana regulators have granted only conditional approval, pending more evidence from the mine's backers that it won't drain overlying creeks.

Work on the site began around 1990 under different ownership and was suspended in 1991 due to low metal prices. Mines Management later took over and has been seeking a mining permit since 2004.

Mines Management Chairman Glenn Dobbs said the company has spent about $46 million to bring the project into compliance with new mining regulations. He said the mine would be "environmentally benign" and accused those behind the lawsuit of raising the alarm over "worst-case scenarios" that bear no resemblance to the realities of modern mining practices.

During its decades of operations, the mine would disturb more than 1,500 acres and remove up to 120 million tons of ore.

The state's action on Montanore has drawn a backlash from Republicans hoping to unseat Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock. They've accused the administration of stalling on a project that would employ about 500 people during construction and about 350 people during mining.
What Is Dual Income, No Kids (DINK)?

"Dual income, no kids" (DINK) is a slang phrase for a household in which there are two incomes and no children. Couples living in a DINK household frequently have more disposable income because they do not have the added expenses that come with children. They also often spend less per person on housing than singles because of their ability to share kitchens, bathrooms, and living rooms.

For related insight, contrast DINKs with DEWKs, a living arrangement wherein both partners work and are raising children.

Key Takeaways "Dual income, no kids" (DINK) is a slang phrase for a household in which there are two incomes and no children.

DINKs are often targets of marketing efforts for investment products and luxury items because they usually have higher disposable incomes.

There are several main categories of dual-income couples with no kids, including new couples, empty nesters, gay married couples, and other childless couples.

Understanding Dual Income, No Kids (DINK)

The lack of dependents in the household can allow for more income to be put toward savings or spent on other interests. Dual income households without children do not automatically become rich or even upper middle class. The salaries of the partners still limit how much they can spend and how often they can spend it. However, DINKs are often targets of marketing efforts for investment products and luxury items, such as expensive cars and vacations.

Costs for food, clothing, and long-term education associated with raising one or more children are eliminated from the household. Without children, the partners can save that money or spend it on creature comforts for themselves. That could allow the couple to increase their expenditures on meals. They can also buy articles of clothing that might otherwise be deemed too expensive. Sellers of consumer goods, the travel industry, and other companies may also target this demographic.

The couple would also not require as much living space to accommodate themselves and their needs. In other words, they would not need to look for housing that includes bedrooms for children to occupy. That could allow them to rent or purchase less expensive dwellings with smaller spaces. Furthermore, they save money compared to singles by sharing goods and services. For example, DINKs usually only need one kitchen and typically share hotel rooms during their vacations.

Sharing with each other is what gives DINKs more disposable income than singles. On the other hand, DINKs have more disposable income than couples that are married with children because they don't have to share with kids.

The availability of more disposable cash also creates the possibility for further exploration of investment opportunities. The money that might have been spent on children could be put into stocks, bonds, or other investment vehicles. Investing even a few thousand dollars per year can make a substantial difference in the long run.

Types of DINKs

There are several main categories of dual-income couples with no kids. They have different advantages and disadvantages for the partners and those trying to market to them.

New Couples

Whenever people first combine their households, it frees up funds for other purchases. This effect can be magnified by other events, such as graduation. Suppose a couple waits until graduating from college to get married and move in together. They could go from making $20,000 each per year to a combined annual income of $80,000 or more. New couples like this are deciding how they are going to live their lives. Naturally, it is a good marketing strategy to focus on these consumers and try and win them over.

Everyone has a plan for these new couples. Financial institutions will want them to start investing in mutual funds and ETFs. They will have all sorts of charts and graphs showing how money the couple saves now will benefit from compounding. Real estate agents will encourage new couples to go ahead and buy large family homes. They may claim real estate is a better investment than stocks or bonds, and now is the time to start preparing for kids in the future. Others will try to sell sports cars, vacations, and other luxury goods to new couples.

Empty Nesters

After the children have grown up and moved out, couples may become part of the dual income, no kids demographic again. This time, the money they spent on kids is freed up, and they might also gain funds by selling their house. Empty nesters are usually in their 40s or 50s and might need to start getting serious about saving for retirement. If they already have substantial savings, it could be time to start taking more vacations before the couple gets too old to enjoy them.

Gay Married Couples

Gay married couples are a relatively new DINK category, but they are important to marketers for a variety of reasons. First, gender income inequality means that men usually make more money than women. So, gay married men have even more disposable income than other dual income couples with no kids. Secondly, gay married couples often remain DINKs forever because they are less likely to have kids.

Other Childless Couples

Although this group is sometimes overlooked, many couples cannot have children or decide to remain childless. These outcomes are particularly likely when trying to have or adopt children might be too risky or costly. By staying in the dual income, no kids demographic, these couples continue to enjoy the benefits of higher disposable income.
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.
Key Takeaways Adjusted EPS was $1.08 vs. the $0.95 analysts expected.

Revenue exceeded analyst expectations.

Gross margin was slightly lower than analysts estimated.

Micron posted strong DRAM sales in cloud, PC, and gaming consoles.

What Happened

Micron's fiscal Q4 earnings and revenue were both higher than analysts forecasted. Both metrics also grew substantially compared to the year-ago quarter. Gross margin, however, was slightly below what analysts estimated, but still up YOY. Results were driven by strong DRAM sales and significant increases in QLC NAND shipments.

"Micron delivered solid fiscal fourth quarter revenue and EPS resulting from strong DRAM sales in cloud, PC and gaming consoles and an extraordinary increase in QLC NAND shipments," said CEO Sanjay Mehrotra.

(Below is Investopedia's original earnings preview, published September 29, 2020.)

What to Look For

Micron Technology Inc. (MU), one of the leading manufactures of DRAM and NAND memory chips, is experiencing a return to growth amid the COVID-19-induced rise of the remote-work economy. Social-distancing measures have forced many employees to work from home, driving demand for memory chips. This is a welcome development for chip manufacturers like Micron after a glut of supply weighed on prices, revenue, and earnings for much of 2019.

Investors will be watching to see whether the positive effects of the pandemic will continue to outweigh its negative effects when Micron reports earnings on September 29, 2020 for Q4 FY 2020. Micron's FY 2020 ended in August. Analysts expect both adjusted earnings per share (EPS) and revenue to rise sharply.

One key metric investors will focus on is gross margin, an indicator of operating efficiency at Micron as well as other memory chip manufacturers. Analysts expect the company's gross margin to rise compared to the same three-month period a year ago.

Shares of Micron have kept pace with the broader market for most of the past year, but they have lagged dramatically since the company's last earnings report at the end of June. Micron's stock has provided investors with a total return of -0.7% over the past 12 months, well below the S&P 500's total return of 10.5%.

Source: TradingView.

The stock received a quick boost after reporting Q3 FY 2020 earnings announced on June 29 that surpassed analysts' expectations. Despite the earnings beat, adjusted EPS was still 21.9% lower than it was in the year-ago quarter, marking the sixth consecutive quarter of year-over-year (YOY) declines. Revenue rose 13.6%, the first YOY increase in six quarters.

The earnings beat and revenue growth, however, were not enough to maintain upward momentum in Micron's share price. The stock traded sideways for the next month before experiencing a significant pullback during the first half of August as optimism over continued demand for memory chips waned. Its shares have rebounded since the third week of August but are still underperforming.

Analysts expect adjusted EPS to rise 69.2% in Q4 FY 2020, which would mark the first earnings growth since Q1 FY 2019. Revenue is expected to rise 21.2% compared to the year-ago quarter. For the full FY 2020, analysts forecast annual adjusted EPS to fall 57.2% and annual revenue to decline 9.1%. It would mark the second consecutive annual declines in both metrics.
Few figures in the finance world can claim as much influence as Jordan Belfort over the reputation of Wall Street as a greedy, heartless place. In 1999, Belfort pleaded guilty to numerous crimes related to stock market manipulation and the running of a long-term scam involving penny stocks.

In the wake of his sentencing and time in prison, Belfort wrote two memoirs: the first, The Wolf of Wall Street, was popularized in a 2013 movie adaptation directed by Martin Scorsese and starring actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

In 2017, Belfort released another memoir, a self-help book entitled Way of the Wolf. Belfort has drawn criticism for profiting off his story of stealing money from innocent people, while his victims received nothing.

After scandals and a stint in prison for securities fraud, Belfort has reinvented himself as a motivational speaker. And one of his primary topics is the distinction between greed, ambition, and passion on Wall Street.

Critics of Belfort commonly point to his criminal past and ask whether he is operating his businesses legitimately at this point.

Early Life and Career

Jordan Belfort (born 1962) grew up in Queens, N.Y., and showed an understanding of the business world from an early age. According to his memoir The Wolf of Wall Street, Belfort worked with a friend to sell Italian water ice desserts out of inexpensive styrofoam coolers at a beach near his childhood home. In the summer months between high school and college, Belfort and his partner earned a whopping $20,000.

Key Takeaways Jordan Belfort is a former Wall Street trader who was guilty of crimes related to stock market manipulation.

Belfort is a notorious public figure who wrote two memoirs: the first, The Wolf of Wall Street and Way of the Wolf, the former was turned into a blockbuster film.

Belfort has been accused of profiting off the story of his white-collar crimes.

As the founder of Stratton Oakmont, the firm he ran when he was arrested, Belfort pleaded guilty to fraud, sentenced to four years in prison, but served 22 months before he was released.

Belfort runs a motivational speaking business and continues profiteering off his life experiences.

Belfort studied biology at American University with plans to enroll in dental school, using the money he had saved from his earlier venture. However, when the dean of the University of Maryland School of Dentistry warned students on the first day that dentistry was not a path to financial success, Belfort dropped out.

One of Belfort's earliest ventures after his short stint in dental school was as a door-to-door salesperson in Long Island. He said the venture was successful, and that he was able to grow the business to the point where he had a team of several workers capable of moving more than two tons of product (in this case, meat and seafood) each week. By age 25, the business failed, and Jordan filed for bankruptcy. It was only then that he became interested in stockbroking, a position he entered with the help of a family friend.

By the late 1980s, as Belfort approached age 30, he founded the financial firm Stratton Oakmont, an over-the-counter brokerage house. Stratton Oakmont did remarkably well over the next several years and was linked to the IPOs of nearly three dozen different companies.

Scams, Fraud, and Other Crimes

It was in his position as founder of Stratton Oakmont that Belfort committed the illegal activities which would ultimately send him to prison. Stratton Oakmont participated in a number of different frauds, including pump-and-dump schemes to artificially inflate the price of penny stocks.

The firm was a type of boiler room, with a team that pressured investors to place their money into highly speculative securities. At its peak, the firm is said to have employed about 1,000 stockbrokers overseeing investments of more than $1 billion.

Throughout the history of Stratton Oakmont, the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) pursued consistent legal actions against the firm. In 1996, the firm was shut down. In 1999, Belfort and his associate Danny Porush were indicted for money laundering and securities fraud.

Belfort pleaded guilty to fraud for the pump-and-dump schemes which may have cost his investors as much as $200 million. He was sentenced to four years in prison and ultimately served 22 months in prison.

Life After Prison

Following his release from prison, and as part of his restitution agreement, Belfort was required to pay 50% of his income to his defrauded former investors through 2009.

Federal prosecutors filed a complaint in 2013, alleging that Belfort had not paid the appropriate amount of his income in the previous years. Ultimately, he reached a separate deal with federal authorities to complete the restitution payments.

The Bottom Line

Aside from his memoirs and the successful film adaptation of The Wolf of Wall Street, Belfort has reinvented himself as a motivational speaker. His speaking ranges from questions of ethics and motivation in the financial world to practical demonstrations of sales skills.

Belfort emphasizes the mistakes he made during his time at Stratton Oakmont, indicating he was under the influence of drug addiction at the time and that he deeply regrets having lost money for his clients through scams.

In 2014, media outlets uncovered ties between Belfort and an Australian employee training company which may have participated in a scam involving government funding. As of early 2019, nothing has come of this possible connection, and Belfort continues to operate a fairly successful motivational speaking business.
Are you a frequent flyer? Do you find even airlines' first-class service more frustrating than fulfilling? You can charter a jet, but the greatest freedom comes when you own one. Before you buy, though, you should consider whether the investment is truly justified.

Depending on size, range, model, and features, a private jet can set you back anywhere from $2 million to over $100 million. Much like used cars, private jets are subject to serious depreciation. If you are looking for a bargain, second-hand jets are significantly less expensive.

Key Takeaways A private jet can cost anywhere from $2 million to over $100 million.

Ongoing expenses may include flight crew salaries and expenses, the costs of routine maintenance and unforeseen repairs, hangar rental, and aircraft insurance.

Alternatives include private jet charter services, partial jet ownership, and membership in a private jet club.

Travelers can charter flights with the jet company's agent or with a broker.

Chartered flight rates range from the low thousands to more than $10,000 per flight hour.

Things to Consider Before Purchasing a Private Jet

Hourly Rate

The first logical question that comes to mind is: How much do you fly? Aircraft vendors will tell you that if you spend 200 hours a year in the sky, it justifies the outright purchase of a private jet. Remember, they're also trying to sell you one.

Aircraft brokers who offer fractional ownership in a plane will say its more like 400 to 600 hours. They, of course, are also trying to sell you something. Fractional ownership is similar to a timeshare in real estate.

An unbiased rule of thumb is that an annual flight time of at least 240 hours is required to achieve a reasonable operating cost for a private jet.

Your Travel Routine

The type of travel you do might be even more important than air hours as a factor in whether to buy a jet. If, for instance, you frequently have to schedule one-way flights, then youll have to pay the cost of sending the plane and its crew back.

Alternatively, if you plan to remain at a particular destination for a week or more, the pilots, crew, and plane must be accommodated for the entire period or sent home. In both cases, the costs may well outweigh the benefits of buying in the first place.

Ongoing Costs

Regardless of where and how frequently you intend to fly, jet owners are faced with substantial ongoing expenses, beginning with routine maintenance and on-the-ground downtime.

Then there are unforeseen repairs. A blown tire can cost $2,000 to $3,000 to replace. Theres also hangaragemeaning a parking spot in a hangarplus crew salaries and aircraft insurance. As the owner, you have to cover everything.

As a rule of thumb, you can expect to pay around $500,000 to $1 million annually in operating costs. You can find several nifty aircraft cost calculators online. One site even breaks down expenses involved with specific jet brands and models.

If you do decide to make a purchase, there are several buying consultants and aircraft management companies that can help you arrange the purchase and maintain it for you.

Used private jets can be an option to save money. Used models can be purchased for as low as $200,000 and as much as $15 million.

Other Options

If the running costs combined with the initial outlay simply dont work in your financial favor, there are several far less expensive ways to join the private jet set. You could book a charter for a specific trip, purchase partial ownership in a jet, or buy a private flight club membership.

Book a Charter

Charting a flight can be a great option for travelers not wanting to fly commercially or subscribe to a private jet membership. To book a chartered flight, it is important to choose with whom the flight will be booked, the type of aircraft needed based on the number of passengers and destination, cost, and other factors.

A traveler can charter a flight directly with the jet company representative or with an independent broker, who has sufficient knowledge of the industry and its players and can aid in the selection of the best aircraft for the traveler's specific needs.

The costs to charter a flight range from approximately $1,000 to more than $10,000 per flight hour. For frequent fliers, however, it might be more feasible to consider charter club or private jet memberships.

Private Flight Club Membership

The private flight club membership enables short-notice booking for domestic or international flights on a range of jets at set hourly rates. To join, travelers purchase memberships from a charter company, which, in turn, makes available its fleet of jets. Subscriptions are typically sold in annual increments, with a minimum term of one year.



Any of these options provide the custom-craft experience without the management hassle and associated costs. It pays to shop around. There are many competitors offering charter flights, fractional jet ownership, and private flight memberships.

Unless money is no object, the steep annual costs of running a jet make it a cost-effective investment only for frequent flyers with specific needs.

What Is the Cheapest Private Jet for Sale? The least expensive, new private jet for sale is the Cirrus Vision Jet, with a sticker price of $2 million. However, used private jets can sell for as low as $200,000.

Is a Private Jet a Good Investment? If the annual cost of chartering a flight or flying commercially exceeds the cost of owning a private jet, or if you spend an average of 240 or more hours in the air annually, owning a private jet might be a good investment.
Serving on a corporate board of directors can be a lucrative side gig or second career for high-profile executives and recent retirees. Board membership is less stressful and time-consuming than earlier positions board members have taken on, while still offering an impressive income.

The median compensation for members of private company boards of directors was $42,750 in 2020, according to a global study by Lodestone Global. That's actually a 2% decline from the year before.

It goes a lot higher from there. Compensation for board members can easily reach $300,000 to $500,000 a year, according to Veritas, an executive compensation consulting service.

Not surprisingly, the most lucrative seats go to directors at S&P 500 companies. Average compensation in 2018 at those firms was $304,856, according to Reuters. That's a 43% increase over 10 years. That year's top payer was Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which paid its directors an average of $599,279.

Board members in general, by the way, participated in an average of 7.9 meetings, in person or remotely, during the year.

If youre interested in pursuing a board seat, heres what you need to know about what boards are looking for, how to get noticed, and what to expect as compensation.

Corporate boards are made up of highly successful executive outsiders.

They range from recent retirees and people nearing retirement to younger people who've experienced early successes in business.

By learning about the backgrounds of existing board members, you can extrapolate what they may be looking for in new ones.

What Companies Seek in a Board Member

You can sometimes learn what companies seek in their board members by reading the companys annual proxy statement. For example, some of the qualities Wal-Mart says its looking for in board members include: "outstanding achievement in their professional careers; broad experience and wisdom; personal and professional integrity; ability to make independent, analytical inquiries; experience with and understanding of the business environment; willingness and ability to devote adequate time to Board duties."

The proxy statement also says the company is seeking expertise in governance, strategy, development, and execution; people who understand financial, operational and strategic issues facing large retail companies; global or international business experience; technology and e-commerce experience; marketing, brand management or public relations experience; finance, accounting, or financial reporting experience; or regulatory or legal experience.

Diverse Candidates Sought

The more qualifications you can bring to the table, the better. In recent years, companies have also begun to seek ethnic and gender diversity on their boards.

These descriptions are fairly generic. By learning about the backgrounds of existing board members, you can extrapolate what the company is probably looking for in new ones.

Attractive qualities include experience in high-level work for the federal government, positions as a CEO or director, experience founding and running a successful startup, and experience on other boards.

Look for a gap in expertise that might be left when a current board member steps down. Could you fill that gap?

Youth Is Not a Barrier

Boards aren't entirely made up of retirees and people nearing the end of their careers. You will compete for board positions with people who have been extremely successful at a young age.

Walmart's current board members include Cesar Conde, 47, chair of NBCUniversal, and Marissa Mayer, 46, who is well-known for the high positions she achieved at Google and Yahoo.

How to Get Noticed

Your strategy to get noticed and be considered for board membership should be similar to the strategy it takes to secure any high-level position.

Make sure you develop a board resume that positions you as qualified for the corporations board, says Renee Hornbaker, who currently serves on the boards of Eastman Chemical Company, The Freeman Company, and Tri Global Energy. Make sure your resume states what you will specifically bring to the table as a board member.

Search Firms Can Help

Executive search firms can streamline the process since theyll know about available positions. Hornbaker suggests giving your resume to search firms youve dealt with in the past and letting them know you're interested in obtaining a board position.

Finally, make sure you are networking and letting people know what boards you are suitable for, while also leveraging contacts you might have with the companies that you might be interested in, Hornbaker says.

Networking Is Key

You'll want to pursue networking both online and offline. For online networking, Mark Rogers, CEO of BoardProspects.com, recommends his site, a board-recruitment network akin to LinkedIn. Its members include current board members, aspiring board members, and corporations looking to hire board members. Complement your online networking with face-to-face connections at events, conferences, and social gatherings, he says. Opening up lines of communication to a second- or even third-degree connection could lead to an excellent fit for the board position you seek.

Hornbaker also recommends becoming educated on the fundamentals of governance and directorship through a program such as the National Association of Corporate Directors Director Professionalism program.

Once you find a good prospect, you must be nominated by the nomination committee, then approved by shareholder election.

Director Responsibilities

Only outside directors get compensation specifically for serving on the board. Inside directors, who are mostly C-suite level executives, don't receive additional compensation.

Hornbaker says pay depends on the complexity of the company, whether it's public or private, the number of meetings it entails, and the amount of responsibility involved.

As a board member, your responsibilities would typically include preparing for and attending board meetings, and reviewing company filings and materials, she says, as well as advising management on a wide range of matters, including succession, strategy, compensation, and acquisitions.

Representing Shareholders

Rogers adds, Board members are the representatives of the shareholders, and it is their fiduciary duty to oversee the affairs of the corporation, including overall performance and fiscal strength, and to serve as a consultant for management  particularly with respect to the strategic and operational directives of the company.

Formal board meetings where all the directors are present typically occur four to six times per year, depending on the company.

Obviously, if there is a crisis or a strategic issue  for example, an acquisition  the number of hours for a director can dramatically increase, Rogers says.

Hornbaker says attending committee meetings might be another responsibility. For example, audit committees have regular meetings before public filings, she says. Another example would be compensation meetings to discuss compensation plans and awards.

Examples of Top-Paying Boards

Here are a couple of examples of what Fortune 500 companies pay their board members.

Walmart Inc.

According to the company's 2020 proxy statement, Walmarts compensation program for outside directors offers base compensation of a $175,000 annual stock grant and a $100,000 annual retainer.

Outside directors who hold certain board positions receive an additional annual retainer: $35,000 for the lead independent director; $25,000 for audit committee members and for compensation, nominating, and governance committee members; and $20,000 for strategic planning and finance committee chairs and for technology and eCommerce committee chairs.

Apple Inc.

Apples non-employee directors each receive approximately $250,000 worth of restricted stock units per year, which are granted at the annual shareholder meeting and vest on Feb. 1 of the following year.

Non-employee directors also receive an annual cash retainer of $100,000. The board chair receives an additional $200,000; the audit committee chair receives an additional $35,000; the compensation committee chair receives an additional $30,000, and the nominating committee chair receives an additional $25,000.

Non-employee directors also get every new Apple product for free on request and can purchase more at a discount.

To find out what any publicly held company pays its board members, read the companys annual proxy statement, available from its corporate website or the Securities and Exchange Commission website.

The Bottom Line

As an outside director, you could bring a fresh perspective to a corporate board and leverage your years of experience as an executive into a satisfying new project that still leaves you with enough time to do your day job or enjoy your retirement. The Boston Globe reports that the average time commitment to serve on a board is fewer than five hours per week.

Aside from the financial compensation, your reward will be having substantial input into major decisions made by the company, such as executive hires, policies on dividends and stock options, and executive pay  all while representing the best interests of management and shareholders.
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Mullen (NASDAQ: MULN) Continues Acquisition Path With Purchase of ELMS Assets Including Factory in Mishawaka, IN., Enabling EV Production for Retail and Commercial Vehicle Lines

BREA, Calif. - October 19, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Mullen Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: MULN), an emerging electric vehicle ("EV") manufacturer, announces the US Bankruptcy Court approval on Oct. 13th, 2022 of its acquisition of electric vehicle company ELMS's (Electric Last Mile Solutions) assets in an all cash purchase.

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Breaking EV Stock News: Mullen Automotive (NASDAQ: $MULN) Taps Former GM Executive John Schwegman as Chief Commercial Officer for Next Phase of EV Growth

BREA, Calif. - October 21, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Mullen Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: MULN), an emerging electric vehicle ("EV") manufacturer, announces today the hiring of John Schwegman as its Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) for Mullen's line of commercial vehicles.

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EV Stocks Driving Higher: (NASDAQ: $MULN) (NASDAQ: $TSLA) (NYSE: $NIO) (NYSE: $F)

Vancouver, Delta, BC - October 20, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Investorideas.com, a leading investor news resource covering EV and automotive stocks releases a special report featuring Mullen Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: MULN), covering the continued growth of the EV market as government policy and infrastructure plans sync up with consumer and investor interest in the EV space.

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Breaking AI Stock News: FatBrain (OTCQB: LZGI) Acquires Confidential Computing Platform ZeroTrust to Protect Data Privacy and Accelerate Innovation for Millions of Growth Businesses

NEW YORK, NY - October 19, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) FatBrain AI (LZG International, Inc.) (OTCQB: LZGI), the leader in powerful and easy-to-use artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for star enterprises of tomorrow, has acquired the confidential computing and privacy intellectual property (IP) plus software assets of Zero2A PTE LTD ("ZeroTrust Platform"), a software company based in Singapore.

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The New York Times has called Galway Irelands most charming city.

In last week's travel piece 36 Hours in Galway, Ireland, the city, which is located on Ireland's stunning west coast, is described as compact, walkable and filled to the brim with independent shops and restaurants that walk the fine line between cool and kitsch.

Cozy, old-fashioned pubs showcase the citys ever-growing selection of craft beers, chefs serve up west-of-Ireland ingredients in creative new ways, and almost every building housing a modern cafe or new atelier has a centuries-old story behind it. Its not a city in which to hustle; rather, its one in which to enjoy a locally brewed pint, relish the excellent seafood and get your fill of views of the rushing River Corrib as it sweeps out to Galway Bay.

The article, illustrated with beautiful photographs of Galway's sites, suggests the things to see and do over a three-day weekend in the city. The piece also recommend lodgings for your stay (House Hotel and Park House Hotel).

The 36-hour itinerary starts on Friday afternoon with a visit to Collegiate Church of St Nicholas, an Anglican church dating back to 1320. Some coffee and a look at some shops, followed by a fish and chips dinner at McDonaghs and then a few pints at Tigh Neachtains to listen to a traditional Irish music session.

Saturday kicks off with brunch at Ard Bia and then a visit to the Galway City Museum near the Spanish Arch, a local landmark that is part of the medieval city walls. A walk over Bridge Street to Nuns Island and a stop at Galway Cathedral is followed by a sample of Galways craft beers. The Salthouse Bar, owned by Galway Bay Brewery is suggested as the perfect place to sample a midafternoon pint or two.

And make sure you only have one or two, because the next suggested activity is to rent a bike from one of the 16 Coca-Cola Zero stations and cycle down the promenade out to Salthill to take in the coastal scenery. If you stick around Salthill until evening, stop in a O'Connor's, a pub dating back to 1875.

For dinner, the Michelin star restaurant Loam is recommended for its six-course tasting menu that is always an amalgamation of west-of-Ireland products, from Connemara air-dried lamb to West Cork cheese. Finish off the night at Roisin Dubhs, a lively and eclectic nightlife venue.

On Sunday, spend the morning taking in Shop Street, including a stop by the 14th century Lynchs Castle and a visit to Aunty Nellies Sweet Shop. End the weekend at Morans Oyster Cottage, located a 25-minute drive southeast of the city center and serving Irish lobster, seafood chowder and legendary oysters.

The full New York Times article can be found here.
Bridget Delia Bradley went mad with fear and tried to clamber back out of a lifeboat and on to the sinking Titanic on April 15, 1912.

On April 15, 1912, the Belfast built RMS Titanic sank after colliding with an iceberg, killing over 1,500 passengers and crew on board. This was one of the deadliest commercial peacetime maritime disasters in modern history and among those on board were many Irish.

In the run-up to the anniversary of the disaster, IrishCentral will take a look at the Irish on board  the lucky, unlucky and heroic.

This is an extract from the book The Irish Aboard the Titanic by Senan Molony, which tells the tales of the people who were on board the night the ship went down. This book gives those people a voice. In it are stories of agony, luck, self-sacrifice, dramatic escapes, and heroes left behind.

Read More: Who was the longest-living Irish survivor of the Titanic?

Bridget Delia Bradley

Ticket number 334914. Paid 7 14s 6d.

Boarded at Queenstown.

Third Class.

From: Ballinahulla, County Kerry; bordering Kingwilliamstown, County Cork.

Destination: 29 William Street, Glen Falls, New York.

She was saved  sitting securely in a lifeboat that was beginning its jolting descent to the water. But Bridget Delia Bradley felt she had to escape from the vessel of her salvation. Demented with fear, she tried to get back on the doomed ship:

"There was a girl from my place, and just when she got down into the lifeboat, she thought that the boat was sinking into the water.

"Her name was Bridget Bradley. She climbed one of the ropes as far as she could and tried to get back into the Titanic again, as she thought she would be safer in it than in the lifeboat. She was just getting up when one of the sailors went out to her and pulled her down again."

-(Daniel Buckley, testifying to the US inquiry, day 12, 3 May 1912)

Read More: On this Day: Titanic arrives in Southampton for her maiden voyage

Buckley also mentioned Bridget in a letter he wrote home from the safety of the rescue ship Carpathia:

"Thank God some of us are amongst the saved. Hannah Riordan, Brigie Bradley, Nonie OLeary and the Shine girl from Lismore are all right."

-(Letter printed in The Cork Examiner, 13 May 1912)

Bridgets family believed she was rescued in lifeboat No. 4, launched from the starboard side of the sinking Titanic at 1.55 a.m., but this is inconsistent with her being seen by Daniel Buckley, whose own lifeboat departed a little earlier.

Bridget was interviewed by the Daily Times while still recovering from her ordeal at St Vincents Hospital in New York:

"I was in bed at the time the accident occurred and the shock, which was a comparatively slight one, did not disturb me greatly. A knock on the doors of our rooms caused us to get up and dress ourselves. I slipped on a lightweight black dress and wrapped a small shawl about me, the only clothes I saved, and went to the deck where I found the most of the passengers assembled.

"There was no disorder on the deck that amounted to anything, and all the officers acted in a manner that convinced us the ship was not in grave danger. The story that the men on board acted like heroes is true in every detail, and it was women first in nearly every case except for a few of the steerage passengers who tried to fight their way to the lifeboats and who I have been told were shot by officers of the boat.

"All the lifeboats were lowered while I was on deck and it looked for a time as if I would be left. I saw men lead their wives to the lifeboats and leave them there, returning to the deck, and we on deck were not so horribly frightened as might be thought. Every one of us thought that it was impossible to sink the ship.

Read More: The RMS Titanic by numbers  facts and figures on the tragic Belfast-built ship

"Just as the last lifeboat, the one with Mr Ismay in it, was launched over the side, one of the officers shouted Theres more room in that boat and I and eleven other women were crowded into it. This was after 1 oclock. I dont know how much, but it was after one. The lifeboat was manned by enough men to care for it properly and immediately on touching the water, the men rowed with all their strength to get away from the ship, so that, if it did go down, we would not be caught in the suction.

"The night was extremely cold, and we womenfolk had little wraps to keep us warm and we huddled there in clusters watching the great ship as it slowly sank. Not until we got off the boat did we fully realize the danger. Then we saw that the boat had tilted forward and that slowly, but surely, she was sinking.

"We saw the bottom row of lights disappear under the water and watched as line after line disappeared, showing us the rapidity of the sinking of the ship. We were entirely surrounded by large cakes of ice and there was no food or water on the boat, and in the long wait for the Carpathia the majority of us prayed for the coming of the ship. When the welcome ship hove in sight many of us were too much exhausted to realize the greatness of the disaster 

"We were picked up at 6 oclock and I am informed that every one of the boats that were launched from the Titanic were picked up, with the exception of one which turned over and drowned everyone on board. The relief that we experienced when on board the Carpathia is beyond description, but there was with many a fear that this ship might meet the same fate as the Titanic and it was not until the ship touched the port of New York that we all felt safe.

"To realize what we passed through is impossible for anyone who was not on the ship. The hand of death was over us and as we floated out in the frail lifeboats, with no food or water, and as our thirst began to increase, the thought that we might not be picked up, and huddled up in this manner should die of starvation, made us beside ourselves, and as we prayed the smoke-stack of the Carpathia hove in sight "

Read More: Luck of the Irish: Louth man survived two major shipwrecks including The Titanic

"Practically two out of every three who sailed on the Titanic are now at the bottom of the ocean, and when I realize that I was one of the last twelve to leave the ship, I cannot help thinking what might have been.

"The brave men who went down have left a memory in the hearts of every one of us survivors that will linger as long as we live. The women first rule was carried out to the letter and those who had womenfolk on board devoted their time to getting the women in the small boats while they themselves were content to remain on deck.

"A few men, including six Chinese, had hidden under the seats of the lifeboats and were carried out, according to the stories on the Carpathia on Monday night, but it is said that two of them were crushed to death by the weight thrown upon them. There were none of them in our boat."

Read More: Extraordinary story of Titanics second officer Charles Herbert Lightroller

Bridget was the fifth eldest of nine children who lived in a cottage with no bath or electricity. She occasionally went to school barefoot. Older siblings Mary and Michael emigrated to the United States, both settling in Glen Falls, where Mary became a domestic and her brother a fireman. On discharge from the hospital, a penniless Bridget was assisted by the American Red Cross, receiving $125. She worked as a domestic in Glen Falls for two years before moving to New York and becoming engaged by the wealthy Nicholls family.

She lodged a court claim against the Ocean Steam Navigation Company, owners of the Titanic, in the US District Court, southern district of New York, in company with numerous other litigants. Her claim was for $153 worth of lost personal effects, made up as follows:

"Three pairs high shoes, at $3.50  $10.50; One ladys suit, woollen consisting of coat and skirt, $25; Two suits union underwear, flannel $1  $2; Three pairs woollen stockings, $.50  $1.50; Three pairs half hose $.50  $1.50; One ladys hat with trimmings, $3; One toilet set consisting of brush, comb, soap, tooth brush, one bath towel, two plain towels, one silver soap case, one silver hair pin case and leather case for set  $5; One leather valise  $3.50; Two ladys dresses, cotton, $3.50  $7; One black dress, mixed goods, $28; Six white shirt waists, $1  $6; Cash $25; One large steamer trunk, $10; Paid for medical attendance as result of the collision, $25. Total: $153."

Read More: Faces of the Titanic: Eugene Daly's account as the ship went down

In 1925 Bridget met the supervisor of the Nicholls summer estate on Howe Island in the St Lawrence river in Canada. She was 32, he was 40. They were married two days after the following Valentines Day at St Patricks Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, New York. She was now Mrs Bernard LaSha, and she adopted the first name Delia, a familiar name for Bridget. They settled in Gananoque, Ontario, where their first child, Mary, was born in September 1927. John Joseph arrived fourteen months later, and Rose Henrietta two years after that. Joan Margaret was born in 1931.

By 1929, Delia LaSha, Titanic survivor, had become a boat owner herself. Her husband plowed his savings into a tour boat, named the Sun Dance, to take passengers around the islands of St Lawrence. In the autumn of 1932 he suffered a seizure and on March 29, 1933 died aged 47, at the height of the Great Depression. A few months later, heart worn and suffering from shingles, his widow gave birth to their fifth child, who lived only a few days and was buried with his father.

Bridget could not face the water commerce business herself. She hired a man to operate the Sun Dance, which cut down on her own income, and she took up babysitting to try to make ends meet. In 1951, she suffered a stroke which severely impaired her speech and paralyzed her right arm and leg. The boat was sold.

When the film "Titanic" was shown in the local cinema that same decade, Delia LaSha was guest of honor. Her daughter Mary Higgins recounted: Mom became very emotional during the movie and at times kept shaking her head as if to say it didnt happen that way. If able to speak, I am sure she would have had many comments to make.

Three years later she was dead, having outlived her husband by twenty-three years.

According to her death certificate, she was born on January 10, 1893, and passed away on January 24, 1956, aged 63.

Read More: Visiting the Irish ghosts of the Titanic at the Titanic Experience in Cobh, Co. Cork

* The Irish Aboard the Titanic by Senan Molony is available online.

* Originally published in 2013.
The mother of a Cork toddler who had to temporarily move to the United States so her son could receive cannabis treatment for debilitating epileptic seizures is campaigning to make medical marijuana legal in Ireland.

In December year, Yvonne Cahalane and her two-year-old son, Tristan, relocated to Colorado to begin the much-needed treatment, which uses cannabis oil.

Tristan was born with Dravet syndrome, a severe and incurable form of epilepsy. He began having seizures when he was five months old and the condition escalated over time. At one point, he was experiencing twenty seizures a day. His condition combined with the side-effects from his prescribed medications resulted in numerous neurological and cognitive problems that affected his speech, movement, appetite and behavior, the Irish Examiner reports.

Since receiving the cannabis treatment in the U.S. Tristans condition has been remarkably improved. He has not had a seizure in three months, and he has not needed rescue medication or oxygen since beginning his cannabis oil.

He has also been weaned off three pharmaceutical drugs and is about to begin removing a fourth. Previous attempts to wean off the medications in Ireland before the cannabis treatment, always resulted in Tristan being hospitalized.

His treatment consists of a whole-plant medicine oil, with a full spectrum of therapeutic compounds, that is administrated orally.

Tristan was suddenly able to make eye contact and became more alert. He began to babble, repeat sounds and say new words. All of which had vanished since his spate of violent seizures last May when he stopped talking altogether, said Cahalane, of her sons improvement.

During the second week he began to get steadier on his feet, he wasnt falling after a few steps, he was bending with stability. He would sit down without help and he began to kick a ball.

His seizure activity lessened with every few days and once he had been increased to his optimum dose with the introduction of tiny amounts of THC, he was 99% seizure free and has been ever since.

She says his appetite and sleep have also improved and adds that he is becoming more communicative and independent.

Tristan is being treated at the Children's Hospital Colorado, which made the top five on the U.S. News & World Report Best Children's Hospital's 2015-16 Honor Roll.

Yvonne said: The hospital and doctors we have caring for Tristan are wonderful, they hold cannabis in high regard as a medicine. Colorado in general is a very open-minded and beautiful state. There are educational events all the time to spread awareness of peoples options in using cannabis as their medicine.

So that Tristan could receive the treatment he needed, Yvonne had to leave behind her husband John and their other son Oscar.

She said: Ive missed so much of Oscar, I miss taking him to school and hearing about his day. While Daddy is missing Tristans development and progression, which he can only see through Skype.

It has definitely been heartbreaking to say goodbye to them both for this time.

And now, with a visa set to expire, Yvonne and Tristan will soon have to return to Ireland, where cannabis oil is illegal.

Yvonne is now strongly campaigning to change Irish legislation regarding medicinal marijuana. She has launched an online petition on Change.org, which now has over 6,000 signaures, and is in regular correspondence with various doctors, whole-plant medicine producers, and political members in both Irish and U.S. governments.

She is also trying to raise awareness through the media.

On The Neil Prendeville Show, she said: I think the prospects are good. Its illogical to not have it in Ireland.

She also recently appeared on The Claire Byrne Live Show, where a national poll revealed that 79% of people support the legalization of cannabis for medicinal use.
Harlem now has a taste of Tribeca, with some Irish sprinkled in for good measure. On Fifth Avenue between 111th and 112th Streets, Maxwells Central Park has taken over the former Ottamanelli location in East Harlem.

Described as an American eatery that embodies the spirit of Old New York, Maxwells is similar in menu and overall vibe to the downtown sister location with dishes like macncheese, burgers and wings. This is all comfortably recognizable to the gentrification generation but very much a new addition to this particular neighborhood.

Maxwells appears to have monopoly of the locale with no other bars or restaurants visible for a five block radius. As a result, the first two months have been packed out, much to the relief of owners John Hughes, Mike Casey (Tavern 29 and RedSky) and Alex Tortolani (Maxwells Tribeca).

This week we caught up with the youngest owner, John Hughes who hails from Mullingar in Co. Westmeath.

Like many of the twenty-something Irish living in New York, Hughes had spent a few summers in New York before taking the plunge and moving here in January 2014, and safe to say he has achieved quite a lot in just two short years.

While many fall into the stereotypical traps of swinging between bartending, interning and whatever freelancing actually is, Hughes has been planting his hospitality roots in the city and embarking on a risky yet  so far  successful entrepreneurial endeavor. Sure, there are tons of Irish bar and restaurant owners in New York  were everywhere, like a friendly disease  but how many are this young?

We asked Hughes about the highs and lows of working in the restaurant biz, being the first of many who will undoubtedly flock to this burgeoning neighborhood, and what made him take such a leap of faith and embark on this particular adventure.

Date you arrived in New York:

January, 2014.

Date the bar opened:

January 20, 2016.

Where do you call home in New York?

Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Why this job?

My parents lived in Boston for 12 years, and then went back to Ireland to purchase and renovate a hotel in my hometown of Mullingar. I came on the scene a couple months after that. For the first few years we lived in the hotel, so as the saying goes, I was kind of born into the business and its something that surrounds my family to date.

And why now?

Initially I came here with the plan of gaining more experience in the industry and bringing that knowledge back to Dublin and doing something there, but gradually I started to see more scope here and this project presented itself so I went for it. We were drawn to this part of East Harlem because its one of the last unsaturated bar-neigborhoods in Manhattan, and more importantly, we saw a demand in this heavily residential area for what we have to offer.

How does your current job compare to the first job you ever had?

At my first job I had in New York there was always the option to disappear for a couple of days or weeks, but theres no hiding anymore.

What is the biggest challenge you have faced so far?

Without doubt, moving here. It took me a long time to actually get myself in a position where I could start to make things happen. The first six months are daunting, and everything that can possibly go wrong will. The hardening phase  once over  makes the city that much better.

What is the biggest risk you have taken?

A curry I had in Chinatown in the early hours of last Sunday morning.

What makes you most excited about going to work?

Satisfied customers, seeing visions materialize, and my team of staff.

What is the best advice you have gotten in New York?

Overheard while bartending in the Financial District, a middle aged man in suit: I should have made more mistakes.

Top tip for new Irish arrivals fresh off the boat?

Soak it all in, and try to experience something new every week.

What do you miss most about Ireland?

The three Fs: family, friends, and food.

When you go home, what do you miss most about New York?

The pace is a big adjustment. It takes me a couple of days to reacclimatize.

Describe your borough in three words.

Twenty somethings playground.

Have you lost your Irish accent yet?

Absolutely not.

Favorite New York catch-phrase?

Only in New York. I recently  with an audience  watched two cab drivers go toe-to-toe in the middle of Third Avenue. There was an elderly man to my left, no doubt born and raised in the city, and he blurted out, Only in New York! Most acts of craziness here seem to fall under this saying.

Favorite place to eat?

Le Barricou in Williamsburg.

Favorite place to drink?

Iona, also in Williamsburg.
This is Up and Down, where we give a brief thumbs up and thumbs down on issues from the past week.

Up

Its never too early to learn kindness. Students at Saint Anne Elementary School have taken it a step further this year. The schools Kind Kids Club, in its second year, involved 32 kids in kindergarten through second grade during Lent and 22 students in grades three through six during Easter season.

The students have been learning how to greet someone, shake their hand and look them in the eye. They have been making bookmarks and stickers to be distributed to classmates. They make sure they smile at everyone and try to bring cheer to people. Its hard to frown when more than 50 kids are smiling at you. Theres a lesson at Saint Annes for everyone.

Down

Rest areas are intended to make travel easier and safer for motorists. Sometimes its hard to wait for a restroom. Other times you need a break to get the sleep out of your eyes and a can of pop to help keep you alert.

So its disappointing that an Interstate 94 rest area between Jamestown and Bismarck has been closed since July 2, 2014. A problem with the wastewater system forced the closing of the westbound stop between Medina and Crystal Springs. A number of factors including a rising lake and issues with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has delayed the stops reopening. Its going to be about another year before the rest stop opens. Thats too long to make travelers keep going. This is an example of government not working.

Up

There were a lot of disappointed people when the Riverbound Farm closed. The farm was involved in a Community Supported Agriculture venture that provided produce to members. The owners had an opportunity in Hawaii they didnt think they could pass up. Theres good news, however, as the new operators plan to continue the farms goals. Richard Baumgartner and Brenda Christophersen intend to help supply the Bis-Man Community Co-op with produce. The co-op will open soon in Bismarck and along with the farms new operators will help fill a void. It will be interesting to see how the farm and co-op do. It all depends on community support.

Down

The North Dakota Democratic-NPL Party last week asked Gov. Jack Dalrymple to call a special legislative session to review budget cuts the governor requested. The request came days before the Democrats and Republicans held their state conventions. The political overtones were obvious. While not everyone agrees with how the cuts were decided and what was cut, theres no need for a session at this time. The Democrats dont have the votes to push through their proposals, and unless a lengthy session was held, Republicans dont have the time to craft an alternative plan. Its best to wait and see how close the revenue figures are to the new projections. This isnt the time for political jockeying.

Up

The North Dakota Industrial Commission has been criticized for being too lenient on oil-related companies, fining them for violations and then reducing the fines after cleanups. Last week they refused an administrative law judges recommendation that they toss out nearly $1 million in fines against a trucking company over a saltwater spill on a county road. The judge argued they didnt have jurisdiction, but the commission held firm. On the same day, the commission ordered a company to take down a pumpjack in a neighborhood near Dickinson. The original permit issued to the company that owned the oil well required the company to use an underground pump. When the well was sold, to the new owner they werent aware of the underground requirement. The commission ordered them to comply.
Bono has been a force for good in so many ways  his work on behalf of AIDS treatment and prevention in Africa is heroic  and now hes lending his support to the millions of refugees who have been displaced by war in Syria.

The U2 frontman spent the Easter period at a refugee camp in Jordan, and is pleading with the world to come together to solve the worsening crisis.

"We now know that what goes on in the Middle East or North Africa this year will spill onto the streets of Paris or Brussels next year and, God forbid, onto the streets of America," Bono said during a live interview from Jordan on Mondays Good Morning America.

"We cannot separate ourselves from whats going on in the outside world anymore. Its our world. Thats what comes with globalization," he said. "With global impact, weve got responsibilities."

Bonos One campaign, which he co-founded several years ago to help eradicate poverty and preventable disease in Africa  One has seven million members  is assisting in his efforts to prod the world to act.

"If what happened in Syria were, God forbid, to happen again to another country, its happening already in Libya but, God forbid, Nigeria, Europe is no longer viable," Bono said. "Thats a big problem for America."

"As well as being a big trade partner, Europe is Americas greatest ally. Jordan, where Im standing, is a really critical ally of America and, as it happens, a lesson of grace in the way theyre treating the refugee crisis."

Bono says that if the world embraces the refugees  especially the children -- the support will be returned.

"Remember, all these kids, all these lives, they want to be friends of America. They want to be friends of liberty," Bono said. "These places can be sort of universities in teaching people our values or else they can be places that are dangerous to our ideas and who we are so lets take the first course, not the second."

The new issue of Fortune named Bono on its Worlds 50 Greatest Leaders list  hes number 14. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, is tops.
For the first time, all those who died in the Easter Rising of 1916, including rebels, civilians and members of the British forces, are being remembered by name on a wall similar to the Vietnam veterans' memorial in Washington D.C.

A group of 100 protesters from militant Republican groups showed up carrying banners and trying to create a disturbance.

Many of those present carried banners and placards bearing the logo of the 32 County Sovereignty Movement. One of the banners read: British soldiers with our patriot dead? Not in my name.

In a statement issued prior to the ceremony, Aengus O Snodaigh TD, who chairs Sinn Fein's 1916 centenary committee, said his party was opposed to listing the names of Irish republicans alongside British soldiers.

"Sinn Fein did not agree to this proposal as we believe it is totally inappropriate for a memorial wall to list indiscriminately together Irish freedom-fighters and members of the British crown forces," he said.

The Remembrance Wall, which was unveiled at Dublin's historic Glasnevin Cemetery today, displays in alphabetical order the names of 488 people and the dates on which they died.

Most of those listed are civilians, who make up 55 percent of the total, with 29 percent from the police or the British Army and 16 percent from the ranks of the insurgents, including executed leaders such as Patrick Pearse and James Connolly.

In a keynote address, Mr John Green, chairman of the Glasnevin Trust which manages the cemetery, said 224 of the 488 people killed were buried there.

Gravediggers worked tirelessly over a 12-day period at the time and he pointed out that Gerald Neilan, one of the first British soldiers to be killed, was buried in the same grave as his younger brother Arthur, who died fighting on the other side.

"Behind each and every one of these lost lives lies a story of heartbreak, no matter what side the person served on or indeed for those innocently caught up in the conflict.

"One hundred years on, we believe this memorial reflects the time we live in, with the overwhelming majority of the Irish people wishing to live in peace and in reconciliation, but it is for each visitor to take from the wall what they wish."

The monument, which is also known as the Necrology Wall, is scheduled later to include names of those who died in the War of Independence of 1919-21 and the Civil War of 1922-3.

The ceremony was to be headed by Acting Taoiseach (prime minister) Enda Kenny and Sinn Fein Lord Mayor of Dublin, Criona Ni Dhalaigh.

Mr Kenny laid a wreath but the Lord Mayor did not attend and was represented instead by Ruairi McGinley, an Independent member of Dublin City Council, who said her absence was due to unforeseen family circumstances.

The Irish Defence Forces were prominent in the commemoration and leading religious and humanist figures paid their respects to the dead of Easter Week and its aftermath.

The Northern Ireland power-sharing Executive was represented by Justice Minister David Ford. British Ambassador Dominick Chilcott, US Ambassador Kevin O'Malley and Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Charles Brown, were also in attendance.

Others present included Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Heather Humphreys, Transport Minister Paschal Donohoe and former Taoisigh Bertie Ahern and John Bruton.

There were scuffles outside the cemetery between protesters and members of the Garda Siochana, the Irish police force. Attempts were made to set fire to the Union Jack, but as a result of the wet weather the British flag was too damp to catch fire.

A firecracker which went off during the protest caused some concern among the attendance at the ceremony inside the cemetery as it sounded like a gunshot.
Anti-Austerity Alliance TD Paul Murphy is due back in court today with 15 others accused of falsely imprisoning the Tanaiste and her adviser during a water charge protest.

Four weeks in April 2017 have been provisionally set aside for their trials.

Joan Burton and her adviser Karen OConnell were allegedly trapped in their car by water charge protestors while trying to leave a graduation ceremony in Jobstown in Dublin in November 2014.

Eighteen people have been sent forward for trial in connection with the incident.

Sixteen of them, including Anti-Austerity Alliance TD Paul Murphy and two of the partys local councillors, are accused of false imprisonment - a charge that carries a maximum penalty of life in prison.

The Director of Public Prosecutions wants to split the protesters into four groups and hold separate trials.

The protestors want to know the reasons for doing so, and the DPP was due to write to them before the end of last month.

Their cases are due back before Dublin District Court this morning.

A block of four weeks next April have already been set aside for the trials.
Militants have unleashed a wave of suicide attacks across Iraq - killing at least 29 people and wounding dozens, officials said.

The deadliest attack took place in the southern province of Dhi Qar (also known as Nasiriyah) when a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a restaurant that is frequented by Shiite paramilitary militia fighters, killing at least 14 people.

Another 27 people were wounded in the attack on the well-known restaurant, which is located on the main highway that links the capital, Baghdad, with the southern provinces, a police officer said.

Dhi Qar is located about 200 miles south east of Baghdad.

At around the same time, a suicide car bomber set off his explosives-laden vehicle in a commercial area in the oil-rich city of Basra, killing at least five people and wounding 10 others, another police officer said.

Earlier in the day, a suicide bomber rammed his car into a security checkpoint in the capital's north-eastern suburb of Sadr al-Qanat, killing six troops and wounding 13 others.

Another suicide car bomber hit a headquarters of paramilitary troops in the town of Mishahda, 20 miles north of Baghdad - killing four troops and wounding 10 others.

The Islamic State group seized much of northern and western in Iraq in the summer of 2014 and established a self-styled Islamic caliphate in the areas of Iraq and Syria under its control, imposing a violent version of Islamic law.

The Iraqi army, along with pro-government militias, launched an offensive last month aimed at retaking Mosul, the country's second largest city, which is under IS control.

Their progress in villages outside the city has been slowed by roadside bombs and other booby traps.

Iraqi officials said troops on Monday recaptured a key village outside Mosul after days of heavy fighting.

Iraqi forces retook the village of al-Nasr, near the Tigris river, after destroying six suicide car bombers that had tried to attack them, Lt. Col. Mohammed al-Wagaa of the Iraqi army said.

As Iraqi forces backed by a US-led coalition have advanced against IS on a number of fronts in recent months, extremists have retaliated with a number of large scale bombings targeting civilians.

According to the United Nations figures, at least 1,119 Iraqis were killed and 1,561 were wounded in March, a sharp increase from the previous month, when 670 people were killed and 1,290 wounded.

The figures include 575 civilians killed and another 1,196 wounded. The other casualties were Iraqi security forces, including Kurdish forces known as the peshmerga and government-allied militiamen.
Police on the Greek island of Lesbos have begun placing migrants and refugees on boats heading to Turkey, the first to be deported under an EU plan to limit the amount of migration to Europe.

Under heavy security, the first 135 migrants were being escorted onto the boats as dawn broke today by officers from the EU border protection agency, Frontex.

They were being taken to nearby ports on the Turkish coast under the plan which has been strongly criticised by human rights groups.

About 4,000 migrants and refugees have been detained on Greek islands since the agreement came into effect on March 20.

On the nearby island of Chios, riot police clashed with local residents hours earlier during a protest against deportations planned there.

"All of the migrants returned are from Pakistan except for two migrants from Syria who returned voluntarily," Giorgos Kyritsis, a spokesman for a government refugee crisis committee, told state TV.

"There is no timetable for returns. Examining (asylum) applications will take some time."

He said 136 migrants were deported from Lesbos and 66 from Chios.

"This is the first day of a very difficult time for refugee rights," said Giorgos Kosmopoulos, head of Amnesty International in Greece.

"Despite the serious legal gaps and lack of adequate protection in Turkey, the EU is forging ahead with a dangerous deal.

"Turkey is not a safe third country for refugees. The EU and Greek authorities know this and have no excuse."

The operation was supervised by a lieutenant general of the Greek police and occurred peacefully, as ships departed from Lesbos to the Turkish port of Dikili.
At least 22 militants have been killed in an air strike on an al Qaida-affiliated headquarters in northern Syria, a monitoring group has said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said jets thought to belong to the Syrian or Russian air forces targeted the headquarters of Jund al-Aqsa, an extremist group that fights alongside the Nusra Front, al Qaida's affiliate in Syria, on Sunday night.
This is the sixth year of the agri-environmental programme for farmers in the Burren region of north Clare and south Galway.

Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney, who confirmed the payments, said the programme is implemented in conjunction with the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and the Burren Life team.

He praised the work of the Programme Steering Group comprising members from Burren IFA, farm advisers, the National Parks and Wildlife Service, the National Monuments Service, Teagasc, the programme management team based in Carron, and his own department.

Mr Coveney recalled he had provided 1m from national funds for the continuation of the programme in 2015 as unused Single Payment Scheme funds were no longer available.

I am delighted to confirm the issuing of payments totalling over 950,000 to 156 farmers under this scheme to support high-environmental value farming in the Burren, which is one of Irelands outstanding landscapes and is known worldwide.

This brings the allocation to participating famers by my department over the six years of the scheme to almost 6m, he said.

Mr Coveney said investment under the BFCP has given rise to a range of important benefits, such as improved water quality in this very sensitive karst landscape, the protection of sensitive limestone springs from pollution, and allowing the Burrens famous rare flora to emerge every spring.

In addition, over 163km of scrubbed-over animal paths have been reopened, enabling livestock access to under-grazed grasslands to restore some of Europes rarest grassland habitats.

The BFCP guarantees excellent value for money and works to improve biodiversity, water quality, cultural and landscape attributes on almost 13,000 hectares of Irelands flagship heritage landscape, he said.
There are around 1,000 US companies with operations here, and they provide around 100,000 direct jobs.

Each year, these companies pay 6bn in wages to Irish employees, spend 3bn on fixed capital, and, up to 2014, contributed 2bn in corporation tax to the Exchequer. That is 11bn a year, every year.

This omits other contributions which are difficult to quantify, such as Vat and other taxes, indirect expenditure on security, logistics, catering, cleaning, and other services, as well as thousands of agency workers used by the companies.

The inclusion of largely unseen things like outsourced manufacturing, quality control and research and, of course, expenditure on professional services, puts the annual contribution north of 15bn.

There is substantial commentary that US multinationals are in Ireland solely to avoid corporation tax.

This sometimes ignores the fact that we collect a lot of corporation tax. In 2015, corporation tax revenues surged to 6.7bn. If it was so easy to avoid our corporation tax how do we collect so much?

Around 80% of corporation tax receipts come from foreign-owned companies.

We do know US multinationals have complex arrangements to try and minimise their overall tax bill. Everybody tries to minimise their tax bill and, while the strategies used can appear egregious, none of them is illegal.

The main determinant of the strategies pursued by US multinationals is the US tax code. The taxation of multinationals is complex but is based on a pretty fundamental principle: corporate profit-taxing rights are granted on the source principle.

That is, countries can tax the profits from risks, functions, and assets that are located in their countries.

Although some of the worlds largest companies have operations in Ireland, we can only tax them on the profit they generate from their activities in Ireland.

Apple alone has annual profits of $60bn. This is not attributed to Ireland because the risks, functions and assets that generate this profit are not located here.

Apples 5,000 employees are important for the company, but they are not the reason the company makes $60bn in annual profits.

At 35%, the US has the highest corporate tax rate in the OECD. However, the US tax code is incredibly complex and has numerous peculiarities.

One of these is the concept of deferral for corporate income taxes, which means US multinationals can delay certain tax payments until the profits are transferred to US-incorporated entities in their corporate structure. The primary objective of many tax strategies used by US multinationals is to engineer such a deferral, sometimes permanently.

These strategies do not affect the tax paid in countries such as Ireland, where they have manufacturing or trading operations, or countries around the world where they have customers.

The tax paid in these countries is based on internationally-agreed standards for transfer pricing and permanent establishment.

The profits US multinationals earn are based mainly on activities that take place in the US and assets that are held there.

As a result of the deferral provisions in the US tax code, some companies create an artificial division between their US and non-US source profits and give the appearance of very low tax rates on their non-US profits.

The reality is that most of the profit is sourced in the US, and the companies owe US corporate income tax on those profits. It is not the case that the profits are untaxed.

The taxing right is granted to the US. If the US has deferral provisions that allows companies delay the payment, that is their business and, in the case of Apple, we can see that they are making it their business.

At a US Senate hearing in May 2013, there were accusations against Ireland of special tax deals and 2% tax rates.

That was proven to be untrue, but the European Commission is investigating whether more of Apples profits should be subject to Irelands 12.5% tax. And now the vacuous noise of May 2013 is being shown up for the nonsense that it was.

Now, the US Senate Finance Committee is raising concerns that a large portion of Apples profits may be taxed in Ireland because it will be the US that foots the bill through a reduction in the tax owed there.

The US Treasury Secretary has written to the Commission stating that while they dont collect the tax until repatriation the US system of deferral does not give EU Member States the legal right to tax this income.

If the EU rules that Apple owes billions of corporation tax to Ireland, we can be guaranteed that there will be another US Senate hearing and this time they wont be calling us a tax haven; theyll be calling us a tax thief.

* Seamus Coffey is an economist at UCC and is a member of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council. He is writing in a personal capacity.
The Easter Rising celebrations have brought the past alive. We have remembered dead heroes while considering the national story from various angles.

After 1916, the journey grew bumpy as disputes were settled by men in trench coats with revolvers. Ireland eventually became a relatively prosperous republic.

Unlike many of the new nations that emerged after the Second World War, the country remained firmly democratic. Since then, most have achieved levels of personal financial wellbeing that would have been considered beyond the imaginings of the vast majority, a century ago.

It is time to celebrate a few of the clever, practical, business-minded, yet community-focused people who are arguably the real heroes in our island story.

Horace Plunkett was born in 1854. From a Unionist background, he was made aware of the wretched condition of many rural poor while serving on the Congested Districts Board.

He had already spent a decade as a rancher in the US state of Wyoming where he picked up tips on Scandinavian-style agricultural co-operation. In 1889, Mr Plunkett established Irelands first dairy co-operative at Doneraile, Co Cork, soon after opening the countrys first creamery in Dromcollogher, Limerick.

Farmers were persuaded to join forces to process and market their own butter, milk, and cheese. Mr Plunkett was faced with opposition from vested interests including shopkeepers and butter buyers.

The downbeat view at the time was that Irish farmers were uncombinable atoms.

In 1894, he founded the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society along with a Jesuit priest, Fr Tom Finlay, and he was also a driving force behind the establishment of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction.

In their book on the Irish Co-ops, Carla King and Liam Kennedy have described how Mr Plunkett sought to apply principles of combination to every branch of farming.

The Irish Agricultural Organisation Society sent paid organisers around the country. But the gap between the paternalistic Mr Plunkett and a largely illiterate rural population was, at times, huge. By 1914, around 90,000 belonged to co-operative organisations.

During the First World War, however, many producers pursued short-term gains at the expense of long-term customer relations. Mr Plunketts home in Foxrock was burned down by anti-Treaty forces in 1923 and he died soon after.

The foundations for Irelands successful dairy groups had been laid, though farming struggled for many years amid post-war depression and a 1930s trade war between Ireland and Britain.

Nora Herlihy grew up in Ballydesmond in these years. She witnessed much destruction in the area as a child during the Troubles. She later worked as a national school teacher in Dublin where she witnessed some terrible living conditions.

She saw how people struggled to manage their money. It led her to form the Dublin Central Co-operative Society, in 1954, along with Thomas Hogan.

In 1958, Irelands first credit union opened on Donore Avenue, near the Coombe in central Dublin. The branch took in 7 in its first week. Ms Herlihy co-founded the Irish League of Credit Unions in 1960, serving as secretary.

In 1967, the Credit Union Act was passed and today, there are over 500 credit unions affiliated to the League. John Hume founded the Norths first credit union, in Derry.

Social historians have noted how spending on food has plummeted as a proportion of peoples incomes in the past 100 years. A revolution has occurred in the grocery sector.

The transformation of retailing in Ireland began in Cork with the opening of the first branch of Dunnes Stores. There was nothing soft about founder Ben Dunne  his toughness towards suppliers and trade unions was legendary  but the Dunnes supermarket formula helped Irish housewives to stretch the family earnings, paving the way for new forms of leisure spending from the 1960s onwards.

Waterford Crystal was a tangible symbol of a burgeoning export economy in that period. The glass was revived in the city in large part by a Czech craftsman, Miroslav Havel who came to the city in 1947 as a young migrant.

Mr Havel served as a glass blower, engraver, cutter, designer, polisher and sculptor. Almost single handedly, he recreated an industry, with financial backing from the powerful McGrath family.

Irish industry after the war benefited from an infusion of overseas entrepreneurial talent. At the same time, state companies stepped in to fill a large funding gap left by the commercial banks.

The forerunner was the Industrial Credit Corporation which was established in 1933. The ICC was run for decades by a classmate of Sean Lemass, JP Beddy. Somewhat forgotten today, he played a key role in persuading Mr Lemass to drop his opposition to the establishment of the IDA, the organisation which has spearheaded the drive to attract foreign investment into Ireland.

The name Eustace Shott hardly rings too many bells. Little is known about this partner in the accountancy firm, Craig Gardner, bar the fact that he is credited with suggesting that the IDA be established.

Alexis FitzGerald, a government adviser in 1948, later recalled the approach from Mr Shott. His point was that we needed a body that was independent of the bureaucracy... free of all the trammels and restrictions... ready to go out and seek new industries.

Another character now lost in the mists of time is Roy Geary, founding director of both the Central Statistics Office, and the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).

Mr Geary once played hurling with Michael Collins, but his real interests were cerebral. He rose to a senior position in the UN before returning to set up the ESRI in 1960. He is remembered as the father of Irish statistics.

None of these people were handy with guns, one suspects, but each in his or her own way played an important part in building the nation.

From the 1970s, our business leaders acquired more glamour and swagger. Many, such as Tony Ryan, the man behind GPA and Ryanair, and Kerry Group founder Denis Brosnan, have left great legacies.

But we must never forget the debt owed to the early pioneers, often running below the radar, operating in a country that took time to emerge from poverty and discord.

When we are thinking up the next commemoration ceremony, maybe it is time to remember some of our non-violent champions to avoid the temptation to round up the usual suspects.
WHEN it comes to the cuppa, we Irish are in a class of our own  recent statistics show that as a country we are the second biggest tea drinkers in the world.

And the consumption of coffee is also becoming increasingly more popular.

It was no surprise then to discover that two of the 10 companies that recently joined the first FoodService Academy, run by Bord Bia and Musgrave MarketPlace, specialise respectively in tea and coffee.

Whats more, Lilys Tea Shop in Termonfeckin, Co Louth, and Coffee House Lane in Waterford each has a proud heritage that adds to their business profiles and reflects their individual traditions.

The story behind Lilys Tea Shop goes back to a mountain region in Fujian Province called Bohea in the south-east of China. It has a reputation for producing teas that are famous for their distinctive flavours and superior quality.

Lily Chen, originally from the Fujian province and settled in Termonfeckin, has access to the best tea farms in China and selects the finest tea leaves for her customers. The mission statement of her business, as outlined in her website, says it all; A healthier generation on a greener planet sounds too big for such a small business like Lilys Tea Shop. Yet, it is where our conscience lies.

In Lilys Tea Shop, we believe thousands of streams gather into an ocean; many a leaf fills up a forest.

We strongly believe in the spirit of eco-friendly and fair trade products and thus select our suppliers strictly in accordance with these principles.

Mark and Stephen Bergin, of Coffee House Lane, a father and son team in Waterford, had been in the coffee industry for several years as agents for imported brands.

But then they decided to develop a quality local offering of their own in the South-East. Now, they have a big reputation of their own for producing a broad range. Ponticelli, one of their brands, means little bridges and was named after a suburb of Naples visited on a family holiday many years before.

Coffee House Lane, another range, owes its name to a busy trading part of Waterford, which is believed to have been the location of Irelands first coffee house over 325 years ago.

The family, which has a strong reputation in coffee roasting in the South-East, has both retail and foodservice customers and a cornerstone business ethos of selecting only the finest quality coffee beans from all over the world.

Coffee House Lane and Lilys Tea Shop are just two of the 10 companies involved in the first FoodService Academy, the new programme run by Bord Bia and Musgrave MarketPlace.

Blanco Nino, based in Clonmel, is Europes first producer of authentic corn tortillas and Nobo, the company behind a Wicklow made dairy free ice-cream, which is made without any refined sugar, gums or stabilisers, were set up as suppliers in advance of the programme starting.

Two of the academy companies are from Cork. Secret Recipe, based in Ballincollig, is the only producer of halal and gluten-free meal solutions to the foodservice industry in Ireland and Britain, while Susan Robbins Fehilys artisan gluten free bakery, WildBerry, is located in Ballineen.

Another company that will benefit from the programme is Tipperary Kitchen, a family-run artisan bakery producing a range of handcrafted meringues, dessert sauces and chocolate biscuit cakes in Holycross.

Atlantis Seafood, a family seafood business based in Wexford, Maria Lucia Bakes, a Dublin producer of gourmet gluten, wheat and dairy-free granola cereals, and Kildares Outdoor Oinks, a range of Bord Bia approved pork and bacon products, are the other participants. The academy seeks to help small Irish food and drink companies develop their business in the foodservice market.

It also aims to help the companies achieve growth within Musgrave MarketPlaces foodservice business, which works with over 6,000 customers each week ranging from hotels and restaurants to pubs and nursing homes.

Maureen Gahan, Bord Bias foodservice specialist, said it is looking to grow the sales of small businesses in the market.

The foodservice market is delivering real growth and value for Irish food and drink companies, as is evidenced in our recent report. The out of home market is now worth 6.37bn and this is forecasted to grow to almost 6.9bn by 2018 so this is an area we are encouraging companies to develop, she said.

Sheena Forde, trading director, Musgrave MarketPlace, said the foodservice programme is a follow on from the success of a similar food academy programme with Bord Bia and the Local Enterprise Offices.

We are now looking forward to bringing a similar programme to Irish foodservice producers through MarketPlace. A number of participating companies are food academy graduates so we are proud to introduce their products to our foodservice customer base.

As the largest and fastest growing wholesaler in Ireland, we are ideally placed to understand the needs of the foodservice market and, as an Irish family business, we are delighted to work with small Irish manufacturers, many of which are family-owned, to give them a head start in the market.

The FoodService Academy programme offers a combination of commercial and marketing expertise and will provide invaluable consumer insight for the companies involved.

We would like to acknowledge the excellent support of Bord Bia throughout the development of this programme. Their shared passion for supporting Irish food business has been evident throughout, she said.

The four months programme, co-ordinated by Bord Bia, is comprised of workshops and mentoring with Musgrave MarketPlace personnel sharing with the companies their practical insights and experience in supplier set-up, food safety requirements, distribution, sales and marketing.
Michael OHanrahan, or Miceal Ua hAnnracain, was an extremely modest man whose greatest ambition from a very early age was to free Ireland from the imperial administration.

Underneath a reserved exterior was a passion and a drive that meant Miceal gave up nearly every evening of his adult life to one organisation or another that furthered this goal.

Born on January 16, 1877, in New Ross, Miceals family moved to Carlow town three years later, where he lived at 90 and 91 Tullow St, a house, shop and workshop in which the family business of cork cutting was carried out.

After attending the Christian Brothers School, Miceal planned to take the examination for a place in the civil service. But on learning that all civil servants were required to take an oath of allegiance to the Queen, he abandoned that goal.

From his journalism, it is clear that Miceal read carefully into Irelands history  and the history of other countries within the Empire  and came to the conclusion that the attempt of the imperial administration to portray itself as a benevolent influence upon Irish affairs was a lie.

Miceals belief was that when their interests were threatened, the supporters of empire were savage in their barbarity. In Carlow, for example, a terrible massacre had been carried out in 1798 against the United Irishmen and Miceal helped preserve the memory of this event through his involvement in the local 98 Memorial Club.

For regular updates on news and features (as well as twitter action action as it may have happened 100 years ago) to mark the revolutionary period follow @theirishrev HERE

His reading led Miceal to write two historical novels, A Swordsman of the Brigade (1914) and, published posthumously, When the Norman Came.

His commitment to the Irish language, too, was impressive. Self-taught, Miceal was giving classes in Carlow from 1899.

His other interest as a young man was in the GAA, which he supported in Carlow and then as a player for Lorcan OToole GAC in Dublin.

Whether from his own natural disposition or from the experience of his father (who was a member of the old Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) of 1867), Miceal operated as covertly as he could against a very powerful enemy, one whom he believed would never voluntarily surrender control of Ireland to the Irish people. As with many of his contemporaries, Miceal was convinced that the British Empire had to be defeated militarily if Ireland were to escape its domination.

When, in 1901, a British officer was allowed to join the Carlow Workingmans Club, Miceal resigned, even though he had helped found the organisation two years earlier.

Shortly afterwards, the whole family moved to Dublin, settling at 67 Connaught St. There they lived above their shop, which sold tobacco and fancy goods.

Due to Miceals discretion, as well as his scrupulous honesty and willingness to devote all his time to the revolutionary movement, he became the key figure behind the scenes in arming and equipping the Irish Volunteers. From the Volunteers headquarters on 2 Dawson St, Dublin, he effectively became the quartermaster of the Easter Rising.

Miceal had developed the skills to carry out this task in the course of organising for the Gaelic League in Carlow, then for Sinn Fein in Dublin, and especially through his efforts to ensure the great language processions of 1908 and 1909 were a success. These were marches in support of Irish language and culture that were up to 100,000 strong.

As Easter 1916 approached, Miceal had high hopes for the ability of the Irish Volunteers to inflict a stunning blow on the imperial administration, hopes that were shattered by the loss of the Aud, which was to deliver 20,000 rifles in Kerry the weekend the Rising was to start.

When given the news that the weapons had not been landed, Miceal was as shaken as he had ever been in his life and must have had a premonition of his own death, for the odds of victory suddenly lengthened enormously.

They lengthened again when Volunteers chief of staff Eoin MacNeill issued his countermanding order.

In the event, Miceal, like so many of the other leaders of the rebellion, went out with little hope of victory, but with a determination to create the circumstances, even in defeat, that would save Ireland.

As he awaited his execution, he believed that those who fought in the Easter Rising had achieved this much at least. Calm and unwavering in the face of death, it seems that he was satisfied that it was worth his life to have helped bring about a fundamental change in political direction for the country, one that would lead to more successful struggles in the future.

In different circumstances, Miceal Ua hAnnracain would have indulged his love of literature and lived a long life devoted to writing novels. This, however, was not an ambition he could allow himself to yield to while the British Empire remained in control of Ireland.

Instead, in a quiet and indefatigable manner, he put his considerable organisational talents and, ultimately, his life, at the disposal of the cause of revolution.

Conor Kostick is a historian and author of Michael OHanrahan in the 16 Lives series of biographies on the executed 1916 leaders, published by OBrien Press.

Enjoyed this? Then check out our dedicated micro-site, developed in collaboration with UCC, to mark the revolutionary period HERE
Just over a quarter (26%) or the workforce exercise for about 20 minutes a day, or two and a half hours a week.

However, 15 months ago almost one in three (32%) were managing to clock up the recommended 150 minutes of moderate physical activity every week.

The study from the Nutrition and Health Foundation (NHF) found that four in 10 (42%) are either totally or extremely inactive during their working day.

The results were released in advance of Irelands second National Workplace Wellbeing Day that takes place on Friday.

The event, to get the workplace moving, is organised by the NHF, is supported by business group, IBEC.

This week hundreds of organisations across the public and private sector will be promoting better nutrition and exercise in the workplace.

Some of the many events taking place are health checks and talks, exercise and fitness classes, nutrition talks and cookery demonstrations.

Employers are also being encouraged to arrange a lunchtime mile  a one-mile cycle, jog, run, or walk for employees near their workplace.

NHF manager Muireann Cullen said that, with people spending so much of their lives at work, it is the perfect place to promote better exercise and eating habits.

And, with parents making up so much of the workforce, the workplace is an opportunity to influence the habits of more than one generation, said Dr Cullen.

A healthier workforce was in everyones interest  four out of five employees believe there is a positive link between their health and wellbeing and their companys activity.

Almost seven out of 10 (69%) said they were more likely to stay longer with employers who showed an interest in their health and wellbeing.

According to the NHF research, about half of employers are already trying to facilitate healthier lifestyles for their employees and since 2014, there had been an increase in employers providing access to health and wellbeing initiatives within the workplace.

The three most popular initiatives mentioned by employees to promote more exercise are company organised pilates or other exercise classes (45%), access to annual health checks or screenings (45%), and more facilities to support exercise, such as showers and lockers (38%).
In an interview in Peru last night, she did acknowledge the damage the drugs could have on others. However, she also revealed the impact of her action on her own life.

McCollum and Melissa Reid, from Scotland, were imprisoned in 2013 for six years and eight months after admitting trying to smuggle cocaine worth 1.5m from Peru to Spain. McCollum was freed on parole last Thursday after serving more than two years. It is anticipated she will have to remain in Peru for a considerable period as part of her parole conditions.
Writing in todays Irish Examiner, the partys environment spokesman, Barry Cowen, has set out his partys priorities as it begins intensive talks with Independent TDs about forming a government.

Mr Cowen says that one of his priorities is the abolition of Irish Water and he is scathing in his criticism of the utilitys use of taxpayers money to fight for its survival.

The scale of the campaign by Irish Water is beyond anything ever before undertaken by a public company in this country, writes Mr Cowen.

It is a campaign funded by a charge levied on the Irish people, with the direct aim of trying to prevent parties from implementing the peoples will.

When the relevant Oireachtas committees are established, we will be seeking details of how much public money has been spent on this issue in recent weeks.

Mr Cowen also insists the partys opposition to Irish Water has not changed in any way, but he stops short of describing it as a red-line issue.

When we outlined our commitment to abolish Irish Water and suspend the regressive water charge which it collects, we did so following a detailed analysis of investment in water infrastructure, writes Mr Cowen.

We were also very clear that legal charges should be paid. Our position today remains exactly as it was in the election.

The party is to set out six main priorities in its discussions which begin today, with Independent TDs, about forming a government.

With no deal likely in time for Wednesdays Dail vote, it is now anticipated that the Independents will abstain from voting for either Enda Kenny or Micheal Martin for Taoiseach.

Therefore, focus is now shifting back to some form of a modified grand coalition between the countrys two biggest parties and, over the weekend, there seems to have been a shift in position from Fianna Fail.

While the party is still seeking to maximise its vote in the Dail, it is accepted that Mr Martin cannot catch Mr Kenny and therefore, substantive talks between the two leaders are expected to begin on Wednesday night.

In todays Irish Examiner, Mr Cowen reveals Fianna Fails six main policy positions heading into those talks.

He writes: Our policy priorities can be summarised in six overall points: We want to strengthen economic recovery through supporting the creation of well-paid jobs and ensuring that the recoverys impact is felt throughout the country; We want urgent action on the housing emergency.

We want to help families and cut their costs. This includes an approach to taxation which is progressive and gives the greatest relief to those under the most pressure.

We want action to help communities under pressure which will make them safer and stronger, with vital public services guaranteed.

We want increased support for essential public services; and we want to deliver a substantive and lasting reform of government and politics.

Also writing in this newspaper today, Independent Roscommon-Galway TD Denis Naughten, who is part of the Rural Five group, says that he and his colleagues are trying to construct a political partnership agreement, a blueprint for what this new government would do over its term of office.

Mr Naughten writes: This is based on the social partnership agreement model which sidelined the industrial relations turmoil of the 1980s and brought about real economic growth.

Today, my colleagues Michael Collins TD, Michael Harty TD, Noel Grealish TD, Matty McGrath TD, and I, believe that we need a similar structure to bring about a political partnership agreement across a broad range of TDs in Dail Eireann who are willing to step up to the plate of government.

Such an agreement must have inputs from the political parties  Fine Gael, Fianna Fail, the Social Democrats, the Green Party, Labour, and a number of Independents  who are willing to assist in putting a government together.

Analysis: 11
For two days over the weekend, Luas services did not run because of a row between drivers and Luas operator Transdev over pay.

Mr Murphy, speaking to the Irish Examiner, said the fight for equal pay is a welcome development in Ireland.

The industrial action is a good thing, it marks the legitimate battle for fair wages in this country. Ireland is predominantly a low-wage economy, he said.

Mr Murphy also moved to deny he and his colleagues have been whipping up unrest among Luas workers.

Union sources have suggested to the Irish Examiner that Mr Murphy and others in the AAA have encouraged a hardening of stance among drivers, who rejected pay increases of up to 18% over 33 months.

The AAA was the only party to issue a public press statement in full support of the Luas drivers position, and members of the alliance have also been present on the picket line during the recent stoppages.

No, there is no truth in that, said Mr Murphy. A 99% rejection rate of the deal cannot simply be put down to agitation by people like me or others on the left. It was driven by a genuine desire for wage equality among Luas drivers.

Another two days of industrial action is planned for later this month.

The dispute escalated on Friday when Kieran Mulvey, head of the Workplace Relations Commission, rejected calls from Siptu general president Jack OConnor to resign after he criticised the unions actions.

Fine Gael MEP Brian Hayes said the Fawlty Towers approach to the strike has taken industrial relations back 30 years, with the ordinary commuter paying the price for the dispute.

Writing in the Sunday Business Post, Mr Hayes said: Agreement is not helped by an over-the-top response that attacks the very people who are core to the viability of that transport business  the travelling public. Neither is it helped by calling on Kieran Mulvey to resign after his useful intervention.

Meanwhile, Transdev apologised to customers.

It said: Transdev wish to apologise to Luas customers for the disruption to Luas services this weekend.

We strongly urge Siptu to re-engage with the management and conclude an agreement that is within the limits of the available company resources.

To continue to strike is unfair to Luas customers, the travelling public, and business.
Sheila Willis also told the authorities that the new DNA database, which was eventually launched last November, will be ineffective because of the limited capacity of the laboratory to take enough DNA samples.

In correspondence released under the Freedom of Information Act, she said this was ironic in light of the initiative by Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald to target burglaries, given that DNA databases are most effective in investigating such crimes.

In a written warning to Justice Department secretary general Noel Waters and the minister, the director general of Forensic Science Ireland (FSI) said the risk of DNA contamination presented unthinkable consequences in the courts.

It is my greatest fear and the main concern I have in relation to standing over the work, Dr Willis told them, citing the key role DNA evidence played in criminal trials.

She said modern laboratories, with positive pressure, are the norm to prevent contamination, but that this is not an option in their 1970s-style office block.

She said she has to devote more and more staff to conduct checks and double checks to ensure DNA contamination was caught.

In a series of frank correspondence, released in partially redacted form to the Irish Examiner, Dr Willis:

Expressed again her extreme concern that the long-promised new FSI facility will not become available until 2022 at the earliest, saying it is not tenable to wait this long;

Said the Office of Public Works recently informed them that the facilities are a fire hazard;



Said an OPW architect told them the conditions in the laboratory are worse than any he had seen in the State.

FSI, formerly known as the Forensic Science Laboratory, has been housed in an office in Garda Headquarters since 1979.

Various plans to replace the laboratory with a modern facility in different locations have failed to come to pass, most recently a 2009 project to move the FSI to Backweston, Co Kildare.

Under the Capital Expenditure Programme, announced last September, funding for the new FSI facility will become available in 2019, with a three-year construction process.

In a reply to Dr Willis, Mr Waters said the department is seized of the difficulties she was facing.

He recognised the facility was vital, particularly with the new DNA database.

We have continuously and strongly argued for the provision without delay of such a facility, he said, and said that if an opportunity arose to bring forward the start date it will be taken.

In her letters, Dr Willis also highlighted the dramatic impact of staff losses.

Dr Willis said, as of July 2015, there was a backlog of 4,500 drug cases, a 16-week wait time to examine DNA samples and a large number of cases in the chemistry department that will not be examined.

In Budget 2016, Ms Fitzgerald announced additional funding to FSI of 1.3m, which would allow for the recruitment of 25 staff.

READ MORE: The State cant claim ignorance of DNA disaster risk
The Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) annual convention voted last week that members should cease the extra 33 hours a year being delivered since 2011 under the Croke Park agreement  but the move would have to be approved by a ballot of all 18,000 members.

ASTI had accepted the Haddington Road Agreement (HRA) which succeeded Croke Park, but convention delegates said that, with its expiry at the end of June, the requirement to do the extra hours should also end. Many said the hours are put to unproductive use on staff meetings rather than, for example, class preparations or corrections.

But the department said a requirement for extra hours will not expire in June.

The HRA has been extended to 2017 through the Lansdowne Road Agreement (LRA) and these hours are a continuing element of the agreement, a spokesman said.

Although the ASTI and Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) rejected the LRA, the department said all unions affiliated to Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) are regarded as party to it unless they repudiate the agreement. The ICTU public services committee voted to accept the LRA in consequence of its ratification by the majority of unions representing public servants last year.

Stepping outside the LRA would have consequences for members of a union and these would need to be carefully considered by them in voting on a decision to repudiate, the department told the Irish Examiner.

These include a freeze on increments, loss of specific salary improvements and salary restoration for teachers, other specific benefits for fixed-term and part-time teachers, and other protections provided for under the collective agreement, such as compulsory redundancy, the spokesperson said.

ASTI president Maire Ni Chiarba told delegates on Thursday that any necessary meetings would be held to ensure a ballot can take place before the end of this school year. This, she said, would allow a union directive to be issued in time for next school year if members back the proposal to cease working the extra hours.

The debate on the issue on Wednesday heard that some principals are already planning staff meetings in late August that would be held using Croke Park hours, despite teachers insistence they would no longer be required to work them after June.

All three teacher union conferences last week promised to ramp up efforts to restore pay parity for members who started teaching since 2011, under two different reduced pay scales depending on what year they entered the profession. ASTI is to ballot members for authority to take industrial action up to strikes if the issue is not fully resolved before schools return next autumn, a mandate already held by TUI in respect of its members.

The Department of Education said last week that the LRA would begin a process of bridging the gap between pre-2011 and post-2011 teachers, through salary improvements that are of proportionately greater value to newer entrants. Those would be among the improvements at risk of being withdrawn if union members withdraw from working Croke Park hours.

Those sanctions could be imposed under the provisions of Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest (FEMPI) acts. The ASTI convention last week heard calls for the union to lobby TDs to reject any attempt by Brendan Howlins successor as public expenditure minister to extend the FEMPI measures.
According to worker union Siptu, the company announced the plan in a site-wide communication to all staff on March 31.

Siptu said the cosmetics manufacturer had also advised staff that it was to move two of its production lines from the Kilbarry Industrial Park on Dublin Hill to Rheux in Brittany, France, which is currently operating under capacity.

The company has also cited the cost of shipping as another reason for its decision, the union said.

Siptu organiser Paul Depuis said the announcement had caused deep shock among staff and was a major blow to its members and their families and to the northside of the city. He said the move was particularly surprising to staff, given that major restructuring had taken place in 2014/2015.

Union representatives have met with the firm to seek more details and explore whether measures can be applied to preserve as many roles as possible. More meetings are planned in the coming weeks.

Yves Rocher commenced operations in Cork in 1981 and established its Dublin Hill facility in 1984. In 2010, it announced a 3.7m investment in the plant for upgrading of its fabrication and manufacturing areas.

However, in May 2014, the skincare giant announced plans to shed jobs and cut operational activity by a third at its manufacturing plant here. The Cork facility has been the main producer for strategic Yves Rocher brands such as Riche Creme Pure Calmille, Arnica, and Serum Vegetale.

No one was available to comment on the companys plans last night.
HUNDREDS of people receive the ultimate gift of life every year in Ireland when they undergo organ transplant surgery. Organ Donor Awareness Week runs from April 2- 9, and the Irish Kidney Association wants to make the public aware of how someones life can be transformed by a donated organ.

Padraig Leader from Ballydesmond (on the border of Cork and Kerry) is one of these lucky recipients. Suffering from a rare condition since childhood, much of his life revolved around hospitals and dialysis machines until July of last year when his sister, Maura Angland, made the ultimate sacrifice and donated one of her kidneys to her younger brother.

From a young age I was always getting headaches but wasnt diagnosed until I was in my teens, says the 56-year-old.

After several examinations it was discovered that I had a rare auto immune disease called Pachymeningitis which caused me to have many health consequences, including renal failure.

I started dialysis in 2012 which was a very difficult time particularly as I had to make a 100-mile round trip into Cork City to the hospital three times a week. After a while my wife (Mary) generously volunteered to be trained for the home haemodialysis therapy option as I was too unwell to be able to do it myself and I remained on dialysis at home until July 2015 when my sister Maura donated a kidney to me. Proving the blood really is thicker than water, Maura and several other family members got tested to see which one would be a suitable donor for Padraig.

I always said I would wait for my chance on the transplant list as I didnt want to put anyone through an operation to donate an organ, says Padraig, who has four children  Eilish, 30, Richard, 29, Catherine, 27, and Patrick, 26. But without my knowledge my two sisters (Maura and Brid), my brother Liam and my daughter Eilish went to get tested to see who would be a suitable donor for me.

As it happened, they were all matches and I was informed at the end of May 2015  I wasnt given a choice as to whether or not I wanted the organ  they had all decided it was going ahead and Maura made the decision that she was the best candidate. She discussed it with her family and with their consent, there was no stopping her. So once the decision was made, Padraig and Maura were prepared for surgery in Beaumont Hospital and almost immediately after the transplant, he had a new lease of life.

The operation took place in Beaumont last July and went perfectly, recalls Padraig who works for the ESB. My bloods started improving immediately and for the first time in years, there was to be no more dialysis  it was fantastic. Maura was discharged after five days and I was let out four days later. Our families stayed in the Irish Kidney Association hostel on the grounds of Beaumont which was amazing and we were all very grateful.

The after-effects of surgery were hard for the first two weeks but after that both Maura and I recovered very quickly. I really mean it when I say that the operation has changed my life. Being on dialysis keeps you alive but since I got the transplant, my life has been transformed and I am enjoying every minute. But I do think of all the people waiting for a donor, who have to travel to hospital three or four times a week while they wait and hope.

So with Organ Donor Awareness Week, I believe everyone should have a talk with their family and make the decision to help someone live again.

Daughter Eilish agrees and as well as putting herself forward as a potential donor is also taking part in a fundraising swim as she hopes to raise both funds and awareness for others in the same situation as her father.

She and three others  known as the Myrtle Turtles  are planning to swim the English Channel in July and although they say they wont break any speed records, are hoping to make a decent splash for charity.

I have always loved swimming and one of the best decisions I ever made was turn up to a meeting I heard advertised on Red FM called The Red Drive Challenge, says Eilish who works as a public health nurse in Cobh. The challenge was to do the Vibes and Scribes Lee Swim and this is how I met my fellow turtles.

We trained together and completed the Lee swim in 2012 and have been swimming together since. Anne Sheehy, a grandmother from Ballinlough, booked the English Channel swim and recruited Eoin Lowry from Glanmire, Caitriona Kehily from Newcestown, and myself to do the swim with her this July. We are doing it for two charities, Marymount Hospice and The Irish Kidney Association and we call ourselves the Myrtle Turtles as we swim in Myrtleville and are slow like turtles.

Eilish, who lives with her partner Kevin Lucey, says her father has been her inspiration and she hopes others will see the importance of filling out donor cards.

Dad has unbelievable determination and is always so positive, she says. He has been through so much, yet has always been there for his family  he is the reason I went nursing because he was always so easy to look after even though he was so unwell.

We were fortunate that my aunt Maura was a suitable donor and was adamant and very willing to donate a kidney to her brother. Also we are so grateful that the transplant was a success and dad is enjoying renewed health.

Organ Donor Awareness Week is really important as there are so many people with organ failure who are entirely dependent on the goodwill of the public and a transplant would transform both the lives of the recipients and their families. So I would encourage everyone to carry a donor card and have the discussion about organ donation with their loved ones.

www.ika.ie , www.organdonation.ie

Great comfort from Alexs donated organs

Before Alex Ryan died in January after taking the psychoactive stimulant N-Bomb at a house party in the Greenmount area of Cork City neither his mother Irena or sister Nicole had any thoughts of organ donation. However, having been told that he would not survive the effects of the deadly hallucinogenic drug, they made the decision to donate his organs so others would survive.

I doubt any parent ever thinks about donating their childs organs and neither had we before Alex was pronounced brain dead, says Nicole. After we were told on the Wednesday night the news wasnt looking good, I thought of organ donation and asked doctors if it was possible.

I broached the subject with my mum who initially resisted the idea as she couldnt bear the thought of Alex being cut up. It was just too soon to be even thinking about it. But then on the Friday night, he was pronounced clinically brain dead and after talking it over, we decided it would be better if some good could come out of his death.

The doctors told us there were four people who were a match for his organs and on Saturday morning he was taken in for surgery. We were then informed that his healthy organs had saved four lives which gave us great comfort  one life would have been incredible but to think that four people are alive today because of Alex is a miracle.

I encourage people to talk to family members about filling out donor cards or at least think about it as no-one ever believes a tragedy like ours will happen. If we had the chance to save Alexs life we would have jumped at it. He was such a giving person I know he would be happy to have given others the chance of life.
Still reluctant? Well, it turns out that walking in the woods is more than just a pleasant way to spend an hour or two - it might actually prolong your life.

The Japanese have a word for it: "shinrin-yoku" or forest bathing. It's the sensory experience of being among trees. It's a rich form of physically active mindfulness. Forest bathers are encouraged to put away their mobiles and their headphones, and instead activate all their senses to interact with the forest environment.
AFTER 50 hours of talks with both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, it is clear that a new government  if formed  will be a watershed government.

It either involve both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, which will bring an end to civil war politics, or it will see the establishment of a minority government which, because of its numbers, will be the very first consensus government.

Either format will change the political landscape in Ireland for the better, and will bring about a new type of politics  a political system for the 21st century, instead of the present one which was designed for the 18th century.

At this stage in our discussions, we are trying to construct a political partnership agreement, a blueprint for what this new government would do over its term of office.

This is based on the social partnership agreement model which sidelined the industrial relations turmoil of the 1980s, and brought about real economic growth.

Today, my colleagues Michael Collins TD, Michael Harty TD, Noel Grealish TD, Matty McGrath TD, and I believe that we need a similar structure to bring about a political partnership agreement across a broad range of TDs in Dail Eireann who are willing to step up to the plate of government.

Enda Kenny says election has brought 'sense of liberty' to politicians https://t.co/8zu0xHjCLt pic.twitter.com/8zrRFY1ghL  Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) April 2, 2016

Such an agreement must have inputs from the political parties  Fine Gael, Fianna Fail, the Social Democrats, the Green Party, Labour and a number of Independents  who are willing to assist in putting a government together.

We view a political partnership agreement as a programme for government that would be agreed between a coalition of the constructive TDs in Dail Eireann with clear proposals to address the serious issues of the housing crisis, rural and provincial decimation, health service chaos, and climate change.

From our engagement with the main political parties, there seems to be momentum building behind the formation of a minority consensus government which will be forced to listen to the Dail and which will have to construct a majority in parliament on a case-by-case basis for every measure it would like to implement.

For the first time in Irish history, we could have a political system that works like it was designed to  that is, a government that will propose and a Dail that will dispose.

In plain English, this means the government of the day will only be able to table a plan of what it wishes to do, but it will not be able to implement this plan without the consent of a majority of members of Dail Eireann, including those on both the government and opposition sides.

It will force individual TDs and parties to set aside what is in their interest and instead to act in a responsible manner by taking the actions which are in the best interest of the State and its people. Dail Eireann will, I believe, at long last become a problem-solving chamber.

TDs will be provided with all of the relevant information and policy options and they will then have to decide on what approach to take.

Of course this is going to rock the foundations of the civil service, because no longer will it be in the position of only having to convince one person of the merits of a plan, namely the minister of the day.

Enda Kenny and Micheal Martin to finally meet after Wednesdays vote https://t.co/nGhvZFulDd pic.twitter.com/bjGmSFOIx2  Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) April 1, 2016

Instead, it will have to be able to convince a majority of the members of the relevant parliamentary committee.

These committees will have at their head a chairperson with real powers who will manage a committee with real decision-making capacity. And of course if this applies to the civil service, it will also apply to lobbyists who will have to build a coalition of support based on real facts, and not just getting the ear of a sympathetic Minister.

This is all a gamble, we may fall back to the same party political Punch and Judy show that we have seen during the first two sittings of the 32nd Dail but it may just work and, if it does, then Punch and Judy are set for retirement and Dail Eireann is set to become an institution that people look to and not turn away from, as they do at the moment.

For this to happen, we have to lay down new ground rules, new ways of doing business in Dail Eireann, and in Government Buildings.

Yes, this will take time, and the public will have to be patient, but I sincerely hope that last weeks phone calls between Enda Kenny and Micheal Martin are the first steps towards a watershed government of the people and for the people.

Denis Naughten is TD for Roscommon-Galway
The State cant pretend it wasnt warned.

That much is clear in letters from the countrys top forensic scientist to the Department of Justice.

Dr Sheila Willis warns of a possible legal and political nightmare if a court case collapses because of failings in forensic evidence  failings directly stemming from working in poor facilities.

The prospect is unthinkable, she warns, saying that it would result in very large expense and untold reputational damage for the criminal justice system.

Her four-page letter of October 16, 2015, was the culmination of a series of correspondence to the department in which her exasperation and frustration is clear to anyone who reads them.

In addition to the contamination risk, she highlights consistent staffing problems; worrying backlogs of criminal case loads; lack of basic storage space; smells that are so bad that they made a pregnant woman sick; and that the place is a fire hazard.

The letters from the director general of Forensic Science Ireland (FSI) to Noel Waters, secretary general of the Department of Justice ,were made available under the Freedom of Information Act.

Parts of the October 16 letter  at least six or seven sentences  have been redacted by the department.

FSI has long been viewed as the Cinderella of the criminal justice system, run by scientists who, by their nature, are not inclined to publicly bang the drum or take to the streets in protest.

And its not that their work is not important. Anything but.

The agency tests samples from crime scenes to gather forensic evidence linking an accused to the crime and provides expert testimony in criminal trials.

This work supports, and sometimes single-handedly secures, convictions.

It is work that necessitates modern facilities, particularly in the handling and analysis of DNA samples.

If a senior counsel could identify a weakness in the testing of forensic evidence it could well sow that crucial reasonable doubt in the mind of a jury  or indeed convince a judge to throw out the evidence altogether.

The letter of October 16 was written after the Government published the Capital Investment Plan 2016-2021 last September.

After more than 10 years of promises of building a modern facility, this plan renewed an abandoned 2009 project for a new laboratory.

But the capital plan said that funding for this would not be available until 2019.

If that actually comes to pass and construction starts straight away, it will take three years to build and fit the high-tech facility.

This may have been the straw that broke the camels back for Dr Willis, the long-suffering head of what was formerly known as Forensic Science Laboratory.

I wish to convey to you again, she writes to Mr Waters my extreme concern at the announcement in Building on Recovery: Infrastructure and Capital Investment 2016-2021 that construction of a purpose built forensic science laboratory at Backweston, Co Kildare, will not commence until 2019 at the earliest. She points out that the agency has been in the Garda Technical Bureau building at Garda Headquarters since 1979.

This is a 1970s style office block, not suited for a modern laboratory, which subsequent modifications have not much improved.

She said that for more than 10 years she has advised successive justice ministers of this.

Numerous promises have been made and expressions of sympathy and goodwill received with no tangible result. She said staff at the laboratory had spent considerable time with the OPW and the department on various proposals, which were all abandoned, including the most recent one in 2009 for state-of-the-art facilities in Backweston.

She said she has recently been informed by the OPW that they consider their office to be a fire hazard.

She said they were using a basement for secure storage of the case exhibits and that the foyer beside the lift acted as a reception area for all cases.

She also writes: We have ongoing problems with strong odours emanating from the piping system. It takes months to get them fixed. Two weeks ago, an odour was so obnoxious that one of the pregnant staff had a bout of vomiting. She said she was genuinely worried to see the date of 2019 in the capital plan.

She said it was their expectation that the project, which she said was shovel ready, would have started in early 2016 and could have been completed by 2018.

Now it appears that the purpose-built facility will not be available for occupation until 2022 at the earliest. She told Mr Waters that with improvements in DNA technology there was significant associated risk of inadvertent contamination.

This included the possible transfer of DNA from a scientist to an item from a crime scene, or DNA from a victim to a suspect or vice versa, or DNA from an item in one case may be transferred to an item in another case.

She said the current unsuitable facilities dictate that more and more staff time is devoted to check and double checks to ensure that contamination is caught and that we can stand over the results we produce.

Dr Willis said DNA evidence played a role in the investigation of a wide variety of criminal offences, from the most serious (murders, sexual offences) to burglaries and other crimes.

She said DNA evidence provided by FSI scientists had played a key role in many high-profile criminal trials.

She said the credibility offered by FSI scientists in court required that the laboratory had the most rigorous anti-contamination procedures.

In light of all of this, Dr Willis said: It is my duty to formally advise you of the following consequences.

She said the risk of contamination will take more and more staff to manage because the possibility of it happening in a case is unthinkable and would result in very large expense and untold reputational damage to the FSI and the Irish criminal justice system.

It is my greatest fear and main concern, she said.

In a further bombshell, she said that the new DNA database, promised since 2007 and eventually launched last November, will be ineffective because of the limited capacity to process sufficient samples.

Dr Willis added: This is ironic in light of the ministers initiative to target burglaries, which are shown to be the most effective use of DNA as a tool in other jurisdictions. She said she did not believe the situation was tenable for the next seven years and urged Mr Waters and the minister to reconsider the plan.

A note on the letter from Mr Waters to the minister stated that Dr Willis had asked that this be brought to your attention.

In his response to Dr Willis, Mr Waters said the department was seized of the difficulties she was facing.

He recognised the new facility was vital, particularly with the new DNA database.

We have continuously and strongly argued for the provision without delay of such a facility, he said, and that if an opportunity arises to bring forward the start date it will be taken.

One would have thought that given the barrage of justice scandals and crises that plagued the outgoing administration, the department, the minister and the wider government would do everything to avert another one.

They cannot say they didnt know.

READ MORE: Poor lab facilities are big risk to evidence says forensic chief
You might have peered over from a safe distance, wondering who let him in, then ignoring him, assuming he will soon pass out. Until he starts kicking over the furniture and threatening people. Wheres the host? Why is he still here? Hes not funny anymore. He never was, but now hes about as funny as a loaded gun.

Like his hairdo, Donald Trump is an illusion. Artificially puffed up, hiding a great swathe of nothingness underneath. Women should be punished for having abortions, he says suddenly, as though it has just occurred to him.

What sort of punishment, wonders the television interviewer. Ten cents fine or ten years imprisonment? No idea, says Donald Trump out loud on national television, because he hasnt. He has not given it any thought. He has not given anything any thought. The only genuine aspect of Trump is his desperate desire for power.

Hes not anti-abortion any more than hes pro-choice. An echo chamber for reactionary public opinion, which he then resounds back to us via repeated media ricochets, Donald Trump doesnt care about repatriating Mexicans, banning Muslims, building walls, punishing women on issues of reproductive autonomy. He just wants to be in the Oval Office. By any means.

His motivation is simple  spraying the White House gold and erecting a giant TRUMP sign on its roof. To achieve this he will do anything, say anything, condemn anything, condone anything. He will go to any lengths - like Frank Underwood but without the charm and nuance.

A Donald Trump protester might have made the best sign ever - everyone agrees https://t.co/TPUeA5pVWO pic.twitter.com/E5KrYBNGfK  Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) April 3, 2016

Trumps greatest folly  and there is quite a range to choose from  is his failure to recognise half of humanity as actual human beings. Women are not people, in Trumpvision. Women are things. Bitches. Beauties. Uglies. He has called women who disagreed with him dogs, fat pigs, disgusting animals. He has compared women he finds attractive to buildings and pieces of art.

His spouses are trophies, to be marched out and displayed. It doesnt matter what [the media] write as long as youve got a young and beautiful piece of ass, he once told Esquire.

Even his daughter is an object of desire about whom he makes super-creepy references: If I werent happily married and, you know, her father... In case we dont get the inference, he spells it out: If Ivanka werent my daughter, perhaps Id be dating her. Lets try and deep breathe our way out of that one.

But his latest glob of spontaneous misogyny may be his undoing. By suggesting that women who have abortions should be punished, he united the opposing poles of the abortion rights spectrum. Pro choice people and pro life people, all slack jawed in horror.

Its like the drunk guy at the party just defecated on the rug.
The announcement is a clear recognition of the growing strength and power of the international BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) movement targeting G4S in response to calls from Palestinian prisoners and civil society organisations.

This announcement comes following the loss of millions of dollars through boycotts  including contracts in Colombia and Jordan in recent weeks alone  and divestments, including that of the Gates Foundations $170m stake in the company, after sustained international BDS campaigns highlighting G4S role in the incarceration, torture, and oppression of Palestinians.
Fighting in what was a dormant conflict for two decades flared up over the weekend with a boy and at least 30 troops killed on both sides. Each side blamed the other for Saturdays escalation, the worst since the end of a full-scale war in 1994.

The defence ministry said, in response to pleas from international organisations, it will be unilaterally suspending a counter-offensive and response on the territories occupied by Armenia.

The ministry said that it will not focus on fortifying the territory that Azerbaijan has liberated. It did not elaborate.

Nagorno-Karabakh, a region in Azerbaijan, has been under the control of local ethnic Armenian forces and the Armenian military since a war ended in 1994 with no resolution of the regions status.

The conflict is fuelled by long-simmering tensions between Christian Armenians and mostly Muslim Azeris. Armenian forces also occupy several areas outside Nagorno-Karabakh proper. The sides are separated by a demilitarised buffer zone, but small clashes have broken out frequently.

Officials in the self-proclaimed republic of Nagorno-Karabakh promptly disputed the reports of Azerbaijans unilateral ceasefire.

David Babayan, spokesman for the Karabakh president, said that they had not seen any signs that fighting was suspended. The defence ministry of Nagorno-Karabakh yesterday also claimed to have restored control over a strategic area near the frontline.

It said that Nagorno- Karabakh forces went on a counter offensive around the village of Talish after Azerbaijani forces shelled their positions just before dawn. Two Karabakh troops were reported injured.

It also said that Azerbaijan was using rockets, artillery and armour against the region.

Earlier on yesterday, a spokesman for Azerbaijans defence ministry, Vagif Dargyakhly, said that Azerbaijani positions came under fire overnight and that civilian areas also were hit.

On Saturday, Armenia said 18 soldiers were killed and Azerbaijan reported 12 dead.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed yesterday to back its ally Azerbaijan in the conflict, saying that the flare-up could have been avoided if fair and decisive steps had been taken.

We pray our Azerbaijani brothers will prevail in these clashes with the least casualties, he said.

The unresolved conflict has been an economic blow to Armenia because Turkey has closed its border with Armenia.

Russian president Vladimir Putin called for an immediate end to fighting along the frontline.

President Putin calls on the parties in the conflict to observe an immediate ceasefire and exercise restraint in order to prevent further casualties, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
The British Prime Ministers late father was reported to be among figures - including six peers, three ex-Tory MPs and political party donors - named in relation to investments set up by Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

Downing Street said it was a "private matter" whether the Cameron family still had funds in offshore investments and insisted the PM was in the vanguard of efforts to increase the transparency of tax arrangements.

More than 11 million documents were passed to German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) to 107 media organisations.

British Shadow chancellor John McDonnell said the revelations were "repulsive" and demanded an investigation by HM Revenue and Customs.

The ICIJ named Conservative peer Baroness Sharples, former Tory minister Michael Mates and ex-Tory donor Lord Ashcroft as being included within the leaked documents.

It said Mossack Fonseca was used by Belize Corporate Services (BCS), a subsidiary of Lord Ashcrofts company BCB Holdings, to provide shell corporations for its clients in 2006.

At this stage Lord Ashcroft was still a Conservative peer in the House of Lords.

Alan Kilkenny, writing on behalf of Lord Ashcroft, told the ICIJ the allegations were "completely untrue, and the events as described never happened".

He added: "The records upon which you claim to rely for those allegations either do not exist or have been falsified."

The ICIJ raised Baroness Sharples involvement with the Bahamas-based company Nunswell Investments Limited to make investments, although noted she did not deal with Mossack Fonseca directly when managing her company.

A law firm handling the affairs of Baroness Sharples told the ICIJ the company was registered in the UK in 2000 and now pays taxes to the British Government.

It added that the House of Lords "has been notified of Baroness Sharples oversight in registering her interest as a director of Nunswell Investments Limited" and that she receives "no remuneration ... nor any income or capital from that company".

Mr Mates is said to have been linked with offshore companies used for real estate development in the Bahamas.

The former minister told the ICIJ he was asked by a friend to become chairman of Haylandale Limited, with his advice sought on issues including how to deal with the government of Antigua.

According to the ICIJ, Mr Mates said he had not and would not receive any remuneration "unless and until the development took place, nor were the shares of any value", as the company "never had any real value".

There is nothing illegal about using offshore companies but the disclosures have intensified calls for international reform of the way tax havens are able to operate and claims of large-scale money laundering.

Mr Cameron, who will chair an international anti-corruption summit in May, has been a vocal advocate of reform and legislation forcing British companies to disclose who owns and benefits from their activities comes into force in June.

Despite several years of pressure however, few UK Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories - said to make up a large part of the tax havens referred to in the papers - have taken concrete action to open up the books.

Asked if Mr Cameron was prepared to legislate if there was continued inaction, the PMs official spokeswoman said: "He rules nothing out. The work with them continues."

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has approached the ICIJ for access to the data and said it would "act on it swiftly and appropriately" if there was any wrongdoing.

But the shadow chancellor said not enough had been achieved and claimed HMRC was being forced to "operate with their hands tied behind their backs" because of staffing cuts.

"The revelations in the Panama Papers are extremely serious and frankly repulsive. HMRC should treat this with the utmost priority and urgently launch an investigation," Mr McDonnell said.

Among the disclosures are:

: A suspected two billion dollar (1.4 billion) money laundering ring run by a Russian bank and said to involve close associates of President Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin denied the president was connected to any wrongdoing and claimed he was the target of a smear operation

: Mossack Fonseca set up a company suspected of being used to launder money from the 1983 Brinks-Mat bullion heist. A spokesman for the law firm told the ICIJ any allegations the firm helped shield the proceeds of the Brinks-Mat robbery "are entirely false"

: Icelandic prime minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson reportedly had an undeclared interest in his countrys bailed-out banks and is now facing calls for his resignation

: In China the families of at least eight current and former members of the supreme ruling politburo had been found to have hidden wealth offshore, according to The Guardian

: Some 23 individuals who had had sanctions imposed on them for supporting the regimes in North Korea, Zimbabwe, Russia, Iran and Syria were said to have been revealed to have been clients of Mossack Fonseca

Ian Camerons use of the firm to help shield investments from UK tax as he built up a significant legacy, part of which was inherited by the Prime Minister, had been previously disclosed but further adds to the pressure on the PM.

There is no suggestion that this avoidance arrangement or others exposed by the leak were anything but entirely legal or that Mr Camerons family did not pay the UK tax due on any repatriated assets.

Mossack Fonseca said it had operated "beyond reproach" for 40 years and had never been charged with criminal wrong-doing.
Trump, acknowledging the possibility of a loss, said it would be better to win the state, but was confident hed get the nomination regardless.

Amid talk of the Republican establishment trying to block the frontrunner, party chairman Reince Priebus said the nomination process will be open and transparent.
A few signs Turkey was getting ready for the migrants could be seen on Saturday. Two room-size tents were set up on the pier of the cramped port at Dikili, where migrants being returned from Lesbos were to be taken.

Two portable toilets were installed nearby.

The return of the migrants is a key part of an agreement between the European Union and Turkey aimed at ending the uncontrollable influx into Europe of migrants and refugees fleeing poverty and war in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.

Under the agreement, those who cross into Greece illegally from Turkey from March 20 will be sent back to Turkey once their asylum applications have been processed.

Turkeys interior minister, Efkan Ala, was quoted by the pro-government newspaper Aksam as saying 500 people were expected in Turkey from Greece today.

Afghans, Iraqis, and Pakistanis would be deported to their countries, he said.

More than 6,000 migrants and refugees have been registered on Greek islands since March 20. While returns are due to begin today, where they will start from and how many will be returned remains unclear.

Planning is in progress, said George Kyritsis, a Greek government spokesman for the migration crisis.

The Athens News Agency reported over the weekend that the returns would begin this morning on two Turkish passenger ships chartered by Frontex, the EU border agency. The ships will sail from Lesbsos across to the Turkish coastal town of Dikili.

Some 250 people would be returned each day through Wednesday, the report said, without citing sources.

Greek officials would neither confirm nor deny the report. A police spokesman on Lesbos said the force was still awaiting instructions.

Arrivals to the islands remained steady yesterday, two weeks since the cut-off date, with 514 migrants, including many Syrians and Iraqis, crossing from Turkey through Sunday morning.

Of those, 364 arrived on Lesbos, authorities said.

In previous months, arrivals averaged 1,000 to 2,000 a day. Bad weather and gale-force winds have at times hit the Aegean Sea in the two weeks since the agreement.

Arrivals fell, then rose again, and have held around 300 to 500 a day for the past few days. Many were unaware they would be sent back to Turkey.
Some 11m documents, known as the "Panama Papers have been leaked from a Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca.

Associates of Russian president Vladimir Putin are among those whose assets feature in the vast expose published yesterday after a year-long investigation into 11m leaked documents.

Around 140 political figures are mentioned in the revelations, according to the probe by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

The documents, which date back to 1975, show links to 72 current or former heads of state, including Middle East and North African dictators.

I think the leak will prove to be probably the biggest blow the offshore world has ever taken because of the extent of the documents, said Gerard Ryle, director of the ICIJ.

The leak contains secret offshore companies linked to the families and associates of Egypts former president Hosni Mubarak, Libyas former leader Muammar Gaddafi, and current Syria president Bashar al-Assad.

It also revealed Icelandic prime minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson had an undeclared interest in his countrys bailed-out banks.

Leaked documents show Mr Gunnlaugsson and his wife, Anna Sigurlaug Palsdottir, bought offshore company Wintris in 2007. He did not declare his interest in the company when entering parliament in 2009, and sold his share of the company to Ms Palsdottir for a nominal sum eight months later.

Other files expose offshore companies controlled by the leaders of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the children of the president of Azerbaijan.

Biggest leak in the history of data journalism just went live, and it's about corruption. https://t.co/dYNjD6eIeZ pic.twitter.com/638aIu8oSU  Edward Snowden (@Snowden) April 3, 2016

The leak also reveals a suspected billion-dollar money laundering ring run by a Russian bank and involving close associates of Mr Putin.

The scheme was operated by Bank Rossiya, which is under US and EU sanctions.

Mossack Fonseca said it always carries out appropriate checks and regrets the alleged misuse of its services.

For 40 years Mossack Fonseca has operated beyond reproach in our home country and in other jurisdictions where we have operations, a spokesperson said. Our firm has never been accused or charged in connection with criminal wrongdoing.

If we detect suspicious activity or misconduct, we are quick to report it to the authorities. Similarly, when authorities approach us with evidence of possible misconduct, we always cooperate fully with them.
Martin McDonaghs Hangmen was named Best New Play at the ceremony in Londons Royal Opera House.

The play tells the story of how the second-best hangman in England is enjoying his celebrity status in a pub on the day that hanging is abolished, when a mysterious stranger appears.
Burma Lower House Committee Endorses State Counselor Bill

Burmas Lower House Bill Committee signs off on legislation creating a powerful position for National League for Democracy chairwoman Aung San Suu Kyi

RANGOON  Burmas Lower House Bill Committee on Monday recommended that a State Counselor bill be approved by Parliament without any amendments, putting legislation creating a powerful position for National League for Democracy (NLD) chairwoman Aung San Suu Kyi one step closer to reality.

Tun Tun Hein, chairman of the 15-member committee, took to the dais during Mondays parliamentary session to explain its findings on the draft bill, which was passed by the Upper House last week.

He shared that during committee meetings, most members expressed favor for the bill, while two members voiced concerns about the proposals constitutionality and speedy approval in the upper chamber. Steven, a lawmaker representing the formerly ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) in Shan States Kengtung Township, and fellow committee member Brig-Gen Maung Maung, a military appointee, opposed the bill in its current form.

Most members of the Bill Committee agreed that the bill should be endorsed without any amendments, as approved by the Upper House, Tun Tun Hein told lawmakers of the NLD-majority committees findings.

The bill, proposed by President Htin Kyaw, passed the NLD-dominated upper chamber by a vote of 137-70 on Friday. The bill includes five chapters and eight articles, and marks the partys first legislative initiative since Htin Kyaw was sworn in as president on Wednesday.

The text of the legislation explicitly designates Suu Kyi as state counselor, and has been widely interpreted as a move by the party leader to circumvent a Constitution that bars her from the presidency. In the role, she would be given a broad consultative mandate with both the legislative and executive branches.

The secretary of the Upper House Bill Committee told lawmakers last week that the bill was drafted in order to implement the will of a public who voted in large majorities for the NLD and its popular leader Suu Kyi on Nov. 8. The bill has been criticized as unconstitutional by parliamentarians in opposition.

Maung Maung of the Lower House Bill Committee repeated his concerns at Mondays session, asking the chambers speaker to allow sufficient time to discuss the bill and emphasizing the importance of maintaining a separation between the legislative and executive powers of the state.

Rushing to approve a bill within such a short time may call into question democratic standards and the existence of transparency, he said.

We, military lawmakers, will show our support as long as the bill is approved in accordance with the Constitution, he continued.

Lower House Speaker Win Myint announced that the bill would be discussed on Tuesday afternoon. The chamber leader, in responding to Maung Maungs concerns about the swift timetable, cited the need to push the legislation through ahead of a lengthy holiday break next week, when Burma celebrates the Buddhist New Year.

The party hopes to have the legislation sent to Htin Kyaw for his signature ahead of the recess.
Burma NLD Issues Guidelines on Gifts for Civil Servants

Aung San Suu Kyi orders civil servants not to accept gifts worth over 25,000 kyats, an amount much lower than the threshold previously allowed.

RANGOON  In an act viewed as targeting rampant corruption in Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi has ordered all civil servants not to accept any gift worth more than 25,000 kyats (US$21), an amount more than 10 times lower than the threshold allowed by the previous government.

Signed by Suu Kyi in her capacity as Presidents Office minister, the Presidents Office Guidelines on Accepting Gifts were delivered to union ministries, and state and divisional governments across the country on Friday, according to a post on the offices Facebook page, which uploaded the document on Monday.

The guidelines were made public three days after Suu Kyis National League for Democracy-led government officially assumed power on Friday, with the party vowing to target graft in a country known for it. According to Transparency Internationals 2014 Corruption Perceptions Index, Burma ranked 156th out of 175 nations surveyed, on par with Cambodia and Zimbabwe.

The document concedes that corruption in Burma runs deep, describing its eradication as a huge challenge for the new government. However, corruption has to be effectively handled by all means as it can deteriorate society, economy and rule of law, the aims of the guidelines state.

The nine-point guidelines ban civil servants from accepting gifts from anyone or organization that would be benefit from their [civil servants positions of] responsibility, including businesses seeking to win government tenders. The guidelines warn that government employees must not ask for gifts, directly or indirectly.

As exceptions, the guidelines allow civil servants to accept gifts with a price tag of not more than 25,000 kyats, and restrict the gifts received from an individual or an organization in a year to not more than 100,000 kyats. Another exception allows civil servants to accept a gift not exceeding 100,000 kyats on holidays when the practice is common, such as the Buddhist celebration of Thadingyut or Christmas.

It further restricts civil servants from accepting gifts many times.

From foreign governments, gifts worth not more than 400,000 kyats are acceptable, as is accepting money from these governments for travel or medical expenses, or scholarships.

The last chapter of the guidelines states that anyone has to report to his or her supervisor upon being offered a giftwhether accepted or not.

[D]eputy directors general of their offices will have to urgently report to the Presidents Office Minister [Suu Kyi] upon giving gifts to their bosses, the president and vice presidents.

Thein Seins government passed an Anticorruption Law in 2013 and established a new anti-graft commission as it attempted to shed the countrys highly corrupt international image. The following year, he told government officials that they could accept gifts worth up to 300,000 kyats without it being considered corruption.

Kyee Myint of the Myanmar Lawyers Network said he welcomed the new guidelines but worried that the exceptions listed could offer loopholes that would undermine the anti-graft drive.

Instead, it should only say any civil servant must not accept or take anything. Any violation can be bribery, he said.

In October 2013, The Irrawaddy looked at the sometimes ambiguous line between a tradition of generosity in Burma and blatant favor-seeking.
Burma NLD Religious Affairs Minister: Muslims Are Not Full Citizens

Muslim organizations speak out after Religious Affairs Minister Aung Ko describes Burmese Buddhists as full citizens and Muslims as associate citizens.

RANGOON  Muslim organizations both overseas and within Burma have condemned a statement made by Religious Affairs Minister Aung Ko that those who practice Islam are not full citizens of the country.

In a Voice of America (VOA) interview conducted during his first days in the Cabinet position, the former military general and ex-Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) lawmaker was asked how the new government would treat religious minorities in Burma, as the previous regime has been accused by both local rights groups and the international community of having persecuted these populations.

Aung Ko replied by denying any government abuse based on religion, adding that some groups had simply misunderstood the previous administrations over support for Buddhism. He said that in Burma, Buddhists were full citizens, and that religious minorities, including Christians, Hindus and Muslims, had not been deliberately oppressed.

Perhaps his most controversial statement was that Muslims made up the majority of Burmas associate citizens, implying that those who practice Islam are classified as partial citizens or foreigners.

Muslim organizations have begun sending letters to the new National League for Democracy (NLD) government that appointed Aung Ko in the ministerial role, expressing anger at his statement.

The All Myanmar Islamic Religious Organization said that while they welcome an elected NLD government, the comments in Aung Kos VOA interview were hurtful.

Abu Tahay, chairman of the Union National Development Party (UNDP), an organization from Arakan States largely Muslim Buthidaung Township, said that his party is preparing to contact the government soon, to ask that they refrain from using religion as a political tool.

Citizenship can not be based on religion. Therefore, it was not appropriate to talk like this, said Abu Tahay, who is also a leader within the Rohingya community, a Muslim group which has been denied citizenship by the former government, who labeled the Rohingya as migrants from neighboring Bangladesh.

In an April 2 statement from the UK-based Burmese Muslim Association (BMA), spokespeople said they strongly condemn [Aung Kos] careless talk.

They added that they had expected the NLDwhich garnered widespread national support in the 2015 electionto adhere to principles of democracy, human rights, and equal rights on which they had campaigned.

We have asked the party to give an explanation for what [Aung Ko] said and whether these words came from the party or only from him, said the statement.

The BMA referenced Burmas constitutions from 1947, 1974 and 2008, which recognize Islam as a religion practiced by citizens of the country. There is no mention of associate citizenship for Muslims in any of these documents, the groups statement pointed out.
Burma For-Profit Stages Banned During Water Festival

Rangoons municipal government has banned all for-profit pavilions during the water festival, calling for a return to a safer, traditional celebration.

RANGOON  Rangoons municipal government has banned all for-profit pavilions during Thingyan and is encouraging the public to celebrate the water festival, which begins next Tuesday, in a simple, traditional way.

Rangoon Chief Minister Phyo Min Thein announced the decision at a press conference on Saturday.

Thingyan should reflect Burmese tradition and culture, he said, highlighting that it should not focus on drinking alcohol, loud music or instigating trouble.

He urged the public to collaborate with the police force to ensure a safe festival and added that in order to prevent unexpected riots, the public must follow the laws and respect human rights.

Some critics say festivities in the past have gotten out of hand, with areas at the back of pavilions the scene at times of fornication, drug use and other illicit activities.

Rangoons Karen ethnic affairs minister Naw Pan Thin Zar Myo explained that the decision was made with the public in mind. It was intended to prevent traffic, conserve water during El Nino season, and follow health warnings, he said.

There were over 300 applications to construct pavilions along the Kabar Aye Pagoda and Kan roads this year.

But Yangon City Development Committee (YCDC) department officer Than Hote said only 16 private applications had been transferred to the government on April 1, because the new government had announced that it would not allow large pavilions to be set up on public land.

The regional government said it would allow the central pavilions in four Rangoon districts, as well as uncensored versions of Thangyat [satirical songs that mock authority] during the festival. Thangyat was banned under military rule, and was allowed with censored text under the quasi-civilian government.

There have been mixed reactions to the governments decision not to allow for-profit pavilions, because some companies have already received deposits from people who want to celebrate by dancing and throwing water from the stages.

While many agree with the chief ministers decision, some teenagers and organizers complained on social media.

One ticket holder said, [the organizer] said they would arrange something else for ticket holders who had already paid, but I dont see that working.

Si Thu, an organizer who helps arrange the construction of pavilions every year, didnt build any this year, because building them on public spaces was not allowed.

Some people rented private compounds on Pyay Road [the only road available to build large pavilions], he said. But the compound rental fee was about US$8,000-12,000 for the five days of Thingyan.

Reporters Tun Tun and May Soe San contributed to this report.
Burma Rangoon MPs Approve New Regional Government Members

The Rangoon regional parliament approves new appointments, including six divisional ministers.

RANGOON  Rangoon Chief Minister Phyo Min Theins list of regional government nominees, including six ministers, was approved in the divisional parliament on Monday.

The nominees include Planning and Finance Minister Myint Thaung; Agriculture, Livestock, Forestry and Energy Minister Han Tun; Electricity, Industry, and Transportation Minister Nilar Kyaw; Development Affairs Minister and mayor, Dr. Maung Maung Soe; and Social Affairs Minister Naing Ngan Lin.

Rangoon regional lawmaker Moe Myint, from South Okkalapa constituency, told The Irrawaddy that Naing Ngan Lin is the only National League for Democracy (NLD) lawmaker; the others are retired civil servants and technocrats.

Han Htoo and Khin Than Hla were also appointed to advocate general and auditor general of Rangoon Division, respectively.

Nominated by the commander-in-chief, Col. Tin Aung Tun was reappointed as Security and Border Affairs Minister for Rangoon Division and two NLD lawmakers, Zaw Aye Maung and Naw Pan Thinzar Myo, were appointed Arakan and Karen ethnic affairs ministers, respectively, last week.

Other state and regional parliaments also announced and approved their chief ministers proposed list of cabinet members on Monday.
Burma Suu Kyi Gives Up Two of Four Ministerial Posts

The NLD chairwoman renounces her positions as minister of education and electric power and energy.

RANGOON  National League for Democracy (NLD) chairwoman Aung San Suu Kyi has renounced two of the four ministerial positions she took on last week.

After a meeting of the Union Parliament on Monday, Upper House Speaker Mahn Win Khaing Than announced that President Htin Kyaw had nominated Myo Thein Gyi and Pe Zin Tun for the posts of Minister of Education and Minister of Electric Power and Energy, respectively.

Last week, the Union Parliament approved President Htin Kyaws appointment of Suu Kyi to four Cabinet positions, heading the ministries of foreign affairs, the Presidents office and education, as well as that of electric power and energy.

The reason behind the Ladys renunciation of the posts remains unknown. But on Friday, the NLD-dominated Upper House passed a bill designating Suu Kyi as state counselor, an advisory role that is perceived as giving her more executive power, since she has been barred from the presidency.

Currently, Myo Thein Gyi, 51, the nominee for the position of education minister, is the rector for the University of West Rangoon. Prior to the post, he held directorial roles in both basic and higher education departments in the education ministry.

Pe Zin Tun, 60, whose name was put forward for the ministerial role for energy and electric power, has served as a permanent secretary within the Ministry of Energy since 2015.

The Union Parliament also announced President Htin Kyaws nomination of Tun Tun Oo for Attorney General and Maw Than as the Union Auditor General.

Fifty-nine-year-old Tun Tun Oo was once a Maj-Gen in the military and is the current deputy attorney general. He is also a member of the Union Peacemaking Working Committee.

Maw Than, 77, is the current director of the Central Bank of Burma and was once the rector of the Rangoon Institute of Economics.

If there are no objections from lawmakers to the nominations, all four positions are expected to be approved in Parliament on Tuesday.
Dateline Irrawaddy: People Expect the NLD Will Solve All Their Problems

After a historic power transfer this week, The Irrawaddy team looks at expectations for Burmas new NLD government and the challenges that lie ahead.

Ye Ni: Welcome to Dateline Irrawaddy. This week well discuss peoples expectations for the new government. The Irrawaddy news crew members Ko Thalun Zaung Htet and Ko Lawi Weng will join me for the discussion. Im The Irrawaddys Burmese editor, Ye Ni.

We now have a new democratic government elected by the people for the first time in 54 years, spanning 1962 to 2016. The new democratic government will have to take on the burden of curing the countrys political, economic and social sectors, which deteriorated during that period. People have voted for the National League for Democracy [NLD] and weve now seen a NLD government and Parliament. Ko Thalun, do you believe the NLD government and the Parliament will be able to rebuild the countrys political, economic and social sectors?

Thalun Zaung Htet: Since the military staged a coup in 1962, Burmese people have not had a civilian government. The military regime ruled in successive periods. It held an election in 2010 while Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and political prisoners were still behind bars. The 2010 election was not a fair poll and was riddled with massive electoral fraud. The Union Solidarity and Development Party [USDP] won the election and U Thein Seins government came to power. The 2012 by-election was relatively free and fair since it was not a poll to elect the government. In the 2015 election, people from all walks of life voted for Daw Aung San Suu Kyis party and the NLD therefore won in a landslidearound 80 percent of the vote. As a result, they have now formed the first elected government in 54 years and the president is U Htin Kyaw.

People want to see Daw Aung San Suu Kyi as president, but she is barred from the presidency by the 2008 Constitution drafted by the military. So far, peoples wishes have not yet been fulfilled as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi still cant be president. But a government led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has taken power.

Talking of peoples expectations, people have high expectations for the NLD government. People have high expectations that the NLD government, led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, will be able to solve all the problems. People from every walk of life, from trishaw drivers and squatters to the educated and affluent, as well as civil servants, voted NLD. They voted for the NLD because they want to see big changes for the country. They have been deeply desirous of changes. People have high expectations for the new government, and believe completely that it will be able to solve all their problems.

YN: In response to speculation that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will handle four ministries, some say that it is too much for her, even though she has taken on the task with good intentions. People are concerned about her health; whether she will be able to cope with the stress, given her age and the formidable duties. What is your view, Ko Thalun Zaung Htet?

TZH: There were 36 ministers and almost 100 deputy ministers in the U Thein Sein government. Their salaries were a large burden on the country. Now, the NLD government has reduced the number of ministries to 21 and ministers to 18, with a minister managing more than one ministry. This saves a large chunk of budget, which is very good for the country. The lean government is a good sign for the country.

On the other hand, people at home and abroad doubt whether Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will be able to manage four ministries at the same time as she will take the helm of Foreign Affairs, Education, Electric Power and Energy ministries, [as well as the Presidents Office ministerial post], all of which are important for the country and are in need of fundamental reforms. So, everyone is concerned. But Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has reportedly said she would manage those ministries temporarily because she has not yet found the right people.

Most of the cabinet members are U Shwe Manns allies, for example U Thein Swe, the former transport minister and the minister of the Prime Ministers Office [under the junta government]. He has a bad reputation for corruption. He allegedly has ties with Asia World Co. So, this raised peoples eyebrows. The new government is elected by the people but it does not look impressive to the people. There is also criticism of the government as being the administration formed jointly by U Shwe Mann. It is undeniable that the government is not 100 percent impressive. Well wait and see if the government will be lean, effective and corruption-free and spend minimum budget, as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has said.

YN: Ko Lawi Weng, you are an ethnic Mon. The ethnic issue is the top priority on the NLDs election manifesto. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has included ethnic persons in the government and the Parliament to show her resolve to handle the ethnic issue. She has even set up an Ethnic Affairs Ministry, a completely new ministry. She has shown her consideration for ethnicities. But what the ethnicities actually want is federalism. What do you think Ko Lawi Weng?

LW: As to the ethnic issue, I would like to talk about two pointsethnic political parties and ethnic armed groups. In the case of Arakan [State], the Arakan National Party [ANP] wants to get the Arakan State chief minister position. It said it would cooperate with the NLD only if it gets the Arakan State chief minister position, and would stand as opposition if not. There has been lots of criticism about the ANP and some even say the ANP does not want to cooperate at all.

The chief minister position has been announced and it is now certain that the ANP will not get that position. Lets take a look at the reason why Daw Suu did not give that post to the ANP. Arakan State is important because of the Rohingya-Bengali issue. That issue has marred the image of the country on the international stage. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi seemingly wants to address the problem to somehow revive the countrys image by appointing her party member as chief minister.

If she gives the chief minister position to the ANP, she would have to negotiate with the ANP first to handle the Rohingya-Bengali issue. Thats why Daw Aung San Suu Kyi did not give ANP that position, I think. In the case of Shan [State], U Khun Tun Oos Shan Nationalities League for Democracy [SNLD] also wanted to get the state chief minister position, but Daw Aung San Suu Kyi did not give it. Why?

There are various ethnic armed groups in Shan State. The SNLD supports SSPP [Shan State Progressive Party/Shan State Army-North] while the SNDP [Shan Nationalities Democratic Party] backs the RCSS [Restoration Council of Shan State/Shan State Army-South]. The SNLD and SSPP are close, both are based in northern Shan State. Palaung are currently clashing with the Restoration Council of Shan State [RCSS] and Palaung would of course not like a Shan taking the chief minister post. There are [ethnic armed] groups like the Wa, Kokang and Mongla in Shan State. It would be quite problematic if a Shan were appointed chief minister. Daw Aung Suu Kyi would know the consequences, and thats why she did not give SNLD the chief minister position, I think. Whats more, ethnic groups are also engaged in armed clashes with the military there.

YN: So, Ko Lawi, you mean in settling the conflicts in Arakan and Shan states, the NLD has given consideration to national reconciliation and therefore has not chosen anyone from the warring sides, and only appointed NLD members who are neutral.

LW: So that the problems can be solved more easily. As the NLD has appointed its party member in Shan State, Palaung or Wa have nothing to say. Ethnic issues in Shan State are quite problematic. The NLDs appointees are rather neutral, also for the military. Thats why Daw Suu has chosen her party members.

YN: What is your view of ethnic affairs minister Nai Thet Lwin, who is also an ethnic Mon?

LW: Daw Suu is very smart to have appointed Nai Thet Lwin as ethnic affairs minister. Nai Thet Lwin has never contested an election but he has a reputation in the Mon National Party because of his support for the party and Mon social organizations. He is a reputable person, but not a key political player in the Mon National Party. He is under no ones influence. Except for his cordial relations with the leadership of the New Mon State Party, [an ethnic armed group], he is under no ones influence. No one is pulling his strings. Daw Suu sees this point and has therefore appointed Nai Thet Lwin, I think.

YN: A new democratic government has now emerged as hoped for by the majority of the people. But there will be many challenges for the new government to tackle in rebuilding the country and a society that has deteriorated. But we should not be dismayed at this. I would like to conclude this discussion with the saying, Rome was not built in a day.
Trust is the new global online currency. You cant buy it - you have to earn it by being reliable, consistently delivering what you promise, being honest, open, and speaking from the heart  not just saying what you think someone wants to hear.

SAS , the leader in innovative analytics, business intelligence and data management software and services, has conducted new research into concerns about data privacy. It is called Mobility, Vulnerability and the State of Data Privacy and reveals that despite a slight lessening of concern about data privacy over the past year, 62% of all consumers surveyed are still concerned about continuing well-publicised data breaches. The research covered 15 countries and the level of concern in Australia and New Zealand was higher, at 66%.

Iggy Pintado, SAS Australia and New Zealand head of marketing, said, Whichever the country, marketing and customer engagement is now all about personalisation. Consumers increasingly expect to be told about things that appeal to them individually and they willingly cooperate by disclosing their personal information. However, they are clearly concerned that their information may not be held securely and they worry that details about them are gathered without consent.

Interestingly, while women globally were much more concerned than men about what businesses do with their personal data, there was no difference between them in Australia and New Zealand. Nor was there any difference here based on income. However, concern amongst consumers aged 40 and older was double that of younger people, he added.

The research also found that A/NZ consumers are very willing to provide vendors with their names and email addresses but reluctant to give their age, a mailing address or phone number. New Zealanders were more forthcoming than Australians. When respondents were asked what degree of control they felt they had over the personal information they shared with organisations, more than 25% said they felt they had none at all.

Local findings are perhaps influenced by the enthusiasm Australians and New Zealanders have for new technologies, said Pintado, and by our comparatively very high use of the internet. In New Zealand, 95% of the population are internet users. The figure is 93% in Australia and 45% globally.

While similarly high percentages of consumers in both countries were concerned about the security of their information when recorded using smartphones, PCs, laptops and tablets, there were stark differences elsewhere. 63% of Australians worry about security using smart watches compared with 23% for New Zealand, and Australians concern about wearables is twice that of New Zealanders. Both in our region and globally, only two in five people are confident about security with in-store technology.

This research proves that businesses must work harder to be seen as digitally trustworthy in the eyes of their customers, said Iggy Pintado. Senior executives across the organisation must balance the benefits of personalised marketing with the rigours of data security. Policies must clearly spell out how and what data is collected and shared, and there must be processes to ensure compliance. After all, a confident consumer is more likely to be a better customer.

Comment

Marketing giant Edelman publishes an annual trust barometer. It stated that there is a growing trust disparity  a widening trust gap and a mounting trust inequality. Clever, honest, trustworthy business will benefit from that.

Customers will willingly exchange personal information  initially because they were asked but increasingly now because they expect some personal gain. More than ever we know that in order get better service organisations we choose to deal with will require intimate details of our wants, needs and preferences.

With that comes great responsibility. For example, a company that asks for personal details and then unmercilessly spams you will lose credibility quickly but also sours your perceptions of others in that space.

But the issue goes further  if we give personal information how will the recipient secure that. The huge amount of high profile data breaches rightly shake the trust foundation.

SAS is in the business of analysing all this data and providing actionable insights to more than 80,000 clients. It has identified trust as a key issue and the fact that on average over 60% of consumers are concerned about what businesses do with personal data simply reinforces Edelman's widening trust gap.

The SAS survey shows that Data concerns are not a digital deterrent. As the use of digital technology continues to grow and as new devices are introduced, early adopters are out in full force long before security vulnerabilities can be identified.
According to the NAB, the convenience of being able to pay for everyday items like fast food, fuel and groceries using a mobile phone has seen customers make more than 60,000 purchase transactions since the service launched earlier this year.



In just over a month NAB claims:



 More than 18,000 customers are using NAB Pay to make purchases using their mobile phone.





Category % NAB Pay transactions % Paywave transactions Difference

 More than 150 customers are activating NAB Pay, every day. More than 300,000 customers have downloaded the latest version of NABs Mobile Internet Banking App, enabling access to NAB Pay.And, compared to Paywave transactions the banks says NAB Pay is used more for lunch, coffee and snacks with a higher proportion of transactions at cafes, restaurants fast food and supermarkets (60% of NAB Pay transactions vs 52% of Paywave) .In addition, NAB Pay is used more for lower ticket items ($13 for NAB Pay vs $19 for Paywave), with top NAB Pay Merchant categories revealed as: Supermarket 29% 26% 3% Fast Food 18% 15% 3% Retail 7% 9% -2% Other 23% 28% -5%NAB Executive General Manager for Consumer Lending, Angus Gilfillan, said the number of customers using NAB Pay had significantly exceeded expectations.Customers love how simple and easy the service is to use, which is why were seeing more people using NAB Pay at the register.As expected, transactions have mostly been below the $100 mark, with customers using NAB Pay for coffee, lunches, general grocery shopping and petrol.Notably, weve also seen customers use NAB Pay for larger transactions at electronic retailers, where they purchased the likes of televisions and whitegoods for their homes.According to NAB, during the working week, NAB Pay transactions spike at lunchtime, mainly at fast food restaurants, and between 6pm and 7pm, where most spending is done at the supermarket on the way home from work.Gilfillan said customers were continuing to drive the agenda and we could expect to see more Australians using their mobile phone to make purchases.Australians have been fast adopters of contactless payments, with more than 70 per cent of transactions now done in this way.If NAB Pay is anything to go by, it wont be long before mobile payments become the common payment method for our customers.And, last week, NAB introduced all consumer Visa Qantas and Velocity Rewards credit cards to the NAB Pay service.Were delighted to bring our most popular credit cards to NAB Pay and will continue acting quickly to make other cards products available as soon as possible, Gilfillan said.Were focused on delivering the number one cards experience in Australia and look forward to extending our digital wallet offering in the coming months.To use NAB Pay, customers will need a compatible Android device, have downloaded the latest NAB Mobile Internet Banking App and have a NAB Visa Debit card and/or eligible Visa Qantas and or Velocity Rewards credit card. NAB Pay is available wherever contactless payments are accepted.
The Hawaiki submarine cable system is a new trans-Pacific cable, which will link Australia and New Zealand to Oregon in the US, as well as Hawaii, with options to expand to several South Pacific islands. Permitting and initial route planning began in June 2015 with the system scheduled to be completed by mid-2018. The undersea cable infrastructure will be supplied by US provider TE Subcom.



According to Hawaiki, the new trans-Pacific cable system will be the fastest link between Australia and the US and will provide an alternative undersea network to the Southern Cross Cable system jointly owned by Spark, Singtel and Verizon which was built in 1998.



Hawaiki claims the 14,000 km cable system will deliver more than 30 Tbps of capacity via TE SubCom's C100U+ Submarine Line Terminating Equipment (SLTE) and will allow for optional connectivity to islands along the route utilizing TE SubCom's industry leading optical add/drop multiplexing (OADM) nodes.





Sir Eion Edgar and Remi Galasso, the co-developers of the project, have entered into a long- term partnership and joined forces with entrepreneur Malcolm Dick, to fund and operate the multi-million dollar cable system. Hawaiki will be a privately-owned and carrier-neutral cable for the Pacific region."This is a fantastic achievement for the team. We are delighted to move to the implementation phase and pursue our collaboration with TE SubCom," said Galasso, chief executive officer of Hawaiki. "They have demonstrated a full commitment to the project since the early stages of development and are a true partner of Hawaiki."Sir Eion added, "This is the beginning of a new era for New Zealand and the Pacific Islands in terms of international connectivity. We are excited to be at the forefront of this very significant infrastructure investment.""The lack of an alternative cable system connecting Australia, New Zealand, and the US has long been a concern of mine, so I am delighted to be part of this project," said Dick. "Having built telco businesses in both Australia and New Zealand in the past, I am very aware of the need to provide competition by being independent of the incumbent operators. This increased level of competition and capacity should make data caps a thing of the past.""The Hawaiki cable system will enhance international capacity for New Zealand and Australia directly to the U.S., providing them with a vital communication advancement that the region has been in need of for quite some time," said Aaron Stucki, president of TE SubCom. "We are honored to play a key role in a project that will undoubtedly help support the economic development in the region thanks to this state-of-the art infrastructure.
ITWire has been following this start up with interest  in February it acquired Bezar.com

AHALife now represents more than 4,000 designers and makers in 45 countries and its categories extend to women, men, home, beauty, dining, tech, gifts and more. It uses a direct ship model  the suppliers ship to the purchaser  and as such requires no stock to be held in expensive warehouses. It is worth browsing the web site for items that are not usually found in stores  like the interesting evoMouse. or a Myrtle timber 64GB USB 3.0 drive from Launceston.

Colfer will serve an important advisory role and bring his strong expertise in luxury and e-commerce to further drive the success of the AHAlife marketplace.

Colfer is an international Chairman, Chief Executive and Board Director with an exemplary track record in multiple industry sectors including luxury goods, branded goods and E-Commerce. He is highly skilled in strategy, retail, e-commerce, business development and marketing. He was the longest serving Non Executive Board Member of online luxury fashion retailer NETAPORTER, where he oversaw the initial investment by Richemont, saw its transformation into a billion-dollar company, and subsequently led the full acquisition in February 2010. Currently Colfer sits on the board of personalised fashion marketplace LYST, Nude by Nature, Huntsman & Sons and Crumpler.

During his career he has revitalised and repositioned organisations and brands to industry leaders. As CEO

he successfully transformed UK luxury goods brand Alfred Dunhill Ltd from a loss making company with double digit negative sales growth to an industry leader with year-over-year double digit sales growth. While at Richemont, he also oversaw the investment in, and management of, various textile businesses including Chloe, Shanghai Tang, Old England, Hackett and James Purdey and Sons.

Chief Executive Officer, Shauna Mei said: Were delighted to welcome Chris to the board and believe his experience and expertise in high growth online businesses and the luxury industry will add value to the strategic direction and continued execution of the AHAlife marketplace. We look forward to working closely with him as we continue to scale the business and acquire customers from around the world.

Colfer added: AHAlife is tapping the market potential of millions of independent designers and artisans around the world. This opportunity, combined with AHAlifes marketplace business model where no inventory is held and data is used to provide a personalised shopping experience will be a game changer in the artisanal space. Im looking forward to supporting
According to just released research, PayPal Australia reveals that nearly 60% of millennials had shopped from both domestic and international retailers in the past twelve months - and more than half (53%) of these shoppers said it isnt important if the online retailer is in Australia or based overseas.



Simon Banks, Director of Merchant Services, PayPal Australia warns that the results highlight the potential threat for domestic businesses as preference for shopping from global websites grows.



But, despite the warning, the research also reveals a large minority of Australian millennials have a strong preference for domestic online retailers, with one in three saying they only shop online from Australian merchants.





And when asked about what would drive them to shop from an international site, free shipping (54%), a safe way to pay (43%) and faster delivery (42%) were the most common drivers of preference.Millennials may only comprise 21% of the population but they contribute 34% of retail spend, so there is a massive opportunity for Australian businesses with this audience, Banks says.Our research shows that Australian merchants are not meeting the needs of millennials on a number of fronts so they need to step up their offering to meet the demands of this highly valuable segment.If Australian online businesses dont offer free or competitive shipping, optimise their mobile and online experience, or dont accept payments quickly and efficiently from any device, theyre choosing to limit their potential with millennial shoppers.On social media and mobile shopping habits, PayPal observes that millennials are also significantly more likely to be driven to international online stores through the influence of social media with nearly 30% of millennial respondents saying they go to sites shown as links on social media.The research also reveals insights into how millennials are purchasing goods online, including that desktop and mobile devices are the most preferred for making online purchases.When compared to the general population, millennials were far more likely to purchase via a smartphone (63%) compared to the general population (42%) who favour a laptop or desktop, while one in ten (9%) Australian millennials only shop online using a mobile device."For the majority of our customers, online and mobile shopping is the norm and has been for some time. As an online retailer, we believe it's imperative that we invest strategically in delivering a seamless, blended omnichannel shopping experience that builds trust and offers convenience to our millennial customer base, said Robin McGowan, co-founder of InStitchu, an Australian online provider of tailor made suits and shirts, who is a millennial himself.One channel that is playing an increasing role in achieving this is Instagram as we can engage with our millennial customer base where theyre already hanging out and engaging with products  at little to no cost."Banks says the research comes as PayPal launches its global New Money Campaign in Australia.At the heart of the new brand proposition is the concept of New Money, which Banks says is PayPals vision for the future of money and how a reimagined financial world must include everyone. The goal of the campaign is for people everywhere to consider how PayPal can make their lives easier by helping them move and manage money more securely, efficiently and affordably.The value of Australian owned and operated should not be underplayed and domestic brands are still a drawcard for millennials but real and virtual barriers between businesses and consumers are coming down. While this means your customer base is no longer restricted to your own backyard, it also means your competition is no longer just local either, Banks concludes.
This Week in Review

A weekly review of the best and most popular stories published in the Imperial Valley Press. Also, featured upcoming events, new movies at local theaters, the week in photos and much more.
Library bond unanimously approved Voters waited in line for 45 minutes Tuesday to participate in an eight-minute meeting that resulted in the unanimous approval of a $600,000 bond to help renovate the North Road...

Ferryboat business told to halt operations The ferryboat company operating from the municipally owned docks at East Ferry is illegally using that space, according to correspondence mailed to business owner Bill Munger. Town Administrator Jamie Hainsworth...

A DOGGONE NEW BUSINESS A former business that used to clean peoples clothes is reopening as a groomer to tidy up the fur of those peoples four-legged companions. The defunct laundromat at the McQuades...
This past Friday, I blogged about the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissions recent decision to allow a vaguely worded proxy resolution proceed to a vote. The resolution was submitted by, among others, members of the religious shareholder activist group the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility.

The ICCR resolution calls upon ExxonMobil Corporation to take action intended to mitigate climate change. ExxonMobil requested the SEC deny the ICCR resolution on the grounds it was based mainly on nonspecific greenhouse-gas reduction targets and unclear strategies to achieve them.

Since that post, I received an email from a subject matter expert that helps place the SECs decision in perspective. Legal Director Allen Dickerson from the Center for Competitive Politics, a free-speech nonprofit, commented:

The SECs decision was routine. It is extraordinarily easy, under U.S. securities laws, to put a proposal before a companys shareholders, and politically active groups have done so with increasing frequency in recent years. But these policy proposals are seldom adopted. Shareholders generally want corporations to maximize the value of their investment, as management is legally obligated to do, and rebuff attempts to turn the annual meeting into an extension of the broader political arena.

Just so. ICCR members are performing a disservice to the companies in which they invest as well as fellow shareholders. Compare Mr. Dickersons comments to these from an ICCR press release quoting Sr. Patricia D. Daly, OP, of the Sisters of St. Dominic of Caldwell, NJ, the lead filer of the resolution:

This years Holy Days are celebrated in the midst of violence and ecological turmoil. As people of faith attempt to respond to the needs of the world, it is critical and timely that our call for ExxonMobil to acknowledge the moral imperative of limiting global warming to 2 C will go to their shareholders for consideration. ExxonMobil and its shareholders now face a choice: acknowledge the untold suffering that climate change will cause and work towards solutions, or remain willfully blind to the impacts of their business as usual approach  The moral responsibility to acknowledge the impacts of human dependence on fossil fuels and take action remains an urgent priority for all, none more so than the producers of these fuels. In asking ExxonMobil to acknowledge the imperative of limiting global warming to 2 C, this resolution seeks to bring Exxon in line with the consensus of over 190 nations, which adopted this goal in the Paris Climate Agreement this past December, as well as the numerous oil and gas companies that have expressed support for the 2 C target. We strongly encourage all shareholders to support the resolution at ExxonMobils annual general meeting on May 25th 

The press release continues, reiterating the scientific consensus canard as if ICCR was advertising toothpaste recommended by four out of five dentists. There exists no consensus in the first place, and even if there were, science isnt a democratic process wherein a majority opinion must inherently be perceived as correct.

It is widely acknowledged in the scientific community that global warming must not exceed 2 C above pre-industrial levels if the worst impacts of climate change are to be avoided. Indeed, this decision from the SEC comes only days after the release of a new study from 19 leading climate scientists, including James Hansen, warning that catastrophic impacts may occur even if warming is limited to 2  C.

Rather than going into the weeds refuting the vague claims above, ExxonMobil explained to the SEC already that, even if such predictions are correct, its widely acknowledged that the Paris Climate Agreement wouldnt come close to achieving a 2  C target. Furthermore, the Clean Power Plan, which was the U.S. strategy to reduce its carbon footprint to achieve the 2  C goal, was stayed by the U.S. Supreme Court prior to the SEC determination on the ICCR proxy resolution. With all this lack of clarity on the climate-change public policy front, the SEC decision is all the more puzzling.
GREENSBORO  While tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs were being lost, Piedmont Triad International Airport was quietly growing into the regions next-generation employment center.

In the past 15 years, companies such as FedEx Express, HAECO Americas, Cessna Citation and Honda Aviation have turned this quiet passenger airport into an aviation district that employs 5,000 people and helps support another 8,000 jobs in related industries.

But apparently that was just the warmup.

Workers are now building a taxiway and bridge from the western runway to 1,000 acres that could attract the attention of major aviation companies around the world that wouldnt have taken a second look 10 years ago.

Federal, state and local governments have spent hundreds of millions of dollars since 1998 on a building binge that wont be over until 2017. Thats when the N.C. Department of Transportation is likely to finish the bridge over a leg of Interstate 73, currently under construction through airport property.

PTI needs the space because it is bursting at the seams with other expanding businesses that have filled land mostly beside the eastern runway, where aviation workers do jobs ranging from overhauling jet engines to building the HondaJet.

And Guilford Technical Community College is right there as well with three buildings where 400 students learn a range of skills.

So when you wonder where the passengers are on a quiet day at PTIs terminal, remember theres a lot going on outside that is changing the regions future.

Rarely does so much promise hang on what is essentially an overpass.

Economic developers have complained they were losing major aerospace projects because the land could not be reached from the airport.

The airport had known for years that the state DOT was planning to build a section of Interstate 73 through Rockingham County into Guilford County, eventually connecting N.C. 68 with Bryan Boulevard on the northwest side of the airport.

So the airport bought hundreds of acres, including a golf course, for future development.

But it couldnt build a taxiway from its runways to that land until DOT built the new road  and a bridge that is large and flat enough to hold airliners rolling across that road.

PTI Executive Director Kevin Baker said he made it a mission to get that bridge built.

Companies wouldnt look twice at the land without runway access, Baker said. Its easier to go pick a flat site in Wichita.

So he went to civic groups, elected officials, government transportation officials  anybody he could find to talk about what an asset the airport could be if it only had that bridge.

Dammit, he would tell them, weve got to get that space open. We want to be ready to say yes. 

The construction had been scheduled for this year at the earliest. But through political arm twisting and negotiations, local officials persuaded DOT to start construction of the road and the bridge in 2014.

The bridge must be wide, strong and perfectly level. Planes dont travel on an incline. Period.

So beginning April 11, crews will use a crane to begin laying 165 girders to hold those planes. Theyll cast a concrete roadbed on top of that. And once the airport completes access taxiways beside the runways, it will be ready to cut through the dirt to the bridge  an overpass for jumbo jets.

People got so tired of me ... pounding my fist saying, We need to build this bridge,  Baker said. To see it coming out of the ground is one of the coolest things in my professional life.

PTI has come a long way.

The airport opened in 1927 as Lindley Field, eight miles west of Greensboro. Pitcairn Aviation, the governments airmail carrier, made the first airmail delivery to North Carolina on May 1.

In 1930, Pitcairn became Eastern Air Transport and began North Carolinas first passenger service from the Triad.

By the 1950s, the Greensboro-High Point Airport Authority began the process of turning the airport into a regional operation, opening a new terminal in 1958 and buying 900 acres to allow for expanded runways and protect from encroaching development.

On a tour of the property, Baker can hardly control his excitement as he shows off the 50-foot trench that contains the roadbed for Interstate 73 and the massive supports that could someday hold the weight of a jumbo jet.

He remembers when he and now-retired Executive Director Ted Johnson were sitting in another airport waiting for a flight one day, dreaming about ways to expand PTI. With the land they were slowly accumulating to the west, Baker and Johnson sketched out rough lines over a map that outlined two plans.

Todays $500 million expansion, now crawling with bulldozers, was one of those hand-drawn visions.

Farther to the north of PTI, Baker stood recently at the green on the 16th hole at Pleasant Ridge Golf Course, now owned by the airport. With the bright sun above and the fresh smell of grass in the air, he looked down the sloping fairway at a small lake where the taxiway will end.

Eventually, he said, this may be Boeing sitting underneath there.

The two biggest drivers of PTIs corporate success are Asian companies. One is an import planted and nurtured in Greensboro. The other is U.S. grown and later acquired.

Honda Aircraft Co. employs about 1,700 people at its world headquarters here and builds the HondaJet for worldwide distribution. Those tiny jets, classified as very light jets by the industry, began flying out to customers in December.

Then theres HAECO Americas, which employs 1,400 people at PTI and is one of the worlds largest aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul companies. It serves the entire western hemisphere from Greensboro.

Before it was HAECO Americas, the company was TIMCO. At any given time, full-size jets from airlines around the world are crammed into the companys four hangars beside the runway, surrounded by workers stripping interiors, threading wires and securing tiny bolts inside jet engines.

In the coming months, the company is likely to begin work on a fifth hangar that will employ 400 people by 2018.

HAECO will search the country for workers to fill that hangar because the Triad cant train them fast enough.

HAECO hires about 300 workers a year at an average salary of $46,000 and the majority come from someplace other than Greensboro.

Kip Blakely, HAECOs vice president of customer and government relations, would like to see that change.

Were not producing nearly enough, he said.

GTCC is working hard to fill that gap.

However, space for students who want complete aviation skills training is limited to 400 in a variety of courses.

Whatever they study, the students know that aviation-related companies across the nation are interested in them.

One program shows how aviation companies and GTCC are working together to build an economic sector that could ultimately attract other companies to PTI and beyond.

In 2009, Honda approached GTCC and asked the school to develop a training program for the Garmin G1000 cockpit instrument system, which was planned for the HondaJet.

The $100,000 system was and remains a state-of-the-art system requiring the most sophisticated technicians to maintain and repair it.

Money from Honda, the state and Duke Energy helped the school buy two G1000 systems for GTCC.

Now, the program trains 40 students divided into two classes. Those students can go to work for Honda or other companies once theyve earned their two-year degrees.

If there were no jobs here, thered be no reason to have the school, said David Mayers, GTCCs department chair for the Division of Avionics. If there were no school, thered be fewer jobs.

Vlad Prosanov, whose family came to Charlotte from Russia in 2007, moved to Greensboro for the program after a few years with no particular career goal after high school. Sitting at an elevated table with a jumble of small wires attached to a rack of components for the G1000, the 22-year-old worked beside his classmates with patient intensity.

At first, he wasnt sure if he made the right choice.

But the more I got into it, the more I really like it, Prosanov said. Its hands-on. Thats what I like.

GTCC President Randy Parker said the school will soon offer five two-year aviation degrees to supply the industry  and thats not counting programs for specific companies such as Honda.

Parker said that even before the airports 1,000-acre western site opens, PTI is already a regional business megasite.

The airport is really a megasite in itself, Parker said. We talk about the megasites in Chatham County and in Randolph. (But) when you look at the airport, were the only one on the East Coast that is truly considered a megasite for aviation companies to locate right there on the tarmac.

Lisa Shoemaker may have found her calling two months ago with her new job at HAECO, the Hong Kong aircraft engineering company that is hiring hundreds of workers and technicians.

Just a couple of years ago, Shoemaker was living in Myrtle Beach and working as a personal trainer and manager for a condo cleaning service.

But she wanted a way out.

So Shoemaker, 43, enrolled in the Pittsburgh Institute of Aeronautics in Myrtle Beach.

Shoemaker said she was inspired to change her career after the death of her grandmother, who had worked in manufacturing.

I never in a million years would have picked something like this because I didnt have the confidence, said Shoemaker, a mother of three.

Shoemaker, a small woman, paused during the interview to pick up a wrench nearly as large as her arm to tighten a bolt on the landing gear of a towering Airbus that she was repairing.

The tire alone was nearly as tall as Shoemaker.

HAECO handles only the largest airliners, including some Boeing 777 jumbo jets.

When she walked into the first of four hangars that HAECO operates, Shoemaker said, I felt like Honey I Shrunk the Kids. 

Women are rare in the aircraft repair business, but she said the industry aggressively recruited her.

The work is hard, she added, but she came here wanting a challenge. Learning to do her job is like drinking through a fire hose, but her co-workers have been helpful even as they joke about her being the rare woman under the towering jetliners.

Baker said the expansion project took the work of scores of government, business and civic leaders. Ultimately, it will take the engagement of local, regional and state recruiters to land the right businesses on the site.

He knows the next steps will be difficult.

If a company chooses PTI for a new plant, theres the matter of preparing the site and securing state and local incentives to drive the deal.

But even today, Baker said, the airport has already proven that it will pay its way back into state coffers.

With 5,000 workers earning an average salary of $60,000 a year, Baker said the state can collect a lot of taxes on that $300 million payroll.

Add the money that auditors, lawyers, engineers and architects can make from airport operations, he continued, and PTI becomes a $1.2 billion industry for the region.

That should be enough to persuade state leaders to invest in any economic development project that comes along, Baker said.

The bridge  and the access it grants to all that open land  is key.

In a lot of ways, the bridge represents both physically and metaphorically what PTI will be in the decades to come.

This bridge becomes the turning point for the future of the airport, Baker said, and well see what comes to the other side.
The Republican Party is fracturing on the topic of trade. Alas, in the same corners where free and open exchange was once embraced as a propeller for economic growth and dynamism, protectionism is starting to stick.

In response, free traders are pushing the typical arguments about growth, innovation, and prosperity. Others, such as myself, are noting that the trend has less to do with economic illiteracy than it does with a protectionism of the heart  a self-seeking ethos that wants economic freedom only insofar as it poses no threat to the preferred wage, vocation, or plot of dirt.

We have forgotten that work is not about us. Its about serving others, and adapting that service when the signals say, yes.

On this, the communitarian wing of conservatism tends to push back, accusing free traders of being overly comfortable with social disruption and displacement, prioritizing efficiency and cheap widgetry over stability and social well-being.

Such critics would do well to heed Edmund Burke, one of the movements heroes. Burke was a staunch supporter of free trade not because he was indifferent to disruption, but because the alternative would cause much, much more.

Burke, who Adam Smith once described as the only man I ever knew who thinks on economic subjects exactly as I do, believed that the disruption from trade was far less destructive than whatever government trickery was done on the citizens behalf. Throwing up walls and blockades and imposing tariffs may serve stability for a season, but at its root, it is an act of sabotage that will only lead disorder and disappointment.

By artificially fixing prices and inhibiting exchange, protectionists are not just cramping the goals of narrow efficiency; they are subverting the natural order and beyond. We, the people, Burke wrote, ought to be made sensible, that it is not in breaking the laws of commerce, which are the laws of nature, and consequently the laws of God, that we are to place our hope of softening the Divine displeasure to remove any calamity under which we suffer, or which hangs over us.

In his book, The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left, Yuval Levin explains Burkes view at length, contrasting it with that of Thomas Paine, the famous American revolutionary.

Paine, too, supported free trade, but for very different reasons, preferring it because of its disruptive effects  not to the everyday worker, but to the power structures and social mores of his day. The comparison offers a good warning for conservatives and libertarians today:

Paine several times makes it clear that he is a believer in commerce because he believes open trade and free economics will advance his radical causes by uprooting traditional social and political arrangements. It would do this by focusing men on their material needs and showing them a rational means of meeting those needs. The system of the old European governments, Paine argues, was held in place by deceptions and distractions (including especially the nearly permanent specter of war) that could be, and were already beginning to be, dissipated by a rational economics. The condition of the world being materially changed by the influence of science and commerce, it is put into a fitness not only to admit of, but to desire, an extension of civilization, Paine writes. The principal and almost only remaining enemy it now has to encounter is prejudice.

Paine was right that such trade is bound to shake up unhealthy power structures both here and abroad, but conservatives should be wary of this sort of blind march to (supposed) technological progress. When it comes to the modern variations of Paines thinking, communitarians are right to protest, and conservatives do themselves no favors when they idolize efficiency as the ultimate end.

Which is why we should turn to Burke, who supported free trade for reasons of justice, not utility. Burke supported free trade not because it would invigorate materialistic desire or disrupt the populace toward a rational economics. He supported free trade because it would lead to a social ecosystem wherein people could serve their neighbors in response to real prices that communicated real needs, creating networks of community and collaboration.

Society will shift and adapt, and sometimes, the so-called forces of the market will require a wake-up call or correction. But for Burke, such a resistance cannot be mounted by the government. It must come from the culture, bottom up:

Burkes support for largely unimpeded trade and industry began from roughly the opposite corner [as Paines]. He argued that government manipulation of the economy could be profoundly disruptive to the social order because it involved gross manipulation of very complicated economic and social forces that are almost inevitably beyond the understanding of legislators. Even in its own material terms, he argues, the economy functions best when left to itself, referring in one essay to the laws of commerce, which are the laws of nature, and consequently the laws of God. A free economy, as Burke saw it, would help sustain the stability of society and therefore its wealthsome of which could (and should) then be used by the wealthy to help the poor. The passion for wealth was by no means an unmitigated good, but trying to mitigate it through policy would be a mistake, Burke arguedIt would have to be counteracted by the culture, not by politics, which should just seek whatever good could be drawn from it. The love of lucre, though sometimes carried to a ridiculous, sometimes to a vicious excess, is the grand cause of prosperity to all States. In this natural, this reasonable, this powerful, this prolific principle, it is for the satirist to expose the ridiculous; it is for the moralist to censure the vicious; it is for the sympathetic heart to reprobate the hard and cruel; it is for the Judge to animadvert on the fraud, the extortion, and the oppression: but it is for the Statesman to employ it as he finds it; with all its concomitant excellencies, with all its imperfections on its head. Legislators are always tempted to employ the weight of government to undo economic inequalities, but such attempts always produce more harm than good, in Burkes view. He recognizes that the modern economy does relegate some people to desperate poverty or to demeaning occupations, and he frets about the innumerable servile, degrading, unseemly, unmanly, and often most unwholesome and pestiferous occupations, to which by the social economy so many wretches are inevitably doomed. But the costs of remedying their situation, not only to society as a whole but even to the particular wretches involved, would be far worse than their current suffering, Burke argues, because these people are the most vulnerable to economic dislocations, which are made more likely by clumsy government manipulations of prices or wages.

As we re-articulate and remind conservatives of the many glories of free and open exchange, let us remember that community is, indeed, of utmost importance, and that any subsequent disruption will require a significant cultural, social, and spiritual response. This is what it means to be both free and virtuous.

Rather than taking the path of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, pretending we can manipulate market signals and concoct manipulative deals for temporary or personal gain, let us set our sights like Burkes: toward an economic order that is free and authentic, and a culture that is true and good enough to produce the fruits that endure.
By of the

Welcome to the most important Wisconsin presidential primary since Kennedy beat Humphrey  and maybe the wildest ever.

Ive only covered the last eight. This is one is in a league of its own, but there are threads that connect it to the past.

I learned two big things from my first Wisconsin primary 28 years ago.

One is that demography isnt always destiny. Every state has its own makeup. Wisconsin is very white and blue-collar. But the same groups of people dont vote the same way in every state.

Mike Dukakis beat Jesse Jackson by 20 percentage points here in 1988, but something pretty historic happened. In a major, high-turnout presidential primary, one out of four whites voted for an African-American.

Twenty-years later, Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton by 17 points here. Once more, Wisconsin was an anomaly. Obama won all kinds of demographic groups (working-class whites, rural whites, white Catholics) that he lost almost everywhere else.

The other lesson I learned is that politics is a participatory sport here. The Wisconsin primary had the highest turnout in the nation in 1988  38% of the voting-age adults.

Well top that Tuesday if the official turnout forecast (40%) is correct.

That kind of engagement alters the nature of campaigns and elections in Wisconsin.

Sometimes it makes for a more moderate electorate thats not skewed by a partys most conservative or liberal voters. In 2004, only 13% of the states Democratic primary voters described themselves as very liberal. (Expect a higher number Tuesday).

Sometimes it makes for a volatile end game, because voters respond to events. In the brief run-up to the 04 primary, John Edwards came close to erasing a huge lead by John Kerry, boosted by a strong Milwaukee debate that drew stellar local ratings.

My second Wisconsin primary  1992  featured a recurring pattern here: the insurgents last stand. Democratic front-runner Bill Clinton fought off a last-gasp challenge from Jerry Brown, who lost by less than three points.

Clinton was battling a rival Democrat popular with young voters and independents. You could have written that same sentence in 2008 and again in 2016.

I havent said much about the Republicans because until now their primaries have been a lot less eventful. Wisconsin Republicans were 0 for 12 in picking their partys nominee between 1912 and 1952.

I asked Mel Laird, the 94-year-old former defense secretary from Marshfield, what the states hottest Republican primary was and he answered, The Stassen one.

That was 1948. Harold Stassen, in his second of nine presidential bids, beat Douglas MacArthur and Thomas Dewey in Wisconsin.

That was a big one, said Laird.

The Republican contest has often been over by the time the front-runner got here. I first met Texas Gov. George W. Bush on one of those trips, two days before the 2000 Wisconsin primary. He gave me an interview on his campaign plane. Earlier that day a controversy had erupted over the long form of the census questionnaire and whether it was too intrusive.

When I asked Bush about it, he said he hadnt decided which form (long or short) to fill out for his own family.

I told him he didnt have much choice. I explained that about one in seven households get the long form, and youre supposed to fill out whichever one they send.

When our plane landed in Milwaukee, Bush got the same exact question from a TV reporter. He winked at me. About one in seven households gets the long form, he said, before repeating everything Id told him about the census. After the news conference, he walked over to me, smiled and said, Thanks for the briefing.

In 2004, I had my only first-hand experience with staging a presidential debate. It was on the eve of the Democratic primary. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and MSNBC were co-sponsors. The candidates were Kerry, Edwards, Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton. I was on the panel, along with Milwaukee anchor Mike Gousha, current NBC anchor Lester Holt and current CNN analyst Gloria Borger.

It was a pretty quaint event by todays standards. Nobody threatened to skip the debate, though Sharpton barely arrived in time to take the stage. There was no name calling or verbal abuse of the candidates or the questioners. Kucinich griped about his lack of speaking time. But he waited until the commercial breaks to do so, rather than complain on the air, as candidates do now.

Edwards, the trial attorney, watched the panelists like a hawk, anticipating the flow of questions, using eye contact and body language to signal when he wanted to jump in. When I asked Kerry if he felt any responsibility for the human and financial cost of the Iraq war after voting to authorize the use of force, the Massachusetts senator gave what media accounts described as two long and convoluted answers. I could see Edwards jumping out of his shoes to respond.

Thats the longest answer I have ever heard to a yes-or-no question," he told Kerry, making his future running mate look bad by accepting some responsibility for the war after voting the same way.

With Kerry hanging on to victory, Wisconsin went according to form.

It boasted the nations third highest turnout.

Two more insurgents (Edwards and Dean) had their hopes dashed.

And the winners of the Wisconsin primary (Democrat Kerry, Republican President George W. Bush) became their parties' nominees, as they have on every occasion since 1988.

Four years later, Obama arrived on a wave of momentum. Hillary Clinton all but conceded the state, scheduling one big fly-around two days before the voting.

Then a blizzard struck. Her campaign plane took off, flew around in circles and came back down.

Stranded in Milwaukee, Clinton winged it. She dropped by Miss Katies Diner (the same restaurant Donald Trump visited Sunday), then the El Rey market, giving clerks and patrons a jolt.

It was actually kind of nostalgic, Clinton told me in an interview afterward. Trying to find anybody who would talk to us, (as in) Lets go to the restaurant down the street. Lets go to the bowling alley. Lets go to the Dunkin Donuts.

In most primaries that year, the Democratic vote could be neatly projected based on a states political rules and population mix, since Obama and Clinton had very different coalitions.

But Wisconsin was an exception. For the first and pretty much the last time, Obama made deep inroads into Clintons base, especially blue-collar whites, winning them by five points here while losing them by 31 nationally. Obama won 27% of blue-collar whites in Ohio, 29% in Pennsylvania and 52% in Wisconsin.

This is the very same demographic grouping that on the Republican side has propelled Trump this year. These voters make up a disproportionate share of the GOP electorate in Wisconsin.

But demography isnt always destiny. Trump won blue-collar whites by 16 in Illinois and 21 in Michigan, but was losing them by two points to Ted Cruz in last weeks Marquette Law School poll of Wisconsin Republicans.

With close contests in both parties, this is the states most frantic and hard-fought set of primaries in decades. It will help determine how much hope Bernie Sanders has left against Clinton, and whether there will be a contested GOP convention this summer.

The Stop Trump movement has a great shot here and is taking it. Either it will be emboldened or squashed, making this potentially the most consequential Wisconsin primary since 1960 when Democrat John Kennedy knocked off Hubert Humphrey of neighboring Minnesota and took a major step toward the nomination.

Turnout that year was 50% of voting-age adults. It was a bitter fight that left long-lasting scars and divisions among Democrats in this state.

It really hurt for a long time, says Dave Obey, the former Wisconsin congressman.

But it made history.

Maybe Wisconsin Republicans will be able look back one day at this primary and say the same thing.

Follow Craig Gilbert @WisVoter

Graphic: Wisconsin primary winners, 1912-2012
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Madison  A self-proclaimed white nationalist group flooded Wisconsin with robocalls supporting real estate mogul Donald Trump leading up to Tuesday's primary.

Trump will respect all women and help preserve western civilization, the narrator says on the call. If you vote for Donald Trump, he will be a fine president.

The call says it was paid for by William Johnson, who the narrator describes as a farmer and a white nationalist. The ad also mentions two groups affiliated with Johnson, the American Freedom Party and the American National super PAC.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups, describes the American Freedom Party as an organization "established by racist Southern California skinheads that aims to deport immigrants and return the United States to white rule."

A spokeswoman for Trump denounced the effort.

"We have no knowledge of this and strongly condemn these views," spokeswoman Hope Hicks said by email.

Johnson said Monday he spent about $6,000 on the call, which went to all Wisconsin landlines starting Saturday. He provided his cell phone number at the end of the call and said he took "hundreds and hundreds of calls" -- both positive and negative -- in response to the robocall.

He said the reaction was not as negative as it has been in other states, largely because the message was less controversial and the script was read by someone with a "sweet, grandmotherly voice." The robocall makes only a brief mention about white nationalism, which Johnson said he felt was important.

"I want people to hear, to feel comfortable with, the term 'white nationalist,'" said Johnson, a Los Angeles lawyer and persimmon farmer.

Audio of the call was provided to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel by Jerry Bader, a Green Bay radio host who opposes Trump and recently emceed an event for rival Ted Cruz. Two Democrats -- one in Milwaukee and one in Madison -- told the newspaper they also received the robocall.

Speaking to reporters after a town hall appearance in Madison with Cruz, Gov. Scott Walker denounced the robocall.

"That's outrageous. I hope the people of this state are smart enough to see through that and denounce anything related to it," Walker said.

Jason Stein of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.
SHARE Octavia Dodson Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office

By of the

Prosecutors have charged a 28-year-old concealed-carry permit holder with homicide in the fatal shooting of a Milwaukee man.

Octavia W. Dodson faces a charge of second-degree intentional homicide in the March 25 death of Deshun T. Freeman, 21, who police initially said was shot during an argument after a minor car crash.

Court records show Dodson was charged after discrepancies in his account about the circumstances of the shooting. Dodson remained jailed Monday on $75,000 bail and is expected in court Thursday for a preliminary hearing.

According to the criminal complaint:

Several people called 911 about 10:50 p.m. March 25 to report hearing gunshots near N. 10th St. and W. Concordia Ave.

Dodson was among those who called 911, and he told police he shot a man who had "pulled a gun" on him. Dodson said he had left the scene, was armed and would turn himself in to police.

The city's ShotSpotter system, a series of sensors that captures the sound of gunfire and pinpoints its location, detected six gunshots near the intersection, and officers found two bullet holes lodged in a house at that location.

Officers saw Freeman lying facedown in the street. He had been shot three times, including once in the head. No firearms, bullets or holster were found on him.

Officers found numerous shell casings about 10 feet away from Freeman, and a green Buick Park Avenue was parked nearby. The car was running and had its headlights on. The doors were closed and there was no window tint.

Other investigators went to a home on N. 9th St. to locate Dodson. Inside the house, Dodson directed officers to a 9mm gun on the coffee table. Next to the gun was an extended magazine with 17-round capacity. It was loaded with 11 rounds. Officers found two 10-round magazines each loaded to capacity inside a green four-door Mercury Grand Marquis parked outside the house.

In interviews with various detectives, Dodson said he was driving north on N. Teutonia Ave. when he was rear-ended while stopped at a red light.

He described the car that hit him as a blue Buick with a bluish-purple window tint and no front license plate. He said he got out of his car to see if there was damage and said the other car involved continued on Teutonia.

He first claimed he went to his relative's house but later said he followed the other car before losing sight of it.

He was driving on W. Concordia Ave., just past N. 11th St., when a car came speeding up behind him. That car pulled over and parked on the side of the road.

Dodson told police he recognized the car as the one that had rear-ended him and he, too, pulled over and stopped. Dodson said a man got out of the car, yelled an expletive and ran toward him with his hands in his pockets or under his shirt.

Dodson initially told detectives he fired from sitting inside his car and never got out of the vehicle, but he later said he left his car and shot the man from a standing position. Dodson recalled shooting his gun three times.

"I felt that threat wasn't fair," Dodson told investigators. "There was no need."

Dodson watched the man fall to the ground and then drove to his relative's house, where he called 911.

Police noted discrepancies in Dodson's description of the striking car  color, window tint and no front plate  and the car parked near Freeman. The investigation is ongoing into whether Freeman was involved in the car accident at all.

Dodson has not been charged with a crime before in Wisconsin, according to online court records. The state Department of Justice issued him a concealed-carry permit on July 29, 2014.

Freeman was the second member of his family slain in March. His pregnant sister, Tamecca Perry, was killed earlier in an unrelated shooting.

The suspect in that case, Shanika S. Minor, 24, was charged with homicide in the deaths of Perry and her unborn child. A warrant was issued for Minor's arrest, and she remained at large Monday.
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A former longtime fugitive leader of the Outlaws motorcycle gang has pleaded guilty in exchange for a 15-year term in federal prison.

Randy "Mad" Yager, 60, was indicted on charges of racketeering and conspiracy that could have landed him in prison for life. Yager had been set to go to trial this week.

Yager, originally of Crown Point, Ind., was first indicted with 16 others in 1997.

Yager is accused of participating in murders, arson and bombings aimed at rival clubs in the 1990s, while he was a regional boss of the Outlaws. The crimes did not occur in Milwaukee, but Yager was boss of the region that included Milwaukee, a stronghold of the gang.

On the day of the bust in 1997, Yager was at a Las Vegas hotel and fled. He landed on the U.S. Marshals Service Most Wanted list and was arrested in October 2014 in Mexico, where he had been using an assumed name.

Weeks after Yager appeared in court here, his brother was killed in Indiana  found inside a burning house, his hands cuffed and his throat cut.

An evidentiary hearing in December focused on evidence gathered in a police stop in 1994 after a murder in a motorcycle raceway battle in New York.

Yager pleaded guilty in a hearing in late March. The sentencing before U.S. District Judge J.P. Stadtmueller has not been set.
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The 19-year-old male suspect wanted in the killing of a Milwaukee woman during a domestic dispute has turned himself in to police.

The suspect was wanted in the fatal shooting of Audrea Williams, 18, and Milwaukee police will refer the case to prosecutors this week, a spokesman said Monday. The suspect surrendered to authorities on Friday.

Williams was shot to death about 1 p.m. Wednesday inside a home in the 8100 block of W. Villard Ave. A witness took Williams' 2-month-old son away from the scene briefly, but he was returned, police said. The baby was placed with Child Protective Services.

Williams had a relationship with the 19-year-old suspect, who last August was charged with false imprisonment and battery, both by use of a dangerous weapon. Williams was the victim in that case, which ultimately was dismissed after she withdrew the complaint against him.

The man had gone to Williams' house in the middle of the night, pointed a gun at her and ordered her to get in his car, according to the criminal complaint. While in the car, he demanded her online passwords and punched her before she escaped, the complaint says.

Prosecutors said last week the case was dismissed because Williams' testimony was necessary in moving forward with the case successfully. There were no other witnesses and no corroborating evidence, such as a firearm, was found during the investigation.

Domestic violence experts said it's not unusual for domestic violence victims to decline to participate in the criminal justice process  mainly for their own safety.

The Sojourner Family Peace Center in Milwaukee operates a 24-hour hotline at (414) 933-2722. The National Domestic Abuse hotline is (800) 799-7233 and the National Child Abuse Hotline is (800) 422-4453.
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A secretive group led by a longtime conservative political operative has spent as much as $200,000 to influence Tuesday's city elections, including the Milwaukee mayor's race and key aldermanic contests.

And the group has done all this without disclosing its donors, detailing its spending or even registering with local, state or federal agencies.

Craig Peterson  a veteran GOP operative  said last week that his group, called Milwaukeeans for Self-Governance, has been involved in just about all of the 14 competitive Common Council races. Only one incumbent, Ald. Jim Bohl, isn't facing a challenger.

Peterson insisted the group and others that he's created are focused on improving conditions in Milwaukee, such as combating crime and improving job opportunities for city residents, especially African-Americans.

"We're not registered with anybody because we don't need to be," Peterson said. "However, we are going to be around for a long time, so there may be multiple organizations."

But the diverse slate of candidates backed by Peterson's group doesn't appear to have a single unified message or agenda  except possibly opposition to a Milwaukee streetcar  prompting some to wonder what Peterson is really aiming to achieve.

It's not clear who is putting the money up for the sophisticated operation, which is underwriting radio ads, opposition research and detailed city polling. Peterson will say only that it receives funding from a "network of business people."

But one thing is certain: Peterson is out to upset the balance of power at City Hall.

"It really feels like we're running against him, and not his so-called candidates," said Ald. Bob Bauman, one of the veteran Common Council members targeted by Peterson's forces.

Ald. Nik Kovac, who is being challenged by another Peterson-backed candidate, Shannan Hayden, said: "I would describe them as a cynical group of saboteurs from outside the city hoping that the city fails and hoping they can politically profit off that failure."

Longtime player

Peterson, 54, has long been a player in Wisconsin politics, having been an active Republican for decades. He is the owner of the once-powerful Zigman Joseph Stephenson public relations firm.

But Peterson's influence waned with the political downfall of his longtime ally, former Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen, a Town of Brookfield Republican who once was considered a likely gubernatorial candidate.

In 2006, Jensen was convicted of three misconduct in office felonies, sentenced to 15 months in prison and banished from the Capitol for five years. But those charges were dropped under a 2010 plea deal.

Peterson's career hit bottom four years ago when he filed for bankruptcy, reporting more than $2.2 million in debts.

But he didn't stay down for long.

In recent years, he has joined forces with Eric O'Keefe, a well-heeled conservative activist who helped lead the fight against a John Doe investigation by Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm into the political activity of a number of right-wing operations.

In an interview last week, Peterson said his amorphous group first became active when it helped Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. fend off a tough challenge in the 2014 primary.

It's not clear to what extent Peterson's group assisted the sheriff, though it paid for radio ads under the name Citizens for Urban Justice.

"Eric raised money for that campaign," Peterson said. "And I spent the money. That's another benefit to our relationship: He's good at raising it; I'm good at spending it."

The group ramped up its operations with the current City Hall elections.

"The crime rate, the issues with the police chief, the drug trade, the drug economy, it's all issues that can be addressed," said Peterson, who lives in River Hills. "But you have to have a mayor and the leadership in the Common Council that's willing to tackle it."

Group surfaced this year

Milwaukeeans for Self-Governance surfaced publicly when it began airing a series of radio ads this year.

Some spots  including one featuring convicted former Ald. Michael McGee Jr.  encouraged people to vote. Other ads by the group slammed Mayor Tom Barrett over increasing car thefts and his streetcar plans. Another radio spot, voiced by Clarke, warned about soaring crime in the city.

Describing his efforts, Peterson said Milwaukeeans for Self-Governance isn't really an organization but a "conduit" to influence city politics.

Peterson praised Ald. Joe Davis, who was eliminated from the mayor's race in the February primary election. The group's ads critical of Barrett would now benefit Ald. Bob Donovan, who is challenging the mayor on Tuesday.

But Peterson's real focus appears to be on the Common Council. He said he recruited some candidates while others came to him.

"Throughout the last year and a half, we've looked at folks who've had an interest in running for alderman. We've been involved in a majority of the races," he said. "I'd say in some way, in some way, in almost every single race we have some involvement."

Peterson said he provides strategic and fundraising advice to candidates, and he's contributed financial resources to some of them. He added that the candidates he's backing in Tuesday's city elections like and support each other, unlike the current crop of city leaders.

"It's like a dysfunctional family," he said of City Hall. "People don't like each other."

Patrick Curley, Barrett's chief of staff, bristled at Peterson's description of City Hall as a troubled political institution.

Curley pointed out that the three-term Democratic mayor has introduced budget after budget, worked through the process and ultimately won the support of a majority of aldermen in the end.

"This idea that there's some dysfunction is pure myth," Curley said. "I just think bringing the rhetoric of Madison to Milwaukee City Hall is totally unjustified."

Not just financial support

Peterson's candidates see him as more than just a political sugar daddy.

"Listen, he's been my Svengali," said Ald. Mark Borkowski, an outspoken conservative and the newest member of the council.

Borkowski added that Peterson had no ulterior motive.

The two agree on a lot of issues, Borkowski said. Most notably, they share the concern that the mayor's streetcar project will be bad for Milwaukee.

"This is not like some kind of takeover, or something like that. This is more in our eyes common sense," Borkowski said.

Many of those targeted by Peterson think the lifelong conservative operative's latest venture is about more than just the streetcar.

"The sense I get is this has nothing to do with public policy. This has all to do with partisan politics and the November election," said Bauman, who faces a challenge from Monique Kelly, a Peterson-backed candidate.

Bauman said he thinks Peterson is trying to "drive a wedge" between people of color and white liberals in the hopes of "suppressing turnout" in this fall's presidential election. In doing this, Bauman said, Peterson can help turn the state from blue to red.

He said it's hard for aldermen to know how to combat this new source of dark money.

"In terms of transparency and accountability, there appears to be things taking place that would not have gone on even 10 years ago," Bauman said.

Peterson said there is nothing nefarious afoot.

"It is out of the goodness of my heart," Peterson said. "For my friends who really know me, know me well, they know that I've always had this incredible passion for the city of Milwaukee."

Peterson said all the money comes from local sources, primarily downtown residents, and O'Keefe no longer plays a financial role but still serves as a sounding board for ideas. The group has spent "way over $100,000...but under $200,000" on city races this cycle. He sees it as a counter to the Wisconsin Working Families Party, a union-backed operation led by Milwaukee County Supervisor Marina Dimitrijevic.

The group could form a political action committee or a nonprofit in the future, but for now, Peterson said he doesn't need to register his group or his activities anywhere because it is doing "issue advocacy," not promoting specific candidates.
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MILWAUKEE COUNTY

Here are opportunities offered by the Volunteer Center of Greater Milwaukee, a service of the Nonprofit Center. Call (414) 273-7887 or visit volunteermilwaukee.org.

Create and implement social media, maintain donor relations, increase organization visibility in the community and produce a quarterly newsletter for Lead2change, a youth-focused agency. Call (414) 226-2410.

Distribute fire safety tagsdoor to door and talk with residents about fire safety on April 16. Call American Red Cross at (414) 345-8698 or register at http://www.redcross.org/MilwaukeeHFPC.

Prepare and servebreakfast to those who are hungry and homeless weekdays at St. James Episcopal Church at 8th and Wisconsin Ave. Call The Gathering at (414) 272-4122.

Answer phones and greet clients and guests at the front desk weekdays for an Adult Day Program in Menomonee Falls. Call Curative Care Network at (414) 479-9297.

Place posters at coffee shops, gyms, casual restaurants, houses of worship, schools and businesses promoting Capuchins' Run Walk for the Hungry now until May 31. Call (414) 271-0135.

Set up, greet and register walkers or hand out snacks and drinks at National Multiple Sclerosis Society Walk MS Milwaukee Sunday, May 1. Call (262) 369-4400.

OZAUKEE COUNTY

Opportunities are available from the Volunteer Center of Ozaukee County, 885 Badger Circle, Grafton. Go to volunteerozaukee.org or call (262) 377-1616.

Help at Season's Hospicebereavement camp for kids ages 6-17 held on July 8-10.

Assistthe Luxembourg American Cultural Center with planning the parade for Luxembourg Fest.

Volunteerat the American Diabetes Tour de Cure on June 18.

Collect earplugs, composition notebooks and more for Ozaukee County Jail Literacy.

Distribute tickets, brochures and posters for Gathering on the Green.

WAUKESHA COUNTY

Opportunities are available from United Way of Greater Milwaukee & Waukesha County. If interested call (262) 409-2406, or emailvolunteer@unitedwaygmwc.org.

Mentorhigh-school age young women on professionalism, resume building and interview prep with United Way's Women's Leadership Council's three-week long mentoring series, an hour each Wednesday morning April 6-20.

Put the finishing touches on Friedens Community Ministries' new Zion Rock Food Pantry the week of April 4.

Support studentsin the arts by volunteering for the Wisconsin School Music Association's Choral Concert Festival 8 a.m. to noon April 6.

Share a mealwith clients with mental illnesses and developmental disabilities at Jewish Family Services with a Passover Seder 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. April 15.

WASHINGTON COUNTY

Opportunities are available from the Volunteer Center of Washington County, 1530 Corporate Center Drive, Suite 1, West Bend. Call (262) 338-8256 or visit volunteernow.net.
Bernie Sanders: The Vermont senator has made free college a cornerstone of his campaign while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, his opponent for the Democratic nomination, has said its unrealistic. Credit: Michael Sears

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Remember when college was optional? Fifty years ago, if you finished high school and went to work, it was possible to make a living and have a decent life. If you wanted to attend college but couldn't afford it, grants and scholarships helped with the costs. If you qualified, the federal Pell Grant covered more than 75% of the costs of attending a public university for a year. If you didn't, working while in college helped make ends meet.

Those days are over. Targeting financial aid to some people has proved ineffective at making college affordable for the millions of Americans who are now required to attend. It's near impossible to maintain a middle-class life without college, yet the Pell Grant now covers barely one-third of the cost a year at a public university. And most Americans can't get a Pell Grant because they are "too rich," even though they have to shell out at least 25% of their annual income to pay for an education at a public university. Other people can't get a Pell Grant because they can't complete the required application. Even a community college is so expensive that after all grants and scholarships, students from low-income families still have to work or borrow to afford it.

This is why Bernie Sanders has a plan that emphasizes the importance of making public higher education affordable to everyone, period. His approach goes "big" because it's what our economy needs: strong incentives for everyone to work hard, get educated, and commit to a better tomorrow. It focuses on the public sector because government can hold schools accountable for high-quality outcomes, and encourage real competition for private institutions that shortchange students.

Sadly, Hillary Clinton decries this bold effort to make college affordable because she thinks Gov. Scott Walker won't like it, or one of Trump's kids might actually benefit. Should the Democrats really support a leader with a defeatist attitude about a critical 21st century problem? Would we have supported a Democrat who opposed making public high schools free?

Ignorance is massively expensive. Bernie Sanders is pursuing a goal we can't afford to sideline. His plan is to invest in public higher education  in its educators and its students  so that anyone who wants to attend college can afford to complete a degree. Since higher education brings enormous economic benefits to communities, states, and the entire nation, he's proposing that the federal government pays two-thirds of the costs and states pay one-third. If Governor Walker refuses to make college in Wisconsin affordable, then Wisconsin residents will either vote him out or move to Minnesota where college will be free  after all, they will face a nearly $100,000 incentive per degree to do so.

We can't afford for families to resent each other when it comes to paying for college  we all need education and should all be able to afford it. So it's fine for Clinton or even Trump's kids to benefit from tuition-free public higher education  because it means that they will then help fund it. After all, that's why we also provide them with Social Security, public fire departments, libraries, and even k-12 schools.

Making public colleges and universities tuition-free is not unrealistic. It's necessary. States like Tennessee and Oregon, and communities like Kalamazoo, Mich., and El Dorado Ark., know this. They are already doing it and reaping big returns. Tuition-free college is catalytic  it brings schools, businesses, and communities together to focus on public education. On the other hand, Clinton's approach is more of the same  more means-tested aid, more bureaucracy, and yes, more reliance on governors.

We're living in a new world today, and our kids know it. They want college and we need to be able to pay for it. It's been more than one hundred years since we made high school tuition-free, and generated a century of incredible technological and economic improvements. The old financial aid system worked for a while, but now it's broken. We know what to do. It's time to make public higher education tuition-free.

Sara Goldrick-Rab is professor of educational policy studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of "Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American dream" coming in September from University of Chicago.
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It's time to go back where we began: not only that Donald Trump will lose the Republican presidential nomination, but that he could be so weakened by the end of the primaries that his party will not even have to worry about choosing someone else.

I feel your skepticism. Hasn't Trump so far defied all predictions of his demise? Absolutely. Hasn't every claim that "now he's gone too far" been wrong? Of course.

Let's be honest about journalists: We find a lot of ways of being wrong.

One trap is "presentism," the idea that whatever is happening now will keep happening. And it is, indeed, easy to project Trump's impending doom after his most miserable week yet.

He responded rather ineffectually to criticisms from Wisconsin conservative talk show host Charlie Sykes. His campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, was charged with battery. Trump reacted by aggressively attacking the credibility of conservative reporter Michelle Fields, the woman Lewandowski is accused of hurting. The front-runner thus fed the perception that he's a misogynist.

For good measure, Trump flip-flopped on whether women should be legally punished for having an abortion, underscoring that he really hasn't thought very much about the positions he is taking or even what he says from moment to moment.

But the killer news for the man who values winning above everything else is that he has dropped well behind Ted Cruz in the polls in Wisconsin, which holds its primary on Tuesday. A loss there, particularly a big one, would greatly complicate Trump's already difficult path to a delegate majority of 1,237.

You could look at the week as an aberration that Trump, the magician, will somehow surmount. In fact, these episodes tumbling one upon the other ratify what Trump skeptics said all along: that he is utterly unprepared to be a serious candidate, let alone president of the United States; that an endless stream of insults against all who get in his way wears thin over time; that he is winging it and stubbornly refusing to do the homework the enterprise he's engaged in requires; and that trashing ethnic and religious minorities can win you a fair number of votes but not, thank God, a majority of Americans.

The always instructive Yogi Berra explained the New York Yankees' loss of the 1960 World Series to the Pittsburgh Pirates by saying: "We made too many wrong mistakes." In the case of Trump, journalists are so worried about their old mistake of underestimating the man's staying power that they now risk making the wrong mistake of missing his fall.

Why does this matter to anyone except pundits? First, Trump's troubles threaten to go beyond Wisconsin. He could now lose in other big states that vote next, including Pennsylvania, California, New Jersey and possibly even his home state of New York. If this happens, it will be far easier for the Republican Party bosses (such as they are these days) to deny him the nomination. Trump will come to look less like the rank-and-file Republican favorite and more like a flash in the pan.

Second, Democrats Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders would lose their ideal opponent. From their point of view, Trump's collapse may come too early. It's true that if the very right-wing Cruz were the Republican nominee instead of Trump, the Democratic winner  it's still likely to be Clinton, despite Sanders' current surge  would be favored.

But an utter Trump implosion might free the Cleveland convention to turn to someone entirely outside the current crop of candidates, someone unsullied by the ugly and vulgar GOP primary campaign. A sinking Trump would have far less power to resist such an outcome. Democrats need to prepare now for the strong possibility that they will not be lucky enough to run against The Donald.

Most important, journalists need to remember that ratings and page views are not the same as votes and that Americans may love circuses but ultimately want elections to be more than Barnum & Bailey productions. Trump has entranced the media and ignited a minority of Republican primary voters. He has never, ever won over anything close to a majority of the American electorate. We demean ourselves as a people if we think that Trumpism is the wave of the future.

Journalists and citizens alike should cultivate, not resist, their most honorable instincts. The instinct that Americans would never choose as their president a clownish peddler of racial and religious stereotypes who made everything up as he went along was right from the start.

E.J. Dionne's email address is ejdionne@washpost.com. Twitter: @EJDionne.
President Ronald Reagan: He sent a powerful signal to GOP officeholders when he busted the air traffic controllers union. Credit: Doug Mills

Five years ago, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker declared war on workers. Not only did he strip public sector union members of their collective bargaining rights, he also went back on his word and pushed for passage of "right to work for less" laws that weakened the power of private-sector union members.

Today, the ranks of organized labor in Wisconsin  once a union stronghold  are thinner.

But the story of organized labor's decline is bigger than Wisconsin. In the United States today, union membership is at an all-time low. For working class Americans, who once made up the broadest middle class the world has ever seen, wages are falling while economic inequality is rising. For too many, the American dream is simply out of reach.

Without swift action, the collapse of the labor movement  and the American middle class  may be inevitable.

That's why, during the upcoming election contests, it's important to recognize that the war on workers didn't start with a governor. It started with a president.

In 1981, President Reagan issued an executive order to break the strike by members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, or PATCO. With the stroke of the pen, the president sent a powerful signal to GOP officeholders  it's OK to bust unions.

In the aftermath of this historic "PATCO moment," GOP governors around the country started to restrict the freedom to organize and future presidents  like George W. Bush  built on Reagan's anti-worker executive action legacy.

The truth is that Governor Walker was just the latest in a long line of Republicans who used their elected offices to weaken worker power.

But 2016 presents an opportunity for us to turn the tables. We can make sure that the next President we elect puts the power of government on the side workers again.

In fact, President Barack Obama has set the example. In response to strikes by low-wage federal contract workers who are part of the labor advocacy group Good Jobs Nation, the President used his executive authority to raise the minimum wage to $10.10, crack down on wage theft and labor violations, and expand paid leave for federal contract workers. With the simple stroke of the pen, President Obama helped empower millions of working people.

My colleagues and I in the Congressional Progressive Caucus have stood shoulder to shoulder with these brave workers, and we applaud President Obama for being the first president in a generation to build worker power instead of weaken it.

With tens of thousands of low-wage workers hitting the streets across the country to "Fight for $15 and a Union," the next President has the opportunity to build on the President actions and use his or her power to help workers win living wages and collective bargaining rights.

That's why the Congressional Progressive Caucus is calling on the next president to enact a "model employer" executive order that awards contracts to companies that pay their workers at least $15 an hour, provide fair benefits, and allow their workers to form unions without interference.

Bold executive action for workers can start to undo the damage done by President Reagan, Governor Walker, and others in the GOP. According to the public policy group, Demos, the U.S. Government is the largest low-wage job creator in the countrybigger than McDonald's and Wal-Mart combined. With the stroke of the pen, the next president can put an end to taxpayer-subsidized poverty jobs.

But more importantly, a "model employer" executive order would restore a path into the middle class for millions of American workers and their families.

As the presidential candidates debate their economic plans, it is important that they talk about how they plan to use the power of the pen for workers. The future of the American economy is at stake.

Mark Pocan, a Democrat, represents Wisconsin's second district in Congress.
Parishioners receive a flower from the Rev. Ted Trifon at the end of the Sunday of the Holy Cross service at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Fond du Lac. The Greek Orthodox Church in Appleton recently merged with the Fond du Lac congregation. Credit: Corey Wilson / for the Journal Sentinel

By of the

Fond du Lac Holding an arrangement of bright yellow daffodils, candles and a golden cross above his head, the Rev. Ted Trifon walked slowly through his congregation Sunday morning as parishioners bowed their heads.

On the third Sunday of Lent in the Greek Orthodox Church, priests in parishes just like Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Fond du Lac performed the same rite  the adoration of the cross, marking the halfway point of the Lenten season with fresh flowers signifying Christ's resurrection.

Trifon solemnly circled the altar three times holding the cross above his head as he chanted prayers, then set it down on the altar and picked up a censer containing burning incense, which he swung in a rhythmic arc as bells jingled. Then he knelt and prostrated himself three times at the altar.

Among the faithful in the pews Sunday were members of the Greek Orthodox Church in Appleton, which officially closed earlier this year and merged with the Fond du Lac church, dropping the number of Greek Orthodox Churches in Wisconsin to six.

"It's always a sad moment to see a church close," Trifon, who served at SS Constantine and Helen Church in Wauwatosa for 29 years, said after the service. "We do not know why things happen. But sometimes God closes one door and opens another."

Fond du Lac's Greek Orthodox Church, which has around 90 members, draws parishioners from Oshkosh, Neenah, Beaver Dam and Campbellsport. And now Appleton.

"Over the years as our families grow, our children go away to school and they don't come back," said Holy Trinity parish president Dena Meyst. "We've sort of been in a holding pattern in terms of getting new members."

Some St. Nicholas Church members in Appleton began driving to Fond du Lac in the last few years as membership began to dwindle. Mark Schedler and his family live in Appleton but started coming to services in Fond du Lac because "the priest situation was in doubt. This was more stable."

When St. Nicholas members made the difficult decision to officially close after five decades and merge with Holy Trinity in Fond du Lac, they did not want to be forgotten. So the small congregation donated $100,000 to create a digital video history of the parish to be placed at a shrine commemorating a New York City church, also called St. Nicholas, destroyed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Construction began last year on the $35 million St. Nicholas National Shrine, designed by Santiago Calatrava, which is expected to open in 2017. The tiny church was empty when planes crashed into the World Trade Center; landing gear and body parts were reportedly seen on and around the church before it was obliterated in the collapse of the South Tower. Relics of St. Nicholas, St. Catherine and St. Sava donated to the church by Nicholas II, the last Russian czar, locked in the church's safe were never recovered.

The Appleton church donated money to the shrine "in the spirit of the big hearts, hardworking parishioners and generous stewards that contributed to the founding, existence and the next chapter of St. Nicholas Appleton," Christopher Apostolou wrote in a letter to the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.

Last month, Bishop Demetrios, the chancellor of the Metropolis of Chicago, traveled to New York to deliver the donation to the primate of the Greek Orthodox Church in America.

"With this contribution, the name of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church of Appleton will forever be placed among the shrine's benefactors. St. Nicholas in Wisconsin will live on as a part of St. Nicholas in New York," Demetrios said.

George Vourvoulias, who lives in Green Lake and attends the Fond du Lac church, visited St. Nicholas in Manhattan once.

"You don't remember because it's just one of your churches and it doesn't stand out until something happens," said Vourvoulias, vice chairman of the Metropolis of Chicago council.

When the Appleton church closed its doors, the congregation donated its chalices and other religious equipment to the Fond du Lac church, where parishioners there are lamenting the loss of a Greek Orthodox parish.

When Meyst heard the news of the Appleton church's official closing, she felt "great sadness," she said. "I know if it was Holy Trinity that was closing I'd be in mourning, and I know they feel the same way."

After Sunday's service, which included prayers in Greek and English, parishioners gathered in the basement to talk, sip coffee, eat cookies and buy items in the church rummage sale. In the Greek Orthodox Church, which follows the Julian calendar, Easter is celebrated on May 1 this year.

Meyst grew up in Fond du Lac, where her family operated a Greek grocery store. She remembers when her neighborhood was filled with families of many ethnicities, the Greek Orthodox Church congregation was larger and mostly from Fond du Lac, and everyone walked to church.

"Our membership then was predominantly from Fond du Lac. Now we reach out to people in Appleton, Beaver Dam and other places," Meyst said. "But you know, that's a sign of the times."
Former President Bill Clinton makes a pitch for his wife, Hillary Clinton, to an audience of about 400 people Monday at the Turner Hall Ballroom in downtown Milwaukee. Credit: Mark Hoffman

By of the

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton may have moved on to her next contest in New York, but her husband remained in Milwaukee on Monday urging supporters to carry her to the White House as the only candidate with a realistic vision for helping all Americans "rise together."

"She'd be the best president. She's always been a change-maker. And she's always been a leader," former President Bill Clinton told a crowd of about 400 people at the Turner Hall Ballroom in downtown Milwaukee on Monday.

"This is not about new vs. old or establishment vs. reform," he said, ticking off a long list of individuals and organizations that have supported the former New York senator and secretary of state. "They're in the change business, and they know she's always been there."

The Clinton campaign was making a final push in hopes of tilting the scales in advance of Wisconsin's Tuesday primary. Though Clinton holds a strong lead in the race for delegates and the Democratic nomination, polls show her lagging Bernie Sanders in Wisconsin.

Bill Clinton hammered again and again the theme that all Americans should rise together, and he touted his wife's agenda as one that can make that happen.

Clinton highlighted four key strategies: modernizing the nation's infrastructure, both physical and digital; positioning the country as the world's clean-energy superpower; creating incentives that would lure back manufacturing jobs from overseas and help address income inequality ; and forcing banks to comply with lending requirements in ways that would benefit small businesses.

"If we did these four things, we will all rise together. You've got to do the stuff that works," Clinton said, alluding to the Sanders campaign, which some in the Clinton camp have dismissed as impractical and unrealistic.

In contrast to Sanders' call for free college tuition, Clinton's plan to address the college debt crisis, he said, would fund tuition for those who need it, expand Pell grants and work study programs, allow students to refinance their loans and limit payments to a portion of their income.

He deflected critics' assertions that Hillary Clinton is beholden to Wall Street interests, saying there are 50,000 to 75,000 fewer jobs on Wall Street than there were before the economic crash.

"Wall Street cannot wreck Main Street again, because of the Dodd-Frank bill, which Hillary Clinton has supported" he said.

Three of the candidates  Sanders, an independent, and Republicans Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz  continued to crisscross the state on the eve of the Wisconsin primary. All are expected to wrap up Monday evening with events in Milwaukee and Waukesha.

Recent polls show Sanders and Cruz in the lead in Wisconsin.

A Sunday survey by CBS News and YouGov showed Cruz with 43%, Trump with 37% and Ohio Gov. John Kasich with 18%. And it gave Sanders a 49% to 47% lead over Clinton. The poll, which followed a week of other surveys showing similar leads for Cruz and Sanders, had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.

An Emerson College Polling Society poll on Monday had Sanders ahead 51% to Clinton's 43%.

As of Tuesday, Clinton had 1,243 pledged delegates to Sanders' 980, a margin of 263, according to The Associated Press. Clinton's lead more than doubles  1,712 to Sanders' 1,011  when factoring in the superdelegates, party officials and others who can support whom they wish. In all, 2,382 delegates are needed to secure the nomination.

Wisconsin, with its 86 Democratic elected delegates and 10 superdelegates up for grabs, is considered crucial as the candidates head to Clinton's home state of New York and elsewhere on the East Coast.
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.
Phil Bryant, Clay Chandler

Republican Gov. Phil Bryant, center, walks behind his spokesman, Clay Chandler, left, as reporters ask him if he will sign a bill that would let government employees and private businesses cite religious beliefs to deny services to same-sex couples who want to marry, following a news conference on a youth jobs program at the Capitol in Jackson, Miss., Friday, April 1, 2016. Bryant would not say whether he will sign House Bill 1523, noting he had not received it yet and would need to study it first. Chandler tried to block reporters from asking questions by saying repeatedly: "Not today. Not today."

(Rogelio V. Solis/The Associated Press)

JACKSON, Mississippi -- The Mississippi state chamber of commerce is opposing a religious-objections bill heading to Gov. Phil Bryant's desk.

Mississippi Economic Council President Blake Wilson sent a statement to The Associated Press saying House Bill 1523 conflicts with the organization's non-discrimination policy.

Businesses including Nissan North America, Toyota, Chevron, Huntington Ingalls Industries, and Entergy haven't taken a clear stance on the bill, but say they oppose any legislation that might violate their non-discrimination policies regardless of whether they're intentional.

Supporters of the bill say it protects religious groups, small businesses and government employees from being forced to violate their religious beliefs by having to serve same-sex couples.

The bill is similar to one Georgia's Republican governor vetoed last week after big corporations said it could lead to discrimination.

Bryant hasn't indicated whether he will sign the bill.
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A fire Sunday night in Sheboygan prompted the evacuation of nearby homes over the threat of an explosion.

Firefighters responded around 8 p.m. to a fire in a large shed between two houses on N. 17th St. The shed contained four 100-pound liquefied petroleum tanks, posing the threat of an explosion.

An evacuation order was issued for a two-block radius around the fire, with city police and the Sheboygan County Sheriff's Office assisting.

Crews were able to put out the fire and prevent the tanks from exploding, the Sheboygan Fire Department said in a news release.

The cause of the fire is under investigation. It resulted in an estimated $12,000 in damage to the shed, its contents and nearby homes.
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By Yezid Sayigh | (Project Syndicate) |  

WASHINGTON, DC  Experience across the Arab world demonstrates that when it comes to security-sector reform, technocratic approaches are inadequate. Simply put, a technocratic focus on upgrading skills and operational capability, in the absence of improved governance of the security services, can be easily subverted by anti-reform coalitions, resulting in the continuation of regressive patterns of behavior.

This is especially true in polarized political and social environments  the most obvious cases today being Egypt, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen, not to mention Bahrain and Syria. But even in countries where there is some degree of political pluralism and an absence of civil strife or domestic armed conflict  such as Lebanon and Tunisia, and potentially the Palestinian Authority and Algeria  incremental approaches can achieve only partial success. Creating a fully modernized and accountable security service requires more than technocratic tinkering.

Regardless of formal legal frameworks, barriers to effective audits prevent the monitoring of financial flows to and within the police and internal security agencies. Moreover, such institutions are often able to absorb formal anti-corruption training and yet continue with business as usual.

For effective security-sector reform in the Arab world to occur, the shroud of secrecy surrounding the sector must be removed. But among the Arab states, only Yemen drafted a Freedom of Information law after 2011. Conversely, several state institutions blocked a proposal by Egypts Central Auditing Agency for legislation stipulating citizens right to access information regarding corruption in any governmental agency.

The problem, as Egyptian researcher Dina El-Khawaga has argued, is that it may be impossible to introduce reform on a structurally corrupt basis. What is needed is broad and effective oversight of public procurement, fuller transparency regarding budgets and routines, and substantially upgraded, multi-agency monitoring of national borders to dismantle illicit networks involving the security sector. Arab states like Jordan have shown that reducing corruption in the security sector enables significant improvements, even in a challenging environment comprising long borders, extensive black market trade fed by wars in neighboring states, and large refugee populations.

Effective governance of the security sector requires sustained political will at the top of the government, particularly a readiness to push reforms to sectors of the government and economy with which the security sector interacts. But change of this order of magnitude is highly contentious, and its path and outcome cannot be easily predicted or steered, no matter how determined the governmental leadership is.

There is a grim paradox at work here. The move toward more pluralist politics in Arab states has unleashed deep social divides over the nature and purpose of policing  divides that invariably complicate the reform process. For example, some demand that the security services should enforce religious values.

The specific dynamics of security-sector reform varies among states, depending on past modes of policing and the circumstances in which the authorities are challenged and forced to change existing structures. But, in most cases, people either look to the state and its officially mandated agencies to resolve problems and provide basic law enforcement, or would prefer to do so rather than resort  or just as often submit  to alternative, non-state providers. As a result, governments can claim a powerful legitimacy in embarking on reform efforts.

Despite support for the state as the ultimate arbiter of law, increasing social polarization in many Arab states over the last two decades has impeded consensus on how to restructure and reform policing. Marginalization of up to 40% of the population, who live at or below the poverty line, has fueled political challenges, in turn subjecting entire social segments to targeting by official security bodies.

Furthermore, the determination to crush dissent affects the urban middle classes, which might otherwise be the strongest proponents of security-sector reform in this area. Both Egypt and Syria are prime examples of this. The sectarian nature of Iraqs security sector and partisan polarization in the Palestinian Authority imply similar risks.

Severe political and constitutional breakdown, as well as extensive social and institutional fragmentation, also hampers  or, in cases like Libya or Yemen, blocks  reform. Even Egypt, with its highly centralized and bureaucratized state, has devolved certain policing and security functions in marginalized urban communities or rural areas to baltagiyyeh (thugs) and to former henchmen of the ruling party, village headmen, and clan elders.

Clearly, formalizing policing and adjudication on the basis of clan, sectarian, or ethnic identity as has happened with the revolutionary militias of Libya, the Shia Hashd militias in Iraq, or sectarian party militias in Lebanon  can be highly damaging. But the past emphasis on centrally managed security sectors has made them a crucial asset in political contests, enabling them to escape oversight and benefit from de facto legal impunity. So a better balance is needed to mitigate the concerns of diverse social and political actors whose participation is needed to renew constitutional frameworks, strengthen the rule of law, and revive national identity and state institutions in a context of democratic transition.

-

Related video added by Juan Cole:

BBC News: Yemens forgotten conflict  BBC News
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Maan News Agency |  

BETHLEHEM- (Maan)  The autopsy conducted on the body Abd al-Fatah al-Sharif on Sunday confirmed that the 21-year-old Palestinian was still alive before a bullet fired at his head at point-blank range by an Israeli soldier killed him, according to a statement from the Palestinian Prisoners Society.

Palestinian doctor Rayan al-Ali, who attended al-Sharifs autopsy, said: The results of the autopsy were expected. What the whole world saw on the video that documented the shooting was more than enough, but the autopsy results assured it.

He added in his statement that he would hold a press conference on Monday to give further details about the results of the autopsy, which took place at the Israeli Institute for Forensic Medicine in Abu Kabir near Tel Aviv.

A court order by the Israeli Supreme Court Thursday denied an appeal to allow a Palestinian doctor to partake in the autopsy itself.

The court later granted permission for al-Ali to merely attend and take notes for the autopsy report of al-Sharif, whose killing by an Israeli soldier on March 24 has been branded by the UN as an extrajudicial execution.

A graphic video released by BTselem captured the moment the soldier stepped forward and shot al-Sharif in the head at point-blank range, after he had been gunned down and left lying on the ground severely wounded for several minutes.

According to Israeli media, the autopsy was conducted as part of an investigation being carried out by the Israeli public military prosecutor to determine if al-Sharif was killed by the initial gunshots that visibly incapacitated him or the final bullet that was fired at zero range.

The soldier has claimed he acted in self defense and is facing charges of manslaughter rather than murder as had been widely expected.

In the video, Israeli soldiers can be heard saying this dog is still alive in Hebrew, and the soldier who shot al-Sharif could also be heard saying, this terrorist deserves to die.

In an another moment caught on camera prior to the shooting an Israeli soldier is seen tying his shoelace near the wounded al-Sharif while Israeli settlers walk nearby, apparently belying the claim that he was perceived as a threat at the time he was killed.

The Israeli soldier was released into open detention on Friday in an Israeli military camp, after an appeal by the prosecution was denied to extend his remand for another five days.

The soldier is free to roam the camp and receive visits from his immediate family, which has reportedly happened frequently since Friday.

Before the autopsy was conducted, Israeli media reported that the lawyer for the Israeli soldier had said the results would have a major effect on the course of the case.

The international community has reacted in the wake of al-Sharifs killing, expressing worries that it might be part of a broader Israeli shoot to kill policy against Palestinian suspected attackers.

We are concerned this killing may not be a lone incident, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Rupert Colville said in a recent statement, adding that all incidents where security forces have caused death or injury should be fully investigated, and those responsible brought to account.

A number of Palestinian families signed a letter late last year demanding that families should be allotted time to request an official autopsy report on their dead relatives. Autopsy reports are used in official paperwork necessary to file cases against Israeli authorities at the International Criminal Court.

Families often request for a Palestinian doctor to be involved in the autopsy, as Palestinians have historically distrusted Israeli military investigations and the ability of Israeli authorities to conduct unbiased autopsies of Palestinians slain by Israeli forces.

Rights groups have also repeatedly criticized Israel for offering impunity to Israelis who harm Palestinians.

Al-Sharif was among the more than 200 Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers since a wave of unrest spread across the occupied Palestinian territory in October.

The unrest has been marked by a surge of small-scale attacks carried out by Palestinian individuals  predominantly on Israeli military targets  which have left nearly 30 Israelis dead, with the majority of suspected Palestinian attackers shot dead on site.

Via Maan News Agency



Related video added by Juan Cole:

PressTV:  Israeli soldier who shot wounded Palestinian is free
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Written by Bridge Initiative Team | ( Bridge) |  

In the wake of the Belgium terrorist attacks, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has double-downed on his position in favor of torture.

In a recent telephone interview with CNNs Wolf Blitzer, Trump argued we have to change our law on the waterboarding thing, that he would go further than waterboarding and that the primary suspect in last years terrorist attack in Paris would talk faster with the torture.

Trump concludes that our respect for the rule of law places us at an unfair advantage in our shared struggle against violent extremism.

We have to change our laws and we have to be able to fight at least on almost equal basis. We have laws that we have to obey in terms of torture. They have no laws whatsoever that they have to obey, Trump explained during his CNN interview.

In fact, international human rights law  which emerged in WWIIs aftermath  prohibits torture absolutely even in a national emergency, like in France or even Egypt (where a state of emergency has lasted over two decades).

Since 9/11, theres been wide ranging debate around torture particularly in the context of counter-terrorism techniques. Some, like Trump, have argued that torture is necessary to get evidence that helps protect us from criminals who would do us harm.

But, does torture actually work?

Several years ago, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, responsible for overseeing our federal intelligence community, began investigating the CIAs use of enhanced interrogation techniques  like waterboarding  as a counter-terrorism strategy.

After evidence emerged that the CIA destroyed recordings of post 9/11 detainee interrogations, the bipartisan group looked at the CIAs use of torture on detainees from 2001 to 2006. Its findings, completed in 2012, were publicly released in 2014.

Significantly, the Committee concluded in its 6,000 page report that the CIAs techniques were ineffective. Specifically, the Committee found that torture:

* Resulted in false information and faulty intelligence

* Did not facilitate detainee cooperation

* Did not thwart terrorist plots

Regarding waterboarding, as championed by Trump, the committees report described how it induc[ed] convulsions and vomiting, with one detainee becoming completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth, while another suffered a series of near drownings.

In other words, while it resulted in physical harm it didnt give us accurate information.

CIA agents threatened detainees that they would be leaving in a coffin-shaped box, and that they could never go to court because we can never let the world know what I have done to you.

Again, according to the Senate Committee, these threats gave us no reliable intelligence.

So, what actually works?

The Committee found CIA agents obtained the most accurate information when they confronted detainees with intelligence they had already secured.

Trump sets up a moral equation between us and terrorists to argue for torture. But, by doing so, we give up our international standing and credibility as global leaders on human rights.

And, thats no way to make America great again.

-

Related video added by Juan Cole:

The Young Turks: Trump And Cruz Call For More Torture And Bombs After Brussels
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By Michael Blum | ( Your Middle East |  

Israels chained women fight for right to divorce.

She is one of Israels chained women  the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of wives denied a divorce by their husbands and prevented from breaking free by the countrys use of Jewish law.

The 30-year-old mother of two is hardly unique in struggling to obtain a divorce in a country where men must grant permission for their wives to leave.

But her case has shone a spotlight on the issue after her husband Oded Guez was named and shamed by a religious court for refusing to grant a divorce.

I have been asking for a divorce for four years, and the rabbinical court ordered him to give it to me two years ago, she told AFP in an interview, asking for her name not to be published.

Her main aim, she said, is to gain my freedom as soon as possible.

Marriage in Israel is governed by Jewish law, which requires the husband to grant permission through what is known as a get before his wife can divorce him.

If the woman has a child with another man without an official divorce, the child is considered fatherless and cannot marry under Jewish law.

The case of Guez and his wife has drawn new attention to the issue due to moves by a rabbinical court.

The court sought to force Guez to grant the divorce by shaming and essentially excommunicating him.

It also authorised the judgment to be published on social networks, as requested by his wife, while calling on the community to shun Guez.

It was shared widely online along with Guezs photo.

6,000 requests a year

One must not ask him about his well-being, said the order. He cannot participate in daily communal prayer, nor recite kaddish (the prayer for the dead) in a synagogue when a relation dies as long as he ignores the call of rabbis and refuses to provide the get to his wife.

There are officially 131 chained women involved in rabbinical court cases in Israel, where around 11,000 divorces of Jewish couples are granted annually, said rabbinical courts director Shimon Yaakobi.

But since that number includes only cases where the court has ordered the husband to grant the divorce, activists say it is far below the actual amount.

Aliza Gellis of the organisation Yad Lisha, which provides legal aid to chained wives, said it receives 6,000 requests for help every year.

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There are also rare cases of men seeking to divorce, but their wives refusing to accept gets.

Gellis said the women who seek the organisations help wait five years on average for their husbands to relent.

But we have had more difficult cases, she said, adding that some men flee abroad and even change their identities.

Activists have increasingly sought to have the issue, which exists in other Jewish communities worldwide, addressed.

In 1992, a group of women created Agunah (Chained) Day, marked this year on March 23 at the start of the Jewish feast of Purim.

Prison sentences

Guezs case has highlighted the overarching influence of rabbinical courts in the lives of Israeli Jews.

While the country adheres to a Western-style legal system in many domains, the rabbinical courts wield power in areas including marriage and divorce.

The rabbinate tries to find solutions so that the get is given quickly, and the court will continue to sanction husbands who refuse to obey the law, said Pinhas Tennenbaum, spokesman for the Israeli chief rabbinate.

Rabbinical courts can withdraw recalcitrant husbands driving permits, prevent them from leaving the country or put holds on their bank accounts.

They can also sentence them to prison. Seven are currently in jail for having refused to grant a divorce, said Tennenbaum.

The Jerusalem rabbinical court includes a cell where husbands can be jailed immediately.

In March, a rabbinical court even sentenced a wealthy ultra-Orthodox businessman to 30 days in prison for his role in his sons refusal to grant his wife a divorce over the course of nearly 10 years.

It was the first time a rabbinical court sentenced someone who was not the husband himself over the issue.

In the case of Guez, if the tribunal finds that it could result in progress, he will be sent to prison, Tennenbaum said.

Guez himself has not spoken publicly about the case.

His wife said his recalcitrance over granting a divorce has nothing to do with custody of their children or with money. He only wants her back.

But she vowed to fight to the end.

Via Your Middle East



Related video added by Juan Cole:

AP Archive: ISRAEL: ORTHODOX BLACKLIST PREVENTS MANY MARRIAGES
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - April 1, 2016) - Dynasty Metals & Mining Inc. ("Dynasty" or the "Company") (TSX:DMM)(OTCQX:DMMIF) announced that an unexpected walkout by workers at its Zaruma gold mine in Ecuador has resulted in the temporary suspension of all activities at the mine. Administration and all other projects of the Company are unaffected. Dynasty is exploring available options to resume mining activities at Zaruma, and is in discussions with worker representatives in cooperation with labour authorities with a view to resolving this situation as soon as practicable.

Management remains hopeful that the issues relating to this walkout can be resolved shortly. However, as the duration or outcome of the walkout is out of management's control and cannot be reasonably predicted, a further delay remains a possibility. The Company will provide updates as the situation evolves.

About Dynasty Metals & Mining

Dynasty Metals & Mining Inc. is a Canadian based mining company involved in the mining, exploration and development of mineral properties in Ecuador. The Company is currently focused on gold production and continued development at its Zaruma Gold Project. The Company also owns the Dynasty Goldfield Project, a permitted property 180km southwest of the Zaruma project, and the Jerusalem Project, an exploration property immediately south of the Fruta del Norte project.

For further information please visit the Company's website at www.dynastymining.com, follow Dynasty on Twitter @DynastyMining.

Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains certain forward-looking information that reflect the current views and/or expectations of Dynasty with respect to its performance, business and future events, including statements regarding the timing of the resolution of the unexpected work delay, its expected outcome and its impact on operational results of the Zaruma project.. Forward-looking information is based on the then-current expectations, beliefs, assumptions, estimates and forecasts about the business and the industry and markets in which the Company operates. Forward-looking information is not a guarantees of future performance and involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions which are difficult to predict. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking information contained herein involve risks and uncertainties including, without limitation, that further delays in the resumption of mining activities may materially adversely impact the Company's financial performance and results of operations, as well as other risk factors listed from time to time in the Company's public filings. These risks, as well as others, could cause actual results and events to vary significantly. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information, which is qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. Dynasty does not undertake any obligations to release publicly any revisions for updating any voluntary forward-looking information, except as required by applicable securities law.
TORONTO, ON--(Marketwired - April 01, 2016) - Primero Mining Corp. ("Primero" or the "Company") (TSX: P) (NYSE: PPP) today confirmed that a plane crash resulting in three fatalities has occurred close to its San Dimas mine in Mexico.

An aircraft carrying 10 individuals crash-landed earlier today in the Sierra Madre mountain range approximately 15 kilometres from the Tayoltita airport. The passengers were Primero employees and family members en route to Durango. Primero mourns the loss of employees, Toronto based executive Guillermo Adrian, Vice President, Operations, San Dimas based Jose Paz Vizcarra Juarez, Warehouse Clerk, and a family member of Sr. Vizcarra.

"This tragedy has impacted every person at Primero deeply and we send our deepest condolences to the families, friends and colleagues of the deceased," stated Ernest Mast, President and C.E.O. "All survivors are being treated for their injuries, and we will provide support to the affected families to help them through this difficult time. The Company will cooperate fully with aviation authorities to determine the cause of the accident."

About Primero

Primero Mining Corp. is a Canadian-based precious metals producer that owns 100% of the San Dimas gold-silver mine and the Cerro del Gallo gold-silver-copper development project in Mexico and 100% of the Black Fox mine and adjoining properties in the Township of Black RiverMatheson near Timmins, Ontario, Canada. Primero offers immediate exposure to un-hedged, below average cash cost gold production with a substantial resource base in politically stable jurisdictions. The Company is focused on becoming a leading intermediate gold producer by building a portfolio of high quality, low cost precious metals assets in the Americas. Primero's website is www.primeromining.com.
TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - April 1, 2016) - ABERDEEN INTERNATIONAL INC. ("Aberdeen", or the "Company") (TSX:AAB) wishes to provide an update on mining activities at African Thunder Platinum.

African Thunder Platinum ("ATP") has decided to temporarily suspend mining operations at the Smokey Hills platinum-palladium mine effective immediately. As previously disclosed in our press release dated February 22, 2016, ATP was engaged in a process to review mine activities for 2016 including consultation with its workforce. ATP concluded that the best way to optimize the long-term value of the Smokey Hills mine and 2,000 ton-per-day plant facility was to suspend operations and focus on the planning and permitting required to optimize production and costs in the future.

Since ATP hired new management led by COO Rodney O'Reilly, in December, production rates and efficiency increased, equipment availability improved, costs decreased, and the safety record improved. However the continued weak platinum and palladium prices have continued to drag on cash flow. With several more months of underground development required to achieve full production, ATP decided it made the most sense to defer this expenditure until metal prices improve, and other optimization plans can be implemented.

Among the expected future optimizations, ATP has commenced the permitting process for open cast production at the mine to add to low cost tonnage that can be mined upon restart. The open cast is a critical development to the overall plan, as it should provide additional tonnage and improve operating flexibility. Permitting of the open pit is expected to take the remainder of 2016.

In addition to the operational improvements currently being addressed, the major shareholders of ATP, Aberdeen and Pala Investments are reviewing options to restructure the financial position of ATP to provide greater financial flexibility and less risk upon the future restart of operations.

David Stein, President and CEO of Aberdeen commented, "We know the decision to suspend the mine is never an easy one, however we commend ATP for taking a disciplined approach to preserving long-term value with the Smokey Hills operation. Despite achieving many operational successes over the past few months, producing metal in this environment of low prices appears to be wasteful and unnecessary. By combining the mine optimization plan with an improved financial structure, we expect that ATP will be able to return to operations once we see positive movements in the platinum and palladium pricing."

Cautionary Notes

Except for statements of historical fact contained herein, the information in this press release constitutes "forward-looking information" within the meaning of Canadian securities law. Such forward-looking information may be identified by words such as "plans", "proposes", "estimates", "intends", "expects", "believes", "may", "will" and include without limitation, statements regarding, proceeds to be received on closing or subsequently, the ability of the Company to generate additional value for shareholders as a result of such transactions, past success as an indicator of future success; net asset value of the Company; the potential of investee companies and the appreciation of their share price; the Company's plan of business operations; industry opportunities and dynamics and anticipated returns. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate; actual results and future events could differ materially from such statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include, among others, metal prices, competition, financing risks, acquisition risks, risks inherent in the mining industry, and regulatory risks. Most of these factors are beyond the control of the Company. Investors are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking information. Except as otherwise required by applicable securities statutes or regulation, the Company expressly disclaims any intent or obligation to update publicly forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
First Alabama resident confirmed with Zika virus

A female Aedes aegypti mosquito acquires a blood meal on the arm of a researcher at the Biomedical Sciences Institute in the Sao Paulo's University in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The Aedes aegypti can spread the Zika virus, which is suspected in an unusual birth defect and possibly other health issues. (AP Photo/Andre Penner, File)

PASCAGOULA, Mississippi-- Steve Pavlovich of Mississippi Mosquito Control presented information at Monday's Jackson County Board of Supervisors meeting regarding the Zika virus.

"There has been a lot of things in the news about Zika virus and some of the things people are hearing out there, some detailed and some of it not being so detailed and I wanted to discuss the virus in a more in-depth fashion and the steps you can take to guard against Zika," he said.

"Zika virus is not similar to West Nile or chikungunya," Pavlovich said. "Dengue is not one we typically have in the region, but it is a flavivirus transmitted by the same types of mosquitoes that would transmit the Zika virus. These are the container breed mosquitoes which include: the Asian Tiger and Yellow Fever mosquito. The yellow fever mosquito is the most prevalent vector of the Zika virus and the Asian Tiger is the second vector. Both of these mosquitoes exist throughout the Gulf Coast area, but mainly in Miami, New Orleans, and maybe the Galveston area of Texas."

Steve Pavlovich of Mississippi Mosquito Control spoke about the Zika virus, how it is transmitted, and ways you can keep from attracting them around your home. (Tyler Carter/Gulflive.com)

According to Pavlovich, the Zika virus is transmitted from mosquito to human and then back to mosquito.

"One of the reasons it is not similar to West Nile is because within the West Nile virus, the mosquito would transfer it to a bird and in turn, the bird transfers it back to the mosquito, which amplifies the virus."

"Zika virus differs because the transmission of virus is higher transmitted back onto mosquito than it would be from a bird or other small mammal, although it is completely amplified within the human population."

So are residents of the Jackson County in danger of contracting the Zika virus? Pavlovich said he does not believe so.

"Currently the risk of Zika virus is low, but the virus is here in the United States," Pavlovich said. "It has appeared throughout Mississippi, but there has not been any local transmission or mosquito born transmission here in Jackson County."

Three cases have been confirmed through sexual contact, according to Pavlovich. Those cases have been attributed to people traveling outside of the United States and bringing the virus back.

While the yellow fever mosquito is the secondary transmitter and is thought to have a low probability of transmitting the Zika virus, additional surveillance is being conducted specifically looking for container breeding mosquitoes, those that can breed in small puddles or containers of water in inhabited areas.

"Symptoms of Zika virus are mild," Pavlovich said. "The symptoms would mimic those of a cold or flu. According to the CDC, only 18 percent or one in five people would even contract the virus or know they even had it. It is also important to note that people do not die from this virus."

How do you protect yourself Zika virus? Open containers on the outside of your home need to emptied.

"The yellow fever mosquito is not prevalent here in Jackson County, but the Asian Tiger mosquito is in everyone's backyard," Pavlovich said. "Removing empty containers around your home where mosquitoes can breed is important. Or you can help us help you by calling us out and allowing us to treat those areas."

Mosquito repellent sanctioned by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and long sleeves are other preferred methods to deterring mosquito bites while outside or vacationing, according to Pavlovich.
[JURIST] Azerbaijan on Sunday announced a unilateral ceasefire to the fighting with Armenian forces over the disputed area of Nagorno-Karabakh. The announcement comes a day after UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon [official profile] called for [UN news report] an immediate end to the fighting between the two countries, as there have been reports of increased fighting and large-scale ceasefire violations along the Line of Contact in the region. The fighting had continued [BBC report] until Sunday, which up until that point had led to the deaths of 30 soldiers and civilian casualties. Ban stated [statement] that he was particularly concerned with the use of heavy weapons and by the large numbers of casualties.

Nagorno-Karabakh has been a territory under dispute [BBC backgrounder] between Armenia and Azerbaijan since the two countries became independent in the early 1990s. The area, located within Azerbaijan but made up of a majority Armenian ethnicity population, is landlocked by mountains and has been contended for by the two sides since the 19th century. In 1988 a war was fought between the two sides which left the area in the hands of Armenia with a tentative truce signed in 1994. However, negotiations since have failed to produce a permanent peace agreement. In 2010, Turkey expressed its support for Azerbaijan, as Armenia continues to allege that Turkey committed genocide [JURIST report] during the time of the Ottoman era in the early 1900s.
[JURIST] World leaders and other high profile individuals are hiding billions in off-shore accounts, according to reports Sunday that cite confidential documents leaked from a Panamanian law firm. The documents, coined the Panama Papers [website] by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, purportedly show that numerous politicians, celebrities and other wealthy individuals have hid money utilizing the legal services of Mossack Fonseca [firm website]. The Panama Papers include 11 million documents allegedly illustrating how Mossack Fonseca laundered money and helped their wealthy clients avoid tax consequences and dodge sanctions. It is reported [BBC report] that 12 heads of state are among those implicated by the Panama Papers. Mossack Fonseca has denied any wrongdoing, claiming they were the victim of a data breach and that they have not engaged in any illegal activity.

Tax evasion remains an important global issue. Last year HSBC [corporate website], a Swiss private bank, was a part of on-going string of fraudulent practice investigations since the 2009 leaks by Herve Falciani [BBC profile]. Currently HSBC is under investigation by eight nations for tax evasion [Business Insider report]. Last month the Swiss police raided HSBCs Geneva office on suspicion of aggravated money laundering [BBC report]. In 2012 the US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] announced [press release] that HSBC Holdings and HSBC Bank USA [corporate website], a federally chartered banking corporation based in Virginia, agreed to forfeit USD $1.256 billion to settle a multi-year probe related to the groups failure to enforce rules to prevent money laundering. As part of the DOJs deal, HSBC agreed to enter into a deferred prosecution agreement for its violation of various federal laws.
It might have been around for nearly 17 years but Mitsubishis Pajero still sells relatively well, thanks to its superb 44 abilities and a reputation for being unbreakable.

This big 44, which is also known as the Shogun or Montero, has had continuous tweaks since it first went on sale in Japan way back in 1999. The latest adjustments sees the arrival of Apple Carplay, Android Auto and DAB+ digital radio. Manual transmission, however, has disappeared as part of model year 2016 changes. Mitsubishi says this is in response to customer preferences.

Smartphone Link Display Audio (SDA), which is what Mitsubishi calls the new infotainment system, eliminates the need for updates to the vehicles own mapping software as most of us now use our phone for in-car SatNav. With SDA, you can also access your apps, send and receive texts and choose music via the touchscreen or voice command.

Carplay worked perfectly in the press loan vehicle though its appearance tends to make the trip computers dot matrix above it look even more dated than it is. Still, a large chunk of the target audience wont worry too much about that. Instead theyll just be pleased that their kids or grandkids will approve of the new systems connectivity options.

In top-spec Exceed trim, the Pajero is still smart looking and even the interior measures up, despite it being a few years since it was last overhauled. You wont find an electronic parking brake inside this car, nor are there paddles for the five-speed automatic transmission but the prominent location of the lever for diff locks demonstrates what this vehicles buyers care more about.

If you dont want to use the third row of seats, these can be stowed under the boot floor and thats easily and quickly done. The second row seating is the kind which is hinged to fold and rest against the backs of the front seats. Cargo capacity with the final row down is 1,081 litres and with the second row also out of the way, this increases to 1,789l.

Mitsubishis long lived 3.2-litre DiD (direct injection diesel) is the standard engine and this produces 147kW and 441Nm. Official average consumption is 9.0 litres/100km.

It might not have the air suspension of a Discovery but it certainly has competitive abilities in most conditions thanks to short overhangs and a more compact size (length is 4,900mm). Weight is also an advantage, with the Pajero having a gross combination mass of 2,335kg in Exceed model grade. Maximum payload is 775kg and towing capacity with trailer brakes is 3,000kg (750 without). Ground clearance unladen is 235mm and fording depth is 700mm.

This ladder-frame chassis vehicle has always been built at, fittingly, the Pajero Manufacturing Company plant in Japan, also known as Sakahogi. CKD assembly takes place at two other locations: Changsha in China, which is a JV with Guangzhou Auto, and Tiruvallur in India. The second of these is under licence, build taking place at Hindustan Motors plant near Chennai in Tamil Nadu. Mitsubishi vehicles have been made here since 1998.

Being tall, top-heavy and not too wide, the Pajero is never going to be in the same league for handling and roadholding as the likes of the BMW X5. But compared to the Toyota Land Cruiser Prado, it can certainly be considered as a serious alternative. Both these vehicles tend to be bought by people trading in an older example  each has a solid reputation for bulletproof durability and brand/model loyalty tends to be very strong. That fact alone explains why the big Mitsubishi still sells as well as it does the world over.

How Mitsubishi intends to replace its largest SUV continues to be the subject of much speculation. Various successors have been proposed over the years but still the current model remains. The latest inside word is that a new model is back in development but we wont be seeing it this side of 2020.
KILN, Mississippi -- Hancock County authorities are investigating the death of 1-year-old boy who suffered traumatic head injuries in Kiln.

Sheriff's Cmdr. Glenn Grannan tells The Sun Herald deputies responded to a home on Thursday and found toddler suffering from cerebral bleeding and hemorrhaging.

Grannan said the child was at his grandparents' home, where he and his mother lived.

He was taken to Hancock Medical Center in Bay St. Louis and was later airlifted to Ochsner Hospital in New Orleans. Grannan said the toddler died just after midnight Saturday.

Hancock County Coroner Jim Faulk said he will take the body of 15-month-old Maddox Vieregge to the state medical examiner for autopsy.

Grannan did not say how the child was injured, but he said officials have collected witness accounts.
Even if Anthony had a year to analyze and dissect each piece...(he couldn't tell if it would)... stand the harsh light of public exposure.

WUWT insider Willis Eschenbach tells you all you need to know about Anthony Watts and his blog, WattsUpWithThat (WUWT). As part of his scathing commentary , Wondering Willis accuses Anthony Watts of being clueless about the blog articles he posts. To paraphrase: Click here to read more.
Its been a federal crime since 1970 to show horses who have been sored, but unscrupulous trainers exploit regulatory loopholes, and the corrupt industry self-regulation system allows the perpetuation of what amounts to organized crime, all for the sake of show ribbons. Photo by Lance Murphey/For The HSUS

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With the Big Lick segment of the Tennessee walking horse industry showing no willingness to root out the abuse festering in its ranks, the Obama Administration has signaled readiness to take further measures to crack down on the cruel practice of soring. Late last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) sent a proposed rule to update its existing Horse Protection Act (HPA) regulations to the Office of Management and Budget for White House clearance (a key step before a proposed rule is released for public comment).

For some time now, The HSUS has urged the USDA to take action to end all soring practices. In February 2015, The HSUS filed a rulemaking petition with the USDA to promulgate a rule to ban the stacks and chains that are an integral part of the soring process in the Tennessee walking, spotted saddle, and racking horse breeds; put an end to the failed system of industry self-policing; and crack down on violations by extending disqualification periods for both the offender and the sored horse. At this stage of the review process, the text of the USDAs proposed rule is not yet public. But to be effective, the proposed rule should include all of these commonsense, long-awaited reforms.

Its been a federal crime since 1970 to show horses who have been sored  subjected to the intentional infliction of pain on their legs and hooves to force them to step higher to gain a competitive edge in the show ring. But cruel, unscrupulous trainers exploit regulatory loopholes, and the corrupt industry self-regulation system allows the perpetuation of what amounts to organized crime, all for the sake of show ribbons.

The USDA has stated publicly in separate Federal Register notices (in 1979 and in 2011) that, if soring persisted, the agency would consider banning the chains hung around horses legs and the tall, heavy stacks nailed to horses hooves. These devices exacerbate the pain of caustic chemicals on the skin, conceal hard or sharp objects jammed into the tender soles, and make the hoof strike the ground at an abnormal angle and with excessive force. Its way past time to eliminate the use of these instruments of torture, as a majority in Congress recognizes.

The regulatory changes were seeking are consistent with key elements of the Prevent All Soring Tactics (PAST) Act, S. 1121/H.R. 3268, sponsored by Senators Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Mark Warner (D-VA) along with Representatives Ted Yoho (R-FL) and Kurt Schrader (D-OR). The legislation has overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress from more than 300 Senate and House cosponsors and a vast array of endorsements, including the American Horse Council and more than 60 other national and state horse groups, the American Veterinary Medical Association, the American Association of Equine Practitioners, state veterinary groups in all 50 states, the National Sheriffs Association, the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, major newspapers in the two states (Tennessee and Kentucky) where soring is most concentrated, and all major animal protection organizations.

Data recently released by the USDA revealed that a startling 87.5 percent of horses the agency randomly selected for testing at the 2015 Celebration, the industrys premier event, were found positive for illegal foreign substances used to sore horses or temporarily numb them to mask their pain during inspection. A recent HSUS undercover investigation of a major Big Lick training barn found that 100 percent of the sampled horses leg wrappings tested positive for chemicals banned from use in the show ring by the USDA. Last October, a Freedom of Information Act request filed by The HSUS yielded hundreds of pages of damning information, including grim and grisly photographs documenting the abuse of walking horses by Big Lick trainer Larry Wheelon.

There is no question the current regulations are failing to protect horses from a core group of scofflaw trainers and owners in this industry. Their denials are hollow and their cruelty is incontrovertible. At this stage of the debate, this Administration has an opportunity to fix this broken system before President Obama leaves office, and heres an issue where nearly the whole of Congress agrees with needed reforms.

In 2010, following a comprehensive two-year audit of the Horse Protection Program, the USDA Inspector General recommended several anti-soring changes  stating that the agencys present program is inadequate to prevent abuse, and that the industrys system of self-policing should be abolished.

We believe in attacking this sickening abuse from every angle, and the agency action were pressing is urgently needed. Were going to put our shoulder behind this rulemaking to put an end now to both the lawbreaking and the scourge of soring.
Donald Trump, John Kasich, Ted Cruz

Pictured from left to right are, Republican presidential candidates, Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)

(Alan Diaz)

Good Monday Morning, Fellow Seekers.

With the potentially game-changing Wisconsin primary just about 24 hours away,

Donald Trump

may be looking to another Rust Belt State to try to shore up his grasp on the GOP's presidential nomination.

Trump trails Texas Sen. Ted Cruz by 6 percentage points, 43-37 percent, in a CBS News Battleground Tracking poll of Wisconsin's likely GOP voters. Ohio Gov. John Kasich gets 18 percent.

But the Manhattan real estate mogul holds a 47-29 percent lead over Cruz, with Kasich, who was born in McKees Rocks, Allegheny County, taking 22 percent support among likely Republican primary voters.

Trump is also up in his home state of New York, which goes to the polls a week ahead of Pennsylvania. There, he leads Cruz 52-21 percent among likely GOP voters, with Kasich trailing at 20 percent support.

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The CBS News result differs starkly from a Franklin & Marshall College poll released two weeks ago that has the race much tighter.

In that canvass, Trump narrowly led Kasich, 33-30 percent, with Cruz in third at 20 percent.

While Trump leads on overall delegate count, a Cruz win in Wisconsin on Tuesday could slow Trump's momentum.

As Nate Silver at 538.com notes:

"Wisconsin has 42 delegates -- 18 go to the statewide winner and three go to the winner of each of the state's eight congressional districts. So if Cruz wins Wisconsin by even one vote, the most Trump can hope to take home is 24 delegates, which is fewer than the 25 delegates our expert panel predicted. Our panel had Trump falling just short of 1,237 even with 25 delegates in Wisconsin, and chances are -- if Cruz wins statewide -- Trump won't win most of those remaining 24.1 You can see why in the regional breakdown of support from the Marquette poll."

Pennsylvania has 71 Republican delegates up for grabs in its April 26 primary and they are apportioned similarly to Wisconsin.

As Silver notes, Trump needs 1,237 to clinch the nomination. A win by Cruz in Wisconsin on Tuesday, which is expected, and one for Kasich in Pennsylvania (which some are predicting) spells trouble for Trump as the primary season heads into its home stretch.

The rest of the day's news starts now.

The Daily News' Will Bunch looks at legislative Republicans' new war on education.

Pittsburgh's big universities are uniting in their search for energy research dollars, The Tribune-Review reports.

Senate Republicans are raising concerns about the Wolf administration's commission to review nominees to the state Supreme Court, The Post-Gazette reports.

U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, himself no stranger to mangling the English language, thinks a communication error may have played a role in Sunday's deadly Amtrak crash in Philadelphia. PhillyMag has the story.

WITF-FM's Ben Allen takes a look at what's actually required in a gun-purchase background check.

From BillyPenn, a visual representation of the toll taken by the weekend's high winds:

NewsWorks/WHYY-FM looks at the case for vocational education over college.

The Morning Call on the birth of the Lehigh Valley's new soccer franchise: Bethlehem Steel FC. The club claims a relationship with the Philadelphia Union of the MLS formerly held by Harrisburg's City Islanders.

Politico on the 'halting progress' Senate Democrats are making in the fight over Merrick Garland.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is dumping money into ads aimed at helping Katie McGinty, Roll Call's Alex Roarty reports.

What Goes On.

The House and Senate are both in session this Monday morning. Expect hilarity to ensue.

What Goes On (Nakedly Political Edition).

11 a.m.: Luncheon for Rep. Rob Kauffman

5 p.m.: Reception for Rep. Frank Farina

5:30 p.m.: Reception for Sen. Guy Reschenthaler (that didn't take long)

5:30 p.m.: Reception for Rep. Ron Marsico

6 p.m.: Reception for Rep. Dave Reed

6 p.m.: Reception for Rep. Kerry Benninghoff

Ride the circuit and give at the max and you'll part with $5,300 today.

WolfWatch.

Gov. Tom Wolf heads to Philly for a 12:30 p.m. stop at the Chamber of Commerce to talk about his 'Government that Works' plan. We are resisting jokes about it being a short event.

At 3:15, Wolf heads to Yardley, Bucks County, for a stop at a firm called Exact Solar, where he'll call on the Legislature to pass a minimum wage hike.

Monday's Gratuitous Baseball Link.

Baltimore starts its 2016 campaign with the Minnesota Twins. First pitch at 3:10 p.m. Chris Tillman is on the mound for the Os.

And now you're up to date. See you all back here in a bit.
There is some interesting timing in NTT DATAs decision to purchase Dell Services in order to become a leading Global IT service provider. Before we get to that however, its worth noting the deal is valued at more than $3 billion has already helped Dells debt reduction and a ratings increase as it acquires EMC.

For NTT, The combined companies will offer expanded BPO capabilities with a focus on the healthcare and insurance markets.

Other benefits of the acquisition will include an increased infrastructure platform footprint, with Dells U.S., U.K. and Australian data centers joining NTTs 230 global facilities. The companies will also offer expanded technology resources for providing next-gen application and business process services with the goal of aiding clients as they use IT to improve business performance and outcomes.

There are few acquisition targets in our market that provide this type of unique opportunity to increase our competitiveness and the depth of our market offerings, said John McCain, CEO of NTT DATA. McCain led the acquisition and will take responsibility for directing the combined businesses and offerings. Dell Services is a very well-run business and we believe its employee base, long-standing client relationships, and the mix of long term and project-based work will enhance our portfolio.

I recently interviewed Robert Westervelt (pictured), VP and General Manager, Indirect Global Solutions for NTT DATA and he told me the company has signed 15 major partners and is now focusing on the sub-agent space.

The company has an amazingly wide array of products to offer and even Rob marveled at the fact the company was $105 billion in size and didnt have a channel. Something they have now remedied. You may recall, Kevin Goodman (see video below) described the companys massive innovation center as well as the vast array of products the company has. In addition, he went on to explain the companys laser focus on the channel and data center space.

Rob also emphasized some of the differences the company brings to the table  such an early jump into NFV  allowing services such as firewalls to live in the cloud instead of being truck-rolled in numerous locations. In addition, the company has become a security powerhouse and a new OpenStack-based enterprise cloud offering is coming to Japan and the US very soon.

I started this post with a mention of timing  you see, Dell Services is mostly Perot Systems which was founded by Ross Perot  the businessman turned presidential candidate. Many people compare Donald Trump to Ross Perot  there are so many parallels. So although Perot and Trumps presidential aspirations have little to do with data centers and NFV, its interesting to see how the political news of the day can sometimes overlap with whats happening in the world of M&A and technology. Is this all a coincidence? You tell me  but I think it may be worth pointing out the CEO of NTT DATA is named John McCain Wow, Im getting goosebumps.

Want to dig deeper? Here is a past interview from 2011 that TMC conducted with NTT Communications
The Legislatures 38-8 vote and the governors signature on a bill to exempt the University of Nebraska from public records laws when searching for key leadership positions wasnt a surprise.

The university, the Board of Regents and an impressive array of business organizations and leaders flexed their legislative muscles, convincing more than enough lawmakers that, to stay competitive, the university system needs to be able to identify a single candidate for public vetting before hiring, instead of the four finalists required by the current law.

We gotta run this thing like a business, is todays mantra.

Well, the university system isnt a business. But if it were, the people running it just slapped the owners (taxpayers), employees (faculty) and customers (students) in the face. And 38 state senators helped them, taking what was already a compromised public records law  done on the universitys behalf but applying to all elected bodies  and making it even more restrictive. The university wants its taxpayer money, but, if isnt too much trouble, theyd like it with as little accountability as possible.

The law, as passed, applies only to the University of Nebraska, but how long do you think it will be until a local school board wants to apply it to a superintendent search or a mayor to apply it to a police chief search? The passage of LB1109 doesnt just put Nebraska on a slippery slope. It gives us a headlong shove that will require citizens and senators alike to help regain the right balance.

Public records and public meetings laws arent there to make life easier for government. They exist to make government more responsive, more accountable and, ultimately, more effective. If government is to do the will of the people, the people ought to know how the government is doing, and we learn that through a process of legally defined inclusion.

The 38 senators who backed LB1109 have voted for exclusion, unresponsiveness and unaccountability. Theyve put a dubious business proposition  the potential hiring of a marginally better candidate  above the interests of the people who sent them to the Capitol.

Their overwhelming approval shows their regard for the publics access to information. We hope that senators  and voters  will be vigilant to guard against any further erosion. The public deserves to know more, not less, about how our public institutions are run.

Lincoln Journal Star
Nebraska is blessed with world-class wind resources, but it hasnt been able to harness their full potential. A new amendment under consideration by the state Legislature could change that.

Currently, Nebraska has among the most stringent wind power regulations in the country. This has undoubtedly hampered business. Companies have difficulty getting projects built, which closes off opportunities and potential resources.

To see how wind can help Nebraska, look at what it has already brought to the state. Wind supports 2,000 jobs and has attracted $1.5 billion in capital investment. Land owners receive $2.4 million annually in lease payments for hosting turbines, and Nebraskas wind projects expand property tax revenue streams by millions.

Now look to neighboring Iowa, where state policies have encouraged wind development. Wind power supports 7,000 jobs and has attracted $10 billion in capital investment. Lease payments to landowners are nearly eight times higher than Nebraskas. By 2030, they could exceed $55 million a year, while property tax revenues from wind could total $137 million.

By streamlining its wind farm regulatory process, Nebraskans could see benefits like this. An amendment to LB824 proposed by state Sen. Ken Haar of Malcolm could make it happen.

The amendment proposes simplifying regulatory hurdles while leveling the playing field for wind power. It keeps commonsense rules to ensure safe, successful projects. Its a win-win for companies looking to do business in Nebraska and the states citizens.

Nebraska has the resources to make it a national wind energy leader. Now it needs the policies to make it happen.

Deirdre Hirner, Washington, D.C.
It came with some surprise when Fidel Castro unleashed criticism last week about President Obamas visit in a bid to further normalize relations between the U.S. and Cuba.

Obama met with current Cuban leader Raul Castro, Fidels younger brother, but did not meet with Fidel. I know of many people who hoped Obama didnt meet with Fidel because he is irrelevant to the future of Cuba. As it turns out, Fidel is well enough to pen a letter to blast Obama and America.

We do not need the empire to give us anything, Castro wrote.

Castro is wrong. Perhaps the best chance to undue the horror, pain and economic mess that is now his legacy lies with America. That is likely why Raul Castro hosted Obama, and by extension, America.

Lasting and meaningful change may finally be on the way, but they havent come fast enough for the hordes of Cubans forced to flee in recent decades due to Fidels tyranny. The oldest wave of immigrants remember being stripped of their homes, businesses and bank accounts by Fidels goons. They remember the executions. Most of all, they remember the way Cuba was before Fidel grabbed power, one of the most progressive and glorious nations in the world.

It must be hard for Cuban-Americans to hear about how Cuba is ripe for a new economic boon from tourists who know little or care little about what happened to Cubans.

Count me among those who hope Cubans in Cuba will see a better day soon. And among those counting the days until Fidels funeral.

Daniel Vasquez is a columnist for the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel.
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In my line of work, understanding risk tolerance is all about stepping away from biases and preconceived notions and putting myself in the mindset of my client. With experience comes trust. When you deal with many different types of clients, you learn how to allay fears and to prevent procrastination in the service of crafting and implementing a successful financial plan.

Designing a good plan or investment portfolio is a combination of selecting the right products and solutions and having a team approach to execute it effectively. As with sports, good teams have the right fit of personality types. Each player needs to maintain clear communication about the intended goals.

Of course, there will be unexpected twists and turns over time. Static planning doesnt work in real world applications. Success is a combination of getting all the small details right and being flexible to adapt to changing circumstances.

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It's just like rock climbing. Really. Let me explain.

In March, I enrolled in rock climbing school with the Arizona Mountaineering Club. Most of the students had some experience (mostly indoor climbing in a gym) and wanted to gain technical skills and be safe climbing outdoors. I wanted to conquer my fear of heights and get outside my comfort zone.

During our first outdoor climb, other students tried to calm me by saying I would be anchored in at all times, safely tethered on a rope. Yet I could tell by their questions and comments that they didnt understand the irrationality of my fear. That realization gave me a better understanding of the fears of my clients regarding market downturns or running out of money in retirement. Never mind that their fears were sometimes unwarranted or exaggerated. Risk is often in the eye of the beholder.

At the end of rock climbing class, we were asked to pick a graduation climb. I chose Camelback Mountain in Phoenix for three reasons: 1) I pass this iconic landmark with sheer cliff faces on my daily work commute and thought it might be fun to relive the experience every time I drive past it; 2) it was a challenging six-hour multi-pitch experience of rugged hiking and climbing; and 3) the lead instructor for the class would be the guide on this climb. The last point was especially important to me. I wanted to have a familiar and trusted member of the team with me on this journey. It helped calm my fearsthe same thing a trusted adviser can do for a client who is uncertain about the financial future.

I have been a victim of procrastination in the past. Sometimes it is the fear of the unknown, other times it is pure laziness. My clients display the same behaviors in their financial planning. But one thing became readily apparent as I learned to climbwaiting is never an option. You do it in the moment, or you probably never do it. Going first and not having time to think about the consequences worked really well. Too much overthinking is never good for any plan.

Climbing is very gear-intensive. Learning to trust your equipment is vital to enjoying the sport and, in my case, working through the fear of heights. Although the school had rental equipment to buy, most of us wanted to purchase our own harnesses and other safety gear so we could learn how it worked for us.

Another takeaway emerged for me: Trusting your financial plan or investment equipment in the form of selecting investments in a portfolio can certainly help maintain long-term success. The last thing you want to do is question whether you are in the right products or ones you dont understand during periods of stress.

Having a strong team can make all the difference in success, too. I was paired with several different students during the class. Some were a good fit; others, not so much. The president of the climbing school told me that when someone is belaying you on a climb (belay is the safety procedure), you are forming a contract with that person to keep you safe during the climb. Both climber and safety need to understand and respect when the contract starts and when it ends. Clear communication is vital.

Likewise, clients and advisers need to have the right personality fit and respect each persons role. I am less inclined to work with someone that I dont respect or trust after my climbing experience.

And just as with personal finances, sometimes what you fear the most isnt what can get you in trouble. Take bees, for example. My big fear as a rock climber was the heights issue and physically not being able to complete a climb. But we learned in class that swarming bees can be a dangerous hazard for climbers, who can become disoriented and lose safety on a climb. Some have died from falls after being swarmed by bees. This insight gave me a newfound respect for dealing with the unexpected and finding new tools to help model different outcomes for my clients who are concerned with issues such as running out of money in retirement.

On the graduation climb, we had to navigate a series of steep approaches. Several times we switched from hiking boots to climbing shoes to get better grip. We reached the top. Scaling a 2,700-foot peak pumped most of us full of confidence. But the hardest part was yet to come.

Coming back down the mountain proved to be terrifying for some of my fellow climbers. Afraid of slipping, several students tried to navigate a steep 20-foot decline on their rear ends instead of trusting the techniques they had learned and their specialized shoes.

My thought was, How can this 20-foot stretch hurt me after everything that happened all day? A final lesson: Success in any endeavor is getting a lot of small steps done correctly, even if they are not the most glamorous part of the journey.

Robert Altshuler, JD CLU CHFC, founder of PlanningCore Wealth Advisors, LLC (opens in new tab), provides investment and estate strategies to entrepreneurs, executives and affluent families in Phoenix, Arizona.
Beth Everett and her husband, Glenn, built a cottage in their backyard in 2014 for their son Jordan to live in when hes home from college. But while the studio sits empty, visitors to Portland, Ore., can rent the cozy space through Airbnb for $99 a night. Fox Lair, as its known, offers heated floors, a small sitting area decked out with guitars and bongos, and plenty of eclectic artwork. Everett estimates that in 2015 they earned about $9,000 from a steady stream of visitors, which she used to help pay for editing and cover designs for her self-published books, the Lee Harding mystery series. It was the easiest money I ever made, she says. And it was fun.

Airbnb (opens in new tab) wasnt the first website to help owners, or hosts, rent out their homes directly to travelers. But the rental site has made it easy for anyone, in any city, to offer up a couch, a spare room, an in-law suite or the entire house for a short-term rental, generally defined as fewer than 30 days. You dont have to have a six-bedroom house in Florida, says Joseph DiTomaso, CEO of AllTheRooms.com (opens in new tab), a search engine that aggregates both traditional accommodations and short-term rentals. You can rent out a room while youre traveling for a week and make money to pay for your trip.

A plethora of websites compete with Airbnb. The sites typically charge a service fee of at least 3% of the rent (and sometimes substantially more), but some lend a hand with the marketing, take care of collecting taxes in some locations and offer insurance. Airbnb, along with other sites, collects payments from your guests and deducts fees and sometimes taxes before sending the rest to you. Third-party services, including Guesty, Pillow and Proprly, offer to help make your gig as a landlord easier by managing your listings, delivering keys to guests, cleaning your place and more, often for a small percentage of the rental income.

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Navigate the Rules

Start by checking with your homeowners association, condo or co-op board (or landlord, if youre a renter) to see if short-term rentals are allowed and under what conditions. Your city or county may also have restrictions, but in many jurisdictions, laws that apply are rarely enforcedor they havent been updated to address sharing-economy rentals.

Several cities have made changes to deal with the new realities of home sharing. Last year, for example, San Francisco passed a law allowing rentals of fewer than 30 nights by residents who follow a set of strict rules. In New York City, rentals of fewer than 30 days are legal in apartment buildings if the host is there.

Your city may charge a registration fee, require you to secure city permits and business licenses, and enforce zoning rules that may prohibit short-term rentals. Sometimes that sounds more intimidating than it actually is. In Portland, where Everett lives, youre allowed to rent out part of your primary residence as long as you register with the city and jump through a few hoops, such as notifying your neighbors and keeping a log of your guests. And you may have to undergo an inspection to ensure your rental meets safety standards.

Right now, laws governing short-term rentals tend to be enforced only if the neighbors complain because, say, your guests throw a raucous party. But that may be changing. I am seeing increasing oversight and enforcement of short-term rental ordinances, particularly for tax collection and code enforcement, says Paula E. Meyer, a real estate lawyer and owner of Paula E. Meyer & Associates, in Tustin, Calif. If you flout the rules and get caught, the extra bucks you make could be gobbled up by fines and other penalties.

Vacation rental websites generally take a hands-off approach to local laws, leaving it to you to work out the legalities of subletting your home. Your city council or local government website is the best place to start your research. Airbnb also has summaries and links for about 50 U.S. cities on its Responsible Hosting page.

[page break]

Figure the Taxes

Whether youre renting out your couch or an entire villa, your guests usually have to pay taxes to the city, county or stateand sometimes all three. The taxes go by different names: sales, lodging, occupancy or hotel taxes. Some rental services, including Airbnb and FlipKey by TripAdvisor (opens in new tab), automatically deduct and pay these taxes for you in locations that have agreements with the services. Thats one reason Everett prefers Airbnb over VRBO, a website on which she used to list her cottage. The city and county split an 11.5% transient lodging tax, and the state takes another 1%.

If you list with a site that doesnt take care of taxes for you, services such as Avalara MyLodge Tax can help you calculate what you owe. Avalara charges about $150 a year to file taxes on your behalf, but the amount changes depending on how many monthly or quarterly returns your city and county require.

Unless you rent out your home for 14 or fewer days a yearsay, when a big convention comes to townyoull owe income tax on your rental income, too. Airbnb collects payment from your guests before sending it to you and may send you a 1099 form at tax time if your income and reservations exceed a certain amount. Regardless of whether you get a 1099 form, report your rental income on Schedule E of your Form 1040 (your state and city will probably want to know about your rental income, too). You can deduct costs directly related to your rental, such as the state and local taxes you pay, advertising expenses, and even new sheets and towels. You can also deduct a portion of expenses that you pay for your entire home, such as utilities and potentially homeowners insurance. Consult IRS Publication 527, Residential Rental Property (Including Rental of Vacation Homes), for more details.

Check Your Insurance

You want to be protected if a guest steals something or suffers an injury and holds you liable. And if a guest starts a fire or causes water damage, you want to be sure your insurance will pay for repairs. Tell your insurer how often you rent and whether you live in the home simultaneously; insurers might see it as a plus if youre there when renters are.

Your homeowners insurer might be fine covering the occasional paying guest, says Jeanne Salvatore, of the Insurance Information Institutebut get that approval in writing. Or your agent might advise you to switch to a dwelling fire policy, which typically costs about 25% more than homeowners insurance, to account for the extra risk you take on as a host.

To add liability protection, Spencer Houldin, president of Ericson Insurance Advisors, in Washington Depot, Conn., recommends an umbrella policy of at least $1 million, which typically costs $150 to $200 per year.

Take simple precautions as well, such as concealing valuables. And be clear about your house rules to cut down on incidents that wouldnt trigger an insurance claim but would still hurt your wallet. A few bad experiences prompted Everett to impose some restrictions. For example, she instituted a no-guests policy when renters invited guests who drank too much and trashed her place.

Airbnb includes coverage for liability and property damage, up to $1 million each. Other rental sites sell or include insurance as well. Whether you choose to rely on this coverage depends on how comfortable you are trusting your home to an insurer you may not know much about. Its a good backup, but dont rely on it, says Houldin. I would much prefer to work with my own insurance company. Also, if you list your home on multiple websites, you need coverage that will apply to all guests.

Everett priced a couple of commercial policies, but the premiums were more than double her homeowners insurance. For now, she is sticking with Airbnb's coverage.

Everett says she loves getting texts alerting her to new bookings. She often brightens up the rental with fresh flowers and hands out coupons for free beer at her favorite restaurant. You get really lovely people whom you want to keep in touch with forever, she says.

The Big Three Sharing Sites

The sites below are the best-known home-sharing economy services. Other smaller or specialty sites include HouseTrip, Kid & Coe, Onefinestay, Rent Like a Champion, Roomorama and Wimdu.

Airbnb (opens in new tab). Rents out private rooms or entire structures. The service fee is 3% per booking. Airbnb holds payments from guests until after check-in and collects and pays occupancy taxes in certain cities. Property and liability coverage are included at no extra charge. Hosts can impose a security deposit as well.

HomeAway (opens in new tab). The site, which also owns VRBO, rents out entire structures only. The service fee starts at 8% per booking, or owners can pay a $349 annual fee instead. Homeowners can buy tailored vacation-rental insurance called HomeAway Assure. There is no assistance with taxes. Hosts can impose a security deposit.

FlipKey by TripAdvisor (opens in new tab). FlipKey lets you rent out private rooms or entire structures. The service fee is 3% per booking, or owners can pay an annual fee that starts at $399. The site holds payments from guests until after check-in. TripAdvisor, which owns other sites as well, collects and pays occupancy taxes in certain cities. No insurance products are available. Hosts can impose a security deposit.
The rise of the dollar store business model caters to a disappearing middle class who are incurring shrinking incomes. This has made dollar stores prosper, in the last decade. Dollar stores, for most Americans, have carried an odd sort of stigma. In the past, these stores were seen as shopping for the poor, only. We are all now aware that many people who were in the once strong American middle class were thrown off of the prosperity path and into lower income brackets from business layoffs, downsizing, and salary reduction. While regular product companies struggle the expanding dollar stores have found a niche in this economic climate. The shrinking middle class means more customers for dollar stores.

A big part of the new recovery is lining up at midnight at Wal-Mart stores in order to purchase food. There are families not able to feed their families by the end of the month. They are literally lining up at midnight at Wal-Mart stores, waiting to buy food along with their Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) Cards when their funds are deposited into their accounts.

EBT cards are an electronic system that allows state welfare departments to issue benefits via magnetically encoded payment cards, used in the United States. The average monthly EBT payout is $125.00 per person!

Common benefits provided (in the United States) via EBT, are typically of two general categories: food and cash benefits. Food benefits are federally authorized benefits that can be used only to purchase food and non-alcoholic beverages. Food benefits are distributed through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly the Food Stamp Program. Cash benefits include state general assistance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits, and refugee benefits.

There appears to be a growing great divide with in the current U.S. economy. The financial sector is swimming in their bailout-induced profits. Within their elite circles, it appears as if the recession is over.

However, within the average American family, they are not experiencing available access to new credit cards, equity in their homes is vanishing and they do not have a store of available capital they can access like a stock portfolio.

The table below clearly shows the middle class making less money year after year while the wealthy earn more each year. The money is slowly shifting from everyone to just the one-percenters  YIKES

Conclusion:

In short, the average American is slowly earning less and becoming financially stressed about their future outlook.

If you are one of these hard working individuals experiencing a decline in business/income its best you do some research and change what you are doing because things will likely get much worse before they get better.

Mainly because of Trump thousands of Americans are looking to leave the country with the search term How to Move to Canada up over 1000% last month. While I love Canada, myself being a Canadian and all, there are many other great places to live and a very full life at a fraction the cost of Canada/USA.

Couple years ago I went to the DR (Dominican Republic) to see if it would work for my family in the winters to escape the cold and be surrounded in palm trees, ocean and kitesurfing. It was an awesome experience with a huge amount of development, tons of Canadians, retirees, and elegant vacation properties available at Holden Sothebys.

Chris Vermeulen

TheGoldAndOilGuy.com
(Kitco News) - Finally, something to take Donald Trump off the front page; a new political tax-haven scandal has gripped global attention.

But, according to some analysts, this one wont have much of an impact on financial markets.

The political landscape was shaken Sunday night after documents were leaked by German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung, implicating 72 current and former heads of states to secret offshore accounts in Panama that helped them hide money and evade taxes.

Obviously, it looks bad, Wynn Thin, global head of emerging market currencies at Brown Brothers Harriman, told Kitco News Monday. But its not something we trade on. I think its fascinating to read about but I dont think its affecting markets.

Thin added that he will remain focused on the Federal Reserves outlook, which to him, remains the main market driver right now.

However, even if it wont make a dent on markets, Dennis Gartman said he wont be ignoring the news.

People who think this is only going to be a short-term news phenomena are naive, he said. This is one of the biggest news items weve seen in a long period of time and this is going to take some political figures all around the world down.

Gerald Celente, publisher of the Trends Journal and longtime market watcher, agreed with Gartman in that this will have more of an impact on geopolitics.

It is going to have geopolitical implications of the people involved in those countries, he said.

Celente is not too surprised by the news, he is just content that it has finally surfaced.

No one is shocked that corporations are using these schemes to hide dough and not pay taxes, he noted. What is really making this story popular, Celente continued, is the fact that these corporations front men that people like to call presidents, prime ministers, and chancellors are doing the same thing.

This is no longer a conspiracy theory, its a fact, he said.

According to Axel Merk, president of Merk Investments and currency market veteran, not really.

I mean some governments might have their leaderships toppled but it doesnt look like its going to happen to the countries that really matter in the world of currencies, he said.

I think there is a broader story here that people will realize that there is no such thing as privacy anymore; but, does it mean that it will be good for gold? Im reluctant to jump to conclusions at this stage.

By Sarah Benali of Kitco News; sbenali@kitco.com

Follow me on Twitter @SdBenali
(Kitco News) - The worlds political class has been rocked to the core in reaction to 2.6 terabytes of data that was leaked Sunday by German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung.



According to reports, 72 current and former heads of states have been linked to secret offshore accounts with the worlds fourth largest offshore law firm, Mossack Fonseca. Some of biggest names connected to to the secret accounts include Icelands Prime Minster Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson who faces calls for an early election as citizens protest in the streets; Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.



The leaked documents also show that Ian Cameron, the father of U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, ran an offshore fund, Blairmore Holdings Inc, that avoided paying taxes in Britain.



The secret accounts also show a link to Russian leader Vladimir Putin. According to the documents, one of Putins closest confidants Sergei Roldugim, who is also the godfather to Putins eldest daughter, shuffled loans worth $2 billion in a network of secret accounts.



Some are calling the release of the Panama papers the biggest journalist leak in history as the Washington based Consortium of Investigative Journalists, collaboration of reporters from more than 100 media outlets in 78 countries around the world, has spent the last year reviewing all the documents.

"I think the leak will prove to be probably the biggest blow the off-shore world has ever taken because of the extent of the documents," said Gerard Ryle, director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which has been analyzing the data.

The reaction on Twitter has been vast with more than 1 million posts ranging from humorous to sarcastic, to outright disgust.



Here are some of the best of the best that Twitter had to offer on #panamaleaks and #panamapapers:

Those involved in the #PanamaLeaks driving to work like pic.twitter.com/KA5ULGpG8V  RANsquawk (@RANsquawk) April 4, 2016

Summary of the #PanamaPapers leak:

- Rich people hid their money overseas

- We'll all get distracted with something else in a day or two  dbrand (@dbrandSkins) April 4, 2016

Look. Tax is for the little people, the serfs, the plebs its not for me and my rich mates. Got it? #PanamaLeaks pic.twitter.com/djl17Obf30  Andy Hearn (@AndyHearn09) April 4, 2016

#PanamaLeaks: Another tax scandal exposed. Poor countries lose $170 billion each year to tax dodging. Take action: https://t.co/tH74mVg5V0  Oxfam International (@Oxfam) April 4, 2016

RE #PanamaLeaks: Wouldn't it have been quicker for all to leak a list of rich people who have morals?  Lawrence Wakefield (@lawrencedarcy) April 4, 2016

My thoughts are with all the crooks, spivs, fraudsters and their families at this difficult time #PanamaLeaks  Mr Ethical (@nw_nicholas) April 4, 2016

Yeah but what about the POOR people who hide THEIR wealth*



*Loose change in a jar to pay for food and medicine etc #PanamaLeaks  Wil Anderson (@Wil_Anderson) April 4, 2016

While the latest tax haven sandal has spanned the globe, some have noticed that there is one country that is absent from the list.





Finally, the Simpsons predicted Donald Trump would be president 16 years ago but before that, in 1996, they predicted this latest scandal.

By Neils Christensen of Kitco News; nchristensen@kitco.com

Follow Neils Christensen @neils_C
News.com.au reports:

Yesterday Mr Turnbull outlined what he called a once in a generation reform toredesign the tax system for the first time in 74 years.

The plan involves the federal government cutting its own income tax and giving the states the ability to collect their own taxes.

While details have not yet been revealed, some have suggested the federal government could give the states 2 per cent of the income tax rate, which Mr Turnbull said would raise about $14 billion for the states.

When asked whether this was actually double taxation, Mr Turnbull said no.

He said the plan could mean different states had different rates of income tax, but they already had different rates of land tax, payroll tax and stamp duty.

The fundamental question is this: Are we sick of the blame game, are we sick of the finger pointing, are we sick of states not being responsible for much of the money they spend? Mr Turnbull said.

What we are proposing is that we begin a grown up conversation, a rational conversation, about a solution that does not involve any new or it doesnt involve any additional tax.

Mr Turnbull described the plan as a change to the way income tax was allocated.

It is too easy for states and territories to just go to the federal government ATM and too easy for them to just blame the Commonwealth for not having enough money, he said.

It will deliver a better government because people, politicians and parliaments will be more responsible for more of the money they spend.

They will have to be answerable to their voters for the money they spend.
Shenandoah, IA (51601)

Today

Windy with a mix of clouds and sun. High 87F. Winds SSE at 25 to 35 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph..

Tonight

Windy...variable clouds with thunderstorms, especially early. Potential for severe thunderstorms. Low 57F. Winds SSW at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of rain 40%.
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By Mamie Kuykendall of the Knoxville News Sentinel

Many business owners are wrestling with the realities of the Affordable Care Act for the first time and few are winning.

This is the first year businesses with 50 to 99 full-time employees are required to offer specifically outlined health care coverage, and poorly defined reporting requirements are leaving employers bewildered.

"Confusion is exactly what you're finding on both business and individual levels," said Eric Elliott, a principal accountant at Pershing Yoakley & Associates. "People don't know what information to bring to file.  No one has instructed them in the process."

Companies are finding it hard to gather required employee information, and IT departments are unequipped to compile everything into one form. The panic is compounded by the shadow of hefty penalties that will be levied for non-compliance with the employer responsibility mandate of the ACA.

The fines are steep. Companies that don't offer affordable insurance will have to pay $3,000 for every employee who seeks government-subsidized care, while employers who do not offer insurance options will pay $2,000 for every full-time employee.

Collected penalties are projected to total $228 billion between 2017 and 2026.

This could spell trouble for employees. Some companies hit with the fines are expected to ease their losses by lowering wages, while health care-related taxes will cause other employers to increase taxable wages while decreasing non-taxable benefits, according to a report released this month by the Congressional Budget Office and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation.

Reporting

Employers will provide the majority of insurance to 244 million people under age 65 this year. For each worker, employers must submit Form 1095, which documents whether insurance was provided on a month-by-month basis. Many employers find the task difficult because monthly information is not usually tracked, according to Anthony Spezia, president and CEO of Covenant Health, a Knoxville-based health system.

"No one has a payroll system that says if employees were covered every month," Spezia said. "This is not something that we track normally. We offer it, if they choose to buy it, they buy it, and we're done for the year. Nobody is set up to do this.

"I will tell you this: most companies are not going to be able to comply with the regulation, because it's outrageous. We don't track this monthly. We've never had this."

Additionally, the reports require information not commonly known about dependents, who must be offered coverage. Companies are scrambling to find social security numbers and birth dates for each insured child.

"We've got 93 branch locations, with 50,000 employees," said Jason Leverant, president and COO of AtWork Group, a national staffing agency. "We're franchisors and each of our franchisees has their own subjectivity, their own plan offerings they offer, so it's very, very complex for us."

The 1095 form requires information from IT, HR and health care providers, and many company departments are throwing around the task "like a hot potato," according to Elizabeth Wright, a certified public accountant with Pugh CPAs, based in Knoxville.

"Even the software that we purchased to print forms for our clients, there's been software updates and several corrections because they're not ready, just like no one else is," Wright said.

Since the filing requirements are new, the government has promised to extend grace to those who attempt to file, waiving fines for incorrect submissions this year. The grace period extends only to fines related to filing. Penalties for improper insurance will be enforced.

"It's just more hoops to jump through, more bureaucracy, more red tape, more things that you have to work out," Wright said. "Not only do you have to do your tax return, W2, and your 1099s, now you have to do these health care forms."

Costs and the marketplace

There are three insurance requirements that companies must meet to comply with the mandate. They have to include essential minimum coverage, which provides yearly screenings and other government-chosen services. They must be of minimum value, covering at least 60 percent of the total cost of medical services outlined by the government. Finally, they must be affordable, costing employees no more than 9.5 percent of their annual household income, according to the Internal Revenue Service.

This means the employer must cover a large chunk of increasingly rising premiums, some of which have shot up 35 percent in the last year. Small businesses that pay minimum wage are feeling the costs as their employees' 9.5 percent responsibility covers little of the premiums.

"I don't see a decline in the pay rate, (but) I see a decline in offered benefits," Spezia said. "The issue with Affordable Care Act is whether or not it's affordable. The goal is to give coverage, which we are all in favor of."

Coverage is not cheap at an average of $2.70 an hour per employee, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and premiums continue to rise. BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee quoted a 36.3 percent premium increase for 2016, and was approved, according to healthinsurance.org.

"I think across the board, companies have realized health insurance costs have gotten out of control," Elliott said. "Health care costs are going up significantly, and now we have bureaucratic hurdles to jump through. No one has any other ideas (about how to fix it)."

One reason for drastically rising premiums is the amount of people flocking to the Health Insurance Marketplace  online insurance markets, where roughly 13 million people obtained coverage in 2016. Around 10 million received government subsidies, totaling thousands of dollars per enrollee. The CBO estimates that in 2016, the government will spend more than $600 billion subsidizing health insurance for people under 65, plus costs for Medicare and Medicaid.

Premiums are increasing because people with high medical expenses have entered the exchanges, while a lot of younger and healthier people are choosing to remain uninsured and simply pay the fine at the end of the year, leaving no one to offset the costs, according to Leverant.

"It has a negative impact, because the more expensive it gets, the older and sicker population, they start falling off, too, so now you have less people," Leverant said. "It's called 'The death spiral' because it spirals every year and eventually no one can enroll because it's so expensive.

"I know there's been financial modeling before the exchanges really came out that said three to five years and this thing's gonna be unusable, unless something changes."

Coping with the ACA

Because business owners have certain insurance requirements, the government is supposed to notify them if an employee enters the exchange, to allow employers to track potential fines.

According to Leverant, no notices were sent out in the past year, but employers will be fined anyway.

"The government acknowledged the fact that these exchange notices have not been going out to employers, and had not through the entire year," Leverant said. "Here's the funny thing: they said 'Well, we know we didn't do it, but still the penalties are going to be enforced.' "

The penalties and heightening premiums are causing a shift in the job market as companies look for ways to control medical coverage costs, but businesses have few options.

Since the Affordable Care Act considers anyone who works more than 30 hours a week to be a full-time employee, employers wishing to avoid health care costs can either cut employee hours and lose manpower, or pay the rising premiums for health care coverage. And because hours are regulated, employers who hire too many part-time staff will have to provide insurance, anyway.

"You have to aggregate those part-time people and add their hours together to determine if this law applies to you," Wright said. "If you think 'I'm gonna cut hours so nobody goes over the threshold,' but then you have to hire more people to do that, all those people's hours are going to count in your full-time employee number, which could put you above your threshold.

"When you get hired on as a waitress, do you really expect health care? No. But now the companies will be forced to give it."

Further employer confusion stems from common ownership regulations. If a small company is a member of an ownership group, and that group has 50 or more collective employees, the small company must offer health insurance.

Some businesses are choosing to use temporary employees who work with ACA-compliant staffing agencies in an effort to avoid penalties for infractions.

"I'm an independent employer. I'm a vendor of you," Leverant said. "You pay an invoice for the employees we send, and we're the employer. (Employers who utilize our services) are not responsible for the employees we send, from the ACA standpoint, so a lot of companies can use a staffing firm to offset their potential cost.

"We grew 57 percent over 2014, revenue-wise, and the industry was like seven percent. We really exploded with growth."

A few businesses are choosing not to offer coverage and instead pay the fines, sending their employees to exchanges for insurance. According to the CBO report, 4 million to 9 million fewer people will have coverage through their employers each year from 2017 through 2026.

"Over the next few years, more employers are expected to respond to the availability of coverage through the marketplaces by declining to offer insurance to their employees," the report reads.

Spezia is seeing the shift.

"You've seen elimination of insurance for part-time employees," he said. "You're pushing employers to focus on full-time employees only. I'm not sure that the ACA got more people to offer coverage."

Retention issues prohibit many businesses from taking this tack, according to Kathy Hamilton, COO of HealthCare 21, a healthcare business coalition.

"For a mid-size to a large company, when they're out in the marketplace competing to hire talent, it's not just the salary, it's the full benefit package that attracts the types of employees they're looking to bring on," Hamilton said. "They know they've got to be competitive or they're not going to get the talent that they want to bring in-house. Health care is a big one."

Businesses are struggling through the process, but no one has found a good solution, according to Elliott and Leverant.

"People kind of kept their heads in the sand and thought this is gonna go away, they're gonna vote it out, and many times Congress tried to veto it, but the president has come in and said 'No, we're not taking it off the table,' " Leverant said. "The snowball's been dropped at the top of the hill, and it's rolling, and it's so large and rolling so fast you can't just stop it, you've got to figure out a way to slow it down and make it more bearable."
SHARE Caffey-Knight Davison DePaoli Douglas

Advanced Water Systems of Louisville has been named the No. 1 Costco Dealer Weekly and Top Volume Dealer in the Southeast by EcoWater Systems.

Wynne Caffey-Knight has been certified as a Tennessee Supreme Court Rule 31 Mediator. She is a partner at Elmore, Stone & Caffey, PLLC.

Brian Davison and David DePaoli of the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have been elected fellows of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. Davison is the chief scientist for the systems biology and biotechnology initiative as well as the science coordinator for the BioEnergy Science Center. DePaoli is a senior R&D staff member at ORNL's Radiochemical Engineering Development Center.

Terence Douglas, the president of Alliant Corp., was named Small Business Person of the Year for the state of Tennessee by the U.S. Small Business Administration. Douglas has been invited to attend ceremonies in Washington, D.C., on May 1-2, when the national winner will be announced.

Debra Fulton, partner at Frantz, McConnell & Seymour, LLP, has earned the ANSI-accredited Certified Information Privacy Professional/United States (CIPP/US) credential through the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP).

Kyle Goodrick of Knoxville, an engineering student at University of Tennessee, has received a $1,000 scholarship from the American Council of Engineering Companies of Tennessee (ACEC of Tennessee). Goodrick, who is studying electrical engineering, now will compete for national ACEC scholarships to be announced in April.

Dr. Lynn Massingale has been appointed a judge for the Entrepreneur of the Year Southeast program by Ernst & Young. He is the founder of TeamHealth.

Mercedes-Benz of Knoxville has been named a Mercedes-Benz "Best of the Best" dealership for 2015. The program recognizes top performing Mercedes-Benz dealers for their exemplary performance in sales, service and parts, as well as excellence in operations and customer experience.

LaToya Myles has been recognized by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research for exemplary service in diversity and inclusion. She is a lead research physical scientist at NOAA's Oak Ridge division.

Nanomechanics, Inc. founder and president Warren Oliver, PhD, was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. Oliver was elected "for contributions to the development and commercialization of nanomechanical testing technology," according to the NAE. He is one of 80 new members and 22 foreign members elected this year.

University of Tennessee researchers Brian O'Meara, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and Kai Sun, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, have received CAREER Awards from the National Science Foundation, one of its highest honors for young faculty members. Both awards include grants for their research.

Jason Leverant, president and COO of AtWork Group, a 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. Leverant is responsible for the oversight and administration of the AtWork Group brands throughout the country.

Peak Restaurants, which operates the Knoxville-area franchise for McAlister's Deli, has been named a Franchisee of the Year by Focus Brands, which owns the McAlister's brand.

Adam Price has been named Code Official of the Year by the Eastern Chapter of the Tennessee Building Officials Association. He is a code officer for the Town of Farragut.

TIS Insurance Services has been named Agency of the Year by United Heartland.

Team Health Holdings Inc., one of the nation's largest providers of outsourced physician staffing solutions for hospitals, was named among "150 Great Places to Work in Healthcare" by Becker's Hospital Review for the second consecutive year.

The University of Tennessee Institute for Public Service has earned Interest Level Recognition in the annual Excellence in Tennessee program by the Tennessee Center for Performance Excellence.

Doug Webster has been named a Top Retirement Plan Advisor Under 40 by the National Association of plan Advisors. He is a managing director for SageView Advisory Group in Knoxville.

Dylan Whitman, a financial planning specialist, financial advisor and CFP in Morgan Stanley's wealth management office in Knoxville, has been named to the firm's Pacesetter's Club, a global recognition program for financial advisors who, within their first five years, demonstrate the highest professional standards and first-class client service.

Jane Wu and Shigetoshi Eda, researchers at the University of Tennessee, have received the B. Otto and Kathleen Wheely Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer from the UT Research Foundation. The two developed a point-of-care disease detection device that is being licensed by Meridian Biosciences. Wu is an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at UT and Eda is a professor of forestry, wildlife and fisheries with the UT Institute of Agriculture.
ADAM LAU/NEWS SENTINEL King University's campus in Hardin Valley is located across the street from Pellissippi State.

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By Steve Trosky, steve.trosky@knoxvillebiz.com

King University was founded in 1867 in Bristol. It has since grown to four brick and mortar campuses with 10 additional campuses located at community colleges across Tennessee and southwest Virginia.

In 2008, King University began off-site partnerships in Knoxville before building a campus in 2010. It is relatively new to the area's educational landscape.

Samantha Lane, the school's territory manager, wants you to know that the university is here to help.

"Often, if we can't help a student or an employer or whomever, with the resources that we have, we are always happy to send them to someone else," Lane said. "I think that's why so many people are comfortable using us as an education resource, because if we can't help them here .... we have no problem sending them to somebody who is the best fit. We work a lot with other schools in this area. I would want someone to come to us first and we would help them find a good fit.

"I love Google, but there is only so much you can do in finding quality education."

King is a private university that offers more than 90 majors, minors and pre-professional degrees with graduate programs in business administration, nursing and education. Students can live on campus in Bristol, attend class one night a week for most programs or take a class online.

When the Great Recession hit in 2009, King benefitted as laid-off workers returned to school to either become more educated in their chosen profession or to change professions.

"Students come to us for a handful of reasons," Lane said. "One, they have finished from a community college and they need to get the second two years of a four-year degree. We teach on community college campuses and our campus here (in Hardin Valley) is conveniently located (across the street from Pellissippi State).

"Additionally, they'll come to us if their employer is supporting them and they say 'I want you either obtain a bachelor's degree or pursue an advanced degree, and I'm going to help you for it.' Then we have some who their employer is not supporting them and they have to either get a degree, a different degree or an advanced degree to get a different job."

Other King students typically fall into two other categories: a skill set that is lacking or bucket list. It's the skill set category where Lane feels King can hope many businesses.

"Another way that we can help those business members in our community is by offering professional development for their employees," said Andrea Hurst, director of the career success center at King. "Quite a few of our team here in Knoxville go out to these businesses and organizations and present on what does it look like to build your own personal brand. What does your resume look like? What should your cover letter look like? What is that transition from working adult to education?

"I look at that as almost a philanthropy for us. That's us giving back to the community, although they're not here, they're not students, they're not paying for an education. We're offering them the opportunity to learn, and then with that, they associate King University with this professional development seminar that they were involved with and maybe they'll check King out and see what we have to offer."

Hurst said that members of King University staff are in the community building relationships with businesses and organizations.

"We are building those relationships, so those businesses feel comfortable," Hurst said. "They think to themselves 'How can I develop my employees? Oh, I know Samantha from the chamber or Executive Women International or from a networking group that I'm involved with or the American Marketing Association' ... so those businesses don't have a problem calling us and asking 'Hey, if you can't do this, do you know someone who can?' "

King recently launched a platform called the College Central Network, which allows employers to go directly to the college's website and post open positions.

"It really gives them the opportunity to review resumes on that website, post those jobs and connect with students in the career center," Hurst said. "We do it both virtually and personally."

One of King's philosophies in enrollment is to remove barriers.

"We try to help our students across the board," Lane said. "What are their real barriers, like financial limitations, so we can connect students with financial resources? Can we make sure that they're aware of free money, scholarships? Have they asked their employer for tuition assistance? Anything like that. But then it's also perceived barriers.'I'm too old. I don't have the time' or whatever those things may be.

"How do we help them remove those barriers, and how do we help them to believe that they really can do it? How do we use the tools that we have to make sure they are successful? That is anything from connecting them with resources to our programs seem to be very affordable in the marketplace, because we really want people to have access to quality education."
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The Knoxville Franchise Business Expo will be held at the Rothchild Catering & Conference Center at 8807 Kingston Pike, Knoxville, on April 20 from 10 a.m.3 p.m. While the majority of the expo is available to wander, two workshops will be offered: Franchise Funding Options at 11 a.m. and Finding the Right Franchise Fit at noon.

Michael Ousley, AAMS, will present a seminar "The Entrepreneurial Equation" on April 20 from noon-1 p.m. at the Anderson County Chamber of Commerce. Limited number of seats are available. The event is free to chamber members, $10 for non-members.

The Anderson County Chamber of Commerce, in partnership with the Tennessee Small Business Development Center, will host a free workshop for potential and existing small business owners and entrepreneurs who want a better understanding of the business planning process. The seminar will be held on April 21 from 911 a.m. at the Anderson County Chamber of Commerce in Clinton. To register, call 865-457-2559 or go to www.andersoncountychamber.org and click on the title under events to register.

Andrew K. Lowe, LBMC, will present a seminar "The Benefits of Knowing the Value of Your Business" on April 27 from 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. at the Anderson County Chamber of Commerce. The event is free to chamber members, $10 for non-members.
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If he could, U.S. Rep. John J. Duncan Jr. says he would bar any company that hires a former federal employee from getting a government contract with the department or agency where he or she used to work.

But since that's not going to happen, the Knoxville Republican is going after a related problem.

Duncan and U.S. Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-NY, have introduced legislation that targets operatives who gather inside information from the federal government and sell it to Wall Street investors.

The practice is legal. The Duncan/Slaughter bill wouldn't ban it  no one has figured out a way to do that  but it would subject anyone who is involved in the so-called political intelligence industry to the same regulations and requirements as lobbyists.

"This legislation is a commonsense proposal to finally end the ability of political intelligence operatives to work behind closed doors and profit from information that's available only to the well-connected in Washington," Duncan said. "It's something that Republicans and Democrats should agree on."

It's not the first time Duncan and Slaughter have set their sights on what is reportedly a $400-million-a-year industry. The two lawmakers filed the same bill in fall 2014, but the clock ran out before Congress had a chance to take up the legislation. Duncan thinks there's a chance that Congress might approve the measure this time.

"I think this is a bill most people would be in favor of, both the liberals and the conservatives," he said. "It's just more or less an open government kind of legislation."

Here's how the political intelligence industry works:

High-placed professionals leave their jobs at the White House, Congress or some government agency after a few years and move back into the private sector. Then they go back to their friends in government, often the same agency where they used to work, to gather information about upcoming regulations or announcements that aren't yet public and sell the materials to Wall Street, where they're used to influence investment decisions.

The Duncan/Slaughter bill, the Political Intelligence Transparency Act, would subject those who engage in the practice to the same regulations and requirements as lobbyists.

The rules would mean operatives in the political intelligence field would have to disclose their names, clients and fees. Public officials also would be barred from working in the political intelligence industry for one to two years, depending on the job they held in government.

"It's time to finally bring this industry into the light of day and hold these operatives to the same standards as lobbyists," said Slaughter, who teamed up with Duncan several years ago on a bill to protect students from credit card debt.

Their latest legislation includes an exemption for the media to collect and disseminate information from government sources.

Previous efforts to force political intelligence operatives to disclose their activities have come up short. Then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., stripped such provisions from a broader bill that banned insider trading by members of Congress before it became law in 2012.

But Cantor is no longer in Congress. Now that he's gone, Duncan is hoping the legislation can move forward.

"I just think everything should be as fair as possible," he said. "The public should be able to have the same information when they're considering buying a stock as some insider in Washington who gets information from some high-level committee staffer."

A number of public interest groups have backed the bill, including Public Citizen, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the Sunlight Foundation and Common Cause.
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By Steve Trosky of the Knoxville News Sentinel

This month's Greater Knoxville Business Journal is about job transitions.

I spoke with experts in the staffing industry, educators, students, and several people who know how to connect people with jobs.

And then I met Anthony Gomez, a 28-year old former soldier who now is a machine tools technology instructor at Tennessee College of Applied Technology.

You can call him the middle man. His students range from 17 to 50 years old and he does everything he can to find them a job. And then he checks up on them.

"I try to find the best fit for each student, identify what they're best at, then sit them down and give them options," Gomez said. "I look at the student right before the end of their last trimester and see where they want to go. I try to focus on some of the things that will help them get placed. I'll call employers, too.

"We have graduates out now. I'll call them about a month later and see how they're doing. They know to cut it straight with me, and I'm going to cut it straight with them. If a student isn't here at school, I'm not going to recommend them for a job. At the end of the day, it's our name. It's all going to come back to this program. One bad apple and word will spread quick. So we try to find where they will fit best. It's best for the employer, the student and for us."

Since placement is part of the job at TCAT, Gomez knows it's something he must do. But he doesn't mind.

He went to a community college after graduating from high school, but it didn't appeal to him.

"I was paying out of pocket and wasn't really taking any classes for about a year that actually went toward the degree I was going for."

So he joined the Army for the experience and to gain an education using the GI Bill.

"I knew I wanted something hands on from my (college) experience before," Gomez said. "I was stationed at Fort Campbell, Ky., my wife looked around and she found this school. I was still enlisted during my orientation here. I got out of the military and went through industrial maintenance. It was great."

Gomez said he learns better through hands-on experience, and while he knows and understands theory, nothing beats the ability to figure out things on your own.

"They can teach you theory, but at the same time, you're getting that hands-on experience. You get out in the field and not only do you have the knowledge, you have experience on machines. Fixing them, actually trouble-shooting them. There's only so much you can read and see from pictures. You get on a machine and something that's not in the book will pop up. You have to figure it out."

Gomez has it figured out.

"Anthony is a fantastic instructor," Wendel Conrad, 43, said of his instructor. "The great thing about Anthony is that he understands the industry. When he sees his students, he looks for those who have a work ethic, who show up on time, don't cause an attitude, and he will see what this guy's strength is, and who do we know who would be a good fit? Anthony is very good about trying to find us jobs."

Just like a good middle man.
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Thousands of businesses will be spared sending quarterly franchise and excise tax payments to the state Department of Revenue or be able to reduce their payments, according to a legislative staff review of one of Gov. Bill Haslam's business-friendly initiatives this year.

The bill, HB1554/SB2558, also reduces the penalty for those who don't pay their taxes on time from 5 percent per month to 2 percent per month.

Under current law, most businesses must make equal quarterly payments of franchise and excise taxes, based on estimated liability and those who do not face a penalty of 5 percent of the amount of tax due per month. The bill declares those with liability of less than $5,000 in combined taxes  estimated at 2,000 business taxpayers statewide  can begin paying only once a year rather than quarterly.

It's estimated that another 8,700 will take advantage of a provision letting them base their quarterly payments on 80 percent of their tax liability in the previous year than 100 percent, as required under current law. Proponents say businesses often know they are going to have less liability in the coming year than in the past year, maybe because of an extraordinary event in the past year, a planned cutback in the coming year or anticipation of qualifying for tax credits.

As things stand, they must still make payments and then seek a refund at year's end. In years past, big refunds have caused problems with the state's revenue flow.

The upshot, according to Fiscal Review Committee staff estimates (which rely largely on Department of Revenue figures), is an $11.8 million projected loss of revenue to the state  or a gain to statewide business bottom lines, depending on perspective  in the coming fiscal year and $5.6 million per year in subsequent years.

The bigger loss in year one is the anticipated result of business taxpayers taking advantage of reduced payments, though they will be due the following year. The continuing revenue reduction is mostly because of the reduction in penalties.

The legislation moved through committees with virtually unanimous approval and little debate.

unemployment Fraud carries heavier price

Persons collecting unemployment benefits through fraud will face higher penalties under administration bill (HB1552), drafted by the Department of Labor and Workforce Development. For the first offense, the penalty will increase from 22.5 percent of the amount overpaid to 30 percent; for second offenses, the penalty will increase from 22.5 percent to 50 percent.

The measure retreats from a previous legislative rewrite of the rules governing unemployment insurance benefits for seasonal employees, a response to the U.S. Department of Labor saying the changes put Tennessee out of compliance with federal labor law. The changes enacted in 2014 that were supposed to take effect on July 1 of this year are now put off until 2020. The most notable change is the old bill said an employee must work 36 weeks per year to be covered as a seasonal employee. The new bill sets it at 26 weeks.

The unemployment benefits bill, which includes a provision putting into statute a reduction in premiums that took effect in January through departmental administrative action, appears to have smooth sailing toward passage before an anticipated adjournment of the 2016 later in April.

Rural Opportunity Act clears way for credits

The governor's "Rural Opportunity Act of 2016" (HB2570) sets up a new state program to help pay for economic development projects in rural areas  initially funded with $10 million in Haslam's proposed budget for the coming year  making it easier to get jobs tax credits in designated areas. It zipped through the House unanimously last month with House Speaker Beth Harwell as a prominent promoter. Disputes over some details slowed the measure in the Senate, but it's expected to pass.

Under current law, credits on franchise and excise taxes are available, generally speaking, to businesses creating 25 or more new jobs at a rate of $4,500 per job. The rules are somewhat easier to qualify in an "enhancement county," or one struggling with higher unemployment and poverty rates than the state average. Under the bill, the credits will be available for creation of as few as 10 jobs in some counties.

The new program for funding grants, with approval of the Department of Economic and Community Development, to high unemployment counties is to be called the "Rural Economic Progress Fund," or PREP for short. Eligible for the grants, according to a legislative staff summary, are "site development activities; infrastructure activities; tourism-related activities; planning activities; training and mentoring activities; entrepreneurship activities; significant technological improvements; or other economic development activities determined by the commissioner of economic and community development to have a beneficial impact on the economy of this state."
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By Mamie Kuykendall of the Knoxville News Sentinel

Six startup companies will compete to win a $20,000 grand prize Wednesday when they pitch their products to a group of seasoned investors at the Tennessee Venture Challenge's final event.

This is the second year that the University of Tennessee Research Foundation has hosted the challenge, a monthslong process during which startups tweak and pitch their products, commercializing intellectual property created at a UT campus or institute.

The biyearly event culminates at The Foundry, 747 World's Fair Park Drive, 3-5 p.m. It is open to the public.

"You won't want to miss this year's competition," said Dr. David Millhorn, University of Tennessee executive vice president and president of the research foundation. "We are pleased to support this exciting group of entrepreneurs moving inventions from University of Tennessee classrooms and laboratories into the commercial marketplace."

The final teams were selected from 18 university-affiliated startup companies who beginning in February went through a seven-week "entrepreneurial boot camp" that helped inventors define their markets and tweak their pitches. Eight teams went on to compete in the semifinals.

"It showcases broad-based technologies throughout the area," said Stacey Patterson, vice president of the research foundation. "Hopefully it will lead to significant economic growth in the region."

The prize money comes from royalty revenues gained through other UT-owned intellectual properties.

Launch Tennessee will sponsor an additional $5,000 "crowd favorite" prize, to be awarded by audience members through a text-in vote.

The teams:

Farm Specific Technology: Team FarmSpec is working to patent the Flex Roller Crimper, a flexible twist on a piece of farm equipment used to manage cover crops and get rid of pesky weeds. Shawn Butler, a graduate research assistant at UT's West Tennessee AgResearch and Education Center, is working with Austin Scott and Daniel Wiggins on the project.

T&T Scientific Corp.: UT students Graham Taylor, a Ph.D. student in biomedical engineering, and Nima Tamadonni, a Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering, are leveraging their experience in the laboratory setting to help researchers increase efficiency in bioengineering, electrophysiology, biophysics and molecular pathology.

Peroxygen Systems, Inc.: Ming Qi, a former postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tennessee, is changing the hydrogen peroxide production and delivery process to make it efficient and cost effective. Hydrogen peroxide is used for its oxidizing properties, working as a bleaching agent and disinfectant against bacteria, viruses, spores and yeasts.

TechSmarrt: Made up of doctoral candidates at the UT Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education, TechSmarrt has cracked the code that cuts research time for scientists analyzing materials. Led by Akinola Oyedele, TechSmarrt software provides a way for researchers to identify and understand the properties of new and existing materials.

Iono Pharma: Dr. Hassan Almoazen, director of the Ph.D. program in Pharmaceutical Sciences and the dual degree Pharm.D./Ph.D. program at the UT College of Pharmacy in Memphis, has developed a new, patent-pending approach to deliver over-the-counter iodide to millions of children worldwide, designed to help prevent mental retardation and developmental growth delay.

CZ Nutrition: Dr. Qixin Zhong, professor with the UT Department of Food and Science Technology, has invented a technology to produce clear protein drinks that are easy on the palate, rich in nutrients and sugar free.

The event is free but registration is required. For more information, visit http://utrf.tennessee.edu/.
Steve and Joanna Judson sit in the cabin of their new Cadillac CT6 sedan at Cadillac of Knoxville on Monday during a ceremony presenting the car to them. It's the first CT6 to be delivered to a customer in Tennessee, and the Judsons got special treatment because of an email they sent to the plant requestign special care when their car was assembled. G. CHAMBERS WILLIAMS III/NEWS SENTINEL

SHARE Steve and Joanna Judson look over their new Cadillac CT6 sedan at Cadillac of Knoxville on Monday shortly after the car was unveiled for them. G. CHAMBERS WILLAMS III/NEWS SENTINEL Steve and Joanna Judson of Maryville watch a video at Cadillac of Knoxville of their new Cadillac CT6 as it progresses through the assembly process at the plant in Michigan in mid-March. General Motors made the video in response to an email the plant received from the Judsons concerning the car they had ordered. G. CHAMBERS WILLIAMS III/NEWS SENTINEL

By Chambers Williams of the Knoxville News Sentinel

It's not often that new-car buyers get to see their vehicles being built, but that's what happened for Steve and Joanna Judson of Maryville and their 2016 Cadillac CT6 sedan -- which they call their dream car.

They didn't make it to the plant to watch the car come down the line, but the plant brought the event to them, via a YouTube video in which Cadillac executives and assembly workers chimed in as the vehicle made its trek through the build process.

This special treatment came about because of an email the Judsons sent to Courtney Zemke, communications manager for the General Motors Detroit Hamtramck plant where the CT6 is made. In it, the Judsons talked of how much they anticipated owning the vehicle they dubbed "Big Red," and asked the plant to take special care when assembling it.

"They placed an order in December, and found out later that the car would be assembled in mid-March," Zemke said. She was on hand for a specal event at Cadillac of Knoxville on Monday afternoon, during which the car was unveiled and delivered to the Judsons, who were ushered into the dealership on a red carpet.

"I shared their email with our team members, and we decided to chronicle the car's assembly with a video, with comments from the people who were making the vehicle," Zemke said. "I've been pals with the Judsons ever since I responded to their email, and we have been in touch all through the process."

The car is a milestone for Cadillac as well as for the Judsons. Brand new for 2016, the CT6 went on sale in March as the newest member of the brand's lineup. It's a rear- or all-wheel-drive full-size performance sedan that Cadillac hopes will position it to compete successfully against such European luxury models as the Mercedes-Benz S-class, BMW 7-series and Audi A8.

And the one delivered to the Judsons on Monday was the first to come to a Tennessee dealer, Cadillac officials said.

For the Judsons, the car was an aspirational vehicle for their retirement years.

"It's probably the last new car we'll buy," said Steve Judson, 71. "And it's also the nicest car we've ever owned."

Joanna Judson broke out in tears when the cover was pulled off the car in the showroom.

"It's even more beautiful that I thought it would be," she said.
Madeline Rogero

Georgiana Vines Columnist SHARE ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTOS Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks during an election night event at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Tuesday.

Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero is among Democrats who have notified the Tennessee Democratic Party they would like to be appointed delegates for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on July 25-28.

The state Democratic Party Executive Committee will complete the delegate process Saturday of 76 delegates and six alternates when members select 18 delegates from a party leader and elected officials group, which is the one Rogero is in, and 14 at-large delegates and two alternates. Others were elected in congressional district caucuses on March 26. The meeting will be at noon at the IBEW union hall in Nashville.

Long-time Democratic leader Sylvia Woods has applied for a spot as an at-large delegate for Clinton. Former Knox County Commissioner Mark Harmon seeks to be a Bernie Sanders delegate in either category. Both are members of the executive committee.

About 30 people from Knox County have submitted forms to be considered at-large delegates, with most wanting to be Sanders delegates, according to a list provided by the state Democratic Party.

The deadline for prospective delegates to file forms is noon Tuesday.

DOESN'T MIX POLITICS: When Rogero and the Knoxville City Council sent a letter to Knox County's three state senators expressing the city's "strong opposition" to a deannexation bill, it was not signed by 1st District Councilman Nick Pavlis.

Pavlis says that is because of his day job as director of government relations for Charter Communications. He spends much of his time in Nashville when the Legislature is in session.

The bill would have allowed people living in annexed areas to de-annex under certain conditions. The letter said the state House version of the bill has "not been properly vetted" by a state Senate committee and asked for a delay "until its full impact is known by the committee."

The State and Local Government Committee later voted to study the measure after the Legislature adjourns.

Pavlis said he also has not supported other statements on legislative issues.

"I can't mix my politics," he said.

ANOTHER ELECTION: Beth Hickman has resigned as a 5th District member of the state Democratic Party Executive Committee, with the spot to be filled Aug. 4. The district represents Anderson and Loudon counties and a portion of Knox County.

Linda Haney, immediate past chair of the Knox County Democratic Party, has taken out a petition for the seat.

The deadline for qualifying petitions to be turned into the Election Commission for all state and federal positions is noon Thursday.
SHARE This is a photo of the packaging that contained a candy-type substance with high levels of THC. Three people were hospitalized Sunday, April 3, 2016, after ingesting the contents. (BLOUNT COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE) Ron Talbott, Deputy Chief of. Investigation at the Blount County Sheriff's Office, releases more details during a news conference on Monday about the incident in which three people, including two juveniles, are recovering after overdosing on a candy-type substance containing high levels of THC (SAUL YOUNG/NEWS SENTINEL)

By News Sentinel Staff

MARYVILLE  The Blount County Sheriff's Office is warning parents about a candy-type substance that contains high levels of THC  the active ingredient in marijuana  after three people, including two juveniles, overdosed Sunday.

A number of states have legalized marijuana for medical purposes, but only four  Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska  have legalized it for recreational use.

"As other states legalize marijuana we see more and more of this stuff coming through the mail or over the Internet or sold out the back door of these shops where it is legal," said Ron Talbott, deputy chief of investigations. "But then it comes to states like ours and they hit markets  for kids who don't know anything about them. It just looks appealing to them."

According to authorities, a mentally disabled boy on Sunday brought two packages of the candies labeled "Dank Grasshopper" Orange Gummies to Hickory Valley Baptist Church in Friendsville.

The boy gave one package to a 15-year-old male and another to a 24-year-old male.

The teenager did not consume any of the contents of the package he received, Talbott said, and authorities were able to recover the candies.

The 24-year-old male opened the package, consumed three of the gummies and gave the rest to two girls, ages 15 and 17. Both girls also consumed three of the candies, Talbott said.

The packaging is labeled, "THC 900 Mg  2 gummies/450 Mg per gummy."

"The problem with them (is) they say on their packaging that they contain an extremely high amount of THC  almost 30 times the amount that you find in one marijuana joint," Talbott said.

Talbott said the recovered bag and its contents will be submitted to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation for analyzing later this week.

All three people who ingested the candies had negative reactions, including seizures, hallucinations and vomiting.

The 24-year-old man was treated and released from Blount Memorial Hospital, while the two females remain at East Tennessee Children's Hospital, according to the sheriff's office. The 15-year-old girl is in the intensive care unit.

Investigators are trying to determine exactly where the boy obtained the candies, but it is believe they were ordered and obtained from another state via the Internet.

"They seem similar in nature but obviously they are two different packages," Talbott said.

Talbott said no one will be charged in the incident.

"We honestly believe at this point that they were experimenting and they were just sharing it among friends not trying to harm one another," he said. "It was just kids being kids but not making very educated, or good, decisions."

Talbott said it is important to make parents aware of such substances.

"The main purpose for us wanting to disseminate this information today is to make all parents aware that any packaging that looks like this; keep your kids away from it," he said. "If you don't know for sure that it is candy or it is something that's purchased from a grocery store or a legitimate business, don't let your kids take it."
SHARE Jackie Stanfill Jacqueline Stanfill, former financial adviser pleaded guilty in federal court to wire fraud, mail fraud and money laundering and was sentenced to nine years in prison for stealing more than $8 million from clients. Stanfill admitted that as owner of Stanfill Wealth Management, she pretended to invest money on behalf of clients but instead converted the funds to her personal use from 2008 to 2015. (KNOX COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE)

By Megan Boehnke of the Knoxville News Sentinel

A former financial adviser who called herself "Jackie Jackpot" to one client and told another she had "more money than God" was sentenced Monday to nine years in prison for stealing more than $8 million from clients.

U.S. District Court Judge Leon Jordan ordered Jacqueline Stanfill to be taken into custody immediately.

"I don't want to see another courtroom full of broken hearts," said Jordan. "The court needs to send a message to others."

Eight victims, including family members and high school friends, detailed to the judge how Stanfill used their retirement funds, college funds and savings accounts to finance her lavish lifestyle.

"The truth is she stole our money to live a life of luxury and unbelievable excess," said Karen Franklin, a victim who is also Stanfill's sister-in-law.

Stanfill pleaded guilty in January to one count each of wire fraud, mail fraud and money laundering.

According to court documents filed last month in U.S. District Court in Knoxville, Stanfill requested to be sentenced to 63 months in the case  a little more than five years  instead of the standard range of 87 to 108 months.

Instead, she received the maximum penalty. Jordan also ordered Stanfill to pay $8.8 million in restitution to victims.

"I took money that belonged to my family and friends. I have no excuse, none, for my behavior," said Stanfill, while crying.

In the plea agreement, Stanfill admitted that as owner of Stanfill Wealth Management, she pretended to invest money on behalf of clients but instead converted the funds to her personal use from 2008 to 2015.

Many of Stanfill's assets, forfeited as part of her plea, have already been liquidated, including a $1.6 million, five-bedroom house at 7010 Stone Mill Drive in West Knoxville.

Stanfill also faces lawsuits from former clients.

Many of those clients spent over an hour Monday describing the betrayal and devastation they say Stanfill caused.

Paige Miller said Stanfill had been her best friend for more than 35 years, and that she'd encouraged her entire family to invest with Stanfill. As a result, they lost a combined $2 million, including money to care for her mentally disabled sister.

Renee Retka, a closer friend whose family vacationed with Stanfill and her family, called the financial planner a "dangerous person."

Retka said Stanfill stole her daughter's college fund, leaving the now 19-year-old student to work extra jobs and take out loans of her own to pay for college.

Retka said she'd also lost $320,000 from a retirement fund that has since led the IRS to charge her $124,000 in penalties for an early withdrawal.
Donald Trump, who is the front runner for the Republican presidential nomination, declared last week that he believes the Department of Education is a vital cog in how government helps its citizens.

Speaking to Anderson Cooper of CNN, Trump said that education is a dutiful exercise of the federal government.

Stunned, like many others, Cooper asked Trump to clarify what he means by the role of the federal government in how education is run. Trump again answered that education plays an important role in the function of government.

This is a departure from the Trump that many find on the campaign trail, and on television for that matter. In October of last year , Trump said that he would get rid of the Department of Education as well as the Environmental Protection Agency.

Trump has previously said that the Department of Education must go because Common Core is bad and that education should be run by the state, with little oversight by the federal government.

This is either a politically shrewd move closer to the center so that he may attract moderates and independents, or just the words of a man who was caught telling the truth and wrapped himself in a lie.

After all, it seems that Trumps campaign thus far is based on admonishing the role of government and inciting the ire of Americans who believe that there is too much government overreach in their lives.

While many Republicans have floated the idea of eliminating the Department of Education, Trump is likely the first one to fight for the departments cause in one breath and then call for its eradication in the next.

For what its worth, Trump said that healthcare is a responsibility of the federal government, but then changed his stance to state that healthcare should be privately run.

Trump may believe that education is better suited for the private sector as well if polling and his constituents say so. Many on the left and right have championed charter schools and voucher programs, so this wouldnt be a sudden or shocking departure for Trump. His view of capitalism makes sense based on the fact that he is one of the wealthiest Americans (just ask him).

For now, though, Trump is, or was, of the belief that education should be run by the federal government which is a platform that aligns with the current administration and his either of his potential future opponents in the Democratic party.
Superintendent Jim McIntyre, left, chats with Tennessee education commissioner Candice McQueen, right, at Green Magnet Math & Science Academy on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2015. (ADAM LAU/NEWS SENTINEL)

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By MJ Slaby of the Knoxville News Sentinel

Whether or not next year's TNReady will be online or on paper hasn't been decided, but state Education Commissioner Candice McQueen said the assessment test will be shorter.

For the second year, the test will have fewer questions and take less time for students to complete, but have the same rigor, McQueen said in an update Monday.

She said the exact time reduction will be available in a few weeks. It also hasn't been determined if the test will be online or on paper next year, McQueen added.

This year is the first year for TNReady, an assessment for math and English skills for grades 3-11. It replaces the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, known as TCAP tests.

Students were originally going to take the test online, but computer glitches on the first day  including some in Knox County Schools  moved the test back to paper and pencil.

Part one of the test finished about a month ago, and students start the second phase on April 25.

McQueen said Monday that the Department of Education is "committed to moving to an online assessment," but needs to move at a "pace that's fit for Tennessee."

The state is exploring options for next year that include paper as well as online forms of the test, McQueen said. She added that Measurement Incorporated, the company the state was set to use to administer the test online this year, could still be considered for 2016-17.

After the glitches on the first day of testing in February, McQueen said then that the state wasn't confident the Measurement Inc. system would be consistent so the test was moved to paper.

She said changes to TNReady will reflect feedback from educators as well as continue to support educators and students during the test.

For next year, the math portion in the first phase of the test will be eliminated, and then several more questions will be added to the second phase, McQueen said.

In English, next year's test will add multiple choice questions prior to the writing segment in the first part and some of the questions in the second part will be eliminated, she said.

McQueen said the state found students didn't need all of the time allotted for the writing portion, so that will be reduced.

With these changes, both portions will be shorter, she said.

There have always been two goals: to strengthen the content of the test and to reduce the time to take it, McQueen said.

She added that changes will move TNReady forward in a way that provides a "positive testing experience no matter what."
SHARE Phil Roe, U.S. House 1st District representative and a 2012 candidate for re-election. Scott DesJarlais, U.S. representative.

By Michael Collins of the Knoxville News Sentinel

WASHINGTON  The patients who showed up at U.S. Rep. Scott DesJarlais' medical office hoping to score painkillers often resorted to clever tricks to persuade him to prescribe the drugs.

They'd pretend they didn't know how to pronounce the medication they requested and would slowly sound out the name, one syllable at a time. Or they would complain the low dosage he suggested wasn't strong enough to kill their pain.

"You might as well prescribe me candy," they would grumble.

"I've heard that a number of times," DesJarlais said.

U.S. Rep. Phil Roe also has seen the devastating effects of prescription drug abuse  not only to adults, but also to children, especially newborn babies.

"Opioid abuse is a serious and growing epidemic in East Tennessee and around the country," Roe said.

DesJarlais and Roe bring a distinctive and important perspective to the table as Congress and the White House look for ways to counter the epidemic of prescription drug abuse and heroin addiction.

Not only do the two East Tennessee lawmakers represent a region that has been hit especially hard by the drug scourge, they are also physicians who, through their medical practices, have witnessed firsthand the destructiveness of addiction.

"It's an issue I'm very familiar with, from my years in medicine probably more so than my years in Congress," said DesJarlais, a South Pittsburg Republican who worked as a general practitioner before he was elected to represent Tennessee's Fourth Congressional District.

In 2014 alone, more than 28,000 drug overdose deaths involved some type of opioid, and 1,269 of those were in Tennessee, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The state ranks third in the nation for prescription drug abuse and 12th for drug overdoses.

The numbers are so staggering they have managed to do what other issues could not  unite Republicans and Democrats in a bipartisan battle to help people dealing with addiction.

In March, the U.S. Senate voted 94-1 to pass a bill that will boost state and local programs that provide services for Americans dealing with the abuse of opioid painkillers and heroin addiction. The bill is now before the U.S. House.

Last week, President Barack Obama's administration announced various new initiatives to fight the epidemic. Those initiatives include steps to improve access to mental health and substance abuse treatment, make it easier for doctors to prescribe drugs to treat opioid disorders and make new grants available to law-enforcement officials investigating the distribution of the drugs.

Obama traveled to Atlanta last Tuesday for a national summit on drug abuse, where he heard what he called "heartbreaking" stories of addiction and argued for more funding to treat opioid abuse. He is asking for $1.1 billion to expand treatment for addiction, particularly in rural areas.

Obama's appearance at the summit won him kudos from U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, a Kentucky Republican often critical of the White House but whose coal-country congressional district has been devastated by drug abuse.

For their part, DesJarlais and Roe are both members of the House GOP Doctors' Caucus, a small group of lawmakers with medical backgrounds that has been working on the issue of prescription drug abuse.

Roe, a Johnson City Republican who is a retired obstetrician-gynecologist, is the group's co-chairman and has organized meetings between the caucus and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy to try to come up with common solutions to dealing with the problem.

"The reality is there's no silver bullet," Roe said, "but there are a lot of individual solutions that can make a difference."

Roe, for example, has written legislation that advocates the establishment of programs to encourage the proper disposal of unwanted or expired medications. The bill is pending before a House subcommittee.

The bipartisan resolve to tackle opioid abuse could be tested in the coming weeks.

The Senate bill passed in March authorizes $570 million in spending on opioid programs  just half of the $1.1 billion Obama has requested. Even that is cause for concern among some conservatives in the House.

"You can't spend what you don't have," DesJarlais said, noting he's open to allocating the funding as long as money can be saved somewhere else.

DesJarlais said he also wants to see the costs of the other opioid initiatives offered by the White House, but stressed they are ideas he could support in principle.

DesJarlais said he can't imagine that Congress would pass up the opportunity to do something about opioid addiction, given that the problem has devastated so many lives.

"It is not a Republican or a Democratic problem," he said.

Michael Collins is the News Sentinel's Washington correspondent. His weekly Tennessee in D.C. column highlights Volunteer State lawmakers, causes and connections. Contact him at 202-408-2711 or michael.collins@jmg.com.
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By Richard Locker of the Knoxville News Sentinel

NASHVILLE  The state Senate gave final legislative approval Monday to the so-called "Slowpoke" bill, prohibiting driving  except for passing  in the left lane of highways with at least three lanes in each direction, with certain exceptions.

The bill won Senate approval 21-7, despite arguments that drivers already can be charged with impeding traffic in such situations. It won House approval 69-13 on March 7 and now goes to the governor, who's likely to sign it into law.

Issuing tickets will be up to the discretion of state troopers and police officers. A violation will be a Class C misdemeanor punishable by a fine of only $50.

Sen. Frank Niceley, R-Strawberry Plains, the bill's Senate sponsor, said the bill applies only to highways with six or more lanes. "This is to cut down on road rage. A lot of people pull in the left-hand lane and just stay there. People pull up behind them and it causes traffic to line up. This bill is an effort to keep people out of the left-hand lane on six-lane highways."

The law won't apply in these circumstances: when the volume of traffic doesn't permit safe merging into a non-passing lane; when inclement weather or a traffic control device makes it necessary to drive in the passing lane; when obstructions or hazards exist in a non-passing lane; when avoiding traffic moving onto the highway from a merging lane; when highway design makes it necessary to drive in the passing lane to exit or turn left; to emergency vehicles engaged in official duties, or to vehicles engaged in highway maintenance and construction.

The bill authorizes the Tennessee Department of Transportation to put messages informing drivers of the law on electronic highway message boards.
1:34 p.m. April 4, 2016

World's Largest Maritime Exercise Underway in Middle East









Ships of Commander, Task Group 521 transit in formation during the International Mine Countermeasures Exercise (IMCMEX). With a quarter of the world's navies participating, including 6,500 Sailors from every region, IMCMEX is the largest international naval exercise promoting maritime security and the free-flow of trade through mine countermeasure operations, maritime security operations, and maritime infrastructure protection in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility and throughout the world. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Christopher D. Blachly/Released)





MANAMA, Bahrain (NNS) -- The International Mine Countermeasures Exercise, the largest maritime exercise in the world, kicked off April 4, with international naval and civilian maritime forces from more than 30 nations spanning six continents training together across the Middle East.



The exercise is organized and led by U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, which leads U.S. Navy and afloat Marine Corps forces across the more than 2.5 million square miles of ocean in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility.



"These participating nations are united by a common thread -- the need to protect the free flow of commerce from a range of maritime threats including piracy, terrorism and mines," said Vice Adm. Kevin Donegan, commander, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command. "This region provides a strong training opportunity for nations worldwide as three of the six major maritime chokepoints in the world are here: the Suez Canal, the Strait of Bab Al Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz. Nearly 20 percent of the world's oil transits through the Strait of Hormuz every day. Imagine the impact on the global economy if suddenly that oil stops flowing because of restricted sea lanes. This region is clearly important to the whole world."



Through the course of this exercise, participants will train to execute a wide spectrum of defensive operations designed to protect international commerce and trade consisting of mine countermeasures, maritime security operations, and maritime infrastructure protection.



"This exercise is also a great opportunity for us to build proficiency and test the latest technology available for ensuring the global maritime commons stay open and secure," said Donegan. "It also allows us to work with our partners to reinforce adherence to the international rules and accepted behavioral norms expected of professional mariners. If all nations followed these established practices the result would be a safe and stable maritime global commons with commerce flowing freely for the benefit of the global economy."



IMCMEX is focused on maritime security from the port of origin to the port of arrival and will include scenarios that range from mine countermeasures, infrastructure protection and maritime security operations in support of civilian shipping.



IMCMEX begins with a symposium in Bahrain on Maritime Infrastructure Protection bringing together governments, militaries and industry to discuss how to best provide the necessary foundation of security that supports unrestricted access to the vital maritime infrastructure that is critical to regional and global economies.



IMCMEX will also demonstrate new technologies, such as unmanned underwater vehicles and exercise the sealift capabilities of expeditionary fast transport ship USNS Choctaw County and afloat forward staging base USS Ponce, equipped with the U.S. Navy's only operational laser weapon system. Exercise operations will include mine countermeasures, diving operations, small-boat exercises, maritime security operations coordinated with industrial and commercial shipping, unmanned underwater vehicle operations, and port clearance operations.



"IMCMEX demonstrates the capability and co-operation of the international community and is not about any one nation or group," said Commodore William Warrender, Royal Navy, Combined Maritime Forces deputy commander and leader of the exercise. "Our aim in IMCMEX 16 is to conduct exercises with our partner nations that allow us to continue to develop our interoperability and capability to ensure that we are ready to meet potential challenges now and in the future."



The exercise runs through April 26.

Published April 4, 2016














A new Oregon law requires the states education department to develop a plan to reduce rates of chronic absenteeism and provides limited resources for schools to pilot trauma-informed practices aimed at keeping students in class.

The law, signed by Gov. Kate Brown in late March, acknowledges what child advocacy groups have said for years: School absences are a multipronged issue that require comprehensive solutions involving mental and physical health, emotional issues, and other outside-of-school factors.

Some advocates have even suggested incorporating rates of chronic absenteeism into school accountability systems to give seemingly disparate efforts a common goal. Because such a wide range of programs can address school attendance, such a goal would lead to improvements throughout the school environment, they say.

Oregon has one of the lowest overall graduation rates in the country, a problem the state has tried to address throughout the K-12 pipeline with a variety of student supports. Education Weeks 2015 Diplomas Count report set Oregons adjusted cohort graduation rate at 69 percent, compared to 81 percent nationwide.

The new law requires Oregons education department to create a plan to tackle absenteeism in consultation with the department of human services, the Oregon Health Authority, and community and education stakeholders. That plan must include:



A process for publicly disclosing annual information on chronic absence rates for each school.

Guidance and best practices for all schools and school districts to use to track, monitor, and address chronic absences and improve attendance.

A process for identifying schools in need of support to reduce chronic absences and improve attendance.

A description of technical assistance available to schools identified as being in need of support, including technical assistance that will be provided by the department or the office.

The estimated costs associated with implementing the plan.

The law also requires the state to provide grants to schools to design and implement a pilot program to decrease rates of school absenteeism by using trauma-informed approaches to education, health services, and intervention strategies that are based in schools and take advantage of community resources.

Attendance Works has long argued for a common definition of chronic absenteeism that includes both excused and unexcused absences to better track school attendance.

Its possible that more states will encourage schools to address absenteeism as the nation transitions to a new federal education law. Thats because that law, the Every Student Succeeds Act, requires states to incorporate at least one other indicator beyond test scores in the accountability systems they use to measure school success. While a variety of indicators are on the table, some have already pushed states to use absenteeism.

Related reading:

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MPK Group Chairman Jung Woo-hyun

By Bahk Eun-ji

MPK Group Chairman Jung Woo-hyun, who owns the nation's largest pizza chain Mr. Pizza, allegedly assaulted a security guard at a building in Seoul where one of his restaurants is located.

The tycoon, 68, punched the security guard in the face twice on Saturday night after learning that the guard had locked the front door through which Jung wanted to leave the building, according to police.

The assault took place at around 10:30 p.m., shortly after Jung dined at the restaurant, and a closed circuit television recorded the incident, they said.

Police will soon summon Jung for questioning and, if deemed necessary, seek an arrest warrant against him.

A MPK spokesman was not immediately available for comment. Jung is believed to have been under the influence of alcohol, but police refused to give more information. They said the front door was supposed to be locked at 10 p.m. and the security guard was doing his job properly.

Jung is the latest in a series of business leaders caught recently abusing  physically or mentally  people of lower social status.

Daelim Industrial vice chairman Lee Hae-wook is under investigation by police and the labor ministry for allegations that he physically and verbally abused his drivers for years.

In December, Kim Man-sik, honorary president of Monggo Foods, was accused of habitual verbal and physical violence against his drivers.
By Choi Sung-jin

Debate between government and private economists about economy and what to do about it has been rekindled, yet again.

Some numbers indicating the health of national economy have improved recently, leading government officials to be optimistic of a recovery. But private economists say it is too early to talk about recovery: "One swallow does not make a spring," one leading economist said.

At an economic ministers' meeting on Thursday, Minister of Strategy and Finance Yoo Il-ho said, "The national economy seems to be getting out of the downswing that gripped it since early this year." Bank of Korea Governor Lee Ju-yeol agreed, saying, "There are some positive signals such as the rebound of international oil prices and the improvement of consumer sentiment."

The nation's top economic and monetary policymakers appeared to think the economy might have not yet started to recover, but began to got out of the dire situation early this year.

Korea's industrial production, for instance, increased 3.3 percent in February, buoyed by brisk output of semiconductors, which increased 19.6 percent year-on-year, and metal processing, up 12.5 percent, recording the biggest growth in six years and five months, according to Statistics Korea.

The Bank of Korea said the business survey index (BSI) in March rose five points to 68, marking the first rise in five months, and the consumer sentiment index climbed for the first time in four months to 100, indicating an increasing number of businesses and consumers are optimistic about the national economy. The BSI in the second quarter, as measured by the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, jumped 10 points to 91.












By Lee Hyo-sik



Daewoo Engineering & Construction (E&C) and POSCO Engineering & Construction were fined 70 million won ($58,000) and 50 million won, respectively, in a latest bid-rigging case, a court said Monday.



They were found guilty of colluding to win construction orders from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport at an inflated price in 2011.



The other two colluders  Daelim Industrial and Hyundai Development Company (HDC)  were not prosecuted under the country's leniency program as they voluntarily reported the price-rigging to the authorities.



The Seoul Central District Court found Daewoo and POSCO E&C guilty of violating the nation's Fair Trade Act and Construction Industry Act in imposing fines on the two.



The court also fined four former executives  one each at Daewoo, POSCO E&C, Daelim and HDC  10 million won each for breaching the Construction Industry Act.



The transport ministry held an open bid in March 2011 to select builders for construction of a road connecting Yeosu and Goheung, South Jeolla Province. The project was valued at 130 billion won.



Prior to the bidding, the four individuals met at a restaurant in southern Seoul and agreed to cooperate in order to increase the price of the contract. Under the collusion scheme, Daewoo, POSCO E&C and Daelim submitted slightly higher bid prices than HDC to ensure that the latter obtained the contract at an inflated price.



Under the law, the builders could only ask the government to pay less than a 130 billion won estimate.



Later, Daelim and HDC confessed to the bid rigging to the Fair Trade Commission. The anti-trust agency imposed an 11 billion won fine on the four builders, but then referred only Daewoo and POSCO E&C to the prosecution.



Daelim and HDC avoided prosecution under the leniency scheme, which was enacted to encourage companies to voluntarily disclose collusion and other unfair business practices.



"We decided to fine the two builders for breaking the law. Through the ruling, we are sending a message that businesses that rely on dubious practices will be punished," the court said. "But, given that the FTC had already slapped Daewoo and POSCO E&C with fines of 1.9 billion won and 4.2 billion won, we decided to reduce our fine."




Employees of China's Aurance Group pack the HDC-Shilla Duty Free Store in Yongsan, Seoul, March 31. Nearly 6,000 Aurance employees visited the duty free store in two group March 31 and April 1, buying made-in-Korea cosmetics and other merchandize worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. / Courtesy of HDC-Shilla Duty Free



By Lee Hyo-sik

HDC-Shilla and Hanwha Galleria, two newly-opened duty free stores, which have been struggling to attract foreign shoppers, found a breakthrough with a group of Chinese workers who visited Korea on a corporate incentive tour program.

Over the weekend, the two outlets hosted nearly 6,000 employees of China's Aurance Group who came here on a company-sponsored trip. They bought made-in-Korea cosmetics and other merchandize worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, raising the stores' daily sales by two-fold.

HDC-Shilla and Galleria are seeking to attract more Chinese tourists who visit Korea on incentive tour programs in the coming months.

"Nearly 6,000 Aurance workers came to our store in two groups on March 31 and April 1," a HDC-Shilla spokesman said. "Skincare products were some of the most popular items they bought. The employees also purchased wrist watches, jewelry and other fashion items. Our daily sales more than doubled on both days."

Aurance or Aolan International Beauty Group, which sells health and beauty products using a multi-level marketing business model, sent 6,000 employees here on an incentive tour program early last week. This was the single largest group of tourists in Korea arriving via air.

The spokesman said the store has indeed been struggling to attract both Korean and non-Korean shoppers since its opening last December, because of the absence of popular foreign luxury brands. The outlet's location, away from tourist sites in downtown Seoul, has also made it less attractive to foreign visitors.

"But we have found a new customer base, the groups of young Chinese tourists visiting Korea on company sponsorships," the spokesman said. "With the TV drama Descendants of the Sun' reigniting hallyu' in China, we expect more young Chinese to come to Korea, particularly women in their 20s and 30s, who will choose to visit Korea on corporate incentive tour programs. We will do everything we can to have them shop at our state-of-the-art duty free store."

Hanwha-Galleria is another beneficiary of the 6,000-strong incentive tour group from China as the employees also visited its duty free store at the 63 City Building in Yeouido. They came to shop in two groups on April 1 and 2.

A Hanwha Galleria spokesman said that daily sales increased by more than two-fold on both days, adding that Chinese shoppers bought up cosmetics manufactured by Amore Pacific, and LG Household and Health Care.

"We worked really hard to attract Aurance Group workers. In February, we contacted Aurance and a Chinese travel agency catering to the firm's workers during their one-week stay in Korea," the spokesman said. "Aurance is not the last but the first group of Chinese incentive tourists who will visit our store this year."

To strengthen its marketing activities in China, Hanwha Galleria will open five offices there this year. The duty free store plans to run as many as 30 offices in the world's second-largest economy by 2019 to attract more Chinese tourists.
By Choi Sung-jin

To develop its domestic export industries, Korea needs to benchmark Germany, a local think tank said on Monday.

"Between 1994 and 2015, Germany's exports increased 3.1 times while Japan's exports grew only 1.57 times," the Institute for International Trade, affiliated with Korea International Trade Association, said in a report.

The institute said Germany was far ahead of Japan in export growth because of its strengthened price competitiveness with the use of the euro, its low corporate tax rate was low, plus positive labor reform.

Also helping Germany's exports were its efforts to attract foreign investment, and the push for German manufacturers operating abroad to return, the report said.

It also praised the Germany government's policy to accept positively refugees and immigrants to replace its dwindling workforce.

Japan, on the other hand, experienced the slower growth of export industries because of its reluctant market opening, an increase in overseas manufacturing, labor shortage resulting from a rigid immigration policy and its export structure focusing on shipments of intermediary goods, mainly to emerging countries.

"Korea's export, the growth rate of which has remained at a single-digit rate since 2012, has similar problems to Japan in that the share of overseas production is high among major export industries and its reliance on emerging economies, including China, is too high," the report said. "If such structural reasons remain unsolved, the nation's export recovery may take far longer than expected."

The report said Korea, following the example of Germany, needs to expand shipments of high-tech parts and materials to industrial countries. It added that the nation should also carry out labor reform and reach a social consensus on immigrant laborers.

"The West European country has managed to make its businesses relocate their overseas plants back home through labor reform and lower corporate taxes," it said. "Korea, too, should try to re-localize' industrial production by improving the domestic business environment."
By Yoon Ja-young





Policymakers are increasingly voicing optimism about the economy bottoming out, while most private economists remain cautious about the outlook, triggering a dispute over the state of the economy.

Some key economic indices have turned for the better, with industrial output posting a modest rebound.

According to Statistics Korea, mining and manufacturing output grew 3.3 percent in February from a month earlier, marking the biggest rise in six years and five months. The overall industrial output also posted a 0.8 percent gain.

Consumer sentiment is also showing signs of recovery with the consumer sentiment index (CSI) rising to 100 in March.

Strategy and Finance Minister Yoo Il-ho said last week that the economy seems to be stopping contraction.

The government expects both production and consumption to show further improvement in March figures.

Bank of Korea Governor Lee Ju-yeol also showed optimism, citing a rebound of global oil prices and the improving CSI.
By Yoon Ja-young





Jung Woo-hyun

The second largest pizza franchise in the country, Mr. Pizza, could be in trouble with increasing criticism after it was alleged that the firm's owner assaulted a night watchman. This is the latest in a series of scandals illustrating the high-handedness of the rich and powerful that continue to cause public outrage.

According to local media, officials at Seoul's Seodaemun District Police Station requested Jung Woo-hyun, chairman of Mr. Pizza Korea (MPK) Group, to report to the station over the case.

Jung had dinner last Saturday at a new restaurant that MPK Group opened in Seodaemun. At around 10:30 p.m., he saw the building's night watchman, identified by his surname Hwang, closing the shutters of the building's main entrance. He sent a restaurant employee to tell the night watchman to stop, and summoned Hwang. The watchman apologized, saying he didn't know they were still in the building, but the chairman allegedly slapped his face. Jung left the building right after the incident, and a colleague of the watchman called the police.

The 59-year-old night watchman of the building owned by a university told the police that he only followed the manual, according to which the main entrance should be shut down at 10 p.m. Police will investigate Jung after examining the CCTV of the restaurant.

Jung said Sunday that he would like to sincerely apologize to the watchman, but criticism is increasing among the public. Internet users said that they won't order Mr. Pizza, since sharing the news through social networking services (SNS).

The incident is the latest in a series of improper behavior by owners of large businesses. Recently, Daelim Industrial Vice Chairman Lee Hae-wook made headlines for abusing his personal drivers; and Monggo Foods, a soy sauce maker, issued an apology on its website after being mired in controversy also over its honorary president's abuse of his personal driver. Another instance is the Korean Air heiress's "peanut rage" when she forced a chief steward to kneel and beg is internationally known.

MPK Group recorded 122 billion won in sales last year, running a number of franchise brands including Mr. Pizza and bakery cafe Manoffin. It has been focusing on expanding its franchises in China recently, planning to increase the restaurants it operates there to 184 this year.
By Nam Hyun-woo



The National Tax Service (NTS) is conducting an audit of Lotte Engineering and Construction, a company official said.



It is the latest of the tax authority's inspections of the group amid the owner family's internal feud over control of the group.



The NTS Seoul Regional Office early last month sent its auditors to the company's office in southern Seoul to launch the audit. This came three years after the company was fined almost 100 billion won in a 2010 audit.



"This is a regular tax audit that happens every five years," a company official said. "Thus, this should not be taken too seriously," he said.



The NTS refused to comment on this issue, taking caution about the possible impact upon the audit.



Industry insiders say the audit may be the tax agency's effort to scrutinize the group's governance and business practices amid the unprecedented sibling feud over management.



The audit is the latest of a series of audits Lotte Group affiliates have faced so far. The NTS last year audited Daehong Communications, Lotte's advertising unit, about 80 percent of its contracts are from Lotte Group affiliates.



A month later, the group's fast food franchise Lotteria was also audited. Lotteria has been at the center of Lotte Group's cross shareholding. According to the Financial Supervisory Service, the franchise owns a 12.5 percent share of Daehong Communications, a 34.5 percent share of Lotte Data Communication and a 17.31 percent share of Lotte Logistics.



In 2013, Hotel Lotte, the de facto holding company of Lotte Group in Korea which owns Lotte Engineering and Construction's 43.1 percent share, went through an audit and the hotel chain is reportedly appealing the penalty imposed on it.



Lotte Engineering and Construction's share is owned by Hotel Lotte (43.1 percent), Lotte Chemical (35.21 percent) and a number of other Lotte affiliates. Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin and his elder brother, Shin Dong-joo, former vice chairman of Tokyo-based Lotte Holdings, also own 0.59 percent and 0.37 percent, respectively.



The NTS's latest move is expected to deal another blow to Lotte Group, which has been paying keen efforts in restoring its tarnished corporate image following a prolonged succession dispute between the two sons of founder Shin Kyuk-ho.



Last month, shareholders of Lotte Holdings in Japan rejected Dong-joo's request to dismiss his younger brother from the company's board of directors, helping the incumbent Lotte Group chairman tighten his grip on the group.




Politicians from New York City to Texas have pledged to expand access to computer science courses in K-12 schools, but one states efforts stand out for gearing teachers up for the effort.

Bringing coding classes to every school in Arkansas was a central tenet of Governor Asa Hutchinsons 2014 campaign . Its probably the first time in the history of politics that the word coding was used in a political commercial, the Republican told WIRED magazine. Following up on his campaign promises, he signed a bill last February requiring all Arkansas high schools to start offering computer science classes this fall. And it worked: Every Arkansas high school is offering coding this year. By contrast, Texas was the first state to promise that all schools would offer coding, but districts there have largely ignored the mandate . What set Arkansas apart was Little Rock policymakers following up on their pledge to provide millions to train teachers.

Far from the nations tech hubs, Suzanne Mitchell, director of the Arkansas STEM Coalition and a member of the governors Computer Science Task Force, estimated that there were only about two-dozen teachers in the state who were prepared to teach the new coding classes before the new law was passed . Over the summer, 130 Arkansas teachers received state-funded professional development to learn how to teach coding classes . More than a dozen of those teachers attended a free, weeklong boot camp hosted by the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts, a residential high school for students gifted in math and science that has been offering computer science classes for more than 20 years.

Daniel Moix, ASMSAs computer science education specialist, described the teacher boot camp to Kim Dishongh of Arkansass AMP magazine :

It's not just a weeklong professional development [course] where teachers come and get their stuff, and then they go back and they have a year to figure it out. My full-time job is to support computer science teachers in Arkansas. I will be mentoring these teachers in their classrooms, online, helping provide them with instruction some days of the week, helping provide them the support to do face-to-face instruction the other days of the week. They're basically getting training wheels for 12 months while they get on their feet, with the goal being the following year for them to be able to teach that course independently."

As of August, 87 schools had applied to the state for $20,000 grants to pay for professional-development programs to prepare even more teachers. In addition to providing for in-person professional-development sessions, the state is paying for every Arkansas teachers subscription to Lynda.com , a tech-oriented training website.

Mitchell of the governors Computer Science Task Force says that the long-term solution for having enough coding teachers is making sure preparation programs offer more computer science courses.
By Choi Sung-jin

Korea's middle and high school students think the most urgent problem between Korea and Japan is the "comfort women" issue, a survey showed Monday.

According to an opinion poll of 218 students by a uniform maker, Hyungji, 54.1 percent of secondary school students cited the sex-slavery issue as the problem awaiting the most urgent solution. Moreover, 84.9 percent think the recent agreement between Seoul and Tokyo on comfort women was wrong.

As to the reason for thinking so, 40.5 percent said it was closer to an accord for politicians, not the suffering "grandmothers;" 23.2 percent said officials conducted negotiations without sufficient dialogue with the victims; and 21.6 percent said Japan is still denying the coerciveness in recruiting comfort women.

As the next urgent bilateral problems, the students cited sovereignty over Dokdo (20.6 percent) and history textbooks (20.2 percent), the survey said.












By Kang Seung-woo

Park Geun-hye

President Park Geun-hye is changing her views about the challenges facing the country's economy.

A number of months ago, she warned of a possible impending economic crisis while calling on opposition parties to endorse bills on economic and labor issues. Now she is talking about optimistic economic indicators, although the bills remain pending at the National Assembly.

Political analysts said Tuesday that Park's baffling turnaround is politically motivated by the main opposition party's strategy to blame the government's poor policies for the current economic difficulties ahead of the April 13 general election.

Park told her senior secretaries Monday that the nation's economy is showing a reasonable performance, better than she had expected and fretted over, stressing that an excessive sense of uncertainty over the economy should not be an issue.

"The nation's export decline is slowing down and youth employment and consumption are maintaining a steady growth," Park said, adding that she expects the economy to continue improving when the government's financial policies are adjusted.

But Park's comments regarding the national economy are in sharp contrast to her previous repeated claims that the nation would tumble into another economic crisis, when urging the National Assembly to pass economy-related bills since last year.












A top United Nations official on human rights stressed Thursday that only the victims of wartime sexual slavery can determine if they have been properly compensated for the injustice they endured.



In his annual speech at the U.N. Human Rights Council on Thursday, High Commissioner Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said that despite South Korea and Japan reaching a deal in December, the former comfort women of Japan's sexual slavery are the ones who have the final say on the compensation issue.



On Dec. 28, Seoul and Tokyo agreed to "finally and irreversibly" resolve the issue on forced sexual slavery of South Korean women by the Japanese military during World War II.



Hussein said the relevant authorities should reach out and listen to the voices of these brave women.



He said the U.N. human rights council and other human rights organizations have raised questions about the Seoul-Tokyo agreement.













Earlier this week, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) released a report, calling on Japanese leaders and public officials to "desist from making disparaging statements" regarding the former sex slaves.



In a statement, the committee urged the Japanese government to "recognize the right of victims to a remedy and accordingly provide full and effective reparation," including compensation and official apologies. The CEDAW also expressed regrets over Tokyo failing to implement several U.N. recommendations regarding the issue. (Yonhap)
By Kim Da-hee

A group of former "comfort women" has filed a petition with the Constitutional Court, arguing that an agreement between Korea and Japan in December infringed on their basic rights, thus unconstitutional.

The Minbyun-Lawyers for a Democratic Society represents the 41-member plaintiff, including 29 former comfort women and family members of eight deceased victims.

"The Korean government neglected its constitutional duty by making it hard for the victims of wartime sexual slavery to demand compensation from Japan through the Seoul-Tokyo accord," the organization said in a statement. "This tramples on the victims' property rights, dignity and value as humans and rights to receive diplomatic protection from the government."

It said the accord possibly violated the constitution because the agreement violated the victims' procedural right of participation and right to know during the process of negotiating the accord.
South Korea's ICT ministry said Monday it will allocate 100 billion won ($87.2 million) to develop supercomputers, amid the rising awareness of the segment after Google Inc.'s AlphaGo posted a historical win against mankind in a board game last month.

The Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning said it will invest 10 billion won annually for the next 10 years to foster the development of artificial intelligence, big data, the Internet-of-Things technologies and other emerging industries through supercomputers.

South Korean policymakers have been working to expedite projects that foster the domestic supercomputer industry, especially after AI technology made an impact in March.

Last month, Google's AlphaGo program defeated Lee Se-dol, a ninth-dan Go player with 18 international titles, in four out of five matches in the historic man-versus-computer showdown.

The event was seen by many as the start of the full-fledged development of AI, which will also speed up the growth of the supercomputer industry.

"The latest development of artificial intelligence was made possible through supercomputers boasting high-speed data processes," the ministry said.

As the first phase of the project, the ministry plans to develop a supercomputer with a data-processing speed of 1 petaflop (PF) in five years, eventually reaching 30 PF by 2025.

A petaflop is the speed in which a figure of a quadrillion digits can be processed in a second. The term is used to assess the capabilities of supercomputers.

The ministry said a 1-petaflop computer can be utilized for predicting maritime and landslide-related disasters.

The ministry added a state-level project for supercomputers has become vital as more than 95 percent of South Korea's market for high-performance computers is dominated by overseas firms.

The South Korean market for high-performance computers is estimated at 260 billion won for 2015, accounting for only 2.5 percent of the global total. (Yonhap)
By Kim Rahn

Prosecutors have indicted Ryu Sang-wook, director of Grand Plastic Surgery in Gangnam, southern Seoul, for allegedly having other surgeons stand in for him in the operating room without his patients' knowledge.

The Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office said Monday that it had charged the 44-year-old with fraud.

Between November 2012 and October 2013, he allegedly told 33 patients that he would perform the surgery but had other doctors do it instead while the patients were unconscious under anesthesia. The doctors who stood in for him included dentists and otolaryngologists, who are usually paid less than the surgeons specializing in plastic surgery.

The "ghost surgery" allegedly saved Ryu 15.2 million won, according to the prosecution. He allegedly did not keep many patients' medical records during the period.












By Kim Da-hee

Selected marriage migrants in the city of Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, have been receiving travel expenses to visit their homelands.

Since 2009, 47 multicultural families with 172 family members have traveled to their homelands under city's welfare program.

This year, the city has allocated 17.5 million won ($15,200) for the program.

Each family will receive 3.5 million won ($3,000), which covers a round-trip airfare and visa costs.

Those who are married and have lived in the city more than three years can apply.

Applicants must submit six documents, including an application form, a cover letter and a document of family relationships. They can be taken to one of the city's community centers, Seongnam Multicultural Family Support Center or Seongnam Migrant Community Service Center.

The city will select five families for funding, after considering various factors, including the applicant's years in Korea, income level and number of children.

Beneficiaries can visit their homelands on their desired dates after May 16.

For more information, call 031-740-1174.
By Jun Ji-hye



U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has indicated that if elected, he would not care about a potential war between Japan, one of the key U.S. allies, and North Korea, raising international concern about his capability of resolving any possible conflicts in Northeast Asia.



His remarks also contradict Washington's long-held commitment to safeguarding its key allies in the region  South Korea and Japan  in the event of military conflict.



Speaking at campaign rallies in Wisconsin, Saturday, ahead of the state's primary this week, Trump said that if a conflict between Japan and a nuclear-armed North Korea were to break out: "That'd be a terrible thing. But if they do, they do," adding that, "Good luck. Enjoy yourself, folks."



Trump pointed to snowballing U.S. debt as a key reason for it to reconsider its military commitments abroad.



"We can't be the policeman to the world and have $19 trillion in debt, going up to $21 trillion," he said.



Trump apparently reiterated his belief that Japan and South Korea should arm themselves to deter a threat from the communist state rather than have the U.S. military protect them.



The remarks are also in line with the unfounded repeated position he has made that the U.S. has been providing protection for wealthy nations for almost nothing. He claimed that Washington should end such protection unless those countries agree to pay more.



The real estate mogul also recently raised eyebrows in Seoul and Tokyo by arguing that U.S. troops stationed in the two nations may need to be pulled out, and the two countries may need to step out from under the U.S. security umbrella and develop their own nuclear arsenal.



About 28,500 American troops are stationed in South Korea to deter North Korean aggression, and about 54,000 U.S. military personnel are stationed in Japan.



"Japan is better if it protects itself against this maniac of North Korea," Trump said on CNN early last week. "We are better off frankly if South Korea is going to start protecting itself they have to protect themselves or they have to pay us."



The remarks also contradict Washington's stance on eliminating  or at least reducing  the world's stockpile of nuclear weapons and material, a position that Republicans and Democrats have held since World War II.



Concerned about the statement made by the entrepreneur-turned-politician, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe responded: "Whoever will become the next president of the United States, the Japan-U.S. alliance is the cornerstone of Japan's diplomacy."



President Barack Obama also said at a news conference, Friday, "The person who made the statements doesn't know much about foreign policy or nuclear policy or the Korean Peninsula or the world generally."



Critics here also said Trump's views reflect his lack of knowledge about the situation of the United States Forces Korea (USFK) stationed on the peninsula.



In 2014, the allies renewed the Special Measure Agreement (SMA) on sharing the financial burden of keeping U.S. troops in Korea to guard against North Korean threats. Seoul paid 920 billion won ($790 million) for that year.



The renewed SMA, which will apply until 2018, also stipulates that the amount paid must reflect the consumer price index (CPI), and increase Seoul's cost-sharing every year by up to 4 percent.



Critics say Korea pays nearly 1 trillion won a year in accordance with the SMA for the cost of stationing the USFK, and is not getting a defense free-ride from Washington.







Follow Jun Ji-hye on Twitter @TheKopJihye




By Jun Ji-hye



A United Nations office in Seoul has begun an investigation into North Korea's human rights abuses by interviewing defectors from the repressive nation, government officials said Monday.



"Since February, the U.N. office has been visiting Hanawon, a resettlement center for North Korean defectors, to interview defectors and ask about crimes against humanity in the North," a Ministry of Unification official told reporters on condition of anonymity. "The government has approved the office's request to conduct interviews with North Korean defectors."



In June last year, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights opened a field office in Seoul to monitor and document human rights violations in the secretive state. Establishing the office was among the recommendations made by the U.N. Commission of Inquiry (COI) in its landmark report released in February 2014.



Ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-hee also told a regular briefing that the government is cooperating with the U.N. office on the latter's investigation, adding, "We will continue to work together not only with the U.N., but also with other countries to improve human rights in the North."



The U.N. office has been conducting written interviews with North Korean defectors at Hanawon that offers a three-month resettlement education for defectors. Then, the office will carry out in-depth face-to-face interviews, if necessary, according to officials.



The North's human rights problem has drawn greater international attention since the COI report stated that North Korean leaders are responsible for "widespread, systematic and gross" violations of human rights, and the International Criminal Court (ICC) should handle North Korea's "crimes against humanity."



The report led the U.N. General Assembly to adopt a landmark resolution calling for the issue to be referred to the ICC.



Pyongyang has bristled at international criticism, calling it a U.S.-led attempt to topple its regime.



For its part, South Korea is seeking to establish a center tasked with better looking into the North's human rights record and setting up an archive to preserve written testimony and other resources on related issues under the wing of the ministry.



The envisioned establishment comes after a new law aimed at improving Pyongyang's dismal treatment of its people was passed early last month after years of political wrangling between conservatives and liberals.







Follow Jun Ji-hye on Twitter @TheKopJihye




Sexual assault victims participate in a group therapy program held at the Seoul Sunflower Center in Hyehwa-dong, Seoul. / Courtesy of Seoul Sunflower Center



By Kim Bo-eun

Park Ji-na, 23, was sexually assaulted by her father for 12 years from the age of eight. Out of fear, she kept quiet about the abuse until she started having hallucinations. She then mustered up the courage to visit a local community center for adolescents.

After receiving initial aid from the center, she was referred to the Seoul Sunflower Center, where she was able to receive medical aid and counseling.

Since 2012, Park has been visiting the center on a weekly basis, taking part in counseling and therapy sessions.

"I feel like I am alive," Park said of her experience in the sessions in an interview with reporters at the center.

Park's mother also received counseling and participated in therapy sessions for mothers of victims.

"Although I was not involved in what happened, I had a sense of guilt toward my daughter," she said. "The counselors at the center helped me overcome this."

Park's mother and others created a group through which they could share their experiences dealing with the aftermath of sexual assault.

Park and her mother both said that it required courage for them to disclose what had happened and seek help. A 2013 survey on sexual violence conducted by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family showed two out of three victims keep silent, and fighting social stigma continues to be the greatest challenge for them and their families.

"People, including family members, have prejudice against victims  so they keep quiet about the matter for the sake of family," Park's mother said.

"It is really important for victims to realize that they are not the ones that tear apart their families by speaking out; instead, they are the ones who save the family."

Park and her mother also received legal aid from the center and the perpetrator faced criminal punishment.

As such, the Sunflower Center provides counseling and medical expenses as well as help on criminal and legal matters in collaboration with police. The center can also provide medical aid because it is located within Seoul National University Hospital.

There are currently 36 centers nationwide for victims of sexual violence, domestic violence and prostitution. These centers provide emergency services as well as post-recovery programs.

The Seoul center opened in 2011, and 4,669 victims, including foreigners, have either called or visited it since. Over 90 percent of them are women and they are mainly victims of sexual assault.

Young women in their teens and 20s constitute the largest ratio of sexual assault victims, although the number of male victims is also on the rise, according to the center. According to 2013 data from the National Police Agency, an average of 79 sex crimes occurs daily.

"Victims and their families are very cautious about being revealed. They don't like having centers located on main roads, and they do not want the name of the center to indicate that it aids sexual assault victims," said a Seoul center official.

"This is the greatest barrier for victims, but we spoke out with the hope that other victims would summon up their courage to seek help," Park and her mother said.

The center official advised victims to visit the center as soon as possible after the assault, within 72 hours and without changing or showering if possible, so that physical evidence can be collected. "Without physical evidence, police can only rely on victims' testimonies," she said.
With testing season upon us again, teachers across the country are speaking out against the importance placed on tests that they say dont properly measure their students learning. In New Mexico, that outspokenness can get them in trouble, as it violates a state education department rule against disparaging standardized tests.

But now, contending that this proscription violates free speech protections, the New Mexico branch of the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit on behalf of five teachers and a parent .

The rule, written into a section on test security regulations, says that school district staff, including administrators, teachers, volunteers and office personnel who come in contact with standardized tests cant disparage or diminish the significance, importance or use of the standardized tests. Among the possible punishments for disobeying the regulation is the suspension or revocation of a persons educator or administrator licensure.

Maria Sanchez, a staff attorney for the ACLU of New Mexico, says that the restriction is an attempt to intimidate teachers in an effort to silence viewpoints that are at odds with the departments.

Beyond the illegality of this restriction, there is something unsettling and fundamentally un-American about the government compelling praise for its policies, she said in announcing the suit. Our society is in the midst of an important conversation about what role standardized testing should play in education, and the government shouldnt be trying to forcibly elbow teachers voices out of the public square.

New Mexico isnt the only place where teachers are being told to keep their opinions on testing to themselves. New York City teachers are reportedly getting mixed signals on the issue from district and state officials. While the newly elected chancellor of New Yorks Board of Regents, Betty Rosa, has gone so far as to say that if she were a parent of school-aged children she would opt them out of the state tests, city officials have been sending a different message. Several principals told The New York Times that district officials have told them that school staff shouldnt be encouraging parents to opt out.

The events in New York City, where only about two percent of kids opted out last year compared to 20 percent statewide, comes as New Yorks major teachers union is again recommending that parents have their kids sit out the tests . It should be noted, however, that some contest the extent of the role that teachers and their unions have played in the opt-out movement. They say this is primarily a parents movement, not one driven by people concerned about what the tests will mean for their own job security.
By Lee Kyung-min



Daegu Metropolitan Police Agency has launched an investigation into Kyungpook National University Law School over allegations that influence-peddling and corruption were involved in its admissions process in 2013.



The probe followed a complaint filed by a civic group against the law school, Thursday, with the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission, which then asked for a police investigation.



It comes amid criticism that law schools, with high tuition, benefit only those who are wealthy and are heavyweights in the political and legal circles. They allegedly take advantage of their personal ties with law school professors in having their children admitted.



The complaint was based on allegations depicted in a book "Law School for Law School Professors" written by a professor at the school, Shin Pyung.



In the book, Shin wrote that one of his fellow professors, whose identity was withheld, visited a number of other professors' offices there and asked them to admit the son of his friend, a prosecutor-turned-lawyer, at the end of 2013.



The professor and the lawyer studied together at the Judicial Training & Research Institute, at which those who passed the state-administered bar exam train before becoming judges, prosecutors or lawyers.



During the admissions interview, the interviewers asked the candidate whether his father was a former prosecutor, asking for his father's name for verification. The son was admitted, according to the book.



Shin also said it is common for parents and acquaintances to seek professors' influence ahead of law school admissions.



On one occasion, a lawyer firm told Shin that he would hire a handful of graduates from the school in exchange for granting admission to his son.



Shin said that applicants openly state their family background in their self-introduction essays, such as who their parents are, and whether they are judges, prosecutors, or lawyers.



Schools also like such applicants because they believe they will have deeper understanding of the legal system due to their backgrounds.



Police plan to question Shin and other school officials in charge of admissions about the allegations.



The school denied Shin's claim.



School President Kim Moon-jae sent a letter to Shin last week, stating that the school will take punitive measures against him if he fails to provide evidence backing his claims by today. Kim asked Shin to give the name of the professor who sought other professors' favor and that of his friend, and to prove that the son was admitted as a direct result of influence-peddling.



"We select interviewers 10 minutes before the interview to guarantee fairness. There cannot be any influence-peddling," Kim said.



The school also criticized Shin for publishing the book with the sponsorship of the Seoul Bar Association, which wants to retain the state-bar administered exam that will be abolished in 2017. From that time, law schools will be the only avenue for a student to become a lawyer.




By Kim Hyo-jin

The rival parties ratcheted up their campaigns in fiercely contested districts in Seoul and South Gyeongsang Province, Monday, eight days ahead of the April 13 general election.

Ruling Saenuri Party Chairman Kim Moo-sung stumped in South Gyeongsang Province, following a visit to Busan, Sunday. The two-day campaign reflects his uneasiness about dwindling support in the conservative party's traditional home turf, observers said.

Kim Chong-in, interim leader of the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK), hit the campaign trail in Gyeonggi Province where 60 of 253 electoral seats are up for grabs.

The MPK views divisions within the opposition bloc as disadvantageous to the party in the metropolitan and capital area. Although it secured 25 seats in the previous election, recent polls show its candidates lead in only 20 districts while the Saenuri Party's candidates are ahead in 28.

Rep. Ahn Cheol-soo, co-chairman of the People's Party, made all-out efforts in Seoul, redirecting his focus from Gwangju, and North and South Jeolla provinces, Korea's traditional left-wing stronghold.

The minority opposition party is seeking to expand the scope of its popularity which is condensed to the southwestern region.

Worries are prevalent that the party could secure no seats in the metropolitan area and remain a Jeolla-based regional party, according to party officials. Its candidates suffer from weak standings in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province, except for Ahn running in the Nowon-C district of the capital.

Kim Moo-sung stumped for candidates trailing opposition candidates in the Changwon-Seongsan and Gimhae districts, criticizing the MPK interim leader. "The so-called economic democratization is nothing but rhetoric without substantial benefit for the public," he said. "To truly improve the regional economy and create jobs, Saenuri Party candidates should be elected."

Saenuri Party candidate Lee Man-ki, a former ssireum (Korean wrestling) champion, is losing ground to the MPK's Kim Kyung-soo, a former secretary of the late President Roh Moo-hyun in Gimhae.

Rep. Kang Gi-yun of the Saenuri Party is also losing to the Justice Party's Roh Hoe-chan, who gained momentum after his opposition rival Huh Sung-moo dropped out of the race, according to polls.

With the Saenuri Party's survey showing that eight out of 65 seats could be snatched by the opposition parties in its home turf, Kim appeared to be seeking more attention from traditional voters.

"We won't lose our pride in the region, putting our utmost efforts to secure the area from Changwon and Busan to Ulsan," he said.

Meanwhile, Kim Chong-in went to Yongin and Suwon, launching an offensive against the ruling party.

"The election should be a judgment against the Park Geun-hye administration that has failed with the economy for the past eight years alongside the previous conservative government," he said.

The MPK had aimed its offensive against the People's Party, urging it to put single candidates together. But after that scenario failed, the party is expected to frame the election as a head-to-head competition between the MPK and the ruling party.

Rep. Ahn reiterated his opposition to an alliance, saying "I highly doubt putting a single candidate with the MPK will have a positive impact."

A recent poll showed that the approval rating of the ruling Saenuri Party has fallen for three consecutive weeks, while those of the opposition parties have risen.

In a March 28 to April 1 Realmeter poll, the Saenuri Party was favored by 37.1 percent of 2,528 respondents, a 1.2 percentage-points decrease from the previous week.

In contrast, the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK) and the minority opposition People's Party rose by 1.3 and 0.8 percentage points to 26.2 percent and 14.8 percent, respectively.

The local pollster said the fall in the Saenuri Party's support was evident in its home turf  Daegu, Busan and North and South Gyeongsang and Chungcheong provinces.

It suggested that it was caused by a recent controversy over President Park Geun-hye's portrait and intensified criticism by the opposition bloc of the Park administration's economic policy failures.

The party was involved in further factional strife last week, after loyalists to Park requested independent lawmakers running in Daegu  Reps. Yoo Seong-min, Kwon Eun-hee, Yoo Sung-kull and Joo Ho-young  to return portraits of the President hanging in their offices.

The four lawmakers quit the party in late March following a controversy over nominations, controlled by Park's loyalists, calling it political revenge against those who weren't close followers of the President.
The statue of a girl, a symbol of Korean sex slavery victims during World War II, stands in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, Monday. / Yonhap



By Kim Se-jeong

The landmark deal on the resolution of sex slavery by the Japanese military before and during World War II has made no meaningful progress since Dec. 28 when the Korean and Japanese governments reached the agreement.

One hundred days ago, foreign ministers of both countries reached a verbal agreement that Japan would pay to establish a foundation to take care of the survivors. Also, the two announced that the two governments will regard the issue as resolved finally and irreversibly.

However, few would agree the agreement has gone any further.

What happened last week between President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe confirmed the lack of progress. Meeting on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C., the two leaders repeated that the agreement will be implemented as discussed.

Earlier, there was an exchange of criticisms after Japanese officials insisted at the United Nations that the brothels where almost 200,000 women were forced to provide sex were private and voluntarily run, again avoiding the Japanese military's involvement in the brothels and its culpability.

Setting up the foundation is stalled, as related ministries keep repeating they are working on it without details about when and how it will be established.
Korean President Park Geun-hye on Sunday toured a museum and watched a K-pop concert in Mexico City on the second day of her trip to Mexico.

She spent about an hour at the National Museum of Anthropology -- home to about 600,000 collections, including artifacts from the Aztec and Mayan civilizations before their conquest by the Spanish.

Park also attended a K-pop concert in Mexico City later in the day staged as a cultural exchange event between the two countries. The event drew some 3,200 people, mostly young Mexican fans of "hallyu," or the Korean wave.

The fans screamed as popular South Korean boy group Infinite sang songs at a theater. The cultural event also featured a performance of taekwondo, South Korea's martial art.

Spreading beyond China and Southeast Asian countries, the Korean wave has gained wide popularity in Mexico and other Central and South American countries in recent years.

Separately, Park has called for a free trade deal with Mexico in Seoul's latest push to make inroads into the emerging market, saying it would create a win-win situation for the two countries.

South Korea and Mexico launched free trade talks in 2007, but the negotiations have been stalled since 2008 due to strong opposition from the Mexican automobile industry.

Last year, South Korea asked Mexico to resume talks on a bilateral free trade agreement.

"I think it's meaningful for South Korea and Mexico to sign a free trade agreement to expand trade and investment and strengthen economic cooperation," Park said in an interview with Mexico's major daily El Universal published on Sunday.

Park said a free trade deal, if signed, could create a win-win situation, as it could open a new gateway in Northeast Asia for Mexico, while South Korea can expand its access to North, Central and South America.












South Korea and Japan are each other's most important neighbors, sharing strategic interests, a draft of Tokyo's annual foreign policy report said Monday.

Japan's ties with South Korea have greatly advanced since last year's bilateral deal to settle the issue of Korean women forced to work at wartime Japanese military brothels, said the draft Diplomatic Bluebook for 2016 obtained by Kyodo News Service.

According to the draft of the Japanese foreign ministry, South Korea is one of the most important neighbors, adding that friendly relations between the two countries are essential for peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region.

The paper, compiled by the Japanese Foreign Ministry, will be released later this month after the Cabinet of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe approves it.

In December, South Korea and Japan agreed to resolve the "comfort women" issue, a source of a drawn-out dispute between the two countries, "finally and irreversibly" with Tokyo pledging to provide 1 billion yen (US$9 million) for a new South Korean foundation aimed at helping aging former comfort women.

The draft paper said South Korea and Japan have made great advances in bilateral relations.

In 2014, Japan wrote in the annual diplomatic report that "South Korea and Japan share basic values and interests such as liberal democracy and basic human rights." Last year the annual book again merely expressed the term "South Korea is one of the most important neighbors."

But this year's draft contains the term "sharing strategic interests" with South Korea in a move to improve bilateral relations following the landmark deal on Dec. 28.

Nuclear and missile development by North Korea remains a source of concern and threat to the international community, according to the draft, which said Japan will strongly urge the communist country to take concrete actions toward denuclearization.

Tokyo will keep pressing Pyongyang to resolve the issue of North Korea's abductions of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s, it also said. (Yonhap)
Former Government Administration and Home Affairs Minister Chong Jong-sup, right, and other Saenuri Party candidates join a crtiticism against independent candidates who abandoned the Saenuri Party for the general election on April 13 during a joint campaign in Daegu, Thursday. / Yonhap



Nomination fiasco expected to negatively affect Saenuri Party in April 13 polls



By Yi Whan-woo



President Park Geun-hye faces challenges in her apparent bid to extend her influence over state affairs after her Presidential term, with a tougher-than-expected race confronting the ruling Saenuri Party in the April 13 general election.

Analysts said last week that they believe the President was behind the Saenuri Party's lopsided nomination of her loyalists as its electoral candidates while forcing those estranged by Park to leave the party.

Up to 60 percent of the party's electoral candidates are considered mainstream pro-Park factional members.

The party's strategy was to push the Park loyalists to dominate the National Assembly following the April election, to help her avoid lame-duck status and ensure Park's control over selecting her successor in the 2017 presidential election.

The strategy, however, backfired as public sentiment against the party has grown in the wake of its factional strife. And it remains uncertain whether the party can increase its majority of the 300 parliamentary seats up for grabs, according to experts.





From left, three former ruling Saenuri Party members  Reps. Yoo Sung-kull, Yoo Seong-min and Kwon

Eun-hee  hold a press conference during their joint campaign as independent candidates for the April 13 general election in Daegu, Sunday. / Yonhap



"I don't think people find it uncomfortable for presidents to capitalize on parliamentary elections as a chance to solidify their post-presidency status," said Lee Joon-han, a political professor at Incheon University. "But it's important for presidents to make sure they are not wielding their power excessively as if they were monarchs. In this climate, Park obviously crossed the line."

Shin Yul, a political professor at Myongji University, speculated that the factional strife is forcing a growing number of Saenuri Party supporters to break away.

Shin cited that the Saenuri Party's approval rating nationwide fell for two straight weeks, hitting 37 percent on the fifth and last week of March in a survey released by Gallup Korea, Friday. The rating stood at 41 percent in the third week of the month and then dropped by 2 percentage points the next week.

The party especially suffered an 8-percentage-point fall to 32 percent in Seoul between March 22 and March 31. During the same time period, its approval rating in Incheon and Gyeonggi Province combined dropped by 3 percentage points to 33 percent.

Collectively known as the Seoul Capital Area, Seoul, Incheon, and Gyeonggi Province make up the country's most populous region.

"I'm so concerned that our supporters may turn their backs on us after being disappointed by recent mistakes we've made," Saenuri Party Chairman Rep. Kim Moo-sung said on the campaign trail for Saenuri candidates in Gyeonggi Province, Saturday. "We initially planned to secure 180 parliamentary seats and now I'm not even sure whether we can occupy half of the 300 seats."

"The fall of the party's approval rating is attributed to the President's involvement in the nomination process and the party's internal rift," said Bae Jong-chan, the chief director of political pollster Research and Research.

"The 180-seat goal will be unrealistic unless both the Saenuri Party and the President's approval ratings rise above 50 percent."

Choi Chang-ryul, a political professor at Yongin University, echoed a similar view.

"Some may have been disappointed by the President while some others may be displeased with Kim Moo-sung," he said.

The Saenuri Party chairman is a non-mainstream lawmaker. He opposed the nomination committee's plans and discouraged it from fielding Park's loyalists as candidates in three contentious districts.

Two of them include Daegu Dong B where the party's former floor leader Rep. Yoo Seong-min is running as an independent candidate and Seoul Eunpyeong B where Rep. Lee Jae-oh, also a former Saenuri Party member, is also seeking reelection as an independent.

They both quit the Saenuri Party after failing to win electoral nominations.

"The party will need to retrieve approval from its longtime supporters this week to win in this election," said Yoon Hee-woong, a senior researcher at Opinion Live.

Lee Chung-hee, a politics professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, urged the Saenuri Party to resolve the internal strife, saying "Touting the number of seats they want to win in elections doesn't look good."

Some party officials said the mainstream and minority factions are on a "political ceasefire" and their strife will resume immediately after the election.

They pointed out that Kim Moo-sung vowed to step down from his chairmanship post right after the election although his two-year term is set to expire in July.

"Both factional members will blame each other if the party fails to win 150 seats and also they will try to have their members run for the chairmanship," said Hwang Tae-soon, a political commentator.

He speculated former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Strategy and Finance Choi Kyung-hwan could run for the party's leadership for the pro-Park faction. He is making a parliamentary bid in Gyeongsan, North Gyeongsang Province.
South Korea partly resumed flights of its F-16 fighter jets on Monday after the crash of one plane led to a fleetwide grounding, the Air Force said.

The U.S.-made combat aircraft plunged into an uninhabited hill in the southeast town of Cheongsong, some 320 kilometers southeast of Seoul on Wednesday, after its engine failed during a training mission. The two pilots aboard the airplane safely ejected.

Following the accident, the Air Force suspended the flight of some 30 F-16 units, as well as 130 KF-16 fighter jets, a South Korean variant of the U.S. airplane, which the Korea Aerospace Industries Ltd. license-produced.

With Monday's decision, around 130 KF-16 aircraft resumed their operations, an Air Force official said.

But the F-16 jets remain grounded and will not resume flights until the Air Force wraps up its investigation into last week's crash, according to the official.

The two models use different jet engines and the KF-16s safely underwent a special engine checkup, the official said, explaining why Seoul lifted the flight ban.

"A thorough investigation is under way over the crash of the F-16D aircraft," the official said.

The Air Force retrieved the black box of the stricken jet and sent it to the U.S. for a probe, he said, adding that a technical investigation from the aircraft's engine maker will arrive in South Korea to join the local investigation. (Yonhap)
Mexico has vowed it will continue to detain a North Korean freighter, an official said Monday, in the latest sign of its resolve to enforce U.N. resolutions on Pyongyang.

Mexico detained the Mu Du Bong after identifying the ship as belonging to Ocean Maritime Management, a North Korean firm blacklisted by the U.N. for illegally shipping arms.

One of the company's ships was detained by Panamanian authorities in July 2013 for carrying Soviet-era MiG-21 fighter aircraft, surface-to-air missiles and other arms-related cargo hidden under sacks of sugar.

The 6,700-ton freighter ran aground on a reef off Tuxpan in the Mexican state of Veracruz in July 2014. Mexico held 33 crewmembers before releasing them last year.

North Korea has called for the release of the ship, saying the Mu Du Bong is a totally peaceful and legitimate commercial ship that sails under the direction of the Ministry of Land and Sea Transportation.

Still, Mexico said it "will continue to detain the ship" according to an official who is in a position to know about government policy. He asked not to be identified, citing policy.












By John J. Metzler

UNITED NATIONSThe modern day barbarians have been routed from the ancient city of Palmyra, but the destruction left in the wake of the year-long Islamic State occupation has been near catastrophic. After five years of conflict, war torn Syria sees the fruits of limited cease fires allowing observers to gaze upon a near apocalyptic humanitarian and physical landscape.

That's why the liberation of the ancient city of Palmyra is key; signaling a significant setback for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, (ISIL) and hopefully now a turning point from wanton destruction to the eventual restoration and preservation of Syria itself.

The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) stated clearly,

"Palmyra contains the monumental ruins of a great city that was one of the most important cultural centers of the ancient world. From the 1st to the 2nd century, the art and architecture of Palmyra, standing at the crossroads of several civilizations, married Graeco-Roman techniques with local traditions and Persian influences."

Yet UNESCO's Director Irina Bukova warned, "The deliberate destruction of heritage is a war crime, and UNESCO will do everything in its power to document the damage so that these crimes do not go unpunished."

AfterISIL captured Palmyra, it turned to destroying archaeological sites such as two 2,000 year old temples, the Arch, and turning the Roman amphitheater into an execution ground. ISIL claims such pre-Islamic structures are idolatrous and should be smashed and sacked.

Following the occupation, Maamoun Abdulkarim, the Syrian antiquities director, advised 80 percent of the Unesco World Heritage site nonetheless remains intact.

Beyond its hateful political ideology, ISIL has spread a noxious anti-cultural logic that it must destroy the legacy of pre-Islamic civilization. Thus when ISIL seized Mosul in Iraq, it trashed the famed Museum and later sent its demolition teams to blast the storied ruins of Iraqi civilization. And the same in Syria. Blasting, bulldozing and looting art treasures from the past and in some cases allowing more portable objects to enter the global antiquities black markets.

Such damage is not unique. In Afghanistan in the Spring of 2001, the Taliban's Islamic extremists targeted age-old Buddhist statues in Bamiyan. The world watched in horror but did nothing as the Taliban thugs blasted statues dating from the 7th century AD into oblivion.

Such cultural barbarism is not unique to the Middle East. During China's so-called "Cultural Revolution" between 1966-1976, Red Guards, the self appointed watchdogs of the communist new order, burned books, Buddhist sutras and trashed religious Temples all in the name of Chairman Mao. In the Spring of 1966, the mindless terror which led to opposing the "Four Olds" of China's civilization was unleashed by the paramilitary Red Guards.

The Washington D.C. based "Antiquities Coalition" created a map of Culture Under Threat to highlight the threat to sites such as St. Elijah's Monastery in Iraq, Palymra and the Mosul Museum. The map lists 700 heritage sites throughout the 22 states of the Arab League, 230 of the sites which have since been destroyed.

Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, offered interesting views on the recapture of Palmyra by the Syrian army backed by the Russians. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Johnson called Bashir Assad a "vile tyrant" but added "the victory of Assad is a victory for archaeology, a victory for all those who care about the ancient monuments." Johnson called for the top notch expertise of British archeologists to help restore this ancient city known as "the Bride of the Desert."

Beyond ISIL's cultural barbarism we see the humanitarian disaster unfolding inside Syria.

Addressing the Security Council, Stephen O'Brien the UN's Humanitarian Chief spoke of the slightly improved situation in light of the ceasefire. Yet, "Many of the 4.6 million people in need in besieged and hard to reach areas still remain outside our reach to to insecurity and obstructions." Essentially, the UN relief has reached only about a third of the nearly five million people internally displaced inside Syria.

Treating Syria's humanitarian symptoms remain admirable, but the political Problem must be solved.

Though some quarters may question if Palmyra's liberation from Islamic State by the military forces of the Syrian dictator Bashir Assad should be celebrated, the facts favor this positive development. The Assad's at their worst never ruined or wrecked ancient Roman and Greek treasures scattered throughout the country. On the other hand, Islamic State policy is to deliberately desecrate, destroy and loot pre-Islamic treasures. Moreover, a century from now who will remember this evil ruler, but all will still cherish millennia of civilization which stand as silent testament to Syria's ancient heritage.
By Michael Breen

The people of Jeju this weekend marked the 68th anniversary of the killings in 1948 that shattered their bucolic communities and left scars that, despite a truth and reconciliation approach by modern democratic governments, fester to this day.

Korea has come a long way since its own police, their ranks supplemented by anti-communist youth invited for the purpose, provoked a communist-led uprising and then dealt with it by randomly slaughtering non-combatants in almost every village on the island.

Now there is a government-built memorial "Peace Park," where the names of over 14,000 confirmed dead and almost 3,600 missing are recorded. On Sunday, the ceremony there was attended by officials and politicians along with local citizens.

The Jeju Massacre, as it is called, was the bloodiest episode during the vicious struggle between the political right and left in South Korea when the country was under American occupation and in the brief period of independence before the North Koreans invaded.

The terrible events were quickly overshadowed by the sheer scale of the Korean War and, as the perpetrator was the government and most victims non-political peasants, subsequent dictators suppressed discussion of it.

It took 40 years and the arrival of democracy to change that.

In 2000 the government set up a Jeju Commission to investigate the massacres and honor the victims. (It was followed in 2005 by a Truth and Reconciliation Commission whose mission was to address other human rights abuses, violence, and massacres in Korea going back to1910).

The bereaved of Jeju finally received a presidential apology in 2003 and the day it started, April 3, was designated a national memorial day by President Park Geun-hye in 2014.

This would appear to close things, but it doesn't.

Tens of thousands of Jeju people have passed their whole lives trying to deal with the day their own government's forces came to their village, hauled the adults out of their homes, accused them of being communists, and shot or killed them with bamboo spears.

"When I was a young man, I was filled with anger and got into fights with people," one elderly man told me. He was eight when his father, male relatives and school teachers were murdered. "My mother saved me. She said the purpose of life is to love people, not hate them."

Such events in a country's history are not easy to address and recent administrations should be credited with their effort.

The recommendations made by the Jeju Commission have now been implemented: a presidential apology, a memorial park, a memorial day, education of students and the public (the peace park is the most widely visited "dark tourism" site in the country), basic welfare for bereaved families, excavations of mass graves, further investigation and commemoration projects.

But if you examine the approach taken, two weaknesses emerge. One concerns truth, the other concerns reconciliation.

The problem on the truth front is that the nationalistic narrative today is the same one shared by the Jeju killers and the dictators who suppressed talk of their crimes. It is that we Koreans have always been the innocent victims of greater powers.

But how can you square that belief with the stark truth that more Koreans were killed in the four years after the Japanese occupation (and before the Korean War) by their fellow Koreans than by the beastly Japanese during the previous 40 years?

You can't. You have to either distort the truth  that's what suppressing it tried to achieve. Or you do what has to be done and change the narrative.

Clearly, the digging up of truth about this horrendous past calls for a new view of Korea, one that reinforces not blood-nationalism but democracy. The narrative should be that people are people everywhere, but a democratic society is stronger, more successful and more virtuous than a non-democratic one because democracy stays the hand of the powerful and protects the weak. There was horror and abuse in every country before it became democratic. Our people were not intrinsically worse then. But their behavior was because they were unrestrained by the concept of rights that was enshrined in laws that were backed up by the authority of the state.

That brings us to the reconciliation point. Underlying the good work of the Jeju Commission is the idea that the unearthing of truth, the acceptance by government and the presidential apology assuage the pain of the victims and rectify all wrongs. But they don't.

President Park, for example, may represent the Korean establishment. But she was not even born when the massacres happened.

A real move for reconciliation would sensitively bring together victims and actual perpetrators, or their representatives. That is, the villagers of Jeju with the old men still alive of the police, militia and anti-communist North Korean refugee youth groups.

Such an effort will allow the people of Jeju who grew up without mothers and fathers and who struggled despite themselves to love and forgive the people who took them away, as the decent folk among them counselled, to find the deep sense in that guidance and finally find peace.

Michael Breen is the CEO of Insight Communications Consultants, a public relations company, and author of "The Koreans" and "Kim Jong-il: North Korea's Dear Leader."
Heres a nice new-teacher-development idea: An academic advisor at the Middle Tennessee State Universitys College of Education has opened a clothing shop just for education students , the Daily News Journal in Murfreesboro, Tenn., reports.

The Clothing Our Educators Boutique, which is located in the education school, is intended to serve students who arent equipped with professional clothing and are on a student budget. The idea is to make sure students can find appropriate dress for student-teaching assignments or attending interviews.

The proprietor, June Adams, said that in working with students at the school, she had noticed that many did have proper attire for working in schools. "[M]ost arent as fortunate as others ... and attire is basically jeans, T-shirts and sneakers. ... Im seeing the need every day.

The store receives clothing donations from the public and local stories, and items are available at no cost to students who are in the residency stage of teacher-education program, according to a piece in the MTSU newspaper

Adams said she was inspired by similar program launched for business majors at the university.

Donations can be made by contacting at june.adams@mtsu.edu. Professional attire that is age appropriate for both men and women ages 20 to 30 is welcomed.
Jin Kyung-jun, head of the Justice Ministry's Korea Immigration Service, offered to resign Saturday over suspicions that he pocketed huge gains through the sale of his Nexon stock. In a statement, Jin said, "I registered all my fortune according to the relevant law. But I didn't know that that would fall short of meeting people's expectations."



Jin came under suspicion last week after it was revealed that he sold about 800,000 shares of Nexon, a local game developer, for 12.6 billion won last year. He reportedly bought 8,537 Nexon shares, which were unlisted at the time, in 2005. The number of shares increased due to a stock split in 2011 when Nexon was registered on the Japanese stock market.



Suspicions arose quickly after it was reported that Jin had worked at the Financial Intelligence Unit, raising the possibility that he may have purchased the unlisted stock for much less than its market price. What's more, Jin is a close friend of Nexon founder Kim Jung-ju as they attended Seoul National University together.



Jin explained that he bought the unlisted stock from a third person who emigrated in 2005. He denied taking advantage of his public office or of any inside information in deciding to buy the shares of Nexon.



But Jin refused to reveal who the third person was and how much he paid for the stock. So there is reasonable doubt that the unlisted stock may have been connected to the Nexon founder or that his purchase may have been concluded with Kim's consent.



The Justice Ministry has indicated its intention to accept Jin's resignation but has not opened an investigation of the case. The ministry should not accept his resignation because it might result in him escaping punishment.



If Jin becomes an ordinary citizen after his resignation is accepted, it will be difficult for the Government Public Ethics Committee to examine the case.



As things stand now, Jin is suspected of having committed an irregularity, which is subject to heavy sanctions. Hence, it's right for the Justice Ministry to withhold Jin's resignation and make a decision according to the results of the probe after suspending him from his duties.



The ministry has been facing a storm of criticism for failing to open an investigation, although suspicions arose against the senior prosecutor. So it's not surprising that the government would be met with a vehement public protest if Jin's resignation is accepted.



Getting to the bottom of the case will be the only way for the Justice Ministry to restore public confidence.




A U.N. office on North Korea's human rights is carrying out interviews with North Korean defectors in a bid to investigate Pyongyang's treatment of its people, a government official said Monday.



The United Nations opened its field office in June last year in Seoul to monitor North Korea's human rights violations, recommended by the U.N. Commission's landmark report on the country's dismal record on human rights.



"Since February, the government has cooperated with the U.N. office by allowing it to hold interviews with North Korean defectors," Jeong Joon-hee, a spokesman at Seoul's unification ministry, told a regular press briefing.



Another ministry official said that the ministry has approved the office's request to have interviews with North Korean defectors at a resettlement center.



The U.N. office is conducting written interviews with North Korean defectors at Hanawon, a facility in which defectors receive a three-month resettlement education after coming to South Korea, the official said.



If needed, the office is carrying out in-depth face-to-face interviews to further glean evidence of North Korea's widespread violations of human rights.



North Korea has long been labeled one of the worst human rights violators in the world. Pyongyang has bristled at such criticism, calling it a U.S.-led attempt to topple its regime.



The communist regime does not tolerate dissent, holds hundreds of thousands of people in political prison camps and keeps tight control over outside information.



In December, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution for the second consecutive year that calls for referring the North to the International Criminal Court for human rights violations.



A new law that aims to improve the North's dismal treatment of its people was passed last month after being held up for years due to political wrangling between conservatives and liberals.



In accordance with the law, Seoul is seeking to establish a center tasked with investigating the North's human rights violations and collect relevant data and create an archives on the issue.



If the center is created, the ministry is not likely to allow the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights, a civic group handling Pyongyang's rights issues, to investigate the North's human rights situation, a ministry source said. With the government taking charge of record-keeping, a civic group handling the matter would be redundant.



Jeong said that it is too early to say how the U.N. office and an envisioned center on the North's rights will cooperate.



"It is premature to comment on (details of their cooperation). But the government will make efforts to improve North Korea's human rights situation with the U.N. and other countries," he added. (Yonhap)




SPARX Asset Management Korea Executive Managing Director Bae Jung-hyun speaks during an interview

with The Korea Times. / Courtesy of KeyWest Partners



By Nam Hyun-woo

Amid growing interest about the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the financial sector, SPARX Asset Management Korea Executive Managing Director Bae Jung-hyun believes that stock trading is a game of "psychology," something that an automated investment tool is not equipped to engage in.

The Japan-based asset management company won an award from the Financial Supervisory Service earlier this year with its SPARX Bon-Japan Fund, designed to achieve capital gains through investment in equities in Japan. The small and mid cap fund, launched in April last year, notched up a 9.33 percent return rate (class F) which is the highest among similar funds investing in Japanese equities during the past year.

"SPARX's investment philosophy of macro is the aggregation of micros," said Bae during a recent interview with The Korea Times. "Based on such a philosophy, we approach and meet executives and CEOs of each investable company (bottom-up) to evaluate whether their business vision is solid."

This strategy, seemingly not matching up with the current digitalized and rapid investment trends, allows SPARX to directly learn the "non-quantitative things" about a company, such as how talented or competent its leader is or what kind of strategy it has in order to make its business prosper -- aspects that are seldom mentioned in financial statements.

"Excessive earnings from asset management without a style often end ups being random," said Bae. "And inconsistent gains may end up becoming losses in the end. Thus, you have to look for an asset management company which is consistent in gaining results. It can be seen at a company's investment policy and its previous record," he said.

According to Bae, SPARX Bon-Japan fund could be successful after an understanding of the fact that the economy has been and will be growing slowly as society ages.

"Small and mid cap stocks are strong in the Japanese market," said Bae. He said stock markets in other countries, including Korea and some European countries, are led by large companies, but that is not the case for Japan, because small and medium-size enterprises in Japan have long been striving for survival through restructuring or cost reduction amid the country's long-term recession.

"About one third of Small and medium-sized companies in Korea sees black numbers, which is not so good for investors to invest to them. On the other hand, about 90 percent of small and mid cap stocks in the Japanese market record surpluses. So this is the reason why I recommend Japan for investors who want to invest in overseas companies," Bae said.

The veteran investor recommended businesses which continue to make profit a low growth trend, such as Muji, a Japanese household and consumer goods retailer.

Another emerging SPARX's fund is SPARX Value Power Fund. The fund, which invests in value stocks that tend to be traded at lower prices relative to their fundamentals, notched up a 12.25 percent earnings rate since it was launched in January last year, the highest among stock fund products launched in Korea last year.
An unnamed worker lowers an engine into a car being assembled at Hyundai Motor's manufacturing line in Chennai, India, last week. / Yonhap



Country's top automaker fears Samsung's reentry in vehicles market



By Kim Yoo-chul





Hyundai Motor Group's partnership with LG Group's technology affiliates is further strengthening, pushing LG's chief local rival Samsung to a secondary position in the promising and growing automotive industry.



Both LG and Samsung announced that they will increase their investments in electronic parts for the automotive industry with a specific focus on autonomous vehicles.



Such a strategy shift is in accordance with LG and Samsung's plans to find new revenue streams by cutting their heavy reliance on conventional business-to-consumer (B2C) models, which are highly competitive and have thin margins.



However, Hyundai Motor apparently favors LG affiliates over Samsung in jointly developing new automotive products, according to officials who are familiar with the issue, Monday.



Hyundai Motor recently signed a contract with LG Chem on joint promotion of eco-friendly vehicles. This is the fourth such agreement, following similar deals struck in 2012, 2013 and 2014.



LG along with Samsung are making a somewhat aggressive push into the carmaking industry, as automotive computer systems and sensors become more sophisticated.



LG Chem supplies its batteries to Hyundai Motor with LG Display and LG Electronics selling displays, navigation, audio systems and other in-vehicle infotainment systems, according to LG officials.



"LG affiliates were the primary suppliers for components to be used in Hyundai Motors' recent Ioniq electric vehicle," said an executive at one LG technology affiliate, wishing to be unidentified. "This one-sided love partnership is expected to continue."





No Samsung?



Hyundai Motor is said to purchase automotive chips only from Samsung Electronics, as LG Electronics had dropped its chip-making business two decades ago.



Like LG, Samsung is also upbeat about the auto-related business.



Samsung and its tech affiliates are ramping up R&D for auto technology, with two-thirds of their combined 1,804 U.S. patent filings since 2010 related to electric vehicles (EVs) and electric components for cars.



Specifically, Samsung Electronics could supply automotive chips and components for infotainment systems, while Samsung Electro-Mechanics, Samsung SDI and Samsung Display could supply motors, batteries and displays.



Officials say Hyundai's preference for LG is partly due to LG's aggressive pricing strategy, meaning that LG-supplied vehicle components are cheaper than Samsung's.



But some say Hyundai Motor's inclination toward LG is due to growing fears of Samsung's reentry in the vehicle market.



"If Samsung reenters the automotive market, then it greatly threatens Hyundai Motor," said the executive. "Given the ongoing trend of major consumer electronics companies joining the race for autonomous vehicles, Hyundai Motors is worrying that any shared information could help Samsung develop technologies faster than expected."



Samsung launched a new team last December to handle automotive businesses. The team has increased its staff to 20 members from four.



"Samsung will eventually begin producing smart vehicles. It is just a matter of time. Cars are becoming larger smartphones. Samsung can handle and generate profits as it has been doing well to jump into the market with on-time delivery, output commitment and better pricing in its target businesses," said a local fund manager who owns millions of dollars in stocks for Samsung affiliates.



"I think this is why Hyundai Motor is reluctant to expand its partnership with Samsung in the automotive industry. For Hyundai Motor, Samsung could become a threatening force in the next stage."
What Is the DOJ's 'Equitable Sharing Program'?

It sounds like a euphemism that would make George Orwell proud -- calling a process by which law enforcement can seize a person's assets even though they haven't been (and may never be) convicted of a crime, "sharing." But the Department of Justice is resuming its controversial "Equitable Sharing Program," even amidst serious political opposition to the practice.

So how does the seizure process work, and do you have any legal recourse if cops confiscate your property?

Cops or Robbers?

As The Washington Post described:

"The 'Equitable Sharing Program' gives police the option of prosecuting some asset forfeiture cases under federal instead of state law, particularly in instances where local law enforcement officers have a relationship with federal authorities as part of a joint task force. Federal forfeiture policies are more permissive than many state policies, allowing police to keep up to 80 percent of assets they seize."

Essentially, local law enforcement agencies can seize assets from people under investigation, even when they haven't been convicted, or in some cases even charged, with a crime. And the police can keep most of what they seize, despite the outcome of the case.

Also referred to as "civil forfeiture," the practice has become so widespread that citizens lost more property to cops in 2014 than they did to burglars. All told, police departments raked in some $4.5 billion in civil forfeitures.

Seizing Up

Because the targets of these asset seizures are relatively poor, they often lack the time and resources necessary to challenge civil forfeitures and reclaim their property. Some states allow law enforcement to hold property for over 180 days before a forfeiture action is filed, and then months may pass before a decision is reached.

As we noted, though, there has been some pushback on civil forfeiture and other procedures like the Equitable Sharing Program. Just this week, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government can't seize assets from a criminal defendant before trial if those assets were unrelated to the crime and needed to pay for legal representation.

If you've had property seized or confiscated by law enforcement pursuant to a criminal investigation, you should contact an experienced criminal defense attorney about your rights.

Related Resources:
#USImmigrationLaw: Affirmative and Defensive Asylum Applications

An affirmative or defensive asylum application is based on fear of persecution. An asylum seeker asks the government for protection, in the form of permission to remain in the United States legally, because they are being persecuted at home.

People who apply for asylum must prove that they can't go home because their lives are threatened based on their race, religion, nationality, membership in a social group, or political affiliations. Unlike refugees, who apply for protected status from the United Nations before they enter the US, asylum seekers apply while on America soil. There are two types of asylum applications -- affirmative and defensive. Let's look at both briefly.

Affirmative Applications

An affirmative asylum application must be filed within a year of arrival in the United States. The applicant files Form I-589 for an immigration officer to review. But in addition to filling out the form, applicants also document conditions in the country and evidence of persecution based on one of the five criteria: race, religion, nationality, membership in a social group, or political affiliations.

Depending on the basis for the claim and the situation in the applicant's home country, and how well they show evidence of past persecution or likelihood of future persecution, an application is denied or approved after an interview with an immigration officer. If an application is denied, it goes to an immigration judge for review and there are opportunities to submit more evidence and to make legal arguments.

Persecution manifests in many ways and the five categories apply to a wide range of situations, from political activism to flight from ethnic wars and much more. Asylum exists to protect people who truly fear going home. That's why applying for it is also possible as a defense to removal.

Defensive Applications

A request for asylum may also be filed defensively when a person is in removal proceedings. What that means is that people who enter the country illegally can still apply for permanent residency if they face persecution at home under one of the specified categories.

The application will be reviewed by a judge and legal briefs may be submitted, along with evidence of the dangers the applicant faces, based on country conditions and specifics of the individual's situation. If asylum is not granted, a judge will consider alternative forms of relief.

Talk to a Lawyer

While an applicant -- for affirmative or defensive asylum -- is not entitled to an attorney for an asylum application, you may hire one. There are also human rights agencies that assist applicants who cannot afford representation, but you must apply for their assistance as well.

If you or someone you know is considering applying for asylum, speak to an attorney. Many immigration lawyers consult for free or a minimal fee and will be happy to talk to you about your claim and other possible forms of relief.

Related Resources:
The SLFP does not condone the continuation of the Emergency Regulations (The Public Security Ordinance) more than a day necessary

Read more
What's better than one entertaining movie? Two entertaining movies, and that's what Twilight Time delivers with their double-feature release of 'Support Your Local Sheriff' (1969) / 'Support Your Local Gunfighter' (1971), two comedic westerns directed by Burt Kennedy and starring James Garner that came out as the genre's popularity began to decline in American pop culture. The latter is not a sequel, but it did use some of the same cast and crewmembers and the story has a similarly silly tone.

'Sheriff' (3.5/5) opens during a funeral of the sheriff of Calendar, Colorado, who was killed after only having been there two days, demonstrating how wild things are. During the ceremony, the townsfolk find gold in the open grave and eventually those looking to strike it rich soon follow. One such man is Jason McCullough (Garner), who is looking to take part in gold rush before heading off to Australia. He takes the job as sheriff, which includes room and board at Mayor Olly Perkins' (Henry Morgan) home. Perkins' daughter Prudy (Joan Hackett) is feisty and surely anyone who has seen a few movies can guess she is likely to be Jason 's romantic partner before the end of the film.

The movie's conflict comes from Jason arresting Joe Danby (Bruce Dern) for murder. Jason is in such control of the situation he is able to keep Joe there even though the cell has no bars. Pa Danby (Walter Brennan) isnt happy about his son's incarceration and gathers up a bunch of relatives to break him out of jail. As usually happens within this genre, the townsfolk dont want to take part in fighting the gang of bad guys, leaving Jason, along with his deputy Jake (Jack Elam) and Purdy, to handle the overwhelming odds.

'Gunfighter' (3.5/5) opens with Latigo Smith (Garner) riding a train with Goldie (Marie Windsor), a madam who very much desires to marry him. He has other ideas and sneaks off at the next stop, Purgatory, CO, a town where two mining companies, one owned by Taylor Barton (Morgan), the other by Colonel Ames (John Dehner), are competing to see which can get to the gold mother lode first. Everyone mistakes Latigo for notorious gunfighter Swifty Morgan, whom Ames summoned to help him against Barton.

Latigo, assisted by down-to-owning-a-pair-of-spurs Jug (Jack Elam), uses this information to make some money and skip town before Swifty (an uncredited Chuck Connors) shows up. Although Swifty isn't the only thing Latigo has to worry about as Barton's daughter, the ironically named Patience (Suzanne Pleshette), wants to kill "Swifty" to save her father and ensure she can go back east to finishing school, but once she spends some time in his company, her blood lust subsides.

While both films are amusing, filled with funny plot twists and humorous performances, James Garner on-screen charm is the key reason why both films work. As both Jason and Latigo, he's the coolest guy in the story. If not in control, and there are moments in both films where things don't go according to plan, he soon gets things under control through his wits, although Jason does have the additional advantage of being extremely quick on the draw. He portrays very likable heroes who come out on top across the board.

Both 'Support Your Local Sheriff' and 'Support Your Local Gunfighter' are enjoyable, light-hearted romps through the western genre. While there are aspects in both films that come across forced, from the romantic subplots to the obligatory barroom brawls, most of the plot turns are believable and the humor and action deliver enough to make each movie worth viewing.

The Blu-ray: Vital Disc Stats

Twilight Times 'Support Your Local Sheriff / Gunfighter' comes on a 50GB Region A Blu-ray disc in a standard clear keepcase. The disc boots up directly to the menu screen without any promotional advertisements and offers the movie selections. There is a booklet with an essay by Julie Kirgo about both movies.
Clover POS systems are a great solution if you want to streamline your internal services and want to replace an old kit like cash registers, payment terminals and other equipment. Clovers point of sale solution allows you to get rid of all that and replace it with a more integrated system with state of the
Just minutes after U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service biologists flipped on live streaming video of a California condor nest in Ventura County, the long-awaited condor chick hatched.

Watch the stream here, as the little baby meets its parents, and learns how to survive.

Biologists had set up cameras in a cliffside nest at Hopper Mountain National Wildlife Refuge in Ventura County in anticipation of the condor's hatching, which happened at about 9:30 a.m. Monday. "This live cam takes the viewer right into the nest cave with the condors to watch their behavior and hear the sounds they make, Charles Eldermire, Bird Cams manager at the Cornell Lab, said in a statement. The egg was incubated as part of the California Condor Recovery Program's captive breeding effort at the Los Angeles Zoo. The parents, California condor #111 and #509, had laid an egg in March that went missing, so biologists replaced the missing egg with a dummy egg so they would continue to incubate the nest.

Hopefully the little chick will make it to adulthood, and join the fragile population of critically endangered California Condor that live in California, Arizona and Baja California.

"We hope [the livecam] will really raise awareness about these spectacular but highly endangered birds and the threats they face," Charles Eldermire, bird cam manager at Cornell Lab of Ornithology, told the Washington Post. "We know from past experience that people form a real emotional connection to the birds they see on the cams as they witness a part of nature they've never seen before."

About the video stream: The condor cam is a collaboration between the Santa Barbara Zoo, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
PRESS RELEASE

Russia: Third Force Behind Nagorno-Karabakh Flare-UpClearly Erdogan

April 3, 2016 (EIRNS)The flare-up of deadly fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region is being driven by a third force, leading Russians have reported. Most reports on the recent violence treat the conflict, which has been unresolved since at least 1994, as if it were organic to the region, but in this world, nothing happens in a vacuum. Russia has an airbase in northern Armenia which it recently reinforced and about which Turkey has been complaining. Erdogan, before he left Washington, declared that "we will support Azerbaijan to the end."

Deputy Speaker of the Russian State Duma Sergei Zheleznyak, attributed the renewed outbreak of violence to a "third force," without explicitly naming Turkey or the Saudis.

It is clear that the force that continues to fan the flames of war in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Caucasusdissatisfied with the peacekeeping and counter-terror success of Russia and our allies in Syriais interested in the speedy exacerbation of the protracted conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh region,

he wrote on his Facebook page yesterday.

According to Zheleznyak, "neither Azerbaijan nor Armenia essentially need this exacerbation now." He noted that "there is every likelihood that this provocation has been organized by a third force," adding that "information on its presence is beginning to leak out." He indicated that, in the mountains, it is sufficient to have only a few trained individuals to provoke "retaliatory" actions by either side.

Thats why the Russian President and our government agencies urge Armenia and Azerbaijan to cease fire and not to allow to draw them into someone elses insidious game, as long as it is still possible,

he noted, adding that "Russia will do its utmost to defuse tensions in the Caucasus."
PRESS RELEASE

Germany To Sponsor a Germany-U.S.-Russia Parliamentary Meeting

April 3, 2015 (EIRNS)Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the International Committee of the Russian Federation Council, said that representatives from upper and lower houses of the U.S. and Russian parliaments might hold a meeting this summer, either in June or July, according to Sputnik.

"The first expanded contact between the Russian and U.S. lawmakers is slated for early May in Berlin at the trilateral parliamentary meeting, Germany-Russia-the United States,"

Alexei Pushkov, the head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the State Duma, the lower house of Russias parliament, wrote on his Twitter account.

Meanwhile, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) met with Kosachev and others at an inter-parliamentary meeting in Moscow this week, expressing his disgust with the lying anti-Russian propaganda that dominates the U.S. media and political discourse. Kosachev thanked Rohrabacher for his efforts to restore the inter-parliamentary discussions between the countries,

"This with all certainty was not a result of the Russian initiative. We have always committed to the most open wide and open dialogue,"

Kosachev said. We consider it a very important source for solving common problems and search for joint solutions."

Rohrabacher said: "The children of our countries will pay for the stupidity of what is going on in our relations," and laughed about the U.S. leadership which called Russia, the greatest threat to the United States.
Gay Talese, the famed journalist and author of books such as Honor Thy Father and Unto the Sons, told an audience at a Boston University conference that he couldnt name a single female journalist who inspired him, the Boston Globe reports.

During a question-and-answer session at the Power of Narrative Writing conference, an audience member asked Talese which female journalists inspired his writing. Talese mentioned authors Nora Ephron and Mary McCarthy, then, after a silence, replied, None.

Talese then explained that the problem with female journalists was they were limited by their desire to stay above the fray, according to an audience member who spoke to the Washington Post. Amy Littlefield, 29, said that Talese explained how educated women dont want to hang out with antisocial people.

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His answer seemed to shock the audience, with one person shouting out the name of Joan Didion, the legendary journalist and author of Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album.

It could be argued that Talese and Didion were contemporaries. They both appeared in the seminal 1973 anthology The New Journalism, edited by Tom Wolfe.

Talese, 84, is widely considered one of the best journalists of his generation. He started his career in the 1950s as a sportswriter for the New York Times, and eventually left the newspaper to write for Esquire magazine.

Esquire published his two best-known articles, Frank Sinatra Has a Cold and The Silent Season of a Hero, which was a profile of New York Yankees legend Joe DiMaggio. He is married to Nan A. Talese, the publisher of the Doubleday imprint that bears her name.

His latest article, The Voyeurs Motel, appears in the April 11 issue of the New Yorker. The piece is about a male Colorado hotelier who cut holes in the ceilings of motel rooms to spy on his guests -- for decades. The timing seems remarkably bad, considering charges of sexism after his remarks in Boston.

Taleses remarks at the conference inspired a Twitter hashtag, #womengaytaleseshouldread, with users suggesting writers like Janet Malcolm, Susan Sontag, Lindy West and Susan Orlean, among others.

The website Bustle ran a response titled 5 Kickass Female Journalists Gay Talese Should Read Up On, Pronto, which included suggestions like Gloria Steinem, Frances FitzGerald and Betty Friedan.

On Sunday, Talese told the Associated Press that he had misunderstood the question, and thought he was being asked which female journalists influenced him when he was young. He said he was unable to think of any women reporters he read when he was a teenager.
For a memoir that ends quite well  Rob Spillmans first 25 years see the writer triumph over multiple car crashes, titanic drinking and the dicier corners of urban neighborhoods to go on and co-found Tin House, one of Americas most influential literary magazines, with an associated publishing mini-empire  it sure has a dark title. An aching dirge sung by Nico on the Velvet Undergrounds first album, All Tomorrows Parties epitomizes art rocks rejection of easy beauty. The book is Spillmans account of his own search for the psychic equivalent, a place that will act as a whetstone for creativitys blade.

We talked by phone the day his crosscountry tour for All Tomorrows Parties (Grove Press: 400 pp., $25) was kicking off in New York City  30 events in 30 days, he said with mingled incredulity and anticipation. Its a day that had been 10 years coming, the length of time he wrestled with the raw material of an artists emblematic youth, wandering from dark into shots of light and back into shadow, finally to emerge into sunshine of his own manufacture. Its the light of self-knowledge.

Spillman grew up in Berlin, the son of expatriate musicians who eventually separated, trading him back and forth between professional postings in places as diverse as Aspen, Colo., Chautauqua, N.Y., and Baltimore. He spent his young adulthood trying to find his way back to a place that felt like home. For a moment  an indelibly exciting one  it was Berlin again, just after the Wall came down, and East Berlin was fully open to the West again after almost three decades. Spillman and his new bride, writer Elissa Schappell, knew they were present on the cusp of something weird and quite possibly wonderful.

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Music is the beginning of his story, literally and structurally; each chapter is given its own soundtrack, a collected playlist of personally meaningful work heavy on the restively avant-garde (Lou Reed, Public Image Ltd., Joy Division, Sonic Youth).

Music has a primal effect, I think, Spillman said. When I heard punk, it was like, Is anyone else hearing this? It was everything the classical music I grew up with was not. I have visceral problems with opera  notwithstanding the backstage perks he enjoyed as a precocious youngster given bit parts in his fathers productions  mainly its aspect of social privilege.

Spillman cites the Talking Heads as being transformative. Hearing Psycho Killer for the first time, it was as if this strange, tense, weird voice came into my room to speak to me alone.

The 1977 song spoke to those who burned with inchoate rage, who developed a youthful taste for nihilism that new wave and post-punk met head-on. Spillman allows that now, almost 40 years later, what he feels is more a rage to instead of rage against, except where inequality is concerned: I still rage at that, gender, racial, inequality of any kind. In general, though, I try to channel it more productively now.

His chosen method is the rigorous practice of art, both his own and the work he seeks for Tin House magazine. I absolutely love what William Gass said about his motivation: I write because I hate. A lot. Hard.

Now that Spillman has become something of a vizier of the literary world (with the jewel in the turban to show for it, the 2015 PEN Nora Magid Award for Editing), he aims to use his stature to right publishings traditional imbalance toward the white and financially secure. He heads the membership committee of PEN, has long striven to give a platform to underrepresented voices, is working with Brooklyn College to bring greater diversity to the ground floor of the publishing complex and has just returned from story exchanges in Israel and Palestine.

There and in places like Nairobi, he finds the same sort of creative ferment he found in Berlin 25 years ago. Artists are good at scenting out opportunity in the ruins. It happened in the Bombay of Salman Rushdies time, it happened in the East Village of the 70s, its happening now in Africa. Throw in revolutionary politics and you have the perfect conditions for very engaged, energetic art.

Spillman had a magnetic attraction to the fervor of a culture that was remaking itself out of the joyfully destroyed rubble of the old  and there was no more promising or ominous rubble than that of East Berlin in 1990. It seemed like our generations Spanish Civil War, he said. I heard a call to action, felt a sense that if I didnt get there then, Id kick myself later. Creature comforts were hard to come by in the squats, but that is not what Spillman was looking for; indeed, it was a point of pride to live off discards. In return, he got to experience the transporting ecstasy of being where history was being made.

We come next to the inevitability of what happens after artists have colonized a desolate neighborhood and figured out how to do without hot water (though never without beer, even if they had to convoy it in). After a place is made safe again, the hard way, it becomes safe for money. When it arrives, the artists go. Having lived in Brooklyn for 18 years with Schappell and their children and having witnessed a couple of cycles of the transformation, he says, New York does feel like home, though I worry about it. No longer is Berlin or New York what it was, a thrilling ground zero in the battle between commodification and artistic utopia, as he writes.

Spillmans daughter, of college age, has just visited Berlin. The places her father described in his book are all but unrecognizable. The Prenzlauer Berg district where her parents and their compatriots lived on the edge of destitution is now pricey, like Park Slope, sidewalks filled with double-wide strollers, he says with sad resignation.

Once a member of a band of outsiders, Spillman become the consummate insider. Its a time-honored process, one his book allows us to witness in its formative stage. He went to the edge to find the center.

The book charts the first part of his effort to remake himself, from an impossibly restless youth to one more or less settled in a paradoxical commitment to remaining creatively unsettled. If the first theme of All Tomorrows Parties is that peculiar power of music to collar the young and pull them into the embrace of their tribe, then the second is reinvention  personal, geographic and artistic. My favorite thing in the world is to read something Id thought couldnt be done. When I find a writer who can do that, everything feels new again.

Pierson is a critic and the author of five books, including The Place You Love Is Gone and 2015s The Secret History of Kindness.

Spillman will appear at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on Saturday.
On March 23, the San Juan Water District, which serves upper-crust residential estates in the Sacramento area, declared that the drought is over.

After months of El Nino rainfall, Folsom Lake, the district's chief water source, had become so full that excess water was being released over Folsom Dam. "That was a very visible signal," says Lisa Brown, customer service manager for the district. Customers, some of whom own spreads as large as 10 acres, "wanted to know why they were still being held to drought restrictions." So the district board lifted them, replacing a 33% mandatory conservation cutback with a 10% voluntary cut and eliminating a 10% drought surcharge on water rates, effective April 1.

Droughts are really a matter of signals. When it has rained a lot, people get comfortable.  Jeanine Jones, deputy drought manager, California DWR

The abundance of water, says Assistant General Manager Keith Durkin, made it "very difficult to defend a continued 33% reduction in use."

Across Northern and Central California, brimming reservoirs and a recovering mountain snowpack are prompting water users to pressure Gov. Jerry Brown and the State Water Resources Control Board to ratchet back restrictions that have made California a national leader in conservation.

The Placer County Water Agency on March 18 asked state authorities to rescind emergency drought regulations on the grounds that its supply is "robust enough to meet demand" from its customers through 2017. The Nevada Irrigation District, east of Marysville, cited "well above average precipitation, full reservoirs and a mountain snowpack" in rescinding its own drought declaration and calling on the state to ease its restrictions.

Districts such as San Juan have taken matters into their own hands by unilaterally removing the most stringent regulations on their own customers. San Juan says its customers met their conservation obligation by reducing usage by 34% from June through February. Not all the protesting districts managed that; the Georgetown Divide Public Utility District in El Dorado County, which last month lifted a drought-inspired moratorium on new water connections, acknowledges that it was upbraided by the state board in January for failing to meet its goal.

Some Northern California reservoirs have risen above historical levels, but drought effects are still evident in Southern California (DWR) (Test)

The Water Resources Board is looking for ways to ease pressure on water-rich districts without giving them a free hand. It has scheduled to consider relaxing some restrictions at a meeting in May, following a workshop at which those districts will be asked to make the case for more flexibility. "In the eyes of Placer County and San Juan the job is over," says George Kostyrko, a spokesman for the board. But water conservation "isn't a regional or a siloed issue," he says. "It's a statewide issue."

Policymakers are getting the uneasy feeling that public impressions of newfound abundance could undo much of the progress of the last few years. "Droughts are really a matter of signals," Jeanine Jones, deputy drought manager for the California Department of Water Resources, told me. "When it has rained a lot, people get comfortable."

That would be a mistake. Experts reckon that even if 2016 represents a break from the record dry conditions of the last four years, the damage done by the drought to the state's water supply will be lasting. Long-term reserves in groundwater have been drained to the point that years, even decades, of wet weather would be required to replenish them. "We've depleted our savings account in reserves and groundwater storage," Jones says.

A more likely scenario for the future is a change in climatic conditions requiring a permanent change in water usage habits. "In the water community, people talk about a new normal, with dry conditions becoming more frequent and more lasting," says Matt Heberger, senior research associate at the Pacific Institute, an environmental think tank in Oakland.

These conditions create a quandary for policymakers, who must tread a fine line between enforcing restrictions that people may feel are no longer necessary while guiding residents, growers and businesses toward enduring changes in usage patterns. "Messaging is important," says Ellen Hanak, a water expert at the Public Policy Institute of California. "It doesn't make sense to tell people conditions are terrible when they're not, but it makes sense to tell them that the precipitation we've gotten hasn't put us in a safe spot."

RELATED: Californians fall a bit short of Brown's call for 25% cut in water use after 9 months of conservation

The habits born in the last few years, if they take root, could produce lasting gains in water sufficiency for the future. The emergency atmosphere of the last couple of years has a lot to do with that: In the same sense that $3-a-gallon gas starts turning people off gas-guzzling SUVs, the best weapon against water shortages in the future is a sensation of crisis today.

Since January 2014, when Gov. Brown declared a drought emergency, Californians have met the challenge. They've replaced tens of millions of square feet of turf with drought-tolerant landscaping (coaxed by hundreds of millions of dollars in utility rebates) and installed water-thrifty indoor fixtures. The results are remarkable: Statewide average residential consumption of 61 gallons a day in January was nearly 15% below the same month a year earlier. Last summer's usage was more than 23% lower than a year earlier.

Indications abound that the regional drought is far from over. The water level of Lake Mead, the reservoir behind Hoover Dam that stores Southern California's Colorado River supply, stood last week at 1,081.32 feet above sea level  a recovery of about 6 feet since it reached a recent low point in June. But that's still the lake's lowest level in any March since 1937, when it was still filling for the first time. Mead is currently at about 39% of capacity.

Although three major Northern California reservoirs  Shasta, Lake Oroville and Folsom Lake  are currently above their average historical levels, they're the exceptions, according to the Department of Water Resources.

Reservoirs in Central and Southern California remain well below their averages, with Don Pedro Reservoir in the Sierra foothills at 82% of its average and 60% of capacity, and Perris Lake in Riverside County at 43% of its average and 36% of capacity. While the snowpack is calculated at 87% of normal overall, its depth varies widely across the state  rising over recent months to roughly 100% of the average in the far north of the state, but reaching only about 75% of the average toward the south. The U.S. Drought Monitor still shows much of Southern and Central California to be facing long-term "exceptional drought."

The problem with giving some parts of the state a pass on water rules while maintaining them elsewhere is that California's water supply system binds north and south together. The long-term water crisis can only be solved as a statewide effort.

The state has begun to make changes that may well be lasting. "There will be a different-looking outdoor space 10 or 20 years from now than there was 10 or 20 years ago," Hanak says. But the mind-set producing those changes could be fragile. The message needs to be that "the fact that we're easing up doesn't mean we're out of drought mode."

Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see his Facebook page, or email michael.hiltzik@latimes.com.

Return to Michael Hiltzik's blog.

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For most of the period after Oct. 23, when a massive gas leak in at a Southern California Gas Co. storage well in Aliso Canyon was discovered, the gas company made all the right noises.

The company pledged to counteract pollution from the methane leak and help the residents of nearby Porter Ranch, who were displaced for months by the noxious fumes of escaping gas. "SoCalGas recognizes the impact this incident is having on the environment," gas company CEO Dennis Arriola wrote in a letter to Gov. Jerry Brown on Dec., 18, even before the leak was capped. "I want to assure the public that we intend to mitigate environmental impacts from the actual natural gas released from the leak and will work with state officials to develop a framework that will help us achieve this goal."

As of March 24, however, Southern California Gas has changed its tune. It doesn't care for the mitigation "framework" that was developed by the state Air Resources Board under an emergency order Brown issued on Jan. 6. It's proposing changes that would appear to make the program cheaper for itself while (according to ARB) accomplishing less mitigation than is warranted.

Any proposed mitigation program from the ARB does not itself impose any legal obligations on SoCalGas.  George I. Minter, regional vice president, Southern California Gas. Co.

The company is also questioning whether the state has the legal authority to force it to do any specific mitigation. According to a March 24 letter from company executive George Minter to Air Resources Board Chairwoman Mary Nichols, Southern California Gas Co.'s participation in the program outlined by the board would be voluntary. The letter treats the board's plan as largely advisory, stating that it provides "ideas as to how the company might mitigate the actual greenhouse gas emissions" from the leak.

"The general tenor of their reply seems to be, 'Thanks but no thanks,'" observes Alex Jackson, legal director for the California Climate Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council. He calls it "a disappointing and shortsighted response for a company that markets itself as an environmental leader and is trying to regain the trust of the Porter Ranch community."

He also observes that Southern California Gas might be setting up for a fierce legal fight. Even if it's true that the Air Resources Board has no specific authority to impose a mitigation plan on the company, that doesn't reckon with the potential outcome of a lawsuit brought by Los Angeles City Atty. Mike Feuer and joined by Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris on behalf of a raft of state agencies. That case could be the mechanism for a court to hold the company to its "voluntary" commitments.

Feuer says he anticipated that possibility. "The gas company must be required to implement a robust climate change mitigation program, at its expense," he told me. "I'm hopeful that our lawsuit will be the vehicle to impose that requirement."

The Aliso Canyon leak alone exceeded methane emissions from all other oil, gas, and pipeline sources until it was capped in February. (California Air Resources Board) (Test)

The gas company says it's not trying to wriggle out of its promises. Even before the leak was capped, a spokesman says, "SCG voluntarily committed to mitigate the greenhouse gasses released during the incident. We stand by that commitment. While SCG and ARB have different approaches, that does not lessen our commitment.... As for living up to our commitment, judge us on our actions."

Let's briefly recap the Aliso Canyon leak, which the Air Resources Board has calculated pumped 100,000 tons of methane into the atmosphere before it was capped on Feb. 18. (A final estimate won't be available until this summer.)

That represents a big setback to the state's climate change program and to the war on climate change generally, not merely because of the volume of escaped gas, but because methane is among the most potent greenhouse gases of all. Methane doesn't last as long in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, but in the short term it's as much as 80 times worse for the environment than carbon dioxide on a molecule-for-molecule basis. The Air Resources Board estimated through November for each day the leak continued, it added 25% to California's statewide greenhouse gas emissions, far outstripping the routine emissions from oil and gas production and pipeline operations.

That's the big picture; the small picture is the impact on the local community of Porter Ranch, a community of some 30,000 residents that was blanketed with toxic fumes of toluene, benzene and mercaptan. That's the compound added to otherwise odorless natural gas to signify its presence by a nauseating smell. Residents, including children, started reporting dizziness, breathing difficulties and nosebleeds, and hundreds had to be relocated until the well was capped.

In addition to the leak's many effects on local residents, the emissions from Aliso Canyon will contribute to global warming and its detrimental consequences for the environment.  California Air Resources Board

There's no question that Southern California Gas is the responsible party here, and that its shareholders, not the customers, must bear all the costs of rectifying the damage. The board of its parent company, Sempra Energy, acknowledged as much when it cut the 2015 pay of Sempra CEO Debra Reed for the mishap. As I reported, the reduction was a paltry $130,000 on Reed's $16.1-million pay and she still received the biggest bonus of her executive career; but in an era when CEOs don't seem to be held responsible for anything, this was a big step.

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RELATED READING:

Despite the Porter Ranch disaster, the top executive over SoCal Gas is getting an enormous bonus

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Nevertheless, in challenging Air Resources Board's mitigation plan, the gas company essentially is acting as though the Aliso Canyon leak is just another industrial gas emission, albeit a biggish one. It's not acknowledging that this incident is not only quantitatively greater than anything anticipated by pollution regulations, but qualitatively so. That puts it at odds with the position of regulators and public officials.

"One thing on everybody's mind here is that this is an extraordinary event, not something that people would plan for," says David Clegern, a spokesman for the Air Resources Board. "There are mechanisms to deal with it, but the scale is unimaginable."

The gas company raised three major objections to the board's proposal. One involved the Air Resources Board's estimate of the "global warming potential" of the released gas. The so-called GWP is normally calculated as a multiplier of the impact of carbon dioxide, which is pegged at 1, over 100 years. This allows the relative potency of other greenhouse gases to be measured. The ARB proposed that the impact of the Aliso Canyon methane be measured over a 20-year span, which would give it a much higher impact  84 times as much warming impact as carbon dioxide, rather than 28 times as much.

The Air Resources Board's rationale is that methane's impact is front-ended, because it dissipates quicker than carbon dioxide, so the effect of this leak should be measured in the near term. But that raises the potential cost of mitigation for SoCal Gas, so naturally it objects. Most other climate change programs use the 100-year metric, so ARB should too. But that glosses over the fact that this is a special case.

SoCal Gas also objects to the Air Resources Board's position that it shouldn't be allowed to use existing pollution control programs, such as the state's cap-and-trade credits, to mitigate the leak's effects. Its argument is that the cap-and-trade program wasn't designed to accommodate gross insults to the environment like the Aliso Canyon leak, but only routine industrial pollution; to counteract the leak, SoCal Gas might have to buy so many cap-and-trade credits that the trading market in pollution rights could be thrown out of whack.

Dairies and landfills are the largest categories of methane emissions in the state; why shouldnt SoCal Gas be required to rectify those emissions to make up for the gas leak? (Air Resources Board) (Test)

"Allowing the gas company to use programs it's already planning or that it's legally required to do isn't really making the atmosphere whole," says Jackson of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Finally, the gas company doesn't want to be held to concentrating its mitigation efforts in California, as Gov. Brown insists. "Climate change is a global phenomenon," a company spokesman told me. "Therefore, the locations for the Mitigation Program should be flexible both in terms of where the emissions reductions occur.... The Mitigation Program should not be artificially restricted to projects within the state of California."

Yet there are sound reasons to force the company to focus on California. The state needs action against greenhouse gas emissions; creating programs to address methane emissions from agriculture and waste sites, the largest categories of methane emissions, is an opportunity for the state to gain something positive from SoCal Gas' fiasco.

Keeping the program within the state's borders also eases the task of enforcing the company's commitment and ensures that it's paying the price. "From the gas company's perspective," says Jackson, "they can get cheaper reductions the further afield they look."

It's only proper that state authorities have the ability to watch Southern California Gas like hawks. Though the company has made its commitment, it's already looking for ways to mitigate the cost of its own mitigation.The Aliso Canyon leak was anything but business as usual for local residents or for the greater battle against climate change, and SoCal Gas shouldn't be allowed to treat the consequences as merely the cost of doing business.

Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see his Facebook page, or email michael.hiltzik@latimes.com.

Return to Michael Hiltzik's blog.
Fridays are paydays for Edgardo Villatoro  and also for the company where he works, XPO Port Services.

Villatoro, 54, gets paid for driving tires and furniture from Los Angeles-area ports to railway stations. But in return, he has to compensate the company for renting a truck, parking, insurance on the vehicle, and maintenance. He also buys diesel fuel.

Those expenses, which Villatoro says hover about $900 a week, sometimes leave him with a negative paycheck.

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I tell [my wife] Look, the work was slow. We arent going to have much to buy food. We have some savings, and we have to spend that on food this week. 

Welcome to the booming  and largely unregulated  world of shadow employment.

Villatoro is one of 12.5 million people who are considered independent contractors, a group that has swelled in the last decade and now represents 8.4% of the U.S. workforce, according to a new study by economists at Harvard and Princeton universities. Nearly 3 million Americans became freelancers from 2005 to 2015, the study found.

Because people who work independently are not technically employees, they do not enjoy the raft of worker protections that apply to almost everyone else. That leaves independent contractors out of the wave of pressure to upgrade pay  the latest example being the $15-an-hour minimum wage that is poised to become law in California and New York.

Raising the minimum wage is extraordinarily important, but it shouldnt distract us from the other question, which is: What do we do about the fissuring of the traditional American workplace? said Seth Harris, former deputy secretary of the U.S. Labor Department.

The gig economy has become synonymous with app-driven ride-hailing and home-sharing services that have altered the way many Americans travel. But new research by Harvard economist Lawrence Katz and Princeton economist Alan Krueger suggests that the vast majority of contract workers do not answer to Internet companies.

Less than 0.5% of the labor force works through an online intermediary such as Uber or Airbnb, Katz and Krueger found. Most contractors do other freelance jobs, in areas such as sales, home healthcare or construction.

In these arrangements, the assumption is that workers sacrifice a safety net in the interest of flexibility. Freelancers arent entitled to workers compensation, healthcare or unemployment insurance, or the minimum wage. In exchange, they are their own bosses.

In Joy Brandes case, that control is a matter of degree.

Brande, 66, spends about 15 hours a week driving for Uber. She can choose to not take rides when she knows drunk kids will be the main clientele, and can simply turn the app off if shes feeling burned out.

But if she is online and does not take 80% of the rides, the company sends her a text strongly encouraging her to accept a greater share. Uber also sets the fares for each of her rides and monitors her customer service rating from riders.

Harris explained that federal law treats contractors like independent businesses that are expected to be able to negotiate their own individual compact through bargaining with other businesses.

The problem is that many people called contractors by the companies that pay them do not actually have total autonomy.

Indeed, one of the main strategies of labor activists to extend protections to contract workers is to turn them into employees.

Port truck drivers across America are misclassified as independent contractors, said Barb Maynard, a spokeswoman for the Teamsters union. About 65% of all truckers are not properly labeled as employees, according to a 2014 study by the nonprofit National Employment Law Project.

Driver Villatoro said he typically takes home about $800 per 70-hour week, minus expenses, which comes to about $11.40 per hour. On weeks when his expenses exceed his earnings, though, the South Central Los Angeles resident has no remedy. Contractors cant unionize.

XPO Logistics, the trucking companys parent, said in an email that it has conferred with its drivers and the vast majority of them value the significant benefits that operating independently can bring. This model is the right one for XPO.

Trucking companies have been battered with lawsuits and claims to the state labor commissioners office from drivers who have demanded millions in back pay after allegedly being misclassified.

In December, the commissioners office ordered Pacific 9 Transportation to pay 38 drivers nearly $7 million in back wages.

Since 2012, the commissioners office has received 720 complaints from truckers, and it ruled in three cases that covered 100 drivers so far.

The onslaught has taken a toll on some companies. Premium Transportation Services Inc., one of Southern Californias largest trucking companies, filed for bankruptcy in March after losing $4 million to workers misclassification claims and lawsuits.

In June, a jury will hear arguments in a class action lawsuit brought by California-based Uber drivers, who say the company should treat them as employees rather than freelancers. Uber has said drivers would lose freedom if they were to change their status.

In July, in an effort to prevent the class action from going forward, Uber presented testimonials from 400 drivers in the state confirming that theyd prefer to freelance.

Proceeding with the class action would destroy the very independence and flexibility that countless drivers love about Uber, the company said in a court filing.

Instead of transforming contractors into employees, some lawmakers have tried to make it more comfortable to be an independent contractor in the first place.

Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego) introduced a bill last month that would give independent workers the right to collectively bargain for pay and other benefits. Seattle passed a similar law, which allowed Uber and Lyft drivers to unionize, in December.

Business groups are pushing back. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce sued Seattle last month, saying the measure contradicted federal regulations. Chamber of Commerce lawyers said that the law could undermine the flexibility, efficiency, and choice that accompany independent driver arrangements.

Brande, the Uber driver, values that flexibility.

The Costa Mesa resident also has a part-time job as a cashier at TJ Maxx that pays minimum wage but doesnt come with benefits. Superiors admonish her for failing to make the right notes about a returned item, Brande says. She follows a very specific protocol for ringing up goods and has to consult with a colleague for some small errors she makes at the register.

If I were making a lot more money at this I could understand why they are so demanding, Brande said, but this is a minimum-wage job, so you are screwed all around.

I like Uber better because nobody is standing there telling me, Oh you have to do this. I really like freedom.

natalie.kitroeff@latimes.com
In his life and especially in the stories told of his life, Robert Mapplethorpe has represented a multitude of identities and meanings.

He created elegant photographs of flowers and celebrities and documented a sexual underground in pictures that helped ignite a battle over free expression that continued well after his death in 1989. He was an ambitious Catholic kid from Queens who, like his early lover and comrade Patti Smith, rose to fame as a creative force from the Boho squalor of New York City. And his reputation lives on as a still-controversial icon of the LGBT community.

When you put them all together, the totality gives you Mapplethorpe, says Randy Barbato, co-director of a feature documentary, Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures, debuting Monday night on HBO. There was an intensity to his honesty and his intimacy with all kinds of people.

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The documentary created by Barbato and longtime collaborator Fenton Bailey was two years in the making, arriving amid a reexamination of the photographer sparked by an unprecedented joint exhibition at the Getty and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The filmmakers insist their timing was coincidental to last months opening of Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium, a comprehensive retrospective at both museums made possible through the joint acquisition of the photographers work and archival materials from the foundation he created in his name. Look at the Pictures had its Los Angeles premiere March 15 on the big screen of LACMAs Bing Theatre.

I cant help but think that somehow were part of this master plan of his, Bailey says playfully of the photographer, whose gifts included the shrewd marketing of his work and persona. Mapplethorpes self-portraits were central, portraying himself in various moods and guises, from street tough to sex toy or a demon in plastic novelty store horns to finally, the fully realized artist facing premature death at age 42 from AIDS.

The full life of Mapplethorpe, who would have turned 70 this year, is told in the documentary, but the film inevitably focuses significant time on the sexually charged images of his most personal work. It opens in 1989 with footage of Republican Sen. Jesse Helms angrily holding a Mapplethorpe photograph on the U.S. Senate floor, enraged that federal funds from the National Endowment for the Arts were involved with an exhibition of the work. He implored his colleagues: Look at the pictures, just look at the pictures"

The film explores Mapplethorpes relationship with patron, lover and influential collector Sam Wagstaff and the connections between the photographers active personal life and crucial phases of his work. He was a perfectionist with incomplete technical skills but had ambitions for Warhol-like fame, nearly approaching his goal at the time of his death.

Among the films almost 500 Mapplethorpe images are selections from his X portfolio, with carefully composed pictures of bondage, male anatomy and sadomasochistic sex acts. By simply showing the work on camera, the documentary is as explicit as its subject. He said its the most important pictures he ever took, so he put it front and center, says Bailey. That was a guiding principal in making the whole film.  He saw sex and photography both as magic.

An early scene in the film features curators from the two Los Angeles museums carefully examining, with gloved hands, photographs and other artifacts from Mapplethorpes life. One item is a weathered membership card for the Mine Shaft, a bondage-themed gay sex club frequented by Mapplethorpe for a time and where he found subjects for his most explicit pictures. It is signed by the artist, right above the line: a member in good standing.

Were in a climate-controlled room at the Getty Institute, one of the most expensive architectural masterpieces of the 20th century, with the most incredible resources for preserving things. And all of us are all standing there looking at this card, and its sort of absurd, recalls Bailey. Yes, its funny, but that doesnt mean its not serious.

The idea for a Mapplethorpe documentary came during a meeting with HBO, which has commissioned Bailey and Barbato to create several acclaimed films under their World of Wonder production company. There were no discussions about what could or could not be shown, and they were not asked to remove anything from the finished film.

Weve made a lot of films for HBO, so theyre usually very respectful. They knew who Mapplethorpe was and who we are as filmmakers, says Barbato.

The culture has moved to a different, more open place since the Reagan 80s and Clinton 90s, and the battles over censorship and public funding for the arts. S&M has become a fashion runway look, says Bailey, but Mapplethorpes work still cuts through the multimedia noise.

We have access to explicit imagery just by opening up our computer, adds Barbato. As sexually commodified as our culture is, were equally as puritanical. We have a split personality as a culture. Thats why Mapplethorpe is so exciting and interesting and important  especially now.

In the 80s, before settling on filmmaking, the duo had a New York-based underground dance-pop group called the Fabulous Pop Tarts. They were aware of Mapplethorpes presence while living in the East Village but never saw him. The documentary was a chance to catch up.

Mapplethorpe was a particular passion that really took us away from things in a bigger way, Barbato says of the project. It felt more personal.

One close Mapplethorpe collaborator not interviewed for the film was Smith, his onetime muse and cultural co-conspirator during their crucial early years in New York. Smith never made herself available to the directors. Instead, they used existing recordings of Smith speaking of their youth, the subject of her 2010 memoir Just Kids, winner of the National Book Award.

In a weird way, it became like a gift for us, because she is in the film to the extent that she was in his life, says Barbato. We loved Just Kids, and we love Patti, but it really became apparent that we wanted him to narrate this film, and she casts a long shadow. It was important that the true narrator of this film was Mapplethorpe.

steve.appleford@latimes.com

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

Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures

Where: HBO

When: 9 p.m. Monday

Rating: TV-MA (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 17)
To say that the sudden death of Zaha Hadid last week has left a gap in architecture is an understatement.

She was a woman in a field dominated by men. An Iraqi-born, secular Muslim who made her home in clubby Protestant England. A flamboyant, cape-wearing figure who was recognizable, Madonna-like, by simply her first name. Most important, she was an architect who pushed the field forward, toward ever more complex, organic shapes that seemed to take their inspiration from the webbed patterns of biological tissue and the globular shapes of cells.

1 / 6 Clockwise from top left: MAXXI contemporary art museum in Rome; London Aquatics Centre; Bergisel ski jump in Austria; Zaha Hadid in West Hollywood in March 2004 (Clockwise from top left: Roland Halbe; John Walton / PA via Associated Press; Helene Binet; Kevork Djansezian / Associated Press) 2 / 6 Zaha Hadid visits the Riverside Museum, her first major public commission in the United Kingdom, in June 2011 in Glasgow, Scotland. (Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images) 3 / 6 The Hadid-designed London Aquatics Centre was built for the 2012 Olympic Games. (John Walton / Associated Press) 4 / 6 Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid poses in West Hollywood in March 2004. (Kevork Djansezian / Associated Press) 5 / 6 Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid in 2013, outside the extension she designed for the Serpentine Sackler Gallery in London. (Leon Neal / AFP/Getty Images) 6 / 6 Zaha Hadid Architects designed the sets for the 2014 Los Angeles Philharmonic production of the Mozart-Da Ponte opera Cosi fan Tutte at Walt Disney Concert Hall. (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

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She charted new territory for all architects with her vision, architect Sharon Johnston, founding principal at Johnston Marklee, an L.A.-based firm, stated via email. Zahas passion, personality and sheer talent were all essential to her success and her undeniable importance in the history of contemporary architecture.

She was far more interested in pushing the boundaries of design than of society. And yet, theres no denying that Hadids gender and ethnicity were part of what made her an outsized role model for so many. Hadid, after all, was the first woman to win the Pritzker, architectures most prestigious prize, as well as the first female to be awarded the Royal Gold Medal by the Royal Institute of British Architects. She was, as Kriston Capps notes over at Citylab, the first real-deal female starchitect  a figure whose name and designs resonated way beyond the architectural community.

In addition to buildings, she also designed jewelry, yachts and even a jelly shoe.

I never use the issue about being a woman architect, she told the Guardian in 2004, but if it helps younger people to know they can break through the glass ceiling, I dont mind that.

The focus on her storied career in the wake of her death shows how much it is possible for a woman to achieve  and how much more ground women have yet left to cover.

A report published by the San Francisco Chapter of the American Institute of Architects last year revealed that though women make up 42% of graduates from programs accredited by the National Architecture Accrediting Board, they make up only 28% of architectural staff in AIA-member-owned firms, and only 17% of principals and partners.

In addition, a study released this year by the national AIA shows that women and minorities in the United States, two groups underrepresented in architecture, both cite a lack of role models as one of the major reasons the profession remains largely male and white.

The women who do labor in these environments have had to contend with dismissive or downright hostile behavior. In an interview I conducted with architect Denise Scott Brown in 2013, she described everything from direct insults to not being invited to architect parties because she was the wife. (She ran a firm with her husband, Pritzker Prize-winning architect Robert Venturi.)

Zaha Hadid stands before her design for the Serpentine Sackler Gallery in London in 2013. (Leon Neol / AFP/Getty Images)

Hadid, who was based in London, had to deal with some bad behavior herself. Anissa Helou, a cookbook author, teacher and chef, was a longtime friend of the architects. The two met in the early 1970s, at a dinner party hosted by a mutual friend.

Being a strong woman and a foreigner in London in a mans field [at the time] did not make it easy for her, she stated via email. Also, being so ahead of her time in her thinking and designs and being so uncompromising about what she wanted to do did not help, so she had to contend with a lot.

When Hadid accepted the Royal Gold Medal earlier this year, she said in her remarks: We now see more established female architects all the time. That doesnt mean its easy.

Moreover, there was the issue of her Iraqi heritage, which wasnt always well-received.

Its a triple whammy, she told the BBC Radio 4 in February. Im a woman, which is a problem to many people. Im a foreigner  another problem. And I do work which is not normative, which is not what they expect. Together, it becomes difficult.

Zaha Hadid designed the sets for a 2014 production of Cosi fan Tutte at Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

In the mid-1990s, Hadid won a competition to design a new opera house in Cardiff, Wales. As concerns about the purpose of the building and its budget hit the press, xenophobic remarks began to surface. One Welsh minister of parliament said that her geometric design was identical to the shrine in Mecca.

It was disgusting the way I was treated, Hadid told the New Yorker in 2009. These British women would tell little jokes. ... It was awful. We dont want a fatwa! Tee-hee!

There were people, she added, who wouldnt look me in the eye.

Like any high-profile architect, Hadid was expected to produce strong, functional designs. But as a woman, she also faced the added pressure of having her work interpreted as some sort of gender statement. One of her designs for a stadium was compared to female genitalia in the press  something she described as nonsense.

You are vulnerable as a woman because there is pressure for what you represent not just for the profession, but in society, said Annabelle Selldorf, principal of Selldorf Architects in New York. She didnt marry. She didnt have a family. She didnt represent the conventional model.

Zaha Hadid designed the opera house in Guangzhou, China. (View Pictures / UIG via Getty Images)

Hadid also wasnt the sort of woman who stood around meekly asking for permission to join in, something that made her a significant example to other women.

She was a big deal for women in architecture and not because she made that her thing, said Selldorf. But because she was simply a powerful person. ... She was so unequivocal and so powerful. Thats what made her an idol.

Her toughness, however, was also used against her. Hadids imperious manner  directed at architectural selection committees as well as magazine writers and her staff  often got her characterized as a shrew by the press. In fact, much has been made of her diva behavior, even in her obituaries.

As Guardian critic Oliver Wainwright noted in an essay last fall, petulant male architects get described with words such as maverick instead. When the irascible Philip Johnson died in 2005, the New York Times referred to him as an enfant terrible, a label that comes off as charming and continental.

Certainly, there are aspects to Hadids career that are unsavory  such as her work in locations where serious human rights issues have come up (such as the cultural center she designed in Azerbaijan). Its important, though, to note that in this regard she was no different from some of her male starchitect colleagues  figures such as Norman Foster and Rem Koolhaas, who have taken on morally questionable assignments in locations such as Kazakhstan and China, respectively.

But whatever the ramifications of individual buildings, the fact is that Hadids death leaves an enormous void. She remains the only individual woman to have won the Pritzker in its nearly 40-year history, and the only woman to have won the Royal Gold Medal in its 168-year history. On so many occasions, she has been the lone female architect in the room  and with her absence, some of those rooms may revert back to being all male.

Women have made tremendous gains in architecture since Hadid launched her career in the 1970s. They build towers and design museums and magazine-worthy weekend homes. But they still remain sorely underrepresented.

Hadids death has prematurely taken a powerful emblem from our midst, a woman who commanded respect and prestige  and who didnt feel the need to be all cuddly about it.

I just do what I do and thats it, she told the BBC nonchalantly back in February.

As far as a whole generation of women architects are concerned, however, what she did was just the beginning.

Twitter: @cmonstah

MORE:

Architect Zaha Hadid becomes first woman to win Pritzker Prize

A mix of the urban and urbane: Zaha Hadids remarkable Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center

Zaha Hadids garden spot in Germany has city smarts
After storming out of an interview where he was questioned about his ownership of an offshore company implicated in the Icelandic banking scandal, Iceland's Prime Minister, Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson, has said he will not resign (he did apologize for doing a bad job on the interview).





Opposition parties are calling for snap elections, and plans for mass demonstration at the Icelandic Parliament are growing, with thousands signing up for the action via Facebook.

Iceland's banks and government were at the center of the financial crisis, and the country remains one of the only jurisdictions on earth to actually jail bankers for their role in the global fraud. The current government took office after a campaign of reform and transparency.

The Panama Papers reveal that Gunnlaugsson and his wife secretly owned offshore assets that had made claims on the assets of Iceland's collapsed, dirty banks, whose affairs Gunnlaugsson's own government is settling.

The Icelandic Pirate Party recently polled so well that they could have formed the government, if elections had been held right away. The Icelandic Pirates stand for sweeping democratic reforms and have previously intimated that they would grant asylum to Edward Snowden. A snap election in Iceland could have dramatic implications for world politics.





You can follow the international implications of the Panama Papers with the Google Trends page dedicated to the leak  a recent datum from the service reveals that the three countries leading the world in searches related to the papers are Panama (unsurprisingly), Argentina, and Switzerland (where, doubtless, many a delicious milk-chocolate brick is being shit).

The organisers write on social media that "opinion polls have shown for over a year now that the government does not enjoy majority support in Iceland." The government is accused of forcing through wide-ranging changes to how Iceland's natural resources are used and of conducting behind-the-scenes bank business. The event description for the demonstration also alludes to "serious cases of corruption" to which numerous MPs and ministers are allegedly linked. "The government has lost all trust and it is undemocratic for it to remain in place," the organisers conclude. "The government should respect the basic rules of democracy and stand down at once. We therefore demand elections now!"

Anti-government demo planned for Monday

[Iceland Monitor]

Iceland PM: "I will not resign" [Iceland Monitor]
SAG-AFTRA and the ANA-4As Joint Policy Committee on Broadcast Talent Union Relations have reached an agreement on terms for television and radio commercials contracts, subject to approval by the SAG-AFTRA National Board of Directors later this month. Though no details on the agreement with the advertising organizations representative have been released, SAG-AFTRA Acting President Gabrielle Carteris said the deal best served the organizations members and the changing landscape of media.

This negotiation dealt with where we are now and where we will be in the future, she said. The tentative agreement delivers essential gains while properly positioning us for future growth in digital and social media. As content evolves, we are poised to grow work opportunities that support members and their families.

SAG-AFTRA represents more than 160,000 people, including actors, announcers and broadcast journalists. These negotiations take place every few years regarding terms of contracts for those working in commercials, an important source of income for many of the unions members.

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I make the majority of my living as a commercial performer and I am pleased to present this contract to our board for approval, said Sue-Anne Morrow, SAG-AFTRA Negotiating Committee co-chair. We secured significant financial gains that will benefit our members right now. Equally important, we achieved creative new elements that make our contract more relevant in a rapidly changing industry and guarantee the expansion of work opportunities for our members.

A final approval vote will be made by the unions Board of Directors later this month.

Get your life! Follow me on Twitter: @TrevellAnderson.
In hero-quest terms, the recovery of the Sorcerers Stone was Harry Potters first big win, even though he didnt get to keep it. By the time Harry woke up after his first battle with You Know Who, the stone, with all its life-extending and gold-producing properties, had, in fact, been destroyed.

Not that it matters. As it turns out, he didnt actually need Nicolas Flamels famous bit of alchemy. No one has a more golden touch or a better shot at immortality than J.K. Rowlings young wizard.

Just watch the faces of those entering Universal Studios new Wizarding World of Harry Potter Hollywood on a preview day, ahead of the official April 7 opening. Although Hogwarts Castle is now technically a part of the L.A. skyline, the Wizarding World is not immediately visible from the park entrance. Which makes the first sight of its gorgeously gothic arches, just past and set back a bit from Shrek 4-D, even more arresting.

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As in aresto momentum visitors. Hogwarts Castle, home to Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, which is possibly the best dark ride ever, beckons from the far end of the new land and quaint butterbeer carts tempt, as do the windows of the sweets shop Honeydukes and the chance to huddle, as Harry, Hermione and Ron did, over shepherds pie at the Three Broomsticks.

But no one is hurrying.

Even those so eager to attend Hogwarts that they are wearing heavy robes under a ruthless Southern California sun slow to a stop just outside the arched entrance to the re-created village of Hogsmeade. Smartphones at the ready, some take selfies, but others just stand for long minutes at a time, gazing at the fictional villages swinging sign, the snow-capped peaked roofs, the tilted chimneys, cobbled streets and vaguely Dickensian shop windows.

Taking in the steaming locomotive of the Hogwarts Express, the carts and stores and ambient wizards, witches and villagers strolling by (some of them Wizarding World staff, others just serious Potter fans), people of every age and sort peer, as if through a magical doorway into a dream.

Which is exactly where they are. J.K. Rowlings dream, shared first by millions of readers and then, filtered through the enormous talent of those who produced the eight-movie franchise, millions more.

Hogsmeade and Hogwarts are now iconic aspirational destinations, like Paris or Harvard. Indeed, any college with the slightest medieval flair will inevitably invoke the School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in its promotional material, along with the promise of quidditch matches.

Frankly, youd think wed be sick of it by now, all the spells and magical creatures, the recipes for Golden Snitch cake pops on Pinterest, the Gryffindor scarves and earthworm-flavored jelly beans. The children who came of age waiting overnight at bookstores for the next installment are adults now, some with children of their own, and all manner of fictional teen heroes and heroines  The Hunger Games, the Divergent series, now SyFys The Magicians  have sprung up to compete for the next generations devotion.

But Harry, Hermione and Ron continue to prove irresistible, endlessly enlisting young recruits while retaining the originals. I visited in the company of a 9-year-old, a 10-year-old, a 13-year-old and a 16-year-old as well as several adults, all of whom entered and left in the same state of wide-eyed wonder.

Here it is, magic come to life, or as close as it gets, conjured into obsessively detailed, interactive splendor by many of the same designers who worked on the films. Only this time, instead of partial sets, fleshed out with camera work and green screen, they got to build real streets, actual shops and taverns, even, in the queue leading to the Forbidden Journey, the Gryffindor common room. Theres Hagrids hut and his famous motorbike, alongside the line for the small but zippy roller coaster, Flight of the Hippogriff.

With two rides instead of three, the Hollywood version may occupy less landscape than the original Wizarding World in Orlando, Fla., but the landscape is a better fit.

Universals hilltop perch makes this Hogsmeade seem even more rural and isolated, angled between the Simpsons Springfield and the Studio Tour. Even its most noticeable park neighbor  Water World  is tonally appropriate. The faux-rickety tower visible over the back wall, and the flames the show sends into the air could easily exist in the world of Harry Potter.

A world that remains as tantalizing as it was almost 20 years ago, when the first book was published.

Here are the chocolate frogs, the Owl Post, the bottles of Gilly Water. Theres Mr. Weasleys car and Gladrags Wizard Wear. Myrtle playfully moans in the restrooms, the Frog Choir shows up at regular intervals, as do dancing Hogwarts, Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students, preparing for the Triwizard Tournament.

In Hollywood, Ollivanders Wand Shop  where every few minutes a wand chooses a lucky wizard  has twice as much space as the one in Orlando. But even on a pre-official opening day, the line is just as long, and the gift shop into which you are guided is just as cramped. Like every store in the land, however, its something to see, with its stacks of wands for every character, many in regular and interactive varieties.

Those interactive wands, which go for $50, come with a map to certain windows at which actual spells (explained via brass plates in the cobblestones) can be used to perform magic. Adding to the verisimilitude, but also, potentially, child/parent frustration, many are quite difficult to do. (Fortunately, helpful staff members are on hand to help.)

The Three Broomsticks restaurant manages to seem both cozy and spacious, its high vaulted ceilings groomed to look like the two-story inn (watch for the dancing broomstick and shadow Dobby), its stone floors and huge fireplaces giving way to the Hogsmeade Pub next door, where beer of all varieties, including butter, is available. Much of the food is pub-heavy (which should make this a killer winter holiday destination), but there are fruit plates and salads, which are large enough to feed two, and the kids meals are a bargain, with big portions and lots of grapes.

Of course, all roads lead to Hogwarts Castle, home to possibly the most immersive, amazing and utterly convincing dark-ride/queue ever invented.

Winding through all parts of the Castle, the path to the Forbidden Journey passes all manner of narrative touchstones, beginning with the Mirror of Erised. As Harry and other main characters propel you along with the promise of seeing a quidditch match, you move through Professor Sprouts greenhouse, past the enormous golden griffin into Dumbledores office, through the hall of moving portraits and into the defense against the dark arts classroom.

Then, having greeted the chatty Fat Lady and read the iconic animated newspapers (the ultimate example of digital media), you enter the Gryffindor common room before climbing into the ride that sends you sailing alongside Harry, Ron and Hermione as they fly through various adventures.

The detail at every turn is exquisite, the revelations seemingly endless  there are the earmuffs that you need to cope with mandrakes, the pensieve, the sad stained glass window, the sword of Gryffindor, all looking exactly like they did in the films (in some cases because they are actual props from the films). While the length of the queue itself can be daunting  though there was no line during an early soft open, two hours will not be unusual after the official opening  it is so evocative and fascinating that even those not forced to should take their time.

Or go on the ride multiple times, as we did (though folks prone to motion sickness should probably space things out). Not only is this as close as any of us will get to actually flying on a broomstick, its a chance to spend a little more time with your favorite young wizards, whom you didnt realize you would miss until the books and the movies stopped appearing with reassuring regularity.

For fans like my youngest daughter, who discovered Harry and company only after the Potter universe was complete, the Forbidden Journey and the Wizarding World itself offer the same sense of boundless discovery that fueled all the late-night bookstore parties and midnight premieres.

The story isnt over, not really, and maybe it never will be, what with the new play, and the upcoming prequel movie and the expansion of the Orlando park.

Even after all this time, even for someone who has been to the park in Florida, who has read the books with three children, sat through the films a dozen times each, and recently made 30 floating candles, three dozen chocolate frogs and a forest of Golden Snitch cake pops for her youngest Potter fans birthday, even for me, Rowlings wizarding world is just as magical as it ever was.

mary.mcnamara@latimes.com

Twitter: @marymacTV

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

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter

Where: Universal Studios, 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City

When: Grand opening Thursday

Info: universalstudioshollywood.com
Though already underway, the retrospective tribute series Chantal Akerman: Contre lOubli / Against Oblivion is just hitting its stride. Featuring more than 20 pictures at multiple venues across Los Angeles, the series captures both the breadth of Akermans work and the depth of her influence as a filmmaker.

This was done with a certain sense of urgency, said Berenice Reynaud, co-curator at REDCAT, one venue for the series. I think people need to regroup. Its why I wanted to title the series Against Oblivion; this is about people being clearly shocked and really wanting to commemorate her. The work is talking to people.

Born in Brussels, Akerman died in Paris last fall at age 65. Best known for her landmark 1975 film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, made when she was not yet 25, Akerman created an outsize body of work that included fiction features and documentaries, short films, personal films, political films, films with both professional and nonprofessional performers and those even featuring herself and her family.

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In addition to REDCAT, the series is unspooling at Cinefamily, the Los Angeles Film Forum, Fahrenheit, Veggie Cloud and Human Resources. It will conclude with a weeklong run in May at Cinefamily of Akermans final film, 2015s No Home Movie, an intimate portrait of her ailing mother.

This is definitely the biggest and quickest and most enthusiastic response weve seen for a filmmaker tribute in Los Angeles, said William Morris, assistant programmer at Cinefamily. So many people jumped in immediately. Everybody was just, Absolutely, lets do it.

One spotlight event of the program is scheduled for Monday night at REDCAT. Against Oblivion is a 1991 short film produced for Amnesty International featuring Catherine Deneuve. I Am Hungry, I Am Cold is a rarely screened 1984 short film starring Maria de Medeiros and Pascale Salkin. (It will also soon screen at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, which is presenting its own Akerman series.)

This is definitely the biggest and quickest and most enthusiastic response weve seen for a filmmaker tribute in Los Angeles.  William Morris, assistant programmer at Cinefamily

The Monday program will also include a screening of Akermans 2000 feature La Captive, an adaptation of a volume of Prousts Remembrance of Things Past starring Sylvie Testud and Aurore Clement.

On Wednesday, Cinefamily will feature a program including Akermans first short film, Saute Ma Ville (Blow Up My Town), made when she was just 18 and in which she stars. Also screening that night will be her 1972 documentary Hotel Monterey, a look at a New York residence hotel.

Among other films screening at Cinefamily will be the 1986 musical Golden Eighties (April 9), 1989s Histoires dAmerique (American Stories) on April 13, 1993s DEst (From the East) on April 17 and Je Tu Il Elle (I You He She), Akermans 1975 debut feature (April 19).

The Fahrenheit will screen the documentary Chantal Akerman par Chantal Akerman along with a panel discussion on her work on April 13.

Though Akerman may never have had the commercial success that would have made her a more household name, her reputation among filmmakers goes deep. Hungarian director Bela Tarr has noted how Jeanne Dielman deeply influenced his own debut film, Family Nest, just two years later. American director Andrew Bujalski recently called it one of my lifes extraordinary good fortunes to have had Akerman as his thesis advisor during the only year she taught at Harvard. Todd Haynes dedicated a screening of his movie Carol at the New York Film Festival to Akerman shortly after her death.

Ive never talked to a person who watched a Chantal Akerman film who came out of it and was neutral in any way, said Morris. There are people who dont like it, of course, but most people have such a visceral, personal response to her work. Personally, I think its because Chantal Akerman is one of the only filmmakers who was always able to make fiercely personal, often autobiographical films, but theyre never solipsistic. They are always very giving.

Akerman frequently rejected being labeled in any way, but her career-long focus on the lives of women found her work most often read through the lens of feminism. Her Jeanne Dielman was such a towering achievement  Reynaud said, Sometimes, its the tree that hides the forest  that for many people, it is the beginning and the end of what they know of Akermans work.

She represents a certain manner of positioning feminism, but its totally nondogmatic, added Reynaud. Its funny, its irreverent and its original. She described herself as a female Charlie Chaplin, and there is a sense of goofiness that a lot of women relate to. You can be very true to your female identity and not be a superwoman, being imperfect.

Though the Against Oblivion series is far from a complete retrospective of Akermans work, organizers hope that it is nevertheless comprehensive, pointing curious viewers toward other works.

I really wanted to show different parts of her career but also show the big ones, Morris said. The big goal is even if people come to every single one of our shows, once its done, they just keep going.

Reynaud added, There is a sense that Chantal Akerman is a difficult filmmaker, and really shes not. Its very accessible work. Its not commercial work, but its work about people, about life and desire.

Bujalski, whose own films include Computer Chess and Results, recently spoke at an Akerman tribute in New York City put on by the City College of New York and the Film Society of Lincoln Center. He provided a copy of his remarks to The Times.

In noting how often he is asked about any technical or stylistic influence his former teacher had on his work, he said, The truth is that her influence was much deeper and harder to quantify, and it was entirely personal. It was the influence of seeing an artist navigate a world thats rarely easy on artists, and doing so uncompromisingly, unapologetically and  this is the most important part  generously.

mark.olsen@latimes.com

Twitter: @IndieFocus
Tania and Jose Amaya are both a little shy, but ask them how they met and theyll light up. Shell blush. Hell grin.

She was a computer teacher at the Braille Institute in East Hollywood, soft-spoken and sweet. He was a volunteer, deaf and legally blind, unable to speak. She was enrolled in deaf studies at Cal State Northridge. Hed help with her sign language homework.

Theyd speak in a language for the deaf-blind, called tactile sign language. Shed sign, and hed hold his hands over hers, reading the movements of her fingers. Theyd make each other smile.

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By the time they learned to communicate, something else happened: They fell in love. Next month, theyll celebrate five years of marriage.

1 / 6 Tania Amaya uses sign language to speak to her husband, Jose. (Stuart Palley / For The Times) 2 / 6 Jose Amaya and his wife, Tania, greet Joses service dog at the Braille Institute. (Stuart Palley / For The Times) 3 / 6 Tanya Amaya, her husband, Jose, center, and friend Paul Hoffard talk at the Braille Institute. (Stuart Palley / For The Times) 4 / 6 Jose Amaya wears a watch around his neck that can be read by a deaf and blind person. The buttons vibrate depending on the time. (Stuart Palley / For The Times) 5 / 6 Tania Amaya talks with her husband by using sign language as he holds his hand over hers. (Stuart Palley / For The Times) 6 / 6 Jose Amaya, left, and Paul Hoffard, right, troubleshoot a Braille device. (Stuart Palley / For The Times)

Asked recently what attracted them to each other, Tania signed the question to Jose, and they chuckled.

How do you explain love? she asked.

Its the kind of thing that happens often at the Braille Institute. People  many of them sad and scared after starting to lose their vision  find community. They find friends. They find mentors. And, sometimes, they find love.

The institute recently lauded those relationships in a social media campaign called #loveatbraille, with couples and friends cheesing for the camera beside cutout hearts to celebrate finding hope and love in our community.

Its about redefining hope. People come here thinking theyre useless to other people and that theyve lost their independence, said Anita Wright, executive director of the institutes Los Angeles center. As students come here, they start to understand that theres more to life than just the eyes, and that the eyes are to look through but the vision is through the heart.

Jose Amaya, 36, was born deaf in El Salvador, with only the ability to hear extremely loud noises, such as emergency alarms.

His grandparents raised him but could communicate only with simple hand gestures. They didnt know of any schools for deaf children, so while Joses brothers went to class, he stayed home, taking care of the farm animals and planting fruits and vegetables.

At 10, he moved to California to live with his parents, who had come to the U.S. years earlier. He finally started learning American Sign Language in school. But when he was about 12, his peripheral vision started getting fuzzy. He was slowly going blind.

 Earth Kidkul from Braille Institute Los Angeles shows how people who are blind can use an iPad to send email.

Jose has Usher syndrome, a condition that affects both hearing and vision. Retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease, has deteriorated his sight so much that he now can make out only blurry shapes. He prays it wont get worse.

When Jose started coming to classes at the Braille Institute in 1999, there was a petite young receptionist with big brown eyes and a kind smile. He wanted to talk to her but didnt know how. She didnt know sign language.

I could see better then, Jose signed, with Tania translating. We didnt know each other. It felt kind of awkward, how to communicate.

Growing up nearby, Tania Amaya, 40, often walked by the Braille Institute but never really knew what went on inside the austere concrete building on Vermont Avenue.

She started volunteering there while taking classes at Los Angeles City College next door and quickly fell for the place. In 1999, she took a job as a receptionist. She watched the deaf-blind students talking with each other, signing into each others hands, feeling the words.

What a beautiful language, she thought.

Jose wanted to take care of himself. So, in 2001, he moved to Sands Point, N.Y., about an hours drive northeast of Manhattan, to attend vocational and independent living classes at the Helen Keller National Center for Deaf-Blind Youths and Adults.

I had never before seen so many deaf and blind people, Jose said. We socialized and communicated. We just enjoyed chatting.

On Sept. 11, 2001, he took a cab to work for a morning shift at his new job at a clothing store in another nearby suburb. Then the planes flew into the World Trade Center.

They called an emergency alert, Jose said, signing rapidly. I could hear that loud alarm. We had to stop what we were doing. They told me we had to leave now. I didnt know what to do. How can I leave?

Jose walked with a cane at the time, his vision better than it is today, but still not good. Co-workers told him cabs werent running, nor were buses. His boss helped him get to the Helen Keller center, where everyone had worried about him, alone in the chaos.

Jose graduated from Helen Keller in 2002 and moved into his own apartment. But the economy took a hit. He lost his job.

He moved back to California and started volunteering at the Braille Institute. Tania was by then teaching computer classes and studying sign language. She introduced herself and told him she was still learning  could he help her?

They had study dates at Starbucks, having signed conversations, getting to know each other. He encouraged her to become an interpreter. They dated for two years before, one night at dinner, Jose asked: Would you like to marry me?

Jose now works at a clothing store in Northridge, and Tania teaches in the same Braille Institute classroom where shes worked for 15 years. She helps the visually impaired learn how to type  the kind of patient works that on a recent day involved explaining keyboard shortcuts to a man trying to cut and paste words without being able to use a mouse.

The Amayas marriage is like any other: Theres constant learning. Like all couples, they fight sometimes. But they cant yell at each other from across the room  they have to touch each others hands to talk, even if theyre mad.

Many people think the same thing, Oh, hes deaf, that means you guys never argue, Tania said, laughing, her cheeks pink. Well, of course, we do.

Jose, a big grin on his face, showed what he does when they fight: He yanks his hand away from hers so they cant talk.

Every Friday, the Amayas hold an open lab for blind-deaf people at the Braille Institute, where all classes and services are free. Jose and his guide dog, a golden retriever, commute by bus from the couples Van Nuys home.

On a recent morning, a deaf-blind man, Paul Hoffard, came in with his iPhone. He uses a Braille device to type on it, and the Bluetooth connection didnt work. The device was still synced with his wifes phone  shes blind and deaf too.

Jose sat with him, and they held hands, signing, fingers flying. Jose donned a thick pair of specialized glasses and inverted the colors on the iPhone screen, trying to make out the magnified words.

For several minutes, he worked with the phone and Braille device, as Hoffard, an old friend, vented about the tech issues. Jose was having trouble with the needed fix  and it was a maddening mishap. He was trying to enter a serial number but couldnt see that he was typing too many zeroes. Tania helped figure it out, and Jose signed the good news to Hoffard.

It worked! Hoffard signed. Thank God! Thank you!

The Amayas both smiled.

hailey.branson@latimes.com | Twitter: @haileybranson

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Betty Robison got so riled up debating with her son over Donald Trump and immigration that her voice drowned out the barks of her two Chihuahuas.

I dont like Mexicans. I dont like them, the 58-year-old said in the frontyard of her apartment, which is littered with empty soda bottles and hamburger buns still in their plastic bags. To me, if you cant speak English, why be here? Go back to where you come from.

Thats the point of coming to America, said Sean Kearns, 31. Just because of the color of your skin doesnt mean youre not welcome here.

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Well, you watch [Trump] get everyone the hell out of here, retorted Robison, who wore a Dia de Los Muertos shirt. What gives them the right to come to the United States and take over everything they see?

Oildale  the conservative hometown of country legend Merle Haggard that is north of Bakersfield  might be as close as California gets to Trump Country. The region has remained loyally Republican while California as a whole has become more Democratic.

1 / 7 Betty Robison, left, who supports Donald Trump, debates with her 31-year-old son Sean Kearns about the GOP front-runner as they stand in the front yard of their apartment in Oildale, an unincorporated community in Kern County. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 7 A Confederate flag hangs on a home along Beardsley Avenue in the Oildale neighborhood near Bakersfield. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 7 Melody Jackson, left, and husband James are strong supporters of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump. They says they share ideals with the candidate. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 7 Kenny Reed, a UC San Diego sociology graduate and owner of Guthries Alley Cat Bar in downtown Bakersfield, sits in his office while discussing his progressive political ideals and how they relate to Donald Trump. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 7 Leonard McGill, 73, proudly flies the American flag from his scooter while riding through Oildale, an unincorporated community in Kern County. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 6 / 7 From left, Jason Powers, 19, Cyrena Jones, 18, and Erika Davis, 19, sit outside Dagnys Coffee Company in downtown Bakersfield talk. The three say say are very opposed to GOP presidential candidate Donald Trumps ideas, but they know their parents agree with some of his suggestions. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 7 / 7 Charles Leland, who says he will vote for Donald Trump, displays a Confederate flag, a gift from his nephew in Alabama, at his home in Oildale, an unincorporated community in Kern County. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

Places such as Oildale could prove to be important points on the political map June 7 when California, for the first time since the 1960s, will hold a contested Republican presidential primary. Trump faces Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

Oildale, an unincorporated community with a population of 30,000, remains predominantly white while Kern County as a whole is 51.5% Latino. In 2014, the most recent year for which figures were available, it had an unemployment rate of 16%  well above Kern Countys 10.2% and Los Angeles Countys 6.7% in 2015. Oildales poverty rate is 32%  well above the county average.

See the most-read stories this hour >>

For generations, the community has ridden the boom and bust of the oil industry, but in recent years its been far more bust than boom.

If you go through Oildale, its not as economically thriving as some other quadrants of Bakersfield, said Jeanine Kraybill, assistant professor of political science at Cal State Bakersfield. Weve been seeing a trend of where Republicans are in pockets or areas where its more manufacturing, blue collar or economically disenfranchised, those sectors are going for Trump, because hes targeting those demographics.

Across the nation, these types of communities have embraced the Trump message of stronger borders and tougher trade policy. In the view of Kraybill and others, Oildale could be a bellwether of sorts as to how well that message translates in California.

Based on what other trends weve been seeing  if hes going to be gaining ground in the Central Valley, it may be more likely in places like Oildale, she said.

Crossing over the bridge from Bakersfield into Oildale immediately yields a street that most residents warn outsiders to avoid. Beardsley Avenue is where the tweakers roam, residents say, and where one can find drunk men wandering the street polishing off a can of beer.

In a community made up of conservative, blue-collar workers, the appeal for Trump is rooted in ideas that he can fix a system many feel is broken. Residents believe Trump will help the country financially by not allowing other countries to take advantage of the U.S. and that he will support the military.

Also on the list of concerns is immigration, which was one of the top issues of Trumps campaign early on.

Raised in Oildale, Melody Jackson, 54, said she believes Trumps business savvy will help the countrys economy. She said she agrees with his views when it comes to immigration, including his call to build a giant wall along the Mexican border to stave off illegal immigration.

I have nothing against the Hispanics. But, like they say, do we have a country if we keep letting everybody come over here if theyre not legal? No, Jackson said. He is not a racist. Absolutely not. They want him to appear that he is, but hes not.

Race is a sensitive issue in Oildale.

Residents argue that times have changed the town, but some feel bias against nonwhites persists in some corners of the community. Last year a man, 24, was arrested and charged after he allegedly shouted racial slurs and fired a sawed-off shotgun at a Latino man while the man and his family were outside their Oildale home, according to the Anti-Defamation League. He had the letters WP on his shins, for white power.

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Trump supporter Leonard McGill, 73, flies the American flag from his scooter as he rides through Oildale. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

The Oildale Peckerwoods, a racist skinhead clique, operate in the area and periodically make headlines.

Oildales black population is just about 2%, but the Latino community is now 19%; almost three-quarters of the community is white.

Just across a bridge from Oildale, Maria Hernandez, an immigrant from the central Mexican state of Zacatecas, spoke in dismal terms about Oildale. A lot of people resent and blame immigrants for their own struggles, she said.

They look at us like were the trash people, Hernandez, in her late 60s, said from a Bakersfield bus station. Like we are the intruders.

Lynn Hughes, 49, has lived in Oildale with her husband for a year. They plan to vote for Trump. This leads to constant arguments with Hughes best friend and roommate, Letisia Mendez, who is Mexican American.

She just hates Trump, Hughes said as she stood on her porch. Trump is far from racist. What hes trying to do, people dont stop and listen far enough to what hes saying to understand exactly what hes doing.

Trump just wants Mexicans coming into the U.S. to legalize themselves, she said.

You know I dont like that fool, yelled Mendez, 34.

Oh, here we go, Hughes said, with a smirk. Shes got a whole lot of not nice things to say.

Mendez said she believes that anyone in the country illegally who commits a serious crime, such as selling drugs, should be deported. But Mendez said Trumps rhetoric about immigrants and Mexicans has crossed into prejudice. She said her father came from central Mexico and was undocumented for a while and did nothing but work hard.

She said there should be more staffing to provide security along the border and that immigration officials should do better investigations on people coming in and out. But Mendez disagreed with Trumps idea of building a mega-wall.

Mendez said shes amazed that Trump has managed to get as far as he has with his campaign, saying: We have a lot of racist people in this country.

One of the greatest presidents we ever had was Ronald Reagan, and nobody said hed get very far, because he was an actor, he wasnt from political things, Hughes said.

Yeah, but he wasnt racist, Mendez replied.

Mendez said she feels Trump is bringing racial issues to the surface, making for an uglier climate.

I think hes racist and I think hes sexist, she said. I dont appreciate him one bit.

Trump support extends into Bakersfield, the county seat and another GOP stronghold.

Four of the five county supervisors are Republican, as are most of the members of the Bakersfield City Council, said Dean Haddock, Kern County Republican Party chairman. Reagan, Haddock notes, is like a hero in Kern County.

Support for both Trump and Cruz has been solid in the county, Haddock said.

Trump brought up immigration and I know he offended a lot of people, but he even said that if he hadnt brought it up the others would never have talked about it, Haddock said. I think a lot of the people here see that kind of a message. Theyre looking for someone who has the guts and the backbone, willing to make the changes, or at least try to, and they havent seen that happen for a long time.

Jason Powers, 19, from left, Cyrena Jones, 18, and Erika Davis, 19, talk about Donald Trump outside Dagnys Coffee Co. in downtown Bakersfield. They say they oppose the GOP presidential candidates views but believe their parents will agree with some of his stances. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

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Though Bakersfield is more demographically diverse than Oildale, Trumps message has appealed to a variety of residents there.

Joyce Monaco-Olivas, a Bakersfield resident, said she plans to vote for Trump. She said that people who have been here illegally and have children here  if theyre upstanding citizens and people who dont have a lot of problems with the law, allow them to stay.

That differed from the billionaire businessmans call for deporting 11 million immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally.

People are just tired of nobody doing anything, said Monaco-Olivas, 73. We need to do something about that, or were going to be a little Mexico in California.

Over his morning coffee at Happy Jacks Pie n Burger in downtown Bakersfield, Anthony Tarango called Trumps call to deport all immigrants in the country illegally a pipe dream. He didnt give the candidate much of a shot to win the presidency either, he said. But Tarango opposed illegal immigration, saying: Im a believer that we should come here legally.

That being said, the Mexican American added, my father didnt come here legally.

brittny.mejia@latimes.com

Twitter: @brittny_mejia



Times staff writer Sandra Poindexter contributed to this report.

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Good morning. It is Monday, April 4. A Chihuahua is in custody after getting loose on the Bay Bridge. Is he yours? His only piece of identification was a collar with a silver skull. Heres what else is happening in the Golden State:

TOP STORIES

Water ways

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The ambitions of Californias largest water project in decades  a $15-billion plan to divert water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta  are being scaled back. If the tunnels are built, state modeling indicates future delta exports to the valleys thirsty fields and Southern Californias faucets would average 4.9 million acre-feet a year  only a small improvement over recent averages. Los Angeles Times

Violence at home

In North Hills, interviews and information from law enforcement suggest a long-brewing mix of drugs, mental illness, homophobia and extreme family dysfunction left a man in jail and his wife and son dead. Prosecutors initially said Shehada Issa killed his 29-year-old son because of his sexual orientation, but the truth may be more complicated. He was a good guy. The son was a bad guy. Im so sorry for the old man, said one neighbor. Los Angeles Times

The Donalds supporters

Oildale near Bakersfield is about as close as California may come to Trump country. Weve been seeing a trend of where Republicans are in pockets or areas where its more manufacturing, blue collar or economically disenfranchised, those sectors are going for Trump, because hes targeting those demographics, said Jeanine Kraybill, assistant professor of political science at Cal State Bakersfield. Los Angeles Times

DROUGHT AND CLIMATE

Weather patterns: The driest and warmest years in California are associated with a high-pressure region, a new study finds. Since California depends on a relatively small number of heavy precipitation events to make up the bulk of its annual total, missing out on even one or two of these can have significant implications for water availability, said Stanford researcher Daniel Swain. Science 2.0

L.A. AT LARGE

Less housing: A Times analysis found 1,000 rent-controlled apartments were taken off the market last year to make way for McMansions, condos and new rentals. Evictions from such units have doubled during the same time. Housing advocates say the citys supply of affordable housing is slowly being eaten away. Our housing situation is beyond crisis. Its a catastrophe and its getting worse, said Larry Gross, executive director of the Coalition for Economic Survival. Los Angeles Times

Money matters: The interim head of the Los Angeles County Fair Assn. says his first act of business will be to review employees salaries and bonuses. J. Michael Ortiz, however, is defending the $1-million compensation package received by his predecessor, who resigned after a Times investigation into the groups finances. Los Angeles Times

Back online: Exxon Mobil will be allowed to restore its refinery in Torrance, one year after an explosion there. Members of the South Coast Air Quality Management District came to that decision after listening to 12 hours of public and expert testimony. Exxon will pay $5 million in penalties for air pollution violations related to the explosion. Los Angeles Times

Columnist passes: A longtime fixture of the Long Beach Press-Telegram has died at age 80. Tom Hennessy wrote for the newspaper for 27 years. Tom had a love affair with Press-Telegram readers that lasted for more than 30 years. His Irish wit and charm came through in everything he wrote, said Rich Archbold, public editor of the Press-Telegram. Long Beach Press-Telegram

POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT

Political messaging: The makeup of California may be such that messages from presidential contenders Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump just dont work, writes columnist Cathleen Decker. The distinction between who lower-income voters backed in other states and how theyre behaving in California derives from their makeup and political loyalties here. Los Angeles Times

Checkpoint controversy: Students at UC Berkeley set up a mock checkpoint to protest Israels treatment of the Palestinian people. The campus checkpoints cause tension among some students  while some sympathize with Palestinians and condemn Israeli actions, others defend the checkpoints as essential to preserving the Jewish state and protecting Israelis from terrorism. San Francisco Chronicle

Political leanings: This year could see the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors pick up a liberal supermajority for the first time in modern history. Though the board is officially nonpartisan, its two Republicans will be termed out of office after decades of service. This is a new game already with the 3-2 liberal majority on the board as it is, but a 4-1 split  its unheard of, said Jaime Regalado, professor emeritus of political science at Cal State L.A. Los Angeles Times

CRIME AND COURTS

Lawsuit planned: The cab driver who was kidnapped by three escaped convicts in Orange County plans to sue the county for discrimination. Long Ma, who worked with law enforcement and persuaded one of the fugitives to surrender, believes he was denied a monetary reward because he is a humble Vietnamese American. A $150,000 reward was split between four other people who provided information in the case. Los Angeles Times

Close to home: As president of the Oakland City Council, Lynette Gibson McElhaney is used to getting alerts about a shooting. But when such an alert came on Dec. 20, it hit home  the victim was a 17-year-old who had been like a grandson to McElhaney. I feel completely incapable of describing what this feels like, she says. San Francisco Chronicle

Party house: The tenant of a San Antonio Heights home that was the scene of a massive weekend party says he will move out when his lease expires in June. Sheriffs deputies with San Bernardino County showed up to the property where 1,000 people were partying. Neighbors complained of noise, trash and double-parked cars. San Gabriel Valley Tribune

BUSINESS

Care facilities: A growing number of Californias nursing homes are housing young, able-bodied people with mental illness or a history of drug addiction. The homes that we have known as havens for the frail elderly, as you can see, are no longer safe havens, said Tippy Irwin, executive director of San Mateo Countys ombudsman services. Sacramento Bee

Airline merger: Alaska Airlines appears to be on the verge of buying Virgin America. The $2.5-billion purchase would allow Alaska Airlines to beef up its West Coast presence, particularly in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Bloomberg

CALIFORNIA CULTURE

Cocktail time: Meet the Mezcal queen of Los Angeles. The New Yorker

Love is all around: At the Braille Institute in East Hollywood, Tania and Jose Amaya came together to learn tactile sign language  and then fell in love. As students come here, they start to understand that theres more to life than just the eyes, and that the eyes are to look through but the vision is through the heart, said Anita Wright, executive director of the institutes Los Angeles center. Los Angeles Times

Canine perks: Developers in Los Angeles are hoping to reach new tenants through their dogs. Apartment and condo buildings now feature dog parks, grooming stations and free treats. Los Angeles Times

Movie premiere: The Night Stalker, a movie about murderer Richard Ramirez, is set to premiere in Orange County in June. The film will be shown 20 miles from the scene of Ramirezs final crime. Orange County Register

CALIFORNIA ALMANAC

Riverside will have sunshine and a high of 84 degrees. Los Angeles will start the day with low clouds; highs are expected to reach 77 degrees. San Diego will have low clouds and a high of 71. Sacramento will have sun and a high of 76 degrees. San Francisco will be breezy and 65.

AND FINALLY

This weeks birthdays for notable Californians:

L.A. City Councilman Paul Koretz (April 3, 1955), Gov. Jerry Brown (April 7, 1938), director Francis Ford Coppola (April 7, 1939) and labor leader Dolores Huerta (April 10, 1930).

Please let us know what we can do to make this newsletter more useful to you. Send comments, complaints and ideas to Alice Walton or Shelby Grad.
A father accused by Los Angeles County prosecutors of killing his son because he was gay is scheduled to be arraigned next week.

But questions remain about the violence last week at the familys North Hills home that left the son and his mother dead.

Authorities say they are continuing to investigate.

Q: What happened at the house?

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Shehada Issa, 69, is being charged with first-degree murder in the shooting of his 29-year-old son, Amir Issa, who was found dead Tuesday morning outside the familys home on Rayen Street. His arraignment is scheduled for April 11. Found inside the house was Shehadas wife and Amirs mother, Rabihah Issa, 68. She had been stabbed, police said, and may have been dead for some time before her body was discovered.

Shehada Issa has not been charged in his wifes death. Police said he admitted to shooting his son with a shotgun. Amir Issa, who had gunshot wounds to the face and abdomen, was pronounced dead at the scene.

Q: Why do authorities believe the sons sexual orientation was a factor?

The district attorneys office alleged in a statement that Issa killed his son because of his sexual orientation, a move that brought national publicity to the case over the weekend.

According to the Los Angeles County district attorneys office, Issa had allegedly threatened to kill his son in the past because he was gay.

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The murder was committed because of the victims sexual orientation and because of the defendants perception of that status and the victims association with a person and a group of that status, prosecutors alleged in a statement.

Q: What else do we know about the family dynamic?

The Times reviewed court records and interviewed neighbors, who described a more complex picture.

Turmoil appears to have reigned behind closed doors at the Issa home since Amir moved back in with his parents, which neighbors said occurred within the last two years. LAPD Sgt. Greg Bruce said officers had been called to the home to help evict Amir, whose parents were attempting to sell the house against their sons wishes. The son had even vandalized the house, according to police.

Joel Munoz, 38, has lived across the street from the Issas for 15 years. Speaking through the bars of his driveway gate Saturday, Munoz said he had recently done handiwork for Shehada Issa, who complained to him about what he described as his sons problems with drugs and mental illness.

He was a good guy. The son was a bad guy, Munoz said. Im so sorry for the old man.

Those problems were evident, among other places, on Amir Issas Facebook page. In his last post, 10 days before his death, he said he worried that his parents, brother and sister were literally controlling me in my sleep and that they tell people to rape and molest me and make it seem like I enjoy that.

Read more about the sons history here.

What about the slaying of the wife?

Police said the condition of Rabihahs body indicated she may have been dead for a while before Amir Issa was shot. LAPD Officer Mike Lopez said she was stabbed numerous times. Asked whether Amir Issa might have killed his mother before being shot by his father, Lopez said, Thats something that detectives will investigate.

peter.jamison@latimes.com

cindy.carcamo@latimes.com

matthew.stevens@latimes.com

Times staff writers Matt Hamilton and Rong-Gong Lin II contributed to this report.

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After losing personal belongings, pets and homes in last years deadly 76,000-acre Valley fire, many Northern California residents are still trying to pick up the pieces.

But at least one Valley fire victim got an uplifting surprise recently when she found her missing cat.

The white tabby named Muscat went missing six months ago when hundreds of residents in Lake, Napa and Somona counties were evacuated during the blaze.

Nancy Underwood hadnt seen the feline since he disappeared from her Hidden Valley Lake home.

But then last month, Underwood was driving near her home when she saw a cat that looked a lot like her tabby, according to the Middletown Animal Hospital.

Underwood stopped her car, called the cat and he came to her.

It's another Valley Fire miracle! I found my kitty, Underwood wrote on Facebook.

A resident in the area had been caring for the tabby for the past six months, she said.

After reuniting with her lost cat, Underwood took him to the veterinarian for a checkup.

We're happy to report that Muscat is healthy, the hospital said. We updated all vaccines and did a well check on him. She is so happy to have him back. A wonderful reminder to never give up hope!

Hospital manager Teresa Axthelm told KPIX-TV that Muscat was one of many pets still missing since the blaze tore through the area. The hospital has even put up a bulletin for residents in search of their missing pets.

The wind-driven fire began on Sept. 12 in Cobb, a community in southern Lake County, and burned for more than a month, destroying 1,955 structures and killing four.

The Valley fire is the third most damaging wildfire in Californias history. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.

For breaking news in California, follow @VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter.

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Pamela Bowlin, a retired CVS cashier, says the years she spent being forced to stand while waiting on customers took their toll.

At the end of the day, I would be exhausted from standing in one place for hours and my legs would ache, Bowlin said in a sworn declaration. I also suffered from varicose veins which were painful, especially when standing.

On Monday, the California Supreme Court told workers like Bowlin  perhaps millions of them  in effect that they could take a load off.

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Bowlin had joined a class-action lawsuit against the pharmacy chain, one of dozens filed in California during the last several years against corporations that required workers to stand. In a unanimous ruling Monday, the court clarified labor law in a way that is likely to make it more difficult for companies to deny workers a chair.

There is no principled reason for denying an employee a seat when he spends a substantial part of his workday at a single location performing tasks that could reasonably be done while seated, merely because his job duties include other tasks that must be done standing, Justice Carol A. Corrigan wrote for the court.

Whether a worker is entitled to a seat depends on the totality of the circumstances, including whether a task can be performed from a chair, whether seating the worker would interfere with job performance and whether the physical layout of the work space is conducive to seating, the court said.

An employer may not design a work space to further a preference for standing and must consider whether it could be reasonably changed to accommodate a chair or stool, the court said.

If the nature of the work reasonably permits seated work, the court said, the law unambiguously states employees shall be provided with suitable seats.

The issue reached the states top high court in response to questions from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is reviewing three pending class-action cases by workers. The 9th Circuit asked the California court to clarify state law.

Michael Rubin, who represented workers in the cases before the state high court and the 9th Circuit, said Mondays decision would have a huge impact and affect almost every industry in the state, especially retail.

Employers can no longer force workers to stand at the job all day in a fixed location when the actual job tasks could be performed while seating, he said.

Most large retailers require checkout cashiers to stand because of a perception that customers regard upright workers as more attentive and professional, Rubin said. Now employers will have a very strong incentive to provide seats to workers whose tasks reasonably permit the use of seats, he said.

Although retail clerks are demanding seats, office workers confined to chairs have been increasingly asking for standing desks. Rubin, who works at such a desk, said ergonomic experts say it is best to both sit and stand during the workday.

This isnt forcing someone to sit rather than stand, Rubin said. It is making seating available for workers to use when they chose to.

The class actions directly affected by the decision involve tens of thousands of workers in California, but the ruling will affect millions, Rubin said.

UC Hastings professor Reuel Schiller, an expert in employment law, said the court decision seemed clearly to be a victory for workers.

Employers are going to have to come up with a better reason than a bald assertion that it is more professional for employees to stand, Schiller said.

Jamie Workman, who worked for CVS from October 2009 to March 2011 as a cashier in Rocklin, Calif., said she was denied a seat even after she became pregnant and standing made her feet and legs swell.

One day, her shift leader gave her a stool from the break room to use at the cash register, she said in a sworn statement. She said she was able to do her job well on the stool.

After I worked about half my shift with the stool, my store manager told me I was not allowed to sit, she said. I had to leave on my maternity leave early because CVS would not allow me to sit and it became too difficult for me to stand all day.

Alicia Salinas, 23, a grocery cashier in Los Angeles, said she was always told that employees should be standing, not sitting. A seated worker may look lazy or, even worse, become lazy, she said.

But after working as a cashier for three years, she said, she now sees the value of a stool.

Most of the time Im standing for eight hours, she said in an interview, sipping a cold coffee drink during her break. Sometimes Im like, Ouch, I wish I could sit down right now.

She said Mondays ruling was good because employers may now give workers the option of sitting.

The suits binding in the 9th Circuit were filed by workers against CVS Pharmacy Inc., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and JPMorgan Chase Bank.

Several lawyers for employers said they were not authorized to speak about the ruling. CVS spokesman Mike DeAngelis said in an emailed statement that the company has already complied with the requirements set down in the ruling.

CVS Health is pleased with the California Supreme Courts ruling in this matter, he said.

Katherine M. Forster, who represented the Chamber of Commerce in the case, said the decision still permits customer service and the physical layout of a work space to be considered in determining whether an employer will be forced to provide a seat.

We are hopeful this will lead to common sense prevailing, she said.

maura.dolan@latimes.com

Twitter: @mauradolan

ruben.vives@latimes.com

Twitter: @LATvives

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The granite statue of Junipero Serra has stood headless in a Monterey park ever since October, when an apparent protester used a sledgehammer to decapitate the image of the 18th century priest.

But now it appears the Lower Presidio Historic Park sculpture will soon be reunited with its missing noggin.

Monterey authorities announced over the weekend that a young girl had discovered the head while wading in a tidal pool.

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Were ecstatic that the head has been found, said Willard McCrone, of the Old Monterey Foundation.

Officers recovered the vandalized likeness around 3:30 p.m. Saturday, after the girl spotted it at low tide, near the Coast Guard Pier, according to Sgt. Ron Blair of the Monterey Police Department.

The Old Monterey Foundation had been raising funds to restore the statue and had estimated the cost at around $77,000, McCrone said.

The cost of having a professional sculptor chisel a replacement head accounted for much of that expense, according to McCrone, the secretary to the foundations board of directors.

Now that we have a head, it should be considerably less expensive, he said of the restoration work.

With the heads recovery, the total job should run somewhere between $10,000 and $20,000, he said.

The decapitation followed Pope Francis canonization of Serra on Sept. 23. Serra, a friar who brought Catholicism to California, has been criticized by many for his harsh treatment of Native Americans.

Authorities said it appeared vandals used a sledgehammer to break the Serra statue at the neck.

The restoration project would seek to reattach the head in a manner that it cannot be so easily vandalized in the future, McCrone said.

The statue was erected in 1891, McCrone said, and has been there all this time without any vandalism.

Follow me on Twitter @brittny_mejia

brittny.mejia@latimes.com
The fact that Ian Cameron  father of UK Prime Minister David Cameron  ran a firm called "Blairmore Holdings" that rich Britons used to move their assets offshore and out of reach of UK taxation is no secret.

But the argument all along has been that Cameron Sr's tactics were merely sophisticated, not illegal or immoral. The Panama Papers leak sheds light on the details of Blairmore's activities that call this into question, revealing a kind of elaborate kabuki around its board of directors where formal measures were used to make the company's decision-making look like it was based out of the UK, when in reality, all the decisions were directed from the UK (meaning that the company's holdings were taxable there).

A spokesman for the Prime Minister said it was a "family matter" and had no further comment. David Cameron inherited millions of pounds from his father.

HMRC (the British tax authorities) have requested access to the Panama Papers in order to pursue investigations for tax avoidance.

In addition to the Cameron family, several elite UK political figures, especially Tories, are linked to the Panama Papers.

Cameron Sr was one of five UK-based directors until shortly before his death in 2010. In order to avoid UK tax, his venture had to be managed and controlled from abroad. A team of six other directors from Switzerland and the Bahamas was recruited, to ensure that a majority of the board was based outside Britain. However, the paper trail suggests this was a conjuring trick, albeit one tolerated by the law. Board meetings were held every year in Nassau and Switzerland, often in the five-star Hotel Beau-Rivage in Geneva. While the Europeans regularly jetted out to the Caribbean, there is little evidence of travel in the opposite direction, raising questions about how much the Bahamas directors contributed to strategy and decision making. For Blairmore, 2006 was an important year. It sent out a prospectus calling for new investors  clients were asked to put in a minimum of $100,000 (70,000) each. However, the prospectus stated two of the three Bahamian board members waived their $5,000 fee that year. They were the only directors recorded as doing so. Through the Bahamas branches of Coutts and later SG Hambros, Blairmore retained dozens of local residents. There is no suggestion this arrangement was illegal and it was used by other offshore funds at the time. The signatories were authorised to perform complex financial tasks. They could, company minutes state, "sell or buy any stocks, shares, annuities" and even "precious metals". In reality, according to the documents, big investment decisions appear to have been taken in the UK. Strategy was seemingly discussed in London where the investment management firm Smith & Williamson and five of the directors including Cameron were based.

Fund run by David Cameron's father avoided paying UK tax

[Juliette Garside/The Guardian]

UK tax officials seek access to huge leak of Mossack Fonseca papers

[Luke Harding and David Pegg/The Guardian]

(Image: Cameron with Russian president Vladimir Putin in May 2013, Kremlin.ru, CC-BY)
After allegations that the Seal Beach City Council twice violated the states open meetings law, the council unanimously agreed last week to recommit itself to transparency.

The alleged violations of the Ralph M. Brown Act were raised by Kelly Aviles, an attorney for the nonprofit Californians Aware, who contended that the five-member board has repeatedly used the guise of anticipated or threatened litigation to sidestep public scrutiny.

In a March 7 cease-and-desist letter to the council, Aviles alleged that the first Brown Act violation was a closed-session decision to approve a contract worth up to $120,000 for a Sacramento lobbying firm. In another closed session, the council unlawfully decided to move a historic home whose location was the subject of debate in the community, Aviles said.

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You are prohibited from taking action in closed session which deprives the public of their right to participate, said Aviles, who is representing the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune in open-government litigation.

During the council meeting March 28, Seal Beach City Atty. Craig A. Steele said Aviles was not in possession of all the facts related to the closed session meetings.

The bottom line is that we believe both items questioned by Ms. Aviles were appropriately discussed by the City Council in closed session, he later said in an email to The Times.

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During a June 8, 2015, closed session, the City Council signed off on the $120,000 lobbying contract with Khouri Consulting, City Clerk Robin Roberts said. The contract, obtained through a public records request, calls for Khouri Consulting to lobby on behalf of the city on a proposed bill that would restructure the board of the Orange County Fire Authority, trimming its size from 25 members to 13.

The fire authority, which provides firefighting service to 23 cities and unincorporated areas in Orange County, gives a board seat to each city it serves, plus two representatives from the countys unincorporated areas. If passed, the law would have ended the citys guaranteed spot on the board. The bills author, Assemblyman Tom Daly (D-Anaheim), said at the time that the fire authoritys governing board was oversized and inefficient.

The Khouri lobbying contract took effect June 3, about five days before the City Council met to give its approval in closed session.

Explaining the time gap, the City Clerk said the initial installment of $28,500 was signed off by the city manager, Jill Ingram, who is authorized to approve contracts up to about $28,800. Contracts for professional services such as lobbyists and architects do not require a formal bidding process, according to the municipal code.

In closed session, the council unanimously authorized the city manager to extend the contract for its full $120,000 scope, the city clerk said.

Robert Goldberg, who regularly monitors the City Councils activity, said he first became aware of the Khouri Consulting contract in October, when he noticed a quarterly report from the city manager that indicated the city had a $120,000 contract. He reviewed the roster of checks issued by the city and found two payments to the lobbying firm. He questioned city leaders over the contracts genesis, and later alerted Californians Aware to the alleged Brown Act violation.

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I asked, When was the contract approved? It was never on an agenda, Goldberg said. I got no response.

About a month after the City Council hired its lobbying firm, Daly canceled a hearing on his bill, bringing it to a halt, and the bill has since languished. Still, Khouri Consulting received payments from Seal Beach for a total of $120,000, according to filings with the secretary of states office. In its final quarterly report for 2015, Khouri Consulting listed a $30,500 payment from Seal Beach, but did not list any bills on which it had actively represented the city.

Gus Khouri, who signed the contract with the city, did not respond to an email seeking comment.

The fire authority, which serves more than 1.7 million residents, also opposed Dalys bill. To its $5,500-per-month annual lobbying agreement with Nielsen, Merksamer, Parrinello, Gross & Leoni, the fire authority added another $5,000 per month of work, a decision reported by the investigative news outlet Voice of OC. The additional funds, not to exceed $20,000, were designated for only a three-month period. The fire authoritys decision to devote more resources to lobbying on the bill was made in an open session.

Aviles alleges the city also violated the Brown Act in an Oct. 26, 2015, meeting, when the council decided behind closed doors to move a historic cottage that had been donated. In the same meeting, the city attorney later announced that the decision to relocate the cottage had been made during the closed session.

The discussion of potential litigation cannot include actions that deprive the public of participation, Aviles said. She expressed fear for what could happen under the auspices of anticipated litigation  that governments could make any number of decisions behind closed doors citing the exposure to legal risk.

Everything that a public agency does could lead to litigation, Aviles said.

At its meeting last week, the City Council voted unanimously to reply to Aviles cease-and-desist letter and drafted a response that does not acknowledge wrongdoing but does include a commitment to transparency and the Brown Act.

matt.hamilton@latimes.com

Twitter: @MattHjourno

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The Supreme Court on Monday let stand a $203 million verdict in favor of Californians who were repeatedly charged overdraft fees by Wells Fargo Bank a decade ago.

The justices turned down the banks final appeal, in which Wells Fargo contended the class-action verdict was not justified.

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Lawyers sued on behalf of Wells Fargo customers who used a debit card and said they were misled by the banks policy on overdrafts.

A federal judge in San Francisco ruled in 2010 that Wells Fargo had sought to maximize the number of overdrafts by subtracting the highest charges first on the debit card, followed by the lower charges. When the account was overdrawn, this so-called high to low policy had the effect of multiplying the number of overdrafts, each of which carried a $25 to $35 fee.

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The judge said the bank had deceived its customers in violation of Californias consumer protection law, and he awarded $203 million in restitution to those who were charged for overdrafts between 2004 and 2008.

Since then, lawyers for Wells Fargo have been appealing in the federal courts, including twice to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

In its appeal to the Supreme Court, the bank argued there was no proof that the debit card users had ever read or relied upon the banks written policies, which were found to be deceptive. In upholding the verdict, the 9th Circuit said the California law protects consumers who have been hurt by a companys deception, regardless of whether they read its disclosures.

The justices on Monday said they would not hear the appeal in Wells Fargo vs. Gutierrez.

On Twitter: @DavidGSavage

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For the second time in two weeks, a conservative bid to shift the law to the right fizzled at the Supreme Court, when the justices on Monday upheld the current, widely-used method of counting every personnot just voterswhen drawing election districts.

The unanimous ruling rejected a constitutional claim that states and municipalities may count only eligible voters when dividing up districts.

Had the court accepted such an interpretation, it would have shifted power away from cities with fast-growing communities of immigrants, including Los Angeles, Houston and Phoenix, and given more clout to suburban and rural areas. Doing so would have generally strengthened Republicans and undercut Democrats.

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History, our decisions and settled practice in all 50 states and countless jurisdictions point in the same direction, said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, explaining the high courts decision to uphold the constitutionality of the existing practice. Political power, she said, may be divided up on the basis of the total population.

Liberals and civil rights advocates, who had feared a string of losses this year at the hands of the courts conservatives, instead celebrated another victory.

Thomas Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, called the decision a tremendous victory for democratic representation that recognizes all constituents count. Miles Rapoport, president of advocacy group Common Cause, said it affirms one of our most fundamental values as Americans: that every person counts.

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

FOR THE RECORD

March 5, 10:22 a.m.: An earlier version of this article stated that Thomas Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund., said that the Supreme Courts voting-district decision recognized that all citizens count. He said the decision recognized that all constituents count.

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

Ever since the February death of Justice Antonin Scalia, conservatives have been left without a crucial fifth vote, raising doubts about their ability to control the courts rulings.

Last week, the justices said they were split 4-4 and could not decide a major challenge to unions. Conservatives had urged the court to overturn a nearly 40-year-old precedent that allows public-sector unions to collect fair share fees from all employees to help pay for collective bargaining. Due to the deadlock, the unions ability to charge the fees was left in place.

Its not clear what role Scalias death played in the dispute over election districts, but it may explain why the decision was narrowly crafted.

While agreeing to uphold the legality of the status quo, the court left the door open for states to try different methods to draw election districts in the future, including taking into account the number of voters, rather than counting all persons.

The case began with conservative activist Edward Blum, who claimed the one person, one vote rule adopted by the Supreme Court in the 1960s meant that the election districts should represent equal numbers of voters.

He launched a lawsuit on behalf of Sue Evenwel, a Republican county official from East Texas, who alleged the practice of counting everyone had the effect of diluting the votes of citizens like her in favor of districts with a high number of non-voters, including foreign residents, children and prisoners.

The high court agreed to hear Evenwels claim last year and in December, conservative justices sounded receptive. It is called one person, one vote. That seems designed to protect voters, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. commented.

But Evenwels claim faced practical and legal problems. For one thing, the census is seen as providing the most accurate data on neighborhoods, and it counts all residents, not just citizens or voters.

Also, the U.S. Constitution says members of the House shall be divided up among the states based on counting the whole number of persons.

It cannot be, Ginsburg wrote, that the 14th Amendment calls for the apportionment of congressional districts based on total population, but simultaneously prohibits states from apportioning their own legislative districts on the same basis.

But her opinion left unanswered a key question. We need not and do not resolve whether, as Texas now argues, states may draw districts to equalize voter-eligible population rather than total population.

Roberts and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined her opinion, while Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. concurred separately.

Thomas wrote an 18-page separate opinion arguing the court was wrong in the 1960s to rule that election districts in states must represent an equal number of people. Alito wrote to dispute the meretricious argument cited by Ginsburg that the Constitution suggests all people should be counted when drawing districts.

In the end, it was not clear whether Roberts and the other conservatives agreed that Texas, as a matter of states rights, was free to decide whom to count when drawing its districts, or whether they implicitly agreed with the liberals that counting all the people was required.

The outcome in Evenwel vs. Abbott leaves open the possibility that lawmakers in Texas and other conservative states could decide after the next census to redraw their election districts using data on eligible voters.

Blum, whose small group was behind the successful 2013 case that led the high court to strike down parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, said he was disappointed that the justices were unwilling to reestablish the original principle of one person, one voteBut the issue of voter equality is not going away, he said.

Still pending before the court is another of Blums cases, a challenge to the affirmative action policy at the University of Texas.

Twitter: @DavidGSavage

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Campaigning for his wife ahead of Californias Democratic primary, former President Bill Clinton rallied supporters Sunday in downtown Los Angeles, saying his family has special ties to the state.

California has been uncommonly good to my family, he told more than 1,000 people in a courtyard at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College.

Clinton recalled clinching the Democratic nomination in Californias 1992 primary on his way to winning his first term in the White House. Hillary Clinton beat Barack Obama in the hard-fought 2008 primary, but she ultimately lost the nomination.

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I always felt at home here because every time I looked at a crowd, especially one having anything to do with a community college, I could see the future and feel good about it, he said.

Clinton praised California policies as a model for the nation, highlighting the $15-per-hour minimum wage bill that Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown is scheduled to sign on Monday.

God bless you for passing that minimum wage law, Clinton said. You should be proud. Thats what weve got to do for the country.

During his visit, the former president also raised money for his wifes campaign and met privately with elected leaders and labor chiefs.

Hillary Clinton has a large lead in delegates over her rival, Bernie Sanders, in their battle for the Democratic presidential nomination. Recent polls show Sanders up slightly in Wisconsin, which holds its primary Tuesday, while Clinton leads in New York and other states that vote later this month.

But neither may win enough to secure the Democratic nomination before the California primary, among the last state contests held June 7 before the party convention in Philadelphia on July 25.

California also will play an outsize role in the Republican race. It could decide whether front-runner Donald Trump gets enough delegates to win his partys nomination, or whether the GOP race will go to a brokered convention in Cleveland.

During the L.A. rally, Clinton praised his wife and did not mention Sanders by name. But he highlighted what he said were their differences on immigration reform and gun control, and in their proposals to improve healthcare and make college more affordable.

Hillary Clintons approach is pragmatic, he said, and her record proves she would be able to accomplish her goals despite the political polarization that has paralyzed Congress.

Of all the people Ive ever worked with, shes the biggest change-maker Ive ever known, Clinton said. He added that they met 45 years ago last month.

The former president has been criticized for recent remarks that were perceived as critical of President Obamas stewardship of the economy over the last eight years.

On Sunday, he repeatedly said that Obama doesnt get the credit he deserves for stopping the nation from falling into a depression after the financial collapse just before the 2008 election.

Now, Clinton argued, the nation is again on a precipice.

I believe we are just this close -- just this close to being able to rise together again, he said, holding his thumb and index finger together.

Lets face it, the reason theres been so much intensity... is a lot of people despair and dont believe. They think things are so rigged against them that we cannot do it.

A woman in the crowd yelled in Spanish, Si, se puede.

Si, se puede -- yes we can, Clinton said.

Forget about who Im married to, he added. Remember, I was president the last time we all rose together.

seema.mehta@latimes.com

For the latest 2016 campaign news, follow @LATSeema on Twitter.
With the stroke of a pen, Andrew Cuomo got a beat on Jerry Brown. And with the flash of the cameras shortly after, Hillary Clinton sought to steal a bit of Bernie Sanders spotlight.

Cuomo, New Yorks governor, signed into law the first statewide $15-an-hour minimum wage in the nation Monday, beating Brown doing the same in California by an hour or so. And Clinton, New Yorks former senator, who is banking on a big victory in its primary in two weeks, was a conspicuous presence in celebrating the state enacting what has long been a policy goal for progressives.

Its a result of what is best about New York and what is best about America. And I know that its going to sweep our country, Clinton said.

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Sanders, the Vermont independent who has galvanized liberals by building an entire campaign around income inequality, could only issue a statement from afar.

As president, I will proudly stand with working families all across our country and fight for Congress to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour and provide paid family leave to every worker in America, he said.

The moment was a microcosm of Clintons primary campaign: singing in harmony with the Democratic progressive base while she seeks the partys nomination, but not quite the same tune in the way that Sanders does.

Sanders supports a nationwide minimum wage of $15 an hour, firmly aligning him with the array of progressive groups and labor unions engaged in what they call the fight For $15. But Clinton has taken a more nuanced position, saying that although she supports local efforts to reach $15, she wouldnt commit to that nationally, aligning herself instead with legislation establishing a $12 hourly federal rate.

What you can do in L.A. or in New York may not work in other places, she told reporters after a town hall meeting in New Hampshire last summer at which she also staked out other positions short of the progressive ideal.

Days later, after meeting with labor groups, Clinton explained her position further by aligning herself with Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senates health, education and labor committee, who had introduced a $12-an-hour federal wage bill.

Whatever she advocates, I pay a lot of attention to, because she knows how to get it through the Congress, Clinton said of Murray. Lets not just do it for the sake of having a higher number out there, but lets actually get behind a proposal that has a chance of succeeding.

Clinton has tried to withstand the Sanders insurgency with political reality checks, calling herself a progressive who wants to make progress rather than make promises she knows are not likely to be realized in a divided Washington.

Clintons position also represents the rapid evolution in Democrats thinking on this issue. In the 2014 midterms, Senate Democrats ran on a platform of a $10.10 minimum wage.

But $15 has become the standard for labor groups in part because of the advocacy of fast-food workers in particular, said Mary Kay Henry, international president of the Service Employees International Union.

The fearlessness of the workers has made elected officials understand that there is huge wind at their back, she said. Were proud that it created a situation where both New York and California were dueling at the same time. But it wasnt like it was on anyones plan anywhere. Its how the movement has created more than we even imagined possible before.

Henry, whose union has endorsed Clinton, said theyve discussed the issue with her and that she supports a $15 hourly wage for fast-food, home-care and child-care workers.

By the time shes elected to office, we will be able to generate the kind of momentum that the federal government will feel the same wind at their backs that Cuomo and Brown have felt, Henry predicted.

And there is a political analog in New York. Two years ago in his bid for reelection, Cuomo faced a spirited primary challenge from his left, a race that exposed some liberals frustration with Cuomo, the scion of a Democratic icon.

Cuomo can now say he delivered on two of their chief priorities, both the minimum wage and a new paid family leave law. As Cuomo and Clinton arrived at a rally after the private bill signing, labor groups in the audience cheered: Si se pudo  yes we did.

Clinton praised Cuomos tenacity in securing the votes in New Yorks Legislature to enact the minimum-wage bill, saying it wasnt just enough to support the idea, but that feelings have to be matched with politics.

Some people get bored by that kind of talk, she said. I think wed still be [just] sounding good and feeling good if not for the hard work and the incredible commitment that the governor made to this issue.

With that implicit jab at Sanders, Clinton then turned to a more overt attack at her potential Republican opponent, Donald Trump, who said in a debate that he did not support a minimum wage. She, of course, disagreed.

This is what makes America great, she said.

Follow @mikememoli for more 2016 campaign news.

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Having led and won the fight in the 1960s and 70s to reduce air pollution from automobiles, Californias road regulators turned their sights on a more ambitious goal: curbing global warming at the tailpipe through fuel-economy standards. But powerful evidence shows that these standards are costly for consumers and have almost no impact on the environment.

The federal government has set fuel economy standards since the 1970s. Back in 2002, California proposed stricter rules for vehicles sold within its borders, and several other states followed suit. Worried that a fractured market would create a headache for automakers, the Bush Administration prevented California from implementing its 2002 law. But in 2007 President Bush signed a bill that effectively took the states proposal nationwide, mandating a fleet average of 35 miles per gallon by 2020. In 2012again thanks in part to pressure from CaliforniaPresident Obama raised the bar, mandating that the average reach 36.6 mpg by 2017 and 54.5 mpg by 2025. (Standards rise incrementally before the final deadline.)

Under the national Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard, regulators assess a vehicles fuel economy on a sliding scale based on size. Regulators impose fines on an automaker if its mix of vehicles does not meet the size-adjusted standards on average. As a result, manufacturers have redesigned their fleets to use much more expensive, lighter engines that burn only a little less fuel.

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Before the 2007 CAFE standards were implemented (from 2009 to 2012), three independent teams of economists and engineers estimated the financial impact for car owners. Unlike the Obama administration, which optimistically projected that the strict regulations and fines would save consumers more on gas than they cost to implement, the teams forecasted net per-vehicle consumer costs of $3,800 or more.

Manufacturers have redesigned their fleets to use much more expensive, lighter engines that burn only a little less fuel.

The independent analysts were right on the money. My colleague David Kreutzer and I examined actual price trends through Model Year 2015 and found that vehicle prices had risen $6,200 above the pre-2007 trend. Gas savings over the life of a new car might be $2,000, so the net cost is over $4,000.

If the 2025 standards come into effect unaltered, we expect the cost to reach $7,200 or more per vehicle. The gas savings are simply too small to offset the expense of the high-efficiency engines.

But what about the upside? Many Americans are willing to pay for environmental benefits, and maybe $3,800 a car is not too steep for them. But even the Obama administration predicted that CAFE standards will have a negligible effect on global warming. Specifically, the administration estimated that the standards implemented through Model Year 2016 will lower the global temperature by less than two hundredths of a degree by 2100. Using that projection, we can compare costs and benefits. Reducing the global temperature as the administration predicted would create a benefit equal to 0.0065% of world income, according to a widely-used model of climate impact. But CAFEs current cost to American consumers is already 0.054 % of world income, about 8 times larger.

Although Californias Clean Cars Standard isnt bindingit was superseded by federal regulationthe legislature should repeal it anyway to send a message that this approach is not working as promised. We were told stricter fuel efficiency standards would help the environment and actually save consumers money. Instead, were getting a truly tiny C02 benefit (presumably, at least, though its too small to measure) and massive costs. And, unlike pollution controls, fuel-economy standards are not important to maintaining air quality.

Of course, one particular failure does not mean its impossible to reduce the overall vehicular contribution to climate change. Rather than trying to make car trips more efficient, governments could help citizens reduce their reliance on long daily commutes.

One smart reform: Better land use policy. Lets take Los Angeles as an example. Despite a strong history of environmentalism and weather that is the envy of the world, the built environment in L.A. makes it unrealistic for most people to walk or bike to work.

Perversely, sprawl is encouraged by environmental review boards and neighborhood preservation campaigns. To allow denser, environmentally conscious construction, Sacramento should repeal the private right of action in the California Environmental Quality Act. The provision allows anonymous front groups to tie up construction projects in court, dissuading developers from investing in the first place. Los Angeles should also streamline its permitting processes and write more permissive zoning laws. None of these changes would hurt consumers; all of them would make residents less dependent on cars.

We dont need to pit the environment against prosperity.

Salim Furth is a Research Fellow in Macroeconomics at The Heritage Foundation.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
Body cameras have become the solution of the day for stomping out discriminatory behavior against minorities by police officers. Cameras provide a neutral record of events, so we have a better idea what happened during an encounter. Some research even suggests that the presence of body cameras steeply reduce the use of force by officers and the number of citizens complaints.

But that raises a question: whats to limit this type of solution only to police officers? Its a slippery slope to an Orwellian future, where Big Brother could be watching all of us  for our own good, of course.

Consider health care, another interaction which produces potentially life-or-death outcomes. In general, African Americans and other people of color receive inferior medical treatment, leading to higher death rates. David R. Williams, a professor of public health at Harvard, who has researched this issue writes that blacks and other minorities receive fewer diagnostic tests, fewer treatments, and overall poorer-quality care  even after adjusting for variations in insurance, facilities, and seriousness of illness.

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Leaving aside patient outcomes, there are also highly credible accusations that medical staff have groped and sexually abused sedated patients. Body cameras on doctors and nurses might well prevent such incidents, or provide evidence if they did occur.

If the doctors office is off-limits, what about the classroom?

Its a slippery slope to an Orwellian future, where Big Brother could be watching all of us  for our own good, of course.

U.S. Department of Education data shows that black students are suspended or expelled at rates three times higher than whites, even though no studies examining the relationship between race, behavior and suspension have proven that black students misbehave more often. Currently, parents who insist their children are innocent or are being excessively punished for minor offenses have no evidence.

Make teachers wear body cameras, and parents would see and hear exactly what the teacher heard and saw. An overreaction? Keep in mind, a growing body of evidence shows that school punishments do long-term damage Students who are expelled or suspended are less likely to graduate, and more likely to end up involved with the criminal justice system.

Perhaps even our politicians should be required, by law, to wear body cameras at all campaign and fundraising events while theyre in, or running for, office. If that sounds unnecessary, recall that it was only because of a surreptitious recording that voters found out that 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney thinks there are 47% of Americans who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.

But this isnt partisan. Personally, Id welcome video or audio of what Hillary Clinton has to say to the people paying $353,000 to sit next to her and George Clooney at an upcoming fundraising dinner.

Sure, the officials, professionals or politicians could simply turn off their cameras  but that break in the recording log will be interpreted as evidence that the person was hiding something, and probably up to no good.

A recent article in an American Bar Association magazine summed up the legal landscape: The battle for workplace privacy is over; privacy lost. Employers have a right to monitor employees (provided the employees are aware of it) to measure productivity, prevent theft, promote workplace safety and so on. Advances in digital technology that vastly reduced the cost of cameras just accelerated this trend. Mass monitoring has begun where the need is critical (e.g., police stops) but also where the workers are least able to resist (sanitation workers, truck drivers, Amazon warehouse employees, and so on).

Higher-paid professionals mistakenly assume increased workplace surveillance will be confined to the hoi polloi. In reality, given the technology is available (and improving) all it may take is a high-profile incident or two. Imagine something analogous to the police shooting an unarmed person happening in a school or hospital, and how quickly that could trigger for demands for wider personal surveillance like body cameras. Already the ubiquity of smartphones has made ad hoc recording by employers, customers or colleagues almost effortless.

The NSA or iPhone hackers arent the greatest threat to our privacy. Instead, it may be ourselves  as we are tempted to trade our privacy for the benefits of reduced discrimination, improved productivity and reduced corruption.

Indeed, the world outlined above might be safer, more efficient and more honest. But its not a world Id want to live in.

Steven Strauss is a visiting professor at Princeton Universitys Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
Boon to low-income adults.  Small-business job-killer. Good for cities, bad for rural regions. Too fast or long-overdue. All about fairness.

Conflicting opinions raged over the action in Sacramento this week on the ground-breaking minimum wage measure. The Times coverage  including: Who wins with a $15 minimum wage? and Whats the rush on wage hikes?  prompted dozens of sharp retorts from letter writers, including these:

 Sara Lessley, letters to the editor department

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Linda Kranen of Carlsbad pointedly observes:

Your editorial Whats the rush on wage hikes? sounds like it was written by someone with a very secure salary.

A better perspective would be to advocate for similar legislative urgency to address the lack of low-cost housing; create apprenticeship programs for better-paying jobs; and link educational grants, scholarships and loan-forgiveness to the highly specialized job requirements of Californias employers.

Don Tonty of Los Angeles pinpoints a missing element:

What The Times overlooks is who loses.

Big business will be barely affected while small businesses will be less competitive, shed employees or simply quit. Prices for those goods and services that are barely affordable to the working class will be increased so we are robbing Peter to pay Paul.

And the enormous disparity between the richest Americans and the rest of us will not change. The minimum wage emphasis appears to be smoke and mirrors to make the power brokers look generous while the average citizen bears the burden.

Let the marketplace determine the value of an employee. And if government determines someone should have a higher standard of living, let government pay for it.

Betty Vanole in Burbank offers another solution:

Raising the minimum wage sounds great and makes politicians look as if they are looking out for the little guy or gal.

However, raising the minimum wage is just a vicious cycle. The price for everything goes up along with wages.

Education is the answer to a living wage.

From Fullerton, Dennis James foresees serious consequences:

The wage hike is a huge mistake. Millions of small businesses will be affected. Many will leave California if possible to relocate their business; many will be forced to close.

I have a flower shop with 20 employees. If the bottom wage earners get a $5 raise, my experienced people want that also. If you think I can afford to give away $200,000 per year, you are wrong. I only have a few options: lay off 20% of my staff; lay off the top earners and only hire high school, part-time kids to do the work; or raise prices where the Internet companies will put us out of business.

Look at the long term, reminds Bill Bell of Mar Vista:

If that employee at Burger King pictured in your paper really believes shell still have a job in six years when the $15 an hour minimum wage kicks in, shes in for a rude awakening. She and millions more like her will be standing in the unemployment line faster than you can say Jerry Brown.

Every retail establishment and fast-food restaurant in the state will slash personnel to the bone and cybernate their operation so employees are superfluous. Fifteen an hour will make the Great Recession seem like a tea party when it comes to job killings.

The state and the federal government should abolish all minimum wage laws and let the market decide.

What about the role of the unions, asks Domenico Maceri in San Luis Obispo:

The governors deal on the minimum wage to avoid a more precipitous increase planned by the unions through a referendum gives the current or future governor the power to delay the increase if the economy tanks.

Why should minimum workers be punished if the economy tanks? In a downturn, minimum wage workers would be punished because their hours at work would be reduced or possibly eliminated completely through layoffs. Maybe the unions who negotiated with Brown on the compromise made a mistake?

David Capelouto of Redlands thinks its overreach:

By what legal authority does the government, at any level, have the right to set wage levels for employees in private sector business? I understand that it has an obligation to establish regulations for the safety and health of employees and customers. But, other than establishing taxes, it does not provide any funds to the employer for operational expenses, including wages.

And in Studio City, Barry S. Erbsen draws on his past:

A quick observation on this subject of wage hikes. Im a 75-year-old man who worked for hourly pay decades ago, first for a market, then as a lifeguard for the City of L.A. and then as a water ski instructor for several years.

In those jobs, I made between $1.25 and $1.50 an hour. It has occurred to me that prices in those approximately 50-plus-years have gone up by a factor of 10, or just move the decimal point one place to the right.

I think this is fairly accurate for most things, but it has not worked for hourly wages! Minimum- wage laws have NOT kept up with prices. Think about that.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
Bill Clinton is the star surrogate of his wifes presidential campaign. His speeches on her behalf carry echoes of his winning arguments from a generation ago; his pledge then that Americans would rise and fall together has morphed into his promise that his wifes policies will make the nation rise together.

But for all of his wow factor and the crowds enthusiasm, Bill Clintons presence is a reminder of something less positive for his wifes campaign: Much of the Democratic base has moved further to the left than the former First Couple.

That came through during a campaign event Sunday in Los Angeles, where Bill Clinton praised the California Legislatures passage of a measure that eventually will raise the states minimum wage to $15 an hour.

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God bless you for passing the minimum wage law, the former president told an audience that included some of the legislative leaders who pushed it.

In contrast to the leap the legislators had taken, however, Hillary Clintons view on raising the minimum wage has been the definition of caution. She has backed a substantially smaller federal pay raise, to $12 per hour, with states encouraged to set their own levels as they see fit. (She took part in New York Gov. Andrew Cuomos signing of that states $15 minimum wage measure on Monday).

The Clinton approach of incremental change may get workers in places like California and New York to the same place, but to many activists it seems weak compared to the full-throated support for a national increase from Clintons opponent Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator.

Bill Clintons Sunday remarks, made at a venerable Democratic campaign stop, the campus of Los Angeles Trade Tech College, also included reminders of past policy positions that run counter to where the partys voters are today.

At one point he praised the stunning advances in the rights of gay and lesbian Americans, and lamented the lack of federal nondiscrimination laws. Gay Americans once prohibited from doing so can get married this weekend and be fired tomorrow, he said.

Clinton made no mention of the fact that he was the president who in 1996 signed the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal law that limited marriage to a man and a woman.

Later, as he laid out Hillary Clintons plan to provide expensive job training and other support for those leaving prison, he asserted that there were too many young people in jail.

But Clinton did not mention his role in pushing for stringent criminal justice measures in the 1990s. Back then, many African American elected officials, concerned about high rates of crime, supported his moves. Today, many young black activists blame those laws for imprisoning large percentages of minority men.

The Democratic redefinition that has occurred as the party grew more liberal in recent years is one reason that both Clintons heap praise on President Obama.

Hillary and Bill Clinton regularly say that Obama doesnt get the credit he deserves for his stewardship of the economy, and they tout the importance to Americans of the healthcare reform Obama pushed. They talk of him saving the auto industry and curbing the nuclear ambitions of Iran.

The goal is to prove Hillary Clinton is the truest heir to the legacy of Obama and to the loyalty of the voters, many of them young and liberal, who twice helped to put him in office. She needs to do that because without Obama, she has no real connection to many of those voters. They came of age long after the Clintons left the White House, and Sanders, far more than Clinton, reflects their liberal urges.

Defenders of the Clintons, and the centrist ideology that came to be known as Clintonism which the couple forwarded in the 1990s, point out that its natural for views to evolve over the years. A majority of the country, after all, opposed gay marriage in the 1990s and has now embraced it, making the Clinton evolution nothing extraordinary.

And there is the matter of context: In 1992, when Bill Clinton ran for the presidency, the Democratic party had lost the presidency for five of the six previous elections, the only exception being the post-Watergate win by Jimmy Carter in 1976.

The candidates in those losing elections had been liberal, a word that by the Reagan years had devolved into a political slur. Democrats were not only losing presidential elections, they were being defeated by such striking margins that many wondered if they would ever regain the White House.

Clinton, along with other figures at the time, embraced what he called a third way between traditional liberalism and Republican conservatism that included some elements of each, and that path led him to the presidency.

Among the more conservative ideas were support of free trade agreements, welfare reform and criminal justice reform, all of which have been used against Hillary Clinton by Sanders this year.

In some ways, both Clintons are still embracing a third way, this time between a Republican Party that has lurched to the right and the Sanders campaign, with its firm standing on the left.

Sanders is arguing that his harsh anti-Wall Street stance is necessary to prevent another Great Recession or worse; Clinton counters that changes made under Obama already have narrowed Wall Streets ability to wreak more havoc.

On healthcare, Clinton proposes a middle course that would improve President Obamas plan, but not repeal it as Republicans favor or brush it aside for a Medicare-style, government insurance plan as Sanders desires. On college tuition and trade policy, too, she represents a middle ground between Sanders and the Republican candidates.

Central to her success is convincing Americans that things are not bad enough that they should flee to the revolutionary approaches of Sanders or Republican front-runner Donald Trump. Both she and her husband evoke an optimism about the countrys present and future that is missing in the thundering campaigns of Sanders and Trump.

Bill Clinton on Sunday ticked off the details of a new jobs report that found Americans moving back into the job market because, as he said, Americans are waking up and saying My countrys coming back.

I believe that we are just this close to being able to rise together again, Clinton said. And lets face it, the reason there has been so much intensity in this primary in both parties is that a lot of people despair and dont believe that.

They think things are so rigged against them that we cant do it, he said.

He was headed back toward another blitz of optimism, when a listener yelled out an affirmation, quickly repeated by Clinton: Si se puede.

cathleen.decker@latimes.com

Follow me on Twitter: @cathleendecker. For more on politics, go to latimes.com/decker.

ALSO:

Latinos and women are blunting Trump and Sanders in California primaries

In abortion stumble, Donald Trump shows glaring election weaknesses

Donald Trump leaders in California primary race but threatens GOP fracture

Among California votes, support for trade doesnt fall clearly along party lines

Live coverage from the campaign trail
Im Christina Bellantoni. Essential Politics begins today with several quotes that might just illustrate where we are in the presidential race.

Im gonna have to see how I was treated. Its very simple.

That was Donald Trump on Fox News Sunday, refusing to rule out an independent bid for the presidency should someone else become the GOP nominee.

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I am the strongest candidate to defeat Donald Trump.

Sen. Bernie Sanders making his pitch to Wisconsin Democrats this weekend ahead of Tuesdays primary.

California has been uncommonly good to my family.

Former President Bill Clinton, campaigning here for his wife Hillary Clinton.

He is not a racist. Absolutely not. They want him to appear that he is, but hes not.

That was Melody Jackson of Oildale, Calif., defending Trump as the candidate shell vote for on June 7. Brittny Mejia takes readers into the heart of the Central Valley to get at the complicated feelings some of the states hardest-hit regions have when it comes to immigration policy and the economy. Dont miss the video attached to the story.

Mr. Trump, hes single-handedly bringing back freedom of speech. Hes enabled students to voice whatever we believe in a thoughtful way.

College student Jake Lopez on why he is trying to turn classmates into Trumplicans. Rosanna Xia takes readers to Westmont College in Santa Barbara to examine what the movement looks like on college campuses.

VILLARAIGOSAS BIG DECISION

Phil Willon is hearing that former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa plans to wait until after the June 7 primary election  and possibly even after the November election  to announce if he will run for California governor.

Villaraigosa, who recently got engaged, plans to spend most of his time in the coming months helping with Hillary Clintons presidential bid, and rallying Democrats against Trump, according to a well-informed source.

The former Democratic mayor also will work on efforts to increase Latino voter turnout.

Villaraigosa has spent the past few months on a listening tour up and down the state  and is expected to jump into the 2018 governors race.

CAMPAIGN COMING TO CALIFORNIA

Seema Mehta has the details of two additions to the state Republican convention at the end of this month.

Sen. Ted Cruz will speak at a luncheon, and a source tells her Ohio Gov. John Kasich also will join the three-day confab in Burlingame.

Kasich is hiring staff and looking for office space in California in preparation for the states June 7 primary, according to his new California co-chairman Rick Caruso, who described the governors plan to make a big push here.

Mehta also reported on Clintons Golden State efforts, about two months before the June 7 primary.

Remember, I was president the last time we all rose together, Bill Clinton told a group of his wifes supporters at the Los Angeles Trade-Technical College on Sunday. The former president was making an economic pitch and hailed California for the minimum wage hike about to become law.

MINIMUM WAGE MONDAY

Within two hours of one another, the governors of California and New York today will sign legislation (gradually) increasing their statewide minimum wages to $15 per hour.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is scheduled to officially bless his states measure at 8 a.m. Pacific time.

At Cuomos side just after the ink dries will be Hillary Clinton, campaigning ahead of the New York primary.

Gov. Jerry Brown is scheduled to sign the California measure, which goes into effect in stages until 2022, in downtown Los Angeles at 9 a.m.

George Skelton hints at the Brown-Cuomo rivalry in his Monday column, which also looks at how voters are in a better mood because the Legislature is getting things done.

Patrick McGreevy noticed Friday that five Democrats got campaign checks from the Service Employees International Union the same day they voted to raise the minimum wage.

Well be reporting live from Browns event on our Essential Politics news feed and also via Snapchat. Are you following us at losangelestimes and latimespolitics? Well be watching Cuomo and Clinton on Trail Guide and via @latimespolitics.

And if youre wondering how your lawmaker voted on Californias wage hike, weve got you covered.

WHY FRESNO MATTERS THIS TUESDAY

Theres a little-known special election Tuesday in the Central Valley, and it could turn a blue Assembly seat red for the first time in 40 years, Christine Mai-Duc reports.

The battle  with Fresno City Councilman Clint Olivier, a Republican, and Democrat Joaquin Arambula, an emergency room doctor and son of former assemblyman Juan Arambula, as the top two candidates  finds Republicans with a chance to eke out a win, despite a 20-point voter registration deficit.

The contest is thanks to the surprise resignation of former Assemblyman Henry Perea.

TROUBLE AHEAD FOR TRUMP?

Cruzs expected strength in Tuesdays Republican presidential primary in Wisconsin is threatening to obstruct Trumps path to the nomination and heighten the odds of a contested convention in Cleveland. The senator from Texas is favored to win most of Wisconsins 42 GOP delegates at the same time signs are emerging that Cruz is outmaneuvering Trump in battles among party insiders for the loyalty of delegates.

The gender gap is another reason Trump is struggling. Cathleen Decker sees his abortion stumble as a sobering look at his vulnerability  a bracing reminder of what can happen when Trumps blustery confidence mixes with his lack of experience.

LOOKING AHEAD TWO YEARS

Dont ask Dianne Feinstein just yet whether she plans to run for a fifth full term in the U.S. Senate.

Ive got two years and nine months  ask me that in about a year, Feinstein said last week as she met with Los Angeles Times editors and reporters. Ill give you the answer then.

Decker reports that Feinstein said her health will be the determining factor, and that she wont endorse in the race to replace her retiring colleague Sen. Barbara Boxer until after the primary.

She also said that she had not worked much with Sanders despite the nine years they have overlapped in the Senate.

He, with me at least, has always lived in his own world, she said. She noted that shed developed relationships with Republican senators from working alongside them, but not with Sanders. Hes not as easy to be friendly with.

TODAYS ESSENTIALS

 Decker finds the high numbers of Latinos and women in Californias electorate are making things harder for Trump and Sanders.

 Well, thats one way to get attention for your STD testing campaign.

 Cartoonist David Horsey introduces you to Trump Nation.

 Susan Sarandon and Debra Messing had a fight about politics on Twitter.

 The June 7 primary could usher in a liberal supermajority on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for the first time in modern history.

 Top California Democrats joined an amicus brief backing President Obamas Clean Power Plan.

 The Festival of Books is this weekend. Here are details on the program, which will include panels featuring Team Politics.

LOGISTICS

Did someone forward you this? Sign up here to get Essential Politics in your inbox daily. And keep an eye on our politics page throughout the day for the latest and greatest. And are you following us on Twitter at @latimespolitics?

Please send thoughts, concerns and news tips to politics@latimes.com.
A dog trotted down the middle of a levee road as red-winged blackbirds darted in and out of the reeds. A few fishermen dangled their baited lines into the muddy brown water.

Only a close look at the Middle River revealed anything amiss in this part of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Instead of flowing north toward San Francisco Bay, as nature intended, the Middle was headed south. On the other side of Bacon Island, the Old River was doing the same thing.

The backward flow of these two obscure channels is at the core of a proposal to build Californias biggest water project in decades: a $15-billion diversion and tunnel system in the delta, the ecologically failing hub of the states waterworks.

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The long-planned project would draw directly from the Sacramento River as it enters the north delta and send water to enormous pumping plants that now pull supplies entirely from the south delta. The intensive pumping that now takes place causes the environmentally harmful reverse flows that have triggered increasingly tight limits on water deliveries to San Joaquin Valley growers and Southern California cities.

In news releases and tweets, tunnel backers have lamented the lost and wasted water from the Sacramento River that could have been pumped south during this years winter storms if only the delta had a modern delivery system. About 486,000 acre-feet  or enough water to serve 3.6 million people for a year  could have been captured, the project website proclaims in big, bold numbers.

But scroll down on the website, below those impressive figures, and you now find a cautionary note: The project on average over time is not expected to provide a significant increase in water deliveries from the Delta.

The language reflects a major scaling back of the projects once lofty ambitions.

The San Joaquin Valley irrigation districts and Southland water agencies that would pay for the project originally envisioned it as a grand delta fix that would push water exports back to  or even above  their peak in the early 2000s of an average 5.3 million acre-feet a year.

But as the project has gone through a protracted environmental review by skeptical federal fishery agencies, reality has set in. Instead of cranking open the pumps, the tunnels will, at best, do little more than maintain the status quo.

This idea that its all going to be resolved is fiction, said state Department of Water Resources Director Mark Cowin, whose agency is overseeing the proposal along with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

The tunnels would lessen the damaging reverse flows. But they would not cure the deltas other ecological ailments, many of which stem from the exports and upstream diversions that have profoundly altered delta hydrology and robbed the ecosystem of about half its natural flow to the bay.

Nor would the project escape the regulations concerning endangered species and water quality that will probably grow tougher in response to the deltas cascading environmental woes.

If the tunnels are built, state modeling indicates future delta exports to the valleys thirsty fields and Southern Californias faucets would average 4.9 million acre-feet a year  only a small improvement over recent averages.

Without the project, however, Cowin warns that number could fall by 1 million acre-feet  to roughly 1970s levels.

Officially named the California WaterFix, the project has become less a fix than a multibillion-dollar tourniquet.

::

The Old and Middle rivers are in the south end of the delta. There, the state and federal pumping plants draw water to fill the highway-size California Aqueduct and the Delta-Mendota Canal that carry supplies south.

The harder the enormous pumps work, the stronger their wrong-way pull on south delta channels and native fish. Migrating chinook salmon and steelhead wander off course into the mouths of predators or to the dead-end of the pumps.

The finger-size delta smelt  declared a threatened species by the federal government  follow the unnatural flows away from good spawning habitat, edging ever closer to extinction.

Two in three fish drawn into the south delta by the pumping perish, according to government biologists.

Under WaterFix, the new water diversion point on the Sacramento River in the north delta would feed two massive 35-mile tunnels supplying the pumps. Thus, less water would be drawn directly from the south delta, reducing the problematic reverse flows.

It is a variation of an old idea. Decades before the Endangered Species Act was enacted, when delta smelt were so plentiful they were used as bait, water managers foresaw problems with using the delta as a water pipeline for the south.

By the 1960s, government planners were pushing plans for a peripheral canal to carry supplies from Californias biggest river, the Sacramento, around the delta to existing federal pumps and the soon-to-be built State Water Project pumping plant.

Among the benefits cited in a 1966 state document: Improvements in the quality of exported water and a halt to damage to the delta fishery.

But it was cheaper to use the delta. The canal wasnt built. The proposal resurfaced again years later, only to be killed by voters in a 1982 statewide referendum that played on Californias perennial north-south water tensions.

This time, opposition is centered in the delta, where the landscape of levee-ringed farm islands and curling water channels hasnt changed much in a century.

Save the delta. Stop the tunnels, signs are staked next to delta roads. Local growers dont want a mammoth, years-long construction project mucking up islands in the eastern delta. And most of all, they dont want the tunnels sucking up good-quality Sacramento River water before it gets to their irrigation ditches.

Environmentalists worry about salmon losses at the three big river intakes that would be built near Hood, Calif. And state assurances to the contrary, they are convinced the tunnels will inevitably be used to suck more water from the delta watershed.

::

The nerve center of the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project is housed in a nameless building in a Sacramento suburb, where managers in the Joint Operations Center monitor data around the clock and relay orders to the field offices that move water supplies around California.

Crucial to that movement are delta conditions, which are religiously measured, recorded and scrutinized.

How much water is being released from upstream reservoirs in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river watersheds? How much fresh water is flowing into the delta? How much is going out to San Francisco Bay? What are the salinity levels? How muddy is the water? How many protected fish have been collected at the pumps? How strong are the reverse flows in the Old and Middle rivers?

The reverse flow is measured in negative numbers on either side of Bacon Island and plays such a dominant role in exports that Cowin said he can recite it any minute of the day.

It is by no means, however, the only limit on delta pumping.

In the final months of last year and the early days of January the pumps were turned down to meet water quality and other state standards. If not enough fresh water flows out of the delta to the bay, salty water can intrude, tainting delta supplies.

Then it started raining and we were meeting the outflow, no problem, recalled state water operations chief John Leahigh. Exports bumped up, though they were still capped to protect out-migrating salmon.

By mid-January, storm runoff had driven up the turbidity levels that trigger delta smelt movement. Daily sampling surveys found some of the translucent little fish near the mouths of the Old and Middle.

To avoid drawing smelt to the pumps, the pumping rate limit was tightened and exports dipped. When smelt were caught at the pumps Jan. 21, the exports were further restricted, only to rise again when turbidity levels dropped during Februarys dry spell.

On a late February afternoon, the drone of 100,000 horsepower of pumping muscle filled the federal C.W. Bill Jones Pumping Plant not far from the walled subdivisions of Tracy, Calif.

Four of the plants six pumps were discharging delta water into the head of the 117-mile-long Delta-Mendota Canal for a trip to the San Joaquin Valley.

At the nearby diversion point on the Old River, a network of screens guided fish into pipes that carried them to large collection tanks. There they were held until tank trucks transported them to the western delta for release.

As part of a routine check for protected species, a worker hoisted a cone-shaped bucket out of one of the holding tanks and emptied it into a rectangular sorting tray.

Biologist Rene Reyes dipped a net into the water, scooping up a baby catfish. Next came a couple of bluegills and six silversides. All introduced species, very hardy, he said.

No smelt. No salmon. It was a good day for water exports.

bettina.boxall@latimes.com

Twitter: @boxall

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Highlights from the Angels 6-4 exhibition victory over the Chicago Cubs on Sunday:

AT THE PLATE: The Angels overcame a 4-2 deficit with four runs in the eighth inning, David Fletcher and Gregorio Petit highlighting the rally with two-run singles. Geovany Soto reached on Cubs shortstop Addison Russells two-base error to open the second, took third on Cliff Penningtons bunt and scored on Todd Cunninghams sacrifice fly.

C.J. Cron doubled to left to lead off the fourth, took third on Sotos single and scored on Penningtons single to right. Russell hit his sixth homer of the spring, a solo shot to center, in the third.

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Chicago first baseman Anthony Rizzo hit a solo homer in the fourth that traveled almost halfway up the right-field bleachers. I think that thing scraped the paint off of a 747, Angels Manager Mike Scioscia said.

Cubs third baseman Kris Bryant hit a two-run homer to left-center off Angels reliever Lucas Luetge in the sixth.

ON THE MOUND: Angels starter Matt Shoemaker gave up the homers to Russell and Rizzo. But his five-inning, three-hit, four-strikeout, one-walk effort was an improvement over a rough spring in which the right-hander gave up 17 earned runs and 27 hits, including seven homers, in 20 innings of five Cactus League games for a 7.65 ERA.

No doubt, coming out of Arizona, his secondary stuff was crisper, Scioscia said. Matt is where he needs to be.

Cubs right-hander Kyle Hendricks gave up two runs  one earned  and five hits in five innings, striking out seven and walking none.

IN THE FIELD: Cron made a nice backhand diving stop of Miguel Monteros fourth-inning grounder to the first-base hole and flipped to Shoemaker for the out. Right fielder Shane Robinson made a superb diving catch of Tim Federowiczs flare toward the line in the eighth. Cubs right fielder Albert Almora made a diving catch of Fletchers sinking liner in the sixth.

EXTRA BASES: The Angels added a left-handed short-relief option by signing Neal Cotts, 36, to a minor league deal. Cotts, released by Houston in late March, has held left-handed hitters to a .239 average over 10 big league seasons. He had a 3.41 ERA and held left-handers to a .186 average in 61 1/3 innings for Milwaukee and Minnesota last season. He will open at triple-A Salt Lake, where he will be joined in the bullpen by 22-year-old left-hander Greg Mahle, who was among the teams final cuts Saturday.

Jered Weaver, slowed by neck and shoulder problems, is scheduled to throw a simulated game Tuesday, which could put the veteran right-hander in line to make his 2016 debut Sunday against Texas.

The Angels finished with a 19-8-6 spring record.
Tucked alongside the citys forest of gleaming glass towers are three historic neighborhoods that had been overlooked until recently.

These neighborhoods, the citys oldest, had fallen into disrepair and were home to those struggling to survive in one of Canadas poorest postal codes. Gastown is Vancouvers birthplace; Railtown boomed as the warehouse district for the transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railway, which was completed in 1885; and Chinatown was the hub for many of the 15,000 Asian immigrants who helped construct that nation-building line.

Now collectively called Downtown Eastside, or DTES, they were Vancouvers epicenter at the turn of the 20th century before it shifted west, leaving the neighborhoods to fall on tough times. Community activism successfully fought repeated attempts to evict the poor before Expo 86 and the 2010 Olympics.

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Thats why the DTES now harbors Vancouvers richest collection of 19th and early 20th century architecture, rare in a metropolis with a history of demolishing its old, character-rich buildings.

I sensed the first rustlings of a renewal in Gastown in the mid-2000s as one-of-a-kind decor and furniture shops as well as local designer clothing boutiques took advantage of cheap rents for roomy brick-walled, plank-floored spaces.

Tiny Railtown quietly followed suit, its warehouses morphing into artists studios, loft lodgings and manufacturing space for hip brands such as Herschel Supply Co. And traditional Chinatown has also recently turned a corner, its colorful but often empty shops welcoming a tide of young entrepreneurs attracted by rents one-tenth of those in adjoining downtown.

Though still unpolished and edgy, the neighborhoods are actively thriving and evolving  each at its own pace and with its own vibe  with new restaurants and shops opening weekly.

A stroll past the No 5 Orange strip club, the pot-smoky Marc Emerys Cannabis Culture Headquarters or the chic Matchstick Coffee might still include running a gantlet of panhandlers and buskers, but the areas offer a stimulating place to experience squeaky-clean Vancouvers grittier side.

Skateboards and modern art pop up amid the traditional in gentrifying Chinatown

Vancouvers Chinatown is Canadas biggest, although it began a serious population decline in the 1980s. In those days, newly arriving immigrants preferred settling in suburban Richmond, which has since become the citys contemporary Chinatown.

Only recently has gentrification begun to appear among the fragrant traditional herbal remedy shops and the window displays of dangling Peking ducks.

Bao Bei, a trendy Chinese brasserie with Asian-themed tapas, mixes the past and present. It even has an ornate neon sign, the type Chinatown  and Vancouver in general  was known for until a 1974 anti-neon bylaw cleaned up the city. Just down the road, the dark, swanky Keefer Bar serves up Asian-themed cocktails.

A wacky mix of creative places is popping up. Newly minted Juniper is a locally sourced West Coast-themed restaurant with a gin-centric bar. Tiny Bestie is a German sausage-and-beer joint serving a much-revered currywurst. Mamie Taylors  in the space where Keefer Bakery once sold Chinese coconut buns and other goodies  is an American comfort food eatery with a dazzling array of cocktails and taxidermy.

Low rents (when compared with downtown) encourage creative young entrepreneurs to try their hand at retail in Chinatown. Flatspot Longboards has an eclectic selection of skateboards, and Duchesse is a vintage consignment store.

A growing trend seems to be multi-business stores such as the Shop, a quirky hybrid that dishes out coffee, clothing and all things vintage motorcycle. Space Lab is an antique store/cafe/retro barbershop.

Many of the colorful, early 20th century Asian shophouses are taking on new roles while retaining their historic faces. None has seen more internal change than the 1889 Victorian Italianate Wing Sang building, Chinatowns oldest structure.

Its interior now houses the real estate business and art gallery of local philanthropist Bob Rennie. The Rennie Collection, one of the biggest contemporary art collections in Canada, focuses on works related to identity, social injustice and appropriation through painting and photography. Exhibits are free, but by appointment only; the tours are guided.

We prefer to give a meaningful experience with contemporary art to a few hundred people a year, said director Wendy Chang, rather than having thousands walk through and not know what they are looking at.

Because the interiors of Chinatown buildings often are a mystery to those who gaze at the ornate shopfronts, I finished my visit with an unusual tour in the company of Judy Lam Maxwell.

She takes visitors inside century-old businesses to meet the founders descendants and opens doors to the private clan buildings of the Lams and the Lees  community center-like enclaves with lavish private shrines and gathering spaces where Chinese opera is practiced and dragon costumes readied for upcoming New Years celebrations.

The hip is fusing nicely with the heritage of Gastown, Railtown and Chinatown. Though change is coming to Vancouvers old quarters, its also breathing new life into neighborhoods that have been out of the limelight for too long.

Trendy shops, gastropubs and high-tech firms have re-illuminated Gastown

In 1897 Vancouver was a cluster of loggers tents, a sawmill and a tavern known as Gastown, named after saloonkeeper Capt. John Gassy Jack Deighton.

I was a teen growing up in Vancouver in the 1970s when Gastown was in its bohemian heyday, with hippies and draft dodgers grooving to live music in coffeehouses and bars.

The area declined in the 80s, and it always puzzled me that this exquisite quarter with its cobblestone streets and heritage buildings wasnt thriving. For decades it languished as a netherworld of old pubs and souvenir stores struggling alongside shuttered shops and sleazy hotels.

Tour buses drove tourists down Water Street for its architecture and a quick photo in front of the rare steam-powered clock, but locals avoided Gastown.

Vancouvers Gastown is full of fun architecture. Here stands the Hotel Europe, whose three-sided flatiron building was built in 1908 and 1909 in the city in British Columbia. (Martin Child / Getty Images)

Then a decade ago, a friend suggested we visit the then-new Salt Tasting Room, which we found down dimly illuminated, dumpster-lined Blood Alley near Gaolers Mews. Opening the door, we entered a stylish restaurant offering flights of wine and sherry with tasting plates of international cheeses and charcuterie.

In 2008, shoe designer John Fluevog, whose flamboyant creations have adorned the feet of celebrity Fluevogers such as Madonna, Alice Cooper and Robin Williams, had a homecoming by reopening a store in Gastown, where hed had his flagship from 1970 to 1982.

Gastown was clearly finding its footing again.

Today, it is Vancouvers creative hub. The vast warehouse space has made the area popular among information technology and high-tech firms such as George Lucas Industrial Light & Magic, which moved into a 30,000-square-foot Gastown studio in 2014.

These days, the streets are busy, lined with trendy shops, gastropubs and nightclubs. The aroma of good cooking wafts from the Sardine Can, known for its tapas, and LAbattoir, known for its fine French cuisine.

On warm summer evenings, buskers provide the soundtrack for sidewalk dining as bicycles and scooters stutteri over the cobblestone square in the shadow of the iconic flatiron Hotel Europe.

Railtown on track to becoming a funky hood full of craft beers and stellar food

Walk east from Vancouvers Gastown neighborhood and youre in the unofficially named Railtown, only six blocks long and four wide alongside the ports rail lines. You can hear trains shunting behind the revamped warehouses where dozens of artists and designers have their studios. Many of them open their doors to visitors during the four-day Eastside Culture Crawl every fall (this year, Nov. 17-20).

Until recently, even longtime Vancouver residents didnt realize a neighborhood existed here. Now its the go-to place for British Columbias best selection of local craft beers at the Alibi Room, and its the site of a perpetual line outside a minute but stellar casual Italian trattoria called Ask for Luigi, which was justifiably crowned the citys best new restaurant in 2015 by Vancouver Magazine.

Railtown is becoming a hip hood, and its changing fast. On a decidedly ungentrified block of Powell Street, a young couple recently opened the funky, vintage Mackenzie Room restaurant, while just down the road is the new, industrial-chic, pan-Latin small-plate Cuchillo.

I met up with Bonnie Todd, who offers Off the Eaten Track foodie tours in Railtown. Our small group stepped from nondescript Dunlevy Avenue into a warehouse, where we were culture-shocked by the ultra-modern interior containing the Vancouver Urban Winery, Postmark Brewing and the Belgard Kitchen small-bite restaurant. I agonized over its selection of 38 British Columbia red and white wines on tap.

We noshed our way through Railtown, indulging in the Uncommon Cafe's legendary meatballs and sipping in-house roasted coffee and tucking into handmade Madagascan chocolate truffles at chic East Van Roasters. Its mandate is to train and employ marginalized women from the Rainier Hotel residence upstairs. As in Gastown and Chinatown, many locals struggle to get by, and social enterprise is a big theme in this neighborhood.

travel@latimes.com

If you go

THE BEST WAY TO VANCOUVER, CANADA

From LAX, Air Canada, WestJet, United, Alaska, Delta and American offer nonstop service to Vancouver, and Alaska, United and Delta offer connecting service (change of planes). Restricted round-trip airfares from $236.

WHERE TO STAY

(All prices in U.S. dollars)

Skwachays Lodge, 31 W. Pender St. Vancouver; (888) 998-0797, www.skwachays.com. Aboriginal boutique hotel and gallery with 18 First Nations art-themed rooms and a 40-foot totem pole on the roof. A portion of room rates benefit the nonprofit BC Native Housing Corp. Doubles from about $130.

Victorian Hotel, 514 Homer St., Vancouver; (604) 681-6369, www.victorianhotel.ca. Renovated 1898 boutique hotel in the Downtown Eastside. Doubles from $135, some with shared bath. Continental breakfast included.

WHERE TO EAT

Ask for Luigi, 305 Alexander St., Railtown; (604) 428-2544, www.askforluigi.com. Unpretentious Italian-inspired restaurant specializing in handmade pasta. Voted Vancouvers best new restaurant in 2015. No reservations. Open for weekend brunch. Dinner from $75 for two.

Settlement Building, 55 Dunlevy Ave., Railtown; (604) 566 9463, www.settlementbuilding.com. Houses a microbrewery, restaurant (Belgard Kitchen) and the Vancouver Urban winery and wine bar. Casual light meals and tapas from $8. Beer and wines on tap.

Salt Tasting Room, 45 Blood Alley Square, Gastown, (604) 633-1912, www.salttastingroom.com. Modern tasting restaurant specializing in cheeses, home-cured meats and condiments with eclectic wine or sherry flights and pairings. Pick-your-own tasting plates from $12.

Mamie Taylors, 251 E. Georgia St., Chinatown, (604) 620-8818, www.mamietaylors.ca. Lively, hip cocktail bar and restaurant with casual American comfort cuisine  and taxidermy. Dinner for two from $50.

Bao Bei Chinese Brasserie, 163 Keefer St., Chinatown, (604) 688-0876, www.bao-bei.ca. Stylish eatery for modern Chinese sharing plates and cocktails. Small plates from $8.

WHAT TO DO

Forbidden Vancouver Walking Tour, (604) 839-3126, www.forbiddenvancouver.ca. Unusual 90-minute walking tours in Gastown focus on Wild West history and Prohibition. $22 per adult.

Historical Chinatown Tour, (604) 418-8560, judy@chinatowngirl.ca Insightful, off-the-beaten path Chinatown walking tours with local historian Judy Lam Maxwell. Rates depend on group size.

Off the Eaten Track, (778) 918-4584, www.offtheeatentracktours.ca. Two-hour Railtown culinary walking tour. $42 includes noshing en route.

Rennie Collection at Wing Sang, 51 E. Pender St., Chinatown, www.renniecollection.org/index.php. Vancouver developer and philanthropist Bob Rennies extensive private art collection can be viewed free with an advance online booking.

TO LEARN MORE

Tourism Vancouver, www.tourismvancouver.com

Chinatown, www.vancouver-chinatown.com

Gastown, www.gastown.org
The Disney California Adventure Food & Wine Festival returns after a five-year hiatus with celebrity chefs, culinary demonstrations and beer, wine and spirits seminars.

I visited the revived food fest during opening weekend and came ready to eat and drink. But as youll soon see, I learned the hard way that the DCA food and wine fest is, ironically, not for the seriously hungry and thirsty.

Overall, I found the festival offerings to be of gourmet food truck quality. In general, the food was much better and higher priced than Ive come to expect at a Disney park. As the festival progresses, the biggest challenge for Disney will be shortening the lines at the kiosk registers and pick-up windows.

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The revived DCA event is an offshoot of the popular Epcot International Food & Wine Festival in Florida that has run every fall since 1995. The original DCA festival ran from 2006 until 2010 until a $1-billion improvement project forced the Anaheim theme park to put the annual event on hiatus during construction.

This years springtime festival at DCA runs on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays until May 1. Some festival events are included with park admission while others require an additional fee and reservations.

The eight Festival Marketplace kiosks along the DCA parade route sell $4 to $8 tastings from a snack menu that includes chilled ahi poke, zinfandel-braised wagyu beef, roasted yellow beets and purple haze goat cheese, artichoke chips with spicy aioli and a chilled shrimp and snow crab cocktail.

I passed on the $45 Tasting Passport at the Blue Sky Cellar that lets annual pass-holders sample six items from the Festival Marketplace kiosks. The passport made little financial sense since the six most expensive festival food items came to a grand total of $43.25. In theory you could save $1.50 if you bought six grilled beef tenderloin sliders with the passport, but who would pay $45 for six sliders?

I started with the $5.75 Thai vegetable curry, which had a spicy kick, especially for theme park food. Like many of the other offerings, the sample-size dish was served in a bamboo bowl and was gone in a few bites.

Next up was the $7.75 grilled beef tenderloin slider. The bite-sized brioche bun was delicious but the shredded fillet portion was about the size of a stick of chewing gum. It was at this moment I realized I had made a mistake skipping breakfast and coming to the festival hungry.

The $5.50 white cheddar ale and bacon soup in a mini Boudin sourdough roll was creamy and cheesy but contained only two ounces of soup, which was gone in two spoonfuls. By now Id already dropped $19 and was still hungry. And Id waited in six lines - once to pay and then again to pick up at each kiosk - to eat a few bites of overpriced and undersized food.

I passed on the pedestrian California beers offered at the festivals Brewhouse kiosk, knowing there was a better selection at DCAs Golden Vine Winery. When I got to the winery, I stumbled upon a line waiting for a Stone Brewing beer seminar. I didnt have a reservation, but I was surprised to find a few spots still available for the paid event on the winery terrace.

The 45-minute beverage seminars feature presentations by winemakers, sommeliers and brew masters along with sample tastings. Reservations are recommended for the $15 sessions that take place several times a day throughout the event. More than 50 seminars are offered by vendors like Modern Times Beer, Lasseter Family Winery and Henebery Whiskey.

During the seminar I attended, Stone Brewings Minister of Evangelism and Indoctrination Ken Wright offered a humorous take on the brewerys culture, history and mythology along with simple beer-tasting instructions: If you try it and dont like it, try harder. The 45-minute session included samples of the hop-loving San Diego brewers Saison du Buff farmhouse-style ale, Pataskala Red X IPA and Ruination 2.0 double IPA.

During the festivals initial run, the challenge for Disney had been how to hold limited-capacity seminars in the middle of a theme park teeming with thousands of people. In years past, lines often formed hours before seminars and crowds bulged around the edges of the venues during the shows, creating traffic management issues and unhappy visitors who couldnt see their favorite stars. This time around, Disney has opted to turn the most popular seminars into reserved VIP events with fees and amenities designed to control attendance and add an air of exclusivity.

After my beer seminar I came to the realization that I had been approaching the festival the wrong way. The idea is to graze, relax and enjoy the festival atmosphere. If youre really hungry or thirsty, go to any of DCAs restaurants and bars. The festival is for sipping, savoring and sampling. And if you have a problem with high prices or long lines, a Disney theme park is the wrong place to be.

In the afternoon, I tackled the festival at a more leisurely pace when the lines were more manageable. The $6.50 fried shrimp soft taco delivered a burst of flavor with lots of textured layers of pickled red onions, jalapenos, queso fresco and avocado-lime crema. The $5.50 burrito was the most substantial item on the festival menu and combined two unique flavors: Anaheim chiles and roasted cauliflower. The tasty $6 triple cheese mac with smoked chicken was one of my favorites.

Clearly the most popular item of the festival was the $6.50 pork belly bao taco, which was sold out at least twice during my visit. The savory taco with pickled vegetables and a sticky glaze on a puffy steamed bun was worth the wait. Hopefully the Disney culinary staff finds a place for the delicious taco at one of the theme parks restaurants.

The Festival Marketplace tasting menu also included several desserts: Milk chocolate caramel tart, blackberry tart, apple-bacon whoopie pie, Meyer lemon macaroon and coconut tapioca layered with mango and lychee boba.

California wine is available at most of the kiosks from $5 to $25 per glass. Chardonnay, Cabernet and Pinot Noir wine flights are sold at The Vineyard kiosk for $14 to $19. Disneys done a good job of pulling together wines from throughout California -- from obvious places like Napa and Sonoma but also lesser-known wine regions like San Luis Obispo, Monterey, Santa Barbara, Paso Robles and Santa Ynez Valley.

California beer can be found for $7.50 to $9.25 a glass at The Brewhouse kiosk, with Northern and Southern California flights available for $11.25 to $12.25. Youll find most of the usual suspects on tap - including Hangar 24, Karl Strauss, Bootleggers, Sierra Nevada, Anchor and Firestone. The most interesting pour: The Patsy coconut rye stout from Barley Forge Brewing in Costa Mesa.

The biggest change to the rebooted DCA Food & Wine Festival are the hefty fees and mandatory reservations required for the most popular events. In the past, celebrity chef demonstrations and beverage seminars were on a first-come basis and free with park admission. Now if you want to see Guy Fieri from Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives or Robert Irvine from Restaurant: Impossible youll have to shell out an additional $99 to $149 to get admission to the closed-door events.

The 90-minute Celebrity Kitchen events take place on Saturday afternoons inside Stage 17 in DCAs Hollywood Land. The $99 reservation-only events include food and beverage tastings. For $149, annual passholders can get priority seating and take part in an autograph session with the celebrity chef. Among the participating top chefs: Graham Elliot from MasterChef, G. Garvin from the Cooking Channels Road Trip, former Food Network Challenge host Keegan Gerhard as well as Carthay Circle and Napa Rose chef Andrew Sutton.

Non-VIPs and those with lower credit limits can still attend dozens of free cooking demos by professional chefs and lifestyle seminars by artisans in Hollywood Land, but there are no samples and youll have to wait in line for the first-come, first-served chance to get a spot.

After feasting during the festival, I caught one of the free culinary demonstrations on the Backlot Stage in DCAs Hollywood Land. The KABC radio host of Food & Wine with Chef Jamie Gwen took the audience through the step-by-step process of making a fresh summer lemon pie. At the end of the show, Gwen had to decline several requests to taste the pie, which seems ridiculous at a food festival. It would be easy enough for Disney to sell samples of the chefs creation at the kiosk next to the stage.

There is certainly room for the DCA food fest to improve and grow in the coming years, but the event will never rival the 30-kiosk monster thats held every fall at Epcot. Should the rebooted festival prove successful, expect the DCA event to introduce international themes and focus on delicacies and beverages from individual countries in coming years.

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The disclosures contained in a massive leak of documents from a Panamanian law firm reverberated worldwide on Monday.

In Pakistan, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharifs government defended his childrens ownership of offshore companies.

The embattled premier was one of several world leaders named in the so-called Panama Papers, a trove of files that belonged to the secretive Mossack Fonseca law firm, whose contents shed light on how the wealthy and powerful stash their money in offshore tax havens.

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An anonymous source first leaked the documents to the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, based in Munich, Germany, last year, which shared them with several international media outlets. Many of those outlets published reports on the documents Sunday, in collaboration with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Those reports allege that three of Sharifs children maintained offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands, through which they owned half a dozen properties overlooking Londons tony Hyde Park. Sharif himself was not named as an owner of any of the companies or properties.

While analysts said that maintaining offshore bank accounts may be legal under Pakistani laws, the practice could expose the countrys wealthy political elite to fresh allegations of corruption and money laundering in a country in which more than half the people live on less than $2 a day.

Opposition leader Imran Khan accused Sharif of acquiring the properties and transferring them to his children to shield himself from liability under Pakistani tax laws. Khan said that Pakistans National Accountability Bureau, an anti-corruption watchdog, must take action to determine how Sharifs family obtained the money to set up the offshore accounts.

Our stance vindicated again as Sharifs wealth stashed abroad exposed, Khan tweeted.

Hussain Nawaz Sharif, the prime ministers eldest son, said he owned the offshore companies named in the leaks but that he and his family members had broken no laws.

I have been living abroad for many years and have invested there. I have not done anything illegal, Sharif told the Geo TV news channel. I have been doing business according to Pakistans foreign act and other Pakistani laws, including the income tax laws.

The Sharif family denied any wrongdoing in a statement on Monday. None of the corporations mentioned are owned or run by Mr. Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister of Pakistan, the statement said.

All of the corporations owned by the Sharif family (by Mr. Hussain and Mr. Hassan Nawaz) are legal and financially sound. No new information has been disclosed by the Panama leaks and ICIJ which was not already in the public domain, the statement continued. It is regretful that some elements in media and political rivals are disseminating factually wrong information and distorting it for political purposes.

Maryam Safdar, Sharifs daughter, who is widely seen as his political heir, and his son Hassan Nawaz Sharif were also named as trustees or owners of companies based in the British Virgin Islands, a popular tax haven. According to the Indian Express newspaper, which was given access to the leaked documents several months ago and conducted subsequent investigations, Sharifs children mortgaged four London properties in exchange for a loan of 7 million British pounds, about $10 million at current exchange rates.

Pervaiz Rashid, Pakistans information minister and a close aide to Sharif, said the premiers children filed tax returns in accordance with Pakistani laws and do business abroad like children of common Pakistanis do. He also criticized Khan, the opposition leader, whose two sons study at expensive private schools in Britain.

Imran Khans allegations are wrong; he should at least express regret, Rashid said.

Sahi is a special correspondent. Staff writer Bengali reported from New Delhi.

shashank.bengali@latimes.com

Follow @SBengali on Twitter for more news from South Asia
Sergei Roldugin is Russian President Vladimir Putins closest friend. They met when Putin was training to become a KGB officer at school, where Roldugins brother was one of Putins classmates. Roldugin introduced Putin to his future wife, Lyudmila, and the couple made him the godfather of their eldest daughter in 1985.

He is simply like a brother to me, Roldugin said in Putins biography, From the First Person, published in 2000 just months after Putin assumed his first presidency.

While many of Putins former KGB colleagues and summer home neighbors followed him to Moscow, assuming key government jobs and controlling entire sectors of the Russian economy, Roldugin stayed out of sight. The 64-year-old cellist teaches at the St. Petersburg conservatory, manages a charity that helps talented children, and occasionally conducts the orchestras of the Mariinsky opera and ballet theater that was founded by Catherine the Great.

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But an investigation published Sunday suggests that Roldugin hasnt been living such a quiet life. He has allegedly amassed a fortune of more than $100 million through three offshore companies that list him as owner, according to reports published by multiple news outlets based on a trove of leaked documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Foncesca.

An anonymous source first leaked the documents to the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, based in Munich, Germany, last year. The newspaper partnered with news organizations around the world to report on the documents, dubbed the Panama Papers.

Roldugin has allegedly acquired a 12.5% stake in a major Russian advertising company, and holds a 3.2% stake in Bank Rossiya, the reports say. The U.S. government blacklisted the bank for its close ties to Putin.

The companies under Roldugins name had a turnover of $2 billion, and their income mostly came from insider deals with the stock of Rosneft and Gazprom, Russias largest, state-controlled oil and gas companies, according to the reports. Donations from Russias wealthiest businessmen and loans from an obscure Cyprus bank were also major sources of income.

The leaked files suggest that Roldugin is not keeping this wealth for himself, but is funneling the money to Putins inner circle, the reports say. Although Putin is not mentioned in the documents, he appears to be at the center of a web of Russias most influential and powerful men who owe their posts and fortunes to nothing but their friendship and association with him.

Its possible Roldugin, who has publicly claimed not to be a businessman, is not the true beneficiary of these riches, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists wrote. Instead, the evidence in the files suggests Roldugin is acting as a front man for a network of Putin loyalists -- and perhaps for Putin himself.

Cellist Sergei Roldugin speaks with the media in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2000. (Kirill Kudryavtsev / AFP/Getty Images)

Roldugin is not the only friend and confidant of Putins mentioned in the Panama Papers. The reports mention Putins judo sparring partners, the wives of Putins spokesman and a governor, sons of economy and deputy interior ministers, four Russian lawmakers and several members of the ruling United Russia party.

But Roldugin seems to be the only person mentioned in the Panama Papers who has directly responded to the accusations against him. Novaya Gazera, one of Russias last remaining investigative newspapers that participated in the Panama Papers investigation, approached the cellist after a concert in Moscow on March 24.

Honestly speaking, I cant comment on this, Roldugin was quoted as saying. I have to see and understand what I can say and cant. I am simply afraid to be interviewed.

Wheres the money from? Whose [money is it]? I know all that. These are delicate matters, he told the Novaya reporter, promising to come back with a more detailed response. But he never did -- and stopped answering his phone, the paper said.

Russian officials: Panama Papers scandal is a Western plot against Russia

Russian officials met the Panama Papers investigation with rare and angry remarks that follow a popular conspiracy theory -- propagated in recent years by Kremlin-controlled television -- about the evil West plotting against resurgent Russia.

Putins spokesman Dmitri Peskov said that the reports lack details.

The rest is based on arguments and speculations. We dont want to and will not respond, Peskov told Russian news agencies. Putinophobia has reached such a degree that one cannot say anything good about Russia a priori.

Last week, Peskov said that a major information attack on Putin is expected, and his warning seems to have stifled any upcoming domestic coverage.

No major television network or state-controlled media outlet covered the Panama Papers. Monday news shows on Kremlin-controlled television networks covered a deadly fire in a Siberian city, doping scandals in the United Kingdom, the Syrian war and the migrant crisis in Europe.

A top anti-corruption official called the report part of a smear campaign against Russia.

The number of information attacks on Russias president and the simplicity of the lies-filled reports are like multiple injections of poison -- hopefully, at least one of them will work, lawmaker Irina Yarovaya told the Itar-Tass news agency.

The Kommersant, an influential Russian daily, published a small commentary by its economy expert.

The researchers failed to find direct confirmation of corrupt deals neither for Russia nor for Ukraine, or for other countries in the databases, Dmitry Butrin wrote.

The newspaper, once one of Russias most respected independent publications, is now owned by Alisher Usmanov, a powerful tycoon with close ties to the Kremlin.

The CEO of one of Russias largest state-run banks, vehemently defended the Russian president.

Mr. Putin was never involved. Its [garbage], VTBs Andrey Kostin told Bloomberg. Theres definitely quite a big campaign against Russia.

A blow to Putins reputation?

Russian opposition figures were hopeful that the Panama Papers revelations would tarnish Putins image. The report is based on the leaked data from just one of Panamanian law firms, opposition leader and anti-corruption crusader Alexei Navalny said in statement. Yet, this small part is good enough for [Putins] impeachment.

Navalny cut his teeth as the author of detailed reports on corruption among Russian officials, including Putins closest friends. He recently called Putin a czar of corruption.

His latest investigation, a YouTube video accusing Russias prosecutor general, Viktor Chaika, of having ties to organized crime and corrupt businesses, has been seen more than 4.7 million times since its release in December -- or slightly more than 3% of Russians.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, center, poses for a selfie with SKA hockey club president and KHL board member Roman Rotenberg, left, and businessman Gennady Timchenko, second from right, last May. (Alexey Nikolsky / SPUTNIK / KREM / EPA)

An opposition lawmaker who was kicked out of Russias lower house of parliament for his criticism of Putin and United Russia said that the report has dealt a serious blow to Putins reputation. It will contribute to the destruction of his image of an infallible president, and all the power, all the might of the government are based on Putins personal image, Gennady Gudkov said.

Transparency International, an international anti-corruption watchdog, called the Panama Papers a pleasant surprise.

All of this roughly coincides with what we have been dealing with, said Anton Pominov, head of the Russian branch of Transparency International. This is a pleasant surprise that documents of this kind surface in such quantities and with such quality.

There are dozens of such companies, and theres many more offshores, and the scope [of such schemes] could be dozens of times bigger, he added.

The group said in January that Russia ranks 119 in its global corruption index of 167 nations, between Guyana and Sierra Leone.

The Kremlins resurgent propaganda machine and a crackdown on independent media will keep most Russians ignorant about the Panama Papers, according to Levada Center, a Moscow-based independent pollster.

No more than several percent of the population will learn about it, said Levada sociologist Denis Volkov.

He said that no more than 15% of Russians knew about Russian oppositions reports on corruption among top officials -- and added that average Russians didnt move beyond the archetypal Russian idea of a good czar who fights corruption among his officials but is himself devoid of any wrongdoings.

Mostly, Putin is excluded from these schemes, Putin is fighting them, although without success, Volkov said.

Over the last decade, numerous reports by Russian and international media outlets, anti-corruption groups, opposition and critics accused Putins inner circle of involvement in massive corruption schemes worth billions of dollars.

The Guardian claimed in 2007 that Putin owned a fortune of at least $40 billion, citing political analyst and former Kremlin insider Stanislav Belkovsky.

Putin responded to the report with one of his trademark salty phrases. They have picked this in their noses and have smeared this across their pieces of paper, he told a news conference in 2008.

Opposition leader Boris Nemtsov published a series of reports on Putins implication in corruption, money-laundering and illegal businesses.

Corruption in Russian ceased to be a problem and became a system, he wrote in one of his reports.

Nemtsov described The Lake Cooperative, a group of several ex-KGB officers and close friends of Putin who built modest dachas, or country houses, outside St. Petersburg, becoming Putins neighbors.

After Putins rise to the presidency, the cooperatives members -- along with Putins former colleagues and judo sparring partners -- rose too.

Within years, they became top officials in charge of Russias security, interior affairs, transportation, customs service, communications, migration service and anti-drugs enforcement.

Others turned into Forbes-listed tycoons controlling huge chunks of Russias oil and gas exports, railroads, nuclear fuel supply, hi-tech sector, gas pipeline construction, telecoms, advertising and banking, Nemtsovs report said.

Most of the officials listed in Nemtsovs report have not denied their friendship or collegial ties with Putin that precede his presidency.

Nemtsov was killed outside the Kremlin walls in 2015.

In 2014, the New York Times said that Bank Rossiya-- in which cellist Roldugin allegedly owns a stake -- had some $11 billion in assets and spread its tentacles across Russias economy.

The bank became a symbol of Putins brand of crony capitalism that allowed his friends and former colleagues to become billionaires who control key sectors of Russias economy, the report said.
From Vladimir Putins best friend to the prime minister of Iceland and a revered soccer star, many of the worlds rich and powerful on Monday were scurrying for cover after the release of the so-called Panama Papers, possibly one of the largest leaks of secret intelligence ever and one that apparently reveals a vast network of financial shenanigans.

The documents from a Panamanian law firm were obtained by several international news outlets and published over the weekend. They appear to show how a whos who in the global political and business elite  and maybe drug traffickers  have mounted complex systems to hide money in offshore accounts.

By itself, it is not illegal to hold money overseas. But the implication is that many of those mentioned evaded taxes or that money illicitly obtained was laundered through such clandestine networks.

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As the scandal widened, country after country, as well as many of the prominent figures mentioned, issued denials and statements of indignation. Activist groups, meanwhile, demanded investigations into the tax havens provided by countries such as Panama and the Seychelles.

The ability to move and stash money secretly is the key weapon in any prosperous illicit business. It allows tyrants to loot nations, tycoons to rob consumers.

Laundered money is the fuel that keeps organized crime, smugglers and drug cartels running smoothly and profitably.

The Panama Papers could provide investigative leads to authorities as well as journalists for months if not years.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which took the lead in examining and publishing the trove of more than 11 million documents dating to 1977, said the information appears to show that the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca established shell companies and offshore accounts to help hundreds of people move their money.

Twelve current or former top government leaders, 61 of their associates, other politicians and thousands of businesses are named in the documents, the group said. An anonymous source first leaked the papers to the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper in Munich, Germany, last year, and it in turn shared them with a number of outlets.

From Russia to China, from Iceland to Argentina, the revelations were explosive.

There was no official reaction in China to allegations that relatives of President Xi Jinping were squirreling away money. It appeared the reports were being censored on the Chinese mainland.

Icelands prime minister, Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, rejected opposition calls to resign after his wifes name surfaced in the documents.

Two of Mexicos leading television executives were among those named, along with a major construction tycoon, Juan Armando Hinojosa Cantu, whose work for President Enrique Pena Nieto already sparked allegations of corruption. There was no immediate response from Hinojosa.

France and Australia immediately opened investigations into possible money-laundering and tax evasion.

Italys tax agency plans to request access to the names in the Panama Papers as it prepares to launch its own inquiry. There are about 1,000 Italians listed, according to the magazine LEspresso, which helped sift through the leaked data.

As for Putin, the Russian president, associates were reportedly tied to more than $2 billion in secret loans. The associates include Sergei Roldugin, an unassuming cellist described as Putins best friend.

The evidence in the files suggests Roldugin is acting as a front man for a network of Putin loyalists  and perhaps for Putin himself, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists said.

Icelands prime minister, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, is facing calls to resign after his wifes name surfaced in the leaked documents. (Halldor Kolbeins / AFP/Getty Images)

Honestly speaking, I cant comment on this, Roldugin was quoted as saying in the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. I have to see and understand what I can say and cant. I am simply afraid to be interviewed.

On Monday, the Kremlin dismissed the allegations as part of a smear campaign targeting Putin.

Khulubuse Zuma, the nephew of South African President Jacob Zuma, appeared in the Panama Papers because of interests in oil fields in the Democratic Republic of Congo through an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands. The deal was made several years ago amid suggestions he might have received favoritism through his uncle. The younger Zuma denied wrongdoing in the deal then and asserted now there was nothing new in the latest reports.

In Pakistan, an already embattled Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif found himself on the defensive after the documents alleged that three of his children maintained offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands that they use to own half a dozen properties overlooking Londons Hyde Park. Sharif himself was not implicated, and his government defended the childrens property arrangements.

In yet another twist involving the scandal-plagued FIFA organization, which governs worldwide soccer, the documents revealed a business relationship between a member of the groups ethics committee and three men indicted on charges of paying bribes and other misdeeds, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists said.

Meanwhile, soccers best player, the Argentine Lionel Messi, is tied to a Panamanian shell company in the papers, the consortium reported. He is already under investigation on suspicion of tax evasion in Spain, where he plays.

Mossack Fonseca, the law firm, denied wrongdoing and issued a statement saying that the information ricocheting around the planet was full of inaccuracies and that its industry practices are misunderstood.

The facts are these: While we may have been the victim of a data breach, nothing weve seen in this illegally obtained cache of documents suggests weve done anything illegal, and thats very much in keeping with the global reputation weve built over the past 40 years of doing business the right way, right here in Panama, the statement said. Obviously, no one likes to have their property stolen, and we intend to do whatever we can to ensure the guilty parties are brought to justice.

Transparency International, a nonprofit organization that studies corruption, whistle-blowing and secret financial practices globally, praised the document dump for shedding light into the murky world of secret offshore companies. Companies can incorporate in the U.S. without revealing sources of money.

Its not just the Virgin Islands and Panama where kleptocrats and criminals go to launder their illicit wealth, said Shruti Shah, vice president of Transparencys U.S. chapter.

Times staff writers Shashank Bengali, Jonathan Kaiman and Robyn Dixon contributed to this report from Mumbai, India, Beijing and Johannesburg, South Africa, respectively. Special correspondents Mansur Mirovalev and Aoun Sahi reported from Moscow and Islamabad, Pakistan, respectively.
Many people cannot imagine being unable to express thoughts and feelings every single day, but for teenager Dillan Barmache, this has been his reality since birth.

To commemorate Autism Acceptance Month, Apple released two brief but moving videos on the non-verbal autistic teenager showing some of his struggles with autism and finding out how to deal with it through new technology.

The Struggles of Autism

Dillan's therapist and communication partner Deborah Spengler described him as "the most challenged" kid in their first encounter. Indeed, a child who cannot speak or communicate is one who will understandably struggle day to day.

"Having autism is like being in hell and it is a lonely existence," the 16-year-old shared in the three-minute video entitled "Dillan's Path."

"If you're just going off of what you see on the outside the assumption is often that there's a lack of intelligence," his mother Tami Barmache explained. "Not being able to speak is not the same as not having something to say."

In the other video called "Dillan's Voice," he spent much of his life wanting to connect with people, but being unable to.

Finding a Way With Technology

Through technology, Dillan's life was transformed and he was given a way to express what he has to say to his family and friends. Now, he types out what he wants to say on his iPad, which is then translated into words through software. Spengler revealed that the teenager called his first experience of typing as "being freed."

It's a privilege many of the world take for granted, but the ability to communicate opened up a whole new world for Dillan.

"At school, I now can have a conversation," he said in an email interview with Mashable. "I can share [answers to questions] with my classmates to amaze them that this totally awkward and sometimes strange guy is as smart as they are."

He added, "The iPad allows me to be seen."

The opportunities have truly opened for Dillan. The teenager first made headlines back in 2014, when he delivered a thoughtful commencement speech in front of his fellow graduates at the Hale Charter Academy in Woodland Hills, California.

In his message, he said, "Always look inside other peoples experience in order to gain another perspective outside of books. Only then are we able to start opening our eyes to the amazing things around us."

The crowd gave him a standing ovation.
Authorities in Costa Rica are being pressured to seek the identities of several young men who dragged an endangered green sea turtle from their car, then mutilated the frightened animal while it was still alive.

Video from the cruel and callous act was ultimately posted to Facebook, sparking the public outrage.

Word is the culprits tied the giant animal up by its front flippers after capturing it off the port of Morin in the province of Limon.

Animal Dragged Over Potholes

After flipping the turtle on to its back, the callous youths carted it face first through the rugged terrain behind their vehicle. Soon, the red car speeds off with the animal tied to it, accelerating over several potholes on the mud track before coming to a sudden stop.

From there, the group hosed down the turtle and untied its fins. It's at that point that they callously started to slice and dice up the animal.

Animal activist Alvaro Sagot was among those who looked on the Facebook post with as much outrage as horror.

"Like me, they were left without words or breath, and disillusioned with life, after seeing the footage," he said of those who made him aware of the posting. "It is a lack of respect to different forms of life. The way they mistreat the turtle goes against everything that a civilized country should be."

Sagot also took note of the way youths smiled and laughed as they carried out their dastardly act.

"The youths don't care, they laugh their heads off, they don't care that you can see their faces," he said. "It's shameful."

Act a Chargeable Offense

Sagot went on to assure his social media followers that the act is a criminal offense. He and other animal organizations are now calling on authorities to become involved.

The International Union of Conservation of Nature lists green turtles as an endangered, making it illegal to "collect, harm or kill them."

Violations are punishable by up to three years in jail.
A Mexican-Canadian construction worker is receiving praise for a Facebook post he shared showing the Mexican flag hung on the new Trump Tower in Vancouver, Canada.

On April 2, Diego Saul Reyna shared a photo on his Facebook page of him sitting at the top of the Trump Tower with the Mexican flag hung up behind him.

Reyna explained that he made the choice to hang the flag because of the infamous comments Trump made about Mexican people last summer.

"From the concrete pouring, finishing, drywall, taping, wood forming and general labour, Mexicans were there, building it, doing good work, the comments Trump has made about us, did not stop us from doing the high quality work we have always done, in our home country or when we migrate to the US/Canada," he wrote.

WHY DID I PUT A MEXICAN FLAG ON THE ROOF TOP OF TRUMP TOWER VANCOUVER, ??????Because from the concrete pouring,... Posted by Diego Saul Reyna on Saturday, April 2, 2016

Reyna has also spoken out about the fact that Trump criticized the very same people who he has employed several times over the years.

"I put a Mexican flag on the roof of the Trump Tower in Vancouver, just to show that he is benefiting from us and that we are working hard on his projects and that we are not all criminals," Reyna said in an interview.

Reyna isn't the only one who has spoken out about the tower. Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson urged developers to remove the name Trump from the tower because the political candidate's views don't coincide with the city's "commitment to diversity."

Donald Trumps hateful positions and commentary remind us all of much darker times in our worlds past  and it is incumbent on all of us to forcefully challenge hatred in all of the ways it confronts us," he said.
An honest essay has numerous characteristics: original thinking, a good structure, balanced arguments, and plenty more.

But one aspect often overlooked is that an honest essay should be interesting. It should spark the readers curiosity, keep them absorbed, make them want to stay reading and learn more. An uneventful article risks losing the readers attention; whether or not the points you create are excellent, a flat style, or poor handling of a dry subject material can undermine the positive aspects of the essay. The matter is that a lot of students think that essays should be like this: they believe that a flat, dry style is suited to the needs of educational writing and dont even consider that the teacher reading their essay wants to search out the essay interesting. You might want to have online essay editor service to boost your confidence in writing with an error-free output. Academic writing doesnt need to be  and shouldnt be  bland. The excellent news is that there is much stuff you can do to create your essay more attractive, while youll be able only to do such a lot while remaining within the formal confines of educational writing. Lets study what theyre.

Have an interest in what youre writing about

Dont go overboard, but youll be able to let your passion for your subject show.

If theres one thing bound to inject interest into your writing, its being fascinated by what youre writing about. Passion for a subject matter comes across naturally in your essay, typically making it more lively and fascinating and infusing an infectious enthusiasm into your words  within the same way that its easy to talk knowledgeably to someone about something you discover fascinating.

Include fascinating details

Another factor that may make an essay boring maybe a dry material. Some topic areas are naturally dry, and it falls to you to form the article more interesting through your written style and by trying to seek out fascinating snippets of knowledge to incorporate, which will liven it up a small amount and make the data easier to relate to. A way of doing this with a dry subject is to create what youre talking about that seems relevant to the critical world, as this is often easier for the reader to relate to.

Emulate the fashion of writers you discover interesting

When you read lots, you subconsciously start emulating the fashion of the writers you have read. Reading benefits you a lot, as this exposes you to a spread of designs, and youll start to require the characteristics of these you discover interesting to read.

Borrow some creative writing techniques

Theres a limit to the quantity of actual story-telling youll do when youre writing an essay; in the end, essays should be objective, factual and balanced, which doesnt, initially glance, feel considerably like story-telling. However, youll apply a number of the principles of story-telling to create your writing more interesting.

consider your own opinion

Take the time to figure out what its that you think instead of regurgitating the opinions of others.

Cut the waffle

Rambling on and on is dull and almost bound to lose the interest of your reader. Youre in danger of waffling if youre not completely clear about what you wish to mention or havent thought carefully about how youre visiting structure your argument. Doing all your research correctly and writing an essay plan before you begin will help prevent this problem.

Editing is a vital part of the essay-writing process, so edit the waffle once youve done a primary draft. Read through your essay objectively and eliminate the bits that arent relevant to the argument or labor the purpose.

employing a thesaurus isnt always a decent thing

Avoid using unfamiliar words in an essay; theres too great a likelihood that youre misusing them.

You may think that employing a thesaurus to seek out more complicated words will make your writing more exciting or sound more academic, but using overly high-brow language can have the incorrect effect.

Avoid repetitive phrasing

Please avoid using the identical phrase structure again and again: its a recipe for dullness! Instead, use a variety of syntax that demonstrates your writing capabilities and makes your writing more interesting. Mix simple, compound, and complicated sentences to avoid your paper becoming predictable.

Use some figurative language

Using analogies with nature can often make concepts more accessible for readers to know.

As weve already seen, its easy to finish up rambling when youre explaining complex concepts  mainly after you dont know it yourself. One way of forcing yourself to think about a couple of pictures, present it more simply and engagingly is to form figurative language. This implies explaining something by comparing it with something else, as in an analogy.

Employ rhetorical questions

Anticipate the questions your reader might ask.

One of the ways ancient orators held the eye of their audiences and increased the dramatic effect of their speeches was by using the statement. A decent place to use a statement is at the top of a paragraph, to steer into the following one, or at the start of a replacement section to introduce a brand new area for exploration.

Proofread

Finally, you may write the top interesting essay an instructor has ever read. Still, youll undermine your good work if its plagued by errors, which distract the reader from the particular content and can probably annoy them.
An unmarried gay woman, whose ex-girlfriend gave birth to two children through artificial insemination, asked the Massachusetts' top court to decide the complicated case about parental rights.

According to Lowell Sun, Julie Gallagher and Karen Partanen want to be declared as the full legal parent of the children. A judge then dismissed the couple's request, claiming that Karen did not meet the requirements for legal parentage under state law because she and Julie were not married when the children were born. The judge also underlined the fact that Karen is not a biological parent.

Julie acknowledges that Karen has been a good parent and wanted her to have the right to make legal decisions for the children as their biological parent. The kids spend half their time with Karen under a shared custody order.

Yahoo News reported that Karen appealed after the court dismissed her complaint which was filed in a family court. The extent of Karen's parental rights is being disputed under two state laws in Massachusetts.

One law states that children born out of wedlock are entitled to the same protections and rights as children born to married couples, while the other law says that any child born to a married woman as a result of artificial insemination with the consent of "her husband" is considered the legitimate child of the husband or mother.

However, the case law made by the courts in Massachusetts has recognized the rights of unmarried same-sex couples to jointly adopt children. Karen's lawyer argued that she and Julie presented themselves publicly, even to their friends and family, as the parents and shared equally in terms of parenting responsibilities, reports The Salt Lake Tribune.

Karen is being represented by GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders, which is the same group who brought the lawsuit that led to same-sex marriage in Massachusetts.
Egypt's top state newspaper editor warns the state authorities to take on the case of the slain Italian student seriously. The editor published on the front page column telling the officials are not aware of the grave consequences of the case that will affect the countries' relationship to Italy.

According to ABC News, Al-Ahram's Editor-in-Chief Mohammed Abdel-Hadi Allam took the front page column of the newspaper to warn the state officials and authorities regarding the case of an Italian student, Guilio Regeni, who was tortured and killed in Cairo.

The editor compared the case to the case of an Egyptian teen, Khaled Said, who was beaten to death by police in Alexandria in 2010. Said's death has sparked a revolution on January 2011 that overthrown Hosni Mubarak's regime. "The naive stories about Regeni's death have hurt Egypt at home and abroad and offered some a justification to judge what is going on in the country now to be no different from the January revolution," he stated.

The Egypt-Italy relations were shaken after an unmatched investigations. Regeni's body was recovered dumped beside a road and was unrecognizable as his mother said, she can only recognized him by the tip of his nose, ABC News reported.

According to Egyptian authorities, Regeni's death was killed by a criminal gang, who were specializing in abducting foreigners. The members of the said gang were all killed in a shootout and the victim's belonging such identification card were all found in the gang's hideout, Egyptian authorities cliamed. However, Italian officials questioned their claims, and believed that Regeni was killed by Egyptian security forces.

The CBC World reported, the 28 year old Italian student is a student at Cambridge, had been researching trade unions. He was reported disappeared in January 25, while on his way to a party in Cairo. His body was later found with signs of torture on 3 February, a week after his disappearance in Cairo.

Allam's statement, appealing to reveal the truth, seemed to support the contention that the official criminal gang explanation is not the truth. He also appealed to the state to handle the case with the "utmost seriousness and bring the culprits to justice."
A Roman Catholic diocese in Pennsylvania may face a legal battle as federal prosecutor is considering whether to file a racketeering lawsuit against them. State grand jury discovered that two ex-bishops concealed child sexual abuse for over a period of 40 years by more than 50 priests.

The Altoona-Johnstown diocese in Pennsylvania is on an ongoing federal probe over Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as Rico, US attorney David Hickton said on Friday, according to the Guardian. The prosecution of the child molester convict, Reverend Joseph Maurizio Jr prompted the investigation of the said pattern of criminal activity. The reverend was convicted in 2015 for molesting street children while on his Honduras missionary trips.

Hickton said, the statute of limitations has expired on criminal racketeering charges, however, in filing a Rico lawsuit, no time limit is required. The Republic reported, Hickton was considering on filing the said lawsuit. A Pennsylvania diocesan spokesman has not yet commented regarding the said legal action.

Boston attorney, Mitchell Garabedian, the representing attorney of the victims said, he approves of the Rico lawsuit. "I think the tactic is an approach that must be taken given the depth and scope of the supervisors enabling sexual abuse," Garabedian said. He added, many victims would like to witness the "complete admission of guilt".

According to Lancaster Online, the consideration to file a lawsuit was after a a grand jury report was released last month by state attorney general Kathleen Kane.It stated that an evidence and testimony was found, Diocese officials are covering up the child abuse in order to protect the institution image.

The Best Picture Oscar movie, "Spotlight" highlighted and detailed reporting of the Boston Globe on the sexual abuse scandal as well the concealment of the truth in Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. The said newspaper has published 600 stories regarding abusive priests, and the church's system of covering up the said abuse. Attorney General Kathleen Kane said, the said church's system of covering up is the same as the case at the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese.
Slave traders are reportedly selling children who have survived the Nepal earthquake to United Kingdom families. These children are being sold as domestic slaves.

According to The Guardian, Home Secretary Theresa May has called on the publication Sun newspaper to share their "disturbing findings" regarding the matter so that appropriate action could be taken. An investigation by the aforementioned newspaper suggests that boys and girls as young as 10 years old are being sold for 5,300 (more than $7,500) by black market gangs operating in the Indian province of Punjab.

The Sun newspaper claims that the gangs are targeting the children of Nepalese refugees as well as poor Indian families. The newspaper adds that the children are sold to the British families to be used as unpaid domestic servants.

A reporter is said to have posed as a wealthy Sikh living in Britain who has an ill wife and an elderly mother. The newspaper then said that one of the supposed traders, named Makkhan Singh, reportedly stated they have "supplied lads who have gone to the UK" and most of the children taken to England are Nepalese. Singh also reportedly claimed that there are other costs associated with taking the children to the U.K. but that is covered by the buyers, Evening Standard reported.

May pointed out that child trafficking is an "abhorrent crime." She noow urges the National Crime Agency to investigate the claims of the newspaper. She added that no child in the world "should be taken away from their home and forced to work in slavery." May cited the landmark Modern Slavery act last year, which includes enhanced protections for child victims of slavery. The sentences for these kinds of crimes include life imprisonment if found guilty, Sky News reported.

A 7.8 magnitude earthquake has struck Nepal on April 25 last year. It killed almost 9,000 people and left millions needing help.
Libya's sovereign wealth fund sanctions will be given considerations by the U.N Security Council. This move will only be possible if a unity government will be formed to take control of the funds as well as Libya's Central Bank and the National Oil Corporation.

In 2011, the U.N council froze the assets of the Libyan Investment Authority after the fall of is former leader Muammar Gaddafi in order for the funds to be safe, but this action has led the country to a deeper disarray as per Reuters.

As reported by the ABC News, Ibrahim Dabbashi, Libya's U.N Ambassador, was surprised due to government inaction regarding the request for an exemption from U.N sanctions for the LIA so that it will be able to manage the frozen assets while it is still under the control of the U.N. The LIA's total assets were valued at around $67 billion by the end of December 2012.

The U.N council is waiting for the confirmation that the unity government will take its role in overseeing the LIA, National Oil Corporation, and the Central bank of Libya before it gives the renewed sanctions that the council has voted. The council wanted the continuous function of these institutions for the benefit of the Libyan people.

During the fall of Gaddafi's leadership, there has been a power vacuum between two competing governments who have been claiming control over the oil-producing country. This has allowed the Islamic State militants to take over the North African state.

As reported by BBC, the western powers only recognize the new unity government to be Libya's legitimate government though it faces opposition from the east and west part of the country. The U.N Security Council has shown its utmost willingness to support the unity government.

Hassan Bouhadi who was appointed as the head of the fund in 2014 is the only international leader that the U.N recognizes according to Ambassador Dabbashi.
A major reshuffling of the heads of the Yemeni government has taken place, resulting to the dismissal of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi's prime minister and vice president ahead of United Nations' lead peace talks with the Houthi militants.

According to reports, President Hadi replaced Vice President Khaled Bahah with the army's political general Ali Mohsen Al-Ahmar to take over his place. Hadi also appointed lawmaker Ahmed Obeid bin Daghr as his prime minister. Prior to the changes, Hadi had been involving Ahmar in his active decision-making and appointed him as the armed forces deputy commander in an act to support the tribes and troops in the rebel-held region around the country.

There have been no public explanations on why President Hadi made his move but speculations from the international media say it is because of the differences that developed between Hadi and Bahah over the campaign and strategies to end the civil war that the country is undergoing as per Voice Of America.

The quarrel between the two parties started when Bahah rejected the president's plan on reshuffling the government without gaining his approval. Bahah, on the other hand, has been said to be favoring a political settlement to the country's conflict. This conflict started in September 2014 when the Houthi rebels took the capital Sanaa and remove the former president. According to the Middle East Eye, Hadi has started to reshuffle his cabinet, appointing new foreign and interior minister in order to pacify the tension between him and Bahah.

As reported by the National, Brig. General Al Ahmer was the commander of the First Armoured Division in Sanaa before he joined the battle against former president Ali Abdullah in 2011. By the month of February, Ahmer was then appointed as the deputy supreme commander of the Yemeni command.

Saudi, on the other hand, had started an all-out war against the Houthi rebels. Saudi targeted the rebels but damaged the entire Yemeni communities. More than 6,000 people died in the war which involved mostly civilians.
A man who police found allegedly vomiting and urinating on himself inside a parked vehicle outside a Subway restaurant has been cited for public drunkenness.

Daniel Watson, 44, of the 300 block of Main Street in Hellertown, was found by Lower Saucon Township police shortly before midnight Sunday. Watson was sitting in the driver's seat of a parked vehicle in the 1800 block of Leithsville Road.

When an officer spoke with Watson, he had slurred speech and glassy, bloodshot eyes. Police say there was an odor of an alcoholic beverage and Watson had vomited and urinated in the vehicle.

Police gave Watson a breath test and he blood alcohol level was 0.15; penalties start for most drivers in Pennsylvania at 0.08.

Police say keys were not in the ignition and the hood of the vehicle was cold. He was cited with public drunkenness.

Watson then called a friend to drive him home, police said.

Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
meth ring.JPG

An organizational flow chart of the meth ring busted up by the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office today in Northampton County.

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A man accused of leading a $1 million methamphetamine ring has been arraigned on several drug related charges and sent to Northampton County Prison.

Steven Reyes

Steven Reyes, 41, address unknown, is charged with manufacturing a controlled substance, possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance, unlawful possession of a controlled substance, corrupt organizations (two counts), conspiracy to manufacture a controlled substance with intent to deliver.

Reyes was arraigned overnight on the charges by District Judge James Narlesky and sent to Northampton County Prison in lieu of $200,000 bail.

Reyes was charged in 2010 along with other members of the methamphetamine ring, but was never arrested on the charges, court records show.

Reyes was found last month in Yelm, Washington, based on a tip from a "Washington's Most Wanted" viewer, according to Channel Fox 13 in Seattle. He was arrested by the Thurston County Sheriff's Office and extradited to Northampton County.

The Pennsylvania Office of the Attorney General Bureau of Narcotics said Reyes had controlled an operation throughout Northampton and Monroe counties.

When Reyes left the region, six other ring members learned to cook meth and filled the void, according to prosecutors. Ring members allegedly cooked meth in bathrooms, hotel rooms and water bottles in their car.

Searches done by agents uncovered six meth labs. Some of them contained items such as instruction manuals, sulfuric acid, drain cleaner, lithium batteries, pseudoephedrine, antifreeze and camp fuel.

The group distributed about 12 pounds of meth, estimated at that time to be worth about $1 million, in little more than a year, according to prosecutors.

Authorities gained traction with their investigation in February 2010 when they used an informant to buy drugs from Terra Vermilya, police said. At the time, Vermilya was being supplied by Bradford, now 61, and Audra Maynard, now 46, both of the 4300 block of North Delaware Drive, police said.

The other co-defendants are Karli Kaufmann, Scott Keet and Sonny DeCastro and Kelly Biechy.

Bradford Maynard, Karli Kaufmann and Scott Keet, now 47, went to prison in July 2011 for their roles in the ring.

Keet of Moore Township, received the most prison time of three to six years for charges of corrupt organizations and delivery of meth, between 50 and 100 grams.

Kaufmann, then 23, of Nazareth, pleaded guilty to charges of corrupt organizations and possession with intent to deliver meth. She was sentenced to nine to 23 months in county prison, with credit for time served.

Bradford Maynard, of Forks Township, had previously pleaded guilty to the same charges as Kaufmann. He was sentenced to two to four years in county prison. Maynard's wife, Audra, of Forks Township, pleaded guilty to the same charges as her husband.

Sonny DeCastro, now 38, of Easton, previously pleaded guilty to charges of corrupt organizations and possession with intent to deliver meth and was sentenced to three to six years in state prison.

Kelly Biechy, now 45, of Plainfield Township was charged with possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance, conspiracy possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance, corrupt organizations and possession of a controlled substance.

Online records show all the co-defendants no longer are incarcerated with the exception of Kaufmann, who isn't listed.

Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
UPDATE: Gunman in Easton shooting arrested in Newark, police say

Authorities in Easton and eastern New Jersey continue to search of a man -- considered armed and dangerous and charged in a March 18 shooting in the city -- and the woman he was with early that morning, police Lt. Matthew Gerould reports.

Easton police released this surveillance photo on April 4, 2016, of a woman who sold drugs to a 38-year-old city man on March 18, 2016, in the 1200 block of Ferry Street before the man she was with, Lamont Baker, shot the victim, police say. (Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com)

While information has come in every day since police released Lamont Baker's name and photo on Friday, he remains at large, Gerould said. People are asked if they know anything -- no matter how small -- about the 24-year-old former Easton resident to call the police tip line at 610-250-6635.

"We are currently searching for him," Gerould said. "We know he has associates in (Easton's) West Ward. But we believe he's hiding in the Newark area."

If anyone sees Baker, because he's considered dangerous, they should call 911 and not approach him, Gerould said.

"We believe he was still in the area after the shooting," Gerould said. "We believe he's since fled knowing law enforcement was close to identifying him."

The victim -- a 38-year-old Easton man who was buying crack cocaine from the unidentified woman -- is out of the hospital and "still recovering from very serious injury," Gerould said.

"The victim is giving limited cooperation" with the investigation, Gerould added.

Lamont Baker, 24, is being sought in a shooting March 18 in Easton's West Ward, city police report. (Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com)

The drug deal turned into a robbery and that's when Baker shot the man, police said. The victim had crack cocaine hidden in his buttocks; the drugs were found during treatment after he drove to Easton Hospital, Gerould said.

Police on Friday said the woman is likely still with Baker. If anyone knows anything about her -- or recognizes her -- they should call the detectives bureau at 610-250-6780 or the tip line, Gerould said.

The black woman is about 25 years old, between 5 feet and 5 feet 2 inches tall, weighs 125-130 pounds and has long red and black hair, police said.

Police on Monday released a surveillance photo of her.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Frank Pintabone

Easton Area School Board President Frank Pintabone unveils plans for an Easton Hospital health clinic at Paxinosa Elementary School. Behind him to the left is Easton Mayor Sal Panto Jr.

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When Joseph Roy saw the backlash to the announcement of a health clinic at Paxinosa Elementary School in Easton, it caught him off guard.

"I was very surprised to see a negative reaction," said Roy, schools superintendent in the Bethlehem Area School District. "Having the school-based clinic in our experience has been nothing but a positive for the students and our community."

He helped bring a health clinic to Donegan Elementary School to serve the disadvantaged population at that school. Allentown School District has clinics in many of its schools.

In-school clinics can help uncover and treat young people's health problems so they can focus on learning, according to Easton Area School District Superintendent John Reinhart. That's why he wants to bring one to the West Ward school.

He expects a crowd of skeptics when the school board meets next on April 5. The meeting was moved to Paxinosa Elementary for a community discussion on the clinic after the topic exploded on social media.

Renihart said the clinic will help low-income families with limited access or no access to a doctor.

Doctors at the Bethlehem school clinic helped children with undiagnosed asthma or diabetes treat those illnesses. Allentown Schools Superintendent Russell Mayo said in-school clinics provide "critical services," including primary medical care, dental care, nutrition education and preventive health education.

"If these services were not available, we would see more missed days of school," Mayo said.

Reinhart said the Paxinosa clinic will offer primary physician care, dental care services and mental health treatment.

"Schools are currently the largest mental health providers in our society," Reinhart said.

Reinhart said the Paxinosa Elementary clinic will be self-contained. There will be an entrance on 12th Street and no access to the school. Even the ventilation system will be independent of the school's, he said.

There's concern on social media about the sorts of patrons the clinic will house. Reinhart feels residents' fears are misplaced.

"It is the parents and the families who have a relationship with the school who will be using the facility most often," he said. "I believe that's been the case in virtually every school-based health care facility in the Lehigh Valley.

Plans call for the Paxinosa clinic to be open to anyone in the community. Donegan's clinic is open to the community, although Allentown's school-based clinics are open to students only.

Many clinic users don't have transportation. Opening a clinic seven blocks away from a downtown site and having it open for evening hours may be the difference between a child getting treatment or being left to suffer, proponents say.

Floor plan for an Easton Hospital health clinic proposed at Paxinosa Elementary School in Easton. (Courtesy rendering)

"You have to do what you can possibly do to overcome dental health issues, mental health issues and physical health issues as soon as possible in order to get our young people focused on learning and exploring the world in a healthy way," he said.

Easton Hospital will run the school-based clinic. Reinhart said it's going in space that was previously unused at Paxinosa. If the clinic doesn't happen, that space will remain unused.

Reinhart said the clinic is part of the community school model he wants to bring to Paxinosa that's already in place at Donegan Elementary in South Bethlehem. The school becomes a one-stop site for services including tutoring, for instance.

The model for delivering health care is changing. Doctors' offices in schools are becoming more commonplace to meet the changing needs of children and families, Reinhart said.

The superintendent said there is no hidden agenda behind putting a clinic in Paxinosa.

"It is not about anything more than helping our kids achieve more as they go through our schools," Reinhart said.

IN SCHOOL CLINICS

Below is a breakdown of which Lehigh Valley schools have in-school health clinics and their affiliations with local hospitals.

ALLENTOWN SCHOOL DISTRICT:

Sacred Heart Hospital has clinics in Mosser, Sheridan and Jefferson elementary schools

Lehigh Valley Health Network has clinics in Building 21 and William Allen high schools; South Mountain Middle School; Central, Cleveland, Dodd, Lehigh Parkway, Lincoln, McKinley, Muhlenberg, Ritter and Roosevelt elementary schools; and the William Penn and Jackson alternative schools.

Allentown Family Practice has a clinic in Ramos Elementary School.

St Luke's University Health Network has medicals vans at Dieruff High School; Harrison-Morton, Raub and Trexler middle schools; Union Terrace Elementary School and Newcomer Academy

BETHLEHEM AREA SCHOOL DISTRICT:

St. Luke's University Health Network has a clinic in Donegan Elementary School

EASTON AREA SCHOOL DISTRICT:

Easton Hospital proposes a health clinic in Paxinosa Elementary School.

Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook.
After losing his medical residency at a Lehigh Valley hospital, his fiancee and his reputation over exposing himself three times last year, a Maryland man was in court on Monday to see if he would get jail time for his crimes.

Jeffrey Zapora, of Lutherville, Maryland, avoided jail, and was instead sentenced to four years of probation for three counts of indecent exposure, which he can serve in Maryland.

Zapora previously pleaded guilty in the three separate incidents last year where he was seen performing a sex act in his car -- twice at Muhlenberg College and the other time at a Lehigh County Wawa.

In court Monday, Zapora said it was the increasing stress in his life that led him to act out. He said he used masturbation and sexual behaviors as a coping mechanism, and the flashing was an extension of that.

It was an explanation met with doubt by the judge.

"That's it -- that you weren't thinking clearly because of stress?" Judge Robert Steinberg asked, later adding, "It just doesn't seem to add up to me."

Zapora said he attends a 12-step program for sex addiction, as well as counseling, and started going to church again.

"I accept responsibility and I'm sorry for any harm I caused the victims," Zapora said. "I'm doing everything I can to ensure it doesn't happen again."

Before his arrest, Zapora was a first-year plastic surgery resident with Lehigh Valley Health Network. Zapora said he was terminated from the program following his arrest.

Zapora said he now works as a personal trainer in Maryland at a senior living facility. Because he does not have a medical residency, Zapora currently does not have a training license to practice medicine.

While it would be difficult for him to make re-entry into the medical profession, Zapora said, "it's not completely impossible."

Authorities reported Zapora exposed himself on three occasions:

March 18, 2015: A student reported she was walking on Muhlenberg's campus when she saw a man sitting in a red car, court records say. The man called out to her, and when the woman stepped toward the car, she saw the man was not wearing pants and was masturbating, records say.

March 30, 2015: A second woman at Muhlenberg reported seeing a red car parked in the same area as the previous incident on campus, police say. The woman said as she walked by the car, the man inside made eye contact with her, and she saw him masturbating, according to police.

In that incident, the woman got the license plate number and called campus security, police say.

Allentown police traced the plate number to Zapora, and the second victim picked him out of a photo lineup, Falk said Monday.

March 25, 2015: A 17-year-old girl told police she was getting into her car outside the Wawa off Route 100 in Lower Macungie Township when a man in the car parked next to her with the window rolled down said hello, records say.

The teen said the man was not wearing pants and was masturbating, according to police. That charge was filed after the Muhlenberg charges. The teen did not get a license plate number, but recognized Zapora's photo from media reports on the Muhlenberg incidents and she called police, police said.

The girl from the Wawa incident was in court on Monday, but did not make a statement.

Chief of Prosecutions Matt Falk said in once instance, Zapora followed one of the victims for a short time after she retreated in fear. The victim believed Zapora got excited by the fear caused by the indecent exposure.

"He did this for sexual gratification. There's no question about that," Falk said. "This is something that he is going to have to deal with for a very long time."

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Members attend regional conference to debate policy, receive training, question the decision makers in the party, and, of course, to socialise with old friends over a cup of tea or an excellent lunch.

On Saturday, following the opening of North West Liberal Democrats Conference by the Deputy Leader of Stockport Council, we heard an upbeat presentation from Sir Vince Cable about the work the Liberal Democrats did in Government, and where we go from here. This was followed by a presentation by former North West MEP Chris Davies on the progress of the #intogether campaign to keep Britain in the EU. Lord Goddard then reported on the tremendous work being done on our behalf by our team in the House of Lords.

Before the Conference I wrote a post explaining why I thought the Region should become a state party. On Saturday we debated this and voted to accept a motion to create a North West State Party.

The morning ended with an update from Richard Kemp on the Mayoral and Local election campaigns in Liverpool.

After lunch our Candidates for Police and Crime Commissioner elections, Lorraine Birchall, Chris Carubia, Neil Lewis and Graham Roach (there is no Greater Manchester PCC election this year), engaged in a lively debate with members. We then received a report from our Regional President, Lord Stunell, and Vice Chair for Membership, John Skipworth, about the work in the region on improving diversity and inclusion.

This was followed by an excellent feedback from Hilary Stephenson on the lessons for the future from our time in coalition. Conference then debated a motion on the availability of PrEP (drugs than can prevent contraction of HIV/Aids) and voted to support the campaign to make these drugs available to vulnerable groups.

Pipa Hepworth from Liberal Youth North West reported on activities to grow our youth wing. This was followed by Cllr Sue Derbyshire, the only Lib Dem Leader of a Metropolitan Council in England, who reflected on 20 years of Lib Dem administration in Stockport. We then had a very detailed report from Richard Marbrow on the work the regional party is doing in preparation for the Boundary review. Conference concluded with a rousing speech by Greg Mullholland MP.

At the same time as all this was happening there were training sessions on recruiting and retaining members, an introduction to community campaigning, getting into the local media, and accounts for local treasurers in the light of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000.

There was a workshop based on the work of the Federal Policy Committees Social Security Working Group and there was an advice drop-in for Connect, Pageplus and Nationbuilder and a discussion on how to engage members in policy development.

The North West Region holds two Conferences a year, and out next will be in Lancaster in the autumn. On the eve of conference we held an extremely successful fundraiser which will help ensure that we have money to fight the EU Referendum Campaign here in the North West Region.

* Ian is VC Campaigns for NW Liberal Democrats, and a member of the ECE, EFAC and FCEC.
IT was announced more than a year ago that Shannon Heritage had won the contract to operate the 7m GPO Witness History, a visitor attraction in Dublin commemorating the events of 1916.

Now the permanent exhibition, located in the iconic GPO building in OConnell Street, has opened to the public.

GPO Witness Historys self-guided tour is an immersive, interactive experience, bringing history to life through technology, video, sound, photographs and authentic artefacts, transporting its visitors back 100 years in time.

Its special effects, soundscapes and the heartfelt stories of real people in extraordinary circumstances will captivate all age groups, from the culturally curious international visitor to the well-informed history buff.

There is plenty to interest and engage individuals, families and touring groups. Children, in particular, will love the low-level interactive touchscreens.

Aline FitzGerald, general manager on behalf of Shannon Heritage, offered a glimpse of what visitors will experience.

The centrepiece is an immersive, semi-circular, audio-visual feature which puts visitors right at the centre of the events of Easter Week, giving them a birds eye view of events unfolding across the city.

Another important feature of the exhibition is the wall of remembrance which lists all of the volunteers who served in the GPO during the Rising.

Limerick visitors will note the names of local volunteers Eamonn Dore, Peter Slattery, James O'Sullivan, James [Michael] Flanagan, Matthew Flanagan, Gearoid McAuliffe and Laura OSullivan [nee Daly].

Limerick is further represented at the GPO Witness History exhibition by the work of artist, Michael Canning.

His stunning image, The Weather at Easter, was specially made for the commemorations. Michael is a native of Murroe and a long-time resident of Ballingarry.

The image presents an Easter lily (Lilium longiflorum) against a ground reminiscent of the silvery, decaying surface of an aged mirror. There are echoes too of gunpowder burns, and raindrops.

Michael told the Leader: I feel genuinely honoured to have been asked to make a new work for such a genuinely powerful commemorative document.

During the exhibition, visitors will meet a real life Irish Volunteer and a member of Cumann na mBan, both in full uniform.

Members of the media, including the Limerick Leader, were given a preview tour of the exhibition and one element of the exhibition that seemed to attract and keep the attention of everyone present was a life-size photograph of Dublin street children of the 1916 period with many, diverse and sometimes troubling life experiences etched on their little faces and expressed in their clothing and demeanours.

Like many images in this exhibition, once seen it is not easily forgotten.

In addition to the exhibition, visitors will have the opportunity to spend time in the inner courtyard of the GPO, to appreciate the scale of the vast building, to savour the courtyards surprising stillness and quiet, and to reflect on artist Barbara Knezevics special memorial to the 40 children who were killed during that Easter Week 1916.

The memorial features 40 stones, one for each child lost. The stones vary in size depending on the age of the child victim represented.

Shannon Heritage says that advance bookings from national and international visitors are already very strong, including school groups, tour companies, independent travelers and family groups of all ages.

The aim of the centre is to give visitors a real sense of what it was like to be in the GPO and Dublin at that time and to reflect on how those days shaped Ireland in the 100 years since, Ms FitzGerald said.

The website for the centre is at www.gpowitnesshistory.ie. The admission fee is 10 for adults, 7.50 for children and seniors, while there are also special offers for families.
EFFORTS are to be made through literary circles in Limerick, to ensure a recently completed manuscript by author Michael Curtin, will be published.

Many tributes have been paid to the author of six novels, who died over the weekend.

His removal will take place from Thompsons funeral home this Monday night ahead of his funeral at St Josephs Church, OConnell Avenue tomorrow morning.

He was very well respected as a writer in the Modernist mode, and you could say he was one of Ireland's most unrecognised authors of literary fiction, said Dominic Taylor, of Limerick Writers Centre.

The late author had recently only recently finished a manuscript, but it has not been published.

Mr Taylor hopes that some publisher will, with the blessing of Mr Curtin's family, publish the work in the near future.

Born in 1942, Michael Curtins works include the much acclaimed novel The Plastic Tomato Cutter, along with The Self-Made Men; The Replay, The League Against Christmas

Mr Curtin, who had been unwell for some time, was being cared for by his wife Anne and family  including his sons Jason, Michael and Andrew.

Tributes have also paid to him by his old friends at CBS Sexton Street.

It is with absolute sadness that we report the death of Michael Curtin, read a message posted on the schools facebook page.

Mr Curtin had helped the school with a special commemoration book to acknowledge to mark the 200th annivserary of the arrival of the Christian Brothers in Limerick.

Papers relating to Mr Curtins personal and professional life can be viewed at the Special Collections Department at the University of Limerick.
THE modest redevelopment of the Crescent Shopping Centre will not impinge on the status of Limerick city centre as the top retail destination.

But the proposals will ensure the retail area remains competitive.

Thats according to representatives of the Dooradoyle centre, which is planning to expand the retail space to create six new shop units in the centre, plus five new units outside, three of which will accommodate restaurant and cafe use.

There will be an outdoor public realm which can be used for activities such as commercial and community events. The owners of the Crescent plan to renovate the original sections of the shopping centre, including higher ceilings or improved lighting.

Several units are to be combined or extended, while others are being reconfigured.

There will be an overall increase of 1,743 square metres in retail floor space, and an overall increase of 3,384 square metres.

In documents submitted to the local authority, representatives of the Crescent Shopping Centre say the plans equate to an increase of just 3.9% in terms of retail.

This reinvestment is critical to maintaining operators which have traded along these malls for an extended period, and which now needs to be reinvented so as to assure their vitality, representatives of the centre write.

"The proposed development seeks to ensure that the long established Crescent shopping centre remains competitive within its own functional position in the retail hierarchy, and that it thus retains its market share and tenant mix."

Having suffered from the so-called 'donut effect' which has seen suburban retail thrive at the expense of the centre, the Mid-West Retail Strategy has placed the city centre at the top of the pecking order when it comes to major development.

Councillors Daniel Butler and Joe Leddin both say they do not see the Crescents proposals as any threat to the centre.

Cllr Butler, who lives in the area, said the city and the shopping centre offer two different products and experiences.

The fact they are further investing in it is yet further commitment to the locality, and it has to be welcomed in that sense, he said.

I think the city centre is developing a vision for where it is going, and I believe the two can work in conjunction with one another. They are two seperate offerings.

Cllr Leddin added: I think it is very clear what the centre needs to do in terms of footfall and maintaining its viability, and that is to fast-track the existing projects the council has control over.
IRISH Water has defended its decision to remove water meters from outside homes at Ballinacurra Road in Limerick city, less than two years after they were installed.

The State utility says the meters are currently being removed to prevent them being damaged during upcoming rehabilitation works.

Residents have expressed concerns about the works claiming the removal of the meters, which were installed in late 2014, is an awful waste of money.

The removal of the meters was discussed at the AGM of the Ballinacurra Road residents' association on Friday night.

One man, who asked not to be named, described the situation as a "fiasco".

Its an awful waste of tax payers money, he said.

Another resident, who works in the construction sector, said he was baffled by what he has seen happen in recent days.

In a statement, issued over the weekend, a spokesperson for Irish Water insisted that the meters would be re-installed once the major rehabilitation works are complete.

She said new boundary boxes were installed in the footpaths at the front of the houses following the installation of new water main in late 2013 and that the meters were installed in 2014 to be ready for future use.

However, as previously reported by the Limerick Leader, the majority of houses at Ballinacurra Road share a water connection at the rear of the properties and not the front.

Irish Water says major works are due to commence later this year which will see a new service pipe being brought from the boundary box in the footpath to the existing point of water supply to the rear of each house.

The meters are being removed as some of the boundary boxes may be damaged during the works.
Several members of the so-called Rathkeale Rovers gang have been jailed for plotting to steal rhino horns and rare Chinese artefacts worth 76m from a number of museums across Britain.

A court in Birmingham today imposed sentences of up to six years and eight months on some of the gang members, several of whom are originally from Rathkeale, Co Limerick.

The sentencing follows the conviction in recent months of a total of fourteen men for their parts in the string of break-ins at museums and auction houses in Britain.

Among those identified as ringleaders of the gang were John Kerry OBrien Jr, 26; Richard Kerry OBrien Jr, 31; Michael Hegarty, 43; and Daniel Turkey OBrien, 45. All have addresses in Cambridgeshire but are well known in the Rathkeale area.

In Birmingham Crown Court this Monday, Richard Kerry OBrien Jr was jailed for five and half years, while Daniel Turkey OBrien was received a sentence of six years, eight months.

OBriens uncle, John Cash OBrien, 68, of Fifth Avenue in Wolverhampton, was jailed for five years and three months.

Another man, Daniel Flynn, 45, of Smithy Fen, Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, was jailed for four years.

Three others were also jailed for five and a half years, while six more gang members will be sentenced later.

The trial heard that the gang was involved in raids on museums in Cambridge, Norwich, Glasgow and Durham as well as an auction house in Sussex. Among the items stolen were a Ming Dynasty bowl worth up to 20m and a number of valuable jade pieces. Raiders also attempted to remove a rhinos head from Norwich Castle but had to abandon it because it was too heavy.
HIS roots are in West Limerick but the historic Spanish city of Toledo is now home for author Jonathan Dunne.

And within the next few weeks, Jonathans fifth novel Hearts Anonymous will be launched, a book which he describes as a fairy-tale for adults and the young-at-heart with an element of dark humour.

Its a lot to achieve in less than half a dozen years. But, explains Jonathan, writing has been a part of his life since he was a child growing up near Old Mill, outside Newcastle West when even his mothers shopping list provided inspiration for his first scribblings and when even carrots and cabbage could be transformed into suspects for a murder story.

I've been writing since I was a teenager and Im now 40, Jonathan explains. My dad, Bill Dunne, read bedtime stories to us as kids and I think he planted the seeds that would later become my own stories. My mom, Dorothy, who died of cancer in 2009, always read to us and she was an avid reader.

Growing up in Ballyine (between Rooska and Old Mill), I was surrounded by countryside and a kid needs to have an active imagination to come up with things to do, especially during the summer holidays. Sometimes I would walk for miles with my dogs and sometimes camp out, he recalls I was a loner i suppose, but regularly had friends come to stay. I loved wandering in the pine forest near my house where it was very easy to imagine my own version of the world.

School was in Ardagh and later at Scoil Mhuire agus Ide in Newcastle West but Jonathan was a reluctant scholar and says he has no fond memories of his school days. What he recalls most is heading to Connolly Terrace, Newcastle West where his granddad Billy Dunne lived. There he says, he would have a cup of tea and toast or maybe a few custard creams while his grand-father remained hidden behind a newspaper or a National Geographic with blue Woodbine smoke curling up around him, as the old Stanley range glowed red-hot.

After, Jonathan worked at a variety of jobs, including bookshops and later completed a degree in literature as a mature student. He lived in Spain for six years from 2000 and returned there, after a break, in 2009. I live in the medieval town of Toledo, a touristic city, full of winding cobblestone streets and it is magic. I am married to Ruth who is Spanish and I have two girls, Chloe and Maia, ( 4 and 9), Jonathan explains. Now, his work-day is divided between teaching English and writing. If I don't write I feel at odds with the world, he says.  Im an early bird, so I get up early and try to find an hour and something to write.

He has written short stories but his first novel, Balloon Animals in 2012 was quickly followed by 'Living Dead Lovers' in 2013, The Nobody Show in 2014 and Hide the Elephant in 2015.

I've had a few offers from small publishers for my books and I've also had various London agents express interest. They liked my writing, but wanted to see a different genre or they tried to change important elements in the books, Jonathan explains. Describing his genre as black comedy, he adds: I prefer to stay true to myself and publish my books on my own basis, rather than writing something which doesn't come from the heart. This is why i have decided to do it on my own. I involved in the creative process, from writing the book to helping with the cover design. I love the freedom that I have.

His books sell both online or through Amazon.  Because of the nature of internet, I have readers from all over the world, but mainly USA, UK, and Canada. I would like to find more readers in Ireland, he says.

And through his online blog, he likes to keep in touch with readers and also to involve them.  I'm an indie writer and proud to be one. I like to involve my readers because they are the people who make this happen for me. It's a way of saying thank you for all the support and having their names in one of my books is an acknowledgment and fun to do. I can do this with some characters, he explains.

Other readers have proof-read his latest book. They enjoy it and it helps me as typos are my speciality, Jonathan says. From their point of view it's something a little special to be involved in the creation of a book - something a little different. And I can do it coz Im indie.

Hearts Anonymous will launch at the end of April. Any of Jonathans books can be bought in paperback from Amazon or the ebooks are available from Amazon, Kindle, iBooks, Barnes & Noble and other platforms. Go to jonathanwdunne.wordpress.com for Jonathans blog
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Unless you are a ballet dancer or in the military  occupations where poor posture is readily noticed  you probably don't pay much attention to your posture. But if parts of your body  such as the neck, shoulders or lower back  start to cry out in pain, you may find out that your posture is out of whack.

Posture refers to the preferred biomechanical alignment of the body, said Eric Robertson, director of graduate physical therapy education at Kaiser Permanente of Northern California and a spokesperson for the American Physical Therapy Association. Good posture is important because it minimizes the excessive force that muscles and joints need to absorb, he said.

Posture is more than just a function of the way someone stands or sits. For example, it also impacts how much pressure these positions place on the lower back and other muscles and joints. What's more, posture can be a reflection of a person's overall health, fitness, and the body's strength and weaknesses, Robertson told Live Science.

Health effects of posture

There are plenty of reasons to maintain good posture, and doing so can benefit a person's body and mind. [Posture Pointers: 7 Tips for Breaking Bad Habits]

The main health risks of poor posture are aches and pains, which can occur right away or down the road, said Jill Henderzahs-Mason, a wellness physical therapist at the Mayo Clinic's Healthy Living Program in Rochester, Minnesota. This discomfort may start in the neck or back, but ultimately, it may affect the hips or knees, she said.

People who exhibit bad posture also may be less efficient when they move, Henderzahs-Mason said. "They don't move as well or as fast, and are predisposed to injury," she said.

Sitting hunched over your computer can lead to pain over time. (Image credit: Marcin Balcerzak/Shutterstock.com)

Posture in which the shoulders are hunched forward can even impact breathing, because the diaphragm and the lungs have less room to expand, and this narrows the airways, Henderzahs-Mason told Live Science.

There are many other benefits of standing or sitting up straight. For one, it can help people appear taller and feel better about themselves. Psychology studies have suggested that slouchier postures make people look less confident to others, and even feel less competent, Henderzahs-Mason said. There's also some evidence showing that people who walk with a slouched posture have a higher predisposition to depression than those who walk more upright, she noted.

Research also has shown that slumping and slouching may influence a person's thoughts and feelings, and that improving posture could help to boost mood and energy levels.

Common posture mistakes

There are many factors in people's daily lives that can sabotage posture and throw the body off-balance, such as sitting at a desk for long periods, frequently cradling a phone between the ear and the shoulder, hunching over a laptop, or continually looking down at a smartphone.

The body was not physiologically designed to stay in one position, and if you go a long time without changing your position, it can start to stress your body's tissues, Robertson said. To remedy this common posture mistake, he recommended switching positions about every 20 minutes. For example, you can take a break from your desk work to get up and stretch.

When women wear high heels, their posture can be shifted forward, causing the lower back to arch too much, Robertson said.

Another common problem is when people carry heavy backpacks or bags on one side of the body, which can lead to muscle imbalances, such as muscle tightness or weakness, Henderzahs-Mason pointed out. [5 Surprising Facts About Pain]

Getting up from your desk to stretch can help alleviate pain. (Image credit: Ana Blazic Pavlovic/Shutterstock.com)

People who are concerned about having poor posture can get it assessed, Robertson said. A physical therapist can evaluate someone's posture to identify what is out of balance and what might be the cause, he said.

A physical therapist may closely watch the way a person walks across a room, to look for any physical imbalances, Henderzahs-Mason said. Sometimes, therapists also take a picture of each patient in front of a posture grid. That photo may offer clues about where treatment needs to focus. For example, it may illustrate that one hip or shoulder is higher than another. It also provides people with important visual feedback about what their posture looks like and what they can do to improve it.

To improve posture, a physical therapist may need to manually correct someone's posture so that a person knows what position his or her body needs to be in, or demonstrate how to do certain exercises that could improve tight muscles or help strengthen them.

Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science.
Alaska's Pavlof volcano erupts in 2013, shooting a plume of ash into the air. A steam plume from melting snow and ice can also be seen.

The roar of a volcano erupting on a remote Alaska island reveals important details about the blast, such as its size and location, a new study reports.

Armed with this new information, scientists in Alaska are listening to volcanoes to better pinpoint eruption hazards.

"Sound waves are very good at telling you about how, when and where a volcano is erupting," said lead study author David Fee, a research assistant professor at the Alaska Volcano Observatory and Wilson Alaska Technical Center in Fairbanks.

The findings were published today (April 4) in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America. [Big Blasts: History's 10 Most Destructive Volcanoes]

Erupting volcanoes are often compared to thundering jet engines. The sound is loud enough to shake the ground nearby, similar to how a passing garbage truck may rattle windows in an apartment or a house. Seismometers placed near a volcano can detect this shaking, called ground-coupled airwaves, Fee told Live Science. Ground-coupled airwaves (GCAs) occur when an acoustic wave in the atmosphere impacts the Earth's surface. Meteors and nuclear explosions also trigger GCAs. The signals are fairly small compared with felt earthquakes, Fee said.

The shaking pattern produced by sound waves, which travel through the air, looks different from the shaking of earthquake waves, which travel only through the ground, the study showed.

By looking at the sounds picked up by seismometers, the scientists can gather information that otherwise would not be available, Fee said. For instance, thick clouds may hide a volcano from the prying view of a satellite, but monitoring of sound and earthquakes can help determine whether or not volcanic activity is at the surface or only underground. Volcanoes unleash earthquakes and tremors before an eruption as lava and hot fluids push their way through underground fissures. The actual trembling produced by those sound waves starts only once the eruption begins.

"This study is a good example of using data beyond its initial, intended purpose," Fee said. "Due to the high number, remoteness and difficult logistics of the volcanoes we monitor, we often have less than ideal monitoring networks. In these cases, we use as many processing techniques as possible to help monitor and understand these volcanoes."

Sound waves reveal eruptions at remote Alaska volcanoes such as the Cleveland volcano, shown here. (Image credit: John Lyons/ Alaska Volcanic Observatory/ USGS)

Knowing whether an eruption has started is crucial in southwest Alaska, because large ash clouds from volcanoes in the Aleutian Islands can affect international flight paths, as with the flights canceled when Pavlof volcano erupted in late March.

Pavlof volcano is one of the three fiery peaks where Fee and his colleagues tested their new technique. The other Alaskan volcanoes studied are Cleveland and Mount Veniaminof. During eruptions at Pavlof volcano in 2007 and 2013, the researchers were able to locate the source to within about 100 feet (within tens of meters).

The Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO) already monitors some volcanoes in the state with infrasound  low-frequency sound waves outside of the range of human hearing. The AVO has now added sound-wave-monitoring to its arsenal of techniques, the researchers reported.

"We definitely plan on extending this type of monitoring," Fee said.

However, Alaska's volcanoes continue to hold surprises, even at closely monitored volcanoes such as Pavlof. The most recent eruption of Pavlof, in March 2016, started with essentially no warning.

"The seismicity started right about the same time the eruption began, which is unusual for a volcano," Fee said.

Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.
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Longfords third Darkness Into Light (DIL) 5K walk takes place on the morning of Saturday, May 7 at 4.15am.

Darkness into Light is Pieta Houses key annual fundraising and awareness event, supported by Electric Ireland.

Longford DIL Walk organising committee member Lorraine Nash explained that the walk represents hope and solidarity. It symbolises the work of Pieta House  bringing people from darkness into the light.

Frances McCarrick and Noeleen Walshe, Longford DIL committe, attended the regional launch of Darkness into Light where Joan Freeman, Founder of Pieta House expressed her gratitude to the people of Longford for their support.

Your courage, vision and generosity has helped Pieta House to bring hope to over 5,000 people every year. Together we are leading the way with Darkness Into Light now reaching communities from Longford to Abu Dhabi and many more across the world.

In 2015, over 2,500 participated in the DIL Walk in Longford, Athlone and Mullingar and they raised over 69,000 for Pieta House.

Last years event attracted over 100,000 participants in over 80 locations across Ireland and abroad.

Pieta House is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. More than 20,000 people have come through the doors of Pieta House during the last decade, with over 5,000 of those seeking help in 2015.

Online registration and further details are available now on www.darknessintolight.ie

For more information on Darkness Into Light in Longford and Westmeath contact Tom McEvoy from Pieta House on 087 2430700.

Tom attended the launch of the Longford DIL Walk in the shopping centre recently along with RTEs Sinead Hussey. For more see Darkness Into Light Longford on Facebook.
Local News, Press Releases

By Allison Gayne Published: April 04 2016

Long Island water commissioner recently addressed the Flint Michigan water contamination crisis during a NSWCA meeting led by guest presenter Paul Ponturo of H2M Architects & Engineers.

Farmingdale, NY - April 4th, 2016 - At a recent Nassau Suffolk Water Commissioners Association (NSWCA) meeting, guest speaker Mr. Paul J. Ponturo, P.E., Senior Water Resources Engineer with H2M Architects & Engineers in Melville, NY, discussed with Long Island water commissioners scientific information and data regarding the water contamination crisis in Flint Michigan.

When Flint changed its water source from treated Detroit Water and Sewerage Department water obtained from Lake Huron and the Detroit River to the Flint River, officials failed to apply corrosion control treatment to the new water source, Mr. Ponturo explained. This resulted with lead contamination that created a serious public health danger. The corrosive Flint River water caused lead from aging pipes to leach into the water supply, producing extremely elevated levels of lead.

Mr. Ponturo added that while many Long Island water providers utilize infrastructures that are almost 100 years old New York State has strict water management compliance regulations in place for preventing such crises. Each Long Island water district follows these regulations and continually maintains their respective infrastructure to avoid potential water contamination, including lead leaching intrusion.

Local Long Island water districts get their water from a sole source subterranean aquifer as opposed to lake or river water, commented NSWCA President Ray Averna of Massapequa Water District. While our raw water contains virtually no lead even before treatment, the public can see complete information on what is in the water of our 21 commissioner-run NSWCA member districts within each respective districts annual Drinking Water Quality Report.

Organized and chartered in 1981, Nassau Suffolk Water Commissioners Association (NSWCA) is comprised of water commissioners from 21 Nassau and Suffolk County water districts. The NSWCA is dedicated to promoting environmental excellence and best practices as well as maintaining the highest standards of water quality and supply. NSWCA sponsors regular educational meetings on topics that include the environment, security, economics, rules and regulations, among other related issues.
Pets & Animal, Local News, Community, Charity & Cause, Press Releases

By Legislator Anker's Office Published: April 04 2016

During the month of March, Suffolk County Legislator Sarah Anker partnered with Long Island Cares to host a pet supply drive at her office in Mount Sinai.

Mount Sinai - April 4th, 2016 - During the month of March, Suffolk County Legislator Sarah Anker partnered with Long Island Cares to host a pet supply drive at her office in Mount Sinai. Through the generous donations of local community members and pet supply stores,

Legislator Anker collected pet food, small animal bedding, and pet treats. All collections will be donated to Baxters Pet Pantry, operated by Long Island Cares  Harry Chapin Food Bank.

It was my pleasure to partner with Long Island Cares, said Legislator Anker. They have a wonderful reputation and their support of families who are in need of pet food is a unique service that all pet lovers on Long Island should support.

Baxters Pet Pantry was developed in partnership with the Animal Relief Fund to make free pet food and supplies available to pet-owning families in need in Nassau and Suffolk Counties. For more information, please call Long Island Cares at 631-582-FOOD (3663).
Local News, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: April 04 2016

Rice highlights Kaminskys record of fighting corruption and advocating for Sandy victims.

Long Island, NY - April 4th, 2016 - Today, Congresswoman Kathleen Rice endorsed Assemblyman and former federal prosecutor Todd Kaminsky in the race to replace Dean Skelos in the State Senate. Congresswoman Kathleen Rice represents the 4th Congressional District, which encompasses nearly all of the 9th Senatorial District that Kaminsky is vying for.



"I'm proud to endorse Todd Kaminsky for State Senate in the ninth senatorial district," said Congresswoman Kathleen Rice. "As a former federal prosecutor, Todd started his career taking on corrupt politicians from both parties, and we need someone with that independence working to clean up Albany and restore New Yorkers' faith and trust in their state government.



Todd is a true public servant who grew up here in Nassau County and knows the issues that matter most to our communities, from helping Superstorm Sandy victims rebuild to holding the line on taxes for middle-class families. Todd knows how to get things done for the people he serves, and that's why I'm excited to work with his team over the next two weeks to make sure we elect Todd Kaminsky to the State Senate on April 19th."



In accepting the endorsement, Todd Kaminsky said: Albany needs significant reform and we need it now and Im proud to have the support of Kathleen Rice. As Nassau Countys DA and now as a member of Congress, Congresswoman Rice has done so much for our community. Congresswoman Rice knows the importance of rooting out corruption at all levels of government and how important that is to protecting our hard-working taxpayers. As a State Senator, I will continue to work with Congresswoman Rice to advocate for the needs of the South Shore because we must continue to hold the line on taxes while finally cleaning up Albany.



Todd Kaminsky has also been endorsed by U.S. Senators Chuck Schumer and Governor Andrew Cuomo.



The 9th Senate District seat became automatically vacant upon the conviction of Dean Skelos in December on charges of bribery, extortion and conspiracy. A special election to fill the 9th Senate District seat will be held on Tuesday, April 19th, 2016.



About Todd Kaminsky

Assemblyman Kaminsky has spent his career fighting for Long Island families and working to end government corruption. As a federal prosecutor representing Long Island, Brooklyn and Queens, and as acting deputy chief of the Public Integrity Section, Todd took down corrupt elected officials, drug kingpins and other major felons.



In 2014, Todd was elected to represent the South Shore in the New York State Assembly. During his first term, Todd fought for and won ethics reforms, tax breaks, aid for Sandy victims, and a new emergency center at South Nassau Communities Hospital. Todd authored the most laws by a first-year assemblymember in recent New York State history.
Local News

By EAC Network Published: April 04 2016

Town Supervisor Judi Bosworth partners with Meals on Wheels to promote awareness campaign.

North Hempstead, NY - April 4th, 2016 - Judi Bosworth, Town of North Hempstead Supervisor, hosted a press conference April 1st at the Yes We Can Community Center in an effort to raise awareness for EAC Networks Meals on Wheels program. Town Councilmembers Viviana Russell, Anna M. Kaplan, Lee R. Seeman, as well as Town Clerk Wayne H. Wink, Jr. and Nassau County Commissioner of Human Services Lisa A. Murphy were also in attendance to support the endeavor.



EAC Network is the largest provider of Meals on Wheels in Nassau County to senior citizens who cannot shop or cook for themselves. Supervisor Bosworth also revealed the new Meals on Wheels marketing materials that, she hopes, will increase the town residents awareness of the service available to them.

[Its] not only food for the body, but its food for the soul, Supervisor Bosworth said in regards to how imperative it is for seniors to receive nutritional meals as well as receive social interaction from the deliverers. It takes a village to care for our youth, but it takes a village to care for seniors, too.

Meals on Wheels relies on volunteers from the community to deliver nutritional food to homebound seniors several days a week. To promote awareness and overall wellbeing of elderly citizens, Hofstra University students recently went door-to-door in New Cassel to reach out to seniors in the area who may qualify for Meals on Wheels.

Walking around and talking to the residents of North Hempstead solidified my belief that this program is not only needed, but welcomed, said Alejandra Saladardi, a student volunteer and Hofstra Center for Civic Engagement Fellow. I believe this program will be very successful in the area, and hopefully it can help as many seniors as possible.

To learn more about EAC Networks Meals on Wheels program visit their website, or call 516-539-0150 ext 219.

About EAC Network

Founded in 1969, EAC Network is a not-for-profit human service agency serving 71,000 people annually through 70 programs across Long Island and New York City. EAC Networks mission is to respond to human needs with programs and services that protect children, promote healthy families and communities, help seniors, and empower individuals to take control of their lives.

For more information about EAC Network, please call 516-539-0150 or visit the EAC Network website, follow along on Facebook, and or follow them on Twitter at @EACNet.
Looking to stay up to date about all of the news stories and local headlines that are important to Long Islanders? We've rounded up the top coverage for all of the important topics from multiple sources around Long Island, so you can be sure you've got the most recent update on the top stories for Long Island. Have an idea for a news story? Email us at news@longisland.com

Columnists Press Releases
Jihadists on social media reported earlier today that Abu Firas al Suri, who served al Qaeda since the 1980s, was killed in an airstrike in Syria.

Abu Firas relocated from Yemen to Syria in late 2012 or early 2013 as part of al Qaedas attempt to smooth over the then simmering tensions between Al Nusrah Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS). The mediation efforts failed and ISIS grew into the Islamic State, becoming al Qaedas chief jihadist rival around the globe.

It is not clear which nation launched the airstrike that purportedly killed Abu Firas. His putative death has not been confirmed by any official sources. Several well-connected jihadists on Twitter announced his death, saying the US hunted him down in Kafr Jalis, which is in the northwestern province of Idlib. One of the tweets can be seen on the right.

Abu Firas made his first public appearance in March 2014, when he was featured in an Al Nusrah Front video. The al Qaeda leader testified against Abu Bakr al Baghdadis organization, blaming it for the jihadists infighting in Syria. Abu Firas also said he had warned another al Qaeda veteran, Abu Khalid al Suri, about ISIS intent to kill him. Abu Firas warning didnt save Abu Khalid, as he was killed in a suicide attack the following day (Feb. 23, 2014).

[For an analysis of Abu Firas first appearance in March 2014, see LWJ report: Al Qaeda veteran appears in Al Nusrah Front video, criticizes rival.]

After the news broke of Abu Firas death, jihadists posted the picture on the right showing him sitting with Abu Khalid (far left) and Hassan Abboud (center). Abboud, the first emir of Ahrar al Sham, was killed in an explosion in September 2014. Abu Khalid acted as Abbouds mentor and played a leading role in Ahrar al Sham.

The Long War Journal helped reveal Abu Khalids senior role in Ahrar al Sham in December 2013. Up until that time, his leadership position had not been formally acknowledged by Ahrar al Sham. Nor was it reported by Ahrar al Shams allies in the West.

If todays report is in fact true, and Abu Firas perished in an airstrike, then all three of the men pictured above sitting together are now dead.

Abu Firas was a core al Qaeda member, under any reasonable definition of the term.

According to a biography provided by Al Nusrah, Abu Firas traveled in the early 1980s to Afghanistan, where he met with Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden. He trained both Afghans and Arabs, as well as jihadists from other countries around the world.

Abu Firas served as Osama bin Ladens envoy for mobilizing Pakistanis for jihad. And the Pakistani jihadist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) was set up for this purpose, the Al Nusrah Front said. With Abu Firas acting as an intermediary, the LeT and another Pakistani group were established, trained, and funded by Osama bin Laden.

Further demonstrating Abu Firas seniority within al Qaeda, the Al Nusrah Front said that he worked with the groups first two military commanders, Abu Ubaidah al Banshiri and Abu Hafs al Masri. Abu Firas also worked with Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the deceased commander of al Qaeda in Iraq.

After the 9/11 attacks, Abu Firas secured the mujahideen families in Pakistan, meaning that he helped al Qaeda families and others find safe haven in the country.

In 2003, he relocated to Yemen and stayed there until late 2012 or 2013, when the conflict between ISIS and Al Nusrah Front erupted. Al Qaedas senior leadership then dispatched Abu Firas to Syria in an attempt to help put an end to the dispute.

Al Risalah, a pro-al Qaeda and pro-Al Nusrah magazine, published an infographic with Abu Firas biography on it in October 2015. The biography emphasized his longstanding opposition to the Assad family, noting that he used the expertise he gained in the Syrian military to help the Combatant Vanguard (or Fighting Vanguard) fight the Syrian regime in 1976.

In more recent years, Abu Firas served as Al Nusrahs spokesman and as a member of the al Qaeda branchs elite Shura council. He was known to stir controversy. For example, in more recent months, he became a critique of Ahrar al Shams strategy for waging jihad.

Abu Firas was a proponent of the idea that some Muslim-majority countries should be turned into erupting jihadi center[s]. He explained in a video released in June 2015 that the concept of jihad in the Levant was absent from peoples minds for decades.

Nobody even heard of the word jihad, Abu Firas continued. In reality, the Levant is regarded [as] one of the most important centers in the Islamic world due to its close proximity to Palestine, to the Hijaz [Saudi Arabia] and being in the center of the Islamic world. He drew on Marxist thinking to explain that the jihadists needed to spark revolutions that could change the course of the Islamic world for generations to come.

For more on Abu Firas al Suri, see LWJ reports:

Al Qaeda veteran appears in Al Nusrah Front video, criticizes rival (Mar. 20, 2014)

Al Nusrah Front spokesman explains differences with Islamic State in video appearance (Aug. 13, 2014)

Al Qaeda veteran takes on a more prominent role as spokesman in Syria (Sept. 6, 2014)

New Al Nusrah Front video features interview with leader, military gains in Syria (Feb. 13, 2015)

Al Nusrah Front celebrates 9/11 attacks in new video (June 29, 2015)

Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Senior Editor for FDD's Long War Journal.

Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.
The Pakistani military continues to claim fantastic success in Operation Zarb-e-Azb, the offensive in the tribal agency of North Waziristan which began in June 2014. Based on the reporting from Pakistan, it seems the military is eager to declare victory and put an end to Zarb-e-Azb, even though the jihadists networks based there have not been dismantled.

Pakistans Army claimed an unlikely kill ratio of 32 to 1 in its last phase in the Shawal area of the tribal agency. From Xinhua:

During last phase of operation in Shawal, 252 terrorists have been killed reportedly 160 were severely injured. In the last two months, valiantly fighting in Shawal, eight soldiers of Pakistan Army embraced Shahadat (martyrdom) while 39 injured, the army spokesman said.

Additionally, the military said it captured Ahmad Mehsud, who was described as an important commander of the banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan (TTP). Pakistani officials previously claimed Mehsud was based in Afghanistan, but he was captured in the Razmak area of North Waziristan.

The Pakistani military has claimed that Zarb-e-Azb has targeted all jihadist groups in North Waziristan, including the Haqqani Network and the Hafiz Gul Bahadar Group, two powerful Taliban factions that are independent of the TTP. But as the The Long War Journal has reported multiple times, that claim is fiction. The Pakistani military has blatantly ignored the Haqqanis and Bahadars group (the so-called good Taliban because they dont overtly challenge the Pakistani state), and only targeted the bad Taliban such as the TTP, the defunct Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and al Qaeda.

The so-called good Taliban are the life blood to the bad Taliban. They provide shelter, safe haven, logistics, manpower, finances, and other key enablers that allow the networks to survive a military offensive. Groups like the TTP melt away while a rearguard harasses Pakistani forces, and establish or reinforce operations in other areas of Pakistan.

The Pakistani military and intelligence services myopic view that groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Haqqani Network serve its domestic and foreign policy agenda is short sighted to say the least. Pakistans refusal to deal with the entire continuum of the jihadist threat  both the good and bad Taliban  ensures that Pakistan and neighboring countries will continue to suffer devastating terrorist attacks.

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.

Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.
Canfora - Iconic Sandals Made in Capri Since 1946

All the sandals available for purchase onare made on the island of Capri, in Canfora's shop-workshop on Via Camerelle, using only 100% Italian materials.iThe sandals are still made in exactly the same way as Amedeo Canfora did, when he first opened the shop in 1946: starting with the sole, made with various layers of Italian leather.Inside the sole, an iron arch support preserves form and consistency. The various layers are pressed and sewn together: this is the feature which distinguishes Canfora's sandals from the other, Capri-style, sandals on the market, in which the sole is glued and not sewn together.To see the difference, all you need to do is to look at the bottom of a pair of sandals: when they have been glued, stitches are only visible on the top of the sandals, in Canfora's sandals, stitches can also be seen underneath.At this stage, the sole is practically eternal: the sandals maintain their form and consistency for years and are even rain resistant.Straps are attached to the soles and provide maximum durability. Canfora's sandals can be embellished with various accessories and decorative items. In all cases, only the finest Italian costume jewelry is used, thus guaranteeing maximum longevity. It is important that the decorations last as long as the leather parts of the sandal, so that customers will be able to wear their sandals summer, after summer, after summer.The standard heel used is 0.9 inches (2.5 centimeters high). The traditional Capri sandal, patented by Amedeo Canfora, is, in fact, almost flat: ideal for walking up and down the steep lanes of Capri and, above all, supremely comfortable and resilient.Needless to say, fashion is fashion, and for this reason, Canfora also produces sandals with a 2-inch (5 centimeter) heel or a 2.4 inch (6 centimeter) wedge. When choosing your sandals, you can select the type of heel you prefer.Like the soles, heels are made with layers of leather pressed together. These are then covered in rubber (not plastic). The rubber helps prevent slipping and increases durability.You can see the styles inspired by-- these simple and essential sandals will appeal to advocates of understated elegance.In addition to the K model inspired by Jackie Kennedy, Canfora makes many collections to choose from: So Capri, Sunshine, Make it Easy, Capri Bells, Capri light, First Lady, Antiqua, To the Beach, and La Dolce Capri. You are spoiled for choice!Visit Canfora's website:or visit them in Capri at Via Camerelle, 3, 80073 Capri NA, Italy. Phone:+39 081 837 0487
Iceland by Fokion Zissiadis

Traversing almost 10,000 kilometers of the country's remote topography, he showcases its rough beauty during both the summer and winter seasons. Like the photographer himself, readers will be awestruck by the sights of lava, sky, and moors, and the vivid formations of waves crashing and rivers flowing. The meticulously-composed images in this collection evoke contemplative bliss. Occasionally we spot a miniscule human figure far in the distance, a sobering reminder that compared to the grandeur of nature, we humans are but a humble footnote.Architect FOKION ZISSIADIS is a self-taught photographer. He and his wife Mata are keen travelers and their joint trips to places as varied as Patagonia, Botswana, and Oman inspire Fokion's creations.Size: 41,5 x 31,5 cm / 16 1/3 x 12 2/5 in. 184 pp., Hardcover 62 color and 17 duotone photographs $ 600 Release: December 2015 ISBN 978-3-8327-3319-3 teNeues Publishing GroupPhoto  Iceland by Fokion Zissiadis, published by teNeues, www.teneues.com. Seljalandsfoss, Seljaland Waterfall South Iceland, Photo  2015 Fokion Zissiadis. All rights reserved.
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2016 > US President in Cuba: Obama gets Mojito, Havana Cigar, but no (...)

There is bound to be lingering doubt at the end of the day whether President Barack Obamas trip to Cuba measured up as a historic visit. What is Cubas history without Fidel Castro? Except for a last-minute drama, the possibility of Fidel receiving Obama at his home seems very remote. And that caps the optics of Obamas visit despite the red carpet welcome he received. (Mail)

Washington put on a brave face saying no meeting with Fidel was planned; neither side sought one; and, the correct arrangement is that the two Presidents met. But Obama probably hoped that Fidel, who is famous for springing surprises, might just do that. He said he would have no objection to meeting the iconic figure  just as a symbol of the end of this Cold War chapter.

Curiously, Fidel had favourably commented when Obama was awarded the Nobel in 2009. The veteran Communist revolutionary wrote in a column that he had often disagreed with the choice of Norways Nobel judges, but, I must admit that in this (Obamas) case, in my opinion, it was a positive step. Indeed, Fidel added a caveat: Many believe that he still has not earned the right to receive such a distinction. But we would like to see, more than a prize for the US President, a criticism of the genocidal policies that have been followed by more than a few Presidents of that country.

So, why didnt Fidel receive Obama? Fidel is too great a humanist to hold it against Obama that the CIA repeatedly plotted to kill him. Can it be that Fidel is dogmatic? Of course not. How unequivocally he did reconcile with the Church! Can it be that he did not want to overshadow his brother, President Raul Castro? But then, Fidel frequently received foreign dignitaries on official visitand that invariably turned out to the high noon on the visitors itinerary.

One reason why Fidel hesitated could be that he had no real option here so long as the US embargo against Cuba continued. The heart of the matter is that the embargo remains a national humiliation for Cuba. Fidel often spoke and wrote about it. While Fidel wouldnt impede diplomacy to run its course or place impediments on the long winding road of US-Cuban normalisation, when it comes to the embargo, it is a matter of national honour. The 55-year old embargo was imposed in the wake of the Cuban Revolution; it was the most severe US trade embargo imposed on any nation except Red China; and, it is one of the longest running embargoes in US history. Raul Castro warned that the embargo is still in the way of normalisation of relations.

In all fairness, Obama is helpless here. The Republican-dominated US Congress intends to keep the embargo in place this year and its a political season in America till November. Period. On the other hand, it is an embargo in name only and is riddled with as many holes as Swiss cheese, as someone pointed out. Besides, if Cuba wants something from America, it can always source it through a third party. However, it sticks out and retains a huge amount of symbolic value despite all the manoeuvres and presidential executive orders Obama issued to cut into it. In Rauls words, The blockade remains in force. It contains discouraging elements and intimidating effects.

This is where Obamas working visit to Cuba may help. A big faction of Republicans in the Congress is already on board with the idea of removing the sanctions, and, as Edward Isaac-Dovere wrote for Politico in the weekend, Obamas visit will only accelerate the pace of shifting sentiments in the US. Obamas expressed skepticism about getting the embargo lifted during his presidency or at least before the expected lame duck session post-election. But with all the members of Congress and all the business leaders he brought with him (to Havana), and all the government changes and deals being announced as part of this trip, hes hollowed out what little obstacles are left. (Politico)

However, that Obama left Havana without being received by Fidel underlines that the hype over the historic visit notwithstanding, US-Cuban relationship is a deeply wounded one and the healing will take time. The rapproche-ment is irreversible and the compass cannot change even under the new US President, because the US has understood essentially that it cannot decide Cubas future. However, as the New York Times put it, old grievances and disputes marred a groundbreaking (Obama-Raul) meeting and underscored lingering impediments to a historic thaw (here). The tense joint press conference which witnessed some spirited sparring testifies to this geopolitical reality that much as Cuba welcomes trade and investment from the US, it is not going to make political changes for the sake of normalisation with the US. (Transcript)

Nonetheless, to be sure, this is a legacy visitfirst by a US President to Cuba in nearly 90 years. Will Obama follow through with a visit to Iranthe first by a US President since the Islamic Revolution in 1979? Dont rule it out. You can never say never when it comes to this extraordinary American President breaking new ground in US foreign policy.

Ambassador M.K. Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for over 29 years, with postings including Indias ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2016 > Prime Ministers Predicament

From N.C.s Writings

Robin Raphel came and went as was expected at the present state of Indo-US relations. The visit of a junior officer of the US State Department was played up by a section of the establishment as if this country has chosen to downgrade itself to the status of a nondescript Timbuctoo, where everything short of a red-carpet and a presidential guard of honour was provided for.

The manner in which she had hit the headlines in the last few monthsquestioning the very accession of Kashmir to the Indian Union, attacking Indian authorities for human rights violations in Kashmir, and finally equating it with the civil-war crisis in Afghanistanwould normally have got her brickbats more than bouquets. However, despite all this media-hype, Robin during her New Delhi rounds must have got an idea of the fall-out of her impertinent pronouncements from the entire spectrum of public opinion from the Union Home Minister right upto the corporate sector luminaries like Raunaq Singh, who minced no words in telling her off.

Robin Raphel on her part tried to be circumspect in New Delhi, avoiding what she called, to get into history over the Kashmir dispute, focussing not on how it started but how it can be ended, through negotiations and political process. One got the impression that her provocative statements on Kashmir in the past were as calculated as the sweet reasonableness in New Delhistoking the confrontation posture and then playing the conciliator.

There is no reason to get excited, one way or the other, over Robin Raphels performance in Washington or New Delhi. More important for us is to understand the US strategy in handling the South Asian situation, particularly the Indo-Pakistan crisis. Officially the US position is that it is anxious to defuse the eye-ball-to-eyeball confrontation between the two neighbours as this might touch off a nuclear war. The reality is that the Pakistani military establishment enjoys strong backing from the Pentagon.

Those who held the view that with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Pakistans importance in the US strategic map has gone down, are mistaken since the USA needs a strategic foothold in the region to oversee the entire spectrum from Sinkiang in the east to Iran in the west with the newly emerging Central Asian republics with their rich mineral deposits and proximity to the sprawling giant of Russia which might again rise from its present torporthe new Crescent of Crisis, as Olaf Caroe would have called it. Despite the fiasco in Afghanistan where the US operated through its trusted military junta in Pakistan, there is no question of the Pentagon or the State Department abandoning Islamabad. Benazir Bhutto has an effective lobby within the Democratic Party which enabled the silent US mediation to bring about a rapprochement between her and the military junta, so that she could provide the democratic facade of an elected government with the military bosses ruling the roost.

It is in this context that one has to examine the latest US move to supply F-16 aircraft to Pakistan. There is no question that Washington has to placate the military brass at Islamabad. In fact, the morale of this junta needs to be boosted particularly after its failure so far in its active proxy war against India by despatching armed secessionists into the Kashmir Valley. The F-16s are thus very much needed to signal Pentagons unwavering support for Pakistans military bosses. Senator Larry Pressler has also exposed how the additional imperative of placating the Lockheeds has led the Clinton Administration to arrange for the delivery of the F-16 aircraft to Pakistan.

To cover up this dirty deal and to provide a respectable alibi for violating the Pressler Amendment which debars aid to Pakistan because of its nuclear weapons drive, the State Department argumentwhich Robin Raphel repeated in New Delhi last weekis that this would enable the USA to persuade Islamabad to abandon its nuclear-weapons programme. How hollow this American plea is can be gauged from the fact that Pakistans entire nuclear bomb projectBhuttos Islamic bombhas been conceived and worked out over the years with the government there all the time denying it altogether. Nobody in the wide worldnot even the US Administrationcan take seriously any commitment by the Pak establishment that it would cap its N-bomb programme in exchange for a fleet of F-16s.

More sinister is the further move that the Clinton Administration is going to makemost likely through Strobe Talbott during his visit to New Delhi next monththat since Pakistan has agreed to cap its N-bomb programme, India must do the same. The Indian position, reiterated over and over again, is that India cannot abandon its nuclear option so long as there is the potential threat from a whole range of countries from China, the Central Asian republics right upto Israel, apart from Pakistan. There could be no discriminatory imposition of nuclear weapons non-proliferation regime on India which, on its part, would readily give up the nuclear option the very day that is done by all the other nuclear powers, particularly those which fall within the range of potential attack on this country.

So, the turning down of the US proposal by India would be exploited by the US that Pakistan Government could not be disciplined on the nuclear question because India refused to respond to the US proposal. Thus the tables are likely to be neatly turned against India on the nuclear question. As for Kashmir, it appears that the US strategy now is to force third-party mediationthat is, either Washington staging its own Tashkent (that is, a revised version of Camp David) or the good offices of the UN Secretary-General for a new version of peace-keeping.

It is in this background that the question of the Prime Ministers visit to Washington has to be viewed. Since last year, this question has been hanging fire. Washington put off the question until it found that the Prime Minister has not only survived the ordeal of the mini-general election in December, but is now about to complete three years in office. At the New Delhi end, there is considerable eagerness on the part of a good section of the present establish-ment that Narasimha Rao should soon pay a visit to Washington and call on the chief executive of the only remaining superpower, particularly in the congenial environment created by Indias economic reforms which has earned a lot of kudos in the US corporate sector. Particularly conspicuous in prodding for this Washington trip by the Prime Minister is a well-known business house whose high visibility could be detected among the politicos since the Bofors scandal came into view. The buzz word of this lobby is that the access to the White House is easier via the corporate sector than the normal diplomatic channel.

While in principle, a meeting between Indias Prime Minister and the US President is unexpectionablein fact a normal practice in normal circumstancesNarasimha Rao has to take into account its impact on the domestic front. With Washington sending F-16s to Pakistan, and planning to pressurise India to abandon the nuclear option, the Prime Ministers trip to Washington at this juncture can earn him only negative dividends in terms of the governments standing before the public of other country. Both these items would help the Opposition to beat the government with. In this words, what can Narasimha Rao get out of the projected trip to Washington apart from political devaluation at home?

An extremely cautious person that he is by nature, and seasoned to sense the public mood, this is indeed a difficult choice for Narasimha Rao.

(Mainstream, April 2, 1984)
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2016 > Danger to Constitutional Values - Statement by Retired Civil (...)

DOCUMENT

We, the persons listed below, a group of retired civil servants belonging to different All India and Central Services, who have worked in the Government of India (GoI), State governments and a wide range of governmental and other institutions, would urge all constitutional institutions in India, the media and general public to reflect upon the deeply disquieting trends visible in the public sphere and in our polity today. These developments are causing deep anguish to us as they question some of the fundamental constitutional principles and legal safeguards we have long taken for granted. Some of these are mentioned below:

1) The discrimination against Scheduled Caste students and an attempt to clamp down upon Ambedkar study groups as found in IIT, Chennai, and in the University of Hyderabad. The tragic suicide of Rohith Vemula has highlighted the unwarranted interference of the GoI in the University of Hyderabad and its targeting a group of students, who did not subscribe to a narrow concept of nationalism.

2) There is a systematic attempt to silence dissent using the outmoded law of sedition against young idealists like Kanhaiya Kumar and his colleagues, who have given India a wake-up call to address poverty and all forms of exploitation.

3) Law and order agencies like the Delhi Police used doctored videos in a blatantly partisan manner against the JNU students while an MLA and certain lawyerswho were widely caught on camera beating up Kanhaiya and journalistswere treated with kid gloves. Even the team of senior lawyers nominated by the Supreme Court to monitor the situation reported the atmosphere of threat and intimidation.

4) The atmosphere of intolerance is growing what with the murder of the rationalists and the regular threats of violence against minorities and all who do not accept a very narrow version of nationalism. Such a concept of nationalism is itself grounded in a biased view of history. This intolerance is a direct attack upon the freedom of speech and expression and is anathema to the pluralism of the Indian Constitution.

5) A Minister in the Central Government, a ruling party MP and local leaders have recently issued terrifying threats against Muslims but the GoI does not find anything objectionable in the Ministers statements. Other minorities have also expressed their sense of insecurity.

What is listed above is only illustrative. We feel that all told, there is a clear and present danger to the values of the freedom of speech, thought and expression as also the pluralism and the secularism that are basic to the Indian Constitution. We add our voice to the multitude of dissents already expressed and call upon all right- thinking people to register their protest at the current goings-on.

At the same time, we would like to point out that we do not condone similar transgressions by other groupsparticularly on the extreme Leftwhich try in like manner to silence opposing views by vicious attacks on social media and/or violence.

We urge a return to the civilised and civilisational discourse of the Constitution of India and a renewed public commitment to the freedom of speech, thought and expression.

Niranjan Pant

, IA and AS (R), former Deputy Comptroller and Auditor General, GoI;

E.A.S. Sarma,

IAS (R), former Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, GoI;

Ruchira Mukerjee,

Indian P and T Accounts and Finance Service (R), former Adviser (Finance), Telecom Commission, Department of Telecom, GoI;

Kalyani Chaudhuri,

IAS (R), former Additional Chief Secretary, Government of West Bengal;

Keshav Desiraju,

IAS (R), former Secretary, Ministry of Consumer Affairs, GoI;

Amitabha Pande,

IAS (R), former Secretary, Inter-State Council, GoI;

Ardhendu Sen,

IAS (R), former Chief Secretary, Government of West Bengal;

Pranab Mukhopadhyaya,

IAS (R), former Director, Institute of Port Management, GoI;

Surjit Das,

IAS (R), former Chief Secretary, Government of Uttarakhand;

Anup Mukerji,

IAS (R), former Chief Secretary, Government of Bihar;

Vibha Puri Das,

IAS (R), former Secretary, Ministry of Tribal Affairs, GoI;

S.S. Rizvi,

IAS (R), former Joint Secretary to the GoI;

Sundar Burra,

IAS (R), former Secretary, Government of Maharashtra;

Harish Chandra,

IAS (R), former Prinicipal Adviser in the rank of Secretary, Government of India (GoI);

Kamal Jaswal,

IAS (R), former Secretary, Ministry of Information Technology, GoI;

Meena Gupta,

IAS (R), former Secretary, Ministry of Environment and Forests, GoI;

Hirak Ghosh,

IAS (R), former Principal Secretary, Government of West Bengal.
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2016 > Would Bhagat Singh have raised the Slogan Bharat Mata ki Jai (...)

by Sandeep Pandey and Rahul Pandey

As we know, the great revolutionary Bhagat Singh was an atheist. He wrote a famous article Why I am an Atheist? Even after he knew that he was going to be hanged by the British Government, his commitment to his principles was not shaken. Neither did he regret his action of exploding the harmless bomb in the Central Assembly at Delhi nor did he seek any apology from the British. He was hanged when he was merely 23 years of age and hence did not get a chance to play a major role in the freedom struggle of India but there can be no denying that he continues to be among the most inspiring of the freedom fighters that India produced.

Bhagat Singh believed in the objective reality and was concerned about the condition of the masses. He wanted to work for the liberation of millions from the clutches of poverty and exploitation. A lot many people, when they take up a cause, seek the help of the almighty. Belief in God gives them inner strength to live through the extremely difficult circumstances in order to be able to help the needy. A good example would be that of Mother Teresa. But for Bhagat Singh such faith was not required. He derived his strength from his inner self. He believed in the ideals of Socialism and was convinced that political change could be brought about. With his small but extremely dedicated band of volunteers he took on the might of the British and was crushed. But not his spirit, which continues to be alive in the form of numerous revolutionaries and activists working for social transformation.

As Bhagat Singh did not believe in God, he would not have believed in any symbolism. Hence he would not have felt the need to hail Bharat Mata, an incarnation of the idea of mother nation. As he did not worship any God or Goddess, there was no need for him to feel any reverence for Bharat Mata. It is unlikely that he would have ever raised the Bharat Mata ki Jai slogan. In fact, his favourite slogan was Inqilab Zindabad. Does it make him any less patriotic? On the contrary, his life exemplifies that patriotism lies in ones beliefs and actions rather than mere symbolic slogans.

The Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh is doing a great disservice by promoting the idea that to prove ones loyalty to the nation one has to say Bharat Mata ki Jai. There are innumerable people who are working with full commitment to serve the society and humanity. The way of expressing their commitment to the nation may be different. For example, a doctor by serving the patients is working for the nation. Does she need to raise Bharat Mata ki Jai slogan to prove her loyalty to the nation?

Owing to its historical origins, Bharat Mata ki Jai conjures up an image of the Durga-like Goddess who is worshipped by several sections of Hindus. However, Indias reality is far more diverse. Many Indian citizens from religions other than Hinduism would not relate the nation with such a Goddess-like image. Even among Hindus there are several sections, especially the oppressed castes, who do not worship such an image. Some even despise it.

Then there are numerous tribal communities living in and around the vast forests and natural ecosystems all across India who display an amazing richness of cultural variety. These communities have being living here for ages, even before Hinduism took birth on this land. Most of them do not revere human-like Gods or even identify with the idea of a nation that many of us in the mainstream have. They are more likely to revere nature and specific forms of natural resources around them, such as forests, soil, rains, mountains, rivers and seas, amidst which they have been living in a symbiotic relationship.

And, there are non-believers, atheists and agnostics among us, having equal constitutional rights as all others, many of whom may not agree with the concept of Bharat Mata. With increasing influence of science and rationality in modern times, such communities are growing almost everywhere.

All these sections and communities of people are Indian citizens and have their own ways of relating with and serving the nation. They have different cultural symbols too, which are perfectly meaningful in their respective contexts. Every community has the right to follow its rituals and symbols without imposing them on others.

This is the reason why our founding fathers and motherswho led Indias freedom struggle against the Britishlaid overarching importance to respecting our societys pluralistic character. They realised that India can thrive only with a robust foundation that preserves this pluralism. All tallest leaders of our freedom movement, who had a pan-India following and who inspired the imagination of millionsGandhi, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Ambedkar, Bose, Bhagat Singh, Tilak, Nehru, Maulana Azad, Patel, Tagore, and others, agreed on certain common core values in spite of differences in ideology and strategy. They were not willing to compro-mise on the principles of pluralism, secularism, justice and democracy. Consequently these core values were enshrined in independent Indias Constitution and even in national symbols like the tricolour flag and slogans such as Jai Hind.

If nationalist passions get linked with religious symbolism such as Bharat Mata, then it will lead to more divisions, strife and even open murders on irrational provocations, just like the gruesome killing of Muslims in Dadri and Jharkhand on the pretext of another symbolismcow protection. Bhagat Singh had indeed warned the youth against falling prey to such narrow religious-nationalist passions. In an article written in 1924 in Kirti he had lamented that it were the communal leaders and irresponsible local press (newspapers) who together manufactured bigoted slogans and headlines that created an atmosphere in which communal killings and riots were easily fomented.

In fact, rather than revering some symbolic idea of the mother nation it would be more important to serve the destitute women/girls in society and to uphold the dignity of women/girls around us. It is probably people who are not doing enough for society or do not treat women/girls around them as equal citizens who need to publicly display their loyalty to symbolic nationalism by raising a jingoistic slogan.

Sandeep Pandey is a social activist and Vice-President, Socialist Party (India), and Rahul Pandey is an entrepreneur and Visiting Faculty at the IIM, Lucknow.
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2016 > Is Hindu Society Changing?

Something extraordinary and adorable happened to the Hindus, who number 80 per cent in India. Breaking the 400-year-old tradition, widows at Vrindavan, about 110 kilometres from Delhi, celebrated the festival of Holi and danced while throwing colours at one another. Surprisingly, the national media has not considered it newsworthy.

Widows have no status in the Hindu religion. The society looks down upon them if they wear coloured clothes and sport bindis. Although the Rig Veda, older than the Bible, laid down that widows should lead their lives ordinarily, the Brahmins, the priest class, have driven them to a life worse than death.

The liberal Indian Constitution has been of little help against the prejudice and practice going back to hundreds of years. Widows at Vrindavan have dared the Brahmins, who have sheepishly accepted what happened there. And this has come as a shot in the arm for the widows.

They will vigorously fight for equality as they are doing in the case of seeking entry into several temples or at least proximity to the sanctum sanctorum. This development fits into the secular ethos of the country which is increasingly under pressure.

India has come to accept secularism of sorts. It is not ideal. Yet, it does give space to the minorities. Lately, this space is sought to be restricted when the slogan of Bharat Mata ki Jai was raised.

Two happenings which have come to light in the last few days are disconcerting. One, the Legislature in Maharashtra, a fairly progressive State, has suspended an Assembly member for not chanting Bharat Mata ki Jai. The Legislature has not explained why it is necessary to raise the slogan. This is neither a national anthem, Jana Gana Mana..., nor is it a national song like Sare Jahan se achcha Hindustan hamara.

Even if one were to violate the procedure of standing up at the time of rendering of the national anthem, it is at best an expression of irreverence and distasteful. But how does it invite imprisonment or fine? The Indian Constitution is a liberal document and guarantees freedom of speech and expression.

One may not like the Constitutions violation. But there is no law to penalise people in a democratic society. Their opinion is the best custodian, not any penal action. The very spirit of democracy would be lost if people are told what not to say. True, it is their inherent right to support or oppose a proposition. But it cannot be thrust on them. They are their own masters.

Against this background, it is strange that the martyrdom day of Bhagat Singh, hanged by the British, has gone practically unnoticed. It is probably because he was an atheist who finds little favour with those who want people to wear the badge of religion on their sleeve. They are trying to suppress even the free thinking of people.

These so-called custodians of religion have never considered how to erase the curse of untouchability which is a part and parcel of Hinduism. Even in the 21st century the people, particularly women, practise untouchability. Even though it is banned by the law, the tradition has not diminished, especially in rural India.

The Hindu society should introspect why it is insensitive towards the lower castes. They are treated worse than the cows, which are revered. The Hindus express more sorrow on the killing of a cow than that of a Dalit. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which considers India a Hindu state, should be paying attention to the eradication of discrimination which has dogged the Hindu community for centuries. In contrast, Islam knows no high or low when it comes to eating. They sit together at the same daster khan.

Yet, discrimination is creeping into Islam. The Sayyids consider themselves like the Brahmins at the top of the ladder. This is only an exception, not the rule. The Muslims complain that Hinduism has influenced Islam as practised in India where it has acquired many traits which have cast a shadow on Islam.

In reality, Muslims in most countries consider those in India inferior because of their contamination by Hinduism. Emperor Akbar from the Mughal dynasty, which ruled for more than a hundred years, floated a new religion, Din-i-Lahi, which sought to reflect the best of both in Islam and Hinduism. The venture failed to take roots since both communities were too immersed in their centuries-old practices.

Even though Hinduism is essentially a way of living and thinking, it has become a prisoner to dogmas which do not fit into the freedom they are supposed to have. The RSS has been trying its best to make Hinduism rigid, but even after several decades the organisation has failed in its efforts. No doubt, tolerance has lessened the rigidity than what it was before.

Taslima Nasreen, a Bangladeshi writer who has taken refuge in India after the bigoted ousted her from her country, says relentlessly that if Indians had not been tolerant, there would have been riots between Hindus and Muslims all the time. There is something to ponder about in what she says.

However, she ignores the fact that both Hindus and Muslims live like two nations. There is very little social contact between the two. I recall that we, the Hindus and Muslims, lived together in Sialkot city, my home town, and never felt that we were two different people. We visited each others house and ate together and celebrated Eid, Diwali and Holi.

This atmosphere changed after the demand for Pakistan came to be raised. And today when a line has been drawn on the basis of religion, the distance between the two has increased. Was partition the best solution? This question was posed to Qaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah when he founded Pakistan. He said he did not know. Only posterity would judge. But one cannot run away from the fact that partition has not brought Hindus and Muslims nearer to one another. Was there another way to bridge the gulf between two communities?

The author is a veteran journalist renowned not only in this country but also in our neighbouring states of Pakistan and Bangladesh where his columns are widely read. His website is www.kuldipnayar.com
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2016 > Getting Ones Priorities Right

by N.V.K. Murthy

The following was written by the author sometime ago but could not be used earlier due to space constraints. It is now being published as its contents have not been fully overtaken by the latest events.

The Government of India in recent days has been making an excellent showing at inter-national meetings. The countrys leaders have been making right statements, winning appro-bations all around. These statements talk about adherence to secular ideals, democratic gover-nance and inclusive economic and social progress. But when these statements are judged against events happening within the country, they ring hollow.

What has caused concern among people in India and abroad are the daylight assassinations of liberal intellectuals fighting for freedom of thought and speech. Dr Dabholkar was a leader of Andha Shradha Nirmolan Samithi (Committee for Eradication of Superstition and Blind Faith) and had been carrying on a campaign of rational thinking for many years. Govind Pansare was a Left-wing liberal intellec-tual and was in the thick of fighting for civil liberties. Dr Kalburgi was an eminent intellec-tual and educationist. He was fighting for freedom of thought and expression. All these three were assassinated in broad daylight. The suspects belong to the Rightist Hindu organi-sations close to the ruling party. Then came the lynching of a Muslim man not far from the national Capital for allegedly eating beef, a normal food for a Muslim. He was lynched by a Hindu mob for his act of eating beef when it was banned by the State Government. No government, which claims to be democratic, can lay down what a citizen should think or say or eat. Now comes a Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader who has urged volunteers to put together stones for the construction of a Ram Mandir at the Babri Masjid site. The country has still not forgotten the widespread violence that followed the demolition of the Babri Masjid structure some two decades ago. The case is before a court of law. Moderate leaders amongst Hindus and Muslims are trying to find a solution to the problem acceptable to both the communities. When such is the case, the recent Vishwa Hindu Parishad call is nothing but an invitation to trouble.

This writer had earlier pointed out that the landslide victory of the BJP in the last parlia-mentary elections was not to be interpreted as an endorsement by the country of the Hindutva ideology of the RSS core of the BJP, but as a reaction to the misrule and extensive corruption under the previous government. The BJP and RSS have a lot to answer. The country has still not forgotten the conspiracy of Godhra, where a railway carriage of returning volunteers from the Ram Mandir/Babri Masjid site, were alleged to have been burned alive. Later investigations showed that the railway carriage was empty, all the volunteers were detrained at the earlier station, and the carriage was torched deliberately from inside before being abandoned. This so-called torching of a carriage full of volunteers was to justify the genocide of Muslims all over the Gujarat State which followed.

In spite of these events, Indians across the country were excited when the new government assured the people of good, fair and clean governance. The assassinations referred to above shook the public badly. Prime Minister Modi made a bold resolve to change the anti-Gandhi legacy of the RSS. He visited Raj Ghat soon after taking over as the Prime Minister to pay homage to the Father of the Nation. He further went on to initiate the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India mission) on Gandhi Jayanti day. These were imaginative and constructive moves. But he has to go a lot further. He has to stop the Right-wing Hindu organisations, like the RSS and Vishwa Hindu Parishad, from organising vigilante groups and taking the law into their own hands. He has to take action which will make minority groups feel secure in India. In other words, PM Modi will have to make sure that the Government of India is really a secular democracy.

There are equally pressing problems, which need to be on the priority list. The problem of climate change is one such. It is good that India is part of the agreement signed at the Paris conference. Here again the immediate action of starting four new coal-based energy projects goes against the Paris agreement. Considering the dire pollution situation in New Delhi and other cities and the recurrent droughts and floods all over the country, there is an urgent need to scale down coal and other fossil based energy units and to build renewable energy units on an emergency scale. Earlier all attempts to put up renewable energy units were discouraged as uneconomical compared to fossil fuel-based units. Now that we have realised the terrible social, health, and other costs that we have to pay for fossil fuel-based energy, renewable energy is the only answer. There are no alternatives. The availability of fresh air and clean water must be the top priority of any sensible government. No special interest should be allowed to interfere with this priority. Fortunately the country has resources and the know-how to provide fresh air and unpolluted drinking water to its citizens. Two names immediately come to mind in this connection Ratan Tata for renewable energy and Mukesh Ambani for fresh water. The Tatas have been in the power business for many years. They also have the know-how for electrical power production based on solar energy. They should be encouraged and given all the help to take on leadership in this matter. In the past, the oil refinery project of the Ambani group based in Rajkot had helped in desalinating seawater to supply drinking water to drought-affected Rajkot. With the shrinking importance of refining mineral oil for fuel, the Ambanis could be encouraged to convert the Rajkot plant into a water desalination plant.

As far as the problem with Pakistan is concerned, PM Modi has seized an opportune moment to try and solve the long-standing Indo-Pak problem. In earlier days the Govern-ment of Pakistans encouragement of the Taliban elements to commit terrorist acts against India was the main obstacle. Now the Pakistan Government seems to have realised the Taliban menace is also threatening the stability of its own country. So this is the right moment to offer Pakistan all the help it needs to root out the Taliban menace from Pakistan once and for all for the good of both the nations. Then perhaps India could persuade Pakistan to accept the Line of Control (LoC) as an international border between the nations. This could be followed after a period of five or seven years of friendly relations by some sort of referendum overseen by an agreed-upon team of inter-national observers to find out what the Kashmiris on both sides of the border really want. Meanwhile the Government of Jammu and Kashmir should be allowed the maximum amount of regional autonomy possible under the Constitution so that the people could enjoy the benefits of living in a free and open secular society.

PM Modi has two options. Option number one is to be a loyal RSS member, and against the advice of the sane and secular, to simply follow the RSS mantra of supremacy of Hindus in a Hindu-majority nation, and in good time be remembered only as a prejudiced leader. Option number two is to rise above the narrow confines of loyalty to the RSS ideology, grow up to be a true nationalist and world statesman, and go across the aisle to the Opposition to build a national coalition for establishing a truly secular and open society. Then he is likely to become a yugapursha, a historic figure and join the company of personages like Buddha, Asoka, Akbar and Gandhiji. The choice is his.

The author, now retired, was the First Registrar of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Subsequently he functioned for sometime as the Director of the Film and TV Institute of India, Pune. Later he was appointed the Director of the Nehru Centre, Mumbai.
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2016 > Overriding Task at Present Juncture

EDITORIAL

As the campaign for the elections to the State Assemblies of Assam, West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry hots up with the BJP making a desperate bid for power in Assam banking on the anti-incumbency factor since the incumbent Tarun Gogoi Government there has completed three terms at a stretch, the Narendra Modi dispensation at the Centreunder the supervision of the RSShas launched a concerted drive against all secular democrats concentrating on a symbolic hyper-nationalistic slogan of Bharat Mata ki Jai if only to conceal its sordid history of having opposed the Gandhi-led national movement as well as the freedom struggle alongside a not-so-covert understanding with British imperialism. Unfortunately the principal Opposition party of the country, the Indian National Congress, has, instead of exposing the ruling partys nefarious game on this score, meekly fallen in line, as witnessed in its role alongwith the NCP in colluding with the BJP and Shiv Sena in enforcing the suspension of a Muslim MLA in the Maharashtra Assembly for having refused to chant the aforementioned slogan.

While democracy is under assault from those in power at the Centre the judiciary has, despite some flip-flops (as was noticed in the peculiar judgment delivered at the time of granting interim bail to the JNU Students Union President detained on the charge of sedition), taken a bold and unambiguous stand on the issue of the Modi administrations dismissal of the Harish Rawat Government in Uttrakhand and imposition of Presidents Rule there. The State High Court, in its order of March 29, unequivocally pointed out: The present proclamation is nothing but a colourable exercise of power by the Central Government... Democratically elected Houses should not be demolished in such fashion. Floor test is the only test to prove the majority. The State was brought under Central Rule on March 27; and the High Court ordered that the floor test be held today, that is, on March 31. However, on March 30, a Division Bench of the High Court stayed the floor test until April 7 and posted the matter for April 6 for a final hearing on the writ petition filed by the ousted CM challenging the imposition of Presidents Rule in the State.

Meanwhile a new development on the whole episode has come to the fore. That is the stand of the BJP ally, the Shiv Sena, In an editorial in the Sena mouthpiece, Saamna, it was noted on March 30: The BJP used nine rebel Congress MLAs to bring instability in the Uttarakhand Government... If the government had lost majority, the decision should have been taken in the State Assembly. The Governor had even given time to the government to prove its majority by March 28, but a day before that Presidents Rule was imposed. What did the BJP gain out of it?

It further observed: In a democracy, the voice of the Opposition is of paramount importance. A one-party rule is worse then Emergency or dictatorship. The country will be ruined if the Opposition is eliminated and poison is thrown at allies.

There is no shadow of doubt that the anti-democratic proclivities of the BJP have soared with the party enjoying a comfortable majority in the Lok Sabha on its own following the 2014 parliamentary polls. The party has given sufficient indications of such proclivities on several occasions in the recent past. But as the Shiv Senas reaction shows, it will not be smooth sailing for the Modi leadership in this regard.

The global scenario has turned complex, what with the terror strikes in Brussels, the tragic killing of several women and children in a Lahore park the other day, US President Obamas landmark visit to Cuba, the historic return to democracy in Myanmar after 54 years with the Aung San Suu Kyi leadership assuming power there and the frightening prospect of someone like Donald Trump winning the US presidential election.

However, it is the domestic scene in India with the BJP on the rampage which acquires greater prominence for us in the present setting. That is precisely why democracy needs to be reinforced in the country in the days ahead. That indeed is the overriding task at this juncture.

March 31 S.C.
I woke up the first night out of Anacortes, Washington, when the ship dropped out from under me and I levitated off my bunk. Then came the sound of shuffleboard in the conference room one deck above. The only trouble was, there's no shuffleboard on the research vessel Neil Armstrong.

It was Halloween 2015 in the Northeast Pacific. We were in the first hours of the first voyage of the newest ship in the U.S. academic research fleet, and we were already plowing through 15-foot waves. But the ships motion made it feel more like we were facing much heavier seas. A hammering gong rang through the hull to announce the trough of each wave, while the shuffleboard game continued through the night. As I lay awake, I kept thinking back to something Kent Sheasley, Neil Armstrongs captain, told me on the bridge just before we cast off: No one knows how the ship will ride. We havent taken her out into open water yet.

Then a crowd of well-wishers from town (including one Halloween Frankenstein), who had come to think of Neil Armstrong and its crew as their neighbors, slipped our lines from the dock and we were away. Come what may, our bow pointed down the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the open ocean.

The first vague idea of what would become Neil Armstrong took shape in the 1990s, when the U.S. Navy began to lay the groundwork to replace some the largest Global Class research ships, which were well into their third decade of service at the time. In 2002, the Navy announced plans to build a new Ocean Class of vessels. They were intended to cost less to build and operate than the Global Class ships without compromising their ability to remain at sea for weeks at a time and still carry scientists into nearly all forbidding parts of the ocean not covered by ice.

In the decades since Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, just nine new large research ships have been built and added to the U.S. academic research fleet. Two are retiring and being replaced by Neil Armstrong and its sister ship, Sally Ride. That leaves only seven large shipsour equivalent of ocean-going space shuttlesand a dwindling number of small- and medium-sized ships to explore two-thirds of our planet's surface.

There are strong links between outer space and ocean exploration. NASA's space shuttles were all named after famous ships that explored the ocean: Endeavor after the ship Capt. Cook sailed to discover Australia and New Zealand; Discovery after the ship that found the colony in Jamestown, Virginia, and later explored the Northwest Passage; and Atlantis, the nations first ship built expressly for ocean-going research. Even before the shuttles, the first space missions gave us a new perspective: For the first time, we could look back on Earth from space and see just how the ocean dominates the face of the planet we call home.

In 2012, the U.S. Navy announced that the two newest oceanographic research vessels would be named after pioneers of space exploration. But where the shuttle Endeavour alone cost $1.7 billion to build, the Neil Armstrong and Sally Ride together cost U.S. taxpayers about $200 million.

While Navy officials worked with the science community to hammer out details of the ships' design, four oceanographic institutions competed for the job of operating the new vessels, and in 2010, the Navy awarded the first of the class to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). What was then known as AGOR-27 would become the latest in a long line of WHOI-operated ships that began in 1930 with the first Atlantis. Five more years passed as the ship slowly took shape, first on paper and then in steel on the shipyard of Dakota Creek Industries (DCI).

All that planning and hard work culminated on a rainy autumn day in Anacortes when the last of the lines were cast off. A double crew, almost all of them veterans of Knorr, was on board to learn their new ship and bring it south to San Francisco, the Panama Canal, and its homeport in Woods Hole, and eventually into the historically fierce conditions of the North Atlantic.

Build It and They Will Come

Gary McGrath was working as chief engineer on Knorr, when the plans to replace it with a new ship moved from conference calls and meeting rooms to the shipyard. For much of the three-plus years it took to build the ship, McGrath made Anacortes his home away from Cape Cod. His tenure as WHOIs representative at DCI coincided almost exactly with the college careers of two of his children. Armstrongs inaugural voyage marked a third graduation in four months for McGrath.

Neil Armstrong and its sister ship Sally Ride were assembled by DCI in large sections known as blocks. Each of the major hull blocks was constructed individually and then fit together like massive Legos. The method is meant to speed the building process, but it also requires a high level of skill and attention to detail.

This was also the first time that DCI built a ship for the U.S. Navy, or anything as complicated as an Ocean Class research vessel. A commercial vessel is basically just a cargo hold with an engine and a bridge, said McGrath. There are systems on Armstrong youll never find on a commercial ship. The amount of [electrical and fiber-optic] wire they had to run alone was phenomenal. But they did a great job. Their steel work is excellent. Their welds are perfect. This is one tough little ship.

McGrath knows how and where almost every part was installed, how tricky marriages between components were made, and what still needs to be improved. For him, Neil Armstrong will always be a work in progress. When you look at a flat piece of paper, it doesnt really tell you just how everything is going to fit. Now that were operating, were always going to find things that need to be changed.

Aboard Armstrongs first voyage in November, the rough weather continued through the next day and much of the following. Our course south toward San Francisco meant that we had to take the southeasterly swells on our stern quarter. The ship, not yet freighted with science equipment, rode high and skittishly. The shuffleboard game turned out to be some loose chairs, which were easily remedied, but as the crew made their rounds, they began taking note of things they would have to adjust.

Countless small things cropped up and were quickly fixed. Bigger things, like the hammering, which turned out to be caused by the way the anchors fit against the bow, would require a design team and the services of a fully equipped shipyard. Thankfully, a shipyard in Charleston, S.C., was the next stop after San Francisco and the Panama Canal. There, the list that McGrath and his engineers began compiling right off the dock met the equally long list for the final phase of the ships outfitting.

Carrying Data

When David Fisichella looks at Neil Armstrong, he sees datamore than any ship in the academic research fleet has ever produced. Its what she does, said Fisichella, who heads the team of technicians in the WHOI Shipboard Scientific Services Group (SSSG) that operates the scientific instruments on the ship. Some ships carry cargo or oil. Ours carries data.

After Armstrongs initial transit from the Pacific, it arrived in Charleston in December, where Fisichella and his team helped WHOI's Ship Operations group turn Neil Armstrong from a functioning ship into one of the most advanced research vessels afloat. As part of the construction contract, the Navy provided nearly $10 million to purchase and install the scientific instrumentationfrom the multibeam sonars on the bottom of the hull to the communications array on top of the wheelhouse. Once calibrated and fine-tuned, all of these will make it possible for the ship to investigate organisms living in the ocean, map the seafloor from shallow coastal waters to the deepest depths, examine interactions between the sea surface and atmosphere, and probe currents beneath its hull. (See Shipshape and Well-Equipped below)

In many respects though, its what cant be seen just by looking at the ship that sets Neil Armstrong apart from other ships in the fleet. Though it's still too early to tell for certain, observations during Armstrongs initial cruises indicate that its fuel consumption will be noticeably less than other ships. At the same time, its marine diesel engines comply with the Environmental Protection Agencys regulations to reduce exhaust emissions from large, ocean-going ships. The separators that remove oil from seawater used as coolant and ballast meet and often exceed international limits for oily water discharged back to the ocean. In some cases, the discharged water will be cleaner than when Armstrong takes it in.

But one of the biggest advances is in the ships hull design and overall construction. The keel is designed to keep bubbles away from the acoustic sensors mounted on the bottom of the hull, something that should greatly improve scientists' ability to map the seafloor and water column. In addition, much of the ships machinery, from engines to air-conditioning units, is mounted on vibration-absorbing shock absorbers to reduce the noise that the ship radiates into the water. The final analysis is yet to be written, but early tests indicate that the ship is much quieter than the design specifications.

Its a lot of ship in a compact package, said WHOI Vice President of Marine Operations Rob Munier. And were going to ask it to do a lot.

Taking a new research vessel out of the shipyard is not like taking a new car out of the lot. It will probably take a few years, he said, before the crew, technicians, and scientists finds the ships optimal sweet spot when all systemsship, instrument, and human are aligned to maximize performance. The increased complexity of Neil Armstrong's suite of sensors and engineering systems means that technicians and crew have to maintain a high level of performance in conditions that are often nicely referred to as adverse.

The ships system to deploy and recover scientific equipment overboard offers a step up in safety, with fewer people needed to handle lines in rough weather, but it has more moving parts and more delicate electronics that must operate flawlessly time and again while at sea. The same is true of the ships staggering array of sensors, communications equipment, propulsion, and monitoring systems. These modern advances offer researchers the ability to learn more about how the ocean works and how it affects us on shoreat a time when rapidly occurring changes on our planet demand our greater attention.

New technology like this always reinvigorates the [ocean science] community, said Jon Alberts, executive secretary of the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS), the agency in charge of coordinating operations and research on the 21 ships in the U.S. academic fleet. The community has been waiting a long time for this ship and is watching its progress very closely.

But the increased level of complexity also requires a greater level of knowledge and care, especially in the open ocean far from a shipyard. When I go on the ship these days, my techs say, Welcome aboard, just dont touch anything,  Fisichella joked.





Whats in a Name?

The meaning attached to the ship's name isnt lost on Capt. Sheasley. He and the crew transferred en masse from the retired Knorr, after earning a reputation in the scientific community for getting the job done no matter what the sea threw at them. Sailing on a ship named after someone who got the job done at Mach 6 or 250,000 miles from home just makes them stand a little taller.

The effect of Armstrong's name on others became clear about 20 miles from San Francisco. We were approaching the sea buoy that marked the entrance to San Francisco Harbor, where we would pick up our harbor pilot for the passage through the Golden Gate. Over the radio, a vessel traffic controller guided us toward the northern buoy. At a designated location wed start looking for the fast-moving boat carrying our pilot, whose job it is to know the ever-changing seafloor and currents of the harbor.

When it was our turn, the controller gave us rendezvous instructions and then hesitated a moment. Would it be all right, he asked a touch sheepishly, if we took on four pilots? We looked around at the towering bulk of an outbound oil tanker, lightly loaded and riding high in the wind and waves. It could easily fit us in one of its holds, but we knew from radio traffic that it was carrying just one pilot. Four? For us? Capt. Sheasley just chuckled. Everyone wants to see the ship named Neil Armstrong, he said, before keying the mic and replying that of course we would welcome them on board. One of the mates went to the galley and got more coffee cups.

Whether they were there to see the ship or just because they needed a ride to shore was unclear. But when the senior pilot walked down the gangway after we'd tied up to the dock, he made a beeline for the bow and asked the first person he could find to take a picture with the name Neil Armstrong blazing white-on-blue behind him.

Even for those like third mate Josh Woodrow, who is too young to remember the Space Race or that iconic first step by a human on the moon, Neil Armstrong's name carries great weight. It crystallizes a sense of purpose that continues to pull scientists and crew to sea to learn more about our planet and the ocean that makes life on Earth possible.

Its really about exploration and discovery, said Woodrow. A boat named after Neil Armstrong just embodies that sense of exploring, learning new things, and trying to be the first to find out whats out there.

Shipshape and Well-equipped

John Kemp has spent as much time on boats as on land over the past 30 years, putting scientific instruments into the ocean and bringing them back. Kemp is the at-sea operations leader of WHOIs Mooring Operations, Engineering and Field Support Group. To him, a ship is a giant floating puzzle. He needs to be able to pack a ship with gear, move that gear around, and deploy it piece by piece in conditions that make standing still a challenge. The first thing he looks at when he walks on a ship is the size and layout of the decks work area and the size and position of the ships crane.

He was aboard the research vessel Neil Armstrong for a cruise in February, when crew and technicians began testing handling and operations of various instruments and equipment on the ship for the first time. During that trip, he was finally able to answer a question that had been nagging him for quite some time: Is it big enough and flexible enough to handle big loads?

You look at schematics for two years and wonder how it will do, he said. But when you finally see it, you can tell it's going to be great. I think people are going to be pleased.

More cruises are planned throughout the spring and fall to test everything from the layout of the ship's lab to its collection of acoustic instruments, including two multi-beam echo sounders designed to operate at different depths. The EM-122 is particularly suited to survey the ocean floor all the way to Challenger Deep, if needed. To this, the ship adds an EM-710, which is optimized for shallow water. Neil Armstrong and its sister ship, Sally Ride, will be the only ships in the U.S. academic research fleet equipped to conduct high-resolution seafloor surveys almost anywhere the ships can sail.

Scientists are also interested in studying the region between the ship and the seafloor. For this they have three acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCPs) that can scan the water column at different frequencies to reveal the invisible structure of water at varying depths and resolutions. But the crown jewel of these acoustic instruments is the EK-80, a multi-beam, multi-frequency echosounder that go way beyond the capacities of its single-beam, single-frequency cousin, the fish-finder. The EK-80 can not only detect the presence and abundance of marine life beneath the ship, it also offers the potential to differentiate among species of fish and other marine life hidden beneath the surface. Its like going from a black-and-white TV to color, said David Fisichella, head of WHOI's Shipboard Scientific Services Group.

For the engineers, Neil Armstrong offers plenty to be excited about. In addition to clean-burning diesel-electric generators, it has variable-frequency DC propulsion, which means less wear and tear on critical components and higher efficiency. The new ship's integrated controls provide access on touch screens in the engine room and bridge to virtually every critical system, from propulsion and navigation to electrical load to heating and air-conditioning to ballast. And for those times when a little extra help is needed, the navigation system can be monitored and diagnosed from shore.

But many early and anticipated users of the ship agree, the most important part of the ship's systems are the humans on board to run them. For that, said Kemp, the Neil Armstrong excels in ways that no shipyard could design. Having the Knorr crew on board really elevates it.

About the Author

Ken Kostel is WHOI's web science writer/editor. Prior to WHOI, he was a freelance writer living in Manhattan and the Bronx, where he wrote for such publications as Audubon, Science News, and State of the Planet.
Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) Ingalls Shipbuilding division christened the companys 30th Arleigh Burke-class (DDG 51) Aegis guided missile destroyer, Ralph Johnson (DDG 114), April 2 in front of approximately 1,000 guests.

Its been more than a quarter century since the start of construction of Ingalls first Arleigh Burke destroyer, the Barry (DDG 52), said Sean Stackley, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, who delivered the ceremonys principal address. And as I look at the shipyard today, much has changed over the years, but much remains the same. That is the people, the work ethic, the proud workmanship exceeded only by the proud patriotism, passed down from generation to generation here at Ingalls. And also the care and respect that you hold for the young men and women who sail far from your shores under the American flag to defend our way of life here at home. These, thankfully, remain the same.

DDG 114 is named to honor Pfc. Ralph Henry Johnson, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroic actions that saved others during the Vietnam War. Johnson shouted a warning to his fellow Marines and hurled himself on an explosive device, saving the life of one Marine and preventing the enemy from penetrating his sector of the patrols perimeter. Johnson died instantly. The Charleston, S.C., native had only been in Vietnam for two months and a few days when he was killed at the age of 19.

Johnsons sister, Helen Richards, spoke at the ceremony. I know my brother is looking down and saying, Why make a fuss over me? she said. He was quiet, giving and caring. Whatever he was asked to do, he did it. I love my brother, and I wish he was here. But I know he is in a better place. To ship commander Jason Patterson: Ralph will be with you and your crew at all times when this wonderful ship goes to sea.

On April 20, 1970, President Richard M. Nixon posthumously awarded Johnson the Medal of Honor, the highest recognition and honor a member of the United States military can receive. On Sept. 5, 1991, 23 years after his heroic act, the Veterans Hospital in Charleston was renamed the Ralph H. Johnson Veterans Hospital.

Georgeann McRaven, wife of retired Adm. Bill McRaven, is the ships sponsor and smashed a bottle of sparkling wine across the bow of the ship, officially christening DDG 114 as Ralph Johnson. God bless this ship and all who sail on her, she said.

Ingalls has delivered 28 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers to the Navy. Other destroyers currently under construction at Ingalls are John Finn (DDG 113), Paul Ignatius (DDG 117), Delbert D. Black (DDG 119) and Frank E. Peterson Jr. (DDG 121).

This programlike our LPD and National Security Cutter programsis proof of the benefits of a hot production line and our ability to improve on cost and schedule with each new ship, said Ingalls Shipbuilding President Brian Cuccias. This ship is a true example of moving specialized work teams from one ship to another and how that can improve efficiency and affordability. And while were proud of our performance on this ship, were also proud that it is named after a true American hero. Ralph Henry Johnson was only 19 years old when he sacrificed his life for someone elses. His story is tragic, but its also inspiring. It reminds us that anyoneregardless of age or rankcan make a difference.

Mike Petters, HIIs president and CEO, also attended the ceremony, along with platform speakers Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss.; Rep. Steven Palazzo R-Miss.; Vice Adm. Ted Branch, deputy chief of naval operations, information warfare, and director of naval intelligence; and Lt. Gen. Ronald Bailey, the Marine Corps deputy commandant, plans, policies and operations.

Arleigh Burke-class destroyers are highly capable, multi-mission ships that can conduct a variety of operations, from peacetime presence and crisis management to sea control and power projection, all in support of the United States military strategy. DDGs are capable of simultaneously fighting air, surface and subsurface battles. The ship contains myriad offensive and defensive weapons designed to support maritime defense needs well into the 21st century.
U.S. Judge Carl Barbier granted final approval on Monday to BP Plc's civil settlement over its 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill after it reached a deal in July 2015 to pay up to $18.7 billion in penalties to the U.S. government and five states.



The company at the time said its total pre-tax charges from the spill set aside for criminal and civil penalties and cleanup costs were around $53.8 billion.



Under the terms of the original agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice and the Gulf Coast states, BP will pay at least $12.8 billion for Clean Water Act fines and natural resource damages, plus $4.9 billion to states. The payouts will be staggered over some 16 18 years.



The rig explosion on April 20, 2010, the worst offshore oil disaster in U.S. history, killed 11 workers and spewed millions of barrels of oil onto the shorelines of several states for nearly three months.





(Reporting By Jonathan Stempel and Terry Wade)
Aberdeen-headquarted, Hydro Group plc is recognised as a finalist at the 2016 Made in Scotland Awards for the categories Manufacturer of the Year and Exporter of the Year.



The subsea cable and connector specialist is at the forefront in the development and innovation of subsea product technologies, with involvement from prototype concept through to design, manufacture and project management.



The company has been named as a finalist for the Manufacturer of the Year as a result of its continued, and outstanding manufacturing efforts. From its state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities in Scotland, Hydro Group develops the complete subsea electrical and optical interconnect package, built to withstand the harshest environmental conditions.



Similarly, the shortlisting for Exporter of the Year draws upon Hydro Groups innovative approach and tireless commitment to successfully supply Scottish made products to both domestic and international markets. These markets include Canada, Europe and the Far East, further supported by its Singapore based division Hydro Group Asia, formed in 2013.



Doug Whyte, managing director at Hydro Group, said: We are extremely honoured to have been shortlisted and recognised for over three decades of Scottish manufacturing. Our dedication to British manufacturing goes beyond our own in-house capabilities, with 95% of our suppliers being UK based, 30% of which are Scottish.



We are proud of our dedicated team in Scotland, and our international offices, for their continued innovation and development of subsea cables and connectors, adapting to the ever changing oil and gas industry, while also securing a stronghold in other markets including defence, oceanographic and renewable energies.



A celebration of innovation, the Made in Scotland Awards recognise companies that have successfully capitalised on their Scottish roots in promoting their products out with the country. Winners will be announced at a prestigious awards ceremony on Thursday 21st April, at the RBS Gogarburn, Edinburgh.




U.S. Marines and sailors with II Marine Expeditionary Force packed up their bags and headed home after a nine-month deployment to Iraqs al Anbar province at the end of March 2016.



The troops manned the command element for Task Force Al Taqaddum, at Al Taqaddum Air Base, Iraq, with the mission to advise and assist members of the Iraqi Security Forces conducting operations in the province, primarily in the Ramadi area.



The team of advisors arrived in Al Taqaddum to form the task force shortly after President Barack Obamas June 10, 2015, announcement on the augmentation of U.S. troops to provide assistance to Iraqi forces in their fight to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.



In addition to the II MEF Marines, the U.S.-led coalition force is composed of augments from the Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force Crisis Response Central Command, as well and U.S. Soldiers, Airmen and components of the Australian and Italian armed forces. The task force currently operates out of Camp Manion at the air base.



During their tour, the team advised the leadership of the 8th Iraqi Army Division, which ultimately led to the recapture of Ramadi, early this year.

U.S. Marine Col. Christopher J. Douglas, the task force commander said that members of the task force advised and assisted the ISF regarding the planning and coordination for operations in the form of surveillance and reconnaissance for key areas where [the Iraqis] were going to conduct operations in addition to fire support planning and monitoring of the attacks.



Nine months ago, there was a much smaller footprint [in the area]. Many capabilities had been added as a need developed within the ISF and right now we would consider Ramadi secured, said Douglas. The local governance and the ISF are now enabled to focus on the stability [of the area] and security operations.



Douglas also said the recapture of Ramadi is the result of the hard work put in by the ISF, and the task force simply served as advisors throughout the process.



As far as the role that was played in the securing of Ramadi, really who all the credit goes to is the ISF, said Douglas. [Ours] was a limited role in the planning and coordination of operations.



Through the conduct of operations, members of the task force drew from their offensive mindset to better assist their Iraqi counterparts in the planning and execution of tactics, techniques and procedures.



[As] the Ramadi counter attacks were going on, the members of the task force, specifically the advisors, were providing training to members of the 8th Division, the Anbar Operation Command and the 10th Division, in small number because primarily the forces were committed to the fight, said Douglas.



The task force conducted train-the-trainer training on communications and radio operations, artillery, explosive ordnance disposal, breaching, and medical techniques. TFTQ trained nearly 60 Iraqi soldiers on communications and radio operations and more than 40 on artillery. They also trained eight EOD teams, and approximately 40 Iraqis were trained on medical and life-saving procedures.



With their newly gained education, the Iraqis were now able to go back to their units and hold sessions to teach what they learned to other soldiers.



We saw a real-time effect with the training that was conducted, said Douglas. Specific to the medical training, [Iraqi] medics that we worked with came back with casualties and the task forces medical advisors saw the actual practical applications of some of the techniques that [our U.S. medical personnel] had shown them in training.



In addition to the planning and coordination for operations and training, the task force also assisted in the care of wounded Iraqi Soldiers who were injured in combat.



Douglas said that this was a significant element as it gave Iraqi Soldiers the will to continue to fight.



If a wounded Iraqi soldier is brought to the gates of Camp Manion, they are first treated by U.S. Navy corpsmen, who assess the patients injuries, stabilize them and perform emergency procedures on the spot, if necessary. Based on the corpsmans assessment, a patient could be admitted for further care by the U.S. Army medical teams. The assessment must meet the medical rules of eligibility to determine if the corpsmen are able to provide care. Iraqi Soldiers who are in danger of losing their life are seen immediately, where more routine injuries may be referred to local hospitals.



According to a medical advisor, the task force admitted 360 casualties for surgery in addition to over 100 who were treated at the gate for minor injuries during TFTQs nine-month deployment.



The expansion of Camp Manion, which houses the task force, is another noticeable accomplishment for the task force.



[The camp] has grown a lot and many capabilities have been added and enhanced, said Douglas. I can say that all the credit goes to all of the members of the task force for their diligence, their hard work ethic and their ability to work together  regardless of service  towards the achievement of the shared and common goal, which is providing the best spot available to provide advice, assistance and training for the ISF during the Ramadi counter attacks.



The new team of advisors arrived at Camp Manion mid-March to begin taking over the task forces A&A mission. The team is led by U.S. Marine Col. Sam Cook from II MEF. This is Cooks third deployment to Iraq, and he hopes to be as successful as Douglas team was.



The previous team under Col. Douglas had an outstanding success with the recapture of Ramadi; I hope to continue that success, said Cook. And I look forward to the challenge of helping the Iraqi Security Forces retake their country.



Cook is also excited to work with other branches of services and is confident in his team.



Im looking forward to working in a joint environment with soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines we brought out here from across the [II Marine Expeditionary Force], said Cook. Every Marine in II MEF, which is the core of the command element here at the task force, comes from across the [2nd Marine Aircraft Wing], the [2nd Marine Division], and the [2nd Marine Logistics Group]. They were all hand selected and approved by their commanding generals, so the core command element is top notch.





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The annual Marine Corps 17.75K race took a different turn this year after Prince William County Police Officer and U.S. Marine veteran Cpl. Ashley Guindons tragic death. The 28-year-old was fatally wounded Feb. 27 in the line of duty while responding to a domestic call in Woodbridge, Virginia. It was her first day on the job.

In response to the turn of events that fateful day, about 150 police officers, first responders, service members and supporters ran the 11.03 miles in Guindons honor paying tribute to her dedication to service in both the Marine Corps and the police department. The team of runners wore shirts displaying the names of fallen officers to honor their selfless service and ultimate sacrifice.

Jason Van Horn spent 14 years with the Prince William County Police Department and was Guindons squad leader during her time in the academy.

I was on the fence about running this year, Van Horn said. Once I found out about the tribute, I signed up immediately. We all wanted to come together to support the family.

Officers who had never even had the opportunity to meet Guindon showed support at the race.

Its a difficult time for police officers right now, said Aron Shore, police officer with PWCPD for 18 years. We appreciate the support from the community.

Guindon served in the Marine Corps Reserves from 2007 to 2015. She finished her tour as a personnel retrieval and processing specialist at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in Washington D.C., and left to pursue her career in law enforcement.

She was excited to start her [law enforcement] career, said Guindons mother, Sharon Guindon as she shared memories of her daughter. She loved to serve.

Although Guindons mom did not run the race, several other family members did including an aunt from Massachusetts.

I wanted to run with them in honor of Ashley, said Joanna Guindon. Being with people who care about you and support you helps. Without the police department this would be a different situation. They have helped tremendously. Were excited to be here.

This event marks the 80th anniversary of the 17.75K, and Marines and supporters proudly welcomed finishers as they crossed the finish line. 2nd Lt. Andrew Harper, a student at The Basic School at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, finished with a time of 1:05:33 sealing the first place win followed by Robert Michell in second place and Charles Engle in third. The first female finisher, Sharon Schmidt-Mongrain from Pennsylvania finished with a time of 1:16:12. She was followed by Alissa Savage in second and Ashley Kniss in third.

What could have been a sad occasion ended up being a celebration not only of the life and sacrifice of Guindon but of the dedication to service that members of all organizations share. As stated by Guindons mother as she welcomed the finishers across the line, Marines do amazing things.
Marine Corps officers participated in the Watch Officer Exercise while training at the Military Police Officer Basic Course at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, March 24-28, 2016.

The Marine MPOBC is a 70-day training course. The instructors train the students in police advising and training, law enforcement training, conducting law enforcement training, expeditionary forensics and preparing them for garrison and expeditionary law enforcement.

Until the summer of 2015, Marine Corps military police officers attended the Armys MP Basic Officer Course, which included a good amount training Marines previously learned at The Basic School. Now, all future MP Marine officers attend the Marine MPOBC, an exclusive Marine Corps training course.

We were tasked at the school house to develop military police basic officer course strictly for Marine lieutenants and young company grade officers, said Capt. Tate Blenke, officer instructor and curriculum developer for Military Police Basic Officer Course. We implemented our own curriculum and were able to take Marine Corps orders, policies, standard operating procedures and teach Marine Corps officers exactly what they should be doing at a provost marshal office or at a law enforcement battalion directly after MOS school.

The second iteration of the new course began in January. The course includes a Watch Officer Exercise, which is meant to simulate the daily duties at a provost marshal office and is geared toward garrison law enforcement.

The importance of this exercise is to give the students the opportunity to serve in a leadership role where they will be in charge of Marines and Marine Corps civilian law enforcement professionals, said Blenke. Marines may be in charge at a provost marshal office at any base or station.

Students participated in realistic training scenarios such as medical assists, domestic assaults, sexual assaults, active shooter, suspicious packages, traffic stops, access control and paper work during the exercise. Students also rotated in and out of the desk sergeant role while gaining an understanding of how calls are dispatched and how notifications are made for incident reports.

The hardest part of this training exercise is definitely communication along with command and control within the scenarios, said Blenke. This exercise trains the students to be able to conduct themselves appropriately and professionally in a garrison law enforcement environment.

If for instance theres a domestic dispute, the students would need to control those individuals, get the information, paint a picture for dispatch so dispatch can put that into their logs as well as when they can come back they can fill out their incident report later on.

This exercise was the culminating event for all the training the students have gone through so far.

Previously the course was with the Army and my favorite part now is being just with Marines, said 2nd Lt. Payton Roberts, a student at the Marine MPOBC. A lot of Marines go to the provost marshal office and law enforcement battalions, so we get to focus on those two different aspects in this course. We really focus on what the Marine Corps does in the MP community.

The new course allows students to lead enlisted Marines who are at the Military Police Basic School giving them the opportunity to test things they have been taught during the course.

The importance of separating from the Army is very structured to where we also jump in with the enlisted Marines, said Gunnery Sgt. Joseph Clarkin, course chief at the Marine MPOBC. The students get that leadership perspective before they go to the fleet and get the opportunity to interact with enlisted Marines before they hit the operating force.

The officers will have a chance to put their skills to use with the enlisted military police students during the upcoming Law Enforcement Professional Exercise in April to evaluate their skills in an expeditionary environment.
Ordinarily, an upward revision to GDP growth would bring a bit of good cheer-usually of the "hey, that was better than we thought!" variety. But when UK Q4 GDP growth was revised up to 0.6% q/q on Thursday, it brought some hyperbolic handwringing. Some said it was the wrong kind of growth, built on consumer spending instead of trade and business investment-or, if you will, "sand." Others skipped over the upward bump entirely, latching onto the record-low saving ratio and peacetime record-high current account deficit as evidence the country is stretched beyond its means and facing an ugly day of reckoning. At face value, it all sounds quite scary, but in reality, these stats aren't very meaningful-arbitrary measurements that don't much reflect the country's health. The UK's economy-and by extension, markets-remain in much better shape than most give them credit for.

Let's start with the GDP report. Consumer-driven growth isn't new or necessarily bad. The UK economy is 80% services, after all, so it stands to reason that consumers would do most of the heavy lifting. It's a sore spot for those biased in favor of a manufacturing-heavy economy, nostalgic for the UK's days as an industrial powerhouse, but the country has evolved. All advanced economies have-it is the natural order of things. Agriculture gives way to factories. Factories give way to services. One day services will give way to something else. Maybe intergalactic services! Or intergalactic mining! But it is something to cheer, not fear. Services are no less sustainable as a growth engine than manufacturing. They are just different.

As for the actual expenditure breakdown, we're never ones to write off a drop in business investment, as plunging business investment typically accompanies a recession. But not every drop in business investment brings recession. All Scotch is whiskey, but not all whiskey is Scotch, as it were. Business investment is a fairly volatility data point, and there are plenty of false signals. This expansion has seen several (Exhibit 1). The latest drop stemmed largely from a -9.3% drop in transport equipment investment, which reeks of North Sea oil cutbacks. That is hardly a surprise, as the industry's battle with dirt-cheap oil prices is widely known. Oil-related cutbacks also flipped US business investment negative in Q4. Seems to us this is just another example of Energy's woes masking strength in other sectors.

Exhibit 1: UK Business Investment During This Expansion

Source: Office for National Statistics, as of 4/1/2016.

Energy also bears much of the blame for that record-high current account deficit. For those not familiar (and we don't blame you), the current account deficit is calculated thusly:

(Exports + Income on Outbound Foreign Direct Investment) - (Imports + Income on Inbound Foreign Direct Investment )

Or if equations aren't your thing, it adds the value of all exports and income on Brits' foreign investments, then subtracts the value of all imports and the income on foreigners' investments in the UK.

The UK typically runs a trade deficit, importing more than it exports. This is fairly normal for advanced, service-driven economies, and it isn't a bad thing. The UK simply takes advantage of other countries' expertise, letting them make trinkets, gadgets and garments while Brits do other things. The world works pretty darned well when countries are allowed to specialize. While other countries make a lot of things, the UK produces services (and still some goods) that require more advanced human capital and, in turn, generate higher incomes and better living standards. So this part of the current account isn't so bad. Nor is the other part, the investment-related stuff. It is tied mostly to falling earnings on Brits' overseas investments, which are in turn tied to the commodities downturn. The UK is home to some of the world's largest Energy and Materials firms, and they have invested a lot in foreign mines and oil fields. These investments have cratered due to falling oil and metals prices. Meanwhile, UK assets have generated nice returns-a sign of the country's strength, yet it subtracts from the current account. Lesson: Sometimes econometrics are weird.

Exhibit 2: The UK's Current Account

Source: Office for National Statistics, as of 4/1/2016. Page 33 of this report defines all the jargon in detail. But in general, income credits are income earned from abroad, and income debits are income sent abroad. Primary refers to the private sector, and secondary refers to central governments. We presume exports and imports are self-explanatory.

Those who warn of current account doom claim a high current account deficit makes the UK dependent on the kindness of strangers to fund investment (and, most importantly, buy gilts), presuming the negative balance means money is seeping out of the country. But this isn't how it works. There is no seepage. Brits buy things from abroad, and the sellers invest the capital in Britain. This is how foreign trade works. UK debt's attractiveness has nothing to do with trade flows, the current account or, despite the many claims otherwise, EU membership. People, banks, pension funds, central governments and other investors buy gilts because they are liquid, high quality, higher-yielding than many similar assets, and backed by the full faith and credit of Her Majesty's Treasury. They will probably still do this no matter how much the country imports and no matter how much earnings on those foreign commodity investments fall. Gilts are that desirable.

Finally, the household saving ratio, which hit an all-time-low 3.8% in Q4 2015. According to the Office for National Statistics, this means UK households saved a record-low percentage of their disposable income. But here, too, things get wonky, as the ratio has some odd inputs. For one, it doesn't measure households' activities only. UK "household" statistics also include non-profit institutions. So, it's really the purported savings of households, charities, schools and their ilk. Households comprise the bulk of it, but skew is skew. Two, the measure of spending includes an arcane item called owner-imputed rent, which is the amount a homeowner would pay to rent their own home. This...is not a thing anyone actually pays. And yes, mortgage payments are included in expenditures, so this is double-counting and then some. Finally, on the savings side, while it does include pension contributions, it excludes capital gains. That is kind of a big deal. Sure, capital gains aren't new savings, but they represent growth of existing savings, and a lot of people live off them in retirement. Which is sort of what savings are for.

The saving ratio doesn't tell you whether people are overall better or worse off. In 2014, the saving ratio fell all year, yet household net worth rose 12%. Were people really living beyond their means and storing up trouble? Or is economics maybe just weird sometimes?

As for concerns about real disposable income falling -0.6% q/q in Q4 while consumer spending and debt rose, this isn't evidence consumers are tapped out. Consumer spending and disposable income diverge often (Exhibit 3), and household balance sheets are in overall fine shape. Income growth might vary from quarter, but it is growing quite nicely from year to year. Don't let short-term swings make you myopic.

Exhibit 3: Household Spending and Disposable Income

Source: Office for National Statistics, as of 4/1/2016.

Look, we won't argue everything is perfect in the UK economy. No country will fire on all cylinders all the time. But the strong areas outnumber and outweigh the pockets of weakness, and the whole is what ultimately matters. As in the US, the many strong areas are pulling the rest along. With the yield curve steepening a bit lately, the Leading Economic Index in a solid uptrend and money supply growth improving, things should stay good for the foreseeable future.
Vietnam War at 50: Have We Learned Nothing?

Last week Defense Secretary Ashton Carter laid a wreath at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington in commemoration of the "50th anniversary" of that war. The date is confusing, as the war started earlier and ended far later than 1966. But the Vietnam War at 50 commemoration presents a good opportunity to reflect on the war and whether we have learned anything from it.

Some 60,000 Americans were killed fighting in that war more than 8,000 miles away. More than a million Vietnamese military and civilians also lost their lives. The US government did not accept that it had pursued a bad policy in Vietnam until the bitter end. But in the end the war was lost and we went home, leaving the destruction of the war behind. For the many who survived on both sides, the war would continue to haunt them.

It was thought at the time that we had learned something from this lost war. The War Powers Resolution was passed in 1973 to prevent future Vietnams by limiting the president's ability to take the country to war without the Constitutionally-mandated Congressional declaration of war. But the law failed in its purpose and was actually used by the war party in Washington to make it easier to go to war without Congress.

Such legislative tricks are doomed to failure when the people still refuse to demand that elected officials follow the Constitution.

When President George HW Bush invaded Iraq in 1991, the warhawks celebrated what they considered the end of that post-Vietnam period where Americans were hesitant about being the policeman of the world. President Bush said famously at the time, "By God, we've kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all."

They may have beat the Vietnam Syndrome, but they learned nothing from Vietnam.

Colonel Harry Summers returned to Vietnam in 1974 and told his Vietnamese counterpart Colonel Tsu, "You know, you never beat us on the battlefield." The Vietnamese officer responded, "That may be so, but it is also irrelevant."

He is absolutely correct: tactical victories mean nothing when pursuing a strategic mistake.

Last month was another anniversary. March 20, 2003 was the beginning of the second US war on Iraq. It was the night of "shock and awe" as bombs rained down on Iraqis. Like Vietnam, it was a war brought on by government lies and propaganda, amplified by a compliant media that repeated the lies without hesitation.

Like Vietnam, the 2003 Iraq war was a disaster. More than 5,000 Americans were killed in the war and as many as a million or more Iraqis lost their lives. There is nothing to show for the war but destruction, trillions of dollars down the drain, and the emergence of al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Sadly, unlike after the Vietnam fiasco there has been almost no backlash against the US empire. In fact, President Obama has continued the same failed policy and Congress doesn't even attempt to reign him in. On the very anniversary of that disastrous 2003 invasion, President Obama announced that he was sending US Marines back into Iraq! And not a word from Congress.

We've seemingly learned nothing.

There have been too many war anniversaries! We want an end to all these pointless wars. It's time we learn from these horrible mistakes.



Dr. Ron Paul

Project Freedom

Congressman Ron Paul of Texas enjoys a national reputation as the premier advocate for liberty in politics today. Dr. Paul is the leading spokesman in Washington for limited constitutional government, low taxes, free markets, and a return to sound monetary policies based on commodity-backed currency. He is known among both his colleagues in Congress and his constituents for his consistent voting record in the House of Representatives: Dr. Paul never votes for legislation unless the proposed measure is expressly authorized by the Constitution. In the words of former Treasury Secretary William Simon, Dr. Paul is the "one exception to the Gang of 535" on Capitol Hill.

Dr. Ron Paul Archive

 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.




Trump to Run as Independent if Denied GOP Nomination?

National polls show him way out in front, up to 20 points over Cruz. Youd think hed be unstoppable. Not if party bosses intend blocking him. More on this below.



Americas political system is deplorable, the best democracy money can buy, insiders deciding wholl be president and fill key congressional posts, ordinary people having no say whatever.

Elections are farcical, theater, not democracy in action, meaningless exercises, why half the electorate usually opts out.



Choices this year for the nations highest office show why - between a political anomaly bombastic billionaire real estate tycoon, the Senates most detested neocon, a dangerous war goddess risking WW III if elected, and a phony populist making promises he wont keep.



Trump looks poised to be slightly short of the 1,237 delegates needed for nomination when Republicans meet at convention time in July - yet way ahead of only rival Cruz.



Hes adamant, saying the candidate with the most votes should be party standard bearer. I have millions more votes. Thats my leverage, he said.



A Bloomberg poll last month showed nearly two-thirds of Republicans support his position if not his worldview.



A March Pew Center poll showed only 38% of Republicans and others likely to support party candidates willing to endorse him if nominated.



Are plans afoot for anyone but Trump? Will dirty politics deny the clear GOP frontrunner? On Fox News Sunday, he refused to rule out an independent run if a manipulated convention fails to make him GOP standard bearer.



I want to run as a Republican, he said. I will beat Hillary Clinton. He abandoned his pledge to support another party choice if denied. His future plans depend on how hes treated, he said - so far very unfairly, he stressed.



Whats happening behind the scenes wont be known until nominating convention time. Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus was less than candid saying plans arent afoot to deny Trump.



Party bosses are actively plotting to stop him, secret discussions taking place, aiming for a brokered convention they control.



It remains to be seen if Trump can foil them. Politics isnt for sissies - corrupt and dirty in America, a democracy in name only.

By Stephen Lendman

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com

His new book as editor and contributor is titled Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.

http://www.claritypress.com/Lendman.html

He lives in Chicago and can be reached in Chicago at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.



Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday through Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national topics. All programs are archived for easy listening.

 2016 Copyright Stephen Lendman - All Rights Reserved Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.

 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.




The European Union Is Anti-European

Louis Rouanet writes: What is Europe? It seems that no rigorous answer can be provided. Europe is not exactly a continent. It is not a political entity. It is not a united people. The best definition, in fact, may be that Europe is the outcome of a long historical process that engendered unique institutions and a unique vision of what men ought to be. The idea that men ought to be free from violent government interference. Europe has no founding fathers. Its birth was not orchestrated but completely spontaneous. Its development was not imposed by armies and governments but was the voluntary product of clerics, merchants, serfs, and intellectuals who were seeking to interact freely with each other. Europeans were united by their freedoms and divided by their governments. In other words, Europe was built against States and their arbitrary restrictions, not by them.

After the fall of the Roman Empire a period of political anarchy followed where cities, aristocrats, kings, and the church all competed with each other. Therefore, as Dr. Ralph Raico noted in his article The European Miracle,

Although geographical factors played a role, the key to western development is to be found in the fact that, while Europe constituted a single civilization  Latin Christendom  it was at the same time radically decentralized. In contrast to other cultures  especially China, India, and the Islamic world  Europe comprised a system of divided and, hence, competing powers and jurisdictions.

In other words, over the centuries, a long evolution of the institutions gave birth to personal liberty. Although the European aristocracies and states were restricting freedom, they were forced to grant more autonomy to their subjects, for, if they did not, people were opting out by migrating or using black markets. As Leonard Liggio puts it, after 1000 A.D.:

While bound by the chains of the Peace and Truce of God from looting the people, the uncountable manors and baronies meant uncounted competing jurisdictions in close proximity. ... This polycentric system created a check on politicians; the artisan or merchant could move down the road to another jurisdiction if taxes or regulation were imposed.

Europe was where the road to freedom began. It was in Europe that the values of individualism, liberalism, and autonomy rose from history and gave humanity a sense of progress that no civilization had ever experienced to such an extent before. Unfortunately, the values and institutions that made Europe great vanished under the pressure of political centralization, nationalism, statism, socialism, and fascism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Today, however, a new danger looms over Europe  the European Union.

The European Institutions Against the Free Market

Contrary to what is often said, the European Union has nothing to do with peace, freedom, free trade, free capital and migration movement, cooperation, or stability. All this can very well be provided in a decentralized system. The European Union is nothing more than a cartel of governments that tries to gain power by harmonizing the fiscal and regulatory legislation in every member State. Article 99 of the Treaty of Rome (1957) clearly states that indirect taxation can be harmonized in the interest of the Common Market by the European Commission. As for Article 101 of the same Treaty, it explicitly restrains regulatory competition where the Commission finds that a disparity existing between the legislative or administrative provisions of the Member States distorts the conditions of competition in the Common Market.

Since the very beginning, with the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951, the European institutions were more planning agencies than anything else. Indeed, the coal and steel industries at the time were mostly nationalized and the goal of the ECSC was to coordinate governments activities in these two sectors, not to liberalize activity. The fact that the ECSC was not about free trade but about government planning was known by everybody at the time. It was Robert Schuman, the French minister of foreign affairs, who proposed in his declaration of 9 May 1950, that the Franco-German coal and steel production be placed under a common High Authority within the framework of an organization in which other European countries could participate. Also, the ECSC created for the first time European anti-trust legislation, which as Austrians know, is nothing less than government planning in the name of an erroneous vision of what competition is. Even the Treaty of Rome (1957), the basis of the EU as we know it, despite enacting the free movement of goods, capital, and persons, remains a highly statist treaty. Indeed, it is often forgotten that among other things, the Treaty of Rome created a European Investment Bank, a European Social Fund, the highly protectionist common agricultural policy, the common transport policy, and reinforced European anti-trust legislation. Therefore, if in the short and medium run, the Treaty of Rome, by breaking the neck of protectionism, was a boon for the European economy, it created institutions that could easily expand their regulatory power in the future, and that is exactly what they did.

Many free marketers support the European Union on the ground that even if their regulations are bad, they are still far better than those produced by our very prolific national governments. Such a line of argument, often used in more socialist countries such as France, is sheer nonsense. It is the equivalent of saying: I dont mind being robbed twice because the second thief will be much nicer to me. The question is not how to make better regulations but how to expand free trade.

Europeanism: True and False

In 1946, F.A. Hayek wrote a pathbreaking article named Individualism: True and False where he distinguished two different individualist intellectual traditions. One, as Hayek calls it, is true individualism, based on evolutionism, the idea that institutions and individuals behaviors are not planned consciously but are rather the result of a spontaneous process. True individualism follows the tradition of the Scottish Enlightenment. False individualism, on the contrary, is based on extreme rationalism and solipsism. False individualism is based on the idea that society, freedom, and markets, can be planned and should be planned. This false individualism is the heir of the 1789 and  even more clearly  of the 1793 French Revolutionaries.

These two sorts of individualism are today at the root of two different sorts of Europeanism. True Europeanism admits that most of what made Europe was not planned but rather spontaneous. The implications are that we ought to have as much decentralization as possible for Europe to continue to strive and to safeguard human liberties. On the other hand, false Europeanism thinks that Europe can only truly become Europe if planning by common political institutions exists. False Europeanists believe that the only alternative is between Nation States and the European Union. Their defense of a centralized European political entity is based on the erroneous idea that political centralization is positively linked to the process of civilization because society, law, markets, prosperity, and the European spirit ought to be designed by rulers. Europe during the Middle Ages, those thinkers say, lacked trade integration because it lacked political unification. It follows that we must be grateful today for the existence of the European Union. In their narrative, economic progress took place only when Europe slowly began to develop new trading alliances that combined some aspects of military protection with something akin to a free-trade area. But this version of history is very far from the truth. In the Middle Ages for instance, the lex mercatoria, the law of merchants, was purely private. Furthermore, the protective tariffs were mostly ignored anyway by Europeans. Smuggling was so widespread that England in the late Middle Ages should be in fact considered as a nation of smugglers rather than a nation of merchants. As Murray Rothbard noted in Conceived in Liberty:

Too many historians have fallen under the spell of the interpretation of the late nineteenth-century German economic historians (for example, Schmoller, Bucher, Ehrenberg): that the development of a strong centralized nation-state was requisite to the development of capitalism in the early modern period. Not only is this thesis refuted by the flourishing of commercial capitalism in the Middle Ages in the local and non-centralized cities of northern Italy, the Hanseatic League, and the fairs of Champagne.  It is also refuted by the outstanding growth of the capitalist economy in free, localized Antwerp and Holland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Thus the Dutch came to outstrip the rest of Europe while retaining medieval local autonomy and eschewing state-building, mercantilism, government participation in enterprise  and aggressive war.

Thus, the idea that a centralized authority, in our case the European Union, is necessary for free trade is pure fantasy, It is false Europeanism. Its constructivist approach has prevailed in European institutions since the beginning. For example, one of the goals advanced by the Treaty of Rome was to create markets through a unified European Anti-trust legislation. Similarly, the official justification of the Common Agricultural Policy introduced in 1962 was to create a unified agricultural market. But markets do not need States or treaties to exist and they certainly do not need the European Union.

The parallel between false Europeanism and false individualism is also relevant when it comes to their respective imperialistic tendencies. Whereas the French revolutionaries wanted to invade Europe to impose their universal values through force, the European Union does not tolerate, in the name of Europe, independent States that do not want to submit to Brussels. Switzerland, for instance, is forced by the European Union to adopt countless regulations concerning food safety and gun ownership. If the Swiss confederation does not comply with many provisions of European law, the European Union threatens to cut Switzerlands access to the single market.

The most incredible political success of the European Union zealots is their constant shaming of those who refuse to submit to a European hegemonic super-State. But we must understand that only so-called Euro sceptics can truly be pro-Europe. Only Euro sceptics can be loyal toward the history and liberal values of their continent. In other words, the European Union is a highly anti-European institution.

We Need Decentralization

On June 28, 2016, the British will vote on whether they want to stay in the EU or not. If the NO vote wins, it might be the end of the European Union as we know it. Historically, Britain played a major role in the maintenance of a fairly decentralized European order. Whether it was with Napoleonic France, or the German 2nd Reich, or Nazi Germany, it has always been Britain that ultimately helped to break up the hegemonic endeavors of empires on continental Europe. The question is, then, will Britain play its historical role this summer against the imperialistic European Union? We should consider any attempt to establish a more decentralized system with more competition between States as a boon for Europe and the Europeans. To be sure, the Nation-States must be dismantled, but not if it means the creation of an even bigger European Leviathan. It is, on the contrary, the regionalists and independence movements that must be supported, whether it is Scotland, Catalonia, or Corsica. The European miracle can be revived only through extreme political decentralization. What history teaches us is that Europe is greater than the individuals that compose it only insofar as it respects liberty. Insofar as it is controlled or directed by a monolithic and central political authority or by bellicose Nation-States, Europe is limited by the inability of Europeans to escape the arbitrary restrictions of their governments.

Louis Rouanet is a student at Sciences Po Paris (Institute of Political Studies) where he studies economics and political science.

http://mises.org

 2016 Copyright Louis Rouanet - All Rights Reserved Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.

 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.




TODAYS WORD is parry (par-ee). Examples: (1.) The fencer skillfully parried her opponents thrusts; (2.) "The AMP [Accelerated Mobile Pages] technology  indirectly parries one of the main threats facing digital ad companiesthe growing use of ad-blocking software in response to slow, buggy, and hard-to-use Web pagesby stopping ads from slowing down access to articles."  Jack Clark and Gerry Smith, The Boston Globe, 25 Feb. 2016

SUNDAYS WORD was shrapnel (shrap-nl) It means small metal pieces that scatter outwards from an exploding bomb, shell, or mine. Example: Shrapnel from the explosion wounded many people.

In celebration of National Public Health Week, the West Piedmont Health District and Go Healthy West Piedmont, in partnership with Virginia Cooperative Extension will host a district-wide food drive at the Henry-Martinsville, Patrick County and Franklin County Health Departments starting today through Friday. All food items collected will be donated to local food pantries.

There will be drop-off boxes in the lobbies of all the health departments from 8 a.m. until 4:30 p.m., and a drive-through drop-off from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday at the Henry-Martinsville Health Department. The first 50 drive-thru food drive participants will receive a Go Healthy lifestyle gift bag. Although all commercial, non-perishable items are welcome, Go Healthy West Piedmont suggests items such as brown rice, whole grain pasta and cereal, canned tuna, salmon and chicken, dried beans, canned beans (low-sodium preferred), lentils, raisins, peanut butter, cornmeal, canned fruit, pasta sauce with vegetables, and olive oil.

Items with expired dates and home-canned goods cannot be accepted.

Southern Area Agency on Aging (SAAA) will host a Diabetes Self-Management Workshop, beginning at 5 p.m. Tuesday at 204 Cleveland Ave., Martinsville. The workshop and materials are free for all participants. Refreshments will be served during the sessions.

If you are someone with diabetes or close to someone who is diabetic and you want to learn more about how to manage this chronic illness and take back control of your lifestyle, contact Amanda Foddrell-Shuff at SAAA toll free at (800) 468-4571.

The workshop will be held on Tuesdays for six weeks, ending on May 10.

The Henry County Bike Club, Elks Club and members of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church along with Thrivent Financial Services will hold a fundraising dinner to benefit Hugh Gerlach with his medical needs. The location and raffle items will be announced later this week. For more information, contact Linda Drange at 276-340-9105 or go to lindad19501@live.com.

A Poor Mans Supper will be held from 6-8 p.m. on April 15, with all proceeds to benefit FOCUS on Youth/CASA. The supper will be at Smith Memorial United Methodist Church in Collinsville, sponsored by UM Women of the church. In addition to the supper, there will be a silent auction with "Childhood Dreams" themed pieces from local artists, T-shirts, and more. Donations are also welcome. The supper menu: pinto beans, cole slaw, red potatoes, corn bread, dessert and drinks. The cost is $7 per person; children under age three eat free.
The following draft document was discussed at the World Congress of the International Marxist Tendency in July 2016. The main aim of the document is to define the main economic, social and political trends in the world today and to develop a perspective for the class struggle in the next period. The document was originally drafted in October 2015. [You can read the final version of the document, which was passed at the congress here as well as a special resolution passed on the question of Brexit here - ed.]

The year 2016 was ushered in by sharp falls on the stock exchange in China that swept across the globe, reflecting a mood of panic among investors. This nervousness expresses the fears of the bourgeoisie that the world is heading in the direction of a new slump. The history of capitalism is a history of booms and slumps. This cycle will continue until capitalism is ended, just as a person breathes in and out until he or she dies. However, in addition to these events, one can discern longer periods, curves of development and decline. Every period has different features that have a decisive effect on the class struggle.

Some, like Kondratiev and his modern imitators, have tried to explain this in a mechanical way. Kondratievs ideas are becoming fashionable these days, because they presuppose that every downswing will inevitably be followed by a long period of upswing. This thought provides a much-needed crumb of comfort to the bourgeois economists who are cudgelling their brains attempting to understand the nature of the crisis and find a way out.

The present world situation is characterised by crisis at all levels: economic, financial, social, political, diplomatic and military. The main cause of the crisis is the inability of capitalism to develop the productive forces on a world scale. The OECD believes that there will be no significant growth for at least fifty years. Booms and slumps will still continue, but the overall tendency will be downward. This means that the masses are facing decades of stagnant or falling living standards and the situation will be even worse in the so-called developing countries. That is a finished recipe for class struggle everywhere.

A new slump looms

The more serious capitalist strategists tend to draw the same conclusions as the Marxists, though with a certain delay, and from their own class point of view. The pessimism of the bourgeois economists is shown by their predictions of a period of secular stagnation. The International Monetary Fund points out that the global financial crisis was worse than previous episodes of turmoil and warns that most of the worlds leading economies should prepare for a prolonged period of lower growth rates.

The IMF reports are full of gloom. They have downgraded their forecasts repeatedly. In relation to 2012 forecasts, the IMF has revised its estimates for the level of US GDP for 2020 downwards by 6%; Europe by 3%; China by 14%; emerging markets by 10% and 6% for the world as a whole. Growth in the industrialised countries has not surpassed 2% for the past four years.

The IMF estimates the long-term growth rate in rich countries will average just 1.6% annually from 2015 to 2020, compared with 2.2% from 2001 to 2007. Of course, this assumes that there will not be a slump, but that is precisely what cannot be assumed. Everything points to a new and deep slump on a world scale.

In the words of Christine Lagarde, head of the IMF, In addition, medium-term growth prospects have become weaker. The new mediocre of which I warned exactly a year ago  the risk of low growth for a long time  looms closer.[] High debt, low investment, and weak banks continue to burden some advanced economies, especially in Europe; and many emerging economies continue to face adjustments after their post-crisis credit and investment boom.

Lagarde warned that the slowdown in China would have knock-on effects on countries that rely heavily on Chinese demand for their raw materials. She said there was a possibility of a prolonged period of low commodity prices, particularly in the large commodity exporters. She complained about low productivity holding back growth. But this is an explanation that explains nothing.

The risks are rising, warns Lagarde. We need a new recipe. Unfortunately, she does not enlighten us as to what this new recipe might be. But the Fund has its cookbook open at the page where a very old recipe is written: calling on politicians in emerging markets to implement structural reforms, that is, to open up their markets to be plundered by foreign capitalists, privatize state property and make labour markets more flexible: that is, to take measures that will lead to further attacks on jobs, wages and conditions.

At the heart of the crisis is the fact that productive investment  the key to any boom  is falling. Investment spending is forecast to remain below pre-crisis levels even if the present sluggish economic recovery persists. What this means is that the capitalist system has reached its limits on a world scale and in fact has gone far beyond them. This fact finds its expression in the mountain of accumulated debt that has been inherited from the last period. For several years, multi-national companies invested heavily in the emerging economies, but this has now slowed down, given the overproduction (excess capacity) affecting their economies.

The capitalists have lost faith in the system. They sit on piles of trillions of dollars. What point is there in investing to boost production when they cannot use the productive capacity that they already have? Lower investment also means stagnant productivity of labour. Productivity in the US is growing at a miserable 0.6% per year. The capitalists only invest for profit, but that presupposes that there are markets in which to sell their products. The fundamental reason they are not investing sufficiently to develop productivity is that there is a crisis of overproduction on a world scale.

Instead of investing in new factories, machinery and technology, they are trying to boost productivity by lowering real wages in a race to the bottom everywhere. But this only serves to further exacerbate the contradiction by reducing demand, which in turn leads to further falls in investment.

Growth in potential output in the developed capitalist countries is estimated to be 1.6% a year between 2015 and 2020, according to the IMF forecasts. This is marginally higher than the rate of expansion in the past seven years, but significantly lower than growth rates before the slump, when potential output expanded at 2.25% a year. Even that figure was miserable when compared to the colossal potential of modern industry, science and technology. Now, however, the economy is crawling along, and even that perspective is uncertain.

Falling prices and low interest rates, which in normal times would be good news, now become a mortal danger. They are the mirror image of economic stagnation and falling demand. Interest rates have been falling for the past decade. They have reached rock bottom, even turning negative. According to Andy Haldane, the Bank of Englands chief economist, these are the lowest rates for 5,000 years.

Low growth, low inflation and zero interest rates add up to what the bourgeois economists refer to as secular stagnation. The economic engine of the industrialised economies is barely running above stall speed. That cannot be maintained for long. According to the strategists of Capital, the dangers facing the global economy are more severe than at any time since the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

The fears of the bourgeois were well expressed in a speech on September 2015 delivered by Andy Haldane. He warned: Recent events form the latest leg of what might be called a three-part crisis trilogy. Part One of that trilogy was the Anglo-Saxon crisis of 2008/09. Part Two was the Euro-Area crisis of 2011/12. And we may now be entering the early stages of Part Three of the trilogy, the Emerging Market crisis of 2015 onwards.

The problem for the bourgeois is that they have already used up the mechanisms they need to get out of a slump or lessen its impact. When the next slump occurs (and it is a question of when, not if) they lack the tools to respond. Interest rates remain very low and the continuing high levels of debt rule out further huge injections of state money. The instruments to deal with such a condition are not readily available, as Martin Wolf coyly puts it.

Global Debt and the BRICs

Since the crisis began global debt has actually risen. The hoped-for financial healing has happened only in a few scattered parts of the global economy. The level of debt is of an unprecedented scale. Government debt has in wartime reached present levels, but never in peacetime, and household and corporate debt has never before reached such heights. Before the crisis, debt was rising everywhere. In the US it reached 160% of GDP in 2007 and nearly 200% in Britain. In Portugal, such debt reached 226.7% of GDP by 2009. In 2013, it was still at 220.4%. In the US, total debt is presently 269% of GDP. Only once before in history has it reached such a level. That was around 1933 when it reached 258%, after which it rapidly fell to 180%.

The whole point of the austerity regime was to lower the volume of debt, particularly state debt. But figures show that this is far from being the case. In the February 2015 report from McKinsey Global Institute, we find that global debt has increased by $57tn since 2007, or from 269% of world GDP to 286%. This is happening in every sector of the world economy, but in particular with government debt, which is rising by 9.3% per year. This rise in levels of debt (leveraging) is also happening in practically every single country. Only a few countries, dependent on China or oil prices, were reducing their debt levels, but this has been brought to an abrupt end in the last two years. This vast mountain of debt acts as a heavy burden on the world economy, smothering demand and dragging down production.

All the so-called BRIC economies are in crisis: Brazil, India and Russia are in difficulties. In fact, Brazil and Russia are in a slump. The slowdown in the so-called emerging markets is set to be even sharper than in the advanced capitalist countries. The IMF predicts that their potential output, which continued to expand in the run-up to the crisis, is set to decline from 6.5% a year between 2008 and 2014 to 5.2% in the next five years.

The growth of these economies was one of the main factors that prevented the 2008 crisis from developing into a deep slump of the world economy. Over the past five years the so-called emerging markets accounted for 80% of global growth. These markets, especially China, acted as the locomotive of the world economy before and after the slump. They were an important field of investment previously, when profitable outlets were scarce in the west.

But now that has turned into its opposite. From being a factor that propped up world capitalism it has become the main danger that threatens to drag down the whole world economy. It is not just in the traditionally developed economies that debt has risen dramatically. The debts of so-called emerging markets have swollen to unprecedented dimensions. The study by McKinsey shows that total emerging market debt rose to $49tn at the end of 2013, accounting for 47% of the growth in global debt since 2007. That is more than twice its share of debt growth between 2000 and 2007.

According to the IMF total foreign currency reserves held by emerging markets in 2014 (a key indicator of capital flows) suffered their first annual decline since records began in 1995. These capital inflows resemble a flow of blood to a person in need of a transfusion. Without a steady flow of capital the so-called emerging economies will not have the money to pay their debts and finance their deficits while investing in infrastructure and the expansion of production.

The BBC also quotes figures from the International Center for Monetary and Banking Studies (ICMBS):

Since then [2008], it is the developing world, especially China that has driven the rise in debt. In the case of China, the report describes the rise in debt as stellar. Excluding financial companies it has increased by 72 percentage points to a level far higher than any other emerging economy. The report says there have been marked increases in Turkey, Argentina and Thailand as well.

Emerging economies are particularly worrying for the authors of the report: They could be at the epicentre of the next crisis. Although the level of leverage is higher in developed markets, the speed of the recent leverage process in emerging economies, and especially in Asia, is indeed an increasing concern.

Some of the most significant capital outflows are originating from countries that piled debts up the quickest. South Korea, for instance, saw its debt to GDP ratio to debt rise by 45 percentage points between 2007 and 2013, while China, Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan experienced debt surges of 83, 49, 43, and 16 percentage points respectively.

These economies are also slowing down or are in recession, preparing a deep global slump in the coming period.

Trouble in China

Most serious of all, the Chinese economy is experiencing a sharp slowdown. The slowdown in the emerging economies is due, on the one hand, to the prolonged slump in demand in the advanced capitalist economies and on the other, to the decline of China. This scenario must translate into significantly weaker world trade. Dialectically, everything is interconnected, so that weak demand and markets lead to weak production and investment. Weak investment leads to weak recovery, which in turn leads to weak demand.

The explosive growth of industry in China can be seen from the statistic that between 2010 and 2013, China poured more concrete than the USA did in the entire 20th century. But the huge productive capacity of Chinese industry is not compensated by a corresponding growth in world demand. The inevitable result is a crisis of overproduction.

In the period up to 2007, global demand was driven by credit and house building, especially in the US and Spain. This collapsed and demand was taken up by China, as it poured in billions into infrastructure and bank loans. Over 40% of GDP was invested, which built up the productive forces and demand for raw materials. It also built up huge excess capacity.

The bursting of the bubble in the West starting in 2008 led to the Chinese state pumping enormous amounts of money into the economy. This in turn led to an enormous speculative bubble and a massive accumulation of debt at all levels of the Chinese economy. This bubble is in the process of bursting, with far-reaching consequences. China is going the same road as Japan, the road of prolonged stagnation. The slowdown in China, in turn, has meant a collapse in commodity prices, which has hit hard the emerging economies. More importantly, China represents 16% of world output and 30% of world growth. When China slows, the world slows.

Overproduction in China is affecting steel and other manufactured goods. There has been a massive accumulation of debt and there are fears of a collapse of the overheating property market. More than 1,000 iron ore mines are on the verge of financial collapse. The Financial Times predicts: China, in particular, could see a sharp contraction in the growth of potential output, as it tries to rebalance its economy away from investment and towards consumption.

The Chinese premier Li Keqiang told the US ambassador that he relied on three things to judge economic growth: electricity consumption, rail freight volumes and bank lending. On this basis, economists at Fathom have compiled a China Momentum Indicator from the three sets of figures. The indicator shows that the actual pace of growth could be as low as 2.4%. Rail freight volumes are sharply down and electricity consumption is virtually flat. As a result of falling growth, China has cut its interest rates six times in the last twelve months. It has also devalued its currency to revive its exports, which intensifies the conflict with the Americans and creates massive instability everywhere.

The decline in growth in China has hit the so-called emerging economies, especially those who heavily depend on China. The fears of a Chinese slowdown were felt within China itself, especially on the falls in the stock market. The authorities intervened with $200bn to stabilise the market, but had to give up in the end. Panic has gripped investors. If we dont reform, the Chinese economy may even slow to collapse, says Tao Ran, professor of economics at the university of Beijing. All we have achieved in the past 20 or 30 years will be lost.

The research division of Japans second biggest brokerage house, Daiwa, did what nobody else has done before and released a report in which it made a global financial meltdown, one resulting from nothing short of a Chinese economic cataclysm, its best case scenario. It added that the impact of this global meltdown would be the worst the world has ever seen.

World trade

The most serious threat to the world economy is the re-emergence of protectionist tendencies. The growth of world trade in previous decades and the intensification of the international division of labour (globalization) acted as the main motor force of the world economy. By these means the bourgeois succeeded partially and for a temporary period in overcoming the limits of the nation state. But now all this has turned into its opposite.

A striking example of this is the European Union, which the European bourgeois (led initially by France and Germany, now by Germany alone) attempted to unite in a single market with a single currency, the Euro. The Marxists predicted that this would fail and that the first serious economic crisis would lead to the re-emergence of all the old national divisions and rivalries, which were disguised but not abolished by the single market.

The crisis of the Euro, which has plummeted against the dollar, reflects the seriousness of the economic crisis. The Greek crisis is only the most obvious expression of a crisis that can lead to the collapse of the Euro and even the breakup of the EU itself. Such a development would have the most serious consequences for the entire world economy. That is why Obama is urging the Europeans to solve the Greek crisis at all costs. He understands that the collapse of the EU would lead to a crisis in the USA itself.

2015 marked the fifth consecutive year that average growth in the emerging economies has declined, dragging down world growth in the process. Before 2008, the volume of world trade grew by 6% annually, according to the WTO. In the past 3 years, it has slowed to 2.4%. In the first 6 months of 2015, it suffered its worst performance since 2009.

In the past, trade was a major factor driving production, but not anymore. Since 2013, every 1% of global growth has produced a trade rise of only 0.7%. In the USA, manufacturing imports have not risen at all as a share of GDP since 2000. In the decade before that they had nearly doubled.

The conclusion is inescapable: Globalisation is slowing. The engine of economic growth, world trade, is stalling. The volume of world trade fell in May (2015) by 1.2%. It fell for 4 out of the first 5 months of 2015. The Doha Round of talks has been going on for 14 years and has effectively been abandoned. The US is instead attempting to develop regional free trade blocks, in its own imperialist interests. They have recently negotiated the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which could cover 40% of the world economy, but it is full of contradictions. It needs to be ratified by a host of countries, including the US, which by no means is certain. Obama faces a hostile Congress and might be unable to ratify it before the end of his term.

Inequality

The concentration of capital predicted by Marx has reached unheard-of levels. It has created levels of inequality that are unprecedented. Enormous power is concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority of super-rich men and women who really control the lives and destinies of the peoples of the world.

Young people, women and ethnic minorities also suffer disproportionately from the crisis. They are the first to be sacked and those who take the largest falls in wages. The crisis aggravates the effects of inequality and gender discrimination as well as feeding moods of racism, xenophobia and intolerance towards minority groups among backward layers of the population.

Young people are suffering the worst economic prospects for several generations. That is acknowledged by all the bourgeois economists. Younger people have seen the greatest drop in income and employment. They suffer from the constant attacks on all levels of education, which is being ruthlessly slashed and privatised in the interest of finance capital. Universities are increasingly becoming the preserve of a privileged minority.

The majority of young people are denied opportunities that in the past were taken for granted. This is a major cause of instability and threatens to cause social explosions. It was a major factor in the so-called Arab Spring and similar uprisings are being prepared everywhere.

Everywhere the poor are poorer and the rich are richer. The anti-poverty charity Oxfam published a report that shows that the share of the worlds wealth owned by the richest 1% increased from 44% in 2009 to 48% in 2014, while the poorest 80% currently own just 5.5%. By the end of 2015 the worlds richest 1% already owned more wealth (50.4%) than the remaining 99% combined.

The more perspicacious bourgeois understand the danger this polarisation between rich and poor represents for their system. The OECD says its findings raise social and political questions in addition to economic ones. Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International, said the increased concentration of wealth seen since the deep recession of 2008-09 was dangerous and needed to be reversed.

Well-meaning reformers have urged world leaders to address the problems of inequality, discrimination and social exclusion as well as climate change and other pressing matters facing humanity. But how these miracles are to be achieved under capitalism is never explained. Summits and conferences come and go. Speeches are delivered. Resolutions are passed. And nothing changes.

Permanent austerity

The perspective is one of a very prolonged period in which economic recessions are interrupted by periods of sluggish economic growth with ever-increasing economic hardship: in other words, permanent austerity. This is a new scenario, entirely different to the one that existed in the advanced capitalist countries for a period of more than fifty years after the Second World War. The political consequences will therefore also be very different.

We have explained many times that every attempt of the bourgeoisie to restore the economic equilibrium will destroy the social and political equilibrium. And that is precisely what is happening on a world scale. A prolonged economic recession creates economic hardship and disturbs the old equilibriums. The old certainties vanish and there is a universal questioning of the status quo, its values and ideologies.

Since the start of the global financial crisis in 2008 more than 61m jobs have been lost. According to the estimates of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the number of people that are unemployed will continue to rise over the next five years, reaching more than 212m by 2019. It declares that the global economy has entered a new period combining slower growth, widening inequalities and turbulence. If we include the huge number of people engaged in marginal employment in the so-called informal sector, the real figure of world unemployment will not be less than 850 million. This figure alone is sufficient to prove that capitalism has become an intolerable barrier to progress.

In the advanced capitalist countries governments are attempting to reduce the levels of debt accumulated during the crisis by cutting wages and pensions. But the policies of austerity have sharply reduced living standards without having any serious effect on the mountain of debt. All the painful sacrifices inflicted on the masses in the last seven years have failed to solve the crisis; on the contrary, they have made it worse.

Neither the Keynesians nor the orthodox Monetarists have any solution to offer. The already intolerable levels of debt continue to grow inexorably, acting as a dead weight on growth. Governments and companies are trying to pass the burden onto the shoulders of the working class and middle class to bring down their debt levels. This is having profound effects on social relations and the consciousness of all the classes.

Political effects of the crisis

Here, however, we are faced with what seems at first sight to be an inexplicable paradox. Until recently the bankers and capitalists were congratulating themselves on having passed through the deepest crisis in history without provoking a revolution. This surprising outcome developed in them a sense of smug complacency that was as misplaced as it was stupid.

The main problem for these people is that they lack even the most elementary understanding of dialectics, which explains that everything sooner or later changes into its opposite. Beneath the surface of apparent calm, there is a growing anger against political elites: against the rich, the powerful and the privileged. This reaction against the status quo contains the embryonic seeds of revolutionary developments.

It is an elementary proposition of dialectical materialism that human consciousness always lags behind events. But sooner or later it catches up with a bang. That is precisely what a revolution is. What we are witnessing in many countries, is the beginning of a revolutionary change in political consciousness, which is shaking the institutions and parties of the establishment to the core. It is true that consciousness is shaped to a large extent by the memories of the past. It will take time for the old illusions in reformism to be burned out of the consciousness of the masses. But under the hammer blows of events there will be sudden and sharp changes in consciousness. Woe betide those who try to base themselves on the consciousness of a past that is already vanished beyond recall! Marxists must base themselves on the living process and on perspectives for the coming period, which will bear no similarity to what we have experienced heretofore.

Looking for a way out of the crisis, the masses put to the test one party after another. The old leaders and programmes are analysed and discarded. Those parties that are elected and betray the hopes of the people, carrying out cuts in violation of election promises, find themselves rapidly discredited. What were considered as mainstream ideologies become despised. Leaders who were popular become hated. Sharp and sudden changes are on the order of the day.

There is a growing anger against the establishment, which goes beyond the immediate economic situation. People no longer believe what the politicians say or promise. There is a growing disillusionment with the political establishment and in political parties in general. There is a general and deep seated sense of malaise in society. But it lacks a vehicle that is capable of giving it an organized expression.

In France, where the Socialist Party won the last parliamentary election, Francois Hollande now has the lowest approval rate of any President since 1958 and the socialists suffered a severe defeat in the recent regional elections. In Greece we saw the collapse of Pasok and the rise of Syriza. In Spain we have the phenomenon of Podemos. In Scotland we saw the rise of the SNP. In Britain as a whole we have seen the emergence of Jeremy Corbyn. All this is an expression of the deep discontent that exists in society and is seeking a political expression. Across Europe there is a fear that the policies of austerity will not be a temporary adjustment but a permanent attack on living standards. In countries such as Greece, Portugal and Ireland these policies have already resulted in deep cuts in nominal wages and pensions without having solved the problem of the deficit. Thus, all the sufferings and privations of the people have been in vain.

We saw the same process taking place in Ireland in the recent referendum. For centuries, Ireland was one of the most Catholic countries in Europe. Not long ago, the Church held absolute dominion over every aspect of life. The result of the referendum on gay marriage, where 62% voted Yes, was a stunning blow to the Roman Catholic Church. It was a massive protest against its power and interference in politics and in peoples lives. This represented a fundamental change in Irish society.

The USA

The US was the only main capitalist country to experience at least a minor recovery, although it was of a weak and anaemic character. Most of the growth that was recorded last year was due to the build-up of inventories (unsold stocks). In reality growth is slowing in the USA and has already slowed in Japan and the EU. Since July 2015 the IMF has scattered minus signs all over its forecasts. Thus, nothing is left of the much vaunted recovery.

The weakness of the world economy and particularly the so-called emerging economies has led to a stampede into the dollar, which is still seen as a safe refuge in times of crisis. But the strength of the dollar is itself a problem for the US, giving a competitive advantage to its rivals and hurting US exports. Last year, exports and imports into the US fell, reflecting the general weakness of the world economy.

The crisis is polarising American society. The Obama administration is seen as a failure. The fact that the anti-establishment message of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders has resonated with so many Americans is an illustration of the alienation of millions of people. There is a polarisation to the left and to the right  a process that is taking place internationally.

Trumps reactionary rhetoric strikes a chord with people who feel alienated by the political elite in Washington. His soaring popularity has come as a shock to the Republican Party leadership and the party is faced with crises and splits.

The US Presidential election presents a most interesting development. It is, of course, impossible to predict the outcome with any degree of certainty, given the extremely unstable and volatile juncture of US politics. The media has focussed almost exclusively on the person of the Republican Donald Trump. It seems unlikely that the US ruling class would entrust its affairs to a reactionary clown and ignoramus, although they have done so on at least two occasions in the recent past with Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Hillary Clinton is surely a safer bet from the standpoint of the ruling class.

But far more significant than Trump or Clinton is the massive support for Bernie Sanders who openly speaks of socialism. The emergence of Bernie Sanders as a serious challenger for the Democratic presidential nomination is a symptom of profound discontent and ferment in society. His attacks against the billionaire class and his call for a political revolution resonate with millions of people, as tens of thousands attend his rallies.

The word socialism is now used more frequently in the mainstream media. A 2011 poll found that 49% of those aged 18 to 29 had a positive view of socialism, versus only 47% with a positive view of capitalism. A more recent poll, from June 2014, found that 47% of Americans would vote for a socialist, with 69% of those under 30 in favour.

Large numbers of people, many of them youth, but also many rank and file union members, are eager to hear Bernie Sanders message. It is true that his proposals are akin to Scandinavian-style Social Democracy, rather than genuine socialism. Even so, this is a most significant symptom that something is changing in the USA.

Bernie Sanders has tapped into a popular mood of hatred for the establishment and the government of billionaires and Wall Street bankers. The world slump has shaken America to its foundations. One in five US adults now lives in households either in poverty or on the edge of poverty. Almost 5.7m have fallen to the countrys lowest income levels since the global financial crisis.

The US administration has been bragging that the unemployment level has fallen to 5%. But the reason for this is not economic growth, but the fall in workforce participation. If the ratio of those working or actively looking for work were the same as in 2008, the unemployment rate would be over 10%. Workers have been forced into low-paid insecure jobs.

With stagnant growth and high unemployment in the eurozone; Japan falling into recession; and US growth stuck throughout the recovery at a mere 2 to 2.5%, there is now no country that can serve as the engine for a new boom. In the last period the developed industrial nations have therefore been depending on the emerging markets to support the global economy. That is no longer an option.

Europe

All across Europe people are waking up to the fact that that the policies of austerity are not merely a temporary adjustment but a permanent attack on living standards. In countries such as Greece, Portugal and Ireland these policies have already resulted in deep cuts in nominal wages and pensions without having solved the problem of the deficit. Thus, all the sufferings and privations of the people have been in vain.

Europe faces a long period of slow growth and deflation. The attempt to reduce debts in this environment will be harder and bloodier than we have seen. Taken as a whole, the eurozone economy has not yet recovered to the pre-crisis level of 2007. This is despite a series of factors which should promote growth: low oil prices, the quantitative easing program of the ECB (which amounts to 60 billion euros a month) and a weaker euro, which should stimulate exports.

However, the extremely low rate of inflation is not a reflection of economic health but of chronic sickness; it mirrors the lack of consumer demand, which in turn is a consequence of huge accumulated debts and falling incomes. It can lead to a downward spiral that can end in a prolonged recession. As a result they are talking about further cuts in the overnight bank deposit rate and an increase in the QE program.

Commenting on the situation, The President of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, writes: It took between five and eight quarters for the countries now making up the euro area to recover their pre-recession level of real output after the slumps of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. During the recent recession  which was admittedly the worst since the 1930s  it took the US economy 14 quarters to reach its pre-crisis peak. If our current assessment is correct, it will take the euro area 31 quarters to return to its pre-crisis level of output  that is, in 2016.

Even this is an over-optimistic assessment. In its present enfeebled state the EU is sensitive to shocks. The slowdown in China and the crisis in emerging markets is having a damaging effect above all on Germany, which is an exporter of machine goods to China. Since exports accounted for 45.6% of Germanys GDP in 2014, the only country that could have acted as the motor force for an economic revival of Europe is in no position to fulfil that role.

The lower the growth, the higher will be the debt burden. That is the lesson of Greece. Under these conditions, defaults and financial losses will follow as night follows day, accompanied by a wave of bankruptcies and collapses in one country after another.

The economic impasse has had the effect of deepening all the contradictions and provoking serious tensions between the nation states of Europe. The refugee crisis, and the question of who is going to pay for it, was a catalyst that brought all these contradictions to a head. It has led to angry conflicts between Germany and Eastern European countries (Poland, Hungary), which not long ago had almost been reduced to the role of virtual German colonies.

France and Germany are locked in a conflict over the idea of a banking union, for which France is pressing, while Germany is dragging its feet. The men and women in Berlin are naturally not enthusiastic about the prospect of guaranteeing other countries banks, which they see rather like a man with a sound credit rating lending his credit card to his next door neighbour who has been several times committed to the bankruptcy court.

The bailout of Greece is still not resolved, despite Tsipras capitulation. It will not be easy for him to carry out the deep cuts demanded by Merkel and Co. There will be a further intensification of the class struggle as the Greek workers resist cuts and privatisations. At a certain stage this will provoke a crisis in the government and a new clash with the Troika, which will once again raise the spectre of Greeces exit from the euro and a crisis in the eurozone.

Then there is the little matter of Britains forthcoming EU referendum. Cameron represents the Conservative Party which is implacably opposed to further EU integration. The negotiations will be difficult. Cameron must show that he has won some substantial concessions and Merkel must show that she has given him nothing.

The expansion of the EU has come to a shuddering halt. It is no longer in a position to integrate new and prospective Eastern European members. Having dangled the carrot of closer relations with the EU to Ukraine, that unfortunate country will now be left to sink or swim  and it is already sinking. Moreover, the process of European integration (which went further than what we thought possible) is now going into reverse, as border controls are reimposed.

The crisis in Europe is producing sharp changes in consciousness. The December 2015 regional elections in France indicate the process taking place. The National Front emerged as the first party in the first round, with the Socialist Party coming third behind Sarkozys conservative Les Republicains, but the biggest party by far was the party of those who didnt vote (over 50%), expressing the general alienation of a large part of the population from all the mainstream parties.

In Spain, in 2011, the right wing Popular Party (PP) won the election. The explanation for this lies in the fact that the previous left government of the Socialist Party (PSOE) carried out a policy of cuts that disappointed the masses and led inevitably to the victory of the Popular Party. But now we see the opposite process with the rise of Podemos, which grew from nothing to a movement of hundreds of thousands in the space of 18 months.

There is ferment and a process of radicalization in Spain that is still developing. The December general election in Spain solved nothing. The PP has lost its majority and the result is a governmental crisis that will almost certainly lead to new elections. The widespread support for Podemos, which increased its number of seats from nothing to 69 is causing alarm in the ruling class.

Leaders of PODEMOS speaking at a mass meetingThe rapid growth of Podemos was a reflection of a profound discontent with the entire existing political order. At the present time one can say that the masses do not know exactly what they want, but they know very well what they do not want. Pablo Iglesias outspoken criticisms of the bankers and the rich and his denunciations of the political establishment, which he calls the Caste (La Casta), accurately reflect the anger of the masses.

It is true that the ideas of the leaders of Podemos are confused and unclear. But that corresponds to the existing state of consciousness of the masses, who are only just awakening to political life, and therefore did not prevent Podemos from growing, at least in the initial period. However, if it is not corrected this lack of clarity can ultimately destroy Podemos. Very soon it will have to decide where it stands and in which direction it intends to go.

All these processes will be accelerated in the event of a deep slump. Europe will be facing a situation far more similar to the 1920s and 30s than the decades that followed the end of the Second Word War: a prolonged period of social and political upheavals with violent swings to the left and right. However, as well as similarities there are also profound differences with the period between the two World Wars. The correlation of class forces is entirely different.

This means that the European bourgeois is faced with an insoluble dilemma. It is compelled to try to abolish the reforms conquered by the working class over the past half century but is confronted with the stubborn resistance of the working class. Precisely for that reason the crisis will go on for years with ups and downs.

Donald Tusks predictions

The general figures for unemployment in the eurozone conceal deep divisions between wealthier and poorer countries. Before the crisis, unemployment rates in the regions largest economies were broadly similar.

In 2016 the EU will try to speed up the vicious policy of cuts and austerity under the soothing banner of fiscal consolidation. The serious strategists of Capital can see the dangers that are implicit in this situation. They have come to the same conclusions as the Marxists. Writing in the Financial Times on 15/6/14, Wolfgang Munchau warned that Europe is under a constant threat of insolvency and political insurrection  The bottom line is that the total post-crisis adjustment will be much more brutal than it was in Japan 20 years ago. In such an environment I would expect the political backlash to get more serious Even if deleveraging could work  which is not clear  it may not work politically By reducing political instability, they will end up increasing financial instability.

More recently, Donald Tusk, the former Polish prime minister who now heads the European Council, said he feared political contagion from the Greek crisis far more than its financial fallout:

I am really afraid of this ideological or political contagion, not financial contagion, of this Greek crisis, he said. It was always the same game before the biggest tragedies in our European history, this tactical alliance between radicals from all sides. Today, for sure, we can observe the same political phenomenon.

This was the same Tusk who played a central role (together with Angela Merkel) in forcing Alexis Tsipras to agree to the brutal terms involving sweeping austerity measures including the privatisation of 50bn worth of Greek public assets, cuts in pensions, tax hikes and other deep cuts. The same Tusk later protested that he could not accept the argument that someone was punished, especially Tsipras or Greece. The whole process was about assistance to Greece.

But Tusk also said he was concerned about the far left, which he believes is advocating this radical leftist illusion that you can build some alternative to the current EU economic model. He argued those far-left leaders were pushing to cast aside traditional European values like frugality and liberal, market-based principles that have served the EU in good stead.

As in other parts of the world, the youth is particularly hard hit, with persistently high levels of unemployment. Presently in the regions largest economy, Germany, youth unemployment is at 7.1%. In Italy, more than 40% of people under 25 looking for work are without jobs. The figure for France is 24% and in the UK 17%. But it is over 45% for both Greece and Spain.

The ruling class is well aware of the danger this represents for their system. Ms Reichlin of the London Business School said: There is a big stock of young people in Italy that risk being lost forever and that will create political pressures over time. The Italian opposition is fragmented at the moment, but that wont necessarily always be the case.

Donald Tusk, referring to Tsipras, said the febrile rhetoric from far-left leaders, coupled with high youth unemployment in several countries, could be an explosive combination: For me, the atmosphere is a little similar to the time after 1968 in Europe, he said. I can feel, maybe not a revolutionary mood, but something like widespread impatience. When impatience becomes not an individual but a social experience of feeling, this is the introduction for revolutions.

The impact of the Greek crisis has been felt far beyond Greece. The idea of European integration has been shattered. In negotiations, Germany was like the dictatorial conductor of an orchestra. Merkel made no secret of the fact that she was in charge of the whole show. The French bourgeois, who once had the illusion that they were the joint rulers of Europe, had to take care not to push too hard for any concerns they might have had. These tensions will grow even sharper as the crisis deepens.

The reality of bourgeois democracy as a fraudulent facade stood exposed in the minds of millions. Merkel was saying in very clear language: popular referendums and elections are of absolutely no value: the big powers and the real rulers of Europe, the bankers and capitalists, will take all the decisions, irrespective of the opinions of the majority. Likewise, the humiliating climb-down of Tsipras has exposed the limits of reformism and social democracy.

This is a period of wars, revolution and counterrevolution. But that does not mean that fascism or Bonapartism are an imminent danger. In the long term, of course, if the working class offers no way out, the ruling class will try to move in the direction of reaction. But because of the changed correlation of class forces, this could not take the form of fascism as in the past, but some kind of Bonapartist regime. Even so, they could not immediately install a military dictatorship without running the risk of civil war, which they would not be guaranteed to win.

Sooner or later the ruling class will decide that democracy is a luxury they can no longer afford. But they will move cautiously, one step at a time, gradually eroding democratic rights and edging towards parliamentary Bonapartism first. But in conditions of capitalist crisis a reactionary Bonapartist regime would be unstable. It would not solve anything and probably would not last long. It would only prepare way for even greater revolutionary upheavals, as the Greek Junta in 1967-1974 ended in a revolution. We must be prepared for these kinds of developments and not allow ourselves to be thrown off balance by events.

Britain

The election of Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party by a big majority transformed the whole situation in Britain practically overnight. This development was anticipated by events in Scotland, where the revolt against the establishment was reflected in the rapid growth of the SNP. This was not a movement to the right but to the left. It was not the expression of nationalism but of a burning hatred of the effete elite that rules in Westminster. The Labour Party, as a result of the cowardly class collaborationist policies of its leaders, was seen as just another part of that establishment.

In itself, the election of Corbyn was the product of a series of accidents. But Hegel pointed out that necessity expresses itself through accident. The fact that Corbyn managed to get his name on the leadership ballot falls under the philosophical category of accident  that is, something that might or might not have occurred. But once this had happened, it transformed the whole situation.

From his very first appearance in a television debate Corbyn stood out clearly in comparison with the other candidates. He stood for something different, fresher, more honest, more radical and more in tune with the real aspirations of millions of people, who were fed up with the status quo and wanted to express their rejection of the establishment.

Before the general election there was little or no life in the Labour Party. But the Corbyn campaign transformed the situation. It was precisely the catalyst that was needed to act as a rallying point for all the accumulated discontent in society that had until then not found any point of reference, and least of all in the right-wing dominated Labour Party.

The election of Jeremy Corbyn provided the one thing that was lacking in Britain: a point of reference for the accumulated discontent and frustration of the masses. It is beginning to regenerate the Labour Party and push it to the left. That represents a mortal danger to the ruling class and they will stop at nothing to destroy it.

For decades the Labour Party under right wing leadership was a pillar of support for the existing system. The ruling class will not abandon this without a ferocious struggle. The first line of defence of the capitalist system is the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) itself. The Blairite majority of the PLP are the direct and conscious agents of the bankers and capitalists in this struggle. That explains their fanatical determination to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn at all costs. The ground is being prepared for a split in the Labour Party that will create an entirely new situation in Britain.

Not only the Labour Party but also the Tory Party is split, especially on the question of the EU. The outcome of the British referendum is hard to predict, but a British exit would have the most serious effects both on Europe and on Britain. It would accelerate the process of disintegration that could end in the destruction of the EU. On the other hand, if the UK leaves the EU, the Scottish nationalists, who are pro-EU, would demand another referendum on independence, which could lead to the breakup of the united British state.

The cracks in the Tory Party will deepen, probably leading to a split-off of the anti-European right wing, which could fuse with the anti-European and anti-immigration Ukip, to form a Bonapartist-Monarchist party to the right of the Conservatives. On the other extreme, the Blairite Right are clearly moving in the direction of a split from Labour. Although both they and the bourgeois fear the consequences of such a move, it is likely that at a certain stage the Labour right wing will be forced to split and link up with the left Conservatives and Lib-Dems to enter some kind of National Government.

This seems to be the only way the British ruling class could prevent the emergence of a Corbynite Labour government. But it is a very risky strategy. It would cause extreme polarization, pushing Labour further to the left. In opposition at a time of deep crisis, the Labour Party would recover, preparing the way for a Left Labour government. The generals have already threatened a coup if Corbyn came to power. It would immediately open the door to a clash between the classes and a revolutionary crisis in Britain.

The perspective now opens up of a crisis and split in the Labour Party, which will offer even bigger possibilities for the Marxist Tendency. But our priority is still that of winning and educating the youth. That will provide us with the cadres we will need if we are to take advantage of the possibilities. This is not a normal crisis. Sharp and sudden changes are implicit in the situation. We must expect the unexpected. Tactics may have to change within twenty-four hours.

All these events are a reflection of a profound change that is taking place in the depths of society. It was very well described by Trotsky as the molecular process of socialist revolution: a process in which a series of small changes gradually accumulate until it reaches that critical point when quantity changes into quality.

Illusions of the bourgeoisie

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War the dazzling prospect opened up before the European bourgeois of permanent economic prosperity and ever-increasing European integration that would end with Europe (under German control) expanding its borders up to the Urals. Intoxicated with such dreams of grandeur, the European bourgeois were induced to give up a large degree of national sovereignty in some very sensitive areas. The creation of the eurozone is probably the most striking example of this.

The Marxists pointed out that it is impossible to have monetary union without political union. We predicted that the Euro could be maintained as long as the economic conditions remained favourable, but in the event of a slump, all the national antagonisms would re-emerge and the Euro would collapse amidst mutual recriminations. Twenty-five years later this prediction retains its full force.

Marxists stand unequivocally for the abolition of all borders and for the unification of Europe. But on a capitalist basis this is a reactionary utopia. The reactionary aspect was shown by the brutal treatment meted out to Greece by Brussels and Berlin. Under the domination of the bankers and capitalists, the EU stands for a policy of permanent austerity. An unelected and irresponsible clique of bureaucrats can dictate policies and overrule the decisions of elected governments like the government of Syriza in Greece.

In alliance with NATO and US imperialism the EU also plays a reactionary role on a world scale. It has intervened in the Balkans, where it was instrumental in the criminal dismemberment of Yugoslavia. It intrigued for the breakup of Czechoslovakia  something that neither the Czechs nor Slovaks were ever consulted about. Its interference in the Ukraine, together with US imperialism, caused the present disastrous mess. All this was basically in the interests of German imperialism, which is the real master of the European Union and has been striving to reassert its domination of Eastern Europe and the Balkans.

The other imperialist powers of Europe, in the first place Britain and France, now find themselves in the role of junior partners subordinate to Germany. But they have their own imperialist interests in Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean, which they continue to pursue under the flag of the EU. The French and British led the way in the bombing of Libya. The British were the most enthusiastic allies of the USA in the criminal invasion of Iraq. Now the French play a similar role in Syria. All are pursuing their own cynical interests, under the flag of humanitarianism, of course.

Together with the Euro, the Schengen Agreement is one of the cornerstones of the European Union. It has reduced the time and cost of moving goods across Europe because trucks no longer have to wait for hours to cross an international border. It benefits tourists and people living in border towns, because passports and visas are no longer needed. It does away with the absurd waste of spending money on patrolling obsolete borders. This treaty was supposed to be a key step in the creation of a federal Europe.

In 1995 the Schengen Agreement eliminated border controls between its signatories and created a common visa policy for 26 countries. But now the process towards greater European integration has gone into reverse. The crisis of the European Union was sharply exposed by the refugee issue.

Europe and the refugee crisis

With the November 2015 massacre in Paris the Middle East finally came to Europe. Simultaneously, the arrival of thousands of desperate people fleeing from the horrors of war, hunger and oppression presented the governments of Europe with a dilemma. In reality, there is a global refugee crisis, not just a Middle Eastern one. Globally the number of people displaced by wars, persecution of minorities and violation of human rights was close to 60 million at the end of 2014. This is a graphic reflection of the world crisis of the capitalist system  its inability to give people the most elementary of human rights  the right to live. The flood of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and other war-torn and poverty-stricken parts of the globe has led to demands for tighter border controls.

Angela Merkel was quick to open her arms to the poor refugees who were knocking at her door. Partly no doubt this was an attempt to capitalise on the genuine feelings of sympathy that were naturally expressed by many people in Germany and all other European countries. The ordinary people, whose thoughts and actions are not dictated by the cold calculations that motivate the bankers and capitalists, always display sympathy and solidarity to the poor and downtrodden. On the other hand, big business was in favour of an open door policy, not out of empathy for the sufferings of others, but as a means of securing a large supply of human labour at bargain basement prices.

However, Merkels kind heartedness did not last long. Germany was expecting to receive over 1 million asylum seekers in 2015. But attacks against immigrant shelters in Germany are increasing as are the votes for right wing anti-immigration parties like Alternativ fur Deutschland. Now Merkel is pleading with Turkey not just to halt the flow of refugees but to take them back. Berlin is urgently demanding proportional distribution of migrants across the European Union  a suggestion that meets with no great enthusiasm in London and Paris and outright rejection in Warsaw and Budapest.

Sharp contradictions have emerged between the members of the EU. French and Austrian authorities accused Rome of allowing (and even encouraging) asylum seekers to leave Italy and threatened to close their borders with Italy; indeed, France followed through with its threat and briefly closed its border in late June. Germany, the richest country in Europe, was in a position to absorb a large number of refugees. Others are not so fortunate. Italy and Greece have taken a larger portion of refugees than most others. They have repeatedly demanded more resources and the introduction of immigration quotas in the European Union. But these pleas fell upon deaf ears. Central and Eastern European countries immediately rejected the idea of quotas.

The problem is now posed: what exactly to do with the Schengen Agreement, which makes it possible for immigrants to move freely among member states. Even before the Paris events the Polish President of the European Council Donald Tusk said: let there be no doubt; the future of Schengen is at stake and time is running outwe must regain control of our external borders. The Paris attacks provided governments with a convenient excuse for the temporary introduction of border controls, not only by France but by other states including Germany and Sweden.

Throughout Europe there is a growing malaise and a feeling of mistrust and hostility to the EU. After the brutal treatment of Greece, there is growing political opposition to Brussels from workers and youth in Southern European countries that are opposed to austerity. At the other extreme there is opposition from right wing, anti-immigrant and populist parties in Germany, France, Finland, Denmark and other countries in northern Europe.

The longer countries maintain border controls or fencing, the more the principle of an open Europe will be undermined. The rise of nationalist and anti-immigration parties in Germany, France, Finland, Denmark, Sweden and Hungary is putting further pressure on European governments to close the borders. The days of the Schengen Agreement are clearly numbered. If it is not abolished altogether, it will certainly be revised to such a degree that not much will be left of the sacred principle of the freedom of movement in Europe.

Member states are pushing to be given more power and discretion on the issue of reintroducing border controls. With or without a reform of Schengen, there will be stricter police controls at train and bus stations and at airports. This is already happening. Immigration laws will be tightened to make it harder for immigrants to obtain welfare benefits. Countries like Romania and Bulgaria that have not yet joined Schengen will want severe controls. Poland and Hungary, which were the satellites of German imperialism, are now in direct conflict with Berlin over the refugee issue.

The undermining of the Schengen Agreement will necessarily lead to the weakening of the free movement of people  one of the key cornerstones of the European Union. Once a basic principle is weakened, the door is open for other things to be similarly affected. The removal or weakening of the free movement of people can provide a precedent for the weakening of the free movement of goods. Together with the collapse of the Euro  which is entirely possible  it would mean the end of the European Union as we know it. Nothing would remain of the dream of European unity but an empty husk.

Under capitalism the idea of a Continent without borders will remain an unattainable dream. The unification of Europe  a historically necessary and progressive task  can only be achieved when the workers of Europe move to overthrow the dictatorship of the banks and monopolies and lay the foundations for a free and voluntary union of the peoples on the basis of the Socialist United States of Europe.

World relations

From the standpoint of international relations the period through which we are passing is without historical precedent. In the past there were always at least three or four Great Powers vying for superiority on a European or world scale. Thus, for long periods international relations tended towards some kind of equilibrium that was periodically punctuated by wars.

The economic instability is also expressed in increasing political instability. Not since the Second World War have international relations been so fraught with tensions. The aggressive expansionist tendencies of US imperialism since the fall of the USSR has created a chaotic situation everywhere: in the Balkans, in the Middle East, in Central Asia, North Africa, Pakistan and lately also in Africa.

Before the Second World War Leon Trotsky had already predicted that the USA would emerge as the dominant world power, but he added that the USA would have dynamite built into its foundations. That prediction was dramatically confirmed with the destruction of the Twin Towers on 9/11.

The United States established itself as the dominant world power in 1945. The rise of American power was accompanied by the collapse of the power of the European imperialist states. World War II had shattered both Japan and Western Europe. The United States dominated economically, militarily and politically, although it was confronted by the power of the Soviet Union.

An uneasy equilibrium was established that lasted almost half a century. Power was not in London, Paris or Warsaw. It was in Moscow and Washington. There was no question at that time of the USA interfering in countries like Iraq, Syria or Yugoslavia, which were in the Soviet sphere of influence. Much less could Washington contemplate meddling in the Ukraine or Georgia, which were still part of the Soviet Union.

All that changed with the collapse of the USSR just over two decades ago. Dragged down by internal crisis and under the pressure of a massive protest movement, Moscow was compelled to withdraw from Eastern Europe. The Soviet-led Warsaw Pact was wound up. However, NATO continued to exist as a potential threat to Russia.

In the 1980s American President Ronald Reagan made a verbal promise to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that the West had no intention of expanding NATO eastwards into the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union. That was a lie. In the past two decades the USA has been systematically expanding NATO to the east, incorporating several countries that were previously within the sphere of influence of the USSR.

German and US imperialism were behind the breakup of Yugoslavia  an entirely reactionary development for the peoples of Yugoslavia and a complete humiliation for Russia. Although Russia had troops stationed there, the West was allowed to take over while the Russian army was relegated to the role of an impotent bystander.

In the past, the contradictions we see on a global scale would have led to world war. But this is no longer a possible outlet. The correlation of forces on a world scale does not allow it. That, however, does not signify an epoch of peace. On the contrary, the contradictions will find an expression in a never-ending series of small wars, leading to terrible bloodshed and chaos.

Although the United States remains enormously powerful, it is far from being omnipotent. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq exposed the limits of the power of US imperialism. Even the most powerful imperialist state cannot afford to be directly involved in large numbers of conflicts all around the world. It would soon find itself exhausted economically and politically as public opinion swung sharply against foreign interventions. This lesson was lost on the short-sighted ruling clique under George W. Bush. It had to be learned painfully by his successor.

Russia and America

Urged on by US imperialism NATO advanced right up to the frontiers of Russia. First the Balkan states were incorporated into NATO, and then Poland joined. But when the Americans attempted to draw Georgia into NATO, it was one step too far. The Russian army was sent and Georgia was swiftly crushed. Now it was the Americans turn to be humiliated, as the Russians seized large quantities of arms and equipment provided to the Georgian ruling clique by Washington - even the toilet seats.

That was a clear warning to the Americans. The Kremlin was saying: Thus far and no further! But the US ruling circles are blind, deaf and dumb. When the Germans were ready to pull back from the conflict in Ukraine in late 2013, John McCain and his Republican allies stepped in, forcing Obamas hand in the matter. They were looking to deal Russia a blow in revenge for Georgia and draw it closer to the EU and NATO. The idea that Putin would quietly accept the loss of Ukraine was foolish in the extreme. It was even more foolish to expect him to accept the loss of the Crimea, where the Russian navy has a big base at Sebastopol.

The right-wing coup in Kiev, backed by extreme nationalist and fascist forces, succeeded in toppling the government of Yanukovych, but by so doing they have plunged Ukraine into an abyss of economic collapse and civil war. The West, predictably, has not delivered any of its promises to the Ukrainian people. Nor have they done anything to stand up to Russia, despite all their fist-shaking and threats.

The imposition of sanctions on Russia have not weakened the regime but strengthened it. Before the Ukrainian crisis and US sanctions, Putin was not in a very strong position. But the measures taken by the USA to punish Russia had the opposite result to that intended. Putin was able to ride on a wave of patriotism, and at some point enjoyed an approval rating of nearly 90%.

On the surface it may seem paradoxical that Putin has emerged strengthened from the crises in Ukraine and Syria. The efforts of the West to isolate him have been a miserable failure. In Syria he is the man who now calls the shots. And even if the US persists in maintaining sanctions over Crimea and Ukraine, we can confidently predict that its European allies will quietly drop theirs. The crisis-ridden European economy needs the Russian market and Russian gas just as much as the European bourgeois need Russian help to clear up the mess in Syria and halt the unending flow of refugees.

But if we look deeper into the situation, it will become evident that it is not as stable as it looks. The Russian economy continues to fall, hit by the falling price of oil and western sanctions. Real wages are falling. The middle class can no longer spend pleasant weekends in London and Paris. It grumbles but does nothing. The Russian workers were influenced by the official propaganda on Ukraine. They were scandalised by the activities of the Ukrainian fascists and ultra-nationalists and Putin was able to take advantage of their natural sympathy with their brothers and sisters in eastern Ukraine. On this basis his poll ratings soared.

Putin may be able to maintain his grip on power for some time, but everything has its limits and in the end history always presents its bill. The economic crisis has led to a sharp fall in living standards of many workers, especially outside Petersburg and Moscow. The masses are patient, but their patience has definite limits. We saw evidence of this at the end of 2015 when long-distance truckers went on strike. A small symptom perhaps, but a symptom nevertheless that sooner or later the discontent of the Russian workers will find its expression in serious protests and strikes.

Putin felt confident enough to launch a military offensive in Syria, which caught the West off guard. As a result, the man who was supposed to be an international pariah is now in effect the arbiter of Syrias fate.

Not long ago Obama and Kerry were breathing fire and brimstone against the man in the Kremlin. Then suddenly Putin turns up at the United Nations and becomes the centre of attention. He even appears in public together with the US President and there is a well-publicised handshake  though not a very warm one to be sure.

For Putin, the main aim in Syria was to keep Assad in power as a reliable Russian ally and to halt the advance of the Islamist rebels who were getting ever closer to the main areas of Assads support in the West  and Russias bases there. At least one can say that Putins intentions were clear and unambiguous. That gave him an appearance of strength.

Obama, on the contrary, is a man with a sharply divided Congress and a rabid Republican Opposition. He is acutely aware of the danger of getting involved in a war on the ground in Iraq. The American people are weary of foreign adventures. That, and not any pacifist or humanitarian considerations, is why he is at pains to avoid committing US forces on the ground in Syria.

The reason for the contradictions in US policy in Syria is not hard to see. The only serious military actions against the jihadis in Syria have been the ones carried out by the Russians in collaboration with the Syrian army of Bashar al-Assad. And the only serious military actions against Isis in Iraq (apart from the Kurds who will only fight in their own areas) are carried out, not by the so-called Iraqi army and its US backers, but by the Iranian-backed Shia militia and elements of the Iranian military.

In practice, the Americans have been forced to recognise this and accept the demands of Russia and Iran that Bashar al-Assad must remain in power for the foreseeable future. That is why Obama had to arrive at a deal with Iran over nuclear arms that is hated by Saudi Arabia and Israel and also by their Republican friends in Congress. In short, he has to face all ways at once. That gives him the appearance of weakness. The Russian leader returned to Moscow convinced that with regard to Syria the Americans would do exactly the same as with regard to Ukraine  that is, nothing of any consequence, and he was not wrong.

The Russians redoubled their arms shipments to Damascus, pouring in weapons and equipment. They have launched a series of bombing raids against Isis and other targets. The Russian raids effectively changed the balance of forces on the battlefield. This forced the US and its western allies to step up their bombing campaign which until then had been halfhearted and aimed at containing Isis rather than defeating it. Thus, at every step the Russians have run rings around American diplomacy. In Syria Washington has had to swallow its pride and accept Moscows terms. This has fundamentally altered the correlation of forces, not just in Syria but in the Middle East as a whole.

The Middle East

Cest pire quun crime, cest une faute (Its worse than a crime, its a mistake). The celebrated words attributed to Louis-Antoine-Henri de Bourbon-Conde, duke dEnghien might serve as a fitting epitaph for the foreign policies of US imperialism in recent decades.

The flames that engulf the entire Middle East are the direct consequence of the criminal invasion of Iraq and the continuing interference of US imperialism in that unhappy region. Having destabilised Iraq and reduced it to a smoking, war-torn ruin, the Americans and their allies have aided and abetted reactionary forces in Syria which now pose a serious threat to their interests. But the so-called war against terror that has allegedly been waged for nearly fifteen years in Iraq has achieved precisely nothing.

The politicians in Washington understood nothing and foresaw nothing. Ironically, by destroying the old state machine of Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi army, they upset the balance of power in the region and created a vacuum into which stepped their old enemy Iran. When the US army stormed into Iraq there was no al-Qaeda present in that country. Now the whole region is in the grip of the jihadi madness. This is the direct result of the meddling of US imperialism.

Belatedly the Americans have woken up to the disastrous state of affairs they themselves have created and which now threatens them. Now the US is faced with the growing threat of jihadi violence that is spreading like an uncontrollable epidemic through the Middle East and North Africa, crossing the Sahara desert to burst through in Nigeria, dragging in the neighbouring countries of Niger, Chad and Cameroon.

How is the worlds greatest military power to respond to this threat? It was forced to limit itself to bombing from a great height. But it is an open secret that bombing alone does not win wars, and least of all wars like the one in Iraq and Syria. America and its allies have bombed Isis positions for over a year. But the effect on Isis seems to have been minimal.

It is true that the self-styled Islamic state with its cruel and inhuman punishments, its crucifixions, beheadings and stoning to death, its oppression of women and attacks on culture and education represent a reactionary aberration  a throwback to a dark and primitive past. But all this is merely the mirror image of the crimes of imperialism, the indiscriminate bombings, the torture and abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. The interventions of imperialism in the Middle East since 2001 have cost between 1.3 and 2 million lives and led to the displacement of many millions more who now live in barbaric conditions. This comes under the heading of collateral damage.

The imperialists need an excuse for their criminal aggression in the Middle East, and this is conveniently provided by the murderous actions of the jihadis. The imperialist propaganda machine has assiduously built up the impression of an all-powerful Isis. But events will show that Isis is not as all-powerful as it seemed. Since the intervention of the Russians, Isis and other the jihadi groups have quickly been forced onto the defensive.

The Russian intervention has changed everything. It has forced the Americans to intensify their activity. But in order to defeat Isis, they need boots on the ground. Only the boots in question must not be American ones. A small number of American Special Forces have been involved on the ground, though to what extent is not clear.

Unfortunately for Obama in order to defeat Isis it would require not very small forces but rather substantial ones. How is this problem to be resolved? Some incurable optimists placed their hopes on the Iraqi army. But this was the vainest of all vain illusions. When they destroyed the Iraqi army in 2003, the Americans removed the only military force in the region capable of acting as a counterbalance to the power of Iran. Now the pathetic remains of that shattered force is demoralised and not fit to fight Isis or anybody else. Its total lack of fighting ability was shown last summer when the Iraqi army ran away like frightened rabbits, leaving Mosul to the tender mercies of the Isis jihadi hordes.

At the same time, the moderate opposition inside Syria has proven to be a complete fiction. With minor exceptions, almost all the groups fighting Assad are Islamist fanatics of one kind or another. They are more interested in fighting the Assad government than fighting Isis. The main role of these moderates is to act as a bridgehead to channel the arms sent by the Americans to jihadi groups. The Americans announced that they were going to form a fighting force of 5,000 moderates, but now admit that there are only a handful left in the field (where they are and what they are doing remains a complete mystery). Others have been killed by al-Qaeda groups  who received intelligence about their whereabouts from the US ally, Turkey  or have gone over to Al Qaeda, handing over their weapons.

In the end the US has been forced to give up all its plans in Syria. The support for the moderate rebels has been significantly scaled down. Meanwhile it has been forced to throw its weight behind the Kurdish forces of the YPG. Around the YPG, they have set up the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Democratic Syrian Congress.

The YPG has proven extremely efficient in Syria, mainly because it is a popular militia based on a democratic and non-sectarian programme. With 50-70,000 troops it is only surpassed by the Assad army which is inferior to it in training, morale and motivation. With the setting up of the Democratic Syrian Congress it has de facto become a Kurdish statelet.

The YPG is undoubtedly the most progressive movement in the Middle East at the present time. However it is being used by the US for wholly reactionary reasons. US imperialism aims to breakup Syria into small statelets run by different militias and warlords which they can play off against each other to maintain its control. For the imperialists the slogan of self-determination for small nations is always a reactionary deception and a trap. For the present, they are obliged to make use of the Kurds to fight Isis on their behalf. However, at a certain stage the imperialists will inevitably attempt to use this divide and rule tactic against the Kurds themselves. While supporting the progressive aspects of the Kurdish movement and defending the right of the Kurdish people to self-determination, Marxists must warn against mixing up the Kurdish cause with the intrigues of US imperialism, and criticize the inconsistencies and shortcomings of the Kurdish leadership.

The shift in US policy towards the Kurds has deepened the divisions between Washington and its Turkish ally whose al-Qaeda linked proxies stand to lose direct and indirect US support. Turkey views the YPG and its sister organisation the PKK as a threat and has been alienated by the new US line. This has led to the ironic situation of a low-intensity war, brewing between the US supported SDF and Saudi and Turkish supported Islamist proxies. This could explode into a full scale war at any point.

Besides support for the Kurds the US has realised that it needs Iranian-backed forces, as well as the Assad regime, to stabilise Syria and prevent it from being overrun by Islamic fundamentalist groups. Everybody knows that the brunt of the fighting in Iraq, apart from the Kurds who are mainly interested in fighting for their own areas, has being borne by the Iranian-sponsored Shia militias and Revolutionary Guard and that the Iraqi army is being trained and commanded by Iranian officers. The attempt to build up a fighting force based on moderate Islamists is likewise doomed to failure. The different factions are more intent on fighting the Assad government and each other than fighting Isis. Clashes between al-Qaeda groups and groups belonging to the newly formed Syrian Democratic Forces (a US-backed group consisting of the Kurdish YPG and dubious, yet non-jihadist remnants of the FSA) have increased.

Therefore, all insistence on regime-change in Syria has been conveniently forgotten and the Americans have been forced to drop their earlier belligerent attitude to Teheran and reach a shaky compromise with Iran over its nuclear programme with the promise of reducing sanctions. This was undoubtedly a humiliating climb down for Washington and a major diplomatic triumph for Teheran. Iran now has effective control of southern, eastern and central Iraq (Isis and the Kurds control the west and the north) and a major influence in Syria, as well as most of Lebanon, the base of the powerful pro-Iranian Hezbollah.

Gritting its teeth, Washington has been compelled to turn to the only viable option: a deal with Iran  and Russia. But is this not that same Iran that, not so long ago, was demonized in the American press as part of the Axis of Evil. Not long ago John Kerry was breathing fire and brimstone in his bellicose denunciations of Tehran. Now suddenly all is sweetness and light in Washingtons dealings with Tehran. Mr. Kerry delivers conciliatory speeches, beaming with a smile from ear to ear as he sings hymns of praise to the leaders of Iran for their great wisdom and moderation.

The same is true of Americas dealings with Russia  only more so. Not so long ago Vladimir Putin was considered to be outside the Pale of civilization, a man to be shunned and boycotted. Now, suddenly, he is the hero of the hour in Syria. These developments are raising serious concern in Ankara and Riyadh. The American imperialists are trying to face two ways at once, and in the process they are finding themselves in new and insoluble contradictions. These diplomatic contortions are a further indication of the mess that the Americans have landed themselves in the Middle East. The government in Baghdad is heavily dependent on Iran. The fear in Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region is that Iraq is being turned into nothing more than an Iranian satrapy. This result is not at all what Washington desires, but it is the logical consequence of all Americas actions.

Their attitude towards Syria is even more contradictory. Publicly they continue to denounce Assad and complain about the Russian interference in Syria, while in reality there is a de facto detente. The Americas complain that the Russians do not give them enough information about their targets in Syria, that it is impossible for them to co-ordinate the bombing raids, that there is a risk of accidents etc., etc. They complain loudly that the Russians are bombing not only Isis targets but also the moderate opposition forces backed by the West, that are attacking the Syrian army in the West. But the Russians pay no attention and continue blasting their targets remorselessly.

Saudi Arabia and Yemen

It is an old maxim of diplomacy that nations have no friends, only interests. In the Middle East the United States is trying to balance between the four major regional powers  Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Turkey  leaning now towards one, then towards another in a perpetual balancing act. In Iraq, US fighters carried out airstrikes in parallel with Iranian ground forces, while in Yemen, the United States supports Saudi air strikes against the Houthis, who are backed by Iran. The United States says it is expediting deliveries of weapons to Saudi Arabia, yet at the same time the Obama administration is desperately signalling to Tehran that it does not wish to clash with Iran over Yemen.

The Saudi ruling clique is at the centre of counterrevolution in the entire region. For decades western leaders have constantly backed the reactionary Saudi monarchy, slavishly swallowing all its vicious actions and licking the backside of the disgusting creatures that rule the roost in Riyadh, as we saw at the funeral of the late unlamented King Abdullah.

These devout Muslims, the protectors of the Holy Places and hitherto one of Americas most loyal allies, beheaded more than 50 people in one year alone, apart from other pleasant little practices like floggings and crucifixions. But the rotten Saudi regime is resting on very shaky foundations. There is a growing ferment among the oppressed Shia population of Saudi Arabia as well as a significant part of the youth. This could lead to an uprising at a certain stage. But there is also a growing impatience amongst the Wahabi reactionary zealots who are more sympathetic to Isis and al-Qaeda than the royal family, whom they see as illegitimate. This contradiction is undermining the regime which is desperately trying to cling on to power.

These were major factors that determined the Saudi reaction to events in Yemen. The volte-face of American foreign policy in relation to Iran led to further complications for Washington. It enraged the Saudis and Israelis who see Iran as the main enemy. Iran has good relations with the Houthi-Shia militias that swept through Yemen on a populist programme and took control of Aden, driving out the Saudi puppet. In response to this, Saudi Arabia ordered its air force to bomb the rebels.

The Saudis hastily put together a coalition of ten states which aims to drown the Yemeni insurrection in blood. Reluctantly the US and Britain joined the coalition although they have avoided direct participation in the bombing. The Coalition forces have brutally bombed the country, pulverising its infrastructure, destroying schools and hospitals and killing a large number of civilians. Twenty million people are in acute need of aid. Despite the murderous bombings, the Houthis have not been destroyed and there is a general hatred towards the Saudis and their allies among the mass of the population. The fact that the Pakistan army refused the request by the Saudis to participate in their military campaign against the Houthi rebels is sufficient proof that a ground offensive in Yemen would end in disaster.

The present ruling clique is playing with fire. The old king Abdullah was a very cautious man who tended to avoid direct involvement in risky foreign adventures that could upset the stability of his regime. But his successors are degenerate upstarts, ignorant, stupid and over-confident. Blinded by their sense of invulnerability they have launched an unwinnable war. By intervening militarily in Yemen, Saudi Arabia risks destabilizing its own regime or even provoking an uprising.

Saudi Arabia is deliberately stirring up religious sectarianism against the Houthis. This has led to the strengthening of al-Qaeda in large parts of the country. The execution of Nimr-al-Nimr was a judicial murder ordered by the Saudi royal clique. It was a deliberate provocation intended to stir up sectarian strife between Shias and Sunnis and push the government of Teheran into taking military action against Saudi Arabia, which would then call on the Americans for aid.

This immediately led to the storming of the Saudi embassy in Tehran and the breaking off of diplomatic relations by Saudi Arabia. All this was carefully premeditated. Events proceeded step by step, like the steps of a ballet dancer. But this ballet is the dance of death. This was a desperate act by a regime that finds itself in deep trouble and faces the prospect of overthrow.

The Saudi gangsters miscalculated in Yemen. They have stirred up the anger of the Shias who constitute at least 20% of the Saudi population and are among the poorest and most oppressed layers. Mass demonstrations broke out in Saudi cities with slogans like Death to the House of Saud! By overreaching themselves the Saudi ruling clique has sown the winds and will reap a whirlwind.

Turkey

Together with Saudi Arabia and Israel, Turkey represents the main counter-revolutionary force in the region. Although formally part of NATO, under the reactionary regime of Erdogan, Turkey in practice has been backing Isis and other Islamist forces in Syria.

Erdogans regional ambitions are well known. He wishes to re-establish something resembling the old Ottoman Empire, bringing large parts of Central Asia and the Middle East under Turkish control. In order to further this ambition he attempts to use the Turkic-speaking peoples like the Turkmens for his own cynical purposes, just as Russian tsarism used the South Slavs in the past as the pawns of an expansionist foreign policy.

It is also an open secret that Erdogan has been supporting Isis and other Islamist gangs in an attempt to overthrow President Assad and grab slices of Syrian territory. That is why he has allowed a large number of Islamist fighters to cross the Turkish border into Syria, while blocking the supply of arms and volunteers to the anti-Isis forces in Syria and brutally crushing the Kurds who are fighting Isis.

The shooting down of a Russian warplane by the Turks was a provocation intended to create a conflict between America and Russia. Turkey is a member of NATO and has appealed to its allies for help. But while publicly expressing support for Turkeys right to defend its national sovereignty NATO did nothing, while Putin used the incident as an excuse to move a Russian S-400 missile defence system to Syria, thereby taking control of Syrian airspace.

Erdogans provocation achieved nothing. It did not stop President Hollande from visiting Moscow or calling for a wider international coalition against Isis. In reality, the Erdogan regime is not stable. The mass uprising that spread throughout Turkey in 2013 was a warning of what awaits Turkey in the future.

Israel

The Palestinian question remains unresolved and continues to poison the political life of the Middle East. The attempts of Abbas and the Palestinian Authority to isolate Israel diplomatically in the UN and other international forums are exercises in futility.

Relations between the administration of President Obama and the government of Israel have become openly hostile since Netanyahu accepted an invitation from the Republicans to address the US Congress last year.

When Netanyahu was elected, the White House refrained from customary congratulations. There was no phone call from Obama. Instead the prime minister got a brief call from the secretary of state, John Kerry. This little incident, of small significance in itself, indicates the growing contradictions between the USA and Israel.

In an attempt to put pressure on Washington, Netanyahu resorted to the crudest blackmail. Israeli Intelligence obtained secret details about the nuclear talks between Iran and the United States from confidential briefings from US officials as well as from informants, diplomatic contacts in Europe and eavesdropping. They handed this sensitive information over to members of Congress.

By such underhanded means, Netanyahu was attempting to sabotage the deal with Iran. The Wall Street Journal quoted a senior US official as saying that it is one thing for the US and Israel to spy on each other. It is another thing for Israel to steal US secrets and play them back to US legislators to undermine US diplomacy.

The chill deepened when Netanyahu explicitly ruled out the so-called two-state solution  the cornerstone of Washingtons peace efforts. The White House warned that that the Obama administration could be making recalculations in its dealings with Netanyahu.

Israel has maintained its iron grip over the West Bank. Gaza is being slowly strangled and Jewish settlements in the occupied territories are being remorselessly expanded. The leadership of the Palestinians is totally impotent, leading to desperate actions on the part of the youth, actions which will play right into the hands of Netanyahu. This is yet another blow to Obama and US imperialism, which has failed in its attempts to find a compromise solution.

The rise of China

In the East, the USA faces another challenge in the rise of China. After the crisis of 2008 China saved the world economy by absorbing a large amount of surplus capital (that is, overproduction). But now Chinas role in the world has changed into its opposite. As a rising economic power, hungry for raw materials to feed its industries, China penetrated Africa and South America where it mainly extracted raw materials. But now it is faced with a crisis of overproduction.

Like Germany before 1914, the productive forces amassed in China cannot be contained within its borders. This is leading to conflicts with surrounding states as well as the big imperialist powers. The huge programmes of economic stimulus packages have had no lasting effect. China finds itself compelled to resort to dumping in order to unload vast quantities of cheap goods on the world market. Thus, Chinas role in the world economy has turned into its opposite.

Also like Germany in the past, China is striving to gain power and influence in world affairs that reflect its economic power. It is seeking a redistribution of spheres of influence. To the existing powers, especially Japan and the United States, Chinas thrusting ambitions are increasingly perceived as a threat. Publicly America says it welcomes Chinas ascent to great-power status, so long as the Chinese respect international norms and play a proper part in the multilateral system. But in practice, whenever China does anything on the world stage, the USA tries to hem it in.

America has systematically blocked China from increasing its say in international financial bodies like the IMF. Even a modest proposal to increase the resources of the IMF (giving slightly more votes to China) has been stymied for years in Congress. America has also frustrated efforts to boost Chinas weight in the World Bank. To counter Chinas growing weight in the region, the USA is also intriguing with eleven other Pacific Rim countries to set up the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which excludes China, despite it being the most important economy in the west Pacific. But China continues to expand its influence in the region, to Americas chagrin.

We saw this in the case of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). As usual, America has adopted a policy of containment. But this has failed in practice. China now holds in its hands the worlds largest foreign exchange reserves, with which it plans to launch a new bank to help build bridges, roads and other necessities of development in Asia.

The Chinese ruling elite wants to ensure that its military might and political influence are brought into line with its economic strength. Its expansionist tendencies are bringing it into conflict with US imperialism in the Pacific, which is destined to become the decisive area in world history. Fearing (correctly) that the new bank will be a vehicle for Chinese influence in an area vital to its own interests, America is attempting to sabotage the plan. Behind the scenes the Americans have put pressure on its allies not to join it.

When Britain became the first country outside Asia to apply for membership, an American official complained about the UKs trend towards constant accommodation of China. But that did not stop Cameron from inviting Chinas President Xi Jinping to London for a state visit with red carpet treatment and dinner with the Queen in Buckingham Palace. The European powers are falling over themselves to court favours in Beijing. Following Britains lead, Germany, France and Italy announced that they too wanted to be founding members of the Bank.

A high-speed rail line from Shanghai to Kunming will be completed in 2016, promoting Chinas expansion into South-East Asia. And the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the first China-led multilateral financial institution, set up in 2015, gives China the chance to use its huge reserves to boost its political ambitions.

Over the past two years China has been engaged in a massive campaign of building artificial islands in the South China Sea. In response the Americans sent a naval destroyer on what they called a freedom of navigation operation near one of the artificial islands. The head of Chinas navy, was probably not alone in seeing all this as a veiled threat. Except that it was not really veiled.

Admiral Wu Shengli said his forces had shown enormous restraint in response to provocative actions by America in the South China Sea. In the past these tensions would have led to war. But the correlation of forces has changed dramatically. No longer is China a poor, downtrodden semi-colonial nation that could be invaded by Japan, Britain or the United States. The Americans are not even able to take military action against North Korea, which is constantly provoking them. Still less will they dare to challenge the military might of modern China. Although the US can call most countries in the region its allies against China, such as Vietnam, Chinas rise will test this balance of forces more and more. Each time the US fails to intervene, as it did in Ukraine and Syria, it is registered not just in Beijing but in Hanoi, Taipei and Seoul. China is the biggest trading partner for all of these countries, and its share of their trade will only grow. These contradictions will in the future cause political instability in the countries of the western Pacific as the US and China vie for influence.

The new $1 trillion Silk Road strategy, involving in particular Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, is motivated partly by strategic considerations (avoiding the Strait of Malacca) but also by the need to export overproduction. 70% of loans to countries in the new Silk Road strategy are made on condition that Chinese companies must be involved. But this is also provoking conflict with and within these countries.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a huge project that aims to connect Gwadar Port in southwest Pakistan to Chinas autonomous region of Xinjiang, is an extension of Chinas proposed 21st century Silk Road initiative. It is supposed to provide benefits to Pakistan in transport, infrastructure, telecommunications and energy. In reality, it is a plan to turn Pakistan into a Chinese satellite.

China will benefit most by opening trade routes for western China and providing China direct access to the resource-rich Middle East region via the Arabian Sea, bypassing longer logistical routes currently through the Strait of Malacca. It will include the construction of highways, railways, and natural gas and oil pipelines connecting China to the Middle East. Chinas stake in Gwadar will also allow it to expand its influence in the Indian Ocean, a vital route for oil transportation between the Atlantic and the Pacific.

The Chinese state intends this to serve the geopolitical and strategic interests of the Chinese elite. This project is opposed by US imperialism and also by an important section of the Baloch nationalists. It brings no benefit to the inhabitants of Gwadar who live and work in desperate conditions. On the contrary, they are being deprived of their rights in the area. There is also resentment among Sindhis and other nationalities through which this corridor has not been routed. Thus, Chinas expansionist policy serves to aggravate the contradictions in Pakistan and the entire region.

Pakistan, Afghanistan and India

More than one-fifth of the human race lives in the South Asian subcontinent, which has natural resources abundantly sufficient to create a paradise on earth. Yet after nearly seven decades of formal independence, this ancient land is a sea of misery, poverty, illiteracy and oppression. It has been plagued by wars and terrible ethnic and communal viol
SPRINGFIELD -- CRRC MA USA , the Chinese rail car manufacturer with a contact to build subway cars for the MBTA, has begun hiring for its factory and North American headquarters now under construction at the former Westinghouse site in East Springfield.

CRRC MA is running ads online now through staffing company United Personnel in Springfield for two executives. One ad is for a director of manufacturing with at least 10 years of management experience. The successful candidate must be willing to make frequent trips to China and knowledge of the Mandarin Chinese language is preferred but not required.

The other ad is for a director of safety, health and security with a bachelor's degree in safety, engineering or related field and five to 10 years or more of experience. Again, the successful candidate must be willing to make frequent trips to China and knowledge of the Mandarin Chinese language is preferred but not required.

Neither job listing includes a salary range.

In addition to those two jobs, CRRC MA is in the process of hiring a human resources director to handle personnel matters as the plant ramps up, said CRRC MA spokeswoman

Lydia Rivera

. She believes a decision on that hire is imminent.

CRRC received a $566-million contract in 2014 to manufacture 284 subway cars for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, Boston's mass transit system. Of those cars, 152 will be for the Orange Line and 132 will be fore the for the Red Line. First delivery of the Orange cars is expected in March 2018 and production, at least on this contract, is expected to last five years.

But CRRC, once known known as CNR Changchun Railway Vehicles, hopes that fulfilling this MBTA contract is just the beginning of its work at the East Springfield plant. The Chinese company plans to bid on rail and transit projects all over north America using this plant -- its first in North America -- as a base of operations.

That was the idea the state of Massachusetts was going for when it went without federal funding for the Red and Orange line projects. by doing so, the state was allowed to specify that final assembly take place in Massachusetts.

When it's up and running in two years, the factory will employ 150 production workers with starting salaries of at least $66,000 a year, according to company and city officials. Employees will go to China for training, CRRC has said.

That's in addition to the another 150 or so construction workers employed building the $95-miilon plant

CRRC has already started working with local unions, including the sheet metal workers interested in providing permanent production help. CRRC is also in contact with the Regional Employment Board of Hampden County, Western New England University and its School of Engineering and Roger L. Putnam Vocational Technical Academy.

At the factory site on Page Boulevard, construction workers are already prepping the ground for foundations, said Kevin Kennedy, Springfield's chief development officer. Workers are also rehabbing the lone remaining Westinghouse office building to serve as offices and an engineering center for CRRC.

Kennedy said CRRC and the city have reached a number of small agreements concerning how the site will look from the street and how it will be landscaped.

"They are on schedule with everything they told us," he said.

That means construction on the plant -- complete with test subway track -- will be completed in the summer of 2017. CRRC will do a 60-day shakedown process at the plant and the first incomplete cars will arrive in the fall of 2017.
Saskia.JPG

Saskia Cote provides massages to employees at nursing homes, assisted living facilities, hospitals and doctors' offices so that these healthcare workers can have both happy employees and a healthy bottom-line.

(Janice Beetle)

Saskia Cote, owner, Bottom-Line Bodywork, LLC, P.O. Box 371, Palmer (Bondsville)

Years in business: Two

What do you offer and to whom? We provide massages to employees at nursing homes, assisted living facilities, hospitals and doctors' offices so that these healthcare workers can have both happy employees and a healthy bottom-line. We specialize in short, targeted sessions to help prevent repetitive motion injuries like carpal tunnel, and to reduce tension and relieve stress.

Why? What motivates you? Working with nursing home employees lets me reach people who would normally not have access to massage, and seeing them so happy gives me such joy. When they receive this touch from massage, they in turn learn how to touch the residents in a more healing and loving way. This has an incredible impact on the service they provide their patients--our loved ones. At the same time, it saves the business so much money to deal with stress and injuries in-house. As a teacher, I also love to be able to give work to other therapists as well as mentor them. It's a win-win-win situation that gets me so excited.

What sets you apart? We go to the facility, and all the massages are on a massage table, not a chair massage. The staff members, nurses and CNAs are so grateful to be able to lie down and be off their feet for 15 minutes.

What mark do you hope to make on your community? I hope to make the world a better place, and what better way then massaging hard-working people and helping companies at the same time. I love that a CNA, nurse or staff member might be able to go that extra mile for a patient because they themselves feel nurtured. It is the ripple effect of compassionate touch.

Website:

www.bottomlinebodywork.com

How people can contact you:

info@bottomlinebodywork.com

413-250-5139

Voices of the Valley is compiled by Janice Beetle of Beetle Press in Easthampton, a PR and communications firm. www.beetlepress.com. To suggest a subject for this feature, email Beetle at janice@beetlepress.com.
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Don Henley

(File Photo)

Don Henley has extended his tour to promote the release "Cass County" with dates across North America that include Connecticut.

The founding member of The Eagles will headline the Mohegan Sun Arena on Sept. 17 at 7:30 pm.

After starting the tour in Europe the North American portion kicks off on July 13 in British Columbia, and is currently booked through Sept. 21 in Brooklyn, where Henley will perform at the Amphitheater at Coney Island. He will also play the Minnesota State Fair on Aug. 25.

Tickets for the Mohegan Sun show go on sale beginning Saturday, April 9 at 10 a.m. through all Ticketmaster outlets and locations including ticketmaster.com and by phone at (800) 745-3000.

Tickets are priced at $69.50 and $49.50.
Legendary Bob Marshall Wilderness packer Smoke Elser is scheduled to lead a pack clinic on Sunday, April 17, in Corvallis, hosted by the Selway-Pintler Wilderness Back Country Horsemen.

The clinic will provide hands-on training for a more luxurious wilderness experience, said Kathy Hundley, Back Country Horsemen state director and chair of the SPWBCH Education Committee.

MICHELLE MCCONNAHA [email protected]

Full Story: http://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/legendary-packer-elser-to-lead-clinic-in-corvallis/article_dd4bcfcb-8fb9-52fb-86d7-abbfd655d30c.html

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Smoke Elsers Fire

Montanas most famous horse packer continues his lifes work.

By Jayme Feary

 See more at: http://www.americancowboy.com/article/smoke-elsers-fire#sthash.gNaoJ0MZ.dpuf

http://www.americancowboy.com/article/smoke-elsers-fire
"Emotional intelligence" has become a buzzword among business leaders recently, but what does it really mean, and how can you improve upon it?

By tapping into the emotions of your colleagues as well as turning inwards to understand your own, you can become a better leader who facilitates team cohesiveness. Ten entrepreneurs from Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) share the tactics they use to improve upon their emotional intelligence and become stronger business owners in the process.

Full Story: http://www.inc.com/young-entrepreneur-council/10-no-fail-ways-to-strengthen-your-emotional-intelligence-at-work.html
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 Erik Sass @eriksass1, April 1, 2016

This Old House is going private in a transaction funded by private equity investor TZP Growth Partners, spinning production company This Old House Ventures from longtime owner Time Inc. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Leading the transition is Eric Thorkilsen, an investor and media veteran who helped build the brand as a Time Inc. executive in the 1990s, including the launch of the eponymous magazine. It was an early example of the TV print spinoffs that would become popular in later years.

Thorkilsen, who also helped build the Martha Stewart brand, will serve as CEO of the independent company.

Susan Wyland, previously a managing editor at Real Simple, will replace Scott Omelianuk as editor in chief; Omelianuk is leaving the business after 12 years in the top editorial spot.

This Old House magazine has fared better than many of its print peers in recent years, thanks to a relatively stable subscription base. The magazines paid circulation remained basically stable at around 956,000 from 2011-2015, according to figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations and its successor, the Alliance for Audited Media.

The deal is part of an interesting old/new trend in which media industry veterans return to brands that they help launch years before, or even launching niche publishing empires themselves.

Earlier this year, Jack Kliger, the former CEO of Hachette Filipacchi from 1999 to 2008 and a top exec at Conde Nast before that, relaunched a small publication he bought in 2014, British Heritage.

Also, Playboy is exploring options that include a possible buyout bringing back founder Hugh Hefner and previous management execs.
by Thom Forbes @tforbes, April 4, 2016

Asserting that it will redefine its brand identity in the U.S., Volkswagens global brand chief Herbert Diess assuaged the concerns of dealers Saturday who were threatening legal action in the wake of its emissions scandal. Still, some remain vocally concerned that not enough is being done.

Saturdays meeting during the National Auto Dealers Association convention in Las Vegas marked a cease-fire in VWs strained relationship with its U.S. dealers, reports Ryan Beene for Automotive News. Dealers say they came away convinced VW would continue to pursue the objectives championed by former VW of America CEO Michael Horn, even without any clear signs of how VW planned to rebuild its reputation with customers and regulators in the wake of the emissions crisis.

Indeed, much remains unresolved for the automaker. A federal judge in San Francisco set a deadline of April 21 for the company to come up with a plan to get the over-polluting cars off the road. Volkswagen still has not said how it will compensate customers who bought the cars, or what it will do for dealers who have lost business as a result of the scandal, reports UPIs Eric DuVall.

In remarks to reporters after the meeting, Diess said the company is preparing to lower prices and retool its fleet of offerings, after dealers encouraged them to do so, DuVall writes. One dealer present in the meeting described the new appeal as price-competitive German engineering.

The Wall Street Journals John D. Stoll interprets the crux of Diess message as Volkswagen aims to be a mass-market player in the U.S. market, willing to chase volume at the expense of exclusivity.

He also reports that its unclear if Mr. Diesss actions would persuade a smaller group of dealers to drop threats to sue the company. Leonard Bellavia, an attorney who says he represents smaller dealers unhappy with Volkswagen managers, said several of them were ready to file a lawsuit.

Indeed, Steve Kalafer, owner of a 17-franchise New Jersey dealership group, said the promises were broad statements and nothing more than more of the same, reports Steph Willems on The Truth About Cars.

One reason for Volkswagens lack of specifics, however, is that U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, who is overseeing the court case, had asked the company not to disclose details of talks with regulators before it supplies the specific remedies it proposes in his courtroom later this month.

Meanwhile, most dealers appear to feel that they  and their customers  will be better served by taking a collaborative approach with the automaker.

On Friday, many of Volkswagens 652 U.S. dealers met and selected a five-member committee to negotiate with the automaker, writes John Lippert for Bloomberg. Jason Kuhn, owner and chairman of Kuhn Automotive Group in Tampa, Fla., was chosen to lead it.

The dealer body is unified that its not in our best interest to take a litigation posture, Kuhn said. These are going to be our partners not only now but for a long time to come.

Jason believes  and I agree  that in order to properly compensate consumers who own the affected vehicles, it is important to keep the Volkswagen brand as a going concern in the United States, emails Thomas J. Young, a Tampa-based attorney who formerly was a proponent of litigation but now believes an amicable solution is the best solution for all involved.

If VW franchisees go to battle with the manufacturer in a class action, it will only hurt Volkswagen's ability to compensate car owners, particularly if the manufacturer pulls out of the U.S. market or puts its U.S. entity into bankruptcy, Young writes.

According to Diess, compensation was not discussed at Saturdays meeting, and he indicates he is hopeful any lawsuits can be avoided, reportsWards Autos David E. Zoia. I think we had a very positive atmosphere, Diess says.

But all the good vibes in the air wont put drivers behind steering wheels.

We have to see some action, Autotrader.com analyst Michelle Krebs tells Bloombergs Lippert. They keep talking about where they want to be with sales, but theres still no plan for taking care of the customers they have, and to win back the customers theyre losing.
by Philip Rosenstein , Staff Writer, April 4, 2016

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has won five of the last six Democratic nominating contests with extremely strong margins. The Clinton campaign is still confident it can make it through the nominating cycle ahead of Sanders, but glimpses of frustration from the Democratic front-runner and her campaign have started to emerge.

One of the first noticeable moments of public annoyance from Clinton was at the NBC News/New Hampshire Union Leader debate in Durham, N.H., on February 4. She demanded that Sanders end his artful smear of her campaign.

Last Thursday at a rally in Harlem, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was confronted by a Greenpeace activist who asked her if she would act on [her] word and reject fossil-fuel money in the future in [her] campaign.

Without skipping a beat, when she probably would have preferred to take one, Clinton responded forcefully: I am so sick -- I am so sick of the Sanders campaign lying about me. Im sick of it. The unseemly outburst comes after a string of wins for Sanders, even as lawmakers are asking the Senator to begin clearing the path for a Clinton nomination.

One can imagine the pressure Clinton is facing as the presumptive nominee, while dealing with an FBI investigation, attacks from extreme conservatives on the right and precise attacks from the progressive, millennial-attracting Sanders supporters to her left.

While both candidates have said things about each other that vary from the truth, Clinton must feel especially hard done by attacks on her record from the progressive branch of her party.

There is certainly no love lost between the Clinton and Sanders campaigns.

In a culmination of months of disagreements and tussles between the candidates, the two campaigns have now locked shoulders over the details of a Democratic debate in New York, which both candidates claim to want. Its the dates they cant agree upon.

Both Sanders and Clinton have accepted invitations to debate in New York, just not the same ones. Clinton told NY1 and ABC that she would attend debates on the evening of April 14 and morning of April 15.

Sanders, however, has accepted an invitation from NBC to join an April 10 prime-time debate, while also being available on either April 11, 12 or 13. With the New York primary contest on April 19, the clock is ticking.

Both campaigns are blaming one another for the missed connection.

Brian Fallon, a Clinton spokesperson wrote on Twitter: We are at the point that if we agreed to a debate in Williamsburg, theyd say Bushwick. If we said Gowanus, theyd demand Park Slope.

The Sanders campaign, on the other hand, had spokesperson Michael Briggs call out the Clinton campaigns decision to participate in the April 14 debate as disingenuously announced. It was noted that Sanders had previously proposed that date; now he has a rally planned in New York City that night.

The negotiations are taking place between the two campaigns, with the candidates themselves staying out of the detailed conversations.

No resolution will be the worst outcome for New York voters. As for the candidates, Sanders probably has more to gain from more face-to-face time with Clinton on TV.
by Larissa Faw , April 4, 2016

Eurostar is launching its new e320 trains with a campaign called La Vie on Board that will be featured on Instagram and the transportation firms digital and offline assets.

Developed with agency AKQA, the project features an Instagram canvas made of 200 image squares depicting an illustrated version of the new train. Viewers can track the whole journey from London to Paris by horizontally scrolling through the Instagram grid on the phone.

"Instagram allowed us to create a playful and beautiful grid for people to play with our train and to discover all the stories behind it," says Peter Lund, creative director, AKQA. "By 'hacking' Instagram traditional usage, weve been able to create real engagement between people and our train."

Each square is designed to tell its own little story via a combination of animated and still images. One grid, for instance, shows a couple falling in love, while another image shows senior citizens having a party while they are on the train. These stories are specifically plotted to highlight the benefits of the new train, including free Wi-Fi and an on-board infotainment platform.

The "canvas" also features hidden Easter egg hunt type promotions, such as 2-for-1 ticket offers from nine museum partners in London and Paris.

To help attract attention to this platform, the campaign enlisted Instagram influencers, including French fashion editor Adenorah and London-based photographer By Afrique to invite their followers to post a travel selfie and tag it with #eurostar.

Select winners then received a trip to either London or Paris and an opportunity to meet their influencer. In addition, these influencers and winners found themselves illustrated within the Instagram narrative.

This concept will live outside of Instagram as well; creative will appear inside the train stations on the screens, on the new infotainment system onboard the train and on other digital and offline assets.

This Instagram horizontal canvas idea has immediately seduced us," stated Lionel Benbassat, marketing director at Eurostar. "It allows us to discover in a playful way all the features of our new trains, and it gives users a preview of their traveling experience from London to Paris.
by Steve McClellan @mp_mcclellan, April 4, 2016

In 2013, when KSL Media filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection, then company controller Janet Miller-Allen submitted a sworn statement that alleged that a predecessor who left the firm three years earlierGeoffrey Charnesswas largely responsible for the firms going under.

Miller-Allen stated that Charness was responsible for the embezzlement of $145 million from the company and that he had bungled financial reports causing the loss of a key clientCumberland Packing Corp., the parent company of Sweet N Low.

But now, according to the Trustee of the KSL Media Estate, David Gottlieb, who hired investigators to probe those charges, the allegations appear false. Gottlieb told U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Martin R. Barash that Charness had little if anything to do with the firms going belly-up.

Gottlieb has proposed settling a lawsuit against Charness for $100,000 that would waive all claims by both parties. Gottlieb stated that he believed Charness did misuse some company funds, but that the exact amount is hard to track  and its a tiny fraction of $145 million.

He noted that the proposed settlement comes after good faith negotiations and a review of sworn financial information provided by Charness pursuant to a Confidentiality Stipulation.

Among Charness biggest transgressions was the use of 180 million American Express points from corporate cards in his name for his personal use. Gottlieb acknowledged that it was subject to debate whether Charness was within his rights to do so or not.

In a declaration to the court, Gottlieb stated that Charness was likely not the cause of tens of millions of dollars in damages and losses and did not embezzle $145 million of Debtor money through transfers to credit cards Rather, stated Gottlieb, it appears that the overwhelming majority of the KSL funds transferred to make credit card payments were unquestionably used to make payments to KSLs trade creditors and not for personal transactions.

As to the record keeping, any sloppiness or negligence had as much to do with changes in accounting software and actionably lax corporate oversight by KSLs principals and officers. Gottlieb has filed suit separately against KSL founder Kal Liebowitz, former CEO Hank Cohen and former CFO Russell Meisels for negligence and breach of their fiduciary duties while overseeing the agency.

The actions (or inactions) of Charness, Gottlieb told the court were unrelated to the departure of client Cumberland, which left after the agency couldnt demonstrate that it had placed all of the media dollars that Cumberland had paid up front to the firm.

The two parties entered into a legal settlement over the dispute.

Gottlieb added that his investigation did not reveal the actions or inactions of Charness to be a significant cause of KSLs unprofitability, nor what made continued business operations unviable or bankruptcy inevitable.
by Nina Lentini @Nina_Lentini, April 4, 2016

Charlotte, N.C.-based Blu, an innovator on the electronic vaping scene, on Monday launched a new global campaign called Just You & Blu, focusing on the U.S., UK, France and Italy.

It consists of 90-, 60- and 30-second films in addition to simple and timeless black-and-white imagery. The first phase focuses on individuals  a motorcyclist, a comedian, a drag queen, a model and a pilot.

"They are not celebrities, they are not famous; they are just interesting people, each with their own story, and each with their own connection to the Blu brand," says John Wardley, CMO for parent company Fontem Ventures.

Media buys include TV, cinema, print and outdoors as well as digital and social content.

For the campaign, Blu tapped the talents of London-based ad agency The Corner. Commercial ad content was led through video director Romain Gavras and photographer Rick Guest, respectively, with music track "Outro" by French electronic band M83.

Along with campaign, Blu has expanded its international presence through online store launches. The next generation of Blu products is available in the U.S., UK, France and Italy -- including upgraded performance, added personalization and new packaging.
by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, April 4, 2016

Aiming to curb unexpected broadband fees, the Federal Communications Commission today unveiled new, approved formats that carriers can use to disclose information to broadband subscribers.

The samplelabels, similar to nutrition labels on food packaging, include lines for information about total monthly data, overages, activation fees, early termination fees, and typical speeds. The labels also include a spot for ISPs to link to sites offering insight into traffic management practices like throttling. (Currently, AT&T, Sprint and Verizon say they may throttle customers in certain circumstances.)

The new labels are not mandatory. But ISPs that use the labels will have a defense for accusations that they violated a net neutrality rule requiring transparency.

The initiative aims to eliminate the bill shock experienced by consumers. Currently, some report paying 40% more than the advertised price, after fees and taxes, according to the FCC. "With the average monthly cost of broadband service ranging between $60 and $70, consumers deserve to know what they are going to get for their money," the agency stated Monday.

The FCC added that it receives 2,000 consumer complaints annually about surprise broadband bills.

"These labels provide consumers clarity about the broadband service they are purchasing," FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said today in a statement. "Customers deserve to know the price they will actually pay for a service and to be fully aware of other components such as data limits and performance factors before they sign up for service."

The templates unveiled today call for fairly detailed information. For instance, the sample label for wireline service includes a box for the price of stand-alone broadband service, and also leaves room for links to sites where consumers can learn how much bundled service will cost.

At the same time, the FCC's initiative doesn't appear likely to completely eliminate surprise bills. Consider, the sample labels released today don't deal with the cable-video portion of the bill -- which often is incomprehensible to subscribers. Telecom analyst Bruce Kushnick made this point in October of 2014, when he publicly posted his Time Warner Cable bill for triple-play broadband/video/telephone service. When I signed up, less than two years ago, it was advertised at $89.99 and today, less than two years later, the actual price is 110% more -- now $190.77, he wrote in a widely circulated piece that originally appeared on Huffington Post.

He added that not only did his bill increase, but Time Warner tacked on a host of extra charges, including a regulatory recovery fee of 69 cents, a public access fee of $1.23 and a broadcast TV fee of $2.25. Fact is -- you can never, ever get the advertised price because it doesn't include many of the fixed costs, like the set-top box, not to mention it is littered with pass-throughs of the company's taxes and fees, including the cable franchise fees, he wrote. To add insult to injury, there are a bunch of garbage, made up charges.
Patients who set up virtual visits with physicians through a website are experiencing varying qualities of care, according to research published in JAMA Internal Medicine. Share on Pinterest New ways of consulting physicians will require new ways of regulating practices. In a commercial virtual visit, patients use a website to request a live consultation with a doctor they have not met before. They will consult with the physician through a video conference, telephone or web chat. Commercial virtual visit companies do not offer in-person care, but they are easy to access, especially for consultations about acute conditions. They can be an attractive option for patients who have difficulty accessing conventional health care, such as primary care practices, retail clinics and urgent care centers. In 2013, less than 50% of American adults were able to make an appointment with their physician on the same or the next day, and fewer than 40% had access to care outside regular hours, unless they went to the emergency department.

Virtual health care: a growing trend The number of companies offering commercial virtual visits has been expanding, and customers are increasingly willing to accept such care. One company states that over 6 million people use their services. Fast facts about virtual health consultations Analysts estimate there were 2 million video consultations in 2015

Experts project a 25% growth annually over the next 5 years

They predict that there will be 27 million video consultations in 2020. One major insurer in the US now has its own virtual visit service, and, from 2010-2012, the number of large employers offering virtual visits increased threefold. Concern for standards has caused some state medical boards to limit the ways in which virtual visits can be performed. Restrictions include only allowing telemedicine if there is an on-going physician-patient relationship. One authority requires the visit to be carried out by video conference, rather than web chat or telephone. There are also questions regarding interstate virtual visits and which government agencies should oversee them. How urgent the need for a regulatory framework is will depend on the extent to which the quality of care varies among companies offering virtual visits. Dr. Adam J. Schoenfeld, of the University of California-San Francisco, and colleagues have been looking into the consistency of care accessed through virtual visits. The team recruited 67 trained, standardized patients to approach eight virtual visit companies from May 2013-June 2014. The patients made 599 commercial virtual visits with 157 physicians specializing in internal medicine, emergency medicine and family practice. Patients presented with one of six common acute conditions  low back pain, ankle pain, recurrent female urinary tract infection, streptococcal pharyngitis (strep throat), viral pharyngitis (a sore throat) and acute rhinosinusitis (sinus infection)  and participated in 372 videoconferences, 170 telephone consultations and 57 web chats.
Elderly adults are bigger around the middle when they turn up the heat inside their homes during the cold season and have smaller waistlines when their homes stay cool, new research finds. Investigators from Japan presented their study results Friday at the Endocrine Society's 98th annual meeting in Boston.

"Although cold exposure may be a trigger of cardiovascular disease, our data suggest that safe and appropriate cold exposure may be an effective preventive measure against obesity," said the study's lead investigator, Keigo Saeki, MD, PhD, of Nara Medical University School of Medicine Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, Nara, Japan.

Cold exposure activates thermogenesis, to generate body heat, in brown fat. This type of fat is the good calorie-burning fat that prior research found most humans have. However, Saeki said the association between the amount of cold exposure and obesity in real life remains unclear.

He and his colleagues used data from 1,103 participants in the HEIJO-KYO study, a community-based study in Japan, to investigate the association between housing environment and health in home-dwelling older adults. The participants had an average age of 72, and all stayed home in the daytime. Almost 47 percent of the group were men.

For each year of the study (2010 to 2014), the subjects underwent measurement of their abdominal, or waist, circumference before the study began in October and after it ended in April. Waist circumference measures belly fat and can help predict the risk of developing diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.

Additionally, the researchers measured the participants' indoor home temperature every 10 minutes for one 48-hour period in the daytime during the same cold season. The average temperature outside on the measurement days was about 48 degrees Fahrenheit, or 8.7 degrees Celsius, the investigators reported. Participants were divided into four groups based on their average indoor temperature during the daytime.

Results showed that the 64 participants whose indoor temperatures were lowest (50F or lower/10C or lower) had an average waist circumference of 32 inches (81.3 cm). Their waist measurement was 1.4 inches smaller than that of the 164 participants with the highest housing temperature (68F or higher/20C or higher), whose waistlines measured 33.4 inches (84.9 cm) on average. This difference was statistically significant, according to the researchers, and remained significant when they adjusted for factors including age, sex, physical activity, total calorie intake and socioeconomic status.

According to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the risk of disease is high with a waist circumference greater than 35 inches for women (88 cm) and more than 40 inches (102 cm) for men.

According to Saeki, to establish a safe and appropriate cold exposure for prevention from obesity, we need further study about the minimum amount of cold exposure to activate calorie-burning brown fat.
Higher levels of blood markers in the umbilical cord indicate that the baby has more fat and may continue having more fat into late childhood and adolescence, new research suggests. The results

in a poster Friday, April 1, at ENDO 2016, the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society in Boston.

The cord blood markers leptin and adiponectin indicate the degree of fat in the child at birth, but the relationships between these markers and the offspring's risk of obesity in later life is not clear.

"Birthweight was positively associated with fat mass, waist circumference and body mass index at age 9 and 17," said lead author Joy Simpson, MBChB, clinical research fellow in maternal and reproductive health at the University of Glasgow, United Kingdom. "Fetal overnutrition may facilitate fetal growth and fat accretion, as determined by cord leptin and birthweight, and may program greater adiposity in the child that extends into childhood and adolescence."

To examine the association of cord-blood leptin, adiponectin and birthweight with childhood and adolescent fat, Simpson and her colleagues measured blood taken from the umbilical cord at birth in 5,011 mothers and children who were part of an existing study in the United Kingdom.

Higher levels of cord-blood leptin and adiponectin at birth were associated with greater fat in the child at ages 9 and 17, and these effects remained even after pregnancy and lifestyle influences such as the mother's weight in pregnancy were accounted for. Greater birthweight also corresponded to the child's increased fat mass at ages 9 and 17.

The researchers found that cord-blood leptin was positively associated with fat mass, waist circumference and body mass index at age 9, but that the effect was diminished when they adjusted for pregnancy characteristics.

They found a similar but weaker pattern at age 17, when cord leptin was significantly associated with fat mass, waist circumference and body mass index, but these associations faded after they adjusted for maternal and pregnancy characteristics.

Cord-blood adiponectin was not associated with any measures at age 9, but at age 17, adiponectin was positively associated with fat mass and waist circumference. Also at age 17, the effect size after adjusting for maternal and pregnancy characteristics was strengthened.

"This work highlights the importance of optimizing maternal health before and during pregnancy to improve offspring health and limit the translation of greater adiposity onto future generations," Simpson advised.
A new study of African-American infants finds that those who feed more vigorously at 1 month of age have higher weight at 4 months, which may be associated with a later risk for obesity. Researchers presented their study findings Friday at the Endocrine Society's 98th annual meeting in Boston.

"Infants should double their birth weight by 4 months of age on average, but some babies gain weight more rapidly than others," said the study's presenting author, Sani Roy, MD, a pediatric endocrinology fellow at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "Past research shows that rapid weight gain in the first four months of life is associated with a greater risk of obesity by young adulthood."

Because African Americans have among the highest U.S. rates of adulthood obesity, Roy and her colleagues studied African-American infants, specifically 53 healthy, full-term babies who are participating in the Infant Growth and Microbiome Study. This National Institutes of Health-funded study, which is being conducted at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, is evaluating maternal and infant factors contributing to growth during the first two years of life in African-American infants.

"Although birth weight and infant feeding practices are known risk factors for obesity, it is not clear whether an infant's intensity of sucking while feeding is a factor," said Roy, who is a 2015 recipient of the Endocrine Society's Endocrine Scholars Award in Growth Hormone Research.

Such information is important, according to the study's principal investigator, Babette Zemel, PhD, of The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "Preventing obesity early on is more effective than treating obesity once it occurs," she said.

In this preliminary study, the researchers evaluated the infants' sucking intensity, which is the maximal sucking pressure and the number of sucks on a baby bottle in a two-minute period. They used a standardized test developed at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia called the Neonur feeding device. This device uses a flow sensor attached to the nipple of a baby bottle filled with the infant's formula or mother's breast milk. The infants--25 males and 28 females--had this test when they were 1 month old. At that age, 26 of the 53 infants were receiving only formula, and the rest received some or exclusively breast milk, although three months later, 39 infants were receiving only formula.

The researchers also assessed infants' body composition and body fat at 1 and 3 months of age, and weighed the babies again at 4 months. About half of the infants had obese mothers.

Results showed that higher maximal sucking pressure at 1 month of age was significantly and positively associated with greater weight gain from birth to 4 months. A higher number of sucks, the investigators reported, also predicted greater weight gain from birth to 4 months of age after statistical analyses adjusted for birth weight. However, both infant sucking measures had only marginal effects on the amount of body fat at 1 month and no effect at 3 months.

Whether early feeding behavior remains a marker for excess weight gain in the first two years of life is currently under study, Roy said. "It will be interesting to see if these differences hold up with time in this group at high risk of obesity," she commented.
Among military veterans identifying as transgender, 90 percent have at least one mental health diagnosis, such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or depression, and nearly 50 percent had a hospitalization after a suicide attempt or suicidal thoughts. These study findings, from a single veterans' hospital, were presented Friday at The Endocrine Society's 98th annual meeting in Boston.

"As more of our active military returns from deployment and transitions to veteran status, the health care system will be faced with treating more transgender veterans who have mental health issues," said principal investigator Marissa Grotzke, MD, an endocrinologist at Salt Lake City Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC), Salt Lake City.

Compared with the general U.S. population, the military and its veterans have a fourfold higher rate of gender dysphoria, according to Grotzke. Formerly called gender identity disorder, gender dysphoria is substantial distress associated with nonconformity to one's assigned sex.

Patients with gender dysphoria have unique health care concerns, Grotzke said. In general, they have high rates of depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts. Past research also has shown high rates of mental health disorders in military veterans, including PTSD and depression. Less is known, however, about the mental health of veterans with gender dysphoria, she noted.

By examining medical records at Salt Lake City VAMC between January 1, 2014, and October 1, 2015, Grotzke and her colleagues found 39 patients who had a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. Eight transgender patients identified as transitioning from female to male, and the other 39 as male-to-female. They included both combat and noncombat veterans and ranged in age from 21 to 68 years.

The researchers then searched the medical records for mental health conditions that coexisted with the gender dysphoria. They found that PTSD was the most commonly identified mental health diagnosis, affecting 46 percent of these veterans, followed by depression in 41 percent. Tobacco use disorder reportedly occurred in one-third, and anxiety was present in 15 percent. Nine patients (23 percent) had other substance abuse, bipolar disorder or schizotypal personality disorder.

Eighteen patients (46 percent) carried two or more mental health diagnoses, according to the researchers. Only four patients (10 percent) with gender dysphoria had no additional mental health problem.

"These findings highlight the need to improve the quality of care for our transgender veterans," Grotzke said.

To address these concerns, the Salt Lake City VAMC formed a multidisciplinary gender dysphoria team composed of an endocrinologist, mental health professional, pharmacist, speech therapist and vocational rehabilitation providers. Team members meet together twice a month to discuss patients and treatment plans, which Grotzke said already has been "very beneficial" for patients.

Probably multiple reasons exist for the increased rates of mental health disorders they observed in transgender veterans. Grotzke said that traumatic brain injuries sustained in combat, military sexual abuse, and stigma related to gender struggles are common in this population.
A new culture system that tests the role of chemical exposure on the developing mammary gland has found that bisphenol A (BPA) directly affects the mammary gland of mouse embryos. The study results, presented Friday at the Endocrine Society's 98th annual meeting in Boston, show that these changes to embryonic mammary tissue occur at a dose comparable to that of humans' environmental exposure to BPA.

"We exposure in the womb to endocrine disruptors such as BPA may be a main factor responsible for the increased incidence of breast cancer in women," said the study's lead investigator, Lucia Speroni, PhD, a research associate and member of the Soto-Sonnenschein lab at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston.

"We knew from our previous research that BPA causes changes to breast tissue associated with a higher predisposition to breast cancer later in life," said Speroni, who helped develop the new biological assay. "However, until now, we did not know whether this was a direct effect on the fetus or an indirect effect from the mother's exposure."

BPA is a hormone-like industrial chemical that appears in many plastic and resin household products and food containers. It has been detected in most urine samples representative of the U.S. population. Research links BPA to numerous adverse health effects in humans, and it can cross the placenta in the womb.

Unlike typical in vitro cultures of cells, the new culture method is ex vivo, meaning that the growth of the whole mammary gland is examined outside the organism. The researchers extracted mammary buds, the early developing form of the mammary gland, from 14-day-old mouse embryos, which is a critical time for mammary development in rodents, according to Speroni. They then grew the mammary buds in culture dishes for five days. The mammary buds kept developing, allowing the investigators to observe how the mammary gland develops in real time, she said.

BPA is the first chemical the investigative team has tested using the new rapid bioassay. The study received funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the Art beCAUSE Breast Cancer Foundation in Framingham, Mass.

Speroni and her collaborators tested various BPA doses and compared the effects with estrogen. She said BPA increased growth of the mouse mammary bud at doses which were environmentally relevant. This effect is similar to what happened when the researchers exposed the mouse fetus through its mother in a previous study, she noted.

Many past studies have demonstrated that BPA has estrogen-like effects. However, Speroni and colleagues found that BPA did not have the same effect on the mouse mammary bud as did estrogen, which inhibited mammary gland growth. They plan to conduct more studies to learn the reason why and to try to find the mechanism by which BPA disrupts mammary gland development.

The researchers also hope to test other hormonally active chemicals that potentially cause breast cancer.

Speroni said, "We now have a way to test the impact of endocrine-disrupting chemicals on the development of the mouse mammary gland at different doses and obtain results in less than a week."
Many ultraviolet (UV)-filtering chemicals commonly used in sunscreens interfere with the function of human sperm cells, and some mimic the effect of the female hormone progesterone, a new study finds. Results of the Danish study were presented Friday at the Endocrine Society's 98th annual meeting in Boston.

"These results are of concern and might explain in part why unexplained infertility is so prevalent," said the study's senior investigator, Niels Skakkebaek, MD, DMSc, a professor at the University of Copenhagen and a researcher at the Copenhagen University Hospital, Rigshospitalet.

Although the purpose of the chemical UV filters is to reduce the amount of the sun's UV rays getting through the skin by absorbing UV, some UV filters are rapidly absorbed through the skin, Skakkebaek said. UV filter chemicals reportedly have been found in human blood samples and in 95 percent of urine samples in the U.S., Denmark and other countries.

Skakkebaek and his colleagues tested 29 of the 31 UV filters allowed in sunscreens in the U.S. or the European Union (EU) on live, healthy human sperm cells, from fresh semen samples obtained from several healthy donors. The sperm cells underwent testing in a buffer solution that resembled the conditions in female fallopian tubes.

Specifically, the investigators evaluated calcium signaling, which is signaling inside the cell brought on by changes in the concentration of calcium ions. Movement of calcium ions within sperm cells, through calcium ion channels, plays a major role on sperm cell function, according to Skakkebaek. CatSper is a sperm-specific calcium ion channel that he said is essential for male fertility. This channel is the main sperm receptor for progesterone, a potent hormone attractant for human sperm cells. Binding of progesterone to CatSper causes a temporary influx, or surge, of calcium ions into the sperm cell, controlling several sperm functions necessary for fertilization.

The researchers found that 13, or 45 percent, of the 29 UV filters tested induced calcium ion influxes in the sperm cells, thus interfering with normal sperm cell function. "This effect began at very low doses of the chemicals, below the levels of some UV filters found in people after whole-body application of sunscreens," Skakkebaek said.

Furthermore, nine of the 13 UV filters seem to induce this calcium ion influx by directly activating the CatSper channel, thereby mimicking the effect of progesterone. This finding suggests that these UV filters are endocrine disruptors, Skakkebaek said. In addition, several of the UV filters affected important sperm functions normally controlled via CatSper, such as sperm motility.

Skakkebaek called for clinical studies to investigate whether chemical UV filters affect human fertility. He added, "Our study suggests that regulatory agencies should have a closer look at the effects of UV filters on fertility before approval."

Eight of the 13 UV filters that disrupted sperm cell function are approved for use in the U.S. They are avobenzone, homosalate, meradimate, octisalate (also known as octyl salicylate), octinoxate (or octyl methoxycinnamate), octocrylene, oxybenzone (also called benzophenone-3 or BP-3) and padimate O. These chemicals are common active ingredients in sunscreens as well as sunscreen-containing personal care products, such as makeup, moisturizers and lip balms.

PhD student and coauthor Anders Rehfeld, MD, presented the study findings.
Having too little thyroid hormone in the blood--even in the low-normal range--raises the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, especially in people with prediabetes, a new study in nearly 8,500 people finds. The study results were presented Sunday at the Endocrine Society's 98th annual meeting in Boston.

Prediabetes is a mild elevation in blood glucose, or sugar, level that usually occurs before diabetes develops. One of every 10 people with prediabetes will develop Type 2 diabetes every year, according to the Hormone Health Network.

In the new study, the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes over long-term follow-up increased by 13 percent for people with low thyroid function--often called underactive thyroid gland or hypothyroidism--or even those with low-normal thyroid function. However, the diabetes risk was up to 40 percent higher for individuals with reduced thyroid function if they already had prediabetes, the investigators reported.

"These findings suggest we should consider screening people with prediabetes for low thyroid function," said lead investigator Layal Chaker, MD, of Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Currently, experts recommend thyroid screening of people with Type 1 diabetes, because they have a greatly increased risk of thyroid disease. Both Type 2 diabetes and hypothyroidism occur more often in older adults. However, Chaker said the association of thyroid function with Type 2 diabetes and prediabetes remains unclear.

Thyroid hormones are crucial for the regulation of metabolism, which is how the body converts food into energy or stores it. Hypothyroidism slows metabolism and can lead to weight gain. According to Chaker, past research has found a link between hypothyroidism and reduced sensitivity to the hormone insulin, another risk factor for Type 2 diabetes.

The study by Chaker and her colleagues included 8,452 participants from the Rotterdam Study, a population-based study in adults age 45 or older that reflects the general population in the Netherlands. Participants had an average age of 65 years. All participants had blood tests to measure their blood sugar and thyroid function. They were reexamined every two or three years to check for the development of Type 2 diabetes, and their medical records also were reviewed.

Over an average follow-up of nearly eight years, 1,100 participants developed prediabetes and 798 developed diabetes, according to the study abstract.

The researchers found that even among participants whose thyroid function was in the normal range at first measurement, progression from prediabetes to diabetes was reportedly 1.4 times higher for those in the lowest third of thyroid function levels compared with the highest third.

"We found it surprising that even people whose thyroid function was in the low-normal range had an increased risk of diabetes," Chaker said. "Future studies should investigate whether screening for and treatment of subclinical hypothyroidism [mildly low thyroid function] is beneficial in subjects at risk of developing diabetes."
A new low-dose vaginal estrogen capsule may help relieve symptoms of menopausal vulvar and vaginal atrophy, including dyspareunia (pain during sex), new industry-sponsored research reports. The study results were presented in a late-breaking poster Saturday, April 2, at ENDO 2016, the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society, in Boston.

Vulvar and vaginal atrophy affects roughly 50 percent - 32 million - of postmenopausal women in the United States. This widespread condition involves decreased estrogenization of vaginal tissue and can cause painful sexual activity and urination, as well as vaginal dryness, itching and irritation.

"This study provides a new easy-to-use option for vulvar and vaginal atrophy, for which only about 7 percent of women are currently treated with a prescription product. Health care providers and their patients may soon have an additional safe and effective product for a very untreated condition," said study consultant and lead author Ginger D. Constantine, MD, president and CEO of EndoRheum Consultants, LLC, in Malvern, Pennsylvania.

TX-004HR, containing the estrogen 17-estradiol, is currently an investigational drug for use in clinical trials and is not yet available to the general public.

TherapeuticsMD, the manufacturer of TX-004HR, conducted the double-blind, randomized, phase 3 REJOICE clinical trial comparing 3 doses (4, 10, and 25 micrograms) of TX-004HR with placebo in 764 postmenopausal women aged 40 through 75 in 105 medical centers in the United States and Canada.

The women in the study received either vaginal softgel capsules containing one of the three doses of TX-004HR or placebo, once daily for two weeks, then twice weekly for 10 weeks.

Within two weeks, at all doses, vaginal cells and vaginal pH significantly improved, compared with placebo. Superficial and parabasal vaginal cell improvement was found at baseline and at two, six, eight and 12 weeks, and at every time point the return to premenopausal cell ratios was significant. Vaginal pH returned to premenopausal levels as well. Dyspareunia, vaginal dryness and irritation, significantly improved.

TX-004HR did not, on average, increase blood levels of estradiol outside the normal postmenopausal range.

The treatment was well tolerated. No treatment-related serious adverse events were reported, and no clinically significant differences in any adverse events or treatment-related serious adverse events were found between TX-004HR and placebo.

TherapeuticsMD plans to use the results of this study in its new drug application for approval of TX004HR to the FDA that will be submitted during the first half of 2016.
As skin tans, it darkens to protect itself against harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation, but the increasing pigment blocks vitamin D synthesis, limiting the skin's ability to produce more vitamin D, a new study from Brazil finds. The results were presented in a poster Saturday, April 2, at ENDO 2016, the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society, in Boston.

Even people exposed to high levels of sunlight may be deficient in serum vitamin D because it is mainly induced by UV irradiation and synthesized in the skin.

"Our research showed that, in a large sample of individuals living in a tropical region located 8 degrees south of the equator with very high rates of sun exposure and extremely high UV irradiation, most people had serum vitamin D below 30 ng/ml (nanograms per milliliter), the cutoff for normal," said lead study author Francisco Bandeira, MD, PhD, associate professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Endocrinology and Diabetes at the University of Pernambuco Medical School in Recife, Brazil. "Our findings suggest that skin tanning, which is a natural protection against the harmful effects of UV irradiation, limits the progressive rise in serum vitamin D towards optimal concentrations."

Bandeira and colleagues evaluated 986 people between 13 and 82 years of age, with roughly equal numbers of males and females, living in the city of Recife, Brazil. All study participants had high rates of daily sun exposure and did not regularly use sunscreen or take vitamin D supplements.

The researchers evaluated each participant's Fitzpatrick skin phototype scale to estimate the response of different skin types to UV light. In general, higher Fitzpatrick scale scores indicate deeper color and tendency to tan rather than burn in the sun.

They also calculated each participant's sun index, the number of hours of sun exposure per week multiplied by the fraction of body surface area exposed.

They measured everyone's serum vitamin D levels and compared them with their skin phototype and sun index scores.

Although the individuals with greater sun exposure had skin that was more tanned and less vitamin D deficiency than other participants, most of those with very high daily exposure had serum vitamin D levels below the normal cutoff.

Overall, 72 percent of participants had vitamin D deficiency, and their mean vitamin D level was only 26.06 ng/ml. The participants with deficient serum vitamin D tended to be older and have lower sun index values than those with normal levels.
With the increasing mobility of people, animals and goods around the world, nations need to do more to protect their citizens from antimicrobial resistance, write the authors of an Editorial published in the Medical Journal of Australia.

Professor John Turnidge (Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care), Professor Chris Baggoley (Chief Medical Officer of Australia), and colleagues from Department of Agriculture and Water Resources write that alarm bells about antimicrobial resistance have been ringing for some time, but key international organisations have only recently now addressed the problem in a coordinated manner.

"Antimicrobial resistance is now a major item on the agendas of the World Health Assembly and the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), and has been revived as a major work focus for both the World Health Organization and the OIE," they wrote.

Many Australians don't understand what antibiotics can and cannot do or what resistance is; this understanding is also sometimes lacking among prescribers, the authors note.

"Although almost all doctors and veterinarians prescribe antimicrobials as part of their daily practice, few are aware of rational prescribing principles and their benefits."

Australia's First National Antimicrobial Resistance Strategy, released in 2015, was the first strategy in this country to fully embrace the concept that antimicrobial resistance has no borders.

The strategy incorporates a range of coordinated measures, including increasing awareness and understanding of the problem, implementing more effective antimicrobial stewardship, improved surveillance and infection prevention and control, and formulating a national research agenda.

"Developing partnerships with countries across the world will assist Australia to learn from international best practice, avoid duplication of effort, contribute to public health outcomes in our region, and provide early warning of emerging threats," the authors advised.

Without clear governance from all Australian governments, ministries and agencies, however, none of the other objectives of the strategy can be achieved, the authors argued.

The authors write that it is essential to have a coordinated approach if Australia is to be protected from antimicrobial resistance.

"All prescribers and users of antimicrobials have a responsibility to preserve their long term effectiveness and to protect the health of their nation's citizens, animals and ecosystems," they concluded.


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On February 24, 2016, the well-known Russian liberal website Gazeta.ru published an article about the Kremlin's position toward the Russian Jewish community.

It should be mentioned that, although one of Vladimir Lenin's first decisions as the new head of Soviet Russia was to grant Jews freedom of worship, in recognition of the prominent role they played in the 1917 Russian Revolution, all hopes for full emancipation were dashed when Joseph Stalin assumed power, since the Soviet leader suffered from extreme paranoia when it came to the Jews. Some of the most prominent victims of Stalin's purges were doctors, intellectuals and members of the leadership, such as Soviet politicians Leon Trotsky and Grigory Zinoviev, who were both Jews.

The Soviet Government did all it could to force the disappearance of Jews as a separate national community.

Even after Stalin's death, the attempt to suppress Judaism and Jewish culture continued. Although the Soviet Union supported the creation of Israel in 1948, it tilted toward the Arab world in the early 1960s and even threatened to attack Israel in both the 1967 Six Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War. After the Six Day War, Soviet discrimination against Jews increased further. The authorities viewed Jews as potential enemies, partly because many Jews had relatives in the United States. The Jews indeed fought the Soviet regime for their right to immigrate to Israel, and this fight was carried out by both American Jewry and by Jewish dissidents in Russia.[1]

In the article, Yuri Kanner, President of the Russian Jewish Congress, says that the Soviets used Jewish emigration from Russia to Israel as leverage in their relations with Muslim countries. It describes further how repression of the Jews increased in the 1980s (under Soviet Presidents Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko), when the Cold War escalated and relations between the USSR and the U.S. deteriorated. The Jews' situation improved under President Mikhail Gorbachev, with the advent of Perestroika.

According to the article, the Kremlin's attitude toward the Jews changed under Russian President Vladimir Putin, who sees Russian-speaking Jews as a political asset. The article states that the Kremlin uses its ties with religious figures to broaden its sphere of influence. For example, Moscow uses Russians Patriarch Kirill and Russian rabbis as unofficial ambassadors of the Kremlin. The article mentions that Vyacheslav Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, is one of Putin's men.

The following are excerpts from the Gazeta.ru article: [2]



Russian President Vladimir Putin with Russia's Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar lights a Hanukkah menorah during the Jewish Hanukkah holiday. (Source: Kremlin.ru)

Moscow Used Jewish Emigration To Israel As Leverage In Its Relations With Muslim Countries

"On February 24, 1971, 24 Soviet Jews entered the office of the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet Presidium and refused to leave until their demands were met. Then-Minister of the Interior Nikolai Shchelokov was informed that the room had been 'taken over.' Later, it emerged that the word 'takeover' was misplaced, since none of the Jews were armed. But they were determined to remain there until they received permission to leave the USSR for Israel.

"The [Jewish] political activists waited all day for a response and their wait was not in vain. Eventually, the assistant to the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR [the highest legislative body in the Soviet Union] told them that the documents necessary for their emigration were being drawn up. This was a real triumph for Soviet Jewry. By that time, relations between the USSR and Israel had been severed, and nobody expected the Kremlin, with its persecution of Zionists and all Jews who were interested in their cultural heritage, to open the borders for Jews who wanted to leave.

"When the information about the 'takeover' of the office reached the leaders of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), an order was given to settle the matter quickly and quietly. According to Kanner, 'the explanation is that in 1971, the Kremlin made it official policy to improve its relations with the U.S., the country that had the largest Jewish community in the world at the time, even [larger] than [the community in] Israel. Besides, Moscow wanted to use Jewish emigration as leverage vis-a-vis its allies among Muslim countries.' Muslim powers were anxiously watching the flow of immigrants into young Israel, which was becoming an increasingly powerful geopolitical rival. In particular, the USSR wanted to extort concessions from Egypt, whose President Anwar Sadat had begun to demonstrate too much independence from Moscow by the start of the 1970s. In 1971, the flow of Soviet Jews to Israel increased from less than a thousand to 11 thousand people. This, however, only served to fuel tensions between the USSR and Egypt...

"From 1969 to 1976, about 100 thousand Soviet Jews left for Israel. This wave of emigration was followed by a backlash. The 1980s saw a new escalation of the Cold War, the relations between the USSR and the U.S. deteriorated, and Moscow used the 'Jewish factor' [to pressure the U.S.].

"'For the first time, they started arresting teachers of Hebrew, who had been left in peace until then, says Iosif Begun [a human rights activist and author and a former Soviet prisoner of conscience]... Iosif Begun himself, who was one of the most active popularizers of Jewish culture in the USSR in the 1970s, first found himself behind bars in 1977. By that time, he had already lost his position as a research associate because of his 'anti-Soviet activity.' The first charge brought against him was '[leading a] parasitic lifestyle.' More serious accusations of anti-Soviet propaganda and subversive activity followed. Between 1977 and 1980, and 1983 and 1987, Begun was held in prisons and penal colonies. 'Then the perestroika started, and, to my surprise, Gorbachev's amnesty[3] was announced. That's how I got out,' he says. Only then did he manage to emigrate to Israel."

Putin "Is Intolerant Toward Any Manifestation Of Nationalism That May Blow Up The Country"

"Times have changed, and now the Kremlin sees Russian-speaking Jews as a political 'asset.' The Kremlin's attitude to Russian Jewry has markedly improved. In 2012, Vladimir Putin became the first Russian leader to don traditional religious Jewish headwear - a kippah - during his visit to the Western Wall in Jerusalem. In the opinion of political analyst [and vice president of the Center for Political Technologies] Aleksey Makarkin, it was only during Putin's rule that 'the state embarked upon a determined course to eradicate radical antisemitism.' This is due primarily to the fact that the current president is intolerant toward any manifestation of nationalism that 'may blow up the country. 'For this reason, Makarkin claims, 'the Jewish communities see the state as their protection from antisemitism'...

"The Kremlin uses its connections to Russian Jewry in Israel, but does not do it the same way as most other world powers,' says Makarkin... According to Kanner, the Kremlin prefers to use religious ties rather than NGOs to broaden its sphere of influence. 'For example, during the recent meeting between Russia's Patriarch Kirill and Pope Francis, the former was representing not only the interests of the Russian Orthodox Church, but the interests of the Kremlin as well,' Kanner says. Moscow uses Russian rabbis the same way. But foreign partners do not always realize that.'

"Vyacheslav Kantor, one of the richest businessmen in Russia, and third-time president of the European Jewish Congress (EJC), is considered to be an influential 'pro-Kremlin' figure in the international Jewish community. One of the missions of the EJC is to disseminate information and preserve the memory of the Holocaust, as well as to fight Nazism. Haaretz, an Israeli left-wing newspaper, calls Kantor 'Putin's man' and 'an oligarch with ties to the Kremlin.'[4] The newspaper notes that it was during Kantor's presidency that the EJC actively directed the attention of the mass media to incidents of antisemitism in those countries 'toward which Putin's administration is hostile.'

"During a recent meeting with Putin, Kantor described the situation of the Jews in Europe as 'the worst since the Second World War.' Putin responded [given the growing antisemitism in Europe] by inviting the European Jews to move to Russia.[5] But the Jews are in no hurry to move, and not because of their fear of antisemitism. Although many Russian Jews are successful entrepreneurs, there aren't many business opportunities in Russia today because of the [economic] crisis [Still,] Jews in Russia do feel comfortable enough. The wild antisemitism of the 1990s is no longer there."

Endnotes:
BJP leader and Janpad Panchayat vice-president of Pandaria town in Chhattisgarh was arrested for killing four stay dogs by shooting them after getting irked with their barking. Police recovered two bullets from the spot which helped them to track the accused.

This is the second case of brutality against animals by the BJP leaders. Earlier, last month, a group of BJP members led by Mussoorie MLA Ganesh Joshi had allegedly attacked 14-year-old police horse Shaktimaan at a location close to the state assembly.

According to the villagers, three youths in a Maruti van shot a stray dog dead after he barked on them near Meghapara village. The incident took place on the intervening night of Friday and Saturday. The same van stopped near a river bank in Golhapara basti where they again shot at three other stray dogs who started barking on them due to loud music being played in the car.

 BCCL

Villagers recovered the bodies of the dogs and informed police, next morning. Cops conducted autopsy of the dogs and identified the accused with the help of bullets which were fired from the licenced revolver of Janpad Panchyat vice president of Pandaria, Pragyesh Tiwari.

Cops arrested 28-year-old Praygesh Tiwari and also confiscated his Maruti van. The accused is being questioned to know about the location of his other aides.

SP Mungeli Neethu Kamal informed that an FIR has been lodged against Praygesh Tiwari for cruelty against animals under section 11 (D) of Prevention of cruelty to animals Act 1960 and and Arms Act 1959.

"The accused has used his .22 bore licenced revolved to kill the dogs. Such use of licenced arm is illegal and punishable. He is being interrogated," she added.

(This article was originally published in The Times Of India)
In a tumultuous situation in Palmyra, an officer of Russian Special Forces ordered to execute an airstrike on his location when he realised that he was surrounded by the ISIS jihadists.

 YouTube

Alexander Prokhorenko, popularly known as the Russian Rambo, was the name of the twenty five year old martyr who gave his life to combat the terror attacks of ISIS in Palmyra in the war torn zone of Syria.

A transcript of Prokhorenkos last communication with the Russian Special Forces has revealed how he was surrounded by the ISIS bitches when he had a dearth of ammo. In spite of the frequent orders that were given to him to move to a safe location before the airstrike, he couldnt as it was too late.

 YouTube

He insisted, Conduct the airstrike now, please hurry. In a situation when death was inevitable, Prokhorenko was prepared to die but not in the hands of the jihadists. He didnt let them make a mockery of him or his uniform which harnessed the honour of his country. Such was the courage of this young lad!

According to the reports of the Mirror UK, Prokhorenko said, I want to die with dignity and take all these bastards with me. Please my last wish, conduct the airstrike, they will kill me either way.

 YouTube

His last words were during the final communication with the Russian Special Forces is heart wrenching as the young braveheart said: This is the end commander, thank you, tell my family and my country I love them. Tell them I was brave and I fought until I could no longer. Please take care of my family, avenge my death, tell my family I love them.

His marriage with his wife Ekaterina was one of the happiest moments in his life. Ekaterina didnt even know that his beloved husband was serving in Syria. He had been married for 18 months and all that he wanted in his life was to have a life of peace with his dear wife and serve his country.
The Foreign Ministry expresses its profound grief at the passing of Ambassador Emeritus Nikolaos Kalantzianos.



Nikolaos Kalantzianos was a distinguished diplomatic employee, conscientious, intelligent and tireless. He served his country with passion and responsibility.



Ambassador Nikolaos Kalantzianos entered the Foreign Ministrys Diplomatic Service in 1973 and served in a variety of posts, including Consul in Izmir and Director of the Foreign Ministers Office. He served as Greek Ambassador to the Vatican, Budapest and Luxembourg.



Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias, all of the Foreign Ministrys political and service leadership, and all of Nikolaos Kalantzianos colleagues express their deep condolences to his family.
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP)  Less than a year after New York banned fracking, dashing the hopes of farmers who had hoped to reap royalties from natural gas leases, the commercial solar industry is courting landowners for energy production.

Buoyed by Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo's renewable energy plan and the extension of the 30 percent federal tax credit in December, solar companies in recent months have blanketed rural areas with mailings seeking leases on farmland for solar arrays spanning 20 acres or more. While some farmers welcome the opportunity to earn up to $2,000 an acre annually for the next 20 years or so, some agricultural advisers, community leaders and lawyers are urging caution.

"These are complex business transactions masquerading as lottery tickets," said Chris Denton, a southern New York lawyer who helped landowner groups negotiate oil and gas leases during the Marcellus Shale gas rush in 2009. "There are unexamined risks and environmental impacts. That's why landowners are banding together again to formulate leases that will protect their interests."

Manna Jo Greene, environmental director for the nonprofit Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, said the developing solar boom is welcome but only if it's done right. While a solar development is a beneficial use for a former landfill, it might not be appropriate for prime farmland, she said. And there are many questions concerning zoning, agricultural tax benefits, effects on farm operations, and the eventual decommissioning and disposal of the solar components.

"A lease promising $20,000 or $40,000 a year is tempting to farmers who are struggling," said Greene, who is also an Ulster County legislator. "But we're trying to get the word out to be cautious and not let a developer strip them of their property rights."

The Cuomo administration's initiatives aimed at promoting local renewable energy generation, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and generating 50 percent of the state's energy from renewable sources by 2030 are bringing solar developers to the state. One company, Santa Monica, California-based Cypress Creek Renewables, has mass-mailed lease offers to hundreds of upstate landowners.

"We expect to have operational projects in every utility load distribution zone in New York by the end of 2017," said Cypress Creek spokesman Jeff McKay. The company already has operational sites in North and South Carolina, Texas, Indiana, Missouri, Minnesota, Oregon and Georgia, he said.

"New York's solar industry is growing at unprecedented levels," said Department of Public Service spokesman Jon Sorensen. He said that the state doesn't have figures on solar leasing activity but that energy and agriculture agencies are developing information to help farmers make leasing decisions.

"It's happening so fast, it's caught people off-guard," said Elizabeth Higgins of the Cornell Cooperative Extension in Ulster County.

Several New York towns, including the Orange County town of Goshen, have enacted moratoriums on new solar farms to allow officials to consider any zoning changes that might be necessary.

A similar solar boom has been going on in North Carolina for about four years, driven by state-mandated rules for utility power purchases that favor solar developers. At least 200 commercial solar farms have been established in North Carolina, mostly around 5 megawatts but ranging to up to 80 megawatts, said Tommy Cleveland of North Carolina State University's Clean Energy Technology Center.

Objections similar to those being raised in New York were raised in North Carolina.

"There has been concern about taking prime land out of farm production," he said. "In the last two years, we've installed more than any state other than California, and it's still only a tenth of a percent of our farmland."

For some farmers in New York, the leases could mean salvation. Marginal land could become productive, and prime cropland could produce income without labor and other costs during a 20-year lease, with the potential to one day return to crop production.

"I've been looking for anything and everything to get some other income for my farm," said Mike Athanas, a retired electronics technician who has a 184-acre farm in Hyde Park in the Hudson Valley. "The taxes are killing me. My vegetable business doesn't have much profit margin. And some of the soil isn't the best for planting."

Athanas recently signed an option with Boston-based Omni Navitas Holdings to lease two 20-acre parcels where he used to grow hay. He hopes to get at least $2,000 per acre annually after the solar panels go up this summer.

"I've always wanted to have a vineyard," Athanas said. "This may give me the extra capital I need to while away my hours growing grapes for local wineries."
GOSHEN  A man who shot and wounded another man outside the You You Asian Restaurant and Bar in the Town of Wallkill because he
Almost 100 people mostly from Haiti who were rescued from an overcrowded boat off the Florida coast had no food or water for...
Marine Corps officials are looking into offensive comments made on a network reality show by a Marine sergeant who serves as executive chef at the Home of the Commandants. Sgt. Frank Cala created an internet furor after an April 1 episode of the Fox show "Hell's Kitchen" showed him disparaging female Marines and all women after getting kicked off the show. "The blue team never had any drama until the females came aboard," Cala said in a confessional interview as he left the set. "That's when the ship sunk. And that's exactly why I get [bleeped] female Marines and I send them back wherever [bleeped] they came from. The clip was posted April 2 to a Facebook page called End Gender Bias in the Military as an example of a broader culture of sexism. "Personal chef to the Commandant of the Marine Corps, Marine Sergeant Frank Cala disparages women on Hell's Kitchen. Cultural problems in the Corps? Yes," page administrators wrote. Cala's remarks also prompted dozens of comments on the show's Facebook page. Sgt. Bryan Nygaard, a public affairs Marine for Recruiting Station Baltimore, condemned the comments in his own post. "I can assure you that Sergeant Frank Cala's comments have not gone unnoticed. Sergeant Cala's comments toward the end of the episode are not consistent with the Marine Corps' values of honor, courage and commitment," he wrote. "I will notify my chain of command as well as Sergeant Cala's chain of command to ensure that corrective action is being taken." On Monday, Headquarters Marine Corps responded, posting a short message to its official Twitter page. "Many have drawn our attention to comments not in keeping w/ our values made on @HellsKitchenFOX Friday," officials wrote. "We are looking into it. Thank you." Cala is a seven-year active duty Marine originally from Staten Island, New York who enlisted in the Corps at the age of 19, according to a January profile by SI Live. Military news releases show he has previously received recognition as a Marine food specialist, winning the Culinary Team of the Quarter competition at Mess Hall 411 aboard Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina in 2011. It's not clear what arrangements were made in order to allow Cala to participate in Hell's Kitchen, a restaurant cooking competition hosted by celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay. Cala was kicked off on the 12th episode of the show's 15th season.

--Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter @HopeSeck.
Introducing Military.com's new Transition app. Our new app gives you a personalized transition plan, tells you what to expect while transitioning, and even helps you find a job. The app is customizable for all Active Duty, National Guard, Reservists, and spouses. Download it today from Google Play or iTunes.

Veterans returning home from a tour (or several tours) in Afghanistan, Iraq, or other areas where terrorists live, sometimes have a difficult time getting out of operational threat mode. Understanding that there is no threat at home is easy to say, but a challenge to live. Building a normal life can take time, patience, and many days and nights of frustration. Here is an email from a reader who offered some assistance to her nephew after deploying for over a year recently.

She writes:

Hello Stew.

My nephew recently returned from active duty in the Army after a year in Afghanistan. When I asked him how it felt to be home, he had a troubling response: "I'm not really sure what comes next."

I started thinking about the unique challenges veterans often face after returning home from deployment. They may be starting college four years later than their friends, looking to get a fresh start in a new city, or returning with a physical or mental injury that affects their everyday lives. I did a little research and found some wonderful resources that could help our veterans get back on their feet after deployment. Can you share them?

Thanks, Angela

How Service and Therapy Dogs are Helping PTSD Victims Reconnecting with Your Children After Deployment Transitioning Back to Your Civilian Job After Deployment The Ultimate Job Relocation Guide for the Newly Hired Student Veterans: Top Military-Friendly Colleges & How to Find Academic Success Veteran's Education Benefits & Tuition Assistance Guide Vacations and Retreats for Wounded Warriors, Disabled Veterans, and their Families Grants for Home Modification: 16 Resources for Homeowners with Disabilities PTSD Symptoms  What is PTSD?

Angela 

Thanks for caring. There are many resources out there for veterans returning home. They deserve the best care and treatment. I hope these resources can help returning warriors ease back into civilian life and find their "new normal!" Here are some others from the Military.com site as well: Veteran Jobs  Finding work after serving. Military Health and Wellness  Complete section on Veteran Health Issues. Helping Vets Start and Grow Businesses  Help on being your own boss.
The Diamondbacks have not ruled out acquiring a new center fielder to replace injured star A.J. Pollock, reports Jon Morosi of MLB Network in a series of tweets (1, 2, 3, and 4). Pollock will have surgery on his fractured elbow and hopes to return at some point this season. However, its very possible hell miss the entire 2016 campaign.

The Diamondbacks made a serious of win-now oriented moves over the offseason. The loss of Pollock is a devastating blow to their hopes of contention. According to FanGraphs, he was worth over six wins above replacement level last year. Internal options like Chris Owings and Socrates Brito may patch the problem, but they wont come close to replacing Pollocks production.

For now, the club will evaluate their in-house candidates while exploring the trade market and free agent markets. Its generally a difficult time of year to acquire impact talent  most teams have either made their blockbuster swaps or hope to contend this season. If Arizona does choose to look outside the organization, they could begin their search with veterans Michael Bourn and Will Venable. Bourn was recently designated for assignment by the Braves while Venable failed to make the Phillies Opening Day roster.
DETROIT, MI - Toyota Motor North America and technology giant Microsoft are partnering to launch Toyota Connected, a company that specializes in compiling and managing data while keeping it as a background feature for consumers.

The new company will be a data science hub for Japanese automaker's global operations.

It will use Microsoft's Azure cloud technology to make intuitive services and to help humanize the driving experience, the company said Monday.

"Toyota Connected will help free our customers from the tyranny of technology," Zack Hicks, CEO of Toyota Connected and chief information officer at Toyota Motor North America, said in a release. "It will make lives easier and help us to return to our humanity."

It will do so by using telematics services that can learn users' habits and preferences, Hicks added.

Toyota Connected will also be able to launch use-base insurance pricing models that correlate with driving patterns. And It will leverage connected vehicle technology to share road conditions and traffic information from car to car.

The company said it will support a broad range of consumer-, business- and government- facing initiatives.

Toyota Connected is based in Plano, Texas where Toyota also has its North American headquarters.

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.
DETROIT - The 400 block of West Canfield in Detroit's Midtown neighborhood looked less like a functioning city street, and more like a shopping mall on a recent sunny Saturday.

Groups of shoppers bustled up and down the block, moving between stores and across the street, some toting bags from Willys or Third Man Records or City Bird.

The stores on that block are not necessarily neighborhood staples, but higher-priced boutiques, with many of their well-dressed patrons coming from outside the city to shop.

And that's a good thing, according to Midtown Detroit, Inc. President Sue Mosey.

That's what Midtown is supposed to be, she said, at least in parts.

"First of all, everybody's got to get out of their head that this is a traditional neighborhood," Mosey said. "This is not a traditional neighborhood... This neighborhood is built to serve the entire (Metro Detroit area)... This is about servicing everybody."

What is Midtown?



Midtown sees about 3 million visitors a year, according to statistics gathered by Midtown Detroit.

About 60,000 people work at institutions like the Detroit Medical Center, Wayne State University and Henry Ford Hospital up the road, in addition to the small businesses.

Roughly 30,000 college students attend Wayne State University and the College for Creative Studies.

And, 20,600 people live in the Midtown area, according to 2015 numbers.\

Add to that national attractions like the Detroit Institute of Arts, and Mosey said it's not hard to see that Midtown is meant to serve a bigger area than just those who live within the borders.

In a city where the median household income is $26,095 and 39 percent of the population lives in poverty, the 400 block of Canfield is undeniably different than any other block in Detroit.

Willys, the Shinola sister-store that sold $200 jeans and $90 shirts, is closing, but will be replaced by a Filson store. Filson makes the $90-and-up flannels, $600-and-up watches and other goods formerly sold at Willys.

Shinola draws attention from around the country. President Barack Obama flashed a Shinola watch during a visit to the city, which included a stop in Midtown, last year.

While the retailers all have a few affordable options like journals or keychains and other knickknacks, the price point is high for most items.

Note that retail, even high-end retail, is not new to Detroit. Downtown up until Hudson's departure in the 1980s was a shopping destination; still today stores like Hot Sam's and Henry the Hatter are remnants of the flashy, expensive shopping scene that once was.

Woodward Avenue storefronts downtown are starting to fill up with stores like Nike and John Varvatos, but in Midtown nationally-recognized fashion brands are new.

Mark Denson, manager of business attraction with the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation, explained that the 400 block of West Canfield is specifically meant to be a destination shopping area.

"Not every store that opens is for every resident," Denson said. Certain stores are meant to appeal to different demographics.

Mosey bristles at the notion that Midtown has become a place that only offers high-end watches and expensive clothing, though.

She said just 11 percent of the stores in Midtown qualify are labeled "high-end," by Midtown Detroit.

Local college-age people wearing boots, cuffed jeans and frumpy sweaters often populate the area during the week.

But on weekends, the crowd is different.

An older mix strolls Canfield -- they're of every color, mostly well-dressed, and they mostly get in their cars and drive away after they've finished with the block, which houses a few "fast casual" restaurants in addition to the shopping.

And that's what the block is meant for, Denson said.

"It's a burgeoning tourist destination," he said. "(Higher-end retail) is an important component" for the neighborhood and even Detroit as a whole.

The Midtown boom, the rebranding, is by no means isolated to Canfield. Midtown is dense, expensive and well-known almost in its entirety, and that's due to calculated, meticulous work from many since the 90s.

Mosey has been instrumental in defining Midtown, Denson said.

She said it took 30 years to get Midtown to where it is today, and a huge amount of the momentum was built in the last five years.

What was Midtown?

John Linardos, founder of Motor City Brewing Works, has been brewing beer on the northwest corner of the Canfield block since 1992. His dad grew up in Midtown -- long before it was called Midtown -- and Linardos has lived in Midtown since 1985.

He loves the neighborhood, he said, but what initially attracted him to Midtown is pretty much gone.

Linardos didn't open a taproom until 2001. And even then, after staples like Traffic Jam and Snug, Avalon International Bread and Cass Cafe had firm roots in the area, it was rough.

"When I first opened the tap room, it was still really dark, and I mean that physically, down here," Linardos said.

The streetlights were out, and a majority of the buildings were empty.

"It was not unusual at all for people to bring cars, stolen cars, on Canfield and torch them," he said.

On that front, things are better, Linardos said. He doesn't have to call the Detroit Fire Department to come get a burned-out car out from in front of his business, but some of the edgy attitude that was iconic in Midtown has been sucked out of the neighborhood.

"When I moved down here, one of the things I liked about it was kind of a Wild West attitude," Linardos said. "If you had an idea, you just did it... That energy, that just do it, it was cool, but you had to watch your back."

Linardos said he appreciates the oft-boasted walkability of the neighborhood -- that it's safer. He's also seen a boost in business and a change in the people walking through his doors, mostly on the weekends.

A look down Woodward Ave. in Midtown.

"I have definitely seen a change in our clientele... I didn't anticipate (the brewery) being for the people who were in Detroit for a convention," he said. "I just envisioned the neighborhood being here, a local spot."

The high-end retail across the street makes sense, the brewery owner said, though rising costs of retail space in the area stymie the experimentation that created some of the longer-lasting Detroit brands.

There has to be a cluster effect for businesses to flourish, though, with people trickling out of one popular store and into another, he said.

"Now on Sunday, there's a ton of people walking around... You need those people walking around the neighborhood to shop (and) spend the afternoon in the district," Linardos said. "Is (high-end retail) necessary to help build a district? Yeah, I think it is."

But Bedrock Manufacturing Co., which owns Shinola and Willys, wasn't really aiming to answer any sort of call to action, said Chief Operating Officer Heath Carr.

In 2011, they just wanted to find a storefront for Shinola that was close to their offices at the College for Creative Studies.

Mosey sold the company on Midtown and that particular block of Canfield, according to Carr.

The 441 West Canfield location allowed the company to assemble their bicycles on-site and build out a custom store.

The block further coagulated around the watch and bike maker that's become an internationally recognized brand, and neighboring storefronts were filled with Third Man Records, Run Detroit, Willys and Jolly Pumpkin Pizzeria and Brewery.

Carr said Willys was opened due to consumer demand.

"The consumers wanted another opportunity on that street to buy some products," he said.

Shinola sees about 5,000 customers a week in Midtown, Carr said, and about half of those people walk into Willys.

"We're doing way more volume than we ever thought we'd do there," Carr said.

The clothing store isn't closing, it's rebranding, he said.

"It was more about just enhancing the real estate there," Carr said.

The rebranding comes about eight months after Fellow Barber closed to make room for musician Jack White's Third Man Records store.

Fellow offered $40 haircuts, and a $50 shave.

Shinola founder Tom Kartsotis said in a recent magazine article that Shinola is, in fact, losing "millions." Kartsotis told Inc.com the loss is part of a concentrated effort to invest in building brand.

And the brand has clearly built notoriety.

Though the prices may seem high for a city with a median income of $26,095, these pricey stores see a plethora of activity.

The businesses around them are, too.

Linardos said that while it might have been a cooler scene in the early 2000s, there's a better economic climate in Midtown now.

According to Denson, it helps to think of that part of Midtown like a mall.

That includes the higher-end restaurants a few streets away like Selden Standard and the Whitney.

"Maybe you don't eat there every day, but it's an important mix," he said.

In the same way someone in Ann Arbor might know they have to go out of their way to get to Costco or Meijer or Whole Foods for groceries, instead of walking up Main Street, Detroiters know where to go for day-to-day needs, and where to go when they want to window shop.

There's no reason Midtown in Detroit can't be held to similar standards of other big cities when it comes to shopping options, Mosey said.

What will Midtown become?

The unique shopping and dining destinations on Canfield "give Midtown a sense of place," Denson said.

"That's what the real draw is," he said. "You're not going to drive out of your way to buy something that's right next to your home."

He also dismissed talk of gentrification.

"It's a mater of utilization," he said.

Midtown retail space was simply empty and fallow, he said. Vacant and abandoned locations have been filled. And minority-owned businesses, like Textures By Nefertiti and Source Book Sellers, have as much of a place in Midtown as Shinola.

Denson said it's important for people to see the vibrancy outside of that one block.

On the residential end, developer Robert Slattery, 58, has lived in the neighborhood since 1975. He's redeveloped 14 properties in Midtown, invested $50-million in the buildings, and plans to start on his 15th project soon.

Lofts in his Willys Overland Lofts complex on Cass Avenue have fetched close to $400,000. Most recently, a 1,606-square-foot condo in the building listed for $530,000.

Slattery said the crowd in his buildings, though all wealthy, vary in age. A large percentage of those living in his lofts are older than 50, he said.

"They have money, and they're established," Slattery said. "I have millionaires in my buildings."

The neighborhood gets a bad rap for not being inclusive enough, according to Denson.

"You've got every imaginable housing type right there in Midtown," Denson said, noting that public housing, student housing, multi-family, market rate and single-family dwellings all stand within blocks of each other.

There's a relationship between housing prices and retail -- in fact, it might be the prominent millennial demographic in Midtown that attracted the retailers, not the other way around.

With recent talk of zoning changes in Midtown, it's possible those trying to push the neighborhood toward something of a shopping district might inch closer to ideals slowly taking form: Getting people on the street, giving them parks and store fronts and cafes, and getting outsiders talking about Detroit.

"There's plenty of a mix of price points and types of products (in Midtown)," said Mosey.

There's an expensive grocer, and a bargain store, and she and her team works with countless startups and small local retailers.

Mosey's work isn't done, either. She said she has a long, running list of suggestions coming from residents on what they want to see happen in the neighborhood next. The neighborhood needs another dry cleaner, for example. A couple more salons might work, too.

People also want to see a better mix of basic clothing stores in the neighborhood, she said.

Mosey said repeatedly that Midtown is meant to serve "the entire Metro," and while that offers a place for a couple high-end retail stores, "it's not by any means the most significant part."

There's a huge market for mid-range retail and fast-casual dining in that part of the city, she said.

For Linardos, the brewery owner, the change in Midtown is complicated.

His company hasn't changed, he said. They're making beer with the same attitude they had when the started.

Mostly, the businesses and people popping in around him and other long-time Midtowners are "aware of the fact that they're moving into a neighborhood with a lot of history... most people have been respectful," he said.

But he took issue with the "walkability" buzzword.

"People say 'Oh, well, you can walk, you can walk, you can walk,'" Linardos said.

"When I started, you could kind of do the same thing... I could walk to Cass Corridor Food Co-op and I could walk and see concerts and I could walk to galleries... It was just more bootstrap, and that part of it, that was awesome.

"All of that just kind of evolved or transformed into this."

Midtown Detroit keeps statistics on everything that opens, closes or expands in the neighborhood.

There are currently 170 businesses operating in Midtown, according to Mosey.

The group labels 18 of those businesses as high-end retail or fine dining.

That's 11 percent of Midtown businesses.

"The data does not support these claims that the neighborhood is becoming some gentrified boutiquey place," she said.

Since 2013, Midtown Detroit reports that 65 women or minority-owned businesses have opened in Midtown, New Center or TechTown.

New Center and TechTown border the Midtown neighborhood to the north.

Midtown Detroit lists 54 restaurants classified as "casual dining" or "quick eats," with meals at or under $12 for dinner. Locations in that category include Hopcat, Traffic Jam & Snug, New Center Eatery, Alley Taco, fast food, La Palma and Olympic Grill.

Shinola and Selden Standard may get the most press, Mosey said, but they're not all the neighborhood has.

They're necessary and important anchors for other businesses, which are employing Detroiters, she said, however small they are.

Ian Thibodeau is the business and development reporter for MLive Media Group in Detroit. He can be reached at ithibode@mlive.com, or follow him on Twitter.
Izzy.jpg

Izzy, a 4-year-old miniature Chihuahua, is owned by a Grand Valley State University student who sued Meadows Crossing Apartments after its management denied her request to have Izzy live with her as a medically prescribed emotional support animal.

(Photo courtesy of Fair Housing Center of West Michigan)

ALLENDALE, MI - A Grand Valley State University student is suing Meadow Crossing Apartments after its managers denied her request to have Izzy, her medically prescribed assistance dog, live with her.

Marissa Biesbrock, a second-year chemistry major, claims Izzy, a 4-year-old miniature Chihuahua, has helped reduce her symptoms of depression and anxiety disorder.

She and the Fair Housing Center of West Michigan are suing Silveri Management Company after she was denied a request to keep the dog in an apartment she planned to lease with three roommates near Grand Valley State University's Allendale campus.

According to the March 19 complaint, Biesbrock "suffers from panic attacks, which cause her to experience a rapid increase in heart rates, tightening in her throat and stomach, bodily shaking, sleep deprivation and an overwhelming sense of danger."

After she adopted Izzy several years ago, those symptoms were reduced, along with her need for anti-depressants, according to the lawsuit.

"Before Ms. Biesbrock had Izzy, any stressor in her life would trigger a panic attack, and she could not always anticipate when to take anxiety medication to prevent these attacks," the lawsuit said.

"She found it very difficult to calm herself down on her own. With Izzy, however, the dog was able to sense when Ms. Biesbrock was about to experience an attack and could calm her down within minutes, often avoiding the attack altogether."

The Fair Housing Center claims the apartment complex also has been told by the Michigan Department of Civil Rights that is in violation of state law by refusing her request to live with an assistance animal. At least two other requests for assistance animals have been denied by Meadows Crossing's management, the lawsuit said.

Filed in U.S. District Court, the lawsuit claims the apartment's denial to accommodate Biebrock's disability is a violation of the U.S. Fair Housing Act and the Michigan Persons with Disabilities Civil Rights Act.

The lawsuit asks the court to find Silveri's policy of not allowing assistance animals in violation of the law and enter an order allowing Izzy to live with her at Meadow Brook. The lawsuit also asks for unspecified damages and attorney fees.

Glenn Turek, president of Silvestri Management, declined to comment on the lawsuit on Monday, April 4. He said the company had just been served with the case.

"The Fair Housing Act guarantees people with disabilities the right to choose a place to live free from housing discrimination," said Elizabeth Stoddard, director of advocacy for the Fair Housing Center.

"When a housing provider denies a reasonable accommodation request for an assistance animal, it is no less discriminatory than prohibiting someone's use of a wheelchair," Stoddard said.

"It is crucial to equal housing opportunity that housing providers properly understand and exercise their obligation to make reasonable accommodations for assistance animals," Stoddard said.

"Companies in the business of providing housing are in the business of complying with fair housing laws, and that includes making reasonable accommodations for assistance animals," said Nancy Haynes, executive director of the Fair Housing Center.

Jim Harger covers business for Mlive Media Group. Email him at jharger@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter or Facebook or Google+.
TRAVERSE CITY, MI -- The charm of visiting Chateau Grand Traverse is the heady combination of sipping Michigan-grown wine while taking in the scrumptious view of the rolling vineyard that looks out over the west arm of Grand Traverse Bay.

For nearly a year, the Northern Michigan winery and inn has been pairing those experiences on a bigger scale, with wines supporting Michigan's great outdoors.

As a pilot project, CGT produced three custom-labeled wines and promised a portion of the profits to the Department of Natural Resources to better state parks, trails and waterways.

The thinking behind the series, "CGT Wines of the Great Outdoors," is to bring together the best of Michigan's natural resources - both agricultural and recreational - to benefit the state's residents and visitors.

The three wines - named Woods, Waters and Picnic - are available in retail stores including Meijer, Kroger, Family Fare, D&W and independent retailers throughout Michigan. The wine is also available in the winery's tasting room and its online store.

The winery collaborated with Pryor Design company, which created the packaging and provided marketing design services as the project's sponsor.

Under the multi-year partnership agreement with the winery, 50 percent of the net profits generated from the Wines of the Great Outdoors program will be donated to the DNR annually.

How the wines have raised since last May is still being tabulated, said Elizabeth Smith, marketing coordinator for Chateau Grand Traverse.

Shandra Martinez covers business and other topics for MLive. Email her or follow her on Twitter @shandramartinez.
LANSING, MI -- Corey Warren is not a tattoo artist or a piercer, so you might wonder why the 26-year-old would open a tattoo shop with his mother, Jacque Liebner.

Ink Therapy, located at 324 N. Pine in Lansing, opened just last year and was recently voted Michigan's Coolest Tattoo Shop by MLive readers.

Ink Therapy

Address: 324 N. Pine, Lansing

Hours: Noon until 11 p.m. Tues.-Thurs.; noon until midnight Fri. and Sat.; noon until 6 p.m. Sundays

Phone: 517-614-6711

Online: Facebook

"It's a breath of fresh air when you walk in there," Warren said of the shop.

The idea to open Ink Therapy was born out of Warren's work with recovering drug addicts and alcoholics. As someone who struggled with drug addiction in the past, Warren decided to focus on helping others navigate a path to sobriety.

"When I was in high school, I end up becoming dependent on heroin and alcohol and other drugs," Warren explained. "My mom and I had 8-to-10 years of hell. Our relationship was chaos and separation, for lack of better words."

Once Warren found recovery and started living a sober life, Liebner and Warren started a non-profit, WAI-IAM, to help others with substance abuse problems. As part of the program, they opened Rise Recovery Community, which Warren describes as a "new-age sober living" facility.

Those who were living at the facility sparked the idea to open a tattoo shop.

"I flew a gentleman in from Florida," Warren recalls. "He's got this big old shiny case with him.

"I ask him, 'What's in the case?' He said, 'I'm a tattoo artsist.'"

Shortly thereafter, Warren explained, another resident of Rise came to him and revealed her passion for body piercing. While the woman had a desire to continue her work as a piercer, she told Warren the environment of a traditional tattoo shop was not conducive to her sobriety.

That's when Warren had the vision for a "clean and sober tattoo shop" and Ink Therapy was born.

"The name says it all - Ink Therapy," Warren said. "It's therapy to them."

Ink Therapy tattoo artist Shawn Farr recently completed this piece.

There are currently four tattoo artists working at the shop -- Shawn Farr, Preston Evans, Jero Garza and Warren's Fiance, Karley Miller. Melissa Knight works as the shop's sole piercer and Jackie Evans is the shop receptionist.

"What we're doing over there is very pure, it's very genuine," Warren said. "They make you feel like you're family when you're in there."

Since the shop is completely drug and alcohol free, all clients must appear completely sober when visiting the shop. If someone inside the shop is visibly impaired, they are asked to leave.

Profits made through Ink Therapy go to help fund the Rise Recovery Community program, Warren said. The funds even help to pay for financially-strapped residents to stay at the facility, which works with 17 drug courts and brings residents in from across the country.

Warren urged those who know someone struggling with substance abuse to reach out by calling 517-703-3389.

For more information on WAI-IAM and Rise Recovery Community visit wai-iam.com.

-- Jessica Shepherd is a reporter with MLive. Contact her at jessica_shepherd@mlive.com or follow her on Twitter. You can also hear her Fridays at 8 a.m. on 102.5 WIOG's Nate and April in the Morning.
Drinks manufacturer Loi Hein Company has shelved plans to list on Yangons stock exchange, but a series of potential foreign joint ventures means the firm should have no difficulty growing, CEO Sai Sam Htun told The Myanmar Times.





At one stage he intended to take the company public when its annual revenue hit US$100m. He expects revenue to touch $150m in 2016 and the Yangon Stock Exchange is up and running. But there are no plans to list Loi Hein in the next two years, he said.

One reason is that the disclosure requirements and necessary changes to the corporate structure are simply too onerous, he said.

He has a business partner in Thailand who is in the middle of the IPO process in that country.. They face a lot of difficulties and its quite painful for them to go through, he said. I talked to my family, my son, and the next generation. At the moment well leave it.

Loi Hein could well go public in the future, he added, but once the decision to start down the IPO path is made it could take another two or three years to get the company ready.

The lack of listing is unlikely to hold Loi Hein back from expanding into new areas. Sai Sam Htun has spent the last decade collecting as much land as possible, partly to benefit from rising prices. Not only have land prices in many areas rocketed, there is now huge scope for development.

Loi Hein provided for Singaporean firm Soibuild Group to build the luxury housing project Rosehill Residences. The project has already started construction, and now the Condominium Law has been passed marketing has also begun, Sai Sam Htun said.





The law was passed on January 29, and allows foreign ownership of up to 40 percent of residential units.

We were waiting on the condo law and now our partner is doing marketing in Singapore, he said, adding the he is eyeing another real estate development with a Japanese firm.

If everything goes well well build a commercial complex with office and shopping [space], he said, but declined to name the Japanese partner.

The issue with property projects is a lack of investment, he added. We cant handle the big projects by ourselves. We need joint ventures.

His first joint venture was with Japans Asahi in 2014. When Coca-Cola and other international firms began to enter the Myanmar market Sai Sam Htun wondered whether I will get killed if I dont partner, he said.

The Asahi partnership, of which Loi Hein owns 49pc, opened up access to Japanese bank financing and the opportunity to expand, he said.

Loi Hein also owns a 37-acre plot in Thilawa Special Economic Zone, and is in talks with yet another Japanese firm to partner on an offshore supply base.

Whether Loi Hein will supply investment as well as land for the potential project has yet to be decided. But if the company is asked to invest there is a local bank interested in providing financing, Sai Sam Htun said.

Our investment scope is $150m, he said.

Loi Hein is moving to position for more foreign investment in others areas too. The firms core business is still beverages, where it concentrates on energy drinks, soft drinks and mineral water. It has recently also set up Loi Hein Distribution Company, which will focus entirely on logistics.

This new distribution arm is only a few months old and has just a few contracts  including SPY Wine and My Paris cosmetics from Thailand. But more and more foreign firms will be eager to sell products in Myanmar, and could struggle with distribution, Sai Sam Htun said.

We do business with about 400 wholesalers who have their own connections, he said. I think we can touch 100,000 outlets easily. If a foreign firm comes in it might not have [that kind of access].
A historic election, political transition and a new president  not exactly business as usual for Myanmar.





Local businesses at Yangons most famous bazaar, Bogyoke Market, are banking on the new government for better economic times.

Since 2011 there has been an unprecedented influx of foreign tourists, and nowhere are they more evident than at the 90-year-old Bogyoke Market.

Despite this, vendors said they have faced an economic downturn over the last five years.

I make less income now than I did five years ago, and I earn less and less each year, said gem shop owner Daw Sita, who has worked at the market for 47-years.

However, that is all going to change. Now that the country has taken a major step following the landslide election victory and the new presidency, I have high hopes for the improvement of the economy of the market.

Another gem shop owner, who goes by the name Mr Gopal and has been at Bogyoke market since 1970, said the country has been waiting for an educated and competent leader for more than 60 years.





Surely, there will be positive outcomes from this, but not immediately, he said. There might be some obstacles at first, but I believe everything will work out well.

For some, economic benefits have already begun. Myanmars GDP per capita has been on the rise over the last few years, and an explosion of foreign interest  both from investors and visitors  has helped bump up business.

Expert opinions: Myanmars next government

Lacquer ware shop owner Daw Myint Myint Soe said that she has seen some benefits.

In the last one-to-two years, I started to earn more, said the handicraft store owner. I can also see the immense increase in the tourism rate in the market every year.

I hope this trend will keep going. After the new president starts, I think there will be even more improvements for our market because there will be educated people leading us.

On a smaller scale, however, vendors were not so optimistic, expressing dismay at the burden being placed on the market.

Another gem shop owner said that Bogyoke ranked among the top two tourist destinations in Myanmar  Shwedagon Pagoda being the other  and worried for its upkeep.

I want to preserve the market without destroying its ancient aspect through a better cleaning and maintenance system, she said.

Meanwhile, a traditional food seller said that if everyone took responsibility for themselves, cleanliness at the market wouldnt be an issue. But not everyone is, she added.

And though the market is a tourist hotspot, it is also a parking nightmare, shopkeepers said.

Gem lab owner and gemologist Ko Min Phone Naing said visitors are less likely to visit the marketplace if there is no space to park vehicles.

There have been several occasions that customers come to my lab for a gems test, but their drivers have to drive around the market until the testing procedure is done. The same goes for tourists, he said.

If there is little or no parking available, there will be fewer customers willing to visit the market.

However, even parking issues wont keep droves of foreigners and locals from whiling their way through the market each day, bargaining for everything from pink wigs to tailor-made longyis.

Many expect its history will extend ahead into a bright future.

If Bogyoke Market is better maintained, it can become famous at an international level because old markets like this are rare nowadays, said gem shop owner Daw Sita. We should value it.
Pyithu Hluttaw speaker U Win Myint has urged the government to consider whether a 5 percent tax levied on telecommunications is appropriate, just one day after the duty was enacted after almost a year of delays.





During a meeting with hluttaw committee chairpersons and secretaries in parliaments Zabu Thiri Hall, the speaker said the government should assess whether the tax on phone calls and text messages is appropriate, National League for Democracy MP U Hla Moe told The Myanmar Times.

He asked how much the tax will affect people, and how much will it affect the telecoms operators, and said that frankly, companies are making profits and they should shoulder the tax, said U Hla Moe.

The unpopular duty, which has been in effect since April 1, has been some time coming. Last June it was suspended just days before its planned introduction following a public backlash, extending what the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology had called an initial exemption for the sector.

Former finance minister U Win Shein told the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw last December that the tax will earn the government up to K80 billion in revenue.

It will impact millions of mobile customers, who have bought SIM cards from state-owned Myanma Posts and Telecommunications (MPT) and foreign operators Ooredoo and Telenor over the past few years.

Opinion is split over whether the duty  which will go toward health, education and transportation projects  should be collected. Some say it is inappropriate to charge people who are already facing financial difficulties, while others point out the revenues will be put to good use.





Peoples views are varied. Some think that more taxes should be collected and put towards beneficial causes, said U Nay Soe, a Nay Pyi Taw-based business owner. Others are saying that the tax should not be charged to people who are already poor. Still, it would be fine if [the government] could explain to the people why the taxes are needed and how they will be used.

On its first day in power the new government declared 161 of the countrys 302 toll gates free to use  a move which was welcomed by the people.

If this phone tax is postponed or cut, applause would be heard again, said U Nay Soe.

But I dont think it will happen. It is not an easy thing to do.

Translation by Kyawt Darly Lin
Recent troubles surrounding the popular Yangon social enterprise Pomelo seemed long forgotten as the founders launched a new organisation on April 2.





After an ownership dispute broke up the Pomelo leadership team earlier this year, original members have now formed Hla Day  after the Myanmar phrase for beautiful.

Hla Day bills itself as a social enterprise that collaborates with Myanmar artisans, disadvantaged groups and small businesses [to] design, develop and sell handmade Myanmar products.

The launch event at Goethe Villa was primarily a fundraiser with the aim of securing capital to establish Hla Day as an ongoing, sustainable entity.

This is the first event of Hla Day to help us start anew, co-founder of the organisation Ulla Kroeber told The Myanmar Times. Together with our community of producers, we are determined to come back with energy and strength.





Attendance was impressive, with the venue at near-capacity. Participants took part in arts and craft activities, a yoga workshop, a photographic exhibit and live music performances.

Kroeber said Hla Day will continue to work with producers whom she has been partnering with for years, along with seeking out new producers.

A number of producers sold their wares at the event. One stall represented widows living with HIV. They were selling handmade dolls, skirts and other materials.

Another stall displayed items such as handbags and laptop covers made from recycled plastic. We collect this material from markets and industrial areas, then make it into new things, said one of the artists.

Other producers represented at the event included students, women from rural areas and groups of disabled people.

So far, we have been overwhelmed by the support [for our new venture], Kroeber said.

She said a crowdfunding campaign has now been launched with the aim of raising US$40,000 to [secure] a shopfront for Hla Day. Money will be used to pay for first years rent in a new location that is accessible to our customers and viable for our producers.

We need a location for our shop, but we [will be] more than just a shop. We [will] provide a service which supports people to earn an income and develop their identity and pride in what they do.

Details of the campaign can be found online on their Facebook page or by emailing [email protected]
A controversial Myanmar police training program funded by the EU and the UK has been abruptly halted following failure to reach an agreement with the military that included issues of parliamentary oversight.





Police trainers last month were suddenly told by international donors to pack their bags and leave, according to sources knowledgeable about the program who asked not to be named.

At the heart of the issue over the breakdown was a failure by international donors and the military-controlled Ministry of Home Affairs to agree on a memorandum of understanding, according to representatives of civil society groups who attended recent trainings and were briefed by the EU.

Reform of the police force, notorious for its brutal and sometimes deadly crackdowns on peaceful protests, has been a showpiece of the EU assistance program to Myanmar, costing 9.5 million euros (US$10.2 million) since November 2013. The project went ahead even after EU-trained units used excessive force to break up student protesters in Letpadan in March last year, with the EU saying the incident demonstrated that further training was needed.

Its termination  or at least suspension  is an embarrassing blow to the EU and the UK but also a setback for NLD leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi who endorsed the program. Given the fraught state of relations between the new government and the military which controls three key ministries  reaching a deal to restart the program is likely to involve difficult negotiations.

Senior police officers, who appear to have been overruled by their military superiors, were also dismayed at the end of training, according to some participants.

The end came in March when the ministry stuck to its refusal to allow its police officers, as well as members of parliament, to attend UK-funded training sessions which had gone ahead despite the absence of an MoU.





The crux of the dispute, according to participants in the program who asked not to be named, appeared to lie within Myanmars complex separation of powers, with the Tatmadaw refusing to allow what would be seen as parliamentary oversight of the military-controlled police.

As the EU set out in a project note last September, At the heart of every democratic system is the parliamentary and public control of the states institutions, including the police. This is why the project explicitly provides capacity building directly to the Myanmar Parliament as well as to civil society actors and the media, to enable them to hold the police accountable and encourage them on their path towards a democratic police service.

Asked to comment on the reasons for the breakdown in training and the failure so far to agree on the next phase, the EU said, The future programme is currently being formulated in consultation with all relevant stakeholders and will build on previous successful EU engagement with the police.

An interim UK-funded police training project was set up to bridge the gap between the EU training that ended in September 2015 and the follow-up that was planned to start this year.

Neither the UK nor the Ministry of Home Affairs would explain why an MoU could not be reached. A spokesperson for the UK embassy in Yangon said they were not able to comment on specific project discussions.

It is also not clear why the Ministry of Home Affairs had allowed nearly two years of training to continue up to September 2015 without an MoU.

Asked for the legal basis for that period of training, a EU spokesperson in Yangon said, Trainings under the EU-funded Support to the Myanmar Police Force project were implemented based on an exchange of notes between the EU Delegation and the Ministry of Home Affairs.

The training had involved senior and junior police officers, as well as MPs and civil society organisations. The Geneva-based Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF), an international foundation working worldwide on security sector reform, collaborated with parliament to improve police accountability to the legislature.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi had been closely involved in the training and, according to DCAFs report, personally pushed for more accountability.

In response to the request of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in her capacity as chair of the parliamentary Rule of Law committee, DCAF conducted a series of capacity-building workshops on the role of parliament in police governance. These workshops ended in specific recommendations for strengthening police accountability, the report said.

But as the former parliament  dominated by the military and the Union Solidarity and Development Party  prepared to make way for an NLD-controlled legislature after the partys landslide election win last November, the interest of the Ministry of Home Affairs in police reform training seemed to diminish.

Police Major Pyae Sone, from Yangon Region, confirmed there was no training at the moment and that no date for further training had been set. Internal training was continuing, he added. He declined to comment further.

Asked about the fate of the program before the March 30 handover to the new government, NLD spokesperson U Zaw Myint Maung and U Ye Htut, spokesperson for then-president U Thein Sein, said they did not know if or when the EU training would continue.

Daw A Mar Ni, a Metta Campaign activist from Mandalay who attended training under the recent UK-funded program said she was disappointed that no representatives from the police force had been present.

She called it ridiculous that training designed to foster cooperation between police and civil society went on to only involve the latter.

Additional reporting by Swan Ye Htut
Last week, the names of Myanmar's new chief ministers were revealed, and as expected, all fourteen were members of the ruling-National League for Democracy, much to the chagrin of major ethnic parties. Meet the NLD's new chief ministers  two of them women  here:





Pu Lian Luai

Chin State chief minister

A lawyer turned politician, Pu Lian Luai is from Airibual village in Falam township, Chin State. He holds a bachelors in religious education and a law degree from Yangon University, where he was active in Chin student groups, according to Chin media.

He served as a lawyer for various government offices in Yangon, Mandalay and Sagaing regions, as well as in Chin State. In his last role as a civil servant, he worked as a Tamu district legal officer.

In the 2015 election, Pu Lian Luai contested and won the No 2 spot for Falam township in the state hluttaw as a new member of the National League for Democracy. He has four children.

U Khat Aung

Kachin State chief minister

Born in 1946, U Khat Aung is a 70-year-old Kachin Christian who worked as a dentist before striking into politics. He ran for state parliament in the November 2015 election, contesting a seat in Myitkyina, his home town.





U Khat Aungs brother, U Khat Htein Nan, is a well-known Kachin politician and former upper house MP. Although his brother was a member of the rival Union Solidarity and Development Party and lost in the 2015 election, U Khat Aung ran for the NLD and secured a seat in the state legislature.

U Khat Aung was not a member of any political party prior to last Novembers general election, but became an NLD member in 2015. He has two sons and two daughters.

U L Phaung Sho

Kayah state chief minister

U L Phaung Sho is a 37-year-old former educational staffer from a Kayan-Shan family. He holds a bachelors in education and is among the youngest in the cabinet. In order to contest the 2015 election, he resigned from his post as deputy officer at a township education department in Mese in order to run for the townships state hluttaw seat. Despite having no prior involvement in politics, he won his seat and will now head the state.

Nan Khin Htwe Myint

Kayin State chief minister

One the NLDs trusted inner-circle members, Nan Khin Htwe Myint is a veteran party member on the central executive committee. She is one of just two women to secure a spot among the chief ministers.

The 61-year-old has twice been a political prisoner, once due to participating in student protests at Yangon University, and again in 1998 after she was charged with obstructing a public servant.

She served in the Department of Domestic Revenue and won a seat in Hpa-an in the voided 1990 election. She won again in the 2012 by-election, and also last November.

Her father, Saw Hla Tun, was also a chief minister.

U Min Min Oo

Mon State chief minister

U Min Min Oo, 46, holds a bachelors in electrical engineering from Yangon Institute of Technology. A native of Taungzone village in Bilin township, he was a student leader during the 1988 student uprising. He is the vice chair of the NLD office in Bilin township, where he won a seat in the state parliament. He is also head of finance for Bilin townships rubber plantation association, and a member of Taungzone Hospitals administrative committee.

Currently the deputy speaker in the Mon State parliament, U Min Min Oo will have to resign from the post to become chief minister, according to the NLD.

U Nyi Pu

Rakhine State chief minister

U Nyi Pu is the NLD chair for his native Rakhine State. He graduated with a legal degree from Rangoon University in 1983 and then worked as a security guard until 1988. He briefly served as a clerk in the Land Transport Department and in the 1990 elections won but was not allowed to assume his parliamentary seat. In Novembers election, he won a spot in Gwa. His appointment to the chief minister post has been hotly contested by the Arakan National Party.

U Lin Htut

Shan State chief minister

U Lin Htut, 56, is also a dentist-turned-politician. He was born in Kyeemyindaing township, Yangon, in 1960. He studied biology and agriculture at Pathein Regional College and started studying dentistry in 1980. He worked as a dentist at Kutkai Hospital in northern Shan State beginning in 1988, then transferred to Lashio General Hospital in 1994. In 2006, he was dismissed and his medical licence suspended after he refused a promotion and transfer order.

He said he has supported the NLD since seeing Daw Aung Suu Kyi give a public speech in Peoples Park in 1988. He became a party member after retiring from his government posts in 2015.

Mahn Johnny

Ayeyarwady Region chief minister

An ethnic Kayin lawmaker, Mahn Johnnys appointment was widely expected, with the MP confirming to The Myanmar Times three months ago that he had been picked for the position.

Born in Kangyidaunt township, he received his bachelors and masters in education from Yangon University. Mahn Johnny won a regional parliament seat in Kyonepyaw township in the November 8 election. He had previously served in Myaungmya after winning a seat there in the 2012 by-elections. He also claimed victory in the 1990 election though the results were never realised. He has promised to ensure law and order and to stop corruption.

U Win Thein

Bago Region chief minister

Fifty-two-year old U Win Thein graduated with a bachelors in mechanical engineering and an AGTI diploma. Before becoming a politician for Yedashe township, he worked as a farmer. His party CV lists him a Buddhist with one son.

U Aung Moe Nyo

Magwe Region chief minister

U Aung Moe Nyo graduated from Rangoon Institute of Medicine in 1982 and started his own clinic in 1984. He won a seat in the 1990 election, capturing 74 percent of the vote. He was one of the NLD MPs-elect who were arrested in 1998 and kept without trial in military prisons referred to as guesthouses. He was released in 2001 and was elected as a lower house MP in the 2012 by-election and was re-elected in 2015 for Pwintphyu township. He has promised to prioritise resolving land-grab cases.

U Myint Naing

Sagaing Region chief minister

U Myint Naing, 65, also became involved in the NLD through the 1988 student-led nationwide protests. In 1990, he ran for Kantbalu township and won a seat. He was also charged with rebellion against government and attempting to set up a rival administration, and was given a 25-year sentence. During his imprisonment at Insein Prison he said he suffered serious health problems before being released in 2004. He contested both the 2012 by-election and the 2015 general election, winning a seat in the regional legislature for Shwebo constituency.

U Zaw Myint Maung

Mandalay Region chief minister

Mandalay Region chief minister Senior party official U Zaw Myint Maung became involved in politics through the 1988 uprising, during which he was a biochemistry lecturer and graduate student at his alma mater, the Institute of Medicine in Mandalay. He was the co-secretary of the committee of demonstrating doctors in upper Myanmar. As punishment for his political activities, he was told he would be transferred from Mandalay in 1989. He rejected the transfer and was prevented from completing his graduate work. He won the constituency of Amarapura in the 1990 election but was jailed the same year and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment for high treason. He was released in an amnesty in 2009 and soon returned to politics, winning the seat of Kyaukpadaung in the 2012 by-elections.

Daw Lae Lae Maw

Tanintharyi Region chief minister

Daw Lea Lea Maw is the second of only two women chief ministers appointed by the NLD. She said her selection to run the region came as a surprise to her, as she only found out the day before parliament made the announcement. She worked as a medical doctor for 25 years and joined the party in 2012, quickly becoming a member of the central executive committee. After taking office as an MP for Thayetchaung township, she said she would work to develop the region and solve land disputes.

U Phyo Min Thein

Yangon Region chief minister

U Phyo Min Thein, an NLD MP from Hlegu, also has a legacy as a political prisoner. He completed just two years of a physics degree when his studies were interrupted by the 1988 student protests. He was arrested in 1991, and sentenced to seven years in prison, but was not released until 2005.

He helped form the short-lived Union Democratic Party in 2010, but resigned before the election in the same year. He served as a Pyithu Hluttaw MP after the 2012 by-election and was on the parliaments Banks and Monetary Affairs Development Committee.

His appointment as chief minister was not received without criticism and last month about 1500 people staged a protest accusing him of election violations. The protest was arranged by his USDP election rival.



 Staff
The National League for Democracy says it intends to ram through by tomorrow a law that would create a pivotal post in government for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi despite opposition by the military bloc in parliament.





We submitted that bill because Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is the right person to fulfil the peoples real needs in the country, not just to give her that position as promotion, upper house MP U Aung Kyi Nyunt, who submitted the state counsellor bill last week, told The Myanmar Times.

Last night the NLD also confirmed that, as expected, the 70-year-old party leader would hand over two of her ministerial portfolios  education and energy  to new ministers, while remaining foreign minister and head of the Presidents Office.

Military-appointed MPs and others strongly objected to the state counsellor bill on constitutional and other grounds when it was debated in the upper house on April 2, but the NLD majority ensured the bill was approved by 137 votes to 68.

The draft legislation, which some analysts see as in effect creating the position of prime minister for the NLD leader, is to be presented to the lower house today. The NLD hopes that in record time it can get the law finally approved by parliament tomorrow, before the Thingyan recess, and send it to President U Htin Kyaw for ratification.

U Aung Kyi Nyunt yesterday played down the risks of a major confrontation between the military and the new government less than a week after taking office. He also said that in her future position as state counsellor with special responsibilities to parliament that the NLD leader would be able to smooth over such potential conflicts.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will have the chance to build mutual trust between the Tatmadaw and other political forces, he said.





Defending the legality of the bill, he said article 217 of the constitution gave parliament the right to confer specific duties and responsibilities to an individual, while executive power remained vested in the president.

Brigadier General Khin Maung Aye, a military MP, raised four objections. Most important, he said, the bill threatened article 11(a) of the constitution enshrining the division of powers of the three branches of state by giving one individual both legislative and executive powers.

Six other MPs who took part in the debate  two from the military, three USDP and one from the Arakan National Party  also said the bill was unconstitutional.

The text of the law, which covers just two pages, sets out four aims for the creation of state counsellor who will advise the state on bringing about a flourishing multi-party democratic system, a real market oriented economy, a Federal Union, and peace and development.

The special counsellor is to be given access to all branches of government and undefined organisations and individuals, as well as a role in dealing with the Union parliament.

Last week the NLD made clear that this position had been created to give Daw Aung San Suu Kyi legal protection, because she cannot serve as president due to the constitutional ban on those with close foreign relatives filling the highest executive posts.

U Khin Zaw Win, head of Tanpadipa think tank, said he feared however this was a post too far for the NLD leader.

Aiming to become Paramount Leader in Myanmar is not only setting a dangerous precedent, it can be downright disastrous for the country. It is far more prudent just to do the obvious, that is to get down to putting a country in order after the chaos of a failed dictatorship, he said.

The 70 or so votes against the state counsellor bill in the Amyotha Hluttaw are something to think about, he added.

But political analyst U Yan Myo Thein doubts the law will disrupt relations between the military and government. He does not think the process of national reconciliation will be harmed either because the law gives her the status of counsellor or consultant.

I think the NLD lawmakers were careful with details of the law like describing her title, he said.

U Thein Nyunt, a former MP and chair of the New National Democracy Party, cautioned that the NLD had to be wary not to breach article 11 of the constitution during this transitional period.

If there is a constitutional crisis in parliament, that will have a negative effect on national reconciliation and economic development of the country, he said.

U Myat Thu, chair of the Yangon School of Political Science, was also critical of the bill, saying it could upset checks and balances, raising concerns over the relationship between the executive and legislature. The law shouldnt be crafted for only one individual, but in general, he added.

He said the NLD had drawn up the law because the party had not tried to amend article 59(f) of the constitution that bars those with foreign close relatives from the presidency. For that reason the new law would also disrupt the Tatmadaw, he said.

Additional reporting by Swan Ye Htut, translation by Thiri Min Htun
Just hours after taking office, the new Yangon government has put a significant dampener on this years water festival celebrations by banning for-profit pandals, or stages.





U Phyo Min Thein, Yangon Regions new chief minister, announced the decision during a press conference on April 2 and said the decision had been taken due to concerns over water use  El Nino is expected to cause water shortages. He added that traffic jams, security issues and commercialisation of the New Year festival are also concerns.

As Thingyan gets bigger every year, the National League for Democracy-backed chief minister wants to bring the festival back to its essence.

We dont give permission to build for-profit pandals this year because we want the water festival to be held in accordance with Myanmar culture, U Phyo Min Thein said. He said that each district would get its own pandal to decentralise celebrations. Measures have also been taken to control drug and alcohol use, as well as inappropriate behaviour and dress.

The mayors pandal, which is already under construction in front of city hall, will still go ahead.

But no for-profit pandals will be allowed on Kabar Aye Pagoda and Kandawgyi Kanpat roads, which were central celebration points in the city previous years, and licences will only be issued to businesses or individuals if the pandal is to be erected in front of land that they own.

There are about 310 applications for big pandals and five small pandals at Kabar Aye Pagoda road but we wont give them a permit. They applied before the chief minister was appointed and announced his policy, said Naw Pan Thinzar Myo, minister for Kayin ethnic affairs for Yangon Region.

Special Feature: Thingyan 2016





The decision is already upsetting businesses that had spent months planning to build pandals. Tickets for over a dozen stages have been advertised since mid-March, with some going for as much as K100,000 a day.

But the new regulations will ensure that it is now easier for not-for-profit pandals to get permits, U Phyo Min Thein said. He added that those pre-selling tickets were doing so without having first secured their permit.

They are pre-selling tickets but we hadnt given out any permits to build pandals because the new governments term didnt start until April 1 and we couldnt announce our policy until the next day, U Phyo Min Thein said.

Naw Pan Thinzar Myo said that 44 rules, set by the previous government but hardly ever followed, would be enforced this year.

There were 44 rules for discipline that organisers had to follow already under former governments but they were rarely abided by. During the new governments term they have to, she said.

Ko Arkar from the God Theatre pandal, which was planned for Kabar Aye Pagoda Road, said that he was looking for a way to get a permit under the new policy. Previously he told The Myanmar Times that 50 percent of tickets for his pandal had already been sold.

Our pandal is on Kabar Aye Pagoda Road so we will move somewhere else. We are looking for a location and a company to connect with so that we can get a permit under the new policy, he said.

Last year, Yangon City Development Committee allowed 57 large pandals to hold water festival parties in Yangon.
In a policy shift since last year, police have announced they will refrain from seizing contraceptive pills and condoms in their annual crackdown on crime leading up to the Thingyan holiday. Last year, womens groups and health campaigners protested that police had emptied pharmacists shelves of contraceptive medication and devices, as well as pills designed to stimulate sexual arousal.





They complained that depriving people of access to legitimate contraceptive measures could bring unwanted pregnancy and exposure to sexually transmitted diseases.

On March 31 police announced the results of a three-week drive to reduce and prevent crime in advance of the holiday, which some feel has grown increasingly raucous and out of control over the past few years, with increasing alcohol consumption and sexual activity.

Starting March 7, pre-Thingyan crime prevention measures have been implemented. As of March 30, police have taken action in 2346 cases, said Police Captain Thi Thi Myint.

These actions include gambling (48 cases), weapons caches (99 cases), excise evasion (130 cases), prostitution (42 cases), narcotics (41 cases), unlawful restrictions on movement (81 cases), more than 1300 vehicle-related cases, and others. In only five cases did police seize sexual arousal pills.

We are acting to decrease crime at Thingyan. Pharmacies that sell unlicensed sexual arousal pills have been shut down, but we have not seized condoms and licensed emergency contraceptive pills. We have also given talks in townships and wards, said Kyauktada Central Police Captain Win Tin.

But police will be particularly vigilant against the danger of rape.

Sexual arousal pills approved under the National Pharmaceutical Act have been implicated in rapes, when young men slip them into womens drinks, said a police spokesperson. Underage girls are particularly at risk, but use is also prevalent among men aged over 40. Many users and vendors are unaware of the side effects.





While police may be targeting unlicensed sex drugs and arousal drugs implicated in rapes, seizure reports reveal that raids often net far more, and end up including contraceptives like condoms and birth control pills.

Sexual drugs are included in the prohibited medicine list in the national drug law ... By using these medicines, rape cases could occur. Some young girls dont know about this kind of medicine, so they are at risk of being raped, said Pol Capt Win Tin, head of Kyauktada township police.

The new Yangon Region government, headed by Chief Minister U Phyo Min Thein from the National League for Democracy, is also involved in managing security for the annual festival.

Speaking outside the Yangon parliament on March 31, the newly reappointed regional minister for security and border affairs, Colonel Tin Aung Tun, said he would act according to instructions from U Phyo Min Thein, despite being nominated by Commander-in-Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing.

Parliament decided earlier this week to deploy 8000 more police during the festivities. Col Tin Aung Tun said several security committees would be formed within the Myanmar Police Force.

People in Yangon can enjoy the water festival with full security, he said.

Additional reporting by Ye Mon, translation by Khant Lin Oo
The first time I crossed the border into Myanmar, 15 years ago, I was sat in a small office waiting for my paperwork.





On the wall above the bustle of the immigration outpost was a photo of Senior General Than Shwe peering down on proceedings. I remember being surprised, at first because I was spending so much time in Thailand where portraits of the king and queen are ubiquitous. Here was an unfamiliar face.

I recall also being surprised because I was under the impression that Myanmars military junta was a group of around a dozen powerful figures. But here was the supremo. Back then, there was not much quality analysis of how the State Peace and Development Council worked in practice.

What we did know was that the military high commands standing, forever tarnished by the events of 1988, only got worse through the 1990s and early 2000s. These were the years when Snr Gen Than Shwe took charge, monopolised decision-making and systematically eliminated opposition to his dictates.

The country was sad, impoverished, isolated. For many Myanmar people, Snr Gen Than Shwe was personally responsible for this national tragedy. The buck stopped right at the top.

Even though he was the dominant figure in Myanmar life for two decades, U Than Shwe is still a tough nut to crack. There is one substantial book about him: a 2010 biography and criticism written by Benedict Rogers. Most of the other materials on his life are fragments, snippets, footnotes.

I have no doubt that the senior general, trained in the dark arts of psychological warfare, enjoys this carefully cultivated inaccessibility.





Take the experience of the diplomatic community. My Australian National University colleague, former Australian ambassador to Myanmar Trevor Wilson, has just published a memoir about his years in Yangon titled Eyewitness to early reform in Myanmar. It is available for free download at the ANU Press website.

The book makes occasional mention of the former senior general. As Wilson explains, Embassies had little or no contact with Commander-in-Chief Senior General Than Shwe, other than in the case of high-level visits.

I assume this meant that even official communication resorted to a familiar repertoire of speculation. Such was his reputation that, in the old days, most people would rather not talk about the senior general at all.

When he was in charge, the senior general was rightfully the subject of unrelenting criticism. A lightning rod for disquiet was the 2006 release of a video of his daughters ostentatious wedding. It went viral: an early Myanmar case-study in the political role of email and social media.

But such critical scrutiny did not help to loosen his control.

The nadir for Myanmars democrats came with the crackdown on marching monks in 2007, followed soon after by the devastation of Cyclone Nargis, and then the sham popular vote on the 2008 constitution. Through it all, Snr Gen Than Shwe consolidated power, always a shadowy figure, shrouded in a dense cloak of conjecture.

After surrendering his command in 2011, it is worth emphasising how quiet the former senior general has become. Occasionally you still see an old photo of him, usually in a temple compound where he made a donation or helped to support some other meritorious work. Of course, he looms large at the Defence Services Museum in Nay Pyi Taw, where some exhibits pay homage.

In other senses, he quickly retreated from the stage, allowing his former subordinates like U Thein Sein, U Khin Aung Myint and Thura U Shwe Mann to take the lead in reforming the political system.

There was talk that he played some active role in the 2015 purge of Thura U Shwe Mann from his senior Union Solidarity and Development Party functions. As ever, it is hard to know where guesswork ends and the truth might start.

Then, late last year, when U Than Shwe met with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, we had a further reminder of the overwhelming authority that he used to hold. That meeting still feels like it was an essential step in the incomplete rapprochement between the National League for Democracy elite and their military peers.

For the NLD government, the retired senior general will require continued attention. They know that premature moves to change the political role of the armed forces could inspire abrupt responses.

They also have to handle his successor, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, who looks like he is getting ready for a long turn in the commanders office. Under the constitution endorsed by Snr Gen Than Shwe there is no obvious end to military influence in politics and society. For the old general, it all seems to be going to plan.

 New Mandala

Nicholas Farrelly is director of the Myanmar Research Centre at the Australian National University. His column appears in The Myanmar Times each Monday.
04.04.2016 LISTEN

Highlife music legend, Abrantee Amakye Dede, has condemned the Musicians Union of Ghana (MUSIGA) and the Ghana Music Rights Organisation (GHAMRO) for neglecting Kwadwo Akwaboah Jnr., who is currently blind and need help.

The highlife musician noted that Kwadwo Akwaboah is one of the greatest Ghanaian highlife musicians who have contributed immensely toward the development of the Ghanaian music industry as well as promoting highlife music.

Amakye Dede made these comments after Kwadwo Akwaboah Jnr revealed on Atinka FM's 'Tete Ndwom' show hosted by Roman Fada, that Amakye Dede had been of immense help to him in his current predicament.

According to Abrantee, it is rather unfortunate that a great musician like Kwadwo Akwaboah, who is currently blind, has been neglected by the industry players.

He noted that Akwaboah, who needs help, had done a lot for the Ghanaian music industry and served it faithfully.

He therefore, called on the two music bodies  MUSIGA and GHAMRO  not to neglect Kwadwo Akwaboah since he is still part of the industry to which we all belong.

Amakye Dede pointed out that such a great musician should not be neglected since his contributions to the industry has undoubtedly been recognized by all, including MUSIGA and GHAMRO, which leaders are all musicians.

He appealed to musicians and the music unions to attend to people who had once contributed their quota to the development of the music industry adding, Akwaboah has done a lot for the Ghanaian music industry and so we should not neglect him. I always talk about Akwaboahs condition to my colleagues so that they can help him.

Kwadwo Akwaboah Jnr, a professional keyboardist, through his skills has recorded a number of songs for many people in the music industry.
04.04.2016 LISTEN

Afro-pop and Highlife music group, Galaxy, has questioned the criteria used in nominating it for the Best Group category in the 2016 Vodafone Ghana Music Awards (VGMA).

The VGMA Board nominated us for the Best Group category and we wonder why and how. None of our songs was selected in any other category so we wonder how and why we got nominated for Best Group. The Best Group should have at least one song in another category else the question would be, 'for what work have you been nominated for best group?' All the other artistes in the category of Best Group have songs in other categories so we wonder how come Galaxy alone was left out, the group told NEWS-ONE over the weekend.

Galaxy, an Ashaiman-based music duo under the management of Habour City Records, got nominated for Best Group alongside VVIP, R2Bees, Keche and Preachers for this year's VGMA.

The group said they submitted songs for other categories apart from Best Group and when the nominations list came out, they almost told their fans to ignore and not vote for them because they suspected foul play.

Initially we wanted to tell our fans not to vote but we have changed our minds and we are asking them to go ahead and still vote for us because despite the disappointment, we can still win if we get the votes. We submitted other songs which could have made it to the Highlife and Afro-pop categories but the Board did not see them fit, the group noted.

Galaxy further complained that apart from their disappointment with the nomination, the group has observed that some Ghanaian radio DJs and presenters enjoy promoting Nigerian musicians to the disadvantage of their Ghanaian counterparts.

We also want o tell the radio DJs and presenters to play our songs and not wait for us to give them money before they play. Some are here and happily promoting the songs of Wizkid and Davido. These Nigerians come here and they do not even recognise or appreciate you. Yet you download their songs with your internet data and play for free. When it gets to a Ghanaian artiste, you ask for money. Let's learn to support our own and push our own to the top.

.

Some are also sabotaging the industry. People who are heading our music industry are the very ones sabotaging artistes. They do not want you to have gigs and performances. They go round discouraging event organisers from putting you on their shows and it makes it difficult to climb, they stated.

They said they were into music at the underground level for over ten years until Habour City Records label signed them.

The group explained why it remained underground for close to a decade: It is because of our style. The market is not used to it. People generally do not want to try new things and it takes time for people to start to relate to our product. Our new track, 'Papa Bi', is a bit different and seems to be getting attention and very good feedback. It is doing some magic for now.

Our management has also been strategic in building our own fan base which would eventually become our core support and strength. Eventually, when we release our album, we already have a waiting market. We want to make the album hits all out (sic).

The VGMA is the biggest honour in Ghana's music sector and the grand event for the 2016 edition will come off at the Accra International Conference Centre on May 7. Each nominee will be relying on the general public, the VGMA board and the VGMA Academy to win.

The VGMA board has 30 percent voting power to determine which musicians win in the various categories.

There is also the VGMA Academy which also has 30 percent voting power and then the general public which has 40 percent voting power.

The VGMA Academy is made up of about 50 distinguished industry players with a fair regional representation to cover the country. The 50 are drawn from all the ten regions and are usually brought together to vote under the supervision of KPMG.

It is significant to note, however, that the VGMA Most Popular Song of the Year category is entirely left to the public without any say from neither the VGMA Board nor the Academy.
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Chibok (Nigeria) (AFP) - There's not much left of the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, northeast Nigeria, where Boko Haram kidnapped 276 teenagers in the dead of night nearly two years ago.

Even the word "girls" on the school sign outside has been painted over in black -- hidden from the world, just like the 219 students who are still missing.

Up the dusty track and beyond the heavy wrought-iron gates, soldiers stand guard with assault rifles, although there are few buildings and no people to protect.

Only the peeling light-green walls of the school's main school building remain. Metal beams that supported the roof lie rusting. Rough grass pokes through shattered concrete.

The government of Nigeria's former president Goodluck Jonathan announced shortly before last year's election that rebuilding work had begun at the school.

But apart from piles of breeze blocks, there's no evidence of any construction. The sprawling site is silent apart from the sound of cicadas and gusts of hot wind through the desert scrub.

Ayuba Alamson Chibok steps through the rubble where the girls' dormitories once stood, picking up a bed frame from the scorched earth -- one of the few signs the site was once inhabited.

"If the government wanted to do something, let them call the contractor... to put somebody on the ground," the town elder told AFP, his voice rising in anger.

"Education here in Chibok has really come to zero level. This is the only school we have in Chibok and it has been destroyed."

- Abandoned -

The second anniversary of the mass kidnapping on April 14 will bring renewed attention to the remote town in southern Borno state, which was little known until two years ago but is now synonomous with the brutal conflict.

Parents of the abducted girls plan to gather at the school on the day itself to pray for their safe return, said Yakubu Nkeki, from a support group helping those left behind.

But 16 fathers and two mothers will not be there, he said. They have either died or are now among the estimated 20,000 killed in the nearly seven-year Islamist insurgency.

Others live with the physical and psychological effects of the disappearances. High blood pressure and stomach ulcers are common, he said.

Yet despite the global outrage online at the kidnapping and promises of action, many people in Chibok say they feel abandoned.

"Nothing has been done," said Nkeki, a primary school teacher, questioning why nearby towns recently liberated from Boko Haram have since been able to re-open schools.

The Government Girls Secondary School was the only state-run school in Chibok but it has been shut since the kidnapping. Calls for a boys school have come to nothing, he said.

"Really, Boko Haram has achieved its aim by saying they don't want Western education," he added.

- Hardship -

In the town, life goes on as best it can. Upturned bicycles are repaired in the street, hawkers trade groundnuts from see-through plastic buckets and boys push wheelbarrows full of tart oranges.

The single main street, like the dirt road into and out of the town, is unpaved. Every vehicle kicks up choking dust. Electricity cables hang to the ground from damaged poles.

In January, three suicide bombers killed 13 people in Chibok. At the mosque, worshippers, including young children, are now screened outside for explosives.

Vigilantes assisting the military stand guard with single-shot, home-made muskets in a town that has been largely inaccessible because of insecurity.

"We have hardship," admitted Buluma Dawa, a 56-year-old bookseller. "There is no light, no water, no road and security-wise it's not enough for us in Chibok."

Dawa and others are at a loss to explain why, suggesting the state government has no interest in developing rural areas.

"We hope that on the two years' anniversary (of the kidnapping), we pray that people will remember Chibok because... nothing is improving at all...

"We have a lot of children living at home without doing anything... They will suffer, there is nothing else.

"If there is no education the poor people cannot even achieve."

- Waiting -

Some of the missing schoolgirls' parents can be found in Mbalala, a 10-minute drive from Chibok through an area still known for Boko Haram activity.

There's little movement in the market place, only the sound of children playing, the bleating of goats and an imam's sermon over the loudspeakers of the mosque.

Young girls in blue and white hijabs sit on piles of mud bricks; boys wash a goat tethered to a pole while others fetch water from a well, pouring it into plastic buckets.

Yawale Dunya is among the men sitting mostly silently on benches in the shade of cracked mud-brick houses or cross-legged playing cards.

The 41-year-old farmer has been able to do little else since his 15-year-old daughter Hawa was abducted. His fingers pick distractedly at prayer beads.

Military successes against the insurgents have kept his hopes alive of Hawa's return and he runs through the scenario repeatedly in his head.

"When I see my daughter coming back to me I will feel very much joy in my heart," he said.

"All the small sickness and other things will disappear and I will be very happy in my life."
Tunis (AFP) - Tunisia on Monday announced the reopening of its embassy and consulate in the Libyan capital following the arrival there of a UN-backed unity government.

Tunisia closed its diplomatic missions in neighbouring Libya in 2014 when a militia alliance seized Tripoli and set up a government and parliament opposed to the internationally recognised administration.

Prime minister-designate Fayez al-Sarraj arrived Wednesday in the Libyan capital drawing the fury of the Tripoli government, but also praise and pledges of allegiance from several fronts.

Tunisia's foreign ministry said as a result it was reopening the Tunisian embassy and consulate in Tripoli in a bid "to support the political process in Libya".

It was not immediately clear if the mission had in fact reopened or if it was about to resume work.

Last year Tunisia reopened its consulate in Tripoli but closed it again following the abduction of 10 staff members.

Tunisia has been wary of the chaos that spread across Libya in the aftermath of the 2011 uprising that ousted and killed longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

Both neighbours have seen an emergence of militant Islam.

The jihadist Islamic State group has set up a stronghold in Kadhafi's hometown of Sirte and claimed attacks in both Libya and Tunisia.

Tunisia has built a 200-kilometre (125-mile) barrier that stretches about half the length of its border with Libya in an attempt to prevent militants from infiltrating.
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) says it has decided to boycott all political programmes on Okay FM and Neat FM, with immediate effect.

The party says the two stations appear set to destroy the NPP, and so it has asked 'party executives, communications officers and members' to desist from speaking or patronizing political programmes of the two stations with immediate effect.

According to the party, programmes on the two stations hosted by Kwame Nkrumah Tikesie and Adakabre Frimpong Manso respectively, 'have in recent months developed a format to consistently discuss all matters of the NPP with a negative slant.'

A statement issued by the NPP and signed by its Deputy Director of Communications, Anthony Abayifaa Karbo explained that the programmes have also 'concentrated on encouraging submissions which denigrate and insult the Party and its Flagbearer.'

'Several letters, phone calls and face to face discussions between us and other management members, the producers and host of the programmes, to desist from this unethical practice of journalism have gone unheeded.'

The NPP said it is 'a firm believer and practitioner of multi-party democracy, with freedom of expression as its cornerstone, but it also believes in the exercise of this freedom with responsibility, and in this case, professionalism.'

A source close to the Despite Group of Companies, operators of the two stations told Graphic Online, the NPP's position has officially been communicated to the management. The group also operates Peace FM.
Koforidua, April 3, GNA - Mr Isaac Dupey, the Director of Public Relations Directorate of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, has urged Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies to engage chiefs and politicians in the national sanitation exercise.

He said this is necessary to help raise public participation in the national sanitation exercise.

Mr Dupey was speaking at a stakeholders meeting on the effective organization of the national sanitation exercise in the Eastern Region.

He called on the media to support the national sanitation exercise to help in the mobilization of people to participate in the programme.

Mr George Aguadza, Regional Manager of Zoomlion Company, said the company in collaboration with the New Juaben Municipal Assembly has initiated a pilot project distributing dustbins in the markets and lorry stations to help improve sanitation in those areas.

He said the Zoomlion Company had also initiated a refuse separation programme with the residents of Old Estate and Effiduase SSNIT Flats in the New Juaben Municipality.

He said the project would help turn the refuse into economic resources.

Mr Maxwel Kudekor, Eastern Regional Secretary of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) urged the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development to involve government appointees, ministers of state, members of parliament, district assemblies and traditional rulers as they seek to mobilize the people to participate in the monthly national sanitation day exercise.

GNA
04.04.2016 LISTEN

Africa World Airlines (AWA) has told Citi Business News the airlines does not feel threatened with the resumption of flights by three other airlines later this year.

According to the airline the coming in of the three will rather deepen competition and offer customers opportunities to choose from.

The Ghana Civil Aviation Authority has disclosed to Citi Business News that Antrak Air, Fly 540 now Royal Fly-GH as well as City Link have all advanced in their processes to resume operations by the third quarter of this year.

The three, halted operations between 2014 and 2015 for varied reasons but have shown indications of returning onto the market scene after some reforms.

Currently, only two domestic airlines are operating. They include the Africa World Airlines and Starbow Airlines.

But Head of Commercial of Africa World Airlines, Richard Kyereh tells Citi Business News the come -back will not affect current operations.

With the coming in of new entries or resumption of the three, it can never be a threat. In as much as you have a business, you should have a strategy plan, you should be ready to the uncommon things that you do in a nice way that is what makes the difference,

What we are supposed to do is to do our things right, give customers a very reliable service, a very timely service, affordable fares and of course we are guaranteed to have our customers, Richard Kyereh stressed.

-citifmonline


Former President, John Kufuor, has called on Engineers in the country to let their professional voices be heard at the corridors of power.

The former President said an outspoken Engineering professional body would assist national development efforts.

He said these when he delivered a keynote address as the Guest of Honour at the 47th Presidential Inauguration & Banquet as part of the Engineering Week Celebration of the Ghana Institution of Engineers (GhIE).

The event was held at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, La, Accra on Friday, April 1, 2016.

Photo: Kufuor (middle) with other dignitaries at the event

The former President, who has been awarded the Honorary Fellow of Ghana Institution of Engineers, explained that Engineering will be nothing if not solving problems and improving quality of life of the citizenry; and challenged Engineers to build a resilient and sustainable infrastructure that will stand the test of time and contribute to the socio-economic development of the country.

The colourful ceremony witnessed the swearing into office Ing. Dr. Kwame Boakye, FGhIE as the 47th President of the Ghana Institution of Engineers and Council members.

Photo: Kwame Boakye

The oath of office was administered by Justice Constant K. Hometowu. In attendance was Major Gen. O.B. Akwa.

The Out-going President of GhIE, Ing. Kwaku Boampong (FGhIE), in his handing over address expressed delight and appreciation to members of the Institution for supporting him during his tenure in office and assured the in-coming President of his full support during his term in office.

The new President of GhIE, Ing. Dr. Kwame Boakye, in his inaugural address said, I feel privileged and truly honoured to be inaugurated as the 47th President of the Ghana Institution of Engineers. In all humility, I hope to make use of the opportunity to be of service to the Institutions and the nation at large.

I would like to declare that the theme that will drive all my activities is premised on the notion that: Ghana is going nowhere without Engineers and therefore the Ghana Institution of Engineers has a special responsibility to the country. No country ever developed without technology and in the more successful recently developed countries, Engineers have been at the forefront of leadership, Ing. Dr. Kwame Boakye explained.

He added that Engineering has been and continues to be the backbone for the development and progress of any country. But for engineering where would we be today? Indeed, there would be no civilization. The Pyramids of Egypt, the Taj Mahal of India, the Great Wall of China, etc, of yesteryears as well as the tunnels and bridges, the provision of easy access to potable water, the control of flooding, the space exploration, the cell phone and easy access to information are all products of engineering. It is therefore not surprising that there is a correlation between the number of engineers in a country and its level of development.

The ceremony, which climaxed the 2016 Engineering Week Celebration of the Ghana Institution of Engineers was in collaboration with the Ghana Armed Forces, was under the theme: Resilient and Sustainable Infrastructure  The Role of Civilian and Military Engineers

The week-long celebration was attended by Professor Kwabena Frimpong Boateng, who gave a cutting-edge lecture on the theme during the opening ceremony on Tuesday, 29th March, 2016.

The 2016 Engineering Week was launched by Air Marshal Michael Samson-Oje, Chief of Defence Staff and attended Past Presidents of GhIE, Council Members, Military High Commands, Engineers, other professional bodies, with fraternal greetings from Nigeria and other international engineering associations.

The Engineering Week Celebration also witnessed the induction of new members into the Ghana Institution of Engineers on Tuesday, 22nd March, 2016 at the Engineers Centre, Roman Ridge, Accra and a Health Walk on Monday, 28th March from Trade Fair to Teshie.

Prof. Frimpong Boateng (6th left) Air Marshal Michael Samson-Oje (middle) Ing. Kwaku Boampong (6th right) and other dignitaries in at the opening ceremony.
Not long before this past Easter Sunday (03/27/2016), I had, in response to a comment posted to one of my articles, informed one of my regular readers to expect to read a piece on my views on Easter Sunday celebrations by Christians before the celebration itself came on.

Later on, after making the promise to him, I was led by Ruwakh HaQuodesh (Holy Spirit?) to defer the publication of the article to after the Easter celebration so that my Easter-loving reader may reflect on his celebration of the feast vis a vis my teaching. And so, my dear reader, if you are still out there, here is the fulfillment of my promise to you. May all other readers also be blessed by this piece!

Around the year 30 CE (Common Era), there occurred, in the land of Yisroel, a most spectacular event that the Creator had destined to be subsequently known in all the Earththe coming back to life of a dead young man of the house of Melek Dovid (King David), who had been buried for three full days in a tomb, after hed been killed in sacrifice according to the will of the Creator!

This coming back to life or resurrection of the dead man stuns everyone who hears about it and so, for close to two millennia now after its occurrence, mankind is unable to forget it. Sadly, however, many of the facts surrounding this resurrection have become willfully distorted by evil men over the passage of time, just to deny mankind of the spiritual benefits due him [mankind] from this resurrection!!

The CreatorElohiym is His holy Namecaused the birth of this young man to be foretold repeatedly by His chosen holy men of the stock of Yisroel over a period of many centuries before it happened. These announcements got more intense with the increasing closeness of this birth until it finally happened!

In fact, not only was his birth foretold, but everything about the life of this august personalityhis origin or spiritual Father [Abba, Elohiym], mission to Earth and eternal destiny after this resurrectionwas also foretold to the children of Yisroel by holy messengers of Elohiym, long before his coming to Earth!

He was to be the last of all human messengers coming from Elohiym to Yisroel and so was to forever be known as HaNavi (the prophet?) of the type of Moshe, the revered holy deliverer of Yisroel from bondage to Mitzrayim. He was to be the redeemer of Yisroel [and, in due course, the redeemer of all mankind of Goyim (Gentile nations) as well] from the dominion of sin and all evil oppressors.

He was also to be the means and channel through whom Khayyei Olam (eternal/everlasting life)that is, the very type and nature of Life in Elohiymwould indwell the bodies of all men who would receive him, accept his Torah (teaching and instructions), and have the wisdom of Elohiym to express faith in a sacrifice he was to offer for the remission of sins by permitting his own body to be used in this sacrifice; and still be the source of many more glorious blessings too!!

When the birth of this august personalitythe most illustrious of all men of the stock of Yisroel and, indeed, of all mankind ever borndrew near, holy malakim (angels) were made to take over from men as messengers to deliver information from Elohiym to the would-be parents of this personality, and to other holy people who were pre-ordained to play certain roles in his birth and life!

Eventually, the birth of this King of the house of Melek Dovid came about, albeit secretly and in obscurity; unnoticed by even almost all the leaders of Yisroel who had been told of his coming!! Well, he got circumcised on the eighth day of this birth in accordance to the dictates of a covenant Elohiym established with the all-time father of all the children of YisroelAvraham.

On this same day of his circumcision, he was also named according to a name delivered by a malak from Elohiym on two separate occasions to Yosef and Miryam, his would-be parents! All mankind was, therefore, obliged to identify and forever call him by this name he was named by!!

Nobody was permitted to ever call him by any other name but this malak-delivered one, unless the one wanted to incur the displeasure and wrath of Elohiym! For, who would dare try to undo what Elohiym has done by His Will and Power or rename His son for Him?? For, this august personality was also revealed by neviim to be HaBen HaElohiym (the Son of Elohiym), and that the conception of him by his mother, Miryam, was to come about through an overshadowing over her by Ruwakh HaQuodesh, and not as through any man in a normal sexual union.

Well, because this man was divinely ordained by Elohiym to be the Deliverer or Savior of Yisroel first of all, and, subsequently, all mankind of Goyim (Gentile nations), he had to live all the days of his adult life on Earth in Yisroelright before the very eyes of his own people who had been told in nevuah (prophecies??) to expect his coming and mission to mankind, repeatedly, over a period of about 1500 years!

Sadly, even though every one of the countless nevuah made by neviim (prophets?), and the many running commentaries about him based on the Torah, were all fulfilled by his life as he actually acted them before the eyes of the then living fathers and zekenim (leaders/elders) of Yisroel at the time, they and their childrenall of whom were supposed to have their spiritual eyes opened to behold and discern himfailed to identify him as their Deliverer!

And yet, it was important for them to be able to identify him as their Deliverer so as to accord him the necessary honor, loyalty and submission to his Torah, to enable them be blessed with the gift of salvation and Khayyei Olam which he had been sent by his Abba (Father), Elohiym, to deliver to them, and subsequently to even all mankind of the Goyim who would profess faith in him!

Speaking on three different occasions from His Throne in Shamayim (Heaven?), Elohiym urged the children of Yisroel to listen to His Ben and obey his Torah, but the hardness of their hearts kept them from believing the clear Word of Elohiym which He thundered down to them from His Throne abovecf. MattitYahu (Matthew?) 3:17, 17:5; Marqos (Mark?) 9:7, Luqas (Luke) 9:35; YahuKhanan (John?)12:28-29!

Also, not even did the words of the Saviors forerunner YahuKhanan Ben ZekharYahu (John the Baptist?), nor yet his own words which revealed him as HaBen (the Son) of Elohiym on many occasions, ever mean anything to Yisroel!! In fact, whenever he cried out that he is HaBen HaElohiym and so they should believe his word and also accept his miracles as coming from Elohiym, they chose to be offended to such an extent that they always wanted to stone him to death!

The many miracles he performed all over Yisroelmaking the blind see, deaf and dumb to speak and hear, lame and cripples to walk, dead people to come to life again to live to complete their ordained life spans on Earth, demons to flee the bodies of men, and healing the sick from all manner of chronic sicknesseswhich hitherto were never seen in Yisroel, did not even stir them to reason so as to see in him their much-awaited Deliverer and, therefore, to accord him honor and obedience to his Torah for their salvation. Instead, they ridiculed him, saying that his miracles were done by the power of Lucifer!

His holy and exemplary lifestyle meant nothing to his fellow countrymen. Even though he taught with such unction and power in his words that no son of Yisroel, after Moshe, had ever taught, his listeners were not impressed enough as to give him the due recognition they were obliged under the Torah of Moshe to do for every son of Yisroel who spoke in the name of Elohiym; even though Moshe had told them of his coming, and that he was to be the last of all their neviim from Elohiym and so was to be called HaNavi!
04.04.2016 LISTEN

The opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) has finally boycotted all political programmes on Okay and Neat FM, all Accra-based radio stations.

This was after months of talks between leadership of the party and management of the two radio stations failed to yield results about what the NPP considered as negative and biased publicity. The party subsequently asked its supporters to boycott the two radio stations.

The NPP accused the two stations, especially programmes hosted by Kwame Nkrumah Tikesie and Adakabre Frimpong Manso, of having developed a format to consistently discuss all matters of the NPP with a negative slant.

A statement issued by the party and signed by its Deputy Director of Communications, Anthony Abayifaa Karbo, yesterday posited: These programmes have also concentrated on encouraging submissions which denigrate and insult the party and its flagbearer.

Several letters, phone calls and face-to-face discussions between us and other management members, the producers and hosts of the programmes to desist from this unethical practice of journalism have gone unheeded.

For this reason, the statement said, The mission and vision of the stations currently seem to be to destroy the NPP.

Even though a firm believer and practitioner of multi-party democracy, with freedom of expression as its cornerstone, Karbo indicated that The party also believes in the exercise of this freedom with responsibility, and in this case, professionalism.

On several occasions, the party had complained about the conduct of the two hosts who sometimes deliberately stoke unnecessary debates and tension in the party with their slanted programmes.

It is for this reason that the party has asked its rank and file not to only stop listening, but also to stop calling and participating in programmes of the two radio stations.

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Party executives, communication officers and members have been advised to desist from speaking or patronising the stations' political programmes with immediate effect, the statement said with emphasis.

But management of the Despite Group of Companies, under whose ambit the affected radio stations operate, has pleaded with the NPP to reconsider its decision.

In a statement issued yesterday and dated April 1, 2016, it expressed appreciation for the NPP's decision to prompt it on the conduct of the two  Kwame Nkrumah Tikesie and Adakabre Frimpong Manso  indicating that management would ensure that our programmes are in the larger interest of the Ghanaian public and not any political party.

The statement added, We have tried as a station to maintain our neutrality, regardless of the political heat in the country at any given time. We do not intend nor have thought of creating a politically biased station in Ghana as we do understand the consequences of such a decision.

They expressed hope that the NPP would rescind its decision to boycott programmes on Okay and Neat FM.

By Charles Takyi-Boadu


Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia

04.04.2016 LISTEN

TRAFFIC FLOW in Kumasi, the Ashanti Regional capital, will definitely be impeded on Wednesday, April 6, as Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) vice presidential candidate, leads an expected massive demonstration in the city.

Dubbed 'Baamu Yada'  an Hausa expression which literally means 'We won't agree'  demonstration, the protest march is expected to attract thousands of people from all segments of society, who would be dressed in red and black apparels, to demonstrate against the Electoral Commission (EC).

The demonstration would be a platform for the NPP, its partners and all well-meaning Ghanaians to pressurize the EC to conduct the validation exercise as soon as possible so that names of dead people, minors and foreigners, would be deleted from the current bloated voter register to ensure free and fair polls this year.

The Ashanti Regional branch of the NPP is organizing the demonstration in collaboration with its partners such as Let My Vote Count Alliance (LMVCA), Movement for Change (MFC) and Alliance for Accountable Governance (AFAG), and it is supposed to start at the Suame Roundabout at 6am.

The demonstrators, which would include other party bigwigs like Freddie Blay, Acting National Chairman and Bernard Antwi Boasiako aka Wontumi, Ashanti Regional Chairman, would walk through Abrepo Junction, Bantama, Adum, Asafo Interchange and converge at the Abbey's Park.

Some selected top people, including Dr. Bawumia, would then address the crowd at the converging point, a statement jointly signed by Wontumi, Dr. Anthony Nsiah Asare (MFC), David Asante (LMVCA) and Dr. Afriyie Ayew (AFAG), indicated.

It said the protest march would be used to charge the EC to do the right thing by making sure that the validation exercise  which virtually all the political parties in the country are in full support of  is carried out to make sure that the voter register is thoroughly cleaned to ensure peaceful polls.

Again, the statement indicated that the demonstrators would use the occasion to ask the EC to as a matter of transparency, tell Ghanaians about the nature of the existing contractual relationship between it and Superlock Technologies Limited (STL), Who we are told is in-charge of transmitting tallied electoral results.

FROM I.F. Joe Awuah Jnr., Kumasi


The names of Mr John Addo Kufour, a son of former President J.A. Kufuor and Mr Kojo Annan, son of former UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan have popped up in an investigative piece authored by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) on offshore companies dubbed 'Panama Papers'.

The massive leak of documents, which were all hidden in 11.5 million secret files exposes the offshore holdings of 12 current and former world leaders and provides details of the hidden financial dealings of politicians and public officials around the world.

They were leaked from one of the world's most secretive companies, Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

It shows how Mossack Fonseca helped clients launder money, dodge sanctions and evade tax and how the rich and powerful use tax havens to hide their wealth.

The leak also exposes confidential documents and the names of 140 politicians including Heads of state, their associates, ministers and elected officials from more than 50 countries who are connected to offshore companies in 21 tax havens.

The report by ICIJ however explains that there are legitimate uses for offshore companies, foundations and trusts and that the intention was not to suggest or imply that any persons, companies or other entities included in the ICIJ report have broken the law or otherwise acted improperly.

It goes further to explain that engaging in offshore business in itself was not illegal.

John Addo Kufuor

According to the report published by the ICIJ , Mr Addo Kufuor's offshore company controlled a $75,000 bank account for him and his mother [Mrs Theresa Kufuor].

It said in early 2001, shortly after the start of President Kufuor's first term, Mr Addo Kufuor appointed Mossack Fonseca to manage The Excel 2000 Trust.

Later that year, it controlled a bank account in Panama worth $75,000.

His mother - Theresa Kufuor, then-Ghana's first lady - was also a beneficiary.

In November 2010, an employee in Mossack Fonseca's compliance office in the British Virgin Islands suggested to colleagues that 'due to the apparent prevalence of corruption surrounding Mr. Kufour we would not recommend us taking him on as a client or continuing business with him.'

Mossack Fonseca, however, continued to do business with Kufuor.

In 2012, Kufuor asked Mossack Fonseca to close the trust. Files also connected Kufuor with BVI companies Fordiant Ltd and Stamford International Investments Group Limited.

Both were registered when Kufuor's father was president of Ghana and became inactive in 2004 and 2007.

According to the ICIJ, when Mr Addo Kufuor was repeatedly contacted for a comment, he did not respond.

Mr Addo Kufuor is the eldest son of Ghana's former president, John Agyekum Kufuor, who led the country from 2001 to 2009.

As a trained accountant, the younger Kufuor has worked in the hotel industry.

Throughout 2005, there were media reports of allegations that he gained lucrative government contracts and private sector business deals through paternal connections.

An official commission later found no evidence of wrongdoing.

Kojo Annan

In the case of Mr Kojo Annan who is the son of former United Nations Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, who served from 1997 to 2006, he used an offshore company to buy a $500,000 London apartment, according to Mossack Fonseca data.

The files states that the Swiss company, Cotecna hired Kojo Annan in 1995 for work in Nigeria. By early 1998, he had quit to become a consultant to Cotecna. Months later, the United Nations awarded the firm a contract as part of Oil-for-Food humanitarian program in Iraq, prompting allegations of impropriety.

An independent panel investigated the program, including Mr Annan, and issued a report in 2005 that found no evidence that he tried to influence or to use family connections to benefit from the program.

Annan and Cotecna have consistently denied allegations of wrongdoing.

The files added that Annan was sole director of the Samoan company Sapphire Holding Ltd, originally incorporated in Niue in 2003, which he had used to buy an apartment in central London.

The apartment was purchased in a transaction completed in 2003 for more than $500,000, according to U.K. records.

Sapphire Holding used unnamed shareholders until 2015 when Mr Annan became a listed shareholder with a Ghana address.

Mossack Fonseca continued to communicate with Annan at the central London address, Argyll Mansions, into 2015. Annan was also a joint shareholder and director of two British Virgin Islands companies incorporated in 2002.

However, a lawyer for Annan responded that his companies "operate in accordance with the laws and regulations of the relevant jurisdictions and, insofar tax liabilities arise, they pay taxes in the jurisdictions in which taxes are due to be paid.

'In other words, any entity and account held by Mr. Annan has been opened solely for normal, legal purposes of managing family and business matters and has been fully disclosed in accordance with applicable laws."

He also noted that an investigation found no evidence that Mr Annan tried to influence anyone in the UN to award contracts to any company with which he was associated.

more to follow
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) says the decision to boycott two Accra-based radio stations  Okay FM and Neat FM  was the last resort after several attempts to cure an alleged slant against the party failed.

Communications Director of the party, Nana Akomea, explains the decision to boycott the station was taken with great pains.

Mr. Akomea however, explained that although it may seem as if the party has boycotted the two stations, what the party has actually done is to boycott one programme each on both Okay FM and Neat FM.

The NPP claims Kwame Nkrumah Tikese and Adakabre Frimpong Manso  the hosts of current affairs programmes on Okay and Neat FMs respectively  have consistently worked towards bringing the image of the party into disrepute with their presentations.

Nana Akomea spoke on the Super Morning Show on Joy FM Monday.

The opposition NPP announced a decision to boycott one programme each on the two radio stations operating on the license of the Despite Group.

A statement released Sunday by the party said the programmes on Okay and Neat FM have consistently discussed all matters of the NPP with a negative slant.

The statement also said, several letters, phone calls and face to face discussions between us and other management members, the producers and host of the programmes, to desist from this unethical practice of journalism have gone unheeded.

Despite Group subsequently released a reconciliatory statement urging the NPP to rethink its decision to boycott the two stations.

Our doors are always widely open to you as we all contribute our quota to developing the nation, the Despite Group statement said.

Speaking on the Morning Show, Nana Akomea welcomed the Despite Group statement, assuring the party is also willing to review its boycott.

However, speaking on the Morning Show, Adakabre said although he stands by the contents of the statement by his employers, the NPP must cite specific instances of the alleged slant against the party by him.

He, in turn, alleged that elements in the NPP have rather made threats on his life.

NPP Member of Parliament for Tema East, Titus Glover, who was also in the Joy FM studio said Adakabre's claims are false and disappointing.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | George Nyavor | [email protected]
The suspected illegal gold miners

04.04.2016 LISTEN

Seventeen suspected illegal miners (galamsey operators), comprising nine Burkinabe nationals, three Nigeriens and five Ghanaians, have been nabbed at Nkawie in the Ashanti Region and handed over to the police.

Forestry Commission officials at Nkawie, who made the arrests, also confiscated 22 gold detector machines, each valued at GH18,000.

The suspects had allegedly been mining for gold in the Offin River Forest Reserve, an illegal action which has destroyed the river in the process.

The 17 persons would be arraigned before court possibly today, to face the law, Nana Poku Bosompem, the Nkawie Forestry Commission boss, said.

According to him, some people had been mining, especially during the night, in the Offin River Forest Reserve, thereby creating environmental hazards.

He said reports in his custody indicated that some foreigners from Burkina Faso, Guinea and Niger as well as some Ghanaians, were the main architects.

Nana Bosompem said these illegal miners use gold detector machines  which are small  so tracking them for possible arrests always became difficult.

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He maintained that his outfit started about one year ago to track and arrest the perpetrators who usually dag holes and destroyed the river, but to no avail.

Nana Bosompem said during the weekend his men were able to track the suspected illegal miners and arrested them in possession of the 22 gold detector machines.

He described the arrest as positive for the commission in its resolve to protect the Offin River Forest Reserve.

FROM I.F. Joe Awuah Jnr., Kumasi






04.04.2016 LISTEN

One who causes misfortune unto others also teaches them a lessonAfrican proverb.

Politics, they say, is a dirty game. You should therefore not be surprised to see politicians engaged in mudslinging and character assassination. Indeed, the modus operandi of many a politician is to give a dog a bad name to hang it.

One political dog whose character has been mercilessly and unjustifiably assassinated is Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. His political opponents have tagged him with all manner of invectives. But his actions have so far proven to the world that the allegations are Kwaku Ananse stories deliberately fabricated to tarnish his reputation.

One tag his detractors continue to place on him is that of violence. They say he wants to become president at all cost. Yet when the opportunity presented itself to the man to demonstrate his so-called violent nature, he shamed his detractors by choosing the path of peace. Despite the fishy nature of the election petition ruling in August 2013, he gracefully accepted the results. Yes, the dog refuses to be hanged!

Fast forward to 2016, three South African nationals were arrested by the Bureau of National Investigation (BNI) for activities deemed to endanger the security of the state. Pro-government newspapers made a lot of noise on the matter. Some even tagged the three as 'terrorists' and 'mercenaries'.

They were taken to court on a misdemeanor charge and subsequently granted bail. The BNI disrespected the court's order and continued to keep the three in their cells. Before one could say Jack, the three had been deported to their homeland. What an anticlimax!

Meanwhile, the head of Nana Addo's security, Capt (rtd) Edmund Koda, was also arrested by the BNI, released and re-arrested a few days later. His house was ransacked in the name of searching for evidence. The man fell sick while in BNI custody yet was refused bail. They kept the sick man in detention until they heard of an impending invasion of their offices by the youth riding on the Elephant. The threat of 'aluta' by the Osono youth finally gave Captain Koda his freedom.

Abusuapanin, all the arrests and the subsequent vile propaganda by the rented press was for only one purpose: to paint Nana Addo as a violent man. But the shame that greeted the BNI in court made them run with their tail between their legs. Once again, the dog refuses to be hanged!

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In their desperation, the government propagandists fell on the Interior Minister, Prosper Bani, to finish their hatchet job. But the statement the minister released turned out to be their waterloo. It finally confirmed the suspicion that Superlock Technologies Limited (STL) had a clandestine deal with the Electoral Commission (EC) during the 2012 polls.

The statement from Prosper Bani on Tuesday, March 29, 2016 said, STL is the company contracted by the EC to transmit tallied election results.

It contradicted the statement released by Dr Kwadwo Afari Gyan on December 8, 2012 when the matter first surfaced. Listen to him: The Commission's attention has been drawn to the allegation that it has engaged the services of a company to do electronic transmission and collation of results on its behalf. We wish to state emphatically that no such engagement has been made, neither is the Commission doing electronic transmission of results.

Prosper Bani's deputy, James Agalga, is also on record to have corroborated the stance of his boss. On Newsfile last Saturday, he did not mince words in expressing the fact that STL was contracted by the EC to transmit tallied results in 2012.

With such clear contradictions, it has become necessary for the EC to come clean. I fully support the call on the EC to eschew the frequent denials and be more transparent in its dealings, in order to regain the public's trust. The EC's consistent denial of the reality and its belligerent stance on issues clearly show that it is not ready to be an impartial referee. And that may spell doom for this country.

Now is the time for all peace-loving Asomdwekromanians to raise their voices against the poisonous seeds being planted by the shameless BNI and the belligerent EC. Isn't it puzzling that the Peace Council and the other so-called peace-building organisations are very silent? Indeed, their silence is very loud!

As for the ruling Zu-za, it deserves our sympathy as it suffers a rare instance of political paranoia. But one thing is certain; no amount of name-calling can overwhelm the dog. The dog simply refuses to be hanged!

See you next week for another interesting konkonsa, Deo volente!
04.04.2016 LISTEN

Let's quickly recall two episodes as among the most humiliating moments in this our republic motherland.

One is closing down schools for children with disabilities because government cash support was not forthcoming.

The other, using GH3.6 million OIL MONEY to paint a colour picture of a president on publicly owned buses only for one of those buses, through criminal negligence of disrepair, to crush to death 160 precious lives of the motherland.

There have been many motherland momentous embarrassing moments, many in the full glare of the international community.

Brazil, ECOWAS 'where is my speech?' Scottish gallery, errors of printer's devil has followed us from Independence Square to Kenya and not long after University of Aberdeen.

The worst was an error dogged election process and which ended up with results which illegitimately handed defeat to the competent and thieved victory for the incompetent.

Those of us who know no security are heavily descended upon when we make the slightest references to it.

My knowledge of that field is limited to two years of cadet corps experience in high school and one year in university. It's been a total of not many days of training in firing a gun and not much about handling a rifle except for cleaning it.

But like some preacherpeople said about common sense, if you have a trained mind in conjunction with the natural instinct, you can make good sense of some security situations.

This is a motherland coveting gateway status to scoop direct foreign investment which counts rule of law as one of its fundamental demands.

To see a court order so blatantly violated in full view of social media lenses, these days is not a sight an investment hungry motherland would want displayed.

I thought there is a rule that says what you do to others you do to yourself.

I checked my records to a replay of some two newspaper people being whisked away in a similar manner. For publishing a cartoon of a first lady, they had been strategically arraigned on a Friday to ensure denial of bail could not be appealed over the weekend so off they were whisked into prison.

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My mother always said she would treat other people's children the way she would want her children treated by other mothers.

I thought that is how international relations work. Under the same media repressing regime, an obviously constrained judge had refused bail so some journalists would spend time in prison. When counsel for the defence raised issues with the judge about the prosecution not objecting to bail, the prosecutor responded that that opposition could be seen from his face.

With judges now responsibly interpreting the law as is internationally required and accepted, unproven security concerns seem to be shaming the practice. However, Konongo Kaya can no longer be played.

So far, not a word from the branding experts or perhaps thieves assembled to rape the nation of funds for school feeding and statutory payments, on the negative implications of these embarrassments for the banana republic image for the motherland.

Right now, some are berating a flagbearer for daring to proactively protect himself and his team from some marauding protest eye-removing atinga-squad. But just let anything untoward happen to the flagbearer, running mate and their spouses, same will mock flagbearer for being incapable of protecting self, and therefore lacks the capacity to protect a whole nation.

You are damned if you do and you get damned if you don't do.

Yaanom asimasifo of less thinking and more propaganda talking are crooning how a flagbearer who has no faith in a security system can hope to work with that same system as president.

My class three friends have a simple answer. When you are not in charge, your enemy in charge would give orders against you. When in charge you give orders.

My compatriots, you know, the sum total of errors of embarrassment is incompetence. Nowhere, and under no circumstance is positive branding achieved by always placing how much money you can steal through a branding exercise.

In addition to incompetence, the administration is characterized in consistency by disingenuousness.

They thought they were making capital out of addressing a Scottish Parliament. That backfired into being banished to the gallery for shooting out an eye of a compatriot unarmed who was demonstrating against a fraudulent voting register.

Indeed, guess who comes out on top in all the security melodrama; the flagbearer. That is because should anything untoward happen to him his mate or their spouses, I can confidently blame it on those who would not allow him to secure himself.

By a strange dint of luck, irony of fate or quixotic twist, he can spend less on security. The louder they talk, the greater their responsibility to protect a flagbearer.

By Kwasi Ansu-Kyeremeh


04.04.2016 LISTEN

The Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) and the National Security apparatus have found themselves in a fresh wave of controversy after the weekend arrest of persons they claim took photographs of some branded vehicles of President Mahama without authority and circulating these on social media.

Last Saturday, the media broke the news about the arrest and detention of the Managing Director of Granite and Marble, Dr Edmund Eyo Ani, an importer and wholesaler of imported natural and engineered stone products with an office at Spintex in Accra. Within one hour, over 200 comments were posted on social media lambasting the government for this latest round of arrests.

As at press time yesterday, DAILY GUIDE's sources at the BNI said Mr Eyo Ani had been granted a self-cognizance bail.

He was arrested Friday afternoon together with a female Chinese consultant with the firm between 2 and 3pm by state security agents on suspicion that he was taking photographs of Mahindra vehicles being sprayed and branded in a yard.

Pictures of the Mahindra Pick-ups, numbering over 50, which had been parked on a property believed to be owned by 'a high government official' opposite the premises of Granite and Marble on the Spintex road, flooded social media last week with a narrative that suggested they were originally meant for the under-resourced National Commission on Civic Education (NCCE).

It is not certain who took the snapshots of several vehicles in an unkempt yard with cows grazing nearby being branded with campaign posters of President John Mahama and the colours of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC).

Power Play

But even before followers of the unfolding event could grasp what was happening, National Security Advisor to the President, Alhaji Baba Kamara, boldly told the media that the businessman was arrested upon his explicit orders.

Dr Ani is said to be of Nigerian and British extraction.

Baba Kamara confirmed the arrest, explaining that what looked like a virtually abandoned yard in which the Mahindra vehicles were parked was his and that it was not right for Dr Edmund Ayo Ani to take shots of the place.

According to lawyers for Ani, the BNI claimed that from the angle of the photographs, they were taken from windows of Granite and Marble; hence the arrest of the managing director and the other staff.

Ani had then arrived from a trip outside the country when he heard he was wanted at the Cantonments police station.

Confusion

At the police station, his lawyer, Nana Agyei Baffour Awuah, narrated that Ani was confronted with the tell-tale photographs and asked to write a statement but he refused because he 'found the whole thing to be a childs play'.

Even before he could walk out of the police station, agents of the BNI had stormed the place to whisk him to the BNI headquarters where he was being kept together with the female Chinese consultant and allegedly denied the right to visit or access to their lawyer.

The police invited the MD, demanding that he completes a standard bio-data form, which he declined, demanding to know what his crime was. He also refused to change into a police cells attire, according to reports.

What is their crime? bemused veteran journalist Kweku Baako asked as the story broke during the Joy FM news analysis programme, 'News File', on Saturday.

Though Baba Kamara did not confirm or deny whether those vehicles were indeed meant for the NCCE as had been speculated, the Security Advisor to the President, who spoke to Joy FM, said he was going to process and send Ani to court to explain why he took those shots as well as explain where he got the information that the vehicles were meant for the NCCE.

He thinks everything is wrong with Dr Edmund Ayo Ani's getting up, looking into somebodys yard and taking such shots. The National Security Advisor has hinted that today he will drag Dr Ayo Ani before court to explain why he took that action.

Also, he would want an explanation from the MD on where he got the information that the cars were NCCE property which had been branded in NDC colours.

But Dr Ani's lawyer, Nana Agyei Baffour, described the conduct of the state security agency and that of Baba Kamara as repugnant.

Hidden Agenda

Interestingly, even before dust could settle on the brouhaha, the vehicles were carted away from the location Baba Kamara claimed to be his property.

In the wee hours of Saturday (between 1 and 2am), hours after the pictures had gone viral on social media, the vehicles were driven away at top speed with heavily armed security guard under the cover of darkness.

A video footage of the movement of the vehicles from the yard has also managed to find its way onto social media platforms, thereby raising questions as to why they were being taken away if there was nothing to it and the vehicles indeed belonged to the NDC as a party or were procured by President Mahama for his campaign.

The report has sparked another round of what some people view as an abuse of office and incumbency ahead of the general election in November.

By Charles Takyi-Boadu




04.04.2016 LISTEN

The Minister-in-Charge of the Calvary Methodist Church, Tema community 3, Very Reverend Rosebud Adjaottor has urged Ghanaians to pray to God to choose a "David" for the country come November 7.

She said in all things it is prudent to seek the direction of the almighty God thus the need to implore God to intervene in this year's election to elect the right leader for the country who will fight for the whole country.

On the first Sunday of April 2016, which was also a communion Sunday, the humble Minister of God told her congregation and by extension the country not to pay heed to the empty promises and attractive gifts from politicians who want to swindle them to vote for a certain party; but "pray to God to give us a Divid in this election", she said.

Very Rev. Rosebud Adjaottor noted clearly that as part of campaigns to winning the election, people will try to proffer donations and other things to lure the innocent ones to vote for a particular political party.

She added that, Ghanaians, especially Christians should set an example by rejecting gifts just to vote for a political party so that pagans can follow their steps.

She also advised students who are in their voting age to rebuff offerings from politicians to vote for a particular party but rather advised the students to pray to God to direct them to vote for the right party that would make the welfare of the country its major priority.

Very Rev. Adjaottor emphasised that there are always some kind of economic instability in the country when the country is preparing to go into a general election and this year being an election year might not be different from the previous election years. However, she advised Ghanaians to stay away from following political parties 'blindly' for money to satisfy one's 'immediate hunger'.

"No matter how the economy in Ghana is, don't let anyone deceive you with gifts to vote for a particular party. Pray to God to give Ghana a leader who will have the people at heart. Someone who will think about the whole country and not his family alone", she stated.

Preaching on the theme, 'stand up for Jesus' she urged Christians to rise up and speak the word of God to all nations no matter the circumstances.

She added that "God is faithful and just to see his children through any temptations from the devil because he who has began a good work will take it to a perfect end", she opined.

In about eight (8) months time the country would go into another poll which has been predicted by most political analysts to be very keen.

The keenness of the upcoming general election as predicted by analysts has pressed politicians and for that matter political parties to fortify their campaign strategies.

One of such campaign tactics as may have been done during previous elections campaigns but has been intensified in this year's election crusade is the door-to-door campaign.

Eight months before the election, promises have been made and gifts are being given to innocent Ghanaians in a bid to entice them to vote according to a certain direction. These demonstrate how desperate the political parties would want to retain or win power.

Meanwhile, the Very Reverend Rosebud Adjaottor has recommended that Ghanaians pray to God to choose the right leader to lead mother Ghana.
Following the official visit of the UNAIDS Executive Director and Under Secretary-General of the United Nations, Michel Sidibe, to Nigeria in February, the National Agency for the Control of AIDS is stepping up efforts to ensure that the country's leadership participates in the upcoming United Nations General Assembly High Level Meeting on Ending AIDS.

The meeting will take place in New York, United States, from 8 to 10 June 2016.

NACA recognises the importance of the upcoming High Level Meeting to the global goal of ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030. My team is working hard to ensure that Nigeria contributes to preparations for the meeting and that it is represented by the highest political leadership possible during the meeting, said the Director General of the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), Prof John Idoko.

The upcoming meeting offers a timely and critical opportunity for the political leadership in Nigeria to help nurture the global partnership and cooperation that shall guide and monitor the AIDS response up to 2021 and beyond, Prof. Idoko said.

During his successful official visit to Nigeria in February, the UNAIDS Executive Director, Michel Sidibe, explained the importance of High Level Meeting to the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria Prof. Yemi Osinbajo and appealed to the Nigerian authorities to play a leadership role in it. He made similar appeals during meetings with the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Eng. Babachir David Lawal, the Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, the Minister Budget and Planning, Senator Udo Udoma, the Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, members of the National Assembly, the Director General of NACA, Prof John Idoko, the donor community, the private sector and the civil society.

The High Level Meeting on Ending AIDS shall review the progress achieved in realising the implementation of the Political Declarations of 2011, including successes, lessons learned, obstacles and gaps, as well as challenges and opportunities. The meeting will adopt a new Political Declaration to guide the AIDS response until 2021.

It has become scientifically evident that the world can defeat AIDS by 2030 and that Nigeria can lead this global success, said the UNAIDS Country Director for Nigeria and UNAIDS Focal Point for Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS), Dr Bilali Camara.
Dr. Nduom delivering his lecture

04.04.2016 LISTEN

PAA Kwesi Nduom, the presidential candidate of the Progressive People's Party (PPP), has appealed to Ghanaian youth of voting age to be mindful of the kind of candidates they vote for in this year's elections.

This, he said, is to save the nation from being ruled by another bunch of incompetent people over the next four years.

According to him, it has become necessary for the youth to vote wisely considering the high level of incompetence being displayed by the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) government in managing the country's economy, resulting in untold hardships for many Ghanaians.

Dr. Nduom was delivering a special lecture organized by the National Union of Ghana Students of Islamic University (NUGS-IUCG) Power Talk Series under the theme: Empowering The Youth: A Bold Step to National Development.

A cross section of participants

.

He urged the youth and every voter to endeavor to vote for feasible plans this year, stating that Ghanaians have become 'gullible.' According to Dr. Nduom, Ghanaians must question politicians to ascertain how feasible it would be to get their plans implemented when elected into office.

They promise, we clap, and they go and don't implement them. We must decide to stop this. It is time you hold your future in your hands, he said, while pointing out that Ghanaians have over the years failed to probe campaign promises of political parties and their agents.

He expressed the belief that failure on the part of Ghanaians to vote based on issues was responsible for the challenges facing the nation under President John Mahama-led NDC administration which has proven over the last three years to be grossly incompetent in managing the affairs of the state.

According to him, Ghana's economy has not been restructured after several promises from the current government.

He reiterated his desire to stem out corruption from the Ghanaian society when given the nod in this year's election by setting up an independent prosecutor who, he said, shall examine all the administrations from 1992 to 2016 on the usage of state resources.

He observed that the era of impunity would be a thing of the past when he comes to power.

BY Melvin Tarlue


04.04.2016 LISTEN

Businesses in the country are pressuring government, seeking for a reversal of the 17.5 % VAT Flat Rate Scheme imposed on traders as contained in the new tax law which was effective from January this year.

According to the law, all registered traders in the country are required to pay 17.5 % VAT instead of the normal 3%.

In supportive of this effort of the businesses, the presidential running mate of NPP, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has advised that, Ghanaian companies will be in position to offer jobs to fresh graduates if government pursues a policy of establishing an employment tax credit scheme for businesses.

According to the economist and former Bank of Ghana Deputy Governor, whilst providing incentives to companies, the burden of high taxation on businesses should also be revised.

Ghana should focus on providing tax incentives for increasing production and generating employment, he said.

In the process, revenue can be raised from corporate taxes. What we should not allow to happen is for the desire to generate revenue to kill businesses and cause unemployment, he added.

The Joint Private Sector Business Consultative Forum sees the imposition of 17.5% VAT on their operations as unjustified hence, its call for a withdrawal of the policy.

President of Ghana Union of Traders Associaion (GUTA), George Ofori, maintained that government will be doing harm to traders should it continue with the policy.

We were not actually informed, all of a sudden, we got to know that it has been taken back to the standard rate of seventeen and half percent VAT rate. This seventeen and half percent can be a component of input and output but with the flat rate scheme, it is a simplified system that does not have the input and output system. So you pay that one and that ends it because you are not getting any input, So we thought that since it was fashioned up for the informal sector even if for nothing at all if there were going to be any changes, we could have been informed but that was not to be. George Ofori stressed.

Meanwhile, authorities have advised traders operating the 3% VAT Flat Rate Scheme to continue to file their monthly 3% VAT Flat Rate returns with the Ghana Revenue Authority until an agreement is reached.

The business union has also cautioned GRA officers to desist from harassing traders who approach them willing to pay the 3% tax Instead of us saying that our members should not pay, we felt that whilst negotiating, the business community, vis-a -vis the informal sector, should keep on paying the 3%. If they go and the GRA staff decide not to take it, well, they have done what they have to do as their civic responsibility. George Ofori added.

Moreover, Dr. Bawumia who was delivering a public lecture in Kumasi on the theme: High Graduate Unemployment and Employment Embargo, What is the Solution? organized by the KNUST Economic Students Association, proposed that companies willing to employ fresh graduates should be given tax incentives and rebates.

To demonstrate our focus on productivity and jobs for the youth in Ghana, particularly graduates, we should introduce employment tax credit scheme to provide incentive for companies that employ fresh graduates, he said.

Dr. Bawumia believes the value chain of Ghanas housing market holds a great potential to solving the high graduate unemployment by specifically tackling the mortgage market.

He however said one of the biggest threats to battling the countrys unemployment is high borrowing and debt non-sustainability, which he says leads to a slump in the economy.

He observed that an operational national identification and good addressing system will help drive growth and build new businesses that will employ graduates.
04.04.2016 LISTEN

Information gathered by Economy Times indicates that, so far over 40 companies have tendered their interest to take up the concession of the ECG. The companies consist of 24 foreign countries, as well as 18 Ghanaian firms.

Eighteen of the companies are indigenous Ghanaian owned while the remaining 24 companies are from 14 different foreign countries.

ECG is expected to be handed over to a Concessionaire in January 2017.

The United States is supporting the nations power sector with an investment of US$497 million to aid its transformation - to assure the people and businesses of reliable electricity supply.

Mr. Robert Porter Jackson, the US Ambassador, said this was coming under the President Obamas Power Africa Initiative, designed to boost electrical power supply across the continent.

He noted that inadequate and erratic energy flow was unhelpful to economic growth and said it was for this reason that every effort must be made to radically improve the energy situation.

The support which is part of Millennium Challenge Account Compact II, seeks to introduce reforms and intensify efforts to ensure consistent electricity distribution to consumers.

This support has pushed the government to concede some aspect of the Electricity Company of Ghanas (ECG) activities to ensure division of labour that will automatically bring efficiency in the electricity distribution in the country.

Companies interested in the concession are from United States of America (USA), South Africa, United Kingdom (UK), France, Lebanon, India, Nigeria, Philippines, Turkey, Canada, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Ireland, Israel and Thailand.

The Millennium Development Authority (MiDA) posted the updated list of companies that have expressed interest in the ECG concession on its website on Wednesday March 2, 2016.

The compact two of the Millennium Challenge Account between the Government of Ghana and the Millennium Challenge Corporation of the United States of America is a Power Compact-aimed' at transforming ECG in terms, of technology and efficiency in power distribution to become a stronger company able to meet the current and future needs of Ghanaian families and businesses.

In helping to address this problem, the MCA recommended that EGC be handed over to a Concessionaire for a specific period of time.

The development would also help to eliminate governments interference in the operations of the ECG.

The list of 18 Ghanaian companies include: Power Meter Technics (Pty) Ltd &Pricoil Ghana Limited, China Railway No.5, Engineering Group Co. Ltd, Wilkins Engineering. Limited, ER- STOVS COMPANY LIMITED, TG Energy Solution Ghana Limited, Enclave Power Company, BXC GHANA LIMITED, HECDIG Limited, MBH

POWER AND GAS LTD, MC Jones Energy, Fallow Ghana Ltd, Wellfind Limited, Reroy Power Limited, IRIS, Infrared Imaging Solutions, Belstar Capital Ltd, in collaboration with CEC Africa Investments Ltd, The Quantum Group Ltd, Rabest Company Limited and Amandi/STL.

Six companies from the United States of America have also expressed interest. They are;Thelios Power/Orgone Development LLC, APSM, Pike Corporation & UC Synergetic Information-Thinking Engineering Solutions, CMF Global. Inc, New Generation Power and Latitude Capital Management L.P.

However, some analysts and civil society groups have expressed concern that because the USA is providing funding for restructuring ECG, companies from that country stand a better chance of winning the concession bid.

However, MiDA officials have discounted this assertion, adding that only the best company can win the concession.

Also, three companies from South Africa; namely, Total Utilities Management Services, Mat Tecknologies Consultancy Limited/Siri Engineering (PTY) Ltd and Pricoil Ghana Limited, with office in Ghana, have also expressed interest in the ECG concession.

Actis GP LLP-United Kingdom and CDC Group pic from the United Kingdom have also shown interest.

Interest was received from-two companies from France EDF International Networks and Eranove Group.

Butec Utility Services-Lebanon and Matelec S.A.L-Lebanon also applied for the concession.

Expression of interest was received from 10 other countries. They include; TataPower Company Limited Manila Electric Company/ MERI ALCO, Philippines; AFRASIA, Enerji MUh.ve Dan. Tic. A.S, Manitoba Hydro Intei Canada; ENG1E Limited, Uri Emirates; ESB International,

NIP Global Ltd, Israel; African Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIIM), Nigeria; and Metre Electricity Authority, (MEA) land.

O&M Solutions expressed interest but did not provide their address.

According to MiDA, it reserves right to change, amend or modify the list at any time and without prior notice.

Analysts say if ECG is able to reduce its annual cumulative losses by half, it would be making $150 million every year.

Any company that succeeds in winning the concession to operate ECG from January 2017 will be expected to invest not less than $200 million every year.

It is on record that the power sector requires about $200 million investment every year for a number of years a responsibility the government alone cannot shoulder, hence the need for the concessionaire.

The money will be used to replace obsolete equipment in order to maintain service quality.

In addition, between $8 billion and $12 billion would be required by the country - for new power generating plants in the next 10 years to ensure reliable power.

The major project under the Ghana Power Compact is the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) Financial and Operational Turnaround Project, which is designed to transform ECG into an efficient and financially strong institution through private sector participation (PSP).

About $300 million of the MCC grant is being invested in ECG, and the Government of Ghana is committing at least S37.4 million of its own money.

The project seeks to bring about PSP in investments into ECG, as well as the management and operation of the power provider through a concession arrangement.
Spio Gabrah, Minister of Trade

04.04.2016 LISTEN

Member of Parliament (MP) for Banda and Deputy Majority Chief Whip has revealed that he hoard the Trade and Industry Minister, Spio Gabrah from possible wrath of the livid cashew farmers in the Brong Ahafo region.

He said the directives on the export and import of cashew nuts from the Minister was the last straw to have hit the camels back after that sector had seen little investment from governments.

In an exclusive interview with The Crystal Clear Lens Parliamentary Correspondent, Maxwell Ofori, he said if Mr. Spio Gabrah should have been in the Brong Ahafo region at the time the directives came, only God could have determine whether or not he would have had his peace in the region.

I helped him. If he should have been in the Brong Ahafo region those days when the directives were implemented I dont think he would have come home safely. People were so annoyed. The anger was uncontrollable. I rather saved him, he said.

According to the MP for Banda constituency, the Minister should have gone to the grassroots to involve the people to know what exactly their challenges were before any directives would be implemented so that it would have a wide impact on the people. He added that to introduce such directives it would be shrewd to engage all stakeholders.

Go to the hinterlands and engage with the people, what are the challenges they are facing. There should be participatory policy, participatory decision making, let everybody come on board and you will take the best policies but if you dont do that you can be the custodian of the encyclopedia you will get it wrong, he stated.

The Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr. Ekow Spio Gabrah introduced some directives recently in an attempt to safeguard the cashew production in the country. Meanwhile Hon. Ahmed Ibrahim could not fathom why the Minister would implement such a directive if he wanted to protect cashew production.

In a statement read on the floor of Parliament to respond to the directives from the ministry of trade and industry, the outspoken Deputy Majority Chief Whip described the directives as illegal and weak and had also been introduced at the wrong time. However, MPs shared in his thought that the Minister and for that matter the Ministry erred. This led to the ministry, haven paid heed to the concerns of the law makers to withdraw the directives.

A follow up to the MP who first raised the issue to know how he had felt with the withdrawal of the directives, he expressed appreciation to Mr. Spio Gabrah and his ministry for listening to the voice of the masses. He stated that this was an opportunity that we used to make sure that the right thing was done, which the minister after recognizing that he erred had to go and withdraw that directive which had a negative impact on cashew production in the country, he opined.

He furthered that Ghana could be a very good producer of cashew if it could put measures in place to produce more cashew in the country.

What I want them to know is that Ghana can be a very good cashew producing country. We should start with the production to make sure that we even produce more to compete with the Worlds leading producer of cashew (Cote Dvoire). We have the land so we should encourage more farmers to produce cashew. The producer price is not going to suffer, is going to increase compare to the World market. And going forward, now we have learned ones who are cashew farmers, if the system should remain like this you cannot come and buy my cashew and cheat me because I can google to the World market and see the price per kilo so the farmer will gain, he explained.

He continued that If Ghana wants to expand its cashew production we should allow the current regime to continue, where price are going to be determined by the forces of demand and supply where it is attracting people to smuggle cashew from other countries to sell in Ghana. So now Ghana is getting a lot of cashew for export.

Even though our production was fifty thousand (50000) it has increased to sixty-eight thousand (68000), we are saying we want to increase to one hundred and fifty thousand (150000). Increasing to one hundred and fifty thousand (150000), it is not government who is going to subsidize it. Is not government who is going to bring seedlings, fertilizers and all those things. Price alone is motivating the youth to go into it because everybody knows that if you get 1kilo of cashew you get this amount of money so a lot of youth are now scrambling for cashew production and this one alone should motivate government and the minister of trade, minister of finance, minister for agriculture to make sure that you welcome it, you dont discourage it.

Why is it that people are now cutting down their cocoa trees and planting cashew? The rainfall pattern is changing. The transitional zone is now fertile for cashew production. Just as the rainfall pattern is changing, people are now finding interest in cashew production. So if we produce more the local processor will get what they want to process but you dont say that am going to bring restrictive. If you are not on the ground you cannot lead, he noted.
04.04.2016 LISTEN

The Concerned Students leaders and Youth Activists by this statement wishes to express our fear and discomfort with the demeanor and laissez-faire attitude of the Electoral Commission of Ghana, Associated institutions and the abusive nature of the security, especially the dead goat recipe of chaos the EC led by Charlotte Osei seem to be preparing with its nonchalant attitude to the organization of this years election.

One would have thought that being a strong woman; the woman would have brought on board her mother-for-all attitude in organizing a free, fair and peaceful election. Unfortunately, three months into the election year, we have had cause to be alarmed and frightened with the mention of 2016 elections. We are worried about what fate lies ahead of us especially the youth, women and children before and after this years elections.

EC ANOTHER FAILED LEADERSHIP INSTITUTION:

One would have thought that the two day public forum organized by the EC on the 29th and 30th October, 2015 purposely to trash out issues raised in petitions by some political parties and civil groups was done with the desire to foster peace and harmony.

However, this hope of peace was only short lived and was quickly replaced by deep anxiety and uncertainty about the future of the nation as the elections draw near.

Shivers were sent through our spines by the prejudiced comments and declaration of Mrs. Osei even before the panel made its recommendations so it is of no surprise the EC is resisting the validation recommendation by the VCRC Crabbe panel. The EC had its decision in hand and the forum was only a cosmetic one and a waste of tax payers money.

We the Student Leaders and youth activists want to know why Charlotte Osei and her team are bent on shepherding this electoral process to a chaotic end. If the ECs excuse is that some Ghanaians will be disenfranchised why then wont they create a totally new register so everybody duly fit can register? Which people will be disenfranchised, is it the over 600, 000 dead people?

What are Mrs. Osei and her team up to? Are they setting a trap for provocation knowing well they and their families are secured by Security agencies? If anything happens what will become of the ordinary Youth, mother and child? Are they choosing a chaotic post-election period over a validation exercise/new register?

We the Students leaders are not happy with the EC and the early signs especially considering the security issues and happenings within our neighboring countries. We will not forgive Charlotte Osei and her team if through their actions Ghana is thrown into a state of Anarchy. Ghana belongs to the youth and we wont allow this to be destroyed by Institutional actions and inactions dictated by parochial interests.

Many are shouting that the EC should be allowed to do its work but nobody seems to be shouting the EC must do its work devoid of seeming biases. We expect the clergy, Peace council and all well-meaning Ghanaians to rise up to deal with these issues before it gets too late and not to wait for NPP and NDC to start charging at each other before calming nerves. Indeed the EC is independent but that independence is not in isolation but with accountability to the people of Ghana.

Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise. . . . She prepares her food in summer, and gathers her sustenance in harvest ( Prov. 6:6, 8 ). We give the EC two weeks to give us a proper address on the validation less they face demonstrations from us the Student leaders and our students and may God help us to resist any form of oppression and oppressors rule with all our will and might forever more.

NON-SERIOUS COUNTRY AND NATIONAL SECURITY

It is obvious that we are not a serious country and the youth have been taken for granted by everybody including some clergymen, politicians, employers and educationists. So-called men of God are exploiting the desperate masses of unemployed youth with spiritual excuses, government officials are siphoning and emptying state coffers with the excuse of youth funds with leakages, employers are abusing and underpaying workers among many others. In the face of all this it is amazing that the Government searches elsewhere for National security threats. It is the gargantuan unemployment, hunger and anger that constitute a security threat. It is the youth losing out on hope for a better future in this country while greedy and exploitative politicians fill their bellies full and leave luxurious lifestyle; that is a security threat. Instead of dealing with serious issues Ghanaians prefer to dance to comic songs One can appreciate the frustrations of the wise Mensah Otabil when he speaks of how unserious we are as a country.

THE TIME IS NOW!! ARISE GHANA YOUTH FOR YOUR COUNTRY!!!!!!!

Signed

Ebenezer Henaku Jnr (National GRASAG Vice President)

Convener, Student Leaders and Youth Activists Forum

Kobi Amoah (KNUST NUGS, Former President)
04.04.2016 LISTEN

Kojo Bonsu and Dr. Allbert Brown Gaisie being supported by Bremanhene to cut the tape to open the fire station

AN ULTRA modern fire station has been constructed at the cost of GH 233,628 at Breman Abusuakuruwa in the Suame Constituency of Kumasi, to help deal effectively with possible fire outbreaks in the area.

The Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) used its share of the Urban Development Grant (UDG,) a World Bank financial support, to build the edifice, which boasts of modern amenities.

Speaking at the commissioning ceremony of the fire station, Kojo Bonsu, the Kumasi Mayor, tasked the Ghana National Fire Service to intensify its fire prevention and control educational programmes.

Prevention is better than cure, he said, maintaining that issues of fire outbreaks would reduce significantly, thereby leading to prevention of loss of human lives and destruction of valuable properties, if the people were educated about fire.

Kojo Bonsu lamented that Kumasi had recorded several fire outbreaks recently, which led to destruction of properties, noting that the commissioning of the fire station, would go a long way to reduce the devastating effects of fire.

The Chief Fire Officer, Dr. Albert Brown Gaisie, announced that his outfit had called for the design of the Kumasi Central Market so as to demarcate a suitable place for fire hydrants in the new market to help fight fire.

He admonished the public to patronize and pay attention to series of educational drives about fire outbreaks being initiated by the Ghana National Fire Service, so that fire outbreaks could be prevented.

Dr. Gaisie commended the KMA for constructing the Breman Fire Station, which he described as very beautiful, urging the KMA to build more of such fire stations at other areas in Kumasi to help battle fire.

FROM I.F. Joe Awuah Jnr., Kumasi


04.04.2016 LISTEN

Some aggrieved customers of DKM Micro Finance Company in the Brong Ahafo Region have reacted angrily to the retirement of the Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), Dr. Henry Kofi Wampah, saying the move is a ploy by the BoG boss and the government to hide information from the public, especially customers, whose monies have been misappropriated.

Dr. Wampah, who has retired after three years in office, has been accused of failing to ensure the effective monitoring of the operations of micro finance companies, especially those in the Brong Ahafo Region where many residents have lost their life savings through the scam.

His exit from the bank came as a shock to many affected residents in the region.

Some customers told DAILY GUIDE that DKM's property would be liquidated and the proceeds given to customers to lessen their plight.

A customer, Emmanuel Kusi Sarpong, a newspaper vendor at Sunyani, told the paper that Dr. Wampah's exit is a ploy by government to conceal information from the public.

The President, in the State of the Nation's Address, categorically blamed the BoG before Parliament and the governor's response to the lawmakers that the BoG cannot be blamed for the mess in the microfinance business shows that there is something fishy about the whole thing, Mr Sarpong added.

He said Dr Wampah's exit from the bank would not improve the lives of customers, adding that he would surely get his pension.

Another customer, Katrina Boamah said Dr Wampah's exit would not affect the bank's operations because his successor would scrutinize all documents that would be handed over to him or her, saying soldier go, soldier come.

.

We plead with the incoming governor to speed up the liquidation process.

Another customer, Mark Adjei, who works in a banking institution, said because the financial year has not ended, the governor's exit would surely have an effect on the banking sector.

He wondered why commercial banks in the region had failed to mobilize funds in the area.

Mr. Adjei appealed to the next governor to work hard to mobilize enough funds to ensure the socio-economic development of the country.

He said unfortunately the issue has been excessively politicized and appealed to customers to exercise patience for the next governor to address the issues.

From Daniel Y Dayee, Sunyani

[email protected]


The Writer

04.04.2016 LISTEN

At 34th UN General Assembly in 1979, former Cuban president Fidel Castro asked a question when he delivered his speech to the UN General Assembly with regard to the guiltiness of the imperialist organization, asking  Of what use is the United Nations?, he went further and add  The exploitation of poor countries by rich countries must cease.

Therefore, now with the comeback of another cold war between the West and East over supremacy on the third world; the USAs dangerous quest to build a global emperor and more noticeably the horrendous takeover of the United Nations by only five member states which called themselves United Nations Security Council (UNSC) deciding and taking decisions for all members (193) of the United Nations and subsequently the UN establishment of the  oil-for-food program; thus, the question is Of what use is the UNSC?

Since the failed coup attempt in South Sudan on 15th Dec 2013, the United States of America in the UNSC had numerously attempted to demonize and discredit the effort of the government of South Sudan to bring about peace. USA ambassador to the UN Mrs. Samantha Power proposed the targeted sanctions and discriminately lobbied the council to sanction top SPLA Generals, unsuccessfully tried to convince the council to adopt: economic sanctions regime, arm embargo and UN trusteeship on South Sudan.

The United States of American at its own capacity as a country had also imperially issued the executive order of the National Emergency in April 2014 branding South Sudan as a threat to its National Security and foreign policy. This order was again extended for the second times on 1st April 2016 despite the fact that the parties to the conflict are committed to implementing the peace agreement and they have taken tremendous steps toward visible and meaningful implementation of the peace agreement.

Indeed these are indications that clearly show that some members of the UNSC have used the UN as an instrument to promote their imperialist agenda and to oust the leaders of independently-minded governments by means that dont worship or adore the permanent member States of the UNSC especially the USA and UK.

The manipulation of the United Nations by the powerful (Western) countries for neocolonialism agenda goes back to its inception. Without any doubt, the United Nations was formed stringently to kick upstairs the global influence of the United States of America after the Second World War. This organization was meant to be used as a tool to control most former Western European and American colonies of the Third World.

The United Nations, which was got its name from the military coalition (called the United Nations) on 1st January 1942 of the allied 26 countries fighting against Germany and the Axis countries, was established on an agreement drafted by the UK and the USA during the Second World War. This agreement, the Atlantic Charter, was drafted while the USA was sitting on a fence but silently supplying the British with weapons through Canada. The USA didnt stay long on neutral side but quickly use the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii as gist for entering the war and later the formation of the United Nations at the San Francisco Conference in 1945.

In that conference, the USA, UK and France formed the UN Security Council and made their countries permanent members giving themselves veto power. Consequently, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) which is now the driving wheel (remote control) of the organization deciding the future for all members of the UN is undemocratic body given the fact that the so-called permanent members were not democratically elected by the UN Generally assembly. The absent of term limits for the so-called permanent members of the UNSC bits the logic of democracy. The elected 10 non-permanent members of the UNSC strictly serve for only two years while the so-called permanent members serve to the infinity. Arguably, China is the only democratically elected permanent member of the UN Security Council by the UN General Assembly in 1971.

According to the UN charters permeable, the organization was created to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war [...] to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained [...] in Article 2 sub article 1, it says  The organization is based on the principle of sovereign equality of all its members

However, this appealing charter has been totally deformed by the so-called UNSC and the USA. As a matter of fact, some countries in the United Nations are now more equal than others; they are the ones deciding the destiny of the world, making sure that everything suits their interest using their veto power and military prowess and claim to be holding democracy and freedom so dearly above everyone on this planet. Late Mumar Gadaffi of Libya had once expressed his rejection of unfair treatment of some member states of the UN by West in his historical speech to the UN General Assembly in 2009; he said The Preamble says that all nations, small or large, are equal. Are we equal when it comes to the permanent seats? No, we are not equal. Do we have the right of veto? Are we equal? The Preamble says that we have equal rights, whether we are large or small; that is what is stated and what we agreed in the Preamble. So the veto contradicts the Charter. The permanent seats contradict the Charter. We neither accept nor recognize the veto.

Because of his anti-imperialist stance, he was brutally killed two years later by the three permanent members of the UNSC, the USA, UK and France. Indeed the West use UNSC to kill any arising dissent voice challenging their neocolonialism in the UN and would dictate every country to knee for them or bomb to extinction. There is no equal right of all nations now in the UN whether powerful or weak nation as stipulated in the charter. The existence of permanent members of the UNSC oppugns the practical sovereign equality of all the members of the UN.

The USA had been using the UNSC for decades as a mean to promote its interest, invading countries and expanding its evil empire on the pretext of human right abuses, despotism and etc. The UN Security Council has gone beyond function of protecting USAs interest after the collapse of the Soviet Union but unashamedly went on imperially to project US interest globally; using force against the sovereign states, building coalitions based on principle if you are not with us, you are against us invading countries, destroying infrastructures, killing people and install their puppets to siphon the natural resources to the USA.

The Preamble of the UN Charter states that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest. That is the preamble of the UN and it supposed to be what the UNSC and the UN could operate under when it comes to the use of armed force but astonishingly, it turns otherwise. It says the armed forces shall only be used in the interest of all member states, but what happened since then? Sixty seven wars have broken out since the inception of the organization and de facto Security Council_____ with more deaths of civilians and destructions of states infrastructures. The question that lingers in everyones mind is; are those aggressions or armed forces that were used in 67 wars are in the common interest of all members of the United Nation? Definitely No, they were only in the interest of one or four member states but not in the interest of all members of the organization. From invasion of Yugoslavia to Somalia, Iraq to Afghanistan, Yemen to Libya, the armed forces used by the UNSC to invade these countries were only in the interest of the United States of America, France and the United Kingdom.

The USA, in their self-anointed role as masters of world trying to bring about the new world order, deluded by their own belief of exceptionalism continued to sell their aggressive wars to the people as democracy operation using the platform of the UNSC. Mendacity is indeed the hallmark of the United States of America to press on the UNSC to adopt either economics sanctions or arm embargo on the targeted countries on the account of human right violations or despotism. Sometimes the technical invasion (responsibility to protect) can be approved by the UNSC only in the interest of the UK and USA and it worked very well on the Libya in 2011.

In conclusion; it is crystal clear by any objective assessment that the takeover of the United Nations by only four countries in the UNSC to promote imperialist agenda and to build evil empire of destructions and deaths is the root cause of instability in the world today. USA has used its seat in the UNSC to instigate foreign regimes change for decades either by supporting the rebels with arms and logistics against the legitimate governments or by training them; and if it all failed it can aggressively and barefacedly invades sovereign countries, destroying states and kill millions of people. Now is a time for all member states of the United Nations especially African countries to stand up and end this cynical manipulation of the United Nation by the West. The UN has lost its independence and utility as force for peace because of this manipulation by the West. The so-called permanent membership of the UNSC must cease and all 15 members of the UNSC must be democratically elected by the UN General assembly with term limits.

Simon Yel Yel, is co-editor of the essential writings and speeches of the president Salva Kiir Mayardit, published as  Salva Kiir Mayardit: The Joshua of South Sudan. he can be reached at [email protected] or 0955246235
The Chairperson of the Commission of the African Union, Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, welcomes the arrival in Tripoli, on30 March 2016, of the Head of the Presidency Council and Prime Minister of Libya's Unity Government, Fayez El-Serraj and some members of his cabinet.

The Chairperson hails the courage of the Prime Minister to go to Tripoli with some members of his cabinet to unite all Libyan stakeholders with the overall aim of attaining peace, security and national reconciliation. She further calls upon all stakeholders, including those who are still outside of Libya to take similar steps in order to create a positive momentum that will culminate in the establishment of a Government of National Accord.

The Chairperson reiterates, in this regard, that the AU High Representative for Libya, former President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania, will continue to undertake, in coordination with the United Nations, consultations with all parties, including neighbouring countries and other relevant international partners, on how best to assist in the consolidation of the peace process.
When her American assigns nearly two years ago brought me up on some trumped up charges of ageism, sexism and sexual harassment, my understanding was that my continuous criticism of the former First Lady (first lady, indeed!) in my journalistic writings stood the risk of damaging diplomatic relations between Ghana and the United States.

This amused me silly, because there was this implicitly oversized presumption that the then-Acting President of the State University of New York-sponsored community college where I taught, and have been teaching for some twenty years now, was the political coequal of President Barack Obama, the man I had earlier on been accused by some administrative higher-ups at my college of invidiously and flagrantly campaigning for, instead of opening the assigned textbook for my class  one of them, that is  and instructing my students strictly according to the dictates of the curriculum.

Naturally, I felt sick to my stomach, as many a New Yorker is wont to say. I even came dangerously close to vomiting onto the desk of my seven-and-odd-footer accuser. For truth be told: I had never ever for the life of me envisaged Mrs. Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings as any more than the criminally collusive wife, or domestic partner, of Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, the pathologically impenitent Butcher-of-Sogakope.

What I was presently witnessing to my utter horror and indescribable shame and embarrassment was that, somehow, the Black-American guests of the bloody couple had grossly mistaken my laid-back profile on campus to logically imply that, somehow, I belonged to one of the bottom-most socioeconomic and political rungs of Ghanaian society.

To these post-civil rights Negroes, for that matter, I ought to have been smart enough to have known far better than to cavalierly presume to rather unwisely take undue advantage of my new-found American citizenship and identity by also presuming to have elevated my old supposedly marginal nobody-status in Ghanaian society.

There was, of course, absolutely no need, whatsoever, for me to alert these studiously misguided New Negroes to the fact that Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings and her half-Scottish kleptocratically revolutionary husband were illegal squatters on my ancestral lands at Nsawam-Adoagyiri. That would come up in another installment of this column in the near future, for the battle against these two bloody political and socioeconomic parasites has only begun.

Well, the woman whose husband and the latters godforsaken associates of thugs of the so-called Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) ran nearly every courageous and intelligent and independent-minded leader of the National Union of Ghanaian Students (NUGS), not Ghana Students, by the way, out of the country would now have Ghanaians believe that the NUGS executive operatives have capriciously morphed into the servile mouthpieces of some powerful politicians and influential public-service officials, to wit, the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC), which, by the way, was founded by Chairman Jerry John Rawlings.

The last time I checked, Mr. Rawlings was still the legitimately wedded husband of Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings. Perhaps, she may so soon have forgotten this, but I was in Kumasi, the Asante Regions capital, when Chairman Rawlings and his Khaki-sporting and AK-47-toting Abongo Boys swarmed and swamped the sprawling campus of the erstwhile University of Science and Technology (UST), now Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), and promptly proceeded to brutally assault and mercilessly maul the peacefully gathered membership of a national convocation of the National Union of Ghanaian Students.

The NUGS membership had met to elect new leaders as well as strategize responsibly against vicious and barbaric attempts by the Rawlings Posse to force these cranial trustees of the country to toe the PNDC junta line. Several humans on both sides may well have lost their lives.

Actually, what had happened was that the AK-47 Abongo Boys had brought in big-muscled Atinga Boys from the Obuasi mines, otherwise known as the Ashanti Gold Fields Corporation, who had then been brutally sicced on these students.

The mine workers had been told by Chairman Rawlings and his henchmen and women that it was criminally unruly students like those at Kumasi Legon whose ungrateful and parasitic rowdiness was squarely to blame for the acute economic problems of the country. If something wasnt done to put these good-for-nothing knaves into their place, the Abongo Boys insisted, the entire country may be headed for the dogs in the offing.

This, in essence, is the history of Chairman Rawlings and the NUGS. And it is this transparently verifiable historical record that ought to have been re-played by the NUGS executive leadership, as a rejoinder, for the sobering benefit and moral edification of Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, and not an apologetic and wishy-washy enumeration of what the NUGS has been doing for its dues-paying membership lately.

I also dont know what the student leaders and administrators of the Ghana Telecommunications University were thinking, when they invited Konadu-Rawlings to deliver its 14th Prestigious Lecture Series. It turns out, after all, that Ghana, indeed, went to the dogs, as the AK-47-toting Abongo Boys had predicted.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs
Kumasi, April 4, GNA - Mr Alexander John Ackon, the Ashanti Regional Minister has called for the introduction of sanitation practice lessons into the curriculum of basic schools.

He said the practice would imbibe some principles into the minds of pupil in the basic schools and change the mindset of the children towards best sanitation and good environmental practices.

Mr Ackon said this when he addressed the media after a four-hour clean-up exercise of a two kilometre stretch of road to observed the National Sanitation Day (NSD) exercise in the Asokori Mampong Municipality of the Ashanti Region.

The NSD exercise is observed every first Saturday of the month and was instituted by the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development at the instance of President John Dramani Mahama.

The exercise is to revive the spirit of communal labour and to ensure attitudinal change towards the promotion of environmental and public health.

He said the issue of ensuring good sanitation practices was a shared responsibility among the citizenry and government.

The Regional Minister noted that it was important to sustain the exercise to promote a healthy nation with healthy citizens.

'Diseases do not know anybody, but will attack anybody at all who did not keep his or her environment clean,' the Minister said.

GNA
Accra, April 4, GNA - An Accra Circuit Court has remanded four persons who were said to have conspired together with a common purpose to commit crime to wit robbery.

Enoch Arthur, Translator; Francis Kwame Kumah, Solomon Akunnor, and Yussif Addy; all drivers pleaded not guilty to the charge of conspiracy.

The Court presided over by Mr Aboagye Tandor, however remanded the four and adjourned the case to April 7 to take a decision on the application for bail by the counsel for the accused persons.

The facts of the case as presented by Chief Superintendent of Police Duuti Tuaruka are that the complainant is a Chinese's National and the Director of AGM Casino at Adjiringanor, in East Legon, whiles the accused persons are all workers of the complainant.

He said Enoch and Francis reside in the company's premises together with one Catherine Mensah who is the house help of the complainant and a witness in the case.

He said some time ago Francis confided in Catherine his intentions to steal the complainant's money and run away.

He further explained to Catherine his plans to go into hiding after stealing the money, and stated that if he succeeded in stealing the money, he would ask for her assistance in conveying his personal belongings to him at a place he was going to hide.

The prosecution said Catherine told Francis that she would not support his plans to steal from the complainant and that she would not be in a position to send his belongings to him at the said hideout.

He told the court that the witness later told Solomon about the intentions of Francis but he rebuked her and asked her not to tell anyone.

Chief Superintendent Tuaruka said Francis later informed Enoch of what he had planned to do.

He also bought into the idea and went further to recruit people to attack and rob the complainant.

He told the court that on March 14, at about 1900 hours Enoch sent Francis to Adjiringanor and brought one Gideon and two others now at large to the house without the knowledge of the complainant to survey the area, and showed them the room where the money was kept.

He said on March 16, at about 1139 hours the witness Catherine who was alone in the house was watching television in her room when Gideon and the other two attacked her with cutlasses. They tied her with a rope; cello taped her mouth and kept her in the kitchen.

According to the prosecution, the robbers broke into the strong room of the complainant and stole an amount of GHa 251,000.00, $100.00US, 600 Yuan and a wedding ring.

Chief Superintendent Tuaruka said further investigations disclosed that when the robbery took place Enoch informed Yussif of his involvement in the robbery and promised to give him some of the money and as such he should not disclose it to anyone.

A report was made to the police and the accused persons were arrested. They admitted the offence in their caution statement and promised to assist the police arrest Gideon and his accomplices.

GNA
Tolon(N/R), April 4, GNA - The Baptist Child Development Programme (BCDP), a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), has donated furniture to four basic schools and three Early Childhood Development Centres (ECD) in the Tolon District of the Northern Region to help improve education.

They comprise 156 dual desks, 32 round tables and 256 chairs, while the beneficiary schools include the Tolon District Assembly (D/A) Primary 'A' and 'B', Tolon Model Primary and the Kunguri D/A Primary, Zali Primary.

BCDP, which is funded by the Christian Children's Fund of Canada (CCFC), a child-centered NGO, also presented one motor ambulance to the Wantugu Community Clinic at Tolon to help improve health care delivery in the District.

Mr James Amadu Kinykib, a Partner Programmes Manager of BCDP, who presented the items, said it formed part of BCDP's contribution to the efforts of the Government in ensuring quality education and health care delivery in the District.

Mr Kinykib said he was happy that the efforts of BCDP had helped to improve education at Wantugu where a pupil was selected for the Presidential Award in the 2015 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).

He gave the assurance that the BCDP, with support from CCFC, would continue to support health and education in the District.

These include the holding of extra classes for its BECE candidates, the provision of infrastructure in both health and education and the capacity building and logistics to ensure improved health care and education delivery.

Mr Abubakari Alhassan, who represented the Tolon District Assembly, received the items on behalf of the beneficiary institutions and thanked BDCP and CCFC for the support and appealed to other organisations to also go to their aid.

Mr Yussif Baba Iddrisu, the Director in-charge of Supervision at the Ghana Education Service in the Tolon District, pledged to put the items to good use to serve the purpose for which they were donated.

GNA
04.04.2016 LISTEN

Accra, April 4, GNA - Mr Alex Segbefia, The Minister of Health, has encouraged the public not to be alarmed by the news of the confirmation of outbreak of Lassa Fever in Togo, Benin and some West African countries.

He said the Ministry of Health (MOH) has initiated the necessary measures to enhance surveillance, public awareness for prevention, early detection as well as the treatment of the disease.

Lassa fever, according to the Health Minister, is an acute viral haemorrhagic feverish illness, endemic in the West African Region. It has an incubation period between six to 21 days.

Mr Segbefia said the disease, is often gradual with no-specific signs and it symptoms.

Mr Segbefia said currently there is no cause for alarm; as the Health Ministry has not renege on its efforts to protect the people of Ghana, especially health workers.

He said the disease presents often with symptoms such as fever, general weakness, headache, sore throat, chest pain, vomiting, diarrheoa and abdominal pains, and in severe cases facial swelling and bleeding either through the nose, mouth, genitals and the gastrointestinal tract.

He said although there is a cure for this type of acute viral hemorrhagic disease, it remains deadly with a high potential of person-to-person transmission, as well as contact with food or household items that are contaminated with urine or toilet of a rodent such as rats.

He therefore entreated members of the public to desist from contacts with rodents for the prevention of infection.

Mr Segbefia who was updating the media in Accra, on the current state of the outbreak of the disease in the sub-region, said the Ministry has received information and confirmation that Benin has so far reported 71 cases of Lassa fever, out of which there has been six confirmed, 10 probable and 55 suspected ones.

The outbreak, he said has progressively been sweeping westwards and since March 15, the Togolese Health Authorities have also reported confirmed outbreak in a district called Oti, which shares boundary with Ghana.

According to him it has also been confirmed that in Togo more than 80 people have shown signs and symptoms of the disease, and due to the closeness there is the urgent need for Ghana to intensify her surveillance systems.

Mr Segbefia said the MOH has therefore directed health workers at all levels, to take up the challenge of intensifying public awareness, education and giving regular updates on the disease.

'We further charge the leadership in the various health regions and districts to initiate processes for public awareness creation on the disease and related complications.

'Institute systems for enhanced surveillance, identify isolation facilities for case management, holding areas and strict adherence for infection prevention and control at all health facilities,' he said.

The Ministry, he said has recommended specifically that suspected cases of Lassa fever should be managed in specific isolation conditions, health workers should adhere to regular infection prevention and control measures for prevention and protection.

He directed that blood samples from suspected cases be taken to the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research for laboratory investigations.

Meanwhile the Governments of Benin and Togo as well as development partners have also initiated response measures and interventions.

The measures include field investigations, enhanced surveillance, case management, infection prevention and control, contact tracing and follow-ups, as well as social mobilisation and risk communication, to contain the situation.

He said the World Health Organisation however, does not recommend any restriction of travel and trade to Togo and Benin based on the information available on the disease outbreak.

GNA
04.04.2016 LISTEN

Accra, April 4, GNA - Nii Armah Ashietey, National Democratic Congress (NDC) incumbent Member of Parliament for Klottey Korle, has called on his supporters to exercise restraint and remain resolute as he seeks for redress in court.

He urged them not to panic and be bold saying: 'The truth is only one. At the end of the day we shall get to the bottom of this case.'

Nii Armah Ashietey was addressing scores of supporters at Osu on the legal battle with the elected Parliamentary Candidate for the Constituency, Dr Zanator Rawlings.

Dr Rawlings had 2,739 representing 58.84 per cent of the valid votes cast in the NDC Parliamentary primaries in November last year to defeat Nii Armah Ashietey, who pulled 1,348 votes representing 37.51 per cent and Nii John Coleman had 151 votes representing 3.24 per cent.

Nii Armah Ashietey later filed a suit against Dr Rawlings at an Accra High Court praying the court to restrain her from holding herself out as Parliamentary candidate elect for the NDC.

Dr Rawlings, last Wednesday filed a fresh suit at the Supreme Court 'an order of prohibition directed to the His Lordship Kwaku T. Ackah Boafo J of the High Courtrestraining him from proceeding to hear the dispute between the applicant and the interested parties pending a decision in the instant application.'

The Supreme Court would on April 26, hear the case.

Nii Armah Ashietey has described Dr Rawlings bid to seek interpretation at the Supreme Court as means of delaying the court process.

According to the Nii Ashietey, Dr Rawlings after suffering some defeats at the High Court had now gone to the Supreme Court to seek refuge.

He noted that Dr Rawlings' decision to go to the Supreme Court to afford her register as a voter during the upcoming Limited Registration Exercise to be conducted from April 28 to May 8.

He recounted that he had worked hard to bring the constituency to a level that attracted people, adding that people had taken advantage of that to impose candidate on the constituency.

Following the filing of the application before the Supreme Court, the High Court had stayed proceeding awaiting the decision of the Supreme Court.

According to Dr Rawlings the learned judge erred in law when he wrongly assumed jurisdiction to interpret Article 94(1) (a) of the Constitution holding that once the Applicant had put herself out as a contestant in the parliamentary primaries of the NDC, she was caught by Article 94(1) (a) which required that she was registered voter at the time of her participation in the primaries.

Dr Rawlings has been dragged to court by the incumbent NDC MP for Klottey Korle, Nii Armah Ashietey over claims that she is not a Ghanaian registered voter.

The Incumbent MP has therefore prayed the court to declare the election of Dr Rawlings election as null and void and urged the court to order the NDC to re-run the primary in the area.

GNA
Samenye (W/R), April 4, GNA - The Member of Parliament (MP) for Ellembelle, Mr Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, has pledged his unflinching support towards the development of the Samenye Community in the Jomoro Constituency.

He said development was a collective responsibility and pledged his commitment to extend his developmental agenda to the community whenever the need arose.

The MP said the entire development of Nzemaland should be the prime motive of anybody who had the development of the area at heart irrespective of boundaries.

Mr Buah, who is also the Minister of Petroleum, was speaking at the annual festival of the Samenye Community at the weekend.

He reminded the community of the need for peace and unity in the run-up to the November 7 general election adding that a number of countries in Africa had been plunged into chaos due to misunderstanding over the outcome of elections.

Mr Buah said the National Democratic Congress was not in any way interested in fomenting trouble and that any party member who fuelled electoral violence before, during and after the elections would be dealt with according to law.

He pledged to assist the community financially to improve development of the town.

Mr Francis Adu Blay, the MP for Prestea Huni-Valley, who accompanied Mr Buah, donated an unspecified amount of money to support development of the community.

There was an appeal for funds in aid of a community centre.

Present at the ceremony was the former CPP Parliamentary candidate for Jomoro, Madam Samia Yaaba Nkrumah.

GNA
Koforidua, April 4, GNA - The General Secretary of the Ghana Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU), Mr Kingsley Offei Nkansah had threatened that the Union would fight attempts by some chief executives of state institutions to break their ranks.

He alleged that there are moves to break the front of GAWU and therefore called for unity in the union and the support of the members for actions that would be taken by the leadership.

Mr Nkansah said most of the rights that workers are currently enjoying were fought for by the unions and without the trades union, workers are mere slaves to their employers.

He was speaking at the delegates' conference of the Eastern Regional branch of GAWU in Koforidua.

Mr Nkansah called on the government to create favourable economic environment for investors to move their investment into agriculture to create employment for the youth.

Ms Phyllis Agyemang, Regional Secretary of the Trade Union Congress, called for commitment of members of GAWU to solve the challenges facing the union.

She urged the delegates to vote for committed people into the leadership of the union.

The Regional Chairman of GAWU, Mr Augustine Michael Owusu appealed to the national leadership of the union to take appropriate steps to stop the attempts being made to break the front of the union.

GNA
The incumbent Member of Parliament for Klottey Korle Constituency in the Greater Accra Region is seething with anger over claims of his ingratitude to former President John Rawlings.

Nii Armah Ashittey told Joy News he owes the Rawlings' particularly, ex-president John Rawlings no favours and did not enter into politics a destitute.

"Today somebody can come and tell me i should show gratitude to Jerry Rawlings. For what? Why should i? I served Ghana, i didn't serve Jerry Rawlings.

"In any case when i was coming into politics, i was not looking for jobs. I was doing well in my job. I never stayed in this country for two months without going abroad. What are they talking about? They should go and ask Jerry Rawlings whether i owe him any favour. I do not owe him any favour," he said at a press conference held Monday.

It was the first press conference organised by the embattled MP after he proceeded to court to challenge the Parliamentary primaries he lost to the daughter of the ex-president- Dr Zanetor Rawlings.

Nii Armah Ashittey also accused the party leadership at the national level of manipulating events to have Dr Zanetor Rawlings win the primaries at all cost.

"The national executives were behind it. As for me i am a principled person. People think that there are people who can push others, I don't need to tell you. The truth is only one and all said and done it will come out one day," he said.

The embattled MP also revealed that he had received death threats but is not deterred the least.

Nii Armah Ashittey

"I have received. People call me, others send me a text message to me and all that. There was a time people were following me. I don't give a damn about that. I won't lie to you. I am too big to lie. If you kill me, Ghana will live. I am not a coward type.

"When you dig a hole and you push weeds on it if you are not careful you are the same person who will fall into it," he stated.

But a Deputy General Secretary Koku Anyidoho would not discuss the merit of the parliamentary primaries except to say the allegations by Ashittey were unfounded.

He said the party went through due process in conducting the primaries and wondered why Ashittey will accuse them.

"We had no hand in any primaries," he said, adding during the vetting of Dr Zanetor Rawlings the case about whether the eventual winner was a registered voter never came up.

"It was not a petition that was brought by anybody; It was not a petition that was brought by the constituency executives; it was not a petition that was brought by any of the contestants and so we through the voting process. As it is, there are legal processes that allow the young lady subsequently to get her name on the register," he stated.

Koku Anyidoho said the accusations being leveled against the national executives by Nii Ashittey were without basis. He would rather the MP waits for the court's verdict.

Nii Ashittey is asking the court to declare as null and void the parliamentary primary that elected Dr Zanetor Rawlings as NDC parliamentary candidate.

He cited amongst other things, that Dr Rawlings is not a registered voter, a breach of the party's own guidelines for the parliamentary primaries.
President John Dramani Mahama has hinted his government will be building first class district hospitals in the country as part of his promise of expanding healthcare in the country.

He said the construction of the hospitals is part of his governments commitment to ensure that Ghanaians are able to access healthcare facilities wherever they are.

The President was speaking at the commissioning of the new 120-bed district hospital at the Shai Osudoku in the Greater Accra region.

The completion of the Shai Osudoku hospital reflects an unwavering commitment to my 2012 social contract with the people of Ghana to expand access to quality healthcare across the length and breadth of our dear country Ghana, he said.

He disclosed that his government has earmarked the hospital to be replicated in six districts in the country; namely in Abertifi, Fomena, Sekondi, Kumewu and Garu-Tempane.

According to him, the on-going construction of the districts in Fomena and Kumewu are expected to be completed by October, 2016 whilst the ones in Garu-Tempane and Abertifi would be completed in the early part of 2017.

Presdient Mahama also said his government is upgrading the Takoradi European hospital into a first class hospital to be better equipped to deliver the health needs of residents.

He commended the team that worked on the Shai Osudoku hospital saying they have been able to put up one of the first district hospitals to be completed this year.

Story by Ghana|Myjoyonline.com|Austin Brako-Powers|Email: [email protected]
05.04.2016 LISTEN

The groom arrested at the Aldersgate Methodist Church at West Anaji in the Sekondi/Takoradi metropolis in the Western region has been charged with robbery by a Prestea Magistrate court.

The suspect, Aaron Ackah, allegedly robbed a small scale Chinese miner of 18,000 and inflicted knife wounds on the victims left hand.

The police who had mounted a manhunt for him used one of the invitation cards to confirm the suspects identity.

According to sources, the couple had just completed the exchange of vows and the officiating minister was just about to usher them into the wearing of rings when two plain clothed police officers detailed from Bogoso suddenly entered to whisk the groom away.

His bride, Rebecca Buah was reported to have collapsed after the arrest.

In an interview with Adom News, Police Commander for Prestea Hunivalley, Superintendent Timothy Dassah said the 30-year-old suspect pleaded not guilty for the charge.

He indicated that, the police has asked for more time for further investigations into the matter.

Superintendent Dassah added that Aaron Ackah has been remanded in police custody to reappear in court on May 3, 2016.

 ghana-news.adomonline


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IVA Struggling with debt? Compare your debt options and write off up to 80% of your unsecured debts  from 80 per month Get Started for free

What is an IVA? With an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) you can make affordable monthly payments towards a percentage of your debt for 5 years. At the end of the 5 year plan, your remaining debt will be completely written off.

Benefits of an IVA

Here is a list of the cost common advantages of an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA):



 Affordability  You will only be asked to pay back what you can afford, with allowances taken into account for food, bills, entertainment, travel, childcare and others. You may be sacrificing certain essential costs at the moment. With an IVA they are budgeted for so they will no longer be neglected

 No upfront costs  When you set up an IVA, there are no upfront costs whatsoever. This means that you can put a debt solution in place today without spending a penny

 You have a finishing line  Do you feel like there will be no end to your debt problems? With high interest costs and charges, the balances of your credit accounts may not reduce as you need them to. With an IVA you will become totally debt free at the completion of the IVA (usually 5 years). You can use this as an opportunity to change your financial life, for good

 Confidential  Your IVA is not advertised in the London Gazette or local newspaper. It is your decision whether you would like to disclose it to other people or not

 No more contact from creditors  When you are in an IVA, your creditors will no longer have the right to contact you or refer the debt on to debt collectors/bailiffs. This is a great benefit for most people as it will take away the stress caused by constant calls/texts/emails and home visits

 Stay in your house  Unlike some debt solutions, an IVA will allow you to stay in your current home. This is even the case if the property has a mortgage or is owned outright

 Your pension  An IVA does not have an impact on your pension. You will not have to surrender your pension or withdraw money from it to pay into your IVA

Risks of an IVA

Here is a list of the cost common disadvantages of an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA):

Equity Release  If you own your property and it has value, you may be asked to release the equity in the property

Credit Rating  If you have a perfect credit rating, this will be damaged and you will not be allowed to take out more debt whilst in an arrangement

You must keep up with repayments  If you do not keep up with your monthly repayments, there is a risk you will be made bankrupt

Who qualifies for an IVA?

There is no office guidelines to who qualifies for an IVA. It is a legally binding, Government legislation designed to help all people. Generally speaking, insolvency practitioners (IP) will look at your situation if they think the IVA proposal they submit is beneficial to both yourself (the debtor) and your creditors. This often restricts people to a certain criteria which you will have to meet:

Over 5000 worth of unsecured debt You must have 2 or more creditors of 2 or more lines of credit Must live in England, Wales or Northern Ireland Must be insolvent Must be willing to pay at least 70 per month into their IVA Must have some type or types of regular income

What debts can I include in an IVA?

You can include a wide range of unsecured debts within your IVA. These include:

Credit card debt/credit cards

Loans/loan debt

Payday loans

Council tax arrears

HMRC debt

Overpaid benefits

Catalogues

Gas and electricity arrears

Overdrafts/overdraft debt

Water arrears

Income tax arrears

Debts to friends and family

Other unsecured debts

Note: If you are a resident of Scotland, you will need to apply for a Scottish Trust Deed (legally binding). Speak to our advisors for Scottish Debt Advice.

What debts cant be included in an IVA?

Secured loans

Your mortgage (if you still live in the house)

Car finance (if you still have the car)

Rent arrears for your current property

Court fines/Police fines

Hire purchase arrears (if you still have the product)

Log book loans (if you still have the vehicle that the debts are secured on)

Student loans

Other secured debts

What does I.V.A stand for?

IVA stands for Individual Voluntary Arrangement. It is a formal way to consolidate your debts into one affordable monthly repayment, resulting in the debtor becoming debt free at the end of their payments.

Can I apply for an IVA online?

Use the IVA Calculator to check your eligibility Prepare your IVA proposal and apply for your IVA. When your IVA is accepted, your creditors can no longer contact you. Pay 60 low monthly payments. After 5 years, you are out of your IVA and completely debt free.

Will an IVA affect my employment?

In most occupations, your credit rating or credit scoring is not a factor and it may never have been checked in the past, it may also be likely that it is not checked in the future either.

There is no law to tell you that you must advise your employer that you have entered an IVA or that you owe money. They will not be notified by your insolvency practitioner. If you wanted to keep it a private matter, in most cases this would be absolutely fine. With some roles such as financial advisors, solicitors or bank workers it may make up part of your contract to advise them of changes like this. In these situations we would advise to inform your employers of your intentions before you enter into any arrangements. This way there will be no nasty surprises for you later down the line. More often than not, we find that your employer would not be concerned by your IVA and that it would not affect your employment status. An IVA is a formal solution and could affect some employments, such as if you were a solicitor or accountant for example. We would always recommend that you receive approval from your employers that your job isnt affected before you sign up for anything.

Will an IVA impact my partner?

There are certain situations where you may not want to involve your partner at all in your IVA proposal due to personal reasons. Insolvency Practitioners are very aware of these circumstances and can operate solely via telephone and email and at your convenience, so rest assured that your matters can be kept completely private.

If the debts which you are looking to place into your IVA are in joint names, then this would be different. Your IP would look to place all of your debts into an IVA, including joint debts therefore you would have to inform your partner of your plans.

If your debts are solely yours, then there would be no negative impact on your partner, their credit score would remain unaffected and they would not be entered onto any registers or be tainted in any way.

Will an IVA affect my credit score/credit file?

Whilst you are in your arrangement, you will not be able to get any credit. An IVA will stay on your credit file for 6 years, so 12 months after a typical IVA. When this time has passed and your monthly payments have ended, you will be able to rebuild your credit rating.

What proof will I need to apply for an IVA?

Proof of ID  Passport/driving license/birth certificate/utility bills/national insurance identification/credit agreement Bank statements  3 months bank statements with all transactions displayed Proof of income  3 months payslips/P60/proof of benefits

How long does it take to set up an IVA?

Your initial call will only last around 5-10 minutes. The IVA process will be explained to you and you will be told what further information you will need to provide to proceed with your IVA proposal. Once you have returned the required information, an IVA will usually take between 7-14 days to get into place. You will be protected from creditors within this time, your advisor will provide you with documentation via email.

How long does an IVA last?

Most IVAs will last for a length of five years. The i v a will remain on your credit file for a period of six years and is placed on the Insolvency Register for that period. You can work out what date it will be removed from your credit file, it will be six years from the start date of the IVA term. So if the IVA started on 1 January 2000, it should be removed from your credit file six years from that date, which would be 1 January 2006. When you apply for an individual voluntary arrangement your Insolvency Practitioner (IP) will tell you if you qualify for an IVA, how long it lasts, how much it costs and provide you with any other debt advice which you may need.

How much will debt advice cost for an Individual Voluntary Arrangement?

The advice cost for individual voluntary arrangements is free of charge. Your I.V.A company will tell you if you qualify for an IVA. They will talk to you about your different debts, provide you with free debt advice and check if your creditors are likely to approve your proposal for your IVA for debt.

How does an IVA affect your life?

By taking out an IVA you may affect your overall financial position. You will not be allowed to take out credit for 6 years. You will struggle to get a mortgage or remortgage your existing property. It also may affect any future increase in earnings or windfalls you may receive, as these will need to be paid to your insolvency practitioner. Your insolvency practitioner will take control of your debts for this period, they will deal with all of your creditors and this is legally binding. That means you will not be allowed to take out any more debts whilst in the IVA.

Once the plan is completed, any debts which you accrue will be managed by yourself. Your ability to take out further debts in the future will not be impacted once the IVA has completed.

What is the IVA protocol?

The I.V.A protocol is a voluntary set of guidelines which your Insolvency Practitioner (IP) can sign up for which improves the efficiency of Individual Voluntary Arrangements. When you apply for debt advice, it is important that you understand the steps of the debt solution, so you can decide whether or not the solution is the best one for your circumstances.

How do I know if creditors will accept my IVA?

Generally speaking, most creditors will approve voluntary arrangements for unsecured debt. But some debts can not be included within one formal debt solution. Your Insolvency Practitioner will tell you how likely it is that your creditors will be willing to accept your proposal, based on the voting creditors.

Can I pay in one lump sum?

There are occasions when you may be eligible for a debt solution which is payable in a one off lump sum as a final settlement to your creditors. This is usually when the money is being gifted from some one else, or you have received inheritance or a windfall for example. With a one-off lump sum payment, the advice is usually the same as when you normally apply for an IVA. You wouldnt have to make regular payments into the solution, your IP can provide you with more advice on one off lump sum solutions for your debts. Your IP will provide you with more advice on the debt IVA and explain what is IVA to you.

Who regulates the debt industry?

At present the debt industry is not regulated. Some Insolvency Practitioners offices choose to sign up to the Insolvency Practitioners Association (IPA) or register with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). You can contact the IPA using the contact details or email address on their website. Your creditors do not regulate the debt industry and your creditors will not be able to impact any decisions which the IPA or FCA make. In our experience, the regulators will take assertive action on any advisers or businesses which do not comply with their strict codes of practice. To check if a person is regulated by the FCA, enter their name into the search box in the FCA website.

Should I use a debt charity?

There are thousands of companies which provide debt help in the UK. You may be looking for an alternative to a private company. You should know that charities usually pass their fee charging products to sister companies which charge fees and disbursements, just like private companies. So what you initially thought was a good option, on further analysis could be different to what you originally thought. Charities do have their part to play though. They can help you if you have a problem with your bank accounts, maintenance arrears, living costs, credit reference agencies, child support arrears, bankruptcy, assets, accountancy issues, mortgages, creditor issues, insurance providers, mobiles, your bank account, rates arrears, PAYE contributions or if you want to work out your expenditure. They can make sure that you speak to an adviser or supervisor and look at proposals to offer your lender. A petition has started with the possibility of a debate in parliament about how charities represent themselves and their services.

Which charities help with debt?

You can contact Money Advice Service, National Debtline, Step Change, Shelter or a combination of the three. Charities are particular useful for a low debt level under 1,000. If the debt is high (such as a debt value of 10,000 or more) you would usually seek an assessment from a professional adviser. If you do decide to use a charity to guide you, make sure you check their charity number and the registration number on their website to make sure you are content that their team can answer your questions in the right ways. A lot of clients of charities have a minimum debt level which does not meet the basis for an IVA, so you could always chat to a charity that is happy to act on your behalf for low debt levels.

Although an I.V.A could be the answer to your debt problem, its important to understand the monthly payment so call us on our free phone number. Anyone customers can receive expert feedback on their rights from debt charities, if they cant help they will usually point you in the director of firms which help with IVAs.

We are homeowners, will lenders see my proposal differently?

In some cases yes. In the majority of cases, if you are a homeowner you will not need to remortgage or take out any additional finances that will effect your property. You will need to sign a additional restrictions which remove your ability to take out additional credit tied to your property, which is something that is restricted once you are in an i.v.a. There are exceptions to this, such as when you have a lot of equity in your property/properties. If you own half of a property and another party owns the other half, only your equity will be affected.

If you are landlord and you are in a position of equity, your IP may review your trading position or business to make sure the figures in question are in order. This is usually the case if you have two or more properties, as sometimes the equity can be used to form a repayment to your creditors. But this usually depends on the amount of value built up in your properties.

Banks and building societies will not change the terms of your mortgage as long as a contribution is still being made for the duration of your arrangement. Your mortgage payments will be added to your expenses and accounted for within your budget, as long as you can provide evidence that you can afford to continue to make payments into your mortgage for duration of the plan.

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business Panama Papers leak: Journalists and experts beg to differ While journalists from the Indian Express which published the report on the Panama Papers leak say resident Indians couldn't have followed the law of the land in spirit, experts say media should not paint everyone with the same brush.
The last thing you want to do is rely on newspapers to form your investment strategy. Learn to analyse the economy yourself. Firstly, understand the real estate cycle.

Anyone who is investing in the markets right now is swamped with noise from the financial press. A lot of it is negative and its hard not to be influenced by that. How can you buy shares when you get instances like the Royal Bank of Scotland coming out at the start of the year and telling clients to sell everything?

Its even worse when highly credentialed fund managers add the weight of their opinion to the negativity.

But theres one thing to keep in mind in all this.

In the latest reporting season, 69% of companies improved their half year profit results. Thats the highest result in the 12 profit reporting seasons CommSec have covered .

Almost 90% of those reporting half-year earnings reported a profit near record levels.

A record 91.2% of companies issued a dividend, and almost 77% of those companies lifted or maintained dividends.

Given the concerns expressed in the financial press, it should have been the worst reporting season in years. But it wasnt.

Housing construction and strong consumer spending are all suggested by the half year results. That implies jobs and continuing consumer confidence.

Employment remains stable, and Australias economic growth continues to beat forecasts.

Australias economic growth was a higher-than-expected 0.6% for the December quarter and 3% for the year, according to the Bureau of Statistics. That means Australian GDP is near average levels.

And on those numbers Australias economy is growing faster than every economy in the G-7.

This is all in line with what Cycles, Trends and Forecasts has been saying for some time. And although 2016 may throw up more market volatility, were not predicting a complete share market collapse.

The strong ASX reporting season, the solid unemployment figures and growing GDP results are surprising most analysts, and with these figures its difficult to see where the predicted collapse will come from in 2016.

You have two choices as an investor. You can rely on news media reports to determine whats happening in the economy and the share market, or you can analyse it yourself.

The last thing you want to do is rely on newspapers to form your investment strategy.

Learn to analyse the economy yourself. Firstly, understand the real estate cycle. You can find that knowledge distilled at Cycles, Trends and Forecasts.

Then learn how to read a chart. Put those things together and youll be able to analyse the economy for yourself, so that you can just invest accordingly and you wont be paralysed by fear.

Then you can just trade the chart in front of you. Bring up a company stock chart, and if each succeeding top and bottom is higher than the previous, then the trend is up. And that in essence, is all you need to know.

If the trend is up, stay with your position, despite what you may read in the press about a market collapse.

So dont get caught up in the emotional news of the minor moves. Trade the trend until the charts tell you otherwise and signal that a change in trend is in place.

To know where the share market is headed, you need to understand the real estate cycle, which drives the economy.

Everyone makes the same mistake; they see a panic in the stock market, and they think the market is going to collapse. But thats not where the collapse will come from.

Its the land market, and the credit created against it, which will ultimately drive the major bust in stocks and of course property.

If you do not understand the real estate cycle, then you are blind to the risks and opportunities when you invest. And the opportunities have been there. The market panics back in August last year and January this year have been good opportunities to buy stocks in strong weekly up trends. You can only have the confidence to buy then, if you know the real estate cycle. Its profitable knowledge to have.

Understand the real estate cycle and youll know for yourself where the share market is really headed. Youll know when to profit from market panics, and when to be cautious in the market. The year ahead promises more market volatility; there will be more opportunities.

That cycle knowledge is your advantage over every other investor.

Regards,

Terence

From the Port Phillip Publishing Library

Special Report: Wealth Eruption: Forget the market downturnthe oil crashand the debtThere are FOUR unstoppable events that could generate huge wealth for Aussie investors. Starting with one play that could make you a potential 1,068% return in the next 24 months(more)
oOh!media Limited [ASX:OML] picked up another 2% in todays trading. OML has been a stock on explosive growth over 2015, and its stock performance has reflected that growth.

What happened to the OML share price?

oOh!media Limited [ASX:OML] picked up another 2% in todays trading. The Aussie market moved higher in morning trading, but gave back gains in the afternoon. OML has been a stock on explosive growth over 2015, and its stock performance has reflected that growth.

Why did OML shares do this?

OML is a relatively new addition to the Aussie stock market. The company is in the advertising space, which is a hot area for Australia. There are a number of advertising stocks that have been doing great in recent months. And they are not your average media companies that distribute content. If you are an investor searching for stocks in the media sector, advertising companies can be a good place to start.

OML is not a secret, by which I mean it has already been discovered by many momentum and growth investors. The company has a price to earnings ratio of almost 39 times. This is a very high level, and it prompts questions on the sustainability of its pricing.

The company has been growing at double digit rates in both revenue and earnings per share over the past five years. Its margin is respectable. It pays a dividend. It has low debt and plenty of liquidity. Overall, it is a growth company that investors tend to love.

What now for OML?

Is OML too high in terms of P/E multiples? One can argue so. But it is still good stock to have for the active investor. Will OML see a correction at some point? Yes, if its momentum continues to build disproportionally relative to its earnings. Again, OML may not be a long term investors game; it may be for the much more agile, active investors.

You should definitely pay attention to this stock if you are thinking of investing in the media sector.

Ken Wangdong+

Emerging Market Analyst, Emerging Trends Trader
Amid a multi-billion-dollar political crisis that has thrown the Malaysian one-party regime into disarray, the state investment company involved said that it would be releasing a tranche of funds for a $1.5 billion repayment over the next few weeks.



In an interview with Bloomberg Markets, reporter and analyst Max Abelson said that the corruption scandal is threatening to plunge the Malaysian government into in-fighting.



Abelson said that the magnitude of the issue should not be underestimated.



Imagine if President Obama suddenly had something like $600 million in his bank account and he was in charge of a pseudo-sovereign wealth fund in the U.S., and that seemed to have missing money. And on top of that, if that fund had worked with Goldman Sachs, and Goldman got something like $500 million from their dealings with [the fund], Abelson explained.



The scandal centered around Malaysian prime minister Najib Razaks state fund, 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB). Former premier Mahathir Mohamad has already filed a lawsuit against Najib on grounds of misuse of power.



A former prime minister is feuding with him over the case, and what it comes down to is that this pseudo-sovereign wealth fundwhich is called 1MDBissued billions of dollars worth of debt with the help of Goldman Sachs, Abelson said.



The money was initially meant for turning Kuala Lumpur into a global financial center, but the lead-up to the current chaos involved 1MDB missing payments to lenders last year.



Now that has not gotten off the ground. At first people were upset that Goldman Sachs had made so much money off of these bond deals, but thats been overshadowed by a sense of, Has money been taken from 1MDB? Where is it? Abelson added.



Almost $700 million was allegedly funneled to Najibs accounts, with global investigators estimating that as much as $1 billion ended up in the Malaysian PMs personal funds.



Najib denied the claims, saying that the unexplained wealth was actually a gift from the Saudi royal family. Meanwhile, the then-chairman of Goldmans Southeast Asia operations, Tim Leissner, has left Goldman Sachs.



Goldman Sachs connections with money and power can be a very good thing when theyre making a lot of profit from it, but they can also lead to a lot of complications, Abelson said of Leissner, who forged strong connections with plenty of regional leaders during his tenure.
While the red-hot Canadian real estate industry has continually defied pessimists dire predictions for years now, a long-time observer is sounding the alarm on oversupply and other factors that might cause the sector to come crashing down.



In a breakdown piece for the Financial Post, investor James Westwho has covered Canadas publicly traded and private companies for over three decades nowcautioned industry players to take notice of the very real danger posed by the 10 per cent vacancy rate in Toronto and Vancouver.



While steady demand can be seen in these major markets, one must question what portion of this demand originates from other Canadian cities, West said.



That sort of balloon-squeezing doesnt necessarily equate into a uniform national demand pressure, and as houses are sold in the smaller communities supporting resource extraction, movement toward cities is not necessarily properly accounted for as intra-border migration, he explained.



West also pointed at the failure of the federal governments Immigrant Investor program, which provided visas to millionaires on the condition that each of them would lend Canada $800,000 over a period of five years. The program shut down in 2012 when an enormous number of nouveau riche Chinese overloaded the system.



So one of the pillars upon which residential real estate demand has been removed, West wrote. Now the global economy has slowed the pace of millionaire minting, and so, arguably, the available pool of foreign investors in Canadian real estate has peaked.



In addition, the incessant hammer blows on the Canadian economy stemming from the sharp declines in the value of oil and gas worldwide has led to weaker purchasing power across all levels of society.



Like the pebble in the proverbial pond, the onset of business failures could catalyze radiating waves of dependent enterprise collapses, which could contribute tremendously to a sudden evaporation of demand for Canadian residences, West warned.



A crucial side effect of this development is that the ailing energy sector might end up defaulting on its loan obligations to financial institutions.



This would likely cause the banks themselves to become more conservative, and tighten lending policies, making it harder for individuals to finance home purchases, West stated.
My husband and I moved from Chicago to Midland in 2010. I volunteered at a shelter in Chicago, so my first priority when I moved here was to continue my work in rescue. When we first arrived in Midland, Lone Star didn't have a volunteer program, so I showed up and asked if I could help. In the almost six years I have been volunteering for Lone Star, I have watched the shelter blossom into a wonderful organization. We have gone from "the little shelter that could" to "the little shelter that does." We have an amazing and dedicated staff and many talented and wonderful volunteers. I'm proud of our staff and volunteers for working so hard to make Lone Star Sanctuary the wonderful place that it has become.

How do you contribute to Lone Star Sanctuary for Animals?

Fortunately, Lone Star Sanctuary is structured so that volunteers can be as involved as much as they wish. For myself, that means I do a little of everything. I spend a few hours each day at the shelter helping socialize and exercising the animals. My focus is to try and help the animals, who through no fault of their own, are going to take a while to be adopted. Most people will tell you I have a special place in my heart for helping street dogs and pit bulls. I also help plan fundraisers, write animal- adoption profiles, and run the Facebook page. I have a background in design, so I do all the graphic work and created the shelter's new website.

Does giving back to the community enrich your life? How so?

Absolutely! Like many others, I have always been searching for my true purpose in life. Several times in the past, I thought I had found it. It wasn't until I started volunteering in animal rescue that my purpose became clear. I can't imagine what my life would be without rescue.

If you are interested in helping animals and volunteering with us, we have a volunteer orientation the first Saturday of each month.

What unexpected lesson have you learned through your volunteer experiences?

It's not always easy to be involved in animal rescue. There are times you feel incredibly helpless and overwhelmed with the number of animals that need help. There are days you consider quitting, because you just can't keep up. You see things that no animal should ever have to endure. However, the one unexpected lesson I have learned in rescue is that there is "hope." When someone walks through the shelter's door and asks to adopt a senior animal, it gives me hope. When children ask for donations for the shelter in lieu of receiving birthday gifts, it gives me hope. When I meet people in the community who contribute their money so that animals can be spayed and neutered, that gives me hope, too.

We truly need support from our community to help reduce the number of euthanized animals and the number of animals entering our shelter. The biggest contribution you can make to help solve this problem is to spay and neuter your pets. Many people aren't aware there's a voucher program that is available to help offset the cost of spaying and neutering. The voucher requirements are available on the city of Midland's website.

How long has Midland been your home, and why have you stayed?

We have lived in Midland since 2010. My husband, Garrett, is fortunate to work as an attorney at Cotton, Bledsoe, Tighe & Dawson. We have six rescue animals, and they have helped make Midland feel like our home.
Oil companies have turned to veterans who have the military to fill their staffing needs. Now, veterans are turning to oil companies to help meet their needs.

Cargo, with Freedom Service Dogs, made the rounds of Midland-Odessa last week, making contact with local veterans groups and animal shelters about the Denver-based organization that pairs active duty military and veterans  or the disabled  with trained rescue dogs.

One rescue dog that found its way to Freedom Service Dogs was Whimsy, a 2-year-old Labradoodle that was found in a Midland backyard in January 2014. She graduated from the organizations program in September and was matched with a client.

Cargo and his entourage toured EOG Resources and Occidental Petroleums Oxy Permian Plaza on Wednesday before returning to Denver.

We hope to start up here and grow outside oil companies, said Steve Loving, vice president, corporate business development with Core Laboratories LP. He accompanied Cargo from his Houston office.

Loving explained that his company decided in 2012 to form a charitable organization that served veterans.

We discovered Freedom Service Dogs and it was a match made in heaven, he said.

Core Labs presented the first Faces of Freedom sporting clay shoot fundraiser in 2013 and has been the presenting sponsor and organizer since. The shoots have raised $588,000 to benefit pairing dogs and veterans. The first Midland Faces of Freedom shoot is set for Windwalker Farms on Aug. 19.

While Freedom Service Dogs also provides service dogs for disabled children and adults, Loving said Core Labs focus is on active military and veterans.

Oil companies love veterans, said Serena Bruzgo, development director for Freedom Service Dogs, and veterans apparently love the oil patch.

One of our clients, John, said, after he left the Army, it took him a long time to find the same camaraderie he had in the Army. He finally found it in the oil patch, she said.

The goal of Cargos visit to Midland-Odessa was to lay the foundation for local businesses and organizations to support Freedom Service Dogs.

Already, a donor has offered to donate a dog and a veteran has expressed interest in receiving a service dog, Bruzgo reported.

Using the model started in Denver, we hope to start here, grow outside oil companies, and then grow to other areas until eventually we have a national network, Loving said.

Freedom Service Dogs is an accredited member of Assistance Dogs International and has received the highest possible rating, four stars, from Charity Navigator two years in a row.
Royal Vopak tracks its history back four centuries to the busy port of Amsterdam, where its predecessors warehoused bounty brought to Europe by the Dutch East India Co.

A Vopak predecessor took its first cargo of oil in 1862  and quickly built dedicated storage for the fuel after news spread that the viscous black liquid was flammable.

Today, Vopak, the largest independent operator of petroleum tanks, has 74 terminals worldwide, with total storage capacity equal to just under half of the tank and underground oil storage in the U.S. at 216 million barrels. Vopak handles crude oil, petroleum products, gases and edible oils.

The Netherlands-based company landed in Houston in 1976 and took over Robertson Distribution Systems and two storage terminals. In February 2015, Royal Vopak sold its 36-acre, 1-million-barrel Galena Park terminal to Houston-based Kinder Morgan as part of a larger deal worth $158 million. The company still operates its 7-million-barrel terminal at Deer Park.

The Chronicle sat down with Vopak Chairman and CEO Eelco Hoekstra shortly before his company's 400th anniversary, while he was in Houston to speak at IHS Energys 2016 World Petrochemical Conference. Edited excerpts follow.

Q: What kind of company is Royal Vopak?

A: We are the largest independent storage company. If you look at the oil markets, we have an about 10 percent market share. In the chemical markets, about 20-25 percent market share. We store crude oil, oil derivatives, chemicals, edible oils, biodiesel, and gases such as propane and liquefied natural gas. We have a global network of 74 terminals spanning 26 countries.

Q: How has the business changed over the past two years? Over the past 15?

A: Over the past two years, our storage business has not changed dramatically. We like to tie ourselves into long-term supply chains, so our tank occupancy is high even when there was a high oil price. We normally have occupancies of between 80 and 90 percent. Last quarter we were running at 94 percent occupancy. What you do see now is that the secondary and tertiary locations  or tanks not used in daily refining operations  are filling up, more because of speculators. Now that there are opportunities, people are putting oil away.

In the past decade, we have seen huge changes, for two major reasons. Ten to 15 years ago, if you wanted to build a refinery, you could do it on a small scale and be competitive. The refineries constructed now are substantially larger in volume, in complexity and in price. This has helped to concentrate refining in fewer areas of the world, and that in turn has concentrated storage and shipping traffic in those areas. We looked at the data from the three big ports  Singapore, Fujairah and Rotterdam  and weve seen that the volume through those ports in petroleum products has quadrupled in 15 years. The whole supply chain has changed.

Q: What is your outlook for refining and storage along the U.S. Gulf Coast?

A: The Gulf has an advantage in feedstocks. If you take a long-term view, the ethane opportunities, and the tight oils that can be produced here are very advantageous for the refining sector, which is already competitive globally. The American industry can be very outward focused and find markets to sell their products into, which goes for oil and for chemicals. I very much welcome the participation of the American industry in global trade. Liquidity in trade has always been one of our major interests. We see it as a new positive. Materials can either flow to Europe or to Asia.

Q: Vopak recently sold a number of tanks and terminals on the Houston Ship Channel to Kinder Morgan. What was the thinking behind that deal?

A: During a larger examination of our company, we saw there were several terminals across the globe that were not completely aligned with our long-term view of what will happen to commodities. Other terminals required such heavy investment or were so limited in their capabilities that it made a lot of sense to divest them. We are very pleased with the Houston Ship Channel and the opportunities there. This was not a vote of confidence against Houston. It just had to do with the fact that the scale with which we could operate that facility was not satisfactory. Since it was located next to the Kinder Morgan assets, it made better sense for them to operate it rather than us.

Q: What is the long-term plan for the Deer Park facility Vopak runs in Houston?

A: In Deer Park, we are running a very successful business storing chemicals and some components. The next step is to look for growth. We have purchased a plot of land along the Ship Channel adjacent to our facility where we can expand our docks. We are looking at our opportunities more in fuels and in gases. If you look at our footprint in Rotterdam and Singapore, we have a full spectrum of storage. We have crude, oil products, chemicals, edible oils and gas. Wed like to expand our range of capabilities along Houstons Ship Channel.

Q: What does the market for liquefied natural gas storage look like?

A: The market for LNG is getting much more liquid. Were already seeing that the number of short-term contracts for LNG has increased. Every year theres more. There will be more small-scale assets available in smaller markets.

Q: Do you believe you'll be storing oil in another 100 years?

A: I do. In some way or form. The product is still there, and for high intensity energy demand  for something that needs a lot of energy in a short period of time  oil is a very viable alternate.

Ultimately, I believe in an energy transition. Youll see an energy landscape that is based on many different fuels. They need to live together, and we as a company need to become more diversified in the different liquids that we store.
The chairman of the Texas House of Representatives Higher Education Committee said Thursday that he would not have any concern if the Top 10 Percent Rule governing college admissions in the state were eliminated.

Speaking at an event hosted by The Texas Tribune, Rep. John Zerwas, R-Richmond, said the rule takes away universities discretion in picking among applicants. He stopped short of calling for a full repeal of the law. But said the Legislature should at least consider tweaking it in the near future. And he said it wouldnt necessarily be a bad thing if the U.S. Supreme Court caused it to disappear.

The Top 10 Percent Rule promises automatic admission into any public university in the state to students who finish in the top 10 percent of their Texas high schools graduating class. It was created in 1997, following a court order that temporarily banned affirmative action at Texas universities. The idea is that Texas public high schools are somewhat segregated, so promising spots at places like the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M to students from all high schools should increase diversity.

Diversity at UT-Austin and A&M has increased since 1997, but those schools populations still dont match the demographics of the state. And the law is unpopular among some segments of Texans, especially parents and students at suburban schools where it is harder to get into the top 10 percent.

Zerwas expressed less concern about issues of fairness, saying his biggest problem was that the law takes away autonomy from UT-Austin as it tries to build its incoming classes. State law allows UT-Austin to cap its automatic enrollees at 75 percent of its incoming freshmen. Some university officials have long expressed frustration that they want to be able to consider more than just class rank as they evaluate applicants. Next year, the automatic threshold will be the top 7 percent.

Zerwas called the rule a blunt instrument. He questioned: Is 10 percent the right number?

Others at the event shared similar frustrations. But they noted that the rule is important to minority populations. Without it, there would likely be high schools in Texas that dont send any students to UT-Austin, said former UT-Austin President Larry Faulkner.

I dont have any doubt that the law is working in that regard, Faulkner said.

The Top 10 Percent Rule has come under scrutiny in recent months because of Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, a Supreme Court case over the constitutionality of the schools admissions system. Oral arguments in the case were held in December. The future of affirmative action could be at stake  the justices could uphold UT-Austins system or ban affirmative action at UT-Austin, in Texas or even across the country.
The first of four community meetings regarding Educate Midland, collective impact and an education improvement initiative in our community (unlike any other) is scheduled for 6-7:30 p.m. today at Stonegate Fellowship.

Three other meetings are set for Thursday at First Presbyterian Church, April 12 (Spanish only) at the Hispanic Cultural Center of Midland and April 14 at Greater Ideal Family Life Center.

Representatives of the Business and Funders Initiative, Midland ISD and Educate Midland want residents to attend, gather information, ask questions and contribute. They want teachers, parents and anyone else interested in improving education outcomes to attend at least one of the meetings.

The Reporter-Telegram has and will continue to provide coverage of the education improvement initiative, leading up to the April 19 State of Education luncheon. That coverage started in Sundays edition and included op-eds from Ronnie Scott of the Henry Foundation and MISD Board President Rick Davis. To read these articles, go to mrt.com.

Here are a few things we will be looking at concerning these community meetings:

Apparent apathy

Asking Midlanders about the quality of public education is the responsible thing to do. There are so many private schools in our community and so much apparent apathy that it would be foolish for us not to ask. For instance, Midland ISD recently held public meetings regarding schools on the citys south side. Officials reported that the number of people who attended the meetings averaged fewer than two people per school.

In general, we see the publics lack of concern every other year during election season. A school board seat comes up for election every four years. We can count on one hand the number of contested elections for school board during the last eight years. We are not seeking an overthrow of current school board members. But competitive elections are about more than replacing representatives; they are about the discussion of ideas. Forcing those who seek public office to talk about the state of an entity is an opportunity communities shouldnt pass up. Midland has missed this opportunity over and over again.

Is it about tax money?

Not exactly, and that is important to get out of the way. The Business and Funders Initiative -- comprised of leading employers and prominent foundations -- has paid the bill thus far and is putting millions more into the funding of Educate Midland. The BFI told the Reporter-Telegram that it expects to donate more than $24 million for recent, current and future education initiatives through 2019.

Board members, including those who also sit on the BFI, will be present at the meeting tonight, and they can speak to what -- if any public funds -- will be used to pay for the initiative.

Is it about putting forward the next bond?

This is a legitimate question. It seems every time education leaders tell us to rally around education in Midland, they are promoting a bond referendum. This is your chance to hear for yourself. Educate Midland people have indicated this is about improving the quality of education and developing a system that is right for Midland. They have said three committees will be created initially: teacher retention, development and recruitment, facilities and data interpretation. For those who believe a facilities committee is code for pushing the need for new facilities, we would remind our readers that changes in the reconfiguration of schools would require a look at facilities as they currently exist and a plan -- even if there isnt one cent of bond money dedicated to an effort.

Teachers arent going to take the fall.

In conversations about the initiative, it repeatedly was said that our school districts ratings and positions on achievement indexes arent about attacking the teachers. Again, Educate Midland will provide support for teachers (see the creation of a teacher retention, development and recruitment committee). The Reporter-Telegram has asked a couple of respected educators to provide us their thoughts about what teachers need moving forward, and we hope to bring you those op-ed articles in Sundays edition. Listening to teachers will not be optional if we want to improve educational outcomes in Midland.

We will move forward.

This process will be better with an engaged community, but it must move forward, regardless. The fact that large employers and foundations have stepped up should be applauded. Now, it is up to our community to match their efforts with an enthusiasm for education improvement we havent seen in recent memory.

Meeting schedule

today

6-7:30 p.m.

Stonegate Fellowship

6000 W. Wadley Ave.

Thursday

6-7:30 p.m.

First Presbyterian Church

800 W. Texas Ave.

April 12

(presentation will be in Spanish only)

6-7:30 p.m.

Hispanic Cultural Center of Midland

1311 E. Wadley Ave.

(Inside Hogan Park)

April 14

6-7:30 p.m.

Greater Ideal Family Life Center

301 S. Tyler St.

What is collective impact?

Collective impact is a framework to tackle deeply entrenched and complex social problems. It is an innovative and structured approach to making collaboration work across government, business, philanthropy, non-profit organizations and citizens to achieve significant and lasting social change.

Source: www.collaborationforimpact.com

What is Educate Texas?

Educate Texas, a public-private initiative of Communities Foundation of Texas, is an innovative alliance of public and private groups that share a common goal: strengthening the public education system so that every Texas student is prepared for success in school, in the workforce, and in life.

Source: www.edtx.org

What is Educate Midland?

A collaboration of Midland ISD and Educate Texas with the goal of strengthening Midlands public education system so that every student is prepared to succeed in school, in the workforce, and in life.

Source: www.educatemidland.org

Educate Midland Board members

Susan Spratlen, Pioneer Natural Resources

Laura Roman, community representative

Mark Palmer, Abell-Hanger Foundation

Ronnie Scott, Henry Foundation

Grant Billingsley, Scharbauer Foundation
AUSTIN, Texas (AP)  The U.S. Supreme Court handed Texas a victory Monday, upholding the state's system of drawing legislative voting districts based on everyone who lives there  not just registered voters.

But it was liberal groups, rather than the Republican-controlled state's top leaders, who applauded the 8-0 ruling loudest since it likely bolsters the voting power of Texas' booming Latino population over sparsely populated rural areas dominated by conservatives.

Gov. Greg Abbott's office declined to comment. Attorney General Ken Paxton put out a statement saying only that his office was pleased with the decision and "committed to defending the Constitution and ensuring the state legislature, representing the citizens, continues to have the freedom to ensure voting rights consistent with the Constitution."

Contrast that with the head of the Texas Democratic Party, which hailed the ruling as affirming the principle of "one person, one vote," a requirement laid out by the Supreme Court in 1964.

"This is a victory for our democracy and every Texas family," party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa said in a statement.

Added American Civil Liberties Union Legal Director Steven Shapiro: "The argument that states are forbidden from treating everyone equally for redistricting purposes never made any constitutional sense and was properly rejected."

That was a far cry from the years Texas Democrats and civil liberties and Hispanic advocacy groups have spent arguing in federal court that the Republican-controlled Legislature discriminates against minority voters in other ways it has drawn voting maps and in its approval of one of the nation's toughest voter ID laws.

They say that minority voters are more likely to support Democrats, but have been deliberately dispersed by many lawmaker-drawn electoral maps or are less likely to have one of seven forms of identification Texasnow accepts at the polls.

Texas' top officials have long countered that the electoral maps are fair and that its voter ID law prevents election fraud.

At issue in this case were the complaints of two Texas voters, Sue Evenwel of Mount Pleasant and Edward Pfenninger from north of Houston, who argued that their voting power was diluted because many registered voters lived in their districts.

They compared that to Texans casting ballots in urban areas dominated by people who were too young to vote, or who aren't American citizens.

While arguing the case before the Supreme Court in December, both sides defended the notion of one person, one vote, but differed on how to apply it.

Paxton's office defended Texas' current system, which has been good to Republicans. A Democrat hasn't won statewide office in Texas since 1994  the nation's longest such losing streak.

But it also suggested that a ruling overturning Texas' system would simply allow the state to determine another acceptable method.

The Supreme Court stopped short Monday of saying that states must use total population. It also didn't rule on whether states are free to use a different measure, as Texas had asked.
M83 is just a few days away from releasing his new album Junk and has unveiled their third single from the LP "Go!" The new single features French singer Mai Lan and a guitar solo from virtuoso Steve Vai.

M83 gets funky on this new record with a new bit of dance-pop. It starts out soft and a tad cheesy with a saxophone wailing in the distance hinting at a regrettable 1980s track. It quickly takes the right fork in the road and introduces some atmospheric synths and Mai Lan's heavily layered vocals. Drums and a funky guitar lick beckon the infectious hook before another slow break eases into another hook from M83 that Mai Lan lets you know exactly when it is coming with a countdown.

Steve Vai's contribution is felt after the second break as a searing guitar solo comes through the mix alongside a third hook as all of the instruments are played on full blast.

Anthony Gonzalez, M83, commented on how he was able to get the guitar master on this record.

"We asked for the craziest space solo possible, which wasn't hard for him. He sent us three different takes, and we blended two to make the ultimate Steve Vai solo. It was amazing to work with him."

This is the third solo to emerge from M83's upcoming album Junk. Pick up "Go!" on iTunes.

He has already released others such as "Do It, Try It."

M83 is heading out on a very extensive tour for the next five months starting on Wednesday in New Orleans. He and his band will head to Australia, Europe, Asia and all over North America over the rest of the spring and summer. Mixed in with some headlining shows are loads of festival gigs in Europe and the United States. Find details for that here.

 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Icelandic experimental rock band Sigur Ros have announced a new North American tour this fall. The month-long string of tour dates towards the end of 2016 will kick off on Sept. 19 in Vancouver and then move along the West Coast and then slowly meander its way across North America with gigs in Portland, San Diego, Los Angeles, Detroit and New York City.

About a month later, the tour will wrap up at the Orpheum Theatre in Kansas City on OCtober 14.

Speaking about what fans can expect on the tour, the band explains that they want things to be different this time around, just like every tour should be different. There will be some new unreleased songs for fans to digest, a new show and other "new" things.

"This time, in addition to playing songs you know, we wanted to remember the seat-of-your-pants feeling experienced in the wake of agtis byrjun, when for two years we formed and re-formed the songs that would go on to be the ( ) album live in front of people, night after night. All we can say right now is it's going to be different, with new unreleased songs, a new show and maybe some other *new* things. Beyond that, we can only ask you to trust us on this one."

This is the first time the band will tour without a supporting act (minus their Hollywood Bowl show). They will treat attendees to two sets with an intermission, starting at 8:30 p.m. sharp each show. Tickets go on sale at Friday April 8 at 12 p.m. EST, except for the Hollywood Bowl show. Tickets for groups of five or more are on sale now here and single tickets will go on sale May 1. Fans can sign up for pre-sale here.

09/19: Vancouver, BC @ Queen Elizabeth Theatre

09/20: Seattle, WA @ Paramount Theatre

09/21: Portland, OR @ Keller Auditorium

09/23: San Diego, CA @ Copley Hall

09/24: Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Bowl (* with support act, TBA)

09/26: Salt Lake City, UT @ Kingsbury Hall

09/27: Denver, CO @ Paramount Theatre

09/29: Minneapolis, MN @ Orpheum Theatre

09/30: Chicago, IL @ Chicago Theatre

10/01: Detroit, MI @ Fox Theater

10/03: Toronto, ON @ Massey Hall

10/05: New York, NY @ Radio City Music Hall

10/06: Brooklyn, NY @ Kings Theatre

10/08: Philadelphia, PA @ Academy of Music

10/10: Asheville, NC @ Thomas Wolfe Auditorium

10/12: Kansas City, MO @ Midland Theatre

10/14: Phoenix, AZ @ Orpheum Theatre

 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
We need to calm down after hearing this news about the collaboration! Just hours before the release of Taylor Swift's Midnights, the pop star gave a first look at the music videos for her highly anticipated 10th studio album. In a teaser
Someone should sue the President for ...
The 17-year-old accused of fatally shooting 15-year-old Antwan Davis last month is being charged as an adult, the State Attorney's Office said Monday.



Michael Anderson has been charged with second-degree murder.

Davis was found dead Saturday, March 12, near North Lakewood Avenue and Anderson Place. He died from a gunshot wound to the head, according to the Orange County Sheriff's Office.

Anderson was arrested six days later after deputies found him hiding in a wooded area near Piedmont Wekiva road and North Orange Blossom Trail in Apopka.

The deadly shooting was over a marijuana deal, deputies said.

Members of the community were credited with tips that led to Anderson's arrest. The gun used in the shooting was reported stolen out of Seminole County in 2014, deputies said.

Anderson's 18-year-old girlfriend faces charges of accessory after the fact and tampering with physical evidence.
LUBBOCK -- Texas Tech Universitys National Ranching Heritage Center will host the 46th Annual Ranch Day event from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, April 9, at 3121 4th St.

Ranch Day activities, suited both for the young and the young at heart, attract more than 4,000 visitors to the NRHC event each year. The family-friendly, hands-on experiences will include living history demonstrations, hands-on ranch science activities, horseback rides, demonstrations by the Texas Tech Equestrian Center, a stick horse rodeo, music, dancing and an authentic Comanche tepee on the front lawn.
OVERTON - Springtime conditions are increasing fly activity and cattle producers should take steps to protect animals and reduce losses, said Jason Banta, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service beef cattle specialist at Overton.

Horn flies, stable flies and house flies are the most common fly pests in Texas. Flies may be viewed by some as a nuisance to their animals but they also cost cattle producers statewide hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

Banta said ranchers should be extra wary of horn and stable flies. The economic impact of the two species can cost a rancher more than $10 per calf in a 100-day period.

Those species feed on livestocks blood and can stunt sucking calves weight gain by a pound every 10 days - and stocker calves and replacement heifers by a pound every five days, Banta said. In a business where every pound counts, especially in todays historically high market, ranchers should take steps to reduce fly breeding grounds or use treatment options to reduce pest populations, he said.

Avoiding those costs could be as easy as cleaning stables and pasture maintenance or treatments, such as insecticide ear tags and feed additives. Ranchers have to decide what options are most cost effective and best fit their management style when addressing fly problems, Banta said.

Banta said horn flies are active now and that stable fly activity is being reported in some areas of the state.

The horn fly is the most detrimental to producers because they are active for a longer period of time throughout the year, Banta said. But the species may be the easiest for producers to address because they only leave the cow to lay eggs in manure patties.

Horn fly activity is increasing and will peak in late spring, Banta said. Numbers generally wane in the summer and peak again in the fall, he said. He said ranchers should expect to see numbers increase over the next six weeks.

Horn flies, like all three of the species, can be identified most easily by their location on the animal. Horn flies typically swarm on the back of cattle or migrate to the sides and belly for shade and protection from the wind.

The historic cost threshold for horn flies is 200-250 flies per animal.

However, the price of cattle justifies treatments to lower (fly) numbers, Banta said.

Producers have several options to treat horn flies.

Banta said fly tags deliver insecticides over a longer period of time as the animal grooms and may last three to four months. Topical applications like pour-ons and sprays are also effective but dont last as long, he said.

The product and method is up to the rancher as long as producers are using insecticides with effective active ingredients, Banta said. Producers should use products that include cyhalothrin, cyfluthrin, permethrin cypermethrin in pyrethroids, and methoprene and diflubenzuron in insect growth regulators. Organophosphates should have phosmet, diazinon, coumaphos, tetrachlorvinphos, pirimiphos-methyl, dichlorvos or chlorpyrifos in them.

Flies build up a resistance to insecticides so producers should also rotate the chemicals they use, Banta said.

Use the method that works for you but rotate the chemical classes to fight resistance, Banta said. I recommend switching up every year.

Producers can also utilize mineral supplements or molasses tubs with the active ingredient methoprene, he said. The minerals are consumed and treat manure patties to prevent eggs from hatching. Banta recommends year-round use of methoprene-containing mineral supplements or tubs for ranchers who incorporate those products already.

Stable flies pose the same threat to producers but are a different challenge to address.

When ranchers see cattle bunching up together in a pasture during the spring, its a likely sign of stable flies, Banta said. The cattle try to work their way to the middle of the herd in an attempt to avoid the biting, blood-sucking fly. Stable flies typically gather on the animals legs, Banta said.

Banta said stable flies are most active around stables, pens and youth projects, but have shown the ability to expand their environment.

In 2012, stable fly numbers in pasture environments increased significantly due to piles of unconsumed poor-quality hay being left in pastures, he said. Small piles of hay created perfect breeding grounds for stable flies when combined with moisture and manure.

Cleanliness goes a long way to address stable flies, Banta said, whether it be regular cleaning of stables or spreading out piles of old hay in a pasture to allow it to dry.

The best way to deal with stable flies is to manage possible breeding sites, he said.

Insecticides or biological options, such as parasitic wasps, can be utilized to address stable flies because they are most prominent in concentrated areas. But treating stable flies with insecticides in an open pasture can be a challenge because they leave animals frequently and gather around the legs, Banta said.

Dimilin 2L, which can be used to combat young grasshoppers, is also effective against stable flies, Banta said. So if producers need to spray for young grasshoppers they can use Dimilin to help reduce stable fly numbers. Additionally, spot-spraying old hay sites with Dimilin can be effective, he said.
The 2016-2017 District 13 school budget was moved forward by the Board of Education on March 16 at a proposed decrease of 1.85 percent from the current school year.



That decrease has school officials looking into the workings of a lesser known state law called the Minimum Budget Requirement.



The Minimum Budget Requirement, or MBR, requires towns and school districts to spend at least the same amount in the school budget that they spent the previous year or face a reduction in state money sent to the town or district.



MBR is designed to force towns to use state money as a supplement to local money and not a replacement.



As Business Manager Ron Melnik explained to the BOE on March 16, Its a statute that the legislature put in place to ensure funds are passed ... onto Boards of Education.



BOE members have referred to MBR in the past as a potential issue, but the 2016-2017 proposed budget, which takes advantage of the closing of Korn Elementary School and savings in the benefits packages, made the statute much more relevant.



According to Melnik, MBR has never come into play in District 13.



MBR has some exemptions in place, including one for school closings. The district has sent a letter to the Department of Education seeking an exemption. Although declining enrollment is a state-wide issue, no towns or districts have gone through the exemption process yet.



According to a document from the law firm of Shipman & Goodwin, which has advised school boards, Though waivers ... might be possible, the procedures for obtaining a penalty waiver, and the standard by which the State Board would grant such a waiver, are not clearly defined. State officials have also counseled that waivers are highly unlikely to be granted.



Declining enrollment, which has already started in District 13, also allows school boards to pass a budget with a decrease. The formula for maximum allowable decrease involves the student body reduction and per pupil expenditures.



The State Department of Education gave District 13 a preliminary calculation of its minimum gross budget for 2016-2017 in light of declining enrollment as $36,815,515.



The figures can be confusing as MBR deals in the gross, not net, budget. District 13s proposed 2016-2017 net budget, which is the figure most often discussed, is $34,944,142.



According to Melniks calculations of the budget as originally proposed, We are ... above MBR by 143,000. Meaning right now our budget meets the minimum budget guidelines.



Melnik presented this information before the board removed $132,000 from the salary line, placing the 2016-2017 budget approximately $11,000 above the amount that would trigger a penalty.



The penalty is a two for one offset, meaning for every dollar the district falls below MBR, the state will remove two from its funding.



Melnik told the BOE, We dont know if we will get the exemption. We were told we were the first ones to apply for it.



Although declining enrollment has begun impacting schools across Connecticut, the document from Shipman & Goodwin suggests that MBR is likely to be preserved in the future.






NORTH HAVEN  A new ordinance that will freeze qualified seniors property taxes barely passed at a recent special town meeting.



Town clerk/tax collector Stacey Yarbrough, who chaired the meeting, and John Lambert, a local lawyer who served as moderator, helped break a tie by supporting the measure, which passed 32-30.



The two voted at the end of a long March 29 proceeding that was marked by complaints about the ordinance approved earlier by the Board of Selectman.



I support the ordinance 100 percent despite the sliding scale,  said Third Selectwoman Sally Buemi. She explained that the range of asset limits, from $150,000 to $300,000 for single or married applicants, based on the amount of time a person has lived in North Haven, unjustly favors longtime residents.



Residents also complained about a cap on benefits that will be determined by the Board of Finance. Since the board has yet to calculate the amount, residents were unsure of the impact the freeze will have on seniors.



Resident Mary White said, Not knowing the cap makes it hard to vote in favor.



Residents also criticized the $500 fine that will be levied against citizens who file applications that misstate their finances. They said the fine is too low, but Jennifer Coppola, the lawyer who represents the town and oversaw the taxation ordinance, said the amount was set by a state statute the town must follow.



Resident Joan Mazurek questioned why the town is following the state statute, noting Guilford has established a tax ordinance without it. But Coppola said Guilford had an ordinance before the state statute was in place.



Before approving the tax ordinance, meeting attendees voted overwhelmingly in favor of a new memorial that will honor veterans of all post-Vietnam conflicts.



The ordinance established eligibility requirements. All service veterans will be listed on the memorial, with a special sword insignia noting those who served in combat.



One veteran said that the special designation should be affixed to the names of veterans on other memorials, but Ray Fowler, a Marine veteran who assisted in the preparation of the Soldiers Memorial ordinance, said, It would be too expensive to recast all the memorials.



Another veteran said he has lived in North Haven for 35 years but served in the armed forces before moving to town, so he doesnt qualify for inclusion in town memorials. You may not qualify in North Haven, but you should go back to the town you lived in and have your name included on their memorial, Fowler said.



The original plan for the memorial was to limit it to veterans who served in combat.



Its an excellent compromise, Fowler said. Every veteran who served with an honorary discharge will be included with a special designation for combat veterans next to their names.






As rare as it may be, once in a while an issue emerges on which there is agreement across a broad swath of political thought, and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy seems to have found one when it comes to bail reform. In this case the governor, a Democrat with credentials as a social liberal, seems to be on the same page with the ACLU as well as two conservative groups, the Yankee Institute for Public Policy and the California-based Reason Foundation.



Malloy would bar bail for most misdemeanors, except domestic violence cases and failures to appear in court. He says the bail system discriminates against the poor by keeping hundreds of defendants locked up on bails of $20,000 or less, while people with more money facing the same charges are able to post bail or pay a bondsman. Not surprisingly, most pre-trial detainees are minorities, something that the ACLU sees as a blinking red light.



State Sen. Len Fasano, of North Haven, the Republican leader in the Senate, is urging caution, however. He wants to wait for the report of the Connecticut Sentencing Commission, which is studying bail issues here and in other states, a report thats expected late this year. Are we jumping the gun? asked Fasano, who also represents Wallingford.



Fasano is right to want as much information as possible before taking action, but its also clear that the issue of bail reform has developed some momentum this year. Perhaps there can be some legislative action this year, as encouraged by the Yankee Institute and the Reason Foundation, with other changes waiting until 2017, when the Malloy administration intends to seek a state constitutional amendment.



We have a very diverse and eclectic group on our commission, and I can safely say all points of view will be represented, John Santa, the acting chairman of the sentencing commission, told a forum in Hartford Wednesday, as reported by The Connecticut Mirror.



So far, the bail industry has shown flexibility on this subject  or maybe its resignation.



We have conceded that misdemeanor bonds can be given up in this proposal. Were OK with that, Andrew Bloom, a founder and former president of the Bail Agents of Connecticut Association, told The Mirror. After a pause, he added, Not that were really OK with it.



But the bail industry is big business  even in this small state, the system processed 151,763 defendants last year  and is probably hoping to forestall even-more-sweeping changes. And Bloom pointed out that the industry provides a service by searching for defendants who fail to appear.



For the record, those numbers are not huge. Of those 151,763 defendants, 8.77 percent failed to appear in court. Of the 28,911 defendants freed on surety bonds last year, 7.4 percent failed to appear.



The slogan Equal Justice Under Law is inscribed on the Supreme Court building, and it is a worthy goal. But since there are such vast differences in wealth among those who come before our courts, it seems only reasonable that justice should not depend on money to the extent that it now does.



If this is part of the governors second chance society, then let it proceed with all deliberate speed.






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An unworldly looking shark, dubbed The Alien Fish," can be found swimming of the coast of Cabo San Lucas after it was caught, photographed for a social media post which garnered a viral reaction and released back into the water.

According to Pisces Sportfishing Fleet, a yacht charter operating in the popular travel destination, an alien fish was caught by an angler from Chicago who was on a boat captained by Jaime Rendon on March 29. The pair were in about 370 feet of water near an area called El Tule, according to the Facebook post.

RELATED: Padre Island National Seashore shares escape pod photo, reveals list of strange items found ashore

He thought it looked like an alien but guessed it was some kind of shark as it had raspy skin, three rows of tiny teeth and three gill slits on each side of the head (most sharks have 5-7 each side,) the post explained. He thought it might be endangered so (he) released it, it then swam back to where it had come from.

RELATED: Some beautiful (and sometimes scary) things have washed up on Padre Island National Seashore lately

Over the next few days, thousands of Facebook users responded to the post and mulled over what the strange creature could be.

On March 31, the alien fish mystery was solved, according to the page.

RELATED: 'Gargantuan' wild hog weighing nearly 800 pounds caught in Texas

Pisces Sportsfishing enlisted in the help of experts, who agreed the strange fish is an albino swell shark  still alive and well.

Now all figured out, the yacht service dubbed the find a cute critter.

Multiple experts in contact with the Pete Thomas Outdoors blog confirmed the mysterious potbelly shark, or Cephaloscyllium ventriosum, was not an alien.

The site spoke to Californias Monterrey Bay Aquarium and the Pacific Shark Research Center Moss Landing Marine Laboratories to clear up the case.

This is clearly a swell shark, no doubt about that, David A. Ebert, of the Pacific Shark Research Center, told the site.

RELATED: Dive into an underwater Mexican art museum this summer

According to the MexFish.com, a similar shark was caught in the Los Cabos area in June 2012.

The Monterrey Bay Aquarium's website describes the species as "inactive sharks," which can be commonly found in Southern California waters. Their enlarged stomachs are a defense mechanism. Along with their engorged stomachs, they also usually have a "drab color" which allows them to blend with their surroundings.

"Generally shy and harmless, unless aggressively threatened, these sharks attempt to stay clear of divers and snorkelers," according to the site. "Swell sharks are harmless unless handled or provoked."

mmendoza@mysa.com

Twitter: @MaddySkye
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As Brussels, Belgium recovers from the March 22 terror attacks that left at least 32 dead and more than 300 wounded, a small group of San Antonios Belgian-Americans offered their support at a downtown memorial service Sunday.

The memorial, held at St. Marks Episcopal Church, was organized by the Belgian American Club of San Antonio. With 650 members, the group represents the largest Belgian American club of any city in the United States, said area lawyer Robert Braubach, the honorary Belgian consulate in San Antonio.

This was a global event  this has affected us worldwide, Braubach said. Belgium has come together is support of the victims, so this (memorial) is just us doing our part to honor them, honor their families and honor the injured.

European officials have stated the attacks were carried out by at least five individuals, of whom three died during the assault. The three tentatively have been identified as ISIS bomb-maker Najim Laachraoui and brothers Khalid and Brahim el-Bakraoui. A manhunt for the fourth and fifth terrorists, who remain unidentified, is ongoing. In the past week, authorities have also made several subsequent arrests that have thwarted similar, would-be attacks in Paris.

Sundays memorial in San Antonio brought together Belgians from all across the city.

Area contractor Frank DeCock, 59, is part of a Belgian family that moved to San Antonio in 1916. Rather than focus on the violence, he said he's choosing to reflect on his heritage.

Being Belgian is beautiful, DeCock said. Its about beauty; its about flowers; its about dedication to family, and the Catholic faith. Belgians always stick together and work things out.

While honoring the victims, DeCock said the best way for Belgians to respond to tragedy is to look toward the future.

Were a small country, but Belgians ... are resilient, he explained. When something like this happens, you come together, you regroup, and you move on.

Wayne DeWinney, 64, club president, said moving on from the tragedy will be difficult.

Were one big community, so the attacks hit all of us hard, of course, DeWinney said. Terrorists try to make you fearful, but instead, were going into prayer.

Even though no Belgians with San Antonio ties were harmed, DeWinney said, the attack still felt personal.

Fortunately, none of our family were harmed, but with a little country like that, were all going to be related somewhere along the line, he noted.

Texas and Belgium have a history dating back to 1841, when the European nation was one of the first countries to recognize the fledgling Republic of Texas, setting up an embassy in Austin that same year.

Belgians have always been a tight-knit bunch in San Antonio, Braubach said.

Were showing that were a global community, he added, and with tragic events of this type, were reacting accordingly.
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AUSTIN  Greg Abbott is joining the governors before him in adding author to his resume.

His first book -- Broken But Unbowed: The Fight to Fix a Broken America -- links his perseverance after the accident that put him in a wheelchair to public-policy battles including his push to amend the U.S. Constitution.

We have effectively submitted ourselves to the rule of men and abandoned the rule of law on which our nation was built, Abbott said in a statement announcing the books release Monday. America was born as a nation in search of one thing: freedom to chart our own path.

SEE ALSO: Atheist group sues Texas Governor Greg Abbott over removal of Bill of Rights display at Capitol

Abbott in January called for a convention to amend the Constitution in order to rein in federal oversight of states and curtail the U.S. Supreme Courts power. The topic at the time was getting attention in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

The Texas governors who immediately preceded Abbott, George W. Bush and Rick Perry, ran for president themselves.

Asked Monday whether Abbott might follow suit, his spokesman John Wittman said, As the governor has stated numerous times, he is not running for president.

Abbott has endorsed U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas for the 2016 GOP nod.

RELATED: Texas appeals court clears former Gov. Rick Perry in abuse-of-power case

Whatever the governors aspirations, Abbotts long-running policy battles with the Obama administration and the moves he makes as Texas governor on topics ranging from immigration to abortion give him a national profile likely to be enhanced by a book.

Copies of the book werent immediately but the statement from Abbott said it can be ordered online. The site provides touts for the book from Newt Gingrich and Chuck Norris.

The book will be available online and in bookstores in May 17, upon which Abbott plans a tour to promote its ideas and a convention of states to amend the Constitution.

Net proceeds from the book will be donated to Operation FINALLY HOME, a Texas-based non-profit that provides custom-built, mortgage-free homes to veterans and their families.

pfikac@express-news.net

Twitter: @pfikac
The United States Supreme Court on Monday unanimously rejected a challenge to the method by which the Texas Legislature counted the population in the states 31-member Senate when it drew legislative district maps.

The lawsuit, brought by two voters who live in rural parts of Texas, argued that the state should not count the total number of people living in a district when drawing state maps, which they said diluted the voting power of rural communities and violated their constitutional rights. Instead, the plaintiffs argued, lawmakers should use another system altogether, such as one that took into account only the number of eligible voters.
Posted on 04/04/2016, 11:00 am, by mySteinbach

This past weekend, Steinbach RCMP made a surprise guest appearance to a local house party, resulting in thousands of dollars of fines being handed out.

During the late evening hours of April 2, 2016, Steinbach RCMP attended the scene of a local house party on Cedar Crescent in Steinbach. Police had received numerous complaints about a large party that was possibly hosting persons who were not of the legal age to consume alcohol. Once on scene, RCMP shut down the party and sent party-goers on their way.

As a result of this incident, police issued seven Provincial Offence Notices to seven minors for consuming liquor under the Liquor and Gaming Control Act. Each notice carries a fine amount of $673.65. A property representative at the party was also issued a Provincial Offence Notice for providing liquor to a minor under the Liquor and Gaming Control Act. This offence carries a fine amount of $2,543.65. In total, RCMP handed out $7,259.20 in fines.

RCMP also report that a 19-year-old male, who was in attendance at the party, was arrested. The male was found to be breaching court ordered conditions as per a recognizance he was released on at an earlier date. The male was later remanded into custody on four charges of breaching his recognizance.
Now in its 22nd year, the annual fundraising campaign has raised more than $32 million since 1995.

SALT LAKE CITY  Corner Store customers and team members are giving back to local kids treated at Childrens Miracle Network Hospitals during the companys 22nd annual Miracle Balloon campaign. Corner Store locations in Colorado, Texas, Arizona, California, New Mexico, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Arkansas will raise funds for 30 member hospitals within the Children's Miracle Network (CMN) during the 30-day campaign.

From April 130, Corner Store customers will be able to purchase a $1 or $5 Miracle Balloon, buy a glow bracelet or donate change to support sick and injured kids in the community.

Were grateful for Corner Stores long-term support and the strong relationships that exist between individual locations and our member hospitals, said John Lauck, president and CEO of Childrens Miracle Network Hospitals. Its clear that Corner Store cares about the communities it serves by the way its leadership and team members get behind this campaign that impacts so many.

Collected funds will benefit children like Ryleigh, who was born weighing only 1 pound, 11 ounces and spent 88 days in the neonatal intensive care unit at her CMN Hospital. Local donations funded research and technology that helped her survive a bacterial infection and surgery to repair a heart condition. Now 8 years old, Ryleigh is energetic, imaginative and inspires others with her joyful spirit.

For [more than] two decades, our team members and loyal customers have opened their hearts and wallets for children treated at local CMN Hospitals, said Kim Lubel, president and CEO of CST Brands, Inc. which owns and operates Corner Store locations. Leading the CMN Hospitals campaign for our communities embodies our Corner Store core value of servant leadership and gives us a greater sense of purpose. Experiencing the generosity of our great Corner Store customers brings joy to all of us.

Corner Store has raised more than $23 million for pediatric patients since partnering with Childrens Miracle Network Hospitals in 1995. Like all Childrens Miracle Network Hospital fundraisers, donations made during the Corner Store campaign will stay local to benefit kids in the community.
By James Burgiss, Deputy Editor of OilPrice. Originally published at OilPrice

As the Syrian refugee crisis reaches a critical impasse, both in terms of European security and refugee human rights, Brussels has found itself having to deny accusations of a secret pact between Malta and Italy to swap refugees for oil exploration rights.

The Maltese opposition leader has claimed that Malta and Italy cut a secret deal in which Malta would surrender oil exploration rights in an offshore area disputed with Italy, while Italy would return the favor by picking up Maltas share of migrant rescues at sea.

In late March, the European Commission was forced to respond to the accusations as the Syrian refugee crisis has hit a fever pitch, denying the accusations; but its a complicated issue.

Maltese opposition leader Simon Busuttil of the Nationalist Party, and a member of the European Parliament until 2013, accused the Maltese government late last year of allowing the Italian government to drill for oil in Maltese waters in a dubious oil-for-migrants swap.

His accusations were boosted by the reporting of an Italian newspaper, Il Giornale, which claimed that Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi had agreed to the deal with Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat.

Last September, Maltese Home Affairs Minister Carmelo Abela stated that Malta had an informal agreement with Italy take on irregular migrants from Malta, but the minister later altered that statement to a situation of close collaboration between Italy and Malta, according to the Italian media report.

While Malta has admitted to close collaboration, the countrys officials maintain that there is no agreement concerning migrants or linking migrants to oil exploration.

Now the European Commission has had to step up to the plate.

Malta is the European Union member country that is closest to the Libyan coast. And with that in mind, Italian centre-right lawmaker Elisabetta Gardini has recently asked the European Commission to explain why there are such low migrant arrival numbers in Malta.

Her question was poignant.

Since 2015, out of the 142,000 people who fled their homes bound for Europe, leaving from the North-African coast, only around a 100 arrived in Malta. Its an odd situation during this heightened refugee crisis.

In 2013, Maltese officials registered 2,008 arrivals. During the same period, Italy accepted some 150,000 refugees. The argument that there was no deal would suggest that refugees simply have no desire to try for Malta.

Late last month, the European Commission finally replied to the allegations, with European Commissioner for Home Affairs and Migration Dimitris Avramopoulos saying that it was not aware of any such bilateral agreement between the Maltese and Italian authorities concerning Search and Rescue (SAR) operations in the Mediterranean Sea.

Not aware certainly does not put this issue to rest.

That said, as reported by the Independent, the Commission noted that coincidentally the area of oil exploration in question overlaps with the migrant rescue areas.

While not being aware of any agreement, the Commission said that if there was an agreement, it would be in line with normal burden-sharing.

When it comes to the emergency relocation mechanism, the Commission sees it as establishing concrete measures of solidarity and contributing to the fair sharing of responsibilities between member states, in line with Article 80 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, according to the Commission.

Whats at stake here in terms of the oil play? Quite a lot, potentially. According to an independent review, Malta has a potential 260 million barrels. But Malta and Italy have been locked in dispute over offshore exploration zones as well as over what their migrant rescue zones are.

The crux of the issue is a 2012 law passed by Italy that essentially doubled Italys continental shelf southeastwards of Sicily and towards the Libyan coast. Malta balked because this cut into maritime territory it claims. In late 2015, Malta and Italy reached an informal agreement to suspend exploratory oil drilling in this area.

Perhaps one open-ended question is this: With an EU-Turkey deal in place that will see Turkey (in return for some EU favors and a bunch of financial aid) take back refugees landing in Greece, it will essentially cut off the Aegean Sea human smuggling route. It might mean a renewed interest in the Libya route. And if Malta has traded off its rescue area, it will mean problems for Italy, which would have to intercept them all.
New Zealand Offshore FSPs are the result of a regulatory loophole that has created a running sore of fraud and money laundering, tainting New Zealands reputation. Here are pages and pages, four years worth of coverage, from the tenacious New Zealand journalist Gareth Vaughan.

In this post, we will take a walk through one well-documented case that exemplifies the New Zealand Offshore FSP horror, and the reputation risk for New Zealand, and then draw readers attention to a related but much bigger international offshore scandal, breaking this coming week, Panamapapers.

Our stalking horse is Breder Suasso Limited, FSP number 360686, and the story starts in July 2014, just when New Zealands financial regulator, FMA, took over supervision of the FSP register from Companies Office:

Grace Haden, an independent standing for election in Epsom, raised concerns with the regulators about Breder Suasso, which is referred to on overseas websites as a New Zealand bank and as providing banking services, despite not being registered as one here. She pointed to a photo on the Auckland-based companys website, since removed, which featured a plush reception with an oil painting on the wall. In fact the company has a poky office with room for only a single desk and a line of filing cabinets down one wall. Breder Suasso admitted the photo was faked for marketing purposes, a detail buried in fine print on the website.  Breder Suasso markets offshore accounts to foreigners, telling its clients on its website: Your account information is kept confidential, our staff highly respect clients confidentiality and secrecy. People will know about your Breder Suasso Account only if you tell them.

Substituting the more specific tax authorities for the generic people should tell you why thats quite an aggressive marketing angle.

Meanwhile the term Breder Suasso Account is as misleading as the faked photo; Breder Suasso is not actually a bank:

The accounts are not its own however, but are set up with Polish Bank Bre Bank

FMA, just beginning to get its eye in to its new duties at that point, took a look and, judging by Breder Suassos continuing registration, were satisfied that nothing was wrong with any of this.

Next, New Zealand journalist Gareth Vaughan took a seriously deep dive into Breder Suasso in September 2015:

A small office shared with three other companies deep in the bowels of the Outsource IT Tower on Aucklands Khyber Pass Road opposite a reservoir isnt necessarily where youd expect to find the global headquarters of a financial service provider that claims to be following in the footsteps of three outstanding men from the Dutch golden age. But this is where you will find what, according to its website, is Breder Suassos head office. When interest.co.nz visited recently the office was unattended.

Vaughan observes a certain mutability in the business proposition:

Services listed include private accounts, corporate accounts, payment cards and advisory, although the advisory section appears to have been removed from the companys website over recent days.  Breder Suassos website says it doesnt provide services to NZ or US residents, with the latter now having to comply with the intrusive Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA.

It gets cheesier:

Theres also a Breder Suasso brochure on NZ trusts. Among other things it says; The New Zealand Foreign Trust regime is considered to be one of the best if not the best offshore trust regimes in the world today. And; a properly established trust provides virtually 100% protection against creditors. Plus; In New Zealand there are many cases of personally bankrupt individuals who have been unable to pay their taxes or have failed in business but who still live in mansions and drive Ferraris owned by their trusts and there is nothing anyone including the Government can do about it. Other comments in Breder Suassos NZ trusts brochure focus on property, and obtaining NZ residency. You may not have known that property in New Zealand is not taxed for capital gain and that we can obtain loans of 50% of the value of the property. That means that by establishing a trust and buying New Zealand property you can realise long term gains that are tax free. Buying property in New Zealand can also allow the investors to obtain residency for themselves and their families. Thus the trust can become both an investment, asset protection and migration vehicle rolled into one. How about mortgagee property? We can also assist you in acquiring for sale or mortgagee property in New Zealand, Panama, Las Vegas, as well as opening brokerage, investment, forex accounts or physical precious metal holdings held in the name of your trust.

18 months later, theres been an office move from the embarrassing reservoir-side location, to another serviced office address shared with dozens of other companies, for all the good that will do to the look. The business proposition has changed a lot more, too.

Right now, Breder Suasso just offers bank account opening services and payment cards. The trust and company formation services, the other account opening services and the property acquisition services have all gone, along with the boast about bankrupts driving Ferraris.

Theres no sign of Bre Bank any more either, whether under that name, or its more recent manifestation as MBank (its a Polish subsidiary of German giant Commerzbank). So where are the bank accounts? They cant be in New Zealand: Breder Suasso has no New Zealand clients. The accounts must all be offshore. Up until a few weeks ago, Breder Suassos corporate account opening service stated that the related account opening agreement was subject to the law of the Marshall Islands. But the brochure has now vanished too.

Meanwhile the Breder Suasso payment card service is a bit hair-raising: up to 100 (or perhaps, just 20: the web site copy is inconsistent) prepaid payment cards may be issued to the employees of any company using Breder Suassos card service. One wonders what steps Breder Suasso takes to counteract the sort of prepaid card abuse written up here:

Recent ebanking heists  such as a $121,000 online robbery at a New York fuel supplier last month  suggest that cyber thieves increasingly are cashing out by sending victim funds to prepaid debit card accounts. The shift appears to be an effort to route around a major bottleneck for these crimes: Their dependency on unreliable money mules.  Ive interviewed now more than 200 money mules, and its hard to escape the conclusion that many mules simply are not the sharpest crayons in the box. They often have trouble following simple instructions, and frequently screw up important details when it comes time to cash out (there are probably good reasons that a lot of these folks are unemployed). Common goofs include transposing digits in account and routing numbers, or failing to get to the bank to withdraw the cash shortly after the fraudulent transfer, giving the victims bank precious time to reverse the transaction. In isolated cases, the mules simply disappear with the money and stiff the cyber thieves. In several recent ebanking heists, however, thieves appear to have sent at least half of the transfers to prepaid cards, potentially sidestepping the expense and hassle of hiring and using money mules. For example, last month cyber crooks struck Alta East, a wholesale gasoline dealer in Middletown, N.Y. According to the firms comptroller Debbie Weeden, the thieves initiated 30 separate fraudulent transfers totaling more than $121,000. Half of those transfers went to prepaid cards issued by Metabank, a large prepaid card provider.

Those are personal prepaid cards. One imagines, though, that the problem is just as acute, if not more so, with corporate cards. Happily, Breder Suassos web site makes great play of its commitment to comply with all legal obligations relating to Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) according to the New Zealand anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 (the AML/CFT Act).

Less happily, that stated commitment could all be cosmetic waffle: Gareth Vaughan establishes that Breder Suasso isnt actually caught by the New Zealand anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 at all:

Breder Suasso, the NZ registered but overseas operating financial service provider that featured in this interest.co.nz article last week, operates outside the territorial scope of this countrys anti-money laundering legislation, the Department of Internal Affairs has confirmed. As noted in last weeks article, interest.co.nz had emailed a series of questions to Teodoro De Regibus, who Companies Office records list as Breder Suassos sole shareholder. A response to the questions, from Breder Suassos partnerships manager Benjamin Cohen on behalf of De Regibus, was received after last weeks story was published. Among other things Cohen says, In November 2014, the Department of Internal Affairs fully reviewed our Anti Money Laundering and CFT (countering financing of terrorism) policies with no adverse comments or recommendations of any changes needed to our robust policy of only dealing with low risk clients.

Vaughan adds drily:

The Department of Internal Affairs version of the story is, however, a little different.

Indeed it is:

In October 2014, the Department initiated a desk based review of Breder Suasso Limiteds AML/CFT programme documents. During this review, it was identified that the financial activities conducted by Breder Suasso Limited were not being carried on in New Zealand in the ordinary course of business. On this basis, Breder Suasso Limiteds activities were determined to be outside the territorial scope of the Act. In turn, it was determined that Breder Suasso Limited is not captured as an AML/CFT reporting entity in New Zealand, the spokesman said.

So there you have it. Breder Suasso is a registered New Zealand financial services provider, with an ever changing product offering, that doesnt have to comply with NZ AML requirements (but would like you to think that it does), and currently offers no banking services to New Zealand clients, but does offer bank accounts and prepaid cards, somewhere on the planet, possibly via unidentified banks domiciled in the Marshall Islands and mBank in Poland, to unspecified non-New Zealand persons and business entities.

That doesnt look like a particularly transparent or salubrious business proposition. There are a few more pointers.

First, theres this Marshall Islands connection. The Marshall Islands are an interesting tax haven. Their currency is the US dollar, but they mainly crop up as a domicile of entities associated with the post-Soviet offshore finance system, usually alongside Latvia and Cyprus.

So thats where one naturally looks next, and promptly finds Breder Suassos Latvian company, at another mailbox address, and then, via LinkedIn, Breder Suassos Cyprus connection:

Jevgenijas mother tongue is, unsurprisingly, Russian, and she learnt her trade at Rietumu Banka, which, like many of Latvias oligarch-controlled boutique banks, has collected the occasional money laundering wristslap from Latvias financial regulator.

Meanwhile Breder Suassos subsidiary in Georgia (the US state, not the Eurasian country) doesnt seem to be doing anything much. For instance, it doesnt seem to have a banking licence.

Still, this is enough to make it look as if a lot of what Breder Suasso is doing is connected to offshore finance for Russians, not always the cleanest banking business in the world.

Its possible that Breder Suassos Polish subsidiary is part of that too, along with Polish mBank. There might be a bit of extra pressure on mBank to be, well, an aggressive business builder at the moment. In January last year, having sold a bunch of Swiss-franc-denominated mortgages to zloty-earning Poles, mBank and other Polish banks were horribly caught out by the instant huge appreciation of the Swiss Franc that occurred when the Swiss announced that they had abandoned attempts to cap its exchange rate against the Euro. In Poland, by August, the whole story had got very political:

Polish banks fell heavily on Thursday after deputies approved a bill allowing homeowners to convert their Swiss franc mortgages into zlotys, a move which could double the cost to lenders to $5 billion. Polands financial regulator called for an impact assessment on bank stability if the measure were passed into law.  Public opinion is divided over state support for should support Swiss franc mortgage owners, who are mostly well paid professionals. Shares in Polands major banks most affected by the proposed changes recovered sharply after Kleinas comments, but at 2:43 GMT were still down by between 6 and 19 percent. Shares in some of Polands biggest banks, which are mostly owned by foreign parents, plunged by as much as 24 percent at one stage. Getin Noble, the most exposed to Swiss franc mortgage risk, was still down by 19 percent at 2:47 GMT. The sector, which includes PKO, BZ WBK, mBank, Millennium, and BPH hold Swiss franc portfolios worth some 144 billion zlotys, or 8 percent of Polands gross domestic product (GDP).

For the moment, mBank isnt paying a dividend. Its debt is graded BBB- by Fitch, which is just between good quality and speculative. Thats not exactly great, for a bank, but not cataclysmic, either; not with Commerzbank backing up mBank.

So anywayBreder Suassos business all looks a bit Russian, so far. But theres more: a surprising Francophone connection. Heres Breder Suassos Brussels department:

and some more

Perhaps, after Swissleaks, theres demand in Francophone territory for something more secure than an HSBC account. From whom: diamond dealers? Dentists? Who knows.

One conclusion involves less guess work: theres damn all indication that Breder Suasso has anything much to do with New Zealand financial services. On the other hand, quite a lot that is nothing to do with New Zealand, and doesnt look all that great, is hanging off that FSP registration.

The least good-looking thing is the resonantly-named Teodoro de Regibus, 100% shareholder of Breder Suasso Limited of New Zealand. Vaughan observes that de Regibus, a resident of Hitchin, UK, according to the New Zealand info on Breder Suasso, appears also to live in Mauritius, where he operates a licensed corporate services firm: Titan Corporate Services Ltd. Hes also the sole director of a UK Breder company.

His Hitchin address indicates another bit of pedigree: for 20 years, he was on the board of Mossack Fonseca & Co UK, and of RM Company Services, Mossack Fonsecas UK subsidiary, based in Hitchin. This is of course the same Panamanian Mossack Fonseca found recently on Naked Capitalism supplying companies that facilitated government corruption in Brazil (Petrobras) and Malta (Panamagate) and a giant bank fraud in Moldova. Thats barely the start of it: vice.coms 2014 article on Mossack Fonseca, The Law Firm That Works with Oligarchs, Money Launderers, and Dictators has much more. Even thats not the end of it. Coming this week, theres Panamapapers, a huge expose based on a massive email leak from Mossack Fonseca. It may start in Finland, but it certainly wont end there:

Panamaleaks ties three of this bloggers eccentric long running obsessions, New Zealand FSPs, New Zealand Foreign Trusts, and Mossack Fonseca (especially here and here), into one huge stinky mess.

Intriguingly, Mossack Fonseca are being less than 100% candid with their clients about the age of the data leak. Here, courtesy of Daphne in Malta, is the missive Mossack Fonseca sent out a couple of days ago:

That makes it sound as if the leak has only just happened, doesnt it? But thats just Mossack Fonseca bullshitting its clients. You can read the real story of the leak in a year old post at Naked Capitalism about HSBC CEO Stuart Gullivers embarrassing connection to a Mossack Fonseca company:

Mossack Fonseca are in it up to their thighs, and Stuart Gulliver has no idea. Amazingly, its now quite likely to get even worse. On the very same day that Gulliver put in his tense appearance at the Treasury Select Committee, the Suddeutsche Zeitung had this (my English): The Mossack Fonseca Group, of Panama, is a well known provider of shell companies used by tax dodgers and other criminals

Investigators from the USA and other states have obtained the firms internal documents. Other countries are interested. German tax investigators have bought data relevant to Germany. On the basis of the documents, they are now carrying out raids.

The various groups of officials are operating with selections of firms records. Suddeutsche Zeitung has all of the data in the internal Mossack Fonseca documents at its disposal, more than 80 Gigabytes. Full evaluiation of the data is nowhere near complete. Theres more: Thousands of shell companies, registered in the Seychelles, the Bahamas, the British Virgin Islands or in Panama, built by Mossack Fonseca Group, ordered and paid for by Banks, wealth managers and lawyers from dozens of countries, can be found in the secret data on the USB sticks.  Clearly, Mossack Fonseca has a problem. Onlookers can only agree. Its a spectacular disaster. If, like Mossack Fonseca, your entire business model is predicated on secrecy and deniablity, a massive data leak, including gigabytes of emails, is the one thing that could kill you stone dead. Mossack Fonseca are likely to find out if its that bad in the coming months. HSBC and other banks, such as Credit Suisse and Commerzbank (summarizing the German: big tax investigation sparked by the Mossack Fonseca leak), will also have a problem. For it just so happens that one of the authors of the SZ piece, Bastian Obermayer, is with the ICIJ. This Panama story looks like a natural for one of their leaks series. In fact the current ICIJ Swiss Leaks series, featuring HSBC, was the main reason why its execs were suddenly hauled in front of the Treasury Select Committee. Given HSBCs fondness for the Panama connection, 1998-2009 at least, I cant help wondering if there will be a Panama Leaks series soon, and a repeat appearance by Stuart Gulliver before the TSC. Im pretty sure that even he will have heard of Mossack Fonseca, by then.

Well, Panamapapers has just hit the media, world-wide. Apparently Mossack Fonseca didnt see fit to tell their clients about this well-publicized forthcoming event for a whole year. The unnecessary lack of notice would irritate me, if I was a corrupt head of state, or a person involved in organised crime. Mind you, as I wrote back in 2011,

my tip to the fraudsters: you cant trust the Panamanian lawyers that you are dealing with. They are scamming you. If they get into trouble, they will turn you in.

Back in the smaller world of New Zealand FSPs, its over to MBIE and FMA to figure out what, if anything, needs to be done about Breder Suasso. There might be another wee reputation problem coming round the corner.

And now, its eyes down for #Panamapapers: for that, follow @icijorg and @occrp on Twitter.
By Swati Dhingra, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, London School of Economics, Hanwei Huang, PhD candidate in Economics at LSE, Gianmarco I.P. Ottaviano, Professor of Economics, LSE; Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Bruegel; and CEPR Research Fellow, Thomas Sampson, Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics, LSE; Research Affiliate, CEPR, and John Van Reenen, Director of the Centre for Economic Performance, Professor of Economics at LSE and CEPR Research Fellow. Originally published at VoxEU.

What are the economic consequences of leaving the EU? This question is at the heart of the Brexit debate. Some studies address this question by analysing how countries fared after joining the EU (see Campos et al. 2014 or the survey by Crafts 2016). In recent work (Dhingra et al. 2016a, 2016b), we take an alternative approach that estimates the consequences of Brexit by directly modelling the effects of leaving the EU on the UK economy

Our work focuses on two channels: trade and net fiscal contributions to the EU budget. We present results using both a structural gravity trade model and reduced form empirical estimates. In both cases, we find that leaving the EU reduces living standards in the UK, although the exact magnitude of the loss is subject to considerable uncertainty as it is not known what policies the UK would adopt following Brexit.

Trade Between the UK and the EU

Membership of the EU has reduced trade costs between the UK and the EU not only through the removal of tariff barriers, but also through reductions in non-tariff barriers as part of the European Single Market. Reductions in trade barriers have increased trade between the UK and the EU. Prior to the UK joining the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973, around one third of UK trade was with the EEC. In 2014, the 27 other EU members accounted for 45% of the UKs exports and 53% of UK imports. EU exports comprise 13% of UK national income.

Higher trade benefits UK consumers through lower prices and access to better goods and services. At the same time, the UKs workers and businesses benefit from new export opportunities that lead to higher sales and profits and allow the UK to specialise in industries in which it has a comparative advantage. Through these channels, increased trade raises output, incomes and living standards in the UK.

Structural Brexit Estimates

To estimate the effect of Brexit on the UKs trade and living standards, we use a quantitative trade model of the global economy based on Costinot and Rodriguez-Clare (2013). Our model divides the world into 31 sectors and 35 regions. It allows for trade in both intermediate inputs and final output in both goods and services. The model takes into account the effects of Brexit on the UKs trade with the EU and the UKs trade with the rest of the world.

To forecast the consequences of the UK leaving the EU, we must make assumptions about how trade costs change following Brexit. It is not known exactly how the UKs relations with the EU would change following Brexit, so we analyse two scenarios: an optimistic scenario in which the increase in trade costs between the UK and the EU is small, and a pessimistic scenario with a larger rise in trade costs.

The optimistic scenario assumes that in a post-Brexit world, the UKs trade relations with the EU are similar to those currently enjoyed by Norway. As a member of the European Economic Area (EEA), Norway has access to the Single Market. But because Norway is not a member of the EUs customs union, it faces some non-tariff barriers that do not apply to EU members, such as rules of origin requirements and anti-dumping duties. In the pessimistic scenario, we assume the UK is not successful in negotiating a new trade agreement with the EU and, therefore, trade between the UK and the EU following Brexit is governed by World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules. This implies larger increases in trade costs than the optimistic scenario.

Under both scenarios we take a forward-looking view. We assume EU integration will continue over the next decade and the UK will benefit less from future integration if it leaves the EU. The pessimistic scenario assumes integration continues at the same rate achieved over the last 40 years, while the optimistic scenario assumes the speed of integration falls to half its historical rate.

Our estimates also account for fiscal transfers between the UK and the EU. Like all EU members, the UK contributes to the EU budget. The net fiscal contribution of the UK to the EU budget is around 0.53% of national income (HM Treasury 2013). One benefit of Brexit for the UK would be a reduced contribution to the EU budget. But Brexit would not necessarily mean the UK would make zero contributions to the EU budget.

In return for Single Market access, EEA members such as Norway make substantial payments to the EU. On a per capita basis, Norways financial contribution to the EU is 83% as large as the UKs (House of Commons 2013). Therefore, in the optimistic case we assume the UKs contribution to the EU budget falls by 17% (that is, 0.09% of national income).

In the pessimistic case we assume the UK makes a bigger fiscal saving. Eurostat data shows that, after accounting for the money the UK receives back from the EU to fund research, firms and other non-governmental bodies, the UKs contribution to the EU budget is 0.31% of national income. Therefore, in the pessimistic case, the UK saves 0.31% of national income.

Table 1 summarises our results. For each case, we report the percentage change in income per capita that has the same effect on living standards in the UK as Brexit. In the optimistic scenario, there is an overall fall in income of 1.28% that is largely driven by current and future changes in non-tariff barriers. Non-tariff barriers play a particularly important role in restricting trade in services, an area where the UK is a major exporter. In the pessimistic scenario, the overall loss increases to 2.61%.

The costs of reduced trade far outweigh the fiscal savings in both scenarios. In cash terms Brexit reduces average income per household in the UK by 850 per year in the optimistic scenario and 1,700 per year in the pessimistic scenario.

Table 1. The Effects of Brexit on UK Living Standards

Optimistic Pessimistic Trade effects -1.37% -2.92% Fiscal benefit 0.09% 0.31% Total change in income per capita -1.28% -2.61%

Source: Dhingra et al. 2016a.

Notes: Optimistic scenario: Increase in EU/UK Non-Tariff Barriers (+2%) + exclusion from future fall in NTB within EU (-5.7%), saving of 17% of 0.53% lower fiscal transfer. Pessimistic scenario: MFN Tariff + increase in EU/UK Non-Tariff Barriers (+6%) + exclusion from future fall in NTB within EU (-12.8%), saving of 0.31% net fiscal transfer.

Unilateral Liberalisation after Brexit?

Following Brexit, the UK would no longer be bound by the EUs common external tariff on imports. Proponents of leaving the EU argue the UK could benefit from this change by unilaterally removing all tariffs on imports into the UK. To study this unilateral liberalisation policy, we re-do our analysis with the additional assumption that the UK removes all import tariffs.

Table 2 reports the results. We find that unilateral liberalisation reduces the costs of Brexit by 0.3 percentage points in both scenarios. But the overall effect of Brexit is still negative. The reason is that WTO tariffs are already low, so further reductions do not make much difference. In todays world, integration is not a matter of lowering tariff rates. It requires policies, such as hammering out regulatory differences in services provision that rely on international agreement and cannot be achieved unilaterally.

Table 2. The Effects of Brexit and Unilateral Trade Liberalisation on UK Living Standards

Optimistic Pessimistic Brexit trade effects (from Table 1) -1.37% -2.92% Fiscal benefit (from Table 1) 0.09% 0.31% Unilateral liberalisation 0.30% 0.32% Total change in income per capita -0.98% -2.29%

Source: Dhingra et al. 2016a.

Notes: This includes simulating the unilateral removal of all tariffs on imports into the UK.

Reduced-Form Brexit Estimates

The estimates in Tables 1 and 2 are based on a static trade model that does not account for the dynamic effects of trade on productivity. Recent research finds that dynamic effects may double or triple the size of the static effects reported in Table 1 (e.g. Bloom et al. 2014, Sampson 2016).

An alternative way to evaluate the consequences of Brexit is to use the results of reduced-form empirical studies of the effects of EU membership. Baier et al. (2008) find that, after controlling for other determinants of bilateral trade, EU members trade substantially more with other EU countries than they do with members of the EEA or EFTA. Their estimates imply that, if the UK leaves the EU and joins EFTA, its trade with countries in the EU will fall by about a quarter.

Combining this with estimates that a 1% decline in trade reduces income per capita by between 0.5% and 0.75% (Feyrer 2009) implies that leaving the EU and joining EFTA would reduce UK income per capita by between 6.3% and 9.5%. These estimates are much higher than the costs obtained from the static trade model, suggesting that the dynamic gains from trade may be important.

Conclusions

The economic consequences of leaving the EU will depend on what policies the UK adopts following Brexit. But lower trade due to reduced integration with EU countries is likely to cost the UK economy far more than is gained from lower contributions to the EU budget.

Even setting aside foreign investment, migration and the dynamic consequences of reduced trade, we estimate the effects of Brexit on trade and the UKs contribution to the EU budget would be equivalent to a fall in income of between 1.3% and 2.6%. And once we include the long-run effects of Brexit on productivity, the decline in income increases to between 6.3% and 9.5%. Other possible political or economic benefits of Brexit, such as better regulation, would have to be very large to outweigh such losses.

References

Baier, S. L., J. H. Bergstrand, P. Egger and P. A. McLaughlin (2008) Do Economic Integration Agreements Actually Work? Issues in Understanding the Causes and Consequences of the Growth of Regionalism, World Economy 31(4): 461-97.

Bloom, N., P. Romer, S. Terry and J. Van Reenen (2014) A Trapped Factors Model of Innovation, Centre for Economic Performance Discussion Paper No. 1261.

Campos, N., F. Coricelli and L. Moretti. (2015) Economic Growth and Political Integration: Synthetic Counterfactuals Evidence from Europe, mimeo.

Costinot, A., and A. Rodriguez-Clare (2013) Trade Theory with Numbers: Quantifying the Consequences of Globalization, CEPR Discussion Paper 9398.

Crafts, N. (2016) The Growth Effects of EU Membership for the UK: A Review of the Evidence, University of Warwick mimeo.

Dhingra, S., H. Huang, G. Ottaviano, J.P. Pessoa, T. Sampson and J. Van Reenen (2016a) The Costs and Benefits of Leaving the EU: Trade Effects, Centre for Economic Performance Technical Report.

Dhingra, S., G. Ottaviano, T. Sampson and J. Van Reenen (2016b) The Consequences of Brexit for UK Trade and Living Standards, Centre for Economic Performance Brexit Analysis 02.

Feyrer, J. (2009) Trade and Income  Exploiting Time Series in Geography, NBER Working Paper No. 14910.

HM Treasury (2013) European Union Finances 2013, 19th November.

House of Commons (2013) Leaving the EU, Research Paper 13/42, 1st July.

Sampson, T. (2016) Dynamic Selection: An Idea Flows Theory of Entry, Trade and Growth, Quarterly Journal of Economics 131(1): 315-80, 131(1): 315-380.
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GMA Architects & Planners has hired Project Manager/Designer Zachary E. Smith.

Miromar Development Corp. has appointed Logan Peters as public relations coordinator.

Gail Difini has joined the staff of Naples-based Animal Specialty Hospital of Florida as client and team services manager.

John Mastrocinque, aviation manager for The Hertz Corp., has been appointed to the Naples Municipal Airport Noise Compatibility Committee for a four-year term.

EverBank said Anthony Alba has joined the home lending division as a mortgage loan officer in Naples.

Honors

Ryan Williams, vice president of Kevin Williams Construction Inc., was named one of Professional Builder magazine's 40 Under 40.

Presentations

William Carracino, M.D., neurologist and vice president of medical information for Lee Memorial Health System, shared insights on the use of telemedicine to treat a stroke patient at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society Annual Conference & Exhibition.

Attorney and full-time mediator James L. Nulman spoke as part of a two-person panel to a group of 150 lawyers at the Ninth Annual Construction Law Institute on the topic "Mediations, Managing Expectations to Success."

New business

Doug, Tricia and James Boot have opened Chem-Dry by Rhein, specializing in carpet, tile and upholstery cleaning. Information: 239-353-4246

To submit your business news directly online, go to naplesnews.com/BIZwire or email news@naplesnews.com.
Lance Shearer/Special to the Daily News Selem Lake serves up pulled pork at the Speakeasy booth. The 26th annual Taste of Marco brought a crowd to the Esplanade shopping center Sunday afternoon to sample light bites from 14 island eateries, and benefit the YMCA.

SHARE Lance Shearer/Special to the Daily News The Marco Island Yacht Club kitchen prepared "jazzy jambalaya." The 26th annual Taste of Marco brought a crowd to the Esplanade shopping center Sunday afternoon to sample light bites from 14 island eateries, and benefit the YMCA. Lance Shearer/Special to the Daily News Alesa Mateas of Marker 8.5 dishes up seafood at their top-rated booth. The 26th annual Taste of Marco brought a crowd to the Esplanade shopping center Sunday afternoon to sample light bites from 14 island eateries, and benefit the YMCA.

By Lance Shearer, Daily News Correspondent

With the tourist season starting to wind down, residents and visitors got together for one more blowout party on Marco Island Sunday afternoon.

Crowds packed the waterfront Esplanade shopping center, and cars filled all available nearby parking spaces as people took advantage of a perfect spring day to stroll, greet friends, and sample delicacies from 14 island restaurants at the 26th annual Taste of Marco.

There was a play area for the kids with bounce houses and games, and a demonstration of ice sculpture by Michael Cox, but most of the action was in the booths lining the Esplanade's central courtyard, where patrons could turn red food tickets into tastes of the eateries' specialties.

A cool breeze blowing off the boat basin and an intermittent veil of clouds kept the heat in check, but the beer concessions, ice cream from Cold Stone Creamery and smoothies from the Summer Day Cafe also helped guests keep their cool. The Greg Miller Band, on the other hand, heated things up with their high-energy Motown grooves.

A steady stream of people who wanted a break in the action  including Katie Bashir, with her baby Beckham in his stroller and grandmother Irene Bashir  sat in the shade along the water's edge and gazed out over the waters of Smokehouse Bay.

All of the booths had their devotees, but the word on a few of the restaurants and dishes on offer spread rapidly through the crowd. There was serious buzz around the seafood strudel from Kretch's, which was made with shrimp, crab meat, scallops and a lobster and cheese sauce in flaky puff pastry.

"That is awesome," said Julie Huntley, visiting from Canada, after trying a bite. Her husband Rob said they had been impressed by how friendly everyone on Marco had been, a high compliment from residents of a country known for being nice to a fault.

The beef tenderloin from Ario, the new fine dining restaurant at the Marco Marriott, was awarded most creative food presentation, with Chef Gerald Sombright energetically shaving truffles onto each plate.

The featured benefactor of the event was the Greater Marco Family YMCA, and specifically its scholarship program, with a goal of enabling the group to sponsor children to attend preschool for free. Last year's Taste of Marco generated more than $30,000 for the Y, said Fritzi Holmes, the Y's vice president of special events. Event organizers hoped to top that figure with this year's Taste.

"The goal is always greater," she said. "We're going to try to send more kids to summer camp and help more families in need for all of the Y programs."

Marker 8.5, which also jokingly calls itself the "Goodland Yacht Club," won top honors overall in the judging conducted by Sister Patricia Roche and Sister Suzanne Dauwalter of the Salesian Sisters, St. John Bosco. Marker 8.5 featured perhaps the most extensive menu of any restaurant participating, with their lobster rolls and yellowtail towers winning many personal bests.

Marco Island Yacht Club won for best decorated, best bite went to Kretch's, and the judges' choice award was presented to Sami's Pizza. If the judges actually sampled the offerings from all the restaurants, they might need to let out their habits. But for all the winter residents and tourists who are preparing to head back up north, they will be leaving Southwest Florida with a good taste in their mouth.
William DeShazer/Staff

Streetlights in the River Park neighborhood don't turn on at dusk on Sunday Sept. 30, 2012.

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By Joseph Cranney of the Naples Daily News

The city of Naples wants to use federal grant money to construct a new sidewalk in River Park, the city's poor, mostly black neighborhood whose residents say the area could be served by a variety of public facility improvements.

The sidewalk would be built on the north side of Fifth Avenue North, stretching east from Goodlette-Frank Road to Anthony Park.

The sidewalk is the city's latest proposal to use Community Development Block Grant money from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The money, which is distributed to Naples annually through an agreement with Collier County, is required to be used in low-income areas.

Community leaders criticized city officials in the fall when the Naples Daily News reported the city has often left tens of thousands of dollars on the table when carrying out its CDBG projects. About $275,000 of the money earmarked for the River Park area has been reallocated to county nonprofits since 2001, the Daily News reported.

Harold Weeks, president of the local chapter of the NAACP, described the situation as an ethics issue.

The city invited the public to participate in this year's grant-writing process when it held a meeting at the River Park Community Center last month. About two dozen residents showed up and answered questions about the area's needs. It was the first public meeting regarding the city's CDBG spending since 2007.

According to the census, 89 percent of the city's black residents live in the River Park area. And River Park households have an annual median income of about $22,600, according to the most recent census estimates. By comparison, the city's overall median income is roughly $78,600.

There needs to be more children's programs at Anthony Park and the neighborhood would benefit from having a liaison who regularly communicates with the city, residents said. There also was the suggestion that more residents would have showed up to the meeting if the city had given more notice.

"This is so piecemeal," Mary Linda Sanders, who grew up in River Park, said on Feb. 4. "Everything is so piecemeal."

Among a list of eligible CDBG projects, residents picked sidewalks as the most-needed improvement, according to the city's survey results. Among survey respondents, 15 were River Park residents, according to the city.

The city applied for a $167,000 grant to cover the cost of the new sidewalk. The Naples City Council will vote to approve the grant application at its regular meeting Wednesday.

City Council members and River Park community leaders said the neighborhood stands to improve from a more inclusive grant-writing process. The Rev. Lonnie Mills, pastor at Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church, said he thinks the sidewalk will make the neighborhood safer for kids who sometimes walk in the street.

"It is a concern about the kids walking in the streets," Mills said.

But Willie Anthony, a longtime River Park resident, worried that the new sidewalk would encroach onto people's lawns.

"It's fine with me if the residents have not complained about putting it in front of their house," Anthony said.

The city's grant award, if ultimately approved, would be more than double what Naples got in its CDBG project last year when it upgraded the infrastructure at the intersection of Goodlette-Frank Road and Fifth Avenue North. The city typically asks for $80,000 to $100,000 in CDBG money for aesthetic projects like parking or landscaping improvements.

City Councilman Doug Finlay suggested the city can ask for more money when its grant ideas come from the public.

"I think when you get the community behind you through the public meeting process, your chances are probably going to be a lot better," Finlay said. "Community involvement in the neighborhood gives the city a better case."
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E.R. Russell, Naples

Where did America go?

Of all the comments in the political arena in recent years, the most accurate was by Professor Jonathan Gruber when he said Americans are stupid.

A lot of young people are supporting declared socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders because of his free college and free health care ideas. Hello, nothing is really free. If these young folks get jobs, they will wind up paying for all this "free stuff."

The Republican establishment is trying to take stupid to a new level. All their anti- Donald Trump efforts are going to ensure a Hillary Clinton win in November.

As for Trump, he is an enigma. His supporters have no idea what his real policies would be if elected. The Clinton supporters are also clueless. African-Americans have made no progress under President Obama and she promises more of the same.

A Quinnipiac University poll asking one word to describe Clinton noted liar as the most frequent response followed by dishonest and untrustworthy. In spite of this, many Democrats still plan to vote for her, really. If one cannot believe much of what she says, on what basis are they planning to vote for her?

Here in Florida, the Republicans are still voting against the will of the people on the gambling issue and getting away with it year after year. As I watch all this, I do not know whether to laugh or cry. What I do know is America is toast. It is only a matter of time before things get ugly.
Food, fun, and plenty of exciting auction items combined at the 11th Annual Imagine Gala on Saturday, March 12 for a magnificent evening that raised more than $70,000 to support the Imaginarium Science Center and Southwest Florida Museum of History.



Nearly 200 people enjoyed a little friendly competition and lots of great food from four of Southwest Floridas finest chefs, who sliced and diced their way through the Celebrity Cook-Off competition. Chefs Fabrice Deletrain and Benjamin Voisin of Fathoms Restaurant & Bar, Chef James Fraser of FGCUs Hospitality and Resort Management Program, and Chef David Rashty of Jacks Farm to Fork at the Pink Shell all presented exquisite works of culinary art that made the judging process extremely difficult. Among the 12 judges were TV star and MasterChef Finalist Derrick Peltz. Taking home the Imagine Gala Top Chef apron this year were Chefs Deletrain and Voisin of Fathoms.



The chefs first whetted the crowds appetite for competition, with gala guests taking to the polls to decide who would win Best Appetizer. Chef Fraser garnered the most votes for his delicious smoked sous vide breast of chicken and took home the coveted bronze chef trophy.



Educator and performer Glen Beitman brought his locally famous Wild Wizard science show, adapted for a mature audience, to the gala stage for a fantastic show involving some amazing science and gala guests.



Amongst all of the evenings excitement guests had a chance to bid on some great auction items, including chefs table dinners, a weeks vacation in the mountains of North Carolina, a full-service landscape design and installation package, a 3-day stay at the Pink Shell, magnificent clothes from Chicos, and a vacation on Captiva Island.



The generosity of ticket holders and sponsors demonstrated a dedication to the Imaginarium and SWFL Museum of History as major community assets. All money raised at the event will benefit The Imaginarium Group and SWFL Museum of History Foundation, as they continue to bring new exhibits and educational opportunities to our community.



Jonathan Romine, President of the Imaginarium Groups Board of Directors, said, We sincerely appreciate the outpouring of support we received from the community for the Imaginarium and Museum of History. Wed like to give special thanks to our Title Sponsor, Lipman Produce, for the support they continue to give to this event. The Imaginarium and Museum of History are both great assets for Southwest Florida and the continuous support we receive from the community allows us to bring great exhibits and programs to its residents.



The board, event committee, and staff are grateful to the many sponsors who helped make the gala such a great success, including Title Sponsor Lipman Produce, and major sponsors Chicos FAS, Inc., Enterprise, EnSite, Inc., Publix Supermarket Charities, CONRIC PR & Makreting, and The News-Press Media Group.



The Imaginarium Science Center is a family-friendly science center and aquarium offering fun interactive exhibits and a 3-D theatre. The mission is to engage guests in the exploration of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) through hands-on exhibit experiences and educational programs that further the understanding of the natural and human-made world, foster an appreciation for Southwest Floridas unique environment and natural waterways, and nurture intellectual curiosity, discovery, and innovation. For more information, visit www.i-sci.org.



The SWFL Museum of History The Southwest Florida Museum of History is dedicated to the collection, preservation, and interpretation of history and traditions, with particular emphasis on Fort Myers and Southwest Florida. Exhibits showcase the regions rich history, from prehistoric to modern day. For more information, visit www.MUSEUMofHISTORY.org.



The Imaginarium Science Center and the SWFL Museum of History have been under joint leadership for nearly a decade, but are now planning a new museum experience. Get a sneak peek as to where that path may lead at this joint fundraising event. It is sure to make history and blaze new trails into the future.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and US President Barack Obama discussed the Alliances response to key security challenges at the White House in Washington D.C. and preparations for the Warsaw Summit in July. Their meeting on Monday (4 April 2016) had special symbolism, as it took place 67 years since the signing of the Washington Treaty, on which the Alliance is founded.

The Secretary General stressed that "NATO is as important as ever, because NATO has been able to adapt to a more dangerous world." He thanked President Obama for his personal leadership and his commitment to transatlantic security.

The two leaders discussed the common fight against terrorism. "Terrorism affects us all, from Brussels to San Bernardino," Mr Stoltenberg said, noting that all NATO Allies contribute to the US-led effort to degrade and destroy ISIL and that NATO has just started training Iraqi officers. They also discussed how NATO can increase its support to other countries in the region, including Libya. 

Afghanistan was also high on the agenda. Mr Stoltenberg underlined that NATO's biggest operation, a response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the US, shows the importance of Europe and North America standing together.

The Secretary General outlined NATO's strengthening of its collective defence in response to a more assertive Russia, and thanked President Obama for the important US contribution through the European Reassurance Initiative.

The two leaders also stressed the importance of increased investments in defence at a time of greater security challenges.

On Tuesday (5 April 2016), the Secretary General will meet with senior US defence officials and observe a military training exercise at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. On Wednesday, Mr. Stoltenberg will also meet with members of the Armed Services Committee and Foreign Relations Committee on Capitol Hill, and deliver a keynote speech at an event organised by the Atlantic Council in Washington D.C.
(NaturalNews) Decades after the practice was banned via federal regulations, there are still a number of damaging effects lingering from a legacy of dumping into the environment tens of thousands of pounds of chemical waste used to produce pesticides, says a June 30 report inAccording to the Illinois-based publication, the production by the Hooker Chemical Company of C-56, "the progenitor of many now-banned organocholorine pestistides," has resulted in contamination and lasting environmental damage. The group Beyond Pesticides "has long advocated for the elimination of hazardous synthetic pesticides," the report said, "due to unnecessary risks that put the health of both people and entire communities in jeopardy."As further reported byThe situation was very advantageous for the company because it needed vast underground reserves of salt and lake water for cooling purposes during the process of manufacturing its industrial pesticide."Hooker had been welcomed into the community because as individuals they were well-educated, well-spoken and nobody at the time had any idea what the attitude of industry was toward our natural environment ," said local attorney Winton Dahlstrom.In the 1980s, Marjory Erdman, Beth Manchesky and Kristy Anderson, all from Montague, formed an early friendship, grew up and started families. All three remained very close. One day, in 2010, they were all having lunch together and discovered that each of them had contracted a deadly disease that likely would result in early death. Anderson had developed a rare sarcoma; Manchesky had a rare form of mantel cell lymphoma, and Erdman had contracted a rare uterine cancer , the report said.The common denominator between them was the environment in which they grew up, which was rife with industrial pollution.Later, the three discovered that they were not alone in contracting illness; a number of other longtime residents from the same area also had a number of health problems,reported."There is a good chance it's from the environment -- that either the water or the air or something in our environment [contributed]," said the father of 16-year-old Zachary Peterson, who died after being diagnosed with rare hepatocellular carcinoma (liver cancer), a disease that normally strikes liver-damaged males over 50. "But how do you prove it?"Some years ago, Claire Schlaff, a local resident, began to look for answers following the death of her son at age 35. She started collecting data that she believed could help answer questions that were arising in the community. Along with some volunteers, they founded the White Lake Cancer Mapping Project, which collected information about people who lived in the area and who had been diagnosed with, or died from, cancer."With the information collected, they were able to track the cases over time and establish a pattern," said the report. Often, Schlaff would have to deliver bad news to those looking for links and closure regarding the local environment and the death of a loved one."It's very difficult when you're talking about exposure to chemicals in the environment and proving they have caused any individual illness," she said. "There are lots of reasons, starting with the people. Every person comes to the table with different hereditary genetics and disposition to disease. While you can have a group of people exposed to a chemical, all at the same level and same time, each person will react differently."The report said that investigator James Truchan looked into Hooker during the 1970s and early 1980s; he became convinced that the local health issues were tied directly to the chemical compound C-56."C-56 as a compound is extremely toxic," he said. "It's extremely mutagenic and it'salso fetotoxic. It's extremely bad stuff. My only hope is that people exposed to it don't have some kind of detrimental health effects down the road from it 20, 30 or 40 years from now."C-56, also known as hexachlorocyclopentadiene, is an organochlorine compound from which many now-banned pesticides , including DDT, methoxychlor, dieldrin, chlordane, toxaphene, mirex, kepone, lindane and benzene hexachloride, are derived and produced."It makes you wonder," Erdman said in 2011, according to a report in. "Even my doctor said at one point 'This is just odd. You seem to have hung around with a circle of friends that seem to have all these problems.'"Anderson and Manchesky have both since died from their diseases; Erdman, however, is a cancer survivor.
Herbicide-resistant weeds

(NaturalNews) The biotech industry has been under a lot of scrutiny recently for its part in causing the development of herbicide-resistant weeds , which are becoming a huge problem for farmers. This resistance, combined with the toxicity of herbicides, means that it is crucial that we find an alternative way to get rid of those pesky weeds  and that's where Ibex, a.k.a. "The Terminator," comes in.Ibex is a new invention created in Britain by Dr. Charles Fox who hopes to revolutionize the way farmers control weeds, according to the. The machine is a rover-like robot that is able to identify individual weeds according to its settings and can navigate in a similar way to self-driving cars in order to reach the location of the weeds and spray herbicide in small patches.On-board sensors identify encroaching weeds and destroy them one at a time using a robotic arm. This method is a lot more species-specific than broadcast spraying and causes less harm to the environment.As reported by the, Dr. Fox said, "There is a lack of ways to tackle weeds in difficult to reach areas like hill farms, it's become too expensive to employ individuals to spray each area and spraying a whole field - grass and everything - is not good for the environment." The hope is that eventually Ibex will evolve to be able to kill weeds simply using a needle-like jab to the right spot on the weed  making it even less likely to interact with the wrong species.When genetically engineered (GE) seeds began to be used in farming across the US, Monsanto  a Big Agribusiness that produces both GE seeds and popular herbicide Roundup  created a big problem. Roundup contains the chemical glyphosate, which is extremely toxic to both humans and the environment. It is also categorized as a broad-spectrum herbicide, which means that it will destroy almost every plant it comes into contact with  except for specially modified GE plants.There has always been concerns that the combination of GE plants and herbicide use would create a problem down the line. When herbicides such as Roundup and GE seeds were first used together, Big Agri promised that GE plants wouldn't be able to cross with weeds  so there would be no danger of herbicide resistance. When GE crop weed hybrids first started to sprout up, Big Agri then promised that they wouldn't persist, as they were unstable and would die out after a couple of years.According to, scientists from Canada's Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food discovered that there is a persistence and apparent introgression  the "stable incorporation of genes from one gene pool into another"  with these hybrid plants. For example, GE canola plants have been found to interbreed with a weed, producing a hybrid called "wild mustard" that is resistant to the herbicide Roundup.The problem with this is that farmers are now struggling to kill these herbicide-resistant weeds  and the numbers of these hybrid plants will only continue to rise with the ongoing use of GE seeds. Farmers are now having to turn to alternative methods such as the robotic weedkiller, in an attempt to be more specific with their herbicide application and take down particularly resistant weeds.According to, Terry Boehm, a Canadian farmer now speaking out against the adoption of GE crops in other nations, stated that "contamination takes place rapidly, there are many legal disputes over responsibility and ownership and we lost the European (export) market soon after GM canola was introduced to Canada.""Canada is now a GM country," Boehm said.Will Monsanto simply create a stronger herbicide to help combat these new herbicide-resistant weeds?
BPA found in 70 percent of food packages

Taking a closer look at the bill's author

Calif. backtracks on BPA labeling

(NaturalNews) Finally, the health implications of bisphenol A, or BPA, are becoming well known as science continues to uncover its harmful array of side effects on humans. The industrial chemical is routinely used as a coating inside canned foods. Because it is also a synthetic estrogen, BPA mimics the body's sex hormones, resulting in countless health problems including infertility, early puberty and cancer.While the mainstream media is doing a better job at educating the public regarding the health effects of BPA, newly introduced legislation could take consumer education on BPA one step farther.Introduced March 19, the BPA in Food Packaging Right to Know Act would ban the sale of food package containers composed in whole or in part of BPA unless they come with a warning label that states: "This food packaging contains BPA, an endocrine-disrupting chemical, according to the National Institutes of Health."The proposed legislation, S.821, would also require the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct "a revised safety assessment for food containers composed in whole or in part of" BPA to determine whether the chemical is dangerous (even in low-doses) to "vulnerable populations" such as pregnant women, infants, children and the elderly.If passed, S.821 would have a huge effect on the food industry. Recently, it was revealed that nearly 70 percent of cans produced by major retailers, such as General Mills, Campbell Soup, Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, contain the hormone-disrupting chemical Testing across 19 states and one province in Canada found BPA in canned vegetables, fruits, soups, broth, gravy, milk and beans, according to Market Watch Though retailers say they're moving away from BPA packaging, the analysis found the chemical in 62 percent of private-labeled canned foods from "grocery stores, big box retailers and dollar stores."It was present in 62 percent of Kroger products and half of Albertsons' products. No BPA was found in Amy's Kitchen, General Mills' Annie's Homegrown, Hain Celestial Group or ConAgra cans.An interesting fact about the bill is that it's authored by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who appears to have done an about-face regarding consumer rights. Previously, Feinstein has thrown her support behind war in the Middle East, NSA surveillance and widespread gun confiscation.She also introduced legislation "to route $25 billion in taxpayer money to a government agency that had just awarded her husband's real estate firm a lucrative contract to sell foreclosed properties at compensation rates higher than the industry norms."However, it appears she's taken a newfound interest in consumer safety. In addition to supporting the right to know if food packaging contains BPA, Feinstein is also supporting a bill that would devise a national standard for GMO labeling The Calif. senator co-authored the Biotechnology Food Labeling Uniformity Act, introduced by Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), which would give food companies several options for listing the presence of genetically altered ingredients on a product's Nutrition Facts Panel.It would also encourage the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to work with food manufacturers to develop a national symbol disclosing whether or not a food product contains genetically modified ingredients, according to Consumers Union, the policy and advocacy arm ofIt's worth mentioning that Feinstein votedthe DARK (Deny Americans the Right to Know) Act, legislation that would have prevented individual states from passing GMO-labeling laws, as well as reversing any that are currently in effect.Businesses in the Golden State are required to include warning labels on products containing hazardous chemicals. Though last year scientists identified "reproductive toxicity" caused by BPA and added the chemical to its list of ingredients requiring labeling, the state is backpedaling.Using the same argument that Big Food cited to weasel out of labeling GMOs, officials said that BPA labeling would somehow "confuse customers and cut poor people off from fruits and vegetables," reports theInstead of placing warning labels on cans, the state suggests placing signs at registers.Food makers want to keep using BPA but promise to reduce the chemical to safe levels  critics argue there is no such thing.
'Dust-off' drift

A broken system

Taking action



(NaturalNews) Two beekeepers were recently compensated by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, after it was proven that a widely used class of insecticides destroyed their hives last spring. Neonicotinoids, which chemically resemble nicotine , were found to have drifted onto the hives from a nearby corn field, and as a result, severely damaged the colony and killed some of the bees.The beekeepers were compensated under a law passed in 2014, which provides reimbursement for beekeepers whose hives have been affected by acute pesticide poisoning "This is the first action of any state, a finding of fact, that neonicotinoids are harmful to bees," said Sen. Rick Hansen, who sponsored the environmental law. "Once you have a state compensating people for a loss, it's real."Neonics can be applied as a seed coating or sprayed directly onto the crop. Because they are systemic pesticides, neonics are taken up by the plant and transferred to its leaves, flowers, roots and stems, as well as pollen and nectar. Corn seed is routinely pre-treated with some level of neonics, which can "dust-off" and contaminate other plants."The Minnesota case was a prime example of the 'dust-off' phenomenon that can occur with neonicotinoid-coated seeds used with talc seed lubricants. Small amounts of the insecticide can mix with the lubricant coating and contaminate the lubricant dust that blows out of the planter as it is dropping seeds," according to KTIC Radio "In this form, the chemicals can drift off target onto flowering plants and trees nearby, for example. When bees visit these flowers, they carry the contaminated pollen back to the hive."Laboratory studies show that, depending on the amount of exposure to neonics, the effects on bees can be either sub-lethal or lethal. Sub-lethal effects include impaired learning behavior, memory loss, lowered fertility, and problems with foraging and motor activity, according to a report by Washington State University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.Pam Arnold, who manages five hives on her organic farm, and Kristy Allen, founder of the Minneapolis honey company Beez Kneez, were the two beekeepers compensated under the law. Arnold explains that her neighbor across the road planted corn coated in insecticides on a day that the wind was blowing towards her and Allen's hives.Allen immediately suspected what had occurred. Sure enough, tests performed by the Agriculture Department found "acute levels" of neonics in the dead bees, as well as on nearby dandelions.Allen helped pass the 2014 reimbursement law, and said that being one of the first beekeepers to be compensated "is an irony that kills me." The state's ruling is unique, in that no actual laws were broken when the neonics drifted."The fact that MDA is compensating me for something that is not illegal is crazy to me," said Allen. "It means something is broken."A 2015 alteration to the compensation law requires beekeepers to register the locations of their hives so that farmers can be more vigilant about chemical drift Honey bees are absolutely crucial to human survival, as they are solely responsible for pollinating more than $15 billion worth of crops in America each year, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council Without bees, we wouldn't have foods like carrots, apples, avocados, broccoli, onions and many others. Neonics not only affect bees, but hurt other pollinators including bats, birds, beetles and butterflies.The chemicals are also known to pollute rivers and streams. But government is finally starting to make some headway in reducing use of these chemicals. Maryland is poised to become the very first U.S. state to ban the sale of neonics to consumers; farmers, however, will still be allowed to use them.The following cities have moved to ban or limit neonicotinoids use: Seattle and Spokane, Washington; Portland and Eugene, Oregon; Skagway, Alaska; Boulder City, Colorado; and Shorewood, Minnesota.The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service vowed to halt the use of neonicotinoids on wildlife refuges beginning January 2016. Neonicotinoids are largely banned in the European Union; however, last summer, after being pressured by the National Farmers Union, lawmakers in the UK lifted the ban, allowing the use of two neonicotinoid pesticides for 120 days on 5 percent of oilseed rape crops.
Researchers recently took a second look at the genome of gorillas to acquire fresh insight on their similarities and differences with us.

Using the DNA of a gorilla named Sue, researchers discovered that they are more genetically related to humans, more than what the previous results of the first gorilla genetic mapping in 2012 showed, as per a Reuters report.

The gorilla, according to Defenders of Wildlife, is one of the four species of great apes that are closely related to humans. The other three are chimps, bonobos and orangutans.

NH Voice reported that the latest genome sequencing of gorillas revealed only a 1.6 percent difference in the genes of gorillas and humans.

Chimps and bonobos are the closest relative of humans with only 1.2 percent gene divergence, while orangutans differ from humans by 3.1 percent.

Humans differ from one another by around 0.1 percent.

The study, published in the journal Science, also showed the areas where gorillas and humans are different. These include sensory perception, regulation of insulin, production of keratin and the immune and reproductive systems.

Christopher Hill, a genetic researcher at University of Washington and one of the authors of the study, told Reuters that researchers can better identify parts of the human genome that are related with complex language, higher cognition, and behavior and neurological diseases by looking at the difference between species.

Hill added that the availability of complete and accurate genomes for comparisons allowed the researchers to discover interspecies differences.

Gorillas can be found in Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They are listed in the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species as "critically endangered."

According to Sea World, female gorillas can only give birth around every four years with usually only one infant, and in rare occasions, they give birth to twins.

The populations of gorillas are in a constant decline due to diseases, poaching, habitat loss and civil unrest.
Iraqi forces took the northern edge of the Islamic State-held town of Hit, west of Baghdad, on Sunday in an operation led by the country's elite counterterrorism forces, military officials said.

The operation to recapture Hit was relaunched last week, but the troops' progress has been slowed by hundreds of roadside bombs and efforts to safeguard thousands of civilians trapped inside the town.

"We've never had a delay like this on one of our targets," said Gen. Husham al-Jabri of Iraq's counterterrorism forces. Al-Jabri carefully plotted progress towards Hit on a map in a temporary operations center just south of the city.

The initial push to take Hit was launched last month, but was quickly put on hold when Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi pulled forces back to Baghdad after anti-government protests threatened instability in the Iraqi capital.

After the operation resumed, Iraqi forces had to deal with hundreds of roadside bombs laid by ISIS fighters along the main roads leading in and out of Hit, forcing convoys to veer off into the surrounding desert terrain. Even there, the forces' advance was repeatedly brought to a standstill by booby-trapped explosives. Progress was further complicated by muddy conditions after days of rainfall.

"The roadside bomb is the only weapon they have left to depend on," said Ayad Ghazi, a sergeant with one of the leading battalions inching toward the town. Just a few hundred meters ahead of him plumes of orange smoke rose from controlled blasts. He said it took his men 12 hours to travel just three miles (five kilometers) on Sunday.

While initially used on a limited basis by al-Qaida in Iraq, the predecessor to the Islamic State group, ISIS now produces roadside bombs on an industrial scale. ISIS fighters use these bombs defensively, placing the devices to essentially create mine fields to impede advancing government forces. ISIS also litters cities and towns with the explosive devices to hinder pursuit of their fleeing fighters.

Iraqi forces have struggled to train and equip enough units to deal with the sheer volume of the bombs.

The U.S.-led coalition said Iraqi forces were in the outskirts of Hit and working to surround the town, seeking to build on recent gains made by government forces with the recapture in February of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province in central Iraq.

Hit, 85 miles (140 kilometers) west of Baghdad, lies along a supply line linking the extremist group's fighters in Iraq with those in neighboring Syria. Iraqi military officials say retaking Hit would cut ISIS supply lines and allow anti-IS forces to link up to the west and north of Baghdad.

Iraqi and coalition officials said that retaking Hit will be a key step before an eventual push on Mosul, the largest Iraqi city held by ISIS.

Associated Press writer Khalid Mohammed in Hit, Iraq, contributed to this report.
Firefighters were still on the scene Monday morning after a Chicago laundromat became engulfed in flames overnight.

Around 2 a.m. fire crews were called to the JM Laundromat on the citys Northwest Side to find a fire taking over the entire 6,000 square-foot building at 5130 W. Fullerton Ave.

For hours they battled the blaze, with flames shooting upwards of 40 feet into the air through the roof of the one-story structure, fire officials said.

Firefighters attempted to make their way into the laundromat, but were pushed back, thankfully, because the roof caved in just 30 minutes later, officials said.

The mornings windy conditions helped in the battle, according to fire crews, as the powerful gusts stopped the flames from spreading further.

We could have had garages and houses on fire, Chicago Fire Department Battalion Chief Thomas McCormack said. The wind was with us tonight."

No injuries were reported and no one was inside when emergency responders arrived, but the laundromat is destroyed, officials said.

The cause of the fire is still unknown.
A North Hills man was charged Friday in the shooting death of his son, whom he allegedly killed because he was gay, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office.

Shehada Khalil Issa, 69, was charged with one count of willful, deliberate and premeditated murder, officials said. Prosecutors said the felony complaint includes a special allegation that Issa personally and intentionally discharged a shotgun and an allegation that he murdered his son because of his sexual orientation.

His son and wife were found dead Tuesday in his home in the 15000 block of Rayen Street, prosecutors said.

Amir Issa, 29, was shot outside of the house and his body was discovered in the front yard. His mother was found dead inside the bathroom, investigators said.

Prosecutors said Shehada Issa allegedly threatened to kill his son on prior occasions because of his sexual orientation.

Neighbors heard multiple gunshots that morning. They said they often hear arguing at the home. Investigators were determining whether the shootings were a result of a domestic dispute.

An investigation into the mother's death is ongoing, prosecutors said.

Shehada Issa was being held without bail. If convicted as charged, he faces life in prison without the possibility of parole, prosecutors said.
Forty-two people were displaced by a morning fire in a Hartford apartment building Sunday.

Hartford fire officials say the department responded around 11:34 a.m. after multiple 911 calls reporting a fire at 48 Huntington Street. When they arrived they saw heavy fire showing from the windows of a third-floor unit. Multiple residents were assisted out of the building by firefighters. Two people were transported to a local hospital for difficulty breathing but have since been treated and released.

Firefighters were concerned strong winds would be an issue fighting the fire but by 11:56 a.m. it was declared under control. The fire was contained to one apartment but the building, which contains 14 units, sustained significant smoke and water damage and was deemed uninhabitable for the time being.

Thirty adults and 12 children are being relocated with assistance from the American Red Cross and Special Services Unit, according to the Hartford Fire Department. The fire marshal is investigating the cause of the fire.
The body of 16-year-old Carlos Alejandro Perez, the Mansfield student who went missing last week, has been found Monday in South Texas, according to a school district statement.

Perez disappeared Friday in rough waters in the Gulf of Mexico at Corpus Christi.

The Lake Ridge High School ninth grader was in Corpus Christi as part of a school trip for the SkillsUSA state competition  a competition of trade skills like welding and masonry.

A Coast Guard spokeswoman said Perez's body was found by someone on sea turtle patrol near Padre Island National Seashore, about 25 miles south of the pier where he was last seen.

A small memorial greeted students at Lake Ridge High School Monday morning following the disappearance of their classmate.

Mansfield ISD officials said they had counselors available at all campuses this week to provide support.

Online: Carlos Perez Memorial Fund - GoFundMe
A lawyer murdered in Southlake three years ago was the de facto head of the Gulf Cartel, one of the largest and most violent drug organizations in Mexico, according to a defense attorney for one of three men charged in the slaying.

The victim, Juan Guerrero Chapa, ran a large criminal enterprise whose activities included murders, narcotics trafficking, kidnapping, extortion, bribery, money laundering and torture and had a large number of enemies, the suspects attorney wrote in a court filing on Monday.

Guerrero, 43, was gunned down in an ambush in May 2013 on the Southlake Town Square.

It has been previously reported that Guerrero was once the personal attorney for former Gulf Cartel leader Osiel Cardenas but the allegation that Guerrero ran the cartel himself after Cardenas arrest is new.

Ledezma-Cepedas son, Jesus Gerardo Ledezma-Campano, and the fathers cousin, Jose Luis Cepeda, of Edinberg also were indicted in Guerreros murder. The trial is set to start in federal court in Fort Worth on April 25.

The father and son were former police officers in a wealthy suburb of Mexicos third-largest city, Monterrey.

They are not accused of being the actual triggermen in Southlake.

Instead, prosecutors charged the trio essentially with being part of a sophisticated intelligence squad, following Guerrero for months with an electronic GPS tracker they had placed on his car and a remote camera they had hidden in his upscale Southlake neighborhood.

The three were charged with stalking and conspiracy to commit murder.

In court filings, prosecutors have linked the three to a dozen other drug-related murders in Mexico.

At the time of Guerreros murder, Southlake police described it as a professional hit. He was shot once in the chest and nine times in the back in just six seconds as he was getting in his Range Rover after shopping with his wife. She was not injured.

The men who shot Guerrero and organized the ambush have not been arrested and are believed to be in Mexico.

Records show Guerrero was not licensed to practice law in Texas and had no apparent job.

He bought a $1.2 million house in Southlake under an assumed name in July 2011.

Investigating Guerreros murder became a high priority for the FBI and other agencies.

VICTIM WAS INFORMANT

Adding a twist to the case, Guerrero was an informant for Homeland Security Investigations, the investigative arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, at the time of his murder, NBC 5 has reported.

If true, the allegation about Guerrero heading a major cartel raises questions about his relationship with the U.S. government and whether agents turned a blind eye to his illegal activities in exchange for information.

Usually law enforcement officers use lower-level informants to work their way up an organization, not to protect the top boss.

Fred Burton, vice president for intelligence for the Austin-based global security company Stratfor, said it would not be surprising that Guerrero held a senior position with the drug-trafficking organization.

In my view, the scope and sophistication of the narco hit in Southlake adds credence to the defense allegations, he said.

After his murder, police and federal agents would say only that Guerrero was a Mexican citizen who had been living legally in Southlake.

THE CARTELS

The Gulf Cartel is one of Mexicos largest, most violent and most sophisticated cartels.

Cardenas was arrested in Mexico in 2003 after a shootout with the Mexican military.

He was widely believed to have continued running the cartel from inside a Mexican prison.

In 2007, he was extradited to Houston, where, in an extraordinary plea deal in 2010, he was sentenced to just 25 years in prison in exchange for his cooperation.

It is unclear when Guerrero became a U.S. informant or what information he may have provided to American investigators.

Prosecutors have not publicly said which cartel may have wanted Guerrero dead or why.

Guerreros enemies included members of the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas, Ledezma-Cepedas attorneys said in Mondays filing. The Zetas were once part of the Gulf Cartel but split off to become their own group in 2010.

A third organization, the Beltran-Leyva cartel, is said to control the Monterrey suburb where the Ledezmas are from.

DISPUTE OVER AUTOPSY RESULTS

The allegations about Guerrero heading the Gulf Cartel came in two defense attorneys response to a prosecutors motion to suppress evidence that Guerreros autopsy showed he had cocaine in his system at the time of his death.

Prosecutors argued the autopsy results are not relevant to the murder.

But the two lawyers for Jesus Gerardo Ledezma-Cepeda, Wes Ball and Warren St. John, argued the fact Guerrero had used cocaine shows he had continued his association with criminal groups.

U.S. District Judge Terry Means, who is presiding over the case, has not ruled whether the autopsy should be admitted.

STRICT TRIAL RULES

Judge Means has issued a strict set of trial instructions for lawyers.

Prosecutors had asked for 60 hours to present their case.

The judge ordered them to do it in 35 hours, including the opening statement and cross-examination.

Defense attorneys will get 25 hours.

The judge also ordered that spectators can enter the courtroom only before the call to order and during recesses.

Anyone who leaves cannot re-enter until the next break, the judge wrote.
A small plane that crash landed on a San Diego freeway Saturday, killing one and injuring five, previously landed safely on the same freeway 16 years ago.

The single-engine, two-seat Lancair IV crashed into a car on Interstate 15 North near State Route 76 at approximately 9:15 a.m. Saturday morning, about 50 miles north of San Diego.

The driver, Aaron Meccann, had pulled over to sync his Bluetooth when the plane crash landed in the fourth lane of the freeway, sliding 250 feet and hitting the back of the Nissan, California Highway Patrol (CHP) authorities said.

See photos from the scene of the crash here.

Watch video from moments after the plane crash here (Warning: graphic language).

Saturday's crash was not the first time the Lancair IV was spotted on the I-15.

Matt Nokes, a San Diego resident and former MLB player, told NBC 7 San Diego he believes he was the original owner of that plane, based on the identical tail number of the plane and the model.

He said at one point, he was flying near Rancho Bernardo when he had to make an emergency landing on the I-15 during the plane's second flight in February 2000.

"I just looked around, and it was all rolling hills," he told NBC News.

He told NBC 7 he saw a break in traffic and deployed landing gear, safely landing between cars.

After the landing, Noke said he had some machinery replaced and flew it regularly for four more years before he sold it in 2004. A fuel flow problem led to the crash, he said, but he never did learn what caused the problem.

Antoinette Frances Isbelle, 38, a passenger sitting in the back of the car, was crushed to death on impact, CHP officials said. Meccann, 43, the driver, suffered lacerations above his eye. A 45-year-old woman and 36-year-old man, both passengers in the car, were also injured and taken to the hospital, officials said.

The pilot, identified as Dennis Hogge, of Jamul, suffered life-threatening injuries and severe head trauma. His passenger, a woman in her 50s, was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Noke told NBC 7 San Diego he knows Hogge and called his an excellent pilot and master plane builder.

"Something must have gone horribly wrong," Noke told NBC News.

Authorities on scene told NBC 7 San Diego that a 38-year-old woman, identified as Antoinette Frances Isbelle, was sitting in the back passenger seat and was crushed to death at impact. Meccann, 43, who had pulled over to sync his Bluetooth, was taken to Palomar Hospital with lacerations above his eye; a 45-year-old female sitting in the front left passenger seat was taken to Sharp Linda Vista; a 36-year-old man sitting in the back passenger seat was taken to Sharp Linda Vista Hospital.

Hogge, 60, suffered severe head trauma, CHP officials said; his injuries are considered life-threatening. He was taken to Palomar Hospital. The passenger in the plane, a woman in her 50s, suffered non life-threatening injuries and was taken to Palomar Hospital.

CHP officials said there was no evidence landing gear was deployed in Saturday's crash; it appeared the plane had mechanical issues.

"I can't get into the pilot's mind, what he saw at a particular time; I don't know how he was, I don't know what his airspeed was, so I really don't know what his options were at the time," Howard Plagens, a NTSB investigator, said.

Noke said the plane was a high-performance machine built much like a BMV, constructed by a master builder over four years.

NTSB officials said it is unclear if there was a black box on the plane. Investigators may be able to use radar data to look at the pilot's flight profile, they said.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is investigating the cause of the crash. Investigators performed an initial inspection of aircraft and engine Saturday, but will do a more thorough inspection at their facility in Arizona. A preliminary report is expected in five to seven days.
Two former baggage handlers at Los Angeles International Airport were arrested Monday and charged in connection with a cocaine smuggling operation.

Adrian Ponce, 27, and Alberto Preciado Gutierrez, 26, were charged in federal court with conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine. The men allegedly helped couriers involved in a nationwide operation use commercial airlines to smuggle kilogram samples of the cocaine from Los Angeles to East Coast customers.

Both men were scheduled to appear Monday in federal court in Los Angeles. It was not immediately clear whether the men have attorneys.

"These defendants are charged with abusing their privileged access on behalf of drug dealers," said United States Attorney Eileen M. Decker. "This case is yet another example of employees associated with airports assisting drug traffickers."

About two weeks ago, a JetBlue flight attendant was arrested in a separate case after allegedly attempting to bring nearly 70 pounds of cocaine through security at LAX. Marsha Gay Reynolds ran from a security checkpoint and out of LAX before she turned herself in to authorities in New York City on Wednesday, investigators said.

Reynolds, charged with possession of cocaine with intent to distribute, is also expected in federal court Monday.

Preciado and Ponce were arrested during an investigation into the use of employee credentials to breach airport security, according to the United States Attorneys Office. Preciado was identified in a criminal complaint as a suprevisory baggage handler employed by Swissport International at LAX.

In December, investigators seized a kilogram of cocaine in an LAX Terminal 3 restroom, where Preciado was delivering the drug to a courier scheduled to take a flight to New York just hours later, according to the federal complaint. He was fired by Swissport after the incident, according to authorities.

Ponce was arrested as he waited for Preciado in a vehicle outside Terminal 3, according to investigators.

"Ponce gave a written statement in which he admitted that 'on multiple occasions,' he and Preciado had used Preciado's supervisory status as an LAX employee to smuggle drugs to out-of-state drug customers by using third-party couriers... who had booked flights from LAX to the East Coast, and were willing to take the drugs on a commercial flight in exchange for payment," according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office.

If East Coast buyers liked the samples, larger shipments were delivered by driving the cocaine across country, according to authorities.

If convicted, Ponce and Preciado would face a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in federal prison, and a statutory maximum sentence of life.
Senegal has agreed to take in two Libyans who spent nearly 14 years in custody at the U.S. base in Cuba without charge, becoming the second country in West Africa to accept former detainees, officials said Monday.



Salem Abdu Salam Ghereby, 55, and Omar Khalif Mohammed Abu Baker Mahjour, who records show is about 44, were both members of the Libya Islamic Fighting Group, an organization that sought the ouster of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and had been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. since 2004.

Khalif's lawyer, Ramzi Kassem, said his client is looking forward to "receiving proper medical care" as he is missing his right leg below the knee after stepping on a land mine in Afghanistan in 1998. He is also blind in one eye, and has shrapnel in his leg and arm.

"This is a bittersweet moment. I'm unsure why a half-blind, one-legged man with only one fully-functioning arm, and whose only supposed crime was to object to the Gadhafi dictatorship in his native Libya, was not freed years ago," said Kassem, a professor at City University of New York School of Law.

Ghereby had been cleared for transfer from Guantanamo by U.S. authorities since 2010. His lawyer didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Their departure comes amid an effort by President Barack Obama to release Guantanamo prisoners who are no longer deemed a threat and to eventually close the detention center, a prospect that faces strong opposition in U.S. Congress. With the release of the two Libyans, there are 89 men left, including 35 cleared for release who are expected to be gone within months.

Neither of the two Libyans could be sent back to the homeland they fled in the 1990s because of the instability there unleashed by the violent overthrow of Gadhafi. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry expressed thanks that Senegal agreed to take the men.

"The United States appreciates the generous assistance of the government of Senegal as the United States continues its efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility," Kerry said. "This significant humanitarian gesture is consistent with Senegal's leadership on the global stage."

Senegal's Foreign Affairs Ministry confirmed they would be receiving the former detainees in a statement released Monday on the country's independence day. It cited the "Senegalese tradition of hospitality" and Islamic solidarity.

Khalif, who had been cleared by a U.S. government review board last year, was described in a profile issued by the Pentagon as having worked for a company owned by Osama bin Laden in Sudan after he fled Libya in the 1990s.

He later moved to Afghanistan, where he allegedly fought against the Northern Alliance in its war with the Taliban. Kassem, his lawyer, said that a U.S. federal court judge found there was no evidence that he was ever involved in any attacks on the U.S. or its allies. Both men relocating to Senegal were captured in Pakistan.

More than two dozen countries have now taken nearly 100 former Guantanamo prisoners since 2009. These are the first to go to Senegal, though the West African nation of Ghana also has accepted two former detainees.

Their arrival comes amid growing concern about Islamic extremism in Senegal.

Officials in the moderate, predominantly Muslim country on West Africa's coastline have grown increasingly concerned about the threat of jihadis in recent months. Al-Qaida's North Africa branch has carried out a series of deadly attacks on places popular with foreigners, including hotels, a restaurant and a beach in the region.

Senegal is now widely considered a possible next target after the attacks in Mali, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast. As a result, security has been significantly enhanced at upscale international hotels, along with French-owned grocery stores and restaurants in the normally peaceful capital. Armed police officers in flak jackets search the contents of all vehicles entering the parking lot of Dakar's sole upscale shopping center.
A federal judge in New Orleans granted final approval Monday to an estimated $20 billion settlement over the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, resolving years of litigation over the worst offshore spill in the nation's history.

The settlement, first announced in July, includes $5.5 billion in civil Clean Water Act penalties and billions more to cover environmental damage and other claims by the five Gulf states and local governments. The money is to be paid out over a 16-year period. The U.S. Justice Department has estimated that the settlement will cost the oil giant as much as $20.8 billion, the largest environmental settlement in U.S. history as well as the largest-ever civil settlement with a single entity.

U.S District Judge Carl Barbier, who approved the settlement, had set the stage with an earlier ruling that BP had been "grossly negligent" in the offshore rig explosion that killed 11 workers and caused a 134-million-gallon spill.

In 2012, BP reached a similar settlement agreement with private attorneys for businesses and residents who claim the spill cost them money. That deal, which didn't have a cap, led to a protracted court battle over subsequent payouts to businesses. A court-supervised claims administrator is still processing many of these claims.

BP has estimated its costs related to the spill, including its initial cleanup work and the various settlements and criminal and civil penalties, will exceed $53 billion.

David Uhlmann, a University of Michigan law professor and former chief of the Justice Department's environmental crimes section, said Barbier's ruling "ends a long sad chapter in American environmental history."

"The question that remains is whether we have learned enough from this tragedy to prevent similar environmental disasters in the future," he said.

Associated Press Writer Michael Kunzelman contributed to this report.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel asked the offices of the U.S. Attorney and Cook County States Attorney to launch a hate crime investigation Sunday after racial slurs, including the n-word, were heard on police radio channels last month.

The Chicago Police Department began an internal investigation March 14 after learning of an "inappropriate transmission on a police frequency," authorities said. According to Emanuel and the police department's Office of Emergency Management and Communications, the transmission was made not by a police officer but by an "unauthorized private citizen."

Audio from calls made on March 13 reveal a man saying "typical f---ing n-----s" on the radio channel as a dispatcher and officer communicate. Someone says in another transmission, "All black lives matter man, f---ing n-----s."

An officer on the channel asks the dispatcher to find out whose radio the comments came from but the dispatcher says she can't track it down.

"You know we don't do radio numbers, but I'm already hollering for my supervisor," she said.

In a formal request made Sunday to State's Attorney Anita Alvarez and U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon, Emanuel said similar incidents have occurred since those calls were made public.



"In subsequent days, there have been at least three additional instances of one or more unauthorized users broadcasting racial slurs over CPD radio frequencies," Emanuel wrote.



Emanuel also said the broadcasts were not made from a police officer or on city equipment, a position the OEMC has maintained since shortly after the calls were made public.



"Subsequent investigation has indicated that the transmission was made by an unauthorized private citizen using non-City issue equipment," Emanuel said in the letter to Alvarez and Fardon.



"The audio in question lacks identifying characteristics of an official police radio," OEMC said in a statement following the March 13 calls. The department also said that any officer involved in making such statements would be disciplined.



"The language used does not represent the values of our police department or our city," Emanuel's letter reads. "These actions merit serious investigation as a hate crime or other applicable offense under Illinois or federal law."



The request for a hate crime investigation comes amid continuing tensions and fallout after the release of footage showing the fatal October 2014 police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.
Authorities say the countrys dams, stadiums, traffic controls and power grids can be accessed by anyone with simple passwords or no passwords at all, NBC News reported.

New York U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said the 2013 hack of the by an Iranian computer hack was a "frightening new frontier" of cybercrime that's "scary to think about."

Hamid Firoozi, the Iranian hacker charged earlier this month with breaking into the control system of the Bowman Avenue Dam in Rye Brook, New York, reportedly used a simple, legal search engine that surfs for and identifies unguarded control systems online. New York U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said the 2013 hack was scary to think about.

Authorities believe the threat of more attacks is growing exponentially, and have been warning America's private sector to adapt, but businesses have been slow to respond.

About 6.4 billion devices and control systems will be connected to the Internet in 2016, a 30 percent spike over 2015, according to a new report. By 2020, nearly 21 billion will be online.
The Delaware County Medical Examiner has identified the two workers who were killed when an Amtrak train crashed into a backhoe on the tracks near Philadelphia Sunday morning.

Joseph Carter, Jr., 61, of Wilmington, Delaware, and Peter John Adamovich, 59, of Lincoln University, Pennsylvania, both died from multiple blunt force injuries when a speeding train hit a piece of construction equipment and partially derailed in Chester, Pennsylvania. Carter was a backhoe operator while Adamovich was a worker.

The identities of the two victims were released Monday as the National Transportation Safety Board revealed new details in the crash.

NTSB official Ryan Frigo said at a news conference that the train was traveling 106 mph in a 110 mph zone and the crash occurred at milepost 15.7, just north of the Booth Street underpass in Chester. The engineer placed the train into emergency mode five seconds before impact, according to officials.

Frigo also said "no anomalies" were found after investigators examined the locomotive and passenger cars, along with their maintenance records. Video revealed construction equipment and work train equipment were on the track and immediately adjacent to the Amtrak train's track at the time of the crash. Frigo said investigators have not yet determined who was authorized to be on the track.

The Amtrak Palmetto Line train was heading from New York to Savannah, Georgia, when it hit a backhoe on the track about 8 a.m. Sunday in Chester, about 15 miles outside of Philadelphia, officials said. The impact derailed the lead engine of the train and shattered its windshield. There were 341 passengers and seven crew members on board. [[374415721, C]]

U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, of New York, said before Carter Jr. and Adamovich were identified that he was told the Amtrak employees who were killed both worked for the train system for a long time.

Two workers were killed while dozens were injured after an Amtrak train crashed into a backhoe just south of Philadelphia Sunday morning. NBC10s Randy Gyllenhaal has the latest on the investigation.

Before many of the injured Amtrak crash passengers made it to the hospital, they took refuge in a nearby church. NBC10s Cydney Long has that story.

The crash came on a weekend full of accidents, NBC News reported: A man apparently trying to cross tracks near Sacramento was fatally struck by a train, a motorist was killed when a train crashed into a car in Illinois and a pedestrian near Philadelphia lost a leg after being struck by a train.

Frigo said at a Sunday news conference the engineer of the derailed locomotive in Pennsylvania was among those taken to hospitals. He said he did not know why the equipment was on a track the train was using. Scheduling, the track structure and the work being performed at the time of the accident would be part of the investigation, he said.

The event data recorder and forward-facing and inward-facing video from the locomotive were recovered, Frigo said Monday, and the recorder was sent to the NTSB laboratory in Washington. Frigo said it determined the train was traveling 106 mph at a location with a 110 mph speed limit.



Schumer said it's unclear whether the equipment was being used for regular maintenance, which usually is scheduled on Sunday mornings because fewer trains are on the tracks then, or whether it was clearing debris from high winds in the area overnight.



But he said Amtrak has "a 20-step protocol" for having equipment on the tracks and no trains are supposed to go on a track when equipment is present.



"Clearly this seems very likely to be human error," Schumer said, calling for Amtrak to review its processes. "There is virtually no excuse for a backhoe to be on an active track."



An Amtrak spokeswoman said in an email Sunday to The Associated Press that any information about the type of equipment on the track and why the train was using that track would have to come from the NTSB.

Ari Ne'eman, a disability rights activist heading to Washington after speaking at an event in New York, said he was in the second car at the time of the crash.



"The car started shaking wildly, there was a smell of smoke, it looked like there was a small fire and then the window across from us blew out," said Ne'eman, 28, of Silver Spring, Maryland.



Some passengers started to get off after the train stopped, but the conductor quickly stopped them, he said. Officials started evacuating people to the rear of the train and then off and to a local church.



"It was a very frightening experience. I'm frankly very glad that I was not on the first car," where there were injuries," Ne'eman said. "The moment that the car stopped, I said Shema, a Jewish prayer. ... I was just so thankful that the train had come to a stop and we were OK."



Businessman Steve Forbes told C-SPAN's "Book TV" by phone that he was in the next-to-last car when the train "made sudden jerks" as if it was about to make an abrupt stop. [[374430881, C]]

Forbes, chairman and editor-in-chief of Forbes Media, said the train then made another abrupt stop and "everyone's coffee was flying through the air."

"The most disconcerting thing ... (was) not knowing what had happened," he said. [[374439401, C]]

Since the public address system was knocked out, he and other passengers were left to speculate for 20 or 25 minutes before a crew member came back to tell them what had happened, he said.

Amtrak said trains ran close to schedule Monday morning. SEPTA said its Wilmington/Newark Regional Rail Line trains, which were delayed up to a half-hour and did not make all stops in the early morning hours, were restored to full service shortly after 9 a.m. [[374460971, C]]

In travel alerts on its website, Amtrak advised that services would resume on the heavily traveled start of the workweek, although commuters would encounter delays on Acela Express, Northeast Regional and other services between Philadelphia and Wilmington, Delaware.

Amtrak referred all other questions about the Sunday crash of Train 89 to the National Transportation Safety Board, which is conducting the investigation. Chester officials however did reveal some further details at a Monday news conference including that the engineer was last to leave the train and suffered a leg injury and most of the injured on the train were either carried out by crews or walked to ambulances on their own.

The derailment comes almost a year after an Amtrak train originating from Washington, D.C. bound for New York City went off the tracks in Philadelphia. Eight people were killed and more than 200 were injured in the May 12 crash. The exact cause of that derailment is still under investigation, but authorities have said the train had been traveling twice the speed limit.

Nearly three decades ago, an Amtrak train struck maintenance equipment on tracks in Chester, near the site of Sunday's derailment. More than 20 people were injured in that January 1988 crash of Train 66, the Night Owl. The NTSB determined afterward that an Amtrak tower operator had failed to switch the train to an unoccupied track.
Hello San Diego! Spring is upon us, and as April comes along, we have some amazing news to share!

If you havent heard yet, San Diego will be hosting its own house-music conference, West Coast Weekender, May 13-15, and one of the headliners, Oscar P, did an intimate set at AC Lounge over the weekend. For those who missed it, the bass keeps on rumbling at the weekly Organized Grimes drum and bass sessions Monday, April 4.

If youre feeling spiritual and in the mood for the best trance artist in the world, Armin Van Buuren skips on Vegas and heads to Omnia San Diego instead on April 8. Formerly the number 1 DJ in the world, Armin is rounding off his nightclub gigs before heading out on his Embrace world tour in May -- dont miss it! For those into the house beats, Thomas Gold is at Cake with support from Helena.

With San Diegos younger music audience begging for more events catering to them, promoters like Scream are listening and hosting events at places like the World Beat Center. If youve yet to attend, its in Balboa Park, open to ages 18 and up and will be featuring Darksiderz as the only hardstyle artists of the month, plus the trap-tastic duo known as Contrvbvnd, who have been charting on the Beatport charts for the last three weeks with their hit remix of Docka and Snoop Dogg's track "Let Me Hit It," which is out on Docka Records now. You can catch me at Scream as well, dropping a good dose of house beats Saturday, April 9.

The following Friday, April 15, Bassmnt plays host to Feenixpawl, who are fresh from a busy Winter Music Conference -- and it's open to all who are 18 and older! If youre in the mood for a refreshing day in the sun, Soul Work have a surprise in store for all house heads with a special guest Saturday, April 16 at the Spin rooftop.

Genres in dance music seem to be the legion of follower-ship, and Southern Californias Bixel Boys continue to cross the borders in their productions, leading the way for very original music, which has landed them with some amazing releases, including their most recent on Skrillexs label imprint OWSLA. Catch them April 23 with Two Shoes at Bang Bang. If youre looking to get your trap fix, expect to hear the new Fools Gold remix for Alvin Risk, plus a slew of other bass bangers as UZ returns to San Diego, this time at Bassmnt, also on April 23.

Closing out the month is one of my favorite events to come to life. For those not aware, I brought the very first Dayglow to San Diego and the West Coast back in 2010, and it's grown to become the world-wide touring sensation known as Life in Color. This April 30, everyone ages 18 and up is invited to experience the newly rebranded Life in Color Kingdom event happening at the Valley View Casino Center with headliners 3LAU, Audien, Grand Theft and San Diego artists on the support level. However, if youre feeling adventurous, Tato comes to a secret warehouse somewhere within San Diego's city limits on the same night. Expect a wall of speakers, a late night of dancing and plenty of great house music!

There are tons of events going on in San Diego, and I will also be playing some tunes for the month of April. Catch me at Scream on April 9, and on April 23, youre invited to the grand opening of Studio 79 to support the local business and new music studio, where Ill be doing an exclusive mix along with other bands and artists!

April 4: Organized Grime: Sub Killaz @ AC Lounge

April 8: Armin Van Buuren @ Omnia; Thomas Gold @ Cake

April 9: Scream with Darksiderz, Contrvbvnd @World Beat Center

April 15: Feenixpawl @ Bassmnt

April 16: Soul Work Rooftop Party with special guest @ Spin

April 23: Bixel Boys, Two Shoes @ Bang Bang; UZ @ Bassmnt

April 30: Life in Color feat 3LAU, Audien, Grandtheft @ Valley View Casino Arena; Tato @ undisclosed warehouse (location TBA)

Hoping you can join us at one of these many fabulous events, and remember that being a good friend means introducing your friends to new music! See you on the dance floor!

Tomas Serrano, aka DJ IDeaL, is the electronic dance music correspondent for SoundDiego, covering the best of San Diego's electronic music events and culture. Follow his whereabouts on Facebook, Twitter or contact him directly.
NBC 7 San Diego / KNSD moved April 3 from its downtown location to a new state-of-the-art facility featuring the latest broadcast technologies and numerous energy-efficient elements.

NBC 7, San Diegos media leader with the largest social following and the largest multiplatform digital audience, employs more than 140 people and offers more than 34 hours of local television programming each week.

Its broadcast center is now located in a new, 52,000 square foot, two-story building off of Aero Drive just west of Interstate 15.

We are proud that NBC 7 has returned to Kearny Mesa, the neighborhood where the station aired its first newscast 50 years ago. The new facility is incredible and were excited to be producing our live, local newscasts from one of the most advanced broadcast centers in the country on behalf of our viewers, said Richard Kelley, President and General Manager of NBC 7 San Diego / KNSD.

The purchase of the new building was announced in June 2014 and groundbreaking was celebrated the following April.

The new building was designed to include a larger news studio and to provide room for the station to grow.

Thanks to NBCUniversals investment, our news teams now have access to the best newsgathering tools to help them deliver the best-in-class news coverage that our viewers deserve and can count on, Kelley said.

NBC 7s new home will be among the most advanced broadcast centers in the country, offering the markets first 4K video wall  a multi-screen wall that is capable of displaying video and images across various types of layouts.

Images: NBC 7 Unveils New State-of-the-Art Facility

Building such a facility required 117 miles of ethernet and TV cable along with 13.6 miles of electrical cable.

A 200 KW solar rooftop system and parking lot make the facility one of the most environmentally-friendly news centers in the region.

Additional energy-efficient elements of the new facility include:

A 250 KW natural gas fuel cell that emits low carbon electricity;

A new, tightly-controlled efficient HVAC system that conserves electricity;

Air-cooled chillers that are capable of using outside cold air to cool computer equipment;

LED lighting all throughout the facility, including the news studios;

Use of natural light in lieu of electric light by incorporating occupancy and sunlight driven lighting, solatubes and skylights and automatic shades that are light-sensor driven;

A low-flow drip system for sprinklers that contains a smart irrigation controller; and

Low-flow water devices, drought tolerant plants and ground cover.

San Diegans can see the new facility on NBC 7's newscasts beginning at 4:30 a.m. Monday - Friday.

NBC 7s Jodi Kodesh takes you on a tour of the new NBC 7 Studios off of Aero Drive, west of I-15.
U.S. researchers are launching studies on Mexico's red-crowned parrot -- a species that has been adapting so well to living in cities in California and Texas after escaping from the pet trade that the population may now rival that in its native country.

The research comes amid debate over whether some of the birds flew across the border into Texas and should be listed under the Endangered Species Act.

Parrots in U.S. urban areas are just starting to draw attention from scientists because of their intelligence, resourcefulness and ability to adapt. There is also a growing realization that the city dwellers may offer a population that could help save certain species from extinction.

Parrots are thriving today in cities from Los Angeles to Brownsville, Texas, while in the tropics and subtropics, a third of all parrot species are at risk of going extinct because of habitat loss and the pet trade.

Most are believed to have escaped from importers or smugglers over the past half-century, when tens of thousands of parrots were brought into the United States from Latin America.

Scientists only now are starting to study them.

After doing most of his research in places like Peru, Donald Brightsmith is concentrating on the squawking birds nesting in Washingtonian palms lining avenues and roosting in the oak trees in front lawns in South Texas.

"Parrots in urban settings are of great interest to me," the Texas A&M University biologist said. "I see these as kind of future insurance policies."

Brightsmith has received a two-year grant from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to get an official count on the state's red-crowned parrot population and determine whether threats against them are increasing.

The loud, raucous birds have been shot at by angry homeowners and their young poached from nests.

In San Diego, a $5,000 reward is being offered for information on the killings of about a half-dozen parrots found shot this year.

The research could help drive ways to maintain the population that prefers the cities and suburbs.

"It's more of an urban planning, landscape, ecology issue and not so much how do we protect an area of pristine nature," he said. Brightsmith would like to team up with scientists in California.

Researchers want to someday study the gene pool to determine whether there are still genetically pure red-crowned parrots that could replenish the flocks in their native habitat.

"We could have a free backup stock in the US," Brightsmith said.

In Mexico, biologists are working on getting an updated count. The last study in 1994 estimated the population at 3,000 to 6,500 birds, declining from more than 100,000 in the 1950s because of deforestation and raids on the nesting young to feed the pet trade.

"We suspect the population in South Texas could rival the number found in the wild in Mexico," said Karl Berg, a biologist at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley who received a grant to study the red-crowned parrot in Brownsville.

Biologists estimate the population at close to 1,000 birds in Texas and more than 2,500 in California, where they are the most common of more than a dozen parrot species.

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department in 2011 listed it as an indigenous species because it is thought the parrots flew north across the border as lowland areas in Mexico were cleared in the 1980s for ranching and agriculture, though ornithologists debate that.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that same year announced that the red-crowned parrot warranted federal protection because of habitat loss and poaching for the pet trade. It remains a candidate, and the agency reviews it annually.

Some in the pet trade fear that a listing under the Endangered Species Act could prevent them from breeding the birds and moving them across state lines.

Conservationists question whether any of the birds are native to Texas and should be listed when there are so many species in need of protection in the United States.

"It seems odd to me," said Kimball Garrett, a parrot expert at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. "I don't know that there is enough evidence to show the birds flew for hundreds of miles from their native range and went across the border."

Brooke Durham said the birds need more protection. Durham runs a parrot rescue center called SoCal Parrot in the town of Jamul, east of San Diego, and treats up to 100 birds a year.

Recently at her sprawling home-turned-sanctuary, dozens of birds were being nursed for broken bones and pellet gun wounds. Most were red-crowned parrots.

Animal cruelty laws offer about the only protection for the birds in California, because they are not native to the state or migratory.

"People complain about the noise, but they're just not educated about the birds," she said. "They don't realize these birds are endangered."
Hillary Clinton snapped at a Greenpeace protester. She linked Bernie Sanders and tea party Republicans. And she bristled with anger when nearly two dozen Sanders supporters marched out of an event near her home outside New York City, shouting "if she wins, we lose."

"They don't want to listen to anyone else," she shot back. "We actually have to do something. Not just complain about what is happening."

After a year of campaigning, months of debates and 35 primary elections in the Democratic presidential race, Sanders is finally getting under Clinton's skin.

Clinton has spent weeks largely ignoring Sanders and trying to focus on Republican front-runner Donald Trump. Now, after several primary losses and with a tough fight in New York on the horizon, Clinton is showing flashes of frustration with the Vermont senator  irritation that could undermine her efforts to unite the party around her candidacy.

According to Democrats close to Hillary and former President Bill Clinton, both are frustrated by Sanders' ability to cast himself as above politics-as-usual even while firing off what they consider to be misleading attacks. The Clintons are even more annoyed that Sanders' approach seems to be rallying  and keeping  young voters by his side.

While Hillary Clinton's team contends her lock on the nomination is "nearly insurmountable," the campaign frequently grumbles that Sanders hasn't faced the same level of scrutiny as the former secretary of state, New York senator and first lady. Her aides complain about Sanders' rhetoric, claiming he's broken his pledge to avoid character attacks by going after her paid speeches and ties to Wall Street. They also point to scenes of Sanders supporters booing Clinton's name at his rallies.

Actress Rosario Dawson's 15-minute speech at a New York City rally on Thursday, in which she rallied the crowd by crying "shame on you, Hillary" and noted that Clinton could soon face an FBI interview over the email controversy while at the State Department, underscored the growing tensions between the campaigns.

Over the weekend, the bickering was about a possible debate before the New York primary April 19. Clinton's campaign accused Sanders' of playing "political games" by rejecting three specific dates; Sanders' team volunteered dates the Clinton campaign says are unworkable.

Clinton hopes big victories in New York and five Northeastern states a week later will allow her to wrap up the nomination by the end of the month.

But aides acknowledge that Sanders, who's raised $109 million this year and has pledged to take his campaign to the party convention in July, is unlikely to feel significant political or financial pressure to drop out of the race, even if it becomes clear he cannot win the nomination.

Clinton stayed in the 2008 contest against Barack Obama until the bitter end, though her initial advantage with superdelegates, who later flipped to the Illinois senator, gave her a stronger case for the nomination.

Unlike eight years ago, when California Sen. Dianne Feinstein brought Clinton and Obama together for a meeting, few Democrats are in position to broker peace between Clinton and Sanders. For most of his political career, Sanders identified as an independent  not a Democrat  leaving him with far weaker ties to party powerbrokers.

According to an Associated Press analysis, Sanders must win 67 percent of the remaining delegates and uncommitted superdelegates  party leaders and officials who can support any candidate  through June to be able to clinch the Democratic nomination. So far he's only winning 37 percent.

Joel Benenson, Clinton's chief strategist, said: "We're going to get to a point at the end of April where there just isn't enough real estate for him to overcome the lead that we've built."

Still, any kind of truce is probably weeks, if not months, away.

For now, Sanders is costing Clinton significant time, money and political capital. His victories in recent Western caucuses underscored her weaknesses among younger and white working-class voters, important elements of the Democratic coalition. He's favored in the Wisconsin primary Tuesday.

Sanders is drawing sizable crowds in New York, attracting 18,500 to a rally in the South Bronx on Thursday. A victory in that state, which Clinton represented for two terms in the Senate, would deal a significant psychological blow to her campaign, rattling Democrats already worried about her high national disapproval ratings.

Clinton is more reliant on traditional fundraising than Sanders, who's raised the bulk of his money online. Even as she prepares for New York's primary, she has scheduled fundraisers before then in Denver, Virginia, Miami and Los Angeles  at the home of actor George Clooney.

She needs to continue raising primary dollars because June contests in California and New Jersey will be expensive. Sanders faces fewer financial anxieties.

Sanders adviser Tad Devine said the senator was not encouraging his supporters to disrupt Clinton's events and was focused on his own message. But he also said the campaign would respond when Clinton mischaracterizes Sanders' records and positions.

Her attacks, he said, only help Sanders.

"When your attacks against your opponent feed the biggest weakness that you have, you are undermining yourself," said Devine.
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe vetoed a bill Monday that would force schools to warn parents if their children will be assigned books with sexually explicit content, saying it's unnecessary and lacks flexibility in labeling literary works.



The Democratic governor said the bill isn't needed because the state Board of Education is already examining such a policy. He also said curriculum management should be left to local school boards, which he said are best positioned to make decisions about their students.



"Open communication between parents and teachers is important, and school systems have an obligation to provide age-appropriate material for students," McAuliffe said. "However, this legislation lacks flexibility and would require the label of 'sexually explicit' to apply to an artistic work based on a single scene, without further context."



The measure, which is backed by GOP House Speaker William Howell, was brought to the General Assembly by a Fairfax County mother who protested the use of Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' in her son's high school senior class. The 1987 novel set in the post-Civil War era includes scenes depicting sex, rape and bestiality.



The bill initially flew through the GOP-controlled House with unanimous support. But outcry from Democrats and free-speech groups grew as the bill received more attention. The 22-17 vote in the Senate means there's likely not enough support to override the governor's veto in that chamber.



James LaRue, director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom at the American Library Association, has said that Virginia would be the first state in the country with such a law.



The bill would direct the state Board of Education to create a policy on sexually explicit books for elementary and secondary schools. Under the policy, schools would be required to provide an alternative to the sexually explicit book if a parent objects.



Republican Del. Steve Landes, who sponsored the bill on the speaker's behalf, called McAuliffe's veto disappointing and vowed to reintroduce the bill next year if the Board of Education doesn't act on its own.



"Parents make decisions every day about what video games kids play, what movies they watch, and what material they consume online. They should have the same opportunity within the classroom," Landes said in a statement.



Opponents questioned how the state would define "sexually explicit" material and said they fear the measure would apply to a wide range of literature, including Anne Frank's "The Dairy of a Young Girl" and most of William Shakespeare's works.



"Many, if not most, parents want their children to receive a comprehensive education that includes books like these, and they rely on teachers to select materials that best promote educational goals and prepare students for college and life beyond," the Washington-DC based National Coalition Against Censorship and other groups wrote in a letter to McAuliffe, urging him to veto the bill.



Many Virginia school districts already require parents to be notified if their children will be exposed to potentially sensitive material. The Virginia Board of Education has been considering a statewide policy, but supporters said they decided to go to the General Assembly because the process was taking too long.
The family of a young Vermonter who died from a drug overdose used his obituary as a call to action to break down social barriers, like stigma and shame, to getting help for addiction.

Sean Tyler Stem, 26, died last week, and was remembered Monday with a memorial service in Burlington, attended by many loved ones. The large group remembered Stem as gentle, sensitive, as someone who loved to laugh, and who was generous with hugs.

"Oh that boy was so amazing," remembered Shannon Stem, Sean's sister. "We really wanted to celebrate him today."

Sean struggled for a long time to break heroin's grip, Shannon Stem said, even seeking professional drug treatment.

"We could not find a way to help him," Seans older sister told necn, describing how it felt like her brother was slipping away from his many friends and relatives who cared deeply about him.

After Sean's death, his family chose to use Sean's obituary as a call to action. In the remembrance, the Stems wrote of their hope that more people will keep "asking for solutions to this tragic epidemic" and that communities will "tear down whatever obstacles" stand in the way of getting help, like "fear, loneliness, shame, [and] stigma."

"We have to be able to openly and honestly talk about this, and not have any shame," Shannon Stem said in an interview following Monday's memorial service.

Sean's loss has become tragically familiar in this country. The Centers for Disease Control said 78 Americans die every day from opioid overdoses, whether heroin, or prescription painkillers.

In Vermont, numbers from the Vermont Health Department showed in 2015, there were 53 deaths statewide from heroin and fentanyl, a powerful painkiller that has been increasingly mixed with heroin to make more potent doses.

Shannon Stem said her family is working on launching a foundation to combat drug use. One way of doing so may be to support services following drug treatment, Stem said.

"The only way we can fix this is if we all come together as a community; we take this on as a team," Stem told necn. "We can't keep quiet about this."

The eventual foundation will surely have the same spirit as the final line from Sean's obituary: "If you or a loved one is fighting addiction please know you are not alone."

Donations to the foundation can be made care of attorney Norman Blais, 289 College St., Burlington, Vermont, 05401.

To read the full obituary for Sean Stem, visit this website.
A Meriden man admits he made a major mistake when he fired gunshots into a mosque next door to his home. The incident took place in November in the hours after the terror attacks in Paris.

Now he has done something that many in the mosque had been hoping he would do.

"I just ask for your forgiveness," said Ted Hakey Jr., apologizing to the members of the Baitul Aman Mosque.

"I'd like to apologize to the whole community," said Hakey. "It just shouldn't have happened."

Hakey said he was sorry for firing gunshots into the empty mosque next door to his house in the hours after the Paris terrorist attacks in November.

"Of course there was initially fear and then the police came right away," said Dr. Muhammad Quereshi, the President of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Connecticut.

Hakey told the mosque members on Saturday that he had been drinking alcohol on that November evening and that he was frightened of a religion that he knew nothing about.

"I wish that I had come on knocked on your door and if I had spent five minutes with you, it would have been all the difference in the world and I didn't do that," said Hakey.

In February, Hakey pleaded guilty to intentional destruction of religious property with a dangerous weapon.

"I'd like to go forward with learning and helping other people not make the same mistake I did," he said.

Hakey is currently out on bond but he still has to be sentenced. Federal guidelines suggest that he serve eight to fourteen months in prison.

A judge is scheduled to sentence Hakey on June 7.
Swansea, Mass., police arrested four Vermont men after finding weapons inside their vehicle during a traffic stop.

According to WJAR, police stopped a vehicle with Vermont plates, traveling at high speed on Route 103 near New Gardners Neck Road.

While interviewing the occupants, Officer Donald DiBiasio noticed the front seat passenger was in possession of an open liquor bottle.

He also noticed the driver making sudden movements to the area under his seat.

After removing the driver from the vehicle, Officer DiBiasio discovered a loaded .45 caliber handgun magazine in the driver's pocket, two loaded handguns under the driver's seat, pepper spray, survival knives, nun-chucks, modified brass knuckles, body armor, handcuffs, and hand cuff keys.

All four occupants are Vermont residents and told police they were heading to Fall River to visit a friend.

The driver, Eric Poland, age 30 of Milton, Vermont, was arrested and charged with numerous firearm possession charges, possession of a dangerous weapon, possession of large capacity feeding device, malicious destruction of property, disorderly conduct, and operating negligently.

Jon Lamony, age 31 of Milton, Vermont, was also charged with numerous firearm possession charges, possession of a dangerous weapon, possession of a large capacity feeding device, malicious destruction of property, and disorderly conduct.

Charles Livingston, age 61 of Winsooki, Vermont, was also charged with numerous firearm possession charges, possession of a dangerous weapon, possession of a large capacity feeding device, malicious destruction of property, and disorderly conduct.

All three were processed at the Swansea Police Department and transported to the New Bedford House of Correction.

They are each being held on $25,000 cash bail.

The fourth occupant was released at the scene and will be summonsed into court on other charges including possession of a dangerous weapon, malicious destruction of property, and disorderly conduct.




Norwich Gospel adventurer helped reach millions

Gospel adventurer and former Fleet Street journalist, Mike Wiltshire, has helped to reach literally millions of people with the message of Christ thanks to his pioneering work with mission ship charity Operation Mobilisation. Keith Morris reports.

God has been utterly faithful to me in my 50 years as a believer and my life as a Christian has been a huge adventure, says Mike, who has lived in Norwich for the past decade with his wife of 33 years, Lois.



In 1963, as a young journalist and a church youth leader, Mike met George Verwer, founder of Operation Mobilisation, then a student movement working in 20 countries. It was the start of a 50-year friendship.



In his 20s, Mike, with others, drove 4,000 miles overland to India where the OM team set up a massive publishing programme and saw the distribution of 100 million pieces of Gospel literature in 12 different languages.



But not everyone was happy with Mikes path. His concerned and loving parents were so upset that they practically disowned him and refused to attend his wedding because they felt he was completely throwing his life away after a public school education. Later, they realised their fears were groundless and all was forgiven.



After five years in India and Nepal, Mike was sent to Scandinavia with a key mission - to look for a ship that OM could buy by faith.



In Norway he found and secured the Umanak, which was renamed Logos (which means Word in Greek) by OM and became an iconic ocean-going mission ship.



The ship eventually set sail from London to India with 200 tons of literature and a volunteer staff and crew of 120 young people, comprising many nationalities. In 18 years, the ship visited 108 countries and more than 370,000 people attended conferences on board.



Mike was given the key role of pioneering line-up man, travelling ahead of the Logos and arranging programmes in dozens of ports, before the ships arrival.



On one day, 15,000 people queued up at an Indian port to go on board, and everyone received a packet of Christian literature before they left.



The work took Mike to 50 countries across the world and today OM has more than 3,000 workers in 110 nations. It works in every region of the world and aims to motivate and equip Christians to share Gods love, and to strengthen and plant churches, especially where Christ is least known.



Eventually, four ships were purchased which, through scripture distribution and meetings, have shared the gospel with a billion people. The largest of the OM ships is Logos Hope (12,500 tons) which was purchased in 2004 and is now visiting ports in Mozambique, South Africa and Namibia. The ship has a volunteer crew and staff of 400 people from 45 different countries.



Looking back, Mike says he is amazed at the way God used such a group of nobodies.



While travelling the world, Mike also had the honour of meeting many well-known Christians because, he says: We all need our heroes and those who inspire us.



Mike recalls encounters with evangelist Billy Graham, China pioneer missionary Gladys Aylward, and Bible teachers such Martyn Lloyd-Jones and John Wimber, as well as Bakht Singh, who planted 400 churches in India.



While working with OM, Mike was also developing a career as a newspaper journalist. I won my first job as a newspaper reporter after offering to sell papers on a street corner if the editor would just give me an interview! Cheeky, maybe, but I was offered several interviews, recalls Mike.



I started on weekly papers at the Kentish Times, moved to evening papers, such as the Lancashire Evening Post, became deputy editor of a group of London regional papers and finally worked with the Financial Times on Fleet Street for more than 20 years.



After retiring in London, Mike and Lois, moved to Norwich some 11 years ago. They have four children and nine grandchildren. Their son, Mark, who was born in India, is now a London pastor. He is also national missions leader for 550 churches with Assemblies of God in the UK.



Once in Norwich, Mike showed no signs of slowing down and has been a national director with the FGB, the Christian businessmens fellowship, for ten years, and is still involved with the news media, editing two magazines and writing for Good News for Norwich among other titles.



Lois is herself active in the community as a local Dementia Champion, encouraging the setting up of church-based dementia-friendly communities.



Inspired by the life of Billy Graham, Mike recalls a crazy prayer moment when, as a shy young Christian, he nevertheless asked God to use him to reach millions for Christ  with no idea how that prayer would be answered.



He had little idea then that one day 100 million people would receive scriptures and Christian literature through the Logos ship ministry alone.



In 2013, at the age of 75, Mike had a complex heart valves operation at Papworth Hospital: The surgeon later smiled when he told me the outcome was a minor miracle, said Mike, who is now a thankful member of the zipper club.



But true to form, Mike, to the despair of Lois, shows very little sign of slowing down in his lifes work to communicate the Gospel in as many ways as possible.



Today, after a lifetime of faith adventures, Mike likes to quote Proverbs 3:5: Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.



God has never let us down, says Mike His promises are utterly trustworthy.



Pictured above are Mike and Lois Wiltshire.


The Internet will eventually be secured from hackers by a technology called quantum photonics, say researchers.

Single light particles will ultimately be used to exchange information in secure systems, they think. The technique is part of quantum computing. And now that a limitation has been overcome, the scientists at the University of Sydney say that the ultra-secure system is one step closer to realization.

Its been guessed at that photonics will be the future of security, however figuring out how to create a single photon has been holding back the forward movement in the research, the team says in a news release on the universitys website. They now think theyve figured out how to do it.

Generating indistinguishable single photons on-demand, has been, thus far, a fundamental challenge, says Dr Chunle Xiong, from the universitys School of Physics in the release.

In fact, scientists have been on the track for years. Stanford University wrote about it in 2000, when it suggested that messages sent by a single photon would make it easier to detect intruders.

"If you have only one photon per pulse, you would immediately know that an eavesdropper had penetrated the system because the receiver at the opposite end could tell that the data had been disturbed," said Stanford professor W. E. Moerner then.

Moener and his associates solution provided single photons 86% of the time thennot enough for total security. The odds arent high enough.

The problem has been that the single particles of light, called photons, are generated in twos. The scientists need them singly.

Implementing optical quantum technologies has now come down to one fundamental challenge: having indistinguishable single photons on-demand, says Xiong.

The Australian team think they're closer to obtaining the single photon all of the time.

This research has demonstrated that the odds of being able to generate a single photon can be doubled by using a relatively simple technique. And this technique can be scaled up to ultimately generate single photons with 100% probability, Xiong says.

The scientists are multiplexing the photons using fiber optics and off-the-shelf components, they say in their paper in Nature Communications.

This scheme will ultimately provide a solution for photon sources required for optical quantum computing and simulation, they say.

Single-photon security is an element of quantum computing. Ive written about that largely theoretical computer before, including writing of recent strides in its development.

Future quantum computers promise to allow ultra-fast interrogation of databaseson the order of something never seen before.

That potential rapid ingestion of data is a double-edged sword, though. Not only will we be able to work calculations faster, but conceivably existing encryption will be broken faster. What is now considered brute force may seem more like a gentle prod with a pocket calculator.

Indeed, the federal government is so worried about that scenario that the NSA plans to transition to quantum-resistant algorithms soon.

If a quantum-based security system, such as the quantum photonics one, being explored by many, could replace traditional encryption, then the security-Armageddon problem of cracked encryption becomes moot. Security apocalypse thwarted.
David Dow thought he was having back problems, and that his legs were hurting as a result. As it turns out, that pain may have saved his life.

An otherwise healthy 57-year-old, he figured he just needed to learn some back-strengthening exercises, so he found a personal trainer to help him. But despite the workouts, his leg pain got worse  making it hard for him even to walk from the car to the grocery store entrance. He and the trainer suspected something else was wrong and he sought the advice of his doctor.

Soon his doctor's tests revealed the true cause: blockages in the blood vessels of his legs. In fact, the arteries going to his lower extremities were nearly 100 percent blocked. The cause Years of heavy smoking and high-fat meals, and other factors had caused cholesterol, scar tissue and blood clots to build up inside his blood vessels.

Most people think this kind of clogged artery disease, or arteriosclerosis, only happens in the heart. But as Dow's case shows, it can happen throughout the body. When it does, it's called peripheral arterial disease, or PAD.

And in some people, PAD causes leg pain that acts as an 'early warning' that someone is at high risk for a heart attack or a stroke, says a University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center expert.



This is the hallmark of a disease that's all over, says James Stanley, M.D., a director of the U-M CVC and the vascular surgeon who operated on Dow. It's like gray hair  you don't just get it on one side of your head. So if you've got this kind of blockage in your leg, you're going to have it other places.

In fact, nearly a quarter of people who have leg pain due to PAD will be dead in five years, mostly due to heart attacks and other heart problems, Stanley says. For people like Dow, whose leg pain kept them from walking even short distances, the odds are even worse: as many as half will die by five years.

Fortunately, Dow got diagnosed and treated before that happened to him. Stanley performed a bypass operation to open his blocked leg arteries, similar to the bypasses that heart patients have. A recent checkup showed he's doing well.

For sure, it's a wake-up call, says Dow, who has quit smoking and changed his eating habits. You know that old saying, Where there's smoke, there's fire', I'm

sure that I not only have the vascular issues in my lower extremities, but I'm sure I have them in other parts of my body.

Dow isn't alone, says Stanley, who has operated on thousands of patients with severe PAD in his decades as a professor of vascular surgery at the U-M Medical School. Nearly 30 million people in the United States have some form of PAD, though the vast majority are silent cases that don't cause symptoms. Among people over age 70, nearly one person in five has PAD.

Who's most at risk for PAD? People over 50, smokers, people with diabetes, people with high blood pressure, people with high cholesterol, and people who are overweight or obese, Stanley explains. In other words, it's the same group of individuals who have a high risk of heart attack and stroke.

So, the advice for preventing PAD, or stopping it before it gets serious, is largely the same as the advice for preventing a heart attack or stroke: Quit smoking, eat healthier, get more exercise, control your blood sugar if you have diabetes, lose weight, and get your blood pressure and cholesterol levels checked. And ask your doctor if you should take a daily aspirin to prevent clots, or drugs to reduce your blood pressure and cholesterol.

Even though PAD makes people's legs hurt or feel tired when they walk or exercise - even when the person is sleeping  something called rest pain. Stanley says this pain often awakens patients from sleep. It most often occurs in the ball of the feet and may feel like someone has wrapped a bandage around the foot. This level of symptoms is ominous, he says, because it indicates a more severe blockage without adequate collateral vessels.

Another sign of severe PAD is the development of painful sores, or ulcers, on the feet and toes. These occur because the blood flow to the lower leg isn't enough to feed the tissue, and it begins to break down. People with diabetes, whose bodies have an especially hard time healing such ulcers, are most at risk. Left untreated, skin ulcers can get worse and even turn into gangrene  often leading to amputation.

Genetics & Genomics eBook Compilation of the top interviews, articles, and news in the last year. Download a copy today

The vast majority of PAD cases are nowhere near this serious. But people who don't get help for symptoms when they first start may find their problem becoming much worse over time.

So, Stanley recommends that anyone who has discomfort in their leg or legs, especially new pain that lasts more than a week, should talk to a doctor. She or he might perform a Doppler examination  a painless, non-invasive ultrasound test that detects blood pressure in the extremity.

The Doppler test can tell whether someone has PAD and how bad the blockage might be. Depending on the result, the doctor might recommend an MRA (magnetic resonance arteriogram) of the leg, or a conventional arteriogram that involves injecting dye into the leg arteries through a device called a catheter.

If a severe blockage is found, like in Dow's case, there are several options. Two are similar to those for heart patients: a minimally invasive procedure like an angioplasty that opens blockages with a tiny balloon, or bypass surgery to place a new graft to carry blood into the blocked area.

There are also promising new options on the horizon, to help the body grow new blood vessels in the blocked area. The U-M CVC the first place in the world where patients with severe PAD can volunteer for an experimental new gene-therapy treatment called MultiGeneAngio.

The MultiGeneAngio trial takes cells from a vein in the patient's arm, adds in new genes that encourage the growth of blood vessels, and then injects the cells into the blocked artery using a minimally invasive technique. Right now, it's still being tested for safety and to find the right dose of cells, says Michael Grossman, M.D., the U-M interventional cardiologist who is leading the study at U-M. But if the study proves successful it may one day become a new treatment option for patients.

Until that day, the best weapon against PAD is better knowledge of the fact that pain in the legs is more than an inconvenience. If one has PAD there are two issues, says Stanley. What happens to your leg, and what happens to your life.

Facts about peripheral arterial disease or PAD:
At just 31 years of age, and with a first grader in tow, single mom Wendy Langley set out to take on the giants in the head lice industry. The reason? She couldn't, as she says, stand putting a popular but potentially toxic head lice treatment that "smelled like bug spray" on her kid's head to kill lice. Plus, she was constantly terrified the runny liquid would seep into her daughter's eyes.

Langley's desire to protect her daughter and other children prompted her to develop a product that would absolutely kill head lice, even the dreaded super lice, as they're called, and buck the standard of using pesticides to do so. Her solution was to use sodium chloride, better known as salt, as her weapon to kill head lice. Her unusual product, Licefreee, quickly became the best-selling pesticide-free head lice treatment in the U.S., the world's largest consumer market for head lice.

In 1988, Langley walked in the doors of Tec Labs, a family-owned pharmaceutical manufacturer in Oregon. The thriving company was mainly known for making Tecnu, a poison ivy product with a cult-like following. She was hired through a temp agency for a three-day stint in the company's mail room. Her offbeat personality and eagerness to learn clicked with Tec Labs' CEO, Steve Smith, and she was eventually brought in as a full-time employee.

Langley worked in several areas of the company before she discovered her passion in the Research and Development department. Soon, Langley was a leader on the R&D team, heading up the research side. She became nearly obsessed with a desire to help people on a broad scale.

"I truly love helping people," says Langley, "especially children, since they can't help themselves."

Langley's first success on the R&D team was Calagel, a home run for the company in the anti-itch category. Next up was Corticool, a first-of-its-kind mentholated hydrocortisone gel. And then came the head lice incident, as she calls it, which prompted her to develop Licefreee.

Langley recalled the moment when she came across the idea of using salt to kill head lice. "I felt chills run through my body," said Langley. "I thought, 'Aha! That's it!' I knew from doing my research that salt, in the right formulation, could be 100% effective in killing lice."

It turned out that Langley was correct. Independent lab studies showed Licefreee to be 100% effective killing head lice and their eggs. The company added a sturdy metal comb and Licefreee became a hit, eventually landing on over 20,000 drug store shelves. The treatment's popularity skyrocketed. Licefreee went on to become the top-selling pesticide-free head lice brand in America. This back-to-school season marks the 10th anniversary of Licefreee.

Not content with battling head lice, Ms. Langley set her sights on a far more dangerous foe: MRSA (methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus). "I saw the oncoming threat of MRSA years ago and told the R&D team," said Langley. "I saw that this sometimes deadly problem was growing, and it had a growth potential of epidemic proportion. I feared it could affect our children through the school system."

Staphaseptic hit shelves in 2006 behind the biggest product launch in the company's 32-year history and became another breakout success. Langley is now busy trying to discover her next big idea for Tec Labs.

"Helping others is where my heart feels best," she says. "I can't wait until the next 'Aha!' moment. I have a feeling it's coming soon."

Source: http://www.Licefreee.com
Spring weather signals the start of many outdoor activities as people of all ages eagerly embrace the change in weather. Paul Prinz, MD, orthopaedic surgeon at Gottlieb Memorial Hospital, part of Loyola University Health System says, "Broken bones and fractures occur year 'round but the change in seasons always creates an increase of patients in our offices."

6.8 million broken bones and fractures are reported each year in the United States and the number is growing due in part to an older, active population of "baby boomers." "A cast is still the most common treatment for healing bones, and complaints about itching are among the most common," said Dr. Prinz.



Accidents happen and bones get broken but Dr. Prinz says that maintaining good health practices while healing in a cast is especially important. "Never stick anything into your cast to scratch an itch. Never. I have had to remove casts to retrieve items ranging from pencils and chopsticks to forks and brushes," he said.

Dr. Prinz is no longer surprised when he removes casts and finds objects. "The bone may be safely healed but scratching techniques can cause skin infections and blood conditions that require additional medical care," he said. "The skin is very delicate and sensitive when it is protected by a cast and is very easy to injure. Objects can create wounds which may lead to infection. The use of lead pencils can even cause blood poisoning," Dr. Prinz warns. He also says that healing skin wounds will increase the itch factor.

Tips For Itch Relief

Dr. Prinz advises patients to keep the cast clean and dry, and often uses a waterproof cast to prevent irritation. Here are Dr. Prinz's top tips for comfort when you sport a cast:

1."Gently use a hair dryer, set on a low and cool setting, to blow air between the cast and skin. Don't use a warm setting as it may create moisture through condensation."

2."Lightly tap on cast to create a gentley vibration."

3."Massage the exposed skin around the cast and increase circulation through massage in other areas of the body."

4."Wrap a watertight ice pack or even a sealed bag of frozen vegetables on the exterior of the cast to cool down the area."

5."Consult your physician and ask if an over-the-counter antihistamine can be safely used to minimize the itching."

It is not unusual for a cast to smell. "Talk to your physician about your concerns," said Dr. Prinz. "Keep the cast dry and as clean as possible. The warm-up in weather makes everyone want to get outdoors and get active, even when wearing a cast, but you'll heal faster and more comfortably if you slow down and take it easy."
Among reproductive-age women, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) as well as overweight and obesity are independently linked with asthma, new preliminary research from Australia suggests. The results will be presented in a poster Saturday, April 2, at ENDO 2016, the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society, in Boston.

"A greater proportion of women with polycystic ovary syndrome report asthma, and the results of this study suggest that asthma is associated with PCOS and excess weight," said lead author Anju Elizabeth Joham, MBBS, FRACP, an endocrinologist and postdoctoral research fellow at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

"These findings highlight that polycystic ovary syndrome is a complex disorder that includes significant inflammatory underpinnings. These results also raise awareness of the need to consider higher risks in other health areas in this condition," Joham said.

Polycystic ovary syndrome is a common ailment among women of childbearing age, but no studies of the relationships of asthma with PCOS and weight have been published to date.

Joham and her colleagues assessed the prevalence of asthma in reproductive-age women. They also investigated the impact of obesity on the prevalence of asthma in the women who had PCOS compared with those who did not have PCOS.

To examine these links, Joham and her colleagues analyzed data from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health (ALSWH), an ongoing national periodic survey that has been following more than 58,000 Australian women of various ages since 1996 and periodically collecting data from them about the factors that influence their health.

The researchers randomly selected the survey responses of 9,145 women about their polycystic ovary syndrome and asthma status. Among the women aged 28 to 33 years, PCOS prevalence was 5.8%. Among the women reporting PCOS, asthma prevalence was 15.2% compared with 10.6% among those not reporting PCOS.

The study showed that PCOS status and body mass index (BMI) in both the overweight and obese categories were independently associated with asthma.

Of the women reporting asthma, mean BMI was significantly higher in those reporting PCOS compared with those not reporting PCOS. Polycystic ovary syndrome was associated with increased odds of asthma. BMI in the overweight and obese ranges was also associated with increased odds of asthma.

"The results of this observational study need to be confirmed with results in other populations, and exploration of these relationships in longitudinal studies is needed," Joham said.
Renan Uflacker, M.D., FSIR, was honored posthumously on April 3 with the Society of Interventional Radiology Foundation Leaders in Innovation Award. The award was announced during the Society of Interventional Radiology's (SIR) Annual Scientific Meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia.

"Dr. Uflacker's pioneering work helped transform interventional radiology into the cutting-edge medical field it is today," said Stephen T. Kee, M.D., MMM, FSIR, SIR Foundation board chair. "His work--from the endovascular treatment of liver disease, to peripheral vascular disease, aneurysms and interventional oncology--provides a bedrock upon which new generations of interventional radiologists can learn from and further develop."

Uflacker was a professor and director of the division of vascular and interventional radiology at the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, for 34 years. He was part of a national trial that resulted in the approval of the first covered stent for biliary application in United States. Prior to his death, Uflacker was participating in a long-term project to create and grow new vessels in limbs with lack of blood flow.

The Dr. Gary J. Becker Young Investigator Award recognizes promising young practitioners to encourage the pursuit of academic careers. This year's recipient was Sarah White, M.D., M.S., associate professor of radiology at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), Milwaukee. White's work focuses on clinical and translational research in the division of vascular interventional radiology.

The following individuals were recognized for their outstanding achievements in research and innovation with the Dr. Constantin Cope Medical Student Research Award: Alexander Pasciak, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore; Megan Sue, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles; Richard Boyer, Vanderbilt University, Nashville; and Tianshen Hu, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas.

SIR Foundation's Resident/Fellow Research Awards recognize high-quality research by trainees. This year's recipients are Ali Alian, M.D., University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas; Paul M. Haste, M.D., Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis; and Olaguoke Akinwande, M.D., Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore.

This year's Frederick S. Keller, M.D., Philanthropist of the Year Award was presented to Gordon McLennan, M.D., FSIR, professor of radiology and biomedical engineering and program director of the Interventional Radiology Fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, in honor of his outstanding commitment to SIR Foundation. McLennan, a past foundation chair, inspired SIR members and industry to support IR research through active involvement with the Discovery Campaign. As chair, he helped start the SIR Foundation Gala.
How can Donald Trump be stopped?

For months, conservatives have debated what Trump represents and whether they can or should support him. While millions of voters still have time to make their choice (and still need to be informed about his baleful record), among those pundits, politicians, activists, donors and strategists whove been hashing this out for a seeming eternity, that argument is over. Trump is either someone you can live with  or celebrate  as the standard-bearer of your cause and your party, or he isnt.

As I wrote last week, this is an insurmountable divide within the party and the conservative movement. That means its a zero-sum contest. There will be winners and losers. Either Trump wins or #NeverTrump wins (thats the umbrella Twitter hashtag for a diverse coalition of conservatives who will never vote for the man). Theres no compromise.

So if youre a #NeverTrumper, the debate now is all about the how.

The most desirable, but least plausible, way to stop Trump would be for Ted Cruz or John Kasich simply to beat him before the Republican convention in Cleveland. Unfortunately, Cruz would need to secure more than 80 percent of the remaining delegates to win the nomination outright. Kasich, the longtime candidate of math deniers, would need to capture a lot more than 100 percent.

The second-best, but more likely, scenario is to deny Trump the 1,237 delegates required to automatically win on the first ballot. Right now, that seems quite doable. Recently, University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato projected the most likely scenario for Trump to get to 1,237. It required Trump to carry both Wisconsin and Indiana handily, and even then he only landed at 1,239. Right now, that looks unlikely. And if Trump loses just a couple congressional districts in Sabatos scenario, hell fall short.

Most observers believe that if Trump cant reach the magic number, hed hemorrhage support after each ballot at the convention, because delegates tend to be party regulars (and more and more delegates are released to vote their conscience after each round of voting).

Thats why the margin of Trumps shortfall matters so much. If he comes just a few shy of 1,237, he could probably cut deals with a handful of delegates. Or he could horse-trade with Kasich, making the Ohio governor his running mate.

Whats more important, however, is delegate psychology. Some argue, in defiance of the rules, that Trump should be the nominee even if he fails to reach 1,237. My Fox News colleague Sean Hannity says he will support whoever gets the most delegates, which, given the math, means he will support Trump, no matter what.

That sentiment might be compelling with a narrow shortfall. But if Trump misses the mark by, say, 150 delegates, that would be significantly more than the delegate totals of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina combined. Its one thing to deny the trophy to the guy who finished a few yards shy of the finish line. Its another if he misses it by a mile. The bigger the shortfall, the easier it is to convince delegates that they are not defying the popular will by denying Trump, particularly given the widespread conviction that Trump would be crushed in a general election (with the GOP being torn apart in the process).

Cruz would be the most likely victor in a floor fight, but that isnt assured. The longer the balloting goes, the more likely it is that the bitter and bleary-eyed delegates will opt to order off-menu. Thats what Kasich is allegedly counting on. But Kasich is widely disliked, and it might be a good deal easier to find a unifying candidacy in, say, Rick Perry, Scott Walker, Nikki Haley or Mike Pence.

The third option is what Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol calls Plan B. If the #NeverTrumpers fail to stop Trump at the convention, they could rally around an independent candidate. Who might that be? Thats the billion-dollar question. Some want a true outsider like retired Marine General James Mattis. Others think Mitt Romney could leap into the breach. The path to an independent candidacy is perilous. But if youre of the opinion that Trump and Hillary Clinton arent acceptable options, the perilous path is the only one available.

Goldberg is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior editor of National Review. Email him at goldbergcolumn@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @JonahNRO.
Red Hulk, Ronin, and more: 10 Heroes and Villains whose secret identities were hidden from readers

There's a longstanding superhero tradition of hiding the identity of certain characters even from readers
Working with youth to end crime

I believe there are many different issues that come up, there are many different things .

There is the degree of poverty, the education system, there are degrees of families falling apart so the children grow up and they dont have the support structures that they would have in an ideal world, but to me it is not about looking at the problem but how can we move forward, thats my attitude .

We need to move forward and we can do it with respect.said her programme achieves a remarkable level of successbecause when youth realise that they have rights they also realise that they have responsibilities .

She said that was Article 29 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. So as soon as youth realise that they are responsible, that they have to care for the rights that they want to see, for example the right to education, thats when we start seeing motivation, they put their own shoulder to the wheel to build the duture they want to see .

She said the programme is taught to prisons officers, to military officers, to police, to inmates. It works. It just works She said it was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was put together at the end of World War Two when human rights had to be defined so that the world would never again see the level of abuse and inhumanity that it saw during the war. And we are not done. We do not have peace in the world but we have come a long way with so many issues that absolutely, it does work. She said the programme is based on respect and once the prison officers take part it works because respect is shown by both the prison officers and the inmates. Its the respect of the inmates to the prople in charge, its the respect of the people in charge to the inmates but most importantly to me You Speak Human Rights teaches respect for themselves and when youve got respect for yourself thats the beginning of pretty much a better life. She said the only way to build human rights is by working on cross levels and all working together. She added that even the United Nations alone cannot teach human rights to every single person and the Government of Trinidad and Tobago working by itself cannot do it. But if you give it into the hands of the people, the groups that touch the lives of different segments of society, now it can make an impact because working together, thats the secret. She said it doesnt matter that the programme is being exposed to a difficult group such as incarcerated persons because its universal human rights and she said that since the justice system is not perfect there is no certainty that all the persons in prisons are guilty of the crimes for which they have been jailed. She added that now witht he existence of DNA there have been cases of people in prison for years who are being freed on the basis of the findings of DNA evidence, further re-emphasising the point. How horrifying is that. So, of course you are dealing with that .

Of course, you are dealing with criminals, they have really offended. We have to teach respect. Carlyle Holder, President of the National Association of Blacks in Criminal Justice said the future depends on the young people and if society is unable to reach them the world is not going to be the world that we want to see. For this reason he said his organisation is commited to working with young people to reverse the tide of violence and miseducation and let them know that they have human rights not just criminal rights. Because most of the young people that we know, they can tell you about the right to remain silent and the right not to do this andnot to do that .

We want them to understand that they have the right to a good education, the right to live in a free society that you can reach your god given talents. Holder, who is Trinidadian, said the organisation has been in existence for 43 years, has 5,000 members and 36 chapters across the United States and the Caribbean. He said they have been partnering with the local prison service since 2001 .

Vernice Robinson, the US co-ordinator of the Pen or Pencil programme which she described as a unique, culturally -based programme which applies social and emotional core learning practices in the engagement of youth to include those who are at greatest risk of disadvantage or had current or previous contact with the criminal justice system. She said pen referred to penitentiary while pencil was symbolic of education which she said was the fork in the road which often stood between failure and success .

The pervasive issues of incarceration and the use of alternative sanctions as a means of changing the life course of juvenile offenders is both topical and timely as emanating out of the United Nations Development Programme. She said several recommendations were made in the Caribbean Development Report of 2012 and the prevention of juvenile delinquency was an essential part of crime prevention in Trinidad and Tobago. By engaging in lawful, socially useful activities and adopting a humanistic orientation toward society and outlook on life, young persons can develop non-criminal attitudes.
Jamaicans denied entry into TT Likely charge on public funds, says Foreign Ministry

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs says this decision is in keeping with the countrys immigration laws and was communicated to Jamaicas High Commissioner to Trinidad and Tobago David Prendergast during a meeting last Tuesday.

The foreign ministry has also disputed claims by the Jamaicans that they were ill-treated by immigration personnel after the decision to deny them entry.

It says once the decision was taken to deny entry to the 12 Jamaicans, members of the group as well as Caribbean Airlines representatives were notified as stipulated by section 21 of the country Immigration Act.

In a statement issued on Friday, the Trinidad foreign ministry said the Jamaicans were then placed in the care of Caribbean Airlines to await a flight to Kingston.

It says prior to their departure on March 22, the group was served a meal, provided with blankets and escorted to the washroom upon request
'He Had the Chance to Go in

and Save the Children'
(Newser)  Prosecutors say 29-year-old Los Angeles man Amir Issa was murdered by his father for being gay, though other factorsincluding the unexplained murder of Issa's mothermake the case a lot more complicated than a simple hate crime. The Los Angeles Times reports that there was a "long-brewing mix of drugs, mental illness, homophobia, and extreme family dysfunction" leading up to last week's killings. In a Facebook post 10 days before his father allegedly shot him dead, Issa complained that he felt like his "sister or brother or mother or father" was "literally controlling" him in his sleep. "If there is a devil or evil spirit, I truly believe it manifests itself in my family," he wrote, adding that his name is "Prince Christ." In a video posted weeks earlier, Issa's father calls him a "pervert" as he interrogates his parents about whether they have had anal sex.

Shehada Issa has been charged with first-degree murder in his son's death but hasn't been charged in the death of his wife, who was found stabbed to death in the family home. A police spokesman says officers are investigating whether Amir killed his mother before being shot by his father. A next-door neighbor tells the Los Angeles Daily News that the father complained to her about his son's drug use but never mentioned his sexual orientation. "If he killed him because he was gay, he would have killed him earlier," she says. "I still don't believe that he did it. I still can't believe it." Police say that the parents had been trying to sell the home and that officers had been called to the house in the past to help evict the son. (Read more hate crime stories.)
(Newser)  Edwin Shifrin, 93, seldom discussed his time at war and his memory is fading, but the Missouri man received a prisoner-of-war medal in February after son Dan Shifrin dug through old news reports and his father's military records and pieced together what happened. Assigned to the Army's 30th Infantry Division, 1st Battalion, 117th Infantry Regiment, Company C, Shifrin landed on France's Normandy beach in June 1944, a week after the D-Day invasion, and then fought the Germans in battles at St. Lo and Mortain. The Germans captured Shifrin on Aug. 7 and he ended up in the Stalag III-C prison camp, about 90 miles east of Berlin. Telegrams to US family members notified them he was missing in action.

Shifrin was on the camp's "escape committee," which devised a plan for prisoners to hide during roll call, causing a futile search for escapees. That allowed the prisoners to slip away unnoticed days later, when the head count had been lowered. Shifrin made his getaway with other prisoners in mid-January 1945, just weeks before the Russians liberated the camp. Dan Shifrin tells the AP that "the rest of their journey is pretty hazy," but what's known is they hitchhiked on Allied supply trucks and purloined rides on horses and bikes on their way to Italy. By that April, Shifrin was back on US soil. After getting his law degree, he became a St. Louis attorney and worked well into his 80s. "We knew he'd been in the war, that he had been captured, and that he escaped. That's about it. He didn't talk about it," his son says. "My guess is he figured it was just part of his lifemany went through it, many didn't return. Many of those who did return didn't return in one piece." (Read more World War II stories.)
(Newser)  EOTech, a firm that has supplied gun sights to the US military, admits that its Holographic Weapon Sight suffers from a defect known as thermal drift. And in November, the company's parent L-3 Communications Corp. agreed to pay $25.6 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the federal government, Bloomberg reported, which claimed EOTech knowingly sold $24 million worth of bad sights to the Defense Department. Months later, though, US Special Operations forces are still using the HWS, which "potentially endangers the lives of service members in combat," per a Washington Post investigation. Thermal drift (the most serious of the several defects with the sight) can cause a shot to be off target by six to 12 inches"one of the worst types of failures," per an unnamed employee quoted in the lawsuit, "since most users won't notice the problem until their life is on the line."

Problems with the HWS first emerged in 2007, when the Norwegian military noticed that the holographic crosshairs would distort in cold weather. But EOTech didn't tell the Pentagon, even as it continued supplying sights. After that, it was discovered that faulty seals caused the sights to fog up in humid weather. Again, EOTech kept quiet. Finally, the FBI, while conducting ballistic tests, discovered the thermal drift, which occurs in both hot and cold temperatures. A Pentagon rep confirmed that some troops still use the sights, adding that military officials "have an unshakable commitment to the safety" of US armed forces. Another military rep tells the Post the sights are only used in instances that "the limitations of the equipment" don't put troops at risk. Denver police, however, abandoned the sights soon after the November settlement. (Read more US troops stories.)
(Newser)  At least two dozen young Islamic radicals linked to the Paris and Brussels attacks are still on the loose, with investigators trying to penetrate the "extensive web" that may be planning more attacks, a Wall Street Journal investigation finds. Scouring court documents and interviews, the paper finds many of these extremists, who apparently met in Belgium's impoverished Molenbeek district, had played a role in other ISIS attacks and fought in Syria for months, or even years, officials say. "We see many plots and several cells that we now know are part of the same network," says the president for Paris' Center for the Analysis of Terrorism. "They're already here. The problem is how to find them." The apparent ringleaders: Abdelhamid Abaaoudwho was killed in a police raid five days after the Paris attacksand Khalid Zerkani, a preacher-turned-recruiter known as "Santa Claus" who's been in a Belgian jail for two years.

And it's the people Abaaoud was tied to who worry officials most, as he played a major role in ISIS operations in Syria and reportedly pulled many of the group's recruits out of Brussels himself. Family members of young men from Brussels tell authorities of the changes they noticed in their sons and brothers after the men started going to Zerkani's meetings. "One day he threatened to kill me, because I was the devil," one mother says in the court papers (she insists her son is now dead, but officials think he faked his death, per CNN). Another man told investigators that his son-in-law tried to get his daughter to go with him to Afghanistan to become a suicide bomber, and when her family put up a fight, he went without her. "I consider [him] a danger to society," the father-in-law told Belgian authorities. "I think that if he comes back to Belgium, he could commit a bloodbath." Meanwhile, Zerkani told police that the claim he helped run the terror network "has no correspondence to reality," court docs reveal. (Read more Paris terror attacks stories.)
(Newser)  North Dakota's GOP convention finished Sunday with the selection of 25 unbound delegates to the Republican National Conventionthough that didn't stop Ted Cruz's campaign from declaring itself the winner after days of wrangling for delegates. At the convention, which the state GOP holds instead of a primary or caucus, 18 of the 25 delegates selected were on a list of the Cruz campaign's preferences, though they will be free to vote for any candidate at the July convention, CNN reports. Some of the delegates on the Cruz slate told Politico that they were only leaning toward Cruz, and at least two said they actually prefer John Kasich.

A request to have the delegates openly state their preferred choice of candidate failed by a 611-748 vote, the Bismarck Tribune reports. With a contested GOP convention now a strong possibility, the candidates will keep trying to woo the North Dakota delegates until July. Cruz spoke at the convention, telling the assembled Republicans that if "we nominate Donald Trump, it hands the general election to Hillary Clinton with a big silver bow," PBS reports. Ben Carson was among those who spoke in support of Trump, though not with great enthusiasm: He said he initially thought "maybe the best thing would be to remain neutral," but he decided it was time for the party to unite behind a candidate. (Read more North Dakota stories.)
(Newser)  By obstinately staying in the Republican race, John Kasich is "taking" votes that rightfully belong to Donald Trump, according to Donald Trump. In Milwaukee on Sunday, Trump told reporters that the Ohio governor shouldn't be allowed to stay in a race that is impossible for him to win, the AP reports. "He doesn't have to run and take my votes," Trump said, adding that he had complained to RNC officials about Kasich and the "unfair" situation. "I said, 'Why is a guy allowed to run?' All he's doing is just he goes from place to place and loses." Kasich spokesman Chris Schrimpf fired back, saying Trump and Ted Cruz will also fail to gain a majority of delegates before the convention, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.

"Since he thinks it's such a good idea, we look forward to Trump dropping out before the convention," Schrimpf said. Recent polls in Wisconsin show Trump behind Cruz, with Kasich a distant third, and Trump missed the bris of his new grandson amid efforts to catch up before the state votes on Tuesday, the Washington Post reports. Analysts say a loss in Wisconsin would be a huge setback for the Trump campaign, since its white, blue-collar workers are the kind of voters who have handed Trump big victories in similar states. A Trump loss would also give the media two weeks to discuss his loss of momentum before the next GOP primary, which is New York's on April 19. (A recent poll found that Trump would be the most disliked major-party presidential nominee on record.)
(Newser)  It's being called the "WikiLeaks of the mega-rich," and it's the top story in dozens of countries around the world: A gargantuan document leak has revealed information on more than 200,000 offshore entitiesand the people who use them to hide their money. Suddeutsche Zeitung, the German paper first contacted by the anonymous source who turned over the documents, says the 2.6-terabyte leak of 40 years of information from Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca is by far the biggest leak of its kind in history, dwarfing the likes of Cablegate and the Edward Snowden leak. Journalists from more than 100 organizations have been secretly reviewing the 11.5 million documents in the "Panama Papers" over the last year. A roundup of coverage:

The Guardian explains exactly what Mossack Fonseca does in its operations in tax havens around the worldand why some, but not all, of those who use offshore shell companies are crooks.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists lists some of the biggest finds in the leak and describes how the papers reveal the way "dark money flows through the global financial system, breeding crime and stripping national treasuries of tax revenues."

Fusion lists some of the dozens of current and former world leaders connected to the files, including Iceland's prime minister, who is under pressure to hold a snap election following the news that he failed to disclose offshore holdings. The documents also revealed a $1 billion money-laundering ring linked to Vladimir Putin.

Mossack Fonseca denies any wrongdoing, but the BBC has uncovered emails in which the firm appeared to break money-laundering rules by helping American business guru Marianna Olszewski pretend that her offshore funds belonged to somebody else.

Tax authorities in Australia say they're now investigating at least 800 wealthy citizens for suspected tax evasion, the AP reports. Tax probes in many other countries are expected to follow.

The Miami Herald has gone through the leaked documents and discovered hard evidence of what authorities have long suspected: "Dirty money" processed through shell companies is fueling South Florida's real-estate boom.

Mossack Fonseca co-founder Ramon Fonseca tells Reuters that the "vast majority" of the 240,000 offshore firms the company helped create have been used for "legitimate purposes." He adds that privacy is "a sacred human right," and documents that appear to reveal some very obvious wrongdoing have been "taken out of context."

Edward Snowden has been keeping a close eye on developments. "Courage is contagious," he tweeted. He also retweeted this observation from journalist Bobby Ghosh: "Can we just remind ourselves that the #PanamaPapers are from just ONE law firm, in just ONE tax haven."

(Read more Panama Papers stories.)
(Newser)  Thirty countries that provide the most troops to UN peacekeeping armies are particularly prone to corruption, according to a new study. Transparency International, an organization that monitors corruption, says six of the most troop-contributing nations scored an F in an A-to-F grading systemTogo, Morocco, Chad, Egypt, Burkina Faso, and Cameroon, the New York Times reports. Among the top three troop contributors, Ethiopia scored an E while Bangladesh and India each got a D. Among all 30 nations, only Italy was graded higher than D.

Transparency International didn't give specific examples but blamed the problem partly on poor training and lack of anti-corruption practices. The study was released amid allegations that international peacekeepers in Central African Republic (CAR) committed sex-abuse crimes between 2013 and 2015, Fortune reports. UN investigators there have talked to 108 apparent victims, most of whom are minors. UN peacekeepers in Democratic Republic of Congo have also received allegations of sex abuse against minors and paternity claims, Reuters reports. "This plague of sexual abuse by peacekeepers must stop," says US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, who described the alleged crimes in CAR as "sickening and odious." (Read more United Nations stories.)
(Newser)  What Bernie Sanders has touted as his devotion to his home state and his refusal to get negative against Hillary Clinton may be exactly what's hampered his campaign. That's according to more than 15 people in Sanders' campeither professionally or personallywho tell the New York Times that the Vermont senator missed early opportunities to go after Clinton and gain valuable momentum that could have placed him in a much better position than he is noweven in the front-runner seat. And part of the reason for these "early missteps" in 2015 and early 2016, as the Times frames it, may seem surprising, considering the tenacity and perseverance that Sanders is now showing: He didn't initially think he could win and simply wanted to spread his message about the inequities in America.

Some feel he could have stepped up more aggressively, and sooner, speaking out more about Clinton's email, Goldman Sachs speaking fees, and involvement in Clinton Foundation financestopics Sanders initially passed on. And some say if he had stumped more in early voting states instead of attending to his senatorial duties, as well as tried earlier to make inroads with black voters in key Southern states, he may have built the momentum he needed. Not everyone agrees: A George Washington University professor recently told the Washington Times that a tough Sanders offensive would have seemed a "selfish power grab" that "wouldn't [have gone] over well with the many idealists ... in his base." Although Sanders has now dug his heels in for the long haul, Clinton has what some say is an insurmountable delegate lead1,712 to Bernie's 1,011, per Bloomberg. Even his wife, Jane, seems to have regrets. "We didn't run all over the nation last year," she tells the New York Times. "It's something that gives you pause." (Read more Bernie Sanders 2016 stories.)
(Newser)  Alaska Air will leapfrog JetBlue to become the nation's fifth-largest airline after striking a deal to buy Virgin America, reports the Seattle Times. Alaska Air announced the deal Monday morning after what the Wall Street Journal reports was a "frenzied" bidding war with JetBlue, one that resulted in a higher-than-expected $2.6 billion price tag. The deal still must be approved by regulators. Alaska Air would add 60 Airbus jets to its fleet of 147 Boeingsthe airline is based in Seattleand solidify its status as a "West Coast power," notes the Times. As USA Today reports, the new airline would have 1,200 departures daily and hubs in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Anchorage, and Portland. It's not clear whether the Virgin brand would disappear entirely. (Read more Alaska Airlines stories.)
(Newser)  Fans of '80s movies who are familiar with the line "Stay gold, Ponyboy" might be interested in a movement to restore an old house in Oklahoma. As the Tulsa World reports, the house just happens to be the one where the Curtis brothers lived in the film The Outsiders. For those unfamiliar, that would be the one with virtually every up-and-coming male star of the era: Matt Dillon, Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe, Patrick Swayze, Ralph Macchio, Emilio Estevez, C. Thomas Howell, etc. The 1940 home is falling apart, but hip-hop artist Danny O'Connor of House of Pain has bought it and now plans to restore it as a museum honoring the film and the SE Hinton novel on which it was based.

"I felt if someone didn't step in, why not me? So that's what I did," O'Connor tells NewsOn6. The plan is to restore the front rooms exactly as they appeared in the 1983 movieright down to the green curtains and a fishbowland to use the back rooms for movie memorabilia, reports KJRH. "Right now, we just want to clean it, preserve it, secure it, and get the word out about what we are trying to do," says the 47-year-old O'Connor. Hinton is showing her support for the restoration via Twitter, and O'Connor has set up a GoFundMe page for those who want to contribute. The goal is $75,000. (Read more movies stories.)
(Newser)  A Missouri man attending college in Russia headed with friends on Easter weekend to a popular resort town known for its mineral springs, with plans to hike a mountain, the AP reports. But when 25-year-old Colin Madsen's friendstwo Russian locals and an American studentwoke up early Easter morning, Madsen wasn't in their Arshan guesthouse, having left in the wee hours in only a T-shirt and pants in the brutal Siberian cold, ABC News reports. Russian investigators announced Monday that after a massive search, Madsen's body had been located about a mile from where he was last seen. A statement by the country's Investigative Committee says Madsen didn't have outward injuries or seem roughed up, and was still carrying money and other items, per NBC News.

Madsen, a student at Irkutsk State Linguistic University who spoke fluent Russian and who had visited the resort a handful of times, was to ascend the 1.2-mile "Love Peak," and his companions said he had seemed pumped the day before and that there was no tiff that would explain why Madsen had taken off in the middle of the night (the AP reports he slipped out between 2am and 5am on March 27). But while investigators haven't determined a cause of death, ABC reports that the IC's statement "suggested" his death may have been drug-related, and it also noted the group had taken drugs the day before Madsen vanished. Police are carrying out drug tests on the body, although they haven't ruled out foul play, and the Siberian Times reports the friends have taken a polygraph. (A woman isolated in Siberia for decades recently emerged.)
(Newser)  Paul Ryan, a man who is not running for president and swears that he doesn't want the job, continues to get about as much press about it as the official remaining candidates. In his Politico Playbook on Monday, Mike Allen talks to a Republican in the know who "sees a 60% chance of a convention deadlock, and a 90% chance that delegates turn to Ryanergo, a 54% chance that Ryan, who'll start the third week of July as chairman of the Republican National Convention, will end it as the nominee." Ryan, meanwhile, tells the Times of Israel while on a visit to Jerusalem that he's not interested.

"No, I've already said that that's not me," he tells the newspaper. Of course, as Allen and Steve Benen at MSNBC point out, Ryan said much the same thing about becoming House speaker before accepting the job as John Boehner's successor. Saying he doesn't want the job gives him "maximum leverage" and sets up a scenario in which he's "begged to do it," writes Allen. Benen thinks those in the GOP hoping for just this scenario should be careful: "The Republican Party would find itself in late July with a presidential nominee who has no campaign infrastructure, no platform, no stump speech, no staff, and no money." (Read more Paul Ryan stories.)
Samsung rolls out Samsung+ 3.0 with remote assist features for their new phones Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge.

Samsung released the update Samsung+ 3.0 which comes out with a new feature called "Samsung Assist". Samsung Assist takes customer service to a whole new level. Any Galaxy S7 or S7 edge owner can let a Samsung representative take control of their phones and remotely troubleshoot their device at a tap of a button anywhere and anytime. Obviously, the user will have to permit their consent to the representatives before they can play around with the handset, and it can be done through voice call or video chat."Brand new for Samsung+ 3.0, 'Samsung Assist' feature brings users hands-on support, direct to their screens wherever they are," Samsung said.

This service is especially useful for those who aren't exactly into technical aspect and software perspective in their smartphones. Even tech-savvies can benefit from it, particularly in the carrier settings department, which will eliminate the need to request their friends and family members who aren't that knowledgeable in technology with setting up their devices anymore.

Available only for the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge for now Samsung says that it will definitely come to other Galaxy smartphones and tablets via carrier updates in the coming weeks. Samsung is also rolling out add-ons which include Live Support, On Demand Answers, Device Diagnostics, Tips & Tricks and Community. Live Support: A customer can get in touch with a Samsung customer service representative through video chat, text or call.On Demand Answers is the guide of FAQs and various tips for troubleshooting, allowing them to find solutions independently.

The latter is more preferred for users who like to take matters into their own hands. Another add-on is device diagnostics, a feature that lets users monitor the status of their devices, including battery health, data and security.Tips & Tricks, lets users can make the most out of their devices with a database of information. Community is a portal to user-based forums across Samsung+ and the smartphone maker's website. This is great for users who want to get information by interacting with other users instead of speaking with a customer service representative thereby exploring more than what expected and of course making some new internet friends etc. This helps to increase your knowledge along with helping others too in their own problems. Samsung+ 3.0 is already on Google's play store for those of you who haven't updated it and want to experience it.
According to insurance-claims study from Taiwan, children and adolescents suffering from Type 1 diabetes are three times likelier to develop epilepsy.

The study findings are coherent with other limited research that indicates a link between type 1 diabetes and epilepsy. However, further research is required to determine how that happens, I-Ching Chou, MD from China Medical University Children's hospital in Taiwan, said in his paper. The researchers published their results online in Diabetologia on March 31, 2016.

"The pathogenetic mechanisms of neurological diseases [such as epilepsy] remain unknown but may be associated with significant long-term neurological sequelae," they stress. Thus, the "causative factors between type 1 diabetes and the increased risk of epilepsy require further investigation," they conclude.

"Teasing out the causes of seizures is difficult to do retrospectively in an administrative database," Kenneth Mandl, MD, MPH, from Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital, Massachusetts, told Medscape Medical News.

However, according to previous reports, when Mandl's team of researchers ran the same analysis on US insurance-claims data, they found that the patients suffering from any of the 12 autoimmune diseases were vulnerable to epilepsy and type 1 diabetes patients had a 5.2 times higher risk of developing epilepsy. Dr. Mandl recommends that link between diabetes and epilepsy risk "should certainly be studied further," ideally "in populations where coding can be confirmed with clinical review and characterization of the seizures."

The findings of the current study back the hypothesis that "metabolic abnormalities of type 1 diabetes, such as hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia, may have a damaging effect on the central nervous system and be associated with significant long-term neurological consequences," write Dr Chou and colleagues.
GUWAHATI/KOLKATA:

West Bengal and Assam recorded 80 per cent and 70 per cent voter turnout respectively today in the first phase of assembly elections, which the Election Commission said was by and large peaceful, with no reports of violence-related death or injury.

Though high, the voting percentage was lower than that recorded in the 2011 assembly polls in the same seats. The figures are till 5 PM. With queues of voters still present outside polling stations, the figures could go up, Deputy Election Commissioner Sandeep Saxena told.

The ruling Trinamool Congress today expressed satisfaction over the huge turnout in the first phase of Assembly polls and said the record turnout proves the silent revolution that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had ushered in through development.

The huge turnout in the first part of the first phase proves the silent revolution that Mamata Banerjee had brought in through massive developmental work in the junglemahal in last five years, state panchayat minister Subrata Mukherjee said.

Registering a heavy turnout, an estimated 79 per cent voters today cast their votes in 18 constituencies in the first part of the first phase in West Bengal till 5 PM, many of which are located in areas which had earlier witnessed Maoist violence.

Eighteen constituencies went to the polls in the first part of the first phase election, while elections will be held in another 31 seats in second part of the first phase on April 11.

The huge turnout proves the confidence that the people have in Mamata Banerjee and TMC. The opposition will have to hide their faces after the results are announced on May 19, TMC MP and leader of the party in Lok Sabha Sudip Bandopadhaya said.

On the allegations by opposition parties over TMC trying to create hurdles in the way of free and fair polls, Bandopadhaya said, Those who dont have any connect with the masses for five years, only make such baseless allegations during polls. These allegations are a desperate attempt to stay relevant.

An estimated 51 per cent polling was recorded till 2 PM today in 65 constituencies of Assam to decide the fate of 539 contestants during the first phase of Assembly elections. Half of the 95,11,732 voters including Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi have cast their votes so far, election office sources said, adding 50.83 per cent polling was recorded across 2190 polling stations in 65 constituencies till 2 PM.

Besides Tarun Gogoi, the fates of BJPs Chief Ministerial candidate Sarbananda Sonowal and his alliance partner AGPs Working President Atul Bora will be decided in the first phase polls. First time voters were seen enthusiastically standing in long queues along with others for hours as many of the polling booths wore a festive look.



Some of the booths were adorned with multi-coloured festoons and buntings, others with red, blue, white and orange balloons and yet some had earthen urns painted with smiling human faces on them. The ruling Congress, the BJP-AGP-BPF alliance and the AIUDF, CPM, CPI-M, CPI-(M)-(L) are in the fray.



Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi along with his wife Dolly Gogoi, son and MP Gaurav Gogoi and brother Deep Gogoi were among the early voters to stand in line to press the EVM button at the Debicharan Baruah Girls High School polling station.



Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in some polling centres were reported to have malfunctioned, briefly halting voting but once they were replaced voting continued uninterrupted, election office sources said. With over 48,000 persons manning the polling booths, security measures have been put in place in the state and the Indo-Bangla border along Barak Valleys Karimganj district sealed.



CCTV cameras and web casting facilities have also been put in place by the election office for a free and fair election. Altogether 535 companies of central security forces and state police have been deployed in the 65 constituencies spread across Upper Assam, two hill districts, northern bank of Brahmaputra Valley, besides Barak Valley.



For todays first phase of polling Congress is contesting in all the 65 constituencies, BJP in 54 and its alliance partners - AGP in 11 and BPF in three, AIUDF in 27, CPI and CPM in ten each with CPI(ML)(L) in six along with 60 others of unrecognised parties and 13 Independents. The remaining 61 seats will go to the polls in the second and final phase of polling on April 11. (Also read: EC to review poll preparations in TN, Puducherry next week)

Voting underway in West Bengal

Heavy turnout was recorded in the first phase of Assembly election in West Bengal today with over 63 per cent of the voters casting their ballots till 1 PM in 18 constituencies, many of which are in areas earlier dominated by Maoists. Serpentine queues were seen in front of many polling booths since morning as villagers tried to avoid the scorching midday sun.



So far there has been no report of any violence or disturbance. There were some issues with EVMs in some booths which were immediately addressed and polling is going on smoothly. We got some other complaints also and they have been addressed, Additional Chief Electoral Officer Dibyendu Sarkar told PTI. Polling began at 7 AM with a tight multi-layered security cover in place. (Also read. Cong manifesto promises all round progress in West Bengal)



Key candidates in this phase include Sukumar Hansda, minister-in-charge of tribal affairs department, who is fighting from Jhargram. Of the 18 seats, 13 are in Jangalmaahal area earlier affected by Maoist violence where voting will end at 4 PM due to security considerations.



In the remaining five constituencies of Purulia, Manbazar, Kashipur, Para and Raghunathpur voting will go on till 6 PM. For aerial surveillance, two choppers have been conducting regular sorties. There are total 4,945 polling stations out of which 1,962 have been classified as critical by the Election Commission. Voter Verifiable Audit Trails (VVAT) are being done in 562 polling stations. (Also read. WB Assembly polls: 7 candidates own assets worth less than Rs 1,000)



Over 40 lakh electorate will decide the fates of 133 candidates, including 11 women, who have been wooing voters in the first part of the first phase of the elections. There are a minimum of three security layers, including sector forces and a quick response team. Central forces are present in every polling booth and depending on the requirement, the deployment of forces are increased, EC sources said.
New Delhi:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has returned home after wrapping up his final-leg of five-day three-nation tour of Belgium, the US and Saudi Arabia. The Prime Minister had arrived in Riyadh yesterday from Washington and today he held wide-ranging talks with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud during which they agreed to strengthen cooperation in combating terrorism.



Thank you Saudi Arabia. Joined several programmes during my visit, which will deepen economic & people-to-people ties between our nations, Modi tweeted both in Arabic and English before departing for New Delhi.



The Prime Ministers first stop was Brussels where he attended the long-delayed India-EU summit and held talks with Belgium counterpart Charles Michel on March 30. From Brussels Modi went to Washington where he attended the Nuclear Security Summit on March 31 and April 1.

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New Delhi:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on April 5 inaugurate Stand Up India initiative which is aimed at creating jobs and promoting entreprenuers among SC, ST and women by extending loans at cheaper rates. The programme will be launched by Modi at a function to be held at Noida. The Cabinet, headed by Modi, had in January approved Stand up India scheme for providing credit to SC, ST and women entrepreneurs at lower rates.

Under the scheme, which will be implemented through 1.25 lakh bank branches, banks will give loans at the least applicable rate of interest. Also every bank branch, including private sector, will give loans between Rs 10 lakh and 1 crore to at least one SC/ST and one woman entrepreneur under the scheme.

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Jaipur:

The global population of Tigers is currently less than 3,500, which is indeed a worrisome figure. More than 90 per cent of the territory which was once covered by the big cats is not under the forest cover anymore. It was feared 10 years ago that Tigers may go extinct one day. However, fortunately, In India and Nepal, the population of tigers has increased if we talk about the past decade. And now, in a good news, the number of tigers could rise to double in the forest cover that is remained, a paper published in the international journal Science Advances has claimed.



In 2010, a meeting of 13 tiger range countries was held in Russia, in which a target was set to double the number of tigers by 2022. Representatives of these 13 countries will meet again in New Delhi this month and a review of progress on the target will take place.

The authors of the scientific study mapped the forests across 76 landscapes that have maximum tigers with the help of satellite technology between 2001 and 2014. It was found that the forests had not shrunk at the pace which was thought. The factors that lead to shrink in tiger territory involve agricultural expansion and infrastructure development.

According to the study, tigers also "proliferate rapidly where prey and sheltered habitat are abundant, as demonstrated by tiger recovery in Panna National Park, India." The tiger being a solitary animal required forested habitats that are larger than 30 sq km large for survival.

Achieving the goal would need "maintaining the existing habitat, including ecological connectivity among source populations."

The researchers used tools such as Google Earth Engine and Global Forest Watch to analyse habitat loss to the tiger. Sumatra was the most affected. As per their estimation, $750 billion need to be invested in infrastructure over the next decade. "Large roads are mortality magnets for tigers."



Authors also noted the successful efforts of conservation managed by community in Nepal and India, the two countries that have registered a rise in tiger population.

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London:

Fashion conscious Kate Middleton will reportedly be packing 12-15 outfits for her six-day visit to India and Bhutan after an advance team completed a recce of locations, including the iconic Taj Mahal. Kate, 34, and Prince William, 33, will fly into Mumbai next Sunday for the trip and the Duchess of Cambridge will be packing alongside her daytime dresses and evening gowns, a surprise additiona pair of hiking boots.



Kate will take 12-15 outfits for the six days of official visits, the Telegraph reported. Whilst the Royal couple are in Bhutan they will go on a six-hour trek to Tigers Nest monastery said to require peak physical fitness and hiking gear, likely to be the 106 pounds Hillmaster boots the Duchess last wore when she visited Borneos jungle.



The official tour starts in Mumbai on April 10, and the Duke and Duchess will travel to New Delhi, the Kaziranga National Park and Thimphu, capital of the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, apart from their visit to the Taj Mahal.



A small team have made a rehearsal trip to India and Bhutan, on which Kates private secretary Rebecca Deacon made notes on factors to consider about the locations the Duchess will visit, so that she has an idea of what outfits will and wont work, the daily said.



The team took a photograph of every place the Duchess will visit, so that she can use these images as a guide to determine how formal she needs to dress and what colours will look best against the backdrops.



She is in charge of it herself and takes an interest in paying tribute to the host country with nods to their culture and local style on at least a few of the engagements, a royal source was quoted as saying.



The important factor on this tour is the heat, so thats an issue that plays a big part in the choice of outfits, the source said.



On previous royal tours Kate has made a point of dressing diplomaticallywearing a dress by Canadian born designer Erdem Moralioglu to touch down in Montreal, for example.



She wore a dress by Australian label Zimmermann whilst on Australias Manley Beach, and on her three-day trip to New York in 2014 she wore two pieces from American designers, a Tory Burch coat and J Crew jeans.



Just a few days after it was announced the Duke and Duchess would be travelling to India, Kate wore a dress by Indian designer Saloni for a function in London, hinting perhaps that she will also rely on the designers print and colour filled collection for the upcoming tour.The Duchess personal assistant, Natasha Archer, will accompany her on the royal tour, as will her hairdresser Amanda Cook Tucker.

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Chennai:

Ending intense negotiations spread over weeks, DMK today allotted its key ally Congress 41 seats for the May 16 Assembly polls. The bilateral discussions to identify the constituencies each of them would contest will begin later today.

We have signed (an agreement) that allots 41 seats to Congress, senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad told reporters here after inking the deal with DMK chief M Karunanidhi.

Jointly addressing reporters here along with his colleague Mukul Wasnkik, TNCC chief EVKS Elangoan and DMK leaders led by party treasurer M K Stalin, Azad said they would work to emerge victorious.

The agreement comes against the background of intense bilateral discussions between the DMK and Congress. Also, TNCC held a series of discussions with its state and central leadership. Recently, Elangovan held talks with party Vice President Rahul Gandhi as well over the issue.

It was decided by Tamil Nadu Congress to push for at least 45 seats and in a worst case scenario climb down a few seats and conclude the deal and it has worked out as was expected.

Azad said the rest of the seats would be shared among the DMK and other allies. Of course, the major share, the number (of seats) will go to DMK but there are other allies also and DMK has already tied up with other political parties, he added.

This time it is the turn of the DMK-led government and I am sure under the leadership of Karunidhiji, the party will be able to form the government in Tamil Nadu, he said, adding,all partners would work sincerely to ensure victory.

Pointing to DMK leader Stalin, he said here is the young leadership, and we have signed 41 seats.

Stalin referred to discussions held earlier and said, it has been decided today that Congress will contest 41 seats as part of the DMK front and an agreement has been signed.

He said they are confident of driving out AIADMK from the seat of power.

We are confident we will achieve it, he said.

Talks will commence this evening to identify the constituencies that would be fought by Congress and DMK, he said. Karunanidhi and Ghulam Nabi Azad signed the pact in the presence of top leaders of both parties including Wasnik, former ministers of DMK Duraimurugan, E V Velu and party MP Kanimozhi.

With the present allotment to Congress, DMK has so far allotted 54 seats to its allies.
New Delhi :

It was a fateful day in 1991 for 10 Sikh pilgrims at Pilibhit, who were killed by a group of 47 policemen in the pretext of terrorists. On Monday, a special CBI court awarded life sentence to the accused in the Pilibhit fake encounter case. The CBI had investigated the case on the directions of Supreme Court. Around 47 policemen were chargesheeted in the case of which 10 died in the course of the trial.

On Friday, 20 policemen appeared before the court, which sent them to judicial custody. The court also issued non-bailable warrants against the remaining 27 accused.

According to CBI investigating teams, the bus was on its way to Pilibhit on July 12, when a police team stopped it at Kachlapul ghat. Eleven Sikh men were allegedly dragged out of the vehicle alleged of terror activities.

On the intervening night of July 12 and 13, the policemen gunned down the Sikh men in three encounters in the thickets falling under three different police station areas - Bilsanda, Niuria and Pooranpur - in Pilibhit.

The accused policemen then claimed that these men had criminal cases against them and claimed to have recovered arms and ammunition from their possession.

The CBI probe found that the police got the autopsy done on 10 of the bodies and got them cremated the same day.

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New Delhi:

India is likely to raise with China the issue of Beijing blocking its latest bid to have JeM chief Masood Azhar designated terrorist by the UN in the aftermath of terror strike at the Pathankot air force base. India has been disappointed by the Chinese action at the UN and is expected to take up the issue at the political-level at the first given opportunity, sources said.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj is travelling to Moscow later this week to attend RIC (Russia-India-China) ministerial meeting. On the sidelines, a bilateral meeting between Swaraj and her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi is expected during which the issue of China blocking the designation as terrorist of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief and Mumbai terror attack mastermind at the UN is likely to figure.

Last week, China stopped UN sanctions committee from designating Azhar as terrorist, maintaining that the case did not meet the requirements of the Security Council.

This is not the first time China has blocked Indias bid to get Pakistan-based militant groups and leaders proscribed by the UN.

The UN had banned the JeM in 2001 but Indias efforts for slapping sanctions on Azhar after the 2008 Mumbai terror attack also did not fructify as China, that has veto powers, did not allow it apparently at the behest of Pakistan again.

Last July, China had similarly halted Indias move in the UN to take action against Pakistan for its release of Mumbai terror attack mastermind Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, saying that its stand was based on facts and in the spirit of objectiveness and fairness with Beijing again claiming at the time that it was in touch with New Delhi.

Expressing its strong disappointment over the development, India said it finds it incomprehensible that while the Pakistan-based JeM was listed by the UN Committee for its well known terror activities and links to the Al Qaeda, the designation of the groups main leader, financier and motivator has been put on a technical hold.

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Milwaukee:

Americans return to the polls for yet another presidential primary election in what has proven the most chaotic Republican contest in recent memory, with front-runner Donald Trump now pushing rival John Kasich to leave the White House race saying the nomination is beyond his grasp.

Trump, who is badly trailing Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in the polls ahead of Tuesdays primary in the Midwestern state of Wisconsin, argues that Kasich is unfairly siphoning off delegates who will select the partys candidate for the November general election.

Trump holds a significant lead over Cruz in primaries and caucuses so far, but looks as though he will be unable to gain the 1,237 delegates needed to lock up the nomination ahead of this summers national convention in Cleveland.

Trying hard to right himself after a difficult week, Trump said it was unfair for Kasich, who has won only one primary in his home state of Ohio, to continue campaigning.

He suggested that Kasich, who has pledged to make it to the convention, follow the lead of former candidates Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush and quit. If I didnt have Kasich, I automatically win, Trump said Sunday evening in Wisconsin.

Trump said Kasich could ask to be considered at the Republican convention even if he stopped competing in the remaining nominating contests. He said earlier Sunday that he had shared his concerns with Republican National Committee officials at a meeting in Washington last week.

Kasichs campaign countered that neither Trump nor Cruz would have enough delegates to win the nomination outright. Trump faces major opposition in the mainstream of the party where he is seen as running an outlandish campaign that will make him unelectable in November.

Since he thinks its such a good idea, we look forward to Trump dropping out before the convention, said Kasich spokesman Chris Schrimpf.

Across the political aisle, Democrat Hillary Clinton told NBCs Meet the Press that the FBI had yet to request an interview regarding the private email server she used as secretary of state.

Clinton and her Democratic opponent, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, announced theyd agreed to debate in New York before the important April 19 primary, though their campaigns continued debating over when to schedule the face-off.

Sanders, meanwhile, fired up a crowd in Wausau, Wisconsin, hoping to continue a string of recent campaign victories even as Clinton maintains a sizable delegate lead.

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Kolkata/Guwahati:

The first phase of Assembly polls in West Bengal and Assam today passed off peacefully, with a high voter turnout of 80 and 70 per cent respectively in the two states. Voting in 18 of the 294 Assembly constituencies in West Bengal and 65 of the 126 seats in Assam was by and large peaceful with no reports of violence-related death or injury, Deputy Election Commissioner Sandeep Saxena told reporters in Delhi.

Responding to questions, he said a total of 16 complaints related to rigging, denial of vote and late start of polling were received.

Polling in the two states was held amid tight security, including large-scale presence of central para-military forces and aerial surveillance by helicopter-borne personnel in West Bengal.

In West Bengal, where Mamata Banerjees Trinamool Congress is making a determined bid for a second successive term, heavy voter turnout was recorded with an estimated 80 per cent of 40.09 lakh electors casting their ballots. Most of these constituencies are in areas where Maoists held sway before TMC came to power and neutralised them.

In 13 seats of tribal Jangalmahal area earlier affected by Maoist violence, polling concluded at 4 PM as scheduled due to security considerations. In the remaining five seats of Purulia, Manbazar, Kashipur, Para and Raghunathpur it went on till 6 PM.

Banerjees TMC, which contested the last Assembly polls in alliance with the Congress, is pitted this time against foe-turned-friends Congress-Left combine, besides the BJP, which is seeking to make inroads into the politically volatile eastern state.

In Assam, where Congress under Tarun Gogoi is seeking a fourth straight term, an estimated 70 per cent of little over 95.11 lakh voters cast their ballots. There were no reports of violence from any of the 65 of the 126 constituencies where polling was held in the first phase.

Seeking to capitalise on anti-incumbency factor and a host of contentious issues, including the divisive debate on nationalism, BJP has tied up with former chief minister Prafulla Mahantas AGP and Bodo Peoples Front in its bid to dislodge the Congress from power in the northeastern state. Illegal Bangladeshi infiltration is a major electoral and social issue in Assam and the party had sought to exploit it to the hilt during electioneering.

The fate of several prominent Congress candidates, including Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi from Titabor and Speaker of the outgoing Assembly Pranab Gogoi from Sibsagar will be decided in the first phase. Among others whose constituencies went to poll today include BJPs chief ministerial candidate Union Minister Sarbananda Sonowal from Majuli and the partys Lok Sabha member from Jorhat Kamakhya Prasad Tasa, who is crossing swords with Tarun Gogoi in Titabor.

AIDUF of Dhubri MP Badruddin Ajmal, which has emerged as a force to reckon with in the state is the last several years, with the backing of Bangladeshi migrants, has also fielded candidates in 27 of the 65 constituencies. Congress is contesting all 65 seats in the first phase, BJP 54, its alliance partners AGP 11 and BPF three. CPI and CPI-M have put up candidates in 10 seats each and CPI-ML (L) in six.

04042031 West Bengals ruling Trinamool Congress expressed satisfaction over the huge turnout and said it was indicative of the silent revolution that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had ushered in the state through development.

The huge turnout in the first part of the first phase proves the silent revolution that Mamata Banerjee has brought in through massive developmental work in the junglemahal in the last five years, state pancahayat minister Subrata Mukherjee said.

The Left front too voiced satisfaction over the voting, saying election was more or less free and fair.

Leader of Opposition and CPI(M) state secretary Surya Kanta Mishra in a tweet said the people have given a clear message about ousting the TMC from power.

The people have given a clear message todays first phase of d Polls - Ousting of d TMC from power is inevitable!!! #PeoplesPower, Mishra tweeted.

In Guwahati, Gogoi voiced confidence that the people would re-elect a Congress government.

We are 100 per cent confident that people will vote for us. We brought change, we proved it and people can see it. I also want change. Who wants to remain static? We (Congress) achieved change for the better, while AGP also achieved change but for the worse.

Everyone knows what was the situation (15 years ago) when AGP was in power when they failed.... There was no development then, no employment, Gogoi said as voting was in progress.

BJPs chief ministerial candidate Sarbananda Sonowal said in Majuli, his constituency, that people were voting in the Assam Assembly elections for change.

People want change for a free, clean and efficient government. They want an administration that protects their culture too, he said.
India-Saudi Arabia Joint Statement during the visit of Prime Minister to Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia, Mon, 04 Apr 2016 NI Wire

India-Saudi Arabia Joint Statement during the visit of Prime Minister to Saudi Arabia (April 03, 2016) Both leaders expressed appreciation for the successful transformation of bilateral relationship in political.

1. At the invitation of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques His Majesty King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Hon'ble Prime Minister of the Republic of India, Shri Narendra Modi paid a two-day official visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from 2-3 April 2016.

2. The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques received Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi on 3 April at the Royal Court. The two leaders held discussions in the spirit of the strong friendship that binds the two countries and their peoples. During the visit, Prime Minister Modi also met with His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Naif bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, Crown Prince, Deputy Premier & Minister of Interior and His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Deputy Crown Prince, Second Deputy Premier & Minister of Defence. Prime Minister Modi also received Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Health & Chairman of the Executive Board of Saudi Aramco.

3. The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz and Prime Minister Modi exchanged views on bilateral, regional and multilateral issues of mutual interest. The two leaders underlined the close and friendly bilateral ties, deep-rooted in shared history and sustained and nourished through growing economic partnership, multi-faceted cooperation and vibrant people to people contacts. The wide-ranging and constructive discussions were held in a cordial atmosphere and enabled better understanding and appreciation of each others concerns and perspectives, recognizing the close interlinkage of the stability and security of the Gulf region and the Indian subcontinent and the need for maintaining a secure and peaceful environment for the development of the countries of the region.

4. Both leaders expressed appreciation for the successful transformation of bilateral relationship in political, economic, security, defence, manpower and people to people exchanges, in recent years, which have enriched bilateral ties. They expressed satisfaction at the regular exchange of high-level visits between the two countries, underlining that the Delhi Declaration (2006) and the Riyadh Declaration (2010) elevated the mutually beneficial bilateral relations to the level of 'Strategic Partnership'.

5. Cognizant of their responsibility for promoting peace, stability and security in the region and the world, the two leaders emphasized the importance of further cementing bilateral strategic engagement, including in the areas of security and defence cooperation, to serve the common interests of the two countries and their peoples.

6. Prime Minister Modi acknowledged that the MoU on Defence Cooperation signed during the visit of His Majesty King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud to India in February 2014 as the then Crown Prince, Deputy Premier and Defence Minister of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was an important milestone in strengthening the strategic partnership between the two countries. The two leaders agreed upon the need to intensify bilateral defence cooperation, through exchange of visits by military personnel and experts, conduct of joint military exercises, exchange of visits of ships and aircrafts and supply of arms and ammunition and their joint development. They also welcomed the decision for convening of the second meeting of Joint Committee on Defence Cooperation in Riyadh to follow up on the visit of Prime Minister Modi.

7. The two leaders agreed to enhance cooperation to strengthen maritime security in the Gulf and the Indian Ocean regions, vital for the security and prosperity of both countries. They further agreed to promote bilateral collaboration for humanitarian assistance and evacuation in natural disasters and conflict situations.

8. The two leaders expressed strong condemnation of the phenomenon of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, irrespective of who the perpetrators were and of their motivations.

9. Affirming that the menace of extremism and terrorism threatens all nations and societies, the two leaders rejected totally any attempt to link this universal phenomenon to any particular race, religion or culture. They called on all states to reject the use of terrorism against other countries; dismantle terrorism infrastructures where they happen to exist and to cut off any kind of support and financing to the terrorists operating and perpetrating terrorism from their territories against other states; and bring perpetrators of acts of terrorism to justice.

10. The two leaders agreed to further strengthen cooperation in combating terrorism, both at the bilateral level and within the multilateral system of the UN. The two leaders called upon the international community to strengthen multilateral regimes to effectively address the challenges posed by terrorism. The two sides agreed to work together towards the adoption of Indias proposed Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism in the United Nations. The Prime Minister lauded Kingdoms efforts at fighting terrorism in all its aspects and its active participation in international efforts towards this end. The Indian side was briefed on the Kingdoms initiative in bringing together Islamic Alliance against terrorism.

11. Acknowledging and commending their strong bilateral security cooperation, the two leaders agreed to enhance cooperation in counter-terrorism operations, intelligence sharing and capacity-building and to strengthen cooperation in law enforcement, anti-money laundering, drug-trafficking and other transnational crimes. They welcomed the signing of an MOU on cooperation in exchange of intelligence related to money laundering, related crimes and terrorism financing. The two sides further agreed to take action against illegal transfer of money.

12. Both leaders agreed to promote cooperation in cyber security, including prevention of use of cyber space for terrorism, radicalization and for disturbing social harmony. The two leaders directed their relevant agencies to coordinate efforts to counter radicalization and misuse of religion by groups and countries for inciting hatred, perpetrating and justifying terrorism for pursuing political aims. The two leaders welcomed exchanges and dialogue between religious scholars and intellectuals of both countries and the organization of conferences and seminars to promote values of peace, tolerance, inclusiveness and welfare, inherent in all religions.

13. Reiterating the significance of regular bilateral interactions in reinforcing the momentum for bilateral cooperation, the leaders noted with satisfaction the increase in high-level exchanges between the two countries in recent years. They underlined the importance of regular exchange of visits, including at the levels of ministers and senior officials.

14. Both leaders appreciated the well-functioning bilateral institutional mechanisms in the field of trade & investment, energy, defence and manpower. They noted that new and potential areas of cooperation identified during the meetings held under these mechanisms had a constructive effect on the expanding bilateral ties and further called for effective implementation of the decisions made under the framework of these mechanisms.

15. The two leaders welcomed the positive outcomes of the 11th session of the Joint Commission Meeting held in New Delhi in May 2015 and its Review Meeting held in Riyadh in December 2015. The two leaders mandated the Saudi-India Joint Commission to continue follow up of the decisions taken at the highest levels for cementing the bilateral strategic partnership.

16. Acknowledging the on-going positive transformation of the economies of India and Saudi Arabia, the two leaders emphasized the importance of expanding trade and investment ties to drive the strategic engagement forward. They directed their Finance and Trade Ministers to work together to find ways and means to substantially increase the flow of bilateral investments and growth of trade ties.

17. Acknowledging the steady increase in bilateral trade over the last few years, the two leaders expressed satisfaction at the USD 39 billion trade in 2014-15. Taking note of the excellent trade and economic engagement, with the two countries being among the top trading partners for each other, the two leaders agreed upon the need to further strengthen these ties, particularly through diversifying non-oil trade.

18. Both leaders expressed satisfaction at the growing presence of Indian and Saudi companies in each other's market and agreed to further encourage trade promotion measures and participation in fairs and exhibitions. They welcomed the meeting of Saudi India Business Council in New Delhi in December 2015 and agreed that Council was a useful platform for furthering trade and economic cooperation.

19. The two sides conveyed satisfaction at the holding of the 4th India GCC Industrial Forum at King Abdullah Economic City, Jeddah in November 2015. The Saudi side thanked India for active participation of a large number of Indian companies in the International Fairs and Exhibitions held in Riyadh and Jeddah.

20. The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman Bin Abdulaziz lauded the strong growth shown by Indian economy and expressed appreciation for Prime Minister Modi's remarkable vision for the future of the country. He commended Prime Minister Modis worthy initiatives of "Start Up India", "Make in India", "Smart City, and "Clean India, noting their strong potential to provide Indian economy a positive thrust for growth.

21. The Indian side highlighted the key initiatives taken by the Government of India to improve the ease of doing business in the country and India's key efforts to simplify and rationalize existing rules and relax the foreign direct investment norms in key areas, including railways, defence and insurance. Inviting Saudi Arabia to be a partner in India's growth story, Prime Minister Modi encouraged Saudi Aramco, SABIC and other Saudi companies to invest in the infrastructure sector in India and to participate in projects creating mega industrial manufacturing corridors, smart cities as well as the Digital India and Start up India programmes.

22. The Saudi side expressed its interest in investing in infrastructure development in India, especially in priority areas such as railways, roads, ports, and shipping. The Saudi side welcomed interest of Indian side in investing in the Kingdom, especially taking advantage of the competitive investment opportunities offered by the Saudi economic and Industrial cities.

23. Both leaders also welcomed the signing of the framework agreement between the General Investment Authority in Saudi Arabia and Invest India aimed at facilitating investments by the private sectors in the two countries.

24. Keeping in view the importance of energy security as a key pillar of the strategic partnership, the two leaders expressed satisfaction at their growing bilateral trade in the energy sector, acknowledging Saudi Arabia as the largest supplier of crude oil to India.

25. The two leaders agreed to transform the buyer-seller relationship in the energy-sector to one of deeper partnership focusing on investment and joint ventures in petrochemical complexes, and cooperation in joint exploration in India, Saudi Arabia and in third countries. The two sides also agreed to focus on areas of training and human resources development and cooperation in research and development in the energy sector. In this regard, the two leaders expressed the need for regular meetings under the umbrella of India-Saudi Arabia Ministerial Energy Dialogue.

26. The two leaders agreed to strengthen cooperation between educational institutions, universities and higher research institutions of the two countries.

27. Both leaders emphasized the importance of continued promotion of scientific and technological collaboration, including in the areas of renewable energy including solar, Information and Communication technology, space technology, sustainable development, arid agriculture, desert ecology, urban development, healthcare and bio-technology. The two sides further agreed to collaborate on areas of food security.

28. The Saudi side appreciated the initiative taken by the Prime Minister of India leading to the formation of International Solar Alliance. They acknowledged the importance of this Alliance in advancing new solar technologies worldwide.

29. Recognizing the vibrant people to people contacts that provided strong bonds between the two countries, the two leaders lauded the valuable role of the Indian community in Saudi Arabia and its contribution to the progress and development of both India and Saudi Arabia. They welcomed the signing of an agreement on labour cooperation for recruitment of General Category Workers. Both sides also welcomed the establishment of a Joint Working Group on Consular issues under the umbrella of the India-Saudi Arabia Joint Commission to discuss consular issues on a regular basis.

30. Prime Minister Modi conveyed his sincere appreciation for the excellent arrangements made by the Saudi authorities for the comfort of the Haj and Umrah pilgrims from India.

31. The two leaders noted that India and Saudi Arabia have shared civilizational ties over history that are enriched by the movement of goods, peoples and ideas. They believed that this common heritage can be drawn upon to strengthen their convergence on approaching contemporary challenges. A broad approach of humanism and tolerance and a conviction that faith should unite rather than divide can be a positive factor in international relations.

32. The two leaders discussed regional and international issues of mutual interest, including the security situation in West Asia, Middle East and South Asia, in the light of their common interest in the regional and global peace, security and stability. Referring to the earlier declarations with regard to the situations in Yemen and Syria, they called for the implementation of relevant UN Security Council resolutions (2216, 2254 and 2268). They also expressed grave concern regarding security situation in Libya and Iraq. In this regard, they reiterated the importance of peaceful resolution of these issues through dialogue and political negotiations.

33. During their discussions on regional issues, the two sides emphasized the importance of the principle of good neighbourliness, non-interference in internal affairs, respect of independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity and resolution of dispute through peaceful means.

34. The two sides expressed their hope for achieving a just, comprehensive and lasting peace in accordance with the Arab Peace Initiative and the resolutions of international legitimacy, in a way that guarantees the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, including the establishment of their independent, united and viable state, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

35. Both leaders emphasized the importance of an effective multilateral system, centred on a UN reflective of contemporary realities, as a key factor in tackling global challenges. They stressed upon the urgent need to pursue UN reforms, including of the Security Council through an expansion in both categories of its membership, to make it more representative, credible and effective.

36. The leaders agreed that the visit of Prime Minister Modi to Saudi Arabia helped in further consolidating and deepening the strategic partnership framework and further development of excellent bilateral relations in all spheres, to serve the common interests of the two countries and their peoples.

37. Prime Minister Modi expressed his sincere gratitude to His Majesty the King for the warm welcome and gracious hospitality. He invited His Majesty the King to pay an official visit to India at mutually convenient time, which was gladly accepted.

Source: PIB
OTTAWA, April 4, 2016 /CNW/ - In what postal workers say is a "cynical attempt to provoke a labour dispute," Canada Post Corporation has filed for conciliation surprisingly early on in its negotiation process with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers.

"This is unprecedented in our history," said Mike Palecek, national president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, "Canada Post has not even finished giving us their demands and they are already preparing to push matters to a head".

The long list of concessions demanded by the Crown Corporation so far includes hefty rollbacks on pensions, benefits and job security. Canada Post negotiators have refused to consider any of the union's proposals, including ideas for service expansion and pay equity for the female-dominated rural carriers.

"In June 2011, Deepak Chopra had no scruples about shutting down the postal system and locking workers out," said Palecek. "These Harper appointees want to break our union at any cost, with no regard for the public and the services they rely on."

The union also points out that a postal review is in the works and that Canada Post's actions could interfere with that process.

"Canada Post should be preparing for public consultations about the future of the post office," said Palecek. "Not declaring war on its workers."

SOURCE Canadian Union of Postal Workers

For further information: Aalya Ahmad, CUPW Communications, at [email protected] or 613-327-1177 or Kevin Matthews, CUPW Communications, at [email protected] or 613-293-0547.
[April 04, 2016] Manthan - IITC Partnership to Bring Big Data and Advanced Analytics Solutions With Zero Capital Expenditure, to the Middle East

DUBAI, UAE, April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Pre-packaged advanced business intelligence solutions with the quickest time to value will enable regional businesses to accelerate growth even in challenging economic conditions Manthan the global leader in business intelligence and Big Data analytics solutions today announced a partnership with IITC - an OHI group company in the Sultanate of Oman. IITC is a leading service provider of enterprise IT infrastructure and complex business solutions, and is a specialist in large turn key projects. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160321/346132LOGO ) Optimized for Big Data, and delivered on a SaaS model, Manthan's solutions bring down the cost of ownership for businesses while providing them best in class pre-packaged analytics. This partnership will thus bring cutting edge advanced analytics within the reach of businesses in the region riding on Manthan's unique pricing model and the market leadership of IITC. In Oman, retail sales are likely to grow at 6% per year through 2020. Manthan already has a strong focus on the Middle East market and has a regional office in Dubai's innovation hub- Dubai Internet City. "IITC, being part of the large conglomerate OHI, has a wide network and excellent understanding of the market needs. And hence it emerged as an ideal partner for Manthan's Switch On analytics solutions for the Oman market. Manthan's solutions, which are offered on the SaaS model allow organizations to reap the benefits of advanced predictive nd prescriptive analytics at scale, with virtually Zero Capex commitment. Therefore it is a perfect match for the business expectations of the region," said Ehtesham Mohammed, Director Sales - Middle East and Africa, Manthan.



With a rapidly growing demand for sophisticated analytics, the Middle East is one of the most promising markets today. IITC, one of the first IT companies in the Sultanate has been a pioneer in bringing best of the breed solutions to various industries in the Sultanate. "IITC's professional services and expertise coupled with their deep knowledge of the customer requirements complements Manthan's industry leading portfolio of pre-packaged, self-service BI solutions. This partnership will ensure that businesses in Oman, have access to best in class analytics solutions that provides quick ROI and growth in the market", said S. Jayakumar, General Manager, IITC. Gartner observes that "Without advanced analytic capabilities, retailers will not be able to compete in the digitalized marketplace."*

Featured in multiple analyst reports and recently ranked as the #1 vendor for Tier 1 retailers in the RIS Software leaderboard, Manthan has been at the forefront of providing the advanced analytics edge to every business role across various verticals. More than 200 customers in 22 countries are reaping rich dividends with Manthan's analytics solution suites, gaining the unmatched ability to analyse huge volumes of structured and unstructured data for real-time insights. Manthan will be showcasing its award winning advanced analytics solutions at the Technology and Innovation in Retail 2016 event, in Dubai, UAE on the 10th and 11th of May 2016. For more information, please write to [email protected] or call +971-561-3838-03. About Manthan : Manthan is the Chief Analytics Officer for consumer industries worldwide. Manthan's portfolio of analytics-enabled business applications, advanced analytics platforms and solutions are architected to help users across industries walk the complete data-to-result path - analyze, take guided decisions and execute these decisions real-time. Sophisticated, yet intuitive analytical capability coupled with the power of big data, mobility and cloud computing, brings users business-ready applications that provide on-demand access and real-time execution - the only path to profit in a contemporary, on-demand and connected economy. Manthan is one of the most awarded analytics innovators among analysts and customers alike .To see how your business can gain from analytics, visit http://www.manthan.com. Reach out to Manthan on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. * Retailers Find Success Using Self-Service and Advanced Analytics, Robert Hetu, 24 April 2015 SOURCE Manthan

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[April 04, 2016] The NSPCC Selects Interact to Boost Collaboration and Strengthen Organisational Culture

MANCHESTER, England, April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Large UK children's charity to deploy intelligent intranet software to unify and engage its dispersed workforce The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), one of the UK's largest charities, has selected an intelligent intranet platform from Interact, to aid collaboration and build a stronger organisational culture for its employees. By implementing Interact, the children's charity hopes to create 'one' NSPCC, enabling workers to share stories, inspire and engage colleagues as well as celebrate success and demonstrate impact. Rebecca Leppington, Intranet manager at NSPCC, commented: "After extensive research into what our staff wanted from their new intranet, it became clear that Interact offered an outstanding out-of-the box solution. We were particularly impressed by its ease of use, superior collaboration and engagement features and extensive user community. These will allow us to bring our workers closer to the heart of the organisation and continue to fight for the children we work to protect." The charity plans to launch its intranet at the beginning of Q2 2016 to over 2,000 employees, all working across multiple sites. Features in Interact mean that the NSPCC can centralise its previously disparate CMS, staff directory, survey tool and discussion groups, thus encouraging ease of adoption andgreater engagement of workers.



"The NSPCC recognised that it needed an intranet that was responsive on mobile and tablets, making it easier for staff to share knowledge and engage, whilst reducing the time taken to access vital information," said Nigel Danson, Interact CEO. "Whilst many solutions can deliver on some level, there are few that offer intelligent functionality that learns the preferences of the user, whilst being so easy to implement and use. The fact that the NSPCC has recognised this and has selected Interact as its collaboration platform is a testament to our non-profit intranet offering." The NSPCC is one of many charities globally that uses Interact's intelligent intranet software. Organisations including Barnardos, British Red Cross and Breast Cancer Now in the UK and ASPCA, March of Dimes and Make a Wish Foundation in the US all use Interact to help power internal communications, worker engagement and collaboration.

Interact - the software Interact is intelligent intranet software. The flexible and scalable solution has more than 650,000 users and has revolutionized the way companies communicate, collaborate, share knowledge, and streamline internal processes. Interact promotes a culture of collaboration and idea sharing by using corporate social networking and micro blogs. Non-technical users can quickly and easily update the intranet. Interact - the company Founded in 1996 with headquarters in the UK, Interact operates globally and is one of the fastest growing intranet software companies. Interact has built a strong reputation of delivering successful and collaborative intranet solutions to leading companies such as ASPCA, Arriva, G4S, ADT and Make a Wish Foundation. For further information, visit: http://www.interact-intranet.com Press contacts:

Lauren King

VP Marketing

T: +44 (0)161 927 3222

E: [email protected]



Steve Zucker

US Marketing Director

T: +1 (646) 564 5775

E: [email protected]



Caroline Duff

Account Director, Metia for Interact

T: +44 (0)203 100 3796

E: [email protected]

SOURCE Interact

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[April 04, 2016]

Vidmind to Launch New TV Content Marketplace for Ethnic Content at MIPTV 2016

CANNES, France, April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Vidmind, a white-label, Over-The-Top (OTT) Cloud-TV platform, will launch a new marketplace which enables content providers to offer global pay TV services quickly and easily to ethnic groups living outside their home country, at MIPTV 2016, which will take place April 4-7 in Cannes.

The new marketplace, which aggregates local content, enables content owners to acquire more traffic and exposure by offering their own branded next-generation TV services at minimal risk and cost.

Vidmind will hold live demonstrations at MIPTV, the worlds biggest TV and digital content market, in Palais 1, Stand P-1.J14.

"The new platform is part of Vidmind's strategy of becoming an international marketplace for content for citizens who live abroad and wish to watch TV programs from their home country," said Andrey Nayman, Vidmind'sCEO.







"By building partnerships with content companies, we can offer a full package which includes both distribution and premium content in a risk-free and pay-as-you-grow model."

Companies using Vidmind's OTT platform can, for the first time, operate outside their local boundaries and offer an omni-channel experience on cross devices regardless of their size.

Vidmind has already signed an agreement with YAM TV, an Israeli Internet pay-TV service provider, to launch a new pay television service for Israeli expats.

YAM TV will be able to offer a multichannel and VOD pay TV service, which offers a new way to watch Israeli television channels online from anywhere anytime. Subscribers will be able to watch premium content of unparalleled quality through the Web or mobile devices.

Vidmind can provide content companies with everything required to deliver comprehensive end-to-end service management. This includes content preparation, management and delivery, contracts and subscribers' management, monetization, business model and billing for different content packages.

About Vidmind

Vidmind's innovative OTT solution allows Internet service providers, mobile operators, ISPs and content owners to easily and quickly launch a primary TV everywhere service.

Vidmind's cloud-based solutions enable users to benefit from capabilities which far exceed existing pay-TV services, and show fast return on investment.

For more information and to schedule a meeting at MIPTV 2016, please visit http://www.vidmind.com.

Contact Person

Hagai Azor

VP Operations

Vidmind

[email protected]

+972-54-8300847



SOURCE Vidmind
[April 04, 2016] We Are The World Online Community Launches With Plenty of Engaging, Interactive Features and Ways to Connect With Fellow Members

DUBROVNIK, Croatia, April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Registration is now open for We Are The World, a new online community that combines all the best features of today's social media networks. The mission is to unite people from every corner of the globe under the banner of friendship and fun. The site launched publicly in April 2016. Learn more at http://www.wearetheworld.online/. Registering for membership with We Are The World takes just seconds. The site requires only an email address and profile name. User also have the option of creating a profile through a Google, Yahoo, Live, Launchpad, Flickr, LiquidID, Word Press, Verisign, and, Clavid link. We Are The World respects the privacy of its users and will not sell personal information to third parties. We Are The World's homepage features a summary of what's most popular within the community, along with a snapshot of newest members along the right sidebar. The newsfeed is fully customizable, ensuring members see only what interests them. We Are The World also includes business listings, resumes, a question-and-answer section, ideas, file sharing, SMS functionality, aticle directory and a charity fundraising page. Clearly, the site's value lies in its tremendous versatility.



Furthermore, We Are The World's global reach makes it the best network of its type for connecting people from many different locales who share similar thoughts and hobbies. The site features a broad assortment of subsections to appeal to all users, including: Albums

Article Directory

Pages

Blogs

Businesses pages

Forum

Chat

Polls

Groups

Events

Videos

Music

About We Are The World Online Community We Are The World's homepage features a feed of "What's New" in the community, along with a snapshot of newest and most popular members, Profile pictures, Blogs, Business listings, Videos, Albums, Classifieds, Groups, Articles and much more. The value proposition of We Are The World clearly lies in its versatility. Whatever a user's purpose or interest, the site has tools to express that interest. Likewise, with its global connections, We Are The World might be the best network of its type for connecting people from many different locales who share similar thoughts and hobbies. The creators of We Are The World encourage the community to like the Facebook page https://web.facebook.com/wearetheworldonline/ and therefore stay informed of all important site developments. They expect 2016 to be an exciting year for everyone who takes a moment to register with the community. Contact:

Ivan Bolfek

+385 95 7303437

Email Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160401/350369

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160401/350370 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/we-are-the-world-online-community-launches-with-plenty-of-engaging-interactive-features-and-ways-to-connect-with-fellow-members-300244855.html SOURCE We Are The World

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[April 04, 2016] Smart Insights: Pay Wallets Adoption in Europe Will Generate Over EUR 1 Billion Revenue

MARSEILLE, France, April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Intelling is publishing a new Smart Insights Report "mWallets to meet European adoption" investigating how the Pay Wallets, namely Apple Pay, Android Pay, Samsung Pay and others, which were developed in other world regions, can be adapted to fit the European payment market specificities. This newly published research analyzes in detail the evolution of mobile payments market in Europe as well as the hurdles of the Pay Wallet rollouts in other markets. Pay Wallet providers: Apple, Samsung, Google,  have already taken measures to adapt their offer to the technical and business specificities of the European markets. Major findings from the report include: In the US and in South Korea , the Pay Wallets have experienced some hiccups during their introduction phase but are now meeting a growing adoption,

, the Pay Wallets have experienced some hiccups during their introduction phase but are now meeting a growing adoption, So far, in Europe , both financial institutions and mobile network operators have attempted to introduce mobile payment solutions but have failed to reach mass markets so far,

, both financial institutions and mobile network operators have attempted to introduce mobile payment solutions but have failed to reach mass markets so far, The card and payment industry is on a trend towards a lower revenue operation due to the recently introduced interchange cap regulation in the region,

Mobile wallet transactions number in the European Union will grow at a CAGR of 61.8% over 2016-2021,

The total mWallet revenue for the payments industry is forecasted to experience a CAGR of 50% over the 2016-2021 period, surpassing the EUR 1 billion bar by 2021.



Thierry Spanjaard , CEO of Smart Insights explains: "The European payment market is characterized by efficiency, fragmentation and lower operating revenue. Attracted by the European market size and dynamism, the Pay Wallet vendors are taking these constraints into account on their path to European market conquest." Artur Khakimov, industry analyst for Smart Insights and author of the report adds: "It has been established that consumers are more confident in electronic giants than in MNOs or even in established financial institutions when it comes to satisfy their mobile payment needs. This will help the Pay Wallets adoption on the European market.

The Smart Insights Report "mWallets to meet European adoption" is available at http://www.smartinsights.net/Smart-Insights-Reports About Intelling: Smart Insights Reports, along with Smart Insights Weekly and Smart Insights Market Trends, are published by Intelling, a consultancy headquartered in Marseille, France. Intelling is a consultancy with two expertise majors: marketing and strategy for secure transactions, smart cards, telecoms, payment, and convergence, as well as market intelligence, for all industry fields. Intelling is the publisher of Smart Insights Reports, that address secure transactions and smart card markets, providing an extensive qualitative and quantitative analysis. More details are available at: www.smartinsights.net and www.intelling.com Contact : Thierry Spanjaard, CEO, Intelling, Email

tel: +33 609 18 28 51 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/smart-insights-pay-wallets-adoption-in-europe-will-generate-over-eur-1-billion-revenue-300245363.html SOURCE Smart Insights - Intelling

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[April 04, 2016] Why IT Ignores Cost, Complexity, Skills Gap for Hybrid IT, According to New Sungard Availability Services Research

WAYNE, Penn., April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Hybrid IT is about more than saving money. A survey of IT decision-makers at major financial services, retail, health care, and other organizations found that 50 percent have seen IT costs remain the same or rise since adopting a Hybrid IT strategy. Yet 94 percent report positive business impacts despite the costs, according to the benchmark research from Sungard Availability Services (Sungard AS) conducted by Vanson Bourne. The survey respondents, spread throughout the U.S. and Europe, remain committed to Hybrid IT strategies despite growing skills gaps and the potential costs and complexity of mixing cloud resources with existing in-house IT environments. A full 73 percent agreed that running a Hybrid IT environment was necessary to staying competitive, and 74 percent were willing to invest to ensure they have the skill sets within their organization to successfully run their Hybrid IT estate. The cost of Hybrid IT varies widely, according to the study. Half of organizations saw costs increase, at an average of $291,000 per year. The other half, however, have seen significant cost savingsan average of $218,700 per year overall. Despite the costs, almost half (45 percent) were driven to Hybrid IT as part of an evolution toward the cloud, with 38 percent responding that it offered a competitive advantage. A third of respondents pointed to changing customer and workforce demands that have necessitated a Hybrid IT approach. "Sungard AS research shows that Hybrid IT is part Jekyll, part Hyde for global businesses," said Keith Tilley, executive vice president, global sales & customer services management, Sungard Availability Services. "Organizations note that Hybrid IT improves customer satisfaction, enables flexibility, and is often essential to their business. Yet many struggle to manage, and even understand, these complex environments. What's most striking about the responses, however, is that mny organizations are eager to invest in Hybrid IT, and the skills to support it, because it offers such a distinct competitive advantage."



Often, combining cloud environments with on-premises systems is necessary for legacy applications or as part of mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Nearly half of respondents (49 percent) cited mission-critical legacy applications that they needed to keep running as a key reason why they employ Hybrid IT. The second most common answer, at 48 percent, was M&A activity that left the organization with multiple IT systems. Many of these organizations need help managing their Hybrid IT. Some 41 percent of respondents rated their organization's current IT estate as "very complex" or "extremely complex." Only 3 percent said their environment was "not at all complex." More than a third (34 percent) admitted they don't fully understand their firm's IT architecture.

One reason for the complexity might be that businesses lack the skills needed for Hybrid IT success. A full 89 percent of global respondents said their team lacks at least one skill, and two in five feel their organization isn't up to managing the complexity of their Hybrid IT estates. When asked what skills they lacked, 37 percent cited the ability to respond to security issues  the most commonly reported need. More than a quarter of organizations said that they needed to fill skills gaps in managing different IT systems across different departments (28 percent), and integrating and maintaining public and private cloud environments (27 percent each). Explore both the Jekyll and Hyde sides of Hybrid IT by visiting Sungardas.com/JekyllandHyde for the full research results. About the research

Interviews were carried out in September and November 2015 by Vanson Bourne on behalf of Sungard Availability Services. 700 interviews were conducted altogether: 200 from the US, 150 from the UK, 150 from France, and 100 each from Sweden and Ireland. The research spoke to IT decision makers in businesses of over 500 employees across a variety of sectors  including financial services, business process management and retail. About Sungard Availability Services

Sungard Availability Services ("Sungard AS") is a leading provider of critical production and recovery services to global enterprise companies. Sungard AS partners with customers across the globe to understand their business needs and provide production and recovery services tailored to help them achieve their desired business outcomes. Leveraging 35 years of experience, Sungard AS designs, builds and runs critical IT services that help customers manage complex IT, adapt quickly and build resiliency and availability. To learn more, visit www.sungardas.com or call 1-800-468-7483. Connect with us on Twitter @Sungardas, LinkedIn and Facebook. Brand Statement

The abbreviation for Sungard Availability Services is 'Sungard AS' as cited above. Please use 'Sungard AS' when abbreviating the name rather than 'Sungard' or 'SunGard,' which may confuse the reader with another separate company with a similar name. Sungard Availability Services is a trademark or registered trademark of SunGard Data Systems or its affiliate, used under license. The Sungard Availability Services logo by itself is a trademark or registered trademark of Sungard Availability Services Capital, Inc. or its affiliate. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140702/124193 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/why-it-ignores-cost-complexity-skills-gap-for-hybrid-it-according-to-new-sungard-availability-services-research-300245251.html SOURCE Sungard Availability Services

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[April 04, 2016] IT Revolution Announces Call For Presentations And Conference Themes For DevOps Enterprise Summit San Francisco 2016

PORTLAND, Ore., April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- IT Revolution (http://itrevolution.com), the industry leader for advancing DevOps, today announced its call for proposals for DevOps Enterprise Summit 2016 San Francisco (DOES16), the premier industry conference for the leaders of large, complex organizations implementing DevOps principles and practices (http://events.itrevolution.com/us). The call for proposal submissions will be accepted until midnight PDT on May 2 (http://bit.ly/SFOCFP16), and the conference is scheduled for November 79 at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square. Abstracts should address the conference theme of "Leading Change," and its sub-topics of organizational design in the enterprise, the functions of people, modern processes and technology adoption, and addressing security and compliance. Early Bird registration for DOES16 San Francisco has opened (http://bit.ly/doessfo16eg) and is highly encouraged, as the popular event has doubled in size while selling out the past two years. In addition, the DOES16 London event set for June 30July 1, has opened Blind Bird registration. For more information, visit: (http://bit.ly/doesldnreg).



"Our goal is to help accelerate the rate of DevOps adoption in large, complex organizations, and to increase the probability of those transformations succeeding," said Gene Kim, founder of IT Revolution and co-author of "The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win." "One of the ways we do this is to understand the top obstacles in these transformations. A great community is one that helps one another  by having leaders share how they're overcoming the top obstacles identified last year, my hope is that we can quickly elevate the state of the practice." IT Revolution and its founding partner Electric Cloud are proud to present the third year of DOES16 San Francisco  an event for enterprise IT leadership and software delivery experts to join together to identify and amplify the evolving technical and architectural IT practices as well as the methods needed to lead widespread change efforts in large, complex organizations. For more information about DOES16 San Francisco, please visit: [http://events.itrevolution.com/us/]

Share This: DevOps Enterprise Summit San Francisco call for proposals is now open! Submit your proposals here: http://bit.ly/SFOCFP16 @DOESSummit #DOES16 About IT Revolution IT Revolution assembles technology leaders and practitioners through publishing, events, and research. Our goal is to elevate the state of technology work, quantify the economic and human costs associated with suboptimal IT performance, and to improve the lives of one million IT professionals by 2017. Contact:

Jeremy Douglas

Catapult PR-IR

303-581-7760, ext. 16

[email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160322/346968LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/it-revolution-announces-call-for-presentations-and-conference-themes-for-devops-enterprise-summit-san-francisco-2016-300245078.html SOURCE IT Revolution

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[April 04, 2016]

BoothNV Brings Creative and Innovative Photo Booths to Las Vegas Weddings, Parties and Events

LAS VEGAS, April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- As the mobile photo booth industry continues to evolve, it's important for companies to regularly update their products.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160404/351024

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160404/351025

BoothNV has added a new and creative photo booth design to its current line of photo booth rentals within the Las Vegas area. BoothNV is the premiere photo booth rental company in Las Vegas specializing in corporate events, weddings, birthday parties and much more.

Constantly striving to set themselves apart from competitors with creative rental packages and uniquely designed booths, BoothNV has surely outdone themselves with this new setup. After countless hours o R&D, combined with over 20 years of professional photography experience, BoothNV is proud to introduce its 8ft x 8ft inflatable LED photo booth. This new design allows users to fit up to 12 people inside the booth, can be setup in under 15 minutes, and is portable enough to fit into any vehicle.







BoothNV's new photo booth comes equipped with a Canon Rebel DSLR Camera, Sinfonia CS2 printer, 22 inch touch screen monitor and soft box lighting system, for flawless, evenly distributed light. Picture quality is unbelievable, it's as if you're in a professional photo studio.

Commitment to customer care continues to make BoothNV Las Vegas' premier photo booth rental company. For further details regarding BoothNV's newly designed booth or existing product line and services, please get in touch using the contact information below.

View BoothNV's new photo booth design here: http://www.boothnv.com/our-booths/

Web: http://www.boothnv.com/

Customer Service

Kris Hartmann

Email

(877) 695-1942

2421 Tech Center Ct #100-B

Las Vegas, NV 89128

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/boothnv-brings-creative-and-innovative-photo-booths-to-las-vegas-weddings-parties-and-events-300245573.html

SOURCE BoothNV Photo Booth Rental
[April 04, 2016] The Future of Bitcoin Is Bright According to XML Gold CEO

MAHE, Seychelles, April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- In a recent blog post, the CEO of Bitcoin and digital currency exchange platform XML Gold outlined why he believes the future of Bitcoin is bright. If the growth and adoption of Bitcoin as a technology is compared to that of another disruptive technology, the Internet, it can be seen that Bitcoin is still in its infancy, comparable perhaps with the world wide web in the early 1990's: "Bitcoin is only seven years old and has many problems typical for other technologies in the early stages of development. But despite that, investors have already invested huge amounts of money in its ecosystem." Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160404/350955 But according to XML Gold's CEO Bitcoin is growing up: "The developers of new Bitcoin exchanges and infrastructure have a more responsible approach to their security and regulation. The number of Bitcoin network users, and the volume of transactions is growing constantly. Such companies asPurse, ChangeTip and ZapChain offer current services on the basis of the technology, including instant online payments for goods, micropayments, and more."



He went on to conclude that: "This "civil war" inside the Bitcoin community will end with the fact that Bitcoin Classic will release a hard fork after coming to consensus in the circle of miners and developers. New killer apps will appear and make the Bitcoin user base bigger. And finally the Internet will get its first real payment protocol."

About XMLGold: Founded in the year 2000, XMLGold has established a reputation as a reliable Bitcoin and digital currency exchange platform. All transactions are protected with SSL 256-bit encryption. XMLGold is designed for those who wish to safely and profitably exchange cryptocurrencies. XMLGold services are compatible with Perfect Money, Bank wire, Bitcoin, Litecoin, MoneyPolo, Payeer and PayPal. XMLGold also offer a generous affiliate program where affiliates receive 10% of the profit. To learn more about XML Gold please go to: http://xmlgold.eu XMLGold is the source of this content. Virtual currency is not legal tender, is not backed by the government, and accounts and value balances are not subject to FDIC and other consumer protections. This press release is for informational purposes only. The information does not constitute investment advice or an offer to invest. This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-future-of-bitcoin-is-bright-according-to-xml-gold-ceo-300245611.html SOURCE XML Gold

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[April 04, 2016] The Makers of the HERDEZ Brand Partner with Food Network Chef Martita Jara and Mini Chef Jojo to Celebrate Dia del Nino

ORANGE, Calif., April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Dia del Nino or Day of the Child, a nationally recognized Mexican holiday (typically taking place on April 30th) began in 1925 as a way to celebrate children and the important roles they play in society. Since then the holiday has evolved taking its place on the world stage, and though dates and traditions among countries may differ slightly the theme of celebrating our children remains key. That's why this year the makers of the HERDEZ brand, the number one salsa brand in Mexico, are partnering with Food Network Star Chef Martita Jara and her nephew Jojo, mini Chef in training, to encourage everyone to celebrate our children every day by cooking with them. "My mama inspired me to cook and in turn I want to pass down the traditions, starting with my nephew Jojo," said Chef Martita Jara, Food Network Star Alumni and cast member of OWN's Home Made Simple. "We've been cooking with the HERDEZ brand since he was able to sit up. Sharing these moments with our kids means the world to them." In honor of the holiday, Chef Martita Jara and Jojo have created simple kid-friendly recipes with everyday household ingredients like tortillas, cheese, salsa and broccoli to help kids and families collaborate in the kitchen, preparing easy after school snacks, light lunches and even dinner together. Available exclusively on www.herdeztraditions.com, Martita and Jojo's recipes include:



Pizza Casera -- This all-time favorite gives traditional pizza an HERDEZ brand twist. Featuring a combination of Salsa Casera, Salsa Verde, on a tortilla crust, topped with jack cheese, ham, basil, herbs and a touch of olive oil. Perfect for a quick and tasty after-school snack.

-- This all-time favorite gives traditional pizza an HERDEZ brand twist. Featuring a combination of Salsa Casera, Salsa Verde, on a tortilla crust, topped with jack cheese, ham, basil, herbs and a touch of olive oil. Perfect for a quick and tasty after-school snack. Albondigas de Pollo a la Barbacoa -- Barbeque delight! This version of meatballs including chicken, jack cheese, HERDEZ Salsa Verde, oregano, breadcrumbs, spices and homemade barbeque sauce will create fun forms in the kitchen culminating in a leisurely light lunch.

-- Barbeque delight! This version of meatballs including chicken, jack cheese, HERDEZ Salsa Verde, oregano, breadcrumbs, spices and homemade barbeque sauce will create fun forms in the kitchen culminating in a leisurely light lunch. Mac and Cheese Verde -- No kid-friendly recipe is complete without mouthwatering mac and cheese. This take incorporates pasta, tortillas, milk, butter, broccoli, sharp cheddar, HERDEZ Salsa Verde, Maseca a touch of olive oil and spices to taste for a crisp, creamy creation.

-- No kid-friendly recipe is complete without mouthwatering mac and cheese. This take incorporates pasta, tortillas, milk, butter, broccoli, sharp cheddar, HERDEZ Salsa Verde, Maseca a touch of olive oil and spices to taste for a crisp, creamy creation. Cheesy Spinach Enchiladas-- This appetizing arrangement is made with tortillas, spinach, jack cheese, corn, avocado, olive oil, spices and a combination of HERDEZ Salsa Casera and Salsa Verde. Inspired by traditional enchiladas and elaborated with kid-friendly ingredients, this recipe is a delicious dinner-must the whole family can enjoy. "Food is always a part of the celebration! Most of our happy childhood memories are centered around our Tia's kitchen," said Gilberto Gutierrez, senior brand manager for the HERDEZ brand. "Martita and Jojo's Dia del Nino recipes are an easy and fun way to celebrate our kids and get them involved in the cooking experience." To further encourage the celebration, the makers of the HERDEZ brand are hosting a "Celebrate Your Chef" video and photo social media contest so families can get that extra motivation to jump in the kitchen with their kids and win fun prizes. Simply cook with your kid, capture the moment and share on Facebook or Instagram using #HERDEZKids for a chance to WIN $1,000 cash, cooking classes and prizes. All participants are eligible for a free child-size apron while supplies last.

For more information on the HERDEZ Brand "Celebrate Your Chef" Contest, to download kid-friendly recipes or learn more about the holiday visit www.herdeztraditions.com/dia-del-nino. Follow the HERDEZ brand via social media on Facebook and Instagram @HERDEZTraditions and on Twitter @HERDEZBrand. Join the conversation via #HERDEZKids. ABOUT THE HERDEZ BRAND

HERDEZ salsa is made the authentic way, using fresh ingredients like tomatoes, onions, chile peppers and cilantro. Today, HERDEZ Salsa is the No.1 selling salsa brand in Mexico and a growing staple in homes in the United States. HERDEZ authentic Mexican products are available nationwide at major grocery stores. Visit www.herdeztraditions.com for more information. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160404/351091 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-makers-of-the-herdez-brand-partner-with-food-network-chef-martita-jara-and-mini-chef-jojo-to-celebrate-dia-del-nino-300245616.html SOURCE HERDEZ Brand

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Popular public commentator and economist, Prof. Pat Utomi recently described the Lagos State Governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode as a man with ...

Popular public commentator and economist, Prof. Pat Utomi recently described the Lagos State Governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode as a man with a lot of substance who is administering the state methodically and is very sensitive to important things.Utomi, who spoke in an interview with newsmen shortly before delivering a keynote address at the unveiling of the Office of Overseas Affairs and Investment otherwise known as Lagos Global, said from his assessment of the Governor so far, the man is governing the state with the mindset of an accountant, and that informed why he was being methodic and concentrating on getting things done.He said those criticizing the Governor have really not taken time to study his management style, a development he said informed the unfair criticism of the Governor and his team.He said, You know I have had the opportunity of talking to him (Governor Ambode) quite a number of times before the elections and after the elections. I think people have not been as fair to him as he deserves.However, I think he is a very clever guy and I think that he is very sensitive to what is important to do, but people who are used to one style are not in a hurry usually to accept a new way of doing things, but I think he would probably be more methodic in getting things done from what I see of him.He has the accountant mind which is a different kind of mindset. When I teach corporate leadership, I refer to styles of management or cultures of management as they are called and there are three unique cultures of management as stated by a former professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Edgar H. Schein.One is called the operator culture, another one is called the engineering culture which means people who have specific professional kind of background loyal to the way their professional backgrounds affect the way they do things like engineers driven by safety; accountant driven by certain things.So all of those things will mean that there would be a shift in style and if people pay more attention to what is getting done than style, they would probably find out that the Governor has a lot of substance, Utomi said.
The Federal Government has issued a 21-day ultimatum to Turkish Airlines to comply with the order of Consumer Protection Council, CPC, ...

The Federal Government has issued a 21-day ultimatum to Turkish Airlines to comply with the order of Consumer Protection Council, CPC, over abuse of rights of passengers on flight TK 623 of December 20, 2015 or face sanctions. Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, slammed the ultimatum against the backdrop of shoddy treatment of Nigerian passengers aboard the airlines flight, especially with regards to misplaced baggage. Passengers on the said flight TK 623 to Abuja were allegedly subjected to untold hardships, as they were forced to repeatedly check the airport in Abuja on the fate of their baggage, thereby incurring extra and budgeted expenditure, including hotel accommodation, without any form of support by the airline.Following a report on the incident, the CPC in a letter to the airline, dated December 29, 2015, signed by its Director General, requested the airline to provide it with a full situation report of the events, including Turkish Airlines policy on delayed baggage, particularly as regards the compensation of affected passengers, the number of affected passengers, the number of those yet to receive their baggage and when same was expected to arrive. The airline was also asked to indicate what steps it had taken to provide appropriate redress to the affected passengers.
Ekiti State Governor Ayo Fayose has admonished President Muhammadu Buhari from contesting in the 2019 presidential election.

Ekiti State Governor Ayo Fayose has admonished President Muhammadu Buhari from contesting in the 2019 presidential election.He said by 2019, the president, who he claimed is presently bogged down by age would have become too old to govern.Those promoting Buhari for 2019 should stop. I have told Nigerians that Buhari does not have the capacity now to govern Nigeria. What capacity will he display in seven years time? Currently as it stands, the President is challenged by age," Fayose said at an interactive forum in Lagos.
The Special Assistant to Ekiti State Governor on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka has described the yesterday's me...

The Special Assistant to Ekiti State Governor on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka has described the yesterday's meeting in Lagos of the embattled former Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the State, Mr Temitope Aluko with the Governor, Mr Ayodele Fayose as a vindication of his position that "he (Aluko) can make a 360 degree turnaround and return to the same Governor Fayose that he claimed rigged election because he lacked integrity."Olayinka, who said he was speaking in his personal capacity and not as spokesperson of the governor, added that, "Being the person that faced Aluko on Television interviews where he told all the lies that he told against Governor Fayose and the people of Ekiti State, I am constrained to make my position known on this new development."Even though Governor Fayose, being someone with large heart may not be too happy that I am making this statement, but as one of the major dramatis personae in the whole saga, my conscience won't allow me to just keep silent after all the pains and confusion caused by Aluko."I did say on Channels Television that giving the right situation or after Aluko must have concluded his scamming of the APC and its gullible leaders, he will return to Governor Fayose and recant everything that he had said."Today, I have been vindicated because Aluko has done just that and I wonder how he will feel when he comes face to face with the people that he has destroyed. I wonder how he will feel when he comes face to face with those fine military officers that he went to Kaduna to lie against and made them to lose their jobs."Also, I wonder how those who funded him will be feeling now, having failed to listen when I was consistently saying that they were being duped. I wonder how the Department of State Services (DSS) men who took Aluko's lies and acted on them by invading the State House of Assembly will feel now that they have integrity problem because of what he (Aluko) made them to do."However, I salute my boss, Governor Fayose for once again displaying his statesmanship because only a statesman with a large heart can hold the hands of someone like TKO Aluko after all that he did to pull down his government."I also thank God for vindicating me by finally exposing the hypocrisy of Aluko to the whole world to see."
An All Progressives Congress chief in Sokoto State, Alhaji Muktari Mapia, has urged Nigerians to support President Muhammadu Buhari'...

An All Progressives Congress chief in Sokoto State, Alhaji Muktari Mapia, has urged Nigerians to support President Muhammadu Buhari's administration in its efforts to reposition the country.Mapia told the News Agency of Nigeria in Sokoto on Monday that such support was necessary as the nation's problems cannot be solved in one year.He stressed that what the administration require at this critical stage, was the collective support and understanding of all Nigerians.He said that the administration inherited myriads of problems, urging Nigerians to be patient and align with the change mantra of the Federal Government to reposition the country.Mapia advised Nigerians irrespective of religious and political affiliations to pray for God's intervention in the nation's socio-economic and political activities.He said that seeking divine intervention would enable the federal government overcome the challenges facing the country.
The General Overseer of The Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Pastor Enoch Adeboye, has urged Nigerians to have faith in God, be ...

The General Overseer of The Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Pastor Enoch Adeboye, has urged Nigerians to have faith in God, be prayerful and grateful.Pastor Adeboye spoke yesterday at the Special Prayer and Thanksgiving service for Landlords and Tenants by the RCCG, National Headquarters, Throne of Grace Parish, Ebute-Metta, Lagos.The programme featured prayers, song rendition, bible teaching and prophetic ministration.He said God owns all nations and he is the master builder and anyone who wants to enjoy His mercy and favour must have faith in him.His words: Nigeria belongs to God. It is indeed a blessed nation. I have never seen a nation as blessed as Nigeria . We only need to put our faith in God to build our nation.Psalm 127:1: Unless the LORD builds the house, the builders labour in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain.God is the master builder and when we let him know how much we depend on him for sustenance and be grateful with the little he has done, we will make it.Our economy became awful when we forgot God and brought in idols.Pastor Adeboye, speaking through his Special Assistant on Personnel and Administration, Pastor Johnson Odesola, said before Festac 77, the Naira was equivalent to a dollar and our economy was stronger and better, until we forgot God and became the laughing stock of the world.It is only what He does that can stand and if we really want God to build this nation, we must return back to Him, know Him personally and let Him occupy our national life.
Born State Governor, Kashim Shettima, has said the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led Federal Government is trying to rebuild the count...

Born State Governor, Kashim Shettima, has said the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led Federal Government is trying to rebuild the country after it was bastardised by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) administration led by former president Goodluck Jonathan.Governor Shettima, who is also the chairman, Northern Governors Forum, assured that the fuel scarcity being experienced in the country at the moment would end in a couple of weeks. He said President Muhammadu Buhari has put necessary machinery in place to get things right.Shettima stated this in Owerri, Imo State, yesterday, while fielding questions from newsmen when he visited Governor Rochas Okorocha with the governors of Niger State, Alhaji Abubakar Sanni Bello and Jigawa State, Alhaji Badaru Abubakar Monmni. He noted that the hiccups faced by the nation at the moment was expected, as the APC government is in the process of rebuilding the nation from the bastardized state it was left by the PDP.When PDP was misruling the country, the price of oil was hovering around 140 dollars per barrel. The price has now plummeted to less than 40 dollars per barrel. It is to the credit of President Buhari that the nation is still moving despite the decline in revenue. If the PDP had continued in power, the nation would have disintegrated, Governor Shettima said.He continued: The integrity of the president has earned Nigeria respect in the global community as corruption has reduced drastically and impunity is a thing of the past now. Nigerians should give President Buhari the benefit of doubt because he has shown sincerity in his desire to build a nation of our collective dreams and aspirations.Governor Shettima said Boko Haram has been dealt a deadly blow by the APC-led Federal Government as all the roads that were previously closed have been reopened while the local governments have been recovered from the insurgents.The APC government has scored a great deal in the fight against Boko Haram insurgency. All the roads in Borno State have been opened for business unlike before when Boko Haram was occupying some local government areas.Also speaking, Governor Okorocha said: There was enough evidence that Nigeria was almost going down the drain before the emergence of the APC government. God loves this country and that is why he brought APC at this point in time to save the nation from imminent collapse.
The operatives of the Rapid Response Squad of the Lagos State Police Command have arrested a suspected vandal, Lucky Udeagwu.





The operatives of the Rapid Response Squad of the Lagos State Police Command have arrested a suspected vandal, Lucky Udeagwu.Udeagwu, 29, was nabbed by the police for allegedly stealing a 35 meter-long armoured cable meant for the state governments Light Up Lagos project in the Ogudu area.The alleged cable thief, who claimed to be from Delta State, was sighted by the police along with two suspected accomplices, now at large.They were reportedly sighted coming out of the bush towards Ogudu bus stop by the RRS operatives on routine surveillance around 3am, carrying a big sack containing the armoured cable.The leader of the team, Inspector Bello Kabir, who led the men on patrol of Oworoshoki Expressway, told our correspondent that the team was monitoring the project when the suspected thieves were sighted.He said, The Commander RRS, ACP Olatunji Disu, told us that Governor Akinwunmi Ambode wanted officers to always check out Light-Up Lagos projects because of cases of vandalism of lamp posts.On Saturday, we saw Lucky and two other guys carrying a big sack and coming towards Ogudu bus stop. Because it was a straight road, we could see them from afar.As they sighted the RRS vehicle, they took to their heels in different directions, but we caught Lucky. We were suspicious that what could make them run when they saw us must be something criminal. We checked the bag and we saw a 35 meter-long armoured cable. Beside the bag was a camouflage cap.On the spot, we searched him. We found in his small bag, a screw driver, a 10-spanner and a T-shirt. The 10-spanner is the size of the bolts covering the lamp posts in the area.It was gathered that further investigations by the RRS showed that Luckys boss saw him last before the Easter break.It was also learnt that nobody could identify him in the three houses he gave as his residents.But Lucky denied stealing the cable, adding that the men that dropped the bag and fled committed the act.He said, I got to Ogudu bus stop at about 3am on Saturday. Those boys dropped the sack containing the cable. I dont know them.I got out early because I was searching for work. I wanted to get to Ikorodu early so that I could get a site job. I saw the two boys carrying that bag from a nearby bush, and as soon as they saw the police, they ran and I also ran.The tools in my bag are what I used to service my generator, but I sold the generator about a year ago.I was arrested at about 3.11am, but I dont know any of those boys, he said.The Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer, Dolapo Badmos, said the state would not tolerate vandalism and sabotage of governments property.The suspect has been transferred to SARS office in Ikeja, she added.
The Nigerian Army has reportedly retired Brigadier General Aliyu Momoh over his role in the last governorship election in Ekiti State in...

The Nigerian Army has reportedly retired Brigadier General Aliyu Momoh over his role in the last governorship election in Ekiti State in 2014.Minister of Defence, Dan Ali, disclosed the plan to end General Momohs military career.Ali was in the US as part of the Nigerian delegation to a nuclear power summit convened by President Barack Obama of the United States of America.The Defence Minister revealed that the army decided to initiate the process of rusticating General Momoh, who was indicted last year by a military panel. General Momoh led a contingent of soldiers and other security agencies, to Ekiti State and reportedly intimidated voters and inhibited the movement of officials of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in a broad strategy reportedly approved by former President Goodluck Jonathan to enable Ayodele Fayose of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to defeat the then incumbent Governor Kayode Fayemi.A former Minister of State for Defence, Musiliu Obanikoro, was allegedly used as a conduit to transfer huge sums of money for the election.
A former governor and minister of Education under President Umar YarAdua, Senator Sam Egwu (PDP, Ebonyi North) yesterday urged Nigerians t...





A former governor and minister of Education under President Umar YarAdua, Senator Sam Egwu (PDP, Ebonyi North) yesterday urged Nigerians to support President Muhammadu Buhari to succeed, saying if he fails, Nigerians will suffer.Egwu, who is the chairman of the Senate Committee on Industry, said Nigerians must key into the programmes of the present administration for the success of the country.My concern now is how the president will succeed because if he doesnt succeed all of us will suffer. We want a positive change and we will support it. Buhari must succeed, he said.Even though we are of the PDP, we will support him to succeed in the interest of the country, he said.
Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx became friends after starring in a movie together many years ago. After his marriage to Katie Holmes ended, Jam...

Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx became friends after starring in a movie together many years ago. After his marriage to Katie Holmes ended, Jamie Foxx was linked to her. For years now, there have been rumours that Jamie is secretly dating and possibly even being married to Katie.





Now insiders claim Tom Cruise and the Church of Scientology are planning to make Jamie pay for going near Katie..



From The National Enquirer The National Enquirer

A major Hollywood feud is rumbling and it could erupt in an earth-quaking flash! An enraged Tom Cruise is furious at Jamie Foxx after the Oscar-winning actor swept his ex-wife Katie Holmes off her feet and is now playing daddy to daughter Suri - even though Hollywood's most famous Scientologist hasn't seen her in more than two and a half years!

"While he was looking at a picture of Jamie wearing his wedding ring, Tom started pounding his fists on the the table. Then he pointed at Jamie's picture and screamed, "I hate You!"

"Now Tom would love nothing more than to see Jamie exposed as a fraud and have humiliating secrets about him spilled."
A lawsuit filed by a man who tussled with three "Real Housewives of New Jersey' stars in the show's fifth season finale and who allegedly took a stiletto to the forehead from Jacqueline Laurita has been settled, court records show.

The suit, filed by John Karagiorgis and his wife Penny Drossos, threatened to blow the lid off the extent of producer manipulation in the popular reality series. Filed in 2013, the lawsuit claimed that the show's producers, in an attempt to maximize drama and goose ratings, conspired with stars Joe Gorga and Jacqueline and Chris Laurita to confront Karagiorgis and Drossos about rumors they allegedly had been spreading.

It ended, as these things often do, in a brawl at a boutique in which Jacqueline Laurita's stiletto figured as a weapon, although Bravo elected not to air actual footage of the fight, only the build-up and the aftermath.

Shortly after the March 2013 melee, Karagiorgis filed assault and harassment charges against the three stars, who returned the favor on Karagiorgis, but in September 2013, they all later agreed to drop the criminal charges.

Karagiorgis later filed a civil suit against the reality show stars as well as NBC, Bravo, Sirens Media, which produces the "Housewives" franchise, and "Housewives" producer and Bravo bigwig Andy Cohen.

The lawsuit alleged that Karagiorgis and Drossos suffered serious body harm from the reality show stars, including "bruising, scarring, disfigurement, fractured bones, facial lacerations, mental anguish, psychological health problems, physical discomfort, pain and suffering, economic losses, and shame and embarrassment." The suit also claims that Karagiorgis was restrained by production staffers so he couldn't defend himself, and was not offered medical assistance after the melee.

Eric Weiss, Gorga's attorney, confirmed the settlement but said the details were confidential. The other attorneys involved in the case refused comment or did not return phone calls.

Vicki Hyman may be reached at vhyman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @vickihy or like her on Facebook. Find NJ.com/Entertainment on Facebook, and check out TV Hangover, the podcast from Vicki Hyman and co-host Erin Medley on iTunes, Stitcher or listen here.

TV HANGOVER SHOW: Ep. 28: Has MTV's 'The Real World' jumped the reality show shark?
In last week's Paranormal Corner, I discussed the legend of George, a spirit who allegedly haunts the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida.

Legend has it that George was a construction worker helping to build the attraction in 1970 before the park opened to the public in 1971.

While working in the "burning city" scene inside the ride, George either fell to his death from a high point of the set, or died after a heavy beam fell on him. No one seems to be exactly sure how it happened, just that he did indeed die inside the Pirates building.

During my research, I discovered that George tends to interact with cast members (Disney employees) and guests on a pretty regular basis.

So, of course, when I visited Pirates of the Caribbean on March 21, I had to try to strike up a conversation with the spirit of George.

As soon as I entered the winding passageways that lead to the dock where guests board the boats that sail into the fantastic world of pirates, I began talking to George.

"Hi George," I said out loud to no one in particular. "I wrote a story about you and just wanted to say 'hi.'"

Thanks to Disney's Fastpass option, we -- myself, my dad and my daughter -- walked right in and climbed into our boat with a large group of excited riders.

We shoved off from the dock and floated into the dark caverns of the Caribbean to the sounds of whipping winds, squawking animatronic seagulls, and the foreboding, disembodied voice reminding us that, "Dead men tell no tales."

If you have ridden the ride, follow along with me. If not, here's what happens inside.

We went around the first bend, through the misty "curtain" featuring a cryptic message from Blackbeard himself, past skeleton beach, which now features the bones of a deceased mermaid (which I tried to get a picture of, but it didn't come out), and on to the windy, stormy scene of a skeleton grasping a ship's wheel.

That's where our boat stopped.

It's a fact that Disney rides sometimes stop for short periods of time to load passengers with special needs or for other unknown reasons, but when the wait goes on for 10, 15, 20 minutes, you know there is something more serious happening behind the scenes.

As soon as the boat stopped moving, I realized that this delay in our journey could, in fact, be my fault.

From reading other guests' experiences, I found out that George tends to be mischievous and enjoys making the ride stop, making phone calls from empty offices, and photo bombing guests' pictures.

Just to be safe, I began to apologize to George, and ask him to please allow the ride to continue.

After waiting patiently for several more minutes, the audio soundtrack playing throughout the building went silent.

So not only was the boat at a standstill, now it was quiet.

The animatronics continued to operate, but nothing else was functioning properly.

As we sat quietly floating in our vessel, I noticed we were slowly drifting backwards -- back towards the skeleton beach we had already sailed past.

We continued drifting until we were back with the mermaid skeleton.

Taking advantage of the strange situation, I aimed my camera once again and this time got a great photograph of the scene.

As soon as I did, our boat began drifting forward.

We made it back to the skeleton sailor in time to see a cast member (Disney employee) come out from behind the scenes with a flashlight, check a hidden panel, and quickly disappear again through a secret door.

Finally, the boat lurched and began moving forward again. However, the audio soundtrack hadn't come back on.

Oh well. I've ridden the ride a million times, so I could probably recite the dialogue myself.

We dropped over the waterfall and splashed down in the middle of a pirate battle between Captain Barbossa and his foes, and then continued past a crew of pirates pillaging a Caribbean town, before sailing into the section where George supposedly lost his life -- the "burning city" scene.

As soon as we entered this area, I leaned over to my dad and daughter and told them that this was where George died more than 45 years ago.

At that exact moment, the audio soundtrack blared throughout the ride once again, returning after almost 15 minutes of silence.

And oddly enough, I knew that was going to happen.

We finished the journey with everything working properly.

Had I stirred up the spirit of George by talking to him?

Or had there simply been a malfunction in the Disney "magic?"

As I exited the attraction, I asked a cast member what had caused the problems.

"A big storm came up and blew our sails down and we couldn't move," he responded.

In other words, there was no explanation.

Kelly Roncace may be reached at kroncace@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @kellyroncace. Find the South Jersey Times on Facebook.
Field Station: Dinosaurs, the prehistoric theme park that brought towering T. rex and lumbering longnecks to life near exit 15X of the New Jersey Turnpike, is no longer on the brink of extinction.

The dinosaur park had to pack up and move out of Secaucus last fall. Now, a representative for the park confirms that Field Station has just signed a deal with Bergen County. Officials are set to announce the details of the dinosaurs' move to Overpeck County Park on Monday.

A Facebook account for Field Station shared a photo tease of the new location on Thursday, asking followers to guess the spot -- a wild, reedy section of Fort Lee Road in Teaneck. Overpeck, which spans more than 800 acres, including five miles of trails, was built on the former site of landfills and brownfields and covers Teaneck, Leonia, Ridgefield Park and Palisades Park.

A visit to the section of Overpeck Park shown in the photo shared by Field Station yields a long, paved path surrounded on both sides by brush that is somewhat littered with empty bottles. The vacant area near Teaneck Creek sits at the dead end of Fort Lee Road. The dinosaur park's former home was a hilly area with gravel paths and a sunny perch where visitors could take photos with T. rex and the New York skyline.

Field Station, which had a three-year lease with Hudson County, opened in 2012 at Secaucus' Laurel Hill Park. The park ran for three seasons -- usually open to the general public starting in May and closing in the fall -- until Hudson County officials informed park staff that construction would be starting on a new building for High Tech High School at the same location, despite the park having renewed its lease for two more years. So the roaring robotic dinosaurs, created from steel and foam, were packed up and stayed dormant in storage until the park could find a new spot.

It doesn't look like much right now but this is the future site of Field Station: Dinosaurs. Anyone want to take a guess... Posted by Field Station: Dinosaurs on Thursday, March 31, 2016

As the park got ready to close in 2015, word came that Field Station was scouting for locations outside New Jersey. One potential new home for the park was Derby, Kansas, but the dinosaur park, whose original tagline was "9 minutes from Manhattan, 90 million years back in time," ended up staying in North Jersey.

At the time, Guy Gsell, president of the park, said he preferred that the park stay in the region, though he anticipated it would be difficult to find the necessary 8- to 10-acre space the arrangement of dinosaurs would require.

Before the park moved out of Secaucus in 2015, the price of admission was lowered to $15 for all ages from a usual $17.50 to $20 admission, in part due to attendance dropping, Gsell said. On good days, the park drew upwards of 3,000 visitors, he said.

A part of Overpeck Park at Fort Lee Road in Teaneck. (Amy Kuperinsky | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup. Find NJ.com Entertainment on Facebook.
starbucks-lawsuit-underfilling-lattes

A new lawsuit filed in Northern California accuses the Seattle-based Starbucks of underfilling lattes as much as 25 percent.

(NJ.com file photo)

If you've noticed that there isn't as much latte in your Starbucks cup, you're not alone.



The Seattle Times reports that a new lawsuit filed in Northern California accuses Starbucks of underfilling their lattes.



The lawsuit alleges that Starbucks instituted the standard latte recipe in 2009 to save on the cost of milk. In terms of ounces, the Seattle based coffee chain breaks down how many ounces are in the Starbucks drinks on their web site: 12 ounces of fluid in its tall size, 16 ounces in its grande size and 20 ounces for its venti.

The suit was filed on behalf of Siera Strumlauf and Benjamin Robles, two Bay area residents who would often visit Starbucks to purchase grande plain or vanilla-flavored lattes and a grande-sized latte for $3.95.

The lawsuit goes on to state that those amounts are not accurate and java lovers are given less ounces than what Starbucks claims. "In fact, Starbucks lattes are approximately 25 percent underfilled," the lawsuit says.



A spokesperson for the chain said in a statement to the Times, "We are aware of the plaintiffs' claims, which we fully believe to be without merit.



The spokesperson did, however, state that there are some factors at hand that may alter the volume of fluid in latte cups. "Hand-prepared beverages increase the likelihood of variations, as disclosed in the nutritional section of our website. Customers often tell us how they want their beverage prepared (e.g. with room, extra foam), therefore beverage volumes are largely collaborative. Also, if a customer is unhappy with their beverage preparation then we are happy to remake it to their satisfaction."



Starbucks was founded in 1971 in Seattle, Washington. Currently it operates over 23,000 locations worldwide. To visit a New Jersey Starbucks near you, visit their official web site.

Anthony Venutolo may be reached at avenutolo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @AnthonyVenutolo and Google+. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
NEWARK - A second man has been arrested for an alleged plot to kill Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, police announced Monday.

Jerry Jordan, 65, was apprehended without incident in his hometown of New Brunswick on Friday morning, Newark police spokesman Capt. Derek Glenn said in a statement.

Jordan had been wanted since March 30, when Baraka's office received a call reporting two men had been overheard at Newark Penn Station discussing a plan to kill him. The caller was transferred to city police, and provided descriptions that matched Jordan and 56-year-old Kenneth Curry, according to Glenn.

Officers quickly corralled Curry, but Jordan fled the station and managed to elude authorities until Friday.

Glenn said Jordan is being held on an unspecified open warrant, but than an investigation into the alleged threat remains active and additional charges may be filed.

Baraka also faced threats to his life earlier this year, when he increased security on his personal police detail and around City Hall after finding a pair of menacing letters sent to his mother's home.

Dan Ivers may be reached at divers@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DanIversNJ. Find
GLASSBORO - Competition was fierce at the national geography bee as it went into the longest tie-breaking round ever.

On Friday, students from across the state of New Jersey gathered at Rowan University to compete in the 2016 National Geographic Geography Bee. This competition between middle school students, ages 10-14, determined the state champion who will move on to compete for the national title in Washington D.C. next month.

Students were asked geography questions in a variety of ways to challenge them. They ranged from questions using historical events to give context to displaying a picture from National Geographic's Instagram as a clue.

Each student prepared differently for the competition and some were even amazed to find themselves competing.

Christian Mammarel-Pitrafitta, a 7th grader from William W. Allen Middle School in Moorestown, said he believes he did so well in the competition because of all the history books he enjoys ready. And he was surprised at how well he did and how much he enjoyed the competition.

"It was really fun and in the preliminaries we got to sit down next to people and you could talk and stuff. Afterwards, I didn't have to do the tie breaker because I got all eight questions right," Christian said.

The competition was intense as the top 10 students took turns answering questions. The eighth and last round before the final two competitors had more than 15 questions asked and set the tone for an exciting final round.

The winner of the geography bee must have the most right answers out of the three final questions and in the event of a tie, three more questions are provided to help determine a winner. Both students did so well that the moderator, Rowan political science professor Katrinka Somdahl-Sands, had to ask an additional five questions before declaring a winner.

"This is absolutely the first time this has happened," explained professor Somdahl-Sands. "I've been involved with the geography bee in New Jersey, and this is the 7th year, and I've never seen it go beyond the tie breaker round questions. These kids are phenomenal."

Sixth grader Veda Bhattaram from Robert R. Lazar Middle School in Montville won the competition. He explained that he was surprised at how well he did. He did not expect to make it in the top ten and was nervous going into the final rounds.

"I thought I was going to get it wrong, but then with more and more questions passing I got a lot more confident," said Bhattaram.

He said that with this win he will be getting a new cellphone.

Bhattaram will be competing on May 22-25 for the national title and if he wins, it will be the second year in a row that a student from New Jersey won the competition.

The National Geographic Geography Bee is held every year and helps aims to help inspire students to be better acquainted with the world they live in.

"Geography is just so important in making informed citizens. And seeing theses kids and how much they know about everywhere all over the world should give hope for everyone in the future, because these are our future leaders," said Professor Somdahl-Sands.

Here are 5 questions from the final round and tiebreaker questions. How well can you do?

In the newest Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens, desert scenes of the films fictional planet of Jaku were filmed in a country that borders both Oman and Saudi Arabia. Name this country on the Persian Gulf.

United Arab Emirates

Fans can enjoy Abba, a 1970's rock band, at a museum in which major Scandinavian city located at the mouth of lake Malaren?

Stockholm

In 2015, scientists sent a camera into Kavachi, and underwater volcano in the Pacific ocean, and were surprised to discover two shark species inside despite the threat of eruptions. This volcano is located near the New Georgia islands in which country?

Solomon Islands

Santa Maria Island, where Portuguese settlers planted grapes as far back a 1430, is part of what island chain?

The Azures

In the 1770's, Captain Cook sailed through this treacherous strait that separates New Guinea and the Cape York peninsula. Name this strait

The Torres Strait

Name the capital of the state of Baha California.

Mexicali

Anthony Medina may be reached at amedina@njadvancemedia.com. Follow South Jersey Times on Twitter @theSJTimes. Find the South Jersey Times on Facebook.
A car chase that ended with one Mandeville officer killed and another wounded Friday (Sept. 20) marked the first time a city officer had been 
Missing boy taken from hotel hallway because he was crying: NOPD
Chef Michael Gulotta opened his restaurant MoPho on City Park Avenue in New Orleans in 2014.
Martin Luther King was killed in a country where George Wallace was more admired
The federal government plans to pour $125 million into the fight against a mysterious disease that has ravaged corals in Florida and much of the Caribbean, and now poses a dire threat to the treasured reefs off the Louisiana and Texas coasts.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The House 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.
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.
Vegetable glycerine, propylene glycol and nicotine. These are the three base ingredients that all e-liquids have in common.

Vegetable glycerine, propylene glycol and nicotine. These are the three base ingredients that all e-liquids have in common. Individually, they can be found in products that we encounter every single day; whether its food, medicine, household products, or if you visited the hospital today  in the very air we breathe.



If these substances are so common and harmless, whats the big deal about everyone vaping it? Surely if the Ontario government wants to treat these devices and the liquids that go in them like actual cigarettes, they must be terrible, right? Lets talk about that.



With one of the oldest and largest research data volumes of any non-food substance that we encounter frequently, propylene glycol (PG) is what I believe to be the most important ingredient in e-liquid.



It does the heavy lifting: Keeping the solution together, carrying flavour and nicotine, as well as delivering the retired smoker that ever-sought-after throat hit. Too much of it, however, will make it uncomfortable to vape, while too little will cause certain parts of the liquid to fall out of solution and separate.



In effect, propylene glycol is inert, and can be found in a whole gamut of pharmaceutical applications: inhalers, injected with medications that cannot mix with water, and pumped into hospital air for purification are just a few of its uses.



Given that, it is worth mentioning the substance comes with absolutely no health-related concerns when used in any form. None. While it is possible to be sensitive to PG, it is not at all possible to be allergic or intolerant to it. The absolute worst thing that it does when vaporized is dry out your upper respiratory tract. Fortunately, it is not the only thing in e-liquid and one of the other major components helps counteract the dry throat.



Vegetable glycerine (VG) is major component No. 2. It can be considered mainly a filler, as it is less expensive than propylene glycol, and significantly smoother to vape.



When this industry was in its infancy, e-liquids were predominantly found in mix ratios that contained more PG than VG. These days, however, devices are leaps and bounds more powerful and are capable of producing more vapour at higher temperatures.



This has seen e-liquid manufacturers flip the mix ratio around completely. This is mainly because on its own, PG is harsh on the throat. The VG counteracts this harshness, providing a more of a moist feel in the mouth and throat.



VG is actually an alcohol and is not technically made from food products at all anymore. In fact, most manufacturers use pure synthetic pharmaceutical-grade glycerol these days. Dont let that scare you, though  if I hadnt said anything, you probably wouldnt have known the difference. I dont and I vape all kinds of different e-liquids every day. Besides, its kosher!



Nicotine is the third and final ingredient absolutely all e-liquids have in common.



While nicotine itself is a very addictive substance, its effects on the body are actually not much different than caffeine. They are both stimulants that increase heart rate, blood pressure and will absolutely make you sick in large enough dosages.



If youre not a smoker, but a heavy coffee drinker and youre reading this, think about that terrible headache and crankiness you feel when you havent had a coffee yet. The lethargy, irritability and the feeling like you could snap on anyone for even the smallest reason  thats how a smoker feels when they go from lots of nicotine, straight down to none.



Clearly, its not at all ideal to be addicted to anything. However, there are significantly worse things to be addicted to. Nicotine is not the bad guy here  its the thousands of other chemical compounds that can be found in cigarettes that are released by combustion, or burning, the tobacco.



This alone is the reason I always encourage folks who are new to vaping to stick to the amount they are comfortable with for as long as they please, and to not rush stepping down to lower concentrations.



At this point, anyone reading this is probably wondering what the big deal with these liquids is, given that I havent mentioned a single negative thing about any of these substances  except for nicotine being able to kill you in a large enough dosage, in which case the same can be said for pretty much anything.



The danger for any serious side effect when vaping actually comes from the flavouring used. Compounds such as acetyl propinyl and diacetyl are the Big Two that manufacturers look out for, as they are possibly linked to health problems.



Both of these compounds occur naturally, or are added as flavour enhancers in food, which makes them safe to ingest, but possibly not to inhale. While the e-juice industry aims to eliminate these two agents and most major e-juice manufacturers dont use it, they can be found at extremely high concentrations in cigarette smoke.



Fortunately, we have an organization here in Canada called ECTA (Electronic Cigarette Trade Association). They do everything in their power to ensure that standards are set for both hardware and liquid alike, and set very strict guidelines for what compounds can be in e-liquid, as well as what the acceptable levels are. In order to be a member of ECTA, everything you sell or distribute must adhere to its standards. With that said, many of the more popular brands either are members or are distributed by ECTA client members.



At the end of the day, inhaling nothing but pure clean mountain air is the best thing for us, but what I am getting at with all this information is that these ingredients themselves are not harmful, and it is possible to know exactly what youre putting in your body.



Many of these companies are completely transparent when it comes to their lab test results and ingredients. Off the top of my head, without even looking them up, I can guarantee that Twelve Monkeys, The Illusions, Theravape, The Juice Punk, Gold Seal, and Moshi, just to name a few, post their lab test results publicly on their websites for anyone to see.



Bottom line: Do your research, find something you like and that you are comfortable with, and vape happy. Its as easy as that.



If for some reason you still dont trust these liquids, but still like the idea of using a vaporizer as tobacco harm reduction, flavourless liquids exist that literally only have the three base ingredients, and come with no chance of having anything in them that you havent already run into today.



Matt Boucher is a vape enthusiast in Greater Sudbury. You can find him dispensing vaping wisdom and advice at Juice on the Loose on Barrydowne Road.
St. Gabriel Villa recently celebrated its fifth anniversary. In honour of this occasion, dignitaries, residents, family members, staff and volunteers attended a March 30 special liturgy and celebratory event.

St. Gabriel Villa recently celebrated its fifth anniversary.



In honour of this occasion, dignitaries, residents, family members, staff and volunteers attended a March 30 special liturgy and celebratory event.



Monseigneur Jean-Paul Jolicoeur of the Diocese of Sault Ste. Marie presented a special liturgy. A number of dignitaries were on hand, including Nickel Belt MP Marc Serre, Nickel Belt MPP France Gelinas, and city councillors Evelyn Dutrisac and Gerry Montpellier.



The most important and heartfelt gratitude that I have today is for our residents, said Jo-Anne Palkovits, the care home's administrator. You are the reason we are here today and every day for the past five years.



As a board, we are proud that we have been able to build on the tradition of Catholic health care in our community by addressing the unmet needs and by rising to the challenge of funding, building and operating this beautiful facility  a facility that 128 residents, at any given time, call home, said Linda Wilson, chair of the St. Gabriel's Villa board of directors.
The burned body of a 28-year-old woman accused of taking $24,000 raised in a GoFundMe campaign for the family of a Sudbury man was reportedly discovered near a popular camping area in Mission, B.C. last week. NorthernLife.

The burned body of a 28-year-old woman accused of taking $24,000 raised in a GoFundMe campaign for the family of a Sudbury man was reportedly discovered near a popular camping area in Mission, B.C. last week.NorthernLife.ca reported on the alleged GoFundMe theft back in October 2015 CTV in British Columbia is reporting they have learned the victim is Vikki Heppner  officials have not confirmed her identity, pending an autopsy. Her body was discovered by a father who was walking with his children on a rural logging road near Stave Lake last Tuesday, according to media reports.Ryan Jack Armstrong, 29, of Burnaby, B.C. was arrested and charged with second-degree murder and indignity to a body in the case.Heppner, a resident of Fort McMurray, Alberta, appears to have left the province for B.C. after being accused of the GoFundMe fraud, her mother told CTV.Police got involved and she got scared and she ran, said Anna Carlson of Clifton, Illinois. I said Vikki, why dont you just turn yourself in and tell police whats going on? She hung the phone up.Heppner had set up the GoFundMe account for the family of 29-year-old Roger Belanger of Sudbury, who died in car crash in southern Ontario last fall.The campaign raised more than $24,000 from 172 people, and Belanger's wife was planning to use the funds to set up registered education savings plans for the couple's two young sons.But Heppner never gave the money to the family, who later learned the GoFundMe account had been emptied. The RCMP in Fort McMurray said last fall it was investigating the incident.Roxanne Belanger, Roger's sister, said in an interview with NorthernLife.ca last October they were vaguely aware of the person who started the campaign as an acquaintance of her brother.She began the campaign the day after the accident, at a time when the family's focus was on grieving."Because we were dealing with the shock at the time, we weren't really thinking about it, Roxanne said. And then about a week after the accident, we realized we should take steps to make sure that Justine, my sister-in-law, would have access to the money."And the person (who started the campaign) was basically giving us a lot of answers, but not taking any action ... She would tell us she was going to do something, but then never do it, in terms of transferring the account over."As their suspicions grew, the family tried to work with representatives from the GoFundMe website to find out what was going on."They were not very forthcoming, Roxanne said. It took weeks for them to answer our questions regarding what we needed to do (to get information), because at that point we were very suspicious."We had to provide all this documentation to have access to this account that was supposedly ours  and by that, I mean our sister-in-law. But she needed absolutely no documentation to open an account for someone else. But we had to jump through hoops in order for them to even answer our questions.After eventually convincing the website who they were, they found out the person who started the campaign had withdrawn the donations."It wasn't until we became very angry and very aggressive that they told us the account had been basically drained, Roxanne said. There were 22 withdrawals. If they would have just helped us at the beginning, then we probably could have avoided at least most of this."
Despite anti-hazing policies enacted by almost every school corporation in Northwest Indiana, this form of harassment still happens in school locker rooms, bathrooms and sometimes private homes in the Region, according to school officials, police and parents.

Almost two months ago at Clark High School in Hammond, a freshman new to the school's soccer team reported to the principal that he had been sexually assaulted by other students in the school. Two students were suspended as a result.

Five years ago, a member of Munster's swim team said he was hazed during a party at a teammate's house. That case ended up in court.

In Hammond, the Clark High victim said when he went to the locker room to change clothes for soccer practice he was joined by members of the team, according to the police report. The victim said he was forced to the ground, and he was sexually assaulted five times. The victim told police the suspects then forced him into a shower stall, turned on the water and left the locker room.

The case was turned over to the Lake County Prosecutor's Office Juvenile Court Division, which declined to comment, because it involves juveniles. Lake County Juvenile Court Judge Thomas Stefaniak Jr. said juvenile delinquency proceedings are confidential, and he also is unable to comment.

Hammond school attorney David Dickson, who investigated the case at Clark, said, "It was hazing."

Dickson said he interviewed 15 to 20 students and five to 10 administrators.

"We don't know exactly where administrators were in the building at the time," he said. "We were working in conjunction with the Police Department. There could be more discipline charges depending on what more we may uncover."

School City of Hammond, like many other districts in Northwest Indiana, has an anti-hazing policy that says, in part, "The School Board believes that hazing activities of any type are inconsistent with the educational process and prohibits all such activities at any time in school facilities, on school property and at any corporation-sponsored event ... Students, administrators, faculty members and other employees who fail to abide by this policy may be subject to disciplinary action and may be held personally liable for civil and criminal penalties in accordance with law."

Hammond schools Superintendent Walter Watkins said two students have been expelled.

"There could be additional students disciplined, but these are juveniles. We want to be sure that we act on fact, not emotion," he said.

"No adults have been disciplined, because we don't have any evidence that they were knowledgeable about this."

Clark Athletic Director Chris Moore said coaches, parents and athletes meet before each season begins to discuss the schools rules for student athletes, including bullying, and hazing is part of that discussion.

We cover all of the policies of being a student-athlete, Moore said. We lumped (hazing) in with bullying, but looking forward I would expect to see all of us with a hazing statement on there.

Moore said students in all extracurricular activities  not only athletics  are made aware of the districts bullying guidelines.

How schools deal with hazing

In September 2011, a Munster parent reported her then-17-year-old son, who was a member of the swim team, was hazed for two years, and she said school officials did nothing about it.

Then-high school Principal Steven Tripenfeldas conducted an investigation. His report acknowledged members of the swim team were responsible for some "inappropriate actions." Once advised, the coach took the appropriate steps to stop them, he said then.

The family sued the School Town of Munster. The case is pending before the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana in Hammond. A jury trial is scheduled for May 16 on several civil rights-related issues.

Munster schools Superintendent Jeffrey Hendrix said its hazing policy is online under Board Policy 5516 and is in the Munster High School Student Handbook. The district has worked with Ohio-based company Neola, which helps school systems, many in Northwest Indiana, align their policies with state law.

"It specifically outlines our current practices and protocols when an incident is reported," said Hendrix, who started in July 2014.

"I cannot speak for any past incidences before I started at STM. Currently, we do a thorough investigation of any complaints. We also have included our school attorney in the process to monitor our investigations for fairness and accuracy."

Munster schools attorney Kathleen Maicher said the district has instituted several steps to raise awareness of students and staff to the dangers and negative impact of hazing, including presentations on bullying, harassment and hazing. Staff members also are required to participate in anti-bullying training annually.

Maicher said the athletic director is an administrator and may not be at the in-service every year, but he would be holding meetings with coaches annually to address the subjects of bullying, hazing and harassment with them. Lay coaches, those who are not teachers or staff members, would be attending coaches' annual meetings where this subject is addressed prior to the beginning of each sports season.

Hazing across the U.S.

Neola President Richard Clapp said his company, which assists states across the country, has worked with 29 school corporations in Lake, Porter and LaPorte counties and 223 school districts in Indiana. He said several states, though not Indiana, have a hazing law and require school districts to have specific hazing language.

"Knowing what was transpiring in other states, we suggested to our clients in Indiana that they consider a hazing policy," he said.

"In Indiana, it's a Class D misdemeanor and could rise to the level of a felony if there's bodily injury," Clapp said.

"It's an issue all over the country. Sadly, that kind of thing has gone on for some time despite the fact that there are policies in place. Some coaches, some students don't seem to heed that good advice."

In addition to putting Neola policies in place, Highland school officials also talk to students and staff, said Superintendent Brian Smith.

"We have a meeting with athletes before each season starts in the fall, winter and spring sports," Smith said.

"We tell our coaches, we don't tolerate hazing. I'm not aware of any incidents since I've been here and this is my third year. Before that, I spent four years at North Newton, and there were no incidents of hazing there, either.

"When I was a kid in high school, it might be something innocuous like carrying someone's bag or something," Smith said.

"There was a really bad incident in Carmel several years ago, and some people were sued. We always remind our coaches  no initiations of any kind."

In 2010, four former members of Carmel High School's varsity basketball team were indicted for misdemeanor battery charges for incidents in which they hazed and/or sodomized teammates. They were convicted on the battery charges a year later, and all accepted plea deals. Four basketball coaches resigned in connection with the case.

Communication is key

While Portage schools Superintendent Richard Weigel said there have been no incidents of hazing to his knowledge at Portage Township Schools, the consequences of hazing are based on the degree of the offense as determined by the principal. But such behavior can result in suspension or expulsion.

He said hazing is discussed at the summer coaches' meeting.

"We have no tolerance of this behavior, and coaches are aware of the implications and consequences to their own jobs," Weigel said in an email.

"Hazing is also discussed at Captain's Council meetings, and our team captains/leaders are given the opportunity to discuss what hazing is and how to handle the treatment of freshman and younger athletes on the team. We discuss any 'rituals' they may have and if we would consider hazing to be, e.g. carrying ball bags, picking up team balls, etc."

Chesterton Athletic Director Garry Nallenweg said he is continuously updating his coaches about hazing incidents as they happen around the country.

"It's something you have to watch for and you have to stay on top of it, or it can get out of hand," Nallenweg said.

"Any time I see an article  we get something called Coach and Athletic Management magazine which always has articles about such and such school and coach  if I think an article is unique, I send that out to the coaches because it's something for them to read. Besides the normal precautions I tell them to take, if something happens out East or somewhere, we may not think it constitutes as hazing, but the courts did."

Nallenweg said his coaches and players are told about the school's hazing policies in preseason meetings, and that the key to minimize chances of hazing is to have adults around as often as possible.

"We talk about supervision and how important that is," Nallenweg said. "The kids recognize that there will be adults popping their heads into locker rooms all the time."

Hebron schools Superintendent Nate Kleefisch said there have not been any incidents of hazing during his tenure, but if there were, a lot of attention also would be given to the victim, he said. Parents of the abuser as well as the victim would be notified, he said.

"The majority of our program focuses on prevention, and changing the culture in a positive way so that kids understand it's not acceptable," he said.

Bishop Noll President Paul Mullaney said he is not aware of any hazing incidents at the Catholic high school in Hammond.

"Our policy is very clear, and it is stated in the student handbook, which parents and students are required to sign as having read and understood at the start of each school year," he said.

"It states that intimidation, threats, bullying, or any form of harassment are dismissable offenses and subject to expulsion. It also states that written, verbal and/or physical abuse of a member of the faculty, staff or student body may warrant expulsion," Mullaney said.

"All matters of dismissal from Bishop Noll are ultimately the decision of the principal. We hold our students to high standards at Noll, and our families expect us to keep discipline strong."

 Times staff writer Hillary Smith contributed to this report.
MONTROSE, Colorado  Keith Carey is a gunsmith in Montrose, a town with a frontier flavor set amid the rocky mesas of western Colorado. He's a staunch, though soft-spoken, defender of the right to bear arms.

Yet now he's also a willing recruit in a fledgling effort to see if the gun community itself  sellers and owners of firearms, operators of shooting ranges  can help Colorado and a swath of other Western states reduce their highest-in-the-nation suicide rates.

"Suicide is a tragedy no matter how it's done," said Carey, whose adult daughter killed herself with a mix of alcohol and antidepressants a few years ago on the East Coast. However, he sees the logic in trying gun-specific prevention strategies in towns like Montrose, where guns are an integral part of daily life.

"It's very expedient for people to commit suicide by a firearm, without too much forethought," Carey said. "Unfortunately, it's generally effective."

So at the urging of a local police commander, Carey agreed last year to participate in the Gun Shop Project, a state-funded pilot program in which gun sellers and range operators in five western Colorado counties were invited to help raise awareness about suicide. It's a tentative but promising bid to open up a conversation on a topic that's been virtually taboo in these Western states: the intersection of guns and suicide.

The counter in Carey's tiny shop  where he repairs horns and woodwinds as well as guns  now displays wallet-sized cards with information about a suicide hotline. A poster by the door offers advice about ways to keep guns out of the hands of friends or relatives at risk of killing themselves.

"Consider offering to hold on to their guns or to help store their guns temporarily," the poster says. "You may save a life."

Carey says some of his customers take materials home, or ask a few questions. But the conversations tend to be brief.

"Suicide is one of those morose subjects that a lot of us don't want to talk about," he said. "But it's all too common. I believe any method of suicide prevention is worth a good hard try."

___

Across the U.S., suicides account for nearly two-thirds of all gun deaths  far outnumbering gun homicides and accidental deaths. In 2014, according to federal data, there were 33,599 firearm deaths; 21,334 of them were suicides. That figure represents about half of all suicides that year; but in several western Colorado counties, and in some other Rocky Mountain states with high gun-ownership rates, more than 60 percent of suicides involve firearms.

A map of state suicide rates reveals a striking pattern. Along with Alaska, the states with the highest rates form a contiguous bloc of the interior West  Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico. All have age-adjusted suicide rates at least 50 percent higher than the national rate of 12.93 suicides per 100,000 people; Montana's rate, 23.80, is the highest in the nation.

Between 2000 and 2014, gun suicides increased by more than 51 percent in those states, while rising by less than 30 percent nationwide.

Theories abound as to why residents of this Western region kill themselves at such high rates. Commonly cited factors include the isolation and economic hard times that are prevalent in rural areas of these states. A University of Utah psychiatrist, Perry Renshaw, contends that the lower oxygen levels of higher altitudes contribute to elevated suicide rates.

There's also widespread belief that a self-reliant frontier mindset  admirable in many circumstances  deters some Westerners from seeking help when depression sinks in.

"We embrace the cowboy mentality," says Jarrod Hindman, director of Colorado's Office of Suicide Prevention. "If you're suffering, suck it up, pick yourself up by your boot straps. But that doesn't work very well if you're suicidal."

Underlying all these explanations is the fact that firearms  the most effective of all the common means of suicide  are more ubiquitous in the West than in most other parts of the country.

Catherine Barber, a suicide prevention expert at the Harvard School of Public Health, says numerous studies show that residents of gun-owning homes are at substantially higher risk of suicide than other people  simply because a suicide attempt is more likely to involve a gun and thus prove fatal. According to federal estimates, suicide attempts involving firearms succeed 85 percent of the time, compared to less than 10 percent of attempts involving drug overdoses and several other methods that often allow a suicidal person to reverse course.

"It's not that gun owners are more suicidal," Barber argues. "It's that they're more likely to die in the event that they become suicidal, because they are using a gun."

___

Colorado's Gun Shop Project is modeled largely after a program pioneered in New Hampshire a few years ago; it's now being tried in Nevada and a few other states. Barber helped design the initiative and hopes that constructive collaboration on firearm suicide prevention can spread nationwide.

"In the past, people shut up about this issue because they thought raising it meant raising the issue of gun control," she said. "It makes so much more sense to look at gun owners as part of the solution: Gun owner groups have a strong tradition of caring about safety."

The Colorado project is being expanded this year from five counties to nine, including San Miguel County, home to the Telluride ski resort and some of Colorado's most spectacular mountains. In a two-week span in late February to early March, the county of 8,000 people recorded three firearm suicides.

Hindman, who oversees the Colorado program, said that when he joined the state health department in 2004, talking about the role of firearms in suicide was discouraged. It's still a sensitive topic, he said, but some funding has materialized for gun-specific initiatives. One of Hindman's strategies is to emphasize the toll of firearm suicides, which run more than 5-to-1 higher than gun homicides in Colorado.

"Homicides and mass shootings are tragic," he said. "But the vast majority of gun deaths are suicides, and we don't have that conversation."

In Montrose, Police Commander Keith Caddy has been around guns since childhood as a hunter, lawman, firearms instructor and licensed gun seller. Now he's doing outreach for the Gun Shop Project  and most of the businesses he has visited agreed to display the suicide-awareness materials once they were assured it wasn't a gun-takeaway program in disguise.

"Is it doing any good or not? That's a tough thing to quantify," Caddy said. "It's my duty to protect the community I serve. If I can go out there and spend a little time talking to the gun shops, maybe the reward will be saving someone's life."

In Grand Junction, western Colorado's largest city with about 60,000 residents, the outreach was assigned to Dave Fishell, a local historian and author who knew most of the shop owners. He's a gun aficionado and collector who has made his own bullets.

Fishell says he has another important credential  for many years he battled serious depression, to the point where he contemplated suicide and three times put himself into a psychiatric ward.

"Maybe it's part of my mission in life," he said. "When people ask, 'Do you know what I'm going through?' I say I do."

During those episodes of severe depression, he placed his guns in a safe and gave the key to his wife  the kind of precaution he'd like to see more people consider. Yet he also remembers thinking that if he did kill himself, it should not be with a gun. He didn't want to contribute to giving gun owners a bad name.

At the gun shops he visited, several owners declined to display the materials and expressed skepticism about playing a role in suicide prevention.

"I can see that point of view," Fishell said. "But making people aware is a first step."

___

Throughout the region, prevention efforts are fueled to a large degree by people who've lost loved ones to suicide, often involving firearms.

Cindy Haerle, a teacher and board member of the Grand Junction-based Western Colorado Suicide Prevention Foundation, grew up in "a real gun family" in Salida, Colorado, and had her own gun by the time she was 5. But she gave up shooting after her brother John, a high school football star and later a sniper in Vietnam, killed himself with a pistol in 1980 at age 29 after prolonged struggles with depression.

"Nothing is as final as a gunshot," said Haerle, who was 13 at the time.

Jim Doody, a former Grand Junction mayor and city councilor, serves on the foundation's advisory board. He talks movingly about the suicide of a close friend, Matt Townsend, in 1989 at the age of 33.

They'd met in 7th grade at a parochial school  "We drove the nuns crazy," said Doody  and stayed close through high school and thereafter. But adulthood proved challenging for Townsend, who took painkillers after a motorcycle injury. He told Doody at one point, "I think I'll blow my brains out someday."

Doody says Townsend called him late one night, drunk but seemingly in good spirits, just a day before killing himself with his brother's handgun. Even 27 years later, Doody feels some guilt for not picking up clues that his friend was on the brink of suicide.

Doody has joined in the recent appeals to gun owners to keep their weapons out of the reach of those at risk of suicide.

"Have we made a difference?" Doody wondered. "We won't ever know about a life we might have saved."

Andy Mills, who works for an energy company in the northwest Colorado town of Craig, lost his 15-year-old son, Austin, to suicide in 2010. Mills blames himself for not ensuring that Austin couldn't find the handgun that was kept in the house, and he now supports the Gun Shop Project's suicide prevention outreach.

Firearms remain a part of the family's life, however; Mills replaced the gun that Austin had used with a different model.

"My wife and daughter-in-law, we've all talked about it," he said. "They understood the need, as our protection and our right as gun owners, to still have a gun at home."

In Fruita, a few miles west of Grand Junction, high school teacher and gun-rights supporter Jami Jones talked about two people she knew who fatally shot themselves in recent years  a mechanic who had seemed devoted to his two young daughters, and a 15-year-old girl who was a classmate of Jones' own daughter.

The man used his own gun; the girl used a gun she found hidden in her mother's bedroom.

Jones depicted guns as a fact of life for western Colorado  she has a concealed-weapons permit and joins her husband in hunting and target shooting. But she says gun owners need to think about suicide prevention.

"What's your plan?" she said. "We've got to keep the children safe and the people who are mentally ill safe."

In a region of ruggedly beautiful peaks and canyons, the high suicide rates puzzle her.

"I don't really know why," she said. "You look around: We're in God's country."

___

Suicide presents a distinctive challenge for shooting ranges: Occasionally, someone will rent a gun, then use it to commit suicide at the site.

At the Family Shooting Center at Denver's Cherry Creek State Park, there have been three such wrenching incidents, including two since Doug Hamilton began managing the range in 2004. One involved a young man upset by post-divorce problems; the other involved identical twin sisters from Australia who shot themselves with rented pistols  one died, the other survived.

Hamilton is open to letting his staff get some suicide-prevention training, though he's unsure it would help. Those who killed themselves at his range exhibited no signs of stress beforehand.

"How do we identify a bad apple who's about to go over the edge, and get them the help that they need?" Hamilton asked. "Suicide prevention brochures aren't something that anyone's going to pick up who has come out to our range to kill themselves."

In Grand Junction, a Gun Shop Project poster hangs on the bulletin board at the Rocky Mountain Gun Club, a state-of-the-art shooting range with sections for pistols, rifles and archery.

The general manager, Josh O'Neal, says safety is a high priority; there's a video system providing live views of all the ranges. Yet he's not confident of avoiding an onsite suicide attempt.

"We all feel in the back of our minds it's a question of when, not if," he said. "We're not psychologists. A lot of unstable people are good at hiding that."

The challenges facing shooting ranges are familiar to Dr. Michael Victoroff, a physician in the Denver area whose leisure-time passion is competitive shooting. He's a certified firearms instructor and was at the Family Shooting Center in Denver when one of the suicides occurred there.

"Nobody wants that," he said. "It's bad for your soul, it's bad for business, it's bad for the sport."

Due in part to that incident, Victoroff has become increasingly engaged in suicide prevention, and serves on a state working group seeking to raise awareness of the issue among primary-care doctors. He also has provided firearms instruction to Jarrod Hindman and other suicide-prevention specialists.

Differing from some gun enthusiasts, Victoroff asserts emphatically that the presence of a gun in a household is "an enabler of suicide."

"It's a myth that people would just choose some other means if they didn't have a gun," he said. "There's a particular attractiveness about suicide with a gun... It's by far the most effective means."

Victoroff belongs to the American Medical Association and the National Rifle Association, and has qualms about both.

"The medical community has been content not to know anything about gun culture and gun safety," said Victoroff, who offers presentations trying to bridge that knowledge gap. As for the NRA, he'd like to see suicide prevention highlighted in its training materials.

Over the years, firearm suicide has not been a high-profile issue for the NRA; it worries that the topic might be used to advance a gun-control agenda. Though the NRA has no position on Colorado's Gun Shop Project, it has endorsed a bill in Washington state encouraging gun dealers to participate in suicide prevention efforts, said spokeswoman Jennifer Baker.

The NRA views suicide as a mental health problem, she said. "The goal is to prevent it regardless of how people kill themselves."

___

The intersection of gun culture and mental health is complicated. And it's personal for Ed Hagins in Montrose. Deputy director of a local mental health center and active with the county's suicide prevention coalition, he had a cousin who fatally shot himself.

Beyond that, Hagins says he has suffered from depression for much of his life, including instances as a teenager when he considered suicide. As an enthusiastic gun owner who enjoys target shooting, he's leery of proposals to deny gun rights to people diagnosed with mental illness.

"I meet that criteria," he said. "That's one of my biggest fears  legislation that I can't have a gun."

It's personal, too, for Ken Constantine, owner of Elk River Guns in Steamboat Springs.

"I don't want to sell a gun to someone to commit suicide," he said. "That happened once in this shop  it weighs on me."

He recalled the sale of a handgun to a woman several years ago: "She seemed completely normal. No telltale signs."

But he learned later from police that the woman, within a week of purchasing the gun, killed herself with it.

Having been through that experience, Constantine is troubled by the Gun Shop Project's offer of training for shop employees so they can better identify customers at risk of suicide.

"I won't assume the responsibility of a mental health professional," he said, suggesting instead that therapists in the area should get permission from their at-risk patients to temporarily place their names on a private list of people who shouldn't acquire guns.

But that approach has been tried and doesn't work, said Tom Gangel, director of a mental health center serving the area.

"We have asked patients who we think are really in danger, can we give their names to gun shops or they can self-report, but only one or two have done that," Gangel said. "In our area, not very many people want to give up the right to be able to go buy guns."

The local Gun Shop Project is coordinated by Meghan Francone, who constantly reassures gun owners and sellers that the outreach program poses no threat. She got involved after her 15-year-old brother-in-law, Austin Mills of Craig, fatally shot himself in 2010.

"Keep your guns. Keep a dozen. I don't care. But please make sure they are locked and out of the reach of someone who's in crisis," she said. "I'm not asking any gun shop owner to be a psychologist. I'm asking them to be their brother's keeper."

___

Follow David Crary on Twitter at http://twitter.com/CraryAP
Mourners held a tribute in Queens to celebrate the life of legendary rapper Phife Dawg.

Born Malik Taylor, Phife Dawg was a high school classmate of fellow rapper Q-Tip.

The two banded together to form the influential hip-hop group "A Tribe Called Quest" in St. Albans.

Dozens of fans gathered in Memorial Park.

They handed out free t-shirts and a few tickets to Tuesday's private service at the Apollo Theater.

Mourners we spoke with described the rapper as humble and well-respected.

"He had a moral compass, in my opinion, that was to be admired," said one. "He meant a lot to, not only, the community of New York, but the community globally, of hip-hop.

"I grew up listening to him, you know, the music is very dear to me, and I just came to show my support," said another.

"Phife and "Tribe Called Quest" impacted the world, like quickly, and we didn't think he would pass away like this, we knew he was sick, but this came as a huge shock," said a third.

Fans are petitioning to rename part of Queens' Linden Boulevard in honor of "A Tribe Called Quest."

Phife Dog died last month from complications related to diabetes.

He was 45 years old.
At a morning rally at the Javits Center in Manhattan, Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton joined Governor Andrew Cuomo to celebrate last week's state budget that included a paid family leave program and a higher minimum wage.

"What was accomplished here, reflects our values and our priorities," Clinton said. "It shows the world what kind of community we are."

"We passed a new plan, a new budget for the state of New York that is revolutionary," Cuomo said.

Later in the day, Assembly and state Senate Democrats in Albany traipsed through the region's worst snowstorm all season for a private meeting with Clinton at Albany's new Renaissance hotel.

Polls show a tightening race between Clinton and Sanders, with Clinton ahead by just ten points in the state she once represented in the United States Senate.

"I think that what she did is she came home and talked about how important it was for New York to send the message about her leadership, about the fact that we know her well," said Senator Andrea Stweart-Cousins.

"When you are running the highest office in the world you don't take anything for granted," said Senator Jeff Klein. "She is coming back to her base. This is a lot close than most people would think, but again, I think you come back to the people who know you the best."

In the evening, Clinton held second rally in the capital region, where she mentioned water contamination in the small town of Hoosick Falls.

"We have to make sure that water systems across this state like Hoosick Falls and others are clean," Clinton said.

Two years ago, Zephyr Teachout, an unknown candidate, ran in a Democratic primary against Cuomo and garnered 34% of the vote. Some say the surge of Sanders here in New York now reflects a similar dissatisfaction with establishment candidates within the Democratic party.
Supporters rallied in Queens Saturday for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders ahead of the New York primary.

Dozens of Residents gathered at the Calvary Baptist Church in Jamaica.

State Senator James Sanders, who supports the Vermont Senator's run for president, stumped for Bernie Sanders at the rally.

Many who attended the rally signed up to volunteer at a phone bank or canvass.

Meantime, LGBT leaders in Queens will gather this Wednesday in support of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's bid for the Democratic nomination. That rally is set for 7:00pm at Club Evolution in Jackson Heights.

The New York primary is April 19th.
A panel of scientists told the Federal Government today that despite great uncertainties there was a ''clear possibility'' that a major nuclear war would generate enough smoke and dust to blot out the sun in the Northern Hemisphere, causing severe drops in temperature.

The report, the first major assessment for the Federal Government of the theory of ''nuclear winter,'' was prepared by a committee of the National Research Council. The 193-page report cautioned that detailed predictions of climatic cooling were unreliable because of ''enormous uncertainties'' in the data and that scientists now could give only ''a general indication of the seriousness of what might occur.''

Nonetheless, Dr. George F. Carrier, an applied scientist at Harvard University who was chairman of the 18-member committee, said at a news conference that the panel's findings were ''quite consistent'' with studies that originally outlined the theory of nuclear winter. The authors of the early studies had predicted that the combined effects of low temperatures, radiation, disease and starvation might all but extinguish life on the earth.

The committee recommended that a major research effort by the Federal Government be given high priority to narrow the uncertainties. Earlier Criticism of Theory
Charlie Parker came into his own in the jazz clubs of Harlem, so there was undeniable poetry in his return to the neighborhood in operatic form. But Charlie Parkers Yardbird, given its New York premiere on Friday at the Apollo Theater, evoked none of that masterly saxophonist and composers wild beauty and mesmerizing focus.

Instead, this slack sketch of an opera, introduced last year by Opera Philadelphia and brought to the Apollo by that enterprising company, offered wanly jazz-flavored music, by Daniel Schnyder; a confusing libretto, by Bridgette A. Wimberly; and stodgy direction, by Ron Daniels.

The plots framing conceit is that Parkers ghost has traveled to Birdland, the Midtown club named for him, to write a musical masterpiece. That is the shaggily supernatural setup for a standard if needlessly scattered sprint through biographical highlights: Parkers childhood in Kansas City, Mo., his collaboration with Dizzy Gillespie, his addictions, his romantic liaisons, his incarceration in a California mental hospital.

None of these episodes or characters come to life; the women, in particular, are barely differentiated. In both its low-slung swinging and jazzily peppy modes, the 90-minute score, conducted by Corrado Rovaris, is a weak echo of Porgy and Bess. A handful of personal touches  like an eerie solo flute line weaving through the mental institution scene  have little dramatic effect, nor does the overly literal libretto (Im blowing all my pain out through my horn).
The BBC series Detectorists is a mournful comedy, a sneakily funny celebration of futility and stasis. But dont get the wrong impression. Its not angsty and serious, in the vein of recent American comedies like Transparent or Togetherness. Its as light and joyous as a show about a pair of melancholy British losers can be.

The second six-episode season, available on Monday at Acorn.tv, begins with the shows signature image: Andy and Lance (Mackenzie Crook and Toby Jones) moving slowly across a broad swath of sky and open field. Their insignificance is indicated both by their tiny scale against the Essex landscape and by the metal detectors they carry, the apparatus of the all-absorbing hobby that buffers them from the annoying realities of life  Andys timidity and joblessness, Lances loneliness and perpetually bruised ego.

There have been changes since Season 1, though. Nestled at the end of the field is Andys 3-month-old baby, the product of his relationship  highly unlikely, objectively, but somehow believable onscreen  with Becky, the driven, sarcastic schoolteacher played by Rachael Stirling. (Joining the show in a small part is Ms. Stirlings mother in real life and onscreen, Diana Rigg of The Avengers and Game of Thrones.) And Andy and Lance have moved on to new pastures, literally. Having failed to find the Saxon treasure that we know was buried under the farm they scanned in Season 1, theyre now failing to find another medieval artifact thats directly underfoot.
Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures sheds light on the life of Robert Mapplethorpe and his sexually frank photographs. The Powerpuff Girls grow up. And Nova streams its exploration of what could be a new Viking site in North America.

Whats on TV

MAPPLETHORPE: LOOK AT THE PICTURES (2016) 9 p.m. on HBO. Look at the pictures! Senator Jesse Helms demanded of Congress in 1989, denouncing photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989), whose unflinching depiction of nudity, sexuality and fetishism had ignited a cultural maelstrom about the government funding of art that some deemed offensive or obscene. This documentary by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato chronicles Mapplethorpes life: his Roman Catholic childhood in Floral Park, Queens, and enrollment at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn; his relationship with Patti Smith and other influential lovers; and his death from AIDS. Then there are the images  from society portraits and flower still-lifes to explicit depictions of the S-and-M and bondage scenes in 1970s New York. Where Senator Helms meant to point to the photographs content  the skin, the genitalia, the placement of a bullwhip or a fist  Pictures, an insightful work of biographical criticism, puts them in the context of a life and artistic vision, James Poniewozik wrote in The New York Times. It finds the light behind the heat. (Image: Mapplethorpe)

THE POWERPUFF GIRLS 6 p.m. on Cartoon Network. Those pint-size superhero sisters  Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup  return, a wee bit older, to protect Townsville from evildoers in this reboot of the late-90s cartoon. Fans can create crime-fighting avatars of themselves on powerpuffyourself.com. (Image: The Powerpuff Girls)

WELCOME TO LEITH (2015) 10 p.m. on PBS. A neo-Nazi white supremacist tries to take over a town in North Dakota in Michael Beach Nichols and Christopher K. Walkers documentary. There are a few moments in which the film might be mistaken for a horror movie about an alien invasion, Stephen Holden wrote in The Times.
And I adore her sideways sense of humor. Here is how Ms. Newman begins her second essay:

If there were a Gilbert and Sullivan opera called I Wanted to Suck the Dirty Washcloth except there was only one line in it, and that line was I wanted to suck the dirty washcloth, and the whole ensemble sang it while they were wearing just their Hello Kitty underpants  and crying  youd get a pretty good sense of the most recent couple of hours of my life.

Image Credit... Patricia Wall/The New York Times

But writing about toddlers, whose challenges are all pretty similar (they wont eat, they wont sleep, their freak-outs could split the atom), requires one kind of skill: Youve got to be able to make the banal seem surprising. Boy, can Ms. Newman do that.

Writing about older children, though, requires different gifts. Youre now telling stories about individual people, whose strengths and weaknesses are starting to harden; youre telling stories about trying to nudge children toward the moral high ground in a seedy, complex world. To do this well, you must remain conscious of your own ideological biases and neuroses, which your readers may not share. And you must curb your natural urges to boast.

Ms. Newman lost me in an essay about discussing evolution with her kids. I think its great that her 9-year-old son asks precocious questions, like what the adaptive purpose of dying might be. (This elicits an approving whoa from a stranger who overhears him on a hiking trail.) And I think its great that this same boy can spend an entire day studying Far Side comics in his pajamas or picking Joni Mitchell songs out on the piano, which we learn about an essay later. But what I really want to know is: Where did that sympathetic and (above all) humble narrator go?

She appears to have left the page and been replaced with artisanal co-op mom. What started as a ring-a-ding vaudeville act, with Ms. Newman as the star stooge, descends uncomfortably into a series of soliloquies about imparting liberal values to children, which contain more than a few notes of self-congratulation.

Were told that her family happily scavenges for its own dandelion greens and burdock. (Ms. Newman is also the editor of the childrens cooking magazine ChopChop  maybe this has something to do with it?) Were told that when her daughter comes home with lice, I put everyone in old T-shirts before massaging warm and fragrant olive oil into their scalps. (Is there something wrong with just using regular lice shampoo from Walgreens?)

Ms. Newman wants to impress upon her children, too, that capitalism is failing the poor, and that the word Eskimo might be problematic for Aleutian, Inuit, and Yupik people. She plumps with pride when her son says there arent just two kinds of everybody when compassionately explaining the gender-neutral pronoun ze. He smiles dazzlingly, she writes, his cheeks like freckle-dotted plums, and I think exactly.
When Andrew Caspersen sought money for an investment that federal authorities said duped investors out of tens of millions of dollars, one of the people the former Wall Street executive turned to was a college classmate at Princeton University.

James McIntyre, a managing director at the hedge fund Moore Capital Management, is the previously unidentified individual who federal prosecutors said last week invested  and lost  $400,000 in Mr. Caspersens scheme and also recommended that a charitable trust affiliated with Moore Capital invest nearly $25 million.

Mr. McIntyre did not return requests for comment. His identity as a victim in the scheme, however, was confirmed by two people with direct knowledge of the case who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

He and Mr. Caspersen attended Princeton together and graduated in 1999. Each found his own path to work for a Wall Street firm after graduate school: Mr. Caspersen went to Harvard Law School, and Mr. McIntyre received his M.B.A. from Columbia University. Along with their wives, both men shared an interest in Latin America and were donors to Princeton in Latin America, a nonprofit organization that funds projects and fellowships in the region for students, as recently as 2011.
The Powerpuff Girls have battled a rogues gallery of evil lab monkeys, hillbilly monsters and androgynous devils. But for the first time, they face a new challenge: a fight for relevancy.

Eleven years after their television series ended, the Powerpuff Girls  Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup  are returning to Cartoon Network on Monday. But as children are increasingly moving away from watching television, the network has a new plan to reach them on many platforms, including publishing, digital and licensed products.

This broader approach is part of an effort to create a wider world for fans, said Christina Miller, the president and general manager of Cartoon Network, which is owned by Turner Broadcasting System, a unit of Time Warner.

Its not one dimension or one platform, she said. Its about bringing an experience to life in multiple ways.
These drugs are being tested in large clinical trials to see if their effects on LDL levels translate into reduced incidences of heart attacks, strokes and death. The Food and Drug Administration has approved the drugs based on their LDL-lowering effects for a number of patient groups, including those at high risk for heart disease who report painful muscle aches or weakness when they take statins.

The PCSK-9 inhibitors can cost more than $14,000 a year, while statins can cost just pennies a day, so determining what portion of patients are truly statin intolerant has become an important question.

A second study presented at the cardiology meeting on Sunday and published online in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed just how vexing the issue is.

The study, directed by Dr. Nissen and paid for by Amgen, a pharmaceutical company, included more than 500 people with extremely high levels of LDL cholesterol who had tried two or more statins and had reported aching or weak muscles so severe that they said they absolutely could not continue taking the drugs.

The participants were randomly assigned to take either a statin, atorvastatin or a placebo for 10 weeks. Then those taking a statin were switched to a placebo for 10 additional weeks, and those taking a placebo were switched to a statin. The result: Less than half of the patients seemed to be truly unable to tolerate statins, and complained of muscle pain only when they were taking the drug. A quarter of the patients reported muscle problems with a placebo. And nearly one in 10 had muscle issues with both the statin and the placebo.

That indicated that 57 percent of patients actually could tolerate statins. Researchers then randomly assigned the remaining 43 percent to take either Amgens PCSK-9 inhibitor, evolocumab, or another cholesterol-lowering drug, ezetimibe, which is often taken by statin intolerant patients but has never been shown to reduce heart disease risk when taken without an accompanying statin. The patients tolerated both drugs.

The statin tolerance results were not a total surprise. Smaller studies had indicated that most patients who said statins caused muscle aches actually could tolerate the drugs. But this was the largest such study and raised a real question about how to treat patients who are at high risk of heart disease and say they cannot or will not take a statin because of intolerable side effects.
The Ochs-Sulzberger familys involvement with The Chattanooga Times began in 1878, when Mr. Ochs bought an interest in and full control of the newspaper, and ended in 1999.

Image Adolph S. Ochs in 1878. The mustache was an attempt to look older than his 20 years. Credit... The New York Times

As a reminder of that era, Ruth Sulzberger Holmberg, the former publisher and chairwoman of The Chattanooga Times, celebrated her 95th birthday recently.

Other reminders can be found in The New York Timess headquarters. A stately grandfather clock, presented to Mr. Ochs by the citizens of Chattanooga, stands against the wall outside the company board room on the 16th floor. And in the Timeseum, off the third-floor newsroom, is an ornately etched window panel from the door of his Chattanooga office.

It cost Mr. Ochs $250  down payment on a $1,500 purchase price  to take over the troubled Chattanooga Times. He didnt put his signature on the papers, however. In July 1878, he was only 20 years old, and his father, Julius, had to sign for him. Once he reached his 21st birthday, and obviously in no mood for modesty, Mr. Ochs told readers in an editorial:

We take this occasion to state that notwithstanding a boy has published The Times since last July; The Times has under his administration steadily increased in circulation and patronage, so that today we can boast that The Times has as large, if not a larger circulation than any paper in East Tennessee.

The course that Mr. Ochs charted for The Chattanooga Times seemed almost like a blueprint for what he was about to do in New York.
But eventually she began scattering in posts that signified a growing comfort with the medium  sort of how J.C. Wyatt (Diane Keaton), the prototypical yuppie in Meyerss 1987 screenplay Baby Boom, grew fonder of her inherited daughter once the child spent a few weeks crawling around her toddler-unfriendly Manhattan apartment. After a few more obligatory photos of notable clapboards and lesser actors who were probably more accessible than their A-list counterparts, she uploaded a throwback Thursday photo of Goldie Hawn from Private Benjamin, her first screenplay, for which she received an Academy Award nomination. The next week, she became even more adventurous and took her followers to the beach, where she photographed her dear friends new book. Saturday! Loving Dianes new book. #DianeKeaton #theintern, she captioned it.

Once The Intern was released, in the fall of 2015, Meyerss account could have become just another relic of promotions past, like the frozen-in-time early websites of Youve Got Mail and Space Jam. But after developing something resembling an affection for the format, she decided to keep it going, and her followers have been able to watch the account transition from its original state to a treasure trove of behind-the-scenes content and intimate moments. There are the more easily predictable photos like the one of her posing with Ina Garten, who would have been friends with every character in Somethings Gotta Give. And then there are the unexpected works of digital art, like a carefully composed shot of freshly baked cookies beside a television tuned to The Bachelorette. How very Cameron Diaz in The Holiday of her. Whether those moments are indeed genuine windows into her life or carefully curated images posted to support her existing image is unimportant  thats the beauty of the medium.

The path her Instagram feed has taken since June 2014 has reflected the arc of her lead characters  who can easily be read as avatars of Meyers herself  in a way that suggests it could inspire its own movie. Though were introduced to them during hectic moments in their lives, when things arent entirely in their control, a sort of Xanax-like calm slowly washes over a Meyers protagonist by the films end. Her characters always come into their own and ultimately open up to someone who was previously shut out  usually a lover, occasionally a friend and, in this case, her Instagram followers. In Baby Boom, Diane Keaton went from a busy woman inching ever closer to an emotional/physical/spiritual breakdown after being unexpectedly burdened with the responsibilities of motherhood to a fully centered entrepreneur, satisfied in every way a person can be. On Instagram, Meyers has gone from a woman at the helm of the hardest movie she has ever made to a person basking in the joy of a recent success, and who is more prepared than ever to begin a new one.

Two years ago, my delight in seeing @nmeyers on Instagram was rooted in the novelty of watching the production of a movie I looked forward to. But after The Intern came and went, and after she grew more comfortable using Instagram for her personal enjoyment, every new photo  even ones as banal as a teapot  delivered the satisfaction of a Meyersesque final scene. Like Judy Benjamin, J.C. Wyatt, George Banks, Erica Barry, Jane Adler and Jules Ostin, Nancy Meyers had figured it out. She had moved on and made something her own.

Now Im imagining another group of people  older, with three to six Oscars among them  in the same conference room from before. They cant get the Oculus Whatever video chat to work, but neither can Meyers, so she just calls in. (Its easier that way, they assure her in an email.) I have an idea, she tells them, as they wait breathlessly for her pitch. So Diane plays an interior decorator whos just retired to Paris, and one day she decides to join Instagram.
Angelo Cabrera was offered a job administering a program for Mexican immigrants at Baruch College in Manhattan more than two years ago.

This month, he will show up for his first day of work.

He spent around 24 months stuck in his native Mexico, trying to straighten out his immigration status and qualify for a work visa, and almost 24 years as an undocumented New Yorker. During those years, he earned two degrees from Baruch, part of the City University of New York, and started a social services organization. Now he is back  legally.

It has been a miracle, Mr. Cabrera, 41, said on Friday at the college. It feels like I was under the shadows, under the darkness, for nearly 24 years.

Mr. Cabrera crossed the border as a teenager in 1990 and made his way to New York. While working menial jobs, he earned an undergraduate and a graduate degree from Baruch and founded Masa, a nonprofit in the South Bronx that tutors Mexican and Mexican-American students.
Last month, as the McKean pulled into the Tarrytown Marina, near the Tappan Zee Bridge in Westchester County, there were no flames beckoning its arrival, no emergencies at all. The ship, decommissioned nearly six years ago, was beginning a new phase. It was put up for sale, and after 158 bids, a pair of restaurateurs bought the McKean for $57,400 at an auction in which New York City also sold an array of surplus goods, including camcorders and file cabinets. The boat originally cost the city $1,426,000.

The new owners, Michael Kaphan and Edward Taylor, hope to turn the boat into a museum of sorts that pays homage to its legacy. If all goes as planned, the boat will be open for tours led by former firefighters by July 4, at the dock outside the two mens coming seafood restaurant in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y.

You cant own something like this, Mr. Taylor, 54, said as he walked along the port-side deck. It belongs to the city. Were just the custodians.

As New York Citys waterfront has evolved over the decades, so too have its security needs. Burly boats, like the McKean, that could quell fires raging in warehouses that once dotted the shoreline have grown old and outdated. They have been replaced by a more varied and technologically sophisticated fleet of around 20 vessels that can, the Fire Department believes, swiftly respond to conflagrations, chemical spills, and biological and nuclear attacks.
But the argument the government always makes in cases like this, Mr. Brafman continued, is that the court should focus on the issue of general deterrence above all of the other factors, even those that may be compelling in an ordinary case.

Federal judges typically rely on sentencing guidelines, along with a recommended sentence by the trial courts probation office after it investigates a defendant and the circumstances of the offense. Judges are not bound by the guidelines but must consider them.

Jessica A. Roth, a former federal prosecutor who teaches at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, said that because the recommendations of the probation office, the prosecution and the defense can have an anchoring effect on a judge, there may be a strategic benefit for the defense to seek probation, to try to set that anchor low.

John S. Martin, a former federal judge and United States attorney in Manhattan, concurred. However unlikely a probationary sentence may seem, he said, it doesnt mean necessarily that its wrong to ask for it.

You may be trying to soften the judge up, he said, so he or she imposes a sentence of three years rather than five.

Still, lawyers do not want to make a request that is so off base that a judge disregards their other arguments for leniency, Paul Shechtman, a defense lawyer, said.

Its not for you to paint a negative picture of your client, Mr. Shechtman said, but if you paint too rosy a picture, the judge knows shes in the wrong gallery.
Private landlords who have blanket bans on renting to people with criminal records are in violation of the Fair Housing Act and can be sued and face penalties for discrimination, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development said.

Julian Castro, the HUD secretary, is expected on Monday to announce guidance that details his agencys interpretation of how the fair housing law applies to policies that exclude people with criminal records, a group that is not explicitly protected by the act but falls under it in certain circumstances. Federal officials said landlords must distinguish between arrests and convictions and cannot use an arrest to ban applicants. In the case of applicants with convictions, property owners must prove that the exclusion is justified and consider factors like the nature and severity of the crime in assessing prospective tenants before excluding someone.

Mr. Castro said housing bans against former offenders were common.

Right now, many housing providers use the fact of a conviction, any conviction, regardless of what it was for or how long ago it happened, to indefinitely bar folks from housing opportunities, Mr. Castro said in a statement. Many people who are coming back to neighborhoods are only looking for a fair chance to be productive members, but blanket policies like this unfairly deny them that chance.

The new federal housing guidance applies a legal standard that was upheld by the United States Supreme Court last year that allows plaintiffs to challenge housing practices that have a discriminatory effect without having to show discriminatory intent. The ruling allows plaintiffs to show instead that the practices both have a disparate impact on racial groups and are not justified. Blacks and Latinos are arrested, convicted and imprisoned in disproportionate numbers, and civil rights groups say they face equally disparate discrimination in finding housing.
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Good morning.

Heres what you need to know:

 Busy April for campaigns.

The primary season kicks back into gear this week with voting on Tuesday in Wisconsin, where Senators Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders are positioned to win. This is the first of several important contests this month.

Some of Mr. Sanderss allies and advisers say the campaign missed an opportunity last year to present a bigger challenge to the Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton.

Donald J. Trumps general election prospects look grim, possibly putting reliably Republican states in play, our review of recent polls suggests.
Some world leaders, especially in developing countries like India, have long said its hard to reduce the emissions that are warming the planet because they need to use relatively inexpensive  but highly carbon-intensive  fuels like coal to keep energy affordable. That argument is losing its salience as the cost of renewable energy sources like wind and solar continues to fall.

Last year, for the first time, renewables accounted for a majority of new electricity-generating capacity added around the world, according to a recent United Nations report. More than half the $286 billion invested in wind, solar and other renewables occurred in emerging markets like China, India and Brazil  also for the first time. Excluding large hydroelectric plants, 10.3 percent of all electricity generated globally in 2015 came from renewables, roughly double the amount in 2007, according to the report.

The average global cost of generating electricity from solar panels fell 61 percent between 2009 and 2015 and 14 percent for land-based wind turbines. In sunny parts of the world like India and Dubai, developers of solar farms have recently offered to sell electricity for less than half the global average price. In November, the accounting firm KPMG predicted that by 2020 solar energy in India could be 10 percent cheaper than electricity generated by burning coal.

These are all hopeful signs. They suggest that reductions in carbon emissions can be achieved more quickly and more cheaply than widely believed. And they provide hope that nations will be able to achieve the ambitious goals they set for themselves at last Decembers climate summit meeting in Paris  to keep warming below the threshold beyond which the world will be locked into a future of devastating consequences, including rising sea levels, severe droughts and flooding, widespread food and water shortages and more destructive storms.
MY grandma  we called her Mamaw  loved her country. Born in eastern Kentucky coal country at the beginning of the Great Depression, she credited so much of the good in her life to Americas bounty. When I interviewed her about her life for a school project, she spent most of the time talking about World War II: her dads love letters from the Pacific; how her younger brother lied about his age in an effort to enlist. We did it, she told me, still beaming with pride more than a half-century later. We freed the whole world from tyranny.

Mamaw said something else entirely when, just a few weeks after America invaded Iraq, I told her that I had enlisted in the Marine Corps. Youre a grade-A idiot, she shouted, and though her anger stemmed in part from worry, I knew that she saw the conflict as the indulgence of an elite president who knew nothing of sacrifice. She liked George W. Bushs folksy demeanor and admired his Christian faith, but as the war dragged on, her criticisms grew increasingly personal.

To Mamaw, the president was the living embodiment of privilege, and he had cashed in when it mattered most: by joining the Texas Air National Guard while his less fortunate peers lost their lives in the jungles of Vietnam.

Though I never acquired Mamaws disdain for the president, I eventually learned that her wariness about the war was justified. Thirteen years later, the wars costs are obvious, especially to military families. Though I avoided significant combat, many did not. One good friend suffered horrible burns when his vehicle rolled over a roadside bomb. Another came home traumatized; his alcoholism eventually landed him in prison. And the best that can be said of our nations effort is that we produced a feckless and disorganized Iraqi government.
To the Editor:

Taking On Citizens United, by Ellen L. Weintraub, a member of the Federal Election Commission (Op-Ed, March 30), by seizing on the references to corporations as associations of citizens, in that 2010 Supreme Court decision, misses the central thrust of Citizens United.

It holds that the First Amendment does not protect the speech rights of particular speakers; rather, it protects speech by and for all.

In fact, the corporation in Citizens United was a non-stock, nonprofit corporation, so any reference in the opinion to stockholders  whether citizens or not  is plainly a noncontrolling dictum.

Nothing in the Constitution (other than the questionable requirement that to be president one must be native born) suggests that noncitizens get fewer rights than citizens. Indeed, the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments extend the guarantees of due process of law and equal protection of the laws not to each citizen but to each person.
Shortly after taking up his post as American ambassador to the Dominican Republic in November 2013, Wally Brewster got a bit of unsolicited advice from the Vaticans envoy to the Caribbean nation.

If you keep your private life behind the walls of your embassy, youll be O.K. here, Nuncio Jude Thaddeus Okolo told Mr. Brewster. He meant that Mr. Brewster, to be an effective diplomat, would be wise to keep his husband, Bob Satawake, out of sight in a country where prejudice against gay people remains widespread.

The advice went unheeded. Mr. Brewster and Mr. Satawake, who have been together for nearly 28 years, have been out and proud in Santo Domingo, sparking a spirited debate that has galvanized the nations fledgling gay rights movement and outraged local leaders of the Catholic Church.

The attacks against Mr. Brewster, a Chicago businessman who raised money for President Obamas re-election campaign, began just days after the White House nominated him for the post. During a news conference in June 2013, Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez Rodriguez, the archbishop of Santo Domingo, said he was appalled that Washington would be represented by a maricon, a slur term for gay men. Monsignor Pablo Cedano, another senior church leader, predicted that Dominicans would make Mr. Brewster so miserable, he wouldnt last long.
To the Editor:

Lawrence Downes professes puzzlement at pretty much every aspect of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin except for a firm belief that its leaders were misguided and mistaken. Perhaps a little context will help. In the spring of 1916, the powers of Europe were settling their differences with the greatest blood bath in history to that point.

The Ulster Volunteers had in April 1914 run 25,000 rifles and five million rounds of ammunition into Ireland under the willfully blind eye of the British authorities to fight even the very limited home-rule legislation that was moving through Parliament. The month before, much of the British officer corps in Ireland had declared the intention to resign rather than enforce such a law.

In a year that also marks the centenary of the slaughter at Gallipoli, Verdun and the Somme, it is perverse to shake a moralizing finger at the Dublin leaders. They chose to fight and die rather than go quietly into a future of subjugation. If the rebellion didnt speed Irish independence  and I believe that it did  it surely didnt deter it.

STEPHEN McFARLAND

Brooklyn

To the Editor:

Its inappropriate for Lawrence Downes to compare the actions of the men and women who led the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin to the actions of the Islamist extremists, who have, as he says, intentionally killed innocent civilians in Paris, Istanbul, Brussels in their holy warfare against the West.

The men and women who led the Rising, whether wisely or not from a strategic point of view, were waging a war for political freedom, not a holy or religious war, and the innocents who died with them were not intentionally and ruthlessly killed by them.
TEENAGERS who sext are in a precarious legal position. Though in most states teenagers who are close in age can legally have consensual sex, if they create and share sexually explicit images of themselves, they are technically producing, distributing or possessing child pornography. The laws that cover this situation, passed decades ago, were meant to apply to adults who exploited children and require those convicted under them to register as sex offenders.

Though most prosecutors do not use these laws against consensual teenage sexters, some do. The University of New Hampshires Crimes Against Children Research Center estimates that 7 percent of people arrested on suspicion of child pornography production in 2009 were teenagers who shared images with peers consensually.

Almost two dozen states, including New York, Illinois and Florida, have tried to solve the legal problems that surround sexting with new legislation, and others, like Colorado, are considering new sexting laws. These reforms typically give prosecutors the discretion to choose between child-pornography felony charges or lesser penalties like misdemeanor charges or a mandatory educational program.

These new laws may seem like a measured solution to the problem of charging teenage sexters with child pornography felonies. However, once they have the option of lesser penalties, prosecutors are more likely to press charges  not only against teenagers who distribute private images without permission, but also against those who sext consensually.
There are two prominent features of the Democratic Partys presidential selection process that are thoroughly undemocratic and undermine faith in the party: superdelegates (which favor Hillary Clinton) and caucuses (which favor Bernie Sanders).

As the New York Times editorial board explained: Superdelegates are party bigwigs  712 Democratic leaders, legislators, governors and the like. They can vote for any candidate at the nominating convention, regardless of whether that candidate won the popular vote. These unpledged delegates make up 30 percent of the 2,382 delegates whose votes are needed to win the nomination, and could thus make all the difference.

Lets start there. Superdelegates, whose votes are not bound by the millions of individual voters, make up nearly a third of the delegates that would be required to win the nomination. That, on its face, is outrageous.

Its no surprise that superdelegates were created by establishment elites to increase their own power. Superdelegates were invented by a Democratic rule change in the early 1980s after the nomination of George McGovern in 1972 and the devastating loss of Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan in 1980, precisely to help the establishment prevent the nomination of insurgent candidates of whom the establishment disapproved. (Sanders is nothing if not an insurgent candidate.)
These days, the term multimedia artist is used to describe just about any creative type with an Instagram account. But Olga of Greece is deserving of the moniker. The princess  whose mother is the well-known Greek painter Marina Karella and father is Prince Michael of Greece and Denmark  is as skilled an illustrator and textile designer as she is a filmmaker and photographer. Since the early 2000s, shes worked as an artist and online creative director for Christian Louboutin, making short movies and look books (sometimes starring herself). Her hand-drawn wallpaper and fabrics adorn both the shoe designers boutiques, as well as the Moscow home she shares with her three children and Italian husband, Prince Aimone of Savoy, who works for Pirelli. My parents surrounded me with art and artists when I was growing up, says the 44-year-old, who graduated from Princeton and has a masters degree in architecture. I think thats why I see so many things from a creative point of view.

Olgas unique aesthetic  Old World glamour colored by an obsession with science  is a reflection of her cosmopolitan upbringing and surprising career trajectory. As a child, she lived amid the wild beauty of Greece and the refined urbanity of New York and Paris, near the beloved taxidermy shop Deyrolle. I would spend hours there when I was young inspecting the preserved insects and animals, she says. It established my lifelong love for natural history museums. After graduate school and a short stint working with an architect in Egypt, she left for a year in the Panamanian jungle to work with the Smithsonian as a lepidopterist specializing in moths. I found these extravagantly colored ones that are nothing like the dull brown things you think of that eat your sweaters, she says. I was absolutely taken with them.
Almost three years ago, a curious video appeared on YouTube. Called Kerous Lament, it featured strobing, mysterious footage of the ocean and of a little girl self-immolating, set against a sweeping postrock anthem that vowed resistance to the powers of old, to the powers that be.

The identity of its creator wasnt a secret: It was posted by Ellery James Roberts, the ex-frontman of the highly acclaimed and short-lived British band WU LYF. At that point, it had been less than a year since Roberts broke up the band in dramatic fashion: by posting an open letter to his bandmates declaring, WU LYF is dead to me. But there was no other context to the release of the song  no website, no social media, no indication as to whether Roberts might be planning to release an album.

Roberts did create an entire album under his own name, over the course of about half a year in 2013  but then scrapped it. I basically made an album that I subsequently deleted, he says now. It didnt give me any joy, and I didnt really feel like putting something out in the world that didnt even give its creator any joy. Instead, he pivoted his attention to something that did (and does) bring him joy: his partnership, both romantic and creative, with the Amsterdam-based visual artist Ebony Hoorn, who makes up the other half of his new band, LUH, an acronym for lost under heaven. Its hard to tell to what extent the title of the duos first album, Spiritual Songs for Lovers to Sing, is tongue-in-cheek: Roberts and Hoorn are smart and self-aware, but theyre also very serious, even earnest, about the music they make together. Our relationship being the anchor in our lives, the reference point of how we were experiencing life was for each other  I dont know, it suddenly allowed me to write much more hopeful music, Roberts says.

As testaments to love go, Spiritual Songs is an impressive one: Its huge in scope, full of orchestrations just as urgent and climactic as Kerous Lament (which also appears on the record, in a slightly different form and under the title Lament), complemented by the signature plaintive growl of Robertss distinctive vocals  and the sweetness of Hoorns.
PALO ALTO, Calif.  Dion Weisler, the chief executive of HP Inc., recently held out a bulky laptop that was the pride of 2012. This is the laptop we had when I came here, he said.

He opened it to reveal another HP laptop within its hollowed-out insides. Then he opened that machine to produce another smaller and lighter laptop. Like the last in a set of nested Russian dolls, a final and even more slender laptop emerged from inside the third machine.

Pretty spectacular, right? said Mr. Weisler, a toothy and optimistic Australian.

It was an impressive visual trick  and one with a point. On Tuesday, Mr. Weisler will publicly introduce a personal computer similar to the slimmest one he brought out of the nested machines, with a 13.3-inch screen but even thinner. At less than 11 millimeters thick (less than half an inch), he said, it beats the best effort by Apple and shows that HPs PCs are still hip and innovative. In fact, HP has made a small number of the new slim laptops in gold and diamonds, to be sold for $25,000 each for charity, with the unveiling planned for a New York Times Luxury Conference in Paris.

HPs new laptop, called Spectre, underlines the lengths to which PC makers must now go to attract customer attention. Apart from HP, PC makers like Dell and Lenovo are also pumping money into the design of desktop and laptop computers, coming up with increasingly sleek machines, as well as two in ones, whose screens detach to become tablets. There are PCs that fit in a pocket, understand voice and gesture, or sense when they need repairs and call on their own for a remote tuneup.
Republican insiders said they recognized that the stakes could not be bigger and that they would be particularly glad to run against Mr. Grayson, though they expressed confidence of victory either way.

Florida will decide who the next president will be and will decide the balance of the U.S. Senate, said Joe Gruters, the Republican Party chairman in Sarasota, who is also leading Mr. Trumps campaign in Florida. The two races, no question, are very tied together.

Such calculations certainly help explain why the White House and the national Democratic establishment have taken the unusual step of intervening. A report by the House ethics committee on Mr. Graysons investment activities is due out this week and could deal a further setback to his campaign.

The Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, has called on Mr. Grayson to exit the Senate race, saying his actions disgrace the halls of Congress.

Mr. Grayson, however, has denied any wrongdoing and has used the criticism to portray himself as an underdog. Asked about Mr. Reids comments at the College Democrats event, he shot back, Harry Reid is a liar. Harry Reid is a hatchet man.

Mr. Murphy, more temperate by comparison, acknowledges that the White House interest is bigger than his own candidacy. My campaign was recently endorsed by the president and the vice president, he said. I dont know if it has anything to do with me, he added. Frankly, I think it has more to do with the importance of the state of Florida.
PANAMA CITY, PANAMA (APRIL 3, 2016) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) // (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) AUDIO FROM REUTERS TELEPHONE INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR OF MOSSACK FONSECA LAW FIRM, RAMON FONSECA, OVER REUTERS IMAGES OF PANAMA CITY, SAYING: // We are a company who almost after 40 years has never been formally accused of anything. We are dedicated to doing legal structures which we then sell to intermediaries like banks or lawyers or accountants and they manage it from there and we do not have any control over that. We are not responsible for how they manage those structures however they may want to do them. We have formed more than 240,000 companies throughout our history and the vast majority of these for legitimate purposes. Of course, there are some that end up being used for illegitimate activities but that is not our responsibility because we are not the ones who are managing them, we are not acting on them. REPORTER ASKS: Mr. Fonseca, in various news reports that we have seen, it is being said that your information systems were hacked? AUDIO OF FONSECA RESPONDING TO THE QUESTION, SAYING: (We were hacked in a) Limitedly, yes, our systems were hacked but it was only limited. REPORTERS ASKS: And when did that happen? AUDIO OF FONSECA RESPONDING TO THE QUESTION SAYING: We have no idea, we are investigating. We have completely shutdown the system and we are now completely protected. REPORTERS ASKS: Have you reached out to your clients? AUDIO OF FONSECA RESPONDING TO THE QUESTION SAYING: Yes, we have reached out to all of our clients and we have advised them of this problem. REPORTERS ASKS: And how have they reacted? I imagine that for you, it must be very difficult to have to confront something so delicate. AUDIO OF FONSECA RESPONDING TO THE QUESTION SAYING: The reaction of the clients has been one of comprehension and understanding but, well, there has been a bit of everything. REPORTERS ASKS And whats next Mr. Fonseca? AUDIO OF FONSECA RESPONDING TO QUESTION SAYING: We believe that there is an international campaign against privacy. Privacy is a sacred human right. There are people in the world who do not understand that. We definitely believe in privacy and we will continue working so that legal privacy works. If a company that we have formed finds itself in trouble and they approach us to solicit information via the appropriate channels, we immediately give out that information. And I would like to repeat, we have never been implicated in anything except by the media. REPORTERS ASKS: And do you have any idea as to who could have hacked your database or what was their purpose? AUDIO OF FONSECA RESPONDING TO QUESTION SAYING: We have our suspicions but we cannot comment because we do not have the evidence. REPORTER ASKS: And if you are able to confirm that would you be willing to file a suit against them? AUDIO OF FONSECA RESPONDING TO QUESTION SAYING: Of course yes. We are investigating. REPORTER ASKS: One last question Mr. Fonseca, and it is a question that I must ask, considering the position you once held as an advisor for President (Juan Carlos ) Varela, could this have some kind of political reasoning or some form of revenge? AUDIO OF FONSECA RESPONDING TO QUESTION SAYING: I cannot answer that. I resigned from that position so I could defend my firm without involving the government
They had been installed over the decades by different organizations using different standards, different techniques, from different eras, Mr. Recordon said. They were finding these pipes that just had bundles of cable that had been cut off over the years, no longer used. So we just started pulling it out.

With the wiring fixed, Mr. Recordon started replacing computers (the new ones have fast, solid-state drives and modern processors) and color printers. The new phone system  the first since the Clinton years  is all digital, with built-in speakerphones and speed-dial buttons that can be changed online. Many White House aides now carry the most recent iPhones. Mr. Obama, however, still carries a specially modified, highly secure BlackBerry.

The Wi-Fi in the Roosevelt Room is finally strong enough to live-stream an event on Facebook, like White House aides did last week when Mr. Obama surprised former federal inmates whose sentences had been commuted. Forgotten passwords are no longer an irritant now that the White House has started requiring users to log on with a chip-enabled smart card and a pin code.

Mr. Recordons team also designed a new web-based system for admitting visitors to the West Wing that can be managed securely from any computer, including ones outside the White House complex.

To be sure, some important West Wing technology was upgraded by the George W. Bush administration, which overhauled the Situation Room for the first time since the Kennedy administration and added modern communications gear. Joe Hagin, the deputy chief of staff for Mr. Bush, recalled having to replace the phones in the presidential limousine after Mr. Bush complained that he had not been able to make a single phone call from his motorcade over an entire weekend.

He said to me, What the heck would happen if there were a true national emergency?  Mr. Hagin recalled. That fear came true months later on Sept. 11, 2001, when communications glitches plagued the government and led to new equipment in Air Force One and the first BlackBerries in the White House.

Mr. Hagins team also upgraded the Intel 486 computers and got rid of the slow and cumbersome Lotus Notes email system. But the speed of technological advancement has once again left the current White House behind.
WASHINGTON  Jack Evans was a summer intern here in 1976, the year Metro, the capital regions subway system, opened to rave reviews. It was an architectural triumph, with escalators that plunged into clean, well-lit stations  a mass transit marvel like The Jetsons,  he says  a far cry from the graffiti-scarred, decrepit system of that era in New York.

Now Mr. Evans, 62, is the chairman of the transit agency that oversees Metro  perhaps the citys least enviable job. Last week, at a conference examining Metro on its 40th birthday, he said out loud what Washingtonians had known for years: The capitals once-glorious subway system, the nations second busiest, is short on cash and a terrible mess.

Its a system thats maybe safe, somewhat unreliable, and that is being complained about by everybody, declared Mr. Evans, who estimates that Metro could face a $100 million budget shortfall next fiscal year.

Then he dropped a bombshell. He warned that whole lines may have to be closed for months for repairs, adding, If we do nothing, 10 years from now the system wont be running.
What does seem clear is that the projects critics  environmentalists, human rights advocates and economists  have grown more outspoken and organized. In this part of the country, many homeowners have stenciled Go Away Chinese on the sides of their houses, and virtually all the re-election posters for Mr. Ortega have been hit with black paint balls.

When he announced the deal in 2013, Mr. Ortega, a left-wing guerrilla turned pro-business politician, promised that the canal would transform Nicaragua and create hundreds of thousands of jobs, eventually doubling the countrys gross domestic product. Many Nicaraguans, eager for a better future, embraced the idea, and many still do.

But a growing number say the benefits of the deal are not so clear.

Some question whether the canal would even be commercially viable. Few supertankers and massive container ships now afloat will not be able to pass through the expanded Panama Canal set to open soon. And few ports are big enough to welcome those megaships. In the short term, some experts say, the combination of the Panama and Nicaragua canals would lead to overcapacity and price wars.

There are also concerns about the seismic activity in the area, or the many volcanos. Some analysts point to Chinas poor record on environmental matters and Mr. Wangs inexperience in building anything, let alone a $50 billion (some say $80 billion) canal carving through miles of protected areas that are home to many endangered species, including the jaguar, and legally recognized indigenous lands. The little-known Mr. Wang made his fortune in telecommunications, not in construction.

And then there is the 50-mile trench to be dug on the floor of Lake Nicaragua, the largest body of fresh water in Central America  which many fear could end up contaminating, even killing, the lake.

Economists and human rights activists also object to the powers Mr. Wang has to expropriate land at far less than market rates, saying the terms of Mr. Wangs concession could discourage anyone else from investing in Nicaragua.
The militaries of the 30 countries that provide the most soldiers and police officers to United Nations peacekeeping operations also are among those most susceptible to corruption, according to a study released Sunday by an anti-corruption monitoring organization.

The organization, Transparency International, known for its annual corruption rankings of governments around the world, said that in its A-to-F grading for the armed forces of the top troop-contributing countries, only Italy scored higher than a D.

Six of the countries  Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Egypt, Morocco and Togo  received F grades, Transparency International said.

The three countries that contribute the most troops, Bangladesh, Ethiopia and India  which together provide about 25,200 uniformed personnel, roughly a quarter of the total in United Nations peacekeeping operations  also scored poorly in the studys rankings. Bangladesh and India each received a D, and Ethiopia an E.
Shortly after taking over Valsuani, Mr. Benatov says he discovered an entirely new set of 74 plaster sculptures by Degas, including a Little Dancer. These plasters and the bronzes Mr. Benatov later made from them are the subject of the controversy. Some of the plasters needed repairs and Mr. Benatov, himself an accomplished sculptor, fixed them.

Image Degass Woman Walking in the Street. Credit... Antoine Mercier/Artco France

Until recently, Mr. Benatov and his artisans had been churning out posthumous Degas bronzes, as well as reproductions of sculptures by Rodin, Modigliani and Dali. Under French law, Mr. Benatov can brand bronzes as originals, with the permission of an artists heirs or rights holders, or as reproductions, once the artist has been dead for 70 years and the bronzes are clearly stamped as such. Since he did not have the authorization of the Degas family to produce originals, he had made reproductions, since it has been more than 70 years since Degass death.

Mr. Benatov then cast, and in 1997 sold, 12 bronze Little Dancers for around $60,000 each, and another 34 or so a year later. They were all marked reproduction under the tutu.

Otherwise, I wouldnt have been able to cast them, he told ArtNews in 2013. Customs would have come out to the foundry.

The problem for some Degas scholars is that the plaster sculpture used to make the Valsuani bronzes of the Little Dancer is different  the face, the collarbones, the hair, the position of the legs  from the Little Dancer that Degas is widely embraced as having made and exhibited.

The authenticity debate has accelerated in recent years, as the foundry had expanded the number of bronzes it produced that were based on the disputed plasters. Increased production was tied to a contract the foundry entered into with Walter Maibaum, a New Jersey art dealer. Mr. Maibaum said he was convinced that the plasters were based on wax sculptures made by Degas, a view that was supported in a published paper by Gregory Hedberg, an art dealer at Hirschl & Adler Gallery in New York, and endorsed by some of the artists relatives.
Sculptures by Henry Moore, one of the most influential and celebrated British artists of the 20th century, are on public display in parks and plazas around the world. They reside in major museums like the Tate and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But plans to install one of Moores works at Columbia University has made students angry.

Unlike many campus outcries of the past year, this one has nothing to do with sexism or racism. Moores Reclining Figure (1969-70), many students have said, is just ugly and doesnt fit in with Columbias neo-Classical aesthetic. The work has not arrived on campus, but more than 1,200 students have signed a petition that condemns the sculpture and the schools administration. (Anyone can sign the petition, but the movement has largely been led by the universitys 8,600 undergraduates.)

News of the sculptures arrival first appeared late last month in a university blog post by Roberto Ferrari, curator of art properties at the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library. He wrote that Reclining Figure suggests the form of a woman with her legs outstretched before her, propping herself up with her forearm.

But students see it another way. In interviews, they referred to the sculpture as an arthropod, a spider and a dragon, and used phrases like kind of evil. An op-ed in Columbia Daily Spectator, the student newspaper, described it as a dying mantis or a poorly formed pterodactyl.
It may be the biggest unfiring in opera since Maria Callass New York comeback: Kathleen Battle, a prima donna whose dismissal by the Metropolitan Opera more than two decades ago made front-page news, will return to the Met next season to sing a recital of spirituals.

The concert, scheduled for Nov. 13, will provide a burst of old-school star power at a time when the Met has been struggling with declining attendance. Arrangements for her appearance came after Ms. Battle, 67, was courted by Peter Gelb, the companys general manager. I think great artists should be on the stage of the Met, Mr. Gelb said in an interview. There arent enough of them.

Ms. Battle was a Grammy-winning soprano who had appeared with the Met 224 times by 1994, when Joseph Volpe, then general manager, fired her from a production of Donizettis La Fille du Regiment a week before opening night, citing, with a bluntness unusual in classical music, her unprofessional actions during rehearsals. Stories quickly circulated about what was described as divalike behavior and rudeness toward colleagues, including demands that other singers leave rehearsals when she was singing and not look at her mouth during duets.

Ms. Battle was said to arrive late to rehearsals, leave early or not to show up at all. Nor was Fille the first case of her being temperamental: The year before, she withdrew from a Met production of Strausss Der Rosenkavalier after clashing with the conductor. A few months before that, in a season-opening appearance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, she was said to have changed hotels several times and banned an assistant conductor from her rehearsals.
Having come from a long line of Presbyterians who valued their faith and marched off to war, Mr. Fair enlisted in the Army in 1995, stumbled into one of its language programs and became an Arabic linguist. The diagnosis of a heart condition in 2002 would mean he could not continue in his postmilitary career as a police officer or re-enlist in the Army when the invasion of Iraq began in early 2003. Working for CACI, which requested no medical exam, was a way for him to ensure that he didnt miss out on the war.

Mr. Fair draws an alarming portrait of CACI as disorganized and unprofessional in its deployment of civilians, not to mention dangerous and irresponsible: as former soldiers and marines, none of us were comfortable with the lack of planning, lack of support and lack of proper supplies, he writes. No weapons, no communications equipment, no maps and nothing for first aid. We all expect something to go wrong very soon.

Things are chaotic at Abu Ghraib, where Mr. Fair is assigned to a team tasked with debriefing former associates of Saddam Hussein. He writes that it is never entirely clear how the Army determines whether any of us have the proper security clearance, and the shortage of interrogators means there are thousands of detainees who will never be processed.

Image Eric Fair Credit... Amy Cramer

Those detainees are given no information about their status, he observes, and they have no way of knowing when or if they will see their families again. Some of them are guilty; some of them are not. All of them are jailed under intolerable circumstances. Military intelligence officers would tell the Red Cross that an estimated 70 percent to 90 percent of the detainees had been arrested by mistake.

Some of Mr. Fairs descriptions of Abu Ghraib and the National Security Agency facilities at Camp Victory recall the absurdities of Catch-22 and Animal Farm, but here the sense of the absurd is infused with real horror and injustice. He writes that he and his colleagues were encouraged by supervisors to be creative, that they often struggled to understand what detainees were saying because of dialect problems, and that they learned to justify the use of different forms of torture by calling them enhanced techniques and filling out the appropriate paperwork.

Mr. Fair says he and Mr. Ibabao often thought about quitting but didnt want to be seen as the type of people who arent cut out for doing their part in the war. At home, he will come to realize that he needs to earn his way back as a human being: He does not believe he will ever be redeemed, but thinks he is obligated to try.
Even if you had the money, there was a chance the government would try to keep you from spending it. The federal forfeiture laws give prosecutors a powerful  and oft-criticized  tool to seek a court order freezing a persons assets until the criminal case is completed so that the money is available to cover a fine or restitution to victims if there is a conviction. That usually means defendants must rely on appointed counsel rather than the lawyer of their own choosing and will have far fewer resources to defend the case that can put them at a distinct disadvantage.

The Supreme Court confronted the issue of whether a court can freeze innocent funds unconnected to any violation before there is a verdict in the prosecution of Sila Luis. She was accused of a number of health care offenses, which prosecutors claim resulted in close to $45 million being fraudulently obtained, almost all of which she had spent.

The government filed a civil asset forfeiture action to prevent Ms. Luis from spending $2 million she had available that was not connected to any of the crimes charged because those funds would be needed to pay any restitution or penalties after a conviction. The order effectively prevented her from hiring a lawyer to defend the criminal case.

This is not the first time the justices have confronted the issue of whether an asset freeze violates a defendants Sixth Amendment right to counsel when a court keeps a defendant from using money in their possession to retain a lawyer.

In 2014, in Kaley v. United States , the court held that the defendants, a wife and husband, could not challenge before trial an indictment accusing them of theft of medical devices and money laundering that prosecutors used as evidence to secure an order freezing a $500,000 certificate of deposit they owned. The court found that the money was traceable to the underlying crimes charged, so because a grand jury had determined there was probable cause the defendants committed the offenses, the freeze order was valid.
In agreeing to buy Virgin America for $2.6 billion, Alaska Air Group is betting that the airline industry is so consolidated after years of mergers that what it needs is another takeover.

The acquisition of Virgin America, the sleek but embattled young airline that sought to make flying across the United States stylish, would propel Alaska Airlines into the top five American carriers. The deal, announced on Monday, would also prove especially helpful in giving the older airline valuable space at major California airports and lucrative transcontinental routes.

At the same time, Alaska Air must now be careful in how it integrates a brand beloved by its cadre of customers who adore its cheeky image, onboard Wi-Fi and soothing onboard purple lighting.

For Alaska Air, buying Virgin America was in some ways a natural consequence of the successive mergers that have already concentrated domestic air travel in four primary airlines: American, Delta, United and Southwest. Together, they control roughly 85 percent of the countrys airline capacity.
Mr. Vaccarello founded his own brand, in 2009, but will suspend that line to devote himself fully to Saint Laurent, according to a spokesman for the brand. He will be responsible for womens wear, mens wear, the couture line revived by Mr. Slimane and the image of the brand.

His name first surfaced as a possible replacement for Mr. Slimane in January. He deflected the gossip as a rumor in March at his last show during Paris Fashion Week, which was marked by a combination of body-baring asymmetric lacing and leather that reflected his penchant for 1980s rock n roll, and that may connect his aesthetic to that of Mr. Slimanes Saint Laurent line. (Ms. Versace once characterized Mr. Vaccarellos signature look as cool and sexy.)

Certainly, he is not expected to carry out another wholesale reinvention of the house in the manner of Mr. Slimane, who redesigned not only the stores but also the furniture in the stores; photographed the ad campaigns himself; and dropped the Yves from the name of the ready-to-wear line. Unlike Mr. Slimane, who based himself in Los Angeles, Mr. Vaccarello is based in Paris.
Angola is experiencing a major urban yellow fever outbreak that threatens other countries, including China, and is exposing how poorly prepared the world is to fight two mosquito-borne epidemics at once.

Angolas outbreak, which is known to have killed about 200 people, has already consumed the World Health Organizations emergency stockpile of yellow fever vaccine.

Image Dr. Margaret Chan of the W.H.O. Credit... Salvatore Di Nolfi/European Pressphoto Agency

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said it cannot give Africa as much help as it normally would: Most of its mosquito-disease experts are fighting the Zika virus in Brazil, Puerto Rico and elsewhere.
Somehow, it seems, the city lost her babys body.

I just broke down, because I thought this whole time that my son was buried, at peace, Ms. DeJesus, 36, said in an interview last week. I tried to speak to the captain, but it was too hard for me.

Where is my son, then? she asked. What have they done with his body?

Now Ms. DeJesus is suing the city for negligence in destroying her sepulcher rights  the age-old right to bury ones relatives. Her lawyer, Daniel Flanzig, filed a formal notice of the claim against the city last week, citing $5 million in damages and naming as defendants the office of the chief medical examiner, the Bronx County medical examiner, the citys Health and Hospitals Corporation, and the Correction Department.

The law recognizes the right of kin to find solace and comfort in the ritual of burial, Mr. Flanzig said, and the courts have recognized that damages can be assessed against anyone who interferes with that right.

The belated discovery that the babys body was missing echoes more recent problems with corpses lost or mixed up, both in funeral homes and at city morgues. In 2014, the city dug up 274 bodies on Hart Island in a fruitless search for the body of a woman named Rebecca Alper, 71, after a relative asked about her remains. It turned out that she had been wrongly transferred by the city morgue to a funeral home under another womans name, and cremated. The mistake and its cover-up came to light nine months later, after the body of the other woman, Leah Lerner, 95, was discovered, languishing in the city morgue.
A Brooklyn man who fatally beat a transgender woman after a chance encounter in Harlem in 2013 pleaded guilty on Monday to manslaughter in exchange for a sentence of 12 years in prison, prosecutors said.

The man, James Dixon, 25, took the offer from Justice Daniel P. Conviser just before jury selection was to begin in his trial in State Supreme Court in Manhattan. On Friday, Justice Conviser ruled that Mr. Dixons videotaped confession to prosecutors could be used as evidence, making an acquittal more unlikely.

The plea bargain was not supported by the Manhattan district attorneys office. The lead prosecutor, Nicholas Viorst, had demanded a prison sentence of at least 17 years if Mr. Dixon pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter.

In his confession, Mr. Dixon said he met the transgender woman, Islan Nettles, on the street in Harlem just after midnight on Aug. 17, 2013. Under questioning, he told the police he started flirting with Ms. Nettles, unaware she was transgender, and became enraged when one of his friends starting mocking him.
A Long Island contractor was sentenced on Monday to one to three years in prison for stealing nearly $500,000 in prize money awarded to his friend, the jazz pianist Cecil Taylor.

The contractor, Noel Muir, 55, of Uniondale, N.Y., pleaded guilty to larceny last month for having stolen the money awarded to Mr. Taylor by the Inamori Foundation of Japan in June 2013 as part of his Kyoto Prize. The prizes recognize cultural, scientific and spiritual achievements.

Image Mr. Taylor spoke outside of a Brooklyn courtroom in February. Credit... Bryan R. Smith for The New York Times

Mr. Muir, who befriended Mr. Taylor while working on his brownstone in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, accompanied the jazz musician to Japan in November 2013 and then arranged to have the prize money  $492,722.55  deposited into his own Citibank account. Documents that Mr. Muir sent to the foundation falsely stated that the name on that account was the Cecil Taylor Foundation.
PRINCETON, N.J.  The board of trustees at Princeton University said on Monday that it had voted to keep Woodrow Wilsons name on campus buildings and programs, despite student protests last year that led to a review of Wilsons legacy here.

Following a racially charged 32-hour sit-in in November, Christopher L. Eisgruber, the university president, signed an agreement to consider removing Wilsons name from Princetons public policy school and a residential college because of Wilsons views on race.

While it left Wilsons name in place, the board called for an expanded and more vigorous commitment to diversity and inclusion at Princeton in a statement. To that end, it endorsed the creation of a new program to diversify the ranks of its doctoral candidates, recommended that the campuss artworks and iconography better reflect the schools current makeup and pledged to focus on aspects of Princetons history that have been forgotten, overlooked, subordinated or suppressed.

It also voted to change the universitys informal motto, Princeton in the nations service and the service of all nations, which was derived from a speech Wilson gave to celebrate the schools 150th anniversary. A new version, Princeton in the nations service and the service of humanity, was suggested by Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the Supreme Court, a Princeton alumna, in 2014.
Last year, nearly 5,000 people were charged in New York City with dealing small quantities of heroin or cocaine, and in 2014, just over 6,000 people faced such charges. But the number of those that involved buy-and-bust cases against addicts is unknown. A vast majority of drug-dealing charges end in plea deals, so there are few trials during which such distinctions might emerge.

The 55-year-old crack addict, Reginald J., agreed to speak to a reporter on the condition that only the first letter of his surname be used when identifying him. In an interview, he articulated one of the issues with these sting operations: It is tough for addicts to say no.

For him to put the money in my hands, as an addict, let me tell you what happens, he said. I like to think I could resist it, but Im way beyond that. My experience has shown me that 1,000 times out of 1,000 times, I will be defeated.

At one trial in January, a defendant testified that he had shown an undercover officer track marks on his arm. At another trial, in December, the defendant testified that he had even told an undercover officer about his desire to get clean. You know what? We got to stop getting high, the man, Mitchell Coward, testified. Thats what I told him.

Joan Vollero, a spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorneys office, which prosecuted three of the four cases reviewed by The Times, declined to say whether the office considered such sting operations to be appropriate. But she did say that in some cases, addicts who pleaded guilty to felony drug-dealing charges were steered toward treatment instead of prison.

Law enforcement officials said that sting operations remained a necessary and sensible response to neighborhood complaints about drug dealing and narcotics use. For instance, the McDonalds on the Lower East Side, where the undercover officer approached the 21-year-old heroin addict, was the topic of dozens of recent community complaints about drug dealing and drug use there or outside its doors, the police said.
Striking a nuclear plant or the cooling ponds in which nuclear waste is stored wouldnt set off a mushroom cloud or kill hundreds of thousands of people. But it would spew large amounts of radiation, spark a mass panic and render vast swaths of land uninhabitable. And it could cause thousands of early deaths from cancer.

More than one in three Americans lives within 50 miles of the 99 nuclear reactors operating in the United States today. There are more than 300 other nuclear reactors producing electricity in 30 other countries.

Nuclear plants have built-in safety mechanisms, typically multiple systems that are unlikely to fail simultaneously: If one of them malfunctions, theres always a backup, the theory goes. But redundancy is effective protection only against accidents, not against terrorists who set out to cause simultaneous system failures. For example, by targeting power and water supplies at the same time, attackers could cause a reactor to melt down or a cooling pond to ignite.

After the catastrophe at Fukushima, safety measures were bolstered at nuclear plants worldwide: More emergency equipment was put on standby, and measures for venting explosive hydrogen gas were improved. But conspicuous gaps remain in security, even in countries like Japan, India, Pakistan, Russia and the United States, which have major nuclear facilities and also have suffered serious acts of terrorism in the past. President Vladimir V. Putin didnt even attend last weeks summit.

The first measure must be to combat complacency. Incredibly, it took the November attacks in Paris for Belgium to finally arm guards at its nuclear power plants. Even more incredibly, it took the Brussels attack last month for Belgian authorities to review the personnel records of employees at nuclear sites  and determine that about a dozen workers should have had their credentials revoked on security grounds.

At a minimum, armed guards should be required at all sites that hold weapons-grade material or enough low-enriched fuel to cause a major release of radioactivity. And all employees at nuclear plants should be thoroughly vetted before they are employed.

The United States can leverage its leadership in the international commerce of nuclear material and technology to improve security at nuclear plants in other countries. United States law already requires that nuclear material originating in that country be adequately protected when it is exported and while it is abroad.
To the Editor:

Re Suppress Votes? Id Rather Lose My Job (Op-Ed, March 31):

Representative Jim Sensenbrenner deserves our deep respect for pushing for an effective Voting Rights Act that will protect against racial discrimination in voting. His action stands in stark contrast with that of the speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, who says he supports the Voting Rights Act but refuses to do anything to get it passed.

Mr. Ryan seems to want to have his cake and eat it too. He says he is for civil rights, but wont push the House Judiciary Committee to move the legislation. The hypocrisy is breathtaking. We need more elected officials who arent afraid to take a stand like Mr. Sensenbrenner when he says, I would rather lose my job than suppress votes to keep it.

ELISABETH MacNAMARA

President

League of Women Voters of the U.S.

Washington

To the Editor:

Representative Jim Sensenbrenner calls for the passage of his Voting Rights Act of 2015 to overturn the Supreme Courts 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder. But no new legislation is needed.

The Supreme Court struck down only one provision in the Voting Rights Act  which was indeed unconstitutional and was never a permanent part of the act anyway  and there are plenty of other voting rights laws available to ensure that the right to vote is not violated. And notwithstanding Mr. Sensenbrenners suggestion to the contrary, those provisions can be used to stop discriminatory voting practices before they affect any election.
Its become an accepted truth of modern politics that Republican electoral prospects go up as the number of voters goes down. Conservatives have known this for a long time, which helps explain their intensifying efforts to make it harder to vote, or to eliminate large numbers of people from political representation entirely.

On Monday, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected one of the more extreme attempts  a lawsuit from Texas that aimed to reverse longstanding practice and require that only eligible voters be counted in the drawing of state legislative districts.

Texas, like virtually everywhere else in the country, applies the courts one person, one vote rule by counting all people living in a district, regardless of whether they can vote. The legal challenge to that practical approach came from white conservatives living in Republican-leaning rural areas. They said this diminished their political power and increased the political power of Texas urban areas, where more minorities  particularly Latinos, who are disproportionately not citizens  tend to live.
PARIS  There is a global backlash against rising inequality, stagnant middle-class incomes, politicians for sale, social exclusion, offshoring of jobs, free trade, mass immigration, tax systems skewed for giant corporations and their bosses, and what Pope Francis has lambasted as the unfettered pursuit of money.

The backlash takes various forms. In the United States it has produced an angry election campaign. The success of both Donald Trump on the right and Bernie Sanders on the left owes a lot to the thirst for radical candidates who break the mold. Trump is unserious and incoherent; Sanders is neither of those things. But they both draw support from constituencies that feel stuck, reject politics as usual, and perceive a system rigged against them.

Hillary Clintons chief predicament, apart from the trust issue, is that she represents the past in a world where the post-cold-war optimism that accompanied her husbands arrival in the White House almost a quarter-century ago has vanished. To embody continuity these days is political suicide.

In an interesting essay in the journal STIR, Jonna Ivin writes: People want to be heard. They want to believe their voices matter. A January 2016 survey by the Rand Corporation reported that Republican primary voters are 86.5 percent more likely to favor Donald Trump if they somewhat agree or strongly agree with the statement, People like me dont have any say about what the government does.
One thing thats definitely gotten better over time: not as much ritualistic human sacrifice.

But a new study published Monday in Nature revisits the ancient practice to look for fresh insights. The scientists found that, for better or worse (and only worse for the victims, of course), human sacrifice helped create the hierarchies present in many modern societies.

The scientists from the University of Auckland and Victoria University of Wellington, both in New Zealand, found that ritual sacrifice may have spurred the transition of small, egalitarian societies to large, stratified ones. The study examined 93 traditional Austronesian cultures (speakers of a family of languages in parts of Africa, Asia and Oceania).

They looked at whether and how these cultures used ritual sacrifice  40 of them practiced it  and how it affected social organization. The cultures were then divided into groups: egalitarian, moderately stratified and highly stratified. They were defined by the presence or absence of social hierarchy, and the rate of social mobility.
The technology industries in the United States and China have rarely developed in lock step with one another. For years, the United States was ahead in chips, software and the web. China was largely a manufacturing engine, but lately it has been doing more innovative things in mobile and messaging.

In the area of self-driving cars, though, there is now plenty of activity in both countries.

In the United States, large tech companies such as Google have pushed development of autonomous vehicles, as have carmakers like Tesla. Some of the companies are lobbying for regulatory changes to pave the way for the broad adoption of the vehicles later on down the line.

In China, there is also a lot of action around self-driving cars  and perhaps a better set of conditions for the burgeoning industry to thrive in because of more support from the government, among other factors, write John Markoff and Paul Mozur . Start-up activity in the field has increased, with top Chinese engineers setting up autonomous car companies  one of the latest to jump in is Gansha Wu, a veteran engineering manager at Intel, who has begun a self-driving car start-up called Uisee Technology. Read on.
For years, the federal government, states and some cities have enthusiastically made vast troves of data open to the public. Acres of paper records on demographics, public health, traffic patterns, energy consumption, family incomes and many other topics have been digitized and posted on the web.

This abundance of data can be a gold mine for discovery and insights, but finding the nuggets can be arduous, requiring special skills.

A project coming out of the M.I.T. Media Lab on Monday seeks to ease that challenge and to make the value of government data available to a wider audience. The project, called Data USA, bills itself as the most comprehensive visualization of U.S. public data. It is free, and its software code is open source, meaning that developers can build custom applications by adding other data.

Cesar A. Hidalgo, an assistant professor of media arts and sciences at the M.I.T. Media Lab who led the development of Data USA, said the website was devised to transform data into stories. Those stories are typically presented as graphics, charts and written summaries.
HALF MOON BAY, Calif.  From a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, a loud pop signals the catapult launch of a small fixed-wing drone that is designed to carry medical supplies to remote locations almost 40 miles away.

The drones are the brainchild of a small group of engineers at a Silicon Valley start-up called Zipline, which plans to begin operating a service with them for the government of Rwanda in July. The fleet of robot planes will initially cover more than half the tiny African nation, creating a highly automated network to shuttle blood and pharmaceuticals to remote locations in hours rather than weeks or months.

Rwanda, one of the worlds poorest nations, was ranked 170th by gross domestic product in 2014 by the International Monetary Fund. And so it is striking that the country will be the first, company executives said, to establish a commercial drone delivery network  putting it ahead of places like the United States, where there have been heavily ballyhooed futuristic drone delivery systems promising urban and suburban package delivery from tech giants such as Amazon and Google.

The concept of drone ports is something that a very small decision-making unit in the country decided they were going to do, said Michael Fairbanks, a member of the Rwandan president Paul Kagames presidential advisory council. It took a very short time. Its something that America could learn from.
Aaron Davidmans Wrestling Jerusalem, at 59E59 Theaters, is an act of faith. A smartly written solo show about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it trusts in the power of the human voice and the capacity of the human heart. It believes that listening to one anothers stories can change the way we move through the world. That, really, is its reason for being.

So it is intensely frustrating that Mr. Davidman and his director, Michael John Garces, get in their own way throughout this puzzlingly paced production, whose 17 characters  Israelis, Palestinians, a sprinkling of American Jews  need far more room to breathe than theyre allowed.

The performance starts at a gallop and often moves too fast, Mr. Davidman switching from one character to the next with little more delineation than perhaps a change of accent. Clear and individual on the page, the voices blur together onstage.

Its not that Mr. Davidman is incapable of making these characters real to us. He does well with a friendly, proselytizing Muslim named Tariq; a resolute Palestinian named Ibrahim, whose family lost its orchard to the barrier constructed between Israel and the West Bank; and a pot-smoking young Israeli named Amir, haunted by a bombing that killed his friends in front of him.
Donald Trump has had a rough couple of weeks. He said he supported punishing women for abortion and then walked it back; his campaign manager was arrested on a charge of battery; he retweeted an unflattering picture of his main opponents wife, Heidi Cruz.

And the polls show him trailing by a wide margin in Wisconsin, which holds its primary on Tuesday. For some people, its a sign that Mr. Trump is finally losing ground.

But his problem in Wisconsin is mainly about the states demographics, not self-inflicted wounds. Even a 10-percentage-point loss there wouldnt necessarily indicate any shift against him.

The state has always looked as if it would be one of Mr. Trumps worst. This was true even before the primaries began. Polling by Civis Analytics and Marquette Law both showed Mr. Trump faring much worse there than nationally, just as was the case in neighboring Iowa, where he wound up losing to Ted Cruz.
We have tremendous empathy for people who are fearful and scared, Ms. Lieberman said. Weve really tried to explain why the schools are safe now.

Malibu parents have a history of skepticism about official health advice, including routine childhood vaccinations: At some local elementary schools in 2014, fewer than 60 percent of kindergarten students had received the full lineup of recommended vaccines, far below the state average.

In this case, the distrust on both sides became plain last fall, when supporters of caulking removal secretly took their own samples from classrooms and had them independently tested. Ms. deNicola announced that the results showed extraordinarily high levels of PCBs. The school district asked the sheriffs office to investigate her for trespassing and vandalism.

The battle now threatens to tear apart the school district: Concern over PCBs has fueled an existing effort here to break away from Santa Monica so that Malibu can be in control of its own schools.

Beth Lucas, a parent, pulled her son, Christian, out of Malibu High after their endocrinologist said it was especially dangerous for him to remain there. Christian, now 17, had a malignant brain tumor at age 6, and the radiation used to treat it left him with a diminished immune system and thus more vulnerable to the effects of PCBs, the doctor told the family.

We moved to Malibu for the schools, so it has been a big slap in the face to have the school district treat the parents and teachers and children so poorly, Ms. Lucas said. She is also considering removing her daughter, who is in middle school, at the end of the year, but worried about the cost of private school.

Yes, we live in this nice house, she said, sitting on a hilltop porch that overlooked a wide expanse of ocean. I dont want to have to sell my house and leave Malibu. The district has put us in a horrible position.
ATLANTA  At least five people were killed Monday when a sightseeing helicopter crashed in east Tennessee, the authorities said.

A spokesman for the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency, Dean Flener, said five people on board had been killed. He said he did not know if anyone had survived the crash.

The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement that the accident happened about 3:30 p.m. near Sevierville, Tenn., east of Knoxville, and that the helicopter, a Bell 206, had been destroyed by a fire.

Mr. Flener said the crash had caused a fire at the accident site and that emergency crews were working to ensure that it did not spread.
WASHINGTON  Global warming could lead to an increase in allergies and asthma, deaths by extreme heat and the proliferation of insect-borne diseases such as the West Nile virus, according to a scientific report released Monday by the White House.

The conclusions of the report on the health effects of climate change in the United States are not new. But Obama administration health officials, including Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, the surgeon general, said the study, which was reviewed by the National Academies of Science, offered the strongest evidence to date that links climate change to health risks.

A number of scientific reports have suggested that a warming planet may exacerbate certain health problems. Even so, scientists have cautioned that no connections had been proved, given the multitude of variables that influence health.

The scientific information in this report adds considerably to what was known before, said John P. Holdren, President Obamas top scientific adviser, in a briefing Monday morning.
When Mr. Walker, who ended his own presidential bid by offering a pointed rebuke of Mr. Trump, endorsed Mr. Cruz last Tuesday, he did so by calling in to Mr. Sykess show. And the week before, Mr. Cruz opened his Wisconsin primary bid in a friendly interview with Mr. Sykes.

Mr. Trump, by contrast, has found himself under near constant fire from the conservative talk radio hosts who dominate the southern part of the state, including the three counties that contain parts of Milwaukee: Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington. They are among the most conservative counties in Wisconsin, and where Mr. Trump is struggling the most.

How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause. Learn more about our process.

The most popular conservative talk show hosts here  Mr. Sykes, Jeff Wagner of WTMJ, and Mark Belling, Vicki McKenna and Jay Weber of WISN  are united in their disdain for Mr. Trump, with Jerry Bader, a radio personality at WTAQ in Green Bay, rounding out the group.

The thing thats been unique in this presidential race is, for some reason, the three who work here  Jay, Vicki and myself  and our competitors, Charlie and Jeff Wagner, all seem to despise Trump, Mr. Belling said in an interview. We all just kind of came to this conclusion independently. I think its just that were not as stupid as some of the people that are falling for Trumps crap.
WASHINGTON  The United States military has transferred two Libyan detainees to Senegal from its wartime prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, government officials said on Monday, the first time Senegal has resettled a Guantanamo prisoner.

The men had been imprisoned without trial for about 14 years, and their transfers reduced the detainee population at the prison to 89.

Secretary of State John Kerry thanked Senegal for taking them. He reiterated the Obama administrations arguments that the prison should be closed because it is costly and fuels anti-American sentiments abroad.

The United States appreciates the generous assistance of the government of Senegal as the United States continues its efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, Mr. Kerry said in a statement. This significant humanitarian gesture is consistent with Senegals leadership on the global stage.
A nasty row that erupted between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders over oil and gas industry donors last week is catapulting the issue of climate change into the race for the Democratic presidential nomination as it moves to New York, where an army of activists upstate is driven by opposition to drilling.

Mrs. Clinton has moved steadily left on the issue, under pressure from Mr. Sanders and his progressive allies, but she continues to come under assault, posing new challenges for her as the race moves to more liberal Northeastern states.

Last week, her mask of composure slipped when she angrily replied to a Greenpeace activist in Purchase, N.Y., I am so sick of the Sanders campaign lying about me.

Climate change is a powerful issue for voters in the Democratic base almost everywhere. But it has especially inspired grass-roots progressives in upstate New York, who fought  and won  a yearslong battle against fracking for natural gas.
DAKAR, Senegal  Gunfire rang out for hours in Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo, early Monday as armed men attacked police stations and a mayors office.

The police battled the group, which rampaged through the southern part of the city, before the situation calmed by late morning, government officials said.

The violence upset the relative order that had been in place after the re-election last month of Denis Sassou-Nguesso, 72, the nations longtime president. The balloting followed a change to the Constitution that allowed him to run for yet another term. One of several so-called presidents for life in Africa, Mr. Sassou-Nguesso has been in office for 32 of the past 37 years, starting in 1979.

Last fall, violent protests accompanied the constitutional referendum that removed term limits and extended presidential candidates eligibility beyond age 70. Opposition leaders condemned the referendum results, and the presidential election a few months later, as fraudulent.
HONG KONG  In an Oscar-like spectacle on Sunday night, the Hong Kong Film Awards announced 21 movie prizes. Or 20  if you consulted only reports in the mainland Chinese news media.

That was because the top honor went to Ten Years, a low-budget independent production depicting a dark future for a Hong Kong bullied by the mainland government into assimilation. In the lists of award winners published on the Chinese news portals Sina and Tencent and a report by Xinhua, the state news agency, there was no mention of the best film.

With a shoestring budget of about 500,000 Hong Kong dollars, or about $64,000, and a limited theater release, the film has raked in more than 5 million Hong Kong dollars, finding resonance with present-day fears that local culture and liberties are being threatened under Chinese rule. On Saturday, thousands of people flocked to community-organized screenings in more than 30 locations, including public parks and squares.

We just hope that our feelings are shared by the Hong Kong people, said Ng Ka-leung, a producer and director of the film, after he won the award. We want to use our work to ponder the future of Hong Kong.
MYTILENE, Greece  They had braved risks and hardships to get to Greece, having crossed the narrow strait from Turkey in flimsy rafts like nearly a million others last year  with hundreds dying along the way.

But on Monday, Greek and European Union officials sent them back  202 migrants  beginning a central part of a deal worked out with Turkey last month to stem the flow of people making the perilous journey to European shores.

In this port on the island of Lesbos, as the sun rose over the Aegean Sea, more than 100 officers from the European border agency, Frontex, marched 136 migrants onto two ferries bound for the Turkish town of Dikili. Once there, the migrants were taken into tents for processing and then loaded onto buses  to where, Turkish officials would not say.

An additional 66 migrants were deported from the island of Chios, where riots broke out last week among asylum seekers fearing deportation. In all, Greek officials said those deported were mostly Pakistanis and Afghans, though they also included two Syrians, who had not asked for asylum, the officials said.
WASHINGTON  A foreign fighter surge team of experts from the F.B.I., the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security met with their Belgian counterparts a month before the Brussels terrorist attacks to try to correct gaps in Belgiums widely criticized ability to track terrorist plots, American officials said.

The half-dozen experts focused on long-term structural fixes to the Belgians failure to share intelligence effectively and to tighten porous borders, but not on providing information about suspected Islamic State operatives. The recommendations, even if accepted, would not have prevented the attacks at the Brussels Airport and in the citys subway last month, the officials said.

But the gaps addressed in two days of meetings, held at Belgiums request at the United States Embassy in Brussels, underscore the urgency and the frustration senior American officials say they feel as they prod many European allies to embrace the kind of counterterrorism lessons the United States learned after the Sept. 11 attacks. The American experts have also visited Greece and are expected to travel to France and Germany in the coming weeks, Obama administration officials said.

The team was part of a little-noticed White House plan announced after the Paris terrorist attacks in November to help Western European allies shore up their defenses and borders to avert the next big attack that European and American terrorism officials feared was inevitable.
RAMAT GAN, Israel  The bearded man placed three overstuffed shopping bags on a table at the entrance of a military base here, his expression turning to embarrassment as he emptied them, as if dropping off dirty laundry.

Out came parts of old khaki uniforms, a helmet, a winter hat with earflaps, an army-issue snowsuit, a clear plastic bag bulging with machine gun clips, and a metal box packed with neat rows of ammunition. The man hurried off without identifying himself.

He was one of many Israelis taking advantage of a four-week amnesty offered by the Israel Defense Forces, which is appealing to former soldiers harboring equipment at home to return it, with no questions asked and no risk of prosecution. Return centers have been set up at more than 100 police stations and military bases, like this one in a Tel Aviv suburb.

Its not safe to keep this stuff at home, said Col. Yosi Ilu, the head of the militarys logistics department. Say Mrs. Cohen has a grenade in her house that her husband brought back by mistake from reserve duty. She can bring it back, no questions asked. It should be in the hands of the army or the police. Its a violation for civilians to hold onto it, and its dangerous.
PALMYRA, Syria  As my Hezbollah escort and I entered the modern city around Palmyra, we were greeted by the mangled body of an Islamic State fighter left to rot in the sun. He looked as if dogs might have gotten to him after Syrian government forces, backed by loyal militiamen, routed him and his comrades from the ancient city after almost a year of Islamic State control.

In that time, the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, destroyed some of the remains of a civilization that 2,000 years ago was a mix of Roman, Persian and local cultures.

Where Palmyras impressive Temple of Bel once stood, only a single stone archway was left to frame a rectangle of blue sky above the arid desert about 160 miles northeast of Damascus, the capital.
Many Cubans are shocked. They arrive and say: What? I need a reservation from a day before? Thats ridiculous! said Amy Torralbas, 31, the owner of Otramanera, a gated ultramodern restaurant that serves a blend of Cuban and Mediterranean cooking.

At first glance, the problem wouldnt seem to be a shortage of places to eat. Antonio Diaz, a University of Havana economics professor, estimated that several hundred viable restaurants have sprouted since 2011, when the government loosened crippling restrictions on privately owned restaurants, or paladares. With that has come a much wider variety of cuisines, from Spanish-style seafood to Japanese sushi, reflecting the desires of a public with an increasingly cosmopolitan palate.

But demand is also growing exponentially, thanks to a flood of international tourists  3.52 million in 2015, among them 161,000 from the United States, or nearly double the number of Americans in 2014, according to Reuters. And though restaurateurs have freer rein than at any time since the 1950s, they still have to grapple with the byzantine, sometimes nonsensical rules that come with owning a private enterprise in a communist country. By law, for example, restaurants are limited to 50 seats or fewer.

The islands economy runs on dual currencies: the Cuban convertible peso, or CUC, meant primarily for tourists, and the local peso, or CUP, which Cubans use for most day-to-day transactions. Restaurants must run on a mix of both, accepting payment mostly in CUCs but using CUPs for supplies and wages.
On Monday, Anthony Vaccarello was announced as the new creative director of Yves Saint Laurent, assuming the design position vacated by Hedi Slimane. For those in the fashion industry, where rumors of Mr. Vaccarellos appointment have been front-row chatter for months, the news was no surprise; to those outside the industry slipstream, a little more explanation may be helpful.

The designers who have stewarded Yves Saint Laurent since its founder and namesake stepped down from couture in 2002 (and ready-to-wear before that) are now well known: Besides Mr. Slimane, they include Tom Ford, Alber Elbaz (late of Lanvin) and Stefano Pilati. Here is a primer on Mr. Vaccarello in advance of his first collection in October.

Where did he come from?

Mr. Vaccarello, 36, was born in Brussels to Italian parents. He studied at La Cambre, the Brussels design school also attended by Cedric Charlier and the Paco Rabanne creative director Julien Dossena.
AMELIA ISLAND, Fla.  On a steamy March day, Jerry Seinfeld stood before a group of men, most of them in polo shirts and loafers, in a muggy tent here at the Omni Amelia Plantation Resort.

Thank you, insane car people, he said to a round of applause.

He was here because the Jerry Seinfeld Collection, a fleet of 18 cars  16 Porsches and two Volkswagens  was to be sold that day by the auction house Gooding & Company at its annual Amelia Island auction.

Let me be honest with you, Mr. Seinfeld said. I could have gotten rid of every one of these in one day with no problem. But I wanted to be here with you all, who see these things the way I do and enjoy it the way I do. I want to see your face and feel your enthusiasm.
Her marriage often made matters worse; in many ways, Louisa is a portrait of that marriage. She and John Quincy had deep emotional bonds, but they clashed as often as they bonded. Both were strong-willed, stubborn and fiercely intelligent, but in the mans world that was the early 19th century, when it came to battling, he usually won. He determined the whens and wheres of their life, much to her frustration, which became something darker during trips when he insisted that they leave their children behind. Indeed, children were both the joy and the heartbreak of Adamss life. She suffered multiple miscarriages, often due, apparently, to the challenges of 19th-century travel, and outlived a daughter and two sons.

Image The portrait of Louisa Adams that hangs in the White House. Credit... Painting by Gilbert Stuart, via Corbis

Some battles required her special talents. She was indispensable in advancing John Quincys bid for the presidency in 1824. Without her social skills  her strategizing, her ability to win people over, her success as a hostess of glittering parties  her awkward husband would never have attained his goal. It was for good reason that Louisa referred to her presidential toiling as my campaigne  and for equally good reason that she bitterly complained of being continually told that I cannot by the Constitution have any share in the public honors of my husband. Louisa makes her political contributions clear, hinting at both the power and the frustrations inherent in the blurred boundaries between the public and the private, the personal and the political.

Some women may have been content with such accomplishments, but Louisa wanted more. She relished challenges, as her dash across war-ravaged Europe in the winter of 1815 makes clear. Left behind in Russia when John Quincy went off to negotiate the Treaty of Ghent, Louisa decided, at his invitation, to join him in Paris. Accompanied by a few servants and her 7-year- old son, Charles, she rumbled across battlefields, a witness to the graphic delineations of wars unhallowed march  that speak in thrilling language to the heart, where the tongues of men are silent. Drunken soldiers and lascivious tavern keepers, lost trails and thin ice: Louisa battled them all. Her later account of her trip  Narrative of a Journey From Russia to France  shows her pride in her accomplishment.

But her need for a sense of purpose went beyond such escapades. She struggled not only with her role in life but also with its broader meaning, yearning to be a person who was. Perhaps this need fueled her autobiographical impulses, particularly her second memoir of sorts, Adventures of a Nobody. It may also have deepened her continuing interest in womens rights. I cannot believe that there is any inferiority in the sexes, as far as mind and intellect are concerned, she wrote to her son late in life. Although as a political wife Louisa was cautious, she was true to her convictions, as her writings attest. During the fight over a congressional gag rule in 1841, she wrote a short statement on the right of women to petition Congress. And after reading the abolitionist Sarah Grimkes article On the Province of Women, she began a correspondence with Grimke.
Last semester, a student in the masculinity course I teach showed a video clip she had found online of a toddler getting what appeared to be his first vaccinations. Off camera, we hear his fathers voice. Ill hold your hand, O.K.? Then, as his son becomes increasingly agitated: Dont cry! Aw, big boy! High five, high five! Say youre a man: Im a man!  The video ends with the whimpering toddler screwing up his face in anger and pounding his chest. Im a man! he barks through tears and gritted teeth.

The home video was right on point, illustrating the takeaway for the course: how boys are taught, sometimes with the best of intentions, to mutate their emotional suffering into anger. More immediately, it captured, in profound concision, the earliest stirrings of a male identity at war with itself.

This is no small thing. As students discover in this course, an Honors College seminar called Real Men Smile: The Changing Face of Masculinity, what boys seem to need is the very thing they fear. Yet when they are immunized against this deeper emotional honesty, the results have far-reaching, often devastating consequences.

Despite the emergence of the metrosexual and an increase in stay-at-home dads, tough-guy stereotypes die hard. As men continue to fall behind women in college, while outpacing them four to one in the suicide rate, some colleges are waking up to the fact that men may need to be taught to think beyond their own stereotypes.
Today President Andy Hamilton named Katherine Fleming, a historian who is currently NYUs Deputy Provost and Vice Chancellor (Europe), as New York Universitys new Provost, effective September 1, 2016.

The appointment follows an extensive search process to name a successor to mathematician David McLaughlin, who has been Provost since 2002.

I am thrilled to announce that after an international search that included extraordinary candidates, our own Katy Fleming will be the next Provost of NYU, said President Hamilton. I have said many times that no university has come further in such a short period than NYU. Katy has been integral to the Universitys rise and I know she will be unrelenting in our quest to build one of the greatest research and teaching institutions in the world. Katys knowledge of the University, as well as a clear perspective on both our opportunities and our challenges, make her uniquely qualified to work with the faculty to maintain NYUs remarkable trajectory. I am delighted to have her as a partner in this endeavor.

I'm honored to have been asked to work with President Hamilton, the deans, and the faculty in this role, said Fleming. Im especially looking forward to collaborating with my colleagues across the university to advance our academic mission. This is an exciting but also challenging time to be at NYU. My hope is to help address the challenges and identify opportunities for growth."

Katherine (Katy) Fleming currently serves as NYUs Deputy Provost (since 2013, and as Vice Chancellor (Europe) since 2007). In this role, she worked closely with the deans, directors, and schools on academic planning, and also provided oversight of the Provosts Global Research Initiatives Program, which she created in 2011 and which supports faculty and graduate research at NYUs global sites.

A historian, she is also the director of the Remarque Institute and is the Alexander S. Onassis Professor of Hellenic Culture and Civilization in the Faculty of Arts and Science.

Beyond NYU, Fleming is an associate member of the History Department of the Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris, and is the President of the Board of the University of Piraeus, Greece. A specialist on modern Greece, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean, Fleming is most recently author of Greece: A Jewish History (Princeton, 2008), which won several prizes, among them the National Jewish Book Award and the Runciman Award.

She holds a doctorate in History from the University of California, Berkeley and an M.A. (Chicago) and B.A. (Barnard/Columbia) in Comparative Religion.

Richard Foley - professor of philosophy, former dean of NYUs Faculty of Arts and Science and Vice Chancellor for Strategic Planning, and chair of the Provost Search Committee - noted that the selection of Katy Fleming was the culmination of a rigorous, wide-reaching process.

The search committee was encouraged by President Hamilton to cast a wide net, and it did so, he said. In all, more than 450 potential candidates were considered. The committee interviewed the most promising and after much deliberation presented to Andy Hamilton the best of the best. The search firm, Isaacson Miller, reported that it was one of the most impressive list of finalists it had seen. Out of this long, arduous but rewarding process comes Katy Fleming, NYUs new provost. I couldnt be more pleased with the process or the choice.

The committee - composed of faculty from across the university, as well as one student and one administrator - reviewed candidates from across the country and the globe.

It was one of the premier provost searches of the past year, said John Muckle, Principal, Isaacson Miller. The trajectory of NYU and its academic success combined with the excitement around joining Andy Hamiltons new administrative team made this an extremely attractive position and a very competitive process. The diversity of the pool across every dimension was stunning and a credit to the University, the president, and the search committee who worked tirelessly to identify and recruit outstanding candidates from the best universities in the world.

Id like to thank Dick Foley and Ellen Schall, Senior Presidential Fellow, for their hard work in chairing and staffing the committee respectively, said Hamilton. Each committee member also deserves a special thanks for their hard work in ensuring that we had the most qualified candidates and the most meaningful process.

David McLaughlin steps down after nearly 14 years of service as NYUs provost. Among the many accomplishments that occurred under his leadership are the additions of the Colleges of Nursing and Global Public Health; the merger that led to establishment of NYUs Tandon School of Engineering; the additions of two global campuses (Abu Dhabi and Shanghai); adding several university-wide initiatives (the Institute for Public Knowledge, the Marron Institute for Urban Management, the Center for Urban Science and Progress, the Center for Data Science, and Technology-Enhanced Education); the Partners Initiative, which significantly increased tenured and tenure-track faculty in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences; and fostering faculty development and entrepreneurship activities across the campus.

About New York University

Founded in 1831, NYU is one of the worlds foremost research universities and is a member of the selective Association of American Universities. NYU has degree-granting university campuses in New York, Abu Dhabi, and Shanghai; has eleven other global academic sites, including London, Paris, Florence, Tel Aviv, Buenos Aires, and Accra; and both sends more students to study abroad and educates more international students than any other U.S. college or university. Through its numerous schools and colleges, NYU is a leader in conducting research and providing education in the arts and sciences, law, medicine, business, dentistry, education, nursing, the cinematic and performing arts, music and studio arts, public administration, social work, and professional studies, among other areas.




As Gothic Revival and Carpenter Gothic architecture styles start to become few and far between in the state, the Gingerbread House and the Penn Yonge House at Spring Villa in Opelika remain preserved and a part of the citys history.

Gothic Revival architecture, which lasted from 1850 to 1875, was a common style for Alabama churches, schools and some private houses during the mid 19th century.

According to a document from Robert Gamble, senior architectural historian for the Alabama Historical Commission, a Gothic Revival-style building can be identified by such things as vertical proportions, pointed arches, clustered chimneys, steep rooflines and latticed porches.

Carpenter Gothic architecture, which lasted from 1840 to 1870, was a form of Gothic Revival that carried some similarities to the style, but with differentiating features, such as gingerbread ornamentation.

According to Old House Web, some of the identifying features of the Carpenter Gothic style include steeply pitched roofs and gables, fancy scroll work, barge boards, carved porch railings and strong vertical design elements, such as board and batten siding.

The Gingerbread House, at 405 South Ninth Street, was built in 1865 for John C. Edwards and his wife Sara Jane Griffin Edwards, who were among the first settlers in Opelika.

According to a document from the Library of Congress, the house is made up of weatherboard construction, with stone and asher foundation piers and a steep gable tin roof. The porch is supported by lattice braces. The curvilinear gingerbread trim is repeated on the roof eaves, gabled ends and on the second story balconies. Inside the house is a closet spiral staircase leading to the second floor.

The house was purchased in January 2007 by John and Margaret Hendricks, who own and operate Old Timers and Chimers Clock Shop and Museum.

Before the Hendricks bought the house, it was in very poor condition and vacant for 25 years, according to their shops website. The restoration was completed in 2009 with no changes to the exterior.

The house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Geneva Street Historic District. It is also recognized by the National Park Service as an American Historical Building.

The Penn Yonge house at Spring Villa Park was built in 1850 by Horace King, a slave of Yonges, who is also famous for building covered bridges and some work on the State Capitol in Montgomery.

Yonges interest in Gothic Revival architecture and Andrew Jackson Downing influenced the style of the house.

The house has been a part of the park since 1927 when it became the property of the city of Opelika.

In 1978, the house was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Renovations have been made to the house over the years, but the character of the house has not changed.

Opelika Mayor Gary Fuller expressed what it means to be able to continue to showcase the architecture styles of these houses.

Theyre both important and many people visit each year, Fuller said. Were proud of our history and want to preserve our heritage.

Opelika Chamber of Commerce President Barbara Patton extended her gratitude to the city and other entities that all played a part in helping preserve these two structures.

The Opelika Historic Preservation Society is to be commended for their efforts in preserving the Gingerbread House, Patton said. The structure was stabilized by the OHPS through the efforts of Peter Weiss and students at Auburn University. The City of Opelika and its Opelika Recreation Department have continued the efforts to preserve the Spring Villa house and its wonderful history.

Patton said the structures are tourist attractions for the city and a source of pride for the residents.

These two structures could have so easily been destroyed and lost as have so many historic places and landmarks, not only in this community but throughout the state, Patton said. I hope more efforts will be directed toward its preservation so that Opelika will have this unique remaining asset with its fascinating background and stories for future generations.
OPELIKA, AL  Southern Union State Community College will host its annual Caree and Job Fair. This event will be held on April 12, from 10:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m. in the Business and Technology Center on the Opelika Campus.

The 2016 Career and Job Fair will service all 4,500 students from all three campuses, along with the Southern Union State Community College alumni.

The 2015 Career and Job Fair, organized by Academic Advisor Brandon Morgan, had over 40 businesses participants, and over 400 students and alumni attend the event.

According to Morgan, the purpose of this event is to provide services to the Southern Union students who need supplemental income by obtaining a part-time job, those who need resume-building internships and those who are looking for full-time employment after graduation.

Southern Union State Community College invites local businesses to participate in the 2016 Career and Job Fair. Businesses with full-time, part-time, internships and co-op opportunities are welcome to participate in this event. Tables and private interview areas will be available, and lunch will be provided to the vendors. There is no cost for a business to participate.

To RSVP for Southern Union State Community Colleges 2016 Career and Job Fair or for more information about this event, please contact Brandon Morgan at bmorgan@suscc.edu or (334)-745-6437 ext. 5494.
Lee County Sheriff's Office

 Third-degree domestic violence/assault was reported Sunday morning in Smiths Station.

 Unlawful breaking and entering a vehicle, second-degree theft of property and third-degree criminal trespass were reported Saturday at 5:57 p.m. in the 1400 block of Lee Road 374 in Valley.

 Third-degree domestic violence (assault) and third-degree domestic violence (criminal mischief) were reported Saturday evening in Opelika.

 First-degree theft of property was reported Friday at 9:39 p.m. in the 1 block of Lee Road 983 in Smiths Station.

 Third-degree domestic violence (assault) and third-degree domestic violence harassment were reported Friday evening in Opelika.

 Third-degree burglary, fourth-degree theft of property and third-degree criminal mischief were reported Friday at 3:26 p.m. in the 4200 block of Lee Road 11 in Opelika.

 Third-degree burglary and first-degree theft of property were reported Friday at 4:52 a.m. in the 500 block of Lee Road 272 in Cusseta.

Auburn Police Division

 David Michael Blake, 20, of Mobile, was arrested Sunday and was charged with driving under the influence of alcohol.

 Discharging firearm in city was reported Sunday at 8:35 p.m. in the 200 block of South Gay Street.

 Third-degree burglary and theft-from residence were reported Sunday at 2:24 p.m. in the 600 block of Dekalb Street.

 Fraudulent use of a credit/debit card was reported Sunday at 12:24 p.m. in the 1200 block of South College Street.

 Louis John Ferris III, 19, of Tuscaloosa, was arrested Saturday and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol.

 Gunnar Hank Lantrip, 20, of Birmingham, was arrested Saturday and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol.

 Christopher Edward Luce, 26, of Auburn, was arrested Saturday and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol.

 Third-degree domestic violence, resisting arrest and harassment were reported Saturday evening.

 Three counts of third-degree domestic violence were reported Saturday afternoon.

 Third-degree burglary and theft-from residence were reported Saturday at 10:05 a.m. in the 600 block of Dekalb Street.

 Two counts of third-degree domestic violence were reported Friday evening.

 Third-degree burglary was reported Friday at 5:40 p.m. in the 1900 block of Woodview Court.

 First-degree theft of property was reported Friday at 2:59 p.m. in the 400 block of Webster Road.

 Unlawful breaking and entering a vehicle was reported Friday at 11:34 a.m. in the 1400 block of North Donahue Drive.

 Unlawful breaking and entering a vehicle was reported Friday at 7:14 a.m. in the 200 block of Lee Road 17.

 Third-degree burglary and first-degree theft of property were reported Friday at 6 a.m. in the 400 block of Martin Avenue.

 Unlawful breaking and entering a vehicle was reported Friday at 5:05 a.m. in the 100 block of Lee Road 17.

Opelika Police Department

 An unlawful breaking and entering a vehicle and theft occurred between 7 p.m. on March 31 and 5 p.m. on Saturday in the 700 block of Waverly Parkway.

 Two burglary and theft incidents occurred Saturday at approximately 11 a.m. in the 500 block of Hildreth Avenue. Opelika police responded and chased three juveniles from one of the residences. Two of the juveniles were subsequently caught and determined to be responsible for the burglaries and thefts. Juvenile charges are pending. Their names and ages will not be released.

 Stephanie Nicole Grevey, 22, of Auburn, was arrested Saturday and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol. Grevey was booked into the Lee County Jail.

 Opelika Police responded to calls of shots being fired Friday at 10:30 p.m. in the area of the 300 block of 16th Street. Upon arrival it was determined that a 21 year old male victim had been shot during an argument and was being taken to the hospital by private car. The car he was traveling in had also been shot into. Officers located the male at the emergency room of East Alabama Medical Center where he was suffering from non-life threatening gunshot wounds. The male was treated and released. The male knew the suspects, and charges are pending.

 A fraudulent use of a credit/debit card and theft occurred Friday between 8 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. at 2640 Enterprise Drive, Target.

 A first-degree theft of property occurred Friday between 2 a.m. and 9:15 a.m. at 2100 Gateway Drive, Studio 6.

 An unlawful breaking and entering a vehicle and theft occurred between 7 p.m. on March 31 and 6:30 a.m. Friday at 1651 Parker Way, Microtel.

 Kenneth Ronald Carter, Jr., 34, of Opelika, was arrested Friday and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol. Carter was booked into the Lee County Jail.

 Gena Elizabeth Shands, 45, of Opelika, was arrested Friday and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol. Shands was booked into the Lee County Jail.

 Ashley Michele Redding, 24, of Notasulga, was arrested Friday and charged with driving under the influence of a controlled substance. Redding was booked into the Lee County Jail.

 A third-degree theft of property occurred March 31 between 5:30 p.m. and 6 p.m. at 2500 Pepperell Parkway, Planet Fitness.

 A burglary and theft occurred March 31 between 1:30 p.m. and 2:35 p.m. in the 3500 block of Dale Avenue.

 An identity theft and property theft occurred March 23 between noon and 11 p.m. in the 1900 block of Northgate Drive.

Chambers County Sheriffs Office

 Ricky A. Ellis, 56, of Maiden N.C., was arrested between Friday and Monday and was charged with driving under the influence of alcohol.

 Samual Joseph Lewis, 39, of Five Points, was arrested between Friday and Monday and was charged as a fugitive from justice.

 Kemarcus Deshawn Banks, 21, of Opelika, was arrested between Friday and Monday and was charged with failure to appear-no insurance.

 Lamichael Cajuan Hutchinson, 34, of Valley, was arrested between Friday and Monday and was charged with failure to pay-driving suspended.

 Deana Lee Birchfield, 40, of Forsith Mo.., was arrested between Friday and Monday and was charged with failure to appear-first-degree illegal possession of marijuana and failure to appear-possession of a controlled substance.

 Shantoria Samiel Richardson, 27, of Lanett, was arrested between Friday and Monday and was charged with second-degree theft of property (grand jury indictment).

 William Edward Daniel, 37, of Lanett, was arrested between Friday and Monday and was charged with failure to appear-child support.

Lanett Police Department

 Fourth-degree theft of property was reported between Friday and Monday in the 600 block of North 13th Avenue.

 Third-degree domestic violence was reported between Friday and Monday.

 Unlawful breaking and entering a vehicle and third-degree theft of property were reported between Friday and Monday in the 300 block of South Sixth Avenue.

 Fourth-degree theft of property was reported between Friday and Monday in the 1200 block of North 13th Street.

 Third-degree domestic violence was reported between Friday and Monday.

 Possession of a forged instrument was reported between Friday and Monday in the 100 block of North Gilmer Avenue.

 Fourth-degree theft of property was reported between Friday and Monday in the 2500 block of 47th Avenue Southwest.

 Casey Lamar Roberts, 24 of Lanett was arrested between Friday and Monday and was charged with third-degree domestic violence.

 Benjamin Strickland Jr., 50 of Lanett, was arrested between Friday and Monday and was charged as a fugitive from justice.

Tallapoosa County Sheriffs Department

 Crystal McAlister of Thompson Ridge Road in Alexander City, was arrested Sunday for a probation violation warrant.

 A resident of Highway 50 in Camp Hill, filed a report Sunday for a private property accident.

 Antoine Stokes of Winfield Place in Montgomery, was arrested Sunday and was charged with driving under the influence of alcohol.

 David Bell Jr. of North Turkey Trot in Dadeville, was arrested Saturday and was charged with domestic violence assault.

 Wesley Cosby of Lester Road in Dadeville, was arrested Saturday for two failure to appear warrants.
SACRAMENTO  A physician whose father left the California Legislature six years ago is competing with a Fresno city councilman for a vacant seat in the state Assembly thats critical to Democrats goal for a two-thirds majority.

Democrat Joaquin Arambula, an emergency room doctor, and Republican Clint Olivier, a former reporter and Marine Corps Reserve radioman, are sparring to fill the remaining eight months of former Democratic Assemblyman Henry Pereas term.

Perea endorsed Arambula to succeed him before he left office in December to take a job in the pharmaceutical industry. In the Legislature, Perea led a group of business-friendly Democrats who blocked a provision in 2015 climate change legislation that called for cutting petroleum use by half within 15 years.

A deep-pocketed coalition of special interest groups that backs moderate Democrats has spent more than $140,000 this year supporting Arambula and opposing Olivier.

I tend to find people want to be binary, they want to be able to place you in a box and define you and your positions, but Ill push back a little, Arambula said. The business community, they see (me as) someone who understands the value of a dollar, who understands unintended consequences.

Nearly 50 percent of the districts 170,000 voters are registered Democrats and 28 percent of voters identify as Republicans. The voters have supported Democratic candidates for the state and nations highest offices since 2008, but Republicans hold two of the three congressional districts overlapping the Assembly district.

The people who live here appreciate the contributions of common-sense, Republican elected officials, Olivier, 40, said. Thats what I am.

Arambulas campaign and outside groups supporting him have raised more than $1.5 million this year. As of the March 19 campaign filing deadline, Arambula had about $116,000 in his special election account.

Oliviers supporters have raised about $470,000. He had $73,000 on hand for the special election on March 19.

Democrats currently hold 51 of the 80 Assembly seats; 54 votes are needed for the ability to raise taxes.
Bow-wow-wow-yippie-yo-yippie-yeah

Bow-wow-yippie-yo-yippie-yeah

A DJ spun George Clintons funk classic Atomic Dog as Bruno took center stage at Anaheims La Palma Dog Park on Sunday afternoon.

Cameras flashed, TV news crews rigged their video cameras, dogs and owners clamored to get a glimpse of the 9-year-old German shepherd.

They were there to honor the dog who has become a local celebrity after surviving a gunshot through the jaw in March 2014. On Sunday, the city unveiled a $25,000 bronze statue, inspired by Bruno and made to honor all police dogs past and present.

The statue was created by Northern California artist Susan Bahary. Shes also creating another statue, this one for the citys upcoming Olive Hills dog park.

Its mind-blowing, said Cheryl Timmons, president of the Friends of Anaheim Police Canine Association. When I first saw it, I was like, Oh my gosh, its absolutely incredible. She got the police badge, the look in the eye.

The Anaheim Police Department has had 23 police dogs since 1981 and had a record of no major incidents until Brunos two years ago, Timmons said. The shepherd has since retired.

That day in March, Bruno was sent out with handler RJ Young to respond to a call of a suspect firing on probation officers who had gone to do a check. Bruno helped locate the suspect, who was hiding in a trash can.

When the K-9 lifted the lid of the can with his nose, the suspect shot the dog in the jaw.

The bullet shattered Brunos jaw and pierced his lung, lodging near his heart. He had several jaw surgeries and a lung was removed.

The bullet, a symbol of his sacrifice, remains in his chest.

On Sunday, Bruno appeared as healthy as ever, even though hes nearing 70 in human years.

About 200 people showed up  with their own pups  to show their support for the departments K-9s.

I support him all the way, said Carol Rhodes-Rice, who has lived in Anaheim nearly 60 years. She was wearing a Bruno T-shirt and had her German shepherd Skyy in tow.

Theyre the most valuable asset we have, she said. Theyre fearless, completely devoted.  God help anyone who hurts their human.

Tara Harden of Upland took the day off from working at the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department to watch the unveiling. She had her maltipoos Bay Nicole and Sky Michelle groomed and dressed in Batgirl and Wonderwoman outfits, respectively.

Im an animal lover anyway, but when I heard he was shot  it was kind of close to home, she said, noting that shes friends with K-9 handlers. I love what they do.

When Bruno was brought out near the life-size bronze statue, the six other police dogs present started barking  apparently not prompted.

Its as if they were clapping, said CJ Eastman, a Fullerton resident.

Bruno spends his retirement at Youngs home, where he chases the handlers kids around. Young said the dog has long, lazy days with lots of naps.

Its a good life, he said.

Fundraising is going on to pay the artist. About $7,000 is needed. Donations can be made at kashfork9s.com.

Contact the writer: jclay@ocregister.com or 714-796-6910
SANTA ANA  A defense attorney acknowledged that a Lake Hughes woman was drunk, speeding and distracted by her cell phone when she crashed into a mother and her two girls crossing at a Santa Ana intersection, but he denied that his client intentionally fled.

Trial began Monday for Jessicah Louise Cowan, 37, who is facing felony counts of murder, vehicular manslaughter, hit-and-run and DUI for the June 2012 collision that left 5-year-old Osmara Meza dead and her 6-year-old sister Grecia and mother Eloisa seriously injured.

Both prosecutors and Cowans attorney agree that she was speeding at nearly twice the 40 mph speed limit and had three times the legal blood-alcohol level for driving when she ran a red light and struck the woman and her children as they crossed 17th Street at Spurgeon Street.

They had been walking from their home to get pancakes for breakfast.

Cowan was driving from the Burbank airport to Temecula, and had stopped at two liquor stores on the way, Deputy District Attorney Mark Birney said, buying at least two small bottles of vodka.

A driver who witnessed the collision chased after Cowan, blocking her vehicle two blocks away until officers arrived, police said. Birney said Cowan continually denied to officers that she was drunk or speeding and claimed the light was yellow.

She knows what she has done, Birney said. She took a risk. She gambled and that little girl lost.

Attorney Dennis OConnell, who represent Cowan, told the jury that his client is guilty of manslaughter. However, the attorney denied that Cowan knowingly committed an act dangerous to human life, a requirement for a murder conviction.

She is, sadly, doing what thousands of Americans do every day. She is driving under the influence of alcohol, OConnell said. The last thing on her mind is that she is going to kill someone on that day. What she is thinking is that she is going to make it home.

Also, OConnell denied that Cowan tried to flee from the crash, telling the jury that she was confused and disoriented.

She did not even know there had been an accident, OConnell said. That is how under the influence she is.

A dozen of the 5-year-olds family members watched the opening statements quietly, some dabbing their eyes with tissues.

Eloisa Magana, Osmara Mezas mother, testified that while she didnt recall the accident itself, she did remember waking up in a hospital after days in a coma, undergoing surgeries and learning to walk again.

She remains in pain.

Everything hurts me, she said.

If convicted of all counts, Cowan faces up to 15 years to life in prison.

Contact the writer: semery@ocregister.com
Tom Staggs, the man thought to be CEO Bob Igers eventual successor at the Walt Disney Co., is stepping down, effective in May, the company said Monday.

Staggs, Disneys chief operating officer, will remain with the company as a special adviser, Disney said in a statement. The company did not say who will take over for Staggs.

Hes made important contributions to this company, earning wide respect across the organization for his achievements and personal integrity, Iger said in the statement. Im proud of what weve accomplished together, immensely grateful for the privilege of working with him, and confident that he will be enormously successful in whatever opportunity he chooses.

Staggs, 55, is resigning after 14 months as COO and just months before the June unveiling of Shanghai Disneyland, a project he helped lead.

Insiders had pegged Staggs as the eventual successor to Iger, with the latter planning to retire in 2018, after competing with former Chief Financial Officer Jay Rasulo for the position. Rasulo resigned from Disney last year.

The New York Times reported Staggs is perhaps stepping down because Disneys board of directors may not have been convinced he had the skills required to maintain Disneys creative momentum.

With Igers retirement ahead, Disney said, the board will broaden the scope of its succession planning process to identify and evaluate a robust slate of candidates for consideration.

Staggs contributions include Cars Land and other additions at Disney California Adventure.

Contact the writer: 714-796-2443 or jpimentel@ocregister.com or follow on Twitter @OCDisney
Consider your familys daily schedule. How often is everyone in one place at the same time?

Most likely during the average day, the children are at school or day care and mom and dad are at work, at home or running errands.

When a natural disaster or violent event hits, that separation can make reaching loved ones feel like the earth has split in two.

During or after a crisis, parents often rush to their kids schools to retrieve them. The 911 emergency phone lines might be tied up, and cellphone calls might not go through. Things can get chaotic.

Having a family emergency and communication plan in place helps families cope with a disaster or an act of violence or terrorism, law enforcement officials say.

The horror of the shootings in San Bernardino and at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut has created a new reality for most parents. The unthinkable may happen, and preparation is a powerful way to help squelch those fears.

Create a communication plan and discuss it with your kids several times throughout the year, said Sgt. Jared Dahl, who oversees the Juvenile Services Bureau of the Orange County Sheriffs Department.

Despite the busy schedules many parents face, consistently updating contact information is essential to any emergency plan, Dahl said.

ReadyOC, Orange Countys primary emergency-preparedness resource, offers families and schools emergency plans and templates, kits and other resources to prepare for earthquakes, floods, landslides, disease outbreaks, power outages, weather emergencies, wildfires and terrorism.

Similarly, the Federal Emergency Management Agency offers family communication plan templates that parents and kids can fill out online and in print.

California schools must annually update their locally developed comprehensive safe school plans, which include responses to an emergency and steps to keep staff and students safe. Parents should learn about their schools disaster-response plans, authorities said.

If a disaster or act of violence occurs, do not panic, said Dahl. As parents, we all want to know if our kids are safe and get them out of harms way. However, parents need to have faith that the schools, if it is a school event, and law enforcement understand the utmost importance is child safety.

Dahl added that parents sometimes become a bigger distraction than the event when disorder ensues. I understand the need parents feel to get to a location, but plan on being very patient with staff and law enforcement.

Annie Brown, spokeswoman for the Irvine Unified School District, said her district uses a phone call system and can also send an email, a recorded voice message or a text, or all of them, to keep parents informed.

Parents are encouraged to go to our social media sites, Facebook and Twitter, for real-time updates, Brown said. We encourage people to get on social media, because in times of major disasters those things wont go down, generally, and they usually arent hampered by overload.

Annette Franco, spokeswoman for the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, said her districts schools hold regular drills for fires, earthquakes and other disasters, as well as lock-down drills that include tips on when to shelter in place or run-hide-act.

The district also conducts threat assessments, and staff members have emergency response training.

TIPS FOR PARENTS

 Include your kids in the emergency-planning process. Shop for your emergency-supply kit with them and make sure they know where the kits are stored.

 Learn about emergency and evacuation plans for schools, day care providers, workplaces and apartment buildings.

 Make sure your kids school emergency contact cards are updated.

 Emergency kits should include food, water, a radio, flashlights, batteries, a first-aid kit, dust masks, duct tape, a wrench or pliers, local maps and more. Go to ready.gov/kit.

 Have a list of your childs teachers and the times your child will be in specific classes. Take a picture of the class schedule with your cellphone. It should include a phone number for the school. Know the entrances, exits and side streets for auxiliary parking. In an emergency, you may not be able to access the area because of emergency vehicles and the media.

 Make sure all family members know how to text and have your child text you his or her location when its safe. Texts often get through when network disruptions prevent calls.

 Have a safe place for your child to go to that is close to the school or near home. If you work out of the area, designate another parent, friend or relative to pick up your child.

 Have your childs cellphone set up with a GPS locating service that is accessed by the parent. Many phones have this feature through the phone itself or the carrier.
Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law Monday a hefty, if gradual, expansion of Californias minimum wage to $15 an hour, a boost that will affect an estimated 605,000 Orange County workers over the next seven years.

A one-time Jesuit seminarian, Brown, who had initially opposed a $15 minimum on fiscal grounds, embraced it with fervor at a Los Angeles signing ceremony, where he cited the Bible and couched the wage hike as a religious and moral imperative.

Economically, minimum wages may not make sense, he said. But morally and socially and politically, they make every sense because they bind the community together and make sure that parents can take care of their kids in a much more satisfactory way.

The new law raises the current $10 an hour pay floor to $10.50 in January 2017 for employers with more than 25 workers. Smaller businesses will have until January 2018.

The wage will rise by another 50 cents the following year. It will jump by $1 annually after that, until reaches $15 in 2022 for large- and medium-sized businesses, and in 2023 for small businesses.

Some 5.6 million Californians, about a third of the states workforce, will eventually get a raise under the new law, according to a UC Berkeley study. Of those, 96 percent are adults and 37 percent have children.

The enactment of Californias law came just hours after New York Gov. Mario Cuomo signed similar legislation, lifting the hourly pay floor in New York City to $15 over three years, and to $12.50 over five years in upstate regions.

Nearly one of every five Americans live in California or New York, and the new laws are expected to fuel the movement for higher wages across the country. Over the past three years, a campaign to boost pay, bankrolled by the 1.9 million-member Service Employees International Union, has spread to 150 cities. Wage hikes have been enacted or are under consideration in 14 states.

Oregon enacted a multitiered wage hike to $14.75 by 2022 in the Portland area, and to lesser amounts in midsize counties and rural areas. New Jersey legislators are poised to approve a $15 wage floor, and if Gov. Chris Christie vetoes it, activists are prepared to launch a ballot initiative.

Income inequality has become a major issue in the presidential campaign, with Bernie Sanders advocating a boost in the federal minimum wage to $15 from $7.25, and Hillary Clinton favoring a $12 wage floor. GOP candidates are opposed to a raise.

On Monday, Brown said the California law is about creating a little, tiny balance in a system that every day becomes more unbalanced. He added, Theres a lot of anger going on in the presidential campaign. One of the sources certainly is the way the average American is being treated by this particular economy.

Californias law allows a governor to pause the wage hikes in the event of an economic downturn. Nonetheless, opposition to the rise has been fierce, particularly from restaurants and retailers, the two most affected industries.

Tom Scott, executive director of the California chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business, with 22,000 members in the state, predicted that the $15 minimum will have devastating impacts on small businesses and potentially put them at risk of closing their doors permanently.

However, some local businesses welcome the raise. Kelly Vlahakis-Hanks, chief executive of Cypress-based Earth Friendly Products, said she raised her companys wage floor to $17 an hour in 2014. Her 350-employee cleaning products manufacturer has not had to raise prices as a result.

Our employees are more productive, their families are healthier and happier, and the living wage we pay them goes right back into the local economy, she said, calling the statewide $15 minimum a a win-win for everyone.

Economists are divided over the new law. UC Irvines David Neumark has suggested a $15 minimum could reduce employment among the least skilled by 10 percent or more.

While some gain, others lose, he said in an email Monday.

The majority of poor families have no workers, he added. I would prefer honest income redistribution that taxes those who earn the most, and targets those with the lowest incomes, and especially low-income families with children.

However, Michael Reich, a UC Berkeley economist who studied the projected impact of a $15 minimum in California and New York, argued it would have little effect on employment or on the economy, with business costs offset by the growth in purchasing power of low-income workers.

Minimum wages stimulate increased worker productivity, reduce employee turnover and are paid for primarily by very small price increases that are spread among all consumers, he said.

On Monday, UC Berkeley Labor Center economists analyzed the number of workers who would benefit from the new law, as well as from earlier local ordinances which are boosting pay floors to $15 in several California cities including San Francisco and Los Angeles, and in Los Angeles County.

The 605,000 workers affected in Orange County are the most of any county in the state after Los Angeles, where 1.9 million workers would get a raise. San Diego has the third largest number, 522,000 workers.

Many charitable groups welcome the higher wage. It will be a blessing, said Paul Leon, president and CEO of the Irvine-based Illumination Foundation which works with the homeless.

Orange Countys cost of living is 46 percent above the national average. High housing costs have fueled an explosion in the number of homeless children to more than 32,000, many of whom live doubled and tripled up with other families in single-family units.

A 2015 study by Orange county government agencies and charitable groups estimated a minimum wage worker would need to work 110 hours a week to afford a typical one-bedroom apartment.

For our families, something as simple as sending your children to the Boys and Girls Club, for as low as $6 a week, is not an option, Leon said. To work, they have to afford bus tickets, presentable clothes, a cell phone, electricity and rent. You can imagine what a raise might mean to them.

Contact the writer: mroosevelt@ocregister.com; on Twitter @MargotRoosevelt
This year, 391 high school juniors and seniors were nominated by their teachers as the top Orange County students in theater, dance, instrumental music, vocal music, visual arts and film. Now, the quest is on to determine the top young artist in each discipline.

After reading application statements from the teachers and students, reviewing examples of the students performances and artwork, and examining the artistic resumes of the nominees, we, with the help of a panel of arts teachers, have narrowed the complete list of nominees to a Top 10 in each discipline, for a total of 60 finalists.

Over the next few weeks, the Top 10 artists in each category will be interviewed by a panel of experts in their discipline. These experts include distinguished artistic professionals and faculty members from Southern California universities as well as a few representative high school teachers. During the interviews, the students will present their art form, and afterward the panels will decide who will be named artist of the year for each discipline.

This week, we present the Top 10 nominees in instrumental and vocal music. Initially, 51 students were nominated in instrumental music and 60 in vocal music. In profiling the artists, we have included quotes from them that refer to their artistic aspirations and submitted works.

Instrumental musicians include those who perform in classical groups (orchestras, concert bands and chamber groups), marching bands, jazz ensembles and combos, and contemporary groups (pop, rock, folk, etc.). Vocal musicians include those who perform in the styles of classical, jazz, Broadway, contemporary and pop/rock.

Next weeks issue of Varsity Arts will reveal the Top 10 nominees in theater and dance.

The winners will be announced May 1 in Varsity Arts.

INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC TOP 10s

DORIAN APITZ

ESPERANZA HIGH SCHOOL

Instrument: saxophone

In the future, I want to be a recording artist. I would love to wake up every day knowing that I am doing what I love. I want to be part of a team of talented musicians that are able to work together and make one of the most beautiful things in the world: music. This would justify all the countless hours of practice and allow me to achieve my dreams.

GAVIN THORNBURG

TESORO HIGH SCHOOL

Instrument: trumpet

My favorite quote from an honor group conductor goes as follows: Where the body goes, the mind goes, and where the mind goes, the music follows. It taught me that expression is something to be worked for and can take on much more meaning than I ever realized. My whole life I have been trying to understand what art means to me, and at the end of the day, the best forms of art I have experienced have been performing with other talented musicians and directors as we interpret the sounds, emotions and feelings from their composed works.

ALEXANDER FLAVELL

VALENCIA HIGH SCHOOL

Instrument: piano

My selections range from a slow ballad to up-tempo stride playing to a technical romantic selection. What I would like the audience to experience is a snapshot of the music that has influenced my development and the range of my emotions when Im playing. Most of all, I hope that my music can speak for who I am.

NICHOLAS IM

BECKMAN HIGH SCHOOL

Instrument: cello

Music has greatly influenced many aspects of my life. To be honest, the grand majority of my life revolves around music. Whenever I am not practicing the cello, Im probably playing a different instrument.  Ive also developed everything that defines my person through music. Through music, I gained a better understanding of myself and what I aim to do with my life.

HANNAH KIM

ORANGE COUNTY SCHOOL OF THE ARTS

Instrument: flute

I hope that when people hear me play, they not only hear the composers intentions but also the ways I make a piece my own. I hope that when people hear my interpretation of a piece, they can connect my performance to a memory or associate my performance with a feeling that will stay ingrained in their minds.

EMMA LEE

CREAN LUTHERAN HIGH SCHOOL

Instrument: cello

The first piece I presented is Tchaikovskys Pezzo Capriccioso, one of the most romantic pieces you will ever play. It has a glorious beginning with lyrical melodies. This is the kind of piece you want to hear forever. The second piece is Chopins Polonaise Brilliante. This piece is so much fun to play. I feel as though Im dancing with my cello. Unlike serious pieces, Im able to smile, have fun on stage and let the audience enjoy its playfulness with me.

JULIET KIM

CORNELIA CONNELLY SCHOOL

Instrument: violin

Ive chosen the Bruch Violin Concerto in G minor to perform because it is a piece that Ive studied which embodies the romantic passion that I feel when performing. The piece begins slowly, building up into the fiery passion. This contrast pulls the audience into the piece.

JAMES RO

ORANGE LUTHERAN HIGH SCHOOL

Instrument: clarinet

It is true that classical music has faded behind the popularity of modern music, like rap and pop music. However, as an artist, I want to teach and inform younger generations that classical music is a mode of human expression that reveals complex emotions. In general, I want to reawaken the public to the beauty that is classical music.

REBECCA SUH

IRVINE HIGH SCHOOL

Instrument: cello, bass, French horn

The Lalo Cello Concerto  allows the soloist to shine in many areas with passionate phrases, technical runs and cadenzalike flourishes. I was drawn to this piece for its exceptionally written solo lines as well as the raw emotion used by Lalo. In my rendition of this work, I aspire to tell a story. As I play I infuse drama, romance, tenderness and passion, but I leave it up to the listener to fill in the storyline.

JEMELEE WANG

ORANGE COUNTY SCHOOL OF THE ARTS

Instrument: cello

I play (music) because as someone who cannot produce colorful language to express certain emotions, I use music to do so. I love the freedom it gives me, its beauty so unique to itself, and the empowering and motivating meanings which underlie it.  As an artist, I want to use my ability to spread classical music and give it greater accessibility. I want to help make it so that classical music is no longer alienated but rather much more relatable to the public.

VOCAL MUSIC TOP 10s

GABRIEL ANDRADE

GODINEZ FUNDAMENTAL HIGH SCHOOL

Vocal styles: contemporary cabaret/stage, musical theater

The song that Ill be submitting is titled If I Cant Love Her from the musical Beauty and the Beast. This piece means a lot to me mainly because I performed it while I was going through a rough obstacle in my life.  I cried on stage as I performed this piece because I was no longer myself for those four minutes of singing  I had become someone else.

KAITLIN BARRON

JSERRA CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL

Vocal style: classical/opera

I love singing in German, and Verborgenheit by Hugo Wolf really captures the emotions of love and loss. Another song, Dream a Little Dream of Me, is a piece that I love because it can be sung in many different styles. I chose to sing it in a jazz/folk style. This song is fun to perform because it expresses the happier side of someone in love.

KATHERINE CHATMAN

HUNTINGTON BEACH HIGH SCHOOL

Vocal style: contemporary cabaret/stage

I want to pursue (singing professionally) because I think it is amazing that I can have a job that makes me happy because I am doing what I love, but at the same time I am able to bring joy to people that I have never met before. Someone could be going through a rough time and if I am able to bring them a little joy during my performance, then I feel as though I have succeeded in doing my job.

BRIANNA CLARK

BREA OLINDA HIGH SCHOOL

Vocal style: contemporary cabaret/stage

I want to make an impact on the musical theater world. I want to inspire younger girls to know that its OK to take a chance on something as spectacular as singing.  I want to bring the art of storytelling through song to audiences and inspire ordinary people to do something extraordinary and bring a moment of joy into the life of others who may be looking for peace.

SYDNEY DARDIS

ORANGE COUNTY SCHOOL OF THE ARTS

Vocal style: classical/opera

As artists, we are taught to figure out why were singing, what were singing and what the composer is trying to convey. When I sing Caro Nome from Rigoletta I am singing every cadenza and every trill as an expression of that feeling inside. Verdis music touches me very deeply, and I would like the listener to feel like this piece touches them in such a way that it means something to them  to me that would be magical.

JASON RISDANA

ORANGE COUNTY SCHOOL OF THE ARTS

Vocal style: classical/ opera

In my aria, Aprite un po quegli occhi from Le Nozze di Figaro by Mozart, my character feels a broad spectrum of emotions, ranging from defiant and seething with anger to heartbroken and void of any joy in his life. I thought it would be a fun challenge to sing this and get this aria in my body to perform. I hope people can feel the same loneliness, the same anger and the same hurt that my character does at this moment.

KYLE GABRIEL

VALENCIA HIGH SCHOOL

Vocal style: classical/ opera

In the future, I simply want to bring music to as many people as possible, be it through performance or composition, arranging or recording in a studio. I guess you could say a driving issue for me is the fact that so many people go about their lives never fully experiencing, nor appreciating the value, significance and power of the art of music. Thus, I seek to put forth my voice in the world, among the many other unique voices.

JOSIAH HAUGEN

FULLERTON UNION HIGH SCHOOL

Vocal style: classical/opera, contemporary cabaret/stage

An aspect that I love about music is its ability to jump across borders and barriers that are placed by differences in language, culture or race.  It is the very nature of human beings to share what that they love with others in order that they too might experience it, and so I long to share with others the beauty of music whether that be as a performer, teacher or music enthusiast.

JENNA LEA ROSEN

LOS ALAMITOS HIGH SCHOOL

Vocal style: contemporary cabaret/ stage

Now When the Rain Falls from The Scarlet Pimpernel is one of my favorite songs to sing because the melody is so beautiful, and I really connect with the heartfelt and haunting lyrics. This song reminds me of my great grandma, and I think of her every time I sing it. During this song, I hope the audience can feel my emotion and my love of the song.

MEDORA ZANI

DANA HILLS HIGH SCHOOL

Vocal style: classical/opera

Music positively affects all other parts of my life. It has brought me closer with people that I didnt think I would necessarily get along with. It has helped me with other parts of my life, and I am so thankful for that.
In response to the recent sale of the Register, I would hope that subscribers and readers never forget that the Register has been a major source of local news throughout Orange County and has maintained a balanced point of view for any and all opinions.

Print media have declined in recent years and newspapers are no longer the main source of news and information. It is a very sad day, indeed, when we see major newspapers either sold or going out of business. Cable television news, mostly slanted opinion, cannot, or will not, give the point of view of the audience, but the news media, especially the Register always do and always allow for a difference of opinion.

I am a longtime subscriber to the Register and certainly hope it continues as a positive source of news and information.

Edward A. Sussman

Fountain Valley

  

I also welcome the new owners to the Register and hope they are political moderates. It will be a breath of fresh air, especially if the Opinion section of the paper gives some equal space to political and scientific views from a more enlightened prospective.

Although many seem to like the right-wing opinions that are in the paper every day, in case readers and letter writers hadnt noticed, their primary focus is to complain constantly about President Obama (with a 49 percent approval rating), simply because Congress (with an 11 percent approval rating) is controlled by Republicans. If they wrote negatively of Republicans, or somehow complimented President Obama, they would probably lose their jobs.

Our country has experienced nothing but political bickering without accomplishing anything  like the latest fiasco with choosing a Supreme Court nominee. Why do we need to have a Supreme Court justices be considered conservative or liberal? Whats wrong with appointing a moderate judge to view all sides of every issue without leaning toward a political or religious bent?

Many have praised the late Justice Scalia as a brilliant interpreter of the Constitution and that he tried to understand the intentions of our founders. I dont believe he ever tried to interpret their intentions with regard to why women should not be allowed to vote and just be subservient to their husbands. Or, for it to be OK for black people to be slaves.

Maybe their minds hadnt quite expanded enough to understand the importance of equality?

Chuck Feeney

Irvine
The U.S. Department of Energy is taking baby steps toward figuring out what to do with tons of spent nuclear fuel that have been piling up across America for decades, turning commercial reactors like the shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station into makeshift nuclear waste dumps.

In a move that he hopes will increase pressure on the federal government, U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Visa, said it must do more.

My district is home to the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS), which is in the initial stages of decommissioning which will be completed by 2031, Issa wrote in a letter to U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz dated April 5.

Positioned near an active fault line, sandwiched between the heavily-trafficked I-5 Freeway and the Pacific Ocean, and bordering the densely-populated Orange and San Diego Counties, the storage of more than 3.6 million pounds of high-level nuclear waste at the SONGS site is of great concern to the over 8 million people of this region.

After decades of false starts and paralysis on a permanent disposal site, the Department of Energy is trying a more modest approach: creating several temporary storage sites in regions eager for the business, currently in West Texas and New Mexico. Those could be up and running while the prickly issue of finding a permanent repository is hashed out.

The Department of Energy is doing a roadshow on its new consent-based approach, holding forums in a half-dozen cities nationwide to get feedback. Only one such forum is slated for California  in Sacramento on April 26  and Issa thinks thats an oversight.

Southern Californians must be able to weigh in, Issa told Moniz in his letter. A forum near San Onofre should be added to the schedule, Issa said.

Officials at the Department of Energy didnt respond by deadline as to the likelihood of adding a Southern California date, but the department is eager to move forward with consent-based disposal. In addition to the commercial reactors that currently store decades-worth of spent fuel, waste from national defense activities is kept at several Department of Energy-managed sites as well, a department spokesman said.

While this is safe in the near-term, we need a sustainable, long-term solution to avoid leaving the waste in communities that never consented to be permanent hosts, the Department of Energy said in a prepared statement.

This will take time, so its important that we get started now to design our consent-based siting process and start making progress toward that long-term solution.

Some 72,000 metric tons of highly radioactive waste has piled up at 75 commercial reactor sites over the past half-century, according to a recent review by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. That wasnt the plan.

To encourage the development of nuclear power, the federal government passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, promising to accept and dispose of spent fuel and high-level waste by Jan. 31, 1998. Utilities operating nuclear plants made payments into a Nuclear Waste Fund to pay for disposal. About $750 million a year was collected from ratepayers, and the fund grew to $41 billion over three decades.

But the federal government never accepted any commercial nuclear waste for permanent disposal. The nuclear industry sued, and a federal judge found that the Department of Energy couldnt continue charging for a service it not only wasnt providing, but wouldnt provide for many decades. In 2014, utilities stopped collecting the charge, about 20 cents a month on the average electric bill.

After the government spent $10 billion on a now-abandoned plan to create a permanent disposal site at Nevadas Yucca Mountain, about $30 billion remains in the fund.

Local governments, including San Clemente, Laguna Beach, Oceanside, Encinitas and San Diego County, are pressing Washington to fulfill its obligations.

Ultimately, a consent-based approach will ensure that partner communities, tribes and states are comfortable with the location of nuclear storage and disposal facilities before theyre constructed, Department of Energy officials said in Chicago last week.

Contact the writer: tsforza@ocregister.com
Virtual reality geeks will have to wait a little longer for the highly anticipated Oculus Rift.

Shipments of the immersive gaming system have been delayed as supply issues slowed production, Oculus Chief Executive Brendan Iribe said on Twitter.

Pre-orders for the Rift started in January, priced at $599.

The Rift includes a headset with removable headphones, an external camera that tracks head movement, an Xbox One wireless controller and an input device that allows users to manipulate objects.

Company founder Palmer Luckey flew in late March to Anchorage, Alaska, where he delivered the first pre-ordered Rift to indie developer Ross Martin.

Oculus was founded in 2012 and established its base in Irvine. Two years later, the startup was bought by Facebook for $2 billion. Oculus the moved to Menlo Park to be closer to Facebook.

As an apology, Oculus will offer free shipping on all pre-orders, Iribe said.

Playstation VR, which will be released in October, will cost $399. The HTC Vive, which is scheduled to be released Tuesday, costs $799. Some orders have been delayed because of a payment processing error, according to the companys blog.

Contact the writer: hmadans@ocregister.com or Twitter: @HannahMadans
MOSCOW  The Kremlin responded angrily on Monday to reports alleging that close associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin were involved in secret offshore transactions totaling $2 billion.

The reports, published Sunday, are based on a leak of millions of documents from a Panamian law firm that over decades helped set up offshore bank accounts and shell companies for some of the worlds most prominent leaders and businesspeople.

The reporting by an international consortium of journalists spans the globe, touching the father of British Prime Minister David Cameron, the prime minister of Iceland and one of Putins oldest friends, Sergei Roldugin. In many instances, the reports do not allege law-breaking, but the mere possession of offshore accounts can prove politically embarrassing.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the allegations as part of an international campaign to smear Russia and to distract from what he deemed the success of its military operations in Syria. Putin was not connected to any of the alleged accounts, Peskov said in remarks carried by Russian news agencies.

There is nothing concrete, nothing new, no details about Putin, Peskov said. All the rest is built on arguments and speculations.

The spokesman warned last week that Western news outlets were planning an information attack against Vladimir Putin, and he said Monday that he expects further reports along the same lines.

The German daily Sddeutsche Zeitung said that it had received the documents from an unnamed source and that they covered decades of work by the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. Sddeutsche Zeitung shared the data with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and more than 100 news outlets across the world.

Mossack Fonseca told Britains Guardian newspaper on Sunday that we are responsible members of the global financial and business community, that it had broken no laws and that it had conducted due diligence on its clients in line with international regulations.

Some of the reports focused on Roldugin, a childhood friend of Putin who is the godfather of the Russian leaders eldest daughter. Roldugin was said to be at the center of transactions totaling more than $2 billion that involved Bank Rossiya. The bank is under sanctions imposed by the U.S. Treasury Department, which describes it as the personal bank for senior officials of the Russian Federation.

Roldugin, a prominent cellist in St. Petersburg, told reporters from Russias Novaya Gazeta investigative newspaper last week that he could not comment on the allegations. He said he was connected to some of the businesses long ago.

The reports have also reverberated elsewhere in the world. Icelands Parliament on Monday was considering whether to ask Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson for a snap election after allegations that he had owned an offshore company, with his wife, that he had not included in his financial disclosures. Gunnlaugsson has denied wrongdoing, and the Guardian and other news outlets did not find any evidence of tax evasion.

In Ukraine, President Petro Poroshenko was coming under criticism from allies in parliament after the revelation that he had set up an offshore company after his May 2014 election to hold the assets of his substantial business interests, including a candy conglomerate. Poroshenko has said that the offshore structure was necessary to prepare his Roshen company for sale. The offshore company was set up in August 2014, but Poroshenko has not yet sold his business holdings. A spokesman declined to comment.
The rock band the Aquabats have always been an all-inclusive kind of group, known for its crazy superhero costumes and wildly silly-fun live performances, which is why on April Fools Day some fans were genuinely perplexed when a re-posted photo of Newport Beachs Frog House Surf Shops marquee that appeared to poke fun at transgender people popped up on all of the bands social media pages.

The surf shop marquee, which is known using puns and humor to advertise its merchandise, read Summer wetsuits. Jennerally speaking we can fit Bruce or Caitlyn. According to a shop manager at Frog House, that marquee was taken down quickly a year and a half ago after the shop had received a few complaints. The marquee outside is currently focused on presidential hopeful Donald Trump.

Just as Frog House had received complaints, the re-posted photo also didnt sit so well with Aquabats fans, who pointed out in numerous, now deleted comments, that this was making light of the transgender community. Some were raging mad, others just commented that it was in poor taste and not really funny at all, while some took the stance that the complaining fans were being overly sensitive.

At the end of the day on Friday, the post, on all of the Aquabats pages, had received a lot of negative feedback. The bands leader, Christian Jacobs, who goes by the MC Bat Commander, posted a new photo via Instagram on Saturday of the band playing at a kids birthday party and offered We have to apologize for offending anyone yesterday  Were sorry  And were going through a rough patch. Whatever happens  Lets remember the good times.

Again, the fans were divided on social media. Some quickly said they would opt to move forward and offered forgiveness, while others felt Jacobs second post was an empty apology since the initial photo had only been removed from Instagram, but remained on all of the other forms of social media.

By Sunday, negative messages swelled, prompting Jacobs, who is also the co-founder of the popular kids shows Yo Gabba Gabba! and The Aquabats! Super Show, to post a more formal apology to fans, which can be read in full below.

Friday, I reposted a photo of the marquee at a local shop in our area. Every couple of weeks they come up with some kind of silly messaging on their marquee for the people driving by the store to read. Ive posted a few of these in the past  but Fridays post was a mistake. Initially, I read it as a silly topical way to say that the shop has wetsuits that can fit anyone and everyone.

I realize that it was actually in poor taste and insensitive to the transgender community. I honestly didnt mean any offense and unfortunately, I didnt think too much of it at the time of my repost. I realize now that many people were hurt by this and I feel bad. This was my poor judgment to post it.

Just so you know, when I post things to Instagram, they automatically post to our Twitter and Facebook accounts. Unfortunately, they dont automatically delete. So  When I deleted it on Friday and issued a rushed apology on Saturday, it didnt delete on our Twitter or Facebook pages.

This understandably added a fuel to the feeling that my apology was disingenuous.

It wasnt. I hope that those that are deeply hurt can forgive me. I also hope that those that arent offended can strongly empathize and love those that are. That being said, Id like to try and restore some kind of positive modicum and love back to this page. We love all of our fans and friends regardless of race, gender, creed or lifestyle. We always have. We do make fun of ourselves and those we love quite a bit but its supposed to be fun. I wasnt aware of the further damage done until today and I am trying to do my best to make amends.

Wed ask that you stop jumping to conclusions and pouring gas on a small fire when instead we need you to restore love and safety back to this page. As I also try to reconstruct love and support to our transgender brothers and sisters out there, I will note that this has nothing to do with the other (Aquabats) guys. This was my mistake alone. Let love rule.  The Bat Commander.

Contact the writer: 714-796-3570 or kfadroski@ocregister.com
A 37-year-old man who died after he was shot in the neck by a security guard at a Santa Ana bar Friday night has been identified, police said.

Officers were called to El Coral Bar in the 1900 block of South Standard Avenue around 9:30 p.m., where they found Leonel Bucio of Santa Ana lying in the parking lot with a gunshot wound, said Santa Ana police Sgt. Eric Rivas. He died at the scene.

The man was shot by a security guard working at the bar, Rivas said. The two had gotten into an altercation prior to the shooting, Rivas said. Additional details were unavailable.

Rivas said the security guard was not arrested.
My favorite Christmas movie of all time is National Lampoons Christmas Vacation. Whether its the inadvertent burning of the turkey, the accidental explosion in the sewer or the unexpected dog attack, the holiday high jinks never get old.

But sometimes life imitates art, and crazy things like that happen to real people.

On the Fourth of July last year in Calais, Maine, 22-year-old Devon Staples was drinking and playing around with fireworks when he decided to put a mortar on his head and light it.

The firework went off and killed him instantly.

Staples fiancee, Kara Hawley, says the whole thing was an accident. She told the Portland Press-Herald that Staples was only buzzed and accidentally lit a cigarette lighter while dancing with the explosive on his head.

Whether it just was an accident or a prank gone bad is irrelevant  the truth is that Staples drunken, reckless behavior directly resulted in his death.

But if you think thats the final chapter in this tale, youd be wrong.

Staples mother, Kathleen Staples, now advocates for stricter controls on the sale and possession of fireworks. She wants to regulate fireworks as if they were cars or firearms.

Staples told the Associated Press, At least itd be a little bit more than, Here you go.  Thats an explosive. They didnt just hand me a license and put me in the car.

And it didnt take long before Maine state Rep. Michel Lajoie volunteered to lead the effort.

So, apparently, if a guy in his early 20s gets drunk and blows his head off while insanely misusing a legal product, this proves that the rest of us have too much freedom and need to be restrained.

How appropriate.

And its not just fireworks.

I recently attempted to buy a water slide for my swimming pool and was almost laughed out of the pool supply store by the sales clerk.

Stupid me for thinking that I could just walk into a shop and purchase a slide for a 6-foot-deep pool that already has a hookup built in.

After finishing his hearty chuckle, the clerk told me that his company stopped selling slides long ago because theyve been essentially regulated out of existence in the California residential market.

I went to another shop. They told me the same thing.

I did a little research and found out that its easier to buy marijuana in the Golden State than it is to get a slide for your pool.

Why are they virtually forbidden? For the same reasons that fireworks are under attack in Maine: People abused the product and hurt themselves.

In 1998, the Consumer Product Safety Commission reported that, out of 57,900,000 total pool swimmers in the United States, only 99,691 swimmers faced injuries associated with swimming or the use of a pool slide. The most commonly reported injuries were lacerations to the head or face  meaning many of them were going down the slides head first, which is not the intended use of the product.

Unfortunately, we dont have any statistics on how many of these swimmers were drunk or how many parents were hitting the sauce instead of keeping an eye on their children.

And legislators have a hard time saying no to grieving mothers, so say adios to the water slides. But who comes to California to have fun in the pool anyway? Thats what North Dakota is for!

Americans should not lose even small freedoms based on something that Otis the town drunk may do after downing a 12-pack. People must control how much they drink, and assume responsibility for their safety.

Staff opinion columnist John Phillips can be heard weekdays at 3 p.m. on The Drive Home with Jillian Barberie and John Phillips on KABC/AM 790.
We find it troubling that presidential candidate Hillary Clinton proposes new SWAT teams of government experts to address problems with schools, veterans care and businesses. The acronym derives from Special Weapons and Tactics units. According to the website of the Los Angeles Police Department, the teams first were formed in the late 1960s as a result of several sniping incidents against civilians and police officers around the country, including the 1965 Watts riots.

Unfortunately, SWAT teams have proliferated even to small police departments and commonly are used for arresting people on minor offenses, such as drug possession or gambling. Cato Institute scholar Radley Balko provided numerous disturbing incidents in his recent book, Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America.

Trying to get an edge on opponent Bernie Sanders in their debate last month in Detroit, Mrs. Clinton proposed, I want to set up inside the Department of Education, for want of a better term, kind of an education SWAT team, if you will. The team would swoop into underperforming schools and supposedly fix them.

The proposal doesnt take into account that a major contributor to public educations problems is the vast increase in federal meddling in education since the late 1950s, precluding local control. Moreover, as we are seeing in California with the increase in charter schools and use of the parent trigger law, which enables parents to replace the administration at their childrens school, the solution to underperforming schools is competition or new management under parents, not more bureaucrats from distant Washington, D.C.

Discussing last October the problems in the Veterans Administration, Mrs. Clinton noted, I have said I would like to literally appoint a SWAT team to bring in people and just tackle the disability of a veteran forced to wait for treatment. And, in December, she said companies that close should bring a kind of SWAT team response, to be able to help communities invest in something new.

In such instances, whats needed is not new, heavy-handed government involvement, but private alternatives to the VA for veterans and lower taxes and regulations for businesses.
DAMASCUS, Syria  A week after taking back the historic town of Palmyra, Syrian troops and their allies on Sunday captured another town controlled by the Islamic State group in central Syria, state media reported.

The push into the town of Qaryatain took place under the cover of Russian airstrikes and dealt another setback to the IS extremists in Syria. An activist group that monitors the Syrian civil war said that government forces are in control of most of the town after IS fighters withdrew to its eastern outskirts.

The advance came a week after Syrian forces recaptured Palmyra from IS and is strategically significant for the government side. The capture of Qaryatain deprives IS of a main base in central Syria and could be used by government forces in the future to launch attacks on IS-held areas near the Iraqi border.

Dozens of Qaryatains Christians and other residents have been abducted by the extremists. While the town was under IS control, some were released, others were made to sign pledges to pay a tax imposed on non-Muslims.

While IS extremists blew up and destroyed some of the worlds most precious relics at Palmyras archaeological sites during their 10-month reign there, the ancient Saint Eliane Monastery near Qaryatain was also bulldozed and destroyed shortly after IS took the town in August.

Christians make up about 10 percent of Syrias prewar population of 23 million people.

The Syrian army command said in a statement that troops have restored security and stability to Qaryatain and farms surrounding it. The statement, read by an army general on state TV, said the oil and gas pipelines in the area will be secured and IS supply routes between eastern desert and the Qalamoun region will be cut.

A Syrian army general, speaking live from Qaryatain with the Lebanon-based Al-Mayadeen TV, said troops are now dismantling bombs placed by extremists and will prepare to launch fresh attacks on areas held by IS.

Fighting was going from one house to another, another army officer told Al-Mayadeen TV also speaking from inside Qaryatain. He added that IS had suicide attackers who were trying to block the push by the army into the town.
WASHINGTON  It was in Nevada, just about month ago, when Donald Trump proclaimed his affection for the uneducated.

We won with young. We won with old. We won with highly educated. We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated, the Republican presidential front-runner boasted after coasting to a decisive victory in the states caucuses.

He should love them.

Trump overwhelmingly leads his rivals for support among the less educated, and draws more modest backing from college graduates and those with postgraduate study, according to exit polls conducted for the Associated Press and television networks by Edison Research.

In an analysis of voters by education in states where exit or entrance polling is available, nearly half of those with high school diplomas or less schooling said they supported the billionaire. Just over 40 percent of those with some college study favored him. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz captured the next best showing among the two groups, with 27 and 28 percent, respectively.

What is it about Trump that he attracts such a strong showing among those who havent graduated from college?

I think it is incorrect to look at the data and conclude that those voters are more ignorant, Katherine Cramer, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in an interview. Instead, theres a strong correlation between having a college degree or not, and your economic situation in life.

Cramer explains, These are folks who have been feeling a real struggle to make ends meet for decades now and they see a candidate coming along who says to them, Youre right. Youre not getting your fair share. It sucks. And Im going to stand up for you.

Thats really appealing to people, Cramer said before Tuesdays primary in Wisconsin, where Cruz is leading Trump in polls.

Exit polls from most of the primaries and caucuses held to date show Trump has trailed among voters having a high school degree or less in only one state where data is available so far. Cruz led in his home state of Texas. The high school graduate sample size wasnt large enough in Massachusetts and Vermont for a solid measure.

Trumps state-by-state performance wasnt nearly as strong among those with some college or an associates degree.

So far, Trumps populist pitch to ordinary folks facing economic uncertainty is resonating, says Michael McDonald, associate professor of political science at the University of Florida.

A lot of people have underestimated Trump because they expect a candidate to do things in a certain way. And because he breaks the mold on that in some respects, they miss when hes making these appeals that speak directly to the voters, he said.

Case in point, says McDonald, was the Republican debate in Manchester, N.H., in February.

Trump and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush got into a testy exchange over their positions on eminent domain, the process by which the government takes private property for public use.

Trump drew boos from the audience when he dismissed Bush saying, Let me talk, quiet, and he then told the crowd that the booing was coming from donors and special interests in the audience  pressing his populist, anti-establishment message.

Cramer calls it the politics of resentment, when a candidate taps into the economic stress and gives people something concrete to blame. Trump is able to direct peoples profound uneasiness with their situation in life at a target  the government, trade policies, or a group of people.

Exit polling shows Trump didnt track nearly as well with college-educated voters.

Across all the states with data available, Trump was supported by 35 percent of college graduates, sharply off his 47 percent of those with a high school education or less. Still, in many states Trump has led even among the college-educated.

By comparison, support for Cruz hasnt varied much by education, while those with postgraduate studies have been more likely than those with less education to support Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Kasich has led the postgraduate vote in three states  Michigan, Ohio and Vermont.
DIKILI, Turkey  A controversial European Union plan to stem the flow of refugees began Monday with the deportation of more than 200 people from Greek islands to Turkey, despite concerns over human rights and criticism that Europe was turning its back on refugees.

As dawn broke, buses filled with migrants left under heavy security from a detention center on the island of Lesbos headed to the port for the short boat ride to the Turkish port of Dikili. More were ferried across from the island of Chios, where riot police clashed hours earlier with demonstrators protesting the expulsions.

In all, 202 people from 11 nations  191 men and 11 women  were sent back. They included 130 Pakistanis, 42 Afghans, 10 Iranians, five Congolese, four Sri Lankans, three Bangladeshis, three from India, and one each from Iraq, Somalia and Ivory Coast, as well as two Syrians who Greek authorities said had asked to be sent back.

Human rights groups expressed deep concern over the operation.

The returns underway this morning in the Aegean are the symbolic start of the potential disastrous undoing of Europes commitment to protecting refugees, said Amnesty Internationals deputy director for Europe, Gauri van Gulik. Urgent key questions are: What process is everyone going through and what will become of them after their return?

Judith Sunderland, acting deputy Europe director at Human Rights Watch, said trying to close the Aegean migration route by shipping people back to uncertain fates in Turkey will only make them seek potentially more dangerous and expensive ways to reach the EU.

This whole deal involves throwing human beings down legal loopholes, she said. Turkey is not a safe country, and rights on paper are not the same as rights in practice.

It is completely disingenuous to say that the EU-Turkey deal is about saving lives, Sunderland added. Conducting serious search-and-rescue operations at sea, doing large-scale, unconditional resettlement, creating legal migration pathways  these policies would save lives.

European officials insist the EU-Turkey agreement is the only way to deter people from heading to Greece from the nearby Turkish coast  a brief but perilous trip that has cost many lives  and to stop what was an almost uncontrolled flow of hundreds of thousands of people heading into Europes prosperous heartland.

Under the deal, those who arrived on or after March 20 will be sent back to Turkey unless they qualify for asylum. For every Syrian returned, Europe will take a Syrian to be resettled in an EU country.

Despite the deal, hundreds have persisted in making the Aegean crossing, although the numbers are far lower than the thousands who had earlier arrived daily. On Monday, Greek authorities said they had registered 339 new arrivals over the past 24 hours.

Even Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country signed up to the deal in return for an EU pledge of 3 billion euros to handle the refugee crisis, lashed out at Europe for turning its back refugees and restricting the numbers they will accept.

Did we turn Syrians back? No, we didnt, but they did, he said of EU countries. By way of placing razor wire, they didnt let these people into their countries. We see whos dying on the Aegean Sea. But the number of those rescued by us on the Aegean Sea is 100,000.

Turkey is home to 2.7 million Syrian refugees, but has come under criticism for not cracking down on the smugglers who have ferried hundreds of thousands across to Greek islands, often with deadly results. Under the deal, Turkey will also see visa liberalization talks and EU membership negotiations speeded up.

The first vessel from Lesbos was escorted into the Turkish port of Dikili by the Turkish coast guard as a helicopter hovered overhead. The migrants were taken to red-and-white tents for registration and health checks.

About a dozen people stood at the port holding a banner that read Welcome refugees. Turkey is your home. That sentiment was in sharp contrast to protests over the weekend by residents who feared that Dikili would turn into a warehouse for refugees.

Those who arrived from Lesbos were sent to a reception and removal center in the northwestern Kirklareli province on the Black Sea, according to Turkeys state-run Anadolu Agency. It said the Syrians would be placed in refugee camps and other migrants would be deported.

As part of the other half of the plan, 32 Syrian refugees from Turkey were flying into Germany to be resettled, while another 11 arrived in Finland.

Balkan and European countries began restricting the flows of refugees and migrants through their borders earlier this year, and shut them completely in early March. More than 52,000 are now stranded in Greece.
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria  For months, they were kept in tiny thatched huts in the middle of the forest, waiting with dread each evening for their rapists to return. During the almost intolerable violence, the young womens minds drifted to escape or death. The victims were as young as 8.

At the heart of Boko Harams self-proclaimed caliphate in northeastern Nigeria was a savage campaign of rape and sexual slavery that has only recently been uncovered. Thousands of girls and women were held against their will, subject to forced marriages and relentless indoctrination. Those who resisted were often shot.

Now, many of the women are suddenly free  rescued in a series of Nigerian military operations over the past year that dislodged the extremist Islamist group from most of the territory it controlled. But there have been few joyous family reunions for the victims.

Most of the surviving women no longer have homes. Their cities were burned to the ground. The military has quietly deposited them in displacement camps or abandoned buildings, where they are monitored by armed men suspicious of their loyalties. They are still labeled Boko Haram wives.

Few could have imagined such an outcome two years ago, when 276 schoolgirls were kidnapped by Boko Haram and the world responded with the Bring Back Our Girls campaign. While most of those schoolgirls from Chibok are still missing, many people assumed the other kidnapped women would be warmly welcomed back.

Instead, they are shunned.

For seven months, Hamsatu, now 25, and Halima, 15, were among Boko Harams sex slaves, raped almost every day by the same unit of fighters in the remote Sambisa Forest. Now, they live in a narrow, white tent in a displacement camp, with empty cement bags sewn together to create a curtain. The women spoke on the condition that their full names were not used in order to freely describe their experiences.

When Halima leaves the tent to get food for the two of them, the other people living in the camp scowl at her or cautiously move away.

Youre the one who was married to Boko Haram, one older woman spat at her recently.

We cant trust any of them, said one guard.

Authorities say there are good reasons for their wariness. Last year, 39 of 89 Boko Haram suicide bombings were carried out by women, according to UNICEF. Twenty-one of those female attackers were younger than 18, many of them girls apparently abducted from villages and cities and converted into assassins. Since January, female attackers have killed hundreds of people across northeastern Nigeria, in mosques, markets and even displacement camps.

No one knows exactly why some women who were captured and abused became killers. Maybe it was the indoctrination. Maybe it was the militants threats.

Either way, the job of reintegrating the displaced has become vastly more complicated for Nigerian authorities.

And for survivors trying to move on from a horrific chapter of their lives, there is now a new agony.

There is no trust here, said Hamsatu, crouching in her tent and wearing the same pink, flowery dress she had on when she was kidnapped 18 months ago. In her arms, she held the baby of her captor.

Many were able to flee

It was September 2014 when Boko Haram fighters took over Hamsatus and Halimas home city of Bama, near the Cameroonian border. Many of the 350,000 residents managed to flee. But the fighters immediately started killing the male civilians who couldnt escape. Some were shot in their homes. Others were beheaded and thrown in mass graves.

With a group of about 25 other women, Hamsatu and Halima say, they were moved by the militants from home to home and then forced to travel on foot and on the backs of motorcycles to the Sambisa Forest, where Boko Haram had set up camps for its sex slaves.

The women were each assigned to a sliver of a hut, barely big enough to lie down. Hamsatu said that days later, one fighter, whose name she never learned, entered the hut and said a prayer in what sounded to her like Arabic.

Now they were married, he told her. She thought of her real husband, who had been missing since the day Boko Haram stormed Bama.

I dont know if hes alive, she said.

From then on, the days were uniformly violent. Different men would come into her hut each evening, in addition to the one who called himself her husband, Hamsatu said. Sometimes they screamed at her for not praying enough. Even the Chibok girls are better Muslims than you, a man yelled at her once.

Sometimes the men said nothing at all, tearing off her headscarf and raping her on the floor of the hut, she recalled. After about two months, she became pregnant.

Publicly, Boko Haram members decry the tyranny of Nigerias federal government, which is mostly Christian in a nation where Muslims, nearly half of the population, have long complained about being marginalized. The militants rail against secular education and demand strict Islamic observance. The group has declared allegiance to the Islamic State.

But to their prisoners, the fighters campaign didnt seem driven by ideology so much as a wild appetite for sex and violence. It would take the rest of the world some time to learn about Boko Harams institutionalized sexual abuse. Rape wasnt just a byproduct of the chaos of war in Nigeria, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon would say in 2015. It was a calculated tactic of terror.

These people have a certain spiritual conviction that any child they father will grow to inherit their ideology, Kashim Shettima, the governor of Borno state  where Bama is located  told reporters last year.

At night, Hamsatu heard helicopters and gunshots. Several times, she attempted to escape, but she was caught and returned by guards. After a while, the pregnancy slowed her and she stopped trying.

When the Nigerian military came, it hardly felt to the women like a rescue operation. Soldiers burned the huts while women were still inside and shot wildly at everyone, they said. Several women were killed or disappeared during the operation, according to accounts from several former captives. Halima is now raising a 3-year-old orphan whose mother vanished during the rescue operation.

The women were loaded in pickup trucks and dumped on a desert road about 50 miles away, they said. Military interrogators arrived.

The women were searched for weapons. After months of being held by one of the worlds deadliest terrorist groups, the women realized: They were now suspects.

Sambisa woman

Sambisa woman  thats what they called Hamsatu and Halima when the women arrived at the Dalori displacement camp on the outskirts of the city of Maiduguri in April of last year. It was the name of the forest where they had been enslaved.

Hamsatu and Halima were taken to a tent they shared with two other women and the 3-year-old orphan  all of whom had been liberated from Boko Haram, as the military said. The women who had been forcibly married to fighters were kept apart from other people displaced by the war.

Unlike most of the worlds refugee or displacement camps, which are run by the United Nations and international aid groups, the camps where Boko Harams victims live are administered by the Nigerian military. Outside Dalori, an army captain stands by the front gate. Visitors are patted down. A poster of high-level Boko Haram suspects hangs on the perimeter wall of the camp. Aid workers need military permission to enter the camps.

Some women who lived under Boko Haram are occasionally hauled off to a military base for questioning, and then returned.

The fear is that theyve been converted to Boko Harams ideology, said Mohammed Ali Guja, the chairman of the city of Bama. They are now a different person.

The countrys displaced population has ballooned. As of March, there were 2.6 million internally displaced people, or IDPs, in northeastern Nigeria, according to the International Organization for Migration. Even local relief workers worry that the women they have been sent to help might be concealing loyalties to their Boko Haram abductors.

The simple truth is they pose a serious threat to the general public, said Ann Darman of the Gender Equality, Peace and Development Center, a Nigerian aid group that often works with the United Nations.

Last year, just as the liberated women were pouring into displacement camps and local communities, there was a surge in female suicide bombers. In June, one killed 20 people at a bus station in Maiduguri. A day later, two bombers killed 30 at a market in the city. In July, two more killed 13 people near a military checkpoint. In October, four girls and a boy targeted a mosque, killing 15. Witnesses said some of the attackers appeared to be no older than 9.

We think they have more or less brainwashed these children, said Maj. Gen. Lucky Irabor, the top Nigerian military official in the northeast. They have become useful tools for Boko Haram.

Amid the attacks, Hamsatu gave birth last June to the child of her rapist in the camps rundown clinic.

Her daughter made her an even greater target of scorn. In many Nigerian communities, people believe that the fathers blood courses through the veins of his child, so that at some point in the future they will be likely to turn against their own community, said Rachel Harvey, UNICEFs head of child protection in Nigeria.

One morning in mid-March, the women in the narrow white tent woke up on thin mats, each with one pair of clothes to wear. At 10, Halima walked across the scorching-hot sand to get breakfast: rice and beans donated by Nigerias government aid agency.

At the food-collection point, sometimes people inch away from her, she said, as if it would be dangerous to get too close.

It didnt seem to matter that she had been vetted by the Nigerian military. Or that she actually never wanted children and was now struggling to raise a 3-year-old and blamed Boko Haram each time the girl cried or soiled herself or asked where her real mom was.

Just a few weeks before, three female suicide bombers had blown themselves up in the nearby village of Dalori, part of an attack that killed 86 people, including children. The suspicion of Boko Harams victims only grew. In late March, a Nigerian girl was apprehended with explosives strapped to her body in Cameroon, near the Nigerian border. She set off a brief scandal when she said she was one of the Chibok girls, but Nigerian officials denied her claim.

Some worry that in a part of Nigeria that was once torn apart by a homegrown insurgency, another cleavage is forming, this one in the wake of war.

Subjecting the victims 3 to further discrimination and ill treatment due to their status as victims of Boko Haram violence is certain to undermine the entire response to the situation in the northeast, said Martin Ejidike, a prominent human rights adviser to the United Nations in Nigeria.

There are few signs that the situation will improve. Many international aid organizations wont work in the north because of the continued insecurity.

The government had opened a deradicalization center to help re-integrate the former victims, but it closed late last year, after admitting only 311 people. Officials at the national security advisers office did not return phone calls seeking an explanation for the closure.

In the camps, some of the women victimized by Boko Haram down bottles of homemade cough syrup to get deliriously high alone.

Once a week, Halima and Hamsatu attend group therapy sessions in a tent that says Safe Place for Women and Girls.

There they are known as the sisters because of how close theyve become. They gather in a circle on the floor with about a dozen other women. The counselor repeats a few lines during each meeting. Hamsatu and Halima wait quietly for them, wishing they were true.

What has gone has gone.

You are safe now.

You are secure now.
Washington, D.C.-based public affairs firm Dezenhall Resources Ltd. has appointed Josh Culling senior vice president.

Josh Culling

Culling, who previously served as vice president at the crisis management and public affairs firm, returns to Dezenhall, which he initially joined in 2013, following a stint with Toledo, OH-based marketing and advertising agency Communica Inc. Prior to joining Dezenhall, Culling was state government affairs manager at Washington, D.C.-based taxpayer advocacy organization Americans for Tax Reform, and also served as state government affairs manager at conservative taxpayer advocacy group the National Taxpayers Union.

As senior VP, Culling will now provide crisis communication counsel for Dezenhalls clients and will manage its portfolio of issues management clients.

Dezenhall has also appointed James Hewitt, another former Dezenhall staffer, to the role of senior director. Hewitt returns to Dezenhall after serving as the deputy press secretary for the Republican National Committee.
(L to R) Emily Eldridge, Adrian Patenaude & Liz Hilton contributed to this article.

Youre wrapping up a kick-off meeting with a client and your PR team, when suddenly you hear one of the C-suite team utter these cringe-worthy words: Lets do some social media, too.

Effective social media management is not as easy as it seems. It can be time consuming and requires a smart strategy to effectively engage audiences. Weve seen social media grow in importance among senior management over the last few years, there are still a lot of things we wish they knew about managing social accounts.

This is not a drill

At a recent Las Vegas industry conference, we had a conversation with the CMOs of two large banks. They spoke about the challenges marketing to younger consumers, which they referred to as the Battle of the Bank Millennials. They noted that the creation of social media was similar to the advent of the Internet in the ways in which it has revolutionized business, and that social media has single-handedly changed how these executives do their jobs.

Weve all come to realize in the last five or so years that social media isnt just a trend  its here to stay. Social has been an integral part of political elections, disaster relief efforts and social rights movements. Pew Research now finds that 63 percent of Facebook and Twitter users identified at least one of those platforms as their primary news sources. The way we communicate  and ultimately the way marketers reach audiences  has been permanently altered. As users turn toward these nontraditional outlets, companies must get creative.

Its not an afterthought

The only thing worse than no social media is bad social media. Our senior management team always discourages throwing social into a PR plan as a last-minute suggestion. Social media needs to be a recognizable priority; its vital for social media to be integrated into a whole campaign.

Even if the plan is to simply monitor current trends, you still need to think through the issues, topics and tone for your brand (for example, who the brand should be following and what trends should you be monitoring). Rather than tasking everyone with writing a few half-hearted posts, its best to assemble an elite social media #dreamteam. Take ownership of the companys digital presence. This is where senior managements insight is key.

The times, they are a-changin

The success rate of most social media platforms is low. Remember Xanga, Friendster and iTunes Ping? Yeah, neither do we. The social platforms that thrive today are the ones that have evolved with users demands. Facebook is notorious for constantly updating its features, most recently allowing users to react to their friends posts with different emotions. Even though these updates seem minor, its a way for Facebook to stay relevant and maintain users attention in this age of distraction.

We need senior management to understand that social media is constantly changing, so the best way to succeed with the medium is to change along with it. Brands have to be flexible, and social media managers need to be willing to adapt and experiment.

Here come the cool kids

As older generations begin embracing Facebook and Twitter, younger users are fleeing to newer platforms like Instagram and Snapchat. In the past year alone, Instagram has overtaken Twitter in monthly active users (~400 million vs. ~300 million) and Instagram users are 120 times more engaged with posts than on Twitter. These numbers should raise eyebrows in the boardroom. The fact of the matter is that Twitter is dying, and we dont know how to tell management that.

Snapchat, the newfangled app young people seem obsessed with today, is significantly underrated by many decision makers. This platform is all about capturing real-time experiences, and for anyone wanting to grab the attention of Millennials, this is the place to do it. Its no surprise that Snapchat has been heavily experimenting with its advertising potential, from sponsored videos embedded in hosted content on its Discover page to custom geofilters tailored for branded events.

Aint nobody got time for that

Social media is time-consuming. While we agree an organizational playbook or approval process is essential, it should be designed to provide quick feedback to team members so content doesnt go stale. Whether its sending a morning email detailing the days posts or simply texting your supervisor some content before you send it, do whatever works best so you dont let a good opportunity pass you by.

Of course, engaging with others is just as important as creating content. Retweeting, regramming, sharing or liking a post from another like-minded organization is a great way to speak for your brand.

Fear not

Weve noticed that older generations often approach social media with trepidation. And while their hesitation is grounded in reality  a sloppy tweet could, and definitely has, caused a legitimate PR crisis  we shouldnt let fear hold us back from engaging on social media. We need to learn how to relax; social media is supposed to be fun and friendly! And people respond more positively to brands that demonstrate a distinct personality and arent afraid to push the envelope.

Even if something does go wrong, its possible to make amends in a creative way, sometimes using humor to diffuse the situation. Believe it or not, the Internet can be a forgiving place if you fess up sincerely. In our fast-paced digital world, audiences will likely move on to the next controversy before you know it. Forgive and forget has never been more true.

It doesnt have to be confusing

Just like anything new, social media takes some getting used to. We all remember setting up MySpace accounts in 2004 and not really knowing how to crop the profile photo or change our Top 8. Before our 16th birthdays, we were pros.

The same goes for senior management today: you may not know what a Snapchat story is and you probably dont know if you look better in a Valencia or an X-Pro II filter, but you should know by now that social media matters and offers real investment returns when planned and executed correctly. So please, dont underestimate the power of investing in a talented social media team.

Social media can be intimidating. But jump in, ask questions, hire great talent and give it a try. Its all one big learning curve and to be honest, were still figuring it out too!



* * *

Emily Eldridge is an Account Executive at Crosswind Media & PR. Liz Hilton and Adrian Patenaude are Assistant Account Executives at Crosswind Media & PR.
The OECD Observer online archive takes you on a journey through half a century of public policy and world progress.

Since November 1962, the OECDs experts and leading guests offer insights on the questions facing our member countries with concise and authoritative analysis, and provide our audiences with an excellent opportunity to understand policy debates and consider solutions.

Each edition of the OECD Observer reports on a core theme of the OECDs on-going work, from economics and society through governance, finance, and the environment, and articles are bolstered by tables and graphs.
The Portarlington Group of Alcoholics Anonymous has issued an invitation to anyone interested in finding out a little bit more about Alcoholics Anonymous, to attend an open public meeting.

The Portarlington Group of Alcoholics Anonymous has issued an invitation to anyone interested in finding out a little bit more about Alcoholics Anonymous, to attend an open public meeting.

The meeting will be held at The Social Services Centre, (Old AA Meeting Place opposite the Swimming Pool) on Thursday, May 17 at 8.30pm.

Speakers will be present from both Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon. Also present on the night will be a guest speaker and the premier showing of Alcoholics Anonymous, The Road Back DVD(16 minutes duration).

Admittance is free and all members of the public are welcome to attend, particularly those who may be concerned about their own drinking or that of someone else in their lives. Light refreshments will be served.

The Portarlington Group of Alcoholics Anonymous continue to hold their regular closed meetings on Tuesday and Friday nights at 8.30pm, and on Sundays at noon, their closed (step) meeting. All take place in The Girls Catholic Club, Foxcroft Street, Portarlington.

For anyone interested in more information please contact Alcoholics Anonymous General Service Office on 01 8420700, email gsoalcoholicsanonymous.ie, on their website www.alcoholicsanonymous.ie or on their Leinster telephone service on 01 8527000.
RELATIVELY little has been written about the Quakers industrial activities in Ireland, yet they were instrumental in creating some of the countrys largest manufacturing businesses, including many with their origins in the Midlands. Now Michael Goodbody, a member of one those well-known and long-established Quaker families, has written a book that examines their role.

RELATIVELY little has been written about the Quakers industrial activities in Ireland, yet they were instrumental in creating some of the countrys largest manufacturing businesses, including many with their origins in the Midlands. Now Michael Goodbody, a member of one those well-known and long-established Quaker families, has written a book that examines their role.

His book, The Goodbodys  Millers, Merchants and Manufacturers  The Story of an Irish Quaker Family 1630-1950, is more than just a family history. It also looks at the role the Quakers played in the Irish economy. The book follows the fortunes of the family from the time of their arrival in Ireland and conversion to Quakerism, through the quiet years, when they were farmers, merchants and tanners, until 1825, when Robert Goodbody moved to Clara to start milling flour. He and his five sons, who were connected by marriage to some of the leading merchants and manufacturers of the day, used their increasing wealth to alleviate distress during the Famine years and then developed their business interests in Tullamore and Clara.

The Goodbodys were among the first Quaker families to settle in Mountmellick, one of the principal Quaker communities in Ireland at the time, and they remained there for eight generations. Here they intermarried with other well-known families such as the Bewleys and the Pims, who started factories for the manufacture of woollen and cotton goods.

The Goodbodys industrial activities in Clara created considerable employment and resulted in it being one of the few towns to increase its population between the Famine and Irish independence. In 1860, the family provided lighting for the residents of Clara when they built the gas works, and, four years later, they started a major jute factory. By the early 1900s, this forward-looking family had organised a motor conference at Clara to encourage the improvement of roads and were among of the principal backers of Marconi when he was developing radio.

Members of the Goodbody family were also in business in Tullamore, where they started a general store in 1837, a tobacco factory in 1848 and an animal feed manufacturing business in 1892, as well as being involved in local infrastructure improvements.

Michael Goodbody writes: The Quaker movement was founded by George Fox during the troubled Commonwealth period of the 1650s. The first converts, many of whom spent long periods in prison for refusing to pay tithes, eventually overcame initial persecution by the authorities and then devoted themselves to a simple life upholding Christian principles of honesty and the treatment of all of their fellow human beings as equals. This trait they put to good use in their business affairs, where they gained a reputation for integrity and reliability. At a later date they devoted their energies to the abolition of slavery, prison reform and famine relief.

Michael Goodbody was born in Co. Wicklow and educated in Ireland. He moved to London in 1962 to take up a career in the City. Married with three children, he now lives in Essex. At an early age he developed an interest in Irish Quaker families and their social and business relationships. This book about his family and others connected with it is the result of these years of research.

He says of his book: The Goodbody story is not just an account of a successful family; it also follows the fortunes of those who fell on hard times. In some instances these individuals found themselves sharing the fate of the millions of nineteenth-century Irish emigrants who endured enormous hardships in an attempt to find a better life in the textile factories of England or on the other side of the Atlantic.

The Goodbodys  Millers, Merchants and Manufacturers  The Story of an Irish Quaker Family 1630-1950 by Michael Goodbody is published by Ashfield Press, price 40. It is available through the offices of the Offaly Historical and Archaeological Society (info@offalyhistory.com) and local bookshops, as well as from www.ashfieldpress.ie. The book includes photographs dating back to the late 1800s and paintings and illustrations from even earlier.
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Insurance officials still are investigating the cause of a fire that caused an estimated $1.4 million in damage in Nebraska Furniture Marts flooring warehouse Sunday.

The flooring center remained closed Monday, but the retailer is operating normally otherwise.

The fire involved boxes of laminate flooring and as a result was quite smoky, retired Furniture Mart executive Bob Batt said.

While the Omaha Fire Department has estimated damage at $1.4 million, insurance adjusters will assess what is damaged by smoke and what is not, said regional marketing manager Rebecca Ritterbush.

Were still really under that investigation period of figuring out the cause and getting insurance companies in here to assess and look at the damage, Ritterbush said.

Omaha firefighters were called to the stores carpet and flooring warehouse at 402 Rose Blumkin Drive at 7:24 a.m. The fire was under control at 8:22 a.m., according to the Fire Department. There were no injuries.
Late actor Puneeth Rajkumar to be conferred with 'Karnataka Ratna' award on Nov 1

Karnataka to strengthen ATS and up the number of prisons

Suffering from back pain, Karnataka Excise Minister demands luxury SUV for travel

Bengaluru

oi-Shalini

Bengaluru, April 4: After massive controversy over Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah's expensive watch, now Karnataka's Excise Minister Manohar Tahsildar has landed in a row over alleged allotment of an expensive luxury car.

Reports claim that the minister has been allotted a Fortuner car because he is suffering from back pain, but the move is in gross violation of the government's existing rule, which prohibits ministers from using expensive luxury vehicles.

As per Karnataka Government norms, an official cannot own a car more than worth Rs 13 lakh. While, the Fortuner allotted to Manohar Tahsildar, by the government, costs Rs 25 lakh.

Tahsildar had reportedly requested government to provide Toyota Fortuner in place of Toyota Innova, which he currently uses. The Siddaramaiah government accepted his request.

After being asked about the new luxury car Tahsildar was quoted as saying, "I have to travel from Bengaluru to my constituency in Hanagal, Haveri district, which is 300 kms away from the state capital. Due to long travel hours I have developed back pain problems."

"That is the main reason behind requesting the government for new car," he concluded.

However, there is no reaction from Chief Minister's Office over this issue.

OneIndia News
Narendra Modi to Launch Stand up India Scheme

Feature

oi-Lisa

By Lisa

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be launching the "Stand up India scheme" and a Web portal for the scheme tomorrow at Sector 62, NOIDA. The event will be attended by Governor of UP, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Union Minister for Culture and Tourism Dr. Mahesh Sharma and Union Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha among others.

The "Stand up India Scheme" is being launched now to promote entrepreneurship among Scheduled Caste/Schedule Tribe and Women for loans in the range of Rs. 10 Lakhs to Rs. 100 Lakhs.

The Scheme is expected to benefit large number of such entrepreneurs, as it is intended to facilitate at least two such projects per bank branch (Scheduled Commercial Bank) on an average one for each category of entrepreneur.

Features of the Stand Up India scheme:

1. Composite loan between Rs. 10 lakh and upto Rs.100 lakh, inclusive of working capital component for setting up any new enterprise.

2. Debit Card (RuPay) for drawal of working capital.

3. Credit history of borrower to be developed.

4. Refinance window through Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) with an initial amount of Rs.10,000 crore.

5. Creation of a corpus of Rs. 5,000 crore for credit guarantee through NCGTC.

6. Handholding support for borrowers with comprehensive support for pre loan training needs, facilitating loan, factoring, marketing etc.

7. Web Portal for online registration and support services.

The overall intent of the proposal is to leverage the institutional credit structure to reach out to these underserved sectors of the population by facilitating bank loans in the non-farm sector set up by such SC, ST and Women borrowers. The initiative will also develop synergies with ongoing schemes of other Departments.

The process would be led by SIDBI with involvement of Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DICCI) and various sector - specific institutions all over the country. The offices of SIDBI and National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) shall be designated Stand Up Connect Centres (SUCC).

The launch event would involve distribution of 5100 E-Rickshaws by Bhartiya Micro Credit (BMC) under the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojna scheme.

In addition the recipients will also be covered under Pradhan Matri Jan Dhan Yojna, Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Yojana, Pradhan Mantri Jivan Jyoti Yojana, Atal Pension Yojana schemes and other eight significant Prime Minister schemes.

Bhartiya Micro Credit:

"Bhartiya Micro Credit (BMC) aims to spread awareness of the financial inclusion and social security schemes and proposes to take the benefits to poor and destitute people in the country. The idea is to facilitate the up gradation of pedal rickshaw pullers into E Rickshaw owners and help create threefold increment in their income. Credit for all these facilities are being provided under Mudra Scheme. The progression to E rickshaw from pedal rickshaw will also help contribute towards achieving the goals of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. Sach hua Sapna, Rickshaw hua apna!", shared Vijay Pandey, Managing Director, Bhartiya Micro Credit.

As the first step of this process the pedal rickshaw pullers are provided training post which certificate is provided by NSDC. 150 women drivers have been trained. In addition the customers will also be able to book E Rickshaw through Ola mobile apps and make online payment via Freecharge, which will be integrated under the Digital India initiative.

Under the scheme, charging and service station will also be set up, which will help the growth of emergence of small and micro enterprises along with creating many opportunities for entrepreneurs. This organically integrates Bhartiya Micro Credit (BMC) E-Rickshaws program into Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi flagship 'Stand Up India' initiative.

History:

The Prime Minister on 15th August 2014 launched the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) for "Banking the Unbanked".

As is well known, it met with resounding success as more than 21.3 crore accounts have been opened.

Further, Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana (PMMY) was launched by the PM for "Funding the Unfunded" by facilitating loans upto Rs. 10 lakh on 8th April, 2015.

As on date, over Rs. 1.22 Lakh crore have been disbursed wherein over 57.75 lakh Scheduled Castes, 15.15 lakh Scheduled Tribes and 2.52 crore women entrepreneurs have been benefited under this scheme.

To intensify this inclusive growth, the PM in his address to the nation on 15th Aug, 2015 had announced the "Start-up India Stand-up India" initiative.

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Story first published: Monday, April 4, 2016, 9:53 [IST]
EPS, his supporters detained for trying to hold hunger strike in TN assembly

Tamil Nadu: Light to moderate rain in the next few days

Interview: Tamil Nadu verdict will surprise pollsters, says BJP spokesperson G V L Narasimha Rao

Feature

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

Tamil Nadu has been a state which is known to throw up a lot of surprises. Many feel that the results this time around too would throw up a surprise and no party would be able to form a government without the help of the smaller parties.

The BJP hopes that it would be a player in the formation of the government.

It is a fact that out of the all the state that go to polls, the BJP has the highest presence on the social media where Tamil Nadu is concerned.

This time around the Tamil Nadu elections will be used as a stepping stone for the BJP for the future says, the party's spokesperson, G V L Narasimha Rao. In this interview with OneIndia, Rao says that currently the party is focusing heavily on 70 urban seats in the state and hopes to make a difference.

Was an alliance with the AIDMK a reality at any time?

I do not think there were any serious discussions on this front.

The BJP has a huge social media presence in Tamil Nadu. Does this help?

Off all the states the BJP has the highest social media presence in Tamil Nadu. Somehow Tamil Nadu vibes very well with the BJP where the social media is concerned.

We feel that the social media will help the BJP reach out to the younger and the first time voter in Tamil Nadu. We hope that this would translate over a time into a widened support base.

Are there any winnable seats for the BJP in Tamil Nadu?



The party has identified 70 odd urban seats and we are trying to convert them into winnable seats. I think a concentrated effort would be made in those seats.

Our endeavour would be to widen our vote share and focus on seats where we have a realistic or some chance of winning or being a player in the event of hung assembly.

How does the BJP see its prospects in Tamil Nadu?

This election would be a stepping stone for the future for sure. Many in Tamil Nadu feel alienated from Dravidian politics. The BJP would try and emerge as the conscience keeper in Tamil Nadu.

The DMK- Congress is highly discredited while the AIDMK too faces the same issue due to corruption. The BJP will look to clean up the mess in Tamil Nadu.

Who will win Tamil Nadu?

I do not want to make any predictions. But I would want to say that Tamil Nadu will throw up a surprise. In case of a hung verdict the smaller players will become important.

Tamil Nadu has in the past too surprised the media and pollsters.

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Story first published: Monday, April 4, 2016, 14:10 [IST]
Assam Direct Recruitment: SLRC Grade 3 and Grade 4 results out; How to check

4 held in Assam for suspected links with Bangladesh's terror outfit

Heroin worth Rs 20 crore seized and 2 peddlers arrested in Assam

Assam hikes DA of home guards from Rs 300 to Rs 767

Assam govt to award meritorious students with over 35,000 scooters

Assam poll Updates: 70% polling recorded in 1st phase

Guwahati

oi-Sandra

Guwahati, Apr 4: First phase of Assembly polls began in Assam today for 65 constituencies. Preparations were in full swing ahead of the first phase of polling. Polling began at 7 am. 539 candidates are in the fray in today's polling.

Opinion poll 2016: BJP alliance to get 2 seats more than Congress's 53 in Assam

In Assam, 112 crorepati candidates in the fray

Assembly Elections 2016: Know your state-- Assam

Assam Assembly Elections 2016: Know your leader Profile- Tarun Gogoi

Get all the live updates on Assam Assembly elections here:

7.00 pm: Assam poll percentage at 5 PM was 70%, more reports are trickling in: ECI.

4.20 pm: Assam records 75% voter-turnout as of 4 pm in the first phase of polls.

3.51 pm: 67 percentage polling recorded in Assam till 3 pm.

3.50 pm: Brisk voting reported in Assam for the first phase of assembly polls as people queue up outside polling stations

Karbi Anglong (Assam): Voting for the first phase of #Assampolls underway, people queue up to cast their votes. pic.twitter.com/GZiuj2cs1F  ANI (@ANI_news) April 4, 2016

3.45 pm: People in Assam want development. Sure that results will be good as we(BJP) believe in development

People in Assam want development.Sure that results will be good as we(BJP) believe in development:Sarbananda Sonowal pic.twitter.com/zvKrtGbCZg  ANI (@ANI_news) April 4, 2016

3.37 pm: BJP's chief ministerial candidate in Assam Sarbananda Sonowal casts his vote

Dibrugarh (Assam): BJP's chief ministerial candidate in Assam Sarbananda Sonowal casts his vote pic.twitter.com/lU2iscGdgs  ANI (@ANI_news) April 4, 2016

3.00 pm: An estimated 51 per cent polling was recorded till 2 pm.

1.42 pm: Assam records 45% voter-turnout as of 12:30 pm.

12.47 pm: Heavy voter turnout till noon in Assam.

11.58 am: An updated figure shows 23 percentage voter turnout till 11 am in Assam.

11.32 am: 19% voter turnout recorded till 11 am in Assam.

10.45 am: Voting for the first phase of Assam polls underway. People are seen queuing up to cast their vote in Bokakhat

Bokakhat(Golaghat): Voting for the first phase of #Assampolls underway, people queue up to cast their vote. pic.twitter.com/udhH8VX7TT  ANI (@ANI_news) April 4, 2016

9.50 am: 12% voter turnout recorded till 9 am in Assam.

9.24 am: Several polling stations were inundated due to heavy overnight rain in parts of Assam's Barak Valley.

9.17 am: We'll have to take all possible measures to develop Majuli (Assam) and make it visible in map of world: Sarbananda Sonowal.

9.10 am: Differently abled person casts his vote at a polling booth in Karbi Anglong in Assam

Karbi Anglong: Differently abled person casts his vote at a polling booth #Assampolls pic.twitter.com/A6SEgkp7IT  ANI (@ANI_news) April 4, 2016

8.47 am: Tarun Gogoi after casting his vote, sounded confident and said 'I will be the Chief Minister'

Jorhat: Tarun Gogoi casts his vote, says 'I will be the Chief Minister' #Assampolls pic.twitter.com/ZIsUI4jPsE  ANI (@ANI_news) April 4, 2016

8.32 am: Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi casts his vote

8.23 am: Tarun Gogoi arrives at a polling booth to cast his vote.

#Visuals from Jorhat: Tarun Gogoi arrives at a polling booth to cast his vote. pic.twitter.com/9irj90ROKz  ANI (@ANI_news) April 4, 2016

8.20 am: BJP's chief ministerial candidate in Assam Sarbananda Sonowal offers prayers at a temple in Majuli

BJP's chief ministerial candidate in Assam Sarbananda Sonowal offers prayers at a temple in Majuli #Assampolls pic.twitter.com/sGqI4gXBU1  ANI (@ANI_news) April 4, 2016

8.05 am: People queue up to cast their vote at a polling booth in Jorhat

Voting for the first phase of #Assampolls underway,people queue up to cast their vote at a polling booth in Jorhat pic.twitter.com/CpY8aPmCj6  ANI (@ANI_news) April 4, 2016

7.44 am: Voting for first phase of Assam polls underway in Kaziranga under tight security.

7.23 am: Prime Minister Narendra Modi encourages all voters to cast their votes in Assam and West Bengal today.

Urging all those voting in West Bengal & Assam today to vote in large numbers. Young friends in particular must exercise their franchise.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) April 4, 2016

7.20 am: People cast their votes at a polling booth in Assam.

Diphu: Voting for first phase of #Assampolls underway, people cast their votes at a polling booth in Assam. pic.twitter.com/DV25YDH59F  ANI (@ANI_news) April 4, 2016

7.05 am: Voting begins for first phase of Assembly polls in Assam for 65 constituencies

#Visuals from Diphu(Karbi Anglong): Voting begins for first phase of Assembly polls in Assam for 65 constituencies. pic.twitter.com/84kYrt9IZO  ANI (@ANI_news) April 4, 2016

7.00 am: Phase 1 polling begins in Assam.

6.55 am: People wait in long queues outside a polling booth in Diphu, Assam

Voting to begin shortly for first phase of #Assampolls: People wait in long queues outside a polling booth in Diphu pic.twitter.com/Pl52b1tbmB  ANI (@ANI_news) April 4, 2016

6.45 am: Preparations underway for the first phase of polling in Assam

OneIndia News
Abducted Indian priest safe in Yemen, says Sushma Swaraj

India

oi-Sandra

New Delhi, Apr 3: An Indian priest who was abducted by militants in Aden, Syria is safe, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has said.

Swaraj informed The Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI) that Father Tom Uzhunnallil was safe and that all efforts were being made to secure his release.

Sushma asks twitterati to 'reply' to Manish Tewari on Indian priest

"Sushma Swaraj has categorically assured the delegation that Fr Tom Uzhunnallil is safe and that the government is adopting all possible means for the quick and safe release of Father Tom," said a CBCI statement.

However the minister did not reveal any further details.

CBCI also said that rumours about Uzhunnallil being crucified were false. Earlier there were several reports indicating that Uzhunnallil was crucified on Good Friday by ISIS militants. However there was no official confirmation by Yemeni officials or Indian authorities.

Militants attacked the Missionaries of Charity's home for the aged in Aden on March 4 where an Indian nurse was killed.

16 people were killed in the attack when terrorists stormed the old age home and sprayed bullets at the residents.

The militants, believed to be affiliated to ISIS abducted Uzhunnallil on that day and whereabouts of him are unknown since then.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Monday, April 4, 2016, 7:57 [IST]
Truth has come out, says Sasikala in reaction to OPS's remark before panel

Jayalalithaa death probe: TN cabinet to decide on enquiry against Sasikala and others

Never interfered in medical treatment of Jayalalithaa: Sasikala denies all allegations levelled by panel

DA case- Jayalalithaa's counsel to begin arguments tomorrow

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

Bengaluru, April 4: Senior counsel Nageshwar Rao will commence arguments on behalf of Tamil Nadu chief minister, J Jayalalithaa tomorrow in the Supreme Court.

The last leg of the hearing on the appeal in the Supreme Court would commence tomorrow and conclude with Karnataka filing its reply.

Rao is expected to argue for at least 3 days before the Bench comprising Justices P C Ghose and Amitava Roy.

Also Read: After Jayalalithaa's submission in DA case, Karnataka to submit a quick reply

During his submissions, he would demonstrate before the Bench why the order of the Karnataka High Court which had acquitted his client and three others was right.

Reply to Karnataka:

Rao's arguments before the Bench would focus more on how the trial court was wrong in convicting Jayalalithaa and three others.

He would also make counter submissions to what Karnataka had told the Supreme Court. He would also file a point to point counter to what Karnataka had argued while seeking a reversal of the High Court order.

It is however still not clear if Rao would bring up the issue of locus standi before the Supreme Court. After Karnataka had filed the appeal, Jayalalithaa had questioned the state's right in filing the appeal.

Karnataka however contended that it was the prosecuting agency and only it had the right to go in appeal before the Supreme Court.

Also Read: Jayalalithaa DA case: DMK leader told to file written arguments

Karnataka also does not expect much time to be spent on the petition filed by an advocate questioning the locus standi of either the Supreme Court or the High Court in hearing this case.

The officer said that if this was to be taken up seriously then it would have been taken up first. There is no point in hearing all the parties and then deciding on the locus standi of the court.

If the Bench had been convinced about this point then they would have taken up that case first instead allowing all the parties to argue, the officer also informed.

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Story first published: Monday, April 4, 2016, 9:35 [IST]
Foodgrains under NFSA to be free if NDA wins in UP: Paswan

India

oi-PTI

Varanasi, April 3: Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan on Monday, April 4 said if NDA forms government in Uttar Pradesh, foodgrains under National Food Security Act (NFSA) would be provided for free.

The LJP chief said if NDA, in which his party is also an ally, comes to power in the state following 2017 election, they would provide subsidy and bear the expense.

The Samajwadi Party-led government implemented NFSA in UP from April 1, under which the beneficiaries are being provided wheat at Rs 2 per kg and rice at Rs 3 per kg.

Tamil Nadu government is providing foodgrains under NFSA for free, Paswan said, adding that he would initiate an inquiry into whether all the norms are being followed by UP government for implementing the scheme. He also asked states to take action against hoarders to check prices of commodities.

Accusing SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and BSP supremo Mayawati of doing caste based politics, Paswan said Dalits must understand she is only fooling them and appealed people to support LJP-BJP and its alliance partners in the Assembly polls slated next year. He also blamed the SP government for "deteriorating" law and order situation in the state.

Asked about Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar launching their campaign from Varanasi, Paswan said, "their campaign would be ineffective as people have come to understand that Nitish, who held Lalu responsible for 'Jungle Raj' in Bihar, shook hand to form government."

Ram Vilas Paswan, his son Chirag Paswan and other party leaders are in the city to attend the three-day 'Samaajik Nyay Shivir', organised by his party and Dalit Sena which began yesterday at Sarnath.

PTI
Kaba Imam says Muslims in India living in harmony with others

India

oi-PTI

Lucknow, Apr 4: The Imam of Kaba shrine in Mecca, who is on a visit to India, has condemned acts of terrorism around the world and said that Muslims in the country are living with love and harmony with other communities.

Amid an intolerance debate, Imam Sheikh Saleh Bin Mohammad Bin Ibrahim Aal-e-Talib expressed his views while speaking at an international seminar on "Islam and World Peace" here last night.

"It is a matter of happiness that second highest population of Muslims is in India. Here Muslims are living with people of other religious communities with love and harmony," the Saudi Imam said. Expressing concern over recent terror attacks in different parts of the world including Brussels, he said innocent people are being killed in the name of religion.

"The entire world is suffering from terrorism. In Holy Quran Allah has said if a person kills an innocent, it is like he has killed all humans," he said while condemning terrorism in the name of religion.

Presiding over the conference, President of All India Muslim Personal Law Board, Maulana Syyed Mohammad Rabe Hasani Nadwi said Islam was totally against terrorism and persons involved in such activities.

Nadwi said Saudi Arabia had good relations with India since ancient times and added that Ulama of that country have close relations with Nadwa (Islamic institution in Lucknow), while referring to former head Maulana Ali Miyan.

PTI
Khattar promotes Odia language, calls Odisha 'soul of India'

India

oi-PTI

Gurgaon, Apr 3: Haryana Chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar today praised the people of Odisha calling them "hard-working" and launched a mobile application for the Odia population in the NCR through which they can connect with each other.

Khattar spoke at the 'Pravasi Odia Utsav' organised by Kalinga Bharti Foundation in association with Pravasi Odia organising committee in Om Shanti Retreat Centre, Bhora Kalan here.

Applauding the skilled people from Odisha who work Haryana, Khattar said, "unhone Haryana ki pragati me yogdaan diya hai (They have contributed in the development of Haryana)."

He also announced that the Haryana government is soon going to open the first Efficiency Development College in the state for skill upgradation. The Chief minister also spoke in Odia language during his address at the event in which people hailing from Odisha and residing in NCR-- Gurgaon, Faridabad, Noida, Ghaziabad-- participated.

Union Minister Dharmender Pradhan later made a reference to Khattar's address in Odia language and said," the Haryana Chief Minister speaking in Odia, what else can be a better example of cultural exchange than this?."

Drawing similarities between Haryana and Odisha, Khattar said the war of Mahabharta was fought in Haryana where in Lord Krishna gave the eternal message of Gita to the mankind which teaches us the way to live life while war of Kalinga was fought in Odisha which changed the heart of King Ashoka and he adopted Buddhism.

"Odisha is called the soul of India. It is known for its culture and heritage," he said. Governor of Odisha, Dr S C Jamir, who was also present at the event, said the Odia Utsav gives opportunity for introspection that how much has the state progressed after it came into existence.

He hoped that Odisha and Haryana will further work together in service sector. Pradhan, who also hails from Odisha, said that for people present here Odisha is their 'Janambhoomi' (birth place) but Haryana has become their Karmbhoomi and he can assure that the Odia people will work more hard and contribute in the progress of Haryana as well as the nation.

He said that a temple of Lord Jagannath has been constructed in Faridabad of Haryana which is perhaps the biggest Jagannath temple in the country. Pradhan said that the Odia people think more in "scientific way", that is the reason the Sun Temple in Konark constructed at the sea shore hundreds of years ago, still stood magnificently without any sign of damage on its walls.

PTI
PM Narendra Modi returns home after three-nation tour

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Apr 4: Prime Minister Narendra Modi returned home on Monday after wrapping up his final-leg of five-day three-nation tour of Belgium, the US and Saudi Arabia.

The Prime Minister had arrived in Riyadh on Sunday from Washington and he held wide-ranging talks with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud during which they agreed to strengthen cooperation in combating terrorism.

Delhi: PM Modi arrives in India after concluding his three nation tour pic.twitter.com/qbdUZTcZmZ  ANI (@ANI_news) April 3, 2016

"Thank you Saudi Arabia. Joined several programmes during my visit, which will deepen economic & people-to-people ties between our nations," Modi tweeted both in Arabic and English before departing for New Delhi.

The Prime Minister's first stop was Brussels where he attended the long-delayed India-EU summit and held talks with Belgium counterpart Charles Michel on March 30. From Brussels Modi went to Washington where he attended the Nuclear Security Summit on March 31 and April 1.

PTI
International news brief: Pak's ex-PM Imran Khan's helicopter makes emergency landing & more

International news brief: UN ponders rapid armed force to help end Haiti's crisis and more

International news brief: Russia is tearing at the very foundations of international peace Biden after UN vote

International news brief: Suspect in US Sikh family murder pleads not guilty; N. Korea fires missile and more

International news brief: UK PM Liz Truss may be ousted by October 24

International news brief: Confident of Pak's commitment, ability to secure its nuclear assets, says US & more

News Flash: IED blast near police station in Assam

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

New Delhi, April 4: Get the latest national and international updates here:

12.19 pm: Petrol price hiked by Rs 2.19 per litre, diesel by 00.98 paise per litre.

8.54 pm: IAF personnel injured by a leopard on 30th March at Hasimara airbase, leopard caught earlier this morning then released into its habitat.

8.34 pm: LPG cylinder blast in a shop on Hamidia Road (Bhopal) causing a fire to break out; three people injured, taken to hospital.

8.32 pm: Explosive was inside a dust bin. Injured are being taken to the Govt Hospital in the area.

8.30 pm: IED blast near a police station in Dhudhnoi, Goalpara district (Assam); 1 dead, 3 policemen & 20 other injured.

8.17 pm: The truth is out, and i have finally got justice, says Amit Jogi on Judeo tape case

7.59 pm: Assam: BSF in a joint operation with Kokrajhar police recover 3 country made guns from Tipkai forest area.

7.58 pm: Waqar Younis has resigned as Pakistan's head cricket coach: Pak Media.

7.30 pm: Three people injured after a cylinder blast in a shop in Bhopal's Hamidia road

7.00 pm: 30 new specially trained dogs inducted into Delhi Police dog squad. Of the 30 dogs inducted, 20 are tracker dogs and 10 are explosive experts, says Taj Hasan,Special CP(crime), Delhi Police.

6.30 pm: WB poll percentage at 5 PM was 80%, again here as well more reports are coming in, says ECI.

6.29 pm: Seems to be lack of understanding of India's defence posture. Conventionally,India never initiated military action against any neighbour, says MEA.

6.00 pm: We reject constitution of a multi-departmental committee by FM as a shoddy attempt to brush aside this revelation, says R Surjewala on panama papers row.

5.40 pm: BJP seems to have a smile on their face but are uneasy inside, like they are hiding something, says RS Surjewala.

5.38 pm: Voting for assembly election closed in Purulia (West Bengal).

5:37 pm: Cong demands that PM and BJP order time-bound inquiry, refer matter to SC bench already examining black momey case, says RS Surjewala on panama papers row.

5:22 pm: Solar scam: Kerala high court dismisses Saritha's plea for CBI probe.

4:41 pm: All 47 convicted policemen sentenced to life imprisonment by Special CBI Court in 1991 Pilibhit Fake encounter case.

4:10 pm: Whichever accounts are found unlawful, strict action will be taken against them: FM Jaitley on Panama papers.

3:56 pm: Priyanka Chopra's mother slams Prakash Jaju for daughter's suicide claim.

3:36 pm: Aadhar linked banked accounts increased to 25.48 crores: Ravi Shankar Prasad.

3.15 pm: Nitish Kumar to be next JDU chief: Sources

3.00 pm: More than 300 villagers boycott Assembly Elections' polling in Purulia, West Bengal.

2.50 pm: Court imposes a fine of Rs 5 lakh each against the convict and imposes a fine of Rs 25 lakh against the company, JIPL.

2.45 pm: Namdhari community leader Chand Kaur who was shot at by unidentified gunmen in Ludhiana (Punjab), succumbs to injuries.

2.30 pm: Centre files its reply in Uttarakhand High Court

2.20 pm: DU professor GN SaiBaba was arrested in 2014 for alleged links with Maoists.

2.16 pm: Supreme Court asked Centre whether AMU is bound to follow UGC regulations or not. Hearing after four weeks.

2.13 pm: Supreme Court grants bail to DU Professor Saibaba in a sedition case.

2.10 pm: Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi tells SC that govt has taken a stand now that AMU is not a minority institution.

2.00 pm: My advise is simple, follow Mufti Sahab's agenda which has been finalised by both parties, says Venkaiah Naidu on J&K govt.

1.50 pm: Police only became active when some of our relatives came and shouted slogans, says Rageeb Ahmed, Brother of NIA officer Mohammad Tanzil.

1.45 pm: Namdhari community leader Chand Kaur shot at by unidentified gunmen in Ludhiana.

1.30 pm: SC asks DDCA to respond if they are ready to pay fine of Rs 1 cr for unauthorised structured while hearing its petition agnst Delhi HC order.

1.15 pm: We are investigating all possible angle in killing of NIA officer Mohammad Tanzil in Bijnor including terror, says NIA IG, Sanjeev Kumar.

1.00 pm: Police only became active when some of our relatives came and shouted slogans, says Rageeb Ahmed, Brother of NIA officer Mohammad Tanzil

12.51 pm: Namdhari community leader Chand Kaur shot at by unidentified gunmen in Ludhiana,admitted to hospital in a critical condition.

12.45 pm: SC was hearing DDCA's petition against Delhi HC order dismissing its application for restoration of plea for NOC frm MCD fr Feroz Shah Kotla.

12.35 pm: AIADMK will contest in 227 constituencies and 7 will be allocated for alliance partners, says Tamil Nadu CM J Jayalalithaa.

12.20 pm: Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad congratulates Mehbooba Mufti for assuming the office of Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir.

12.10 pm: Delhi High Court adjourns hearing of CBI plea against Himachal Pradesh HC order for tomorrow.

12.00 pm: National anthem after swearing in ceremony of Mehbooba Mufti as the first woman CM of Jammu and Kashmir.

11.50 am: BJP MLA Priya Sethi takes oath as a minister in J&K Govt.

11.38 am: 1 police personnel and a civilian injured in an IED blast in Kanker (Chhattisgarh), injured police personnel taken to hospital.

11.35 am: Governor NN Vohra administers oath of PDP leader Syed Naeem Akhtar Andrabi as a minister in J&K govt

11.34 am: Governor NN Vohra administers oath of Chhering Dorje as a minister in J&K.

11.33 am: People's Conference leader Sajjad Lone takes oath as a minister in J&K Govt.

11.31 am: Governor NN Vohra administers oath of Chhering Dorje as a minister in J&K.

11.30 am: Haseeb Drabu takes oath as a minister in J&K Govt.

11.25 am: PDP's Syed Basharat Ahmed Bukhari takes oath in Koshur language as a minister in J&K Govt.

11.20 am: BJP leader Chaudhary Lal Singh takes oath in Dogri language as a minister in J&K Govt.

11.15 am: Chaudhary Lal Singh takes oath as a minister in J&K government in Dogri.

11.13 am: PDP's Abdul Haq Khan takes oath as a minister in J&K government.

11.10 am: BJP leader Nirmal Singh sworn in by Governor NN Vohra at Raj Bhawan.

11.07 am: BJP MLA Bali Bhagat takes oath as a minister in J&K government.

11.05 am: PDP leader Ghulam Nabi Lone takes oath as Minister of state, by Governor NN Vohra

11.00 am: Mehbooba Mufti sworn in as Jammu & Kashmir's first woman chief minister.

10.15 am: Amidst global slow down, we are moving and we are moving fast, says Finance Minister Arun Jaitley at inauguration of CII annual session.

10.10 am: J&K Governor NN Vohra inspects the arrangements at Raj Bhawan for Mehbooba Mufti's oath taking ceremony.

10.00 am: Preparations underway at Raj Bhawan where Mehbooba Mufti will be taking oath as the first woman CM of Jammu and Kashmir.

9.42 am: Avinash Rai, Omar Abdullah and Farooq Abdullah will also attend the oath taking ceremony of Mehbooba Mufti.

9.35 am: MoS PMO Jitendra Singh,Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu, Harsimrat Kaur Badal,BJP's Ram Madhav to attend oath taking ceremony of Mehbooba Mufti.

9.25 am: Congress-DMK Seat Sharing talks in Chennai: Congress to contest on 41 seats in the forthcoming Tamil Nadu Assembly polls.

9.10 am: Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad arrives at DMK Chief Karunanidhi's residence for seat-sharing talks.

9.00 am: It's responsibility of all pol parties to accept mandate of people and offer cooperation in smooth running, says Jitendra Singh.

8:58 am: Tarun Gogoi casts his vote, says 'I will be the Chief Minister'.

8:55 am: BJP's chief ministerial candidate in Assam Sarbananda Sonowal offers prayers at a temple in Majuli.

8:50 am: Voting for 1st phase of West Bengal polls underway, people queue up to cast their votes.

Voting for the first phase of #Assampolls underway,people queue up to cast their vote at a polling booth in Jorhat pic.twitter.com/CpY8aPmCj6  ANI (@ANI_news) April 4, 2016

#Visuals from Diphu(Karbi Anglong): Voting begins for first phase of Assembly polls in Assam for 65 constituencies. pic.twitter.com/84kYrt9IZO  ANI (@ANI_news) April 4, 2016

8:48 am: Mehbooba Mufti to be sworn in as J-K Chief minister today.

8:00 am: Peaceful voting begins in Assam and West Bengal

OneIndia News
NIA officer's murder: A killing planned well in advance

India

oi-Vicky

Lucknow, Apr 4: Mohammad Tanzil Ahmed, the NIA officer who was shot dead in Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh yesterday could have made several enemies as a major part of his job involved trailing of Indian Mujahideen operatives.

The preliminary investigations suggest that the murder was a well planned one and his assailants had been tracking him for several hours before the incident.

NIA officer shot dead in Uttar Pradesh

NIA officer's death may not be due to personal rivalry: Sources

The assailants were equipped with sophisticated weapons and they knew his exact movements which is why it can be said for now that the attack was a well planned one.

Whether the incident is connected to his investigations being conducted into the modules of the Indian Mujahideen or not is too early to tell, but it is an angle investigators are exploring with all seriousness.

Well planned attack

Two men on a motor cycle waylaid the officer's car and pumped 21 bullets into him. He was declared brought dead at the hospital. His wife too sustained injuries and has been admitted to hospital.

However his children escaped. The officer who was a Deputy Superintendent of Police in the NIA was in Bijnor to attend a family function.

He along with his family left their home at around 8 pm on Saturday to attend the function. After the function at around 12.45 AM on Sunday his car was waylaid around 300 metres away from his house.

Going by the manner in which the incident took place, it was clear that the assailants were tracking him since 8 pm. They waylaid his car at a spot where there were no people around.

The two unidentified men had used a 9mm pistol. It appears to be a sophisticated weapon said an investigating officer while adding that more details would emerge once the ballistic report is out.

Mourning a brave officer



The officer who was posted as an assistant commander in the BSF was brought to the NIA on deputation in February 2009. He was initially part of the intelligence wing of the NIA, but later moved to investigations. He has been part of several high profile probes especially those concerning the Indian Mujahideen.

He was also part of the delegation which coordinated with the Pakistan's Joint Investigation Team which visited India recently to probe the Pathankot attack. His colleagues have termed his death an irreparable loss.

An upright officer, a friend and a great colleague is what one officer who has worked with him very closely said.

OneIndia News
RSS flag won't be allowed to replace Tri-colour: Lalu Prasad

India

oi-PTI

Patna, Apr 4: Terming BJP and RSS as anti-dalit and anti-minority, RJD supremo Lalu Prasad on Sunday said that RJD would thwart any design of RSS to unfurl its saffron flag in place of national flag.

"BJP and RSS are anti-dalit, anti-minority, anti- Christian. People gave sacrifice for the national flag and now RSS wants to hoist its saffron flag. I declare that RJD will not allow Sangh's intention to fructify...We will blast its design," Prasad said.

To do this, the party would hold a meeting of MLAs, MLCs, office-bearers and workers from across the state after the panchayat polls, he said while addressing newly appointed party office-bearers of the state unit and workers.

Exhorting party workers to go to villages in order to make them aware of 'nefarious design' of BJP-RSS, Prasad said it is the need of the hour to aware people that forces like BJP-RSS is trying to implement the agenda of Golwalkar.

"Where is blackmoney? Rather, the Modi government is helping people in making black money into white money. People are fed up with this government," the RJD boss said. Coming down heavily on the alleged incidents of people hoisting Pakistan's flag and raising slogans in favour of separatists of Jammu and Kashmir, Prasad said, "This is happening in Narendra Modi's regime. We never heard such incidents prior to Modi assuming power at the Centre."

On RJD's stand on banning liquor, Prasad, who as the Chief Minister, had exempted toddy from tax net, said RJD is in favour of complete prohibition that includes whatever is considered as 'intoxicated'.

"The state government will look into the matter. There is scope of mixing toddy. So we need to be extra careful," Prasad said.

Asked about the 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' slogan, Prasad said that "We should not take notice of such slogan." He said the party would celebrate the birth anniversary of Dr B R Ambedkar on April 14.

The party's national committee comprising five vice-presidents, four general secretaries, one treasurer, nine secretaries and 56 members of national executive was announced today, RJD spokesman Mrityunjay Tiwari said.

The vice-presidents are former union ministers Raghuvansh Prasad Singh and Taslimuddin, Mangani Lal Mandal, Iliyas Hussain and Annapurna Devi, Tiwari said. The party has already declared the names of 52 office-bearers of state unit besides 22 cells of the party's state unit, he added.

PTI
Samjhauta Express blast: NIA back to probing Lashkar-e-Taiba link

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, Apr 4: The investigation into the Samjhauta blasts case may take another turn with a team of the National Investigation Agency exploring the role of Arif Kasmani.

An NIA team is seeking evidence from the United States of America regarding Kasmani, a Lashkar-e-Taiba operative who is alleged to have funded the blasts on the Samjhauta Express.

On February 18 2007 bombs planted in two carriages of the Samjautha Express exploded killing 68 persons and injuring several others. It was stated after the blast that it was the handiwork of the Lashkar-e-Taiba.

However the probe a year later took a complete different turn with investigators blaming a group called the Abhinav Bharat.

Help from US sought

A team of the NIA led by the DIG, Sharad Kumar is visiting the United States of America to seek more evidence on the role of the Lashkar-e-Taiba. It is not a u-turn said an NIA official to OneIndia.

It may be recalled that it was the US treasury department which had suggested in June 2009 that Kasmani could have funded the operation.

The NIA team will meet with officials in the US including those from the FBI to seek out more details regarding the case and the Kasmani angle. If the Kasmani angle is ascertained then it becomes clear that there was a hand of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba in the blasts.

Several turns

The case has seen several turns since the investigations commenced. At first it was blamed on the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Students Islamic Movement of India

Later on investigators suggested that it could have been the handiwork of the Abhinav Bharat. The NIA team had even obtained a confession from Swami Aseemanand who was named as an accused in the case. During the confession, he speaks about the role of the Abhinav Bharat.

However the confession could not be used as Aseemanand denied giving any such confession. An accused has a right to deny a confession in police custody stating that it was obtained under duress.

The NIA following this has not been able to gather any concrete evidence to link the Abhinav Bharat. With the probe hitting a dead end the NIA has decided to take a re-look into the Lashkar-e-Taiba angle.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Monday, April 4, 2016, 8:17 [IST]
Irom Sharmila to end her fast: What it means to Manipur and struggle against AFSPA

Two intellectual groups spar over fascist, communal BJP in Assam

India

oi-Oneindia

By Maitreyee Boruah

The rift is out in the open in Assam. It is not just the political parties who are fighting a fierce battle to win elections in the poll bound state.

The Assam Assembly Elections 2016 is witnessing a major war of words between two groups of intellectuals.

At the time of filing this report, the first phase of polling was underway on April 4 (Monday) in the state. The second and final phase of polling is scheduled on April 11.

A group of intellectuals in the state--led by prominent writer and former Gauhati University professor Hiren Gohain--has asked the people of Assam not to vote for the BJP.

According to this group, which consists of around 43 well-known academic voices of the state, BJP is a "fascist and communal" party.

"The BJP has been trying to negate real patriotism with insane patriotism. The nation will gradually be in the grip of darkness if this party continues to remain in power," the group said.

The group members include former college principals Udayaditya Bharali, Dinesh Baishya, noted poets Nilamoni Phukan and Nalinidhar Bhattacharyya, authors Nirupama Bargohain and Anima Guha and cultural activist Loknath Goswami, among others.

Such an "appeal" on the part of the intellectuals has snowballed into a major controversy.

One more group of intellectuals has strongly criticised the former group for taking an "anti-BJP" stand.

A second set of intellectuals--led by former Gauhati University vice-chancellor Nirmal Kumar Choudhury and former Assam DGP Nishinath Changkakoti-has strongly condemned the stand taken by Gohain and his supporters.

Choudhury called such an appeal by the "anti-BJP" lobby as "anti-democractic".

"Asking people not to vote for a particular party is in itself a threat to democracy. Nobody has the right to issue a fatwa to the people on exercising their democratic rights. They are trying to mislead the voters on the eve of polling day," a statement issued by the second group said.

The second group also asked the voters to come out in large numbers to cast their votes without any fear or under any influence.

Clarifying that he and his friends are not favouring any political party or pro-Congress, Gohain said there is nothing wrong in their anti-BJP stand for greater interest of Assamese society.

While BJP members have strongly criticised Gohain and his group members, Congress on the other hand has welcomed the call of the intellectuals.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Monday, April 4, 2016, 11:35 [IST]
Air France staff protest over new Islamic headscarf dress code

International

oi-Pallavi

Paris, April 4: The female staff members of Air France are furious after the airline told them to put on headscarves before landing in Iran.

To this, the staff members protested saying that this was curbing their personal freedom. In an internal email, Air France said female crew members were asked to wear pants during the flight and put on "loose-fitting jacket and headscarf" before disembarking from the plane.

Union leader Francoise Redolfi told RFI radio said,"They are forcing us to wear an ostentatious religious symbol. We have to let the girls choose what they want to wear. Those that don't want to must be able to say they don't want to work on those flights. Many female members of flight crews have told us that it's out of the question they be obliged to wear headscarves.

Meanwhile, the flight officials have said that they were not behind the decision and it was a norm in the country that all women have to wear headscarf. Meanwhile to calm the angry staff members, officials have hinted at penalties for those who are refusing to wear it.

In a statement, Air France said: "Iranian law requires the wearing of a veil covering the hair in public places for all women present on its territory. This obligation is not required during the flight and is respected by all international airlines serving the Iranian Republic."

In lieu of the crippling bilateral relations between France and Iran, all flights had been suspended. However, they will resume soon thrice a day April 17 onwards.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Monday, April 4, 2016, 15:12 [IST]
Laptop Ban: Turkish Airlines CEO says US to lift restrictions on July 5

Turkish authorities ban Facebook, Twitter after blast

International

oi-IANS

By Ians English

London, March 14: Turkish authorities banned Facebook and Twitter after images of a suicide bombing were spread on both social media platforms, media reported.

According to a report in RT.com, Turkish authorities took the decision after images spread on social media showing the suicide car bombing that killed several people in Ankara.

Quoting broadcasters CNN Turk and NTV, the report said that several users reported difficulty in accessing both the social media sites.

Turkey's telecommunications authority TIB, blocked access to social media after a court-ordered ban was imposed.

Turkey last year blocked access to Twitter over the sharing of images of a prosecutor being held at gunpoint by far-left militants.

Turkey blast: Death toll mounts to 34

At least 34 people were killed and 125 others injured after an explosion hit Turkey's capital city of Ankara.

A bomb-laden car caused the explosion late Sunday night near Kizilay square, Hurriyet Daily News reported.

Health Minister Mehmet Mezzinoglu said 30 people were killed at the scene of the incident while four others died on their way to the hospital, adding that one or two of them could be the attackers.

Some 19 people were in critical condition as seven were in surgery and the toll may increase, he said.

So far, no terror group has claimed responsibility of the attack.

IANS
US presidential polls 2016: April primaries to begin with Wisconsin tomorrow

International

oi-Shubham

Washington, April 4: The race for the nomination of the presidential candidate for both the Republican and Democratic Party will resume on Tuesday (April 5) in the state of Wisconsin.

While Republican front-runner Donald Trump will look to regain his momentum in the first primary of April following the recent campaign trouble, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders will hope to build on his 5-1 win of former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton in the Badger State and bridge the delegate gap.

Voters will be needed to produce government-issued photo ID to exercise their franchise as the northern state's strict law could see 3,00,000 registered voters losing their right to vote for not possessing the government photo ID.

The polling in Wisconsin will begin at 7 am Central Daylight Time (CDT) (5.30 pm IST) and conclude at 8 pm CDT (6.30 am IST on Wednesday, April 6).

Voters will be required to bring a government-issued photo ID to cast a ballot. According to The Nation, the state's strict voter ID law could disenfranchise 300,000 registered voters who do not have a government-issued photo ID.

Cruz leads Trump, say polls

Besides Trump, Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich are in the race for the GOP race for nomination. Trump has 736 delegates at the moment while Cruz has 463 and Kasich 143. Lates polls, however, predict Cruz to be six per cent ahead of Trump (47 per cent to 37 per cent) while Kasich is expected to get 18 per cent vote.

To get nomination, a Republican candidate needs to have 1,237 delegates.

Sanders has a slender lead over Clinton, say polls

In the Democratic camp, Sanders and Clinto will contest for 86 delegates, who will be awarded proportionally. To get nomination, a Democratic candidate needs to have 2,383 delegates. Clinton now has 1,712 delegates (including superdelegates) while Sanders has 1,011 delegates. The gap, however, decreases if the superdelegates are not counted since Clinton has a huge chunk of superdelegates with her compared to Sanders. Recent polls have predicted Sanders to be ahead of Clinton by two percentage points (49% to 47%).

Oneindia News
West Bengal election Phase 1A: Final turnout 84.22%

Kolkata

oi-Shubham

Kolkata, April 4: Eighteen constituencies of West Bengal Assembly went to election on Monday (April 4). The constituencies are in the Jangalmahal area in the three districts of Purulia, West Midnapore and Bankura. A turnout of 81 per cent was recorded in this phase. [Final voter turnout goes up to 84.22%]

In brief: Phase 1A:



Total seats: 18

Total candidates: 133

Total voters: 40.9171 lakh

Total booths: 4,945

Total company fo central forces: 172

End of updates

7.10 pm: 84.22 per cent voter turnout recorded in this phase. The Election Commission received a total of 537 complaints during the polling process. Polling ended in 13 extremism-hit constituencies till 4 pm while in another five, it concluded at 6 pm.

5.30 pm: Polling for Assembly election closed in Purulia district.

4.17 pm: Central forces accused of lathicharging against women voters in Shalboni in West Midnapore.

4.10 pm: Polling concludes in 13 constituencies in West Midnapore (six), Bankura (nine) and Purulia (four). Polling to continue for another two hours in the rest of the five seats in Purulia.

3.40 pm: Average voter turnput 75.24% till 3 pm: Bankura 74.61%, Purulia 73.8%, West Midnapore 78.08%

3.00 pm: Clash between villagers at Piyalshole in Purulia district. One person had a fractured head. A few were also injured. No observer of flying squad member were seen, say TV reports.

[Left candidate, journalists targeted]

Purulia, WB: More than 300 villagers boycott Assembly Elections polling pic.twitter.com/QqqSKQ6LXz  ANI (@ANI_news) April 4, 2016

1.55 pm: Purulia resgistered above 80% polling in 2011, six seats of W Midnapore 87% and three seats of Bankura 86.33%

1.40 pm: Polling per cent till 1 pm: West Midnapore: 65.45%, Bankura: 62.15%, Purulia: 61.95%

[Central forces inactive, cry Opposition, media]



12.35 pm: Media representatives reportedly attacked in Salboni constituency in West Midnapore.

12.20 pm: A team of BJP delegates met EC officials urging for a fair and peaceful Assembly election in Bengal.





12.10 pm: BJP candidate allegedly beaten up and threatened in Nayagram constituency in West Midnapore. The BJP had won 5.5 per cent vote-share in 2011.

11.50 am: Women at a booth in Nayagram constituency accused TMC of threatening them if they voted for Opposition, say TV reports. They also received threat of stopping their widow pension.

11.28 am: Voting percentage till 11 am: West Midnapore 47.53%, Bankura 45.02%, Purulia 43.43%

11.13 am: Central forces were seen buying vegetables in Taldangra constituency in Bankura; when asked, they said. "We have to eat," said TV reports.

#WestBengalElection What is the west Bengals police doing in poling booth ? where is the @election commission ? pic.twitter.com/rtjfUF5jBJ  rashmi dey (@deyrashmirph) April 4, 2016

10.55 am: EC receives 190 complaints of poll-rule violation in less than 4 hours, say TV reports.

10.47 am: TMC candidate Dulal Murmu accused of entering a booth in his seat Nayagram. He was reportedly stopped by the central forces.

10.24 am: Central forces get busy in shopping in Chila in Bandwan constituency on election day, says Bengali channel 24 Ghanta.

10.15 am: Election Commission receives 66 complaints of poll rule violation in the three districts that have gone to polls in three hours since polling started, local channels report.

Rise & Shine. Political offices rarely buzz at 6 a m. But it's Election Day. We're all set in The Room #BengalPolls  Derek O'Brien (@quizderek) April 4, 2016

10.00 am: The ruling TMC has been accused by the Left of capturing two booths in Salboni constituency in West Midnapore district. Charges baseless, DM tells EC.

9.29 am: One EVM in Ranibandh constituency of Bankura showed just one vote was registered after 92 people cast their ballots. Will they be recalled to revote is not known yet.

9.20 am: Voting percentage till 9 am: Purulia: 22.5%, West Midnapore: 24%, Bankura: 24%

9.14 am: Presiding officer of booth No. 239 of Balarampur constituency in Purulia removed after charges came up of the polling agent influencing voters to cast their ballot, said TV reports.

8.54 am: Election Commission (EC) seeks report from Purulia DM over charges of state police, TMC agents rigging elections at a booth in Balarampur constituency in the district.

#Visuals from West Bengal's Purulia: Voting for first phase of #WestBengal polls underway,people cast their votes pic.twitter.com/xDcf2k0Fno  ANI (@ANI_news) April 4, 2016

8.38 am: Allegations of vote rigging in booth No. 239 in Balarampur constituency of Purulia. Central forces are guarding outside the booth. The TMC agent has been accused of directing the voters to cast ballot.

8.28 am: 675 booths have miscro-observers; 157 booths have web casting; helicopters carry out vigilance; quick response team in place.

8.24 am: The BJP alleges ransacking of a booth in Midnapore cosntituency. BJP candidate Tushar Mukhopadhyay brings the charge. (2011 winner: TMC]

8.10 am: Polling will continue in 9 seats (3 in Bankura & 6 in West Midnapore) till 4 pm. In the other nine, it will continue till 6 pm.

8.03 am: Bandwan in Purulia is the largest constituency in this phase (2011 winner: CPI(M)). Raipur in Bankura is the smallest (2011 winner: CPI(M))

7.58 am: EVM at booth No. 138 in Purulia district has technical snag; voting stopped.

7.48 am: Technical snag in EVM in booth No. 286 in West Midnapore district; voting has stopped for the moment.

7.40 am: Heavyweight Trinamool Congress (TMC) candidate from Jhargram seat in West Midnapore Sukumar Hansda said there was no contest in his seat. The former state minister, who has been accused of amassing wealth, may benefit since the Left-Congress alliance in this seat has not consolidated and the Left is backing Jharkhand Party candidate Chunibala Hansda in this seat. Hansda won the 2011 election from Jhargram by getting 44.67 per cent vote.

7.33 am: Prime Minister Narendra Modi urges voters of West Bengal and Assam to exercise the franchise.

Urging all those voting in West Bengal & Assam today to vote in large numbers. Young friends in particular must exercise their franchise.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) April 4, 2016

7.24 am: One-hundred and thirty-three candidates are in the fray for this phase of West Bengal election. Total number of booths: 4,945; total number of voters: 40 lakh

7.15 am: BJP hopes to do good in Nayagram where state party chief Dilip Ghosh is a voter. Some high profile BJP leaders have campaigned in this constituency. The saffron party had 5.5 per cent votes in this seat in the 2011 polls.

#Visuals from West Bengal's Purulia: Voting begins for first phase of assembly polls. pic.twitter.com/ED84na60ak  ANI (@ANI_news) April 4, 2016

7.00 am: Polling begins for Phase 1A.

6.58 am: High security in place for Phase 1A. Central forces have been deployed in each booth. Helicopters keep vigilance from above.

Oneindia News
Bengal poll Phase 1A: Central forces inactive, cry Opposition, media

Kolkata

oi-Shubham

Kolkata, April 4: Central forces were accused of remaining largely inactive during the first of the seven-phase election that started in West Bengal on Monday (April 4) although the Election Commission had promised to take a strict stand ahead of the polling.

Follow updates of Phase 1A of Bengal Assembly elections

Local media reports said the central personnel showed little urgency even as supporters of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC), polling officials 'influenced' by it and state police personnel called the shots inside the booths.

It was said the EC received nearly 200 complaints of poll rules being violated during the first four hours after polling started. While state police officers were seen monitoring the election procedure in some booths, presiding officers were seen directing the voters while casting ballots in others. In Balarampur constituency in Purulia district, the presiding officer of a booth was removed for alleged interference in the voters' exercising their franchise.

In some places, the central forces were even seen shopping, resting the shade or buying vegetables from the market.

In Salboni constituency in West Midnapore, CPI(M) candidate Shyam Pandey alleged the TMC supporters removed the Left's polling agent from eight booths.

In Ranibandh constituency in Bankura, local people said they did not see any central personnel in the area during the day even as the EC had promised to focus on it.

Oneindia News

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Story first published: Monday, April 4, 2016, 13:10 [IST]
Not just future of Sena but democracy at stake, says Uddhav

Diwali 2022: Major sites to be illuminated in Mumbai between Oct 22-29

Mumbai: Gathering of 5 or more, loud speakers, illegal processions banned for a fortnight from Nov 1

Amitabh Bachchan reveals he had to get stitches after he cut a vein on his leg

Actor Hrithik Roshan apologises for his tweet on Pope Francis

Mumbai

oi-Sandra

Mumbai, Apr 4: After a notice was slapped on Bollywood actor Hrithik Roshan for a tweet on Pope Francis in January this year, the actor has now apologised for the same.

Roshan was issued a notice by Christian Secular Forum in Mumbai last week seeking an unconditional apology for his tweet on Pope Francis.

Hrithik Roshan's tweet on Pope lands him in legal soup

The actor was accused of hurting the sentiments of the Christian community by his remark about the Pope. The legal notice was served by Abraham Mathai, former vice chairman of the State Minorities Commission.

Roshan tweeted on Saturday, Apr 2 and said: "Seems my tweet about His Holiness has led 2misunderstanding. My apologies 4 hurt caused 2religious or other sentiments. Was unintentional."

Seems my tweet about His Holiness has led 2misunderstanding. My apologies 4 hurt caused 2religious or other sentiments. Was unintentional.  Hrithik Roshan (@iHrithik) April 2, 2016

Roshan, who is currently in a legal tangle with Bollywood actress Kangana Ranaut over their alleged affair, in January had tweeted: "Ther r more chances of me having had an affair with d Pope dan any of d (Im sure wonderful)women d media hs ben naming.Thanks but no thanks."

Seems my tweet about His Holiness has led 2misunderstanding. My apologies 4 hurt caused 2religious or other sentiments. Was unintentional.  Hrithik Roshan (@iHrithik) April 2, 2016

The tweet was said to be an indirect response to Ranaut's statement.

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by  Graham Pierrepoint



Could the Trump train be pulling into a station very soon?

As One News Page has reported on a number of occasions, the race for the US Presidential nomination this year has been one that will go down in memory as being one of the fiercest-fought and most controversial  with contenders on both Republican and Democratic sides offering their own divisive candidates for the position ahead of the final election this fall. However, there has perhaps been no bigger media magnet, nor controversy courter, than Donald Trump  the former Apprentice mogul and real estate champion has taken to the soapbox to speak out on a number of contentious issues affecting the United States, and has made a number of statements on issues such as religion and immigration which have even turned a fair portion of the Republican party against him. Despite this, Trump has thus far weathered the storm, seemingly playing the media circus surrounding him while swallowing nominations for the presidency as he has done so.

However, many media sources are lately stating that the Trump train could be pulling into a station very soon, following comments he has recently made regarding the legality of abortion in the US. While there are two clearly defined arguments for and against women choosing to have an abortion in America today, Trump advised publicly that he felt women should be punished for terminating an unwanted pregnancy, according to The Guardian  an opinion which Trump has not only uncharacteristically recanted, but has caused uproar in both the right and left wings, causing a bizarre harmony across the board in their shock at the moguls comments.

Trumps comments were made during a TV interview and, since then, talk within his own camp has been ruminating that he is an impostor, while the left wing and those on the Democratic side of the coin have seized upon the opportunity to outline why a vote for Donald Trump would be a vote against womens rights. The candidate recanted by advising that those carrying out such abortions should be punished, not the women  but for many, the damage has already been done  and Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton spoke out against her likely Republican rivals comments on social media, looking to strengthen her profile in this election campaign.

With crucial primaries remaining to be decided, media outlets state that now is the time for Ted Cruz to monopolize on his chance to take the Republican party back to The White House  as many in the know, and in the media, anticipate a sheer drop in support for Donald Trump from here on in. Will such predictions pay off? We will all have to wait and see!
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Opalesque Industry Update - The International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds (IFSWF), a global network of sovereign wealth funds, and the Hedge Fund Standards Board (HFSB), the standard-setting body for the hedge fund industry, have established a Mutual Observer relationship. The IFSWF is a global network of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) established in 2009 to enhance collaboration, promote a deeper understanding of SWF activity and raise the industry standard for best practice and governance. Its 31 member funds collectively have about US$ 5.5 trillion under management, representing 80% of assets managed by sovereign funds globally. The HFSB was established in 2008 and is custodian of the Hedge Fund Standards. The HFSB brings together managers and investors from around the world to set standards for how the hedge fund industry should operate. It is supported by more than 120 hedge fund managers with over US$ 800 billion in aggregate assets and by more than 60 leading institutional investors with aggregate assets of over US$ 2 trillion. The Mutual Observer relationship will help ensure that SWFs are active participants in HFSB activities and in the standard setting process. Likewise, the relationship enables the HFSB to offer insights and information to the SWF community on hedge fund industry issues. The Mutual Observer role will enable the IFSWF and HFSB to: * Participate in each others events through attendance and speaking roles; * Organise and co-host seminars that bring together the IFSWF and HFSB memberships to discuss topics of mutual interest and relevance; * Foster a constructive dialogue between hedge fund managers and SWFs and align their interests; * Collaborate on issues of mutual interest, including governance, transparency and financial stability; and * Make the HFSBs resources including its Standards and Toolbox more accessible to the SWF community and invite SWFs to take an active part in the HFSB process. Adrian Orr,IFSWF Chair, and Chief Executive Officer of the New Zealand Superfund, said: We are delighted to form a closer relationship with the HFSB to share knowledge and experience with the objective to raise Standards in the financial industry. This relationship will help ensure that sovereign wealth funds have a voice in the hedge fund standard setting process. Dame Amelia Fawcett, Chairman of the HFSB, said: The interests of the HFSB and IFSWF are very much aligned, particularly in the areas of transparency, good governance and financial stability. The HFSB relies on hedge fund managers and investors to work together to set industry standards, and we welcome closer dialogue with sovereign wealth funds, which are a large and influential hedge fund investor group. Both the HFSB and the IFSWF maintain strong links with official stakeholders and regulatory bodies globally. The HFSB was granted affiliate membership in the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) in 2014; the IFSWF was established under the auspices of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2009. Hedge funds have been an important component in many SWF portfolios, and a number of SWFs such as the GIC and the Future Fund of Australia have been long standing supporters of, and active participants in the work of both the HFSB and the IFSWF. David George, HFSB Trustee, and Head of Debt and Alternatives for the Future Fund of Australia,said: The Future Fund works towards reshaping the investment model to prioritise the interests of the asset owners, and ultimate end-beneficiaries. The Future Fund supports the HFSB and the IFSWF which provide platforms to foster constructive dialogue within the SWF community and between hedge fund managers and asset owners and we look forward to helping shape the joint initiatives between the HFSB and the IFSWF.
Reprinted from Reader Supported News

"What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?" wrote the late poet and biographer Muriel Rukeyser: "The world would split open." And what would happen if the one woman telling the truth were Palestinian, and she was blowing the whistle about systematic torture of Palestinian prisoners, including the rape of woman under Israeli custody?

Meet Rasmea Odeh. Odeh is a 67-year-old Chicago-based Palestinian community leader. She immigrated to the US in 1994 and received her United States citizenship in 2004. Since that time she has worked diligently and effectively with community organizations that provide crucial care and support for immigrant women.

Odeh is the associate director of the Chicago-based Arab-American Action Network and a founder of the Arab Women's Committee, which provides ESL, social services, civil rights education and leadership training to over 800 immigrant and refugee women in the Windy City. She is also a convicted felon.

In October 2013 Rasmea was arrested, charged, and ultimately convicted of one count of unlawful procurement of naturalization (of her US citizenship). A few months prior to her arrest by Homeland Security, she received the Outstanding Community Leader Award from the Chicago Cultural Alliance for her work with Arab-Americans, women in particular.

The details behind Odeh's arrest go to the heart of the matter of an ongoing relationship between the US and Israel -- a national security collaboration that allows the Israelis to push forward with a policy that can only be described as ethnic cleansing. The policy's core is seizing Palestinian land by any means necessary, while supporting an expanding settlers' movement. Illegal arrest, imprisonment, and torture are tools used daily by Israeli occupiers to quell Palestinian resistance to the seizure of their land, house by house and acre by acre.

On February 25, Rasmea Odeh was granted an appeal for a possible new trial. I sat down with Lina Baroudi, a staff attorney for the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC) to talk about the details of the case. AROC is a partner organization with the Arab-American Action Network where Rasmea Odeh is associated. They are working together on a national defense committee. Let's begin in occupied Palestine.

Dennis Bernstein: Please explain how Rasmea Odeh's treatment as a Palestinian woman by Israeli forces began.

Lina Baroudi: In October 2013 Rasmea was charged with one count of unlawful procurement of naturalization, which is US citizenship. She is accused of failing to report a prior conviction on her naturalization application, which was filed in 2004. The accusation is related to her conviction by an Israeli military court more than 45 years ago and her subsequent imprisonment for 10 years in an Israeli prison.

DB: Ten years, 45 years ago.

Baroudi: Absolutely. She is one of the few women who have publicly spoken about the brutal, sexual, psychological, and physical torture Palestinian prisoners endure at the hands of the Israeli government. That torture is what ultimately led to her coerced confession and conviction, a conviction she been very public about and has testified about before the United Nations.

DB: It took them 10 years to come after Rasmea Odeh for this one count: How do you explain the timing? There must have been somebody pushing for this in the US.

Baroudi: Yes. The immigration charge was a pretext to attack Rasmea as an icon of the Palestine Liberation Movement. She's been long involved with that movement in the US and the case against her grew out of an investigation of 23 anti-war and Palestinian community organizers in Chicago and Minneapolis in 2010, all of whom were subpoenaed to a Grand Jury but were never ultimately charged with anything.

DB: This is how they came back to her.

Baroudi: Exactly.

DB: She went from a respected community leader to handcuffs and jail. There must be multiple sufferings as a result.
I first met Kate Nace Day when I took part in the 2012 Fighting Trafficking through Film forum, a project produced by the Boston Initiative to Advance Human Rights. I was there as a panelist and a writer covering the event.

Kate was screening the trailer for her documentary in progress, A Civil Remedy . She was also participating in her capacity as a Suffolk University Law School professor. Kate had moved into the documentary film space as a way to augment conveying information about human trafficking to her students. Her "a-ha" moment came when she screened The Day My God Died for her class. The account of girls from Nepal, as young as 7 years old, being sold into sexual slavery in India hit a nerve. It took the reality of the issue to a new level.

We kept in touch, and Kate invited me to her New York screening of the completed documentary. (Full disclosure: I was more than surprised to see my name in the thank-you credits. Kate graciously told me it was because I spent so much time talking with her about women and documentary film when she first dipped her toe into the creative waters.)

I recently reached out to Kate to discuss her film, her impact on the 2011 Massachusetts anti-trafficking law, and her take on the distinctions between "sex work," "sexual exploitation," and "abolition."

Human sex trafficking is a very complex subject. Many Americans believe that it only happens in foreign countries, when actually it is occurring in all 50 states. Your film focuses on the story of Danielle, a 17-year-old girl who came to Boston in 2011 to study sociology. An invitation to a party led to a relationship with a middle-aged man. He evolved from "boyfriend" to pimp, and through coercion and physical violence forced Danielle to work on the streets of Boston as a prostitute. She states in the film, "I had no idea I was a human trafficking victim until I got out." How does this happen?



Danielle

(Image by Film and Law Productions) Details DMCA



"Sadly, this happens to the thousands of American children who are found in prostitution each year. Many of them are runaways, young teens trying to get away from abuse or violence in their family, or from bullying at school. They may be what we call a 'throwaway' -- a kid who is thrown out of the house because of behaviors or chosen sexuality. Or, maybe, she's just the girl next door.

Every child who has been sexually assaulted is made more vulnerable to sexual exploitation. She may never tell anyone. Her parents and teachers, the healthcare and social service professionals, and an entire criminal justice system may ignore all the signs. Then a smooth talking, street-smart pimp comes along and pays attention to her in a way no one previous has. It's as easy as that.

In 2015 The Georgetown Law Center published a study, The Girls' Story , about the national crisis of violence against girls. It found that one in four American girls experiences some form of sexual violence by the age of 18, nearly half of all female rape survivors were victimized before the age of 18, fifteen percent of sexual assault and rape victims are under the age of 12. The stats are chilling."

You interviewed Siddhartha Kara , author of Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery. He talks about the economic crime of forced labor and human trafficking within the context of economics, finance, and law. Sexual trafficking has been referenced as "rape for profit." It is more lucrative than selling drugs or weapons -- particularly because the "product" is resold endlessly. Trafficking has moved underground and to the Internet. Backpage.com has netted $22 million in prostitution-related ads. Is this what led to your thinking about a strategy to allow survivors to file a civil claim in the courts for financial restitution?

"In 2011, Massachusetts was one of four states in the country with no comprehensive human trafficking law. Massachusetts' Attorney General, Martha Coakley, had proposed a bill and when the Boston Globe called me for a comment, I had only one question: "Does the proposed law have a civil remedy provision?"

I wasn't thinking about the economics of the sex industry. I was thinking about how our justice systems -- criminal and civil -- treat sex trafficking victims. Under our national law, anyone under the age of 18 who is sold for sex is a trafficking victim. Consent is irrelevant. But in many states, prostituted children are still arrested and treated as criminals.

There is a civil remedy provision in the national law and in many state trafficking lawsthat entitle victims to sue their violators for money damages. They could hire their own lawyers, frame their own stories, and then tell it to the law. They can be empowered to hold the perpetrators accountable. It was Catharine MacKinnon's theory in 1994, when she was working with then-senator Joe Biden on the Violence Against Women's Act: When the criminal justice system fails victims of violence, the civil justice system is their only justice."

The average age of entry into trafficking is 12 to 14. Of the two to four million people trafficked for sex each year, 90 percent are girls and women who are predominately poor and disproportionately women of color. In your documentary, Gloria Steinem spoke of the importance of individual survivor storytelling and its relationship to feminist legal theory. Do you agree? And can these narratives illuminate the difference between those who maintain that they are "sex workers" and those who have been forced into sexual servitude and are not on a path of self-determination?

"Survivor stories give us the details, gestures, and remembered events that make the human story of sex trafficking real and alive. A girl in Cambodia who thought she was going to work in a rice shop, but is sold into a brothel. A 13-year-old in the Bronx who ends up in a hospital after a brutal beating from her pimp. As Steinem has said, "There is nothing more important than the stories."

Last summer, the New York Times reported on sexual slavery in the organization of the Islamic State. The reports included survivor accounts of rape, torture, and humiliation, but they also presented a YouTube video of where women were bought and sold for sex "a group of men believed to be Islamic State fighters are shown sitting in a room bantering about buying and selling Yazidi girls on 'slave market day.'"

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This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

Once upon a time, if a war was going to destroy your world, it had to take place in your world. The soldiers had to land, the planes had to fly overhead, the ships had to be off the coast. No longer. Nuclear war changed that equation forever and not just because nuclear weapons could be delivered from a great distance by missile. To use a term that has become commonplace in our world when discussing commerce, the prospect of nuclear conflict has globalized war and it's a nightmare of the first order.

In the post-Cold War world, Exhibit A in that process would certainly be the unnerving potential for a nuclear war to break out between India and Pakistan. As TomDispatch regular Dilip Hiro, author most recently of The Age of Aspiration: Money, Power, and Conflict in Globalizing India, makes clear today, there is no place on the planet where a nuclear war is more imaginable. After all, those two South Asian countries have been to war with each other or on the verge of it again and again since they were split apart in 1947.

Of course, a major nuclear war between them would result in an unimaginable catastrophe in South Asia itself, with casualties estimated at up to 20 million dead from bomb blasts, fire, and the effects of radiation on the human body. And that, unfortunately, would only be the beginning. As Alan Robock and Owen Brian Toon wrote in Scientific American back in 2009, when the Indian and Pakistani arsenals were significantly smaller than they are today, any major nuclear conflagration in the region could hardly be confined to South Asia. The smoke and particulates thrown into the atmosphere from those weapons would undoubtedly bring on some version of a global "nuclear winter," whose effects could last for at least 10 years, causing crop shortfalls and failures across the planet. The cooling and diminished sunlight (along with a loss of rainfall) would shorten growing seasons in planetary breadbaskets and produce "killing frosts in summer," triggering declines in crop yields across the planet. Robock and Toon estimate that "around one billion people worldwide who now live on marginal food supplies would be directly threatened with starvation by a nuclear war between India and Pakistan."

To say the least, it's a daunting prospect at the very moment when the Obama White House has just ended the president's final Nuclear Security Summit with fears rising that Pakistan's new generation of small, front-line tactical nuclear weapons are "highly vulnerable to theft or misuse." Hiro, an expert on the South Asian region, suggests just why a nuclear war is all too conceivable there and would be a catastrophe for us all. Tom

The Most Dangerous Place on Earth

A Nuclear Armageddon in the Making in South Asia

By Dilip Hiro Undoubtedly, for nearly two decades, the most dangerous place on Earth has been the Indian-Pakistani border in Kashmir. It's possible that a small spark from artillery and rocket exchanges across that border might -- given the known military doctrines of the two nuclear-armed neighbors -- lead inexorably to an all-out nuclear conflagration. In that case the result would be catastrophic. Besides causing the deaths of millions of Indians and Pakistanis, such a war might bring on "nuclear winter" on a planetary scale, leading to levels of suffering and death that would be beyond our comprehension. Alarmingly, the nuclear competition between India and Pakistan has now entered a spine-chilling phase. That danger stems from Islamabad's decision to deploy low-yield tactical nuclear arms at its forward operating military bases along its entire frontier with India to deter possible aggression by tank-led invading forces. Most ominously, the decision to fire such a nuclear-armed missile with a range of 35 to 60 miles is to rest with local commanders. This is a perilous departure from the universal practice of investing such authority in the highest official of the nation. Such a situation has no parallel in the Washington-Moscow nuclear arms race of the Cold War era. When it comes to Pakistan's strategic nuclear weapons, their parts are stored in different locations to be assembled only upon an order from the country's leader. By contrast, tactical nukes are pre-assembled at a nuclear facility and shipped to a forward base for instant use. In addition to the perils inherent in this policy, such weapons would be vulnerable to misuse by a rogue base commander or theft by one of the many militant groups in the country. In the nuclear standoff between the two neighbors, the stakes are constantly rising as Aizaz Chaudhry, the highest bureaucrat in Pakistan's foreign ministry, recently made clear. The deployment of tactical nukes, he explained, was meant to act as a form of "deterrence," given India's "Cold Start" military doctrine -- a reputed contingency plan aimed at punishing Pakistan in a major way for any unacceptable provocations like a mass-casualty terrorist strike against India. New Delhi refuses to acknowledge the existence of Cold Start. Its denials are hollow. As early as 2004, it was discussing this doctrine, which involved the formation of eight division-size Integrated Battle Groups (IBGs). These were to consist of infantry, artillery, armor, and air support, and each would be able to operate independently on the battlefield. In the case of major terrorist attacks by any Pakistan-based group, these IBGs would evidently respond by rapidly penetrating Pakistani territory at unexpected points along the border and advancing no more than 30 miles inland, disrupting military command and control networks while endeavoring to stay away from locations likely to trigger nuclear retaliation. In other words, India has long been planning to respond to major terror attacks with a swift and devastating conventional military action that would inflict only limited damage and so -- in a best-case scenario -- deny Pakistan justification for a nuclear response. Islamabad, in turn, has been planning ways to deter the Indians from implementing a Cold-Start-style blitzkrieg on their territory. After much internal debate, its top officials opted for tactical nukes. In 2011, the Pakistanis tested one successfully. Since then, according to Rajesh Rajagopalan, the New Delhi-based co-author of Nuclear South Asia: Keywords and Concepts, Pakistan seems to have been assembling four to five of these annually. All of this has been happening in the context of populations that view each other unfavorably. A typical survey in this period by the Pew Research Center found that 72% of Pakistanis had an unfavorable view of India, with 57% considering it as a serious threat, while on the other side 59% of Indians saw Pakistan in an unfavorable light. This is the background against which Indian leaders have said that a tactical nuclear attack on their forces, even on Pakistani territory, would be treated as a full-scale nuclear attack on India, and that they reserved the right to respond accordingly. Since India does not have tactical nukes, it could only retaliate with far more devastating strategic nuclear arms, possibly targeting Pakistani cities. According to a 2002 estimate by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), a worst-case scenario in an Indo-Pakistani nuclear war could result in eight to 12 million fatalities initially, followed by many millions later from radiation poisoning. More recent studies have shown that up to a billion people worldwide might be put in danger of famine and starvation by the smoke and soot thrown into the troposphere in a major nuclear exchange in South Asia. The resulting "nuclear winter" and ensuing crop loss would functionally add up to a slowly developing global nuclear holocaust. Last November, to reduce the chances of such a catastrophic exchange happening, senior Obama administration officials met in Washington with Pakistan's army chief, General Raheel Sharif, the final arbiter of that country's national security policies, and urged him to stop the production of tactical nuclear arms. In return, they offered a pledge to end Islamabad's pariah status in the nuclear field by supporting its entry into the 48-member Nuclear Suppliers Group to which India already belongs. Although no formal communique was issued after Sharif's trip, it became widely known that he had rejected the offer.

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A Pizza Hut, a Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut!

The worlds largest restaurant company Yum! sign TribePad as their recruitment software provider.Brands KFC, Pizza Hut Restaurants and Pizza Hut Delivery, all subsidiaries of Yum! join other TribePad clients BBC, Tesco and Sodexo in using their award winning social ATS to provide unprecedented candidate experience to tens of thousands of people each year.Both Pizza Hut Restaurants and Pizza Hut Delivery have said: Its fantastic to be partnering with such a great brand as TribePad. TribePad was the stand out ATS provider for Pizza Hut with both its innovative platform and usability for both the client and candidate. Were really proud to be working with TribePad and are all excited by this new partnership, which we have no doubt will deliver great candidate success to both businesses.Chris Bussell, Account Manager for both KFC and Pizza Hut said Were over the moon to have both Pizza Hut and KFC join us! In todays current climate, a recruiter needs the right tools available in order to maximise attraction and enable them to fill vacancies with high-quality talent. TribePad helps brands do just that and so much more".TribePad was founded by former CTO of Plusnet, Dean Sadler, in 2008.The TribePad recruitment platform is used by clients globally; the only two places that it isnt in is North Korea and Vatican City. The ATS is available in 17 different languages and since its launch has processed over 35,000,000 candidates and over 200,000 vacancies advertised. TribePad has recently launched their Video Interviewing platform, processing thousands of candidates within the first few months alone. TribePad aims to have processed 100,000 video interviews in 130 countries within the next 6 months.The Innovation Centre217 PortobelloSheffieldS1 4DP
The 4th Annual Great Lakes Business Intelligence and Big Data Summit  an Astounding Success

www.greatlakesbisummit.com

www.witinc.com

Troy, Michigan  April 1, 2016  WIT is proud to announce the completion of another greatly successful Great Lakes Business Intelligence (BI) and Big Data Summit, last week at the Somerset Inn of Troy, Michigan.Throughout the day, Summit delegates were given the opportunity to sit in on their selection of 17 different sessions, with 2 keynotes, and 15 breakout sessions focusing on real-world BI and Big Data case studies, best practices, emerging trends, and BI solutions. Attendees were also able to acquire an in-depth understanding of the latest technologies in the exhibit hall, and were given numerous chances to network with more than 300 business and analytics professionals throughout the event.The speaker line-up at the 2016 Summit was comprised of BI leaders from a cross-section of top companies across multiple industries who shared their stories about big data. Keynote addresses were presented by Dr. Greg Wells, President of the Wells Group, and Wayne Eckerson, Founder and Principal Consultant of Eckerson Group. Dr. Greg Wells captivated the minds of Summit attendees with his presentation on how wearable technology can be used to monitor and enhance current behaviors and physiological parameters, while Wayne Eckerson delivered a worthwhile keynote address on how to survive and thrive in the new world order of big data.Follow the Great Lakes Business Intelligence & Big Data Summit on Twitter @GreatLakesBI, and learn more about the Summit by going toAbout WIT Inc.WIT is a business analytics consulting firm founded in 1996. We help our clients achieve superior performance by fully realizing the potential of analytics and business intelligence technology and processes, whether its through executive dashboards, data discovery, big data, enterprise reporting, or data in the cloud. Clients range from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies across all major industries. For more information, please visit###900 Tower Dr. Suite 325, Troy, MI 48098
Best Web Designing Company Bangalore

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WDC Bangalore has been offering superior web development, web design, SEO services to national and international clients for over five years. WDC is preferred by clients since this company makes use of state-of-the-art technologies and tools for delivering best web projects to clients.WDC is also preferred since it has several teams of exceptionally talented professionals. They are well-equipped to offer custom programming that guarantees website longevity, We are eager to know how we can help you. Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your project so that we can offer you exactly what you need.Services: Joomla web development services Magento web development services PHP web development services Wordpress web development services Drupal web development services HTML 5 web development services E commerce web development services Website Redesign Company Seo Services CompanyContact us:WDC BangaloreNo: 43, Siddappa Building,10th Cross St Antonys School MainRamamurthy Nagar,Bangalore -560016,Mail id: info@nexevo.inPhone Number: +91-9591505948 office: 918880102111Website:WDC BangaloreNo: 43, Siddappa Building,10th Cross St Antonys School MainRamamurthy Nagar,Bangalore -560016,Phone Number: +91-9591505948 office: 918880102111Website:kr puram
Oliver Wight hosts 3rd annual conference in Amsterdam

Leading business transformation consultants, Oliver Wight, are hosting an exclusive conference on how to achieve business transformation through Integrated Business Planning on 11th and 12th April in Amsterdam.This premium event for Oliver Wight clients, both past and present, is at the Sheraton Hotel, Amsterdam. The two-day event will include a Class A Awards Dinner with guest speaker, French Paralympic Biathlon champion, Anne Floriet, followed by a full day of informative workshops, insightful presentations and valuable networking sessions.Presenting at the conference, Oliver Wight CEO, Les Brookes, and Partners, Anne Marie Kilkenny, Birgit Breitschuh, Liam Harrington and Stewart Kelly, will demonstrate how to successfully implement Integrated Business Planning (IBP) for proven transformational benefits, and inform attendees why engaging leadership is critical to delivering business transformation.In a dynamic and demanding world, business leaders are tasked with delivering stakeholder value and implementing strategy, typically aimed at growth and innovation. Yet many businesses lack a collaborative management process that allows them to manage deployment and implementation of that strategy, states Les Brookes, CEO of Oliver Wight EAME LLP. Integrated Business Planning (IBP) brings that truly strategic perspective, helping to deliver real business transformation and helping the business to get it done he continues.Attendees will be given the opportunity to see first hand what IBP can deliver for their business, by gaining an understanding on what the process involves and what it takes to get the sustainable results needed. Through market insights and informative client presentations from adidas Group, Saint-Gobain Weber and Amgen Breda, the conference will discuss the importance of the implementation process and the best ways to achieve it.Oliver Wight believe that delivering business transformation starts from the top and leaders must be on board from the outset. The consultants will share their knowledge and understanding, showcasing the need for management to walk the talk and excite their people about change and the future direction of the company.Oliver Wight has worked with some of the worlds best known organisations to achieve sustainable growth; companies such as: Wrigley, BP, Heinz, , Revlon, adidas, Pfizer and 3M, have achieved Class A status.For more information on this conference please visit the Oliver Wight website or contact Zowie Newman on zowie.newman@oliverwight-eame.com or +44 (0)1452 397200.At Oliver Wight, we believe sustainable business improvement can only be delivered by your own people; so, unlike other consultancy firms, we transfer our knowledge to you. Pioneers of Sales and Operations Planning and originators of the fundamentals behind supply chain planning, Oliver Wight professionals are the acknowledged industry thought leaders for Integrated Business Planning (IBP).Integrated Business Planning allows your senior executives to plan and manage the entire organisation over a 24-month horizon, while Oliver Wights extended Supply Chain Planning and Optimization ensures your supply chain is designed and structured to deliver best-in-class customer service with minimal costs. Using the Oliver Wight Maturity Model to pursue our globally recognised Class A standard for best practice will determine a tailored improvement journey for you to develop your organisations processes, and reach and sustain excellent business performance. With a track record of more than 40 years of helping some of the worlds best-known organisations, Oliver Wight will help you define your companys vision for the future and deliver performance and financial results that last.Oliver Wight EAME LLPThe WillowsThe Steadings Business CentreMaisemore GloucesterGL2 8EYUnited Kingdom
Global E. coli Testing Market to be Worth US$2.1 bn by 2022, Driven by Rising Demand for Enzyme Substrate Kits

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/e-coli-testing-market.html

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=4822

The research study from Transparency Market Research on the global E. coli testing market offers valuable insights into the market. This report is titled E. coli Testing Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2014 - 2022. According to the report, the global E. coli testing market will expand at a 6.58% CAGR during the forecast period from 2014 to 2022. In 2013, the global E. coli testing market was estimated at US$1.2 bn and by 2022, the market is projected to be worth US$2.1 bn.Browse Full Report:The global E. coli testing market is driven by the rapid spread of E. coli and high morbidity associated with it. Furthermore, the development of drug-resistant species will also fuel the global E. coli testing market. The rising number of supportive initiatives from governments across the world will also boost the demand for E. coli tests. On the other hand, the global E. coli testing market will be suppressed by the high cost associated with the enzyme-substrate test in comparison to separate apparatus.By testing method, the global E. coli testing market is divided into clinical testing and environmental testing. Some of the key environmental testing methods are the enzyme substrate method, multiple tube fermentation (MTF), and membrane filtration (MF). Some of the clinical testing methods are enzyme immunoassays (EIA) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests. MTF is one of the oldest testing methods for E. coli and is currently being extensively replaced by the membrane filtration technique.The demand for enzyme substrate kits has increased in the past few years, as these methods are easy to perform and do not call for sophisticated laboratory equipment. The enzyme substrate tests segment accounts for a significant share in the global E. coli testing market in terms of revenue. In terms of volume, the membrane filtration method is dominating the global E. coli testing market, as this method is a cost-effective substitute to enzyme substrate tests.On the basis of end use, the global E. coli testing market is divided into clinical (physician offices, diagnostic laboratories, and hospitals) and environmental (waste water treatment organizations, bottled water suppliers, home and drinking water suppliers, and others) testing. The demand is particularly high in the home and drinking water suppliers segment and in the bottled water suppliers segment.Region-wise, the global E. coli testing market is classified into Africa, Latin America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and North America. In 2013, Europe dominated the global E. coli testing market due to the outbreak of foodborne infections that occurred in Germany in 2011 due to an E. coli strain. Nevertheless, it is Asia Pacific that is projected to be the most lucrative segment of the global E. coli testing market. The Asia Pacific segment of the global E. coli testing market will expand at a CAGR of 6.92% during the forecasting horizon. The Asia Pacific market will benefit from elevated water pollution in nations such as India, Japan, and China.Some of the key players operating in the global E. coli testing market are Ecolab, CPI International, Nelson Analytical Lab, NanoLogix, Micrology Laboratories, Danaher Corporation, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and Abbott Laboratories. Players in the global E. coli testing market will benefit from the opportunity presented by the polymerase chain reaction- (PCR) based tests for environment water testing.Key Segments of the Global E. coli Testing MarketGlobal E. coli Testing Market, by Testing MethodsEnvironmental Testing Market, by Testing MethodsMembrane Filtration (MF)Multiple Tube Fermentation (MTF)Enzyme-Substrate MethodsClinical Testing Market, by Testing MethodsPolymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) TestsEnzyme Immunoassays (EIA)OthersGlobal E. coli Testing Market, by End UsersEnvironmentalHome and Drinking Water SuppliersBottled Water SuppliersWaste Water Treatment OrganizationsOthers (Government Agencies, Private Well Owners, Ground Water Testing, Farm Water Testing, etc.)ClinicalHospitalsDiagnostic LaboratoriesPhysician OfficesDownload Free Sample Report Brochure:Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Mr.Sudip STransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.com
Win A Chance To Sleep For Free In The All New Get Laid Beds Monthly Photo Competition

The graphic being used for the 'Sleep For Free' Monthly Photo Competition

Get Laid Beds, bed makers based in Leicester are launching an exciting Monthly Photo Competition which will see entrants get the chance to Sleep For Free and win up to 1000* towards the cost of their new Get Laid Beds bed! The competition is open to anyone who has bought a bed from Get Laid Beds either past or present. The winner of the competition is crowned by the public and will be the person who receives the most likes and shares on their photo on Facebook. Further details can be found on their Monthly Photo Competition Page.How Will People Enter The Competition?Entering the competition is simple. The only rule of thumb is that you must have bought a bed from Get Laid Beds previously and this must be the bed that appears in the photograph.In order to enter their competition, just follow these 3 easy steps:1. Take a nice photo of your bed in your bedroom (they dont accept poor quality photos)2. Email them a copy of the photo to myphoto@getlaidbeds.co.uk or hello@getlaidbeds.co.uk3. Leave them an honest review on TrustpilotIt couldnt be easier to get involved and to improve your chances of winning, they do advise that you share your photo with your friends on Facebook.When Will The Competition Take Place?The Sleep For Free Monthly Photo Competition will be taking place monthly, running from the 1st of each month until the final day of that month. The winner will be announced on the 1st working day of the next month.Get Laid Beds are 'The Bedmakers of England'. Get Laid Beds are fast becoming the UK's primary choice for quality long lasting bed frames and mattresses, with all beds handmade to order using solid wood. Affordable, yet of a premium build, you can expect impressive customer service, an 11 year guarantee, a history of exceptional products and reviews to prove you will not be disappointed.Growing rapidly, Get Laid Beds is beginning to move worldwide with production and distribution starting soon in the US. Offering quality and reliability, Get Laid Beds has been providing British-made wooden beds internationally for years, upholding a high standard of workmanship and care no matter where around the globe each bed goes. Get Laid Beds pledge is one of consistency - Always British, always handmade, always Get Laid Beds.Get Laid BedsBarn W2Winchester AvenueBlabyLeicesterLE8 4GZ
Convenient monitoring with the cloud

www.tandd.com

www.webstorage-service.com

Sensor+Test 2016, hall 5, booth 260: T&D Corporation presents off-the shelf and tailor-made data logger solutionsAt this years Sensor+Test, T&D Corporation presents a range of products and services that facilitate easy cloud monitoring of important data: wireless loggers, devices for communication and data collection as well as services and software are all designed for convenient monitoring, independent of place and time. Highlights will include the RTR-500 series for tailor-made solutions as well as the economical TR-7 series of off-the-shelf devices. Data monitoring with T&Ds networked data loggers not only helps to safeguard goods, processes and facilities, but also ensures accurate documentation of compliance with legal regulations.The competitively priced RTR 500 series is designed for users who need high performance wireless logging as well as optimal flexibility. It consists of compact data loggers that can monitor many different parameters, including temperature, humidity, voltage, mA (4-20mA), pulse, UV, illuminance and CO2. Various base stations are available in wireless, GSM, USB and Ethernet models. These robust devices automatically aggregate the data from compatible data loggers within a 150 meter free air range, or longer distances strengthened through a repeater. Theres no need to install cabling or to travel to collect the data, and the base stations also perform automated alarm monitoring via email, SMS or App messaging.Additionally on show will be the best-selling TR-7 series. With T&D now having cut the price points across this range, it makes cloud monitoring even more affordable. Visitors to the T&D booth will also be able to find out about the companys WebStorage Service and its tools. This free of charge service enables users to access current readings from compatible T&D products in easy-to-read graphs or tables at any time and from any place. Users can also upload and store up to 20 MB per account of recorded data from compatible base units.The Japanese T&D Corporation was founded 1986 in Matsumoto. The company name derives from try and develop and emphasizes the companys ambition to create innovative products with a high degree of practical usefulness. Having started out developing electronic products mainly for the automotive aftermarket, today the company is the Japanese market leader for data loggers. A team of about 50 specialists are engaged in developing data logger systems for industrial, public and private demands. Production takes place in a high-tech site in Matsumoto, Japan, and since 2003, T&D Corporation has been exporting its wireless data loggers worldwide. The company is represented through a European Sales Office located in Niddatal near Frankfurt and a sales office in the USA.For further information, please visit:visit us on Facebook: T&D Corporation EuropeT&D CorporationEuropean Sales OfficeMinoru ItoGronauer Str. 161194 NiddatalGermanyPresscontact:akp public relationsChristina FahrtmannTannenstr. 1a69469 WeinheimGermanyTel.: +49 6201 188 98 10
DESIGNER NICOLE MILLER TO LAUNCH SECOND EXCLUSIVE COLLECTION OF PLANNING ESSENTIALS AT OFFICE DEPOT AND OFFICE MAX STORES NATIONWIDE

IRVINE, CA (April 1, 2016)  Nicole Miller, an iconic American designer with a modern, ageless aesthetic, today announces the launch of her second exclusive line of contemporary calendars, planners and notebooks at Office Depot and Office Max locations nationwide. Inspired by her unique style and vision, the limited edition assortment brings a sophisticated and elegant touch to the everyday workspace.The Nicole Miller collection features rich color accents and cursive typography that is designed to be mixed and matched to create a cohesive, yet composed desktop aesthetic that reflects the style of todays woman. Featuring upscale cover materials, metallic finishes and trend forward patterns with vibrant color accents of magenta, teal, and chartreuse- the designs are taken straight from Nicole Millers innovative runway collection. The line consists of over 20 dated planners, calendars and notebooks, in varied sizes and designs.Each planner features well-designed dated calendars with ample space for everyday scheduling and taking notes, while the notebooks are available individually or in packs of three for jotting down ideas and memos while on the go. Nicole Millers thoughtfully spaced desk and wall calendars offer different sizes to accommodate every planning need. Planners are available in weekly/monthly formats and calendars in monthly formats, dated from July 2016  June 2017.Im happy to announce another line of desktop stationary inspired by prints from my runway collections said designer Nicole Miller. They are a fun way to be both fashionable and organized in everyday life!Nicole Millers collection is available exclusively at Office Depot and Office Max stores, with selected items available on officedepot.com, bluesky.com and nicolemiller.com. The collection ranges from approximately $4.99 - $27.99.ABOUT NICOLE MILLERKnown for her signature graphic prints and innovative silhouettes, Nicole Miller is an iconic American designer with a modern, ageless aesthetic. With a degree in fine arts from The Rhode Island School of Design and a degree from lEcole de la Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture Parisienne in Paris, Nicole Miller combines her art training with couture technique. This, along with her French heritage, has givenher a unique style and vision. Her clothing has been worn by celebrities such as Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Aniston, Beyonce, and Blake Lively, among others. Nicole Miller also designs handbags, eyewear, shoes, lingerie, home products, jewelry, fragrances, tech accessories, a diffusion line for JC Penney, and much more.888 South Figueroa StreetSuite 1000Los AngelesCA 90017
F.E. Moran Fire Protection, Northern Illinois Proud to Announce New President and Vice President

www.femoranfp.com

www.femoranfp.com

Northbrook, IL  F.E. Moran Fire Protection is pleased to announce that John Hebert will be taking on the role of the President of F.E. Moran Fire Protection, Northern Illinois (FPN). Mr. Herbert has been a key player in FPNs growth and success over the past nine years. His knowledge and experience in the fire protection industry has helped propel FPN to one of the top fire protection companies in the Chicago area.On the role change, Brian Ramsey said, Brian Moran and I are confident in Johns ability to take on his new role and to work with other members of FPN toward an even higher level of success.With Mr. Herbert taking on the president role, Ken Klimasz will become Vice President of FPN. Mr. Klimasz has been a driving force behind FPNs success and has taken on additional responsibilities as the company grew. Mr. Klimasz used his extensive fire protection knowledge in conjunction with his business experience to develop the operational side of FPN.F.E. Moran Fire Protection has been providing fire protection solutions to Northern Illinois and Northwestern Indiana for over forty years. Their knowledgeable project managers, designers, and field staff work together to develop and deliver fire protection solutions meeting the specific requirements of their clients facilities. For more information on F.E. Moran Fire Protection visitF.E. Moran Fire Protection, Northern Illinois is proud to announce that John Hebert has been promoted to President and Ken Klimasz has taken over the role of Vice President.F.E. Moran Fire Protection Northern Illinois2165 Shermer Rd, Unit DNorthbrook, IL 60062847-498-4870Contact: Sarah Block
Big Band Beat

www.beathotel.com

www.beathotel.com

WHAT: Beat Brasserie, located in Cambridges Harvard Square, is welcoming spring with a big band bang! On Sunday, April 10th, 2016 Beat will host a special performance from Brian Thomas & Alex Lee Clarks 18 Piece Big Band from 8:00PM to 11:00PM. Not your Daddys big band, theyll be playing an undeniably unique combination of jazz, funk, soul and hip hop while guests enjoy dinner specials, handcrafted cocktails, amazing beers and American craft wines from The Beats all on-tap wine list.The Brian Thomas & Alex Lee Clark Big Band formed in 2011 and have quickly gained a reputation for featuring some of the best players in Boston, their great compositions and creating a sound that pushes the art of big band forward, resulting in an entertaining atmosphere for both the band and audience. Boston based trombonist Brian Thomas is one of the most sought after musicians in the country, playing music ranging from jazz to funk. He has been playing trombone since the age of 10 in his hometown of Rochester, NY and leads his own jazz quartet, big band, and funk power house Akashic Record, each of which feature his original compositions. Brian Thomas will performing with Alex Lee-Clark, who has played with the Temptations and the Four Tops (just to name a few) and has crafted a unique and exciting sound by blending jazz and pop sensibilities. He is a trumpet player, composer, and arranger currently living and teaching in Boston and is currently an in-demand performer.Enjoy the unique sounds of Brian Thomas & Alex Lee-Clark Big Band while enjoying a delicious meal that caters to everyones taste buds including dishes such as Red Wine Braised Beef Short Ribs with mustard spaetzli and duck fat cipollini onions ($25) and Maine Mussels Frites with lager, old bay and tomato ($22). For those just looking for drinks, enjoy the big band at the bar while enjoying The Beats wine on tap and signature cocktails. For more information or to make a reservation visit, or call 617.499.0001.WHERE: The Beat, 13 Brattle Street, Cambridge, MA | P. 617.499.0001WHEN: April 10th, 2016 from 8:00PM  11:00PM. Open from 10:00AM-12:00AM.INFO: No cover charge, cash Bar. Reservations recommended.About Beat BrasserieBeat Brasserie is an American brasserie and bar located in the heart of Harvard Square in Cambridge, MA. Inspired by the hippie and beat movements of the mid-twentieth century, Beat caters to all walks of life. Their mission is to satisfy the local community as well as vagabonds passing through. With an always fresh, seasonal, and wholesome menu, enjoyable for carnivores and vegetarians alike, Executive Chef Ignacio Lopezs dishes draw influence and flavors from around the world. The bar celebrates American spirits and American artisanal wines crafted by small batch winemakers with heart and soul. To heighten the senses further, Beat features daily live music by cutting edge musicians in jazz, blues and world music, bringing eclectic artistry to their stage in Cambridge. For more information visitThe Beat, 13 Brattle Street, Cambridge, MA | P. 617.499.0001
TEARRIFIC! ICE CREAM CARVES OUT NICHE OF FOODIES WITH TEA-INFUSED FLAVORS

www.tearrificicecream.com

www.tearrificicecream.com

Artisanal Ice Cream Company Redefines Expectation Of Premium Ice Cream With Its Tea-Infused FlavorsBRIDGEPORT, CT (April 1, 2016) - Tearrific! Ice Cream, a tea-infused ice cream brand dedicated to crafting unexpected and complex flavors, is using the finest ingredients to provide consumers with a refreshingly modern take on a classic American treat. Drawing inspiration from loose leaf and herbal teas across the globe, Tearrific! Ice Cream delivers uniquely delicious flavors while finishing clean off the palate.Tearrific! Ice Cream starts with fresh hormone free cream from local New England farms and non-fat dry milk, cage-free eggs, and organic evaporated cane sugar. It is then infused with fresh brewed, loose leaf and herbal teas to deliver a truly gourmet experience. Tearrific! Ice Cream is made without the unnecessary gums, preservatives, stabilizers or artificial colors.As a self-proclaimed ice cream fanatic, I often made ice cream at home. My love for tea inspired me to use it to craft ice cream with unique flavor notes, said Mario Leite, president and founder. Everyone noted how surprisingly distinct and delicious the flavors were, but also how refreshing. It is almost unheard of for a super-premium, full fat ice cream to be described in this way, which is how I knew we had a hit.Every flavor of Tearrific! Ice Cream is inspired by Leites undying love of all things ice cream and his passion for teas from different countries. With such a wide variety of loose leaf and herbal teas that are enjoyed all over the world, Tearrific! Ice Cream utilizes tea as an ideal ingredient to make each flavor rich and fragrant. All of Tearrific! Ice Creams flavors, including its newest Matcha Green Tea were developed and perfected by Leite. The companys other current flavors include: Ginger Matcha, Masala Chai, Chamomile, Chunky London Mist, London Mist, and Lavenders Blueberry.With a unique product concept and quality ingredients, the company has grown from a handful of independent shops in Connecticut, to distribution in over 400 locations throughout the Northeast and beyond, including major retailers like Whole Foods, Stop & Shop and ShopRite. For more information on Tearrific! Ice Cream, please visitAbout Tearrific! Ice CreamAfter a long love affair with ice cream, founder Mario Leite began searching for an ice cream that used the highest quality ingredients while offering uniquely distinct flavor. After being let go from his investment banking job in 2011, he decided to put inspiration into action and began experimenting in the kitchen by infusing fresh-brewed loose leaf teas into his ice cream. Tearrific! Ice Cream became a product of a wild idea and a passionately sweet desire for fine ice cream. The companys numerous awards & accomplishments include Best New Product at the World Tea Expo East in 2012, Martha Stewart American Made Finalist in 2014, sofi Award Finalist at the 2015 Summer Fancy Food Show, Yankee Magazine Editors Pick Food Awards Winner in 2015, and Connecticut Specialty Food Awards Winner in 2016. For more information on Tearrific! Ice Cream, please visit888 South Figueroa St.Suite 1000Los Angeles, CA90017
The Vatican signs the ISO/IEC 15408 International Recognition Arrangement (I^2RA)

Recognizing the need for secure IT products in all regions of the world, and in support of an internationally agreed Arrangement allowing for the mutual recognition of independently evaluated and validated information technology (IT) products, the Vatican has decided to sign the ISO/IEC 15408 International Recognition Arrangement (I^2RA) and has started to validate the security evaluations of IT products.The I^2RA was established in 1996 and was used as the basis for mutually accepting certificates for the assurance of IT products. At that time it was in competition with another arrangement called the Common Criteria Recognition Arrangement (CCRA), which some nations viewed as the more attractive option.The I^2RA signatories therefore started a process to weaken the CCRA thus strengthening the importance and influence of the I2RA. Finally this process was successful.The Vatican has announced that it has joined the existing signatories to the I^2RA as the first Certificate Authorizing member. This provides much needed value to the existing certificate-consuming members of the arrangement.atsec's Vice President, Fiona Pattinson stated:"Convincing the Vatican to join this hitherto little known Arrangement has been a long term goal of atsec. Drawing from our long experience in helping nation-states to establish validation schemes under the now obsolete CCRA it seemed natural to help the Vatican to establish an evaluation and validation Scheme within the I^2RA in order to continue to support those developers that wish to demonstrate to assurance-consumers that their products offer a modicum of assurance in their security functionality."The Vatican has set up its own evaluation facility that analyzes IT products for compliance with ISO/IEC 15408 in context with divine security principals and a newly established policy that eliminates security flaws using a new vulnerability assessment and mitigation technology named 'exorcism'. Details of this technology have not been published but the Vatican has stated that this technology has been very successful in the past for projects performed in other areas.Objections came from several Intelligence Agencies who stated that international mutual recognition of evaluations not performed under their control, and resulting in the eradication of a large number of vulnerabilities, may have a negative influence on their ability to perform the work they are supposed to do. They also objected to the use of 'supernatural' assessment methods claiming to provide a high level of assurance.Some Voodoo priests in the Caribbean have announced that they are also considering setting up a security evaluation and validation scheme and will potentially convince their countries to join the I^2RA.atsec information security was founded in January, 2000, by three security professionals who share a passion for information security. The founders were so confident that a company focused solely on providing information security services could be successful, that they financed the new business themselves.As it was on its first day, atsec information security is still an independent, standards-based information security consulting and evaluation services company that combines a business-oriented approach to information security with in-depth technical knowledge and global experience.atsec USAatsec information security corporation9130 Jollyville Road, Suite 260Austin, TX 78759USAAndreas Fabis
Gardere Promotes Four New Partners in Dallas, Houston

DALLAS  Gardere Wynne Sewell LLP is pleased to announce that Firm Attorneys Chris Deskin, Rick Jordan, Mike Seely and Glenn T. Singleton have been elected to partnership, effective April 1.These distinguished attorneys demonstrate integrity, expertise across a breadth of specialties, professional initiative and a dedication to providing our clients with exceptional service," says Gardere Chair Holland N. O'Neil. We applaud their accomplishments and are honored to welcome them to the Firms partnership.Mr. Deskin is a tax attorney in the Firms Dallas office. He focuses his practice on trusts and estates, with an emphasis on estate planning and federal tax-related matters, business succession planning, marital property planning and asset protection planning. Mr. Deskin is a 2005 graduate of The University of Texas School of Law.Mr. Jordan works in Garderes corporate practice group and splits his time between the Firms Dallas and Austin offices. He focuses his practice on venture capital financings, mergers and acquisitions, securities regulation and corporate governance. Mr. Jordan is a 2008 graduate of Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law.Mr. Seely is a trial attorney in Garderes Houston office. He represents both plaintiffs and defendants in a wide variety of matters including complex commercial litigation, oilfield litigation, professional malpractice, real estate disputes, collection of unpaid invoices and promissory notes, and other business torts. Mr. Seely is a 2007 graduate of South Texas College of Law.Mr. Singleton works in Garderes corporate practice group in Dallas. He focuses his practice on representing buyers, sellers, investors, fundless sponsors, joint ventures and other business entities in sophisticated debt and equity financings and other complex business transactions. Mr. Singleton is a 2007 graduate of University of Georgia School of Law.Gardere Wynne Sewell LLP, an Am Law 200 firm founded in 1909 and one of the Southwest's largest full-service law firms, has offices in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Denver and Mexico City. Gardere provides legal services to private and public companies and individuals in the areas of corporate, energy, environmental, financial restructuring and reorganization, financial services, government affairs, hospitality, insurance, intellectual property, international, labor and employment, litigation, private equity, real estate and tax.Gardere Wynne Sewell LLP3000 Thanksgiving Tower1601 Elm St.Dallas TX 75201214.999.3000Press Contact: Jennifer Dilworth, 214.999.4718, jdilworth@gardere.com or Connie Thompson, 214.999.4288, cthompson@gardere.com.
New Zealand Author Wins Kindle Press Contract

Kindle Press Cover Image

http://katherinehayton.com

New Zealand author Katherine Hayton released her fourth novel, The Three Deaths of Magdalene Lynton, on March 29th 2016. The book is published by Kindle Press, a digital imprint of Amazon that has operated since October 2014. Katherine was awarded the contract by winning a Kindle Scout campaign. Scout is an American Idol style talent search program operated by Amazon to scout out new literary talent. Authors who are accepted into the program have 30 days to garner support and impress the editors at Kindle Press.The Kindle Scout platform opened to New Zealand submissions in September 2015. Katherine independently published three novels before The Three Deaths of Magdalene Lynton, so she was soon ready with a well-edited manuscript and eye-catching cover to promote her latest book. Her campaign ran from 7th January through to 6th February, earning over 2,300 page views and spending 695 hours in the Hot and Trending category. Her title was accepted for publication on the 8th February 2016. Katherine is the first New Zealand author selected and published by Kindle Press.Ive always enjoyed the creative and marketing control that an indie author has when they choose to self-publish, Katherine explains. However, the downside is that you dont have the marketing power of a large publishing house, so indie authors struggle to become well-known. With access to the might of Amazons in-house marketing, the Kindle Press imprint offers a great avenue for independent authors like myself to dip their toes into the water of traditional publishing.Kindle Press offers a balanced hybrid of indie control (authors have final say over cover design and edits, retain print rights, and earn a fifty percent royalty share) and the benefits of a major publisher (authors are paid an advance, receive professional editing, and enjoy the promotional power of the imprint).The Three Deaths of Magdalene Lynton is set in modern day Christchurch and is the first in a trilogy of novels to feature DC Ngaire Blakes. When a dying man confesses to the forty-year-old murder of Magdalene Lynton it throws doubt on the original coroners verdict of accidental death, but neither explanation holds up to scrutiny. As DC Blakes investigates, the person responsible for Magdalenes death takes drastic steps to halt any further discoveries.Katherine Hayton is a forty-two-year-old woman who works in insurance, doesn't have children or pets, can't drive, has lived in Christchurch her entire life, and resides a two-minute walk from where she was born. For some reason shes developed a rich fantasy life and has been publishing the resulting novels since July 2014.Katherine Hayton (Author)4 Reynolds AvenueChristchurch 8053New Zealand
3 Birds to Offer Real-Time Customer Acquisition Data Visualization & Marketing

Inc. 5000-ranked automotive digital marketing company introduces industrys first dealer-facing, real-time conquest data configurator as part of expanded 3 Birds ME marketing platformChapel Hill, N.C., April 2, 2016 - 3 Birds Marketing announced today that it will incorporate IHS Automotive predictive models into its enhanced and expanded 3 Birds marketing & analytics platform. For the first time, this addition will offer automotive groups and dealers the ability to call up real-time conquest target counts and visualize in-market prospects in their area based on IHS Automotive insight, then Market Effectively on those conquest opportunities through the 3 Birds ME marketing platform and Acquisition Accelerator.Identify high-value prospects in real time based on IHS models3 Birds clients and dealerships across the country will be able to target market opportunities in their area according to the IHS suite of high-accuracy aggregated statistical models, which enhance a dealers ability to better understand opportunities in their local market, as well as enable dealers to garner insight into an audiences likelihood of owning a specific brand or competitive make, and identifying which audiences are likely to purchase a new vehicle within the next six months, while also helping to identify new prospective customers for the dealership.3 Birds eliminates the need for complex data queries and reliance on vendor-managed third-party tools with an intuitive data visualization dashboard powered by the sophisticated Tableau business intelligence software. Any dealership with a login to any app within the 3 Birds platform will be able to access the conquest configurator and independently filter by either preview model. The agreement also grants 3 Birds access to accurate conquest count information for every dealership in the United States, even those without a login to the platform.The conquest configurator and data visualization tool was developed in-house at 3 Birds under the direction of Doug Van Sach, VP of Analytics and Insight, a seasoned technology executive with 15 years of experience building multi-channel marketing programs and merchandising strategies for automotive OEMs, dealer groups, and aftermarket companies. The tool is the first of its kind to allow any dealership in the country to obtain target counts and see the visualizations of the in-market opportunities in their area.Changes are reflected dynamically in the interactive map and corresponding graph view. Additional insights are available by filtering according to specific ZIP codes, such as those containing primary competitors. This data provides the foundation for future conquest opportunities and can be further segmented by vehicle category and other data variables.Deliver performance-focused customer Acquisition Streams with the 3 Birds Acquisition AcceleratorThe expanded offering from 3 Birds provides automotive groups and dealers a powerful tool for identifying their most valuable in-market prospects. 3 Birds also provides a solution to the challenge of quickly acting on these prospects with its new Acquisition Accelerator.The Acquisition Accelerator includes high-quality, well-optimized email communications with 3 Birds' integrated Live Inventory, proven to increase vehicle sales and repair orders. With the guidance of a dedicated account manager, 3 Birds clients can easily identify audiences likely to be in market generated by models from IHS Automotive and track their campaigns' effectiveness with built-in business intelligence and analytics.New leads immediately become part of the long-term dealership messaging cycle powered by 3 Birds' Automated Marketing Engine. The new offering will also allow 3 Birds to incorporate additional insight from IHS Automotive into the 3 Birds advanced analytics dashboards and solution sets, strengthening 3 Birds' consumer intent algorithms and in-market sales predictions."We're proud to expand our solutions by adding IHS Automotive intelligence to provide dealers with more transparent and flexible conquest marketing solutions," said 3 Birds CEO Kristen Judd. "The powerful predictive models IHS Automotive provides are an exciting complement to our own Predictive Modeling and Lifetime Value Analytics, offering an all-new way for our clients to Market Effectively."About 3 Birds Marketing, LLC3 Birds Marketing is a new breed of fully integrated, enterprise-level, multi-channel, multi-tier marketing software platform and solutions provider focused in the automotive retail space. 3 Birds has helped automobile manufacturers, distributorships, advertising agencies, dealer associations, automobile dealership groups and dealerships demand, attract, and convert modern digital consumers through enterprise-level integrated marketing technology, outstanding client services, and extensive marketing and automotive retail experience. 3 Birds was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.3 Birds Marketing505-B West Franklin StreetChapel Hill, NC 27516Media Contact:Kristen Juddkristen@3birdsmarketing.com877-285-1094
Broadnet Technologies Releases Attractive Bulk Sms Packages For Small And Medium-Sized Businesses

www.BroadNet.me

www.Broadnet.me

Mobile devices are playing a very critical role in facilitating the human life on an increasing basis and with that said the number of mobile users is also growing boundlessly at a faster pace with each passing day. With respect to business, mobile devices are unequivocally the perfect tool, which turns out well in building up and perfecting customers communication. Companies these days are focused on delivering the personalized messages related to the business offers to the intended audiences and to let the thing happen actually, they turn to professional bulk SMS service providing companies. If you scout online, a vast array of bulk SMS companies will be visible. Most of the reputable bulk SMS companies offer guaranteed and seamless solutions. However, for the raw individuals who are looking for a premium solution at a reasonable budget is not an easy job since the internet, apart from genuine companies, is replete with specious ones too. So, the release of affordable bulk messaging services for small and medium-sized businesses is really a constructive step.BroadNet Technologies has come up with the latest release of its attractive bulk SMS Packages for small and medium-sized packages. The core team of the company along with Rabih, CEO and founder of BroadNet Technologies expressed that, our central idea behind releasing this wonderful and available offer is to give support of bang-up communication solutions to our small-sized clients. We are well aware that communication is the cornerstone in turning a business into a real success. Therefore, we are committed to crafting and delivering smart solutions in every potential style.We are delighted to launch the affordable bulk SMS services at very affordable price rates. In the time to come, we also plan to offer more engaging and affordable packages for bulk SMS services. We aim to enhance our clientele base. Having cost effective packages available in the marketplace is believed to help businesses in setting up an improved level of communication with their customer base. We plan to help our clients mushroom and cater to the development objectives at the same time. The initiative is to aid our clients develop and cater to the development objectives at the same time.Hence, the communication systems for businesses are developing more powerful with time and assisting the globe in developing in their intended fields. This is an unparalleled level of development for every small-scale business and start-up aiming at impressive development in the eventual years.To get extra pull of information about the bulk SMS packages and offer, please visitBroadNet Technologies LLC located in Al Manara Tower  Business Bay  Dubai. BroadNet is your long-term Bulk SMS solution provider. We provide a Fully Operational Bulk SMS Platform that can adapt to new Business Environments. This platform would enable you to achieve Highest Quality Service and Effective Support Compliance Handling. We help different businesses communicate easily to their customers and to get New Customers through our Professional Services.To learn more about the special offer or other services BroadNet offers, Please visit the website atBusiness Bay, Almanara Tower, 411006
Red Hat Expands Red Hat Developer Program with No-Cost Red Hat Enterprise Linux Developer Subscription

http://www.redhat.com

http://www.sec.gov

DUBAI, UAE, 3rd April, 2016  Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the availability of a no-cost Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription, available as part of the Red Hat Developer Program. Offered as a self-supported, non-production developer subscription, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Developer Suite provides developers with a more stable development platform for building enterprise-grade applications and enables a clear pathway to supported, mission-critical deployments across cloud, physical, virtual and container-centric infrastructures.Launched at DevNation 2015, the Red Hat Developer Program continues to evolve to help meet the demands of enterprise developers, offering simplified access to content, tools, and resources that enable enterprise developers be more successful with Red Hat products. This catalog of resources now includes access to Red Hat Enterprise Linux Developer Suite as well as the Red Hat JBoss Middleware portfolio, both available via no-cost developer subscriptions. These subscriptions enable developers to more easily access Red Hats enterprise-grade technologies for local application development only; production use requires a paid subscription level.With the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Developer Suite, developers have access to a broad and up-to-date set of development tools, in addition to the latest version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server, enabling the creation of modern applications for deployment across the hybrid cloud. In addition, enterprise IT teams who are embarking on modern application development, through DevOps, CI/CD or other practices, can now have a more simple and efficient environment with platform compatibility across development and deployment.For those building cloud-native applications and/or microservices, this new no-cost development subscription also offers access to the Red Hat Container Development Kit (CDK), Red Hats curated collection of container development tools and resources. CDK users will have access to Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server and a local desktop instance of OpenShift Enterprise for development use - providing a powerful configuration for container-based application development.Through the Red Hat Developer Program, the no-cost Red Hat Enterprise Linux Developer Suite provides application developers with a substantial set of products and components, including: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - An application development entitlement to the worlds leading enterprise Linux platform. Development tools with long-term support - Each major Red Hat Enterprise Linux release includes a broad set of base tools that, like the operating system, are supported for 10 years; including Python, PHP, Ruby, OpenJDK 7 (1.7), OpenJDK 8 (1.8) and many more. Development tools with frequent updates - Multiple open source programming languages, databases, web servers, and development tools are updated yearly with the most recent, stable versions, and are packaged via Red Hat Software Collections and Red Hat Developer Toolset.Visit developers.redhat.com to get started today.Supporting QuotesHarry Mower, senior director, Developer Tools and Marketing, Red HatThe Red Hat Developer Program exists to give developers greater access to our technology and to help developers be successful with Red Hat products. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat JBoss Middleware available through the program at no cost, developers can more easily use our technology to start projects and explore solutions while having confidence that their chosen development platforms and tools can be supported in production, without porting or incompatibility issues.Al Hilwa, program director, Application Development Software, IDC"One of the foundational goals of the DevOps movement is to eliminate differences between development and production environments. Developers will appreciate having access to free capabilities that will enable them to work on a consistent stack."About Red Hat, Inc.Red Hat is the world's leading provider of open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to reliable and high-performing cloud, Linux, middleware, storage and virtualization technologies. Red Hat also offers award-winning support, training, and consulting services. As a connective hub in a global network of enterprises, partners, and open source communities, Red Hat helps create relevant, innovative technologies that liberate resources for growth and prepare customers for the future of IT. Learn more atForward-Looking StatementsCertain statements contained in this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including: risks related to the ability of the Company to compete effectively; the ability to deliver and stimulate demand for new products and technological innovations on a timely basis; delays or reductions in information technology spending; the effects of industry consolidation; the integration of acquisitions and the ability to market successfully acquired technologies and products; uncertainty and adverse results in litigation and related settlements; the inability to adequately protect Company intellectual property and the potential for infringement or breach of license claims of or relating to third party intellectual property; risks related to data and information security vulnerabilities; ineffective management of, and control over, the Company's growth and international operations; fluctuations in exchange rates; and changes in and a dependence on key personnel, as well as other factors contained in our most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q (copies of which may be accessed through the Securities and Exchange Commission's website at), including those found therein under the captions "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations". In addition to these factors, actual future performance, outcomes, and results may differ materially because of more general factors including (without limitation) general industry and market conditions and growth rates, economic and political conditions, governmental and public policy changes and the impact of natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company's views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release.###Red Hat, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the Shadowman logo, and JBoss are trademarks or registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. or its subsidiaries registered in the U.S. and other countries. Linux is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries.Media Contact:Colin SaldanhaPROCRE8 for Red HatVilla 41, 81D Street, Uptown Mirdiff, PO BOX 78835, Dubai, UAETel: +97150 6400762Email: colin@procre8.biz
Talenda offers tailor-made online language lessons

www.talenda.com

Munich, April 4, 2016 - The online career network Talenda focuses its business activities on face to face online language lessons for English, German, Spanish and French.The company had originally specialized in the international recruitment of employees. The experience had shown that insufficient language skills among new employees from abroad often are an obstacle to a successful career and a rapid integration. From this experience Talenda has developed a new business model which was launched successfully in january 2016.The aim of Talenda Online Language School is to make language learning easier, more efficient and available to everybody at any time. Not every student can or wants to visit a school on site. The attendance of online language courses offers many advantages: No long journeys, no rigid school hours, a fast learning progress and lower costs.The biggest motivation of Talenda is to support people in learning a new language and help their students to achieve their individual goals. All this combined with the advantages of flexible online classes and a high quality learning experience.The private classes are tailored to the needs of each student and take place on a virtual learning platform or via Skype. Each lesson takes 45 minutes and is conducted by qualified native speaking teachers. The Talenda language tutors speak their mother tongue, which they teach, and also English and have a broad experience in conducting online courses. After a successful completion of each course, the participants receive an official certificate as proof of their obtained language skills.The target group of Talenda are students worldwide: People who aim to learn a language for work, for school or university, for visa purposes, for holidays, emigration, as a hobby or for any other reason.In addition to the currently offered German, English, Spanish and French language courses, Talenda plans to start teaching further languages in the course of 2016.Talenda is one of the leading online language schools. The company offers trainings in many living languages, in intercultural and management skills. Their programs are custom-designed to fit the specific needs of their clients, should they be large or small corporations, individuals, students or children.Talenda believes in a world where communication has no barriers. Their training solutions are designed to overcome the boundaries for global communication such as time, place and cultural differences. A Talenda learner understands that communication goes way beyond languages and is qualified to speak with confidence.Company:Talenda GmbHAdams-Lehmann-Str. 5680797 MunichGermanyPress Contact:Marcus StielManaging DirectorPhone: +49 (0) 89 954575740Fax: +49 (0) 151 22320999E-Mail: marcus.stiel@talenda.comWeb:
Global Self-balancing Scooter Market - 2016 Trends, Market Shares, Growth Prospects & Technology Advancements

http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/global-self-balancing-scooter-industry-2016-market-research-report.htm

http://www.qyresearchreports.com

This study has been based on the results obtained by applying various analytical tools such as investment feasibility analysis and investment return analysis on the worldwide Self-balancing Scooter market to determine its attractiveness. SWOT analysis of major market players has also been performed to identify crucial strategies adopted by participants for business expansion in the market for Self-balancing Scooter across the world.The research report also evaluates the global market for Self-balancing Scooter by performing an analysis of the existing industry chain, prevalent regulations and policies, and the government initiatives to encourage the demand for Self-balancing Scooter. Along with this, it also provides a detailed overview of the products produced in this market, their manufacturing chain, and their price structure.Lastly, the regional markets for Self-balancing Scooter have been analyzed on the basis of their production capacity as well as the volume produced and the revenue generated. The statistical data regarding the demand and supply of Self-balancing Scooter and the historical CAGR of the Self-balancing Scooter market in the respective region has also been presented in this report.Table of ContentsChapter One Self-balancing Scooter Industry Overview1.1 Self-balancing Scooter Definition1.1.1 Self-balancing Scooter Product Pictures & Product Specifications1.2 Self-balancing Scooter Classification & ApplicationChapter Two Self-balancing Scooter Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis2.1 Self-balancing Scooter Raw Material & Equipments Supplier and Price Analysis2.3 Self-balancing Scooter Labor & Other Cost Analysis2.5 Self-balancing Scooter Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis2.6 Self-balancing Scooter Manufacturing Process AnalysisChapter Three Self-balancing Scooter Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis3.1 2016 Global Key Manufacturers Self-balancing Scooter Capacity and Commercial Production Date3.2 2016 Global Key Manufacturers Self-balancing Scooter Manufacturing Plants Distribution3.3 2016 Global Key Manufacturers Self-balancing Scooter R&D Status and Technology Sources3.4 2016 Global Key Manufacturers Self-balancing Scooter Raw Materials Sources AnalysisBrowse Complete Report along with TOC @QYresearchreports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYReseachReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.James Milner1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-618-1030Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Shamans in cyberspace and sacramental drug use

Wouters, Fountain (Eds.) Between street and screen - Traditions and innovations in the drugs field

http://www.pabst-science-publishers.com/index.php?30&backPID=30&swords=978-3-95853-143-7&tt_products=182

www.pabst-publishers.de

www.psychologie-aktuell.com

Neo-shamanism: Drug mysticism is a cultural theme associated with social drug use. Professor Dr. Alfred Springer (Vienna) explored new discourse and practice in sacramental drug use and the practice of achieving ecstasy.Neo-shamanism is not a single, cohesive belief system, but a collective term for many philosophies and activities. It comprises an eclectic range of beliefs and practices that involve attempts to attain altered states of consciousness and communicate with a spirit world.Drug use with spiritual/shamanic intentions is represented on the internet - on the Eurowid website in particular. Springers analysis of Eurowids Experience Vaults revealed thousands of reports on glowing experiences, mystical experiences and bad trips. Glowing and mystical experiences were reportedly induced by a wide range of psychoactive substances and most of them occured after the ingestion of more than one substance (polydrug use). Many experience reports contain reference to shamanism and drug mysticism. Over time, the use of substances traditionally linked with drug mysticism (e.g. LSD, psychedelic mushrooms, DMT, MDMA, dextrometorphane) was stable. From 2011 onwards, methoxetamine became increasingly popular as a substance that induces glowing experiences.As a space for drug- and drug use related information, cyberspace provides locales for the presentation of experiences. Based on a broad definition of shamanism, narrators telling stories about mystical or glowing drug-induced experiences represent a separate form of cyberspace shamans. Like traditional shamans, they are inclined to mystical interpretations and are therefore prone to experience drug-induced alterations of their state of mind as sacred ecstasy ...>> Alfred Springer: Shamans in cyberspace. In: Wouters, Fountain (Eds.) Between street and screen - Traditions and innovations in the drugs field. Pabst, 112 pages, ISBN 978-3-95853-143-7Pabst Science Publishers (Lengerich/Westfalen) veroffentlicht zehn psychologische und neun medizinische Fachzeitschriften; daruber hinaus erscheinen bei Pabst aus den gleichen Fachbereichen mehr als hundert Bucher jahrlich - teils wissenschaftliche Spezialtitel, teils allgemeinverstandliche Fachliteratur.Pabst Science PublishersEichengrund 2849525 LengerichTel. 05484-308Fax 05484-550E-Mail: pabst.publishers@t-online.deInternet:
Accu Holding AG: Ordinary Capital increase and further capital measures to increase shareholder's equity

Ordinary Capital increase and further capital measures to increase shareholder's equity by more than CHF 10 millionRelease of an ad hoc announcement pursuant to Art. 53 KR.The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION IN THE UNITED STATES, UNITED KINGDOM OR THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AREA Exercise of subscription rights within the expected range Strengthening of the balance sheet through conversion of debt of CHF 5'379'953 into new shares Additional subscription commitments of 300'000 shares Placement of CHF 1.4 million from conditional capital with Atlas Capital MarketsEmmenbrucke, April 4th, 2016. Accu Holding AG (Accu) announces today, that in the ordinary capital increase existing shareholders of Accu have subscribed a total of 92'183 shares with a nominal value of CHF 10.00 at an issue price of CHF 11.50 per share. Those shares together with the debt to equity conversion of additional 467'817 new shares will increase shareholder equity of Accu from CHF 26'186'150.00 to CHF 31'786'150. First trading day of the new shares on SIX Swiss Exchange is scheduled for April 14th, 2016. Delivery against payment of new shares is foreseen for 15th April 2016.New investors are expected to subscribe for an additional 300'000 new shares in the ordinary capital increase. If these subscriptions are not submitted in time, the majority shareholder of Accu will convert additional loans granted to Accu in the same magnitude into shares subsequent to the ordinary capital increase.Besides these commitments, Atlas Capital Markets (press release 16th November 2015) has acquired /committed to CHF 1.4 million new shares through private placements.Various strategic investors have expressed their interest to invest in Accu. However, due to time constraints of the investment process, their commitments could not be obtained in the course of the ordinary capital increase. These investors are intended to participate via issuance of new shares out of authorized or conditional capital of Accu at a later stage.Legal DisclaimerThe economic projections and predictions contained in this information relate to future facts. Such projections and predictions are subject to risks, uncertainties and changes which cannot be foreseen and which are beyond the control of Accu Holding AG. Accu Holding AG is therefore not in a position to make any representations as to the accuracy of economic projections and predictions or their impact on the financial situation of Accu Holding AG or the market in the securities of Accu Holding AG.This document does not constitute an offer or invitation to subscribe for or purchase any securities. It is not being issued in countries where the public dissemination of the information contained herein may be restricted or prohibited by law. In particular, this document is not being issued in the United States of America and should not be distributed to U.S. persons or publications with a general circulation in the United States. Any non-compliance with such restrictions may result in a n infringement of U.S. securities laws. Securities of Accu Holding AG ('Company') are not being publicly offered outside of Switzerland. In particular, the securities of the company have not been registered under the U.S. securities laws and may not be offered, sold or delivered within the United States or to U.S. persons absent the registration under or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the U.S. securities laws. This document does not constitute a prospectus according to 652a or article 1156 of the Swiss Code of Obligations or article 27et seq. of the Six Swiss Exchange listing rules.This document is only directed at (i) persons who are outside the United Kingdom or (ii) to investment professionals falling within Article 19(5) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005 (the 'Order') or (iii) high net worth entities, and other persons to whom it may lawfully be communicated, falling within Article 49(2)(a) to (d) of the Order (all such persons together being referred to as 'Relevant Persons'). The securities are only available to, and any invitation, offer or agreement to subscribe, purchase or otherwise acquire such securities will be engaged in only with, Relevant Persons. Any person who is not a Relevant Person should not act or rely on this information or any of its contents.Accu Holding AG - Company ProfileThe Accu Holding AG is listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange with its headquarter in Emmenbrucke/Lucerne. It focuses on the two business areas 'Industrial Yarns' and 'Surface Technology' and investing in leading technology companies that operate in attractive market niches in Europe, Asia and America. Industrial yarns encompasses the development and manufacturing of yarns based on polymer and polyamide. These yarns are used in applications such as mechanical rubber goods (MRG) such as conveyor belts, hoses and transmission belts, as well as for the production of ropes and nets used for example in the manufacture of airbags and tires. The business unit of surface technology includes the equipment manufacturer of heat treatment and coating equipment and the operation of heat treatment shops and high-tech thin-coating centres of the latest generation. These high-quality products are manufactured in Europe and the US for niche markets in the automotive, aerospace, medical, petroleum, process and manufacturing industries.Contact:Andreas KratzerAccu Holding AGGerliswilstrasse 176020 Emmenbruckea.kratzer@accuholding.chTelefon +41 44 318 88 00Media contact for Germanyedicto GmbHDr. Sonke Knop/Elke PfeiferEschersheimer Landstrae 4260322 Frankfurt am MainTel.: +49 69 905 505 51E-Mail: sknop@edicto.de
Worldwide Rheology Modifiers Market Shares, Strategies, and Forecasts, 2016 to 2026

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1282

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1282

www.futuremarketinsights.com

Future Market Insights has announced the addition of the Rheology Modifiers Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2016-2026" report to their offering.Rheology modifiers are the substance used to modify the flow of matter. Rheology modifiers are used to precisely control the physical and chemical properties of fluid. Rheology modifiers are the key ingredients in paints, inks and coating as they are used to control the desired physical and chemical properties. The Global Rheology modifiers market is anticipated to grow at CAGR of more than 3% for the forecasted period of 2016 -2021. The growth in application sector such as paints, coating, cosmetics, personal care, pharmaceuticals , industrial chemicals and others sectors are forecasted to manage a single digit annual growth. It is forecasted that the global Rheology modifiers Market to be worth of U.S. $ 5600 MN by the end of 2021.Rheology modifiers Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe key driver for Rheology modifiers Market is the growth in Paints and coating industry, especially in Asia pacific region. It is forecasted that the global paints and coatings industry to grow at CAGR of more than 5% for the next 5 years, staring from 2016.The Cosmetics and personal care segment is also witnessing a robust growth which is expected to beneficial for Rheology modifiers Market. The increasing company contribution towards research and development such as Evonik Industries AGs new research center in Asia, is expected to provide solutions for new market segments and improve the performance of traditional segments. The improved construction and industrial activities in developing nations is expected to boost the Rheology modifiers Market.On the other hand, the increasing pressure for environmental regulation is one of the major restraining factor. The strict Environmental policies are forcing manufacturers to reformulate their products which adds to the excessive cost of research and development. The falling consumption of ink because of digitalization and rising paperless activities is the restraining factor for the demand Rheology modifiers.Request Free Report Sample@Rheology modifiers Market: SegmentationOn the basis of type, the global market Rheology modifiers market is segmented into:Inorganic rheology modifiersOrganic rheology modifiers.On the basis of application, the global market Rheology modifiers market is segmented into:Paints and CoatingsInksCosmetics and Personal CareConstruction compoundsPaper and paperboard coatingOthers( Chemical Compounding of various industrial Chemicals)Rheology modifiers Market: Region Wise OutlookRheology modifiers Market is mainly distributed into four regions namely Asia Pacific, Europe, America and RoW based on the consumption pattern. The largest producer as well as consumer is estimated to be Asia pacific region due to rising construction and industrial activities. The Europe and America are expected to mark stagnant growth Rheology modifiers Market.Download TOC@Rheology modifiers Market: Key PlayersSome of the market participants in the global polyamide-6 (PA6) market are BASF SE, Evonik Industries AG, Akzo Nobel N.V., Ashland, The Lubrizol Corporation, Elementis plc, Arkema, Clariant AG and others.Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature.616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Wind-Proof Lighter Market 2016 Industry Size, Growth, Share, Analysis and Forecast

http://goo.gl/z91zij

http://goo.gl/PeJ7AM

http://www.prmarketweb.com/

Market Research Report on Wind-Proof Lighter market 2016 is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the Wind-Proof Lighter worldwide. First of all,"Global Wind-Proof Lighter Market 2016" report provides a basic overview of the Wind-Proof Lighter industry including definitions, classifications, applications and Wind-Proof Lighter industry chain structure.The analysis is provided for the Wind-Proof Lighter international market including development history, Wind-Proof Lighter industry competitive landscape analysis.After that, Wind-Proof Lighter industry development policies as well as plans are discussed and manufacturing processes as well as cost structures for Wind-Proof Lighter market. This report "Worldwide Wind-Proof Lighter Market 2016" also states import/export, supply and consumption figures and Wind-Proof Lighter market cost, price, revenue and Wind-Proof Lighter market's gross margin by regions (United States, EU, China and Japan), as well as other regions can be added in Wind-Proof Lighter Market area.Request For Free Report Sample @Then, the report focuses on worldwide Wind-Proof Lighter market key players with information such as company profiles with product picture as well as specification.related information to Wind-Proof Lighter market- capacity, production, price, cost, revenue and contact information. Aslo includes Wind-Proof Lighter industry's - Upstream raw materials, equipment and downstream consumers analysis is also carried out. Whats more, the Wind-Proof Lighter market development trends and Wind-Proof Lighter industry marketing channels are analyzed.Finally, "worldwide Wind-Proof Lighter market" Analysis- feasibility of new investment projects is assessed, and overall research conclusions are offered.Read More Research with TOC @About PR Market WebPR Market Web will provide you real and current information related different news. It may be local, national and global news. Also it serves educational guidance to students and market policies to businessmen. So its best platform to search any type of news.Our team has taken efforts in providing high quality services. Visitors can interact directly to our team for any queries and suggestions. This platform is mobile friendly, so you can search for news anytime and anywhere.Contact UsJoel John3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138,Deerfield Beach,Florida 33442, USATel: +1-386-310-3803GMT Tel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll Free No.1-855-465-4651Website:email: info@prmarketweb.com
Advancements and Innovations Driving the Skilled Nursing Care Services Market

http://bit.ly/1V3Y3AE

http://bit.ly/234QT46

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com

Factors such as aging of population globally, increasing incidences of chronic diseases such as dementia and Alzheimers disease, are driving the global skilled nursing care services market towards growth.Skilled nursing care service centers offer long term as well as short term nursing care services for people who are suffering from chronic or serious diseases such as Alzheimers disease and are difficult to take care at assisted living facility or at home. Skilled nursing care service centers provide services such as monitoring interventional medications, dressing and taking care of post-operative wound, assistance to physical therapists and speech therapists, laundry services, end-of-life care, social and educational activities, bathing, dressing, incontinence and supporting patients in moving in and out of the bed and in eating.Skilled nursing care services are recommended when 24X7 nursing care is necessary mainly in case of elderly individuals who might stray if left unattended, unable to eat by their own, for medication and portability and when more help is needed than family or present caregiver can give.Brochure Download:Factors such as aging of population globally, increasing incidences of chronic diseases such as dementia and Alzheimers disease, are driving the global skilled nursing care services market towards growth. While on the other hand, social stigma associated with residential nursing care services and high cost are some of the factors that are restraining the growth of the global skilled nursing care services market.Geographically, global skilled nursing care services market is classified into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Rest of the World (RoW) regions. Currently, North America is dominating the global skilled nursing care services market and is closely followed by Europe. Some of the factors such as, availability of reimbursement coverage, highly developed healthcare infrastructure, well defined regulatory framework and high awareness about availability of skilled nursing care services are resulting in dominating position of North America in the global skilled nursing care services market. Asia Pacific is a lucrative market for skilled nursing care services. India and China account for the largest population pool in the world. Thus, with rise in geriatric population, India and China would be largest geriatric population pool in the world. With rapidly improving healthcare infrastructure, government initiatives to improve healthcare facilities in countries mainly India andChina on the grounds of swiftly growing medical tourism industry in these countries is expected to fuel the growth of the skilled nursing care services market in the Asia Pacific region. While on the other, in the Asia Pacific region, adoption of residential skilled nursing care services is challenged owing to presence of joint family culture. Presence of joint family culture has created strong social stigma for nursing homes and residential skilled nursing care services.Browse Report:Apart from India and China, Japan is an attractive market for skilled nursing care services owing to increased focus of Japanese government on improving healthcare facilities in the country. Brazil, Argentina and Mexico are the countries in the Rest of the World (RoW) region where skilled nursing care services market is expected to grow rapidly as compared to other countries in the Rest of the World region. Skilled nursing care services market in the African countries will be growing at slower rate due to lack of supportive economic background.Transparency Market 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.We are privileged with highly 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:
In Unison Apparel is one stop shop for corporate uniforms in South Florida

http://inunisonapparel.com/corporate-uniforms-south-florida/

United States 04-04-2016. In Unison Apparel is the leading and dedicated supplier of corporate uniforms in South Florida. It is engaged in the supply of highest quality uniforms ideal for the diverse needs of different industries. Here, you will find the wide selection of unembroidered uniforms ideal to meet your variant needs exactly. These unembroidered uniforms will definitely suit to your custom needs and you can customize them with the available printing techniques. Yes, you can customize your apparels in the way you want using variety of printing techniques available to choose from.Selecting right uniform is somewhat difficult but having reference of leading vendor makes it easy and simple. In Unison Apparel is the recognized supplier of uniforms online that helps you to buy good quality uniforms at very competitive pricing. There must be wide variety of apparels to suit all your trade requirements. It mainly supplies uniforms for construction, hospitality, corporate, security, healthcare, sports, summer camps & reunions etc.For the customization of corporate uniforms, In Unison Apparel provides screen printing in Fort Lauderdale. It is one of the most popular and effective way of printing that gives you chance to design custom apparels with no hassle. You can choose screen printing, if you need more visibility and effectiveness in your design. The companies can form their employees or team in a professional look with uniforms. For the promotion of your company to make your uniform unique, you can put your business or brand name, logo or contact detail on the uniforms using printing techniques available.If you are looking for the leading and dedicated provider of corporate uniforms in South Florida then In Unison Apparel is the name you can trust for quality and excellence.To explore latest corporate uniforms or for more information you can visit at:In Unison Apparel is the largest retailer engaged in the supply of corporate uniforms in South Florida. All the uniforms are pertinent to meet the variant needs of different industries and you can even customize the uniforms in the way you want.For the good quality and latest uniforms or screen printing in Fort Lauderdale, you can prefer to In Unison Apparel.4747 Nob Hill Road, Suite 8 Sunrise, FL 33351, United States
Global Lithium Methoxide Market 2016 Industry Analysis, Growth and Forecast to 2021

Lithium Methoxide

http://www.qyresearchgroup.com/market-analysis/global-lithium-methoxide-market-2016-industry-trends-sales.html

http://goo.gl/H2MujU

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Global Lithium Methoxide Market 2016The Global Lithium Methoxide Market 2016 market size, share, trends, including the product price, profit, capacity, Production, Supply, Sales, and Demand Market Research Report is a professional and in-depth research report on Lithium Methoxide. From two aspects: production and sales, the report provides detailed information of production, supply, sales, demand, price, cost, income and revenue on Lithium Methoxide in US, EU, China, Japan and rest of the world.The report gives a detailed overview of the key segments in the market. The fastest and slowest growing market segments are covered in this report. The key emerging opportunities of the fastest growing Global Lithium Methoxide market segments are also covered in this report. Each segments and sub-segments market size, share, and forecast are available in this report. Additionally, the region-wise segmentation and the trends driving the leading geographical region and the emerging region has been presented in this report.Access Complete report Visit @Global Lithium Methoxide Market 2016 report has Forecasted Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) in % value for particular period, that will help user to take decision based on futuristic chart. Report also includes key players in global Lithium Methoxide market. The Lithium Methoxide market size is estimated in terms of revenue (US$) and production volume in this report.This report covers every aspect of the global market for Lithium Methoxide , starting from the basic market information and advancing further to various significant criteria, based on which, the Lithium Methoxide market is segmented. The competitive framework of the Lithium Methoxide market in terms of the Global Lithium Methoxide industry has been evaluated in the report. The top companies and their overall share and share with respect to the global market have been included in the report. Furthermore, the factors on which the companies compete in the market have been evaluated in the report.Get Free Sample Report :The report offers a close summary of the key segments within the market. The quickest and slowest growing market segments ar coated during this report. The key rising opportunities of the quickest growing international Lithium Methoxide market segments also are coated during this report. Other factors such as government plans and policies impacting the development trend of the market are also evaluated by the report. For an in-depth analysis, the report evaluates the strengths, weakness, and opportunities exhibited by the Lithium Methoxide market using industry leading analytical tools such as SWOT analysis and Porters Five Force analysis.The reports help answer the following questions: What is the present market size of the Lithium Methoxide industry on global scale and in the top 10 global countries? How is the Lithium Methoxide market segmented based on product type? What is the growth rate of different product segments? What will be the future outlook for the Lithium Methoxide market? What is the potential of Lithium Methoxide market into different countries?The latest industry data included in the reports: Overall Lithium Methoxide market size, 2011-2021 Lithium Methoxide market size based on individual products, 2011-2021 Growth rates of the overall Lithium Methoxide market as well as individual products, 2011-2021 Market shares of different product segments, 2011, 2016 and 2021 Market Potential Rates of the overall Lithium Methoxide market and different product segmentsAbout Us:QYResearch Group is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. QYResearch Group also carries the capability to assist you with your customized market research requirements including in-depth market surveys, primary interviews, competitive landscaping, and company profiles.Contact US:Joel 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 FREEWeb:Email: sales@qyresearchgroup.com
Global Hydraulic pump Market 2015 Trends, Size to 2019 Examined In New Market Research Report

http://www.9dimengroup.com/market-analysis/global-hydraulic-pump-market-2015-industry-growth-size.html

http://www.9dimengroup.com/report/56566/request-sample

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9Dimen Group presents this most up-to-date research on Global Hydraulic pump Market 2015 Industry Growth, Size, Trends, Share, Opportunities and Forecast to 2019" Market Research ReportThe Hydraulic pump market research report distils the most essential aspects of the market and presents them in the form of a comprehensive and cohesive document. The findings of this report have been obtained via a balanced mix of both primary and secondary research. Interviews of C-level executives in The Hydraulic pump market form a chunk of the qualitative analysis contained in this report.Browse full report with TOC @To begin with, the report defines The Hydraulic pump market and segments it based on the most important dynamics, such as applications, geographical/regional markets, and competitive scenario. Macroeconomic and microeconomic factors environments that currently prevail and also those that are projected to emerge are covered in this report.With a view to deepen the scope of the analysis, the report also tracks milestone developments and regulations that have shaped The Hydraulic pump market thus far. To help readers effectively plan their future strategies, the report provides a set of expert recommendations. The analysts working on the report have successfully identified expected policy changes, industry news and developments, and trends and opportunities  this information can be harnessed by companies to strengthen their market presence.Other important aspects that have been meticulously studied in the Hydraulic pump market report are: Demand and supply dynamics, import and export scenario, industry processes and cost structures, and major R&D initiatives.Download sample request @Based on all of this information, the report provides recommendations and strategies to the following market participants: New players, investors, marketing departments, regulatory authorities and suppliers/manufacturers. The Hydraulic pump 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 Hydraulic pump market has been mentioned in this report. This will give a clear perspective to the readers how the Hydraulic pump market will fare worldwide9Dimen 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:
Physical Security Industry Trends, Analysis To 2020 by Grand View Research Inc.

http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/physical-security-market

The Global Physical Security Market is expected to reach USD 110.09 billion by 2020, according to a new study by Grand View Research, Inc. Increasing budget allocation for physical security on account of growing security concerns is expected to boost the physical security market. Increased migration towards cloud-based security systems and convergence in applications are expected to impact market dynamics. Smart devices, infinite storage devices, next-generation analytics, and ubiquitous sensors are among the emerging technologies in the physical security market.Cloud-based systems serve various kinds of services including Internet of Things (IoT), mobile internet connections, electronic security and third-party security practices. Smart cities are expected to be governed and managed by these smart facilities over the forecast period. Increased adoption of security systems in business organizations is expected to favorably impact market growth. However, device interoperability issues and privacy concerns against installation of physical security systems may restrain the market. Security compliances issued by international bodies and stringent government regulations is the key opportunity for the market.Browse full research report on Global Physical Security Market:Further key findings from the study suggest: Physical security hardware systems accounted for over 70% of the market in 2013; under these products, access control has the dominant share due to sabotages on critical infrastructure zones and increasing terrorist attacks. Intrusive detection & prevention sub-segment is expected to grow over the forecast period. Transportation was the dominant application segment in 2013; a trend that is expected to continue over the forecast period. This can be attributed to effective transport management system and continued investment in infrastructure. Government applications are expected to witness high growth over the next six years. North America accounted for over 30% of the global physical security market in 2013; Asia Pacific is estimated to exhibit high growth through the forecast period. This can be attributed to shift towards security integration in developing markets, favorable government initiatives and high growth verticals generating demand for physical security. Key participants operating in the market include Honeywell Security Group, Cisco Systems Inc., Genetec Inc, Morpho SA, Bosch Security Systems Inc and Axis Communication AB. These manufacturers have started developing products targeted at network-based technologies; additionally, geographical expansion is expected to be a key growth strategy.For the purpose of this study, Grand View Research has segmented the global physical security market on the basis of component, application and region:Physical Security Component Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion, 2012  2020) Hardware Intrusion Detection & Prevention Access Control Others Software PSIM Management & modeling software ServicesPhysical Security Application Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion, 2012  2020) Transportation Government Corporate Hospitality Energy Retail Industrial Control Centers Chemical Facilities OthersPhysical Security Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion, 2012  2020) North America Europe Asia Pacific RoWGrand View Research, Inc. is a U.S. based market research and consulting company, registered in the State of California and headquartered in San Francisco. The company provides syndicated research reports, customized research reports, and consulting services. To help clients make informed business decisions, we offer market intelligence studies ensuring relevant and fact-based research across a range of industries, from technology to chemicals, materials and healthcare.Sherry JamesCorporate Sales Specialist, USAGrand View Research, Inc
Oerlikon Leybold vacuum technology and measuring equipment enables the proof of gravitational waves predicted by Einstein

Vacuum technology promotes fundamental research

www.oerlikon.com/leyboldvacuum

Vacuum technology promotes fundamental researchAfter about 100 years, it is a fact: Albert Einstein was right again. A century after the physicist predicted the existence of gravitational waves in the scope of his theory of general relativity, their existence has now been proved scientifically. The vacuum and measuring equipment of Oerlikon Leybold Vacuum has provided an important contribution to this discovery of American and German space scientists being worthy of a Nobel Prize. This is what they discovered: Gravity is created because mass causes a curvature of spacetime.Astronomers around the globe have already been working for a century on the scientific image of the "sound of the universe". The curvature of spacetime by the masses propagating gravitational waves which move through the universe  this has been only a hypothetical assumption so far. Now, however, the terrestrial measuring of the length changes in the waves has been successful. To achieve this, extremely sensitive measuring technology and proven vacuum technology of the Cologne based company Leybold Vacuum has been used.The tiny waves which are moving with the speed of light could not have been discovered without a gravitational wave detector like the GEO 600 at the Max Planck institute for gravitational physics in Hanover, Germany. The GEO 600 detector has played a strategically important role during the research. In Hanover, large parts of the instruments were developed and tested which then enabled the two big American LIGO measuring stations in Livingston, Louisiana and Hanford, Washington to find the proof for Einstein's gravitational waves.LIGO measures the spacetime with two tubes with a length of four kms, which come together on the ground as a pipeline. The length of the arms can be monitored precisely via a laser system on the inside of the tubes. If a gravitational wave moves through the unit, it compresses and stretches the arms to a different degree.Only due to the extremely high sensitivity of the measuring instruments, it has indeed been possible to detect sizes of about a ten thousandth of the diameter of a nucleus. The GEO 600 also contains measuring equipment as well as dry compressing screw vacuum pumps of the SCREWLINE series manufactured by Leybold Vacuum. Apart from being easy to operate and as precise as possible, the measuring technology must feature a very fast operational readiness as well as short response times.In order to proof the existence of gravitational waves, further accompanying research projects were carried out simultaneously in Italy (VIRGO) and Japan (KAGRA). In addition, these two research locations were equipped with machines manufactured by Leybold Vacuum - the VIRGO wave detector in the Pisa province has been using Leybold measuring technology and mass spectrometers for about 15 years. And the KAGRA project in the Japanese city of Ida features the currently largest vacuum system volume in Japan. Oerlikon Leybold Vacuum is represented there with several SP250/RUVAC pumping systems.SCREWLINE vacuum pumps are dry compressing fore vacuum pumps working based on the screw principle. The robust SCREWLINE pump family was designed for the special requirements of R&D as well as industrial applications. The innovative design enables the usage in all applications requiring reliable, compact and maintenance-friendly vacuum solutions. One of its biggest advantages, which played a major role in this application, is a high degree of flexibility for potential uses. Connections using universal flanges or clamping flanges enable a simple integration into the system. Using the available accessories, the pump can be adapted to each individual requirement which is typical for research applications. These pumps are optimized by connecting them to the Roots vacuum pumps of the RUVAC series.Oerlikon Leybold Vacuum CEO Dr. Martin Fullenbach says: "This scientific sensation illustrates once again the importance of our technological solutions for research applications of fundamental significance. We are very proud to further accompany and support the leading research institutes also in the years to come".Maybe not only pride but also joy will be one of the emotions, since it is not impossible that these discoveries will be awarded with the Nobel Prize for Physics in the future.Oerlikon (SIX: OERL) is a leading global technology Group, focusing on providing market-leading technologies and services for surface solutions, manmade fibers manufacturing, drive systems and vacuum pumps and components in growth markets. These cutting-edge technologies benefit customers by improving their product performance, productivity, efficient use of energy and resources, and also by contributing to a more sustainable environment. A Swiss company with over 100 years of tradition, Oerlikon has a global footprint of over 15 500 employees at more than 200 locations in 36 countries and sales of CHF 3.2 billion in 2014. The company invested CHF 121 million in R&D in 2014 and has over 1 300 specialists developing innovative and customer-oriented products and services.Oerlikon Leybold Vacuum offers a broad range of advanced vacuum solutions for use in manufacturing and analytical processes, as well as for research purposes. The Segments core capabilities centre on the development of application- and customer-specific systems for the creation of vacuums and extraction of processing gases. Fields of application are coating technologies, thin films and data storage, analytical instruments and classic industrial processes.Oerlikon Leybold Vacuum GmbHChristina SteiglerMarketing & CommunicationsBonner Strae 498D - 50968 CologneTel.: +49 221 - 347 1261christina.steigler@oerlikon.com
Global Cotton Pads Market 2016 Industry Trends, Sales, Supply, Demand, Analysis & Forecast to 2021

Cotton Pads market research

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http://www.qyresearchgroup.com/report/59509#request-sample

Global Cotton Pads Industry 2015 Market Size Share Growth Forecast Research and DevelopmentThe Global Cotton Pads Industry report gives a comprehensive account of the Global Cotton Pads market. Details such as the size, key players, segmentation, SWOT analysis, most influential trends, and business environment of the market are mentioned in this report. Furthermore, this report features tables and figures that render a clear perspective of the Cotton Pads market. The report features an up-to-date data on key companies product details, revenue figures, and sales. Furthermore, the details also gives the Global Cotton Pads market revenue and its forecasts. The business model strategies of the key firms in the Cotton Pads market are also included. Key strengths, weaknesses, and threats shaping the leading players in the market have also been included in this research report.The report gives a detailed overview of the key segments in the market. The fastest and slowest growing market segments are covered in this report. The key emerging opportunities of the fastest growing Global Cotton Pads market segments are also covered in this report. Each segments and sub-segments market size, share, and forecast are available in this report. Additionally, the region-wise segmentation and the trends driving the leading geographical region and the emerging region has been presented in this report.Get Complete Report with TOC :The study on the Global Cotton Pads market also features a history of the tactical mergers, acquisitions, collaborations, and partnerships activity in the market. Valuable recommendations by senior analysts about investing strategically in research and development can help new entrants or established players penetrate the emerging sectors in the Cotton Pads market. Investors will gain a clear insight on the dominant players in this industry and their future forecasts. Furthermore, readers will get a clear perspective on the high demand and the unmet needs of consumers that will enhance the growth of this market.Table of ContentChapter One Cotton Pads Industry Overview1.1 Cotton Pads Definition1.1.1 Cotton Pads Definition1.1.2 Product Specifications1.2 Cotton Pads Classification1.3 Cotton Pads Application Field1.4 Cotton Pads Industry Chain Structure1.5 Cotton Pads Industry Regional Overview1.6 Cotton Pads Industry Policy Analysis1.7 Cotton Pads Industry Related Companies Contact InformationGet Sample Copy of Report @QYResearch Group is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. QYResearch Group also carries the capability to assist you with your customized market research requirements including in-depth market surveys, primary interviews, competitive landscaping, and company profiles. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics. QYResearch Group is the comprehensive collection of market intelligence products and services available on air.3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138, Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442,
COSEC DOOR FMX

www.MatrixSecuSol.com

Door Controller with Multi Spectral SensorFeatures: Time-Attendance and Access Control Reads Surface and Subsurface of a Finger Fast and Intuitive User Identification Works in Extreme Tough Conditions 50,000 Users and 5,00,000 Events Storage 3.5" Touch Screen Wi-Fi, Ethernet, 3G/4GContact: MATRIX COMSEC394 GIDC, Makarpura, Vadodara+91 93744 74302More@MatrixComSec.comAbout MatrixEstablished in 1991, Matrix is a leader in Telecom and Security solutions for modern businesses and enterprises. An innovative, technology driven and customer focused organization; Matrix is committed to keep pace with the revolutions in the telecom and security industries. With more than 40% of its human resources dedicated to the development of new products, Matrix has launched cutting-edge products like Video Surveillance solutions, Access Control, Time-Attendance, IP-PBX, Universal Gateways, Terminals, Convergence solution, VoIP Gateways and GSM Gateways. These solutions are feature-rich, reliable and conform to the international standards. Having global foot-prints in Asia, Europe, North America, South America and Africa through an extensive network of more than 500 channel partners, Matrix ensures that the products serve the needs of its customers faster and longer. Matrix has gained trust and admiration of customers representing the entire spectrum of industries. Matrix has won many international awards for its innovative products.About MatrixEstablished in 1991, Matrix is a leader in Telecom and Security solutions for modern businesses and enterprises. An innovative, technology driven and customer focused organization; Matrix is committed to keep pace with the revolutions in the telecom and security industries. With more than 40% of its human resources dedicated to the development of new products, Matrix has launched cutting-edge products like Video Surveillance solutions, Access Control, Time-Attendance, IP-PBX, Universal Gateways, Terminals, Convergence solution, VoIP Gateways and GSM Gateways. These solutions are feature-rich, reliable and conform to the international standards. Having global foot-prints in Asia, Europe, North America, South America and Africa through an extensive network of more than 500 channel partners, Matrix ensures that the products serve the needs of its customers faster and longer. Matrix has gained trust and admiration of customers representing the entire spectrum of industries. Matrix has won many international awards for its innovative products.Matrix Comsec394 GIDC, Makarpua, Vadodara
Mexico Ayin Project Panorama - Oil and Gas Upstream Analysis Report

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Mexico Ayin Project Panorama - Oil and Gas Upstream Analysis ReportSummaryMexico Ayin Project Panorama, MRS latest release, presents a comprehensive overview of the asset. This upstream report includes detailed qualitative and quantitative information on the asset, provides a full economic assessment and reflects several parameters including (but not limited to) geological profile, asset development and specific challenges. Based on this analysis, future outlook for the asset is presented with possible trends and related scenarios identifying upside/downside potential.Get Free Sample Of Report :Scope- Overview of the asset based on an analysis of the economic indicators- Key financial indicators including Net Present Value and Internal Rate of Return- Review of factors affecting the economic outcome of the field including development overview, geology, challenges, reserves and production with qualitative perspective on of the overall assets life with MRS analysis on the assets future outlook- Detailed production profile for the asset, giving annual output rates for each commodity produced- Cash flow statements from our economic analysis of the asset including capital expenditures, operating expenditures and tax liability- Individual valuations for equity holders- Sensitivity analysis for asset value considering a range of factorsReasons to buy- Understand the economic and non-economic factors that affect production of an asset- Benefit from an asset valuation derived from detailed research and modeling by our analysts- Basic view of various scenarios and its effect on the asset for risk or strategy planning- Utilize the quantitative and qualitative evaluation to ascertain trends within the region to inform decision making- Identify economic trends of an asset to determine investment requirementsRead Full Report:Global Market News 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
Voltage Data Acquisition Systems Capture Transient Data

Voltage Data Acquisition Systems

www.DataLoggerInc.com

www.dataloggerinc.com

Log Signals from the kHz to MHz rangeCHESTERLAND, OHApril 4, 2016Do you need to record voltage for your application? CAS DataLoggers offers versatile data acquisition systems from ADwin and Delphin which can record voltage signals from a variety of sensors, electronic devices, or other equipment. Models are available with sample rates in the kHz or MHz range suitable for capturing transient events or for the timing of very fast sequences.In addition to measuring voltage signals, our systems offer the flexibility to mix and match I/O to meet the specific needs of the test, offer easy connection to a PC via LAN, USB or WiFi, and have the ability to interface with many common software development and analysis tools. Visit our Voltage Data Acquisition page or give our experienced Applications Specialists a call at (800) 956-4437 to find the right data acquisition system for your individual project.Applications:Our voltage dataloggers and voltage DAQ systems are used in a range of diverse applications, for example to monitor: Hydraulic pressure as part of a product test Testing and fault diagnosis of electronic components Academic research into the properties of matterADwin: Real-Time Speed:ADwin real-time systems support parallel, individually-controlled, real-time processes, while running independently of the PC's operating system. ADwin provides your application with deterministic operation and response times of 1 usec. or less. A key ADwin feature is its tightly-coupled analog and digital inputs along with counters providing extremely low-latency operation. These advanced systems have the speed and control functionality to fulfill many vital applications.Delphin Technology:Delphin universal data logging systems solve a variety of measurement and control problems in industrial and laboratory applications. Delphin features different analog and digital I/O modules for use with a wide range of signal types including: voltage; 4-20 mA current; thermocouple; RTD; and resistance. They also offer powerful alarm and programming capabilities to allow the instruments to process measurements and initiate actions on their own.The Data Logger ExpertsAt CAS Dataloggers we have the industry's most complete selection of data logging equipment, with hundreds of different models from more than 18 manufacturers. With data loggers from 1 to 300 channels, we also offer data acquisition and control systems where microsecond precision is needed. We have models with 8 to 400+ analog input channels, analog output channels, digital inputs and outputs, counters, RS-232, RS-485 CANbus and Profibus interfaces.Call us at 800-956-4437 to speak with one of our experienced Applications Engineers and we'll help you to select the best data logger for your application.For more information on our selection of Voltage Data Acquisition Systems, or to find the ideal solution for your application-specific needs, contact a CAS Data Logger Applications Specialist at (800) 956-4437 or visit our website atContact Information:CAS DataLoggers, Inc.8437 Mayfield Rd.Chesterland, Ohio 44026(440) 729-2570(800) 956-4437sales@dataloggerinc.com
Innovations in Cell Culture Media Segment Augment Overall Cell Culture Media, Sera, and Reagents Market

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http://bit.ly/1Zg4sq9

The process of growing cells in an artificial laboratory environment is known as cell culture. These cells are used in several industries such as biopharmaceuticals, pharmaceuticals, and biotechnology. In recent years, the demand for cell culture media has created a boom in the overall cell culture media, sera, and reagents market. The rise of the biotechnology industry in Asia has been the underlying reason for the remarkable growth of the media segment in the overall market. Owing to this reason, several big healthcare players are looking at strategic mergers and acquisitions in the region. For example, Corning Life Sciences acquired Mediatech in 2011, while Merck KgaA acquired Millipore, and GE Healthcare acquired PAA.Get Industry Research Sample:The global culture media, sera, and reagents market is segmented on the basis of the type of media, sera, and reagents. The types of cell culture media are classical, chemically defined, lysogeny broth (LB), protein-free, serum-free, and specialty. The types of cell culture sera are newborn calf and adult bovine sera, fetal bovine, and others. The types of cell culture reagents are amino acids, albumin, growth factors and cytokines, attachment factors, hormones, and others. Geographically, this market is segmented into Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Rest of the World.Media Segment Emerges Above All OthersAccording to a research report published by Transparency Market Research, the cell culture media segment was the largest segment of the overall cell culture media, sera, and reagents market in 2014. In the coming years, the end users will seek better media that offer robust yields and reproducible results. Technological advancements in cell culture and cell productivity have also encouraged the adoption of smaller processes that are characterized by the usage of single-use equipment. Owing to this reason, there has been a huge demand for media powders and ready-to-use liquid media. Furthermore, demand for media has been shifting from serum-free animal derived, chemically-defined media, and serum-based to serum-sparing. Reports show that adoption of chemically defined media has been exceptionally slow-paced for bioprocessors and media manufacturers.Asia Pacific to Remain at Forefront with Increasing Outsourcing to Emerging Economies of the RegionIn terms of geography, North America held a 40% share in the global cell culture market in 2014. This dominance was attributable to the presence of supportive government policies promoting stem cell and life sciences research. However, Asia Pacific is anticipated to grow at a rapid pace between 2015 and 2023 due to the increasing outsourcing of research to countries such as China, India, Japan, and Australia.Growing Usage of Cell Culture in Therapeutics and Vital Biomolecules Drives Global MarketAccording to TMR, the global cell culture media, sera, and reagents market was valued at US$3.7 bn in 2014 and is expected to rise at a CAGR of 7.6% from 2015 to 2023 to reach a figure of US$7.1 bn by 2023. The increasing importance of this technology in areas other than conventional research such as development and production of therapeutics and vital biomolecules is expected to propel this market. The cell culture technology is used in several areas such as bioprocessing and manufacturing of regenerative medicines, biologics, and cell therapy. The only factors hampering the growth of this market are the strict process controls applied to advanced manufacturing capacities and capabilities, ethical concerns over the use of animal sources, and use of transgenic animals and plants.Browse Report: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.90 State Street,Suite 700,AlbanyNY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030
Global Nitrile Butadiene Rubber Market Set for Rapid Growth, To Reach Around USD 485.0 Million By 2020

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http://goo.gl/LW48V0

http://www.marketresearchstore.com/report/nitrile-butadiene-rubber-market-z48039

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Do inquiry Before Purchasing Report:Zion Research has published a new report titled Nitrile Butadiene Rubber Market for Hose, Cable & Belting, Medical & Industrial Gloves, Adhesives & Sealants, O-Rings & Seals, Molded & Extruded Products and Other Applications: Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Segment, Trends and Forecast, 2014  2020 According to the report, the global nitrile-butadiene rubber market was valued at approximately USD 300.0 million in 2014 and is expected to reach approximately USD 485.0 million by 2020, growing at a CAGR of slightly above 6.0% between 2015 and 2020. In terms of volume, global nitrile-butadiene rubber market stood at 75.0 kilo tons in 2014.Nitrile-butadiene rubber is a complex family of various butadiene monomers and unsaturated copolymers. Its chemical and physical properties vary based on the polymers composition of nitrile. This form of synthetic rubber is usually resistant to oil, fuel and other chemicals. Some nitrile-butadiene rubbers are hydrogenated to decrease the chemical reactivity of the polymer backbone to enhance heat resistance. NBR finds wide range of application in fuel hoses, gaskets, rollers, and other products which requires oil resistance. Different types of NBR include Cold NBR, hot NBR, cross-linked hot NBR, carboxylate nitrile and bound antioxidant NBR.The nitrile butadiene rubber market is classified on the basis of various applications such as medical & industrial gloves, hose, cable & belting, adhesive & sealants, molded & extruded products, o rings & seals and others. Hose, cable & belting was one of the leading application segments for nitrile butadiene market in 2014. It accounted for over 25.0% market share of the total volume consumed in 2014. It is expected to exhibit rapid growth with significant CAGR between 2015 and 2020. This growth can be attributed to rising demand for hose, belts & cable from manufacturing industries. Adhesives & sealants, o-rings & seals are other important segments for nitrile-butadiene rubber. Medical & industrial gloves segment is also expected to exhibit fastest growth during the forecast period.Get Sample Research Report:Geographically, Asia Pacific was the leading regional market for nitrile-butadiene rubber and accounted for largest market share in 2014. This region was followed by Asia pacific. The growth can be attributed to increasing demand from automotive industry in this region. North America is expected to grow at moderate rate as compared to Asia pacific and Europe.Some of the key -participants in nitrile butadiene rubber market includes Lanxess AG, KOSSAN RUBBER INDUSTRIES BERHAD, Zeon Chemicals, Synthos S.A., Adventa, Kumho Petrochemical Co., JSR Corporation, Sibur Holding and Versalis among others.This report segments the global nitrile butadiene rubber market as follows:Global Nitrile Butadiene Rubber Market: Application Segment AnalysisHose, Cable & BeltingMedical & Industrial GlovesAdhesives & SealantsO-Rings & SealsMolded & Extruded ProductsOthersGlobal Nitrile Butadiene Rubber 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 Monochloroacetic Acid Market Set for Rapid Growth, to Reach around USD 1,050.0 Million by 2020

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http://goo.gl/Pnzl3O

http://www.marketresearchstore.com/report/monochloroacetic-acid-market-z48007

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Do inquiry Before Purchasing Report:Zion Research has published a new report titled Monochloroacetic Acid Market for Cellulosics, Agrochemicals, Thioglycolic Acid, Surfactants and Others Applications: Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis and Forecast, 2014 - 2020. According to the report, global demand for monochloroacetic acid was valued at USD 850.0 million in 2014 and is expected to reach USD 1,050.0 million in 2020, growing at a CAGR of slightly above 3.0% between 2015 and 2020. In terms of volume, the global monochloroacetic acid market stood at around 700.0 kilo tons in 2014.Monochloroacetic acid (MCA) is an organochlorine compound used as a building block in organic synthesis. Monochloroacetic acid is a colorless or white deliquescent crystalline compound. Acetic acid and chlorine are key raw materials used in the production of monochloroacetic acid. Monochloroacetic acid is a halogenated derivative of acetic acid that is used as a building block in organic synthesis. Monochloroacetic acid is completely soluble in water, soluble in alcohol, acetone, chloroform and ether and a partly soluble in chlorinated hydrocarbons. Thioglycolic acid, agrochemicals, phenoxyacetic acid, surfactants, glycine and others are the major end application industries of monochloroacetic acid.Monochloroacetic acid (MCA) is broadly used in chemical industries in the manufacture of carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC). Hence, the demand for CMC is expected to rise exponentially due to an increase in industrial applications. Moreover, rising population and increasing demand for agricultural products is expected to trigger growth of monochloroacetic acid. Increasing demand from glyphosate is also likely to boost the demand for monochloroacetic acid during the years to come.Get Sample Research Report:Cellulosics, agrochemicals, thioglycolic acid, surfactants and others are the key application segments of monochloroacetic acid market. Cellulosics was the largest application market for monochloroacetic acid market. Cellulosics segment accounted for over 30.0% share of total market, in 2014. Agrochemicals application segment is expected to be the second largest segment in this market. Thioglycolic acid, surfactants and others application are also expected to dominate the global monochloroacetic acid market.Geographically, Asia Pacific dominated the global monochloroacetic acid market, in 2014. Increasing demand from personal care and agrochemicals industry is major driving factor for monochloroacetic acid in Asia Pacific. Asia Pacific followed by North America, Europe, Middle East & Africa and Latin America.Some of the major industry participants in monochloroacetic acid market include Denak Co. Ltd., CABB GmbH, Niacet Corporation, Daicel Corporation, AkzoNobel N.V., Dow CHEMICAL Company and Denak Co. Ltd.This report segments the global monochloroacetic acid market as follows:Global Monochloroacetic Acid Market: Application Segment AnalysisCellulosicsAgrochemicalsThioglycolic AcidSurfactantsOthersGlobal Monochloroacetic Acid 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 Industrial Gases Market Set For Rapid Growth, To Reach Around USD 65.0 Billion By 2020

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http://goo.gl/inOjWc

http://www.marketresearchstore.com/report/industrial-gases-market-z47973

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Do inquiry Before Purchasing Report:Zion Research has published a new report titled Industrial Gases (Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Carbon Dioxide, Argon, Helium and Acetylene) Market: Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Segment, Trends and Forecast, 2014  2020. According to the report, global industrial gas market was valued at around USD 45.0 billion in 2014 and is expected to reach USD 65.0 billion in 2020, growing at a CAGR of above 6.0% between 2015 and 2020.Industrial gases are mainly atmospheric gases and process gases. Nitrogen, oxygen, argon, carbon dioxide, water vapor, ozone, neon, helium, krypton, methane, hydrogen, and nitrous oxide are some of the important industrial gases. Industrial gases play an important role in many sectors of the global economy such as agriculture, mining, oil and gas, construction, glass manufacturing, transportation equipment, instruments, food and tobacco, paper and paper products. It further finds widespread application in chemicals and chemical products, petroleum products, rubber and plastics, medical. Industrial gases are necessary for some processes including chemical, material and.Growing population and industrialization in emerging economies are some of the major growth driving factors for the industrial gases market. Increasing demand of these gases from food and tobacco, paper, chemicals, agriculture, mining, oil and gas, construction and healthcare industry is further fuelling the market growth. Additionally, consolidation, strategic business alliances and concentric diversifications are some of the strategies adopted by major players, which is expected to augment the market growth during the forecast period. However, high storage and transportation cost of industrial gases is expected to be a major restraint of this market.Get Sample Research Report:Based on types, industrial gases market is segmented into hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, argon, helium, acetylene. Hydrogen gas segment dominated the global demand and the segment expected to grow with CAGR of 6% from 2012 to 2018. Hydrogen segment is expected to maintain its dominance over the next five years due its wide range of applications such as agriculture, electricity generation, fossil fuel processing, ammonia production and others. Nitrogen and oxygen segments are also expected to witness fast growth over the forecast period.Asia Pacific region dominated the market and accounted for significant share of the overall market in 2014. China, India and Japan are major consumers of industrial gases in Asia Pacific. Expanding agriculture, construction, chemical industry in Asia Pacific are the significant drivers of this industry. North America was the second largest region for this market followed by Europe.Some of the key participants in the industrial gases market include Air Liquide, Linde Group, Praxair Inc., Cryotec Anlagenbau Gmbh, Air Products And Chemicals Inc., Airgas Inc., and MATHESON Tri-Gas Inc. among others.This report segments the global industrial gases market as follows:Global Industrial Gases Market: Product Segment AnalysisHydrogenNitrogenOxygenCarbon DioxideArgonHeliumAcetyleneGlobal Industrial Gases 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 Automobile Horn 2016: China Industry Product Types, Technology, Application Forecast to 2021 by MRS Research Group

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The report begins with a detailed overview of the global and China Automobile Horn 2016-2021 industry. Starting with a broad overview, the report narrows down to offer an overview of the Automobile Horn 2016-2021 Industry globally as well as with a specific focus on China. By conducting a check of the current status of the Automobile Horn 2016-2021 Industry, the report is able to then delve deeper into the various forces that directly and indirectly impact the Industry.Access Full Report With TOC:Given the ever-shifting and ever-evolving nature of the technologies that enable the products and services contributing to the growth of the Automobile Horn 2016-2021 Industry, the report conducts a detailed analysis of the technological trends and developments. This report then moves ahead to focus on the various global and China-based players in the Automobile Horn 2016-2021 Industry. In order to obtain specific information about the Industry participants, the report focuses on the following key aspects: Company Profiles, product/services information, contact information, as well as production/revenues.The report then delves deeper by segmenting the global and Chinese Industry for Automobile Horn 2016-2021 into sections, based on parameters such as applications, end-users, geographical regions, or product/technology, where applicable. The degree of competition that exists in the Automobile Horn 2016-2021 Industry in the context of both China and the world, is studied in detail.Request For Sample:1)The Aim of this reportTo provide readers with comprehensive & indepth understanding of China Automobile Horn 2016-2021 industry;To disclose market size of China Automobile Horn 2016-2021 industry;To understand position of China Automobile Horn 2016-2021 in the world;To predict what future of China Automobile Horn 2016-2021 industry will be;To analyze major Automobile Horn 2016-2021 producers in China;To find out the key strengths and weakness of China Automobile Horn 2016-2021 producers, and the threats and opportunities they face;To reveal opportunities in Chinese Automobile Horn 2016-2021 industry.2)Benefit from the reportObtain latest info of Automobile Horn 2016-2021 industry, such as market size, status in the world, hotspots and so on;Evaluate the financial performance and growth strategies of top 20 Automobile Horn 2016-2021 producers in China Automobile Horn 2016-2021 industry;Identify key trends and opportunities in China Automobile Horn 2016-2021 industry;Understand what are the drivers and barriers of China Automobile Horn 2016-2021 producers.3)DeliverablesWordformat report, with around 3050 pages;Excelformat database of key Automobile Horn 2016-2021 producers;Excelformat market data of Automobile Horn 2016-2021 industry;Inquiry Before Buying Report Here @:Table of Content1 Global Automobile Horn 2016-2021 Industry1.1 Overview1.2 Manufacture1.3 Market Holding1.4 Automobile Horn 2016-2021 Market Supply1.5 Market Price2 Chinese Automobile Horn 2016-2021 Industry2.1 Market Supply2.2 Market Demand2.3 Chinese Market Price Index2.4 Chinese Market Competition3 Chinese Automobile Horn 2016-2021 Industry Chain3.1 Overview3.2 Upstream3.3 Downstream4 Chinese Automobile Horn 2016-2021 Import And Export Data4.1 Import4.2 ExportFull Report With Toc @:MRS Research Store provides a range of marketing and business research solutions designed for our clients specific needs based on our expert resources. The business scopes of Prof Research cover more than 30 industries including energy, new materials, transportation, daily consumer goods, chemicals, etc. We provide our clients with one-stop solution for all the research requirements.Joel John3422 SW 15 Street,Suit #8138Deerfield Beach,Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 FREE (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803 FREEEmail: sales@marketresearchstore.comWebsite:
The Crane and Drill Masters of Africa

http://smithcapital.co.za/

Cranes and aerial platforms are indispensable when doing works of community or industrial significance such as digging ponds, lifting heavy parts, shifting heavyweight goods etc. Most cranes are massive structures which can pose great risks if not procured from trusted sources. So, utmost care must be exercised while choosing the manufacturer of an industrial crane. In this context, one is compelled to introduce readers to Smith Capital, a leading crane, aerial lift platform, and drill rig manufacturer in South Africa. They have the incredible distinction of being the one and only platform manufacturing firm in the whole wide continent of Africa. And it does not stop there; they are also officially the largest makers of truck-mounted cherry pickers, on the same continent.Apart from manufacturing products which are ISO and SABS certified, the firm also bills them at a much lower price than similar goods which are imported from outside of the country. They do custom-built designing and delivering as per demand. Also, the high priority that they attach to client satisfaction, makes them stringently adherent to the specifications stipulated by their clients.In aerial platforms, their specialty is the Superlift Aerial Platform range, which has won awards and accolades for the unbeatable reach, flexibility and mobility of its platforms. Some of the global brands that are included in this range are: Bronto Skylift, Terex Utilities, Oil and Steel etc. The first one is a height master, the second is famous for its insulation, and the third is famed for its height, reach and utility for small carriers. They supply to leading utility supplier firms such as Eskom.In cranes, Smith Capital is known for their CLASSIC line of truck-mounted cranes and cherry-pickers. These come in all sizes imaginable: small, medium and large. A lot of these are equipped with the PM Power Tronic Compact mechanism.Their drilling rigs are of mainly three varieties----4) Post and Pole5) Exploration and Grade Control6) WaterwellThese are usually known to be mounted on the backs of trucks, tractors and crawlers. But, Smith Capital has made a successful venture of supplying rigs that are stand-alone, or are customised in any unique manner as per requirements.In 2015, they developed their latest innovation - the 12m telescopic model SL-T120 AP. For more details, log on to:ABOUT SMITH CAPITAL:Smith Capital, the largest producer of truck-mounted cherry-pickers in Africa and the sole aerial platform manufacturer on the continent, has been in operation for over 40 years. They manufacture cranes, platforms and drilling equipment in South Africa.CONTACT:11 Junction Road, Industry North, GermistonJohannesburg Gauteng 1401+27 11 873-9830/1Phone: +27 11 589 4200mail@smithcapital.co.za
Cline Family Cellars Unveils Cashmere Black Magic

Cashmere Black Magic

www.cashmeremoment.com

SONOMA, CA, April 1, 2016  Cline Family Cellars announced today the launch of Cashmere Black Magic, the latest extension of their successful Cashmere brand. An opulent dark red blend of Mourvedre, Petite Sirah, Syrah, Alicante Bouschet and Grenache, the inaugural 2014 vintage was created to satisfy loyal Cashmere red wine drinkers as well as those new to the growing Dark Red Blend category.As affirmed by Nielsen, red blends are now the second largest wine type after Chardonnay and continue to drive dollar volume growth. In 2015, sales of Red Blend table wines rose over 10.9% and were valued at over $1.4 billion U.S. Meanwhile the number of cases sold increased to over 16.3MM, reflecting a volume growth of 6.7% versus the previous year.*The availability of phenomenal fruit sources, combined with the artistry of Cashmere winemaker Charlie Tsegeletos, made for perfect timing to launch Cashmere Black Magic. The idea for this wine came out of my love of blending, notes Mr. Tsegeletos. We had excellent fruit to start with, so I knew it was going to be great even before I put it together.A layered, inky dark red wine with loads of luscious dark berry fruit and a rich, generous mouth-feel, the grapes that comprise Cashmere Black Magic hail from Contra Costa, Sonoma Coast, Mendocino Coast and Lake County, with over 16% of the grapes estate grown. The resulting wine was aged in 35% new French oak up to 12 months and given full malolactic fermentation.With the inaugural 2014 vintage we set out to build upon the fine, balanced flavors of our exquisite Cashmere Red blend and create a wine that was dark, rich and satisfying, exclaimed Mr. Tsegeletos. The addition of peppery Petite Sirah and little-known Alicante Bouschet from our Contra Costa vineyards takes this wine to the next level of smoothness and intensity. And with a wine as big, dark and flavorful as Cashmere Black Magic you need a big flavorful meal to go with it.The Cashmere Red and Black Magic red wine blends, along with the Cashmere White blend, can be found nationwide and are also sold online at cashmeremoment.com. More information about the wines and tech sheets can also be found at the Cashmere web site.About CashmereCashmere is the wholly owned and operated wine brand of Cline Family Cellars. Established in 1982, this Sonoma, California based winery produces awarding-winning Rhone-style wines and Zinfandels, as well as classic Sonoma County varietals including Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Merlot. The primary grape source for the wines are estate vineyards owned by Fred and Nancy Cline. With diverse viticulture holdings in areas such as Carneros-Sonoma, Sonoma Coast and Oakley-Contra Costa County, the varietals that make Cashmere are planted in prime locations and vinted by a winemaking team with years of experience and an unerring instinct to the art of crushing, blending and aging wine. The results are wines of great depth, power and intensity of flavor. Visitto learn more.Cline Family Cellars24737 Arnold DriveSonoma CA 95476Mark MarinozziVice President of Marketingmmarinozzi@clinecellars.com
Imagine Gala raises more than $70k with Celebrity Chef Cook-off

www.i-sci.org

www.MUSEUMofHISTORY.org

Food, fun, and plenty of exciting auction items combined at the 11th Annual Imagine Gala on Saturday, March 12 for a magnificent evening that raised more than $70,000 to support the Imaginarium Science Center and Southwest Florida Museum of History.Nearly 200 people enjoyed a little friendly competition and lots of great food from four of Southwest Floridas finest chefs, who sliced and diced their way through the Celebrity Cook-Off competition. Chefs Fabrice Deletrain and Benjamin Voisin of Fathoms Restaurant & Bar, Chef James Fraser of FGCUs Hospitality and Resort Management Program, and Chef David Rashty of Jacks Farm to Fork at the Pink Shell all presented exquisite works of culinary art that made the judging process extremely difficult. Among the 12 judges were TV star and MasterChef Finalist Derrick Peltz. Taking home the Imagine Gala Top Chef apron this year were Chefs Deletrain and Voisin of Fathoms.The chefs first whetted the crowds appetite for competition, with gala guests taking to the polls to decide who would win Best Appetizer. Chef Fraser garnered the most votes for his delicious smoked sous vide breast of chicken and took home the coveted bronze chef trophy.Educator and performer Glen Beitman brought his locally famous Wild Wizard science show, adapted for a mature audience, to the gala stage for a fantastic show involving some amazing science and gala guests.Amongst all of the evenings excitement guests had a chance to bid on some great auction items, including chefs table dinners, a weeks vacation in the mountains of North Carolina, a full-service landscape design and installation package, a 3-day stay at the Pink Shell, magnificent clothes from Chicos, and a vacation on Captiva Island.The generosity of ticket holders and sponsors demonstrated a dedication to the Imaginarium and SWFL Museum of History as major community assets. All money raised at the event will benefit The Imaginarium Group and SWFL Museum of History Foundation, as they continue to bring new exhibits and educational opportunities to our community.Jonathan Romine, President of the Imaginarium Groups Board of Directors, said, We sincerely appreciate the outpouring of support we received from the community for the Imaginarium and Museum of History. Wed like to give special thanks to our Title Sponsor, Lipman Produce, for the support they continue to give to this event. The Imaginarium and Museum of History are both great assets for Southwest Florida and the continuous support we receive from the community allows us to bring great exhibits and programs to its residents.The board, event committee, and staff are grateful to the many sponsors who helped make the gala such a great success, including Title Sponsor Lipman Produce, and major sponsors Chicos FAS, Inc., Enterprise, EnSite, Inc., Publix Supermarket Charities, CONRIC PR & Makreting, and The News-Press Media Group.About the Imaginarium Science CenterThe Imaginarium Science Center is a family-friendly science center and aquarium offering fun interactive exhibits and a 3-D theatre. The mission is to engage guests in the exploration of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) through hands-on exhibit experiences and educational programs that further the understanding of the natural and human-made world, foster an appreciation for Southwest Floridas unique environment and natural waterways, and nurture intellectual curiosity, discovery, and innovation. For more information, visitAbout the SWFL Museum of HistoryThe SWFL Museum of History The Southwest Florida Museum of History is dedicated to the collection, preservation, and interpretation of history and traditions, with particular emphasis on Fort Myers and Southwest Florida. Exhibits showcase the regions rich history, from prehistoric to modern day. For more information, visitTwo great museums come together!The Imaginarium Science Center and the SWFL Museum of History have been under joint leadership for nearly a decade, but are now planning a new museum experience. Get a sneak peek as to where that path may lead at this joint fundraising event. It is sure to make history and blaze new trails into the future!CONRIC PR6216 Whiskey Creek DrSuite BFort Myers, FL 33919
Timetable Software now including connection table to provide an easy-to-look overview even for complex connected journeys.

The graphical connection view will show the connections found as bar chart

www.publicsql.org

www.ptraffic.net

www.en.ptraffic.net

The new version of PTraffic, a software to maintain timetables is now available in an enhanced version. The improved journey planner got a graphical representation and a table view for your journeys.Does one require a view of multiple connections for a given search?In fact it should be sufficient to get only one possible journey  the best one  as a resutl fo a search for a journey. But in case of delays or cancellations hte connections shown may be obsolete and we miss the information on how to continue. Most websites use to show 3 possible journeys for your request. Additional connections may be shown on request. But do we need more than 3 possible journeys to reach our target destination? Isn't there a very small chance for delays on multiple vehicles of a journey?A journey often consists of multiple connection-parts and you need to use tranfser stations to change to different lines or vehicles to reach your target destination. Delay or cancellation of one part of the journey may cause the 3 journeys shown to fail (especially if a single ride of the same vehicle or line is used in all connections). In such cases a table showing more connections for each transfer station to overcome the problem of a failing part.An additional goodie results if the transfer time is handled more dynamical by the software. For example it may be helpful to show a connection with a transfer time of 1 minute, even if 3 minutes transfer is specified, especially if this leads to much shorter travel times. If one misses the short transfer time, the next connection to be used is still available. The same applies to later connections to be used in case of delayed arrival at a transfer station.Conclusion: In many cases it is not sufficient to show only 3 possible journeys in search results. Only if all journeys use the same partial connections or only a direct one exists we can make use of 3 possible journeys. In such cases we usually don't need a journey planner.Graphical connection viewA graphical view of possible connections is already offered by some companies. For the traveler this is much better to handle than the usual listings in text format given as a result of a search for connections. Unfortunately the bar diagrams aren't sufficient because they lack the station names.Connection tablePTraffic now has a view of connections showing all possible journeys and their connections in a single table. Much more connections are shown on a single page and can easily be compared against each other. Print cost is also reduced using the table format. Additional information can be integrated easily to make a look similar to standard schedules. In PTraffic the colors defined for the lines can be used, as additional information the platform could be shown. On Smartphones with limited space this table view also provides a compact view.Compact connection tableA step further is given by the compact connection view of PTraffic. The compacted version shows the same journeys and connections as the simple one above.How come? We don't use a full column for each single journey, but all partial connections for all journeys shown only once. Thus the same parts valid for multiple journeys will be shown only once to save columns and space.The compact connection table uses chronological sort of departure times. All departures for a given arrival time are shown downward or to the right. One gets easily used to the unusual view. A penalty in this view is the fact, that the favorable journey isn't shown any more. Marking these favorable connections might overload the compact view. Another disadvantage is that the arrival time at the target station isn't in chronological order  this has technical reasons and cannot be avoided.The compacted view is most convenient for regular journeys within a given time slot  like to and from your place of work. Journeys in this case are more dynamic and at different times because of flexible work times.This view is highly convenient for shopping and other journeys in city centers, where we usually don't have defined departure times. And in case of delays and cancellations one can just look at the next possible connection.The Timetable Software PTrafficPTaffic is an easy to use program to create and maintain views and schedules for complex transport networks. The software is available in 3 different versions. The standard version already contains important features to maintain timetables including a journey planner and various browser applications. PTraffic Pro offers all features of the basic version and in addition a line network editor to produce schematic network maps as well as a traffic simulation. To display the timetable data the free delivered program PTraffic Show can be used.PTraffic Pro is available from en.ptraffic.net at a price of EUR 99.-, the standard version is available at EUR 29-. The website also contains more information, downloads, sample projects as well as a free demo version.Since many years Jorg Siebrands works as independent programmer for information portals and software development. Current projects arePublicSQL (), a SQL interface for JavaScript.PTraffic (), a platform-independent timetable application.a Web-editor with planned availability of summer 2016.Jorg Siebrands, software developmentLuneburger Schanze 121614 BuxtehudeGermanyTel: +49 4161 597079EMail: info@sybrands.deWeb:
The French Press proudly serves Norman Love desserts

The French Press is proud to announce it has expanded its offerings of Norman Love Confections, and is the only establishment in Cape Coral to serve dessert pastries handcrafted by the world-renowned chocolatier.The European-style bakery cafe located at scenic Cape Harbour Marina has been a Norman Love Confections retail partner since May of 2015, when it began selling boxed chocolates, 12 flavors by the piece, the BLACK line of single-origin dark chocolates, chocolate bars and barks, and other specialties. Now it is pleased to serve Norman Loves French macaroons, a delectable gluten-free chocolate almond cake, three varieties of brownies and an assortment of beautiful petit gateaux.The French Press regulars will continue to enjoy their coffee with Chef Benjamin Voisins daily selections of fresh baked pastry, breads, sweet treats and 24 flavors of gelato, along with breakfast, soups, sandwiches, salads and daily specials. Now with the Norman Love dessert bar, visitors to Cape Harbour can indulge in many more delicious choices including the chocolatiers edible art. These delights are the perfect ending to lunch at The French Press or Fathoms Restaurant & Bar, and are also a memorable custom feature at Black Salt catered affairs.The culinary and wine experts at Fathoms and The French Press are currently tailoring a wine list to pair with Norman Loves desserts to further elevate the experience. Seasonal and holiday dessert offerings will be available. Custom orders are always available with 72 hours notice.Valeria Zanella Voisin of The French Press said, It is an honor to be the only store in the Cape carrying these beautiful desserts. We are proud to partner Norman Love, a real Southwest Florida success story, and to offer his creations on this side of the bridge.With decades of experience, Hoffman Group Holdings LLC is a hospitality company that owns Fathoms Restaurant & Bar and The French Press at Cape Harbour Marina. With the creation of Black Salt, acclaimed French chefs Fabrice Deletrain and Benjamin Voisin offer their engaging personalities, creative synergy and unique artistry to elevate every occasion.The mission of HGH is to continue to grow as one of the most competitive and performance driven companies, with respect and support to the Cape Coral and Southwest Florida community. Timothy and Meredith Hoffman, in partnership with Chef Benjamin Voisin and Valeria ZanellaVoisin, are the leading minds behind a group of highly acclaimed eating establishments. Timothy and Meredith own also Montpelier Plantation & Beach, a Relais& Chateaux property in Nevis, West Indies.CONRIC PR6216 Whiskey Creek DrSuite BFort Myers, FL 33919
Westmoreland Mechanical Testing & Research Becomes a Member of America Makes

www.wmtr.com

http://americamakes.us

www.wmtr.com

Youngstown, PA USA, April 4, 2016 Westmoreland Mechanical Testing & Research, Inc. (WMT&R), continues to be at the forefront of materials testing, additive manufacturing (AM), and 3D printing (3DP) research by becoming a member of America Makes, the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute. America Makes is the nations leading and collaborative partner in AM and 3DP technology research, discovery, creation, and innovation and is dedicated to evolving a shared vision of accelerating AM and 3DP into mainstream manufacturing.We are pleased to become a member of America Makes, stated WMT&R Vice President Michael Rossi. The membership represents our commitment to being a world leader in materials testing, and maintaining close relationships with our customers and industry experts in order to provide them with the highest quality service.Through its memberships in America Makes, WMT&R joins other leading member organizations from industry, academia, government, non-government agencies, and workforce and economic development resources that are working together to innovate and accelerate additive manufacturing and 3DP. America Makes membership also provides WMT&R the opportunity to foster new, successful working relationships with members to enhance customer service, share AM research, discover more economical and cost-effective technology and processes, and provide an ongoing forum for education and industry discussion.AM has many benefits compared to traditional forging methods, which are often time intensive, cost prohibited, and inefficient with materials. AM has the ability to forge customized, intricate materials in a cost effective and economical process for a shorter prototype lead time. WMT&R is dedicated to the advancement of the additive manufacturing industry, as well as remaining current on industry specifications for advanced customer service and quality.About Westmoreland Mechanical Testing & ResearchWestmoreland Mechanical Testing & Research, Inc. (WMT&R) is a world leader in materials testing. Founded in 1967, WMT&R serves a broad range of industries including aerospace, automotive, medical, and nuclear. WMT&Rs testing expertise includes Mechanical Testing, Composites, Fatigue, Stress/Creep Rupture, Fracture Mechanics, Metallography, Chemical, Heat Treat, Thermal Analysis, and Physical Properties Testing.WMT&R is headquartered 40 miles east of Pittsburgh in Youngstown, PA USA. Our UK subsidiary, WMT&R Ltd., operates a full-service materials testing facility in Banbury, UK. For more information, please visitor email us.sales@wmtr.com.About America MakesAmerica Makes is the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute. As the national accelerator for additive manufacturing (AM) and 3D printing (3DP), America Makes is the nations leading and collaborative partner in AM and 3DP technology research, discovery, creation, and innovation. Structured as a public-private partnership with member organizations from industry, academia, government, non-government agencies, and workforce and economic development resources, we are working together to innovate and accelerate AM and 3DP to increase our nations global manufacturing competitiveness. Based in Youngstown, Ohio, America Makes is the first institute for up to 45 manufacturing innovation institutes to follow and is driven by the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM). For more information about America Makes, visitAbout NCDMMThe NCDMM delivers optimized manufacturing solutions that enhance the quality, affordability, maintainability, and rapid deployment of existing and yet-to-be developed defense systems. This is accomplished through collaboration with government, industry, and academic organizations to promote the implementation of best practices to key stakeholders through the development and delivery of disciplined training, advanced technologies, and methodologies. For additional information, visit the NCDMM at ncdmm.org.Westmoreland Mechanical Testing & Research, Inc.P.O. Box 388; 221 Westmoreland DriveYoungstown, PA 15696-0388 U.S.A.Telephone: 724-537-3131Fax: 724-537-3151Website:E-Mail: media@wmtr.com
Now Browse San Clemente Dental Listings To Find A Great Dentist: Dr. Eric Johnson

Dr. Eric Johnson, DDS - San Clemente Dentist

http://www.drericjohnson.com

San Clemente, CA -- Monday, April 4th, 2016 -- Dr. Eric Johnson, premier dentist for residents in the San Clemente, CA and surrounding areas is now part of a greater online search database making it easier to find a great dentist in the area. This area includes the cities of San Clemente, Dana Point, San Juan Capistrano, Laguna Beach, Laguna Niguel and Oceanside, California. In fact, patients find Dr. Johnson's personal approach to dentistry so appealing that patients travel from cities all over Orange County in order to be treated by such a caring and competent dentist.And now with added search capabilities making Dr. Johnson's website more search-friendly, it's even easier to make contact. Search phrases such as "Capistrano teeth whitening", "Find a dentist Dana Point", "San Clemente dentists", "Laguna Beach Cosmetic dentist", and many other pertinent phrases all deliver the prospective patient to the website of one of the most popular dentists in the area.The reason for Dr. Johnson's popularity is clear: outstanding dental work along with a personal touch approach leaving every patient feeling like it's a one-of-a-kind dental experience. These claims are backed up by numerous 5-star patient reviews. Here are few of the things folks say about Dr. Johnson's expertise and effectiveness.Here is what Joan S., a recent patient of Dr. Johnson has to say about the treatment received:"Feel so much better after seeing dentist. Dr. Johnson is the BEST dentist I've ever had (and I've had many over my 65 years), and his ability to do complex work is incredible. I highly recommend him."And the experience Darren S. recently had:"A great experience with a highly professional team that is focused on the care and comfort of their patients."Or the way Carol B. felt after her appointment:"This office has HEART! From the welcome at the door, to the time in the chair, everyone is kind, compassionate and meticulous about excellence. Marlena who cleans my teeth is very gentle which my sensitive gums appreciate. Dr. Johnson treats his staff and his patients like family. I am happy when I have an appointment with him or Marlena knowing I am in loving hands."With patients like these routinely posting stellar accounts of their superior dental experience, it explains the popularity going toward the stellar reputation Dr. Johnson had been building in the area.Go ahead and type any relevant search phrase into any popular search engine to locate the best dentist that folks all over Southern Orange County have found to be an excellent choice for both personal and family dentistry.Dr. Johnson and staff are available for San Clemente residents, as well as residents in the neighboring communities of San Juan Capistrano, CA, Laguna Niguel, CA, Dana Point, CA and Laguna Beach, CA. When a dentist in San Clemente is considered tops by patients, that is the one to call: (949) 493-9311.Dr. Eric Johnson, DDSSan Clemente Dentist647 Camino De Los Mares, Ste. 209San Clemente, CA, 92673Phone: (949) 493-9311Website:Email: smile@drericjohnson.com
UPDATE Aug. 30, 2017

A judge has dismissed criminal charges against Luis Rivas, a former drug and alcohol program manager, after the client he was accused of abusing killed herself and prosecutors dropped the case.

The woman committed suicide in January as the prosecution and defense were preparing for trial in the case.

In April, Washington County Circuit Judge Andrew Erwin ruled the woman's 911 call, all texts between her and Rivas, as well as other evidence in the case were inadmissible. Allison Brown, the prosecutor in the case, elected not to proceed with the trial and Erwin dismissed all charges against Rivas.

Rivas filed a motion in June to expunge his arrest record in the case. A ruling is pending.

---

An evaluator who was hired to get intoxicated drivers the help they need has been arrested on accusations that he had sexual contact with a 22-year-old DUII arrestee in the offices of a Beaverton treatment center.

Beaverton police say Luis Rivas, 35, threatened to fail the 22-year-old woman on an evaluation he was conducting of her if she refused to have sex with him. Police arrested Rivas on Friday on accusations of coercion and second-degree sexual abuse.

The woman had gone to the Serenity Lane Treatment Center, 1800 N.W. 167th Place, after she had been arrested for driving under the influence of intoxicants. She had been sentenced to a diversion program, and part of that sentence required her to receive drug or alcohol treatment and receive an evaluation from Rivas.

The woman reported to police on Friday that while at her evaluation, Rivas threatened her with the demand to have sex. Sexual contact actually did occur within the treatment center's offices, said police spokesman Mike Rowe.

"The victim provided police with evidence that substantiated her claim," Rowe wrote in a news release. Rowe declined to say what that evidence was, citing the active criminal case.

Rivas is a Serenity Lane program manager who normally works out of Portland and Vancouver, police said. He also runs a business called Essential Evaluations, which conducts drug and alcohol consulting for teenagers, police said.

Police want to know if others believe they were victimized by Rivas. Those with information should call police at (503) 629-0111 and reference case number 16-920832 or ask for Detective Doug Jones.

-- Aimee Green

503-294-5119
When Tom McCall was elected Oregon's governor in 1966, Floyd McKay had a front-row seat.

As a journalist, McKay was there when Oregon approved its Beach Bill, preserving public recreational access to the state's beaches. McKay was there when Oregon approved its Bottle Bill, reducing litter by requiring refundable deposits. And McKay was there when Oregon decided to head off anticipated anti-war protests during a 1970 American Legion convention in Portland by sponsoring a rock festival, Vortex I.

Vortex gets its own chapter in McKay's new historical memoir, "Reporting the Oregon Story: How Activists and Visionaries Transformed a State" (Oregon State University Press, 288 pages, $21.95). McKay was news analyst at KGW-TV from 1970 to 1986; before that he reported politics for The Oregon Statesman, now the Statesman Journal, from 1960 to 1970. He retired in 2004 from teaching journalism at Western Washington University in Bellingham, where he lives. He'll read from the book and sign copies at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 14, at Powell's Books on Hawthorne, 3723 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd. Here's an excerpt.

***

"Conventional wisdom holds that the state-sponsored Vortex rock festival and drug free-for-all in August 1970 was the turning point for governor Tom McCall and his legacy. ...

Students descended on the capitol and the governor walked out to meet them; he defused their anger but yielded no ground in his support for the war. He also toyed with various proposals to get tough with campus protesters; Portland State and the University of Oregon were seething and political pressure was building. I registered concern when a group calling itself Citizens Coalition for Social Responsibility announced it would be monitoring campus activities and names would be taken.

Greater danger was on the way, however, as Portland prepared to host the annual convention of the uber-patriotic American Legion, where President Nixon was to speak. War protesters swung into action, raising fears of Chicago 1968 re-dux. On August 6 an incongruous consortium of the hip and the clean-shaven announced, with Ed Westerdahl speaking for the governor, that the state would sponsor a rock festival during the convention to divert the expected throngs of youth. ...

Tom's decision to sponsor a rock festival at McIver Park in rural Clackamas County put his political career on the line. Serious violence at the park, a death from a drug overdose, or a deadly accident would have fallen on his shoulders only weeks before voting took place.

More about Vortex I

The overwhelming majority of the thousands of young people at Vortex took no notice of its political ramifications; they were there to have a good time. Drug laws were blatantly violated, as was the societal rejection of public nudity. Uniformed police were kept away, although a few undercover officers were on site to help calm things down if needed. It really wasn't. It wasn't my generation at McIver, and when I made the obligatory tour with several colleagues, I felt more voyeur than reporter, but I saw nothing that made me think Vortex was a mistake. Somewhere around thirty-five thousand revelers were at McIver at one point.

Portland reporters and editors resisted the temptation to sensationalize the carryings-on at Vortex and, by and large, reporting was balanced and fair. No reader or viewer doubted that drugs were ingested and smoked and that nudity was widespread. Broadcastcodes and common sense dictated that photos of nudity--at least that of the frontal variety--would not be shown to scandalize or titillate our viewers, although that didn't prevent a good crowd around our film-editing benches. Most of our younger photographers and reporters were not strangers to marijuana and older hands had long since learned to tolerate the practice. The fact that media were not scandalized went a long way toward calming the waters. The governor had lots of friends in Portland's newsrooms, and most of us gave him slack that another governor might not have been granted. ...

We were all pragmatists with Vortex; we allowed the law and ordinary codes of public decency to be broken and the drug use and nudity to be flaunted as well. I thought the occasion would soon lead to legalization of marijuana, just as we had ended prohibition. In a post-Vortex commentary I noted the irony: "An individual caught with marijuana on his person can wind up in jail. But put twenty thousand individuals together and much more serious drug use is freely allowed. Not because society condones its use, but because society is all but powerless to enforce the law against a mass of violators."

I predicted that legalization of marijuana was just around the corner; the corner took forty-four years!"

Excerpts from "Reporting the Oregon Story: How Activists and Visionaries Transformed a State" by Floyd McKay, copyright (c) 2016. Reprinted with the permission of Oregon State University Press.

An earlier version of this post misstated the year Tom McCall was elected governor and the time of Floyd McKay's reading at Powell's.
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In 1994, while sitting in the illustrious Heathman Restaurant dining room, Vitaly Paley spotted then-executive chef Philippe Boulot standing by the front desk.

Fresh from a cross-country move from New York City with his wife and partner Kimberly, Paley wondered to himself if he would ever have the opportunity to stand alongside Boulot at one of the city's once-best restaurants, shake his hand and be a part of Portland's tight-knit restaurant community.

Little did the Paleys know that many years later, after their eponymous Northwest restaurant, Paley's Place, celebrated its 20th anniversary and the couple's second restaurant, downtown Portland's Imperial,nears its fourth birthday -- they'd not only be pillars in that same community, but the ones standing at the helm of the Heathman's dining room.

By early fall, the Paleys, along with former Riffle executive chef Ken Norris and general manager Garrett Peck, will open Headwaters at The Heathman, a remodeled, seafood-heavy restaurant with a raw bar, rotisserie, brick oven and Russian-inspired tea room in the former Heathman Restaurant space.

"Headwaters to me represents our connection to the community, to the Northwest, to where things come from," Paley said. "Both Ken and I are incredibly passionate about seafood, but it's not just seafood; it's about the connection to community and the coast."

The Paleys just got the keys to the space -- The Heathman Restaurant officially closed after dinner service on Easter Sunday -- but the couple said they want to be true to the restaurant's past and are mining historical archives and photos for design inspiration.

"We're going to go in there with a scalpel. It's a fine game to play for sure," Paley said. "We're going to be incredibly conscious of what it was and where it came from."

Though menu details have yet to be ironed out, Paley and Norris have hinted there'll be some creative dishes from the rotisserie, including suckling lamb, porchetta and crab. Room service, banquets and all other food and beverage for the hotel will be handled by Headwaters. The tea room, Paley said, will have a Russian twist with zakuski and more.

"There's a tremendous history of tea drinking in that part of the world," Paley said. "It's not just for dainty ladies with crustless sandwiches."

More to come.

Headwaters at The Heathman is slated to open in early fall. The restaurant is located at 1001 S.W. Broadway.

-- Samantha Bakall

sbakall@oregonian.com

Follow @sambakall
psu campus.JPG

Portland State University's campus.

(Staff)

The Portland State University Foundation, still searching for a permanent chief executive, looked to its own ranks to name a temporary leader Monday.

Tom Bull, executive director of the school's alumni association and a senior manager at the foundation, is the foundation's new interim president and CEO. Bull will lead the fundraising group as it continues the nationwide search for a permanent leader.

He is the third short-term leader at the foundation since former CEO Francoise Aylmer and her chief development officer resigned Sept. 1. Aylmer and Kristin Coppola's resignations were the fallout after the university called off an event to receive a $100 million donation from self-described billionaire John Fitzpatrick last fall.

PSU subsequently called off that event following concerns about Fitzpatrick's finances. Fitzpatrick, who is running for president of the United States, says the school rejected his gift.

"Even though this gift was never announced by PSU," Aylmer said in a joint statement with PSU foundation board chair Mark Rosenbaum, "the media coverage about the promised gift has overshadowed the many achievements of the foundation and the university."

Tom Bull is the next interim CEO of the PSU Foundation.

PSU Foundation Trustee Lindsay Stewart led the organization for a couple weeks following Aylmer's resignation. Bull replaced Constance French, who was named as interim CEO last year.

Bull's appointment assures the proposed payroll tax that could generation $35 million to $40 million annually for PSU will continue to have close ties to the foundation. The foundation gave $100,000 to the political organizing committee backing the payroll tax plan last month.

Bull Is also one of the co-chief petitioners backing that plan, which has rankled some local business interests, including the Portland Business Alliance. The chamber of commerce is fighting the proposal in Multnomah County Circuit Court, and a ruling is expected next week.

According to the PSU foundation's website, Bull has spent four-and-a-half years leading the school's alumni-relations body.

"His knowledge of the university and his collaborate, energetic style make him an ideal candidate to lead the foundation," the foundation said on its website Monday.

The foundation didn't make Bull immediately available for an interview.



-- Andrew Theen

atheen@oregonian.com

503-294-4026

@andrewtheen
The Central Michigan University chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) hosted a recent panel discussion titled The Cost of Free Public Information, where it presented the results of multiple Freedom of Information Act requests sent to 13 public universities in Michigan.

In mid February, members of SPJ sent FOIA requests to the 13 largest public universities in Michigan, requesting information regarding a years worth of presidential expenses, board of trustees expenses and police reports regarding on-campus sexual assaults.
Precinct delegates: Why are they important? What are their duties? How does one become a delegate?

Being the smallest political unit in the country, the precinct is a vital place in determining the outcome of elections, which puts the precinct delegate squarely at the grassroots level of a political party.

The Michigan Secretary of State website states that a precinct delegate must be a qualified and registered elector residing within, as well as having his or her actual bona fide residence within, the election precinct for which he or she desires to become a candidate on the filing deadline.

Serving as a bridge between voters and the party, precinct delegates are directly elected in even-numbered years by the voters of their respective precinct. Only Democratic voters elect Democratic delegates and only Republican voters elect Republican delegates. Each delegate is still eligible to hold elected office.

To seek the office of a precinct delegate, a registered elector must secure an Affidavit of Identity from either the county clerk, city clerk, township clerk or online at http://1.usa.gov/IJN6lx. Those affidavits must be returned and notarized to the county clerks office on the 13th Tuesday prior to the primary election, which for this years Aug. 2 primary ballot will fall on May 3 at 4 p.m.

Being at the grassroots level, precinct delegates have various duties:

 Help people get registered to vote.

 Take information on issues and candidates to the voters in your precinct.

 Identify others interested in your party and recruit new party members.

 Help turn out your parties vote in your neighborhood on Election Day.

 Keep your party leaders informed about the issues that concern voters.

The allotment of delegates for each precinct is determined on past voting strength for that precinct. The County of Midland contains 50 precincts: 24 in the City of Midland; 25 in the townships; and one precinct for the City of Coleman.

Precinct delegates attend their respective partys county or district convention where they select delegates to the state convention and may also debate or adopt resolutions for recommendation to the state platform committee.

Each state convention debates and adopts a platform, nominates candidates for supreme court justices, state board of education, university boards and selects presidential electors.

Unlike candidates for political office, precinct delegates are not required to file disclosure forms under Michigans Campaign Finance Act.

Anyone with questions about being a precinct delegate may contact the Michigan Department of States Bureau of Elections at (517) 373-2540 or elections@michigan.gov.
Saginaw Valley State University will seek to empower K-12 teachers in the Great Lakes Bay Region to better advocate the joys of writing to their students, thanks to a financial gift that will support a week-long writing workshop.

The SVSU-based Saginaw Bay Writing Project will sponsor a Writers Workshop for Area Teachers from Monday to Friday, July 25 to 29, at the Alden B. Dow Home and Studio in Midland. Sessions are planned from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The week-long agenda includes writing seminars, evening reading sessions by various Michigan authors, complimentary lunch and dinner each day of the workshop, as well as lodging at the Holiday Inn in Midland.

This workshop will include a keynote address from Penny Kittle, author of Write Beside Them, a book published in 2008 that explores how best to teach writing to high school students.

Participants also can take advantage of an opportunity to obtain 25 free State Continuing Education Clock Hours (SCECH) credits or two SVSU credits, paid for by participants.

Organizers say the week-long workshop is designed to inspire teachers interested in rediscovering the power of writing. The program will include discussion of best practices, as well as workshops aimed at crafting, sharing and discussing teachers writing.

We know that educators who work to become better writers themselves will be more effective when teaching writing to their students, said Helen Raica-Klotz, director of the Writing Center at SVSU and the Saginaw Bay Writing Project. We want students throughout our region to experience the joy of writing while also improving their writing proficiency.

The cost for participation is $150 per person, due to the support of the Alden and Vada Dow Creativity Foundation.

We greatly appreciate the generosity of the Alden and Vada Dow Creativity Foundation, Raica-Klotz said. Their desire to support teachers made this possible. We are grateful they recognized SVSUs strong commitment to supporting teachers of writing in our community and chose to partner with us.

Those interesting in participating can register online at www.svsu.edu/sbwp/vadabdowworkshop/. For more information, contact Marilyn Brooks, assistant director of the Saginaw Bay Writing Project, at mtbrooks@svsu.edu.

SVSUs Saginaw Bay Writing Project, founded in 1993, promotes literacy throughout the Great Lakes Bay region. The initiative offers professional development for teachers interested in growing both as writers and as writing teachers.
Fiona Adams/RedfernsA Grammy Award for Song of the Year that John Lennon won in 1966 for co-writing the Beatles hit "Michelle" that had been put up for bid via an online auction site has been pulled from the sale.

Ed Kosinski, co-owner of the Gotta Have Rock and Roll website, told ABC Radio via email, "we decided it was in the best interest of all parties to withdraw the Grammy at this time."

The decision to pull the trophy from the auction follows a TMZ report claiming the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, a.k.a. the Recording Academy, moved to block the sale. According to the tabloid website, the Recording Academy has a rule that disallows artists from selling or giving away their Grammy trophies, and if they do, the music organization can repossess them.

However, Gotta Have Rock and Roll had claimed Lennon's Grammy previously was sold in 2004 at a Christie's music memorabilia auction. The site had been offering the trophy for a starting price of $40,000.

Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
The name Aaron D. Ullom should be familiar to many Midland County residents by now. Ullom was the hospital corpsman in the U.S. Navy who was killed by enemy gunfire on July 12, 2011 while in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. The 2009 Midland High graduate had left a small ditch to apply a tourniquet to a wounded Marine. For his actions, Ullom was awarded the Purple Heart.

He gave his all for his country, a sacrifice we can never repay. But we can help future generations remember Ulloms sacrifice.
Homeschool group, Learning Differences, said that the number of kids with learning disabilities has continuously been growing. However, although the number is increasing rapidly, the resources to teach these children properly is sadly lacking at present.

Thus, the group is opening its door to all children with learning disabilities. The group wants to help all children who are facing learning challenges to become social and learn at the same time, according to ABC 13.

Tammi Wright, the founder of Learning Differences, began homeschooling her own children with learning difficulties 13 years ago. After seeing how her own children benefited from homeschooling, Wright decided to create her own school group to help other children who have learning differences.

Learning Differences uses interactive activities like museum visits and doing activities at the park. The social activities allow the students to interact with other students who are experiencing the same differences. Moreover, Wright said the group also teaches the students various subjects including history and math.

"We personally do a combination of some online classes; we take some classes out in the community," Wright explained to Houston News. "In some cases our curriculum overlaps a great deal. In other areas I create my own curriculum."

Learning Disabilities and Art https://t.co/Owl9pjX7uP via @YouTube

Great short video by a student with dyslexia,dyspraxia & Irlen Syndrome.  Anna Kerr (@AnnaBigBird) Marso 13, 2016

The group is currently available to students in the Northwest Houston area, including the communities of Katy, Tomball, Cypress, Jersey Village, and Spring. It is open to students from kindergarten through 12th grade. The group handles students who were diagnosed with Down syndrome, dyslexia, ADD/ADHD, deafness and Autism.

Wright said that Learning Differences is the right place for the kids that have learning difficulties. She said that the program will develop students' social skills in an environment that is totally accepting. "They have a chance to socialize with other kids and with parents who really understand and accept who they are for who they are," she said.
A new research funded by charity organization Irish Autism Action has found that 1 percent of overall Irish population has autism. This is the first-ever charity-funded research in Ireland focusing on the autism population percentage of the country, which they aimed to publish to coincide with World Autism Day.

According to the research posted by Irish Examiner page, the figure may reach to 50,000 Irish people diagnosed with autism. The statistics recorded are almost the same with the U.S. and the U.K. The prevalence study of autism was conducted in Dublin City University and was led by Dr. Mary Rose Sweeney and Professor Anthony Staines, both from the University's School of Nursing and Human Sciences.

The researchers have screened over 9000 students coming from different mainstream and SPED schools in Dublin. The Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) screening questionnaires were given to the parents of students coming from the schools in the city of Galway, Cork and Waterford where they diagnosed a total of 63 students with autism which counts to 1 percent prevalence in the sample population.

Isolating the results that came from SPED schools, they found a total of 36 children with autism. As posted by DCU page, one of the lead researchers, Dr. Sweeney said, "The results are very important because now the trends can be monitored to see if and how the rates change over time." She added, "Governments can allocate appropriate funds to care for our children's educational and social needs."

Dr. Sweeney suggested that since the study has established a standard method, it can be used across Europe to study the prevalence of autism in the population. She also explained that making a comparison to different study results about autism is difficult. This is because the researchers in previous studies were all using their own method but if they agreed to use a standardized way for this kind of research, it would be easier to compare the data.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said that it is working to cut the inorganic arsenic levels in rice meals for infants, which is a main source of arsenic exposure in babies. As it turns out, the child's performance rate in learning would decrease if they were exposed to inorganic arsenic as an infant or while their mother is pregnant.

FDA Offers Suggestions

The FDA suggests a limit of 100 parts per billion (ppb) in the cereal, which is based on the level that the European Commission set for rice cereals that were made for infants and young children, Reuters reported. The test found that most cereals on the market meet or at least close to the suggested level.

The FDA was not recommending the consumers to change their current patterns of rice consumptions. It was just offering targeted information for pregnant mothers and infants for them to reduce their exposure.

Nestle SA's unit, Gerber, offers infant rice cereal products, was able to meet the proposed standards given by the FDA, according to Wendy Johnson-Askew, a spokeswoman for the food products giant. Abbot, Kraft Heinz Co. and other manufacturers; however, did not immediately respond to the comment request.

Arsenic Levels Are Dangerous

Arsenic occurs naturally in water and soil while pesticides and fertilizers contribute to levels. It is not intentionally added to rice and it cannot be removed. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization considered inorganic arsenic as toxic as it contains chlorine, oxygen and sulfur. On the other hand, the organic arsenic contains hydrogen and carbon, as reported by the Washington Post.

Babies should be fed iron-fortified cereals such as oat, barley and other grains, as advised by the WHO. Pregnant women should eat a variety of food, which includes grains like wheat, oats and barley. Cooking rice in excess water can reduce a huge part of the inorganic arsenic, as noted by the FDA.

Inorganic arsenic is often used in feed for poultry and hogs to prevent disease. The wastes from these animals contaminate the fields and waterways once used as fertilizer. The inorganic arsenic will then be absorbed by rice, vegetables, fruit and seafood, which are all considered healthy food.
The delivery of the much-awaited Oculus Rift is experiencing some unexpected delays blamed to a shortage of units. Customers who pre-ordered the device have yet to receive their virtual reality gadget.

Independent noted that VR company Oculus has owned up to the delivery problems. It promised buyers that it will shoulder the costs for shipping of the device released last March 28.

"We know you're anxious to receive your Oculus Rift and apologize for not updating your order status sooner," a statement of Oculus was quoted by Fortune as saying. It added that the company is already working on the component shortage but noted that "issue has impacted the original shipping estimates for some early customers."

On his Twitter account, Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe said that the company will refund the shipping costs to all those who pre-ordered the Rift. "First set of Rifts are going out slower than we orig estimated, so we're giving free shipping for all pre-orders, including international," Iribe tweeted.

It was added in the Independet report that Oculus also told its customers through an e-mail that they are doing their best to deliver on time. "We're working hard to get up-to-date ship windows, and you should expect to see your order status updated by Tuesday, April 12," the company said.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the company is expected to give updated shipping dates by April 12. But until now, it is still not sure until when the customers will wait for their units.

The same report mentioned that the Rift is the first VR headset introduced by Oculus. Its starting price is $1,500.

In a review, TechRadar said the Rift is a great device offering virtual reality that people has only dreamed of experiencing. It noted that the device also has an excellent design, great games and "wonderful immersion." However, TechRadar suggested that the device can still improve on its touch controls which could not be accessed at launch.
It's definitely a prestigious honor to be accepted in one of the eight Ivy League schools available across the country. Amazingly enough, Brittany Stinson got accepted into five of those schools, in addition to Stanford University thank to a clever Costco-inspired essay.

Ivy League Acceptance

It was just on Thursday when Brittany Stinson found out that she got accepted into five of the best schools around the world. In addition to Stanford University, Stinson also received acceptance letters from Yale University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College and the University of Pennsylvania, as per Business Insider.

Incredibly honored and blessed to be officially admitted to Yale, Columbia, The University of Pennsylvania as a Benjamin... Posted by Brittany Stinson on Thursday, March 31, 2016

"I'm sort of still in shock," Brittany Stinson told Business Insider. "I don't think I've processed everything yet."

Costco Essay

Selecting "Prompt 1," Stinson used an anecdote from when she was two years old. "Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it," the prompt read. Instead of going for the usual route, Brittany decided to go with a Costco experience.

"Notorious for its oversized portions and dollarfifty hot dog combo, Costco is the apex of consumerism," an excerpt from Brittany Stinson's essay read. "From the days spent being toted around in a shopping cart to when I was finally tall enough to reach lofty sample trays, Costco has endured a steady presence throughout my life."

The Ivy League Schools

The eight Ivy League schools are among the most prestigious institutions in the world - and one of the most exclusive. In fact, Complex reports that Harvard only accepted 2,037 students out of more than 39,041 people - translating to 5.2 percent - this fall alone.

In addition, the "easiest" - albeit, not actually easy - Ivy League school to get accepted in is Cornell University, who only took in 6,277 high school graduates out of approximately 45,000 student applicants. The school has an acceptance rate of 13.96 percent.

Our Director and Sr. Associate Director are answering questions about admissions over on Reddit right now. #AMA #AskMeAnything #Reddit A photo posted by Cornell University Admissions (@cornelladmissions) on Dec 8, 2015 at 7:54am PST

Although not an Ivy League school, Stanford University is also one of the hardest schools to get into after high school. Business Insider claims that the California-based University has a lower acceptance rate than any other Ivy League school, with a mere 4.69 percent.

Check out Brittany's full essay on Business Insider. To find out more about the Ivy Leagues schools, watch the video below:
Chicago police arrested three individuals who joined the teachers' protest in Chicago April 1. The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) also lodged charges against the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) for Friday's walkout citing that the strike was an illegal act.

ABC reports that three teachers, who still remain unidentified, were arrested, but police spokesperson Kevin Quaid declined to reveal details about the arrest. The police also cited one individual with a ticket as hundreds of teachers and union members rallied downtown.

The Chicago teachers strike essentially shut down school operations for over 330,000 students in the city. The teachers were protesting against Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel for diverting and mismanaging city funds, as Parent Herald previously reported.

Chicago Public Schools files labor charges

Officials of the CPS filed a complaint about the Chicago teachers strike with the Illinois Education Labor Relations Board citing the CTU didn't follow the governing laws. The CPS also asked the board to disallow similar types of protests to take place in the future and said that the ban should be a "permanent, pre-emptive injunction."

"We have to know going forward that yes, this is not acceptable, it is not legal, cease and desist," said CPS CEO Forrest Claypool, per Chicago Tribune. As state laws require, certain steps have to be undertaken, including a fact-finding discussion between both sides and a negotiator, before teachers can mount protests. The CPS and CTU were still in the midst of their negotiations when the walkout was staged.

Chicago Teachers Union stands by their move

Friday's protest was in reaction to the CPS halting pay increases, which should be part of the teachers' old contracts. "The district has always paid our steps and lanes since 1967. Our lawyers say this shows it's an unfair labor practice strike," said CTU executive board member Sarah Chambers, via Alternet.

Meanwhile, as teachers' contracts are about to expire in June, the union decided that the Chicago teachers strike should take place as soon as possible to show officials that they are a united front. "We got to this point because CPS has been starving our schools for years. It has been death by a thousand cuts," said Chambers. "We've seen over the years more layoffs, class sizes increasing, cuts to counsellors and clinicians, our schools being closed, private schools and charters opening up."

The teachers also cite that they are unable to function better on "low-level funding" and more budget cuts as the mayor and the education board continue to take out loans to support public schools. "We go further into debt, so the cuts keep coming," said Chambers.
While women's abortion rights have received flak for taking away a father-to-be's say about his unborn child in a debate over men's reproductive rights, Sweden is hoping to pass a law that would allow men to just walk away from fatherhood.

The Liberal Youth in Sweden has come up with a law that says a man should have the right to back out of being a father. This includes giving up all parental rights and any contact with the child throughout his life, but also any financial responsibilities tied to raising a child. However, the decision to terminate a pregnancy is still entirely up to the woman alone.

Although many are skeptical about the law, it shows that the face of feminism is changing. In fact, it wasn't men behind the proposal of this law, but a group of 17- to 20-year-old women who noticed the lack of gender equality on the issue of parenting and abortion; this is according to The Telegraph.

This is how the makers of the law imagined it would go: a man would declare his decision to not be involved as a parent in a state-approved form and submit it to a register office. The process would be tedious and expensive to still promote the use of contraception and the practice of safe sex.

Marcus Nilsen, chairmen of the Liberal Youth in western Sweden doesn't believe the law would promote more complicated parent-child relationships either, Medical Daily reports. Situations wherein the mother doesn't know the child's father already exist, such as artificial insemination. The law would also apply to married couples, although Nielsen says this wouldn't be a good sign for the marriage.

During these modern times where feminism is a cry heard 'round the world, it's easy to forget that maybe men should have reproductive rights too. If girls in their late teens to early twenties can figure that out, surely we should have no problem keeping up.
Manita Singh, a 25-year-old Indian woman, got the biggest surprise of her life after she gave birth to quintuplets through natural delivery in just over 30 minutes on April 2. The new mother, who never had an ultrasound, was left in shock when she found out that she was delivering not one but five baby girls.

The Daily Mail reports that Manita was rushed to the district government hospital in Ambikapur at Chhattisgarh, eastern India after she started complaining of labor pains. The pregnant housewife and her husband Manish Singh were worried about giving birth at just 26 weeks after they lost their first baby in 2014.

The couple, who anticipated only one baby, was shocked when doctors informed them that five baby girls are on the way. The premature quintuplets were all born in swift succession in just over 30 minutes, with varying weight between 1 to 1.5 kg.

Indian mother expecting one baby gives birth to FIVE healthy daughters https://t.co/jTothlCPj1 via https://t.co/GRrtOT9cQy

5 Births Babies  James Penney (@Globalnewscom1) April 3, 2016

"I am extremely grateful to God for blessing us with not one but five children," Mahesh, told The Times of India, according to The Inquisitr. The 26-year-old father believed that God has compensated the loss after their first child died two years ago. He is hoping that all of her daughters will survive so that he can give them a wonderful life.

Dr. Pandey, head of Ambikapur district hospital, said that the Singh quintuplets were not the first quintuplets in India. However, they were the first to be born through natural delivery in the state of Chhattisgarh.

Dr. Tekam, who led the team of doctors in the delivery, shared that it was the first time in his entire career that he was able to deliver quintuplets through normal birth. He, however, added that they are closely monitoring the premature babies as their chances of survival are abysmally low due to their very low birth weight.

"While they are healthy, we cannot say if they will survive. However, we are doing every bit to save them," Dr. Tekam stated.

Quintuplet births are considered rare as it occurs only in one out of almost 50,000,000 births. According to PBS, the Dionne sisters, who were born in Canada in 1934, were the first recorded quintuplets to have survived.
A new testing outrage in Florida involves an autistic student required to take the state-mandated standardized test at a neighborhood public school. Florida's testing outrages just keep on coming. Despite pleas from families, Florida keeps insisting that severely disabled students take the standardized test.

According to The Washington Post, last month, Paula Drew asked the Florida Education Department for a standardized-testing exemption for her daughter. Madison Drew, 15-year-old, has cerebral palsy and is unable to speak due to complications related to her condition. The department denied the mother's request.

Another case involves a boy named Michael who was born without the cognitive part of his brain. Despite his condition, the Florida Education Department asked Michael to take an alternative state-mandated standardized test. After the publicity about his condition, Michael later won an exemption.

Ethan Rediske had cerebral palsy and was born with severe brain damage. The boy passed away at age 11, in 2014. His mother, Andrea, was forced by the Florida Education Department to provide documents proving that Ethan was unable to participate in the state-mandated test while the boy was lay dying in a morphine-induced coma.

The new story involves a 9-year old autistic boy and his Pinellas County parent, Elizabeth Shea. The boy attends the online Florida Virtual School. He was required to take the state-mandated standardized test and he recently went to do so with his service dog.

His mom has become a certified dog handler because the autistic boy is too young to handle the dog alone. Ms. Shea accompanied her son to the test site. The autistic boy has an Individual Education Plan (IEP), but the dog apparently wasn't part of those services. The school's testing administrators did not allow Shea to stay in the testing room with the dog. In a heartbreaking incident, her son was left in tears and unable to take the exam.

According to an article published by Ferrara Fiorenza, a New York law firm, in a child's case the person who handles the dog is considered an assistive device and the service dogs are generally allowed by law to be anywhere the person to which it is assigned is.
Dozens of unsuspecting men in South Australia have tested positive for prostate cancer. Luckily for them, it was all a big mistake.

Dr. Peter Sutherland, an Adelaide urologist, first spotted the discrepancy when some of his patients returned to his clinic dejected and concerned. He started getting suspicious when those who already had their prostate glands removed also got positive results. No less than 40 patients were affected by the blunder, ABC reported.

"Thankfully we repeated the test with other labs and showed it wasn't correct," said Sutherland. "There was some real human misery associated with this in some men who were seriously worried they had recurrent cancer."

In a statement shared to The Advertiser, South Australian health minister Jack Snelling revealed that defective testing kits from a third-party supplier caused the wrong diagnoses. He did not mention the company's name, but stressed that it could be held liable for the blunder.

Julia Squire, the head of Adelaide's health network, urged the public to continue to have faith in SA Pathology's services. She reasoned that the healthcare industry isn't 100 percent infallible.

"It's really important that people feel confident when things don't go right that they know about it," she mused. "And that those issues are identified and we deal with it appropriately."

Sutherland expressed the same sentiment. He believed SA Pathology wasn't entirely responsible for the mistake. Staffers were even surprised to learn about the wrong diagnoses.

"This is very complex chemistry that's going on here and I do have some sympathy with them because this is a test that they've run for a long time and it's always been reliable," Sutherland explained. "So while it did take some weeks for them to get onto this, I can understand why they were reticent to believe it."

Despite the wave of support SA Pathology has been getting, South Australian health officials announced over the weekend that the organization's executive director, Ken Barr, had been relieved of his duty following the mistake. Health minister Jack Snelling has since asked for an independent investigation on the matter, as per Daily Mail.
I think it was in Tucumcari, New Mexico, that I first felt the urge to rush to the end of the road. My wife and I, both schoolteachers, had set our entire summer aside to accomplish one of her long-held dreams: Driving the entirety of Route 66, from Chicago to L.A. By the time our trip started, wed already traveled much that summer, from our home in Atlanta to our parents in Ohio and then to Chicago, where the Great American Road Trip begins on the shore of Lake Michigan. When we spent a lazy afternoon in run-down Tucumcari, waiting for the remnants of the Roads neon-tinted ghost to come alive after nightfall, we were a little less than halfway through our trip of 2500 miles.

If we get up early, I said, sitting on the edge of the tiny bed in the Blue Swallow Motel, we could have lunch in Albuquerque.

You dont wanna see Santa Fe?

I chewed on that for a moment. Id never been to Santa Fe. It was just a couple hours out of the way, a day trip at most. The landscape of New Mexico was stunning, a joy to drive through. The weather had been fine.

I stared out the tiny window and couldnt turn my mind from the Santa Monica Pier. The end of the road.

At some point, every sufficiently lengthy road trip in my mind becomes The Oregon Trail. You start by outfitting your vehicle with provisions: we had coolers full of food, a nice camping set, plenty of extra clothing, and a playlist of classic American rock and doo wopbut no spare tire. You decide how quickly you want to consume your rations: we ate as often as we could from our coolers, reasoning that every peanut butter and jelly lunch allowed us one more stop at one of the greasy spoons that populated the Mother Road. You set your pace: For the first half of the tour, we traveled leisurelystaying off the interstate wherever possible. And the profession youve chosen dictates how much money you have with which to barter on your journey: we were teachers, so not much.

Fortunately, we were never forced to attempt to caulk our Kia Soul and float it across the river, and we never had any bouts with dysentery.

But despite the fact that our trip was, for all intents and purposes, a pleasure cruise, right around the time we hit Tucumcari I started to feel antsy about finishing. The point of The Oregon Trail is to successfully navigate the Trail and arrive in the Willamette Valley. You dont get any points for lingering several days at Chimney Rock to take in the sights.

Surely the point of traveling Route 66 was to bear witness to the faded glory of twentieth-century America, and not merely to arrive at Santa Monica Pier, spit in the Pacific Ocean, and proclaim We did it!

I agreed to take the trip to Santa Fe.

We passed a lovely afternoon exploring the Plaza, the Palace of the Governors, and the Cathedral of St. Francis, but as we grabbed a meal at a hole-in-the-wall burrito place, I felt restless again.

If we get through Albuquerque this afternoon and keep heading West, I suggested, we could camp at Bluewater Lake State Park, near the Arizona border.

My wife frowned over her green chile sopapilla. You dont want to spend time in Albuquerque?

I was sure that Albuquerque was a fine city. But no. We stayed in a hotel last night, I argued, so we should camp tonight. And Bluewater looks like the only good place to do that.

This was the Oregon Trail argument manifesting itself again. We have limited resources. If we want to make it to the finish line, we have to scrimp and save where we can afford to.

We sped through Albuquerque, taking in none of its charm (if charm indeed it has, I wasnt there long enough to verify), and pressed on toward the state park, which took longer to reach than Id guessed it would. As we rolled down a poorly-kept dirt road, not quite sure if we werent headed in the wrong direction, the sun set over the mesas and threatening clouds appeared on the horizon.

Guilt gnawed at me. In my haste, I thought, Id tried to ford the river, the one thing every grade-school student knows you should never, ever do.

We reached the camping area as the last rays of sunlight were disappearing from the sky, and we hastily assembled our tent in the dark. I spent some time apologizing.

The next day took us through Petrified Forest National Park and onward to Winslow, Arizona, so we felt obliged to take it easy. We stayed in a Motel 6, which on this particular trip, was the height of luxury and comfort. I even agreed to take a whole day to visit Sedona.

The day after that, the Road took us through Seligman, Arizona, and my vision of Route 66 as The Oregon Trail fell apart.

Route 66 was the lifeblood of Seligman, ferrying business and tourism through the little town until it was bypassed by I-40 in 1978. If youve seen Pixars Cars, you know this story: Seligman is the town on which the run-down auto-hamlet of Radiator Springs is based, a village made destitute by the departure of freeway traffic.

As we munched on burgers at the Snow Cap Diner (Real Dead Chicken! they advertise on their menu), I gazed at the lonely Main St. of Seligman and had a revelation: Route 66 wasnt the Oregon Trail of my classroom days. It was a game Id played much more recently. It was Kentucky Route Zero.

Kentucky Route Zero is a game about a great many things, but fundamentally it is a story about looking below the surface, stripping away the facade of the ordinary and finding the magical underneath. The protagonist, Conway, in attempting to make a delivery, finds himself in an America that is distinctly off the beaten path. He and his companions traverse a landscape of subterranean highways, giant eagles that roost in museums, office buildings populated by bears, and other, weirder wonders. Where The Oregon Trail is all urgency, Kentucky Route Zero is ponderous, meditative, slow. It is a road trip, in a sense, along the eponymous Route, but the journey is far more important than the destination.

I finished my burger, wiped my hands on one of the Snow Caps trademark slightly used napkins, and thought about Conway.

It says theres a Route 66 Museum in Kingman, just a couple miles out, my wife said, looking at our map. You want to stop?

Absolutely, I said, fishing in my pocket for my keys. Weve got all afternoon.

We spent several hours in the Kingman Route 66 Museum, and all the while I kept an eye out for giant eagles.





Nate Ewert-Krocker is a writer and a Montessori teacher who lives in Atlanta. His first book, an adventure novel for teens, is available here. You can find him on Twitter at @NEwertKrocker, where he mostly gushes about final boss themes from JRPGs.
It is telling that the single scariest image in Baskin emphasizes creeps over carnage. Its a shot of a boy standing alone in his living room, illuminated only by the static glow of his familys television set, which has inexplicably turned itself on in the middle of the night. Nothing about the scenario is overtly terrifyingat least until he shuts the TV offbut it is memorably real in a film where its difficult to distinguish what is and isnt imagined. Grand guignol-level spectacle where every character in the frame is streaked with viscerathats one thing. Domestic peculiarities that invoke nocturnal aberrations, though, are another thing entirely.

But filmmaker Can Evrenol is pretty fixated on that guignol stuff, and so Baskin is best characterized as an off-kilter bloodbath by consequence. Thats great news for any horror fan with a fondness for displays of unbridled cruelty. Baskin indulges in nightmares and constructs itself from the disassembled pieces of the human form, arrayed across the screen in whichever artful ways Evrenol deems best. This is a movie with such a high incidental body count that its IMDB page credits actors for portraying corpses. If you are looking for a single word to sum up the film, try gross. If youre looking for two: super gross. There are more prolifically disgusting horror movies in the distinguished canon of so-called torture porn, absolutely, but not many intend on being this bleak and grisly while being willfully mystifying.

And you know what? The whole thing works in spite of its grisly kinks and enigmas, or perhaps because of them. Baskin is an odd duck. The film is about a police unit investigating a call gone terribly wrong. This is how things start, with the group sitting around at a restaurant, trading bullshit macho tall tales to impress each other and giving the newbie to the team, Arda (Gorkem Kasal), a hard time per police initiation customs. Like Baskins opening shot, this scene is not without its eerie undertones: Before we meet Arda and his superiorsSabo (Sabahattin Yakut), Apo (Fatih Dokgoz), Yavuz (Muharrem Bayrak), and Remzi (Ergun Kuyucu)we watch a silent hooded figure deliver a bucket of meat to the restaurant, which we get to see prepared in close-up and hear through the aural magic of stomach-churning foley work.

Its enough to turn your average steak lover vegan, though if not, Baskin has far worse in store as the cops take a trip down a gory rabbit hole into a world of devil worship. Think of the film as the lovechild resulting from a drunk night between Rob Zombies and Lucio Fulcis filmographies, or a severely twisted cross-stitch of Inception and Stanley Kubricks oeuvre. (Press materials also happily translate Baskins title as police raid, so if you note any parallels between Evrenols movie and the movies of Gareth Evans, congratulations on winning subconscious association games.) Sussing out all of Baskins references and influences is kind of a delight, mostly because Evrenol doesnt call on just one single source for inspiration. Hes a guy who loves movies instead of just one movie, and who loves directors instead of just one director.

What he likes less is clarity. Baskin is a roundly unhinged film. Maybe Evrenol is a fully hinged person, but figuring out what, exactly, is happening in his movie is a fools errand. Where does reality begin and surreality end? Not everything has a clear answer, Remzi says to Arda during one of the films dream sequences, as they sit in a cafe and trade personal fears among themselves. That line is essential to understanding the film, such as the film can actually be understood. How much of what we see on the screen in Baskin is actually happening? How much of it is spun from the characters memories and emotional phantasms? Is there any hope of untangling this genre movie Mobius strip?

That last question is easy to answer: Not even a little. But if youre trying to yank logic out of the film, youre doing it wrong. Dont watch Baskin in the spirit of forcing Evrenols story to make sense. Watch it in the spirit of letting his horrific vision sweep over you however it may.

Director: Can Evrenol

Writer: Can Evrenol, Ogulcan Eren Akay, Cem Ozuduru, Ercin Sadikoglu

Starring: Gorkem Kasal, Sabahattin Yakut, Fatih Dokgoz, Muharrem Bayrak, Ergun Kuyucu

Release Date: March 25, 2016

Boston-based critic Andy Crump has been writing about film online since 2009, and has been contributing to Paste Magazine since 2013. He also writes for Screen Rant, Movie Mezzanine and Birth. Movies.Death., and is a member of the Online Film Critics Society and the Boston Online Film Critics Association. You can follow him on Twitter and find his collected writing at his personal blog. He is composed of roughly 65% craft beer.
The U.S. and Cuba have led a strained relationship since the two countries severed ties in 1961. Like any divorce, the countries split assets. The U.S. took Guantanamo, and Cuba kept the cigars. Now, with the slow lifting of travel restrictions, Airbnbs found a new hub on the island of Cuba, and as of April 2, these properties are open to the entire world.

Last year, 13,000 U.S. travelers stayed with Cuban hosts, but, recently, the Obama

administration lifted restrictions on the home-sharing site and opened Airbnb activities in Cuba for the rest of the world to enjoy. In a year, Airbnbs reaped these benefits:

? 13,000 U.S. travelers stayed with Cuban hosts

? 4,000 Cuban hosts, up from 1,000 in early 2015

? Listings span 40 Cuban cities, most of which are in Havana

? $250 in average earnings per booking

? U.S. travelers have come from all 50 states, with 27.8 percent from California

? 35 percent of U.S. trips to Cuba have been for educational purposes

Airbnb is just the latest of many full-blown expansions onto the island. Starwood Hotels signed the first U.S. contract in Cuba since 1959. Airlines are fighting over Cuban runways. And it seems a ton of Americans are just fighting for a visit, considering interest is the highest its ever been.

Still, travel to Cuba isnt entirely open to U.S. residents yet, though its getting close. Currently, travel between the two countries requires a connection through Canada or Mexico or masquerading as a biologist keen on studying Cuban topsoilor any of these other sanctioned criteria.

Tom is a travel writer, part-time hitchhiker, and hes currently trying to imitate Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? but with more sunscreen and jorts.
Guardians of the Galaxy and Spectre star and mixed martial arts fighter Dave Bautista has been cast in the highly anticipated follow-up to sci-fi classic Blade Runner.

Rumors had been swirling about Bautistas involvement in the film, which is set to be directed by Denis Villeneuve (Sicario), with principal photography beginning this July. Today, those rumors were confirmed, marking Bautista as the fourth major name attached to the projectRyan Gosling, Harrison Ford and Robin Wright are also set to star.

The sequel picks up decades after the original film, with the ageless Ford reprising his role as Rick Deckard. No details are being shared about Bautistas character, except to say that he will play an important supporting role.

Plot details, too, are being kept under wraps. The film was written by Hampton Fancher and Michael Green. Writing credits for the original film go to Fancher and David Peoples, who based their story on Philip K. Dicks novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Warner Bros. will handle the North American release of the film, while Sony Pictures Releasing International will be charged with overseas distribution. The Blade Runner sequel is slated to arrive on Jan. 12, 2018.
This essay contains light spoilers from the first two episodes of The Path.

Usually, I pinpoint the loss of my faith in the Christian God (and his son, and the Holy Ghost) on the year my mother died, when I was 15-years-old. But it actually started a few years sooner. Like Aaron Pauls character in Hulus new drama The Path, I got an inclination about something I experienced while practicing my religion, and I could never quite let it go.

Right after Sunday School, I must have been about 12 or 13, I approached our teacher (Sister Fisher, I believe) at Union Baptist Church in Cambridge, to ask her a question that had been weighing on me all morning: Why did Jesus absolutely have to die? I needed to know. If he was the Son of God, and also God, why couldnt he come up with a less, well, horrible way to prove his love and save our souls? Why couldnt he have worked with God to forgive us of our sins in some other way?

And Ill never forget what she told me.

She looked me dead in the eyes and said, You know what, Shannon? When you die and you go up to Heaven, thats when youll get your answer.

I nodded, waiting for more.

Finally, she added, In that exact moment when you get to Heaven, all of your questions will be answered.

Da fuq?

That was the beginning. I knew Sister Fisher was lying to me, in the Church, though I couldnt for the life of me figure out why. It took me a while to realize that she didnt know the answer, or she didnt know how to answer me, but she occupied a space where she couldnt say that. She couldnt say, I dont know, or Im not sure, but let me investigate and get back to you. And it wasnt her fault. Part of the problem with so many religionsand movementsis that youre not allowed to ask difficult questions and youre not allowed to say you dont have the answer, especially if youve been put in a position of leadership and power. So those of us with questionsbig and smallwill soon find ourselves looking elsewhere for answers.

And the same thing occurred when I had questions about my mother. How in the world, could a loving God, ignore hundreds of thousands of prayers Id offered up in the time since she was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer? After all, as a former ward of the state, I was on my third mother (birth, foster, adoptive) it had to be a special kind of God who saw fit to take away the first mother who chose me, and committed to that choice. What kind of God? I often asked (though, admittedly, with more expletives). And no one offered up a satisfactory answerin fact that very question (expletives or no) is considered to be an act of blasphemy in and of itself.

And this is why I loved the first two episodes of The Path. Aaron Paul is playing Eddie, and Eddie has questions. And this means that Eddie is in big trouble. He goes on a trip to Peru that is, in accordance with the Meyerist movement, supposed to bring him closer to the Truth and the Lightthose gods of the movement. Instead, he sees something that he cant quite shake off, something that suggests the leaders of the movement are lying to the believers.

Of course, like most people faced with a crisis of faith, he tells no one. But he begins by asking small questions. In the first episode, What the Fire Throws, he asks Hugh Dancys character, Calthe head of the movementhow long, precisely, it will take their messiah-like figure Dr. Meyer to finish the work hes totally, definitely been doing in Peru. An entire group of believers, including his wife (a fantastic Michelle Monaghan as Sarah) sits in shock over the sheer audacity of his asking such a question. The question invites a certain logic into their system, and the belief seems to be that logic and faith cannot coexist. And of course Cal pulls a Sister Fisher, and answers the question, without answering a damn thingbut in such a way that the faithful are wholly satisfied.

There are multiple other scenarios throughout the first two episodes, where small questions are introduced and their complications are rejected, in a way, by the movement. In The Era of the Ladder, Sarah and Eddies son wants to help a cute girl at school with a family problem. How does the movement feel about that? The answers not so simple, and in attempting to make it a black and white issue, both parents fail to adequately prepare him for what happens.

The biggest mistake people will make, I fear, will be to consider the show a story about a cult, or even merely a critique of organized religions. One very clear message sent is that Meyerism is not a religion, but a movement. In this way, the group and their followers come to represent political movements and other social groups as wellall of which invites other, equally compelling interpretations. What questions do you have to suppress, The Path asks, to vote in an election, for one candidate over another? If you believe in a particular social movement, is there space to interrogate that movement, while participating in it? And what are the dangers of challenging such a movement from the outside? Im especially interested in seeing how the FBI storyline plays into all thisthe writers were very careful to highlight the bureaucracy involved in one agent wanting to open up an investigation, and getting the following response when he noted that the Meyerists were first on the scene: No one got to Ringe before FEMA. For some people in power, its more important to pretend a particular movement doesnt even exist, rather than interrogate it and its effects on a group of people (in this case, those who were rescued after the tornado). What dangers lie in a willful ignorance that seeks to disavow the power of one particular group of people?

If The Path continues to develop the storylines it presented in these first two installments, well be able to better understand the show as a critique on an entire society where individual thought itself is deemed radical. Its exciting to think that the relationship between religious thought, our political system and an educational system that pretends to exist outside of both, might be challenged by this fascinating (and, sidenote, incredibly sexy) new series. For those of us whove been championing series like Transparent, The Leftovers and Orange is the New Black, The Path is a welcome addition to a far-too-slim selection of shows daring to tackle questions of faith.



Shannon M. Houston is a Staff Writer and the TV Editor for Paste, as well as a script consultant on Season Three of Transparent. This New York-based freelancer probably has more babies than you, but thats okay; you can still be friends. She welcomes almost all follows on Twitter.
Here are the tasting notes on the fair-trade pour-over coffee from Costa Rica that Im drinking: Bergamot; sunflower seed, organic green grapes. I manage to order a cappuccino from the ironic-facial-hair grunge-meister barista without asking how you discern organic versus conventionally grown green grape in the flavor profile of a cup of freaking coffee. I mean, I could tell you if an actual green grape was a Thompsons or a Perlette, but as far as whether it met organic cert standards, Id be guessing. And thats before you get to the part where we are talking about not actual grapes but coffee, which, lets be fair, tastes overwhelmingly of coffee.

Oh, I have a point, and its even about grapes.

Im in Seattle. Its March, which means Japanese cherries and star magnolias are running riot and its colder than a well-diggers ass out here. The wind is piercing, the clouds are doing their best to look more mountainous than the mountains, and large branches are being ripped from cedar trees and flung at people as I write. Ive just discovered there is a huge wine scene half an hour northeast of Seattle. Im half wondering why I didnt know that  being no stranger to wine or to the Northwest  and half wondering how. You can grow some amazing things in western Washington, and if wine could be made from rhododendrons or Japanese camellias or cedars this would be Gods Wine Country but no way, no way could this climate produce a wine grape. Right?

Righty-o. A hundred wineries. Zero grapes.

Welcome to Washington, a land of mysteries, moonscapes, contradictions and conundrums. (But not Conundrum, that stuffs entirely Californias karma.) Of course there are zillions of exceptions but the Napa / Sonoma wine industry grew in the tradition of French and Italian winemaking  Grow Your Own. Estate vineyards, proprietary fruit harvested right outside the doors and pressed, aged and bottled on site. Washington is different. Grapes do not generally fare well west of the Cascade Mountains (the Puget Sound AVA seems to be managing with a few varietals), but they find many attractive niches in the east  from the relatively cool and wet Walla Walla region to the arid sagebrush desert of the Columbia Valley and from the high-elevation ridges of Rattlesnake Valley to the cool river-fed niches of the Columbia Gorge. It is geologically diverse, has vast differences in weather from region to region and even from one side of a given AVA to the other, and is home to a large and rapidly growing expanse of vines  over 40 different varietals sprawling over more than 71,000 square miles. Washington is the second largest wine producing region in the US and, like many things in the Pacific Northwest, its an eccentric and fascinating scene that somewhat defies categorization.

In a sense, the Seattle-adjacent wine producers congregated in and around the city itself and in nearby Woodinville, are all urban wineries. Some are tasting room outposts or partial production facilities of wineries whose main operations are in the east (Woodinville flagship Domaine Sainte Michelle processes some white wines on their stunning property in Woodinville and reds on the other side of the mountains). Most of the almost 100 wineries in Woodinville are small producers operating entirely out of warehouse spaces or other non-vineyard properties, crafting wines from grapes sourced from one or several of the AVAs on the other side of the Cascades. Some own the land their grapes grow on; others form trusted partnerships with particular farmers. Some haul grapes into their facilities and some bring juice post-crush. Some feel the terrain and terroir of eastern Washington is grape heaven and some think its hell. Some are on a mission to make a $50.00 wine that they can safely sell for $20.00, and Id be lying if I didnt privately believe there are a handful doing the opposite. (Sorry.) But the upshot is people have a wildly diverse range of practices and attitudes about producing wine here, and there are so many varietals and attitudes that it is very hard to pin down a definitively Washington winemaking style. What they all agree on is that the harvest season commute is a bitch.

There is something for everyone in this neck of the woods  for sure the most physically dazzling for visitors are the parklike grounds of Chateau St. Michelle and nearby JM Cellars, which is on a terraced hillside property previously owned by hardcore horticulturalists and has enough spectacular rare trees that they get their own tour. If youre going for the picnic factor, no one competes with those two. As for the wines  CSM has a Sauv Blanc that displays an unusually broad spectrum of floral aromatics including a pronounced linden-blossom note I dont think a California Sauv would be capable of, and their Erioca Riesling is pretty dang good. JM Cellars is harder to find (small winemakers might be the best justification of Internet-based retail) but boasts a killer Petit Verdot and a red blend called Bramble Bump that could easily become your new best friend.

Janiuk / Novelty Hill has a gorgeous tasting room and a serious portfolio of Cabernet Sauvignons from both Michael Janiuks collection and the Novelty Hill label. Cabernet Sauvignon is an entirely different beast in Washington than in Napa Valley, leaner, stonier, more dignified  and if youre not familiar with it, Janiuks a great place to start. Novelty Hill is working with one of my fetish varietals, Roussanne, and I think that might have been my favorite pour of the day. Intense florals, citrus and slate at heart. But these guys are turning out a lot of different wines and every one of them is good.

If you are the kind of person who thinks they dont get wine or that you dont have enough of a trained palate to know your way around  this is the perfect region to visit or to buy from because it is proof positive that there are as many ways of contending with a grape as there are people doing it. You want to have a really fun sensory freakout? Try side-by-side tastings from Savage Grace and. Michael Savage and Jeff Lindsey-Thorsen are close neighbors, and even pick from some of the same vineyards. Taste the Syrahs and you will not believe you are drinking the same varietal, much less the same vintage and the same vineyard. Savages wines are the soul of restraint  lean, austere, even  the closest thing I have tasted in a while to drinking liquefied stone (and that isnt a jab; theyre marvelous). Card carrying members of the Anything But Chardonnay club should reserve judgment until theyve experienced Savage Grace  he also forced me to admit I dont hate Malbec after all. His Syrah is a beauty  a light, ruby-colored, tart cherry affair with a ton of wet stone. Jeff Lindsey-Thorsen of WT Vintners, meanwhile, is more opulent and voluptuous in his winemaking tendencies, and while there is still plenty of minerality in those wines (youd be hard put to drive it out, many Washington AVAs sit on basaltic bedrock that can be so close to the surface its hard to drive stakes into the ground to train the vines)  were talking decadent fruit and heady aromatics. Blueberries, cacao, violets, olive leaf. Both are valid expressions of Syrah and both are excellent  but they could not be more different. Which is fun. And weird. And surprising even when you understand it. Maybe thats the cleanest definition of Washington wine you can even get to.

Covington Cellars / Two Vintners Morgan Lee is another example of a skin contact guy, and he gets some beautiful stuff out of that method. My personal fave is the 2V ramato Gewurtztraminer  a normally white wine, this one is left in touch with its tinted skins until it turns a soft salmon-orange and starts exuding all kinds of Grand Marnier and rose petal and tangerine peel goodness. But if youre imagining a syrupy residual sugar bomb, think again. There is a persistent whisper of stone in almost everything that grows up here, and its not missing from this stuff either.

Many Woodinville wineries are small production run (some are large) and they are widely varied in their distribution (I dont know many people down here who know about JM Cellars; theyre pouring Savage Grace at the airport; Chateau Sainte Michelle you can stumble over just about anywhere.) Since the Internet doesnt have a zip code this is no biggie shopping wise  but Woodinvilles situation is kind of unique for the in person experience, because with very few exceptions, the wineries are walking distance from each other, which is not a thing with vineyard estates. And its a blessing in terms of sketchy auto traffic on winding backroads, which is seriously a thing with vineyard wineries.

For those interested in a Seattle-based wine-frenzy, some spots you dont want to miss would include Jet City  a large urban winery with dazzling views of Mount Rainier from their site at the edge of Boeing Field. Winemaker Brennan Leighton is turning out really, really good stuff, and at their production volume it would be easy not to. They have an easygoing, zero-preciousness aesthetic and a diverse portfolio, including a Riesling that would pair really well with spicy Asian dishes and an extremely user-friendly Merlot whose name Velvet Devil pretty much sums it up. Great Syrahs and a couple of really charming red blends are also easily had, as well as they fairly supermarket-ubiquitous Charles & Charles rose, which I will say is ubiquitous for a reason  accessible and refreshing at a really friendly price . Ask Brennan about his Petit Verdot if your socks are in need of knocking off.

If, like me, you happen to be a Grenache freak, your man is Ryan Crane at Kerloo Cellars, also south of Downtown. These wines are small production runs with a lot of attention to detail (and be careful because they will sell out and leave you pining for more)  not a lemon in the portfolio but for me the star of the show at this winery is Grenache in all of its forms.

If your thing is brooding, full-figured Malbec, lucky you because youre only a few blocks from Elsom Cellars. Jody Elsoms exceedingly fabulous tasting room is shared by a trekking organization so its not unusual to grab a glass of Cab and listen to an interesting talk on an exotic travel destination at the same time. Elsom wines do not become available to the public at a young age  they do serious barrel time and they are intense. My favorite was a blend named Isabella after Elsoms daughter  beautifully balanced, a little peppery, very lush.

And thats for starters. Washington is a younger wine region than Napa  or anywhere in Europe  but its diversity is startling and its a fascinating place to visit whether in person or by the glass. You might find yourself agreeing with some of the local winemakers that Washington has not quite found its signature grape and that it will turn out to be Syrah, the way Chenin Blanc is synonymous with South Africa or Cabernet Sauvignon with Napa Valley. You might hold with the equally vocal crew who feel its all about aromatic whites. You might find yourself completely able to render a verdict because pretty much whatever you can think of, someones growing it and doing something relevant with it. If anyone is in need of proof that there is no one right way to make wine, no one way of perceiving terroir, no one correct opinion about how to contend with a grape  this is your spot. Eccentrics, mavericks, ideologues, rockers, chemists, poets, traditionalists, upstarts, little guys, big guys, lifers, dabblers  theres a little of everything up here. Much of it is stellar; all of it is worth investigating.

Check out the gallery to see what Washingtons wine scene is all about.

1 of 13 Charles Smith Jet City Wines

2 of 13 Charles Smith Wines

3 of 13 Chateau St. Michelle

4 of 13 Elsom Richard Duvall

5 of 13 JM Cellars

6 of 13 Kerloo Heywood Chan, YE-H Photography

7 of 13 Novelty Hill

8 of 13 Outside Novelty Hill

9 of 13 Red Mountain Winery

10 of 13 Savage Grace
The most unabashedly videogame-ish movie in cinematic history, Hardcore Henry is a bold act of mimicry, a gimmicky stunt and a faithful adaptation of gamings form and content. Executed by first time writer-director Ilya Naishuller with a go-for-broke showmanship thats at once breathtaking and nauseating, this adrenalized action film revolves around a central conceit: namely, that its tale is told exclusively through its heros perspective, a la Xbox, PS4 and PC first-person shooters (FPS). That protagonist is a blank slate named Henry, who at storys outset awakensor, rather, is resurrectedby a beautiful doctor named Estelle (Haley Bennett) who claims to be his wife, and bestows him with a new, mecha left arm and leg. In other words, hes a man rebooted as an electronic superman.

That introductory sequence (prefaced by a dreamy flashback involving Tim Roth that isnt explained until much later) recalls the visor initiation sequence of Paul Verhoevens 1987 Robocop, a similar tale of a dead man being reborn as a memory-plagued machine. Naishuller embellishes his saga with other big-screen allusionsmost notably, the fleeting sight of a poster for the 1947 noir Lady in the Lake, which also assumed a first-person POV. However, his real source material are games like Halo, Call of Duty and, in particular, Bioshock. The last of those serves as inspiration for Naishullers plot, about a voiceless amnesiac hero on a quest throughout Russia to save his wife and kill his cruel maker, a flaxen-haired telekinetic psycho named Akan (Danila Kozlovsky). It also provides the template for Hardcore Henrys underlying themes about the search for (and formulation of) identity, as well as the inherently manipulative relationship between artists and audiences.

Forced to flee his birthing chamber before his vocal capabilities can be restored, Henry is established as the same type of blank-slate proxy as your average FPS protagonist. Hes only defined by his tattooed hands, his wire port-pockmarked torso and his feetappendages, which extend out from the screen and are thus front and center during the breakneck action. Hardcore Henry is a nonstop barrage of movement: punching, shooting, stabbing, falling, leaping, hanging, sliding and scrambling. Naishullers handheld camerawork is a flurry of shifting visual angles, accurately reflecting Henrys all-over-the-place viewpoint as he hurdles railings, navigates bridge beams, is propelled off van roofs by exploding grenades, and engages in all sorts of spastic melee and firearm combat. The films kineticism is exhausting, if not borderline punishing, and no doubt those prone to motion sickness will find its aesthetic assault intolerable after roughly 10 minutes.

Hardcore Henry is not for the faint of heart (or stomach), and that extends to its ultraviolence, which involves heads being severed by swords and shattered by gun blasts, and bodies being riddled with bullets, always in up-close-and-personal fashion. Like characters proclamations of their heterosexuality and the many nude strippers and prostitutes on display, this brutality is part and parcel of the filmsand FPS gamesprimal, juvenile ultra-macho essence. Naishuller understands that such fantasies are predicated on particular aggro-manly urges to maim, kill and screw; in that regard, his saga effectively channels its interactive ancestors with uninhibited glee.

In every respect, Hardcore Henry aims to be a filmic variation on an FPS. Its story is comprised of familiar types of levels (involving hand-to-hand battles, machine gun firefights, vehicular sequences and sniper rifle scenes) that often culminate with showdowns against imposing bosses, and Henry must repeatedly find ways to enhance his abilities (i.e., to power up) as well as to restore his waning health meter (via medical kits, or cyborgian augmentation). He employs a variety of increasingly outlandish weapons, and his adventure is often interrupted by brief video monitor messages from his wife that help propel the narrative forward. And then theres the figure of Jimmy (District 9s Sharlto Copley)or should I say figures, since Jimmy materializes repeatedly along Henrys mission in different, equally outlandish guises, only to quickly perish. Copley is the jovial comedic relief for this otherwise harsh, hostile film. However, his function is not just to lighten the mood, but also to serve as the plots chief forward-momentum mechanic, providing Henry with GPS objectives to accomplish, and motivating him to reach a secret laboratory.

Jimmys true nature is the first of two major surprises, both of which speak to the I-manipulate-you, you-manipulate-me rapport shared between viewer and movie, player and game. As in Bioshock, Hardcore Henry is ultimately concerned with using its formal conceit and construct-your-identity/kill-your-paternal-God storyline to emphasize, and investigate, the way we project ourselves into fictions to assert some measure of control over them, and over our own destinyand the way those fictions, in turn, affirm their own dominion over our experiences. The fact we have no say over Henrys actions hinders the films ability to truly get into these tricky dynamics, but they remain ever present, hovering around the edges of Henrys POV, and the mass-scale carnage he leaves in his wake.

Not that those weighty issues are addressed overtly throughout this lunatic extravaganza; in its most basic form, Naishullers film merely wants to thrill via orgiastic kill-em-all chaos. Nonetheless, lurking beneath its outrageous exterior, this exercise in videogame imitation doesnt just make you want to grab a controllersay, for the inevitable PS4 (or Oculus Rift virtual-reality!) adaptationbut, better still, it compels one to ponder whos playing who in such first-person bloodbaths.

Director: Ilya Naishuller

Writer: Ilya Naishuller

Starring: Haley Bennett, Danila Kozlovsky, Sharlto Copley

Release Date: April 8, 2016
In November 2014, Apple sold its 1 billionth iOS gadget, which includes iPhones, iPads and the iPod Touch. This past January, Apple said it has 1 billion devices that are currently in use by customers. And now is closing in on being able to claim that it has sold 1 billion iPhones alone sometime between July and November.

CNN Money reports that "Between June 29, 2007 -- when the iPhone first went on sale -- and the end of 2015, Apple has sold 896 million iPhones. If Wall Street analysts' forecasts are accurate, Apple will sell its billionth iPhone sometime this summer. During the current quarter, analysts polled by FactSet said they expect Apple to sell another 44 million, pushing the total to 990 million.

CNN further noted that "The iPhone has been on sale for nine years, but Apple has sold half of its iPhones just over the past two," which is absolutely amazing. "At its current pace, Apple should sell its 2 billionth iPhone by 2020.

This kind of explosive iPhone sales means an explosion of taxable income, especially in Europe where Apple is holding most of its funds. No wonder Europe's antitrust chief is determined to pursue Apple in their tax investigation.

The Financial Times (FT) is reporting today that the European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager will be in Washington this week. "It will probably be the last big diplomatic set piece before the European Commission makes its decision on Apple. A ruling that is expected sometime this spring.

One Last Meeting between Europe and Washington

The Financial Times further noted that "The chief peculiarity of the tax dossier is that Brussels is taking a novel  some would say revolutionary  approach to recouping underpaid tax. Essentially, the European Commission is defining preferential tax deals granted to multinationals as state aid offered by EU governments. If it can prove that Ireland offered Apple terms that other companies could not ordinarily expect, this would represent a form of illegal subsidy. Ireland would then have to claw back up to a decade of underpaid tax.

On January 21, Apple's CEO Tim Cook, made a personal appeal to Ms. Vestager in Brussels. His aim was to deflect her from issuing a ruling against the technology company's tax arrangements in Ireland, suspected of saving the company billions in international tax payments. If Apple is found to have benefited from a sweetheart deal, in contravention of EU competition rules, it could have to pay back billions of euros of underpaid tax to Dublin.







According to those briefed on the meeting, it was a heated, testy encounter. Mr. Cook took aim at the 'fairness' with which Ms. Vestager conducts her cases  a point of pride for her  and argued that Brussels was pursuing a legally baseless raid on Apple's $200bn international cash pile. Mr. Cook complained that the EU's probe into Apple undermined the very principles that Europe claimed to stand for.

The impassioned executive from Alabama seemed frustrated by the cool imperturbability of the Dane. She, in turn, resented his interruptions." For more on this, see the full Financial Times report here.

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HP's forthcoming laptop that is slated to be unveiled at an event tomorrow in Versailles, France, organized by the New York Times is out to be the thinnest notebook. More importantly, they want to steal the "cool" factor away from Apple. This is something that Microsoft tried to do last year when unveiling the Surface Book and Surface 4 products that are always compared to Apple products during their presentations.

HP's Dion Weiler, the chief executive of HP Inc., privately presented their new laptop in an interesting way, the way Russian dolls are nested from a large one containing several smaller bodies within. With the laptop, it began with a 2012 model that opened up to have another HP notebook that was smaller, then opened it up to reveal their latest design, their thinnest yet. The New York Times thought the presentation was a very impressive visual trick.

The new 13.3" HP Laptop will be less than 11 millimeters thick which beats the best effort by Apple. This is the Post-PC era and consumers are demanding light, thin and cool designs.

The New York Times report noted that HP recently showed off some new prototypes of hybrid devices and a laptop with a series of high-end microphones around the display to accommodate internet telephony.

Ron Coughlin, president of HP's personal systems group told the Wall Street Journal that "For years, Apple has been seen as the innovator and the driver of innovation. HP is really taking over that mantle."

In February we posted a report showing that HP was first in notebook sales with Apple in third place. But that's by volume and not necessarily reflecting the "taking over the innovation mantle." It will most definitely be interesting to see what true innovations that HP will be bringing to the table tomorrow.

While Apple never allows reporters to see any of their hardware prototypes, we know that there are some interesting ideas on the table. One is introducing stackable connectors, another covers a unique way of integrating inductive charging to the trackpad area or to the lid of a future MacBook and either Touch ID directly or via an iOS device.That of course if beyond pushing the design factor thinner with a superior display and so forth.



At the end of the day, it's looking like 2016 is shaping up to be an exceptional year for new thin Notebooks from HP, Apple, Lenovo, Dell, Microsoft and others. And they're all promising new innovations to attract consumers. For those that are bilingual with OS X and Windows, 2016 is going to be like being a kid again in a candy store if you happen to be in the market for a new notebook this year. HP's goodies arrive tomorrow. Let's see what they deliver. Will they take over the innovation mantle from Apple or just deliver more hype?



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A guest post by Doshin Nathan Woods

A Black Man is a person who must ride Jim Crow in Georgia W.E.B Du Bois

As I walked to the Zendo the helicopters droned distantly overhead. The muffled announcement reverberating through the neighborhood: White or Hispanic male.wearing a white t-shirt.. Indistinct, my attention turned to the matter at hand, where, upon stepping into the Zendo, I was about my business: Hi, excuse me, sorry to interrupt, but the Zendo is closed right now, would you mind sitting. The man looked up from arranging his cushion: I cant meditate? Yes, I replied, you can, but it would be best if you came back this evening to sit on the schedule, or if we went to another building Youre kicking me outwould you kick me out if I was a white woman? Thisyouyoure racist No, listen, thats not the issue. We have been locking the Zendo in the afternoons because Its because Im Black! Shocked that things escalated so rapidly, I replied, No, nolook Im Black too Your black? Yes, look, we can go sit in the auxiliary hall Well, you dont look Blackno one would ever know. Anger and heated argument gives way to discussion and a tenuous seed of spiritual friendship. Just another day in an urban American Buddhist temple.

Yet several months after this conversation took place this scene of cultural misrecognitionI continue to reflect on the interaction. Once again the topic of race is back in the national spotlight, although for many of us it never left. For Buddhists in the U.S. it has sparked anew a continued conversation, and with the rest of U.S. society many Buddhists have joined the national conversation, moving from advocating diversity to a demand for racial justice. Both concern a demand for inclusion: folding diversity into our communities, and encouraging the Buddhists in the U.S. to participate in a searching examination of racism.

My journey to the Buddhadharma has been intimately tied up with race in the United States. It was the pain of growing up what some would call multi-racialand hence ambiguously brownthat led me to my first meditation session, and it was the promise of release and fellowship that brought me back over and over again. Yet while the topic of racial diversity and inclusion is currently an urgent topic in Buddhist circles, I cant help but pause to ask, what are we including?

In another recent conversation, this time regarding the importance of myth in our contemporary spirituality, I took note of a curious and insightful remark: we live in a culture devoid of myth. I was immediately struck by this insighthow compelling, and yet how remarkably untrue. As Americans our greatest, most prevalent civic and secular myth is the myth of racethe notion that there are durable human races, that racial differences are biological, or somehow natural, and that these biological differences relate to individual and group propensities in important ways.

The notion of a myth may be defined equally as an important didactic story as well a widely held but false ideal or belief, covering both the mythical, or magical elements in our shared cultural life, as well as, in our secular way, dispelling the mythic through appeal to fact. Here the notion of race, and its appeal in the U.S. fits both definitions of the mythical: it is an instructive falsehood, untrue as a body of biological fact but definitively true for what it makes possible. The differences we acknowledge as indicative of racedifferences in body type, in hair texture, facial feature or skin colorhold social and historical meaning, but are devoid of biological reality. Rather, as Alan Goodman notes, race is not based on biology, but ratheron ideas we ascribe to biology. It is the great myth that frames our lessons about cultural recognition, belonging, and equality.

The lessons of this myth run deep. Although human attributes such as language, religion, and class were durable distinctions for ancient peoples, it was only in the 16th C. that these features were increasingly organized according to physical characteristics, or race. The immediate outcome of this re-organization was the creation of brutal systems of colonization, slavery and genocide, and remains with us today in durable systems of racism, racial inequality, class oppression, gendered hostilities, social privileges, and hard won racial identities. In the U.S. we are awash in the great myth of race, its subtle rituals, overt ceremonies, and cultural cognates, where we have constructed over time a grand racial mythology.

As many recent commentators have noted, communities of Western Buddhism remain unexceptional in this regard. Indeed, one could argue that the very notion of Western or American Buddhism is complicit in this mythology, as shaped by the search to distinguish itself from Asian Buddhism, and hence from the so called ethnic Buddhist traditions in the U.S., and the influence of Asian national Buddhist traditions more generally. Sadly, as many have pointed out, this effort is often predicated upon the exclusion of Immigrant and Asian American Buddhist communities, and discrimination against People of Color.

We find this myth in the grand stories we tell about Buddhism. As a cultural project I have always been suspicious of the notion of American Buddhism, or its more sophisticated cousin, Western Buddhism. Less a neutral term of historical geography, the concept of the West connotes, at best, a Western European cultural project within Europe, and at worst a geo-political project, intimately tied to the Euro-American Colonial projects. By contrast, the concept of American Buddhism, while often used to denote Buddhism in the United States, or North America, has taken on a type of searching, nationalist waiting for the Buddhism to come. When will American Buddhism arrive? How will it be recognized? How must we translate American Buddhism to American Audiences? Who is an American Buddhist?

Efforts to answer these questions often serve as implicit vehicles for American exceptionalism. In this search the promise of American Buddhismonce it finally arrivesrests not only in its difference from Asian cultural traditions, but also in its redemption of the Buddhist traditions problematic faults as expressed in Asian cultural settings. Witness Gary Snyders now classic articulation: The mercy of the West has been social revolution; the mercy of the Eastindividual insight into basic self/void. David Loy interprets Snyders sentiment to mean, the highest ideal of Western tradition has been to restructure our societies so that they are socially just. This contrast in effect erases social history, mischaracterizing the diversity of Asian cultures while obscuring the coercive dimensions of Euro-American egalitarianism. While it is true that the societies of the Westby which we mean Europe and the United Stateshave enshrined liberty and equality as political ideals, they largely did so on the basis of exploitation, stratification and colonialism. The contradictory political and spiritual edifice of the the West was in fact built upon the myth of race, at one and the same time supportive of our political ideals of equality, and deeply enmeshed in the construction of a system of racial stratification.

In many ways I feel these are the wrong questions. American Buddhism already exists in the efforts to articulate a shared mutuality amongst practitioners, traditions and cultures. In my view Buddhism is best seen less as ethno-national tradition than, as Robert Thurman suggests, a type of intercultural educational movement with a religious dimension.



In less dramatic ways we find the myth appropriately honored in a vast array of social rituals and ceremonies: in our rituals of schooling, consumption and labor, our rituals of recognition, and ceremonies of distinction. For Buddhists in the U.S., racial concepts remain intimately woven in to the intimate geography of Western Buddhism. A sample from my everyday life turns up several anecdotal examples. After my ordination I received a message from a friend in KyotoYou look more Japanese every day! Another day a friend complains,  I just cant get into American Zenall these white people dressed up playing Japaneseits all very Orientalist to me. And, by contrast, although from a similar perspective: I feel really uncomfortable with traditional Zenwith the formsI mean, Im not Japanese. Im Americanlets be Americanschant in English, get rid of the robes and the bowing etc.

On a different day, while giving meditation instruction to a distinguished older gentleman from Tijuana, he asked, Are you Chinese? I like Chinese meditation the best. I include ethnicity as a ritual cognate of race where, although now used to denote group membership or identity, it did not take on this meaning until the 1950s, but concerned rather the physical characteristics of national origin or cultural ancestry. In the early debates over immigrants from China, and later Eastern and Southern Europe, ethnic referred to nonwhite, colonized or indigenous peoples, as well as working class whites, and Jews. After WWII, and the effort to repudiate scientific racism in the aftermath of the Holocaust, the notion of ethnicity was reformed to replace race.

From this perspective the great question of the momentof how race mattersis both an urgent question, and a distraction. Urgent because it stabs at the heart of spiritual friendship (kalyana-mittata), the very basis of this movement, and a distraction from the questions of power and inequality that the notion of race mystifies, despite our best, most critical intentions. Current sentiments track closely with the limits of race in our national conversation: an appeal to race neutralityor color blindnessand urgent demand to pay attention to how race mattersdifferentially and disproportionately impacting some populations at the expense of othersand thus the proliferation of strategies of racial awareness.

But what are we talking about when we talk about race or racism? For many, the two are now linked in a formula that combines cultural and ethnic difference with power. We see this in the current conceptual formulations of antiracism, and the pitched preoccupation with Whiteness or White privilege, where racism refers to a form of oppression in which one racial group dominates another. Whiteness at once consecrates the notion of race and obscures the contradictory historical exercise of racism responsible for the consolidation of durable racial groupsthe intersecting legacy of the American slave state, and the expansion of the settler-colonial state administered in racial terms. The legacy of each was subsequently combined in the importation of ethnic workers in the late 19th and early 20th century, and their subsequent racialization.

Here I adopt Fields and Fields suggestion that we see racism not as an effect of racea move that in effect naturalizes the non-existentbut rather to view race itself as a product of the application of racism. Racism, on this account, is usefully defined as the theory and practice of applying a social, civic, or legal double standard based on ancestry. In this sense racism is primarily a practice, both an action and a rational for action, transforming racismsomething that is doneto race, something that a person is by dint of an imposed criteria. Nothing exemplifies this race craft more potently than the deceptive history of slavery in the U.S., where we encounter at once a history of forced labor, and thus class, cultural extermination, and domination. As an example we might consider a popular suggestion that Africans in the United States were enslaveddominatedbecause of their race, rather than for the labor that they were forced to provide, as though the chief business of slavery were the production of white supremacy rather than the production of cotton, sugar, and tobacco (117). The issue is not race per se, but racism, the exercise of which is made possible by capitalizing on and extending existent conditions of inequality.

Racism is the rejection of our natural given equality through the obliteration of human distinctiveness. From this angle the act of inclusion means nothing if it does not include the shadows of race. Not race, but rather domination, imprisonment, historical trauma and its intergenerational legacy, stigmatization, revilement, and the struggle against spiritual starvation. Not simply what we now call our racial identitieshard won, to be surebut the political act of identification through the ritualized myth of race. While racial inclusion remains an important topic, the pressing question for Buddhist communities in this context is how to participate in the transformation of this myth of race, and the conditions of inequality that continue to make it relevant. Inclusion of racial difference in our communities does not mean opening to race as we would like it to be, but to the pervasiveness of racism as a widespread practice of inequality, giving rise to othering, domination, exclusion, and dehumanization.

Since the 1970sin Buddhist communities, and in society more generallywe have engaged innumerable strategies and tactics of racial awareness: race sensitivity training, consciousness raising, diversity training, anti-racism training, anti-oppression training, and even support in recovery from the dominant culture. Here we have placed much emphasis on the power of cognitive-emotional changethat we might change our minds to unlearn racism, and now, in this timewhen Black Lives Matterit is imperative to support these endeavors. And yet I continue to ask under what conditions do we practice equality through being in relationshipof being equal to one anothernot as a given, but as a mutual and embodied accomplishment?

Last summer I joined the Zen Peacemakers Native American Bearing Witness Retreat, where with some 200 others I traveled to South Dakota to bear witness to the genocide and ongoing historical struggle of Native peoples linked to the founding of the U.S. During the retreat we had the great privilege to receive teachings from Grandmother Beatrice Long Visitor Holy Dance, a member of the Oglala Lakota, and International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers. I was greatly moved by her prayers and her emphasis on the important need for spaces of reciprocity, where people come together to deeply listen and share in their cultural distinctiveness, as well as in their historical sorrows and traumas. Her teaching helped frame what was for me a major theme of the retreat: cultivating reciprocity in the face of cultural domination and giving up dominion to share in mutuality.

Carrying this home to my community, and in my own practice, I find myself asking: How do we harmonize distinctiveness and equality in our communities, where harmony is defined as mutual recognition? We hear echoes of this in the Ambattha Sutta, where during a particularly contentious moment of co-inquiry, the Buddha suggests:

In the supreme perfection of wisdom and righteousnessthere is no reference to either the question of birth, or of lineage, or of the pride which says you are held as worthy as I, or you are not held as worthy as I, for who so everis enslaved, or in bondage to the notion of birth, or lineage, or the pride of social position, or of family connections, they are far from the best wisdom and righteousness. It is only having got rid of all such bondage that one can realize for oneself the unexcelled perfection of wisdom and conduct

It is not race that is at issue here with its logic of sameness and difference but rather distinctiveness seen through the lens of equality. Human distinctiveness and ancestry are not natural equivalents to the notions of racial difference. Rather race provides a justification for their distortion, as produced through the practice of inequality, a feature of which is domination, exclusion, otherness.

Can we extend our spiritual friendship beyond the meditation hall and beyond the protest to enter into long-term relationships of accompanimenta spirituality of solidarity partnershipswith others around common issues of inequality and justice? For those that believe themselves to be white, can we pursue relationships of accountability with POC groups? As for example, as is now practiced in the Native led Rapid City Community Conversations initiative in South Dakota, or the Society of Friends support of the Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission. For people that identify as POCcan we enter into intergroup relationships of support across cultures or for those in our communities of different class standing? Such as the Tamejavi projectPanValley Institute, or Causa Justa, Just Cause, or the UCCRO. In mixed communities can we institutionalize engagement with tangible issues of inequality, such as in the Mennonite Central Committees Indigenous Visioning Circles work on dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery. Finallywith full embrace of our diverse identitiescan we support broad projects, such as Interfaith Worker Justice, or the Center for the Working Poor, or the Right to the City, that seek Justice for the poor and the Working Class. Where are our new ceremonies of mutuality? Rituals beyond the color line, or the ethnic division in American Buddhism that celebrates being in relationship. Where, as Ven. Dr. Pannavati Bhikkuni states: there is not one that sees you, but when one sees you, he sees himself, and when you see one, then you also see yourself through that one. How can we celebrate and honor the dignity of the common regenerative future at hand?

~

Doshin Nathan Woods (Ph.D., Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center, NYC, 2015) is a writer, scholar and novice Zen Buddhist Priest under the spiritual direction of Seisen Anne Saunders, Roshi. He specializes in the Historical Anthropology of North America, and his research agenda focuses on the organization of knowledge, expertise and education, with a particular focus on institution building and institutionalization in the fields of higher education, science, the environment and religion. His current research program concerns the history of Buddhist-based institution building in North America. He lives in community at the Sweetwater Zen Center in National City, CA, in the Tijuana-San Diego Border Region.
Theyre everywhere, right now: legislation that either gives individuals the absolute right to use the sex-specific public bathroom of ones choice (Washington, actually a state Human Rights Commission ruling), or that requires individuals to use bathroom, in public facilities, that corresponds to their genetic sex (House Bill 2 in North Carolina).

Two things ought to be obvious:

First, that whether you agree with their choices or not, individuals who have taken steps to alter their appearance have, to some degree or another, become, lets say, artificially intersex, and the right bathroom to use becomes dependent on individual circumstances, so that it can cause harm to such individuals to enact genetic sex requirements, where following such rules can expose them to harassment from other users who think that just the opposite is happening.

Second, open bathroom access bills can put women and girls at risk from molesters, pedophiles, and voyeurs who claim a spot in the womens bathroom or locker room, and, even with respect to true transgender people, will oblige women and girls to be exposed to male genitalia, in what was, after all, the original safe space.

Supporters of open access bills seem, so far as I can tell, to treat the impact of such legislation on cis women and girls as a sort of collateral damage. In part, they reject traditional morality that says that people shouldnt view the genitalia of individuals of the opposite sex as an irrelevant and outdated consideration. When issues of harm are raised, because of the ability of men to abuse the law to access womens restrooms/locker rooms, or the impact of physical-men in the locker room on women or girls who are especially emotionally harmed due to a prior molestation experience, these seem, as far as I can tell, to be shrugged off as needing to give way to the greater goal of Trans Rights.

Supporters of closed access bills, at the same time, seem to reject the possibility that their legislation/policies can do harm to real people. Taking as a starting point the idea that these people never should have started down the path in the first place, they seem unwilling to consider the reality that they have taken this path, and do need some reasonable accommodation. In the case of the student in Palatine a couple months back, what was occasionally buried in the thicket of the reporting was that the student had been undergoing hormone therapy  no details were ever provided, so it was never clear whether this was a matter of puberty-blockers, or active estrogen treatments, but, regardless of whether the student had breasts or or just a prepubescent boys body, the student wouldnt have fit in among high school boys, either.

I say seem for a reason: in the various articles that Ive read over the past several months, I have not really seen either side address the concerns of the other side, even if just to discard them, let alone consider the fact that there is need for a compromise, that the other side has valid concerns. And that speaks to the problem, not just with the subject at hand, but our political discourse in general.

UPDATE:

Everyones talking about safe spaces at universities. Well, womens restrooms are the ultimate safe space. (Do men care as much about whether women walk in while theyre peeing in a urinal, or whether a man at the pool with a girl past preschool age takes her into the mens locker room rather than letting her change in the womens locker room? I dont know.) And the fight is about who gets to use that safe space  and whether opening up access takes away the safety of it. A comment I came across during my lunch break noted another issue: a Muslim veil-wearing woman wouldnt use the restroom to adjust her veil or headcovering if the washrooms were decreed to be gender neutral.

Further update:

The comments are starting to prove my point. Pro-transgender-ers: do you see any difference between a transgender person presenting as female using a womans restroom in a public building, and such a person (pre-op) using a changing room where everyone undresses in the open? Do you see any validity to the concern that laws offering protection can be written broadly enough that a man can enter a womens changing room? (After all, how do you prove that he is or isnt watching the women there, without policing whether everyone is going about their business with sufficiently downcast eyes?)

Anti-transgenders-in-the-locker-room: do you recognize the difficulty with telling a transgender person who visibly looks female on the outside, even if genetically male, or with male body parts, or the reverse, that they must use a changing room which will visually appear to be the wrong one?
Patna: Ban liquors all you want but don't mess with my 'Toddy'! That was the gist of Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad Yadav's press conference on Sunday when he said that he would talk to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to reconsider his policy in view of its effects on the 'Pasi' caste that usually engages in the toddy industry.

"There are many Pasis in Bihar and a ban on toddy would severely affect them economically. I have advised the Chief Minister to reconsider his decisions as the Pasis overwhelmingly supported the Mahagathbandhan in the last state elections," the RJD chief said adding Kumar had agreed to seek experts' helps in this matter.

Insisting he supported 'total prohibition' in Bihar, Yadav, however, was quick to meander into the vote bank politics saying toddy was the 'bread and butter' of the Pasis and it would not be fair to alienate a large section of the voters who gave 4-5 legislators to the Grand Alliance in the last Assembly polls.

The Sunday press conference also doubled its purpose as on-the-job-training for his son and Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Yadav in how to hold a press conference.

Engaging in colorful rhetoric that he is known for, the RJD chief said that his party would 'blast the design of the BJP from India'.

"The RJD will blast the design of the BJP from India. The RSS wants to remove the tricolor (national flag) with its own saffron flag but every child in the country would give his life to save our national flag from being corrupted by the saffron party that is trying very hard to distract people from its failed policies," Yadav said.

The former Chief Minister of Bihar also blamed the NDA for famine in India and the drying of the Ganges.

"The country is faced with unprecedented drought and the Ganges has dried because of the sins of the BJP. Those who are complaining about others for not chanting 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' are the enemies of both Hindus and Muslims. In fact, there is no difference between Owaisi and the RSS as both are communal and are fomenting trouble for India," Yadav said.
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"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.
Fresh Casualties Reported In Renewed Nagorno-Karabakh Fighting

04/04/16

Source: RFE/RL

Baku has announced additional fatalities among its servicemen as fighting with separatist forces over Azerbaijan's breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh continued for a third day.





The disclosure of three deaths brings to 15 the number of Azerbaijani soldiers reported killed amid renewed fighting in the South Caucasus mountain enclave, while 18 combat deaths have been reported by the Armenian-backed separatists. The destruction of heavy military equipment has been claimed by both sides.

Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in a conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh for years. Nagorno-Karabakh, populated mainly by ethnic Armenians, declared independence from Azerbaijan amid a 1988-94 war that claimed an estimated 30,000 lives and displaced hundreds of thousands of people. Diplomatic efforts to settle the conflict have brought little progress, and there have been sporadic flare-ups of fighting.

A day after the worst outbreak of violence in nearly two decades broke out early on April 2, Azerbaijan announced a unilateral cease-fire. Karabakh military officials said the territory was ready to discuss the terms of a truce, but only in the context of "restoring former positions." The West, Russia, and Iran have appealed to all sides to exhibit restraint.

On April 4, however, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said that separatist forces in Karabakh were shelling Azerbaijan's positions and front-line villages using mortars and grenade launchers.

"In the event of continued Armenian provocations, we will launch a full-scale operation along the entire front line, using all kinds of weapons," ministry spokesman Vagif Dargahly told journalists.

Separatist forces said on April 4 that Azerbaijani troops had "intensified shelling of their positions, using mortars, rocket-propelled artillery, and tanks.

Armenian Defense Ministry spokesman Artsrun Hovhannisyan said the separatists "seriously advanced at certain sectors of the front line and took up new positions."

Azerbaijan dismissed the report. Its Defense Ministry said it was in control of several strategic heights in Karabakh that were captured by Azerbaijani troops backed by tanks and heavy artillery on April 2.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in a televised meeting of top advisers on April 2 that troops had achieved a "great victory," while vowing to "observe the cease-fire and after that we will try to solve the conflict peacefully.

Separatist forces had reportedly launched a counteroffensive in the region's northeast and along the southernmost section of the "line of contact," which effectively serves as a front line separating the opposing sides.





WATCH: Children Hospitalized After Nagorno-Karabakh Clashes





On April 3, RFE/RL correspondents in Nagorno-Karabakh said that ethnic Armenian forces had been reinforcing their frontline positions by calling up hundreds of reservists and deploying heavy artillery.

Hundreds of other Armenians, most of them veterans of the 1988-94 conflict, reportedly were heading to the front lines from Armenia, which is connected to Karabakh by a narrow strip of territory that crosses high mountain passes and deep river valleys.

A legacy of the Soviet breakup known as a "frozen conflict," the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute has bedeviled regional and international leaders for years, with the United States, Russia, and France taking the lead in trying to reach a permanent settlement, and tamp down tensions.

Diplomats from the three states, grouped together in what's called the Minsk Group, said they would convene a full-meeting on April 5 in Vienna to discuss the breakdown of the 21-year-old cease-fire.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Armenian and Azerbaijani services, AFP, TASS, and Interfax

Copyright (c) 2016 RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org
Iranian commandos deployed to Syria

04/04/16

Source: Press TV

An Iranian military official says commandos from an Iranian army unit have been deployed to Syria on an advisory mission. Amir-Ali Arasteh, the deputy for coordination in the Iranian Army's Ground Forces, told Tasnim news agency on Monday that the Iranian commandos, from Brigade 65 of the Forces, had took on a mission of advising Syrian forces.





Amir-Ali Arasteh, the deputy for coordination in the Iranian Army's Ground Forces

Amir-Ali Arasteh, the deputy for coordination in the Iranian Army's Ground Forces

Iran maintains military advisers in Syria, where the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is fighting an array of foreign-backed militant forces, including, but not limited to, those of the Daesh terrorist group. Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, the so-called al-Nusra Front, is another one of the groups engaged in brutal activities against the Syrian people and government.

The Iranian advisory presence comes as part of defense agreements reached between the governments of Iran and Syria. Iran does not have boots on the ground in the Arab country.











Funeral in Qom for six Iranians killed in Syria - March 2016



Russia, another Syrian ally, has been conducting an aerial campaign against terrorist groups in Syria since September 2015. The bombing campaign had been requested by the Syrian government.

With allied help, the Syrian government has been able to take back militant-held areas, including recently the ancient city of Palmyra, which had been run over by Daesh back in May 2015.

Militancy began in Syria in March 2011, and has, according to the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, killed at least 270,000 people. Some reports, however, put the death toll at as high as 470,000.

The United Nations (UN) has appointed several special envoys for Syria over the course of the conflict in the country. Italian-Swedish diplomat Staffan de Mistura is the latest person to serve in the post.











Funeral in Mashhad for three Iranians killed in Syria - February 2016





Amid the increasing victories of the Syrian army in degrading militants, Russia announced in mid-March that it would be pulling out its forces from Syria, and thus provide a stimulus for the peace talks that have been held under the aegis of the UN for the Arab country.

Speaking back then, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, however, that Russia's two forward military bases in Syria, the airbase in Hmeimim in the coastal province of Latakia and the naval facility in the port of Tartus, will remain operational.

The United States has been leading an international bombing campaign in Syria - without an authorization from Damascus - since September 2014. That campaign, declared to be against Daesh, has fallen short of dislodging the terrorist group, however.
Young Woman's Quest for Higher Education Exposes Iran's Discrimination Against Baha'is

04/04/16

Source: International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran

Rouhie Safajoo, a student banned from Iranian universities because of her Bahai faith and arrested for her online activism, was released on March 27, 2016 on 500 million rials (about $16,500 USD) bail, nearly three weeks after her arrest.



Rouhie Safajoo



We are very happy Rouhie is free, her sister, Maryam Safajoo, told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. But the real story is that for the past 37 years [since Irans 1979 revolution], Bahai students have been denied the right to attend university.

And it keeps getting worse. Even when [Bahai] seek justice by peaceful means, they get threats and it ends up in their arrest, she said. Rouhie is one of thousands of young Bahais who have been banned from getting an education in this country.

Arrested for Speaking Out

Rouhie Safajoo, who lives in Karaj (12 miles west of Tehran), was arrested on the morning of March 8, 2016 for allegedly acting against national security on cyberspace.

In 2014 and 2015 she had taken Irans grueling annual university entrance exam, along with millions of other students, but both times her results were withheld because of her faith, making it impossible for her to access higher education. Since receiving her first rejection she has been actively writing about the daily persecution she and other Bahais are forced to endure on her Facebook page.

The Bahai community is one of the most severely persecuted religious minorities in Iran. The faith is not recognized in the Islamic Republics Constitution and its members face harsh discrimination in all walks of life as well as prosecution for the public display of their faith.

The last public Facebook post she wrote, on March 5, 2016, was a widely circulated poem dedicated to the five-year-old son of a Bahai woman imprisoned for teaching at a banned online Bahai university that Rouhie Safajoo had also attended:

...This university has a construction, every brick of which is made with your and others childhood moments...

This university was erected on lives and hearts...

My little boy, forgive me for taking your childhood, so I would not remain deprived of education...

Rouhie Safajoo was arrested three days after publishing her poem. Her sister described the circumstances of the arrest in an interview with the Campaign.

Two female agents and six male agents came to our house. Only one of the agents was visible on the video intercom and he told my mother that he was from the gas company. My mother buzzed him in and suddenly the other agents followed, said Maryam Safajoo.

The women searched Rouhies room and the others searched the other rooms. They took my parents and Rouhies mobile phones, laptops, books and even framed photos. They took close to 120 books as one agent filmed everything. They didnt allow my mother to call my father to come home and they didnt allow her to pick up the phone when it rang, she added.

One of the agents told my mother to open the garage door so that they could load the confiscated material more discretely and preserve my sisters reputation, said Maryam Safajoo. My mother answered back that our reputation would be just fine.

Denied Crucial Test Results

Bahai students have long been denied higher education in the Islamic Republic. Previously, they were prevented from obtaining their exam results, which are required to attend any institution of higher learning in Iran, by an online message citing incomplete cases. But in a August 2014 Facebook post Rouhie Safajoo described a new form of rejection due to her faith.

After logging in to view her exam results, an online message told her to write a letter or go to the National Education Evaluation Organizations Queries Office in Karaj for her results. She soon discovered that her non-Bahai friends were able to retrieve their results online, but that all Bahais were being told to contact an evaluation organization, and that they would only be rejected upon contacting the address in the online message.

If they had told me I had an incomplete case, I wouldnt have been upset because I was prepared for it. But it bothers me that they found a new way to reject us, she wrote.

Complaints Illegally Ignored

Maryam Safajoo told the Campaign that when Rouhie Safajoo took the national university entrance exam in 2014, she was summoned to the evaluation organization in Karaj where she was told Bahais are prohibited from taking the exam instead of receiving her grades.

Rouhie told them that the ban was against the Constitution and every person has the right to education regardless of ethnicity or religion, added Maryam Safajoo.

I ask you and other officials to treat me just as you would other human beings and Iranians, in accordance with human rights and the Iranian Constitution, wrote Rouhie Safajoo, in a Facebook post addressed to Mohammad Javad Larijani, the head of the Iranian Judiciarys Human Rights Council, on August 7, 2014 after receiving no response to the letter she had sent him on April 10.

...[I]f my letter hasnt reached you and you havent heard my voice, then you definitely havent heard the voices of any Bahais-because you told international forums that Bahais are not mistreated, she wrote. This time, I will try to make sure you get my letter and that your ears hear my voice, although I know it will be difficult to raise my voice that high.

Rouhie Safajoo also sent formal complaints to the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, the Administrative Justice Court, the Office of President Hassan Rouhani, and the Parliaments Article 90 Commission, which is supposed to investigate public complaints against the three branches of state based on Irans Constitution.

According to Article 90: Whoever has a complaint concerning the work of the Assembly or the executive power, or the judicial power can forward his complaint in writing to the Assembly. The Assembly must investigate his complaint and give a satisfactory reply. In cases where the complaint relates to the executive or the judiciary, the Assembly must demand proper investigation into the matter and an adequate explanation from them, and announce the results within a reasonable time. In cases where the subject of the complaint is of public interest, the reply must be made public.

Rouhie did not get a reply from any of the authorities, Maryam Safajoo told the Campaign.

In his annual reports, Ahmad Shaheed, the U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in Iran, has repeatedly detailed the widespread abuse and discrimination against Bahais in Iran, and called on the Iranian government to end its religious intolerance.

Since childhood I have learned that its good and valuable to tolerate every kind of disaster in the path of truth. I still believe so, wrote Rouhie Safajoo on Facebook in 2014. But why does it have to be that way, I ask? Didnt Mr. Rouhani promise that all those who were turned away from university should be let in? So what happened?

Dear Mr. Rouhani, I dont want you to let my expelled brother, father, mother, uncles, aunts and cousins back into universities, she wrote. From this big family, I only want you to let me into university. That would be enough to make us trust you and believe you keep your promises.

The Iranian Judiciary has also not responded to a formal letter of complaint describing harrowing instances of torture suffered by Bahais while they were in prison custody, the Campaign recently revealed.
Obama Administration Considers Further Step to Fulfill US Commitments Under Accord

04/04/16 Press Release by National Iranian American Council (NIAC)

Reports indicate that the Obama administration is considering the issuance of a general license to permit Iran limited and indirect access to certain dollar-clearing services. Under this proposed license, non-U.S., non-Iranian banks would be permitted to set up an offshore facility in order to facilitate currency exchanges in support of Iran-related business so long as such exchanges do not start or end with the U.S. dollar. No Iranian banks would be allowed direct access to such an offshore facility.

Critics of the nuclear accord have pounced on the Administration, calling this an undue concession to Iran. This is wrong. Provided that this license is implemented, the United States would not be providing Iran an additional concession, but would rather be fulfilling the terms of its obligations under the nuclear accord. Pursuant to  24 of the JCPOAs Main Text, the United States is committed to take certain additional steps to ensure that Iran receives practical benefit for the sanctions-lifting outlined in Annex II. In authorizing a license to permit Iran indirect and limited access to certain dollar-clearing services, the United States would be acting consistent with its JCPOA obligations - not above and beyond them.

Why is the Obama Administration Considering This Step?

Despite the dire warning of critics that U.S. sanctions would collapse in the face of the lifting of nuclear-related sanctions, surviving U.S. sanctions have been so strong as to deny Iran any practical benefit from the sanctions-lifting. No major European bank has re-engaged with their Iranian counterparts or facilitated Iran-related business, and Memorandum of Understandings (MOUs) have become the flavor of the day for foreign parties interested in entering Iran in lieu of actual enforceable contracts. Some analysts understood that this would be the case post-deal, while others engaged in hyperbolic false warnings. The danger is, though, that absent any practical benefit for its nuclear bargain, Iran will perceive the United States as a bad-faith actor and its own commitment to the nuclear accord will be undermined as a result. The end-result could be a return to an unconstrained Iranian nuclear program.

What are the Risks of Inaction?

In light of the limited impact of the sanctions relief, the Iranian people have recently expressed their own skepticism that the United States would live up to its obligations under the nuclear accord. According to a recent poll carried out at the University of Marylands Center for International and Security Studies (CISSM), two-thirds of Iranians indicated that they were either not very or not at all confident in the U.S.s willingness to comply with the JCPOA. By failing to take action to resolve the serious issues that are facing Iran and that are the result of our sanctions, we would be sending the wrong message to the wrong people: the Iranian people. Yearning for economic reprieve, the Iranian peoples skepticism that the U.S. will adhere to its commitments risks not just the nuclear accord but also the possibility for a better relationship between the U.S. and Iran in the future.

It is our belief that the United States should take such action out of its own interest - not Irans. Faced with growing skepticism from the Iranian people and seeing that Iran is being denied practical benefit to the nuclear bargain it struck with world powers, the United States needs to take additional steps to secure the nuclear accord and ensure that Irans nuclear program remains constrained and under the close inspection of the international community. Failure to take action will not just risk Irans incentive to continue to comply with the nuclear accord - viewing the U.S.s inaction as itself non-compliant with the agreement - but will also undermine those people inside Iran that seek Irans political and economic re-integration with the world, including with the United States.

Has the U.S. permitted such transactions in the recent past?

Yes. The United States had in place a U-turn license providing Iran indirect access to dollar-clearing services up until November 2008 - all during the tenure of the Bush administration. This previous U-turn license allowed Iran to make and receive payment in U.S. dollars (something that the proposed license does not seem to do). It was revoked in order to put pressure on Iran to concede on elements of its nuclear program and was unlikely to have been put in place absent the U.S.s growing concern over Irans nuclear ambitions.

Based on todays reports, the Obama administration is considering a much more limited license authorization than existed under the U-turn license. Critics who claim that implementing such a license will lead to the end of the U.S. sanctions are giving us the same kind of hyperbole in which they regularly traffic. Just as the U.S. enforced sanctions on Iran prior to November 2008 - including a comprehensive trade and investment embargo with Iran - so too can the U.S. maintain its sanctions on Iran should it authorize a new license. There should be zero question about this.
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A five-week operation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations agents resulted in more than 1,000 arrests, including about two dozen in the Inland Empire, as authorities targeted people suspected of being gang members involved in worldwide criminal activity.

In all, 1,133 people were arrested, with more than 900 being accused of federal violations of smuggling drugs, weapons and humans for sex trafficking, and participating in murder and racketeering, according to ICE.

The 180 people arrested in the Los Angeles area, including those in the Inland Empire, were arrested on state charges such as probation violations and not the federal violations, ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said Monday, April 4.

Nevertheless, those Southern California arrests could prove valuable, Kice said, because they disrupt criminal activity and provide investigators with intelligence that could be useful in solving future cases.

ICE Director Sarah R. Saldana said in a news release that the goal was to decrease violence by gangs and stop the flow of cash to organized crime groups overseas.

Project Shadowfire concluded March 21 with arrests across the country that were concentrated near Los Angeles; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Atlanta; San Francisco; Houston; and El Paso, Texas.

Most of those arrested were U.S. citizens, but 239 foreign nationals from 13 countries in Central America, Asia, Europe and the Caribbean were also arrested. Of the arrests, 915 were gang members and associates, 1,001 were charged with criminal offenses and 132 were arrested administratively for immigration violations, ICE said.

Agents also seized 150 firearms, more than 20 kilograms of narcotics and more than $70,000 in cash.
The certified list of candidates who will be on the ballot in Californias June 7 primary is out, and theres a new wrinkle in the already unusual race for San Bernardino Countys 47th Assembly District.

A Republican, Aissa Chanel Sanchez, has joined incumbent Democrat Cheryl Brown and Democrat Eloise Reyes on the primary ballot. The top two vote-getters in June will compete in November for the right to represent the 47th, which includes Colton, Fontana, Grand Terrace, Rialto, part of the city of San Bernardino, Muscoy and Bloomington.

Sanchez, whose is described as a small businesswoman on the ballot, did not respond to requests for comment.

The race already had attracted Sacramentos attention because it features a moderate Democrat, Brown, being challenged by a liberal Democrat in Reyes. Both candidates have raised six figures for their campaigns, and Sacramento Democrats are having to choose sides in whats been billed as a showdown between establishment Democrats and progressives who see moderates like Brown as beholden to business interests.

The Republican presidential race might boost turnout among GOP voters, who could vote for Sanchez along with Ted Cruz, John Kasich or Donald Trump. In that case, Sanchez might finish in the top two, leaving Brown and Reyes to fight for the other November ballot spot.

Assuming that scenario unfolds, the Democrat would likely be favored against Sanchez in the general election. Almost half of the district voters are registered Democrats.

It all adds urgency to a unique and competitive race.
A cheer went up at the Service Employees International Union Local 721 office in Riverside on Monday morning after Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill that will gradually enact a $15-an-hour minimum wage in California..

The cheers were followed by shouts of Si Se Puede!, a popular labor slogan. Unions were instrumental in making the $15-an-hour wage a reality.

About 20 people gathered at the Service Employees International Union Local 721 office in Riverside to watch Gov. Jerry Brown sign the bill.

Among them was Rep. Mark Takano, D-Riverside, who hopes the state legislation will give momentum in Congress for a nation $15 minimum wage.

As American workers productivity has gone up, their wages have been stagnant. California provides momentum for a national $15 minimum wage, he said.

On both sides of the aisle, youre seeing Republicans as well as Democrats talk about income inequality, Takano said. It is clearly a sentiment in the electorate and among the American people that somethings got to be done.

With the signing, California has enacted the nations highest statewide minimum wage of $15 an hour to take effect by 2022.

Browns signing of the bill Monday in Los Angeles, and a similar New York effort, mark the most ambitious moves yet to close the national divide between rich and poor.

Democratic lawmakers in California approved the measure last week with no Republican support.

Republicans and business groups warn that the move could cost thousands of jobs, while a legislative analysis puts the ultimate cost to taxpayers at $3.6 billion a year in higher pay for government employees.

Brown, a Democrat, negotiated the deal to head off competing labor-backed ballot initiatives. He said that the most populous states fast-growing economy can absorb the raises.

Esmie Grubbs, SEIUs Inland area regional director, said more than 2,500 union members make less than $15 an hour.

In the Inland region, in Riverside County, we have supervisors  supervisors  who make less than $15 an hour that have been with the county for 23 years, she said.

And we have an additional group of people that make anywhere between $15 and $20 and so we know that when standards are high, were going to help everyone else raise (wages).

The union conducted outreach on the need for a higher minimum wage and sent busloads of members to Los Angeles to participate in marches for the $15 wage, Grubbs said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report
Update: Police have no new leads on Saturdays shooting.

A male juvenile sustained minor injuries Saturday evening, April 2 in a drive-by shooting in Banning, according to a police news release.

The news release said the victim was struck by gunfire, but did not state the victims age or the extent of his injuries. It also did not state whether the victim was hospitalized.

Banning Police responded to the 600 block of West Williams Street in Banning at about 5:40 p.m. after receiving several reports of shots being fired in the area.

Witnesses told police that a small silver vehicle with two men inside stopped at the intersection of West Williams Street and 6th Street. Several shots were fired from inside the vehicle, which then sped away north on 6th Street, the news release said.

In addition to the young juvenile, a nearby car was also struck by gunfire. The three people inside were not injured, police said.

Police searched for the suspects but were unable to find them or their vehicle.

One suspect was described as a man wearing a black ski mask, the other as a man with a white tee-shirt covering his face.

Banning Police Chief Alex Diaz wrote in an email at about 1 p.m. Monday that police had no new information to provide.

Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to call the Banning Police Department at 951-922-3170.
When Shahriyar Mustafiz started a Muslim Student Association at his high school in Moreno Valley, another student jokingly asked if they would be teaching people how to make a bomb.

A year earlier, as a Valley View High School sophomore, some students pushed and shoved him in the locker room because of his religion around the time Osama Bin Laden was killed.

They thought it was hilarious, recalled the 20-year-old Mustafiz, who now attends Moreno Valley College.

He started the club  after visiting a similar one as part of a college day at UCLA  as a place where Muslim students didnt have to be afraid and as a way to educate fellow students about their faith. Today, his younger sister Naomi Mustafiz, an 18-year-old senior, is president of the club. She and other members say they feel welcome on campus, where theyve held activities to counter negative stereotypes about Islam.

Its a mission she feels strongly about given the increasingly hostile climate for Muslims since the Dec. 2 mass shooting in San Bernardino by a radicalized couple who were reportedly inspired by the Islamic State terrorist group.

Political rhetoric has also intensified, with Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump calling for banning Muslims from entering the country. Last week, Sen. Ted Cruz, his main rival for the GOP nomination, suggested that Muslim neighborhoods should be under surveillance. The situation is also playing out on California campuses, where a fall survey found more than half of Muslim students have been bullied. Still, some are trying to stop the stereotypes and ridicule with information about their faith.

CAMPUS CLIMATE CHANGING

Iman Bhaghani, a 17-year-old junior at Coronas Santiago High School, can relate to the Moreno Valley students.

She co-wrote an article for the student newspaper headlined Not All Muslims Are ISIS in December to challenge negative stereotypes after the attack.

We are disgusted, horrified and shocked just like the rest of the world, and we take offense when we hear Trumps and others anti-Muslim statements, the article stated.

Bhaghani said she hears more negative remarks on campus due to the presidential race and the debate over terrorism.

Whatever they hear Trump saying about Muslims they put that idea or mentality on every Muslim, she said.

I dont mind explaining my religion Im very proud to have, she added. I just wish there was more openness about it and less negativity about it.

Sarah Amro, an 18-year-old Riverside City College student, was shocked to see a friend and former Santiago classmate post pictures of the Quran on Facebook, claiming that the religious book of Muslims promotes violence.

When she confronted her friend, She was like, Youre not like that, but most of you are like that, Amro said.

Amro, who also takes classes at Fullerton College, said she hasnt had any problems on campus. But, in December, while at a Wal-Mart parking lot in Fullerton, she found herself confronted by a man who parked his car behind her and started yelling at her. He called her a terrorist and told her to get out of the country, Amro said.

INTOLERANCE  ON THE RISE

Even before the attack, a report by the California chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations released in October concluded that at least 55 percent of Muslim students have faced bullying.

That report, which surveyed 600 students between the ages of 12 and 18 across the state  including some in the Inland area  found that 52 percent experienced verbal abuse and 9 percent experienced physical violence. Twenty percent reported offensive comments from a teacher, administrator or other school official.

Among female students who wore a hijab  a scarve or head-covering worn by some female Muslims to show modesty  29 percent reported having it touched unwelcomingly by another student. Twenty-seven percent of these students said they felt discriminated against by a teacher.

Since Dec. 2, the problem has only grown, based on reports to the organization and from human relations commissions in different cities, said Fatima Dadabhoy, a senior civil rights attorney for CAIRs Los Angeles chapter and lead author of the report.

I think the climate of intolerance has been on the rise, she said, citing Trumps comments about Muslims.

TRAINING TRIED

Inland school districts say their anti-bullying rules guard against such behavior.

Tim Walker, director of pupil services at Riverside Unified School District, said faculty and staff get anti-bullying training. Campuses host prevention assemblies and other activities, he said. Student handbooks include a page to report bullying that can be filed anonymously, Walker said.

Walker said he doesnt know of any reports of Muslim students being bullied at district schools.

It hasnt been an issue for us, district spokesman Justin Grayson said.

Earlier this year, CAIR sent copies of the report to principals in that district and the San Bernardino City Unified School District because of their proximity to the site of the Dec. 2 attack and concerns that their students could see more bullying.

Maria Garcia, a spokeswoman for the San Bernardino school district, could not be reached for comment.

Dadabhoy said the survey found that theres been kind of a normalization to it, where students will make negative remarks about Islam or Muslims in a joking way.

Muslim students say they feel welcome, but then you ask specific questions and, Oh yeah, my friends do call me terrorist. Oh yeah, they pull my hijab, she said.

Survey results show some students dont want to report such incidents to school officials, with only 42 percent saying doing so resolved the problem. Muslim students are reluctant to call more attention to themselves, she said.

At the same time they speak out, theyre also going to be targeted as different again, Dadabhoy said.

Dadabhoy said the group, which also offers training for dealing with Islamophobia, hopes to do more outreach with Inland schools.

I think a lot of schools they want to do stuff, they want to do training (but) they dont know where to go right now, she said.

ISLAMIC AWARENESS

At Valley View, Naomi Mustafiz said the club has just as many non-Muslim members as Muslims, which fits with its goal to dispel misconceptions about Islam.

Here were more about bringing awareness about Islam, she said.

In November, the group held an Islamic Awareness Week on campus that included an Islam 101 talk about the basics of the faith, a documentary about a mosque that was burned down and lunch activities.

They even staged a hijab day, on which they passed out 60 scarves to students and staff who wore hijab for a day.

They really appreciated the experience it gave them, she said.

Naomi Mustafiz, who began wearing the hijab as a sophomore, remembered feeling nervous and encountered misunderstandings such as when one student asked if she had suddenly gotten married.

While wearing hijab makes her and other women who choose to do so more identifiable as Muslims, she said, its also resulted in unexpected support.

Once, a stranger at a grocery store approached her to say he was sorry about the negative comments made about Muslims in the news.

At a recent meeting, Naomi Mustafiz was joined by Hajer Dawoody, an 18-year-old Valley View graduate and UC Riverside freshman, for a talk about the difference between culture and religion and how theyre often confused as the same.

They noted that there are Muslims in many countries, not just Arab ones, and that their cultures are often different.

Not everybody practices Islam the same way because culture and religion form together to create identity, she said.

Adaisel Rosales, 18, a Valley View senior who is not Muslim but belongs to the club, said shes learned a lot from its meetings.

It really contrasted the idea of what is supposed to be Islam and what (you see) on TV, she said.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9558 or ighori@pressenterprise.com
Submissions for the review into lockout laws are due today, and this one  coming in at the 11th hour  is a treat.

Its from the City of Sydney themselves, who arguably have the most swing in this thing. Theyve outlined 31 recommendations that would pretty much reverse the lockout laws and put in measures to achieve what was the aim all along: reducing alcohol-related violence.

They include a 12-month trial exemption from the 1:30am lockout for well-managed premises and live music venues, a reconsideration of the 3am last drinks rule depending on the venues compliance history, planning controls and local factors, and replacing the existing liquor license freeze with new saturation zone rules that take into account how the local area would manage another venue (including existing number of licensed premises, relevant crime data, and transport options).

They also take a leaf out of Melbournes book (finally) and recommend that train services be extended on Friday and Saturday nights *after* venue closing times, so people can get home quickly, safely, and without falling victim to the 3am taxi changeover or Ubers surge pricing. (Seriously. Who thought this was ever a good idea?)

In a statement announcing the recommendations, Lord Mayor Clover Moore absolutely savaged the lockout laws.

The City spent year trying to get successive State Governments to respond to a worsening situation in the Cross, she said. We knew what the problem was  too many venues in one area, lifetime liquor licenses that reduce accountability, and a planning system that doesnt recognise when an area has become a problem. Rather than addressing the real problems, the NSW Governments response was to introduce a blanket lockout across the city centre and Kings Cross (with an inexplicable exemption for the casino). It was a sledgehammer when what we needed was a well-researched, evidence based, flexible response using transport, planning, licensing and police.

Goddamn fkn BOOYAH.

The once-thriving and now dying small bar scene  which Sydney has long prided itself on, and does it bloody well  also gets a look in, with a number of the recommendations aimed at reviving it. This includes extending base trading hours until 2am across NSW, doubling their capacity from 60 to 120 patrons, and slashing or removing altogether the hefty trading hours loading fee (which is currently paid by all venues deemed to be high-risk).

In fact, the only major change the lockout laws brought that theyre aiming to keep is the 10pm cut-off time for bottle shops, as a measure to stop you sinking bulk-piss in your en-route pre-game.

Violent venues will experience a greater level of security, and face the risk of losing their liquor license for ongoing non-compliance or repping the most violent venues list.

If all 31 recommendations were to be implemented, the City of Sydney would also recommend the NSW Government consider removing the 1:30am lockout for all venues.

There is no doubt the lockout laws made some areas, especially Kings Cross, safer and returned normalcy to residents and that must not change, said Moore. But the lockout law has hurt Sydneys cultural life and had negative impacts on businesses, including live music venues, small bars and restaurants, and many people have lost their jobs.

Well-managed late-trading premises are essential to out citys cultural life and economic growth  and people need to feel safe, no one wants to wake up to blood and urine on their doorstep. We need to get both right.

These exemptions, on a trial basis, based on evidence, and backed up by renewable licences, saturation controls and late night transport, will ensure we dont return to the Kings Cross that was bloody and violent every weekend.



Photo: Luke Reynolds / Getty.
FILE - In this Nov. 2, 2015 file photo, actor Daniel Craig walks the red carpet at the regional premiere of the latest James Bond film, "Spectre," in Mexico City. On Monday, April 4, 2016, Craig called for more funding for the U.N. agency that cleans up of mines and other unexploded ordnance, saying the work it does increases the chances of survival for people in conflict zones around the world. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)
St. Mary's gets win No. 300, Felten sets 8-man kicking record

What could have been a game to overlook was a milestone night for Gaylord St. Mary's in its final home game of the regular season.
NHS Improvement and NHS England have published the first national, integrated whistle-blowing policy to help standardise the way organisations should support staff who raise concerns.

The new policy is structured to ensure that staff are encouraged to speak up if they have any issues and that organisations have a clear route to follow to address any concerns.

Central to this are new responsibilities for organisations to appoint their own Freedom to Speak Up Guardian, an independent and impartial source of advice to staff at any stage of raising a concern, and investigate any concerns not resolved quickly through line managers.

Recommended by Sir Robert Francis in his Freedom to Speak Up review, this policy contributes to the need to develop a more open and supportive culture that encourages staff to raise any issues of patient care quality or safety, NHS England said.

This policy will help standardise the approach to whistleblowing across the NHS, so that we can embed continuous improvement into how the NHS works, noted Kathy Mclean, Executive Medical Director at NHS Improvement. I want NHS staff to feel that any concern raised is an opportunity to learn and improve care, and we will help NHS organisations to implement this policy and foster free and supportive staff cultures.

Whistleblowers are the smoke alarms of the NHS, and they're vital for patient safety and high-quality care, Phil Hammond, NHS doctor, broadcaster, journalist and patient safety campaigner, previously told PharmaTimes. We must embed a culture of transparency and accountability in the NHS, and make it safe for anyone  staff, patients and carers alike - to speak up knowing they will be heard.

The Care Quality Commission appointed the first National Guardian for whistleblowers in the NHS, in the hope fostering an environment that encourages healthcare workers to speak up over sub-standard care, back in January.
Image Source: Qatar Airways





A report released by the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation reveals that Doha-based Qatar Airways is planning to resume non-stop flights between Doha and Cebu with daily Boeing 787 service by the end of this year. Qatar previously served Cebu via Singapore until the route was dropped in 2012.In an interview at the Singapore Airshow with the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, Qatar Airways CEO, Akbar Al Baker, revealed that the carrier was laying out plans to launch daily service to Cebu by the end of 2016 with initial service operated by a Boeing 787-8 aircraft. The carrier intends to eventually transition the route to an Airbus A350 service.Qatar Airways currently operates three daily flights to the Philippines. Two daily flights are operated by a Boeing 777-300ER between Doha and Manila, while a third daily flight is operated from Doha to Clark with an Airbus A330-200.Once Qatar launches daily service to Cebu, it will become the third largest foreign airline operating in the Philippines after Cathay Pacific and Emirates. Qatar was forced to launch service to Clark in 2013 after it lost the rights to operate a second daily service to Manila following the termination of a codeshare agreement with Philippine Airlines. However, following the renegotiation of the Qatar-Philippines air services agreement, Qatar was able to restore the second daily frequency to Manila, while maintaining the service to Clark International Airport.Qatar currently competes with both Cebu Pacific and Philippines Airlines, which operate flights from Manila to Doha. Cebu Pacific launched service to Doha in July 2015, while Philippine Airlines only began operating the route last month.This will be the second time that Qatar has attempted flights to Cebu. It began operating flights to Cebu via Singapore in 2003 with a daily Airbus A330-200 service. But the unprofitable route was dropped in 2012 due to low yields. However, Qatar Airways believes that the route can be made viable with a new-generation aircraft such as the Boeing 787, which is more fuel-efficient and costs less to operate. As the carrier accepts delivery of more A350 aircraft, the route will eventually be transitioned to an A350 service.The launch date is presently contingent on aircraft delivery schedules. However, Qatar has committed to launch the new route in 2016, which will make it Cebu's third long haul destination after Los Angeles and Dubai. Under the leadership of the GMR-Megawide partnership, Mactan-Cebu International Airport is quickly rising as an alternative transit hub to Manila, which is plagued by congestion and poor facilities.Cebu Pacific currently operates more than twenty domestic routes from Cebu with plans to expand further, while Philippine Airlines operates seven domestic routes from the airport. According to the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, there are considerable opportunities for growth from Cebu. However, carriers should beware of overcapacity, which could become a concern on international routes. CAPA noted that Cebu is a price-sensitive market with limited premium demand as was discovered during Qatar's last attempt to serve the city non-stop. With Emirates recently launching direct service between Cebu and Dubai, it remains unclear if Cebu will be able to support two Gulf carriers.
Calef pointed out that over 1000 m of sediments fill the southern portion of Gale Crater. He then posed the question of whats beneath them. Most certainly there are impact melt brecciasrocks melted from the shock/heat of the impact eventbut how deeply are they buried? And how deep was Gale before it was filled, buried, and now exhumed? These are all big open questions when it comes to Gale.

Nicholas Warner of the State University of New York at Genesco spoke next on regolith thickness estimates at within the proposed InSight landing ellipse(s) in Elysium Planitia. His estimates for the regolith thickness were 3 to 5 meters. This is within the depth range to which InSights heat probe can penetrategood news, because InSights engineers dont expect the probe to be able to penetrate bedrock. So, thicker regolith means a greater penetration depth for the probe. He observed that some craters in the area have rocky ejectalittered with boulderswhile others dont. So, he looked to see if there was a size cut-off at which rocky ejecta craters did vs. didnt form. After analyzing over 3000 craters, he found that only craters larger than 200 meters in diameter had rocky ejecta. This suggests that these craters are excavating an additional layer in the subsurface relative to smaller craters: One that erodes into boulders, and one that does not. This tells us about the materials resistance to erosion. Warner found that craters less than 800 million years old within the landing ellipses still preserved boulders on their ejecta blankets. This leaves the question of what happened to smaller craters with rocky ejecta. The calculated degradation rates in this region are too low to have caused the complete destruction of small craters and boulders, so they havent simply eroded away. It could be matter of image resolution limitations and/or lighting conditions, or the smaller craters might not excavate to the depth of the boulder-producing unit in the subsurface.

The rest of the session focused on gullies and recurring slope lineae. Matthew Sylvest of the University of Arkansas showed experimental results for gully slope constraints on Mars based on carbon-dioxide-sublimation-induced granular flows. In a small chamber under martian conditions, carbon dioxide frost was sublimated and then condensed onto regolith slopes consisting of a Mars soil simulant and two different grain sizes of sand. Videos of these experiments showed that carbon dioxide frost sublimation off the slopes triggered mass wastingthat is, landslides (but on a VERY small scale in the lab compared to nature). Interestingly, the greatest levels of mass wasting activity occurred on areas of the slope devoid of frost. In some rare cases, large carbon dioxide ice blocks dislodged on the slope. Across the three regolith types, the Mars soil simulant experienced the most mass wasting compared to the fine and coarse-grained sand. Sublimation triggered mass wasting on slopes as low as ~13. This is significant as thats way below whats called the angle of repose for dry material. The angle of repose is the maximum angle at which entirely dry material can sit before sliding downhill under the force of gravity.
A police union attorney says the Baltimore officers who fatally shot two armed men last week were videotaped being read their Miranda rights after declining to give statements.

The attorney, Michael Davey, told The Baltimore Sun that prosecutors required the Miranda warnings. He said he could not recall such a move by prosecutors in 16 years working with the union. Davey says the officers were "treated like criminals" after he advised them not to immediately give statements.
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This is a commentary from RMuse.



When Donald Trump remarked, in an appeal for the religious vote, that there must be some kind of punishment for women who opt for an abortion, while some Americans were appalled, anti-choice Republicans saw a chance to profit. No, they were not lashing out at Trump and condemning anyone who would ever think women choosing a perfectly legal medical procedure should be punished. Instead, they portrayed themselves as ultimately compassionate for womens reproductive rights and betrayed their alleged respect for a womans dignity by calling them victims.

As bad as Trumps anti-women remark was, and it was inordinately bad, it paled in comparison to the wickedness of the response from every other anti-choice religious Republican and organization. Every last one who used Trumps misspeak to lie and feign compassion for womens plight they have wholly supported and perpetuated at every possible opportunity. And just for the record, American women are already being severely punished for opting to abort a pregnancy in the states Republicans expressing phony compassion represent; maybe it is why the Donald uttered his little misspeak.

Ted Cruz reacted to the Donalds misspeak by stating that Of course we shouldnt be talking about punishing women; we should affirm their dignity and the incredible gift they have to bring life into the world. On the important issue of the sanctity of life, whats far too often neglected is that being pro-life is not simply about the unborn child; its also about the mother and creating a culture that respects her and embraces life.

Except that Cruz, more than any other Republican does not respect women or the sanctity of their lives and he knows it. His ardent religious support for Texas anti-womens laws and Republican-controlled Senate attempts to ban abortion, contraception, and eliminate womens healthcare provisions inform he is a dirty liar; and far and away much worse for women than Donald Trump.

Amanda Marcotte at Salon noted, Anti-choicers are using Trumps comments to frame as moderate their deeply misogynist view that women are too stupid to be allowed to decide against giving birth. Marcottes point is spot on; anti-choicers have always portrayed women as victims who are incapable of making their own reproductive healthcare decisions. It may be a nuanced position in statements responding to Trump, but it is a universally accepted position by the anti-womens rights cabal.

It was not just Republicans implying women are victims of their own inability to function autonomously, the Susan B. Anthony List wrote that, punishment is solely for the abortionist who profits off of the destruction of life and the grave wounding of another. March For Life tweeted, No pro-lifer would ever want to punish a woman who has chosen abortion. That is against the very nature of what we are about. And Americans United for Life wrote, Pro-life Americans agree; the woman another victim of abortion industry should not and never has been punished.

Now, for religious-oriented groups, these anti-choicers are blatant liars. It takes just a few seconds on any search engine to find myriad examples of their anti-choicers supporting all manner of tactics to punish women who even consider an abortion. It is also a deceitful ploy to claim they care about women while calling a woman making their autonomous health choice a victim. A victim of what? The Constitution that allows a woman to make their own reproductive choice, or a society that is finally coming to grips with the fact that women do not exist to birth children?

Americans in most Republican states know there are already religious laws on the books to punish women who opt to abort an unwanted pregnancy. And, they are laws written and avidly supported by the same groups claiming they are compassionate towards women in responding to Trumps misspeak.

For example, in Georgia a 23-year-old woman is facing a charge of malice murder, a crime punishable by death, for allegedly terminating her pregnancy by taking abortion-inducing medication that she purchased legally. It is worth noting, yet again, that a fetus is not a living being according to the Christian bibles god, so the idea of terminating a fetus equating murder of a living human being is just beyond the absurd.

In Idaho, a young woman was charged with murder last year under a bizarre religious Idaho law for ending her pregnancy with RU-486. And last September in Pennsylvania, a 39-year-old mother of three started serving a 9-to-18 month jail sentence for the crime of ordering pills online to induce a miscarriage to terminate an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy.

All of these cases, and many, many others in 38 mainly Republican-controlled states, represent just the latest examples of American women being arrested, criminally charged, convicted, and punished with incarceration for making the choice of taking or ordering pharmaceuticals to induce an abortion. It is noteworthy that even though so-called compassionate pro-life advocates say women should not be punished for attempting to end a pregnancy, and yet they were and are ardent supporters of Republican laws criminalizing even seeking a legal medical procedure.

There can be little dispute that Donald Trump is no friend of women or their rights; he is a typical misogynistic pig. But he is a fierce advocate for women compared to any Republican, especially Ted Cruz and John Kasich, or the so-called pro-life organizations. Where Donald Trump was attempting to appeal to the evangelical anti-womens movement vote, the other Republicans hold deep-seated anti-womens rights beliefs with documented attempts to punish women for making the wrong choice.

It is an old tactic, but what anti-choice Republicans and their religious activists are claiming is that unlike the Donald, they are looking out for womens rights and well-being. And they are doing it by forcing them to give birth to affirm her dignity and honor the incredible gift they have to bring life into the world; by punishing them for not exercising that incredible gift annually. As many womens rights activists have claimed, Nothing says dignity like being told youre just an incubator whose own life, desires, and autonomy just dont matter.

Yes, Donald Trump is a misogynist cretin. But compared to Ted Cruz, John Kasich and the religious pro-life movement he is a saint who was pandering for evangelical votes in front of a camera. The rest of the Republican field does not have to say women should be punished for seeking an abortion because they actively participated in enacting laws that are punishing women under the guise of affirming their dignity to bring life into the world. And if a woman does not want to bring life into the world, in Republican states they get punished and Donald Trump had no say or vote in the matter.
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Democrats are mocking Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassleys very bad recess because it was a recess full of angry constituents demanding that he do his job. Of course Grassley has no intention of doing the job he is paid to do, and was left holding the McConnell bag of excuses, which are  as Im sure youve heard  tres flimsy.

Senate Democrats didnt have to do much but clip a bunch of papers during the two-week recess to prove their point that Senator Grassley (R-IA) had a no good, very bad recess being blasted for his SCOTUS obstructionism.

Democrats note dryly, At nearly every home state event he held, the first question asked of Senator Grassley was why he refused to do his job. Many Iowans not only expressed confusion, but also anger and frustration at the Senators hardline stance, and this criticism did not go unnoticed by the local press as reports of Iowans focus on the Supreme Court vacancy made front page news and local editorials continued to condemn Senator Grassley.

The Democrats were kind enough to pass along this sampling of clippings to prove their point and yikes, its not good for Grassley:

IOWA

We Are Iowa.com: Iowans Respond to Sen. Grassleys Lack of Movement on SCOTUS Hearings [LINK]

Iowans Respond to Sen. Grassleys Lack of Movement on SCOTUS Hearings [LINK] Des Moines Register: Grassley: No lame duck appointment for Supreme Court nominee[LINK]

Grassley: No lame duck appointment for Supreme Court nominee[LINK] Des Moines Register: Grassley leads slowdown of judicial confirmations [LINK]

Grassley leads slowdown of judicial confirmations [LINK] Ames Tribune: Steffen Schmidt: Politics and the Supreme Court nomination [LINK]

Steffen Schmidt: Politics and the Supreme Court nomination [LINK] Daily NonPareil: Our View: Listen to the people [LINK]

Our View: Listen to the people [LINK] Des Moines Register: U.S. Supreme court fight hits Iowa radio, TV, web [LINK]

U.S. Supreme court fight hits Iowa radio, TV, web [LINK] Des Moines Register: Grassley ad misinforms Iowans over Supreme Court [LINK]

Grassley ad misinforms Iowans over Supreme Court [LINK] Des Moines Register (A1): In Iowa, Grassley takes flak for court stance [LINK]

In Iowa, Grassley takes flak for court stance [LINK] Cedar Rapids Gazette (A1): Hillary Clinton takes on nemesis Grassley on blocking SCOTUS appointment [LINK]

Hillary Clinton takes on nemesis Grassley on blocking SCOTUS appointment [LINK] Cedar Rapids Gazette (Reuters) (A1): Hillary Clinton takes on nemesis Grassley on blocking SCOTUS appointment [LINK]

Hillary Clinton takes on nemesis Grassley on blocking SCOTUS appointment [LINK] Iowa City Press-Citizen (DMR) (A1): In Iowa, Grassley takes flak for court stance [LINK]

In Iowa, Grassley takes flak for court stance [LINK] Sioux City Journal (AP) (A1): Amid Supreme Court battle, Grassley seeks friendly audience [LINK]

Amid Supreme Court battle, Grassley seeks friendly audience [LINK] The Times : DOUG ROSS: Deadlines, commitments needed for Congress [LINK]

: DOUG ROSS: Deadlines, commitments needed for Congress [LINK] Storm Lake Times : Grassley should listen [LINK]

: Grassley should listen [LINK] Waterloo Courier-Falls : GOP may rue Garland snub [LINK]

: GOP may rue Garland snub [LINK] Des Moines Register : U.S. Supreme court fight hits Iowa radio, TV, web [LINK]

: U.S. Supreme court fight hits Iowa radio, TV, web [LINK] Sioux City Journal : OUR OPINION: Supreme Court vacancy creates still another political spectacle [LINK]

: OUR OPINION: Supreme Court vacancy creates still another political spectacle [LINK] Des Moines Register : Grassley misinforms Iowans over Supreme Court [LINK]

: Grassley misinforms Iowans over Supreme Court [LINK] CBC Online : Carroll Residents Gather To Protest Grassley During St. Anthony Employee Town Hall [LINK]

: Carroll Residents Gather To Protest Grassley During St. Anthony Employee Town Hall [LINK] Quad -City Times: Editorial: Mark Kirk might be Grassleys undoing [LINK]

Editorial: Mark Kirk might be Grassleys undoing [LINK] Dubuque Telegraph-Herald: GOP Blockade disrespects constitutional process [LINK]

GOP Blockade disrespects constitutional process [LINK] Des Moines Register: 4 other times Grassley has faced political fire [LINK]

4 other times Grassley has faced political fire [LINK] WHOT (TV): Protests Against Grassley Are OK, But Theyre Caustic, Ernst Says [LINK]

Protests Against Grassley Are OK, But Theyre Caustic, Ernst Says [LINK] Sioux City Journal: Grassley draws big Iowa crowd interested in Supreme Court vacancy [LINK]

Grassley draws big Iowa crowd interested in Supreme Court vacancy [LINK] Northwest Iowa Review: Grassley defends justice stance [LINK]

Grassley defends justice stance [LINK] Daily Nonpareil: Grassley stays firm in his Supreme Court decision [LINK]

Grassley stays firm in his Supreme Court decision [LINK] Denison Bulletin Review: Students quiz Grassley on Supreme Court nominee, immigration and agriculture [LINK]

Students quiz Grassley on Supreme Court nominee, immigration and agriculture [LINK] Iowa Public Radio: ISU Professor: History Sets Precedent for Scheduling SCOTUS Nomination Hearings [LINK]

Nothing to see here, people! Grassley will continue to parrot McConnells fictional Biden rule as an excuse for refusing to do his job, while meanwhile the very same obstructionism and juvenile pettiness is making Donald Trump their partys front-runner.

The Republican party is the party of spoiled children, who are so low as to refuse to even meet with let alone hold hearings (their job) with a Justice Garland. The last time Garland was nominated he was confirmed 76-23. So Garland is clearly a bipartisan nominee.

Things are so dire that today, sixty-eight lawyers who clerked for Justice Garland sent a letter to Senate leadership begging them to do their job.

Everyone is begging Republicans to do their job but like the petulant children they have regressed into, they are steadfastly refusing even when it costs them personally. Its called spite and its very unattractive in a lawmaker.

This is just the start of the punishment. This isnt going to end well for Republicans.
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Former senior adviser to President Barack Obama and current CNN Senior Political Commentator David Axelrod wrote Sunday in What the MRI of Donald Trumps soul reveals about Donald Trumps horrendous week and what it revealed about him.

If you want a brief synopsis, what it revealed is not pretty. What Axelrod doesnt say is that it was never actually hidden in the first place.

Axelrod writes that holy hell is raining down upon him for recent events:

His blithe assertion that he would encourage Japan and South Korea to develop nuclear arms; his defense of his campaign managers alleged strong-arming of a female reporter; and his suggestion, quickly recanted, that women who have abortions should be punished, created a sense of chaos around the candidate. He continued to stumble over the abortion issue all week.

According to Axelrod, The media analyzes and parses every word with a greater seriousness and intensity when spoken by a likely nominee for president of the United States.

Well

There is some truth to this. At the same time, what Axelrod says is only partly true. As has been pointed out, Trump still has  even after all this revealed madness  an advantage over Bernie Sanders when it comes to media coverage.

Far from putting words in Trumps mouth, the media has not paid enough attention to the things Trump has actually said. He got a free pass until it got so bad it could not be ignored anymore  the same chain of events we witnessed with the media and Mitt Romney in 2012.

So lets not go overboard with praise for the media with all this talk of parsing. Parsing is not something the media seems to be into these days. Bad enough Trump lives in a reality bubble. The media shouldnt be in one too.

Axelrod writes of Trump supporters,

They have rallied to the Strong Man, who scoffs at constitutional niceties and international norms and promises to Make America Great Again. For these voters, tired of nuance and complexity, Trump is the anti-Obama ideal  a guy for whom every problem, from terrorism to stagnant wages, is a nail just waiting to be walloped by a leader who has the strength and guts to pick up the hammer.

And thats the problem. That isnt how the world works. Problems arent nails to be pounded. There are humans on the other end of those nails, and sometimes, the nails themselves are human. None of this is new: For years Republicans have tried to solve the worlds problems like Trump wants to solve them, and he is far from the first to rail against Obamas imagined timidity.

Heres the thing: Obama is the adult in the room; has been nearly the only adult for the past seven years. He has done what needs to be done and he has done it well. Against incredible odds. He has done it without staring a war. Without nuclear proliferation. He has done it without destroying NATO, or our decades long relationship with old allies and new. He has done it without sacrificing the worlds economy at the altar of austerity.

As Paul Krugman has noted, Barack Obama is a hugely consequential president. And before you say Krugman is pro-Clinton and anti-Sanders, Krugman wasnt always a big fan of Barack Obama. The measure of a man is that he is not immune to the facts around him. That he can admit he was wrong.

All the Republican Party has to do is put together a scandal float and push it out there and watch the mainstream media go chasing after it. Theyll climb all over it but you wont see a lot of parsing, let alone admitting of mistakes.

We have to be careful, when analyzing people and events, that we dont mistake what is obvious to us as things even on the radar of others. Axelrod, for example says that In the last week, under a front-runners scrutiny and pressure, Trump looked like a guy who simply cant hack it.

Yet Trump zealots, as Axelrod calls his fanboys and fangirls, that 35% of the Republican primary base who seem unshakably committed, arent going to see it that way at all. They dont see a guy who simply cant hack it but a messiah who is being nailed to a cross. They see a guy who is not the perpetrator of racism, but its victim.

Now granted, 35 percent of anybody isnt going to win you any elections. Not in a country where the democratic process still works even a little. But those 35 percent of people are enough to lose somebody else an election, and if they follow Trump off the cliff the GOP establishment is now fighting to avoid, the result doesnt bode well for whoever that establishment ends up running with.

Axelrod admits this dichotomy between people who see Trumps soul begin to come into sharper focus and those of his loyal base may have been unbothered. Sure, much of the rest of America was alarmed at what it showed, but the media isnt alarmed enough to see past its own biases. They seem rather to have a sick fascination with Donald Trump and for a long time have been pulled along by him, like all those scandal floats we talked about.

Before you let Axelrod, part of the media now, pat said media on the back for being tough on Trump, lets remember that Trump has gotten many a free pass, and the media should not have waited as long as it did to scrutinize, or parse Trumps comments. As Media Matters for America reported the other day of Axelrods own network,

CNN president Jeff Zucker reportedly dismissed criticism of overcoverage of Trump as too much handwringing. Zucker also reportedly defended the hiring of multiple Trump surrogates as CNN on air contributors.

No. Dont expect a lot of parsing there. Just because CNN occasionally gets something right doesnt mean theyre not usually more like Fox News than not.

Soif you look at both the mainstream media and the right-wing media, the differences seem to be more one of degrees.

It was obvious from the first words out of his mouth that Trumps soul was ugly, and by shirking its own journalistic ethics, the mainstream media is as much responsible as the Republican Party for the rise and continued success of Donald Trump.
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Officials from several of Guams armed forces gathered at the Guam National Guard Readiness Center in Barrigada Saturday for a joint proclamation signing declaring April Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month.

The event drew the leadership of the Guam National Guard, Joint Region Marianas, the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Coast Guard Sector Guam.

Brig. Gen. Roderick Leon Guerrero, the adjutant general of the Guam Guard, said it was up to leaders and service members to continue an atmosphere of openness that promotes the prevention of sexual assault and the reporting of crimes by victims and witnesses of sexual harassment.

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Know your part and do your part, Leon Guerrero said.

This statement was echoed by Rear Adm. Babette Bolivar. She said it is no longer acceptable to be a bystander.

Intervention is vital to helping each and every one of us identify and stop this unsafe behavior, she said. Reporting crimes is the only way offenders can be identified and made accountable, and service members should be able to do so without fear of retaliation by their peers or leadership, she added.

Lets eliminate sexual assault not only during the month of April but throughout the year  Do your part and make it happen, she said.

Brig. Gen. Andrew Toth, commander of the 36th Wing at Andersen Air Force Base, said he saw the success of eliminating sexual harassment hinging on two focus areas. The first is for victims to have confidence that leadership will act appropriately when approached. The second is for all service members to report instances of sexual assault that they witness.

It requires everyone at all levels to be engaged all year round like Adm. Bolivar and Gen. Leon Guerrero both discussed, Toth said.

Commanders also took an oath to spread awareness and ensure their support in preventing sexual assault.
The Islamic Republic of Iran has been at war with the United States since 1979. It wages war through terrorist surrogates and main forces such as the IRGC. Michael Rubin lists a few markers along the warpath in Imaginary Iran.

Last month brought another reminder and another example. On March 24, the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against seven computer specialists who regularly worked for Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, charging that they carried out cyberattacks on dozens of American banks and tried to take over the controls of a small dam in a suburb of New York.

The New York Times explained that the attacks on the banks were intended to shut down their networks, but the case of the Bowman Dam in Rye, New York, was entirely different[.] How so? [I]t appeared to be an effort to take over the dam itself. We got lucky, however. The attempt failed because the dam was under repair and offline, but in some ways it worried American investigators more because it was aimed at seizing control of a piece of infrastructure. Yeah, well, you might want to worry about Irans nuclear program too now that we are financing and protecting it. According to the indictment, the dam intrusion caused thousands of dollars in damages to the computer system.

The infiltration of the Bowman Avenue dam represents a frightening new frontier for cybercrime, said U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, speaking at the event in Washington. Its actually a frightening new frontier in the mullahs war on the United States.

The Wall Street Journal article on the indictment is here. The Reuters article on the indictment is here. Reuters reports: U.S. officials largely completed the investigation more than a year ago, according to two sources familiar with the matter, but held off releasing the indictment so as to not jeopardize the landmark 2015 nuclear deal with Iran or a January prisoner swap.

The United States Attorneys press release is here. The Department of Justice press release is here. The FBI Wanted poster is here and below.
You may have missed President Obamas mind-boggling statement regarding his friends in the Islamic Republic of Iran at his news conference this past Friday (complete White House transcript here, video excerpt below). Thus spake Chairman Barry: When they launched ballistic missiles with slogans calling for the destruction of Israel that makes businesses nervous.If Iran continues to ship missiles to Hezbollah, that gets businesses nervous.

Iran makes businesses nervous with its nuclear/missile program and its continuing support for terrorism. What about us people? And you have to love Obamas characterization of the mullahs hypothetical continuing support of Hezbollah. His intelligence briefings arent clueing him in.

In any event, Obama remains cool as a cucumber. Hes unruffled by his friends in Tehran.

If Chairman Barry were not an ardent leftist in matters large and small, the media would long ago have made him out to be both a threat to humanity and a laughingstock, just as they did with President Bush (with a helluva lot less material to work with).

Via David Rutz/Washington Free Beacon.
ELECTED

Omoyemi Banjo, a former branch controller of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Minna, has been elected president of the CBN Pensioners Club.

A statement on Tuesday, March 29 by the clubs spokesman, Chimezie Ahaneku, in Lagos said the election took place during the Biennial National Conference of the club.

Mr. Chimezie said the conference, held at CBN Learning Centre, Alakija, Satelite Town, Lagos, was attended by delegates from 21 branches across the country.

Other members of the new executive include Charles Katchy, 1st vice president; Bon Onwubualili, 2nd vice president; Nicholas Mbah, general secretary and Micheal Akinbola, assistant general secretary.

Also elected are Chimezie Ahaneku, publicity secretary; Barth Eyo, assistant publicity secretary; Francisca Arueze, treasurer; Charles Ughulu, financial secretary; Al-Hassan Bala, assistant financial secretary; Anthony Egbenyor, provost (1); and Jamiu Akanbi, provost (2).

LAUNCHED

Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF), a philanthropic initiative devoted to entrepreneurship, on Monday, March 28, launched the second round of its entrepreneurship programme with the selection of 1,000 entrepreneurs.

The foundation made a 10-year $100 million commitment, to identify and empower 10,000 African entrepreneurs, create a million jobs and add $10 billion in revenues to Africas economy.

A statement from the organization said over 45,000 entrepreneurs from 54 African countries applied, more than doubling the number of applications received in 2015.

The statement said successful candidates represented diverse industries, led by agriculture, ICT and fashion, just as the highest numbers of applicants came from Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Uganda and Cameroon.

In TEEPs first year we spent over $8 million of our $100 million commitment with $5 million going directly to entrepreneurs as seed capital and the results have far exceeded our expectations, the founder, Tony Elumelu, said.

We have funded entrepreneurs, established networks and helped extraordinary people take control of their destinies.

The 2016 Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurs will become a generation of newly empowered African business owners, who are the clearest evidence yet, that indigenous business growth will drive Africas economic and social transformation.

HONOURED

Adenrele Adeniran-Ogunsanya, former Secretary to Lagos State Government, has been conferred with the title of Omowonuade of Owu Kingdom.

The ceremony was performed by His Royal Majesty, Oba Olusanya Amororo II, the Olowu of Owu Kingdom, Abeokuta, Ogun State on Saturday, March 26.

The palace of the monarch played host to eminent personalities who were in attendance to felicitate with the princess of Owu kingdom.

The ceremony, witnessed by eminent Nigerians, was part of the week-long activities to commemorate the 10th coronation anniversary of Oba Dosunmu.

ANNIVERSARIES

Ebenezer Obey-Fabiyi, popular Nigerian juju musician, on Sunday, March 3, clocked 74 years of age.

He was born on April 3, 1942 as Ebenezer Remilekun Aremu Olasupo Obey-Fabiyi in Idogo, Nigeria

Chief Commander, as hes fondly called, is of an Egba-Yoruba ethnic background.

Obey began his professional career in the mid-1950s in Lagos. Shortly after receiving training from Fatai Rolling-Dollar, he formed a band called The International Brothers in 1964, playing highlifejuju fusion. The band later metamorphosed into Inter-Reformers in the early-1970s, with a long list of Juju album hits on the West African Decca musical label.

The Inter-Reformers band excelled in praise-singing for rich Nigerian socialites and business tycoons.

Obeys music weaved in Christian spiritual themes and has since the early-1990s retired into Nigerian gospel music ministry.

TRANSITION

Tunji Braithwaite, a frontline politician, lawyer and former presidential candidate of the Nigeria Advance Party (NAP) on Monday, March 28 passed away at the age of 82.

The octogenarian reportedly died at St. Nicholas hospital after a brief illness.

Mr. Braithwaite, the youngest son of eight children, was born in 1933.

He was educated at the prestigious C.M.S Grammar School, entering the schools Preparatory Section in 1946 and completing his education there in 1953.

He then went on to sit for his A Levels at the London University at Kennington College in 1955 and enrolled in 1957/58 as a Law student at the Council of Legal Education, London.

He was admitted into Lincolns Inn that same year and graduated as a barrister in 1960.
Gun battle rocked Brazzaville early Monday, shattering a relative calm that followed President Denis Sassou Nguessos re-election in a disputed poll last month.

Witnesses said the fighting between security forces and unidentified gunmen was some of the worst to hit Brazzaville since 1997, when Sassou Nguesso returned to power after months of urban warfare between rival militia groups in the capital.

They said young opposition supporters chanting Sassou, leave! erected barricades near the main roundabout in southern Brazzavilles Makelekele neighbourhood and set fire to the local mayors office and police headquarters.

The gunfire broke out in the opposition strongholds of Makelekele and Bacongo at 3 am local time (0200 GMT) and lasted until 6 a.m.

It resumed around 8 am and intensified in late morning as military helicopters patrolled southern Brazzaville, witnesses said.

They said heavy weapons fire could be heard.

Witnesses said hundreds of residents of southern Brazzaville, some carrying their possessions on their heads, fled their neighbourhoods on foot toward the north of the city.

Mr. Nguesso won re-election on March 20 after pushing through constitutional changes in an October referendum to remove age and term limits that would have prevented him from standing again.

At least 18 people were killed by security forces during opposition demonstrations before the referendum.

Opposition candidates said the election was a fraud, calling for a campaign for civil disobedience.

A general strike last week was largely observed in southern Brazzaville but ignored in the north of the city, where Sassou Nguesso is popular.

The U.S. State Department said after the election it had received numerous reports of irregularities and criticised the governments decision to cut all telecommunications including internet services during voting and for days afterwards.

Meanwhile, U.S. embassy has also confirmed that there was heavy gunfire and it would provide only limited operations.

(Reuters/NAN)
At least four assets belonging to the wealthy and famous Saraki family of Nigeria, all tucked away in secret offshore territories, have been uncovered.

But the President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, failed to declare them to the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) as required by Nigerian laws.

This revelation, made possible by internal data of the Panama-based offshore-provider, Mossack Fonseca, obtained by the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) with PREMIUM TIMES and over 100 other media partners in 82 countries, could worsen Mr. Sarakis case as he battles to extricate himself from allegations of corruption.

Mr. Saraki is yet to respond to PREMIUM TIMES request for comments. His spokesperson, Yusuph Olayinonu, did not return calls or respond to a text message seeking comments.

But in a written response to ICIJ, the Senate President insisted, through his UK lawyers, that he declared his assets properly in accordance with the relevant legislation, and that the charges against him are both unfounded and politically motivated.

Last September the CCB slammed false asset declaration charges on Mr. Saraki, accusing the Senate President, among other things, of failure to declare his assets in full.

Under the code of conduct law, a public office holder is required to declare his own assets, those of his wife as well as assets in the names of his children below the age of 18.

In his declaration form, Mr. Saraki listed property owned by his wife, Toyin Saraki, to include a plot of land at Lekki valued at N5 million, which he said was a gift he received in January 1989.

Mrs. Saraki was also listed as owner of a property at 15 Bryanston Square, London W1 and 69 Bourne Street, London.

While the first, which rental income was put at 48,000 with a value of 900,000, was acquired in January 1989, the second, which value was put at 2m and had rental value of 150,000, was acquired for business in April 2000.

However, a fresh investigation by PREMIUM TIMES and its media partners, has uncovered a hidden London property in the name of Toyin Saraki but which was left out among the assets declared by the Senate President.

The hidden property is located at #8 Whuttaker Street, Belgravia, London SW1W 8JQ. It has title number NGL802235.

Similarly, the Senate President stated in his assets declaration form that his wife held an account in Eco Bank Broad Street, Lagos, where she had N1.5 million at the time he became governor in 2003.

She also maintained an account in Coutts & Co Strand, London, where she owned 450,000 and $125,000 in addition to $3 million in Northern Trust International Banking Corporation Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner.

Mrs. Saraki was also listed as maintaining substantial shares in European and American Trading Company, Tyberry Corporation and Eficaz Limited just as she held 500,000 shares, valued at 500,000, at P.C.C (U.K) Ltd. He was however silent on the number of shares the former first lady had in Haussmann and Tiny Tee (Nig) Limited.

Elaborate as the declaration in the name of Mrs. Saraki appeared to be, PREMIUM TIMES can authoritatively report that apart from the undeclared London property, three additional overseas assets in the name of the wife of the Senate President were hidden from the authorities and are missing from the assets declaration form.

Our investigations reveal that Mrs. Saraki owns secret companies in some notorious tax havens.

The hidden assets

The first, Girol Properties Ltd, was registered on August 25, 2004 (a year after Mrs. Sarakis husband became governor of Nigerias north-central state of Kwara) in the British Virgin Island (BVI).

Company documents show that Mrs. Saraki owns 25,000 numbers of shares with a par value of US$ 1,00 each, and was appointed the first and only director of the company.

It however remains unclear what businesses Mrs Saraki transacted with the company. Mrs Saraki however, in a letter to ICIJ, through her lawyers, denies ever owning any shareholding in Girol Properties.

The second company, Sandon Development Limited, was registered in Seychelles Island on January 12, 2011 and has Mrs. Saraki and one Babatunde Morakinyo, (a long-term personal aide and friend of Mr. Saraki) of 11 Okeme Street, Lagos, as shareholders.

While incorporating that company, documents show, Mrs. Saraki bought a curious service from Mossack Fonseca & Co, the Panamanian firm that helped her to register the firm.

Perhaps to avoid being identified as the beneficial owner of Sandon, the Senate Presidents wife asked Fonsecca to provide nominee directors for the company. Nominee directors are sometimes used in tax havens to conceal real owners of companies and assets.

She then made an undertaking indemnifying the Panamanian company in respect of all claims, demands, actions, suits, proceedings, costs and expenses whatsoever as may be incurred or become payable by you in respect of or arising out of any member or employee or associate of your company or associated companies holding any ofce, directorship or shareholdings in the company or by reason of or in consequence of any act or decision made by any such person or company in connection with the management and/or administration of the said company.

Shortly after the company was incorporated, Mrs. Saraki used it, in July 2011, to buy the property on Whuttaker Street, Belgravia, London SW1W 8JQ.

The property, acquired from Renocon Property Limited, a company registered in the British Virgin Island, was never disclosed to Nigerian authorities as required by the countrys code of conduct law.

The third hidden company in the name of Mrs. Saraki is Landfield International Developments Ltd., a company registered in the British Virgin Islands on April 8, 2014. Its registration number is 1819394 while its registered office is 1 Akara Blog., 24 De Castro Street, Wickhams Cay 1, Road Town, Tortola, British Virgin Island.

According to Mossack Fonseca, the registered agent of the company, Mrs. Saraki, at least until January 27, 2015, was sole shareholder and beneficial owner of the company which had two nominee directors  Glaisd Alie Limited and NewGombe Limited  both appointed on September 2, 2014. Its agent says Landfield is authorized to issue a maximum of 50,000 no par value shares.

In so far as is evidenced by the documents filed at the Registered Ofce, the Company is in existence and, in good standing, Mossack Fonseca recently said of Landfield in response to an enquiry by one Laura Templeman, a Senior Associate for Ogier Group, a law firm based in the British Virgins Island. According to the documents led on the Companys le as at 27th January, 2015, there are no actions, pending or threatened against the Company and no action has been taken to wind up the Company or to appoint a receiver or manager.

Mrs. Saraki said she sold her shares in the company to a third party in January 2015, but PREMIUM TIMES is yet to sight any document to that effect.

In July 28, 2015, Mrs Toyin Saraki, who was the first lady of Kwara State between 2003 and 2011, was interrogated by Nigerias anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), in relation to awards of contracts during her husbands tenure as governor.

The EFCC has not taken further actions since her interrogation, and nothing has been heard of the case since then.

A troubled husband

Mrs Sarakis husband, Bukola, who is Nigerias third most powerful official by virtue of his position as Senate President, is facing a 13-count charge of alleged false declaration of assets.

He is being tried by the Code of Conduct Tribunal, a special court that tries public officers for any contravention of the Code of Conduct for Nigerian public officers as spelt out in the Fifth Schedule of the Nigerian constitution.

The Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) and the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) were established to enforce a high standard of morality in the conduct of government business, and to ensure that the actions and behaviour of public officers conform to the highest standards of public morality and accountability.

The Code of Conduct Bureau had on September 16, 2015 slammed charges on Mr. Saraki, accusing him of offences ranging from anticipatory declaration of assets, to making false declaration of assets in forms he filed before the Bureau while he was governor of Kwara state.

The Senate President was also accused of failing to declare some of his assets, acquiring assets beyond his legitimate earnings, and operating foreign accounts while being a public officer  governor and senator.

The offences, the charge said, violated sections of the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999, as amended.

Mr. Saraki is also said to have breached Section 2 of the Code of Conduct Bureau and Tribunal Act and punishable under paragraph 9 of the said Fifth Schedule of the Constitution.

The Senate President has denied wrongdoings, saying the case was politically motivated and that he was merely being persecuted for emerging the President of the Nigerian Senate against the wishes of his political party, the ruling All Progressives Congress, which preferred a different candidate.

But this fresh revelation regarding hidden assets in tax havens might fuel the allegations against Nigerias third most powerful official and strengthen the prosecutions case against the politician.

The Saraki family and ownership of offshore companies



Apart from Toyin Saraki, another member of the Saraki family popped up repeatedly as PREMIUM TIMES and its partners conducted a year-long investigation into the leaked Mossack Fonseca internal documents, which contained 2.6 TB files, involved 214,488 entities, and revealed hundreds of details about how former gun-runners, contractors and other members of the spy world use offshore companies for personal and private gain.

Laolu Saraki, brother to Senate President Saraki, also has several footprints in offshore financial havens, documents show. A number of shell companies are connected to the younger Saraki.

He is sole shareholder in some of the companies while sharing ownership with some business partners in others.

For example, documents show that Laolu is the owner of Polly Capital Holdings Ltd registered in Niue, a small island nation in the South Pacific Ocean.

Another document showed that after some years, Laolu brought in another person as co-owner. The company is now co-owned with a certain Richard Pembroke, who has 25,000 equity shares, just like Laolu.

Laolus other offshore companies are co-owned with his associates. Among the co-owners are Kojo Annan, son of former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan; Obi Asika; Olufela Ibidapo who are all known figures in Nigeria.

Laolu and Kojo Annan hold equal shares of 25,000 in Blue Diamond Holding Management Corp. The duo, along with Mr. Asika, also own Sutton Energy Limited, registered in the British Virgin Island.

Mr. Asika owns 15,000 units of shares, the same amount owned by Laolu Saraki and Kojo Annan. Mr. Asika was a Senior Special Assistant to former President Goodluck Jonathan, and is closely connected to the Sutton Group.

Mr. Asikas profile on the website of the Copyright Society of Nigeria (COSON), of which he is Board member, refers to him as Founding Partner & Executive Director, Sutton Group from June 1999 to October 2002.

The connection between Mr. Annan and Mr. Asika seems clear, as Mr. Annan sits on the Board of Mr. Asikas another company,Dragon Africa. Additional documents show that the trio  Laolu, Kojo and Asika  also co-own Sapphire Holding Ltd., a company located in Samoa, a tiny Island of an estimated 194,320 people in the South Pacific.

Company documents also indicate that Ensol Limited (Environmental Solutions), registered in the Republic of Seychelles, with registration number 028376, partly belongs to Laolu.

The company is co-owned with Ama Annan, a relative of Kofi Annan (former UN Secretary General), who was appointed director on May 19, 2006 but ceased to be director on July 2, 2008.

Another Nigerian, Olufela Ibidapo, was then appointed to replace her on January 4, 2010.

Mr. Ibidapo is the current Head of Corporate Affairs at Heritage Bank, a successor bank to the defunct Societe Generale Bank of Nigeria, largely owned by the Saraki family but whose operational license was revoked by the Central Bank of Nigeria in January 2006 following the re-capitalisation policy in the banking sector.

The bank however returned with a new name (Heritage Bank) in 2012 following the order of the Federal High Court, compelling the central bank to restore its operational permit after it declared that it had amassed the required capital base to return to business.

It however remains unclear why the Sarakis incorporated the offshore companies linked to them or what businesses they transacted with the entities.

While that may not be the case with the Sarakis, some business people in Nigeria and elsewhere are known to have created Shell companies offshore for a host of dodgy business reasons, which include hiding assets, avoiding tax or as fronts for illegal deals. Shell companies are however not entirely illegal, and not all owners use them for dubious purposes.

We have done nothing wrong  the Sarakis



Mr. Saraki and his wife denied any wrongdoing.

Responding to separate written demands for comments, the couple maintained that it is not illegal to hold shares in offshore companies.

In a letter to ICIJ by the London-based law firm of Discreet Law, Mr. Saraki said he declared his assets properly in accordance with the relevant Nigerian legislation.

Mrs. Saraki, in a separate letter to the ICIJ through another London-based law firm, Harbottle & Lewis, also insisted that she made all required disclosures in relation to her shareholdings.

In their separate letters, the couple threatened to sue should the ICIJ and its partners proceed to publish information about the undeclared offshore assets, with Mrs Saraki saying any publication concerning her private financial information infringes on her privacy and breaches the Data Protection Act 1998.
The Nigerian Army has sacked Aliyu Momoh, a Brigadier General, who allegedly supervised the rigging of the 2014 governorship election in Ekiti State.

The Minister of Defence, Mansur Dan Ali, told news website, Sahara Reporters, in Washington DC, United States, during the just-concluded Nuclear Security Summit, that Mr Momohs career in the military had been terminated after the report of a military panel that investigated the unprofessional conduct of officers and soldiers during the elections in Ekiti and Osun State indicted him alongside other soldiers.

The board of inquiry, chaired by Adeniyi Oyebade, a Major General, made far-reaching recommendations meant to assist the army in future involvement in civil elections.

In arriving at the recommendations, the board spoke to 62 officers, over 100 soldiers and 62 civilians.

According to the statement, the board recommended the compulsory retirement of two officers from the army.

It also recommended that three officers should lose their commands and another recommended prosecution for collecting financial gratification.

The board further recommended the placing of 15 officers on watch list while nine others were to be handed over to the Economic and Financial Crime Commission for further investigations following allegations of corruption against them.

Six officers are to face an audit committee and 62 officers (mostly of the rank of Majors-below) were to be given letters of displeasure and to appear before their respective General Officers Commanding for counselling, the board also advised.

The panel was set up following the release of a video recording by Sagir Koli, a Captain from its Intelligence Corps, showing actions by his commanding officer (Mr Momoh) and top officials of the Goodluck Jonathan administration to rig the June 21, 2014 election in Ekiti State.

The video recording revealed the connivance between Mr. Kolis commanding officer, Aliyu Momoh, a General, and former Minister of State for Defence, Musiliu Obanikoro, a former Minister of Police Affairs, Jelili Adesiyan, Governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose, chieftains of the Peoples Democratic Party: Andy Uba and Iyiola Omisore, to rig the 2014 election in Ekiti State.

Mr. Koli was forced into hiding after he was tipped off of a plan by the army to arrest him.

His younger brother, a 15-year old secondary school pupil was however arrested, detained and tortured by the army.

Former President Goodluck Jonathan refused to investigate the video, saying Mr. Koli refused to come out of hiding to authenticate the recording.

The army also confirmed that Mr Momoh has been retired.

Sani Usman, the spokesperson of the army told the Punch newspaper that : General Momoh and others have been retired from the Army.

The newspaper said Mr Usman, a colonel, did not give further details.

According to the Punch, another senior officer also retired following the recommendation of the panel was the former spokesperson of the army, Olajide Laleye, a Brigadier-General.

It is believed that Mr Laleye was sacked following his role in the controversy surrounding the school leaving certificate of President Muhammadu Buhari, the candidate of the then opposition All Progressives Congress in the lead up to the 2015 election.

The then ruling party had accused Mr Buhari, a retired Major General, of not having a secondary school leaving certificate  the basic academic qualification for candidates vying to be President.

Mr Laleye held a press conference at the time where he stated that the Army could not find the Mr. Buharis West African School Certificate Examination result.
A Judge of the Lagos Division of the Federal High Court, Justice Muhammed Yunusa, accused by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) of allegedly receiving bribes from a senior advocate of Nigeria, Rickey Tarfa, has been queried by the National Judicial Council (NJC).

In a letter with reference number NJC/F.3/FHC.49/1/421, dated March 16, 2016, signed by the Chief Justice of Nigeria and Chairman of the National Judicial Council, Justice Mahmud Mohammed, Justice Yunusa was given 14 days to submit his response to allegations of judicial abuse, compromise and misconduct leveled against him by the Civil Society Network Against Corruption (CSNAC).

The query was sent to the embattled judge which through Justice Ibrahim Auta, the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court,

I forward herewith a petition dated 21st December, 2015 against you by Mr. Olanrewaju Suraju, Chairman, Civil Society Network Against Corruption, on the above subject matter, Chief Justice Mohammed wrote to the embattled judge. The petition speaks for itself. I shall be glad to have your comments within 14 days from the date of your receipt of this letter, please.

The response of Justice Yunusa is still being awaited, insiders say.

CSNAC had in a petition dated December 15, 2015, accused the judge of consistent refusal to abide by judicial precedents, laid down by superior courts, in granting orders and injunctions against the EFCC.

According to CSNAC, the actions of Justice Yinusa were serving as leeway for unscrupulous and corrupt individuals, who will stop at nothing to truncate their arrest, investigation and prosecution by the appropriate law enforcement agencies, to render our criminal law ineffective, as well as allowing corruption fester in the society.

The organisation said, The grant of the orders of mandatory and perpetual injunctions by Justice Yunusa against the EFCC is a grave departure from the established principles in the mentioned cases, as laid down by the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal which are binding on the Federal High Court, being a lower court.

Honourable Justice Yunusa, by the grant of these orders, has stripped the Economic and Financial Crimes Commissions of its constitutional powers as a law enforcement agency, as well its powers under the enabling law, the Economic and Financial Crimes (Establishment) Act, LFN 2004, a Federal Legislation.

It is also a gross abuse of his powers as a judicial officer.

The organisation further listed some of the cases concerned as:

 Suit No. FHC/L/CS/1471/2015 Mr. Simon John Adonmene & 3ors v Economic and Financial Crimes Commission filed on the 21st day of September, 2015 before Honourable Justice M.N. Yunusa of the Federal High Court, Lagos Judicial Division;

 Suit No. FHC/L/CS/487/14  FRN v. Michael Adenuga; Suit No. FHC/L/CS/1342/15  Senator Stella Odua v. AG Federation, EFCC, ICPC and IGP

 Suit No. FHC/L/CS/1285/15  Jyde Adelakun & Anor v. Chairman EFCC & Anor;

 Suit No. FHC/L/CS/1445/15  Dr. Martins Oluwafemi Thomas v. EFCC;

 Suit No. FHC/L/CS/1269/15  Honourable Shamsudeen Abogu v. EFCC & Ors;

 Suit No. FHC/L/CS/1012/15  Hon. Teeth Dauzia Loya v. EFCC.

The EFCC had, on February 18 arraigned Mr. Tarfa before a Lagos State High Court on a two-count charge of obstruction of justice and attempting to pervert the course of justice.

According to court documents seen by PREMIUM TIMES, in one of the allegations, Mr. Tarfa made phone contacts with Justice Yunusa in a case before the judge.

The commission provided phone numbers of Mr. Tarfa, the judge, and bank documents detailing money transfer from the lawyer to Justice Yunusa.

The EFCC also stated that from its investigations, Mr. Tarfas law firm, Rickey Tarfa & Co. with Access Bank Account with account no. 0000964760 paid N225,000 into Justice Yunusas bank account.

Below is CSNACs petition against Justice Yunusa

21st December, 2015

The Chairman,

National Judicial Council,

Supreme Court Complex,

Three Arms Zone,

Abuja.

Dear Sir,

PETITION AGAINST HON. JUSTICE M. N. YUNUSA OF THE FEDERAL HIGH COURT, LAGOS DIVISION FOR ABUSE OF POWERS

HUMAN AND ENVIRONMENTAL DEVELOPMENT AGENDA (HEDA) is a registered non-governmental organization(NGO) set up for the purpose of educating the public on human rights, the rule of law, transparency, accountability and good governance amongst others. Under our launched Judicial Integrity and Access to Justice (JIAJ) programme, we have undertaking review of judgements and judicial pronouncements of Judges across the country, with a view to assisting the National Judicial Council in her historical fight against corruption in the Judiciary.

In Suit No: FHC/L/CS/1471/2015 Mr. Simon John Adonmene & 3ors v Economic and Financial Crimes Commission filed on the 21st day of September, 2015 before Honourable Justice M.N. Yunusa of the Federal High Court, Lagos Judicial Division, the Applicants sought amongst other reliefs the following:

A Declaration that the Respondent whether by itself, staff, agents, employees, servants, officers and men under its supervision, direction and/or control is not entitled to howsoever invite, interrogate, intimidate, harass, arrest, detain, arraign, restrict the movement of the 1st Applicant and other officers of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Applicants without lawful justification.

An Order of Mandatory injunction restraining the Respondent by itself, staff, agents, employees, servants, officers and men from howsoever inviting, interrogating, detaining, harassing, intimidating, arresting, arraigning, and/or further inviting, detaining, harassing, intimidating, arresting, and/or declaring the 1st Applicant and /or any of the directors, staff, officers and agents of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Applicants as wanted persons.

An Order of perpetual injunction restraining the Respondent, by itself, staff, agents, employees, servants, officers, and men from howsoever freezing, confiscating, depriving and/or further freezing, confiscating, depriving the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Applicants of access to, possession of and use of their assets and the funds in their account Nos 1018826127, 0020593842, 1771258695 and 1013983247 maintained with United Bank for Africa Plc., Sterling Bank Plc., Skye bank Plc. and Zenith Bank Plc. respectively.

A declaration that the Respondent and/or any of its staff, agents, employees, servants, officers, and men under its supervision, direction, and/or control is not entitled to and/or authorized by law to issue any directive(s) to any/all banks in Nigeria, in particular, United Bank for Africa Plc., Sterling Bank Plc., Skye Bank Plc., and Zenith bank Plc., to freeze the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Applicants account Nos 1018826127, 0020593842, 1771258695 and 1013983247 maintained with the said banks and/or howsoever continue to freeze the said accounts, without the leave of a court of competent jurisdiction.

In a ruling delivered on the 30th day of October, 2015, Justice Yunusa granted all the orders as prayed thereby granting an Order of Perpetual Injunction against an anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

Justice Yunusa in similar questionable circumstances, granted arbitrary injunction to Political Exposed Persons and other accused persons against the law enforcements agency. Some of these other cases are:

Suit No. FHC/L/CS/487/14  FRN v. Michael Adenuga

Suit No. FHC/L/CS/1342/15  Senator Stella Odua v. AG Federation, EFCC, ICPC and IGP.

Suit No. FHC/L/CS/1285/15  Jyde Adelakun & Anor v. Chairman EFCC & Anor.

Suit No. FHC/L/CS/1445/15  Dr. Martins Oluwafemi Thomas v. EFCC

Suit No. FHC/L/CS/1269/15  Honourable Shamsudeen Abogu v. EFCC & Ors.

Suit No. FHC/L/CS/1012/15  Hon. Teeth Dauzia Loya v. EFCC

The Supreme Court has held in a plethora of cases that the grant of perpetual injunctions against law enforcement agencies is a violation of constitutional provisions. In Kalu v FRN (2014) 1 NWLR (pt. 1389) 526 Para D-H, the court held that interference with powers given to law officers by the constitution to carry out criminal investigations cannot be departed from by court injunctions. Also in Alhaji Sani Dododo v EFCC (2013) 1 NWLR (pt. 1336) 510 Para A-C, the Court of Appeal held per Nwodo JCA as follows:

The EFCC Act and the ICPC Act are enactments towards achieving the goal of abolishing corruption. The drive to abolish corrupt practices by established enactment and statutory provisions must not be extinguished in construction of the statutes. The intendment of the legislation must be conveyed and its provisions complied too.

Furthermore, in Chief Rasheed Ladoja v Federal Republic of Nigeria & Anor (2014) LPELR 22432 (CA), the Court of Appeal also held:

Anti-corruption Legislation is always construed to ensure that society is adequately protected against the canker-worm of corruption with its attendant destructive effect on the body polity of society.

The grant of the orders of mandatory and perpetual injunctions by Justice Yunusa against the EFCC is a grave departure from the established principles in the aforementioned cases, as laid down by the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal which are binding on the Federal High Court, being a lower court. Honourable Justice Yunusa, by the grant of these orders, has stripped the Economic and Financial Crimes Commissions of its constitutional powers as a law enforcement agency, as well its powers under the enabling law, the Economic and Financial Crimes (Establishment) Act, LFN 2004, a Federal Legislation. It is also a gross abuse of his powers as a judicial officer.

These decisions, based on his Lordships refusal to abide by judicial precedents laid down by the apex court, will undoubtedly serve as a leeway for unscrupulous and corrupt individuals, who will stop at nothing to truncate their arrest, investigation and prosecution by the appropriate law enforcement agencies, to render our criminal law ineffective, as well as allowing corruption fester in the society.

In the light of the above, CSNAC is therefore by this petition requesting that the council carries out its constitutional role by immediately summoning Honorable Justice M. N. Yunusa on this matter and thereby ensuring that sanity is restored in the exercise of powers by judicial officers.

Attached is a sworn affidavit in support of this petition. Also attached are snippets of the above listed cases for your review.

Thank you for your anticipated cooperation and prompt actions.

Yours faithfully,

Olanrewaju Suraju

Chairman
Former Delta State governor, James Ibori, established limited liability companies and foundations in secret offshore tax havens to hide some of the funds he looted from the states treasury, a leak of secret tax documents has revealed.

Mr. Ibori, who is currently serving jail term in the United Kingdom after pleading guilty to fraud charges in 2012, enlisted his immediate family as beneficiaries of the offshore companies and foundations.

Details of how Mr. Ibori organised the looted funds were contained in a leak of about 11.5M secret documents owned by the Panama-based international law firm, Mossack Fonseca, obtained by the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) with PREMIUM TIMES and over 100 other media partners in 82 countries.

The Panama Papers scandal has been described as the biggest leak in history.

To hide his loot, Mr. Ibori, working through a Swiss asset management firm, Clamorgan S.A. in Geneva, established several offshore companies, including Stanhope Investments Limited,a foundation, Julex Foundation, and a trust, The Hopes Trust, enlisting himself, his wife and daughters as beneficiaries.

Clamorgan prides itself as a company that provides asset management, fiduciary services, immovable property administration, amongst others, and operates under the laws of Geneva, Switzerland.

After almost five years of playing cat and mouse with Nigerian and British authorities, the former governor capitulated on February 27, 2012, pleading guilty in a London court to 10 counts of money laundering and conspiracy to defraud.

Before Judge Anthony Pitts, Mr. Ibori admitted stealing $250million as alleged by the prosecution.

The Metropolitan Police accused Mr. Ibori of spending some of the stolen money to purchase six houses in London  paying 2.2m in cash for one Hampstead mansion  and putting his children in expensive British private schools.

The leaked papers have now revealed how Mr. Ibori used offshore shell companies and foundations to launder Delta States money, including an attempt to take out a massive loan from Lloyds Bank in London.

The beneficiaries of Mr. Iboris Julex Foundation were Mr. Ibori himself; his wife, Theresa and some other believed to be his daughters: Obianuju, Ehriatake Ibori, Otonvwen, Eseoghene, Oberhili and Eguono.

In August 2003, Clamorgan S.A. applied for registration for Stanhope Investments Ltd. in the Pacific Island of Niue with initial shareholders capital of $50,000 at $1.00 per share, all held by Julex Foundation. A certificate of incorporation for Stanhope was issued by the Office of the Registrar of International Business Companies on August 11, 2003.

On behalf of Mr. Ibori, Clamorgan S.A. contacted Mossack Fonseca & Co. in Seychelles to act as the registered agents for Stanhope Investments Ltd.

Mr. Ibori then secured the services of Yvette Rogers and Francis Perez to act as nominee directors on his behalf. Nominee directors are usually appointed in tax havens to hide ownership of companies and assets.

Both Mrs. Rogers and Mrs. Perez were staff of Mossack Fonseca. The two only signed forms as directors of the company, and they take direct instructions from shareholders  Julex Foundation, through Clarmorgan S.A.

Therefore, they had no discretion over the companys activities, whatsoever.

Mr. Ibori hired Sebastian Thiery, a certified independent assets management consultant based in Switzerland as the signatory to the account of Julex Foundation. He operated the bank accounts on behalf of the Iboris.

When Mossack Fonseca resigned as the registered agent for Stanhope in Seychelles in 2012, the company transferred all Stanhopes assets to Mr. Thiery.

The documents also showed that all the shares of Stanhope were issued in bearer form. According to Investopedia, bearer form means the security is traded without any record of ownership, so physical possession of the security is the sole evidence of ownership. Most securities issued today are in registered form.

The leaked papers linked Stanhope Investments, Julex Foundation, Financial Advisory Group Ltd. and Hunglevest Corporation as the four companies owned by Mr. Ibori in tax havens.

Other companies such as Borel and Barbey, a Swiss law firm, The Hopes Trust and Howard LLP in London also had links to Mr. Ibori.

Mr. Iboris ordeal began in April 2005 when the U.K. authorities uncovered his fraudulent activites. It was revealed that Mr. Ibori obtained and transferred funds from accounts held or controlled by fraudulent individuals.

During their investigation, U.K. authorities unearthed companies acting as fronts for Mr. Ibori through Mossack Fonseca in Seychelles. He had requested that Stanhope Ltd. be moved from Niue to Seychelles in 2004.

Seychelles attorney-generals office notified Mossack Fonseca that a criminal investigation had been launched into the activities of Mr. Ibori in the U.K. and demanded that all documents relating to Stanhope be forwarded to his office.

Mr. Ibori had attempted to take a huge loan from Lloyds Bank Plc using properties located at 261 Grays Inn Road, London, WC1X 8QT as guarantee for the loan. A hostel reservation company, Bed Reservation Jersey Limited, applied for the loan which was to be guaranteed by Stanhopes entire assets.

In the process of acquiring the loan, Mr. Iboris lawyers also attempted to compromise Lloyds Banks lawyer, by plotting to hire the same attorney hired by the bank for the transaction. Jersey is one of the most popular tax havens for the elite.

We were unable to determine if the loan was eventually approved and how much.

Mr. Ibori also made efforts to instruct his partners to conceal evidences in order to frustrate his case with the Seychelles Supreme Court.

In the first of these instances, in an email dated April 14, 2008, Stanhope instructed Mossack Fonseca to conceal some information about other possible assets being managed on behalf of Mr. Ibori.

Please see list of documents sent to AGs office. Please note that we did not attached the document of Borel & Barbey as it does not mention Stanhope Investments Ltd.

A week later on April 21, 2008, Stanhope again requested that some information be redacted from the documents, in a clear violation of the law since that request came after the Seychelles courts order that all documents be released.

We also suggest to eliminate the Email from the client dated 27th, October, 2004 from the group of documents. Please refer to point No.14. We believe this email includes a list of instructions of our client, reflecting information about other companies that are not involved in this case.

We believe it is not convenient to deliver all this unnecessary information to the authorities. Please confirm that you will take out this email copy from the group of documents.

2. The indemnity letter is not necessary neither. Please refer to point No.9. We must declare that we have an indemnity letter from the client in the Statement of Mossack Fonseca.

Jailed on April 17, 2012, for 13 years on, Mr. Ibori is currently serving jail term in the United Kingdom. That was the third time the former former governor, described as a thief in Government House, got sentenced for theft in London.

Mr. Iboris spokesperson, Tony Eluemunor, declined ICIJ requests to comment for this story.

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Nigerian troops, from the 22 Brigade Garrison, Army Headquarters Strike Group, on Sunday captured three Boko Haram terrorists in Kadawu, Borno State.

Four motorcycles, three bicycles, one solar panel and two containers of liquid herbicides were recovered from the terrorists.

Three more Boko Haram terrorists were captured at another village, Garna, and seven locally-made guns recovered from them.

The troops, accompanied by some civilian JTF, were on patrol to the two villages, including other villages like Boboshe, Kyare, Gineba, and Ajiri in the state, according to information released by the Nigerian Army.

The troops recovered bomb-making equipment  eight industrial gas cylinders and five regular gas cylinders, and a pick-up truck, at a primary school in Boboshe village.

The village was deserted by the time the soldiers arrived.
The Islamic Movement of Nigeria, a leading Shiite group in the country, has condemned Nigerian Armys alleged intelligence report linking the movement with insurgent group, Boko Haram.

A statement by the groups spokesman, Ibrahim Musa, said the movement had no alliance with any militant group and had no intension to form a coalition with Boko Haram to attack the military.

Mr. Musa noted that the only weapon the group bears is positive reasoning, truth and good conduct.

In the past few days we have received some intelligence reports dished out by the security agents insinuating that the Islamic Movement in Nigeria, IMN, is planning a coalition with the terrorist organization Boko Haram, Mr. Musa said in a statement sent to PREMIUM TIMES.

The intelligence report further indicated that due to the said strategic alliance with Boko Haram, attacks will be carried out on military formations and other government buildings.

Ordinarily we wouldnt have even reacted to this latest intelligence report had it not been due to the frequency with which the report is being peddled across the intelligence community, since we have in the past reiterated our stance vis-a-vis terrorism and terrorist groups.

However we distance the IMN from any attempt to associate it with violence and other militant activities. Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky, our revered leader has said it many times without number that our weapon is positive reasoning, truth and good conduct.

Guns are for the reckless and foolhardy ones. We have been conducting our affairs peacefully, calling people to the truth for the last 36 years. So you cannot come overnight and attribute violence to us that we now resort to killing people. This is impossible. We save lives not kill them.

The group further said it would not derail from its pacifist ideology even in the face of many provocations.

We hereby state categorically that there are no connections or any links whatsoever between the Islamic Movement in Nigeria and Boko Haram.

IMN in the first place is not the creation of any foreign security agencies, which is common with all the various terrorist groups globally. It was borne out of the desire of Muslims to live according to the teachings of Islam.

IMN has been around at least in Nigeria for almost four decades now, with its various educational programs now commonly known in many Nigerian villages, towns and cities and with all its activities peacefully and transparently conducted.

Hence, there is no basis for any comparison with the Boko Haram that is a terrorist organization and a creation of global imperialism with the intention of tarnishing the image of Islam.

Moreover, it is the same so called Boko Haram that bombed our brothers and sisters during an Ashura procession in Potiskum, Yobe state in 2014 and also sent suicide bombers to the Arbaeen trek along Kano-Zaria highway, killing many innocent people including women and children. It beats any sane imagination that IMN will now turn to the same group in what the intelligence agents term strategic alliance.

The IMN will like to reiterate its stance once again; we reject any violence or militant attack on anybody or any place in our name. We are not and will never become, act or relate with any terrorist group.

We make bold this statement because the history of security agencies the world over is known for false flag operations, Nigeria inclusive; where a violent attack will be carried out somewhere and innocent people will be accused of the crime. Islam is a religion of peace and is not associated with violence; therefore it is illogical to associate killings and violence to true followers of Islam.

In a related development, the Inspector General of Police, Director General of DSS and other bigwigs of the security agencies held a meeting wherein they deliberated on the need to crush the IMN once and for all before the month of Ramadan. According to them all efforts carried out to exterminate the movement so far will come to naught if the annual Quds day rally is staged anywhere in Nigeria again.

In preparation for the grand onslaught on the IMN some Muslim clerics have been commissioned to add momentum to their hate campaigns against Shia in all their preaching sessions.

This treacherous act has already started in earnest in various mosques across the country. One of such Sheikhs on the payroll of the government was even heard saying to those around him, leave them (Shiites) they will be finished off in the next two weeks.

We will like to inform the public that, the Islamic Movement in Nigeria is at the receiving end of the evil machinations of the government. By now those who are opposed to any peaceful resolution of Zaria massacre by the military are seen clearly in their true colors.

Notwithstanding we will keep on pressing for our demands that punishment be meted out on the military that unjustly and without due process killed innocent Nigerians who are followers of Sheikh Zakzaky from 12-14 December, 2015 in Zaria.

We still demand that our leader, Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky, be released unconditionally, since after over four months the authorities have failed to accuse him of committing any crime, the statement added.
Tope Aluko, a former secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, who revealed how former President Goodluck Jonathan gave the governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose, several millions of dollars and military support to help rig the 2014 governorship election in the state, has reconciled with the governor.

Lere Olayinka, the chief press secretary to Mr Fayose told PREMIUM TIMES that the former allies settled their differences after Mr Aluko made a surprised appearance at Eko Hotel, Lagos to see the governor.

Sources at the meeting said Aluko begged for forgiveness, prostrating and rolling on the ground for several minutes, Mr Olayinka told PREMIUM TIMES via, instant messaging app, WhatsApp.

Alukos return to Fayose was facilitated by former Speaker of the State House of Assembly, Hon Dele Olugbemi. After the closed-door meeting, both Fayose and Aluko talked to the press.

After the press interview, a highly sober Aluko was said to have wept profusely. At a point, he was said to have held the legs of one of Fayoses associate and wept, he added.

Speaking on a political programme, Politics Today, on Channels Television, in February Mr. Aluko narrated how the states chapter of the party convinced Mr. Jonathan to part with a huge sum of money and direct the military and other security agencies to cooperate with the PDP and ensure the party wins the election at all cost.

Before the primaries, we had this believe that because Jonathan was coming out for second term and because we are going to be the first election in the south-west, at a meeting, we told him (former President Goodluck Jonathan) that north-east, north-west and north-central may not be too sure for him because the Hausas are clamouring for presidency and that you now have south-east and South-south, you must manage the South-west.

It was on the basis of that that we told him that he must manage South-west.

Because of his interest, even before winning the primaries, we did so many security reports to tell Mr President then that he must make sure that we manage South-west zone and it was because of that that he gave us the head of security agencies, Mr Aluko said.

The PDP chieftain was also quoted as telling reporters in Abuja that Mr. Jonathan actually gave Mr. Fayose $37 million (N4.7 bn) which was used to rig the election.

Mr. Aluko on Sunday said the then Minister of State for Defence, Musiliu Obanikoro, and that of Police Affairs, Jelili Adesiyan, were made to give attention to the election because we know that APC was everywhere in the southwest and we must naturally capture part of southwest if we want to balance what our brothers in the north were likely to bring on.

He also revealed that there was an agreement to take out some members of the APC to ensure that they do not give adequate support to their members.

There was a strike team, a mixture of the SSS, military, the mobile police that is about all.

We had a meeting at Aso Rock on security and funds. We were given security and funds.

He listed the persons at the meeting to include Mr. Jonathan; the then national chairman of the PDP, Adamu Muazu, Governor Fayose; and himself (Aluko).

At the meeting President Jonathan agreed that if he needed Ekiti, he would support us to ensure that we delivered.

At the second meeting we had Obanikoro, Jelili, Omisore It was a combination of Osun and Ekiti people and they were discussing how we were going to move to take the South-west.

Before the primaries, His Excellency, Ayodele Fayose, said that we can only win using the military, he said.

Mr Aluko who was the chief witness of PDP at the election petition tribunal also confessed to have lied under oath.

Mr. Aluko, who was reported to be the Chief Returning Officer for the PDP in that controversial election, was quoted as saying he was forced to come forward with the revelations because Mr. Fayose betrayed him and derailed from the original plan they had for the development of Ekiti state.

Mr. Aluko told reporters that Mr. Jonathan initially gave Mr. Fayose a first tranche of $2 million in March 2014 for the primary election.

He said cash was collected at the NNPC headquarters in Abuja and was taken to Mr. Fayoses private home in Abuja before it was moved to Ekiti.

Immediately after the primary election, we collected another $35 million from Jonathan on June 17, 2014. The money was brought to us by the former Minister of State for Defence, Senator Musiliu Obanikoro.

We all assembled at the front office of Spotless Hotel, Ado Ekiti, owned by Fayose. Thereafter, the cash was taken to a Bureau De Change in Onitsha where it was converted to N4.7 billion, Aluko added.

Below is the transcript and link to the video of the interview with journalists after the reconciliation meeting:

Fayose: In politics, there will be issues and we have to resolve issues. For him to be here with me shows that there is peace.

(Aluko cuts in): There is peace

Fayose: there is a step forward beyond what he told you. Aluko came to see after all the incidents before now.

For him to be here shows that there is peace

Question: Are you at peace with him?

Fayose: Let me tell you, I am the father of the State. For whatever has happened I am the father and I should be seen as the father. I should see it as one of those things and accommodate everybody. If I leave him to the whole world, who will be there for him? Nobody. I am his father, I am his brother, whatever the past has held for all of us, I am still his father.

Question: Have you forgiven him?

Fayose: Well, you see, whether you are talking of forgiveness, Aluko remains my boy, my son. Like I said, whatever has happened, whatever he has said in public, there is time to move forward in life.

Question: are you giving conditions?

Aluko: No, No ooo. There is no condition.

You talk about betrayers in your interview

Aluko: That what?

Question: That you were betrayed

Aluko: But then, am I not standing beside him (Fayose) now?

Question: Have now rallied round to get what you want?

Aluko: No, this is not about position. This is about peace. This is about misunderstanding. This is about talking together. This is about family coming in, this is about well-meaning Nigerians stepping in and that is what we have achieved.
There was a rowdy session at the Nasarawa State House of Assembly on Monday, following the swearing of 11 sole administrators by the state governor, Umaru Al-Makura, without the permission of the lawmakers.

PREMIUM TIMES gathered that the disagreement began at the Executive Session of the Assembly as six legislators kicked against the swearing in of the sole administrators without presenting them before the Assembly for screening.

But the other 17 lawmakers, with the exception of the Speaker who is currently on sick leave, threw their weight behind Mr. Al-Makuras action.

Our reporter observed that the rift spilled over to plenary when the Majority Leader of the House, Tanko Tunga, moved a motion, citing Order 39 subsection 1,2,3 of the House rules to suspend the six members for challenging the action of the governor and the House at a press conference.

The motion was however greeted by a stiff opposition from the aggrieved members, resulting in physical combat between the two groups.

The Deputy Speaker, Godiya Akwashiki, who presided over the session, and four members of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), were not part of the disagreement.

It was also gathered that the feud resulted in the infliction of injuries on members of the Assembly as chairs, tables and various sharp objects were used on one another.

The tension was however doused when Daniel Ogazi, a member representing Kokona East, moved a motion to suspend the House indefinitely.

Earlier at a press briefing, the chairman, House Committee on Information, Makpa Malla, who is among the six aggrieved lawmakers, said the breaking of tables at the executive session was a result of division among the lawmakers on the appointment of the sole administrators.

Mr. Malla described the appointment of the sole administrators by Mr. Al-Makura as illegal, saying the House could not watch illegality continue in the state.

As you can see, this is the executive room of the State House of Assembly, where we sit down every morning to discuss on matters that will bring development to the state and the country at large.

Categorically, I want to state here that the division which caused this chaos was as result of the appointment of the sole administrators by the governor and as a responsible House in which some of us are lawyers, we insist that the right thing must be done.

The constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Section 7 sub section 1 as amended, guarantees for a democratic system of local government and the constitution defined how the local government system, structure should be run.

That is why we are kicking against the appointment of the sole administrators which only existed in military era. As respecter for the rule of law, we must ensure that the executive also respect the rule of law, he said.

He called on the people of the state to remain calm and be law abiding, assuring that the law would take its course on the matter.
A Gudu Upper Area Court in the Federal Capital Territory on Monday sentenced two men to six weeks each in prison for stealing fish from a pond.

The convicts, Samuel Mamman, 22 and Jaffaru Bashir, 23, both of Berger Yard junction, Games Village, Abuja, pleaded guilty to the charges of criminal conspiracy and theft.

The offences contravened sections 97 and 287 of the Penal Code.

Presiding Officer of the court, Umar Kagarko, who sentenced the men after they both pleaded guilty and begged for leniency, however, gave them a fine option of N4, 000 each.

Mr. Kagarko also advised the convicts to desist from engaging in criminal activities and engage in honest paid job.

He said the parties could appeal to the High Court within 30 days if they were dissatisfied with the verdict.

Earlier, the prosecutor, Rebecca Odunjide, told the court that Patrick Okoh of Plot 112 AMAC Layout, Lugbe, reported the matter at the Wuye Police Station on March 27.

Ms. Odunjide said the convicts were caught using a fishing net to steal fish from the pond.

(NAN)
In the run-up to the NATO summit in Warsaw in July, Poland will make efforts to increase the presence of forces from the United States and other NATO members, as well as of NATO infrastructure, President Andrzej Duda said in Washington on Friday.

President Duda came to Washington to attend the Nuclear Security Summit, alongside leaders of more than 50 countries.

"As regards the NATO summit, we need to remember that the North Atlantic Alliance is not only the United States and Poland. We will talk about a broader participation of allied troops in strengthening (NATO's regional presence) and exercises, in intensifying common activities in Central and Eastern Europe, including Poland, of course," the president told Polish media.

President Duda stressed that Poland counted on more NATO infrastructure in the region. "We would like to host the North Atlantic Alliance's military infrastructure on our territory so that it could serve the Alliance's exercises, or our joint exercises, but on the other hand so that it could be used by the Polish army."

Whether this presence will be permanent or rotational is of secondary importance, according to Duda. "What I do care about is that this presence is real because to a large extent it guarantees our security and shows the Alliance's unity and strength."

Poland's view that NATO needs strengthening is shared by presidents of Turkey, Finland, Georgia and Ukraine, Duda said following his meetings with the presidents in Washington. The point is "to demonstrate that the Alliance is alive and in the case of a significant threat or an act of aggression will be able to protect the security of its members, and other countries if such a need arises."

"I believe that our proposal for the NATO summit to be decision-oriented will be fully implemented," Andrzej Duda said.

The president noted that Poland was satisfied with the United States' recent decision to send an armoured brigade to Central and Eastern Europe.

On March 30, the United States announced plans to strengthen their land forces in Europe by continuous rotational presence of armoured brigades, which will increase the total US Army presence in Europe to three brigades. The army also decided to start stocking weapons in the so-called Army Prepositioning Stocks in Europe for the needs of potential current operations.

Referring to the summit's main focus, President Duda said that Poland was at the forefront of nuclear and radiological security and reminded that Poland "practically got rid of highly-enriched uranium" in collaboration with the United States. "As part of our cooperation, we handed over this uranium and our research reactor in Swierk (..) was transformed and today uses low-enriched fuel."

Andrzej Duda also reiterated that Poland was an important producer of radiological material used in medicine. "We cover a significant part of global demand for radioactive materials used for medical purposes. Therefore this type of civil security in our country is of global significance." (PAP)
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New Maritim Hotel in Turkey

The hotel chain has taken over the 4-star hotel, Saray Regency, in the popular holiday area of Side

At the world's largest travel fair, ITB, in Berlin, the agreement for the new Maritim Hotel Saray Regency was officially signed  on 1st April 2016, Maritim Hotelgesellschaft took over the 4-star establishment on the Turkish Riviera near Side (Antalya).

Bad Salzuflen, Germany - Monday, April 04, 2016.

This 4-star hotel will operate under the Maritim brand; it has a total of 381 rooms, including family rooms, suites and two rooms equipped for physically challenged persons. Located at a distance of only 65 kilometres from Antalya airport and five kilometres from Side, the Maritim Hotel Saray Regency will offer an all-inclusive service in addition to numerous sporting and water activities, three outdoor pools with water slides, two indoor pools, as well as a spa and wellness centre for those seeking relaxation, and direct access to the beach, which is only 150 metres away.

"The Turkish Riviera holiday region offers high quality, attractive rates and an excellent environment for a varied and relaxing holiday. This popular holiday area is also peaceful. Safety concerns are only an issue in the large cities such as Istanbul. "We are sure that tourists will soon return to the Turkish beaches," explains Dr. Monika Gommolla, owner and chairperson of the advisory board of the Maritim Hotelgesellschaft. The head of the group is also the Chief Operating Officer of Hotel Management Services GmbH (HMS), which has its head office in Cologne. Since 2004, HMS has been taking care of the expansion of Maritim Hotelgesellschaft abroad.

The Maritim Hotelgesellschaft is Germanys largest owner-managed hotel group, and the companys nationwide hotel network is represented by hotels in six countries overseas: Mauritius, Egypt, Turkey, Malta, Spain and China. The groups strong position in Europe's first-class hotel industry will continue to be consolidated through continual expansion. For more information, please visit www.maritim.com.

Upon hearing the news, we can offer you the following media

New in 2016: Maritim Hotel Saray Regency, Turkey

Maritim owner and chairperson of the advisory board, Dr. Monika Gommolla, and Alper Kam, General Manager of Armas Hotels

Seal your future collaboration at the ITB on the Maritim stand: Maritim owner and chairperson of the advisory board, Dr. Monika Gommolla, and Alper Kam, General Manager of Armas Hotels.

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Good intent does not always make for good legislation.

Laws are seldom the answer to making people use common sense.

That is the case with a proposal by Assemblywoman Pamela Lampitt, D-Burlington, Camden, to make it illegal for people to walk in the street and text at the same time.

Lampitt is motivated by growing concerns about distracted walking. Most of the related injuries involve bumps, sprains or fractures from falls or running into stationary objects - or other people. But data also show that pedestrian deaths have increased, rising from 11 percent of fatalities in 2005 to 15 percent in 2014. The National Safety Council reports that injuries connected to cellphone use grew sixfold from 2005 to 2010.

The assemblywoman's proposal would bar pedestrians on public roads from using electronic devices unless they are hands-free. Penalties would be the same as for jaywalking - fines of as much as $50, 15 days in prison or both.

Lampitt says the measure is needed to discourage people from and penalize them for risky behavior.

"Distracted pedestrians, like distracted drivers, present a potential danger to themselves and drivers on the road," she says.

But that overstates the case. Distracted driving is and should be illegal. Texting while walking is usually much less dangerous and a risk mainly to the offender, who should know better.

Other states, including New York, Nevada and Illinois, have rejected such proposals, and New Jersey should do the same, if only to avoid forcing busy police to have to enforce such a ban. That's not to say the practice isn't a danger. But legislation is not the answer.

Public education would be a far better approach. Expansion of the Street Smart pedestrian-safety program coordinated by the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority with financial help from the Federal Highway Administration would be useful. It was launched this year in areas including Long Beach Island.

Even Lampitt admits she may have difficulty getting her legislation passed. It has yet to be scheduled for a hearing.

"If it builds awareness, that's OK," she told Philly.com.

Even better than implementing her legislation may be the educational benefits from the publicity it has generated.
For the New World Order, a world government is just the beginning. Once in place they can engage their plan to exterminate 80% of the world's population, while enabling the "elites" to live forever with the aid of advanced technology. For the first time, crusading filmmaker ALEX JONES reveals their secret plan for humanity's extermination: Operation ENDGAME.

Jones chronicles the history of the global elite's bloody rise to power and reveals how they have funded dictators and financed the bloodiest warscreating order out of chaos to pave the way for the first true world empire.

Watch as Jones and his team track the elusive Bilderberg Group to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III.





to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III. Learn about the formation of the North America transportation control grid, which will end U.S. sovereignty forever.





Discover how the practitioners of the pseudo-science eugenics have taken control of governments worldwide as a means to carry out depopulation.





View the progress of the coming collapse of the United States and the formation of the North American Union.

Never before has a documentary assembled all the pieces of the globalists' dark agenda. Endgame's compelling look at past atrocities committed by those attempting to steer the future delivers information that the controlling media has meticulously censored for over 60 years. It fully reveals the elite's program to dominate the earth and carry out the wicked plan in all of human history.

Endgame is not conspiracy theory, it is documented fact in the elite's own words.




More than 3,400 patients worldwide treated with HeartLight System to date

Validates definitive clinical results from U.S. multi-center pivotal study

MARLBOROUGH, Massachusetts, April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- CardioFocus, Inc. today announced that it has received premarket approval (PMA) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its HeartLight Endoscopic Ablation System for the treatment of patients with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (AF). The approved PMA submission contained comprehensive safety and effectiveness data from the Company's multi-center HeartLight U.S. Pivotal Clinical Study, a randomized, controlled study in which a total of 353 participants were randomized at 19 leading arrhythmia centers across the United States1.

Results from the pivotal trial, announced at Heart Rhythm 2015, showed that when performing a single ablation procedure using the HeartLight System, the majority of patients experienced freedom from paroxysmal AF at 12 months. In addition, both the primary safety and efficacy endpoints were met.

AF is the most common cardiac arrhythmia affecting more than 33 million people globally, and an estimated 2.7-6.1 million people in the United States. Catheter-based treatment of AF has created a market in excess of $1.5 billion, currently growing at approximately 15% annually, making it one of the largest and highest growth medical device market opportunities.

With the granting of PMA approval, CardioFocus becomes one of very few manufacturers possessing a specific indication for catheter ablation therapy of paroxysmal AF. Specifically, in the United States, the HeartLight System is now indicated for the treatment of drug refractory recurrent symptomatic paroxysmal AF.

The HeartLight System differs from other AF solutions that rely on x-ray or mapping support for guidance, by allowing the electrophysiologist to control the delivery of therapeutic laser energy, for the first time under direct visual guidance, to electrically and durably isolate the pulmonary veins (PVs). The HeartLight System is designed to provide the clinician maximum procedural flexibility with a highly compliant balloon that easily accommodates diverse PV anatomies and laser energy that the clinician delivers under direct endoscopic visualization.

Co-principal investigator Andrea Natale, MD, FACC, FHRS, Executive Medical Director at the Texas Cardiac Arrhythmia Institute, Center for Atrial Fibrillation at St. David's Medical Center in Austin, TX commented, "This was a large study and the device clearly met both primary safety and efficacy endpoints. I am confident these results, produced by physicians who were new to the laser balloon, demonstrate the promise of the HeartLight technology in routine clinical use."

Further, co-principal investigator Vivek Y. Reddy, MD, Director of Cardiac Arrhythmia Services for The Mount Sinai Hospital and The Helmsley Trust Professor of Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai observed, "Novel medical devices have a challenging path to approval and are evaluated through intensive comparison with control arm devices that are inherently more familiar to the study investigators. The short learning curve of the new HeartLight System will enable even new users to quickly and efficiently deliver durable therapy to their patients."

Frank Cuoco, MD, FACC Associate Professor of Medicine, Division of Cardiology at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, SC was one of the highest enrollers of patients in the HeartLight study, and added, "We are excited about the approval of the HeartLight endoscopically-guided laser ablation catheter. Based on our experience in the CardioFocus pivotal study and the successful results from the EU, I am confident that this new laser balloon catheter will offer our patients an outstanding treatment option for atrial fibrillation. The flexibility of the compliant balloon, which is intuitive to use under direct visual guidance, is one of its primary appeals. I found the learning curve to be very short."

On behalf of CardioFocus, Vice President of Regulatory & Clinical Affairs Burke Barrett said, "The achievement of the HeartLight System PMA approval is a major milestone and the result of dedicated teamwork among our employees, the clinical sites and study participants, and we are grateful for this remarkable support. It is also important to highlight the efficiency and professionalism of the FDA, reflected in this PMA review from filing to approval in eight months. The HeartLight System represents a novel approach to ablation for the treatment of AF and we look forward to making it available in the U.S. for electrophysiologists and their patients."

The U.S. pivotal clinical study results are added to dozens of independent studies supporting the CardioFocus HeartLight System. Several published EU single-center studies have reported high rates up to 80% of freedom from AF recurrence measured one year or more after the performance of a single ablation procedure. To date, more than 3,400 patients worldwide have been treated using the CardioFocus HeartLight System.

CardioFocus is finalizing preparations to commercialize the HeartLight System in the United States.

About the HeartLight Endoscopic Ablation System

The HeartLight Endoscopic Ablation System is a unique catheter ablation technology designed for the treatment of atrial fibrillation (AF), the most common heart arrhythmia. The system incorporates an endoscope to provide physicians with the capacity to see within the heart, and for the first time, visually direct the application of laser energy to achieve durable pulmonary vein isolation. In the United States, the HeartLight System is indicated for the treatment of drug refractory recurrent symptomatic paroxysmal atrial fibrillation. The HeartLight System consists of the HeartLight Catheter, the Endoscope, Balloon Fill Media and the HeartLight Console.

About CardioFocus, Inc.

CardioFocus, Inc. is a medical device manufacturer dedicated to advancing ablation treatment for cardiac disorders such as atrial fibrillation (AF). The HeartLight Endoscopic Ablation System is commercially available at leading institutions throughout Europe and now in the United States. CardioFocus is headquartered in Marlborough, MA, USA. For more information on the company and its technology, please visit www.CardioFocus.com.

1 Dukkipati, S.R., et. al., J Am Coll Cardiol 2015;66:135060

Company Contact: Media Contact: Renny Clark Kirsten Thomas Chief Financial Officer (508) 280-6592 (508) 658-7281 kthomas@theruthgroup.com wrclark@cardiofocus.com



Related Links

http://www.cardiofocus.com



SOURCE CardioFocus, Inc.
HATFIELD, England, April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

FOR EU MEDIA ONLY: NOT FOR SWISS AND AUSTRIAN MEDIA

Variation to extend indication of eribulin for treatment of adult patients with unresectable liposarcomas who have received prior anthracycline containing therapy (unless unsuitable) for advanced or metastatic disease[1]

Positive opinion for licence extension to Halaven (eribulin) from the European Medicines Agency's Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) is based on pivotal Phase III data which show a median 7.2 month increase in overall survival compared to dacarbazine (15.6 months versus 8.4 months, HR = 0.511; 95% CI 0.346-0.753; P=0.0006) for people with unresectable advanced or metastatic liposarcomas.[1] Eribulin is the first and only single agent therapy to show a significant survival advantage in this type of soft tissue sarcoma.[2]

"Eribulin has been shown to extend the lives of adults with specific types of progressive soft tissue sarcoma, which are rare and have a high rate of mortality. This positive opinion is welcomed by sarcoma specialists in Europe, who have few options to treat these patients. These data are a clinically meaningful result given the significant unmet need. This is the first and only time that we have been able to demonstrate an overall survival benefit in soft tissue sarcoma in a large Phase III trial, which mirrors the results for eribulin in advanced breast cancer," said Patrick Schoffski, Head of the Department of General Medical Oncology, University Hospitals Leuven, Belgium.

Eribulin shows a median overall survival improvement of 2.6 months (13.5 months versus 11.5 months) in patients with leiomyosarcomas or liposarcomas (L-type soft tissue sarcomas) when compared with dacarbazine, an active treatment option (HR=0.768, 95% CI 0.618-0.954; P=0.017).[2] There were no unexpected or new safety findings; the toxicity profile is consistent with the known safety profile of eribulin.[2] The pivotal study results were published in The Lancet, February 2016.[2]

Eribulin is a microtubule-dynamics inhibitor, structurally modified analogue of halichondrin B, originally isolated from the marine sponge Halichondria okadai. Its mode of action is distinct from other tubulin inhibitors and involves binding to specific sites on the growing positive ends of microtubules to inhibit their growth. Eribulin also induces vascular remodelling, suppresses migration and invasion of cancer cells, and reverses the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition in many cancer cell lines.

Only 50% of people with soft tissue sarcomas are expected to live five years.[3] 29,000 people are diagnosed with soft tissue sarcomas each year, approximately 1% of all cancers diagnosed in Europe.[4] Liposarcomas (adipocytic sarcomas) originate in fat cells and can occur anywhere in the body.[5]

"For the first time, people with liposarcoma, a rare and difficult to treat cancer, have an option that can significantly extend their lives. This is the second form of cancer in which eribulin has demonstrated an overall survival cancer benefit, and we remain committed to developing eribulin's potential for people with cancer, their family and carers," comments Gary Hendler, President and Commercial Director, Eisai Global Oncology Business Unit and Chairman & CEO, Eisai EMEA.

In January 2016 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved eribulin for the treatment of people in the US with unresectable or metastatic liposarcoma who have received a prior anthracycline-containing regimen. Licence was granted in Japan to extend the indication of eribulin to treat patients with soft tissue sarcomas in February 2016.

Eisai is dedicated to discovering, developing and producing innovative oncology therapies that can make a difference and impact the lives of patients and their families. This passion for people is part of Eisai's human health care (hhc) mission, which strives for better understanding of the needs of patients and their families to increase the benefits health care provides.

Notes to Editors

Halaven (eribulin)

Eribulin is the first in the halichondrin class of microtubule dynamics inhibitors with a novel mechanism of action. Structurally eribulin is a simplified and synthetically produced version of halichondrin B, a natural product isolated from the marine sponge Halichondria okadai. Eribulin is believed to work by inhibiting the growth phase of microtubule dynamics which prevents cell division.

Eribulin is currently indicated for the treatment of women with locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer who have progressed after at least one chemotherapeutic regimen for advanced disease. Prior therapy should have included an anthracycline and a taxane in either the adjuvant or metastatic setting, unless patients were not suitable for these treatments.[6]

About Soft Tissue Sarcomas

Soft tissue sarcoma is a collective term for a diverse group of malignant tumours.

Leiomyosarcomas and liposarcomas make up around 30% of all cases of soft tissue sarcomas[7] and develop from cells in the tissues that surround the body such as fat, muscle, nerves, fibrous tissues and blood.[4] Leiomyosarcomas form from cells called smooth muscle and can start anywhere in the body.[4]

Unlike other cancers such as non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), soft tissue sarcomas are mostly diagnosed with localised disease, and many are amenable to complete surgical removal, yet relapse rates can be as high as 50 percent.[8] Outcomes for patients with advanced disease are poor, with median survival around one year or less. Due to the rarity of these tumours, evidence for prognostic factors is weak and not well understood.[9]

Global Phase III Clinical Study 309[2]

Study 309 is a randomised, open-label multicentre Phase III study comparing the efficacy and safety of eribulin mesilate in 452 patients (aged 18 or over).[2]

The primary endpoint of the study was to compare overall survival between patients treated with eribulin mesilate 1.4 mg/m (equivalent to eribulin 1.23mg/m[2]) intravenously on days 1 and 8 and those treated with dacarbazine (850 mg/m, 1000 mg/m, or 1200 mg/m [dose dependent on centre and clinician] intravenously on day 1). The additional endpoints included progression free survival and quality of life.[2]

Patients were aged 18 years with advanced high/intermediate grade leiomyosarcoma or dedifferentiated, myxoid, round cell or pleomorphic variants of adipocytic sarcoma (ADI) incurable by surgery and/or radiotherapy were enrolled. Patients had ECOG status 2 and had received 2 standard systemic treatment regimens including an anthracycline.[2] Patients were randomized 1:1 to eribulin mesilate (1.4 mg/m[2], IV on D1 and D8) or dacarbazine (850-1200 mg/m2, IV on D1) every 21 days until disease progression.[2]

Overall, 452 patients (67% female; 79% <65 years) were randomized (228 eribulin; 224 dacarbazine). Median OS for eribulin and dacarbazine was 13.5 and 11.5 months, respectively (HR=0.768, 95% CI 0.618-0.954; P=0.017). PFS was 2.6 months in both arms (HR=0.877, 95% CI 0.710-1.085; P=0.229). PFS rate at week 12 was 33% and 29% for eribulin and dacarbazine, respectively.[2] Eribulin had a toxicity profile consistent with prior experience, with no unexpected or new safety findings. In this study, the most common adverse events observed in the eribulin arm were neutropenia, fatigue, nausea, alopecia and constipation, which is consistent with the known profile of eribulin.[2]

Eisai in Oncology

Our commitment to meaningful progress in oncology research, built on scientific expertise, is supported by a global capability to conduct discovery and preclinical research, and develop small molecules, therapeutic vaccines, and biologic and supportive care agents for cancer across multiple indications.

About Eisai Co., Ltd.

Eisai Co., Ltd. is a leading global research and development-based pharmaceutical company headquartered in Japan. We define our corporate mission as "giving first thought to patients and their families and to increasing the benefits health care provides," which we call our human health care (hhc) philosophy. With over 10,000 employees working across our global network of R&D facilities, manufacturing sites and marketing subsidiaries, we strive to realise our hhc philosophy by delivering innovative products in multiple therapeutic areas with high unmet medical needs, including Oncology and Neurology.

As a global pharmaceutical company, our mission extends to patients around the world through our investment and participation in partnership-based initiatives to improve access to medicines in developing and emerging countries.

For more information about Eisai Co., Ltd., please visit http://www.eisai.com.

References

1. European Medicines Agency. Summary of Opinion (post authorisation) Halaven, eribulin April 2016. Available at: http://www.ema.europa.eu/docs/en_GB/document_library/Summary_of_opinion/human/002084/WC500203965.pdf

2. Schoffski P et al. Eribulin versus dacarbazine in previously treated patients with advanced liposarcoma or leiomyosarcoma: a randomised, open-label, multicentre, phase 3 trial. The Lancet. 2016

3. National Cancer Institute - http://www.cancer.org/cancer/sarcoma-adultsofttissuecancer/detailedguide/sarcoma-adult-soft-tissue-cancer-survival-rates

4. ESMO Guidance. Available at: http://annonc.oxfordjournals.org/content/25/suppl_3/iii102.full.pdf+html Accessed: November 2015

5. Macmillan. What are soft tissue sarcomas? Available at: http://www.macmillan.org.uk/Cancerinformation/Cancertypes/Softtissuesarcomas/Aboutsofttissuesarcomas/Softtissuesarcomas.aspx . Accessed: November 2015

6. SPC Halaven (updated November 2015). Available at: http://www.medicines.org.uk/emc/medicine/24382 Accessed: December 2015

7. Cancer Research UK, Soft Tissue Sarcoma Incidence Statistics. Available at: http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/cancerstats/types/soft-tissue-sarcoma/incidence/ Accessed: November 2015

8. R. Pollock. Soft Tissue Sarcomas, A Volume in the American Cancer Society Atlas of Clinical Oncology Series. 2012

9. Fletcher et al. World Health Organization Classification of Tumours of Soft Tissue and Bone (4th Edition). Lyon: IARC Press, 2013

SOURCE Eisai
NEW YORK, April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- AdExchanger, an integrated media company devoted to the data-driven, digital marketing space, has been honored with the Jesse H. Neal Award for Best Media Brand  one of the highest distinctions in specialized journalism. This award is for overall excellence and is in recognition of AdExchanger's outstanding ability to work across a range of media, while maintaining high levels of editorial craftsmanship, journalistic enterprise and innovation.

AdExchanger was bestowed this prestigious honor because of its in-depth offerings to readers. The media company helps its audience understand marketing and advertising technology, the marketplace and data through its news, feature stories and illuminating thought leadership pieces from industry experts. It also brings readers and major players together at several conferences throughout the year across the United States.

"We are ecstatic to receive this tremendous recognition and could not have attained it without the leadership and perseverance of AdExchanger's Managing Editor Zach Rodgers," said John Ebbert, Publisher and Executive Editor of AdExchanger. "I congratulate our talented team, and thank our readers for empowering us to provide the tools for helping marketers and publishers deal with today's influx of data and technology."

"It is immensely gratifying to see the editorial team's hard work pay off and to receive this acknowledgement from the industry and our peers," said Mr. Rodgers upon receiving the Neal Award. "I want to thank Ryan Joe, Tilde Herrera, Kelly Liyakasa, Allison Schiff, Sarah Sluis, James Hercher, Nate Neal and Haley Howell for their dedication to AdExchanger and contribution to this win."

AdExchanger would like to acknowledge the three other finalists for Best Media Brand in the mid-tier category: Heavy Duty Trucking (Bobit Business Media), Tech and Learning (NewBay Media) and Supermarket News (Penton).

The Jesse H. Neal Awards, named after Jesse H. Neal, the first managing director of American Business Media, were created in 1955 to recognize editorial excellence in business-to-business media. It is considered the most important accolades in the field. Prior to this win, AdExchanger was recognized as a finalist in the Best News Coverage category for its reporting on ad blocking.

About AdExchanger

Founded in 2008, AdExchanger is an integrated media company  which includes publishing and events  devoted to the data-driven, digital marketing space. In addition, the company produces the leading conference in programmatic media, PROGRAMMATIC I/O; as well as Industry Preview, which provides an exclusive look at the year ahead in digital marketing technology; Omni.Digital, which addresses the challenges marketers face building seamless cross-channel brand experiences; and Clean Ads I/O, a conference focused on transparency in advertising.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160302/339788LOGO

SOURCE AdExchanger

Related Links

http://www.adexchanger.com


INDIANAPOLIS, April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Akeso Care Management ("AkesoCare"), a URAC-accredited international health care management company, has unveiled new corporate branding to reflect its commitment to clients.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160404/351234LOGO

A subsidiary of International Medical Group (IMG)  an administrator of global health care benefits  AkesoCare provides worldwide assistance and medical management services, including:

Emergency medical evacuations

International cost containment and Medical Concierge Service

Precertification and medical review

Wellness services and disease management

International workers compensation

Comprehensive case management

"These industry-leading services deserve a brand identity that matches the same commitment and passion shown by AkesoCare staff each day," IMG CEO Brian Barwick said. "Refreshing the company's brand will convey an even better sense of purpose to current and future AkesoCare clients."

The new brand identity includes the revision of the AkesoCare logo, which reflects the company's strong value proposition.

Now in orange, a combination of yellow and red, the logo evokes a sense of optimism and passion  the same traits AkesoCare employees convey as they coordinate both routine clinical care and emergency medical treatment for their members.

Additionally, the orange arrow in Akeso, a Greek word meaning "to heal or cure," is the mark of the company's mission to direct clients to safety, providing nothing less than the best possible medical care they can get.

As part of the rebrand, the company also launched AkesoCare Global, a new service line within AkesoCare focused entirely on providing clients the right care at the right price, globally. Established to decrease overall plan costs, AkesoCare Global uses proactive, concurrent and post-treatment strategies that help save members money and avoid unnecessary health care costs altogether.

AkesoCare Global's proprietary cost-containment strategy provides more than 30 unique, proven cost avoidance approaches. Thus far, the strategy has demonstrated an average overall savings of 49.3% in the U.S.

"In the U.S. and many other countries, there is often no correlation between the cost and quality of care  with many providers charging bogusly inflated prices at whim," said Andy Tibbets, vice president of AkesoCare. "AkesoCare Global is the watchdog of escalating costs, ensuring that clients and health care systems as a whole pay a fair price for the services and treatment delivered."

These cost-containment strategies are just one component of AkesoCare's commitment to clients. While the company's services have expanded over the years, its focus remains the same.

"One thing that has never changed is AkesoCare's focus on the health and well-being of its clients," IMG President Todd A. Hancock said. "AkesoCare touches lives every day and our new branding reflects our continued commitment to serve and protect our clients."

About AkesoCare

Founded in 1996, AkesoCare  headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.A.  has served more than 200,000 members in almost every country. The URAC-accredited international health care management company offers a comprehensive range of services, including emergency medical evacuations, cost containment, precertification, medical review, wellness services, disease management, international workers compensation, case management and more. AkesoCare's on-site clinical staff provides 24/7 assistance in the case of a medical emergency, ensuring clients always travel with Global Peace of Mind. AkesoCare is part of the International Medical Group (IMG) global family of companies.

About International Medical Group

For more than 25 years, International Medical Group  headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.A.  has provided global benefits and assistance services to millions of members in almost every country. We're committed to being there with our members wherever they may be in the world, providing them Global Peace of Mind. With 24/7 worldwide assistance and medical management services, multilingual claims administrators and highly trained customer service professionals, IMG delivers the insurance products international members need, backed by the services they want. IMG's global family of companies includes Akeso Care Management, IMG Europe Ltd., Global Response Ltd., IMG-Stop LossSM and International Medical Administrators, Inc.

SOURCE Akeso Care Management

Related Links

http://www.akesocare.com


NEW YORK, April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Boxes, the largest online community for collectors, recently partnered with PayPal to offer transaction support to both buyers and sellers around the world. Now transactions can take place across different continents and in 21 different currencies.

In addition, Boxes has introduced new ways for its community to discover collections with newly designed instant search features and new ways to find content tailored to a person's interests. You can find these new features in the latest update available today for iPhone via www.box.es/download

With over $125 million in items added by the community, Boxes has become a destination for collectors to spend their time discovering incredible content and a place to socialize with the community for hours per day.

"As the community increasingly grows and people continue to add their collections, it was very important for us to enhance the experience. Serving content according to people's interests and activity will certainly make things more enjoyable," said Founder and CEO Solomon Engel.

"There have been hundreds of thousands of items added since August 2015, so we needed to make sure anyone can buy or sell on the platform no matter where they're located in the world. With PayPal's worldwide presence, there couldn't be a better company to partner with," continued Engel.

In a first for Boxes, the all new instant search features bring items on sale at the forefront of search results with the ability to filter down by category, price, and whether items are on sale or not. This allows people to find exactly what they are looking for increasing the number of transactions within the Boxes' marketplace.

The all new discovery area displays items that are relevant to a person based on various pieces of data collected during their use of Boxes. That same data will help Boxes improve the user experience going forward as new features get built.

More information on Boxes can be found at www.box.es/press

About Boxes

Boxes is a home for collectors and a place to keep your collections with you always, organized and searchable. You can find great collections owned by others and socialize with a community of people that share your interests.

Sell and trade your things when you're ready and shop hundreds of thousands of items owned by collectors, artists, shops, and more.

Jon Linder

Media Relations

Boxes

(239) 246-3592

[email protected]

This release was issued through WebWire(R). For more information visit http://www.webwire.com.

SOURCE Boxes

Related Links

http://www.box.es/press


"Brainspace's Discovery 5.4 represents a critical leap forward in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. The ability to process native files (English, Russian, Arabic, and Mandarin Chinese) adds a critical piece of the puzzle that has been missing from collaboration, predictive analysis, and search," said Edward Scott Smith, Founding Owner of Ryswyk, LCC. "And by opening the 'black box,' Brainspace is less vulnerable to cyberattacks. This is exactly the direction that the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, encouraged in his opening remarks to Senate Armed Services Committee, February 9, 2016."

Brainspace Discovery 5 is the leader in text analysis for early case assessment and corporate investigations around the world. This update also deepens the integration with Lexis DiscoveryIQ, challenging conventional workflows by re-thinking the role of early case assessment and providing advanced analytics throughout the eDiscovery process.

Key features of Discovery 5.4 include:

Enhanced International Language Support  Discovery 5's industry-leading clustering and advanced text analytics now include Chinese, Japanese, and Farsikey additions to the growing list of natively supported languages for international investigations and government intelligence.

 Discovery 5's industry-leading clustering and advanced text analytics now include Chinese, Japanese, and Farsikey additions to the growing list of natively supported languages for international investigations and government intelligence. Enhanced Capabilities for Lexis DiscoveryIQ  EDA ingestion is now fully integrated into the Discovery 5 product workflow making the process of working with Brainspace and Lexis DiscoveryIQ smoother than ever. Additionally, Brainspace ID technology is uniquely integrated into the Lexis DiscoveryIQ platform providing intelligent, prioritized review that accelerates the process by upwards of 60-90 percent.

About Brainspace Corporation

Brainspace Corporation is a pioneer and recognized leader in helping enterprise clients derive meaning, gain insights and identify human connections in unstructured data. Our unique solutions utilize our patented Brainspace platform and are leading the industry in text analytics, accelerating institutional learning and reinventing how organizations exchange knowledge and expertise. Our customers include the Fortune 500, leading consulting firms, legal service providers, and government agencies.

For more information on Brainspace, visit the company's website at http://brainspace.com.

Jacob Morse, VP, Marketing & Strategy, 469-828-8210 ext. 7003, [email protected]

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160403/350786

SOURCE Brainspace

Related Links

http://brainspace.com


LAS VEGAS, April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Cox Automotive presented the 11th annual Barbara Cox Automotive Woman of the Year Award to Jenell Ross, president of Bob Ross Auto Group located in Centerville, Ohio. The Bob Ross Auto Group has the distinction of being the only Buick-GMC, Mercedes-Benz, Alfa Romeo and Fiat dealerships owned by an African-American woman.

Jenell Ross, president, Bob Ross Auto Group

This honor is awarded to women who demonstrate business leadership and community advocacy, as well as a commitment to advancing the automotive industry. Cox Automotive President Sandy Schwartz presented the award during the Northwood University Dealer Education Award annual breakfast on April 2 at the National Automobile Dealers Association Convention and Expo.

"Jenell has the perfect mix of industry savvy, business acumen and community mindedness," said Schwartz. "Jenell positively influences the automotive industry and leads an award-winning dealer group while advocating for important community causes. This award is named after the late Barbara Cox, one of our owners and the mother of Jim Kennedy, our chairman. Jenell shares many of the same qualities that we admire in Mrs. Cox, including being a trailblazer in a male-dominated industry. I am honored to present this award to Jenell on behalf of Cox Automotive."

Ross accepted the leadership role of the dealerships in July 1997 after the untimely death of her father Robert. P. Ross Sr. Under Ross's leadership, the Bob Ross franchises continue to rank as a leader in Buick-GMC, Mercedes-Benz, Alfa Romeo and Fiat sales and customer service.

As a committed industry leader, Ross is a member of the National Automotive Dealers Association; the National Association of Minority Automobile Dealers; General Motors Minority Dealers Association and the Chrysler Minority Dealer Association. Her national board affiliations include being the 2013 chairwoman of the American International Automobile Dealers Association, a dealer-led organization representing more than 10,000 international franchises in which she was the first African-American and the second woman to hold the position in the organization's 46-year history. In 2014, Governor John Kasich appointed Ross to the Motor Vehicle Dealers Board in Ohio.

"I accept this great honor from Cox Automotive not as applause for a job well done, but as motivation to continue to work hard to promote the importance of diversity and inclusiveness in the automobile industry," said Ross. "I am grateful to the founders of Bob Ross Auto Group, my father, the late Robert P. Ross Sr. and my mother, the late Norma J. Ross, who were early trailblazers in this effort and provided me a wonderful legacy to follow."

An active member of the Dayton community, Ross serves on several boards of foundations and community service organizations. Ross has received numerous awards for her community involvement and inspirational work both locally and nationally.

In addition to presenting the award to Ross, Cox Automotive presented a $10,000 Barbara Cox scholarship to Jaclyn Suchta, a Northwood University student with dual majors of Automotive Marketing and Management & Marketing and Advertising.

About Cox Automotive

Cox Automotive Inc. is transforming the way the world buys, sells and owns cars with industry-leading digital marketing, software, financial, wholesale and e-commerce solutions for consumers, dealers, manufacturers and the overall automotive ecosystem worldwide. Committed to open choice and dedicated to strong partnerships, the Cox Automotive family includes Autotrader, Dealertrack, Kelley Blue Book, Manheim, NextGear Capital, vAuto, Xtime and a host of other brands. The global company has nearly 30,000 team members in more than 200 locations and is partner to more than 40,000 auto dealers, as well as most major automobile manufacturers, while engaging U.S. consumer car buyers with the most recognized media brands in the industry. Cox Automotive is a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises, Inc., an Atlanta-based company with revenues of $18 billion and approximately 55,000 employees. Cox Enterprises' other major operating subsidiaries include Cox Communications and Cox Media Group. For more information about Cox Automotive, visit www.coxautoinc.com.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160330/349402

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SOURCE Cox Automotive

Related Links

http://www.coxautoinc.com


SEATTLE and DENVER, April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Diego Pellicer Worldwide (OTCQB: DPWW), a real estate and a consumer retail development company that is focused on developing Diego Pellicer as the world's first premium marijuana brand by adhering to the highest quality and standards for its facilities and its branded cannabis and non-cannabis products, announces the grand opening celebration of their flagship retail store in Seattle on May 4, 2016. A short video detailing the Diego Pellicer roll-out is available here.

"This grand opening is the culmination of several years of diligent work by our savvy, experienced executive team," said Ron Throgmartin, Diego's CEO. "This represents the initial step in the roll-out of our retail locations in those states where recreational and medical cannabis retail are a legal, burgeoning market, and serves to exemplify our unique business model that adroitly addresses the immediate hurdles in front of entrepreneurs in the cannabis industry, while simultaneously incorporating provisions for shareholder value creation as various federal regulatory restrictions are anticipated to be lifted in the future."

The company's initial focus is to acquire and develop legally compliant real estate locations for the purposes of leasing them to state licensed companies in the cannabis industry. If, as anticipated, federal regulations are lifted, DPWW through it's future acquisition agreements (where permitted by state law) with select tenants, will acquire ownership of the retail operations, securing the revenue stream and opportunities for expansion for DPWW shareholders.

The Company is hosting a Media Day as part of the grand opening and inviting all members of the media to explore the luxurious facilities. In addition, DPWW is sponsoring a Cannabis Thought Leader Series, hosted by Small Cap Nation, featuring leading experts in the cannabis field, discussing various elements of the medical and recreational cannabis sector and how entrepreneurs and investors are able to navigate these rapidly changing markets. To find out more about the series, please contact Mike Mcloughlin at address below. The video programming will be featured on key media and financial programs and platforms.

The company's second, branded retail location in Denver, Colorado is in the final stages of tenant improvement and build out and is anticipated to open in the third quarter of 2016.

About Diego Pellicer Worldwide

Diego Pellicer Worldwide Inc. is a real estate and a consumer retail development company that is focused on developing Diego Pellicer as the world's first "premium" marijuana brand by adhering to the highest quality and standards for its facilities along with both cannabis and non-cannabis products. The company's initial focus is to acquire and develop legally compliant real estate locations for the purposes of leasing them to state licensed companies in the cannabis industry. Diego does not grow or sell marijuana or marijuana infused products in the early stages of the plan.

CONTACT:

For Diego Pellicer Worldwide:

Ron Throgmartin

CEO

(516) 900-DPWW

(516) 900-3799

For Small Cap Nation:

Mike Mcloughlin

Media Coordinator

[email protected]

SOURCE Diego Pellicer Worldwide Inc.

Related Links

http://www.diegopellicerworldwide.com


With continued expansion on the horizon, First Watch Restaurants will leverage SiteZeus to augment its current processes and strategy. The addition of the cloud based location intelligence platform will allow First Watch to quickly consume, analyze & distribute actionable insights to team members across the organization. SiteZeus enables First Watch to analyze customer information, brand profiling & create predictive forecasting models on a consolidated basis or analyze each individual brand separately.

Richard Renninger, Chief Development Officer, had this to say about the new partnership, "SiteZeus is breaking new grounds when it comes to the ability to consume, analyze & distribute relevant information in the data-driven, geospatial world we now live in."

Headquartered in Bradenton, Florida, First Watch Restaurants, Inc. is the largest and fastest-growing daytime-only restaurant concept. With more than 275 restaurants in 26 states, the

First Watch portfolio also includes the restaurant brands The Egg & I, The Good Egg and Bread & Company.

About:

Based in Tampa, Florida, SiteZeus is a leading Location Intelligence technology dedicated to helping users better understand the data driven world we now exist in through geospatial analysis. The technology focuses on leveraging its proprietary big data, predictive engine to aggregate, consume and distill information in real-time. Users leverage its simple, intuitive interface to visualize & distribute information across networks.

For more information, go to: http://www.sitezeus.com/

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160404/350843

SOURCE SiteZeus

Related Links

http://www.sitezeus.com


VISTA, Calif., April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Flux Power Holdings, Inc. (OTCQB: FLUX), a developer of advanced lithium batteries for industrial applications including electric forklifts, today announced the appointment of Steve Dickson as Director of Sales and Jon Berry as Director of Operations. These senior hires, who bring significant alternative energy technology experience across a range of industrial and commercial applications, will guide Flux as it transitions into active sales, marketing and commercial production of its UL 2271-listed lithium-ion LiFT Pack batteries for walkie pallet jack forklifts.

Flux CEO, Ron Dutt, commented, "Today's appointments substantially enhance the strength of the Flux team as we prepare to launch and scale-up production and sales of our recently UL 2271-Listed Flux LiFT Pack battery solutions http://www.fluxpwr.com/products/lift-pack/. We have spent the past two years developing rugged, high-performing solutions, introducing and piloting the concept of a better performing, lower cost alternative to lead-acid batteries which have long dominated the industrial market. Those efforts helped us build strong relationships with distributors, dealers, lift equipment OEMS and importantly, customers that include some the world's leading beverage, food, grocery and distribution companies.

"Now with our substantially enhanced, UL 2271-listed storage solution nearing initial production, Flux plans to realize the commercial potential of our solutions with the support and leadership of Steve and Jon in key roles. Our fiscal 2017 year, which begins on July 1st, is set up to be a transformational year for Flux, and we thank the loyal support of all our stakeholders in helping bring us to this point."

Flux's LiFT Pack solution is designed for walkie pallet jack forklifts, widely used in warehouses and depots, on trucks and at retail locations. An estimated 120,000 electric walkie pallet jacks are currently in use in North America, powered by decades-0ld lead-acid battery technology. This equipment provides a potential total available market of almost $400 million for a portion of Class III lift equipment. UL 2271 Listing complements Flux's proven performance and total cost of ownership advantages by providing a widely recognized validation of the safety and durability of its LiFT Pack line.

Steve Dickson spent the last decade in senior sales positions concentrating on commercial and industrial electrical vehicle charging networks in Southern California and most recently selling energy storage solutions that address peak energy shaving and arbitrage applications. Steve brings a broad network of commercial contacts along with unique energy storage experience from successful positions at Powin Energy, Stem Energy, Ecotality and Infrastructure Networks. Steve earned his B.A. in Finance from Southern Connecticut State University.

Jon Berry was previously Director of Operations at Clean Air Power, an international manufacturer, distributor and vehicle converter specializing in the development of natural gas systems for trucks and heavy equipment. He also held management and engineering positions at Alstom Transport, PACCAR UK and Pilkington Aerospace. Jon earned a bachelor's degree with Honors in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Leeds University in England.

About Flux Power Holdings, Inc. (www.fluxpwr.com)

Flux Power develops advanced lithium-ion batteries for industrial uses, including its first-ever UL 2271 Listed lithium-ion "LiFT Pack" forklift batteries. Flux solutions utilize its proprietary battery management system (BMS) and in-house engineering and product design. Flux batteries deliver improved performance, extended cycle life and lower total cost of ownership than legacy lead-acid solutions. Flux sells direct and through a growing base of distribution relationships. Products include advanced battery packs for motive power in the lift equipment, tug and tow and robotics markets, portable power for military applications and stationary power for grid storage.

Flux Blog: Flux Power Currents

Facebook: FLUXPower

Twitter Company: @FLUXpwr Investor Relations: @FluxPowerIR

LinkedIn Flux Power

This release contains projections and other "forward-looking statements" relating to Flux's business, that are often identified by the use of "believes," "expects" or similar expressions. Forward-looking statements involve a number of estimates, assumptions, risks and other uncertainties that may cause actual results to be materially different from those anticipated, believed, estimated, expected, etc. Such forward-looking statements include the development and success of new products, projected sales, the Company's ability to timely obtain UL Listing for its products, the Company's ability to fund its operations, distribution partnerships and business opportunities and the uncertainties of customer acceptance of current and new products. Actual results could differ from those projected due to numerous factors and uncertainties. Although Company believes that the expectations, opinions, projections, and comments reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, Company can give no assurance that such statements will prove to be correct, and that the Company's actual results of operations, financial condition and performance will not differ materially from the results of operations, financial condition and performance reflected or implied by these forward-looking statements. Undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements and Investors should refer to the risk factors outlined in our Form 10-K, 10-Q and other reports filed with the SEC and available at www.sec.gov/edgar. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release, and Company assumes no obligation to update these statements or the reasons why actual results could differ from those projected.

Flux, Flux Power and associated logos are trademarks of Flux Power Holdings, Inc. All other third party brands, products, trademarks, or registered marks are the property of and used to identify the products or services of their respective owners.

SOURCE Flux Power Holdings, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.fluxpwr.com


THE WOODLANDS, Texas, April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Huntsman Corporation (NYSE: HUN) today announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Huntsman International LLC, entered into a new $550 million term loan B due 2023. Proceeds from the new term loan were used to repay in full its term loan B due 2017 and remaining term loan C due 2016.

The interest rate for the new term loan B is LIBOR plus 3.50% with a LIBOR floor of 0.75%. Based upon the company's current LIBOR forecast, it expects interest expense of approximately $215 million in total within 2016.

The company also extended its revolving credit facility to 2021 in the increased amount of $650 million.

Kimo Esplin, Executive Vice President and CFO, commented: "This refinancing extends our debt maturities for several years providing greater flexibility for the deployment of cash allocation. Our free cash flow generation will improve by $350 million in 2016 compared to the prior year; we expect additional improvements in subsequent years. We intend to reduce our debt by more than $500 million over the next three years with our increased free cash flow generation."

About Huntsman:

Huntsman Corporation is a publicly traded global manufacturer and marketer of differentiated chemicals with 2015 revenues of more than $10 billion. Our chemical products number in the thousands and are sold worldwide to manufacturers serving a broad and diverse range of consumer and industrial end markets. We operate more than 100 manufacturing and R&D facilities in approximately 30 countries and employ approximately 15,000 associates within our 5 distinct business divisions. For more information about Huntsman, please visit the company's website at www.huntsman.com.

Social Media:

Twitter: twitter.com/Huntsman_Corp

Facebook: www.facebook.com/huntsmancorp

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/huntsman

Forward-Looking Statements:

Statements in this release that are not historical are forward-looking statements. These statements are based on management's current beliefs and expectations. The forward-looking statements in this release are subject to uncertainty and changes in circumstances and involve risks and uncertainties that may affect the company's operations, markets, products, services, prices and other factors as discussed in the Huntsman companies' filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Significant risks and uncertainties may relate to, but are not limited to, financial, economic, competitive, environmental, political, legal, regulatory and technological factors. The company assumes no obligation to provide revisions to any forward-looking statements should circumstances change, except as otherwise required by applicable laws.

SOURCE Huntsman Corporation

Related Links

http://www.huntsman.com


LAKE FOREST, Calif., April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- As part of its continued focus on international growth and development, Johnny Rockets opened its first international food truck in La Serena, Chile to support its active market and on-the-go consumer base. Operating as an extension of the brand, Johnny Rockets food trucks offer the restaurant's world famous fresh, cooked-to-order hamburgers, sandwiches, salads and hand-spun shakes to guests in areas with high foot traffic and at special events.

"This is the first Johnny Rockets food truck to open internationally and we are thrilled to have it out and serving the community of La Serena," says James Walker, President of Global Operations and Development, Johnny Rockets. "Our franchise partners often ask for mobile options to supplement their full-service restaurants, whether that is to access pedestrian areas or offer Johnny Rockets menu items for catering or special events. As a solution, our development team worked to create a food truck that franchisees can purchase and use to support guests in their markets. We are excited about the growth opportunity these trucks provide for our international franchise partners."

Johnny Rockets food trucks are an add-on option for franchise partners, available as a convenient way for restaurants to access the community outside of the restaurants' four walls. Opening around the globe, including a truck coming soon to Nigeria, the food trucks will visit local community events and will also be available for guest to rent for private events and catering needs.

About Johnny Rockets

Johnny Rockets is an international restaurant franchise that offers high quality, innovative menu items including fresh, never frozen 100 percent beef cooked-to-order hamburgers, Veggie Boca burger, chicken sandwiches, crispy fries and rich, delicious hand-spun shakes and malts. This dynamic lifestyle brand offers friendly service and upbeat music contributing to the chain's signature atmosphere of relaxed, casual fun. Founded in 1986, Johnny Rockets operates more than 340 franchise and corporate locations in 28 countries around the world. For more information, visit www.johnnyrockets.com.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120112/LA35131LOGO

SOURCE Johnny Rockets

Related Links

http://www.johnnyrockets.com


The number has almost doubled just within the last few months. Now, according to Digital Journal, more than 2,800 cases have been consolidated in the Eastern District of Louisiana, with an additional 600 lawsuits consolidated by the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (MDL 2592).

The lawsuits include claims of serious health problems, long hospital stays, and even death as a result of uncontrollable bleeding events. According to experts, there is no known antidote at this time. For more information or assistance with finding a qualified Xarelto law firm or Xarelto lawyer, contact Legal-Bay directly at: http://lawsuitssettlementfunding.com/contact-us.php

Chris Janish, CEO of Legal-Bay, commented on the recent announcement, "We expected the Xarelto litigation to pick up steam, and with more lawsuits continuing to be filed, it seems that it's happening. We are following this litigation closely, and we want to remind patients who have been injured by the blood thinner that we are committed to helping them."

In order to receive lawsuit funding, you must have retained a Xarelto lawyer first. If you need lawsuit money or pre-settlement funding for your Xarelto claim, Legal-Bay is here to help. Legal-Bay is offering pre-settlement and settlement funding for Xarelto cases as well as other blood thinners  such as Pradaxa  and they are also providing free legal consultations for possible plaintiffs who have not yet retained a Xarelto lawyer. To learn more about Xarelto, Pradaxa, and other blood thinner cases, including services in helping you find a Xarelto lawyer or Xarelto law firm, visit: http://lawsuitssettlementfunding.com/pradaxa-settlement-funding.php

To speak with a live agent to discuss receiving pre-settlement lawsuit money or a free legal consultation on your potential Xarelto or Pradaxa blood thinner lawsuit, call Legal-Bay's toll-free hotline at: 877.571.0405.

You may also apply online at: http://lawsuitssettlementfunding.com and an agent will respond to your request shortly.

Legal-Bay LLC (and their related companies) is not a law firm and cannot provide legal advice on a consumer's case; however, Legal-Bay works with lawyers involved in mass tort litigations who can provide a free legal consultation at the consumer's direction.

Contact: Patty Kirby, COO/Head of Client Relations

Ph. 877.571.0405 Email [email protected]

SOURCE Legal-Bay LLC

Related Links

http://lawsuitssettlementfunding.com


BARCELONA, Spain and CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Oryzon Genomics (ISIN Code: ES0167733015), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company leveraging epigenetics to develop therapies in oncology and neurodegenerative diseases, today announced that the first subject has been dosed in a Phase I, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled single and multiple ascending dose program study to investigate the safety, pharmacokinetics (PK) and pharmacodynamics (PD) of its oral LSD1-MAOB dual selective inhibitor ORY-2001 in healthy subjects. The Phase I study is being conducted in Spain, pursuant to a Clinical Trial Application (CTA). With a successful study outcome, ORY-2001 is expected to proceed to a Phase II study in Alzheimer's disease patients in 1H 2017.

ORY-2001 is a highly selective dual LSD1-MAOB inhibitor. The molecule, which focuses on cognitive decline and memory loss, has a good safety profile and therapeutic index in preclinical trials. In non-transgenic AD mouse models, long-term treatments with the drug demonstrated a marked cognitive improvement. LSD1 is an epigenetic modulator, which regulates histone methylation. Epigenetic approaches to modify the progression of various neurodegenerative diseases focus on producing changes in patterns of gene expression in neurons and also in glia cells and are of interest for the pharmaceutical industry.

Oryzon is further exploring the potential of ORY-2001 in other neurodegenerative diseases, such as Huntington's disease, Parkinson's disease and other dementias. Dr. Cesar Molinero, Oryzon's Chief Medical Officer, commented: "With our clinical trials on LSD1 inhibitors, we are gaining very valuable information of the potential of Histone Demethylase inhibitors in human diseases beyond oncology and we are particularly interested in the potential of ORY-2001 in neurodegenerative and neuroinflammatory diseases".

About Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia in adults. It is estimated to affect 5.3 million Americans and over 30 million people worldwide with an average course of 8-12 years. It is projected that the disease prevalence will double over the next 20 years. Marketed products address some of the symptoms, but there are no treatments currently available. The economic cost of Alzheimer's is expected to grow in the coming years. Projections of the direct cost of Alzheimer's disease in adults over 65 could balloon to $1.1 trillion in 2050 (in today's dollars) with a total of $20.8 trillion in medical costs between 2015 and 2050, according to the Alzheimer's Association.

About Oryzon

Founded in 2000 in Barcelona, Spain, Oryzon (ISIN Code: ES0167733015) is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company considered as the European champion in Epigenetics. The company has one of the strongest portfolios in the field and a clinical asset already partnered with ROCHE. Oryzon's LSD1 program is currently covered by 20 patent families and has rendered two compounds in clinical trials. In addition, Oryzon has ongoing programs for developing inhibitors against other epigenetic targets. The company has a strong technological platform for biomarker identification and performs biomarker and target validation for a variety of malignant and neurodegenerative diseases. Oryzon's strategy is to develop first in class compounds against novel epigenetic targets through Phase II clinical trials, at which point it is decided on a case-by-case basis to either keep the development in-house or to partner or out-license the compound for late stage development and commercialization. The company has offices in Barcelona and Cambridge, Massachusetts. For more information, visit www.oryzon.com.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This communication contains forward-looking information and statements about Oryzon Genomics, S.A., including financial projections and estimates and their underlying assumptions, statements regarding plans, objectives and expectations with respect to future operations, capital expenditures, synergies, products and services, and statements regarding future performance. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally identified by the words "expects", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates" and similar expressions.

Although Oryzon Genomics, S.A. believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, investors and holders of Oryzon Genomics, S.A. shares are cautioned that forward-looking information and statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties, many of which are difficult to predict and generally beyond the control of Oryzon Genomics, S.A., that could cause actual results and developments to differ materially from those expressed in, or implied or projected by, the forward-looking information and statements. These risks and uncertainties include those discussed or identified in the documents sent by Oryzon Genomics, S.A. to the Comision Nacional del Mercado de Valores, which are accessible to the public.

Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. The auditors of Oryzon Genomics, S.A, have not reviewed them. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date they were made. All subsequent oral or written forward-looking statements attributable to Oryzon Genomics, S.A. or any of its members, directors, officers, employees or any persons acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statement above. All forward-looking statements included herein are based on information available to Oryzon Genomics, S.A. on the date hereof. Except as required by applicable law, Oryzon Genomics, S.A. does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Spain: The Company: ATREVIA Ms. Anna K Baran Ana Melgar/Patricia Cobo IR Director +34 91 564 07 25 +44 (0) 752 1083 006 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]



SOURCE Oryzon Genomics

Related Links

http://www.oryzon.com


COLUMBUS, Ohio, April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society, is delighted to now offer its latest patent workflow solution, PatentPak, in both SciFinder and STN.

Third-party research indicates the most common challenges faced when evaluating global patents includes the extensive length and complexity of these documents, as well as difficulty finding information in languages researchers know.

By leveraging the extensive intellectual analysis of CAS scientists, vital chemistry in patents is identified and quickly located using PatentPak. A recent publication ( Senger, et. al. 2015) suggests 40-50 percent of chemistry in patents is missed using automated approaches. PatentPak allows you to:

Rapidly track down the specific location of chemical information in patents, with interactive links to substances;

Instantly and securely access full-text patents from major patent offices; and

Find an equivalent patent in a familiar language.

Research professionals across a global spectrum of prestigious commercial, government and academic institutions, including Eli Lilly and Company, the University of Alabama, and universities in Israel and Turkey, among others, are already benefiting from efficiencies using PatentPak.

"The University of Alabama Libraries selected PatentPak to more quickly access chemical information within the patent literature," said Vincent F. Scalfani, Ph.D., science and engineering librarian at The University of Alabama. "PatentPak will also make patent literature more accessible to new researchers, including undergraduate students. Incorporating the full-text PDF and indexed chemical structures directly within SciFinder removes many of the barriers associated with discovering and retrieving patent chemical information, streamlining information discovery."

PatentPak provides access to nearly 9 million full-text patents (and growing) across 31 major patent offices. The interactive patent chemistry viewer has built-in search functionality facilitating fast, efficient access to the exact locations of information a researcher needs. PatentPak was initially introduced with access through SciFinder last year, and access in STN was made available in January.

"Intellectual property professionals told us they were eagerly awaiting the addition of PatentPak in STN," said Craig Stephens, vice president of sales at CAS. "As patents continue to grow in volume, length, and complexity, the amount of time patent examiners, analysts, and attorneys are spending hunting through page after page to find a few sentences of interest presents a tremendous opportunity for increased efficiency. By taking users immediately to the location of the key chemical information they need, PatentPak saves hours, enhancing productivity and providing a competitive edge in the race to protect novel inventions."

About CAS

CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society, is dedicated to the ACS vision of improving people's lives through the transforming power of chemistry. The CAS team of highly trained scientists finds, collects and organizes all publicly disclosed substance information, creating the world's most valuable collection of content that is vital to innovation worldwide. Scientific researchers, patent professionals and business leaders around the world rely on a suite of research solutions from CAS that enable discovery and facilitate workflows to fuel tomorrow's innovation. For more information, please visit CAS.org.

SOURCE CAS

Related Links

http://CAS.org


PITTSBURGH, April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Pennsylvania Health Secretary Dr. Karen Murphy today joined Acting U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health Karen DeSalvo for a day-long conference on "Public Health 3.0," aimed at building innovative partnerships to improve health care for all Pennsylvanians.

The event, which took place on the first day of National Public Health Week, spotlighted the ways public health advocates are working across sectors to build partnerships with a common goal of improving health outcomes.

"This event kicks off a new holistic approach to public health that embraces innovative solutions by bringing together health care providers, local communities, and all levels of government," said Secretary Murphy. "It's very different from the traditional 'top down' approach to improving public health and I believe will affect long term change for the better."

The conference brought together representatives from a variety of sectors, including federal, state and local public health officials, business leaders, nonprofit and urban planning organizations.

Secretary DeSalvo, the conference's host, emphasized the need for public health agencies and advocates to serve as leaders in local communities.

"At a time in this country when, too often, your zip code can be the most accurate determinant of your health, we must work together toward solutions  empowering local leadership and building strong, community-based coalitions," said DeSalvo. "Public Health 3.0 is a chance to bring people from across sectors, like the terrific leaders here in Allegheny County, together for a discussion on how we can build healthier communities throughout America."

Sessions focused on enhanced leadership and workforce skills, cross-sector partnerships, accreditation and infrastructure, data and analytics, and funding.

Additionally, there will be a spotlight on the Live Well Allegheny initiative, which will be led by Director of the Allegheny County Health Department Dr. Karen Hacker, as well as a panel session on the role of both state and big-to-small local public health departments.

Other Department of Health officials attending the conference included Deputy Secretary of Health Innovation Dr. Lauren Hughes and Deputy Secretary of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Dr. Loren Robinson.

Public Health 3.0 is a movement in public health that emphasizes cross-sectoral environmental, policy and systems-level actions that directly affect the social determinants of health.

MEDIA CONTACT: Amy Worden, 717-787-1783

SOURCE Pennsylvania Department of Health

Related Links

http://www.state.pa.us


NEW YORK, April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Fourth Annual Aerospace Manufacturing Conference presented by Penton's SpeedNews Conferences will take place in Charleston, South Carolina on May 3-4, 2016 at the Belmond Charleston Place hotel. To register, visit http://speednews.com/aerospace-manufacturing-conference.

"Our Aerospace Manufacturing Conference responds with a dynamic, face-to-face forum focused on helping industry professionals gain critical insights that can improve their operations. We started this event three years ago in Charleston, and we are excited to bring our event and delegates back to this region," said Joanna Speed, Managing Director, A&D Events, Penton Aviation.

"SpeedNews is a leading voice for our industry, and we're honored and proud that they have selected South Carolina once again for this important Conference for the aerospace industry. The industry is watching the growth in this region of North America, arguably the fastest-growing regional concentration of aerospace and aviation companies in the world," said Steve Townes, Chairman, SC Aerospace and CEO, Ranger Aerospace.

The Aerospace Manufacturing Conference will bring together the leaders of major manufacturers and suppliers in the aerospace industry to discuss manufacturing capabilities and processes, innovation within manufacturing, modern machining technologies and automation, as well as industry trends. The Conference themes are very much operational in nature, featuring speakers and panelists with tremendous hands-on manufacturing experience. Scheduled speakers include representatives from:

Accurus Aerospace

Alcoa Forgings & Extrusions

ARIES Manufacturing

Ascent Aerospace

Boeing

Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing

Dassault Systemes

Gardner Aerospace

GKN Aerospace

Hexcel

ICF International

Kennametal

Lockheed Martin Aeronautics

Makino

Moog Aircraft Group

Motormindz

Okuma America

Peaxy

Pratt & Whitney

SC Aerospace

Siemens PLM Software

Spirit Aerosystems

Stratasys

Toray Composites (America), Inc.

The Conference will focus on all key manufacturing aspects including tooling, machining, equipment, components, electronics, advanced materials and manufacturing, engineering, and technological systems. The agenda will cover what is really behind the hype of Internet of Things (IoT), a major theme across Penton impacting many industry sectors including aviation; as well as Additive Manufacturing (AM), Big Data, and how the Auto and Aero industries learn from each other.

Delegates will be updated with real examples of products and knowledge that will help and inspire them to improve the productivity and profitability for their own operations. Delegates will also have the chance to participate in a tour of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner final assembly facility.

The Aerospace Manufacturing Conference will provide company presidents, vice presidents, directors, C-level executives, general managers, procurement, production, sales and marketing, R&D, engineers, investment, and quality control professionals, the opportunity to network and gain a full understanding of the aerospace manufacturing industry.

Event sponsors include Mazak, Dassault Systemes, Siemens, Charleston Regional Development Alliance, Piedmont Triad International Airport, ARIES Manufacturing, Crosspoint, Okuma, K&L Gates, and the Aero Metals Alliance.

For information on registration, promotional and advertising opportunities, contact Joanna Speed at +1-424-465-6501 or [email protected]. On Twitter, follow @speednewsconf (https://twitter.com/speednewsconf). For information about all SpeedNews events, visit http://speednews.com/all/conference.

ABOUT PENTON'S AVIATION WEEK NETWORK

Penton's Aviation Week Network is the largest multimedia information and services provider for the global aviation, aerospace and defense industries that has a database of 1.2 million professionals around the world. Industry professionals rely on Aviation Week for analysis, marketing and intelligence. Customers include the world's leading manufacturers, suppliers, airlines, business aviation operators, militaries, governments and other organizations that serve this global market. The product portfolio includes Aviation Week & Space Technology, AC-U-KWIK, Aircraft Blue Book, Airportdata.com, Air Charter Guide, Air Transport World, AviationWeek.com, Aviation Week Intelligence Network, Business & Commercial Aviation, ShowNews, SpeedNews, Fleet and MRO forecasts, global maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) tradeshows and aerospace & defense conferences.

ABOUT PENTON

Penton is an innovative information services company that empowers nearly 20 million business decision makers in markets that drive more than 12 trillion dollars in purchases each year. Our products inform with rich industry insights and workflow tools; engage through dynamic events, education and networking; and advance business with powerful marketing services programs. Penton is the way smart businesses buy, sell and grow.

Headquartered in New York, Penton is privately owned by MidOcean Partners and Wasserstein & Co., LP. For more information, visit http://www.penton.com or follow us on Twitter @PentonNow.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Joanna Speed

SpeedNews

424-465-6501

[email protected]

@speednewsconf

Facebook.com/SpeedNews

linkedin.com/company/speednews

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SOURCE Penton

Related Links

http://www.penton.com


HOUSTON, April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Prince International Corporation ("Prince" or the "Company") will post financial and operating results for the quarter ended December 31, 2015 to the Company's Intralinks investor site on Friday, April 8, 2016.

Holders of the Company's Senior Secured Notes, prospective investors, and members of the financial community who would like access to the Company's Intralinks site should contact Ann Marie Boatcallie by email at [email protected] or by phone at 832-241-2168.

Prince will host a conference call for holders of its Senior Secured Notes and other members of the financial community on Tuesday, April 12, 2016 at 10:30 am ET. A replay of this conference call will also be available through May 12th. The dial-in information for both the conference call and the replay has been posted to the Company's Intralinks website. Participants for the conference call are requested to dial in five to ten minutes prior to the scheduled start time.

Prince International Corporation is a privately held, portfolio company of Palladium Equity Partners.

About Prince

Prince International Corporation ("Prince") is a leading, global, value-added distributor of specialty mineral products and additives used across a broad spectrum of niche industrial applications. Prince purchases raw materials from global mining companies and other suppliers and leverages its technical, processing and blending abilities to develop value-added products for customers, who often have unique product specifications, in specialty markets around the world  with industrial applications in brick, glass, agriculture, appliances, foundry, refractory and steel, and oil and gas. Headquartered in Houston, Texas, with production facilities and sales offices worldwide, Prince is able to supply its customers with quality products on a global basis. The Company's web site can be accessed at www.princecorp.com.

Investor Contact

Ann Marie Boatcallie

832-241-2168

[email protected]

Media Contact

Peter Hill

Kekst and Company

212-521-4800

[email protected]

SOURCE Prince International Corporation

Related Links

http://www.princecorp.com


NEW DELHI, April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- #1 SEO Company in India, Profit by Search is now offering search engine optimization services employing Google Analytics 360 suite. An enterprise-class solution for a multi-screen world, Google Analytics 360 suite is features the capability to deliver customer and advertising insights that are needed for setting marketing strategy and generating sales. This Analytics suite can benefit SEO marketers in simplifying their tedious tasks of unifying and syndicating marketing and advertising data across different channels. The new features that the search engine giant has integrated in this suite include a data management platform, on-site testing tool, enterprise-wide data analysis and visualization, tag manager, enterprise analytics and attribution. Google Analytics 360 suite is basically a new name for Google Analytics Premium and allows marketers to integrate with other Google products like AdWords, the Google Display Network and Google BigQuery. Moreover, it can be easily paired with DoubleClick Bid Manager and help business owners in reaching potential customers at the opportune moment with auto-optimized bidding. Business owners seeking to gain new customers for their products and services can count on the professionals of the firm for their varied needs.

Profit by Search is a leading provider of SEO services in India and has been in this business since 2000. Now, the company is utilizing Google Analytics 360 suite to render top quality services that can benefit their clients in enhancing the ROI of their business. Those interested in availing their services can reach them by filling a simple contact form present on their official website, ProfitbySearch.com. In addition to providing the services of SEO in India, their experts also provide a number of other services like search engine marketing, pay per click management, social media marketing, email marketing and many others.

Talking more about their SEO services, one of their representatives stated, "Profit By Search combines rich content and effective web site design with intelligent applications to provide you & your potential customers with a quality experience and this experience is a result of an entire process of business, creative and technical understanding. We are proud of our ability of working closely with our customers to achieve excellent results. Using a methodology based on our experience, we identify the ideal mix of strategies to accomplish your specific goals  ensuring both cost-effective marketing solutions and quality results."

About Profit by Search

One of the premier providers of SEO Services in India, Profit By Search not only serves the purpose of increasing a client's website visibility on major search engines, but it also helps solve various technical problems of a website like providing a client with unique content to keep the website away from getting slapped by the Google Panda, improvises on methods to improve lost rankings, helps fight better with the bounce rates, maximizes the rate of return on investment for advertising budget and many other such services.

For more details, please visit https://www.profitbysearch.com

Media Contact:

Al

[email protected]

646-688-5525

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SOURCE Profit By Search

Related Links

http://www.profitbysearch.com


CALGARY, April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Sanjel Corporation ("the Company" or "Sanjel") is pleased to announce the signing of two transformative agreements for its sale to two separate North American pressure pumping providers.

Sanjel has signed a definitive agreement for the sale of its Canadian fracturing, coiled tubing and cementing assets to STEP Energy Services Ltd. ("STEP"), an ARC Financial Corp. sponsored company. STEP is a privately owned, technically focused, oilfield services company providing specialized coiled tubing and associated pressure pumping equipment and fracturing services.

Concurrently, Sanjel is also pleased to announce that it has signed a definitive agreement for the sale of its United States fracturing, coiled tubing and cementing assets to Liberty Oilfield Services ("Liberty"). Liberty is an innovative oilfield service company providing specialized stimulation services to optimize well production. Liberty currently operates in the Williston, DJ and Powder River basins and is headquartered in Denver, CO.

Sanjel also announced today that it has initiated a Court-supervised restructuring process to facilitate the closing of the two sale agreements. The Company today obtained an initial order (the "initial Order") from the Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act ("CCAA"). The Court appointed PricewaterhouseCoopers Inc. as Monitor of Sanjel during this process. The Company has also applied for recognition of the Initial Order under Chapter 15 of the US Bankruptcy Code.

The Company anticipates operating on an uninterrupted basis throughout the CCAA process until closing of the transactions. The Company has arranged interim financing for this purpose with its existing twelve member banking syndicate. Closing of the sale transactions are anticipated over the next 30 days.

Over the past 34 years, Sanjel has been providing premium pressure pumping services to a wide variety of oil and gas companies in North America. Its reputation for best in class service quality and Health, Safety and Environmental performance will continue with its new owners in Canada and the United States.

PricewaterhouseCoopers Inc. will make information relevant to the restructuring process available on their website at www.pwc.com/ca/sanjel.

SOURCE Sanjel Corporation
SEATTLE, April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Sound Pharmaceuticals, a leader in developing novel drug treatments for diseases of the inner ear, announced today that Jonathan Kil, MD, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, has been invited to present at the 15th Annual Needham & Company Healthcare Conference on Wednesday, April 13th, 2016 at 11:20 a.m. EST in New York, NY.

Dr. Kil will share an update on the Company's milestone achievements from the past year, along with the strategic objectives for its research and development programs for 2016 and beyond. In addition, he will highlight some of the significant market opportunities within the field of otolaryngology, specifically, otology and neurotology.

Needham & Company's 15th Annual Healthcare Conference is a high-impact forum for institutional investors and venture capital firms to hear the latest updates from senior management teams of both leading public and private companies in the Biotechnology, Specialty Pharmaceuticals, Medical Technology and Diagnostics sectors.

About Sound Pharmaceuticals

Sound Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (SPI) is a pioneer in otologic drug development aimed at treating sensorineural diseases of the inner ear. SPI is developing therapeutics that will enable doctors and patients to prevent and treat various forms of hearing loss and tinnitus including ototoxicity and Meniere's disease. Sensorineural hearing loss is the third largest disease and affects 50 million Americans. SPI is a privately held biotechnology company headquartered in Seattle, WA.

Contact:

Sound Pharmaceuticals

Paul Rickey, CFO

[email protected]

www.soundpharma.com

SOURCE Sound Pharmaceuticals

Related Links

http://www.soundpharmaceuticals.com


PRINCETON, N.J., April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Streebo, Inc., announced today that it has completed the spin-off of its Pharmaceutical Software and Consulting Solutions practice to a new company called qordata.

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qordata is a data management and business intelligence startup that provides software and consulting solutions to Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences corporations in the areas of compliance, marketing and commercial operations. qordata will inherit Streebo's Open Payment Analytics platform that serves over 40 leading customers in the Pharma and Life Sciences industry.

"The decision to separate into two companies reflects our ongoing commitment to implementing bold changes in order to deliver sustainable growth and enhanced value to our customers," said Usman Memon, managing partner and co-founder, Streebo, Inc.

qordata will be led by CEO Mohammad Ovais and will be headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey. The main driving force behind this move is innovation and commitment to become leaders in data management & business intelligence sector for Pharmaceutical and Life science corporations. qordata's core strategy will focus on strengthening its pharmaceutical and life science industry portfolio.

"We expect to work closely with pharma, life sciences, medical device and diagnostic companies to provide software and solutions that solve critical business problems. Now with a targeted focus, qordataseeks to accelerate innovation and become the go-to partner for pharma companies on data and information management," said Mohammad Ovais, CEO, qordata.

The two businesses operate in distinct markets and possess unique and compelling growth prospect. In addition, Streebo believes that the separation will result in other material benefits to the standalone companies, including:

Greater management focus on the distinct business of pharmaceutical and life science software and consulting products.

Benefit from independent management teams, each equipped with the resources, strategic autonomy and financial flexibility.

About qordata: qordata is a data management and business intelligence startup that provides software and consulting solutions to Pharmaceutical and Life science corporations. qordata's core competencies and expertise are in data analytics, integration, master data management and big data. Open Payments Analytics will be rebranded as qordata insights.

About Streebo: Streebo, headquartered in Houston, Texas, is an IBM Business Partner and a global provider of automated solutions. Streebo partners with its clients to streamline complex business processes and applies software automation techniques to rapidly assemble business solutions.

Contact Information:

Zafar Ahmed

Streebo, Inc.

(888) 906-38282

[email protected]

This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com

SOURCE qordata

Related Links

http://www.qordata.com


ISLAND PARK, N.Y., April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- SunPower by EmPower Solar is now offering the SunPower Equinox system to New York homeowners. It is the first residential solar solution in the nation in which every major component has been designed and engineered by one company to work seamlessly together, delivering unbeatable power, long-term performance and curb appeal. With a typical SunPower Equinox installation, only the solar panels and a Smart Energy management device are visible, reflecting SunPower's minimalist architectural approach at the system level.

"The SunPower Equinox system is a game changer for home solar," said Howard Wenger, SunPower president, business units. "This powerfully elegant solution produces 70 percent more energy with 70 percent fewer visible parts compared to conventional solar, and we're backing it by the best combined power and product warranty in the industry. SunPower continues to raise the innovation bar by delivering solutions that make the complex simple, reducing costs, speeding installation, and increasing satisfaction for our customers - while improving quality and aesthetics."

Key SunPower Equinox elements and homeowner benefits include:

High-efficiency SunPower solar panels

SunPower  microinverters

The low-profile, all-black SunPower InvisiMount  mounting system

SunPower's EnergyLink ecosystem

An industry-leading, 25-year product and power warranty

"With SunPower Equinox, we now have more than just superior solar panels to offer, as each key component of the system comes from SunPower," said David G. Schieren, CEO, SunPower by EmPower Solar. "This innovative solution is covered by the best warranty available from a single company, giving our clients peace of mind that their complete system will perform as expected over its long lifetime."

SunPower by EmPower Solar recently launched a consumer awareness campaign called "Demand Better Solar" reminding homeowners that solar technology differs widely from brand to brand. Not all solar systems deliver the most energy, look as elegant on a roof, or are guaranteed to last as long as promised. However, with the SunPower Equinox system, U.S. homeowners can have the best solar technology available today.

For the original SunPower Equinox announcement, click here.

To learn more, visit the latest SunPower by EmPower Solar blog post titled, "What does it mean to Demand Better Solar?" at empower-solar.com/blog/demandbettersolar.

About SunPower by EmPower Solar

An award-winning solar engineering and installation company, SunPower by EmPower Solar offers high performance solar energy and storage systems for residential, commercial and non-profit customers in New York. Since 2003, the company has installed more than 1,300 solar power systems in the tri-state area, delivering significant electricity savings and a superior customer experience.

Media Contact: Tara Bono, 516-837-3459 ext 157, [email protected]

SOURCE SunPower by EmPower Solar

Related Links

http://www.empower-solar.com


"Linda, Robert, and Rich are leading the ongoing digital revolution that is transforming the business landscape," said Dr. M. Moshe Porat, Dean of the Fox School. "They join a proud and rich tradition of leadership exhibited by previous Fox IT Award recipients. The IT Awards, now in its 16th year, continue to recognize the best and brightest role models."

Linda Dillman, Chief Information Officer, QVC, will receive the Fox IT Leader Award for her leadership in the use and development of IT in business. Dillman helped to develop and implement QVC's global technology vision and strategy. Under Dillman's leadership, QVC's IT organization works to deliver a high-quality, seamless, multiplatform, engaging shopping experience for customers.

Dillman also serves on the board of directors for Cerner, the leading U.S. supplier of healthcare information technology solutions, and she was recently appointed to the GS1 US Board of Governors.

A seasoned leader, Dillman was recently named to the Top 10 Women in Tech list by Chain Storage Age magazine and a 2015 Top IT Pro by the Philadelphia Business Journal. She has also been recognized as a Computerworld Premier 100 IT leader for 2015 and a Most Powerful Women in Cable by CableFAX magazine in 2014 and 2015. Additionally, Dillman was named to Fortune's "50 Most Powerful Women in Business" for five consecutive years.

Robert Moore, Co-founder and CEO, RJMetrics, a SaaS company that builds data infrastructure and analytics tools, will receive the Fox IT Innovator Award for his innovation in applying technology and insights to create business opportunities. Using his skills in data analysis, entrepreneurship and software development, Moore's RJMetrics seeks to inspire and empower the data-driven community. Prior to launching RJMetrics, Moore served on the Investment Team of Insight Venture Partners in New York. As a writer and speaker, Moore has been featured by the New York Times, Forbes, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, TEDxPhilly, EnterConf, and Business of Software.

Moore supports local startups, serving on the leadership team of Philly Startup Leaders, and mentoring burgeoning Philadelphia entrepreneurs through the PSLU accelerator program.

Rich Brennen, North American CIO Practice Leader and Partner of Spencer Stuart, will receive the Fox IT Award for Distinguished Alumni for his work in the IT field and contributions to the community, industry and Temple. Brennen earned an MBA from the Fox School of Business in 1978. After graduation, he spent 15 years with IBM, where he played an instrumental role in building the company's international information technology strategy and consulting practice. At Spencer Stuart, Brennen expanded its information officer position, leveraging his consulting talents to recruit 250 chief information officers for several Fortune 500 companies.

Brennen is currently a member of the Fox School Dean's Council and Temple University's Conwell Society.

"The IT Awards recipients are superb role models for our students and an inspiration to our faculty for their role in leading the new digital centric economy," said Dr. Munir Mandviwalla, founding chair of the MIS department.

Recipients are nominated and selected by a committee comprised of senior leadership at Fox, the Fox IT Advisory Board, and previous recipients.

Contact:

Christopher A. Vito

Temple University

215-204-4115, [email protected]

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SOURCE Temple University's Fox School of Business

Related Links

http://ibit.temple.edu/


LONE TREE, Colo., April 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Applications Group of North America (AGONA), Inc. announces its new internship program to help train tomorrow's I.T. Professionals by giving them exposure to Oracle JD Edwards (JDE) Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, and to related solutions based on the Enterprise Imaging Platform by Canon Information and Imaging Solutions, Inc. (CIIS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Canon U.S.A., Inc.

AGONA, Inc. is on the forefront of developing tomorrow's JD Edwards consultants today, through a new and comprehensive internship program with Denver area institutions of higher learning such as Colorado State University, University of Denver, Argosy University (Denver campus) and many more. The internship program, designed for business, finance and Information Technology majors, will start in the summer of 2016, and will consist of an 8-week hands-on training and development on Oracle JD Edwards systems as well as introduction to third party integrations. Upon completion of the program, successful interns will be provided an opportunity to apply for placement by AGONA, Inc. with various leading firms as functional and technical JD Edwards's consultants.

AGONA, Inc. a premier consulting firm that is dedicated to providing clients with integrated solutions for the Oracle JD Edwards ERP systems, brings to bear the latest that JD Edwards has to offer with net new installations as well as upgrades, to provide clients new features of the current JDE software releases. AGONA, Inc. also provides additional value to their clients by offering related solutions from CIIS, which extend JDE's functionality by automating document-based workflows such as those found in the Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable processes.

When asked about what sets AGONA, Inc. apart from other JDE Consultancies, F. Duke Crosby-Attipoe, Chief Operating Officer answered, "Our clients have access to dedicated JDE professionals with exceptional industry and product knowledge. We are committed to providing hands-on solutions to achieve our clients' business objectives and goals. In addition to the extensive experience in technical and functional development, system implementations, software release upgrades, and customized JDE training, our implementation team brings strong project management skills and business process knowledge to all projects. Our goal is to help our clients become efficient in managing their business systems while maintaining compliance to avoid risks."

When CIIS was asked about why they partnered with AGONA, Inc., Tetsuhiro Minamide, President, Canon Information and Imaging Solutions, answered, "Like Canon, AGONA, Inc. is committed to excellence and integrity, and strives to know the needs of our clients; with the goal of delivering the right solution that provides significant business value to the client's organization. CIIS is pleased to partner with such an innovative company as the Applications Group of North America."

AGONA, Inc. is a Platinum Oracle Partner, and CIIS Solutions Partner, headquartered in Lone Tree, Colorado, serving clients throughout the United States, specializing in JD Edwards consulting. Additional information about the Applications Group of North America (AGONA), Inc., its programs and mission can be found at www.agonainc.com

About Canon Information and Imaging Solutions, Inc.

Canon Information and Imaging Solutions, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Canon U.S.A., Inc., was formed to harness the power of Canon's in-depth knowledge of information flow and world-class imaging technology. Utilizing Canon's vast collection of imaging technology and development tools along with select third-party enterprise applications, Canon Information and Imaging Solutions delivers compelling market-driven solutions in the area of business process automation, procure-to-pay & order-to-cash automation, records management, and print management. Additional information about the company, its programs and mission can be found at www.ciis.canon.com

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SOURCE Canon Information and Imaging Solutions, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.ciis.canon.com


The survey respondents, spread throughout the U.S. and Europe, remain committed to Hybrid IT strategies despite growing skills gaps and the potential costs and complexity of mixing cloud resources with existing in-house IT environments. A full 73 percent agreed that running a Hybrid IT environment was necessary to staying competitive, and 74 percent were willing to invest to ensure they have the skill sets within their organization to successfully run their Hybrid IT estate.

The cost of Hybrid IT varies widely, according to the study. Half of organizations saw costs increase, at an average of $291,000 per year. The other half, however, have seen significant cost savingsan average of $218,700 per year overall. Despite the costs, almost half (45 percent) were driven to Hybrid IT as part of an evolution toward the cloud, with 38 percent responding that it offered a competitive advantage. A third of respondents pointed to changing customer and workforce demands that have necessitated a Hybrid IT approach.

"Sungard AS research shows that Hybrid IT is part Jekyll, part Hyde for global businesses," said Keith Tilley, executive vice president, global sales & customer services management, Sungard Availability Services. "Organizations note that Hybrid IT improves customer satisfaction, enables flexibility, and is often essential to their business. Yet many struggle to manage, and even understand, these complex environments. What's most striking about the responses, however, is that many organizations are eager to invest in Hybrid IT, and the skills to support it, because it offers such a distinct competitive advantage."

Often, combining cloud environments with on-premises systems is necessary for legacy applications or as part of mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Nearly half of respondents (49 percent) cited mission-critical legacy applications that they needed to keep running as a key reason why they employ Hybrid IT. The second most common answer, at 48 percent, was M&A activity that left the organization with multiple IT systems.

Many of these organizations need help managing their Hybrid IT. Some 41 percent of respondents rated their organization's current IT estate as "very complex" or "extremely complex." Only 3 percent said their environment was "not at all complex." More than a third (34 percent) admitted they don't fully understand their firm's IT architecture.

One reason for the complexity might be that businesses lack the skills needed for Hybrid IT success. A full 89 percent of global respondents said their team lacks at least one skill, and two in five feel their organization isn't up to managing the complexity of their Hybrid IT estates. When asked what skills they lacked, 37 percent cited the ability to respond to security issues  the most commonly reported need. More than a quarter of organizations said that they needed to fill skills gaps in managing different IT systems across different departments (28 percent), and integrating and maintaining public and private cloud environments (27 percent each).

Explore both the Jekyll and Hyde sides of Hybrid IT by visiting Sungardas.com/JekyllandHyde for the full research results.

About the research

Interviews were carried out in September and November 2015 by Vanson Bourne on behalf of Sungard Availability Services. 700 interviews were conducted altogether: 200 from the US, 150 from the UK, 150 from France, and 100 each from Sweden and Ireland. The research spoke to IT decision makers in businesses of over 500 employees across a variety of sectors  including financial services, business process management and retail.

About Sungard Availability Services

Sungard Availability Services ("Sungard AS") is a leading provider of critical production and recovery services to global enterprise companies. Sungard AS partners with customers across the globe to understand their business needs and provide production and recovery services tailored to help them achieve their desired business outcomes. Leveraging 35 years of experience, Sungard AS designs, builds and runs critical IT services that help customers manage complex IT, adapt quickly and build resiliency and availability.

To learn more, visit www.sungardas.com or call 1-800-468-7483. Connect with us on Twitter @Sungardas, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Brand Statement

The abbreviation for Sungard Availability Services is 'Sungard AS' as cited above. Please use 'Sungard AS' when abbreviating the name rather than 'Sungard' or 'SunGard,' which may confuse the reader with another separate company with a similar name.

Sungard Availability Services is a trademark or registered trademark of SunGard Data Systems or its affiliate, used under license. The Sungard Availability Services logo by itself is a trademark or registered trademark of Sungard Availability Services Capital, Inc. or its affiliate. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners.

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SOURCE Sungard Availability Services

Related Links

http://www.sungardas.com


If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this





Got news tips, gossip, suggestions, complaints?E-mail us: progressivecharlestown@gmail.com We strive to avoid errors in our articles. Our correction policy can be found here
New York, March 30 : Do you have a workplace atmosphere sans motivation and constant cribbing from your boss about performance? The negative feedback from seniors may lead to endorsement of immoral behaviour in employees, warns a study.

"Strongly held professional goals, when combined with public criticism of our potential in that field, can have unintended effects on ethical behaviour for some," said lead researcher Ana Gantman from New York University.

For the study, researchers conducted three experiments with students intending to enter business, law and STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) fields.

In the first study, business students took a mock aptitude test which purported to measure their potential in the field, with some told they performed well on the exam and others informed they did poorly.

The results, appeared in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, showed that those highly motivated to enter the business world and who were told they did poorly on the test were more likely to endorse the immoral act -- breaking the contract -- than were those who were informed they did well.

Similarly, in the second research, students who were determined to enter the legal field and told they performed poorly on the test, were comparatively more likely to say they performed these "immoral" behaviours.

The researchers conducted a third experiment involving students, who were told they were taking a test measuring their potential to successfully major in business or STEM fields.

Similar to the results for the first two experiments, those highly motivated to pursue business or STEM majors -- and informed that they lacked the potential to excel in these majors -- indicated that their personality was very similar to the successful example -- in this case, possessing personality traits associated with immoral behaviour.

"If we can better understand the triggers of these behaviours such as when negative professional feedback leads to the compensatory endorsement of immoral behaviour, we might even prevent incidents of large-scale fraud in the future," Gantman noted.
Mumbai, March 30 : Reliance Capital, a part of Anil Ambani-led Group, on Wednesday said the sale of an additional stake of 23 percent in its life insurance company to to Japan's Nippon Life has concluded with the receipt of the entire proceeds of Rs.2,265 crore ($348 million).

"The transaction pegs the valuation of Reliance Life Insurance at approximately Rs.10,000 crore ($1.5 billion), amongst the highest in the industry till date. Nippon Life Insurance now holds 49 per cent stake in Reliance Life Insurance," the company said in a statement.

The company will now be renamed Reliance Nippon Life Insurance.

"We have immensely benefited from our relationship with Nippon Life over the last five years and look forward to further consolidate this partnership in India and abroad with their experience," said Sam Ghosh, executive director and group chief executive of Reliance Capital.

Nippon Life Insurance is investing a total of Rs.8,630 crore ($1.5 billion) for acquiring a 49-percent stake each in Reliance Life Insurance and Reliance Capital Asset Management.

Nippon Life Insurance is an over 125 years old insurer and a Fortune Global 500 company that manages over $520 billion in assets -- amongst the largest total assets in the world for any similar company.
Nay Pyi Taw, April 1 : Myanmar's House of Nationalities (Upper House) on Friday approved the bill designed to pave the way for appointing Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi as a consultative figure to the state.

The bill calling for appointment of a state consultative figure was submitted to the House of Nationalities of Myanmar on Thursday, Xinhua news agency reported.

The bill, moved by a member of parliament from the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) and was accepted by the house for debate, aims at flourishing democracy, building federal union, peace and development, it was explained.

Aung San Suu Kyi, NLD chairperson, was on Wednesday appointed as Myanmar's new foreign minister, concurrently holding three other portfolios -- minister at the president's office, minister of Education and minister of Electric Power and Energy.

The Lower House has also appointed Aung San Suu Kyi as chairperson of the Joint Coordination Committee for development of parliamentary affairs.

The concentration of power and high office in Aung San Suu Kyi, a graduate from the Lady Shri Ram College for Women in New Delhi, culminates over two decades of peaceful political struggle for democracy in Myanmar.
Mumbai, April 2 : India, along with 100 other nations would ratify the Paris 'COP 21 Global Climate Agreement' in New York on April 22, Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said on Saturday.

"The COP 21 agreement would be ratified at a high level signing ceremony to be convened at the UN Headquarters in New York on April 22," Javadekar said at a symposium at the University of Mumbai here.

"All countries have decided to walk the green path as per their common but differentiated responsibilities. India was always perceived to be a naysayer and negative in its approach and took a corner seat in most of the international conferences. But in Paris, Prime Minister Narendra Modi introduced the concept of climate justice driving home the message of sustainable development," Javadekar said at the symposium titled 'COP 21 Building Synergies, Shaping Actions'.

Saying that climate change was a reality with 1 degree rise in temperature caused by 150 years of uncontrolled carbon emission by the developed countries, Javadekar said India was responsible for only three percent the global carbon emission. Thirty percent of the cumulative contribution was that of the United States, 50 percent by Europe, Canada and other developed world and 10 percent by China.

"Though India is not part of the problem, it wants to be part of the solution. Our commitment is reflected in every programme being pursued by the government," he said.

Describing the Paris agreement as a victory of multilateralism and the one which helped correct the image perception of India, the minister said "If the developed world followed India's example and levied higher taxes on coal, billions of dollars would accrue to pursue clean energy programmes".

The minister also said that the proposed Compensatory Afforestation Funds Bill 2015, would unlock Rs.40,000 crore of funds for the 'Green India' initiative. The fund would be released during the resumed Budget session.

Union Minister of State for New and Renewable Energy, Piyush Goyal on the occasion said that India has launched the world's largest renewable energy programme by scaling up the target for solar energy by pushing ahead the 20,000 megawatts of solar electricity generation to 1,00,000 megawatts by 2022.

Goyal also lamented 'lack of commitment' of the developed world in fulfilling their obligations.

"India's green energy programmes will be carried out whether we receive support of the western world or not".

The United Nations Climate Change Conference, Conference of the Parties (COP) 21 was held in December 2015 in Paris where 195 countries adopted the first-ever universal, legally binding global climate deal. The agreement sets out a global action plan to put the world on track to avoid dangerous climate change by limiting global warming to well below 2 degree celsius. The agreement is due to enter into force in 2020.
Los Angeles, April 4 : Madonna's son Rocco has reportedly branded his mother a "b****", according to an Instagram account in his name.

While 15-year-old Rocco, whose father is Guy Ritchie, deleted his account on the photo-sharing app earlier this year, a new account set up in his name describes him as a "son of a b****", reports dailymail.co.uk.

The account is private but features a closeup of Rocco's face as the profile picture. It is not clear if the Instagram page has been set up by him or not.

Madonna and Guy are currently locked in a custody battle over Rocco, who left his mother's world tour last year to live in London with his father.

"If this is his new account then clearly comments like this show he's in a delicate place and highlights the fact he needs to be in an equally supportive relationship with both parents," said a source.

"The fact it has been set up at all, even if it is just a prank by one of his friends, shows how public their feud has become. For Madonna, it is proof their relationship needs to get back on track as soon as possible," source added.
New York, April 4 : Internet giant Google has released a new feature, Google Search, that will enable parents to teach children about different noises that animals make.

A quick search for "animal noises" on Google returns illustrations of animals, their names and a sample of what sound do they make, Mashable tech website reported.

Alternatively, you can also search for something like, "What does the dog say", to bring up a specific animal sound result, the report added.

Google has included 19 animal sounds in its list, including zebra, ape, cat, lion, moose, owl, pig, cow, duck, elephant, horse, raccoon, bowhead whale, humpback whale, wolf, rooster, sheep, tiger and a turkey.
New York, April 4 : Companies appear to structure compensation contracts and incentive pay based on seniors' personality traits and not just firm characteristics, a team of US researchers, including an Indian-origin scientist, has found.

Companies offer incentive-heavy compensation contracts to overconfident CEOs to "exploit" their positively biased views of the firms' prospects, the researchers noted.

"There are divergent views on the use of options and stock in CEO compensation contracts: Do they appropriately incentivise managers and enhance shareholder value and if so, why is there much variation in their use across firms?" said Vikram Nanda from Naveen Jindal School of Management in the US.

The notion is that if managers and shareholders -- represented by the board -- have a different take on a firm's prospects and CEO talent, there will be greater use of incentive pay that the managers value highly but the board regards as less costly.

"When you think about incentive contracts, you don't usually think about the personality of the individual being a factor in the contract," Nanda added in the paper published in the Journal of Financial Economics.

Using the compensation data of CEOs between 1992 and 2011, the researchers identified managers who were exhibiting behaviour that was overconfident compared to other CEOs.

"You don't usually hear about how two profit-sharing agreements are going to look different because the personalities and the beliefs of the individuals are coming into play," Nanda stated.

The team conducted empirical tests to explore the relationship between CEO overconfidence and incentive compensation.

The researchers found that CEO overconfidence increases the proportions of total compensation that comes from both option grants and equity grants, compared to other executives.

Overconfident CEOs receive even greater option and equity intensity in innovative and risky firms.

"Overconfident CEOs are prone to overestimate returns to investments and underestimate risks. They may use extremely positive words in the media or tend to invest more than a typical manager in the industry," Nanda stated.
Islamabad, April 4 : A massive leak of secret files from a Panamanian law firm that specialises in offshore tax havens has revealed the often-murky financial dealings of some of the world's most powerful political players.

The leak highlights people such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the family of Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, among dozens of others, Dawn online reported.

The data from the Panama Papers, available on the website of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists -- one of around 100 news organisations and 300 journalists that worked on mining the data simultaneously -- also reveals the offshore holdings of the members of Sharif's family.

According to the documents, Sharif's children Mariam, Hasan and Hussain "were owners or had the right to authorise transactions for several companies".

Mariam is described as "the owner of British Virgin Islands-based firms Nielsen Enterprises Limited and Nescoll Limited, incorporated in 1994 and 1993".

On one of the documents, the address listed for Nielsen Enterprises is Saroor Palace in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The document, dated June 2012, describes Mariam Safdar as the 'beneficial owner'.

"Hussain and Mariam signed a document dated June 2007 that was part of a series of transactions in which Deutsche Bank Geneva lent up to $13.8 million to Nescoll, Nielsen and another company, with their London properties as collateral," the papers revealed.

In July 2014, the two companies were transferred to another agent, it said.

Hasan Nawaz Sharif is described as "the sole director of Hangon Property Holdings Limited incorporated in the British Virgin Islands in February 2007, which acquired Liberia-based firm Cascon Holdings Establishment Limited for about $11.2 million in August 2007."

But the papers are not necessarily evidence of wrongdoing. According to The Guardian, using offshore structures is entirely legal.

"There are many legitimate reasons for doing so. Business people in countries such as Russia and Ukraine typically put their assets offshore to defend them from 'raids' by criminals, and to get around hard currency restrictions," the paper said in an explanatory note.

Leaders such as the presidents of Ukraine, Argentina, the UAE as well as relatives of British Prime Minister David Cameron, Syrian leader Bashaar al-Assad, a former Chinese prime minister, as well as the son of former UN chief Kofi Anan are also mentioned in the leaked documents.
Manila, April 4 : Dozens of people on Monday gathered in front of the American Embassy in Manila to rally against the largest so far bilateral military exercise held between Philippines and the US.

"US out now! Take down US," shouted some 50 protestors brandishing signs with similar slogans, before setting fire to a mock American flag scrawled with the words "US imperialism", EFE news reported.

The demonstration involved members of nationalistic Filipino political groups who fear that the 12-day "Balikatan" or shoulder-to-shoulder bilateral drills with the American military will exacerbate rising tensions with China over the South China Sea Islands.

The war games take place annually but this year's exercises come just months after China began constructing an air strip and other facilities on islands in the disputed South China Sea.

Within the upcoming weeks, the UN court in the Hague is expected to issue a verdict on the complaints filed against the Chinese manoeuvres, which the East Asian nation has claimed are purely defensive and fall within Chinese territory.
Ankara, April 4 : The US-led coalition on Monday destroyed the Turkish consulate compound in Mosul in Iraq, which was occupied by the Islamist State (IS) since June 2014, said a statement released by the Turkish Foreign Ministry.

The compound, where high-level IS terrorists had resided, was targeted and destroyed in an air raid around 3.00 a.m. (local time) on Monday, said the statement.

"Turkey's views and approval were taken at all stages concerning the preparation and execution of the said operation," said the statement.

"Our country will continue fighting against Daesh (IS) in coordination and cooperation with the international coalition in the activities in which it has participated since the beginning," the statement added.

In June 2014, IS militants seized the consulate and kidnapped 49 staff and family members, including the consul general.
New Delhi, April 4 : He has twice played god on screen, and now he's taking the small screen route to explore 'the story of god' in a documentary series for which he paid a maiden visit to India last year.

One of American cinema's most recognisable figures, Morgan Freeman, says he's fascinated with the "differences" that the country has to offer and that he'd love to return to film a movie.

"I would primarily like to go to India and make a movie. I'd like to be there for a while. Some time ago I had a great idea, a great movie idea. It wasn't mine, it was someone else's. It wasn't well thought out, but it was such a great idea and I would really like to do something like that in India," Freeman told IANS in an interview during a conference call with select Indian media.

During his tryst with India for National Geographic Channel's "The Story of God", he visited Bodh Gaya and Varanasi -- cities which are of religious significance -- to bring forth the nation as a melting pot of myriad religions, faiths beliefs and traditions.

"India is an endlessly fascinating place when you go from place to place to place to place and you see the differences. For instance, all the places we were in, Bodh Gaya and Varanasi, had fascinating differences. I think you would probably find that all over India," added the 78-year-old in his distinct baritone.

Freeman, who has left a lasting impression with his persona in movies like "The Shawshank Redemption", "Seven", "Bruce Almighty" and "Million Dollar Baby", visited seven countries for the series in a quest to find out how religion has evolved through the course of civilisation, and how it has shaped the evolution of society.

He visited iconic places like Jerusalem's Wailing Wall, Mayan temples in Guatemala and the pyramids of Egypt. In India, though, Freeman said he could not put his mind "around the traffic" in Varanasi, one of the oldest cities in the country which he found "extraordinary".

"For me, I was a little surprised by India... I was trying to understand how people associate with one god to another. It was completely interesting and new."

Those sentiments also describe his journey into some of the world's key religious sites, ruins of ancient civilizations, and in cutting-edge science laboratories for the six-part series which will go on air on April 15. Freeman, Lori McCreary and James Younger are the executive producers of the series.

While religion is often seen as something that divides, the series illuminates the similarities among different faiths.

Did "The Story of God" affect Freeman's personal beliefs about the Almighty?

"I have been asked if my beliefs changed. I'd say no. But affected personally? Absolutely! Learning these different cultures around the idea of god was very fascinating," said the Academy Award winning star, who found himself in a "spiritual limbo dealing with Hinduism because for one thing, it seems to be a tough religion".

Is he a god-fearing person?

"No, no. The god I believe in doesn't scare me, so I'm not god-fearing at all," Freeman told IANS, adding that "if the job comes along, the script is right, and the money's good", he will will play god again on the big screen.

And every once in a while amid his busy schedule, Freeman finds time to do documentaries such as this as he feels there's "an obligation to make positive changes in the world".

(Radhika Bhirani can be contacted at radhika.b@ians.in)
Lucknow, April 4 : The Allahabad High Court on Monday issued a contempt notice to a top Uttar Pradesh government official for not providing documents to IPS officer Amitabh Thakur with regard to a departmental inquiry against him.

The contempt notice was issued to Principal Secretary (Home) Debashish Panda by Justice D.K. Upadhyaya of the high court's bench here for not complying with its direction to provide documents to the suspended Indian Police Service (IPS) officer.

The high court on January 13 had stayed the departmental inquiry against Thakur till documents demanded by him in connection with the probe are provided to him by the state government.

It directed the government to provide the documents to him within four weeks.

But instead of providing them, the state government filed a Special Leave Petition (SLP) before the Supreme Court.

The apex court dismissed the petition on March 14.

Following that, Thakur filed the contempt petition in the high court.

Thakur had challenged the departmental inquiry started against him after his suspension last year and sought directions to provide 67 documents related to it.

The state government had suspended him on charges of misconduct, taking part in dharnas and filing PILs (public interest litigation petitions).
New Delhi, April 4 : The Supreme Court on Monday granted bail to Delhi University professor G.N. Saibaba, accused of being associated with a front organisation of a banned Maoist outfit.

The apex court bench, headed by Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar, granted bail to Saibaba noting that all the material witnesses in the case have already been examined and there was no basis for keeping him confined.

The court was not moved as counsel for Maharashtra expressed the apprehension that Saibaba would propagate his views if he is set free.

The court said that does not hold as he would be doing so even if he was released later.

Granting bail to Saibaba, the court said his release would be subject to the conditions by the trial court as he would make himself available as and when he was required.
Kochi, April 4 : In a game of one-upmanship in Kerala's Congress circles, the name of Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy's closest aide Benny Behanan was axed from the list of assembly aspirants by the party high command, a party source here said on Monday.

Behanan is sitting legislator from Trikkakara constituency in Ernakulam district.

Sources here said party vice president Rahul Gandhi dropped Behanan's name from a list sent from here for approval at New Delhi.

The development followed strong reservation by state Congress chief V.M. Sudheeran to five names suggested by Chief Minister Chandy. Gandhi, while allowing four names to remain on the list, directed that Behanan's name be knocked off, the sources said.

Later, Behanan told media persons here that he had decided to withdraw his name from the upcoming assembly polls.

The final list of Congress nominees for the 140-seat Kerala assembly was likely to be released on Tuesday.
Kolkata, April 4 : Braving the sweltering heat, over 75 percent of the 40 lakh electorate turned out to vote on Monday in the first phase of the assembly polls in 18 constituencies in the Maoist-affected western districts of West Bengal.

The scheduled poll timing in 13 of the 18 constituencies identified as Left Wing Extremism (LWE)-affected areas was reduced by two hours and closed at 4 p.m. without any report of violence.

Polling booths opened amid tight security at 7 a.m. in the 18 constituencies -- nine in Purulia district, three in Bankura and six in West Midnapore.

"Voting has been peaceful so far. As per the last report (3.30 p.m.) 75.61 percent polling was recorded in all the 18 constituencies. While the scheduled time for closing of polling in 13 constituencies was 4 p.m., voters are still queued up in some of the booths," said an Election Commission official.

The official said 78.08 percent polling was reported in West Midnapore, 74.61 percent in Bankura and 73.85 percent in Purulia.

In five other constituencies -- Purulia, Manbazar, Kashipur, Para and Raghunathpur (all in Purulia district) -- voting will continue up to 6 p.m.

The turnout is thus expected to rise, said the official, adding over 300 complaints were received during the day.

"There has been no report of violence while most of the complaints received were about malfunctioning of EVMs, which were redressed at the earliest," he added.

For the first phase of the elections, there are 40,09,171 registered voters and 133 candidates.

While a presiding officer in a booth in Purulia was changed following an allegation of trying to influence voters, a section of voters in Piyalsole village under Manbazar constituency in Purulia boycotted voting.

Complaining of lack of development in the area, the villagers said the decision to boycott the polls was taken in advance.

"From hospital to school to even the market, everything is in Manbazar. The road here is virtually non-existent which makes commuting to Manbazar difficult," said one of the villagers, adding that most of them have to walk several kilometres to fetch drinking water.

Among major candidates in the fray are Minister Sukumar Hansda of the Trinamool Congress from Jhargram and the CPI-M's Pulin Bihari Baske contesting from Gopiballavpur.

The Congress and the Left Front accused Trinamool activists of attempting to influence and intimidate voters in many booths across the three districts, a charge denied by the ruling party.

The Trinamool, the Congress-Left Front combine and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), are in the fray for the 18 constituencies.

A multi-layered security ring has been put in place around the constituencies.

At least 10 personnel of a central paramilitary force have been deployed to secure each polling station in the 13 LWE-affected constituencies.

Besides helicopters carrying out sorties, an air ambulance and quick response teams are on standby.

There are 4,945 polling stations, out of which 1,962 have been classified as critical where special security measures have been taken.

Voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) has been made available in 562 polling stations.

Under VVPAT, a printer-like apparatus is linked to the EVM. When a vote is cast, a receipt is generated showing the serial number, name and symbol of the candidate. It confirms the vote and the voter can verify the details.
New Delhi, April 4 : A fleet of ships from the Indian Navy's First Training Squadron berthed at Phuket in Thailand on Monday.

The squadron's primary aim is to impart at-sea training to naval and Coast Guard trainees.

The fleet includes cadet training ship 'Tir', patrol vessel 'Sujata', sail training ship 'Sudarshini', and Indian Coast Guard ship 'Varuna', all indigenously built.

A statement from the navy said the deployment of the training squadron to Phuket "provides opportunities for extensive maritime engagement, contributes to the maintenance of good order at sea and further cements the close relations between the two nations and the two navies".

Training is imparted in seamanship, navigation, ship handling, boat work and technical aspects, while the trainees are exposed to the rigours of life at sea.

The Southern Naval Command is the navy's training command, which provides both basic and advanced training to naval officers and sailors.

The navy has also been providing training to personnel from friendly foreign countries for more than four decades. More than 13,000 personnel from over 40 countries have been trained so far.
New Delhi, April 4 : Janata Dal United (JD-U) president Sharad Yadav on Monday stepped down from the post, ending his more than decade-long stint as party chief.

"At this point, (Bihar Chief Minister) Nitish Kumar is the most suitable for party president's post. He is most likely to be given the responsibility," a party source said.

Yadav was the party chief for three consecutive terms ever since the JD-U was formed in 2003.

"Sharad Yadav decided to step down as president as there is no provision for a fourth term for the post in party constitution," JD-U spokesman K.C. Tyagi told IANS.

Party rules were earlier amended to enable Yadav to continue as JD-U chief as there was no provision for even a third term, Tyagi said.

Tyagi refused to say who could be the next JD-U president.
New Delhi, April 4 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday ordered a multi-agency probe team on the global expose by International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), dubbed the "Panama Papers", which found over 500 Indians also had alleged offshore links.

"A multi-agency group is being formed to monitor the black money trail," Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said here after the expose was published in The Indian Express. "Details of the assets worth Rs.6,500 crore has already been found," he added.

As per a statement issued by his ministry, the probe team will comprise officers from the Central Board of Direct Taxes' Financial Intelligence Unit, its Tax Research Unit as also officials from the Reserve Bank of India.

"The group will monitor the flow of information in each one of the case. The government will take all the necessary actions as required to get maximum information from all sources including from foreign governments to help in the investigation process," the statement added.

The journalists' consortium had said late on Sunday that its members and more than 100 other news organisations around the globe have found offshore links of some of the planet's most prominent people. The list included over 500 Indians.

The details of the Indians with such offshore funds were published in The Indian Express. But whether or not such funds exist, and also if they were illegal is what the probe team ordered by Modi is expected to look into.

"In terms of size, the Panama Papers is likely the biggest leak of inside information in history - more than 11.5 million documents - and it is equally likely to be one of the most explosive in the nature of its revelations," the consortium said of its investigation published.

In the context of the commitment of the central government to bring out undisclosed money both from abroad and from within the country, information brought out by any investigative journalism was welcome, the finance ministry said.

The ministry said in the past too, based on the investigations by ICIJ in 2013 -- that showed the links of 700 Indians with business connection with off-shore entities -- the agencies of the government were able to identify 434 persons as Indian residents.

It also said 184 persons admitted their relationship with such off-shore entities/transactions.

"Although, in the previous report of ICIJ, information relating to financial transactions/bank accounts was not available, the government authorities have detected credit in the undisclosed foreign accounts of such Indian persons in excess of Rs.2,000 crores."

As a consequence, 52 prosecution complaints have been filed against the alleged offenders so far.

"The government is committed to detecting and preventing the generation of black money. In this context the expose of Panama Papers will further help the government in meeting the objective," the finance ministry added.

The government expressed concern that tax havens were making countries like India suffer tax losses.

"The recent initiative of 'Base Erosion' and 'Profit Shifting' (BEPS) will help India and other countries in checking the practice of tax-avoidance through such tax havens. India is also fully committed to the BEPS initiative."

In India, The Indian Express ran several pages of the investigation reports alleging, among other names, Bollywood superstarts Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai, being directors in companies in Panama.

The two did not immediately respond despite efforts to contact them. Aishwarya Rai's media adviser told the newspaper that the information was false. The spokesperson for Aishwarya Rai said "no" when IANS asked her if she intended to issue a statement.

Among those named in the report were Sameer Gehlaut of India Bulls and K.P. Singh of DLF. Vinod Adani, elder brother of industrialist Gautam Adani, politician Shishir Bajoria from West Bengal and Anurag Kejriwal of Loksatta Party were also alleged to have set up companies in tax havens.

Bajoria told the paper that that "erroneous beneficial owner information" was given by mistake.

The Express said it had carried out the investigations spread over eight months with several global newspapers. Many of the other persons named in the Express reports responded, some denying while others maintaining that they had worked within the laws of the country.

Among the global leaders named were 12 current and former world leaders, including Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's family members. It also sought to reveal how associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin secretly shuffled as much as $2 billion through banks and shadow firms.

In Russia, the state-run media organisations were silent on the subject. In Pakistan, however, Sharif's son Hussain told Geo News that his family had not done anything wrong.
Mumbai, April 4 : On Heath Ledger's 37th birth anniversary on Monday, filmmaker Shekhar Kapur praised the late Hollywood star for being a "wise spirit in a young mind".

Ledger died in January 2008. The actor was at the peak of his career when he was found unconscious by his housekeeper. The "Candy" star was in the middle of filming his acclaimed role as the Joker in filmmaker Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight".

"He went too young. But then I always told Heath there was an ancient wise spirit in his young mind. His spirit rose," Kapur tweeted on Monday.

Kapur also retweeted a collage of the actor, which featured all the characters essayed by him.
New Delhi, April 4 : Indian Army Chief General Dalbir Singh will be visiting the US on a "goodwill visit" from April 5 to 8 when he will also meet UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

The visit is part of the ongoing high level exchanges between India and the US.

General Dalbir Singh will meet Ban at the UN headquarters to "strengthen the Indian Army's commitment towards UN Missions", an official statement here said.

He will also visit the US Central Command (CENTCOM) that includes countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia including Afghanistan and Iraq in its Area of Responsibility.

He will also visit the United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM), the Unified Combatant Command charged with overseeing the various Special Operations Component Commands of the United States Armed Forces, headquarter 1 Corps and US Army's Manoeuvre Centre of Excellence (MCoE) where he will hold discussions with commanders of the US Army.

In Washington, General Dalbir Singh will meet US Secretary of Army, Chairman Jt. Chiefs of Staff, Chief of Staff of the US Army and Commander US Marine Corps, along with other officials.

The India-US ties have been transformed in recent years with a renewed Defence Framework Agreement, supply of defence equipment, sharing of technology and military-to-military exchanges.
New Delhi, April 4 : The income tax department has issued refunds of over Rs.1,17,000 crore, which may further increase as banks reconcile the accounts, for 2015-16, an official statement said.

"The Income Tax Department has issued refunds of over Rs.1,17,000 crore. This figure is likely to further increase as banks reconcile the accounts. The Centralized Processing Centre (CPC) at Bengaluru issued refunds to the tune of Rs.37,870 crore in an automated manner of which 67 percent were issued within 30 days," said the finance ministry statement.

The CPC processed more than 4.14 crore income tax returns, an increase of over 35 percent over the previous year, it said, adding it also issued over 1.61 crore refunds above Rs.100 to taxpayers, an increase of more than 47 percent over the previous year, it added.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) asked taxpayers who have not received their refunds to immediately check whether they have submitted their ITR-Verification (ITR-V) form to the CPC.

"They (taxpayers) may also check whether have responded to any notice under section 245 regarding outstanding tax arrears, or notice under section 139 (9) regarding any defect in their return. Taxpayers can also electronically verify their return using Electronic Verification Code (EVC) instead of submitting ITR-V by post so that the process is completed faster," it said.

The ministry said that a whopping 4.34 crore income tax returns were filed online in FY 2015-16, an increase of over 26.83 percent over the previous year.
Kochi, April 4 : Switzerland-headquartered Coop Cooperative, an international agency that promotes organic farming across the world, has offered its support to the Kerala University of Fisheries and Ocean Studies (KUFOS) for organic shrimp farming in the state.

KUFOS is planning to promote organic shrimp farming by utilising the rich resources of the mangroves in Kerala's backwaters.

Gerhard Zurlutter, a representative of Coop Cooperative, on Monday visited the farms and ponds at KUFOS and had discussions with officials.

He said organic shrimp farming could be made successful by making use of the mangrove rich backwaters or by planting mangroves on the shores of the backwaters and the farming ponds.

KUFOS will now study the available resources, and if the conditions are favourable, it will conduct a pilot farming to develop a suitable farming model, and later introduce the model among shrimp farmers in the state.
Guwahati (Assam), April 4 : Terming the Assam assembly polls a "fight between two opposing ideologies", Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Monday urged the people to vote for his party for peace, development and progress in the state.

Addressing three public rallies at Goalpara, Dhubri and Abhayapuri, Gandhi said if the BJP comes to power in Assam, the state will go back to those days when there was violence, bloodshed and tears everywhere 15 years back.

"This election is a fight between thoughts and ideologies. On one side, there is an ideology that fought against the British, brought the Constitution of India, loves and respects the citizens of the country -- the name of which is Congress."

"On the other hand, there is a thought which believes in breaking things, that wants people to fight against one another, wants to spread hatred -- the name for this thought is Narendra Modi, BJP, RSS," Gandhi said at a rally in Dhubri, located along the India-Bangladesh border.

"India does not belong to any particular caste or community. It belongs to all Indian citizens who have been living here," he said.

"The Congress is committed to secure the rights of all Indians and the party will not allow anyone to break the unity between the people of different castes, communities or religion," he assured.

Asking the people to recall what was the state 15 years back, he said: "There was violence, bloodshed and women were crying. There was no security in Assam then."

"At that time, those who believe in hatred and want people to fight, were in power. Then the Congress came and brought peace by uniting the people," Gandhi said, adding that the same situation will be repeated if the BJP comes to power.

Gandhi criticised Modi on his poll promise of bringing back black money from abroad, and said the central government was only interested in bringing the "Fair & Lovely" scheme through which "thieves and gundas (hooligans)" can convert their black money into white by paying a meagre tax.

Referring to the election results in Bihar, Gandhi said the people of Assam were going to repeat what the people of Bihar did.

"Modi ji went to Bihar to make some new promises. However, people asked him to go back to Delhi and fulfill the previous promises made during the Lok Sabha polls. The same is going to be repeated here," he said.
Agartala, April 4 : Tripura and Meghalaya on Monday heaved a sigh of relief as the Northeast Electric Power Corporation (NEEPCO) agreed to continue to supply power from its plants, thereby saving the two states from a major power outage from Tuesday.

NEEPCO, which is under the union power ministry, had earlier served notice to both Tripura and Meghalaya to clear their dues, saying it would otherwise cut supply from its power projects to the two states from April 5.

Tripura and Meghalaya owe Rs.550 crore as outstanding dues to NEEPCO.

"Both the Tripura and Meghalaya governments have assured us to repay their outstanding money at the earliest and after getting the written assurances, we have withdrawn our power suspension order for the time being," a NEEPCO official told IANS over phone from its headquarters in Shillong.

"Other northeastern states, including Assam, also have dues to NEEPCO. These states, except Tripura and Meghalaya, taking into account a waiver scheme, liquidated their dues against power supply," said the official requesting anonymity.

When contacted by IANS, Tripura State Electrical Corporation Limited chairman-cum-managing director Shyamal Kumar Roy said he was unaware about the dues to NEEPCO and it was being looked into by senior officials of the state government.

NEEPCO, which contributes around 38 percent of the total installed capacities of various state and central government run power projects in the northeastern region, currently has its combined installed capacity of 1,287 MW from seven power plants in Assam, Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh.
New Delhi, April 4 : In the first sentencing in a coal block allocation case, a special court here on Monday sent to jail, for four years, two directors of Jharkhand Ispat Pvt. Ltd. whom it had convicted of criminal conspiracy and cheating in bagging a coal block, saying "white collar criminals" are "more dangerous" to society".

Special Central Bureau of Investigation Judge Bharat Parashar awarded four years' jail terms to JIPL directors R.S. Rungta,79, and R.C. Rungta, 60, and slapped a Rs.5 lakh fine each on them.

The court also imposed a fine of Rs.25 lakh on Jharkhand Ispat Pvt. Ltd. (JIPL).

Defining "white collar criminals" as "a person of the upper socio-economic class who violates the criminal law in the course of his occupational or professional activities" and including businessmen, industrialists, entrepreneurs, traders, politicians, bureaucrats or well-qualified professionals, the court said: "Such white collar crimes are in fact more dangerous to the society than ordinary crimes, firstly, because the financial losses are much higher, and, secondly because of the damages inflicted on public morale."

"Off late the anti social activities of persons of the upper socio-economic strata of the society in their occupation and which have came to be known as 'white collar crimes' have attracted attention.

"The average loss from ordinary crimes such as burglaries, robberies and larcenies etc. may run into few thousand rupees only but the loss which the white collar crimes may cause run not only in lakhs but in crores of rupees," it said.

It added that to find criminality committed by "white collar criminals" is often a difficult task because they are committed after much deliberations and planning undertaken by well trained minds having a higher status in the society.

The court observed that crime committed by "white collar criminals" is due to their greed or lust to acquire maximum material resources in the name of their business, taking benefit of open competition, economy and individual freedom.

"However the inevitable result of all the aforesaid acts is the large scale exploitation of the public by the businessmen and professionals in the course of their occupational activities."

Noting coal is an important element for the infrastructural and industrial development of a developing country like India, it said such kind of unscrupulous businessmen and industrialists were the reason that "despite 69 years of independence, our country is still lagging behind than most of the countries in the world in industrial/infrastructural development".

The court last week convicted JIPL and its directors R.S. Rungta and R.C. Rungta for the offence of cheating and criminal conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code, observing that they had "fraudulently" and with a "dishonest intention" deceived the government in allocating the North Dhadu coal block in Jharkhand to the firm.

The Rungtas, who are already in judicial custody, were present in the courtroom when the sentence was pronounced.

Besides this case, 19 other cases investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) are pending before the court, set up to exclusively deal with all the coal scam matters.

Two other cases probed by the Enforcement Directorate are also pending before the court.
Thiruvananthapuram : Leader of the Opposition V S Achuthanandan has pounced on the latest bout of allegations levelled against Oommen Chandy by solar scam accused Saritha S Nair to launch a scathing political as well as personal attack on the Chief Minister.

At a press conference here in Thiruvananthapuram on Monday, Achuthanandan charged Oommen Chandy with misusing his official residence and exploiting a woman (Saritha S Nair) who had called on him for the sake of her livelihood.

Achuthanandan called for a comprehensive investigation into the contents of the letter allegedly written by Saritha. Saying that there was no reason to disbelieve the charges made against Chandy in the letter, he added that if the allegations were untrue, then Chandy should prove it.

Accusing Chandy of misusing the position of Chief Minister, he said that the Chief Minister should be brought to book.

At one point, when presspersons posed doubts about the credibility of Sarithas charges citing her flip-flops in the past, Achuthanandan launched a stinging personal attack on Chandy, casting aspersions on his character.

There is no reason to disbelieve Sarithas charges given that Oommen Chandy has a history such misdemeanours. Once while travelling by train, he had engaged in a similar dalliance but salvaged the situation by having his wife rushed to the station and saying that the woman with him was his wife, Achuthanandan said.

The latest controversy related to the solar scam surfaced yesterday after a private news channel telecast contents of a letter allegedly written by one of the key accused in the scam Saritha S Nair, in which she has accused Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, a Union Minister, and the private staff of a Minister of sexually abusing her.

In the letter, Saritha accuses Chandy of having sexually abused her at the Cliff House, his official residence.

When the news channel sought her out for her opinion, she confirmed that the letter was indeed written by her.

On why she had not disclosed the same to the Solar Commission looking into the scam, she said it was because she had no faith in the Justice Sivarajan-led Commission.

She told the news channel that she was willing to produce visual and audio evidence to prove her charges should an investigation by a central agency be launched in the case.
Chennai, April 4 : The DMK and the Congress on Monday announced seat sharing for the Tamil Nadu assembly elections, with the Congress agreeing to contest just 41 of the 234 seats.

The Congress had demanded 63 seats, the number allotted to it in 2011. But the DMK offered only 41, which is less than the 48 where the Congress fielded candidates in 2006.

Congress leader and former union minister Ghulam Nabi Azad told the media that he was confident that DMK president M. Karunanidhi would be able to form a government in the state after the May 16 election.

DMK treasurer M.K. Stalin added that the DMK-led alliance was confident of winning the elections "as people want a change".

Now the parties in the DMK alliance have to decide the constituencies each will contest.

Earlier, the DMK allotted five seats each to the Indian Union Muslim League and the MMK, another Muslim party, and one seat to the smaller SSP.

Senior Congress leader E.V.K.S. Elangovan said the party was pleased with the 41 seats given to it. "The partymen are happy now," party spokesman Gopanna told IANS. "It is not a climbdown."

After the rout in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the 41 seats is not a small number, he said.

"Also, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi wanted a minimum of 41 seats, the number the party contested in Bihar," Gopanna said.

"In 2001, Congress contested only 14 seats. So 41 is not the lowest ever for the party," another party leader said.

The DMK is expected to contest in 180 seats.
New Delhi, April 4 : Specialists in detecting explosives and picking up clues from places of crime, a new batch of 30 Labrador Retriever dogs were on Monday inducted in the dog squad of Delhi Police.

Of these dogs, 20 are expert in detecting explosive materials while 10 have skills in finding clues from crime spots, police said.

The Labrador Retrievers are one of the most popular breed of dogs in Britain and the US.

The dogs were inducted in the Delhi Police's dog squad in a programme attended by Lt. Governor Najeeb Jung in the presence of Delhi Police Commissioner Alok Kumar Verma and other senior officers.

A police officer said these dogs were bought on March 18 from the army's Remount & Veterinary Corps based in Meerut in Uttar Pradesh.

"With the induction of these dogs, the total number of dogs in the squad have reached 60. Of the total dogs in the squad, 45 are skilled in detecting explosives and remaining are specialised in finding clues at crime spots," said a police officer.

The Delhi Police dog squad, which started in 1960 with 10 dogs in Mandir Marg and Model Town areas in central and north Delhi, respectively, is now spread across 11 Delhi Police districts and special units under the supervision of the Crime Branch.
New Delhi, April 4 : The AAP on Monday demanded a Supreme Court-monitored probe against companies and people named in the Panama Papers.

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) spokesperson Raghav Chadha said: "Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself has availed of the hospitality of industrialist Gautam Adani, whose brother's company is named in the Panama Papers investigation. Therefore, we don't trust the government for a fair probe into the matter."

"Therefore, a Supreme Court-monitored probe should be ordered in the Panama Papers investigations at the earliest," he said.

An investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and more than 100 other news organisations across the globe reveals offshore links of some of the world's prominent people, including over 500 from India.

In India, The Indian Express published the investigative report, alleging that, among others, Bollywood superstars Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai were directors in companies in Panama. The two did not immediately respond despite efforts to contact them. Rai's media adviser told the newspaper that the information was false.

Also named in the probe were Sameer Gehlaut of India Bulls for allegedly owning properties in the Bahamas, Jersey and Britain and K.P. Singh of realty firm DLF for having companies registered in British Virgin Islands.

Vinod Adani, elder brother of industrialist Gautam Adani, politician Shishir Bajoria from West Bengal and Anurag Kejriwal of the Loksatta Party were also accused of setting up companies in tax havens.

Meanwhile, the AAP leader said the Centre was planning to bring about "retrospective" amendments to the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act so that political parties can receive foreign fundings.

"The Delhi High Court ruled in 2014 that the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress received foreign funding. Therefore, the central government wants to bring in retrospective amendments in the Act so that they could not be charged with violation of the law in the past and continue to receive foreign fundings," Chadha said.

"If the government brings in the amendments, foreign companies will open their branches in India and fund different political parties. Hence, they will dictate policies to the government (of the day) for their own benefit," the AAP leader added.
New Delhi, April 4 : Jawaharlal Nehru University and Hyderabad Central University, which recently faced controversies, have figured in top four rankings released by the union Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD).

The JNU has been placed at third spot with weighed score of 86.46 while Hyderabad Central University is at the fourth place with a score of 85.45 in the rankings of top universities released by the HRD.

The Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, has topped the chart with weighed score of 91.81 while the Institute of Chemical Technology has scored second position with a score of 87.58 in universities category.

"Designed with a transparent mechanism, the National Institutional Rankings will facilitate choice, enabling higher education stakeholders to make informed and accurate decisions," HRD Minister Smriti Irani said releasing the India Rankings 2016.

"Each year, these rankings will serve as a performance benchmark for education institutes to improve their standing in the educational arena," Irani added.

Ironically, various members of parliament from Irani's ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, in various speeches and public statements they made over last two months have described the JNU as a fortress of naxalism and anti-national activities.

However, on Monday the HRD ministry described these rankings as the country's first exercise to rank higher educational institutions based on objective, identifiable parameters.

"The rankings are arrived at after detailed analysis and validation of the data submitted by more than 3,600 higher educational institutions in the Country classified in 6 categories," the ministry said in a statement released here.

"These rankings follow an Indian approach, where academic institute will be assessed on parameters, including teaching-learning; research; collaborative practice and professional performance; graduate outcomes; placements; outreach and inclusive action and peer group perception," the ministry added.

The announcement of the rankings was made by the ministry under its National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) programme in the presence of HRD Minister Smriti Irani here on Monday.

Meanwhile, reacting to developments, the JNU has said that it will continue on its march to be the best university in the world.

"It is an exciting news to know that JNU finds place in the top echelons of Indian universities despite its broad-based nature of research and teaching. Students from diverse economic backgrounds from different parts of India should take advantage of the quality education imparted by JNU and apply in large numbers," JNU public relations officer Poonam Kudasiya said.

In the university category, other top-ranked institutes were University of Delhi (6th), Banaras Hindu University at Varanasi (7th), Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology in Kerala (8th), Birla Institute of Technology and Science at Pilani (9th), Aligarh Muslim University (10th) and Visva-Bharati University in West Bengal (11th). Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi was ranked 83rd.

IIM-Bangalore and IIT-Madras have topped the charts in the category of management and engineering institutions. The NIRF evaluated 100 higher educational institutions each in engineering, management, universities and pharmacy categories.
Hyderabad, April 4 : YES Bank, India's fifth-largest private sector bank, on Monday said it will set up a centre of excellence for start-ups in financial technology space at T-Hub, a technology incubator set up by Telangana government in partnership with three premier academic institutes.

YES Bank on Monday signed an MoU with T-Hub in this regard.

This association will help create a conducive business environment and support system for a large number of FinTech startups. In addition, YES Bank will offer its various products and payment gateways and open APIs (application programme interface) to the start-up community, it said in a statement.

The bank's senior president and country head, digital banking, Ritesh Pai said they had been in the forefront of revolutionizing the Indian FinTech startup segment.

CISCO and ParadigmIT will also set up smart cities centre of excellence at T-Hub. They will set up a PoC of smart parking and smart lighting solutions. The two companies will work with companies and startups in developing innovative solutions using Internet of Things.

Yes Bank, CISCO and ParadigmIT were among different companies which signed MoUs with the Telangana government, and its arms T-Hub and Telangana Academy for Skill and Knowledge (TASK) at the launch of state's new Information and Communication Technology policy and four other subsidiary policies.

HPE will set up its innovation centre/lab infrastructure to develop, test and pilot innovative technology enabled ideas at T-Hub.

Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) also signed MoU with T-Hub to set up Mobile 10X hub, the largest capacity building and ecosystem enabling programme for mobile applications.

TalentSprint and T-Hub agreed to foster collaborative environment in bringing start-ups leverage the collective effort of both the organisations. InsideView also signed a similar MoU with T-Hub.

CISCO also signed a MoU with TASK to identify a pilot set of educational institutions, which will be provided web based curriculum and other teaching resources developed by CISCO.

Under another MoU, Microsoft India will offer Microsoft office Specialist certification programmes to educators and students at registered colleges of TASK.

ICICI Foundation and TASK also agreed to explore collaboration for increasing employment potential by enabling supply of skilled manpower in the desired sector.

University of Cambridge will collaborate with TASK for enhancing English language skills for faculty and students of engineering colleges.
New Delhi, April 4 : The Supreme Court on Monday commenced the final hearing on the appeals by four December 16, 2012 Delhi gangrape accused challenging the Delhi High Court verdict upholding their death sentence.

As the bench of Justice Dipak Misrra, Justice V. Gopala Gowda and Justice Kurian Joseph commenced the hearing, counsel M.L.Sharma appearing for accused Mukesh and Pawan told the court that there was haste and hurry on the part of the high court in deciding the matter without deciding on the application relating to their torture by police.

Arguing the high court was in a hurry to decide the appeals of his clients the moment they reached before it, Sharma said that applications alleging torture of his clients were not even taken up by the court.

At this, Justice Misra said: "Let us hear the case as if fresh case is being raised" and asked Sharma to proceed in the matter in his own way. "We have to deal with the matter in its entirety," the judge added.

After making his preliminary objections on the manner his clients were allegedly not given a fair opportunity before the trial court and later the high court, Sharma sought to take the apex court into the judgment pronounced by the trial court with an objective to point gaps that could be read in favour of his clients.

The other two convicts are Vinay Sharma and Akshay Thakur.

On March 13, 2014, the Delhi High Court bench of Justice Reva Khetrapal and Justice Pratibha Rani had upheld the death sentence of all four.

"Society's abhorrence to atrocious crimes perpetrated upon innocent and helpless victims has resulted in the death penalty being retained on the statute book to remind such criminals that human life is very precious and one who dares to take the life of others must lose his own life," the high court had said in its order.

Mukesh, Pawan, Vinay Sharma, Akshay Thakur and Ram Singh along with a juvenile were accused of gang rape and assault on a 23-year-old paramedical student inside a private bus. The victim and her friend were thrown out of the bus after the crime.

Ram Singh allegedly committed suicide while in incarceration.

The victim died of grave intestinal injuries Dec 29, 2012 at Singapore's Mount Elizabeth Hospital.
New Delhi, April 4 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on Tuesday launch the Stand Up India initiative at Noida.

The initiative will promote entrepreneurship among the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and women, by facilitating loans in the range of Rs.10 lakh to Rs.100 lakh, an official statement said.

As per the scheme, each branch of a scheduled commercial bank shall facilitate at least two such loans. A web portal will also be launched for the initiative, to enable online registration and support services.

Modi will also flag-off 5,100 e-rickshaws and also interact with the beneficiaries, besides inaugurating a Kaushal Vikas Kendra (skilling centre).
Mumbai, April 4 : The opposition Congress on Monday raised in the Maharashtra assembly the issue of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis's remarks on 'Bharat mata ki jai' issue and sought an apology from him before walking out of the house.

Under opposition fire, Fadnavis defended his statement made at a public meeting in Nashik on Saturday that those who refused to chant 'Bharat mata ki jai' had no right to stay in the country.

"I don't care whether I remain the chief minister or not... I used to say 'Bharat mata ki jai', I still say it and will continue to say it," Fadnavis said after the Congress sought his apology.

Former chief minister and Congress leader Prithviraj Chavan -- who led the opposition onslaught on the government in the assembly -- sought to know if Fadnavis had made the remarks in his capacity as the chief minister or a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh member.

Fadnavis retorted that he was the chief minister of the state, but the RSS had taught him nationalism and patriotism, and what he was saying in the house was as per the constitution.

Moving an adjournment motion, leader of opposition Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil accused Fadnavis of creating apprehensions in the minds of minority community's members who, he said, were forced to prove their patriotism by such remarks.

He said the chief minister's statement that everybody chant 'Bharat mata ki jai' was not right, and he sought to divert public attention from the real problems plaguing the state.

Vikhe-Patil accused him of repeatedly politicising the issue, and demanded an apology from Fadnavis before the Congress walked out of the house amid a din.

Fadnavis defended his remarks and said there was no dispute since it is not related to any particular religion or caste. He praised 500 Muslim clerics who not only hoisted the Tricolor at the Mahim Dargah but also chanted 'Bharat mata ki jai' on March 27, the 603rd urs of Hazrat Makhdum Fateh Ali Mahimi.

He said that at the Wagah border near Amritsar in Punjab, Indian soldiers only sing the national song 'Vande Mataram' and chant 'Bharat mata ki jai', and said that chanting of pro-India slogans was being deliberately linked to a particular religion to create a rift between different communities.

After his remark kicked up a row, Fadnavis on Sunday clarified: "We have absolutely no problem if somebody says 'Jai Hind' or 'Jai Bharat' or 'Jai Hindustan', but we object when someone refused to say 'Bharati mata ki jai... the slogan has nothing to do with religion, but is about patriotism and love for the country."
New Delhi, April 4 : The Delhi government will soon send 90 school principals to Cambridge University for an education leadership training exercise, as part of its teachers training initiative.

"At first, 90 principals will be sent to Cambridge University in three batches. This education leadership programme will span over 10 days," a government official said.

The move came after two Cambridge University officials -- Jaydeep Prabhu and Harold Chi -- met Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, who also holds the education portfolio, at the Delhi Secretariat on Monday.

The principals will also be sent to other top institutions and universities like Oxford, Harvard, IITs and IIMs.

The Delhi government has allocated Rs.102 crore for international training of principals and teachers in the budget for the current financial year.

During his interaction with the Cambridge officials, Sisodia said: "Our principals and teachers are very talented, but we need to impart them with the necessary leadership skills."

"Officials from Cambridge University revealed that the principals going for training would also be visiting local schools to understand the education system of UK in detail. They will also interact with the teachers of government schools there."
Moscow, April 4 : The Kremlin on Monday dismissed reports linking friends and relatives of Russian President Vladimir Putin to offshore deals worth billions of dollars.

"There are no details, all are based on allegations and speculation," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, demanding "professional results of the work of the journalistic community".

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) on Sunday published some 11.5 million documents leaked from a Panamanian law firm. It alleged offshore links of prominent figures in many countries, including transactions by people associated with Putin, which was worth $2 billion.

Peskov claimed the main aim of the publication, though mentioning other countries and their leaders, obviously targeted Putin, "especially in the context of upcoming parliamentary election and long-term prospects of presidential election in two years."

An earlier report published on Thursday alleged that a Putin associate had benefited from state construction contracts.

Prior to the publications, Peskov had said that the Kremlin expected that an outfit of international research in the West and in Russia was planning to publish "hoax material" on Putin, his family and friends.

Founded in 1997, the ICIJ is a global network of more than 190 investigative journalists in more than 65 countries and regions working with leading news organisations worldwide and focusing on issues like cross-border crime, corruption and accountability of power, according to its website.
Kolkata, April 4 : The city police on Monday arrested four more people in connection with the city's flyover collapse case that claimed 26 lives, taking the total number of arrests to eight.

"We have arrested four more officials of the company (IVCRL) today (Monday). They are senior engineers Shymal Manna and Bidyut Manna, Murti who is the director operations and Ratnam, the director of project monitoring," said Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Debashish Boral.

Being constructed by Hyderabad-based IVRCL, the Vivekananda Road flyover collapsed in the busy Posta area of the city on Thursday killing at least 26 and injuring nearly 90 others.

Slapping charges including that of murder against the company, police had earlier arrested four of its officials besides detaining several others.

The city offices of the company were sealed following the tragedy.
Lucknow, April 4 : Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Monday announced financial assistance of Rs.20 lakh for the family of NIA official Tanzeel Ahmad, who was shot dead by unidentified assailants in the state's Bijnor.

Expressing sadness at the incident, the chief minister assured the family that the state government was with them in this hour of sorrow. He also directed the director general of police to extend all cooperation to the agencies probing the incident that occurred early Sunday and facilitate investigations so that the culprits behind the heinous crime are brought to justice at the earliest.

Meanwhile, police continued to probe the incident but there has been no breakthrough.
Jerusalem, April 4 : Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday he is willing to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, responding to a television statement the latter made last week.

"A few days ago, on Israeli television, I heard President Abbas say that if I invite him to meet, he'll come," Netanyahu told the Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek in a meeting in Jerusalem.

"I'm inviting him again. I've cleared my schedule this week," Netanyahu said, according to a statement released by his office. "Any day he can come, I'll be here," he said.

Netanyahu stressed that the first item on the agenda would be the ending of the "Palestinian campaign of incitement to murder Israelis."

He was referring to a six-month-long Palestinian unrest, including frequent stabbing, shooting, and car-ramming attacks, which claimed the lives of 28 Israelis.

At the same time, at least 190 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire, mostly amidst attacks and attempted attacks, according to Israel.

Netanyahu's remarks followed an interview by the Palestinian leader in the Israeli Channel 2 TV, in which he said he was willing to meet Netanyahu to forge a peace deal.

"I still extend a hand to Mr. Netanyahu because I believe in peace. I believe that the people of Israel want peace and that the Palestinian people want peace," Abbas said.

Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast War and has been holding it ever since, in an act condemned by the international community.

Several rounds of peace talks to end the occupation have failed, with the last one reaching an impasse in April 2014 over the expansion of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the unity agreement between Fatah and Hamas.
Bengaluru, April 4 : Global private equity fund Blackstone on Monday said it had reached agreement with Mphasis to buy a majority 60.5 percent stake in the leading IT services player in a deal valued at between Rs.5,466 crore-Rs.7,071 crore ($825 million-1.1 billion).

"As per the Takeover Code in India, the transaction will trigger a mandatory open offer for a purchase of additional 26 percent shares of the company and the acquiring entity has released a public announcement to the stock exchanges," Blackstone said in a statement here.

The acquisition will also be the US-based Blackstone's largest IT deal in India.

The shares are being acquired from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) that currently owns 60.5 percent in Mphasis.

"Blackstone will pay a purchase price of Rs.430 per share," said the statement.

The city-based Mphasis is listed on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and BSE.

The shares of Mpasis, however, declined Rs.12.95 or 2.77 percent to Rs.454.45 from an opening price of Rs.472.30 and previous closing rate of Rs.467.40 on the BSE at the end of trading session.

JM Financial Institutional Securities Ltd. is the lead manager for the deal.

HPE's exit is in alignment with its capital allocation priorities and will have no adverse impact on its commercial ties with Mphasis.

"While our financial relationship is changing, the business and commercial relationship with Mphasis remains an important part of our service delivery strategy," said HPE enterprise services vice-president Mike Nefkens in the statement.

HPE also plans to renew its master service agreement with Mphasis for another five years post-transaction, expected to close in second half of this calendar fiscal.

"We remain committed to our strategic partnership with Mphasis and provide customers with high level of service and support they expect from us," he said.

Mphasis' last 12 months revenue as of December 31, 2015 was Rs.59,996 million ($904 million), while net profit was Rs.6,923 million ($104 million).

It has large revenues from banking and financial services and insurance apart from new generation services, including digital solutions.

Mphasis serves marquee clients across the globe, including six top global banks, 11 out of 15 top mortgage lenders and three top global insurance firms.

The company has about 24,000 employees across 16 countries.

Commenting on the deal, global advisory firm Gartner research director Arup Roy said the takeover by Blackstone would give Mphasis an opportunity to come out of shadows it walked into since EDS acquired majority stake (52 percent) in it for Rs.1,748 crore in June 2006 and after HP bought EDS for $13.9 billion in May 2008.

"Although, Mphasis had a legal identity with its own business and go-to-market, it was not able to establish as a visible and credible provider. The Blackstone buyout will allow it to come out of its 'oblivion status' and return to mainstream IT services," Roy said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Mphasis chief executive Ganesh Ayyar told reporters here that all the employees were excited over the Blackstone take-over of the company, which has huge potential for accelerated growth, with continuity, stability and predictability.

"I feel like a kid in the toy shop, excited about the potential that is ahead of us. We want to see the company in the top quadrant of growth and value," he said.

Admitting that HPE and direct business were its top revenue generators, Ayyar said the latter contributed to 50 percent of its revenue, growing at 14 percent annually, while the former accounted for 14 percent annually though declining 19-21 percent per annum.

"The transition to Blackstone will give us a minimum guarantee and an opportunity to grow it further, as it will have an impact on the company's overall growth," he said.

Under the MSA, HPE will commit minimum revenue, escalating year-on-year over year and totalling $990 million over the next five years.

HPE also plans to include Mphasis in its preferred provider programme, which opens up opportunity for accruing additional revenue.

Ayyar also hoped the transaction would check attrition at the middle and top levels.
New Delhi, April 4 : Multi-stakeholder partnerships was the key to improving Indian Railways at the earliest, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu said on Monday.

"We have a comprehensive plan to transform Indian Railways. Doing it at the earliest involves multi-stakeholder partnerships in its various areas," Prabhu said at the annual session of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here.

Admitting that providing a superior rail experience was a challenge, Prabhu stressed the need to increase capacity exponentially with sustained investments.

"Although the government is making efforts, partnerships will be the key in this endeavour," Prabhu asserted while addressing captains of the industry at the day-long session on "Opportunities in Indian Raiways - scope for partnerships".

Citing partnerships with Japan in modernisation and expansion, the minister said many agreements were signed to leverage opportunities for a quantum leap in technology absorption.

On financial viability of the railways, Prabhu said efforts were on to augment non-rail revenue by monetising assets and modernising stations through public-private participation, multilateral organisations, self-help groups and others.

Railway board member (traffic) Mohammad Jamshed said the performance parameters of railways had improved in fiscal 2015-16 despite headwinds.

Rajiv Lall, chairman of the CII National Committee on Infrastructure Financing and IDFC Ltd., spoke on the corporatisation of railways.
New Delhi, April 4 : The Supreme Court on Monday granted bail to Delhi University professor G.N. Saibaba, accused of being associated with a front organisation of a banned Maoist outfit.

A bench of Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar and Justice C. Nagappan granted bail to Saibaba, noting that all the material witnesses in the case have already been examined.

Not accepting the contention of the Maharashtra government that if Saibaba was released, he was "he is likely to indulge himself in the anti-national activities", it described the position taken by Maharashtra government as "extremely unfair."

"We are of the view, that the submission made by the learned counsel for the respondent (Maharashtra) is extremely unfair," the court said, noting the "undisputed position" that the professor has "never been accused of having misused the concession of bail".

"Since all the material witnesses have been examined and cross-examined, the release of the petitioner on bail ought not to have been opposed, especially keeping in mind the medical condition of the petitioner," it said, directing Saibaba's release on bail "forthwith" on conditions to the "satisfaction of the trial Court" .

It said Saibaba "shall enter appearance before the trial court, as and when the petitioner (Saibaba) is directed to appear before the trial court, failing which, it shall be open to the trial court to cancel the concession of bail granted to him".

Saibaba was arrested by Maharashtra Police in May 2015 for alleged Maoist links. He had challenged the December 23, 2015, order of the Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court rejecting his plea for regular bail.

He was released on interim bail on health grounds by Bombay High Court which had treated as a PIL an email based on a newspaper report on his failing health condition.

Saibaba suffers with 90 percent disability for post-polio paralysis.

The interim bail was extended till December 31 as court asked him to approach the Nagpur bench of the High Court for regular bail. The other accused in the case had already been granted bail.

However, when Saibaba moved for regular bail, the same was rejected on December 23 and was asked to surrender before Nagpur Central Jail within two days.
Hyderabad, April 4 : Rights activist and former bureaucrat Harsh Mandar on Monday said the young voices for justice and equality being raised in universities are the sparks which should lit the whole nation in these dark times.

Addressing students at University of Hyderabad, he said the young voices in this university, at Jawaharlal Nehru University and other campuses give a hope for the future.

He said the young people showed how to join hands regardless of identity, birth gender, caste, class, religion and age and how to stand together unitedly to fight politics of injustice, of hatred and of division.

"Perhaps every generation in difficult times will generate its own young people who have vision, imagination and courage to speak truth and reflect on injustices," said the former IAS officer.

Mandar managed to address students at shopping complex, the venue of student protests, despite the continued ban on entry of activists, leaders and media into the university.

CPI-M MPs from Kerala, activists Teesta Setalvad, Medha Patkar, Yogendra Yadav and others were stopped from entering the university during last few days.

Mandar was in the university at the invitation of Sarojini Naidu School of Arts and Communication to deliver a talk and he also used the occasion to address the students demanding immediate ouster and arrest of Vice Chancellor P. Appa Rao for his alleged role in the suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula.

He said Rohith, through his words in the suicide note, stirred a battle that has grown and spread to many campuses.

"What is troubling establishment is not just young voices speaking truth but reminding us about our unequal and unjust world which we are not ready to accept," he said.

The human rights activist said Rohith was thrown into such a despair that he had no option but to take his life while the young people in JNU were charged with crime against the nation and called for thousands of people to come out in the form of civil disobedience to challenge the notion who is for the nation and who is against it.

Stressing the need for people standing up in solidarity of victims of injustice, he pointed out that Rohith was described anti-national for raising the issue of Muzaffarnagar riot victims and also of Yakub Memon's hanging. Kanhiya Kumar got into trouble for raising the issue of justice of Azal Guru's hanging and of Kashmir.

He pointed out that JNU student Umar Khalid, though a Muslim, did not raise the issues of Muslims but spoke about the injustice being meted out to tribals.

"Many of us are challenged whether we are far the nation or against the nation. We need not to be defensive," he said.

The former bureaucrat said whether JNU students shout offending slogans or not is not the central issue.

"Regardless of whether they raised slogan or not they should not be victimized. They must have freedom to raise questions even against their nation," he added.
Panaji, April 4 : Religious intolerance is a very real phenomenon in north India, senior Catholic clergy in India said on Monday, but noted that after the overwhelming loss in Delhi assembly elections in 2015, the Hindu right wing fringe had become "more tolerant".

Addressing a press conference at a church-run centre near here, ahead of the three-day Conference of Diocesan Priests of India, the event's patron Bishop Udumala Bala also said that incidents of intolerance were making Catholics in the country "anxious".

"Here and there strange incidents are there, especially in north India, we are anxious about it," said Bala, a part of the influential Conference of Catholic Bishops of India, when asked to comment on how the Church views the issue of religious intolerance in the country.

Without naming the Bharatiya Janata Party, Bala also said that sometime back, a series of intolerant incidents, which included cabinet ministers making communally insensitive comments, had failed to yield the ruling party dividends in the Delhi assembly polls, especially after a show of protest by Catholics, including archbishops in Bengaluru.

"We knew they were going to lose, but we never thought they were going to lose so badly and then I think they have learnt a lesson from that. They are more tolerant after that," Bala said.

The aim of the Conference of Diocesan Priests of India, in which 275 priests from across India are expected to participate in, is aimed at helping participants foster an expert understanding of their priesthood and encourage collegiality amongst the priests of the order, which runs several premier educational institutes in the country.

The theme of the conference is 'Priest as a minister of God mirrored in the person of Pope Francis'.

Speaking to reporters at the press conference, the event's vice president Father John Crasta, who is posted in Ranchi, said that from time to time, prayer meetings are disputed and prayer halls have been attacked in the capital of Jharkhand.

"But wherever it is necessary we are raising our voice, but in a peaceful manner. But it (intolerance) is a real issue and a real concern in north India, where intolerance is affecting each one of us," he said.
New Delhi, April 4 : Representatives from India, Brazil, South Africa and China or Basic nations will meet in New Delhi on Wednesday and Thursday to discuss issues related to climate change, an official statement said on Monday.

The 22nd meet of BASIC ministerial group will be organised by the environment ministry to further consolidate the positions of the countries and secure the interests of developing countries, before the 196 UNFCCC member countries meet in May 2016.

The two-day meet is the first meeting of the BASIC Group, after the Paris Agreement was adopted in December 2015.

The group, which was formed in 2009, will also decided on how to carry forward the decisions adopted in the Paris agreement.

"At the end of the two-day meeting, a joint statement will be issued by the Group of Ministers, highlighting the BASIC group position on the way forward for the implementation of the Paris Agreement and its decisions," said the environment ministry statement.

During the 21st meeting of the BASIC Group held in Beijing in 2015, the ministers had highlighted the importance of cooperation among developing countries and voiced their support for further strengthening common positions of developing countries in Paris through the Group of 77 and China.

Along with India's Environment, Forest and Climate Change Minister Prakash Javadekar, China's Special Representative for Climate Change Affairs Xie Zhenhua, South Africa's Deputy Minister of Environmental Affairs Thomson Barbara and Brazil's External Relations Ministry's Under Secretary-General for Environment, Energy, Science and Technology Jose Antonio Marcondes de Carvalho will be attending the meeting, along with other officials.
Accidental landlords in the UK are most at risk of being caught out by new European Union mortgage legislation, new research suggests.

Some 55% buy to let mortgage applicants are unaware of the impending changes to mortgage law and accidental landlords, those who did not intentionally set out to rent out a property, are least likely to know about these regulatory changes.

The research by landlord insurance provider Direct Line for Business amongst mortgage brokers also reveals that 62%of applicants were unaware of either the changes to mortgage tax relief or the EU's Mortgage Credit Directive (MCD) and therefore changes which could impact their ability to secure a mortgage.

This lack of awareness rises to 71% amongst 'accidental landlords', namely those who rent out property due to unforeseen circumstances such as being unable to sell, or inheriting a home.

Mortgage advisers estimate that accidental landlords account for 17% of new mortgage applications, with overall buy to let mortgage applications growing by 29% in the past year.

The research also shows that only 7% of mortgage advisers believe that the MCD will have a positive impact on approvals of buy to let mortgage applications while 59% expect it to have a negative impact.

The EU's MCD could see circumstances where landlord mortgage lending will be viewed as consumer lending and therefore could be subject to more stringent lending criteria. Accidental landlords with one or two rental properties may not be able to pass the expected new affordability tests.

Changes to the mortgage tax relief are set to be phased in from April 2017 with landlords no longer able to deduct mortgage interest payments before calculating their tax bill. They will instead get a tax credit equivalent to 20% basic rate tax on this amount. Landlords are also now paying a 3% surcharge on stamp duty.

The new EU legislation on mortgages coupled with the Government's increase in buy to let taxation could significantly alter the buy to let market, so we would encourage any mortgage applicants to think carefully about the new law and how this could impact them as a landlord, said Nick Breton, head of Direct Line for Business .

With house prices in the UK rising by 7% in the year leading to October 20152, and with the estimated average deposit standing at more than 61,000, it is imperative that landlords are able to maintain a suitable amount of property to house the population of young people saving up to buy their first property, or those seeking a temporary stay in a town or city, he added.

With the new legislation set to be phased in between 2017 and 2020, Direct Line for Business is providing landlords looking to protect their income with suggestions. It says that as letting and management agents currently charge between 10% and 15% of the monthly rent in fees those with the time and who are prepared to take on the responsibility of managing their properties could save more than 1,000 per year.

It points out that by renting a property privately a landlord can also claim back the cost of advertising, credit checking, referencing, deposit protection and professional inventory costs and they should make the most of existing tax benefits as any money spent on keeping a property in a good state of repair is tax deductible, as are all broker and arrangement fees.

Landlords can also claim the whole cost of council tax or utility bills that a tenant would pay but it is essential that those going it alone should keep up to date with legislation to ensure that a property complies with the latest legislative changes.

It is also important to consider whether a property is not just affordable in the short term but in the medium to longer term as often relief is phased out and additional taxes phased in over a number of years.
NewNet Mobile Communications, a global leader in mobility technologies, announced today it has joined the Wind River Titanium Cloud ecosystem, a program dedicated to accelerating the deployment of solutions for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV).

By validating and pre-integrating their hardware and software offerings with Wind River Titanium Server, Titanium Cloud ecosystem partners deliver optimized solutions to help accelerate time-to-market for service providers and telecom equipment manufacturers (TEMs) deploying infrastructure based on NFV. Service providers and TEMs can confidently select these hardware and software products knowing that they are pre-validated with Titanium Server and ready for deployment in live networks.

NewNets Krypton RCS, Lithium SMS and Mercury MMS voice, video and messaging solutions deployed at Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) and Communication Service Providers around the world support a significant portion of the global mobile subscriber base with over 100 billion messages per day. These NFV enabled NewNet Mobile Communications solutions deliver the deployment agility and scalability required by Communication Service Providers supporting subscribers with increasingly demanding expectations.

NFV support adds cost effective flexibility within systems that allow Communication Service Providers to resolve immediate challenges such as making the transition to IP/LTE with our Lithium IPSM Gateway, said Krishna Viswanadham, President of NewNets Mobile Communications division. "Our membership within Wind Rivers Titanium Cloud ecosystem enhances our ability to deliver NFV powered value for our customers."

Through our Titanium Cloud program, we are partnering with leaders such as NewNet Mobile Communications to create optimized, interoperable solutions for service providers who are deploying NFV in their networks, said Charlie Ashton, Senior Director of Business Development for Networking Solutions at Wind River. Service providers can now quickly achieve goals such as reducing OPEX while accelerating the introduction of new high-value services by leveraging the pre-validated NFV elements that contribute to the Titanium Cloud ecosystem."

Titanium Server is a carrier grade NFV infrastructure software solution that is designed to meet the stringent "always on" requirements of the telecom industry. With Titanium Server as the NFV infrastructure software foundation, the telecom industry can take full advantage of rapid service deployment while ensuring the Carrier Grade uptime and strict reliability mandated by telecom networks. Titanium Server is based on open software standards including carrier grade Wind River Linux, real-time Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM), carrier grade plugins for OpenStack, Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK), and accelerated virtual switching, all optimized for Intel architecture platforms.

About Wind River

Wind River, a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel Corporation, is a global leader in delivering software for the Internet of Things. The company has been pioneering computing inside embedded devices since 1981, and its technology is found in more than 2 billion products. Wind River offers a comprehensive portfolio of solutions for addressing the system-level challenges and opportunities of IoT that is backed by world-class global professional services, award-winning customer support, and a broad partner ecosystem. Wind River delivers the software and expertise that enable the innovation and deployment of safe, secure, and reliable intelligent systems. To learn more, visit http://www.windriver.com

About NewNet Mobile Communications

NewNet is a leader in mobility technologies with a focus in messaging, signaling, wireless broadband, consumer internet, multimedia content delivery, mobile advertising, and secure transaction processing. NewNets Mobile Communications Group provides a complete range of communication solutions including VoWiFi, IPSM Gateway, and messaging platforms for MNOs, MVNOs, telecommunication carriers and enterprises throughout the world More than 1 billion subscribers worldwide currently access NewNet Mobile Communication platforms. For more information, visit http://www.newnetmobility.com
Through his music, Scherer has captured the universal messages of peace and solemn majestic praise that are found throughout this ancient prayer

The Downers Grove Choral Society and orchestra under Artistic Director Dr. John Rakes will perform the world premiere of Kaddish by Naperville composer Paul Scherer at the First United Methodist Church, 1032 Maple Ave., Downers Grove, Sunday May 1, 2016 at 4:00 PM.

The program, entitled Prayers of Remembrance pairs Scherers Kaddish with the powerful Mozart Requiem; two works bound by the theme of remembrance, as approached by two ancient faiths.

The program begins with Kaddish, a complete setting of one of the oldest and most sacred of Hebrew texts. While there are several forms of the Kaddish prayer, Scherer chose the Kaddish Yatom  the prayer traditionally recited to remember those whose lives we cherish in our memories.

In contrast to the Catholic Requiem, Kaddish Yatom is a celebration of the majesty of the Almighty, and Scherer has set the music to reflect the tone of the prayer.

I conceived of the Kaddish setting several years ago as a means to honor my mother-in-law, a holocaust survivor, Scherer said. However, after visiting her small village in Germany, I felt compelled to also dedicate the work to the ordinary citizens among the six million. Im especially delighted the work will be performed just before Yom Hashoah, the day of Holocaust Remembrance.

Through his music, Paul has captured the universal messages of peace and solemn majestic praise that are found throughout this ancient prayer, said Dr. Rakes. This gentle and harmonically lush piece will be paired in performance with Mozart's Requiem, another musical expression of a prayer for those who have died.

The second half of the program is dedicated to the Mozart Requiem. The concert thus brings together the new and the old in order to explore the parallels and differences between these two ancient texts and how they have inspired composers now and in the past.

Dr. Rakes and Rabbi Andrea Cosnowski of Temple Etz Chaim in Lombard will conduct a pre- concert discussion contrasting the Requiem mass and the Kaddish prayer. Mr. Scherer will explain the creation of his composition and answer questions. Tickets for the concert are available at the door or via the Downers Grove Choral Society web site: http://www.dgcs.org.
Good Leads was selected by Infotraffic as their partner to expand their sales pipeline for their Infotraffic System TV software platform. As a premium provider of B2B lead generation and IT sales leads, Good Leads will source new business opportunities for Infotraffic throughout the U.S.

Bob Good, CEO of Good Leads, in making the announcement said, "We are pleased with being selected as a business partner to build Infotraffics sales pipeline throughout the U.S. Our executive level focused Prospect Builder Program and methodology is well suited to grow their base of opportunities in hotels, parking garages and enterprise facilities through our discovery and qualification processes." "Knowing their experience in representing French firms, we selected Good Leads. We look forward to Good Leads delivering quality leads for our software platform" said Jerome Lefevre, CEO. Good Leads dedicated lead generation team will focus their efforts in a targeted sectoral effort in the lodging sector.

About Infotrafic System TV:

Infotraffic System TV is a software system for distributing all the information your employees and visitors need each day on your digital media. The software provides for a dynamic service for your visitors in the lobby of hotels, the gateways to your corporate office and the departing visitors of your parking facilities. The versatile platform is customizable to reflect current road traffic conditions, public transportation scheduled and real time options and a customers own relevant content. With headquarters in France, the firm is launching their North American initiative from offices in Cambridge, Ma.

Infotraffic System TV can be contacted at: 1 617 500-8418 infotraffic.system.tv

About Good Leads:

Good Leads is a premier provider of sales and marketing, B2B lead generation, B2B sales leads and enterprise software business development activities for technology centric firms on a global basis with significant emphasis in the U.S. and Canada. Bob Good is CEO and Founder of the 14 year old firm. Good Leads specializes in executive level lead generation and appointment setting with international emphasis on supporting external corporate sales teams. Good Leads corporate headquarters is in Salem, NH with sales offices in Massachusetts, Maine and California. Good Leads can be contacted at 866 894-LEAD. http://www.GoodLeads.com
Looking for inspiration for your next remodeling project? Searching for a trusted contractor for a project? Look no further. Visit the Home Improvement Showcase presented by the National Association of the Remodeling Industry, NARI, April 30 from 10am-5pm and Sunday, May 1 from Noon-5pm.

Guests will have the opportunity to tour a variety of projects around the city including remodels by: Custom Home Works, Dave Fox Design Build Remodelers, J.S. Brown & Co., Kresge Contracting, Nicholson Builders, Organized Home Remodeling, Owens Construction, Renovations Unlimited, and The Cleary Company. Projects range from whole house remodels to kitchen, baths, sunrooms, master suites and more.

The tour of homes allows consumers to see exciting home transformations while talking with contractors who can walk you through the remodeling process from start to finish. According to Shari Bates, Executive Director of NARI of Central Ohio, NARI contractors are pre-qualified for membership, so you will have peace-of-mind knowing that the professionals you are speaking with during this tour are trusted and vetted professionals - all members of NARI, a not-for-profit trade association.

Tickets for the tour are $3 for a single site visit per ticket, ticket per person or $10 per person for the entire tour. Tickets can be purchased online at trustnari.org or at any one of the 11 Central Ohio tour locations (cash only please).

As a bonus, one lucky guest will receive a free 400 square foot floor coating from Columbus Garage Floor Coating. Guests can register at each home on the tour.

Tour Locations:

6352 Andrews Dr. W.

Westerville 43082

Kresge Contracting

Kitchen remodel including master suite and sunroom addition.

695 Cardinal Hill Ln.

Powell 43065

Project by: Dave Fox Design Build Remodelers

Interior remodel including kitchen, mudroom plus the addition of sunroom and in-law suite

5199 Reserve Dr.

Dublin 43017

Project by: Dave Fox Design Build Remodelers Kitchen remodel

1443 Clubview Blvd. N.

Worthington Hills 43235

Project by: Owens Construction

Kitchen remodel

877 Lookout Point Dr.

Worthington Hills 43235

Project by: Organized Home Remodeling Kitchen remodel

68 W. Beaumont Rd.

Clintonville 43214

Project by: Nicholson Builders

Interior Renovation including kitchen remodel

429 Piedmont Rd.

Clintonville 43214

Project by: J.S. Brown & Co.

Addition including mudroom, kitchen & powder room

2252 Abington Rd.

Upper Arlington 43221

Project by: Nicholson Builders

Interior renovation including kitchen remodel

1824 Roxbury Rd.

Upper Arlington 43212

Project by: Renovations Unlimited Interior remodel including kitchen & bath

207 E. Deshler

German Village 43206

Project by: Custom Home Works

Whole house remodel including kitchen, half bath, laundry & garage

2241 Astor Ave.

Bexley 43209

Project by: The Cleary Company Family room addition

The Tour is generously sponsored by:

Gold Sponsor: The Cellar Lumber Company

Silver Sponsor: Pro Exterior by APCO

Silver Sponsor: Ferguson Bath, Kitchen & Lighting Gallery Bronze Sponsor: Hamilton Parker Co.

Supporting Sponsor: Frog Hauling

Contributor: Columbus Garage Floor Coating
Main image America is not just a country, it's an idea.

Today, American-Muscle announces the launch of its Indiegogo campaign to create a centralized media outlet on American classic and muscle cars for Russian-speaking audiences. The campaigns goals include innovating professional classic automotive journalism in the Eastern Hemisphere, expanding the community of American classic and muscle car lovers in Russia, and establishing a representative office in the Unites States to bring the latest news.

American-Muscle is a team of Russian enthusiasts that have set off to introduce their country to something that has never truly reached the worlds 280 million Russian speakersthe great American classic and muscle car culture. The company has received praise from Hot Rod Magazine, Popular Hot Rodding and Super Chevy and is supported around the world.

American classic cars are a genuine legacy of the United States. While carefully preserved and treasured, there remain places that are barely acquainted with this culture. While Russian society shifted into the global market 25 years ago and many things have changed, its people have yet to receive the culture of the great American automobile.

The Indiegogo campaign aims to fill this gap by creating a full-scale media resource on the subject of American classic and muscle cars in the Russian language. The American-Muscle team is working to produce not just another website but a professional editorial office with a dedicated staff of editors, journalists, and video and photography operators to create unique content never before seen in this part of the world.

The daily publication will provide test-drives, reviews of oldtimers, and event and show overviews. It hopes to expand American car culture to one-sixth of the worlds landmass, to develop a beautiful new trend in the Russian-speaking world and, finally, to bring the two countries closer together.

The campaign will also offer its supporters the chance to interact with a Russian audience by participating in further content creation and contributing to the development of American culture around the world.

American-Muscles inspiration emerged from a high demand among the local population. Multimillion search requests, regional clubs and the companys own experience demonstrate that people here are hungry for the American oldtimers but cant access the information due to not knowing the English language.

All project details are available on the Indiegogo campaign page: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/bring-american-muscle-to-russia--2.

To learn more about American-Muscle, please visit http://www.american-muscle.ru/. For inquiries, more information, or just to talk about Americas automotive ancestry, feel free to contact Danil Zherebtsov, American-Muscles CEO, at +7(909) 901-95-96.

About American-Muscle

American-Muscle is a team of enthusiasts working to bring the great American Motoring traditions to the Russia-speaking audience. It is creating a high-quality media resource that will provide professional automobile journalism on the subject of classic American cars, featuring oldtimer reviews, test drives, hot rod show overviews, and localized American classic cars shows. Working from Moscow, the company covers the territory of Russia and the whole CIS sector, which is represented by 280 million people.
Virginia Community Capital 10th Anniversary Logo We are using our business as a force for good in our communities by investing capital to address social challenges such as healthcare, housing, food access, energy efficiency, and job creation.

Virginia Community Capital (VCC) announces that it has converted its wholly-owned, FDIC-insured, for-profit bank into a Benefit Corporation. VCCs is the first regulated bank in the United States of America to become a Benefit Corporation. The conversion will attract new investors to help communities and people all across the Commonwealth of Virginia prosper. The conversion does not affect the bank's status as a state-chartered banking corporation.

Since its founding in 2006, VCC has invested in 488 projects with a total economic impact of $766 million and 4,997 new and retained jobs. The conversion to a Benefit Corporation will allow the bank, within its banking charter, to better align its long-term mission and create value by making additional commitments to higher standards of purpose, accountability, and transparency. All of which VCC has been doing for the past 10 years. To view VCC's 10 year return on investment report click here.

This is a tremendous day both for the banking industry and the Benefit Corporation movement, said Jane Henderson, President and CEO of VCC. We are using our business as a force for good in our communities by investing capital to address social challenges such as healthcare, housing, food access, energy efficiency, and job creation.

VCCs conversion was conducted in partnership with B Lab, the global nonprofit organization that assists companies to meet the highest standards of verified, overall social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability. There are currently 1,659 Certified B Corporations and 192 registered Benefit Corporations across 47 countries and in 130 industries. Benefit Corporations are stock corporations with at least one mission of creating a general public benefit such as a positive impact on society or the environment, as measured by a third-party standard.

Rick Alexander, Head of Legal Policy at B Lab, commented on VCCs conversion, "As the first federally regulated bank in the U.S. to become a Benefit Corporation, VCC has set a new model for the financial industry. They are creating the path for more banking institutions to act as forces for good and create long term value for shareholders and society."

VCC is now able to provide individual and institutional investors with greater access to impact investing opportunities in a safe, secure method. Partner financial institutions who have invested in VCC include Goldman Sachs, Capital One, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, BB&T, SunTrust, Bank of Botetourt, among others. Their investments have focused on VCCs three main areas of impact investing: job growth and retention, quality of life, and creating vibrant communities.

Inspired by Sunrise Community Banks, the holding company for St. Paul, MN-based Sunrise Banks, which became the first benefit corporation bank holding company, VCC hopes to inspire other regulated banks across the United States by being a model of success for them to follow. VCC is now working with B Lab to help other regulated banks go through the process.

We congratulate our friends at VCC on this incredible accomplishment, said David Reiling, Chief Executive Officer of Sunrise Banks. Empowering our communities by being an active and responsible corporate citizen is at the heart of who Sunrise is and who VCC is as well. We look forward to working with them on inspiring other financial service industry leaders to address a variety of social challenges.

Over the last decade, VCC has supported housing and community development ventures, increased jobs, and built sustainable communities by offering flexible financial products and advisory services throughout Virginia. Among those investments include the community revitalization of Floyd (Floyd, Va.), the expansion of the Essel Propack America plant (Danville, Va.), Pioneer Community Hospital of Patrick (Stuart, Va.), the Masonic Theatre (Clifton Forge, Va.), the Robert Russa Moton Museum (Farmville, Va.), and hundreds of others.

VCC is a leader in impact investing in Virginia. Impact investments are investments made to generate social and environmental impact alongside financial return. The growing impact investing market provides capital to address global social challenges such as healthcare, housing, food access, energy efficiency, and job creation. VCC has been able to accomplish this through partner financial institutions that have invested in them, including Goldman Sachs, Capital One, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and foundations such as the Jessie Ball duPont Fund.

About Virginia Community Capital:

With offices in Christiansburg, Richmond, and Norfolk, Virginia Community Capital (VCC) is dedicated to the prospect of building wealth for all through our lending, deposits, and advisory services. As a community development financial institution (CDFI), our mission is to offer innovative, flexible financial products designed to support housing and community development ventures, increase jobs, and encourage sustainable communities. In partnership with our for-profit bank, Community Capital Bank of Virginia, VCC offers loan capital broader and more flexible than bank lending in low-to-moderate income communities in underserved geographies and markets. Learn more at vacommunitycapital.org.

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The first rule in a Zombie Apocalypse is to keep moving. Are you being followed? Just like with our Engineering and Support Teams, its through this type of collaborative effort that many of our initiatives are formed, too.

VirtualPBX has brought a creative and engaging campaign to new audiences through the use of clever timing and planning. Often recognized and awarded as an innovator in the space of telephony products and services, the VirtualPBX marketing team delivered a similarly memorable product.

Most of the marketing team has worked outside of the telecom industry, so we all have a lot of entertaining examples of successful April Fools Day campaigns that often come up in conversation, said Rachel Anderson, VirtualPBX Director of Marketing. Just like with our Engineering and Support Teams, its through this type of collaborative effort that many of our initiatives are formed, too.

The campaign, which consisted of five dystopian images and phrasing that was designed to entice audiences outside of the realm of most conventional telephony marketing platforms, has been welcomed as an inventive and intriguing introduction to hosted telecom. By delivering content to niche subsets of social media that was authentic and relevant, VirtualPBX has opened the door to vast, new audiences to engage with.

Just as it would be disingenuous for someone to sit down at your family dinner table and hop right into the conversation, you cant just waltz into a specific group and start talking to them like you belong, added Anderson. Fortunately, we had a combination of relevant subject knowledge and the creativity to tie it back into the topic of hosted telecom, specifically surrounding our PBX Parachute and Softphone App products.

Though this is the first such deviation from the norm for the hosted telecom industry, VirtualPBX is known for embracing out-of-the-box product and service development. With the ever-growing list of game-changing products in their quiver, it is likely that more equivalently potent content is on its way from the company as a whole.

About VirtualPBX

VirtualPBX was founded by members of the team who brought some of the first commercially available hosted PBX service to market in San Francisco in 1997. Born from the advent of the hosted telecom industry and driven by the innovative vision of its founders, VirtualPBX continues to deliver leading edge telephony products for business. Backed by award-winning, local, in-house support teams, VirtualPBX offers an array of services including disaster recovery, network monitoring and optimization, and professional system management.

VirtualPBX Contact

Rachel Anderson

Director of Marketing

888.825.0800 Ext. 339

Rachel.Anderson(at)VirtualPBX(dot)com
NEW North Texas hosts Spring Lunch at Crowne Plaza Addison Halter will examine how to establish strategic partnerships between men and women, encouraging men to act as champions of womens efforts

The Network of Executive Womens NEW North Texas region will welcome Jeffery Tobias Halter, a gender strategist focusing on engagement of men in the advancement of women, to their spring luncheon. Men continue to hold a disproportionate number of leadership positions in America and change cannot occur without them taking an active role. During this event, Halter will speak to identifying ready-now men advocates, as well as the business rationale for why it is important. He will examine how to establish strategic partnerships between men and women, encouraging men to act as champions of womens efforts by overcoming some male cultural norms that tend to impede growth.

The luncheon and networking event will be held Thursday, April 28th at the Addison Crowne Plaza.

Halter is a TedxSpeaker, Huff Post Contributor, author, panelist, and President of YWomen, a strategic consulting company focused on engaging men in womens leadership issues. Halter is the former Director of Diversity Strategy for The Coca-Cola Company and has extensive knowledge of the consumer package goods, retail, foodservice, and hospitality industries.

The luncheon event will be held from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at the Crowne Plaza, 14315 Midway Road, in Addison. The event is open to the public and the first 50 registrants will be entered into a drawing for a $50 gift card courtesy of 7-Eleven. Registration is $50 for NEW members, $60 for non-members. Space is limited and advance registration is required. Register now or visit the NEW North Texas regions homepage at newonline.org.

Non-members attending the April 28th luncheon will be entered into a drawing to win a free one-year membership to the Network of Executive Women.

About NEW

Founded in 2001, the Network of Executive Women, Retail, Consumer Goods and Services, represents nearly 10,000 members, 750 companies, 100 corporate partners and 20 regions in the U.S. and Canada. For more information NEW and its national and regional learning programs, events and best practices, visit newonline.org.

Network of Executive Women, 161 N. Clark St., Chicago, IL 60601
North American Wholesale Logistics (NAWL) is proud to announce that they have been named the sole distributor of Spectrum brand products in North America. Huade Racking, the manufacturer of Spectrum material handling products, has selected NAWL based on their mission to deliver quality warehouse products quickly and efficiently for dealers only.

As an MHI member, Huade Racking is the first overseas manufacturer to receive an R-Mark certification. We only want to provide the best shelving and pallet racking to our customers, Curtis Parnell, NAWL Division Manager, said. Spectrum products are highly dependable and cost-effective, as well as easy to integrate with other leading manufacturers systems. We are honored that Huade has selected us to be their exclusive North American distributor.

When asked why Huade selected NAWL to exclusively carry their Spectrum line a representative from the company said, NAWL sets themselves apart from the competition in many ways. They understand the industry, have a wide selection of inventory on hand at all times and their clients can place their quotes and process orders through a convenient online quote tool. The fact that they care so much about their dealers is apparent and speaks volumes of who they are.

About Huade Racking - HUADE is dedicated to the design innovation of the storage rack systems and warehouse racks and automated material handling products in order to support warehousing management to become more efficient and create value for the supply chain. Since 1998, HUADE has been exporting products to Europe, North America, Middle East, Oceania, Asia and more. Stop by Booth #615 at MODEX 2016 to see Spectrum in person.

About North American Wholesale Logistics - NAWL is a wholesale material handling distributor who sells exclusively to dealers and resale partners only. Their Spectrum line was engineered to integrate easily with other teardrop style rack brands and with over 80,000 load beams in stock and ready to ship from their Texas or California offices, they are able to service their more than 500 dealers fast and efficiently.
Understanding compliance obligations regarding employees with disabilities

AudioSolutionz is one of the countrys popular information and training destinations for human resource professionals, which regularly hosts live and on-demand HR webinar on hot topics and updates that are important for human resource and payroll professionals. In April, the company has lined up some informative and insightful training session on the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) among others.

AudioSolutionz will host a live webinar titled The ADA & the PDA: Key Changes in the American with Disabilities Act and Handling Pregnancy and Disability Issues on Tuesday, April 19, 2016, by expert speaker Natalie Ivey, MBA, SPHR, who has more than two decades of leadership and HR management experience with Fortune 500 organizations and is working as a trusted advisor and consultant to business leaders both in the U.S. and abroad.

The U.S. Congress passed the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) in 1978 making it clear that any discrimination that is based on childbirth, pregnancy or any related medical condition is a form of sex discrimination which is forbidden under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII). Also, the PDA is extended to pregnancy Title VIIs goal of obtaining employment equality and in having no barriers that were there in the past to favor a particular group of employees over the others. In 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) was enacted by the congress. It is a wide-ranging civil rights law which was formed for protection against discrimination based on disability.

The ADA Amendments Act (ADAAA) that was signed into law in 2008, broadens the definition of what all disabilities are covered under it and also widens the interpretation of the ADAs coverage. The ADAs description is based on a string of case law of the U.S. Supreme Court decisions from 1999. The two decisions that the ADAAA specifically targeted were  the decision in 2002 in Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Ky, Inc. v. Williams, which made the standards for individuals to be considered substantially limited by their disability more stringent, and the 1999 decision concerning Sutton v. United Air Lines, Inc., which set a limit on the ADAs protection for job applicants and employees whose disabilities can be mitigated by taking steps like treatment, assistive devices, medication etc.

Natalie, in the live webinar by AudioSolutionz, will go through the recent ADA Amendments Act (ADAAA) and the significant changes that have been made in accessing what is actually qualified as a disability. She will explain the compliance obligations and give practical guidance on what is required for complying with the ADA and how to manage issues concerning employees who become pregnant and require accommodation. Attendees will learn how to determine whether a worker or employee has a qualified disability - and how to document it properly.

For more information visit: https://www.audiosolutionz.com/hr-compliance-employment/key-changes-ada-pda.html

About AudioSolutionz

AudioSolutionz is the countrys leading source of knowledge and training for professionals in the human resource and payroll industry. Our conferences and webinars on the HR and Payroll industry are conducted by nationally renowned experts and consultants who provide a fresh perspective on HR and payroll issues, trends and regulations. AudioSolutionz offers important updates, regulatory knowledge and compliance information on hot topics in this industry. It has provided thousands of professionals in the HR industry the opportunity to get answers to their most complex questions directly from experts. To know more visit: https://www.audiosolutionz.com/hr-compliance-employment.html

About the Speaker

Natalie Ivey, MBA, SPHR is an HR consultant, professional speaker, author, and educator. She has more than two decades of leadership and HR management experience with Fortune 500 organizations and in working as a trusted advisor and consultant to business leaders both in the U.S. and abroad. She is the founder and CEO of Results Performance Consulting, Inc., an HR consulting practice that specializes in providing HR expertise and guidance to employers doing business in the U.S.

She is also the author of numerous HRCI accredited HR training programs that are marketed throughout the U.S., as well as the author of the book: How to Conduct Internal Investigations: A Practical Guide for HR Professionals, which has received excellent reviews. Her new book: How to Keep HR from Being the Employee Complaint Department is due to be released in early 2015. Natalie is a frequent lecturer at university symposiums, is a guest speaker at SHRM conferences, and is a nationally known speaker who travels throughout the U.S. and abroad, speaking on a variety of topics to advance the HR profession.
The severity of injuries from automobile accidents is increasing and hitting the insurance industry hard

Distracted Driving kills eight people and injures 1,161 others every day in motor vehicle crashes according to the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration. Nearly 3,200 people were killed and 431,000 injuries were reported in 2014 as a result of distracted driving. Philadelphia Insurance Companies (PHLY) is offering a complimentary, 20 minute online training during National Distracted Driving Awareness Month to help decrease the number of distracted driving accidents.

PHLY is making this course available to everyone during the month of April at http://www.phly.com/safedriving. The course content covers the three major categories for driver distractions (visual, manual, cognitive), as well as tips for avoiding distractions both inside and outside of the car. Participants may take an exam at the end of the course to help with retention of the material covered and receive a certificate of completion after passing the test. The first 2,000 drivers who watch the training and pass the exam will receive a first aid kit.

The severity of injuries from automobile accidents is increasing and hitting the insurance industry hard, shared Mark Konchan, Vice President of Risk Management Services for Philadelphia Insurance Companies. On top of that, the accidents are happening more frequently and part of the cause is due to cell phones, smoking, and other driver distractions.

This online course will be available to the public through April 30th at http://www.phly.com/safedriving.

Steps to take PHLY Distracted Driving online training:

1. Go to PHLY.com/safedriving to watch the online course

2. Pass the exam and complete the form

3. Download certificate of completion

About PHLY

Philadelphia Insurance Companies designs, markets, and underwrites commercial property/casualty and professional liability insurance products incorporating value added coverages and services for select industries. In operation since 1962, the Company, whose commercial lines insurance subsidiaries are rated A++ (Superior) by A.M. Best Company and A+ for counterparty credit and financial strength by Standard & Poors, is nationally recognized as a member of Ward's Top 50 and National Underwriters Top 100. Policies are underwritten by Philadelphia Indemnity Insurance Company, admitted in all U.S. states and D.C., except Louisiana and Tokio Marine Specialty Insurance Company, a surplus lines insurer admitted in Delaware for surplus lines and authorized in all other US states and D.C. The organization has 50 offices strategically located across the U.S. to provide superior service. For more information, please visit http://www.PHLY.com.
North American Title Company Logo Russell will provide expert title advisory and solution-centered support for major projects, commercial and other high-liability transactions.

A nearly 40-year veteran of the title industry, Russell Hirayama has joined North American Title Co. (NATC) as a chief title officer in its California and Nevada title operations. He will provide expert title advisory and solution-centered support for major projects, commercial and other high-liability transactions.

Russell has an impeccable reputation in our business, said David Simmons, NATC vice president, California/Nevada title operations manager. We were able to recruit him based upon our reputation, our staff and the quality title product we provide with our local process and quality control.

Hirayama most recently spent more than 10 years as a chief title officer for a major national title company and has worked on residential, subdivision, commercial and agricultural properties with liabilities as high as $500 million. His title industry career began in 1977 with Safeco Title, when he went through its title officer training program after graduating from the University of California, Davis. Hirayama worked in Fresno County and then moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to work for several other title companies and an underwriter.

He is located at North American Titles California and Nevada title operations headquarters at 6612 Owens Dr., Suite 100, Pleasanton, CA 94588, telephone number (925) 399-3000.

About North American Title

With well over 1,000 associates and a vast network of branches from coast to coast, North American Title (NAT) is among the largest real estate settlement service providers in the United States. Consisting of both agent and underwriter operations, NAT reported annual net revenues in fiscal 2015 of $229 million. The company also has the resources and stability of a wholly owned subsidiary of an S&P 500 company with over $14.4 billion in assets (fiscal year ending Nov. 30, 2015). North American Titles agency network operates nationally under the name North American Title Co. (NATC) in 19 of the fastest-growing states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Virginia, in addition to the District of Columbia. Through our relationship with our expanding affiliate network, NATC provides real estate settlement services in all 50 states. NAT is headquartered in Miami, Florida. To learn more, visit http://www.nat.com
I am so gratified that our organization has grown to include virtual walking teams around the country and Europe, showing global support for our work in Kenya. - Linda Hooper Executive Director, The Samburu Project

On Sunday, April 17, 2016, from 8am to 11am, the South Bay and surrounding communities will come together to support The Samburu Projects 7th Annual Walk for Water & Pancake Breakfast event. This family-friendly event will focus on the drought that affects both Kenya and California and will educate ways in which people can make a difference, locally and globally.

The Walk for Water will take place along a 4-mile loop from Hermosa Beach Pier to Manhattan Beach Pier and back, beginning and ending at American Junkie Restaurant, located at 68 Pier Avenue, Hermosa Beach, CA. Hosted by Actress Rosa Blasi, star of Nickelodeons The Thundermans and special guest India Williams, Miss Santa Monica 2016. Families, local service clubs, students and local business teams participate in support of the event. Participants will receive pledges from supporters and walk 4 miles along the beautiful and famous seaside strand. Metropolitan Water Districts Kids Corner will highlight water issues around the globe and right here at home, inspiring our youth and their families to take action by becoming water conservationists. The walk will culminate with a hearty breakfast and raffle at American Junkie. Registration fee is $40 (student, family and team registrations vary).

While this is the 7th annual event, The Samburu Project is excited to have added satellite walking-teams that will be joining the event virtually. Teams in San Francisco, CA; Atlanta, GA; Marian, IA; Haverhill, MA; Detroit, MI; Stamford, CT; Brooklyn and North Salem, New York as well as London, United Kingdom and Nairobi, Kenya will be walking so others dont have to.

"As the new Executive Director of The Samburu Project, I am so gratified that our organization has grown to include virtual walking teams around the country and beyond, showing global support for our work in the Samburu region of Kenya. In addition to our loyal walkers in Hermosa and Manhattan Beaches, we have added teams from London to Nairobi, to Brooklyn, Atlanta, San Francisco and 6 other U.S. locations. A spotlight is beginning to illuminate the challenges that women and girls face in the developing world as they are the ones tasked with procuring water. The 83 wells The Samburu Project has drilled since 2005 are effecting real change in the lives of women and girls in Kenya. Our supporters share a vision that with clean water, a life out of poverty is within reach; and they are putting their feet to work to make it happen. Commented Linda Hooper, The Samburu Project Executive Director.

Sponsors and supporters of The Samburu Projects Walk for Water are; the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California; Team Tutors; Whole Foods; Juice Crafters; American Junkie; Mike Rossi of NW Real Estate Brokers; Fit-On Studios; DDHPR; CurlyKids HairCare; Crown Diva Boutique & Pageant Academy; and JOL Design.

For additional information please contact Kiki Swanson, Project Coordinator at The Samburu Project, 310.881.7265, Kiki(at)thesamburuproject(dot)org. For media requests and press inquiries please contact Delia Douglas, DDHPR 424.272.0442 delia(at)ddhpr(dot)com.

Since its inception in 2005, The Samburu Project has drilled 83 wells, providing clean, safe drinking water to over 80,000 people in Samburu, Kenya. For more information visit http://www.thesamburuproject.org
(L to R) Joel Rosen, managing partner of High Swartz and Thomas Panzer, managing partner of McNamara, Bolla & Panzer. High Swartz and McNamara, Bolla & Panzer attorneys look forward to offering our clients additional experience and an expanded range of legal services.

Montgomery County law firm High Swartz LLP is pleased to announce a major expansion that will significantly increase its presence in Bucks County. Effective April 1, 2016, High Swartz and McNamara, Bolla, & Panzer in Doylestown, Pennsylvania have merged. The combined firms will maintain the name High Swartz LLP.

The move adds all nine attorneys and five staff members from McNamara, Bolla & Panzer to High Swartz. The new law firm will have 28 attorneys and 18 support staff, positioning it among the largest in the Bucks-Mont region. The attorneys and staff joining High Swartz will continue to work from their existing Doylestown office while the firm will remain headquartered in Norristown.

Joel Rosen, managing partner of High Swartz, said the combined experience and resources of the newly expanded firm underscore its standing as a go-to law firm in the Philadelphia suburbs.

High Swartz and McNamara, Bolla & Panzer attorneys look forward to offering our clients additional experience and an expanded range of legal services, said Rosen. After more than a century of practicing law, during which High Swartz and McNamara, Bolla & Panzer have become woven into the fabric of the greater Philadelphia community, this is a truly historic day for all of us.

The law firms shared practice areas in common, including business law, municipal and government law, wills, trusts and estates, and real estate law such as zoning, corporate real estate transactions and affordable housing matters. In addition, High Swartz handles education law, employment law, environmental law, family law / domestic relations, franchise law, intellectual property law, and litigation. With the addition of nine attorneys from McNamara, Bolla & Panzer, the firm has added personal injury, Social Security disability, and workers compensation claimant and defense work to its legal service offerings.

When we discovered that our attorneys and practice areas were so complementary, uniting our firms made sense, said Thomas Panzer, managing partner of McNamara, Bolla & Panzer. Together, we offer legal counsel to meet a wide range of needs for clients across Bucks and Montgomery counties, and we look forward to working in unison to meet those needs.

Photo caption: (L to R) Joel Rosen, managing partner of High Swartz and Thomas Panzer, managing partner of McNamara, Bolla & Panzer.

About High Swartz LLP  High Swartz LLP is a general practice law firm serving clients in the Delaware Valley and throughout Pennsylvania from offices in Norristown and Doylestown. Established in 1914, High Swartz serves the needs of businesses, municipalities, government entities, nonprofits and individuals. With offices in Bucks and Montgomery Counties, the full-service law firm provides comprehensive counsel and legal support to individuals and business entities of all sizes across a broad spectrum of industries throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey. For more information, go to http://www.highswartz.com.
Mr. Jose Suarez I like Florida National University, and look forward to studying and working here, ~Jose Suarez

Florida National University (FNU) is proud to welcome their newest Admissions Advisor, Jose Suarez, a 21-year-old Upward Bound Scholar. While he is currently finishing a semester at Miami Dade College, Suarez plans to enroll and attend FNU, majoring in Business Administration.

It seems that Suarez was also born to excel in sales. In addition to his current major in Business Administration, Suarez would refer his friends to the Upward Bound program to make extra money.

I would get $10 per referral, and it was easy because the program was good, he said.

FNU saw the potential in Suarez, and he is now starting on a career path to success under the direction of the Admissions Department. The university expects great things from the young, business-savvy salesman. He was well prepared from Upward Bound, and looks forward to the opportunities from FNU both as a student and a staff member.

I like Florida National University, and look forward to studying and working here, says Suarez.

Suarez has traveled far in his time. His family is Cuban; however, Suarez hails from the Canary Islands near Spain. His mother decided to immigrate at the tender age of 24 from Cuba, and later to the United States. At first, Suarez didnt speak English. He found himself learning not just English, but various types of science and math as a student in the Upward Bound program, sponsored by FNU, when he was in high school.

Once I came to this country, Dr. Cuervo helped me to like science, he said.

According to Suarez, his school overseas didnt teach much of any science unless a student indicated interest.

I was not a science guy at all, Suarez said.

When asked about his favorite sciences, Suarez smiled and happily answered, Chemistry. Coming from a diverse background of interests, the young professional is also a dancer of salsa, merengue, and bachata.

To contact Jose Suarez for an interview, call 305-226-9999 or email jasuarez(at)fnu(dot)edu.

####
Joseph F. Finn, Jr. C.P.A. ("Finn") of the firm Finn, Warnke & Gayton, LLP ("FWG"), announces the final notice of the sale of certain assets from Vector Neurosciences LLC of Livingston, NJ (Vector) that were formerly owned by Neurologix, Inc., including clinical data from successful Phase 1 and Phase 2 trials of a potential gene therapy treatment for Parkinsons Disease.

In June 2010, Neurologix announced successful results of its Phase 2 trials of NLX-P101, its investigational gene therapy for advanced Parkinson's disease. Patients in the Phase 2 trial who were administered NLX-P101 achieved statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvements in their motor function scores without their standard medication, in comparison with control subject patients who were treated with sham surgery." The clinical data, and certain of the intellectual property owned or used in the Phase 2 trials, are part of the former assets of Neurologix being offered for sale. Certain other intellectual property is no longer licensed by Neurologix, and is therefore excluded from the assets offered for sale.

The Neurologix assets offered for sale include the patents and intellectual property described below, as well as accounts, general intangibles, clinical trial data and records, and equipment. Also included are additional files, records, office equipment and certain tangible personal property formerly used by Neurologix (certain physical assets located in West Berlin, NJ).

The intellectual property of Neurologix included in the offer for sale consists of certain patents, patent applications, and rights under certain patent licensing agreements. By serial number, the patents include No. 6,436,708 (Delivery System for Gene Therapy to the Brain), No. 7,527,785 (Novel Glutamic Acid Decarboxylase Chimera and Methods of Use), and No. 7,723,288 (Methods and compositions for the treatment of neurological disease).

By serial number, the patent applications include Nos. 2004281764(AU) & 04795081.1(EP) (Methods and compositions for the treatment of neurological disease), No. 12/714,613 (Methods and compositions for the treatment of neurological disease), No. 10/769,182 (Methods and Compositions for use in Interventional Pharmacogenomics), No. 11/255,637 (Use of Apoptosis Inhibiting Compound in Neurological Disorders), Nos. 06 77 1671.2 (EU) & 2610164 (CA) (Novel Glutamic Acid Decarboxylase Chimera and Methods of Use), No. 12/409,837 (Novel Glutamic Acid Decarboxylase Chimera and Methods of Use), No. 11/888,556 (Novel Consensus GAD and Methods of Use), No. 12/261,451 (A Novel Gene Therapy Approach for Treating The Metabolic Disorder Obesity), No. 12/433,098 (A Novel Gene Therapy Approach for Treating The Metabolic Disorder Obesity), No. 61/301,396 (Production of Recombinant Virus).

Also being sold are rights to use certain third party patents (as qualified, limited, or restricted by certain licensing agreements) including Nos. 6,156,535 & 6,159,948 (Mammalian IAP gene family, primers, probes and detection methods).

Vector possesses a security interest. Vector recently acquired rights to the patents, intellectual property and other assets from the senior lenders and noteholders of Neurologix, which Vector will offer for sale at a public auction to be held on Thursday April 14, 2016 at 10:00 a.m. at the offices of McCarter & English, LLP, 100 Mulberry Street, Four Gateway Center, Newark, New Jersey. Vector reserves the right to credit bit on the patents, intellectual property and other assets up to the amount of $9,923,559.22.

Persons interested in bidding must sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement ("NDA") before receiving a bid package. The NDA may be obtained by contacting FWG  IPSaleServices(at)finnwarnkegayton(dot)com or (781) 237  8840.

Bid packages including more specific information on the patents (including any corresponding foreign issued patents), intellectual property and other assets being offered for sale will be provided by email upon receipt of an executed NDA.

About Finn, Warnke & Gayton, LLP:

Joseph F. Finn, Jr. C.P.A., is the founding partner of Finn, Warnke & Gayton, LLP

(http://www.finnwarnkegayton.com) Certified Public Accountants of Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts.

FWG has liquidated a number of patent portfolios specific to CNS, and gene therapies.

For further information, please contact Joseph F. Finn, Jr. C.P.A. at (781) 237  8840 or jffinnjr(at)finnwarnkegayton(dot)com.

SOURCE Joseph F. Finn, Jr. C.P.A.
Voiceye is truly an amazing new technology and we are pleased to once again honor Crawford Technologies.

Crawford Technologies announced today it will be honored during the Xploration 16 customer communications conference, receiving the coveted Xplor International 2016 Technology of the Year award for its new Voiceye Maker for Operations Express solution. Featured recently on the Discoverys Channels NewsWatch program, the innovative Voiceye technology enables people with visual or cognitive impairment to read text from printed pages using a smartphone.

"With Voiceye, organizations can make their original printed documents inclusive, meaning accessible to anyone, eliminating much of the exception processing that is done today to provide special formats," said Ernie Crawford, President of Crawford Technologies. "This disruptive technology is turning accessibility into business as usual, and we are proud to be recognized for our part in revolutionizing the accessibility market."

Voiceye is based on a patented, ultra-high-density barcode  smaller than a QR code - that can hold the information from several pages in a single barcode. Using a free smartphone app, Voiceye barcodes are scanned and allow visually-impaired users to use their phones standard accessibility features to hear the document spoken to them. They can also read the printed document in large font and high contrast viewing modes or display them on refreshable Braille displays. The app can link to Google Translate for people who need to read their documents in a different language.

Voiceye Maker for Operations Express allows high-volume document producers to make all their documents into fully accessible pages. By implementing Voiceye Maker for Operations Express, organizations can significantly reduce the costs of creating separate documents in traditional alternate formats.

We received a larger than normal number of award submissions, making it a challenge for the Awards Committee to select a winner, said Skip Henk, EDP, President and CEO of Xplor International. Voiceye is truly an amazing new technology and we are pleased to once again honor Crawford Technologies.

In addition to winning 2016 Technology of the Year Award, Crawford Technologies will receive an Honorable Mention award in the same category for its new PRO Inkjet Express solution. PRO Inkjet Express is a modular and scalable software solution that gives organizations powerful tools to migrate transactional print workloads to high-speed color inkjet presses. This allows organizations to implement an automated end-to-end production workflow and fully leverage the capabilities of their inkjet presses quickly, efficiently and cost effectively.

The Xplor International Technology of the Year award honors an individual, company or organization that has conceived and developed an original concept leading to a significant advancement in the industry. It can be a new program, product, or technology that notably enhances the capabilities of document and communication systems.

For more information about Crawford Technologies award-winning solution, Voiceye for Operations Express, please click here. To watch the Discovery Channel news story on Voiceye for Operatons Express, click here. For more information on PRO Inkjet Express, click here.

About Xplor International

Xplor International is a worldwide, not-for-profit professional association that consists of thousands of users and suppliers of the products and services that create, modify and deliver customized information using a wide variety of document technologies. The association provides educational products and programs for its members and the industry at large through conferences, meetings and annual events. Xplor International has its worldwide headquarters in Lutz, Florida, with affiliated offices around the world.

About Crawford Technologies

Crawford Technologies is an award-winning, worldwide leader in print-stream conversions, document re-engineering, high-volume document workflow, document accessibility and archiving software solutions. For 20 years, Crawford Technologies has expanded its solution offerings in Customer Communications Management (CCM), Enterprise Output Management (EOM), Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and Document Accessibility markets. CrawfordTech is dedicated to helping organizations improve their customer communications delivery systems so people can receive their documents in their format and channel of preference.

For media and other inquiries please contact the CrawfordTech Press Office:

North America Tel: +1-416-923-0080

UK Tel: +44 (0)20 3289 4724

media(at)crawfordtech(dot)com

http://www.crawfordtech.com
Rigaku Oxford Diffraction announced the release of a new single crystal diffractometer, the XtaLAB Synergy, at the British Crystallographic Association meeting in Nottingham, UK on April 4, 2016. Arriving on the anniversary of the acquisition of Agilents XRD group by Rigaku Corporation and the formation of the Rigaku Oxford Diffraction business unit, the XtaLAB Synergy represents a combination of the best technologies from the two groups and a major advance in single crystal experimental performance and usability.

An improved Kappa goniometer design provides greater access to reciprocal space and both longer and shorter crystal to detector distances. Motor speeds have been doubled to improve data collection speed and minimize dead-time between scans. Total data acquisition time has been reduced and the ability to analyze smaller samples is improved by newly designed PhotonJet(tm) X-ray sources. Customers can choose between a range of detectors based on HPC (Hybrid Photon Counting) or ultra-fast CCD technologies, depending on their experimental needs of aperture size, sensitivity and the ability to measure data in a true shutterless mode.

The XtaLAB Synergy can be equipped with either one or two PhotonJet X-ray sources from a selection of three radiation types: Cu, Mo, and Ag. The PhotonJet X-ray source is based on microfocus sealed-tube technology and includes a new X-ray tube, new optics, and new alignment mechanism providing double the fluence and longer tube life compared to previous sources. A new user-inspired cabinet design includes additional space for an improved work environment and electronically controlled brightness of the cabinet interior and crystal lighting, which results in optimum video imaging for all types of crystal samples.

The highly regarded CrysAlisPro software package is the nerve center of the new XtaLAB Synergy, tying together all the new improvements of speed and fluence through a highly parallelized architecture resulting in a blindingly fast system for generating 3D structures of crystalline materials.

About Rigaku Oxford Diffraction (ROD)

ROD was formed as the global single crystal business unit of Rigaku Corporation after the acquisition of the former Oxford Diffraction organization from Agilent Technologies in 2015. ROD is a leader in the field of single crystal analysis, both in the field of chemical crystallography as well as well as macromolecular crystallography. Formed in 1951, Rigaku Corporation is a leading analytical instrumentation company based out of Tokyo, Japan.

For further information, contact:

Paul Swepston

Senior Vice President and General Manager

Rigaku Oxford Diffraction

Tokyo, Wroclaw, Oxford, The Woodlands

tel: +1 281-362-2300

Paul(dot)Swepston(at)rigaku(dot)com
Free demos of the VJ-Advance (VJ-ADV) articulating video borescope and answering questions about how the joystick-controlled, 4-way articulating VJ-ADV can help aviation professionals confidently complete equipment inspections.

RF System Lab will be exhibiting at the 21st annual MRO Americas Conference & Exhibition, presented by Pentons Aviation Week, on April 5-7, 2016 at the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center in Dallas, TX.

The Aviation Week MRO Americas Conference & Exhibition will explore the future of aviation and defense maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) through a series of drill-down discussions and networking opportunities. Drawing 10,000 industry and government professionals, the event features the industry's largest exhibition floor, which showcases 700+ solution providers to communicate actionable solutions, build contacts, and exchange ideas.

Borescope expert Zack Wessels will be representing RF System Lab in the exhibit hall at booth #3927. He will be offering free demos of the VJ-Advance (VJ-ADV) articulating video borescope and answering questions about how the joystick-controlled, 4-way articulating VJ-ADV can help aviation professionals confidently complete equipment inspections. The VJ-Advances numerous features can make your job faster and easier for any aviation professional looking to add a high-quality inspection camera to their arsenal; especially the 3.9mm diameter borescope, which is the perfect fit for Pratt & Whitney Engines.

During the event, industry leaders from the airlines and MRO supply chain as well as military professionals will discuss a number of the key dynamics shaping the commercial airline business today. Kevin McAllister, President and CEO of GE Aviation Services, will deliver the events opening keynote address. To learn more about the Aviation Week MRO Americas Conference & Exhibition or to register, visit http://www.aviationweek.com/events/mro or call or call +1.646.392.7883. On Twitter, follow @aviationweek, @avweekevents, #MROAM, #MROMIL.

RF System Lab offers the industrys only no cost, no obligation borescope trial. The company will send you the VJ-Advance video borescope so that you can use it while completing inspections in your own facility in order to be sure that it suits all of your requirements. Visit Zack Wessels at booth #3927, or contact RF System Lab today at (231) 943-1171 to arrange to receive your demonstration unit.
This is the best way to make ALPR data available to agencies that need it while maintaining the personal privacy of American citizens.

PlateSmart, the surveillance industrys leading provider of Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) technology, has been selected to receive a Govies award for excellence in government security technology for 2016. This is the third Govies in as many years for PlateSmart. This year, the award goes to PlateSmart Network(TM), the Companys unique peer-to-peer ALPR data sharing system. The award will be presented to PlateSmart at ISC West, one of the securitys industrys biggest annual expos, to be held this year in Las Vegas from April 6th through the 8th.

PlateSmart Network is an innovative new feature for the ARES ALPR-based video analytics platform, which itself took home a Platinum Govies award in 2014. It allows multiple users with their own ARES deployments to share ALPR capture metadata via a secure peer-to-peer connection. This would enable, for example, homeowners associations, hospitals, college campuses, bank branches, public parking garages, or other private organizations to deploy ARES at their facility and instantly send any ALPR capture data they received to local law enforcement, who could in turn check the data against criminal databases for active wants or warrants. It could also enable multiple law enforcement agencies to share ALPR data for the purpose of detecting and tracking wanted individuals.

The system is designed to allow end users to devise their own data storage and distribution schemes based on their individual needs and the laws of their states. Its design is also naturally compatible with the storage and distribution needs of law enforcement data fusion centers that have been emerging in regions all across the country in recent years.

This stands in sharp contrast to a competing business model, wherein the ALPR manufacturer stores the data in a central database and distributes it as it sees fit. PlateSmart CEO John Chigos notes, At PlateSmart, we never touch the users data. We believe that it is up to the user to decide how they will handle the data they generate in compliance with applicable state laws. We also give them some of the best tools available to protect the security of that data. This is the best way to make ALPR data available to agencies that need it while maintaining the personal privacy of American citizens. It also enables local law enforcement agencies to form solid public-private coalitions with the people they serve in the fight against crime and terrorism.

Still undetermined is whether PlateSmarts 2016 Govies award will earn the coveted Gold or Platinum designation; that will be announced during the presentation at ISC West. The Companys awards for 2014 and 2015 were both Platinum.

In addition to receiving the 2016 Govies Award, PlateSmart will also be demonstrating the PlateSmart Network and new innovations in ALPR with High-Definition capability and vehicle make recognition at ISC West. PlateSmart will be exhibiting alongside integration partner Samsung Techwin in Booth #14079.

Learn more about ISC West at http://www.iscwest.com.

About PlateSmart

PlateSmart Technologies has developed the worlds first software-only Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) and video analytic solutions, which are compatible with both state-of-the-art and legacy cameras. PlateSmart offers both mobile and fixed ALPR and analytic solutions, which are designed either to function as stand-alone tools or to integrate with third-party software and hardware. ARES, PlateSmarts enterprise ALPR-based analytic solution, provides real-time actionable intelligence with industry-leading accuracies and state jurisdiction recognition for complete situational awareness. PlateSmarts solutions have been recognized as the most innovative and forward-thinking LPR technology by Frost and Sullivan. http://www.platesmart.com

DISCLAIMER: This press release may contain forward-looking statements and/or predictions. These statements are based on history, current knowledge, and current market conditions. They are subject to change without notice as conditions and knowledge change; therefore, undue reliance should not be placed on such statements.
AMG is fielding a team in the May 28 Dirty Girl Mud Run 5K. AMG Girls, left to right: Lou Anne White, Ty Waddell, Jamie Rettie, Linda Lanier, Jennifer Royalty, (front) Crystal Weaver and Joselin Paz. AMG believes its important for women to come together to support one another.

Association Management Group (AMG), one of the Carolinas largest professional homeowner association managers with five offices in North and South Carolina, recently signed on as a financial sponsor of the Dirty Girl Mud Run scheduled for Saturday, May 28 in nearby Archdale. More than a 5K, this unique women-only run through a muddy race course polka-dotted with obstacles ranging from walls to climb over to water pits to wade through, benefits Bright Pink, the only national non-profit focused on the prevention and early detection of breast and ovarian cancer in young women. The organization educates, equips and empowers the 52 million young women in the US between the ages of 18 and 45, to be proactive, to reduce their risk for these diseases and detect them at early non-life-threatening stages. Nearly a million women have participated in this race across the nation since its debut in 2011.

Jamie Rettie and Crystal Weaver, Certified Manager of Community Associations, organized team AMG Girls after seeing a post on Facebook about the fundraising event that focuses more on camaraderie and girl power than competition and victory. My grandmother is a breast cancer survivor and two friends are ovarian cancer survivors, said Rettie. Life can be heartbreaking at times. Its important for women to come together to support one another. Participating in this run is a privilege because at this point in our lives we are healthy enough to do so. This may not always be the case, so doing an extreme woman-only event is perfect to show support for those who are not healthy enough to do so.

AMG has a corporate culture of community support, enjoying 100% service by its employees in all five offices. Our AMG Girls team is fueled by this motto: Decide what you want and go for it, especially if it can make a difference and benefit others, Weaver explained. Thats what were doingfor ourselves, and cancer awareness and prevention. To donate to the cause, visit AMG Girls page http://www.crowdrise.com/DirtyGirlMudRunGreensboro. For more about the Dirty Girl Run, visit godirtygirl.com/Greensboro-nc-2016/?gclid=CO7E2ai748sCFVg6gQodrukDKA. For more about the event beneficiary, visit http://www.BrightPink.org.

About AMG: AMG is a professional community association management company dedicated to building effective community associations. AMG guides and assists executive boards to help protect the association's interests, enhance the lives of community members and improve the property values in the community. With offices throughout the Carolinas in Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Charlotte and Raleigh, NC, and Greenville and Aiken, SC, AMG is a knowledgeable partner in enforcing community governing documents with a proven set of processes and techniques, and supporting communities with a broad range of services which can be tailored to individual community needs. Association Management Group, Inc. is a locally Accredited Business by the BBB and is a nationally Accredited Association Management Company (AAMC) by the Community Associations Institute. For more about AMG, visit http://www.amgworld.com.
Sustainability manager, Paul Helgeson, pictured here with GNP Company representatives, accepts the 2016 Hunger Hero award. We appreciate our partnership with Second Harvest Heartland, because they are helping us live our mission of dedicated to healthy food, families, and farms, said Paul Helgeson, sustainability manager for GNP Company

GNP Company, the Midwests leading chicken producer of the Goldn Plump and Just BARE chicken brands, has been named a 2016 Hunger Hero Food Award recipient by Second Harvest Heartland in a ceremony held on March 31 at Second Harvest Heartlands Golden Valley, Minn. headquarters.

The Hunger Hero Award, now in its seventh year, recognizes organizations that make a compassionate and transformational impact on people in need in Minnesota and Wisconsin. GNP Company has supported Second Harvest Heartland for 12 years and was acknowledged as the food banks largest food donor in 2015 for donating 1.7 million meals worth of chicken last year.

As a food company, we appreciate all of the hard work of the Second Harvest Heartland team in building awareness about food insecurity in our local communities, said Paul Helgeson, sustainability manager for GNP Company. Good organizations tend to find one another. We appreciate our partnership with Second Harvest Heartland, because they are helping us live our mission of dedicated to healthy food, families, and farms.

According to Second Harvest Heartland, which is one of the largest and most efficient food banks in the United States, one in 10 people in Minnesota and western Wisconsin experience the stress of hunger on any given day. The food bank delivered 77 million meals in the region last year.

According to Helgeson, what GNP Company equally appreciates about the partnership is the fact that Second Harvest Heartland serves all three of the communities in which the company operates. My great-grandfather, E.M. Helgeson, who founded the company 90 years ago, would be very proud that were continuing his legacy of supporting our people where they live and work. And, he would be humbled by the size of the donation and impact it made locally, said Helgeson.

A crowd of 75 people attended the Thursday evening event, where Helgeson, along with other GNP Company representatives, were on-hand to officially accept the award.

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About GNP Company | Dedicated to Healthy Food, Families & Farms.

Based in St. Cloud, MN, GNP Company is a provider of premium branded and custom chicken products to retail, deli and foodservice customers nationally. Founded by E.M. Helgeson in 1926 and purchased in 2013 by Maschhoff Family Foods, GNP Company remains family-owned. It distributes products under the Just BARE and Goldn Plump brand names. Together, the companys more than 1,700 team members and 350 family farm partners in Minnesota and Wisconsin provide enough chicken for about 4 million consumers annually. For more information about the company and its mission of dedicated to healthy food, families and farms, visit http://www.GNPCompany.com.
Landscape Structures Inc., a Delano, Minn.-based commercial playground equipment manufacturer, announced today that it will once again partner with Kiwanis International, a global organization of members of every age who are dedicated to serving the children of the world, to help a deserving Kiwanis club bring a playground to their community through the Legacy of Play Contest on Facebook.

The winning Kiwanis club will receive $25,000 in playground equipment to be used toward a playground project. The contest is open to all Kiwanis clubs that are currently working on a playground project, and that can complete the project on or around 2017 Kiwanis One Day, Kiwanis Internationals signature day of service during which many clubs participate in service projects benefiting their local communities.

Qualified contestants may enter the contest at facebook.com/Kiwanis by completing the entry form. Entries will be accepted April 4 through May 5, 2016. Following the submission period, Facebook users will have the opportunity to vote for their favorite project. The contest winner will be announced on or around June 9, 2016. Find complete contest rules by visiting kiwanis.org/oneday, then choose Legacy of Play Contest on the sidebar.

This is the third year that Kiwanis International and Landscape Structures have held a playground contest for Kiwanis clubs. In 2013, the Iola Kiwanis Club in Iola, Kan., was the winner and went on to design and install an inclusive playground environment that welcomes children and families of all abilities. In 2015, the Kiwanis Club of Ottawa, Ill., was named the winner of the Legacy of Play Contest. The club continues to fundraise for their inclusive playground project with plans to install phase one this spring. Learn more about these projects and the Kiwanis partnership at playlsi.com/Kiwanis.

About Kiwanis International

Founded in 1915, Kiwanis International is a global organization of members dedicated to serving the children of the world. Kiwanis and its family of clubs, including Circle K International for university students, Key Club for students age 14 to 18, Builders Club for students age 11 to 14, Kiwanis Kids for students age 6 to 12 and Aktion Club for adults living with disabilities, dedicate annually more than 18 million service hours to strengthen communities and serve children. The Kiwanis International family comprises nearly 600,000 adult and youth members in 80 countries and geographic areas. For more information about Kiwanis International, please visit http://www.kiwanis.org.

About Landscape Structures

Since 1971, Landscape Structures Inc. has been committed to enhancing childrens lives by fostering and creating inspiring play experiences while honoring the environment. We create innovative playground equipment to inspire children to grown strong bodies and minds so their futures remain bright. And to further ensure a better tomorrow, we are sensitive to the environment through manufacturing practices that minimize our impact on the earth. Our goal from day one has been to foster healthy children playing in healthy communities year after year, generation after generation.
Tamie Adaya hosts 2016 BritWeek events at her Hotel Shangri-la Santa Monica I am thrilled to be hosting this exciting series of BritWeek events at my Hotel Shangri-la. Nothing is as personally and professionally rewarding than this amazing opportunity for me to showcase the Sceptered Isles hottest talent to the U.S.

Following her immensely successful BritWeek 2015 events profiling the best of British creativity, renowned art patron Tamie Adaya is once again hosting her signature event series showcasing the Sceptered Isles hottest talent in film, fashion, modeling and design at her Hotel Shangri-la in Santa Monica. Now in its tenth successful year, Los Angeles BritWeek is being celebrated around the city between April 23 and May 8, 2016.

This year, Tamie's BritWeek events feature filmmaker and author Phil Strongman, British model and entrepreneur Felicity Hayward, and innovative latex fashion designer Kim West. Save the date for an afternoon poolside Village Fete themed Anarchists tea party and an evening premiere screening for ANARCHY: The McLaren Westwood Gang, director Phil Strongmans wide-reaching new documentary. As always, Tamies events celebrating the multiplicity of creative links between L.A. and the U.K. are among the most sought after BritWeek programs.

April 24  2 pm Anarchists Village Green Tea Party

This poolside afternoon Village Fete themed Anarchists tea party features some of Britains best loved childhood playground games including Guess the Weight of the Cake, Penny Up The Wall and schoolyard favorite, Hopscotch. Complimentary classic post-WW2 British tea and biscuits are served for all. Taking center-stage at Tamies exclusive tea party this year are British model/entrepreneur Felicity Hayward and designer Kim West, who are showcasing their exclusive latex collection.

Kim West Clothing was established in 1984 and quickly brought latex into mainstream fashion. Her designs have been featured in Vogue, Notion, Volt magazines, pop videos, ad campaigns (Jimmy Choo), on the catwalk at LFW in the House of Holland SS12 collection and worn by icons such as Madonna, Kylie, Isabella Rosselini, Helena Bonham Carter, Jessie J and Rita Ora. Latex is still her signature fabric but Kim has made so many technical advances that its been re-branded Glyde-tex.

Born in Suffolk, Felicity Hayward moved to London to study a degree in Photography. Leaving university with a First Class Honours, she had her work commissioned to be displayed on the London Underground. Felicity ran various established club nights and events in London, it was at one of these events she was scouted to model for photographer Miles Aldridge. After this shoot was published by Ponystep Magazine in 2012, Felicity was approached by Storm Management and started her career as a model. She has worked with such photographers as Patrick Demarchelier, Miles Aldridge, Dan Jackson, Matt Irwin, Rankin and Mark Lebon. She has also been featured in publications such as VOGUE, GLAMOUR, i-D, Schon! Ponystep & Numero.

April 26  7 pm L.A. premiere and screening of ANARCHY: The McLaren Westwood Gang

As a special engagement, Tamie Adaya presents the L.A. premiere for ANARCHY - a documentary focusing on Britains answer to Andy Warhol: Malcolm McLaren and his partner-in-crime, Vivienne Westwood, who single-handedly changed the course of Western culture forever with their unique brand of subversive, situationism and creativity.

Making great use of candid interviews he conducted with Malcolm in Paris and London, director Phil Strongman has unearthed some stunning, unseen footage about Malcolms childhood, his 1960s activism and his key role in punk anti-fashion. Three films in one: its a history of European Anarchism; a biography of McLarenand a compelling expose of the real birth of the Sex Pistols (with The Clash, 101ers, Bow Wow Wow, Adam Ant, Boy George, Don Letts, Tony Wilson, Tracey Emin, Stuart Christie, Nick Egan, Vivienne Westwood). Screening is followed by a Q&A.

Where

Hotel Shangri-la Santa Monica, 1301 Ocean Ave, Santa Monica, CA

Open to the public - RSVP required; RSVP(at)shangrila-hotel(dot)com

Once again, I am thrilled to be hosting this exciting series of BritWeek events at my Hotel Shangri-la, said Tamie Adaya, art patron, social architect and owner of the Hotel Shangri-la Santa Monica. Nothing is as personally and professionally rewarding than this amazing opportunity for me to showcase the Sceptered Isles hottest talent to the U.S. from this historic art deco hotel in the heart of Santa Monica, she added.

About Tamie Adaya

As a student of art, history, pop-culture, and politics, Tamie Adaya brings a distinctive viewpoint to her iconic Santa Monica boutique hotel property. Long a family treasure, the recently re-branded and remodeled Hotel Shangri-la is a reflection of Tamies palatefeaturing clean, crisp lines, modern lifestyle amenities with a classic flair, an unprecedented attention to detail with a whimsical unpredictability that makes each visit a discovery in self-expression, escapism and pure enjoyment.

An avid traveler and student of modern-day life, Tamie is constantly seeking inspiration from other great cities, famous hotels, famed restaurants and museums, but has also found there is no greater way to be inspired than by bringing diverse and interesting people together at her hotel. From international DJs to writers, professors, photographers, and celebrities like famed British Magician Dynamo who recently filmed an episode of his hit BBC One series, Magician Impossible at the hotel, to just close friends, Tamie often brings her diverse group of friends and associates together for a night of intellectual chat ranging from politics to fashion to the current state of the music industry. A sneak preview screening of PBS MASTERPIECE CLASSIC Season 2 premiere of the popular British series, Mr. Selfridge, was held at the hotel. Visit https://www.instagram.com/tamieadaya/ to learn more.

About Hotel Shangri-la

The original and urbane Hotel Shangri-la Santa Monica is anything but ordinary and a member of Small Luxury Hotels of the World. Overlooking the Pacific since 1939, the hotel is a striking beacon of Art Deco elegance, a chronicle of the golden era of Hollywood and a quintessential nexus of culture. Hidden away on a high Santa Monica bluff overlooking the ocean and historic Santa Monica Pier, this timeless luxury boutique hotel promises guests their own personal Shangrila. Guests enjoy brilliant views of the Pacific Ocean, a celebrated history and a cultural connection during their stay. In the U.S., for toll-free room reservations only, please call (800) 345-STAY (7829) or for more information, visit http://www.Shangrila-Hotel.com.
Nathan Conway, CEO Fortis Energy Services, Inc. Being acknowledged by our industry as the Oilfield Service Company of the Year is a tremendous honor.

For the second year in a row, Fortis Energy Services is taking home the award for Oilfield Service Company of the Year. Fortis has been named Oilfield Service Company of the Year at the 4th Annual Oil & Gas Awards in recognition of their HSE Programs, Operational Excellence, Innovation and Corporate Social Responsibility.

Being acknowledged by our industry as the Oilfield Service Company of the Year is a tremendous honor. This award is a testament to the extraordinary teamwork of our employees and Fortis commitment to creating an organization that is continuously making industry leading strides in regards to safety and operational excellence. stated Nathan Conway, Fortis Energy Services CEO.

The Oilfield Services Company of the Year Award recognizes the organization that provides exemplary services to regional operators. Companies were judged on the strength and breadth of delivery where both safety and commercial concerns are demonstrably best in class. The Oilfield Service Company of the Year demonstrates that timeliness, cost control and overall value for money have been delivered for customers across a range of disciplines.

Fortis attended the 4th Annual Oil & Gas Awards and received the Oilfield Service Company of the Year trophy at a black-tie gala ceremony held at the Westin Convention Center in downtown Pittsburgh where hundreds of oil and gas executives were gathered.

Fortis Energy Services scored highest in the category with Oil & Gas Award panelists saying, Fortiss commitment to putting together a formal program to hire returning veterans is a very notable endeavor, a program like this helps the individuals who have sacrificed so much for the safety of this country. This hiring process is great for the industry because veterans bring discipline and teamwork to the oilfield. This along with a wide portfolio of exemplary services and superb CSR efforts made Fortis the clear favorite.

About Fortis

Fortis Energy Services is an award winning oil and gas well servicing company with corporate headquarters in Michigan and operations throughout the Rocky Mountain and Northeast regions, specializing in well completions, down-hole repairs, workovers and plugging and abandonment.

For information contact: Peter Corrado pcorrado(at)fortisenergyservices(dot)com
OIA Global, a leading logistics, packaging and materials sourcing provider, announced additional European expansion with the launch of its new office in Barcelona, Spain. OIAs decision to open the new office was driven by demand from several existing multi-national customers.

When our clients target a geographic market for expansion, were always there to support them, said David Ower, Managing Director of Europe.

Each market is unique, and our team of logistics professionals in Barcelona are there to ensure that our customers have the same seamless experience in Spain as they enjoy in all other markets, added Ower.

The Spanish economy is experiencing significant recovery since the 2008-09 recession, and is in the process of implementing innovative regulatory reform, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Mirela Duras, OIAs Corporate Support Manager of Europe pointed out the Spanish economy has grown for ten straight quarters, making it a very desirable market to invest in.

OIA has traditionally held a strong base in the northern, western and central areas of Europe. The opening of its new office in Barcelona represents the latest step in the companys growth strategy, allowing them to further build their infrastructure throughout Europe.

OIAs BARCELONA OFFICE CAN BE REACHED AT THE FOLLOWING ADDRESS AND TELEPHONE NUMBER:

OIA GLOBAL

CALLE BRUC NO. 21

OFFICE 2, 2ND FLOOR

BARCELONA, SPAIN 08010

PH: +34 933 906 101

EMAIL: Barcelona(at)oiaglobal(dot)com

About OIA Global:

Since its founding in 1988, OIA Global has grown into a $1 billion supply chain management leader, delivering clients a unique combination of global logistics, materials sourcing, and packaging solutions. With over 1000 professionals, 60+ owned offices and a worldwide presence in 26 countries, OIA designs innovative solutions that optimize supply chains around the world. OIA is a part of Indianapolis-based LDI, Ltd., a family office with more than a century of experience funding and operating high potential, middle-market companies. For more information please visit http://www.oiaglobal.com and http://www.ldiltd.com.

OIA Global Media Contact:

Jerry Levy

Director of Marketing

E. jerry(dot)levy(at)oiaglobal(dot)com

T. 503.736.5900
Our MoovCheckout integration with Demandware enables existing customers to easily and quickly create seamless checkout experiences...

Moovweb, the pioneer in powering engaging mobile experiences for the worlds leading brands, today announced it can provide Demandware clients a frictionless mobile checkout flow, enabling them to increase mobile conversion rates, increase revenues per visit and improve overall consumer mobile engagement.

MoovCheckout includes two components: Catalyst and Business Manager. MoovCheckout Catalyst is focused on optimizing the mobile checkout flow to increase conversion rates and reduce cart abandonment rate. Catalyst instantly transforms an existing checkout flow, applying mobile checkout best practices based on data from over 300 mobile experiences and leading research about mobile eCommerce usability.

The other component is MoovCheckout Business Manager, an online dashboard that provides commerce leaders with detailed analytics to better understand the root of cart abandonments. Business users can measure key eCommerce metrics such as conversion rate, field abandonment rate and time spent per field. MoovCheckout Business Manager also gives business users the ability to quickly create and test custom checkout experiences through a point-and-click interface.

The MoovCheckout LINK Cartridge facilitates the integration of MoovCheckout into a Demandware storefront. After MoovCheckout is installed into a Demandware storefront through the LINK Cartridge, business users can control and analyze checkout behavior through the MoovCheckout dashboard.

"MoovCheckout is a critical component of our mobile commerce strategy. With MoovCheckout we were able to increase our shopping cart conversions by over 20 percent. The ease of implementation and immediate impact on conversions makes MoovCheckout a must-have technology," said Rachel Silva, AVP Marketing at Pep Boys.

As mobile traffic continues to skyrocket, so do abandoned purchases, incomplete account registrations, and lost revenue, said Haresh Kumar, vice president of Marketing at Moovweb. Our MoovCheckout integration with Demandware enables existing customers to easily and quickly create seamless checkout experiences. Mobile and eCommerce leaders can gain key insights on why potential shoppers abandon carts and improve their checkout completion rates.

Retail brands are under constant pressure to maximize the conversion, unlock revenue generating opportunities and gain customer insights. With the Moovweb integration, Demandware clients have access to another cutting-edge solution that can be quickly and cost-effectively integrated into the Demandware Commerce Cloud as a part of the LINK network, said Tom Griffin, senior vice president of corporate development at Demandware.

The Demandware LINK Partner Ecosystem is composed of hundreds of innovative and highly skilled technology and services partners who collectively deliver Demandware clients unprecedented levels of agility, choice, and speed-to-market.

Moovweb will also be showcasing MoovCheckout at the 2016 Demandware XChange Conference. For more information about the Moovweb Checkout Link Cartridge, visit: http://www.moovweb.com/demandware.

About Moovweb

Moovweb allows customers to transform their mobile or desktop sites into fast, engaging, high-conversion experiences. Whether a company is looking to increase checkout conversion rates, enhance product discovery and searchability or drive engagement and mobile app usage, Moovweb can scale to meet the range of those business needs. Over one third of mobile users in the United States engage with rich, contextual mobile experiences powered by Moovweb. Leading brands such as Nordstrom, AIG, Kaiser, Panasonic, McKesson, Fairmont, Campbell's and many more use Moovweb to boost their mobile conversions. For more information, visit http://www.moovweb.com.
Research has shown that patients who have oropharyngeal cancer caused by HPV and receive timely treatment survive considerably longer than those who are diagnosed later in the disease process.

Oral, head, and neck cancers are among the fastest rising cancers today. Each year they account for more than 110,000 new cases in the United States and 550,000 cases worldwide, according to the American Academy of Otolaryngology  Head and Neck Surgery. These numbers include tongue and throat cancers caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV), as well as other forms of cancer caused by tobacco use. April 10-16 is Oral, Head & Neck Cancer Awareness Week. Mount Sinai experts are sharing tips on prevention and urging the community to get screened.

"Research has shown that patients who have oropharyngeal cancer caused by HPV and receive timely treatment survive considerably longer than those who are diagnosed later in the disease process," said Brett Miles, MD, DDS, Associate Professor of Otolaryngology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. "Catching the disease at the earliest possible stage is crucial for good outcomes and improved survival, although fortunately, we now have several novel treatment strategies which can help patients survive considerable time even in advanced stages of the disease."

Free Oral, Head and Neck Cancer Screenings: No registration required. Screening takes 15 mins., and includes an examination of the neck and inspection of the oropharynx and the mouth.



The Mount Sinai Hospital (Guggenheim Pavilion-Atrium of the Annenberg Building/1468 Madison Avenue at 100th Street) Thursday, April 14, 10:00 am  2:00 pm

Mount Sinai Beth Israel Phillips Ambulatory Care Center (10 Union Square East, 2nd Floor) Tuesday, April 12, 10 am  1 pm

Facts



Most head and neck cancers begin in the squamous cells that line the moist surfaces inside the head and neck.

Tobacco use, alcohol use, and human papillomavirus infection are important risk factors for head and neck cancers.

Typical symptoms of head and neck cancers include a lump or sore (for example, in the mouth) that does not heal, a sore throat that does not go away, difficulty swallowing, and a change or hoarseness in the voice.

Regular follow-up care is an important part of treatment for patients with head and neck cancers.

Tips for Head and Neck Cancer Prevention



Dont smoke.

Avoid alcohol.

Avoid marijuana use.

Use sunscreen regularly, including lip balm with an adequate sun protection factor (SPF).

Reduce your risk of HPV infection by limiting the number of sexual partners, since having many partners increases the risk of HPV infection. Using a condom cannot fully protect you from HPV during sex.

Maintain proper care of dentures. Poorly fitting dentures can trap cancer-causing substances in tobacco and alcohol. Denture wearers should have their dentures evaluated by a dentist at least every five years to ensure a good fit. Dentures should be removed every night and cleaned and rinsed thoroughly every day.

Experts Available for Interview



Brett Miles, MD, Associate Professor of Otolaryngology, Assistant Professor of Dentistry at The Mount Sinai Hospital, Co-Chief of the Division of Head and Neck Cancer Surgery at the Department of Otolaryngology, Mount Sinai Health System

Marita Teng, MD, Associate Professor of Otolaryngology at The Mount Sinai Hospital and member of the Head and Neck Institute

Joel Portnoy, MD, Assistant Professor of Otolaryngology, ENT and Allergy Associates

Patients Available for Interview

Karen Andolino: Nurse practitioner Karen Andolino knew something was amiss when a stubborn tongue lesion persisted. She sought nine consultations  all of which resulted in misdiagnoses. It was diagnosed as a cancer that doesnt typically present in the mouth  malignant fibrous histiocytoma (formerly known as fibrosarcoma), Karen recalls. Its an aggressive type of sarcoma typically associated with a poor prognosis. After surgery to remove 19 lymph nodes from her neck performed by Dr. Marita Teng, Karen was back to work in three weeks and is elated with her care and recovery. Dr. Teng is the epitome of what every surgeon should be, she boasts. Her bedside manner, compassion, and skills are unsurpassed. Ive even recommended someone else to her. She has hands of God  she gave me a second life!

David Benedict: It wasnt uncommon for David Benedict, a middle school teacher, to lose his voice. His ear, nose and throat doctor, Joel Portnoy, MD, of ENT and Allergy Associates biopsied his vocal fold. Diagnosed with cancer of the larynx, he underwent six weeks of aggressive radiation but the treatment was not working. Thats when he saw Brett Miles, MD, DDS, who told him about a new, innovative surgery that uses a laser to remove the cancer without damage to the his vocal cords. He is now cancer free and very grateful. Without Dr. Miles, I would not be able to continue as a middle school teacher and not be able to tell my wife and son how much I love them!

About the Mount Sinai Health System

The Mount Sinai Health System is an integrated health system committed to providing distinguished care, conducting transformative research, and advancing biomedical education. Structured around seven hospital campuses and a single medical school, the Health System has an extensive ambulatory network and a range of inpatient and outpatient servicesfrom community-based facilities to tertiary and quaternary care.

The System includes approximately 6,100 primary and specialty care physicians; 12 joint-venture ambulatory surgery centers; more than 140 ambulatory practices throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida; and 31 affiliated community health centers. Physicians are affiliated with the renowned Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, which is ranked among the highest in the nation in National Institutes of Health funding per investigator. The Mount Sinai Hospital is ranked as one of the nations top 10 hospitals in Geriatrics, Cardiology/Heart Surgery, and Gastroenterology, and is in the top 25 in five other specialties in the 2015-2016 Best Hospitals issue of U.S. News & World Report. Mount Sinais Kravis Childrens Hospital also is ranked in seven out of ten pediatric specialties by U.S. News & World Report. The New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai is ranked 11th nationally for Ophthalmology, while Mount Sinai Beth Israel is ranked regionally.

For more information, visit http://www.mountsinai.org or find Mount Sinai on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

About OHANCAW

Oral, Head and Neck Cancer Awareness Week, coordinated by the Head and Neck Cancer Alliance, is a week dedicated to promoting education, prevention, screening and early detection of mouth and throat cancers. OHANCAW is highlighted by free screenings held at participating medical centers across the country. The 18th annual Oral, Head and Neck Cancer Awareness Week will be held April 10  16, 2016. Bristol-Myers Squibb has provided funding for free screenings as part of the companys support of OHANCAW. For more information, please visit the OHANCAW website at http://www.ohancaw.com.

About the Head and Neck Cancer Alliance

The Head and Neck Cancer Alliance (HNCA), created in 1984 as the Yul Brynner Head and Neck Cancer Foundation, is hoping to reduce incidence and increase survival through these efforts. Its mission is to advance prevention, detection, treatment and rehabilitation of oral, head and neck cancer through public awareness, research, advocacy and survivorship. Through united and collaborative efforts, HNCA provides support to head and neck cancer patients throughout the year, supports ongoing research in head and neck oncology and educates children and adults in the disease process, treatment and prevention of oral, head and neck cancer.

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The Brazilian Institute of Cachaca (IBRAC) and Brazilian spirit producers are coming to Miami Rum Renaissance Festival April 15-18 to share their enthusiasm for the authentic spirit of Brazil. With more than a thousand producers in Brasil, many of which are small, regional artisan operations, the world is discovering Cachaca as a fascinating spirit unique to Brasil.

The spirit producers of Brazil are planning a Miami invasion. The DoubleTree by Hilton Miami Airport Convention Center is the focus of this invasion scheduled for April 15-17 to celebrate the national cane spirit of Brazil: Cachaca.

Don't call it rum. It's not made from molasses. Cachaca (pronounced kah-SHAH-sah) is fermented and distilled fresh cane juice. Like other Brazilians, it's a bit sassy and wild, built for fun and easily accessible to those that appreciate the true spirit of cane.

While most rums are distilled to 85 to 95% pure alcohol, Cachaca is typically distiled to only 38 to 48%, leaving behind more of the natural flavors of cane in the distillate. The United States officially recognizes the category of Cachaca as a product unique to Brazil.

Although there are no precise records as to the actual site where Cachaca was first distilled, historians and researchers believe it was distilled at a sugar mill located on the coast of Brazil sometime between 1516 and 1532.

With a robust campaign entitled "Taste The New Cachaca -- Taste Brasil," ten brands are teaming up to "invade America" by showing American rum enthusiasts and professionals their best cane spirits at the upcoming Miami Rum Renaissance Festival and Trade Expo.

Carlos Lima is the Executive Director of the Brazilian Institute of Cachaca (IBRAC). "With more than a thousand producers in Brasil, many of which are small, regional artisan operations, the world is discovering Cachaca as a fascinating spirit unique to Brasil. We're coming to Miami to share our enthusiasm, our passion and our skill in producing the very best cane spirits."

Among the brands and expressions participating are Destom 1000 Montes Amendoim, Dona Beja Sarau Reserva Especial, Germana Desde 1912, Meia Lua Azul, Middas, Novo Fogo Barrel Aged, Sebastiana Double Barrel, Velho Barreiro Diamond, Weber Haus Premium Black and Werneck Ouro.

The Miami Rum Renaissance Festival and Trade Expo is a global gathering of rum professionals and consumers held for three days in mid-April at the DoubleTree Airport Convention Center. Tickets are available online in advance, but not at the door.

In addition to exhibiting products to consumers and the trade, Mr. Carlos Lima will be presenting a seminar entitled: "Cachaca: Brasil In A Bottle" at 3pm Saturday and Sunday, April 16 and 17.

For more information, visit the web site at http://www.MiamiRumFest.com
American Brewing Company, Inc. (OTC: ABRW), an award winning craft brewery in Washington that acquired the Bucha Live Kombucha brand and business last year and has since sold their brewing assets to capitalize on the fast growing healthy functional beverage category, today announced that they will hold an investor conference call to discuss the Companys annual results and strategic plans going forward.

The Company will hold an investor conference call on Thursday, April 7th, at 11:00 AM EDT. Interested investors can listen to the call and participate in a question and answer session by dialing into the conference line at 1-800-895-0198 (domestic) or 1-785-424-1053 (international), using the conference ID: CEO.

About American Brewing

Based in Edmonds, Washington, American Brewing Company was founded in 2010 and became a public company trading under the ABRW symbol on August 7, 2014. As a craft brewer, the Company won major industry awards and accolades for quality. In the 2nd Quarter of 2015, the Company acquired 100% of the assets of Bucha Live Kombucha, from B&R Liquid Adventure, LLC for a combination of cash and stock. Since that time, the firm has been paying down the debt associated with the acquisition, integrating the company, building organizational capabilities, and expanding retail distribution. On October 7, 2015, American Brewing sold 100% of their beer assets improving their balance sheet and providing working capital to expand their healthy beverage business. The transaction is expected to finalize imminently.

For investor inquiries please contact:

Julie Anderson

Julie(at)americanbrewing(dot)com

Website: http://www.mybucha.com
Palma Mingozzi is an exceptional female author whose poems illuminate the experience of women worldwide.

S.W.A.N. Day Staten Island is a celebration honoring local women artists and their contributions to our community through their art forms. Located on the grounds of Snug Harbor Cultural Center, the highlights of the day included: Filmed Artist Interviews by Liz Marotti and Camille Schmoeker, Artist Exhibition, Motivational Speaking and Workshops led by Samantha Popp and Pamela Hernandez, Poetry and visual art by Palma Mingozzi as well as expanded programming for young girls (12-18) in several themed workshopsLiving Your Dreams, and a Special Womens Panel Discussion on the Arts.

Palma Mingozzi is a self-taught artist and writer from Staten Island, New York. She expresses herself in a variety of mediums including oil, acrylic and watercolor. Her interests are in the abstract and include a variety of subjects, infused with realistic themes, including the emotional humane and spiritual. These include beauty, upliftment, awareness, human spirit, wholeness, completion, mystery, fantasy and nature. She is inspired by the beauty of nature people and her environment. She has participated in more than 10 exhibits over the period of five years on Staten Island, and her solo debut exhibit was at the Global Art Gallery in Italy in 2012. She is a poet and writer and has written several poetry books both in English, The Entitlement of the Soul and Emotional upheaval, and in Italian, Brucio Di te, Trofeo, Un'altro Oceano, Erasmo Serretti, Studies in Chromoterapia. She has been included in Italian anthologies, Il Sentiero delle Muse, Librando L'anima, Goccia a Goccia in honor of Alda Merini, Cio Che Caino non Sa. She translated both Io l'ho incontrato cosi by Daniela Straccamore and Erasmo Serretti's book into English. She has been included in one Indian anthology, dimorianreview.com, and has participated internationally in many groups lending her poetry out in places such as Africa, India Canada, Ireland,Pakistan, Spain and Italy.

Boulevard Books is an educational publishing company for the 21st century, Founded in 2010 by Avi Gvili, it aims to bring the best writers across the globe to a greater audience.
The Faith-based community has united in record numbers through social and traditional media to give exceptional event exposure that will create a positive major impact on Los Angeles as a whole.

Azusa Now is seeing the fruit of their call to prayer and unity across many diverse Christian denominations and ethnic communities, who will join together at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on April 9, 2016. The Faith-based community has united in record numbers through social and traditional media to give exceptional event exposure that will create a positive major impact on Los Angeles as a whole.

Registrations are well on their way to a 100,000+ capacity audience, with the Azusa Now team having laid plans in place for overflow. The last time the Los Angeles Coliseum was filled to over capacity was the Billy Graham Crusade on September 8, 1963, with a record attendance of 134,256.

FrontGate Media, who is overseeing public relations and media for the event, implemented a Thunderclap crowdspeaking campaign for Azusa Now that brought people together with a single message to be mass-shared, flash mob-style, at the same moment. The campaign achieved a total social reach of more than 1,115,000 people through Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.

Denominational and racial boundaries have been broken across Catholic and Protestant churches, as well as African-American, Asian, Hispanic, and Caucasian populations who are all coming together for this event.

According to Rt. Rev. Alexei Smith, As the Ecumenical and Interreligious Officer of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, it will be my great pleasure to participate in the Azusa Now summons to prayer, fasting and repentance. During this Year of Mercy, Pope Francis has asked us to be 'Credible Witnesses of Mercy.' Our participation in Azusa Now is a marvelous way of endorsing Pope Francis' thoughts and words."

Azusa Now will be seen by millions around the world as it will be broadcast live in its entirety by GOD TV with additional live and rebroadcast coverage provided by TBN, Juce TV and Daystar.

Azusa Now will be live streamed via the internet at AzusaNow2016.com in five languages: English, Spanish, Korean, Chinese and Portuguese.

In answer to the Azusa Now call for prayer and unity, many events have been created where church and local leaders are bringing together their faith-based communities. These range from individual church gatherings to participation via the live stream to additional large gatherings such as United Cry in Washington D.C.

Azusa Now has a number of pre-event activities this week leading up to the event, including the compassion initiative Carry The Love: L.A. where YWAM, one of the largest youth organizations in the world, has joined with Bethel Church from Redding, California for 10 days of turning Love into action. Carry The Love: L.A. has created local activities that include one-on-one prayer with people in high-traffic areas, revitalizing outdoor spaces in public housing developments, community BBQs, music festivals in city parks and after-school events in public high schools.

Volunteers are still needed. Several thousand volunteers have come forth from various churches and organizations, however there are many more critical volunteer opportunities available and needed.

Those wanting to volunteer, participate in the event, or be part of the pre-event activities should visit the website at http://www.AzusaNow2016.com.
Bomb technician working with Vidisco's portable DR sysem Vidisco is proud to give security forces around the world the tools to fight back against terrorism by gaining knowledge as to the terrorists bomb making techniques.

Brussels international Airport and a subway station were the targets of a terrorist attack on Tuesday, March 22. These attacks led to over 30 casualties and dozens of injuries. The terror organization, ISIS, took responsibility for the attack which involved two IEDs which exploded in the Brussels' Zaventem Airport and a third device which did not explode and was diffused by security forces. All this is now common knowledge as the incident got massive coverage from the international media. The issue that should now be tackled is how to avoid such attacks in the future and how to minimize the damage that terrorist attacks cause.

Vidiscos portable DR systems are taking part in the fight against terrorist attacks in the world. As terrorists often use IEDs to injure as many people as possible, Vidiscos X-ray security systems are used to identify and confirm IEDs. The systems can be carried anywhere as they come in a backpack or Pelican case, so getting them to places like a subway station is no problem at all. They are compatible with robots and can be used with no down-range approach at all. Once the system is in place an image can be taken and viewed in seconds so the bomb technicians respond time is dramatically minimized.

Beside the portability, safety and speed that the system offers, the Xbit program, Vidiscos proprietary software, allows the operator to save,archive and compare images. This is a useful tool that is used to gather information about the terrorist that stand behind the bombs and to better understand what materials, tools and techniques thy use to create their IEDs.

Vidisco has been leading the portable X-ray and Digital Radiography industry for nearly 30 years. All the companys X-ray security systems are created with meticulous details to make the X-ray operators job safer and easier. Further, Vidisco is proud to give security forces around the world the tools to fight back against terrorism by gaining knowledge as to the terrorists bomb making techniques.
Sennheiser D 10 wireless headset receives prestigious Red Dot design award Sennheisers D 10 Series, which includes the D 10 Phone, D 10 USB and D 10 USB ML with Skype for Business compatibility, offers business professionals an unmatched combination of streamlined design and uncompromising sound.

Sennheiser, a leading provider of premium headset and speakerphone solutions, has received the prestigious Red Dot Award: Product Design 2016 for its D 10 Series. The professional wireless DECT headset combines stylish streamlined design with excellent comfort levels and uncompromised sound quality. The Red Dot seal is awarded annually to products that stand out from the competition due to their high quality design and innovative character. In total, the international jury of 41 designers, design professors and specialised journalists assessed over 5,200 products, submitted by candidates from 57 nations.

We are thrilled to receive this amazing accolade for our D 10 Series, said Andreas Bach, President at Sennheiser Communications A/S. We created the headset range to bring the freedom of wireless communication and excellent voice clarity within reach of even more everyday users. The headsets offer exceptional sound and the stylish design caters to every possible requirement of comfort and usability that arises  even during long days of use  while providing business class aesthetics.

Sennheisers D 10 Series, which includes the D 10 Phone, D 10 USB and D 10 USB ML with Skype for Business compatibility, offers business professionals an unmatched combination of streamlined design and uncompromised sound. With a customisable single-sided design that offers the user connectivity to either a deskphone or a softphone/PC, it represents the ultimate in comfort and operation, with 2-in-1 choice of wearing styles that allows it to be worn with a headband or ear hook for all-day use.

The D 10 Series bears all the hallmarks of the Sennheiser brand, encompassing Sennheisers superior sound quality, wearing comfort and quality design to provide a premium communication experience for both the user and listener alike.

About Sennheisers D10 Series

The D 10 Series features Sennheisers Voice Clarity for a natural listening experience, a noise-cancelling microphone for optimum speech clarity, and ActiveGard technology that protects users against acoustic shock from sudden and unexpected sound bursts. Advanced Digital Signal Processing technology gives clearer sound by incorporating both echo cancelling and audio equalisation and is combined with DECT connectivity that avoids interference with nearby WiFi devices, ensuring that crystal clear sound quality is maintained in any environment.

As part of the complete solution for the modern office, the D 10 Series is supplied with a stylish base station that has a built-in ringer for USB models with choice of tones and adjustable volume, which ensures that calls can be heard even without wearing a headset. A long distance wireless range makes it perfect for large office environments where users need to remain mobile and the ideal solution for both hot-desking and phone conferencing.

The D 10 offers brilliant every-day usability. To create a conference call is simply a matter of docking additional headsets to a single base station, which can allow up to four headsets to join a call. Meanwhile, easy one-touch call management and user-friendly indicators to show available talk time, incoming calls and headset link status, make it a product that is effortless to learn and use.

Further practical touches include built-in cable management to help keep the office environment tidier and a magnetic charge interface for secure placement when charging. It offers a full workday talk time of up to 12 hours, with fast charging of up to 50% capacity in just 20 minutes.

About the Red Dot Award: Product Design

In order to appraise the wide scope of design in a professional manner, the Red Dot Design Award is broken down into the three distinct disciplines: the Red Dot Award: Product Design, Red Dot Award: Communication Design and Red Dot Award: Design Concept. The Red Dot Award is organised by the Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen in Essen, Germany. With more than 17,000 entries in 2015 alone, it is one of the largest design competitions in the world. In 2015, the award celebrated its 60th anniversary: It was in 1955 that a jury convened for the first time to assess the best designs of the day. The name and brand of the award were developed in the 1990s by Red Dot CEO, Professor Dr. Peter Zec. Since then the sought-after Red Dot is the revered international seal of outstanding design quality. Further information: http://www.red-dot.org.

About Sennheiser

Audio specialist Sennheiser is one of the worlds leading manufacturers of headphones, microphones and wireless transmission systems. Based in Wedemark near Hanover, Germany, Sennheiser operates its own production facilities in Germany, Ireland and the USA and is active in more than 50 countries. With 19 sales subsidiaries and long-established trading partners, the company supplies innovative products and cutting-edge audio solutions that are optimally tailored to its customers needs. Sennheiser is a family-owned company that was founded in 1945 and which today has 2,700 employees around the world that share a passion for audio technology. Since 2013, Sennheiser has been managed by Daniel Sennheiser and Dr. Andreas Sennheiser, the third generation of the family to run the company. In 2014, the Sennheiser Group had sales totalling 635 million.

http://www.sennheiser.com

For more information on our professional headset and speakerphone solutions, please visit http://www.sennheiser.com/cco
Maaco Logo

Cambridge Automotive Group (CAG) today announced the acquisition of two Maaco licenses in Houston, Texas from former owners Dick and Jane Williams. With this transaction, CAG now owns 24 Maaco shops across the country.

The Williams family built a great business with a solid foundation, and were excited to partner with Dick and Janes son Drew to continue their familys legacy of strong operations, said Ken Ratliff, Co-President of Cambridge Automotive Group.

This is CAGs second transaction in Texas this year. In January, CAG obtained a single Maaco shop formerly owned by Jim and Lindy Devitt.

Working with the Devitt and Williams families through these acquisitions has been a pleasure, said Simon Tisminesky, Co-President of Cambridge Automotive Group. We are grateful to them for helping us execute on our strategic growth strategy.

CAG is actively seeking opportunities to partner with existing Maaco franchisees for future acquisitions.

# # #

About Cambridge Automotive Group

Cambridge Automotive Group (CAG) was formed in 2015 to pursue a growth strategy in the car care industry. CAG is the largest Maaco franchisee in the world. The company has attracted a best-in-class management team and continues to invest significant capital to grow in the Macco system through remodels and new center development. The group is seeking to open additional Maaco locations with growth targeted in California, Texas, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Washington.

About Maaco

Maaco Auto Painting & Collision Repair -- a part of the Driven Brands, Inc. family of automotive aftermarket franchise brands based in Charlotte, NC -- is America's #1 Bodyshop. Maaco provides automotive paint and cosmetic repair services for nearly 500,000 drivers annually. With more than 470 independently owned and operated franchises across the United States and Canada, Maaco has restored the safety and appearance of more than 20 million vehicles over 40+ years. Maaco ranked #106 on Entrepreneur Magazine's 2015 Franchise 500 Rankings, and is currently #1 in the automotive appearance services category. For more information, visit Maaco.com. For more information about franchising opportunities, visit MaacoFranchise.com.

About Driven Brands

Driven Brands, headquartered in Charlotte, NC, is the parent company of North Americas leading automotive aftermarket brands across four distinct verticals: Repair & Maintenance, housing Meineke Car Care Centers and Merlin 200,000 Mile Shops; Paint & Collision, housing Maaco, CARSTAR North America and Drive N Style; Distribution, housing 1-800-Radiator & A/C; and Quick Lube, housing Pro Oil Change, Econo Lube N' Tune, Driven Florida Lubes and Take 5 Oil Change. Driven Brands has more than 2,000 centers across North America, and combined, all businesses generate more than $2.1 billion in system sales. For more information, visit http://www.DrivenBrands.com.
The firm is proud of their achievements so far and is excited for the growth prospects in 2016

Alba International has created a reputation for delivering results for their clients and has been working hard to expand business growth potential and secure a new and exciting customer base. The new branch will officially open its doors in April. This exciting expansion is due to client demand and expanded budgets in the second quarter of 2016. Alba International has beaten several targets, which has allowed them to meet client demand and drive this expansion.

About Alba International: http://www.albainternational.com.au/

The firm is proud of their achievements so far and is excited for the growth prospects in 2016. The firm have a multi stage growth plan. The ambitious firm is looking to get their new base established over the next few months. Once the firm has their customary output they will be looking to expand their reach farther afield, particularly in the Asian market.

Research suggests that today, forty per cent of global economic activity is now occurring in Asia, and world growth is expected to continue being led by Asia over the next decade. As the world continues to diversify and the population continues to integrate, Asian cities are anticipating a population increase of over 120,000. In business this will signify Asias status as the biggest global producer of goods and services; and it will also be the biggest global consumer. This will be a fantastic opportunity for Alba International to make a name for themselves in a diverse culture of brands and expand their already successful business model.

Alba International is excited to offer their firms services in more locations across Australia, and beyond. The firm is proud of their contribution to local and national economies, creating work opportunities for contractors looking to find their path as a sales and marketing professional. By offering a mentoring service the business is able to attract entrepreneurial enthusiasts who demonstrate fantastic qualities in the direct marketing sector. In return the firm offers advice and guidance in small business set up and offers access to the firms business contacts in order to achieve a diverse business network.

Alba International is a direct marketing and sales firm based in Sydney. At Alba International they champion excellence and professionalism. The firm have incredibly high customer service standards and they believe it is this that helps them to stand out in a crowded market. Alba International realise that consumers today have so much choice and need to feel reassured that brands are catering for their needs. Working for a range of local and national clients, Alba International offer services that increase sales, enhance brand awareness and secure leads.
We are able to continue to provide world class service that exceeds our clients expectations despite the ever changing landscape of business travel.

Travisa Visa Service will be a part of the largest travel event in Canada this month held by the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA). The event will be in Toronto from April 18 to 20.

During the event Travisa will demonstrate My Account as the premier travel document management tool. Samantha Lutchman, Manager of the Toronto office, and Kim Conway, Vice President of Operations, will be at the event to answer any questions about Travel Document Management. In addition, they will be able to provide best practices when planning international business travel.

Kim Conway acknowledges that being active in GBTA and attending the conference in Toronto keeps Travisa up to date on current trends in the business travel industry. It also helps us to prepare for future changes, said Conway. We are able to continue to provide world class service that exceeds our clients expectations despite the ever changing landscape of business travel."

During expo hall hours on April 18  20, Travisa will also showcase Travisa First Class at Booth 311.

Samantha Lutchman looks forward to meeting colleagues from across Canada that she can exchange ideas with. This is a great networking opportunity for Travel Managers to meet their vendors and see what is new and cutting edge in the industry, said Lutchman.

About the GBTA Conference

The GBTA Conference in Toronto is the largest Canadian travel management conference, featuring keynote speaker Fab Dolan, head of marketing for Google Canada, and 14 educational breakout sessions targeted toward hands-on learning from Hotel RFP to blending business travel with leisure travel and more. The goal of the conference is to produce Canadas most comprehensive educational and informational business travel management show.

The event will be held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre (255 Front Street W., Toronto, ON M5V 2W6, Canada). For more information, visit http://www.gbta.org/canada/Conference/Pages/default.aspx.

About Travisa Visa Service

Travisa Visa Service is a recognized leader in the visa and travel document industry. Travisa specializes in expediting visa processing and travel document management for travelers, whether for study abroad, recreational travel, or business and corporate travelers. Their global network of offices throughout Canada, the United States, and Great Britain allows worldwide coverage across North America and in Europe.

For more information, please visit http://www.travisa.ca.

# # #
Broker Lenny Maiocco recently received the prestigious Platinum Club award from RE/MAX. I would like to thank all of my current and past customers who have helped me build my business and make this award possible, said Maiocco.

The RE/MAX Platinum Club award recognizes associates who rank among the very highest of producers and is one of the top RE/MAX Awards given in the corporation. Both residential and commercial commissions are taken into account for the entire year from January 1 to December 31. For Maiocco, this is his sixth consecutive year winning the award.

One of the secrets to Maioccos success is his dedication to his clients, as well as the industry as a whole. He goes the extra mile by posting professionally produced videos on his website to virtually show listings, city profiles, neighborhoods, preferred services and more.

About The Maiocco Group, RE/MAX Alliance on Walnut

Lenny Maiocco, broker at The Maiocco Group, works with sellers, buyers, and investors. Go to eColoradoProperties.com for more info. They service the entire Front Range of Colorado including Boulder, Louisville, Superior, Lafayette, Broomfield, Longmont, Niwot, Erie, Westminster, Denver, Lakewood, Aurora, Highlands Ranch, Littleton,Fort Collins, Loveland, Berthoud, Firestone/Frederick and everywhere in between. For more information, please call (720) 201-1114. Main office is located at 1911 11th St., Suite 107, Boulder, CO 80302.

About the NALA

The NALA offers small and medium-sized businesses effective ways to reach customers in the digital age, while providing a single-agency source that helps them flourish in their local community. The NALA offers its clients an array of marketing tools from press release campaigns and social media management to a cause marketing program. The NALAs mission is to make businesses relevant and newsworthy, both online and through traditional media, by providing increased exposure at reasonable costs. For media inquiries, please call 805.650.6121, ext. 361.
The King Center awards the Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace Prize Mr. Dees, through the Southern Poverty Law Center, has purposed his life to expose hate and discrimination, and seek justice on behalf of those who have been violated.

On Monday, April 4, at 11:00 a.m. The King Center will bestow its highest honor, The Martin Luther King, Jr. Nonviolent Peace Prize to Mr. Morris Dees, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center. The ceremony will take place on the 48th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jrs assassination in the Yolanda D. King Theatre for the Performing Arts, at 449 Auburn Avenue, Atlanta, Georgia 30312. The Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Atlanta is partnering with The King Center to present the award. The ceremony is free and open to the public.

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Nonviolent Peace Prize has been awarded by The King Center since 1973. Through this award the Center has publically recognized those individuals who have emulated and embodied the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The Prize is awarded for the commitment to nonviolence as a way of life through which social justice, human rights, and civil liberties are attained for each individual. The Center also recognizes achievements in eradicating poverty, racism, and the successful quest for alternatives to war. Previous recipients include: Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Cesar Chavez, Rosa Parks, President Jimmy Carter, Corazon Aquino, Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Ambassador Andrew Young.

Dr. Bernice A. King, CEO of The King Center, states Morris Dees has tirelessly, and bravely championed the rights of the disenfranchised. He has selflessly taken it upon himself to be a beacon of light in the deep south when very few had the courage to stand against the darkness of injustice. Mr. Dees, through the Southern Poverty Law Center, has purposed his life to expose hate and discrimination, and seek justice on behalf of those who have been violated. Our hope on this significant day is that families who have experienced violence as a result of hate would be comforted by this celebration of loves triumph.

Mr. Morris Dees is recognized not only as a co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, but also for his extensive work with them fighting numerous hate groups in the courtrooms, and representing the disenfranchised. Morris Dees states, Im deeply honored to receive this award. Like millions of other people, I was inspired by Dr. King to do my part in the struggle for equality. When we started the Southern Poverty Law Center in 1971, our goal was simple: We would use the courts to help ensure that the promise of the new civil rights law would become a national reality. Im thankful that, with the support of many dedicated colleagues and passionate supporters, weve been able to make a difference.

Immediately after the award ceremony, there will be a wreath laying followed by a luncheon at 12:30 p.m. across the street from The King Center at Ebenezer Baptist Churchs Martin Luther King, Sr. Community Resource Complex located at 407 Auburn Avenue, Atlanta, GA. The luncheon cost is $25.00 per person. The keynote address will be provided by Mr. Morris Dees followed by an interactive dialogue and Q&A with the audience.

Registration for the luncheon is required at http://my.bidpal.net/nonviolentpeaceprize.

About us

The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change is a 501c3 organization established in 1968 by Mrs. Coretta Scott King. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change (The King Center) is the official living memorial and programmatic nonprofit organization committed to educating the world on the life, legacy and teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The King Center serves to inspire new generations to carry forward his unfinished work, strengthen causes and empower change-makers who are continuing his efforts today. The King Centers premiere educational initiative, Nonviolence365, is based on Dr. Kings nonviolent philosophy and engages participants from various sectors of society, including emerging and next generation leaders, in modules and exercises that enhance communication, leadership, interpersonal and conflict reconciliation skills.

About The Baha'i` Faith

Baha'is believe that we live in a special age in human history, that the last two centuries, though characterized frequently by extraordinary turbulence, injustice and upheavals, have also been uniquely blessed with indications of great promise for the future. World wide we see old patterns of thinking, that used to be seen as normal-patterns that sought to prioritize people based on their race, class, nation or religion being challenged more and more frequently and slowly being replaced by patterns that recognize the interdependence and fundamental common identity of all people. These constructive patterns, informed from a Baha'i viewpoint by a belief in the oneness of God, of religion, and of the human race, are what Baha'is seek to align themselves with as they walk a path of service with their neighbors across the United States, and the world.
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MILWAUKEE (AP)  Donald Trump on Sunday called for John Kasich to drop out of the Republican presidential race, arguing that the Ohio governor shouldn't be allowed to continue accumulating delegates if he has no chance of becoming the nominee.

Working to recover his edge after a difficult week, Trump said it wasn't fair for Kasich, who has won only his home state, to continue his campaign. He suggested instead that Kasich, who has pledged to make it to the summer convention, follow the example of Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush  candidates who quit after lagging behind.

"He doesn't have to run and take my votes," he said.

Trump said Kasich could ask to be considered at the GOP convention in Cleveland in July even without competing in the remaining nominating contests. He added that he had relayed his concerns to Republican National Committee officials at a meeting in Washington this past week.

"I said, 'Why is a guy allowed to run?' All he's doing is just he goes from place to place and loses," Trump told reporters at Miss Katie's Diner in Milwaukee, where he stopped for breakfast. The state holds its presidential primaries Tuesday.

Kasich's campaign tried to flip the script, contending that neither Trump nor Texas Sen. Ted Cruz would have enough delegates to win the nomination outright going into the Cleveland.

"Since he thinks it's such a good idea, we look forward to Trump dropping out before the convention," said Kasich spokesman Chris Schrimpf.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton told NBC's "Meet the Press" that she had yet to receive a request from the FBI for an interview regarding the private email system she used as secretary of state. And during a series of stops at Brooklyn church services, she got in a dig at her Democratic opponent, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has identified as an independent for most of his career.

"I know we have to have a Democrat succeed Barack Obama," Clinton said.

Clinton and Sanders announced they'd agreed to a debate in New York before the consequential April 19 primary, though the timing remained unclear. Sanders fired up a crowd in Wausau, Wisconsin, hoping to continue his string of recent campaign victories even as Clinton maintains a sizable delegate lead.

Trump's call for Kasich to bow out came as Republican concerns grew about the prospect of convention chaos if Trump fails to lock up his party's nomination  or even if he does.

Behind Cruz in the polls in Wisconsin, Trump faces the prospect that a loss Tuesday will raise further doubts that he can net the needed delegates, making it far easier for his party to oust him in a floor fight at the convention.

Cruz, Trump's closest challenger, has only a small chance to overtake him in the delegate hunt before the convention. He spent his afternoon rallying supporters in Wisconsin in an event heavy with references to the state's beloved Green Bay Packers.

Kasich has acknowledged he cannot catch up in the delegate race, leaving a contested convention his only path to victory. He has faced calls in the past to step aside, but those nudges became less frequent following his decisive victory last month in his home state.

Still, Kasich suggested that a contested convention would not involve the chaos that party leaders fear.

"Kids will spend less time focusing on Bieber and Kardashian and more time focusing on how we elect presidents," Kasich told ABC. "It will be so cool."

Republicans fear an unseemly internal fight would damage the party in November's general election, and Trump isn't ruling out the possibility of running as an independent if he's not the nominee, making it that much harder for the GOP to retake the White House.

Such talk has "consequences," said GOP Chairman Reince Priebus, though he tried to quell the prospect of a convention fight. He told ABC that the process will be clear and open, with cameras there "at every step of the way."

Frustration with the GOP field has stoked calls in some Republican corners for the party to use a contested convention to pick someone not even on the ballot. Priebus acknowledged that was a remote possibility, but said he believed his party's candidate would be "someone who's running."

Working to right his campaign after a rough patch, Trump has found himself on the defensive, struggling to explain away controversies over abortion, nuclear weapons and his campaign manager.

"Was this my best week? I guess not," Trump said on "Fox News Sunday."

Yet as he campaigned in Milwaukee, Trump returned to the confident bravado his supporters have come to expect. He said the state of play in Wisconsin "reminds me so much of New Hampshire, where we had this massive victory and it wasn't really anticipated." In reality, Trump had led polls for months in New Hampshire and was widely expected to win.

"I think this has the feel of a victory," he told reporters, as a plate of untouched fried eggs and bacon grew cold.

In Egypt, former Trump rival and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham tried to reassure an Arab world wary of Trump, who has called for banning Muslim immigration to the United States.

"The Congress is going to be around no matter who is president," Graham said after meeting with Egypt's leader.

On the delegate front, North Dakota Republicans at their state convention were set to select 25 of their 28 national delegates on Sunday. North Dakota isn't holding a primary or caucus in the 2016 race. Nevada Democrats held county conventions on Saturday, leading up to a final determination of delegates at a statewide convention in May. Clinton turned backed a challenge from Sanders in the state's caucuses in February.
A memorial event, a private breakfast for residents and first responders, and a house's groundbreaking ceremony will be held Saturday in Fairdale to mark the one-year anniversary of the tornado, the (Arlington Heights) Daily Herald reported.

On April 9, 2015, a tornado struck the community, killing two people, destroying nearly 70 buildings and causing about $11 million in damage. The six-block town was too small to meet the minimum threshold of $18 million to receive federal disaster aid.

The DeKalb County Long-Term Recovery Corp. formed shortly after the tornado hit in an effort to help the affected residents rebuild.

"It was clear that there was not going to be any federal help," said Bill Nicklas, vice president of the nonprofit organization.

Many of the homes were built close to the lot lines with their own well and septic field and tank, all close together, but current county law requires wells and tanks to be at least 50 feet apart, and wells and fields to be at least 75 feet apart. Setting the houses farther back on the lots would require building over those septic fields, which isn't allowed, so the organization had to get creative.

"Geography and topography saved us," Nicklas said.

After receiving permission from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, the DeKalb County Long-Term Recovery Corp. bought seven acres of that field last July to serve as a community septic field, where effluent drains from individual septic tanks connected by sewer mains.

DeKalb County officials were persuaded to allow variances so homes could be rebuilt in their original positions.

"I think everybody could identify; this (the destruction of a small town) is a compelling story," Nicklas said. "Speed was important. Urgency was the order of the day."

The organization designated 13 volunteers as "case managers" who helped four to six clients with challenges such as dealing with insurance companies, contractors, finances and the specific requirements of building after a disaster.

In the past year, Fairdale has made improvements to its public infrastructure, including the new septic system, expanded natural gas service and better Internet access.

Currently, homes are being rebuilt or rehabilitated, and several residents have already been able to move back in.

Fairdale is located off Route 72, about 19 miles northwest of Northern Illinois University in DeKalb.
Compulsive gambling has led to the social and financial ruin of many otherwise longstanding pillars of society since the casino boats arrived in the Quad-Cities in 1991.

Among them, Marilyn Davis, who served 40 years as Sherrard's village clerk before she was sent to prison at the age of 74 for embezzling approximately $282,000 from village coffers. The prime motive, authorities said, was to finance trips to the casinos.

When interviewed by the Mercer County Sheriff's Department in 2008, the woman known as the "village grandmother" told investigators, "I am glad you finally found me."

Her story is far from the only one to take a turn through a courtroom.

In 2007, a Davenport woman was convicted of child endangerment after leaving her young son home alone while she gambled at a riverboat casino.

In June of that year, a 76-year-old man was convicted of trying to bludgeon to death his 81-year-old neighbor during a fight that started, prosecutors said, when the woman refused to give him money for gambling at Scott County casinos.

In 1999, a teller working at a Davenport bank was federally indicted for embezzling nearly $400,000  about $80,000 of which she lost on the boats. She reportedly told investigators she embezzled for three years to pay off her gambling debts.

That same year, former Hillsdale Fire Chief Bill Phillips committed suicide after embezzling more than $150,000 in Fire Protection District money which he then lost at the casinos.

There have been other examples: Dig deep enough in about any local embezzlement case over the last 25 years, and you'll find some stolen money ended up in the pockets of casino operators. Once-honest bookkeepers and treasurers at businesses, churches and social-service agencies all have fallen victim to the allure of a turning card or the spin of slot-machine symbols.
Most people don't show up on Blair Brown's doorstep by chance.

Her Bettendorf office is often the last stop for those whose lives have been derailed by the lies, secrecy and despair that can arrive when the "luck" runs out.

"Most of the time when we get a person who comes in on their own, they're usually at that crisis stage," Ms. Brown said. "They've either lost everything, or are on the verge of losing everything, because of their gambling behavior."

A problem-gambling counselor with the Alcohol and Drug Dependency Services (ADDS), Ms. Brown has seen marriages, careers and bank accounts destroyed by gambling addictions.

It's been 25 years since the riverboat casinos came to town, and while some see the promise of an everlasting party, Ms. Brown only sees the effects of the hangover.

"(With) the onset of the big commercial gambling, of course there was a spike in the problem," she said, citing a flood of calls to the local problem-gambling hotline in the first 10 years after the riverboats dropped anchor here.

That spike has "tapered off over time," Ms. Brown said. "Now, it's one of those situations where we're more concerned about the people who are already struggling with an addiction."

Majority struggle alone

An estimated 2 million people, or about 1 percent of the U.S. population, are pathological gamblers, according to the National Council on Problem Gambling. An additional 4 to 6 million people, or about 2 to 3 percent of the population, fit the criteria for problem gamblers  those whose gambling habits cause problems in their daily lives.

The American Psychiatric Association estimates less than 10 percent of problem gamblers seek treatment.

"It's not like most addictions, where there are physical signs. It's a really easy thing to hide," Ms. Brown said. "Unless you have access to a person's finances, it would be hard to know that they're really struggling."

Ms. Brown said men ages 18-24, people who grew up around gambling and those who already struggle with a mental-health issue or other type of addiction are all at a higher risk of developing a gambling disorder.

Trameka Woods, another ADDS counselor, said desperation and mounting problems in their careers or home lives are what draw most addicts to seek treatment.

"Normally, when they come in is when the secrets and lies kind of run out and they start to become noticeable," Ms. Woods said. "They're not doing so well covering their tracks because now, all the credit cards are maxed or their credit is so bad that they can't get another one in their name.

Treatment

However, gambling addiction is "a treatable disease" with the right support, Ms. Brown said.

"The first thing is to change their thinking when it comes to money and their idea of money and gambling," she said. "A lot of times, they really have bought into the myths of gambling and money. They really believe that 'if I play this certain number' or there's a certain method  like, they've really, really bought into that."

Counselors try to address other issues in a gambler's life, such as a "co-occurring" addictions, mental illness and self-esteem problems. Clients also get a crash course in relapse prevention, financial counseling and safety plans for suicide risk.

Ideally, a client will try to quit gambling entirely. But, for some, "that's not their goal  they don't want to completely stop gambling. They want to learn how to control their gambling. So we kind of meet them where they are," Ms. Brown said.

Addicts who identify money as a trigger, for example, may receive financial counseling or opt to put a family member in control of their bank accounts.

"It's not like drugs and alcohol  we can't test you to know whether you've used. So, the family can kind of be our eyes and ears," Ms. Brown said. "They'll notice things that we'll never notice in a 30-minute or hour session."

No help for Illinois residents

Iowa dedicated a portion of its gaming-tax revenue to gambling-addiction treatment until 2009, and continues to support centers like Ms. Blair's with General Fund appropriations. Illinois does not.

"We've gotten several people who have reached out to us in need of treatment from the Illinois side. But, unfortunately, since we're only funded by Iowa, we're not able to treat anyone from that side of the river," Ms. Brown said.

"It's definitely an unserved population at this point," she added of Illinois residents. "I even think about the people that we've had to turn away in extreme need  to not be able to treat them? They're coming to us. This is kind of their last option, their last hope. I think especially when you look at the Quad-Cities dynamic  this is all kind of one big community and, it's like, it's just a matter of a bridge separating us, and we're not able to offer these services that they need."

Ms. Brown said clients are encouraged to go to Gamblers Anonymous meetings, which are held on both sides of the river.

Still, she worries about Illinois residents who may give up searching for help if it proves hard to find.

Relapse

Risk of relapse varies. Some will be treated and never again set foot in a gambling establishment. Others may relapse multiple times, triggered by problems, such as a loss, financial issues or simply the belief that addiction no longer has a hold on them.

"Sometimes they think, 'I can control it this one time,' and they go and then they're back in that same cycle again," Ms. Brown said.

Clients are taught not to be discouraged if relapse occurs, but to be prepared for it, and to accept it if or when it does, Ms. Woods said.

Recovering addicts face internal and external triggers. Ms. Brown said some people find it difficult to avoid gambling due to the prevalence of commercial gaming  not just at casinos, but at bars, restaurants and convenience stores.

Some people opt to voluntarily self-ban themselves for life from Iowa casinos. Those who agree to a lifetime ban are prohibited from entering any Iowa Gaming Association member casinos, and if they do, they must forfeit any winnings.

Ms. Brown said she doesn't always encourage the ban for those who haven't gotten the treatment they need, saying it can set a client up to face "a whole other list of problems"  including legal ones  if they relapse or try to get around the ban.

A need for awareness

Ms. Brown, whose previous work included dealing with mental-health disorders and domestic violence, said her perception of gambling addictions has changed since starting her current job a year ago.

"Actually working with people, hearing their stories, it's like, this is no different than a person who has been addicted to heroin all their life  might not be the physical, but the impact that it's really had on their life."

She said area casinos allow ADDS staff members to come and set up information booths there at times throughout the year, such as National Problem Gambling Awareness Month in March.

Both she and Ms. Woods said they hadn't personally felt the allure of gambling.

It's just something that I've never enjoyed. You could lose $100 in a matter of seconds. It's just never really been appealing to me, Ms. Brown said. "You know, the house always wins  the odds are not in your favor."

Upcoming stories

The Dispatch and The Rock Island Argus are marking the 25th anniversary of riverboat gaming in the Quad-Cities with a look at the impact of the 1986 decision to seek economic haven in gambling. In the coming days, look for these stories:

Tuesday: The jobs: How many, how they pay

Wednesday: Is there a future in gambling?
The three Quad-Cities casino companies will employ slightly more than 1,700 casino and hotel workers once Rhythm City and Isle of Capri join Jumer's Casino as land-based operations early this summer.

Mo Hyder, manager of operations for Rhythm City, said the number of employees will jump from 250 to about 650 when the Rhythm City completes its move from a boat along Davenport's riverfront to a new $110 million casino//hotel/convention complex at the intersection of interstates 74 and 80.

Isle of Capri in Bettendorf, has 541 employees, according to company spokeswoman Jill Alexander, who said there will be an additional 30 jobs or so when Isle moves its gambling space from the riverboat to a building under construction in the space between the hotel towers.

Before relocating from a boat on Rock Island's downtown riverfront to its casino/hotel at the Intersection of I-280 and the Centennial Express way in 2008, Jumer's employed 350 people. Today, it employs 508 people, according to spokesman Bill Renk.

While the number may fall short of the expectations set 25 years ago, the combined 1,700 workers the three casinos say they expect this year would make them the ninth or 10th largest employer in the Quad-Cities, depending on whose "top employers" list is used.

The casino spokespeople generally were reluctant to further discuss payroll issues.

Ms. Alexander did say 75 percent of Isle of Capri employees are full time, and that the total 2015 payroll at IOC's Bettendorf operations was $13.8 million

Dan Kehl, who is the president and CEO of Kehl Management, which is building the new Rhythm City Casino and Hotel, said a blackjack dealer can make $16 to $18 an hour when tips are included.

Mr. Hyder said Rhythm City pays a minimum of 25 percent above Iowa's minimum wage for any job. "A lot of minimum wage positions, positions start at over $10 an hour," Mr. Hyder said. "A lot of positions, pay is based on experience. They are good paying jobs."

While Mr. Renk said he could not provide payroll information, he said the jobs provided by the Quad-Cities' casinos are a plus for the area.

"If you look at the industry within the Quad-Cities, you put all three casinos together, the amount of people who work in that industry is significant," Mr. Renk said. "And certainly, there is a revenue, a tax benefit, to the community."

A look at the Iowa-side casino websites' employment sections provides some information about wages, though not all advertised positions list pay. Jumer's did not list pay for any of the jobs listed on their website.

At Isle of Capri, a "cook I" starts at $9.15 an hour. A "banquet bartender" starts at $6.27 an hour plus tips. A dishwasher starts at $9.07 an hour, a security officer $9.75 an hour.

At Rhythm City, a cashier/hostess starts at $10 an hour, a "cook I" at $11 an hour, housekeeper at $10.50 an hour, a dishwasher at $10 an hour.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median wage for a worker in the "other gaming workers" category in Iowa makes $9.71 an hour and $12.79 in Illinois. (May 2014 report). For gaming dealers, that average wage is $8.46 an hour in Iowa and $11.93 in Illinois. Dealers commonly get tips.
After Tuesday, there's a two-week lull before the next important voting, in New York.

Trump is facing pressure on multiple fronts following a difficult week marked by his controversial comments, reversals and rare moments of contrition. While his past remarks on topics like Mexican immigrants have drawn a backlash, even he appeared to recognize the damage caused by a series of missteps in the lead-up to Wisconsin.

Those included re-tweeting an unflattering photo of Cruz's wife and a series of contradictory comments on abortion that managed to draw condemnation from both abortion rights activists and opponents.

While Trump is the only Republican with a realistic path to clinching the nomination ahead of the Republican convention, a big loss in Wisconsin would greatly reduce his chances of reaching the needed 1,237 delegates before then. A big win for Trump would give him more room for error down the stretch.

Friendlier pastures lie ahead in New York and other Northeast states. But for now, he's facing a tough challenge in Cruz, whom polls show with a lead in Wisconsin.

Trump is facing pressure on two fronts.

In Wisconsin, he has been battered by negative ads. The state's top Republican advertiser has been Our Principles PAC, which pumped almost $1.3 million into anti-Trump ads. The Club for Growth, which has endorsed Cruz, is spending $800,000 on ads that promote voting for Cruz  not John Kasich  as the best way to ensure a Trump defeat.

Also, the state's Republican establishment, including Gov. Scott Walker and some of its most influential conservative talk radio hosts, have lined up to support Cruz.

At the same time, Trump's campaign has been outmaneuvered by Cruz in some early states where the campaigns are working to ensure that the delegates who attend the convention this summer are loyal to them. Trump acknowledged his frustrations on CBS Sunday in discussing a meeting with members of the Republican National Committee.

"And I did look at my people. I said, 'Well, wait a minute, folks. You know, we should've maybe done better,'" he said. "Except I also said, 'I won the state.' And I think there's a real legal consequence to winning a state and not getting as many delegates."

The billionaire businessman began his final day of campaigning in LaCrosse, a city of about 50,000 on Wisconsin's western border.

Saturday morning, he had been on the defensive, complaining about the coverage he's received and suggesting that his message wasn't getting through to voters.

But as he's moved from rally to rally in the state  many featuring crowds in the thousands  he's grown more optimistic, moving from thinking he "could surprise" to all but guaranteeing victory.

"I really believe tomorrow we're going to have a very, very big victory," he told the crowd, imploring them to vote.

"If we do well here, folks, it's over. If we don't win here, it's not over, but wouldn't you like to take the credit in Wisconsin?" he asked.

Meanwhile, Cruz's confidence was growing, too. He predicted a "terrific victory" during the taping of a town hall in Madison that was to be broadcast Monday night on Fox News. Cruz also discounted any possibility of someone other than Trump or him winning the nomination.

"This fevered pipe dream of Washington that at the convention they will parachute in some white knight who will save the Washington establishment, it is nothing less than a pipe dream," Cruz told reporters. "It ain't going to happen. If it did, the people would quite rightly revolt."

He got in a dig at Trump, too.

"The last two weeks Donald Trump has gotten his rear end whipped, over and over and over again," Cruz said.

On Monday, the Democratic rivals appealed to union members and showed their next-primary hopes by their locations: Bernie Sanders in Wisconsin, where polls show him ahead, and Hillary Clinton in New York, which votes in two weeks and is a must-win state for her.

At a UAW headquarters in Janesville, Sanders criticized Gov. Walker as being anti-union and said, "In a sense what this campaign is about is building on what the union movement has done." In New York City, Clinton campaigned alongside Gov. Andrew Cuomo, praising union-led efforts that helped raise the state's minimum wage to $15 an hour and predicting that that higher level would "sweep" the nation.

As for Trump's difficult recent stretch, it's not unusual for candidates to go through such periods, and they often rebound better prepared.

President Obama, for instance, was dogged in the 2008 Democratic primaries by controversial comments his pastor had made in church sermons. In a move that foreshadowed how he would respond to difficult moments in his presidency, Obama delivered a well-received speech on race in which he disavowed Pastor Jeremiah Wright's comments but also sought to explain them through the prism of the nation's tortured history on race.

When Wright resurfaced later in the campaign with more questionable comments, Obama moved swiftly to put the controversy to rest, cutting his ties to Wright's Chicago church.
Climate change is a major threat to human health, with extreme heat likely to kill 27,000 Americans annually by 2100, according to a report released Monday by the White House.

The report, by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, outlines numerous ways global warming could devastate public health in the U.S. this century.

Global warming will lead to heat waves so extreme that in the hottest times of the year, it will be physiologically impossible for people who work outdoors to do their jobs, John Holdren, a science advisor to the Obama administration, said during a news conference about the report.

People who work outdoors will be unable to control their body temperature and will die, he said. This is a really, really big deal.

Climate change will pose a major health threat to people of color, indigenous people and low-income communities, according to the report. It will lead to worsening air pollution, expose more people to waterborne illnesses, leave the American food supply vulnerable to a greater number of toxins and will potentially devastate the U.S. healthcare infrastructure as it becomes exposed to extreme weather.

By the end of the century, climate change will kill many tens of thousands of people every year in the U.S. because of disease and more extreme heat waves, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, winds, lightning, cold snaps and winter storms, the report said.

For the first time in history weve been able to show its not just about polar bears and melting ice caps, its about our families and about our future, Gina McCarthy, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, said. Every part of the U.S. is impacted now by climate and is going to be increasingly impacted if we do not take action now to reduce those impacts.

The 332-page report, with contributions from hundreds of scientists from universities across the country, was released as part of the Obama administrations Climate Action Plan. The plan aims to reduce the U.S. contribution to global warming by cutting greenhouse gas emissions by up to 28 percent by 2025. The U.S. is a party to the Paris climate agreement, which aims to keep global warming from exceeding 2C (3.6F).

Global warming is driven primarily by carbon dioxide and methane emissions from agriculture, deforestation, petroleum-based transportation and fossil fuel-fired electric power plants. As those greenhouse gas emissions continue to warm the globe, it is expected to lead to rising seas and more extreme weather, such as more frequent and intense heat waves, heavier rainfall, greater flooding, more wildfires and more severe hurricanes and tornado outbreaks in the U.S.

Changing climate is impacting the intensity, frequency, duration and geographical distribution of the extreme events were seeing today, said Stephanie Herring, a climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The report says climate change will threaten public health by increasing the severity and frequency of existing health problems and by posing unprecedented health problems  such as the spread of tick-borne diseases like Lyme disease  in places where they have never occurred before.

As temperatures warm, mosquito-born illnesses such as West Nile virus, malaria and dengue fever could also spread throughout the U.S., sickening and killing Americans in the process, the report said. Air quality is expected to decline because of increased ozone pollution and a greater number of severe wildfires, leading to worsened allergy and asthma conditions and deaths.

Poor water quality caused by climate change could also lead to the spread of disease, according to the report. Warmer temperatures will warm lakes and streams, contributing to blooms of toxic algae, while coastal flooding from rising seas and higher storm surge could overwhelm urban wastewater systems and expose residents to waterborne pathogens.

Americas food supply is vulnerable to toxins and diseases spread by warming temperatures, the report said. Higher sea surface temperatures will lead to more mercury in seafood while warming will lead to the wider spread of pathogens, pests and parasites in the food supply such as norovirus, listeria, salmonella, E. coli and others.

Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide also reduces the concentrations of proteins and minerals in some plant species, reducing the nutritional value of wheat and rice, according to the report. Extreme weather could also severely damage Americas food distribution infrastructure, leaving people without access to nutritional food.

Daniel Dodgen, director of At-Risk, Behavioral Health and Community Resilience at the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, said climate-related deaths and extreme weather could also lead to mental health problems as people lose homes, jobs, family and other loved ones to disease and weather extremes.

If it impacts peoples health, it impacts peoples mental health, he said.
Press release submitted by Alzheimer's Association

Alzheimers Association Report Shows Care Contributors Sacrifice Own Food and Medical Care to Support Person with Alzheimers Disease

By the year 2025, the estimated number of people with Alzheimers disease 65 and older will increase by nearly 16% here in Iowa.

Davenport, IA March 30, 2016  The personal financial support required by a person with Alzheimers disease may ultimately deprive care contributors of basic necessities, such as food, transportation and medical care, according to the 2016 Alzheimers Disease Facts and Figures report released today. Alzheimers Associations Facts and Figures shows that these care contributors were 28 percent more likely to eat less or go hungry while contributing care to someone with Alzheimers, and one-fifth of them sacrificed their own medical care by cutting back on doctor visits. Overall, nearly half of care contributors cut back on their own expenses to afford dementia-related care for their family member or friend.

For the first time, a nationwide survey looked at the cost of dementia and how it impacts finances of what are called care contributors those that have contributed financially to the care of a loved one. This could include family members other than the spouse, as well as friends. What was alarming was the survey found that these care contributors made enormous personal and financial sacrifices, which jeopardized their and their families own financial security, says Carol Sipfle, executive director of the Alzheimers Association Greater Iowa Chapter.

Today it is estimated that 5.4 million Americans have Alzheimers disease, and nearly 16 million family members and friends are caregivers providing financial, physical and emotional support. Financial depletion related to the support of someone living with Alzheimers can occur directly when family and friends contribute to in-home care or other health care resources. The Alzheimers Association Facts and Figures report found that 13 percent of care contributors sold personal belongings, such as a car, to help pay for costs related to dementia, while nearly half tapped into savings or retirement funds. On average, care contributors, many of whom do not live with the person theyre caring for, spent more than $5,000 a year of their own money to care for someone with Alzheimers disease; however, amounts varied with many spending tens of thousands of dollars per year.

The financial burden of dementia is compounded for many care contributors, as more than one-third reported having to reduce their hours at work or quit their job entirely while caring for someone with Alzheimers, leading to an average loss of income of around $15,000 compared to the previous year. Eleven percent of care contributors have cut back on spending for their childrens education in order to provide support.

Preparing for the Financial Impact of Alzheimers

Unfortunately, a significant number of care contributors today dont have a complete understanding of the financial implications of supporting someone with Alzheimers. According to data from the Alzheimer's Association Facts and Figures report, about two out of three people incorrectly believe that Medicare will help them cover nursing home costs, or they are not sure whether the costs will be covered. At the current time, only three percent of adults in the U.S. carry long-term care insurance that might help them cover these costs.

The Alzheimers Association believes the findings of the special report in this years Facts and Figures should encourage people to proactively plan for the potential financial impact of Alzheimers and other dementia, says Sipfle.

To help care contributors financially plan for the future, the Alzheimers Association suggests the following:

 Look at retirement planning as a time to think about how to prepare for the need for long-term medical care. After an Alzheimers diagnosis, your options may be more limited.

 Conduct an inventory of your financial resources (for example, savings, insurance, retirement benefits, government assistance, VA benefits, etc.). A financial planner or elder care attorney can help with this.

 Investigate long-term care services (for example, home care, assisted living residences and nursing homes) in your area. Ask what types of insurance they accept and if they accept Medicaid as few individuals with Alzheimers and other dementias have sufficient long-term care insurance or can afford to pay out-of-pocket for long-term care services for as long as they are needed.

 Call the local Agency on Aging to determine what community services and support programs are available (for example, respite care, homemaker services and Meals on Wheels can help alleviate financial burdens).

 Once you understand what you have for financial resources and what you can afford, make a plan with your family or a close friend for how to access care.

To increase assistance for families affected by Alzheimers, the Alzheimers Association also supports the HOPE for Alzheimers Act, which would provide Medicare coverage for comprehensive care planning services following an Alzheimers or dementia diagnosis. Individuals can ask their legislator to co-sponsor and support the HOPE for Alzheimers Act.

Alzheimers Disease By The Numbers

The 2016 Facts and Figures report provides an in-depth look at the prevalence, incidence, mortality and economic impact of Alzheimers disease and other dementias  all of which continue to rise at staggering rates as the American population ages.

Prevalence, Incidence and Mortality

 An estimated 5.4 million Americans have Alzheimers disease in 2016, including 63,000 in Iowa. This includes an estimated 5.2 million people age 65 and older, and approximately 200,000 individuals under age 65 who have younger-onset Alzheimers. Barring the development of medical breakthroughs, the number will rise to 13.8 million by 2050.

 Every 66 seconds, someone in the U.S. develops Alzheimers. By mid-century, someone in the U.S. will develop the disease every 33 seconds.

 Approximately 476,000 peoplealmost half a millionage 65 or older will develop Alzheimers in the U.S. in 2016.

 Two-thirds (3.3 million) of Americans over age 65 with Alzheimers are women.

 Alzheimers disease is the sixth-leading cause of death in the U.S., and the fifth-leading cause of death for those age 65 and older. 1,252 Iowans died of Alzheimers in the year 2013 and Iowa has the 5th highest Alzheimers death rate in America. From 2000-2013, the number of Alzheimers deaths increased 71 percent, while deaths from other major diseases, such as heart disease, breast cancer and HIV, decreased.

Cost of Paid and Unpaid Care

 Alzheimers is the costliest disease to society. Total national cost of caring for those with Alzheimers and other dementias is estimated at $236 billion (excludes unpaid caregiving), of which $160 billion is the cost to Medicare and Medicaid alone.

 In 2015, the nearly 16 million family and other unpaid caregivers of people with Alzheimers disease and other dementias provided an estimated 18.1 billion hours of unpaid care, a contribution to the nation valued at $221.3 billion (with care valued at $12.25 per hour).

 There are 135,000 Alzheimers caregivers in Iowa providing 153 million hours of unpaid care valued at $1.8 billion.

 Total payments for health care, long-term care and hospice for people with Alzheimers and other dementias are projected to increase to more than $1 trillion in 2050 (in current dollars) from $236 billion in 2016.

 The financial toll of Alzheimer's on individuals exceeds the toll on Medicaid. Total Medicaid spending for people with Alzheimer's disease is $43 billion, while out-of-pocket spending is estimated at $46 billion, or 19 percent, of total care payments for those with Alzheimer's and other dementias.

Sipfle states, Here in Iowa the Alzheimers Association offers care consultations with families concerned about a loved one as well as educational programs, workshops and conferences throughout the state. Being educated about the disease and services in the community is important for the person in the early-stages of a diagnosis and also for the family members.

Full text of the Alzheimer's Association 2016 Alzheimers Disease Facts and Figures report can be viewed at alzheimersanddementia.comError! Hyperlink reference not valid.. The report will also appear in the April 2016 issue of Alzheimers & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimers Association (volume 12, issue 4).

Alzheimers Association 2016 Alzheimers Disease Facts and Figures

The Alzheimer's Association 2016 Alzheimer's Disease Facts and Figures report is a comprehensive compilation of national statistics and information on Alzheimers disease and related dementias. The report conveys the impact of Alzheimers on individuals, families, government and the nations health care system. Since its 2007 inaugural release, the report has become the preeminent source covering the broad spectrum of Alzheimers issues. The Facts and Figures report is an official publication of the Alzheimers Association.

Upcoming Community Education

2016 BrainWorks, an annual educational conference on Alzheimers and other dementia, will take place on Tuesday, April 20 at The River Center in Davenport. The event is open to those in the early-stages, professionals seeking CEUs or contact hours, family members or caregivers, as well as those in the community wanting to learn more. Details and registration information can be found by visiting alz.org/greateriowa.

Alzheimers Association

The Alzheimers Association is the leading voluntary health organization in Alzheimers care, support and research. It is the largest nonprofit funder of Alzheimers research. The Associations mission is to eliminate Alzheimers disease through the advancement of research; to provide and enhance care and support for all affected; and to reduce the risk of dementia through the promotion of brain health. Its vision is a world without Alzheimers. Visit alz.org/greateriowa or call 800.272.3900.
GENESEO -- The Rev. Ryan J. Landino is the new pastor at First Presbyterian Church, Geneseo.

Born on Easter Sunday 23 years ago, Rev. Landino grew up in Bethlehem, Pa., and accepted that God was leading him to the ministry. Being the fourth boy among six siblings fostered his big-brother leadership at an early age, he said.

"I really found a home in the First Presbyterian Church of Bethlehem and there I was nurtured from a young age for discipleship and leadership," said Rev. Landino, who prefers to be called "Pastor Ryan" or just Ryan.

"Others saw that I was a minister way before I did, so I felt not only nudged in that direction by the Holy Spirit, but also by mentors, peers and church leaders Ive encountered along the way," he said. "Becoming a minister was more of a matter of accepting who God was making me to be behind my back and then embracing, 'Yup, this is Gods call for my life,' and then realizing that I found it really fulfilling.

While attending Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, N.J., Rev. Landino took the helm of the English Ministry program of a Taiwanese Presbyterian Church, which he said gave him a heart for immigrant ministry. After his ordination in 2010, he served at a Slovak church for five years.

"There is something about being able to own our cultural differences while at the same time learning from each others unique background, he said. I bring those lessons with me while I do ministry between different generations, with people of conflicting political and theological backgrounds, and among people with different levels of technological proficiency.

At the Presbyterian Church in Geneseo, Rev. Landino oversees the discipleship and spiritual development of the church, both individually and communally, "which means showing the Gospel truth in fresh ways, while training people to take their faith out into the world to show Gods love to everyone else, he said.

Worship is a time to dedicate ourselves to God, but also works as the recharging and equipping time to send us out into the world rejuvenated to be Christians between Sundays, he said.

What I find rewarding is when people feel that visceral sense of the nearness of God, he said. I especially love that moment when peoples eyes are opened to discovering something they never saw before. The Gospel has so many mysteries to unfold, and I love making discoveries along the way.

BIO BOX FOR REV. LANDINO

Birth date: April 3, 1983.

Family: Wife, Danielle; two dogs, Cookie and Leena.

Hometown: Bethlehem, Pa.

Education: Liberty High School, Bethlehem, Pa.; speech communication major at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania, where he was a student associate director of the Honors Program; earned a dual Master of Divinity Degree/Master of Arts in Christian Education Degree from Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, N.J.; ordained Oct. 18, 2010, at Calvin Presbyterian Church, Linden, N.J.

Favorite scripture: Philippians 4:13 Because I had it by my bed as a teenager and it helped me through some of the darker times in my life.

Biblical character Id like to meet: Mary, sister of Martha and Lazarus, "because she is always willing to seize the moment despite what others say about her.

Hobbies and activities: Comic books, film, reading, travel, trying new restaurants.

One thing I feel strongly about: I feel very strongly about the importance of expanding our personal horizons and learning new perspectives from people who are different from us.

I wish I knew how to: Draw people realistically.
Tim Blackwell, he is one third of the Nova Networks Number 1 rating drive offering Kate, Tim and Marty. April 1, Nova 969 Sydney celebrated 15 years and so did Tim being On-Air with the same network.

So how did this guy straight out of AFTRS land a gig with Nova? He tells us about his journey including the time he was absolutely crapping himself: The most terrifying and most exhilarating gig of my life,said Tim.

On paper, Kate, Tim & Marty are in Tims words the three most opposite humans on the face of the planet, but hell they have got crazy On-Air chemistry  we ask Tim what makes it work.

This is Tim Blackwell  Part One

In Part Two with Tim Blackwell, we talk about the Group Content Directors he has worked over the last 15 years and who is the one guy he only heard from when absolutely necessary  good and bad.

Tims clocked 15 years straight with the same network, what has he done to survive this long? Does he want to make a jump back into breakfast radio at some time or is doing Drive the best shift or what Tim calls: Everyday Saturday

And who would he like to work with On-Air but hasnt yet?
Former 2GB and 3AW News Editor Corbett Shaw has passed away.

Corbett was the founding editor of the 3AW News Room in the 1960s and had been sent from Sydney to set it up. Before that 3AW took their news from The Age. He hired many of the 3AW journalists that went on to become household names including Greg Shackleton, one of the journalists killed in Timor.

Corbett Shaw later went to SBS and was the chief editor for 2EA and 3EA (now SBS Radio).
If you want to make a move up the programming ladder, heres the go.

Southern Cross Austereos Head of Content  Regional  Mickey Maher hosted the first online session of the AFTRS Radio Content and Program Director course for 2016 with Attributes Of A Successful Programmer.

The role of a content director has changed dramatically, it really is about creating content that can transcend across multiple platforms, Mickey said.

You really need to be a good listener. Great leaders are selfless. Great leaders know when to speak and know when to listen.

Mickeys responsible for more than 70 SCA regional stations and he shared the key traits he looks for in aspiring content and program directors. He says he thinks radio has become too safe in Australia.

The best content directors are always wanting to create the next best idea, the next best promotion and to hire the next best talent,Mickey said.

Have the courage to take risks, there is always positive learning in something that may fail. You should feel confident in giving it a crack.

Mickey also shared other advice including strategies for understanding your audience and station, and caution expressed about worrying too much about competitors in the market.

The worst thing you can do is become obsessed with your competitor  it takes your focus away from what your station is doing.

The online AFTRS Radio Content and Program Directors course connects students and industry leaders via a dedicated video stream. If youd like to find out more and an intensive year of online study with the Australian Film Television and Radio School, head to www.aftrs.edu.au/radio for more details.
On Wednesday, April 6, 2016, at the morning general session during the ASLRRA Connections Convention, Railway Age will present its 2016 Short Line and Regional Railroads of the Year awards to the New Orleans & Gulf Coast Railway and the Central Maine & Quebec Railway, respectively.

Following are articles published in the March 2016 issue of Railway Age about these two exceptional small railroads.

Regional Railroad of the Year: Central Maine & Quebec Railway

Years from now, the history books will recount the tragic story of the Lac-Megantic crude oil train disaster, a wreck that claimed 47 lives and decimated a small, bucolic Canadian village. But if history is to be accurately served, the history books will also recount how a new railroad came in, and did its best to set things right, restoring service, but more important, helping a community get back on its feet.

Thus, the story of our 2016 Regional Railroad of the Year, the Central Maine & Quebec Railway. Here is the CM&Q story, as told by its own people:

Twenty months ago, Railroad Acquisition Holdings (an affiliate of Fortress Investment Group) bought the U.S. and Canadian railroad assets of the bankrupt Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway and named the new railroad Central Maine & Quebec Railway. Fortress is one of the leading investors in transportation and infrastructure assets and currently has $75 billion under management. Prior to the purchase of CM&Q, Fortress previous rail investments included RailAmerica and Fortress continues to own the Florida East Coast Railway.

CM&Qs first daunting task was rebuilding the railroad, which at the time of the purchase was severed in the middle following the tragic accident in Lac-Megantic. Faced with a neglected infrastructure that included more than 230 miles of main line track with restricted speeds of 10 mph, multiple Transport Canada notices and orders, and the formidable goal of earning back the trust of the public, customers, employees and connecting carriers, CM&Q invested in excess of $22 million in track and infrastructure improvements. Those improvements include ties, ballast, rail, surfacing, bridge repairs, weed spraying and culvert replacements.

Recently, CM&Q led the initiative to apply for (along with our partner roads) and was awarded a $20 million TIGER grant that provides funding to rehabilitate approximately 380 (109 on CM&Q) miles of track through Maine, creating more reliable rail service. In total, this is a $37 million public-private partnership. In addition, in January of this year, CM&Q was awarded operation of the state-owned Rockland Subdivision, which adds 58 miles of track to our network.

CM&Q began operations by completely shutting down the railroad for two days in both the U.S. and Canada. These two days were used to introduce the new leadership members to the rest of the team and to teach what we call the CM&Q Way, which focuses on the key elements of integrity, safety and being your brothers keeper, productivity, excellence and continuous improvement.

Once the track in Lac-Megantic was reconnected, CM&Q negotiated a social compact with the town of Lac-Megantic that included open communication with the Mayor and the promise not to operate hazardous goods through the city until our 2014 capital improvements were completed and we were satisfied that the tracks were safe to handle those commodities.

The transport of hazardous commodities has resumed through the town, but CM&Q is, out of respect for the residents in Lac-Megantic, not handling crude oil through the town in 2016.

In a recent article in the Bangor Daily News, Conrad Lebrun, Director of Buildings and Projects for Lac-Megantic, agreed that the Central Maine & Quebec and the city have developed a good working relationship. It is good, he said. We have access to CM&Q representatives. When we need to, we call them and they call us right back and we work issues out well. We expect it to keep going in the future.

CM&Q has invested heavily in safety and employee training. Employees are trained on an annual basis rather than tri-annually. In July 2015, CM&Q volunteered to be the first railroad to participate in the Railway Association of Canadas Safety Culture Assessment. This assessment was aimed at understanding what improvements are required within the railway in order to cultivate and maintain a positive safety culture. More than 90% of CM&Q employees (U.S. and Canada), including management, supervisors and tradespeople, participated in the initial safety culture assessment phase.

The results of the survey and focus groups enabled CM&Q to identify and promote safety improvements and enhancements across the company. As a result, CM&Q received the 2015 RAC Annual Safety Award for our participation, leadership and contributions to railway safety.

Safety and training has not stopped with just the employees, since beginning operations CM&Q has reached out to many towns and communities along the railroad and participated in onsite training demonstrations and opportunities.

In June 2015, CM&Q participated with Department of Environmental Protection, the Maine Emergency Management Agency, local firefighters and first responders by providing staff, locomotives and tank cars enabling the agencies to perform a real-life exercise on a derailment with a hazardous chemical.

In an effort to educate local fire departments, CM&Q sponsored three firefighters to attend a Crude by Rail Emergency Response Training program at TTCI in Pueblo, Colo. This training program provided them with basic knowledge, skills and abilities to respond to incidents involving crude by rail.

CM&Q has been working diligently to regain business lost prior to the accident as well as increase business. When operations began, the railroad was handling a little more than 3,000 carloads per quarter. Today we are reaching close to 7,000 carloads, and this has been achieved by providing customers with a dependable and economic transportation option, working with local municipalities and our partner railroads to develop new business opportunities.

CM&Q has made significant progress, and we continue to look to the future to grow business and help our customers improve their reach into the marketplace.

Short Line of the Year: New Orleans & Gulf Coast Railway

How does a railroad realize a 50% improvement in train velocity while adding new customers and expanding facilities, and do all of that with no FRA-reportable injuries? The key is teamwork, one of the many reasons why the New Orleans & Gulf Coast Railway is our 2016 Short Line of the Year. Heres the NO&GC story, as told by General Manager Scott Wollack:

The New Orleans & Gulf Coast Railway (NO&GC) operates on the West Bank area of New Orleans and predominately hauls petroleum products, oils, chemicals, food products, grains and steel products. The NO&GC operates 32 miles of track and connects with Union Pacific at Westwego, La., and runs eastward to the Gouldsboro Yard in Gretna and south to Myrtle Grove, La. We service 14 different industries on two subdivisions, with Chevron, Kinder Morgan, and CHS being three of the larger industries served.

Safety is a requirement of all employees at the NO&GC, and it shows. In the past 15 years, this short line has won the industrys top safety honor, the Jake Award, seven times. Four times, NO&GC has won the award With Distinction and is in line to win it again for 2015 with no FRA-reportable injuries. The NO&GC has utilized technology in numerous facets with locomotives, vehicles, maintenance and fuel consumption in improving the safety atmosphere for all, but the bread and butter is the basic philosophy in working and helping your fellow coworker, no matter what department he or she is in to do it the safe way.

The NO&GC has adjusted its entire operations in the past couple of years, and the results have been remarkable. From 2012 to the present, NO&GC velocity numbers have almost been cut in half. For a 32-mile line that typically operates Monday-Friday from 0600 to midnight to have its release-to-interchange with the Union Pacific average a little more than one day is quite impressive. It takes an entire team effort for one car to turn its wheels.

Our customers have also taken notice. In the past couple of years, we have added new customers and have seen a number of existing customers grow their operations through additional tracks and storage tanks, and increased volume. On the NO&GC line itself, we just added a 12,000-foot yard, creating a more-efficient operation for all our customers and allowing for more possibilities in the future.

Another form of excitement is the potential growth of the NO&GC. The corporate officers at Rio Grande Pacific Corporation have been tirelessly working to obtain federal, state and private funding for developing a new line connecting both subdivisions, which would eliminate a line going literally through the center of the street in the city of Gretna. This line would follow an industry area route through the community of Harvey and run through undeveloped land in Belle Chasse, and connect to the Belle Chasse subdivision. Along this line is the planned construction of two additional railroad yards.

This proposed new line would eliminate safety concerns the NO&GC has for some of the communities through which we operate, enable residential and commercial growth along the old line, and allow for proposed expansion of Highway 23 through Gretna, Terrytown and Belle Chasse. It would also improve our already impressive velocity.

An additional major project being reviewed by the NO&GC is an extension of our line by 4.5 miles in Myrtle Grove. This line would connect to Kinder Morgans International Marine Terminal. Along this proposed extension are two other coal terminals presently in the permitting process, and the proposed Port of Plaquemines on 550 acres just south of the Kinder Morgan terminal. The Panama Canal expansion is scheduled to be completed this year, and this has heightened the excitement at the NO&GC as we are the only railroad on the West Bank area of New Orleans, as well as the southernmost railroad to serve the Mississippi River in the great state of Louisiana.

Our growth has occurred amid the recent economic woes the railroad industry has experienced in the past couple of years. It has created more jobs in the area, including on our railroadin the past couple of years, the NO&GC team has grown by about 50%. Throughout this growth period, the NO&GC has not lost its identify of being a family owned railroad. We will continue to operate in that family atmosphere, which our customersboth internal and externalhave come to expect from the NO&GC.

Safety, a family orientation, growth, job opportunities, improved working conditions, improvements in velocity, an overall team atmosphere: Thats what the New Orleans & Gulf Coast Railway is all about.
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With over six in ten people paying for TV, Argentina has achieved the highest pay-TV penetration rate in Latin America.





According to Dataxis, Argentina reached 8.47 million households at the end of 2015, up 0.7% on the year before. Pay-TV a popular premium service in the country, with 63% homes subscribing. Other leading pay-TV markets in LATAM, such as Mexico and Brazil, still have less than 50% penetration.The market has been driven by well-established cable TV operators, such as Cablevision. The Clarin group-owned company owns four in ten subscriptions across the country, followed by AT&Ts DirecTV with 27% and Telecentro (7%).Cable TV subscribers account for 71% of the total, only 23.1% of whom have digital connections. Direct-to-home (DTH) services represent 27.7% of total subscriptions, while IPTV is currently only offered on a very local scale.In this context, regulators are looking to open the market and increase competition as a way to drive telecom convergence. Big telcos like Telecom Argentina and Telefonica are looking for an opportunity to get the green light to enter the pay-TV market. Dataxis also predicts that: Argentina will enter a readjustment stage after the changes in the regulations of the sector and the recent integration of Cablevision-Nextel and Telecom-Fintech.
Alexandria Police have confiscated hundreds of IP and illegal decoders, LAN convertors and Wi-Fi LAN connectors following a swoop on TV Piracy in the Egyptian city.



The equipment seized from two shops on Al Malek Hifni Street represents one of the largest hauls of piracy equipment in the North African country, as part of an ongoing anti-piracy campaign spearheaded by regional pay-TV operator OSN.The Alexandria raid is significant in that one of the illegal operators was also exporting illegal decoders to other countries. OSN has filed complaints against the company in other countries where these decoders were being sold, said OSN in a statement.Nader Genidy, general manager of Alexandria Police, added: We are taking a very stringent view on TV piracy and will take strong action against illegal TV operators. We look forward to the cooperation of the public in this regard, as they must realise that accessing TV content from unauthorised vendors or through unofficial means is illegal. Encouraging it will cause damage to our nations creative industry and our television industry.More than 370 IP decoders, 500 LAN converters, 175 Wi-Fi LAN connectors, a personal computer and memory stick with TV piracy software were confiscated in the raid, along with 370 illegal set-top boxes.The raid led to the arrest of two people.OSN CEO David Butorac thanked Alexandria Police, saying: The illegal operators are doing a great disservice to Egypt, a nation with a rich creative legacy. They are also deceiving the public by providing them unreliable and low-quality content that is accessed illegally. A zero-tolerance approach to TV piracy is important to build the countrys creative industry.The anti-piracy raid in Alexandra follows similar swoops recently in Cairo, Mansoura and Tanta.
Russian court refuses to oblige Aeroflot to change insurance policy

MOSCOW, April 4 (RAPSI, Diana Gutsul)  The Presnensky District Court of Moscow has refused to compel Aeroflot company to insure its civil liability in accordance with modern standards, attorney Marat Amanliev told RAPSI on Monday.

Such demand was issued by Amanliev and attorney Nikolai Maximov who are going to appeal this ruling. The lawsuit was related to a complaint filed by a passenger, Vitaliy Ivanov, who bought a ticket for Moscow  Chisinau flight. Ivanov's interests were represented by Amanliev.

After Vitaliy Ivanov learned that the Republic of Moldova is among countries that require special safety measures to fly to, he decided to inquire about guarantees that are to be provided for his family if something happens to him. There was no answer to that question, Amanliev told RAPSI earlier.

The attorneys studied the international law regarding this problem and found out that Russian air travel falls under jurisdiction of Warsaw Convention 1929 which states that insurance for a passenger estimates 250,000 French francs.

According to Amanliev, modern sum would be equivalent to 35 million rubles ($521,300).

The attorneys asked Aeroflot to provide information on what legislation it abides to during international flights and how it measures amount of insurance that is to be paid to a passengers family if he dies in a plane crash. They also wanted Aeroflot to introduce a fixed insurance estimating 100,000 SDR (special drawing rights) if the company has no civil liability insurance of such amount.
As we see a surge in inflation globally, it is now critical that everyone is aware of the implications this will have along every step of the insurance and reinsurance value chain.
Property details:

2.5 Acres, Agriculture Zoning, Los Angeles County, CA Item Description YOU ARE BIDDING ON THE FULL PURCHASE PRICE, not the down payment. Please only bid if you intend to purchase. If you have less than 5 positive feedbacks, you must contact me by email with your name and phone # prior to placing a bid. These listings are expensive so please only bid if you are serious about buying this property. This lot is 2.5 acres of Agriculturally zoned land in Los Angeles County. Which means it could be use...

Price: $ 1,001 Seller State of Residence: California Type: Homesite, Lot Zoning: Agricultural Location: 923**, Adelanto, California

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West 57th Street by Hilton Club Here is your chance to own a Deeded Property (Does Not Expire) at a bargain price. This ownership is for a Studio Plus Suite with One Bathroom (Deeded as Unit 508; Week 32; Sleeps 2) for FLOATING GOLD WEEKS 1-6, 29-34 (allows you to travel for any one of the aforementioned weeks based on the ability to travel) at the West 57th Street by Hilton Club, an RCI GOLD CROWN Resort located in the Plaza District of Manhattan in New York City, New York!! This ownership has ...

Price: $ 29,999 Seller State of Residence: Florida Property Address: 102-108 West 57th Street City: New York City Type: Attractions Number of Bedrooms: Studio Number of Bathrooms: 1 Zip/Postal Code: 10019 Location: 100**, New York, New York

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By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 04/04/2016



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Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.
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Good news for first-time homebuyers: Construction companies are now offering entry-level and more affordable new houses in the market. The requirement: You need to live in the South.

Construction and sales of new homes are rising after seeing a dip in the number of new houses sold in February. As previously reported here on Realty Today, new home construction is increasing in order to keep up with the increase in demand of houses in the market.

The number of houses on sale in the market is not enough to supply the increasing number of buyers. Add this to the fact that not all buyers can easily find the house that they want from the limited number of houses being sold in the market, which only makes perfect sense for one to buy a new home instead.

"Buyers will definitely need new construction to provide additional homes on the market," said Javier Vivas, an economic researcher from Realtor.com.

New homes, however, are often more expensive, especially for first-time homebuyers.

"There's simply not enough priced at the right level," added Vivas.

Prices of brand new homes in the market were up about 2.6 percent from the previous year. About 236,000 new homes were on sale last February, but only 44,000 of those were sold. The majority of the buyers bought homes in the $200,000 - $299,999 range. Only 2,000 buyers were able to score new homes at a price less than $150,000.

However, those who are living in the South may be lucky enough to get a brand new home as their first house. Several companies are reportedly offering entry-level houses for first-time buyers.

"We've got building in the Houston area in all price ranges for entry-level, first-time buyers, as well as families, moving up to very large estates," said real estate broker Cheri Fama.

This may be the reason why the South has seen 25,000 of the new home sales in February.
When it comes to dating, it is often said that opposites attract. Couples are rarely expected to have everything in common and agreeing on every issue is not always the norm.
Mike and Mary Englert of Redding talk while AARP volunteer Jim McWhorter (left) looks over their taxes with them Thursday at the Redding Library.

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By David Benda of the Redding Record Searchlight

It's tax time.

That means AARP volunteers have started providing Shasta County seniors and low- to moderate-income residents free assistance in preparing their returns.

"We are not trying to compete with tax preparers," said Jan Brockett, AARP's district coordinator. "People who can afford to go to a paid preparer we would prefer that they do that."

AARP's tax assistance program started Wednesday and will run through April 14.

The deadline to file this year is April 17 because April 15 falls on a Sunday, and Emancipation Day, a holiday observed in the District of Columbia, falls on April 16.

Taxpayers requesting an extension this year will have until Oct. 15 to file their return.

In Shasta County, 24 AARP trained volunteers will offer help at five locations: Golden Umbrella, Shasta Senior Nutrition, Redding Library, Frontier Senior Center and John Beaudet Senior Community Center.

Last year, about 1,600 tax returns were filed in Shasta County through the AARP program.

"We added an extra person at the library, so I am hoping we can meet everybody's needs," Brockett said.

While the program's focus is seniors, Brockett said the disabled and low- to moderate-income residents are welcome to use the service.

"Because we are at senior centers, we do get more older people," Brockett said.

Returns are done on a first-come, first-served basis. No appointments are taken.

AARP will assist residents in preparing their federal and state income tax returns.

Married couples should come together, and clients are asked to bring their Social Security card and statements, picture ID, W-2 forms, 1099 forms and last year's tax return. If you're itemizing bring two years' worth of property tax statements and other important documents.

"We do quite a few people this time of year who are filing for the Earned Income Credit," Brockett said. "A lot of people don't think they need to file. But if you are working, and especially if you have children, then they might qualify for the earned income credit."

Taxpayers who earn $49,078 or less can take advantage of the Earned Income Tax Credit, or EITC. Last year in Shasta County, more than 14,300 eligible workers and families received nearly $30 million total in EITC. The average EITC amount was $2,006, according to the IRS.

But AARP volunteers aren't prepared to do all returns.

"We don't do rentals or anything with depreciation, or any business with over $10,000 worth of expenses," Brockett said. "We try to keep it simple."

Other specialized returns AARP volunteers won't do include farm income (schedule F), married filing separately, moving expenses (form 3903), employee business expenses (form 2106) and minor's investment income (form 8615).

IRS publication 554 is designed to cover tax issues of interest to seniors.

AARP tax aide volunteers get their training in December and January. You don't need accounting or tax preparation experience to be a volunteer.

TAX HELP

AARP Tax Aide volunteers are available in Shasta County through April 14. Here is a list of locations and times:

Golden Umbrella: (200 Mercy Oaks Drive, Redding), 12:30 to 4 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, Friday

Shasta Senior Nutrition: (100 Mercy Oaks Drive, Redding), 8:30 a.m. to noon Monday, Wednesday, Friday

Redding Library: (1100 Parkview Ave., Redding), 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Monday, Thursday, Saturday

Frontier Senior Center: (2081 Frontier Trail, Anderson), 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday

John Beaudet Senior Community Center: (1525 Median Ave., Shasta Lake), 9 a.m. to noon Tuesday, Thursday

For more information: 223-6034
In this Jan. 8, 2016 photo, Somali-American teacher Abdinasser Ahmed runs a class for children in the program known as MENA, or Migrant Education Newcomer's Academy, at Fort Morgan Middle School, in Fort Morgan, a small town on the eastern plains of Colorado. The children, many of whom are part of the large local refugee population from Africa and Latin America, learn some of the basic linguistic and academic skills that are designed to help them integrate into life in this small farming community. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

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By JAMES ANDERSON, Associated Press

FORT MORGAN, Colo. (AP)  For the last decade, Somali refugees have flocked to this conservative farm town on Colorado's eastern plains. They've started a small halal mini-market and a restaurant, sent their children to the schools and worked at a meat processing plant.

As much as Fort Morgan's small town feel reminds many of their rural villages back home, some say they will feel like outsiders until they get what has so far eluded them: a permanent mosque. They are renting two small rooms for a makeshift version, for now.

They say they've tried to buy property to build a mosque but believe no one wants to sell to them.

"If we can own a mosque here, we will be more a part of the community," said Abdinasser Ahmed, a local Somali leader and public schools teacher who fled war-torn Mogadishu, Somalia, in 2003, arrived in Fort Morgan in 2009 to work at the plant and is now a U.S. citizen.

Some longtime residents say they don't want one in their city of 12,000, a step too far especially at a time when fears of terrorism have grown following the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California.

Putting a mosque "right in the center of town" would be a symbol "as if to claim the town," said Candace Loomis, who runs a coffee shop and whose grandparents settled this country of sweeping horizons in a two-room sod house.

Divisions have been exacerbated by rhetoric on the Republican presidential campaign trail, including talk by Donald Trump and others about banning fellow refugees and Muslims from the U.S.

Each Islamic State-inspired terror attack, each domestic mass shooting, adds to the pain of the East African community here, Ahmed said. It's a continuing challenge for refugees who fled violence themselves to integrate into a society whose citizens worry about that very same violence at home.

"If Donald Trump came here I would tell him: 'Don't attack the refugees.' We are all refugees. Everyone came from someplace else," said Abdikadir Abdi, a Somali refugee who settled in the city six years ago and helps run the lone halal grocery store.

Residents say they want to be welcoming. They know they need foreign workers in a community with an aging, and dwindling, local-born population. But hesitations remain, especially about Muslim refugees.

"There's a general feeling out there of, 'Let's slow this train down a bit,'" is how Morgan County Sheriff Jim Crone described local attitudes toward the security of the U.S. refugee resettlement program. "It's a sense of: 'We don't mind people coming here. Just be part of the process.'"

More than 9,500 African refugees and asylum-seekers  among 50,000 from around the globe  settled in Colorado or moved here from other U.S. states in fiscal years 1980-2014, the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement reports.

Most went to Denver, Colorado Springs and Fort Collins; so-called "secondary migrants," like those in Fort Morgan, come from those and other U.S. cities, including Minneapolis.

Like most immigrant communities in early stages, the Somalis have largely kept to themselves, fueling suspicion among some of the majority white population that they don't want to assimilate. Most of the East Africans live in a crowded apartment complex on the other side of the railroad tracks from downtown.

The federal and state governments, Morgan County's school district, Cargill, churches and social agencies have poured substantial resources over the years in settling the refugees and building bridges with the community. The most intensive focus is in county schools, where 800 out of 6,000 students take English as a second language

Cargill has set aside room for Muslim prayers. A third of Cargill's 2,100 workers are East African.

In December, 150 East African workers walked off the job because they thought they were being refused prayer time. Cargill insisted they weren't and fired the workers after they stayed away three days. The company has since rehired 10 workers, but an advocacy group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, has stepped in and filed discrimination complaints.

The incident escalated because of language. Many older Somalis don't speak English, making it difficult for One Morgan County and other service organizations to build bridges with the white community and the Hispanics who have been here for generations.

"We have worked hard to build relationships," said Michaela Holdridge, One Morgan County's executive director. "But there can be a lot of misunderstanding."

What happened in San Bernardino solidified for a lot of residents their worries about how the U.S. vets refugees, Crone said.

"Some people will throw the racist card to that attitude," he said. "That's not what it's about. It's about a lack of social structure in their homelands. To ignore that kind of stuff is just not proper. But that doesn't mean you're going to treat them any different."

Jodi Walker runs Kids at Their Best, which works with children in high-poverty areas. She said most of Fort Morgan was unprepared for the sudden arrival of East Africans  and that assimilation would accelerate if more citizens got involved.

"This is where the Latinos were 25 years ago," Walker said of the Somalis. "This is where the German-Russians were 100 years ago. This is the same story here, and it takes time, it takes education, and it takes kids."

Since 2010, Ahmed has specialized in teaching math, English, translating, citizenship and other classes for East African middle and high school students. It's a special calling for Ahmed; he remembers his own grade schools were destroyed in Mogadishu.

"The youth here are starting to get everything  speaking English, using cellphones, mixing with the community through their classmates," Ahmed said.
FILE - In this Dec. 15, 2007 file photo, a box of General Mills' Cheerios is seen on a shelf at a Shaw's Supermarket in Gloucester, Mass. General Mills says it will start labeling products across the country that contain genetically modified ingredients to comply with a law that is set to go into effect in Vermont. The maker of Cheerios cereal, Progresso soups and Yoplait yogurt notes it is impractical to label its products for just one state, so the disclosures required by Vermont starting in July 2016 will be on its products throughout the U.S. (AP Photo/Lisa Poole, file)

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By LISA RATHKE, Associated Press

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP)  General Mills' announcement on Friday that it will start labeling products that contain genetically modified ingredients to comply with a Vermont law shows food companies might be throwing in the towel, even as they hold out hope Congress will find a national solution.

Tiny Vermont is the first state to require such labeling, effective July 1. Its fellow New England states of Maine and Connecticut have passed laws that require such labeling if other nearby states put one into effect.

The U.S. Senate voted 48-49 Wednesday against a bill that would have blocked such state laws.

The food industry is holding out hope that Congress will prevent states from requiring such labeling. Some companies say they plan to follow Vermont's law, while others are considering pulling their products from the small state.

The Grocery Manufacturers Association has called for a national solution instead of what it says is a patchwork of confusing and costly state labeling laws. It has also challenged Vermont's law in federal court, asking that the law be blocked until the case is resolved. That request was denied and is on appeal.

General Mills' "announcement is the latest example of how Vermont's looming labeling mandate is a serious problem for businesses," the association said in a statement. "Food companies are being forced to make decisions on how to comply and having to spend millions of dollars. One small state's law is setting labeling standards for consumers across the country."

Nestle supports the mandatory informed disclosure of the presence of GMO ingredients in food and beverages and believes it's best done by a uniform national approach, but will abide by state laws if they come into effect, according to spokeswoman Edie Burge.

Food giant General Mills Inc. said Friday it will start nationwide labeling on products that contain genetically modified ingredients, saying it's not practical to do so for just one state. Campbell Soup Co. is also printing new national labels in preparation for Vermont's law, although it opposes state-by-state labeling requirements.

"This shows that the United States has the capacity to join the 64 other countries that already require GMO labeling," Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin said Friday. "I urge other companies to follow the lead of General Mills and extend this right to their customers nationwide as well."

Other companies are weighing their options.

Herr Foods Inc., a midsize snack food company based in Philadelphia, is considering pulling its products from Vermont if the law takes effect, said Daryl Thomas, senior vice president for sales and marketing.

"Just the logistics, the expense are horrendous," he said.

"You'd have to duplicate that if any state went along with its own regulations and then multiple it again, again, and again times however many other states chose to have their own requirements," he said.

In addition, he said, ensuring the differently labeled products are sorted and distributed correctly would be difficult and costly, he said.

The food industry argues those costs will be passed to the consumer, and some independent Vermont retailers are worried how it could affect their bottom line.

"As a retailer, there's all sorts of ways that this could backfire on us as a state, and a small independent guy like myself if I've got nothing on my shelves or I've got limited (supply) and my competitors have no problem with the staying power, we're done," said Ray Bouffard, owner of Georgia Market in Georgia, Vermont.

The Food and Drug Administration says GMOs, which can include food made from seeds that were engineered in laboratories to have certain traits, are safe, but labeling advocates say not enough research has been done and they have a right to know what's in their food. They also say the use of GMOs has led to big increases in herbicide use.

A 2014 Associated Press-GfK poll found that 66 percent of Americans supported labeling of genetically modified food.

Leaders of the U.S. Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee said they are committed to finding a compromise.

U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, chairman of committee, has already put forth a compromise that "will ensure consumer access to biotech information and affordable food while protecting farmers and manufacturers," spokeswoman Sarah Little said Friday.

The top Democrat on the committee, Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, said that while several of her proposals have not been accepted, she still believes "we need and can achieve a policy that creates a uniform national system of disclosure ... in a way that has common sense and works for everybody," she said.

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This story has been corrected to show the U.S. Senate voted Wednesday, not Friday.
Greg Barnette/Record Searchlight Gene and Bea Ramsey of Redding celebrated their 73rd wedding anniversary on March 21.

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By Amber Sandhu of the Redding Record Searchlight

In January 1943, 19-year-old Eugene Ramsey asked Beatrice Woods, 18, to be his bride.

And 73 years together, two children, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren later, she's still his bride.

"To this day, I call her my bride," said the 92-year-old Ramsey after he and his wife recently celebrated their 73rd wedding anniversary.

Married March 21, 1943 in National City, the Redding couple met when they both worked at the North Island Naval Air Station in Coronado.

Bea Ramsey, now 91, worked in the wire department at the Naval Air Station and made cables for airplanes.

"Those days they were known as Rosie the Riveter," her husband said.

She worked the mezzanine level, and he, the main floor, as an aircraft mechanic.

So when she had to take a break, she had to walk down the stairs and pass by him.

"I saw him looking at me. You know how you can feel eyes looking at you? I looked up and he glanced away," she said.

He watched her for months.

"We had never gone out and never had a real conversation," he said.

So when Ramsey, known as Gene, was sent away to boot camp, he did something quite out of the ordinary. He spent more than half of his monthly income to send her a gift.

He only made $21 a month, but spent $15 to mail her a black compact.

She has the compact to this day.

"My first gift from my husband," she said as she held the compact.

"I remember wrapping it up so carefully and the guy just throws it onto the concrete," Ramsey said.

After he returned from boot camp, he was at an assembly when a mutual friend introduced him to her.

It's also when they had their first conversation.

Originally from Kentucky, Bea Ramsey moved to California after the Great Depression. Her father lost his job and decided to drive the family west in search of a job.

"He was adventuresome, so he packed us in the car and brought us to San Diego," she said. "It was quite a harrowing experience."

She said back then there were no gas stations or motels along the way, which made it a challenging journey. But they made it, and her father waxed and cleaned cars, before he found a job delivering ice cream.

Gene Ramsey is originally from Yolo County, and lost his father at age 9. He grew up on a farm, cared for his mother, and his three sisters. Times were hard, and it's not something he likes to talk about.

"But life was good after I met her," he said pointing to his wife.

"We just knew we belonged together," she agreed.

When they began dating, they said they'd never marry. Three months later, he popped the question, and she said yes.

She said she was brought up in a generation that preached, "When you get married, you stay married." And to this day, that's still her philosophy.

"We've held up pretty good, I think," she said.

Her husband said it's also important to maintain a sense of humor to have a successful marriage. "You have to laugh every day, you just have to. That makes for longevity," he said.

But, his wife said, forgiveness in a marriage is just as important.

"Forgive each other for whatever goes wrong," she said.

"I didn't have to be forgiven for anything," her husband replied with a laugh.
"Happy Valley" alum Katherine Kelly has been tapped to lead an ensemble of newcomers in the "Doctor Who" spinoff "Class."

Kelly will play a teacher at Coal Hill School, an institution that has been part of the "Doctor Who" universe since its inception in 1963. Students will be played by newbies Greg Austin, Fady Elsayed, Sophie Hopkins and Vivian Oparah.

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Filming on "Class" begins this week. There's no word yet on a target premiere date for the BBC Three/BBC America series created by Patrick Ness. "Doctor Who" and "Class" exec producer Steven Moffat likened the series to a British version of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

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"There's nothing more exciting than meeting stars that nobody's heard of yet. We had the read through of the first few episodes last week, and there was a whole row of them," said Moffet. "Coal Hill School has been part of 'Doctor Who' since the very first shoot in 1963, but this new show is anything but history. 'Class' is dark and sexy and right now. I've always wondered if there could be a British 'Buff' -- it's taken the brilliant Patrick Ness to figure out how to make it happen."

Kelly is also known for her roles in the U.K. dramas "Mr. Selfridge," which has aired in the U.S. on PBS, and "The Night Manager," which is bowing this month on AMC.

"Poldark" and "Doctor Who" veteran Ed Bazalgette is directing. Moffat and Ness are exec producers with Brian Minchin, with Derek Ritchie producing.

Variety
The government, Jaitley said, is committed to detecting and preventing generation of black money

Enforcement Directorate (ED) has launched investigation in 43 cases of offshore accounts, including those from the HSBC list and from an earlier ICIJ expose, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Monday.

The comments came on a day when Jaitley announced a multi-agency probe into a new expose by ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists) about offshore tax haven holdings of Indians and other nationals.

Giving details of the action taken by the government following such exposes on earlier occasions, Jaitley said ED has initiated probe in 23 cases of HSBC and 20 cases of the ICIJ expose.

Based on information about 700 Indians provided by ICIJ in 2013, the revenue department identified 434 persons, of which 184 admitted to their dealings with off-shore entities.

"The government authorities have detected credit in the undisclosed foreign accounts of such Indian persons in excess of Rs 2,000 crore (Rs 20 billion). Fifty-two prosecution complaints under the provision of the I-T Act have been filed against offenders so far," Jaitley said.

With regard to HSBC accounts, the government in 2011 had received information from the French government about 628 Indians holding bank accounts in Switzerland.

"Out of 628 cases, 214 were found not actionable on account of no balance or being non-residents or being non-traceable. Out of the remaining cases, assessments have been completed in 390 cases in which undisclosed income of Rs 5,018 crore (Rs 50.18 billion) and tax demand of Rs 4,584 crore (Rs 45.84 billion) has been raised," Jaitley said.

Also, the concealment penalty of Rs 1,213 crore (Rs 12.13 billion) has been levied in 157 cases. Besides, 154 prosecution complaints have been filed in HSBC cases, he said.

The government, Jaitley said, is committed to detecting and preventing generation of black money.

"India is also concerned that there are countries in the world which are being used as tax havens because of which all other countries of the world suffer loss of tax," he added.

The minister said the recent initiative of Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) will help India and other countries in checking this practice of tax avoidance through such tax havens.

Illustration: Uttam Ghosh/Rediff.com
Whistle-blower points out links that help select investors; NSE denies charges

The Union finance ministry has asked market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India to probe the alleged 'dark fibre links' between the BSE and the NSE, and has been informed, in turn, that a preliminary fact finding exercise is already underway.

The BSE and the NSE have also been asked to provide inputs.

When asked about the issue, the former declined to comment, and the latter said the allegations were baseless.

Business Standard has reviewed the letters sent by the finance ministry to the Sebi over the past few months, along with the internal notes, which were obtained under the Right to Information.

The documents showed that the ministry swung into action after receiving, in November, a whistle-blower account that talked about the dark fibres and other issues in high frequency trading.

According to the ministry note sent to the Sebi, The recent letter from the whistle-blower dated October 3, 2015, talks about dark fibre links between the NSE and the BSE that is available to select investors.

"This puts ordinary investors as well as large institutional investors at a serious disadvantage.

"It also opens the stock exchanges to unknown and unforeseen risk during periods of extreme price volatility.

The ministry note added proper investigation is needed to help save ordinary investors from risks and dangers due to HFT or algo trading.

The whistle-blowers letter describes a dark fibre as a dedicated fibre link, which has no switching equipment in its path.

In tech parlance, a dark fibre is an unused, surplus optic fibre line with a service provider, who leases it out for private use.

The October letter is the third the Singapore-based anonymous whistle-blower has written on algo trading since January last year.

The first one alleged manipulations in the NSE between 2011 and 2014.

It led to Sebi circulars, tightening regulations on collocation servers and became the subject of a Bombay High Court case.

The second letter in August talked about the steps Sebi should take to prove the alleged manipulation and take action.

The letters were addressed to Sebi and senior financial journalist Sucheta Dalal.

In response to an email seeking comments about the probe, the NSE spokesperson said, 

As you know we avoid giving comments to any matter that is being heard legally.

The NSE spokesperson added the exchange and market participants used standard protocols as might be available from time to time.

Regarding your query with regard to our reply to the regulator, we always have clarified issues whenever asked for.

Since such communications are bilateral, the same cannot be revealed.

We have told you earlier also that NSE has always implemented fair practices and allegations as indicated in your email are baseless.

A BSE spokesperson declined to comment.

According to the whistle-blower, a trading firm called AlphaGrep Securities benefitted from this dark fibre link and managed to treble its market share in a few months.

AlphaGrep describes itself a proprietary trading firm focused on high frequency algorithmic trading in asset classes across the globe.

It has offices in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Singapore and Hong Kong.

We are one of the largest firms by trading volume on Indian exchanges, and have significant market share on several large global exchanges as well, the firm claimed on its website.

The whistle-blower said, AlphaGrep figured out that major telcos would not be able to give faster access.

It found a cable operator who had a fibre optic network a was willing to provide a dark fibre.

A dark fibre is a dedicated fibre link which has no switching equipment in its path.

In this case they found Sampark Infotainment which was willing to provide a near dark fibre with minimal switching equipment.

Sampark was, however, not a regular ISP and hence could not technically have access to NSE colo.

It is NSE policy that they allow links to be terminated only by approved vendors (i.e ISPs) on dedicated MUX equipment at NSE colo.

AlphaGrep with its muscle of volume and good contacts managed something no one is supposed to.

It got its near dark fibre terminated across NSE and BSE colo without Sampark being an empanelled vendor in April/May 2015.

At the BSE end their job was even easier as BSE does not own its collocation which is managed by a third party which does not have to follow any standards for link termination.

"The order of latency which they could get across the link was around 400 micro seconds.

This was one fifth of what all others were having. If they could trade at one fifth the latency of the market the benefit is not hard to fathom.

From April to August 2015, the market share of AlphaGrep rose from around five per cent to 15 per cent of BSE turnover. This speaks for itself, the whistle-blower wrote.

"The arrangement was legitimised post facto through an agreement with another empanelled service provider after other algo traders cried foul, the whistle-blower added.

The AlphaGrep website claims that it has experience in development of low latency systems.

We are a team of curious engineers, mathematicians, and statisticians who like to solve challenging problems. We have past experience in quantitative trading and low latency trading system development at global proprietary trading firms and investment banks.

When contacted, Mohit Mutreja, managing director, AlphaGrep, said he was not aware of the letter.

In an emailed response to queries, Mutreja added five-year old AlphaGreps average daily traded volumes over the past one year represented two to three per cent of daily BSE volumes.

AlphaGrep does not have any commercial relationship with Sampark Infotainment. AlphaGrep only contracts with exchange-empanelled vendors for exchange connectivity, Mutreja said.

An email seeking comments sent to Prakash DSouza, managing director, Sampark Infotainment, did not elicit any response.The RTI documents showed the first letter to Sebi was written by the ministry in mid-November.

After a reminder from the ministry a month later, Sebi on December 30, 2015, informed that a preliminary fact finding exercise is already underway.

The matter has also been discussed in the Technical Advisory Committee of Sebi, the regulator told the ministry.

On March 19, Business Standard had reported that the TAC had submitted a report on the matter, which some people described as hard-hitting.

FROM SINGAPORE, A WHISTLE-BLOWER

A letter from an anonymous whistle-blower in Singapore has prompted the authorities to investigate alleged dark fibre links between BSE and NSE:

2015: Jan 14: First letter from whistle-blower, alleging manipulation in the NSE collocation centre

Aug 10: Second letter; focusing on steps to be taken by the Sebi to prove manipulation

Oct 3: Whistle-blower writes about dark fibre links between the BSE and the NSE

Nov 18: Joint secretary of financial markets writes to Sebi chairman

Dec 14: Reminder sent from ministry to Sebi

Dec 30: Sebi replies; says fact-finding exercise underway. Matter discussed in Technical Advisory Committee

2016: Feb 17: Another reminder from the ministry Sources: RTI documents, whistle-blowers letters



HOW DARK FIBRE ALLEGEDLY HELPED

In the cash market segment, the BSE is a clear follower of prices at the NSE. It has less than 15 per cent volume of the NSE, and as a result all price changes first happen at the NSE, and are subsequently reflected at BSE.

If a trader can know the price at the NSE before others at the BSE collocation, he could benefit immensely.

AlphaGrep was able to achieve this by hiring a service provider who could provide this fibre optic link between Bandra-Kurla Complex, where the NSE is located, and Fort, where the BSE is housed.

According to the whistle-blower, this dark fibre link between Fort and BKC (about 15 km) helped Alpha trade at a fifth of latency as the rest of the market helping it treble market share to 15 per cent between April and August 2015.

The image is used for representational purpose only. Photograph: Reuters
The top posts on social media from your favourite Bollywood celebrities:

Jackie Chan is shooting a Bollywood style dance number for his new film Kung Fu Yoga in Jodhpur.

Choreographer Farah Khan shared a picture from the sets, above, and wrote: The King of action CAN dance n how!! Changing his name 2 Jackie Jackson!! #kungfu yoga.

Directed by Stanley Tong, the film also star Amyra Dastur, Aarif Rahman, Sonu Sood and Zhang Yixing.

***

Salman Khan poses with his newborn nephew

Salman Khans sister Arpita, who was blessed with a baby boy on March 30, took to Twitter to thank her doctor.

She posted a picture, above, and tweeted: Guys please welcome by amazing doc on Twitter @kirancoelho.





She shared another picture, above, and wrote: My World, My Life, My Strength, My Happiness, My Everything. Overwhelmed, grateful, thankful.

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Its a wrap for A Flying Jatt!

Remo D'Souza has completed shooting for his next directorial venture A Flying Jatt.

He posted a picture, above, and tweeted: Yayyyyyy last SHOT of #aflyingjatt BIG THANKS TO MY TEAM.

Starring Tiger Shroff and Jacqueline Fernandez, the superhero film is scheduled to release on August 25.

***

Preity Zinta gets a new hairstyle

With IPL around the corner, Preity Zinta is expected to return to India soon.

She recently got herself a new haircut at a salon in Los Angeles.

She posted a picture, above, and wrote: Thanks Jen for my awesome new hair cut! Am loving the bangs. See you soon & take care #haircut #bangs #lovingit #newlook Ting.

***

Farhan Akhtar flaunts his new guitar

Rock On 2!! director Shujaat Saudagar has gifted Farhan Akhtar a new guitar.

Farhan posted a picture, above, and tweeted: My new #McPherson acoustic guitar courtesy #RockOn2 director @ShujaatSaudagar #whatastar #whatabeauty

Rock On 2 will release on November 11.

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Manisha Koirala shoots in Shimla!

Manisha Koirala has started shooting her new film Dear Maya in Shimla.

She posted a picture from the sets, above, and wrote: From the sets of #DearMaya !! #fun #film #excited.

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Lisa Ray turns 44!

Model-turned-actress Lisa Ray celebrates her birthday today.

She posted a picture of herself, above, and wrote: 44 on 4/4 #ContinuationDay.

***

Meet Yami Gautams sister Surilie

Yami Gautam recently celebrated her sister Surilies birthday.

She took to Twitter to wish her and tweeted: Happy bday my lil princess..Can never express enough my love for you.'

Surilie made her acting debut with the television show Meet Mila De Rabba.
'China has refused to act upon the threat posed by Pakistan using terrorism as an instrument of its foreign policy.' says Rajeev Sharma.

As Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Pakistan policy threatens to reach a dead end, his government's strategic and diplomatic narrative will soon going to shift to Pakistan's 'all weather' friend: China.

National Security Advisor Ajit Doval is Modi's interlocutor for both Pakistan and China. The NSA will soon don his diplomatic hat and reach out to China.

Doval will travel to China, not merely as a Special Representative for the India-China boundary talks, but for a much larger role as the PM's special envoy to discuss a wider gamut of bilateral relations.

Pakistan will be one of his core thrust areas during his interactions with his Chinese counterparts this month.

Doval was scheduled to visit China in the first week of January, but canceled his trip after the terror attack on the Pathankot airbase.

The diplomatic scenario has changed since then and the already complicated India-Pakistan-China triangle has become messier with China bailing out Pakistan before a UN committee last week over the issue of notorious terrorist Masood Azhar.

On Thursday, March 31, China intervened a couple of hours before the expiry of the deadline on India's resolution before the UN Sanctions Committee seeking a ban on Azhar, who heads the terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed, whom India has accused of being the main conspirator behind the Pathankot attack.

China blocked India's bid on technical grounds. Significantly, it was the fourth time in the past 18 months when China has saved Pakistan from major embarrassment before the UN Sanctions Committee.

China had earlier blocked Indian resolutions to outlaw Azhar and another Pakistan-based terrorist Syed Salahuddin, chairman of the United Jehad Council.

China also blocked India's resolution in the UN Sanctions Committee for action against Pakistan for contravening UN Resolution 1267 after Lashkar-e-Tayiba terrorist Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi, a prime accused in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, was released on bail.

The Chinese conduct before the UN committee last week came as a shocker and a lesson for India. A shocker because India had engaged China continuously at the bilateral diplomatic level in New Delhi and Beijing and at the multilateral diplomatic level in New York for over two months after the Pathankot attack.

A lesson because despite intense and sustained engagement, China has continued with its old policy and refused to acknowledge and act upon the larger threat posed to the world, including to China, by Pakistan's questionable conduct of using terrorism as an instrument of its foreign policy.

The Modi government's interactions with two key neighbours -- Pakistan and China -- is being handled by the Prime Minister's Office, not the ministry of external affairs.

Doval has a tough and delicate task cut out for him as China is increasingly wary of the Modi government's foreign policy. I had flagged this in an earlier column wherein the warning emanating from Beijing was that India should be wary of the China-Pakistan axis.

It is now apparent that the Modi government's diplomatic efforts in the United Nations to seek action against Pakistan for its various sins of omission and commission on the terror front have hit the China Wall.

India has engaged robustly with Pakistan's three biggest friends -- China, Saudi Arabia and the United States, in that order of importance from Islamabad's viewpoint. China has proved to be the most difficult customer for India.

China has demonstrated to India that the road to diplomatic action against Pakistan on the terror issue or any other issue goes from Beijing, not New York.

Rajeev Sharma is an independent journalist and strategic analyst who tweets@Kishkindha

IMAGE: An Islamabad street is spruced up for Xi Jinping's visit to Pakistan last year.
'These trends put at risk not only minorities or the media or some other out-of-favour group, they can and do concern everyone,' warns T N Ninan.

At one level, India is deepening and strengthening its democracy. Oppressed or suppressed castes have found political voice over the past quarter century and, in a battle that has just been fought, women are winning the right to enter temples where their entry used to be barred.

So the problem that the country faces is not with democracy (however imperfect its practice); the issue which should get attention has to do with liberalism. As Fareed Zakaria argued more than a decade ago in The Future of Freedom, you can have one without the other; many countries do.

India was never a truly liberal system. The government placed far too heavy a hand on the economy, and in many areas there were not enough checks and balances to prevent the misuse of power -- which therefore was frequent.

Remember also that the Constitution restricts freedom of speech when it comes to criticising a friendly country -- begging the question of who maintains authorised lists of which countries are friendly, and which not.

The situation improved with the advent of economic reforms, which paved the way for the abolition of many controls and a greater role for competitive markets and private players.

At the same time, the end of a single party's dominance of the political sphere helped some existing institutions gain confidence and credibility, including the Election Commission and the Comptroller and Auditor General.

The Supreme Court permitted and even encouraged public interest litigation, while the Right to Information law empowered ordinary citizens in an altogether new way.

The media gained in size and reach. New institutions were created for better regulation of the stock market and for preserving the competitive nature of markets in general. The system developed more checks and balances.

The trouble today is that a reverse trend has started. The Gujarat government has proposed a new law that gives it over-arching power over all universities in the state, while the report of a fact-finding team sent by the Editors Guild to look at pressures on the media in Chhattisgarh makes for disturbing reading -- journalists are subjected to arbitrary arrest, or attacked in their homes, and there is pervasive fear.

Meanwhile, the party in power at the Centre puts forward the formal proposition that criticism of the 'nation' should not be permitted. What does that mean? If a nation is its people, does it become impermissible to argue that Indians are prone to racist attitudes when it comes to black Africans?

A state government has just been dismissed, preventing a floor test of its majority, bringing back memories of the arbitrary exercise of power that prevailed when Indira Gandhi was at the helm.

Efforts are being made to whittle down the scope and power of the Right to Information law, while autonomous institutions feel the dread hand of government on their shoulders.

Shouting a slogan has been made a test of one's nationalism. People are lynched in their homes or on their way to a cattle market, while reporters are attacked in court premises in the capital.

Insidiously, there is one rule for those in favour, another for those out of favour.

It is hard to see India being anything other than a democracy but, in Zakaria's framework, it is in danger of becoming a quite illiberal one if some recent trends continue or gain in strength.

No 'basic structure' of the Constitution is threatened, but the de facto position on the ground will be that dissent becomes more difficult, and conformism born out of fear or compulsion more prevalent.

It bears pointing out that these are not trends that put at risk only minorities or the media or some other out-of-favour group; they can and do concern everyone.
'He was carrying his Indian passport.'

'This seems a very different sort of spy than the ones we see in movies, who carry fake passports and are highly trained,' says Aakar Patel.

An Indian in Pakistan has been accused of being a spy from Research and Analysis Wing, referred to by its acronym, R&AW.

Reports from Pakistan say the man was caught after speaking to his family in Marathi over the cellphone. Calls from Pakistan to India are, of course, monitored and so the man was traced.

He was also carrying his Indian passport. This seems like a very different sort of spy than the ones we see in movies, who carry fake passports and are highly trained. I will be very surprised if this individual turns out to be from R&AW.

This is because R&AW agents, just like CIA and Mossad and ISI agents, are usually posted in embassies, with diplomatic passports. I read somewhere the current national security advisor was apparently in Pakistan on such a posting. However, so far as I know he was in the Intelligence Bureau and not R&AW.

The IB (it is also know by its short form) is the internal spying agency, focussed on spying on Indians. If you want to say it more politely, you could say spying on activities in India.

If Ajit Doval was IB, what was he doing in Pakistan? I am not sure, and much of the activities of the two spying agencies are known to us only through rumour and not fact.

Sometimes even R&AW chiefs do not know what is going on inside R&AW. Ten years ago, Outlook magazine reported that R&AW had a policy of not hiring Muslims. None of its 15,000 or so employees was Muslim. When Reuters reported the story, it spoke to A S Dulat, the former R&AW chief said he 'did not recall coming across any Muslims in the organisation,' adding that 'If we do not have any Muslims obviously this is a handicap' and 'If there are no Muslims, there must have been a reluctance to take them in. It is also not easy to find that many Muslims.'

Another former R&AW chief Girish Chandra Saxena said, 'The need for Muslim officers in intelligence gathering is acute,' and 'There are very few people who have knowledge of Urdu or Arabic. The issue has to be addressed.'

If the need is acute and it is a handicap, then why not just hire them? I do not know.

As someone who has done track-two work, I have met some former ISI chiefs and one of them, Asad Durrani, I have known for some years now because we wrote for the same newspaper.

My experience of the ISI came some time ago when I was visiting Harappa, which is a couple of hours' drive from Lahore. I was there to see the Indus Valley Civilisation, which is beautifully preserved.

I first went there many years ago, and before I reached the ticket counter, the man had issued tickets for foreigners, which cost much more than those for locals. I asked him how he knew I was not a local and he said: 'Yahan koi Pakistani nahin aate.'

This time, when I went to the ticket counter I was given locals' tickets and I did not declare my Indian status. Inside the complex, a man in shalwar qameez asked us where we had come from and we said, honestly, "Lahore". He left. Our guide, who knew, then said that the ISI was keeping a record of all foreigners in the area.

When we were exiting, the man again stopped us and asked us for the national identity cards that all Pakistanis carry. We were caught and taken to the ISI office, which was inside the complex. There our passport details were noted down and we were sent off after being scolded for being evasive. 'Don't you know how dangerous it is for foreigners?'

I said earlier that R&AW agents usually travelled on diplomatic passports. My experience with R&AW is from October 2001, when I was in Afghanistan to cover the war. To reach there we had to go through Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and wait in Dushanbe for the next convoy.

In the hotel, I met two middle aged Indian men, in suits and tie, who were at breakfast every morning and the bar in the evening. The rest of us were reporters from all over the world, but these two men were different.

When our convoy reached the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border, our passports were checked by Russian soldiers. All the reporters went through, but the Russians sent those two Indian men back to Dushanbe.

I returned to the hotel two weeks later, after my assignment ended. I had fallen off a horse into a river and the visa stamps on my passport were smudged. This worried me. At the hotel, the taxi that was driving me to Uzbekistan broke down and I was standing with my backpack wondering what to do, when one of the two men, who were still there, asked where I was going.

He offered me a lift (they were in a white Mercedes Benz). At the border, I pulled out my passport to get it stamped while the men remained in the car. I began explaining to the officer my story, but he took one look at the two men and waved me off. That is when I finally realised who the men were.

I was ignorant, but Russian soldiers and Uzbek officers could pick out R&AW men at a glance.

Aakar Patel is Executive Director, Amnesty International India. The views expressed here are his own.
Experience tells me that there must have been some serious flaw in construction.

In India, there is too much flexibility and rules are altered at the drop of a hat.

IMAGE: Workers try to clear the debris after the Vivekananda Setu collapsed on Thursday, killing 27 and injuring around 90 people. Photograph: PTI

I am in deep shock. It hurts to see so many lives snuffed out like this, says Kolkata-based veteran civil engineer Subhash Bhattacharya.

Besides, its also painful to watch such a huge construction, which was going on for years, coming down like a house of cards, he adds.

Having worked in the British-Swedish engineering firm Skanska Cementation Company Limited for more than three decades, Bhattacharya in a conversation with Indrani Roy/Rediff.com tries to ascertain the causes behind the collapse of the Vivekananda Setu, an under-construction flyover in Kolkata last Thursday, and highlights the necessary precautions that need to be taken.

What, according to you, could be the possible causes of the collapse?

Since I was not directly or indirectly involved with the construction or design of this flyover, nor I have seen it before or after it collapsed, it will not be justified for me to give any view on it.

However, from my experience I can say there must have been some serious flaw in construction/design.

I am eagerly waiting for the findings of the investigating team.

Primarily, one needs to find out details of the design, construction procedure and the quality of materials that were used.

Its being heard that the part of the flyover that collapsed was concretised the previous evening.

Yes. This fact is haunting me.

Ideally, during such work, a gap of at least 12 hours should be given after concreting and no traffic movement should be allowed underneath or near it.



It appears this was not done.

How did the supervisors allow this -- its baffling!

Some are alleging that the plan of the flyover was a faulty one.

Yes, there is also such possibility as a steel structure collapsed in this case.

But then I heard that construction of the flyover was going on for years.

In that case, the fault should have been detected.

IMAGE: Subhash Bhattacharya, veteran civil engineer. Photograph: Kind courtesy, Subhash Bhattacharya's Facebook page.

Though such a huge flyover was being built, work was going on during daytime and there was no restriction on traffic movement.

This is a total violation of safety norms. I am at a loss -- how could this happen?

When such a large structure is constructed it is mandatory that no vehicular or pedestrian movement be allowed underneath.

This is mentioned in the manual of the Indian Roads Congress, apex body of highway engineers in India.

Usually, construction of bridges, flyovers etc should take place at night.

One of the workers injured in the incident told the media that cracks had developed in some bolts and some quick-fix welding was done. That is dangerous, isnt it?

As I said earlier, I was not at the site and it wont be possible for me to ascertain the actual reasons for the collapse of the flyover.

However, when the bolts cracked, as per the workers version and huge noise could be heard, the concreting should have been discontinued and the reason should have been sought for.

Welding should never have been carried out.

Working as a civil engineer from 1966 to 2002, you were associated with the construction of the Farakka Barrage, steel plants in Durgapur and Jamshedpur, various bridges, tunnels, and a number of power plants. What preliminary precautions you used to take for constructions of this stature?

We used to review the plan at regular intervals.

Also, a regular check-up of the construction was done to detect any possible flaws.

There used to be round-the-clock supervision. In case of any error detected, rectification was done immediately.

We heard this flyover project got delayed by years. Do you think this delay could have weakened the base of construction?

Oh yes. Delay means wear and tear; and time is bound to take its toll on such a huge construction.

On resuming work at any stalled infrastructure project, its absolutely necessary for the contractor to run a thorough test of the entire structure.

You have taken part in many engineering workshops and seminars in India and abroad. What, according to you is the basic difference between India and foreign countries as far as infrastructure projects are concerned?

The basic difference lies in adherence to norms.



In India, there is too much flexibility and rules are modified and altered at the drop of a hat. But in other countries, rules are generally very strict.

Once, an infrastructure project in California got stalled for long as the authorities felt it could endanger certain neighbourhood species.

In India, on the other hand, one hardly thinks of the environment.

Its really surprising that in case of the Vivekananda Setu (let alone environment), even safety of the labourers, local residents and general public wasnt taken care of.

How can incidents like these be prevented?

Post retirement, I heard of three frightening incidents -- two in Kolkata (another flyover in Ultadanga had collapsed in the wee hours in March 2013) and one in Surat in July 2014.

To prevent such incidents from recurring, governments and construction companies must do the following:

1) Run a thorough health check-up of the bridges

2) Arrange visits by veterans to sites under construction for necessary tips

3) Ensure that work goes on only at night especially in congested areas

4) Restrict and divert traffic and pedestrian movement in and around the area

5) Review the original plan and alter and modify it as per needs

6) Maintain a strict quality control

What should be the primary duty of Kolkata Municipal Development Authority now?

First and foremost, the KMDA should find ways to retain and reconstruct the bridge.

Once the probe gets over and the reports are out, it should check the quality of construction of each and every part of the flyover.

We lost so many of our citizens last Thursday. We cant afford to lose any more lives.
IMAGE: Shreehari Aney submits his resignation as Maharashtra's advocate general to Governor C Vidyasagar Rao. Photograph: Sahil Salvi

'All that Maharashtra can give someone whose husband has died is a piece of cloth. That was extremely tragic for me.'

'If you go back historically there is no reference to Maharashtra whereas there is complete reference to Vidarbha.'

'If you think Vidarbha will look like Mumbai, then that will not happen. We don't expect it too.'

Shreehari Aney was compelled to resign as Maharashtra's advocate general after he told a public meeting in Marathwada that the demands for a separate state for Vidarbha and Marathwada were justified.

Aney tells Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com why Vidarbha needs statehood.

Did you expect your comment would create this big a ruckus in Maharashtra?

I expected there would be a reaction, but I did not think it would be of this magnitude.

Why did you raise this issue?

The occasion was the distribution of saris to the widows of farmers (who committed suicide). I was moved to tears as a representative of the state. All that Maharashtra can give someone whose husband has died is a piece of cloth. That was extremely tragic for me.

Two speakers spoke before me. One said the Marathwada situation needs to be attended to and too much of attention is paid to Vidarbha. A second said Marathwada's freedom movement needs Vidarbha's support. And since we are asking for the creation of a state of Vidarbha, therefore the creation of a state of Marathwada should also be there.

In response, I said, It is true that the Marathwada situation is bad and in fact worse than Vidarbha. I also said that Marathwada does need a state because without a state you cannot solve some of these problems (farmer suicides).

I said they need their own leadership and they do not have an evolution of the statehood demand the way Vidarbha has. We have been fighting for the last 40 years (for separate statehood).

The kind of philosophy that is needed to support this demand and the kind of economic socio-political thesis that goes with it has not yet been attempted by the leaders/people of Marathwada. Therefore, it is not a demand whose time has come.

However, Vidarbha will certainly stand by Marathwada. But don't expect that the Vidarbha leadership to lead Marathwada to freedom/statehood because even if Vidarbha gets statehood it does not follow that Marathwada will also get it. You will have to struggle on your own. This is what I said and I was wrongly quoted.

Didn't you feel as the advocate general you should not say such things? Did you just get carried away?

I did not get carried away. This has been my stance for a very long time. I think the state of Maharashtra has disregarded and neglected its peripheral areas, particularly Vidarbha, because I come from there.

I have been championing the cause of Vidarbha's freedom for a long time. I was consciously speaking about this.

As far as Marathwada is concerned, I was answering a question. I said you need it, but you have not created a demand for it. Now whether I was speaking as AG, the answer is no.

As AG, I speak in a court room. Outside the court I have my own opinion about various things. And I am free to express it. How can you say that I have no right to express my opinion?

Having said that inside the court room I have been critical of the Maharashtra government like water distribution to Marathwada. I have been bitterly fighting about non-completion of irrigation projects in Vidarbha and Marathwada.

When was the first time you felt Vidarbha should be a separate state?

I started practicing as a lawyer 40 years ago. I was practicing mainly in the rich jurisdiction of the Nagpur bench of the high court. Over time it became increasingly clear that there was a pattern of great neglect by the government of Maharashtra towards the problems of the citizens of Vidarbha.

When I got into the movement I was in my late 30s though my family was involved always.

My formative years as a lawyer led me to believe that there was a great regional imbalance that was not being attended to by the government.

Was this a deliberate move by political leaders from western Maharashtra to take the state's resources to their region?

I won't say it was done deliberately because it mustn't have begun that way initially. But over a period of time they found that there was little or no resistance to their diverting funds from Vidarbha to western Maharashtra.

And added to that was the weak leadership of Vidarbha which could not do anything about what was happening. Therefore, it fell into a kind of a habit and a pattern as though it was permitted administrative practice.

But we have the winter session of the Maharashtra assembly in Nagpur which is in Vidarbha.

Lawmakers come, sit there and go home. Our elected members have now reduced their functions to disrupting the work of the assembly. Our assemblies no longer make laws. They don't attend to public welfare.

I don't think that merely having an assembly in Nagpur is a solution to why farmers are committing suicide or why canalisation is not complete despite 40 years of building of dams.

Why has Chandrapur district been converted into a huge ashtray?

Why is the tribal population neglected?

These things are symptomatic of a larger malaise. It is not something to do with whether the assembly sits in Nagpur or not.

Historically, is there any difference between Marathwada, Vidarbha vis-a-vis the rest of Maharashtra?

Yes, there is a great deal of difference. Vidarbha was a state and was always a state and Nagpur was the capital. Vidarbha had a historic existence as a state right from British times.

Marathwada was a territory under the Nizam of Hyderabad and was not a state. Marathwada came into Maharashtra much later whereas Vidarbha was forced into the then Bombay state in 1956.

We also had a totally different culture. We were central Indians.

You know popular sentimental statements that the Shiv Sena makes -- Marathi lokancha ekach rajya (one state for Marathi people). That kind of thing does not make any sense to us because Hindi is spoken as much as Marathi is in this region.

To give you an example, my grandfather's law degree is from Calcutta University and we didn't come to Bombay or Pune for our education. My uncle is from Benares Hindu University. Before Nagpur University was established our university used to be Allahabad.

As a central Indian culture, we were always trading with the east. The British put up the Bengal-Nagpur railway in order to make sure that our cotton was taken to Calcutta and shipped to Manchester.

Our trade, commerce, cultural ethos and our socio-political make up is definitely central Indian before the Bhonsales became the lieutenants of Chhatrapati Shivaji and came as kings of Vidarbha. That is about the same time when the Gaikwads from Maharashtra went to Baroda, the Holkars went to Indore and the Scindias went to Gwalior.

All Marathi speaking people raised kingdoms in central India at that time. Vidarbha had a king from the Maharashtrian area. Earlier to that, we didn't. Our king was the Gond Raja, a tribal. The Gonds were ruling that area.

In that sense, it was a totally different state having nothing to do with Maharashtra.

Even today there is no cultural integration. We speak a different brand of Marathi. Our food is different. Our clothes are different and our association with literature, culture and art is entirely central Indian.

Why did the people of Vidarbha not oppose the inclusion of their region in Maharashtra state when it was formed in 1960?

It was bitterly opposed. 117 of our MLAs went to the House with their resignations demanding a separate state. That was the time when Gujarat was being created. Gujarat was a part of Bombay state like Vidarbha.

Gujarat walked out of Bombay state in 1960. Vidarbha wanted to walk out.

So we were promised under the Nagpur pact (which later went on to become Article 374 of the Constitution) jobs, monies and education in proportion to our population -- which meant that 22 per cent of jobs, budget, educational resources would be made available to Vidarbha.

That is something that never happened in the last 60 years.

You had leaders like then chief minister Sudhakarrao Naik and then powerful Congress leader Ranjit Deshmukh from the region...

It goes back to Vasantrao Naik who was chief minister for 11 years (1963 to 1975) who was from Vidarbha. We had a strong leader like Nasikrao Tirpude. We had leaders undoubtedly. The problem is that the need to politically control the city of Mumbai has overwhelmed Vidarbha's demand for statehood.

Whoever is in power -- whether the Congress then or the Bharatiya Janata Party now -- have not fulfilled this demand.

It cannot happen because neither the Congress nor the BJP are confident that they will continue to rule Maharashtra because they have huge affection for Mumbai. 40 percent of the revenue of the country is generated by Mumbai.

The experiment with small states has not been particularly successful. How do you expect Vidarbha to succeed?

It depends on your point of view. If you think Vidarbha will look like Mumbai, then that will not happen. We don't expect it too.

We will be satisfied if 29,000 farmers who are committing suicide stop doing so.

We will be satisfied if our tribals who are 80 per cent of our population are in a better condition than they were before.

Now to say will we be successful or not is anybody's guess. Do we need an international airport, of course we don't. Do we need a sea link like Mumbai city? Certainly not. Does the city of Nagpur have to look like Mumbai city, no.

We don't look at success in the same way. Our norms are entirely different. We have no need to measure success in the way western Maharashtra measures it.

You think farmer suicides will stop once you create a new state.

Yes, because our prioritisation undergoes a change. The highest priority will be to agriculture projects -- finishing of canals which are incomplete and making sure water reaches the farmers. Making sure Naxalism does not take over the rest of Vidarbha.

If you ask me is this progress? I will say yes it is. If you ask somebody sitting in Mantralaya then they might have a different idea about what progress is.

Marathi comes from Maharashtri Prakrit. Do you feel that this language was not spoken ever in Vidarbha and therefore they had no link with ancient Maharashtra?

Vidarbha is certainly Marathi speaking, but it is also Hindi speaking. Vidarbha's link in ancient India is that of a whole state.

You find references to Vidarbha in the Ramayan. When Ram fly backs with Sita from Lanka he points out to Vidarbha and says that the land is the birth place of Goddess Saraswati. Lord Krishna takes Rukmini as his wife by eloping with her from Amravati, which is in Vidarbha.

If you go back historically there is no reference to Maharashtra whereas there is complete reference to Vidarbha.

The state of Vidarbha's existence is known to Indian history and Indian ethos. You might not be aware that the largest archaeological sites in India are in Vidarbha. In my book Vidarbha Gatha I have written all this.

Vidarbha's history for statehood goes back to 1800. Lord Montagu recommended to the crown that Central Province and Berar ought to become a separate state. In 1938, there is a Madhya Pradesh state resolution stating that there ought to be a separate state carved out for Vidarbha and Berar.

We had a state of Central Province and Berar at a time when Maharashtra did not exist. You had the city of Bombay which was owned by the British. You had a bunch of smaller and larger principalities of kings which was called Deccan and on the other side you had the Nizam of Hyderabad to whom Marathwada belonged.

At that point of time Vidarbha was an independent, self existing, state and Nagpur, its capital, had a high court. It had a Vidhan Bhavan. It wasn't created by the Maharashtra government. Nagpur is the only town in India which lost its status as a capital city. These are, of course, emotional issues.

The Vidarbha movement today is based on an economic pitch. We don't think the state of Maharashtra is financially viable. We don't think the state of Maharashtra can afford to sustain us.
Here's a glimpse of all that happened around the world last month, in 12 images.

Bjorn, aged 5, smiles as he poses with a Owl butterfly during an event to launch the Sensational Butterflies exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London, Britain. Photograph: Dylan Martinez/Reuters

South Korean (blue headbands) and US Marines take positions as amphibious assault vehicles of the South Korean Marine Corps fire smoke bombs during a U.S.-South Korea joint landing operation drill in Pohang, South Korea. Photograph: Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters

Air Force One carrying US President Barack Obama and his family flies over a neighbourhood of Havana as it approaches the runway to land at Havana's international airport. Photograph: Alberto Reyes/Reuters

Widows daubed in colours dance as they take part in the Holi celebrations organised by non-governmental organisation Sulabh International at a temple at Vrindavan, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. Traditionally in Hindu culture, widows are expected to renounce earthly pleasure so they do not celebrate Holi. But women at the shelter for widows, who have been abandoned by their families, celebrated the festival by throwing flowers and coloured powder. Photograph: Anindito Mukherjee/Reuters

A refugee sets himself on fire during a protest by refugees and migrants demanding that the Greek-Macedonian border be opened, at a makeshift camp near the village of Idomeni, Greece. Photograph: Kostas Tsironis/Reuters

A woman consoles her children at a street memorial following Tuesday's bomb attacks in Brussels, Belgium. Photograph: Vincent Kessler/Reuters

Democratic US Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton reacts as she arrives at a campaign rally at a community center in Charlotte, North Carolina. Photograph: Carlos Barria/Reuters

Photographers take pictures as the Soyuz TMA-20M spacecraft carrying the crew of Jeff Williams of the US Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka of Russia blasts off to the International Space Station from the launchpad at the Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. Photograph: Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters

Fruits imported from Spain which failed to pass quality checks are destroyed in Tianjin, China. Photograph: Stringer/Reuters

US Senator and former Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio hugs his family after he announced that he is suspending his campaign at an event in Miami, Florida. Photograph: Carlo Allegri/Reuters

Attendants prepare tea inside the Great Hall of the People ahead of the second plenary session of the National People's Congress in Beijing, China. Photograph: Kim Kyung-hoon/Reuters

Rescue workers evacuate an injured man from the site of a blast outside a public park in Lahore, Pakistan. Photograph: Mohsin Raza/Reuters
IMAGE: Women queue up to vote in the assembly election in Assam, April 4, 2016.

Assembly elections in Assam used to be a quiet affair and people outside the state would take little interest in the outcome.

This time, even in faraway Delhi, people are keeping tabs on political developments in Assam.

Bivekananda Biswas reports.

Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi has billed the state's assembly polls as a fight between him and Narendra Modi.

The Bharatiya Janata Party's tie-up with a Bodoland party could be productive. But the All India United Democratic Front could spoil the plans of both the Congress and the BJP

In the past, assembly elections in Assam used to be a quiet affair and people outside the state would take little interest in their outcome. This time, the situation is different. Even in faraway Delhi, people are keeping tabs on political developments in Assam.

One reason for this piquing of interest could be the presence of a relatively new entrant in Assam politics, the BJP. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is undeniably popular in the state -- that is why Tarun Gogoi has turned this year's assembly elections into a battle between himself and Modi.

The BJP has never done well in districts in lower Assam. This time it has forged an alliance with the Bodoland People's Front. In upper Assam, the party's prospects are better: In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, all the seats it got came from this region.

But the BJP's overall performance never crossed 10 assembly seats in a House of 126. Now, as the state heads for the first phase of assembly elections on April 4, with 65 seats voting on Monday, it is worthwhile to analyse around 50 per cent of the total assembly seats where voters will exercise their right.

Hailakandi, Karimganj and Cachar, the three districts in the valley that will vote in the first phase, have a sizeable Bengali Hindu population. In theory, this should be to the advantage of the BJP. But the party has left 24 seats to its electoral alliance partner, the Asom Gana Parishad because of which local BJP workers are sulking.

The BJP's import from the Congress, Himanta Biswa Sarma, the convenor of the BJP's crucial election management committee in Assam, conceded that giving tickets had caused heartburn. 'We had many challenges in finalising the list of candidates, but it includes candidates from all communities... There are also 20 candidates whose ages are below 40,' he said when nominees were first named.

It isn't just the BJP that is facing dissent. In the first phase of elections, at least two current Congress members of the assembly who were denied nomination have announced their intention to contest their respective seats as Independent candidates.

Sarat Saikia, who has represented Mahmora since 2001, and Duliajan MLA Amiya Gogoi were denied Congress tickets. Both are fighting as Independents. In the Lakhimpur constituency, when former National Students Union of India state president Jayaprakash Das was named the party candidate, a town bandh was called because a local hopeful, Ghana Borgohain, was denied the ticket.

Dissidence or not, the BJP is leaving no stone unturned to ensure it has all bases covered. Gogoi, arguably one of Assam's tallest leaders and a bitter critic of the BJP, will face Jorhat Member of Parliament Kamakhya Prasad Tasa in Titabar, which goes to the polls on April 4.

The Titabar assembly segment falls in the Jorhat parliamentary constituency. The stakes are so high for the BJP that it is ready to sacrifice a current Lok Sabha member to ensure Gogoi's defeat.

The first phase will also see the BJP's chief ministerial candidate, Sarbananda Sonowal, contesting from Majuli that falls in the Lakhimpur Lok Sabha constituency. Sonowal, who contested and won from Lakhimpur in the last Lok Sabha elections, got the highest number of votes from the Majuli assembly constituency -- also the epicentre of Assam's Vaishnavite movement and which could influence voting trends elsewhere in the state.

Sonowal has been focusing on the river (Brahmaputra) island's development since he became a Union minister.

The Congress and BJP manifestos will also be put to the test on Monday. Releasing the Congress manifesto, Gogoi said: 'If I come to power again, I will ensure job to one member of each family. Our target is to provide one million jobs in both government and private sectors in the next five years.'

The manifesto promised to classify families whose annual incomes are each less than Rs 2.5 lakh (Rs 250,000) as 'poor' and provide benefits accordingly. It said, if voted to power, the Congress would fill all vacant teaching posts in schools and create 200,000 more such posts in the next five years.

It would also regularise services of all employees. It promised the development of islands such as Majuli, a package for the revival of tea estates and overall development.

The BJP has responded with a 'vision document.' Party President Amit Shah said: 'A scientific plan was undertaken for controlling floods in Assam; plans are afoot for making railway lines double track; Rs 25,000 crore (Rs 250 billion) has been earmarked for the construction of 447 km of national highways; the gas cracker project that remained dormant for 21 years has started...

'Assam has never been safe under the Congress' 55-year reign. Its border has been opened as a road for lakhs of infiltrators from Bangladesh to snatch employment from Assam's youth.'

However, Badruddin Ajmal's AIUDF might pour cold water on the plans of both the parties. 'We are contesting 60 seats. Contrary to popular belief that we only represent migrant Muslims, we have fielded non-Muslims too,' Ajmal said.

In the first phase of elections, the AIUDF is fielding 27 candidates, of whom 13 are non-Muslim. Several of these constituencies fall in areas where the Muslim population is insignificant.

The AIUDF won 10 assembly seats in 2006 within a year of its formation and went on to win three Lok Sabha seats in 2014 and 18 seats in the last assembly. This election will be a major test of strength for the party.

Not just the first phase, the entire election in Assam will be a test of Gogoi's agility -- and the BJP's determination.
Ending intense negotiations spread over weeks, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam on Monday allotted its key ally Congress 41 seats for the May 16 assembly polls.

The bilateral discussions to identify the constituencies each of them would contest will begin later on Monday.

We have signed (an agreement) that allots 41 seats to Congress, senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad told reporters in Chennai after inking the deal with DMK chief M Karunanidhi.

Jointly addressing reporters with his colleague Mukul Wasnkik, Tamil Nadu Congress Committee chief E V K S Elangoan and DMK leaders led by party treasurer M K Stalin, Azad said they would work to emerge victorious.

The agreement comes against the background of intense bilateral discussions between the DMK and the Congress. Also, the TNCC held a series of discussions with its state and central leadership.

Recently, Elangovan held talks with party vice president Rahul Gandhi as well over the issue.

It was decided by Tamil Nadu Congress to push for at least 45 seats and in a worst case scenario climb down a few seats and conclude the deal and it has worked out as was expected.

Azad said the rest of the seats would be shared among the DMK and other allies.

Of course, the major share, the number (of seats) will go to the DMK but there are other allies also and the DMK has already tied up with other political parties, he added.

This time it is the turn of a DMK-led government and I am sure under the leadership of Karunidhiji, the party will be able to form the government in Tamil Nadu, he said, adding, All partners would work sincerely to ensure victory.

Pointing to Stalin, he said, Here is the young leadership, and we have signed 41 seats.

Stalin referred to discussions held earlier and said, It has been decided today that Congress will contest in 41 seats, as part of the DMK front, and an agreement has been signed.

He said they are confident of driving out Jayalalithaas All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam from the seat of power.

We are confident we will achieve it, he said.

Talks will commence this evening to identify the constituencies that would be fought by the Congress and the DMK, he said.

Karunanidhi and Azad signed the pact in the presence of top leaders of both parties including Wasnik, former ministers of DMK Duraimurugan, E V Velu and party MP Kanimozhi.

With the present allotment to the Congress, the DMK has so far allotted 54 seats to its allies.

After its efforts to cobble up a formidable alliance by roping in actor-turned-politician Vijayakanth-led Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam into its fold did not materialise, the DMK began the exercise of speeding up work to seal ties with smaller outfits and conclude seat-sharing talks with all partners.

The DMK allotted the Indian Union Muslim League, its long time ally, five seats followed by five seats to Manithaneya Makkal Katchi, another Muslim-party.

Also, it allotted one seat each to former Indian Administrative Services officer-led Dalit party Samuga Samathuva Padai, Tamil Nadu Vivasayigal-Thozhilalargan Katchi and Perunthalaivar Makkal Katchi.

Totally, the DMK has allotted 54 seats to its allies out of the total 234 assembly constituencies in Tamil Nadu and it is expected to identify constituencies that would be contested by them.
Supreme Court on Monday granted bail to Delhi University professor G N Saibaba, who has been arrested and is facing trial for alleged Maoist links, saying Maharashtra government has been extremely unfair to him.

A bench, comprising justices J S Khehar and C Nagappan, also pulled up the counsel for Maharashtra for opposing the bail plea of Saibaba.

You have been extremely unfair to the accused, especially looking at his medical condition. If material witnesses have been examined, then there is no point in putting him in jail, the bench said.

Counsel for Maharashtra government said some crucial prosecution witnesses need to be examined.

The bench, however, refused to agree with the contention and granted bail to the wheelchair-bound DU professor, who is lodged in the Nagpur jail.

On February 29, the apex court bench comprising justices J S Khehar and C Nagappan had said it may consider granting bail to Saibaba after the trial court examined key witnesses, and had directed day-to-day hearing in the case.

It had said that of the total of 34 witnesses cited by the prosecution, eight were yet to be examined.

Earlier, the court had asked the Maharashtra government to look for an alternative arrangement to house the jailed professor.

We want the state to make him comfortable, the bench had said, while directing the state to provide sufficient medical facilities to him.

Prior to this, the apex court, on a plea of author Arundhati Roy, had refused to stay a criminal contempt notice issued by Bombay high court against her for an article in a weekly magazine questioning the continued incarceration of Saibaba.

The Bombay high court had on December 23, 2015 issued the contempt notice against the author for her views on Saibabas arrest and rejection of his bail plea early last year.

Gadchiroli Police had arrested Saibaba in 2014 for his alleged links with Maoists. He has been on bail since June last year.

Roy had expressed her views on the arrest in an article published in a weekly magazine last year.
The first phase of assembly polls in West Bengal and Assam on Monday passed off peacefully, with a high voter turnout of 81 and 80 per cent respectively in the two states.

IMAGE: An elderly woman show off their finger after casting her vote in Assam.

Voting in 18 of the 294 assembly constituencies in West Bengal and 65 of the 126 seats in Assam was "by and large peaceful" with no reports of violence-related death or injury, Deputy Election Commissioner Sandeep Saxena told reporters in Delhi.

IMAGE: Womenfolk show off their voter ids before casting their vote in Assam.

Responding to questions, he said a total of 16 complaints related to rigging, denial of vote and late start of polling were received.

Polling in the two states was held amid tight security, including large-scale presence of central para-military forces and aerial surveillance by helicopter-borne personnel in West Bengal.

In West Bengal, where Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress is making a determined bid for a second successive term, heavy voter turnout was recorded with an estimated 81 per cent of 40.09 lakh electors casting their ballots. Most of these constituencies are in areas where Maoists held sway before the TMC came to power and neutralised them.

IMAGE: Women from a village in Assam proudly show off their fingers after having voted.

In 13 seats of tribal Jangalmahal area earlier affected by Maoist violence, polling concluded at 4 pm as scheduled due to security considerations.

In the remaining five seats of Purulia, Manbazar, Kashipur, Para and Raghunathpur it went on till 6 pm.

Banerjee's TMC, which contested the last assembly polls in alliance with the Congress, is pitted this time against foe-turned-friends Congress-Left combine, besides the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is seeking to make inroads into the politically volatile eastern state.

IMAGE: Assam CM Tarun Gogoi and his wife are all smiles after casting their vote.

In Assam, where Congress under Tarun Gogoi is seeking a fourth straight term, the voter turnout was nearly 80 per cent. There were no reports of violence from any of the 65 of the 126 constituencies where polling was held in the first phase.

"As per reports received till 5 pm, 78.45 per cent of voting had taken place. However, as a large number of voters were standing in queue at 5 pm, the final polling percentage is likely to by over 80 per cent," the election department said in a statement.

Seeking to capitalise on anti-incumbency factor and a host of contentious issues, including the divisive debate on "nationalism", BJP has tied up with former chief minister Prafulla Mahanta's AGP and Bodo People's Front in its bid to dislodge the Congress from power in the northeastern state.

IMAGE: Villagers show off their cards before casting their vote in Assam.

Illegal Bangladeshi infiltration is a major electoral and social issue in Assam and the party had sought to exploit it to the hilt during electioneering.

The fate of several prominent Congress candidates, including Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi from Titabor and Speaker of the outgoing Assembly Pranab Gogoi from Sibsagar will be decided in the first phase.

IMAGE: Women show off their voter ids in Assam.

Among others whose constituencies went to poll on Monday include the BJP's chief ministerial candidate Union Minister Sarbananda Sonowal from Majuli and the party's Lok Sabha member from Jorhat Kamakhya Prasad Tasa, who is crossing swords with Tarun Gogoi in Titabor.

All India United Democratic Front of Dhubri MP Badruddin Ajmal, which has emerged as a force to reckon with in the state is the last several years, with the backing of Bangladeshi migrants, has also fielded candidates in 27 of the 65 constituencies.

IMAGE: Voter gets his finger inked at a ballot counter in West Bengal. Photograph: PTI

The Congress is contesting all 65 seats in the first phase, the BJP 54, its alliance partners the Asom Gana Parishad 11 and the Bodoland People's Front three.

The Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India-Marxist have put up candidates in 10 seats each and the Communist Party of India-Marxist Leninist-Liberation in six.

Ruling parties and the opposition in the two states voiced confidence about their victory in the polls.

IMAGE: Women in Assam get ready to cast their vote.

West Bengal's ruling TMC expressed satisfaction over the huge turnout and said it was indicative of the 'silent revolution' that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had ushered in the state through development.

"The huge turnout in the first part of the first phase proves the silent revolution that Mamata Banerjee has brought in through massive developmental work in the junglemahal in the last five years," state pancahayat minister Subrata Mukherjee said.

The Left front too voiced satisfaction over the voting, saying election was "more or less free and fair".

IMAGE: A village woman casts her vote in the Assam assembly elections.

Leader of Opposition and CPI-M state secretary Surya Kanta Mishra in a tweet said the people have given a clear message about ousting the TMC from power.

"The people have given a clear message today's first phase of d Polls -- Ousting of d TMC from power is inevitable!!! #PeoplesPower," Mishra tweeted.

In Guwahati, Gogoi voiced confidence that the people would re-elect a Congress government.

"We are 100 per cent confident that people will vote for us. We brought change, we proved it and people can see it. I also want change. Who wants to remain static? We (Congress) achieved change for the better, while AGP also achieved change but for the worse.

IMAGE: An elderly woman presents her voter id as she readies to cast her vote.

"Everyone knows what was the situation (15 years ago) when AGP was in power when they failed.... There was no development then, no employment," Gogoi said as voting was in progress.

BJP's chief ministerial candidate Sarbananda Sonowal said in Majuli, his constituency, that people were voting in the Assam Assembly elections for change.

"People want change for a free, clean and efficient government. They want an administration that protects their culture too," he said.

Want to know which constituency in West Bengal goes to polls when? Check out the map below
The boyfriend of television actress Pratyusha Banerjee, who allegedly committed suicide at her flat in suburban Goregaon last week, will be questioned again by the police after his discharge from hospital.

Rahul Raj Singh was admitted to Shree Sai Hospital in suburban Kandivali on Sunday after he complained of chest pain and low blood pressure.

He was on Monday shifted to general ward of from intensive care unit, his lawyer Neeraj Gupta said.

"Though Rahul has been shifted to general ward, his condition is still not proper as he is in trauma," he said.

The police said that they will question Rahul after he is discharged.

As part of their investigation, police are currently talking to the common friends of the actress and Rahul.

The 24-year-old former "Balika Vadhu" star was found dead at her home in suburban Goregoan on April 1, in a suspected case of suicide.

Her friends Kamya Punjabi and Vikas Gupta had claimed that Rahul was cheating on Pratyusha and that they were in a "messy relationship".

They also alleged that Rahul used to slap her in public as well as in parties.

The police had recorded Rahul's statement at Bangur Nagar police station on Saturday.

The police had said that they were planning to reach out to friends (particularly males) of Pratyusha who in the past may have had tiff with the actress.

The probe so far had not found anything pointing to abetment of suicide by Rahul.
UNHCR urges immediate safeguards to be in place before any returns begin under EU-Turkey deal

Publisher UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Publication Date 4 April 2016 Cite as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UNHCR urges immediate safeguards to be in place before any returns begin under EU-Turkey deal, 4 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57020aa64.html [accessed 23 October 2022]

UNHCR is today urging parties to the recent EU-Turkey agreement on refugees and migrants to ensure all safeguards are in place before any returns begin. This is in light of continued serious gaps in both countries.

UNHCR does not object to returns of people without protection needs and who have not asked for asylum, providing that human rights are adhered to.

Across Greece, which has been compelled to host people because of closed borders elsewhere in Europe, numerous aspects of the systems for receiving and dealing with people who may need international protection are still either not working or absent. There are currently around 51,000 refugees and migrants in the country, 5000 on the islands and 46,000 on the mainland. Recent arrivals spiked on 29th March at 766 after several days of arrivals averaging about 300 people a day.

On Lesvos, conditions have been deteriorating at the Moria "hotspot" facility, which since 20 March has been used to detain people pending a decision on deportation. There are now some 2,300 people there. This is above its stated capacity of 2,000. People are sleeping in the open, and food supply is insufficient. Anxiety and frustration is widespread. Making matters worse, many families have become separated, with family members now scattered across Greece - and presenting an additional worry should returns begin.

On Samos, at the Vathy hotspot, reception conditions have also been worsening. Sanitation is poor, there is little help available for persons with special needs, and food distributions are chaotic. There are currently up to 1,700 people staying at the Vial hotspot on Chios, which has a maximum capacity of 1,100. We are very worried about the situation there. Rioting last night left three people with stab injuries

In line with its global policy on promoting alternatives to detention, UNHCR has had to suspend services at all closed facilities, with the exception of protection monitoring and providing information on asylum procedures.

Stranded groups await relocation on the mainland

On the mainland, where people who arrived before 20 March are staying, the situation is equally difficult. Refugees and migrants are spread across some 30 sites, many awaiting the chance of relocation. Conditions at the port of Piraeus and around Eidomeni near the border with former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia are dismal.

The risk of panic and injury in these sites and others is real in the current circumstances. There have been further incidents reported in local media of fighting this week.

Without urgent further EU support, the limited capacity of the Greek asylum service to register and process asylum claims will create problems. Limited hours of registration, daily ceilings on registrations, a lack of access to the Skype system for registration set up by the Asylum Services, are at present adding to the anxiety.

In Turkey, UNHCR has requested access to people returned from Greece, to ensure people can benefit from effective international protection and to prevent risk of refoulement. UNHCR hopes that the Temporary Protection regulation required for granting or reinstating temporary protection status for Syrians readmitted from Greece will be adopted soon.

UNHCR has set out the safeguards that would be required for safe readmission from Greece to Turkey, most recently in a paper of 23 March. http://www.refworld.org/docid/56f3ee3f4.html

Sea arrivals down in Greece, up in Italy

Sea arrivals in Greece for the first three months of 2016 are at over 150,700 albeit with lower arrivals in March http://data.unhcr.org/mediterranean/country.php?id=83.

Sea arrivals on the other main Mediterranean route - from North Africa to Italy -stand at 18,784. This represents a more than 80 per cent increase over the same period in 2015 (10,165 people), with March arrivals showing a four-fold increase http://data.unhcr.org/mediterranean/country.php?id=105. These are predominantly Nigerians, Gambians, Senegalese, Malians and other West African nationals. So far UNHCR is not seeing big increases in Syrians, Afghans, and Iraqis using this route. On Thursday, a boat carrying 22 Syrian and Somali nationals was reported to have arrived at Otranto in South-eastern Italy, having travelled from Greece.
UNHCR calls for safeguards to be in place before returns begin

Publisher UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Publication Date 1 April 2016 Cite as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UNHCR calls for safeguards to be in place before returns begin, 1 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57020c294.html [accessed 23 October 2022]

Urging caution, the UN Refugee Agency today called on all parties to the recent agreement between the European Union and Turkey on refugees and migrants to ensure all "safeguards" are in place before any returns from Greece to Turkey begin,

UNHCR spokesperson Melissa Fleming, stressing serious gaps still existed in both countries, declared: "UNHCR does not object to returns of people without protection needs and who have not asked for asylum, providing that human rights are adhered to."

She told a press briefing in Geneva that across Greece, which has been compelled to host people because of closed borders elsewhere in Europe, "numerous aspects of the systems for receiving and dealing with people who may need international protection were still either not working or absent."

There are currently around 51,000 refugees and migrants in the country, 5,000 on the islands and 46,000 on the mainland. Recent arrivals spiked on March 29 at 766 after several days of arrivals averaging about 300 people a day.

On the island of Lesvos, conditions have been deteriorating at the Moria "hotspot" facility, which since March 20 has been used to detain people pending a decision on deportation. There are now some 2,300 people there. This is above its stated capacity of 2,000.

"People are sleeping in the open, and food supply is insufficient. Anxiety and frustration is widespread. Making matters worse, many families have become separated, with family members now scattered across Greece  and presenting an additional worry should returns begin," Fleming declared.

On Samos island, at the Vathy "hotspot", reception conditions have also been worsening. Sanitation is poor, there is little help available for persons with special needs, and food distributions are chaotic. There are currently up to 1,700 people staying at the Vial "hotspot" on Chios, which has a maximum capacity of 1,100.

"We are very worried about the situation there. Rioting last night left three people with stab injuries," Fleming added.

In line with its global policy on promoting alternatives to detention, UNHCR has had to suspend services at all closed facilities, with the exception of protection monitoring and providing information on asylum procedures. Stranded groups await relocation on the mainland

On the mainland, where people who arrived before the March 20 accord, are staying, the situation is equally difficult. Refugees and migrants are spread across some 30 sites, many awaiting the chance of relocation.

"Conditions at the port of Piraeus and around Idomeni near the border with former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia are dismal and the risk of panic and injury in these sites and others is real in the current circumstances. There have been further incidents reported in local media of fighting this week," Fleming detailed.

Without urgent further EU support, the limited capacity of the Greek asylum service to register and process asylum claims will create problems. Limited hours of registration, daily ceilings on registrations, a lack of access to the Skype system for registration set up by the Asylum Services, are all currently adding to the anxiety.

In Turkey, UNHCR has requested access to people returned from Greece, to ensure people can benefit from effective international protection and to prevent risk of refoulement.

UNHCR has set out the safeguards that would be required for safe readmission from Greece to Turkey, most recently in a paper of 23 March. http://www.refworld.org/docid/56f3ee3f4.html.

For more information, please click here
UN refugee agency urges safeguard compliance before any returns begin under EU-Turkey deal

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 1 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, UN refugee agency urges safeguard compliance before any returns begin under EU-Turkey deal, 1 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57020dea40d.html [accessed 23 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.

1 April 2016 - The United Nations refugee agency today urged parties to the recent EU-Turkey agreement on refugees and migrants to ensure all safeguards are in place before any returns begin.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) does not object to returns of people without protection needs and who have not asked for asylum, providing that human rights are adhered to, UNHCR Chief Spokesperson Melissa Fleming told reporters in Geneva.

According to a statement issued by the EU, the sides agreed that all new irregular migrants crossing from Turkey into Greek islands will be returned to Turkey, starting from 20 March, and for every Syrian being returned to Turkey from Greek islands, another Syrian will be resettled from Turkey to the EU.

Across Greece, which has been compelled to host people because of closed borders elsewhere in Europe, numerous aspects of the systems for receiving and dealing with people who may need international protection are still either not working or absent, she said.

There are currently around 51,000 refugees and migrants in the country, 46,000 on the mainland and 5,000 on the islands. Recent arrivals spiked on 29th March at 766 after several days of arrivals averaging about 300 people a day.

Without urgent further EU support, the limited capacity of the Greek asylum service to register and process asylum claims will create problems, she said. Limited hours of registration, daily ceilings on registrations, a lack of access to the Skype system for registration set up by the Asylum Services, are at present adding to the anxiety.

In Turkey, UNHCR has requested access to people returned from Greece, to ensure people can benefit from effective international protection and to prevent risk of refoulement. UNHCR hopes that the Temporary Protection regulation required for granting or reinstating temporary protection status for Syrians readmitted from Greece will be adopted soon.

UNHCR has set out the safeguards that would be required for safe readmission from Greece to Turkey, most recently in a paper of 23 March.

In line with its global policy on promoting alternatives to detention, UNHCR has had to suspend services at all closed facilities, with the exception of protection monitoring and providing information on asylum procedures, she said.

In March, sea arrivals down in Greece, up in Italy

Greece saw more than 150,700 sea arrivals for the first three months of 2016, albeit with lower arrivals in March.

Sea arrivals on the other main Mediterranean route  from North Africa to Italy  increased to 18,784 from 10,165 recorded in the same period of 2015, representing a more than 80 per cent increase, with March arrivals showing a four-fold increase. These are predominantly Nigerians, Gambians, Senegalese, Malians and other West African nationals.
Preparations underway 'at full speed' for intra-Yemeni peace talks, says UN envoy

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 1 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Preparations underway 'at full speed' for intra-Yemeni peace talks, says UN envoy, 1 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57020e3740b.html [accessed 23 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.

1 April 2016 - Preparations are underway at full speed for the next round of United Nations-brokered intra-Yemeni peace talks to start on 18 April in Kuwait, a UN envoy said today.

The aim is to reach a comprehensive agreement that will end the war and allow the resumption of inclusive political dialogue in line with UN Security Council resolution 2216 (2015) and other relevant Council resolutions.

I am looking forward to the active participation of relevant parties in the talks, said Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Yemen, urging the country's delegations to seize this opportunity to provide a mechanism for a return to a peaceful and orderly transition based on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) initiative and the outcomes of the national dialogue conference.

UN political experts have already been deployed to Sana'a and Riyadh to work with the delegations there toward the resumption of talks, he said. Another team is on its way to Kuwait to finalize the preparations with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Special Envoy said he encouraged the parties to engage constructively in the talks, including on the areas of the withdrawal of militias and armed groups, the handover of heavy weapons to the State, interim security arrangements, the restoration of state institutions and the resumption of inclusive political dialogue, in addition to the creation of a special committee for prisoners and detainees.

Within this same context, the special envoy welcomed the encouraging steps taken recently between Saudi Arabia and Ansarallah, known as the Houthis, including the release of prisoners and the relative calming at the borders.

These initiatives reinforced the spirit of the confidence building measures recommended at the previous round of talks and there is no doubt that they can provide an important drive to the political process, he said.

The parties to the conflict have agreed to a nation-wide cessation of hostilities beginning at midnight on 10 April. With political will, good faith and balance, they could take this opportunity to end the conflict and pave the way towards a permanent and durable end of the war, he added.
Iraq: UN envoy voices alarm at ongoing violence, 'unacceptable' loss of civilian lives

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 1 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Iraq: UN envoy voices alarm at ongoing violence, 'unacceptable' loss of civilian lives, 1 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57020e6d40d.html [accessed 23 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.

1 April 2016 - The top United Nations official in Iraq has expressed concern over the continuing acts of violence in the country, which last month took 1,119 lives and injured another 1,561  according to casualty figures recorded by the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI).

I am extremely disturbed at the continuing loss of life and injury as a result of terrorism, violence and armed conflict. It is totally unacceptable that civilians should bear the brunt of violence, said the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General (SRSG) for Iraq, Mr. Jan Kubis, in a press release.

Among the casualties were civilians in personal security details, facilities protection police and the fire department, in addition to 45 federal police officers killed and 50 others injured.

The Iraqi Security Forces, which included Peshmerga, Special Weapons And Tactics Team (SWAT) and militias fighting alongside the Iraqi Army but excluding Anbar Operations, experienced 544 killed and 365 injured.

The overall casualty figures saw an increase from February, where a total of 670 were killed and 1,290 were injured.

My hope is that the proposed reforms will be implemented and will lead to an eventual normalcy in this beautiful country, Mr. Kubis asserted.

With 259 killed and 770 injured, Baghdad totalled 1,029 civilian casualties, making it the worst-affected Governorate. Elsewhere, Ninewa endured 133 killed and 89 injured; Babil, 65 killed and 141 injured; Kirkuk, 34 killed and 57 injured; Diyala, 11 killed and 0 injured; and Salahadin, 6 killed and 1 injured. According to information obtained by UNAMI from the Health Directorate in Anbar, up to and including 30 March, that Governorate suffered 201 civilian casualties, comprised of 64 killed and 137 injured.

The UN mission noted that it had been hindered in effectively verifying casualties in conflict areas as well as reports of large casualty and unknown numbers of persons who died from secondary effects of violence after fleeing their homes  due to elements exposure and lack of water, food, medicines and health care. For these reasons, the figures reported are considered as the absolute minimum.
Syria: UN advisor warns of 'lost momentum' and frustration in humanitarian access talks

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 1 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Syria: UN advisor warns of 'lost momentum' and frustration in humanitarian access talks, 1 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57020eb940d.html [accessed 23 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.

1 April 2016 - Diplomats are very frustrated about not being able to keep the early momentum in the humanitarian track of the intra-Syrian talks, a United Nations humanitarian mediator has warned.

Coming out of yesterday's International Syria Support Group (ISSG) meeting on humanitarian access, Jan Egeland, Special Advisor to the UN Special Envoy for Syria, told reporters that the situation has notably improved from 2015, but the operation is now running into difficulties.

Compared with a year earlier, when UN had access to only one besieged area in Yarmouk, humanitarian supplies have now reached 150,000 people in 11 of the 18 besieged areas, he said.

In addition, convoys got a greenlight to go to three new places, Arbeen, Zamalka and Zabadin. Airdrops in Deir Ez Zor are likely to start on a regular basis within a fortnight.

However, I will not hide that we are afraid now to lose some of the momentum that we got after the Munich meeting, Mr. Egeland said.

There is no access or greenlight at all to Douma, Darayya and East Harasta. In Douma, more than 90,000 people are in need. And there are a number of administrative problems, security issues, and delays. For the three new areas, UN has much higher number of people in need that the Government approved.

And perhaps, most importantly, we are still not where we should be according to international law on medical services and health services for the besieged areas, he said, noting that surgical equipment is still taken off convoys, the besieged areas remain off-limits to medical personal, and medical evacuation is not permitted.

Within the last 75 hours, three children bled to death in Madaya, he said. They were playing with an unexploded bomb, they were gravely wounded but they didn't die. They died because of medical evacuation was not allowed and possible to organize, he added.

It is basically a bit frustrating now and my clear message was that all of the countries that have influence, not only Russia, have to help us, he said.

Urging the Government and the opposition groups to break the impasse, Mr. Egeland said we must continue to get to the remaining besieged areas and we cannot allow medical services to be exempted.

The next ISSG meeting on humanitarian access will take place on Thursday, 7 April. He said he expects Russia, Iran, China, Iraq as well as the Europeans who have contact with Damascus to be actively engaged with the Government.

The ISSG, comprised of the United Nations, the Arab League, the European Union and 18 countries, has been seeking a path forward on the crisis in Syria for several months.
Libya: Security Council welcomes Presidency Council's arrival in Tripoli

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 1 April 2016 Related Document(s) Security Council resolution 2259 (2015) [on the situation in Libya] Cite as UN News Service, Libya: Security Council welcomes Presidency Council's arrival in Tripoli, 1 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57020ee540d.html [accessed 23 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.

1 April 2016 - The United Nations today welcomed the arrival in the Libyan capital of Prime Minister Fayez Serraj and other members of the Presidency Council of the Government of National Accord.

This was an important step towards bringing stability to the country and bringing the political process back on track to implement the Libyan Political Agreement, the Security Council said in a press statement issued by Ambassador Liu Jieyi, the Council president for the month of April.

The Libyan Political Agreement, which was signed in Skhirat, Morocco, on 17 December 2015, following a UN-brokered process to form a national unity. The Council had welcomed the Agreement in its resolution 2259 (2015).

In today's statement, the Security Council encouraged the Presidency Council to urgently start its work so as to broaden the basis of its support and to tackle Libya's political, security, humanitarian, economic and institutional challenges and to confront the rising threat of terrorism. In particular, this includes the threat from groups proclaiming allegiance to Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and groups affiliated with Al Qaeda.

The Council also reiterated its call on all parties in Libya to support the efforts underway and again expressed concern about activities which could be damaging to the integrity and unity of Libyan State financial institutions and the National Oil Corporation.

In addition, the Council renewed their call, from resolution 2259 (2015), to cease support to and official contact with parallel institutions that claim to be the legitimate authority but are outside of the Libyan Political Agreement as specified by it.

Since arriving on Thursday, the Presidency Council has met with local political leaders, as well as businesses, including with the Governor of the Central Bank and Tripoli municipalities.
UN peacekeeping chief condemns sexual exploitation; says victims' needs are 'top priority'

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 1 April 2016 Cite as UN News Service, UN peacekeeping chief condemns sexual exploitation; says victims' needs are 'top priority', 1 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57020f3740b.html [accessed 23 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.

1 April 2016 - The top United Nations peacekeeping official has underscored that the protection of and assistance to victims of sexual exploitation and abuse in the Central African Republic remains the Organization's top priority.

According to the Office of the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General, Herve Ladsous, the Under-Secretary-General who heads the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, said: 'I condemn the scourge of sexual exploitation in the Central African Republic,' and reiterated proposals to establish martial courts in situ.

Mr. Ladsous met with personnel from the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) and, through video conference, with staff from the field, where he firmly reminded military personnel commanders and police officers that they needed to be personally committed to countering sexual exploitation and abuse.

Speaking to reporters in Bangui, the UN peacekeeping chief stressed that it was the responsibility of police and troop contributing countries to provide military and police staff personnel who have been sensitized, trained and fully aware that they would face sanctions if allegations were to be confirmed.

At the same time, victims in the area continued to be interviewed by a MINUSCA-led investigation team comprised of experts on internal oversight, human rights, child and women's protection, conduct and discipline from various parts of the UN system, including the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF).

Mr. Ladsous has been in CAR since earlier in the week when he represented the Secretary-General at the inauguration ceremony of the newly elected president of CAR, Faustin-Archange Touadera.
Bahrain: Glitz of Formula One Grand Prix masks human rights abuses

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 1 April 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, Bahrain: Glitz of Formula One Grand Prix masks human rights abuses, 1 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/570210a44.html [accessed 23 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.

This weekend Bahrain hosts the Formula One Grand Prix, a glamorous event putting the country in the international spotlight. Away from the racing circuit Amnesty International has continued to documented a range of appalling human rights violations.

"Behind the fast cars and the victory laps lies a government that is tightening its chokehold on any remnant of dissent in the country by stepping up arrests, intimidation and harassment of political opposition, critics and activists. The alarming erosion of human rights in Bahrain in recent years means that anyone who dares to criticize the authorities or call for reform risks severe punishment," said James Lynch, Amnesty International's Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

"The modest reforms introduced after the 2011 uprising have demonstrably failed to live up to the hopes and promises they raised to protect and promote human rights."

Amnesty International is calling on the Bahraini authorities to mark the Grand Prix by immediately and unconditionally releasing all prisoners of conscience held solely for peacefully expressing their views.

These include three prominent political opponents: Sheikh 'Ali Salman, Ebrahim Sharif and Fadhel Abbas Mahdi Mohamed, as well as human rights activist Zainab Al-Khawaja, who was arrested and taken into custody on 14 March along with her baby son Hadi, to serve a prison sentence handed down after she tore up a photo of the King. Other political opponents arrested in 2011 still remain behind bars.

Other talking points include:

 Continuation of repressive practices including restrictions on freedom of assembly and association. Demonstrations are banned in the capital, Manama

 Lack of accountability of the security forces involved in killings, torture and other ill-treatment

 Courts continue to hand down lengthy sentences after grossly unfair trials

 The increased use of extreme and unlawful measures to silence dissent such as banishing individuals from the country after revoking their citizenship

For more information see public statement here

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Turkey: Illegal mass returns of Syrian refugees expose fatal flaws in EU-Turkey deal

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 1 April 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, Turkey: Illegal mass returns of Syrian refugees expose fatal flaws in EU-Turkey deal, 1 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/570210f94.html [accessed 23 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.

Large-scale forced returns of refugees from Turkey to war-ravaged Syria expose the fatal flaws in a refugee deal signed between Turkey and the European Union earlier this month, Amnesty International revealed today.

New research carried out by the organization in Turkey's southern border provinces suggests that Turkish authorities have been rounding up and expelling groups of around 100 Syrian men, women and children to Syria on a near-daily basis since mid-January. Over three days last week, Amnesty International researchers gathered multiple testimonies of large-scale returns from Hatay province, confirming a practice that is an open secret in the region.

All forced returns to Syria are illegal under Turkish, EU and international law.

"In their desperation to seal their borders, EU leaders have wilfully ignored the simplest of facts: Turkey is not a safe country for Syrian refugees and is getting less safe by the day," said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International's Director for Europe and Central Asia.

"The large-scale returns of Syrian refugees we have documented highlight the fatal flaws in the EU-Turkey deal. It is a deal that can only be implemented with the hardest of hearts and a blithe disregard for international law."

The EU-Turkey deal paves the way for the immediate return to Turkey of Syrian refugees arriving on the Greek islands, on the grounds that it is safe country of asylum. EU officials have expressed the hope that returns could start as of Monday 4 April.

The EU's extended courting of Turkey that preceded the deal has already had disastrous knock-on effects on Turkey's own policies towards Syrian refugees.

"Far from pressuring Turkey to improve the protection it offers Syrian refugees, the EU is in fact incentivizing the opposite," said John Dalhuisen.

"It seems highly likely that Turkey has returned several thousand refugees to Syria in the last seven to nine weeks. If the agreement proceeds as planned, there is a very real risk that some of those the EU sends back to Turkey will suffer the same fate."

Children and a pregnant woman among those returned

One of the cases uncovered by Amnesty International is of three young children forced back into Syria without their parents; another is of the forced return of an eight-month pregnant woman.

"The inhumanity and scale of the returns is truly shocking; Turkey should stop them immediately," said John Dalhuisen.

Many of those returned to Syria appear to be unregistered refugees, though Amnesty International has also documented cases of registered Syrians being returned, when apprehended without their papers on them.

Syrian refugees denied registration

Amnesty International's recent research also shows that the Turkish authorities have scaled back the registration of Syrian refugees in the southern border provinces.

Registration is required to access basic services. In Gaziantep, Amnesty International met with the son of a woman requiring emergency surgery to save her life but who was denied the ability to register - and therefore have the surgery. She eventually was able to register elsewhere and receive the life-saving treatment.

According to other Syrian refugees in the border province of Hatay, some people attempting to register have been detained and forced back into Syria, together with refugees found without their registration documents.

Amnesty International spoke to a family of unregistered Syrian refugees in Hatay province who have opted to remain in their apartment rather than trying to register, for fear they will be returned to Syria.

There are currently around 200,000 displaced people within 20km of Turkey's border. According to humanitarian aid groups as well as camp residents, conditions in camps close to the border are abysmal, without clean water or sanitation. A camp resident reported kidnappings for ransom among the dangers.

Tighter border restrictions

Increased border security and the lack of any regular means of crossing have pushed people into the hands of smugglers, who are demanding at least US$1,000 per person to take people into Turkey, according to Syrian nationals Amnesty International spoke to on both sides of the border.

The increasingly restrictive border policies are a radical change from those adopted previously by the Turkish authorities during the five years of the Syrian crisis. Previously, Syrian residents with passports had been able to cross at regular border gates, and those who entered irregularly - the vast majority - were also able to register with the Turkish authorities.

"Over the last few months, Turkey has introduced visa requirements for Syrians arriving by air, sealed its land border with Syria for all but those in need of emergency medical care, and shot at some of those attempting to cross it irregularly," said John Dalhuisen.

"Now Turkey is touting the creation of an undeliverable safe zone inside Syria. It is clear where this is all heading: having witnessed the creation of Fortress Europe, we are now seeing the copy-cat construction of Fortress Turkey."

TESTIMONIES

A Syrian family whose children were forcibly returned to Syria

An extended family of 24 people lived together in a single apartment in Antakya, Hatay province. They told Amnesty International that five members of their family were forcibly returned to Syria on or around 20 February 2016.

Thirty-year-old M.Z., in Turkey since early 2015, had been able to register. His 20-year-old brother, M.A., and their 11 year-old nephew and two nieces, aged 10 and nine, had arrived in Turkey around two months previously and had not been able to register because they had been told that it was impossible, and that those who tried risked being sent back to Syria.

The two brothers were taking their nephew and nieces to the park to play when they were stopped by police, who demanded their identification papers. The police took all five Syrian refugees to a nearby police station.

Z.Z. - another of M.Z.'s brothers who lived with them in Antakya - told Amnesty International that after learning of their detention, he brought M.Z.'s registration card to the police station, but that the police refused to release any of them.

M.Z. told Amnesty International by phone from Syria that after being detained for a few hours, all five refugees were put on a bus and driven to the Cilvegozu / Bab al-Hawa border crossing in Hatay province.

They were not alone. M.Z. said that there were a total of seven buses, with about 30 people on each bus - mostly families - representing up to 210 Syrian refugees. Two police cars accompanied the buses, and M.Z. told Amnesty International that on his bus there was a Turkish soldier armed with an assault rifle.

M.Z.'s brother followed the buses to Bab al-Hawa but said he was not permitted to speak to his relatives. When they reached the border at about 3am, they were handed over to the Ahrar al Sham armed group. On the Syrian side, M.Z. told a soldier that he had no money to care for the three children. The soldier then drove them to Atma refugee camp, in Syria's Idlib province.

M.Z. does not know what happened to the other people on the buses. He describes conditions in the Atma camp as atrocious, with no running water or sanitation facilities and completely inadequate food supplies.

M.Z. said that the children have developed skin conditions and that since being in Atma his nephew has developed vision problems.

The five Syrians are still able to communicate with their family in Antakya by phone. The children's mother told Amnesty International, "They are crying all the time; when they talk I can't even understand what they are saying."

Aid groups reported in December 2015 that nearly 58,000 people were living in Atma camp. M.Z. told Amnesty International that he has tried to return to Turkey several times over the past month.

M.Z.'s family in Antakya told Amnesty International that smugglers would charge them about US$1,000 per person to cross, but M.Z. says he only has around 500 Syrian pounds (just over US$2).

Most of the remaining members of the family, including children, are unregistered and remain in their Antakya apartment for fear that they too could be returned to Syria. They rely on registered members of the family to bring supplies to the house.

Two men whose brother and his pregnant wife were returned to Syria

The two brothers said that around 3 March 2016, they were travelling in two cars with their brother and his wife, having crossed the Turkey-Syria border near Yayladag in Hatay province the same day. About 3km into Turkish territory, Turkish border guards stopped the car in which their brother K.A. and his wife B.Q. were travelling. K.A. phoned his two brothers in the other car to tell them what had happened.

The two men explained to Amnesty International that their brother and sister-in-law were sent back to Syria in a van to the Cilvegozu / Bab al-Hawa border crossing in Hatay province, along with seven other vans carrying Syrian refugees. Each van allegedly transported around 14 people, which represents around 112 Syrian refugees. The brother and his now nine-month pregnant wife are living in Atma camp across from the Turkish border.

A man whose mother required emergency life-saving surgery

A Syrian man said his mother had not been permitted to register in Gaziantep, despite urgently requiring life-saving surgery that could only be accessed with registration.

A doctor had told him that every day that passed without the surgery would endanger his mother's life. After two weeks of trying to register in Gaziantep, showing numerous medical test results as proof of the urgency of the situation, they gave up and instead convinced the authorities to register her in Kilis, some 60km away. The mother was subsequently able to receive the free medical care she required.

A Syrian man in Azaz who was unlawfully pushed back from the border

The man had been part of a group of around 60 people trying to cross irregularly to Turkey on 20 February 2016. He said that they were apprehended by Turkish border guards and detained in a military barracks near Reyhanl in Hatay province.

He told Amnesty International he was detained for four hours, and that other people in the barracks (including women and children) were detained for up to 24 hours. He said that the border guards did not provide any food or water, nor access to toilets.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
A historic moment for international justice

Publisher Amnesty International Author Stefan Simanowitz Publication Date 31 March 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, A historic moment for international justice, 31 March 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/570211b44.html [accessed 23 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.

Like proverbial buses, it seems you can wait ages for a landmark international justice case, and then four come along at the same time.

By any standards, the past fortnight has seen some remarkable developments for international justice.

A week ago, on 24 March, Radovan Karadzic was convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for his role in genocide and other crimes committed during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), including for the massacre of more than 7,000 Bosnian men and boys in Srebrenica.

Whilst this story may have grabbed the front page headlines, it came amid a flurry of activity at The Hague's other judicial landmark, the International Criminal Court (ICC).

On 21 March, the ICC convicted Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo for criminal acts committed by troops under his effective control in the Central African Republic between 2002 and 2003. He was formerly a Vice President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, although the crimes were committed at a time when he headed an opposition militia.

Not only was it the first time that the ICC had convicted someone for rape as a war crime and crime against humanity, but it was also the first conviction in international criminal law to classify the rape of men as sexual violence. In addition it was the first ICC conviction based on command responsibility, namely that those in charge may be held criminally liable for the actions of those under their command. More than 5,000 victims participated in the Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo trial, a far greater number than in any other case before the ICC.

Then on 23 March the ICC ruled that there was enough evidence to put former Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) commander, Dominic Ongwen, on trial. The Pre-Trial Chamber confirmed all 70 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed in Uganda between 2002 and 2005, including murder, rape, sexual slavery, and the conscription and use of child soldiers. He will become the first person to stand trial for forced pregnancy under international criminal law and the first person before the ICC to face charges of forced marriage.

The case is also ground-breaking as Dominic Ongwen, as a former child soldier, is both a victim and a perpetrator. The case is additionally significant in that, whilst Uganda has repeatedly voiced its criticism of the ICC, it cooperated with Dominic Ongwen's transfer to The Hague in 2015 rather than trying him domestically.

The day after the ruling in Ongwen's case, the ICC confirmed that it would prosecute Malian jihadist, Ahmad Al Faqi Al-Mahdi, allegedly a leader of Ansar Eddine, a mainly Tuareg movement associated with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, for "the war crime of intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion and historic monuments". Ahmad Al Faqi Al-Mahdi has indicated that he will plead guilty to the charges, which relate to attacks on several mosques and mausoleums in Timbuktu in 2012. It would be the first time that anyone has faced charges at the ICC or at any other tribunal for the destruction of cultural landmarks.

The fact that all of these cases were heard in the same week may be merely coincidental, but it nevertheless sends out a strong signal that commanders who commit or permit atrocities will ultimately be held responsible. They can run - in some cases for decades, and in Karadzic's even under a fake identity - but the ICC is demonstrating unequivocally that they cannot hide from justice forever.

Some victims in BiH are unhappy with the 40-year sentence handed down by the ICTY given the gravity of the crimes for which Karadzic was convicted. Two decades after the war in BiH, thousands of people are still missing, and the majority of perpetrators have still not been brought to justice. Last week's verdict is nevertheless a significant milestone for the ICTY as it nears the end of its mandate. The ICC cases also come at an important time as the Court - which relies entirely on individual states to carry out its arrest warrants - faces increasing financial and political challenges.

While the ICTY had limited jurisdiction both in time and space, the ICC is envisaged as the permanent tribunal to ensure justice for victims of crimes under international law. Unfortunately attacks on the Court have intensified in the past year. Kenya and South Africa both recently indicated that they may withdraw from the ICC's Statute, and the African Union has endorsed the consideration of a roadmap for possible withdrawal from the ICC by its member states.

In these circumstances it is imperative to recognize that the Court's importance as a key route to justice for many victims is more vital than ever. More than 10,000 victims have engaged in the ICC's proceedings so far from countries including Afghanistan, Colombia, Libya, Mexico, Palestine, Syria, Sudan, South Sudan and Ukraine. Despite this, since it was set up in 2002, only 10 official investigations have been opened and an additional seven preliminary examinations undertaken. Thirty-nine people have been indicted in the ICC, including Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony, Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir and ex-Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo.

Whilst international law and the means by which it is enforced are far from perfect, they remain the best mechanism that the world has to challenge impunity, ensure accountability and provide justice for victims of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. These recent advances have proved that they can be effective.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Chibok girls  do we really care?

Publisher IRIN Author Hilary Matfess Publication Date 31 March 2016 Cite as IRIN, Chibok girls  do we really care?, 31 March 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57021d4f4.html [accessed 23 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

The world united in a campaign to demand #BringBackOurGirls after the abduction of the Chibok school girls two years ago by the Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram. But there has been next to nothing in the way of support to the women that have managed to escape the militants.

They are now homeless, reduced to begging to survive, and forced to deal alone with the trauma of their ordeal.

Safiya sits on a woven mat under a scraggly tree in the grounds of Madina Mosque, on the outskirts of the northeastern city of Maiduguri, rocking her newborn son. The mosque has become a rough-and-ready sanctuary for around 2,000 people who have fled the conflict.

"We spent three months in the forest, crawling through the bush, bringing all five children and trying not to disturb the infection in my husband's wound from where Boko Haram shot him," she says.

She was pregnant as well at the time. When she felt the baby was almost due, she left her husband with the children and walked the remaining 70 kilometres to Maiduguri, and this mosque.

Safiya delivered her son here a week later, without a doctor, midwife, or medicine. Her family finally managed to join her, helped by communities along their path, and though they are now physically safe and united, that's about the extent of it.

Safiya is from Baga - as are many of the families camped out on the mosque grounds. The town in the far north, on the border with Chad, was captured and destroyed by Boko Haram in January last year.

"We are just managing to survive here," Safiya says. The women sitting with her, braiding hair and bouncing children on their laps, nod. One chimes in: "all the children do here is beg. All the women do is beg. We have nothing else to do."

Although the Nigerian army is finally getting the upper hand in the insurgency, towns like Baga are far from secure. Nobody here feels ready to risk going home.

The six years of violence has killed an estimated 30,000 people and uprooted 1.9 million. Most of these internally displaced persons (IDPs) have escaped to Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, whose motto - conceived in happier times - is the now ironic "home of peace".

Virtually all IDPs are sheltering in the local community, among friends or relatives, or places like the Madina Mosque. It's run by Khalifa Ahmed Aliyu Abulfathi, a prominent leader of the Tijaniyya: the largest Sufi religious order in West Africa.

The IDPs are allowed to set up rudimentary shelters in the grounds, but there is little else in the way of support for them.

Just eight percent of IDPs live in more than 80 government-run "camp-like" sites, according to the International Organization for Migration. Conditions are so poor, including the risk of sexual exploitation by the security forces patrolling them, that most of those displaced prefer to try and be absorbed by the community.

Made into wives

Amnesty International estimates that more than 2,000 women have been abducted by Boko Haram, but the actual number could be a good deal higher. They took 276 school girls from Chibok alone in April 2014, and in Damasak last year, 400 women and children were seized by the militants.

Nearly every woman IRIN spoke to under the age of 50 who had been captured by Boko Haram said they had been raped or sexually abused, usually under the guise of a sham "marriage".

Bawagana, a shy 15-year-old living in Sanda Kyarimi camp, one of the official IDP sites, said that a Boko Haram fighter had come to her home in Dikwa, 90 kilometres east of Maiduguri, and asked "Do you love me?"

"Of course I answered, 'no!'" she said, with her eyes fixed on the ground. "The boy got very angry and said: 'If you do not come with me, I will kill your father, but if you come with me I will let him live.'"

"I followed to save my father. The boy left 10,000 naira (about $50) on the floor. It was a bride price in Boko Haram's eyes."

In the Boko Haram base, she was sexually assaulted and beaten, forced to cook and clean for her 'husband'. She also attended a perverse Quranic school in which she was taught that "anyone who is not Boko Haram is an infidel" - and therefore can be killed.

She didn't mind the classes, as "life was easier for the women that went to the school - they did not have to cook as much and they were treated more softly."

Bawagana finally managed to escape when her husband left on a raid - the kind of brave, desperate action all the women here, who had been in Boko Haram captivity, had also taken.

Commodities

What the stories of these escapees makes clear is that capturing women and girls is a deliberate strategy of Boko Haram. They are used as a commodity to recruit, retain and reward its militants.

"In this crisis, these men can take a wife at no extra charge," explained Kaka, a young woman orphaned, captured and raped by Boko Haram. "Usually it is very expensive to take a wife, very hard to get married, but not now."

In some Boko Haram bases, the marriage ceremony is formalised. A 15-year-old boy who was held by the insurgents for two years recalled how "they gather all the people around and the imam marries them like it is a normal thing." With a slow shake of his head he added: "they even sing in Arabic after, just like other weddings."

For others there was no ceremony - a Boko Haram fighter simply laid claim to them as a "wife".

Others described anarchic sexual assault. One girl in Sanda Kyarimi IDP camp said they "would rape each other's wives when they were not around; they would hold a knife to your throat and tell you not to scream."

Abuse in the camps

The official IDP camps should provide medical care, education, food, and psycho-social counselling, through the government's Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), its local state equivalent, and an alphabet soup of international relief agencies.

In reality the assistance is limited and uneven. Nigeria is Africa's largest economy, but the oil price crash and a currency devaluation has squeezed the delivery of even the most basic services to the camps. The authorities are also eager for the IDPs to return to their homes.

Those who don't live in the camps are often overlooked in humanitarian efforts - even though NEMA has talked about off-camp support for years. They instead depend on the community, which has been impoverished by an insurgency that has also ruined the region's trade and livestock-based economy.

Umma, a worn 60-year-old woman, says living in the mosque and surviving on begging means she eats "maybe one meal a day, usually rice": Some days "we get nothing."

Others worry that their roofless shelters will be flooded in the coming rainy season. "The conditions here are unsafe, but it is a different insecurity from Boko Haram," said Aisha, who fled Baga with a newborn baby strapped to her back.

And yet a significant number of these women are steering clear of the official camps. One member of the mosque, who visits the IDPs regularly, said that one reason is the "reports of military men and [the vigilante] Civilian Joint Task Force exploiting the women for sex".

One human rights advocate confirmed that "girls in the camps, as young as seven, are being forced into having sex for a little money or even just the rations they deserve."

An employee at the government-run Bakassi Camp admitted "some of the women have left the camp to return to their homes, where it is not yet secure, rather than face the constant sexual assault. They return to the places that the police are even afraid to go."

The lack of support being offered to the women in Maiduguri and across the region undermines the government's project to rebuild the northeast and undercut the appeal of Boko Haram among the poor and marginalised.

While the physical infrastructure can be repaired, there is no corresponding commitment to rebuild the communities devastated by the insurgency.
Rich countries fall way short on Syrian refugee resettlement

Publisher IRIN Author Kristy Siegfried Publication Date 30 March 2016 Cite as IRIN, Rich countries fall way short on Syrian refugee resettlement, 30 March 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57021eab4.html [accessed 23 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

The aim of a high-level conference in Geneva on Wednesday was to convince the international community to rapidly increase resettlement places for Syrian refugees and open up other under-used legal pathways that would remove the need for dangerous boat crossings and long, difficult treks.

But the response from the representatives of 92 countries who attended the meeting was restrained and fell far short of a target set by the UN's refugee agency.

UNHCR, which hosted the conference, was not asking for miracles. It had called for resettling or securing other forms of admission for just 10 percent of Syria's 4.8 million refugees over the next three years.

In the lead-up to today's meeting, UNHCR and NGOs like Oxfam have been pushing for potential host countries to reach the 10 percent target by not only pledging resettlement places, but also offering other legal channels for Syrian refugees such as humanitarian and family reunion visas, scholarships, private sponsorship programmes and labour mobility schemes.

None of these channels are new. As the Migration Policy Institute Europe pointed out in a recent paper: "in theory refugees are already eligible to move through many of these channels, [but] in reality pathways are often blocked by practical, technical, and political obstacles."

Razan Ibraheem, a Syrian journalist who was able to reach safety in Ireland with a student visa and then brought her brother to join her through a private sponsorship scheme, told the meeting about other Syrians she had met in Greece and Turkey who could not access these legal options. One woman had taken a boat to Greece with her sister's four children in addition to five of her own because her sister's application for family reunion had gone nowhere.

"Had her application been processed, those children would have been saved the horrors of crossing the Mediterranean," said Ibraheem, who urged countries "to overcome past mistakes" and quickly expand resettlement programmes and fast-track family reunion.

But the obvious conclusion to draw from the conference is that countries are unwilling to significantly expand on earlier resettlement commitments or open up other pathways.

Actions speak louder than words

Five years into the Syrian crisis, only 160,000 resettlement places have been offered by 30 countries, while the total number of refugees to have actually arrived in those countries is a fraction of that figure  just 67,108, according to a report released by Oxfam on Tuesday.

State representatives took to the floor of the Palais des Nations one after another on Wednesday to speak about the need for greater international cooperation and burden-sharing to address the Syrian refugee crisis, but few announced any new plans to take in more than a few hundred refugees.

Filippo Grandi, UNHCR head, gives opening statement flanked by UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon

Most focused instead on the money their countries had spent supporting refugees to remain in overwhelmed neighbouring countries like Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.

Jordan's ambassador to the UN, Dina Kawar, pointed out that Jordan is hosting 1.3 million Syrian refugees who now make up 25 percent of the population, putting severe strains on the country's infrastructure, public services and economy.

"Refugee challenges can't be addressed by any one state; nor can immediate neighbours be expected to continue to bear the brunt of the refugee problem," she said, adding that genuine solidarity required countries beyond the region "to also keep their borders open".

Canada, Australia and the United States  traditionally the three largest resettlement countries  all highlighted current programmes to assist Syrian refugees, but made no pledges to take in more.

Taking a "fair share"

Canada is one of only three countries identified by Oxfam as having resettled more than its "fair share" of Syrian refugees based on the size of its economy. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the country has absorbed 26,000 Syrians since November 2015, nearly 9,000 of them through private sponsorship.

Speaking at the conference, John McCallum, Canada's minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship emphasised the importance of leadership from the top as well as "frequent and honest communication with the Canadian people".

McCallum said that Canada's "national project to welcome refugees" has been so successful that his biggest challenge now is to find enough Syrian refugees willing to come to Canada.

Germany is another country to have done more than its "fair share". It admitted 41,000 Syrians through a humanitarian admission programme, before 430,000 Syrian asylum seekers made their way to the country in 2015, most having taken boats from Turkey to Greece and then followed a well-trodden route through the western Balkans.

Politics gets in the way

Germany was instrumental in brokering the recent agreement with Turkey to take back all new arrivals to Greece in return for more aid for Syrian refugees living in Turkey and increased resettlement of refugees from Turkey to EU member states. The deal has been widely condemned by rights groups and aid agencies like Oxfam, which in its report on Tuesday criticised "attempts to use resettlement as a bargaining chip in political deals".

Speaking at Wednesday's meeting, state secretary of Germany's foreign office, Markus Ederer, said: "Irregular migration needs to be stopped by extending legal pathways to admission. This is why Germany has pushed hard for the EU-Turkey agreement."

The EU's commissioner for home affairs, Dimitris Avramopoulos, insisted that Europe stood ready to take in its fair share of refugees and pointed out that an EU-wide resettlement scheme was set up in 2015 to take in 22,000 Syrian refugees. To date though, just over 4,500 refugees have been resettled to 11 member states.

With 18,000 places remaining to be pledged, Avramopoulos admitted: "we need to step up delivery and foster political will."

In a joint statement, Oxfam, Save the Children and the Norwegian Refugee Council described the outcome of today's conference as "deeply disappointing", noting that governments had shown "a shocking lack of political and moral leadership".

Oxfam is calling for 10 percent of Syrian refugees registered in neighbouring countries, some 480,000 people, to be resettled by the end of 2016. It worked out what it called a "fair share" based on the size of rich countries' economies. IRIN used the Oxfam data to produce the graph below showing what percentage of its "fair share" each country has actually pledged to resettle:
Why Turkey is still refugees unwelcome

Publisher IRIN Author Umar Farooq Publication Date 30 March 2016 Cite as IRIN, Why Turkey is still refugees unwelcome, 30 March 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/570220484.html [accessed 23 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

The joint EU-Turkish action plan to end the migration crisis not only aims to make Europe a much less appealing destination - with threats of detention and deportation for all new boat arrivals to Greece - but also depends on making conditions more tolerable for the 2.7 million Syrian refugees living in Turkey.

One of the main factors driving Syrians to abandon life in Turkey and move on to Europe has been Ankara's reluctance to lift barriers to the formal labour market. The announcement in January that - albeit with a number of caveats - all Syrians would be allowed to apply for Turkish work permits raised hopes that life would improve for the many refugees dependant on aid or working in the informal economy for low wages.

But the new regulations have yet to be completely implemented and are being described as prohibitively complex and costly. Non-Syrian refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere - who account for about 50 percent of arrivals to Greece - still lack the right to work in Turkey.

"Currently, the procedure [for obtaining a work permit] is still very complicated, and few Syrians are able to meet the requirements," said Kemal Kocak, a consultant with Datassist, a Turkish human resources firm.

Work, but no rights

With a strong resume in a technical field and years of experience in several countries, Ali al-Ahmed found work at a small marketing company in one of Istanbul's wealthiest suburbs within months of arriving in Turkey from Damascus in early 2016.

"All my Syrian friends are telling me I am very lucky," said al-Ahmed, 22. He joined three other Syrians at the company, but because they lack work permits, they are all being paid a fraction of the salaries Turkish nationals would earn for the same jobs.

Al-Ahmed said his employer spent months trying to secure a work permit for him under the new law, but finally gave up when it turned out to be too complicated and costly. "I know I am not getting my rights, but I have managed to accept this because I don't have any other choice.

"We don't want to be refugees in Europe," he told IRIN. "We don't want to waste two or three years of our lives waiting there, and we don't even know what we are waiting for. Maybe, in the end, they will just kick all refugees out. We want to get on with our careers."

Restrictions remain

In 2014, Turkey passed a law that provided limited, temporary protection to Syrians and other refugees. On paper at least, Syrians who registered with the Turkish authorities could access healthcare services and send their children to public schools. But they could only apply for a work permit if they had entered the country using a valid visa. This barred the vast majority of Syrians, who fled the conflict in their country by simply crossing the border into Turkey.

Up until mid-January 2016, only around 7,200 Syrians had been able to obtain work permits, according to the Ministry of Labour and Social Security. The ministry couldn't provide the number issued since the new legislation came into effect, but it isn't thought to be very many.

The new law removes the requirement that Syrians must have arrived in the country with a valid visa, but other restrictions remain in place. They must wait for six months after registering as a refugee with Turkish authorities before they become eligible for a work permit and then remain in the district where they registered and find a company there willing to hire them and make the application on their behalf.

Preparing the documents for the application is a labour-intensive process and paying someone to help can cost as much as $1,000. Many employers are unwilling to make that kind of investment, explained Kocak.

Second-class citizens

The obstacles to Syrians being able to secure jobs and pursue careers in Turkey go deeper than an excess of red tape, said Muhammad al-Gharbi, a Syrian software developer who arrived in Turkey in 2013 with a university degree and years of work experience.

"You are an expert in your field, but nobody treats you like an expert. They treat you like a refugee," he told IRIN.

Al-Gharbi spent six months taking intensive Turkish language classes and is now fluent, but said his Turkish employers continued to pay him less than his Turkish co-workers while many of his Syrian colleagues were not being paid at all. "It happened to a lot of my friends," he said. "[The employer] would say, 'We are in an economic crisis, so we cannot pay you now.'"

By October 2015, al-Gharbi had decided to board a boat for Greece. He only changed his mind at the last minute after receiving a phone call from his mother, still in Syria, who talked him out of making the dangerous trip.

Now in a stable job, al-Gharbi has convinced his employer to apply for a work permit under the new law, but even Turkish officials don't seem to understand the procedure.

"There are a lot of conditions the company must meet, and then there are conditions I must meet," he said.

Even if it was easier to get a work permit, al-Gharbi is not convinced it would change the attitudes of Turkish employers.

"Having a work permit might give you a chance to sue someone if they try to stall on your payment or something," al-Gharbi said. "But then again really it's a cultural, societal problem in Turkey. They do not treat you the same [as locals] and I do not think a law is going to change that."

Hurting the economy

Before the war, Syria had one of the best higher education systems in the region. "Syrians are very well educated. In many fields like engineering and science, they are better qualified than people in Turkey," said Kocak. "So there is definitely a need for skilled Syrians in the Turkish workforce."

Excluding Syrians from the labour market has had negative effects for the entire economy, contributing to a "downward spiral of wages and working conditions" for both Turkish workers and refugees, according to Numan Ozcan, country director for the International Labour Organization.

Many Syrians in Turkey, unable to put their skills and qualifications to use, have had to become entrepreneurs to make a living.

Ahmed al-Mulli, an information systems expert, runs a small but bustling Syrian falafel restaurant in Beyoglu, a popular tourist district in Istanbul. Without a work permit, he found it difficult to secure a job, even in the informal sector. "Even if you speak Turkish you will not find good work. So I got this idea that people might like Syrian food. I opened this place, and in six months I made 5,000 euros."

One of his brothers helped him set up the restaurant but then left for Germany. His German asylum application was finally approved this month, two years later. But al-Mulli, now married to another Syrian and settled in Istanbul, is happy where he is. "When I first came to Turkey, I was thinking of going to Europe but now, I don't think there is any way to go even if I tried."
Greek asylum system reaches breaking point

Publisher IRIN Author John Psaropoulos Publication Date 31 March 2016 Cite as IRIN, Greek asylum system reaches breaking point, 31 March 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/570220b24.html [accessed 23 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 Greece prepares to deport an initial 500 migrants and refugees on Monday under a controversial agreement between the EU and Turkey, senior Greek officials say the pressure to process applications quickly has become too great, at the expense of legal and ethical standards.

"Insufferable pressure is being put on us to reduce our standards and minimise the guarantees of the asylum process," Maria Stavropoulou, who heads the Greek Asylum Service, told IRIN. "[We're asked] to change our laws, to change our standards to the lowest possible under the EU directive [on asylum procedures]."

Under the terms of the 18 March agreement, Greece must screen all new arrivals from Turkey as quickly as possible and return those deemed not in need of international protection on the basis that Turkey is a "safe third country" or "first country of asylum" where they were already protected.

Most of the pressure, according to Stavropoulou, is coming from "countries that are very invested in the deal with Turkey working." Germany, which received more than one million asylum seekers last year, took a leading role in negotiations with Turkey during a tense two-day summit earlier this month.

In addition to having to screen and return new arrivals, Greece is also dealing with high numbers of asylum applications from the more than 50,000 refugees and migrants who were already trapped inside Greece before the agreement with Turkey came into effect. An overland route through the western Balkans to Germany has been closed for a month and many of those who cannot afford to pay smugglers to find a new route to Western Europe are now applying for asylum in Greece. Authorities here expect to receive just under 3,000 applications in March, double the figure for January and three times last year's monthly average. But even as the numbers have mounted, so has the pressure for speedy processing.

The Greek Asylum Service has just hired three dozen new personnel, bringing its total staff to 295. But it says it will need at least double that number to handle the expected caseload in the wake of the EU-Turkey agreement. The European Commission has estimated that some 4,000 personnel are likely to be needed in Greece and is sending reinforcements.

Many of those slated to join the effort are coastguard officers, but some 800 are asylum experts and interpreters from other member states and from the European Asylum Support Office, the EU's coordinating body for asylum matters. The first 60 are to arrive in Greece on Sunday.

"I believe the Greek system is well supported through this increase in staff - it can handle this workload," said EASO spokesman Jean-Pierre Schembri, who added that much would depend on a speedy initial screening of new arrivals.

"If you have many people arriving every day it makes sense that this process is short in order to be able to deal with the workflow," he told IRIN. However, he insisted that, "it's not a question of making a very, very quick [process] without taking the interests of the applicant into account."

Short shrift

Some asylum experts believe that the pressure for rapid screening will mean that vital information for determining asylum claims is overlooked.

"It always takes time," said Spyros Kouloheris, head of legal research at the Greek Council for Refugees (GCR), the country's most respected legal aid NGO.

"Someone who is traumatised will speak in fits and starts. They appear not to be telling the truth. We've lost a lot of cases because we didn't have the time, the information, the culture, the experience, to understand that the more broken up the narrative, the more likely it is that there is a background of torture and abuse. This is how true refugees are lost. Do we really think that a Somali woman who has been raped will sit down and merrily rattle off her experiences?"

Of additional concern is the fact that initial screenings are taking place in reception venues on Greek islands that, since 20 March, have been turned into closed detention centres. "A detained person simply doesn't function You don't play with people's freedom. It's all the worse when they've been storm-tossed," said Kouloheris.

Final decisions on asylum applications rest with the Greek authorities, but officials are so swamped that they are coopting anyone else they can to help inform new arrivals of their right to seek asylum and how to go about it. "We depend on the UN or EASO, on NGOs and on the volunteers - anyone who can have a knowledge of the basics - to hand out our flyers and pass on our web page to people," said Stavropoulou.

GCR has been sending lawyers to the port of Piraeus to tell thousands of migrants and refugees camping out there after recently arriving from the islands about their options. "It's not that they don't know," said Negia, a volunteer at the port. "It's that having made all this effort, they can't believe the borders are closed and they have such few options."

Hala and Fouad, a young couple from Iraq, have made up their minds not to apply for asylum in Greece. "We like Greece, and the Greeks have been very good, very kind," said Hala. "But for my children's sake, I do not want to stay here." The family, who have already spent the past 40 days at Piraeus, have applied to be transferred to Sweden through the EU's relocation scheme, but will have to wait another three weeks for an appointment to assess their case.

So far, a September 2015 agreement by the EU to relocate 160,000 asylum seekers from Greece and Italy over two years has resulted in just under 900 being moved from Greece and a further 2,300 are at various stages in the process, according to Stavropoulou.

For whom is Turkey safe?

The most controversial aspect of the EU-Turkey agreement, however, is Turkey's designation as a safe third country as a basis for rejecting asylum seekers in Greece.

Turkey has ratified the 1951 Refugee Convention, but has not signed a 1967 Protocol extending refugee rights to non-Europeans, meaning that many of those in danger of deportation back to Turkey will have limited legal protection there. The agreement obliges Turkey to make legal changes, but Ankara has already indicated it has no intention of doing so. Greece is about to vote on legislative changes that will make it legal to deport people to Turkey.

Rights groups have pointed out that Turkey has effectively closed its borders to Syrians fleeing the war and recently deported asylum seekers to Afghanistan and Iraq without granting them access to an asylum procedure.

"There is a political dishonesty and evasion in Turkey's designation as a safe third country, and this is also open to legal challenge," said Andreas Takis, a law professor at the University of Thessaloniki who sits on the Greek Human Rights Committee.

Takis predicts that the agreement will turn out to be unenforceable. "There isn't a specific passage in the agreement one can point to and say, 'this is where the Geneva Convention or the asylum procedure is being violated,'" he said. "Instead, everyone is rightly concerned that it will violate it in the manner in which it is implemented."

Kouloheris agrees, and plans to challenge the deal in court. "I think there is a policy of hostility. Europe is putting up a wall. It doesn't want these people. This treaty makes it clear."
RSF decries Iraq's closure of Al-Baghdadia TV's bureaux

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 31 March 2016 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, RSF decries Iraq's closure of Al-Baghdadia TV's bureaux, 31 March 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5702219c4.html [accessed 23 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.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns the arbitrary closure of Al-Baghdadia TV's bureaux in Iraq for allegedly lacking a proper licence and calls on the Iraqi authorities to ensure that the Cairo-based independent broadcaster, the target of repeated harassment, has all the necessary papers to operate legally in Iraq.

After police accompanied by an employee of the Communications and Media Commission (CMC) closed the Iraqi-owned TV station's Baghdad bureau on 16 March, the operation was repeated at its other bureaux in the rest of the country and its licence was withdrawn.

"We call on the Iraqi authorities to stop harassing Al-Baghdadia TV and to allow it to operate normally," said Alexandra El Khazen, the head of RSF's Middle East desk. "This TV station's licence must be restored and its employees must be able to go back to work. Closing Al-Baghdadia TV sends a disturbing message about freedom of information in Iraq."

The interior ministry issued a statement on 17 March saying the closure was ordered by the CMC, which has accused certain broadcast media outlets of operating illegally and without a licence.

According to local media and our Iraqi partner organization, the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory (JFO), the closure was the result of decision taken during the administration of the previous prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki.

The same sources also reported that the authorities prevented Al-Baghdadia TV employees from entering their offices. Al-Baghdadia TV director Najem Al-Rabi'i told JFO that the CMC gave the station no prior warning or notification.

Al-Rabi'i later told RSF that the government regarded the station as dangerous because of its investigative reporting on corruption cases and, more recently, the extensive coverage it gave to street demonstrations.

This is by no means the first time that Al-Baghdadia TV has been persecuted by the Iraqi authorities. The Egyptian satellite company Nilesat stopped carrying its signal in June 2014 as a result of a complaint filed by the Iraqi communications ministry.

Al-Baghdadia TV formally suspended all operations in Iraq on 25 November 2010, a few days after the CMC closed all of its bureaux. And they remained closed until April 2014, when the station was allowed to resume operating as a result of a court ruling.

The CMC was created in 2003, in the immediate aftermath of the US-led military intervention, with the task of regulating the media. According to local media reports, it is now planning to close 13 local radio stations in Basra's province on the grounds that they are operating without licences.

Iraq is ranked 156th out of 180 countries in RSF's World Press Freedom Index.
RSF decries "contempt" cases against journalists by international courts

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 31 March 2016 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, RSF decries "contempt" cases against journalists by international courts, 31 March 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/570221c84.html [accessed 23 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.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns the tendency of international tribunals to bring charges of "contempt of court" or "interfering with the administration of justice" against journalists who have done nothing more than disclose confidential information about their flawed decisions. Journalist Florence Hartmann's case is the latest example.

"Contempt" charges are supposed to be used by international tribunals to punish such actions as bribing witnesses, giving false evidence and, more generally, conduct liable to "obstruct, prejudice or abuse the administration of justice."

However, journalists have been prosecuted for "disclosing information relating to proceedings in knowing violation of an order of a chamber" and "undermining public confidence in the tribunal's ability to protect the confidentiality of information about () witnesses."

RSF calls on international courts to stop bringing "contempt" charges against journalists who have simply shed light on the way they operate. Protecting the administration of justice is legitimate but it must be weighed against the public's right to information. RSF points out that these courts are required to respect international standards, including those governing freedom of expression and information.

Florence Hartmann is a French journalist who used to work for Le Monde and who was the spokesperson of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague from 2000 to 2006. She went on to write a book entitled "Paix et Chatiment," published in 2007, that contained revelations about two of the ICTY's confidential decisions.

In 2009, the ICTY initiated a prosecution against Hartmann that led to her being sentenced in 2011 to pay a fine of 7,000 euros. The sentence was later converted to seven days in prison. On the basis of an international warrant issued by the ICTY, she was arrested in The Hague on 24 March in order to serve her sentence in the place used to hold international criminals.

Her crime was to have published information in full knowledge of its confidential nature and to have revealed facts that could discourage other states from cooperating with the tribunal. For this, she was convicted of "contempt" and "interfering with the administration of justice."

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) has been prosecuting journalists since 2014 on charges of contempt of court, obstructing justice and, in particular, "undermining public confidence in the tribunal's ability to protect the confidentiality of information about witnesses." In a series of reports, they succeeded in contacting protected witnesses and thereby exposed flaws in its system of protection.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda prosecuted journalists on contempt charges in 2002 because that had revealed that a key trial witness was suspected of having participated in the 1994 genocide, thereby undermining the credibility of the prosecutor's case.

These prosecutions set dangerous precedents for all journalists because they penalized legitimate criticism, not obstruction of justice. It is not the job of journalists to assist the "administration of justice." On the contrary, it is their duty to shed light on the way the internationally created system of justice functions and, possibly, malfunctions. The European Court of Human Right has repeatedly stressed the public interest in media coverage of court cases.

The reasoning used by international courts in these cases often results in their justifying denial of the media's right to cover what they do. This is the same as saying an entire segment of their activities must be kept secret from the public. But how are you to trust a court to establish the truth about war crimes and genocide if at the same time it is bent on concealing information about how it works?

Imposing jail terms on journalists who do research and then reveal information of interest to the general public is a grave violation of media freedom. It is unacceptable that international courts - courts that, until now, are the highest expression of international law, courts tasked with punishing the most serious crimes and rendering international justice - convict journalists who expose their flaws. This flouts all international standards on freedom of expression.
RSF urges Libya's new prime minister to protect media freedom

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 31 March 2016 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, RSF urges Libya's new prime minister to protect media freedom, 31 March 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/570221f14.html [accessed 23 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.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns yesterday's (30th of march) armed attack on the headquarters of Nabaa TV in Tripoli, just hours after the new national unity government led by Prime Minister Feyez El Sarraj was installed in the city, and calls on the new authorities to protect the right to information and those who exercise it.

The main aim of the new UN-backed government - which travelled to Tripoli yesterday after long negotiations between rival authorities in Tripoli and the eastern city of Tobruk - is to restore political stability.

But its credibility was immediately threatened by the raid on Nabaa TV, a raid that - according to our sources - was carried out by a brigade allied to militia leader Haytham Al Tajouri. Several journalists were physically attacked and the TV station was completely vandalized.

"There can be no justification for an attack of this kind, which means the new government is off to a very poor start," said Yasmine Kacha, the head of RSF's North Africa desk. "Peace will not be restored in Libya if media activity is not protected. We urge Feyez El Sarraj to take rapid, concrete measures to combat the impunity enjoyed by those who have targeted the media and journalists in recent months."

Libyan journalists are often kidnapped by armed militias and subjected to physical violence for covering certain stories. For the most part, they are released with 24 or 48 hours. On this matter, RSF expresses its concern over the disappearance of cyber journalist Ali Al Asballi on the night of the 28th of march, a hundred kilometre away from Benghazi.

Moreover, in regions controlled by Islamic State, reporters are told to say nothing about atrocities against civilians on pain of death if they fail to comply.

The websites of leading media outlets such as Bawabat Al Wassat have been subjected to systematic cyber-attacks in recent months as a way of censoring them. RSF has also received reports of many attacks on radio stations and the jamming of the signals of several TV channels.

RSF issued an updated version of its Safety Guide for Journalists in January that was produced jointly with UNESCO. RSF is currently also lobbying for the creation of the position of special representative of the UN secretary-general for the safety of journalists.

Libya is ranked 154th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2015 World Press Freedom Index.
Officials manhandle US photographer as she covers Goma street demo

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 1 April 2016 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, Officials manhandle US photographer as she covers Goma street demo, 1 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5702227c4.html [accessed 23 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

The photographer Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi contacted Reporters Without Borders (RSF) to deny her presence at the demonstration at which RSF reported that she had been manhandled by members of the ANR. Four different sources at the scene of the demonstration nonetheless reconfirmed the report

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Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns US award-winning photojournalist Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi's manhandling by members of the National Intelligence Agency (ANR) while she filmed a peaceful street demonstration in Goma, the capital of the eastern province of Nord-Kivu, on 15 March.

Four ANR officers used force against Alhindawi as they tried to arrest her but she managed to escape by clinging to a vehicle belonging to the UN peacekeeping mission MONUSCO.

Alhindawi, who works for the magazine Causette and freelances for other media such as CNN, Al Jazeera, National Geographic and The New York Times, was the only journalist covering the march, staged by a group called LUCHA (Struggle for Change).

"The fact that Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi, a foreign reporter, was the only journalist who dared to cover the LUCHA march is symptomatic of the unease and self-censorship that prevails today in Nord-Kivu province," said Clea Kahn-Sriber, the head of RSF's Africa desk. "We urge the province's authorities to allow journalists to do their work and to freely report what is going on within Congolese civil society."

A civil society movement that defines itself as non-violent, non-partisan and peaceful, LUCHA is calling for democratic renewal in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The 47 participants in the demonstration marched with their hands tied and their mouths gagged in protest against the systematic gagging of the movement. Nineteen of them were arrested for "disturbing public order" and are still detained.

The march was held to mark the anniversary of the arrest of two LUCHA members, Fred Bauma and Yves Makuambala, during a meeting that LUCHA organized in Goma in March 2015 with representatives of similar movements in Burkina Faso ("Balais citoyen") and Senegal ("Y'en a marre").

The authorities portrayed the meeting as "terrorist" in nature, a description that was rejected by a parliamentary committee. Bauma and Makuambala nonetheless continue to be held in Kinshasa on a charge of "conspiring against President Joseph Kabila."

During a visit last month, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon voiced concern about the restriction of political space in the DRC. The clampdown and other developments are seen as signs that Kabila, who was been president for the past 15 years, may be tempted to indefinitely postpone the presidential election due to be held at the end of this year.

The DRC is ranked 150th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2015 World Press Freedom Index.
RSF condemns Erdogan security team's unacceptable behavior towards journalists during US visit

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 1 April 2016 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, RSF condemns Erdogan security team's unacceptable behavior towards journalists during US visit, 1 April 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/570226094.html [accessed 23 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.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns the assault and harassment of journalists by Turkish security guards at an event in Washington, DC where President Erdogan was scheduled to speak yesterday. This is not the first time such unacceptable behavior has been used against journalists covering a visit by the Turkish president to the United States.

Yesterday at the Brookings Institute in Washington, DC where Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was scheduled to give a speech, his security guards harassed and physically assaulted journalists trying to cover the event. They also forcibly attempted to remove several journalists from inside, although they were on the guest list. The Brookings staff prevented them from ejecting the journalists.

Adem Yavuz Arslan, Washington Correspondent of Turkey's Ozgur Dusunce Daily newspaper, was kicked out of the building while checking in. A senior Brookings official eventually escorted Arslan back in but Brookings had to assign a security guard to the seat next to him since Turkish security guards continued to "verbally harass, insult and threaten" him.

"Erdogan's guards are not committing these barbaric acts against independent media on their own, Arslan told Reporters Without Borders (RSF). "I'm pretty confident they have their orders."

Several other journalists were involved in the tussle with Turkish security guards. Another Turkish journalist, Emre Uslu, told AP he was kicked in the leg outside the event by Erdogan's bodyguards and was prevented from attending the speech. An American reporter attempting to film the harassment received a kick in the chest, according to AFP.

"RSF condemns the Turkish security guards' unacceptable behavior towards journalists covering this important event in Washington, DC," said Delphine Halgand, RSF's US Director. "Not only is Erdogan abusing freedom of the press on a regular basis in his own country, but now his security team believes they can obstruct freedom of the press in the United States. "

"Turkey's leader and his security team are guests in the United States," declared Thomas Burr, president of the National Press Club, in a statement issued yesterday. "Erdogan doesn't get to export such abuse."

This is not the first time Erdogan's security team has used these harsh methods against journalists covering an Erdogan visit to the US. In September 2014, Erdogan's bodyguards attacked two Turkish journalists in New York during a visit between the Turkish leader and United States Vice President Joe Biden. One of the reporters was Adem Yavuz Arslan, the very same journalist attacked yesterday. Arslan said the president's nephew, Ali Erdogan, who was a member of his security detail, evicted him from the hotel at the behest of one of the president's advisers. Once he was on the street, two other advisers, Senol Kazanci and Aydin Unal, threatened him. "Your existence is a crime," one of them said. Two unidentified men then physically attacked Arslan in the street in front of the hotel.

Turkey is ranked 149th out of 180 countries in RSF's latest World Press Freedom Index.
(Paris) The imprisonment of two bloggers and four female activists within eight days under Vietnam's draconian laws marks a troubling escalation of the government's crackdown on peaceful dissent, FIDH and its member organization Vietnam Committee on Human Rights (VCHR) said today.

"The recent wave of arbitrary imprisonment of bloggers and activists illustrates the government's ruthlessness in dealing with peaceful dissent. Vietnam must immediately stop the intensified crackdown and release all political prisoners."

Karim Lahidji, FIDH President

On 30 March 2016, the People's Court in Ho Chi Minh City sentenced blogger Nguyen Dinh Ngoc aka Nguyen Ngoc Gia to four years in prison and three years of house arrest on charges of "conducting propaganda against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam" under Article 88 of the Criminal Code. The sentence imposed on Nguyen Dinh Ngoc was the result of his arrest on 27 December 2014 at his home in Ho Chi Minh City for "illegal activities." Ngoc was accused of writing numerous articles critical of the government for various blogs and websites from February to December of 2014. According to the indictment, police were informed of Ngoc's activities by the state-owned Saigon Postel Corporation, which provided his Internet access. The company monitored Ngoc's online activities and filed a complaint against him for "seeking to tarnish the Communist Party's reputation."

In separate cases, on 30 March 2016, the People's Court in Ho Chi Minh City sentenced three women to prison terms of up to four years under Article 88 of the Criminal Code. Ngo Thi Minh Uoc, 57, was sentenced to four years in prison while Nguyen Thi Tri and Nguyen Thi Be Hai, both 58, received three-year prison sentences. The court also sentenced all three to two years of house arrest to be served upon completion of their prison terms. The three women were found guilty of waving the flag of the former Republic of (South) Vietnam and chanting anti-state slogans outside the US Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City on 7 July 2014 during a protest against land confiscation. Ngo Thi Minh Uoc, Nguyen Thi Tri, and Nguyen Thi Be Hai are members of the "Victims of Injustice," a movement that campaigns against land confiscation, forced evictions, police brutality, and arbitrary detentions across Vietnam. All three have been detained since their arrest at the demonstration.

The above-referenced prison sentences were imposed a week after Vietnam jailed another blogger and an activist under one of its many repressive laws. On 23 March 2016, a People's Court in Hanoi court sentenced blogger Nguyen Huu Vinh and his assistant Nguyen Thi Minh Thuy to five and three years in prison respectively for "abusing democratic freedoms to harm the interests of the State" under Article 258 of the Criminal Code. The two had been accused of "publishing online articles with bad contents and misleading information to lower the prestige and create public distrust of government offices, social organizations, and citizens."

"The draconian provisions of Vietnam's Criminal Code have no place in the legal system of a country that aims to become a preferred trading partner of the EU and the US. Washington and Brussels must use their political and economic leverage to demand an urgent and comprehensive reform of its repressive laws."

Vo Van Ai, VCHR President

Amendments to the Criminal Code, adopted by the National Assembly on 27 November 2015, failed to repeal numerous clauses that are inconsistent with Vietnam's obligations under international law. In addition to Articles 88 and 258, other provisions that fail to comply with international standards include: [1] Article 79 ('activities aimed at overthrowing the people's administration'); Article 80 ('spying'); and Article 87 ('undermining national solidarity, sowing divisions between religious and non-religious people'). Vietnamese authorities have repeatedly used these provisions to suppress the right to freedom of opinion and expression and to detain government critics.

FIDH and VCHR have consistently denounced and called for the repeal of the above-referenced 'national security' legislation that is overly broad and totally inconsistent with Vietnam's commitments under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Vietnam holds about 130 political prisoners - the largest number among Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states.
In recent weeks, the Egyptian authorities have summoned human rights workers for questioning, banned them from travel and attempted to freeze their personal funds and family assets. These steps indicate that a five-year-old investigation into the funding and registration of independent human rights groups could soon result in criminal charges, 14 international organizations said today.

The authorities should halt their persecution of these groups and drop the investigation, which could threaten human rights defenders with up to 25 years in prison, the organizations said.

Human rights activists risk prosecution, asset freezes

"Egypt's civil society is being treated like an enemy of the state, rather than a partner for reform and progress."

Said Boumedouha, Deputy Director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Programme

The investigation into the funding of local and foreign groups began in July 2011, five months after the toppling of former president Hosni Mubarak, and has already led to convictions and the closure of the Egypt offices of five international nongovernmental organizations. It is currently being conducted by a panel of three judges chosen by the Cairo Court of Appeals at the request of the Justice Ministry.

Under Egyptian law, prosecutors could charge leading human rights defenders for working without official registration or accepting foreign funding without government authorization. An amendment to the penal code passed in September 2014 by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi provides for a sentence of up to life imprisonment (which equates to 25 years in prison in Egypt) for the latter charge.

"The Egyptian authorities have moved beyond scaremongering and are now rapidly taking concrete steps to shut down the last critical voices in the country's human rights community."

Nadim Houry, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch

Asset freezes and travel bans tools to restrict dissent

The crackdown on Egypt's human rights defenders has gathered pace in recent months. On March 22, 2016, Mozn Hassan, founder and director of Nazra for Feminist Studies, was summoned for questioning as a defendant in the foreign funding case. She is due to appear before the investigating judges on March 29, 2016.

On March 19, a Cairo criminal court heard a request from the investigating judges to freeze the assets of Hossam Bahgat, a journalist and founder of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights who currently writes for the Egyptian news website Mada Masr, and Gamal Eid, a lawyer and the director of the Arab Network for Human Rights Information. The judges' request also extended to the assets of Eid's wife and 11-year-old daughter. The court postponed the hearing to March 24, and on March 21, the investigating judges also imposed a gag order preventing local media from reporting on the case.

A Cairo criminal court had already issued an order in February, at the investigating judges' request, to bar Bahgat and Eid from travelling outside Egypt.

Courts, prosecutors and security agencies have barred at least 10 human rights activists from travel in recent weeks, including Mohamed Lotfy, director of the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, and four employees of the Egyptian Democratic Academy.

Between March 13 and 15, three employees of Nazra for Feminist Studies, two employees of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, and one employee of the United Group, a law firm that has published reports on torture, were asked to appear before the investigating judges for questioning. The summoned employees included finance officers from each group.

Previously, on March 3, an investigating judge had interrogated the director of the United Group, the lawyer Negad al-Borei, on the allegation of establishing an unlicensed entity and "pressuring" the president to issue an anti-torture law.

In February, following an investigation, government tax authorities demanded that some of the independent groups under investigation pay several million Egyptian pounds in back taxes. On February 17, Health Ministry officials also issued an order to close the Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence and Torture, Egypt's leading center for such treatment, on the basis that it was performing unlicensed work. The Center has been licensed as a medical clinic since 1993 and has provided hundreds of torture victims with vital services, including counselling and legal assistance.

Foreign funding investigation

The first phase of the investigation into independent groups' fundingknown as case 173 of 2011concluded in June 2013 when a Cairo criminal court sentenced 43 foreign and Egyptian employees of five international organizations to between one and five years in prison, on charges of operating unlawfully in the country and receiving foreign funding without permission.

All of the sentences were either suspended or issued in absentia, but the decision forced the closure in Egypt of the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute, Freedom House, the International Center for Journalists and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

Following the conclusion of the first investigation into international groups, the authorities turned their attention to local organizations.

The three investigating judges resumed their work in 2014, when the Social Solidarity Ministry gave local groups an ultimatum to register under an onerous associations law dating to Hosni Mubarak's presidency. The law empowers the government to shut down any group virtually at will, freeze its assets, confiscate its property and reject nominees to its governing board.

Many of the targeted groups are licensed in some fashion, including as non-profit groups, law firms or medical clinics. Still, some have relocated their staff outside Egypt or curtailed their operations rather than register under the Mubarak-era law. But even registered groups have not escaped investigation: The Egyptian Democratic Academy had successfully registered in January 2015, and Nazra for Feminist Studies has been registered since 2007.

Both the National Security branch of the Interior Ministry and the General Intelligence Service, Egypt's external spy agency, have been gathering information on local groups' activities for some time. Their findings were contained in a September 2011 fact-finding report, parts of which were leaked to the media, that named 37 groups under investigation, including all of those affected by the recent summonses and travel bans.

Calls on the Egyptian authorities

The Egyptian authorities should withdraw the order to close the Nadeem Center and lift all travel bans and asset freezes against human rights workers, whose activities are protected by Egypt's constitution and international law, the organizations said.

The authorities should also lift the gag order, which prohibits media outlets from publishing anything on the case other than statements issued by the presiding judges until the investigations are complete. This violates the right to freedom of expression, enshrined in Egypt's constitution and international law.

Egypt should abide by its March 2015 pledge at the conclusion of its Universal Periodic Review before the United Nations Human Rights Council to "respect the free exercise of the associations defending human rights." This should include allowing groups to register under a new associations law that parliament should draft following consultation with independent groups, and which should abide by article 75 of the constitution, which protects groups from interference by the government. The law should comply with international standards on freedom of association.

The Human Rights Council and its member states should condemn the current crackdown and demand concrete measures to improve respect for fundamental human rights.
MONDAY

Resume class

A free resume class will begin at 10 a.m. at the Mockingbird Branch of the Abilene Public Library, 1214 N. Mockingbird Lane. Participants should bring their job history information and a personal email address. To register, call 325-437-7323.

Tree class

Bruce Kreitler will present a workshop on spring tree care at 6:30 p.m.at the Abilene Public Library, 202 Cedar St. Admission is free.

Other ...

Blood drive, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Colorado City High School.

Overeaters Anonymous, noon, Hinds Square Building, 100 Chestnut St., Room 112.

Schizophrenia Support Group, 1-2 p.m., Mental Health Association of Abilene, 333 Orange St. 325-673-2300.

Free swim class for people with multiple sclerosis, 5:30 p.m., YMCA, 3250 State St.

Anorexics Bulimics Anonymous, 6 p.m., Shades of Hope, 402A Mulberry St., Buffalo Gap. 800-588-4673.

Central Texas Gem & Mineral Society of Abilene, 7 p.m., 7607 Highway 277 South. 325-692-0063.

Abilene Toastmaster's Club 1071, 7 p.m., Conference Center, Texas State Technical College, 650 E. Highway 80. 325-692-7325 or abilene.toastmastersclubs.org.

Al-Anon, 7 p.m., First United Methodist Church, 1501 N. Broadway, Ballinger. 817-689-2810 or 325-977-1007.

Mid-City Al-Anon, 7 p.m., First Christian Church. 325-670-4304.

Memory Men (4-part a cappella singing), 7 p.m., Calvary Baptist Church, 1165 Minter Lane. Park on east side, enter through kitchen. 325-676-SING.

Taylor County Libertarian Party, 7 p.m., Winery at Willow Creek, 4353 S. Treadaway Blvd. 325-675-0266.

Abilene Community Band rehearsal, 7:30 p.m., Bynum Band Hall, McMurry University. 325-232-7383.

South Pioneer Al-Anon Group, 8 p.m., 3157 Russell Ave.

Alcoholics Anonymous/Narcotics Anonymous, 8 p.m., Avoca United Methodist Church. 325-773-2611.

Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse Group. 325-676-1400.

TUESDAY

Piano concert

Dr. Mark Puckett will present a piano concert at 7:15 p.m. in the Woodward-Dellis Recital Hall at Hardin-Simmons University.

Other ...

Veterans benefit meeting, 10 a.m. to noon, Disabled American Veterans, 2555 Grape St. 325-793-9699 or 325-480-6175.

Mission on the Move Soup Kitchen, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Southwest Drive Community United Methodist Church, 3025 Southwest Dr.

Abilene Southwest Rotary Club, noon, Beehive Restaurant, 442 Cedar St.

High Noon Al-Anon, noon, Southern Hills Church of Christ, 3666 Buffalo Gap Road (south end; follow the yellow signs).

Stroke/Aphasia Recovery Program support group, 1:30-2:30 p.m. West Texas Rehabilitation Center boardroom, 4601 Hartford St. 325-793-3535.

Dystonia Support Group, 5:15-6:15 p.m., Not Without Us, 3301 N. First St. Suite 117.

Take Off Pounds Sensibly (TOPS), 5:30 p.m., Brook Hollow Christian Church, 2310 S. Willis St. 325-232-7444.

Legacies Al-Anon Family Group, 5:30-6:30 p.m., Open Door Building, 3157 Russell Ave. 325-280-7584.

Dining For Women  Abilene Chapter, 6 p.m., First Christian Church, 1420 N. Third St.

Family (of Mental Health Consumers) Support Group, 6-7 p.m., Mental Health Association in Abilene, 333 Orange St. 325-673-2300.

MHAA Bipolar/Depression Peer Support Group, 6-8 p.m., Ministry of Counseling & Enrichment, 1502 N. First St. 325-673-2300.

Free certified nurturing parent class (pregnancy to toddler), 6-8 p.m., Mission Church, North Third and Mockingbird streets. 325-672-9398.

Abilene Star Chorus, 6:15 p.m., First Baptist Church, 1333 N. Third St. 325-829-1470.

Overeaters Anonymous, 6:30-7:30 p.m., Exodus Metropolitan Community Church, 1933 S. 27th St.

Al-Anon Parents Group, 7 p.m., Hillcrest Church of Christ, 650 E. Ambler Ave. Use Church Street entrance.

Al-Anon, 7 p.m., Doug Meinzer Activity Center, Knox City. 940-658-3926.

Abilene Society of Model Railroaders, 7-8:30 p.m., 2043 N. Second St.

Parents, Family, Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) of the Big Country, 7-9 p.m., Unity Church, 2842 Barrow St. 325-232-4726, www.pflagbc.weebly.com.

Unity Group of Alcoholics Anonymous, 8 p.m., Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest, 602 Meander St.

WEDNESDAY

Free tax assistance

The AARP will offer free assistance in preparing income tax forms for low- and middle-income taxpayers from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Abilene Public Library, 202 Cedar St. Doors will open at 9 a.m. Space is limited, and help will be provided on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Other ...

Overeaters Anonymous, 8 a.m., Hinds Square Building, Room 112, 100 Chestnut St.

Veterans Association Club, 10 a.m., Rose Park Senior Citizens Center (in Rose Park, South Seventh and Barrow streets).

Blood drive, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Hamlin High School.

Abilene Cactus Lions Club, 11:45 a.m., Cotton Patch Cafe, 3302 S. Clack St.

Abilene Wednesday Rotary Club, noon, Abilene Country Club, 4039 S. Treadaway. $12 for lunch. Jo Ann Wilson, 325-677-6815.

Kiwanis Club of Abilene, noon, Abilene Country Club, 4039 S. Treadaway Blvd.

Clearly Speaking Toastmaster Club, noon, Westgate Church of Christ, 402 S. Pioneer Drive. 325-795-5570.

Retired Military Wives Club business meeting, 1 p.m., Rose Park Senior Activity Center, 2625 South Seventh St. 325-677-9656 or 325-793-1490.

Free swim class for people with multiple sclerosis, 5:30 p.m., YMCA, 3250 State St.

Veterans Peer Support Group, 6 p.m., 765 Orange St. 325-670-4818.

Mid-week Al-Anon Family Group, 6-7 p.m., Open Door Building, 3157 Russell Ave. 325-698-4995.

Advanced Square Dancing, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Wagon Wheel.

Al-Anon, 7 p.m., First United Methodist Church, 1501 N. Broadway, Ballinger. 817-689-2810 or 325-977-1007.

DivorceCare support group, 7 p.m., Hillcrest Church of Christ, 650 E. Ambler Ave. 325-691-4200.

Old Town Abilene Neighborhood Association, 7 p.m., Shining Star Baptist Church, 302 Palm St. 325-676-4068.

Big Country Audubon Society, 7 p.m., Rose Park Senior Citizens Center.

Key City Coin Club, 7 p.m., Rose Park Senior Citizens Center, Room B. 325-675-0266.

American Legion Post and Auxiliary 661 meeting, 7 p.m., Lueders Legion Hall, Highway 6, Lueders.

THURSDAY

Free tax assistance

The AARP will offer free assistance in preparing income tax forms for low- and middle-income taxpayers from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Abilene Public Library, 202 Cedar St. Doors will open at 9 a.m. Space is limited, and help will be provided on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Spring festival

A spring festival will be presented from 6-8:30 p.m. at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, 1718 Pine St. Games, food, balloon animals, face painting and health screenings will be available. For more information, call 325-676-7948.

'The Shadow Box'

A production of "The Shadow Box" will be presented at 7:30 p.m. in Van Ellis Theatre at Hardin-Simmons University. Tickets are $8 for adults, $5 for students, seniors and military, and free for HSU faculty, staff and students.

Other ...

Chronic Pain and Depression Group, 11 a.m. to noon, Mental Health Association of Abilene, 333 Orange St., 325-673-2300.

Abilene Founder Lions Club, 11:30 a.m., Al's Mesquite Grill, 4801 Buffalo Gap Road.

Kiwanis Club of Greater Abilene, noon, Beehive Restaurant, 442 Cedar St. 325-695-0092.

Mental Illness Open Support Group, 1-2 p.m., Mental Health Association of Abilene, 333 Orange St. 325-673-2300.

Blood drive, 1-6 p.m., First Baptist Church, Albany.

Abilene 42 Club, 6 p.m., Rose Park Senior Center.

Teen Recovery Group, 6-7 p.m., Mission Abilene, 3001 N. Third St.

Free certified nurturing parent class (all ages), 6-8 p.m., Mission Church, North Third and Mockingbird streets. 325-672-9398.

Take Off Pounds Sensibly, 6:30 p.m. Brook Hollow Christian Church. Weigh-in begins at 5:30 p.m. 325-665-5052.

Free swim class for people with multiple sclerosis, 6:30 p.m., YMCA, 3250 State St.

Gambler's Anonymous, 6:30 p.m., Unity Spiritual Living Center, 2842 Barrow St. 325-338-2575.

Round Dancing, 7 p.m., Wagon Wheel. 325-829-1517.

South Pioneer Al-Anon Group, 8 p.m., 3157 Russell Ave.

Unity Group of Alcoholics Anonymous, 8 p.m., Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest, 602 Meander St.
This column usually concentrates on youth activities. An activity this weekend, however, is an excellent opportunity for people of all ages to contribute to their community. And other than a bit of driving, there is no cost or special skill required to participate.

The annual Don't Mess With Texas Trash-Off will take place Saturday. Registration will take place through Thursday at Abilene City Hall, 555 Walnut St., between the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Volunteers will be assigned to pick up litter at designated sites in Abilene and provided with cleanup supplies.

This is a great way to show children the value of contributing to their community and cleaning up the environment. Participation by adults can set an example  and may even open some doorways of communication or bonding.

How often do you see a trashed-out area that you wish someone would clean up? How often do you get to spend time with your kids (and maybe even some of their friends) doing something together? Now is your chance to do both.

And the cost is next to nothing  unless you agree to feed them afterward. But then again, why not? You get to watch them having fun with their friends, another rewarding experience.

There's a lot of pluses and not many minuses. Think about it  then get up and do it.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Old Comanche Trail Pinewood Derby, Saturday, Gorman. Registration from 8:30-9:30 a.m.; racing begins at 10. Cost: $5 per car. Includes "open" category for parents and siblings. 325-677-2688.

Sporting Clays Classic, April 16, Camp Tonkawa (next to Lake Abilene State Park). Fundraiser for Texas Trails Boy Scout Council. Check in at 7 a.m., 9:30 a.m. or noon. Launch party 6 p.m. April 15, Taylor County Expo Center Round Building. Prices for individuals or teams. Must register by April 13. Register at www.texastrailsbsa.com.

Cub-O-Ree at Camp Tonkawa, April 24-26. Events are likely to include a zip line, human foosball, BB shooting, games and more. Cost is $15 per person; $60 for a family of five or more. Cost includes lunch and supper Saturday; provide your own breakfast each day.

Tot Spot, for children ages 3-5 (and an adult), 9:30 or 11 a.m. first Thursday and Friday of each month, The Grace Museum, 102 Cypress St. Free for museum members, $5 for nonmembers. Reservations required; 325-673-4587 or www.thegracemuseum.org.

National Center for Children's Illustrated Literature, 102 Cedar St., 325-673-4586, offers free art activities each Saturday from 1-4 p.m.

DEADLINE

Sunday for Coder Girls for Girl Scouts of all ages, April 16, Girl Scout office, 901 Avenue B, Brownwood. Create an online game, video or program. Cost: $5 per girl. Programs suitable for all age levels. Register at www.gsctx.org; under the "Events" tab, narrow your search to the Brownwood region. 800-346-3215.

Contact Carl Kieke at 325-673-3552; kiekec@suddenlink.net; or mail to Carl Kieke, 1417 N. 7th St. No. 2, Abilene TX 79601-4948. Deadline is Tuesday for publication the following Monday.
Halloween events, fall festivals pack October in Abilene, Big Country

From family-friendly to frightful, there are plenty of opportunities to don the costumes and scare up some treats.
Last fall, it looked like the Agriculture and Environmental Science program was coming to an end.

"With some retirements and transfers in the department faculty, one option was to phase out the program," according to department chair Dr. Ed Brokaw.

He said the University's Faculty Council reviewed the proposal and it was felt that program needed to continue. In fact, this semester, student numbers are the highest the department has seen in several years.

The extracurricular program such as student organizations suffered, because of sponsor shortage, but now plans are in place to fill key positions and continue student involvement.

"We have utilized several qualified individuals in the role of adjunct instructors to teach classes filling the void," said Brokaw. This fall the Range and Environmental position vacated by Emmitt Miller last year is to be filled and other positions are slated to be filled, he said.

To provide hands-on experience the University Farm north of Abilene is the site of several special projects as well as an equine program being offered. Student research projects are in the planning stages.

The Department of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences has three major degree plans:

The Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science offers training for wildlife and natural resource management, ecotourism, and environmental consulting and public policy.

Agribusiness majors are prepared for businesses allied with agriculture, including banks and other lending agencies, real estate, insurance companies, farm supply and equipment companies, firms processing and marketing agricultural products, and public agencies associated with agriculture

A Bachelor of Science in Animal Science addresses production and management on the farm or ranch, veterinary work, and advanced scientific study and research. Several graduates of this program have been accepted and have completed a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine throughout the nation, and one recent alumni completed a veterinary degree in the United Kingdom.

A related course, Companion Animal Management covers the practical aspects of behavior, nutrition, breeds and breeding, reproduction, health and management of dogs, cats and other animals that are generally considered to be human companions is available.

"There is a need nationwide for ag majors" according to Brokaw. "We have an excellent placement record, the key is that the student must be willing to locate anywhere jobs are available."

The overall objective of the department is provide the best education possible, Brokaw said.

With 41 years at Abilene Christian University Ag department and in his second term as department head, Brokaw is working to fulfill that goal. Being a former student of ACU, and after completing a Ph.D. in Animal Science from Oregon State, he returned to make it his life's career.

Brokaw said the department will be at full capacity with the 2016 fall semester.

"From all indications, we are looking forward to a large freshman class," he said.

The department has many scholarship opportunities available. Detailed information of the activities and programs offered are available at the department website www.acu.edu/agenv
It may be several days before investigators determine what started the fire that destroyed the Christian Service Center Saturday afternoon, an Abilene Fire Department battalion chief said.

"It's going to be difficult," said Michael Burden, Sunday afternoon. Burden said there was no indication the fire was deliberately started.

Burden said the blaze was essentially extinguished around 8 p.m. Saturday after starting sometime around 4 p.m. On Sunday morning, the walls were pushed in as investigators searched for smoldering spots that could reignite. Burden said the property was turned back over to Christian Service Center at around 2:30 p.m. on Sunday.

While the cause of the fire is unknown, it is no mystery what caused the blaze to grow so quickly. The building is made up of three World War II barracks from Camp Barkeley that were connected to another building to form a horseshoe-shape structure. It was filled with clothing, plastic and cardboard boxes. The building was made entirely of wood with a metal roof.

"It's what we call a heavy fuel load," said Brandon Brown, a lieutenant with the fire department who was on the scene Sunday morning.

Burden said the metal roof compounded the problem, making it potentially dangerous for the firefighters.

"What you had in effect was a wood oven," he said, adding that some of the firefighters who went into the structure early during the fire had the decals burned off of their helmets. He said no one was injured during the blaze.

Burden said that a concern was to make sure the fire didn't spread to other buildings nearby.

"We got exposures contained pretty early," he said.

IN OPERATION FOR 40 YEARS

Christian Service Center has been operating at North 9th and Mesquite streets since 1968. Jackie Warmsley was a volunteer at the center from 1968-78 and she remembered when the barracks were installed.

"The government certainly got their money's worth out of those barracks," she said.

Warmsley said the center was a project of a group of Churches of Christ and was later operated by the University Church of Christ before becoming its own entity. She said the program was the dream of Peg Smith.

"It was kind of an experiment to see if something like that would work," she said. "We wanted to have it where the problem was, in a neighborhood where it was needed most. We were immediately successful."

Warmsley said she went to the location last night, along with many other people, including those who have come to depend upon it for periodic help.

"I was so sad," she said. "But, I just believe something better will happen. Jim Clark (executive director of the center) is a good friend of mine and he's a very good, capable leader.

"I know beyond a shadow of doubt that God is in that program," Warmsley continued. "He is not deserting that program."
Harold Christian, famous for his barbecue, died Sunday evening, according to family members.

Christian ran Harold's Pit Bar-B-Q until 2011 when he retired due to health problems. The restaurant at North 10th and Walnut was started by his father, Tobe Christian, in the late-1950s.

In addition to serving up mouth-watering barbecue, Christian was known to belt out a hymn for customers when he was not needed behind the counter.

In an interview in 1981, Christian said, "I'm thankful for all the people, especially the ones who have always been here, who've always eaten our food and who have let me serve them. I've always wanted everyone to feel welcome. There aren't any strangers here.

"When you do something year after year, when you've worked at a place, had a place, grown attached to the customers, served in the city on different boards, worked all those days, it's kind of hard when you mention closing up."

GRANT BOONE REMEMBERS

"Just hearing of the passing of Harold Christian. A giant has passed. He came to Abilene as a kid and helped his father, Toby, open a barbeque restaurant. He later took over and changed the name to Harold's. The facade wouldn't wow you; the food could change your life. And the kitchen? You could've eaten off of the floor if he'd have let you, which he wouldn't have because then someone would have had to clean it.

"He was a powerful force in Abilene's African-American community - I called him Abilene's first black mayor - and, one "Q Basket" at a time, helped the city navigate its way through the choppy waters of integration. His beautiful wife, Drucilla, said African-American folks from out of town would regularly call the store to ask them to get word to someone in the area about births or deaths.

"Twenty-five years ago, Amy Nichols Boone and I had our rehearsal dinner at Harold's. He honored us, as he did so many of his patrons, by singing a few of his favorite hymns, His beautiful baritone voice still echoes.

"Harold was a man who knew both joy and deep sorrow. He loved Drucilla and his children and grandchildren fiercely. I am happy he is now at peace. There aren't many I've known who've earned it more.

"I call on Mayor Archibald and the Abilene City Council to carefully consider a way to appropriately honor this man on the occasion of his passing. Whatever they choose, it won't be too great."
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As the Cambodian legislature began considering controversial legislation that seeks to regulate trade unions on Monday, security forces injured at least one union official as they violently broke up a labor demonstration by opponents of the measure.

The clash took place after more than 50 union supporters gathered to protest outside of the national assembly complex in an effort to show lawmakers they are unhappy with the legislation.

While Prime Minister Hun Sen contends that the law is aimed at regulating the country's 3,400 trade unions, labor leaders and human rights groups say it is an attempt to dilute the power of organized labor's power..

The legislation still needed approval by the Senate on Monday afternoon, but its final passage is likely a foregone conclusion as the upper house is dominated by lawmakers from Hun Sens Cambodian Peoples Party.

Garment factory owners want to restrict the number of unions, blaming them for the poor labor relations they claim threatens to undermine a lucrative sector of the national economy.

Around 700,000 factory workers form the bedrock of Cambodia's $7 billion textile industry, which supplies brands including Gap, Nike and H&M.

Critics of the legislation have expressed concern over provisions that force unions to report their finances to the government and increase authorities power to close down labor groups.

The whistle blew

Before the union supporters clashed with police, Daun Penh district authorities blew a whistle as a signal to chase the protesters away from the barricades authorities erected to block the road leading to the national assembly complex.

Suddenly, the security forces pushed the protesters away, telling them to do their protests from the street. When protestors argued with police, security forces beat Sut Chet, a union official from the Collective Union of Movement of Workers.

Sut Chet, whose left eye was injured, said he didnt provoke the attack by security forces.

I just went to see them, and they just beat me, he told RFA. I didnt say anything, or curse them. They used both fists and walkie-talkies.

Another union official, Yang Sophorn, who was also pushed hard by security forces, said the attack further erodes confidence in the Cambodian government.

We used to have a firm belief that we put our trust and our rights in them because we voted for them to protect us, she said. But instead, they did not even protect the peoples interests. Thats because the union laws are laws that will make workers lose their rights, and when we come to protest for those rights back, they just used violence on us.

Phnom Penh City Halls spokesman blamed a group of female union protesters for starting the fracas by grabbing the collar of a security force officer.

It was not without reason, he said, adding that the protest was illegal. What is not allowed by law and what is allowed by law, we should think of those rationally. City Hall always states that a gathering to demonstrate or protest or any gathering for that matter must have permission first.

Nai Vongda, vice president of the human rights watchdog Adhoc, appealed to the international community to pressure the Cambodian government.

We saw that the security forces of the Daun Penh district are still behaving violently towards the protesters who protest peacefully, he told RFA. We would like to condemn and appeal to the international community to again review their relations and the aide they give to this government, because of their crackdowns on unions and threats to human rights.

Labor Minister Sam Heng and Pen Panha, who chairs the Committee in Charge of Laws and Justice of the National Assembly, told the assembly that they changed 37 points of 22 articles in the draft law, but they failed to explain what was changed

Lawmaker Ith Sam Heng defended the move, saying approval of the law shows the close attention by the National Assembly and ensures freedom in vocational organizations and well-being in the trades, which are a core factor of stability in production and attract more investment in Cambodia."

A senior official with the Licadho human rights organization told RFA the changes are just window dressing.

There are a number of articles that are contrary to international standards because the international standards call for openness for the workers to establish unions without restrictions, Am Sam Ath said in RFAs call-in show on Monday.

Reported by Samnang Ramm for RFA's Khmer Service. Translated by Pganawath Kuhn. Written in English by Brooks Boliek.
A global investigation into a Panamanian law firm by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and other news organizations names prominent Chinese.

Chinese censors moved quickly on Monday to delete social media posts linked to a massive investigation that revealed the use of offshore tax havens that some high-ranking Chinese leaders and their families may have used to conceal their fortunes.

At least eight current or former members of the all-powerful Politburo standing committee are among the more than 140 political figures worldwide who are linked to the offshore tax havens, according to a global investigation into the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and more than 100 other news organizations.

Included in the names uncovered by the investigation are the brother-in-law of Chinese President Xi Jinping, Deng Jiagui, and the daughter of late former premier Li Peng, Li Xiaolin, the ICIJ reports.

According to the examination of some 11.5 million documents, Deng set up two British Virgin Islands companies in 2009, while Li and her husband Liu Zhiyuan were the beneficiaries of Foundation Silo, a Lichtenstein foundation that was the sole shareholder of Cofic Investments Ltd., a company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands during Li Peng's tenure as premier.

Geneva-based lawyer Charles-Andre Junod, who was a director of Cofic Investments, declined to comment when contacted by the ICIJ, but said he has always respected relevant laws.

Li Xiaolin did not respond to repeated requests for comment, the report said.

Chinese censors strike quickly

Coming against a background of growing public anger at the huge fortunes and overseas passports accumulated by the country's ruling class, the ICIU revelations could embarrass Chinas ruling elite, if the Chinese people could see the reports.

Chinese sensors took quick action to make that as difficult as possible as news articles and comments on the leaks were rapidly removed from China's tightly controlled Internet, despite being among the day's top search terms on the Twitter-like service Sina Weibo.

While Beijings censorship may have prevented most Chinese from seeing the reports, those who saw them werent easily fooled.

User @dabingzhanjiangci quipped: "By deleting posts at such speeds, they are admitting their guilt," while user @yikesaiting agreed. "All the posts have now been deleted. They really are showing their guilt," the user commented on one of the last remaining posts on the story on Monday.

Others called for more information on offshore dealings linked to China's leaders.

"Actually, I'd rather see reports about our own leaders in China," user @SFC-wule wrote, while user @dapianshoufa wrote: "Are there any from China? ... This must be fully investigated!"

The post they were commenting on was deleted soon afterwards, however, returning the message: "Sorry, there is an error with the page you visited, or it cannot be found."

Hebei-based veteran journalist Zhu Xinxin said the censorship of reports carrying the "Panama documents" hashtag on social media suggests a guilty conscience on the part of Chinese officials.

"Reports of this nature are extremely embarrassing [for the government], and they are terrified by them," Zhu said. "The fact that they have been deleting them and closing down accounts is testament to the truthfulness of those reports, there's no doubt about it."

While the ICIJ's report said it isn't illegal in itself to have an offshore company, the revelations are by no means the first to point to carefully hidden wealth linked to Chinese leaders and their families.

Not the first time

In 2012, China's Internet censors blocked access to the Bloomberg website after the news agency described in detail the multimillion-dollar assets of belonging to Xi's relatives while he was still vice-president.

According to U.S.-based economist Qin Weiping, the leaks show that President Xi's long-running anti-corruption campaign is unlikely to have scratched the surface of official corruption in China.

"All the anti-corruption campaign has done up till now is treat the symptoms, not the causes," Qin told RFA on Monday.

"The entire political and financial elite have been robbing ordinary Chinese people of wealth, right from the Politburo standing committee all the way down to the village level of government," he said. "This is an elite that has been built up over the past few decades; they're hardly going to start investigating their own behavior or opposing it.

Chinese authorities have jailed dozens of activists in recent years for publicly calling on the government to reveal details of officials' wealth. Several high-profile members of the New Citizens' Movement are currently serving jail terms on public order offenses for anti-graft activism.

"They always do their utmost to cover up things like this, Zhu said.

Reported by Yang Fan for RFA's Mandarin Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.
Myanmar President Htin Kyaw (2nd R) and Aung San Suu Kyi (L), chairwoman of the National League for Democracy, attend a parliamentary session in Naypyidaw, March 30, 2016.

Military deputies in Myanmars parliament said Monday that they wanted more time to discuss a bill that will make Aung San Suu Kyi a state counselor, fearing that the position will give her power equal to that of the president and upset the balance of power among the three branches of government.

The bill, which passed in the upper house last week, was submitted to the lower house where military deputies, who control a quarter of the seats in parliament, objected to the measure, saying it is unconstitutional.

We need more time to discuss this bill, said Brigadier General Maung Maung, a member of the lower houses Bill Committee. If we rushed to approve a bill in such a short time, it could call into question democratic standards and the existence of transparency.

Our military representatives will discuss amending this bill, according to the constitution, he said. If this bill is approved in accordance with the constitution, then military MPs [members of parliament] will support it.

Lower house speaker Win Myint told lawmakers to submit any objections or proposed amendments to the bill for discussion on Tuesday.

Tun Tun Hein, a National League for Democracy (NLD) party deputy who chairs the 15-member Bill Committee, submitted a report about the NLDs findings on the draft bill, with the committees recommendation that the legislation be passed.

The lower house, like the upper house, is dominated by NLD lawmakers, who won a majority of the votes in last Novembers general elections.

Two new ministers

In another development, President Htin Kyaw has nominated two bureaucrats to replace NLD chairwoman Aung San Suu Kyi as head of two of the four ministries to which he appointed her.

He made the move after questions arose last week as to how the 70-year-old would manage to lead the foreign affairs, education, electric power and energy, and Presidents Office ministries to which she had been appointed, in addition to remaining NLD chairwoman and taking the state counselor post, if both houses of parliament approve the bill.

Htin Kyaw has put forward Myo Thein Gyi, director general of the Department of Higher Education, as education minister, and Pe Zin Tun, permanent secretary of ministry of electric power and energy, as head of that ministry.

Regarding the presidents nominees for both ministers, we will announce the appointments or the submission of proposals if someone wants to object to them during tomorrows Union parliament session, said upper house speaker Mahn Win Khaing Than.

If there is no objection, the Union parliament will announce that the nominees are appointed, he said.

Aung San Suu Kyi will remain minister of foreign affairs and the Presidents Office.

Though she is barred from the presidency by a provision in the current constitution that forbids anyone with foreign-born relatives from occupying the nations top office, she has vowed to rule from a position above Htin Kyaw, her longtime friend and aide.

Htin Kyaw also sought parliaments approval for the appointments of Tun Tun Oo as attorney general and Maw Than as auditor general.

Tun Tun Oo was deputy attorney general in the previous government under former President Thein Sein, and Maw Than is a retired rector of the Yangon Institute of Economics.

Gifts for bureaucrats

Aung San Suu Kyi, in her role as minister of the Presidents Office, issued a nine-point set of guidelines on Friday regarding the acceptance of gifts by government ministry employees and staff in state and divisional governments to improve government transparency and combat the bribery and corruption that have crippled Myanmars development.

The guidelines require public servants to report to their departmental heads any gifts they accept or decline.

They also specify that bureaucrats cannot accept gifts valued at 25,000 kyats (U.S. $21) or more from individuals or organizations, and that the total value of gifts received annually should not exceed 100,000 kyats (U.S. $83).

The 25,000-kyat limit is less than one-tenth the threshold set by the previous administration, according to a report in the online journal The Irrawaddy.

In addition, bureaucrats must distribute flowers and fruit that they receive to staff members.

However, civil servants are allowed to accept gifts valued at less than 100,000 kyats on religious holidays such as the Buddhist celebration Thadingyut or Christmas, when gift-giving is common.

Officials also can accept gifts worth up to and including 400,000 kyats (U.S. $332) as well as travel, scholarships, and medical expenses from foreign governments, The Irrawaddy reported.

Myanmar ranked number 147 of a total 167 countries on Berlin-based Transparency Internationals Corruption Perceptions Index in 2015.



Reported by Win Naung Toe for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
Three Tibetans detained since last year for attempting to reclaim land seized by local authorities went on trial last week in western Chinas Sichuan province, joined by a fourth man who had earlier been released but was then taken back into custody, sources said.



The four were part of a group of Tibetans who had briefly reoccupied confiscated community land in Thangkor town in Dzoege (in Chinese, Ruoergai) county in the Ngaba (Aba) Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, a local source told RFAs Tibetan Service.



On March 31, three Tibetans who were under detention and another person who had previously been released were put on trial by the Dzoege Peoples Court, the source said speaking on condition of anonymity and identifying the men as Jigje Kyab, Rinchen Dorje, Phurko, and Kurde Yeshe.



Four family members of each of the accused were allowed to attend the hearing, with no others permitted to witness the proceedings, RFAs source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.



They were also subjected to a thorough search before entering the courtroom, he said.



During the trial, each defendant was asked who had been responsible for marking and fencing off the disputed land, which had been taken from them five years before for a government development project, though no developer had begun work on the land and local authorities were instead leasing it out to private individuals.



During the proceedings, Jigje Kyab asked the court to spare Rinchen Dorje, who is in poor health, and to send him to prison in his place, with Rinchen Dorje asking that he be sentenced instead of Jigje Kyab, who is still young and has his whole future ahead of him, RFAs source said.



Protest in Chengdu



Entrusted by community members with documents supporting Tibetan claims to the confiscated property, Kyab had briefly gone into hiding last year so that he could present the communitys case to higher provincial authorities, sources told RFA in earlier reports.



He had also played a role in organizing a Jan. 28, 2015 protest by 20 Thangkor-area Tibetans in the Sichuan provincial capital Chengdu, sources said.



In that incident, authorities quickly broke up the protest and detained 11 Tibetans after the group petitioned in front of government buildings during a meeting of the Sichuan Provincial Peoples Congress for the return of their land.



Separately, a second Tibetan source confirmed to RFA that the men had gone on trial.



All four have been put on trial, and it is said that a verdict could come in about a weeks time, the source, a Thangkor resident, said.



The requisitioning of rural land for lucrative property deals by cash-hungry local governments triggers thousands of mass incidents across China every year.



Many result in violent suppression, the detention of the protests main organizers, and intense pressure on the local population to comply with the governments wishes.



Reported by Lobe Socktsang for RFAs Tibetan Service. Translated by Karma Dorjee. Written in English by Richard Finney.
A Tibetan writer sentenced to three years in prison in February for writing material deemed politically sensitive by Chinas government has appealed his prison term, saying that Chinas constitution protects the right to express ones views in writing.



Shokjang, also called Druklo, was jailed on Feb. 17 by the Peoples Intermediate Court in Rebgong (in Chinese, Tongren) county in the Malho (Huangnan) prefecture in northwestern Chinas Qinghai province, a local source told RFAs Tibetan Service.



Now, Shokjang has protested his sentence to a higher court in Qinghai, arguing in a 17-page appeal, a copy of which has been obtained by RFA, that his writings are protected by Chinese law, RFAs source said.



Writing in both Tibetan and Chinese, Shokjang said that Chinas constitution guarantees the freedom of expression, allowing one to express ones views in writing, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.



He offered an apology if anything he wrote had mistakenly violated specific provisions of the constitution without his knowledge, he said.



He also said that his wife and children are counting the minutes and seconds until his return, and therefore hopes for a speedy and positive decision by the appeals court, the source said.



Shokjangs family have not been allowed to visit him since he was taken into custody, he added.



Shokjang was secretly detained on March 19, 2015, around the same time that a friend of his was also taken away, a source in the region told RFA in an earlier report.



Before his detention, he had written about the increased presence of Chinese armed security forces in the Rebgong area and about crackdowns on Tibetans, the source said.



Shokjang had also written an article that month about conditions in a school in Kangtsa (Gangcha) county in the Tsojang (Haibei) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai.



Shokjang was among the 23 journalists and 83 bloggers that the ruling Chinese Communist Party put behind bars in 2015, according to an end-of-year report by the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF).



Reported by Lhuboom for RFAs Tibetan Service. Translated by Karma Dorjee. Written in English by Richard Finney.
A new report based on leaked documents from a Panamanian law firm says that the daughters of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev hold a significantly greater stake than previously known in a consortium that worked jointly with the government to develop a lucrative gold mine.

On April 3, an international network of journalists published a series of reports based on documents about some 214,000 offshore companies created by the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

In a new report published on April 4, the Sarajevo-based Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) says the documents show that Aliyev's daughters, Leyla and Arzu, control a 56 percent stake in the consortium to develop the Chovdar gold field, which at one point was estimated to hold reserves worth up to $2.5 billion.

This is considerably greater than the 11 percent stake held by the two women that RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service and the OCCRP documented in a 2012 joint investigation.

The co-author of that report was Azerbaijani investigative journalist and RFE/RL contributor Khadija Ismayilova, who is currently in prison on embezzlement and tax-evasion charges widely believed to be retribution for her reports on corruption involving senior government officials.

Ismayilova is credited as a co-author in the April 4 OCCRP report based on the leaked documents from the Panamanian law firm.

The Aliyevs did not respond to repeated requests for comment, the OCCRP said in the report.

Aliyev's critics have long accused him of marshaling the state's resources to enrich himself and his family, allegations that the Azerbaijani president has dismissed. But the leaked Panamanian documents appear to add to a larger picture of his family's access to lucrative state deals.

In two 2007 decrees, the Azerbaijani government assigned the right to develop the Chovdar field and five other sites to a consortium called Azerbaijan International Mineral Resources Operating Company, Ltd. (AIMROC).

AIMROC, which was formed by presidential decree the previous year, controlled a 70 percent stake in the mines, while the government controlled 30 percent.

Establishing the identities of the ultimate beneficiaries of AIMROC has long proven difficult, given the secretive nature of the offshore companies behind the consortium.

The 2012 investigation by RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service and the OCCRP found that Leyla and Arzu Aliyeva were listed as senior managers in three Panamanian firms that own U.K.-based Globex International, which holds an 11 percent stake in AIMROC.

The other three companies in the AIMROC joint venture are obscure offshore entities called Londex Resources, S.A, Willy and Meyris S.A., and Fargate Mining Corporation.

Until the leak of the Panamanian law firm's documents, the true owners of these companies had been a mystery. But according to the records, Aliyev's daughters control Londex Resources, which has a 45 percent stake in AIMROC, the OCCRP said in its April 4 report.

This puts the two women's control of the consortium at 56 percent, the OCCRP concludes.

The OCCRP report notes that the development of the Chovdar gold field has ground to a halt, with workers complaining of unpaid salaries.
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
Air France has decided to allow female cabin crew to decline to work in the company's newly resumed flights to Iran, for which they must wear a head scarf.

The French national carrier said on April 4 that it will appoint a "special unit" to replace those who do not want to fly to Iran.

Gilles Gateau, an Air France human resources official, told French media that "any woman assigned to the Paris-Tehran flight who for reasons of personal choice would refuse to wear the head scarf upon leaving the plane will be reassigned to another destination."

The airline is expected to start three flights weekly between Paris and Tehran beginning on April 17.

An internal company memo regarding Tehran flights says female flight attendants would be required to wear the uniform's long-sleeved jacket and trousers, rather than a knee-length dress on board.

They must also wear a head scarf on their arrival in Tehran.

The head-scarf rule is already in place in Air France's flights to Saudi Arabia and some other destinations.

Based on reporting by AFP and AP
Iran will continue to increase its oil production until it recovers the market share it lost when international sanctions were imposed due to concerns about Tehran's nuclear program.

Iran's Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh's comments are a blow to a deal struck in February between Russia and Saudi Arabia to curb falling global oil prices.

Zanganeh was speaking on April 3 ahead of an April 17 meeting of oil producers in Qatar to discuss a possible output freeze.

Despite his comments, Zanganeh was quoted by the semiofficial Mehr news agency as saying that "the agreement between the world's top OPEC and non-OPEC exporters such as Saudi Arabia and Russia to freeze output at January levels is a positive step.

On the possibility of his attending the Doha meeting in Qatar, he said he would certainly attend the meeting "if he had time," Mehr reported.

Based on reporting by Mehr and AFP




Dozens of people have been killed in separate militant attacks across Iraq.

The attacks on April 4 left at least 25 dead and over 60 wounded.

In the deadliest single attack, a suicide bomber struck a street in the southern port city of Basra, killing five people and wounding 10.

The Islamic State (IS) extremist group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Another attack targeted a convoy of the Popular Mobilization Force, a coalition of Shi'ite militias, killing five, in the town of Mashahdeh, north of Baghdad.

Another bomber struck a joint police and army checkpoint in north Baghdad, killing four people.

A fourth bomber hit militiamen in a restaurant south of the city of Nasiriyah, killing at least three people.

Two Iraqi security personnel were killed in a suicide car-bomb attack in Anbar Province, west of Baghdad, and a third was killed south of Baghdad by an explosive device.

Two people were also killed when mortar rounds hit the district of Abu Ghraib, west of the capital.

IS militants, who have been losing ground, frequently carry out suicide bombings targeting civilians and security forces in Iraq.

Based on reporting by AFP and Reuters
Faced with growing competition and rising battlefield casualties, the Islamic State (IS) militant group has taken a family-friendly approach to its efforts to draw fresh recruits from Central Asia.

Two videos released last week by the extremists' Russian-language propaganda wing make use of fatherly -- or grandfatherly -- militants to sell recruits on fighting for IS.

One 30-minute video, in Uzbek with Russian subtitles, features a veteran Uzbek militant in his 60s urging Uzbeks of all ages to come to IS-controlled territory.

A second, shorter, clip shows two Kazakh militants and their sons calling on Muslims to leave Kazakhstan and join them in Syria.

Recruitment Drive

The videos produced by Furat Media are part of an intensified drive by the IS group to recruit Central Asian militants.

This move is likely an attempt to replenish numbers after heavy battlefield losses in both Syria and Iraq.

It is also likely a response to increased competition in the recruitment of Central Asian militants from Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, the Al-Nusra Front.

Though IS and Nusra share similar ideologies, they have demonstrated different strategies in Syria: while IS has declared a "caliphate," Nusra has focused on cooperating with other groups to defeat Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The focus on fighting Assad is a powerful recruitment message for Central Asians, including those already in Syria. Nusra absorbed a major Uzbek militant group, Katiba Tawhid wol-Jihod, in September 2015.

The drive also comes as IS recruitment of Central Asians is getting tougher amid security crackdowns, including one in which a group of 16 Uzbeks allegedly involved in recruiting for IS were arrested in Moscow on March 30.

Uzbeks living in Turkey, meanwhile, have reported being interrogated after flying home to Uzbekistan as part of heightened counterterrorism measures.

A Family Affair

Each of the new videos emphasizes that families can and should move to IS-controlled territory.

The Kazakh recruitment video opens with shots of militants with their children: a young teen, a toddler, and a baby. Both militants featured in the video say they moved to Syria with their families.

The first militant identifies himself as Marat Maulenov, who according to RFE/RL's Kazakh Service worked as a Russian teacher in a school in the South Kazakhstan region before traveling to Syria with his wife and six children.

The second militant says he is Rinat Zhumabekov, an ethnic Kazakh from Orsk in Russia's Orenburg Oblast. News reports say Zhumabekov disappeared after traveling to Turkey in August 2015 with his 8-year-old son.

Abu Amina, the veteran militant in the Uzbek recruitment video, emphasizes that he has brought his family with him to wage "jihad." He describes how he traveled with his 60-year-old wife, daughters, and grandchildren to IS-controlled Syria in 2015 after fighting for several years with Uzbek militants in Afghanistan. The video features shots of Abu Amina with a small boy, apparently his youngest grandson.

Deirdre Tynan of the International Crisis Group says there have been previous cases in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan where family groups have traveled to Syria, or where some family members have left first and then others have joined later.

"I think this is also a key illustration that the appeal of life in Syria under Islamic State is not confined to those who would seek a combat role," Tynan tells RFE/RL.

Child Militants

A key message of both videos is that teenage militants are among the Central Asians fighting in IS-controlled lands, and that younger children are also getting involved in "jihad."

The Kazakh video shows shots of a teenage boy carrying a gun and a young child who threatens Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev.

In the Uzbek video, veteran militant Abu Amina boasts that his teenage grandson is fighting alongside him in Syria and he says that boys as young as 14 are on the battlefield.

Prestige, Respect, And Trust

The videos use militants whose backgrounds are intended to inspire respect and trust among potential recruits to make the case that IS has the "correct" Islamist ideology, a tactic that is also a response to increased competition for recruitment with Nusra, which has accused IS of killing Muslims, among other crimes.

Zhumabekov from the Kazakh video says that he is a former law enforcement officer, while Abu Amina from the Uzbek recruitment video says that before joining IS he spent seven years in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he fought alongside the notorious Uzbek militant Najmiddin Jalolov in the Islamic Jihad Union, a militant group affiliated to Al-Qaeda that conducted attacks in Uzbekistan.

Whether the recruitment drive will result in increased numbers of Central Asians joining the IS group remains to be seen. But the two videos have been widely spread online, reflecting Furat Media's increased reach via social media, including on the Telegram messaging service.
Armenia has warned that renewed hostilities over Azerbaijan's breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh could lead to "full-scale war" and the recognition of the territory as an independent state, while Baku has announced new fatalities among soldiers fighting separatist forces and threatened to expand its operations along the front line.

Azerbaijan's disclosure of three deaths brings to 15 the number of its soldiers reported killed amid renewed fighting in the South Caucasus mountain enclave, while 18 combat deaths have been reported by the Armenian-backed separatists.

The destruction of heavy military equipment has been claimed by both sides.

Armenian Defense Ministry said on April 4 that five people had been killed in an Azerbaijani drone attack on a bus carrying Armenian volunteers to Nagorno-Karabakh.

There was no immediate comment from the Azerbaijani side.

Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in a conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh for years. Nagorno-Karabakh, populated mainly by ethnic Armenians, declared independence from Azerbaijan amid a 1988-94 war that claimed an estimated 30,000 lives and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

Diplomatic efforts to settle the conflict have brought little progress, and there have been sporadic flare-ups of fighting.

A day after the worst outbreak of violence in nearly two decades broke out early on April 2, Azerbaijan announced a unilateral cease-fire.

Karabakh military officials said the territory was ready to discuss the terms of a truce, but only in the context of "restoring former positions." The West, Russia, and Iran have appealed to all sides to exhibit restraint.

Speaking at an April 4 meeting with the ambassadors of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Sarkisian said international appeals would fall on deaf ears unless world powers forced the Azerbaijani leadership to abide by the 1994 truce that stopped the war.

Sarkisian said the OSCE must also bolster the cease-fire by increasing the number of his field observers deployed in the conflict zone and "urgently" introducing a mechanism for investigations of cease-fire violations.

WATCH: Homes Damaged In Latest Nagorno-Karabakh Fighting

He warned that a further escalation of the fighting would be fraught with "unpredictable and irreversible consequences, including a full-scale war."

"I must point out here that I have repeatedly stated that if hostilities continue and become large-scale, the Republic of Armenia will recognize Karabakh's independence," the Armenian president added.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in a televised meeting of top advisers on April 2 that troops had achieved a "great victory," while vowing to "observe the cease-fire and after that we will try to solve the conflict peacefully.

Each side has accused the other of targeting civilians.

On April 4, Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry warned that "Armenia will bear the blame for possible counterattacks and retaliatory measures by Azerbaijan's armed forces."

"In the event of continued Armenian provocations, we will launch a full-scale operation along the entire front line, using all kinds of weapons," Azerbaijani Defense Ministry spokesman Vagif Dargahly told journalists.

WATCH: Children Hospitalized After Nagorno-Karabakh Clashes

Separatist forces said Azerbaijani troops had "intensified shelling" of their positions in the region's northeast and southeast sections of the "line of contact" -- which effectively serves as a front line separating the opposing sides -- using mortars, rocket-propelled artillery, and tanks.

Armenian Defense Ministry spokesman Artsrun Hovhannisyan said the separatists "seriously advanced at certain sectors of the front line and took up new positions."

Azerbaijan dismissed the report. Its Defense Ministry said it was in control of several strategic heights in Karabakh that were captured by Azeri troops backed by tanks and heavy artillery on April 2.

The ministry said Azerbaijani forces responded to the Armenian fire by using the Russian-made TOS-1 heavy flamethrower system.

It also released a video purportedly showing the destruction of an Armenian command post in which it said an Armenian general and other high-ranking officers were killed.

The military of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh republic denied the allegations, but said it had destroyed an entire Azerbaijani Army unit.

A legacy of the Soviet breakup known as a "frozen conflict," the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute has bedeviled regional and international leaders for years, with the United States, Russia, and France taking the lead in trying to reach a permanent settlement, and tamp down tensions.

Diplomats from the three states, grouped together in what's called the Minsk Group, said they would convene a full-meeting on April 5 in Vienna to discuss the breakdown of the 21-year-old cease-fire.

Meanwhile, Russia's Foreign Ministry said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had a phone conversation on April 4 and expressed "serious concern" over an escalation in the standoff.

The ministry added in a statement that both sides had called for a swift cessation in fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh.

U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner later confirmed that Kerry and Lavrov discussed the conflict on April 4.

"They did speak today via phone...to discuss efforts to secure an immediate end to the violence that has erupted along the Nagorno-Karabakh line of conflict and encourage both Armenia and Azerbaijan to...resume settlement talks under the auspices of the OSCE," Toner told reporters.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said on Twitter he had urged the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Serzh Sarkisian and Ilham Aliyev, to settle the conflict.

Biden wrote that he told Sarkisian and Aliyev that "a comprehensive settlement in Nagorno-Karabakh is critical for their stability, security, prosperity."

With reporting by RFE/RL's Armenian and Azerbaijani services, AFP, TASS, Interfax, and Reuters
He is a veteran conservative politician known for attempting to introduce strict Shari'a law in Pakistan in the late 1990s before a military coup temporarily sent him into exile. But since his return as prime minister, Nawaz Sharif has emerged as an unlikely torch-bearer for reform.



Sharif and his Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) party, which has strong support among conservatives, have surprised many observers by confronting the powerful religious establishment and calling for a more tolerant Pakistan.



Since the turn of the year, the 66-year-old has enacted a landmark domestic violence bill, promised a tougher stance on so-called honor killings, officially recognized holidays celebrated by Pakistan's religious minorities, and overseen the execution of a man revered by hard-line clerics.



Observers suggest the change of course is down to the prime minister's ambitious plans to overhaul the economy, the considerable influence of his daughter Maryam Nawaz Sharif, and his easing relationship with the country's powerful army, which has an oversized role in domestic and foreign affairs.



"He's a politician and a businessman," Mohammad Taqi, a U.S.-based Pakistan political analyst, said of Sharif, who oversees a vast business empire.

"Jihadist anarchy doesn't suit politics or business. Also, unlike the military, the politicians evolve and learn," Taqi said. "The military sees archrival India and neighboring Afghanistan as zero-sum games; politicians don't. Therefore the utility of jihadism is limited for politicians."



Confronting A Community

After making a triumphant return to Pakistan in 2007, Sharif went on to regain his former post as prime minister in 2013. His ascension to an unprecedented third term came after strong support among rural voters and the religious community spurred his party to a decisive parliamentary election victory.

Sharif has long been closely tied with Pakistan's conservative establishment, an identity forged during his two terms as prime minister in the 1990s. But, in recent months, he has shaken that very establishment and challenged his traditional support base.

In January, the government ended a three-year ban on YouTube that had been supported by clerics to block access to videos defaming Islam.

The same month, in a bid to curtail child marriages, Sharif's party introduced a bill calling for the age limit for brides to be raised from 16 to 18. The Council of Islamic Ideology, the country's top Islamic guidance body, declared the bill un-Islamic. But while the proposed legislation was withdrawn, Sharif made clear that his government was intent on making changes.

In the province of Punjab, where Sharif's brother, Shahbaz, serves as chief minister, lawmakers approved new legal protections for abused women. More than 30 religious groups have threatened to launch protests if the bill is not withdrawn.

Earlier this month, Sharif officially recognized holidays celebrated by Pakistan's religious minorities, including Easter and the Hindu festival of Holi.

Perhaps the clearest indication that Sharif had changed tack was an execution that took place under his government's watch. Mumtaz Qadri was executed in February at the order of the Islamabad High Court five years after he assassinated a liberal Punjab governor over his calls to reform the country's blasphemy laws.

Thousands of hard-line Islamists rallied in the heart of the Pakistani capital for four days to denounce Qadri's execution and to call for the introduction of strict Shari'a law in Pakistan.

The sit-in protest ended on March 31 after protest leaders said they were given assurances that controversial blasphemy laws would not be amended and more than 1,000 Islamists detained by police during the protest would be released. The government, however, denied it had acceded to any of the protesters' demands.

"A few years ago a death penalty like this for a religious fanatic would not have been possible," analyst Taqi said. "So credit to the prime minister because he's the one who has to deal with the political backlash."

Going Too Far

Some warn, however, that Sharif risks taking things too far.

Observers have linked pro-Qadri protests with a recent militant attack in the southern city of Lahore that killed 70 people and injured some 300 others. Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a breakaway Pakistani Taliban faction that supports the Islamic State (IS) group, claimed responsibility and said it specifically targeted Christians.

"If Sharif pushes too far, then both the terrorists and the more moderate religious forces will be galvanized and could respond in terrifying and traumatic ways," said Michael Kugelman, South Asia associate at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.

Kugelman said both the Lahore attack and the pro-Qadri protests in Islamabad "underscore, in a big way, how religious forces can make the Pakistani government vulnerable."

True Reform?



Even as Sharifs government has managed to push through some reforms, however, it has come under strong international criticism.



The United Nations, the European Union, and human rights groups have deplored the governments heavy-handed measures taken following the Pakistani Taliban's gruesome ambush of a military-run school in the northwestern city of Peshawar in December 2014 that left 147 people dead, the deadliest ever attack in Pakistan.



Pakistan has hanged more than 300 people since lifting a moratorium on the death penalty in December 2014. Many were convicted in closed military courts, which critics say fail to meet fair trial standards.



And, in the broader scope of things, analysts say, Sharif has not managed to bring about true reform.



"I would characterize Sharif's moves so far as isolated and even token gestures that haven't occurred in a sufficiently sustained fashion to constitute a formal reform plan," said Kugelman. "There is only so far that he can go, given the constraints posed by powerful conservative vested interests such as mullahs and the military."



Emboldened Position



But observers have said there could be several reasons why Sharif might have changed course in his third term.

"I suspect that some of it may have to do with the thought of leaving a legacy after his third term," Taqi said. "His daughter may be an influence on him too on women's issues."

Sharif's influential 42-year-old daughter, Maryam, has been a voice of moderation on women's issues and the protection of minors.

But perhaps the key to emboldening Sharif to change direction has been his improved ties with the army.

Sharif spent most of 2014 locked in disputes with the powerful military, with tens of thousands of protesters camped near the prime minister's residence demanding that he resign. During those protests, speculation was mounting that the military was considering a coup to oust Sharif. In order to keep his job, Sharif reportedly conceded foreign-policy decisions to the military.

"His relations with the military are perhaps a bit better now than they were months ago," said Kugelman. "So maybe there is a bit more space for him to operate independently."


A huge leak of over 11 million documents from a Panama-based law firm has revealed how global elites, including associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin, have hidden away vast sums of money.

RFE/RL spoke to John Christensen, executive director of the Tax Justice Network and co-author of The Finance Curse: How Oversized Financial Centers Attack Democracy And Corrupt Economies.

RFE/RL: How do you interpret the "Panama papers" leak? Is this a surprising revelation? A WikiLeaks moment?

John Christensen: I think Panama papers is one of the biggest leaks of modern times. It is the first major leak from a law firm, an offshore law firm, and it is on a scale which most people will find astonishing. Millions and millions of papers have been revealed and continue to be revealed, so the leak is still going on. And it involves very high-profile [people], not just politicians, but business people and elites around the world.

I think this leak is possibly on the same scale as the Edward Snowden leaks, because it reveals the level of corruption amongst the global, political, and wealthy elites. And this corruption has been going on for decades. This is the first time we have a leak on this scale.



RFE/RL: And when politicians and elites try to establish offshore companies or evade taxes, is this legal?

Christensen: Let's be absolutely clear. Tax evasion is illegal in all circumstances. Even when people say tax avoidance, which we don't know whether it is illegal or legal, even when that's happening, [if] it's been tax avoidance happening through offshore structures, in almost all cases, it is eventually when it is taken to court, shown to be illegal.

So, I think the public understands this very well. They understand that when people are setting up offshore structures, offshore companies, or offshore trusts in jurisdictions like Panama, they think that it's most likely that something illegal or corrupt is happening.

RFE/RL: So offshore companies are illegal?

Christensen: No, the sad thing is that offshore companies are legal. The real problem with offshore companies is the fact that places, countries like Panama, do not require the owners, the real owners of offshore companies to disclose their identities.

What companies like Mossack Fonseca, which is the company, the law firm, at the heart of the Panama papers scandal, what they do is they provide nominee shareholders and nominee directors, that is, people who give their names to act as directors or shareholders to hide the identity of the real people. That's the shocking part about offshore companies, is that they don't disclose the identity of the real people who hide behind these offshore companies.

RFE/RL: What about shell companies, functioning for example in the United Kingdom. Is this legal as well?

Christensen: The U.K., of course, provides shell companies to people from around the world and currently it does not require full disclosure of what's called the beneficial ownership and this undoubtedly creates an environment which supports criminal and corrupt activities. And this is why civil society in Britain is calling for the British government to require full disclosure of the real ownership of these companies, not just in Britain, but in all of the British dependent territories and offshore tax havens like the Cayman [Islands], or the British Virgin Islands, or the Channel Islands. We are demanding full disclosure of who really owns these companies. And that disclosure must be on public record, so that journalists and others with a legitimate reason for investigating these companies will not be blocked from finding out who is hiding behind these companies.

RFE/RL: The leaks are still going on. Do you think there will be a big reaction from people around the world?

Christensen: I am very much hoping that the public in the countries around the world will start to put really serious pressure now on their politicians to take action.

And what kind of action are we looking for? First of all, we want a global treaty or requirement that every single jurisdiction in the world creates a public registry of ownership of offshore shell companies and offshore trusts and offshore foundations. And this will not happen unless politicians are forced by the public to take action, because too many politicians are themselves or their families involved in offshore structures. They will only do this once there is pressure from the public, real global pressure to take action. For decades, politicians have been promising that they would take action against tax havens and they've done nothing. And now is the time. This Panama leak is the wake-up call to the rest of the world to take action.

RFE/RL: Russian President Vladimir Putin's very close friend's name is disclosed in these papers, that he also established offshore companies. Since Russia is already under Western sanctions, do you think it will prompt Western countries to increase their sanctions against the allies and friends of Putin and do you think there will be some reaction in Russia?

Christensen: I am expecting there will be some reaction in Russia, but I think the important thing now is, if the West is serious about taking [further] sanctions against the Russian leader, they must now look at the role of lawyers, law firms like Mossack Fonseca.... So, I think now is the time for the leaders of the rest of the world, if they are serious about imposing sanctions, to put pressure on the law firms to reveal the identity of their clients when they are politically exposed persons and to stop working with them. That would make it very much harder for leading politicians, whether in Russia or any other country, to hide behind offshore structures.

RFE/RL: How do you see the future of such law firms? Until now, we knew that nothing would be revealed, everything would be secret, everywhere in the world, and we couldn't possibly touch these law firms and other offshore companies, because the secrecy was so strict. Do you think the world's financial elite and political elite, or drug dealers, will now be very careful when they are moving money abroad?

Christensen: Well, let's face it, politicians and drug dealers and all the other people who have been using offshore countries have been very careful. They have been operating on the understanding that law firms will protect their identity. This leak shows that law firms are no longer able to protect their identity.

So this is going to be causing a lot of people to lose a lot of sleep in weeks to come. Because they know they can no longer rely upon law firms to protect their identity. And I suspect that criminals and the business elites and the wealthy elites around the world, who've been evading tax and not disclosing political conflicts of interest and engaged in a lot of corrupt white-collar crime, will be losing their sleep in the coming weeks because the level of secrecy which they have been assured for decades can no longer be assured.
Many leaders of the former Soviet republics publicly condemn using offshore havens to hide wealth, saying it robs their nations of capital.

Yet the leak of data from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm specializing in offshore companies, implicates at least three heads of state from the region in the use of offshore companies to hide billions of dollars of wealth outside their countries.

One is Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is not named directly in the Mossack Fonseca leak, but who is closely linked to someone who is: his longtime friend Sergei Roldugin.

Another is Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. And the third Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, whose wife and daughters are shareholders in several offshore companies.

Other key political leaders from the former Soviet region could yet be implicated as more information from the leaked data becomes available in the coming days. One name to look for will be Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev, whose grandson Nurali Kazaliev's name appears in Mossack Fonseca records.

Enough information has already come out to underline how much authoritarian leaders make exceptions for themselves while calling on others to keep their money at home. Here are some key points to consider:

Putin's Circle

Putin has been suspected for years of amassing a prodigious personal fortune, with leaks from his own presidential administration in 2007 suggesting it could be from $40 billion to $70 billion.

But what has not been available until the Mossack Fonseca leaks is a glimpse into the avenues the Russian leader may use to keep the extent of his wealth unknown.

The leaked data suggest that one of the keys could be the use of close and trusted friends such as Sergei Roldugin, a professional cellist who founded and is artistic director of the St. Petersburg Music House.

Roldugin, who is godfather to Putin's eldest daughter, Maria, heads several offshore companies that receive loans and payments from Russia, shelter those funds, and then extend loans back to Russian companies in which Putin appears to have an interest.

"I am not a businessman, I don't have millions," Roldugin told The New York Times in 2014. The leaked data show that may be true. In fact, he is a conduit for billions of dollars and the fortune may not belong to him.

A good example is provided by Sandalwood Continental Ltd, one of the offshores registered to Roldugin. The company got $1 billion in loans from various Russian banks and other offshore companies from 2009 to 2012, including loans from the state-owned Bank Rossia, long dubbed "Putin's crony bank" by Western officials.

Some of that money later came back to Putin's inner circle in the form of virtually interest-free loans totaling $11.3 million in 2010 and 2011 to the Ozon company, which owns the Igora ski resort near St. Petersburg. The resort, of which Putin is a patron and a reputed resident, is where the president's daughter Katya celebrated her wedding in 2013.

The full extent of the amount of money coming and going through offshores registered to Roldugin is unknown. The leaks also show that another of his offshore companies, International Media Overseas, has a 12.5 percent stake in Russia's biggest TV advertising agency, Vi (formerly known as Video International). Roldugin also owns 3.2 percent of Bank Rossia.

Poroshenko

When Poroshenko ran for president in 2014, he promised to sell Roshen, Ukraine's largest confectionery corporation and the main source of his estimated $858 million fortune.

But the Mossack Fonseca leaks show that Poroshenko never sold his assets and instead transferred them to an offshore company called BVI Prime Asset Partners, Ltd., which he registered in the British Virgin Islands.

Doing so allowed Poroshenko, who is the sole shareholder of his offshore company, to cease reporting money earned from Roshen on his annual income-disclosure statements. He could do that because BVI Prime Asset Partners calculated the value of shares in the offshore as having a total value of just $1,000.

One of the media groups investigating the leaked data, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), asked the Kyiv-based financial service group that advises Poroshenko on his personal money matters why the president made no mention of foreign income on his 2014 disclosure statement.

Makar Paseniuk, managing director of the financial group ICU, responded that the reason was because "shares in BVI Prime Asset Partners Limited have no par value, and the declaration for 2014 required only shares having a par value to be included."

Moving his assets in an offshore not only perpetuated the idea that Poroshenko had divested himself of Roshen, it also enabled him to avoid Ukrainian taxes on his sheltered income.

But the use of offshores may yet come back to haunt Poroshenko in two ways.

Poroshenko set up his holding company in late 2014 to protect his personal fortune and save on taxes at exactly the time he was calling up reservists and asking citizens to make sacrifices as Russia-backed separatists seized territory in eastern Ukraine. The irony cannot be lost on the Ukrainian public.

And Poroshenko's offshore activities could bring him legal troubles.

Yevhen Cherniak, an analyst with Transparency International Ukraine, told OCCRP that Poroshenko might have violated Ukrainian rules banning the president from business activities and prohibiting public officials from submitting false information in income declarations.

The Aliyev Family

The Mossack Fonseca leaks confirm that the family of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev makes frequent use of offshore companies to hide its wealth and mask the ways it gains shares in Azerbaijan's most lucrative businesses.

The leaked data corroborate much of the information that previously has been made public by Azerbaijani investigative reporters, notably jailed RFE/RL contributor Khadija Ismayilova. She was sentenced to prison for 7 1/2 years in September on charges of tax evasion and illegal business activities that rights groups call retribution for her reporting on corruption involving senior government officials.

The leaks show that Aliyev's wife, Mehriban Aliyeva, was named in 2005 as one of two managers of a Panamanian offshore company called Panamanian UF Universe Foundation that was incorporated in 2003. The firm, which was deactivated in 2007, had control of the major Azeri conglomerate AtaHolding.

The leaks also allege that Aliyev's two daughters, Leyla and Arzu Aliyeva, controlled a Panamanian firm with a stake in a group of companies developing Azerbaijani gold fields.

And the leaks show that President Aliyev's sister, Sevil Aliyeva, is sole shareholder of an offshore set up in 2005 in the British Virgin Islands.

In May 2012, in a joint investigation by RFE/RL and the OCCRP, Ismayilova discovered that the Azerbaijani first family was personally profiting from the construction of a new $134 million concert showplace called the Crystal Hall that was being prepared to host that year's Eurovision Song Contest.

The Aliyev family's involvement was through concealed ownership of the Azenco construction company, which had quietly become a subcontractor to the only company listed in official documents as constructing the concert hall, Germany's Alpine Bau Deutschland AG.

Tracing the ownership of Azenco back through a series of shell companies, the investigation discovered that its majority owners belonged to a firm registered to the then-home address of Aliyev's wife and two daughters. Azenco has routinely received contracts for state-funded projects, with State Procurement Agency records showing it was awarded contracts worth $79 million in 2010 alone.
World leaders have scrambled to react to the leak of a trove of documents linking many of them to secretive offshore companies that enabled vast sums of money to move around the world hidden from law enforcement and regulators.

A massive report called The Panama Papers, published simultaneously by multiple news organizations in multiple languages on April 3, divulged details about the offshore holdings of 12 current or former heads of states, including Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

The leaked documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca also revealed that relatives or associates of 17 other current or former leaders held offshore accounts, including Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Several world leaders on April 4 confronted the report head-on, saying the report did not reveal anything implicating them in wrongdoing.

Poroshenko took to Facebook to defend himself after the leaked documents reportedly showed that he moved his confectionary business, Roshen, to the British Virgin Islands in August 2014 amid some of the heaviest fighting between Kyiv's forces and Russia-backed separatists.

"Having become president, I recused myself from the management of my assets and delegated this to the respective consulting and law firms," Poroshenko wrote. "I expect that they will provide all necessary details to the Ukrainian and international media."

He added that he took the issues of income declaration, paying taxes, and conflicts of interest "very seriously" and was in "in full compliance with the Ukrainian and international private law."

Earlier in the day, the head of Ukraine's populist Radical Party called for an impeachment investigation of Poroshenko over allegations he used the offshore account to avoid taxes. Ukraine's Prosecutor-General's Office said it had seen no evidence that Poroshenko committed a crime based on the leaked documents.



In Moscow, meanwhile, the Kremlin slammed the leak of the tax documents as an attack aimed primarily at Putin.

Putin is not named in the leaked documents. But the report claims to have documented a vast network of shady money transfers, several of which it details, used by close associates of Putin to funnel as much as $2 billion into offshore shell companies.

"Putin, Russia, our country, our stability and the upcoming [parliamentary] elections are the main target, specifically to destabilize the situation," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on April 4.

He added that there was "nothing new or concrete" about the Russian leader in the leaks and suggested that U.S. intelligence was behind the revelations.

"We know this so-called journalist community," Peskov said. "There are a lot of journalists whose main profession is unlikely to be journalism: a lot of former officials from the [U.S.] State Department, the CIA, and other special services."

The information stems from millions of e-mails, spreadsheets, corporate records, and others materials leaked from Mossack Fonseca, a Panama-based law firm with representatives in dozens of countries that specializes in setting up shell companies, the report says.

WATCH: Muscovites React To 'Panama Papers' Implicating Putin

The leaked data was initially provided to the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung. It was then shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), based in Washington, which collaborated with media outlets around the world over the course of a year to organize, analyze, and publish the materials.

There was no immediate response from Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, whose wife was reportedly named in the leaked documents as one of two managers of a Panamanian offshore firm in 2005, a firm that in turn has control of the Azerbaijani conglomerate AtaHolding.

Among the assertions in the report is that Aliyev's daughters controlled a Panamanian firm that held a significant stake in a group of companies developing Azerbaijani gold fields.

Iceland's prime minister, meanwhile, insisted that he would not resign after the investigation revealed tax documents suggesting that he and his wife used an offshore company to hide million-dollar investments.

"I have not considered quitting because of this matter nor am I going to quit because of this matter," Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson told Icelandic television Channel 2.

He denied any wrongdoing and denounced the leak of the documents as a witch-hunt against him and his wife.

"She has been adamant about paying taxes on [the offshore firm] to Icelandic society rather than saving money by paying taxes abroad," he said.

The British government has requested a copy of the leaked data, which could prove embarrassing for Prime Minister David Cameron, who has been a vocal critic of tax evasion.

His late father, Ian Cameron, is mentioned in the documents, as are members of the prime minister's Conservative Party in the upper house of parliament, former Conservative lawmakers, and party donors, according to British media reports.

"We will closely examine this data and will act on it swiftly and appropriately," said Jennie Granger, director-general of enforcement and compliance at the British Revenue and Customs.

Cameron's spokeswoman declined to comment on whether the prime minister's family had invested in offshore entities set up by his father, calling it a "private matter."

With reporting by RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, Reuters, UNIAN, AFP, and AP
An American student who went missing in freezing conditions in a mountainous part of Siberia, in Russia, has been found dead.

Officials in the Russian republic of Buryatia said on April 4 that the body of Colin Madsen, 25, was found two kilometers from the spa village of Arshan, some 500 kilometers east of the regional capital, Ulan-Ude.

Madsen disappeared early on March 27, a day after he arrived in Arshan with another American as part of a group from Irkutsk, where he was a student at Moscow State Linguistic University.

Local police said Madsen, who was fluent in Russian, was found with documents and cash.

Preliminary assessments said he might have frozen to death.


The head of Ukraine's populist Radical Party has called for an impeachment investigation into President Petro Poroshenko over allegations he used an offshore account to avoid tax.

In a televised interview on April 4, Oleh Lyashko said the Anticorruption Bureau (AKB) must investigate Poroshenko for allegedly hiding significant amounts of money in offshore accounts.

According to a massive leak of documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca over the weekend, Poroshenko has been tied to secret offshore companies on the British Virgin Islands.

The AKB said on April 4 that it has no power to begin an investigation against Poroshenko.

The Ukrainian Prosecutor-General's office said it has seen no evidence that Poroshenko committed a crime based on the leaked documents.

Based on reporting on UNIAN and Reuters
Ukrainian military pilot Nadia Savchenko, who has been sentenced by a Russian court to 22 years in prison, will begin a dry hunger strike on April 6, her defense lawyers say.

"Her demand is her immediate return to Ukraine," Nikolai Polozov, one of the Savchenko's lawyers, wrote on Twitter on April 4.

Polozov had earlier tweeted that Savchenko's "health condition is stable. She only drinks water."

Savchenko, 34, was sentenced on March 22 on charges including complicity in the killing of two Russian journalists in eastern Ukraine in 2014. The sentence comes into effect on April 5.

She denies the charges and has gone on several hunger strikes protesting her detention and the court case.

Earlier on April 4, Savchenko's defense team said the pilot reiterated that she would not appeal the verdict, saying she did not recognize the legitimacy of the case against her.

Savchenko says she was seized in eastern Ukraine in June 2014, while fighting with a volunteer battalion against Russia-backed separatists, and taken to Russia illegally.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said Kyiv was ready to swap her for Russian prisoners.

But a Kremlin spokesman said that "she will serve her sentence."

Based on reporting by Interfax and TASS
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A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind.
Congressman Morgan Griffith's office shares his electronic newsletter for the week of April 4:

A Symposium on the Future of Coal

The morning of April 4 from 9:30am until 11:30 am, I will be holding a Symposium on the Future of Coal-Focused Technology, Innovation, and Industry at the University of Virginias College at Wise (UVA-Wise) Convocation Center. I am looking forward to engaging communities in our region with federal officials, industry, and researchers and discussing such important issues as the future of coal-focused technology, innovation, of industry.

This event will feature a keynote address by David Mohler, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Clean Coal and Carbon Management within the Office of Fossil Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Mr. Mohler will provide an overview of the Fossil Energy coal and carbon management program, a focused discussion on rare earth elements, and a discussion regarding how DOE is moving forward with the coal program and as well as future opportunities in the Commonwealth.

Following Mr. Mohlers remarks will be a panel discussion featuring Dr. Roe-Hoan Yoon, Director for the Center for Advanced Separation Technologies at Virginia Tech, Bob VanGundy, Professor in the UVA-Wise Department of Natural Sciences, and representatives from Dominion Resources, Inc., American Electric Power, the Southern States Energy Board/Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership. I expect that the panelists will be discussing the future of coal as they see it in their respective roles.

We all want affordable energy that is clean and efficient. I support the use of all sources of American energy, and believe that we must take full advantage of all options to unlock Americas full potential.

As one part of my all-of-the-above, four-point Drill, Dig, Discover, and Deregulate energy plan, I am fighting to discover and advance promising clean-burning coal technologies that will positively impact the economy of Southwest Virginia while minimizing the negative impact to our environment.

In my column of June 24, 2013, I delved into the coal-direct chemical looping (CDCL) or simply chemical looping, which extracts the energy out of coal with virtually no pollutants. Research into the prospect of chemical looping has been done by Dr. Liang-Shih Fan at The Ohio State University. Others are also researching chemical looping, and the DOE is continuing its work research in this area.

I am excited by this possibility and about other technologies that are also still under development, and am looking forward to discussing at the symposium various potential paths forward.

As I have said before in this column and in the Energy and Commerce, I respect that the DOE under the leadership of Secretary Ernest Moniz has not abandoned efforts to burn coal more cleanly. I do, however, remain worried about anti-coal government policies and their impact on jobs, the Appalachian economy, and our nations energy security.

I am looking forward to what I believe will be an informative and productive discussion at the Symposium on the Future of Coal-Focused Technology, Innovation, and Industry on April 4.

Freedom Update

In February, a New York Times report indicated that The Obama administration is on the verge of permitting the National Security Agency to share more of the private communications it intercepts with other American intelligence agencies without first applying any privacy protections to them, according to officials familiar with the deliberations.

As described by The Hill, The modification would open the door for the NSA to give the FBI and other federal agencies uncensored communications of foreigners and Americans picked up incidentally  but without a warrant  during sweeps. Emphasis ours.

Civil libertarians, including myself, have concerns about this change, which could violate many law-abiding Americans constitutional and privacy rights.

As two of my colleagues  both members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform  recently wrote to the director of the NSA, Domestic law enforcement agencies  which need a warrant supported by probable cause to search or seize  cannot do an end run around the Fourth Amendment by searching warrantless information collected by the NSA.

I agree.

Robert Litt, a top lawyer for an intelligence agency, has, according to The Hill, denied allegations that the change would allow the FBI and other agencies to use the sensitive data for domestic law enforcement matters

I will continue to monitor the situation to assure that Americans rights are not being violated and that laws regarding surveillance programs are not broken.

If you have questions, concerns, or comments, contact my office. You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov. Also on my website is the latest material from my office, including information on votes recently taken on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Submitted by Andie Pivarunas
GRUNDY  Retired coal miner Fred McCracken was raised in a Democratic household, but he doesnt think the country is ready for a female president and longs for a candidate like ol big ears Ross Perot.

The 67-year-old Buchanan County resident says he probably wont vote in November, but he sees how electing Donald Trump would send a message to the world.

These other countries need to know that theres somebody over here stupid enough to pull the trigger on em, McCracken said as he finished up at a barber shop along U.S. 460, the winding highway that serves as the main drag in this mountainous corner of Southwest Virginia.

Doug Davis, another retired coal worker waiting for a haircut at Jerrys Barber Shop in Oakwood, said the slumping coal mining business may be Gods way of scattering the people out.

When it comes to Trump, his faith is stronger.

I think hell do all right, said Davis, 69. Because he hates failure.

There arent many votes to be had in Buchanan, a shrinking Appalachian county on the edge of West Virginia and Kentucky with an estimated population of 22,776.

But of the ballots cast for Republicans here in the March 1 primary, an exceptional number went to Trump, who won a narrow victory statewide over now-withdrawn Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida. The tough-talking Trump won nearly 70 percent of the vote  his highest margin in the country so far.

Over a Mexican lunch in Grundy, the county seat where most of the old downtown was demolished and a mountainside was blasted away to create enough flat land for a Wal-Mart, Liz Justus credited Trump for being the first to talk about building a wall to keep out illegal immigrants.

The 53-year-old co-owner of a home health care business said shes never been political previously and thinks Trump can go a little overboard with the name-calling.

But when he says hell bring back coal jobs, she believes him.

He has the personality where he would do it just to prove that he could do it, Justus said.

If working-class anger is the fuel for Trumps rise, few places were better primed for a blowup. Among Buchanans almost all-white populace, unemployment is high, incomes are low and college degrees are rare.

From 2011 to 2015, the number of coal jobs in Virginia fell from 4,867 to 3,033, a drop of nearly 38 percent, according to state data.

The growth of cheaper natural gas as a source of fuel to generate electric power and environmental restrictions aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions have put the coal industry under pressure, with weak coal prices forcing several large producers to consider bankruptcy.

Last month, CONSOL Energy, a major employer in Buchanan, sold its Buchanan mine and other coal assets in a $420 million deal with Coronado IV.

In the past five years, Buchanans population has fallen about 5.5 percent, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates. Declining coal production has meant less tax revenue for the county government, forcing officials to consider steep budget cuts and possible layoffs of public workers.

Many Buchanan residents pointed to presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clintons recent comment about putting a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.

The remark came as Clinton was describing a $30 billion plan to safeguard benefits for miners and their families and diversify coal-dependent economies.

That a New York billionaire would find rock-solid support in a hardscrabble place such as Buchanan  where Grundys one chain hotel warns guests of an extra cleaning fee for rooms smudged by dirty boots  is one of many unexpected turns of the 2016 campaign cycle.

In interviews with Buchanan residents and political observers, the Trump effect here was attributed to a combination of demographics, fury over lost jobs, and economic decline (much of it blamed on President Barack Obama and the so-called war on coal) and, perhaps above all, a desperate desire for something different.

Trump gives voice to a feeling of frustration, the lack of any other place to turn, lack of confidence in the economic future that so many people in places like Buchanan County are feeling, said Rick Boucher, a former Democratic congressman who represented Southwest Virginias 9th District for three decades before losing to Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, in the 2010 Republican wave.

I think to a large extent that explains why hes been so popular nationwide, Boucher said.

Trump, who has promised to scale back regulation by cutting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, won every locality in the 9th District but the city of Radford, which Rubio took by 30 votes.

Tucker Davis, a 25-year-old Republican operative who served as Trumps field director for western Virginia, would not discuss campaign strategy, but he told a crowd at a recent Buchanan GOP meeting that people are fed up and yearning for leadership.

I think theyre ready to knock the table over and change things, said Davis, a Grundy native whos angling to represent Virginia this summer as a Trump delegate to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

Several Buchanan residents said they see establishment opposition to Trump  outlined starkly by 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romneys assertion that the Trump campaign has become associated with racism, misogyny, vulgarity and violence  as interference meant to keep an outsider from gaining power.

I think theyre using scare tactics on him, said Justus, adding that if Trump were racist, he wouldnt have the support of Ben Carson and Herman Cain, who are African-American.

In a speech at Radford University on the eve of Super Tuesday, Trump told the crowd hes a believer in clean coal.

Were going to bring the coal industry back 100 percent, he said. If I win, were going to go clean coal, and that technology is working. I hear it works.

Though Appalachian coal regions have been one of Trumps strongest areas of support, some Buchanan residents arent sold on the idea that the industry can be restored.

Daniel Duryea, a 35-year-old electrician who moved to the area a few years ago from New York, said Trump is blowing smoke.

People here, theyve got a false hope, Duryea said. And theyre looking for something like that.

Trump himself hasnt always been hot on coal labor.

In an interview with Playboy magazine published in 1990, he used a mining analogy while describing deal-making as a beautiful, creative pursuit.

The coal miner gets black-lung disease, his son gets it, then his son. If I had been the son of a coal miner, I would have left the damn mines, Trump said.

But most people dont have the imagination  or whatever  to leave their mine. They dont have it.?

He went on to describe it as an ability to become an entrepreneur, a great athlete, a great writer.

As with many statements from Trumps pre-politics life, his supporters seem more focused on what hes saying now. And how he says it.

The working class in the U.S. loves Trumps straightforward style, said Corey Stewart, chairman of Trumps Virginia campaign and a member of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors.

With blue-collar Democratic traditions rooted in labor unions, many suspect the party crossover made possible by Virginias open primary system played a large role in the Buchanan result.

Jamie Hale, a 44-year-old former Obama voter who considers himself blessed to still have work at a coal-fired power plant in neighboring Wise County, said hes now behind Trump.

Hes for compromise and making deals, Hale said. Here in the last eight years, weve had no compromise. Its all been just stop Obama regardless.

Carroll Branham, the Democratic chairman of the Buchanan Board of Supervisors, guesses as much as half of the Trump vote in the county may have been Democrats. Branham said hes open to voting for Trump in November but considers him unproven and needs to see concrete plans.

This county is not hard-core Democrat or Republican, Branham said. Most of the time they elect what they think are the best people.

On Super Tuesday, Trump won 1,588 of 2,278 Buchanan primary votes for Republican candidates, followed by 313 for Rubio and 266 for Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton won 523 of 744 total Democratic votes.

In the 2008 primaries, Buchanan cast 680 votes for Republicans and 2,497 votes for Democrats, the vast majority of which went to Clinton.

If Trump becomes the nominee and runs strong in Southwest Virginia, Republican organizers know a surge here easily could be wiped out by high-population localities in Northern Virginia that favor Democrats and where Trumps primary showing was weaker.

In recently released electoral predictions envisioning a Trump vs. Clinton matchup, the University of Virginias Center for Politics switched Virginia from a toss-up state to leaning Democratic.

Russell Presley, an attorney who chairs the Buchanan Democratic Committee, said its been difficult to gauge whos voting for Trump because few people seem to be outwardly stating their support.

Presley said he believes the political mood in Buchanan has been shaped by eight years of conservative broadcasters blaming Obama for all the ills of the economy.

I think when he got elected, our country took a step forward, Presley said. But unfortunately certain areas of the country, including my own, probably took two steps back.

With Trump winning huge swaths of rural Virginia, many state lawmakers now find themselves in the tricky position of seeing their constituents embrace a candidate few in elected office leaped to endorse.

Griffith has not endorsed any presidential candidate but said he would support Trump if he wins the nomination. As a Southerner, Griffith said, hed say things a little bit differently than the New Yorker.

But he thinks we need to get a better deal, Griffith said. And the people in my district think they need to get a better deal.

Del. Will Morefield, R-Tazewell, whose district includes Buchanan, endorsed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush before he switched to Rubio but said he absolutely would support Trump in the general election.

Hes a straight shooter. He pretty much tells it how it is, Morefield said. And I think thats what people are really looking for in a candidate right now. I think theres an overall disgust with the establishment, whether youre a Democrat or a Republican.

Morefield and other officials say theyre working to create a business-friendly environment that can lure new industries to Southwest Virginia.

For Buchanan, that has meant trying to develop the infrastructure to bring more call and data centers to a mountaintop business park built on a reclaimed surface mine.

Boucher, who emphasized telecommunications as a lifeline for rural areas, said internet commerce has made it less important for companies to be geographically close to their customers and has opened up possibilities in areas where land is cheap and taxes are low.

The county also is continuing to establish itself as education center. Its home to the Appalachian School of Law and the Appalachian College of Pharmacy. An optometry school is in the works.

Were just trying to hold on right now and wait till things begin to get better, Branham said.

For many, that means hoping for President Trump.
GO Virginia has come to a near-halt in the office of Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who has asked for a legal opinion from the attorney general on the constitutionality of the regional economic development initiative approved by the General Assembly with little opposition.

McAuliffe, who championed the initiative and included almost $39 million for it in his proposed two-year budget, said he has warned lawmakers previously about his concerns that legislators would exercise too much control over a new 22-member state board that would have the ultimate say over funding of economic development projects proposed through a new regional framework.

This is an executive responsibility, he told the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

The governor has not yet proposed amendments to the Virginia Growth and Opportunity Act, or GO Virginia, but his concerns raise the possibility of another political confrontation with the General Assembly over the separation of powers under the state constitution in the aftermath of a bitter battle over the appointment of a justice to the Virginia Supreme Court.

If so, McAuliffe may face opposition from Democrats who supported the legislation as well as a group of influential business leaders from across the state who pushed the initiative, warned House Majority Leader Kirk Cox, R-Colonial Heights, who carried the House version of the legislation.

It would be very unfortunate if this gets derailed for any reason at the midnight hour, Cox said Friday.

The Republican majority leader has clashed frequently with the Democratic governor, but he expressed disappointment and puzzlement that McAuliffe potentially would undermine an economic development initiative he had endorsed.

He was certainly willing to be at all of the announcements, Cox said.

McAuliffe spokesman Brian Coy said Friday that the governor had expressed concerns to legislators throughout the process about the proposed governing structure of GO Virginia.

Specifically, the governor is concerned that an executive board that is controlled by the legislature is an unconstitutional violation of the separation of powers, Coy said.

Given that those concerns were not addressed in the legislation that is on his desk, he has asked the attorney general for a formal opinion on the matter before he takes any action on the legislation.

In an interview at the Capitol late last month, McAuliffe likened the governing structure proposed by the assembly for GO Virginia to the Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission, which was dominated by legislators when it was created in 1999 to stimulate economic opportunities in the Southside and Southwest Virginia regions.

The commission has come under scrutiny for lack of oversight of grants made from a tobacco settlement trust fund, most notably by a $4 million fraud committed by former Secretary of Finance John Forbes , who was sentenced in 2010 to a 10-year term in federal prison. The governor and the assembly restructured the commission a year ago.

Im not creating another tobacco commission, McAuliffe said.

The governor also said he was very clear to everybody over there [in the General Assembly] what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.

John Dubby Wynne, chairman of the Hampton Roads Community Foundation and retired president and CEO of Landmark Communications, voiced concern Friday about the potential political standoff over an initiative he and other corporate leaders pushed to create.

Were sure our state leaders care way too much about people and jobs to let some political power struggle stall the momentum now, Wynne said in a statement to The Times-Dispatch.

The legislation adopted by the General Assembly would create a 22-member board that would include the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and three other delegates appointed by the speaker; the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and two other senators appointed by the Rules Committee; three ex-officio members of the governors Cabinet; and 12 nonlegislative members, with four each appointed by the House, Senate and governor.

The act expressly authorizes legislators to serve on the board, as they do on other executive branch boards and commissions, and gives each chamber and the administration veto power over proposed grants.

In an interview, McAuliffe said the proposed board would be too unwieldy to act on economic development prospects in a global economy, but supporters say GO Virginia would not act as a deal-closing body or make grants to individual companies.

Instead, the board would act on proposals made by a series of regional councils created under the act for projects that would receive performance grants under companion legislation, the Virginia Collaborative Economic Development Act.

Coy said the governor supports the concept of regional cooperation and partnership in economic development but that McAuliffe is evaluating the legislation on questions of constitutionality as well as the policy merits.

McAuliffes budget included about $39 million for GO Virginia, including about $13 million that he initially tied to estimated savings from expanding Virginias Medicaid program with billions of dollars in federal funds under the Affordable Care Act.

The General Assembly rejected Medicaid expansion but ultimately included about $36 million for the initiative in the two-year budget it adopted last month, most of it to be spent in the second year of the biennium after setting up the state and regional administrative structures.

In the worst case, the legislature would reject whatever amendments McAuliffe proposes and leave the governor with the stark option of signing or vetoing the legislation. In that case, the money in the budget would be held in a reserve account for other state needs.

Thats why we set it up that way, House Appropriations Chairman Chris Jones, R-Suffolk, said Friday.
BUSINESS Minister Anna Soubry is visiting Tatas Rotherham site for crunch talks with bosses, MPs, councillors and unions.

Labour MP John Healey said he pushed for the Tory minister to visit the Aldwarke site, and he remained hopeful about the firms future after Tata bosses announced last week it was selling its UK assets.

The shock blow has put thousands of Rotherham workers' livelihoods, and their colleagues across the UK, under threat.

Tata management, Sheffield and Rotherham council leaders, Rotherham Steel Taskforce, trade unions and local MPs Sarah Champion, Kevin Barron, John Healey, along with Penistone and Stocksbridge MP Angela Smith will also meet with the minister today.

MP John Healey said: We will all be singing from the same hymn sheet

She will be seeing first hand speciality steels in South Yorkshire at the Rotherham and Stocksbridge sites.

Mr Healey said the sites produced some of the worlds highest quality steel.

He added: This type of steel making is part of the future.

The Labour MP said he will tell the minister that the Rotherham workforce had taken a huge hit in the last three months with over half of its workforce gone.

He said that equated to around 667 workers who had lost their jobs this year, and there were now around 550 left.

Mr Healey said: We now need the Government to do what is necessary to help Tata keep the operations going before a long-term solution is found.

As local MPs we will do everything we can, we are pulling out all the stocks.

Mr Healey said he pressured the business minister to visit the Rotherham plant today and she was originally only going to visit the Stocksbridge site.

I spoke to her on Friday and said: look you cant come to South Yorkshire and not come to Rotherham.

He added: Its really important shes here, so good on the minister for coming today.

The workforce have been hit hard by the huge redundancies, we are still reeling after the decision in Mumbai (to sell Tatas UK assets) last week.

What they need from the company and the Government is the commitment and assurance, which we will be pressing for, to make sure this can be sold as a growing business.

Mr Healey said he expected the minister to not rule out any potential solutions, including nationalisation.

The Wentworth and Dearne MP said he refused to be downbeat about Tatas South Yorkshire sites because of the top quality steel that was produced there.

"And because it is exported globally for critical defence, aerospace, locomotives and oil and gas products, he said

Britain cant do without steel we make in South Yorkshire.
MP John Healey has warned Tata closing down could cost Rotherham almost 6 million in lost business rates.



The Wentworth and Dearne MP met business minister Anna Soubry (pictured) on Monday at the firms Aldwarke plant.



He said business secretary Sajid Javid should held fill the business rates black hole caused if the town lost Tata.



Mr Healey wrote to Mr Javid this week, pointing out Tata was due to pay 3.2 million in rates this financial year on five properties in Rotherham.



This amounted to four per cent of the entire business rates collected in the borough.



Under the current business rates system, with central-local government sharing the risk of falling rates 50-50, the firm pulling out of Rotherham would mean 1.6m in direct loss of borough council income and could mean an increase of 1.8 per cent in council tax to cover the shortfall, Mr Healey said, with the effect set to double when the system changes in 2020.



Beyond this, there are a further 100 or so Rotherham-based companies involved in the supply chain to Tata whose annual rates bill is around 2.4 million, Mr Healey added.



Altogether the closure of this firm could lead to a 5.8 million reduction in business rates raised.



Mr Healey said Mr Javid should guarantee to fill the business rates gap to demonstrate your support for UK steel and UK steel communities.

Minister's hope of saving steelworks


BUSINESS Minister Anna Soubry visited Tatas Rotherham site for crunch talks with bosses, MPs, councillors and unions.



The Tory minister visited the Aldwarke site on Monday and said people should be confident about the firms future.



Last week Tata bosses revealed at a meeting held at their Mumbai HQ they were going to sell off its UK assets  putting thousands of jobs at risk at its Rotherham sites.



Business Secretary Sajid Javid said the news was unexpected, but Ms Soubry said during her visit the Government had been in talks with Tata for weeks.

She added: Nobody really knew what was going to come out of that meeting in Mumbai.



The minister said Rotherhams position compared to Tata in Port Talbot, which she claimed was losing 1 million a day, was very different.



It (Rotherham) does not lose that amount of money, it has a real future, and makes specialist steel which is exported around the world, she said.



Every aeroplane that is made has a piece of steel in it that comes from this site, I dont think people realise that.



The clues in the name - specialist steels, it has a future.



The business minister said she estimated Tata could find a buyer within four to six weeks.



When asked what would happen if that was not achieved she said she did not see that ever happening.



She continued: We know the interest is there, and quite rightly should be, this is a viable business with a genuine future, extremely skilled workforce, producing specialist steels.
In a recent report, the research wing of ICRA Ltd said that the volume of jewellery manufactured across India is expected to decline by about 40-50 tonnes for the fourth fiscal quarter ending on March 31, 2016. According to the report, this is the result of new government regulations and the prolonged jewellers strike.

The report, while noting that overall demand for gold jewellery has been relatively good over the last few months, said that the decline in this quarter may be temporary and overall volumes for the year are likely to be relatively stable.

ICRA expects that the industry will gradually adhere to the new norms, and this will spur pent up demand in subsequent quarters. The report projects a growth of 5  6 percent in value terms and one percent in volume terms over 2016, mainly driven by an approximately 5-percent rise in gold prices, increased rural demand and expansion by organized players.

ICRA also says that the excise duty hike announced in this Budget will be passed on to the consumers, but is unlikely to have any impact on demand, given that consumers have adjusted to an increase in import duty from 4 to 10 percent over the last few years.

However, the agency believes that the cess will benefit the organised retail industry over the medium to long term. It would also favour the organised jewellery manufacturers who possess strong information systems to comply with the requirements. Small artisans and job workers, who have neither the expertise nor the infrastructure to maintain records are likely to be hit.

The report notes that the excise levy is also likely to lead to a longer term change in the sourcing mix for organized retailers who will incline towards larger, organised sector manufacturers, as against the current practice of sourcing primarily from the unorganized sector.

ICRA Limited (ICRA) is an Indian independent and professional investment information and credit rating agency.



Aruna Gaitonde, Editor-in-Chief of Asian Bureau, Rough & Polished




Christies announced it will host an auction of superb jewels from the collection of H.S.H. Gabriela Princess zu Leiningen in Geneva on May 18. The sale features 46 lots, selected from her unique and important collection, and estimated to realize in excess of US$15 million. Jewelry items were created by such brands, as Cartier, Schlumberger, Boucheron, Tiffany & Co, and Van Cleef & Arpels.Sophisticated and classically beautiful, H.S.H. Gabriela Princess zu Leiningens extensive collection is a true reflection of its owner. A woman of charisma, wisdom, elegance and above all, joy. Each jewel represents a special moment in her life and the happiness she experienced at the time. We are honored to present superb jewels from her collection, and extend to all the wonderful karma it brings,  says Francois Curiel, Chairman Christies Asia Pacific.Born to an entrepreneurial and philanthropic German family, Princess Gabriela zu Leiningen, a trained lawyer, has been involved in educational, health and cultural development programs throughout her life.Aside from their rare beauty, many of these jewels bare a compelling history of their own. To me they embody wonderful and loving personal memories as well as exciting chapters of my life, full of colour, travel and encounters. They have brought me great joy and happiness. Now I wish their journey to continue, bringing joy and happiness to their new owners,  claims the Princess.The superb jewels of H.S.H. Gabriela Princess zu Leiningen feature some of the finest gemstones collectors could dream of. The highlight is the 36 carat D color Pohl diamond. Mined in 1934 as a 287 carat rough stone, it was the first major diamond to be polished in America and was sold in 1943 to Bernice Chrysler Garbisch of the Chrysler Family. In 1998 it was acquired for the Princess at Cartier. This famous diamond is offered for an estimate of US$3,800,000-5,500,000.More jewels by Cartier include a sensational emerald and diamond necklace suspending a richly coloured Colombian emerald of almost 40 carats (US$2,500,000-3,500,000). Princess Gabriela was photographed on many occasions wearing the necklace and the matching earrings, one of them being at the official dinner preceding the wedding of Prince Felipe of Spain and Letizia Ortiz in Madrid, in 2004.Another magnificent parure, also by Cartier, is set with rare Burmese sapphires. The V-shaped necklace suspends a 55 carat cushion-shaped sapphire (US$2,000,000-3,000,000) and is complemented by a pair of ear pendants, with diamond-set star tops and pear-shaped sapphire pendants, each weighing approximately 25 carats (US$600,000-800,000).This very elegant cultured pearl and diamond fringe necklace, belonged to H.H. Begum Om Habibeh Aga Khan (1906-2000), the wife of H.H. Sultan Mohammed Shah, Aga Khan III. When it entered the collection of Princess Gabriela, a matching pair of ear pendants and a bangle were commissioned to Van Cleef & Arpels in order to wear them as a complete parure (US$200,000-300,000).
The World Jewelry Hub has marked Diplomatic Day in Panama by hosting the country's Minister of Commerce and Industry, Augusto Arosemena, as guest of honor, together with ambassadors and representatives from a host of countries.

The highlight of the day was the granting of honorary membership to the Panamanian Minister of Commerce and Industry. Making the award to Mr Arosemena, WJH Chairman Eli Izhakoff paid tribute to the ongoing support provided to the World Jewelry Hub by the Government of Panama. "Not only has the government worked with us closely in establishing a world-class business infrastructure, but it has also created a regulatory framework that is designed to ensure the transparency and integrity of trade. In our industry it is critical that we defend the confidence of our customers and all our trading partners," he said.

Since it began operations as Latin America's only dedicated gemstone and jewelry trade center early in 2015, WJH has maintained close ties with members of the diplomatic corps in Panama, working with them in expanding commercial relations with their respective countries, both in Latin America and internationally.



Alex Shishlo, Editor of the Rough&Polished European Bureau in Brussels




Condor (CNR.L) announced a proposed placing 6.45 million Units at a price of 40 pence per Unit to raise gross proceeds of about 2.6 million pounds.

Each Unit is comprised of one ordinary share of 20 pence each in the Company and two thirds of one share purchase warrant of the Company. Each Warrant, which is unlisted, will entitle the holder thereof to purchase one ordinary share at a price of 60 pence for a period of 24 months from the date on which the shares issued pursuant to the Placing are admitted to trading on AIM.

The company said that Ross Beaty has subscribed for 1.5 million pounds worth of Units and will have a 7.18% shareholding in the Company post placement on an undiluted basis. The investment follows a site visit and technical due diligence. Mr Beaty is a Canadian mining entrepreneur with a successful track record of both building mining companies and developing mineral deposits for sale. The Company has agreed to a non-dilute clause for Mr Beaty's shareholding. The Company also welcomes a specialist resource fund managed by an affiliate of Sprott Inc. as a shareholder.

The proceeds of the Placing will be used for general working capital purposes and specifically: to fully permit Mina La India in Nicaragua, pay the remaining US$670,000 for the purchase of the Espinito-Mendoza concession , secure the surface rights for the rural land that host and surround the future mine infrastructure and continue work to demonstrate the significant exploration upside of the 2.4M oz gold resource at 4.0g/t gold at La India Project.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
Crude oil prices were flat Monday morning, steady after last week's losses, despite ongoing concerns about the global supply glut.

Analysts say Iran may flood the market with oil in the coming months, offsetting any relief from a deal between Saudi Arabia and Russia to freeze output.

The Saudis now say they may not agree to anything unless Iran comes to the table.

WTI Crude oil for May was up 7 cents at $36.87 a barrel, having dropped more than 6 percent last week.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Market Analysis
Chicken restaurant chain El Pollo Loco Holdings Inc. (LOCO) said that Kay Bogeajis has stepped down from the position of chief operating officer, effective March 31, 2016. She has decided to leave the company to pursue personal interests.

The California-based fast-food company said that Bogeajis' responsibilities will be transitioned to other internal resources, while it will search for a successor.

Steve Sather, President and CEO of El Pollo Loco, said, "I would like to thank Kay for the valuable contributions she has made to our team over the last three years. I wish her well in all of her future endeavors."

In a separate statement, El Pollo Loco said that it has appointed William "Bill" Floyd and Carol "Lili" Lynton as independent members of its board of directors, effective April 1, 2016.

Floyd was chief operating officer of Taco Bell and KFC, both of which at the time were part of PepsiCo's Restaurant Division, and the chairman of the board of Buffet Holdings, Inc., a billion dollar family dining restaurant concept.

Lynton is an experienced executive with extensive restaurant industry and financial industry experience. She is the co-founder and operating partner of Dinex Group, a specialty restaurant launched in 1992 along with New York chef Daniel Boulud, which currently operates 17 Boulud-branded restaurants.

El Pollo Loco's chicken restaurant chain is known for its citrus-marinated, fire-grilled chicken and handcrafted entrees using fresh ingredients inspired by Mexican recipes. The company has more than 430 company-owned and franchised restaurants in Arizona, California, Nevada, Texas and Utah.

El Pollo Loco's business was negatively impacted last year after it attempted to raise prices and scaled back on value menus. However, the company has brought back the $5 menu combination meals.

In early March, shares of El Pollo Loco fell after the company forecast fiscal 2016 earnings below analysts' estimates.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
A prominent human rights organization has hailed the United States government's release of two Libyan detainees from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility to Senegal on Monday as a meaningful progress on closing the prison.

The Senegalese government has shown leadership and compassion in agreeing to resettle the detainees, both of whom were held at Guantanamo for years, in violation of international law, Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

"President Barack Obama has less than a year in office to erase the stain of Guantanamo that taints his human rights legacy," said Laura Pitter, senior US national security counsel at Human Rights Watch. "These and other announced transfers bring Obama closer toward his goal of closing the prison," she added.

The two detainees resettled to Senegal are Salem Abdul Salem Ghereby, 55, and Omar Khalif Mohammed Abu Baker Mahjour Umar, approximately 44. Both are Libyan nationals who were held for nearly 14 years without charge or trial. In 2009, an interagency task force determined that Ghereby did not pose a significant security threat to the US, clearing him for release from Guantanamo. A different inter-agency body, a Periodic Review Board (PRB), cleared Abu Bakr in 2015. Both are alleged to have joined the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), an organization opposed to the then-Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi, in the 1990s. Years after Ghereby and Abu Bakr were detained by the US, the LIFG split into two factions, one of which was allegedly aligned with international terrorist organizations.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Political News
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 ...
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 ...
One of three fuel tanks at the Matautu Wharf continues to burn as thousands of people are being evacuated.

Businesses nearby have been closed as well as government offices in the area as Firefighters battle the blaze.

Emergency workers and Police have taken over the area, sealing it off from members of the public.

The Samoa Observer understands that firefighters are concentrating their efforts on preventing the fire from spreading to the other two tanks.

A senior police official said there is a fear that the other two tanks could explode and thats why the area has been evacuated.

Firefighters and trucks from all over Upolu including Faleolo have been called to the area.

In the meantime, the fire can be seen from as far away as Siusega and Vaitele as black smoke covers the town.

The fire started about an hour ago.

More details soon.

Photos: Kini Vili, Margaret Polly Godinet, Tihati Devoe, Tessa Tafua, Hilton So'o, Felicity Pogi, Dida Clinton and Iuni Sapolu Facebook.
Some workers at the government building and many others on the main street of Apia have been told to go home.

It comes as one of three fuel tanks at the Matautu Wharf continues to burn.

The closing of schools follow the decision to close businesses nearby as Firefighters battle the blaze.

Emergency workers and Police have taken over the area, sealing it off from members of the public, creating traffic queues in Apia.

The Samoa Observer understands that firefighters are concentrating their efforts on preventing the fire from spreading to the other two tanks.

Part of the effort to fight the fire includes attempts to remove some of the fuel from the other two tanks. Fuel tanks have been running back and forth as part of the operation.

A senior police official said there is a fear that the other two tanks could explode and thats why the area has been evacuated.

Firefighters and trucks from all over Upolu including Faleolo have been called to the area.

In the meantime, the fire can be seen from as far away as Siusega and Vaitele as black smoke covers the town.

More details soon.
The fire at one of three large fuel tanks at the Matautu Wharf yesterday was a timely wake up call for Samoa.

If anything, it clearly exposed just how vulnerable we all are to the consequences of something like that happening, especially when we are least prepared for it.

The fact that a life has been lost is a real tragedy. Its a sad day for everyone. As we come to grips with the reality of what happened yesterday, spare a thought for the family of the man killed as a result of the fire.

Whisper a prayer for him today.

We also pray for the speedy recovery of all other victims of the fire  including the firemen  who were hospitalised yesterday as a result of what had happened.

But know this Samoa.

We are very blessed that the death toll is not higher. We say this because contrary to what will be said, that could have been a lot worse.

The simple fact is that the whole of Apia was at risk from a major catastrophe. That includes the possibility that the Matautu wharf could have blown up destroying everything on and near it.

Thousands of lives could have been at risk, not to mention properties, businesses and families who live on Beach Road.

And knowing the strategic importance of the wharf to livelihoods and businesses, imagine what could have become of Samoa if we had woken up this morning to find that there was no wharf at all?

Indeed, as the firefighters battled the blaze from the tank yesterday, the mind couldnt stop wondering what could have happened had the fire spread to the other two tanks.

What could have happened if there was another explosion?

We couldnt stop thinking about those poor firefighters and emergency workers in the area. They were clearly exposed and vulnerable.

And so was everyone else in the Apia area.

Today, there is reason to be thankful.

There is reason to rejoice.

Why? Although we have lost a precious life, we know deep down inside that many more lives have just been spared. But we cannot be complacent.

Some serious questions must be asked about how yesterdays incident came about. There must be a Commission of Inquiry into how it happened and how to ensure it doesnt happen again.

Safety is paramount and that is where the focus should be. It is why every effort must be made to get to the bottom of what happened yesterday to ensure that the incident is not repeated.

We repeat, Samoa was lucky yesterday.

But the next time, we might not be.

And thats something nobody wants.

At this point, we want to acknowledge the hard work of the Fire and Emergency Services Authority (F.E.S.A), the Disaster Advisory Committee, the Police, health workers and everyone who risked their life to help. Thank you for your commitment to Samoa.

In moments like this, as a community, we must come together and give thanks, acknowledge the hand of God and the work by our fellow people.

But there are some serious questions about safety that must be addressed. And that should be the focus from now onwards.

There is absolutely no guarantee that what happened yesterday will not happen again.

Absolutely none. And thats a real worry.
Dear Editor,

I think it is great that there has been a lot of conversation lately regarding gender inequality and ways to combat it. However, I cant help but feel that as a country many people, particularly males still see the issue of gender inequality as a womens issue only.

After working in the Geospatial/ICT sector for over 12 years now I just want to explain some of the effects Ive observed of gender inequality on ICT in particular, as well as the broader impact this inequality has on our development as a nation.

A countrys most important resource is its human resource as they say. This is especially relevant to countries with limited capacity for expensive physical infrastructure like Samoa. This is best illustrated by Singapore, where successful human resource development allowed a country 4 times smaller than Samoa to achieve a GDP per capita about 13 times larger than Samoas.

Samoa is already limited in our human resources. More than half of our population is female, the presence of artificial barriers that hinder womens economic participation severely limit the ability of our country to develop. To put it plainly, its similar to working with one hand tied behind our back. We have already seen very clear cases where women in our community have created businesses that have improved our economic output for example SSAB, Le Vai to name a few.

I am not in any way saying that women now are somehow not contributing. The fact that they give birth to all of us and are our primary child rearing/care-giver is a very big contribution. However IF they want to contribute more, then we should support them more instead of putting in artificial barriers that hinders them from doing so.

If we look at the top 5 most gender equal countries in the world. Iceland, Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Ireland. These countries also consistently rank at the top of virtually every other key socio and economic development indicator like GDP, health, education, welfare, low unemployment rate, low crime rate etc.

I believe a lot of this has to do with their population as a whole participating in their social and economic development because there are less or no barriers for half of their population (women) to participate. New Zealand is actually at number 10 which is a country many of us in Samoa want to migrate to for economic reasons. Contrast that to the bottom 3 countries in terms of gender inequality like Egypt, Mali and Lebanon and we see the difference. Although these countries have other factors affecting them negatively, I would argue that the large gender inequality certainly does not help.

When I worked for EPC in Geospatial/ICT we had to advertise an assistant position 4 times because we couldnt find someone. What I noticed each time was that most of the applicants (which there were very few to start with) were predominantly males. In fact I remember that there was only 1 female that applied. Now that I am in the private sector and involved heavily in Geospatial/ICT research and development it has hit hard how quite debilitating it is not having the capacity/talent to source from locally because there are very few ICT and in particular Geospatial talent in Samoa. What is making it worse is that literally half of the population (females) are not participating in ICT education and careers according to the recent ICT survey.

Why they are not participating is where gender inequality has reared its ugly head again. Girls for the last couple of years have consistently performed better than boys in the sciences and especially maths. These are subjects that are critical to CS(Computing Science) in particular and ICT however most women dont end up taking a lucrative career in CS/ICT because of gender inequality. Key among them is a perception that CS/ICT is really for boys and not for girls. Because of this image of CS/ICT being a male space, pursuing it would not even occur to most girls despite the options it provides, those that pursue it are discouraged to take it up by their peers or parents, not necessarily directly but beliefs.

The end result is that we are seeing a huge shortage in ICT professionals in many countries including Samoa, in a time where ICT is projected to be a major driver in socio and economic development not just locally but globally.

To fully maximise the use of the already limited human resources we have, we need to take gender out of the equation and focus only on the individual person. Stereotypical views of certain professions based on gender roles not only discriminate against an individual persons gender regardless of merit but it also limits the pool of people to feed from as is the case with ICT.

We should not discourage our children from taking certain professions because of their gender. If a boy wants to be the best secretary or nurse then let him be or if a girl wants to be the best software or geomatics engineer then encourage her to be one. In doing so will open up all these professions not only to more competition but also to the total available human resource to source from and hopefully fill highly skilled professions that we are currently lacking in including ICT.

I fear that if gender inequality is not addressed properly we will not fully utilise our limited human resource and such will continue to hinder our socio and economic development including ICT and development in general.

More hands makes a load lighter, two heads is better than one etc etc

Nomeneta Saili

Vaimoso
Mothers Day is around the corner and the team at Hyundai and Ford Samoa are gearing up for it in a big way.

On Saturday, the team were at the front of the government building to showcase a brand new Ford Fiesta they are planning to give away for their Mothers Day promotion.

This promotion for our mothers is our own way of giving back to the community, says Hyundai Samoa Executive Manager, Simon Fruean.

So today were bringing the car here so that people can see it. This is the first time weve done this promotion for mothers. Its a good way to give back to our customers, especially our mothers.

Mr. Fruean and his team were in front of the government building for another reason on Saturday.

Were offering free service for any kind of cars at any condition, he said.

This kind of service is normally $89 but were offering today for free and this is the third time weve done this.

The two promotions fit in together and its just a way of giving back to the community.

This is not only to promote our services but also to show people that we offer more than just a company so we are giving our time and expertise no matter what model.

Customer, Misilei Pouniu, was extremely grateful.

Theres so much happening at this time requiring money but having a chance to come here today with my car for free service is really exciting, he said.

As for the possibility of winning a brand new Ford, Pouniu said Looking at the brand new Ford Fiesta, Im praying that I will be the lucky winnerthanks Hyundai, youre the best!

The Ford Fiesta is valued at $58,000. The promotion ends on 5 May with the winner drawn the next day.
The spectacular blaze at the Matautu Wharf yesterday could be seen from as far away as Siusega, Vailima and Aleisa.

The explosion at the diesel tank belonging to P.P.S. left a trail of black smoke noticed from miles away.

Close to the site, the lid of the diesel tanker was completely blown off and was left just sitting on the side with firefighters risking their lives to subdue the flames.

An official at the wharf who spoke to the Samoa Observer said that the explosion was so sudden.

We got a shock when this happened so right now we are just trying to assist the firemen with their work, he said.

This fire is way too big for the small team of firefighters to deal with so we are just going to do whats needed to make their work easier, whether its reeling the hoses or whatever.

Fences around the tank were broken down by the firefighters in an attempt to use their portable pumps on the seawater to try to put out the fire. The firefighters were seen shooting water on the walls of the diesel and petroleum tankers to cool down any built up pressure.

This fire wont be able to be put out by water so the best thing we can do is let it run its course and pray that the other tanks wont blow up, said a firefighter.
At around 11:30am yesterday, a loud bang was heard in Apia and seconds after there was black smoke coming from one of the fuel tanks at Matautu. It set off widespread panic in the Apia township as reports about possible further explosions on the wharf quickly made the rounds on social media.

At Savalalo, members of the public were clearly in shock.

Some of them quickly made reference to an incident where a young woman claims to be carrying the marks of Jesus Christs suffering.

Remember that girl that has the signs on her body, I believe this is one of the many things that is going to happen, said Ioleva.

Its scary but we need to prepare ourselves, I believe what happened did not just happen out of the blue but we just need to believe that we are at the end of the days.

A bystander Amio Matue said he was on his way to the Samoa Shipping Services when the explosion occurred. It was scary, he said. I ran outside to see what is going on when I saw a black smoke coming out of one of the tanks.

Everyone ran out and started panicking hoping that the other two tanks wont explode.

It was good that the fire fighters came here as soon as possible because if they didnt then we wouldnt be able to have a wharf.

As a matter of fact we wouldnt be able to have a town anymore if all of those tanks exploded. Another witness Val Shah stood in shock and watched the police officers and everyone working together to secure peoples safety. Its just sad, at the beginning of this year it was the Flea Market and not even half way through the year and now this, she said.

I just hope that no one was hurt at this incident but thats all we can do is hope and pray. As for the fire fighters they are the ones at risk.

Its scary and hopefully we can all recover from this and pray for those who are working hard to make sure that everyone in this country is safe.
An officer at Samoas High Commission in Australia routinely assisted Mossack Fonseca in creating shell companies, files from the firm reveal. One of those shell companies later faced sanctions for supplying goods to the Syrian government and military.

The law firm assists its clients in setting up offshore shell companies in countries commonly linked to tax avoidance such as the British Virgin Islands and the Seychelles. A shell company is an entity that is usually created for business transactions but has limited assets and offers low visibility of the activities it undertakes.

Documents on Mossack Fonseca were obtained by the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists with the Guardian and other media outlets.

The files show that Mossack Fonsecas Samoan office appears to have been using the Samoan High Commission in Canberra, about 4,500km away, to assist it in forwarding documents for the creation of shell companies to other countries, such as the United Arab Emirates and Uruguay.

The Samoan High Commissioner initially said in a statement she was not aware of any instances where documents had been received from Mossack Fonseca for legalisation, but later clarified and said some documents had been forwarded for processing only to foreign authorities.

One email from Mossack Fonsecas Samoan office, dated 16 April 2013, details the process of sending documents from Samoa to Australia and then to the UAE.

We had forwarded on 15 March 2013 to the Samoa high commission a Certificate of Good Standing for the above company for authentication by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and then to be forwarded to the UAE embassy for further endorsement, a Mossack Fonseca employee wrote.

Other leaked documents demonstrate a similar process was followed for numerous companies created by Mossack Fonseca, with documents being notarised by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs, and the embassy or consulate of another country, before then being couriered onwards from the Samoan high commission.

In another email from 2012, Luciano Fonoti, the deputy head of mission at the high commission of Samoa in Australia, responds to a Mossack Fonseca employee: Have received your letter 13/2/12 for Agro & Oil International for UAE Embassy with the usual prepaid Fed Ex Courier.

He continued: Can you plse confirm the account is paid, because the one that was send in Nov 2011 was rejected by local FedEx here and now our office has been asked to pay for it, despite our having to inform the FedEx people here that it is not our document but because we had to fill in the senders address of the airway bill hence, the reason for the local Fed Ex agent going after our office.

The documents outline in detail the process for setting up shell companies, and the unusual involvement of the Samoan high commission in Australia.

The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade frequently provides what are known as legalisation services for documents to help them meet foreign governments requirements.

One of the companies created in this way was later found to have deliberately engaged in deceptive measures by the US government to supply aviation oil to the Syrian regime in 2013 and 2014.

Documents for Pangates International Corporation Limited were sent to the Samoan high commission, which were in turn sent to the UAE embassy and then back to the high commission, with the intention of then sending them on to Mossack Fonsecas client in Dubai, the papers show.

For more details http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/04/samoan-diplomat-was-used-to-help-mossack-fonseca-create-shell-companies
Santa Paula News

By Letitia Austin

Over 130 students from Santa Paula High School and Renaissance High School spent the start of their spring break attending the 3rd annual Spring Leadership Conference held on Monday, March 21 and Tuesday, March 22 at Santa Paula High School. This years conference was hosted by the Santa Paula Youth Empowerment Initiative Partnership consisting of the Santa Paula Latino Town Hall, Santa Paula High School, Renaissance High School, Santa Paula Unified School District, Oxnard College, Ventura College, and the Ronald Reagan Leadership Program. The conference was organized by three Ronald Reagan Fellows  Chris Magana, Estefany Mendoza, and Araceli Navarro  as part of their community service project.

Im really excited because our goal is to build a college-going culture here in Santa Paula, said Richard Castaniero, a teacher at Santa Paula High School and a Latino Town Hall member. We are giving them the nuts and bolts of leadership, education, and soft skills to be successful.

Students participating in the conference took the first step towards finding their passion and career goals by learning about the realities of college life and about different career fields from professionals.

Day one of the conference focused on students attending colleges and universities and also included a presentation by Tony Magee, a motivational speaker and author of the book: Cant Shove a Great Life Into a Small Dream. He shared valuable, life-essential tips with students to match their dreams to the life they aspire to have.

The meaning of life is to know what your purpose is, Magee told students. You are going to go through new things, but dont be afraid. The only thing that is permanent is change.
By Kay Wilson-Bolton

Santa Paula News

There are a number of folks in Santa Paula who have been concerned for decades about the dismal local economy caused by lack of job opportunities and diversity and the amount of disposable income spent out of town. They have studied ways to increase the tax base to pay for a higher level of services and amenities including public safety and sound infrastructure.

Many of these people have served on boards, commissions and councils. They have been active members of local business support groups, and supported bond measures for schools, police and fire services. Many are still at work; some have given up.

There is one area where everyone can participate in promoting all positive efforts and that is to understand the jobs-housing balance where there is adequate and desirable housing to support people who work within the community. Without housing, the jobs wont come.

Our primary industry is agriculture. We do not have sufficient housing for all of our workers, although we have provided many housing opportunities for some. We will never have enough.

About 30 years ago, the City expended a real effort to entice a company called Tolo Corporation to move from Santa Ana to Santa Paula and create approximately 300 entry-level and skilled trades jobs. They visited us; we traveled to their plant to visit them. We hosted them here and they hosted us there. They met with Planning, Council members and local leadership. Their mantra became Santa Paula or Bust.

However, after all that, they never came. The decision was largely for two reasons. The City didnt like the design of their proposed building and there wasnt enough housing for the employees they would bring with them.

Every single development proposed within the community of Santa Paula has faced opposition and often hostile resistance. When the Hillsborough project along Monte Vista Drive was proposed, there were fears of landslides, mud and extreme traffic. When Hillview Estates was proposed on West Telegraph Road, there was concern about the loss of agricultural land, it was a closed community and the lots being too small.

The Las Pasadas neighborhood was opposed because of the loss of agricultural land and the project was too dense with lots being too small. Today all of these neighborhoods are extremely popular and provide a good balance of housing mix in a community where approximately 50% of the housing stock is more than 60 years old.

When the Mobile 400 and Rancho Santa Paula mobile home parks were proposed, the opposition was so bitter that a highly respected citizen resigned from his seat on the City Council. The controversy was enormous over the proposal for reduced lots sizes and home square footage in the Vista Grande development, Phase 2 of the Hillsborough tract along upper 10th Street.

When the Wilson Ranch in the Oaks along Cliff Drive was proposed, there were objections to spoiling the Oaks neighborhood with too much traffic. The objection to the addition of the 7 homes on two acres owned by the Stewarts was so bitter that relationships were lost and damaged. One resident laid down in front the gravel trucks to halt construction. Not seventy houses, but seven.

Even today, the current proposal for homes along Ojai Road on the former Procter Ranch is being opposed for a number of reasons. The Anderson Project along Foothill Road has been bogged with controversy for all the same reasons cited in every other development project ever proposed.

The controversy over the proposals for Adams Canyon and Fagan Canyon are still very fresh.. The opposition was huge. And so, the need for homes to support the jobs-housing balance has gone unmet.

The East Area One Project by Limoneira was favorably approved for several reasons. They are trusted community partners, the Ag land was out of town and considered marginal, traffic impact was not an issue and there was something for everyone. Even that has changed with the recent proposed reduction of affordable housing.
Penndel, PA -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/04/2016 -- When the electric has been turned off for a period of time in a commercial or residential dwelling, restoring the power without checking the system could pose a serious hazard. That's why in the state of Pennsylvania, an electrical inspection is required in order to have the electricity turned back on by a utility company like PECO. But, the inspection cannot be conducted by just anyone; it must be performed by a certified electrical inspector of a third party agency to make sure the task is unbiased. A-1 Electric is a recommended third party agency by the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry for electrical inspections such as reintroduction of service. The company is pleased to announce that they are highly experienced in conducting reintroduction of service across the Philadelphia region.



A-1 Electric is certified as an electrical underwriter by PECO and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. During the inspection in Montgomery County, PA, their electrical inspectors thoroughly examine the elements of the electrical system for errors or issues. Some of the things they check for include making sure that the system meets the National Electrical Code (NEC) requirements, that the parts are in good condition, the structural integrity is in place, and all components are properly attached to the building.



Whether the power has been shut off for more than six months, a fire had occurred, or the electrical system was replaced, A-1 Electric puts safety at the forefront of its inspection services to make sure that there is no potential threat to having the electric be restored. Any issues that are found during the inspection are presented with a list of required repairs necessary to comply with code standards. A re-inspection must then be scheduled once the repairs are fixed.



To inquire about A-1 Electric's division of electrical contractors in Philadelphia or their third party agency, give them a call by dialing 800-401-6114.



About A-1 Electric

A-1 Electric is an organization of Electrical Inspectors and Master Electricians operating out of Penndel, Pennsylvania. They service Bucks County, Chester County, Delaware County, Montgomery County, Philadelphia and all of Pennsylvania, with electrical underwriting, reintroduction of services, installation of electrical infrastructure and implementation of electrical equipment. They also offer complete electrical inspection and authorization consulting services certified by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, all local AHJs (Authorities Having Jurisdiction) and all PA electrical utilities.



Their customer support team also offers emergency support for all customers 24 hours a day. Anyone suffering from bad electrical infrastructure or loss of service is advised to contact A-1 Electric as soon as they can.
Knoxville, TN -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/04/2016 -- A true conservative with strong principles, Clint Tribble will be entering the race for the November general election and seeks to unseat incumbent Congressman of District 1, Phil Roe. Like presidential candidate Donald Trump, Tribble is self-funding his campaign and unlike Roe, he doesn't have the support or backing of special interests.



"We can't afford to waste another election and we can't afford to re-elect Phil Roe," said Tribble. "Only the voters can carry my grassroots message to Washington, D.C. by voting for me on Aug. 4."



Prior to Dec. 2015, Tribble hadn't considered running for Congress. Statements made by Roe in The Kingsport Times-News made him realize that the residents of District 1 needed a different, better choice  someone that understands the issues, who will work hard and won't side with the status quo or the Establishment.



Tribble cites decisions by Phil Roe as reasons he has to go. Roe doesn't believe the borders should be secured and doesn't understand the scope of the threat. He voted for Obama's Fast Track Authority trade deal to enrich offshore corporate interests to the detriment of American workers.



Roe voted to prohibit labeling of GMOs and voted in favor of the DARK Act, a giveaway to corporate giant Monsanto. He voted in favor of a multi-billion dollar food stamp bailout bill, supported numerous boondoggle projects, and voted to increase the debt ceiling several times. Heavily funded by special interest groups, Roe also attacked Internet freedom.



In contrast, Tribble isn't a typical politician. He's an outsider with common sense who believes it's time for citizens to rise up and take back their country. Tribble majored in International Affairs at Northern Arizona University and has a firm grasp of the world situation and the tough decisions that are necessary for the U.S. to prosper.



Tribble supports a full and temporary ban on all immigration and opposes any trade agreement that would damage the U.S. or put the country at a disadvantage. The candidate supports local education and opposes Common Core educational requirements.



He opposes efforts to take away gun rights and will fight any increase in age requirements for Social Security benefits. Perhaps most notable is Tribble's opposition to The North American Union that would effectively create a European-style super state composed of the U.S., Canada and Mexico.



Tribble supports Donald Trump's positions on ways to return the U.S. to the beacon of hope and leadership the world needs. Residents will play an essential part in that process who Vote Clint in the District 1 Republican primary on Aug. 4.



About Clint Tribble

Clint Tribble is a lifelong Republican running for Congressman of Tennessee's District 1. He was raised in the Nazarene Christian evangelical faith and graduated with a degree in International Affairs at Northern Arizona University. He maintains a presence on Facebook and Twitter



Media Contact:

Committee to Elect Clint Tribble

865-440-5630
Blue Bell, PA -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/04/2016 -- While he is mostly known as a respected DUI Lawyer who represents Conshohocken area citizens, Edwin L. Guyer is also an expert in white collar criminal and fraud defense. According to Guyer, police forces are becoming more and more sophisticated in their surveillance tactics as the age of technology continues to advance. Relevant charges are becoming increasingly more difficult to understand.



Guyer is urging those involved in white collar crime charges to seek his expert counsel. As a lawyer who has represented cases as such since 1975, his experience is largely unmatched. Guyer spent a number of years as a prosecutor before moving into criminal defense law, and built a strong knowledge of how prosecution functions during that time. He also built a strong rapport with other prosecutors, and can work closely with them.



In the eyes of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the word fraud is vague. It involves a plethora of instances, and is relatively difficult for everyday people, who do not specialize in the laws as they pertain to fraud, to wrap their heads around. Residents of Pennsylvania who have been charged with fraud are best off allowing an expert to interpret the charges as they relate to them specifically. Not only is Edwin L. Guyer a prominent DUI lawyer serving Whitemarsh, but he also has the skills to represent those dealing with fraud charges.



To schedule a complimentary consultation, please visit The Law Offices of Edwin L. Guyer's website, or call 215-542-9333.



About Edwin L. Guyer

The Law Offices of Edwin L. Guyer have been assisting the public in DUI defense, along with a vast array of other criminal charges for over 30 years. He is comfortable in the courtroom and, as a former prosecutor, understands what is necessary for a successful criminal defense.



Guyer provides free consultations for DUI defendants and more. Please visit his website at http://www.paduilawyer.com for more information.
New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/04/2016 -- Concrete is the prime essential construction materials for all type of construction project, and serve the essential requirements of civil structures such as strength and durability of the final structure. Concrete consists of mixture of sand, aggregate, binder, water and admixtures.



The concrete admixtures contain specialty chemical solvent or mixture. It is used as an additive in cement or concrete to enhance the physical and chemical properties of the concrete such as aesthetic, functional, and design requirement of concrete structures. The concrete admixtures are extensively used in almost all type of concrete structures such as construction of residential buildings, industrial amenities, social and commercial complexes, and surface transportation infrastructure projects. The various cost and performance benefits offered by chemical admixtures include improved strength of the concrete structure, chemical resistance, enhanced durability and color properties, enhanced working properties of concrete and significantly low water and cement requirement. It also provides superior surface finish and better resistance to endure adverse climatic conditions.



Based on the different product type the market can be divided two broad categories: mineral admixture (including fly ash, granulated blast furnace slag, silica fume and rice husk ash) , and chemical admixture (including super plasticizers, normal plasticizers, accelerating agents, retarding agents, air-entraining agents, and waterproofing admixtures).



World Bank has estimated about 900 billion for the infrastructure development in developing countries till 2030. Moreover the improving quality of civil structure in developing countries of Asia Pacific is offering a double digit growth for the concrete admixture market. Various support mechanism such as foreign direct investment (FDI) for pacing infrastructure development in some of the major concrete civil structure dominant market such as India and China is providing new market opportunities for the concrete admixture market.



Increasing prices of concrete admixtures chemicals coupled with lack of awareness about the advantages of admixtures in unorganized construction sector of Asia Pacific and other developing region is restricting the market expansion of the concrete admixture.



Interested in report: Please follow the below the links to meet your requirements; Request for the Report Brochure:http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/3702



Growing residential requirement due to rising middle classes coupled with government initiatives such as stricter contraction quality regulations, upcoming infrastructure development programs such as home for every citizen of India (India Vision 2020, Planning Commission of India), development of transportation infrastructure and proposals of new megacities in both India and China is expected to display new market opportunities for concrete admixture market in upcoming years.



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Asia Pacific is by far the largest market of concrete admixture followed by North America and Europe. Asia pacific and Rest of the World region (includes Middle East, Latin America, and Africa) are two of the fasted growing market of concrete admixture exhibiting a lucrative double digit growth over the years, whereas market of develop region such as Europe and North America is heading towards maturity and expected to grow at an below average rate. Country wise, China, India, Brazil, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Japan, Italy, Spain, U.S., Canada and Mexico are some of the predominant market of concrete admixture.



Some of the major companies operating in global concrete admixtures market, include, The Dow Chemical Company, BASFSE, SIKA AG, W.R. Grace & Co., Cemex S.A.B. De C.V., Rpm International Inc., Ashland Inc., Pidilite Industries, Fosroc International Ltd, Chryso Sas, Mapei South Africa (PTY) Ltd, CICO Technologies Ltd., and CEMEX S.A.B. de N.V.



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Key points covered in the report

1) Report segments the market on the basis of types, application, products, technology, etc (as applicable)

2) The report covers geographic segmentation

North America

Europe

Asia

RoW

3) The report provides the market size and forecast for the different segments and geographies for the period of 2010 to 2020

4) The report provides company profiles of some of the leading companies operating in the market

5) The report also provides porters five forces analysis of the market.-



About Persistence Market Research (PMR)

Persistence Market Research (PMR) is a full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients' business needs.



PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients' business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMR's engagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.
Valley Cottage, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/04/2016 -- Fruit concentrates are primarily used in the beverages industry to manufacture fruit juices and nectars. Concentrates are also used as natural sweeteners and to produce natural food colours. Manufacturers use fruit concentrates in variety of food items so that customers perceive their products as natural. Fruit concentrates increase the nutrient level and reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease. Consumption of fruit supplements on a routine basis increases the serum concentration of major vitamins such as vitamin C and vitamin E. Consumption of fruit supplements or fruit juices helps individuals to achieve their food intake requirement. Purees are produced by grinding, pressing or blending vegetables or legumes into a paste or thick liquid. Fruit concentrates are derived from fruit juices after removing the water content. These and are usually thinner than puree and higher in sugar content. Products such as sauces, soups and drinks require puree as a base. Longer shelf life of puree and concentrates makes them suitable base products/ingredients for food processors and downstream manufacturer. Puree Fruit purees taste like fresh fruits and also offer similar benefits.



India's annual fruit production is approximately 94 Mn tonne, making it the second-largest producer of fruits in the world. India also produces a variety of fruits due to the varied climatic conditions in the region. Various growth factors for beverage industry includes using high quality concentrates and puree as consumers are relatively sensitive to the quality and taste of the product. Hence, purchasing fruit concentrates and puree from healthy and reliable sources increases the demand of the product. Another growth factor is product differentiation .Product differentiation can be done by advertising which can boost the company's sale by differentiating the company's product from others. Growing urbanization, increase in disposable income, demand for healthy and convenient food options and changing food consumption pattern are other growth drivers of the market. Some restraints in the industry include lack of infrastructure for cold storage and warehousing, inadequate infrastructure for quality control and testing, inefficient distribution channels, high inventory carrying cost, high cost associated with packaging and high preferences for fresh food and seasonal availability of raw materials.



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On the basis of application, the market can be segmented into beverages, dairy, frozen novelties, flavours, baked food, jams and spreads, soups, sauces, baby food and others. The fruit concentrates and puree market can be segmented geographically into North America, Western Europe, Asia Pacific and Rest of the World.



The fruit concentrates and puree market has been segmented on the basis of geography, type, technology and application. On the basis of type, the market is segmented into fresh, fresh cut, frozen and dried. On the basis of type of fruit used, the major segments are pineapple, mango and banana. Among these, pineapple is the most popular fruit concentrate, accounting for 60% of the world's fruit juice trade.



The major markets for fruit concentrates and puree market are European Union, the Middle East and the U.S. Fruit juices, concentrates and purees are traded internationally and used by a variety of industries; mainly the beverages industry. Beverage industry is the largest end-user of concentrates and purees, producing numerous drinks, nectars and syrups. Mango concentrate is base ingredient for all drinks. Several industries use banana pulp to enhance the flavour of drinks, and it is relatively cheaper than mango. Other products that are traded internationally are acerola from Brazil, Cherimoya from Venezuela and Brazil, Lychee from Brazil and starfruit.



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Innovation is a major strategy companies adopt to increase market share and to meet the changing customer needs. Intense expenditure on advertising helps industries to create opportunities and increase market share. Social media platforms play a pivotal role in building brand image, helping in understanding consumer behaviour and providing personalized solutions. Recently, various companies have been entering into Joint Ventures (JVs) in order to expand product portfolio and increase market share. Companies which signed joint ventures are the U.S., the U.K., Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany. The objective behind JVs is to ensure increased production of puree and fruit concentrates.



Major players in the fruit concentrates and puree market are Oceanaa, DohlerGroup, Capricorn, and Mine Products among others.
Charleston, SC -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/04/2016 -- Rebates on Real Estates is a South Carolina based real estate company that is now offering realistic rebates to customers off the commission agents receive from property sellers. This structure has been adopted by the company after the rebates on commission to buyers has allowed cashback to real estate customers in several states. "We have launched our program in several markets and are growing into new areas quickly as the demand and response has been very high", senior agent from the company wrote in a blog.



The agent for the company also highlighted the process in which real estate buyers can make use of the website to locate properties. "A customer can use our site to find a suitable property among the thousands listed. Once they find a property of interest, they may save the search and add it as a favorite. After that, they may schedule a showing with one of our dedicated local agents that is willing to rebate a portion of the sales commission offered from the seller as cash back at closing on the property. "



Rebates on Real Estate is also said to have provided special training to their agents. The agents are trained to clarify the services in further detail to the customers. The agents will also explain to the customers the various benefits of entering into the Agency Agreement, "the agreement is what really allows you to find your home with us and of course there is the benefit of availing a handsome cash rebate on closure of the property."



The CEO of Rebates on Real Estate assured real estate buyers that they do not have to negotiate with agents for the rebate. "We have already sought out dedicated real estate professionals that are willing to participate in our program and offer the highest rebates available." The company also discloses the rebates available prior to making a decision on engaging one of our local agents and an easy to use rebate estimating tool is available on their website. Customers can visit us online or call for any other service-related query."



About Rebates on Real Estate

Rebates on Real Estate is a South Carolina based company that features local realtors that offer cash back to customers on commission received by real estate agents.



Contact:

Contact Name: Tom Wingard

Company name: Rebates on Real Estate

Phone: 888-704-0727

Address: Charleston, SC, USA

Email: info@RebatesOnRealestate.com

Youtube URL: https://youtu.be/HNQahXDvSMs

Website: http://rebatesonrealestate.com
Austin, TX -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/04/2016 -- Roger's Plumbing, a plumbing company based out of Austin, Texas, has added the ichthys to their company logo. The ichthys has two intersecting arcs that makes it look like a fish. It has a long history, starting back with the Greeks and Romans. It wasn't until the 1970's that the "Jesus Fish" started to be used as an icon of modern Christianity. Roger's Plumbing has company vehicles that can be seen sporting the symbol in their phone number instead of a hyphen on the side of their trucks. In a world where dishonesty runs rampant and Christians are still persecuted, it's unusual to see such an obvious sign of faith in a business.



Although the company says nothing about being Christian, the symbol along with other subtle signs, makes it obvious that they are proclaiming the faith. On their website, http://callrogersplumbing.com/, they make statements about "honesty" and being "straight-forward" with their pricing, along with some rules. According to the site, the employees are drug free and not allowed to smoke, chew, or swear in the customer's home. They also state a 100% customer satisfaction promise, which alludes to the importance they put on making sure the client ends up content.



About Roger's Plumbing

Roger's Plumbing was founded in 1994 by Roger L. Patterson, who is still active in the business. They are a family owned plumbing company that services the greater Austin, Texas area including Largo Vista, Cedar Park, Georgetown, Leander, Pflugerville, and Round Rock. The company specializes in residential repairs, slab leaks, grinder pumps, locating leakage, and broken water or sewer lines. They also do drain cleaning, trenchless drain repair, water heater repair and replacement, water conditioning, tankless water heaters, gas lines, and any other plumbing type problems. Their experts are skilled in plumbing repair and installation and they continually educate and train their employees in all the latest repair and installation techniques. Their continuing education is mandatory, based on the fact that they are required to keep up to date regarding changes to the plumbing codes. All employees are also required to have a criminal background check.



Besides displaying the Christian symbol, they also claim professionalism. They are committed to showing up on time and calling if running behind. They pride themselves on communicating with their client throughout the service experience and they require their employees to be in uniform and drive a professionally lettered vehicle. They excel in common problems such as leaky pipes, dripping faucets, running toilets, and low water pressure. They've also dealt with leaky hose bibbs, slow or clogged drains, sump pump failures, and water heater repair and maintenance. Roger's Plumbing's twenty-two years of experience allows them to be at the top of plumbing companies in the greater Austin, Texas area.



Roger's Plumbing Inc.

815 Brazos St

Austin, Texas 78701

(512) 259-5754

service@callrogersplumbing.com

http://callrogersplumbing.com/
A global plan to introduce mass dog vaccination in order to combat rabies  which kills around 70,000 people every year  is under way after being backed by major health players.



A tripartite alliance between the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) is overseeing the End Rabies Now campaign.

Mass dog vaccination is critical to reducing and eventually eliminating rabies. Ronald Schultz, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Rabies is a viral disease that affects the central nervous system of mammals, including humans. Once symptoms appear, the disease is always fatal. Rabies is present on all continents except Antarctica, but according to the WHO, more than 95 per cent of human deaths caused by rabies occur in Africa and Asia.



To target high risk areas, the OIE regional vaccine bank recently enabled the procurement and delivery of canine rabies vaccines to Indonesia, the Philippines and Tunisia.



Mass dog vaccination is critical to reducing and eventually eliminating rabies from a few defined areas where it is present at low levels, Ronald Schultz, founding chair of the Department of Pathobiological Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine, tells SciDev.Net.



Schultz explains that while eliminating rabies will be impossible where it is endemic in wildlife, it is vital to continue the support of mass vaccinations of domestic dog populations as one step towards significant reduction of the disease. According to the OIE, mass dog vaccinations have proven to be successful in Mexico, where the number of rabid dogs has nearly dropped to zero after mass dog vaccination campaigns, with a parallel decrease in human cases.



Barbara Hasler, lecturer for agricultural health at the Royal Veterinary College in the United Kingdom, says that both upwards and downwards trends of the disease are possible. This depends strongly on the implementation of effective control strategies, she tells SciDev.Net.



Hasler cites targeted, large-scale rabies control programmes by the Global Alliance for Rabies Control (GARC) such as in the challenging mountainous terrain of Sorsogon province in the Philippines, one of the top ten countries with rabies problem. The 1,251 volunteer vaccinators, composed of village health workers, agricultural and fishery workers and local youth council members, have achieved dog vaccination coverage of 64 per cent, or about 34,500 dogs.



Sarah Jayme, Philippine country representative of GARC, says that mass dog vaccination of at least 70 per cent remains the most cost effective means to control rabies at source while citing the economic cost of rabies annually which is at US$8.6 billion.

The WHO, FAO and OIE anti-rabies alliance has also made making human vaccines and antibodies affordable and ensuring that people who get bitten receive prompt treatment as additional key factors in eliminating the disease.Louise Taylor, scientific director at GARC, notes, For some travellers, such as those likely to be in close contact with animals, or travelling to very remote areas, vaccination before you travel is recommended. For most, the advice is to understand how to quickly get help in the event that you are bitten. Even with vaccination, you still need to get booster shots.
The outbreak of Rift Valley fever in Uganda holds important lessons for current thinking about investment in research for global development.

What is happening in Uganda is reasonably familiar  similar lessons have come up before. Epidemiological control measures designed to limit spread of disease do not fully consider the reality for affected people. In this case, what are poor rural communities to eat, or farm, if dairy and meat sales are banned? Also the official communication channels used to raise the public health alarm are not the communitys most trusted opinion leaders.

In discussions around science for development, there are frequent mentions of contextualising research so it has an impact, and the value of this seems obvious. So why do these mistakes continue to happen?

The question is particularly urgent not only because livelihoods and lives are at stake, but also because trends in research funding appear likely to increase the frequency of such mistakes. Ironically, it is development agencies growing concern with impact that is exacerbating the constraints to learning what works.

Impact focus

The 2008 financial crisis brought into focus two narratives on public investment in research. The first is that evidence-informed policy and practice makes for more cost-effective programmes. The second is that knowledge economies drive economic growth, and require sustained investment into the innovation pipeline. The intersection and driving force of both narratives is expressed in funders concern with impact and national interests.

The evidence of this shift is increasingly ubiquitous. In the United Kingdom, the Higher Education Funding Council for England increased the role of impact in determining its levels of research funding of English universities in 2011: a larger percentage of research quality criteria are now based on impact.

There are signs of the shift in the development sector as well. In 2012, the Dutch government announced a restructure focused on knowledge platforms, with each featuring a different theme (such as inclusive policies or food and business). The idea is to make sure all research investment is funneled into a specific priority sector.

The irony is that investing in systems sustains efficiency in research spending. It is, in fact, through independent knowledge brokers and experts on research uptake that we learn most effectively about what works when research gets put to use. Nick Ishmael Perkins

The Canadian agency, the International Development Research Centre, is under pressure to scrutinise its research portfolio and become more poverty focused, along the lines of what happened with the UK Department for International Development (DFID) some time ago.

Harmful expectations

To be clear, the mainstreaming of funders concern with research impact is a welcome development. A SciDev.Net survey in 2012 found that more than 80 per cent of NGOs do not systematically use research to inform their policy and practice. Even bilateral research funders such as DFID and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency have previously struggled to get parts of their respective organisations to use the research they fund.

The problem with the recent focus on research impact is the expectations and assumptions about how it works, particularly in relation to poverty reduction.

The most common expectation is that research will lead to a specific and immediate policy response. It is an idea that has appeal as a political soundbite. But in practice it means that any measure of impact that falls short of that goal may be dismissed. This is particularly problematic because it renders irrelevant the process of sustained social change, which is slow and complex.

When research uptake is conceived of in this way, it underestimates the agency of research users and the complexity of their environment, and assumes they are merely awaiting instruction in the form of study findings. In the case of Rift Valley fever in Uganda, the pastoralists just need to be told not to touch the meat, the assumption goes, and we can contain the spread of disease. Weve seen how well that worked.

Misguided communication funding

Another concern is that this focus on impact discourages innovation and experimentation. The stakes have become too high to risk failure.

The biggest concern, however, is that the push for impact has made research more producer-focused. Funders are encouraging researchers to allocate resources for communication, so funds for uptake increasingly go through the commissioned research projects themselves. This is an understandable instinct from a funders perspective as it demonstrates a level of mainstreaming that makes a portfolio look progressive. The result is that money goes to research producers, not organisations that support its use.

The problem becomes clear when looking at this from the users perspective.

Thousands of high quality research programmes are funded every year, targeting a limited and highly prized group of policymakers. To return to the Rift Valley fever example: communicating the research to them would be comparable to pastoralists being inundated with public health messages about managing their livestock, which are not necessarily coordinated.

Clearly what is required is a bit of intelligent brokering of the research, with trusted information sources acting as mediators between knowledge producers and those most affected by the disease.

Thinking this through from the demand side should underscore the value of research systems: the capabilities needed to deliver on the assumed benefits of research. They are local infrastructures and relationships that build both an understanding of users needs and ability to act on new knowledge.

Those of us in this line of work call this assessing and contextualising the research, and mobilising the demand. It cannot be reasonably delivered by any single research project. The rise in health systems research stems from a similar realisation  in that case, that health outcomes depend on more than the development of the right drug.

In the current drive for impact, spending on such systems is seen increasingly as a luxury. For instance, the British government just cancelled a funding call for building the capacity of knowledge brokers, saying it was not enough of a high-level objective under a new aid strategy that allocates at least 2.5 billion (US$3.6 billion) to commissioning new research. SciDev.Net has noticed this attitude in a number of funders, not just DFID.

The irony is that investing in systems sustains efficiency in research spending. It is, in fact, through independent knowledge brokers and experts on research uptake that we learn most effectively about what works when research gets put to use.

Everyone who invests in research in a marginalised community should learn from the current problems with containing Rift Valley fever.

Nick Perkins is the director of SciDev.Net. @Nick_Ishmael

SciDev.Net led a consortium that applied for the DFID Improving Communication of Research Evidence for Development (ICRED) programme.
A woefully low proportion of members of the world's learned bodies and science academies are women.



A report [1] published by the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) in collaboration with the InterAcademy Partnership (IAP) and launched on 29 February puts the figure at 12 per cent, measured across 69 national academies, including 11 in Africa: Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.



Among the African academies that participated in the survey, the mean proportion of women members was even lower  ten per cent. However, the tally varied widely between individual academies.



The ASSAfs 24 per cent makes it one of the most women-friendly academies in the world, but at four per cent women, Tanzanias Academy of Sciences shares the last place globally with Poland.



The report recommends ways academies should promote greater gender parity among members. These include collecting annual data on women membership and establishing permanent structures to promote the role of women  not just within the academy but also more broadly across science, technology and innovation.

One thing is certain: The problem is not that there arent enough women scientists. Linda Nordling



However, many of Africa's (mostly underfunded) academies will struggle to implement these recommendation, even if their leaders should want to. Better support for academies, and for research more widely, is therefore crucial to achieving better gender balance in African science.



Dearth of women scientists?

One thing is certain: The problem is not that there arent enough women scientists. Across the world, the proportion of women in science generally is vastly bigger than the proportion of women on the academies. So why is that?



Many blame childcare and family responsibilities for the dearth of women that reach the highest echelons of academic institutions.



But is that really all that there is to it? In the United Kingdom, for instance, the Royal Society has six per cent women members, while women, according to Nature [2], hold 18 per cent of the countrys professorships. The picture is more or less the same all across Europe.



In Africa, it is difficult to find data on the numbers of professorships held by women. However, the disparity between the ratio between men and women scientists generally, and that found in the academies, mirrors the trends found in Europe and elsewhere.

For instance, Ugandan women make up 24 per cent of the country's scientists overall.



However, women only make up 13 per cent of the Uganda National Academy of Sciences' members. And in South Africa there is near-parity between men and women in research jobs across the board. Against that background 24 per cent women in the academy is not a number to be proud of, said Daya Reddy, president of ASSAf, at the reports launch in Hermanus, South Africa.



Why low women membership

So what else is holding back women from attaining academy membership? Is there something a bit conservative and patriarchal about the academy as an institution?



Given that the seeds of the national academies we have today were planted several hundred years ago, when women were excluded from most spheres of public life, there may be a grain of truth in this. Moreover, most academies focus on rewarding excellence may unintentionally skew membership against women.

But the problem is getting on the first step of the ladder  and that's the problem for women getting into academies too. Tonya Blowers, OWSD



For, what constitutes excellence? And does the system give equal chances to attain it for women as for men?



Tonya Blowers, coordinator of the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD) based in Trieste, Italy, says the system favours men. She likens the situation to getting on the property ladder in an expensive city.



Winning a prize will give you points that can be used towards getting another prize. It's much like the housing ladder in London. Once you've bought your own house, you can sell it and buy another, she says. You can keep moving up and up that ladder. But the problem is getting on the first step of the ladder  and that's the problem for women getting into academies too.



Improving gender balance

However, some academies have managed to improve their gender balance through targeted action. South and Central American academies were among the most gender-balanced academies in the world.



The Brazilian Academy of Sciences has a working group on women in science. The Cuban Academy of Sciences, which at 27 per cent has the highest proportion of women in the world, has had such a body since 1999. These dont just promote women entering the academy, but also promote women in science more broadly.

It is such committees or bodies that the report recommends all science academies form. However, many African academies dont even have permanent secretariats. This makes it extremely difficult for them to implement any policies , let alone ones that try to change the culture of the institution.What is needed is more support for Africas academies. There is no doubt that academies play an important role in representing the scientific community to governments, and presenting them with advice on scientific matters. Therefore, African governments should support their academies. It does not have to be much  just enough to staff a secretariat and manage the academys activities.Even simply establishing a network of women scientists would be a step in the right direction towards recognising womens scientific contributions. Such networks would provide up-and-coming women with role models and support, perhaps helping them onto that crucial first rung of the ladder.Journalist Linda Nordling, based in Cape Town, South Africa, specialises in African science policy, education and development. She was the founding editor of Research Africa and writes for SciDev.Net, Nature and others.This piece was produced by SciDev.Nets Sub-Saharan Africa English desk.
Recent satellite images sent from space may hold new clues to the presence of another Viking site in the Western Hemisphere, apart from L'Anse aux Meadows, the only known such site to date. The new findings could very well change or even rewrite the history of the Vikings.

Infrared photos from space reveal the presence of a probable unearthed site located on Newfoundland's southwest coast. Archaeologists say these images were taken from above 400 miles in the sky. A study of the images by archaeologist Sarah Parcak, who pioneered the use of satellite imaging for archaeology, revealed a large mass of area with discolored soil and changed vegetation that hinted at the presence of something beneath the soil - possibly indicating ancient ironwork. Until now there has been no evidence of humans using iron in the area that correlates with the Viking time period.

"Either it's an entirely new culture that looks exactly like the Norse," said Parcak, "or it's the westernmost Norse site that's ever been discovered." Either way, the discovery also leads to the notion that there could be even more such unknown sites spread across the said region. This means that Vikings had made an attempt to colonize the area long before Christopher Columbus arrived in North America.

L'Anse aux Meadows, discovered about five decades ago, is the only known ancient Viking site in the Western Hemisphere. The 1,000 year old site was found to be a temporary settlement that probably served as a way station during Viking conquests. If a link is confirmed between the newly discovered site at Newfoundland and Vikings then more can be known about Norsemen and their foray into the Western Hemisphere. It would also give more insight into the general history of the Vikings, and in particular their techniques and way of living.
FLORENCE, S.C.  Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. 

The sweet sounds of Amazing Grace could be heard echoing through the Florence National Cemetery on Monday morning as Sgt. John Charlton Holladay at last was laid to rest in the place he called home for much of his life.

Holladay, a Florence Marine, was killed in action in 1943 in the South Pacific by a sniper during World War II. His remains were discovered recently by a local person on New Georgia Island in the British Solomon Islands and identified through DNA sampling.

Sunshine beamed down on more than 100 family members, friends, civilians and active duty and veteran servicemen who gathered to pay their respects for Holladay in the graveside service with full military honors.

Daniel Holladay Jr., of Columbia, one of Holladays nephews, said the return of his uncles body was completely unexpected, but it has felt wonderful to be able to say he is home.

Hes here, Daniel said, gesturing at the flag-draped casket. Amazing. Simply amazing.

He went on to say that Holladay was a part of what Tom Brokaw called the greatest generation.

And great they were, Daniel agreed.

Holladay was remembered Monday as a leader. He joined the Marine Corps in early 1942 after learning of the bombing at Pearl Harbor and subsequent declaration of war. He was 29 years old, as compared to many of his fellow servicemen who joined as teenagers.

Sgt. Holladay made the ultimate sacrifice, said Navy chaplain Jack Carmody, who led the service. He laid down his life for his friends, sure, but for our country. He laid down his life for people he would never meet.

Carmody reminded the crowd of the reality of Holladays sacrifice. Without it, the chaplain said, we might not be here today.

A great debt of gratitude is owed to Holladay and his fellow servicemen, Carmody said.

We celebrate today, and we know that he is in a better place not because he gave his life for his country, though he did. Hes in a better place not because he was a war hero, though he was, Carmody said.  He is in heaven because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

In an emotional moment at the services conclusion, Jack Holladay was given the carefully folded American flag that covered the casket on its journey to South Carolina by a member of the Marines. It was Jacks DNA that was used to confirm Holladays identity.

He was also given a letter of recognition from President Barack Obama.

"John Holladay was a fearless soldier, a good friend and a good Marine," Daniel said.

And his uncle serves as a reminder for all to "seize the day, make the most of it and be the best you can be."
In the first quarter of this year, Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME) and Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) have received zero new shipbuilding orders, according to sources quoted by local media Yonhap. Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) is the only one among the three to have landed a KRW150bn ($130.6m) order in March to build two petrochemical tankers.

SHI, for instance, had clinched new orders worth $2.3bn in the first quarter of 2015, with the orders consisting of containerships, oil tanker and LNG carriers, compared to none received in the first three months of this year.

Demand for offshore units has been hit by the plunge in crude oil prices while the container shipping segment is awashed with capacity leading to reduced new orders as well. The Korean shipbuilders are mainly focused on constructing drillships, FPSOs, LNG carriers and large containerships.

The difficulties for the Korean yards are made worse by an equally weak conventional shipbuilding market, where they also face stiff competition from Chinese and Japanese yards.

The depressed state of the shipbuilding market has led to massive losses at the three Korean yards, with DSME posting a $2.88bn loss for 2015, HHI recording $1.13bn of loss and SHI reporting $1bn of loss, not to mention some 5,000 job cuts among them.

In view of the protracted downturn of the industry, the three Korean yards have trimmed their order targets for 2016 from 2015.

HHI, the largest among the three, is targeting to bring in $16.7bn worth of new orders, representing a 12.6% decrease from last years $19.1bn. SHI is eyeing a full year order worth $10bn compared to $15bn achieved in 2015 while DSME is aiming for $10bn, down from $13bn last year, the news report said.

Industry observers have expected the shipbuilding slump to persist this year due to the lingering overcapacity and slowing global economic growth. The stumbling shipbuilding sector is also feared to be a major drag on South Koreas economy as the industry is one of the key growth engines, along with electronics and automobiles.
Press Release

April 3, 2016 BONGBONG MARCOS WANTS TO BRING TO WHOLE COUNTRY HIS SUCCESSFUL HEALTH PROGRAM IN ILOCOS NORTE Vice presidential candidate Senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" R. Marcos, Jr. today said he wants to replicate in the entire country the successful health care program he began in Ilocos Norte during his stint as governor of the province. Speaking before the officials and employees of the Chinese General Hospital, led by its president and chairman of the board Dr. James Dy, Marcos said the health program he has started in Ilocos Norte should be duplicated for the rest of the country because it has enabled those in the far-flung areas to have access to doctors and other health programs. "My solution was to bring health care to the people," said Marcos. First, Marcos said they conducted medical missions four times a month in isolated barangays. He added that they created a database of medical records of residents, making diagnosis and treatment easier in their subsequent visits. Likewise, Marcos said he adopted a policy to provide health insurance to 75 percent of the residents of the province who did not have any health insurance coverage with the cost shouldered by the provincial government. He said they not only achieved the 75 percent target coverage but the program even became self-sustaining later. Eventually, Marcos said the medical missions were institutionalized into Rural Health Units with permanently assigned nurse and midwife and a doctor available for at least 2 days of the week to cater to basic health problems of residents. "Now our residents especially those in far-flung barangays, who had found it difficult to go to hospitals not only because they lack money for transportation, but also because of other concerns such as having to leave their family and their work, have regular and easy access to health care professionals and workers and our health programs," he pointed out. Because of his pioneering efforts, the Department of Health (DOH) has lauded the all-out efforts of the provincial government of Ilocos Norte to implement the Universal Health Care program to attain its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) targets by 2016. It noted that Ilocos Norte is doing well in achieving the universal health care particularly addressing the five programs in maternal care, infant care, under five, HIV/AIDS and the establishment of a Service Delivery Network. Marcos earlier called for more RHUs in the country, saying majority of health problems people experience were common ailments that health personnel of the RHUs and barangay health centers can adequately address. The senator stressed the importance of basic health care saying nobody can be productive unless he has good health. "Poor health is the great equalizer--it does not recognize status. It does not discriminate if you're rich or poor. That is why the first thing I did when I became governor of Ilocos Norte was to strengthen our health care system," said Marcos. "And that is the same thing I want to do for our country," he added.
BONGBONG MARCOS CALLS FOR PROBE ON PLIGHT OF COMELEC WORKERS IN LAGUNA

VICE Presidential candidate Senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" R. Marcos Jr. has called for an investigation on the alleged non-payment of wages and substandard working conditions of workers at the Commission on Elections (Comelec) warehouse in Santa Rosa, Laguna.

Marcos made the statement after he received reports that more than a hundred Comelec employees have gone on strike over the weekend, citing poor working conditions and not receiving compensation.

"We've received word that workers in Comelec have been poorly treated. This should be investigated immediately, and if proven true, should be resolved the soonest possible time," Marcos said.

The workers at the Comelec warehouse were in the production and dispatch of more 90,000 vote-counting machines for the May 9 elections.

Reports showed that workers at the Comelec warehouse held a noise barrage last March 31 after they were not paid their wages from the contractor of technology provider Smartmatic with many of them refusing to go to work on April 1.

The workers were also reportedly complaining of substandard working conditions because of poor ventilation in the warehouse.

While the workers later on reportedly received their wages, Marcos said the incident is a very serious matter which Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista should look into.

"This should be looked into by no less than the Comelec Chairman. Our election workers should be treated well because their roles are crucial in the conduct of elections. They do not deserve such kind of treatment," he stressed.
Press Release

April 4, 2016 CHIZ WANTS FULL ACCOUNTING OF DA, NIA FUNDS Independent vice-presidential candidate Sen. Francis "Chiz" Escudero wants Agriculture Secretary Processo Alcala to account to the public every centavo that the Department of Agriculture (DA) has spent to help the farmers affected by the drought spawned by the El Nino phenomenon. "I call on Secretary Alcala to disclose to the public where he used the taxpayers' money entrusted to his department to help the agriculture sector. The public deserves no less than a complete accounting of the total and entire DA funds," Escudero said in the face of mounting complaints from farmers battered by the extreme weather condition. The violent dispersal in Kidapawan City of poor farmers demanding food and help from the government has brought to light the lack of funding and support from the DA, the agency mandated by law to look after the welfare of the agriculture sector. "Taon-taon himihingi si Secretary Alcala ng pondo sa Kongreso para tulungan daw ang mga magsasaka at ibinibigay naman namin. Ang hindi katanggap-tanggap ay kung sino pa nagpapakain sa atin ay iyon ang walang makain. Nasaan na ang pera ng mga magsasaka?" asked the leading vice-presidential contender. For 2016 the government has allotted a total of P91 billion for the agriculture sector, with the DA receiving the highest allocation of P40.33 billion from P39 billion last year. The budget for the National Irrigation Administration (NIA), which is responsible for irrigation development and management, was also increased to P32.74 billion this year from P28.75 billion in 2015. "Nasa kamay ni Secretary Alcala ang pondo ng mga magsasaka. Walang dahilan para tipirin ang mga magsasaka sa perang sadyang inilaan para sa kanila. Sabi nga nila eh 'aanhin pa ang damo kung patay na ang kabayo?' Ibuhos na ang pondong yan sa agrikultura para sa tunay na nangangailangan," the veteran lawmaker said. According to Escudero, former chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, funding is immediately available to assist El Nino-hit farmers if the government genuinely cares for the agriculture sector, which hosts 60 percent of the country's poorest. "Kung gusto may paraan, kung ayaw may dahilan." Under the current National Expenditure Program, some P39 billion in Calamity Fund can be tapped for food aid, various cash-for-work programs, farm subsidies and emergency employment, to help farmers reeling from the impact of El Nino. On top of this, money is also available to assist the sector under the P6.7-billion Quick Response Fund farmed out to 12 major agencies, including the Department of Social Welfare and Development (P1.32 billion), DA (P500 million) and NIA (P500 million). Since last year, Escudero has been pushing the DA, which is notorious for underspending, to download funds intended to help farmers and fisherfolk facing the threats of El Nino in the wake of repeated warnings from PAGASA that the farm sector should brace for the harsh weather condition. Similarly, he asked the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) to extend help to the sector by providing alternative livelihood and source of income. Recently Escudero has called on the DSWD to include calamity victims like the El Nino-hit farmers in the conditional cash transfer program but sans the usual requirements imposed on CCT beneficiaries. He also wants free irrigation for all farmers if he wins in the May elections. Three farmers died and dozens others were injured when police tried to break a barricade set up by protesters along Cotabato-Davao Highway in Kidapawan City to seek food assistance. The farmers, including lumads, are asking the government to increase the three kilos of rice in government subsidies per quarter to 15,000 sacks of rice, and provide free seeds and other inputs to replace their crops.
Press Release

April 4, 2016 Guardians Brotherhood Party list (1GB) declares support for VP bid

of Sen. Marcos The Guardians Brotherhood (1GB) party list, composed of various associations of Guardians in the country, today formally expressed its support for the vice presidential bid of Senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" R. Marcos, Jr. In a one-page manifesto, signed by 1GB party list 2nd nominee Rolando "Rolly" Bernardo, the group said they have decided to make official their support for the vice presidential bid of Marcos, believing him to be a leader who will stand for our rights and lead our country to a better future. "As a united organization built in the truest sense of brotherhood, we declare our support for the candidacy of Senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos, Jr. for vice president in the coming May 9, 2016 national elections," the manifesto said. The manifesto was read before Marcos himself when he visited a gathering of the Guardians at the Guardians Republican International, Inc. (GRII) National Headquarters in Barangay Bambang, Los Banos City, Laguna. Apart from Bernardo, who is the chairman and president of GRII, other guardian leaders present in the gathering include Virgilio Briones, chairman and president of Guardians Solid Brothers Inc.; Arturo Narvaez, president of Guardians New Hope Brotherhood, Inc.; and Ronaldo Arrienda, chairman for Southern Luzon of GRII. Marcos thanked the leaders and members of 1GB party list for their expression of support and for giving him the opportunity to meet with them. "More than that, I want to take this opportunity to show to all Filipinos the importance of the example of unity that the Guardians have shown," he said. Reiterating his call for national unity, Marcos said the history of the Guardians bore a striking parallel to the divisiveness in the country's recent history. He noted that after growing into a large organization the Guardians split into various factions. According to Marcos the formation of 1GB party list reuniting various Guardians factions marks a revitalization and further development of the organization. He said this was the realization of his advice, when he met various Guardians groups in the past, for them to unite under a single national organization. In the same way Marcos said his call for national unity which he said is essential for the realization of his vision for a brighter future for the country.
Press Release

April 4, 2016 BONGBONG MARCOS CALLS FOR MORE SUPPORT TO COOPERATIVES VICE presidential candidate Senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" R. Marcos Jr. over the weekend chided the government for the miniscule support it is giving to people's cooperatives. At the same time, he called on the cooperatives to expand and strengthen its ranks so that more benefits will be gained by its members. "Tapat ang aking paniniwala na napaka-importante na kailangan nating pasiglahin ang movement, ang kilusan ng kooperatiba dito sa Pilipinas... malaki ang kakulangan ng suporta na ibinibigay ng pamahalaan sa kooperatiba," he said during the 10th General Membership Meeting of Southern Global Services Multi-Purpose Cooperative held at the Lyceum University in Calamba, Laguna. Marcos also scolded anew Commissioner Kim Henares of the Bureau of Internal Revenue for continuing to extract taxes from small cooperatives that are levy-exempted under the law. "Nasa batas na ang isang kooperatiba na mas maliit sa P10 milyon ay tax-exempt. 'Yun lamang, ang ating BIR ay panay pa rin ang tax ng ating mga maliliit na kooperatiba," he said. Paragraph 1 of Article 61 of Republic Act No. 9520, entitled, "An Act Amending the Cooperative Code of the Philippines to be known as the Philippine Cooperative," states that: "Cooperatives with accumulated reserves and undivided net savings of not more than Ten million pesos (P10,000,000.00) shall be exempt from all national, city, provincial, municipal or barangay taxes of whatever name and nature." It further states that: "Such cooperatives shall be exempt from customs duties, advance sales or compensating taxes on their importation of machineries, equipment and spare parts used by them and which are not available locally a certified by the department of trade and industry (DTI)..." Marcos, vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Cooperatives, has already sponsored Senate Bill 2134, entitled, "Cooperative Development Authority Charter Act," with a provision stating that "The certificate of registration issued to a duly registered cooperative, as validated in the certified list submitted by the Authority, shall ipso facto constitute as the sole legal basis or requirement for the full enjoyment of the tax exemption and other incentives granted under the Philippine Cooperative Code of 2008, notwithstanding any provision of law, executive order, rule or regulation to the contrary." "Iyan ang pinaglalaban natin at inilagay ko na sa bagong CDA (Cooperative Development Authority) charter na dapat ang mangyari kung ikaw ay kinilala na isang kooperatiba ng CDA, sapat na 'yun na katunayan na ikaw ay functioning cooperative. Therefore, ikaw (kung maliit na cooperative) ay considered na tax exempt," he said.
Press Release

April 4, 2016 SAN MATEO, RIZAL CONFIRMS RIZAL PROVINCE IS MARCOS COUNTRY, BACKS BONGBONG'S VP BID The municipality of San Mateo in Rizal today confirmed that that the province is indeed "Marcos country." This developed after vice presidential candidate Senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" R. Marcos, Jr. received a rousing welcome from town officials, government employees and residents when his "Unity Caravan" rolled into the town Monday morning. Marcos, who was the guest speaker in today's flag-ceremony at the municipal hall, was mobbed by municipal employees and town residents, eager to shake his hands or have a selfie with him. He was met by Rep. Isidro "Jun" Rodriguez, Jr. (Rizal, 2nd district) and San Mateo Mayor Rafael Diaz. Marcos thanked Diaz and the people of San Mateo for the enthusiastic reception they gave him. Marcos noted that Diaz was a member of the Kabataang Barangay (KB), the national youth organization established by his father, former Pres. Ferdinand Marcos. "It is really heart-warming," he said. Rodriguez, during his speech to welcome the senator, recalled his father saying that the province of Rizal delivered the biggest margin of vote for the senator's father when the latter first ran as President. "We will do the same thing for Senator Marcos," he vowed. In response, the crowd chanted: "Marcos, Marcos, Marcos pa rin!" To close the flag-raising rites, town officials and municipal hall employees raised their hands as one and prayed over Marcos to seek divine blessing for his vice presidential bid. The warm reception given to Marcos was exemplified by retired teacher Josefina Magabo, PhD., who brought with her a picture of the Marcos family as well as two books authored by the late Pres. Marcos, for the senator to sign. "I have been waiting for the opportunity to meet him (Sen. Marcos) for a long time. I'm glad that it finally happened today," said Magabo who vowed to campaign for the senator's VP bid to her family, neighbors and friends. Marcos echoed in San Mateo the same message for national unity that he delivered in all other places he had visited in his campaign. He said this is the only way the country can move ahead towards a brighter future. "With your help and your support we will be able to realize this vision for our country," Marcos said. It could be recalled that when Marcos visited the Rizal provincial capitol last month, the political kingpins of the province, led by the Ynares clan, declared their support for the senator's vice presidential bid. Rizal Vice Gov. Frisco San Juan, Jr. even assured the senator that "Rizalenos will forever be a Marcos country."
Lance Iversen/The Chronicle

A man was killed Sunday night when he was clipped by an Amtrak train as he tried to cross the railway tracks in Hayward, authorities said.

The skirt of the train hit him at 10:05 p.m. near Newhall Street and Huntwood Avenue, according to the Alameda County coroners bureau. The man, whose identity was not determined as of Monday morning, was dead when officers arrived. No one else was injured.
FAIRFIELD  Starting a business is a process. For some, it can take years of planning and organizing a small idea until it blooms into a corporation. But for the students in the Fairfield University StartUp program, getting a business off the ground has taken just a few months.

Going through this process takes a lot of getting used to people telling you no all the time, said Chris Huntley, StartUp program director. So you have to be highly motivated to follow through.

The Fairfield StartUp program takes place once a school year and is designed to assist young entrepreneurs in the creation of their own businesses. The program connects these students with mentors and alumni who are already established in the worlds of business, finance and engineering to guide them through the ups and downs of creating a business and pitching it to potential investors.

This is kind of a competition that humbles you in a way as an entrepreneur, said senior John Bauer. Everyone comes up with these ideas then sees themselves making millions of dollars within a matter of months. It just breaks down the whole process and shows you how hard it is.

More Information List of businesses DraftSales - Thomas Casale FavrWire - John Bauer, Chris Nicastro and Jason Wierzel RediMed - Michelle Puthota, Haasim Vahora Zapp - Kumeil Hosain, Anthony Crasto and Joseph Pisano Thrivio - George Pertesis See More Collapse

After months of preparation through workshops, exercises and programs to prepare business models and networking techniques, each team of entrepreneurs presents their business to potential investors at the StartUp Showcase on Tuesday. During the showcase, investors and students negotiate for startup money to get their respective business ventures off the ground.

Most of all the work happens outside of classes. This is really an extracurricular activity and a great way to involve alumni and other mentors to engage with students, said Don Gibson, dean of the school of business.

The point of the program has been to create an opportunity for students to get a firsthand experience of what it takes to create a profitable and successful business. Senior George Pertesis said that even from the first day, going through the process has continued to be a learning experience.

When we all started with our ideas in September, I would agree that most of our ideas have really changed because were constantly being challenged by our mentors and adviser to think outside of the box, he said. We all have idea. But its a matter of how you execute it for it to be a viable business.

AJohnson@hearstmediact.com
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A case involving cracking open a single iPhone in a single case handled by the FBI has become a story about the security of many phones in the hands of law-enforcement agencies across the nation.

After the FBI announced in March that it had managed to access data on an iPhone used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook on its own, averting a legal showdown with Apple, other officials are now asking the agency if it could help them, too, unlock iPhones in their possession.

The FBI recently sent an advisory to state and local law enforcement suggesting that it will share the technique that an unnamed party provided the agency. A source in law enforcement confirmed the authenticity of the memo, whose existence was first reported by BuzzFeed on Friday, to The Chronicle.

We know that the absence of lawful, critical investigative tools due to the Going Dark problem is a substantial state and local law enforcement challenge that you face daily, the FBI said in its letter. As has been our longstanding policy, the FBI will of course consider any tool that might be helpful to our partners. ... Please know that we will continue to do everything we can to help you consistent with our legal and policy constraints. You have our commitment that we will maintain an open dialogue with you. We are in this together.

Breaching security

As The Chronicle recently reported, there are active marketplaces, legal and otherwise, in information and techniques about bypassing the security of smartphones and other devices. Buyers in these markets include both government agencies and criminals.

There are also mobile-device forensics companies that automate the process of pulling data off of devices. Cellebrite, a subsidiary of Japans Suncorp, has done $2 million in business with the FBI in recent years, government contracting data show, and recently signed a $215,000 contract renewal with the agency.

Apples security upgrades, though, have stymied some of the publicly known methods used by agencies. Cellebrite officials, for example, have only publicly discussed the firms ability to break into phones running Apples iOS 8, not the newer iOS 9.

Apple declined to comment on the FBI advisory.

For years, law enforcement officials have argued that the use of encryption in communications has hampered their ability to solve crimes. They call the phenomenon going dark.

In October 2014, not long after the release of iOS 8, which included more security protections than previous versions, FBI Director James Comey made a speech at the Brookings Institution on the topic.

Some argue that we will still have access to metadata, which includes telephone records and location information from telecommunications carriers, he said. That is true. But metadata doesnt provide the content of any communication. Its incomplete information, and even this is difficult to access when time is of the essence.

Critics concerns

Law enforcements attempts to defeat new security features have drawn criticism  especially when, as in this most recent case, they keep the method to themselves, rather than disclose it and thereby allow technology companies to improve security for their users.

The government, some say, already has far more data available to it than ever before.

The FBI has been focusing on a few specific places where they face technological obstacles to gaining evidence, said Peter Swire, a professor of law at the Georgia Institute of Technology. In reality, government agencies have innumerable new sources of evidence compared to earlier years, so we live in a golden age of surveillance.

For instance, he said, smartphones act as personal location-tracking devices, and cameras exist in billions of places more than a decade ago.

Swire served on a White House intelligence review group that recommended the administration disclose most flaws.

Already, the FBI has reportedly agreed to aid prosecutors in Arkansas seeking access to an iPhone 6 and an iPod that might hold evidence in a murder trial.

Its not clear how powerful the vulnerability the FBI used is, and whether it applies to more recent models, as in the Arkansas case. The San Bernardino iPhone was a 5c, a model containing fewer security protections built into its hardware than more contemporary models.

This means that phones with that (particular) hardware and software configuration can be bypassed, said Rick Orloff, a former Apple security executive, now chief security officer at Code42. Apple is certainly trying to figure out how they did it and close the hole.

Adam Ghetti, the founder and the chief executive of Ionic Security, said he doubts that the iPhone 5c exploit the FBI is using could be used on recently released iPhones. If so, then they have a previously unknown attack, he said.

According to a Reuters report, Apple engineers and other experts said that if the method is used enough, it will most likely be leaked and fixed.

If the FBI has a working unlock method, they can and will use it on (multiple) phones, said Greg Martin, chief executive of San Francisco cybersecurity startup Jask. Why would they not?

Sean Sposito is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ssposito@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @seansposito
Richmond police

Police arrested an 18-year-old known gang member in the March killing of a 21-year-old man in Richmond, officials said Monday.

Detectives and officers arrested Temaree Harris on Friday in Pittsburg. He is being held in the Martinez Detention Facility on $1 million bond.
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The mother of a San Francisco man who was beaten by Alameda County sheriffs deputies in a Mission District alley last year said Monday she believes her sons arrests since then reflect a bid to criminalize him as prosecutors weigh whether to file charges against the deputies.

Stanislav Petrov, 29, has been suffering from paranoia and post-traumatic stress disorder in the months following the video-recorded Nov. 12 baton beating that left him with serious head injuries and broken bones in his hands and arms, said his mother, Olga Petrov.

Petrov was arrested along with two others Friday in an FBI raid of a home on Teddy Avenue where a man had been shot and critically wounded hours earlier. He was in federal custody over the weekend when San Francisco police confirmed his connection to a woman and toddler who were reported missing Friday, but have since been found safe.

Though Petrov was set to make his first appearance Monday in federal court regarding Fridays arrest, the case was put off until Wednesday and the complaint against him remained sealed. Federal authorities declined to comment on Petrov, who was transferred from the custody of the San Mateo County Sheriffs Department to the Marin County Sheriffs Department on Monday.

Outside court, Olga Petrov, 59, said she found the timing of the police attention suspicious. She said she believed it was deliberately shaping public opinion to criminalize him and make him a monster so that (San Francisco District Attorney) George Gascon does not file criminal charges against those deputies.

The FBI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Last week, Petrovs attorney filed a legal claim on his behalf against the Alameda County Sheriffs Office, alleging that Petrov was needlessly beaten by two deputies and that a third deputy had stolen jewelry from him and given it to a pair of witnesses.

Petrov had allegedly fled deputies in a half-hour chase in a stolen car from Castro Valley over the Bay Bridge. The deputies said in reports that Petrov had rammed two patrol cars and that they feared he was armed, possibly on drugs and dangerous.

Alameda County Sheriff Greg Ahern later said that the two deputies who struck Petrov with batons, Paul Wieber and Luis Santamaria, were allowed to revise their original reports alongside their attorneys after watching the video footage.

A spokesman for Gascon said the case is still under investigation. Following the release of the video of the beating by the San Francisco public defenders office, Wieber and Santamaria were placed on paid leave. Deputy Shawn Osborne was placed on paid leave in connection with the theft and bribery allegations, but has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

In the months since the beating, Olga Petrov said her son has been moving from house to house, refusing to stay in one place for long. She said he has become unpredictable and unmanageable.

My heart is bleeding to see him in this kind of condition, she said. As soon as I start talking to him, he is immediately running, running away.

Petrovs civil attorney, Michael Haddad, said any criminal matters his client is facing doesnt change that he was a victim of a brutal police beating.

Stan has never claimed to be an angel, but even if he were arrested again, it wouldnt change the moral or legal calculation of what happened on Nov. 12, Haddad said. The video says it all.

Vivian Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: vho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @VivianHo
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Dont touch that dial: Veteran Bay Area talk show host Ronn Owens wont be moving this week from KGO to sister station KSFO, the AM stations parent company is to announce Monday. The reversal on the part of Cumulus Media came in response to listener anger after Owens announced the planned move at the end of his broadcast Thursday.

Owens said he was called to the office of Vice President and Marketing Manager Justin Wittmayer on Friday morning and informed he would stay put on weekday mornings, although his show will begin at 10 a.m. instead of 9. He said he was stunned at the news, albeit in a good way. He returns to the Ronn Owens Studio at KGO on Tuesday.

Programming Director Mike Anthony admitted, Ronns audience made it very clear to us (Thursday) that he belongs at KGO  so we listened.

Owens had been told in advance of the plan to move his show to the afternoons in KSFOs politically conservative lineup, which includes Rush Limbaugh in the morning and Michael Savage at midday. He hadnt been told that KGO would lay off most if not all of its newsroom on Thursday, amounting to between 20 and 30 people, according to sources. As Owens was trying to put a positive spin on his impending move, he watched newsroom staffers outside his studio packing up and moving out.

For all the joy I am feeling, he said after the news about the layoffs broke, I feel horrible about the people who were laid off. These were my friends and colleagues.

Cumulus not only laid off news staffers at KGO, it also axed personnel at sister station KFOG, including four of the stations six full-time DJs and weekend voice Rosalie Howarth, a 32-year veteran of the station.

The layoffs came ahead of major format changes at Bay Area stations owned by Cumulus, which is based in Atlanta. Although KFOGs future will be revealed on April 20, Cumulus is moving forward with changes at KGO this week, branding the changes The Next Generation Live of the station formerly owned by ABC.

As reported by The Chronicle last week, the Sacramento-based Armstrong and Getty talk show will occupy the early-morning slot, from 6 to 10 a.m. Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty offer a mix of issue-oriented talk and humor.

Owens will lose an hour of his show, which will now air from 10 a.m. to noon, followed by The Ethan Bearman Show from noon to 2 p.m. Bearman has hosted talk shows on both KGO (weekends) and KSFO.

Actor, author, playwright Brian Copeland, who previously hosted a weekly Sunday show on KGO, will occupy the 2 to 4 p.m. slot, followed by The Chip Franklin Show from 4 to 7 p.m. Contrary to some media reports last week, Franklin was not among the KGO layoffs. DreX will continue to occupy the evening shift, from 7 to 10 p.m.

Reached over the weekend, Owens, who has spent 32 of his 40 years with KGO hosting the morning show, said the stations reversal was amazing, adding that hed just signed the sixth addendum to his contract with Cumulus.

Obviously I prefer being where I am, Owens said, adding that hed psyched myself up for the move to KSFO. Staying at KGO gives me a chance to be with the people Ive grown up with. I was there when your daughter was born. After a while, it starts to really mean something.

Earlier, Owens had told The Chronicle that while he was hopeful that his KGO morning listeners would follow him to the KSFO slot, he worried that he wouldnt be loved by the stations conservative audience.

Although Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom had been slotted as Owens first guest if hed made his KSFO debut Tuesday afternoon, Newsom has a scheduling conflict Tuesday morning, so Owens will welcome his boss, Wittmayer, to talk about the format changes at KGO. He may get some lively call-in response from listeners.

David Wiegand is an assistant managing editor and the TV critic of The San Francisco Chronicle. Follow him on Facebook. Email: dwiegand@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @WaitWhat_TV
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A bill that would allow pregnant women to sign up for health insurance after becoming pregnant almost died in the legislative Insurance and Real Estate Committee.

But third-term Sen. Kevin Kelly, R-Stratford, displayed some veteran parliamentary moves last week, using a little-known rule to revive the measure. Its called petitioning a bill out of committee and to do it, Kelly had to gain signatures from a majority of the 36 senators. Its Rule 19, for those keeping score at home.

You learn something new every year, Kelley said.

Currently, people are allowed special enrollments following marriage, divorce, loss of insurance coverage and the birth of a child, but not after a pregnancy is confirmed.

I think this is an important bill for our constituents, said Kelly, ranking member of the committee. Babies are three-to-four times more susceptible to infant mortality for women without prenatal care, Kelly said.

The bill is now on the Senate calendar.

BIG Rookie mistake

If Kellys an example of a veteran lawmaker learning the ropes, consider Rep. Fred Wilms, R-Norwalk, a freshman who recently made local political hay promoting legislation aimed at bringing more education funding. Except the bill did not exist. It died last year and was never revived. He even recruited Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff.

I was more than happy to help Rep. Wilms with the bill, but when I went to co-sponsor it, I found there was no bill, Duff said. It was disturbing to me and I hope it doesnt happen again. With a current class-action suit on education funding in state court, Duff said he works in other ways to bring funding home above and beyond the states outdated Educational Cost Sharing formula.

Battling opioids

The Finance Committee last week took a step forward in the battle against opioid abuse and heroin. In a 37-13 vote, the panel approved a bill that would create a tax on a wide range of opioids sold by manufacturers and wholesalers in the state. The proceeds would be used to create a state abuse-prevention-and-treatment account. From there, grants would be provided to regional treatment programs through the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.

Republican support for the bill was led by Sen. L. Scott Frantz of Greenwich and Rep. David Rutigliano of Trumbull. Rutigliano warned that cash-strapped lawmakers could raid the money and put it in the General Fund.

The concept is good but I think theres another way to fix the problem, said Rep. Terrie Wood, R-Darien, a member of the panel who is also ranking Republican on the Human Services Committee.

I want to make sure were not taxing out kids cough syrup, said Rep. Dan Carter, R-Bethel, who asked why wholesalers and drug manufacturers would have to pay. Its almost like were assigning blame to them.

We ought to reduce the amount of opioids being prescribed, said Rep. John Shaban, R-Redding. Wood, Carter, Shaban, Rep. Livvy Floren, R-Greenwich, and Rep. Stephen G. Harding Jr., R-Brookfield, voted against the bill, which heads to the Senate.

Chargin up the debate

Is this a hint of how the Tesla direct-sales-to-consumer legislation will fare? Two new electric-charging stations are being installed in a parking lot near the Capitol for the brave new world of personal transportation. There are already charging accommodations in the nearby Legislative Office Building and according to the Office of Legislative Management, electric-car drivers are sharing the station very nicely. The new chargers should be up and running soon.

Aptly named escheats

The states public financing program for statewide and General Assembly races is funded through unclaimed property, such as old, abandoned bank accounts, called escheats. Millions of dollars are accumulated, even after Treasurer Denise Nappier prints those massive lists in state newspapers to alert people. During the Judiciary Committee the other day, a bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Rep. Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, led the vote to extend the amount of time an account can remain inactive before it reverts to the state from the current three years, to seven years.

Candelora said its a sign of the still-recovering state economy that People are not putting money into their accounts and not keeping them active. The bill passed 28-17 and heads to the House. Democrats who voted against it included Rep. Bob Godfrey of Danbury, Rep. Bruce Morris of Norwalk, Rep. Steve Stafstrom of Bridgeport and Rep. Caroline Simmons of Stamford.

kdixon@ctpost.com; Twitter: @KenDixonCT
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New York Army National Guard Lt. Col. Michael Tagliaferro of Saratoga County is the new commander of the 2nd Battalion, 106th Infantry Regiment.

The battalion trains Army National Guard and Reserve soldiers at Camp Smith Training Site near Peekskill.

Tagliaferro replaced fellow Iraq war veteran Lt. Col. Christopher Ciccone Jr. of East Greenbush. Ciccone was assigned as deputy intelligence officer for the New York National Guard's Joint Forces Headquarters in Latham.

Tagliaferro of Porter Corners joined the Army in 1983 and served as a cavalry scout in Germany and Fort Knox, Ky., for four years. He joined the New York Army National Guard's 1st Battalion, 210th Armor in 1987. In 1989, he received his commission through Officer Candidate School and was the scout platoon leader of the 1st Battalion, 210th Armor until 1992.

Tagliaferro entered the inactive reserve in 1993 and left military service in 1998. After Sept. 11, 2001, he rejoined the New York Army National Guard in the 42nd Infantry Division.

He deployed to Tikrit, Iraq, as the commander of the 42nd Infantry Division's Headquarters and Headquarters Company.

In 2009, Tagliaferro deployed to Iraq as an information operations targeting officer with the National Guard's 34th Infantry "Red Bull" Division. He was in Iraq with the "Big Red One" 1st Infantry Division until August 2010.

Afterward, Tagliaferro served in the New York Army National Guard's Joint Force Headquarters as the Homeland Response Force implementation and plans officer.

He earned a Bronze Star and a Meritorious Service Medal.

As a civilian, Tagliaferro is employed by the state comptroller's office in the Local Government and School Accountability Division in Glens Falls.

Mission completed

The March 25 arrival of a New York Army National Guard helicopter crew in Latham marked the end of a six-month mission on the Mexican border.

Chief Warrant 2 Franz Scott, Chief Warrant 5 Chuck Rodda and their UH-72 Lakota light utility helicopter supported the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agencies in Marana, Ariz.

The pilots and nine other soldiers of Detachment 2 of the 1st Battalion, 224th Security and Support Battalion rotated through the mission for 45 days at a time with two pilots and two mechanics on duty.

The missions were designed to stop the smuggling of drugs and illegal immigrants across the border. All missions included a Customs and Border Patrol agent.

Yellow Ribbon Day

A Yellow Ribbon Day "Remember Our Troops" program begins at 11 a.m. Friday at the Halfmoon Town Hall.

Volunteers will collect donations for VETHELP, which aids homeless veterans as well as Vet House for male veterans and Guardian House for female veterans in Ballston Spa.

Needed are Lysol spray, large Ziploc freezer bags, plastic storage bins, floor cleaners, trash bags, air fresheners, tote bags, sheet sets, lamps, shower curtains and liners, hot cocoa K-cups, Febreze fabric spray, storage shelves and blankets as well as money.

The Capital Region Chapter 2 of Blue Star Mothers is collecting beef jerky, granola bars, trail mix, toiletries, socks and playing cards to ship to troops from the Capital Region and Fort Drum stationed in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The Blue Star Mothers are collecting money for shipping.

Carol Hotaling, the "Yellow Ribbon lady," will be on hand. For a list of care package items, visit http://www.capitalregion2bsm.org.

News of your troops and units can be sent to Duty Calls, Terry Brown, Times Union, Box 15000, Albany, NY 12212 or brownt@timesunion.com.
NEW YORK  Hillary Clinton linked herself to a successful effort to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour Monday, part of an effort to woo working-class voters ahead of competitive Democratic primary contests in Wisconsin and New York.

The Democratic primary candidate joined New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo at a raucous midtown Manhattan rally celebrating the states newly approved higher minimum wage.

We need to build on what was done here in New York and go all the way to Washington and raise the minimum wage for everybody, Clinton told several hundred union workers.

But Clinton hasnt embraced that standard in her own campaign platform. Instead, she backs Senate legislation that would enact a federal minimum wage of $12 an hour, with the ability of individual cities and states to set a higher threshold.

Clinton argues that a $15 threshold may be too high for some rural areas and smaller cities with lower costs of living.

That position puts her at odds with a vocal coalition of fast-food workers and union members whove made the fight for $15 a rallying call in their push for higher wages and better benefits.

Democratic primary candidate Bernie Sanders has linked himself with that movement, turning the $15 wage into a central issue in his candidacy.

Not too long ago, the establishment told us that a $15 minimum wage was unrealistic, said Sanders, in a statement released before Clinton took the stage. But a grassroots movement led by millions of working people refused to take no for an answer.

New York and California are the first states to approve a $15-an-hour minimum wage, passing laws that will phase in the new standard over several years.

Sanders was campaigning in Wisconsin on Monday, hoping to boost whats expected to be a strong showing in the states primary on Tuesday.
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Democrats in immigrant-rich states such as California dodged a bullet Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court said lawmakers could continue to draw legislative districts that are equal in population, rather than by the number of registered voters.

Ruling in a surprise unanimous vote, the court rejected a lawsuit by conservatives who argued that the constitutional standard of one person, one vote required states to draw boundaries for districts for their legislatures and local governments to equalize the number of registered voters in them. Currently all states, and nearly all cities and counties, design districts that are equal in total population, including people who cant vote  noncitizens, children and prisoners.

A switch to voter-based equality would reduce representation of urban areas with large immigrant populations, as well as low-income groups with relatively low voter-registration rates, in favor of suburban and rural areas more likely to vote Republican. The case originated in Texas, but any change resulting from it would have applied nationwide.

Although some justices seemed receptive to a conservative groups arguments when the case was heard in December, the ruling announced Monday was 8-0 to let states use equal population as the measuring stick. The court did not say whether a state could shift to equal representation by registered voters if it wanted to, leaving that issue for a future case.

Representatives serve all residents, not just those eligible or registered to vote, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in the ruling.

Nonvoters have an important stake in many policy debates, Ginsburg said, citing childrens need for a strong public-education system and the importance of government services to other residents, regardless of whether they are registered to vote.

She also noted that the court requires congressional districts to be equal by population and said it would make little sense to conclude that the post-Civil War authors of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protection of the laws, required a different system for state and local elections.

Justice Samuel Alito, in a separate opinion, said Ginsburg had misinterpreted constitutional history and that the court should consider voter-based representation in a future case. Justice Clarence Thomas joined Alitos opinion and also argued that the one-person, one-vote requirement, which the high court decreed in 1964, was the result of the courts misguided attempt to impose its political theory upon the states.

The suit decided Monday was filed by the Project on Fair Representation, whose earlier legal action produced the courts 2013 ruling that stripped the Voting Rights Act of a major provision subjecting several states to federal scrutiny before changing voter laws. That ruling led to a profusion of state laws requiring voters to produce government identification.

The groups leader, Edward Blum, said he was disappointed in the ruling Monday but added that the issue of voter equality in the United States is not going to go away.

The Obama administration and the state of California backed the use of equal population in determining state and local districts, as did liberal and Latino organizations.

This decision is a victory for the principle of representative democracy, said Steven Shapiro, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Ben Monterroso, executive director of the advocacy group Mi Familia Vota, said the ruling means that Latino communities will be able to more effectively elect, and keep in office, politicians who work and fight for the well-being of our families.

The case is Evenwel vs. Abbott, 14-940.

Chronicle news services

contributed to this report.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @egelko
MILWAUKEE  After Donald Trumps toughest stretch of the campaign, he and Ted Cruz made spirited final pitches Monday to Wisconsin voters, who will cast ballots Tuesday in a Republican primary that both consider a key step in the race for president.

After Tuesday, theres a two-week lull before the next important voting, in New York.

Trump is facing pressure on multiple fronts after a difficult week marked by his controversial comments, reversals and rare moments of contrition. While his past remarks on topics like Mexican immigrants have drawn a backlash, even he appeared to recognize the damage caused by a series of missteps in the lead-up to Wisconsin.

Those included re-tweeting an unflattering photo of Cruzs wife and a series of contradictory comments on abortion that managed to draw condemnation from both abortion rights activists and opponents.

While Trump is the only Republican with a realistic path to clinching the nomination ahead of the Republican convention, a big loss in Wisconsin would greatly reduce his chances of reaching the needed 1,237 delegates before then. A big win for Trump would give him more room for error down the stretch.

Friendlier pastures lie ahead in New York and other Northeast states. But for now, hes facing a tough challenge in Cruz, whom polls show with a lead in Wisconsin.

Trump is facing pressure on two fronts.

In Wisconsin, he has been battered by negative ads. The states top Republican advertiser has been Our Principles PAC, which pumped almost $1.3 million into anti-Trump ads. The Club for Growth, which has endorsed Cruz, is spending $800,000 on ads that promote voting for Cruz  not John Kasich  as the best way to ensure a Trump defeat.

Also, the states Republican establishment, including Gov. Scott Walker and some of its most influential conservative talk radio hosts, have lined up to support Cruz.

At the same time, Trumps campaign has been outmaneuvered by Cruz in some early states where the campaigns are working to ensure that the delegates who attend the convention this summer are loyal to them. Trump acknowledged his frustrations on CBS Sunday in discussing a meeting with members of the Republican National Committee.

And I did look at my people. I said, Well, wait a minute, folks. You know, we shouldve maybe done better, he said. Except I also said, I won the state. And I think theres a real legal consequence to winning a state and not getting as many delegates.

The billionaire businessman began his final day of campaigning in LaCrosse, a city of about 50,000 on Wisconsins western border. As hes moved from rally to rally in the state  many featuring crowds in the thousands  hes grown more optimistic, moving from thinking he could surprise to all but guaranteeing victory.

I really believe tomorrow were going to have a very, very big victory, he told the crowd, imploring them to vote.
Police: Calif. boy who vanished was living with teacher for years

A shooting in North Oakland left one man dead Sunday afternoon, police said.

Officers responded to reports of a shooting about 1:54 p.m. in the 6000 block of Idaho Street to find one man with apparent gunshot wounds, Oakland police officer J. Moore said.

The man, who was not immediately identified, was pronounced dead at the scene.

The shooter remains at large. No suspects have been identified and no one was detained in the immediate aftermath of the killing, Moore said.

Marissa Lang is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mlang@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Marissa_Jae
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Ana Biocini said in her heart she never wanted to take $450,000 from the city of Oakland to settle her familys lawsuit over the death of her brother, who in 2013 stopped breathing while crying for help in police custody.

So on Monday, the 62-year-old Oakland woman and her attorney, John Burris, asked a San Francisco federal judge to set aside the agreed-upon settlement of the lawsuit for the wrongful death of 53-year-old Hernan Jaramillo.

I said yes, but in my heart I didnt want any agreement, Biocini told U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson during a brief hearing Monday morning. I always wanted to go to trial, but there was too much pressure and I felt forced by the circumstances.

Jaramillo  a licensed Realtor and graduate of San Francisco State University  died on July 8, 2013, handcuffed and gasping for breath. Video of the encounter from a police body camera shows the mans final moments in which he can be heard telling police dozens of times, I cant breathe!

That video  which drew intense public attention  was first released in the weeks after Biocini and her siblings agreed to settle the case during a closed court session on Jan. 19. Burris said that he and Biocini had seen the footage, but a judge had put the video under seal while the case was pending.

The footage shows the final moments after officers responded to Jaramillos and his sisters home on East 21st Street. Biocini had called 911 thinking loud noises coming from her brothers bedroom were from an intruder.

When police found no invader in the home, they handcuffed Jaramillo and tried to put him in the back of a police cruiser. Her brother struggled, Biocini said, so the officers threw him face down on the ground.

Once they knew there was no intruder, why didnt they leave us alone? she said. There was no reason. I never said he was attacking me.

Biocini can be heard in the video crying and asking officers to let her brother sit up. Jaramillo soon lost consciousness and was unresponsive.

Police said that the man had resisted them and that during the ensuing struggle he went to the ground. Minutes after Jaramillos cries for breath and shouts that theyre killing me fell silent, police told him he could sit up, Biocini said.

But it was too late, police and paramedics were unable to revive him.

Now racked by guilt, Biocini said some of her family members blame her for Jaramillos death because she called 911.

I want justice for my bother, she tearfully said on Monday. I believe this has to go to trial  no settlement.

But reneging on the deal may be a long shot. Burris acknowledged that asking a judge to set aside an already-agreed-upon settlement was an unusual position for us.

He argued that there might have been miscommunication between Biocini and her five siblings, some of whom were taking part in the negotiations from Colombia via Skype.

At one point during the talks, Internet service was lost in the judges chambers and some of the co-plaintiffs could not be immediately reached. Burris told Henderson that he went through with the deal because all parties seemed to agree before Skype went out.

But in the days after the release of the body camera video, and nationwide public debate over police tactics, two of the siblings have said they no longer agree with the settlement.

Relieved of the pressure from her siblings, Biocini said she has changed her mind about the agreement and wants the case to play out in a trial.

Every single night I have dreams of my brother, she said. He needs peace. He needs justice.

Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky
Human rights activist Scott Bishop was at an International Transgender Day of Visibility rally in Charlotte, N.C., on Thursday, when he looked up and saw the sky aglow with the colors of the transgender pride flag.

To show support for the state's LGBT community, Wells Fargo lit their Duke Energy Center in an array of pinks, whites and blues.

"It was cool," said Bishop who serves on the board of directors for the Human Rights Campaign. "Seeing the building lit up I think was a very good sign of support for the transgender community from one of our leading employers here in Charlotte."

The display from the San Francisco-based company was significant at a time when North Carolina is embroiled in a debate around LGBT rights. On March 23, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signed House Bill 2. While the law is being referred to as the "bathroom bill," and requires transgender people to use bathrooms that align with the gender listed on their birth certificates, HB2 is much more complicated than this. It also places a number of restrictions on what municipalities can do in passing non-discrimination ordinances.

Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf was one of some 80 business leaders who signed a bill asking McCrory to repeal HB2. CEOs from Apple, Google and Facebook also signed.

"As a reflection of our company's vision and values, Wells Fargo has a long history of support against discrimination of any kind and for LGBT rights overall. This is fundamental to who we are as a company and what we stand for in terms of equality and basic human rights," Wells Fargo said in a statement to the Charlotte Observer.
Its time to go back where we began: not only that Donald Trump will lose the Republican presidential nomination, but that he could be so weakened by the end of the primaries that his party will not even have to worry about choosing someone else.

I feel your skepticism. Hasnt Trump so far defied all predictions of his demise? Absolutely. Hasnt every claim that now hes gone too far been wrong? Of course.

Lets be honest about journalists: We find a lot of ways of being wrong.

One trap is presentism, the idea that whatever is happening now will keep happening. And it is, indeed, easy to project Trumps impending doom after his most miserable week yet.

He responded rather ineffectually to criticisms from Wisconsin conservative talk show host Charlie Sykes. His campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, was charged with battery. Trump reacted by aggressively attacking the credibility of conservative reporter Michelle Fields, the woman Lewandowski is accused of hurting. The front-runner thus fed the perception that hes a misogynist.

For good measure, Trump flip-flopped on whether women should be legally punished for having an abortion, underscoring that he really hasnt thought very much about the positions he is taking or even what he says from moment to moment.

But the killer news for the man who values winning above everything else is that he has dropped well behind Ted Cruz in the polls in Wisconsin, which holds its primary on Tuesday. A loss there, particularly a big one, would greatly complicate Trumps already difficult path to a delegate majority of 1,237.

You could look at the week as an aberration that Trump, the magician, will somehow surmount. In fact, these episodes tumbling one upon the other ratify what Trump skeptics said all along: that he is utterly unprepared to be a serious candidate, let alone president of the United States; that an endless stream of insults against all who get in his way wears thin over time; that he is winging it and stubbornly refusing to do the homework the enterprise hes engaged in requires; and that trashing ethnic and religious minorities can win you a fair number of votes but not, thank God, a majority of Americans.

The always instructive Yogi Berra explained the New York Yankees loss of the 1960 World Series to the Pittsburgh Pirates by saying: We made too many wrong mistakes. In the case of Trump, journalists are so worried about their old mistake of underestimating the mans staying power that they now risk making the wrong mistake of missing his fall.

Why does this matter to anyone except pundits? First, Trumps troubles threaten to go beyond Wisconsin. He could now lose in other big states that vote next including Pennsylvania, California, New Jersey and possibly even his home state of New York. If this happens, it will be far easier for the Republican Party bosses (such as they are these days) to deny him the nomination. Trump will come to look less like the rank-and-file Republican favorite and more like a flash in the pan.

Second, Democrats Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders would lose their ideal opponent. From their point of view, Trumps collapse may come too early. Its true that if the very right-wing Cruz were the Republican nominee instead of Trump, the Democratic winner  its still likely to be Clinton, despite Sanders current surge  would be favored.

But an utter Trump implosion might free the Cleveland convention to turn to someone entirely outside the current crop of candidates, someone unsullied by the ugly and vulgar GOP primary campaign. A sinking Trump would have far less power to resist such an outcome. Democrats need to prepare now for the strong possibility that they will not be lucky enough to run against The Donald.

Most importantly, journalists need to remember that ratings and page views are not the same as votes and that Americans may love circuses but ultimately want elections to be more than Barnum & Bailey productions. Trump has entranced the media and ignited a minority of Republican primary voters. He has never, ever won over anything close to a majority of the American electorate. We demean ourselves as a people if we think that Trumpism is the wave of the future.

Journalists and citizens alike should cultivate, not resist, their most honorable instincts. The instinct that Americans would never choose as their president a clownish peddler of racial and religious stereotypes who made everything up as he went along was right from the start.

 2016, Washington Post Writers Group

Email: ejdionne@washpost.com. Twitter: @EJDionne.
ATHENS  A controversial European Union plan to stem the flow of refugees began Monday with the deportation of more than 200 people from Greek islands to Turkey, despite concerns over human rights and criticism that Europe was turning its back on refugees.

As dawn broke, buses filled with migrants left under heavy security from a detention center on the island of Lesbos headed to the port for the short boat ride to the Turkish port of Dikili. More were ferried across from the island of Chios, where riot police clashed hours earlier with demonstrators protesting the expulsions.

In all, 202 people from 11 nations  191 men and 11 women  were sent back. They included 130 Pakistanis, 42 Afghans, 10 Iranians, five Congolese, four Sri Lankans, three Bangladeshis, three from India, and one each from Iraq, Somalia and Ivory Coast, as well as two Syrians whom Greek authorities said had asked to be sent back.

Human rights groups expressed deep concern over the operation.

The returns under way this morning in the Aegean are the symbolic start of the potential disastrous undoing of Europes commitment to protecting refugees, said Amnesty Internationals deputy director for Europe, Gauri van Gulik. Urgent key questions are: What process is everyone going through and what will become of them after their return?

Judith Sunderland, acting deputy Europe director at Human Rights Watch, said trying to close the Aegean migration route by shipping people back to uncertain fates in Turkey will only make them seek potentially more dangerous and expensive ways to reach the EU.

European officials insist the EU-Turkey agreement is the only way to deter people from heading to Greece from the nearby Turkish coast  a brief but perilous trip that has cost many lives.

Under the deal, those who arrived on or after March 20 will be sent back to Turkey unless they qualify for asylum. For every Syrian returned, Europe will take a Syrian to be resettled in an EU country.

Despite the deal, hundreds have persisted in making the Aegean crossing, although the numbers are far lower than the thousands who had earlier arrived daily.

Even Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country signed up to the deal in return for an EU pledge of $3.4 billion to handle the refugee crisis, lashed out at Europe for turning its back on refugees and restricting the numbers they will accept.

Did we turn Syrians back? No, we didnt, but they did, he said of EU countries.

Balkan and European countries began restricting the flows of refugees and migrants through their borders earlier this year, and shut them completely in early March. More than 52,000 are now stranded in Greece.
ATHENS  An agreement between the European Union and Turkey to deport migrants currently on Greek islands back to the Turkish mainland is to take effect Monday, but the operation is threatened by a shortage of personnel.

Frontex, the EUs border management agency, is responsible for the implementation of the deal, but has less than one tenth of the 2,300 officers that it needs to do the job. The agency relies on the EUs 28 member states to provide translators and other officials to process asylum seekers, but these have not been forthcoming, even as the continent faces its worst refugee crisis since World War II.

The EU-Turkey deal aims to control the mass influx of people into Europe. Under the deal, migrants arriving illegally in Greece will be returned to Turkey if they do not apply for asylum or if they make an asylum claim that is rejected.

For every person sent back, EU countries would take in one person confirmed to have made a legitimate asylum request.

The deal was supposed to take effect on March 20, but has faced delays due to the shortage of personnel and other problems.

The looming implementation of the deal and the closure of European borders have slowed the flow of people into Greece but not stopped it altogether. In the 24 hours leading to 7:30 a.m. Sunday, 514 arrived, according to authorities. There are now over 6,100 migrants in the Aegean islands, more than half in Lesbos.

Giorgos Kyritsis, a spokesman for the Greek governments refugee crisis committee, said Frontex only has 200 officers in place to accompany the deported migrants, but almost none of the other personnel that would facilitate screening those who apply for asylum.

Other agencies, such as UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, are trying to help migrants go through the asylum application process.

Frontex has secured three vessels that will make the short trip from the island of Lesbos to the Turkish coast starting Monday morning. It aims to deport about 750 migrants, mostly from Pakistan and Afghanistan in the first three days. To safeguard against unrest, the number of deported migrants will be matched by the same number of Frontex border guards on each ship.

The Greek government must also deal with the over 46,000 migrants and refugees now on the mainland. They have become stranded after Macedonia and other counties closed their borders.
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BAGHDAD  Militants unleashed a wave of suicide attacks across Iraq on Monday, killing at least 29 people and wounding dozens, officials said.

The deadliest attack took place in the southern province of Dhi Qar (also known as Nasiriya) when a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a restaurant that is frequented by Shiite militia fighters, killing at least 14 people.

Another 27 people were wounded in the attack on the restaurant, which is located on the main highway that links the capital, Baghdad, with the southern provinces, a police officer said. Dhi Qar is located about 200 miles southeast of Baghdad.

At around the same time, a suicide car bomber set off his explosives-laden vehicle in a commercial area in the oil-rich city of Basra, killing at least five people and wounding 10 others, police said. Basra is located about 340 miles southeast of Baghdad.

Earlier in the day, a suicide bomber rammed his car into a security checkpoint in the capitals northeastern suburb of Sadr al-Qanat, killing six troops and wounding 13 others.

Another suicide car bomber hit a headquarters of paramilitary troops in the town of Mishahda, 20 miles north of Baghdad, killing four troops and wounding 10 others.

Also Monday, Iraqi forces say they entered the town of Hit, a week after launching an operation to retake the town from the Islamic State militant group.

Commanders on the scene from Iraqs elite counterterrorism forces, who are leading the offensive, said they were clearing Islamic State fighters from Hits northern neighborhoods as they push toward the town center.

Hit lies along an Islamic State supply line that links the militants in Iraq to those in Syria.

Thousands of civilians are fleeing as Iraqi troops advance under cover of heavy air strikes and artillery fire. Families, many with small children and elderly relatives, say they walked for hours through the desert despite the threat of roadside bombs to escape the violence.
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BEIRUT  Syrian troops and allied militiamen pressed on with an offensive against Islamic State militants in central Syria on Monday, clashing with the extremists around the town of Qaryatain a day after it was captured by pro-government forces.

The push into Qaryatain took place under the cover of Russian air strikes and dealt another setback to the Islamic State in Syria a week after the army retook the historic town of Palmyra from the group. Syrias state news agency, SANA, said the army was fighting militants in areas around Qaryatain on Monday, as well as in farms east and north of Palmyra.
MANILA  Thousands of U.S. and Philippine troops, along with Australian defense forces, began annual drills Monday to prepare to quickly respond to a range of potential crises, including in the disputed South China Sea.

The exercises have been opposed in recent years by China, which has territorial disputes in the South China Sea with several countries, including the Philippines, and suspects the drills are part of efforts to contain Beijing. Washington and Manila say the drills are not directed against China, and that they also focus on responding to natural disasters and humanitarian crises.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter will fly to the Philippines to witness some of the 11-day exercises, underscoring the importance Washington puts on the joint combat drills that have been staged 32 times, said Marine Lt. Gen. John Toolan, who heads the 5,000 American military personnel taking part in the maneuvers.

Carters presence will reaffirm that the relationship that we have with the Philippines is rock solid and were side by side, Toolan, who heads U.S. Marine forces in the Pacific, said at a news conference.

A highly mobile rocket system will be used during the Balikatan, or Shoulder to Shoulder, exercises for the first time, he said.

Filipino military officials said a key exercise will involve U.S., Australian and Philippine forces retaking an oil rig seized by hostile units in a mock assault in an unused rig off the western province of Palawan, which faces the South China Sea.

The Philippines has turned to the United States, a longtime treaty ally, and others to rapidly acquire patrol ships and planes as its territorial rifts with China have escalated in the last four years. The disputes in the South China Sea also involve Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei.

The Philippines is the least capable armed forces in the region, and the U.S., being a big brother, is a big help, said Philippine Vice Adm. Alexander Lopez, who heads the contingent of about 3,500 Filipino military personnel involved in the exercises.

While many Filipinos welcome American support in strengthening the Philippines territorial defense, left-wing activists and nationalists have opposed a growing U.S. military presence in the former American colony, along with Chinas increasingly assertive advances in disputed waters. Dozens of activists protested at the U.S. Embassy in Manila on Monday.
Arizona Firm Plans Departure

The Las Cruces Sun-News reports, Another Arizona behavioral health company brought in to replace New Mexico nonprofits accused of Medicaid overbilling and fraud has announced

.

That means

within 90 days.

Suicide Belt

Speaking of behavioral health issues,

, including New Mexico, than other areas of the country.

Fetal Tissue Dispute

The University of New Mexicos Health Sciences Center is

one day after Lieutenant Governor John Sanchez addressed the issue in a Facebook post.

On Saturday night, Sanchez wrote on Facebook that the House probe uncovered something troubling and alarming at HSC. He also wrote the Southwestern Womens Open Clinic partnered with HSC for the research.



I have been clear about my opposition to the harvesting of infant organs by Planned Parenthood and am even more appalled to learn that it could occur right here in conjunction with the University of New Mexico, Sanchez wrote. The practice is both barbaric and unethical, and I certainly expect better from UNMHSC and its leaders.



The HSC statement says the center has not made any reimbursement for the fetal tissue, and the women consented to donate the tissue for research purposes. HSC says it has scrupulously followed all applicable federal laws during its more than 20 years of fetal tissue research.

Sexual Assault Survey



Beginning today, UNM will

on gender discrimination and sexual assaults.

Testing Starts



There have been a few changes over the past year, but those controversial Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers

. Sen. Howie Morales, D-Silver City, is asking Attorney General Hector Balderas to

.

Immigrant Taxes



Civil rights groups are

to stop New Mexico taxation officials from withholding refunds of excess tax payments from immigrants who file under an alternative tax identification number provided by the federal government, according to the Associated Press.

Attorney David Urias said Friday that the request for an injunction was filed in anticipation of April tax deadlines, as a lawsuit over the immigrant tax returns makes its way through a state district court in Santa Fe.



The New Mexico Taxation and Revenue Department says it seeks additional information as a precaution against fraud from foreign nationals who use a federally issued identification number instead of a social security number. The department declines to say how much money has been withheld from those filers since the procedure was implemented in 2012.

First Court Appearance

Former state Senator Phil Griego, who faces criminal charges for a real estate deal he brokered, will be in court in Santa Fe this morning. Journalist Steve Terrell has spent some time trying to figure out

from the case.

Firewall Crack

Andy Lyman reports that KRQE journalists are now required to notify their news director if they are working on

about any of the news station's advertisers.



Urban Outfitters

The Navajo Tribe will be allowed to

again Urban Outfitters after a federal judge determined they didnt intentionally delay filing their complaint.

Renewable Energy

The

Las Cruces Sun-News

reports,

Community leaders and environmental groups round the state are

.



The head of the University of New Mexico's Sustainable Studies Program, Bruce Milne, says it's both desirable and feasible for the U.S. to shift to 100 percent renewable energy and that technological innovations in the industry could be exported globally.

Airport Security Lines Could Be Longer



You may have experienced longer lines getting through airport security during spring break, but

after TSA cut its workforce and fewer people than expected signed up for its pre-check screening program.

Santa Fe Reporter
New Zealand new vehicle sales in March rose to the highest level for the month in 32 years, led by record demand for commercial models.

Registrations increased 3 percent to 12,110 in March from a year earlier, marking the strongest March level since 1984, according to the Lower Hutt-based Motor Industry Association. Commercial vehicle registrations rose 6.5 percent to 3,919, the highest ever recorded for a March month while passenger vehicle registrations gained 1.4 percent to 8,191, the strongest level for the month since 1989.

New Zealand vehicle sales have hit annual records for the past two years, and in the first quarter of this year are tracking 3 percent ahead of last year. Vehicle sales are being underpinned by a growing economy bolstered by record migration and tourism as rivalry keeps a lid on prices.

"Strong net immigration, competitive pricing and end of financial year deals drove strong new vehicles registrations in March 2016, said MIA chief executive David Crawford. The month of March continued the overall strong performance of the new vehicle sector over the last three years."

Japanese car maker Toyota was the top selling brand in March, with 15 percent market share, followed by Ford with 10 percent, and Mitsubishi on 8 percent.

The three top-selling models for February were all light commercial vehicles, led by the Ford Ranger with a 5 percent market share, followed by the Toyota Hilux with a 5 percent share and the Mitsubishi Triton with a 4 percent share.

(BusinessDesk)

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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RIYADH: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday invited oil-rich Saudi Arabia's top business tycoons to invest in India's key sectors like defence, insurance, railway and oil as he projected his country as an attractive investmentdestination even in the face of a global economic slowdown.



Saudi Arabia is planning to set up world's largest sovereign wealth fund of about Rs 132.46 lakh crore andIndia was eyeing a major investment from the country which is India's fourth largest trading partner.



Listing policy initiatives taken by his government to boost economic growth, Modi said his government was looking for major investment in defence production, railways and deep sea off-shore oil exploration in coal gasification to produce clean energy.



The Prime Minister made the pitch while interacting with a group of 30 top Saudi CEOs and Indian business leaders at the Council of Saudi Chambers of Commerce here.



The Saudi business honchos, who attended the interaction, collectively account for a major share of the Saudi GDP.



Talking about his government's initiative in "high temperature deep sea off shore exploration", Modi invited Saudi investment in the sector which has been opened up for FDI from this month.



He said "most transparent" policy framework has been put in place and that market driven revenue sharing model will be adopted for such project.



The Prime Minister said India plans to build a staggering 50 million low cost housing, a mega project requiring huge investment which will create massive economic opportunities besides creating jobs. "I want to give house to every poor Indian. I think every year a new Saudi Arabia has to be built in my country. That is a huge requirement," he said.



Modi said railways and food processing sectors have been opened up for 100 per cent Foreign Direct Investment and that there is huge investment opportunity in building cold storage network as well as in manufacture of equipment for generation of solar power.



Pitching for Saudi investment in the defence sector, Modi said India's biggest import bill after petroleum products is defence equipment and asserted that the government now is focusing on indigenous production.



"We are importing everything. Why not we develop defence equipment in India. Your investment can play a major role in this," he said.



Talking about cyber threats, the Prime Minister said major investments will be required to ensure cyber security and Saudi Arabia can invest significantly in the sector.



The Prime Minister also faced range of questions at the interaction relating to retrospective tax, proposed Goods and Services Tax, non-performing assets of Indian banks and whether India will allow Islamic banking.



Referring to specific sectors, Modi said India plans to go for coal gasification in order to be able to produce clean energy and invited Saudi companies to invest in the sector. "I think your companies can do a great deal in this regard." Seeking investment in railways, he said, "Today, India's railway is world's second longest network and I wish to double that. I wish to upgrade it. We have 50 cities in the country where we wish to build metro network."



He said the insurance sector has been opened up and that there is huge scope in it. The Prime Minister also invited Saudi investment in agriculture and medical tourism sectors.

Read Also: World's Largest Oil Firm Aramco Plans To Invest In India

World's Largest Oil Firm Aramco Plans To Invest In India
RIYADH: Promising easier business environment for global investors, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said retrospective taxation has been relegated to history, but he is "not able to do anything" on two pending cases from the previous government as "they are sub-judice".



Inviting Saudi businesses to come and invest in India in sectors like railways, defence and energy, Modi also said a common indirect taxation regime in form of GST (Goods and Services Tax) was "about to happen". He, however, refrained from giving any specific timeframe.



Addressing Saudi CEOs and Indian business leaders here, Modi said his government has opened up various sectors to foreign investment and India stands out as a "beacon of hope" amidst global economic slowdown.



"World Bank has upgraded India by 12 ranks in Ease of Doing Business. I expect in the next review, our ranking will improve further because we have made a lot of administrative reforms.



"You are worried about GST. Do not worry about GST. GST will happen. I cannot give a timeframe, but it will happen. It was our commitment, and it is about to happen," Modi said.



Prime Minister added the government is in favour of long-term stable and predictable policies and any retrospective amendment to tax laws is a thing of past.



"There are two cases of the previous government, but they are sub-judice matter, so I am not able to do anything... Now, retrospective tax in India has become a thing of past. It will not happen going ahead," Modi said.



Although Prime Minister did not specifically name the pending cases, the major retrospective tax disputes include those involving Vodafone and Cairn.

Modi said with huge growth potential and evolving global



relations, India should have a predictable taxation system.



"Retrospective tax is also a thing of the past. We have said this again and again in Parliament. Today again I am saying.



"If someone plans to come to India after 10 years, he should be able to predict the tax structure. So I'm in favour of a long-term predictable tax system and we have implemented it. So I don't think that in coming days there will be any problem," he said.



Prime Minister also said Saudi investors can look at petroleum, renewable energy, infrastructure and defence manufacturing as possible areas for investment.



"Saudi investment in fertilisers, warehousing, cold chain facilities and agriculture would be a win-win partnership as it would ensure good quality food products for Saudi Arabia," he said, adding defence sector accounts for second largest contributor to the import bill, after oil.



"We import everything for Defence sector. Why can we not manufacture defence equipment in India? You investors can play a big role in that. Whatever will be manufactured, India is a very big buyer," Modi said.



Prime minister added that today's world is scared of two things. First is terrorism and the other is more dangerous, cyber terror, which is unknown, but can still happen.



"There is a need for innovation in the field of cyber security and India has the talent. There is a need for dynamic professional management and for that there is lot of investment that is required," Modi said.



Inviting investments in petroleum sector, Modi said investors can partner India in energy sector as the country offers "transparent" policies.



He said in one year, India has already achieved 5,500 MW of renewable energy production.



"When I first time said 175 GW renewable energy people were surprised.... And I am confident that we will do it within the time period. I want investment in solar equipment manufacturing and we are ready to produce 175 GW renewable energy, which will be a strange thing for the world," Modi said.

Later in the day, Ministry of External Affairs



spokesperson Vikas Swarup tweeted that Prime Minister met Chairman of Saudi Aramco, Khalid A al-Falih and discussed issues related to energy and healthcare sectors.



Al-Falih, who is also the Minister of Health said Aramco looks to India as its number one target for investment, read Swarup's tweet.



Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir also met Narendra Modi before the ceremonial welcome.



While interacting with 30 Saudi CEOs and Indian business leaders here, Prime Minister said the Centre along with state governments have worked to take over the distressed power sector loans from banks. "Now we are working with private companies. On that also we have progressed fast. So NPAs will not be an issue in the near-future."



Modi said a lot of foreign banks are functioning in India and going forward, whatever is needed, the government will do.



He described India and Saudi Arabia as old friends, ready to take bold new steps to a golden future.



Modi said India had a unique combination of democracy, demography and demand, and several policy initiatives have been taken over the last two years to spur growth.



He said there was tremendous scope for investment in the manufacturing of medical devices.



India's health sector is globally extremely cost competitive, offers immense scope for health tourism.



He also called for taking the economic relationship between the two countries beyond export and import, to technology transfers and joint investment.



Emphasising the strength of ties, Modi recalled King Salman mentioning that he was taught by an Indian teacher.

Read Also: Modi Talks Tough On Terror, Says UN Risks Its Relevance

Modi: Drop Notion That 'His' Terrorist Is Not 'My' Terrorist
RIYADH: Terming terrorism as the enemy of humanity, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said there was a need to "delink" religion from it and asserted that "segmented and partial" approaches to counter the menace will not be effective.

Pressing for united global efforts to deal with the scourge, Modi said there can be no distinction between "good" or "bad" terrorism and that it has "no caste, colour, creed or religion".

Appreciating Saudi Arabia's leadership role in fighting terrorism in the Middle East, Modi said India was committed to working with Riyadh as well as with its partners in the region to ensure that the world is a better and safer place to live in.

The Prime Minister said India has sought to challenge and repudiate the terror narrative that global counter-terrorism efforts are directed against any particular religion or ethnic group.

"In this context, we deeply appreciate the leadership role being played by Saudi Arabia in the region to fight this menace," he told leading daily Arab News in an interview during his two-day visit to the Kingdom.

Saudi Arabia, a country known as the spiritual home of Islam, recently formed a major coalition of 34 Muslim nations to fight terror, particularly the ISIS. Saudi Arabia and India have a counter-terror mechanism as well.

"To defeat terrorism, all those who believe in humanity have to be united. We need to delink religion from terrorism. Terrorism should be dealt in a comprehensive manner. Segmented and partial approaches have historically proven to be at best suboptimal," Modi said.

"There can be no distinction between 'good' or 'bad' terrorism," he said in a veiled reference to Pakistan, a close ally of Saudi Arabia.

Modi said both India and Saudi Arabia recognise that no cause can justify an act of terror.

He noted that India and Saudi Arabia have come together to cooperate in eradicating the scourge of terrorism.

Hailing the role of King Salman bin Abdulaziz in nurturing the Indo-Saudi partnership, Modi said building further on the strategic partnership with the powerful nation was one of the foreign policy priorities of his government.

To defeat terror, the Prime Minister said governments across the world should enhance cooperation in intelligence sharing, law enforcement, developing best practices and technologies as well as in extradition arrangements and capacity-building.

"India has adopted a comprehensive approach through dealing with its individual elements, including controlling the spread of extremist ideology, plugging financing routes, building a counter narrative to radicalisation through efforts to stem training and recruitment by terrorists," Modi said.

Read Also: Modi Talks Tough On Terror, Says UN Risks Its Relevance

Modi: Drop Notion That 'His' Terrorist Is Not 'My' Terrorist
NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, now on a visit to Saudi Arabia, will on Tuesday launch a scheme to promote entrepreneurship among the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes and women with loans in the range of 10 lakh to 100 lakh, official sources said here.

Named the "Stand up India Scheme", the prime minister will launch it and a web portal for it on Tuesday in suburban Noida.

The function will be also attended by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, union Minister for Culture and Tourism Mahesh Sharma and union Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha, among others, and Uttar Pradesh Governor Ram Naik.

"The scheme is expected to benefit large number of entrepreneurs, as it is intended to facilitate at least two such projects per bank branch of scheduled commercial banks on an average, one for each category of entrepreneur," an official said.

The scheme will also facilitate refinance window through Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) with an initial amount of 10,000 crore, the official announcement said.

The overall intent of the proposal is to leverage the institutional credit structure to reach out to these under-served sectors of the population by facilitating bank loans in the non-farm sector, sources said.

The prime minister on August 15, 2014, launched the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) for Banking for the Unbanked scheme.

Similarly, Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana (PMMY) was launched by Modi on April 8, 2015 for "Funding the Unfunded" by facilitating loans up to 10 lakh.

Read Also: India Incredibly Unique, Valuable Market: Microsoft Executives

Five Successful Startups With Non-IITians as Founders
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The average tax-paying Australian must be feeling futility fatigue amid another round of explosive revelations that the super rich have skirted many millions in tax while at the same time the government is telling them there will be nothing by way of personal tax cuts coming their way any time soon.

The enormous drop of documents around the establishment of offshore accounts in tax havens could hold the key to an Aladdin's Cave for the Australian Tax Office and regulators and investigators of white collar crime.

Investigating and prosecuting tax evaders is complex and difficult. It comes on the back of two high-profile investigations uncovered over the past couple of weeks around Australian companies allegedly involved in another reputational black mark for Australia  its poor record of prosecuting corruption and bribery.
Public Service Commissioner John Lloyd has warned unions that momentum is on his side as he seeks to secure enterprise agreements for remaining staff and end nearly two years of protracted negotiations and industrial action.

The comments come as the main public service union said it would fight an order from the Fair Work Commission suspending strike action by Border Force and Immigration Department public servants at the nation's air and sea ports.

Mr Lloyd, who recently issued a warning for underperforming public servants, took a swipe at unions for industrial action that "has had little to no impact in most agencies other than to cost its members pay".

Mr Lloyd's comments came after the Fair Work Commission approved a federal government bid to suspend industrial action by immigration and customs staff from striking at international airports and ports, due to a possible threat to national security.
A man has been charged and had his number plates confiscated after he was caught allegedly riding a motorcycle at more than 100 kilometres per hour over the speed limit in south west Sydney.

NSW Police say they stopped the 30-year-old man, who was riding a grey Yamaha R1 along Airds Road, at around 11.30am on Monday.

The rider was allegedly detected at a speed of 196 kilometres per hour in a 60 kilometres per hour zone - or more than three times the legal speed limit.

"Police stopped and spoke to the rider... before he was issued a Field Court Attendance Notice for exceed speed over 45 km/h and drive at speed dangerous to the public," police said in a statement.

The man's license has been suspended and his number plates have been confiscated for three months.
Trees near powerlines in rural areas and on the urban fringe of the ACT would have to be cut back to a much greater degree  in some cases to seven metres away from the line  in a new proposal from ActewAGL.

Homeowners across Canberra would also be responsible for clearing trees and shrubs away from power poles as well as power lines under proposed new guidelines.

ActewAGL wants stricter rules in place for vegetation near power poles in the ACT. Trees and other vegetation touching lines can spark fires and cause blackouts.

ActewAGL is pushing for the much stricter clearance limits in rural areas and in the bushfire abatement zone, on the urban fringe. In some cases the current limit is of two metres would be extended to seven.

The utility company, which owns and operates 2400km of overhead electricity lines, conducted consultation around the changes last year and early this year and is expected to put a firm proposal to the government within the next couple of months. It was expected more consultation would be conducted by the government before a final decision.
Police are set to crack down on speeding drivers throughout April, with more than 6000 ACT motorists nabbed driving faster than the legal limit in 2015.

ACT Policing targets dangerous behaviours that contribute to death and serious injuries on Canberra's roads each month as part of its ongoing road safety strategy.

ACT Policing station Sergeant Susan Ball. Credit:Karleen Minney

Officers will have a boosted presence and focus on speeding this month, with fines of up to $1811 and six demerit points for each offence.

Police said a man, 21, was fined $1811 and was docked six demerit points after he was clocked travelling at 163km/hr in a 100km/hr zone on Majura Parkway recently.
Glazier Joanna Tsakiridis Credit:Steven Siewert Glaziers and floor installers are among skilled workers in growing demand. When Ms Tsakiridis bought her business, she knew all she needed to know about sales. But she felt the need to learn more about the trade. The business was installing ready made products, but it now makes its own windows at a factory Ms Tsakiridis established in Kingsgrove. "I thought I should learn more about the business and how to cut glass," she said. In 2014, she completed a course at Lidcombe TAFE where she learned how to cut glass, manufacture windows, timber sides and small security doors.

"I did my training at the same level as the guys. I loved it," she said. "The only restriction was lifting things into place, but we have machines for that." GLAZIERS: In its submission to the government review which determines Australia's future skills needs, the Australian Glazing and Glass Association says the building design industry is making much greater use of glass in new constructions. "Glass is being used a lot more in building than ever before," says the association's national training manager, Patrick Gavaghan. "It is such a good flexible product to work with. "Architects and designers just love it. We can make it reflect or contain heat and it looks very good.

"The more technical the glass gets, the more technical the skills are required by the glazier." Mr Gavaghan said there are about 22 female glaziers in Australia. "Glazing now is a really good trade for females because they have a good eye for detail," he said. FLOOR COVERING INSTALLERS: The Carpet Institute of Australia has also identified growing demand for carpet and floor covering installers who are in short supply around the country.

In its submission to the government review it says employers have reported that a "chronic and worsening shortage of floor finishers is adversely impacting their businesses in various ways". "Independent skilled migration has a role to play in reducing the magnitude of the chronic under-supply of suitably qualified floor finishers, which affects flooring contractors, the residential housing and construction industries, flooring retailers, flooring manufacturers and distributors and consumers," the submission says. ACCOUNTANTS: The accounting industry will also welcome overseas students who have provided a boon to the Australian economy. Organisations representing accountants say there are more than 39,000 international students enrolled in accounting degrees contributing more than $1.7 billion to the economy.

The Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand warns that "if significant changes were to be made to eligibility of foreign accountants for migration to Australia this would have undesirable impacts on universities and the economy". The Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand says there are shortages of experienced accountants which can be "dealt with through employer nominated entry 457 visas". "In the medium term of 10 or so years, openings for accountants in accountant jobs of around 11,000 per annum appear likely," the submission says. But some medical organisations, which have in the past been the subject of Australian Competition and Consumer Commission scrutiny into "closed shop" practices, are seeking removal from the skilled occupation list. DOCTORS AND NURSES:

GPs and other medical professionals are seeking to close the door to skilled migrants on the basis that they will be oversupplied with domestic graduates. Royal Australian College of General Practitioners president Frank Jones said the number of medical graduates has almost doubled in the past decade. "Due to these increases, the RACGP has recommended close monitoring not only of general practitioners, but non-specialist international medical graduates in Australia providing general practice services," he said. "The RACGP believes that an opportunity exists to utilise the increasing number of local graduates, thereby reducing Australia's reliance on international medical graduates to fill service gaps in general practice." The Australian & New Zealand College of Anaesthetists predicts an oversupply of anaesthetists in 2016 and a balance in supply and demand by 2025.

The College of Intensive Care Medicine of Australia and New Zealand also says it represents an occupation "very likely to be in a position of oversupply in the medium to long term". And the college representing obstetricians and gynaecologists says it is well positioned to meet demand over the next five to 10 years. However, surgeons say there is an increasing need for their skills in rural and regional areas. Psychiatrists also report an acute shortage in rural and remote parts of the country. There is also a maldistribution of speech pathologists and demand for specialists. Nursing and aged care associations have identified significant shortages in the next 10 years, linked to the ageing population and the increasing complexity in health needs. The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation says that while rural and remote areas are struggling to fill positions for nurses, there is hot competition for specialty jobs including nurse managers, researchers and educators.

DENTISTS: The Australian Dental Association reports that newly graduated dentists are having trouble finding full-time work. OPTOMETRISTS: Optometrists also say their profession will be oversupplied in the short term. COMMUNITY SERVICE WORKERS AND AGED CARE PROVIDERS:

The long-term projections for aged and community care services suggest major growth in the need for these skills. BUILDERS: Master Builders Australia says that demand for managers and workers in construction will "significantly exceed domestic supply over the medium-to-long-term". The Housing Industry Association also reports "widespread shortages of appropriately skilled trades workers in the construction industry". The number of job openings for electricians is also expected to be high over the next five years, according to Master Electricians Australia.

BRICK LAYERS: Generations Y and Z are steering away from bricklaying and towards higher education, according to The Australian Brick & Blocklaying Training Foundation. "We have seen a consistent trend away from the trade through our regular contact with students, parents, career teachers and employment agencies," its submission says. "There is evidence of shortages of brick and blocklayers across the country." The foundation says skilled workers from overseas are still needed and brick laying should remain on the skilled occupations list.

ELECTRICIANS: The number of job openings for electricians is expected to be high over the next five years, according to Master Electricians Australia. ARCHITECTS: Demand for architects is also expected to remain strong in coming years. FARM WORKERS:

The dairy industry is reporting a "chronic skilled labour shortage" of skilled and experienced farm workers. TEACHERS: Teacher unions and school principals have reported a continuing oversupply of primary school teachers and an undersupply of secondary maths, science and technology teachers. There is also a shortage of special education and language teachers. A spokeswoman for the Federal Department of Education and Training said The Skilled Occupations List identifies occupations that would benefit from independent skilled migration to meet the medium to long-term needs of the country's economy. The Minister for Immigration and Border Protection  on advice from the Department of Education - will decide any changes to the list.
Consider the possibility that, above the craps tables they want to sprinkle on the side of the city, James Packer and Crown had been made to build something useful at Barangaroo. They may have been made to build apartments in which teachers could afford to live. Or police officers or the elderly.

The idea might be hard to fathom in Sydney these days. Subjugating the interests of property developers or land owners to the general needs of the population doesn't really blow with the prevailing winds in the harbour city. But it should, and it probably needs to if the city is going to remain the type of place that a broad mix of us can live in and enjoy.

Sydney's spruikers and spinners are fond of dubbing the city a "global city". But there is one area in which Sydney is falling behind other comparable cities around the world. And that is the government-mandated provision of affordable housing in inner- and middle-ring areas.

In New York last month, Mayor Bill de Blasio's City Council passed a policy on "mandatory inclusionary zoning". The policy provides that developers and land-owners benefiting from the rezoning of land provide a proportion of housing that is affordable to people on low and medium incomes.
However, home birth always has been and always will be a game of Russian roulette, because, when things go wrong everyone wants answers and blames everyone except themselves. Most of us have known women who seem to think they are the only ones ever to be going through a pregnancy, that they know best and that the rest of us who have had children know nothing. These women ignore medical advice, because they want to believe that if they go into hospital like most normal people, they will be robbed of some kind of mythical birthing experience. Twaddle. In Mrs Lovell's case, Gaye Demanuele had taken steps to deregister herself but she kept practicing as a midwife after Mrs Lovell's death and it is believed that Demanuele may have been involved in another death in 2011, this time of the actual baby. Gaye Demanuele's actions were dreadful but for a first time mum at 36 years old, if your own brain does not tell you that you are 'an older mum' and you need to use some common sense and choose a hospital delivery from the very start then what can you do?

Mrs Lovell's mother summed it up when she said "the midwives refused to call an ambulance because of their radical and dangerous beliefs that women don't need ambulances, that women don't need hospitals in childbirth and, because of this belief, my daughter is dead." The fact that a midwife decided to play God along with a less-experienced midwife at her side still angers many within the medical profession. "There is no excuse for women who do not meet sensible inclusion criteria for homebirth to take unacceptably high risks with the potential of their unborn child. These women, these couples are not stupid, they are selfish," said WA Australian Medical Association President and obstetrician Dr Michael Gannon. But seriously, given that medical science is so advanced now and has reduced the risk of actually dying during childbirth in a hospital to such a negligible amount, why on earth would you want to take the do-it-yourself risk both to yourself and your unborn child? Australia boasts some of the best hospitals in the western world. Women should be thrilled that they can actually take advantage of the hospital care we are lucky enough to enjoy.

How ironic that around the world around 300,000 to 400,000 women are dying in childbirth each year. These women are UNABLE to access hospital care. Yet in 2016, an Aussie mum has the luxury of shunning the care these women can't get for no other reason other than, simply, because she can. The most important job a woman can do is to actually be there as a mother for her children, not ending up killing herself in the process for the sake of having a so-called 'birthing' experience. A birthing experience of a few hours does not a mother make. Proponents suggest home birthing allows mothers 'to be in control'. But the reality is, when labour kicks in, very little can prepare you for what happens next. You can have written out all the birthing plans and requests you want  but any woman who has been through it will tell you that it very rarely happens the way you envisage. The desire for the mum to 'experience the pain' is so often put above the big picture of getting the baby actually out into the world as safely as possible.

It astounds me that in this day and age women would choose to stay away from medical intervention when we know things can go tragically wrong during labour. Don't you want the best possible chance for your unborn child to survive? Yes, hospitals can be scary and confronting places. But please give some credit where it is due to the medical teams of obstetricians, anaesthetists, doctors, midwives and nurses who are there to help you and your unborn child. I like to think I am as maternal as the next mum but the whole birthing thing is over rated, it really is. I have had three children and not so long ago either. Let's get real, no one really remembers every little detail of giving birth either naturally or via caesarean. If they do and say they loved it, don't believe them. They have a very selective memory indeed! Only a few short years ago in 2011 we had the tragic case of a Perth mother gave birth to twins, one of whom later died.

The Perth parents had found a midwife and homebirth advocate, Lisa Barrett, on the internet and paid her $3000 and the cost of an airfare from Adelaide to attend the home birth. What they did not know was that prior to the birth and death of one of their babies, Ms Barrett had been involved in the preventable death of three other babies in South Australia. A WA coronial inquest was put on hold, pending the outcome of a similar South Australian coronial investigation. But a WA Police investigation revealed the baby's parents had insisted on a homebirth despite the WA Community Midwife program refusing to be involved. Unable to find a willing private midwife within the state, they took to the internet and found Ms Barrett. "The hospital in Perth with which they had contact had indicated that they wanted the mother to have an elective caesarean," said SA Deputy Coroner Anthony Schapel. Mr Schapel found that if each of the three babies that died in South Australia had been born in a hospital they would have survived in a healthy state.

In WA, the Community Midwifery Program has been brought under the control of the Health Department. This control came about after situations associated with an unacceptable rate of perinatal death and cerebral palsy. Home birth advocates will argue till they are blue in the face that homebirth remains a valid model of care for low-risk pregnant women and want this choice to continue to be supported. They claim that by birthing at home, the mother experiences less intervention and more confidence and support to tackle the role of parenting a new baby. Advocates also say that for women experiencing low-risk pregnancies, with a home birth service well supported with an effective transfer-in process, the risks are the same as birthing in hospital. Well, what else are they going to say? "The CMP will never be as safe as hospital birth where immediate access to lifesaving measures for both mother and baby are all perhaps taken for granted, "said Dr Gannon.

Dr Gannon is not a fan of home births but still has praise for midwives as well as the CMP giving the program credit for its refusal in accepting some pregnant women. The program cares for a few hundred Western Australian women each year with timely transfer to hospital if needed. It allows women to give birth under midwife-led care at home, at the birth centre next to King Edward Memorial Hospital or at Kalamunda Hospital. "However there are still a small number of women who refuse to follow advice and engage the service of private midwives who are not covered by insurance. They need to be aware that they are placing their life and the life of their unborn child in the hands of someone who doesn't have the skill, training and adheres simply to their own ideology which is very, very dangerous," said Dr Gannon. "We must remember it is not just the woman who has to deal with the consequences of that birth for the rest of their life, it is the child and the society into which that child is born," he said. Parenthood is tough enough, why would you not give yourself and your child the best start you possibly could in Australia?

Sometimes, no matter how desperately we want something, common sense has to win out. People may argue that having a home birth is about the rights of women. It is not. Birth should be all about the rights of the child who deserves every opportunity to reach their full potential. The majority of pregnant women work this out from day one which is why they go into hospital, deliver and go back home to begin being a mum. But sadly the minority who choose to be different seem to never accept the blame for their ridiculous decisions when things go wrong. Instead they launch campaigns to "demand answers" and find a scapegoat. Instead, perhaps the rest of us should demand why they made their ridiculous decision in the first place? Emails and phone calls to the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation as well as to the WA Community Midwifery Program have not been returned.
I believe the Queensland government's decision to approve the Adani mine will go down in history as one of the greediest and most thoughtless and ignorant decisions ever. The world expects us to look after the reef but we seem to be hell bent on destroying it. Jane Stevenson Port Macquarie But Queensland Premier, your mine, with its lifetime emissions of 4.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, will certainly finish off your greatest tourist attraction. Joan Croll Drummoyne At a time when large expanses of coral are bleaching, temperature records keep being broken, extreme weather events are no longer unusual, and there is general agreement around the world that we need to move away from fossil fuels, the decision by the Queensland ALP government and the federal Coalition government before that to approve the Adani coal mine is abhorrent. Imagine the emissions that will result from the estimated 11 billion tonnes of thermal coal that lies waiting to be being taken out of the ground and shipped through the Great Barrier Reef from the aptly named Abbot Point.

And the best the Queensland government can offer in its justification of this abomination is the mantra of jobs, a disingenuous, desperate and downright ludicrous claim, given that employment in renewables would most likely not just match but far outnumber any mining jobs and also help us do our bit to address what is fast becoming runaway climate change. Catherine Moore Braidwood I agree with Charlie Veron, former chief scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, who says approval of the Adani coal mine in Queensland is akin to "evil". It certainly defies reason, given it was an "environmental" approval. It's harm is not just the direct effects on the Great Barrier Reef, such as dredging for the port, but the indirect effects when the coal is burnt. The carbon dioxide emitted will exacerbate global warming and acidify the oceans. There have been a couple of reputable studies lately about sea-level rise being two metres or more this century. Warmer oceans may break up the West Antarctic ice shelves that currently buttress the ice sheet. Once massive ice cliffs are exposed to the ocean they will collapse, causing sea levels to rise. Scientists say it is not inevitable, as long as there are strong mitigation efforts on climate change. Approval of the Adani mine is the very antithesis of this. Let us hope Adani cannot find the $16 billion investment needed to proceed.

Jenny Goldie Michelago Labor's court jester couldn't stop drift to the right The truly sad and early loss of the wisdom, wit and wickedness of Bob Ellis got me thinking about the well-deserved words of praise and love pouring in from the centre-right leaders of the Labor Party and the political and cultural elite ("Journalist Bob Ellis dies, aged 73", smh.com.au, April 4). It got me wondering about what Ellis himself might have thought and written about such words.Ellis was, of course, about much more than words. He was about values. He was a fierce critic of capitalism. He wanted profoundly different and better public policy. He wanted a profoundly different and better Labor Party.Frustratingly, despite that lifetime of magic and memorable words, his influence on the direction of the "true believers" was limited. Despite, or perhaps because of, his close relationships with so many Labor leaders he was never able to prevent the drift further to the so-called centre and right of the political spectrum. How could one voice, no matter how brilliant? So Ellis was condemned to be a modern-day court jester. Close to power, insightful and entertaining to the last, loved by all and driven to carouse. Vale, we will not see his like again yet we need him, and more like him, more than ever. Stewart Sweeney North Adelaide (SA)

The Sydney Writers' Festival will never be the same again. Bob Ellis wandering around with his shopping bags, talking to everyone and dropping such wonderful, witty, clever comments on all that was happening in our world. We will miss him. Kathy Bradley Wollstonecraft Are we 100 per cent sure it was Bob Ellis that died and not Max Gilles? Peter Fyfe Erskineville No sign of pork on New England Highway

Having recently returned from Inverell via the New England Highway, I disagree it is not deserving of more infrastructure money ("Too much money spent on 'wrong' highways", April 4). During our week's holiday we managed to inject tourist dollars in Stanthorpe, Inverell, Armidale, Uralla and the Hunter wine district, all of which can only be effectively accessed by the New England Highway. It was bumper to bumper, with few overtaking lanes. New England cities and towns are not "nowhere". They are places where many people live and work, and are visited by many tourists. This should not be a case of either/or. Both the New England and the Pacific Highways deserve substantial upgrades. Elizabeth Elenius Pyrmont What criteria did the Grattan Institute use to determine whether the road projects were necessary or important other than an estimate of the amount of traffic using them?

Did it consider the state of the roads prior to the updates, the number of accidents, the speed limits? If you were just using traffic volume as a priority for road building many parts of Australia would have no roads at all. Frances McMahon Mosman As a frequent user of the New England Highway for more than 20 years, I'm darned if I can see where $2.1 billion has been spent. I'd like to see a breakdown on just where this mega amount has gone but I'm not holding my breath. Chris Tiley Nana Glen

Moore misses point on late-night lockouts Clover Moore wants to wind back the late-night alcohol restrictions that have been so effective ("It's time we grew up", April 4). Moore misses the basic point that fewer inebriated people on the streets late at night equates to fewer sexual and violent assaults. The evidence is overwhelming. For Moore to seek to undermine the recent significant safety gains is an irresponsible position and not befitting of a mayor "for all" the city. Dr David Moss Byron Bay When discussing the 1:30am lockout and 3am "last drinks", examples of overseas cities are often quoted. This is not helpful as few other countries have a culture such as ours, part of which is that it is thought smart to get paralytic from grog. Anthony Jones Stanwell Park

Credit where it's due It is very hard to reconcile the government closing the Court Referral of Eligible Defendants into Treatment diversion program with its goal of reducing adult reoffending by 5 per cent ("Criminal intervention program dropped", April 4). People with intellectual disability are often in trouble with the law for want of the support services they need to live positive lifestyles. CREDIT can link people to these supports. In 2012, the NSW Law Reform Commission recommended that CREDIT be expanded to cover all local courts in NSW. Instead, it is being closed. Jim Simpson senior advocate, NSW Council for Intellectual Disability, Malabar Unregulated capitalism will end in disaster The Panama Papers revelations quickly follow the Unaoil scandal ("ATO investigating more than 800 Australian clients of Mossack Fonseca, smh.com.au, April 6). Add to them multi-national tax avoidance on a massive scale and it's easy to see why people are becoming disillusioned with politics. The system is broken. And instead of an attempt at fixing it we are presented with political drivel.

To paraphrase Thomas Piketty, government will either become a vehicle for democratic sovereignty to take control of globalised capitalism or it will facilitate its subjugation to markets and corruption and, in the resulting chaos, fail. Ted Keating Tallai Maybe it's not such a great time to be an Australian with ties to big oil and money stashed in overseas tax havens administered by Panamanian brokers. William Bielefeldt Kembla Grange Is PM afraid of ICAC?

What inference, if any, can be drawn from the Prime Minister's refusal to have a federal commission against corruption ("Turnbull rules out deal for a federal ICAC", April 4)? Evan Whitton Glebe Turnbull disingenuous in his criticism of states The state premiers do not "live within their means" because they are always trying to satisfy the infrastructure demands of rapid population growth (Letters, April 4). Malcolm Turnbull and others conveniently forget it is the federal government which determines population growth through high immigration and generous family tax benefits when he demands the states raise the funds to provide for the education and health needs of this population growth.Australia has the highest population growth rate in the developed world, yet the states do not challenge the federal government to lower population growth to a sustainable level.Until Australia has a stable population, we will never have enough funds to provide for the demands of rapid population growth. Karen Joynes Bermagui

The bigger issue in this debate is making sure the tax that is raised is shared appropriately between the levels of government. Australia needs an independent body to do this rather than relying on Commonwealth largess. Ken Clarke Ballina Perhaps the state and federal leaders could come to better arrangements if only the people they administered had more in common. Bruce Hulbert Lilyfield Good will or good politics

It must be an election year. Wolves are suddenly turning into sheep ("Last children released into community", April 4). Mustafa Erem Terrigal Bring in pillow talk to fix frustration Why isn't International Pillow Fight Day promoted in this country ("Feathers fly", April 4)? We could all do with a little levity to counteract the humdrum of day-to-day politics and it would be a good opportunity to take out one's frustrations by killing them softly. Better than guns or bombs. Judy Finch Cedar Party

Yolk of the matter Brian Henderson (Letters, April 4), the difference is a free-range egg has a deep yellow or orange centre. This is replaced in a non-free-range egg with a pasty, anaemic-looking blob; truly, no yolking. Stewart Smith North Kellyville The difference between a free-range egg and a cage egg is about 20 to 25 an egg, Brian Henderson. The difference for the two chooks is incalculable. Don Smith Ashfield
The phrase "Safe Schools" has appeared in Australian headlines lately in the context of an educational initiative to address LGBTI bullying. However, there's another Safe Schools campaign that you may not have heard of  one where Australia is noticeably absent.

Last May, countries from around the world came together to join the Safe Schools Declaration, pledging to protect education during war. By signing this declaration, countries endorsed the "Guidelines for Protecting Schools and Universities from Military Use During Armed Conflict".

Fifty-two countries have joined the Safe Schools Declaration to date. Credit:Quentin Jones

These guidelines, drafted in a consultative process over a three-year period, provide guidance to governments and non-state armed groups on avoiding using schools in the course of military operations.

The campaign aims to protect schools and universities from being attacked or used for military purposes in times of armed conflict. At its heart are children like 16-year-old Alia in Yemen. Soldiers occupied the third floor of her school  she said just seeing them terrified her.
Death Row: The dog kennels at Wagga pound. Credit:Laura Hardwick Skye Paproth received a letter advising that her lost, microchipped dog, Cindy, was safe and well and that, as per requirements under the Companion Animals Act, she had 14 days to collect the pet before it was put down. But it later emerged the dog was euthanised after one week. In a media release, Wagga Wagga mayor Rod Kendall said: "I know no staff member sets out to do the wrong thing ... but mistakes do happen from time to time." The wet floor in the dog kennels at Wagga Wagga pound in a photo from the council's website. Several weeks on from that scandal, retired school teacher and shelter volunteer Myriam Hribar wrote to the council, claiming the "welfare" of animals had become "the last priority on the rangers' list of duties".

Quoting from a diary she had been keeping, Ms Hribar reeled off a series of horror stories in which animals had allegedly been left to suffer, including one cat trapped inside a "crush cage" with no food or water for five days. Belinda Oakman with Saviour, who was rescued from a freezer at the Wagga Wagga pound. "It is very sad to see dying dogs just left to die," she wrote. "I am not a vet, but just like a parent knows it is time to take a child to the doctor or hospital, a dying dog should automatically have vet treatment. How can you see this and not do anything?" Other volunteers have accused some pound staff of an "overwhelming lack of compassion for animals". As evidence, they point to the council's own shelter website which in August last year, featured a post that mocked a surrendered, disabled dog which was days away from being put down.

Beneath a banner that read: "Where are all you rescue groups and bleeding hearts now", a photo of the deformed animal was uploaded, alongside the words: "Lovely Kelpie needs someone with a special heart. Badly misshapen but that doesn't stop him. Available now." In October last year, the RSPCA received a signed affidavit from a volunteer, Belinda Oakman, who during the course of weekend work at the pound last March, stumbled upon a kitten, approximately 12 weeks old, that had been dumped in a freezer while still alive. Several months earlier, volunteers photographed another cat in the same freezer. In a statement to the RSPCA last December, one of those witnesses, Simone Lieschke, wrote: "The cat was bleeding from the nose and there were blood stains all around the freezer walls. The position of the blood stains looked like they were from the cat trying to get out of the freezer. "The way the cat was crouching in the freezer struck me as strange - it did not look like a cat that had been euthanised normally."

Following mounting pressure for greater transparency, the council has since released "activity level" data for all incoming and outgoing animals at the pound. But statistical analysis of those figures only serves to raise further questions. During the past three financial years, 3165 dogs arrived at the pound. Of those,1330 were reunited with owners, 387 were sold, 940 were released to organisations for rehoming and and 395 were euthanised. When the 69 dogs that "died at the facility" are added to the tally, there are 44 dogs unaccounted for. When the corresponding figures are compiled for the 1318 cats received, 573 were destroyed, 23 died within the facility while 37 mysteriously fall off the grid altogether. After Fairfax Media presented those findings, Mr Eldridge responded by saying the "discrepancies" were the result of data having been "duplicated" during a transition to a new "electronic impounding system". He added the figures had now been "adjusted". "On a daily basis, staff are faced with the end result of irresponsible pet ownership," said Mr Eldridge, adding that despite the confronting nature of their daily duties, they "endeavour to act with the utmost professionalism".

RSPCA NSW Chief Inspector David O' Shannessy said following an extensive investigation, it was determined that "no proceedings" should commence as the RSPCA was not confident of proving "criminal charges beyond reasonable doubt". "It should also be noted that there is currently no pound-specific animal welfare code of practice in force. This presents challenges when the RSPCA investigates complaints relating to the management of council pounds," he said. 'I opened the freezer lid and there was a black kitten' Belinda Oakman, a volunteer worker at the Wagga Wagga animal shelter, spends endless hours cleaning cat litter trays, washing bedding, filling food bowls and topping up water dishes. She does so because many of the surrendered animals have lived miserable lives, are about to be put down and have "never once" felt the hand of human kindness.

She also claims that if volunteers never attended the shelter, routine neglect would pass unnoticed. In a signed affidavit to the RSPCA last October, Ms Oakman outlined how a routine day at the shelter was suddenly interrupted by a "muffled noise". "I opened the door to the cattery, and nothing. It sounded like it was over near the freezer area. I saw nothing. I went back to cleaning and heard it again. I thought 'no, it wouldn't be coming from the freezer'," she said. Ms Oakman then described the moment she slowly opened the freezer to reveal a kitten, no older than 12 weeks, slumped over a heap of black garbage bags. "I very slowly put my hand in and touched it. It let out a muffled cry. I was in total shock."
But Stephen Heintz, president of the $US860 million ($1.1 billion) Rockefeller Brothers Fund, predicts the world will move rapidly away from fossil fuels to avoid dangerous climate change. Approval of a mine that may produce 4.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide - eight times Australia's annual output - is not going to help.

The Palaszczuk Labor government on Sunday announced the approval of three mining licences for the $20 billion-plus Carmichael coal mine and rail project planned for the Galilee Basin. Its supporters, including India-based owner Adani, say the mine will generate thousands of new mining jobs.

The approval of a giant new coal mine for Queensland is likely to deliver only short-term economic benefits and may carry a hidden cost if its demise triggers a bailout for miners needing new jobs, a leading US investor says.

"Some 60-80 per cent of known fossil fuels in the world are going to have to stay in the ground if we are to have any chance to keep to less than 2 degrees" of warming, Mr Heintz said. "In the short term, [Carmichael] may look like a good idea."

Rockefeller Brothers Fund president Stephen Heintz says investors are increasingly focused on a low-carbon future. Credit:Ben Rushton

The cost of the needed shift to renewable energy will be hefty enough. Approving big new mines means governments, such as Queensland's, will need to find additional funds to pay for the transition of those coal miners out of the industry when it's inevitably curbed, he said.

Mr Heintz is in Australia as a guest of the United States Studies Centre and will speak at the Divest Invest Conference in Sydney on Tuesday about the opportunities and risks following last year's Paris climate summit at which almost 200 nations agreed to step up efforts to curb global warming.

The falling price of fossil fuels over the past year or so has hindered the development of alternatives, such as solar energy, by making competition "more acute". On the other hand, it has also made investments in coal and oil less valuable, he said.
Researchers at the University of NSW say they have developed a new way to form stem cells from fat that could lay the basis for a system of tissue regeneration in humans.

The repair system, the researchers claim, could be used to repair damaged human tissue in situ, including for spinal discs, torn muscle and bone fractures.

Lead author of the research Associate Professor John Pimanda told Fairfax Media: "We take human fat cells and apply two compounds, one of which causes the fat cells to 'lose their memory', turning them into 'multipotent stem cells'. When these are transplanted into damaged tissue, they take their cue from the surrounding cells when proliferating."

This, they say, helps repair the surrounding damaged tissue.
The navy is being investigated after being accused of failing to take action over an alleged 2012 rape of a junior sailor by a higher ranked sailor.

Alleged victim, former sailor Trent Bourne, says his attempts to report the abuse through the chain of command were fobbed off and he has letters, emails and medical notes to support his claims.

A spokesperson for the Australian Defence Force said all allegations of inappropriate or potentially criminal behaviour by Defence personnel were taken very seriously. Credit:Rob Homer

A letter from former Deputy Chief of Navy Michael Julian van Balen sent on March 28, 2014 to Mr Bourne confirms former Chief of Defence Force David Hurley was made aware of an alleged attack in 2013.

Emails between Mr Bourne and the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force, which independently monitors the military justice system, confirm an investigation was launched in January 2016 into the alleged attack and Mr Bourne's claims that the ADF failed to act.
Australia's involvement has been a drawn-out saga. It began in 2013 when the Gillard government committed Australia to the partnership. Departmental work began on Australia's draft action plan in 2013 and continued after the change of government. But in October 2014, the then prime minister, Tony Abbott, advised the Accountability Round Table that the government did not want to "rush" the matter. The community was not consulted.

At the same time, the Abbott government introduced legislation to abolish its key, independent, open-government body, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. You may well wonder whether there was a link between that and the lack of action on Australia's commitments to the Open Government Partnership. For how could Australia honour its obligations as a partnership member to open and transparent government while simultaneously seeking to abolish this crucial body?

The creation of the information commissioner's office was a best-practice reform enacted by the Federal Parliament in 2010 to address the then failed state of the freedom of information system. The office was given statutory authority and responsibility to receive and consider complaints, review refusals of access to information, monitor and guide the FOI system (including providing guidelines) and provide independent advice to government.

The Abbott government was unable to pass its abolition bill through the Senate. But the government's 2014-15 budget was passed, and it allocated funding for the office on the assumption that Parliament would abolish it before Christmas. The government left the bill on the Notice Paper and did nothing to restore the resources the office needed to discharge its functions. You may remember the information commissioner, Professor John McMillan, having to close his Canberra office and work from home.

By its actions, the Abbott government returned the FOI system to its failed 2010 state. The Turnbull government has maintained that strategy despite the community, including the International Commission of Jurists, raising serious questions about its constitutionality.
I put to Shergold that the problem with trying to gauge ministers' appetites for risk is we can't rely on them to be honest about it. Too often we have seen ministers urge public servants to innovate and take risks, only to turn round and spread panic and blame when a risk  even a well-managed risk with a mitigation plan  eventuates. Often it is because the minister simply has no idea of their own risk appetite  i.e. how much risk they are prepared to bear  until an adverse event actually happens. Shergold agrees. He suggests a structured conversation between ministers and secretaries about risk. More than that, what he has in mind is not simply a chat: senior public servants need to make the discussion concrete, about a real project, and test the minister's reactions to the real risk scenarios around that project. It's the same way a good chief executive in a private sector company tests the board's appetite for risk. Just as with a minister, there is no use asking directly: board members will likely tell porkies about how entrepreneurial and risk loving they are. It is only by taking them through a real project proposal, together with its risks, and reading their reaction, that the chief executive can gain a feel for how much risk the board will tolerate. To this I would also add that assessing risk appetite is done progressively and iteratively, through multiple instances where a project or program is rolled out and risks eventuate and are managed. That is more difficult with rapid ministerial changes. Where a minister has been in a portfolio long enough, there's a chance for a very deep insight into risk appetite. If a minister is new, there's a better chance of assessing this if the department or agency sets up multiple small pilots or test beds for new activities, thus limiting downside risks and at the same time providing multiple opportunities for gauging the minister's reaction if (and, where truly innovative, more often when) such pilots fail. It's also important to realise that the risk faced by an individual minister is different to that of government as a whole. Prime ministers love ministers who are prepared to take risks. If the initiative succeeds, then the benefits are great for the government, the prime minister and the minister concerned. If it fails, except in extreme cases, a prime minister will be able to dismiss or demote the minister and move on. For the individual minister concerned, the setback could be a disaster. Thus, the risk versus reward calculation is different at government and ministerial level. Public servants need to be aware of this, and work out their own minister's preparedness to take on risk, not simply rely on whole-of-government statements.

The person who does nothing gains a reputation as a 'safe pair of hands' and is regularly promoted. That's not to say that all ministers are risk-averse. Some are good risk takers and achieve excellent results as a result  among finance ministers I worked for, Peter Walsh and John Fahey would fit this description. The important thing is to be aware of what level of risk they want. In assessing this, it's equally important to remember that private sector risk management models or systems are prone to completely miss the point with public sector risks. They must be adapted, because risk profiles are very different. It's enlightening to teach risk to a mixed audience of public servants and people from business. I have asked such classes how they would decide between competing risks in a project of, say, a loss of $10 million and a 10 per cent drop in public opinion. The private sector people discuss how much reputation matters to the business's future, how quickly it could recover, what the costs in sales might be and so on, working out the metrics and analysing the question. The public servants don't bother. There is no comparison: losing in the opinion polls is unacceptable and to be avoided at all costs. Private sector risk models don't translate well to the public sector because they rarely take sufficient account of, and almost never disaggregate, the many different types of reputational risk. There are numerous different risk methodologies, standards and models. The one most commonly used in the APS, ISO 31000, strongly advocates adapting the standard to the specific circumstances of your own organisation. Yet often public sector bodies, especially when advised by private accountants without deep knowledge of the public sector, fail to modify the approach to suit the public sector.

Appointment of chief risk officers would definitely lift the profile of risk and could improve how it's managed. If the right people are chosen for these roles, they could help create the positive risk culture that Shergold envisages. This is not, however a proposal without its own risks. There is the possibility that risk-averse senior public servants will appoint equally risk-averse chief risk officers who interpret their job as a licence to police risk taking, hunt it down and prevent it happening wherever and whenever possible. We have already seen that with governance. Good governance helps organisations achieve their objectives, supports strategic and flexible decision-making measures, improves performance and (among other things) helps manage risk. Yet in some departments governance has become a synonym for pettifogging regulatory compliance, excessive form filling, preventing action and introducing delays. I spoke with a colleague working in a large department who said its governance area works mainly to frustrate innovation, all in the name of managing risk. It would be easy to see chief risk officers going down this route. To ensure they don't, the criteria for selecting these officers should include a strong appetite for taking  while managing  risks, and a clear record of having done so. In addition to what each department and agency should do, the report also makes suggestions at a whole-of-government level. To improve consideration of risk, "major cabinet proposals should be supported by a minister's endorsed risk management plan"; and because assessing risks on a case-by-case basis can overlook their cumulative impact, the Finance Department should "facilitate a biannual whole-of-government risk assessment for the cabinet, analysing the system-wide impact of operational, financial, strategic, legislative and procurement risks faced by government". The word facilitate is deliberate; information would come from the network of risk officers, and the document would be "strategic and targeted". If these were adopted, cabinet would indeed be better informed on risk; however, to avoid this becoming another ritual form-filling exercise, ministers need to take action arising from risk management plans and biannual reports. If they are simply passed over as a formality, the current risk culture will remain unchanged; the exercise will soon become rote. The next step, therefore, must be engagement between the top levels of the public service and the cabinet on what will work for them, to ensure that such information is actually used and changes decision-making. My only reservation about the chapter is its interchangeable use of the terms uncertainty and risk. Economist Frank Knight argued last century for distinguishing risk (things that we know might happen, and can quantify to some extent) from uncertainty (what former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously termed "unknown unknowns"  things we can't measure because they are inherently unpredictable).
But the risk of missing his target and having Monis spray the cafe full of hostages with bullets was too high. "If I did something it could help and get us out of there but if it didn't it could be a catastrophe," the 22-year-old said. As Monis' behaviour in the cafe grew more erratic and aggressive, Mr Herat formed the view that he and the other hostages would be dead by the following morning. He felt like they had been left there and that no progress had been made to get them out, the inquest heard. Mr Herat told the inquest Monis was aggravated that his demands  including getting an Islamic State flag in exchange for releasing a hostage  were not being met.

But Mr Herat formed the view that if Monis received the flag, "he would probably kill someone anyway and wrap their body in it". He also recounted how Monis encouraged some hostages to call their families to say their last goodbyes. "Looking back at it now in hindsight that may have contributed to what I was thinking ,that it wasn't going to get any better if he was getting people to say their last goodbyes," Mr Herat said. The inquest heard his opportunity to escape came about 2am, when Monis, with hostage Fiona Ma in front of him and Selina Win Pe holding onto his backpack, moved towards the back fire exit. Mr Herat said he then looked at hostage Jarrod Morton-Hoffman, who said he was going to get some help, before he went out the cafe doors.

Mr Herat grabbed the arm of fellow employee Harriette Denny to make sure they were going out of the cafe at the same speed. He said he heard two gunshots as they escaped and felt "bullets whizzing past my ears". "I thought he [Monis] was going to come out and follow us on to Martin Place and shoot us dead or shoot whoever was left in the cafe," he said. Mr Herat was one of six hostages who fled the cafe at 2.04am, minutes before Monis lined up cafe manager Tori Johnson and shot him. The inquest has heard Monis singled out Mr Johnson, telling him that if police came in he would be the first person to die.

Hours before Mr Herat fled the cafe, hostages Elly Chen and April Bae made their escapes. Ms Chen told the inquest she crawled under a table after hearing the noises of three other hostages escaping earlier in the afternoon. She found Ms Bae and watched as she worked on pulling a latch down on a door over a five minute period. "She said that it was her mum's birthday and she needed to escape," Ms Chen, 23, told the inquest. "She said that she would just open the door and leave."

Before Ms Chen fled the cafe  gravely concerned Monis may kill her  she sent a text to her friend. "If I don't talk to you tonight, it's all good," she wrote. "I'll see you on the other side." One of the first things she told police after she escaped was that Monis was nice, she said. "He kept telling us he was a nice person, he was giving us water, giving us food ... I guess it was a manipulation thing but I believed him that he was nice," Ms Chen said.
Train commuters travelling to Sydney's Wynyard station on Monday morning have faced lengthy queues, after the York Street entrance flooded.

The station, the city's third busiest in the morning peak, is already notoriously crowded and is undergoing major upgrade works.

The flooding followed the wettest 24-hour period in a year in Sydney, with more than 50 millimetres of rain falling at Observatory Hill in that time.
More than 300 doctors and other medical professionals have signed an open letter demanding the state government develop a plan to retire the Latrobe Valley's brown coal power plants because of the health damage they cause in the local community.

The letter, organised by the group Doctors for the Environment Australia, argues a transition away from brown coal-fired power  responsible for 85 per cent of Victoria's electricity generation  is necessary because its pollution is responsible for local disease, and even death, and poses a broader health threat through a contribution to climate change.

A giant dredging machine at work in the brown coal mine at Loy Yang in the Latrobe Valley. Credit:John Woudstra

The letter is an attempt to heap pressure on the Andrews government to include measures to start retiring the valley's four brown coal plants as part of its promised state renewable energy plan, which is expected to be released in coming weeks.

Dr John Iser, the Victorian chair of Doctors for the Environment and a retired gastroenterologist, said the state government had carried out "commendable" work to inform its clean-energy strategy, but it was still "paper planning" and the doctors group was "getting fed up with the lack of action".
The new City of Perth library has inexplicably cancelled its Harry Potter-themed event for children because adult fans complained about not being allowed to go.

Perth leapt to attention when the library announced the event, lured by the activities such as meeting and learning about owls from the WA Bird of Prey Centre and attending a 'potions class' with scientists from the ChemCentre.

Over 18 Perth fans were not impressed.

The library tried to explain to the 11,000 people who expressed interest that the event was just for children.

But thousands retorted that the "real fans" who grew up with Harry Potter were now in their twenties and early thirties.
The first idea that may come up when reading this heading is that this article pertains to the strength category of a hurricane. A Cat I hurricane we simply do not fear anymore in St. Maarten, as after Luis and Marilyn in 1995 we learned how to prepare. CAT I in this article has no relation to the tropical storms we face. Category I is the status our Civil Aviation Authority must have and maintain, if there is a desire by the country to maintain commercial flights to the United States or maintain codeshare arrangements with US partner airliners. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) assesses the ability of the country civil aviation authority to oversee air carriers in its territory. This ability is measured based on the compliance with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) safety standards for the industry. The assessment is executed through the International Aviation Safety Assessment program (IASA) and focusses on eight (8) key elements of aviation safety as set forth in the ICAO Safety Oversight Manual- document number 9734. The eight (8) key requirements of compliance are:

1] Primary aviation legislation;

2] Specific operating regulations;

3] State civil aviation system and safety oversight functions;

4] Technical personnel qualification and training;

5] Technical guidance, tools and the provision of safety critical information;

6] Licensing, certification, authorization, and approval obligations;

7] Surveillance obligations; and

The Netherlands Antilles enjoyed the category I status as being part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, but that all changed in 2010 when Curacao and St. Maarten attained separate status within the Kingdom. The Curacao Civil Aviation Authority needed to undergo an inspection, and the deficiencies found resulted in a downgrade in 2012 to a category II status. This downgrade affected St. Maarten as well, due to the fact that the countrys the (PJ) aircraft registry prefix. Even though this downgrade does not affect flights in operation, it does mean that no new flights/service can be undertaken by airlines from St. Maarten to the US and its territories. It is therefore of essence that a category I status is regained, since our economic development is contingent hereon. In this context we must realize that this young country having assumed the Civil Aviation Authority for the first time after the dismantling of the Netherlands Antilles, by far did not have the developed framework in place as was the case in Curacao. Yet with the limited means available the start-up of this entity commenced. The St. Maarten Civil Aviation Authority is functional today, yet not much attention is given to this entity. As a tourism destination and tourism being the main pillar of our economy one would think that the Government would take this matter on as a priority. The safety of our aviation industry is at stake here, yet we must fear that budget cuts may result in this matter not promptly being addressed. It is a known fact that many new authorities assumed since 10-10-10 placed a real burden on the country as many institutions were not present in the country before, the human resources and expertise often yet to be acquired. Yes we all know that Curacao did not keep its promises to help set up the many new institutions country St. Maarten would require, and may still not have transferred our share of the moneys out of the division of the Netherlands Antilles Estate, but if we follow the words of the Minister of Finance we can forget that our share will be released any time soon. So with a strapped budget, cuts left and right, healthcare requiring urgent attention, one can only assume that budget cuts will also affect the quest of the Civil Aviation Authority to regain a category I status. The hiring and training of staff may not be possible, the acquisition of equipment required may be delayed, the much needed regulations, which must undergo legal screening by Legal affairs, may follow a slow process as this division neither has the manpower nor the aviation expertise to truly execute a prompt screening. So how will this category I status be regained, if the importance hereof is not understood or simply mitigated? Yes we need to tighten our belt, but we also need to ensure that we are a safe destination for incoming and outgoing aircrafts, as we depend on this means of transportation for our entire socio-economic growth. The tourism industry- the aviation industry- brings us the much needed revenues, and these revenues will not grow if we are unable to meet aviation safety standards. If expansion of airlift to US territories is deemed part of our further development as a destination, then we need to get our priorities straight. So maybe it is time to set the politics aside. Budget cuts, should go hand in hand with the clearing of a polluted Government payroll, and hiring should be done in areas most needed. Maybe those still on the Government payroll who have not worked for the administration in years and are generating income through other jobs as well, should be taken off that payroll. In the interest of the country those who are needed and are willing to work should be hired. If a clean-up is undertaken this Government would be surprised at the amount of revenues it would have to hire qualified, young St. Maarteners who are hungry to contribute towards their country. Yet this clean-up should not be expected in an election year. Considering all the afore the question remains: are the budget cuts undertaken the right ones, in the right areas, without creating additional liabilities? For if these cuts are the sole basis for the Government to operate on a balanced budget, areas requiring urgent attention and staffing will be left unattended. Whilst balancing a budget on paper the reality will be that fragmented budget cuts will harm us in the long run, and will prevent economic growth. Category I will remain a desired status by the Civil Aviation Authority to be attained.
PHILIPSBURG:--- Member of Parliament Christopher Emmanuel said in a press release that he has serious concerns regarding the current pricing of Petroleum products on the island relating to LPG, fuel and low sulfur diesel.

The Member of Parliament believes the people of St. Maarten have a right to know accurate and concise calculations relating to these products. No longer shall it simply be that everything is calculated by world market. This Member of Parliament would like to know who are the importers of LPG, fuel and low sulfur diesel. Also any additional products sold on the island which is derived from the same barrel.

My further concerns are:

What procedures are used for the calculations of the published prices? Who calculates these prices? What world postings are used to calculate the pricings? How often are these prices adjusted? When and how the wholesale/retailers are notified or price change? Prices in the petroleum products; how is it that some increase or decrease but others dont? For example, the price of LPG decreased, but the price for jet fuel remains the same when both products are derive from the same barrel of crude oil?

The Member of Parliament will be requesting, through the Chairlady, a meeting with Minister of TEATT to discuss the issue of petroleum and in the interest of transparency.
ThreatSTOP Inks Distribution Deal With Cloud Harmonics

CARLSBAD, CA  (Marketwired)  04/04/16  , the company that delivers Powerful Security without Complexity, today announced a distribution agreement with Cloud Harmonics, the fastest growing full-service, next-generation distributor for emerging cybersecurity and cloud solutions. Under the new agreement, Cloud Harmonics will distribute the ThreatSTOP Shield and DNS Firewall network security platform.

The ThreatSTOP platform delivers up-to-the-minute threat intelligence as operational policies to firewalls, routers and DNS servers to automatically block traffic to and from known malicious sources. This patented functionality helps customers prevent data theft and ensures existing security solutions are delivering maximum protection and value. A cloud-based service, it works with existing network security devices to dynamically update and enforce security policies to ensure continuous protection. It provides a single point of control for devices across multiple locations and from different manufacturers.

Cloud Harmonics works with leading technology providers to help them successfully engage with channel partners to drive adoption of security solutions. Its unique approach begins with providing product training to channel partners, along with technical and sales support services designed to help partners effectively deliver security solutions. Working with Cloud Harmonics, ThreatSTOP will accelerate time to market, drive awareness and grow market share through engagements with the distributors channel partners.

The ability to block inbound malware attacks, ransomware and prevent data exfiltration is a critical component of any security ecosystem, said Anand Desai, VP Marketing and Emerging Technologies, Cloud Harmonics. Cloud Harmonics is pleased to work with ThreatSTOP, which provides a cloud-based SaaS threat intelligence platform, enabling our more than 400 channel partners to offer this entirely new class of protection capable of addressing the advanced cybersecurity needs of their customers.

The ThreatSTOP platform deflects inbound attacks such as ransomware, DDoS, and phishing, and prevents communications with command and control servers to prevent theft of sensitive data. Real-time reporting enables customers to pinpoint affected machines for speedy remediation. More than 500 companies trust ThreatSTOP to protect their networks today. It also significantly reduces unwanted network traffic, so security teams can focus on more insidious threats. The platform integrates with leading firewalls, routers and DNS servers.

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Quote: sleepie Originally Posted by omg Drake this city is ridiculously expensive. I have been priced out of every single place I had, and they weren't exactly palaces! It didn't used to be that way though. it was affordable and great for so long.



it's also slowly becoming more gentrified all over and more suburban.

Yep, this was around 2000-2001. I looked at an apartment in Wrigleyville (I know, but I was making ok money at the time) that was old and tiny. Rent was $1500/mo, parking extra. I told a friend here about that and she said that was more than her mortgage for a huge 5 bedroom home with 3 car garage, exercise room and glorious kitchen located in a gated community. I knew then I made a mistake. I hated the job so I left and took one in St Louis... hated it too. Then came back to KC where I had lived for most of the 90's.This is when the drinking really took off.Courage, I grew up in central Illinois, went to UI-Urbana and then UI-Springfield for grad school.
International Relations, War/Peace  April 4, 2016  Greg Shupak

When ISIS claimed responsibility for the horrendous attacks in Brussels last week, U.S. President Barack Obama was unequivocal: the U.S. and its allies, he said, can and will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world. More bombing, it hardly needed to be said, was on the way. For their part, the presidential candidates only disagree on the scale of military action needed to stamp out ISIS  not on the appropriateness of yet more American warfare. The call for a muscular response, however, overlooks the casualties the U.S. has already inflicted.

To date, U.S.-led coalition airstrikes in the war on ISIS have likely killed at least 1,044 civilians in Iraq and Syria. Even the brutal calculus of collateral damage cannot rationalize such deaths. Theyre simply the latest victims in the latest phase of a decades-long, U.S.-led campaign that has visited death and destruction on countries across the globe  particularly in the Middle East.

The current anti-ISIS strategy  which treats the group as a discrete problem with a ready military solution  is myopic. ISIS is the product of long-term, structural factors. To degrade and ultimately destroy the group, its necessary to address the root causes of its growth. An American war promises, at best, a combat trophy  and the spawning of new jihadist groups. Even if military intervention dispersed ISIS, the social forces undergirding it would persist, perhaps emerging even stronger than before. If ISIS disappeared, another organization would likely swoop in to fill the void (whether it was Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham, or some analogous upstart group), ready to carry out ethnic cleansing and the occasional terrorist attack in the West.

Or perhaps ISIS would simply move its base to countries like Libya or Yemen that, thanks in part to U.S. actions, its established a foothold  inflicting even more devastation on the local population. In either scenario, though, we could expect the same U.S. response: begin the drumbeats for war, kick off another round of death and destruction. It was one of those bloody rounds that birthed ISIS.

Children of the Occupation

Lydia Wilson, an Oxford researcher who has interviewed imprisoned ISIS fighters, describes them as

children of the [U.S.] occupation [of Iraq], many with missing fathers at crucial periods (through jail, death from execution, or fighting in the insurgency), filled with rage against America and their own government. They are not fueled by the idea of an Islamic caliphate without borders; rather, ISIS is the first group since the crushed Al Qaeda to offer these humiliated and enraged young men a way to defend their dignity, family, and tribe.

Wilson also quotes Douglas Stone, a U.S. general who oversaw Iraqi detainees at several military prisons during the occupation. Stone says that every single detainee he encountered complained about the disintegration of security triggered by the American invasion.

Elsewhere, Jurgen Todenhofer, a German politician and journalist who spent ten days in 2014 embedded with ISIS, says the groups militants described the 2003 invasion of Iraq as a terrorist recruitment program and notes that ISIS was created six months after the start of the invasion: it is Bushs baby.

If a hard-right U.S. leader laid the groundwork for ISIS in Iraq, a Democratic president helped produce the conditions for ISISs rise in Syria.

At various points in the Syrian war, the United States and allies such as Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates have armed a variety of anti-government factions. By late 2012, foreign policy analyst Aron Lund points out, much of the armed uprising had taken on a sectarian character, and large portions espoused ideologies that ranged from apolitical Sunni conservatism or rural sufism, across the Muslim Brotherhoods ikhwani Islamism, to the rigid ultra-orthodoxy of salafism.

A 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency report notes that the West, Turkey and the Gulf support the Syrian opposition, admits that the Syrian war could result in the creation of a Salafist principality in eastern Syria, and warns that this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.

In 2014, U.S. general Martin Dempsey told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Americas Arab allies were funding ISIS, and Vice President Joe Biden said the same. Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma, estimates that 60 to 80 per cent of the arms that America shoveled in [to Syria] have gone to al-Qaida and its affiliates.

To make matters worse, the U.S. and its proxies repeatedly threw up obstacles to a negotiated settlement in Syria, allowing ISIS to fester and Syria to bleed.

War Is a Racket

Policymakers in the United States and its imperial partners arent stupid. So whats driving their actions?

In his indispensable book Joining Empire, Canadian political scientist Jerome Klassen points to the U.S.s adoption since World War II of hegemonic liberalism, a strategy that ties the spread of capitalist relations across the globe to American diplomatic and military primacy.

During the Cold War, the chain linking the general interests of international capital with U.S. foreign policy was relatively undisguised. Even through the 1990s, the Department of Defense openly admitted that advancing capitals interests was a central goal of U.S. foreign policy.

[O]ur overall objective [in the Middle East] is to remain the predominant outside power in the region and [to] preserve U.S. and Western access to the regions oil, a 1992 Defense Department document read. Similarly, a 1997 issue of the Defense Departments Quadrennial Defense Review noted that one of the purposes of U.S. military policy was securing uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies and strategic resources.

Klassen contends that a transnational capitalist class has now come to rely on the U.S. military to direct and enforce global capitalism through what he dubs armored neoliberalism  the joining of the economic logic of global exploitation with the political logic of disciplinary militarism.

Under Obama, the Joint Forces Command has argued that the U.S. military underpins the open and accessible global system of trade and travel that we know as globalization and provides safety and security for the major exporters to access and use the global commons for trade and commerce.

Recent history bears this out. Capitalists based in the U.S. and allied states made vast amounts of money off the 2003 attack on Iraq, both directly and indirectly. The engineering company Bechtel National nabbed a $1-billion reconstruction contract a month after the invasion and another for up to $1.82-billion nine months later. According to a Financial Times report, by 2013 companies had received at least $138-billion in public money for building infrastructure, feeding soldiers, and delivering services such as private security.

The Florida-based International Oil Trading Company collected $2.1-billion to transport fuel from Jordan to U.S. forces in Iraq. The Cheney-linked, energy-focused engineering and construction firm Kellog, Brown and Root was awarded $39.5-billion during the war, more than any other company. When most of the U.S. military briefly withdrew in 2011, the State Department estimated that it would spend $3-billion over the next five years on private security for its gargantuan embassy in Baghdad.

Weapons manufacturers got in on the action as well. In 2004, a $259-million contract for guns, trucks, and other equipment went to ANHAM, a consortium whose principals are in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the USA. Two years later the Washington Post reported a surge in profits for the company, which had benefited more directly from the war than any other large defense contractor due to its knack for making armored vehicles, tank shells, and bullets. Even after the American drawback, arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin sold $3-billion worth of fighter jets to the Iraqi government.

On the eve of the Iraq War, oil was also on policymakers minds. As Doug Stokes points out, the invasion was not merely a short-term cash grab for particular companies but an effort by the U.S. ruling class to become the key guarantor of stability for two of the most oil-rich states in the world, Saudi Arabia and Iraq  thereby giving them substantial control over the global oil market.

Of course, specific firms also enjoyed a financial windfall from the invasion. Before the attack, Iraqs domestic oil industry was nationalized and inaccessible to Western companies. But by 2013  after a raft of contracts between private oil companies and state-owned firms  the oil sector was largely privatized and utterly dominated by foreign firms.

Companies like BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell all saw flusher coffers, even as the average Iraqi continued to face grinding poverty.

And Business Is Good

Imperial powers are not omnipotent, or without contradictory impulses. Their regional priorities and tactics can shift  and deep internal rifts can develop. But the ascent of ISIS has occasioned no such recalibration from the U.S. ruling class. Why change course, after all, when business is booming?

Arms sales  which the New York Times has credited with fueling the Middle Easts descent into proxy wars, sectarian conflicts and battles against terrorists  show no signs of letting up. Indeed, U.S. intelligence believes the wars in the Middle East will last for years, making regional governments even more eager for the F-35 fighter jet, considered to be the jewel of Americas future arsenal and the costliest weapons project on earth.

When the U.S. coalition ratcheted up its assault on ISIS targets in 2014, the aggression industry reacted with glee and immediately saw its profits spike. In the years since, Lockheed Martin has received thousands of additional orders for Hellfire missiles.

To fight ISIS, the Daily Beast writes, AM General is supplying Iraq with 160 American-built Humvees, General Dynamics is selling the country millions of dollars worth of tank ammunition, and SOS International  whose board of advisers includes Paul Wolfowitz and Paul Butler, a former special assistant to Donald Rumsfeld  says it has been awarded more than $400-million to provide services such as private security.

In 2015, despite a relatively flat market elsewhere, the United States boosted its weapons sales by 35 per cent. Weapons makers Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and General Dynamics, as well as the surveillance company Booz Allen, all saw their value sharply increase when Francois Hollande vowed to destroy ISIS following the Paris massacres.

Many of the weapons deals are with some of the same states that facilitated the rise of jihadism in Syria. The U.S. and Qatar have signed letters of offer and acceptance to sell Apache helicopters, as well as Patriot and Javelin defense systems worth $11-billion. Last year, the State Department approved weapons sales of $293-million to Jordan, $380-million to Turkey, $845-million to the UAE, and nearly $21-billion to Saudi Arabia. This is to say nothing of the exorbitant profits reaped by U.S. arms sales to Western governments participating in the coalition, such as Canada, France, and the United Kingdom  or the considerable sales these countries own weapons firms have made in the Persian Gulf.

Similarly, the New York Times described in January a U.S.Saudi Arabia arrangement in which the Saudis provide funds and weapons to the Syrian opposition, and the CIA trains them  this despite the Saudis support for the extreme strain of Islam, Wahhabism, that has inspired many of the very terrorist groups the United States is fighting.

If the U.S.Saudi bond is rock-solid, the U.S.s preoccupation with oil seems equally unbreakable. American forces began engaging ISIS as early as four days after the group took control of Tikrit and, along with it, partial control of Iraqi oil. Furthermore, as Steve Coll argues, the U.S.s 2014 intervention in Erbil, Iraq had less to do with protecting Yazidis from ISIS than safeguarding a territory that is important to ExxonMobil and Chevron.

The war against ISIS is not just about controlling the flow of oil and delivering immediate material rewards to Western military contractors, though. Its also about building the infrastructure for tomorrows wars.

In June, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey told reporters that the U.S. is considering constructing at least four more bases in Iraq. These sites, called lily pads, are smaller than the average base but can be quickly expanded.

Further west, the U.S. has put up a new outpost in Al-Hasakah, a Kurdish-held governorate in northeastern Syria chosen because its just 100 miles (160 kilometers) from ISIS frontline positions and some of its lucrative oil fields. And construction is underway on an air base southeast of Kobani, which straddles the Turkish border.

The proliferation of such bases allows the U.S. military to deepen its presence in the Middle East, influencing the affairs of host countries while signaling to civilian populations that the U.S. anticipates carrying out future attacks.

With each base the U.S. builds, it fosters an environment not simply more hospitable to ISIS but one that could create a group so ferocious it makes ISIS look tame by comparison. As Andrew Cockburn has reported, in 2015 a U.S.-Turkish-Saudi coordination room ordered the rebel groups it was supplying to cooperate with Jaish al-Fatah, a coalition led by al-Qaedas Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra. In other words, the group the U.S. had once excoriated as the most worlds most barbarous had become the lesser evil.

There Is an Alternative

The war against ISIS isnt a fresh response to a novel situation. Whether its funneling weapons into the region or advancing the interests of capital or consorting with dictators, weve seen this show before. The military campaign against ISIS represents the latest episode in an ongoing effort by the U.S. ruling class and its allies to more fully dominate the Middle East.

Given the political and economic weight of those pushing these policies, undoing the present state of affairs is a considerable task: as Klassen argues, it would require wiping out the capitalist social relations that underlie imperialism and replacing them with democratic modes of production and exchange.

In the immediate term, however, people living in member states of the U.S.-led coalition can organize against aerial bombardment and boots on the ground. Not only is there no military solution to the wars in Iraq and Syria, but such action impedes the diplomatic and humanitarian remedies that can get at the source of these conflicts.

For example: facilitating unconditional negotiations, and halting U.S. military support for the Syrian opposition, to end the Syrian war; pushing for the meaningful integration of Sunnis and other minorities into political life in Iraq; and pressuring Turkey to stop allowing ISIS to freely use its border. Additionally, supporting the struggle of those inside and outside Turkey against the governments ongoing assault on the Kurds both aids the goal of Kurdish self-determination and buttresses Kurdish forces in their continued battle against ISIS.

These policies could cause ISIS to wither. The U.S.-led coalitions military-heavy approach, by contrast, risks killing ever more Iraqis and Syrians without putting an end to the horrors that ISIS and its political equivalents continue to inflict. On this, we must be as unequivocal as Obama. The problems created by imperialism will not be solved by more imperialism. 
This one got lopsided in a hurry, and that was just what Notre Dame needed

football
The Milky Way's youngest supernova remnant, called G1.9+0.3, was likely caused by the merging of two dense cores left over from dying stars.

The Milky Way's youngest supernova  an explosion of a star that renders it extremely bright  was probably caused by the collision of two ultradense remnants of stars, new research suggests. The epic blast, shrouded in dust, also likely happened even more recently than scientists thought.

The supernova remnant was identified by radio telescope in 1984, and astronomers set out to fit X-ray and radio data to a model that could help reveal what instigated the explosion.

Researchers tracked down the explosion's cause by measuring how the supernova remnant brightened over time, and their technique could be used to better understand the type of supernova in general, called Type Ia  a cosmic blast essential to measuring the universe's expansion. Such supernovas can briefly shine brighter than the galaxies in which they reside. [Supernovas: Amazing Star Explosion Images]

"Astronomers use Type Ia supernovas as distance markers across the universe, which helped us discover that its expansion was accelerating," Sayan Chakraborti, an astrophysicist at Harvard University and lead author of the new study, said in a statement. "If there are any differences in how these supernovas explode and the amount of light they produce, that could have an impact on our understanding of this expansion."

Astronomers group stars into classes according to spectral color and brightness. See how they scientists tell stars apart in our full infographic (Image credit: by Karl Tate, Infographics Artist)

The supernova remnant in question, called G1.9+0.3, is the echo of a cosmic explosion whose light would have hit Earth about 110 years ago, the new research suggests, but its dusty home in the constellation Sagittarius blocked its light from 19th century astronomers.

The new research incorporated data from the orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Jansky Very Large Array, a radio telescope in New Mexico. Both observatories focus on wavelengths of light that can pierce the dense cloud of dust around the supernova remnant. The researchers examined how the supernova remnant was interacting with the gas and dust around it, and noticed an increase in radiation over time.

Researchers classify Type Ia supernovas as explosions caused by white dwarfs, the superdense cores left behind when stars run out of fuel. But they aren't sure exactly why the white dwarfs explode. Potentially, the white dwarf could have either sucked in too much material from a companion star in its orbit, or two white dwarfs could have slammed together and merged, NASA officials said in a statement.

According to the Harvard team's new model, a supernova remnant's brightening over time suggests that it was formed the second way, through a white dwarf merger. They also concluded that scientists were seeing the blast 110 years after it happened, rather than 150.

"We observed that the X-ray and radio brightness increased with time, so the data point strongly to a collision between two white dwarfs as being the trigger for the supernova explosion in G1.9+0.3," study co-author Francesca Childs, also at Harvard, said in the statement.

The researchers can use their model to figure out the triggers of other Type Ia supernovas, which are thought to let out a consistent amount of light at their peaks. That consistency lets researchers calculate the distance to the galaxies they reside in, based on their brightness. Therefore, more information about how they form, which could affect the amount of light they put out, means researchers may need to recalculate some of the distances found based on the explosions.

"It is important to identify the trigger mechanism for Type Ia supernovas, because if there is more than one cause, then the contribution from each may change over time," Alicia Soderberg, an astronomer at Harvard and a study co-author, said in the statement. "This means astronomers might have to recalibrate some of the ways we use them as 'standard candles' in cosmology."

The new work was detailed in The Astrophysical Journal in March.

Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
Blue Origin's BE-3 engine restarted at 3,635 feet (1.1 km) above ground level and landed successfully at its West Texas launch site on April 2, 2016.

A brilliant column of fire, blasting out the back of a rocket ship, lit up the cool blue sky above the west Texas desert on Saturday (April 2), when the private spaceflight company Blue Origin successfully launched and landed its New Shepard vehicle for the third time.

Blue Origin's photos and amazing video of the New Shepard launch show the rocket heading skyward, where it eventually separated from the crew capsule (although no one was inside). The crew capsule parachuted back to Earth, but the rocket booster used its thrusters to make a graceful vertical landing.

This is the third time Blue Origin has flown this particular New Shepard vehicle, which makes the test flight somewhat historic. The company (which has been using the motto of "Launch. Land. Repeat." for the flights) is aiming to dramatically lower the cost of suborbital spaceflights by reusing its boosters, rather than discarding them, which is what engineers have had to do with nearly every other rocket in history. Check out more photos from New Shepard's third launch and landing here.

Blue Origin's BE-3 engine restarted at 3,635 feet (1.1 km) above ground level and landed successfully at its West Texas launch site on April 2, 2016. (Image credit: Blue Origin)

For this flight, Blue Origin also had drones following the rocket as it headed skyward, giving some absolutely breathtaking images of the craft racing through the wide open sky, the capsule parachuting back to Earth, and the booster making its incredible landing.

The crew capsule reached an apogee of 339,178 feet (103,381 meters). That's 64.2 miles (103.4 kilometers), just above the 62-mile (100 km) altitude regarded as the boundary of space.

Blue Origin's New Shepard space vehicle ascends from its West Texas test site to reach an apogee of 339,138 feet (103 km) on April 2, 2016. (Image credit: Blue Origin)

"We pushed the envelope on this flight, restarting the engine for the propulsive landing only 3,600 feet [1097 meters] above the ground, requiring the BE-3 engine to start fast and ramp to high thrust fast," the company said in a blog post yesterday (April 3).

Blue Origin team members recover the crew capsule after its fifth successful flight and soft landing at its West Texas launch site on April 2, 2016. (Image credit: Blue Origin)

The private spaceflight company SpaceX is hot on Blue Origin's heels with its reusable rocket booster, which has also made successful vertical landings. SpaceX's rocket can send spacecraft to orbital altitudes above the Earth.
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*BBC THREE ANNOUNCE CAST FOR DOCTOR WHO SPIN-OFF - CLASS**Time has looked at your faces now. And time never forgets*What if your planet was massacred and you were the sole survivor? What if a legendary figure out of space and time found you a place to hide? But what if the things that want to kill you have tracked you down? And worst of all, what if you haven't studied for your A-Levels?On the first day of term, BBC Three today announce the stars of the Doctor Who spin-off series* Class* - exciting young new talents *Greg Austin, Fady Elsayed, Sophie Hopkins *and* Vivian Oparah*. They will be joined by *Katherine Kelly*, as she takes the role of a teacher and powerful new presence at Coal Hill School.Like all sixth formers, these four Coal Hill School students have hidden secrets and desires. They are facing their own worst fears, navigating a life of friends, parents, school work, sex, sorrow - and possibly the end of existence.Coal Hill School has been a part of the Doctor Who Universe since the very beginning, but that has come at a price. All the time travelling over the years has caused the very walls of space and time to become thin. Theres something pressing in on the other side, something waiting for its chance to kill everyone and everything, to bring us all into Shadow.Fear is coming, tragedy is coming, war is coming. Prepare yourselves, *Class* is coming.Award winning YA writer and *Class *creator Patrick Ness, says:We searched far and wide for this amazing cast, fantastic actors who understand what were aiming for with this show. And how lucky we are to get Katherine Kelly! Shes been stunning in Happy Valley, The Night Manager and Mr Selfridge, just wait until you see her here.Steven Moffat, *Class* and Doctor Who Executive Producer, says:Theres nothing more exciting than meeting stars that nobodys heard of yet. We had the read through of the first few episodes last week, and there was a whole row of them. Coal Hill School has been part of Doctor Who since the very first shoot in 1963, but this new show is anything but history. Class is dark and sexy and right now. Ive always wondered if there could be a British Buffy - its taken the brilliant Patrick Ness to figure out how to make it happen.*Class* is a YA series set in contemporary London. It is scary, funny, and as painful and sharp as youth. It will also shine a light on a whole new corner of the Whoniverse.Damian Kavanagh, Controller, BBC Three, adds:I cant wait for Class to arrive on BBC Three. BBC Three will always back best young British talent.From Writer Patrick Ness, Director Ed Bazalgette (Poldark, Doctor Who), Producer Derek Ritchie, and Executive Producers Patrick Ness, Steven Moffat and Brian Minchin, the BBC Cymru Wales production, co-produced with BBC America and BBC Worldwide, starts filming today and will premiere on BBC Three this year.Meet the cast of *Class* in 360Further casting will be announced in due course.